Robot F. Kennedy

In this episode, we explore one of ur-symbols of the American Dream: homeownership. In the United States, home ownership is a symbol of the prosperity Americans are promised. It’s been a status symbol separating the middle classes from the poor for much of American history.

Why? And how does one tax policy, the home mortgage interest deduction, play upon our collective dreams of Americanism.

In this episode, we talk about vacation homes, reparations, Mark Twain, returns on investments, writing letters to curry favor with racists, and guillotines.

This is Robot F. Kennedy.

SHOW NOTES

Six Policies Economists Love (And Politicians Hate), Planet Money Podcast

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/07/19/157047211/six-policies-economists-love-and-politicians-hate

Does High Home-Ownership Impair the Labor Market?, Peterson Institute for International Economics

https://piie.com/publications/wp/wp13-3.pdf

Study: Higher levels of homeownership can kill jobs, Washington Post

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/05/07/study-high-levels-of-homeownership-can-kill-the-job-market/

The idea that owning a home makes it harder to find a job because of higher moving costs is now known as "Oswald's hypothesis." And it's come in for plenty of scrutiny. Some economists, for instance, have argued that this effect might be counterbalanced by the fact that people who own homes have denser local networks, which makes it easier for them to find jobs in their local area.

Why is that? The authors find that higher levels of homeownership in a state appear to be associated with lower levels of labor mobility, higher commute times, and fewer new businesses created. Taken together, those three factors tend to increase the unemployment rate. (Why fewer new businesses? One possibility is that homeowners are more likely to use zoning to restrict the activities of firms, though that's just a hypothesis.)

America's interstate highways: America's splurge, The Economist

http://www.economist.com/node/10697196

The 7 big questions Republicans have to answer on tax reform, Vox.com

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/3/31/15093946/gop-tax-reform-cuts-permanent-border-interest

The Ryan-Brady tax reform blueprint would preserve the two biggest and most popular itemized deductions—those for mortgage interest and charitable donations—but eliminate all others, as well as a few credits.

The biggest deal here is the deductions for state income, sales, and real estate taxes, which together provided $80.4 billion in tax relief in fiscal year 2014. That's more than the mortgage interest deduction. The mortgage deduction is widely viewed as politically untouchable, because its affluent-but-not-super-wealthy beneficiaries will cry bloody murder if it’s threatened.

The Tax Deductions Economists Hate, FiveThirtyEight

https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-tax-deductions-economists-hate/

At the top of many economists’ hit list is the mortgage-interest deduction. If you have a mortgage on your home, you don’t have to pay taxes on the interest on that loan. According to the Congressional Budget Office, that tax break cost the federal government $70 billion in 2013.

Economists have all sorts of problems with the mortgage-interest deduction. For one thing, because wealthier people own bigger homes with bigger mortgages, the benefit disproportionately benefits the rich. In 2013, 73 percent of that $70 billion went to the wealthiest 20 percent of earners; 15 percent went to the richest 1 percent. The poorest 20 percent, who rarely own homes, got essentially nothing.

Mortgage Interest Deduction Is Ripe for Reform, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities

https://www.cbpp.org/research/mortgage-interest-deduction-is-ripe-for-reform

This is the third of a multi-part series on climate change, the President’s withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, and the politics and rhetoric that surround it.

This week: where are we headed? What scenarios are likely to play out in the decades ahead, as the climate becomes the arch-issue of the future?

In this episode we talk about body heat, globalism, the Cretaceous coastline, healthy debt-to-GDP ratios, and Apple CEO Tim Cook.

This is Robot F. Kennedy.

SHOW NOTES

Paper: “Global risk of deadly heat”, NATURE CLIMATE CHANGE

https://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate3322.html

Right now, about 30 percent of the world’s population is exposed to deadly temperatures at least 20 days out of the year. By 2100, that number could reach 74 percent if greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, or 48 percent with drastic cuts to global emissions.

Articles

”A new book ranks the top 100 solutions to climate change. The results are surprising.”, Vox.com

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/5/10/15589038/top-100-solutions-climate-change-ranked

Kottke.org, http://kottke.org/17/06/the-100-best-solutions-to-reverse-climate-change-ranked

If, somehow, we could get to a place where we are talking about dealing with climate change not as “saving the planet” (which it isn’t) but as “improving humanity” (which it is), we might actually be able to accomplish something.

