What Trump Could Do To Earn My Vote

Based on things he's said, I don't think he wants to earn it. But just on the off-chance, here's the checklist:

• Show some reverence for the Constitution. Trump thus far has indicated a desire to govern by executive action and bullying rather than by a restoration of Constitutional order. This would have to change.
• Talk about freedom. This is what Conservatism is about. It's not about lowering taxes, except insofar as that helps reduce the size of government. It's not about a particular policy here or there. It's about the government not getting in my grill. For example, has Trump ever spoken about the regulatory state? Not to my knowledge.
• Be consistent. It doesn't work to announce a tax plan one day and then reverse course a week later.
• Demonstrate that you're a safe choice. We're contemplating giving Trump the nuclear launch codes and executive control over the Treasury Department. We need to be confident he won't drop a nuke on North Korea just because he and Melania got into a tiff over breakfast, or that he won't actually just print money to clear our sovereign debt (he does know this would result in massive inflation... uh, right?).
• Earn our trust. Most importantly, we have to believe you'll actually do the things you say you'll do.

It's that last point that's the biggest problem. How can he earn trust at this point? He's backtracked, lied, done dirty deals, reneged, etc., all his life. He's never held political office and has no political record to point to. So even if he aces the rest of the points, I'm not sure how he checks off the last one, because I don't know if there's any way to overcome three decades of double-dealing with six months of words.

In Which I Cathartically Point Fingers

Trump Is the GOP's Fault

For years and years, the GOP has disappointed certain members of the base. First it was Bush 41 and "no new taxes", then George W. Bush and "compassionate conservatism". Then in the Obama era we nominated in John McCain a man many saw as a RINO and then in Mitt Romney a man who had championed a version of Obamacare when governor of Massachusetts. Anger built. The Tea Party was supposedly a response to that anger, and had some potential to change things. But Tea Party candidates were either defeated or, if elected, quickly co-opted into the dreaded establishment (whisper the word). Elements of the base grew increasingly disenchanted with Politics As Usual.

Enter Trump. No conservative. No angel. Not merely not politically correct but deliberately offensive. But he promised to overturn the apple cart, end squishy RINO-ism for good, and he found enough support running on that platform to win the GOP nomination.

Trump Is the Democrats' Fault

For years and years, Democrats have (usually unfairly) slandered GOP candidates for being racist, anti-woman, anti-working-class, etc. These attacks come as regularly as the sun rises in the east. You can set your watch by them.

Enter Trump. He actually is all those things. But the Left's boy who cried wolf routine has sapped the strength of their attacks, clearing the way for his ascendancy.

Trump Is the Modern World's Fault

For years and years, the world has been defining decency down. It was a minor scandal that Ronald Reagan had once divorced (he is still the only U.S. President ever to have done so). The public has generally punished politicians who attacked too vehemently, went after their opponents' families, or generally behaved in a way too different from what we usually view as public decorum. But in a world of internet trolls, sex tapes, and reality television, we seem to have become hardened to them.

Enter Trump. There was a time not that long ago when Trump's behavior would have kept him out of business altogether, not to speak of politics. Trump has divorced twice, and openly bragged of seducing other men's wives. Kennedy (and others) may have practiced seduction, but at least he had the decency to keep it a secret. Many of Trump's obvious negatives are thus blunted.

Ace of Spades Nails It

Beautiful:

...[T]his is what I most resist in leftist politics -- not the minimum wage per se, but the notion that the government can and should dictate to people what arrangements they make in private employment. Not free birth control per se, but the repulsive idea tha the government will force people to buy birth control for others -- even if that is against their own private covenants with the Lord God.

About seven months ago I noticed, and said on the blog: Trump never talks about limiting the power of government, or freedom. Never. He's Government Action Man-- the government can do and do and do for "the people."

Trumped

Friend of mine asked my wife the other day: Is Mr. Athwart History still annoyed by Donald Trump? I haven't been posting too much recently, so allow me to reply to that question here.

