The Innumerate Right (Michael Barone Is an Embarrassment to the Press Corps Edition)

Why can't Michael Barone count? Wonkette deals with his overall argument at the level it deserves. But I want to point out that only a truly mighty degree of innumeracy could have led Michael Barone to even make this argument in the first place:

Michael Barone: The trustfunder left: a previously unidentified segment of the American electorate... a critical mass... a major force... the trustfunder left. Who are the trustfunders? People with enough money not to have to work for a living, or not to have to work very hard. People who can live more or less wherever they want....

These people... very liberal... have done nothing to earn their money... elite private or public high schools... colleges and universities... propagandized about the evils of capitalism and globalization.... Patriotism is equated with Hiterlism.... [T]hey are citizens of the world with contempt for those who feel chills up their spines when they hear 'The Star Spangled Banner.'...

Where can you find trustfunders?... Places with kicky restaurants... tolerant of alternative lifestyles... art galleries... organic food stores... Starbucks competitors. The... San Francisco Bay area.... Without the Bay area's 1.15 million-vote margin for Kerry, California would have come within 82,000 votes of voting for George W. Bush.... Blaine County, Idaho (Sun Valley).... Teton County, Wyo. (Jackson Hole).... Martha's Vineyard....

The good news for Democrats is that they have found a new source of votes and money. The bad news is that an important part of their core constituency has the characteristic that the British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin ascribed to the press, 'power without responsibility, the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.'

Let's do the math. People with "enough money not to have to work for a living, or not to have to work very hard." How much money is that for an upper middle class lifestyle (have to go to all those restaurants and art galleries: organic produce is expensive)? Figure $70,000 (pretax) per year in property income (and even at that you still have to work pretty hard). If you spend 4% of your capital each year, that's a wealth level of $1.7 million.

Emmanuel Saez tells me that there are roughly 600,000 people living in households with $1.7 million or more of wealth--and that's including the value of their house. Only a fraction have that much income-producing wealth. More than half of that fraction are over 60. More than half of the ones who are left are Republican. And at least half of the remainder have earned all their money--not inherited any of it.

So we are down to less than 75,000 "trustfunder lefties" in America. And they--those of them who live outside the major cities--are supposed to be responsible for the worries about sprawl and environmental degradation that make Sun Valley and Jackson Hole lean Democratic? For the Bay Area's 1.2 million vote edge for John Kerry? Michael Barone embarrasses himself.

Furthermore, one might have thought that Michael Barone might have noticed that over the past generation the San Francisco Bay has been the most powerful engine of capitalist economic development anywhere, anytime. The merchant prince of Silicon Valley today are only fabulously rich rather than unbelievably fabulously rich because the market system works, and competition in the market system pumps wealth out of producers and into the hands of users and consumers. Nevertheless, they and their workers have created, accumulated, and pumped out more wealth than any other region in any other era. The last time I went to a chi-chi restaurant in San Francisco (Nancy Oakes's Boulevard, 1 Mission Street: truly excellent) I betcha I had the biggest trust fund at the table (a 1/12 share of my late grandmother's couple of million) and I also betcha that my household net worth was comfortably less than 1% of the table average. You could go through the restuarants of San Francisco's waterfront some Friday night and not find a single "trustfunder" eating a creme brulee.

Only a true idiot could begin raving about those who have "enough money not to have to work for a living, or not to have to work very hard" without wondering how many such people there are. And only the truly quantitatively innumerate--like Michael Barone--could avoid immediately figuring out that there are very few such people: that they aren't "a critical mass... a major force... a new source of votes... [a] core constituency" at all.

I don't know why Michael Barone is totally innumerate. I do know why he doesn't find innumeracy an obstacle to his career in Washington: if he were numerate, after all, he'd have a harder time just making stuff up.

Comments

[GT]

But tell us how you really think!

[a]

Ah, trustfunder left, welfare queens of the 21 cetury. $70K/yr for a faimly in SFBA is working poor. A family with a couple of million of net assets is likely to have two breadwinners, working more (frequently much more) than 40 hours per week each. If they don't like us so much in Washington, maybe we could secede?

[AWC]

Actually, Barone's argument is familiar to anyone who's read reactionary propaganda of the last two centuries. There's a long American tradition of claiming that a wealthy aristocracy (the Queen of England, the Rothschilds, the Bank of Morgan, the Rockefellers, etc.) works in league with left-wing revolutionists to keep hard-worker, salt-of-the-earth "small businessmen" down. The only difference between Barone's screed and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion is that the Right learned to remove the overt anti-semitism round-about 1960. This rhetoric sadly permeates even the writings of well-read conservatives like David Brooks, who mouth banalities about "real Americans" and "coastal elites."

