Andrew Sullivan's Blog, page 23

Zeroing In On Traffic Safety

Anna Maria Barry-Jester points overseas:

The Netherlands and Sweden have overhauled the design of their roads and cities, resulting in enormous declines in motor vehicle fatalities. In urban areas, curbs are removed, giving the perception of shared space (though cyclists, pedestrians and cars are still separated), which encourages drivers to slow down. And in most of Europe, driving lanes are much narrower, which also fosters slower travel. In Sweden, a program called Vision Zero treats all traffic fatalities as preventable, and this idea has recently crossed the ocean to U.S. cities.

NYC has been introducing new traffic laws along similar lines. The effects thus far:

[The citywide speed limit reduction to 25 mph] was the most public of Vision Zero’s initial changes, but to date, 29 of its 63 initiatives have been implemented. Preliminary data suggests the program may be paying off: 2014 saw the lowest number of pedestrian deaths since the city started keeping records in 1910. New York also had a decline in overall motor vehicle deaths from previous years. But with 134 pedestrian deaths and 250 overall, the city is a long way from zero.

Data released Tuesday by the New York City Department of Transportation also showed that controversial speed cameras near schools may be working to slow traffic at the 19 sites where they have been placed since September. Overall, there was a decline of 58.7 percent in the number of daily speeders found on these cameras (which ticket only at speeds of 10 mph above the posted speed limit), with individual cameras’ declines ranging from 21 to 75 percent. This suggests the mere presence of the camera can help reduce speeds.

A Poem For Friday

“Even the Raven” by Kathleen Jamie:

The grey storm passes

a storm the sea wakes from

then soon forgets . . .

surf plumes at the rocks –

wave after wave, each

drawing its own long fetch

– and the hills across the firth –

golden, as the cloud lifts –yes

it’s here, everything

you wanted, everything

you insisted on –

Even the raven,

his old crocked voice

asks you what you’re waiting for

(From The Overhaul © 2012 by Kathleen Jamie. Used by permission of Graywolf Press. Photo by John Morgan)

Backing De Blasio

Love the irony that #NYPD officers turned backs on #deblasio to look at a #DunkinDonuts instead. pic.twitter.com/idBcKEPZgC

— Eric Stewart (@EricMichaelNYC) January 16, 2015

Nearly 7 in 10 New Yorkers disapprove of the recent antics:

“Cops turning their backs on their boss, Mayor Bill de Blasio, is unacceptable, New Yorkers say by large margins,” Maurice Carroll, a Quinnipiac University poll assistant, said in a statement announcing the results. “Even cop-friendly Staten Island gives that rude gesture only a split decision.”

Another poll from Quinnipiac shows the mayor’s overall approval up slightly. Friedersdorf runs through more numbers:

I worried New Yorkers would punish Mayor de Blasio for losing control, rather than backing him to insist that the NYPD is subservient to the people. I didn’t give New Yorkers enough credit.

A new poll by Quinnipiac University suggests that the city’s voters have seen through the police union’s tactics, and that its temper tantrum will cost it political support. Consider the following findings:

“Police union leader Patrick Lynch’s comments that the mayor’s office had blood on its hands are ‘too extreme,’ voters say 77 – 17 percent, the independent Quinnipiac University Poll finds. There is no party, gender, racial, borough or age group which finds the comments ‘appropriate.'”
“Voters say 47 to 37 percent that Mayor de Blasio’s statements and actions during his 2013 campaign and during his first year in office show he does support police.”
“The recent slowdown in police activity is more of a protest, 56 percent of voters say, while 27 percent say it is because police officers fear for their safety.”
“Voters say 57 to 34 percent that officers should be disciplined if they deliberately are making fewer arrests or writing fewer tickets. Black, white and Hispanic voters all agree.”
“Voters give Patrolmen’s Benevolent Assn. President Patrick Lynch a negative 18 to 39 percent favorability rating and say 43 to 27 percent that he is a mostly negative force in the city.”

Josh Marshall adds:

What also emerged in the poll is public anger that Patrick Lynch, President of the Police Benevolent Association has managed to make the public face of an asshole into the public face of the NYPD. And now there are signs of rising opposition to Lynch within the union itself. A raucous union meeting at Antun’s catering hall in Queens Village on Tuesday night broke down into a melee of pushing and shoving and screaming involving some 100 police officers angry Lynch’s leadership of the union. The yelling and screaming and shoving went on for about ten minutes, according to the Daily News, before Lynch walked out.

Noah Rothman searches for a silver lining for conservatives:

But the Quinnipiac poll isn’t all bad news for the NYPD:

New York City voters approve 56 – 37 percent of the job police citywide are doing, compared to 51 – 41 percent December 17. Approval today is 66 – 28 percent among white voters and 54 – 36 percent among Hispanic voters, while black voters disapprove 54 – 41 percent. Voters approve 71 – 25 percent of the job police in their community are doing.

