backfire theory

Protecting his third nest

Did you know it costs US taxpayers $20 billion a year to cool the troops in Afghanistan and Iraq?  That’s right to keep them cooled down we spend more money per year on cooling than we spend on financing NASA.

Have you ever wondered why strange, kookie, peculiar, freakish ideas persist?  Why conspiracy nuts latch on to beliefs and no matter how much evidence is out there to refute it they still believe the untruth and find material to bolster their ideas?

Lately on line there have been articles that refer to studies done by researchers that have determined that when beliefs are threatened by information that doesn’t reinforce the belief but in fact negates it the believer will not give up the belief but will become further entrenched. 

These studies are based upon single instances where the participant is given something to read that disagrees with their ideology, then tested after to see if the factual information changed their mind.  Say for instance one group that believed Saddam had WMD’s was given a paragraph to read that was based upon information correcting this belief and saying there were none.  Instead of believing the new factual information they became more firmly entrenched in their original beliefs.  This condition has been labeled the “backfire effect” and is being pushed on line to influence people not to bother trying to change minds because you won’t succeed.

Nest 2 destroyed last Wed. Now she is on nest 3

Well i decided to research the “backfire effect” and discovered that before it was called “effect” there was other studies done that called a different outcome the “backfire theory.”  The “backfire theory” looks instead at movements that have been created when actions by those in power are perceived as unfair or unjust.  Kind of like what has happened in Wisconsin, where people who were probably ideologically split came together to protect their rights and their jobs.  Where recall petitions have garnered more signatures than those in office received for votes and where those in power have been blindsided by the backlash against their draconian changes.

Anyway

“Conditions for the backfire theory as defined by Brian Martin are “an action perceived as unjust, unfair, excessive or disproportional.”  Martin is one of the originators of "backfire theory", which analyses the political forces at play in cases where repression or injustice inflicted on vulnerable groups in society "backfires" against the perpetrators of

the injustice. According to Martin's theory, authorities commonly use five distinct methods to prevent their injustice from backfiring: cover-up, devaluing the target, re-interpreting events, using official channels and using intimidation and bribery.” Martin

Studies done on the "backfire effect"(which says you won't change your mind) don’t evaluate how a constant stream of factual information can change minds. There is a tipping point at which people can no longer hold onto their beliefs when the facts just don’t support it any longer.  The “backfire theory,” and what happened in Wisconsin is a perfect example of people who can come together regardless of ideology and fight back.

In a study done by Redlawsk, Civettini, Emmerson their abstract says:

“We show experimental evidence that such an affective tipping point does in fact exist. We also show that as this tipping point is reached, anxiety increases, suggesting that the mechanism that generates the tipping point and leads to more accurate updating may be related to the theory of affective intelligence. The existence of a tipping point suggests that voters are not immune to disconfirming information after all, even when initially acting as motivated reasoners.”

If you are continually bombarded with information that trashes what you thought to be true eventually you have to stop believing and re-evaluate. Believing in the “backfire effect” as opposed to “theory” would tend to make one stop trying to change minds. If we bought into “effect” instead of “theory” the powerful can keep us divided and they can get on with squeezing every bit of loose change out of our pockets, shutting down all the social safety nets, and engaging in endless wars.

Right now i believe that there are powerful forces afoot that don’t want us all talking to each other.  If you believe in the "effect" you will stop trying to talk to anyone who doesn't agree with you, but if you believe in the "theory" (like me)you will never give up trying to change minds.

So in my constant work at changing hearts and minds here are a few things we need to do as a country to tend to the deficit and try not to burden the middle class and poor with any more setbacks.

Tax Wall Street fairly

Wind down the wars responsibly

Close down some of our overseas bases

Roll back the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy

Close corporate tax loopholes

As Van Jones says, “We are not stupid. We can do the math.  The pie, the country’s GDP, is getting bigger!  It’s just your slice that is getting smaller. The social contract between corporate America and the rest of America is broken.”

Beautiful pollen at Sunny Isle

The private sector caused the credit crunch, the financial crisis, and the global recession. The public sector bailed out the banks and brought the world back from the brink of ruin, when is the public sector going to get the recognition it deserves?

Pelosi had this to say about Cantor,“Leader Cantor can’t handle the truth when it comes to these tax subsidies for big oil, for corporations sending jobs overseas or giving tax breaks to the wealthiest people in the country, while they’re asking seniors to pay more for less, as they abolish Medicare,”

Tax cuts don’t produce jobs, the Republicans proved during the Bush years, that tax cuts produce deficits.

