The sad history of immigration in the US

Currently, the US Senate is debating an immigration bill.  The bill, negotiated by a bipartisan Gang of Eight - four Democrats and four Republicans, attempts to expand legal employment based immigration, expand immigration in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math fields, give a path to legalization to 11M illegal immigrants already here, while increasing investment in border security, reducing family based immigration and making the laws against employers hiring illegal immigrants a lot stricter.  It also inroduces a bunch of guest worker programs.  Here are two summaries of the bill, one in the Wonkblog and the other in the Wall Street Journal.  The bill just passed the Senate Judiciary Committee.

This article, however, is not an examination of the merits of the proposal.  It seems a bit of a waste of time to examine the merits as it seems highly unlikely that this bill will go anywhere.  John Boehner has flatly ruled out allowing a vote on the Senate bill in the House.  That means that even if the bill passes the Senate, it really has  no where to go.  Of course, that assumes the bill passes the Senate.  According to CNN, it does not seem likely that there are 60 votes in the Senate to pass the bill.  This is especially true because Senators Jeff Flake and Ted Cruz among others are taking a very hard line (the links take you to their record on immigration) and they are almost certainly going to filibuster.  In case you think this is all about illegal immigration, Ann Coulter clarifies that its really not.

What the bill, however, drew my attention to was a slightly different question.  The story we tell about the US is that its a haven for immigrants.  In fact, many of the bill's supporters almost seem to be arguing that immigration reform is sort of manifest destiny for the US.  They point out, as evidence, that almost everyone in the US is an immigrant and that for most families there is likely a first generation immigrant among their parents or grandparents or great grandparents.

What caught me by surprise is the vituperative, irrational and xenophobic rage that the topic appears to inspire among people as diverse as bloggers, commentators and various Senators and Congressmen.  Why in the world in a country built by immigrants is immigration of all ilk - legal and illegal, being viewed so negatively by so many?  Some have argued that while vociferous, this opposition is a minority racist view, the last hold over of a racist past.  Possibly.   However, the question of what is going on so intrigued me that I decided to investigate.

One of the first interesting charts I came across was this one which shows the immigrants in the US as a percentage of the total US population:


There are two fascinating aspects of this chart.

• The first is that immigrants, as a percentage of the US population, are nearing a historic high.  In fact, it is likely that if the new immigration bill passes, it will be at a historic high.
• The second is the spectacular drop in immigrants since the 1920s.  I found this latter fact to be counter-intuitive as this is supposedly the high point for Italian, Polish and other immigration.

Here's a summary of the story.

As this Wikipedia article shows, every generation of new immigrants in the country has been met with opposition.

Racism in the US immigration policy actually started soon after independence.  The Naturalization Act of 1790 restricted naturalization to immigrants who were "free white persons" of "good moral character".  It thus left out any colored people.  The US, the founding fathers seemed to be implying, was a country for white people.  This situation continued till after the Civil War.

It wasn't only "non white" people who faced opposition though.  Virtually every new wave of immigrants faced with opposition.  The waves of Irish and German immigrants in the 1840s, for instance, were opposed purportedly due to fears that because of their Catholic heritage they'd take orders from the Pope.

After the Civil War, with the enactment of the 14th Amendment, it became clear that the discrimination against non white's could not continue.  In 1870, Congress passed the Naturalization Act of 1870 which for the first time extended the naturalization process to "aliens of African nativity and to persons of African descent".  It however left intact the proscription against other races.

Over the next few years, many states started to pass their own immigration laws.  In 1875, the Supreme Court ruled that immigration was the sole province of the Federal Government.  In the same year, Congress passed its first immigration act - the Page Act of 1875.  The Act sought to outlaw the importation of Asian contract laborers, any Asian woman who would engage in prostitution, and all people considered to be convicts in their own countries.  This was followed in 1882 by the Chinese Exclusion Act which effectively limited and nearly proscribed immigration by Chinese.  This enshrined discrimination on the basis of race in US immigration policy.

