Oh boy, were we ready for a change.

Biden and Harris came in with stratospherically high expectations. Lady Gaga sang the national anthem at the inauguration, and a new day was about to begin. Our newly elected White House Democrats were going to replace night for day, chaos for reason, and restructure dystopia with a clear path leading us forward toward order. And they were going to do all of that within their first year in office, if possible (that’s what we dreamed, hoped, thought – okay, what I dreamed, hoped, imagined!) Oh, foolish me. Oh, foolish us. After DT, were we ever ready for change! We were on pins and needles, waiting for our new day to begin. Kamala was dispatched to the Mexican border, and Joe would take care of the rest.

Of course, we were still in the middle of a pandemic, and caught up in pandemic-related worldwide distribution issues that ultimately contributed to an inflation rate not seen in 40 years. Higher gas prices do not happy campers make! Biden didn’t create the pandemic or inflation. Biden didn’t set up Chinese dominance of production and its tumbling dice of ocean misuse to get us our iPhones when we want them. For that, we have to go back through years of policy making and bipartisan culpability in Washington. And yes, we might even have to reassess our love affair with Apple. Perish the thought! But yeah, we just might. Suffice it to say, there is enough inflation blame to go a long way round – and a long way back. Biden just happens to be the President in place right now, so he’s our fall guy.

Biden didn’t create gun violence either. Gun violence came with the job. Gun violence comes with the country that we are. We are consistently deaf to our nation-defining lessons on death by guns and automatic weapons. We are unwilling to leave the curse of our bloody need to kill one another behind us for once and for all. We are, seemingly, just incapable of doing that. We prefer the guns for everybody Don’t Worry Be Happy approach. As Bobby McFerrin once sang:

“In every life we have some trouble
But when you worry you make it double
Don’t worry, be happy.”

And incapable of bringing about real change, we need someone to blame for our morass. That’s why we elect a new President every four years, right?

This time round, we elected Joe Biden.

And surprise, surprise, in an ABC News-Ipsos poll released in December, even though a majority of Americans (53%) still approve of Biden (not a big majority by any means), Biden’s favorability has slipped far from the 72% support that he had just in March. Scapegoat, maybe? And guess what, in recent polls, gun violence, inflation and Covid-response are the major barometers in Biden’s declining poll numbers. Gun violence and inflation, as already mentioned, are beyond any President’s control.

Covid came out of the clear blue sky. Biden’s Covid response is like night and day compared to Trump’s. But a virus is a virus, not controlled by any president anywhere in the world. The delta variant morphed to an omicron variant whether we like it or not. And Biden, despite his power, has no say in that. But yeah, if we’re going to blame someone for the fast-increasing number of Covid infections across the country, let’s blame the guy in office right now. That would be Biden.

Can we fall back on Harris? Not really.

Harris, not often seen or reported on in our media, has percentages that line up pretty much 53% for, and 40% against, not dissimilar to Biden’s. She is not resonating broadly. She faux-pas’s big time recently by saying the delta and omicron variants had caught the current administration off-guard. Fauci, never failing, came to the rescue. Her comments were taken ‘out of context,’  he reassured us.

And so and just because, I thought we might look at how the previous power brokers in the kingdom are doing. They may yet come back to haunt us. A note to Microsoft’s Word’s spellcheck programming people; even now, Word doesn’t recognize Melania as a legitimate name. Come on Microsoft – you’re the most valuable internet-focused company on the planet, get it together and catch up! Melania was here and gone!

Is Melania’s step-daughter, Ivanka, doing so much better than the current occupants of the White House?

I am sad to report that no, she is not.

I found on YouGovAmerica that Ivanka is not doing well at all. The site tells us that Ivanka’s popularity is now at an all-time low of 34%. Welcome to the club, Ivanka! We’re here for you.

How about Melania herself?

It turns out that there is enough disconnect to go round. Melania – unrecognized by Microsoft – left office with the worst final popularity rating for a First Lady ever. But empathy begins from those abandoned en masse by society, so all is not lost. However, after she left the White House, nobody much seemed to care about how our former First Lady was doing. There are no recent poll statistics that I have been able to find on Melania at all.

Melania news was sparse until FoxBusiness recently reported that you can now own a digital watercolor painting of our former First Lady’s eyes in exchange for 1 Solana, a cryptocurrency token. This is not some nutcase hacker trying to make a buck off of Melania. I am not making this up. This is Melania herself selling an NFT. The SOL token involved is, as of this writing, valued at somewhere around $175. Well, you sell a thousand, that’s small change. You sell 50 thousand, you’re looking at almost 9 million dollars! Melania is cashing in. And apparently she is planning to dedicate more of her energy to her new business going forward. According to AlJazeera … Melania Trump will release NFTs “in regular intervals” on her website … with a portion of the proceeds going to foster children. It’s unclear what percentage of the proceeds will be donated, or whether the donations will be given to specific foster child-related charities.

