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Flipping the Exurbs

By Fester:

I spent a good chunk of yesterday meeting with some relatives and driving through the Washington D.C. exurbs.  And this is an area that is in trouble beneath the veneer of new construction, fresh paint and large neon-signs.  It is also an area that has historically voted Republican for economic grounds as it is an extraordinarily anti-urban and local educational arbitrage environment.  This is a Republican base area. 

Yet it is an area that is looking to flip because the pain is too high. 

We drove through my hosts' subdivision and it was massive but incomplete.  Almost one thousand houses at price points from the mid 200Ks in the New Urbanist portion of the 'village' to million dollar large single family detached houses with three and four car garages are in this project.  All of these houses were built in the past five years, and everyone had been on the HELOC treadmill of drawing out equity to finance current consumption.  However the project lies incomplete as the developers' financing for the next round failed.  The Home Owners Association can not afford a second pool, so there is a massive muddy hole in the ground where construction has stopped.  Seventy houses were foreclosed in the past year.  Many more are somewhere in the foreclosure process.  All of these homes have decreased in value from both the general market drop and the local negative externality of having an empty house nearby. 

The pain is widespread and real, and the second order impacts will be as large or larger than the first order impacts as the entire local/basic economy was structured on new construction with high costs that could only be justified by an increasing population with increasing incomes.  That population is not coming as the next wave of houses will not be built for another decade.  The franchises are high end franchises that are only viable once their consumer bases have taken care of their fixed costs, their quasi-fixed discretionary costs (braces for the kids, swimming lessons etc) and their core discretionary spending is satisfied.  The franchises are based on capturing the truly disposable income of the area.  The combination of fifty mile commutes in a $4.11/gallon environment, and job uncertainty has dramatically decreased local unattached disposable income.

The decline of the minor local business community and the concurrent decline in housing values will devalue the local educational arbitage of having a 'superior' sclhool district just a little bit further out.  This will be an escalating and viscious cycle.

When I had lunch with my relatives who are base Republican voters (white, middle age, self-identifying as Christian), they brought up politics and asked if I was working for any candidate this cycle as they know I had done that work in the past.  They asked how Democrats and liberals saw the primary process and what I thought about Obama and Clinton and then one announced their vote for Obama, a first time Democratic primary voter in over a decade because the pain had been too bad, and something different was needed.

I can see a lot of people coming to that conclusion in the exurbs.  Something different is needed to resolve their problems and the superstructure in which those macro problems reside.  I don't think Obama is that solution they are seeking, but in the short term, this need for something different could swing the exurbs from a dominant Republican territory with attendant massive margins that somewhat offset the urban advantages Democrats enjoy into mildly Republican districts that are insufficient to offset the waves coming out of the cities.  People are in pain, or they see enough of their social networks in pain to want to try something different.  And it is that tropism that could provide for a blowout this fall. 

British state capacity and Peak Brent Oil

By Fester:

Great Britain has been the recipient of a massive and fortunate fiscal gift for the past two generations.  It is an industrialized, modern, energy intensive nation that is also an oil exporter.  The North Sea offshore fields provided a steady, dependable counter-cyclical stream of oil revenue to the Exchequer while the mature British economy could produce returns that are comparable to returns on investment in the energy sector so the oil curse was at worse, mildly felt.  However, British oil production is in decline.  Since 2004, Britain has been a net oil importer and it has been importing in the face of record dollar and pound denominated prices.  Imports are increasing and the current account deficit is matching that increase. 

As the North Sea declines, there are fewer barrels of oil for the Government to tax, although it is receiving a much larger fee per barrel due to the price increases.  The North Sea is predicted to decline at double digit annual rates.  This will have a dramatic impact on the budget as a major revenue hole will be created that can not be papered over by higher revenues per barrel produced. 

We have looked at a similar situation in Mexico two months ago as the Mexican government receives roughly 40% of its revenue from taxation of oil production.  Mexico, like Great Britain, is seeing its major fields in serious decline.  Are these scenarios similar?

Higher prices are masking the pain at this point but Mexico is entering the Export-Land problem.  Higher local demand is keeping more of its oil off the international market and thus leading to a decline in hard currency earnings.  One estimate is that Mexican oil exports could go from a 2007 average of 1.67 million barrels per day to less than 280,000 barrels per day in 2016.  Even projecting high per barrel prices this is a net decline in overall revenue and a massive decline in revenue per capita. 

So given these trends, how much ability does the Mexican elite have to maneuver?  Not much at first glance unless they can clean up their own acts to free up resources for effective, responsive and localized public good projects that can not be matched by the drug gangs which are seeking to create a hollowed out and ineffective state. 

Great Britain is starting at a massive advantage over Mexico in that it is not the nexus of massive black market smuggling into the largest market in the world.  It also possesses significantly greater, deeper and more resilient social and civic capital networks.  However the crux of the problem remains; both governments have made very signficant promises that were significantly backed by oil revenues.  In the next few years, those oil revenues are under severe threat due to geology and physics and numerous promises may be broken as services are either not provided, or different constiuencies are taxed.  How will either government resolve the diminishment of their state capacity?

Another Bush crony resigns suddenly

By Libby

This story barely made a blip on the radar today, but I'm finding this abrupt resignation of a long time Bush crony curious.

White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin will be leaving his job this month, according to White House spokesperson Dana Perino. [...]

Hagin, an Ohio native, has been with President Bush since the 2000 campaign. Combined with experience during the first Bush presidency, Hagin has served 14 years in the White House.

Hagin was a behind-the-scenes player, who had a huge role in the post 9/11 reorganization of the U-S government and how terrorist responses would be reformed.

What do make of that dear readers? I don't recall anyone resigning who wasn't either about to be indicted for something or who wasn't suddenly struck by fear of retribution for actively participating in activities they knew were illegal. Considering the vast amount of illegal practices instituted in the aftermath of 9/11, I'm wondering what Mr. Hagin knows, that we don't.

Campaign Finance, Small Donors and Republicans

By Fester:

Mark Ambinger is passing along this tidbit from a major campaign finance reformer that has me scratching my head:

On the panel, Wertheimer, who called himself a "genetic optimist," said he is confident that the new Congress will pass, and the new president will sign, a major overhaul of the public financing system for presidential campaigns, a key feature of which is a four-to-one match of small dollar contributions.

I'm trying to figure out why Republicans would agree to that change from an institutional point of view.  Even if, or espescially if they suffer the losses that US News and World Report reports that some insiders are worried about:

Some GOP insiders now predict that the Republicans will lose at least five seats in the Senate and 15 to 20 in the House, and it could get worse if gasoline prices continue to soar and the public remains in a disgruntled mood [h/t Atrios]

The remaining Republicans in this scenario are survivors from safe seats.  Furthermore the cycle of politics and seats at risk will look better for 2010 as it is a midterm where the opposition party typically picks up a few seats, and in 2012 when the GOP faces the freshmen of the class of 2006 and sees the House shift to slightly friendlier seats due to redistricting.  The Republicans who would be left are candidates who can win in very hostile environments under the current rule set.

Changing the current rule set to give a 4:1 match significantly disadvantages current Republican office holders while advantaging current Democratic officeholders.  The Democrats have successfully built a massive small donor based financing system in the past five years.  Under the current rule set Democrats can compete with Republicans by a combination of big money and a growing small money component. This rule change would swamp Republican fundraising instead of merely matching and barely beating it.  It would also allow Democrats the option of refusing some funds and become more ideologically coherent and aligned with popular interests instead of their funders interests. 

