A New Big Lie

I have written about what I called The Big Lie several times (see here, here, and here). The Big Lie I wrote about in 2011 concerned the financial crisis and the attempt by conservatives to blame it on the government "forcing" financial institutions to lend to unworthy borrowers. It was a lie because no coercion was needed. GSEs, banks, and private mortgage brokers wrote a massive number of unsound sub-prime loans, Wall Street bundled them and sold them as mortgage bonds, and the ratings agencies gave them phony AAA ratings all because they they made a lot--a whole lot--of money doing it and nearly destroyed the financial system as a result. The crisis was caused by private greed and incompetence, not government policy.

Conservatives have to lie about this because it undercuts one of the essential raison d'etres of conservatism, which is the unsullied virtue of private institutions operating under capitalist principles free from government regulation. The financial crisis of 2008/2009 offers a direct contradiction of this conservative catechism.

In recent years a new big lie has emerged. It goes something like this: Obama and a Democratic Congress rammed through Obamacare in a purely partisan fashion that eschewed bipartisan cooperation. This has been one of the primary attacks against Obamacare from the hard Right, but interestingly it has also been a constant theme espoused by more moderate elements in attempting to explain why they opposed the recent attempt of the GOP to repeal and replace Obamacare with only GOP votes.

This view is based on the fact that Obamacare was passed in the Senate using reconciliation with only Democratic votes. However, the process that led to this was strikingly different from what we saw with recent GOP efforts to repeal and replace the ACA. As Glenn Kessler points out in a Washington Post fact checking column:

Republicans have skipped the lengthy, open process of hearings and markups of legislation that characterized the Democrats’ march to passage of the ACA. Instead, they moved directly to floor votes. Moreover, Democrats at first tried to enlist some Republican support, while Republicans have not reached out to Democrats.

The part of the ACA legislative history that Republicans unanimously ignore is that Max Baucus, then chairman of the Senate Finance committee, worked diligently to try and gain the support of Olympia Snowe for the bill (Snowe voted for the bill in committee and later against the bill on the floor during the final vote). There was a serious and sustained effort to pass at least a minimally bipartisan bill. Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress did not want to pass a health care bill with only Democratic votes. The fact is that there was no GOP support for Obamacare not because Democrats wanted to ram through a partisan bill, but because Republicans had decided in advance to withhold cooperation on any major Obama initiative. This scorched earth policy of noncooperation was hatched even before Obama was inaugurated.

Comparing THIS process with the recent GOP votes on Obamacare repeal and replace is absurd. The Democrats tried to obtain GOP support and failed because the word had gone out that they were to obstruct major Obama initiatives, such as the stimulus and health care reform. Given this, the ONLY reason that Obamacare passed the Senate using reconciliation was that Scott Walker won Ted Kennedy's seat after he died of brain cancer and the Democrats lost their 60th vote. Reconciliation was a desperate last-minute fallback position after attempts at bipartisan cooperation failed. (It is worth noting that the major changes that Obamacare underwent during it path through Congress moved it closer to--not further from--the GOP position. In particular, the public option and an expansion of Medicare to those 55 and older were dropped.) Contrast this with the GOP efforts on repeal and replace. Reconciliation with a purely partisan bill was the ONLY option ever tried. It was the first choice (and so far only choice) of the Republican Congress. It wasn't forced on them. It was their preference.

Anatomy of a Bad Movie

Actually, the title of this blog post is somewhat misleading. Perhaps insufferable movie would be better. Or maybe, pretentious. Or perhaps self-indulgent. Or maybe incomprehensible.

I was one of the unfortunates this weekend who shelled out 9 bucks to see Mother!. It stars Jennifer Lawrence, whose last three non-franchise X-Men or Hunger Games films* have flopped I am counting Mother! in this list. I have never been so sure that a film would die at the box office.

There are a couple of things that are interesting about Mother! One of these is how out of touch movie critics can sometimes be. I refuse to believe that the 69% Rotten Tomatoes score or the 75% Metacritc rating is based on anything other than technical prowess or sheer audacity of the film-maker. Mother's! CinemaScore (a score that rates the responses of audiences) is a quite rare F. Movie goers are generally forgiving about the films they've seen. Not with Mother! I understand completely. Many critics have compared Mother! to Rosemary's Baby and another Roman Polanski film The Tenant. This libels these films. Rosemary's Baby is a classic 1968 thriller in which Mia Farrow's character Rosemary gradually comes to learn that her husband and neighbors are in league with Mephistopheles, who also turns out to be the real father of her unborn child--a fact that is not revealed until the shocking ending. The Tenant, which at least is a little reminiscent of Mother!, concerns a Parisian tenant of an undistinguished apartment building who starts witnessing increasingly bizarre events unfold in his building. In this film the ending reveals that the tenant was hallucinating all along, because he is crazy.