Of course, reality has nothing to do with its popularity. It survives because it allows millionaires like Barone to view themselves as working-class victims, rather than a greedy elite, hell bent on keeping the masses at bay.

[ken]

When I worked at a regional dealer as a bond trader we had several trust funders not working very hard right along side the rest of us who did indeed work very, very hard. They were rabidly conservative with extreme libertarian tendencies. They all voted republican however because they were too afraid that if they voted libertarian their votes would be wasted and a democrat might win.

[Anderson]

Where can I sign up?

[Michael Cain]

Why exclude the over-60 group? In the past year I have met several women well over 60, living well from their investment income, with "leftist" politics. One was certainly a trust-funder; she had inherited tens of millions from her father. I can't say for sure about the others, but suspect that most were wealthy because they and/or their spouse had earned it. The ones I met were active in the Hope for Generations projects at the Denver Foundation -- a program that was started by people who did not presently need their Social Security checks donating them to fund local programs for poor elderly and poor children.

[Thor's Hammer]

Again Frankfurt's words are the most appropriate:

"Both in lying and in telling the truth people are guided by their beliefs concerning the way things are. These guide them as they endeavor either to describe the world correctly or to describe it deceitfully. ... The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all."

I image Barone would not be embarrassed if he were to read your analysis. He may not even care enough to dispute it.

Barone and the right-wing punditocracy have transcended reality. Notions of 'truth' apply only as long as one is 'reality-based'.

[Brian]

I sent a pretty long e-mail to Brad Plumer that was a take down, or so I thought, of Barone's nonsense. It basically showed, or at least I think it showed, the flaws in his logical and the poor case me makes while trying to prove his point. But yours is much more direct (and it has numbers), so I tip my hat to you.

[anne]

Anderson

I am with you. Where do we sign up :) No weasels allowed, however. Well, I actually like the thought of weasels, away from bird nests. There is a metaphor there somewhere. Trustfunding we go.

[big al]

Anne:- A weasel is weasily distinguished, because a stoat is stoatally different!

[anne]

Imagine thinking of myself as a previously unidentified majorette force (forget the critical mass stuff). Ever notice though how such diatribe always has a way of sailing into a meanness about women? Ah well, noticed.

[anne]

Oh Big Al

Now that is wonderful. Remember "Wind in the Willows?" The book is lovely, and the original "Wind in the Willows" made in the early 1950s is brilliant. Toad Hall is taken by stoats and weasels. Dear mad old Toad and friends must take back their home. I love you, Big Al. Yes, we have a weasily weasel in Toad Hall guarded by stoats.

[anne]

Wind in the Willows

THE sheep ran huddling together against the hurdles, blowing out thin nostrils and stamping with delicate fore-feet, their heads thrown back and a light steam rising from the crowded sheep-pen into the frosty air, as the two animals hastened by in high spirits, with much chatter and laughter. They were returning across country after a long day's outing with Otter, hunting and exploring on the wide uplands where certain streams tributary to their own River had their first small beginnings; and the shades of the short winter day were closing in on them, and they had still some distance to go. Plodding at random across the plough, they had heard the sheep and had made for them; and now, leading from the sheep-pen, they found a beaten track that made walking a lighter business, and responded, moreover, to that small inquiring something which all animals carry inside them, saying unmistakably, `Yes, quite right; this leads home!'

`It looks as if we were coming to a village,' said the Mole somewhat dubiously, slackening his pace, as the track, that had in time become a path and then had developed into a lane, now handed them over to the charge of a well-metalled road. The animals did not hold with villages, and their own highways, thickly frequented as they were, took an independent course, regardless of church, post office, or public-house.

[larry birnbaum]

a & AWC are on the money. DeLong believes Barone embarrasses the press, or himself, because he misunderstands the role that Barone and those who publish him play, and understand themselves to play. The question for them, always, is this: How can we create an image of a scary, un-American "other" whose goals and values are antithetical to those of "real Americans," who are the root of our problems, who enough insecure people can be mobilized against to sway the next election?

It's worth deconstructing the arguments these jackals make only insofar as it helps prevent thinking people from being confused by them. But this is a meager response because their arguments aren't aimed at thinking people, but at fearful people.