This same argument could have been written in2002 when McCain-Feingold banned national party soft money donations.  In fact it was written that McCain-Feingold was the Democratic Party Suicide Bill.  However six years later there is a Democratic majority (of what value is another issue) in both chambers of Congress, and the Democratic presidential nominee is the favorite to win the White House.  McCain-Feingold did not have a signiffcant negative impact on the Democratic Party's long run chancess.

However the Democratic Party of 2002 and the Democratic Party of 2008 are two very different creatures in its sources of support, hot button issues, activist influence and strategic direction.  And itis at this point of conflict that I have to question why Republican officials would vote for this rule change. 

The McCain-Feingold rule changes increased the power of activists, and small donors as aggregated small donors could now compete on the same playing field as large, instititutional donors.  Small donors have far less influence per person but as a unit, they can and have repeatedly demonstrated an ability to change the direction of the party by rejiggering the incentive structure through funding good candidates, funding primaries and backing up vulnerable incumbents.  This has worked as liberal activists are fairly close to median political positions.  However Republican incumbents have a good reason to fear their activists as they tend to be further from the median voters and issues positions. 

The activists with a proven ability to raise small donor money for the Republicans are the Paulites and the Christian conservatives.  When either group is the face of the Republican candidate in a barely competitive district, the  Republican probability of a win significantly decreases.  Even more importantly from an institutional power perspective is that these groups are the grunts of the Republican coalition and not its elite.  However being able to magnify their proportional influence by a factor of three or four would massively disrupt the party's power structure.  This is a fight that incumbent Republicans and their supporters don't want to wage as they have seen the costly rearguard that the Democratic establishment has been fighting against the bloggers and small donors for the past five years. 

I just don't see why Republican incumbents will vote for this bill, or allow it to pass without a filibuster vote as it is a direct inter-party threat, and more importantly, a massive intra-party institutional threat to their power. 

 

Problems with simple data

By Fester:

Brad Delong is looking at the expected increase in short term unemployment rates due to the passage of an additional three months of unemployment extension and forces himself to chuckle at the fact that President Bush signed a good piece of policy with severe negative political repercussions for John McCain:

The rule of thumb, IIRC, is that the average duration of an unemployment spell increases by 1/4 of the increase in the duration of unemployment benefits. Thus a 13-week increase in unemployment insurance duration should increase the average unemployment spell by 3 weeks. With current mean unemployment spell duration at 17 weeks, and with roughly 2/3 of the unemployed eligible for UI, this would produce a 3/17 * 2/3 * 5.5% = 0.6% increase in the measured unemployment rate.

It seems to me likely that--whatever happens to the economy--George W. Bush has just produced four bad unemployment-rate headlines on the Saturdays August 2, September 6, and October 4. This cannot be news that John McCain is happy to hear.

I think the unemployment benefit extension is excellent policy on multiple grounds.  First, it massively reduces stress for unemployed workers and their households.  Finding a job that replaces most of an individual's lost wages is tough right now, so extra time is valuable.  Secondly, this policy provides significant reassurance to the vast majority of people who currently have jobs but fear that they could lose their jobs.  Increasing the contingent safety net of unemployment benefits allows people to breathe slightly easier when they make a discretionary purchase that they otherwise would not have made.  Finally as a stimulus measure, unemployment benefits are targeted to people who are cash flow constrained and are very likely to spend the additional income.  This produces a very high multiplier effect which stands in contrast to the low multiplier, untargetted impacts of general rebate checks.  This is good policy.

It will have its impact in encouraging people to find a better job rather than any job.  This will increase the unemployment rate.  It also illustrates the problems of tracking a single number to describe the whole picture.  A more comprehensive and accurate look at the US labor market would look at the unemployment rate, the workforce participation rate, the number of discouraged workers, and changes in hours worked and total compensation.  This more thorough look will show a summer labor market that will continue to slacken as governments begin to cut back, manufacturers down shift as inventory is too high, and energy is poised to consume 10% of GDP.  However it will not be quite as bad as the simple headline statement of the unemployment rate will imply. 

Gambling matures and declines

By Fester:

Nothing is recession proof if a recession is harsh enough.  The gambling industry has long contended that it is close to recession proof, but the Wall Street Journal is reporting on some of its problems (h/t to Johny G in Null Space comments)

Rising gasoline prices, the housing crisis and other economic troubles are prompting consumers not just to gamble less, but to spend less at the luxury boutiques and restaurants where casinos draw most of their profits. Struggling airlines are cutting service to Las Vegas. And pressures are building on casinos that cater to local residents, who have been hard hit by economic troubles.

"This is the toughest environment we've faced," says Gary Loveman, chief executive of global gambling giant Harrah's Entertainment Inc., referring to the economic challenges roiling the entire industry....

The public-debt market, spooked by four casino bankruptcies this year, reflects the concerns. Bond prices for a half-dozen casino companies, from Harrah's to small, Las Vegas-based Herbst Gaming, are trading at distressed levels, frequently below 60 cents on the dollar, on debt totaling about $5.3 billion....Credit-rating agencies have been hitting casinos hard. Moody's Investors Service, which rates $79 billion in debt at casino companies, has downgraded 17 casino companies this year. Eleven more are on review for possible downgrade,...

These debt market issues are having significant impact in Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh as the PITG group, which owns the slots parlor license for Pittsburgh, has not paid its construction crews for two months and has yet to present a final financing plan to the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board.  PITG has taken on a new partner and is stopping construction on its casino for a short time period. 

A representative from PITG Gaming says the group has a new major investor in the Majestic Star Casino, and construction at the site will temporarily stop in the coming weeks.

Bob Oltmanns, of PITG Gaming, announced that the group had secured Walton Capitol out of Chicago as a major investor.

State and local governments, including Pennsylvania, have long counted on gambling revenues to be acyclical.  They 'never' go down as people will gamble in good times with their bonus money and in bad times with their core budget money.  Even as times worsen, the hope of a $50,000 jackpot to bail out troubles is a tangible and real dream for most people, and it could be worth the twenty bucks into the one arm bandit. 

However if gambling as a mature industry  turns out to be cyclical in that its revenues increase when the economy grows and revenues decrease when the economy stagnates or shrinks, then state and local budgets are in more trouble than previously thought. State and local governments are cycle matching financial entities.  Primary sources of government income are various income and sales/use taxes that track income and employment changes and property taxes.  Property taxes are counted to provide a slowly changing and increasing base while the more variable income and sales tax revenues are counted on to provide the marginal cash flow that determine whether a taxing body is seeing income gains or declines. 

With the real estate bubble bursting, property tax collections are stagnant or declining in most locales.  The decline in jobs, and stagnation in wages combined with higher fixed cost expenditures on fuel, energy, medical care and education, all of which have some tax advantages in most locales means that sales tax revenues are not growing.  Gambling revenues were expected to provide another source of stable to growing revenue but as the industry has matured, it is responding to the business cycle as most mature industries will.  It is declining when everything else is declining, and it is stagnant when everything else is stagnant. 

 

Pittsburgh Financial Implosion??

By Fester

Chris Briem at NullSpace is getting into the weeds of the new Hockey Arena's financing and notes that there could be a couple of very large problems on the horizon.  The arena has the potential of straitjacketing the City of Pittsburgh AND Allegheny County due to the bond statement's seniority arrangements AND the weak condition of the Don Barden and PITG finances.

