Twitter roundup

From my Twitter feed (5/6-5/12) Brendan Nyhan May 12, 2011 at 11:31 AM
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	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Abramowitz: whites high in racial resentment view Obama more negatively, more likely to question that he was born in US http://j.mp/mFiTYG
	Larry J. Sabato's Crystal Ball » The Race Factor: White Racial Attitudes and Opinions of Obama Alan I. Abramowitz, Senior Columnist May 12th, 2011 In 2008, Barack Obama used massive majorities among African Americans and other nonwhites to overcome a large deficit among white voters and w...
	May 12, 2011 at 11:29 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Why political scientists treat politicians as strategic and career-motivated: http://j.mp/igBkLE
	Dick Lugar Futilely Pleads For His Senate Seat | The New Republic There seems to be no dignified end for the Republican Senator facing a right-wing primary challenge. Arlen Specter took the best shot he had to survive: cut a deal to switch parties. It didn't w...
	May 12, 2011 at 10:42 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan John Sides and The Monkey Cage: Blogger of The Year - The Week http://j.mp/m4CIBo (via @smotus)
	John Sides and The Monkey Cage: Blogger of The Year - The Week posted on May 10, 2011, at 5:55 PM Nate Silver became a superstar during the 2008 election by bringing serious statistical rigor to the horse-race coverage of presidential polling.
	May 12, 2011 at 10:39 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Signs of the apocalypse - top Google search result for Madagascar is the 2008 Dreamworks sequel http://j.mp/mfafO3
	madagascar - Google Search
	May 11, 2011 at 11:51 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan RT @smotus: Gingrich, 1994: "People like me are what stand between us & Auschwitz. I see evil all around me every day." http://bit.ly/fZCBdD
	Newt in His Own Words: 33 Years of Bomb-Throwing 1987 Gingrich takes to the House floor to decry…pretty much everything about the Democratic-run House: "After the first five months of this Congress, I must report to my fellow citizens that thi...
	May 11, 2011 at 8:25 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Krugman sums up the fed. govt. in budgetary terms: "basically an insurance company for old people that also has an army" http://j.mp/jDx9Ku
	Why Spending Must Rise Age and doctors.
	May 11, 2011 at 5:02 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Poll-based GOP primary forecasts by @fivethirtyeight: http://j.mp/ljmAkM My concerns re: predictive value of early polls: http://j.mp/mk2IU8
	A Polling-Based Forecast of the Republican Primary Field Two models used in tandem help us size up the unusually wide-open 2012 G.O.P. field -- and disagree with the bettors on Intrade in some notable respects.
	Do early primary polls matter? - Brendan Nyhan Can early primary polls tell us who is likely to win their party's nomination for president? In a post a few months ago, I argued they provide little information: If we exclude sitting vice pres...
	May 11, 2011 at 2:56 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan More Foxification of MSNBC: Rachel Maddow distorting Sunday show guest lists as biased against Dems http://j.mp/k0UYbA
	http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh0 51011.html Krugman nails the elites: We strongly recommend Paul Krugman’s column about the work of our willful elites. To read it, just click here. Tomorrow, we’ll provide an important service! We’ll exten...
	May 11, 2011 at 1:17 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Great headline from @jonathanchait: "Alan Simpson Angered By Math" http://j.mp/kIq7dE
	Alan Simpson Angered By Math | The New Republic Alan Simpson has been arguing that longer life expectancy since 1935 requires a fundamental rethinking of Social Security. Ryan Grim gets Simpson on the phone and tries to explain the statistics...
	May 11, 2011 at 12:25 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Implausible hype of Obama contesting Texas -- good luck with that http://j.mp/lkBEen
	http://j.mp/lkBEen POLITICO covers political news with a focus on national politics, Congress, Capitol Hill, the 2008 presidential race, lobbying, advocacy, and more. POLITICO's in-depth coverage includes video fe...
	May 11, 2011 at 12:22 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan My guess is this will evaporate like Obama bounce MT @rmichaelalvarez Gallup: US Economic Confidence Spikes on OBL Death http://j.mp/muyqaP
	http://j.mp/muyqaP Gallup’s Economic Confidence Index improved 10 points in the week after bin Laden’s death, May 2-8, resulting in the best weekly confidence level since mid-February. Thirty-seven percent of Amer...
	May 10, 2011 at 2:44 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Clearly, we need a poll on whether to poll about the polls MT @stevebenen Polling about Obama polls http://bit.ly/lduLRV (via @GrahamDavidA)
	Political Animal - Don’t poll about polls I've read the report a few times, and as best as I can tell, this isn't a joke. Most voters believe the popularity boost President Obama has received following the killing of Osama bin Laden wil...
	May 9, 2011 at 6:12 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan More optimistic finding on accuracy of opt-in Internet polls RT @CCESTweet: New report on 2010 multi-mode study http://j.mp/jgzt0y (PDF)
	http://projects.iq.harvard.edu /cces/files/ansolabehere_schaf fner_mode.pdf
	May 9, 2011 at 1:11 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan MT @GOP12: The more $ & education you have, the more likely you are to support Romney. Poorer & uneducated favor Palin http://bit.ly/jSiTn4
	GOP 12: Income, education strong predictor of Romney, Palin's support
	May 9, 2011 at 1:08 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Hilarious WP overanalysis of Sit Room pic: "choice of a wrap rather than a slice of bread…strikes me as very Bush-era" http://j.mp/lzkII8
	http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh0 50611.html Watching us become like them/Exceptionalism edition: Good lord! The Washington Post’s “Style” section has always been the place you go to watch big scribes make fools of themselves. But yesterda...
	May 9, 2011 at 12:32 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Also, don't miss analyses from noted nat. sec. experts including Post's dance critic, design writer, & Miss Manners: http://j.mp/kprEeq
	http://j.mp/kprEeq A tour of everything you need to know about the action in the photo and the specs of the room -- from its gadgetry, to its cultural representations on TV and film, to its interior design -- from...
	May 9, 2011 at 12:36 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Interesting field experiment RT @Harvard: Where we live and who we know can affect voting patterns http://hvrd.me/iC8my2
	The influence of neighbors Ryan Enos is out to prove that how people naturally organize themselves in the space they live in can have huge political significance. According to Enos, an assistant professor of government at...
	May 8, 2011 at 9:17 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan 16th (!) Gail Collins mention of Mitt Romney putting his dog on the roof of his car http://j.mp/mkqhMY This is getting pathological...
	The Spring Quiz - NYTimes.com Spring is in the air, and it’s time to see how well you have been paying attention to the news. No cheating allowed!
	May 7, 2011 at 12:47 PM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Dear @SurveyUSA, asking about racist attacks on Obama before a birther Q is probably not a good idea http://j.mp/krYnmP (via @ArgoJournal)
	SurveyUSA News Poll #18131
	May 7, 2011 at 12:03 AM
	BrendanNyhan Brendan Nyhan Another kind of backfire effect RT @WSJIdeasMarket "No Smoking" Signs Actually Make Smokers Want Cigarettes More http://bit.ly/lH1XSM
	"No Smoking" Signs Actually Make Smokers Want Cigarettes More - Culture - GOOD Though practically everyone in America knows that you can't smoke in subways and office buildings anymore, for whatever reason, that hasn't cut down on the prevalence of those bright red "No Smo...
	May 6, 2011 at 11:59 PM