It seems fascinating that so much of the effort in the first few immigration bills seemed to be targeting Asians. The trend did not stop there.  Rules continued to be strengthened.  Amendments made in 1884 tightened the provisions that allowed previous Chinese immigrants to leave and return, and clarified that the law applied to ethnic Chinese regardless of their country of origin.  The Scott Act (1888) expanded upon the Chinese Exclusion Act, prohibiting reentry after leaving the U.S. The Act was renewed for ten years by the 1892 Geary Act, and again with no terminal date in 1902. When the act was extended in 1902, it required "each Chinese resident to register and obtain a certificate of residence. Without a certificate, he or she faced deportation."

Meanwhile, immigration from other parts of the world continued undeterred.  Italian immigration reached a peak in 1910.  Eastern European immigration skyrocketed.  And, curiously, Japanese immigrants were allowed.  The prohibitions on Chinese immigration stemmed from fears that the Chinese would lower wages and displace white workers.  The immigrants from Eastern and central Europe and from Japan actually offset any benefits that might have accrued from the anti Chinese policies.

The discrimination against the Chinese resulted in a bizarre situation where even people of Chinese origin born in the US who went out of the US and sought reentry were often denied reentry.  Things came to a head in 1897 in Wong Kim Ark v United States in the Supreme Court.  Here's a summary of the circumstances from the final opinion:

Wong Kim Ark was born in 1873 in the city of San Francisco, in the State of California and United States of America, and was and is a laborer. His father and mother were persons of Chinese descent, and subjects of the Emperor of China; they were at the time of his birth domiciled residents of the United States, having previously established and still enjoying a permanent domicil and residence therein at San Francisco; they continued to reside and remain in the United States until 1890, when they departed for China, and during all the time of their residence in the United States, they were engaged in business, and were never employed in any diplomatic or official capacity under the Emperor of China. Wong Kim Ark, ever since his birth, has had but one residence, to-wit, in California, within the United States, and has there resided, claiming to be a citizen of the United States, and has never lost or changed that residence, or gained or acquired another residence, and neither he nor his parents acting for him ever renounced his allegiance to the United States, or did or committed any act or thing to exclude him therefrom. In 1890 (when he must have been about seventeen years of age), he departed for China on a temporary visit and with the intention of returning to the United States, and did return thereto by sea in the same year, and was permitted by the collector of customs to enter the United States upon the sole ground that he was a native-born citizen of the United States. After such return, he remained in the United States, claiming to be a citizen thereof, until 1894, when he (being about twenty-one years of age, but whether a little above or a little under that age does not appear) again departed for China on a temporary visit and with the intention of returning to the United States, and he did return thereto by sea in August, 1895, and applied to the collector of customs for permission to land, and was denied such permission upon the sole ground that he was not a citizen of the United States.

The court ruled 6-2 in favor of the modern interpretation of citizenship - that anyone born in the US is a US Citizen irrespective of their parents' country of origin.  The dissent penned by Chief justice Fuller basically argued that there were two criteria for being a citizen - one that you were born here and the second that you were not the subject of a foreign power.  Their argument was that unless China renounced their claim, you could not become a US citizen merely by birth.  The majority opinion basically argued that you were presumed to be a US subject by birth until you opted out.

While this protected natural born citizens challenges to immigration laws all failed and naturalized citizens enjoyed no such protections.

In 1917 Congress passed an even more draconian rule, where they barred immigration by illiterate people over 16 and created an Asiatic barred zone:

The provision against illiterate people was intended to stem the flow of Eastern and Central Europeans who, while white, were considered undesirable.

In 1921, the US introduced the National Origins formula restricting immigration to 3% of foreign-born persons of each nationality that resident in the United States in 1910 and the Immigration Act of 1924  provided that for three years the formula would change from 3% to 2% and the basis for the calculation would be the census of 1890 instead of that of 1910. After June 30, 1927, total immigration from all countries will be limited to 150,000, with allocations by country based upon national origins of inhabitants according to the census of 1920. The quota system applied only to white immigrants. It aimed to reduce the overall number of unskilled immigrants, to allow families to re-unite, and to prevent immigration from changing the ethnic distribution of the population.

