Etiquette



DP Etiquette

First rule: Don't be a jackass.

Other rules: Do not attack or insult people you disagree with. Engage with facts, logic and beliefs. Out of respect for others, please provide some sources for the facts and truths you rely on if you are asked for that. If emotion is getting out of hand, get it back in hand. To limit dehumanizing people, don't call people or whole groups of people disrespectful names, e.g., stupid, dumb or liar. Insulting people is counterproductive to rational discussion. Insult makes people angry and defensive. All points of view are welcome, right, center, left and elsewhere. Just disagree, but don't be belligerent or reject inconvenient facts, truths or defensible reasoning.

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Politicians lie

Feb. 13, 2015: David Harsanyi, an intelligent and articulate senior editor at The Federalist, commented in a National Review Online (NRO) article[1] about lies that politicians, President Obama's lies in particular, tell the public to achieve their goals. The asserted purpose is to allow or coax the public to arrive at beliefs that the speaker believes are desired or necessary. Whether one believes that or not will vary from speaker to speaker, comment to comment, and listener to listener. Regardless, these comments merit everyone's consideration because they are so rare and candid. They are acutely revealing about how the two-party system thinks and operates with regard to the public.

In his NRO article Mr. Harsanyi says this:
"Politicians break their promises and modify their positions all the time, of course. They BS us about their opinions and carefully craft identities that are palatable to the average voter. When a person enters this political universe, we need to accept that most of the things we hear are, at best, poetic truths."

Two obvious conclusions are direct and simple: Absent personal knowledge to the contrary, there is no reason to trust or believe anything any politician in the two-party system says about anything. They could be speaking truth, lies[2] or some unknown mix of the two.

Although the quoted comments are aimed at a conservative audience as a prelude to a partisan attack on President Obama, the comments are astounding for their candor regarding two-party politics in general. As written, those comments apply to liberals, conservatives and all other players in politics, politicians, pundits, partisans and lobbyists alike. From the context of the full article, the quoted comments are not limited to the President or the democratic party or politicians. Those comments apply to two-party politics as usual. This takes nothing out of context or puts any words into Mr. Harsanyi's mouth. But, of course, everyone can and should decide that on their own.

Maybe this insider rhetoric reflects a reason that, continuing a long-term trend, voters register as independents (43%), more often than democrats (30%) or republicans (26%). That trend arguably reflects distrust and/or disagreement with both parties and/or their way of doing business. That interpretation is not inconsistent with comments such as these from another, more prominent insider, former CIA director and former Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta: "Members of Congress rarely legislate; they basically follow the money. . . . They're spending more and more time dialing for dollars. . . . It's all about winning, it's not about governing anymore."

Footnotes:
1.    National Review Online is a hard core right wing website of considerable influence. Its ideological content rarely wavers. According to a conservative source, NRO ranks among the top 20 conservative websites and 4,461 in Alexa ratings as of Q2 2014. Although there may be differences, the ideology of the Federalist seems to largely overlap NRO ideology.
2.    Lies in this context is a misleading and/or incomplete term. Spin, as defined previously, is an expansive but more accurate term.

Sunday, February 22, 2015

The high cost of spin in politics

American freedoms include the freedom of speech. The U.S. constitution protects it with a broad, strong shield. With only some exceptions, for example, inciting violence, making false statements and child pornography, Americans can say just about anything about anyone or anything with no fear of legal retribution or lawsuit. That is a real freedom. Despite the constitutional shield's power, a debate is quietly going on about whether to broaden it further.

One of the two sides, hard core pro-free speech Libertarian ideologues, argue for reducing or eliminating at least some existing limits, especially when it comes to spending money in politics as a form of free speech. The other side, maybe less ideologically driven, argues that some limits are needed for civil society. Their proposals are modeled, more or less, on speech laws in some European countries.

Since 2010, the pro-speech side has been winning significant cases in the Supreme Court. Congress, being hopelessly divided and gridlocked, is mostly irrelevant. The court cases expand free speech by nullifying anti-corruption or campaign finance laws on free speech grounds. This is fundamentally shifts power in political debate from average individuals (and candidates to some extent) to entities and individuals willing and able to use wealth for political speech, much of which contains deceptive content. In the process, laws intended to limit political corruption from special interest money were overturned as unconstitutional limits on free speech. The roots of such anti-corruption laws go back a century. Modern successor laws, the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 and counterpart state laws, are being successfully struck down on free speech-based constitutional grounds.

