The "Legislative Priorities" Of Harry Reid

We explored in the last post why these aren't actually his legislative priorities-- those revolve around dealing with minor political issues to help his allies and hurt his opponents using the framework of the law as a bludgeon. These, however, are the things he feels he needs to say in order to get re-elected. Who knows; when he takes time off from using the government to enforce his personal vendettas and pay off his buddies, he may try to pass one or two of these.

These are all nominally bills he has put forward, but most people expect them to be simple placeholders for other bill of the same type.

1- A stimulus bill that will cause infrastructure improvements, energy independance, more education, cheap medicine, tax cuts, and protection for the poor. And he wants a pony. Presumably, Harry Reid will announce a press conference detailing how he is made of money and capable of performing miracles, or announcing that these goals are actually unattainable through massive government intervention. Or maybe he will just go along pretending he is omnipotent as he finishes the task of bankrupting our nation.

2- Improve the lot of the Middle Class, through magic. A) Tax relief and simplification are noble goals that he won't follow through on. B) "Promoting investment" is not the job of government in a free society (although it is in a socialist state) and "enacting policy" is not the way to create "Good, well-paying jobs", repealing policy is (also, what is wrong with shitty, well-paying jobs or good, poorly-renumerated jobs? (also, why is the government creating jobs?)). C) "enhancing incentives and protections" for people to "meet thier needs in retirement": Note that he doesn't say 'invest for' or 'plan for' because he wants people to be dependant on the government; otherwise he would let people opt out of the largest ponzi scheme in our nation's history. D) Help families get education is a noble goal, but not one he supports, as a historic defender of teacher's unions and an opponent of any sort of real educational progress in this nation (though he does like to throw money at the problem and hope it will go away). E) "Promoting families" by having free ("affordable" is the PC term) child and elder care; also he will outlaw the murder of children (just kidding! He would never do that). F) restoring "Prosperity and Economic Security" by spreading the organization that has caused the collapse of the American Auto industry to other industries (Unions, if you missed the reference). G) "Removing barriers to fair pay for all workers" but no details.

3- He wants to end the financial crisis by A) Banning foreclosure (never mind the fact that it would make the toxic MBSs that much more toxic) B) adding more regulation to the financial industry while simultaneously C) streamlining the loan process and making it easier to both get and receive loans (spreading the seeds for this to happen yet again-- has this man learned nothing in the last year?) and D) something vague about credit card responsibility. Nothing here will help us get out of this crisis, nor will it prevent the next one. B and C lay the groundwork for more regulatory capture and bubbling and thus another crisis like this one.

4- Universal health care. You think health care is expensive now, just wait until it is "free".

5- Fix global warming and oil dependance through top down government mandates and subsidies like the ones that brought us the ethanol debacle. Will these people ever learn that the government should not be picking winners? Particularly firghtening; "protect consumers from volatile prices through better market oversight" How does that at all sound like a good idea, except from the point of view of someone who sees himself as an all powerful benevolent father here to protect you from all the evil in the world?

6- National security. Nothing remarkable here (give troops equipment and leave, fight Al-Quaeda, secure WMDs) except for "addressing trans-national humanitarian challenges", presumably by having us interfere in other nations in the way that pisses so many of them off. A humble foreign policy seems to have no support among Senate leaders

7- spend more money on education and education related things. Also "strengthen math and science curriculum" presumably through more top-down curriculum mandates. Oddly, blogger's spell check seems to think "math" is not a word.

8- This bill is a warning to the Bush administration not to pass anything Reid disagrees with until Obama takes office. Even though, you know, he is still president. This is perhaps one of the least subtle bits of arrogance I have seen in a while (I hope that link works).

9- Immigration: Harry Reid wants better enforcement, less illegal immigration, better naturalization procedures and a pony. No details.

10- Balanced Budgets. After the last nine points (well, eight, since number 8 doesn't cost any money) this is laughable and not even worth looking at, except for the implication that he is going to try to increase the progressivity of the tax system.

In summary: The priorities of Senate Democrats are the grocery list progressives have been spouting for quite some time, followed by the absurd demand for a balanced budget (not that balanced budgets are bad, but the idea that you can spend enough to make George Bush blush and still balance the budget, no matter how high you raise taxes, is absurd). Expect no surprises, and a 1% drop in potential GDP over the next 20 years as a result of the taxes, regulation, and spending burden.

The 111th Congress

Everybody hide! Congress is back in session!

That means I need to get back on the horse. Oddly, any slip-ups will be me falling off the wagon, which would seem incongruous as I am currently on a horse, not in a wagon. But I digress...

This is my 400th post in exactly two years. That would be a post every other day, except that I have been on and off on the blogging thing. (Incidentally, Blogger is telling me that "blogging" is not a word-- I find this curious). I am getting started again. No guarantees, but hopefully I should last through the semester. Supporting the sponsors by clicking the ads would help keep me going (because I like money).