In 1923, Supreme Court in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind created the official stance to classify Indians as non-white, which at the time retroactively stripped Indians of citizenship, since prosecutors argued Indian Americans had gained citizenship illegally. The California Alien Land Law of 1913 (invalidated in 1952) and others similar racist laws prohibited these aliens from owning land property, thus effectively stripping Indian Americans from land rights. The decision was placating racist Asiatic Exclusion League (AEL) demands, spurned by growing outrage at the Turban Tide/Hindu Invasion [sic] alongside the preexisting outrage at the "Yellow Peril".

So, let's recap.  When the US was founded, the framers of the constitution introduced an Act to ensure that the US was a white nation.  This policy only receded slightly after the Civil war, but the US passed waves of increasingly draconian measures to bar Asian immigration, ultimately completely banning it in 1917.  By 1921, the US tried to freeze its racial composition to the 1910 composition, and three years later tries to freeze it to the 1890 composition.  Meanwhile, in 1923, the US Supreme Court stripped Naturalized Indians of their citizenship and various states passed laws banning them from owning property and land.

This had a dramatic affect on immigration to the US as seen from this chart of European immigration to the US from 1881 to 1940:


So, now we have an explanation for the massive drop off in immigration in the 1920s.  The US tried to maintain its racial composition and effectively throttled Asian immigration and massively curtailed Eastern European immigration.

These laws have been subsequently repealed beginning with a repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1943 and then in waves until a complete elimination of the racial quota system in 1965.  It should be noted though that the last vestiges of the system remains enshrined in law with a limit on the percentage of total immigrants from any one country, purportedly to ensure racial diversity, which continues to discriminate against Indians, Chinese and Mexicans.

Why is all this relevant?

Well, firstly when we hear someone like Ann Coulter argue for more British immigrants rather than more Latin Americans, many of us are quick to dismiss her as a fringe element.  Except that historically speaking, Ann Coulter's view is the norm and the modern racially unbiased view is actually very much the aberration in the historical sense.

Secondly, when you hear people justify immigration because the US has been a nation of immigrants, remember that for the majority of the 20th century, immigration to the US was a fraction of current levels and  the official immigration policy of the US was designed to retain the racial mix of the US.  Moreover, what is being proposed in the immigration bill would actually push immigration to levels not seen in the last 150 years.

So, while there are a lot of good reasons for a liberal immigration policy, the proposed policy does in fact move the US further away from the historical racial mix and the policies that prevailed in the US for the first 150 years of its existence.  This is does not argue against the immigration bill.  It does, however, suggest that the opposition to the bill may not be as "fringe" as the mainstream narrative would suggest it is.

Do campaign ads have any effect on elections?

The Freakonomics blog had an article some time ago that argued that there is little evidence that money buys elections.  Here is the conclusion of the article:

I have examined several other natural experiments and found similar results. For example, large shocks to campaign spending from changes in campaign finance regulations do not produce concomitant impacts on electoral success, nor do candidates with vast personal wealth to spend on their campaigns fare better than other candidates.  

These findings may be surprising at first blush, but the intuition isn’t that hard to grasp.  After all, how many people do you know who ever change their minds on something important like their political beliefs (well, other than liberal Republicans who find themselves running for national office)?  People just aren’t that malleable; and for that reason, campaign spending is far less important in determining election outcomes than many people believe (or fear).

There is an article today by John Sides that argues, yet again, that campaign ads have little to do with whether candidates win elections.  John Sides however explains his rationale by citing four common reasons for this effect:

1. Campaign activity can be overwhelmed by other events in the campaign.
2. It can be hard to win the messaging war (essentially your counterparties are saying much the same things)
3. The effects of campaign activity are short-lived.
4. In most presidential elections it is hard to get a big advantage in campaign activity.

Note, the two conclusions while superficially similar, may not in fact be similar at all.  

