The first 92 days

I posted this on Facebook this morning, but wanted to expand on it a bit.

As we approach the modern-day checkpoint of the first 100 days, Trumpflake would like to remind us that he's actually done so much and anyone who says he hasn't is fake news. What has Trump actually accomplished?

He has gotten a Supreme Court Justice appointed. That is certainly a thing. I would, however, argue that it was really Mitch McConnell who did that. If not for that bag of misery, we'd have filled the available seat with Garland a year ago. This is akin to Little Donnie being proud that he baked a cake when all he actually did was turn the oven on. It's so cute when they don't know what all else has to go into it!

He has managed to simultaneously achieve the lowest approval and highest disapproval numbers since that's been a thing. If only he could have done the exact opposite of what he's doing, he'd have very nice approval numbers in the low 60s.

He keeps telling us his wall is ahead of schedule, but there was never a schedule announced. He also proudly talks about how illegal immigration is way down already. But we still need the wall because Mexicans are bad.

He has signed a huge number of executive orders whose contents he's been barely aware of, none of which (to my knowledge) has demonstrable positive effects on society. The most egregious have been held up in court. He then lashed out at the courts because so-called judges are bad.

He lied about basic, verifiable, facts like his inauguration crowd size, whether Korea was part of China, barely knowing Paul Manafort, 3+ million illegal voters (who all voted for Hillary), Obama screaming at protesters, Obama's nationality, the state of black neighborhoods, who donates money to, General Pershing subverting the Philippines by dipping bullets in pigs' blood, the relative size of his electoral college win, and probably the size of his penis. There's more, check out the false and pants on fires here (which together make up right about half of his evaluated statements):
http://www.politifact.com/…/dona…/statements/byruling/false/
http://www.politifact.com/…/donald-trump/statements/byrulin…

He made a total debacle of health care reform, then tried to pawn it all off on Paul Ryan (somewhat fairly). But, it was his promise too and he needed to be more involved.

He continues to focus on the Islamic Terrorist boogieman when there are so many far more dangerous things we can do a lot more about going on. (gun deaths, alcohol deaths, drug overdose deaths, distracted driver deaths, deaths due to preventable health conditions, homeless deaths, ... )

He also focuses on the regulations boogieman and how they should be significantly reduced. (Regulations are vetted and serve to protect the population as a whole)

He shot $90-100M of missiles at an airfield in Syria and failed to actually take it out of commission.

He has reduced the role of science in decision making, for example insisting that global warming is fake news and that it should not be a considered factor in regulations.

Numerous people on his senior/appointed staff have had to resign or recuse themselves due to lying about potentially inappropriate contact with Russians.

He, and many in his administration, continue to investigated by the FBI, Senate and House for suspicious ties to Russia.

He has spent at an actually unprecedented (the real term, not how he uses it) rate on vacations to Mar-a-Lago. He has also played golf at an unprecedented rate. Also, Trump the private citizen profits directly from these trips.

His wife lives in a different city, costing the city of New York $40-50M per year, as well as federal taxpayers money for lodging Secret Service. Trump the private citizen profits directly from this.
He rolled back protections for women and LQBQT.

He has reduced the quality of discourse to a 3rd-grade level.

While writing this up, I literally had to start looking back at older news because there's so much. I'm sure I didn't even get everything that could be considered major on here.

So ... what has he done right? Why should anyone write a positive report card about his work?

I had to think, and think, and think to come up with all the things on this list. And I still missed some (like the wiretapping lies, handing Merkel a bill for Germany's "debt" to NATO, ... ). I realize constantly that practically every day this administration does something that would be a once-a-year (or maybe once-a-quarter) shock. 

An admittedly imperfect take on gerrymandering

We all know gerrymandering is a thing, but what can we do about it? Can we even quantify how much there is? How can we say what representatives "should have" won? If you put people in different districts and had them vote on different representative options, there's no guarantee of who they would vote for.

I would propose, however, that there should be reasonable alignment between the popular presidential vote and the number of House seats for each party. While looking at each state is fraught with error (some representatives have broad appeal, for example), I would expect the effect to average out. Alternatively: the effect should average out if there's no systemic bias in how districts are drawn.

