Mob Rule

Deflategate, Patriots: PSI, Cheatriots, call it what you will.  What is clear is that we are beginning to understand that this entire episode was a modern day witch hunt which ultimately will damage those carrying the torches and pitchforks more than it will tarnish the New England Patriots and its accomplishments.  Few people have the time to follow every development with this story but when one pulls back the lens five key issues emerge and all five point to vindication for the Patriots and shame for its critics.

Issue #1: Statistical Analysis of Fumble Rate Post 2007

This may be the most important issue since it implies a significant competitive advantage for the Patriots and appears backed by statistical rigor.  But like much of this scandal the claims do not hold up under scrutiny.  This analysis has been debunked multiple times by legitimate statisticians. The bottom line is that that "analysis" is bad methodology using bad data.

• http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/your-guide-to-deflate-gateballghazi-related-statistical-analyses/ 

• http://drewfustin.com/2015/01/27/patriots-fumble-comments/

Issue #2: Ball Pressure

Chris Mortensen's report that 11 of the 12 footballs were 2 psi under the limit set off this firestorm which quickly snowballed and consumed the entire first week leading up to the Super Bowl.  Now we know that this report is completely falling apart. The latest from Ian Rappaport states that only one of the balls, coincidently the one ball that happened to be in the possession of the Colts was 2 psi under, that many of them were just a "few ticks under 12.5."

• http://thebiglead.com/2015/02/01/nfl-com-report-says-only-one-of-patriots-balls-was-deflated-by-2-psi-not-11-of-them/ 

Two PSI versus "a few ticks" is critical because some of the best scientists and laboratories in the country have demonstrated that the ideal gas law and basic experimentation explains that any football taken from a 75F dry room to 50F wet field will loose some pressure.

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxsXFX3tDpg 

The retort to these points is what about the Colts footballs? Unfortunately we know from other reports that the NFL did not record the starting PSIs of the footballs for either team. So we have no idea at what PSI the Colts' balls started. Maybe Andrew Luck is like Aaron Rodgers and purposefully over-inflates his balls over the league limit and hopes not to get caught. (It is interesting that this was casually discussed in front of the entire nation on Monday Night Football and no one batted an eye; in fact it was portrayed by Jim Nantz as an admirable quirk of Aaron Rodgers) I admit it is not necessarily likely Luck wants the ball over-inflated, but maybe he likes them at 13.0? The bottom line is we have no idea because we have no data, just a witch hunt. We also know from Rodger Goodell's "State of the NFL" press conference that footballs have never been tested at halftime so we have no control group to work with. I'm not a scientist but I would think one might like to have a control group and some data to make any type of reasonable conclusion.

The only other information we have is that an equipment manager took the Colts and Patriots balls into a bathroom for 98 seconds. This is the proverbial Rorschach Test in this case. If one is inclined to think of the Patriots as cheaters then it is obvious that something nefarious went on in that bathroom. If one is inclined to believe the Patriots, Robert Kraft, Bill Belichick and Tom Brady then it is obvious that the old guy just went in to take a leak before going on the field for the next three hours.

Issue #3: Leaks from the League

This brings me to my third point which is the slipshod way the League office has handled this situation and revealed its intention to smear the Patriots with half truths and innuendos. First we have the damning Mortensen report on the 11 of 12 balls which started all the hysteria. Only to find out over a week later that that report is likely wrong. Just as damning is how we found out what happened with the equipment manager and the bathroom. Our first report, clearly leaked from the League office to Jay Glazer:

JayGlazer @JayGlazer Breaking news: sources tell @FOXSports the NFL has zeroed in on a locker room attendant w Patriots who allegedly took balls from officials locker room to another area on way to field. Sources say they have interviewed him and additionally have video. Still gauging if any wrong doing occurred with him but he is strong person of interest 

WOW!? They have a "strong person of interest" that they are "zeroed in on" and that he took the balls to "another area" of the field. W have the smoking gun, the NFL has the Patriots dead to rights. Hurray! But wait we then find out from Mike Florio that "the other “area on way to field” is a bathroom" and "the evidence comes from a surveillance video that was discovered by the Patriots and given to the NFL early in the investigation." and "the video shows the employee in the bathroom for approximately 90 seconds."

