LeVar Burton had no trouble crowdfunding Reading Rainbow for the web; now, he’d like your help bringing it to living rooms and pockets everywhere. His team has announced a $5 million stretch goal that, if reached, will port his literary initiative to…
Conservatives in all corners of the globe must have felt their hearts sing, if only for a moment, when the Financial Times ran a piece entitled “Piketty findings undercut by errors.” Sadly for them, the FT’s claims proved untrue. But if you think that put an end to the accusations against the French economist and his findings on inequality, you don’t know today’s conservatives.
We’re not going to re-litigate the charges against Thomas Piketty, whose book Capital in the Twenty-First Century has galvanized the global debate on inequality. The case for the defense has already been made rather conclusively – by Mike Konczal, Paul Krugman, Mark Gongloff, and Piketty himself.
The Guardian’s Peter Mason went so far as to suggest, perhaps with tongue in cheek, that the FT’s poorly-constructed attack might have something to do with a Times advertising supplement geared to the 0.001 percent. Wrote Mason: “if (FT author Peter) Giles is right, then all the gross designer bling advertised in the FT’s How To Spend It can be morally justified.”
Needless to say, conservatives seized on the FT’s overhyped charges without any evidence that they paused to consider the argument they were endorsing. Even before the FT’s mistakes were brought to light, it was apparent to the attentive reader that its critique addressed only a minor aspect of Piketty’s findings. It had little to do with the central thesis of an author the paper called a “rock-star economist.”
Then it turned out that Piketty’s on-line appendices addressed many of the paper’s concerns, and that the Financial Times itself made some mistakes (including relying on untrustworthy survey data). What was left were “questions,” rather than “errors,” as Piketty observed.
It’s true that we need more and better data on inequality, as Piketty and others acknowledge. (That’s one of his arguments in favor of a global wealth tax.) But there were no math errors, no typing mistakes, and no spreadsheet errors – only a compelling thesis which effectively compiled data from a number of sources, and whose calculations and assumptions were made readily available.
Move along, folks. Nothing to see here.
That’s not to say that journalists and critics shouldn’t question the work of economists and other technical experts, whether they’re “rock stars” or not. In that sense, the FT was doing its job. The FT’s mistake was in sensationalizing its findings and promoting them as something they were not. That’s an irresponsible thing to do – especially in a world where extremists and powerful special interests will seize on any scrap of information, however inaccurate, to discredit facts which undercut their arguments.
The FT’s over-hyping may have sold some newspapers, but it did not burnish the paper’s reputation.
The Right wasted no time seizing the opportunity the FT gave them. By the time the FT’s mistakes and exaggerations had been pointed out, a number of conservatives had embraced the article and were pushing it aggressively. They felt no responsibility to amend what they had written when new information came to light.
As a result, the lie lives on in the hard right. Even now the right-wing Twitterverse features a seemingly unending stream of snide comments about “Piketty fraud” and “Piketty errors,” despite the fact that neither phenomenon has been discovered in the real world. “What is interesting about #Piketty,” said one recent tweet, “is to observe those prepared to defend the condescending fraud.” Another says “Thomas Piketty is a fraud. Was proven a fraud just days ago.”
There have even been snide right-wing comments comparing Piketty’s work to that of the climate-change scientists the Right has worked so hard to discredit. That was predictable – nearly as predictable, in fact, as man-made climate change itself.
There are, in fact, parallels between the false Piketty “scandal” and the Right’s phony climate change conspiracy theories. In the cynical world of bought-and-paid-for public policy thinking, there are politicians, pundits, and think tanks that are all too happy to engage in a kind of “pay to play” debate. These pay-as-you-go partisans have managed to convince a minority of the American people that thousands of scientists are engage in a secret conspiracy to deprive them of the right to bankrupt themselves with gas-guzzling vehicles and vote for politicians who serve the interests of people much wealthier than themselves.
They are joined in this effort by easily excitable, emotionally-driven partisans who find it somehow satisfying to stick it to an imaginary “liberal elite” by employing extreme and erroneous arguments. While the people these groups manage to persuade are (and probably always will be) a minority, it’s often a sizable enough minority to make problem-solving difficult.
Economics is not a hard science like climate research. Nevertheless, there are certain facts which reputable members of the profession do not dispute. To be a denialist – to deny the existence of evidence that is right in front of you – is to engage in a kind of fraud.