In the last election, Clinton took 48% of the popular vote, Trump 46%, and other 6%. If we simply scale this out over the 435 house seats, the alignment suggest we should see 209 Democrats, 200 Republicans, and 26 question marks. I would then generally expect that the question marks should also subdivide similarly and would leave us around 222 Democrats vs 213 Republicans.

The actual number is 193 Democrats, 237 Republicans, and 5 empty seats (for example because cabinet appointments who had been representatives have not been replaced yet). That's less Democrats than we'd expect in even the worst case (where the question marks all go Republican). It's certainly far fewer than the slight advantage this model says Democrats should have.

Where does this discrepancy come from? I charted the vote tallies in each state and compared the expected (proportional) representative count to the actual. I rolled the 3rd party votes proportionately into the two main parties. What do I see?

Republicans have an advantage in a lot more states than Democrats
While only 16 Democratic states have more representatives than the model would predict, 31 states have more Republicans than we'd expect. Screening out all the states where the net effect is less than 1 representative (rounding error, essentially), leaves only 7 states with a Democratic advantage compared to 21 going the other way.

Republicans own the majority of the biggest swings
The top 10 swings (positive denotes pro-Republican) are Texas (+5.3), Pennsylvania (+3.9), California (-3.6), Ohio (+3.3), North Carolina (+3.3), Massachusetts (-3.2), Florida (+2.3), Georgia (+2.2), Connecticut (-2.1), Michigan (2.0).

Republicans gain big in close states
It's not surprising that a state leaning heavily one way would have a more extreme representative makeup. However, Republicans make some huge gains in tightly contested states. Filtering those with popular votes between 47% and 53% shows significant wins in Pennsylvania (+3.9), North Carolina (+3.3), Florida (+2.3), Georgia (+2.2), Michigan (+2.0), Virginia (+1.8), Wisconsin (+1.0). In all, Republicans made more than half their gains (14.6 of 26.4) in states with fairly close presidential popular votes. Half again (+7.3) of that gain is made in states where the popular vote was within 51-49.

So what's going on here? There's a common narrative that Republicans got a boost from promising to repeal Obamacare. Even if not for that, perhaps there's just random volatility? Republicans have in fact controlled the House since 2010 (when Obamacare became their rallying cry), but didn't in 2008 or 2006. But, we have to go all the way back to 1992 to see the previous time Democrats had numbers ... though the Democrat win streak then stretches all the way back to 1960 when the party wasn't even the same thing it is today.

What happened in 1994 to turn the tide?
That was when the more heavily partisan rhetoric started to come into play, but I'm not sure how that influenced the outcomes. Perhaps it was more fear-based, playing on people's concerns? Whether through gerrymander, message, or something else, Republicans figured out a new way to play and win.

Republican presidents were winning elections in the 60s, 70s and 80s, proving that the model I've proposed has no predictive power. I still wonder if it should work, if there's some kind of rigging or gamesmanship afoot, or if there are just tides in politics I don't understand.

A little propaganda with breakfast

I just got up on the weekend and am making some eggs and toast and tea. I'm also, of course, looking over what people have posted on Facebook. A friend liked a meme with the following text:

He didn't say you couldn't have an abortion... he said you have to pay for it yourself if you do.
He didn't say refugees were not welcome... he said let's make sure they are not here to harm us before we let them in.
He didn't say Mexicans couldn't come in... he said come in the right way, not through the back door.
He's not taking away ANYONES freedom, he's keeping us safe and unfunding things that should never have been funded in the first place.
That's simply the way I see it... if I'm wrong please correct me.

The "he" is Trump, obviously. The writing requires vetting. Extreme vetting!

It's probably best to start (and end) at the end. The author has just made a number of statements that read like facts. Then, they soften their tone to say that's just their opinion and they are, apparently, open to discussion. This leaves the reader with a less harsh impression, perhaps more open to the idea that the author at least has some points. Let's look at those points.

He didn't say you couldn't have an abortion... he said you have to pay for it yourself if you do.
This has been essentially the case for 40 years. Abortions became federally legal in 1973 (Roe v Wade) and the Hyde amendment to limit the use of federal funds for abortions passed in 1976. It's been expanded a bit since; in its current incarnation it allows the use of those funds for abortions in the case of rape or life-endangering condition. So, Trump is saying nothing new from a Republican platform perspective.... is he?