And now, I being again:

One of my inside sources has called my attention to ten placeholder bills (S 1-10) put up by Harry Reid which are supposedly the list of legislative priorities. While these are interesting, what I think is more important is what they actually do on their first days. At the beginning of the 110th congress, six bills were passed in the house, one each day that pushed forward the progressive agenda. For comparison, let's see what the House did yesterday after being sworn in (noting that today was spent in the formalities of the electoral college vote).

LEGISLATIVE PRIORITIES:

HR 35- Presidential Records Act Amendments of 2009. Rewrites the methods for making public any document in a presidential library. Repeals one of Bush's early executive orders and replaces it with rules that make easier the process of making documents public.

HR 36- Presidential Library Donation Reform Act of 2009. aka the "Bush won't get away with what Clinton got away with" act. Basically requires the same sort of contribution reporting required during a campaign from presidential libraries. This comes right after various "issues" with the Clinton library and right as the Bush library starts taking contributions.

S J Res 2- The "Cover Ken Salazar's Butt" Act. The first part of the act reduces the pay of the Secretary of the Interior because the way election cycles have interacted with Cabinet pay raises could bring Salazar into conflict with the 27th amendment in appointed Sec. Int. The second part of the resolution gives the DC federal court jurisdiction, so that if anyone had a problem with this, it could go to the supreme court fairly quickly, because we all know the nation has been dying to hear a case on the 27th amendment.

While these are certainly valid bills, I just feel that perhaps congress could have started out with something a little bigger. The next post will be about the "stated priorities" of the democrats.

WTF?

I am not dead, but I will not be posting a whole lot for a while. However, here is the first draft of something I am sending into the school newspaper, entitled wtf?

WTF?

If you are like most Beloit students, you are well informed about the pressing issues of the day. By that I mean you saw that guy on the Daily Show talking about a $700,000,000,000.00 bailout for the finance industry and you were like WTF?!?!111?!/1? I will take that reaction to indicate confusion on your part and spend the rest of this column telling you a story. Note that, in the immortal words of Bob Elder “This is a rich tapestry we are weaving.” I don’t really know what that means, but please realize many of the events in this story have multiple causes and multiple effects, and I do not lay exclusive blame for anything on any single actor, even when only one cause is mentioned.

While elements of our story come from things as far back as the New Deal (so this is sort of like watching season two without realizing that there was a season one), we can reasonably say that the important bits started around 1997. If you are old enough to recall those heady days (and I would hope so), you may recall that there was an increase in construction driven partly by the strong economy, partly by regulatory changes, partly by rising real estate costs, and partly by a drive in congress to get more poor people owning homes. All of these things seemed like good ideas at the time, and with good reason. We watched home values begin to climb and simply assumed that it was either a normal cyclical increase or an increase in the real value of real estate, possibly driven by increasingly strict land use regulations, possibly because of new demand created by what later came to be called sub-prime borrowers, and possibly because of structural factors in the growth of the American city.

As this was occurring, a little thing called the tech bubble formed and burst, leaving us stranded, drunk, and naked in the rain as the new millennium turned (or at least, I was) with no Y2K bug in sight. This was the impetus for a long overdue recession which came into our houses and plopped itself on the couch. And he was always watching crap on TV, even when there was something good on another channel. In order to get Mr. Recession out of our nation’s houses a little quicker, Alan Greenspan, then chair of the board that controls monetary policy in the US, opened up his Intro to Macroeconomics textbook and employed the tried and true method of getting out of recessions by cutting interest rates. This, however, has the side effect of increasing inflation, but in a way that principally benefits those who receive the money first at the expense of those who get it last. In this case, those who got the money first ended up being people taking out home loans (I am over generalizing), which fed an already bubbly industry.

Let me permit housing to continue to bubble while we recall that there were natural inflationary pressures which were beginning to take effect around this time (about 2005, for those playing at home). The dollar began to fall in a long awaited correction for the trade deficit and foreign investment quit making up for the American aversion to saving. At the same time, food and energy prices began to spike, partly because of increased global demand and partly because of silly regulations like ethanol subsidies and restrictions on the addition of new oil capacity in America. This after a recession that hadn’t really had time to work itself out because Greenspan had ended it before all the bad investments could be purged from the economy, which led to more uneven growth than should have been seen.

Now the housing bubble collapses, as all good bubbles must. The collapse was going nice and orderly like, and the added squeeze to prices was likely to send us into a normal recession. Then everyone went bat-shit crazy last August. This was because everyone suddenly realized that what they owned wasn’t worth quite as much as they had thought. This was because the bubble was bursting in conjunction with economic hard times which increased the default rate for mortgages.

Much has been made of this increased default rate, and an excessive amount of the panic has been spurred by it, so perhaps some clarification is in order. Every mortgage has a chance that it will default, and an asset that contains a large number of mortgages is statistically likely to lose some percentage of that value because of defaults. Thus if the average default rate is 4%, someone who owns a whole bunch of mortgages will lose about 4% of the total value of that portfolio from defaults. Then, if the default rate doubles, his portfolio losses are going to double from defaults, and he is going to want to unload the portfolio. If these changes are system wide, then everyone is going to be trying to unload at the same time. If everyone is selling and no one is buying, then the price falls to zero (even though the expected value of the bundle may still be positive).