Recent studies have shown that states that cut spending have also seen their economies tank.  Jobs have been lost in the states where cuts have been made. In fact the more money cut the more jobs have been lost.  States that have increased spending or maintained the spending levels have seen their states enjoy more private sector jobs and actual increases in the employment statistics. According to the study spending cuts have gone hand in hand with job losses.  http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2011/06/27/255010/chart-states-cut-most-spending-jobs/

And finally,

When the history of America's decline as a great power is written, it will be stories like this that are used to illustrate how warped our priorities had become, and how we as a people allowed the corrupt and greedy to hijack our political process to enrich themselves at the expense of the nation, and to use the military to secure corporate objectives not essential to national security. 

The public is you

Jacks

Why is it we always hear that “Big Government” strangles small business but i’ve never seen any proof of this?  By strangle do they mean making them pay taxes or putting them out of business?

i was recently reminded of our not so distant past when small towns and cities had local hardware stores, family pharmacies, small grocery stores, clothing shops, shoe shops, and electronic shops where you could get all your appliances fixed, candy and ice cream shops and i think you get the picture. Now you can hardly find one and almost every place in America has lost those businesses to the corporate behemoths that we know as Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Best Buys, K-Mart, Cost-Co, Krogers, Exxon etc.

All over the country large corporations have put small family run businesses out of business through competition, bulk buying and marketing. They have the resources to take a loss at one store and count on sales at another to balance their books until the store takes off.  Small business owners can’t do that, they can’t compete and must depend upon their customers to remain loyal and supportive. If they loose that customer base they have no other option but to close or go bankrupt.

Beach just below Point Udall

Most of those corporations i listed above make billions of dollars a year all over the world. Their influence is much more powerful than any individual business owner trying to get a break, so they use it, they use their profits to buy influence, they lobby Congress and state governments all over the nation to do their bidding, they finance think tanks to get the electorate confused and focused not on them but on government. They want you to believe that lower taxes will help your business because it’s “BIG GOVERNMENT” that is ruining small family businesses.

And you believe that right?  Was it taxes that put these small business out of business, can someone show me the proof that taxes ruined small business or was it something else? And if low taxes make more jobs why do we have record unemployment after a period of unprecedented low taxation?

I think you can answer that for yourselves.

Large corporations have been putting people out of business for a long long time but that is not all they can do.  Since the early 2000’s large financial companies have been setting up in house departments that are strictly focused on purchasing public property. That’s right, purchasing property that you the tax payer have already paid for. They will privatize the property and charge you to use it.

Cane Bay mini wetlands

All over the nation towns and cities that have finalized the process of privatization of infrastructure are realizing it wasn’t such a good deal. In Indiana where they sold off a highway in 2006 to pay their debts the reality of a 75 year lease is coming back to bite them. Tolls that had seen no price increase since 1985 doubled from $18 to $35 and will still increase every year, alternate roads can’t be improved any where near the toll road if it will affect its revenue stream, the public is responsible for paying the bill for flooding that resulted in lost revenue and the money gained from the purchase was used up in a few years. This deal constrained the public’s ability to use roads it had built fifty years before.

In Chicago the city parking meters now belong to a wealth fund based in Abu Dhabi but partnered with Morgan Stanley. Parking fees increased almost immediately, meters broke and no one fixed them but when people parked at the broken meters they got tickets from the new consortium.  The deal was done by Mayor Daley for approximately 1 billion but should, according to the actuarial reports, bring in more than 11 billion for the consortium. Bad deal for the public, great deal for the company.

Private companies will buy the assets for much less than they are worth and extract every penny of profit. If there should be a disaster that destroys the asset, the company will walk away, and the public will be left with the rubble. The assumption is made that anything run by the government is so inefficient that the private sector can run it better, make a huge profit and the public will still be better off. What a laugh!

Selling off our public assets is akin to selling off your living room furniture then renting it back so you can sit on it, where is the benefit to the public?

Taking the public out of everything in American life is driving us towards a future where only the privileged will have access. So you decide, do you still think government is ruining businesses, are you ready to auction off American public property? If not you better start speaking up cause the public is you.

The Protector

The Protector

i’ve taken to calling a local bird the Protector.  He spends most of his day perched on my railing ready to attack anything.  He is stealthy, fast and an incredible defender; spending long hours standing at attention, listening and watching for incoming predators.  He rarely takes a break to eat or wash because his main concern sits on a rickety nest, and i mean rickety.

The Protector is a Grey Kingbird that is locally indigenous and not threatened.  They have adapted well to life on the island and are one of the more prolific birds here, but the ones around my house have been failing to reproduce for about four years now.  Every late May or early June i have a pair that builds a nest in the West Indian Cedar tree which is also an indigenous tree.

