Disqualifications

I got to wondering: What would disqualify someone from running for the Presidency? There are, of course, the obvious Constitutional ones: not being a “natural born” American, being under 35 years of age, having been involved in a rebellion against the US. There are others that, while not encoded in law, would, in the minds of most voters, render them unqualified. I’d include here things like holding documented racist views, being demonstrably ignorant about Constitutional law, forswearing religion, having had no experience in governance … things like these usually make people feel so uncomfortable that no matter what other virtues the candidate might have they are unlikely to vote for them.

But once you get past these kinds of fairly obvious and largely undisputed issues the game sinks into a partisan brawl. So, since I’m usually ready for a political brawl, here are my first three items of disqualification, positions or actions taken that, in my mind, render an individual unfit for high office. Are they partisan? Honestly, I don’t think so but you may think otherwise.

I. Signing Grover Norquist’s pledge: Any politician who signed this pledge has abrogated his or her responsibility to represent the best interests of their constituents. They have handed control over how they will vote on economic matters and issues of taxation to a private individual. Such an abdication of legislative responsibility renders any complicit politician from ever getting my vote or support — for any elected position, not just the presidency. I have no problems with officials who are wary of tax increases. I’m willing to discuss the issues and listen to debates but I have no truck with anyone who makes a pledge to some right-wing, partisan blow-hard about how they will conduct themselves as elected officials. I note that, as things currently stand, this would eliminate 95% of all Republicans in congress and every member of the GOP who ran in the presidential primaries in 2012.

II. Denying climate change: There is no doubt about the impact of human activity on the climate. It is utterly obvious to anyone who has looked at the data — all the data. It is not a hoax perpetrated by left wing academics. It is not based on fudged numbers. It is also not based solely on specific warming trends. It is seen in dramatic shifts in polar ice, in the melt-rate of glaciers in Alaska, Canada, the Alps and the Andes, in the shrinking of the Greenland icecap, the sloughing off of the Antarctic ice sheet, the thawing of the tundra permafrost, the shift in ocean currents, the changes in the biochemistry of the oceans, the alternations in migration patterns of birds, shifts in the geographical distributions of species of animals and plants, global movements of insect species, increased variance of weather patterns and the frequency of extreme weather events. Any politician who still maintains that this man-made disaster isn’t coming at us like a figurative run-away train and who, as a result, won’t engage in the kinds of legislative and executive efforts that will be required to deal with it has disqualified him or herself from consideration.

III. Denying evolution: Evolution is not a theory. Evolution is a fact. There are theories about that fact, the one most widely accepted is the one that identified natural selection as the driving force. It was, of course, first posed by Charles Darwin in 1859. In the 150+ years since then it has been refined and elaborated and supported. It forms the core of all (and I mean ALL) the social, biological, genetic, botanical, biochemical, biophysical and medical sciences. It is the binding model under which everything we know about life is tucked. To deny evolution is an act of stupendous ignorance, an ignorance so egregious that anyone cleaving to a so-called “creationist” model is automatically disqualified from higher office.

And I do not want to hear any nonsense about balance, about teaching a child about both evolution and creationism and letting them choose. You don’t let a child choose to believe in grammar or arithmetic. You wouldn’t argue that we should teach a child about Einstein’s theory and some silly science fiction idea about faster-than-light travel and let them choose or tell them about plate tectonics and ancient notions about fixed continents and let them choose which to believe. Science isn’t about belief. It’s about theory and data. Religion is about belief and religion does not belong in the public schools.

Are there more disqualifying positions? Sure, but these will do for today.

Women in poker -- Part II

There’s been a long-standing debate over the best way to bring more women to the game. Linda Johnson, known widely as The First Lady of Poker (go here to discover why), has long been a champion of tournaments that are restricted to women. Her argument is that many women find the male-dominated game unpleasant. Men get aggressive and can be nasty. They act condescendingly toward women, hit on them and do other things to make them uncomfortable. Women find the experience so disagreeable that they don’t come back. An all-women tournament, Linda maintains, gives them the opportunity to learn the game in less malignant settings where they can develop the skills and confidence to play anywhere with anyone. Linda’s experiences playing for a living in the earlier rough and tumble days taught her how to not only withstand male aggression but how to exploit it. But, she notes, it wasn’t easy and few women wanted to even try.

