Howard Weaver

There’s lots being written about why the Republicans were so wrong in their expectations about this week’s election. They had the same data as the rest of us, yet they apparently deeply believed they were going to win. I think it’s a fascinating question. But I want to put it to different use.

The left-wing subtext about the Republican leadership’s failure to interpret the data is that it’s comeuppance for their failure to believe in science or facts. But that almost surely is a misreading. The Republicans thought they had factual grounds for disbelieving the polls. The polls, they thought, were bad data that over-counted Democrats. The Republicans thus applied an unskewing algorithm in order to correct them. Thus, the Republicans weren’t pooh-poohing the importance of facts. They were being good scientists, cleaning up the data. Now, of course their assumptions about the skewing of the data were wrong, and there simply has to be an element of wish-fulfillment (and thus reality denial) in their belief that the polls were skewed. But, their arguments were based on what they thought was a fact about a problem with the data. They were being data-based. They just did a crappy job of it.

So what do we conclude? First, I think it’s important to recognize that it wasn’t just the Republicans who looked the data in the face and drew entirely wrong conclusions. Over and over the mainstream media told us that this race was close, that it was a toss-up. But it wasn’t. Yes, the popular vote was close, although not as close as we’d been led to believe. But the outcome of the race wasn’t a toss-up, wasn’t 50-50, wasn’t close. Obama won the race decisively and not very long after the last mainland polls closed…just as the data said he would. Not only was Nate Silver right, his record, his methodology, and the transparency of his methodology were good reasons for thinking he would be right. Yet, the mainstream media looked at the data and came to the wrong conclusion. It seems likely that they did so because they didn’t want to look like they were shilling for Obama and because they wanted to keep us attached to the TV for the sake of their ratings and ad revenues.

I think the media’s failure to draw the right and true conclusions from the data is a better example of a non-factual dodge around inconvenient truths than is the Republicans’ swerve.

Put the two failures together, and I think this is an example of the the inability of facts and data to drive us to agreement. Our temptation might be to look at both of these as fixable aberrations. I think a more sober assessment, however, should lead us to conclude that some significant portion of us is always going to find a way to be misled by facts and data. As a matter of empirical fact, data does not drive agreement, or at least doesn’t drive it sufficiently strongly that by itself it settles issues. For one reason or another, some responsible adults are going to get it wrong.

This doesn’t mean we should give up. It certainly doesn’t lead to a relativist conclusion. It instead leads to an acceptance of the fact that we are never going to agree, even when the data is good, plentiful, and right in front of our eyes. And, yeah, that’s more than a little scary.

Today, the Supreme Court upheld ACA and the mandate as constitutional in a 5-4 decision, with Chief Justice John Roberts providing the swing vote. If you are unfamiliar with the case, Democrats passed a health care reform bill in 2010 that requires nearly all Americans to purchase health insurance or face a penalty for not doing so.

The issue is whether Congress has the power to compel individuals to purchase a good. The Government argued that Congress does, based on the Commerce Clause, which provides Congress with the power to regulate commerce between the states. Secondly, the Government argues that the penalty is not really a penalty at all, but rather a tax—and thus falls within Congress’s broad power of taxation.

Challengers argued that because ACA compels individuals to purchase health insurance, there is no economic activity to regulate, and therefore it is unconstitutional based on the Commerce Clause. In today’s decision, the Supreme Court agrees. John Roberts writes:

The Constitution grants Congress the power to “regulate Commerce.” Art. I, §8, cl. 3 (emphasis added). The power to regulate commerce presupposes the existence of commercial activity to be regulated. If the power to “regulate” something included the power to create it, many of the provisions in the Constitution would be superfluous. For example, the Constitution gives Congress the power to “coin Money,” in addition to the power to “regulate the Value thereof.” … If the power to regulate the armed forces or the value of money included the power to bring the subject of the regulation into existence, the specific grant of such powers would have been unnecessary. The language of the Constitution reflects the natural understanding that the power to regulate assumes there is already something to be regulated.