The Pittsburgh Post Gazette has been reporting that the final financing for the casino is still not coming together:

"A combination of anxiety and curiosity has built in recent weeks surrounding Don Barden's efforts to secure $780 million in financing for the Majestic Star casino, and it could come to a head at the construction site Monday. The team of more than 20 companies erecting the North Shore casino has not been paid on time for work done in either April or May, according to the primary contractor. They agreed on one extension already at a June 16 meeting with Mr. Barden. They meet with him again on Monday, and will decide collectively what action to take if he cannot provide payment of about $10 million that is owed, said Dan Keating III, chairman of Philadelphia-based Keating Building Corp., the primary contractor."

Barden and PITG have had trouble getting financing as they have swapped principal backers and have found raising capital in the crunched credit markets much tougher than they anticipatead a few years ago.  This could have some massive regional financial impacts if the casino is either not built at all, OR if it is significantly delayed or downsized. So let's get into the weeds with Chris by reading the bond statement and working through some of the implications. The bond statement is here SEA_arenabond_2007.pdf and we'll start with Chris's analysis:

The core financing in the form of $7.5 annually is indeed slated to come from him, but he isn't really involved in building it. So who does bear the risk of the arena project.

One answer is the Sports and Exhibition Authority (SEA) because THEY ALREADY BORROWED THE MONEY. That raises lots of questions. If the Barden money stream does not start flowing in as expected, what happens? ....

the revenue backing the project are not limited to the revenues specifically tied to the arena, to include the Barden payments, rent or other sources.. but all the SEA revenue. At least that is my reading. So before these bonds could default to bond insurers it seems the holders have claims against most SEA revenue.

WARNING --- SOME SERIOUSLY NERDY FINANCIAL WONKERY AND SPECULATION AHEAD --- Read at your own risk to your mental health.... 

The Sports and Exhibition Authority currently is paying off the bonds for most of the major destination projects in the city center right now.  These include the two new stadiums, Heinz Field and PNC Park, and the Convention Center.  The Convention Center is a money losing proposition at this time that is consistently blowing a hole in the current Sports and Exhibition Authority budget.  It already drew upon the Regional Asset District's general fund of the 1% county sales tax to cover its 2007 operating deficit.  The SEA is drawing upon a wide variety of general revenues to pay its pre-existing bond obligations. 

So you can see there are significant revenue streams for the SEA from the county sales tax, hotel tax and dedicated parking taxes.  Those revenues are already assigned to pre-existing debt obligations, but I am a bit worried when I read the bond security summary from page 6 of the statement:

The Bonds are payable from, and are secured solely by, certain payments and other revenues to be received by the Authority including: (a) Special Revenues; (b) Swap Receipts; (c) Commonwealth Lease Payments under the Commonwealth Lease (each as hereinafter defined); and (d) other moneys pledged to or held by the Trustee under the Indenture for such purposes.

THE BONDS ARE LIMITED OBLIGATIONS OF THE AUTHORITY PAYABLE SOLELY FROM THE TRUST ESTATE PLEDGED UNDER THE INDENTURE. THE BONDS ARE NOT OBLIGATIONS OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA OTHER THAN THE COMMONWEALTH’S OBLIGATION TO MAKE ANY ANNUAL LEASE PAYMENTS TO THE AUTHORITY UNDER THE COMMONWEALTH LEASE.... THE FULL FAITH AND CREDIT OF THE COMMONWEALTH IS NOT PLEDGED FOR THE PAYMENT OF THE BONDS. NEITHER THE CREDIT NOR THE TAXING POWER OF THE CITY OF PITTSBURGH, THE COUNTY OF ALLEGHENY, OR ANY POLITICAL SUBDIVISION THEREOF IS PLEDGED FOR THE PAYMENT OF THE BONDS......

What are the special revenues?  From page 27 of the entire statement and page 17 of the counted pages:

“Special Revenues” include certain rental payments expected to be received by the Authority
pursuant to the Arena Lease (its sublease of the Arena to the Arena Operator), payments it expects to receive from the entity which receives a license to operate a slot machine casino in the City (the "Casino Operator"), and payments it expects to receive from the Economic Development and Tourism Fund (“Economic Development & Tourism Fund”), a fund established pursuant to Act 71 of 2004 of the Commonwealth (4 Pa. C.S.A. §1407) ("Act 71").

In English, the special revenues are the arena lease payments, and two streams of casino revenue.  The arena lease payments are paid by the arena operator and collected from the users and tenants of the arena, including he Penguins.  The two slot streams are a $7,500,000 annual payment pledged by Don Barden and PITG, the slot license holder, and another $7,500,000 from the state of Pennsylvania.  The state money is from a bond issue backed by casino revenue.

And here is the genesis of a potential financial implosion.  The arena's financing is dependent upon the casino being built and rapidly generating revenues. The arena is already being built in anticipation of the casino running on time and on budget.  The vast majority of the SEA's ability to repay is tied to the casino.  however the casino looks like it will not be completed on time due to financing problems and more importantly, it will be completed when disposable incomes are shrinking.  Ooahhhh Shit....

Despite the bond statement limited the SEA's responsibility to only the dedicated special revenues, interest rate swaps, lease payments and insurance payments, this bond structure could turn itself into an implicit moral bond structure. 

The county and the city have authorized the SEA to perform some local government functions, including agreements to place golden handcuffs on the city amusement tax, and have allowed the SEA to borrow off the books.  If this debt is placed on the books, neither entity can handle the additional debt load strain.  Furthermore, the SEA has current claims on varying amounts of local revenue, including payments from RAD that are dedicated to rehabbing the current Mellon Arena and are due to terminate in the near future.  Local entities are counting on additional RAD funding becoming available.  IF the SEA or the city/county decide that the implied cost to their credit ratings are too high to use insurance, that RAD revenue will be eaten up and could also displace other currently funded projects.

This right now is a low probability event but as the troubles with PITG continue, combined with a slowing economy, the probability of an implosion increases.

More On McCain's War Record

By Ron Beasley

"Who started this rumor that [John McCain] was a war hero? Where does that come from, aside from himself? About his suffering in the prison war camp?" ~Gore Vidal

McCain gets a pass because is supposedly “a hero.” I’ve never been sure why he is a hero. He graduated 4th or 5th from the bottom of his class. He wrecked three of his own aircraft (if I remember correctly) and he was captured in Viet Nam. Unless I missed the part where he jumped on a grenade to save the lives of his fellow servicemen, I don’t know where the hero part comes in. ~ John Cole

This is a follow up to Cernig's post below.  It just goes to show how broken our system is that it's OK to Swift Boat a real war hero, John Kerry, but it's not OK to ask legitimate questions about John McCain's military record.  The corporate media was at best enablers and more likely supporters of the effort to lie about Kerry's record but become indignant when anyone even asks questions about St John's war record.  I have already asked a few questions myself on these virtual pages a few days ago. 

I am a Vietnam era veteran I a knew some heros.  They were not fighter pilots who dropped bombs on people they couldn't see from several thousand feet. They were the points on long range patrols, they were men like Chuck Hagel who spent a year wading through rice paddies and jungles, they were the men like John Kerry on the swift boats in the delta and in the air it was the helicopter pilots who put their lives on the line everyday to get soldiers in and out of the fight.

As Jeff Klein reminds us   we deserve to see McCains military record if he wants to be Commander In Chief.

Some of the unreleased pages in McCain's Navy file may not reflect well upon his qualifications for the presidency. From day one in the Navy, McCain screwed-up again and again, only to be forgiven because his father and grandfather were four-star admirals. McCain's sense of entitlement to privileged treatment bears an eerie resemblance to George W. Bush's.