Melania has moved on.

So, there you go!

Oops, not so fast.

Our 45th President, DT, the man himself, seems to think that Melania still has pending, how to put it, responsibilities, duties, (advantages for DT himself?) going forward. He believes that she, despite her current NFT endeavors (she just posted a new one today and is now called crypto queen by London’s Guardian) – , can win the rest of America over for another flyby at the presidency. Well, dreams have to start somewhere.

How is DT, the man himself, doing in the polls these days? As of Dec 15th, FiveThirtyEight tells us that, unfortunately for him and fortunately for us, not so great either. DT had a 52% disapproval rating as of mid-December. The scales seem to have tipped to his detriment. The man lives, still fuming like a discarded cigarette butt, in a luxurious club-like situation in Palm Beach, Florida. He is slow-burning his final years forward, in exile, like some once-upon-a-time Russian oligarch in erstwhile Paris.

So, who wants to be America most? Who loves us the most right now?

Honestly, I don’t know.

Somewhat facetiously, I thought of nominating Lana Del Rey.

Lana Del Rey is a self-made enthusiast for American symbolism and a lover of America’s past. Del Rey, sometimes, knows us better than we know ourselves. She knows our ins and outs, our cultural highs and lows, perhaps more than anybody. She knows our doubts, our inadequacies, our blemishes and our flaws. She knows out inherent attractions, and she understands why we are the country that we are.

Lana knows us like the back of our hand.

Alas, Lana Del Rey is not our answer. She is a singer who has no interest in politics.

So, hurtling on toward November 5, 2024, we are left with the same coterie of names as before, the Kennedys, the Bushes, the Obamas, the Reagans, the Clintons, the Trumps, and now the Bidens.

The Obamas were the breakthrough family on that list. But they have come and gone, just like Melania. The list is getting thinner by the day. There are no new Regans going forward, no new Bushes (that I know of), no Clintons, no new Kennedys and no new Obamas.

But are there still future Trumps out there, lesser or greater Trumps, in our future?

Hell yeah, there are many new future Trumps – sharing his surname or not – just waiting in line, ready to sabotage our democracy all over again. The grand lesson of DT for his acolytes worldwide is that you can lie, bluff, confuse and bluster … and you can get away with it. You can build a fake persona, just like you can build fake news. QED.

Lesson learned.

Get yourself a bullhorn, align yourself with our most base instincts that negate difference, diversity, multiculturalism, human decency and democracy. And then start to prattle, jabber and vent – the more outrageous and farfetched your positions the better.

Then – and just then – some segments of America may start to believe that you have legitimacy. And just then, some segments of America may begin to believe that you love them most.

Oops! Sorry.

That you love America most.

The post Who loves America most? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Do you remember your first brush with the scientific method? For most of us, the six steps at the core of the scientific method were introduced during our formative years in elementary school. Remember the infamous lima bean experiment? I recall how curious I was when my first-grade teacher unveiled the stack of mason jars, the pile of paper towels, and the tray of beans set up on the crayon-scuffed table in the middle of the room. I’ve never forgotten the sense of wonder as I watched the emergence of the bean’s roots and shoots inside the glass jar. I’ve also never forgotten my impatience as I was reminded to color in a chart that showed that I’d faithfully followed each prescribed step. That was the moment when I, like most first graders, first became immersed in the step-by-step process that forms the basis for all science.

Everything a kid then and now needs to know about the universe of scientific inquiry— about curiosity, about logical planning, about patience, about predictability and integrity, about personal responsibility and commitment to wherever the observed facts may lead an experiment—was contained in the simple act of adding water and light to a lowly bean and observing the miracle of photosynthesis and plant growth.

What we learned in first grade

In child-friendly terms, first-grade teachers introduce the indisputable fact that the scientific method forms the basis for every transformative discovery in science and technology from the ancient world to our time. As adults, most of us understand that no matter what the area of study, the research, experimentation, and the drawing of conclusions based on observation follow the same path—a path that culminates in a set of facts. This trajectory is true for everything from the simplest discoveries—like the environmental triggers that jump start the germination of seeds that feed and sustain us—to the most complex and multifaceted—like space exploration, or identifying the causes of climate change, or the molecular signature of life, or the unraveling of the interconnections between genetics and disease.

