Author: Joshua Hedlund

Electric cars continue to rise. I still see conservatives hating on them, and as I said a few months ago, I still think that hate is increasingly misplaced.

I still see conservatives hating on electric cars for the government subsidies being poured into them. As I said before, that’s a very good reason to hate on them; the arbitrary favor means we’ll never know what better innovations we might be forfeiting. But I was recently reminded of a similar subsidy for good ol’ oil-and-gas cars that doesn’t tend to generate as much outrage: ETHANOL.

The government’s terribly excessive ethanol subsidies and mandates arguably cause far more damage, and – in the classic spirit of overactive government programs contradicting themsleves – every subsidized electric car reduces the demand for subsidized ethanol. Since ethanol is just so terrible, I find that hard not to celebrate.

I still see conservatives hating on electric cars for the energy it takes to charge the batteries, but it still requires comparing the most energy-efficient oil-and-gas cars to the least energy-efficient electricity sources, which is still an increasingly losing argument.

But there’s one losing argument that might be officially lost. I used to see conservatives hating on electric cars for how poorly they were selling (here’s a random diatribe from April). This was a reasonable argument while the facts supported it; the government was spending a lot of money to stimulate demand for these things and the public still didn’t seem to really want it.

But we may be turning a corner. It appears that the public may really want these things after all.

Electric vehicles barely existed in 2010. Last year’s sales tripled from the year before, and this year’s is on pace to double to somewhere around 100,000. Range anxiety? What range anxiety? Remember the alleged chicken-and-egg problem of not enough demand for electric cars to sustain electric charging stations to sustain demand for electric cars? Well somewhere between the market and the subsidies that seems to be solving itself too:

If these trends continue, the old conservative mocking of such-and-such brand only selling so many hundred models in such-and-such quarter will increasingly look like petty tribal banter. It seems like every week now we hear about a new car manufacturer working on adding an electric vehicle to their lineup; apparently it’s not just Elon Musk that’s onto something with Tesla – which, by the way, is getting ready to release its electric SUV.

Does all this mean the government subsidies were worth it? Of course not. But I said it before and I’ll say it again: Conservatives need to stop arguing we should stop subsidizing electric cars because they’re so bad that they don’t do any good, and start arguing we should stop subsidizing electric cars because they’re getting so good that they don’t need the subsidies anyway. And while we’re at it, let’s cut the cord on ethanol. Although, if we don’t, I’m starting to think electric cars might just do it for us.

Ted Cruz stole the show at last weekend’s Value Voters Summit. His speech was littered with small-government rhetoric about the virtues of “freedom” and “liberty” and “free market values” and the “Constitution” and how Obama is destroying “this great nation” with all his “big government.”

I liked Cruz when I first heard about him. He seemed like he might be a smart, articulate libertarian-ish Republican defender of Constitutional principles and legitimate small government. But the more I heard from him, the more uneasy I became. He seemed too populist, too partisan, too eager to blame Obama for every possible problem in the world, but I haven’t put my finger on what really bothered me about him until now.

I’m sick of fake Republicans talking a big talk about how much they hate “big government” while only ever talking about a small part of it. I know, it’s nothing new, but it really bugs me when I hear it, especially from the Tea Party heroes who are supposed to be better than the establishment leaders.

Don’t talk to me about how much you hate Obamacare. Talk to me about how you want to get the federal government out of Medicare. Don’t talk to me about how much you hate food stamps. Talk to me about how you want to get the federal government out of farm subsidies. Don’t talk to me about gun control. Talk to me about how you want to get the federal government out of corrupt defense contracts and military bases and drone strikes and surveillance (to his credit, Cruz briefly mentioned the last two in the midst of his multiple “Obamacare” tirades).

Talk to me about how you want to get the federal government out of the War on Drugs, out of excessive disability benefits, out of ethanol subsidies and indefinite detention and militarized policing and patent extensions and anything the federal government does that gives even a little bit of help to farmers or seniors or veterans or CEOs or anybody else that looks just a little bit Republican.

