This post may be a bit too local and parochial for the Donk, but many of the worst political ideas are ignited here on the Left Coast before burning a path of destruction across the rest of the country. Consider this an early warning of smoke on the horizon.

In any case, Oakland is likely to be in the national news again over the next couple of days. To the surprise of absolutely no one with a modicum of common sense, the City of Oakland will again be forced to roust the Oakland Occupiers from their encampment, with Occupy San Francisco not far behind. As before, it is likely that protesters will be injured, perhaps severely, when they provoke and resist police carrying out their assigned duties and responsibilities. This action in Oakland was made necessary by the Mayor of Oakland Jean Quan, who invited the Occupiers back into Oakland after ordering them rousted once before.

Some insight into how Jean Quan came to be in this position of authority:

One year ago, Jean Quan was elected mayor of Oakland. She never led in any poll at any time during the campaign. She always trailed front-runner Don Perata in every minute of the campaign from beginning to end.

On election day, 36% percent of Oakland voters said they wanted Don Perata as their mayor. Only 24% of Oakland voters said Jean Quan was their first choice to be mayor. In prior years, this would have triggered a runoff election and voters would have chosen between Perata and Quan in a head to head contest. Not this year. This was Oakland’s first Ranked-choice Voting election for Mayor. The other candidates on the ballot were eliminated and the second and third choice votes on their ballots were added to Quan and Perata’s totals. Jean Quan became mayor. Oakland saved the cost of conducting a runoff election.

Jean Quan ran a smart and innovative campaign. She asked Oakland voters for their second place votes. Why not? She is likable and her campaign employed fun YouTube ads. People like to give out consolation prizes. Why not give her your second place vote? What harm would it do?

Advocates for the ranked-choice voting system will tell you that if Quan and Perata ran in a runoff election, we would have seen the same result. They claim this was just a more efficient and less costly way to arrive at that result.

Matt Gonzalez is an RCV advocate. His op-ed in the SF Chronicle makes the case for RCV here in San Francisco. I’ll have more to say about his piece later, but this is what he says about the Oakland election:

It is Gonzalez that misses the point. The operative word in this quote is “should”: “Ranked-choice voting results should be identical to those of a traditional runoff…” Sure they should. We just don’t know if they are.

Gonzalez claims that Quan’s plurality of 2nd choice votes produced exactly the same result as we would have seen in a runoff vs. Perata. The truth is that he does not know that for a fact. No one does. It is just his opinion. My opinion is that Quan would never have beaten Perata in a one on one runoff. No one will ever know because Oakland never had that runoff election. The voters were denied the opportunity to make their choice clear. That is precisely the point. If no one knows whether Quan or Perata would have won, Quan’s legitimacy as an elected mayor is open to question and confidence in our democratic process is undermined. Yes – she won according to the ranked-choice rules, but no one knows if that truly reflected the preference of Oakland voters between Quan and Perata.

Now – all of this would be moot if Quan had proven to be a popular and competent mayor. That didn’t happen. So now Oakland voters are facing the question whether they legitimately elected an incompetent, or if they were denied the opportunity to vote for their preferred candidate for mayor.

Let’s take another look at the Matt Gonzalez case for ranked-choice voting:

Two things to note – First, he no sooner finishes claiming that ranked-choice voting yields an identical result to a runoff, when he offers an exception. If you have “big money” and a “polarized” race, well – he admits you might get a different result. In other words, Gonzalez is saying we cannot trust the voters to make a decision under those circumstances. “Big money” and “polarized” are subjective pejoratives. Others may substitute terms like “commitment” to and “support” for the candidate they prefer.

More astonishing is his claim that ranked-choice voting is somehow “better democracy”. Step back and think about what he is really saying here. He is asserting that having a real run-off election, letting the voters make a simple, clear choice between two candidates, vote if they want to, vote for the candidate they prefer, adding up the votes to yield an unambiguous decision where the candidates with the most votes wins, is somehow a less good democracy. It is an absurd claim on its face.

Trusting the voters to make a simple choice between the last candidates standing is not a good enough democracy for Matt Gonzalez. According to Matt, we need this New and Improved Ranked Choice Voting Democracy 2.0! A better democracy! Now in a convenient 16-Pack!

He goes on to argue for the qualities that make ranked-choice voting a “better democracy.”:

None of these “better democracy” arguments are supported by empirical fact. All these “better democracy” claims can be distilled into this: Matt does not trust the voters in a runoff election to make the right decision. He fears voters might make a wrong decision in a polarized election. He is concerned voters might be unduly influenced by big money advertising. Matt wants” door-to-door” and “coalition building” candidates to win. Best not to take the risk that voters will choose the wrong kind of candidate in a real runoff. Net net – Matt believes the kind of candidate he prefers would have a better chance getting elected under RCV. Ranked-choice voting is a way to put his thumb on the electoral scale.

There is one and only one good rationalization for Ranked-choice Voting – cost. RCV saves the cost of a runoff election. That is certainly and unarguably true. But it is also unarguable that ranked-choice voting is less good democracy than simply trusting voters in a real runoff. It is utter nonsense to claim that there is a “better democracy” than giving voters a choice between two candidates, let them vote between the two candidates, and declare the one with the most votes the winner.

By utilizing ranked-choice voting, Oakland saved the cost of a runoff election in 2010. They are paying the price of incompetent leadership managing the Occupy Oakland protest now. Oakland will be paying for the additional cost of a recall election in 2012. One occupier paid with his life for Mayor Quan’s indecision. For Oakland, the cost savings of ranked-choice voting are illusory.

We just completed our first ranked-choice mayoral, sheriff, and district attorney race in San Francisco, along with our first public funding of the mayoral candidates. We have yet to learn the real cost of this electoral experiment here.

My suggestion for my comrades a here in San Francisco – If we want better democracy, there is a better way. Trust the voters. and scrap ranked-choice voting in San Francisco before it costs us like it cost Oakland.

^{X-posted from “Divided We Stand United We Fall}“

Today was a bad day in the continuing drama of the soap opera we call Europe.

Focus shifted from an insolvent Greece to a potentially insolvent Italy. The back breaker is that the cost of borrowing for Italy spiked above 7% for their 10 year bond, which most economists say is unsustainable.

Greek insolvency was a manageable problem because the Greek economy is a pimple on the ass of the European economy. Italy, OTOH, is the eighth largest economy in the world. Not only is Italy too big to fail, it it may be to big to bail. Bailing Italy out of a debt crisis would have to come from one of three sources.

1. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) which is highly reliant on funding by the US. What do you think the domestic political appetite is for US taxpayers bailing out Italy and the Eurozone via the IMF?
2. The European Central Bank (ECB), which is legally constrained from doing so, doesn’t have the money anyway, and says they won’t do it.
3. The European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) which was the centerpiece of the Eurozone Debt “solution” touted by Merkel and Sarkozy way back two week ago. Problem being – they were expecting the Big Panda to fund those bonds. Yeah, that is not happening either. Here is why…

Al Jazeera’s Teymon Nabili recently interviewed Jin Liqun, Chairman of China’s Sovereign Wealth Fund. The remarkable interview has garnered deserved attention in the blogosphere and MSM. It is well worth the 30 minute investment of time, but for those who want to skip right to the good parts, I’ll offer a few highlights.