Freakonomics argues that once opinions are set in, ads have little effect.  Here's Steven Levitt's paper on the subject.  Steven Levitt concludes that campaign spending had negligible impact on elections and spending by your opponent often had more of an impact.  In Freakonomics' view a vast spending difference between the two candidates would not necessarily handicap one or the other.  In John Sides' view, it may.  John Sides' explanation is that the campaigns were fighting themselves to a draw.

Here's my issue with John Sides' argument that seems illogical.  If as they say "effects of campaign activity are short-lived" why even aim for a draw? They cite their and others’ analyses of 2012 advertising effects as well as previous research to demonstrate their point.  

What caught my attention were two charts they reproduced in their article:

Here's what they say about the charts:

This graph shows that Romney’s time at Bain Capital was a major part of advertising and news coverage only in July  In part, this was because the Obama campaign emphasized Bain less as the general election campaign heated up. In part, this was because the news coverage of Bain Capital — stimulated in July largely by a Boston Globe story – waned as the media moved on to other topics.

However, I don't buy their conclusion.  Firstly, the articles they cite in support actually studied the relationship between vote shares and advertising intensity.  Their conclusion that long term advertising intensity did not have an effect appears to be drawn for lower correlation for advertising intensity over longer terms.  Hmmm ... but since this isn't a controlled experiment, wouldn't it be more logical to assume that the ad teams reallocated media dollars to regions where the ads appeared to be working.  So, I am not sure how they draw that conclusion.  This does not exactly undermine their conclusion, but it does raise some eyebrows.

Next let's take those charts.  Actually, that's what got me thinking.  My recollection was that what Obama was trying to do was to define Romney before Romney could define himself.  So, what I thought might be interesting to look at would be Google Search trends for "Romney Bain".  Here is the chart:

What I noticed almost immediately was that post Obama's massive ad campaign, he was able to raise the level of interest in "Romney Bain" so that it settled at a new level.  This isn't a "short term effect".  Is it possible that how short term the effect is depends on how well formed your opinions are.

I have two takeaways.  In essence, I actually agree with both Freakonomics and John Sides.  I also generally agree with John Sides' reasons.  However, my other takeaway is that the problem with these intensity and spend studies is that they ignore message and "earned" media - i.e. what people are talking about.  As the Google charts show, done right, paid media may move the conversation.  It is likely though that spending cannot really compensate for the lack of appeal of the underlying product (candidate) or message.

The Miraculous Presidency

Jim Porter was elected as the new President of the National Rifles Association (NRA). This is a man who is on record saying: 

"NRA was started 1871 right here in New York state. It was started by some Yankee generals who didn’t like the way my Southern boys had the ability to shoot in what we call the 'War of Northern Aggression.' Now y’all might call it the Civil War, but we call it the 'War of Northern Aggression' down south.

...
That was the very reason that they started the National Rifle Association, was to teach and train the civilian in the use of the standard military firearm and I am one who still feels very strongly that that is one of our greatest charges that we can have today, is to train the civilian in the use of the standard military firearm so when they have to fight for their country, they’re ready to do it. Also, when they’re ready to fight tyranny, they’re ready to do it. Also, when they’re ready to fight tyranny, they have the wherewithal and the weapons to do it."

You can watch his full speech here.  I don't think its a stretch to suggest that Jim Porter is suggesting that the types of government tyranny they are working to protect US citizens from is the type of tyranny observed in the Civil War, i.e. the aggression by the North/Union in trying to maintain the Union and in trying to ban slavery.

It made me think about the miracle that is the Obama Presidency.

We now have President in the US who is African American and an offspring of an interracial marriage.  He has won twice, each time with more than 50% of the votes, a feat last achieved by Reagan.  This has perhaps made us forget just how astonishing it is that a child from an interracial marriage is President of the US.

When Obama was born, in 1961, his parents' interracial marriage was illegal in 13 states.  Those states included Virginia, which had one of the strongest proscriptions.  It would take another five years before the decision in Loving v Virginia by the Supreme Court ruling antimiscegenation statutes unconstitutional.  