There are honorable ways to disagree, and there are dishonorable ways to disagree. The honorable approach was taken by Patrick Brennan of the National Review. To be sure, I think Brennan reaches the wrong conclusions, and that he exaggerates the problems with Piketty’s normalization of data from multiple sources. But at least he had the integrity to deny the overheated charges of “fraud” coming from so many on the right. Good for him.
The dishonorable approach was taken by righty outlets like the Power Line blog, where one writer responded to the FT report by comparing Piketty’s work to the “Piltdown Man” hoax. There have been no corrections or retractions of this statement. Similarly, British blogger Thomas Fraser claimed that the FT had uncovered “corruptions in (Piketty’s) data” which was “shocking because the errors are so basic,” and that “on this, Piketty has built a manifesto for all kinds of tax rises.” Fraser expresses outrage toward Piketty’s publishers at Harvard University Press for failing to spot these “errors” and “corruptions.”
All of these claims have now been conclusively disproven but, as of this writing, Fraser has not issued an update or correction either. (One is tempted to chide his “publishers” at the Spectator website.)
Thomas Piketty is not above criticism. We had a few points of disagreement with him in our own review of his book, and we interviewed Dean Baker about his disagreements with Piketty. Robert Kuttner explored “what Piketty leaves out,” and Thomas Frank noted that Piketty missed the historical effectiveness of organized workers in reducing inequality. (That said, I imagine that all of the left-leaning critics listed above appreciate Piketty’s many contributions to the inequality debate, both in this book and in earlier research.)
Conservatives aren’t obligated to accept the defenses of Piketty, either, however persuasive many of us find them. But to ignore them altogether, to hype the FT’s attack and omit such exhaustively researched and data-rich rebuttals, is to conduct an indefensible cherry-picking of both facts and arguments.
And that, ironically, is what the Financial Times wrongly accused Piketty of doing.
Conservatives can claim that the progressive solutions which worked so well in the past won’t work today. They can argue, as libertarian Garrett Jones does, that “the best way to defuse the situation is to teach tolerance for inequality. ” They can even continue to promote the disproven theories that got us into this economic mess, as a new book from Arthur Laffer et al. does. (It won laudatory blurbs from Dick Cheney and Phil Gramm, if that tells you anything.)
That’s how honest debate works – or should. We should all be willing to hawk our wares in the marketplace of ideas. But to distort the facts or make false accusations is to poison that marketplace with tainted goods. When conservatives do it as a matter of routine – on economics, climate change, and so many other issues – it also sends the subliminal message that they don’t believe they can win an argument on its merits.
Encouraging more conservatives to engage in honorable debate may seem like an overly ambitious goal. But, hey, they got me to say something nice about the National Review, so anything’s possible.
By Will Dunham
June 1 (Reuters) – Comic actress Ann B. Davis, who played the devoted housekeeper Alice on the television sitcom “The Brady Bunch” and won two Emmy awards as the forever-single secretary Schultzy on “The Bob Cummings Show,” died on Sunday at age 88, CNN reported.
Davis fell and hit her head on Saturday morning, CNN reported, citing a close friend of Davis, Bishop William Frey.
She suffered a subdural hematoma and never regained consciousness, Frey told CNN.
Davis’ character helped keep a large, blended family functioning on “The Brady Bunch” by offering advice and wisecracks to busy parents and frantic kids, or simply by making meatloaf for eight. She was known for her light blue housekeeper’s uniform with a white apron.
Behind the scenes, Davis provided a model of acting professionalism to the show’s six child actors, who on occasion were driven more by hormones and mischief than reason.
The “Brady Bunch” was among the first U.S. television shows to focus on a non-traditional family. Robert Reed’s character, architect Mike Brady, was a widowed father of three boys. Florence Henderson’s character Carol Brady was a single mother – the show was vague as to why – who had three daughters. They get married in the first episode in September 1969.
The series made its debut amid cultural tumult in the United States but remained invariably cheery and avoided controversy during its five seasons on the ABC network. It ran during a TV era populated by caustic sitcoms like “All in the Family,” “Maude” and “Sanford and Son.”
In 1994, Davis wrote of the wholesome “The Brady Bunch”: “Wouldn’t we all love to have belonged to a perfect family, with brothers and sisters to lean on and where every problem is solved in 23-1/2 minutes?”
After the cancellation of the original series in 1974, she appeared on later incarnations of the show, including “The Brady Bunch Variety Hour” (1976-1977), “The Brady Brides” (1981), “A Very Brady Christmas” (1988) and “The Bradys” (1990). She also made a cameo appearance in “The Brady Bunch Movie,” a successful 1995 big-screen spoof of the series.