Free speech: What is the cost-benefit?
Given the shifting legal landscape, it is reasonable to raise the question about cost-benefit of free speech in politics, including spin.[1] Spin is a subset of protected free speech and in Dissident Politics (DP) opinion, it dominates political discourse. DP's starting assumption is that the costs of spin to the public interest outweigh its benefits. The assumption is based on the beliefs that (i) political policy debates and choices will be better in the long run when spin is not used to convince citizens to choose among competing options and (ii) debate winners should win on the merits, not on the spin because that is the American way, or, the way it should be. However, parts or all of the two-party system (TPS)[2] may not share that opinion.

Maybe some or most TPS participants and supporters would argue that political debate should be dominated by spin because if the public relies on unspun fact and unbiased logic, (i) the public interest is not well-served and (ii) our elected political leaders are elected to get what they want and whatever they want does in fact best serve the public interest.[3] Examples of political spin include its probable use to get American public opinion behind World War II, the Vietnam War and the Iraq War. Some would argue that all of those wars were preceded by clever spin on the public to rally public support. Roosevelt bluntly admitted he misled congress and the public to get America into WWII and that it was for their own good.

Assuming allegations of pro-war spin are true, did that spin benefit or harm the public interest? Maybe there was net benefit. Maybe not. Maybe it was necessary. Maybe not, but if not, think hard and carefully if that is really true. In the case of WWII, wasn't it inevitable that the U.S. would be drawn in sooner or later? If later, would that have made a noticeable difference in the outcome? Maybe. Maybe not. No one can know. What is the public interest net balance from a possibly earlier entry into WWII via lying vs. damage to public trust from political lies?

Regardless, if some or most politicians and/or partisans think that spin confers a net benefit on the public, then they owe it to the American people to tell them that their rhetoric is spin intended to deceive us for our own good. In that case, we all might as well stop voting, walk away from politics and let the TPS do whatever it wants because it will be good for us. That's not a very appetizing choice, is it?

Another cost of spin in politics includes loss of public trust in federal governing institutions. That makes governing harder and less efficient. TPS rhetoric has sunk to the point that even some politicians and other prominent TPS players openly voice unwarranted disrespect or false accusations for politicians in the opposing party. That reflects disrespect for their own system and American voters who put the opposition in office. No wonder public trust in government is low. It should be. Even the TPS doesn't trust itself.

The bottom line
If one steps outside the TPS's rhetoric and looks objectively, the costs of political spin are far higher than either side is willing to admit.[4] The costs arguably include trillions of wasted tax dollars, tens of thousands of needlessly lost lives, long-term erosion or stagnation of the American standard of living and a drag on annual GDP growth, maybe 0.5% - 0.7%.[5] Despite the costs and lack of convincing rationale for using it, both parties, their politicians, partisans and the remaining parts of the TPS ruthlessly and relentlessly spin the public with little or no regard for damage to the public interest. If nothing else, incessant reliance on spin over merit and honest debate reflects the complete intellectual bankruptcy of the TPS, the ideologies it is based on and the participants who keep the Leviathan alive and well.

