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This photo of Kim Jong Un looks like a still from a Wes Anderson movie – Vox

What the Neoreaction Doesn’t Understand about Democracy

The key conclusion to draw from the Mulligan study is that political competition doesn’t go away when you switch away from democracy; rather, it moves to the metapolitical level. Competition within political systems is a substitute for competition over political systems. When the former is stifled, the latter becomes more important, which is why nondemocratic rulers must take greater pains to prevent an overthrow of government than democracies do. There is no limit on the level of metapolitical competition under a dictatorship other than the state of technology available to the state and to its would-be usurpers.

Interesting read for those following the anti-democracy crowd.

Pro Big Corporate IRS: Agency Guts Whistleblower Program, Leaves Billions on the Table

It’s widely known among tax professionals that the US does little in the way of tax enforcement, and the little that it does do is directed against individuals and small businesses. What is not so widely known is how deep the institutional bias is in the IRS in favor of letting big corporate tax cheats get away with it. Conventional wisdom is similar to the rationalization of weak enforcement at the SEC: that the agency is afraid that if they go after big companies, they’ll have the penalties and fines challenged in court, and they’ll often lose by virtue of being outgunned by better lawyer…It turns out that the picture is vastly worse than that. In 2006, recognizing that the IRS was losing over $450 billion a year in revenue to tax evasion, Congress mandated that the agency establish a whistleblower office and pay whistleblowers 15% to 30% of amounts recovered from their filings. Unfortunately, as a whistleblower from the IRS’ Office of the General Counsel in New York has revealed, the IRS at its highest levels is opposed to implementing the policy.

Obama Is a Republican

Obama has governed as a moderate conservative—essentially as what used to be called a liberal Republican before all such people disappeared from the GOP. He has been conservative to exactly the same degree that Richard Nixon basically governed as a moderate liberal, something no conservative would deny today.

I would dismiss this as yet another attempt to recast a former president as centrist in the eyes of history. Almost every former president could be called centrist if you cherry pick. But this is a well written article and worth reading.

Grit Trumps Talent and IQ: A Story Every Parent (and Educator) Should Read

according to one Stanford colleague, and a leading voice in the effort to translate into the classroom ideas like hers that self-control and grit, more than talent and IQ, may hold the keys to a better life.

This leads me to wonder, how harmful is active and passive discouragement to growing minds? To what extent are bad schools and subtle prejudices the causes of failure?

Biden Reportedly Calls Tea Partiers ‘Crazy’

Vice President Joe Biden called the tea party “crazy” and said its adherents have “no judgment” during a closed-door meeting Tuesday, CNN reported.

Biden is in trouble for accidentally telling the truth. The GOP has radically shifted to the right and is no longer interested in anything except posturing and profiteering.

Koch Group Sends Fake Voter Information To Discourage Illinois Voters

This is what actual election fraud looks like.

Sam Harris On the Mechanics of Defamation

Why would it be ethical to drop a bomb on the leaders of ISIS at this moment? Because of all the harm they’ve caused? No. Killing them will do nothing to alleviate that harm. It would be ethical to kill these men—once again, only if we couldn’t capture them—because of all the death and suffering they intend to cause in the future. Why do they intend this? Because of what they believe about infidels, apostates, women, paradise, prophecy, America, and so forth.

Aslan and Greenwald know that nowhere in my work do I suggest that we kill harmless people for thought crimes. And yet they (along with several of their colleagues) are doing their best to spread this lie about me. Nearly every other comment they’ve made about my work is similarly misleading.

Shame on Aslan and Greenwald for taking a cheap shot.

Evidence Connects Quakes to Oil, Natural Gas Boom

He said energy companies can try to prevent human-induced earthquakes by avoiding faults when they inject oil and gas wastewater into the ground and by not pumping fluids too quickly into the ground. “You can reduce the risk of large earthquakes through careful monitoring and planning,” Jackson said. “You can’t make it zero, however.”

This isn’t conclusive just yet, but this can no longer be ignored.

The best proof yet that nobody has actually read Piketty’s book

In other words, very few economists believe that Thomas Piketty’s equation r > g explains the rise in US inequality over the past 40 years. The punchline here, however, is that Piketty’s book does not say that r > g explains the rise in US inequality over the past 40 years.

The best criticisms of Piketty have not come from the media or right wing hacks. They’ve come from policy wonks in the center.