The Power and the Money

Intangible drilling costs

This issue came up off-line, so I figured I should post about it. Some people in the oil industry claim that the deduction for intangible drilling costs is not a subsidy but an allowance for real expenses. And they are correct! Which is why nobody proposes to eliminate it.

When oil and gas companies drill, they incur all sorts of expenses beyond the cost of the materials used in the well. They need to prepare the site, build roads and gathering fields, install tanks, etcetera and ad naseum. In addition, they often pay service companies for, you know, services. These costs are real costs (there is nothing intangible about them) and the companies should be able to deduct them. Otherwise the tax code would be treating expenses as income, and that would be crazy.

The rub is that all companies incur similar costs. When Nissan builds a factory, it pays for all sorts of things beyond the cost of materials for the buildings and machinery. These costs are deductible. But when costs are used to build an asset that will produce for a long period of time, then the standard rules are that the company has to deduct those costs over a long period of time. For example, if you build a $5 million factory in one year, you cannot deduct the expenses the year you make them. You need to spread them out, (say) one million per year for five years.

Oil and gas companies, for some reason, are allowed to deduct those expenses up front, in the year that they are made.

The debate is over whether that special treatment should be allowed. (An overivew of oil and gas tax issues in the 2012 budget can be found here.) There are reasonable arguments on both sides of this debate, but do not allow oil company representatives to mislead you into thinking that anybody is considering the nutty idea of removing the deduction for intangible drilling costs.

That is all.

Does gerrymandering matter now? A question for political scientists

There is a political science literature that gerrymandering, as an empirical matter, has had less effect on American politics than the pundits like to claim. There is little past evidence that gerrymandering leads to more polarization or less competitive elections. The U.S. Senate provides perhaps conclusive evidence about polarization: you cannot gerrymander state boundaries, but the Senate is just as polarized as the House. Politicians are polarized because the U.S. now has polarized ideological political parties.

Still, it is hard for me to reject the hypothesis that gerrymandering is very important. Why is that? Well, two things:

1. California: it moved to nonpartisan districting, and Democrats pulled out a two-thirds supermajority. Of course, there could be other explanations: nonpartisan primaries, continuing Mexican-American population growth and leftward shifts in public opinion. It certainly seems as though the new cleaner districts helped the Democrats pick up Congressional seats;
2. The GOP seems to have lost the overall Congressional popular vote, but maintained its majority.

I do not know, but it seems as though gerrymandering may have made a very large difference in this election. What does the literature say? Anyone?

An utterly irrelevant slam on Tucker Carlson and other goofballs

A few posts back, I mentioned that Chris Christie appealed to me on the basis of his accent and body language. Did that somehow exclude people not from greater New York or not of Italian-Jewish-Irish descent? Nope. So when Tucker implies that the president was divisive back in 2007 because he ... well, what is Tucker’s reason?

Is the not-yet-president’s accent really different from his normal cadence? I can’t hear it. But I am from New York.

Anyway, even assuming that Tucker can hear something that I cannot, I am at a lost as to the problem with the putative accent switch. Is Tucker suggesting that putting on an accent when talking to a particular audience is un-American. It seems so, which would indicate that Tucker is a moron.

That is all. I am sure my friend Bernard will agree. Reasonable people can disagree on the other stuff. Word to the mother. Enjoy the debate.

Oh, well, that’s all right, then

I am trying not to comment about the presidential race. In this case, though, I am perplexed. After all that noise and yelling, we now have the GOP nominee saying that:

1. He is going to replace Obamacare with Obamneycare! No, really. He wants to insure that people with pre-existing conditions can get coverage. “I say we’re going to replace Obamacare. And I’m replacing it with my own plan. And even in Massachusetts when I was governor, our plan there deals with pre-existing conditions and with young people.” 
2. He is not going to cut taxes on rich people. “I want to make sure people understand, despite what the Democrats said at their convention, I am not reducing taxes on high-income taxpayers.”
3. He is not going to alter Medicare, not even the way it reimburses providers. “No change,” he says. Of course, that last applies only if you are over 55, but still. And us younger folk will still have traditional Medicare as an option.
4. He won’t repeal the immigration order, he will supercede it.

Etch-a-sketch, indeed. Or perhaps just actual small-c conservatism? Maybe confusion. Or confabulation. (See #3.) Still, I would imagine it all makes it very confusing for a Republican voter to know exactly what it is they are supporting when they check the (R) box.

Leave Clint alone!

Seriously, people, it was funny. My wife is a Democrat, and she thought it was hilarious. So did the Obama campaign! And now the world has “Invisible Obama.” Leave Clint alone!

It was not super respectful, but it was not out of bounds. And believe you me, gentle readers, I am hypersensitive about that sort of thing. I get angry at the use of “this” instead of “the” to refer to the President. I was no fan of President George Bush the Younger, in fact I was the opposite of a fan, and I didn’t even like to call him “Bush” instead of “President Bush” or “George Bush” because that did not show the proper respect. You gotta respect the President, man, even if you wish he would leave office yesterday. I think Governor Jan Brewer owes the current President an apology, a grovelling apology, as does Bill O’Reilly. (You ... do ... not ... interrupt ... the President!) The Congressman who yelled during the State of the Union should be made to beg forgiveness. And oh Sweet Mary has President Obama had to put up with stuff that no person should have to put up with, let alone the President of the United States. I take this stuff serious, old pre-hipster Brooklyn serious. And my wife more so.

