Public Editor

G&M on the Fraser Institute

2011-06-13T14:52:00.000-07:00

Surprisingly honest coverage of the Fraser Institute school rankings, as the article describes the think-tank as conservative and the rankings as narrow and flawed.

The Political Gov. Walker

2011-02-24T20:24:00.000-08:00

Shep Smith and Juan Williams point out, on Fox News no less, that Governor Walker's crackdown on unions is politically motivated and has nothing to do with a fiscal crisis:

Shep is wrong, though, when he suggests that the pro-labor fightback is purely about preserving a major funding source for the Democratic Party. He may or may not be right that the disappearance of unions would be "game over" for the Democrats - it would certainly be very damaging - but many people like me are pro-labor and pro-union regardless of the Democratic Party. I support unions in Canada and abroad, and I would keep supporting them in the U.S. if the Democratic Party disappeared tomorrow.

Unions are about much more than funding a political party. It's about unions being a countervailing power against monied interests and corporate lobbyists. Now it's true that a big part of that countervailing power is expressed by supporting some political candidates over others, but it's a lot bigger than just that.

National Review's CBO Dishonesty

2011-02-18T18:04:00.000-08:00

Andrew Stiles headlines a post CBO: Obamacare Repeal Would Save $1.4 Trillion. Sounds bad, doesn't it? Of course, it's not true. The CBO provided a cost-benefit analysis, and Stiles reported only the benefit. The cost of repeal, according to the CBO, outweighs the benefit by a couple hundred billion dollars. Specifically, the Republican plan to repeal the health care reform would add $210 billion dollars to the deficit. But National Review doesn't want you to know that.

More Fraser Institute

2011-02-07T20:25:00.000-08:00

Following on my previous post, it also bugs me that the Fraser Institute gets cited by the media as if they were some sort of neutral agent rather than an ideological think-tank with a particular perspective. They are often quoted in reputable newspapers with no mention of the nature of their advocacy. That's not the fault of the Fraser Institute. The whole point of a political think-tank is to promote a world-view and make an impact in the media (even if the FI misleads). It's the fault of credulous journalists who believe that the Fraser Institute researchers are just policy wonks existing in some sort of political vacuum. They're not, and they don't try to hide it, so there's no reason to treat them as such. I understand the reason behind it: journalists need quotes and stories and think-tanks churn them out on a daily basis, but that's still not a good excuse.

How the Fraser Institute Gets it Wrong with School Rankings

2011-02-07T19:35:00.000-08:00

This was a good line from Adrian Dix:

"Fantasy hockey pool guidebooks use more rigorous assessment and criteria than the Fraser Institute," Dix declared in a statement.

He's referring to school rankings supplied by the libertarian, right-leaning Fraser Institute, a think tank favouring private solutions and free markets. But it made me curious what analysis the Institute actually does to reach its widely cited rankings. So I took a look.

The rankings are most often criticized because they are based (partly) on the Foundational Skills Assessment (FSA), a standardized assessment widely derided by educators. Here's Jane Friesen of SFU:

"It’s simply telling you how is a particular cohort of students in a school doing in a particular year. I think we have to be careful to not interpret those results as a measure of the effectiveness of the school and I think that’s where the real issue comes in,” she said.

Friesen said there are a number of factors that the rankings don't take into account, such as students' backgrounds.

In other words, the test was never intended to be used to directly compare schools, even though that's precisely how the Fraser Institute uses them. But then I dug into the actual Fraser Institute 2010 report card for B.C. and the Yukon and found that the problems go well beyond the use of the FSA.

The Fraser Institute rankings actually depend on 7 factors, only 3 of which involve the FSA. The other four are Math 10 gender gap, English 10 gender gap, graduation rate and delayed advancement rate. Combining these factors with various weights (graduation rate and delayed advancement rate accounting for fully 25% of the final score), the Fraser Institute scores schools on a 0-10 scale and ranks them "best" to "worst."

You may have spotted the problem already. Given the factors I just mentioned, which schools would you expect to do worst and best? Unsurprisingly, the rankings favor private schools that cater to the wealthy and well-to-do. Social context is completely ignored; schools are directly compared with one another despite some schools facing much more of a challenge regarding students coming from poverty and neglect and facing myriad obstacles not often seen by private school attendees. Should we conclude that West Point Grey Academy in Vancouver is really a better school than a public school in Prince George because it has higher graduation rates and better test scores? That these outcomes reflect superior teachers and better curriculum? Of course not; the challenges faced are worlds apart. We shouldn't be surprised that these 7 factors give a higher score to wealthy private schools. We should be surprised that the Fraser Institute uses those scores to rank schools as being better or worse.

To put it another way, you shouldn't look at these rankings and think "wow, I should put my kids into West Point Grey Academy." You should look at them and think "wow, I should have a wealthy family with few social problems."

I would hope that people's skepticism would be aroused even before inspecting the Fraser's Institute's dodgy use of statistics. After all, what are the chances that a right-leaning libertarian think-tank in B.C. and a right-leaning, libertarian think-tank in Washington State would use the exact same ranking scheme and that the scheme just happens to favor schools advocated by right-leaning libertarians.

Sadly, it gets worse. Many people would look at these stats and say that we should pay teachers according to how well their students do on such rankings. I think most people are sympathetic to the idea of rewarding good teachers, but punishing teachers who are faced with troubled students and real-world problems just makes the problem infinitely worse.

Finally, we should probably be skeptical of any ranking that gives a perfect score to the Bountiful Elementary-Secondary school.

Conservatism Today

2011-01-17T12:38:00.000-08:00

National Review boldly comes out against government-provided meals for malnourished children. Hard to believe someone could write this in disapproval:

That really sums it up. The Obama administration seeks to feed this nation’s children all year round — not just when school is in session. Another example of this year-round feeding frenzy is the $350 million Congress appropriated last year for the Summer Food Service Program, which provides nearly 2 million children with up to three meals per day during the summer months.

The audacity of the government to try to help poor, malnourished children!

But tell us, what's the solution?

The solution to the country’s child-nutrition problems can’t be found in school lunches or any federally funded child-meal program. The only real solution is to encourage parents to take greater control of what their children are eating.

Who knew that rising out of poverty was that easy? This is the classic conservative tack: emphasize the importance of personal responsibility on such matters, where responsibility in those cases translates to "you're on your own." Again, quite a limited definition of responsibility.

Why We Have Progressive Income Taxes

2011-01-15T19:27:00.000-08:00

This is a follow-up of sorts to my post on ways of thinking about taxes. But whereas that post was about justifying income taxes generally, this one's about justifying progressive taxes. A progressive income tax is basically one where the tax rate increases along with the amount of income.

There are many arguments in favor of progressive taxes, some more obvious than others. A common one is that the accumulation of great wealth tends to lead to power and influence over policy, which in turns leads to more wealth. Wealth begets wealth, the rich get richer. Progressive income taxes are a way of fending of an aristocracy where a few individuals wield incredible power over everyone else. At points in US history, for example, there were individuals who wielded almost as much power and influence as the entire US government.

A related argument in favor of progressive income taxes is that they reduce inequality. Inequality has become a hot topic recently, with some claiming that inequality breeds societal ills and still others claiming that vast inequality is morally wrong regardless of whether or not it breeds other social problems.

But it's the less obvious arguments that interest me here, and they are at least as important if not more. First, let's consider the question "Who benefits most from government?" In theory, governments serve everybody, but not necessarily equally. Our first intuition might be that the poor benefit the most, as governments often institute some sort of social safety net including welfare. But the services and protections of government are actually enjoyed disproportionately by the wealthy, the benefits increasing as wealth increases. Why? One reason is that as wealth increases, so do assets. And the enjoyment of private assets is only possible through government-enforced laws. The Trouble with Billionaires, a recent book co-written by a tax lawyer and a journalist, describes the situation by responding to critics of progressive income tax who decry the "interfering state":

On the contrary, that interfering state has been their best friend. Without it, they'd be scrounging around in the bush with the rest of us, worried about when the next marauding gang was going to pounce on the buffalo they had just speared in an attempt to feed their children. Only with the complex set of laws governing property, inheritance, contracts, banking, stock exchanges, and other commercial relations--not to mention criminal prosecution of those trying to seize their buffalo--can the rich be secure in holding their possessions and enjoy the comfortable lives that come with those possessions.

Besides protection of assets, also discussed here, I would add political influence as a way that the wealthy disproportionately benefit from government. The more wealth you have, the more influence and lobbying power you have, and the more you help control the environment in which you live. So another way of answering this question is to rephrase it and ask "If government is removed, who has the most to lose?" The answer becomes even clearer.

The second point is to consider how the wealth is generated in the first place. There is a tendency, particularly strong in the US, to think of wealthy individuals as "self-made," pulling themselves up by their boot-straps and making billions out of thin air. Of course, you can't actually make billions on a desert island. You make billions by taking advantage of a common inheritance of knowledge and advances, incrementally building upon developments that go back hundreds of years. You generate wealth by drawing on this "common treasury," incurring debts along the way. Taxes are one way that we recognize the roles society and cultural inheritance play in wealth generation.

