Science and religion:

Lord of All I Survey

Viral Pew surveys yield surprising results.

 

World and It Basically Sucks

 

It's a 401(k)

 

I like the metaphor in Tom Friedman's latest column, arguing that we now live in a 401(k) world. But I wish he'd spelled it out in greater detail, because the problem with living in a 401(k) world is that Planet 401(k) is a pretty sucky planet. Here's the essential shape of 401(k) as a backbone of the retirement system:

Has the Justice Department Learned Anything from the Aaron Swartz Case?

The Most Misleading Number About the Tea Party and the Senate

Former U.S. Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell signs copies of her book "Trouble Maker" at a Virginia Tea Party rally at Fort C.F. Smith on August 18, 2011 in Arlington, Virginia.

In one of the 500 "both sides share the blame" columns that National Journal is required to run every day, Charlie Cook repeats the least useful "data point" about the Tea Party's role in dragging down the GOP.

In 2010, the GOP lost five of the seven Senate contests The Cook Political Report rated as toss-ups going into Election Day; in 2012, it lost eight of 10. When a party loses 13 of 17 toss-ups over two elections, it has a problem. In many cases, Republicans nominated horrifically flawed candidates who didn’t quite self-destruct but were too weak to win. In other cases, they nominated candidates who did self-destruct. And when these problematic candidates pulled the pin on the grenade, other GOP office-seekers in their states became collateral damage.

By David Weigel

The Confused Person’s Guide to Sequester Politics

Who is lying to you about sequestration? Whom should you believe?

Speaker of the House John Boehner, with Reps. Martha Roby, R-Ala., and Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., talk about the sequester on Feb. 13.

The Research Case Against A Minimum Wage Increase

Yesterday I gave you the research case for a minimum wage increase. The starting point for the research case against a minimum wage increase should be David Neumark and William Wascher's book Minimum Wages which makes a full-bore case that minimum wage rules are perverse. That starts with findings of short-term disemployment effects, but continues with the argument that the impact is particularly severe on the youngest unskilled workers who suffer lasting damage by failing to get inside the world of formal paid labor quickly. They also argue that minimum wages are poorly targeted policy. Many of the workers who earn more as a result of the minimum wage are not poor, and many poor families receive little help from the minimum wage.

This is precisely the line of research that Arindrajit Dube and his co-authors are critiquing in their "new minimum wage" research that I referenced yesterday. Naturally Neumark & Wascher have (with J.M. Ian Salas) a critique of their critique of their work. Something worth noting is that in principle policymakers could actually design minimum wage policies that are meant to shed light on the issue. We could, for example, randomly assign counties different minimum wages on a spectrum of $5 an hour to $15 an hour and see what happens.

Meanwhile, though this cuts against the general charts-and-NBER-abstracts tendencies of the wonk blogosphere, the clearest case against a minimum wage hike has (in my view) more to do with freedom than with research. You've got a guy who wants to give someone $8 to do something that'll take an hour and another guy who wants $8 and is happy to do the thing in exchange for the money. Now Barack Obama's going to fine them for agreeing to trade $8 for the work? Seems perverse. In the real world, obviously, the perversity of this is greatly mitigated by the existence of formal exemptions and weak enforcement. If you pay a neighbor's son $10 to mow your lawn and it takes him 70 minutes, you're going to be able to get away with it even in a world of a $9 minimum wage. Which is probably as it should be.

 

 

By Matthew Yglesias

 

 

Cellphone Blizzard Alert Successfully Befuddles Half the East Coast

 

 

 

If you live along the Northeastern Seaboard, there's a good chance your mobile phone buzzed or beeped Thursday afternoon with a text alert like the one shown at left. And if you don't, there's a decent chance you witnessed the fallout on Twitter anyway.

Why did some people get the alerts while others sitting right next to them did not? Did half the country download some emergency-alert app that they've since forgotten about? If you didn't get the message, does that mean you're safe? Or doomed?

No, no, and no. The alerts are sent via the Wireless Emergency Alert system, developed by the FCC and FEMA and implemented starting in April 2012. They appear on WEA-equipped mobile phones by default, regardless of what apps you have active. As ABC News explained in November, when Sandy spurred a similar (if seemingly more justified) emergency bulletin, the discrepancy is merely a matter of which phones have been outfitted by their carriers to display the alerts. Have an iPhone 4S or 5 on Verizon? You probably got the memo. Same phone on AT&T? No alert: It seems the carrier's LTE network does not support the system. I've asked AT&T's press team for further explanation and will update if they reply. (Update, 5:35 p.m.: Here is AT&T's list of devices that support the alerts, and here is Verizon's.)

The alerts seem like a great idea in theory, although today's message wasn't exactly overflowing with actionable intel. Reactions on social networks and in the newsroom where I'm sitting right now suggest the alert's most immediate effect was to make those who got it wonder why they did and those who didn't get it wonder why they didn't.

But hey, here you are finding out the answer. So, if nothing else, hooray for the sage advice to "check media." Oh wait, were you hoping to learn something about the actual blizzard? Try Weather Underground's page on Winter Storm Nemo.

MORE

Hagel Was Just the Appetizer

 

Why are Democrats perpetually shocked—shocked!—when Republicans throw hurdles in front of their nominees?

Amazon Profits Fall 45 Percent, Still the Most Amazing Company in the World

Jeff Bezos, CEO of AMAZON, introduces new Kindle Fire HD Family and Kindle Paper white during the AMAZON press conference on September 06, 2012 in Santa Monica, California.

