Graphic: Gas Prices Hurt Red States More Than Blue

An analysis of the rise of gas prices shows that they do not affect blue states (those that lean or vote Democratic in presidential elections) and red states (those that lean or vote Republican in presidential elections) equally. Gas prices are actually lower on average in red states than blue states, but residents in red states pay more of their income on gas.

The disparities are stark: Wyoming drivers pay $3.21 per gallon while drivers in California pay $4.34. And, oddly enough, the differences line up well with partisan patterns — Houser found that blue states pay significantly higher prices per gallon than red states.

But here’s the catch: Red states may enjoy cheaper gasoline, but they also tend to be less dense and have less-efficient vehicles, and their residents tend to drive more miles each day. Wyoming residents may pay less per gallon, but they use more gallons of gasoline. And this is a consistent pattern: Houser found that deep-red states are actually shelling out more for gasoline as an overall percentage of their income.

So, I guess the important question is which effect will have a larger impact on the presidential election and whether the salience of the "gas prices" issue in political analysis will be diminished due to this analysis.

Hat/tip to Wonk Blog

REPORT: Aussie Marriage Equality Worth $161M

The Williams Institute at UCLA Law School released a report analyzing the fiscal impact of Australia legalizing marriage equality and came up with a big number: at least $161,000,000 over 3 years.

This is a conservative estimate, as the executive summary states:

Extending marriage to Australian same-sex couples would boost the country’s economy by $161 million over three years. This estimate is based on a projection that 54 percent (or 17,820) of Australia’s approximately 33,000 same-sex couples would marry. Tasmania, in particular, stands to claim a large share of that $161 million should it become the first state to allow same-sex couples to marry. In addition to marriages by Tasmanian couples, an estimated 15,236 couples would travel from out-of-state to marry in Tasmania, resulting in an economic gain of $96 million or more for the state. The figures in the report draw upon recent surveys, estimating the total number of Australian same-sex couples and the number of same-sex couples interested in marriage. Notably, the estimates in the report are conservative compared to other estimates because they only include spending by resident couples.  They do not include spending by wedding guests, or wedding or tourism spending by couples traveling to Australia to marry. One recent study that took this additional spending into account estimated an economic boost of $742 million.

Come on, Australia! Don't you want 2011 US Open champion Sam Stosur to be able to legally marry her girlfriend?

CELEBRITY FRIDAY: Shirley Ann Jackson, College President

Shirley Ann Jackson is the first Black woman to receive a Ph.D. from MIT

Today's Celebrity Friday is Dr. Shirley Jackson, the President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, my alma mater, the nation's oldest technological university.

This is from her official bio:

Described by Time Magazine (2005) as “perhaps the ultimate role model for women in science,” President Jackson has held senior leadership positions in government, industry, research, and academe.

Since 1999, Rensselaer President Shirley Ann Jackson has led an extraordinary transformation of the Institute with an ambitious strategic effort known as The Rensselaer Plan. Guided by her vision, Rensselaer is now home to the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies, the Computational Center for Nanotechnology Innovations, the Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center, and the East Campus Athletic Village. Under her leadership, more than 230 new faculty members have been hired, research awards have doubled, and scholarships have increased. Her tenure also has been marked by innovations in curriculum, expansion of undergraduate research, and new award-winning student life initiatives.

Nearly $1 billion has been invested in The Rensselaer Plan, including more than $700 million in new construction, renovations, new equipment, technology and infrastructure. In 2001, President Jackson secured a $360 million unrestricted gift to the Institute. In 2004, she launched a $1 billion Renaissance at Rensselaer capital campaign. In 2006, the goal was expanded to $1.4 billion. The campaign closed in 2009, having surpassed the ambitious goal of $1.4 billion in gifts and gift commitments, nine months ahead of schedule, exceeding all previous fund-raising at Rensselaer.

Curiously, her Wikipedia page is clearly a site of contestation for her supporters and detractors. Regardless, she is still a Black woman who has been the head of a federal agency (Nuclear Regulatory Commission, 1995-1999), a college president (1999-??) and a trailblazer as a physics professor (Rutgers).

Celebrity Friday: Freeman Hrabowski, University President

For today's Celebrity Friday for the first Friday in Black History Month our subject is Freeman Hrabowski, III, the President of the University of Maryland Baltimore County. Hrabowski, 61, is one of the great role models for African Americans  in the Academy.