The thing is that both of these films tell comprehensible stories. The Tenant does not seem comprehensible for much of its running time, but all is explained in the end. Not so with Mother! SPOILER ALERT! Mother!'s ending does nothing to explain the events that occur during the film beyond revealing that, whatever they were, they were part of a cycle of events that have apparently repeated over and over. The cause of these events, their meaning, or even their physical possibility is never broached. The only real similarity to Rosemary's Baby is that the female lead gives birth near the end of the film, and the father is definitely holding something back from his wife. However, in the case of Mother! I challenge anyone to reveal just what that is. Perhaps a better comparison would be Groundhog Day, but not really. (I'll ignore the religious symbolism in Mother! because it is not particularly coherent or clearly suggestive of Satanism.)

The other aspect of this film that struck me is how dishonest its marketing has been to the public. The trailer suggests that it is perhaps a weird family-based comedy, something along the lines of the 1981 Belushi/Ackroyd film Neighbors. I haven't quite decided what Mother! is, but whatever it is, it is not a comedy, at least not intentionally.

* Mother!, Passengers, and Joy

The Sad Life of an Audiophile

Part One: A New Way

Arguably the most debilitating aspect of an audiophile's life lies in its fiscal drain on one's resources. Being an audiophile is expensive. Decent speakers with anything approaching a full range really cannot be had for much under $2,000. Add to that a good front end and the required electronics and you are at at least $5,000. Mind you, this is pretty much the minimum. Prices go up from there.

I have recently had something of a realization on the road to Damascus. Good audio, and I mean REALLY good audio, does not have to cost anywhere near this much. In fact, my current main system costs $647. I think it is the best sound I have ever heard. What can provide this miracle? Headphones. Modern headphones are insanely good for shockingly reasonable prices. I bought a set of Koss Pro 4As in 1973 for $79. In today's money that would be over $400. My reference phones are now the PSB M4 U1. These cans cost $229.

Remember, I said $647? Well, I added to the PSB an external DAC, the $169 Audioengine D1, and I plug the PSB into an external headphone amp, the $249 Schiit Asgard 2. My front end for this setup is an ordinary laptop computer I already had and is used mostly for other things, so I didn't include this in the total price. I simply play high bitrate MP3s on my computer to which I connect the Audioengine via USB. A standard RCA cable runs from the Audioengine to the Schiit into which I plug the PSB headphones.

The sound quality is breathtaking. It sounds studio quality to me, and I couldn't be happier.

Part Two: What Matters and What Doesn't

In addition to cost, another pitfall of being an audiophile is that the audiophile press is rancid with corruption and superstition. The plain fact is that other than digital audio (CDs and streaming music), there has not been a substantial advancement in audio technology for 30-40 years (Many of the current cause célèbres--vinyl records and tube amps--are based on technology going back to the 1950s.). It is generally held that some of the best speakers ever arrived on the market in the 1970s and 1980s. Think of the $50,000 Infinity IRS V or the Quad electrostatic. The Apogee Scintilla ribbon speaker was released 32 years ago. Apogee shut its doors in 1999. The Yamaha V-FET range of amplifiers sold through the late 70s and early 80s and are still prized for their tube-like sound.

However, selling audio gear is a business so manufacturers have to keep coming up with new reasons for enthusiasts to buy their products and for the audiophile press to write about them. This has spawned an enormous about of nonsense. Let me share with you what I think matters and doesn't matter.

