I was thinking…

The New Neo Posted on by

…how relatively quiet Obama has been lately in terms of news.

For years and years there have been daily outrages from him, new initiatives or statements that have made the blood of all conservatives boil.

Lately, not so much.

It occurs to me that—although I don’t think those things are over, not by a longshot—he may be resting a bit and viewing the fruit of his labors. After all, the transformation of America that he envisioned has been largely accomplished. The voting public has moved left. Government dependence has increased. The power of the federal government has increased. The newer Democratic candidates are more radical than ever before, and radicalism has been mainstreamed. Race relations have reached a new low for this century. Our standing in the world, the trust our allies had in us, and the fear our enemies had for us, have all been greatly undermined.

He must think he richly deserves a little bit of rest.

[NOTE: And yes, I’m well aware that Obama’s doing plenty right now under the radar. He’s not really resting, nor are his supporters. They actually never rest, although they probably sit down now and then.]

Our changing moral judgments

The New Neo Posted on by

graduate

More Americans are finding certain behaviors morally acceptable that are still widely considered unacceptable. In other words, approval (though still low) of these behaviors has been creeping up:

While a select few actions remain deeply taboo for much of the country, there has been an increasing shift to moral acceptability for some of these over time. Such actions include suicide (which 19% of Americans call “morally acceptable”), polygamy (16%) and cloning humans (15%).

Will they follow the route of once-disapproved-but-now-widely-approved behaviors such as premarital sex or gay/lesbian relationships? Or will they continue to remain in the dungeon like—and the low score of the following may surprise you, as it did me—adultery, which remains in the basement?:

On the other hand, “married men and women having an affair” has remained at the bottom of a list of 19 moral behaviors Gallup has measured, with only 8% considering it morally acceptable.

Not only is adultery at the bottom of the list, but I would wager it’s the most highly disapproved behavior that is most widely engaged in.

Or is it? Researchers have long had trouble gauging exactly how much hanky-panky is going on within marriage, but there are indications that it’s less widespread than commonly thought:

Taken together, in any given year, it looks like the actual likelihood of your relationship suffering from cheating is low ”” probably less than a 6 percent chance.

But over the course of your entire relationship, the chances of infidelity may rise to as much as 25 percent. Twenty-five percent ”” over the course of an entire relationship ”” is a far cry from the 50 percent number we hear from many so-called professionals and services trying to sell you something.

And to put cheating into perspective too, the relationship (or one of the people in the relationship) needs to be lacking in something.

Well, that’s a pretty low bar. Who isn’t lacking in something?

Another interesting fact is that these days, adultery is the only behavior on the list that is considered highly unacceptable (approval under 20%) by Americans 18-29; only 10% in that age group say it’s okay. That figure is similar to the disapproval rates in other age groups.

Most Americans now have no problem with out-of-wedlock births, at least in the moral sense (I’d guess there’s more practical disapproval than moral disapproval at this point, but the survey didn’t ask about that). This Gallup article from 2013 tracks some of the changes in a host of areas since around 2000, and it has been huge.

But most of the more recent changes in a 2014 poll have been among Democrats rather than Republicans. In other words, those who perceive that Democrats have moved more to the left, at least on the social dimension, are correct. The right has stayed surprisingly stable:

In the 12 years Gallup has asked this overall question, Democrats have become significantly more tolerant on many issues, while independents generally show a smaller shift in the same direction and Republicans’ views have changed little. The percentage of Democrats who say an issue is morally acceptable has increased for 10 issues, including abortion, sex between an unmarried man and woman, extramarital affairs, cloning humans, divorce, cloning animals, suicide, research using stem cells from human embryos, polygamy, and gay and lesbian relations.

In some cases, the change among Democrats has been substantial. For example, in 2003, 52% of Democrats said having a baby outside of wedlock was morally acceptable, and 40% of Republicans and 61% of independents agreed. This year [2014], 72% of Democrats, a 20-percentage-point increase, say it is morally acceptable. Meanwhile, Republicans have seen no change, with 40% still saying it is morally acceptable, although a higher 50% viewed it as morally acceptable last year. Independents have also not seen a change, with 60% saying having a baby out of wedlock is morally acceptable this year.

