"Airlines no longer will be required to accommodate travelers who want to fly with emotional support animals such as pigs, rabbits and turkeys..."

"... under a final rule announced Wednesday by the U.S. Department of Transportation.... Emotional support animals aren't considered service animals under the new rule.... Over the years, airlines have had to accommodate a growing variety of animals as the definition of what is considered a service animal expanded to include animals that travelers said they needed for emotional and psychological support when flying.... Service animals are those that have been trained to perform a certain function, and under the Americans With Disabilities Act, reasonable accommodations must be made for a person using one. However, no training is required for emotional support animals, which has led some to question their legitimacy. Before the rule change, federal law didn't address the issue of emotional support animals, so airlines had little recourse but to accommodate them.... 'This final rule will ensure that untrained pets will never roam free in the aircraft cabin again.'"

WaPo reports.

I'm happy to see this rule. Click on my "service animals" tag to see what I've written on the topic over the years. I'll just highlight this 2018 post that was based on a David Leonhardt column in the NYT, "It’s Time to End the Scam of Flying Pets" (NYT). Here's the quote from Leonhardt that began the post:

The whole bizarre situation [of emotional support animals on airplanes] is a reminder of why trust matters so much to a well-functioning society. The best solution, of course, would be based not on some Transportation Department regulation but on simple trust. People who really needed service animals could then bring on them planes without having to carry documents. Maybe a trust-based system will return at some point. But it won’t return automatically. When trust breaks down and small bits of dishonesty become normal, people need to make a conscious effort to restore basic decency.

Leonhardt did not want a rule! He imagined people working through the problem on our own! I'm inclined to resist overregulation, but I thought his "best solution" was a pipe dream. I wrote:

The best solution...

Voltaire said: The best is the enemy of the good. ("Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.")

I don't see how we're supposed to get to trust, when in a huge system, like airline transportation, you're always going to get some cheaters and it doesn't take many — 1%? — to create a problem like the one symbolized by Dexter the emotional-support peacock (picture at the NYT link).

And I'm not convinced trust is the answer. People need to be observant and skeptical.

I'll quote John Stuart Mill now: "Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing."

Sometimes you need rules. 

"I have this odd admiration for Evangelical voters. The pretty much sold out their ideals concerning personal morality..."

"... and supported Trump all the way. In return they received Supreme Courts justices they like, a rollback of LGBT rights, a wide expansion of government support for religion, etc.. It was a deal with the devil but for now it is paying big dividends for them. Most of the progressives I know would be horrified by such a 'sellout.' Over at The Nation all sorts of progressives are saying they will sit out the election rather than vote for Biden. Their personal moral purity counts more than winning. It is the same thing that cost Clinton in 2016. It is my biggest worry about 2020."

That's the highest-rated comment (by far) on a NYT column by David Leonhardt, "The Simple Reason the Left Won’t Stop Losing/Progressives need to care more about winning."

"In the more than three years since the tape emerged, it’s become clear that the you-can-do-anything line wasn’t only describing Trump’s attitude toward women."

"It was describing his attitude toward everything: If you’re rich, famous or powerful, you can get away with much more than most people understand. You just do it. You don’t need to worry about ethical niceties or even, sometimes, the law. You use your advantages to bulldoze any obstacles.... Trump does what he thinks is best for him, often in open defiance of rules or customs that constrain almost everybody else.... The country is left with a president who has spent decades doing whatever he thinks is in his self-interest — and a political party willing to protect that president. Staying in power trumps all."

From "The Simple Reason Trump Does What He Does/Because he can" by David Leonhardt (NYT).

In this anti-Trump tirade, Leonhardt never pauses to note that the sense of being able to do anything — to overcome all obstacles in his way — is also a force for achieving good things that benefit the whole country. It's integral to the idea of making America great that binds Trump's enthusiasts to him.

If he's so weak, why don't the Democrats look like formidable opponents?

I'm trying to read "The Presidential Nominating Process Is Absurd/We have an unnecessarily weak presidential field, especially the incumbent" by David Leonhardt (in the NYT). To me, the headline looks fluffed up with various distractions, and a more honest statement would be "We have a puzzlingly weak field of Democratic candidates" or "We have an alarmingly weak field of Democratic candidates."

If Trump is the weakest candidate of all, the Democrats wouldn't look so weak. They'd be just fine. That "especially the incumbent" feels incoherent, and it seems to be offered as a sop to depressed and scared NYT readers. And then, let's talk about how there's something bad about the "process." It's absurd!

But I will read this thing for you. The focus is the process:

"I usually suggest Duke Ellington’s arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s 'Nutcracker Suite,' my favorite piece of holiday music..."

Writes the NYT columnist David Leonhardt in email that I could unsubscribe from, but this is clearly excellent enough to stay my hand for the nonce:

"[T]he overwhelming majority of journalists at so-called mainstream outlets — national magazines, newspapers, public radio, the non-Fox television networks — really are doing their best to treat both parties fairly."