Until then, don’t be shocked when leading progressives say things like, “This whole dispute is about the Republican Party fighting to make sure the working poor don’t have access to affordable health care.” You and I both know that’s an outrageous lie; if we really didn’t want the poor to access affordable health care we would support Obamacare full throttle because we think it’s terrible for the poor and everyone else! But until you start speaking out against the parts of Big Government that benefit you, don’t expect them to believe you.

I’ve always preferred to admit a general bias towards small government while allowing for reasonable arguments for various general regulations and interventions. I’ve always thought that was more humble and more likely to find truth than adamantly declaring all government as evil. But what’s far worse than really believing that is to say you believe it and then completely ignore all the parts of government that benefit you and your tribe. When you do that, it’s no wonder your poll numbers are hitting record lows.

The new Obamacare website, Healthcare.gov, officially opened on October 1, when it was immediately greeted by an onslaught on visitors that rendered the site unusable. Liberals trumpeted the millions of visitors as proof of Obamacare’s success (nevermind how many actually signed up or picked plans, as that was probably in the single digits). They attributed the early hiccups to the standard effects of really high traffic that would eventually be resolved.

But the Affordable Care Act site’s troubles run much deeper than just being coded too poorly to prevent empty drop-down menus or including too many javascript files on every page. My experience with the site so far indicates an embarrassingly rushed and incomplete product that I’m hesitant to trust with my personal information.

Only the government would decide to handle heavy traffic levels with a virtual waiting line! Though to be fair, an automatic queueing system is actually a fairly complex and impressive functionality for a website, and though I encountered it every time I visited it usually seemed to update to a log-in screen after a few minutes. But again, heavy traffic is the least of their problems.

Continue reading Yes, The Obamacare Website Really Is Really Bad

I stumbled on this on the Washington Post site the other day. It’s a supposedly “terrifying chart” that shows “we’re not growing enough food to feed the world”:

Crop yields have been rising for decades, but at their current paces (solid lines) they won’t be nearly enough to meet projected demand (dotted lines). Ergo, terrifying.

I don’t know, maybe I have too much faith in the power of markets and innovation and not enough faith in the “running out of food” movement that’s been wrong for at least six decades, but I’m not feeling too scared here.

The climate change food crisis I looked for a year ago still shows no signs of arriving; world total cereal production is looking to set another record this year. From 1990 to 2010, world population ballooned from 5 billion to 7 billion, yet the number of people living in absolute poverty – a.k.a. probably not getting enough food to eat – dropped from 1.9 billion to 1.2 billion. If we weren’t “growing enough food to feed the world” right now, at least, corn prices wouldn’t be tumbling to an almost 3-year low. (It’s almost like people planted more corn because price signals work or something.)

But what about that future? I see a world whose food production has kept up almost perfectly with demand so far and no reason to doubt it can continue, “physiological limits” of plants notwithstanding. As developing countries get richer, they eat more – but they also get more productive at producing food themselves. It’s even more impressive to consider that we are feeding more and more of the world while using less land to do it; US farms are producing record yields these days even while using 20% fewer acres than they did 60 years ago.

Even if we do start reaching biological limits for increasing yields, there is still plenty of space for growing more food – even just in the US. If prices get high enough, there are millions of lawns and rooftops waiting for innovative farming methods. And have you ever heard of aquaponics? OK, but what about all the meat that increasingly rich populations want to eat? Well, if we can’t breed enough animals in healthy enough environments, prices will make us change our minds. Who knows, maybe that fake meat thing will take off.

There are all sorts of ways incentives will cause people to adapt to keep coming up with ways to keep feeding ourselves, most of which I probably haven’t even imagined. I’m not saying it won’t be hard. But it’s certainly not terrifying.

I said earlier that I thought millions of people were not qualified to be upset about The Verdict. I still believe that, but I’ve been talking with a liberal friend to try to better understand them instead of automatically writing them all off. Megan McArdle noted that the left and right have reversed criminal justice stances in this case – usually it’s the right that’s all about punishment and justice and deterrence, and the left that doesn’t want harsh jail time because it’s not very rehabilitative or whatever. So what’s going on to make the left so upset that George was acquitted?