Furthermore, conservatives can rejoice in the poll’s findings that MSNBC host slash activist Rev. Al Sharpton has received his lowest favorability score in the history of Quinnipiac polling. Only 29 percent of respondents view Sharpton favorably while 53 percent have a negative view of the political activist.

Egypt’s Revolution Isn’t Over

Thanassis Cambanis checks in on the country. He recognizes that “the core grievances that drew frustrated Egyptians to Tahrir Square in the first place remain unaddressed”:

Police operate with complete impunity and disrespect for citizens, routinely using torture. Courts are whimsical, uneven, at times absurdly unjust and capricious. The military controls a state within a state, removed from any oversight or scrutiny, with authority over a vast portion of the national economy and Egypt’s public land. Poverty and unemployment continue to rise, while crises in housing, education, and health care have grown even worse than the most dire predictions of development experts. Corruption has largely gone unpunished, and Sisi has begun to roll back an initial wave of prosecutions against Mubarak, his sons, and his oligarchs.

But the overthrow of Mubarak has had an impact:

The legacies of the revolution are hotly contested, but one is indisputable: Large numbers of Egyptians believe they’re entitled to political rights and power. That remains a potent idea even if revolutionary forces and their aspiration for a more just and equitable order seem beaten for now.

In the worst of times under Mubarak, and before him Sadat and Nasser, mass arrests, executions, and the banning of political life kept the country quiet. But as Egypt heads toward the fourth anniversary of the January 25th uprisings, things are anything but quiet, despite the best efforts of Sisi’s state. Dissidents are smuggling letters out of jail. Muslim Brothers protest weekly for the restoration of civilian rule. Secular activists are working on detailed plans so that next time around, they’ll be able to present an alternative to the status-quo power. No one believes that this means another revolution is imminent, but the percolating dissatisfaction, and the ongoing work of political resistance, suggest that it won’t wait 30 years either.

A group of people who call themselves anti-coup demonstrators, stage a protest in the Helmeyat el Zeytun district of Cairo, Egypt on January 8, 2015. (Photo by Stringer/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

It’s Time To Stop The Handouts For Dirty Energy

The Economist declares that the “fall in the price of oil and gas provides a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fix bad energy policies”:

The most straightforward piece of reform, pretty much everywhere, is simply to remove all the subsidies for producing or consuming fossil fuels. Last year governments around the world threw $550 billion down that rathole—on everything from holding down the price of petrol in poor countries to encouraging companies to search for oil. By one count, such handouts led to extra consumption that was responsible for 36% of global carbon emissions in 1980-2010.

Falling prices provide an opportunity to rethink this nonsense. Cash-strapped developing countries such as India and Indonesia have bravely begun to cut fuel subsidies, freeing up money to spend on hospitals and schools (see article). But the big oil exporters in the poor world, which tend to be the most egregious subsidisers of domestic fuel prices, have not followed their lead. Venezuela is close to default, yet petrol still costs a few cents a litre in Caracas. And rich countries still underwrite the production of oil and gas. Why should American taxpayers pay for Exxon to find hydrocarbons? All these subsidies should be binned.

Inheriting Your Parents’ Nostalgia

Rosie Cima examines research on how “people are disproportionately attached to songs that were on the radio when they were young”:

For better or for worse, this preference seems to override things like the critical quality of the music — people just plain like music more if it was popular when they were young, regardless of whether or not that music was terrible. But an even stranger thing about all this is that these preferences appear to be inheritable. In 2012, researchers from Cornell University and UC Santa Cruz exposed a bunch of college-aged subjects to clips of Billboard top singles dating back to 1955. Then, they surveyed the subjects’ responses.

The researchers’ found that, in addition to liking music from their own generation, “subjects also displayed a similar attachment – including a feeling of nostalgia — to music that was popular in the early 1980s, long before they were born“:

“According to previous research, this would be the time when [the subject’s] parents’ preferences were established,” the researchers write. Their theory is that because of this attachment, parents listened to this music during their “child rearing years” contributing to their children’s musical education.

And there’s another bump in attachment, preference, and nostalgia for music that was popular in the 1960s. Although researchers mention that this music might just be higher-quality and thus have stayed in the popular listening repertoire longer (earning the label “classic rock”), they also say this bump could be the product of grandparents’ influence, either directly or through the parents, on the subjects’ listening habits and music-associated memories.

Megan Garber comments:

What the research also means, on a more collective level, is that there is a psychological reason that “Hey Ya” will inevitably be bringing people to the dance floors of the weddings of 2040—and that only part of that reason can be attributed to humanity’s ongoing desire to shake it like a Polaroid picture. Just as nostalgia tends to confer more nostalgia, popularity also tends to build on itself: Once a song makes it to the top of the charts, the memories people associate with it help to keep it in our cultural consciousness.