Comments

[Rob]

Krugman is wrong that the federal government is an insurance company with an army. Unlike the federal government, insurance companies are required to maintain reserves for the claims that will be made on them. And insurance companies that become insolvent are shut down by regulators, whereas the Administration can project massive deficits into the distant future with alarming equanimity.

No, the federal government isn't an insurance company, it's a Ponzi scheme--with an army. It's a Ponzi scheme with the power to compel hapless individuals to invest in the Ponzi scheme.

[Rob]

The "racial resentment" index cited by Abramowitz is based on responses to four questions:

• Irish, Italian, Jewish and many other minorities overcame prejudice and worked their way up. Blacks should do the same without any special favors.
• Generations of slavery and discrimination have created conditions that make it difficult for blacks to work their way out of the lower class.
• Over the past few years, blacks have gotten less than they deserve.
• It’s really a matter of some people not trying hard
  enough; if blacks would only try harder they could be just as well off as whites.

Give me a break. These four questions aren't a measure of racial resentment, they're a measure of agreement with liberal pieties.

Tesler and Sears explain the provenance of these four questions:

Since 1987, the Pew Research Center and its predecessor Times Mirror, in their series of surveys on American values, have regularly asked a battery of four race-related questions that approximates the
content of Kinder and Sanders’s (1996) racial resentment battery.

These questions gauge the extent of discrimination against African Americans, the group’s societal advancement, whether we should do everything we can to help blacks and other minorities even if it means giving them special preferences, and whether the country has gone too far in pushing for equal rights (see appendix for question wordings). The items do not form quite as reliable a scale as the racial
resentment battery (α = .54 across survey years compared to about .75 for the racial resentment scale). They are also specially unreliable for African Americans (α = .29 across survey years), who as a result are excluded from our Pew analyses.

