The Power and the Money

Sotomayor, soccer, and all that

  I’m all for ethnic solidarity and all that, but Senator Jeff Sessions is taking it to a whole ‘nother level at the Sotomayor hearings.

Anyway, interesting as the linked story is, I just wanted to post a picture of me in this shirt, which I wore to the World Baseball Classic games in Mexico City.  (The picture above is at my favorite bistro in the D.F.)  I will not be wearing it to the U.S.-Mexico World Cup qualifier in Azteca Stadium on August 12th.  In fact, while I will be rooting for the U.S. team, I also want to live, and so will dress in green and red. 

Patrick, Mike, Carlos, what think you?  Am I wimping out?

National health care, updated

  Megan McArdle, whom I respect, linked to a piece by Glenn Reynolds that basically says that his wife and father would be dead while his daughter and mother would have a much-impaired quality of life under socialized medicine.

But I have a question.  Two, actually.

(1)  The treatments for Reynolds' mother (hip replacement) and father (radioactive prostate cancer implants) were developed for a patient pool that is mostly subject to Medicare.  Which is socialized medicine by most definitions.  Why doesn't that fact show that the argument is fallacious?

(2)  If other countries generally force healthy young women to die or live impaired lives, why doesn't that show up in any of the comparative quality-of-life studies?

A third, fourth, and fifth might be:  Does Ms. McArdle really believe this argument?  If so, why?  And what does it have to do with any of the actual health care reforms that are on the table?

Meanwhile, Matt Yglesias points out why I have trouble staying friends with doctrinnaire libertarians.  This one's for you, Guy.

UPDATE:  Matt Miller has an interesting column in today's Financial Times.  He points out that save for the public option, the current reform plan essentially extends coverage using a basic template designed by Mitt Romney in Massachusetts.  In addition, one of the financing plans on the table (not my preferred one, I must admit, nor the President's) was basically proposed by John McCain.  Finally, the eye-popping cost is propaganda, caused by people's emotional reaction to the t-word; the right way to think about the cost is that it is 0.5% of GDP or 3% of total healthcare spending.  In short, the way to a compromise that should attract lots of Republican votes is obvious.

But I will add that since we aren't going to get any Republican votes, I will be very annoyed at my party and President should we get a bill that does not include a public option and that is not financed by a surtax on high earners like, uh ... really? ... my wife and me.

And I thought blogging might be a mistake?

  OK, everyone in America who hits the interwebs has probably heard about Senator Grassley's totally awesome imitation of Cher Horowitz by now.  But on the off chance that there is somebody out there reading this blog who hasn't, be you from elsewhere in the English-speaking world or beyond, click this link right now.  All indications are that this is not a hoax.

That is a U.S. Senator talking.  Yup.  Dude, is there a word for when something intended to be ironic turns out to be accurate?  Twitter, indeed.  I previously had no desire to try using it, let alone read the results:  now I have an active aversion.  Reverse marketing indeed, ironic in its lack of irony.

Somehow I seem to have found deep meaning in such gems as  “My carbon footprint is abt 25per cent of Al Gore. I'm greener than Al Gore. Is that enuf?” and “Comfort America worried abt hyperinflation Reafirm ACCORD of1951” or even “Pres Obama while u sightseeing in Paris u said 'time to delivr on healthcare' When you are a "hammer" u think evrything is NAIL I'm no NAIL.” 

Or ... well, click the link.

Empathy in action

  Alright, I read the 2001 speech that Judge Sotomayor gave at Berkeley.  I'm not seeing the controversy, but maybe I'm just not showing enough empathy for Newt Gingrich.  More interestingly, when I read it out loud to my wife the line causing such outrage among some Republicans caused her to chuckle.  In other words, if Judge Sotomayor gave the speech the same way that I read the speech out loud, the line comes across like she's making a sardonic reference to her own putative “wisdom.”

Is there a video?

Anyway, it is very strange to watch so many prominent Republicans trying to do to their national party what Pete Wilson managed to pull off for the California GOP.  Only the national GOP doesn't have a convenient constitutional dodge to get an Arnold Schwarzenegger into office ... and even old Arnie proved that he'd drunk a little too much of that newfangled party Kool-Aid, what with the crazy slash in the car tax.  Combine the over-the-top reaction to the Sotomayor nomination with the GOP's behavior in California, and you don't have a recipe for a comeback. 

(It would be interesting to watch them try this strategy, but the party would have to go completely Lou Dobbs to pull it off.  Somehow, I don't see that happening.)

I call upon our readers to save the GOP!

  Yesterday I got into a long conversation at the gym with a Republican about the state of the GOP.  (Yes, there are Republicans in Allston!)  He is concerned.  He worries that the party has unconsciously decided to roll double-or-nothing on 2012, rather than write that election off, become a serious option for growing voting groups, and get back into power in 2016.

(We then started talking about Medicare cost control and free trade.  He was a serious Republican.  By which I mean a Republican who takes things seriously, not somebody who is seriously Republican.)

Still ... it seems to be an uphill battle.  From the same blog as the previous post:  “By contrast, if conservatives continue to be unable to restrain themselves from loud whining about how society unfairly tilts the odds in favor of Puerto Rican girls growing up in housing projects in the Bronx, they’ll presumably continue their current trajectory of alienating Hispanic voters.”

Well, yes.  If Republicans need to practice identity politics in order to maintain party unity, as David Allen in comments suggests that they do, then they need to figure out a way to play that card that doesn't alienate other voting groups. 

I know Republicans (and those who would like to be Republicans) do read this blog.  What do you suggest? 

SCOTUS-related linkage

  I have to link to this. The punchline made me laugh out loud.

Another post on the same blog has a great line about the sad state of modern conservatism.  In this case, the opening line produced an involuntary guffaw: 

“If you’re a white guy looking to vent about how Puerto Rican women growing up poor in the Bronx get unfair advantages in life, the conservative movement has a lot to offer you. But otherwise there’s nothing there policywise. That’s not, however, because there are no organizations out there capable of developing or marketing policy. It’s because the movement has become unremittingly hostile to constructive policymaking. Everybody’s too busy cowering in fear from Rush Limbaugh to come up with anything.”