^{X-posted from “Divided We Stand United We Fall”}

From the department of “The more things CHANGE…”

What does this sound like to you? – A high risk “bet the company” culture, huge leverage, “smarter than you” corporate arrogance, regulators asleep at the switch, a”rock star” CEO cozying up to the President of the United States, questionable accounting, bankruptcy, investigations, and criminal prosecutions.

Most of the mainstream media coverage of the MF Global failure has focused on the leverage and the highly speculative bad business bets made by CEO Jon Corzine. But with the SEC and FBI looking under the covers, Dan Primack of Fortune Magazine goes where the NYT fears to tread:

Video of CNBC interview with Primack linked HERE.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Dipping into MF Global client funds to backstop the firm’s heavily leveraged high risk bets on European debt is about as serious as it gets. We’re talking – Federal Felony / Criminal Fraud / Grand Theft / Go To Jail / Do Not Pass Go / Do Not Collect $200 / Throw Away The Key / – that kind of serious. If tapping segregated client funds at a broker dealer is not criminal fraud, then it at least rises to criminal negligence on the part of the CEO of that firm.

Then there is the special relationship with the President and the related special provisions of the “Investment Grade” debt offerings from MF Global only two months ago:

“The futures broker sold $325 million of five-year unsecured notes, the company said today in a statement. The notes will pay an extra percentage point of interest if Corzine is named to a federal post and confirmed by the Senate before July 2013, New York-based MF Global said yesterday in a regulatory filing.

“That seems crazy,” said William Larkin, a fixed-income portfolio manager who oversees $500 million at Cabot Money Management Inc. in Salem, Massachusetts, and has 22 years of experience. “I’ve never heard of something like this.”…

A Democrat, Corzine is among the biggest fundraisers for President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign. He has been the subject of speculation about administration jobs such as Treasury secretary or White House economic adviser, said Christopher Allen, an analyst at Evercore Partners Inc. in New York…

Corzine’s employment contract is written with a view to future government service. It stipulates that he’ll be paid his $1.5 million retention bonus on a pro rata basis if he leaves to work for any “U.S. federal, state or local government” before March 31, 2014.”

I wonder if Corzine’s retention bonus and the bond interest kicker will be invoked if it turns out that Corzine’s federal employment is working in the laundry of a Federal Prison?

Meh – probably not worth worrying about that “Investment Grade” Bond Interest kicker. These bonds (which were sold in August and have yet to pay a coupon) were trading at 40 cents to the dollar on Monday. BTW – Thank you S&P for another great call. In the same time frame that S&P was downgrading US Debt early this summer, they rated this MF Global bond offering “Investment Grade”. U.S. Treasuries have increased in value since that rating. The MF Global bonds? Not so much.

UPDATE:
Jon Corzine resigned this morning and lawyered up.

The Bush Justice Department prosecuted and convicted Ken Lay. Let’s see what happens to Jon Corzine.

^{X-posted from Divided We Stand United We Fall.}

I fully understand that – in the most progressive major city with the most progressive governing body in the country – it is impossible to resist the temptation to occasionally legislate based on their core belief that no citizen can make a decision for themselves or their family without the Supervisors benevolent dictates guiding forcing them to “do the right thing”. But – when even the Daily Show is pointing and laughing – you’d think our Supes might get a clue.

Featured in the clip is SF Supervisor Eric Mar as he is made to look particularly stupid by Daily Show comedian Asaif Mandvi. It’s not like that is a difficult thing to do with our Board of Supes, but Asaif dishes it out with an extra helping of much deserved derision. I can only hope that Mar’s decision to appear on The Daily Show was a career limiting move.

Our local fishwrap transcribes the funniest bit:

“But the most brutal part comes when Mar explains that his 10-year-old daughter, Jade, doesn’t like fast food anymore after watching the documentary “Super Size Me” with him. Those opposed to the to ban maintain it’s up to parents, not McDonalds, to ensure their kids learn healthy habits.

Mandvi: “So she learned from her parents?”
Mar: “That’s a large part of it.”
Mandvi: (staring in wide-eyed disbelief) “Would it be hard to pass a law to force Netflix to send ‘Super Size Me’ to every parent in San Francisco?”
Mar: “We can’t force Netflix, a private company, to do something like that.”
Mandvi: “Are you serious right now?”
Mar:“We have no power to force Netflix or a private company like that to change a business practice.”
Mandvi: “So on one hand, you’re like, ‘We can’t do that’ but on the other hand, you are doing that.”

Mar, looking very tired, shakes his head, stumbles over one of the progressive supervisor’s favorite words, equitability, and mercifully the interview ends. Oy.”

The good news is that four of our Supes have termed out and will be leaving office this week. The bad news is that Eric Mar is not among them.

Reason TV also took note of SF Local Accomplishments in 2010:

Cross posted from Divided We Stand United We Fall.

When an economic bubble bursts, normalcy can only return when price excesses created during the bubble are wrung out of the market. A recession is often the painful but necessary market mechanism that corrects the pricing distortion and consequent misallocation of capital that occurs in a bubble. When government intervention prevents the mispriced asset class from fully deflating, capital continues to be misallocated and economic malaise lingers on. This is the takeaway message from Peter Schiff’s Wall Street Journal editorial:

Schiff defended his thesis on CNBC:

Schiff’s holiday forecasts have become a regular feature on this blog. As long as his prognostications prove to be more right than wrong (as we’ve seen over the last five years) it is a tradition we will continue to observe. I do not find it particularly difficult to appreciate the wisdom in his common sense analysis. In fact, I find it much more difficult to understand how anyone could expect that a problem that was:

• Triggered by Federal government market-distorting social engineering policies intended to permit people to buy homes they cannot afford…
• Enabled by Federal Reserve Bank expanding the money supply and keeping interest rates artificially low to create the illusion of affordability for overpriced housing…
• Fueled with massive deficit spending…

could be solved by:

• More federal government market-distorting social engineering policies intended to allow people to to stay in homes they cannot afford…
• Even more Federal Reserve Bank expansion of the money supply enabling even lower artificial interest rates perpetuating the illusion of affordability for overpriced housing and…
• Fueling it all with even more massive deficit spending.

Definition of insanity anyone?

UPDATE: 1/4/10
Instead of insanity, how about Insana? On Friday last, Ron Insana opined specifically to refute Schiff’s thesis. Basically he is saying there is so much pent-up demand, real estate prices are so low, and the economy is improving enough that the housing market will stabilize here:

^{Cross-posted from “Divided We Stand United We Fall“}

Joe Scarborough tells the GOP to “man up” and take on Sarah Palin:

Republicans have a problem. The most-talked-about figure in the GOP is a reality show star who cannot be elected. And yet the same leaders who fret that Sarah Palin could devastate their party in 2012 are too scared to say in public what they all complain about in private.

Enough. It’s time for the GOP to man up.

What man or mouse with a fully functioning human brain and a résumé as thin as Palin’s would flirt with a presidential run? It makes the political biography of Barack Obama look more like Winston Churchill’s, despite the fact that the 44th president breezed into the Oval Office as little more than a glorified state senator.

Still, Palin is undeterred, charging ahead maniacally while declaring her intention to run for the top office in the land if “nobody else will.” Adding audacity to this dopey dream is that Palin can’t stop herself from taking swings at Republican giants. In the past month alone, she has mocked Ronald Reagan’s credentials, dismissed George H.W. and Barbara Bush as arrogant “blue bloods” and blamed George W. Bush for wrecking the economy.

Wow. That’ll win ’em over in Iowa.