But there’s another side here, the one that argues that the game is, at its heart, gender-neutral — just like it is race-neutral and age-neutral. If, people like accomplished professional player Annie Duke argue, a woman is going to be successful the best way is to face up to reality from the start. Duke, who has been more focused on motivational speaking than poker these days, maintains that there should never be tournaments restricted to women, that to do so gives women a false sense of what the game is really like and does not prepare them for open tournament play.

These two points of view, interestingly, mirror arguments in sociopolitical domains where conservatives take the more individualistic line that each of us is responsible for ourselves in a reality that must be faced (Duke’s stance) while progressives side with the pragmatic position that adjustments need to be made to level what started out as an uneven playing field in order to give those with socio-cultural disadvantages needed experience (Johnson’s position).

The data from the social sciences which, from my perspective, are all that really count here support Johnson’s position. Civil rights laws, racial- and gender-sensitive policies in education and hiring have had a significant impact on American society. There is no reason to suspect they wouldn’t have in poker, just like they have had in another game that has the same kind of gender-bias, chess.

Chess is a good place to look because, like in poker, the game is overwhelmingly male — especially at the top levels. Of the 1,440 current grandmasters listed in FIDA (World Chess Federation) a mere 31 are women. Clearly, many say, this shows that men are just better at this game than women and a host of theories have been offered as to why. They run the standard gamut from men are more aggressive, more analytical, have greater stamina; women are too emotional, unwilling to put in the hours of study and so forth. In case these arguments seem old and stupid, they should. They are the same ones put forward when people tried to argue that women can’t run marathons, play “real” basketball, do mathematics, hold public office, etc. etc. etc.

In a fascinating article Ilja Zaragatski, an expert chess player with a background in economics and psychology, points out the real reason that men grandmasters in chess outnumber women by a huge margin is due primarily to the fact that men chess players outnumber women chess players by a huge margin. In short, the male superiority in numbers is almost certainly due to male superiority in numbers. If you have fifty times as many young boys getting deeply interested in chess as girls you expect, decades later, to find fifty times as many men grandmasters as women. Mirim Bilalić and colleagues did a statistical analysis of the game and found that virtually all the differences between men and women players (i.e., 96%) is accounted for by the numbers of male and female players.

Ditto for poker. Linda Johnson’s argument has at its core the solution: make the environment more accommodating and inviting for women. They will come and we will see more tournaments end like the one at the River Rock last Thursday.

Women in poker -- Part I

I’ve seen no hard data but, judging from my years playing poker, I estimate that roughly 1 in 10 players are women. This figure seems to hold pretty much for cash games as well as tournaments. Last Thursday I went in to the River Rock, a stylish casino in Richmond, BC, to play in a $300+30 buy-in NLH event — one of their “May Madness” tournaments. It had a total of 67 entries, six of whom were women, pretty much in keeping with expectations. It’s worth noting, however, that in the larger events, like those at the annual WSOP bash in Vegas where the smallest buy-in is $1,000, the proportion of women tends to be lower, down around 3%. In fact, in the WSOP Main Event, which has a $10,000 buy-in, reporters talk about “the last woman standing” who is heralded with accolades and showered with face time.

Well, in our mid-level tournament, I was “the last man standing.” When the dust settled three of the six female starters cashed. In fact, they finished in 1st, 3rd and 4th. Putting it in starker terms, the women players who made up less than 10% of the field took home well over 60% of the prize pool. This is remarkable. It says two things, both of which could be true. One, it was a statistical fluke. Two, women are getting better at the game, and learning faster than men. Judging from the way the last two tables played (and realizing that this was a small sample, one tournament in one room) I’d say both. The future of the game will be interesting.

But there are larger issues lurking here — to be discussed in Part II.

