Category Archives: Politics

Analysis suggests fake Twitter followers common among Washington political leaders

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A new analysis of political leaders in Washington D.C. suggests many of them have a lot of fake or inactive Twitter followers:

Of the president’s 36.9 million Twitter followers, an astonishing 53 per cent – or 19.5 million – are fake accounts, according to a search engine at the Internet research vendor StatusPeople.com. Just 20 per cent of Obama’s Twitter buddies are real people who are active users.

Overall, the five most influential accounts linked to the Obama administration – the first lady has two – account for 23.4 million fake followers.

Biden’s nonexistent fans make up 46 per cent of his Twitter total, with 20 per cent being ‘real’ followers. The White House’s followers are 37 per cent fake and 25 per cent active; the first lady’s primary account is 36 per cent fake and 29 per cent active…

The difference between fake followers and ‘real’ ones is comprised of ‘inactive’ accounts, which may relate to real people but no longer send tweets with any regularity.

If this analysis can be trusted, this appears to be a bipartisan problem. But, it would be helpful to hear more about how inactive or fake users are determined: shouldn’t we expect that there are some people on social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook who have set up profiles but then don’t use them regularly? At least there is one infographic that helps provide more detail regarding this phenomena. Plus, you can use this app to analyze your own account.

And, once we have such numbers, we should then think through what it means: is it dishonest for politicians to have a lot of fake or inactive Twitter followers? Should the standards for having fully active followers be different for politicians as opposed to other public figures? Does having more followers really translate into a more positive public image or more votes?

UPDATE: This is not a problem just relegated to well-known figures. See this story from this morning on fines levied against companies that posted fake reviews:

The New York Attorney General has slapped 19 companies with a $350,000 fine after his office unearthed fake review writing for Google Local, Yelp, and others in a yogurt shop sting.

Eric Schneiderman revealed that a raft of search engine optimisation (SEO) companies created dummy accounts and paid writers from the Bangladesh and the Philippines $1 to $10 per review after his office set up a fake yoghurt shop in Brooklyn, New York and sought help to combat negative comments.

“Consumers rely on reviews from their peers to make daily purchasing decisions on anything from food and clothing to recreation and sightseeing,” said Schneiderman in a statement.

“This investigation into large-scale, intentional deceit across the Internet tells us that we should approach online reviews with caution.”

Plus, this is an online concern at sites like Amazon where reviews provide important information for potential buyers.

Congressional town halls not necessarily indicative of public opinion

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I heard two news reports yesterday from two respected media sources about Congressional members holding towns halls in their districts about possible military action in Syria. Both reports featured residents speaking up against military action. Both hinted that constituents weren’t happy with the idea of military action. However, how much do town halls like these really tell us?

I would suggest not much. While they give constituents an opportunity to directly address a member of Congress, these events are great for the media. There are plenty of opportunities for heated speeches, soundbites, and disagreement amongst the crowd. One report featured a soundbite of a constituent suggesting that if he were in power, he would put charge both the president and his congressman with treason. The other report featured some people speaking for military action in Syria – some Syrian Americans asking for the United States to stand up to a dictator – and facing boos from others in the crowd.

Instead of focusing on town halls which provide some political theater, we should look to national surveys to American public opinion. Focus on the big picture, not on towns halls which provide small samples.

“The United States Redrawn as Fifty States with Equal Populations” leads to interesting names in the Chicago area

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Here is a fun map/solution/art project regarding reforming the American electoral college: have all the states have equal populations.

electorally reformed US map

Here is the methodology for the map:

The map began with an algorithm that grouped counties based on proximity, urban area, and commuting patterns. The algorithm was seeded with the fifty largest cities. After that, manual changes took into account compact shapes, equal populations, metro areas divided by state lines, and drainage basins. In certain areas, divisions are based on census tract lines.

The District of Columbia is included into the state of Washington, with the Mall, major monuments and Federal buildings set off as the seat of the federal government.

The capitals of the states are existing states capitals where possible, otherwise large or central cities have been chosen. The suggested names of the new states are taken mainly from geographical features:

  • mountain ranges or peaks, or caves – Adirondack, Allegheny, Blue Ridge, Chinati, Mammoth, Mesabi, Ozark, Pocono, Rainier, Shasta, Shenandoah and Shiprock
  • rivers – Atchafalaya, Menominee, Maumee, Nodaway, Sangamon, Scioto, Susquehanna, Trinity and Willimantic
  • historical or ecological regions – Big Thicket, Firelands and Tidewater
  • bays, capes, lakes and aquifers – Casco, Tampa Bay, Canaveral, Mendocino, Ogallala, Salt Lake and Throgs Neck
  • songs – Gary, Muskogee and Temecula
  • cities – Atlanta, Chicago, Columbia, Detroit, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Newark, Philadelphia, Phoenix and Washington
  • plants – Tule and Yerba Buena
  • people – King and Orange

The words used for names for the name are drawn from many languages, including many American Indian languages.