Here is just an excerpt of his official biography:

Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, has served as President of UMBC (The University of Maryland, Baltimore County) since 1992. His research and publications focus on science and math education, with special emphasis on minority participation and performance. He chaired the National Academies committee that recently produced the report, “Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation: America’s Science and Technology Talent at the Crossroads.”

In 2008, he was named one of America’s Best Leaders by U.S. News & World Report, which in 2009, 2010, and 2011 ranked UMBC the #1 “Up and Coming” university in the nation. In 2011, U.S. News also ranked UMBC 4th nationally for “Best Undergraduate Teaching” – tied with Yale and immediately before Brown and Stanford. In 2009, TIME magazine named him one of America’s 10 Best College Presidents. In 2011, he received both the TIAA-CREF Theodore M. Hesburgh Award for Leadership Excellence and theCarnegie Corporation of New York’s Academic Leadership Award, recognized by many as the nation’s highest awards among higher education leaders.  Also in 2011, he was named one of seven Top American Leaders by The Washington Postand the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for Public Leadership.

[...]

Born in 1950 in Birmingham, Alabama, Hrabowski graduated at 19 from Hampton Institute with highest honors in mathematics. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he received his M.A. (mathematics) and four years later his Ph.D. (higher education administration/statistics) at age 24.

Ph.D. in Mathematics and a University President for more than 20 years!

College Frosh Overwhelmingly Support Marriage Equality

Interesting news about how badly heterosexual supremacists like the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) are losing the cultural war on marriage equality with the next generation. A new survey of incoming freshman students at the nation's college from the prestigious Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA shows overwhelming (and increasing) support for marriage equality among college students:

An unprecedented 71.3 percent of incoming college students indicated that same-sex couples should have the right to legal marital status, compared with 64.9 percent in 2009, a remarkable 6.4 percentage-point increase over a two-year period. While support for same-sex marriage is highest among female students and those who identify as liberal, a significant amount of conservative students (42.8 percent) and an increasing number of male students (64.1 percent in 2011 vs. 56.7 percent in 2009) expressed support for this issue.

And they are not just liberal on marriage equality but other important issues:

Students also demonstrated more progressive attitudes about policies that give students from disadvantaged backgrounds preferential treatment in college admissions. Despite the increasingly competitive admissions environment, which has resulted in fewer students gaining acceptance to their first-choice college (76.0 percent in 2011 vs. 78.9 percent in 2010), the number of students supporting preferential treatment in college admissions rose from 37.4 percent in 2009 to 42.1 percent in 2011, a 4.7 percentage-point increase. 

In another finding with important implications in the current political climate, fewer students said they believe that undocumented students should be denied access to public education. Since the question was last asked in 2009, opposition to educational access for these students dropped by 4.2 percentage points, from 47.2 percent to 43.0 percent in 2011. While liberal students are much more likely to support undocumented students' access to education, 39.0 percent of conservative students also indicated their support. 

I often wonder why people like NOM are fighting so fanatically to deny equal marriage rights to same-sex couples when the writing has been on the wall for years that the public opinion is rapidly moving against them and that eventually no one will care about this issue because marriage will be open to all committed couples.

Why do you think people are fighting to maintain a discriminatory policy that they must know will be swept away in the sands of time eventually?

Hat/tip to LGBT Think Progress.

REPORT: Many Same-Sex Couples Impacted By Immigration Laws

The Williams Institute at UCLA Law School has released a report entitled "Same-Sex Couples and Immigration in the United States" by Craig Konnoth and Gary Gates.

An excerpt from the Executive Summary of the report highlights the fascinating details about the diversity of same-sex couples impacted by unfair immigration laws (and the Defense of Marriage Act) in the United States.

As of 2010,  nearly  79,200 same-sex couples living in the United States include at least one partner who iscurrently not a U.S citizen or was naturalized as a citizen.  Of the nearly 650,000 same-sex couples in the US:
 4.4% or 28,574 are binational couples (one partner is a U.S. citizen and one is not)
 1.8% or 11,442 are dual non-citizen couples
 6.1% or 39,176 are dual citizen couples with at least one naturalized partner 

Under U.S. immigration policy, a citizen may obtain permanent residence for their non-citizen different-sex spouse, and expedited citizenship for a resident, different-sex spouse. Permanent residents may also petition for permanent resident status for their different-sex spouses.   However, these options are not extended to same-sex couples, even if they are married or are in civil unions or registered domestic partnerships.  Currently none of the estimated 40,000 binational and dual non-citizen same-sex couples in US are eligible to use  the immigration mechanisms available to different-sex spouses.