"In doing so, however, they often make an honest mistake: They equate balance with the midpoint between the two parties’ ideologies. Over the years, many press critics have pointed out one weakness of this approach: false equivalence, the refusal to consider the possibility that one side of an argument is simply (or mostly) right.... There’s also the possibility that both political parties have been wrong about something and that the solution, rather than being roughly halfway between their answers, is different from what either has been proposing.... The abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, labor rights, the New Deal, civil rights for black Americans, Reagan’s laissez-faire revolution and same-sex marriage all started outside the boundaries of what either party favored.... Political and economic journalism too often assumes otherwise and treats the center as inherently sensible.... [C]entrist bias... helps explain why the 2016 presidential debates focused more on the budget deficit, a topic of centrist zealotry, than climate change, almost certainly a bigger threat.... Sometimes, people like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are right. Even when they’re not, they deserve the same skepticism that other politicians do — no less, no more."

From "How ‘Centrist Bias’ Hurts Sanders and Warren/The media has a bigger problem than liberal bias" by David Leonhardt (NYT).

Did the part of the quote that I put in the post title wreck your openness to this argument? One word in particular — "non-Fox." The entire assertion — "the overwhelming majority of journalists at so-called mainstream outlets... really are doing their best to treat both parties fairly" — strikes me as wrong. But to create a big group — national magazines, newspapers, public radio, and television networks — and then to exclude only Fox is a plain display of liberal bias. I can't watch any television news, because it's all biased. If all those "non-Fox" networks "really are doing their best," then "their best" is not good enough.

There is a worthy point in Leonhardt's column however, and I would take it further. If these news outlets really were to start giving us the best coverage of American political news, they would cut themselves off severely from any support for either party, not simply accept the way the issues are presented by the 2 parties and balance between the 2 sides. I'm not talking about whether the claim of balance is honest and accurate. I assume it's not. It's that these 2 parties — neither of which is impressively virtuous and competent — are allowed to define the substance and scope of the coverage.

Leonhardt seems mainly to want more supportive coverage for the further left Democratic candidates and more of a challenge to the bland middling candidates like Biden. He briefly acknowledges that the media underestimated Trump in 2016 (and Reagan in 1980) and attributes this to "centrist bias." But how did Trump win in spite of this intense bias against him? He was too extreme even to be taken seriously by the mainstream media. The media were content to accept Jeb Bush as about right for the GOP, similar to the way they're passing Joe Biden along uncritically. Trump broke through on his own. He turned the media bias against him into a positive force. I don't see Sanders and Warren doing that.

"This could be the start of what’s known in Econ as a 'natural experiment.' Follow these students & compare their life choices [with] their peers over the next 10-15 years."

Tweeted Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, after a billionaire,  Robert F. Smith, announced he would pay off the student loans of all the graduating seniors at Morehouse College. (Am I the only one whose first thoughts were about the parents of students who'd sacrificed to pay the expenses of their kids and keep them free of debt?)

I'm reading the AOC quote because it's in email from the NYT (by David Leonhardt). This doesn't seem to be published in the newspaper. It's just email. I quote:

It’s a great point. Ocasio-Cortez supports ideas like free four-year college and universal debt forgiveness. Other people (including me) are more skeptical, arguing that such plans disproportionately benefit the affluent.

But much of the debate is unavoidably theoretical. No one knows exactly how a universal debt forgiveness program would really play out. Maybe it would be a big handout to future financiers, lawyers and software engineers and wouldn’t have much influence on the careers that college graduates chose..... 

"I did not vote for Trump and have concerns about his behavior and policies, but I will not stand-up idly and condone what appears to be an effort to conduct a coup..."

"... and unseat a duly elected President. How so? I read and hear all the rhetoric about his misdeeds, but where is the meat? That he obviously lies. So? I recently read a study in which it was concluded that ALL presidents have lied to the public and knowingly did so. That Trump is more blatant in his lies and lies more often does not make him worse (or in need of impeachment) than his predecessors. Surely, you remember G.W. Bush and his justifications for invading Iraq and then blaming it (that his justifications were baseless) on 'bad intelligence'; those lies lead to the death of over 5,000 American military personnel, over 40,000 wounded and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilian (read: non-combatant) deaths and injuries. That Trump refuses to 'act' in a manner that the political elite demands is not grounds for impeachment. That Trump has and is inciting the tyranny of the masses is not grounds for impeachment. Again, I am not a big fan of Trump, but until hard proof is provided that he has committed high crimes and misdemeanors, I will support his presidency, even if I do not support one or more of is policies or agree with his behavior."

Writes one commenter, very aptly, on "The People vs. Donald J. Trump/He is demonstrably unfit for office. What are we waiting for?" by David Leonhardt (in the NYT).