Republicans are slightly more accepting of gay and lesbian relations, sex between an unmarried man and woman, and divorce than they were in 2001, when these questions were first asked. Independents’ views on the first two issues (but not divorce) also have seen small shifts, but neither group has seen changes as drastic as those among Democrats.

I find that exceptionally interesting. However, we don’t know whether Republicans have toed the line, or whether those who used to call themselves Republicans but who shifted to the more accepting point of view have shifted their political allegiance to Democrat as well, leaving the more socially conservative within the Republican camp.

Generally, the changes have been among the old as well as among the young, so it’s not just the relentless drumbeat of the left in the school system that’s causing the shift.

If you were to track approval/disapproval of these things over a much longer time frame, my guess is that you would detect a slow increase (such as is now occurring with polygamy, for example) and then a sudden surge of approval, until it reaches a critical mass and the behavior is no longer considered a problem. That’s what probably happened with birth control, which now has the highest acceptance of all: in 2014, 90% had no moral problem with it.

Will acceptance of polygamy follow a similar sharply upward trajectory, or will it go the way of adultery, which has hardly changed in its approval figures over recent years?

Rand Paul takes a leaf out of…

The New Neo Posted on by

…Obama’s megalomaniacal book: it’s all about ME, and my opponents have evil in their hearts.

I have fairly strong libertarian leanings myself, but I’ve never been a fan of either Paul. These latest comments from Paul the Younger during the NSA negotiations don’t enhance my opinion of his character. They remind me very powerfully of the sort of arguments Obama favors, which is not a recommendation:

People here in town think I’m making a huge mistake. Some of them, I think, secretly want there to be an attack on the United States so they can blame it on me.

It’s not all about you, Rand. It’s not even mostly about you. And if they’re out to get you, that’s politics.

[ADDENDUM: This post by Ace is relevant and well worth reading. Excerpt:

Rand Paul is not just criticizing his named enemies in the Senate, then. He’s criticizing the millions of GOP voters whose instincts tend to be more conventional and interventionist than his own. And when John McCain calls Ted Cruz a “wacko bird,” he is of course telling millions of GOP voters that they themselves are “wacko birds” — worse than that, really, because at least Cruz is his own wacko bird. Cruz’ fans, in McCain’s insult, are merely the crude-minded follower of a wacko bird.

This is not statecraft. It’s conducting a blogwar from the well of the Senate.

This reminds me of why I don’t like capital-L Libertarians. Put to one side the policy differences, which in the main are not a source of actual emotional discord as policy differences can in fact be discussed dispassionately, intellectually, coolly.

I don’t like capital-L Libertarians because they approach conservatives like myself with actual open contempt with a dismissive and demeaning hostility, and I do not think this is just some accident or character defect.

Rather, and this is the important thing, I believe that that open contemptuousness is not merely a defect, but an essential, foundational part of capital-L Libertarianism.

We define ourselves not just by our heroes and devotions, but even more by our enemies and our anathemas. I believe that it is foundational to the capital-L Libertarian creed, whether they realize it or not, that conservatives are enemies on an emotional level and to be treated with contempt and jeering. A large part of capital-L Libertarianism, many have noted, seems to be a sort of performance art of ritualized disdain for the Squares and Stiffs of the right.

Now, when I say this, my point is not to criticize Libertarians, though it certainly sounds that way.

My point is that there is something very basic about human group dynamics. Something very elemental about team-building — and Other-defining.

Much more at the link.]

Silk Road head Ulbricht sentenced to life

The New Neo Posted on by

Ross Ulbricht received a very heavy sentence for his creation of the black market internet site Silk Road:

Ross W. Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, a notorious online marketplace for the sale of heroin, cocaine, LSD and other illegal drugs, was sentenced to life in prison on Friday in Federal District Court in Manhattan.