[anne]

Sometimes, in the course of long summer evenings, the friends would take a stroll together in the Wild Wood, now successfully tamed so far as they were concerned; and it was pleasing to see how respectfully they were greeted by the inhabitants, and how the mother-weasels would bring their young ones to the mouths of their holes, and say, pointing, `Look, baby! There goes the great Mr. Toad! And that's the gallant Water Rat, a terrible fighter, walking along o' him! And yonder comes the famous Mr. Mole, of whom you so often have heard your father tell!' But when their infants were fractious and quite beyond control, they would quiet them by telling how, if they didn't hush them and not fret them, the terrible grey Badger would up and get them. This was a base libel on Badger, who, though he cared little about Society, was rather fond of children; but it never failed to have its full effect.

[Steven desJardins]

Brad, you're forgetting health insurance. $70,000 is not enough for the lifestyle you're considering for somebody who can't get group rates. (I have a big trust fund, thanks to some Google stock my brother gave me before they went public, but I also have an expensive preexisting condition.)

[anne]

Steven desJardins

Is there a way then to get group rate coverage?

[Roland Buck]

The depiction "People with enough money not to have to work for a living, or not to have to work very hard. People who can live more or less wherever they want...." seems to fit George Bush to a T. Also Forbes and Scaife fit that description well. The reality is that a large majority of the rich are conservative Republicans. One only has to look at to which party the large majority of political contributions from the upper income groups are going.

Barone is trying to divert public attention from the fact that there is a class war going on and the rich are winning. While taxes for the rich are being sharply reduced, programs that help the poor and middle income Americhans are being cut.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/25/opinion/herbert25.1.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists

The Era of Exploitation
By BOB HERBERT

Congress is in recess and the press has gone berserk over the Terri Schiavo case. So very little attention is being paid to pending budget proposals that are scandalously unfair, but that pretty accurately reflect the kind of country the U.S. has become.

President Bush believes in an "ownership" society, which means that except for the wealthy, you're on your own. The president's budget would cut funding for Medicaid, food stamps, education, transportation, health care for veterans, law enforcement, medical research and safety inspections for food and drugs. And, of course, it contains big new tax cuts for the wealthy.

These are the new American priorities. Republicans will tell you they were ratified in the last presidential election. We may be locked in a long and costly war, and federal deficits may be spiraling toward the moon, but the era of shared sacrifices is over. This is the era of entrenched exploitation. All sacrifices will be made by working people and the poor, and the vast bulk of the benefits will accrue to the rich.

F.D.R. would have stared slack-jawed at this madness. Even his grand Social Security edifice is under assault by the vandals of the G.O.P.

While the press and the public are distracted by one sensational news story after another - Terri Schiavo, Michael Jackson, steroids in baseball, etc. - the president and his party have continued their extraordinary campaign to undermine the programs that were designed to fend off destitution and provide a reasonable foundation of economic security for those not blessed with great wealth....

[lise]

Big Al and Anne

Stoatally and weaslily different to you too, Dears.

[Bob O]

I got as far as Barone's rhetorical question
"But who are the trustfunders?"

and I started answering him in my head:
"Well, there's Jenna and Barbara Bush...
...come to think of it, there's their father..."

and then I stopped taking seriously whatever
point Barrone was trying to convey.

The whole thing read like projection.

[Bob O]

I got as far as Barone's rhetorical question
"But who are the trustfunders?"

and I started answering him in my head:
"Well, there's Jenna and Barbara Bush...
...come to think of it, there's their father..."

and then I stopped taking seriously whatever
point Barrone was trying to convey.

The whole thing read like projection.

[ChasHeath]

So why is it, again, that these very same folks want to do away with the estate tax?

[Lodi]

The 1.7 m is not a very large sum to have accumulated, what with the IT explosion. I'd guess there's still plenty of people with those assets working their asses off, just as always, knowing the market may go bust at any moment. We're on the verge of a genuine meltdown if any number of events occur. And the term trustfunders is a misnomer, athrowback to a former era==lots of people have been urged to set up their own trust funds to avoid probate in the future. It no longer apploes only to inherited wealth. Barone's just acting out his own brand of classism.

[Jim D]

As AWC alludes, what's really galling is that Barone alleges that this is a "previously unidentified" phenomenon.

Right-wingers have been making this crap up for decades.