Footnotes:
1.    As explained before, DP defines spin as lies, deception, misinformation, withholding, distorting or denying inconvenient facts or arguments, unwarranted character or motive assassination, and, conscious or not, use of fact or logic that is distorted by ideology and/or self-interest. Distortion of reality and logic by ideology, self-interest or both, is common and has been rigorously documented by years of research. DP accepts that research as basically accurate and valid, although it is still ongoing and incomplete. Future research may refine our understanding, but is very unlikely to negate existing research findings that ideology and self-interest have great power to subconsciously distort fact and therefore logic, i.e., garbage in, garbage out.
2.    DP defines the two-party system as the democratic and republican parties, their politicians, their ideologically aligned or affiliated pundits and think tanks, major campaign or other political cause or PAC contributors, lobbyists working for those contributors and partisan media. Although the lines are not sharp and content is not always obviously biased or flawed, the partisan media includes outlets such as Fox News, MSNBC, the editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and New York Times and websites such as Huffington Post, The Blaze and National Review Online. The TPS does not include average Americans, roughly defined as people who engage in typical levels of political participation, non-voters or minor campaign contributors. The partisan media does not include outlets that, although maybe ideologically biased to some degree, rely on mostly on unspun reality or facts and logic not unduly flawed by ideological bias or self-interest. Non-partisan media includes the Economist magazine, the news pages of the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Los Angeles Times, CNN, The Week, factcheck.org, politifact.com and flackcheck.org (a FactCheck-Annenberg Foundation joint project). Politifact.com has been accused of being a conservative spin or shill operation set up by the conservative Tampa Bay Times newspaper. If that is true, DP has been fooled because Politifact appears to be even-handed and grounded in unspun reality in criticizing both the left and right. But, as one observer has pointed out, even fact checkers make mistakes, presumably including mistakes that arise at least in part from the subconscious power of fact checker's ideology to screw things up. Human error arises because the mind human is not a perfect cognition machine. Although most partisans 'know' they are solidly grounded in reality and that their opposition is delusional at best and insane at worst. Many or most hard core partisan ideologues use that false argument as their rationale to dismiss facts and logic they dislike or cannot rationalize away. This all boils down to a fight over core values, but that topic is for another post.
3.    There is some evidence that at least some politicians are willing to leave what would appear to be crucial aspects of governing to political leaders and quiet, powerful players in the TPS. For example, some politicians don't bother to read legislation they vote on, preferring to leave that to their party's leaders, lobbyists or whoever it is that does those unpleasant legislating things.
4.    Other costs of political spin include fostering (i) distrust between the left and right by appeal to emotion, primarily fear, anger and hate, instead of neutral argument over unbiased fact and reason and (ii) reluctance or refusal of partisans or ideologues to accept unspun facts that undermine their ideology or self-interest. Rejection of fact is bipartisan. It cripples effective governance. It is usually easy to know whether the politics of a partisan is liberal or conservative simply by asking a few questions they are reluctant or refuse to answer. The reluctance stems from answers that are uncomfortable for ideological reasons. For example, pro-abortion liberals tend to avoid answering the question 'Is a 20-week old unborn child a human being?', while anti-abortion conservatives generally have no discomfort answering the question because the answer does not undermine their anti-abortion ideology or belief. For ideologues, reality (facts) is often hard to reconcile with their ideology and many often do not face it honestly and instead, subconscious or not, deny or distort uncomfortable reality to make it palatable. Politics based on that kind of flawed perception and thinking is second rate and wasteful at best. Ideological politics doesn't serve the public interest nearly as well as facing reality despite the psychological discomforts. The most obvious conclusion is that ideology is bad for politics and the public interest. This boils down to a fight over core values, which is a topic is for another post.
5.    Obviously DP cannot prove the costs, because no one has done a serious, fact-based, unbiased assessment. On the other hand, no one can disprove them either for the same reason.

Tuesday, February 17, 2015

Federal debt; military bases

Federal debt
Feb. 3, 2015: The Wall Street Journal reported that a White House analysis projects that interest payments on the national debt, about $210 billion for 2015, will increase to about $600 billion by 2021 and about $790 billion by 2025. The 2021 amount is roughly equal to projected defense and nondefense discretionary spending for that year. The projections suggest that the competition between debt service obligations, defense spending and discretionary spending will be fierce.

Under the circumstances, one might think that Congress and the President would instantly jump at any opportunity to increase revenues without raising taxes or passing major legislation. Unfortunately, if one though that, one would be wrong. Each year Congress knowingly allows hundreds of billions in tax revenues to go uncollected. IRS net tax gap (tax evasion) data for 2001 was $290 billion and $385 billion in 2006, an increase of $19 billion/year. At that rate of increase, the tax gap, Congress' annual gift to tax cheats, would be $537 billion for 2014. To collect most of that, all Congress would need to do is to increase the IRS's budget for tax law enforcement. Instead of enforcing existing law, Congress intentionally limits the IRS enforcement budget, thereby allowing tax cheats to steal hundreds of billions each year from honest U.S. taxpayers. This bipartisan game has been going on for years. Not surprisingly, the situation undermines public trust in the tax system and in the rule of law. Obviously, some of the spending that the lost tax revenue could have paid for is financed by debt.

