Ravi'ngs

The roots of the Obama betrayal

Jackson Lears review in the London Review of Books of two books on Obama’s parents, in an attempt to trace the causes of Obama’s weak presidency:

To those of us who hoped that Barack Obama’s election marked a departure from right-wing rule, the president’s failure of leadership has been stunning. Seldom have insurgent expectations – even sceptical, guarded ones – been deflated so swiftly. From the moment he announced his staff and cabinet appointments (Rahm Emanuel, Timothy Geithner, Lawrence Summers, Hillary Clinton, Robert Gates et al) it was clear that Obama meant to play by the same Washington rules that created the policy disasters he inherited from George W. Bush. Obama had retreated into politics as usual. He never looked back. One did not have to be a sentimental utopian to be disappointed.

There is of course the argument that Obama is not weak at all but in act strong enough to resist the tide that swept him to power in order to deliver the goods to those who paid to put him in power.

The myth of the Indian middle class

Alex Perry in Time:

The size of India’s middle class is 300 million people. No, it isn’t. The size of India’s middle class was 50 million in 2005, according to this report by McKinsey, and won’t be quite 250 million by 2015. And yet the 300 million figure has been pervasive for years, cited by everyone from the UN to multinationals to the US President: I was in New Delhi in 2005 when George W. Bush hailed the new Indian middle class of 300 million people. India will get its middle class of 300 million one day. But basing foreign or commercial policy on that figure today is premature, and ignores the reality that even by 2015, a full 78% of Indians will earn incomes below even McKinsey’s generous definition of middle class (incomes of $4,376 or less a year).

The real cost of piracy and anti-piracy efforts

Julian Sanchez of the Cato Institute, writing on Ars Technica:

As a rough analogy, since antipiracy crusaders are fond of equating filesharing with shoplifting: suppose the CEO of Wal-Mart came to Congress demanding a $50 million program to deploy FBI agents to frisk suspicious-looking teens in towns near Wal-Marts. A lawmaker might, without for one instant doubting that shoplifiting is a bad thing, question whether this is really the optimal use of federal law enforcement resources. The CEO indignantly points out that shoplifting kills one million adorable towheaded orphans each year. The proof is right here in this study by the Wal-Mart Institute for Anti-Shoplifting Studies. The study sources this dramatic claim to a newspaper article, which quotes the CEO of Wal-Mart asserting (on the basis of private data you can’t see) that shoplifting kills hundreds of orphans annually. And as a footnote explains, it seemed prudent to round up to a million. I wish this were just a joke, but as readers of my previous post will recognize, that’s literally about the level of evidence we’re dealing with here.

In short, piracy is certainly one problem in a world filled with problems. But politicians and journalists seem to have been persuaded to take it largely on faith that it’s a uniquely dire and pressing problem that demands dramatic remedies with little time for deliberation. On the data available so far, though, reports of the death of the industry seem much exaggerated.

Yes, the Cato Institute doing eminently sensible cost/benefit analysis! That’s how whack the SOPA/PIPA/MPAA/RIAA/anti-piracy rhetoric and actions (all based one way or the other, in reality, on “rights” arguments) are.

Gingrich and Co fail to activate federal judge

Hypocrisy is never a problem for the Right since they are explicitly the party of double standards! This is amusing nonetheless:

Gingrich has even suggested that Congress subpoena and arrest judges who make controversial rulings.

“I was, frankly, just fed up with elitist judges imposing secularism on the country and basically, fundamentally changing the American Constitution,” Gingrich explained in a conference call with reporters last December.

That same week, the former House speaker made his case to a national audience.

“The courts have become grotesquely dictatorial, far too powerful, and, I think, frankly arrogant in their misreading of the American people,” said Gingrich at a GOP presidential debate held on Fox News.

So when the candidates’ representatives showed up to a federal courtroom in Richmond on Jan. 13 to complain about Virginia’s ballot access law, the irony did not escape District Judge John Gibney.

As the hearing began, Gibney smiled and asked Gingrich’s lawyer what consequences he might face if he overturned a state law that’s been on the books for decades. He said he wanted to make sure he wasn’t going to be labeled an “activist judge.”

Most chimp experiments unnecessary - New Scientist

Andy Coghlan:

The US should be doing much less research on chimpanzees because new, alternative methods yield equally valid results, says a committee of the US Institute of Medicine in a report published this week.

Only in the US and Gabon are experiments on chimps explicitly allowed. In the European Union, no experiments on great apes have been recorded since 1999; a year ago, the EU banned all research on them, unless it was deemed necessary for national security.