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Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Politics: Imagine If the Tea Party Was Black

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters--the black protesters--spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protesters--these black protesters with guns--be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.

Imagine that white members of Congress, while walking to work, were surrounded by thousands of angry black people, one of whom proceeded to spit on one of those congressmen for not voting the way the black demonstrators desired. Would the protesters be seen as merely patriotic Americans voicing their opinions, or as an angry, potentially violent, and even insurrectionary mob? After all, this is what white Tea Party protesters did recently in Washington.

See Imagine If the Tea Party Was Black by Tim Wise, April 22, 2010.

Economics: Decentralizing Capital Ratio Requirementc

An interesting idea ...

The second big event in Washington this week is the jostling over a financial reform bill. One might have thought that one of the lessons of this episode was that establishments are prone to groupthink, and that it would be smart to decentralize authority in order to head off future bubbles.

Both N. Gregory Mankiw of Harvard and Sebastian Mallaby of the Council on Foreign Relations have been promoting a way to do this: Force the big financial institutions to issue bonds that would be converted into equity when a regulator deems them to have insufficient capital. Thousands of traders would buy and sell these bonds as a way to measure and reinforce the stability of the firms.

See The Goldman Drama by David Brooks, April 26, 2010.

Government: A Quick Fix for Slashing Govt Bloat

As America’s budget deficit takes center stage, Republicans that want to regain their party’s rightful place as the guardian of fiscal discipline need to present realistic, achievable ways of bringing the budget into balance. Doing this could start with a simple, bold, commonsense stand: abolish government programs that don’t work.

Finding a list of such government waste is surprisingly easy: Every few years, the Office of Management and Budget subjects each government program to the analysis of a something called the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) . And, according to OMB, fully 20 percent of all federal programs are definitively ineffective or have no way to measure what they attempt to accomplish.

See A Quick Fix for Slashing Govt Bloat by Eli Lehrer, April 28, 2010.

Politics: How America Became a "Secular-Socialist Machine"

This article is a reply to the one in Politics: Obama: A Pragmatic Moderate Faces the 'Socialist' Smear. Most examples cited are temporary measures intended to end the Great Recession, are polling-driven, or are minor in comparison with those mentioned by Ornstein.

It is only from the perspective of the cultural elite that the left-wing governing of the Obama-Pelosi-Reid team could be seen as moderate.

See How America Became a Secular-Socialist Machine by Newt Gingrich, April 23, 2010.

Politics: Government to Appeal Ruling Against Prayer Day

The Obama administration said Thursday it will appeal a court decision that found the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional.

See Government to Appeal Ruling Against Prayer Day by Ryan J. Foley, April 22, 2010.

Politics: Stewart and Reagan vs Gingrich, Hannity, and Palin on the Nuclear Treaty

This clip has 4:00 of background information before getting to where Newt Gingrich and Fox misstate Obama's new nuclear polity, and starting at 5:20 Palin and Fox misstate Reagan's opinions. More interesting than funny.

For the full episode, see David Remnick - Full Episode by April 8, 2010.

Monday, April 26, 2010

Politics: Obama: A Pragmatic Moderate Faces the 'Socialist' Smear

To one outside the partisan and ideological wars, charges of radicalism, socialism, retreat and surrender are, frankly, bizarre. The Democrats' health-reform plan includes no public option and relies on managed competition through exchanges set up much like those for federal employees. The individual mandate in the plan sprang from a Heritage Foundation idea that was endorsed years ago by a range of conservatives and provided the backbone of the Massachusetts plan that was crafted and, until recently, heartily defended by Mitt Romney. It would be fair to describe the new act as Romneycare crossed with the managed-competition bill proposed in 1994 by Republican Sens. John Chafee, David Durenberger, Charles Grassley and Bob Dole -- in other words, as a moderate Republican plan. Among its supporters is Durenberger, no one's idea of a radical socialist.

What about Obama's other domestic initiatives? The stimulus was anything but radical -- indeed, many mainstream observers, me included, thought it was too timid in size and scope given the enormity of the problems. The plan could have been more focused on swift and directed stimulus. It included such diversions as a fix for the alternative minimum tax -- at the insistence of Grassley. And it excluded some "shovel-ready" ideas such as school construction -- at the insistence of Republican Sen. Susan Collins. It did not include the kind of public works jobs program employed by Franklin Roosevelt. Nonetheless, it has been widely credited with ameliorating the worst effects of the downturn and helping to move us back toward economic growth. The widely criticized Troubled Assets Relief Program -- initiated by Obama's predecessor -- is now returning to the Treasury most

It is true that, in an attempt to head off a meltdown stemming from a collapse of the automobile industry, Obama engineered a temporary takeover of two of the Big Three auto companies. But nothing suggests that this is anything but temporary, and Obama has resisted many calls to take over major banks and other financial institutions.

The nuclear treaty with Russia excoriated by Palin, Savage and others was endorsed by Indiana Sen. Richard Lugar, the GOP's resident foreign policy expert, and it was crafted under Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who was first appointed to that post by George W. Bush. Obama's approach to terrorism has been similar to Bush's, while more aggressively targeting leaders of terrorist groups; his larger foreign policy has received the seal of approval from James Baker, former chief of staff to Ronald Reagan and secretary of state to George H.W. Bush. Obama's energy policies include more nuclear power and more offshore drilling. Obama's education policies have received wide acclaim across the political spectrum. The "secular" president has shored up and supported federal faith-based initiatives, to the dismay of many in his base.

See Obama: A Pragmatic Moderate Faces the 'Socialist' Smear by Norman J. Ornstein, April 14, 2010.

Economics: Yes, It's a Bailout Bill, Sort'a

The Senate's proposed financial regulation bill allows the government to force a failing institution out of business but does not allow a "bailout" of it's owners and employees. It also gives the government the option to partially cushion the impact of the failure on creditors to stabilize the economy, which can be called a "bailout", although it would be funded by fees on other institutions, not individual taxpayers.

... the Senate bill gives the government discretion ... to put money into a failing firm to pay off creditors.

See Yes, It's a Bailout Bill by Phillip Swagel, April 24, 2010.

Mind: Brain's 'Fairness' Spot Found

... it's human nature for us to dislike unequal situations, and we often try to avoid or remedy them. Now, scientists have identified the first evidence of this behavior's neurological underpinnings in the human brain.

The results show that the brain's reward center responds to unequal situations involving money in a way that indicates people prefer a level playing field, and may suggest why we care about the circumstances of others in the first place.

See Brain's 'Fairness' Spot Found by Rachael Rettner, February 24, 2010.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

California: More $100,000-Plus Public Pensions

... the new total of people in the $100,000-plus public pension club is 9,111 ....
The updated list now includes 330 retired state prison guards, 300 retired CHP officers, 175 retired state firefighters, and 90 retired Department of Justice agents ....

See Membership in $100,000-plus Pension Club Leaps by 50 Percent by Teri Sforza, April 22, 2010.