Well, it’s important to remember that this happened in the context of blacks being treated unfairly in our criminal justice system. Blacks get arrested for marijuana at much higher rates than whites. There’s the 100 to 1 disparity between sentencing for crack (apparently more likely to be used by blacks) and powder cocaine (apparently more likely to be used by whites). There’s debate over whether driving while black is a real thing or not, but many are at least convinced it’s a real thing, just as many are convinced that blacks who kill are more likely to be convicted than people who kill blacks. There are stories like the Florida mom who got 20 years for firing warning shots, although the circumstances seem a little convoluted.

Now we could argue that many of these things are not as unjust as they seem due to hidden or historical or socioeconomic or whatever factors that don’t require enduring, widespread racism, but the point is that many people have an existing worldview where black lives have no little to no value in the American justice system.

Enter Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman.

It never ceases to amaze me how different people can arrive at such different yet so confident conclusions about the same event when none of them were there but they all theoretically have access to all the same information. You have liberals forming narratives like this:

Zimmerman was an overeager would-be cop, a self-appointed guardian of the neighborhood who carried a loaded gun. They were told that he profiled Martin — young, black, hooded sweatshirt — as a criminal. They heard that he stalked Martin despite the advice of a 911 operator; that the stalking led to a confrontation; and that, in the confrontation, Zimmerman fatally shot Martin in the chest.

The jurors also knew that Martin was carrying only a bag of candy and a soft drink. They knew that Martin was walking from a 7-Eleven to the home of his father’s girlfriend when he noticed a strange man in an SUV following him.

To me, and to many who watched the trial, the fact that Zimmerman recklessly initiated the tragic encounter was enough to establish, at a minimum, guilt of manslaughter.

And you have conservatives forming narratives like this:

• Zimmerman claimed to be trying to follow from a safe distance just so police would have a chance to question Martin. There had been break ins and what George did really isn’t any different than what other neighborhood watches have done in the past. Martin didn’t like being followed so he gave Zimmerman the slip, hid in the shadows, waiting for Zimmerman to pass, and then Martin approached Zimmerman from behind, initiated the confrontation and broke Zimmerman’s nose. No evidence or testimony has ever contradicted this.
• Other than the single point blank gun shot wound, Martin had no injuries. Zimmerman on the other hand looked beaten all to hell. This was consistent with Zimmerman being on the receiving end of an unexpected one sided beat down.
• When investigating officers lied and told Zimmerman that they had footage of the incident, Zimmerman was relieved, and said something along the lines of, “Thank God! I was hoping someone would have filmed to help prove what happened.” This convinced the officer that Zimmerman was telling the truth.

So, if you already believe that blacks are often unfairly treated as criminals, you see evidence of Zimmerman treating Martin like a criminal and ignoring the 911 operator, and that’s all you need because it fits your stereotype. It started with racial profiling of an innocent boy and ended in his death. You see the police’s initial refusal to investigate as more evidence of the broken justice system. You tend to ignore the details of what Zimmerman told the police or the blood on his head (or say it wasn’t bloody enough), or the details of Florida self-defense law, because Zimmerman started the whole thing and Matin was unarmed, so how could that be self-defense anyway? What more do you need to convict for murder?

On the other hand, if you already believe that blacks are often violent, you see evidence of Zimmerman getting beat up, and that’s all you need because it fits your stereotype. You see Zimmerman calling 911 before and going to the police after as evidence of his efforts to be honest and non-secretive. You see the police’s initial refusal to investigate as evidence of how obvious the self-defense was from the beginning. You tend to ignore the claims that Martin said “get off!” during his phone call, or the details of Zimmerman following Martin (or explaining the profiling as justified in light of some recent robberies).

You may beg to differ with some of my statements if you followed the story more than I did. But at the very least I think it’s possible that both of them made mistakes that led to a tragic ending. Yet, in my attempts to understand the different intense feelings here, I can’t help but think that everybody’s focusing on it way too much. This focus clouds the attention to the broader issue of criminal justice for American blacks, and makes people project things about the broader issue that may not be true.

Stand Your Ground.. Everybody

Many conservatives betrayed their stereotypes about black violence when they severely over-predicted rioting in response to the verdict. But what about liberal stereotypes about black injustice? Daily Kos says “Stand Your Ground: Just not if you’re black or female,” pointing to the Alexander story mentioned above.