 My question is why is the first report to Jay Glazer so incomplete? The only conclusion I can draw is there is someone in the league office that is trying to smear the Patriots.

It appears that the NFL executive who leaked the initial report to Glazer was not pleased that Florio's report succeeded in making his leak look foolish and melodramatic. This led to a follow up report from Florio: "One highly-placed official with an NFL team “took the top off” a dozen balls in a mere 56 seconds. “Next time I’m gonna pee as well,” the source said."

• http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2015/01/28/its-easy-to-quickly-deflate-a-football/ 

This story raises serious questions about whether Roger Goodell has any control over the League office and whether a fair investigation is being conducted. That is why Robert Kraft was right to throw down the gauntlet and demand the NFL better have the goods or heads will roll. The PR smear campaign coming from this official is embarrassing. And lest we not forget that when this was all happening everyone is still assuming that 11 of the 12 balls were 2 psi under-inflated which is now seriously in doubt.

Issue #4: Reaction from Former Players

My fourth point is that the reaction from ex-players and ESPN talking heads is ridiculous. Watching Mark Brunell cry on national TV was rich. I feel sorry that he lost all his money in bad real estate deals and has to actually work a real job. But who the hell is he to call Tom Brady a liar and cheater? Please. Almost every single player I've heard criticize Brady is a player that has been smoked by Brady and the Patriots over the last fifteen years. (Brunell, Hawkins, Bettis, Faulk, etc.) And the other players who are quick to judge and demean Brady and the Patriots' accomplishments are all folks who have records and reputations that are being challenged by Brady and the Patriots (Aikman, Rice, Montana, Haley). I'm surprised these players are so insecure and thin skinned. Montana and Rice are legends and gods and they soil themselves getting down in this muck.

Here is Jerry Rice claiming that what the Patriots did deserves an asterisks which eternally tarnishes their legacy but that his use of illegal stickum should be ignored because, hey, everybody was doing it.  Trying to follow Rice's logic makes one wonder if he thinks we are stupid.

http://espn.go.com/blog/boston/new-england-patriots/post/_/id/4778014/jerry-rice-drops-the-ball-in-criticizing-new-england-patriots

Issue #5: The Patriots in Context

Which brings me to my final point. I think the actual facts and evidence make it clear the Patriots did nothing wrong. But I know there are those that will disagree no matter what. However it is a little rich being lectured by former players and fans eager to put that damning asterisks next to the Patriots championships. It seems we need to rush them to the fainting couch lest they faint at the sight of such debauchery. In forty years as a professional football coach Bill Belichick has been reprimanded once by the League for breaking the rules. And yet he is portrayed as a pariah and evil genius par excellence. Tom Brady has never been accused of cheating in his fifteen year career.

I would argue that the Spygate infraction is laughable compared to the cheating that has been carried out by numerous other organizations.  Mike Florio does a nice, but not quite comprehensive job, of covering many rules infraction by other teams.

• http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2015/02/04/if-the-patriots-cheated-theyre-hardly-alone/ 

Ask yourself if Spygate more or less troubling than:

--Jerry Rice and 49er wide receivers using stickum on their gloves

• http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2015/02/06/rice-admits-to-illegal-use-of-stickum/Denver 

--Bronco linemen using vaseline on their uniforms

• http://articles.latimes.com/2006/aug/20/sports/sp-cheathow20 

--Mike Tomlin tripping a player about to score a touchdown

• http://www.baltimoreravens.com/news/article-1/Mike-Tomlin-Interferes-With-Potential-Touchdown/c3f47606-c8d3-4dfd-9f0a-26a55a610d20 

--In the 1990s, the Broncos won Super Bowl trophies in 1997 and 1998 with the assistance of salary-cap violations from 1996 through 1998. Denver eventually lost a third-round pick, paid a whopping $950,000 fine, and a still-unnamed agent and a player donated $100,000 to charity.