Economics: Overvalued Wall Street

In the years leading up to the 2008 crisis, the financial industry accounted for a third of total domestic profits — about twice its share two decades earlier.
So why were bankers raking it in? My take, reflecting the efforts of financial economists to make sense of the catastrophe, is that it was mainly about gambling with other people’s money. The financial industry took big, risky bets with borrowed funds — bets that paid high returns until they went bad — but was able to borrow cheaply because investors didn’t understand how fragile the industry was. And what about the much-touted benefits of financial innovation? I’m with the economists Andrei Shleifer and Robert Vishny, who argue in a recent paper that a lot of that innovation was about creating the illusion of safety, providing investors with “false substitutes” for old-fashioned assets like bank deposits. Eventually the illusion failed — and the result was a disastrous financial crisis.

See Don't Cry for Wall Street by Paul Krugman, April 22, 2010.

Politics: Both National Party Committees Spend Big Chunks on Fancy Meals, Hotels, Travel

Both the national Democratic and Republican party committees spend about two-thirds of the money they take in on the care and comfort of committee staffs and on efforts to raise more funds, with lavish spending on limousines, expensive hotels, meals and tips, an analysis of the latest financial disclosure data shows. ... administrative and fundraising expenses consumed about $60 million of Democratic revenue in this cycle through the end of February, or 59 percent of total revenue that exceeded $100 million. For Republicans, the amount exceeded $74 million, or 68 percent of $109 million in revenue.
The two political committees are not typical nonprofit organizations, and such high spending for overhead is almost unheard of in the nonprofit world. A rule of thumb among nonprofits is that administrative and fundraising costs should consume no more than 20 to 25 percent of income.

See Both National Party Committees Spend Big Chunks on Fancy Meals, Hotels, Travel by R. Jeffrey Smith, April 21, 2010.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Climate: The Iceland Volcano Reduced the World's CO2 Emissions

See Planes or Volcano? by David, Information is Beautiful, April 20, 2010.

Law: Loose Legal Concept Gives Goldman Sachs Grounds to Argue

An article about "materiality" ...

Financial firms selling securities are required to disclose all the information about their products that is “material” to an investor’s decision to invest.

“The legal concept of materiality provides the dividing line between what information companies must disclose—and disclose correctly—and everything else,” explained former SEC official Richard Sauer in a 2007 issue of The Business Lawyer. “Materiality, however, is a highly judgmental standard, often colored by a variety of factual presumptions.” It’s also “inherently situational,” according to Sauer.

See Loose Legal Concept Gives Goldman Sachs Grounds to Argue by Marian Wang, Propublica, April 19, 2010.

Misc: The Long March of the Lord's Resistance Army

A good, long article about the originally Ugandan rebel group is The Long March of the Lord's Resistance Army by Graeme Wood, April 8, 2010.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Politics: How Balkanized Are We?

The fear:

The new media [the Internet] ... allow you to personalize your newspapers so you only see the stories that already interest you. You can visit only those Web sites that confirm your prejudices. Instead of a public square, we could end up with a collection of information cocoons.

Sunstein was particularly concerned about this because he has done very important work over the years about our cognitive biases. We like hearing evidence that confirms our suppositions. We filter out evidence that challenges them.

Moreover, we have a natural tilt toward polarized views. People are prone to gather in like-minded groups. Once in them, they drive each other to even greater extremes. In his recent book “Going to Extremes,” Sunstein shows that liberal judges get more liberal when they are on panels with other liberals. Conservative judges get more conservative.

Sunstein’s fear was that the Internet might lead to a more ghettoized, polarized and insular electorate. Those fears were supported by some other studies, and they certainly matched my own experience. Every day I seem to meet people who live in partisan ghettoes, ignorant about the other side. Yet new research complicates this picture.

The hope:

Yet new research complicates this picture.

...

According to the study, a person who visited only Fox News would have more overlap with conservatives than 99 percent of Internet news users. A person who only went to The Times’s site would have more liberal overlap than 95 percent of users.

But the core finding is that most Internet users do not stay within their communities. Most people spend a lot of time on a few giant sites with politically integrated audiences, like Yahoo News.

But even when they leave these integrated sites, they often go into areas where most visitors are not like themselves. People who spend a lot of time on Glenn Beck’s Web site are more likely to visit The New York Times’s Web site than average Internet users. People who spend time on the most liberal sites are more likely to go to foxnews.com than average Internet users. Even white supremacists and neo-Nazis travel far and wide across the Web.

See Riders on the Storm by David Brooks, April 19, 2010.

Economics: Just Doing It

On a new form of company:

EndoStim was inspired by Cuban and Indian immigrants to America and funded by St. Louis venture capitalists. Its prototype is being manufactured in Uruguay, with the help of Israeli engineers and constant feedback from doctors in India and Chile. Oh, and the C.E.O. is a South African, who was educated at the Sorbonne, but lives in Missouri and California, and his head office is basically a BlackBerry.
Chris Anderson of Wired Magazine pointed this out in a smart essay in February’s issue, entitled “Atoms Are the New Bits.”

Three guys with laptops used to describe a Web startup, he wrote. Now it describes a hardware company, too thanks to the availability of common platforms, easy-to-use tools, Web-based collaboration, and Internet distribution. ... Global supply chains have become scale-free, able to serve the small as well as the large, the garage inventor and Sony.

See Just Doing It by Thomas L. Friedman, April 17, 2010, and In the Next Industrial Revolution, Atoms Are the New Bits by Chris Anderson, January 25, 2010.

Politics: The Tea Party's Lack of Seriousness

Their partisanship and cultural hostility to Obama are far more intense, it seems to me, than their genuine proposals to reduce spending and taxation. And this is largely because they have no genuine proposals to reduce spending and taxation. They seem very protective of Medicare and Social Security - and their older age bracket underlines this. They also seem primed for maximal neo-imperial reach, backing the nation-building efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, favoring war against Iran, etc.
They both support lower taxation and yet bemoan the fact that so many Americans do not pay any income tax. They want to cut spending on trivial matters while enabling the entitlement and defense behemoths to go on gobbling up Americans' wealth. And that lack of seriousness is complemented by a near-fanatical cultural alienation from the modern world.
When they propose cuts in Medicare, means-testing Social Security, a raising of the retirement age and a cut in defense spending, I'll take them seriously and wish them well.

See Why I'm Passing on Tea by Andrew Sullivan, April 16, 2010.

Mind: Links to Spirituality Found in the Brain

Scientists have identified areas of the brain that, when damaged, lead to greater spirituality. The findings hint at the roots of spiritual and religious attitudes, the researchers say.

The study, published in the Feb. 11 issue of the journal Neuron, involves a personality trait called self-transcendence, which is a somewhat vague measure of spiritual feeling, thinking, and behaviors. Self-transcendence "reflects a decreased sense of self and an ability to identify one's self as an integral part of the universe as a whole," the researchers explain.

Selective damage to the left and right posterior parietal regions of the brain induced a specific increase in self-transcendence, or ST, the surveys showed.
One study, reported in 2008, suggested that the brain's right parietal lobe defines "Me," and people with less active Me-Definers are more likely to lead spiritual lives.