Tom Ridge, a nation turns its not-particularly-lonely eyes to you.

An inconvenient question

  I have a very old friend who I believe reads this blog.  We’ve known each other a span of time greater than the world's median age; we’re practically as much brothers as friends.  A few weeks ago, he posted an item on his Facebook page about the President’s decision to keep the torture photos under wraps. 

Now, Facebook pages are weird animals.  On a blog, you expect that everything you write is public.  You get comments from people you don’t know (Anonymous, come back!  Niger, stick around!) and people you do reference things you’ve written.  On a Facebook page, though, because it can be semi-closed, the impression of anonymity is much stronger.  So when my friend wrote, “Sigh. Whatever. You guys will just rationalize this away like you do everything he does,” I took the “you guys” to mean Obama supporters in general, not whatever specific group of people my friend meant.  (FWIW, my friend has a conocido who actually does seem to think that liberals support anything the President does because he is who he is.  This conocido needs to get out more.)

Liberals, unlike conservatives, don’t support a President from their party unreservedly.  There is remarkably little support for the President when he does something that they do not like and cannot support it by making an instrumental argument.  Anyone who flips on Rachel Maddow or Keith Olbermann will see within five minutes.  But this is one of the clearest and well-written examples of the dangers that might come not from the fact that liberals overly trust the president — we don’t, as the piece itself demonstrates — but that the American people may overly trust the president.  The last paragraph is very sobering. 

Yes, this post is comment bait.  But we have a new one coming up on the Russian Empire, so stay tuned!

Not-so-secret prisons at Bagram

  This, if accurate, is un-American and must be stopped.  I was not aware that the U.S. held prisoners at Bagram who were captured outside Afghanistan.  That is wrong.

While I think the decision to keep the torture photos under wraps is a mistake, I am not so sure of my position as to become upset about it.  No laws are being violated, and the administration's propaganda rationale is quite valid.  In addition, I also think that it would be a bad idea to extend habeus corpus to prisoners taken in Afghanistan as long as there is an active rebellion under way.  Denying those rights during a rebellion does not violate American law nor American tradition nor a decent respect of the opinions of mankind.  Finally, I have no problem with American forces swooping down and arresting somebody outside the United States, even in violation of the jurisdiction in which the swooping occurs.  After all, even now, two decades later, and despite all the gray, it still seems to me that Bush the Elder's decision to invade Panama and arrest Manuel Noriega was the right thing to do. 

But I have a serious problem when the swoopee is not transferred to an American federal court but rather transported to an extraterritorial outpost and held with no judicial protections whatsoever.

I understand why the President wants to punt on the Bagram issue.  I am supremely cynical, and unlike many of his early supporters I found the man an attractive candidate early on because I beleived that he was even more supremely cynical in the sort impersonal way that makes for successful presidencies.  But cynicism has its limits.  He does not have my support on the fate of the Bagram detainees captured outside the Af-Pak theater, and they should be tried in American courts or released.   

The fear of populism and populism to fear, or at least chuckle at

  I am at a bit of a loss to understand why the congressional Democrats are afraid of GOP populism on the Guantánamo issue.  We all know that the U.S. is perfectly capable of locking up dangerous individuals at no risk to the surrounding community.  We are, in fact, quite good at it.  Now, there are issues that can be demogogued, regardless of the facts, but the idea that there are any dangers in moving the detaineers in Cuba to the continental United States does not seem to be one of them.  Neither polls nor my general sense of the public atmosphere (judging from, well, crappy bars in Norfolk, Philly, and the greater Miami area) indicate that the demogoguery would have any tangible effect.  So why are the congressional Democrats running scared?  It makes no sense.

On the other hand, if you want some real populism, you go to Venezuela.  I'm telling you, a subsidized electric car called the “M----------r” would be a big hit in the United States, and get anybody re-elected.

Gotta be a marketing case in there somewhere.

To my old master, Colonel P.H. Anderson

  It is pretty nice to be at a major research university.  You can easily do a lot of, well, research.  Of course, you can also easily engage in a lot of procrastination that has the disadvantage of feeling like research when it isn't, or at least not the research you're being paid to produce.  Like looking up the below when you should really be learning more about the details of the Messmer Plan.

You can click on the picture to see a larger version.  That is true for most of the pix on this blog.

Great debate attempt #4: There may be hooptie politics in the U.S. of A., but functioning machines there are not

  Some time ago, I took issue with the use of the word “machine” by two commentators on this blog.  Short version:  They talked about the role of machines in the election.  I said, “There are no more machines.”  They said:  “You’re wrong.  Patronage politics lives.”

I now believe that it is time to reassert my contention.  There is no more Chicago machine.  There may, in fact, be no more political machines in America.

What’s a machine, you ask?  Simple.  Machine politics happens when politicians make promises and levy punishments on voters at an individual level, and not merely as members of an ascribed group.  It isn’t machine politics to support EFCA in return for a union endorsement or union contributions.  It is machine politics to tell Joe the Union Leader if he gets his local gets out a certain number of votes, he’s gonna get federal contracts steered his way. 

Obviously, the boundaries are grey.  They usually are.  (C’mon.  This blog has an “empire” tag.)  But you can make a strong case that machine politics is dead unless you choose to draw the line so broadly as to make everything into machine politics. 

Consider the Board of Revision of Taxes, in Philadelphia, where I write this. 

In theory, its an independent organization, appointed by elected judges and funded by the school district.  In practice, Republican and Democratic Party leaders give jobs away to people who work hard on election day.  Machine politics!  Except … uh …. the BRT was originally part of a Republican machine. (Hard as it is to imagine, many northeastern cities, like Philly and Jersey City, were once controlled by left-leaning GOP machines.)  As the city became more Democratic, Democrats got control of more of the posts.  A real machine shouldn’t let that happen — why would its constituents have an incentive to switch?  But the Republican Party has managed to retain control over 20 of the 78 seats on the BRT and give them to the people who get out its votes despite a complete collapse in the ability of the Philadelphia GOP to, you know, get votes out.   If one machine replaced another, that shouldn’t happen either.  What’s going on in Philadelphia seems more like straight-up corruption rather than machine politics, conventionally conceived.
 