Interesting naming conventions. However, I don’t understand what is going on in the Chicago area. While it makes sense to name Chicago and some of the nearby suburbs “Chicago” (though I’m guessing a number of these suburbs would not want to be lumped in with Chicago), why in the world would the new state made up of the outer regions of the current Chicago area be called Gary? I’m sure people would ask why an industrial boomtown now ghost town (it isn’t quite this bad yet this is the sort of reputation Gary has), an exemplar par excellence of the Rust Belt, would lend its name to a full state. Gary has a bad reputation (which other suburbs, particularly the wealthier ones, would not want to be associated with), it is not the largest city in the area (Milwaukee, Rockford, Joliet are larger), it is located on the eastern side of the new state so isn’t exactly central, and Joliet is the named capital.

It is also interesting to see the New York and Los Angeles metropolitan regions are also split up. However, they don’t appear to be quite split on the lines of concentric rings like the Chicago area.

American preferences for returning to a past decade shaped by when they grew up, their politics

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The Economist reports on a recent poll that asked Americans which decade to which they would wish to return:

In our latest weekly Economist/YouGov poll, we asked Americans which decade of the 20th century they would most like to go back to. Most popular was the 1950s. The decade of economic boom following the second world war is regarded as a time of consumerism, conservatism and cold-war caution. It was an age of stay-at-home wives, novel household appliances and new suburbs—yet was also most popular among women. The haze of Woodstock and Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s rolled up in second place. Republicans in particular preferred the morally uncomplicated 1950s under President Eisenhower and the 1980s of Reagan; Democrats tended to opt for Bill Clinton’s 1990s. In general, people yearned for their youth. Over 50% of those over 65 wanted to revisit the 1950s and 1960s, while 45- to 64-year-olds pined for the 1980s. The youngest were torn between the jazz age of the 1920s and the 1990s, their own salad days.

On one hand, this might be somewhat meaningless: stereotypes of entire decades are much too simplistic and even The Economist falls into that trap in their descriptions. On the other hand, perhaps knowing what decade people would prefer to return to helps give us some indication of what people are trying to accomplish now. If your preferred era is the 1950s, you might pursue different social norms and policies compared to something who most fondly recalls the 1960s. Indeed, conservatives and liberals might both want to push such a narrative: Republicans to return to the prosperous and calm 1950s (maybe also their vision of the 1980s) while Democrats would prefer the more liberating and exciting 1960s (and perhaps also the 1990s).

Suburban worries that Metra troubles may end up giving Chicago more influence

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DuPage County Chairman Dan Cronin doesn’t want the troubles with Metra to give Chicago an opportunity to grab more power over regional transit:

As Metra tries to function amid scandal, it’s essential the suburbs maintain their influence on the board, DuPage Chairman Dan Cronin warned Friday.

With state lawmakers and Gov. Pat Quinn pushing to reinvent the troubled agency, there’s a danger whatever emerges will shift the balance of power to Chicago, Cronin said.

“I’m here representing the nearly 1 million people in DuPage County,” Cronin said. “I want to make sure their voice is heard. We have to be mindful of transit needs in the suburbs.”…

Friday marked the first time the board of directors has met since its game-changing session in June when they approved a separation agreement with former CEO Alex Clifford that’s been called a golden parachute at best and “hush money” at worst…

Other fallout included the departures of Kane County appointee Mike McCoy and DuPage’s Paul Darley. McCoy, a civil engineer and former county chairman, and business owner Darley were considered independent voices on the board.

There is not much context here about Cronin’s statements. However, this statement hints at larger issues. This is part of a ongoing power struggle in the Chicago region between the city and suburban interests. There are transit needs in DuPage County including rail lines to Chicago and major highways and roads (plus a lack of mass transit to points within the county itself outside of Metra lines). And Metra is not the only flashpoint; the Regional Transit Authority is another issue. But, this could also simply be a manifestation of something many suburbanites, particularly conservatives, fear: Chicago is a power-hungry entity that can’t wait to dictate more policy to the rest of Illinois. And this may be the reason many suburbanites live there in the first-place or now justify their suburban presence: they wanted to get away from Chicago.

“The Nate Silver of immigration reform”

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Want a statistical model that tells you which Congressman to lobby on immigration reform? Look no further than a political scientist at UC San Diego:

In the mold of Silver, who is famous for his election predictions, Wong bridges the gap between equations and shoe-leather politics, said David Damore, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and a senior analyst for Latino Decisions, a political opinion research group.

