Wednesday, January 08, 2014

Speed Blogging, 1/8/14. Three Posts: Governor Christie, Internet Harassment and Income Inequality


1.  This story is pretty shocking if true:

Private messages between Governor’s Christie’s deputy chief of staff and two of his top executives at the Port Authority reveal a vindictive effort to create “traffic problems in Fort Lee” by shutting lanes to the George Washington Bridge and apparent pleasure at the resulting gridlock.
....

In one exchange of text messages on the second day of the lane closures, Wildstein alludes to messages the Fort Lee mayor had left complaining that school buses were having trouble getting through the traffic.
“Is it wrong that I’m smiling,” the recipient of the text message responded to Wildstein. The person’s identity is not clear because the documents are partially redacted for unknown reasons.
“No,” Wildstein wrote in response.
“I feel badly about the kids,” the person replied to Wildstein. “I guess.”
“They are the children of Buono voters,” Wildstein wrote, making a reference to Barbara Buono, the Democratic candidate for governor, who lost to Christie in a landslide in November.
- See more at: http://www.northjersey.com/news/christie_kelly_bridge_lane_closures_emails.html#sthash.cm95yRd6.dpuf

Private messages between Governor’s Christie’s deputy chief of staff and two of his top executives at the Port Authority reveal a vindictive effort to create “traffic problems in Fort Lee” by shutting lanes to the George Washington Bridge and apparent pleasure at the resulting gridlock. - See more at: http://www.northjersey.com/news/christie_kelly_bridge_lane_closures_emails.html#sthash.cm95yRd6.dpuf
 In one exchange of text messages on the second day of the lane closures, Wildstein alludes to messages the Fort Lee mayor had left complaining that school buses were having trouble getting through the traffic.
“Is it wrong that I’m smiling,” the recipient of the text message responded to Wildstein. The person’s identity is not clear because the documents are partially redacted for unknown reasons.
“No,” Wildstein wrote in response.
“I feel badly about the kids,” the person replied to Wildstein. “I guess.”
“They are the children of Buono voters,” Wildstein wrote, making a reference to Barbara Buono, the Democratic candidate for governor, who lost to Christie in a landslide in November.
Doesn't sound very mature to me.

2.  Amanda Hess has written an article about the  hatred and threats that women who write on certain topics  face on the net.  She also covers the problems of law enforcement in the new field of Internet threats.  The police passes the puck to the administrators of social media etc. and those administrators pass the puck right back to the police.  Though this may be slowly changing.

For an example (not safe for work) of what goes on, have a look at some messages comedian Natasha Leggero received in response to a denture joke she made about WWII veterans. 

And this piece, by Conor Friedersdorf, explains that the harassment women face on the net indeed is different from the general Internet trolling that anybody might face, both in quantity and in quality. That quality difference is because of the added misogyny.

3.  Paul Krugman writes about the history of the war on poverty.  He suggests that the American political right is living in the past in how it understands the causes of the current poverty:

The trouble is that the American right is still living in the 1970s, or actually a Reaganite fantasy of the 1970s; its notion of an anti-poverty agenda is still all about getting those layabouts to go to work and stop living off welfare. The reality that lower-end jobs, even if you can get one, don’t pay enough to lift you out of poverty just hasn’t sunk in. And the idea of helping the poor by actually helping them remains anathema.

I read that right after learning what Kathleen Parker thinks about this all, in a column which is, funnily enough, about distorting political speech.  She writes:

This may be one of the most brilliant turns of phrase yet. Not one single American, gun to head (figuratively speaking), would say, “I’m for inequality” or “inequality is good.” But is inequality what we’re really talking about?
When you step back and examine the concept closely, what becomes clear is that roughly 99.9 percent of Americans — perhaps even North Korea’s favorite son Dennis Rodman — actually like income inequality. This is because we value merit, talent and hard work, and all people aspire to be commensurately rewarded. What, after all, is the opposite of income inequality? Income equality.
Pretty nifty, don't you think?  Parker makes at least two giant leaps in that quote. 

First, she ignores the fact that we don't just have two discrete qualitative terms: income equality and income inequality. The amount of income inequality in a country can vary greatly, and although most people might prefer to have some income inequality (based on one survey Americans like the Swedish levels), it doesn't follow that any amount of income inequality (say, one person owning everything in the country) is something 99.9% of Americans would support over income equality.

Second, she simply assumes that those who have more income or wealth are commensurately rewarded, because they have more merit, talent or because they work harder. 