See Links to Spirituality Found in the Brain by Livescience Staff, February 11, 2010.

Economy: Senate to Ask Moody's Chief Why Bad Bonds Got Good Ratings

Finally they're getting to the people most to blame for the Great Recession.

On Friday, Moody's CEO Raymond McDaniel Jr. will face the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which is looking into the role the credit-rating agencies played in the nation's worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The agencies rate the quality of financial products such as bonds and serve as guides trusted by investors. Many bonds they rated as top-quality in the recent crisis turned out to be junk.

McDaniel has yet to face the kind of congressional grilling already suffered by bank executives. However, an earlier hearing revealed a transcript in which McDaniel told his board of directors that his firm was constantly pressured to inflate ratings — and that sometimes Moody's "drank the Kool-Aid."

The ratings agencies are under attack on many fronts. Legislation to revamp financial regulations threatens to leave them more open to lawsuits for bad ratings, although not as open as consumer advocates hoped. They already face class-action suits from investors who lost money when top-rated bonds turned out not to be.

In addition, on Monday California Attorney General Jerry Brown brought court action trying to force Moody's to answer questions raised in a subpoena he issued seven months ago.

"The ratings are the linchpin of the entire financial meltdown. Without the ratings, the toxic assets could never have been sold," Brown, a Democratic candidate for governor in California, told McClatchy in an interview. [emphasis added]

Brown wants details about who developed the methodology for the rating of complex securities, and how far up the chain of command these decisions flowed. What most irks him is that Wall Street actors refuse to accept responsibility.

When Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Lloyd Blankfein recently testified before the congressionally mandated Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, which is looking into the causes of the financial crisis, he suggested that Wall Street banks were at the mercy of the ratings agencies.

However, in a McClatchy investigation late last year, former Moody's officials recounted how Wall Street investment powers like Goldman played the three major ratings agencies off each other to get the ratings they needed to attract investors.

The carrot for the ratings agencies was a big reward, $1 million or more, for providing an investment grade to a complex deal.
Officials who oversaw the process of giving top ratings to some of the worst deals were given top executive suites and jobs heading regulatory affairs and compliance.

During this era, former Moody's executives said, ratings quality eroded as analysts were under intense pressure from Clarkson and McDaniel to maintain market share and a "business-friendly" environment.

See Senate to Ask Moody's Chief Why Bad Bonds Got Good Ratings Read More: Http://Www.Mcclatchydc.Com/2010/04/20/92540/Senate-to-Ask-Moodys-Chief-Why.Html#Ixzz0lq6kqzyb by Kevin G. Hall, April 20, 2010.

Wednesday, April 21, 2010

California: Unions Take Fire at Bill to Revamp California Health Care Oversight

The bill discussed is about reforming the current extremely ineffective system.

Among the proposed reforms are safeguards that would bring California in line with other states, such as requiring that employers report workers who are fired or suspended for serious wrongdoing and allowing a top state official to quickly suspend workers who pose a threat to the public.
... union officials say they support many elements of the bill, including efforts to speed up the disciplinary process and give the nursing board the power to hire its own investigators. They also raise no opposition to new rules that would bar convicted sex offenders from holding licenses and suspend the licenses of incarcerated practitioners.
Unions have taken particular aim at the mandatory reporting requirement, which would oblige employers to notify regulators when workers have been fired or suspended for serious problems such as drug abuse, gross negligence, physically harming a patient or sexual wrongdoing.
The unions and professional associations also object to a plan that could close state-run recovery programs for substance abusing health professionals. Currently, some addicted caregivers can avoid license sanctions by taking part in a confidential "diversion" program of drug testing, treatment and restrictions on their practice.

ProPublica and the Times detailed last summer how the program for addicted nurses was largely unsuccessful and had failed to quickly take action when nurses flunked out and were internally labeled "public safety threats."

The California Nurses Association Political Action Committee ... doled out more than $300,000 in the first three months of this year, on top of $359,000 last year and $1.3 million in 2008, according to filings with the state.
Many of the provisions that unions object to would alter a system that state officials say has protected the interests of health workers more than the public. These changes include giving the director of the Consumer Affairs Department the power to temporarily suspend the licenses of professionals who pose a threat to the public.

See Unions Take Fire at Bill to Revamp California Health Care Oversight by Tracy Weber and Charles Ornstein, April 16, 2010.

Media: Crowd-Sourcing Coverage of Home Loan Modifications

Here's an interesting way to cover a news story: crowd-sourcing news coverage of home owners trying to use the Federal loan modification program.

[Propublica is] offering to set up our readers with local journalists (with the homeowner’s permission, of course). Often, the media can be the most effective recourse for homeowners who have nowhere else to turn.

See Reporting Matchmaker: Setting up Home Loan Modification Applicants with Local Journalists by Paul Kiel and Amanda Michel, Propublica, March 31, 2010.

Politics: Survey Says: Republicans Know More than Democrats

... out of the 12 multiple-choice questions asked in a Pew Research Center phone survey of more than 1,000 adults, Republicans answered an average of about 6 questions correctly compared with 5 for Democrats.
These political-party differences are partly a reflection of the demographics, with Republicans tending to be older, well-educated and male – all factors associated with political and economic knowledge. Even after accounting for these factors, however, Pew scientists found a gap.
Men correctly answered an average of six questions correctly, while women answered an average of 4.6 questions right. Those with college degrees correctly answered about seven questions correctly on average.

And as in the past, older Americans generally did better than young people. Respondents age 50 and older answered about 6 questions correctly on average, compared with just under 4 for those under 50.

See Survey Says: Republicans Know More than Democrats by Livescience Staff, January 29, 2010.

Monday, April 19, 2010

Politics: Stewart vs Fox on the Nuclear Logo

For the full episode, see Richard Burt - Full Episode, April 14, 2010.

Mind: Why We Can't Do 3 Things at Once

For those who find it tough to juggle more than a couple things at once, don't despair. The brain is set up to manage two tasks, but not more, a new study suggests.

When experimental subjects were given three simultaneous tasks, they ...

"... perform as if they systematically forget one of the three tasks," Koechlin told LiveScience.

See Why We Can't Do 3 Things at Once by Rachael Rettner, April 15, 2010.

Economics: How Magnetar Made Money by Betting Against Securities It Helped Create

This is a long article which describes how ...

... a few savvy financial engineers at a suburban Chicago hedge fund helped revive the Wall Street money machine, spawning billions of dollars of securities ultimately backed by home mortgages.

When the crash came, nearly all of these securities became worthless, a loss of an estimated $40 billion paid by investors, the investment banks who helped bring them into the world, and, eventually, American taxpayers.

See The Magnetar Trade: How One Hedge Fund Helped Keep the Bubble Going by Jesse Eisinger and Jake Bernstein, April 9, 2010.

Mind: The Superstar Effect

Here's an interesting article showing that people tend to either give up or try too hard when competing against a superstar. It also is another study which shows that paying for performance can produce worse performance.

