Category Archives: Economics

Business, Economics, Health, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

Fixing ObamaCare

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Ted Cruz may have found a way.

I think we have to face the fact that, thanks to “progressives,” first with the 17th amendment, then ending the need for actual filibusters, and more recently the eviscerating of the filibuster for lower courts, the Senate has lost its original role of being (supposedly in George Washington’s words) the saucer into which the hot tea of the House was poured to cool. It’s a shame, because the Republicans are likely to pick up a number of Senate seats in 2018, due to the disparity between the two parties in how many are up for re-election.

Business, Economics, Law, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

The EPA Climate Regulations

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How Scott Pruitt could gut them:

s Pruitt and President Trump look to unwind Obama’s major climate policies, the endangerment finding might be imperiled.

“You know what’s interesting about the situation with CO2, Joe, is we’ve had a Supreme Court decision in 2007 and then the endangerment finding that you’re making reference to in 2009,” Pruitt told CNBC host Joe Kernan, referring to the Supreme Court’s Massachusetts v. EPA decision — the court ruled that greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act and the EPA has to determine whether they should be regulated.

“Nowhere in the continuum, nowhere in the equation, has Congress spoken. The legislative branch has not addressed this issue at all,” Pruitt said.

“The decision in 2007 was not that the EPA had to regulate. The decision in 2007 was they needed to make a decision.”

And what was decided can be undecided. Live by the pen and the phone, die by the pen and the phone. Though I’d like to see Massachusetts v. EPA reversed as well, given that we now know, since the release of the emails from CRU, that it was based on junk science. The notion that plant food as a trace gas is a “pollutant” is nonsensical.

[Update a few minutes later]

Speaking of Massachusetts, it could get up to two feet of snow tomorrow, a week before the vernal equinox. Because, you know, the earth is overheating.

[Update early afternoon]

Yes, Scott Pruitt is right on CO2. But he’s a religious heretic, so he must be condemned.

[Tuesday-morning update]

Let’s talk about Scott Pruitt’s “denial” of global warming.

Business, Economics, General Science, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Scott Pruitt On Climate

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I agree with Professor Curry that the media has distorted his statement beyond recognition (and I basically agree with his position, as does she). I also agree that this statement is nonsense:

The right’s refusal to accept the authority of climate science is of a piece with its rejection of mainstream media, academia, and government, the shared institutions and norms that bind us together and contain our political disputes.

The “authority of climate science.” Sorry, but “climate science” has no “authority” (no science does). It and its ignorant defenders have beclowned themselves.

[Update a few minutes later]

Related: A new paper says that only five out of thirty climate models can capture the Asia Pacific Oscillation. But sure, let’s use them as a basis to pauperize much of the world.

[Update a while later]

Oh, look, here’s some insanity from NBC News:

Pruitt’s view is at odds with 99.99 percent of climate scientists, according to peer-reviewed studies.

At least it’s precise, if not accurate.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

“Biggest Jobs Gains In Years”

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Yes, there is such a thing as an economic environment, and psychology. These are not “Obama’s jobs.”

When Obama came in, the Democrats had already had a jackboot on the neck of the economy since 2006 (including talking it down and things like Schumer helping start the bank runs), and when business (mainly small business) saw that Obama was going to be elected, they pulled in their horns to weather the storm that they hoped would last only four years. It turned out to be eight (though it was mitigated somewhat by the mid-term losses of the party of War On The Free-Market Economy). Despite Paul Krugman’s hilarious prediction, for which he should rightly be mocked until the end of time, the post-election market rally was because she lost, and this boom is part of that relief, despite Trump’s own anti-market instincts.

[Noon update]

Related: It’s an older piece, but Democrats can’t win until they recognize how terrible Obama’s economic policies were.

In other words, they can’t win.

Business, Economics, Mathematics, Media Criticism, Philosophy, Political Commentary, Science And Society, Technology and Society

Science And Policy

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Words of wisdom from Daniel Sarewitz:

Whatever science you’re doing on a post-normal problem, it is always going to be incomplete, and it is always going to be subject to revision, and highly uncertain. It can be viewed from numerous scientific perspectives. So multiple scientific studies can come up with multiple results, so it leads to a profusion of truths that can be mobilized on behalf of different sets of values. Values and facts can pair up with each other in different ways.

One example I love is how everyone talks about how there’s a consensus on GMOs. Well there is consensus around a narrow part of the GMO issue, like there is a consensus around a narrow part of climate change. But the real problems have to do with the ‚what could be done?‘ questions. So for GMOs for example, when people say there is a consensus, what they mean is ‚we know they’re not a health risk‘. So I’ll accept it on health risk, I don’t have a problem with it. But then you say, ‚and we know that they’ll be an essential part of the economic future of Africa‘. Well, maybe that’s true — whose model are you using? What kind of data have you used to generate that? What are your assumptions? I mean anything dealing with projections of the future and claims about how the world is going to look, in a multi-variate, open system, are going to be subject to different people coming up with different claims and conclusions. And that’s exactly what happens.

And when you bring science into the political debate, you have to pick and choose which science you want to use. You have to match that with particular priorities about what policy problems you want to solve. I think science is really important, I think we want to be factual, I think we want to have a grip on reality and I think science can help us do that. But for problems where there are so many paths forward, so many competing values, the systems themselves are so complicated, I don’t think science is a privileged part of the solution.

…The post-normal science idea really does challenge the notion of science as a unitary thing that tells us what to do, PNS really says that we have to think of science in a different way in these contested contexts, and I don’t think most scientists want to go there. The deficit model puts them in charge: “we communicate the facts, you listen and take action.” So if the problem isn’t solved it’s not science’s problem. This is a self-serving superstition that the scientific community generally holds. And superstitions are hard to destabilize.

Over on Twitter, I’ve been having arguments with people about the proposed cut at the EPA, in which the budget for “protecting the climate,” is reduced to “only” $29M.

What in the hell does “protecting the climate” even mean?