Evidence-Based Jurisprudence

A new ruling out of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals blocks an Arizona law that would restrict medical abortions. Some background on the case:

The Arizona Legislature in 2012 passed a law requiring abortion providers to follow the federal Food and Drug Administration requirements for the medication. The FDA requirements restrict the medication to women who are seven or fewer weeks into their pregnancy and requires three visits to a physician. Arizona abortion providers had been using an evidence-based regimen that allowed the medication to be taken up to nine weeks of pregnancy and required two visits to a physician.

So the FDA requirements for this particular medication are contrary to what medical evidence indicates is appropriate use of it. The court ruled that these stricter standards place an undue burden on women seeking abortions, and does so for no good reason (other than, you know, making sure those sex-having sluts receive their proper punishment, I mean precious baby gifts, that God intended for them).

"Plaintiffs have introduced uncontroverted evidence that the Arizona law substantially burdens women's access to abortion services, and Arizona has introduced no evidence that the law advances in any way its interest in women's health," the order states. 

It goes on to describe the FDA regimen as "less safe, less effective."

Unfortunately, the Fifth and Sixth Circuits have ruled the opposite way in similar cases, setting up a likely showdown at the Supreme Court. I'm sure the undue burden standard and the medical evidence will be given all due consideration by all of the Justices on the Court.

Isn't it pretty to think so.

Choices

It goes without saying that, absent unlimited income, budgets necessarily reflect choices. Moyers & Company (via Raw Story) lay out some of the tradeoffs we make as a nation when we allow corporations to evade paying their share of taxes:

Seven things America could buy with the $181 billion in taxes uncollected because of corporate loopholes

Boggles the mind.

Native Plants I Love

Amsonia tabernaemontana (Common Name: Eastern blue star)

Another lovely blue star, this species begins blooming about a week or two later than its cousin Amsonia hubrichtii.  As its common name name would suggest, Amsonia tabernaemontana also features blue, star-shaped flowers that appear in terminal clusters atop stems that reach 2-3 ft. tall. The foliage on this plant, however, resembles willow-leaves, rather than hubrichtii's feathery appearance, and the flowers are a darker blue. 

Close up of flower clusters

Eastern blue star is native to the central and eastern U.S. It can be grown in full sun to part shade. Multiple stems grow from a central core and create a mounding form 2-3 feet wide. We have a handful of these plants interspersed in a bed that contains our serviceberry trees, ornamental grasses, and assorted other native perennials (including Amsonia hubrichtii). The bed gets full sun, we haven't had to water since the first summer we planted it, and there is something cool to look at pretty much all year long.

The two photos above were taken in mid-may. Not sure when the photo below was taken, as it isn't one of mine, but obviously sometime in the fall. Like its relative, this blue star also puts on a fall show.

Parents Are Sooooooo Embarrassing

Love this.

I wonder if this person left the sign up when they returned the truck. And if so, how long before Dad noticed. Hee!

Demand

I was listening to NPR yesterday morning driving into work, and I heard a story about employment numbers finally climbing back up to where they were before the financial collapse in 2008. Yay? I guess?

While it's great that employment numbers are improving, it's kind of horrifying that it has taken over six years to climb out of the hole; it's even more horrifying when you realize that the jobs that have come back largely pay less than the jobs that were lost; and it's more horrifying still to realize that while working stiffs have been taking it on the chin since the Masters of the Universe wrecked the world, the MOUs themselves have made out just fine, thank you very much.

I thought one of the commenters in the story got to the heart of what has been going on for the past six years, but that almost nobody (outside of people like Paul Krugman) has wanted to talk about:

So what's the reason for this slow growth that's held back the job market? Here's one big reason, says Heidi Shierholz, weak consumer demand.

SHIERHOLZ: Employers are smart. They're going to hire people exactly when they need them to meet some increased demand for their goods and services. That's the missing piece. Demand is the missing thing out there. 

When the wealthy (with an assist from the political class) vacuum up all of the value of our productive labor for themselves (by keeping wages low, forcing existing workers to work longer and harder (with no corresponding pay increase) rather than hiring more workers, eliminating private sector jobs, cutting public assistance in various forms, and tilting the tax code heavily in their favor, just to name a few examples) they remove the fuel that powers our economy: consumer demand.

