And Now a Few Words About Rudy Giuliani

I'm from New York State. I knew who Rudy was quite a while ago, when he was the U.S. Attorney there. I remember hearing good things about him.

Then he became mayor, a while after I had left for Minnesota. Didn't hear too much about him out here until 9/11, and then he was everywhere, of course. America's mayor.

At some point — I'm not doing research on dates as I write this — he started to go down hill, and it accelerated until lately he seems to be in full dementia mode. (With apologies to people who suffer from dementia.)

Today Giuliani said that Hillary Clinton wasn't on the ground on 9/11. That could have been possible, or even reasonable given that she was a senator representing New York in WASHINGTON, D.C, at the time, but no. She was there, as shown in this photo, taken that day:


He also praised her for her help with post- 9/11 funding not too long ago. But now she's the Wicked Witch of the West who shirked her duties.

So which is it, Rudy — dementia? Or just completely craven Trumpian lie-blathering?

Fear Itself

This is what you get when your culture is taken over by fear:

Man arrested after shooting at "zombie," nearly striking sleeping man in his home.

In this case, the shooter was probably drunk, and he was definitely outside at 5 a.m. with an AR-15 over his shoulder, full of bullets designed to expand. This is what we're coming to. In North St. Paul, I might add.

Many people have written about how the zombie cultural moment is inspired by fear of real "others" -- especially people of color and immigrants, in an age of economic uncertainty and over-hyped terrorism.

Manipulating the public through fear is not unique to Donald Trump (remember Stephen Colbert's 2010 Rally to Restore Fear?), but Trump works it harder and less subtly than others in the recent past (I'd say since, oh, maybe 1930s Germany).

This Texas Observer story about Trump supporters is revealing on that topic. As the writer observes, "Trump has provided a dark, dank hole into which these folks can dump whatever it is they’re mad about." But when he gets down to it, the thing that his East Texas neighbors are mad about is having their guns taken away, and that's based on fear:

It’s a jungle out there. At least, to hear the Republicans tell it. But what it’s really about, in earthier conservative circles, is a chance for people to feel important, to think they are standing on the lines of freedom, fighting back the zombie hordes. What drives these folks is fear; but for many, it’s a delicious fear.

It’s a chance for the bored and disappointed to play army, a way to justify having tons of guns and ammunition. They feel that if not for their vigilance, dead-eye aim, and concealment due to camouflaged pants and a Duck Dynasty cap, we would be standing on the edge of a precipice looking into the bowels of hell.

This view, well sold to many, has contributed mightily to the current rabid gun culture. People I know, this is all they talk about: stopping power, how far you can sight a target, and having a stock sturdy enough to crack a skull at close quarters when you run out of about a zillion bullets.

Guns are a symbol of fear, but they are also a symbol of power, a way for the everyday person to feel important and potent, to be a participant in the great game show of life. Guns have replaced the previous religion of Texas, which was football, and Trump is the high priest. Fear sells, and it stimulates. Trump and his cronies constantly tell us, without actual facts, how bad crime is and how evil all foreigners are — especially if they dress funny — and they repeat over and over the false information that the economy is on the verge of collapse and you better build that bunker and stock up, because if you don’t, all you’ll have for protection from the certain rise of crazed liberals is harsh language.

This is a world so many conservative Republicans feel they can control. A frightened world.

I don't know where we go with this once Clinton wins the election. If 20 percent of the country, and 50 or more percent in many parts of the country, feel this way, how do we change the direction of the spiral into cultural insanity?

Two Chairs Far from Home

Here's one for the "we're so proud of the shape of our state that we make it into things" file:


What would you call these? Wisconsindack chairs? It just doesn't roll off the tongue.

I'm not sure if this is a Midwestern quirk, but after moving to Minnesota 30 years ago, I realized that people here and in Wisconsin (and maybe some other states like Ohio and Michigan) seem to think the shape of their state automatically makes a great graphic concept.

Does this happen in Illinois and Indiana? I assume it doesn't in Colorado or even Iowa. I don't remember it being common in New York, but maybe I wasn't paying attention back in my youth. Seems like it was only used on New York State official or political messaging.