Despite graduating in the bottom 1 percent of his Annapolis class, McCain was offered the most sought-after Navy assignment -- to become an aircraft carrier pilot. According to military historian John Karaagac, "'the Airdales,' the air wing of the Navy, acted and still do, as if unrivaled atop the naval pyramid. They acted as if they owned, not only the Navy, but the entire swath of blue water on the earth's surface." The most accomplished midshipmen compete furiously for the few carrier pilot openings. After four abysmal academic years at Annapolis distinguished only by his misdeeds and malfeasance, no one with a record resembling McCain's would have been offered such a prized career path.

If John McCain was not the son and grandson of admirals who would have not had the opportunity to get shot down. 

And yes Wes Clark was right

"Well, I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president," Clark said.

In fact spending five years in a cage is bound to mess up your head and maybe should disqualify him.

GOP Jokers

By Fester:

Wow, how will the Daily Show writers cope when they actually have to work for a living next year instead of smashing a softball like this one that Steve Benen is pitching:

Just this week, a group of Republican senators re-introduced the Federal Marriage Amendment to the Constitution, which, as we know, would ban gay marriage.....

But the funny part is looking over the list of the 10 original sponsors.... but there are two others whose names stand out: Sens. David Vitter (R-La.) and Larry Craig (R-Idaho).

Yes, two of the principal sponsors of a constitutional amendment to “protect” marriage include one far-right Republican who hired prostitutes and another far-right Republican who was arrested for soliciting gay sex an airport men’s room.

How do you respond to this besides guffawing?

More marriages are harmed by infidielty then by the fact that the couple down the street, or at your club or at the office happen to love each other and share the same items down below.  Wow, really how does one respond to this 'argument' to 'protect marriage' or at least scare up some votes.   

What people are you talking about....

By Fester:

IndigoWatcher in comments to Cernig's 15 Spines post makes a broad statement that is indicative of a normal human mistake --- generalizing from a non-random sample:

We must either cleanse the Democratic Party's leadership from within or move on to a new party that will represent the will of the people

I have absolutely no problem with the first part of the statement, changing the Democratic Party's leadership and incentive structures for what I perceive to be positive behavior.  This is a project that I have put five years in from door knocking, volunteer coordination, media outreach, policy writing, carping from the sidelines, voting, donating and agitating.  However the second part of the sentence is where I have problems.

Anyone who routinely reads this blog, or can define the terms Blue Dog, FISA, SPR, pay-go and give examples of their policy/political implications is be definition wierd.  We are political junkies/nerds, and activists.  We are not the typical voter or citizen. We devote the energy and cognitive surplus to politics and policy that other people devote to their cooking or their yet to be written novels or their golf game or their sports team.

The phrase will of the people when it is specialized to what interests a particular subset of highly active and engaged individuals is a bastardization of the term.  The will of the people is consistently to be left alone so they won't have to think too much about FISA or telecom immunity or pay-go rules.  These are high salience issues for a very small number of people. In most cases the 'will of the people' as expressed as an opinion will be a lightly held opinion.  Strongly held opinions that can not be easily traded-off or shifted from high salience are unusual. 

Mike Lux at OpenLeft noted that he is in the tank for the Democratic nominee for the last five months of the cycle because the opinion and issue space has stabilized and can no longer be influenced by dedicated activists who believe that there is a significant difference between the parties:

being able to hold a politician accountable is having the real power to actually have a negative impact on something they really care about, namely getting elected and passing legislation they want to pass (although there might be a few other smaller things some politicians might care about). Unless you have the ability and willingness to mess with a politician in a serious way on either of those things, I don't think you can hold them accountable....

Progressives hold a potential Presidential candidate accountable in the years before they decide to run because those candidates know they might need progressive support in a primary fight. We can hold them accountable all through the primary process because there's always another candidate that can be helped, or you can hurt their general standing with the Democratic voters

At this point the electoral space has removed leverage from the high information and highly motivated activist/involved voters and distributed that leverage to the general population.  By definition, the general electorate is not as motivated about politics as the activist classes that fuel the primary campaigns and primary seasons.  The general electorates' concerns are not as sharply defined and formed as the concerns addressed in the primary and pre-primary phases of the election cycle.  At this point the will of the people as expressed by voters choosing from a limited choice menu of candidates and policy preferences will not reflect exactly what any one individual wants. 

The will of the people is seldom clear cut and it is always muddy in the general election. Broad trends and a few bright take-aways can be gathered, but even then it can be re-muddied.  For instance the 2006 mid-terms could be seen as a public rejection of the Bush Administration, but that has not translated into immediate policy steps.  Instead we still have a supine Congress caving into the White House and the fear of fear itself.  Others argued that the will of the people was to check corruption and self-dealing.  The will of the people is an excellent trope, but it is much harder to dowse than a simple exhortion to follow the self-evident. 

The Right To Arm Bears

By Cernig

And just like that, pfft goes the Right's newly minted meme that the current Supreme Court has a liberal majority hellbent on left-wing legislating from the bench and on radically re-interpreting the Constitution. They have struck down Washington D.C.'s gun ban as unconstitutional:

The justices voted 5-4 against the ban, with Justice Antonin Scalia writing the opinion for the majority.

At issue in District of Columbia v. Heller was whether Washington's ban violated the right to "keep and bear arms" by preventing individuals -- as opposed to state militias -- from having guns in their homes.

"Undoubtedly some think that the Second Amendment is outmoded in a society where our standing army is the pride of our nation, where well-trained police forces provide personal security and where gun violence is a serious problem," Scalia wrote. "That is perhaps debatable, but what is not debatable is that it is not the role of this court to pronounce the Second Amendment extinct."

And also, just like that, Obama's campaign comes out with another Blairism.

the Obama campaign is disavowing what it calls an "inartful" statement to the Chicago Tribune last year in which an unnamed aide characterized Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., as believing that the DC ban was constitutional.

"That statement was obviously an inartful attempt to explain the Senator's consistent position," Obama spokesman Bill Burton tells ABC News.

The statement which Burton describes as an inaccurate representation of the senator's views was made to the Chicago Tribune on Nov. 20, 2007.

In a story entitled, "Court to Hear Gun Case," the Chicago Tribune's James Oliphant and Michael J. Higgins wrote ". . . the campaign of Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said that he '...believes that we can recognize and respect the rights of law-abiding gun owners and the right of local communities to enact common sense laws to combat violence and save lives. Obama believes the D.C. handgun law is constitutional.'"

As John Cole wrote yesterday:

No, I don’t have buyers remorse, yes, he still is better than Hillary or McCain, no, I am not disillusioned (I never thought he was a flaming liberal in the first place). I am, however, disgusted, and I will caution the Obama campaign that “better than McCain” is not much of a rallying cry. We all remember how “anything is better than Bush” turned out in 2004.

I've written much the same a few times now.

Indeed, Bush ran successfully twice on a no-U-turns basis of "you may not like him, but you know where he stands", something McCain is emulating with his wholly fictitious "Straight Talk Express" narrative. In today's political climate, flip-flops and smarmy attempts to spin now-abandoned positions of principle as "inartful" are are more harmful than just going against the national grain might be. I understand that Obama wants to move toward the center now that the primary is over and the general must be fought, but inartfully doing so won't help. He needs to redicover his spine.

Value of Safe Seat Primaries?