It's not so much the lying as the lying-about-being-the-first-one-to-lie that gets me.

[RTH]

Is there a trust fund elite in America?

Sure, but they're simply a subset of the broader economic elite. I'm not one myself, but I certainly went to school with more than a few of them. Some are the children of recent fortunes and celebrities, others of old money and poltical elites.

Are they liberal, and specifically are they liberal in some sort of crass Michael Moore, vaguely Stalinist, and capriciously shrill sense of the word?

Not in my experience. To the extent that they involve themselves in politics its usually (like the economic elite more broadly) to advance their own personal (read: economic) interests. They may lend their names to environmental organizations or charities and perhaps they're sufficiently ensconsed in the club that they're invited into the Council on Foreign Relations or become players in the global economic institutions. But their interest is the interest of the political and economic elite generally, which is to preserve the political and economic order that enriches them, and of course these days to lather it with a veneer of democracy.

Right now we seem to be witnessing a rupture in that order, with the old Anglophile elite in something of a recession (its no coincidence my prep school had an Episcopal rather than Methodist or Baptist chaplain), and the peculiar arrival of likudniks and evangelicals onto the scene. I don't know what this means, though I'm not a fan. In any event, the old boy elite has always been a bipartisan cabal, the "people" have never run this country and never will, and the party that manages to convince the electorate of its own inviolate populism is almost always dominant. Right now that happens to be the GOP.

[linnen]

And nothing about getting into college by the way of a legacy?

[ogmb]

"Michael Barone is totally innumerate"

You misspelled "batshit insane".

[ogmb]

In a footnote I also find quite puzzling his claim that the "trustfunder left"* "has reached a critical mass." So is he implying that private wealth accumulation has reached a level where it becomes self-sustaining and starts a hereditary chain reaction? Will, in another couple of years (as he seems to think in years not generations), every American be a trustfunder with a penchant for French cuisine and ambiguous sexual relations? That would be very bad news for the endangered & impoverished right indeed (and good news for Social Security).

*And in a footnote to the footnote, in jam band circles gold card hippies are also known as "trustafarians".

[Bruce Webb]

Innumeracy in the context of a major debate over public policy? Who woulda thunk?

Low Cost = 2.1%. As Max notes the economic debate over solvency is over, whether the political debate over privatization is dead or dead as a door nail is still open for tepid discussion.

[anne]

Though I may respond lightly, when I read such an essay I am much saddened even mildly afraid. There is a gratuitous deception and meanness to such writing; a disdain for the democratic tolerant constructive people we would be at our finest moments and be increasingly. Whatever does such meanness represent that it can be so casually set to print for us? Again, of course, lightness may be a proper approach to such meanness.

[anne]

Please do not think what we have gained from the New Deal is suddenly preserved and will grow. Social Security and Medicare are not secure as fiscal policy is increasingly irresponsible. Medicare costs are increasingly cutting Social Security benefits. The Senate has just passed a tax cut bill on Social Security benefits for wealthy retirees that will in turn cut Medicare support for us all. The Senate tax cut bill has been scarcely noticed save for the New York Times.

[anne]

Wind in the Willows

Stoats and Weasles vanquished:

Toad felt rather hurt that the Badger didn't say pleasant things to him, as he had to the Mole, and tell him what a fine fellow he was, and how splendidly he had fought; for he was rather particularly pleased with himself and the way he had gone for the Chief Weasel and sent him flying across the table with one blow of his stick. But he bustled about, and so did the Rat, and soon they found some guava jelly in a glass dish, and a cold chicken, a tongue that had hardly been touched, some trifle, and quite a lot of lobster salad; and in the pantry they came upon a basketful of French rolls and any quantity of cheese, butter, and celery. They were just about to sit down when the Mole clambered in through the window, chuckling, with an armful of rifles.

`It's all over,' he reported. `From what I can make out, as soon as the stoats, who were very nervous and jumpy already, heard the shrieks and the yells and the uproar inside the hall, some of them threw down their rifles and fled. The others stood fast for a bit, but when the weasels came rushing out upon them they thought they were betrayed; and the stoats grappled with the weasels, and the weasels fought to get away, and they wrestled and wriggled and punched each other, and rolled over and over, till most of 'em rolled into the river! They've all disappeared by now, one way or another; and I've got their rifles. So that's all right!'

`Excellent and deserving animal!' said the Badger, his mouth full of chicken and trifle.

[cymack]

Has anyone ever thought of staging a blog?