So what went wrong in the American zeitgeist that so many first graders have grown up to be adults who seem to be casting aside what they learned about science and facts at the age of six?

Incredibly, the one third of adult Americans who identify as climate-change deniers or doubters have suppressed the lessons of their six-year-old selves and succumbed to factless, corporate-interest propaganda and wild conspiracy theories. Even worse, individuals who have been appointed to be guardians of agencies of our government are ignoring, suppressing, and, in the most extreme, censoring and altering facts promulgated by scientists faithful to the scientific method and the agencies’ science-based missions.

What we’ve forgotten

How much has science denial and suppression of fact-based research under the current president and his appointees affected government agencies and the scientists who commit themselves to fact-based policy on behalf of the health and prosperity of Americans?

A survey of more than 63,000 federal scientists working in sixteen government agencies paints an alarming picture. The survey, conducted in the fall of 2018 by the Union of Concerned Scientists, reveals that

• 80 percent of the survey’s respondents reported workforce reductions through staff cuts, hiring freezes, and failures to replace staff who quit or retired.
• 87 percent reported that budget and staff reductions undermined their ability to fulfill their scientific missions.
• 50 percent across the sixteen agencies confirmed that political interests are currently hindering the agencies’ ability to base policy solely on scientific findings.
• 76 percent of National Park Service respondents and 81 percent of respondents at the EPA reported that political interests have become an obstacle to fact-based policy.

Survey respondents also confirmed the dysfunction and corruption of mission that outside observers have been reporting since the election of 2016. These are shocking numbers.

• 70 percent agreed or strongly agreed that leaders of the agencies plucked from the industries agencies are supposed to be regulating are inappropriately influencing the agencies’ decision making.
• And the most extreme type of interference—actual censorship—is insidiously undermining agencies’ science-based missions, with nearly 35 percent (or approximately 150) of scientists working in the EPA reporting that they’d been asked to censor the phrase “climate change” from their reports;
• Another 30 percent indicate that they had avoided working on climate change or using the phrase “climate change” without “explicit orders to do so.”

Here’s what one anonymous EPA scientist revealed,

“The current administration sees protecting industry as part of the agency’s mission and does not want to consider action that might reduce industry profit, even if it’s based on sound science [emphasis added]. We are not fulfilling our mission to protect human health and the environment as a result.”

The scientists who responded to the survey and were courageous enough to send out an S.O.S. are without a doubt imploring us to take action before the pollution of science and the diminishment of a fact-based world goes beyond our ability to rein in the chaos.

Back to the future

Here’s the first step. Let’s send Donald Trump and his unqualified agency appointees back to their first-grade classrooms for a two-year remedial course on science and the true meaning of the word “fact.” Then, while they’re playing around with their lima beans and mason jars, those in our government who believe in fact-based policy can get on with the work of allowing scientists to provide us with the evidence to create policies that protect and enhance our lives, the lives of our children, and the world.

The post Lima beans, the scientific method, and saving the planet appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Automatically believing Brett Kavanaugh and invalidating the account of Christine Blasey-Ford. Taking aim at the protection of coverage for pre-existing conditions. Ideas like this are appalling to many progressives, people who pride themselves in taking a rational approach to problem-solving.

But those of us who are appalled by these Republican ideas have to keep in mind a couple of things:

1. We are hardly a majority. Just this morning, a Wall Street Journal / NBC poll reveals that Donald Trump’s approval rating has jumped to 47%. For most of his term, he has lingered below 40%.
2. The Republican views will not magically go away. While I have advocated a possible solution being that schools must focus much more on critical thinking and empathy rather than test scores, that idea is somewhat hollow because so many teachers have Republican leanings (even if they below to unions) and they have very different ideas of critical thinking and empathy.
3. Even if progressives are more interested in learning about how Republicans think than vice-versa, we still are largely at a loss.

In an effort to advance the progressives’ understanding of conservatives to the point where we can possibly move the needle towards our version of critical thinking, etc., Occasional Planet is commissioning a series for public opinion surveys. Each one will hopefully give us greater understanding and also raise a new level of questions. We’ll keep pursuing.

On Thursday, October 18, we sent a survey to a random selection of 239 Americans. This has some statistical significance, obviously not as much as a survey of more than 1,000 respondents. You can see the entirety of the results by clicking here.

In this and coming posts, we will analyze findings and raise new questions. We will try not to overload readers with data; we too belong to the “short attention data club.”

One of the questions that we asked was, “Who do you trust most to protect your interests?” The choices were (a) The federal government, (b) My state government and (c) My local government.