That is, to regulate economic activity, there must be activity to regulate. The Government argued that regulating economic non-activity is constitutional because choosing not to purchase health insurance results in higher insurance prices for those who do purchase it, and since it therefore affects interstate commerce, it can be regulated. This argument is informed by the 1942 case Wickard v. Filburn, where a farmer was penalized by the federal government for growing wheat for personal use in excess of his quota. Quotas on wheat production were instituted to stabilize the price of wheat. In this case, the Government’s penalty was upheld under the Commerce Clause because Filburn’s excess wheat production meant that he would purchase less wheat from the market; in the aggregate, this would lead to a reduction in overall demand for wheat and thus in the price. Therefore, the Court ruled, the penalties were regulating interstate commerce.

Proponents of the individual mandate argue that choosing not to purchase health insurance is much the same as choosing to produce more wheat for personal consumption: it affects the price of health insurance and therefore compelling individuals to purchase health insurance is justified by the Commerce Clause. The Court disagrees. Roberts writes for the majority that the Government’s theory goes much beyond the precedent set in Wickard. Roberts argues that in Wickard, Congress is allowed to regulate affirmative activity, not inactivity. He further argues that allowing Congress to “regulate inactivity” (compel individuals) would fundamentally change our relationship with the Federal Government:

While Congress’s authority under the Commerce Clause has of course expanded with the growth of the national economy, our cases have “always recognized that the power to regulate commerce, though broad indeed, has limits.” Maryland v. Wirtz, 392 U. S. 183, 196 (1968). The Government’s theory would erode those limits, permitting Congress to reach beyond the natural extent of its authority, “everywhere extending the sphere of its activity and drawing all power into its impetuous vortex.” The Federalist No. 48, at 309 (J. Madison). Congress already enjoys vast power to regulate much of what we do. Accepting the Government’s theory would give Congress the same license to regulate what we do not do, fundamentally changing the relation between the citizen and the Federal Government.

Roberts is arguing that, if the Government’s theory is correct, there would be no limit at all on Congress’s power. Congress could compel individuals to do whatever it is Congress wishes. Roberts is absolutely right, and it is heartening that something so obvious—that the power to regulate commerce does not mean the power to force individuals to do whatever the Government pleases—is now precedent. The Commerce Clause is not and was not intended to be a grant of nearly unlimited power to Congress.

Roberts turns to the Government’s secondary argument that the ACA’s penalty for failure to purchase health insurance is actually a tax. Roberts writes:

The most straightforward reading of the mandate is that it commands individuals to purchase insurance. After all, it states that individuals “shall” maintain health insurance. 26 U. S. C. §5000A(a). Congress thought it could enact such a command under the Commerce Clause, and the Government primarily defended the law on that basis. … [But] The question is not whether that is the most natural interpretation of the mandate, but only whether it is a “fairly possible” one. Crowell v. Benson, 285 U. S. 22, 62 (1932). As we have explained, “every reasonable construction must be resorted to, in order to save a statute from unconstitutionality.”

That is, ACA’s penalty is, if read most naturally, a penalty, but the Court must consider all other possible constructions of the law as well, and if they are reasonable, then it is constitutional. Roberts goes on to argue that the penalty has similar characteristics to a tax, can be interpreted as such, and is therefore constitutional.

My interpretation is Roberts reached to uphold ACA in order to avoid a conflict with the executive and legislative branches. Roberts apparently believes it is a fair interpretation of ACA’s penalty. I do not, and I believe ruling the mandate or the entire law unconstitutional would have been a principled decision, as Justices Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Kennedy believe.

But this is what a restrained and non-activist court looks like: it defers to the elected branches of government. Roberts wrote early in the Court’s decision that “It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices,” and as his decision shows, he firmly believes it. His decision to side with the liberal justices in upholding ACA says that Roberts believes the Court’s role is not to make policy, but to invalidate egregious violations of the Constitution.