In the early 1960s, the psychologist Sam Glucksberg demonstrated that the [choking during competition] could also inhibit creativity. He gave subjects a standard test of creativity known as the Duncker candle problem. The "high drive" group was told that the person solving the task in the shortest amount of time would receive $20. The "low drive" group, in contrast, was reassured that their speed didn't matter. Here's where the results get weird: The subjects with an incentive to think quickly took, on average, more than three minutes longer to find the answer.

Most of the article shows that people tend to give up (or, conversely, try too hard) when competing against a superstar. See The Superstar Effect by Jonah (Jim) Lehrer, April 3, 2010.

Saturday, April 17, 2010

Santa Barbara: Who Our Homeless Were

... I decided to look at Sheriff-Coroner reports and other sources for answers of my own. Searches for information on some of the dead came up empty. One individual was identified only by his first name: Shawn. In the end, I found official causes of death for 19 of the 27 people. Three reports, including Freedom’s, are still pending. But even without everyone accounted for, a mosaic of the lost began to come together.

To read the stories of the homeless who died in Santa Barbara during 2009, see Recounting the Lost A Close Look at the 27 Homeless Who Passed Away in 2009 by Isabelle T. Walker, April 15, 2010.

Politics: Obama and the Challenge of Slow Change

We are beginning to learn that the Obama presidency will be an era of substantial but deferred accomplishments -- perhaps always to be accompanied by a sense of continuing crisis. His vaunted "cool" allows him to wait without impatience and to endure without visible despair. It asks the same of his constituents.
I think it is welcome to have a president whose vision extends beyond the duration of his own term of office, though it entails a political risk that he could be cut off by the voters before any of his hopes are realized. If the current high level of public frustration fuels a Republican resurgence well beyond the normal midterm losses for a president's party, it is possible that next year might bring a serious effort to repeal the health-care act and reject his initiatives in international affairs.

I do not think this is likely. But a president who is not driven by a compulsion to provide instant gratification for his constituents must also cultivate adult patience in them. My bet would be that Obama has that capacity.

See Obama and the challenge of slow change by David S. Broder, April 15, 2010.

Friday, April 16, 2010

Politics: PolitiFact-Checking Sundays Interview TV Shows

In a step toward better politics, ABC's Sunday-morning public-affairs program, This Week, has arranged for it's interviews to be reviews by PolitiFact.com. For details, watch:

See the full episode, April 14, 2010.

Government: Citizens as Public Sensors

Another technique to improve how government works:

When people talk about the effects of Gov 2.0, the discussion tends to center around transparency and making data available to the general public. But information can flow in both directions. SeeClickFix believes that the citizens may have as much to offer local government as the government may have to offer to the people. By letting the man (literally) on the street report issues to local city or town departments, and making them trackable, it shifts some of the management burden to the people most affected by them.

See Citizens as public sensors by James Turner, April 12, 2010, and SeeClickFix.com.

Economics: Limbaugh & Kudlow Expect a V-Shaped Recovery

Rush says ...

Sometimes, you have to take off your political lenses and look at the actual statistics to get a true picture of the US economy's health. Right now, those statistics are saying a modest cyclical rebound after a deep downturn could be turning into a full-fledged, V-shaped recovery boom by year's end. I'm aiming this thought especially at many conservative friends who seem to be trashing the improving economic outlook -- largely, it would appear, to discredit the Obama [regime].

Anyway, "The current reality is that a strong rebound in corporate profits (the greatest and truest stimulus of all), ultra-easy money from the Fed and some small stimuli from government spending are working to generate a stronger-than-expected recovery." This is Larry Kudlow of CNBC, a noted conservative.

See And Then There's Larry Kudlow by Rush Limbaugh, April 12, 2010.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Politics: Pro- and Anti-Tea Partiers Are Very Different

The survey asked white respondents about their attitudes toward the tea party movement--and their attitudes toward non-whites, immigrants and homosexuals.

For example:

See New Data on Tea Party Sympathizers by Tom Schaller, April 12, 2010.

Economics: How to Fix Social Security

Asked how the nation might address the projected $17.5 trillion in unfunded Social Security liabilities, [Florida Senate candidate] Rubio said we should consider two changes for people 10 or more years from retirement. One would raise the retirement age. The other would alter the calculation of benefits: Indexing them to inflation rather than wage increases would substantially reduce the system's unfunded liabilities.
By the time the baby boomers have retired in 2030, the median age of the American population will be close to that of today's population of Florida, the retirees' haven that is Heaven's antechamber. The 38-year-old Rubio's responsible answer to a serious question gives the nation a glimpse of a rarity -- a brave approach to the welfare state's inevitable politics of gerontocracy.

See Facing Up to a Pension Crisis by George Will, April 11, 2010.

Economics: Georgia Banks on My Mind

I’m not sure how many people know that Georgia leads the nation in bank failures, accounting for 37 of the 206 banks seized by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation since the beginning of 2008. These bank failures are a symptom of deeper problems: arguably, no other state has suffered as badly from banks gone wild.
So what’s the matter with Georgia? As I said, banks went wild, in a scene strongly reminiscent of the savings-and-loan excesses of the 1980s. High-flying bank executives aggressively expanded lending — and paid themselves lavishly — while relying heavily on “hot money” raised from outside investors rather than on their own depositors.

It was fun while it lasted. Then the music stopped.

Why didn’t the same thing happen in Texas? The most likely answer, surprisingly, is that Texas had strong consumer-protection regulation. In particular, Texas law made it difficult for homeowners to treat their homes as piggybanks, extracting cash by increasing the size of their mortgages. Georgia lacked any similar protections (and the Bush administration blocked the state’s efforts to restrict subprime lending directly). And Georgia suffered from the difference.

What’s striking about the contrast between the Texas story and Georgia’s debacle is that it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the issues that have dominated debates about banking reform. For example, many observers have blamed complex financial derivatives for the crisis. But Georgia banks blew themselves up with old-fashioned loans gone bad.

See Georgia on My Mind by Paul Krugman, April 11, 2010.

California Economics: $500B Pension Debt

Currently, governments discount pension values by using the return they expect their pension investments to earn over the long term. For most public pension funds, that means about 8 percent.

The researchers wrote that in today’s economic climate, such rates are associated with more speculative securities that carry some degree of risk, like those of emerging markets. Pensions, by contrast, are constitutionally protected and therefore the payments to public employees and retirees should carry almost no risk.

After the researchers applied a risk-free rate of 4.14 percent, equivalent to the yield on a 10-year Treasury note, the present value of the promised benefits ballooned. The researchers came up with a $425 billion shortfall for the three funds.

As of July 1, 2008, the funds officially reported they were $55 billion short. They have not issued financial statements since then, but have said informally that they lost a total of $110 billion.

The researchers concluded that their estimate of the gap would also have grown by roughly $110 billion, to more than half a trillion, today.

See Analysis of California Pensions Finds Half-Trillion-Dollar Gap by Mary Williams Walsh, April 6, 2010, and Going For Broke: Reforming California’s Public Employee Pension Systems by Howard Bornstein, et al, April 2010.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Humor: Player's Hell

See http://xkcd.com/ by xkcd.com, April 8, 2010.