She wrote “Alice’s Brady Bunch Cookbook” in 1994.
Davis already was a well-known TV actress when she landed the “Brady Bunch” role of Alice Nelson. She thrived as Charmaine “Schultzy” Schultz on “The Bob Cummings Show,” which ran from 1955 to 1959.
Her character was a single secretary who had a crush on her boss – a bachelor photographer played by Cummings. She won Emmy awards for her role in 1958 and 1959 and was also nominated in 1956 and 1957.
Davis received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960 following the success of the series.
She was born in 1926 in Schenectady, New York, with a twin sister named Harriet. In the 1970s, she stepped away from show business to join a religious community, occasionally returning for roles in the various “Brady Bunch” projects. She never married. (Editing by Bill Trott, Ellen Wulfhorst and Cynthia Osterman)
Dyson’s first cyclonic vacuum cleaner was launched 21 years ago, but before it made it into consumer’s hands, the company’s research and development team went through 5,127 prototypes to perfect its design. Since then the company’s R&D lab has been responsible for some amazing products —including a few that have never seen the light of day before now.
VA Secretary Eric Shinseki has resigned. While it solves none of the fundamental problems within the VA, it can perhaps remove him as the object of attention and allow us to focus on the underlying, systemic failings that anyone who cared to look would have already known about.
Care at VA facilities is generally very good. Most veterans that I meet, including during unannounced spot checks at the VHA clinic in El Paso, report that they are very satisfied with the doctors and providers after their visit.
The problem is that a disturbingly high number of veterans can’t get in to the VA to get that care. I remember a veteran telling me that the soonest he could get a mental healthcare appointment was in 2013. This was in February of 2012. Since being sworn in last January, it has been the dominant issue at almost every town hall I’ve held. And now the anecdotal evidence I’ve collected by listening to veterans throughout this community is scientifically and statistically confirmed in a comprehensive survey that my office conducted and will release next week.
Of course access to care is not the only problem.
We learned from investigations in Phoenix that there is widespread fraud in how wait times are calculated and reported. It’s possible that veterans have died because of delayed care while malfeasant managers were bonused for meeting aggressive timelines. But this and past Administrations and Congresses have known since 2005 that local VHA clinics and hospitals were prone to fudging the numbers. The office of the Inspector General has issued reports on an almost annual basis since then warning of this problem. It is part of the reason that I undertook the effort of surveying the veterans in El Paso to try to understand the discrepancies between what the VA was telling me (we’re accessible) and what the veteran was telling me (I can’t get in).
Add to this the other persistent problems in the VA — backlogs for disability claims which have morphed into backlogs for claims appeals; unacceptable wait times for disability ratings and benefits for transitioning soldiers in our Warrior Transition Units; homelessness, suicide and difficulty in workforce integration — and it’s clear that we have a system that is incapable of working at a level that any of us should be satisfied with.
We need a complete rethinking of what the VA does and how it does it; of whether we can really go to war and pay the cost to care for those who’ve borne the battle; and whether we have the real interest, and attention span, to do more for our veterans than to thank them for their service.
I appreciate the outrage and frustration that many of my colleagues have expressed in the last few weeks. But what would be even better is a sustained, determined effort to correct the underlying problems and challenge ourselves to be honest about what kind of care we want to provide our veterans and what we’re willing to pay to deliver it.
The House Veterans Affairs Committee on which I serve is not an “A-List” committee. The work is hard, complicated and messy. It’s not a place from which a member can successfully raise money from the special interests who have a stake in the legislative outcomes (see: Armed Services, Energy and Commerce, etc.). In fact, more than half of the members are freshmen, like myself. I hope that the recent revelations will focus the interests of Congressional leadership and renew the drive that committee members have to complete the tough work before them.
Secretary Shinseki is gone, but the real work to address the outrage we all feel is still before us.
Judy Chicago
Bronze Flowering Head
2013
Patinated bronze, lacquer and flame worked glass on acrylic base, 15” x 16” x 16”
© Judy Chicago
Photo © Donald Woodman
Part of the exhibition “Heads Up” at David Richard Gallery, Santa Fe, NM, June 14 – July 26, 2014
For image reproduction of Judy Chicago’s works, please visit www.artres.com
According to a new report by Sarah Binder at the Brookings Institution entitled Polarized We Govern?, “Today, 75 percent of the salient issues on Washington’s agenda are subject to legislative gridlock.”