So when we say that Clint was fine, then Clint was fine. Leave the man alone!

Anyway, if you were wondering how it played in Farsi, go here.

The beer test

Lots of pundits say that people vote for candidates with whom they identify. They vote by tribal markers, in other words.

That is wrong. If it were right, I would support Chris Christie. Because, hey, the accent, the attitude, the body language, I love that guy. I don’t want him anywhere near public office, but I love that guy. He is bad for New Jersey, but still. I don’t have to vote for the dude.

Tribal. Even if he is from Jersey. And says weird stuff about polls. I mean, you can dislike President Obama for all sorts of reasons, but the man doesn’t suffer from tacking too close to the polls. 

Then again, Christie sometimes pronounces “all” in some sort of weird generic not-Jersey way, so maybe I don’t love him as much as I thought. Ni modo. Make up your mind, Chris! Oll or awl?

You lie!

I am ignoring the electioneering. Icky jokes from the Romster, wild accusations from El Reid. Same old, whatever.

Now, I have to add that this is not 1996. There are issues at stake, we know what they are. And even if it were a 1996-like election, well, I thought 2000 was a 1996-like election, and didn’t that turn out to be stupid!

Still, it is quite feasible to ignore all the electioneering while still paying attention to the election.

But ... it is a little jarring to hear Rick Santorum just straight up lie when he says that President Obama has waived the work requirement for TANF. You can find the executive order in question here. Condensed:

“HHS is issuing this information memorandum to notify states of the Secretary’s willingness to exercise her waiver authority under section 1115 of the Social Security Act to allow states to test alternative and innovative strategies, policies, and procedures that are designed to improve employment outcomes for needy families. ...

“States must develop evaluation plans that are sufficient to evaluate the effect of the proposed approach in furthering a TANF purpose as well as interim targets the state commits to achieve. States that fail to meet interim outcome targets will be required to develop an improvement plan and can face termination of the waiver project. ...

“As described below, however, HHS will only consider approving waivers relating to the work participation requirements that make changes intended to lead to more effective means of meeting the work goals of TANF.”

I find this kind of thing quite annoying. The big thing that the states might do is cut the number of hours of work down from 30. It also would keep states that fail to place 50% of recipient families in work.

I should add that I grew up on AFDC, with a mother who railed against the program because she had to work off the books. She even had to study off the books. Switching to TANF was a great thing. Handing flexibility to governors does not repeal the work requirements.

(Oh gosh. Now Nikki Haley is making stuff up about immigration policy. But she is right that the Administration blocked photo ID requirements to vote and interfered with Boeing’s attempt to move production to South Carolina. I am not sure that she understands the definition of “mack-daddy,” though. I mean, what does it mean for an airplane to be a mack daddy? Does the phrase have a different meaning in South Carolina than it does in South Florida?)

OK, back to my real work.

A hidden blow for the workers of the world

Doug Muir pointed out to me that something interesting happened in 2009, to the attention of pretty much nobody. That something got the World Bank to change how it reports on countries’ labor regulations ... and by so-doing, remove a long-standing anti-labor bias at the Bank.

The World Bank has a set of indicators called the “Doing Business.”  It measures how easy it is to do things like start a business, get a loan, etc. One of the indicators used to be “Employing Workers.”  The index penalizes countries that establish minimum wages above a quarter of average wages, set maximum weekly hours below 66, require any advance notice for dismissal or specific procedures for job termination.

The index is problematic. First, when you dig down into the data, you can find some odd judgment calls: the United States, we’re told, has no restrictions on night work and no mandatory notice period for dismissal ... which I suppose is true in some states, but not most. Saudi Arabia gets a perfect score despite regulations that ban women from particular professions.

Second, labor unions have protested that the index assumes, without much empirical backing, that labor market regulations are all cost and no benefit. The unions are correct on this point: the empirical evidence is very much lacking that the Bank’s indicator has any consistent effect on employment levels or growth. 

But nobody cares about unions, and so nothing happened until 2009, when somebody introduced this paragraph into a supplemental spending bill in the U.S. House of Representatives:

SEC. 1626. REFORM OF THE ‘DOING BUSINESS’ REPORT OF THE WORLD BANK.

(a) The Secretary of the Treasury shall instruct the United States Executive Directors at the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Development Association, and the International Finance Corporation of the following United States policy goals, and to use the voice and vote of the United States to actively promote and work to achieve these goals:

1. Suspension of the use of the “Employing Workers” Indicator for the purpose of ranking or scoring country performance in the annual Doing Business Report of the World Bank until a set of indicators can be devised that fairly represent the value of internationally recognized workers' rights, including core labor standards, in creating a stable and favorable environment for attracting private investment. The indicators shall bring to bear the experiences of the member governments in dealing with the economic, social and political complexity of labor market issues. The indicators should be developed through collaborative discussions with and between the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, the International Labor Organization, private firms, and global unions.
2. Elimination of the “Labor Tax and Social Contributions” Subindicator from the annual Doing Business Report of the World Bank.
3. Removal of the “Employing Workers” Indicator as a “guidepost” for calculating the annual Country Policy and Institutional Assessment score for each recipient country.