By Fester:

Two years ago, in April 2006, I projected a Democratic House caucus in which I that it would be an effective governing majority.  This week's losses on FISA capitulation and the ineffectiveness of following up on Scott McClellan testimony concerning the highly probable systemic obstruction of justice in the Plame case reinforce that basic point.  I had laid out a decision checklist on backing aggressive primary challengers for 2008 in order to seek better Democrats or at the very least more pliable from a progressive angle Democrats.  I think the three major primary challengers to Democratic incumbents that netroots activists funded met my criteria.  However these challengers have not appreciably changed the incentive structure for Democratic Congresscritters and I am curious if one element of my decision matrix is wrong:

Does the incumbent come from a safe district with a high Democratic PVI advantage?

I am questioning the value of restricting the challenge list to safe seat Democrats.  Chris Bowers has the revised and expanded Bush Dog list of Democrats who voted for FISA immunity, amnesia and repeal of significant elements of the Church reforms as well as voting to fund Iraq with no strings attached.  These Democrats come from districts that range from R+18 to D+17.  The traditional techniques would be focused on the highly Democratic districts on the theory that  losing any seat would be unacceptable and areas such as Prince George County, Maryland will not elect a Republican no matter what.  This system gives a pass to swing and tough seat Democrats.   Unfortunately that is enough seats to allow for very bad laws to go through while our intelligence is insulted.  It has not worked in changing the incentive structure of tough votes. 

In 2006 we did not know if the Democratic House leadership would run the House under the majority of the majority system or the majority of the whole system.  Majority of the whole greatly favors conservative Democrats as they can credibly threaten to defect on any deal and create a second option with the Republican caucus.  We have seen this conservative governing coalition dominate the Iraq war debate.  Giving conservative Democrats from tough seats a pass enables Republican favored policies to pass the House.  We need to rethink this.

High Republican PVI districts that are represented by Democrats, especially newer Democrats who do not have long standing relationships to the area require a Democratic incumbent to line all of their ducks in a row and hope the GOP is locally screwed if they are to be re-elected.  This means the liberals within the representative's winning coalition must be willing to work their tails off for a candidate who will routinely screw them over at the local and national level.   

If we assume that all office holders base their votes on some calculus of personal principal/policy preferences and political calculation, liberal/progressive netroots activists can change the formulation of the political calculation so that soft principal votes become more calculation votes in order to maintain the liberal wing of the electoral coalition. 

Assuming Democrats pick up double digit House seats this fall to improve the cushion, the threat of losing one to five R+10 or worse seats because of liberal opposition may be a worthwhile trade-off.  As a defensive action, electing and enabling conservative Democrats was a necessary first step but it is an insufficient step to changing the political calculus and trends within American politics.  It is time to find better leaders either through new candidates supported by new nodes of power, or by changing the existing political power matrix.  And challenging conservative Democrats in conservative seats from the left will force change even at, or more truthfully, because of the highly probable net loss of seats that this type of action would force. 

Resource Ownership and Exploitation Incentives

By Fester   

The Wall Street Journal Editorial page has an interesting column from Mary A. O'Grady that trips over its ideology instead of making a very interesting point that incentives and scopes of responsibility matter.

neither environmentalists nor Brazilian politicians have raised concerns about exploiting oil in the waters off the Brazilian coast.

That's quite a contrast with attitudes in the U.S., where offshore exploration and development has been all but shut down save in the Gulf of Mexico....

I have another theory. And mine fits the pattern of resource development – or lack thereof – all over the Western Hemisphere. It comes down to this: Where government has the property right, restrictions on development tend to be low. But when the private sector is the owner, environmental concerns blossom. [emphasis mine]

Now this is an interesting argument that is detracted by significant red and green baiting and bashing in the rest of the column.  For the sake of argument, let us assume it is true.  Why would it be true then?

Let us assume that mineral exploitation can create significant externalities which are costs borne by people who are not getting paid to bear those costs.  For example, near Pittsburgh, a company wants to open a strip mine on county park land to mine for coal.  This project would destroy a biologically sensitive area while also running a dozen trucks an hour down a residential street.  The residents of that street will bear noise, particulate and traffic externalities and are opposed to this plan.  I'll bear the uncompensated loss of 100 acres of park land that I use.  The theoretical benefits are small decreases in the price of coal and a tiny increase in local tax revenue that means per-capita taxes decrease mildly from what they otherwise would have been. 

Externalities are generated by most activities.  Politics can be a forum in which externalities are adjudicated and compensated through side deals.  When a broad swath of people are buying into a project and believe it is value neutral or an improvement to their own standards of living, opposition will be low.  Government owned resources facilitate this type of buy-in process as different groups can be compensated for the project.  And there is everything right with that, it is standard Pareto optimization analysis.  Government has a higher probability of listening and reacting to a diverse group of stakeholders.

Private resource extraction groups have a single overriding objective and that is to make a profit.  Community outreach, environmental mitigation, externality minimization often occur but these are subsidiary activities that support the profit making objective.  And since these are subsidiary activities that are less reliable activities.  A minimal coalition of support is often what is assembled for a project in which some people are compensated for their losses, while others are still bearing costs without benefits. 

Furthermore since we assume that private activity conforms to profit maximization behavior, we can assume that cleaning up after creating a mess, intentionally or accidentally, is not a high priority.  The Exxon Valdez case is still in the courts nearly 20 years after it ran aground.  In less developped countries, shells of shells of off shore subsidiaries can often be stripmined of all assets while leaving all responsibilities and liabilities that the active parent company had incurred.  Politics is a position of quasi-transparent accountability. 

So there are interesting reasons why government owned development rights may be preferable than privately owned mineral exploitation rights as accountability and externalities are more likely to resolved. 

Nothing matters without verified voting

By Libby

Via Avedon comes a story about a touchscreen voting machine screwup so convoluted I can barely follow the particulars about what happened but the bottom line is the results of this vote are in no way guaranteed to reflect the will of the voters.

There was probably no nefarious attempt at sabotage here. It appears to be simple human error, but that's the point. The machines are operated by humans who are prone to make errors in programming and mistakes in judgment. And this was just a minor local election but the ramifications for November, when it will really matter, can't be overstated.

No system is perfect and someone can always find a way to commit fraud if they're determined but still, we need a tally that the public will have in confidence in as accurately reflecting their votes. I think paper ballots are our best bet, even if they use an optiscan system to tally. At least there's a hard copy to hand count in the event glitches arise.

I'm thinking now would be better than later to push our legislators into decertifying touchscreens altogether and mandating paper balloting for everyone. Having a publicly accepted vote is more important than a instant tally. Besides, the only people who really care about instant results are political junkies and the media.

Zombie Bush will live forever

By Fester:

Paul Krugman in his column today notes that the Bush administration tax cuts and squanderous fiscal policy has produced a political poison pill that greatly reduces future option space:

I realized that the tax cuts enacted by the Bush administration are, in effect, a fiscal poison pill aimed at future administrations. True, the tax cuts won’t prevent a change in management — the Constitution sees to that. But they will make it hard for the next president to change the country’s direction.... Anyway, back to my main theme: looking at the tax proposals of the two presidential candidates, it’s remarkable and disheartening to see how effective President Bush’s fiscal poison pill has been in restricting the terms of debate.

And why be shocked at this realization. It is the same pattern of behavior that is driving the negoatiations for the Status of Forces agreement in Iraq --- lock the next admininstration into Bush's prefered course of action by creating institutional inertia behind a horrendous policy set.

And why be shocked at the SOFA --- it is the same pattern of behavior that we have seen with the changing criteria of Republican judges since the Reagan Era --- find reaonably pliant and pliable young judges without a whole lot of paper trail but the right right wing credentials and seat them on the court for thirty to forty years.

All of these steps are attempts to create gatekeepers and to charge economic, political and military rents even after the policy's support has collapsed. And it is a pattern of behavior that is to be expected.

