Deinonychus antirrhopus

Uhhh...WTF?

I found this via CalPundit, it is a post at Crooked Timber about a proposal to ban the term evolution from public school curriculums. While I think this is an amazingly stupid idea, and I am a vigorous opponent of "Creation Science" Brian's comment is just...amazing.

From the details it looks like this is repeating the Kansan tragedy as farce, and since the proposal has bipartisan opposition this farce probably won’t go far. But don’t you just love a country where scientific theories that are accepted universally within the relevant scientific community are the subject of partisan disagreements? If this were happening in a tiny unimportant country it would be the stuff of late-night comedy. Instead, well it probably is a little tragic.--emphasis added

Has Brian's weekend started early or something. I thought initially he claimed the proposal had bipartisan opposition...but at the end he claims it is a partisan issue. Let me look again. Yep, he did. Amazing that somebody could contradict himself within a single paragraph and in two sentences.

Update: Birth of a New Litmus Test?

In the comments to that post at Crooked Timber tehre is this comment,

I think it’s better to have leaders and a public who have progressed enough not to be positing creationism as a valid explanation for the universe’s existence. It really seems that in some ways the US is sliding back in time. A good lesson, I suppose, for those of us who grew up assuming that progress is inevitable.

So leaders who are "evolutionists" good, those who are "creationists" bad. While I strongly disagree with Creationists, creationism in its more aggressive form (i.e., those who think that evolution is bogus adn that creation should be taught in public school science courses), I am not sure I agree with the basic thrust of this litmus test. For one thing, not everybody who believes in evolution is an Atheist and some might even believe that God created the universe.

The problem here is that this is not a black and white issue. It is not between those who believe in God and those who don't (and who believe in evolution). The beliefs are diverse and often times subtle. Which is where Brian Weatherson goes wrong, IMO. Trying to put this problem into black and white terms (Democrat vs. Republican or God Fearing vs. Atheists) trivializes this to great extent. For example, I have no idea what Michael Behe's or William Dembski's politics are on issues like the deficit, health care, or Social Security. I also bet that one can find rather devout people on the "Left" who are quite doubtful of evolution, just as it is possible to find people who are considered on the "Right" who are ardent opponents of Creationism.

It is all too easy to put labels on things and pigeon hole people on this issue. I think it is unfortunate because it drags in unnecessary complications and doesn't help moving towards the solution which is good science. Ultimately, the goal is a scientific theory that explains the evidence.¹
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¹Right now the only theory to do this is evolution. Creationists and Creation Science has been almost totally dominated by trying to debunk the theory of evolution and has not offered any explanations for the observations of evolution.

GDP, 4th Quarter of 2003

GDP for the fourth quarter of 2003 increased at an annual rate of 4% according the the BEA's advanced estimates.

The major contributors to the increase in real GDP in the fourth quarter were personal consumption expenditures (PCE), exports, equipment and software, inventory investment, and residential fixed investment. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.

Outsourcing, Part IV

I thought I'd follow up on my outsourcing post below. Many people believe this is a serious problem, but as of yet I have not seen any serious proposals on what to do about it. I suspect that one reason nobody says anything about how to stop it is that they know that policies to stop will be roundly trounced as bad policy.

I am going to engage in a fun game that many often engage in, putting forward policies to address outsourcing and then shoot them down. I am to some degree engaging in a strawman argument since nobody that I know of has actually suggested much be done about this problem. So with that warning out of the way....

The most simplistic is to pass a law prohibiting the outsourcing of jobs. I don't think anybody would suggest this policy as the negative outcomes should be obvious. First, many firms that at are looking at outsourcing would see such a law as another reason to outsource. Get out of the United States; not only are the wages for software programmers high, but its government can be intrusive. So you'll have companies leaving the U.S. and quite possibly not only accelerating the rate of outsourcing, but the magnitude as well. Another law could be put into place that punishes financially firms that do leave the U.S. economy. The only problem with this is that firms tend to try and pass on such punishment to their customers via higher prices. So such a policy could in the end result in more outsourcing, faster outsourcing, and higher prices. Say, is this some sort of idiots trifecta?

Another possibility which some Democratic candidates have endorsed is offering tax incentives to firms to stay keep jobs in the U.S. There is a problem with this. On the whole it is not clear that this is welfare enhancing. That is, it might actually reduce people's overall welfare. Tax incentives would increase the governments revenue obligations, which in turn would need to be met with increased taxes (lets assume for a moment that the Democrats who are in favor of this idea are actually fiscally conservative...now stop laughing). These taxes will reduce people's welfare. The fact that fewer jobs will be leaving the U.S. is welfare in enhancing. The overall effect is ambiguous here. It could be that the loss of welfare due to increased taxes means people, in general, are worse off by a larger margin than they are better off. Now on top of this lets throw in the inefficiencies of taxes. This will make it even more unlikely that the such a policy is welfare enhancing (and obviously more likely to worsen overall welfare). This criticism applies to just about any policy that requires the government to spend money that is raised via taxes. So if there is a policy that is geared to increase access/availability of college educations, subsidize infant industries that might employing the people whose jobs have been outsourced, etc.