(b) Within 60 days after the date of the enactment of this section, the Secretary of the Treasury shall provide an instruction to the United States Executive Directors referred to in subsection (a) to take appropriate actions with respect to implementing the policy goals of the United States set forth in subsection (a), and such instruction shall be posted on the website of the Department of the Treasury.

Within 90 days, the Bank dropped the indicator. It’s still being tracked, but it’s no longer included in the international rankings, which means nobody cares.

There is a mystery here. Somebody inserted that provision, but it was done very quietly and even development professionals didn’t pick up on it at the time. Oh, they noticed that the indicator was dropped, but not that it was in response to a legislative threat from the United States. It was a very discreet threat, buried 1600 paragraphs down in a supplemental appropriations bill. Obviously this was only a meaningful threat in the context of the last Congress — today the Bank would be able to ignore this, confident that the Republicans would strip it out. But in the summer of 2009 someone was able to push back against the Bank and force it to abandon, in Doug’s words, “a pretty aggressive anti-labor position which was already having noticeable effects across the developing world.” The Bank would say it was anti-regulation rather than anti-labor, which is not completely unfair, but ignore that for the moment.

Who was the responsible party? Some staffer? A senator? President Obama? I would like to know.

Pointing out the obvious

 OK, I don’t comment a lot about American politics these days, but I just want to point out that Condoleeza Rice is not going to be the next vice-president of the United States, no matter who wins in November.

I am trying to not say something that I will regret about Joe Walsh ... donate to Tammy Duckworth!

I cannot announce my real feelings, because I will say them in New Yorkese, circa 1980, and that level of profanity is not appropriate. But I will say that nobody should vote for that chickenhawk, Joe Walsh. (Click the link to see what he said. Or watch the below video. Did people really chuckle at his remarks?)

Contribute to Tammy Duckworth, a wounded American veteran who is still in the reserves, when lesser people (I raise my hand here) got out over opposition to the same war she also opposed. If Walsh wins, then America is a lesser place.

(By the way, bring back the draft before the robots make it moot. And ... since I am happily off Facebook, somebody please post this to Garri Hendell’s wall, and tell Garri to get in contact with me about how we are going to defeat that ... no, I will not use the Brooklyn term ... unpleasant fellow.)

The left-wing success of a McCain administration?

 It is hard to see how John McCain could have won the 2008 election. Unlike 2000 or 2004, it was not a close-run event. But still, what if he had? (And with, say, Vice-president Pawlenty, not Palin.)

If the Supreme Court upholds Obamacare, then it is a no-brainer. Similarly, if you believe that President McCain would have let the auto industry go hang, then it is a no-brainer. But if the Supreme Court throws out the first and you do not believe (as I do not) that McCain would have done the second, then it is worth asking. Would a McCain administration have been better or worse?

The is one giant gain from a McCain administration: we would probably have a carbon ceiling and a carbon price. Assuming that the ACA does not survive, and that Detroit would have, what Obama administration accomplishments would have fallen by the wayside under a President McCain?

1. Passed the stimulus ... but McCain would have passed one as well. It would be more weighted towards tax cuts, but similar in size;
2. Passed Wall Street reform ... but some sort of bill was inevitable, what with a Democratic congress, and McCain was not a particular friend of Wall Street;
3. Killed Osama bin Laden ... but honestly, if the opportunity arose, a McCain administration would have handled that as well as President Obama. McCain was not George Bush;
4. Ended the war in Iraq ... thing is, I am not convinced that the Iraqis would not have kicked us out in 2011 anyway, given the political realities in Baghdad;
5. Abolished “Don't Ask, Don't Tell”;
6. Stopped torture ... oh, come on! Of course McCain would have done that;
7. Kicked the banks out of the federal student loans;
8. Boosted fuel efficiency standards ... but with a climate bill it would not matter that much. Plus, I think this is the kind of policy where the old pre-2004 McCain might have resurfaced, a safe way to be mavericky;
9. Passed mini stimuli in 2010 and 2011 ... they would have been bigger under McCain. The Democratic Party is structurally less-disciplined than the GOP, and I know that McCain’s advisors are foxhole Keynesians. Put his election at risk, and we get them;
10. Halted the construction of new coal plants ... but again, not necessary with a climate bill;
11. Signed the New START treaty.

Monetary policy would have been about the same. And both Souter and Stevens would still be on the Supreme Court. No difference there, at least as of early 2012.

So what have we got? No equal rights for gay Americans to serve their country; the vampire squid continuing to suck blood from federal student loans; and no START treaty. Plus some greater risk of a catastrophic economic mistake.

On the other side, a market for carbon! And, ironically enough, possibly more stimulus. But a market for carbon! A weak market, with big caps, and no permit auctions ... but a market.