No, he doesn't annoy me. Annoyance is an emotion I feel when swarmed by gnats while trying to enjoy a sunset. The word for my feelings about Trump is "detest". He is a detestable person, and wholly unsuitable to the Presidency. His entire life history is of screwing over the little guy, reneging on deals, cheating both in business and his personal life. It should go without saying that we don't want this man to be President. His supporters want someone who will fight as dirty as the Democrats do. Fine: he will, I have every confidence. But to what end? Only his own, I fear.

Between the time I started writing this post and now, Trump has won the Indiana primary and become the presumptive nominee. As a conservative and nominal Republican, that creates a problem for me. I will never vote for Trump. I cannot imagine voting for Hillary or Bernie (although if it proved necessary to stop Trump... I might). That leaves me with only two options: either skip the Presidential vote entirely, or vote third-party. Luckily I have six months to figure this out.

What Iowa Means for Sanders

Liberals feel obligated to vote for Hillary, for a variety of reasons. Chief among them are her perceived electability advantage over Sanders, the fact that she's a woman, and her length of service in politics. But in their heart of hearts most of them would prefer to vote for Sanders. The longer Sanders sticks around and remains viable, the more they'll listen to their hearts. Everyone seems to think Sanders can't win, but no one thought Obama could, either.

Of course, Sanders isn't a hip, young, fresh-faced newcomer either.

Liberals for Trump

Listening to a group of liberals discussing the Iowa caucuses yesterday at lunch, the conversation went something like this:

Man, that Trump guy is nuts.

Yeah, good thing he lost the Iowa caucus. He's the loser now! Hahaha!

Sure, but I don't know if he'd be so bad. He just wants to be President as a feather in his cap. No one thinks he'd really do what he says he'll do.

True, true. He wouldn't be so bad. Now that Cruz guy, he really scares me.

Whew! You aren't kidding.

Hopefully we can put paid to any notion that Trump is a conservative at this point.

Who's the Real Pragmatist Now?

One of the complaints conservatives level at Obama is that he acts like a (liberal) ideologue, but says he's merely a pragmatist.

It occurs to me that the problem with Trump is just the reverse: he acts like a pragmatist, with no particular values, but says he's a conservative (ideologue).

Shaming the Shameless

So Donald Trump has taken the pledge to support the eventual candidate selected by the Republican Party, and not to run as a third-party candidate. Woohoo! Except, um, doesn't this rely on the power of shame? It's not a legal contract. The only power inherent in the pledge is its power to shame someone who breaks it. Anyone think that applies to Trump?

Hayek in Comics

This is kind of awesome. The Road to Serfdom, in comic book form.

Mad Men's Uneven Amazing Finale

So Mad Men is finally over, and the finale was, well, OK. Which is a bit of an anticlimax for a show that started off so very well. The best, I think, that can be said of the finale is that it could have been worse.

Several of the stories ended satisfyingly: Peggy and Stan are finally together, Joan is still trying to balance personal life with ambition, Pete somehow lucked his way into a new lease on life, etc. But Don's ending doesn't really work, and unfortunately that's the critical one.

The show's writers have said that one thing they really tried with this show was not letting the characters change too much. Sure, Don might go on the straight and narrow for a while, but you know he's coming back to his philandering ways soon enough. So at the end we see Don at a yoga retreat in California, presumably breaking through something in himself and starting anew. It's dawn, of course, with obvious symbolism. But this breaks the whole contract of the show. It's a happy ending, I suppose, but we can't really believe it.

The one thing Don is always saying is that he "wants to build something". But he never quite does - he's constantly hemmed in by the strings other people attach. He's also haunted by his own identity crisis, but he doesn't resolve this. (The crisis, by the way, is why the hypothetical ending in which Don switches identities again in order to start anew doesn't work: he hates himself for what he did. Doing it again would be even worse, and he knows it.) It would have been great to see progress on at least one of these problems of Don's, but we don't.

Endings are hard, so not failing is actually better than average. But it could have been so much more.