The Cretaceous Coastline: http://kottke.org/16/10/how-the-cretaceous-coastline-of-north-america-affects-us-presidential-elections

“A Republican group is framing its proposed carbon tax as “environmental insurance,” not a tax”. Quartz

https://qz.com/905688/a-republican-group-making-the-case-for-a-carbon-tax-to-donald-trumps-administration-needs-to-just-look-at-what-happened-in-australia/

“California, at Forefront of Climate Fight, Won’t Back Down to Trump”, the New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/26/us/california-climate-change-jerry-brown-donald-trump.html?_r=0

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Paul Hawken: And not only that, they’re about energy — they’re all energy models. There’s an assumption that if you get 100 percent renewable [energy], you basically have a hall pass to the 22nd century. That’s simply not true. It’s a scientific howler. It’s extremely important that we [get to 100 percent renewables], but to put all of it on energy ...

Malcom Harris’s tweet: I don't think we're all going to die because of climate change, this is what I think is going to happen https://twitter.com/BigMeanInternet/status/870415818378670080/photo/1

“New Simulations Predict the United States' Coming Climate Change Mass Migration,” VICE | Motherboard: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/new-simulations-predict-the-united-states-coming-climate-change-mass-migration

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What the Earth would look like if all the ice melted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbiRNT_gWUQ

Animations Show the Melting Arctic Sea Ice, and What the Earth Would Look Like When All of the Ice Melts

https://youtu.be/Vj1G9gqhkYA

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Ice Melt, Sea Level Rise and Superstorms Video Abstract, published in the Journal Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics (ACP)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JP-cRqCQRc8

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Want to Fight Climate Change? Move to a City

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/want-to-fight-climate-change-move-to-a-city

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Exiting Paris “probably our most consequential error since the Iraq War,” economist says

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/6/5/15739792/exiting-paris-most-consequential-error-iraq-war-economist

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Fighting climate change isn’t a ‘waste of money’ — it’s a good investment, the Verge

https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/16/14951398/trump-mick-mulvaney-climate-change-epa-budget-cuts

This is the second of a multi-part series on climate change, the President’s withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, and the politics and rhetoric that surround it.

This week: what are we seeing today? Who are the leading voices on climate action in the public, private, and religious spheres?

In this episode we talk about Gaia from Captain Planet, Carl Sagan, a couple of popes, and Elon Musk.

This is Robot F. Kennedy.

SHOW NOTES

Elon Musk's Unbelievably Simple 12-minute Killer Break Down on Climate Change: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKCuDxpccYM

Musk concluded that if we wait to make the transition, we could see “more displacement and destruction than all the wars in history combined”.

He then described civilization as being designed to be “super sensitive to climate change” due to the popularity of coastal cities.

Laudato Si, Pope Francis, Climate Change, and Economics

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/18/guardian-view-on-laudato-si-pope-francis-cultural-revolution

The Pope, the Saint, and the Climate, https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/pope-saint-and-climate

This’ll be the first of a multi-part series on climate change, the President’s withdrawal of the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement, and the politics and rhetoric that surround it.

First up on the agenda: context. Where is climate denialism coming from? How did we get here? How did a seemingly cut and dry, scientific topic become so partisan?

We have some theories: human beings’ natural short-term biases, the anti-science worldview of the religious right, the Supreme Court case of Citizens United v. FEC, and maybe, just maybe the Vietnam War.

This is Robot F. Kennedy.

SHOW NOTES

Q: Why does the American Right seem so uniquely averse to climate science?

- An accident of special interest/party affiliations (aka the Carbon Bubble)?

- Is part of it “motivated ignorance”? https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/5/15/15585176/motivated-ignorance-politics-debate

- The GOP is the world’s only major climate-denialist party. But why?, Vox.com, Dec 2, 2015. https://www.vox.com/2015/12/2/9836566/republican-climate-denial-why

Q: How is the framing device of “belief” in climate science altering our public discourse?