In 1966, when the Loving case was being argued at the Supreme Court, the counsel for Virginia argued that antimiscegenation statutes were Constitutional.  I was curious to know what they argued.  It just so happens that there is now a wonderful site called www.oyez.org where they have posted not only the transcripts of a number of historical cases argued before the Supreme Court but also provided the audio recording of those arguments.  As it happens, the site has the Loving case.  I spend a very interesting couple of hours listening to the case.  

Here are some of the more interesting quotes from the defense of the laws by Mr. Mcllwaine.

"We have the question of whether or not that marriage would be recognized as valid in Virginia even though it was contracted by parties who are not residents of the State of Virginia under the conflict of laws principle that a marriage valid were celebrated is valid everywhere. 

This would be a serious question and under Virginia law, it is highly questionable that such a marriage would be recognized in Virginia, especially since Virginia has a very strong policy against interracial marriage and the implementing statutes declare that marriages between white and colored people shall be absolutely void without decree of divorce or other legal process, the implementing statute which forbids Virginia citizens to leave the State for the purpose of evading the law and returning, the exception to the conflict of laws principally I've stated that a marriage valid was celebrated would be valid everywhere except where contrary to the long -- to the strong local public policy

... 

It is clear from the most recent available evidence on the psycho-sociological aspect of this question that intermarried families are subjected to much greater pressures and problems then those of the intramarried and that the state's prohibition of interracial marriage for this reason stands on the same footing as the prohibition of polygamous marriage, or incestuous marriage or the prescription of minimum ages at which people may marry and the prevention of the marriage of people who are mentally incompetent.

... 

And that the interracial marriages bequeath to the progeny of those marriages, more psychological problems than parents have a right to bequeath to them....As I say, it was published in 1964 and some of the statements which made in it based upon the demonstrably -- statistically demonstrably greater ratio of a marry -- of divorce, annulment in intermarried couples than intramarried couples. 

Dr. Gordon has stated it as his opinion that it is my conviction that intermarriage is definitely inadvisible, that they are wrong because they are most frequently if not solely entered into under the present day circumstances by people who have a rebellious attitude towards -- towards society, self-hatred, neurotic tendencies, immaturity and other detrimental psychological factors.
... 

It is the attitude which society has taught interracial marriages, which in detailing his opposition says, "Causes a child to have almost insuperable difficulties in identification and that the problems which a child of an interracial marriage faces are those which no child can come through without damage to himself."...It is not infrequent that the children of intermarried parents are referred to not merely as the children of intermarried parents but as the victims of intermarried parents and as the martyrs of intermarried parents.
...
But in that case, you do not come to the proposition of the power of the State to forbid interracial marriages and the interest of the state in doing so on the basis of the valid scientific evidence that exists on the detrimental effects of interracial marriage. 

I don't see how you can start with the right and come to the proposition that the state statute infringes the right unless you exclude the evidence which tends to show that the statute in question is rational because even rights, a right to marry is subjective to reasonable limitations by the State as always been. 

Polygamy statutes have never been questioned. 

Incest statutes have never been questioned. 

They have in fact been specifically upheld and upheld against the charge in Reynolds against the United States that the person convicted there had religious duty to marry, not to the other right to marry, his religious tenet as a Mormon required him to marry.

And this Court held that the fact that its religious tenet required him to do so, did not prevent him from being convicted criminally about engaging in a polygamous marriage. 

So you can't reach the conclusion that this statute infringes, a right under the Fourteenth Amendment without examining evidence on behalf of the State to show that the infringement is a reasonable one, just as reasonable as far as we can determine, as far more evidence of the reasonableness of a ban against interracial marriage than there is against polygamous or incest marriages so far as the scientific proposition is concern. 

But I cannot conceive to this Court striking down the polygamy or incest statute on the basis of scientific evidence, and I submit that it would be no more appropriate for this Court to invalidate the miscegenetic statute on that basis."