Scarborough goes on to say Palin isn’t stupid, but then goes on to say just that.

Scarborough’s op-ed is red meat for those of us that don’t like Palin and think she should be no where near the White House. I can see this article getting a lot of play for that very reason. But the thing is, if the only idea to tackle Palin is to basically call her a two-bit bimbo from Alaska, then you might as well crown her to the 2012 nominee right now. Scarborough’s ire might make one feel good, but it won’t do anything to tackle Palin’s rise.

It’s interesting that in the article Scarborough brings up Ronald Reagan. Reagan was pilloried by the Left when he ran in 1980 as being dumb. You can see how well their plan worked: the Gipper got elected to two terms.

If the Left failed in getting the public to see Reagan as stupid, I can tell you those within the GOP who want to use this tactic are also bound to fail.

The rise of Sarah Palin is not simply because she is some kind of bully; it’s also a sign of the times (the failure of the “smart guys”). She represents the failure of institutions and the rise of Self, which is why she does so well on Facebook.

If we want to beat Palin, it has to be at her own game. It won’t be won by being sensible or mad, but by using charisma, street smarts and social media in ways that most candidates have not done before. And we are going to have to do something Palin doesn’t do, instill a sense of trust in America again (remember Morning in America?).

Calling Palin white trash might feel good, but frankly, I want to see some game plans from her detractors instead.

Crossposted at Big Tent Revue

I am less thankful about what our leaders are doing to our currency. Last year I introduced a new tradition on Thanksgiving – watching the carving of our currency as it is sliced by administration fiscal policy and diced by Fed monetary policy.

Your 2010 Thanksgiving dollar dinner leftovers are served:

For our main course, let us check in with Peter Schiff, who you may recall was right in 2006-07 predicting the impending recession and crash of the real estate bubble. He was right in 2008 about the dollar and early in 2009 when he warned President-elect Obama about the folly of trying to borrow and spend ourselves into prosperity. Monotonously he was right again one year ago when he told us to keep buying gold at $1,084 /oz (up 27% to Wednesday’s close of $1,372/oz) as a hedge against the devaluing dollar.

We cannot expect this remarkable record to continue. Schiff is an economist a financial consultant* – a profession second only to economists with a reputation for being more wrong than right (Paul Krugman being a notable high profile example, having correctly predicted eight of the last one recessions). But, while he is on a hot streak, it behooves us to pay attention to what he has to say.

Serving up the meat and potatoes – Schiff on the insanity of Congress mandating a two headed Fed charter. They are required to manage monetary policy to maintain a stable currency, and also to promote maximum employment by umm.. devaluing the currency:

The Chimera of the Fed’s Schizophrenic Mission - Peter Schiff

For a side dish, Peter Schiff checks in with CNBC and browbeats the usual suspects on Fast Money:

C’mon. A six minute long primitive animation about economics, Fed policy, and quantitative easing – going viral? Three million views? How does that happen?

Finally, for a relaxing after dinner smoke – Enjoy “The Bernanke” as he hits the road to defend the QE2 policy to the world. Good luck with that, Ben.

Cross=posted from “Divided We Stand United We Fall“

I wont be nearly the first person to be writing about California’s Proposition 14. I’m coming late into the game, having only listened to the vague positive talking points of the California Independent Voter Network (CAIVN), and their allies, who have talked this proposition up. But I began to see some dissent, and took at a look at it myself. To be blunt, if this passes, partly because of support from CAIVN and their allies, I will genuinely be embarrassed to affiliate myself with these organizations that I hold in very high regard for their work fighting for the rights of independents.

Like so many other laws that make it through corrupt, and usually quite partisan, legislatures or ballot initiatives, this law violates the first rule that an ethical lawmaker or political organization ought to look at when drafting a bill or proposition; ‘first do no harm’.

Independents are doing two things that are inexcusable by supporting this proposition. They are supporting a change in the electoral system, only allowing the top two vote getters to make it through to the general election, that has flatly been shown to not accomplish the stated goals of lessening partisanship in the other states and areas that have, or have had, such rules in place.

I am personally quite familiar with these kinds of rules. In my home state of Nebraska, I considered running for state senate, as an independent, myself. This rule was not the only reason I decided not to do so, but looking at a short primary season where I would have had to overcome a huge money, organizational and manpower deficit… it certainly was one of the straws that broke the camel’s back. Had I had the entire campaign season to catch up, my decision could have been different.

In other words… we’re hurting our own chances, in trade for a rule that has no history of lowering partisanship, and actually has a track record of lowering the rate of incumbent turnover.

The second mistake is even more insidious, and the reason why I dub this bill the ‘First DO Harm’ Act. The first could be explained away as being duped, misinformed or (at best) perhaps blindly grasping for straws on a gamble. No… this is wholly deliberate. This is taking a page from the two party duopoly playbook. Its inexcusable and so hypocritical I cringe to think about how it might effect the future of independent movement types should this pass in California.

Independents have been the whipping boy of the political process for the dozen or so years that I’ve been really paying attention to politics. Its terribly hard to have an effect on primary elections, the hurdles to running for office as an independent are disturbingly high in most places and candidates from the two major parties pay attention to us only when races get close.

If there is any group of people that we have some common cause with on electoral reform, its third party organizations. Now, I think that both major parties are far too partisan, and I recognize that organizations like the Green Party and Libertarian Party are even more ideologically extreme in most cases. But my ideological differences with them don’t go so far as to impinge upon my higher conscientious support for basic democratic ideals, and fundamental fairness.

Richard Winger, over at Ballot Access News, hits the nail on the head in his op-ed in the San Francisco Bay Guardian:

“…since minor party candidates almost never place first or second in the June primary, minor party members would never be able to run for statewide office in November. And, the catch is that only the November vote counts for meeting the 2 percent vote test.

and…

“The real irony is that the big newspapers of California know about this problem with Prop. 14 but refuse to mention it. That’s ironic because back in 1981, when Democrats in the Legislature wanted to toughen the ballot-access requirements, the big newspapers of California denounced that bill with full fury. Forty of California’s biggest newspapers, TV stations, and radio stations editorialized against that measure.

lastly…

“Prop. 14 is supported by the Chamber of Commerce, the for-profit health insurance companies, the for-profit hospitals, and various multimillionaires, and the Yes on 14 campaign has a huge war chest. Why won’t the L.A. Times even mention this flaw in the measure? Who are the big dailies afraid of offending?”

And who are these independent organizations afraid of offending… or perhaps who are they pandering to?

This proposition flat out screws the minor parties. This glaring selfishness is made embarrassingly worse by the fact that several independent supporters I have communicated with, or read explanations of their reasoning for support, of the proposition have actually touted this as a way of further marginalizing these minor parties. This rings of a bully at school taking his anger out on even smaller kids because his bigger brothers have been beating on him for years. In fact, this is precisely what this is.

I’m not going to split hairs on this issue. Independents that support this bill should be ashamed of themselves.

Shikha Dalmia at Forbes goes beyond opinion and actually does the homework:

I wonder – Does Mike Thompson really believe that anyone beside himself would uncritically accept the GM PR, advertising, and administration spin at face value and say “I told you so!” C’mon, Mike. Who would do that?

But I digress. Shika explains how the shell game worked:

I said this was like a carny shell game, but that is not fair – to the shell game. In a shell game a bean is presumed to be placed under one of three cups, and the mark is fooled by quick manipulation of the cups into guessing and betting incorrectly where it might be found.