Economics: How the U.S. Reduced It's Huge WWII Debt

The key thing to understand about Greece’s predicament is that it’s not just a matter of excessive debt. Greece’s public debt, at 113 percent of G.D.P., is indeed high, but other countries have dealt with similar levels of debt without crisis. For example, in 1946, the United States, having just emerged from World War II, had federal debt equal to 122 percent of G.D.P. Yet investors were relaxed, and rightly so: Over the next decade the ratio of U.S. debt to G.D.P. was cut nearly in half, easing any concerns people might have had about our ability to pay what we owed. And debt as a percentage of G.D.P. continued to fall in the decades that followed, hitting a low of 33 percent in 1981.

So how did the U.S. government manage to pay off its wartime debt? Actually, it didn’t. At the end of 1946, the federal government owed $271 billion; by the end of 1956 that figure had risen slightly, to $274 billion. The ratio of debt to G.D.P. fell not because debt went down, but because G.D.P. went up, roughly doubling in dollar terms over the course of a decade. The rise in G.D.P. in dollar terms was almost equally the result of economic growth and inflation, with both real G.D.P. and the overall level of prices rising about 40 percent from 1946 to 1956.

... implying the average rate of inflaction was about 3.5%.

See Learning From Greece by Paul Krugman, April 8, 2010.

Science: An Amazing Force Meter

Scientists built an ultra sensitive force meter using a few atoms and measuring their doppler shift. Wow!

[The device] consists of a few dozen beryllium ions trapped in magnetic and electric fields using a device called a Penning trap. These ions vibrate at between a few mega and kilohertz, frequencies that can be accurately measured by bouncing laser light off the ions and measuring any Doppler shift they cause. Being charged, the ions are highly susceptible to the effects of stray magnetic and electric fields which change the frequency at which they vibrate.

See YoctoNewton Detector Smashes Force Measurement Record by The Physics arXiv Blog, April 8, 2010.

Economics: G.M. Bailout Profit?

We're almost in the black with our investment in G.M. Only $20 billion to go.

General Motors "may go public in the second half of this year, and its stock market value could top $50 billion, more than Ford's $40 billion."
Ford took on $23.6 billion in debt to avoid becoming dependent on Washington, whereas GM shed much of its debt by becoming dependent. Washington ... turned most of its $50 billion loan to GM into 60.8 percent ownership, the United Auto Workers got 17.5 percent for forgoing a $20 billion health care claim against the company, and Canada's government got an 11.7 percent stake for $9 billion.

For a short history of the U.S. automobile manufacturers, see Intersection for a Disaster by George Will, April 8, 2010.

Misc: Bald Eagle Chicks, Live

To watch live video of bald eagle chicks on an island off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, see VCOE EagleCam1.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Economics: The U.S. Is Still the 8th Freest Economically

About the conservative Heritage Foundation's 2010 Index of Economic Freedom study of 179 countries ...

The US ranks 8th by measure, even after TARP and other massive government bailouts, and even after that non-existent "government takeover of health care." And you want the real irony? All of the Western nations above the United States on the list have far more socialist health care systems and larger social welfare systems than we do -- I mean by a long shot, it's not even close.

The top seven are Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Switzerland, and Canada.

See So Much for the Impending Communist Doom by Ed Brayton, April 7, 2010, and Ranking the Countries by The Heritage Foundation.

Government: Study Finds More Woes Following Foster Care

Only half the youths who had turned 18 and “aged out” of foster care were employed by their mid-20s. Six in 10 men had been convicted of a crime, and three in four women, many of them with children of their own, were receiving some form of public assistance. Only six in 100 had completed even a community college degree.

See Study Finds More Woes Following Foster Care by Erik Eckholm, April 6, 2010.

Politics: ‘Repeal and Replace’ Slogan Has No Grounding in Reality

AJC editors and columnists just finished a pretty wide-ranging 80-minute interview with Sen. Saxby Chambliss and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, and I took the opportunity to ask a question that had been nagging at me for a while.
Republicans clearly understand that the American people want the problem of pre-existing conditions to be solved; it’s also pretty clear that they have no idea how to achieve that goal. In fact, while they campaign on “repeal and replace,” they intend to keep that whole “replace” thing as vague and ill-defined as possible. In response to another question, McConnell said explicitly that the Republicans would not be drafting a specific plan on how they intend to replace ObamaCare.

See GOP’s ‘Repeal and replace’ slogan has no grounding in reality by Jay Bookman, April 6, 2010.

Mind: Study Sheds Light on What Makes People Shy

The brains of shy or introverted individuals might actually process the world differently than their more extroverted counterparts, a new study suggests.

About 20 percent of people are born with a personality trait called sensory perception sensitivity (SPS) that can manifest itself as the tendency to be inhibited, or even neuroticism. The trait can be seen in some children who are "slow to warm up" in a situation but eventually join in, need little punishment, cry easily, ask unusual questions or have especially deep thoughts, the study researchers say.

The new results show that these highly sensitive individuals also pay more attention to detail, and have more activity in certain regions of their brains when trying to process visual information than those who are not classified as highly sensitive.

Biologists are beginning to agree that within one species there can be two equally successful "personalities." The sensitive type, always a minority, chooses to observe longer before acting, as if doing their exploring with their brains rather than their limbs. The other type "boldly goes where no one has gone before," the scientists say.

See Study Sheds Light on What Makes People Shy by LiveScience Staff, April 6, 2010.

Politics: Longing for the Republican Party of Old

How did we go from William F. Buckley to Glenn Beck? How did we go from Eisenhower and Nixon to Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann?
I do not recognize myself in the Republican Party anymore. As someone said it before, I did not leave the Republican Party, the Republican Party left me. I have the same ideological positions on most of the issues that I had when I voted for Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan and George W. Bush in 2000. However, I just cannot trust the reins of our government and nation, of this formidably complicated and complex gigantic machine that is the USA, to the amateurish leadership of the Republican Party.

See How the GOP Purged Me by Chris Currey, April 5th, 2010.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Economics: Relax, We’ll Be Fine

The United States already measures at the top or close to the top of nearly every global measure of economic competitiveness. A comprehensive 2008 Rand Corporation study found that the U.S. leads the world in scientific and technological development. The U.S. now accounts for a third of the world’s research-and-development spending. Partly as a result, the average American worker is nearly 10 times more productive than the average Chinese worker, a gap that will close but not go away in our lifetimes.

Interesting fact:

For every 10 percent reduction in population density, the odds that people will join a local club rise by 15 percent.

See Relax, We’ll Be Fine by David Brooks, April 5, 2010.

Politics: Rove Asks People to Fill Out Census

The spot comes as some Republicans in Congress worry that conservatives may not return their forms as an act of demonstration against the government. Many conservative activists have cheered on such efforts and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) has stoked fears that the government could use the survey to intrusively gather information.

See Rove asks people to fill out census in new ad by Jordan Fabian, April 5, 2010.

Economics: TARP Is Returning 8.5% Profit

The Treasury Department said Friday the government had been repaid $181 billion from the program, and predicted that the bailout would be a net profit to taxpayers. The profits stem from early repayments, stock sales, dividends and warrants issued under the bailout.