Dissent Of The Day

A reader writes:

I’m disappointed that you would join in the knee-jerk chorus and claim that it was “an absolute disgrace that Obama sent no one of a higher rank than the ambassador.” On Tuesday, 12 Shiite Iraqis were murdered by “Jihadist mass murder.” Should Biden be dispatched to show our solidarity? How about Boko Haram’s recent massacre? Should Kerry be on a plane right now? The US ambassador’s presence in Paris, visiting the French ambassador in DC, Kerry’s statement, and most importantly, tangible intelligence cooperation are appropriate responses. None of the French press is up in arms about the response of the US. Kerry’s remarks in French were widely praised as eloquent and moving. Obama’s “Vive la France” in the condolence book was also embraced.

This march was about the community, not about the USA. To hear the “freedom fries” crowd all of a sudden care passionately about insulting the French is hilarious but expected. I did not expect you to climb on this manufactured outrage bandwagon.

What The Hell Is Going On With The Swiss Franc?

Matt O’Brien describes yesterday’s events:

The Swiss National Bank (SNB) shocked markets on Thursday by announcing that it would no longer hold the value of the Swiss franc down at 1.2 per euro, although it would lower interest rates from -0.25 to -0.75 percent. Mayhem ensued. The Swiss franc immediately shot up as much as 39 percent against the euro, before settling at “only” up 17 percent on the day. This is basically the biggest single-day move for a rich country’s currency, as economist David Zervos points out, in the last 40 years. And it’s sent Switzerland’s stock market down 10 percent, as its suddenly more expensive currency will cripple its exporters by making their goods more expensive abroad.

Neil Irwin explains how, amid the euro crisis of 2011, if “you were a company or rich person in a country like Greece or Italy or even France or Germany, fearful that the euro could go kablooey and your local banks with it, you were sorely tempted to catch a flight to Zurich or Geneva and deposit your money in a Swiss bank”:

All those people looking to park money in Switzerland, a country of only 8 million people, created incredible upward pressure on the Swiss franc. From the start of 2010 to mid-2011, the value of the franc rose 44 percent against the euro.

Think about that for a minute. It would be as if dollars in the state of Virginia (with a population similar to Switzerland) suddenly were worth 44 percent more than the dollars used in the rest of the country. Virginians would be wealthier, but it would be a catastrophe for businesses in the state. Suddenly their costs would be 44 percent higher, effectively, than that of competitors in other states. Tourism would dry up; why go to a Virginia beach when it is 44 percent more expensive than a North Carolina beach?

Jordan Weissmann reviews the same history:

When the euro crises went into full swing during 2011, panicking money men saw the franc as a safe haven and started buying it en masse, pushing up its exchange rate with the euro, and pushing some exporters into bankruptcy. Sensing an emergency, the Swiss National Bank declared that it would start buying euros in “unlimited quantities” to keep the franc’s value down. Thus, we got the cap.

So what changed? Buying unlimited quantities of euros is about to get expensive. The European Central Bank is about to begin a round of quantitative easing to revive the region’s economy—which, for all intents and purposes, means it will be printing lots of euros, which Switzerland would have to purchase in bulk to maintain its exchange rate. That’s just not sustainable. So, instead, it’s bidding goodbye to the cap, and riding out the nasty economic consequences.

In his column today, Krugman argues that “the Swiss just made a big mistake”:

But frankly — francly? — the fate of Switzerland isn’t the important issue. What’s important, instead, is the demonstration of just how hard it is to fight the deflationary forces that are now afflicting much of the world — not just Europe and Japan, but quite possibly China too. And while America has had a pretty good run the past few quarters, it would be foolish to assume that we’re immune.

Dean Baker disagrees that Switzerland made a mistake:

Switzerland did not see the same sort of downturn as the rest of the OECD in 2008. Furthermore, it has fully recovered from its downturn with a GDP that is 8 percent above its pre-recession level and an unemployment rate of 3.5 percent.

In this context, it is actually doing what we should want Switzerland to do as a good world citizen. By allowing its currency to rise, it will make its goods and services less competitive internationally. This means it will import more from its trading partners and export less, effectively providing them with an economic boost. This is what we should want to see. The countries that are at or near full employment should be running larger trade deficits or smaller surpluses.

However, Scott Sumner sees Switzerland’s actions as monumentally stupid:

I sometimes receive back channel communication from very-well informed people in Europe. Believe me, just as with the earlier nonsense in Sweden, there is no “rational explanation.” People are appalled.

And Mark Gilbert worries about future financial surprises:

While victims of the turmoil ponder whether Swiss policy makers are irresponsible or just incompetent, the scale of the damage is a timely reminder that contagion is always unpredictable, that markets always overshoot, and that traders, when they smell profit, can outgun central banks.