Here are the results:

51% said their local government

29% said their state government

20% said the federal government

Just to clarify, the party breakdown of the survey sample was:

13% Strong Republican

17% Moderate Republican

28% Independent

14% Moderate Democrat

19% Strong Democrat

So, the sample leaned slightly more Democrat than Republican.

But here is our “key finding” and question of the day:

Of those who most trusted the federal government, 50% were strong Republicans while only 26% were strong Democrats.

We normally associate strong Democrats (progressives) with support of the federal government. After all, the New Deal, Great Society and most of the other fabric of the social and economic safety net comes from the federal government. So, why is it that in our survey, there is greater trust in the federal government from strong Republicans than strong Democrats.

Feel free to share your thoughts with us by clicking here.

The post Looking for insights into (er, questions about) the Republican Brain appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Do you wake multiple times during the night obsessing about the upcoming midterm elections and the Democrats’ chances of taking back the House or the Senate?  If the answer is “yes,” then here’s some updated data from statistician-extraordinaire Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight that might—at least temporarily—help you get through the night.

Hot off the presses on Tuesday, October 16, 2018, at 12:57pm, here’s Silver’s latest forecast about the probable breakdown of Democrats’ taking back the House.

According to Silver, there’s a 6 in 7 chance Democrats will win control, which translates for us non-data nerds as an 84.5% chance. Conversely, there’s a 1 in 7 chance, or a 15.5% chance, that Republicans will keep control of the House. Nate’s forecasting that Democrats have an 80% chance of gaining 19 to 62 seats and forecasts a pick up of 40+ seats.

Thank you, Nate, for today’s gift and for tonight’s (possible) restful slumber. And what about tomorrow and the day and night after and the days and nights after that? As in all things, there are no guarantees. However, Nate promises to continue to deliver his group’s most accurate forecasts up until election day.

There are still twenty-one days until the midterms, and all that we know for certain is that the world can turn upside-down in that amount of time. Anything is possible.

For today, I’m going to suspend my doubts, push aside the angst, and trust in Nate. What else have I got?

To read about Nate’s methodology, go to

How FiveThirtyEight’s House And Senate Models Work

The post The [Nate] Silver lining playbook for 2018 midterms appeared first on Occasional Planet.

I filled out the U.S. Department of Commerce’s American Community Survey today, and I’m wondering: Does this thing yield anything useful, and do I trust it?

The survey arrived in my mailbox two weeks ago. Having not returned it immediately, I received a second notice—a message from the Director of the U.S. Census Bureau. “This survey is so important that a Census Bureau representative may attempt to contact you by telephone or personal visit if we do not receive your response,” said the letter. I definitely didn’t want that, so I sat down and began filling in the blanks.

What’s the American Community Survey [ACS]? It’s not the 2020 Census. The Census Bureaus conducts the ACS every year. In censuses before 2010, most households received a short-form questionnaire, while one household in every six received a long form that contained additional questions and provided more detailed socio-economic information about the population. In 2010, everyone got the short-form, and the long form was replaced with the ACS. ACS forms go out every year, rather than once every 10 years. They are sent to a small percentage of the population on a rotating basis throughout the decade. [No household is supposed to receive the ACS more often than once very five years. Good to know.]

As to how I was chosen to participate in the Community Survey, and why I have to fill it out, the Department of Commerce informs me that…

The Census Bureau chose your address, not you personally, as part of a randomly selected sample. You are required by U.S. law to respond to the survey. The U.S. Census Bureau is required by law to keep your information confidential. The Census Bureau is not permitted to publicly release you responses in a way that could identify you. Per the Federal Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2015, your data are protected from cybersecurity risks through screening of the systems that transmit your data.

Also, according to the US Census Bureau, “Every Census Bureau employee takes a lifetime oath to protect your personal identification. Disclosing ANY information that could identify you or your family means 5 years in prison, or  $250,000 in fines, or both.”

Nevertheless, I remain skeptical. Given recent revelations about Facebook, Russian trolls, and the Trump campaign’s links to the downright-dirty Cambridge Analytica group, plus the Trump administration’s pervasive corruption and growing track record of self-dealing, I am rapidly losing trust in our current government’s commitment to privacy and data security. I suspect that I am not alone in that skepticism, and that’s one of my concerns about the accuracy and usefulness of information being collected in the Community Survey.

It took me about 30 minutes to fill out the paper form. If there were more people in my household, it would have taken longer, because you have to answer the same questions for everybody who lives in your house.

The ACS includes questions that go beyond the decennial [big word for every ten years] Census: It asks who’s in school, who’s finished school and at what level, who’s working [where, how often, and the nature of the job], what kind of transportation you use, whether anyone in your household is deaf, blind, receiving benefits for a disability, unable to climb a flight of stairs, or having difficulty focusing on tasks. And more.

