Politics

A few thoughts after being remotely diagnosed with COVID-19

Posted on April 9, 2020April 9, 2020 by Sam Kornstein in General, Ideas, Politics

This past Sunday I woke up and did not feel well. I had a slight headache, some body aches, and was generally tired. I went about my morning routine with the kids, and within half an hour my headache was worse, and I developed cold chills and a mild dry cough. When I took a deep breath, I felt a bit of pressure in my chest. My wife and I quickly arranged for me to be isolated in our basement, and I got in bed and took my temperature, which was 102° F. On paper, I had most of the COVID-19 symptoms, so I called my primary care doctor’s office, and was routed to MGH’s COVID-19 line. I went through

What about people at home?

Posted on April 3, 2017April 2, 2017 by Sam Kornstein in Politics

From Bill Maher’s monologue last week: “Paul Ryan wrote a healthcare bill that somehow covered fewer people than just repealing Obamacare and replaced it with nothing, and it still wasn’t good enough for the Freedom Caucus. It’s like if you wrote a highway bill that made all the bridges fall down, and they said, ‘Yeah, but that only kills drivers. What about people at home?’”

Obama & Xi Jinping

Posted on June 11, 2013June 11, 2013 by Sam Kornstein in Current Events, Politics

Tigger and Winnie. James Fallows: “According to everyone I know in China, all writing in at once, here is the now-most-wildly-popular image being shared on Sina Weibo (Chinese version of Twitter)”:

Outsourcing Gavel Production in the US Senate

Posted on June 5, 2013June 5, 2013 by Robin Bose in Current Events, Economics, Politics

The following is a guest post from Robin Bose. Robin went to MIT with me and likes beer almost as much as I do. He’s also a great singer. The United States Senate has a busy 2013 summer schedule: a new farm bill, interest rates on student loans, and comprehensive immigration reform. Immigration reform in particular has thrown off a lot of heat and light, with new entrants into lobbying — led by Facebook and the tech sector — facing an already crowded field of corporate interests, immigrant groups, unions, Tea Partiers, border militia, and lots of local, state, and national officials. For example, we know who the sheriff of Maricopa County AZ is (Joe Arpaio). He makes national immigration news.

Fiscal Cliff Offers

Posted on December 20, 2012December 20, 2012 by Sam Kornstein in Current Events, Economics, General, Politics

Via Wongblog, this is the best description of the negotiations I’ve seen yet:

Super PAC App: Comment on Non-Profits

Posted on December 5, 2012December 4, 2012 by Sam Kornstein in Politics

In response to my previous posts here and here, Dan, co-founder of the Super PAC App, provided some context in the comments on the “non-profit” organizations that sponsored political ads: Definitions are important here. “Non profit organizations” is a catch-call designation for anything that is not a PAC, Super PAC, official campaign, or the national party (RNC or DNC). The disclosure rules for these groups (501c’s) are different and lighter than other organizations (don’t ask me why). The most famous is probably Karl Rove’s Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies (often called Crossroads GPS). So when you think “non profit”, don’t think Make-a-Wish Foundation or Red Cross. Think of people who are choosing to register as non-profits from the menu of organization types–and they’re

Super PAC App: More on Who Lies Most

Posted on December 4, 2012December 3, 2012 by Sam Kornstein in Politics

As I previously wrote about here, the Super PAC App has published all of their data so that anybody interested can take a look. Last week I looked into which types of organizations had the highest proportion of ‘Fail’ ratings for the ads they sponsored. It turns out that the clear ‘winner’ — and by ‘winner’ in mean the organization type that was found to ‘Fail’ most often — was non-profit organizations. I provided a few reasons as to why this could be the case. To sum them up, it seems likely that these organizations either (1) were more crude in their argument construction and execution, leaving them open to easy criticism, or (2) they may have simply had less

Super PAC App: Who Lies Most?

Posted on November 26, 2012November 26, 2012 by Sam Kornstein in Politics

I’ve previously written a bit about the Super PAC App, an iPhone app that allows users to rate election cycle ads based on whether or not the claims appear to be accurate. It was co-founded by my friend Dan Siegel, and throughout this past election cycle, the app appears to have been a success. According to a recent email from Dan and the other co-founder, the app resulted in “119,815 user sessions. 50,014 claims explored. 38,351 ad ratings. 122 countries represented.” Pretty impressive. They decided to post all of their code and data online so that researchers and others can dig in and see if there’s anything interesting going on. You can download the code and data here. So I decided