Mr. Ulbricht, 31, was sentenced by the judge, Katherine B. Forrest, for his role as what prosecutors described as “the kingpin of a worldwide digital drug-trafficking enterprise.”…

Transactions were made using the virtual currency Bitcoin, and Mr. Ulbricht, operating under the pseudonym Dread Pirate Roberts, took in millions of dollars in commissions, prosecutors have said. They said Mr. Ulbricht had “developed a blueprint for a new way to use the Internet to undermine the law and facilitate criminal transactions,” and that his conviction was “the first of its kind, and his sentencing is being closely watched.”

Judge Forrest echoed that message. “What you did was unprecedented,” she told Mr. Ulbricht, “and in breaking that ground as the first person,” he had to pay the consequences. Anyone who might consider doing something similar, the judge added, needed to understand clearly “and without equivocation that if you break the law this way, there will be very serious consequences.”

If you want to know more about Silk Road and what was sold there, see this.

In the comments section to the article in the NY Times, I noticed a lot of people who consider Ulbricht to be a libertarian hero/martyr, just trying to foster liberty and get away from big bad government. These commenters tend to compare what he did with selling liquor, and (paradoxically, I think) many say that the real criminals who should be in jail are big business’ exploiting capitalists.

The thing is, what Ulbricht did was illegal, and heroin is quite different than liquor. Sure, both can kill and both can destroy lives (and do, quite regularly), and both are potentially addictive. But liquor is a substance with a long long societal history; heroin is a relatively recently synthesized substance. Liquor is used by the vast majority of people and most of them suffer no ill effects from it and are not addicted to it. Heroin is used by a far smaller segment of society and most of those people are greatly harmed by it and are addicted.

In other words, the modes of use of the two substances are different. Liquor has a lot of redeeming social importance, and heroin has virtually none. What’s more, as previously stated, society has decided to make one illegal while the other (except for a brief and failed experiment with outlawing it) is legal.

Ulbricht knew that when he began Silk Road. He also profited greatly from the site. So he needs to take the consequences.

Where I part company with the verdict (and think it is somewhat too harsh) is that I am not at all sure he should be blamed for inventing a method that others with even more evil intentions have used—that is, for (as the judge said) “breaking that ground as the first person” to do this online. I think that Ulbricht should be responsible for what his own site did and punished for that (would 30 years not have been enough?), not for what others did or will do in the future with the tools he developed.

More proof that neo-neocon is no fun at all: on being a non-drinker

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: The following post is a repeat of a post from 2008. I was reminded of it when I was writing the post right below this one.]

cocktail.jpg

I don’t drink.

Oh, I can take a sip or two of almost any alcoholic beverage—sometimes even three or four sips on an especially wild night. And I enjoy them, as many of my friends and dinner companions have discovered. But then something mysterious happens and I simply cannot drink any more. Continue reading →

If you want to buy some 20-year-old cheddar cheese…

The New Neo Posted on by

…now’s your chance.

Don’t delay; it’s going fast at $209 a pound.

Sound expensive? Hey, that’s only a mite more than some at Whole Foods, isn’t it? At least, it seems that way.

The lengthy article manages to discuss this cheese but never describes what it tastes like. I would imagine: sharp and strong, crumbly and gritty. And yes, I’m curious to taste it. But not curious enough to buy some. I’ve had 6-year-old cheddar, and it’s plenty strong already.

If you don’t want to break the bank and you don’t need your cheese to be quite as geriatric as a score old, you can get an entire pound of 10-year-old cheddar here for only $21.20. And the Hooks—the makers of the 20-year cheese—are also offering its younger sibling, a 10-year type. But it’s not exactly cheap, either. A 1/2 pound of it costs $44.00 at Amazon.

If you order it, let me know how it tastes.

Sexual misconduct by public officials: “If I understand the history correctly…”

The New Neo Posted on by

…says Orin Kerr, law professor at George Washington Law School and expert in criminal procedure and computer crime law:

If I understand the history correctly, in the late 1990s, the President was impeached for lying about a sexual affair by a House of Representatives led by a man who was also then hiding a sexual affair, who was supposed to be replaced by another Congressman who stepped down when forced to reveal that he too was having a sexual affair, which led to the election of a new Speaker of the House who now has been indicted for lying about payments covering up his sexual contact with a boy.