Those who cannot believe Trump won the election need a scapegoat and that scapegoat is Mark Zuckerberg.

"The election of Donald Trump was so shocking — and damaging to the country — that many people went looking for a scapegoat.... By spreading false news stories and giving a megaphone to Russian trolls, Facebook — a vastly larger social network than Twitter — played a meaningful role in the presidential campaign. Of course, so did many other suspects on the list. There was no single factor that allowed Trump to win. It was a confluence.... 'Where is Mark Zuckerberg?' asks Recode’s Kurt Wagner..... 'It’s time' for Zuckerberg and other top Facebook officials 'to come and testify,' Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said yesterday...."

From "Facebook Doesn’t Get It" by David Leonhardt in the NYT.

One billionaire seems indestructible, so let's get the other one.

UPDATE: Zuckerberg speaks. Excerpt:

I started Facebook, and at the end of the day I'm responsible for what happens on our platform. I'm serious about doing what it takes to protect our community. While this specific issue involving Cambridge Analytica should no longer happen with new apps today, that doesn't change what happened in the past. We will learn from this experience to secure our platform further and make our community safer for everyone going forward.

I want to thank all of you who continue to believe in our mission and work to build this community together. I know it takes longer to fix all these issues than we'd like, but I promise you we'll work through this and build a better service over the long term.

I want to thank all of you who continue to believe in our mission and work to build this community together... you credulous souls. Why should people believe in a "mission" or that there is one shared mission between users and the people who use them?

"The whole bizarre situation" — of emotional support animals on airplanes — "is a reminder of why trust matters so much to a well-functioning society."

"The best solution, of course, would be based not on some Transportation Department regulation but on simple trust. People who really needed service animals could then bring on them planes without having to carry documents. Maybe a trust-based system will return at some point. But it won’t return automatically. When trust breaks down and small bits of dishonesty become normal, people need to make a conscious effort to restore basic decency."

Writes David Leonhardt in "It’s Time to End the Scam of Flying Pets" (NYT).

The best solution...

Voltaire said: The best is the enemy of the good. ("Le mieux est l'ennemi du bien.")

I don't see how we're supposed to get to trust, when in a huge system, like airline transportation, you're always going to get some cheaters and it doesn't take many — 1%? — to create a problem like the one symbolized by Dexter the emotional-support peacock (picture at the NYT link).

And I'm not convinced trust is the answer. People need to be observant and skeptical.

I'll quote John Stuart Mill now: "Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing."

"So Pence... used his performance skills, built up over years as a successful television host and politician."

"When Kaine challenged him, Pence smiled and shook his head wanly. Or looked off toward the audience and shrugged his shoulders. Or flatly denied that Trump has said things that he most definitely said. Or recycled an old Ronald Reagan line ('There you go again')."

Says NYT columnist David Leonhardt, urging readers to "Judge Substance, Not Style."

Pence's style is so different from Trump's because Pence, like Kaine and Clinton, is a career politician. Pence defended Trump's style:

Well, look, it’s — look, he’s not a polished politician like you and Hillary Clinton. And so...

KAINE: Well, I would admit that’s not a polished...

(CROSSTALK)

PENCE: You know, things don’t always come out exactly the way he means them.

KAINE: Well, can I say...

PENCE: But I’m telling you what the policy of our administration would be....

So Pence, like Leonhardt, is saying judge substance, not style.

But if you are one of the many people who are admiring Pence's style over Trump's, realize what you are saying: You like the manner of the career politician. That is what you want. A man with a style honed outside of politics will seem too rough, too unfinished, too strange. For all the complaints about politicians — their ungenuineness, their smarminess, their embedment in dishonesty, their guile — a politician is exactly what you want. Admit it!

"The North-South Divide on Two-Parent Families....It’s not just a red-blue political divide..."

David Leonhardt reports in the NYT (with a map that vividly depicts the split).

The new geographic analysis comes from W. Bradford Wilcox, a University of Virginia sociologist, and Nicholas Zill, a psychologist.... Mr. Wilcox and Mr. Zill argue that there are actually two models for having a large share of stable families...

In the blue-state model, Americans get more education and earn higher income — and more educated, higher-earning people tend to marry and stay married.

This, they say, explains Minnesota, New Jersey, Massachusetts and Connecticut.

In the red-state model, educational attainment is closer to average, but “residents are more likely to have deep normative and religious commitments to marriage and to raising children within marriage,” write Mr. Wilcox and Mr. Zill.

This explains "much of the Great Plains and Mountain West, including Nebraska and Utah."

From a 12-year-old NYT article: Jonathan Gruber's "most embarrassing moment in government."

This is from an April 2002 article by David Leonhardt titled "How a Tax On Cigarettes Can Help The Taxed":

For years, economists would have said that actions speak louder than words. Whatever smokers say about quitting, they are rationally deciding that the pleasure they derive from cigarettes exceeds their cost.