I recommend you listen to the entire arguments.  Here is the link to the Loving v Virginia case.  

Let me highlight a few points.  In 1966, the lawyer for Virginia was arguing that there is "far more evidence of the reasonableness of a ban against interracial marriage than there is against polygamous or incest marriages so far as the scientific proposition is concern."  Moreover, if you follow the logic, Obama is psychologically "damaged".  What he also explains in an exchange I have not quoted is that Virginia did not recognize interracial marriages from other states and there were proscriptions on interracial cohabitation in Virginia, which was a misdemeanor and not a felony.  The implication would be that Obama's parents could have been prosecuted in Virginia as late as 1966. 

While the Supreme Court struck these laws down, some of the now unconstitutional statutes still remained on the books for a while. In 2000, the last of these statutes was finally struck from the books in 2000 in Alabama through a ballot initiative, BUT 40% of the state voted against the removal of the unconstitutional statute.

It's incredible, nearly miraculous, that a man whose parents' interracial marriage would have been considered illegal when he was born, should have grown up to become the President of the US just about four decades later.  It puts the debate about Obama and his legitimacy into perspective.

A History of Gridlock

A recent episode of Backstory reviews a history of political gridlock in the US and offers some fascinating insights.  Here's a brief summary.

My favorite part was Backstory's "game theory" analysis of filibusters.  They point out that until about 40 years ago, filibusters were actually quite rare and were mostly used by the South to block desegregation.  In the 1960s, the Senators introduced an arcane rule on cloture.  Under this rule, any Senator could hold up proceedings by merely threatening to filibuster and the Senate needed 60 votes to break the lock and proceed.  Now, when introduced, they expected this to reduce filibusters and speed up things as actual filibusters were taking up a lot of time.  However, while the actual time spent filibustering dropped as predicted, the cost of a filibuster suddenly dropped for Senators and suddenly there was no downside to threatening filibusters, and each time you did, 60 votes were needed to proceed.  The result has been a creeping increase in the number of threats of filibusters until today, when really you need 60 votes to pass anything.  In a thought experiment, they explain lowering the votes required to break cloture is unlikely to help as the opposition (Dems and GOP as the case may be) can just invoke cloture more often, causing the system to grind to a halt.

Another aspect that Backstory touches on is the role of media.  They point out that with the advent of broadcast media, politicians are less able to change positions, which has actually decreased their ability to compromise.  Also, they point out, that when there were only 3 national networks, the networks needed massive economies of scale to be profitable, so they tended to naturally gravitate to the center.  However, as costs have reduced and with the advent of internet and the cable networks, there is much more incentive now for very successful and profitable networks that cater to niches, and so the media thrives on partisanship.

Finally, Backstory reviews the history of compromise during Madison and the Missouri compromise and the fascinating history of the nexus between economics and slavery.  The machinations are probably less relevant today, but still are extremely engaging and well worth the time.

How to park

There is an art to writing manuals and infographics.  This posting on how to park is one of the best instructions on parking I have seen.  It was apparently created by UK car dealer T W White & Sons.  Excellent!

Can isolated genes be patented?

Did you know that parts of you may in fact be owned by companies?  Well, Myriad Genetics has patented two human genes BRCA1 and BRCA2.  Women who have mutations in those two genes have a significantly higher chance of developing breast or ovarian cancer and may have a higher risk of developing other types of cancers. 

Here is what underlies the problem.  Myriad has, even in the opinion of their opponents, undoubtedly unlocked secrets of the BRCA genes and should get the "credit" for isolating the BRCA genes.  However, does that mean that should get exclusive rights to those genes, i.e. be able to preclude others from being able to research the genes without paying them a royalty.

There is a long standing principle in patent law that you cannot patent products of nature.  The question here is whether an isolated human gene is a product of nature or an invention.

Here's a link to the arguments, which are fascinating.

This is a great video explaining the issues:

Did Bush make us safer?

Charles Krauthammer has an opinion piece which argues that President George W Bush's policies have made us safer.  This being a claim that is somewhat empirical in nature, I decided to check out whether this is accurate.