Given all this I see absolutely no reason to do anything right now. We have a situation that may or may not actually come to pass (i.e., large scale outsourcing that seriously damages the U.S. economy), and the policies that could be used to try and prevent this could themselves accelerate or even worsen the problem. Further, it strikes me as reckless basing policy on something that may not even come to pass.

Dean's Implosion

Now that Dean's campaign is sinking fast, many are blaming it on those who focused incorrectly on Dean's "I have a scream" speech. Granted the speech wasn't all that big a deal, but what it does represent though is the problem that is emblematic of Dean and his campaign: Foot-In-Mouth Disease. Long before the speech that so many are now ridiculing Dean for are many, many other instances of Dean gagging on his own foot:

• Dean suggests the President new about 9/11, but did nothing about it.
• Dean is supposedly anti-war, yet supported Biden-Lugar¹
• Dean pronounced the DLC the Republican Wing of the Democratic Party.
• Dean's idiocy about Southerners with the Confederate flag in their trucks.
• When Dean said his favorite part of the New Testament is the book of Job...which is from the Old Testament.
• Calling the members of Congress Cockroaches probably wasn't good either.
• Dismissing the capture of Saddam Hussein.
• Yelling at an Iowa retiree who wanted Dean to stop mean-mouthing President Bush.
• A fiscal conservative who wants to get the government even more into the health care industry?
• His desire to repeal all of Bush's tax cuts, that is raise taxes on just about everybody.
• How about his dismissal of the Iowa Caucuses?
• Could it have been his off the cuff statement about regulating a huge portion of the U.S. economy? --Via Larry Elder's essay which also has some funny Cox & Forkum Dean cartoons, so check it out.

If you are a Dean supporter, wake up and smell the coffee: Dean is never ever going to President. He just can't seem to keep his big mouth from running off and saying idiotic things.
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¹Biden-Lugar woud have authorized the President to use force in Iraq.

Talk About Confused

Matthey Yglesias on class size.

Class size is actually much trickier than it seems at first glance. All else being equal, a class of fifteen is better than a class of thirty is better than a class of forty-five. And yet, all else being equal a good teacher is better than a worse teacher. And yet, if your school expands the size of its teaching staff then, all else being equal, the new hires are going to be worse than the old hires, since the best people in the profession already had jobs.

There is nothing tricky here at all. Basically we have a multivariate process where smaller class size is better when all other variables are held constant. Big deal.

Does this mean that smaller class sizes is always better, of course not. If student learning is a multivariate process then focusing on one variable is probably bad policy.

More on Dean's Money Problems

Steve beat me to it, but I want to add another perspective to Dr. Dean's monetary troubles.

For months and months we've been hearing about Dean's Web-based Monetary Donations programs. We were told that his WMD capability was extremely advanced, and was both an imminent threat to his neighboring Democrat candidates and a gathering threat to Republicans in the near future.

After the battles in Iowa and New Hampshire, we discover that Dean's WMD programs isn't nearly as spectacular as we've been led to believe.

It's enough to make one wonder whether Dean actually had any WMDs in the first place. Maybe it was part of a strategy to frighten his opponents into capitulating, or perhaps his subordinates misled Dr. Dean as to the extent of his WMD capability. Either way, it's a terrible failure of the media's intelligence gathering methods. We need a congressional investigation to get to the bottom of this.

Carnival of the Vanities

I don't usually link to the Carnival of the Vanities, but it is at The American Mind this time, an excellent site. So go check out Sean's site and bookmark it.

Dean

I heard on the radio last night that not only has Dean ditched Trippi as his campaign manager, but the staff are going to be "volunteering" for two weeks (i.e., no pay). Sounds not only like the campaign is at a loss in terms of strategy/what to do, but is in money trouble as well.

Given this new information, I'm pronouncing Dean dead in the water. He might stay in the race to see if he can squeak out some sort of deal for V.P., but I doubt it. I think it is all over for him.

Update: Here is an article that mentions the no-pay-for-two-weeks. Also, Dean is not going to spending any money on commercials in any of the States holding primaries on Feb. 3.

Coming on the heels of the campaign's decision not to buy TV ads in those states, Dean said he will focus on picking up as many delegates as he can, but that only requires him to place, not win, in the blitz of upcoming primaries and caucuses.