And at Vox, Andrew Prokop has pulled together five charts from a variety of sources, including Binder’s research, that highlight how Congress is extremely: (1) gridlocked; (2) unpopular; (3) polarized; (4) unproductive; and, (5) expensive.
With important issues facing our nation, very little is getting done. And for our nation’s children, stalemate in Congress precludes action on addressing a wide array of problems, including: changing child welfare financing even though the cost of inaction threatens the very lives of children; addressing child poverty; taking action to reduce gun violence; addressing child labor in tobacco fields; reforming of the No Child Left Behind education law that has incited grassroots movements of teachers, parents and students against the over-testing it has imposed on children in schools across the country; addressing technical problems for kids in the Affordable Care Act, such as the “kids glitch;” and, making critical investments in our children such as early childhood education.
Gridlock has become an enemy of children.
And, on the question of whether “our political system is dangerously broken,” Thomas E. Mann of the Brookings Institution writes that, although he can “sympathize” with the skeptics of doom:
I believe these times are strikingly different from the past, and the health and well-being of our democracy is properly a matter of great concern. We owe it to ourselves and our country to reconsider our priors and at least entertain the possibility that these concerns are justified — even if it’s uncomfortable to admit it.
Mann points to the growing polarization in Congress that results in hardball tactics and partisanship, “even on issues with little or no ideological content and a tribalism that is now such a prominent feature of American politics.” Dysfunction has become the norm and the parties are unable to work together in a meaningful way to address a wide array of our nation’s problems, even when popular solutions are staring Congress in the face.
The result is that Members of Congress and their staff are so frustrated that more and more good people are leaving and many of those that stay behind no longer think in terms of what Congress is supposed to do, which is to “legislate.”
Things other than what is “best for children” are often put first. For example, when we talk to Members of Congress and their staff about important policy issues affecting children, such as policies that would cut child poverty, reduce child abuse and neglect or improve child health and development, we often get answers such as:
The first two arguments highlight some of the reasons why congressional approval rating are near single digits, as they openly acknowledge that partisan politics come before good policy, including what may be best for children. The third type of response recognizes how polarized and partisan Congress has become but is an acceptance of defeat without even the attempt of trying.
However, it is the last argument that may be the most perplexing of all, as Congress is increasingly ceding its legislative power and policymaking authority to the executive branch of government. Consequently, some congressional offices are simply writing letters to government agency leaders asking them to take action or posting words of support or opposition about an issue on Facebook or Twitter. (Note to Congress: it’s the job of advocates to write letters and advocate, but it’s yours to write laws and legislate.)
When you give up on the idea of attempting to “legislate,” one result is that, legislative ideas, proposals and debate are less frequent. According to Derek Willis of the New York Times:
This House is on track to produce the lowest number of legislative proposals since the Clinton administration. Through mid-May, representatives introduced 18 percent fewer bills compared with the same point in the previous Congress…The number [of lawmakers] who have produced five or fewer pieces of legislation has jumped 81 percent.
But it gets worse. On the matter of our nation’s fiscal crisis and budget deficits, Eugene Steuerle of the Urban Institute does a masterful job of diagnosing the disease in his newly released book entitled Dead Men Ruling: How to Restore Fiscal Freedom and Rescue Our Future. Fortunately, unlike others that simply highlight the problem, Steuerle also points toward a pathway to move our nation forward.
On the issue of our growing national debt, Steuerle makes a strong case as to how presidents and legislators in Congress have conspired on a bipartisan basis in the past to enact a series of spending programs and tax cuts that, in conjunction with the most recent recession, have left the nation with a crushing debt and imposed a fiscal straightjacket that precludes efforts to address current and future problems, particularly for children.
According to Steuerle, in the forthcoming decade, with past legislative decisions that have protected Social Security and Medicare from any budget constraints and continuing efforts to enact tax cuts without budgetary offsets, the pressure to reduce spending falls most heavily “on the very types of programs on which children rely — domestic discretionary programs such as education that do not grow automatically.”
As a result, based on recent budget projections, Steuerle finds that:
Children’s programs will be among those hit the hardest. Children’s spending will fall sharply as a share of the economy, from 2.2 percent of GDP in 2012 to 1.8 percent in 2023, pushing spending on children below pre-recession levels. In 2017, Washington will start spending more on interest payments than children.
If we can agree on one thing on a bipartisan basis, it would seem that both parties can at least acknowledge that we reached a place of clearly misplaced priorities if we will soon be spending more money on interest payments on the federal debt than investing in our children.