As the financial market began to struggle, the Federal Reserve reached back into its toolkit and began reducing interest rates a little bit every month (they settled out over the summer). However, the Fed noticed that people did not want to be seen borrowing from them, because all the cool bankers decided that anyone taking credit from the Fed must need it desperately. To this end, the Fed created a new way to loan money, the Term Auction Facility, which gives loans to many more institutions than normal, and got a number of solid banks to borrow from them to remove the stigma of borrowing from the Fed.

Despite all these measures, Bear Sterns, an institution with weak fundamentals which was heavily invested in mortgage backed securities, failed. This came a few months after the world had watched the Northern Rock, a small English bank, fail and the subsequent cock-up of the English government’s attempts to deal with the situation. To avoid doing what the English had done (always a good policy), Economic policymakers in America decided to act quickly and decisively on Bear by bailing it out and selling off its assets to JP Morgan.

Things were looking up for a while, with 3.3% GDP growth in the second quarter of the year, until the first anniversary of the crisis came around. Then people remembered that they were supposed to be having a massive credit crunch and Lehman Brothers failed. The Fed decided that this time they were not going to bail anyone out, which created confusion in the markets (This is called “regime uncertainty”). The general economic conditions continued as larger banks began to fail or get bought up (13 outright failures since Jan 1). While we have thus far been able to avoid bank runs, the FDIC, the government program which insures most bank deposits up to $100,000, has been running out of money and is down to $45 billion, when the lowest safe amount it should have is $200 billion.

In this context, the Department of the Treasury has proposed $700 billion to purchase anything and everything the banks want to sell them. This has sparked a wave of bailout requests, from an FDIC proposal for $200 billion more to a GM/Chrysler/Ford proposal for a $25 billion bailout. All of these proposals are longer on numbers than specifics, so this is where we stand as a nation and an economy. The bailout proposal seems to have sparked even more panic in the markets, which means our troubles are not over yet. Look for another update after something else interesting happens.

-Jeb Bleckley

Barr Sues Texas

A delightful story I have been covering focuses on the fact that neither major candidate filed for the Texas ballot in time, but were let on anyway in violation of the law. Bob Barr is suing to take them off the ballot, because of all the crap he has had to go through to get the ballot access that the major parties get even when they break the law. Full Press release has more details:

Atlanta, GA - Bob Barr, the Libertarian Party's nominee for president, has filed a lawsuit in Texas demanding Senators John McCain and Barack Obama be removed from the ballot after they missed the official filing deadline.

"The seriousness of this issue is self-evident," the lawsuit states. "The hubris of the major parties has risen to such a level that they do not believe that the election laws of the State of Texas apply to them."

Texas election code §192.031 requires that the "written certification" of the "party's nominees" be delivered "before 5 p.m. of the 70th day before election day." Because neither candidate had been nominated by the official filing deadline, the Barr campaign argues it was impossible for the candidates to file under state law.

"Supreme Court justices should recognize that their responsibility is to apply the law as passed by the Legislature, and the law is clear that the candidates cannot be certified on the ballot if their filings are late," says Drew Shirley, a local attorney for the Barr campaign, who is also a Libertarian candidate for the Texas Supreme Court.

A 2006 Texas Supreme Court decision ruled that state laws "does not allow political parties or candidates to ignore statutory deadlines."

Orrin Grover, attorney for Bob Barr and Wayne Root, said that he believes that the Texas Secretary of State is bound by Texas law to remove the Republican and Democratic nominees from the November ballot. "Either we have rules and deadlines, or we do not," Grover said.

The Chairman of the Texas Libertarian Party, Pat Dixon stated, "Libertarian principles require personal responsibility for your acts and failures. Obama and McCain failed to meet the deadlines. They must follow the law like everyone else."

The petition also alleges that the Democratic Party's late presidential filing falsely claimed under oath that Senator Obama had been nominated hours before the nomination actually occurred.

"The facts of the case are not in dispute," says Russell Verney, manager of the Barr campaign. "Republicans and Democrats missed the deadline, but were still allowed on the ballot. Third parties are not allowed on the ballot for missing deadlines, as was the case for our campaign in West Virginia, yet the Texas secretary of state's office believes Republicans and Democrats to be above the law."

Barr will be holding a press conference this Thursday at the Texas Supreme Court at 11:00 a.m.

Libertarian Party presidential candidate Bob Barr represented the 7th District of Georgia in the U. S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 2003.

I don't think you have any idea how badly I want them to pull McCain and Obama off the ballot for breaking the law. If Barr could manage this, I would vote straight ticket Libertarian for the next 20 years.

Props to Barney Frank

I can't stand Barney Frank, chair of the banking and finance committee. However, he did propose Sept. 15th to be Free Market day. Sadly, he was kidding and has no intention to make it an actual holiday. Bonus Quote: “The national commitment to the free market lasted one day.” Sounds about right.

While we are on the subject of openly homosexual congressmen, I urge anyone in Southern Wisconsin to support Peter Theron in his run against the first openly lesbian member of congress (though he isn't running because she is a lesbian, rather because she has no understanding of economics and a terrible health policy). Before he ran for congress, he was my computer science professor at Beloit, and is not a government hack.