He is, or at least he's backing legislation that does. In addition to the standard pro-life, pro-Hyde stance, the current draft of the AHCA ("TrumpCare", or "RyanCare", but lol neither wants their name attached to that steaming pile of shit) has a provision that the health care tax credits (akin to the ACA subsidies) that make health care theoretically more affordable for people can NOT be used on a plan that covers abortions. It's worth repeating that simply covering abortions negates the tax credit. It makes no difference if you use that coverage or not. This would essentially force a huge number of plans to abandon abortion coverage (evidently about 2/3 of insurance plans cover abortions to some degree), making abortion uncovered for a huge number of women. Even if a woman has no intention of ever having an abortion and is fine not covering it, there's still the case of rape or danger that may now not be covered. The AHCA clause is a poison pill designed to create new gaps which will almost definitely leave people uncovered in unfortunate cases.

He didn't say refugees were not welcome... he said let's make sure they are not here to harm us before we let them in.
On a very basic level this false. Trump has reduced the number of refugees the USA is taking in this year (50,000) to its lowest levels since at least 1980. That sends no other message than refugees are less welcome. It's not technically "not welcome", but clearly they are less, rather than as or more, welcome than before. This is also a crazy huge false dichotomy. It implies that there are two mindsets:
1. We have to further limit refugees to be safe
2. We should just let anyone in
There are clearly other possibilities, including the system we've had in place. As has been argued and documented over and over, refugees face years of vetting. There seems to be a misunderstanding that refugees just show up at our border and we give them hugs and gift baskets. And as has been documented time and again, these refugees (and immigrants in general) have caused less crime than the American baseline. As confirmed by leaked DHS documents, the new immigration policy from the Middle East is unlikely to have any positive effect on safety. There's just no need to "do more vetting". It's like checking that your door is locked three times instead of twice. Sure, it's not less safe ... but is it really more safe? To complete the analogy, what else did you miss out on doing while you were needlessly checking that lock over and over? Bringing that back to reality, we're creating the perfect propaganda for ISIS recruitment. I've purposefully avoided purely humanitarian or compassionate arguments. Yes, we should feel those things, but even without invoking any humanity, this is bullshit.

He didn't say Mexicans couldn't come in... he said come in the right way, not through the back door.
Funny, I'm sure his Mexicans went through the back door while working for him. Snark aside, this is an almost identically set up false dichotomy. There's no mainstream argument that we should just let Mexicans walk over the border illegally anytime they want. We just don't agree that a giant wall is the right way to accomplish this. A person can be for border security AND think the wall is idiotic. Since we're talking specifically about Mexicans, there's the other half (roughly) who came over legally and overstayed because it was unclear if they'd be able to come back again in the future as border policy changed. Or they just wanted to stay. Wrongs were done, sure. But the argument here is not an ideologue justice one, but rather a pragmatic one. Can we round up and deport millions of people and if we do, what effect does that have on communities and economies? These are the conversations we need to have instead of running around with our pitchforks to push people out who have been here far longer than the statute of limitations on most crimes lasts.

He's not taking away ANYONES freedom, he's keeping us safe and unfunding things that should never have been funded in the first place.
On a basic technical level, the unfunding claim pretends an opinion is actually fact. There's certainly disagreement on funding abortions, but that it never should have been funded is not a fact. TrumpCare is unfunding it in a roundabout way (and it will have unintended consequences), but it's mostly already unfunded. The claim that he's keeping us safe implies that he's doing more to keep us safer. That doesn't appear to hold water. He's like the daddy who won't let you go to the park because there might be a bad hombre there, even though you're going with your 20 friends and even though he has no concerns about you going to the grocery store or mall or movies or abandoned quarry. If we take "keeping us safe" literally, it's a status quo statement and adds nothing. Either way, there's nothing there.

Whether or not he's taking away anyone's freedom is a much broader question. This meme addresses three concrete items. If, say, a 4th item was "and no one is allowed out after dark", then this would be blatantly false. Not losing freedom does not follow from these particular three lines not encroaching on freedoms. Academics aside, even these 3 shouldn't lead to that conclusion. Even if you take the stance that refugees and Mexicans have no freedoms promised and are therefore not an issue, the abortion-related tax credit loss should raise a few flags. Technically you can still get whatever plan you want, but there's now a federal incentive to get one that does not cover abortions. If not a loss of freedom, it's at least a case of coercion. If we want to look beyond these three, the assault on the free press is evidence enough that he wants less freedom.