I am disappointed the mandate remains law and, more dangerously, that the Federal Government’s power of taxation has been held up as an end-run around the Commerce Clause’s limitation Roberts explained so well. But we, the people, have the means to eliminate laws we find noxious through our elected officials. Many have hoped that the Supreme Court would rule the mandate unconstitutional because they have little faith in Congress’s—our elected officials—ability to get anything of any importance at all done, and I have little doubt many of those people are angry with the Court’s decision today. But that is not the Court’s concern, nor their role. Their job is not to take up slack when our elected officials are shirking their duties, and it is not only unfair, but counter to our system of government, to expect the Court to do so.

Today’s decision is a complex one. The Court placed a firm limit on the extent of the Commerce Clause, which is an absolute victory. They also, unfortunately, validated using the power of taxation to compel individuals to actions the Government prefers. But what it also showed—and what I think will be remembered about this decision—is that our system of government is well-designed and resilient. For all the talk on the left of a coup by the right-wing through unelected judges, one of the most derided of them just sided with the Government in a highly partisan and divisive case. What does that say about the Supreme Court’s ability to fairly adjudicate cases?

Just A Car Guy ponders the insane raises some CEOs make:

TRW CEO John Plant got 510% raise over his 2009 salary of 6.7 million Ford CEO Alan Mulally 524% raise... yet his company has 14 billion in debt Johnson Controls' Stephen Roell 424% raise

So... did those 3 companies make 4 to 500% better business decisions? Better profit? Better products?

Disgusting, but not surprising.

And if so, why???

Some Beltway types are so addicted to the page views she provides that they continue to pretend to think she might matter, after saying for the past two years that she didn’t.

But, really?

Sarah reached her “do it or get off the pot” moment two weeks ago, and stood up, flushed her supporters down the toilet, and walked away.

Does anyone think she might still influence even one percent of those likely to vote in GOP primaries?

When history looks you in the eye and you blink, the parade marches on, with all the other clowns clamoring for the attention you once commanded.

You become not even history, but merely a footnote to it.

Although I guess being the single least qualified candidate for national office in the political history of the United States does count for something.

But now?

Who, really, is asking, “What does Sarah think?”

She faced her ultimate moment of truth in the first week of October.

And she cowered from it, turned her back and ran for cover, shouting all the way, “It’s God’s fault! He closed the door!”

You don’t have to be an atheist to laugh at Sarah trying to blame God for her own inadequacies.

The Mama Grizzly turned out to be a Mama Ostrich–sticking her head in the sand, so she wouldn’t have to see what a fool she’d made of herself.

I don’t think she’ll ever be able to look herself in a mirror and acknowledge the extent to which she made fools of the gullible and dimwitted who supported her for the past three years, while she carried out the cynical scam that made her a multi-millionaire, even as it left them high and dry–or low and wet, submerged beneath the sewage of her words.

I shouldn’t be doing this, rooting for the Cardinals, that is. A rich team, with a winning tradition, and a mad-scientist manager playing against a team that hasn’t won in almost thirty years. But I am and I’m not apologizing for it.


The Brewers have turned into a caricature of a baseball team. Lead by a lunatic center fielder who was discarded by both the Pirates and the Nationals, they’ve turned into a chest pounding, look-at-me bad joke. In the pressure of the NLCS, their defense has fallen apart, their offense has been inconsistent and their pitching ordinary.

The Cardinals shouldn’t, by any measure, be playing in October. They lost Adam Wainwright, one of their best pitchers, before the season even started. They struggled to score runs, Matt Holiday was in and out with illnesses and injuries and King Albert didn’t have his usual extraordinary season. They relied instead on Lance Berkman, who surprised everyone with an excellent offensive year in the twilight of his career. All Berkman did was hit over .300 with 31 homers and 94 RBIs after the Yankees and Astros gave up on him.