Strangely, for some people who have achieved great success and wealth that comes with it, they don't feel thankful or lucky or indebted to the society and circumstances that allowed their success, but rather feel that the society owes them. They perceive themselves as self-made men and the majority of others as leeches, leading to such Randian notions as the elite Going Galt.

Thankfully, not all wealthy individuals feel that way. Warren Buffet is a great example. He often talks about how he generated his billions by being fortunate enough to live in a particular place at a particular time where his skill-set (he's good at allocating money in the market) happened to be highly valued. I've referred before to his description of The Ovarian Lottery in determining our fates. It's no coincidence that he favors progressive taxes. He has actually criticized the US government for not taxing him more.

If you're interested in these issues, I highly recommmend this book.

Don't Forget the Social Darwinists!

2011-01-15T17:53:00.000-08:00

I should clarify this passage from my previous post:

Based on my conversations with conservatives, I think most of them also believe that the affluent have a moral obligation to help the less fortunate. They simply dispute that the government has a right to force them to help via taxes.

One example would be Christian conservatives, who often believe that their faith requires them to help the less fortunate. But there are also many conservatives who believe that no such obligation exists, that it's each man to himself and survival of the fittest. Strangely enough, I know some Christians who are also social darwinists, which makes you wonder what their Christianity actually means.

Krugman on "Two Moralities"

2011-01-14T11:31:00.000-08:00

Krugman's column today relates to my preceding post:

One side of American politics considers the modern welfare state — a private-enterprise economy, but one in which society’s winners are taxed to pay for a social safety net — morally superior to the capitalism red in tooth and claw we had before the New Deal. It’s only right, this side believes, for the affluent to help the less fortunate.

The other side believes that people have a right to keep what they earn, and that taxing them to support others, no matter how needy, amounts to theft. That’s what lies behind the modern right’s fondness for violent rhetoric: many activists on the right really do see taxes and regulation as tyrannical impositions on their liberty.

My one qualm with this is the line regarding the liberal view: "It’s only right, this side believes, for the affluent to help the less fortunate." Based on my conversations with conservatives, I think most of them also believe that the affluent have a moral obligation to help the less fortunate. They simply dispute that the government has a right to force them to help via taxes. They view it as forced charity. This is what I was trying to address in the preceding post on taxes.

Ways of Thinking about Taxes

2011-01-13T19:28:00.000-08:00

The main motivation of the political right in the U.S. and Canada over the past couple of years seems to center primarily around fiscal issues. The tea partiers and most conservatives I know give social issues a lower priority than did right-wingers of even 10 years ago. And the main right-wing complaint I hear seems to be some variation of, or a sentiment similar to, the following question:

What right does the government have to tell me how to spend my money?

The thing is, most people reading this probably live in some form of a representational democracy. And if you're one of those people, that question doesn't really make sense as a complaint. It's true, of course, that governments decide how taxes are allocated, but it's also true that you decide on the make-up of your government (if you exercise your vote). You vote for people who you think will reflect your priorities and advocate for causes you believe in. To answer the above question concisely then, the government has a right to tell you how to spend your taxes because you elected them.

Taxes and voting go hand-in-hand in a democracy. The founders of the U.S. knew this. Note that they were railing against taxation without representation, not against taxes. If you're eligible to vote, you can't make the same complaint they did. Some people, such as permanent residents, do suffer from taxation without representation because they can't vote but pay taxes as anyone else would. But for people who can vote, the whole idea is to vote for people who will reflect your priorities and act as your agent. If you're a conservative and favor small government, lower taxes and a right-leaning social agenda, then by all means support the people who stand up for that. The government isn't telling you how to spend your money, you're telling the government how to spend your money. You decide.

"Wait," you might say, "I don't really make that decision. I just get one vote, and the people I voted for didn't even get elected." Well, that's tough. You get one vote in a democracy. If you had more power than that, it wouldn't be a democracy. In practice, some people or entities (e.g. lobbying firms, huge corporations) do have more power than that, and a big part of the liberal agenda is to try to counteract that and empower the single voter. The proverbial "little guy" that politicians are always blathering on about.

If you're a libertarian, your objection might be harsher. "I don't want to pay any taxes at all. It's my money." Some libertarians like Robert Nozick went so far as to describe taxes as being the fruits of slave labor. That's a real misunderstanding of what taxes are. Maybe a decent analogy is with membership fees. If you live in Canada or the U.S., for example, you enjoy many benefits and advantages of a well-developed country with decent infrastructure, security and some semblance of a social safety net. If you were born in Canada or the U.S., you are a winner in what billionaire Warren Buffet (who favors higher taxes on the rich) calls the Ovarian Lottery. You were born into a life of relative ease, comfort and massive potential. Taxes are one way you pay your dues in the land of plenty. We make exceptions for people in extreme poverty, but generally we consider tax-shirkers to be looking for a free ride.

A libertarian could counter again and say, "I don't want any of those advantages. I voted for minarchy!" Realistically, the chaos and anarchy of minarchism would eventually lead to some form of tax-funded government, even if it were limited. But if you feel really strongly about it, can I suggest Somalia?

Threats and Rhetoric

2011-01-10T21:47:00.001-08:00

Nate Silver has a good post on assassination threats and mentions this stunning statistic:

The journalist Ronald Kessler, meanwhile, wrote in his bestselling book that there has been a 400 percent increase in the number of threats against the White House since Barack Obama took office.

That's incredible. How much of this huge up-tick in threats might be due to the rhetoric and invective churned out by the right? We don't know. Is there a simpler explanation? An obvious explanation could be racism. But would racism alone account for a four-fold increase? Possibly, until I was reminded of this other stat on threats:

The passage of the health care reform bill has resulted in a threefold increase in serious threats to members of Congress according to Federal police enforcement officers.

The health care reform debate was by far the most heated part of the Obama presidency so far, with people on the right labeling the President a socialist, a communist and suggesting that he would institute death panels. I doubt violent threats would have increased by three- or four-fold if the national debate had been passionate yet restrained, if our leaders had spent less time characterizing Obama as a treasonous communist terrorist instead of simply a political foe to be engaged.

Loughner and the Political Discourse

2011-01-10T15:19:00.000-08:00

It seems like most of the MSM discussion of the Tucson shooting and its political implications have failed to separate out two questions:

1. Is violent political rhetoric a problem?

2. Did violent political rhetoric cause the shooting?

My answers would be "yes" and "no," respectively. All the details we've learned about Jared Lee Loughner point to him being mentally ill, probably schizophrenic, and harboring a hodge-podge of paranoid beliefs that don't place him neatly on the political spectrum. Even if we eventually find out that he took some inspiration from political speeches or talk radio, there is no direct line of culpability from Palin et al. to the shooting.

But we shouldn't make our debate about question 1 contingent on whatever Loughner's motivations turn out to be. People were criticizing the overheated political climate long before this tragedy occurred and should continue to do so. I think that's what George Packer meant when he said that Loughner's motivations don't matter. And I'm starting to see similar responses from bloggers across the political spectrum, from David Frum, Ezra Klein, Brendan Nyhan, and Jonathan Chait.

Klein and Chait both go on to defend the presence of anger and passion in our political debates, and I second that. I get angry about politics all the time, because the stakes are often huge. But it's a big leap from giving an angry defense of your views to proclaiming armed revolution if you don't get your way. From Chait:

Since the closing stages of the 2008 election, conservatives have regularly described President Obama as an alien figure and his policies a fundamental threat to American liberty. It has become normal for conservatives to hint that they will take up arms if they don't get their way politically -- a violation of the cultural norm of respecting democratic outcomes that forms the basis for the stability of our political system.

There's no doubt that many politicians and media personalities have fostered a climate in which violence is seen as a credible force for change. "Watering the tree of liberty" and all that. We should all condemn that trend, as it has worsened rapidly and worryingly in the past few years.

Unfortunately the debate of the past few days seems to have coalesced into "was he or wasn't he motivated by politics?" which blurs the questions and misses the larger point.

Ezra Levant, Peter Kent and "Ethical" Oil

2011-01-08T11:54:00.000-08:00

It's disheartening to see that the top priority of the new Environment Minister is to defend the tar sands at all costs, and almost as disheartening to see him getting talking points from Ezra Levant:

Mr. Levant, a onetime aide to Stockwell Day, has helped popularize the argument that oil-sands petroleum is ethically superior to petroleum produced by countries such as Saudi Arabia, Venezuela and Iran – all nations that also sell crude to the U.S. market or Asian markets.

Mr. Levant is correct that, all other things being equal, we should support Canadian democracy over the despotic OPEC regimes. But Canada's superior governance does not make tar sands "ethical," for you can't define ethical in purely geopolitical terms and ignore environmental consequences. The tar sands are unsustainable because of their energy intensiveness (input to output ratio), water requirements, tailing ponds and pollution in the Athabasca River. One of Canada's great resources is it's vast natural beauty, and that's being seriously blighted by the tar sands.