Underground gambling in NYC

The headline screamed out from the pokernews online site: “Former World Poker Tour Champ Sentenced to Prison for Operating Illegal Gambling Ring”. The former WPT champ is Vadim Trincher and he was one of 34 persons indicted last year on illegal gambling charges, all focusing on sports betting and high stakes poker games being operated in New York City. Of that total, 28 have either been convicted in court, pleaded guilty to the charges or brokered plea bargains. The others are still twisting in the wind. The evidence has to be pretty damn strong for prosecutors to have this kind of batting average and, apparently, it is — implicating the charged in illegal gambling, money laundering, extortion, tax evasion and a couple of other more esoteric crimes including racketeering and conspiracy.

A couple of things about this story got to me — the first being that for a number of years I was a part of that “underground” world in NYC. When I wasn’t being a good boy and doing my job as a professor and cognitive scientist, I was a regular there, first at the original Diamond Club and, after Giuliani’s boys shut that down, the PlayStation that opened to fill the void. Part of my forthcoming novel (Xero to Sixty) is based on those days. But what’s so nutty about this recent spate of indictments and convictions is that playing poker and betting sporting events aren’t heinous crimes. Both are legal in Vegas and poker is played in nearby casinos in Philadelphia, Atlantic City and up in Connecticut.

What’s the draw, why run these games in the city? Well, for one, the games were held in midtown so players didn’t have to take a limo (or drive — depending on how fat your bankroll was) to Philly, AC or Foxwoods. They were also running a sports book and, so the charges read, were handling a lot of money from Russian wise guys of questionable integrity. But, trust me, they weren’t the only ones making book in town. There are hundreds of bookies in the city, some “connected,” many independent. One of my best friends back in my NYC days ran a decent-sized book out of the local race tracks; go here for his story. There was also apparently a well-stocked cocaine hamper on site and this, no doubt, added to the draw.

But, importantly, Trincher and friends let out lines of credit. Unlike legit casinos and sports books where it’s cash up front, in these games you could play on promissory notes.[1] If you won, you got the cash. If you lost you were expected to pay up asap. This angle caused trouble because, big surprise, some of the donkeys couldn’t cover their losses and it got a bit weird when the boyz brought in their version of a collection agency, thugs from the MMA world (that’s “mixed martial arts” to the uninitiated).

By the time the dust settled, Trincher and two of his sons were heading for prison and more than a few of his colleagues from the Russian underworld were caught up in the dragnet. Several prominent poker pros were indicted on tax evasion charges including Bill Edler, a lawyer turned poker pro who has a WSOP bracelet and some 3.5 million coconuts in tournament winnings to his credit and Justin Smith and Abe Mosseri, both of whom have chalked up over a million in tournament winnings. And a whole bunch of celebs who enjoy poker got more exposure than they wanted including, Ben Affleck, Leonardo DiCaprio, Tobey Maguire, Alex Rodriguez and Matt Damon. This was especially distressing to A-Rod who had earlier been reprimanded by MLB when he was photographed playing in the PlayStation. Alas, I was not there the night he made his well-documented appearance.

All right, so what’s the point of this blog? Simple. This whole fiasco, from the underground games, the drugs, money laundering, the Russian Mafia, celebs caught in compromising settings, hired leg-breakers, tax evasion and over two dozen mostly reasonable folks now either behind bars or socked with huge fines and penalties, is bizarre and totally unnecessary. It is nonsensical, idiotic, indefensible, ridiculous, moronic, stupid beyond reckoning.

Why? Because the clowns in charge of passing the legislation by which we all live made these activities illegal in NYC. When you criminalize an activity that people want to engage in, when you make it illegal to do things that are desirable and popular you’re asking for trouble. Sumptuary laws criminalize activities based on religion or personal sensitivities. They have never worked as the moralists hope. They can’t. Ultimately they restrict individual freedom and hand over to the state responsibilities that normally sit with individuals and, of course, they invariably backfire.

Why? Well, it’s bloody obvious, isn’t it. Who do you think is going to fill this void when legit folk can’t? Certainly not the Wynn Corporation or Caesars/Harrah. It’s going to be the Russian mobsters, guys looking to launder some dirty money, drug dealers, hired enforcers and folks who don’t acknowledge the existence of the IRS.