[...]


  Additional findings from the analyses include:

 California ranks first in the total number of binational same-sex couples.  A quarter of them (7,115) live in the state.  California is followed by New York (3,695), Florida (2,545), Texas (1,607), and Illinois (1,596).
 Mexico is the country of birth for a quarter of non-citizens in binational same-sex couples.  Canada, the second highest country of origin, is home to 8% of the non-citizen partners, followed by the United Kingdom at 6%.
 More than two-thirds of binational same-sex couples (69%) are male.
 A third of binational couples (33%) are inter-racial/ethnic.
 Forty-five percent of non-citizens in binational same-sex couples are Latino or Latina, while 14% are Asian/Pacific Islander.  Just over a third (36%) are White.  Among citizens in same-sex binational couples, a third (33%) are Latino or Latina while 54% are White and 7% are Asian/Pacific Islander.  AfricanAmericans comprise just 3% of both groups.
 A quarter of male binational couples and 39% of female binational couples are raising an estimated 17,000 children.  Rates of childrearing are even higher among non-citizen same-sex couples. More than half (52%) of male non-citizen couples and nearly two-thirds (64%) of non-citizen female couples are raising more than 7,700 children.
 Citizens in binational same-sex couples have higher median income levels than their non-citizen partners.  However, the non-citizen partners in binational couples have median incomes that are substantially higher than non-citizens with non-citizen partners.
 Almost two-thirds of binational same-sex couples own their home.  They are more than twice as likely to be home owners as dual non-citizen same-sex couples (30%).
 The vast majority of same-sex partners in binational couples speak English “well” or “very well”.   Among citizens in binational couples, 93% report a very good command of English compared to 81% of their non-citizen partners.
 More than 40% of citizens and non-citizens in same-sex binational couples have a college degree.
 Non-citizens in binational same-sex couples evidence low rates of unemployment at just 2%.  Nearly 8% of citizens in binational same-sex couples say they are unemployed.  

Immigration Equality is the premier national LGBT organization advocating for and assisting same-sex couples impacted by federal immigration policies. (MadProfessah has served on the board of the organization since November 2008).

Interestingly, the estimate of 28,574 is more precise but also smaller than the previous estimate of 36,000 binational couples in the United States but the 40,016 couples who are negatively impacted by current immigration law is slightly higher. MadProfessah is a naturalized citizen from the island-nation of Grenada, and Sentient Meat is a "natural born citizen" so we would be classified in the 6.1% of all U.S. same-sex couples who are both citizens where one partner is naturalized.

Analysis of Herman Cain' 9-9-9 Scheme

Hat/tip to Andrew Sullivan

Celebrity Friday: Roland Fryer

Professor Roland Fryer

The 2011 MacArthur Foundation Fellows were announced a few weeks ago. These fellowships are commonly known as "genius"grants. One of the winners this year was Roland Fryer, an Economics Professor at Harvard.

From the official announcement:

Roland Fryer is an economist illuminating the causes and consequences of economic disparity due to race and inequality in American society. Through innovative empirical and theoretical investigations, Fryer has opened up a range of topics to quantitative analysis, offering new insights on such issues as the cognitive underpinnings of racial discrimination, labor market inequalities, and, in particular, the educational trajectory of minority children. In an examination of the longitudinal trends of testing gaps among elementary schoolchildren, Fryer and a collaborator determined that, after controlling for background characteristics, black and white children enter kindergarten at parity, but their achievement gap widens through higher grade levels; in addition, they found that traditional socioeconomic metrics could not account for this gap. In other work, Fryer posited that social network structure could be a contributing factor. Having constructed an index of social status based on a large, national set of demographic data, his analysis suggests that peer-group loyalty sometimes competes with academic performance, particularly in ethnically heterogeneous environments. Recently, Fryer led a randomized experiment with well over 20,000 students from more than 200 schools in three cities, testing several models of financial incentives to see if they improve children's academic performance. Results collected to date indicate that incentives payments alone have no statistically significant impact on subsequent state test scores. These studies, among many others, demonstrate Fryer's propensity to tackle difficult, often sensitive, social questions with scientific rigor. His research is informing the work of academics and policy makers alike, and he is playing a singular and influential role in ongoing discussions about the effects of racial differences in America.

I love seeing Black men officially recognized as "geniuses"! Don't you?Maybe this should become a regular feature of MadProfessah.com, let me know in the comments.