I don’t have a problem with these questions. I believe the Census Department’s brochure when it says :

“Communities need data about the well-being of children, families and the older population to provide services to them. The ACS …[helps to] establish goals, identify problems and solutions, and measure the performance of programs. The data are also used to decide where to locate new highways, schools, hospitals and community centers.”

That actually sounds to me like a well-intentioned, good-government program aimed at the common good.

Of course, I also believe that this information would probably be better used by a government led by people who actually care about the well-being of people, rather than the financial health of their corporate cronies.

Nevertheless, I persisted, and  I dutifully plodded through.

And yes, the ACS does ask about your citizenship status. But, as an aside, that’s not new. That question was included in the every-ten-year census from 1890 through 1950. According to snopes.com:

Beginning in 1970 and continuing through 2000, The Census Bureau used two different questionnaires to gather information—a short form sent to more than 80 percent of American households, which did not inquire about citizenship, and a long form distributed to fewer than 20 percent of American households, which did [include the citizenship question.]

The long form was discontinued after 2000, so in 2010, every household received the short form—meaning, in effect, that no one was asked for citizenship data in the big 2010 Census. But households who received the ACS were …Technically, the Census Bureau never actually stopped asking the citizenship question, although since the 2000 census, they have only asked it of around 3.5 million households [2.6 percent of the population] per year.

[Whether it is being added back in to the overall census for 2020 for political reasons is another issue.]

But I digress.

Here are some problems I have with the ACS:

Working your way through it is a bit like stumbling through a maze. Depending on how you answer, say, Question 12a, you are instructed either to skip to Question 15a, or answer Question 12b. [Not real question numbers, in case you’re checking me for accuracy.] There’s a lot of that. You have to repeat the procedure for every member of the household, and I can imagine people getting frustrated and bailing out. [I can just hear the complaints of “ridiculous government bureaucracy” now.]

Then, when you get to the part about household income and expenses, you’re really in the weeds. You’re sitting on the couch with your spouse, filling out the form, and you come to the questions about how much you earned in the past 12 months [not the same period as you’re filing for with the IRS, by the way], how much of that was interest and/or dividends, how much was Social Security, or pension, how much you pay per month for natural gas, electricity, sewer, water, personal property taxes and real estate taxes, and homeowners’ or rental insurance.

I’m a homeowner. I pay bills. But I don’t have those numbers at my fingertips. And, let’s face it, after page after page of questions, I’m just too lazy to go to my files to figure out those numbers.  So I estimate. Or guess. Or just pull a number out of the air, just to fill in the blank. And I’m certain that I’m not alone in short-cutting the process. So, how good is the information going to be?

Also, the ACS asked me to indicate my ethnic background or national origin. They offer suggestions, such as Japanese, Polish, etc. But, really, what am I supposed to say? Where my parents and grandparents came from? There’s just one blank, but my family was from several different countries. I didn’t know what to say. That’s why I left it blank. Maybe the government doesn’t really need to know that, anyway.

And I think that that others may not answer that question, as well, because they fear that ethnic information could be used for nefarious purposes—especially by an administration that is so openly anti-immigrant. [Personally, I’m not yet at the stage of paranoia that I worry that ethnic information will be used to send us to internment camps –although there’s some evidence that pre-World-War-II census information was used precisely for that purpose].

In the end, I did my duty as a citizen and mailed it in—in the conveniently supplied pre-paid envelope. But I have my doubts about the usefulness and privacy of the information I’ve supplied. In today’s prevailing political atmosphere, I’m guessing that many others share my suspicions, and that there will be a lot of spaces left blank and surveys tossed in the trash. That’s a sad development for our country.

The post American Community Survey: Is it useful? Is it safe? appeared first on Occasional Planet.

You have to name it before you can deal with it. That is sound advice often given by psychologists, sociologists, medical doctors, in fact virtually everyone who engages in try to solve problems. Auto mechanics do it and so do baseball pitching coaches.

One interpretation of what happened electorally in America in 2016 as that too many of us just became sick of “identity politics.” That means that they turned away from the Democratic Party. For generations, Democrats have been the party of “the colored, Negros, Blacks, Afro-Americans, African-Americans” as well as “Hispanics, Latinos” and other ethnic minorities. Democrats have also been the party of the young and the old, as well as of women.

But none of these categories describe a large portion of those who voted for Donald Trump for president. Hillary Clinton attached a moniker to some of them, “deplorables,” but that is neither accurate nor helpful.