Moreover, Levant (and Kent) are presenting a false choice between despotic oil and dirty oil. There are many other energy options more deserving of the "ethical" label.

Partisan Snowstorms

2010-12-30T15:27:00.001-08:00

This post by Charlotte Hays is really one of the dumbest things I've seen on National Review in ages.

The blizzard is definitely a force for conservatism, and not only because it has had the global-warming crowd scrambling for explanations. The blizzard reveals something basic: Liberals in government want to tell us what to eat, counsel us about how and when to die, and in general attempt to engineer our lives. But when reality knocks, they can’t do the basic stuff such as clearing the streets so that newborns don’t die in bloody apartment-building lobbies.

Using the inefficiencies of the New York City snow-clearing system to discredit liberalism is...a stretch, to say the least. And note that she's really asking for better service, not the elimination of service.

But I also love the little flash of global-warming ignorance. Every Winter brings the spectacle of some right-wing dim bulb noticing snow falling and declaring that global warming is a myth. Those people can't tell the difference between weather and climate or between local phenomena and global phenomena. But nonetheless they get writing gigs for the most prestigious conservative publication.

Via Conor

Tyler Cowen on Inequality

2010-12-29T21:59:00.000-08:00

Tyler Cowen has received a lot of attention for this post on inequality in which he attempts to discern the inequality that matters from inequality that doesn't (or inequality that is unacceptable vs. inequality that is). I'm still chewing on it, but I wanted to address his first point, which is that that "the income of personal well-being" has markedly improved over the past century.

First, the inequality of personal well-being is sharply down over the past hundred years and perhaps over the past twenty years as well. Bill Gates is much, much richer than I am, yet it is not obvious that he is much happier if, indeed, he is happier at all. I have access to penicillin, air travel, good cheap food, the Internet and virtually all of the technical innovations that Gates does...
Compare these circumstances to those of 1911, a century ago. Even in the wealthier countries, the average person had little formal education, worked six days a week or more, often at hard physical labor, never took vacations, and could not access most of the world’s culture. The living standards of Carnegie and Rockefeller towered above those of typical Americans, not just in terms of money but also in terms of comfort.

I think that's basically true. But there are a couple of major caveats. First of all, I think he over-reaches here:

Like the vast majority of Americans, I have access to some important new pharmaceuticals, such as statins to protect against heart disease. To be sure, Gates receives the very best care from the world’s top doctors, but our health outcomes are in the same ballpark.

Health care is, in fact, one of the very things that separates a person like Bill Gates from the average American, which is why health care reform has been so important. An average middle class American may enjoy many of life's finer things just like Gates does, but being hit by a major illness can mean bankruptcy and ruin. Gates obviously isn't faced with that problem.

The second caveat is that much of the decrease in the inequality of personal well-being is artificial; millions of Americans can only experience those finer things by hugely over-extending themselves and going into debt.

Having said all that, I'm happier being an average Joe today than an average Joe in 1901.

Car Seats and Libertarianism

2010-12-29T21:45:00.000-08:00

We're shopping for child car seats right now, and so I was reading this article with interest. I was stunned by this figure:

The push for car-seat changes is also prompted by data showing the use of child restraints cuts car-collision deaths dramatically. Between 1993 and 2006, the number of child passengers who died in motor-vehicle accidents dropped by 50 per cent, according to Transport Canada, which attributes the decline to improved design and greater use of child restraints.

Deaths dropped by 50 percent in that time period due simply to improved designs. And what spurred the improved designs? Incredibly restrictive government regulations. Basically, if you live in the US or Canada, it's impossible to buy a crappy child car seat in a store. They differ in features and some are more basic than others, but they all have to pass the same rigorous tests. This is a great example of the positive role government can play in our lives.

That might seem like an obvious thing to say, but it poses a big problem for libertarianism. Extreme libertarians submit that the only justifiable role for government is to provide security and enforce contracts. Anything else begins to impinge on individual freedom. What might their response to this car seat story be? It would go something like this: the government has no right to prevent me from buying a crappy, unsafe car seat if I wish to. That's a decision for each individual to make according to their conscience. Let the market take care of it. If there is demand for cheap, unsafe car seats, then we should let manufacturers supply them. The government shouldn't be intervening in markets and in people's free choices.

I think pure libertarianism is not more popular because of scenarios like this, where most people recognize that there is a serious moral problem in respecting the free choice of a few individuals at the cost of thousands of lives. Quite a few people call themselves libertarians, but I think there are very few people who don't have at least a few pet causes that they think merit government intervention or regulation. In my experience, most people who call themselves libertarians are in fact conservatives who resent the government's role in a few areas but promote it in many others.

A libertarian might now respond to the car seat discussion by clarifying that an individual should be free to act as they wish only as long as they are not harming others, and that in this case harm (or potential harm) is clearly being done and so government intervention is justified. So what about cases where there is no obvious victim or harm being done? Helmet laws are a useful case. Why should cyclists be forced to wear helmets? If a car hits them, they are probably the only ones who are going to be hurt. Shouldn't they be free to make that choice if they aren't concerned with their safety? One rebuttal is that riding without a helmet isn't really a victimless crime; any injuries sustained tend to drive up medical and insurance costs for everyone. But let's pretend that that's not true and that the cyclist really is the only victim of their refusal to wear a helmet. Are the regulations wrong in that case? These discussions tend to boil down to a matter of self-ownership. Do we own ourselves? The obvious immediate answer seems to be yes, but consideration of the types of scenarios offered by Michael Sandel might make us reconsider:

Should a person be free to donate an organ even if it means they will certainly die? Should someone be free to offer their life and body to a cannibalistic killer? (Believe it or not, these aren't hypotheticals but real-life scenarios) In a future post I'll try to summarize Sandel's discussion in more depth. But suffice it to say that there are many scenarios which strongly question our intuitive belief that we completely own ourselves. It remains to be seen whether that will shake anybody's beliefs about helmet laws, but it is something that needs to be addressed by pure libertarians.

Finally, a core weakness of libertarianism is that it has a very narrow conception of liberty (essentially just negative liberty). There's a lot more to liberty than being left alone.

Is the Mandate Constitutional?

2010-12-16T23:21:00.000-08:00

A few days ago, a U.S. District Court judge ruled that the individual mandate in the health reforms of the Affordable Care Act is unconstitutional. This got a lot of hyperbolic press proclaiming the imminent end of "Obamacare." In truth, it's not nearly as critical a ruling as all that. For one thing, the ruling itself separated the individual mandate from the rest of the Affordable Care Act, meaning that even if the mandate were struck down the rest would still survive. Furthermore, the judge refused to grant an injunction preventing the implementation of the health reforms.

We also have to look at the context of the ruling. This is actually the third ruling on the individual mandate, and the first two both found the mandate to be constitutional. It's maybe a sad commentary on the US judicial system that these rulings have been completely partisan. The two judges who ruled in favor of the mandate were appointed by Clinton and the judge who ruled against was appointed by George W. Bush - so much for apolitical judges calling balls and strikes. Anyway, all of these rulings are just stepping stones on the way to the Supreme Court.

So what will happen at the Supreme Court? Who knows. It's famously stacked with several activist Republicans including Scalia, Alito, and Roberts, but I think even they would be very hesitant to hand down a ruling that would dramatically reinterpret and narrow the ability of the federal government to regulate economic activity.

But what if they do declare the mandate unconstitutional? The rest of the health reforms would still be in place. And here's the key problem: the health reforms do not work without the mandate. If you prohibit insurance companies from discriminating based on pre-existing conditions, and you don't require people to have insurance, then people will simply wait until they get sick and then get insurance. That obviously is not a sustainable system. And, as this article points out, it "is not an insurance system at all. It’s free-riding." So the mandate would be replaced with something very similar to the mandate. Ideas are already circulating should that come to pass.

So the takeaway point is that, even in the worst case scenario, this does not signal the end of the Affordable Care Act.

Revolving Doors

2010-12-16T22:08:00.000-08:00

There's a lot of justified anger and cynicism regarding Peter Orzag's move from the White House to Citigroup. A move like this tends to reinforce what people see as a cosy relationship between government and the banking sector, and it seems like we would be well-served by limits on how quickly a person could move from one to the other. But this analysis by Will Wilkinson struck me as wrong-headed:

Progressives laudably seek to oppose injustice by deploying government power as a countervailing force against the imagined opressive and exploitative tendencies of market institutions. Yet it seems that time and again market institutions find ways to use the government's regulatory and insurer-of-last-resort functions as countervailing forces against their competitors and, in the end, against the very public these functions were meant to protect.

We are constantly exploited by the tools meant to foil our exploitation. For a progressive to acknowledge as much is tantamount to abandoning progressivism. So it's no surprise that progressives would rather worry over trivialities such as campaign finance reform than dwell on the paradoxes of political power.