The Cardinals also added by subtracting. They unloaded Colby Rasmus, their every day center fielder who insisted on using dear old Dad as his hitting coach and added starting pitcher Edwin Jackson. Rasmus, presumably with his father’s help, batted .225 for Toronto. Jackson, since early September has won every game he’s pitched.

And so we head to Milwaukee for Game 6, with the Cardinals leading 3 games to 2.  Tony LaRussa shuffling pitchers in and out with surgical precision and the Brewers beating their chests.

Matt Taibbi:

Pay for your own bailouts. A tax of 0.1 percent on all trades of stocks and bonds and a 0.01 percent tax on all trades of derivatives would generate enough revenue to pay us back for the bailouts, and still have plenty left over to fight the deficits the banks claim to be so worried about. It would also deter the endless chase for instant profits through computerized insider-trading schemes like High Frequency Trading, and force Wall Street to go back to the job it’s supposed to be doing, i.e., making sober investments in job-creating businesses and watching them grow.

At the end of my article in the current issue (Subscribe! TM) about the devastating hack of my wife's Gmail account, I promise a detailed online how-to about password generation and other handy security tips.

That will come ... real soon now

In the meantime, let me deal with the most frequent questions that have shown up in emails, concerning one of my two must-do recommendations*: if you use Gmail, you must switch on the two-step authentication system. For the official word from Google about this feature, see this and this. Here are the main questions I keep receiving:

1) Can I use this system even if I'm out of cell phone range? Yes. The app that generates new authorization codes is clock-based, rather than depending on a signal. (At least that is how the one for my Android phone works). You can get a code from the app on your smartphone whether or not it has any coverage at all.

2) What if I lose my phone or don't have it with me? You can generate a special set of one-time-use codes, print them out, and keep them in your purse or wallet. Then you use one of those if you happen to want to log on somewhere and you don't happen to have your phone. OK, if you're mugged, someone could get those codes -- and in theory, if the muggers also know your password (before you changed it), and understood what the codes were, they could get into your Gmail account. But that would be low on my list of worries during a mugging.

3) Is this a big nuisance? It is "a" nuisance, but not a big one. The nuisance/reward tradeoff is  comparable to having to carry keys to your house, versus leaving the door unlocked. On any machine you normally use for email, you can set things up so you have to enter the authorization code once per 30 days. It's only when you're using some unfamiliar machine -- at an internet cafe, at someone's home or office -- that you have to enter a code as well as your password. It's a five-second chore each time you do it. On the other hand, it creates a virtually impassable barrier for someone in Lagos or Moscow or Tianjin who has cracked your password but without the code, still cannot get into your account.  It protects you from what my wife encountered: the loss of six years' worth of mail, documents, photos, life. Take your choice. (And there can be a small additional one-time nuisance in generating special "application specific codes" for your iPad and certain other devices and mail programs. Tough it out.)

That's it for a few days. But do it now!
____

* Oh, yes, the other must-do chore: For any account that matters -- banking, email, sensitive data of any sort -- use a password that applies to that account alone, and that you have never used anywhere else. Reasoning explained in the piece.

Ina Fried, reporting on first-day iPhone 4S preorders:

“AT&T has seen extraordinary demand for iPhone 4S, with more than 200,000 preorders in the first 12 hours alone, the most successful iPhone launch we’ve ever had,” an AT&T representative told [some website]. […]

“We are very, very pleased with the initial first day of iPhone 4S preorders,” Sprint Vice President of Product Development Fared Adib said in a statement. “Today’s sales and the overall customer experience greatly exceeded our expectations.”

But then Fried ends the piece with this:

Initial reaction to the iPhone 4S was somewhat muted, given its similarity to the iPhone 4, though the new device does pack a higher-resolution camera, a faster A5 processor and Siri, its voice-powered assistant software.