In GM’s case, the administration just keeps stuffing more and more of our money into the company’s pockets, the company moves some of the money from one pocket to another, gives a little back, and finally both the company and administration publicly misrepresent what is taking place. When all is said and done, GM winds up owing taxpayers more money than before they “repaid” the loan.

But, no worries. We’ll get the money all back. Someday. Over the rainbow. Just as soon as the 72.5% of GM company stock that US and Canadian taxpayers own is worth as much as they are owed and can be safely sold to repay it. The GAO suggests this may happen just as soon as….

… hell freezes over.

Hat tip to McQ at Questions and Observations who sums it up with this depressing observation:

In the meantime, as taxpayers, we can take comfort in the knowledge that our money is being used to prop up a failed competitor and make life harder for the Ford Corporation. Ford is a well run American company that took the hard management decisions necessary to survive in a tough environment and made the right management decisions to earn the respect of all Americans. Ford continues to innovate and build new products out of their own capital and profits, not requiring or requesting any government handouts. And we are all paying to subsidize their competitors.

We can all sleep better knowing that our tax dollars are being used to undermine a great American company that did the right thing by reanimating their zombie competitors.

I guess I’ll just have to be satisfied with the knowledge that since GM and Chrysler took my money against my will, they’ll never get a dollar from me willingly to buy one of their cars. It’s something.

Cross-posted from Divided We Stand United We Fall

We do requests:

“I’m leaving on vacation or I would do it, but can someone do an overlay chart of the post-WWII recessions and the subsequent recovery? I suspect we’ll see a pattern. Recessions tend to end after a certain number of months, depending on the depth of the recession, whether Congress spends money or not.” – FH

Frank is leaving and I am just getting back from vacation, so I’ll take the baton. The following screenshots are from a nifty tool on the Minneapolis Federal Reserve Bank website. The red line is the current recession.

Post-WWII Recessions Tracked by Changes in US Output:

“The graphic points out an interesting aspect of recessions. They all end. And, surprisingly, they didn’t all need a trillion dollar stimulus bill from the Feds to end them. In fact, all of them combined up to now did not need a trillion dollar stimulus to end.”

This is worth repeating. If you pass a stimulus bill, recessions end. If you don’t pass a stimulus bill, recessions end. If you pass a small stimulus bill, recessions end. If you pass a large stimulus bill, recessions end. Recessions end. Full stop.

In terms of US Output, the graphs show the 2007 recession to be comparable to the ’53, ’57, and ’81 recessions (slightly worse than ’81, not as bad than ’57). In terms of employment, this is the worst recession since WWII. By any measure, this recession is lasting longer than any recession since WWII.

In terms of output, the recovery is underway. In terms of employment, it is not. Justin asserts that “…credit needs to be given to [the administration] for helping turn our economy around in such a dramatic fashion.” I am not sure what is so dramatic about the longest recession and slowest recovery of any recession since WWII, nor am I sure why any administration would want credit for it. Still, Justin is the voice of moderation compared to the hero worshiping fantasy found in the comments.

Given that this is the slowest recovery from the deepest recession in the modern era, any argument on what impact the stimulus package or the Obama administration did or did not have on the duration or strength of the recovery can only be made on a counterfactual basis – “expressing what has not happened but could, would, or might under differing conditions”. Despite the massive expenditures, you cannot say this recovery is more robust than any that has gone before. The only case that can be made in defense of administration policy is speculation that the recovery would have been even more tepid without the stimulus.

Problem being, a case can also be made that the uncertainty created by this administration’s wild spending, insane deficits, threatened increases in health care taxes, likely increases in health care insurance premiums on employers, an energy tax (cap & trade), repeal of the Bush tax cuts, increases in the minimum wage, uncertainty created in the health care, financial, and energy industries with the imposition of radical government mandated top down changes in industrial policy – all contributed to increasing uncertainty in the private sector and made the recession worse.

Both are counterfactual scenarios. Neither can ever be proven with certainty.

There are statements about administration policy on the economy that can be made with certainty. Clearly, administration policy has cushioned the pain of the recession for many who were hit hardest. Realistically and practically, this is a legitimate and necessary function of the federal government. Another certainty is that only about one third of the stimulus package allocation has been spent, and a significant percentage of that was in the form of pork for congressional districts that was not focused on creating new jobs (but may have arguably saved government jobs at the expense of the private sector). Unsurprising, since the bill was written by Nancy Pelosi’s House of Representatives, slightly trimmed by the Senate, and rubber stamped by the President. Based on the percentage of the bill spent to date, it is unarguable that a focused bill 20-30% the size of the one that passed would have had the exact same effect of “turning the economy around in such a dramatic fashion” to this point – without further inflaming the deficit and currency fears the stimulus package produced.

So should we applaud the administration for the economic performance of a bloated, politics-as-usual, pork-filled stimulus package that passed a year ago on a strong-armed partisan vote? It did provide one valuable service. In a single stroke it disabused independents of any illusion that the Obama administration would be vaguely centrist, post-partisan, fiscally responsible, more transparent, or agents of change in Washington D.C. We were immediately back to old-style back-room dealing, partisan politics and favoritism pushed by a classic borrow, tax and spend liberal. It set the tone and became the template for everything that the administration has done since. Credit for turning the economy around? I remain unconvinced.

Hey gang, I know it’s been a while for me. I still visit The Donk everyday — because where else am I going to get top-notch discussion without all of the ridiculous name-calling — I just haven’t posted in quite some time. For that, I apologize. Although, it’s not like my writing has been missed — there are some really great contributors here (I’m looking at you, Nancy, mw, donar, Frank and The Man himself). Okay, enough chat…

So, I have been following the back-and-forth between NBC, Jay Leno, Conan O’Brien (and every other late-night host) for the past several days. I had a phone conversation with a friend yesterday and together we came to an overwhelming consensus: NBC is stupid.

I am old enough (and fortunate enough) to remember when Johnny Carson hosted The Tonight Show back in the day (which was a Wednesday by the way). Carson hosted the show for what, a billion years? (actually: 30) It seems to me that the host of a long-running show such as TTS eventually becomes the something of a de facto host for a certain generation. Carson was the host for much of the time that my grandparents watched Tonight.

After Johnny retired, Jay Leno took over the reins and sat at the desk for 17 seasons. By my aforementioned ‘de facto host’ rule, Leno has been the host for the Baby Boomers (my parents and folks between the ages of 40 and 65?). Last year, when Leno passed the baton, presumably Conan O’Brien would be the host for my generation (Gen X, Gen Y, Internet, ‘N’, Millenials, et al).

As my friend exclaimed to me over the telephone, “Conan is ‘our’ generation’s Carson or Leno! NBC is losing an opportunity for establishing a long-term brand in Conan O’Brien.” Indeed. I cannot see myself at age 50, sitting on the couch with TPW, and laughing at another ‘Jaywalking’ bit. For my money, ‘In The Year 2000‘ is much more funny.

The National Broadcasting Company is indeed missing an opportunity to carry The Tonight Show franchise to a higher level: the next generation. Add to that this little nugget… the only person who looks good in all of this is Conan O’Brien. Think about that.

1) NBC looks disorganized because they are shuffling hosts around after only a seven-month ‘trial’.

2) Jay Leno looks terrible because — rightly or wrongly — it appears as if he was displeased with his 10 o’clock show and now is turning around and asking for demanding that he get his old show back.