I think the first paragraph is basically correct, and it's the second that I take issue with. Acknowledging that market institutions exploit public institutions and their regulatory functions is not "tantamount to abandoning progressivism" any more than acknowledging that pure unchecked market capitalism can be destabilizing and destructive requires a free market advocate to completely abandon the idea. It's like saying that because the system can be gamed, then the entire system should be scrapped. Chait offers several rebuttals, including this one:

As Wilkinson semi-concedes later on in his item, it's not really true that "Well-connected wonks can get rich on Wall Street only because Washington power is now so unconstrained." It's impossible to create a government weak enough that having deep knowledge of government will not be a marketable commodity. Given that fact, the only answer is to create social norms and regulatory barriers to minimize excessive special interest as best as possible.

Wilkinson's post is interesting and much more than a bash on progressivism; he even walks back that original statement. He's asking the right questions:

Maybe it's true that markets hum along smoothly only with relatively active government intervention and it's also true that relatively active government intervention is eventually inevitably co-opted, exacerbating rather than mitigating capitalism's injustices. Perhaps the best we can hope ever to achieve is a fleeting state of grace when fundamentally unstable forces are temporarily held in balance by an evanescent combination of complementary cultural currents. This is increasingly my fear: that there is no principled alternative to muddling through; that every ideologue's op-ed is wrong, except the ones serendipitously right. But muddle we must.

So what is to be done about the structural injustice spotlighted by Peter Orszag's passage through the revolving golden door? How exactly do we tweak the unjust structure? If the system is rigged, how exactly do we unrig it? In which direction can we muddle without making matters worse?

Free Will

2010-12-15T17:17:00.005-08:00

John Searle visits Google and discusses free will and determinism:

Nerd Love

2010-11-29T18:00:00.001-08:00

Statistical analysis of the Canucks by UBC economist James Brander.

The Walrus

2010-11-29T14:26:00.000-08:00

I was reading through The Walrus yesterday and it was a good reminder of the great stuff they put out:

This photo-essay on Bolivian Mennonites.

This interview and article on children's author Robert Munsch.

This Kevin Chong feature on Canadian whisky.

Smearing George Soros

2010-10-20T22:37:00.002-07:00

So, George Soros donated 1 million dollars to Media Matters. If you don't know who George Soros is, he's a billionaire philanthropist who often supports liberal causes (among many other philanthropic ventures). But if you are a follower of Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter then I can guarantee you know who Soros is, because to them he's like the liberal anti-Christ. And today the crazy right-wing attacks on Soros began again.

Limbaugh accused Media Matters of accepting "foreign money", a strange accusation given that Soros is an American citizen and has been for 50 years. Glenn Beck, bless him, apparently thinks that Soros has a contract out on his life. Seriously.

But there's one disgusting conspiracy theory that keeps raising its head, promoted by people like Coulter, Limbaugh and Ezra Levant: the idea that Soros was a Nazi collaborator, a Nazi sympathizer or a traitor to his people (Soros is Jewish). Here's the actual story. As a Jewish child in Nazi-occupied Hungary, Soros' life was in danger and his father arranged for him to essentially be adopted by an employee of the Hungarian Ministry of Agriculture as a way to keep George safe. George lived with this person and posed as a godson, hiding his Jewish identity in order to survive. Hiding his Jewishness in order to survive the Nazi regime does not make him a collaborator or a sympathizer or a traitor. One would think this doesn't need saying, but people like Coulter and Levant will apparently say anything to further their partisan politics.

Here's a question. Should we demonize the Jews who were saved by Oskar Schindler because they were protected by a Nazi while others around them were killed? Of course not. Why would we demonize and slander Soros for taking protection that was offered him as a child? Apparently because he is a liberal who supports liberal causes. That makes him open game for the right-wing set.

I know it's easy to no longer even be shocked when right-wing hacks like O'Reilly, Beck, Coulter and Levant say something hyperbolic and wrong, but I hope we all have enough decency left to recognize this as shocking, bottom-of-the-barrel stuff, even for the GOP Fox News set.

Tennessee Fire

2010-10-06T14:46:00.002-07:00

Really interesting analyses of the Tennessee pay-to-spray incident by Jonathan Cohn, Ezra Klein and Michael Tomasky. And a rundown of right-wing National Review responses here.

Iran-Contra

2009-09-22T09:20:00.002-07:00

Remember when President Reagan sold all those weapons to Iran and then funneled the proceeds to a Latin American paramilitary group? Good times. It's been on my mind for a couple of reasons. First, Reagan has been absolutely lionized by the right, especially since his death. And it seems that this shameful episode has been completely white-washed. When the Iran-Contra hearings were taking place I was just old enough to begin to have an awareness of politics and political figures. I remember seeing him on the TV every day, saying "I don't recall, I don't recall" and I was absolutely bewildered that you could just lie and get away with it. I didn't have any concept of left-wing and right-wing, or even Democrat and Republican. It was just the audacity of him pretending not to know anything about it that struck me. I was so incredulous that I remember asking my folks about it - "You can just lie and get away with it?" Maybe this first impression of Reagan is one reason why I've never been able to idolize him.

A second reason it's on my mind is that I was imagining what the reaction would be if Obama had authorized such acts. A little thought-experiment for right-wingers: if you woke up tomorrow morning and read that Obama had sold weapons to Iran and funneled the proceeds to a left-wing paramilitary group in Latin America (say, FARC), what would your reaction be?

Canadian Healthcare

2009-09-14T20:25:00.002-07:00

A favorite tactic of Republicans opposed to healthcare reform is to find a few scare stories from Canada and the UK to try to put the fear of change into the American people. Nevermind that it's easier to find healthcare horror stories from the US. The fact is that Canadians and Britons like their healthcare and don't particularly appreciate having it misrepresented, even if they do see ways that it could be improved. In the Globe and Mail today, a Canadian economist and a former health policy adviser succinctly lay out the reasons why the Canadian system is better. Here's the gist:

So to sum up. We live longer than the Americans do. We are less likely to die at or soon after birth than the Americans are. All Canadians have medical insurance, whereas a huge number of Americans don't. And we pay less as a society for health care than they do in the United States. Four numbers paint a stark picture. And when you strip away the anti-medicare ideological rants and falsehoods on display in Washington, Canada's approach to health insurance would probably sound pretty good to many Americans.

I don't see how anyone could look at these facts and conclude that the US system is better.

Chait on Ayn Rand & Co.

2009-09-14T20:11:00.003-07:00

This TNR piece by Jonathan Chait is excellent. He gives an overview of Rand's background and beliefs, including some very unusual details about her and her original followers, then procedes to eviscerate her political philosophy. It gets especially good near the end.

The economic right may believe religiously in their moral view of wealth, but we do not have to respect it as we might respect religious faith. For it does not transcend--perhaps no religion should transcend--empirical scrutiny. On the contrary, this conservative view, the Randian inversion of the Marxist worldview, rests upon a series of propositions that can be falsified by data.

He then goes on to show exactly how the Randian worldview fails. This reminds me just how good Chait can be.

Just Cold Makin' Stuff Up

2009-08-28T14:33:00.004-07:00

We apparently live in an age where any outlandish lie about Obama and the Democrats can gain media traction. Here's one now! So I decided to come up with some outlandish lies about Republicans just to see if I could get them to catch on. Keep in mind, these are all lies written by a treacherous liberal. You shouldn't believe them...but you will! So here's a peek at the upcoming Republican policy platform:

The GOP will take your children away and force them to live in a moon colony. How will you feel when you see your kids flying away on a moon rocket? I bet you'll feel bad.

The GOP will force old people to work on cactus plantations in the desert southwest. Something about that just doesn't sit right with me.

You know that favorite TV show of yours? The Republicans want to cancel it.

The Republican health plan requires all Americans to take Dr. Sanjay Gupta as their personal physician. Sorry, that doesn't sound like the land of freedom to me.

The GOP will require all domestic pets to be added to a communal soup pot.

Every morning the Republican leadership gathers and prays - for you to die!!

An old man and his grandson were walking along a dirt road, fishing poles resting against their shoulders, the early morning quiet but for their laughter. Just then Republican Senator Chuck Grassley stepped out of the bushes and snapped their fishing poles in half with a derisive sneer. Then he threw the shredded remnants of a health reform bill in their faces. That just seems way beyond the pale.

The GOP will require each family to have at least one child named "Mega-Dittos." That child will, of course, be sent to the moon.

Some Insurance Basics

2009-08-19T23:48:00.008-07:00

Despite the detailed and heated health care debate, I haven't read much discussion of what insurance is and why we have it. It's worth discussing briefly, as it gets at some of the fundamental need for reform.

Insurance in theory is a pretty great idea. When you pay your periodic fire insurance bill, you're basically paying for a portion of all the fire damage that occurred during that time period, in the understanding that if you ever suffer fire damage then you too will be covered. That's a really rough sketch of the idea, but it's basically about looking after each other and your own self-interest.