Update 5/19: And now I finally realize I may have missed something critical: the final commercial for Coke may have told us that Don goes back to work with a new idea. Maybe his final smile was actually inspiration for a new ad campaign. That fits what we know much better, and works as a "resolution" (i.e. it doesn't actually resolve his inner demons, but it keeps the show consistent and shows his ability to rise to ever-greater challenges). Good. Now I feel better.

The Rubio-Lee Tax Plan

Jim Geraghty's daily must-read e-mail "Morning Jolt" discussed the Rubio tax plan a couple of days ago:

Under Rubio’s plan, the top rate drops from 39 percent to 35 percent . . . but it kicks in at $75,000 for individuals, and $150,000 for married couples. There are a decent number of individuals making $75,000 and married couples making $150,000 who will be surprised to learn that they’re in the top tax bracket in the United States. Rubio points out that there are various little steps people can take to reduce their taxable income below that threshold -- put money in a retirement account or health savings account, etc., and Rubio-Lee also includes a $2,500-per-child tax credit, which will do a lot for the parents in that higher category. (The other tax rate under Rubio-Lee? Fifteen percent. Right now, the 15 percent tax rate only applies to single filers making $9,225 to $37,450 and married couples making $18,450 to $74,900.)

If you’re a married couple with a combined taxable income of, say, $140,000, currently playing the 25 percent rate, the Rubio tax plan is terrific! Your rate is dropping to 15 percent! But if you’re a married couple with a combined taxable income of, say, $160,000, currently paying a 28 percent rate . . . Rubio-Lee’s 35 percent rate doesn’t look good at all!

Right... sort of. It's true that the hypothetical $160k earning family would have a higher marginal tax rate (35% vs 28%), but would they have a higher tax bill? Under the existing tax plan they pay $31,851.50. Under the Rubio plan they would pay $26,000, a savings of nearly $6,000. It's possible that such families would be OK with the compromise: a higher marginal rate in exchange for a pretty large overall cut and simpler calculations. The actual crossover point (where tax bills would be identical) occurs at $276,450 for married filing jointly. In this bracket the current tax rate is 33%, so the Rubio plan represents only a 2% hike.

What's also worth looking at is how tax bills change as income rises. This is, after all, the reason why we care about marginal tax rates: the higher your marginal tax rate, the argument goes, the less interested you as a taxpayer will be in increasing your income, since an ever-higher portion of your additional income goes to taxes. So consider Geraghty's hypothetical $140k-earning family. Under current law they will be paying $26,587.50; under Rubio-Lee they would pay $21,000. They are contemplating a change which would result in a $20k increase in income. How much do they get to keep? We already figured out their final tax bills, so this is easy: under current law they'd pay an extra $5,264, and under Rubio-Lee an extra $5,000. So even though their marginal tax rate is higher under Rubio-Lee, they'd still be better off when transitioning into the higher bracket.

If they contemplated another $20k increase, then we finally see the marginal rate taking effect: they'd pay an extra $5,600 under current law, but $7,000 under Rubio-Lee. However, as I noted before, they'd still be paying a lower overall bill under Rubio-Lee. Marginal rates are important, but so are overall bills.

So let's recap: Under Rubio-Lee, the top marginal rate is lowered. Actual tax bills are lowered in most cases (the most extra a married filing jointly filer would pay is $2,701 for earnings of $411,500: $111,324 under current law and $114,025 under Rubio-Lee). The marginal rate is increased as much as 7% for some filers, but for those filers their total tax bill is decreased, and marginal rates are decreased for the meaty part of the earnings bell curve (filers currently in the 25% bracket would be reduced to 15%). Nothing is perfect, but this plan seems to balance a number of factors pretty well.