That the four questions yield unexpected results for African Americans is especially telling. Apparently a large number of African Americans don't buy into these affirmative action pieties. Doesn't that strongly suggest that agreement with those propositions isn't a basis for judging racial resentment?

Apparently not, because pollsters and academics continue to use the four-question index uncritically. That's just sad.

[David in Cal]

Great posts, Rob. Another bias in the study of racial resentment is limiting it to only one class of racial resentor and racial resentee.

For the purpose of discrimination, the government often considers that we have 5 "races":

Hispanic, white, black, Native American, Asian.

Let's assume that people don't have racial resentment against their own race. That leaves 20 possible combinations of of racial resentor and racial resentee:
-- Hispanic resentment of whites
-- Hispanic resentment of blacks
-- Hispanic resentment of Native Americans
-- Hispanic resentment of Asians
-- White resentment of Hispanics
-- etc.

As a general rule, only one of these twenty possible types of racial resentment is studied and reported. Seldom, if ever, have I heard a report about any of the other 19 types of racial resentment. The result is to give the impression that white resentment of blacks is the only significant type of racial resentment that exists. I don't believe that's actually the case.

[David in Cal]

Ryan Grim and Jonathan Chait demonstrate how to use a misleading fact to support a myth. They are right that the reduction in childhood mortality is a significant cause of the increased life expectancy at birth. They are utterly wrong that this fact proves the myth that Social Security need not be reformed. Three reasons:

1. Although decreased childhood deaths are a factor in the increase in life expectancy at birth, life expectancy at every age has been increasing. In particular, life expectancy at older ages has increased a lot, so Alan Simpson's point is basically correct.

2. Life expectancy is just an illustration. Simpson's concern about SS costs is actually based on cost estimates from the Social Security Administration. Their actuaries base their estimates on mortality at each given age.

3. SSA probably underestimates life expectancy for today's living people. That's because their mortality tables are based on averages of past mortality. However, life spans haves been increasing continuously for many decades. Chances are mortality will continue to improve in the future. (The source for this point is various books by A. Haeworth Robertson, former Chief Actuary of SSA.)

If Grim and Chait really wanted to inform their readers, they would get future cost estimates from SSA. They would discuss how to raise enough money to cover these costs, in the light of the current deficit as well as other areas where costs will also increase, such as Medicare and Obamacare.

If they were as sophisticated as they pretend to be, they would know that SS's financial needs will probably be considerably higher than SSA figures, since SSA in effect assumes that mortality will stop improving.

Instead Grim and Chait pretend that one mistake on a side issue by one particular spokesman not only invalidates that side's entire argument but proves theirs.

However, I do want to thank Brendan for his altruism in promoting this myth. As long as Americans believe that SS need not be reformed, retirees like me will continue to receive generous benefits paid for by working people like Brendan. When Brendan reaches retirement age, he won't get the kind of benefits I now do because they won't be affordable. He will be one of the Ponzi scheme’s victims referred to in Rob's first post.

[David in Cal]

Perhaps I'm beating a dead horse, but I get upset by Jonathan Chait's combination of writing skill, intelligence, arrogance and economic ignorance. In the article Brendan linked to, Chait writes,

I'm actually in favor of some kind of technical fix to fill in Social Security's long-term deficit, though I don't see any special urgency to handle it right away.

Chait's opinion is worthless; he has no economic expertise. He just naively assumes that $1 to $2 trillion dollar deficits continuing indefinitely won't matter.

Compare the nonchalant Chait with Megan McCardle, a liberal who does understand economics. She foresees economic disaster:

[Taxing the assets in pension plans] is the sort of thing that desperate governments do when they're having trouble accessing capital markets. It was easy to write off Argentina's seizure of private pension funds in 2008; to paraphrase PJ O'Rourke, if Latin American finance were a soap opera--and it is--Argentina would be the spendthrift crack-addicted younger brother that uptight, ultra-respectable Mexico fights desperately to save.

But Ireland is another thing entirely--a model of fiscal rectitude whose budget surpluses were a shining example to the rest of us, now reduced to pilfering its citizens "tax free" private pension funds. I say this without implied criticism. When budget deficits soar into the double digits, countries end up doing things they never thought they would. I don't know enough about Irish finance to know whether this was the best of the available options--but I know enough to know that they don't have any good options left.

And I don't think it's that farfetched that we could end up in somewhat similar circumstances--not exactly the same, obviously, but close enough for discomfort. If we don't get our deficits under control soon, we're going to get them under control under duress, when the markets are demanding a rising premium to lend to us, and all the choices are hard.