This works fine, in theory, until the people controlling the inflow and outflow of money realize that they're sitting on a huge pot of money that can be played with and invested, and that their profits can be maximized by increasing the in-payments, restricting any out-payments and denying coverage to anyone who looks risky. Suddenly they've gone from being a simple conduit between participants in the insurance program to being a self-interested, profit-maximizing entity.

Now, here's the thing: it's possible to have a perfectly good functioning insurance system without having a bloated middleman skimming billions of dollars for profit and denying coverage to millions of people. This morning I followed an Atrios link to this post by John Cole:

Hell, I can’t, for the life of me, figure out what value the insurance companies add at all. Seems like all they do is skim money off the top, add layers of paperwork, and then screw people when they get a serious illness.

This is precisely the function of private insurers, and there's no need for it. You could have a non-profit co-op or a public option for providing insurance. I've never heard a single good reason why it's better to have a huge, bureaucratic, profit-driven corporation that looks after only its own bottom line and sabotages the purpose of insurance in the first place.

Public Option and the Mandate

2009-08-19T20:01:00.000-07:00

This is a good point: an individual mandate really doesn't make sense without the public option.

Zombie Death Panel

2009-08-19T19:57:00.002-07:00

Depressing stat of the day: 45% of Americans believe the death panel lies emanating from Palin & Co. There's a quote often attributed to Twain: "A lie can travel halfway round the world while the truth is putting on its shoes."

Some Health Care Talking Points (I)

2009-08-14T01:15:00.004-07:00

I've noticed that many opponents of health care reform seem to deeply misunderstand what is actually being proposed, so figured it might do both proponents and opponents some good to lay out in simple terms exactly what reformers would like to see.

First of all, no one would force you to give up your health insurance. Much of the anger out there seems to be based on a fear of not having that freedom of choice. If you like your current policy, you can keep it. You can buy all the private insurance you want - knock yourself out! What is being proposed is that people who cannot afford or cannot attain private insurance, e.g. because of exorbitant costs, a pre-existing condition, a fixed income, or whatever other reason, would have recourse to a public option. That is, they could purchase an insurance policy from the government. The government's role is that of an "insurer of last resort." The government isn't going to be running the healthcare industry, they are simply going to be offering insurance to those who need it, much like extended Medicare (a very popular *government* scheme).

Second, there would be an individual mandate saying that people have to have health insurance. This seems to be another source of anger out there, with protesters suggesting that it's wrong to force insurance on people. In fact, it's not unusual and not unprecedented - we already do this with auto insurance. If you drive a car, you are required to have a minimum of liability insurance in case you are in an accident. Similarly, people would be required to have health insurance to avoid cases where an uninsured person gets sick and ends up in the emergency room where taxpayers are liable to pick up the tab.

The third idea is that insurance companies would be prohibited from charging different premiums, or denying coverage, based on your medical history or perceived risk. This is sometimes called "community rating." This relates to the first point above in that it would lower the access bar for many people to acquire a private policy. It would also greatly lower administrative costs of insurers because they have huge bloated bureaucracies dedicated to weeding out and denying risky applicants. This last point is important - people assume that a government plan would be bureaucratic and unwieldy compared with private plans, but it's quite the opposite.

Those are the keys ideas, believe it or not: a public option, an individual mandate, and community rating. Simple as that. No death panels, no internment camps. Hopefully you'll find these notes useful in talking to people about health reform. I'll post some more points and arguments soon.

Compromise

2009-08-14T01:03:00.002-07:00

Here's one reason to be optimistic that health reform will be passed. The American Medical Association and the pharmaceutical industry have thrown their mighty weight behind the cause. Every attempt at health reform in the post-war period has been stymied by the opposition of the AMA, so this is huge if they truly are on side. This has obviously made people nervous about what exactly is being compromised on to curry their favor, and with good reason. But I agree with Paul Begala that a solid foundation of reform is the critical thing right now. Some compromises will be necessary. I disagree with Begala in that I think a public option and individual mandate are the bare minimum to begin with, but we can't expect the ideal set of reforms to all come in one fell swoop.

Reducing Costs

2009-08-14T00:58:00.002-07:00

This NYT opinion piece has some relatively simple suggestions for reducing health care costs. One example: in a nation of 300 million people, there are 32 million CAT scans each year. That's nuts - not only illustrating unnecessary procedures, but potentially harmful ones.

The Treatment

2009-08-14T00:57:00.002-07:00

Jonathan Cohn, the guy who was on Colbert the other night, has a good health care blog if you feel like getting all wonky.

Krugman's Take

2009-08-12T15:52:00.003-07:00

For a comprehensive take, I really recommend reading Conscience of a Liberal, but these two pieces give a very concise overview of the ideas behind health reform and the reasons that a purely market-based approach won't work.

Improving the Health Care Debate

2009-08-12T14:50:00.004-07:00

I'm a big fan of eccentric America. You meet a bewildering variety of folks with outlandish views on everything from aliens and black helicopters to the brainwashing power of chlorinated water. It makes for good pub conversation. Having said that, I'm not sure it's a good sign that these are the people currently leading the health reform debate. In a week when you would've assumed that the administration would be receiving some plaudits for the death of the Pakistani Taliban leader or the release of two American journalists from North Korea, pundits and bloggers have been engaged in the very serious discussion of whether Obama plans to round up and execute old people.

It's difficult to try to explain the nature of this national conversation to a non-American. "Wait, Americans don't actually believe that Obama is going to execute old people, do they?" I'm at a bit of a loss trying to answer that question. I know America well enough that I'm sure there is a percentage of people who sincerely do believe that. This seems to have started with Palin's comment that her family would be forced to stand in front of Obama's death panel. You might've expected that this sensational lie would've been denounced by more of her colleagues, but instead the head of the party, Michael Steele, endorsed Palin's claim, as did the lead Republican on the health reform negotations, Chuck Grassley. I'm not convinced they really believe the claim, but top Republicans seem happy to propogate this lie to their political advantage. But assuming Grassley has actually read the legislation he is helping to negotiate, he knows it's BS.

In short, there is a ton of misinformation out there right now, from the outrageous (Obama is planning to round up citizens in internment camps) to more subtle fear-based defenses of the health care status quo. I'd just like to suggest that those of you who support health care reform talk to your friends and family about the issue, because if we don't then the people in tin-foil hats will be the ones deciding whether you get guaranteed coverage. It's critical, especially within the next four weeks of the August recess, to counter the lies and information in a blunt but civil manner. In the next days I'll post some of my own pro-reform thoughts here.

GladneyCare

2009-08-10T09:13:00.001-07:00

An anti-health-reform protester gets in a scuffle at a town hall event, and is now soliciting donations for his medical costs because...he's uninsured. Wow.

Obama & Gates

2009-07-22T21:14:00.002-07:00

Apparently right-wingers are all a-flutter about Obama saying that the Cambridge police who arrested Henry Louis Gates acted stupidly. I think that arresting someone for being in their own home, after they've demonstrated that it is indeed their home, is stupid and many other things. But that's not the point I wanted to make. It occurs to me that right-wingers are usually very sensitive about government intrusion into private property, often fanatically so. If police went into John Boehner's home and arrested him for no reason, imagine the outcry - it would be called more than stupid, it would be called un-American, a call to arms, an unprecedented breach of trust. Interesting that Gates doesn't get that kind of sympathy.

Krugman & Health Insurance Reform

2009-07-22T20:16:00.003-07:00

I did a lot of reading in Dawson City, and a great book I finished is Conscience of a Liberal by Paul Krugman (Chapters, Amazon). It gives a good overview of American politics from the end of the Gilded Age to the present, and especially a good synopsis of the rise and fall of movement conservatism. Krugman does an excellent job of describing complex issues in simple terms, and I really recommend the book to anyone interested in politics and economics - it's only a few bucks in paperback too.

It covers a lot of ground, but pays special attention to the health care issue, which is obviously very relevant at the moment. President Obama had a press conference today that laid out the issues really well. A few points in particular reminded me of points that Krugman was making.

First, Obama is right to market the pending legislation as health insurance reform and not health care reform, as it is indeed primarily an insurance issue. Nobody is proposing government-controlled healthcare along the lines of Britain's NHS, so if you hear people scare-mongering about socialized medicine you can rest assured they don't know what they're talking about. Any public option will be a public option for insurance (so closer to the Canadian system than the British system).

Second, Obama made the excellent point that the most expensive plan with the least coverage is in fact the status quo. The US currently spends much more than other developed countries on healthcare, with less to show for it. There is simply no sane reason to stick with the status quo when we can have better coverage for less. I encourage you to contact your representatives and senators to encourage them to pass legislation before the August break.

When I'm caught up from my trip a bit more I might give a more detailed overview of the Krugman book. It gave a lot of food for thought.

Reaction

2009-06-04T11:11:00.001-07:00

From Jeffrey Goldberg:

An African-American President with Muslim roots stands before the Muslim world and defends the right of Jews to a nation of their own in their ancestral homeland, and then denounces in vociferous terms the evil of Holocaust denial, and right-wing Israelis go forth and complain that the President is unsympathetic to the housing needs of settlers. Incredible, just incredible.