That rules out all the less salutary reasons why some people have a lot of money, and it also assumes that those who are poor don't work hard, don't have merit and don't have talent.  In reality the relationship between all sorts of wonderful individual characteristics and financial outcomes is mediated by several different variables, including good or bad luck, inheritance, illness, lack of opportunities in education and so on.




 






Private messages between Governor’s Christie’s deputy chief of staff and two of his top executives at the Port Authority reveal a vindictive effort to create “traffic problems in Fort Lee” by shutting lanes to the George Washington Bridge and apparent pleasure at the resulting gridlock. - See more at: http://www.northjersey.com/news/christie_kelly_bridge_lane_closures_emails.html#sthash.cm95yRd6.dpuf
Private messages between Governor’s Christie’s deputy chief of staff and two of his top executives at the Port Authority reveal a vindictive effort to create “traffic problems in Fort Lee” by shutting lanes to the George Washington Bridge and apparent pleasure at the resulting gridlock. - See more at: http://www.northjersey.com/news/christie_kelly_bridge_lane_closures_emails.html#sthash.cm95yRd6.dpuf
Private messages between Governor’s Christie’s deputy chief of staff and two of his top executives at the Port Authority reveal a vindictive effort to create “traffic problems in Fort Lee” by shutting lanes to the George Washington Bridge and apparent pleasure at the resulting gridlock. - See more at: http://www.northjersey.com/news/christie_kelly_bridge_lane_closures_emails.html#sthash.cm95yRd6.dpuf
Private messages between Governor’s Christie’s deputy chief of staff and two of his top executives at the Port Authority reveal a vindictive effort to create “traffic problems in Fort Lee” by shutting lanes to the George Washington Bridge and apparent pleasure at the resulting gridlock. - See more at: http://www.northjersey.com/news/christie_kelly_bridge_lane_closures_emails.html#sthash.cm95yRd6.dpuf
Private messages between Governor’s Christie’s deputy chief of staff and two of his top executives at the Port Authority reveal a vindictive effort to create “traffic problems in Fort Lee” by shutting lanes to the George Washington Bridge and apparent pleasure at the resulting gridlock. - See more at: http://www.northjersey.com/news/christie_kelly_bridge_lane_closures_emails.html#sthash.cm95yRd6.dpuf
Private messages between Governor’s Christie’s deputy chief of staff and two of his top executives at the Port Authority reveal a vindictive effort to create “traffic problems in Fort Lee” by shutting lanes to the George Washington Bridge and apparent pleasure at the resulting gridlock. - See more at: http://www.northjersey.com/news/christie_kelly_bridge_lane_closures_emails.html#sthash.cm95yRd6.dpuf
Private messages between Governor’s Christie’s deputy chief of staff and two of his top executives at the Port Authority reveal a vindictive effort to create “traffic problems in Fort Lee” by shutting lanes to the George Washington Bridge and apparent pleasure at the resulting gridlock. - See more at: http://www.northjersey.com/news/christie_kelly_bridge_lane_closures_emails.html#sthash.cm95yRd6.dpuf
Private messages between Governor’s Christie’s deputy chief of staff and two of his top executives at the Port Authority reveal a vindictive effort to create “traffic problems in Fort Lee” by shutting lanes to the George Washington Bridge and apparent pleasure at the resulting gridlock. - See more at: http://www.northjersey.com/news/christie_kelly_bridge_lane_closures_emails.html#sthash.cm95yRd6.dpuf
Private messages between Governor’s Christie’s deputy chief of staff and two of his top executives at the Port Authority reveal a vindictive effort to create “traffic problems in Fort Lee” by shutting lanes to the George Washington Bridge and apparent pleasure at the resulting gridlock. - See more at: http://www.northjersey.com/news/christie_kelly_bridge_lane_closures_emails.html#sthash.cm95yRd6.dpuf
Private messages between Governor’s Christie’s deputy chief of staff and two of his top executives at the Port Authority reveal a vindictive effort to create “traffic problems in Fort Lee” by shutting lanes to the George Washington Bridge and apparent pleasure at the resulting gridlock. - See more at: http://www.northjersey.com/news/christie_kelly_bridge_lane_closures_emails.html#sthash.cm95yRd6.dpuf
Private messages between Governor’s Christie’s deputy chief of staff and two of his top executives at the Port Authority reveal a vindictive effort to create “traffic problems in Fort Lee” by shutting lanes to the George Washington Bridge and apparent pleasure at the resulting gridlock. - See more at: http://www.northjersey.com/news/christie_kelly_bridge_lane_closures_emails.html#sthash.cm95yRd6.dpuf