The poetry! The counterpoint!

[Andrew Gelman]

Barone's analysis does not really fit the data. I think he was making the common mistake of confusing aggregate with individual patterns: yes, richer states and counties mostly support the Democrats, but richer individuals tend to support the Republicans. For example, 62% of voters with incomes over $200,000 voted for Bush in 2004. It is actually true that Kerry got the support of richer counties and states, but Barone makes an ecological fallacy--a "personification" of states and counties--to assume that this applies to individual voters. See here for our fuller discussion:
http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~cook/movabletype/archives/2005/03/the_trustfunder.html

I don't know if Barone deserves so much abuse for this--the mistake he made has been made by many others. (Although as author of the Almanac of American Politics, he reallly should get this straightened out.)

[lise]

Thought the essay is absurdly wrong, do not mistake what was called the "meanness" of the essay. The writing is mean in spirit and meant to intimidate through and through. The numbers are absurd but beside the point of the meanness.

Today, I will read "Wind in the Willows."

[Andrew Gelman]

Hmm, somehow the link in my above comment got chopped up...I guess you can just go to the link to our blog and scroll down a bit. Whatever one might think of the tone of Barone's article, I think he's not alone in making his error.

[lise]

Andrew Gelman

Please excuse me if I seemed too critical. I do appreciate your comment, but would argue that there is more than tone that offends in the essay. The words are meant to be hurtful.

[Unstable Isotope]

Barone is right. If so many people hadn't voted for Kerry, Bush would have won in a landslide.

[Bruce Webb]

"Today, I will read "Wind in the Willows."

Excellent idea, I happen to have an excellent illustrated copy handy. As much as I enjoy the company of Anne, Brad and pgl a couple of hours with Mole and Rat will probably serve me well.

[Randall]

Bruce

I pulled out "Wind in the Willows" last night. I had forgotten how much I liked reading it. Terrific. I never saw the original film, but I will look for it.

[liberal]

Andrew Gelman wrote, "Hmm, somehow the link in my above comment got chopped up..."

It *looks* that way, but if you highlight past the link and paste into a text document, the entire link is there. So it's not chopped; it's hidden. I've seen this before.

It has something to do with the stylesheet/whatever that this blog uses.

[RonK, Seattle]

On the other side of the ledger, we can trace the Bush (Walker) fortune back seven generations to a politically active civil claims lawyer who became Abraham Lincoln's campaign manager ... a Supreme Court justice ... and the largest landholder in Illinois.

[ogmb]

Andrew, may I introduce you to the marvel that is tinyurl:

http://tinyurl.com/3mqgk

[Dubblblind]

"A lie told often enough becomes the truth."

Brad, of course, is knowingly being too kind in his characterization of Barone as merely being innumerate. Brazen lying has become the hallmark of the Right, and why not, it is working extemely well for them, is it not?

[Jennifer]

Anne, I adore "Wind in the Willows." We so need to teach the weasily weasles a lesson. Cheers for Moles and Badgers.

[Dubblblind]

"Again, of course, lightness may be a proper approach to such meanness."

Dear Anne, if the meek are to inherit the earth it is looking more and more like the US will be the exception to the rule, though I am, like, stoatally sure there will be a special place for you in heaven. ;)

[Jennifer]

The animation of "Wind in the Willows" was 1949. A Disney film.

[Snarkasaurus Rex]

Its rumored that residency and incorporation in the United States is no longer especially mandatory. Where is Mr. Barone going to find the dollars to fund his imperial conquests not to mention lavish welfare on his red state brothers and sisters without the ones actually creating the wealth in this country? How good is Mr. Barone's Mandarin?

[anne]

"Dear Anne, if the meek are to inherit the earth it is looking more and more like the US will be the exception to the rule, though I am, like, stoatally sure there will be a special place for you in heaven. ;)"

Dubblblind, how funny, we can be badgers together :)

[anne]

http://query.nytimes.com/search/article-printpage.html?res=9E04E1DF1E31F932A05753C1A961958260

October 31, 1997

An Orwellian Tale About Animal Behavior
By LAWRENCE VAN GELDER

''The Wind in the Willows'' is an unequivocal delight.
Retaining the charm and ambience of Kenneth Grahame's classic of Edwardian children's literature, Terry Jones -- the film's writer and director, as well as a co-star -- has modernized this 1908 tale of Mole, Rat, Badger and their friend Toad of Toad Hall with an infusion of an Orwellian parable that upholds the virtues of civility and decency while baring the evils of naked yuppie greed.