Joel Connelly on Right-Wing Hate

2009-06-04T11:08:00.000-07:00

This is very good.

Krugman on Reagan

2009-06-01T20:07:00.001-07:00

Here.

Vancouver Canadians

2009-06-01T19:40:00.001-07:00

19 days. Who's in?

Bill

2009-06-01T19:37:00.001-07:00

Watch it if you can:

Get this...

2009-06-01T15:05:00.002-07:00

One of the Corner bloggers blames the recruiting station shootings on...pacifists:

If the Pro-Life Movement Is Responsible for the Murder of Tiller, isn't the peace movement responsible for the shootings at the recruiting station?

Every cause has extremists and lunatics, which the saner ones cannot control.

Yes, because extreme pacifists are all about shooting people.

The Strangest Things

2009-04-02T12:07:00.002-07:00

Is it really absurd to desire clean water? Even if you disagree with the ban on those detergents, isn't it a little crazy to be talking about cleaning your gun and beating people to a pulp over this issue?

The GOP has only been out of power for a few months, but it's amazing how quickly the right-wingers revert to the far-right, anti-government, survivalist rhetoric of the Clinton years.

This Glenn Beck piece has got to be seen to be believed.

Haja o Que Houver

2009-03-31T21:47:00.001-07:00

One of my all-time favorite songs.

Wizzywig

2009-03-27T10:52:00.001-07:00

Gotta add this to my reading list.

Awful

2009-03-26T16:19:00.000-07:00

Fire this cop, re-hire him, then fire him again.

More Teleprompter in the MSM

2009-03-26T14:27:00.002-07:00

A WaPo reporter interviews Robert Gibbs, and what are her top questions? You guessed it. His response is great, and she squirms and giggles as if she suddenly realizes what a tool she is.

Make it stop.

Ed Henry Is A Muppet

2009-03-25T19:57:00.009-07:00

This Ed Henry piece is really one of the most ridiculous pieces of journalism I've read in a long time. If you caught the Obama press conference last night, you might remember Henry as the one who asked about AIG bonuses and why the administration waited two days to speak publicly about the issue. He received a succinct, somewhat curt, answer from the president: "Because I like to know what I'm talking about before I speak."

So anyway, today Henry files a piece on...the fact that he asked a question. It's the most smug, self-important, self-congratulatory article you can imagine and might as well be titled "Hey Mom, I asked a hard question at work today!" It's really beyond parody. Also, I love that in the photo accompanying the article, Henry looks like he's about to throw up as Obama is addressing him.

CNN was so impressed that one of their reporters asked a question, they had him do a guest spot on AC360 talking about how awesome it was.

During the conversation with Anderson, Henry says "The interesting thing is that [Obama] used a teleprompter." Really? The interesting thing is that, like thousands of other public speakers and politicians, he uses a teleprompter? Why is that interesting? What's interesting is the willingness of the mainstream media to help propagate this right-wing meme about Obama using a teleprompter. On the one hand, it's sort of amusing and pathetic that the best they can come up with as far as criticism is that he uses a teleprompter. It makes sense as a Rovean type of strategy where you try to attack your opponent's strengths, but accusing Obama of being a poor orator is so easily disproved that it's hard to see why they're bothering with this line of attack. And even if it's all a bit silly, it's still pretty shocking to see mainstream media outlets running with absolutely false stories.

By the way, I really recommend Wonkette's hilarious takedown on Ed Henry's article.

Springtime!

2009-03-20T12:44:00.002-07:00

Andrew Malcolm

2009-03-20T09:51:00.001-07:00

This guy keeps showing up on my radar in various wankerous ways. Here's hoping that when the Times needs to trim some fat they look his way.

Blog Spring Cleaning

2009-03-19T17:23:00.002-07:00

A couple of small changes here. I realized the feed info in the right sidebar was outdated, so if you want to subscribe to the blog, that's been updated.

Also, at the very bottom of the page you can see a feed of items I've flagged from Google Reader - posts I thought were interesting.

Cheap Tickets

2009-03-16T14:29:00.002-07:00

I can't say I've been paying very close attention to ticket deals, but did notice in the Sunday paper yesterday that there are some pretty amazing deals for Vancouver-Amsterdam and Vancouver-London. Apparently Hawaii is cheap right now too.

Quite a Distinction

2009-03-15T20:04:00.002-07:00

Woo-hoo! Sequim has made international headlines for being one of the 10 most mispronounced places in the world. It's skwim, if you were wondering. Not difficult to pronounce, just seldom pronounced correctly by outsiders.

Google Reader Gets Social

2009-03-12T20:15:00.003-07:00

I've been using Google Reader for quite a while for all my blog-reading needs. They've been adding lots of new features, most of which I haven't yet taken advantage of. But this sounds cool. Being able to share items with friends, coupled now with being able to comment on them with your friends, is basically turning it into a blog-centric social networking tool, which I like.

Douthat to the NYT

2009-03-11T13:51:00.004-07:00

This is great news. Ross Douthat is one of the best conservative bloggers out there, period. He's intellectually honest and always interesting, and is a truly modern face for conservatism. He's worlds better than the disaster that was William Kristol. Conservatives should embrace Douthat just as they should reject the tired Limbaugh/National Review variety of conservatism.

Ponnuru

2009-03-11T10:26:00.003-07:00

Ladies and gentleman, I bring you American conservatism today:

The other day when I turned on the tv, the channel was set, as it often is, to Noggin, the toddler network. There was a cartoon image of our president with an announcer saying something like, "Noggin congratulates President Obama. And now here are some things that he likes." I flipped the channel before finding out whether abortion and taxes made the list.

Lovely people over there at The Corner.

The Baltic Dry Index

2009-03-06T22:57:00.008-08:00

Nothing says "Friday night" like the Baltic Dry Index.

So, the market's been all over the place. You're a-feared. It's a bit unfortunate that people pay such close attention to the daily action of the market; for one thing, the Dow Jones falling 200 points is a lot less important than things like job losses and retail sales. And investors are so crazy right now that the market is rising and falling dramatically on the smallest pieces of news. I've heard estimates that the US markets are about 30% undervalued simply because people are so panicked.

It's pretty hard to look at the stock market fluctuations and assess where we're at - like if we've bottomed out or are starting to recover. It doesn't get much (or really, any) attention in the mainstream media, but there's another index that economists pay close attention to. It's the Baltic Dry Index, and it basically tracks the cost of shipping raw materials by sea. The higher the BDI, the higher the demand is for shipping vessels to transport raw materials like coal, iron and grain. It's considered a leading indicator because increased movement of such materials is a precursor to increased growth and production. And the good news is that the BDI has been steadily climbing for a while now. Here's a look at the last 3 months:

Nice - we haven't seen that shape for a while. And unlike a good deal of current stock market activity, the BDI is a cold, hard measurement of real movement and growth, not just investor sentiment. It's just one figure among a lot of bleak news, but it's reassuring.

A Great Dane Walking a Beagle

2009-03-06T22:49:00.001-08:00

Because it's the weekend

The Mysterious Case of the Homeless Guy with the Cellphone

2009-03-06T22:31:00.002-08:00

This is a good example of what I'm talking about. This is what conservative bloggers were pissed about today. Michelle Obama goes to volunteer in a soup kitchen. While she's there, an apparently homeless guy takes a picture of her with his cellphone. LA Times writer Andrew Malcolm captures the moment and posts this:

It doesn't detract from the first lady's generous gesture or the real needs she seeks to highlight to ask two bothersome journalistic questions about these news photos:

If this unidentified meal recipient is too poor to buy his own food, how does he afford a cellphone?

And if he is homeless, where do they send the cellphone bills?

Bloggers like Michelle Malkin and Kathy Shaidle ran with it, apparently outraged at the idea of a homeless man having a phone. Here's nice little bit from Shaidle:

Today's "poor" are the rich Jesus warned you about: fat, slovenly, wasteful of their money and other people's.
...
He spends all his (our) money on cellphones and, most likely, tattoos and drugs and booze and other crap, and has no money left for a home and food. And why should he bother? We pay for his shelter and food anyhow.

Um...so Jesus warned us about rich people, but he really meant poor people with phones? I gotta say, if you're a Christian and the thing that really works you into an angry lather is that some homeless guy has a phone, you need to re-read the gospels and figure out what Jesus was really about.

As for Mr. Malcolm's "bothersome journalistic questions," man, I guess you all are too elite to have heard of pay-as-you-go phones. And you must not understand that for a homeless person to pull himself out of poverty, get a place to live, and try to find work, it really helps to have contact information.

Tigerhawk, the Engine of America

2009-03-06T19:34:00.002-08:00

So, TigerHawk posted this whiny YouTube video:

I'll just quote liberally from Brad's great summary and takedown:

For those of you who don’t have the stomach, I’ll boil it down for you:

* I, Tigerhawk, am a hard-working guy who makes a lot of money.