Firing Federal Employees

Congressional turnover rates rarely dip below 90% in modern times, and when you factor out "voluntary retirements" (admittedly, some of them would have lost had they not left) the retention rate is reminiscent of the old Soviet Union.

Federal Employees, however, seem to be a different story. Every year, hundreds of federal employees are fired for incompetence. Sadly, there are 1.86 million non-military employees of the federal government. When you include gross violations like assaulting the boss, the number rises to between 8,000 and 10,000. 3.7% of all federal employees get unsatisfactory ratings every year, which means that 68,820 federal employees are deemed incompetent by their superiors.

When I hear idealists telling me that all it will take are a few willing politicians and the committed civil service to enforce regulations, I tell them that you cannot trust the bureaucrats, because they are the same sorts of people you meet on the streets (after all, there can't be 1.86 million people energized by the mundanity of bureaucracy) only they face different incentives. One of those incentives is caused by the ability that they have to be grossly incompetent and continue to receive a paycheck. People in private enterprises may be no smarter or better than bureaucrats, but at least they can be fired if they are tremendously unproductive.

Further Attacks on Economists Who Are Smarter Than Me

Mark Thoma displays an inability to think marginally, which is unusual for an economist. He criticizes the McCain plans for permitting expanded drilling and fighting earmarks by posting charts showing that the net effect of these things would be small. However, no one said that the effect would be huge (though some have overstated their benefits) but the important thing to consider when adopting a new policy is not the total effect, but rather the marginal costs and benefits. Looked at this way (the economic way, which is why I am surprised that an econ prof. at a state university misses it), both policies are remarkably effective. Cutting earmarks will come at no cost to the government, and the cost to society will be a few incumbents losing out on votes, and states having to pony up a little more money to pay for things that are state responsibilities (as few of those as there are in this age of diminished federalism). The benefits will be a few incumbents losing out on votes (this one is a perspective issue-- I have no love for politicians in general) and a lower amount of government spending.

Also, Mr. Thoma is both right and wrong, but really just wrong, when he says that many earmarks direct money that has already been appropriated. He is right in the very literal sense. However, in reality, that money was appropriated either for some legitimate purpose, and must make up the shortfall through more fees or appropriations requests, or additional money is built into the appropriations request in anticipation of congressional earmarks. If these expectations were removed from the system, less money overall would be spent.

It Bears Repeating

Democrats don't give as much to charity as Republicans. When Democrats say that society would not make up the shortfall if welfare was removed, and Republicans say that it would, they are both arguing from their personal motivations. Permit me now to cast aspersions on the motivations of Democrats.

Personally, I give very little to charity, but I still think that the elimination of welfare, coupled with an immediate, across the board tax cut would create at first a slight drop in overall transfers, but over the long run I suspect there would be an increase in transfers to charitable causes.

links

The facts about drilling in ANWAR. Sorry about that. Link fixed

Another "Isolated Incident" which casts shame on the law enforcement community.

Assorted Economics

Here is pretty much the definitive exegesis on McCain's economic plan, by his number two and three economics advisors, one of whom wrote the equation that drives monetary policy everywhere on the planet (except Zimbabwe), and the other is Marty Feldstien. You cannot understand anything about economic policy this election unless you have read and understood everything in this article and where it came from (and you need to have read a similar article from the Obama camp, though I have yet to see one as comprehensive as this).

In a similar vein, Reason has pointed out that the Republican plan is better than the Democrats, but not by much. I am afraid the cause of tax simplification is a battle that will not be fought in the next four years.

Look! America is better than Europe. There was a paper a few years back, which I am not sure how to put online (I have the PDF, if anyone knows how to put it on blogger, please tell me), about how living standards in the wealthiest parts of the EU are comparable to the poorest states in the USA. Only Luxembourg is even above the US Average, while the UK, France, Italy, and Finland are all poorer (per capita) than Oklahoma and Alabama.

Also, I almost hesitate to write this last paragraph. Brad DeLong is a significantly better economist than I am, and possibly ever will be, but he is wrong on this post. Prof. DeLong insists that we are in a recession, so when he sees the numbers that say productivity overall has increased 4.3% in the last quarter, he comes to the conclusion that productivity number are counter-cyclical. First off, this is fundamentally ridiculous, since it is principally productivity gains that increase economic activity in the first place. Second, it is absurd because real GDP rose 3.3% over that time period. This would mean both that we are not in a recession, and that productivity broadly speaking corrolates positively to GDP. The depressing part of this is that Prof. DeLong is a respectable economist who has let his rabid partisanship get the better of him. He should know better.

Geek Cred

Why didn't I post yesterday? Is it because I am a lazy, good for nothing,...? Yes. But, I also downloaded the new Google browser fewer than 2 hours after it was released. I then spent the rest of the evening doing homework and moving everything that I had in Opera into Chrome. Sadly, Chrome doesn't come with a built in RSS reader like Opera does, so I had to manually transfer all 70 feeds I read regularly into the Google RSS Reader.

