hard heads soft hearts

a scratch pad for half-formed thoughts by a liberal political junkie who's nobody special. ''Hard Heads, Soft Hearts'' is the title of a book by Princeton economist Alan Blinder, and tends to be a favorite motto of neoliberals, especially liberal economists.
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Thursday, December 19, 2019
 
Big talk:

I wonder how age discrimination polls as a political issue? Not so much "cracking down" on age discrimination, as policies to mitigate the effects of it. In a way, I think policies to mitigate the effects of age discrimination pair well with policies for student debt relief. They are mostly beneficial for everyone, and for a smallish subset they may be very beneficial.

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I gather decriminalizing illegal border crossings polls badly. I don't think full decriminalization is essential, but I think putting a statute of limitations on the crime is essential.


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I agree with the impeachment. I also think it might be a good idea for the House to hold hearings on me too, on mechanisms by which politicians and others get away with it, and how to put some sand in those mechanisms. One of those mechanisms is the NDA, and one possible legislative change might be to allow anyone to partially violate an NDA they have signed if the information they are revealing might be potentially beneficial to someone else's safety and security.

Among the people who could possibly testify at those hearings: E. Jean Carroll, Summer Zervos. . .and Juanita Broaddrick. I also think it may be legitimate to subpoena Bill Clinton. I personally like Bill Clinton, but I think it may be legitimate for him to have to go on the record on the Broaddrick story, on what happened in that hotel room, and whether he tried to apologize to Broaddrick in 1991.

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On the Democratic race, I love the left candidates (Warren, Sanders, Castro) and like the center-left ones. It seems to me slightly more likely that a center-left candidate will win, but it's certainly not impossible that a left candidate will pull off an upset.

Bill James, when looking into whether Lefty Grove or Sandy Koufax was the greatest peak-value left-handed pitcher of all-time, said "There's not a dime's worth of difference between them, but my nickel goes to Grove". I feel that way about Sanders and Warren (my nickel goes to Warren).

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2 ideas knocking around in my head: 

First, a public database, of jira-like tickets, but for political / social issues, rather than tech ones. Whenever you see something wrong with the world, either first-hand or through reading, you can file a ticket for it.

Among the things wrong with the world:

The Garcia family should never have been separated, and should be reunited.


Crystal Mason should never have been prosecuted, and should be pardoned.


Second, a look at racism in my favorite books / authors. Books which are genuine favorites of mine, but which have a non-trivial amount of racism in them.

One of my favorites is Goscinny, and I was glad to read this post on racism in Asterix:


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http://jsomers.net/happiton
. . .It was crucial to me that the numbers in the allegory seem realistic. The most important numbers were: (1) the chance of devastation per year, which came out about right, as I see it; and (2) the amount of time per day that I think would begin to make a significant difference if devoted by a typical person to some sort of activity geared toward the right ends. In Happiton, that threshold turned out to be about fifteen minutes per day per person. Fifteen minutes a day is just about the amount of time that I think would begin to make a real difference in the real world . . .
. . .I happen to believe that the odds of a holocaust will be reduced (perhaps by a factor of 1.0000001-) by writing to my representatives and senators fairly regularly, by attending local freeze meetings, by contributing to various organizations, by giving lectures here and there on the topic, and by writing articles like this. How can I know that it will do any good? I can't, of course. . . 
. . .The fifteen minutes a day per person that I would like to see spent by real people in this country is limited to adults (or at least people of high-school age), and I don't even include most adults in this. I cannot realistically hope that everyone will be motivated to become politically active. Perhaps a highly active minority of five percent would be enough. It is amazing how visible and influential an articulate and vocal minority of that size can be! So, being realistic, I limit my desires to an average of fifteen minutes of activity per day for five percent of the adult American population. I sincerely believe that with about this much work, a kind of turning point would be reached. . . 
. . .One last thought: Although to me it seems that nuclear war is the gravest threat before us, I would grant that to other people it might appear otherwise. I don't care so much what kinds of efforts people invest their time in, as long as they do something. . .

Little talk:

There have been four times in my adult life when I've been happy with what I've been doing. Four times, give or take a few times. One time in 2001, working through a math textbook. One time in 2003, working through a cs textbook. Two times, in 2005 and 2010, where I went on longish walks most days a week. It's a bit of a mystery to me why I've never really managed to combine the textbooks with the walking, but hope remains sprung.

next post: 8-20-20


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