Activists already have an idea of which lawmakers to target, but Wong gives them an extra edge. He can generate a custom analysis for, say, who might be receptive to an argument based on religious faith. With the House likely to consider separate measures rather than a comprehensive bill, Wong covers every permutation.

“In the House, everybody’s in their own unique geopolitical context,” Damore said. “What he’s doing is very, very useful.”

The equations Wong uses are familiar to many political scientists. So are his raw materials: each lawmaker’s past votes and the ethnic composition of his or her district. But no one else appears to be applying those tools to immigration in quite the way Wong does.

So is there something extra in the models that others don’t have or is Wong extra good at interpreting the results? The article suggests there are some common factors all political scientists would consider but then it also hints there are some more hidden factors like religiosity or district-specific happenings.

A fear I have for Nate Silver as well: what happens when the models are wrong? Those who work with statistics know they are just predictions and statistical models always have error but this isn’t necessarily how the public sees things.

Argument: many Chicago suburbs have boring mottos

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The Daily Herald suggests a number of Chicago suburbs have dull mottos that don’t say much about the communities:

Town mottos are like nicknames in that the best ones, such as “City of Big Shoulders” for Chicago, are bestowed by others and not self-proclaimed, such as “Urbus en Horto” (“City in a Garden”) for Chicago. At least there is a story behind Des Plaines’ destiny. Most suburbs adopt bland, easily forgotten mottos that tout development or vague hopes for the future, such as Schaumburg’s “Progress Through Thoughtful Planning,” Bloomingdale’s “Growth With Pride,” or Bolingbrook’s “A Place to Grow.”

Wauconda’s “Water. Spirit. Wonder.” is unique but might sound a little cold compared to neighboring Island Lake, which is “A Community of Friendly People” who settled there instead of in Huntley, “The Friendly Village with Country Charm.”

Hanover Park opts for “One Village — One Future.” It doesn’t say much, but no one can argue with the math. No one should quibble about Elgin’s “The City in the Suburbs.” But Naperville’s “Great Service — All the Time,” also a favorite motto of pizzerias, might fuel discussions. One Wikipedia entry falsely touts Libertyville’s motto as the impressive “Fortitudine Vincimus,” Latin for “By Endurance We Conquer,” which basically means “We Will Win By Hanging Around Until Everybody Else Quits.” But Libertyville never used that motto and currently sports only the phrase “Spirit of Independence” on its red-white-and-blue logo…

Lombard, “The Lilac Village,” still boasts a motto that brings to mind something pretty and fragrant. Roselle hosts a rose parade and includes roses in its village seal, but it uses the motto “Tradition Meets Tomorrow,” which is pretty similar to the “Where Tradition and Vision Meet” motto of Batavia. (Given Batavia’s link to the high-energy physics of Fermilab, it might consider the motto “Village of Density.”)

These mottos sound like classic talk from city boosters: they tend to contain grand visions about the future without getting into too many specifics or highlight a small part of the community’s character. I think they are primarily about trying to impress businesses, trying to attract them to relocate in a place that is thriving and will continue to thrive.

Unfortunately, when all the mottos sound similar, they all don’t mean a whole lot. How does a business really differentiate between communities based on their mottos? The biggest issue for a suburb might be having a motto that is significantly different. This might lead people to ask why that community is so out of line.

Critics of suburbs might see these mottos as more evidence of the homogeneity or blandness of suburbs. Many communities seem to be striving after the same things. Yet, we know that suburbs are actually quite different, whether that is due to different functions (like comparing a bedroom suburb and an edge city) or different histories (date of founding, specific historical circumstances) or a unique set of self-perception (like suburbs that view themselves as extra friendly or full of volunteers). So perhaps more suburbs should work to differentiate themselves in their mottos, move away from bland American notions of progress, and more explicitly highlight their more unique features.

Study suggests Mexican Americans have received less government aid than European immigrants in the early 1900s

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An op-ed from two sociologists that discusses social science research on the assimilation of immigrant Mexicans includes one study about the governmental aid received by two large groups of immigrants:

No one should underestimate the challenges Mexicans from a humble background face when they move to the U.S. — especially in today’s economy, in which low-skilled jobs are scarce. Their children can face ethnic prejudices. They often do not have access to top-quality education.

But even in light of the struggles, it is important to highlight the progress of many Mexican Americans. Indeed, they have made this uphill climb in spite of greater challenges than those faced by earlier, European immigrants. An extensive historical study published by sociologist Cybelle Fox in 2012 shows that Europeans who came at the turn of the 20th century were far more likely to receive government aid than Mexicans or blacks, regardless of need. Local relief officials also protected European immigrants from federal agents who were investigating public aid recipients during the Depression. In stark contrast, officials repatriated Mexican immigrants and their U.S.-born offspring, who also faced Jim Crow-like racism in many parts of the country.