One (French) Soldier's Opinion of U.S. Troops

I've been meaning to link to this for a while. A taste:

And combat? If you have seen Rambo you have seen it all - always coming to the rescue when one of our teams gets in trouble, and always in the shortest delay. That is one of their tricks: they switch from T-shirt and sandals to combat ready in three minutes. Arriving in contact with the enemy, the way they fight is simple and disconcerting: they just charge! They disembark and assault in stride, they bomb first and ask questions later - which cuts any pussyfooting short.Honor, motherland - everything here reminds of that: the American flag floating in the wind above the outpost, just like the one on the post parcels. Even if recruits often originate from the hearth of American cities and gang territory, no one here has any goal other than to hold high and proud the star spangled banner. Each man knows he can count on the support of a whole people who provides them through the mail all that an American could miss in such a remote front-line location: books, chewing gums, razorblades, Gatorade, toothpaste etc. in such way that every man is aware of how much the American people backs him in his difficult mission. And that is a first shock to our preconceptions: the American soldier is no individualist. The team, the group, the combat team are the focus of all his attention.

It occurs to me that this is the first generation of Heinlein's Mobile Infantry from Starship Troopers (the book, I mean, not the fascists in the movie). They're not wearing powered combat suits - yet. But they are highly trained, with excellent equipment, and skilled in the martial arts from hand-to-hand to high explosives. And that was the M.I.: not grunt foot-sloggers trained only to march and shoot, but valuable and valued citizen soldiers.

If all it took to win wars was great soldiers, we'd be set. But it also takes leadership from the top. Let's get on that.

The Problem of Homeless Kids

This morning NPR had a show about a spike in child homelessness. Of course our hearts go out to those affected. But two points.

First, the measurement problem is important. One reason for the surprising extent of the problem ("1 in 30 children in the United States is homeless") is that it measures any child who was in "less than adequate" housing over the past year. This includes kids who are "doubled up", staying in residential motels, couch-surfing, etc. Now I don't deny this is a problem, but it's not homelessness. I defy anyone who has had to sleep on the street for a month to seriously claim that having a roof over one's head, even an impermanent one, is a lot better than not. So we should be calling this an "inadequate housing problem", or something like that. Calling it homelessness is needlessly incendiary.

Second, and more importantly, NPR is shocked, shocked, to discover that California is third worst in the nation in this category. I am not. The reason for the extent of the problem here is high housing prices. The proposed solution... wait for it... is subsidized housing.

This won't work, though, at least not as one would hope. The problem is one of supply: it takes time to add housing. In California there is only so much of it, and as anyone who has looked for an apartment recently can attest, it's largely occupied. Subsidizing it just puts more dollars chasing the same number of units, with the result that the price per unit will go up. But this won't increase the number of units. If the housing market were entirely free, we would expect an increase in supply to come from the rise in prices, and after some lag to allow for building, the market would clear. But this is California: building requires zoning, and approvals, and inspections, and it isn't quick or easy and many cities don't really want it. So the most likely result of subsidies will just be to push prices up, especially on low-end apartments, which will of course hurt those occupying (or competing for) those same units who aren't getting the subsidy. Whether this will actually help anyone is an open question, but it's quite possible that it won't, net-net. We know for sure that any subsidy program will transfer X% of the taxpayer dollars used to landlords (who benefit from the higher rents). The only question is: what's X?

It's hard to ignore the fact that the problem, and the proposed solution, are very much like Obamacare. We have a limited supply of health care (represented by doctors, nurses, hospitals, etc.). Obamacare regulates prices (which certainly won't expand the supply) and subsidizes demand (which increases it), with the result that we'll have shortages. We're already seeing that. Will liberals ever learn a lesson here? In the eighty years since FDR, it's not clear that they have.

World Cup Notes

My opinion: it's been the best World Cup ever, or at least since I've been paying much attention to them (about 20 years). So many exciting games, so many late goals, so many lead changes, so many good teams out early. I decided to compile some data about this.

In 2006, the average number of goals scored was 2.30/game and the average margin of victory was 1.42. The decisive goal (i.e. the one that either tied the game or gave the winning team its final lead) came in the 46th minute, and there were 1.45 lead changes per game.

In 2010, scoring was down a bit: 2.27/game with a margin of 1.23/game. The decisive goal came in the 50th minute and there were 1.34 lead changes per game.