1. Bit rates: Does matter, a lot. A 128 KB MP3 does not sound very good, but a 256 KB and above MP3 sounds very good. It is not quite indistinguishable from the CD source (you'll need a lossless FLAC file for that), but it is very good.
3. High Resolution digital audio: Doesn't matter. CD technology is based on a 44 kHz sampling rate and 16 bits of dynamic range. Neil Young believes that CD sound loses something compared to old fashioned analog sound (true) and that the cause of this is insufficient resolution (not true). He and others champion a 192 kHz/24 bit format. I have listened to this and I can't tell any difference between this and CD's 44/16 format. In fact, in some cases it seems to sound worse
4. External DAC: Does matter, a little. Adding an external DAC to a computer can slightly improve the sound quality. I wouldn't call the difference dramatic, but it is audible and, I think, worth the money.
5. External Headphone Amp: Does matter, a little. Just like the DAC it can make a small but audible difference to the sound.
6. Headphones: Does matter, a lot. Which headphone you use will have a large impact on the sound quality. In fact, after the type of digital audio you choose, this will have the single biggest impact on sound quality.
7. USB cable: Does matter, a little. This one floors me and I have no explanation for it. When I replaced the short USB cable that came with my DAC with a cheap, off-the-shelf 10 foot USB cable, all of the weaknesses of CD sound--sterile, clinical, emotionally uninvolving reproduction--reappeared. Oddly, I have tried two high-end USB cables from AudioQuest and Kimber and niether sounds as good as the ordinary looking cable that came with the DAC.

Part Three: My Latest Journey

As I mentioned at the outset, I have recently discovered an absurdly cost effective way to get audiophile quality sound. I was so pleased with what I heard because not only did the music provide extremely high resolution, but it reminded me of the way music sounded back in the analog days. There was something about it that was just more enjoyable. It was emotionally involving, unfatiguing sound that regularly inspired toe-tapping immersion in a way that standard CD music has not done for me in years. I have no technical explanation for this. Perhaps, it is a reduction in jitter that asynchronous USB provides. Perhaps it is the direct digital playback a computer provides, compared to a laser reading digital data off of the rapidly spinning disc. I just don't know.

Based on this experience with my $647 package, I convinced myself that more was better. I went searching for an upgrade (the eternal audiophile quest). After a lot of research, I decided on the $400 PM-3 Oppo headphones and the $600 Schiit Bifrost Multibit DAC. The PM-3s arrived first, so I plugged them into the Asgard 2 in eager anticipation. I was shocked. They sounded worse--in fact, considerably worse--than the PSBs. I had been hoodwinked by the audiophile press yet again. They exhibited less detail, a flabbier bass, reduced clarity, and a seemingly rolled off top end. The difference wasn't subtle. For a good review that reaches the same conclusion from someone whose judgment I trust (mostly because he often just simply says "I can't hear any difference"), see this comparison. Needless to say, I was very disappointed.

The next day the Schiit Bifrost arrived. Again, I plugged it in with eager anticipation. This time, the result was different. I didn't hear much difference at all. At first, I thought that the Bifrost sounded the same as the D1, but after painstakingly going back-and-forth between the two with music with which I am very familiar I ultimately decided that I preferred the Audioengine D1. The problem with the Schiit DAC was that the sound lost a slight amount of you-are-there-in-the-same-room realism. The $169 Audioengine just sounded more vivid and lifelike. Don't get me wrong. Unlike the headphone comparison, this difference was fairly subtle, bit it was definitely there. There are some practical advantages to the Audioengine as well. In addition to being less than 1/3 the price, it is much smaller and truly portable since it draws its power from the USB connection. More importantly, it has its own volume control. The Schiit pretty much has to be used with an external headphone amp because it has no volume control.

My conclusions? First, you should definitely audition a headphone before buying one. It will have by far the biggest effect on the overall sound, and, just like speakers, the differences between headphones can be large. I would be surprised if there were another set of headphones in the sub-$1000 category that sound better than the PSBs, but obviously I haven't heard them all. The improvements made by an external DAC and headphone amp are real but not dramatic. Get a good set of cans and you are 80% of the way there. The PSBs sound better than they have a right to plugged directly into the computer's sound card. Fortunately, you can get really good DACs and amps for a surprisingly small cost. I am sure that there are other combinations that sound great, but I can personally vouch for the Audioengine D1/Asgard 2 combo.

Edit: I thought that perhaps I heard something this evening and so I began a lengthy test to determine if, indeed, there was an audible difference between CD sound and MP3@256k. After much back-and-forth with several recordings I have decided that there is. There is a lack of energy and presence in the high-end with MP3 that I do not hear with the CD original. The difference is subtle and requires a very good sound system to appreciate, but it is definitely there.