• http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/news/story?id=1883127 

--In 2012 the Chargers were caught using a towel to apply stickum to receivers gloves.

• http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2012/11/07/turner-talks-about-resolution-of-towelgate/ 

--The Jets were fined $100,000 for the wall of humanity former strength coach Sal Alosi placed along the sideline during a punt play to impede former Dolphins gunner Nolan Carroll. Few believed Alosi was acting on his own or without the knowledge of former special-teams coordinator Mike Westhoff or former head coach Rex Ryan.

• http://www.nfl.com/news/story/09000d5d81d543b6/article/tripped-up-nfl-docks-jets-100000-for-sideline-incident

--The Minnesota Vikings played their coldest home game in 38 years on Sunday, when they beat the Carolina Panthers in 12-degree temperatures at TCF Bank Stadium. As both teams dealt with the freezing temperatures, Fox cameras showed sideline attendants using heaters to warm up game balls, which is against league rules. NFL vice president of officiating Dean Blandino said Monday morning on NFL Network that officials warned both the Vikings and Panthers not to heat up the balls during Sunday's game, and would remind teams this week not to heat game balls.

• http://espn.go.com/blog/minnesota-vikings/post/_/id/11218/nfl-aware-of-game-ball-incident-during-panthers-vikings 

--The Atlanta Falcons pumping artificial crowd noise into the stadium.

• http://sports.yahoo.com/news/blank-says-falcons-wrong-add-fake-crowd-noise-195550967--nfl.html 

And yet despite these numerous and easy to find violations of NFL rules I don't see anyone clamoring to suspend a coach or player for an entire year. It seems people want to nuke Bill Belichick and Tom Brady's reputation and careers. Is it because they are egregious cheaters who threaten the integrity of the game of football or is it something else?

Reservoir Dogs and the GOP Primary

Here is a movie clip which captures the current GOP primary perfectly.  This thought came to me as I read this article from New York Magazine (via Charlie Pierce).

The transfiguration of the GOP isn’t only about ideology, however. It is also about demography and temperament, as the party has grown whiter, less well schooled, more blue-collar, and more hair-curlingly populist. The result has been a party divided along the lines of culture and class: Establishment versus grassroots, secular versus religious, upscale versus downscale, highfalutin versus hoi polloi. And with those divisions have arisen the competing electoral coalitions—shirts versus skins, regulars versus red-hots—represented by Romney and Santorum, which are now increasingly likely to duke it out all spring.

Yoda's advice: Good for Luke, Bad for America

Yoda, in one of his famous Zen-like koans, advises Luke "You must unlearn what you have learned."

This may be good advice to an aspiring Jedi or Tibetan Monk but it isn't such great advice for America's economists and economic policy decision makers.

Paul Krugman bemoans in this post that the field of economics has seemingly lost many of its hard-won insights of the past eighty years.

I’ve been arguing for a while that much of the economics profession has lost its way, recapitulating old errors because it made a point of unlearning what Keynes taught. But it’s not just economists who willfully threw away hard-won insights.

While Krugman  outlines a series of theories as to why this is so, I don't think he has embraced the one I find most interesting.  The documentary of the 2008 economic collapse "Inside Job" directed by Charles Ferguson exposes the corrupt link between Wall Street and our nation's leading business and economics departments.  Here Ferguson confronts Columbia University Business School Dean and former George W. Bush economic adviser Glenn Hubbard about potential conflicts of interest between his teaching and the exorbitant consulting fees he is paid by Wall Street banks and corporations.






It is so rare to see people like this called to account; one must simply relish the look on this guy's face when he is confronted with his shameless shilling for corporate robber barons.  These are the people, or in this case one of the servants of these people, who have led us in to the abyss.

