The segment of a Moyers & Company episode, Jonathan Haidt Explains Our Contentious Culture, describes itself as follows:

Our country is more politically polarized than ever. Is it possible to agree to disagree and still move on to solve our massive problems?  Or are the blind leading the blind — over the cliff?

Bill and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt talk about the psychological underpinnings of our contentious culture, why we can’t trust our own opinions, and the demonizing of our adversaries.

“When it gets so that your opponents are not just people you disagree with, but… the mental state in which I am fighting for good, and you are fighting for evil, it’s very difficult to compromise,” Haidt tells Moyers. “Compromise becomes a dirty word.”

Here is the video:

Haidt makes a lot of sense and I like to believe I am self-aware enough to know about many of the issues he talks about. This is not to say that I agree with everything he said.

I have talked about confirmation bias in a number of articles on this blog. I do look for evidence that my ideas are wrong as well as evidence that they are right. I am also willing to admit that there are somethings we do not know and there are some things that have huge uncertainties. Any policy needs to try to accommodate the uncertainties.

There is a reason that I disagree with the consensus view in almost every group I am in. Although I believe strongly in progressive ideals, I know that they can be carried too far. I try to remind people that any policy is not merely an issue of yes or know. It is not a single bit binary decision. We must deal in real numbers where we have to estimate how much of any policy is right. We have to realize from the outset that any estimate we come up with may be in error by significant amounts.

I also liked what I thought was Obama’s management style that he touted in his campaign and in his books. Once a policy is decided on, its implementation must be measured. You have to know if the policy is working satisfactorily or not. If it isn’t, you have to know how much it is off and how much needs to be fixed. There is plenty of distance between saying the program is hopeless and must be stopped to the program is perfect and nothing needs to change.

I have the blog’s motto Extremism is the Enemy of Rationality™ at the top for a reason. By the way, somewhat contrary to what Haidt said, asking for rationality is only bad if you think the human mind is completely rational.

The Truth Out article, Why the “Liberal” Media Leaves Hawkish Foreign Policy Unchallenged, by Gregory Harms talks mostly about The New York Times as an example.

The New York Times could probably be fairly described as liberal. The term has lost much relevance and meaning in recent years, along with its counterpart designation “conservative.”

But if we apply the label generally to mean mildly progressive, roughly approximating the political center, one could reasonably assert that the Times falls within range of the liberal framework. (I would argue it’s right-of-center, but will remain general for present purposes.)

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If we are to better understand issues like the Middle East, we need better information. Among the Times’ class of readers exists a pride in belonging to an enlightened, progressive social stratum – a personal observation I have made over now many years. This is not to suggest they are bad people; they’ve just never been told anything else. Much like the subject of Iran, the ingrained orthodoxies prevail. However, to truly progress beyond the demarcations of acceptable liberal discourse, the barrier between the domestic and foreign spheres needs to be dismantled. In this endeavor, the public has the lead. In this endeavor, the population is the vanguard.

So now I know why I have such a disdain for the foreign policy of The New York Times.  They are liberal right, and I am progressive.  Who knew?

Nation of Change has published the article, Occupy the Super Bowl: Indiana’s New Anti-Union Law Sparks Protest at Sport’s Biggest Event, about the video below.

“Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels signed a so-called ‘right to work’ measure into law that critics say will result in lower wages and diminished collective bargaining rights.”

The article also contains a transcript of the interview in the video.

De­Mau­rice Smith re­cently ap­peared on Dave Zirin’s radio show Edge of Sports Radio. Smith is the ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of The Na­tional Foot­ball League Play­ers As­so­ci­a­tion.

DE­MAU­RICE SMITH: We are in lock-step with or­ga­nized labor. I’m proud to sit on the Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil of the AFL-CIO. Why? Be­cause we share all of the same is­sues that Amer­i­can peo­ple share. We want de­cent wages, you want a fair pen­sion, you want to be taken care of when you get hurt, you want a de­cent and safe work­ing en­vi­ron­ment. So when you look at pro­posed leg­is­la­tion in a place like In­di­ana that wants to call it some­thing called “Right to Work”, but you re­al­ize that…

DAVE ZIRIN: A tricky phrase, “right to work”.