In so doing, ''The Wind in the Willows,'' brimming with verbal and visual wit and imagination, driven by high adventure, reveling in English eccentricity, enlivened by bursts of song, unafraid of ideas and filled with color and splendid performances, exposes most other movies intended to attract children as out-and-out pap.

In telling the story of conflict between the riverside animals who seek only to live in peace and friendship and the pack of Weasels from the Wild Wood who seek to seize and despoil their halcyon land and estates by transforming them into a bleak factory and a slaughterhouse, Mr. Jones has turned to human actors.

With just a suggestion of green on his face and the appropriate costumes for a flamboyant country gentleman with a financially irresponsible mania for the new horseless carriages and a destructive inability to drive them properly, Mr. Jones becomes Toad of Toad Hall. He looks rather like most people, except that his very long tongue occasionally darts out to snare an insect....

[Bernard Yomtov]

Andrew,

Maybe it was the "ecological fallacy," but according to your link, Kerry got 70% of the Denver vote, despite Barone's statement that Denver is not a source of Democratic strength in Colorado. This misrepresentation does not have a fancy name.

I think the point of Barone's article is not analysis at all, but vilification.

[Dubblblind]

`Where's Mr. Badger?' inquired the Mole, as he warmed the coffee- pot before the fire.

`The master's gone into his study, sir,' replied the hedgehog, `and he said as how he was going to be particular busy this morning, and on no account was he to be disturbed.'

This explanation, of course, was thoroughly understood by every one present. The fact is, as already set forth, when you live a life of intense activity for six months in the year, and of comparative or actual somnolence for the other six, during the latter period you cannot be continually pleading sleepiness when there are people about or things to be done. The excuse gets monotonous. The animals well knew that Badger, having eaten a hearty breakfast, had retired to his study and settled himself in an arm-chair with his legs up on another and a red cotton handkerchief over his face, and was being `busy' in the usual way at this time of the year.

Brad, I do believe Anne has hijacked this thread! What *will* we do with her?!?

[Randall]

`Yes, and that's part of the trouble,' continued the Rat. `Toad's rich, we all know; but he's not a millionaire. And he's a hopelessly bad driver, and quite regardless of law and order. Killed or ruined -- it's got to be one of the two things, sooner or later. Badger! we're his friends -- oughtn't we to do something?'

The Badger went through a bit of hard thinking. `Now look here!' he said at last, rather severely; `of course you know I can't do anything now?'

His two friends assented, quite understanding his point. No animal, according to the rules of animal-etiquette, is ever expected to do anything strenuous, or heroic, or even moderately active during the off-season of winter. All are sleepy -- some actually asleep. All are weather-bound, more or less; and all are resting from arduous days and nights, during which every muscle in them has been severely tested, and every energy kept at full stretch.

`Very well then!' continued the Badger. `But, when once the year has really turned, and the nights are shorter, and halfway through them one rouses and feels fidgety and wanting to be up and doing by sunrise, if not before -- you know! -- -- '

Both animals nodded gravely. They knew!

`Well, then,' went on the Badger, `we -- that is, you and me and our friend the Mole here -- we'll take Toad seriously in hand. We'll stand no nonsense whatever. We'll bring him back to reason, by force if need be. We'll make him be a sensible Toad. We'll -- you're asleep, Rat!'

`Not me!' said the Rat, waking up with a jerk.

`He's been asleep two or three times since supper,' said the Mole, laughing. He himself was feeling quite wakeful and even lively, though he didn't know why. The reason was, of course, that he being naturally an underground animal by birth and breeding, the situation of Badger's house exactly suited him and made him feel at home; while the Rat, who slept every night in a bedroom the windows of which opened on a breezy river, naturally felt the atmosphere still and oppressive.

[tmcotter]

I didn't read all the comments, but when his article first appeared it was pointed out that Barone was married, until she died, to a daughter of Walter Shorenstein, purported liberal financier/real estate mogul in the SFBA. Perhaps Michael pays for his outfits on the McLaughlin Groop with some of his trusty inheritance. OH Michael, you're soooo contrary! And, they do swing elections in JHole

[Andrew Gelman]

Liberal, Ogmb: Thanks for the help with the links. Good things to know.