Or consider what a real machine did back in 1972, and try to imagine it happening when today.  Details below the fold.

The President is smart!

  Regardless of your politics, it is refreshing to have a president who can talk intelligently about economic issues.  It is very hard to imagine George Bush having such a conversation, but that isn't the problem.  The problem is that it is also very hard to imagine Bobby Jindal having such a conversation, although he is also clearly a very intelligent man.  Could he do so and survive a Republican primary?

Oh no he di’n’t

  Well.  One of the leaders of the Republican party, a former Speaker of the House, and a plausible presidential candidate, goes to the Bronx and calls Cristina Fernández a “semi-dictator.”   

No, seriously.  Chávez, though, got to be a full dictator, while poor Danny Ortega got lumped in with Cristina among the “semis.” 

Now that is funny.  Ortega, who unlike the other two has in fact engaged in election fraud, becomes the same as Fernández.  Now, it is true that about a year ago she tried and failed to make an end-run around Congress in order to impose an agricultural export tax.  But our last president tried and succeeded to make an end-run around Congress in order to detain suspects indefinitely and monitor all communications crossing the country's border ... and while George Bush the Younger was many things, a “semi-dictator” was not one of them. 

Meanwhile, I really do need to repeat that Venezuela is not a dictatorship.  Most of the anti-Chavista opposition recognizes that.  And even should Chávez turn it into one, Venezuela poses no threat to the United States.  Let him slosh money around!  He gets nothing for it.   

Still, I can understand how he makes a useful foil for American conservatives.  I've heard lefties say stupider things about President Uribe ... although never anyone as prominent as Newt Gingrich.  But making Argentina into an enemy of the United States?  Huh?  Argentina??

So I've really got to wonder.  Can somebody explain what's going on with the GOP and the crazy pills?  I'm at a loss.

I guess I must reluctantly come around to the position that it is time to eliminate the filibuster. 

Geraldo talks sense

  Now, I have many reasons to be favorably inclined towards a half-Jewish half-Latin dark haired fellow who grew up on Long Island and has an almost-but-not-quite buried New York accent of the modern type.  So you should take this endorsement of these comments with a grain of salt the size of, I dunno, at least a Plymouth Champ.  That said, I must ask, are these comments at all wrong?

What's the matter with Texas?

  Nothing, really.  Oh, the governor seems to have gone a little crazy, but that's because his party has decided to do its damndest to commit suicide, and he's got to be crazy in order to win the primary.  Have you read its platform? 

But Texans aren't crazy.  First, the percent who support secession is less than the Crazification Factor.  Second, if you'd asked the question in November 2004, I think you could've easily gotten a similar percentage of Californians or New Englanders to say they support taking up their marbles and leaving.  Remember the "United States of Canada"?    Finally, unlike most of the red states, Texas does in fact generally pay more to the federal government in taxes than it gets back.  Red are payments, blue are receipts, all data in 2008 dollars.

Now, these figures are rough estimates.  Pre-2005, the data are from the Tax Foundation; for 2006-07, they come from me using the same methodology.  And they leave out a lot.  Frex, a lot of federal spending comes from borrowing, rather than taxes, and these figures have made no attempt to allocate the future tax liabilities generated by borrowing.  They also leave out a chunk of federal spending:  mostly interest payments, which aren't allocated to states (and much of which goes to foreigners), but also foreign aid and imports purchased by the federal government. 

In addition, of course, joining a fiscal federation gets you more than just net tax payments.  It makes Keynesian policy much easier:  European countries, for example, have trouble using this tool because so much of any stimulus will leak away to the neighbors.  It adds insurance against asymmetric macroeconomic shocks:  if something bad happens to the economy of your jurisdiction, your residents will pay fewer federal taxes and get more federal benefits.  Finally, it allows for economies of scale in the provision of public services.  All three are why it probably makes economic sense for Iceland to become a Commonwealth, even at a fiscal cost of $109 million per year. 

In short, (1) Texans are no crazier than anyone else, and (2) the Republican Party is really going off the rails.  It isn't just Governor Perry; it's state legislatures in Georgia, Oklahoma, and South Dakota, which have taken to voting in favor of secession.  In another country, these might be worrying in terms of national unity.  In this one, there's no worry about national unity.  (Although I recommend these comic books anyway.)  Rather, there is a worry about the emergence of a de facto one-party democracy.  I know I've got readers who still aren't sure that the GOP isn't in on the road to suicide, but even they have to admit that the Tea Parties and aftermath are a big step down that path.  Right?

I wuz right! or, the defanging of “socialism”

  A little while ago, I suggested the following: 

“I would venture that the mainstream of the Republican Party is in the middle of leeching ‘socialism’ of its negative connotation for the same reason.  By the time 2012 rolls around I'll bet that the word will have lost all of its, well, ickyness.”

A little earlier, I warned my friend Garri Hendell that the Republicans really oughta knock it off with the “socialist” name-calling, because they were leeching the word of all meaning, and that wouldn't be good for them.

Looks like I might be right!  You call a popular president with popular policies a “socialist,” and suddenly socialism doesn't sound so bad.

The video is from a major motion picture release but is not safe for work.  It includes bad words, of which “socialism” is one.

The end of Nixonland?

  It seems as though the Southern Strategy may have reached its conclusion.  Red is unfavorable, green is favorable. 

 

The only place the Republican Party remains competitive is the South.  In fact, this graph understates the Republican advantage in the South.  Southerners don't like the GOP very much, but they hate the other guys more:

 

And they don't like the President much personally, either.

 

For those of you who found this argument unconvincing, this is a worrisome trend.  (There were some good counterarguments in that thread.  I'm almost convinced that I was wrong.  More debate needed.)