All the while, Conan looks like the proverbial Little Guy on whom the big corporation and big star are picking.

Lastly I’ll just say it: I think Conan is funnier than Leno and Letterman combined (Kimmel definitely has his moments). His nerdy appeal (schtick?) resonantes with me because, well, I’m something of a nerd myself (shocker). Seriously though; what other late-night host would put his show up for sale on Craig’s List:

Yeah. That’s how he rolls.

No matter how this fiasco ends, I’ll be firmly in the column supporting Conan. Here endeth my lesson on late-night-shenanigans. Now we return you to your regularly-scheduled Donklephant programming.

14 days since the East Anglia CRU data leak, 4 days until the beginning of the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, and the story continues to grow. By that I mean it is now hitting the mainstream network news, but only after being confirmed as a real story by Jon Stewart. Frank has been all over the climategate story, but he left a few angles for me to explore.

There is still news – Michael Mann, creator and defender of the “hockey stick” graph, pen-pal to disgraced CRU Director Phil Jones, and star of the “hide the decline” YouTube video, is also under investigation by his University.

There is still a mystery – Senator Barbara Boxer disingenuously reminds us that the identity of the whistle blower who released the data is yet to be disclosed. Personally I think the perpetrator is a hero, on the order of Daniel Ellsberg releasing the Pentagon Papers. If I was to take a wild guess, I’d take a hard look at “Harry” the CRU programmer of the now infamous HARRY_READ_ME file. He had the access, he had the means, he had the technical chops, he more than any single person on the planet understood the depth of the deception in the code, and for motive he may simply have decided he did not want to be an accessory to the scientific crime of the century.

Central to understanding the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit kerfuffle is an appreciation of the “scientific method“. The scientific method outlines the rules of the game when competing and contradictory theories vie to explain the world in which we live. McQ at QandO offers a good summary of the methodology and where the CRU comes up short:

True enough. The CRU scientists invested a great deal of time in their models of anthropogenic global warming. They are convinced that they are correct. Their critics believe they have made critical errors with faulty assumptions and the CRU models are projecting scenarios that are the scientific equivalent of GIGO (Garbage In Garbage Out). Scientific methodology and observation will ultimately prove the truth or falsity of their models. That is the nature of science.

However, when politics enters the game, the rules change. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (and fellow Nobel Prize winner Al Gore) bestowed upon the CRU the imprimatur of absolute truth – of “settled science” – of “overwhelming consensus”. These phrases have nothing to do with science or scientific methodology. Nothing. This is the language of politics, not of science.

The CRU scientists were granted a status where they could, for a time, modify and referee the rules of the game as played by believers and skeptics alike. The consequences can be found in the purloined e-mails.

I have spent some time browsing through the the e-mails, documents, and blog reactions (The complete directory can be downloaded here, and the e-mails searched here). Reading the purloined e-mails and documents and understanding their context provides a greater education on the current state of global warming science than a dozen lectures from Al Gore.

As a service to the Donklephant community, I can now reveal one document that is yet to be found in the leaked CRU data dump. I have reversed engineered the CRU Scientific Methodology from the procedures documented in the e-mails and code. It is clear to me that they have built on the work of maverick chemist Theodore Hapner, who revolutionized thinking about the scientific method in 2006. Standing on Hapner’s shoulders, and with the backing of the IPCC, the CRU forged a new path to scientific truth. The New & Improved CRU Scientific Methodology can now be revealed – it is shown graphically at the top of this post, and amplified with a few examples from the CRU files in the context of their new methodology below:

1) Assert Predetermined Conclusion

2) Select & Massage Data -

(0942777075)
Subject: Diagram for WMO Statement
Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999
Dear Ray, Mike and Malcolm,

Once Tim’s got a diagram here we’ll send that either later today or first thing tomorrow.

I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline. Mike’s series got the annual land and marine values while the other two got April-Sept for NH land N of 20N. The latter two are real for 1999, while the estimate for 1999 for NH combined is +0.44C wrt 61-90. The Global estimate for 1999 with data through Oct is +0.35C cf. 0.57 for 1998. Thanks for the comments, Ray.

Cheers
Phil

3) Align hypothesis, code & data to pre-determined conclusion

From the CRU code file osborn-tree6/briffa_sep98_d.pro , used to prepare a graph purported to be of Northern Hemisphere temperatures and reconstructions.

; Apply a VERY ARTIFICAL correction for decline!!
;
yrloc=[1400,findgen(19)*5.+1904]
valadj=[0.,0.,0.,0.,0.,-0.1,-0.25,-0.3,0.,- 0.1,0.3,0.8,1.2,1.7,2.5,2.6,2.6,$
2.6,2.6,2.6]*0.75 ; fudge factor
if n_elements(yrloc) ne n_elements(valadj) then message,’Oooops!’
;
yearlyadj=interpol(valadj,yrloc,timey)

This, people, is blatant data-cooking, with no pretense otherwise. It flattens a period of warm temperatures in the 1940s 1930s — see those negative coefficients? Then, later on, it applies a positive multiplier so you get a nice dramatic hockey stick at the end of the century.

4) Confirm hypothesis by plotting carefully weighted and selected data

(1054736277)
From: “Michael E. Mann”
To: Phil Jones, Tom Wigley, Tom Crowley, Keith Briffa, Michael Oppenheimer, Jonathan Overpeck
Subject: Re: Prospective Eos piece?
Date: Wed, 04 Jun 2003

… Re Figures, what I had in mind were the following two figures: 1) A plot of various of the most reliable (in terms of strength of temperature signal and reliability of millennial-scale variability) regional proxy temperature reconstructions around the Northern Hemisphere that are available over the past 1-2 thousand years to convey the important point that warm and cold periods where highly regionally variable. Phil and Ray are probably in the best position to prepare this (?). Phil and I have recently submitted a paper using about a dozen NH records that fit this category, and many of which are available nearly 2K back–I think that trying to adopt a timeframe of 2K, rather than the usual 1K, addresses a good earlier point that Peck made w/ regard to the memo, that it would be nice to try to “contain” the putative “MWP”, even if we don’t yet have a hemispheric mean reconstruction available that far back…

5) Assess results by comparing to hypothesis predetermined conclusion

“One example from something called a “SOAP-D-15-berlin-d15-jj” document.

A non-native English speaker shows a plot of various proxy reconstructions from which he wanted to “reconstruct millennial [Northern Hemisphere] temperatures.” He said,

“These attempts did not show, however, converge towards a unique millennial history, as shown in Fig. 1. Note that the proxy series have already undergone a linear transformation towards a best estimate to the CRU data (which makes them look more similar, cf. Briffa and Osborn, 2002).”

In other words, direct effort was made to finagle the various reconstructions so that they agreed with preconceptions. Those efforts failed. It’s like being hit in the head with a hockey stick.”

(1237496573)

To: santer1
Subject: Re: See the link below
Date: Thu Mar 19 17:02:53 2009

Ben,
… I’m having a dispute with the new editor of Weather. I’ve complained about him to the RMS Chief Exec. If I don’t get him to back down, I won’t be sending any more papers to any RMS journals and I’ll be resigning from the RMS. The paper is about London and its UHI!”

Cheers
Phil

At 16:48 19/03/2009, you wrote:

Thanks, Phil. The stuff on the website is awful. I’m really sorry you have to deal with that kind of crap. If the RMS is going to require authors to make ALL data available – raw data PLUS results from all intermediate calculations – I will not submit any further papers to RMS journals.