The difference seems not huge once you take the ACA and auto bailout off the table. (I am assuming that Libya would have gone similarly and that when confronted with the military and diplomatic reality, President McCain would have stayed out of Syria.)

I must be missing something. Can somebody help me out and tell me what?

A linguistic history question about presidential politics

 I keep hearing Republicans referring to “this President” instead of “the President.” I don’t recall hearing that phrase in previous election cycles. Is there anyone out there with access to that fancy phrase-tracking software who can see if my memory is correct? Did Democrats refer to George Bush as “this President” in 2004?

To be honest, I don’t think they did. There does seem to be something extraordinary about the lack of respect shown President Obama. Not in the particulars, of course: I remember obnoxious people saying,  “He’s not my President!” in regards to President Bush. And, of course, there was the insane opposition that President Clinton attracted. But in the aggregate, I do not recall the same level of general disrespect in previous election cycles. I certainly do not recall it coming from the opposition candidates.

But perhaps my memory is faulty. Does anyone have any concrete information?

Please do not f--- with the Fourteenth

 Seriously. I am appalled to see senior Republican officials discussing the idea of repealing part of the Fourteenth Amendment. The citizenship clause was written to insure that the descendents of slaves would be citizens. It repealed Dred Scott, and the repeal of that misbegotten Supreme Court decision is something you would think all Americans would revere. It later insured that the mass immigration of the late 19th century did not turn into a permanent underclass. Today it is serving the same function, preventing American nationalism from descending into something tribal and ugly.

If you are born to American parents, you are American. If you are born on American soil, you are American. Other countries have tried to (and still try) to run things otherwise. It does not end well ... or it ends with them de facto creating something very much like what the Republican solons who wrote and passed the Fourteenth gave the great United States.

This craven pandering about a non-problem is disgusting.

The President says something really dumb

 I have to admit being flummoxed at times and frustrated at others by American politics. But I am very dismayed that the President said this. Bad economics, bad politics, bad for America.

I am increasingly pessimistic about the nation’s middle-run economic future.

Props, Mr. President, Madame Speaker

 What the title says. And props to Randy McDonald! For some reason, I didn't think that he would mention this in A Bit More Detail, but he did! Not only that, but he linked to some pretty good commentary that I never would have read otherwise. Although I don't agree with all of it.

Strangely, I am happy, although the Cadillac tax hits us directly. Fancy that! But as long my sister can hang on until ... well, actually, I think she's okay now. RomneyCare for the U.S. of A!

America rocks.

The parliamentarization of the Democratic Party

 The early signs are here. One of the major tools that the GOP uses to discipline its caucus is the threat of a primary challenge financed by (say) the Club for Growth. Well, now the Democrats are starting to do the same thing, financing primary challenges via Act Blue. Blanche Lincoln, a very conservative Democrat, is now facing a very serious challenge from Bill Halter. Halter is openly running at Lincoln from the left.

It will be important to realize that parliamentarization doesn't necessarily mean radicalization. Support for the Afghan War or nuclear power could easily remain in the party platform. Similarly, the parliamentary GOP could move back towards the center. But parliamentarization does mean increasing party discipline ... and an ever-decreasing importance of the individual versus the party.

No, one vote by Senator Scott Brown for a teeny tiny $15 billion jobs bill, quite literally watered down by an order of magnitude from what the President initially suggested, does not count as rebellion. Vote the letter, not the person.

Agreement, and more failure mode

 There is nothing deep or new here. But it succinctly accounts for why I'm less than fired-up, and it's why I really have to take a deep breath and refrain from punching anybody who mentions “socialism” or “radicalism” or “lack of compromise” in my presence.  Center! Right! President!

Also, some serious effects of Senatorial gridlock here and here and here. Unless checked, it certainly seems to me to rise to the level of a failure mode. After all, I also think it would be a very bad thing if a single legislator could unilaterally decide to hire tens of thousands of workers or raise reimbursements for doctors ...

Really bad campaign slogan contest

 Courtesy of Nora Preece, I would like to start the bidding with “Get on the Raft with Taft,” for the 1908 U.S. presidential election.

William Taft, you may recall, weighed a little over 300 pounds.

Don’t ask don’t tell

 From a friend:

It is my long- and deeply-held belief not only that baseball is more important than religion, but also that it is an abomination to support the Red Sox. I am not alone, either. In fact I think that is the majority view in the armed forces.

And yet, I still am required to serve with those openly supporting the Red Sox. I have to write their FitReps with a completely blind eye to what I see as a glaring lack of judgment and morals. I am forced to share living quarters and shower facilities with them, even though I find “Red Sox Nation” tattoos to be patently offensive. I don’t want the government to tell my children it’s OK to be a Red Sox fan.

This is a real morale and unit cohesion issue. My beliefs are constantly being steamrolled and ignored to accommodate a slim minority of service members. But I still show the tolerance that I am required to by law.

Don’t try to sweep aside or marginalize my views, or diminish my legitimate faith by saying it doesn’t count or shouldn’t matter. The services were founded on the principles of baseball. Just look at Yankee Stadium on a Sunday.

Black people and the GOP: a road not taken?

 “Dewey beats Truman” is an iconic headline. The election was close (arguments otherwise smack of hindsight bias) and could have gone the other way. What if it had?