This means that I am going to have to go back and rip all of my music again and save it in FLAC format. In comparing FLAC to the original uncompressed WAV I could not hear any difference. This makes sense in so far as FLAC is a lossless format.

The problem with this is that the difference is small and without blind A/B testing I can never be sure that the placebo effect is not coloring my perceptions. So the bottom line is that FLAC is the recommended format. I say this because even if it is no better than high bitrate MP3 it certainly isn't worse and it is only hard disc space. Thus, it probably helps and certainly cannot hurt.

If you already have an audiophile quality main system (speakers, pre amp, and power amp) then you can use use laptop as the front end for this. You don't need headphones. Of course, this removes the affordability of the system, but it improves the sound compared to a CD player front end.

Bill Clinton was Right: ObamaCare in its Current Form is a Crazy System

During the recent presidential campaign, Bill Clinton was quoted as saying that the current healthcare system in the country (ObamaCare) is a "crazy system." He took a lot of heat for this, but when you see his full quote, what he actually said makes a lot of sense.

 

I was reminded of this so-called gaffe today when a proposed GOP plan for replacing ObamaCare leaked. A key feature of this plan is that instead of means-tested subsidies, the plan uses refundable tax credits that rise with age, not income. Here's a graphic that lays out the benefits.


As you can see, if you are in a low income bracket, especially if you are older with low income, you do MUCH better on ObamaCare. However, at the same time if you are in a higher income bracket ($60,000 and above) ObamaCare is not such a great deal for you. You make just enough money to make you ineligible for subsidies.

This illustrates the problem with ObamaCare. It is basically a benefit program for those with lower income. People who are moderately comfortable--but far from rich--are screwed in this system, especially if you are older. For people like this (I am one of them), the proposed GOP plan is vastly preferable. In my own case, the cheapest plan on our local exchange would have cost me $650 a month and included a $4500 deductible. I viewed this as little more than catastrophic coverage. Under the GOP plan, assuming that nothing else would change, I would pay only $300 a month for the same plan.

This is a persistent problem with Democratic policy proposals. The party consistently criticizes vast levels of income inequality and special breaks for the rich. I strongly agree with this. However, when it comes time for actual policy proposals the party tends to pass legislation that targets benefits towards the poor at the expense of the middle class. If you are rich, then you can afford to pay more, but if you are only moderately successful, then you cannot. What is rich? This is not easy to define, but I would say that at a minimum you cannot be "rich" unless your annual income is in the top 1%, which nationally averages about $465,000 in income annually.

This is an urgent problem that the party must fix. Clinton's idea of a Medicare buy-in for the middle class sounds like a great idea. If Hillary had promoted this idea, then maybe. . . .

An Unhealthy Trend at the Oscars

No, I am not referring to the embarrassing flub last Sunday night when the Price Waterhouse accountants handed Warren Beatty the wrong envelope for Best Picture, and La La Land was mistakenly announced as the Best Picture winner.

There is a long-term trend in which the film that wins Best Picture has become less and less a film that many people have actually seen. Consider the numbers. In constant 2017 dollars in the 40 years between 1959 and 1999 the average domestic box office gross for the Best Picture winner was $342 million. Yet, in the 16 years between 2000 and 2016 the average was $139 million. More disturbingly, in the last 7 years from 2009-2016 the average was $67 million, less than 20% of the 1959-1999 average.

Some might herald this trend as evidence of the Academy placing a focus on pure artistic achievement above popular success. I disagree. I think that this trend is unhealthy for the film business in general and certainly toxic for the Academy Awards specifically. Fewer and fewer people watch the award ceremony on television. This year's show attracted only 34 million viewers in the U.S. As recently as 1998, the show drew 55 million viewers--a year when the country's population was 40 million smaller. To the extent that the audience begins to view the Academy Awards as a salon of artists recognizing rarefied and exotic tastes, the ceremony--and by extension the film business in general--will lose its status as an important component of American cultural life. For example, I found the winner of the 2014 Academy Awards, Birdman, nearly unwatchable. The box office receipts of that film suggests that a lot of others felt the same way. In 6 of the last 8 years, the Best Picture winner has earned less than $50 million.