Today is 12/12/12. Where Does That Rank Among the Best Dates Ever?

Special-date enthusiasts Brandon Pereira and Emilia D'Silva celebrated their engagement on 10/10/10, had a registered legal marriage on 11/11/11 and finally had their big white wedding in Mumbai on 12/12/12.

Payroll tax holiday: The most important part of the fiscal cliff must be saved

Save the Payroll Tax Holiday

It’s the most important part of the “fiscal cliff”—and nobody’s talking about it.

By Matthew Yglesias

 

 

 

 

 

Blue state, red face: Guess who benefits more from your taxes?

Picking up on yesterday's theme, the fiscal cliff, let's look at the wider context to the argument between left and right over taxes and spending cuts.

There are serious economists who study the difference between what our states pay in taxes and how much they get in return from the U.S. government. These people generally don’t draw political, let along moral, judgments from these numbers.

I’m under no such constraint. The numbers, for decades now, have been quite clear: With some exceptions, what we regard as red states are sent a whole lot more of your hard-earned tax dollars than the traditional blue states. In effect, supposedly indolent, “tax and spend” liberals actually subsidize the individualistic, pure, and hard-working lifestyle of our conservative countrymen.

Don’t believe me? Well, there’s plenty of room for quibbling about what constitutes a tax payment vs. a federal benefit. Let’s hash that out below in the comments section. But for simplicity's sake (and to account for the fact that it’s hard to label some states as purely red or blue, I’ve taken the most recent Electoral College Map from RealClearPolitics—which shows how these states would likely vote if the presidential election were today—and cross-referenced it with numbers from one of those places peopled by serious economists: the nonpartisan Tax Foundation.*

Cont.Reading

Rand Paul Runs Ads Against Democrats Who Back Foreign Aid to Arab Spring Nations

Via Jim Antle, I see that Sen. Rand Paul's PAC (did you know he had one?) is running 60-second ads against possibly vulnerable Democratic senators. This one attacks Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who's fallen off the GOP's target list after a compromise-tastic first two years. (In 2010, he solidly won the seat opened up by the death of Robert Byrd.)






This ad jibes with the positions of John Raese, the perennial candidate challenging Manchin. "The fact that we send these countries $4 billion in foreign aid, that's where I'd start cutting," Raese said in a debate this month. Paul's other target is Florida Sen. Bill Nelson, another Democrat who's built a strong lead against a weak Republican, Connie Mack IV. These aren't particularly strategic targets. Paul is likely getting under the skin of Democrats who'll be back in January, for six more years.

 

 

 

 

By David Weigel

FULL VIDEO-Mitt Romney: Mother Jones releases full version of fundraising footage.

Full Video Taken During Mitt Romney's Private Fundraiser [UPDATED]

As promised, here's the full version of the video secretly recorded at a private Mitt Romney fundraiser earlier this year (via Mother Jones, which had been rolling out snippets of the footage since late yesterday afternoon).

Update 11:15 p.m: An earlier version of the first clip cut off roughly 18 minutes at the front end of Romney's remarks, a result of what the magazine says was a production error that occurred while uploading the clip. MoJo published the longer version Tuesday evening, and we've updated our post below with the new clip.

The new version opens with some small talk from Romney as he warms up the crowd and includes his joke about how he would have a better shot of winning the election if his father had been born to Mexican parents as opposed to Americans living in Mexico (a clip that had been previously excerpted during the magazine's initial roll out of the footage).

As to the gap between the end of "part one" and the beginning of "part two," MoJo's David Corn explains that, according to his source, the recording device was inadvertently turned off during the dinner but that it was quickly turned back on. In all, Corn says that his source estimates that there was only about a "one-to-two minute loss of tape."

There will no doubt be some people who point to those missing minutes as proof of editorial slight of hand on the magazine's part (that's right, we read our comment section). But given that Romney has twice stood by his remarks—once Monday night after the original clip was published, and a second time Tuesday afternoon after the slightly-less-than-full version was posted—it's hard to imagine what he could have possibly said while the camera was off that would have dampened the blow back he has faced in the wake of the video's release, or significantly changed the substance of his remarks or the debate that has resulted from them.  MORE

 

Romney Has Made VP Decision

Mitt Romney has made up his mind about who will join him on the GOP ticket and may make the much-anticipated announcement as soon as this week, the New York Times reports, citing those close to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

If the former governor does indeed name his VP pick this week, it would give the Republican a chance to change a political conversation that is currently focused squarely on Romney's time as head of Bain Capital.

The Times report comes only days after Romney advisers floated Condi Rice's name to the Drudge Report as a possible running mate—even though the popular former secretary of state has repeatedly said she has no interest in the job. The Drudge story, conveniently, came on the same day that the Boston Globe reported Romney remained atop Bain for three years longer than he has claimed, a story that has sparked a heated war of words between Obama and Romney.

The current leaders for the no. 2 slot on the GOP ticket are widely considered to be former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Ohio Sen. Rob Portman. Others thought to be on the short-list include South Dakota Sen. John Thune, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan. (NBC News has a solid run-down on the strengths and weakness of all of those candidates, along with other possibilities like Sens. Marco Rubio and Kelly Ayotte.)

Romney leaves town at the end of next week for London, Israel, and Poland, and could announce his decision before the departure.

Putin Returns as President With Crackdown on Protesters

The Russian strongman calls service to his country "the meaning of my whole life."

 http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2012/05/07/putin_starts_3rd_term_of_russian_presidency.html?from=rss/&wpisrc=newsletter_slatest