It is also worrisome if the GOP decides that it can't break out of its regional box without alienating its base.  Why?  Because that would mean that the leadership would have no reason but to continue to insist that every vote on every initiative needs 60 votes in the Senate to pass.  That, I want to add, is not normal.  In the past, few bills were filibustered.  Now, it is becoming routine.  That is not a good thing, I don't think.  Thoughts?

Ross Douthat

  Who reads my blog?  Nobody reads my blog.  Do I avoid certain topics anyway?  Of course I do; I don't have tenure.  But I do believe that my liberal progressive credentials are fairly secure.  So I would like to ask Brad Delong, on the off chance that he is reading this, to go here.  These arguments exactly reflect my thinking when I first read Brad's posts on the Douthat appointment.  I think that Douthat will be a fine columnist, albeit one that I will usually disagree with and often be infuriated by.

Let me add that as someone who between 1988 and 2000 managed to go from a bizarre Reagan Democrat phase into dumb-ass radical libertarianism before becoming a sort of Democratic-voting Rockefeller Republican in the 1990s ... only after 2001 did I drift further left under the weight of, well, facts ... I am seriously glad that there was no internet to preserve my more adolescent opinions.  You gotta forgive people their past opinions.  Even George Wallace reformed.  So I can't hold Ross Douthat's sillier college columns against him. 

People usually change their opinions when the fact available to them change.  Albeit not always. 

P.S.  If I haven't said so already, Ganchoblog is worth putting on your regular blogroll, for all news Mexican and quite a bit else besides.

Serious analysis of an ic-ky topic

  Found here.  The column points out three things Republicans get from using “Democrat Party.”  First, they get to box Democrats into a corner.  If they don't respond, they let Republicans get away with the discourtesy of misusing their name, and seem like wimps.  If they do respond, they seem petty.  It's like the time I eventually got annoyed with an Argentine for calling me “Nor.”  It's not an insult, per se, but ... See the “Bitch-Slap Theory of Politics.” 

Second, it lets them proclaim media bias.  If the press uses the correct name, but the GOP uses a variant, then the press is being objectively anti-GOP.  Or at least the GOP has another reason to proclaim such. (BTW, the use of GOP is not equivalent.  GOP is a respectful nickname.  The personal example would be “Natalino.”  Many friends call me that, I know the fellow who started it, I know why he started it, and I don't mind the nick.)

Third, it disassociates the Democratic Party from the popular and evocative adjective “democratic.”   

The catch?  Well, why should Democrats, or anybody, take the GOP seriously as long as they insist on using “Democrat Party”?  I wouldn't take someone seriously who insisted over-and-over in mispronouncing my name, nor would I believe them when they said that they wanted to have a respectful dialog.  The link has more.  

ADDENDUM:  Patrick, in comments, hits the nail on the head.  “This dichotomy is true for a lot of English words: the proper noun sounds insulting when used as a proper adjective. For instance, to say ‘He is a Jew’ is not insulting, but to say ‘That is a Jew ceremony’ instead of ‘Jewish ceremony,’ then suddenly it kind of is. Even though there is no history of anti-Spaniard feeling in the US (apart from the war, that is), if you were to call something a ‘Spaniard ceremony’ instead of a ‘Spanish ceremony,’ it would sound vaguely dismissive, almost like an epithet. And this only applies when the proper noun and proper adjective are different. For instance, apply the same exercise above with ‘American’ and neither one is offensive. Is there a technical term for this phenomenon? Does it exist in other languages?” 

Icky rhetoric

  Will Baird asks, “When did the adjective for the Democrats move from -ic to ic-less? I noticed it pretty heavily this last election. It's like saying the Republic Party, at least to my ears.”  This question was a bit surprising, and the answer, I think, deserves a post.

The Democratic Party never lost the “ic.”  Using “Democrat” in place of “Democratic” is a long-standing form of political insult.  William Buckley thought it was rude.  And until Dubya, so did most Republicans, certainly most high-ranking Republican public figures.  It was a way of firing up the base, sort of like “rightist” for Democrats.  (Which sounds wrong to most Democrats when applied to Republicans, even today.)  What Will noticed without realizing it was the collapse of one more remnant of mainstream Republican civility towards their political opponents. 

But there is information in the fact that he didn't realize that the GOP was hurling invective at their opponents, invective that would have been immediately recognizeable a decade ago.  Why wouldn't he immediately notice that Republicans were just being rude?  Well, he didn't notice it because the Republicans overplayed their hand.  “Democrat Party nyah nyah” lost its sting, repeated enough times.   “Why do so many people make that mistake?” wondered Will, not “Why are Republicans being so rude?”  Overuse.  I'd venture it doesn't even get the conservative base riled up these days; now they need to joke about nuking Chicago for the same effect. 

I would venture that the mainstream of the Republican Party is in the middle of leeching “socialism” of its negative connotation for the same reason.  By the time 2012 rolls around I'll bet that the word will have lost all of its, well, ickyness.

What dog-whistle words are used to fire up political passions in your country?

UPDATE:  Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) takes Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas) to task for being rude:

And Chris Matthews does the same:

Another modest proposal

  What, no interest in annexing Iceland?  Ni modo.  Let's turn instead to the stimulus plan winding its way through Congress.

To this observer, it seems quite brilliant as Keynesian countercyclical spending.  Such a stimulus works best when all the money is spent on labor-intensive stuff and spent quickly.  That's why the recent Republican lie that a CBO report indicated that only $45 billion would be spent in the first two years got so much traction.  Sadly for the Republicans, the CBO didn't say what they said it said.  (What did you expect?)  The report is here; it covered a now-withdrawn $61 billion bill proposed in September.  Getting $45 billion of a $61 billion full of big infrastructure projects out the door in two years ain't bad, but like I said, H.R. 7110 is moot. 