A reasonable conclusion is that Congress annually permits hundreds of billions of theft from taxpayers and resulting added debt because it reflects Congressional incompetence and/or it serves the interests of people in Congress, e.g., pandering for re-election, corrupt payback to campaign contributors or whatever else the case may be.

Military installations
Feb. 7, 2015: The New York Times reported that Pentagon officials have asked Congress for permission to inventory all military installations with the goal of shedding unneeded installations and saving billions in operation costs each year. The Pentagon has about 562,000 facilities worldwide and they cover about 24.7 million acres. That is about the size of Virginia. Congress blocks attempts to allow the DoD to do the inventory. The NYT article implies that Congress prevents an inventory because doing that could be the first step leading to base closings in affected Congressional voting districts.

A reasonable conclusion is, as the NYT implies, that Congress annually defends billions in Pentagon waste because it reflects their incompetence and/or it serves their interests, e.g., pandering for re-election, corrupt payback to campaign contributors or whatever else the case may be.

Monday, February 16, 2015

Political rhetoric is empty debate: Spin defined

The definition of spin
Maybe the best way to categorize political speech that isn't 'honest' is to call it spin. Assuming it is ever defined at all, spin can be and is defined as partisans need it to be defined to validate their goals and policy choices. That is just common sense. The DP definition of spin focuses on what spin means to the public interest, not to any special interest such as the democratic or republican parties or their politicians. From that point of view (POV) spin can be defined like this.

Spin in politics: Spin is speech that consciously or not, is based on or includes one or more of (i) lies, (ii) deceit, (iii) misinformation, (iv) withholding, distorting or denying inconvenient facts or arguments, (v) unwarranted character or motive assassination, and, (vi) conscious or not, the use of fact or logic that is distorted by ideology, self-interest and or another innate cognitive bias.

Two points about that definition need to be clear. First, from the public interest POV, spin includes distortion of fact or logic that ideology or self-interest typically generates, which usually is subconscious. That means that even completely subconscious fact or logic distortions are spin. Although that might seem a bit unfair, the definition only looks at the public interest, not human nature or biology. Second, the definition of spin is broad because the goal of spin, to win policy or ideological arguments, influence or power is broad. Any rhetorical or other tactic, honest or dishonest, civilized or vicious, can and will be employed if the advocate thinks it will help more than hurt.

Why empty debate dominates political speech
Dissident Politics ("DP") posits that most, maybe 95%, of the content of political speech or rhetoric is "empty debate" that is probably about as detrimental to the public interest as it is helpful. Most political debate between opposing sides or points of view in the U.S. amounts to partisans attacking each other while talking past each other on points of substance. There is usually only a limited understanding or recognition of what each opponent is really saying to the other. As with most complicated things in human society, there can be more than one reason for such empty debate.

One reason is distrust and animosity between the two sides. Although the two parties apparently have stopped doing this, in 2013 at least, colloquies between House leadership members made the depth and scope of bipartisan distrust and animosity crystal clear (the fight begins at about 2:30 of the 44-minute C-Span broadcast). In their dialog, Cantor and Hoyer are talking right past each other. The mutual hate and distrust is obvious. So is the futility of the colloquy, which delivers to the public nothing more than an exercise in partisan posturing. One can presume that the one or both of the parties decided to discontinue engaging in House colloquies like this because the fight makes both sides look intransigent and petty.

Another major factor that adds to the emptiness and deception in two-party political debate is leaving key terms undefined. As discussed before, the human mind subconsciously fills in gaps in knowledge such as definitions. The gaps typically get filled with meanings the mind tends to want to use. even though that can and does lead to errors and misunderstandings, that is just how the human brain works. The process is usually subconscious and it presents a very effective tool for people who want to get a message across. It takes conscious effort and time to be aware of such innate but subconscious activity. It takes even more effort to blunt the impacts of how the human mind can inaccurately perceive facts and process information, leading to flawed conclusions.

Another reason for the dominance of empty debate flows from the adversarial nature of political discourse. In political advocacy, one side argues for policy choices or laws it wants. The advocacy almost always goes on without much regard for opposing arguments or facts that undermine the advocate's argument or logic. In other words, the content is one-sided spin, which is almost always unfair, misleading, grounded in false reality or flawed logic, or some combination of those things. The possibility that adverse impacts to the public interest could flow from one-sided dishonesty rarely or never enters the partisans' mind. The one-sidedness of what advocates tell the public is simply irrelevant to a mind set where all is fair in love and war. Since politics is war, all is fair.