My verdict: Chrome is excellent. It is not astoundingly good, but the performance gains are noticeable even with only a small number of tabs open (right now I have 12 tabs open, including youtube and a PDF file, which is a small number for me). There are a very few personal preferences that aren't implemented, like how in Opera the tabs will only go six to a row and then it will add another row, which allows me to see the entire title of the web page, but I suspect it will be implemented before too long.

However, not everyone should switch to Chrome just yet. If you are particularly attached to your interface configuration, or if you are bad with computers and are only good at your native configuration, you should probably not switch. However, if you are reasonably good at getting new interfaces (and this one isn't really that different for normal functions) then you should switch to take advantage of the fact that your browser is never going to be your internet browsing bottleneck again.

An Interview With The Beloit Daily News

I feel important. I just got an email interview from the beloit daily news to provide the campus republican perspective on the Republican Convention. This is about how it went (questions bulleted):

• How closely are you following the RNC?

I am not following the convention nearly as closely as I should be, simply because I have been quite busy lately, but I will watch McCain's and Palin speech (maybe even Bush's, if it ends up happening)

• How do you feel about the RNC taking a backseat to the hurricane coverage on Monday?

Frankly, the hurricane is going to affect a lot more people than a bunch of silly speeches in Minnesota. The news needs to cover things that will affect peoples lives, and while convention nonsense is entertaining, it really isn't that important in this age of uncontested conventions.

• What kind of effects do you think that will have?

If by "it" you mean the hurricane, I suspect it will destroy a large amount of property, kill a few people, and prevent McCain from getting a post-convention bump because no one is paying attention to it. If by "it" you mean the convention, I doubt it will have any affect at all unless one of the big names goes insane and starts shouting obscenities and racism.

• What are you looking forward to about the RNC?

I was looking forward to an absense of George Bush, but the latest news says he may still give a telespeech. Bush has done some good things for the country over the last eight years, but he has proven himself to be a terrible spokesman for conservatism, increasing the size of government more than anyone since Roosevelt. In that sense, I am looking forward to McCain, who has a proven record controlling spending.

• What do you think about McCain's running mate?

I think it was an excellent choice. Though I associate with the Republican party and use it as a vehicle to advance conservative principles, the fact is that in the last few years it has become corrupt and abandoned its small government principles. Palin made her way up the political ladder by rooting out corruption in Alaska and supporting small government conservatism. While she isn't perfect and has made a few missteps in her political career (and I do hope the whole troopergate thing turns out to be nothing) she has the sort of instincts I want advising McCain, and should the unthinkable happen, she would make an excellent president after a few months in McCain's shadow seeing how everything worked.

• Anything else you'd like to add?

I would like to add three things:

1) The Rock County Republicans are always looking for volunteers. Contact Jan Deeters: jan.deters@rockcountygop.com to support conservative causes and candidates in the area.

2) I run a blog: http://thebillreader.blogspot.com (gotta do the self promotion)

3) Many people see Obama as an agent of serious change from the current order, but his record shows that he is unlikely to be much more than the standard liberal politician. While that is alright if what you want is one more liberal expanding the regulatory burden, increasing spending, and raising taxes, the fact is that the candidate with a record for bipartisanship and responsible governance is McCain. Consider that while Obama has voted with his party 96 percent of the time, making him one of the most partisan democrats in congress, McCain has broken party lines for almost 20% of the votes in the last eight years (see: http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/02/what-chance-of-change-is-enough/).

That last point is very interesting, and I recommend that you read the article in full, especially if you, for some reason, still think Obama is above the normal run of politicians. The fact is that he is just one more far too liberal Senator who wants a free hand to remake America in his image. While I am usually a fan of scientists playing god (because it makes cool things like immortality and ray guns) I don't find it nearly as attractive when politicians do it.

I also want to add to the Palin baby story. First, people seem to be confused. The original, and decidedly false rumour, was that the downs sydrome baby was not Sarah Palin's, but rather her oldest daughter. Some versions of the rumour claim that Sarah faked giving birth and had the doctor forge the birth certificate.

This is crap.

What is true is two things. First, Sarah Palin, while carrying Trig, did pre-natal tests and discovered that he had Down's Syndrome. Becuase Palin believes life to be sacred and not something to be tossed aside when it becomes inconvenient, she chose to give Trig a chance to live and love and be happy instead of killing him before he had a chance to incovenience his mother. Trig is now about 1 year old.

Second, Palin's 17 year old daughter has became pregnant a few months ago. My understanding is that they have kept it out of the media for two or three months, though close political advisors and the McCain campaign knew about it. Her daughter is engaged to the father, and they are not killing the baby (I think it says horrible things about our society that this needs to be made explicit) and while it is certainly inconvientient, the Palin family does not seem to be embarrased by this (nor should they be).

The President Is Not God

People forget this sometimes, and the candidates seem to forget it more often than most people, but Scott Ott has an excellent take on it, "Lame Duck Bush Loses Power to Direct Hurricanes"

A Line I Missed

If I could ask Obama one question (which presumably he would have to answer completely honestly), I would ask how seriously he meant this line from his speech in Denver:

Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us.