Cheers,
Ben

—

(1089318616)

From: Phil Jones
To: “Michael E. Mann”
Subject: HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL
Date: Thu Jul 8 16:30:16 2004

Mike,
…The other paper by MM is just garbage – as you knew. De Freitas again. Pielke is also losing all credibility as well by replying to the mad Finn as well – frequently as I see it. I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!
Cheers
Phil

7) If false (at variance with pre-determined conclusion) – review, re-select, re-weight data, rinse and repeat.

(1255352257)

From: Kevin Trenberth
To: Michael Mann
Subject: Re: BBC U-turn on climate
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 2009
Cc: Stephen H Schneider, Myles Allen, peter stott, “Philip D. Jones”, Benjamin Santer, Tom Wigley, Thomas R Karl, Gavin Schmidt, James Hansen, Michael Oppenheimer

Hi all

… The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate…

Kevin

(1120593115)
From: Phil Jones
To: John Christy
Subject: This and that
Date: Tue Jul 5 15:51:55 2005

John,

… Also this load of rubbish!

This is from an Australian at BMRC (not Neville Nicholls). It began from the attached article. What an idiot. The scientific community would come down on me in no uncertain terms if I said the world had cooled from 1998. OK it has but it is only 7 years of data and it isn’t statistically significant.

Heh. The computer model is true. The observations from nature are wrong. Everything you need to know about these guys is right there.

++++++++++++++++++
UPDATE (12-5-09):

Commenter Jim S complains that I did not adequately support step number 7 with these examples. I disagree, but suppose it is inherent in the release of embarassing e-mails that the argument will devolve to spin about what was really meant and “Who you gonna believe – me or your lying eyes?” statements from the authors. Still – Jim may have a point, I was getting a bit lazy by the time I got to step #7 of this tongue-in-cheek post about CRU methodology. Still, I strive to satisfy the commentariat, so for Jim’s benefit, I’ll take a long post and make it even longer with another example in this update.

This time, instead of using e-mails, lets go to what is now being refered to as “The Smoking Code”. This is the clearest explanation I could find to an inherently complex and technical subject – looking at the detailed workings of the computer code. It comes from Robert Grenier, a self described “scientist and engineer with an agnostic stand on global warming” blogging at Cube Antics.

This is how he starts:

“Emails prove nothing. Sure, you can look like an unethical a-hole who may have committed a felony using government funded money; but all email is, is talk, and talk is cheap. Now, here is some actual proof that the CRU was deliberately tampering with their data. Unfortunately, for readability’s sake, this code was written in Interactive Data Language (IDL) and is a pain to go through.”

Next he goes line by line through the code showing where factors were added to shape the model into a global warming “hockey stick”. There is too much detail to put here. Go to his blog and read it.

This is what he concludes:

“As you can see, (potentially) valid temperature station readings were taken and skewed to fabricate the results the “scientists” at the CRU wanted to believe, not what actually occurred… First and foremost, this doesn’t necessarily prove anything about global warming as science. It just shows that all of the data that was the chief result of most of the environmental legislation created over the last decade was a farce… I tried to write this post in a manner that transcends politics. I really haven’t taken much of an interest in the whole global warming debate and don’t really have a strong opinion on the matter. However, being part of the Science Community and having done scientific research myself makes me very worried when arrogant jerks who call themselves “scientists” work outside of ethics and ignore the truth to fit their pre-conceived notions of the world. That is not science, that is religion with math equations.”

:END UPDATE
++++++++++++++++++++

As statistician William Briggs points out, there is no need to invoke conspiracy to understand their actions. True Believers convinced that they hold the white hot sword of truth with the future of mankind hanging in the balance will not take kindly to scientific criticism or correction:

Mother nature is a bitch. And if the observations of nature do not agree with computer models, the models must go by the wayside. No matter how fervently and how many believe otherwise.

That is the scientific method.

Perhaps now we can get back to it.

^{Version x-posted from Divided We Stand United We Fall}

Before considering this new tradition, let us not forget the greatest tradition of this holiday, taking time to count our blessings and give thanks for all that has transpired in the last year. While my blogging activity has been limited recently, I did not want to miss this opportunity to offer this holiday greeting and a wish for a Happy Thanksgiving to the extended Donk family.

I have much to be thankful for…

I am thankful that Justin continues to permit me to be a contributor to Donklephant, so I can annoy many more partisans than I can reach from my little blog.

I am thankful for all the bloggers, columnists, and pundits that helped me to understand and appreciate the significance of Barack Obama’s election one year ago. I learned that with that election we ushered in a new post-partisan, permanent realignment of the American political landscape. I learned that the United States was actually a center-left country. I learned that the Republican Party if not already dead was doomed to succumb to the inevitable demographic shifts in the populace and that ideas like fiscal restraint are so last century and irrelevant.

Having learned all of this from the 2008 election we can only assume that the recent 2009 GOP gubernatorial victories in New Jersey and Virginia are attributable to the last spasms of a dying GOP corpse. In that context I am thankful to Professor Jacobson’s penetrating analysis of the 2009 race:

I am thankful that as we turn our eyes to the 2010 midterms, the prospect for and value of divided government is once again getting its due from the political chattering class, and there is hope for divided government and fiscal sanity to get “more votes” in 2010 and beyond.

Back to the new Thanksgiving tradition of plucking, stuffing, skewering and carving up the value of our currency. For this, we can be thankful to Barack Obama, Tim Geithner, Ben Bernanke and single party Democratic rule. I am personally thankful for CNBC, a network that, while certainly not immune to political bias, offers the depth of coverage to afford some understanding of our government policies and the real consequences for the economy, jobs, the dollar, our standard of living and the future of our country. Case in point – this week on CNBC I learned about the consequences of devaluing our currency by printing money to service unprecedented debt created by fiscally irresponsible spending that started in the Bush administration and has accelerated to unprecedented levels under Obama:

I am also thankful for Peter Schiff, who was right in 2006, was right in 2008 again and again, and who now tells us what to expect in 2010 and beyond. Three for three??

Finally, I am really thankful for this clip from SNL, which is quite possibly the single best bit that they have ever done:

Just get it over with!

Happy Thanksgiving.

]]> http://donklephant.com/2009/11/26/thanksgiving-tradition-precedented-and-un/feed/ 0 http://donklephant.com/2009/11/09/pfizer-abandons-site-condemned-in-infamous-kelo-v-new-london-case/ http://donklephant.com/2009/11/09/pfizer-abandons-site-condemned-in-infamous-kelo-v-new-london-case/#comments Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:06:15 +0000 Doug Mataconis http://donklephant.com/?p=17282

In the annals of Supreme Court history, there are perhaps only a handful of cases that go down in history as more egregious than what happened in Suzette Kelo v. City of New London.

In that case, the Supreme Court approved an eminent domain taking by the City of New London, Connecticut that involved taking the land of the principal plaintiff, and many others, and using it for a commercial development that would be used by Pfizer Corp. for a new corporate business center. It was a decision that was roundly and deservedly condemned at the time and which led to some efforts at eminent domain reform at the state level, many of which were successful.

But, in the end, Suzette Kelo still lost her property, and now, to add insult to injury, Pfizer has abandoned the project that was the subject of the eminent domain proceeding:

The private homes New London, Conn., took through eminent domain from Suzette Kelo and others, are torn down now, but Pfizer has just announced that it closing up shop at the research facility that led to the condemnation.