First, let's consider gun deaths.  What we find is that the aggregate number of gun deaths was not materially lower post President Bush:

Next we find that the rate of gun deaths per 100,000 people also did not drop post Bush:

Of course, Krauthammer didn't mean overall deaths.  He meant deaths due to terrorist attacks.  Well, let's consider that.  Here's Wikipedia's list of terrorist attacks between 1990 and 2013.  Wikipedia lists 43 terrorist attacks in the US since 1990.  Of these, 15 were between 1993 and 2000, 16 were between 2001 and 2008, and 12 were between 2009 and April 2013.  So, the overall rate of terrorist attacks has not actually dropped.

More pertinently, Krauthammer meant terrorist attacks by Islamic terrorists.  Well, sorting through that aforesaid list, according to Wikipedia, here are the terrorist attacks by Muslims since 1990::

• 1993: CIA shooting
• 1993: World Trade Center bombing
• 1994: Brooklyn Brindge shooting
• 1997: Empire State Building shooting
• 2000: New York Bronx Molotov coctail attack
• 2001: World Trade Center / Pentagon attacks
• 2002: LA airport shooting
• 2006: UNC Chapel Hill attack
• 2006: Seattle Jewish Federation attack
• 2009: Arkansas recruiting office attack
• 2009: Fort Hood attack
• 2013: Boston Marathon attack 

OK, so we had five attacks in 8 years pre 9/11 and 5 attacks in the 8 years post 9/11.  Let's see.  Aha!  That means the rate was the same.

How about the number of deaths?  Well, if you exclude 9/11 itself then there were 10 people killed in the terrorist attacks in the eight years pre-9/11 and there were 17 deaths in the eight years post 9/11 (which does not include the Boston bombing).  Hmmm ... still not safer!

It is undoubtedly true that threats from Islamic terrorists may have changed and it is entirely possible (and indeed I would speculate probable) that the US security is significantly better able to intercept and stop these threats now.  However, that merely means that the defense and security mechanism is more tuned to the threats.  To argue that we are actually safer would require that the probability of attacks or the probability of death from attacks to have been materially lowered.  There does not seem to be any evidence that such a decrease in risk has occurred.

Are winning the War on Drugs?

In a damning report the GAO has concluded that: "our analysis shows lack of progress toward achieving four of the Strategy’s five goals for which primary data are available."

I could have told them this.  Here is a chart which I have not been able to verify, but which if true summarizes the whole war on drugs:



CNN has some fascinating facts on how much the war costs us.  Pretty sure we need to rethink this.

The Bush Presidency

With the opening of the Presidential Library for President George W Bush, there has been a lot of examination as to how good a President he was.  This is a cogent but unflattering summary of Bush's record by Jonathan Chait. This is an article by Dylan Matthews that examines the Bush Presidency in charts.

I was a bit disappointed because the charts, while interesting, did not quite show the impact of the Bush Presidency.  Here are some other charts that may help clear some of the questions:

1.  When Bush took the reigns of power, US public debt as a percentage of GDP was actually falling.  During his term in office not only did he reverse the trend but by 2009 he basically had created a situation where the country was forced to go into massive debt.

2.  Bush expanded federal spending at rates that far outstripped inflation.

3.  As you can see below, he grew both defense and non defense spending.

4.  Real household income under him stagnated and fell:

5.  He also oversaw a period of effective stagnation in the market as evidenced by the S&P 500:

This is the same chart plotted on a logarithmic scale:

6.  And oversaw the largest increase in unemployment in recent memory:

Then there is the $4T he spent on wars.  The fact that at least one of the wars was purportedly because of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, which turned out to be false.  There is the complete debacle of his handling of Katrina.

It is possible that in hindsight, a lot of the messes will look less of an issue, especially if the US out of Iraq and Afghanistan, and we get back on track to growth.  His unfunded Medicare Part D will be dwarfed by Obamacare.  And, he may seem prescient on his prediction that democracy will spread through the Middle East.  He may even get credit for trying on immigration and lauded for his work on education, and aid to Africa and for Aids etc.  On the other hand, there is a good chance that other aspects such as torture, Guantanamo Bay, his being asleep at the wheel on climate change, etc. may prove to be much worse than they seem now.