Initial reaction by whom? What could be more initial than record-breaking preorders in the first 12 hours consumers were able to order the product? What she really means is that a bunch of self-proclaimed technology experts and analysts had a muted reaction after Apple announced it, and that, as ever with Apple, they just don’t get it.

After the WWDC keynote four months ago, I saw Steve, up close.

He looked old. Not old in a way that could be measured in years or even decades, but impossibly old. Not tired, but weary; not ill or unwell, but rather, somehow, ancient. But not his eyes. His eyes were young and bright, their weapons-grade intensity intact. His sweater was well-worn, his jeans frayed at the cuffs.

But the thing that struck me were his shoes, those famous gray New Balance 993s. They too were well-worn. But also this: fresh bright green grass stains all over the heels.

Those grass stains filled my mind with questions. How did he get them? When? They looked fresh, two, three days old, at the most. Apple keynote preparation is notoriously and unsurprisingly intense. But not so intense, those stains suggested, as to consume the entirety of Jobs’s days. There is no grass in Moscone West.

Surely, my mind raced, surely he has more than one pair of those shoes. He could afford to buy the factory that made them. Why wear this grass-stained pair for the keynote, a rare and immeasurably high-profile public appearance? My guess: he didn’t notice, didn’t care. One of Jobs’s many gifts was that he knew what to give a shit about. He knew how to focus and prioritize his time and attention. Grass stains on his sneakers didn’t make the cut.

Late last night, long hours after the news broke that he was gone, my thoughts returned to those grass stains on his shoes back in June. I realize only now why they caught my eye. Those grass stained sneakers were the product of limited time, well spent. And so the story I’ve told myself is this:

I like to think that in the run-up to his final keynote, Steve made time for a long, peaceful walk. Somewhere beautiful, where there are no footpaths and the grass grows thick. Hand-in-hand with his wife and family, the sun warm on their backs, smiles on their faces, love in their hearts, at peace with their fate.

Here is a snippet from What Would Google Do?
about Apple as the grand exception to every rule I put forth there:

How does Apple do it? How does it get away with operating this way even as every other company and industry is forced to redefine itself? It’s just that good. Its vision is that strong and its products even better. I left Apple once, in the 1990s, before Steve Jobs returned to the company, when I suffered through a string of bad laptops. But when I’d had it with Dell, I returned to Apple and now everyone in my family has a Mac (plus one new Dell); we have three iPhones; we have lots of iPods; I lobbied successfully to make Macs the standard in the journalism school where I teach. I’m a believer, a glassy-eyed cultist. But I didn’t write this book about Apple because I believe it is the grand exception. Frank Sinatra was allowed to violate every rule about phrasing because he was Sinatra. Apple can violate the rules of business in the next millennium because it is Apple (and more important, because Jobs is Jobs).

So then Apple is the ultimate unGoogle. Right?

Not so fast. When I put that notion to Rishad Tobaccowala, he disagreed and said that Apple and Google, at their cores, are quite alike.

“They have a very good idea of what people want,” he said. Jobs’ “taste engine” makes sure of that. Both companies create platforms that others can build upon—whether they are start-ups making iPod cases and iPhone apps or entertainment companies finding new strategies and networks for distribution in iTunes.
Apple, like Google, also knows how to attract, retain, and energize talent. “Apple people believe they are even better than Google people,” he said. “They’re cooler.”

Apple’s products, like Google’s, are designed simply, but Tobaccowala said Apple does Google one better: “They define beauty as sex,” he said.

Apple understands the power of networks. Its successful products are all about connecting. Apple, like Google, keeps its focus unrelentingly on the user, the customer—us—and not on itself and its industry. And I’ll add that, of course, both companies make the best products. They are fanatical about quality.

But Tobaccowala said that what makes these two companies most alike is that—like any great brand—they answer one strong desire: “People want to be like God.” Google search grants omniscience and Google Earth, with its heavenly perch, gives us God’s worldview. Apple packages the world inside objects of Zen beauty. Both, Tobaccowala said, “give me Godlike power.” WWGD? indeed.