Compare to 2014, where we've played 56 of the 64 games of the tournament. Thus far, we've seen 2.75 goals/game, with an average margin of 1.39. But the decisive goal came in the 59th minute, with 1.77 lead changes per game. Those last two numbers are the most interesting ones: much later decisive goals and many more lead changes. So it isn't just an impression: this is actually happening.

Finally, how many decisive goals came late? In 2006, there were 28 in the 2nd half and 5 after 90 minutes. In 2010, 30 in the 2nd half and 4 after 90. But this year, it's 34 in the 2nd half and fully 9 after 90 minutes. And still 8 games left.

Let's just hope the final match is a good one. After all this action, it would be disappointing to see a 1-0 snoozer where Germany scores in the 22nd minute and then just holds off Argentina for the remaining 68.

Are We Living In a Simulation?

Dr. Nick Bostrom of Oxford says: probably. The basic argument is thus: Suppose that it is possible to make simulations rich enough to fool its inhabitants into thinking they are real. Then such simulations are probably common, given the ease of using computational power. So we are probably living in one rather than in a "real" world.

But really such arguments are specious. Bostrom tries to rigorize his argument by postulating that posthuman civilizations run "ancestor-simulations", but they might just as well run some other form of simulation, perhaps one in which only one observer (you, dear reader, of course!) is self aware, and everyone else is simulated just enough to continue the illusion. In which case his formula is significantly off. So his postulate #2 ("any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof)") is in fact quite likely to be true - or maybe it is, how could we know? But once that one is true, the others' truth values become unknown. In fact, in any scenario in which #2 is not followed precisely, Bostrom's math stops working.

This is often the problem with anthropic-principle arguments, and this one is no exception. You might be living in a simulation, but this paper is not a convincing argument.

Hope and Change

The only people who should have been surprised by this are journalists: "America drops to #47 in World Press Freedom Index". This is not the change we were waiting for, I don't think.

Followup: I can't imagine this will help:

But under the Obama administration, the Federal Communications Commission is planning to send government contractors into the nation's newsrooms to determine whether journalists are producing articles, television reports, Internet content, and commentary that meets the public's "critical information needs." Those "needs" will be defined by the administration, and news outlets that do not comply with the government's standards could face an uncertain future. It's hard to imagine a project more at odds with the First Amendment.

The Foodless Diet

Here's a space-age idea for your dieting needs.

I hypothesized that the body doesn't need food itself, merely the chemicals and elements it contains. So, I resolved to embark on an experiment. What if I consumed only the raw ingredients the body uses for energy? Would I be healthier or do we need all the other stuff that's in traditional food? If it does work, what would it feel like to have a perfectly balanced diet?

So far, so good. Lots of science fiction movies and books include the idea of the single pill that supplies all the nutrients an adult human needs in a day. Why not actually try it?

The weirdness comes in when the experiment gets underway, and within just days the positive results start to flow in:

• On day 4, he can run 3+ miles whereas before couldn't make it a single mile;
• A lifelong skin condition clears up;
• By week 4 he's up to 7 mile runs.

After a month, one starts to wonder if there's some cocaine in the mixture.

My mental performance is also higher. My inbox and to-do list quickly emptied. I 'get' new concepts in my reading faster than before and can read my textbooks twice as long without mental fatigue. I read a book on Number Theory in one sitting, a Differential Geometry book in a weekend, filling up a notebook in the process. Mathematical notation that used to look obtuse is now beautiful. My working memory is noticeably better. I can grasp larger software projects and longer and more complex scientific papers more effectively. My awareness is higher. I find music more enjoyable. I notice beauty and art around me that I never did before. The people around me seem sluggish. There are fewer 'ums' and pauses in my spoken sentences. My reflexes are improved. I walk faster, feel lighter on my feet, spend less time analyzing and performing basic tasks and rely on my phone less for navigation. I sleep better, wake up more refreshed and alert and never feel drowsy during the day. I still drink coffee occasionally, but I no longer need it, which is nice.

It's a bit hard to take this at face value. All of these benefits just from a supposedly balanced diet, after just 30 days? If so, it's a huge breakthrough and I'm sure we'll all be drinking Soylent in short order. But one is skeptical.