History? Only if you’re a time traveler. As a law professor, Kerr should know better, because we actually don’t yet know that Hastert’s payments were about “sexual contact with a boy.” That’s the rumor and the unsourced report, but it’s a rumor only at this point.

The substance of the rumor is consistent with the idea that there was some sort of sexual conduct with an underage student (most likely male) while Hastert was a teacher and coach (which had to have been prior to 1981, when he quit that line of work), and that the allegations only began in 2010. We don’t know any of this, plus we don’t even know why the allegations weren’t made until 2010, or whether the allegations are true or were just a threat to rake Hastert over the coals with allegations that, in the current climate, would be believed to be true whether they were actually true or not.

There is another flaw with Kerr’s restatement of history, most particularly this phrase: “the President was impeached for lying about a sexual affair.” Actually, it’s not difficult to know what Clinton was impeached for; it’s a matter of history. All you have to do is look at the articles of impeachment:

Article I… On August 17, 1998, William Jefferson Clinton swore to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth before a Federal grand jury of the United States. Contrary to that oath, William Jefferson Clinton willfully provided perjurious, false and misleading testimony to the grand jury concerning one or more of the following: (1) the nature and details of his relationship with a subordinate Government employee; (2) prior perjurious, false and misleading testimony he gave in a Federal civil rights action brought against him; (3) prior false and misleading statements he allowed his attorney to make to a Federal judge in that civil rights action; and (4) his corrupt efforts to influence the testimony of witnesses and to impede the discovery of evidence in that civil rights action.

In doing this, William Jefferson Clinton has undermined the integrity of his office, has brought disrepute on the Presidency, has betrayed his trust as President and has acted in a manner subversive of the rule of law and justice, to the manifest injury of the people of the United States…

Article II:…engaged personally, and through his subordinates and agents, in a course of conduct or scheme designed to delay, impede, cover up and conceal the existence of evidence and testimony related to a Federal civil rights action brought against him in a duly instituted judicial proceeding.

The means used to implement this course of conduct or scheme included one or more of the following acts:

(1) On or about December 17, 1997, William Jefferson Clinton corruptly encouraged a witness in a Federal civil rights action brought against him to execute a sworn affidavit in that proceeding that he knew to be perjurious, false and misleading.

(2) On or about December 17, 1997, William Jefferson Clinton corruptly encouraged a witness in a Federal civil rights action brought against him to give perjurious, false and misleading testimony if and when called to testify personally in that proceeding.

(3) On or about December 28, 1997, William Jefferson Clinton corruptly engaged in, encouraged or supported a scheme to conceal evidence that had been subpoenaed in a Federal civil rights action brought against him…

It goes on and on, but you get the drift. The summary version is that Clinton was impeached not for mere “lying about a sexual affair” but for lying under oath and for trying to get others to do so, too, and for doing all of this while president of the United States. This differentiates him from the others that Kerr mentions, and it’s an important distinction rather than a minor one.

And I say this as a person who does not believe Clinton should have been impeached, nor do I believe he committed perjury in the technical legal sense, although I do believe he lied under oath (if you’re interested, you can see some of my reasoning here, which includes links to several other discussions I had on the subject).

I just spent some time trying to figure out what Kerr’s politics are by reading previous writings of his, and it’s been surprisingly difficult. But from articles such as this one I’ve decided that Kerr is conservative, so his little history lesson doesn’t seem to have been based on a desire to whitewash Clinton’s history. Perhaps he’s just expressing disgust or bemusement that so many public officials have had such unadmirable private lives, and that what goes around seems to come around.

But there’s a huge disparity among the men’s offenses. Gingrich and Livingston were simply cheating on their wives (if such a thing be simple), and for Livingston the infidelity was in the past; he resigned when threatened by a magazine with exposure. Gingrich was already known to have cheated years earlier on his first wife with the woman who became his second, and he was repeating the pattern later when he cheated on the second to marry the third, to whom he is still married. Although not especially laudable, to say the least, these were private acts by public figures that involved neither crimes (such as child abuse) nor lying under oath.