* I and others of my kind work harder than any of you out there and we are better than you are because you’re lazy.

* But despite the fact that we’re superior to all of you, you’re all being ungrateful to us… indeed, you want to raise our taxes!

* Because of this, my feelings hurt.

I agree with Brad that there's this weird undertone of anger and resentment towards poor people and the middle class among TigerHawk and his cohort. It always strikes me when I'm talking about the economy with someone and they only want to blame the mortgage defaulters and the labor unions for the current mess, ignoring the bankers and investment executives who were more concerned about their bonuses than having a sound business model. There's blame all around.

If you watch the video above, TigerHawk basically says straight up that because he is a hard-working wealthy man he is more important than people making less than $250k and that they are showing insufficient gratitude towards geniuses like him. So now you've got folks like him "going Galt" by doing what...not tipping waitstaff!. Yeah, stick it to the working class people serving you!

I completely agree with Brad's conclusion:

Tigerhawk, if it makes you feel better, I have nothing against rich people. If you’re a successful person who has contributed something to society, then more power to you.

But please. Do not ask me to feel sorry for you. You’re rich. Again, I repeat: you’re rich. And because you’re rich in the United States, you have to pay less taxes than rich people in every other industrialized country in the entire world. You also have an entire political party (the Republicans) and a large swathe of another political party (the Democrats) who are lining up to kiss your ass on a regular basis. Rich people in this country have it better than rich people in every other country in the world. You’d think they’d be a little more grateful for this fact instead of being perpetually resentful whiners.

Gordon Brown on Prop 8

2009-03-06T19:08:00.002-08:00

I look forward to the day when one of our leaders stands up and says something like this:

Gordon Brown has condemned California's ban on gay marriage as "unacceptable" and warned people to be vigilant against all forms of discrimination...

Mr Brown said "this attempt to undo good that has been done is unacceptable".

He added: "This shows why we have always got to be vigilant, always got to fight homophobic behaviour and any form of discrimination."

He also praised equality campaigners in the UK for "changing opinion" about same-sex unions.

I hope Obama will be the American leader who firmly stands up for equal rights. There's a long way to go, but then again, it wasn't until Obama was elected that you could even imagine a US president saying something like "our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters."

Correlation

2009-03-06T09:50:00.001-08:00

Brilliant.

(Via Ben Goldacre)

Boneshaker Almanac

2009-03-04T23:10:00.003-08:00

This looks good. Is it available locally, anyone know?

Losing It

2009-03-04T21:26:00.002-08:00

Seriously, wingers are losing their shit. Just a few examples:

- Limbaugh, the winger Godfather, says he hopes the Obama recovery plan will fail.

- Glenn Beck thinks America is in its death throes and that we should all start building bunkers.

- Jim Cramer thinks Obama is a bolshevik and that Pelosi is the general secretary of the Communist Party.

- Malkin is enamored with the whole Going Galt joke, though it's not clear what talent she could possibly withdraw.

If you follow that last link, you'll see that Malkin claims that American taxpayers are fed up with Washington's "confiscatory policies". Really? Considering that 95% of taxpayers will be getting tax cuts, I very much doubt that. Perhaps not coincidentally, Obama's approval ratings are sky-high. Maybe Beck and Cramer et al. are pissed off because they make more than $250,000? In their view, the patriotic thing is to have the tax burden on the poor and middle class and any suggestion otherwise is "bolshevik".

Going Galt

2009-03-04T20:20:00.001-08:00

Ha ha, yes, only a wingnut strike will save us now!

The only thing funnier than right-wingers getting all their ideas from Rush is right-wingers getting all their ideas from Ayn Rand.

Chapters Shortcovers

2009-02-26T16:16:00.002-08:00

Seems like Chapters is doing some pretty interesting stuff: letting you purchase books by the chapter, share various content with friends, upload your own material, get material on your mobile. Hopefully this will help them compete with Amazon.

Ridley

2009-02-26T11:17:00.003-08:00

These Ridley Vintage Motorbikes are awesome. I'm just having a tough time deciding. The MP or the Twin?

On the Offense

2009-02-06T10:53:00.002-08:00

Obama has been good the past couple of days:

President Obama scolded critics of his economic plan on Friday, calling it “inexcusable and irresponsible” to delay the passage of the stimulus legislation in the Senate as he named a new White House economic board to help him respond to the recession...“This is not some abstract debate. It is an urgent and growing crisis that can only be fully understood through the unseen stories that lie underneath each and every one of those lost jobs,” Mr. Obama said. “Somewhere in America, a small business has shut its doors; a family has said goodbye to their home; a young parent has lost their livelihood, and doesn’t know what’s going to take its place.”

Krugman on the Stimulus

2009-02-06T10:22:00.002-08:00

Here.

And here:

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

A Kid Takes a Trip to the Dentist

2009-02-03T19:17:00.000-08:00

This is so funny.

Oh K-Lo

2009-01-27T09:52:00.002-08:00

This piece by Kathryn Jean Lopez on the inauguration contains a real doozy:

We’re a nation not just where you are free to believe or not to believe; we’re a nation founded for Him — so we could praise Him, so we could do His will. Warren began his prayer as a gentle reminder to those privileged with seats and every Joe sitting on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial...

Um, no. That's about as fundamental a misunderstanding of America's founding as you could possibly have.

On another note, and leaving aside the controversy surrounding Warren's invitation to give the prayer (I'm happy to have a diversity of people and beliefs up there), did anybody else find Warren's delivery really weird? Among some evangelicals there is a particular way of talking that suggests the speaker doesn't really believe a word he's saying - an odd combination of fake enthusiasm and smugness. It certainly doesn't work for me.

About that CBO report...

2009-01-27T09:42:00.002-08:00

On the bus-ride home last night I was listening to a news podcast (don't remember which one at the moment, but it might've been the Anderson Cooper video podcast) and someone mentioned that a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report had been released last Tuesday slamming the proposed stimulus bill as ineffective, but that it didn't get any coverage because it came out on inauguration day. This story has now been widely carried by all of the major networks and has become a right-wing talking point, the repeated point being that the CBO has supposedly criticized the stimulus plan on terms of not enacting spending soon enough. Well, guess what. There was no such report. These accusations were apparently based on a leaked portion of a simulation that had been done on one portion of an earlier stimulus draft. The full CBO report has now been released and reports that two-thirds of the proposed spending will happen in the next 18 months. What are the chances that the major networks will issue a correction? Any chance of some honestly among Republicans?

The State of Economics

2009-01-24T21:57:00.005-08:00

Will Wilkinson makes some fair points:

What arises in my mind is the strong suspicion that economic theory, as it is practiced and taught at the world’s leading institutions, is so far from consensus on certain fundamental questions that it is basically useless for adjudicating many profoundly important debates about economic policy. One implication of this is that it is wrong to extend to economists who advise policymakers, or become policymakes themselves, the respect we rightly extend to the practicioners of mature sciences. There is a reason extremely smart economists are out there playing reputation games instead of trying to settle the matter by doing better science. The reason is that, on the questions that are provoking intramural trashtalk, there is no science.

Macroeconomics, in its current form, seems basically inseparable from politics. You see this in the current debates on the stimulus package, with right-wing economists arguing against and left-wing economists arguing against. What little empirical evidence gets introduced can seem cherry-picked. Whenever you see people neatly dividing into two groups, it's got to be more ideology than science.

Gitmo Reoffenders

2009-01-24T21:45:00.007-08:00

So, a few days before Obama took office, the Pentagon released some numbers about Guantanamo inmates returning to terrorist activities after being released. Obama had publicly pledged throughout the campaign that he would close Guantanamo, and so the release of these numbers seemed timed to make the closure a more difficult proposition for Obama. There are a number of weird things about this - namely, that Obama had nothing to do with the released prisoners, since they were released under the Bush administration, and anyway, Obama isn't simply planning to let everyone go. The plan is just to close Guantanamo, end torture, extradite where possible, and pursue any prosecution in an above-board manner.

But now it's sounding like the numbers in the Pentagon report may not even be valid. To give one example, they consider a released inmate to be "suspected of returning to terrorist activities" if the said person has made anti-American comments since release. That's pretty weak. And if we've got the Pentagon deliberately fudging numbers in order to sabotage Obama, that's a big deal.

Shut Up & Sing

2009-01-24T21:37:00.004-08:00

I caught the tail-end of this Dixie Chicks documentary on TV, and it made for a pretty interesting reflection on the last 8 years under Bush. It's sobering to think that it was only a few years ago that someone could have their career jeopardized and life threatened because of not liking Bush. And yet by the end of his presidency you're hard-pressed to find anyone who'd express kind words about his leadership. What a surreal few years.

Protesting Prop-8

2008-11-14T15:39:00.003-08:00

As many of you know, California last week passed a proposition outlawing same-sex marriage, overturning an earlier proposition that had allowed thousands to finally marry. Tomorrow (Saturday) there will be protests in many major cities as people stand together for gay rights and equality, and to stand against bigotry. It's not limited to American cities. There will be a rally in downtown Vancouver at 10:30 AM. Check the same site to find out what's happening in your area.