Berhard: I think it started with the ecological fallacy (overinterpreting county and state patterns). Then, once Barone knew what to expect, I'm guessing he was sloppy and didn't bother looking up Denver. His goal may have been vilification, or maybe not, but I'm guessing that he didn't want to get the facts wrong; rather his confusion led him to think he knew something (in this case, about Denver) that he didn't.

But that's probably just me as a statistician wanting to claim that every error is "really" just a statistical mistake!

[lise]

Andrew

No matter, as long as we know whether you side with Moles and Badgers or Weasels....

[theCoach]

"I also betcha that my household net worth was comfortably less than 1% of the table average."

- could be falling into a mild case of innumeracy yourself with that one. Of course, I do not know your net worth, but I have been to Boulevard, and know plenty of people like myself who would bring the table average way, way down.

[RonK, Seattle]

anne -- Re group coverage ... ISTM these 100,000's of lefty trustyfunders are numerous enough and definable enough to form a qualifying group.

Maybe get travel discounts and such in the bargain.

[anne]

I have found no ready access to group medical insurance for households with no work coverage that also do not qualify for Medicaid. We should discuss alternative coverage if we are aware of such alternatives. The problem is broad and daunting, and little discussed at present.

[anne]

How lovely to advanture through book land for a weekend. Thank you all :) You as well, Dubblblind.

[obscure]

"Well, we could make a large wooden Badger..."

[lise]

Glorious, a large wooden Badger would do. They would never expect, and we with our whistles and cudgels within waiting for nightfall. Bring us the carpenters.

[lise]

Why did the Greeks use a horse, by the way?

[kharris]

Yes, the big-lie, name-calling, mud-slinging right has stopped saying "jew" outright, but just look at the technique. Somebody decadent, whose economic and social interests are utterly unlike "yours", who doesn't deserve what they have (but the sons and daughters of the right-wing rich obviously do - this isn't about the tax code, it's about the "enemy"). "The others" who gather together in their own little neighborhoods where "you" would feel uncomfortable. Those others are ruining "your" country. They aren't real Americans (or Germans, or whatever), but they live among "you", enjoying the blessings "you" create every day through the sweat of "your" brow. They have to be expunged.

It only matters a little if such a group doesn't really exist, or exists in such small numbers as to be politically powerless. It doesn't matter if there is a larger group on the right that fits this description very well - keeping down wages, busting unions, underfunding pensions, evading taxes, rubbing elbows with members of Congress to their own advantage. It doesn't matter because the manipulators on the right aren't left-wing perverts. They mispronounce the same way their target audience does.

Yep, this is very much about taking everything populists would object to among the right-wing elite, assigning those traits to a made-up left-wing elite and hoping the voter on the barstool doesn't notice the trick. Very nasty business.

[Bernard Yomtov]

"Why did the Greeks use a horse, by the way?"

They thought Priam would give his kingdom for a horse?

Or maybe it was just horse sense.

Or it was the idea of one of their lesser known leaders, Klydesdales?

[anne]

Affectingly written, KHarris.

[anne]

There was after all a serious question asked, but cleverly measured Bernard Yomtov :)

[Anna]

> The whole thing read like projection.

"Three fingers pointing back" packs more explanatory punch with these guys than just about anything.

[Julian Elson]

Why not get a list of America's billionaires, divide them into the categories of how they acquired it (inheritance, business, non-proprietary investment, etc) (these first two steps have already been done), and then try to find out who has which political affiliations? This really oughtn't to be too hard.

[Auros]

@ Julian: From what I've read, billionaires, even the self-made ones, actually tend to lean left. Millionaires -- people who are rich, but not "f***-you rich" as the saying goes on Wall Street -- are much more insecure about their wealth, and much more obsessed with getting more-more-more regardless of who suffers for it.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2108136/

Those who are so rich that they can afford to ignore the rat race, have noticed that the country is being driven into the ground. And most of them don't like it.

I suppose there's still the interesting question of whether being "self-made" inclines one towards Libertarianism. Probably so, but it seems fairly clear that a Libertarian type who actually paid attention during the Clinton and Shrub years would favor Clinton-style policies. (See, for example, Bush's "I voted for steel tariffs before I voted against them" flip flop.)

[Markwer]

Nice place! Good luck in your business!

[Gay]

Excellent work, and awesome links! Hope you don’t mind me linking you! :)

[Gay]

Excellent work, and awesome links! Hope you don’t mind me linking you! :)

[Gay]

Excellent work, and awesome links! Hope you don’t mind me linking you! :)