On the other hand, Clinton not only lied under oath to cover up his sexual misconduct, but that misconduct was with a White House intern who was only 22, not just a random woman. And if and only if the Hastert allegations are true, his conduct constituted lying under oath about the intent of the bank withdrawals as well as the crime of sexual contact (either consensual or non; we don’t know which) with a minor student.

I don’t see any way to equate the offenses of Clinton and the supposed ones of Hastert with those of Gingrich and Livingston, and I think it’s misleading to imply there is any sort of equivalence. It makes a cute and seemingly clever sound bite, but no, I don’t think Kerr seems to understand the history of it. Nor does he appear to understand—or at least to acknowledge, because I think he certainly understands—the law of it.

[ADDENDUM: A little clarification here—

I understand, as I already stated, that Kerr’s pretty much a conservative (on the libertarian side). And I understand that it’s a joke he was making—after all, I wrote “It makes a cute and seemingly clever sound bite.”

I just think it’s a joke that fails. Obviously, I may be in a minority, but I don’t find it funny. Maybe I just got up on the wrong side of the bed today, but I think the differences are very large between what was done in each case, and I think the human cost of what’s going on with Hastert isn’t funny either.]

The solution to racial disparities in minor arrests

The New Neo Posted on by

This article on Minneapolis indicates how powerfully the idea of disparate impact has taken over debate about possible racism in policing.

Flawed science is used to prove racism, according to John Hinderaker at Powerline:

But one thing may already have jumped out at you: while the ACLU report goes on and on about “people of color” being victimized by the police, not all people of color are, apparently, created equal. Note that the disparity between population and arrests is greater for Asians than for African-Americans and Indians, only in the opposite direction. Asians account for 6% of the population of Minneapolis, but only 1% of the low-level arrests.

Why might that be? Astonishingly, neither the ACLU report nor the Star Tribune story on it ever mentions the Asian “disparity,” even though the ACLU casually assumes that “[t]he numbers show a startling disparity in the way police enforce low-level offenses.” Would the ACLU have us believe that the Minneapolis police are conspiring to cover up low-level crimes by Asians? Presumably not: it is obvious that Asians are “under-represented” among such arrests because they rarely commit such crimes.

But if that is true, the whole racism hypothesis falls apart…

Well, not necessarily, because there can be selective racism: negative for blacks, positive for Asians. You can do a lot to rationalize the statistics you have to fit your theory, if you so desire.

Hinderaker goes on to explain how the best example the study offers to show that the differences in minor traffic arrests between African American and others is actually due to racism is somewhat suspect. It’s based on a chart that indicates a large disparity between arrests of blacks and others for the months of June, July, and August in Minneapolis. The ACLU says the chart shows a much greater disparity during daylight hours, when the race of the driver can be more easily ascertained, and that this fact points strongly to racism as being the reason.

It’s a very interesting chart:

racialdrivingchart

You can clearly see a big difference during the mid-afternoon to 6 PM between the races in terms of these arrests. By why do the numbers fall back down in the early hours of evening, starting at 6 PM? It’s just as easy to distinguish black drivers from white during those later hours (in summertime) as it is in midday, and there’s usually a lot of traffic at that time. The same for the hours of 6-8 AM, when the falloff is even greater. So what’s going on?

As Hinderaker points out, it’s hard to see racism as the cause here. Does racism increase enormously in the afternoon as opposed to morning or early evening, with the same visibility conditions?

Perhaps there’s something about white drivers that changes in the afternoons. Perhaps the afternoons are when most of the young white men are otherwise occupied, and the driving field for whites is left to the suburban housewife, who tends to drive a lot more cautiously? Or perhaps it’s something about where police tend to patrol in the mid-afternoon as opposed to rush hours?

The ACLU’s suggestion for the remedy for all of this racism is the one that has worked so well in Baltimore: less policing.

Reminds me of Obama’s plan to reduce the racial disparity of students disciplined in the public school system.

[NOTE: I haven’t had a chance to read the actual ACLU report, but I skimmed the data there on the times of traffic stops and racial disparities and found no extra details that would give me an idea of what’s really going on with these numbers. I will try to take more time later to look at it.]

What law did Hastert violate?