Grey Kingbird Nest

This year they built a nest and laid some eggs in a Cedar tree just out of the wind, unlike years past, where they were completely un-protected.  The nest looked pretty good and i thought maybe this year they would finally succeed but the rains took it out so they built another one.  The nest in the picture is the second one they have built in the same tree this year.  They finished it in no time and are sitting on eggs again. 

The whole nest building process and guarding is tough work.  The Protector’s job is not easy as he is burdened by Pearly Eyed Thrashers that try to dive bomb the nest.   The Thrasher's lie in wait in the Turpentine tree and when they think he is derelict in his duties they do a surveillance tour.  He usually spots them on the incoming flight and dive bombs.  Sometimes the female will come off the nest and the two of them will attack together, bashing and pecking until the Thrasher flies off.  None of the other small birds that visit the tree bother the Protector and he lets them suck the nectar out of the flowers or perch on a branch with nary a look.

The Thrasher is an aggressive, opportunistic bird that is rarely put in its place by other birds, but the Grey Kingbird is a formidable foe and battles relentlessly to protect his family; quite a feat for such a small bird.  The even bigger Red Tailed Hawk never even gets close to the nest because if the Protector sees one flying in he is on its back in no time, pecking and dive bombing, keeping it far away from even seeing what he is protecting. 

Watching this little bird work hard every day to protect his family just warms my heart, but makes it ache too when i think about those in our nation that want to deny that we humans have played a negative role in the state of our environment.

This little bird is representative of all of nature out there trying as hard as it can to keep the cycle of life going, while we cut down his trees, pollute the air, rape the land and force him into narrower and narrower environments to survive.  When are we going to wake up and be real stewards of this earth?

Oh Yeah, the answer to last weeks logic problem is the German.

rain rain go away

It’s still raining here, we have been under some kind of stalled system that is now producing flash floods and thunderstorms so we are still under a watch.  For days we have been in a band of weather that is coming out of the west and heading north east, an unusual direction for us this time of year.  The air is warm and heavy with moisture, and the seas are suffering from run off.  All along the shore muddy gook has replaced the beautiful blue. The hillsides are so saturated that i worry when ever anyone drives down our steep roads that they may not hold. The long term forecast is for more rain maybe petering out sometime this weekend.

Even with all this rain St. Croix is a beautiful emerald green and everything is growing like mad.  Good for the trees and grasses but it’s not so good for the farmers who are having a hard time with their crops.  Their fields have been flooded, re-planted, and flooded again. My favorite farmer has closed his vegetable stand because his crops have been ruined.  He’s still selling meat and poultry but on a more limited schedule. Usually this time of year all sorts of goodies can be found along the roadside but now it’s not the case, so we all have to buy imported stuff which doesn’t taste as good.

So enough of the weather…i have been collecting tid bits from around the net and thought i’d put a few up today.

1.  Louis de Sousa at the Oil Drum goes into a detailed discussion on why he thinks peak oil is what brought down the Soviet Union.

“The causes of the fall of the Soviet Union are thought to be inefficiency and the Soviet response to the Reagan Administration’s military buildup of the early 1980s. However, a more plausible explanation is the decline in Soviet oil production caused by peak oil. This gives the world an example of a modern economy confronted by peak oil and what lessons we can learn from it.”

2.  Wisconsin Republicans just passed a new law that allows a property owner the right not to replace his septic system even if his land is swimming in s**t as long as it hasn’t impacted his neighbors land.  The old law, which had advised cutting edge septic systems for replacement of old dysfunctional ones, is being replaced by one that will allow sewage to lie openly upon a piece of private property. Doesn’t this sound like a case of individual rights going out of control.  i’m glad i don’t live in Wisconsin.

3.  Free markets don’t exist.  A book just came out that explains that there is no such thing as a free market. “23 Things they don’t tell you about Capitalism” by Ha-Joon Chang who teaches at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Cambridge.  i’ve never read it but the review looks interesting.

4.  The Pentagon under the auspices of National Security is ignoring the climate skeptics in Congress who have scuttled legislation to combat climate change. In a 2011 report called, "A National Strategic Narrative" (pdf), written by two special assistants to chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Mike Mullen, it was argued, "We must recognize that security means more than defense." Part of this entails pressing past "a strategy of containment to a strategy of sustainment (sustainability)". They went on to assert climate change is "already shaping a 'new normal' in our strategic environment". They believe climate change is real and that plans must be implemented now to deal with it as a strategic issue.

5.  Real Estate news:

             According to Core Logic Nationwide, 10.9 million mortgages (22.7 percent)          were upside down in the first quarter vs. 11.1 million (23.1 percent) in the fourth quarter.