We must not only remember what Keynes taught us eighty years ago, but also not forget eighty years from now what led us astray in 2008.  For surely once the economy recovers and we begin to rebuild from the ashes of this crisis there will be a new generation of "Glenn Hubbards" ready to lead us in to the inferno while they happily line their pockets at our expense.

Sisyphus and Krugman

This profile of Krugman was written almost ten years ago. Could have been written yesterday.

...among those journalists and politicos who enjoy his column, it's not uncommon to hear the comment that Krugman might be a little more effective if he were just a little less rabid. "It is considered the appropriate thing to say at a dinner party that, while Krugman is very bright, he's just too relentless on Bush," drawls James Carville. "Because to accept Krugman's facts as right makes the Washington press look like idiots."

Chutzpah or Mad Genius?

This courtesy of Talking Points Memo:

As the economy slowly improves, the GOP’s effort to recalibrate its message for the 2012 elections continued Sunday as rising star and Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels took to arguing that the recovery is too slow and the economy remains “pathetically weak.”

“Let’s not kid ourselves: this is the worst recovery ever from a serious recession, and history says the deeper the down, the sharper the up,” Daniels said on CNN’s State of the Union. “It should have been a very vigorous one. Hasn’t been.”

This is coming from the man who was President George W. Bush's Budget Director from 2001 to 2003. His presided over turning a $236 billion surplus to a $400 billion deficit. He predicted the Iraq War would cost $50 to $60 billion (It is approaching $1 trillion).

But this shouldn't be a surprise since Governor Mitch Daniels is the former CEO of Eli Lilly and a self-described propagandist.

“It is another sign of the importance P.R. tactics play in American politics,” Nyhan wrote. “The OMB director — once a budget expert — is now an operative chosen for his political skills, particularly his ability to sell the administration’s economic proposals in the media.

“In August [2001], Daniels admitted as much, telling the Wall Street Journal that ‘[t]o the extent I bring anything … to this job, maybe it’s an ability to think about how a product, whether it’s Prozac or a president’s proposal, is marketed.’ Predictably, he has displayed a disturbing tendency to make dishonest claims for political advantage on federal budget issues.”

But maybe Mitch Daniels is really a genius because if I hear much more of his asinine critiques of the President I think I, along with any sane thinking American, will probably need to obtain a prescription for Prozac. His party is looking like it is going to go down in November 2012, at least in the interim his Eli Lilly stock may go up.

Weekend Musical Stylings

As much as we might want to think our politics are arrived at by pure reason and logic it is possible our conclusions are merely an aesthetic sensibility. This thought entered my mind after I became addicted to the band The Civil Wars. An addiction to a new musical group is nothing new, we all experience from time to time, but how many are turned on to a musical group by their favorite economist and political commentator? I know I'm a political junky but even this feels like a little much. C'est la vie.

So without further ado here are two videos by The Civil Wars courtesy of Paul Krugman.

GOP Unhappy with Conservative Economic Recovery

President Obama's polling numbers are up concerning his handling of the economy.

As TPM points out this is bad for Mitt Romney:

Thursday morning brought the news that weekly jobless claims were down to their lowest level since March 2008. General Motors, which survived only because of a government bailout (that Romney opposed), posted its largest annual profit in history. And the Bureau of Labor Statistics released data this week showing that new housing starts are picking up, moving away from the December slowdown. True, the economy is far from fully healthy or at full recovery, but continuing good economic news will make Romney’s message a harder sell.

And despite GOP protestations that the nation is being led by a Kenyan, atheist, communist, anti-colonialist the recovery is actually conservative in nature. As Matthew Yglesias incessantly points out the entirety of job growth is coming from the private sector while public sector employment (teachers, police officers, firefighters) continue to contract.

Paul Krugman takes this analysis one step further and points out that if the federal government simply helped state and local governments keep their employment numbers constant with population growth that would be tantamount to one million to three million more jobs.

This suggests to me that we could put well over a million people to work directly, and probably around 3 million once you take other effects into account, without any need to come up with new projects; just transfer enough money to state and local governments to let them return to doing the essential business of government, like educating our children.