Interestingly, this phenomenon is not entirely due to the Academy recognizing only art house critical favorites. Although Birdman (2014), The Artist (2011), and this year's winner Moonlight (2016) could all be fairly described in this way, the other two films in the sub-$50 million club, The Hurt Locker (2009) and Spotlight (2016) were certainly not art house films. The Hurt Locker is a more or less mainstream war film and Spotlight is a conventional procedural. I suspect that these films suffered from poor marketing campaigns, or, in the case of The Hurt Locker, an reluctance of audiences to go to a film about the Iraq War, which was still an open wound for many in the country.

I certainly don't want to see the Oscars turned into a mere popularity contest along the lines of The People's Choice Awards. But I would like to see Oscar voters at least taking into consideration the cultural impact a film has on the society, while keeping in mind that a film can't have a cultural impact if very few people in the culture are exposed to it.

Michael Wolff and Donald Trump

Michael Wolff, columnist for the Hollywood Reporter, recently sat down for an interview on CNN's media criticism show, Reliable Sources. It infuriated me.

Wolff begins by observing that the media "keeps losing to Trump." By what metric is this loss measured? Certainly not by popular opinion. Trump is the least popular new president since the advent of modern polling. The only metric I can think of to justify this statement is the extent to which Trump supporters have abandoned him in the face of media criticism. One of very few profoundly true statements that Trump has made in his brief political career is that "I could stand in the middle of 5th avenue and shoot someone and wouldn't lose any voters." Rhetorically exuberant perhaps, but it captures a real phenomenon. About 30% of the country's voters who constitute Trump's base are extremely loyal and seemingly unmovable in the face of negative information about their great leader. This has been true from the very beginning. It is difficult to see how the media is responsible for this. If anything, the media is responsible for Trump's incredibly high negatives. Even many who voted for him had a negative view of him.

Wolff said that when the media fact checks Trump, it helps him. Again, helps him with whom? Surely only with the aforementioned 'Go-ahead-and-shoot-someone-and-see-if-I-care' demographic. Again, this is hardly the media's fault. What is Wolff suggesting here? Is he suggesting that when Trump makes statements that are demonstrably false that the media should just ignore the statement and move on?

Wolff rejects David Remnick’s claim that the Trump administration poses an "emergency" for the media, other than the personal pique that members of the media find themselves in. Wolff displays what is surely willful ignorance regarding the nearly constant stream of falsehoods that come from Trump and those charged with representing him. One hardly needs to itemize these. It has been done by others many times. Trump's willingness to repeatedly make statements that are directly contradicted by easily checked evidence is unprecedented at the presidential level. Perhaps this is source of the feeling by some in the media that we are in a very different “emergency”environment that requires a different set of journalistic standards.

Wolff doesn’t know what "going easy on them [the Trump administration] means in this case". He merely plays the role of a fact finder, discovering "What do you think? What do you believe. Tell me."

The problem with this is two-fold. First, if all the media need do is serve as a vehicle of transmission for what politicians believe, then they are not acting as journalists. A journalist's job requires the ability to provide analysis of, context for, and fact checking of what those in power say. This has ALWAYS been the case. This job description has not been changed for Donald J. Trump. The only difference now is that the sheer volume of falsehoods emanating from Trump and his spokespersons requires the media to spend much more time than they are accustomed playing the role of truth referee. When Trump claims that he saw a video of thousands of Muslims celebrating in New Jersey over 9/11, it is the media's job to say "No, you didn't, because no such video exists, because nothing like this occurred.” When Trump asserts that “You can’t believe what my people in Africa are finding” about Obama’s real birthplace, it is the media’s job to inform people that this is a racist lie. That’s not name-calling, it is a factual description.

The second problem with Wolff’s impoverished description of what the media ought to be doing regarding Trump is that it simply isn’t necessary. Trump and the seemingly ubiquitous Kellyanne Conway are not shy about telling the public what Trump believes and what he wants to do. In fact, the only mystery about Trump’s plans (which can often appear to change from day-to-day depending on whom he’s talking to) is how will he square the populism on which he ran with the Wall Street friendly, tax cuts for wealthy agenda that his administration at least initially seems to want to pursue. However, Wolff would presumably resist reporting even on this point as to do so would involve a implied criticism of his subject, which he seems to have ruled out in advance.

Wolff’s final comments border on the incoherent. When asked if he thought the Trump administration was unusual, his reply is that “all new presidencies are unusual”, which, as far as I can tell is an incredibly convoluted way of saying that the Trump administration is NOT unusual because it is like all the others.