Jonathan Gruber was one of these economists when he worked in the Treasury Department in the Clinton administration. Mr. Gruber, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, remembers telling other policy makers that economic theory says they should not increase cigarette taxes. People should be allowed to decide for themselves whether they want to smoke, he told his colleagues. Those who smoke may hurt themselves, but they will not drain the country's resources because so many of them will die before running up large Medicare bills.

Mr. Gruber called it his most embarrassing moment in government, and his discomfort with his own argument caused him to begin researching the issue when he returned to academia.....

So, there was an argument for taxation based on the costs that smokers impose on all of us because of the health problems caused by smoking, and Gruber undercut that argument with a truth. Smokers don't cost more overall because they die earlier. Why was that so embarrassing? Well, "embarrassing" is the reporter's word, not a quote from Gruber. Gruber is a very chatty guy. Maybe he said something like:

Did I catch hell for that. Here, they were all justifying their tax on smokers by blaming these people for forcing all of us to pay for their supposedly monumental hospital bills, and I — big, harsh-truth me — I said do you know anything about lung cancer? These people die, they don't hang around for years, they don't get multiple surgeries, they die. They're dead! And when they're dead they don't run up any more bills and they don't burden us all with endless Social Security payments either. We should be paying people to smoke, not taxing smokers more to try to get them to quit. If your argument is make people pay the true cost of their behavior, we ought to tax people for not smoking. They're the ones who will live up into their 70s and 80s — 90s! — collecting Social Security, and getting medical treatments for all their little, survivable ailments. Oh! You'd have though I was proposing to murder everybody's mom and dad. I was right, of course, but what's the use of an argument that can't be used? It doesn't matter that it's true. Does it work? I had to learn to be more aware of my surroundings. I was in government. Smokers die, and, economically speaking, that's great. Ha ha. You can't say that!

Are we too stupid to understand Jonathan Gruber?

Searching the name of the M.I.T. economist who's been talked about so much lately, I ran across a 2006 NYT Magazine article by David Leonhardt titled "What Makes People Give?"

... Jonathan Gruber, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has conducted a mischievous experiment on the relationship between religious giving and religious observance. His inspiration was a comment his father made after he was elected treasurer of his synagogue in New Jersey. “Good,” Gruber’s father told him, with some amount of irony, “now I don’t have to go.” Somebody thinking purely about the temple might have decided that the treasurer should attend services even more often than an ordinary congregant. After all, he would need to set an example as a community leader. But someone who wanted to attain a certain commitment level — who wanted do enough to feel the warm glow of being involved in the life of the temple — would consider regular attendance and synagogue duties to be substitutes for each other.

To see how typical his father was, Gruber dug into surveys that ask people about how they spend their money and their time. Sure enough, his dad was typical. When the tax code changed in the early 1990s and made the deduction for charitable giving more valuable, the average churchgoer gave more money — and attended services less often. Gruber called his research paper “Pay or Pray.”

I'm presenting this to you as interesting on its own, but I also think it sheds light on the mind of Gruber, if that matters — does it? — in the current swirl of excitement around Gruber.

Personally, I think Gruber is a wonderful character. I might be his biggest fan. He seems to feel the urge to say what others won't say, to tell the truth about lying, even lying that he has participated in. The truth about lying — and I'm using "lying" in its broadest sense — is that people lie all the time and it's necessary, interwoven throughout human culture.

Gruber's father seems to have had a humorous style of revealing the ways human beings dissimulate, and Gruber was inspired and has based his work on the influence of his father. I don't know the whole story of Gruber, son and father. Perhaps, Gruber — exiled, now, from politicians who need to continue their lying, deceitful activities — will compose a memoir telling us all about how he formed his intellectual orientation, with many more words from the old man.

I'm think that it is precisely Jonathan Gruber's orientation to open up any human activity and reveal the trickery. So: of course, he wanted to talk about the creation of Obamacare in terms of the rhetoric and the manipulations. He thought people would appreciate his insight into human psychology and the deception and illusion that permeate human culture. What is more fascinating? What could be more enlightening and important than to become conscious of such things — especially if you are a good and empathetic person? Gruber got in trouble for telling us that people are "stupid," and the question is why are we too stupid to see the value of studying the ways in which we are, indeed, stupid?

The answer is that the people who are talking about Gruber are still inside the political game of promoting or attacking Obamacare. They prefer to use Gruber's statements to the extent that they are useful in continuing whatever political prestidigitation they are performing.

Gruber needs to go meta. He can never insinuate his way back into the center of things. Gruber, you've been there, and they used your wisdom until it was too much wisdom, and then they shut you out and said they never knew you. Now that you can't go back, go forward. Tell all. Give us all the truth you've got — the truth about lying.