See Survey: TARP driving 8.5 percent profit by Silla Brush, April 5, 2010.

Sunday, April 11, 2010

Mind: Blondes Are Paid More than Other Women

At least in the UK ...

And in addition to their preferential pay packets blondes also marry wealthier men, who earn an average of six per cent more than the husbands of other women.

See Blondes paid more than other women by Nick Collins, April 4, 2010.

Economics: Immigration and Education

Craig Mundie, the chief research and strategy officer of Microsoft, asks: What made America this incredible engine of prosperity? It was immigration, plus free markets. Because we were so open to immigration — and immigrants are by definition high-aspiring risk-takers, ready to leave their native lands in search of greater opportunities — “we as a country accumulated a disproportionate share of the world’s high-I.Q. risk-takers.”
What is worrisome about America today is the combination of cutbacks in higher education, restrictions on immigration and a toxic public space that dissuades talented people from going into government. Together, all of these trends are slowly eating away at our differentiated edge in attracting and enabling the world’s biggest mass of smart, creative risk-takers.

See Start-Ups, Not Bailouts by Thomas L. Friedman, April 3, 2010.

Friday, April 9, 2010

Economics: Encouraging Employment Data

This chart shows job losses (and a few gains) per month from January, 2008 thru March, 2010.

See Encouraging Employment Data...Sort Of by Tom Schaller, April 2, 2010.

Security: Which Countries Really Spend the Most on Armed Forces?

For an interesting, visual comparison of the strengths of various armed forces around the world, see Information is beautiful: war games by David McCandless, April 1, 2010.

Economics: Pension Funds Still Waiting for Big Payoff From Private Equity

Indeed, research conducted by several university professors challenge the private equity firms’ premise that returns beat the stock market over long periods of time.

Two professors, Steven Kaplan of the University of Chicago and Per Strömberg of the Stockholm School of Economics, contend that, after fees, many private equity investments just about match or even trail the returns of the broad stock market between 1980 and 2001.

Additional research by Ludovic Phalippou of the University of Amsterdam and Mr. Gottschalg of the HEC School of Management shows that private equity funds underperformed the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index by 3 percent annually from 1980 to 2003, after accounting for fees.

See Pension Funds Still Waiting for Big Payoff From Private Equity by Jenny Anderson, April 2, 2010.

Healthcare: Host the Bill Lowers Costs

I have noted before that the bill contains all the main reform ideas out there to reduce health care cost growth over time — in addition to the deficit reduction it achieves even in its first decade.
If you look at the policy options CBO assessed as having the biggest potential for reducing long-term health care cost-growth, you will see that a vast majority of these proposals are, in some form, part of the historic health care reform legislation the President signed into law last week, including: ...

For the list, see Following Doctor’s Orders by Peter R. Orszag, April 1, 2010.

Economics: US May Soon Face Critical Nerd Shortage

This had another good headline.

Over the 2000s ... US colleges graduated 43 percent fewer science and computing students ....

See DARPA Chief Testifies That US May Soon Face Critical Nerd Shortage by Stuart Fox, April 1, 2010.

Politics: Hannity Calls Tea Partiers Tim McVeigh Wannabes

HANNITY: See, can I add one thing? I think we won the debate.

DREIER: We did win the debate.

HANNITY: When you think about the vast majorities that they have in Congress and they had to bribe, backroom deals, corruption, that’s all because the tea party movement, the people — all these Tim McVeigh wannabes here.

(CHEERS AND APPLAUSE)

HANNITY: Guys, thank you for being here.

(CROSSTALK)

See Hannity calls tea party GOPers “Tim McVeigh wannabees” — and they cheer! by Jed Lewison, April 1, 2010.

Healthcare: We Don't Know How the Bill Will Affect Us

Close to two-thirds of Democrats (64%) say they understand how they and their families will be affected at least somewhat well, compared with 54% of independents and 47% of Republicans.

See Health Care Debate Tops Public Interest, Coverage by Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, March 31, 2010.

Government: Better Contracting

Better government is more important than smaller government. An example ...

Up until now, federal agencies have had very uneven access to information about how well a potential contractor had performed on prior contracts. On top of that, agencies have had limited insight into a contractor’s business ethics — on matters as basic as whether the contractor has had a criminal conviction or been found liable in a civil or administrative proceeding, such as for violation of employment laws, tax laws, anti-trust laws, and the like.

... today we’re launching the Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System (FAPIIS) to break down these barriers to information and increase the integrity of the federal procurement process.

The database allows agencies to obtain a comprehensive range of data, such as information on debarments and suspensions, agency assessments of contractor past performance, contract terminations, and contractor self-reporting of criminal, civil, and administrative actions. Federal contracting officials will be required to review FAPIIS before making awards above the "simplified acquisition threshold," currently $100,000, to protect American taxpayers from the waste and abuse of contractors who are proven bad actors.

See Tech Tool to Save Taxpayers’ Money by Peter R. Orszag, March 24, 2010.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Mind: Global Wellbeing

Below are some results from the Gallup World Poll, 2005-2009, which measured people's self-reported perceptions, not objective measurements of resources.

Percentage Thriving by Region: Americas 42%, Europe 29%, Asia 17%, Africa 8%.

See Global Wellbeing Surveys Find Nations Worlds Apart by Cynthia English, March 25, 2010

Below are selected countries sorted by Daily Experience, which measures feeling well-rested, being treated with respect, smiling/laughter, learning/interest, enjoyment, physical pain, worry, sadness, stress, and anger, with green meaning good and red meaning bad:

Country Thriving Suffering Daily
Experience
Venezuela 50 2 8.0
Malawi 25 10 8.0
Sweden 68 2 7.9
Denmark 82 1 7.9
Norway 69 0 7.9
Finland 75 2 7.8
Mexico 52 5 7.7
Canada 62 2 7.6
China 9 14 7.6
Australia 62 3 7.5
Turkmenistan 52 1 7.5
Germany 43 7 7.4
Nepal 7 11 7.4
UK 54 2 7.4
Japan 19 12 7.4
United States 57 3 7.3
Italy 39 7 7.1
Russia 21 22 7.0
France 35 6 7.0
India 10 21 6.9
Singapore 19 6 6.9
Cuba* 24 11 6.7
Israel 62 3 6.4
Iran 19 14 6.3
Haiti 4 35 6.2
Pakistan 27 23 6.2
Egypt 10 19 6.1
Libya 24 8 6.0
Iraq 11 18 5.2
Togo 1 31 5.0

The same countries sorted by percent who say they are thriving:

Country Thriving Suffering Daily
Experience
Denmark 82 1 7.9
Finland 75 2 7.8
Norway 69 0 7.9
Sweden 68 2 7.9
Canada 62 2 7.6
Australia 62 3 7.5
Israel 62 3 6.4
United States 57 3 7.3
UK 54 2 7.4
Turkmenistan 52 1 7.5
Mexico 52 5 7.7
Venezuela 50 2 8.0
Germany 43 7 7.4
Italy 39 7 7.1
France 35 6 7.0
Pakistan 27 23 6.2
Malawi 25 10 8.0
Libya 24 8 6.0
Cuba* 24 11 6.7
Russia 21 22 7.0
Japan 19 12 7.4
Iran 19 14 6.3
Singapore 19 6 6.9
Iraq 11 18 5.2
India 10 21 6.9
Egypt 10 19 6.1
China 9 14 7.6
Nepal 7 11 7.4
Haiti 4 35 6.2
Togo 1 31 5.0

See Gallup Global Wellbeing: The Behavioral Economics of GDP Growth March(?), 2010.