Well, the Republican Party might have become the party of civil rights. Why do I say that? Well, this 1947 memo from Clark Clifford to Harry Truman (courtesy of Matt Yglesias):

Since 1932 … the northern Negro has voted Democratic, with the exception of 1946 in New York. A theory … is that the northern Negro voter today holds the balance of power in Presidential elections for the simple arithmetical reason that the Negroes not only vote in a bloc but are geographically concentrated in … New York, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan.

This explains the assiduous and continuous cultivation of the New York Negro vote by Governor Dewey and his insistence that his controllable legislature pass a state antidiscrimination act. 

There are several straws … that the northern Negro is today ready to swing back to his traditional moorings — the Republican Party.  Under the tutelage of Walter White, of the NAACP, and other intelligent educated and sophisticated leaders, the Negro voter has become a cynical hardboiled trader. He believes the rising dominance of Southern conservatives in the Democratic councils of Congress and of the Party makes it only too clear that he can go no further by supporting the present Administration. 

Republican politicians … make no great secret of their intent to try to pass a FEPC Act and anti-poll tax statute in the next Congress.  The Democratic Party can only point to the obvious — that the really great improvement in the economic lot of the Negro of the North has come in the last 16 years only because of the sympathies and policies of a Democratic Administration.  The trouble is that this has worn a bit thin with the passage of the years.  Unless the Administration makes a determined campaign to help the Negro (and everybody else) on the problems of high prices and housing … the Negro vote is already lost.  Unless there are new and real efforts (as distinguished from mere political gestures which are today thoroughly understood and strongly resented by sophisticated Negro leaders) the Negro bloc, which certainly in Illinois and probably in New York and Ohio, does hold the balance of power, will go Republican.

Yup

 This about sums it up. I understand the reaction, but I am incredulous that professional politicians would fail to realize how they are shooting themselves in the head. I mean, the abortion issue is tough, and there are fearful congressmen in swing districts, but Frank and Maloney and Weiner get the vapors? Congressional Democrats already voted for the bill; even if insurance-reform is the cause of the reaction (which is by no means true), the political damage is already done. Now all they do is cook the base. 

I am still not entirely sure what will happen if my sister gets sick ... I guess she could quit the job she just got and go on Medicaid. In addition (AFAICT) my wife and I have insurance that probably won't fail to be there if we need it. Plus, I suppose there is some model in which no attempt at cost control is superior to insufficient attempts at cost control. So, substantively, it isn't that bad. Failure to get a second stimulus, that was the that bad part, and that ship sailed a while back.  (Although there is that smaller bill with the TARP funds.)

Anyway, it is very strange politics. Instead of blighting your long-term chances by pandering to the base, you blight your long-term chances by over-triangulating on whatever you think the median voter of the minute is thinking. I am surprised, I must say.

Interesting to watch, in a train wreck kind of way. Which party can destroy its electability quicker? After all, in a two party system, somebody will have to win. It will make for exciting campaigns, in which nothing is at stake. That would have been fine ... in 1998.  2010, not so much.

I could say more, but won't.

When Staties talk, you should listen

 My wife called it a few days ago, saying the lunchroom talk at the hospital was super-negative. I usually have my breakfast coffee with a bunch of cops and contractors (be happy to share the place with anyone who asks), and they were less than thrilled, save the one guy who claimed that Martha Coakley let him off some sort of alcohol-related misdemeanour.

 
Airport talk coming back, same story. See above. (I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time making small talk with cops.) This election is profoundly about Ms. Coakley.

Although I am surprised (even if I honestly do understand) the rapidity with which the progressive base has abandoned the President. Watching the Senate do its thing will do that to you. Plus Dean, Olbermann et al, calling for the defeat of the reform initiative, and Mr. Brown's ability to rehabilitate the GOP brand. But I do have to admit that I was wrong; otherwise I wouldn't bother to comment here at all.

I'm still with all the other so what? people on the Internets. What do people go to Washington to do, anyway? Plus, it is still better politics than the alternative. But if not, and Congress panics, then they will get what they deserve in November.

The President and a question for Doug Muir

  I’ve been avoiding posting about American politics, but I can’t avoid it anymore. Via Johnny Pez, political analysis from a parallel universe:

In this version of events, Joe Lieberman is not acting on his own to make the bill as unpleasant to liberals as possible. Instead, Lieberman is simply doing what Obama wants him to do: stripping out the parts of the bill that the health-care industry doesn't like, while keeping in the parts that the industry does like. Greenwald notes that Lieberman has received no criticism from the White House for doing this. Rather, the White House has reserved its criticism for Howard Dean, who has pointed out just how corporate-friendly the bill has become and who has publicly called for the defeat of the bill.

This is politics the DLC way: a big wet sloppy kiss for corporate interests and a flip of the bird to the party’s liberal base. These are the principles that Obama's Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, has espoused throughout his political career, and presumably that's why Obama made him Chief of Staff in the first place.

If this is what's really going on, then Obama is a DLC Democrat, and always has been. Those who defend Obama, saying that he was helpless to influence events, and that it was all Rahm’s fault, or all Joe’s fault, are in denial. It's no use crying, “If only the Tsar knew!” because, as always, the Tsar has known, and approved, all along.