The relevant question is how to deal with these rent seeking opportunities? I have little faith in the Democratic Congress to stand for its prerogatives by insisting that the SOFA as a full fledged security guarantee is and should be voted upon as a treaty in the Senate. I have little faith in the Congress in standing for the Constitution as Glenn Greenwald so ably demonstrates today.

I have little faith that these poison pills will be spat out and crushed in time's dust.

2nd Round of the Housing Bust

By Fester:

The first round of the housing bust has produced numerous losers.  Home owners who are facing foreclosures, homeowners who are facing decreased or negative equity, investment banks that believed their own sales jobs, and then the second order impacts of banks contracting, construction contracting and aggregate demand for everything but gasoline contracting.  Most of these impacts are immediate impacts.  There are minimal lags.

However we may be entering the second round of lagged impacts as property values decrease, local government tax bases decrease.  Kat notes that Tampa Bay is seeing an epidemic of overdue taxes:

More Tampa Bay property owners than ever before failed to pay their real estate taxes this year.

The surge is unprecedented, officials say, and the reasons are clear: a slumping real estate market, stagnant wages, growing unemployment and the rising cost of energy, goods and services....

In Pinellas, those numbers rose nearly 23 percent this year, coming on top of a 37 percent increase last year. Other counties saw even bigger increases this year: 27 percent in Hernando, 30 percent in Hillsborough and 33 percent in Pasco. 

Statewide figures are not available, but counties around Florida have seen, on average, about a 20 percent hike this year in the number of unpaid property tax accounts...

Unpaid taxes are a small but growing problem.  Most taxes are still being paid on time and the expected value of collection efforts are still high so most municipalities are not threatened by a rash of unpaid taxes.  However the big problem is a reduction in the tax base as property values first stagnated and then declined for several years in a row.  Most local governments' assessments services lag the market for a few years.  In normal times, homeowners like this as normal appreciation is not taxed for a couple of years, they get a freebie.  However in times of a declining market, homeowners want to have the government reassess every year if not every week as they want their tax bill to follow the market downwards. The  Cleveland Plains Dealer is seeing this happen:

The overall value of Summit County homes dropped 1 percent in this year's reappraisal - making it the first county- wide decrease in recent Ohio history.

That means a small part of most homeowners' tax bills will decrease. But there are bigger implications for some school districts: They will collect less money from recently passed general levies, or they will never see the increased revenue they expected.

"It's just never happened," said Scott Ebright, spokesman for the Ohio School Boards Association. "Property taxes have always increased."....

Cuyahoga Treasurer Jim Rokakis estimates a 10 percent reduction in assessed property values would cost Cleveland $10 million in revenue and its school district $3 million.

Most communities in this country will be facing either zero growth or significant declines in their assessable tax base over the next few years.  Projects that made sense to fund with the assumption of inflation based growth no longer will make sense; service expansions that were viable with no changes in the millage rate will no longer by viable, and the maintenance of current services may only be sustained by increasing millage rates or finding new revenue sources.

I think stories like this will open the way to the tax revolt of 2010 as the pain will be too strong.  As I wrote last December:

it is easier to assemble a narrow coalition to protect fixed slices of the pie. And as an intermediate term strategy this is a good way to reap a tax revolt within the next couple of years as the politics of pain will be too strong and the pallative of short term relief will be tempting; thus the symptoms of the underlying problems of short term pervese incentives, decreasing cutting edge productivity, loose credit and perpetual debt will be addresse without actually changing the actual structure of these trends.

I wrote in November that the local politics of housing and taxes will get increasingly nasty as there is a significant concentration of pain......

Significant local pressure will be brought to maintain services, improve the schools, at least comparatively, and cut tax rates and tax bills all at the same time.  This will not happen as services and schools require money.  But this will be the local political dynamic as governments will be forced between revenues and services or low taxes and no services.  Local politics across the country will get very nasty in the near future as the fundamental revenue planning assumption of always increasing property taxes will have been smashed during this budget cycle and one time fixes are used up. 

The real problem is Taboo

By Ron Beasley

We all talk about climate change, peak oil and even water shortages.  We talk about causes and solutions but there is one problem few dare discuss.  About three months ago I wrote the following:

What few address is the "real" problem - there are too many people. The estimated population of the earth in 1 AD was 200 million people. In 1800 AD it was approaching one billion, a five fold increase in 1,800 years. Between 1800 and 2000, a span of 200 years population increased six fold to over 6 billion people. This population increase was made possible in large part by fossil fuels. The reality is the earth cannot support six billion hunter-gatherers. The real solution to climate change, peak oil and water shortages can only involve population reduction. Certainly not politically correct so nothing will be done that is significant.

Much to my amazement I found the following on the opinion page of my local paper, The Oregonian, this morning;

Treading on a taboo

By Jack Hart

Each Tuesday I carry the recycling to the curb and look out over a city bristling with light rail, streetcars, bicycles, eco-roofs, and little yellow bins like mine. The greenest of the green, my city styles itself, filled with good citizens leading the way to Earth's salvation.

If only it were true. The sad fact is that unless we do something drastic, out-of-control population growth will wipe out the gains made by the most ambitious recycling and conservation programs, both here and across the planet.

Portland's fevered efforts to stave off global warming by reducing carbon dioxide began more than two decades ago. And how much progress have we made? None. Zero. Zilch. Every day we dump more planet-threatening gas into the atmosphere. Why? Because at the same time Portland's metro-area population has grown by 42 percent. We cancel out every reduction in CO2 emissions with a gain in CO2 emitters.

Projections say the metro population will grow by another million by 2030 -- even double to 3.85 million by 2060. Do you really think anything we can do will meet the goal of actually reducing total CO2 emissions?

Well, maybe you do. A strange taboo keeps us from talking about the actual cause of global warming and a deadly smorgasbord of other environmental problems. In this supposedly plain-talking era, a former presidential candidate will tell us how Viagra cured his ED, but hardly anybody will talk about what's trashing the Earth. Erectile dysfunction's a bummer. But the fate of our planet is a little more worrisome.

The taboo afflicts most media, including this newspaper. The Oregonian's Earth Day editorial urged support for politicians who back energy-efficient buildings, wind power, public transportation and so on. Everything but population control.

Leaving out the key ingredient can be downright misleading. A March 29 headline read, "Portland lessens its 'carbon footprint.' " But Portland did no such thing. Portlanders may have indeed reduced their per-capita driving by 5 percent over five years, as the story reported, but the metro area's population grew by 8 percent over the same period. The number of vehicles registered in Multnomah County has increased 45 percent since 1990. You do the math.

When it comes to global warming, we're ignoring one simple truth: The Earth doesn't care about per-capita greenhouse-gas production. It's the total amount of CO2 in the air that matters.

I like to refer to the problem as peak people.  While we have just reached or soon will reach peak oil I suspect we reached peak people sometime around 1950.  Stabalizing the population won't be enough - it must be reduced.  In a totalatarian country like China they can limit children to one per family.  Not something we can do in a Democracy but the Bible thumpers in the US are even opposed to voluntary birth control.  Now Mr Hart is a bit more optimistic than I am and gives us some suggestions as to how we can help

Five ways to help the planet

1. Eliminate the taboo that keeps us from talking about the root cause of our environmental -- and many other -- problems. Concern about overpopulation is not racist, communist, sexist or biased against the Third World. We all have a stake in this.

2. Quit mistaking per-capita pollution numbers as a sign of progress. Let's track the totals, of carbon dioxide and every other human pollutant.