Education: California’s Schools: From Bad to Worse

California’s 8th-graders (14-year-olds), for example, ranked 46th in maths last year. Only Alabama, Mississippi and the District of Columbia did worse. California also sends a smaller share of its high-school graduates to college than all but three other states.
Eli Broad, a Los Angeles philanthropist who is trying to reform education, blames a combination of California’s dysfunctional governance, with “elected school boards made up of wannabes and unions”, and the fact that the state’s teachers’ union is both more powerful and “more regressive” than elsewhere. The California Teachers Association (CTA) is the biggest lobby in the state, having spent some $210m in the past decade—more than any other group— to intervene in California’s politics.

See California’s schools: From bad to worse by The Economist, March 31, 2010.

Security: Is Karzai on Our Side?

But I still fear that Karzai is ready to fight to the last U.S. soldier. And once we clear, hold and build Afghanistan for him, he is going to break our hearts.

See This Time We Really Mean It by Thomas L. Friedman, March 30, 2010.

Mind: Magnetic Fields Can Make People Judge Outcomes, Not Intentions

How much do we really control what we think?

Using a powerful magnetic field, scientists from MIT, Harvard University and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center are able to scramble the moral center of the brain, making it more difficult for people to separate innocent intentions from harmful outcomes.
"This study, and other recent studies like it, are enabling us to peer into the very brain activity that underlies and enables legal judgments," said Jones. "Understanding how legal decisions actually work is a potentially important step toward helping decisions be as fair, just and effective as they can be."

See Magnets Can Manipulate Morality by Eric Bland, March 29, 2010.

Health: Fatty Foods May Cause Cocaine-like Addiction

Doing drugs such as cocaine and eating too much junk food both gradually overload the so-called pleasure centers in the brain, according to Paul J. Kenny, Ph.D., an associate professor of molecular therapeutics at the Scripps Research Institute, in Jupiter, Florida. Eventually the pleasure centers "crash," and achieving the same pleasure--or even just feeling normal--requires increasing amounts of the drug or food, says Kenny, the lead author of the study.

"People know intuitively that there's more to [overeating] than just willpower," he says. "There's a system in the brain that's been turned on or over-activated, and that's driving [overeating] at some subconscious level."

See Fatty foods may cause cocaine-like addiction by Sarah Klein, March 28, 2010.

Healthcare: Costs

Our old system is awful ...

Health care provides a textbook case of an industry plagued by numerous forms of market failure, including moral hazard, adverse selection, and free riding, as well as ad-hoc government interventions. The result is a horrendously costly mishmash, which manages to combine excessive expenditure in some areas (diagnostic testing) with too little expenditure in others (preventative care), and overall health outcomes that are middling, at best. According to Wikipedia, the U.S. ranks 38th in the global life-expectancy league table, just below Cuba (!) and just above Portugal.

The new one may be more expensive than advertised ...

Unfortunately, the reform bills that Congress has passed don’t tackle some of the system’s underlying problems, such as the lack of incentives to limit health-care expenditures. Yes, there is financing for pilot schemes that might eventually generate some savings, and, yes, a new independent board of experts will be tasked with identifying possible cuts, but to conflate these initiatives with a guaranteed cure for cost inflation is to fall victim to wishful thinking. Unless I am mistaken—and I hope I am—the reform will end up costing taxpayers considerably more than the Congressional Budget Office is predicting, and it won’t cover nearly as many people as hoped for. In another decade or so, Congress will be back at work, trying to provide genuine universal coverage at a more affordable cost.

If it's not too expensive, it's worth it ...

If Holtz-Eakin’s figures turned out to be spot on, and over the next ten years health-care reform reduced the number of uninsured by thirty million at an annual cost of $56 billion, I would still regard it as a great success.

For a projection of the costs, see ObamaCare by the Numbers: Part 1 and ObamaCare by the Numbers: Part 2 by John Cassidy, March 24, 2010, and List of countries by life expectancy by Wikipedia.

Monday, April 5, 2010

Politics: Pre-Existing Condition Vexes Mitt Romney

I couldn't resist the headline ...

The former governor tries to frame his support for a state mandate requiring all individuals to purchase insurance as fiscally responsible — it would eliminate what he often calls “free-riders” from the system — but the federal mandate that is part of Obama’s plan is central to what many conservatives find so disagreeable about the new law.

See Pre-existing condition vexes Mitt Romney by Jonathan Martin & Ben Smith, March 29, 2010.

Mind: Happiness Is Not Just Economics

It is true that poor nations become happier as they become middle-class nations. But once the basic necessities have been achieved, future income is lightly connected to well-being. Growing countries are slightly less happy than countries with slower growth rates, according to Carol Graham of the Brookings Institution and Eduardo Lora. The United States is much richer than it was 50 years ago, but this has produced no measurable increase in overall happiness. On the other hand, it has become a much more unequal country, but this inequality doesn’t seem to have reduced national happiness.
... joining a group that meets even just once a month produces the same happiness gain as doubling your income. ... being married produces a psychic gain equivalent to more than $100,000 a year.
... most of us pay attention to the wrong things. Most people vastly overestimate the extent to which more money would improve our lives. Most schools and colleges spend too much time preparing students for careers and not enough preparing them to make social decisions. Most governments release a ton of data on economic trends but not enough on trust and other social conditions. In short, modern societies have developed vast institutions oriented around the things that are easy to count, not around the things that matter most.

See The Sandra Bullock Trade by David Brooks, March 29, 2010.

Economics: The TARP (and We) Profit from Citigrounp

The U.S. Treasury Department plans to sell the government’s 27 percent stake in Citigroup Inc. this year in what could become the biggest profit for the bank bailout program.

The Treasury will dispose of its 7.7 billion common shares of New York-based Citigroup over the course of 2010 using a “pre-arranged written trading plan,” the agency said today in a statement. The Treasury’s stake -- the biggest of any common shareholder -- had a market value of $33.2 billion as of last week’s closing price, for a paper profit of $8.2 billion.

The sale would finish the recovery of $45 billion given to Citigroup from the Troubled Asset Relief Program and bring the Treasury closer to President Barack Obama’s goal of recouping “every single dime” of taxpayer money put into the bank rescue fund

See U.S. Treasury Plans to Sell Citigroup Stake in 2010 by Bloomberg, March 29, 2010.