I tend to think it's part of our Midwestern inferiority complex, but who knows.

Crop Art 2016

I just realized I never posted my favorite crop art from the Minnesota State Fair back in September. But it's never too late.

As you might imagine, some of the best stuff was (as always) political in nature, mostly about Trump:


The Sky Is Falling by Dawn Busch.


Scary monsters Evil Trumpachu and Penceypuff are part of the game of Donemon, as Mark Dahlager riffs on this summers Pokemon Go craze.

There were two by Laura Melnick:


Donny the Dirty Dog, which was visually interesting but not my favorite.


I much preferred her take on Trump as Richie Rich, in which she used onion skins for his hair and decoupaged dollar bills on the frame. All around the edge (in seeds) it says I'M YUGE, and the rest of the words are Trump quotes. (Sorry for the blurry photo.)


Finally, there was Yes We Khan! by Katharine Gotham. She must have turned that around pretty quickly, since the Fair's crop art deadline wasn't long after the end of the DNC.

There were three politically oriented non-Trump pieces that I liked:


First, this three-dimensional piece by Elizabeth Butler took me a second to get.


A beautifully rendered map of the U.S. (lower 48) with a message.


And a rainbow map of Minnesota, by Amanda Ward.

The rest of my favorites were nonpolitical. First, three related to plants and gardening:


The stained-glass-like petals of this coneflower by Elizabeth Butler are red onion skins.


Succulents are in, even in crop art! This amusing three-dimensional work by Sarah Anderson uses fava beans to create the kalanchoe-like plant in the foreground.


I have a love-hate relationship myself with rabbits, so I appreciated this one by Cassidy Sutton both for its design and content.

And finally, there were two about the the Fair or crop art itself:


Sweet Martha's sells buckets full of chocolate chip cookies, fresh from oven. It's the most popular food vendor at a fair known for its food. And now it's been immortalized in crop art (including its crazy-bad logo) by Robin Davis.

Finally, long-time crop artist David Steinlicht created a group portrait of 15 of the crop art regulars:


As always, his meticulous seed placement and limited color palette hold first place for visual sophistication.

Some Apology

Trump’s midnight non-apology for his predatory and misogynist 2005 words was analyzed by a mainstream reporter here, but what I found more enlightening were the thoughts of a Twitter user named Leah McElrath, who went through Trump's statement phrase by phrase to show how it follows the patterns of an abuser:

Trump's statement is an eerie replica of psychological manipulations made by abusers after episodes of abuse. Let's break it down.

1. "I'm not perfect" = you're expectations that I behave like a human being are unreasonable.
2. "I've never pretended to be someone I'm not" = you fell in love with me so it's your fault.
3. "this more than decade-old video" = it was a long time ago, why the fuss? you're so unreasonable.
4. "these words do not reflect who I am" = the reality you just experienced didn't actually happen (gaslighting)
5. "I said it...I apologize" = get over it already, I *said* I'm sorry, you're being hysterical.
6. "I've...my...me...I...I've...me...I...I..." = it's all about me; your needs, feelings, existence don't matter.
7. "grieving mothers...laid off workers..." = what are you complaining about? you have it good compared to others.
8. "I pledge to be a better man tomorrow and will never let you down" = I'm sorry I hit you, it'll never happen again.
9. "Let's be honest" = you're not being honest.
10. "We're living in the real world" = I'm sane and you're crazy.
11. "This is nothing more than a distraction from the important issues" = see what you did?! this is all your fault!
12. "we are less safe...Hillary..." = if you only held up your end of the relationship, I wouldn't have to hurt you.
13. "I've said some foolish things, but..." = you're being hysterical over nothing again, you're so crazy.
14. “[Bill Clinton has] actually abused" = the abuse you experienced wasn't *really* abuse.
15. "We will discuss this more...See you...on Sunday" = I'm in control here, not you (with menacing implied threat)

Trump ends his statement of "apology" for bragging about sexually assaulting women with a promise to attack yet another woman more viciously.

I hope that's all I'll have to say about the current Trump implosion. It won't be the last, I'm sure.