So how does the new bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, stack up?  I went through its $543 billion in line items and grouped them as follows:

1. An Army of Roofers: people doing stuff like weatherizing homes, retrofitting office buildings with energy saving windows, or replacing old car engines with new ones.  Plus some building of small-scale stuff like schools and army housing.  $91 billion.
2. An Army of Programmers:  people redoing computer systems across government bureaucracies and the health care system.  $24 billion.
3. An Army of Hardhats:  people building bigger cooler stuff like new electrical transmission lines or freeways.  Or, yes, sewers, lots of sewers.  $60 billion.

That comes to $176 billion spent pretty quickly on stuff that's already pre-approved or pretty simple to ramp up from scratch.  Call it 2.0 million jobs for an outlay of 1.2% of GDP.

But there's more:

1. Keeping bureaucrats employed:  $173 billion in temporary aid to state and local governments.
2. Handing out cash:  $116 billion in various types of temporary aid to individuals.

That's an additional $289 billion that will do a lot to maintain demand, since the governments getting the aid will have to pay the associated salaries (instead of laying people off) and the individuals getting the cash are all people in serious economic trouble.  (There's another $79 billion in there that I couldn't classify, mostly R&D and educational spending of various types.)

Anyway, as a Keynesian stimulus, the package seems pretty brilliantly designed to this observer.  A lot of it will even have long-term payoffs in terms of lower energy use and higher administrative efficiency.  No high-speed trains, no universal health care, but a lot of money out the door very quickly in a way designed to maximize the chance that it will be spent.  Not bad, new Administration, not bad at all.

America returns, with a New York accent

  Below is an example of intellectual heroism.  It was strange to see Senator Cornyn (R-Texas) ask a question that boiled down to: “If you concede that my argument is correct, then isn’t my argument correct?”  Do you think he noticed the chuckles?

I got a New York City game

  P.S. 127, yo.  And he went to my high school.

Newsflash: Boychick from Brooklyn loses Senate race, and word he deserves it

  Official it ain't, but Norm Coleman of James Madison High School in Midwood, Brooklyn, New York appears to have lost to Al Franken.  Now, Coleman has always been an a--hole, but he was once the sort of a--hole that I could respect, having unfortunately been a similar one myself.  Frex, the dude wrote, in the late 1960s, “I know these conservative kids don't f--k or get high like we do (purity, you know).  Already the cries of motherhood, apple pie, and Jim Buckley reverberate thorough the halls of the Student Center.  Everyone watch out, the 1950s bobby-sox generation is about to take over.”

Nor do I fault Coleman for becoming a Republican in the 1990s; once again, I did that myself, and the past can be forgiven.  And my priors are always in favor of the candidate who sounds most like Jerry Ferrara. 

But Norm took a dive off the right end of the pool, hit his head, and never came up for air.  That I fault him for.

Plus, Al Franken is whip-smart, right on the issues, and a great writer.  I gave dinero to his campaign, to my wife's great amusement, and I think he will make a great senator.  Icing on the cake is that Minnesota is one of the few states that deserves no more and no less than its two seats.  Go, Al!

Great Debate Attempt #2: Does America need an opposition party?

  This post is a follow-up to the discussion here. 

The modern Republican party has taken positions on both social and economic issues that are at variance with the median American voter.  For some time, the GOP was capable of wracking up legislative majorities despite that fact.  This feat was due to three factors, in reverse of order of (IMHO) importance:  (1) the memory of the Reagan years, when the GOP's conservatism did, in fact, reflect a change in the preferences of the median American voter, (2) the impact of 9-11 and the Bush Administration's skillful use of fear and war fever, and (3) the GOP's impressive internal discipline.  A great book on the latter topic is Off Center, although the authors turned out to be wrong about the durability of the GOP's majority. 

Today the GOP appears to be sliding towards regional irrelevance.  Laissez-faire economics has become less popular, for obvious reasons.  In addition, the low-marginal-tax doctrine has also become rather less popular ... and will, in fact, become unsustainable once the economy recovers.  Similarly, the declining quality of private health care has produced a groundswell for reform.  Finally, the GOP is falling behind the curve on “social issues.”  Why the scare quotes?  Simply because said issues are increasingly becoming non-issues, much as they were in 1960.  The society's mores have changed, and electoral preferences are changing with them.  Once that generational shift is complete, a party that hold the GOP's current stances will be SOL.

I don't want to ask whether the GOP can, in theory, offer a modernized conservatism with long-term appeal.  The answer to that question is yes.  Frex, a modern conservative party could, in theory, be constructed around gender-neutral pro-natalism, mandatory national service, free trade, “non-financial defined contribution” pension schemes, German-style health care, re-privatization of the financial system, and other things, some of which are laid out in insufficient but intriguing detail here. 

No, I want to ask if we, as patriotic Americans (or non-Americans who would like the United States to be well-governed, for whatever reason) should care whether the GOP can reform itself.  What would happen if the GOP became unelectable?  The answer is less obvious that it might appear.

Great Debate Attempt #1: The U.S. Senate, plus a good $30 cigar

  Resolved:  $30 is not too much to pay for a really good cigar in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.  In inflation-adjusted terms, that would be only 37 times the price of the good cigar that Vice-president Thomas Marshall claimed the United States needed in 1917. 

Further resolved:  The U.S. senate is an undemocratic travesty, and needs to be reformed in order to better reflect the population distribution of the United States.  In 1787 the United States was a federation of 13 different nations with a common colonial heritage.  We are no longer a federation of nations.  The European Union is a federation of nations.  The United States of America has become a single continental federal nation, and it would be better and more fairly governed if the second chamber of its legislature more closely reflected that fact. 

At the very least, our rather well-governed nation to the north should not emulate our bad example the way that Argentina (with some historical justification), Brazil (with rather less), and Mexico (with no good reason at all) have done.

God bless small children, cigar smokers, the federal-nation-formerly-known-as-Dominion of Canada, and the United States of America.