Video of Republicans morphing their positions on climate change, starring Newt and Nancy: https://youtu.be/O4Q8Nm4ksVU

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Paul Mason at Literary Hub: http://lithub.com/there-is-no-market-driven-solution-to-our-climate-catastrophe/

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Transgender bathrooms, evolution, climate change, and the Ten Commandments, http://www.3quarksdaily.com/3quarksdaily/2016/05/transgender-bathrooms-evolution-climate-change-and-the-ten-commandments-1.html

“When I talk about climate change, I don’t talk about science”

http://kottke.org/17/01/when-i-talk-about-climate-change-i-dont-talk-about-science

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“Past v Future” Party Bias (https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/12/28/14074214/climate-denialism-social)

The latest chapter of this unending story began a few weeks ago, when a paper was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that purported to show a way to change pro-environmental attitudes in conservatives.

The results showed that “past comparisons” — comparing the damage climate change has done to the past purity of ecosystems — do more to increase conservatives’ pro-environmental feelings than warnings about the future. “Past comparisons largely bridged the political divide in addressing global warming,” the authors write.

But conservatives aren’t arguing logically (maybe none of us are):

Individualism has misled many areas of inquiry in the West (someday I’ll write about how it has screwed up ethics), but among the victims is epistemology. We imagine people coming to know things inside their heads, using their own thoughts and sense data. When you start there, it becomes difficult to prove that the shared world exists at all, that we are not brains in vats.

But we don’t start there, not in real life. We do not primarily come to know things through individual cognitive efforts — assembling evidence and evaluating it. Individually, we are in a position to critically assess only a tiny fraction of what we claim to know.

The vast bulk of our knowledge, we take on faith. Or to put it more charitably, we take on trust. We absorb what we know from trusted peers and authorities. Our trust in them is a kind of heuristic that allows us to navigate a wildly complex and uncertain reality, of which we will directly experience only a tiny fraction.

Having an understanding of the world and your place in it — an understanding shared by your tribe — feels like safety. It feels like control. Questions that unsettle that understanding are instinctively treated with skepticism or outright hostility.

The election of 1920 was all about a ‘return to normalcy.’ The American public was weary from the Great War. Are there parallels we can draw from the 1920 election to the national mood going into the 2020 election? Will the Democrats promise a return to normalcy? Or does it run counter to everything the Democratic Party holds dear?

In this episode we discuss the Battle of the Somme, Senator Kamala Harris, cowboys, primary challengers, Bill Clinton, and the Resistance against President Trump.

This is Robot F. Kennedy.

As soon as we stopped recording episode ten, about the mechanisms by which President Trump may be removed from office, we realized we left out a huge conversation: what comes after?

In this episode we discuss the post-Watergate reforms of the 1970s, our wishlist of post-Trump reforms, land mines, Frank Sinatra’s party affiliations, killing off the -gate suffix, and the tyranny of cattle.

This is Robot F. Kennedy.

SHOW NOTES

* Post-Watergate Campaign-Finance Reforms: https://www.infoplease.com/us/history/post-watergate-campaign-finance-reforms

What's the Trump Administration endgame? In this episode, we discuss the 25th Amendment, impeachment, the "Rally Around the Flag" effect, the British Raj, our lack of law degrees, and bet on the next steps in this insane week.

This is Robot F. Kennedy.

SHOW NOTES

Any references we give will be out of date by tomorrow at 10am, so we're going to hold off on show notes this week. Hope you don't mind.

Does the idea of copyright protect the interests of artists and creators? Does it add billions of dollars to the US economy every year? Or does it stifle expression, innovation, and economic growth?

In this episode, we discuss the public domain, Google’s spiders, the capital of the Galactic Empire, the Statute of Anne, Jiminy Cricket, and Motown.

This is Robot F. Kennedy.

SHOW NOTES

The Goodlatte Bill

Hollywood-friendly copyright bill passes House of Representatives: https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/27/15452668/copyright-selection-accountability-goodlatte-bill-passes-house

Congress is trying to give even more power to Hollywood: https://www.theverge.com/2017/4/3/15161522/mpaa-riaa-copyright-office-library-of-congress-dmca-infringement

Copyright length in the United States

https://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-duration.html

Star Wars / Hidden Fortress Comparison

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4g8r0LhpMzk

In 19th century Germany, “they had Kant, Mozart, and Goethe AT THE SAME TIME”

The missing Enlightenment: http://snarkmarket.com/2010/6141

Copywrong

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/10/20/crooner-rights-spat

Additional Reading/Viewing

The Hole in Our Collective Memory: How Copyright Made Mid-Century Books Vanish - The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/07/the-hole-in-our-collective-memory-how-copyright-made-mid-century-books-vanish/278209/