Maybe blue collar workers is a more appropriate term. Others prefer “working class” because it seems to describe a lot of people who have daily jobs. But there are a lot of people who are salaried rather than working for wages or are also “working.”

In order to correctly identify this group, we need one or several terms that meet two criteria: (1) the people being described are comfortable with it, and (2) the people outside of that group know who is being described.

There never has been a politically correct term for white people. Perhaps one reason for that is that whites still make up a majority of the American people. This seems to entitle whites to be the “we” and any or all of the others to be “them.”

The difficulty in coming up with a clear name for Trump voters (and that certainly is not a homogeneous group) is what makes it so difficult for Democrats to incorporate them into their plans, their strategies, their way of thinking of creating coalitions from identity groups.

So we are going to suggest two things that Democrats can do now to address the problem:

1. Begin a process of trying to come up with a name (or names) for the people who felt disenfranchised enough from the Democratic Party to vote for Trump, and
2. Named or unnamed for now, help Democrats include them in their basket of constituent groups. These voters need to be seen as people in need of the services and policies that Democrats bring; not as “other people” who we only view as scapegoats.

So below is a quick survey of possible names for the “Trump people” who have not been included in the recent panoply of “identity groups” who are part of the Democratic coalition. By the way, if Democrats can include the Trump voters in their constituencies, then maybe we can reach the ultimate goal of moving beyond identity politics and including all of us as part of “we.”

Acceptable “identity” names for Trump voters:

We will report results of this survey to you no later than Wednesday, December 15, 2016.

The post The party of identity politics needs to identify Trump voters appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Bernie Sanders is calling for a political revolution. Is there evidence to demonstrate that his “revolution” is needed? And why is the Sanders revolution proving to be more attractive to some voters than Hillary Clinton’s focus on “improving what he have?”

There is considerable evidence in the FY 2017 budget that President Obama just submitted to Congress that the American economy is doing well. Republicans seem to collectively have astigmatisms in both eyes considering how blurred their vision of reality is.

Consider how job growth has changed from 2009 (President Obama’s first year, still in the hangover from the Bush years) through 2015:

Related to that is how unemployment has fallen during the Obama Administration:

Republicans are always harping on the federal deficit, but the rate of growth has consistently fallen through the Obama Administration (as it did during the Bill Clinton years):

To be fair, and to raise a question that Democrats tend to avoid: “has the ‘do-nothing’ nature of the Republican-controlled recent Congresses had anything to do with the sustained growth?” It’s interesting because if it is true, there do not seem to be any Republicans who claim any credit for their role in the growth. This stands in stark contrast to the growth during the Bill Clinton years. If you listen to John Kasich and Newt Gingrich, you would think that their roles as Republicans in Congress were the determining factors in the growth.

The charts above depict certain aspects of the macro-economy. That means how we are doing collectively (I guess that we can now thankfully use that word, courtesy of Bernie). What the charts do not show is the micro-economy – how individuals, families, and small businesses are presently doing.

One way to get a sense of how the economy is working at the grass roots level is to test the mood, or the forecasts of individuals. Using data from the recent December, 2015 CNN/ORC poll, it is clear that the American people are of mixed minds when it comes to how the economy is working for them.

How do you rate the economic conditions in the country today – as very good, somewhat good, somewhat poor or very poor?

What leads to further questions is how the lack of optimism crosses economic and educational levels:

What is interesting here is how the percentages for every single sub-group, with the one exception of college grads who rate economic conditions as “somewhat good,” is within the margin of error, compared to the total column. This indicates that despite the rosy macro numbers, there is no mandate for optimism from citizens. While this pattern has been true for most of the 2000s, it has not always been that way. Take a look at the figures from July of 1998, when Bill Clinton was president:

Take a look at the “Total good” and “Total poor” columns. They seem inconceivable today. Interestingly enough, the “Total good” figure nearly two years later, in June, 2000, was 85%. It makes it hard to believe that Al Gore won the popular election that year by only a half-million votes.

Two of the bellwether questions about how the economy is doing are:

1. Do you believe that you are economically better off than your parents at this stage of their lives?
2. So you believe that your children will be economically better off than you?

Occasional Planet asked those questions in a recent survey* and here are the results:

There are two main conclusions from this chart:

1. None of the bars rises to the 50% level. That means that people do not feel that things “are better” or “will get better.”
2. There is a high degree of uncertainty (42%) about whether or not their children will be better off than they.