The Tsar?  Okay.  Either way, it is an interesting post from a world where the Democrats had 65 seats instead of sixty, or cloture required less than sixty votes, or the Republicans had less internal discipline, or Howard Dean was a Senator, or the Senate did not exist.  Or something.  Of course, we live in a world in which the Senate does exist, cloture requires 60 votes, Republican opposition is unbreakable, and Howard Dean is not a Senator.  In which case none of the above makes any bloody sense at all. 

I really get a little crazy when people assume the President has power that the office does not convey.  The bill we have is the best bill that could pass, regardless of the President’s preferences.  So stop it already with the preference parsing.  Who cares? 

Now, the President might have been able to get a bigger stimulus had he been willing to forget about the possibility of Republican votes.  (Of course, Arlen Specter was not yet a Democrat, which poses some problems.)  He could have gone to mattresses on financial reform.  He could have dumped health care in order to go to the mattresses on financial reform.  Heck, maybe he should still go to the mattresses on financial reform; it is a policy field in which liberals can fail without, you know, allowing people to die of preventable illnesses.  And there is slowness on Guantánamo, the backpedalling on detention, and other stuff. 

Analyses should, you know, make sense.  Which means that they should take political realities into account.  The whole Tsar metaphor, well, it doesn’t make any sense, not in this universe.  Sure, yeah, people are disappointed.  And people are disappointed because they thought the Senate would be more progressive, or the Republicans more divided, or because they didn’t think about legislative politics at all.  But that’s where it ends ... unless you want to fault the President for wanting to, well, pass stuff into law.

On July 2008, Doug Muir read a New Yorker article about the President’s early career in Chicago.  Doug then wrote:  “What the article does is, it gives me a much clearer notion of how President Obama may disappoint.”  I asked him at the time to elaborate; he did not.  But I’d like to ask now:  Doug, has President Obama disappointed his supporters in the way that you expected he might, or is he disappointing them in a different way?

Health care reform, House version

  What’s in the health care reform bill?  It isn’t easy to get a concise version.  But my brother wants one.  So I spent my morning trying to put one together.  Here it is.  I am not 100% sure that all of this is correct, so I promise to update the body of the post should anyone bring any mistakes to my attention.

Subsidies:

The bill increases the limit for Medicaid to 150% of poverty, or $33,075 for a family of four. Right now the limit is at the poverty line (with some exceptions) or $22,050 for a family of four.

Families earning up to 400% of poverty ($88,200) will have their premiums and out-of-pocket expenses capped.  The cap starts at 3% of income for non-Medicaid-eligible families and rises to 10% for families earning between $77,175 and $88,200. 

Medicare will cover all prescriptions, eliminating the “donut hole.”  Currently annual drug expenses are covered up to $2,700, and coverage kicks in again at $6,100, but Medicare recipients are responsible for expenses in-between. Medicare will be allowed to negotiate prescription drug costs. 

Mandates:

Employers must offer insurance or pay a fee equal to a percentage of their payroll.  Businesses with less than $500,000 in payroll are exempt. The fee will start at 2% of marginal payroll and rise to 8% for firms with more than $1.5 million in wages. 

The penalty for failing to purchase insurance is set at 2.5% of income, up to a $750 per-person cap, or $3,000 for a family of four. 

Insurance reform:

Insurers will be prohibited from discriminating on the basis of pre-existing conditions.  Annual out-of-pocket costs will be capped on and lifetime benefit limits will be banned.  Age-related premium increases will be capped at 200%. 

All plans will have to meet a minimum “essential benefits” package.

A national Health Insurance Exchange will be created, which will provide a centralized market in which businesses with less than 100 employees and individuals can purchase coverage.  No plans traded on the exchange will be allowed to cover abortion.  Only legal residents of the United States will be allowed to purchase plans on the exchange.

The anti-trust exemption for insurance companies is eliminated.

A non-profit public plan will be available to anyone unable to purchase insurance on the exchanges or through their employer.

Revenue and cost reduction:

A 5.4% surtax will be imposed on incomes over $500,000 for single taxpayers, and $1 million for married couples. The fees mentioned under “mandates” will also generate revenue. 

The government currently reimburses private plans that supplement Medicare (called Medicare advantage) by about 14% (or $1,100 per recipient) compared to what it costs to insure the same services directly.  That difference will be eliminated. 

The plan is expected to generate a surplus through 2023.  (The annual surplus does not decline over time; rather, CBO projections end.)

Editorializing below the fold.

If eliminating the public option is what it takes to get this thing passed by the Senate, then I have no problem with eliminating the public option .  Nor do I have a problem with changing the way the plan will be financed, as much as I like the marginal tax hikes.  (They should kick in lower, but that is just me putting my money where my mouth is.)  Fixing the donut hole seems like good politics, and allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices eliminates the problem my Medicare-receiving father had with the original reform. 

In short, I no longer really care about the public option.

I will also be very annoyed at anyone who calls this “socialism.” 