3. Reward politicians who support population control with your votes. Eliminate tax breaks for more than two children. Focus foreign aid on population-control programs. Campaign for a new worldwide ethic in favor of small families.

4. Keep your own family small. World population will eventually level off only if we hold average births per woman to 2.06. We'll reduce the world population to a sustainable size only if women average no more than 1.7 children.

5. Stop treating growth as not only inevitable, but also positive. Despite recent reports, a slowdown in metro-area housing starts is not bad news.

Now I don't think that anything significant will be done but over population has a way of self correcting.  There is of course starvation and disease but as resources become scarce much of the correction will be the result of resource wars - just ask the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have already died.

Your Subserviance is now required....

By Fester:

TSA has a new policy that is not a security policy.  It is a policy of ritualistic humiliation and subservience enforcement. 

Beginning Saturday, June 21, 2008 passengers that willfully refuse to provide identification at security checkpoint will be denied access to the secure area of airports. This change will apply exclusively to individuals that simply refuse to provide any identification or assist transportation security officers in ascertaining their identity.

This new procedure will not affect passengers that may have misplaced, lost or otherwise do not have ID but are cooperative with officers. Cooperative passengers without ID may be subjected to additional screening protocols, including enhanced physical screening, enhanced carry-on and/or checked baggage screening, interviews with behavior detection or law enforcement officers and other measures. [emphasis mine] (Via Outside the Beltway)

So if I am understanding this press release correctly the policy is that if an individual is nice and subservient to a TSA official, an arrangement can be made, but if the individual is perceived to be an asshole or insufficiently deferential to TSA, they are out of luck. 

This is not a security procedure unless there is an amazing model out that which proves all potential security threats are by definition visible and loud assholes.  We saw with the 9-11 hijackers that this is not the case; they attempted to blend in and not draw too much official attention to themselves.  We know how the KGB trained their NOCs to be normal and quiet but not too quiet individuals.

This is an absurd security policy. If it was a security policy, the workarounds available to cooperative passengers who forgot their ID would also be available to the non-cooperative individuals.   However it is a policy that asserts dominance.

BJ in a great post looking at Canadian stun gun usage also notes the same basic trend.  The use of force is increasing and the threshold of force utilization is decreasing:

But despite the new rules, the percentage of Taser incidents in which the weapon was fired multiple times crept up from 42 per cent in 2005 to 45 per cent in 2007.

The investigation also revealed that in 2,200 of the 3,000 RCMP Taser incidents between 2002 and 2007, the person the Mounties were dealing with was unarmed.[Emp Added]

It's clear that the Taser is being used more for pain compliance than for actual threats. 

Using a firearm is a very high cost action for a cop.  It is a life or death decision as cops are taught to aim for center of body mass which means the chest which means the aimpoint has a high probability of killing an individual.  However tasers, stun guns and pepper sprays have much lower costs of usage as they are probabilistically less likely to cause death or lasting injury.  This, unsurprisingly, means a much higher utilization of weapons in significantly less threatening situations.  It also lowers the cost of pain compliance and humiliation.

Ahh welcome to a world of fear and abuse of power enabled by fear.  Make sure your papers are in good order and the official is in a good mood....   

Reclaiming narrative

By Fester:

James Joyner has an interesting recap of the changes that Defense Secratary Gates is imposing upon the Air Force; namely he wants the Air Force to focus on its actual mission and not on the expensive, fun and operationally less important fighter bomber things that its culture venerates and values.  The new Chief of Staff is a transport/logistics/special ops guy and the new AF Secretary is a logistics guy.  Neither of them flew fighters which is a significant break from the past.  And these are good moves on both an operational level and a budgetary level.  However I have to disagree with James' hope for Gate's future career in a potential Obama administration:

Unfortunately, time’s running out on Gates, unless he’s kept on by the next administration.

The problem is optics.  A functioning and healthy democracy needs multiple parties that are seen as credible on defense policy.  The liberals and Democrats ceded defense thinking and policy to conservatives and Republicans for most of my life and implicitly accepted the framing that Democrats can not and should not be trusted on national defense policy.  Bill Clinton reinforced this frame by bringing in Republican Bill Cohen as his SecDef in his second term. 

The Republican defense policy bench is split between the crazies, nationalists, neocons, pragmatists and realists.  Gates belongs to the combined pragamatist/realist faction.  This is a good thing and he has done good work.  And if McCain was to win the general election, I hope that Gates would be the SecDef.

However the Repbulican foreign and defense policy establishment is bundled with the Republican Party and the colossal screw-ups of Iraq and the failures in Afghanistan.  Obama selecting Gates as SecDef implicitly concedes that even with these expensive and unpopular failures, Republicans are still superior to Democrats on national security issues.    And that is not acceptable.  I have no problem with Obama creating a cabinet with Republicans in it; but those Republicans should stay in second and third tier departments or on special assignments such as nuclear non-proliferation work if possible, but not at one of the three premier posts (AG, SecState, SecDef).   

Predictable Consequences

By Fester:

My wife and I are expecting our first child at some point near Christmas and one of things that I look forward to with some trepidation is teaching our little egoist about cause and effect and an action based intepretation of intent.  Just wanting to be nice to someone does not matter if you steal their toys; they will (rightly) think you are mean and can not share.  But that is a couple of years off.

But I was thinking about this analogy when I saw the London Times lede about President Bush's concern for his historical legacy:

President Bush has admitted to The Times that his gun-slinging rhetoric made the world believe that he was a “guy really anxious for war” in Iraq. He said that his aim now was to leave his successor a legacy of international diplomacy for tackling Iran.

In an exclusive interview, he expressed regret at the bitter divisions over the war and said that he was troubled about how his country had been misunderstood. “I think that in retrospect I could have used a different tone, a different rhetoric.”

Maybe he should have thought about the probable consequences to his reputation before engaging in a war of choice built on lies, deception and bullshit... 

Maybe he should have thought about the probable consequences about playing to the Id of his base...

Maybe he should have thought about the probable consequences when he based his entire re-election campaign on being willing to saber rattle.....

Tough shit --- you earned this reputation and I hope it headlines your obituary some day. 

Racism In America

By Ron Beasley

Paul Krugman writes today:

Fervent supporters of Barack Obama like to say that putting him in the White House would transform America. With all due respect to the candidate, that gets it backward. Mr. Obama is an impressive speaker who has run a brilliant campaign — but if he wins in November, it will be because our country has already been transformed.

Mr. Obama’s nomination wouldn't have been possible 20 years ago. It’s possible today only because racial division, which has driven U.S. politics rightward for more than four decades, has lost much of its sting.

I have seen this happen in my lifetime.  When I graduated from high school in Portland, Oregon in 1964 the city was still segregated.  The blacks lived in North and Northeast Portland.  My west side high school had virtually no black students.  A few years later I had moved from the city and was raising a family and working in the suburbs.  I was working next to and sometimes for the blacks I had not seen when I was growing up.  It went even deeper out there in the burbs - I had black neighbors and my son's best friend was black.  Krugman claims the transition that took place in the US was the result of a lowering urban crime rate.  I think that simplifies that issue.  I think the most important reason is that the races got to know each other and came to realize we weren't that different. 

Krugman is correct - this is bad news for what now passes as the conservative movement.  Through Lee Attwater and Karl Rove the Republican Party converted bigotry into political success.   But racism is not dead in America.  Obama will probably not carry Appalachia.  There are still people who will vote against a black man even if he better represents their interests.