DE­MAU­RICE SMITH: Very tricky phrase. Let’s just put the ham­mer on the nail. It’s un­true. This bill has noth­ing to do with a right to work. If folks in In­di­ana and that great leg­is­la­tion—-and they want to pass a bill that re­ally is some­thing called “Right to Work”, have a con­sti­tu­tional amend­ment that guar­an­tees every cit­i­zen a right to a job. That is a right to work. What this is, in­stead, is a right to en­force and to en­sure that or­di­nary work­ing peo­ple can’t get to­gether as a team, can’t or­ga­nize, can’t stand to­gether, and can’t fight or ne­go­ti­ate with man­age­ment on an even play­ing field.

The New York Times has the article, Romney, the Rich and the Rest, by Charles M. Blow.

First, a report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities last month pointed out that Romney’s budget proposals would take a chainsaw to that safety net.
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Then let’s take the fact that a report last month by the Tax Policy Center found that his tax plan would increase after-tax income for millionaires by 14.5 percent while increasing the after-tax income of those making less than $20,000 by less than 1 percent and of those making between $30,000 and $40,000 by less than 3 percent.

For a man who’s not worried about the rich, he sure seems to want them to rake in more cash.

The article above adds some details  to the previous post, Romney Isn’t Concerned.

I guess that Romney’s claim to want to fix the safety net depends on what the meaning of the word “fix” is.

Whenever one of these Republican candidates comes up with malarkey like this stuff from Romney, the reporter might say something like, “This would be a very nice plan if the data you base it on bore any resemblance to reality. Someday, if the reality ever conforms itself to your preconceptions, then voters might want to consider what you have to say.”  That is not a facetious remark.  The reason why the Republican program seems to ring true to some people, is that it might make sense at a time when the facts met their presumptions.  What the people who believe this stuff don’t seem to know is that, at this time, the facts are not aligned with the Republican program.

Thanks to RichardH for suggesting this article.

The Boston Globe published the story AG Urges Principal Forgiveness. (You may not be able to read the whole thing if you are not a Globe subscriber. The important stuff is right here, so don’t worry about subscribing to the Globe.)

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley today said mortgage giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae should do more to stop “unnecessary foreclosures,” including by reducing loan principal for homeowners who are having difficulty making their monthly payments.
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Melonie Griffiths, an organizer with the Jamaica Plain housing advocacy group City Life/Vida Urbana, said that even if taxpayers lose money when Fannie and Freddie reduce principal for needy homeowners, they will lose even more if the housing crisis is not resolved.

“It is one of the things that is going to get the economy back on track,’’ she said.

This is the one big idea that the Obama administration should have been pushing from the very beginning.  They spent trillions of dollars bailing out the banks which did nothing to get the economy moving again.  If they had used the same money to reduce principal on the loans, the housing sector and the consumer purchasing power would have recovered much more quickly.

I am sure the argument was that the banks would eventually pay back the loans, but the reduction of principal would be permanent.  The government would not be repaid for the money spent reducing principal.  However, as Melonie Griffiths points out, the payback to the government would not have been directly from the mortgagees, but it would come indirectly through a revived economy that would increase tax revenues and cut the deficit. No mention is made of the cost of labor immobility due to homes that cannot be sold because the mortgages are underwater.  In other recessions people have been more free to sell their homes and to move to where the jobs are.

Moreover, though the banks may have paid back the principal of the money that was lent to them in the bailout, they no way repaid the less visible bailout of extremely low interest rate borrowing from the Federal Reserve.  It is funny how nobody accounts for this bailout as money spent by the Fed. Few people may realize that the profits of the Federal Reserve Bank are paid to the U.S. Treasury.

I guess it shows that people with business experience, like Mitt Romney, are so used to looking at the small picture from the viewpoint of a single business, that they cannot see the big picture of the entire economy.  You’d think that a business person might think about  the experience of running a large company where you may have one division losing money so that another division can make more and the company comes out ahead.  This is the same thing that happens for a country and its whole economy.  It applies even more to the whole world and the world economy.  There seem to be few business people who can make the connection, although the connection seems obvious to me.