Notes on a Citizenship Ceremony

Mrs. Athwart History became a United States citizen on Tuesday, and I'm very proud of her. Naturally, I came with her to the swearing-in ceremony. Here are some various observations.

What a truly amazing country we live in! Before the ceremony a video was playing showing various scenes: of family life, of nature, of communities, of business. America is an incredibly varied and welcoming nation. Much is made of our flaws, but it's worth reflecting from time to time on our virtues.

America is unique in its adherence to a set of ideals above any other definition of nationality (other Anglo-Saxon nations approximate this but only America makes it explicit). Essentially, if you agree to live our way, then you can be an American. I wonder how this is handled in other countries. France, for example, is famous for teaching colonial Algerians about "their ancestors, the Gauls."

A slightly sour note crept in early in the ceremony. Representatives from the election office spoke about the importance of registering to vote. But they repeated themselves in Cantonese and Spanish. This is doubly flawed. First, those who speak neither Cantonese nor Spanish must've felt left out. A new citizen proficient in Farsi but a bit shaky in English is thus treated differently on his very first day as an American. And second, it was the only part of the ceremony conducted in multiple languages. Part of the citizenship test is to demonstrate a working knowledge of English. This is as it should be, and the ceremony should be in English. The oath, for example, is in English. Voting is important, of course, but not more important than the oath. If the oath can be trusted to be understood in English, the voting registration advertisement damned well can be.

Nearly every speaker at the ceremony was a naturalized citizen. Kind of cool, I thought.

There were over 1,000 new citizens sworn in along with my wife. This is a busy office, I imagine, and I'm not sure how often they run the ceremonies, but the numbers were still remarkable. USCIS claims to have naturalized 6.6 million people in the past decade, so that's 660,000 per year, or 660 ceremonies like this one every year across the country.

The oath was preceded by a singing of the National Anthem. The singer was pretty awful - just someone from USCIS - but it was poignant, nonetheless, and was the oath. This is a big step in many lives!

At the end of the ceremony, a singing group was invited in to perform "America the Beautiful" and "This Land is Your Land". The singing itself was just atrocious, and frankly embarrassed me. This is how we welcome new citizens, with amateurs who can't stay on pitch? Better to just play a recording or leave it out. But the message was nearly as bad. The Woody Guthrie song is, of course, crypto-communist. The ceremony was being held just a few miles from Berzerkely, so that's probably a factor, and I imagine most of the folks at the ceremony didn't pick up on the lyrics or knew the history of Guthrie or the song. But it's not quite the way I'd like to see America represented.

Still and all: I was moved. And more importantly, my wife is now a citizen!

Obamacare: The Lying Strategy

This has been making the rounds, but in case you haven't seen it, Ezra Klein in 2008 laying out the strategy for Obamacare:

I'd say "shocking", but of course it isn't. This is what we expected. And the last bit about creating a system that would gently lead us to single-payer: yep, just as we suspected. Thanks, Ezra, for finally telling the truth. Now to abolish this abomination.

Bayes Theorem, Guns, and Mental Illness

Since the recent Navy Yard shooting, the Left has been talking about gun control, and the Right about mental illness. The Left's arguments are mostly specious or a dead end (specious: that an AR-15 was involved - one wasn't; dead end: that we should get rid of all guns - we won't).

But the Right's case isn't so great, either. Yes, we should have better mental health policies. And it's pretty clear that the Navy Yard shooting, at least, could have been prevented with more attention to mental health. Evidently the shooter had displayed clear signs of mental illness when speaking to police just days before the shooting. But the police hadn't called mental health officials. Had the done so it's possible the shooting could have been prevented.

In general, though, would better mental health policy have much effect on gun violence? Not really. The problem is that most people with mental illness aren't extraordinarily violent, and most violence isn't perpetrated by the mentally ill. So not only is it difficult - nearly impossible - to determine who is likely to commit gun violence, even if we could keep guns out of their hands the effect would be only marginal.

This is a problem with no easy, obvious fix.