__

McElrath's entire string of tweets can be found on Storify.

The Driverless Disruption

There are lots of articles out there about self-driving cars and their possible effects on cities and suburbia and everywhere else. The truth will fall somewhere between nirvana (no need for parking! narrower lanes!) and devastation (5 million jobs lost! sprawl encouraged!).

This article by Joe Cortright for Strong Towns is the only one I remember reading that tries to address the costs to individuals, and the effect that cost will have on behavior and use. I've been wondering especially how fleets of driverless cars will be deployed to meet rush-hour demand, and Cortright thinks that surge pricing will manage it — and will change users' commuting behavior accordingly.

No one knows what the cost per mile will be for a hired driverless car, though it's likely to be lower than one driven by a person. The average cost per mile for the use of your own car these days, according to the IRS, is 54 cents per mile. However, as Cortright says,

Because the marginal cost of a trip is often perceived to be just the cost of fuel (perhaps 15 - 20 cents per mile), households use cars for trips that could easily be taken by other modes. That calculus changes if each trip has a separate additional cost – and consumers are likely to alter their behavior accordingly. Per mile pricing will make travelers more aware – and likely more sensitive to – the tradeoffs of different modes and locations. The evidence from evaluations of car-sharing programs, like Zip-car, show that per mile pricing tends to lead many households to reduce the number of cars they own – or give up car ownership altogether.

That point about the marginal cost of a trip is so true. Once you own a car, you feel as though you might as well use it, except for the cost of gas and parking, which is why people complain so much about gas prices and having to plug parking meters, but much less frequently moan about insurance rates and car prices. Those costs are fixed once you commit, and you're not reminded about them every time you use your car.

Cortright also has thoughts on the effect of driverless cars on mass transit usage, especially buses, and on road-building agencies, which currently rely on gas taxes for a bit more than half of their revenue. (That new fleet of driverless cars is very likely to also be all-electric.)

Disruption, disruption, disruption. Coming soon to a community near you.

Oh, SNAPPS

It's early days, but it sounds like it's time to learn about SNAPPS, a new approach to killing antibiotic-resistant bacteria.

They're nanoparticles that tear apart the targeted bacteria, while leaving other cells alone. So far there doesn't appear to be a way that resistance to them could be developed over time.

The technology is pretty far from clinical trials, having been used so far on six forms of resistant bacteria in the lab and in mice. But the polymers, developed by Shu Lam, a 25-year-old Ph.D. student at the University of Melbourne, sound like they come from the kind of perpendicular thinking that's often necessary to solve problems like this.

No Joy in These Numbers

It's that joyous time of year again: when we find out how much those of us who buy our health insurance through the individual market will have to pay on January 1. Each year since the start of the Affordable (cough) Care Act, the increases have been substantial, and this year is no different, ranging from 50 to 67 percent.

I don't know yet how much my family's insurance will increase. We currently pay about $14,000 a year for three people (ages 60, 57, and 22), with a deductible around $6,000. In other words, our insurer has made substantial money on us this year, since almost all the care we used was well less than the deductible.

Assuming our plan increase is at the low end of the newly announced range of price increases, our costs will be $21,000 a year, or $1,800 a month. And for all that money, we get preventive care — which I appreciate — and coverage in the event of a catastrophe. (I hope others in our circumstances will be eligible for tax deductions under the ACA; we are not. In 2016, the subsidies cut out around $80,000 a year in pre-tax income for a family my size. Even if that limit goes up to $100,000 with the new rates, how are you supposed to pay $21,000 for insurance?)

Here are two things I've heard about why these increases are happening. First, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services is investigating whether dialysis centers are "steering" their high-cost patients into the individual market, since the dialysis centers can bill higher rates that way. Dialysis patients are some of the highest cost patients, and plunking a bunch of them into a relatively small pool like the individual market would artificially increase the average cost per patient.

