Academics Are Really, Really Worried About Their Freedom

[DGuller]

Also we need serious austerity measures in the US right now.

Why?  You're bored and want to see the country burn?

[Valmy]

Also we need serious austerity measures in the US right now.

Why?  You're bored and want to see the country burn?

I want to see the future of the nation secured, like we did in the 1990s. We did both of those things (raise taxes and cut spending) while the economy thrived it was almost a miracle and it worked...until Dubya and the Republicans decided all those balanced budgets was a terrible idea.

[DGuller]

Also we need serious austerity measures in the US right now.

Why?  You're bored and want to see the country burn?

I want to see the future of the nation secured, like we did in the 1990s. We did both of those things (raise taxes and cut spending) while the economy thrived it was almost a miracle and it worked...until Dubya and the Republicans decided all those balanced budgets was a terrible idea.

I guess the key word is "right now".

[The Brain]

Defunding the police and postal services is a start.

[Valmy]

Also we need serious austerity measures in the US right now.

Why?  You're bored and want to see the country burn?

I want to see the future of the nation secured, like we did in the 1990s. We did both of those things (raise taxes and cut spending) while the economy thrived it was almost a miracle and it worked...until Dubya and the Republicans decided all those balanced budgets was a terrible idea.

I guess the key word is "right now".

Ah. Good point. Yes we need to be out of the crisis first and back to growth.

[Sheilbh]

Also we need serious austerity measures in the US right now. We need to raise taxes and cut spending. Canada is in no such crisis regarding budget deficits, at least not near our scale.

Canadian budget deficit for 2020-2021 projected to be $343 billion dollars (before Covid it was supposed to be $34 billion).

US budget deficit projected at $3.3 trillion.  Adjucted for population size we're both in about equal trouble.

I imagine there's no country in the world that's in a place to "deal with" debt (I'm very dubious about the need to deal with it personally) given covid. We're up to a deficit of about £150billion from around £40 billion last year, and it's obviously going to keep increasing this year:

[crazy canuck]

I recognize you feel uncomfortable with the comparison.  But tell me, what exactly differentiates O'Toole from Harris?

Okay, so I'm comparing Kamala Harris' positions from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_positions_of_Kamala_Harris

and Erin O'Toole's from https://erinotoole.ca/platform/

Harris supports greater gun control, O'Toole does not.

Harris would probably be very happy with the level of gun control we have now.  O'Toole wouldn't change the status quo.

O'Toole wants to reduce and simplify taxes.  Harris wants to cancel tax cuts for the wealthy and increase taxes on corporations.

Meaningless without an analysis of current rates in Canada vs the US. Canadian corporate rates are higher.  Does Harris want to raise them higher than Canada or the same as O'Toole has in mind? 

O'Toole wants to cut funding to public broadcasting with an eye to privatizing it - Harris has no similar policy and likely supports public broadcasting.

Again a meaningless comparison.  The US public broadcaster is not as well supported.  Would Harris be happy with the level of support the CBC gets as a percentage of the Federal budget? 

Harris has supported efforts to cut police funding, O'Toole does not.

Funny, I have read that the line that the Biden/Harris ticket wants to defund the police is a Fox lie - you can do better than that BB.

O'Toole opposes carbon taxes, Harris supports the Green New Deal - which includes carbon taxes.

You are right about that.  But I bet you the Conservatives come around to what was, after all, their idea originally. 

I could go on, but I think that gives you a pretty good idea...

Yep, I did get a good idea.  Not much difference.

Now let me add some things you left out.

Abortion rights - the same

Need to address racism - the same

Need to address climate change - the same

I could go on but I think you see where I am going 

[Barrister]

Back on topic, writer Andrew Sullivan was let go from New York Magazine last month.  The reason given?  That in 1994 at an entirely different magazine, Sullivan published an excerpt from The Bell Curve, a controversial book which argued for a connection between race and IQ.  Sullivan states that publishing is not endorsing and refuses to apologize or recant his decision to publish the excerpt.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/30/business/media/im-still-reading-andrew-sullivan-but-i-cant-defend-him.html

[Barrister]

Funny, I have read that the line that the Biden/Harris ticket wants to defund the police is a Fox lie - you can do better than that BB.

YOu're the one who wanted to compare O'Toole with Harris, not Biden, so that's what I did.  I even gave you the link I used to avoid arguments like this.

From that link:

In June 2020, following a campaign by a coalition of community groups including Black Lives Matter, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced Los Angeles Police Department budget cuts of $150 million.[23] Kamala Harris supported Garcetti's decision to cut the LAPD's budget by $150 million.

[grumbler]

Pretty sure everybody who does not support Donald Trump is a radical socialist, at least that is what the RNC taught me.

You can believe them, or you can believe CC, whose single metric for leftism is to "fully support single payer health care."  Apparently Germany's Die Linke ("The Left") is a far-right party.

I was pointing out to a fellow Canadian that the Democrats are to the right of the CPC. 