Cory Doctorow on copyright and piracy: 'Every pirate wants to be an admiral' - video | Opinion | The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/video/2011/may/30/internet-piracy-cory-doctorow

Piracy Isn't Killing The Entertainment Industry, Scholars Show - TorrentFreak: https://torrentfreak.com/piracy-isnt-hurting-the-entertainment-industry-121003/

How to fix copyright in two easy steps (and one hard one) / Boing Boing: http://boingboing.net/2015/01/23/how-to-fix-copyright-in-two-ea.html

Footnote: If you're seeing this, it's hosted on SoundCloud.

What’s happening at town halls across the United States? Is there a popular groundswell of resistance and opposition to President Trumps agenda building momentum on the Left? Is it sustainable? Would a “Tea Party of the Left” be a constructive or destructive force in American politics?

In this episode, we welcome our first guest co-host—Sarah Ullman, a filmmaker, activist, and co-founder of the grassroots SuperPAC, One Vote at a Time. We discuss our experiences in recent months attending town halls and political protests, we’re tough on CA Senator Dianne Feinstein, we talk about 2018, the instant messenger handles of our youth, and further destroy the idea that the government is or should be run like a business. This is Robot F. Kennedy.

SHOW NOTES:

Sarah Ullman on Twitter: https://twitter.com/thesillysully

One Vote at a Time: https://www.onevoteatatime.us/

LA Times: Sen. Dianne Feinstein gets an earful at Los Angeles town hall, but sticks to her centrist guns

http://www.latimes.com/politics/essential/la-pol-ca-essential-politics-updates-sen-feinstein-gets-an-earful-at-la-1492720742-htmlstory.html

Town hall constituents holding up their IDs in response to their congressman assuming they’re “bussed in.” https://twitter.com/thiswaltz5/status/834535401494806532

(If you're seeing this, it's hosted on Soundcloud. Testing hosting providers. Thanks for your understanding.)

1912 was a really important year. For Progressives, it was the year that a century-long agenda was formalized as the party platform of the Bull Moose Party. It served as something of a checklist of legislative achievements that we’re still working through today. And the man that spearheaded this new agenda and a new (albeit short lived) political party? Theodore Roosevelt.

What are some of the progressive victories Teddy never lived to see? What has yet to be accomplished? If TR were alive today, what are some new progressive ideas he might champion?

In this episode, we discuss anarchists, World War I, an automatic minimum wage, free energy, WEED, paid family leave, and Eddie calls Nick a hippie. This is Robot F. Kennedy.

SHOW NOTES:

Jason Kander’s tweet: https://twitter.com/JasonKander/status/854327448137334785

“2017 isn't about Trump. It's about regular people standing up to Trump. This is the birth of a new progressive era in American history.”

Progressive Party Platform of 1912: http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/progressive-platform-of-1912/

“Theodore Roosevelt is every boy’s favorite president.” —Dan Carlin. Sick burn.

Hardcore History 49 – The American Peril: http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-49-the-american-peril/

Vox.com | “The referendum that just brought Turkey closer to one-man rule, explained”

http://www.vox.com/world/2017/4/17/15320350/turkey-referendum-vote-erdogan-explained

Teddy Roosevelt’s New Nationalism Speech

http://origin.heritage.org/initiatives/first-principles/primary-sources/teddy-roosevelts-new-nationalism

Alaska Minimum Wage Increase, Ballot Measure 3 (2014)

https://ballotpedia.org/Alaska_Minimum_Wage_Increase,_Ballot_Measure_3_(2014)

The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss on Amazon: http://amzn.to/2oFKnPp

Recency Bias

http://www.wikinvest.com/wiki/Recency_bias

The beginning of a new progressive platform (aka Teddy Roosevelt: 2020)

• Automatic Minimum Wage

• Universal Mental Healthcare

• Constitutional Right to Vote

• Universal Pre-K

• One Year of Paid Family Leave

• An Era of Welcoming Immigrants

• A 35 Hour Work Week

• Right to Data, including National Broadband Infrastructure project, and intellectual property ownership of all products of a human person (intellectual and biological)

• Right to Free, Clean Energy

• Universal Drug Decriminalization

• Free College Education

• Term Limits for Supreme Court Justices