... and we come full circle.
Now that we've shoveled a giant load of contentious shit, we do the same thing Trump does. Tone it like we care so much, that this is just common sense, and maybe it's not bulletproof but the heart's in the right place. Even if you can nitpick things, overall this is sound.

I can't nitpick anything here, I can only blow the whole thing up.

Regulate

There's an ever-present struggle between those who believe in less regulation and those who believe in more. Typically this falls along conservative vs liberal boundaries. The general premise is that deregulation jives with the notion of smaller government and free markets, while regulation protects the vulnerable.

Both approaches have merit, and both can go too far. Instead of focusing on ideologies, it's better to think concretely about who is helped and hurt as policies change.

A completely deregulated society provides the capable with the most opportunity. Assuming we keep basic functions like police in place and let just the pure economy play out, we should naturally see an unstable system where the richest get richer and the poorest get poorer. There will be relatively more rags-to-riches stories, but also many people who are destitute with only the goodwill of others keeping them from sinking. We had essentially this system in the 1800s and it gave rise to some of the most powerful business magnates in history: Rockefeller, Morgan, Carnegie. It also exploited the poor to an amazing degree. And that's just modern times. We see even more extreme examples in the colonial and feudal days.

A very highly regulated society prescribes extra rules to prevent the poor, desperate, or less capable from being taken advantage of to the same degree. This leads to more egalitarian societies. An ideal version of communism would work like this (though real-world examples were hardly the ideal versions). Incentive to innovate is reduced or almost entirely eliminated.

The balance tends to be defined by the values of society. Since societies are rarely homogenous, we see this balance swing back and forth.

A deregulated world works on the assumption that an individual is wise and can be informed of and navigate all their options. The Trump administration wants to eliminate several regulations in the financial sector, notably the fiduciary responsibilities of financial advisers. In the past, they were allowed to recommend products to clients that were in the adviser's best interest (their fund, higher commissions, etc) and did not need to act in their client's interests. The free market argument is that clients will simply go elsewhere and it'll work itself out, but that's only if those same clients have an easy way to compare the service they'd get elsewhere. In this case, that's convoluted and difficult (need to understand rates of returns, fees, etc). Removing this regulation expressly says "we want to let advisers fool their clients, at least a little". How is that a good thing for society? I think this is a case where our societal values should clearly dictate that this is not ok.

STEM shortage

The Trump administration is apparently in the middle of crafting yet another executive order, this one dealing with H1B visas. While nothing has been made public, it purports to address abuses. That might be ok, in principle. There are certainly examples of companies circumventing laws to get cheaper employees in the USA.

A big talking point around H1B is whether we need them at all. Many complain there's a STEM shortage, while others point to articles like this that "prove" there isn't. I'd like to address a few things within.

As the article rightly points out, a lack of definitive data or even definition of what STEM is makes this a potentially difficult web to untangle. The author concludes there can't be a STEM shortage because:
1. There are more STEM graduates than there are open STEM positions
2. If there truly were a shortage, wages wouldn't stagnate. Apparently they have?

This is a gross oversimplification and fails to acknowledge how H1B fits into the STEM fields and that not all graduates are qualified to do these jobs (consider those barely passing or going through a for-profit diploma mill). Let's look at some relevant numbers, because the article above left lots to be desired.

There is a cap of 65,000 H1B each year, and 20,000 more for those with advanced degrees (85,000 total). Compare that to a total near 160M across the USA. Each year, we're at most giving an H1B to 1 in 1870 workers. Granted, these are "good jobs" and probably matter more economically, but it's still a fraction of a tenth of a percent. It would literally not move the unemployment numbers as reported to a tenth of a percent.

The literal majority of H1B go to people in the computer-related occupations (see Table 8a). Per that document, 375,038 out of 598,781 (63%) fell into that category in CY 2013+2014.