Leading drugmakers Pfizer and Wyeth have merged, and as a result, are trimming some jobs. That includes axing the 1,400 jobs at their sparkling new research & development facility in New London, and moving some across the river to Groton.

To lure those jobs to New London a decade ago, the local government promised to demolish the older residential neighborhood adjacent to the land Pfizer was buying for next-to-nothing. Suzette Kelo fought the taking to the Supreme Court, and lost, as five justices said this redvelopment met the constitutional hurdle of “public use.”

The private homes that New London, Conn., took away from Suzette Kelo and her neighbors have been torn down. Their former site is a wasteland of fields of weeds, a monument to the power of eminent domain.

But now Pfizer, the drug company whose neighboring research facility had been the original cause of the homes’ seizure, has just announced that it is closing up shop in New London.

Scott Bullock, Kelo’s co-counsel in the case, told me: “This shows the folly of these redvelopment projects that use massive taxpayer subsidies and other forms of corporate welfare and abuse eminent domain.”

One wonders if Suzette Kelo is paraphrasing former Labor Secretary Ray Donovan and wondering, where do I go to get my house back ?

And you know the worst part ? Not only did Suzette Kelo lose her house, but we’re stuck with an incredibly bad precedent that will likely take decade to reverse.

Everybody’s abuzz about the new Wash Post story today that starts off with the idea that Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) was turned into some type of “terrorist professor” because he was waterboarded.

And away we go…

The debate over the effectiveness of subjecting detainees to psychological and physical pressure is in some ways irresolvable, because it is impossible to know whether less coercive methods would have achieved the same result. But for defenders of waterboarding, the evidence is clear: Mohammed cooperated, and to an extraordinary extent, only when his spirit was broken in the month after his capture March 1, 2003, as the inspector general’s report and other documents released this week indicate.

Over a few weeks, he was subjected to an escalating series of coercive methods, culminating in 7 1/2 days of sleep deprivation, while diapered and shackled, and 183 instances of waterboarding. After the month-long torment, he was never waterboarded again.

“What do you think changed KSM’s mind?” one former senior intelligence official said this week after being asked about the effect of waterboarding. “Of course it began with that.”

Yes, of course it began with that. Why? BECAUSE IT BEGAN WITH THAT.

Also, KSM didn’t start giving these terrorism lectures until a full 2 YEARS LATER. The waterboarding lasted one month. Think maybe building rapport and trust with him over the next couple years did more than making him feel like he was drowning?

Not only that, during this early period KSM gave us a bunch of false information…

Mohammed, in statements to the International Committee of the Red Cross, said some of the information he provided was untrue.

“During the harshest period of my interrogation I gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear in order to make the ill-treatment stop. I later told interrogators that their methods were stupid and counterproductive. I’m sure that the false information I was forced to invent in order to make the ill-treatment stop wasted a lot of their time,” he said.

When will people begin to understand that there is an inherent paradox in the idea of torture: you don’t know what you don’t know. So somebody can make up ANYTHING to get you stop torturing them and you’ll waste your time.

Of course the vast majority of interrogators will tell you this time and time and time again, but the opposition finds a few people who were able to beat some actionable intelligence out of somebody and that makes it alright for us to do

And that gets me to the real point of this post. Torture works? Again, no. Because it completely undermines the values that we’re fighting to defend. America is not a TV show. Fighting terrorism doesn’t work like that. And if you don’t understand that having policies that allow us to kidnap and torture anybody we want makes us look like the big bullies they accuse of being, makes it easier for more people to hate us and therefore makes us less safe, well, please think on this some more.

Seriously, really dig into the cause and effect of what we’re doing. Because “blowback” is real, and I fear that if we don’t stop what we’re doing we’re in for yet another round of it.

You may have heard about this before, and one Florida lawmaker is finally doing something about it.

Yes, I realize these laws are meant to prevent repeat offenses, but either up the penalties for those offenses or just leave them be. Once somebody gets out of prison, that should be it. End of story. If they commit another crime it would be tragic, but we have gone WAY too far with these laws and who can honestly defend forcing people to live under a bridge?

Also, let’s not forget that there are plenty of really stupid sex offender laws out there too. People get locked up for doing some fairly innocent things.

The Economist takes a closer look…

In all, 674,000 Americans are on sex-offender registries—more than the population of Vermont, North Dakota or Wyoming. The number keeps growing partly because in several states registration is for life and partly because registries are not confined to the sort of murderer who ensnared Megan Kanka. According to Human Rights Watch, at least five states require registration for people who visit prostitutes, 29 require it for consensual sex between young teenagers and 32 require it for indecent exposure. Some prosecutors are now stretching the definition of “distributing child pornography” to include teens who text half-naked photos of themselves to their friends.

How dangerous are the people on the registries? A state review of one sample in Georgia found that two-thirds of them posed little risk. For example, Janet Allison was found guilty of being “party to the crime of child molestation” because she let her 15-year-old daughter have sex with a boyfriend. The young couple later married. But Ms Allison will spend the rest of her life publicly branded as a sex offender.

The problem is…these laws will only get harsher because what politician in their right mind will try and soften them? This guy in Florida who’s suing the state is certainly a brave guy, but let’s remember that this has been going on for 2 YEARS. That’s how long it took for this to become enough of an eyesore for somebody to make a case that it’s hurting the economy.

What do you think?

Not a whole lot of good has come the way to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) these days. The only organization I can think of that gets more right wing scorn has been ACORN, who I think mostly get picked on because they don’t fight back. Another ally, Health Care for America Now (HCAN), is seeing similar problems getting its legislative priorities passed.

While you could point out any number of mistakes these organizations have made in the last few months, perhaps the most glaring is their belief that they could use the momentum from the 2008 election to push their dream bills through to passage. Their sometimes misplaced tactics haven’t helped their cause either, pulling silly publicity stunts and waging a terribly mismanaged media push. The real meat of it was their misconstrued overall strategy of shoving this legislation through, over the opposition of nearly all republicans and a good chunk of moderate Democrats.

This was just plain foolish. They had to know that they would have a hard time getting moderate Dems to vote their way on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA, or card check if you prefer). They couldn’t have been so blind as to think the Blue Dogs would just roll over on their health care plan, with it costing so much… right?

Some polling has shown a bit of a shift, but numbers have been relatively steady on the issue of the secret ballot being favored over card check, and how wary the public is when it comes to expansion of government into health care. With the debt rocketing into the sky at an historic pace, and promised cost savings being debunked by the CBO, rather than work with the swing votes in the Senate to find a compromise these groups, and liberal organizations like them, have chosen perhaps the most ineffective strategy they could take.

Demonize the moderates.

There is a reason why politicians tone down the partisan their rhetoric after winning primaries, and why many are now saying that 2010 might not be so bad for Republicans after all. Attacking representatives who speak for those of us who worry about liberal overreach and a need for fiscal sanity helps nobody but the Republican party. Democrats may have the majority, and 60 votes in the Senate, but liberals do not… and this will not change any time soon.

Realizing this and working with the center, rather than attacking us, will allow these organizations to make progress on their legislative goals, keep their solid majority and stem the tide of independents that are now beginning to peel their support off. The silver lining of all of this, from my more centrist perspective, is this is leading to even more people leaving both parties. With over 40% of the population now identifying as independents, it is just a matter of time before something happens that turns the independent groundswell into a movement.