I missed this line the first time I read through his speech, but now that I see it, it disturbs me profoundly.

If he truly believes this, as in he believes it is possible for the government to serve an actively positive role in our lives, then I am truly frightened.

A Question Of Message

It amazes me just how tightly on message the Obama campaign keeps itself and its supporters, especially compared to the exceedingly poor job McCain is doing in that regaurd. If I am certain of anything in this campaign, it is that Obama hopes for change, and if I am certain of nothing, it is because McCain doesn't seem to have any sort of unifying theme anywhere. Heck, I don't even know what thier campaign slogan is.

This dynamic is coming out in full force with the new Sarah Palin related messages. From the left it is one blinding criticism of her experience. Each and every left wing opinion peice about Palin mentions the same few facts, that she has only two years of being governor, was a mayor of a smaller town than Obama's senatorial district, and that she is not ready to lead when (not if for these people) McCain keels over, which they expect to happen any day now.

On the right, by contrast, I have heard all sorts of cheerleading for Palin, but every columnist has a different cheer. Some say she is good because of abortion (she insisted on raising her downs sydrome baby instead of killing it), others because of fical conservatism, others respond to the experience charge by saying that the VP slot is the best place for a candidate to get experience, and the end result is a large number of strange and varied pro-Palin arguments.

This dynamic seems to arise from the fact that everything is working for Obama, and nothing for McCain. Obama's campaign is a tight ship, with solid ties to the netroots who seem to be at an unprecedented point of unity (with the Clintonites starting to shut up) and the media is reading his press releases like messages from heaven. McCain, on the other hand, seems to be just muddling by, only now waking up to the fact that it sort of helps to have a little organization when running for president.

I know I need to quit writing about horse-race nonsense, but it is just so much easier than figuring out issues.

Long Term Thinking

This is not a novel observation, I am sure, but why is it that the same democrats who oppose permitting private oil drilling because the benefits are small and far away (never mind that there are no costs to the government or society from it) also insist that we need the government to regulate industry because it is incapable of long term thinking?

Similarly, Greg Mankiw uncovered an old article about Barney Frank opposing the sort of regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (two government corportations) that we need right now. If these were private entities, they could never have gotten into the sort of trouble they are in now, but because the Democrats wanted them to sacrifice their long term financial interest for the short term political gain associated with "being responsible for expanding homeownership".

Also similar (at least to my mind) is the lack of understanding of where government resources come from. Obama wants to "create" 5 million jobs in the green energy field. Setting aside the fact that the president cannot create jobs unless he takes people away from other jobs, Coyote has the explanation of why this is absurd.

The Only Two Reasons To Be Worried About Palin

The Harrison Scenario and the BattleStar Galactica Scenario. I will say that in the latter case, Palin is more attractive than Roslin, which will make the movie that much better.

I do encourage you to click that link

"Predictions by political scientists are always wrong"

I, however, an am economist, so if I apply economic methodology, or simple statistics, I can tease out the winner of the presidential race. Here are a bunch of political scientists who built big complex models showing why some completely unrelated factor is going to be the driving force here.

My reasoning, however, derives from this website (which is really the only "horse race" site you need). The fact is that the election hinges on Virginia, Ohio, Colorado and Nevada, and when I say "hinges on" I mean that those are the four states McCain has to win to win. Math wise, McCain has to win every state he has locked up, plus the toss ups of Virginia, Ohio, and Colorado (which is almost out of swing territory for Obama anyway) to tie with Obama. The next closest swing state is Nevada, which McCain would need to pull for a win (because a tie would go to the legislature, which would pick Obama) although a McCain win in New Hampshire (the next closest state) would do it as well.

In short, quite a lot has to go right for McCain, in places where they are rather unlikely to go right for him. Beyond the number of individual things he needs to happen, the fact is that there are really only two swing state scenarios where McCain wins (OH, VA, CO, and either NV or NH), while there are a large number of plausible scenarios where Obama wins. Probablilistically, McCain is screwed.

All of this will be moot under one (or more) of three conditions: A large external event which shifts public priorities, A large scandal/blunder that alienates large numbers of independents or discourages the base, Barr wins his case in Texas to keep the major parties off the ballot (see a previous post for that fun, see the Texas Sec. of State office to see if anything has changed). All of those possibilities, however, are outliers in the set of posibilities, especially with the Obama campaign being so disciplined and seeing how little the Georgia war affected priorities.

Cliff Notes: Obama

Government cannot solve all our problems. Just the ones involving energy, education, work, the weather, cities, the countryside, sick children, sick mothers, joblessness, hopelessness, and frightening foreigners who do not live in Iraq. Now if you'll all look under your seats, every one of you is going home with a new car!

Courtesy of Reason

I Was Wrong

GDP did not grow 1.9% in Q2, which was one of the main signs I was pointing at to say that the economy is not in that much danger. Those figures have been revised to 3.3%. Take that, pessimists-- now your glass is only 1/4 empty.

Interesting Post

Not mine, but Greg Mankiw's.

In Four Years, Will We Be Yearning For The Relative Peace Of The Bush Years?