THE SIMPSONS™

September 28, 1990

Mrs. Barbara Bush
The First Lady
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C.

Dear First Lady:

I recently read your criticism of my family. I was deeply hurt. Heaven knows we're far from perfect and, if truth be known, maybe just a wee bit short of normal; but as Dr. Seuss says, "a person is a person".

I try to teach my children Bart, Lisa, and even little Maggie, always to give somebody the benefit of the doubt and not talk badly about them, even if they're rich. It's hard to get them to understand this advice when the very First Lady in the country calls us not only dumb, but "the dumbest thing" she ever saw. Ma'am, if we're the dumbest thing you ever saw, Washington must be a good deal different than what they teach me at the current events group at the church.

I always believed in my heart that we had a great deal in common. Each of us living our lives to serve an exceptional man. I hope there is some way out of this controversy. I thought, perhaps, it would be a good start to just speak my mind.

With great respect,

(Signed)

Marge Simpson

Dear Marge,

How kind of you to write. I'm glad you spoke your mind; I foolishly didn't know you had one.

I am looking at a picture of you, depicted on a plastic cup, with your blue hair filled with pink birds peeking out all over. Evidently, you and your charming family — Lisa, Homer, Bart and Maggie — are camping out. It is a nice family scene. Clearly you are setting a good example for the rest of the country.

Please forgive a loose tongue.

Warmly,

Barbara Bush

P.S. Homer looks like a handsome fella!

Carl Bernstein on Watergate and journalism,

Despite some of the mythology that has come to surround “investigative” journalism, it is important to remember what we did and did not do in Watergate. For what we did was not, in truth, very exotic. Our actual work in uncovering the Watergate story was rooted in the most basic kind of empirical police reporting. We relied more on shoe leather and common sense and respect for the truth than anything else—on the principles that had been drummed into me at the wonderful old Washington Star. Woodward and I were a couple of guys on the Metro desk assigned to cover what at bottom was still a burglary, so we applied the only reportorial techniques we knew. We knocked on a lot of doors, we asked a lot of questions, we spent a lot of time listening: the same thing good reporters from Ben Hecht to Mike Berger to Joe Liebling to the young Tom Wolfe had been doing for years. As local reporters, we had no covey of highly placed sources, no sky’s-the-Iimit expense accounts with which to court the powerful at fancy French restaurants. We did our work far from the enchanting world of the rich and the famous and the powerful. We were grunts.

David Strom at ReadWriteWeb notes a trend at hotels to re-jigger lobbies as social spaces in which you can plug in your laptop and hang out, instead of sitting in your disinfected Rectangle of Solitude.

I’d give it a try, especially if free or cheap coffee were involved. I think I might enjoy the company, although if someone actually tried to talk with me, I’d undoubtedly give him the stink eye so I could get back to work. Hey, just because I want to be near other human beings doesn’t mean I want to be your friend.

So, yes, I would want to achieve that refined balance of social and impersonal that is of increasing importance in today’s ever-more-public world, and that is at the heart of Starbucks’ value proposition.

Different languages are spoken at varying speeds but thanks to correlated differences in data-density, the same amount of information is conveyed within a given time period.

For all of the other languages, the researchers discovered, the more data-dense the average syllable is, the fewer of those syllables had to be spoken per second -- and the slower the speech thus was. English, with a high information density of .91, is spoken at an average rate of 6.19 syllables per second. Mandarin, which topped the density list at .94, was the spoken slowpoke at 5.18 syllables per second. Spanish, with a low-density .63, rips along at a syllable-per-second velocity of 7.82. The true speed demon of the group, however, was Japanese, which edges past Spanish at 7.84, thanks to its low density of .49. Despite those differences, at the end of, say, a minute of speech, all of the languages would have conveyed more or less identical amounts of information.

(via @mulegirl)