At a recent commencement speech at Mount Holyoke College, Deborah Bial, Founder and President of Posse Foundation, was talking about issues such as climate change and the potential consequences it will place on the next generation. Her comments to Holyoke graduates apply perfectly well here as well. As she said, “The difficult truth is that I belong to a generation that has fundamentally failed you. It’s kind of like we are handing you the keys to a car we’ve completely wrecked and advising you on how best to care for it.”
As Steuerle concludes:
In essence, we have codified into the law the following rule for the young; they owe us every more when they become adults, and we owe them ever less while they remain children. . .They deserve better.
We must change course for our children but also for our nation’s future. As Ruby Takanishi with the New America Foundation points out, the book makes an important and “compelling case that a nation that does not invest in its children is a nation in decline.”
Fortunately, Steuerle identifies a pathway forward. He point to the fact that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that a decade or so of economic growth will generate about $1 trillion more each year in federal resources. While some of that will need to be dedicated to cutting the deficit, paying off interest on the debt, paying for obligations such as Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and paying for an array of tax cuts, the fact is that, “to govern is to choose.”
What is needed is a new vision of what is possible — rather than the current Capitol Hill capitulation to gridlock. According to Steuerle:
With the world, the nation, the economy and society changing at an ever-swifter pace, we have a budget not for a nation that is preparing for its future but rather one that is nostalgic for its past, a budget not for an ever-rising nation but for a declining one.
To address this crisis, Steuerle proposes a series of solutions that those concerned about our nation’s children or our nation’s future should think about and consider. For example, he proposes that federal budgets “display all sources of federal spending growth together, whether deriving from automatically growing programs or new legislation.” This, he argues, will help highlight how the president and Congress set priorities overall when, “at least implicitly, those choose to allow older priorities to overwhelm emerging needs.”
At First Focus Campaign for Children, this is a reason why we support the creation of a “Children’s Budget” so that both the Office of Management and Budget and CBO would be required to report on how the spending and tax policies that the Congress adopts and the President signs into law impact our nation’s children. Transparency helps but we also need a change in direction.
Consequently, rather than allowing investments in children or other priorities to continue to dwindle, Steuerle highlights other suggested structural and system changes that will allow us to pursue a new vision that includes such things as investments to combat child poverty, child abuse and neglect, infant mortality and childhood obesity. And, as he adds:
By shifting the budget toward investment in education, early childhood development and other priorities set by evidence of high potential impact, we would promote growth for both the nation and its people over the long term. Think of the twenty-first century as doing for the young what the twentieth did for the elderly, only with a focus this time on opportunity and potential….
For too long, the children’s advocacy community has focused on simply advocating for individual programs or policy areas that are important to children without bringing in focus the larger funding problems facing children. It is why some of the leading national children’s groups came together on a letter to Congress earlier this year highlighting that, after adjusting for inflation, federal funding dedicated to children this year is $2.1 billion below 2012 levels.
That letter from the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Federation of Teachers, Children’s Defense Fund, Children’s Health Fund, Child Welfare League of America, Easter Seals, First Focus Campaign for Children, MENTOR, MomsRising, National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth, National Child Abuse Coalition, National Education Association, National Head Start Association, National Title I Association, Public Advocacy for Kids, Save the Children, Share Our Strength, School Based Health Alliance, United Way and YMCA of the USA adds:
Overall, investments in children have declined the past four years in a row and make up less than eight cents of every dollar spent by the federal government. After adjusting for inflation, discretionary investments for children are actually three percent below 2007 levels.
This is simply the wrong direction for our nation to be heading if we are concerned about our children and our future. Although the forces of inertia and the defenders of the status quo will not give way easily, we must build support for change.
Frankly, the stakes are too high and the cost of inaction is too great for us to fail.
If your bank account has left you unaware of the state of the 4K movement, here’s a fun surprise: if you buy a 4K movie from Sony, you’ll need a Sony television to play it back. If you buy one from Samsung, you’ll need a Samsung TV to view it. Which means that what should be a fiesta for your eyes has turned into just another proprietary pain in the ass.
A mind-controlled iPhone? Sure, we’ll take it. A mind-controlled Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1? Why not? A mind-controlled airplane powered by the pilot’s brainwaves? Hold on for a moment while we look for the nearest emergency exit.
Don’t look now, but the speedy WiFi router you just bought may already be old hat. Huawei has tested WiFi based on a future standard (802.11ax) that can hit 10.5Gbps — about 10 times faster than what you typically get out of an 802.11ac connection…
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