This brings us to Larry Johnson and his hate filled band at No Quarter.  Hillary has thrown her support to Obama and even Taylor Marsh and other Clinton supporters have said they will do the same.  But not Johnson and the rest of the crew at No Quarter.  Someone asked the other day: "can we call them racists yet?" about the No Quarter crew.  Good question!

Update

Via John Cole - Even Laura Bush has more integrity than Larry Johnson.

Michelle Obama has a new defender from those who say she isn’t patriotic enough — First Lady Laura Bush. In an interview with ABC News, Bush said that Obama’s February remark that she was proud of the United States “for the first time in my adult life” was misconstrued.

“I think she probably meant ‘I’m more proud.’ That’s what she really meant,” Bush said from Afghanistan.

“You have to be really careful in what you say because everything you say is looked at and in many cases misconstrued,” she said.

Feeling the audacity of hope

By Libby

It's a funny thing. When they excised that tumor, it seems it also rid me of a great despair that I thought I'd never overcome. I got the stitches out this morning and the pathology is back. I don't have cancer. I feel like a new person, or perhaps I should say the old person I was before Bush took office. I feel like I regained my zen and the future looks brighter than it has in seven long years, not just for me but for our country.

Hecate catches the first whiff of a sea change in the political atmosphere with this quote.

"We're going to try to reach out to all her supporters and tell them that we want to unify the party," Obama told reporters. He recounted his comments to the St. Paul group: "I understood that they were as inspired by her candidacy as some of my supporters are inspired by mine. They're not alone in drawing inspiration from her campaign. My own daughters now take the possibility of a woman being president for granted."

More at the link, including a really nice photogragh.

I believe as time goes on, most everyone will realize that both candidates contributed to an incredible change in the way the public relates to politics and in that sense everybody wins. I'm optimistic that the new interest in engaging in the process will outlast the instant election for generations to come. At this moment in time, it feels like a whole lot more than just a fool's hope.

Headlines, politics and self-inflicted wounds

By Fester:

Here are some of the headlines and ledesI have seen in the past few days:

Unemployment rate jumps to 5.5% in May

Forex - Dollar slides as more Americans lose jobs

US Jobs Fall For Fifth Consecutive Month

New claims for unemployment benefits have risen steadily,

Continuing claims fell by 16,000 in the week ended May 24, dropping to 3.09 million.

But the four-week average of continuing claims rose to 3.08 million, up 15,250.

The four-week average is at its highest level since March 2004.

A year ago, continuing claims numbered 2.52 million.

"A majority of Americans say they are worse off financially than a year ago, marking the first time in Gallup's 32-year history of asking the question that more than half of Americans give this pessimistic assessment."

I could go on for a while and pull up headlines and quotes concerning home equity destruction, tightening credit, low to no savings rates, higher gas, food and medical prices, but at some point this is overkill.  The story is simple --- most people are feeling pinched and economically insecure.  Costs are increasing at the same time uncertainty (which is expensive) also increases while the safety nets are very thin and not too reliable.  This would be a great time for Democrats to do something that has a high short term multiplier effect, is cost effective, and targets people who need temporary assistance while assuring others that the safety net is there for them.  This action would be to extend unemployment benefits for up to 13 weeks in most states, and potentially 26 weeks in the worst off states.  Simple, straightforward, and it should be a non-controversial policy to anyone in the party.

And what is the last headline I saw on:

Extension of Benefits For Jobless Is at Risk

House Democrats are likely to drop a 13-week extension of unemployment insurance benefits from a major spending package that includes continued funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan...

The bill would provide $165 billion to fund the two wars into the next presidency, along with billions of dollars more for domestic programs.

The unemployment insurance provision is one of several measures likely to be cut in an effort to win the support of the Blue Dogs and to increase the opposition to a veto that President Bush has threatened over several aspects of the bill

Let Bush veto the bill.  The politics and optics play out great for Democrats --- appease the get out of Iraq in a reasonable timeframe DFHs who make up 60%+ of the American electorate and most of the Democratic core electorate, point of the veto of the GI Bill expansion, and note that John McCain supports Bush.  This is a three-fer.  And then resubmit the same damn bill next week.  Hardball is not a bad thing when it can create a clear and distinct contrast. 

But no... the Blue Dogs are willing to fund an unpopular war but not take care of their constiuents... sometimes we deserve to fail miserably because of ourselves.... 

 

Institutions, incentives and inertia

By Fester:

I'm a Democrat and a lifelong Red Sox fan, so I am used to seeing situations of great advantage being squandered, although this expectation has been tempered with recent successes.  Cernig's post on the Democrats being able to screw up this year is one I sympathize with, but I believe his conclusions and hopes will be wrong and unfulfilled:

Well, the Dems might just have done it again - snatched defeat from the jaws of victory....

for the positive side - a Mccain victory handed to him by the Clintonistas might just mean the end of the two party monopoly in America. An Obama victory gained despite this primary season's bloodletting and erosion of trust might well mean the same thing. There's a lot of dynamic just now that says the natural tendency to stick with what you know and not rock the boat to the point of capsizing might be itself overturned. [my emphasis]

I think Cernig is wrong here as there are strong incentives and institutional reasons for two party systems to be a relatively stable equilibrium with the occassional burst of an ascending third party displacing and thereby making irrelevant a stagnant and failing major party.  The Republicans did this to the Whigs in the 1850s and that is the last time a wholesale replacement of parties has occurred.  And the Whigs did not stick around; instead they fragmented and migrated to one of the two remaining large parties.

The peculiar particularities of the American electoral system with a strong president drawn from outside of the Legislature, single member districts and first past the post voting.  The goal in all situations is to assemble a plurality.  These contests are individually winner take all contests so that a candidate with support of 25% of the population wins nothing besides abuse, and a candidate with support of 3 more votes than anyone else takes the entire prize even if there were seventeen candidates running.  This incentive set quickly produces two blocs that seek to gain a slim majority.

The only prominent national example where this incentive set breaks down is the Democratic nominating process with state by state and district by district proportional delegate allocation and voting.  The old Louisiana open primary system of pitting an unlimited number of candidates together and then advancing the top two vote getters if no one receives an initial primary majority also produces different incentives.  However the institutional organizing, branding and fundraising advantages of aligning with the dominant political organizations in the country swamp the local effects.   

I think Mark at Publius Endures catches the dynamic much better than Cernig as he looks at how libeterians and liberals could integrate into a different coalition:

The fact is that the “Left” in this country, just like the “Right” is just a mish-mosh coalition of various ideological groups. Those interest groups can and do change sides over the course of time, as different issues come to predominate within the group.

Much of what the “Left” generally claims to believe in is not as universally held as they like to think. Instead, many in the modern Left coalition, just like many in the modern Right coalition, conform their political views over time on lower priority issues to match the views of coalition members to whom those issues are of higher
importance.

So I think it depends which element of the “Left” you’re talking about....

The coalitions that are assembled under the labels and institutions of Republicans and Democrats will change after this election. But that is normal and healthy.  And this is the far more likely outcome than a complete rejiggering of American voting rules, political norms and constitutional governance structure that would be needed to break a two party hold on power. 

Are we there yet...

By Fester:

I'm just about ready for this primary season to be done.  I finally put the increasingly childish calvinball fundraising e-mails from HillaryClinton.com into my spam filter as junk and I am hoping that the massive cache of stockpiled superdelegates that Obama reputedly has in his vest pocket actually exists as they have been rumored to have existed since at least before Texas on March 4. 

BJ and I have been talking about whether or not this primary process has been good for the Democrats as we have both been worried about the probability or possibility of Hillary Clinton taking the Sampson Option of destroying the party to destroy her primary opponent.  Given