ADDENDUM:  How many senators would the states have if the U.S. Senate were apportioned in the same way as the House?  29 states would have one senator.  The rest would be distributed as follows:

Minnesota	2
Arizona	2
Maryland	2
Wisconsin	2
Missouri	2
Tennessee	2
Washington	2
Indiana	2
Massachusetts	2
Virginia	2
North Carolina	3
Georgia	3
New Jersey	3
Michigan	3
Ohio	4
Pennsylvania	4
Illinois	4
Florida	5
New York	6
Texas	6
California	10

There would still be a gap between the representation of the smallest state and the largest, but it would be reduced to only 5:1 from something more like 57:1. 

SNL gets its groove

  The only thing wrong with Rahm Emanuel is that he isn't from New York.  Dude should be from New York.

And here I see, for only the second time, a comedian actually get Barack Obama.

And finally, here is comedian Barack Obama on Rahm Emanuel:

Enjoy!

The president-elect and private contractors

  On July 2nd, a Defense Department journalist interviewed Barack Obama.  Below the fold you can find what the then-candidate said about private contractors:

The southern problem

  Some commentators, like Bill Maher, have been worrying over the fact that the Democrats have lost the self-identified "white" vote since the 1964 election.  Barack Obama did better than most, they say, but he still didn't win it.  And that, they believe, is a problem.

Now, I don't understand why it's a problem.  But let's put that aside for a moment.  Do the Democrats have a problem with self-identified whites in presidential elections?

I punched up the exit poll data to find out.  And what did I discover?  The following:

Share of the white vote:
                                             Obama    McCain
Former confederate states:       31%       68%
Other states:                            50%       49%
2004 blue states:                      52%       47%

To be clear, these are not arithmetical averages across states.  They are the share of self-identified "white" people who stated that they voted for each of the major candidates for the synthetic jurisdictions listed on the left.

The Congressional results aren't broken down as easily, but considering as the Democrats won 56% of the Congressional vote versus 52% of the presidential one, then I suspect that their share of the "white" vote was even higher. 

Question to readers:  is it a problem that southern whites really don't like Democrats? 

This land is my land, this land is your land

 Where have I been?  Well, I've been travelling a lot lately.  An interesting combination of academic or personal and election work.  Conference in Miami?  Chance to lobby your relatives' state representative to pressure Governor Crist into extending early voting hours!  Paper presentation in Cleveland?  Chance to knock on doors.  Got to go to a family gathering in Fort Lauderdale?  Opportunity to talk to a small business organization about what a Democratic administration means for them.  

And so, I am now in North Carolina.  Today I discussed HSBC's purchase of Banistmo and the future of the Panamanian banking industry with an anonymous banking executive in Charlotte.  Tomorrow I go off the clock, and work to get Barack Obama elected the next president of the United States.  

I've seen a bit in my travels.  Watch this space.

Word up

  Two videos from the recent presidential debate.  Number one, because it moves me, and I agree with it.  My incentive to work harder will not go down (because my payments will not go up) if we prevent this from happening:

And number two, because it sends my wife into hysterics every time she sees it, and I like making her laugh:

Lincoln-Douglas redux

In my continuing attempt to keep all twelve of my readers (or at least 11 of them) clicking here when I don't have the time to write anything substantive (well, at least here), I figure that you would all enjoy this abridged six-minute version of the presidential debate.

Meanwhile, Jussi Jalonen tells us that Sarah Palin's interview performance would not have been considered dismal or disasterous in Finland.  That makes me feel very worried for the future of Finland, where, by definition, all of the citizenry are experts in foreign policy. 

Fourth part of the Palin interview below the fold.

Even more humorless, I am

I'm losing my sense of humor about the election.  (Yes, I know that some of my readers believe that I never had any.  They're probably correct.)  I could handle the lying, that's what Republicans do, and anyway, we've hit back.  (McCain doesn't really oppose stem cell research and McCain isn't really anti-immigrant, although he really doesn't like Social Security and won't say how much he'd like to cut it.) 

But this crap is too much.  Senator McCain lies about suspending his campaign.  Then he flies to Washington for a big meeting.  At which he takes no stance.  The congressional GOP procedes to propose a plan which makes absolutely no sense.  Viz, as far as I can understand it:

(1)  Insure all mortgages.  Charge premiums high enough to make the insurance self-financing.  Okay ... but the mortgages currently in default never paid any insurance premiums in the past.  So how are you going to pay to insure existing mortgages?  Magic?  Brazilian foreign aid?  I think Brazil might have enough foreign reserves to do that, and they owe us ... oh, wait, no, they don't owe us.

(2)  Cut taxes to get private money to recapitalize the banks.  Uh, okay ... but y'all aware that people who have underwater assets are currently subsidized by the tax code?  Cut taxes, and you cut those subsidies.  They want to cut capital gains taxes on assets that are already underwater to encourage financial institutions to sell them?  Huh? 

Besides which, why is raising expected returns from 4% to 4.6%, or 10% to 11.5%, or whatever, going to enough to persuade that tidal wave of capital to unlock itself and pour into financial institutions?  Spreads are already huge and nobody wants to lend. 
                        
(3)  Require that Fannie and Freddie no longer securitize unsound mortgages.  Wait, didn't you just call for the federal government to insure said mortgages?  Oh.

Now, normally this nonsense wouldn't mean anything.  Nancy Pelosi controls the House; with Bush in office, she wants Republicans to sign on for political cover.  Meanwhile, over in the Senate, they only need to peel off nine Republicans to pass the Dodd plan.  But now McCain is refusing to commit himself and has made positive noises about the above bit of gobbledygook, meaning that nothing will get done for forty days.  At least.  Okay ... but why all the sturm-und-drang from McCain then? 

The political logic escapes me.  The economic logic escapes me.  John McCain appears to have escaped the bounds of gravity.      

I'll get back to ya

I, I, I ... I just had to post this.  I know a lot of non-Americans come here (well, three or four) and you've got some interest in our elections.  Since the McCain campaign is now proposing that the vice-presidential debates be scrapped, I figure you might want to get a look at (perhaps) why.

Watch CBS Videos Online

I'm sure she will.  Well, whaddaya think?