And therein lies the answer: The CEOs shouting about STEM shortages are likely running software companies. Being in that field myself, I can confirm that my own (and my peers') incomes have not stagnated**. I don't want to get into the numbers too exactly, but our typical wage growth is well above COLA. Table 10 shows the 25th (64,000), mean (84,000), median (75,000) and 75th (96,000) percentile compensation ranges as well. Because the median is a lot lower than the mean, there must be a tight cluster on the low end and a longer range on the high end (meaning probably 20% or so are above 100k per year). If they're getting lowballed at these wages, those are still well above the American median and us software engineers should only complain so much, right?

If the article focused on the niche within STEM that actually consumes the bulk of the H1B visas, it may have come to a very different conclusion. Software development is singularly poised to be most hurt by limits to the H1B program.

The comments section is rampant with people complaining about how Americans aren't even given a shot. This is blatantly false in our industry. One guy makes the correct point: while there is a never-ending stream of applicants, few meet a quality bar. What is that bar? That they be able to work autonomously, solve problems and create reliable software. Others jumped on him, that perhaps his bar was unrealistic. I suppose those same people should just live with paying the same for an inferior product (insert joke about XFinity cable boxes). I can confirm from my time giving interviews that people I really want to work with are not appearing left and right. For anyone wanting an analogy, imagine someone shows up for a trucking job and doesn't even know what a clutch or a steering wheel is. That level of interviewee is all too common, and that lack of quality is common across domestic and foreign applicants. It's not like being foreign makes someone a magical unicorn candidate. They have to be good too.


** - This does depend on employer, but most large firms (ie: "the ones you've heard of") are in constant competition with each other, constantly wanting to hire away each others' talent. Why? Because they'd rather pay extra for someone who's proven they can cut it than try to wade through hundreds more resumes for an unknown.

Economy vs Environment

According to the Trump team, it's the greatest fight of the century ... but can't the two just get along? Certainly there are compelling positive examples. Iceland generates 99.98% of its energy from renewable sources and Norway is at 98.5%. Brazil and Colombia are over 80%, and a host of other notable countries (New Zealand, Canada, Venezuela, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark) are above 50%. All told, 29 countries are over 75% and 28 more are over 50%.

List of countries by percent renewable energy generation.
List of countries by total GDP.
List of countries by GDP per capita.

But, picking a few notable countries does not make a convincing argument. It does, definitively, allow that a country can have a thriving economy while using lots of renewable resources. But what are the trends? Who should we compare ourselves to?

The list of countries with very high renewable use hydro almost exclusively. This is a consequence of their geographies; they have significant rivers, lakes, etc, that they can dam. Many of these countries are actually quite poor: using renewable energy did not spur a strong economy for them. This is not shocking or really even interesting for us. Our question is to what extent a reliance on renewable energy hinders a country's economy. We should look at the strongest performers and see if they were able to succeed while using renewable energy at higher rates than the USA does. Let's look at the top 20 by total and per capita GDP to paint a picture of scale and individual well-being and see where we fit in. 20 is somewhat arbitrary, yes, but it should be a reasonable proxy for "leading economy"; it'd be the top 10% of the world.

Total GDP vs percent renewable energy
There are multiple authorities on total economy. Their results are all listed. Small differences exist in the ordering but they are not material. I'll be using the IMF ordering.

Place	Country	Percent
1	United States	14.3
2	China	24.4
3	Japan	15.5
4	Germany	32.7
5	United Kingdom	22.3
6	France	17.4
7	India	19.1
8	Italy	45.9
9	Brazil	84.0
10	Canada	64.5
11	South Korea	1.4
12	Russia	16.6
13	Australia	13.5
14	Spain	31.0
15	Mexico	15.7
16	Indonesia	12.0
17	Netherlands	12.7
18	Turkey	28.3
19	Switzerland	62.0
20	Saudi Arabia	no data

The USA ranks ahead of only 4 or 5 countries (depending on Saudi's standing), and all but one of those countries is essentially tied (12.0 vs 14.3% is not a huge difference). In the meantime, 8 of the top 20 countries are more than 10% ahead. What this tells me is that a large economy and large renewable energy generation are not at odds; in fact many of the other largest economies have managed to blow past us.


Per capita GDP vs percent renewable energy
Same here as before. Since there are a lot of tiny countries in the last that are basically rich-people havens, I'll extend the list to the top 30. This can be argued to be reasonable anyways since the USA is 13th: we should look above and below roughly equally.