A related factor that feeds the one-sidedness of partisan political speech flows from the the free speech clause of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which reads: Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech. In the U.S., the scope of protected free speech is broad and the only limits are prohibitions on threats directed to a person or group, child pornography and a few other categories of speech. False statements of fact, which includes libel and slander, are theoretically not protected free speech and are subject to criminal or civil penalty. However, the courts are unsure of how to deal with this and prosecutions are rare and often hard to prove in the realm of politics. The current supreme court trend is on the side of expanding the nature and scope of protected speech in politics. And, since liability for false statements can be significantly limited by simply expressing statements as opinions (honest mistakes) instead of facts, political partisans are largely free to at least deceive and misinform the public, if not outright lie.[1]

Like it or not, that is the sad reality of political speech, not an unsupported opinion. Again, politics is war and all tactics are fair, regardless of adverse impacts on the public interest. The battle is between and among special interests. The public interest is mainly an innocent bystander taking lots of collateral damage hits with a few benefits. Meanwhile the raging elephants fight each other. Partisans on each side would usually agree that this perception of reality applies only to the opposing side. DP takes that as solid evidence that it applies to both sides. In other words, both sides are basically correct when they accuse their opposition of spinning or harming the public interest.

When the scope of free speech is coupled with bipartisan animosity and distrust and the power of ideology and self-interest to distort both reality and logic, reasons to see political speech as mostly empty become easy to see. All of those factors feed into the one-sided nature of political speech and that makes the speech, from the public interest POV, mostly or completely empty and usually more harmful than beneficial.

Unfortunately, spin dominates partisan political debate or argument. Partisans on both sides use it constantly and ruthlessly. Spin can be very hard to spot and one-sides arguments seem more persuasive when no counter arguments are present. That is just one reason why political speech is nearly always one-sided and inaccurate to a significant degree. And, when a person believes strongly in an ideology, that amounts to a powerful but usually subconscious biological force that distorts fact and logic. When that fact, not opinion, is added to the freedom of spin, it is easy to see why political speech is mostly empty and deceptive.

Conclusion
All of the foregoing paints a rather negative, even depressing picture of politics and the content and purpose of political speech or rhetoric. The purpose is to win special interest favors, ideological arguments, power and/or money, not to inform and enlighten voters. Can it really be that bad? DP thinks so. If there are qualms about this dark vision of politics consider the following. While still in the U.S. Senate and remarking on ethics and money in politics, Chuck Hagel put it this way: "There's no shame anymore. . . . We've blown past the ethical standards; we now play on the edge of the legal standards. . . . . "money and its pursuit [have] paralyzed Washington. . . . Nothing truly important for the country [is] getting done."

If that bare knuckles attitude applies to political belief about money in politics, why wouldn't the same attitude apply to everything else, including the content of free political speech as viewed from the public interest POV?[2] There are good reasons and logic to support the argument that political free speech is far more empty than meaningful. Of course, that all depends on how one defines things and sees reality, doesn't it?

Footnotes:
1. Most partisans are intelligent and fully aware of how to lie, misinform or deceive without running afoul of any laws that punish false statements. Politicians and advocates know exactly where the line is and even cross the line with impunity. Given the court's ideological reluctance to punish political speech of any kind, the risks of expressing lies or misinformation as opinions is nil. It is relevant that many or most democrats believe that republicans or the republican party lie much of the time and the lies involve most topics in politics. Many or most republicans believe the same about democrats or the democratic party. Unbiased fact checking from multiple sources points to partisans often taking liberty with the truth, if not outright lying. Although some must exist, DP is not aware of a single lawsuit and liability arising from any allegedly false statement made by any partisan or candidate for President, Senate or the House in any election since the founding of the Republic.

2. As viewed from a special interest advocate's point of view, spin is better than wonderful. Spin is a powerful tool to get what the advocate wants. Probably the most powerful tool. The importance of always keeping in mind the distinction between the goals of serving the public interest vs. serving special interests cannot be understated.