Researchers Need YOUR Views On Marriage Equality (Pro or Con)

Supporters and opponents of legalizing same-sex marriage are needed for an online research study concerning communication messages about legalizing same-sex marriage within the United States. 
Share your opinions by Oct. 25. Click here to take the survey, or copy and paste this link into your browser: http://pennstatecomm.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_5q0jBQGKH2DXFWs
The survey takes less than 15 minutes to complete. You are eligible to participate if you are at least 18 years old.

This research study is being conducted as part of a doctoral dissertation at The Pennsylvania State University. It is NOT funded or commissioned by any political, religious, or advocacy organization. If you have questions about this study, please contact Pamela Brubaker at pjb943@psu.edu.

Celebrity Friday: Elizabeth Warren

Harvard Law Professor Elizabeth Warren is a favorite of the progressive blogosphere for her championing of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in the Dodd-Frank Act passed by the Democratic Congress of 2009 and signed into law by President Obama. Now comes word that she has decided to run for the United States Senate from Massachusetts, challenging freshman Republican Scott Brown.

She is today's Celebrity Friday. Hopefully we will be covering more of her as it gets closer to the election in 2012.

Likability Perceptions Vary With Sexual Orientation

Zack Ford over at the LGBT Think Progress blog calls attention to an interesting academic article which explores how the perceived sexual orientation of strangers changes their perceived likability.

The results in "Impressions at the intersection of ambiguous and obvious social categories: Does gay + Black = likable?" are published in Journal of Experimental Psychology:

In one study, 22 women and nine men viewed 104 photos of straight and gay black and white males and rated their likeability on a scale of one (not likable) to seven (extremely likable). Participants were not informed that some of the men pictured were gay. While overall, white straight men were rated as more likable than white gay men, black men were rated in the opposite manner: gay blacks were more likable than straight black men.

"We observed that people judge others based on sexual orientation even if they are not consciously aware of whether someone is gay or straight," said doctoral student Jessica Remedios, lead author. "By understanding how sexual orientation affects the rapid evaluations we form about others, we can learn more about predicting and minimizing the negative consequences of homophobia."

In a second study, 36 women and 14 men were divided into groups to view the same 104 photos. One group was instructed to approach whites and avoid blacks by pulling a joystick toward them when a white face appears and pushing the joystick away when a black face appears; the other group was instructed vice versa, to approach blacks and avoid whites. Among participants approaching whites, the responses were faster for the straight men than for the gay. Among participants approaching blacks, however, responses were faster for gay than straight men. "Given that faster approach responses indicate greater positivity toward stimuli, the second study is consistent with the liking expressed in the first study," says Remedios.

"These findings suggest that sexual orientation, despite lacking explicit perceptual markers, infiltrates the automatic impression that is formed. Further, our judgment of gay men depends on whether they are white or black."

Curious result, eh?

Where The Gays Are

The results of the 2010 census on the movement of the LGBT population in the last 10-20 years are coming into focus. Gary Gates at UCLA's Williams Institute has analyzed the results and shown that "gay ghettos" like West Hollywood, CA and San Francisco, CA are becoming less gay. (The caveat must be that the census only measures people in same-sex couples, so that single gay men and lesbians are still invisible. There is a movement to have that changed for the 2020 census.)

Today's New York Times reports:

So much for San Francisco.

The list of top cities for same-sex couples as a portion of the population does not include that traditional gay mecca, according to new census data. In fact, the city, which ranked third in 1990 and 11th in 2000, plummeted to No. 28 in 2010. And West Hollywood, once No. 1, has dropped out of the top five.

The Census Bureau data, finalized this week and analyzed by Gary Gates, a demographer at the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles, gives the clearest picture to date of same-sex couples in America. In absolute numbers, they jumped by half in the past decade, to 901,997.

Most surprising is how far same-sex couples have dispersed, moving from traditional enclaves and safe havens into farther-flung areas of the country.

Consider, for example, the upstarts on the list: Pleasant Ridge, Mich., a suburb of Detroit; New Hope, Pa.; and this beach town in southern Delaware. All three have been popular destinations for gay people locally but had never ranked in the top 10.

The No. 1-ranked town is Provincetown, Mass., at the tip of Cape Cod.

What do you all think, should there be a sexual orientation/gender identity question on the 2020 Census? And do you think San Francisco and West Hollywood are becoming "less gay" as the gay community gets older and settles down in more geographically diverse areas?