Politics: The Rage Is Not About Health Care

In fact, the current surge of anger — and the accompanying rise in right-wing extremism — predates the entire health care debate. The first signs were the shrieks of “traitor” and “off with his head” at Palin rallies as Obama’s election became more likely in October 2008. Those passions have spiraled ever since — from Gov. Rick Perry’s kowtowing to secessionists at a Tea Party rally in Texas to the gratuitous brandishing of assault weapons at Obama health care rallies last summer to “You lie!” piercing the president’s address to Congress last fall like an ominous shot.

If Obama’s first legislative priority had been immigration or financial reform or climate change, we would have seen the same trajectory. The conjunction of a black president and a female speaker of the House — topped off by a wise Latina on the Supreme Court and a powerful gay Congressional committee chairman — would sow fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country no matter what policies were in play. It’s not happenstance that Frank, Lewis and Cleaver — none of them major Democratic players in the health care push — received a major share of last weekend’s abuse. When you hear demonstrators chant the slogan “Take our country back!,” these are the people they want to take the country back from.

See The Rage Is Not About Health Care by Frank Rich, March 27, 2010.

I'll add that an other cause of the rage is the Great Recession which wiped out 1/5 of the nation's wealth between December, 2007 and October, 2008 (and more since). 1/3 of mortgages are still "under water".

Santa Barbara: $23,000 per Child

Montecito Union School ... in recent years has enjoyed a budget of $23,000 per child versus the $5,000-per-child allotment to which the vast majority of California districts are entitled.

See Santa Barbara School District Benefits, Salaries Below Average, Noozhawk Review Finds by Rob Kuznia, March 29, 2010.

Mind: Boys Have Fallen Behind

In the United States and other Western countries alike, it is mostly boys who are faltering in school. The latest surveys show that American girls on average have roughly achieved parity with boys in math. Meanwhile, girls are well ahead of boys in verbal skills, and they just seem to try harder.
Among whites, women earn 57 percent of bachelor’s degrees and 62 percent of master’s degrees. Among blacks, the figures are 66 percent and 72 percent.
Mr. Whitmire argues that the basic problem is an increased emphasis on verbal skills, often taught in sedate ways that bore boys. “The world has gotten more verbal,” he writes. “Boys haven’t.”

See The Boys Have Fallen Behind by Nicholas D. Kristof, March 27, 2010.

Politics: Why Recess Appointments?

... the President announced his intention to recess appoint fifteen nominees to fill critical administration posts.

Many of these fifteen individuals have enjoyed broad bipartisan support, but have found their confirmation votes delayed for reasons that have nothing to do with their qualifications.
... these fifteen appointees have waited an average of 214 days for Senate confirmation.

... one senator put a blanket hold on all of the President’s nominees in an attempt to win concessions on two projects that would benefit his state. And another nominee’s confirmation was delayed by one senator for more than eight months because of a disagreement over a proposed federal building in his home state. When that nominee was finally given the vote she deserved, she was confirmed 96 to 0. ...

... at this time in 2002, President Bush had only 5 nominees pending on the floor. By contrast, President Obama has 77 nominees currently pending on the floor, 58 of whom have been waiting for over two weeks and 44 of those have been waiting more than a month. And cloture has been filed 16 times on Obama nominees, nine of whom were subsequently confirmed with 60 or more votes or by voice vote. Cloture was not filed on a single Bush nominee in his first year. And despite facing significantly less opposition, President Bush had already made 10 recess appointments by this point in his presidency and he made another five over the spring recess.

See An Unprecedented Level of Obstruction by Jen Psaki, March 27, 2010.

Economics: Recession Reduced Americans Net Worth 20 Percent

The Federal Reserve reported that the average net worth of American households fell 22.7 percent since the recession began in December 2007 through October 2008, when the report was prepared. Lower housing values and a plunging stock market combined to take a big bite out of American’s net worth.

However, it appears that the recession has had a much bigger impact on the wealthy, when the Fed’s numbers are more closely examined. If the values of second homes and businesses, typically owned by wealthier Americans are factored out, then the average household net worth declined by only 12%.

See Recession Reduces Americans Net Worth 20 Percent February 13th, 2009.

A Fed study of U.S. family finances estimates median family net worth fell by 17.8 percent [through October 2008] while mean net worth declined by 22.7 percent.

Relative to 2004, median net worth slipped by 3.2 percent while mean net worth tumbled 12.7 percent.

See U.S. family net worth down since 2007: Fed by Reuters, Feb 12, 2009.

Friday, April 2, 2010

Humor: Brain Worms

See Brain Worms by XKCD, March 27, 2010.

Politics: Reagan and Others on Medicare

Reagan warned about Medicare ...

[In 1961] Reagan warns that if his listeners do not stop the proposed medical program, "behind it will come other government programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country until one day as Norman Thomas said we will wake to find that we have socialism." Under this scenario, Reagan says, "We are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children, what it once was like in America when men were free."

Reagan liked it ...

In 1980 President Jimmy Carter, campaigning for re-election against Reagan, told crowds that: "As a traveling salesman for the American Medical Association campaign against Medicare, [Reagan] sowed the fear that Medicare would mean socialism and that it would lead to the destruction of our freedom."
Reagan responded, in a televised debate in late October: "When I opposed Medicare, there was another piece of legislation meeting the same problem before Congress. I happened to favor the other piece of legislation and thought it would be better for the senior citizens. ... I was not opposing the principle of providing care for them."

See Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine in Wikipedia.

Others ignored Reagan's change of mind ...

On August 14 [2009], the Drudge Report, Rush Limbaugh, and O'Reilly Factor guest host Laura Ingraham featured a recording of Ronald Reagan speaking in 1961 against "socialized medicine" for the American Medical Association's Operation Coffee Cup Campaign against Medicare. Neither Drudge, Limbaugh, nor Ingraham, however, noted that Reagan was speaking out against an early version of Medicare, which has become very popular since it was enacted 44 years ago, or that Reagan's dire predictions of curtailments of freedom were never realized.

See Conservatives push Reagan's 1961 attacks on "socialized medicine" but ignore that he was criticizing Medicare by MediaMatter.com, August 17, 2009.

Healthcare: David Frum, AEI, Heritage And Health Care

In discussing the [David] Frum firing, Bruce Bartlett asserts that AEI [American Enterprise Institute] has muzzled its health-care experts, because the truth is that they agree with a lot of what Obama is proposing. I find this quite believable; back in 2003 Stuart Butler of the Heritage Foundation, which is supposedly harder-right than AEI, proposed a health care reform consisting of … drumroll … an individual mandate coupled with subsidies to make insurance affordable. In short, Obamacare.

See David Frum, AEI, Heritage And Health Care by Paul Krugman, March 25, 2010 and Laying the Groundwork for Universal Health Care Coveragexht by Stuart Butler, March 10, 2003.

Science: Identifying Individual Atoms in a Photograph

Amazing they can do this ...

Using a special z-contrast scanning electron microscope, researchers at Oak Ridge took the first picture detailed enough to differentiate different atoms within a chemical compound.

See Insanely Hi-Res Z-Contrast Photos Can Determine Which Atoms Are Which by Stuart Fox, March 25, 2010.