The New Neo Posted on by

When I first heard about the charges against Dennis Hastert, I was puzzled. There’s a law against withdrawing your own money from the bank in cash and not reporting the transaction? How many people have ever heard of such a thing? Not me.

There have been times in my life when for various reasons I’ve wanted a lot of cash on hand. Now granted, it was never anything like $10,000, the minimum sum of money that had to be reported. But I could imagine plenty of innocuous reasons a person might do that, and would most people have a clue it needed to be reported? I don’t think so, unless the bank told them, and from what I’ve read of this case it’s not clear whether banks routinely inform people attempting to make such transactions of the reporting law.

In addition, I’d never heard of someone getting into trouble for being the victim of a blackmailer and trying to pay the blackmailer off. Apparently, Hastert didn’t follow the proper victim-of-a-blackmailer rules:

Hastert was confronted by someone in 2010 and allegedly agreed to pay money to keep something quiet…Hastert allegedly began making $50,000 cash payments to Individual A…Hastert’s first problem is that federal law mandates cash transactions exceeding $10,000 be reported using a Currency Transaction Report. The reason for this is pretty obvious: It is meant to allow criminal activity to be traced. It is also illegal to break up large transactions into smaller ones to avoid the reporting requirement. That’s known as “structuring.”

From June 2010 to April 2012, Hastert withdrew $50,000 sums from several banks at which he had accounts and gave the money to Individual A every few weeks. Those transactions weren’t reported.

When a bank asked about the transactions, he allegedly reduced the withdrawal amounts to under $10,000 to avoid reporting rules. After a bank asked about the large sums he was withdrawing, Hastert started pulling out money in smaller increments ”” in other words, allegedly structuring the payments.

The FBI started investigating Hastert’s transactions. It’s not clear what prompted the investigation, but the implication is that the bureau was given a heads-up by one of Hastert’s banks.

That’s when Hastert lied to the FBI, saying he was withdrawing cash because he didn’t trust the banks when in fact it is alleged he was doing it to coverup the payments.

As one of the commenters at the WaPo article points out, the law was passed to prevent large drug dealers from laundering money. Has it ever before been used to punish the victim of a blackmailing? And is lying to the FBI about a failure to report your own otherwise-legal financial transaction (the bank withdrawals) a crime, as well, or do you have to be lying about a crime itself?

Rumors are that the blackmail may have been about alleged sexual abuse of a male victim (student?) many years ago during Hastert’s high school wrestling coach days. That’s interesting, as well, if true, because it could involve a mere threat of accusation and fear of ensuing investigation and scandal, or it could involve a truthful accusation of molesting. We don’t know, and the payoff of the money doesn’t tell us, either, although it certainly indicates fear.

Ironic that one of the things that brought about Hastert’s downfall as Speaker was his inadequate and belated response to the revelations that Rep. Mark Foley had been sexually inappropriate with a male congressional page.

Last question: would this all be happening now if Hastert had been a Democrat and Obama supporter?

[ADDENDUM: Much more here.]

Democrats: hey, let’s give illegal immigrants the vote

The New Neo Posted on by

A majority are in favor of doing just that:

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that one-out-of-three Likely U.S. Voters (35%) now believes that illegal immigrants should be allowed to vote if they can prove they live in this country and pay taxes. Sixty percent (60%) disagree, while five percent (5%) are undecided. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Fifty-three percent (53%) of Democrats think tax-paying illegal immigrants should have the right to vote.

This represents both a fundamental misunderstanding of the basis for voting and/or a fundamental desire to jettison those principles in favor of either compassion for illegal immigrants, desire to swell the ranks of Democratic voters, or both.

None of that is any mystery, really. The mystery is here:

Twenty-one percent (21%) of Republicans and 30% of voters not affiliated with either major political party agree.

That’s one in five Republicans. Who are these people, and what could they possibly be thinking? Or are they thinking at all?

Additional information on the poll is available only to Platinum members at Rasmussen. If any of you have access to those numbers, please let me know something about who those Republicans are if you can find out: gender, race, religion, age, any other characteristics that can help explain it? Are they those compassionate conservatives we kept hearing so much about a while back?