On a related note, the Mormon Church put up a huge amount of money to sponsor Prop 8, and they are now deservedly getting a lot of flak for it. If you can't attend a protest tomorrow, another great way to stand up for equality is to write a letter to your nearest LDS church, shaming them for their bigotry and hatred.

Google Flu

2008-11-12T14:42:00.002-08:00

This is cool. Google has launched a tool for tracking flu outbreaks, based on search query trends. Because the searches tend to be related to emerging symptoms, Google claims that it can locate flu hotspots up to two weeks faster than using existing techniques.

Unfortunately, it only works for the US at the moment. And one quibble: why don't the color schemes of the two graphs match?

President-Elect Obama

2008-11-04T22:41:00.002-08:00

What a night! Heather and I are toasting Obama. I'm tired right now, but it will be great to wake up in the morning and realize what happened.

And there's some great stuff on the down-ticket votes for Washington: Darcy Burner wins, Gregoire wins, death with dignity wins, Eyman loses. It looks like Prop 8 in California will lose, hopefully (the anti-gay proposition).

I'm so happy for the US. I feel so lucky to have been able to vote in this election and to see this outcome.

NBC's "live" coverage

2008-08-10T23:34:00.003-07:00

A lot of people have complained about the fact that NBC isn't broadcasting a lot of the key Olympic events live. I'm really glad to have CBC coverage here. But what makes NBC's coverage even worse is that it always says "Live" in the upper right corner regardless of whether it's taped or not. So I'll see an event on CBC, then a couple of hours later see it broadcast on NBC "live." That's pretty bad.

Drilling in the ANWR

2008-06-19T13:56:00.002-07:00

What with gas prices being high, the issue of drilling in ANWR has come back to prominence, particularly because McCain's lack of support for the idea has angered many Republicans. In particular, The Corner has been harping on this for a few days. There's one thing about the discussion that's particularly bizarre, and while I've been proscrastinating on posting about this, Ana Marie Cox noticed too:

One of the helpful myths that keeps that idea alive irks me to distraction: The idea that it's okay to drill in ANWR because it isn't pretty. (Jonah Goldberg is a real leader in this field, having mined this particular "mosquito-plagued tundra" since 2001.)

Bush was a big part of this too, arguing that ANWR is a "great white nothing." But the more recent discussion gets even weirder. The Cornerites have been falling overthemselves in contrasting ANWR and the Grand Canyon. This initially came up because McCain said he opposed drilling in ANWR for the same reasons he would oppose drilling in the Grand Canyon: because they should both be kept pristine. Fine, good answer. But then the Cornerites threw up a million posts discussing how many visitors ANWR gets compared with the Grand Canyon, etc. Are they stupid, or just disingenuous? Whether ANWR is a nice tourist attraction is not only not the point, the whole idea is that ANWR should be as free as possible from human intrusion and development.

The other thing that gets me is that even most supporters of drilling in ANWR now acknowledge that such a drilling scheme would only go a very small way towards shoring up America's oil supply, but they still think it should be done. Why? My guess is that they now see the whole ANWR controvery as a right-versus-left issue and that they simply want to win the argument.

Scientology and Free Speech

2008-06-13T10:19:00.002-07:00

C4 had an interesting report on a disturbing trend in the UK. Police are cracking down on critics of Scientology. One man was prosecuted for using the word 'cult' in a placard, but he won the case. You still can't use the words 'evil' or 'brain-washed' without fear of arrest.

Via Ben Goldacre.

Cycling Route Planner

2008-06-11T10:52:00.001-07:00

A cycling route planner for Greater Vancouver is now in beta-testing. Check it out. Other than a few bugs, it seems to do a good job. Has some nice adjustable parameters like maximum slope and speed, and inclusion or exclusion of major roads.

Obama channels Cuomo?

2008-06-06T11:12:00.000-07:00

Yeah, Fox News isn't even trying anymore.

Via Sullivan.

Meet Thomas Sowell, Wanker

2008-06-06T10:54:00.002-07:00

Every once in a while I hear someone refer to Thomas Sowell as one of the great political and economic thinkers of our time. Now, I'm no expert on Sowell, but this garbage tells you a lot about him:

At a time like this, we do not have the luxury of waiting for our ideal candidate or of indulging our emotions by voting for some third party candidate to show our displeasure — at the cost of putting someone in the White House who is not up to the job.

Senator John McCain has been criticized in this column many times. But, when all is said and done, Senator McCain has not spent decades aiding and abetting people who hate America.

On the contrary, he has paid a huge price for resisting our enemies, even when they held him prisoner and tortured him. The choice between him and Barack Obama should be a no-brainer.

Obama aids and abets people who hate America? What a disgusting, idiotic wanker Sowell is.

Anatomy of a Slander

2008-06-06T10:51:00.000-07:00

Meet Larry Johnson, wanker.

Words for Lieberman

2008-06-05T11:04:00.001-07:00

Good for Obama.

Obama's Nomination Victory Speech

2008-06-05T11:02:00.000-07:00

Worth watching if you have a few minutes.

Skydiving Record

2008-05-26T09:39:00.002-07:00

According to this Globe and Mail article, Michael Fournier, the Frenchman attempting to break the skydiving record, should have been back on the ground by 7 AM this morning if everything went according to plan. Searching around and I don't see any word yet.

Update: Ah-ha - postponed till tomorrow.

Finally

2008-05-22T15:18:00.001-07:00

McCain rejects Hagee's extremism and his endorsement. And then tries to turn the focus back on Obama.

John McCain's Spiritual Advisors are Insane

2008-05-22T10:02:00.001-07:00

Discuss.

Decemberists Mania

2008-05-21T15:53:00.002-07:00

I think it's hilarious that right-wingers actually believe believe this.

The Market Hates Obama?

2008-05-21T15:51:00.000-07:00

Quick, somebody give Larry Kudlow a lesson in correlation versus causation.

Vancouver in 1907

2008-05-18T17:50:00.002-07:00

The earliest film footage of Vancouver has recently been rediscovered and cleaned up. You can see a preview at The Province website or order a copy of the DVD here. It looks pretty cool. The filmmaker attached his camera to the front of a downtown streetcar and just let it run basically. The city, although very young in 1907, seemed like a pretty happening place.

He's Eating My Brain

2008-05-18T16:51:00.001-07:00

A Saanich man survives a Grizzly attack by playing dead. I love the fact that he fits in a complaint about road maintenance.

Obama in Portland

2008-05-18T15:58:00.001-07:00

An estimated 50,000 people turn out. Doesn't hurt that it's a gorgeous day here in the Northwest.

Bicycling on Burrard Bridge

2008-05-16T12:56:00.002-07:00

So yesterday I had to pick up my bike at a bikeshop at the intersection of Burrard and Pacific, and afterward I headed back Southbound across the Burrard Bridge on my bike. If you've walked or biked on that bridge, you know that cyclists and pedestrians are forced to share a very narrow walkway, and that said walkway is separated from traffic by a ledge of maybe 6 inches or so. Just after the halfway point of the bridge, as I was cycling alongside pedestrians on a sunny late afternoon, a jogger alongside me blindly moved from the pedestrian lane to the cycling lane in order to pass some walkers, failing to look behind him for cyclists. I was able to quickly swerve and he brushed my handlebars, and I didn't lose stability. But if his timing or my timing had been slightly different, I likely would have been body-checked into traffic. Since then, I've been fuming about how a careless jogger could have been responsible for me sustaining serious injuries or being killed.

I know that Vancouver has plans to put bicycle lanes on the Burrard Bridge sometime after the Olympics, but it's absolutely unacceptable that the current situation will be maintained in the interim. Since I'm fairly new to the city and luckily don't have to cross that bridge very often, I don't know how frequently such accidents occur, but a few seconds' Googling brought up this story:

Every day, hundreds of people cycle over the shared path on the Burrard Bridge, one of Vancouver's busiest. Jane Lister was one of them, until her commute home from work one day.

Halfway across the bridge, she swerved to avoid some pedestrians.

"My first memory is the sensation of a tube being pulled from my throat. I broke all the ribs on my left side, and had punctured and collapsed lungs. I fell into a mini van, and my head kind of got trapped between the car and the curb."

It may sound like just another accident between a cyclist and a car, but - in this case - neither was to blame. Instead, the problem was cyclists, pedestrians, dog-walkers and runners forced to share the same narrow path.

Her scenario was exactly the same as mine, except she was thrown into traffic and nearly killed. I agree that the blame is primarily due to the shared path, but a cyclist shouldn't have to suddenly swerve to avoid pedestrians on a shared path. Pedestrians need to stay on the pedestrian side of the walkway. But the city is responsible. Jane Lister sued the city and got a settlement. The city had been aware of the problem and hadn't done anything to remedy it. That was more than four years ago.

Polar Bears

2008-05-15T10:36:00.001-07:00

Hey look, the US made the right decision.