• Nevada had the highest negative equity: 63 percent of all mortgaged properties underwater.
• Next came by Arizona (50 percent), Florida (46 percent) and Michigan (36 percent.)
• California only had 31 percent underwater — to an average $93,000 shortfall.
• As for big regions? Las Vegas was tops at 66 percent upside down; followed by Stockton (56 percent), Phoenix (55 percent), Modesto (55 percent) and Reno (54 percent).

6.  Einstein said 98% of the world’s population couldn’t figure out this logic problem.

Clues:

• The Brit lives in the red house.
• The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
• The Dane drinks tea.
• Looking from in front, the green house is just to the left of the white house.
• The green house's owner drinks coffee.
• The person who smokes Pall Malls raises birds.
• The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
• The man living in the center house drinks milk.
• The Norwegian lives in the leftmost house.
• The man who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
• The man who keeps a horse lives next to the man who smokes Dunhill.
• The owner who smokes Bluemasters also drinks beer.
• The German smokes Prince.
• The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
• The man who smokes Blends has a neighbor who drinks water.

Who owns the pet fish?

Answer next week unless you look it up on the net, but that is cheating.

See ya

$2,000 for a rainy day

Wednesday June 1, 2011

St. Croix, Virgin Islands

8:00am Salt River NDBC weather station

Water Temperature…82.8

Air Temperature…….82.4

Did you know that half of all Americans do not have access to $2,000 for a rainy day? Half could not come up with the money right now if they had to, without taking out a loan or maxing out their credit cards. When asked if they could come up with it in 30 days 28% said they wouldn’t be able to do it.  According to a survey done of 1,900 participants the National Bureau of Economic Research found that only 25% of the American population could come up with $2,000 in an emergency, 34% said they could get the money by asking family or friends.

Some may say that a lot of those people who can’t come up with $2,000 smoke, drink, have cell phones, big screen TV's, cable, internet, Ipods, a new car, X-box, designer clothes and shoes, and/or buy their lunch or at least coffee everyday.  Maybe even some of them are on welfare. The point being that the way they spend their money would exhibit a lack of delayed gratification and no financial planning. This would be attributed to half the American population with no basis in fact.  Its very easy to accuse half the population of this even when its not true.

Top 1% owns 42.7% of the total net worth of the nation
Bottom 80% owns 6.9% of the nations net worth

Average Net Worth of bottom 80% : $48,600
Average Net Worth of top 1%: $23.77 Million
Average Tax Rate on bottom 50%: 20%
Average Tax Rate on small business owners: 32%
Average Tax Rate on the top 1%: 18.8%
Average Tax Rate on the top 100 corporations: 9.7%

Source FRB Survey of Consumer Finances

Today the Federal Reserve is punishing people for saving money.  Interest rates are hovering at around 1% for regular bank and CD savings, which is less than inflation and the cost of living. Houses are losing value and the stock market is too risky for some. On the opposite extreme the media is telling you to spend or the economy will collapse. You are encouraged to go into more personal debt even as you are bombarded with deficit talk, because without demand the economy can’t expand.

No wonder so many people are living on the edge.  Wages have not been going up and with the outsourcing of manufacturing those high paying jobs are disappearing at a rapid rate.  With so many not able to reach into their pockets and pull out $2,000 in an emergency don’t you think that this is more like the fallout from decades of the "trickle-down" myth. Most Americans can't come up with $2,000. . .but a select few can reach in their pockets and pull out $2,000,000. . .and those are the important ones that get the tax breaks.   

Just look back up at that chart again? Who's getting screwed here?

i truly wish people could see it. Factors like ingenuity, competition, corruption, and just dumb luck will always play a role in anyone's measure of success. Reality dictates that we all cannot be corporate executives, bankers, doctors, lawyers, and rock-stars. Not everyone will be able to become rich.  Fresh invention and hard work can pay off...But the real truth is that the majority of Americans will work their lives away as car salesmen, real estate brokers, policemen, firemen, construction workers, nurses, janitors, clerks, waitresses, exercise specialists, military personnel, bus drivers, teachers, etc. dreaming of hitting the lottery some day. 

Please remember that success is not guaranteed and a lot of people are suffering despite how hard they worked.

So for all these reasons i continue to keep the signature on my e-mails front and center.

"Taxes do not "take money out of the economy" they enable the economy.  The rich do not "create jobs, We, the People create jobs through demand."

"Entitlements are cost-cutting business like efficiencies that save money for society as a whole." 
Lets not reduce the deficit on the backs of the middle class and poor, bring home the troops from Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and all the rest of the places around the world.  Tax the wealthy making over $1,000,000 per year and corporations that are getting away with no taxes that will solve the deficit problem.

See ya next week