The apparent pessimism may be due in part to the lack of growth of “real wages” (wages adjusted for the cost of living) since 1998, the latter part of the Bill Clinton administration:

What we can conclude from all this data is:

1. The American public’s current views about the economy are much less optimistic than they were at the end of President Bill Clinton’s second term.
2. There is pessimism and uncertainty about the prospects for prosperity for our next generation of adults.
3. Despite macro successes, the policies of President Obama and the largely Republican congresses for the past four terms have not really generated confidence among the populace.
4. Perhaps most importantly, the Obama years have not created growth in real earnings for middle and low-income people.

This is in part why Bernie Sanders’ talk of a “revolution” may be more attractive to some voters than Hillary Clinton’s talk of “improving what we have.”

*Occasional Planet interviewed 550 Americans on January 14-15, 2016, using the services of the online-site Survey Monkey. The sample size is reliable +/- 4.5%, 95% of the time. It is demographically balanced by gender, ethnicity, age, income and geographic region.

The post The case for the Sanders revolution appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Which two of the following characteristics best describes the kind of leader that you would want for the country? [You must select two]:

1. A warrior, fearless and strong
2. An intellectual who is knowledgeable and who reasons well
3. A person who is thoughtful and caring with who he or she is
4. Someone who will not back down to anyone.

Once you’ve selected your answers, then think about which two Donald Trump might select. Then try Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

In Occasional Planet’s on-line survey of 550 respondents*, the answers came out like this:

Our thinking was that the top and the bottom choices would be more Trump-like; in fact, more reflective of the Republican Party. Similarly, our hypothesis was that the middle two options would be more representative of progressive thinking. These two characteristics seem to characterize several recent Democratic presidents, most particularly John F. Kennedy and Barack Obama.

There are six different pairs of combinations that any one respondent could choose. We wanted to see what the difference was between what Republicans and Democrats chose. Figure 2 shows the percentages of different groups that selected the pair of “comfortable with self” and “reasons well:”

Democrats (in blue) selected these two options 81% of the time; five times as often as random selection would be. Republicans (in red) selected them only 30% of the time. Republicans generally favored at least one of the two more “macho” choices.

As you look at the current debate among 2016 presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders seem to focus much more on issues than do the Republicans. Clinton and Sanders both come across as “thoughtful and caring; comfortable with themselves” as well as “knowledgeable and capable of reasoning well.” The GOP candidates reflect more of the warrior mentality (particularly with Rand Paul having dropped out) and as individuals who will not back down, especially Donald Trump and Marco Rubio.

We asked respondents the same questions about what characteristics they would like in their boss. The graph below shows the comparisons of different groups in terms of what they want for a leader of the country vs. a boss. The red bar reflects what they want in a leader; the blue bars are what they want in a boss.

When it comes to the “thoughtful, rational, caring, comfortable” options, all groups think that is more important in their boss than in a leader for their nation. But the biggest spread among them is with members of the GOP. Republicans seem to want what might be called the “integrated personality” for their boss, but not nearly as much in their national leader.

What do we learn from this? This is very subjective, but there are a few takeaways:

1. Democrats favor more a person who is “comfortable with who he or she is.” This is why Democrats generally have the good sense to reject uncomfortable individuals for president like Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. The question remains, do Republicans seem to prefer someone who is not comfortable with him or herself, or do they just not notice?
2. Democrats seem to reject the one-dimensional thinking of “someone who will not back down” or a “warrior, fearless and strong.” Does this mean that they have favored “weak presidents?’ It is interesting that during Jimmy Carter’s presidency, no American soldiers were killed in combat. and during Bill Clinton’s presidency, only one American soldier was killed in combat. Were they weak? Doubtful. But they were judicious.

*Occasional Planet interviewed 550 Americans on January 14-15, 2016, using the services of the online-site Survey Monkey. The sample size is reliable +/- 4.5%, 95% of the time. It is demographically balanced by gender, ethnicity, age, income and geographic region.

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How much of science do people believe? In our 2016 survey, we did not ask “What weighs more, a ton of steel or a ton of cotton?” But we did ask people about their understanding of gravity and climate change and other topics. Here are the top findings:*

1. Only 81% of survey respondents believe what scientists say about gravity. What are the other 19% thinking?
2. When it comes to gravity, Republicans and Democrats are both on the same page.
3. Republicans have less faith in weather forecasts, whether or not a drug is safe to take, and yes, climate change.

It seems that Republicans have more trouble with scientific knowledge if it is sanctioned by the government. Only 34% of Republicans believe weather forecasts, even though data indicates that 48-hour forecasts from the National Weather Service are remarkably accurate. A similar number of Republicans believe information about whether or not a drug is safe, which might in part explain why Republicans are not so supportive of the Federal Drug Administration (FDA). Contributions from pharmaceuticals might also influence Republicans (and Democrats) in Washington.