The Dangerous Marginalization Of France’s Muslims

M.G. Oprea spells out why changing France’s immigration policy won’t prevent future attacks:

The truth is, the men who launched these attacks in the name of Islam were French citizens. They were born and educated in France. They didn’t recently immigrate, and they didn’t import terrorism from a foreign land where they were raised. They were radicalized at home, in France. This is why cutting off immigration from North Africa, where most of France’s Muslim population comes from, or other Muslim countries, will not change the strained state of affairs in France among its citizens, or insulate them from further terrorist attacks.

She declares that “the French Muslim men who join radical Islamist movements often do so in the context of growing up in a country that has never wanted them”:

France has made a series of dangerous mistakes that immigration reform can’t fix. They have alienated a community of Muslims five million strong, and the youths in this community are doubling down on their Muslim identity. Because radical Islam considers itself at war with the West, it appeals to young people who want to reject the Western culture and society they feel has rejected them. So they turn to a fundamentalist interpretation of Islam, often finding their inspiration in prisons, where Arab youths are frequently radicalized.

A recent study found that large numbers of Europe’s Muslims are fundamentalist:

For Ruud Koopmans, sole author of a study published in early January in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies and director of the WZB Berlin Social Science Centre (Germany), religious fundamentalism is defined in three ways: that believers should return to the eternal and unchangeable rules laid down in the past; that these rules only allow one interpretation and are binding for all believers; and that religious rules should have priority over secular laws.

He found that “between 40% and 45% of European Muslims have fundamentalist religious ideas, that is they agree with the three definitions of the term”:

The results show that if first and second generations are considered and if each definition is taken independently, almost 60% would return to the roots of Islam, 75% think there is only one interpretation of the Koran possible to which every Muslim should stick, and 65% say that religious rules are more important to them than the rules of the country in which they live. “However in second generation Muslims the levels are slightly lower (between 50% and 70%),” states the expert.

Justin Gest fears that, after these attacks, “French Muslims — particularly their inclusion in French society — may not recover”:

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Western countries have enacted policies that prioritize counterterrorism and populism at the expense of social cohesion. Governments have implemented search and surveillance practices that target people based on their appearance or names; exceptional rules that alter detention standards for those held on charges pressed predominantly against certain minorities; citizenship criteria that discriminate against residents of certain origins or faiths; and cultural policies that prohibit certain religious practices and traditions but not others.

Critics have shown how such actions fail to secure societies. Far more worryingly, my research shows that such actions amplify a much greater threat for Western Muslims: their political withdrawal.

The Best Of The Dish Today

And so we get a little warmer:

Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan consulted the White House before directing agency personnel to sift through a walled-off computer drive being used by the Senate Intelligence Committee to construct its investigation of the agency’s torture program, according to a recently released report by the CIA’s Office of the Inspector General. The Inspector General’s report, which was completed in July but only released by the agency on Wednesday, reveals that Brennan spoke with White House chief of staff Denis McDonough before ordering CIA employees to “use whatever means necessary” to determine how certain sensitive internal documents had wound up in Senate investigators’ hands.

So at the very least, the White House was aware of the CIA’s intent to spy on the Senate staffers, as part, one can only presume, of its campaign to shield the CIA from any accountability on torture and to undermine as much as possible the SSCI report. Then we have this blather from Josh Earnest today:

Reporter: Was it acceptable for the CIA to go into these computers and look at what, you know, at what the senate committee was doing? Senator Feinstein was very, very upset about this. Does the White House have a position about whether the CIA acted properly or not?

Josh Earnest: What is most important is we have a group of individuals within area of expertise who can sit down and take an impartial look at all the facts and determine exactly what happened to offer up some prescriptions for what can be changed to ensure that any sort of miscommunication or anything that would interfere with the ability of congress to conduct proper oversight of the CIA is avoided in the future. You can read the report. It’s been declassified and released. And they included a set of procedural reforms they believe will be helpful in avoiding any of these disagreements in the future. Fortunately, the director of the CIA said he’d implement these reforms. What’s most important is that there’s an effective relationship between the intelligence agencies and the committees that oversee them.

My favorite line in that pabulum is: “Fortunately, the director of the CIA said he’d implement these reforms.” Fortunately. It’s not as if the president could simply order him to do so. He must ask very, very politely; and if he’s very, very lucky, the CIA Director may occasionally agree.

Some posts today worth revisiting: why women cry more than men; watching Charlie self-censorship in Britain on live TV; the burgeoning Republican consensus that 11 million people need to be forcibly deported from the US; the miracle of the latest Google Translate app; and how Obama’s Gallup approval ratings at this point in his second term are identical to Reagan’s.

The most popular post of the day was Charlie, Blasphemer; followed by Quotes For The Day.

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