There is only so much stuff and so many services the small numbers of super-wealthy at the top can consume, even with all their riches. So while they may have more money to speculate with (thus necessitating the creation of ever more exotic "bets on bets" financial instruments, which is, as we saw in 2008, a problem all on its own) they do nothing to stimulate the economy as a whole.

What makes the economic engine of our country run is broad-based prosperity so that there are millions of people with disposable income who can purchase the goods and services of their fellow citizens, who then employ people to meet that demand, thus creating other consumers who create further demand, and so the virtuous cycle goes.*  It infuriates me every time I hear a politician or a pundit argue in favor of tax-cuts for the "job creators"as way to stimulate hiring.

I am a business owner, and our company hires people not when our taxes are lowered a few percentage points (although we might take a nice trip overseas), but when there are customers walking in our doors necessitating more staff to meet their needs. In other words, consumer demand.  And you get that by raising the minimum wage, keeping public sector employment strong, keeping social insurance programs strong, supporting a strong labor movement, and by clawing back some of the grift at the top by raising top marginal tax rates.

Maybe back in the 70s, when top tax rates were actually high, the labor market was tight, wages were high, and capital was not as free to slosh around the world, supply-side economic solutions to our economic problems might have made more sense. Now they make absolutely none.

* Virtuous in the sense of stimulating broadly shared economic benefits. The sustainability of a consumer-based economy, for example, is a whole different question.

Dope-ier

Continuing the theme of Godawful New York Times Op-Ed columnists, here's a lovely takedown of Ross Douthat's really bad trio of columns on the recent shootings in Santa Barbara:

I mostly don’t read Ross Douthat’s New York Times columns because I find his “I’m just a nice conservative guy trying to find some common ground in this mixed up world” thing to be pretty exhausting. He is a chronic mansplainer and a reliable apologist for discrimination (with a little intellectual flair). But the trio of opinion pieces he wrote this week in response to Elliot Rodger and current public conversations about masculinity and misogyny are probably worth talking about. Because Douthat really wants you to think that he gets it, but he very much does not.

In his first go-round on the issue, Douthat uses lots of careful language to concede that he understands why we might need to talk about misogyny right now. Because before Rodger murdered six people, he told the world that he wanted to put women in concentration camps and take his revenge against the “sluts” who rejected him. “In this particular tragedy, the killer’s motives really do seem to have a larger cultural significance,” he admits. Now, mind you, Douthat doesn’t want to talk too much about it, lest we allow emotional things like examinations of systemic violence against women clutter our thinking or get us mixed up in the “splendid little culture war over the significance of the Santa Barbara killer’s distinctive stew of lust, misogyny and rage.”

Plus, he really just wants to blame casual sex for the tragedy. Douthat goes on to argue that feminist attitudes about sex may be as much of a problem in our culture as Rodger’s sense of violent entitlement to women’s bodies, which is the actual point that he’s been waiting to make through all of his maybe misogyny is perhaps possibly real sometimes but not in the way most feminists say it is hand-wringing.

I promise, I won't subject you to even second-hand exposure to Thomas Friedman or David Brooks, but the fact that Dowd, Friedman, Brooks, and Douthat are granted so much real estate to blather on in what is supposed to be the paper of record says nothing good about the the New York Times, or the state of elite political punditry in general.

Can I haz a new New York Times editorial page pretty pretty plz?

Dope.

Thought this was a funny take on Maureen Dowd's ridiculous column about her ridiculous trip to the Land of Weed.

What she should have written: "I went to Colorado and decided to get high. I was stupid and did no research or fact-checking. I asked no questions. I just started eating, and then ate some more. I got really sick. My bad. I'll be smarter next time." 

Imagine the Times sends Maureen Dowd to Colombia. Would she decide to try out the coca leaves, not ask how many to chew and consume a bushel? If the Times sent her to Yemen, would she decide to chew some Khat leaves, and not feeling the desired effect, keep chewing for hours? Tens of millions of people in South America and Africa chew coca and khat leaves without overdosing or dying, just like tens of millions of people around the world use marijuana and marijuana-infused products and don't hallucinate to the point they think they are dying. When you ingest a new substance, you are experimenting. Do a little homework and you'll be fine. If you're dumb enough to dive in blind, you have only yourself to blame.

OOPS! Turns out Dowd wasn't so stupid as to ask no questions about the drug she was about to ingest. Turns out she was even stupider. She chose to completely ignore the information she was given about the drug she was about to ingest.

Can I haz a New NYT Editorial Page, plz?