Place	Country	Percent
1	Qatar	no data
2	Luxembourg	15.4
3	Macau	no data
4	Singapore	no data
5	Brunei	no data
6	Kuwait	no data
7	Ireland	20.2
8	Norway	98.5
9	UAE	no data
10	San Marino	no data
11	Switzerland	62.0
12	Hong Kong	no data
13	United States	14.3
14	Saudi Arabia	no data
15	Netherlands	12.7
16	Bahrain	no data
17	Sweden	60.2
18	Australia	13.5
19	Germany	32.7
20	Iceland	100.0
21	Austria	78.4
22	Taiwan	no data
23	Denmark	56.6
24	Canada	64.5
25	Belgium	13.8
26	Oman	no data
27	United Kingdom	22.3
28	France	17.4
29	Finland	41.8
30	Japan	15.5

This one is a little harder to look at. If we eliminate the no data entries, every country ahead of the USA in GDP per capita is also ahead in renewable energy generation. Trailing behind in the top 30 are many other countries who are clearly ahead of the USA in renewable energy use. On a per capita basis, it looks even more compelling that economic success and renewable energy generation are not at odds.

Naturally we can ask questions. Does investing in clean(er) energy create a drag on the economy and those other countries would be even better off if they didn't bother? I'm not expert enough to say. But, I would argue the evidence is clear that a comparable economy and lifestyle to ours can coexist with much higher levels of clean energy; thus it's clear that clean energy does not prevent a successful economy.

48 hours of awful

It's been just past 2 full days since Trump has been sworn in, and the carnage just continues.

The main issues circulating are whether or not 1.5 million people attended the inauguration. It seems pretty clear they did not, and his troupe is doubling down on this claim and turning it into a shit storm. They're also fanning the fact that the Women's March was terrible and left trash all over the place. Kellyanne Conway even insinuated that the march could not have been about Trump, after all he'd only been in office a day. What could they even have to protest about?

Not that Trump's words are binding or even remotely reliable, but he made a few curious claims in there. Here's a full annotated transcript. I'll let the Washington Post handle a lot of it, but a few lines struck me in particular.

...but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the people.
Says man who claimed he alone can fix this country.

From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this day forward, it's going to be only America first, America first.
I'm not sure how anyone can make a claim that previous administrations has acted with any other motivation than America First. Of course the details are important: it can be difficult to explain that an investment in a foreign interest is projected to be beneficial to the USA as well. Judgement and execution might end up incorrect, but the motivation has always been this.

I will fight for you with every breath in my body and I will never ever let you down.
Well, it took him about an hour to do just that (if I don't include his entire history on the campaign trail as a continuous letdown). Examples include: continuing the assault on basic fact and truth, throttling environmental regulations, temporarily shutting down the NPS's twitter account, scrubbed whitehouse.gov of a number of subsites. Classic flexing of bully muscles.

We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world
Or at least Russia? I literally can't think of a positive thing he's said about any other country. And he's said lots of negatives.

At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America
I imagine this comes with a concrete definition of "allegiance" in mind that goes way beyond a generally accepted set of requirements.

And most importantly, we will be protected by God
Great.

In the meantime, while everyone is caught up in the above, some seriously sinister stuff is happening. In addition to the assault on the press, Trump has made clear that

... he'd like to showcase the military
like they do in authoritarian communist countries. To show off the strength of the great leader.

... he will not release his taxes because no one cares about them
except 3/4 people polled said they did, and even half his supporters said they wanted to. And even if we go with his bullshit "under audit" thing, he should be able to release taxes from 2008 or before as a show of goodwill. Or if he sticks to that, his last 3-4 years of taxes could still be under audit by the time he leaves the White House in January 2021. In other words, this is a "when pigs fly" kind of promise.

... he will cancel our inclusion in the TPP
To be fair, I don't know enough about the TPP to assess it, but this seems like it fails the goodwill test.

... he will cancel NAFTA and renegotiate the terms
Again, I'm not a NAFTA expert but from all neutral accounts this would be an economic disaster.

... he will pull us out of the UN
And wow, talk about the opposite of goodwill and friendship.

... he will roll back environmental regulations
under the premise they are inherently damaging to the economy. There are some very advanced countries and some of our states that show this to be false.

I'm sure there's more, but I'm just one man and can only complain about so many things.