The end argument is that Mexican immigrants have faced some steeper hurdles than European immigrants, including in levels of government support, in the early 1900s and have done well. It would then be interesting to hear how people interpret this historical information. A common refrain among white Americans is that their ancestors had to work hard and do certain things to succeed in America. Thus, new immigrants should similarly pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Yet, circumstances change. Immigration has changed quite a bit since the early 1900s, particularly due to the 1965 Immigration Act that helped increase immigrant flows from non-European areas. Who is thought to be white has changed and will likely continue to change.

All of this is a reminder that immigration policy and reactions to immigrants is variable and dependent on social conditions in both the sending and receiving country.

At the same time, this op-ed doesn’t mention other sociological research on different outcomes for immigrants beyond assimilation into some sort of “normal” white, American culture. In the last few decades, a number of sociologists have found evidence of segmented assimilation where different immigrants have different experiences. For example, more educated immigrants may be more able to experience upward mobility compared to immigrants who have few job skills. Or, certain groups are treated differently than others because of existing stereotypes and policies. Assimilation may not be possible or desired for some immigrants.

McMansion owning Vermont governor criticized for real estate dealing with neighbor

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The governor of Vermont has run into some real estate trouble after buying the property of a neighbor:

Soon after the successful real estate investor built his McMansion on a rural dirt road here outside Vermont’s capital, he began throwing his wealth around, striking a deal to bail out his neighbor from a looming tax sale by buying the man’s property for a quarter of its appraised value.

Such a sale is not uncommon and likely would have gone unnoticed. Except the buyer was the governor of Vermont, Peter Shumlin. And the seller, Jerry Dodge, was a hard-luck ne’er-do-well with a criminal record and what his friends and family describe as limited intellect and diminishing prospects.

Since word of the deal surfaced last week, Shumlin has been under intense scrutiny in the state. Real estate lawyers generally conclude that he did nothing illegal, but that the governor might still have held himself to a higher standard of conduct, raising the question of when a savvy business deal becomes bad for his politics…

Some of Dodge’s dissatisfaction appears to have been fueled by family and friends telling him he took too little for his property. He recalled reciting the Pledge of Allegiance as a child, before he left school in the ninth grade. It’s not justice for all, he said. It’s “justice for the rich.”

Sounds like a sticky situation for a politician who doesn’t want to be seen taking advantage of another resident. At the same time, the use of the term McMansion is intriguing. See a picture of Shumlin’s house here and a wider overhead view here. From these far-off pictures, it doesn’t look too much like a McMansion. The house might have a large square footage but the exterior appears understated and the house does not dominate the large lot. In using the term McMansion, the AP might be referring more to the home’s recent construction by a wealthy resident rather than the architecture and design of a home within a suburban subdivision. The rest of the story does seem to play up the angle that Shulmin’s house is a wealthy and luxurious one, particularly compared with the more run-down property of his neighbor.

Determining how Illinois road money should be split between Chicago area, downstate

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The Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning argues Illinois needs to change its formula for how it apportions road money between the Chicago area and downstate:

A deal hammered out by the state’s top politicians in the 1980s means that 45 percent of all transportation revenues go to the Chicago metropolitan area and 55 percent is allocated to downstate Illinois.

CMAP wants to change the status quo with a performance-based system using population, congestion, pollution and economic impact as criteria when it comes to doling out dollars for significant projects such as new highways, bridges and interchanges or additional lanes…

The agency points out that the metropolitan region comprises 65 percent of the population and contributes about 70 percent of the state’s income tax and 65 percent of its sales tax revenues.

Yet, in IDOT’s 2014-2019 multimodal transportation improvement program, about $3.1 billion — or 45 percent — out of $6.9 billion goes to District 1 including Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will counties, CMAP planners said…

“It’s a very bad idea,” said Republican Rep. Dwight Kay of Glen Carbon. “The needs of southern Illinois in terms of total miles is far greater than in the suburbs or in Chicago. I would be somewhat dismayed if not shocked to think anyone would propose changes. We have hundreds of bridges that either need to be replaced or are older and in disrepair.”

My first question is how lawmakers came to a 55/45 split in the first place. I would hope this agreement was based on some hard numbers but perhaps they were the only figures that everyone could agree on?

It sounds like the current debate would shape up like this: downstate lawmakers argue they have plenty of road miles and infrastructure to maintain while Chicago area politicians argue they put in a majority of the money and have a majority of the population. Do Illinois lawmakers even have the ability to discuss something like this even in the midst of other major money woes? Wouldn’t this simply inflame the ongoing Chicago versus downstate debate? I suspect this won’t be on the front burner even if infrastructure is a growing conversation piece around the country.