P.S.  Strangely enough, I find Heritage a good source of information.  They place a rather breathless (and often quite silly) spin on the details, of course, but they have the details, and they don’t natter on (at least on the pages I reference) about socialism and death panels and the like. 

Explained!

  That Nobel Peace Prize for the President was a little perplexing.  My father, however, just emailed me the explanation.  It all makes sense now.

Public pension systems

  A few posts back, Megan McArdle took issue with my taking issue over her depiction of the social security reform debate of 2005.  (Follow that?)  Our differences fell into two boxes.  The first is whether the Bush Administration was willing to countenance payroll tax hikes.  She says that Andrew Biggs claims that they were.  On balance, I think she was right.  I found an L.A. Times piece from February 18, 2005, that claimed that the President “said earlier this week that he would not rule out paying those transition costs by raising the current wage cap of $90,000.”   The actual quote from President Bush is a little vaguer: “The one thing I'm not open-minded about is raising the payroll-tax rate, and all the other issues are on the table, and that's important for people to know.”  That said, the papers all seemed to think it was a genuine offer. 

In short, the Bush Administration showed some sign that it was willing to countenance a tax hike to pay for transition costs.  McArdle right, Maurer wrong.  That latter bit is sadly not uncommon.  I think Megan was too busy to point me to this post, which is where I think she got her claim from, but I understand.  She has a demanding job.  I do have to say, however, that Biggs’ account comes entirely from the same secondary sources that I’ve linked to here. 

The other debate was more abstruse.  “Carve-outs” and “add-ons” and other such wonkery.  The problem with such conservations is that all too often the conversators forget what exactly it is that public pensions systems do.   When you drill down into the issue, the difference between a pay-as-you-go (e.g., “paygo”) systems, like Social Security, and a privatized forced-saving scheme, like they have in Chile, becomes much less than it seems at first glance. 

So what is it that public pension systems actually do?

Long wonkish discussion below the fold.

McArdle redefines centrism

  I am on record as liking Ms. McArdle's writing.  But this post is really stupid.  President Bush proposed a carve-out in social security with no way to pay for transition costs except via benefit cuts.  That is not a compromise.  It is also not true that the returns from a portfolio linked to the profits of publicly-traded companies is better than the returns from a portfolio linked to the general level of wages unless you believe that markets are irrational.  Had the GOP put forward an “add-on” proposal, which would have in essence raised payroll taxes to fund a tax-free system of private retirement accounts, it would have attracted a lot of Democratic support.  Even a voluntary add-on, in effect a giant investment tax-break, would have attracted such support.  But Bush drew strong redlines and held on to them for a very long time.  Democratic politicians were given no incentives to compromise, even though many (like Joe Lieberman) would have liked to.

It is entirely legitimate to favor a privatized pension system.  If the Bush proposal had materialized, the Republic would not have fallen.  But here McArdle confuses her own policy preference with the facts about a policy debate.  The truth is that President Bush put forward a near-maximalist proposal, the equivalent of Medicare-for-all, and refused to put forward a way to pay for it without cutting the system's payout formulas.  The fact that McArdle would prefer an even more maximalist proposal does not change that.  Nor does it change the fact that Social Security reform never even made it out of committee, let alone face a filibuster. 

I am, therefore, a bit puzzled by the post.  She seems to be looking for equivalence where there is none.  Strange, for a generally nonpartisan writer.

Waterloo on the Choluteca?

  This is not helpful.  It isn't that I'd expect thoughtful foreign policy analysis from Senator DeMint, but holding up our ambassador to Brazil in order to try to get the Administration to oppose the policy supported by entire rest of the hemisphere does nothing for anybody.  Is there really a domestic return to this sort of posturing?

In my own fair and balanced way, however, I'll add that the absolutist stance recently taken by the Brazilian foreign minister is also not helpful.  Like Senator DeMint's calls to have the U.S. back Micheletti, Celso Amorim's demand for “the unconditional return of the deposed Honduran to the presidency” is also aimed at some domestic audience.  I suppose that the Brazilians should enjoy their ability to make such statements unworried about their international consequences; with the country's relative power growing, and the U.S. slowly withdrawing, they won't have that freedom much longer.

The Honduran government just expelled Venezuelan diplomats.  It's sort of funny, in a way, since those diplomats didn't recognize the Honduran government to begin with.  That, at least, is comic opera.  What is more worrisome is the recent statement by said diplomats that they aren't leaving.  Meanwhile, Zelaya is in Nicaragua making vague threats and stirring up some anger on the part of that country's beleaguered opposition. 

I think the pressure is going to get ratcheted up.  One possible sanction that the U.S. could quietly impose without tanking the Honduran economy would be to suspend business and tourist visas.  Of course, what we don't know is whether the block to a compromise is on Micheletti's side or on Zelaya's ... and without that knowledge, it's hard to figure out the best way forward.

UPDATE, JULY 22:  The recent compromise talks have collapsed.  The Supreme Court appears to have rejected a proposal put forward by a representative of the Micheletti government.  Then again, the attorney-general has issued a 16-page indictment against Manuel “Mel” Zelaya.  Congress has approved a budget of $5.9 billion, eight percent lower than last year.  It counts on $554 million in foreign financing; it isn't clear how the sanctions on Honduras by multilateral lending institutions will affect that, since they seem to be counting on around $100 million in such financing, and access to other private funds is often contingent on lending by the multilaterals. 