It's hard to know what history will say, but its hard to argue that he did not leave the country in disarray when he left office.

Acts of terror - how scared should we be?

The heinous and distressing Boston bombing attacks last week have generated understandable anxiety.  However, some of the reaction has been so extreme that it begs the question, are we overreacting?

Consider for instance Lindsay Graham, the Republican Senator from South Carolina, who is suggesting "the surviving suspect -- due to the ties that these two have to radical Islamic thought and the ties to Chechnya, one of most radical countries in the world -- that the president declare preliminarily that the evidence suggests that this man should be treated as an enemy combatant."

So, Lindsay Graham is suggesting suspending due process for a US citizen based on what they think?   

Let's break this down.  

The first question is whether Boston was a terrorist attack.  Well, it isn't clear that it should be considered as this article in the Guardian and this one by Charles Krauthammer suggests.  To understand why, you have to first understand that there is a distinction between an "act of terror" and "terrorism".  In general, an "act of terror" is an attack or killing of some sort that is calculated to terrorize people.  "Terrorism" is when a political entity or group uses "acts of terror" as a tactic for its political ends.  A deranged group of killers who commit an "act of terror" probably should not be considered "terrorists", no matter what their ideological leanings, unless their act had a political purpose and was linked to a political group.  Latest reports on the Boston bombers are beginning to suggest that they were ideologically driven, but that they had no political ties and acted alone, calling into question the description of them as terrorists.

The next question is how worried should we be?

This article by John Cassidy in the New Yorker is a good review of the issue.  Let me put some of the numbers into perspective.  

First, if you just consider mass killings, then in 2012, according to the Washington Post, there were 84 people killed in various mass shootings.  Since then there have been 8 that I know of, 4 allegedly by Christopher Dorner and the 4 in the Boston bombings (These numbers don't include the deaths of the perpetrators).  Meanwhile, there are roughly 2.5M deaths every year in the US.  So, the conditional probability that a person in the US will have died due to a mass killing given that the person has died is less than 0.004%.  That is basically inconsequential.  

What about if we just considered terrorist attacks and leave aside the question of whether Boston was a terrorist attack or not for a second?  Here's how John Cassidy puts it:

"According to “Terrorism Since 9/11: The American Cases,” a new book edited by John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State University, since the World Trade Center attacks there have been fifty-two alleged Islamic plots to stage attacks on American soil or on planes bound for the United States. If Boston is added to the list, the total is fifty-three. Most of these plots only got to the stage of talking (often with disguised federal agents) before the authorities broke them up, but some went further than that, and a few—all shootings rather than bombings—led to fatalities.

... But compared to other types of violent deaths, the numbers are small.  In 2010, to take a year at random, there were 11,078 firearm homicides in the United States, and 19,392 firearm suicides.  In the same year, there were 544 homicides by suffocation and 89 by fire, plus 79 intentional poisonings and 52 intentional drownings. Statistically speaking, people in American had a higher chance of being killed by malaria than by terrorists. (These figures come from the Centers for Disease Control.)"

As an aside, John Cassidy goes on to point out that there is evidence to suggest that terrorist attacks around the world are declining.  Also, he points out that the bulk of Islamic terrorist attacks are actually not against the US or Christians but in Muslim countries against Muslims.

Anyway, the core point is that the Boston Bombing is likely better called a mass killing by deranged youth than a terrorist attack.and, even if we called it a terrorist attack, helped by the vigilance of our security forces, terrorist attacks in the US are rare as are mass killings of any sort.  So, Lindsay Graham is probably being a little paranoid.

As an aside, there is a constitutional question underlying Lindsay Graham's request.  This is an excellent article by George Will highlighting why such a suspension of constitutional rights based on color, race or beliefs is a bad idea.