In The Boston Globe piece, The liberal case against Obama, Neal Gabler makes some points that I have been struggling with for many years.

[Ted] Kennedy believed that principles compromised might very well be principles destroyed, and while he wound up dutifully campaigning for Carter, one sensed that he suspected Reagan’s election might actually revivify liberalism – stiffen its back.
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As his own campaign neared its end, he began calling it a “cause,’’ by which he meant the cause of sustaining the forces of liberalism and buttressing the last remaining liberal institution: the Democratic Party. In short, he seemed less worried about Reagan destroying liberalism temporarily than he was about Carter sapping it permanently.
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But if you believe in the vitality of a robust Rooseveltian liberalism that can stand up to the right wing, then you might worry that Obama, by transforming the Democratic Party from an instrument for change into an instrument of compromise, and by legitimizing Republican talking points like deficit reduction over job creation, has fatally damaged progressivism – something far more important than the election prospects of any particular candidate.

The one thing that gives me pause in reading this is to wonder what Ted Kennedy thought in later life about the rise of Ronald Reagan and Reaganism.  Eight years of Ronald Reagan did nothing to revivify liberalism or stiffen its back. If anything, the Reagan era revivified and emboldened the far, far, far, right.  Or perhaps it was the softening of the damage done by Reagan/Bush/Bush by the terms of Clinton and Obama, that prevented the good effect and brought on the bad one.

The one thing that has seemed to change the terms of debate in recent years is the efforts of the Occupy movement.  The conditions have been bad enough to get large numbers of people taking to the streets in protest.  The Reagan/Bush years were not enough to do it. It took the collapse of the Bush the younger’s term to start the protests rolling. If the Occupy movement does not revive this spring, then maybe it is a sign that we do need to get conditions much worse before there will be a critical mass for a self-sustaining movement.  One of the points of the OWS movement is that you won’t find the solution to our problems in electoral politics.

Speaking of Paul Krugman as I did in my previous post, Romney Isn’t Concerned, I find this other post, Clearing Up the Confusion Over “Made in China”, by Paul Krugman.

On his blog, “The Big Picture,” the author and commentator Barry Ritholtz sends us to a Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco paper from last summer that makes a point about which many people seem confused: Despite globalization and all that, the bulk of a consumer dollar spent in America falls on American-produced goods and services. According to the paper, titled The U.S. Content of “Made in China,”

“Goods and services from China accounted for only 2.7 percent of U.S. personal consumption expenditures in 2010, of which less than half reflected the actual costs of Chinese imports. The rest went to U.S. businesses and workers transporting, selling and marketing goods carrying the ‘Made in China’ label.”

It is amazing how China can accumulate hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. treasury debt by running up a massive trade surplus by selling us 0.6% of our GDP with goods coming solely from China. (If I understand the report, only 11% of the content of the products marked “Made in China” originated in China.)

My engineering training has always told me that after you make a complex calculation, you need to check against other obvious data to make sure there isn’t a mistake in your calculations. When you do find a discrepancy, you need to understand where it comes from. It could be an error in your calculations or it could be an error in the comparison data.

In no case can you just walk away without explaining where the error comes from. Especially when the calculation gives very surprising results, you need to know in great detail how it came to be that the results are correct and yet disagree with all the data that went before.

I take this report with a large bag of U.S. made Morton Salt (if indeed that is where it comes from) before I buy into this analysis.

In The New York Times article, Romney Isn’t Concerned, Paul Krugman attempts to explain Mitt Romney’s words.

So Mr. Romney’s position seems to be that we need not worry about the poor thanks to programs that he insists, falsely, don’t actually help the needy, and which he intends, in any case, to destroy.

Still, I believe Mr. Romney when he says he isn’t concerned about the poor. What I don’t believe is his assertion that he’s equally unconcerned about the rich, who are “doing fine.” After all, if that’s what he really feels, why does he propose showering them with money?

