Trump Voter = Archie Bunker

Seems to me the archetypal Trump supporter is Archie Bunker, of All in the Family.

(Note: I've succumbed to the inevitable by adding a Trump label. )

The Half-Life of Information

In the dispute between the FBI and Apple over obtaining access to the terrorist's cellphone data I thought of the concept in my title.  Radioactive elements have a half-life, the amount of time it takes any mass of the element to emit radiation and convert to half the mass.  (Not a good definition but look up wikipedia if you want better.)  The point being each element decays at a set rate, fixed by nuclear physics.

Apply the same concept to the information of interest to law enforcement. Some types of information, say the DNA on a rape kit, would lose interest very gradually, perhaps losing interest entirely when the rapist is almost certainly dead of old age.  Other types, perhaps the appointment calendar, would lost interest much quicker. Assuming law enforcement knew who the person was likely to see, the calendar might be of no interest once the day of the appointment is past.

It's now been more than 3 months since the San Bernadino shootings, so my guess is that much of the information has decayed into relative meaninglessness.  We don't know the information, so we can't tell for certain, but I think it likely  The longer it takes the FBI to access the data, the greater the chance it won't be helpful.

My point: fast access to the data is worth a lot, which should be a consideration in determining whether and under what rules law enforcement gets access.

Deaths by Terrorism, Past and Present

Now we're in a relative lull in deaths by terrorism.  That seems an absurd statement, but it's the truth, as shown by this chart.  What's the difference between the past (i.e. 1970's and 80's) and now?

We forget how active the IRA groups and the unionist opposition were on the killing front.  We forget the Palestinian groups were terrorists in the 70's and 80's.  We forget the Basque groups.  We forget the small leftist/anarchist groups.  Put them all together and they caused more death than ISIS and Al-Qaeda.

Perhaps it's just our amnesia. It's not the motivation--murdering because of religion was arguably what the IRA did--were they radical Catholic terrorists?  I think not.

More likely it's familiarity--most of the groups had a history and their terrorism was something we were more accustomed to so it somehow seemed less dangerous.  And importantly, most of the groups seemed to have a defined target, where today the ISIS terrorists seem to be attacking "Western civilizations". 

Bottom line for me: chill and think historically.

Meanwhile 125 People Died Today of Drug Overdoses

Currently 36 dead in Brussels.

Peter Moskos notes the drug overdose death rate.

I link the two.

Demagoguery Opportunity

FCW has a piece on moves on Internet Assigned Numbers Authority.  I would not be surprised to see politicians demagogue this as ceding US authority to those untrustworthy people outside our borders.

Amish Businesses

I've long been fascinated with the Amish, particularly from reading Prof. Kraybill's book on them. I was on a task force in the 70's with the CED of Lancaster county, who commented on her dealings with the Amish.  IIRC they didn't participated in farm programs, at least not the production adjustment ones, but I think they did with the conservation cost-shares ones.

This is an article on a Kraybill talk, set up by this:

"Over the past few decades, Lancaster County’s Amish have undergone a “mini-Industrial Revolution,” Kraybill said. High land prices plus a population explosion limited farming opportunities for rising generations, fueling a turn to carpentry, small manufacturing and other enterprises.

Today, there are more than 2,000 Amish businesses in the Lancaster area, Kraybill said. Fewer than one-third of local Amish households still rely on farming as the primary source of income."

He describes the factors in Amish culture which have fed into their entrepreneurship.  It's a lesson to those of us who wonder about how society/culture operates--things are complex. 

The Amish, much like the Hasidic Jews, the Mormons and some Native American tribes also lead to reflection on what is the meaning of "America"--what can cover all the variety we see.

Trader Joe's Parking Lots

Via Marginal Revolution, a short piece on the economic logic of Trader Joe's tiny parking lots.  (We shop there occasionally.)   Bottom line: almost no one refuses to shop at Trader Joe's because they spend a little time finding a spot, or walking to the store from the adjacent street.

Court Gamesmanship

Having just seen my prediction for the Presidential elections go up in flames with Rubio's withdrawal, I forge ahead with commenting on the Supreme Court.

I seems to me that Obama has this strategy:
  

• taking the Senate Republicans at their word--they won't vote to confirm any appointee now.
• Clinton is going to be the Democratic nominee and she's likely to beat Trump.
• if she beats Trump, there's some chance a nominee who's not a liberal icon and who's a little older will seem more palatable to the Republican Senate after election day.  That's particularly true if the new Senate has a Democratic majority.   

Paul Meringoff at  Powerline, a conservative with whom I almost always disagree, seems to support my theory, writing this morning: " Things might look different in September, if Hillary Clinton is 25 points ahead of Donald Trump in the polls and the Republicans are headed towards losing the Senate. In that event, Garland might look a lot better."

We Used to Call It Block-Busting: Same Tactics, Different Group

Back in the 1960's we used to call it "block-busting": real estate agents using the fear of blacks to get homeowners to sell out.  In our enlightened modern times, it's similar tactics, but now it's Orthodox Jews in the Toms River, New Jersey area.  See this Bloomberg  piece, hat tip Marginal Revolution.

The key difference is, of course, the aims of the group: blacks in the 60's wanted the American dream-- better homes and better schools and saw integration as a way of getting it; Orthodox in the 10's want the American dream--independence of outside control and see segregation as a way of getting it.

Unbelievable Fact in the Times

The NYTimes has a piece on who supports Trump, including this table:
"correlations are shown in red.

Variable	Correlation
White, no high school diploma	0.61
“Americans” Percent reporting ancestry as “American” on the census	0.57
Mobile homes Percent living in a mobile home	0.54
“Old economy” jobs Includes agriculture, construction, manufacturing, trade	0.50
History of voting for segregationists Support for George Wallace (1968)	0.47
Labor participation rate	–0.43
Born in United States	0.43
Evangelical Christians	0.42
History of voting for liberal Republicans Support for John B. Anderson (1980)	–0.42
White Anglo-Saxon Protestants Whites with European non-Catholic ancestry	–0.42"

If it's in the Times, it must be right, but I absolutely cannot believe the negative correlation between WASPS and Trump support, and I'm writing as a WASP myself. I suppose it's possible because I no longer understand statistics, but I still think it unlikely.