Staredown

Looks like one guy will be showing up to the debate.  Probably a better strategy than calling the Palin bluff. 

“Presidents are going to have to deal with more than one thing at a time.  It’s not necessary for us to think that we can do only one thing, and suspend everything else.”

Obama also conveyed a bit of irritation that McCain had gone public this afternoon, soon after the two men talked about a joint statement.

“The only possible miscommunication might have been how quickly there was an announcement and somebody was on television.  My assumption was that the joint statement would go out – initially.”

McCain is still a strong candidate, even with his continuing decline into incoherence and dissimulation, which is sad to watch.  After all, I supported the man in 2000.  I wouldn't vote for that John McCain in 2008, because the world has changed and so have my opinions.  But this new guy, well, it's sad.

Or amusing, if you're Letterman.

But McCain could still win.  Please donate.  It's crunch time. 

Inconceivable!

I don't know why Senator McCain wants to postpone Friday's debate.  My guess is that he has no idea what to do about the economic crisis, having over the last few days taken pretty much every position that it is possible to take.  He needs the time to sort it out.  The fact that his duties as a confused Senator dovetail with his political needs as a confused Presidential candidate is a happy coincidence.

How should Senator Obama respond?  Well, he has to agree with his opponent about the importance of the crisis and agree to suspend the debate.  Of course, three debates are still necessary.  So the vice-presidential debate will just have to be moved up to Friday, right, Senator McCain? 

And campaigning should not be suspended, not for those who can walk and chew gum at the same time.

Soy Barack Obama, y yo apruebo este mensaje

Ross Douthat says that this ad is as bad as the McCain ads accusing Barack Obama of teaching little kids how to have sex, or the ones accusing him of supporting infanticide, or the ones that falsely state that Obama's tax plan will raise taxes on people making less than $250,000 per year, or the continual statements by Sarah Palin's that she rejected federal money that she actually accepted. 

I kind of like Douthat's stuff, he's a man with whom I can agree to disagree, but I'm not seeing it.  Is this ad confabulatory?  Or does it just represent the position that McCain fli ... er, adopted during his primary campaign? 

Northern exposure

Here is your daily mental health break.  For lasting effects, avoid any news involving numbers for at least a day.

A friend sent me these photos.  It's a rally in Anchorage, Alaska.  The funny thing is that the organizers of the rally intended it to be a tiny little thing on the steps of the main library.  But then right-wing radio got into the act.  Eddie Burke announced the rally, called the people who planned to attend “a bunch of socialist baby-killing maggots,” and read the home phone numbers of the organizers.

Result:

and

But the best is below the fold ...

Another public service message

Remember, folks, Barack Obama can't debate.  Terrible at 'em.  Barely can form a complete sentence.  Can't keep track of an argument.  Heck, can't even form consonants.  He is outmatched, and John McCain is going to massacre him.  Massacre him, I say, complete and total destruction, no contest.  No contest at all.

Be sure to warn all your friends, enemies, frenemies, friends with benefits, friends without benefits, spouses, ex-spouses, random strangers, and household pets:  Barack Obama is going to get crushed in the debates.   

Mashed like potatos.  Prepare yourself now.  And prepare others.

A public service message

Health care.  Health care.  Healthcare.  Health care healthcare health care.  Healthcare healthcare healthcarehealthcarehealthcare get you insurance healthcarehealthcare save your insurance healthcarehealthcare healthcare healthcare worried about insurance?  Health care.

Bank regulation.  Barn door, yes, on their watch, not again.

Health care.  Healthcare.  Healthcare healthcare healthcare.  Cut your taxes!  Healthcare.

Bankruptcy change, let judges cut your mortgage payments if you're in trouble.  Health care.  Did I mention health care?  And tuition.  But health care.  Stimulus package, keep state governments working!  Health care.

Healthcare healthcare healthcare.

See you tomorrow.

Carpetbagging

I'll admit it.  I give money to this guy, who's running for office in a state that I've never been to.  (I've been to Illinois, I've been to Iowa ... boyoboy have I been to Iowa ... but never north.)  I'm even attending a fundraiser he'll be throwing in Cambridge next week.

But his opponent, well, that dude has a thicker Brooklyn accent than I do, so I feel okay about it.  And as you'd expect, my guy's advertisements are, like, totally awesome.

Am I overestimating the GOP?

The GOP has been trying to keep Sarah Palin away from the press ever since her selection.  The McCain campaign went so far as to say that there will be no interviews “until the point in time when she'll be treated with respect and deference.”

Ridiculous?  Of course.  Playing badly with the electorate?  No doubt. 

So today the campaign reverses course, and says that she will sit down with Charlie “Lots of Americans make $200,000 a year” Gibson.  The standard Democratic take on this is that the McCain campaign has been forced into realizing that they'd made a bad decision to keep her away from the press.

Possible.  Or perhaps the campaign is just yet again lowering expectations.  “If we make everyone think that we're afraid she can't handle an interview, then they'll be all wowed when she goes on and merely fails to throw up over herself!”

Then again, I might be overestimating the GOP's electoral savvy.  It's possible, I suppose.

That poor man

I really feel sorry for John McCain.  I honestly do.

That was a good speech.  No, "speech" isn't right.  That was a good talk.  Other than one (maybe more, I don't remember) strange blurt about lower taxes, and a couple of scary statements about his foreign policy views, it was patriotic, communitarian, and American. 

If John McCain had given that same speech to a group of Democrats, without the tax-cut tic and the terror-war goofiness (and, yes, the lies about Barack Obama's tax plan) they would be on their feet cheering.  Without saying "community organizer," he praised community organizers.  There were no specifics, there was nothing concrete, there was just patriotism.

And he got nothing from his crowd.  Worse yet, he'll get nothing from Democrats, because he opened by praising "the President," and he has spent the last four years running away from all of his liberal progressive positions, reinforcing his crazy conservative ones, and adopting even crazier and more conservative ones from the most selfish and unpatriotic wing of the Republican Party.  In other words, he's been weak, and he's been wrong.  And he's still weak.