I wonder if Romney and the Komen Foundation share the same public relations company.  It is amazing what these two think they can use to explain themselves and get away with it.

Thanks to MardyS for posting the link to this article on his Facebook page.

MSNBC has the story Komen backs off decision on funding cuts .

According to the Associated Press, which first reported Tuesday that Komen had adopted criteria excluding Planned Parenthood from grants, the original move was made solely to penalize the agency.

The AP reported that a source with direct knowledge of decision-making at Komen’s headquarters said the grant-making criteria were adopted with the deliberate intention of targeting Planned Parenthood. The criteria’s impact on Planned Parenthood and its status as the focus of government investigations were highlighted in a memo distributed to Komen affiliates in December.

According to the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussions, a driving force behind the move was Karen Handel, who was hired by Komen last year as vice president for public policy after losing a campaign for governor in Georgia in which she stressed her anti-abortion views and frequently denounced Planned Parenthood.

Brinker, in an interview with MSNBC, said Handel didn’t have a significant role in the policy change.

At a special board meeting late on Thursday, the Komen organization agreed in principle to issue an apology and change the language of the organization’s funding criteria, board member John Raffaelli told Reuters.

“Our policy was that in our original board meeting (on the funding) and it didn’t come out very clearly,” Raffaelli said. “It got screwed up.”

I am glad to see the credibility of Komen restored.  Yeah, right.  That source with direct knowledge must have been mistaken.  Just because Komen adopted this policy that any baseless investigation would stop funding, and just because Planned Parenthood was the only recipient to be cut off, most assuredly the policy was not adopted to have the single outcome that it did.  Moreover, since they adopted the policy and then saw the consequences, they were powerless to change their minds until a groundswell of criticism reached them.

Business Week is carrying the Bloomberg News story, Komen Says Criticism Over Planned Parenthood Unfounded.

Talking about the investigation into Planned Parenthood that is the Komen Foundation’s excuse for withdrawing funding, the article states:

The foundation cited a probe by Representative Cliff Stearns, a Florida Republican and chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee, into whether New York-based Planned Parenthood is illegally using government money for abortions.

No other group has been told it won’t be receiving grants under the new criteria, though some “probably do” provide abortions, Brinker said. “We ask a lot of questions” of grantees, “but that’s not one of them.”

Mollie Williams, a former managing director for community health programs, resigned in January, according to her LinkedIn profile, a move that occurred after the board decided in December to withdraw the Planned Parenthood funds.

The last paragraph is probably just an unrelated incident that the news service has chosen to include here just to hype the story.  Well, that is plausible.

Talking about some donors that have stepped into the void to replace the funds removed by Kome, the article goes on to say:

The donation from the Fikes foundation was made “so that their health centers across the country can continue to put the real needs of women ahead of right wing ideology,” according to a statement on the group’s website. Lee Fikes didn’t return a call to the offices of Bonanza Oil seeking comment.

“Politics has no place in health care,” Bloomberg, the New York mayor, said in the statement about his donation. “Breast cancer screening saves lives and hundreds of thousands of women rely on Planned Parenthood for access to care. We should be helping women access that care, not placing barriers in their way.” Bloomberg is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.

So, given what Mayor Bloomberg has to say, (just coincidentally the founder of Bloomberg News), what is this story doing on a politics blog?  Maybe Komen’s denials about the relationship between their actions and politics is just so very hard to believe.  Does it add to an organizations credibility to stick to a story that is so hard to believe?  I wonder if they can recognize a public relations disaster when they see one.

Probably another unlikely coincidence that Bloomberg News has chosen to insert into the article is:

Some of the political context has centered on the Komen group’s April hiring of Karen Handel as senior vice president of public policy. Handel joined the organization after an unsuccessful Republican campaign for governor in Georgia.

In that race, Handel wrote on her blog that she would eliminate any state grants for organizations such as Planned Parenthood which, she wrote, “I do not support.”

Of course having read RichardH’s previous post, Diversion–Highway Fatalities and Lemons, you all “know the difference between correlation and causality”.