This isn’t some recent revelation. Prohibition made the mob. The Mafia was a bunch of small-time punks fighting with each other over ancient tribal animosities left over from spats back in Sicily. When booze became illegal they were handed the keys to the mint. In 1961 Congress passed The Wire Act making it a federal crime to use a “wire” (i.e., any communication device such as a telephone) to place a bet on a sporting event. Every bookie in the land rejoiced.

Will the morons ever learn? I dunno. I guess not. Even today, when some have begun to understand these issues and individual states are reinstituting intrastate poker online, when most  states allow online and phone wagering on racing, when all but two states have some form of legalized gaming we still have these crazy-quilt sets of laws that make activities like a penny ante poker game or putting down a couple of coconuts on your alma mater’s chances in March Madness a felony. If governments make it impossible for a legitimate, well-organized and above-board company to set up a sports book or spread a poker game you know who will.

So, who wins here? Not you, not me. Just a bunch of lawyers and a couple of prosecutors who get to put a couple of notches in their belts. No one else. It is, as I said, stupid beyond reckoning.

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[1]This practice of giving regular customers credit is common in illegal gambling. The underground numbers rackets, which have been largely displaced by state-run lotteries, would keep their clientele loyal by extending credit, which the legal lotteries cannot do.

The politics of poverty

I. Louisiana moves to make panhandling illegal. The state will join other cities and communities that have criminalized the act of begging for money on the streets. No one has, so far as I can tell, proposed making it illegal for rich people to ask for contributions for their causes or for political parties to solicit for funds or charities to ask for support. If any state were to even consider such a move they would be reminded of uncomfortable things like the 1st Amendment.

Some might argue (as Louisiana legislators have) that they’ve targeted the panhandlers because they bother regular folks with their pleas. Perhaps they do but if they looked at the number of emails that arrive every day in my inbox or sift through the pounds of petitions and promotions in the regular mail every day they might wonder just what form of solicitation is more annoying.

Some might also maintain (as Louisiana legislators have) that panhandlers just spend the money given to them on (depending on who’s making what claim):

a. drugs and booze

b. cell phones and computers

These are commonly held myths about poor people — harking back to Reagan’s assailing of “welfare queens” scamming the government — but the studies that have been done reveal nothing of the kind. These desperately poor people are, in fact, spending what little money they can scrape up begging on food and, if there’s anything left over, housing. Besides, all those “legit” organizations that constantly have their hands out typically spend a far smaller proportion of their income on their claimed goals with numbers running as low as 10% and rarely above 80%.

II. Congress announced they will hold meetings on poverty in America without any input from anyone in poverty. Paul Ryan (R-WI) will chair these and, as chair, will decide who testifies. Those invited are well-heeled politicians, policy advisors and executives in various poverty-related organizations. The several organizations that offered to have actual poor people come to the hearings were told to have them just write a statement and send it in. This latter gambit, of course, let’s Ryan and his group off the hook. They can now tell the press that they took testimony from X number of poor people — providing that the word “took” in that sentence doesn’t imply read, understood or gave a rat’s ass about.

III. The Senate filibustered the minimum wage bill. While this is hardly a surprise, having Republicans accuse Democrats of staging a show vote they knew would never pass was a jaw-dropper. This sentiment, I hasten to add, came from the party that voted to repeal Obamacare 52 times! John Cornyn (R-TX) got one thing right. “This is all about politics,” he said. “This is all about trying to make this side of the aisle look bad and hardhearted.”

Indeed. The truth begins to hurt when others learn it. Increasing the minimum wage is the single most popular notion in the land with over 75% of the population supporting it — and that includes a majority from Cornyn’s own party (58% in a recent poll). Moreover, as standard macroeconomic analysis shows, every dollar that goes to a poor or working class person generates between $1.10 and $1.22 for the overall economy because every dollar that a poor person has gets spent and spending drives the economy. As a group of distinguished economists including seven Nobel Prize winners concluded the long-range impact of raising the minimum wage is positive with little or no evidence of job loss.