Archive for the ‘politics’ category

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Discrimination Against Atheists

February 13th, 2012

Is there discrimination against atheists? Certainly there is in many Islamic countries, where those who do not believe in a god can have almost no legal status, preventing them from voting or even attending a college. Worse, if a Muslim becomes an atheist, which is apostasy, he or she can be sentenced to death in at least three countries. That’s some pretty sever discrimination, to say the least.

It is assumed there there is little discrimination against non-believers in western democracies, but is that true? Consider this recent quote from presidential candidate Newt Gingrich (during a televised debate in Las Vegas): “How can you have judgment if you have no faith? How can I trust you with power if you don’t pray?” Gingrich is essentially proposing a religious test for public office, something expressly forbidden by the Constitution (at least if done on more than an individual level).

According to a Wikipedia entry on the subject of discrimination against atheists, there are seven state constitutions which officially » Read more: Discrimination Against Atheists

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Debt and Analogy

December 19th, 2011

I was forwarded the following email, and I liked it. It shows how a good analogy can make something very clear. It also can be used as an example of why making things clear is not always the same as understanding them more deeply. I’ll explain in a moment, but let’s look at the email first:

Reasons for the US government debt downgrade:

• Tax revenue: $2,170,000,000,000
• Budget: $3,820,000,000,000
• New debt: $ 1,650,000,000,000
• Debt: $14,271,000,000,000
• Recent budget cuts: $ 38,500,000,000

Remove eight zeros and pretend » Read more: Debt and Analogy

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Posted in politics, ponderings

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We Avoid the Truth

September 26th, 2011

We often prefer to avoid the truth. Specifically, we avoid learning those truths which are inconvenient to our ideology or uncomfortable for us to acknowledge. Let’s look at some examples. We’ll start with the mundane, because these cases are easier to recognize in ourselves and in others.

For example, you’ve probably seen someone turn away or change the subject when it is suggested that something is very unhealthy. Of course, this can be a boring subject, but what about the times when the information is directly relevant to the listener, and he still turns away? Why would a man not want to hear that his sedentary lifestyle is causing his weight gain and the back problems that result? Because the knowledge makes him uncomfortable, since he must either change his habits–which is not easy–or feel the guilt of not doing what he thinks he should do.

Ignorance leaves us free of blame if we » Read more: We Avoid the Truth

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Posted in mind, philosophy, politics

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Immigrations Facts and Myths

September 16th, 2011

Time to add a few more immigration facts to the political conversation, and to bust a few more immigration myths as well.

The Myth of the Lazy Immigrant

The labor participation rate (the percentage of people working) in 2006 was not only higher for immigrants in general than for those born in the U.S., but dramatically higher for illegal immigrants. It was, for example, 83 percent for native born men versus 94 percent for illegal male immigrants. It seems obvious that people come here illegally primarily to work.

The Too Many/Too Fast Myth

Many immigrants came from Mexico in the 1990s, and the rate at which they came is seen as a big issue in terms of the short-term effects on the job markets and other areas where “absorbtion” is talked about. But » Read more: Immigrations Facts and Myths

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Immigration and Jobs

September 7th, 2011

Today I am going to once again irritate my xenophobic friends and family by pointing out some of the irrationality in the myths about immigration and jobs, and immigrants on welfare. The statistics mentioned are from Jason L. Riley’s book, Let Them In: The Case For Open Borders.

The Myth That Immigrants Steal Jobs

There were 146 million workers in the United States in 2006. Of these, 21 million were foreign born. Logically, if immigrants took jobs there should have been 21 million people unemployed. At the time the number was 7 million. And keep in mind that there will always be a few million between jobs in even the best economy, since people do quit and get fired or laid off, and it can take a few weeks to find the next job.

Cypress Semiconductors’ CEO T.J Rodgers notes that 37 percent of their 470 engineers are immigrants. Each engineer requires about five employees to administer, make and market the products he develops. He says, “Had we been prevented from hiring » Read more: Immigration and Jobs

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Why Are There False Confessions?

September 6th, 2011

The sad news is that false confessions may be far more common than we have suspected in the past.

Flickr photo by Dennis Crowley

Interrogation

You may have heard of the Innocence Project, a legal charity that fights to exonerate innocent people who are wrongly imprisoned. What you might not have heard is that of the hundreds of people they have now freed, around 25% actually confessed to the crime they were accused of. Why do innocent people confess? That question may not be fully answered anytime soon, but the fact that they do so is becoming more and more evident.

A recent article in the Economist Magazine reviewed the research that has been done in this area, and what they found is fascinating, and a little bit disturbing. For example…

“One of the most recent papers on the subject, published in Law and Human Behavior by Saul Kassin and Jennifer Perillo of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, used a group of 71 university students who were told » Read more: Why Are There False Confessions?

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Immigrants and Health care Costs

August 25th, 2011

Today’s I have just a short “ignorance removal post.” There are many misunderstandings out there, including many assumptions about  undocumented immigrants. Friends are often surprised when I explain, for example, that most “illegal immigrants” (not sure I like the title, since it is a civil infraction and not a criminal one to be here without papers), actually pay more in taxes than similar workers. This is because they get hired  using forged documents, pay all the usual taxes (including the largest, which is payroll taxes–and they never get to claim social security benefits), but they often do not claim the tax refunds that are due to them. Go to your state’s unclaimed money website and you can see this in the lists of unclaimed refund checks (look at the most common last names).

Another fallacy is that immigrants are a huge burden on our health care system. While this is a problem in some areas near the Mexican border, look at what Jason L. Riley reported in his book, Let Them In – The Case For Open Borders:

“A study done in 2006 by » Read more: Immigrants and Health care Costs

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Against the Death Penalty

August 22nd, 2011

Why am I against the death penalty? For a variety of reasons, actually, but for this post I would like to point out one very important one. It is that when we have a death penalty, mistakes will be made and innocent people killed. The only practical way to avoid that is to not sentence people to death.

Consider this quote from Alexander Green’s book, The Secret of Shelter Island:

“In a 1989 study psychologist Deanna Kuhn found that when subjects were exposed to evidence inconsistent with a theory they preferred, they failed to notice it. When they did recognize the contradictory evidence, they simply reinterpreted in favor of their preconceived belief.

In a related study, scientific American » Read more: Against the Death Penalty

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Republican Socialism

August 17th, 2011

What is Republican socialism, and are there Republican socialists in congress? It seems so at times, when you listen to what the Republicans themselves label as socialism and then look at what they vote for.  As reported in Reason Magazine and other news outlets, many Republicans favor keeping or expanding huge redistributionist programs. For example, in 2010 Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky), Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, and former House Speaker  Newt Gingrich all released statements opposing any cuts to Medicare.

Republican president George Bush openly and repeatedly called for more redistribution of wealth by way of » Read more: Republican Socialism

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Define Tax Increase

August 12th, 2011

How do you define a tax increase? It seems like a simple question, but as pointed out in a recent article on MoneyNews.com, it isn’t all that clear;

“In this semantic debate, members of Congress talk past each other without a common fiscal language. Defining a tax increase has become a central policy question as Congress and the Obama administration seek an agreement that can satisfy Republicans who oppose tax increases and Democrats who insist on them.”

The primary problem is whether to call the elimination of loopholes or deductions a tax increase. And what about tax credits? Does eliminating this or that payment to corporations and wealthy individuals for various purposes constitute a tax increase? Republicans almost universally say » Read more: Define Tax Increase

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