I am not sure why you think that has anything to do with a German political party.  But please go on to attribute things to me that I did not say.

When I am directly quoting you, you cannot whine that I am attributing things to you that you did not say! 

Correct, for do it and I will get off your back.

  Look at the words within the " " (those are called quotation marks and mark the beginning and end of the direct quote from you that I used).

Are you sure you want to pretend to be a lawyer?  It sounds kinda silly when you cannot even recognize a quote when you see one.

[Sheilbh]

Back on topic, writer Andrew Sullivan was let go from New York Magazine last month.  The reason given?  That in 1994 at an entirely different magazine, Sullivan published an excerpt from The Bell Curve, a controversial book which argued for a connection between race and IQ.  Sullivan states that publishing is not endorsing and refuses to apologize or recant his decision to publish the excerpt.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/30/business/media/im-still-reading-andrew-sullivan-but-i-cant-defend-him.html

He wrote about leaving and has re-launched the Dish:
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/andrew-sullivan-see-you-next-friday.html

I also think the key issue in part is that he's continued to write about possible links between race and IQ to the current day - basically always on a sort of "not endorsing this, but just asking" kind of approach. He's written loads of blog posts on this over the years I've read him. And, it's Andrew Sullivan so he occasionally gets a bee in his bonnet - so you would get a month with several posts about this "just asking questions" or defending writing about it. That's less of an issue when he has an editor. Honestly it reminds me of his Trig turther conspiracies about Sarah Palin. He published them very early, they were widely debunked and, to the best of my knowledge, still defends posting about that (again an editor helped). I certainly remember well into the 2010s when he was posting about there being valid suspicions about who was really pregnant with Trig.

It's not quite in the past. This is sort of touched on in the article:

So what does Mr. Sullivan believe about race? On his back porch looking over the bay, Mr. Sullivan said he was frustrated by the most extreme claims that biology has no connection to our lives. He believes, for instance, that Freudian theories that early childhood may push people toward homosexuality could have some merit, combined with genetics.

"Everything is environmental for the left except gays, where it's totally genetic; and everything is genetic for the right, except for gays," he said sarcastically.

I tried out my most charitable interpretation of his view on race and I.Q. (though I question the underpinnings of the whole intellectual project): that he is most frustrated by the notion that you can't talk about the influence of biology and genetics on humanity. But that he's not actually saying he thinks Black people as a group are less intelligent. He'd be equally open to the view, I suggested, that data exploring genetics and its connection to intelligence would find that Black people are on average smarter than other groups.

"It could be, although the evidence is not trending in that direction as far as I pay attention to it. But I don't much," he said. (He later told me he's "open-minded" on the issue and thinks it's "premature" to weigh the data.)

"I barely write about this," he went on. "It's not something I'm obsessed with."

But he also can't quite stop himself, even as I sat there wishing he would. "Let's say Jews. I mean, just look at the Nobel Prize. I'm just saying — there's something there, I think. And I'm not sure what it is, but I'm just not prepared to accept the whole thing is over."

[Barrister]

A USC Professor is taking a "short term pause" because in giving examples of vocal pause words (like "um" he uses a Chinese word that sounds like the n-word.

https://reason.com/2020/09/03/usc-communications-professor-on-a-short-term-break-for-giving-chinese-word-neige-as-example/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

[The Brain]

A USC Professor is taking a "short term pause" because in giving examples of vocal pause words (like "um" he uses a Chinese word that sounds like the n-word.

https://reason.com/2020/09/03/usc-communications-professor-on-a-short-term-break-for-giving-chinese-word-neige-as-example/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Is this story real?

[crazy canuck]

Pretty sure everybody who does not support Donald Trump is a radical socialist, at least that is what the RNC taught me.

You can believe them, or you can believe CC, whose single metric for leftism is to "fully support single payer health care."  Apparently Germany's Die Linke ("The Left") is a far-right party.

I was pointing out to a fellow Canadian that the Democrats are to the right of the CPC. 

I am not sure why you think that has anything to do with a German political party.  But please go on to attribute things to me that I did not say.

When I am directly quoting you, you cannot whine that I am attributing things to you that you did not say! 

Correct, for do it and I will get off your back.

  Look at the words within the " " (those are called quotation marks and mark the beginning and end of the direct quote from you that I used).

Are you sure you want to pretend to be a lawyer?  It sounds kinda silly when you cannot even recognize a quote when you see one.

A quote generally requires that the person not to cut off words so as to lose meaning.  You know that so I assume it is just bad faith.

You should see my pretend income...

[Barrister]

A USC Professor is taking a "short term pause" because in giving examples of vocal pause words (like "um" he uses a Chinese word that sounds like the n-word.

https://reason.com/2020/09/03/usc-communications-professor-on-a-short-term-break-for-giving-chinese-word-neige-as-example/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter

Is this story real?

Apparently.  I saw it on a more dubious site at first, waited until I saw it somewhere more credible (Reason) before posting it.