Second, health care lawyer David Feinwachs wrote in today's Star Tribune that Minnesota's HMOs are using state laws to jack up prices without proof their costs require it:

Market segmentation is, in fact, the real problem. We allow the health plans to choose those segments that give them incredible profits and are funded by taxpayers, then we allow them to walk away from, limit and/or price-gouge the segments they don’t like. Why? The whole theory of insurance is based on the pooling and spreading of risk. Our “nonprofit” health plans make billions of dollars in profits over time operating the state’s Medical Assistance (Medicaid) and MinnesotaCare programs (all funded by taxpayers). They claim they are losing hundreds of millions in the individual market. We don’t really know if this is true — we just take their word for it.

Rather than allowing them to engage in market segmentation, we could simply say that doing business in Minnesota is a package deal (contract bundling). We could require that these “nonprofit” corporations must absorb the losses associated with the individual market as a contractual condition of being allowed to run and profit enormously from Medicaid and other very lucrative government programs. The state can and should use its contractual leverage to achieve a result that benefits all of its citizens rather than permitting the HMOs to do whatever they please.

As always, the trade association for the HMOs acts as if the HMOs’ role in this system is some sort of hereditary right. Oddly enough, our Minnesota Department of Commerce seems to encourage this point of view with a steady stream of justifications for the total lack of any regulatory intervention; justifications that are illogical and incorrect.

He ends with this somewhat complex paragraph, but if you follow it through to the end, it's clear:

Minnesota has required a bundled-contract (you can’t pick and choose market segments or programs) approach with providers such as hospitals, doctors and other licensed health care providers for many years. We made it part of Minnesota law. It is found in Minnesota Statute 256B.0644. Health insurers claim that it applies to them as well. But it does not. Hospitals, doctors and other health providers each have only one type of license. Our nonprofit health plans have the option of two. They can be licensed as HMOs and/or insurance companies. Minnesota Statute 256B.0644 applies only to their HMO license. That’s how and why health insurers can escape the bundled-contract requirement. They just use an insurance license rather than their HMO license. And that is why all the health plans use an insurance license when they sell products on the exchange. We let them do this. Now you know how it works. The only remaining mystery is why we allow it to continue.

In the same edition, the Star Tribune editorial board called for a special legislative session to deal with the dramatic rate hikes. They called for action similar to what Alaska did in these circumstances: using reinsurance as a method to bring down rates for its citizens:

Numbers from the state Commerce Department suggest strongly that a state-run reinsurance program would bring down claim costs and thus monthly premiums. “If the top 0.65 percent most expensive individuals had been removed from the market (those with claims $200,000 and higher), average claims would have dropped 29 percent. If the top 1.79 percent most expensive individuals had been removed ... (those with claims $100,000 and higher), average claims would have dropped 45 percent,” officials said.

Other options to consider include allowing the public to buy into the state-run MinnesotaCare program. Minnesota leaders urgently need to explore and enact innovations. Why they haven’t yet done so also urgently needs an answer.

I would gladly buy into MinnesotaCare. It's the public option we should have had all along.

What Young Voters Care About

NORC, the venerable public affairs research and polling group at the University of Chicago, has published the results of a survey of Americans age 18 to 30 (pdf), breaking them down by race and ethnicity (omitting indigenous people from the groupings). It was written up by Reason and Mother Jones, with different angles on what the numbers mean.

Here's the overall table:


What I get from this table is:

• there are pretty wide swings in what varying groups care about
• black people care a lot more about racism and police brutality than anyone else cares about anything else
• everyone cares about gun control pretty strongly except white people.

Here are the top five issues for each group, in descending order:

• African Americans:
  Racism, police brutality, gun control, unemployment, poverty
• Asian Americans:
  Education, unemployment, health care, racism, gun control
• Latinxs:
  Immigration, terrorism, racism, gun control, education
• Whites:
  Terrorism, health care, education, climate change, national debt

On average for the whole sample, the top five issues are:

• Terrorism (weighted to the top by white people and second by Latinxs),
• Racism
• Education
• Health care
• Gun control

Low or very low on all the lists:

• Abortion
• Military strength
• Social Security (not surprising since young people have given up on that idea)
• Gay rights
• Morality
• Women’s rights
• Foreign policy
• Taxes
• Crime

It's notable that education has gotten almost no coverage in the presidential race. A number of the other top issues haven't been addressed much either, except in Trump howls (anti-gun control, anti- ACA health care, climate change denial).