Remember, Bush campaigned on a humble foriegn policy, and aside from anything that could be labeled "War On Terror" he has avoided any Clinton style interventions.

Well, it turns out that those Clinton style interventions have made it into the Democratic platform this year. Since Iraq is winding down naturally, and neither candidate will withdraw from Afghanistan any time soon, we may be facing a sitution where the pro-war candidate, in practice, is not McCain but Obama.

Of all the simmering world crises, the only one McCain seems more likely to get involved in than Obama would be Georgia. No one is going into Iran unless the Isralies force our hand, Obama has talked about intervening in Darfur, and the platform mentions Zimbabwe (of all places) by name.

Barr Wins Texas?

Yesterday, the Bob Barr campaign sent out an interesting link to the Texas Secretary of State's office. Click on it. Go ahead, I will wait.

Now, tell me what was missing from that page.

If you guessed "McCain and Obama", you win! The letter I got today adresses this interesting fact in a way that promises much excitement on the horizon:

Dear Jeb,

As it stands now, Bob Barr is the Lone Candidate in the Lone Star State.

As the filing deadline passed this week, Bob Barr was the only presidential candidate legally certified on the ballot in Texas.

The new Texas law is clear:

A political party is entitled to have the names of its nominees for president and vice-president of the United States placed on the ballot in a presidential general election if . . . before 5 p.m. of the 70th day before presidential election day, the party's state chair signs and delivers to the secretary of state a written certification of the names of the party's nominees for president and vice-president . . .

Given that the deadline passed on Tuesday, Senator Obama was nominated on Wednesday, and Senator McCain has not even announced his selection for Vice President, the Republican and Democrat parties in Texas were technically unable to certify their candidates by the deadline.

However, I have a sneaking suspicion that the ballot situation in Texas will magically correct itself.

Since we sent out our release yesterday regarding Bob being the only presidential candidate certified in Texas, a spokeswoman for the Texas Secretary of State's office stated that, "Upon further checking, both parties filed before the deadline. We expect their amended filings after both parties finish their nominating process at the conventions."

Upon further checking . . .

Hmmm . . .

As it turns out, upon further checking , we were able to collect 10,000 more signatures in West Virginia a few days after that early deadline passed.

Upon further checking, we found that ballot substitution is permitted in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.

Also, upon further checking, we found that Maine stopped accepting our petitions a week earlier than they had done in the past.

Not to mention that, upon further checking, we do object to the state of New Hampshire insisting that two libertarian candidates for president be listed on the ballot.

Finally, upon further checking, we found that the signature thresholds in Oklahoma are a bit too high.

Will our diligence pay off for us in West Virginia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Maine and Oklahoma where we have active interests?

Do you think that John McCain and Barack Obama's names will eventually be printed on the ballot in Texas?

I would be willing to make an educated guess and say that we're going to have to fight our hearts out to get on the ballot in the states above while the Republican and Democrat candidates won't have to lift a finger to secure their place on the Texas ballot.

. . . that is unless we make a stand in Texas.

And that's exactly what we're going to do.

This situation in Texas is a perfect opportunity to highlight the double standard that exists in our nation.

Over the past several decades, Libertarians have spent millions of dollars, filed countless numbers of lawsuits while being sued countless numbers of times over their right to be on the ballot. Thousands of people have put in their time, energy, earnings and passion in an effort that, in the end, simply allows a voter to see a candidate's name printed on the ballot.

Throughout every battle that we engage in each election season, we must dot every "I" and cross every "T" or face the consequences of failure for our ballot drives.

Even when we follow the letter of the law, as we did in Pennsylvania, we still face challenges that drain our financial resources and strain our staff.

Should we give Barack Obama and John McCain a pass in Texas and look the other way? Would they do that for us?

. . . I don't think so.

If John McCain and Barack Obama want to bend the rules to get on the ballot in Texas, they're going to do it with the Barr Campaign and tens of thousands supporters looking on and scrutinizing their every move.

If you want to join us and support our efforts in Texas and around the nation, now is the time to do it.

Our campaign is taking off with tremendous opportunity and we're going to need your commitment to kick it into a higher gear.

A significant gift before the holiday weekend will help us roar into September and face our challenges in Texas, Pennsylvania and many other states.

Please consider a gift of $1,000, $500, $100 or any other amount Also, if you can give up to the maximum, please do so soon as September 4th represents the close of our primary season.

Donations can be made to the Barr Campaign by US Citizens here. Even if you don't want him elected, isn't $25 worth it for the possibility of the two party system being taken down a notch?

The Accomplishments of Barack Obama

I subscribe to Sen Tom Coburn's (R-OK) daily pork report, where he lists all the new pork his office has found in the previous day. Though it is run by a Republican, today it has corrected a misperception of mine regaurding Barack Obama.

For the longest time, I had believed that Obama had accomplished nothing of note while in the Senate. It turns out that:

Sen. Barack Obama sought more than $3.4 million in congressional earmarks for clients of the lobbyist son of his Democratic running mate, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, records show. Obama succeeded in getting $192,000 for one of the clients, St. Xavier University in suburban Chicago.