Yet Zimmerman and Alexander are just two data points – what about the 131 or so other cases? Apparently blacks have used “Stand Your Ground” and been acquitted over 50% of the time, even slightly higher than the rate for whites. Atlantic Wire says blacks don’t actually benefit from that law, but I think it’s all about how you spin the numbers.

One graph shows a black killer claiming the self-defense law on a white victim and being acquitted 67% of the time! How many people with a tainted view of our justice system would expect that to be closer to zero? But wait. Is our system still racist because a white killer of a black victim was acquitted even more often (85%). Or is it not racist because whites who kill whites in self-defense get acquitted even less often than blacks (56%)?

Or maybe there’s just not enough data here to make broad claims about the justice system. But it’s definitely more complicated than you might think if you only hear about a couple of big stories.

Open Season!!!!!

What’s really bad, though, are the opinionators claiming that this verdict means it’s “open season” on “kids who wear hoodies at night,” or that it feels better to have a daughter because this verdict means sons are not safe, as if black children used to live happy, peaceful lives that are all now threatened by all the half-white, half-Hispanic racists who are now walking around with guns imagining danger so they can mow them all down.

We’ve already seen how the self-defense law may be helping protect blacks from violence as much as it “encourages” violence against them. But many blacks are troubled enough already without throwing into the mix the alarming racists who allow them to ignore the uncomfortable truth that the vast majority of blacks (93%) are killed by… other blacks, often in urban, inner-city neighborhoods.

Like 16-year-old Joseph Brewer, Jr. I can’t even figure out if they know who the shooter was, much less if he’s going to be apprehended and put on trial. Why am I seeing so many heartfelt blog posts about what Trayvon’s death implies about race relations in our country when many more Trayvons are dying unnoticed in our cities every day in shootouts that have nothing to do with race?

Maybe we should be talking about bigger things, like cycles of poverty and whether various welfare programs are making things better or worse. Maybe we should be talking about the War on Drugs, where the legal vacuum for resolving disputes among dealers and distributors and consumers basically generates violence on a daily basis. If we want to save lives, maybe we should stop devoting so much time and attention to one tragic, complicated case that got so much attention because it was so rare. Maybe we should stop criticizing racism and bad stereotypes and injustice for existing, and start viewing them as symptoms that spring from the root causes of a more general violence. Maybe that’s too hard.

Yesterday, George Zimmermann was found not guilty. Immediately millions of people reacted with outrage, disgust, anger, and other negative emotions because they wanted justice for Trayvon Martin in the form of a guilty verdict. Apparently a lot of these people were more informed about the case than the jury, because they’re all saying that the justice system is broken and failed.

You sorta follow one trial. When the jury fails to convinct a guy who kinda seemed guilty to you, you say America is broken. Gimme a break!

— Noah Smith (@Noahpinion) July 14, 2013

When the shooting happened over a year ago, we saw similar outrage. I said then that Everyone was Not Qualified To Have An Opinion about it. I guess everyone’s qualified to have some kind of opinion about the shooting now, but You’re Not Qualified To Have An Opinion About The Verdict. From everything I’ve seen about the case (which admittedly isn’t a whole lot), there seems to be enough confusion about what really happened that there’s at least “reasonable doubt,” and in a properly functioning justice system that should mean an acquittal. It only means guilty when your justice is determined by a majority mob of opinionated rumor-chasers.

That’s not to say that our justice system doesn’t have big problems.

The system is broken because we incarcerate more people than any other nation, half of them for non-violent drug offenses, most of whom are black and poor, contributing to continuing cycles of poverty and broken families.

It’s broken because we have an increasingly militarized police, prone to overreaction and immune from consequences.

It’s broken because we’ve legalized indefinite detention of American citizens with no right to trial, and because we have secret courts that write their own secret rules about surveillance.

Maybe it’s broken if the same law that acquitted Zimmermann convicted a black woman for 20 years.

But it’s not broken when a jury acquits someone whose guilt is not beyond reasonable doubt; two wrongs don’t make a right. Sure, let’s work to change unjust laws, to heal race relations, to protect young black men from being killed by whites, Hispanics, AND other blacks. But don’t get angry about a verdict just because you’d already made up your mind.