Four Photos, No Pattern

For today, I've got a few recent photos.

First, this 1923 concrete shield above the door at one of the dairy buildings on the University of Minnesota's St. Paul campus:


I recommend clicking to enlarge it. That's a butter churn in the center, and those are cow skulls on the right and left.

Then there's this decorative plaque, seen at a second-hand store:


The graphic design trick of replacing one letter with a shape is premised on the idea that the replacement shape has something in common with the letter it replaces. In this case, the best I can do is read this as "PROY."

I've seen signs in Italy that use the word bimbo (which means baby), and it was funny enough for me to note it here in a past post. But this bread is in the U.S., and not in a store that carries international brands, either:


Bimbo the little white bread bear. What's up with that? I have no idea.

Finally, just one for the election:


Seen in South Minneapolis.

Individualism in Translation

A thought for today from education writer Alfie Kohn:

American individualism is reflected even in the translations of foreign film and book titles. The French film “La Loi du Marché” (Law of the Market) became “The Measure of a Man” when released here. The Swedish “Men Who Hate Women” became “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo” in the U.S.

Wow, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was actually called Men Who Hate Women? Now there's a name that wouldn't sell well in the U.S.

A Few from the Fire Hose

The interweb and social media, particularly, have been likened to trying to drink from a fire hose. It's a constant spew of information (if you can call it that, when you never have time to process or assimilate it) that mostly leaves you overwhelmed instead of informed.

But here are a few things I've read over the last few days, mostly about the election, of course, that I think will stick with me.

If it sometimes seems as though the anti-Hillary crowd is immune to facts or logic, that's because they (on average) are, according to this: fact-checking is largely irrelevant because deceit is not what’s causing moral outrage, Clinton’s gender is. It's not so much the general claim of sexism that I found interesting in the piece; it's the description of research that's been done about implicit biases against women (emphasis added).

A six-study project released last month by researchers at the University of California-Irvine showed that people assess the risk of danger to children to be higher when they deem a parent’s reasons for leaving a child to be socially offensive. The researchers had 1,200 people rate their sense of how much danger children were in, on a scale of one to ten. They then varied the reason children were left by themselves. In one case a mother was injured, subjects were told she’d been hit by a car and was unable to get back to the child, but others, she was working or having an affair. The scenario scored as the least dangerous was the one in which the mother had been hit by a car. The one deemed the most dangerous was when she’d left to meet a lover. When the mother was working, people felt the child was in more danger than when she was unconscious, less that when she was having sex. In other words, people’s fear and risk responses are tied to how they judged the women for either confirming or violating their expectations. It had virtually nothing to do with the fact of the child’s unchanging and relatively harmless situation.

The study also looked at how people responded when fathers did the same things. When fathers left children to work they were assessed in the same way as when the reasons they left children were out of their control and unplanned. People decided that children in these scenarios faced the least danger.

This implicit bias, the one that says working women are penalized in ways that working men aren’t has been demonstrated in other scenarios. Although long debunked, is the same one that shapes many voter’s belief that a “powerful woman” is not only an oxymoron but a serious danger to the nation.

And

...in 2013, a survey of managers in the United States revealed that they overwhelmingly don’t believe women who request flextime compared to men who do the same. As with leaving children alone in cars, working women are, by definition, morally suspect for having left their children in a way that men are not. In another setting, courtrooms, the connection between gender expectations and perceived competence is also clear. Studies of juror confidence in courtroom experts have found that the more complex an issue a case is the less likely a jury is to believe a woman expert. Women, expected to not have well-developed expertise in matters of public concern, are more effective in what people categorize as “low complexity” scenarios.