Compare that to John McCain, who has been at the forefront (well, perhaps behind the real crusaders like Paul, Flake, Coburn and Hensarling) of the war against earmarks and pork for some time in the Senate.

As an aside, it has been a while since I posted a summarry of the pork report. Here is what the Coburn office found since yesterday:

• Senator Barack Obama sought more than $3.4 million in congressional earmarks for clients of the lobbyist son of his running mate, Senator Joe Biden
• National Science Foundation study claims that despite federal spending increases for science research in higher education, funding has failed to keep up with inflation
• National Science Foundation grant pays to send New Zealand photographer to Antarctica
• National Science Foundation to spend $600,000 to study inbreeding of antelopes
  National Science Foundation grant of $326,733 pays for expedition to Alaska to find ice worms (none were found)
• $1.25 million federal grant will go toward constructing an annex with a snack bar and a place to sit and overlook a fossil dig site
• National Science Foundation research “rehabilitating the image of modern Neanderthals” by demonstrating they were not less intelligent than humans
• National Science Foundation will provide free tuition for a full year of drawing classes for children
• Department of Homeland Security official who hired a disgraced Minnesota state official quits
• Indiana sheriff misused federal justice grants to pay for campaign supplies for his re-election campaign, personal trips, and travel expenses for his stepdaughter
• 72 percent of New Orleans residents believe that the billions of dollars spent on Hurricane Katrina federal recovery money has been “mostly misspent”
• Louisiana PBS affiliate damaged by Katrina has received a SBA loan, federal grants, and assistance from PBS, but says "we did not get the FEMA funding, so we are not whole."
• Work on New Orleans homes billed by contractors and paid for by the federal government was not performed in many instances

As you can see, it is more of a laundry list of corruption, waste, and inefficiency then it used to be. If you want to sign up, email Roland_Foster@coburn.senate.gov and ask to be added to the pork report.

UPDATE: It is for this tremendous accomplishment that he is being heralded in Denver by greek columns. This is to feed his ego and give him self confidence, which is important because he is the shyest and most humble presidential candidate we have had in years.

Midnight Thoughts

Why am I up this late?

Why am I eating white cheddar cheez-its, which are probably the most vile things I have put in my mouth in quite some time?

Complete non-sequitor: Brian Caplan asks why anti-free marketers are against government intervention in social issues (broadly speaking). He lists some pertinent questions:

1. Are markets for ideas/culture less subject to market failure than other markets? Why or why not?

2. Is well-intended regulation of idea/culture markets more likely to have unintended negative consequences than well-intended regulation of other markets?

3. Is regulation of idea/culture markets less likely to be well-intended than regulation of other markets?

4. Is the average consumer a better judge of his own best interest in idea/culture markets than in other markets?

5. Is efficiency less normatively important in idea/culture markets than in other markets? If so, what normative goal(s) do we satisfy by sacrificing efficiency?

6. Should countries with weak civil liberties liberalize their regulation of idea/culture markets? If so, would you advocate "shock therapy"? Why or why not?

These are good questions, but they make me wonder this- what's up with the exact opposite of these people; those Republicans who are (again, broadly speaking) opposed to larger government in the economy but stereotypically in favor of intervention in social issues.

Except that I think the sterotype dicotamy is not quite accurate, or at least not as perplexing as is the dicotomy on the Democratic side. In the modern era, social conservatism seems driven largely by three things- Opposition to abortion, homophobia, and anti-immigrant sentiment. Of those three things, the first is a completely legitimate government function (preventing murder) by anyone's standard, and thus cannnot really be called an extention of government power. The third is taking a legitimate government function (policing the border) and squeezing it perhaps past the point where it is a good idea, but still residing fully within the category of "legitimate". As for the homophobia, it seems to be waning, it isn't a strict pre-requisite to get into the socially conservative club (actually, I think only abortion is the deal breaker for that club these days), and doesn't involve that much government intervention in the grand scheme of things (assuming marriages are going to be licensed at all, this is just one more line on the form).

What I am getting at here is this: Democrats are protrayed as the party that wants the government out of your life and into your pocketbook, while republicans are portrayed as the party that wants the government out of your bank and into your life. Because of that, many small government activists seem to throw thier hands up and say that you cant win. But what they don't seem to realize is that, in the modern American political context, the scope for restrictions on the economy is so much wider and deeper than it is for restrictions on your personal life, that the Republican party seems like a much more natural fit between the two parties for libertarian types.

I hope that was coherant.

This Made Me Happy

Perhaps you will be happy too? via teh internets.

TV programming from the esteemed Dr. Boli.

A terrible idea. If you don't see why this is a terrible idea, there is something seriously wrong with your creativity muscle or your getting into trouble bone. "nerf style excitement" is the last thing we need in every office building in the nation.

While perhaps not a cure all, unless scientist is defined broadly to include economists, this is definitely a useful warning sign.

Robits are terrible dancers. I mean that in both the low quality sense and the tremendously frightening sense. Fight the robit overlords. N.B. They aren't called "robots", they are robits, because it sounds cooler.