But as might be expected, in our survey, Republicans were less than half as likely to believe what scientists say about climate change (35% to 86%). A clear question is whether or not Republicans are just skeptical of scientists who write about climate change, or if this is a different kind of “learned behavior?” Is their thinking influenced by church teachings? What about what Republican office-holders say? If that is so, does it mean that campaign contributions from fossil fuel companies to Republican candidates have a “trickle down” effect of polluting the thinking of rank-and-file Republicans on climate change? This question is one for further exploration.

Here are a couple of other observations from the survey:

Figure 2

The blue vertical bar represents the thinking of 18-29 year olds. This group has more confidence across the board in what scientists say. This raises two related questions:

1. Did the people in the other three age brackets used to have more faith in what scientists said when they were younger?
2. Will the current group of 18–29 year olds have less faith in science as they get further removed from school? If so, why?

A final finding is very tentative because of sample size. But we found that the African-Americans who took the on-line survey showed less belief than others in what scientists say.

Most profoundly, only 6% of African-American Democrats believe that the number of calories listed for a food is accurate. The sample size of African-Americans was only 50, so this will certainly require more study.

But the most vexing question is the one we cited first. Why do so many people not believe what scientists say about gravity. To try to answer that question, we refer them to several experiments on gravity conducted by non-scientist David Letterman in 1986, while dropping “stuff” off a “five-story tower” in New Rochelle, NY.

*Occasional Planet interviewed 550 Americans on January 14-15, 2016, using the services of the online-site Survey Monkey. The sample size is reliable +/- 4.5%, 95% of the time. It is demographically balanced by gender, ethnicity, age, income and geographic region.

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Conventional wisdom holds that Republicans are the party of the wealthy. But as Donald Trump’s campaign has clearly revealed, there are plenty of Republicans out there who are not particularly wealthy.

In a recent Occasional Planet poll*, we asked, “In your opinion, what do you think is the primary reason that some people in America are richer than others?” The answer choices were:

1. The rich deserve to be richer
2. The rich are smarter
3. The rich work harder
4. Our economic system favors the rich
5. The luck of the draw

As you can see from the chart of all respondents, hardly anyone said that the “the rich deserve to be richer,” and only a few more said “the rich are smarter.” Most said, “Our economic system favors the rich.”

Conventional wisdom would say that more Democrats than Republicans believe that the economic system favors the rich  The survey appears to validate that notion.

You can see that 80% of Democrats polled believe that our economic system favors the rich, compared to only 27% of Republicans. Independents fall in the middle at 58%.

Conventional wisdom would further say that lower income people would be more likely to say that our system favors the rich. Again, the survey seems to support that idea, but not as dramatically.

The blue bar represents respondents from households earning less than $50,000 per year. The gray bar shows those from households with incomes of over $150,000. Seventy percent of the lower-income group believe that our economic system favors the wealthy. Only 46% of those with household incomes over $150,000 believe that.

There might be an anomaly here, with 46% of the wealthy believing the supposition, and with only 27% of Republicans accepting that perspective. Is this a relatively small fissure between Republicans in general and the wealthy, or is it a great divide?

We drilled down further and here’s what we found.

Figure 4 represents the views of Republicans, Democrats and Independents, separated by household income level.

Inside the blue bars in the middle, we can see there is virtually no difference among Democrats of different income levels in accepting the premise that “our economic system favors the rich.

Inside the red bars on the left, we see a monumental difference between wealthy and low-income Republicans. Only 6% of wealthy Republicans accept the premise that “our economic system favors the rich.” But for those Republicans who are members of low income households, fully 52% believe that “our economic system favors the rich.” This is nearly a nine-fold difference.

What does all of this mean?

1. On the question of whether our economic system favors the wealthy, there seems to be unanimity among Democrats, regardless of their household incomes.
2. On the same question, there is a deep division among Republicans from high-income and low-income families.

• Do these results mean that there are two large groups of Republicans:  one consisting of the wealthy who want to protect most private wealth in the United States; and a second group of lower-income Republicans who live somewhat of a hard-scrabble life and, perhaps, are among Donald Trump’s “angry supporters?”
• While this contention seems to make sense, it will require far more study. A larger sample size might yield more reliable results.

We will conduct at least one further study examining these questions,  and on the ultimate question we are asking:   “Why are the Democratic and Republican brains so different from one another,” and what can we do to try to have a more fair and just America and world.

*Occasional Planet interviewed 550 Americans on January 14-15, 2016, using the services of the online-site Survey Monkey. The sample size is reliable +/- 4.5%, 95% of the time. It is demographically balanced by gender, ethnicity, age, income and geographic region.

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