For those of you who want a run-down on what to read:  El Heraldo is the conservative newspaper.  Consider these two simultaneous headlines:    “People’s bloc opts for neighborhood protests” versus “Today, great march for patriotism and valor.”  No points for guessing which favors what.  La Tribuna is a little more fair and balanced, although it is also fairly conservative by American standards.  El Tiempo is okay, I'm not thrilled by its coverage. 

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 today. 

In 1972, Richard Daley the Elder could already see the writing on the wall: the days of the classic machine were coming to an end. Royko’s Boss came out in ’71. Michael Shakman began his famous suit arguing that patronage politics violated the 14th Amendment. Ralph Metcalfe defected from the machine with the wonderful quote, “It’s never too late to be black,” and managed to stay in office. His candidate for governor lost. So when a bunch of goo-goos challenged his control over the selection of candidates to the Democratic National Convention, he showed what a real machine does. They attacked the churches where the reformers organized and destroyed their records. Attacked, as in mobs and beatings. The Partido Nacional Revolucionario would have called that a porra. Richard Daley the Younger, I should add, led the porra that assaulted a Catholic Church in the 5th District. They then disrupted the election of the at-large delegates from Cook County. 

Daley lost anyway, save for the at-large. He sued, and when the U.S. Supreme Court punted, he got a machine judge to seat his hand-picked slate over the elected delegates. Except that the judge couldn’t do anything, because, well, the Supreme Court had kicked the problem back into the hands of the Democratic National Committee. Daley’s case wasn’t helped by the fact that in a massive failure of vision his slate contained only one Italian last name and three Polish ones. That’d be like, well, uh … you know, lots of Irish political machines shot themselves in the head over this sort of oversight, be it Chicago’s failure to integrate Italian and Poles and African-Americans, or Boss Flynn of the Bronx trying to pretend for a stupidly long time that all these Jews and Puerto Ricans would just go away. (The Jews did. The Puerto Ricans are. But the machine went away first.) 

Wrap your head around that happening in the 2012 . You can’t. It wouldn’t. Not even in places like San Antonio, where machine-like organizations still exist in a way that they’ve faded in Chicago and Philadelphia. Those cities have a problem with corruption, but I’m just not seeing the machines. (Michael Nutter is many things, including a plausible future President of the United States, but a machine politician is not one of them.) Boston, well, Boston kinda sort has a machine, sorta, but it’s weak, and survived because the Irish were smart enough to turn things over to the Italians. Cambridge has one that survives only out of apathy and indirect elections.

New York City could have replicated machine politics. It had an ethnic base and plenty corruption, while Jews and Italians were replaced by Puerto Ricans and African Americans, who were in turn displaced by West Indians, Dominicans, and Chinese. 

Yeah, I know, hugely diverse immigration stream and all that. But a political entrepreneur could have built a machine on a simple West Indian-Dominican-Chinese tripod … heck, they could have built on West Indians alone.

Only they didn’t. And if you tell me that’s because West Indians don’t make good American politicians or don’t become citizens or otherwise lack the necessary chops I will be unable to contain my laughter. It’s because, I think, American institutions and political culture currently make machine politics impossible. The combination of law, free elections, and prosperity has destroyed the great American political machine. 

In fact, the same combination — or at least two of the three — has also wounded the great Mexican political machine. They hang on in parts of Mexico, but generally the country’s politics resemble U.S.-style interest group politics, not the machine politics of yore. “Porras” cause riots after university soccer games; they don’t assault polling places and beat up opposition politicians. They’re also weakened in Panama. I’m not sure that I’m particularly happy about Martinelli’s victory, but it isn’t a victory for machine politics. 

Now, machine politics isn’t dead in Latin America, despite some bruising. Consider “Daleyismo” in Venezuela. ¡Viva la maquina! The Nestor-Cristina team in Argentina is very good at this sort of thing. Danny Ortega is less good at it, as his need to resort to vote-stealing shows, but even the great Daley had to do that on occasion. Correa and Morales, in different ways, are trying to build machines. Dominican politics is dominated by machines, albeit not hegemonic ones … and I think you could say that Mr. Uribe’s conservatives have built there own odd sui generis electoral machine. 

So machine politics lives on in América, but in America it is almost impossible for me to imagine the kind of tactics used by the Socialists-Peronists-Sandinistas-MAS-Conservatives achieving anything other than a wave of negative news stories followed by indictments.

I know less about the Old Continent. There are some machine-like things in Italy these days, although I think a new word is needed for Berlusconi’s very 21st-century political strategy. But to repeat myself, electoral machines no longer seem to exist in America.

Am I wrong? As always, I’m happy to change my mind. And just to be sure that we’re on the same wavelength, a “machine” doesn’t need to be as powerful as the Cook County Democratic Party under Richard Daley to qualify. It just needs to be able to win elections on the basis of personalistic relationship and individual patronage. 

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 long-term 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 is 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?