He wasn't weak in a prison run by the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, but he has been pathetically weak in the prison that the Republican Party of America has become.  So I still don't respect him.

(I have to add here that his foreign policy instincts are and have always been crazy.)

But I like him now, and I feel very sorry for him.  Why?  Because if he had truly put his beliefs ahead of his ambition in 2002 or 2004 and switched parties, he would be a conservative Democrat today.  As a conservative Democrat, he'd probably be a sitting Vice-President running for re-election.  And if he weren't a sitting Veep running for re-election, there's a good chance that he would be the Democratic nominee for President, with the McCain-Obama ticket cruising towards a landslide.

Instead he's prostituted himself, and given into the worst of his impulsiveness, a rare and awful combination. 

I won't vote for him, because he does not deserve my vote.  But for all ten people who read this, I would like to echo the call he made in the middle of his speech.  Become a teacher, join the armed forces, work in the federal bureaucracy, organize your community, be a good American.  Or, heck, a good Canadian. 

P.S.  I think I live in a different universe from the commentariat, because Sarah Palin's speech just seemed, well, nasty and juvenile.  And that's even before the two blatant lies, in addition to the multiple misrepresentations.  So why all the vapors, I dunno. 

I'm sure you've seen this, but ...

... it is still worth showing.

MSNBC at the Republican National Convention. Chuck Todd, Mike Murphy, and Peggy Noonan commenting. An open mike was on during the commercial break.

Mike Murphy, talking about Sarah Palin:  You know, because, I come out of the blue-swing-state-governor world. Engler, Whitman, Tommy Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush. I mean, and these guys, this is all like how you win a Texas race, you know, just run it up, and it's not gonna work.

Peggy Noonan: It's over.

Mike Murphy: Still, McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech and do himself some good.

Chuck Todd:  Don't you think the Palin pick is insulting to Kay Bailey Hutchison?

Peggy Noonan: I saw Kay this morning.

Chuck Todd:   She's never looked comfortable up there.

Mike Murphy: They're all bummed out.

Chuck Todd:   I mean, is she really the most qualified woman they can obtain?

Peggy Noonan: The most qualified? No. I think they went for this, excuse me, political bullshit about narratives.

Chuck Todd:   Yeah, but what's the narrative?

Mike Murphy: I totally agree.

Peggy Noonan: Every time Republicans do that, because that's not where they live and it's not what they're good at, they blow it.

Mike Murphy: You know what's the worst thing about it, the greatest of McCain is no cynicism, and...

Chuck Todd:   This is cynical, and as you called it, gimmicky.

I almost feel sorry for this guy.

Almost.  But not quite.  Watch a GOP apparatchik try to defend Sarah Palin's experience and readiness to be President of the United States.

Alaska is American!

I just want to say, unequivocally, that I oppose the independence of Alaska, and should a minority of that state impose secession, I will rejoin the Army and risk my life, fortune, and sacred honor to keep it part of the United States.

Awfully mean

This is awfully mean.  But good for a chuckle.

More serious readers, especially our non-American friends who aren't bombarded with this stuff, can go here (on her substantive stances) and here (for the conservative response to her selection). 

But since I am a worrier, I'll admit that I understand Tyler Cowen's admonition that we should not misunderestimate Governor Palin's electoral appeal, because many people may have a lot of sympathy for the woman because she chose to bear a child with Down's syndrome.  What do you think?

Here's the latest ad from the Obama campaign:

American readers, please donate.  We need your help, in any amount.

Political earwig alert!

You will not be able to get this out of your head.  But it is a lot of fun.

American readers:  please click on the link to the left (or right here) and donate whatever you can.  We need donations in any amount, no matter how small.  The election is hitting its peak, and there is a lot of work to be done to get every American decent health care and clean up the wreckage of the housing bubble.  Not to mention avoid Cold War 2 or Gulf War 3 or whatever other insanity the other side might get us in to.

Thank you.  Thank you greatly. 

Blowing hot or blowing cold?

A few weeks ago I was at a conference where I heard a former Bush Administration official publicly wonder whether democracy was a good form of government for a nation of 300 million.  Now that's disillusionment! 

His disillusion stemmed from many things — it must be a sad thing to be a conservative these days — but some of it stemmed from this map:

The fact that good wind power isn't where the people are (or in all that many states) makes federal support highly intermittent.  The federal tax credit for wind comes and goes, gets renewed, expires, gets renewed, expires ... and with its see-sawing so see-saws wind investment.  Similarly, it's practically impossible to get federal support for the necessary investments in long-distance HVDC lines, which is why PG&E has so much trouble coordinating across only the West Coast. 

Peek this chart of the gross increase in electrical power generation, in gigawatts:

Is it good or bad?  Too much coal and gas, but the nation is on track to double its windpower by the end of the year, even with erratic federal policies. 

The reason is state mandates, good old command-and-control systems that force utilities to get a certain percentage of their power from renewable sources by a certain deadline.  (Spiralling fossil fuel prices don't hurt, although coal prices remained pretty flat until 2008.)

And who started the trend?  Well, I don't like the answer ...

Torture is stupid, and its proponents are stupider

Sadly, shamefully, torture has entered the political debate yet again with the recent Congressional testimony of David Addington and John Yoo. 

The standard story seems to be the "ticking bomb."  You know, "gotta torture somebody if there's a ticking bomb."  Only that argument makes no sense at all.

If a bomb is ticking, then the person being tortured has every incentive to make stuff up and send the authorities on a wild goose chase until the bomb explodes.  The only way to give the suspect an incentive to tell the truth is to credibly promise to torture him or her if the bomb actually explodes.

Got that?  You need to promise to torture after the crisis has passed, when no possible information can be gained, solely as retribution.  Otherwise the suspect will lie like there's no tomorrow.

No democratic society can promise that and retain a veneer of legality or justice. 

In other words, the "ticking time bomb" argument is worse than specious.  It's pernicious.