Gender role expectations such as these define disgust as well as how people impute morality and guilt. Disgust, the emotion that most people who say they viscerally dislike Clinton, express, is actually one of the strongest predictors of moral outrage. In courtrooms, these dynamics linking moral prejudice and moral outrage, are well understood. Rape cases are the perfect example of this. A woman’s violation of gender norms, if she was drinking or exhibited interest in sex, are used to rationalize gender biases that jurors feel. According to extensive media studies conducted by Columbia University journalism professor Helen Benedict, a rape victim, usually a woman, is most likely to be rigorously personally investigated and publicly vilified when she and the perpetrator share class, race and ethnicity. In other words, when gender is the only clear difference and allegations of rape threaten historical male sexual entitlements. In these instances, rape myth acceptance, for example, the idea that a woman victim is lying, is highest and evidence is often disregarded.

As in rape considerations, people who feel disgust over what they perceive to be moral transgressions are more likely to find a person guilty (e.g. Clinton’s email scandal and Benghazi) and deserving of punishment (e.g. displays of Clinton jailed and brutalized). Believing that a person is morally corrupt, lying or deserving of punishment is a socially tolerable and palliative form of systems justification.

This connection to disgust is key. As Jonathan Haidt demonstrates in The Righteous Mind, that's one of the six innate human emotional reactions, and it's particularly strong among conservatives. Donald Trump's favorite word appears to be "disgusting," in case you haven't noticed. It's not a coincidence.

Then there's this from a Tumblr called Black Sentai:

White dudes have this thing where they believe your best friend in the world can have opposing political ideas. You’re supposed to be able to have healthy debate and disagreeing shouldn’t harm your friendship.

That’s gross and stupid. It’s really easy to say that when all your disagreements are theoretical. It’s easy to say when none of the laws passed actually affect your life. Fighting with your best friend about corporate regulations, school charters, educational funding, abortion, health care, voting restrictions, drug laws, taxes and all sorts of stuff is cool and lively because none of it is going to actually leave you in a bad spot.

It's different for the rest of us. I can’t be friends with you if you think I shouldn’t be allowed to vote. We can’t be friends if you think my friends shouldn’t have the ability to designate whatever gender they want and have that be legally recognized. We can’t be friends if you think I don’t deserve health care. Or if you think native children should be ripped away from their cultures and people. We can’t be friends if you think closing down health care clinics in an attempt to end safe legal abortions is a good thing.

All these theoretical political ideas and lively debates affect real people, and I won’t be friends with someone who disagrees with me on them. Because disagreement means you don’t see me or a whole bunch of my friends and family as human beings worthy of rights and respect.

And finally, this from a Facebook post by writer Rebecca Solnit. She wrote it when recommending a New Yorker article on Trump and climate change by Elizabeth Kolbert (author of The Sixth Extinction):

Don't imagine that Trump will be some joke we can sort of override or that the people in charge of carrying out his orders revolt against them. Remember that government workers rounded up Japanese-Americans when ordered to do so, under a president most people are inclined to admire, and that the loss of rights and possessions still traumatizes survivors and their children 75 years later. Remember that few besides Daniel Ellsberg revealed the lies behind the Vietnam War (one of his colleagues told Ellsberg he would, but then he couldn't send his kid to Groton, weighing prep school against hundreds of thousands of deaths and coming down in favor of the former), remember that Snowden was virtually alone in revealing what tens of thousands of NSA employees and contractors knew about the violation of our privacy.

Don't count on the revolt or the resistance. It's too iffy, and it depends on a kind of mass disobedience we've never seen, from people sworn to obedience. Remember that evil is often carried out by stages, and many people adjust stage by stage, rationalize, conform. That's how rational, obedient people exterminated my father's relations in Europe 75 years ago.

This is not to say that there is nothing to fight under a Clinton administration, just that some things—reproductive rights, attacks on Muslims in the U.S.—won't be on the table, and there are things we can fight and win, just as we fought Obama on the Keystone XL pipeline and won. On climate we can push for the agenda we need, and her climate proposals are inadequate but have many positive things. With Trump, we finish the destruction of the planet that advanced so far under eight disastrous oil-soaked years of Bush.

If you have time, I also recommend watching this seven-minute interview with Wall Street Journal (!) editorial writer Dorothy Rabinowitz on why she wrote a column endorsing Hillary Clinton. The Journal hasn't endorsed a candidate wince 1982, and Rabinowitz's column doesn't count as an editorial either, but it's highly unusual.