Anti-reform advocates are the gift that just keeps on giving. Take the case of David McKalip, who sent the above image out to his email list.

Does he genuinely not understand the implications of distributing trash like this? Because not only is it guaranteed to get out to the broader media, it also seriously undermines any arguments be brings to the table. And for a member of the American Medical Association’s House of Delegates to do this? Does he seriously have this little common sense?

Here’s more about Mr. McKalip:

He’s the chair of the Florida Taxpayers Union, the founder of Doctors For Patient Freedom, and anti-health-care-reform group, the president of the Florida Neurological Society, and an all-around anti-government activist who has appeared at events with GOP members of Congress and whose op-eds opposing reform have appeared in the St. Petersburg Times.

He’s also a member of the American Medical Association who has been quoted by reporters for the Associated Press, Business Week, the Palm Beach Post, the Tampa Tribune, and the Florida Sun-Sentinel opposing health care reform and taxes.

Listen, I’m a pretty reasonable person, but I’m starting to have a hard time believing that a fair amount of these anti-government folks aren’t closet racists. I obviously hate to paint with the broad brush, but as more and more of these stories pop up and you see all of those posters at the Tea Party rallies…ugh. Trust me, I want to think better of those folks, but they keep giving me reasons to not.

In my last post I detailed some of the roadblocks that have kept the Democratic leadership in Washington from finding a way to pass a major health care reform bill with a public option. They’ve whittled the cost of the bill down a few hundred billion dollars by negotiating concessions from drug companies and hospitals, as well as settling on a provision that would have employers pay a fee for each employee they do not already cover. The two main proposals to fill the budgetary gap have stalled, and are possibly dead in the water. So what other options are there?

Past the constant calls for saving money by eliminating wasteful spending, which never seem to materialize into actual legislation, we need to find new forms of income to pay for this bill. They seem to be failing at convincing enough senators to support taxing benefits and the more affluent, so what else is left?

For the most part, we pay for our governmental services through income taxes (both individual and corporate), property taxes and consumption taxes. Property taxes are used for other things and rightfully shouldn’t be on the table here. The two proposals that were trotted out for discussion by the Democratic leadership were both taxes on types of income. What remains are consumption taxes.

In a way, consumption taxes are the most fair. For instance it makes perfect sense to tax gasoline and tires to pay for roads, as those driving on those roads need those things to do so. So doesn’t it make sense to tax those behaviors that create high health care costs? The American people seem to think so.

Kaiser Family Foundation poll

A poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, from back in April, found that reforming health care is one of the public’s highest priorities, that a majority of Democrats and Independents believe that we need reform now and that a majority support taxing unhealthy behaviors as an acceptable way to pay for some of these reforms. When asked it they would support raising taxes on “items that are thought to be unhealthy, such as soda, alcohol, junk food and cigarettes,” 61% approved (39% strongly favoring, with 22% somewhat favoring the idea). I’m a huge fan of proposals that kill two (or more) birds with one stone, and I think this is a textbook example of such.

To fund a health care program, it makes much more sense to tax behaviors that lead to health problems than it does to tax income in general. By doing so we can, in one fell swoop, put more of the costs of the system in the hands of those who are causing the most problems, lower the consumption of these products AND help pay for universal health care. We already have taxes on cigarettes, alcohol and items deemed luxuries like jewelry, hotel stays and amusement parks. So why not extend similar taxes to the most unhealthy ‘food’ items in the market? (I put food in quotes because one could argue that high fat and sugar content items like pop, potato chips and many fast food items can hardly be described as food)

First on the cutting block is alcohol, with 68% of respondents strongly or somewhat favoring raising taxes on it to help pay for health care reform. Smoking is more demonized in our country, but alcohol related health costs actually outweigh those related to smoking. The Marin Institute lists several alcohol related health care costs, among them $175.9 billion on alcohol related problems, also saying that they bring about “$184.6 billion dollars per year in health care, business and criminal justice costs, and cause more than 100,000 deaths.” This being the case, I see it as nothing but reasonable to levy a higher tax on alcohol, possibly in relation to which forms of it result in the worst outcomes, that is equal to the cost to society it incurs.

Still with a few hundred billion dollars to go, we come to tobacco. I was a bit surprised that a higher cigarette tax was supported by fewer than the increased alcohol tax, but this may be because tobacco products are already taxed at a high rate. Florida alone loses $20 billion dollars when you compare the taxes it collects to the money it pays out, amounting to nearly $7,000 per smoker. A study released by the CDC in 2002 showed that “For each of the approximately 22 billion packs sold in the U.S. in 1999, $3.45 was spent on medical care attributable to smoking, and $3.73 in productivity losses were incurred, for a total cost of $7.18 per pack.” These numbers are sure to have risen since then, and with somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 billion packs of cigarettes sold in the US last year, it seems more than fair to tack on at least another few dollars per pack.

Whether or not this fills the gap entirely, we also should look at taxing the most unhealthy food items. A study at University of Victoria (British Colombia) found that all income groups would benefit, although more so near the top of the economic spectrum, from a tax on junk foods that sent money towards health care programs. I would suggest that this disparity would be less pronounced in the US, where many people near the bottom of the economic spectrum have much more to gain from such an arrangement, given that it will help pay for health insurance that many of them currently do not have.

Put all of these together, and you might piece together enough to get over the hump. At the very least we could make it easier to pass one of the income tax ideas by lowering the amounts they’d have to raise through it.

One might argue that this would cause people to consume less of these products, thereby reducing the income from the levies. My response would be that we should then increase the taxes to keep up with the costs. This would hopefully create a cycle where more people would consume less, making the purchase of such products even more expensive, driving more out and lowering costs to treat those people over the long run. Herein lies the killing two birds with one stone situation.

One might also argue that this is a regressive tax. In effect it will be that way, at least at first. It is the lower end of the spectrum that spends a larger amount of their overall income on food. They also tend to eat less healthy foods. However, nobody forces them to choose to purchase these particular food items. Nobody should force them to quit, but if they want to continue to lead an unhealthy lifestyle, the rest of society should not be forced to subsidize it.

If people want to smoke, drink or eat themselves to death, then they can make a down payment on the hundreds of thousands of dollars the government will pay to take care of many of them during the last months of their lives. If we can save some of them from that fate by enacting the proposals mentioned above, thats even better.

Sanford I have fewer problems with not resigning, although I think he should save South Carolina the embarrassment. His attention is clearly divided at this point and he let down the voters by abandoning his post.

But Ensign fired his mistress’ husband from his staff and then continued to pursue her after the fact. Not only that, his parents bribed her to the tune of $96K.

I mean, come on…

But here’s the kicker…he’s going to run for reelection!

From Las Vegas Sun:

When asked Monday whether he had any thoughts about stepping down, Ensign said his supporters are sending one message: “They say, ‘Don’t.’ ”

“I fully plan on running for reelection,” Ensign said late Monday evening. “I’m going to work to earn their respect back.”

The two-term Republican senator was back on offense Monday, saying his support is coming from his fellow senators as well as those “on both sides” of Senate leadership.

Ensign said his supporters are telling him, “Keep your head up. This thing will pass.”

This is standard boilerplate when controversy pops up, so there’s no reason we should believe that Ensign is getting this advice from anybody but true believers. Still, if he runs in 2012 and wins? Well, I would be shocked.