It really sounds like Dean is out of cash and is banking on Kerry and Ewards spending themselves out while he gets new donations and refills his coffers. I doubt this will work. If Kerry and/or Edwards win more delegates my guess is they'll start to pick up most of the donations. Many donors will want to back a winner and will look more towards whomever looks like they'll be the winner. Not winning in any of Feb. 3rds primaries is not a way to look like a winner.

Bye, Dr. Dean.

Update II: Jay Caruso notes that Dean is out of cash and the shake up at the top and thinks it looks bad as well.

Outsourcing, Part III

All this talk of outsourcing is getting really annoying. Some (Armed Liberal at Winds of Change, Kim du Toit and Robert Reich) are portraying it as the downfall of the United States from its position as the world’s largest economy. There are a myriad of problems with this hypothesis.

First there is notion of equilibrium. Right now there is a price differential between say software programmers in India and the United States. This price differential is such that right now it pays to move some jobs over to India. So the jobs leave the United States and are relocated to India. Fine. The problem is that people act like this is never going to change. Eventually all or a large portion of all software programming jobs will disappear in the United States and reappear in India. Wrong. That is absolutely and totally wrong.

Lets get away from the potentially emotionally charged issue of jobs and put it in a slightly different but analogous context, the rate of return on an investment say bonds. You have bonds that have an average rate of return of say Z. Further, suppose that the risk is such that by holding a diversified enough selection of this type of bond you can reduce your risk so that you end up coming out ahead. That is the interest rate is too high based on the actual risk. When people realize this they start looking to buy more bonds—i.e., people make funds available for such “high risk” loans. By making more of these high risk loans the default rate will increase while at the same time the interest rate will decrease which will bring things back into equilibrium.

This is what will happen with the jobs as well. Market processes are often quite similar in the basics of how they work. In India the wage (price) of hiring software programs will rise. In the United States the wage will fall. Throw in the costs of doing business on another continent (communication problems, training them to do the specific work you need done, security concerns, etc.) and what will happen is that some jobs will move over seas. Not all of them. How many nobody really knows. Sure some firms say, “We are planning on moving 6,000 jobs to India.” But then they move the first thousand, and they don’t save as much as they thought. Then they move another 500 and save even less. Then another 500 and the savings are virtually gone so they stop. The 6,000 number is like selecting the following estimator max{Y_i} where { Y_i} is your sample. Clearly this is a biased estimator. Everybody treats the 6,000 number as the gospel truth when in reality it is almost surely going to be wrong.

Another problem is that it isn’t clear that on the whole this is bad for the United States. When looking at economic issues arm-chair economists often make a gigantic blunder. They forget that the social benefit from a market economy is not just that people earn money via jobs and have more to consume, but that firms earn profits. This is also a benefit to society. So if outsourcing increases profits this is a benefit to society. That people have lost jobs (temporarily for the most part) and may not always find as good a paying replacement is a loss. What is the net gain? Beats the heck out of me, and if they were honest the Chicken Littles who are worried about outsourcing would admit this too. At best we have educated guesses that in some cases might be looking at the worst case scenario even though such a scenario likely has a low probability of actually occurring. Would you think it is rational to go to Las Vegas and assume you are going to win big so, prior to leaving quit your job? No. At the same time it is not rational to assume that the worst case scenario is going to result in the labor market as well.

Moreover, when other countries experience an increase in income they consume more which is also good for that countries trading partners. Or to put it more bluntly, as India software programmers incomes rise they’ll want to buy more goods, and some of those goods will come from the United States. Also, there is the fact that for some goods prices may decrease or wont rise as fast as they would otherwise. All of these things are good for American consumers. How do these positives stack up against the negatives? It is hard to say and economists can spend years studying the question before they arrive at the answer. So it is at the very least way too premature for people like Armed Liberal, Kim du Toit and Robert Reich to be pronouncing the death of the United States economy. Further, I’d caution anybody who is getting worked up about this issue to look at that last name. Robert Reich is not noted for doing good economics research. He is noted for spewing crap that pundits love to pick up and run with. Pundits are usually horrendous forecasters of future anything. Getting into bed, intellectually speaking, with the likes of Robert Reich is something I think everybody should think long and hard about. Before you do you should look at the data, analyze it, look at what other more serious academics are doing in the same field and see if it matches up with the sound bites that Reich is crafting on the Sunday morning talk shows. If every thing still convinces you Reich then go ahead and sign on to his views. Typically though, I think you’d save yourself from a considerable amount of work by simple going with something other than Reich, or concluding he is going to be wrong.

Now what are some of the people doing research in this area saying? Well there is Catherine Mann (via Daniel Drezner) who makes some other interesting observations I missed above.

• Cheaper IT goods has helped boost productivity which added $230 billion to GDP.
• Recent efforts to quantify IT-related and other white collar job loss "offshore" frequently use the peak of the economic and technology boom as the base for the analysis, thus ignoring the business cycle, trend decline in manufacturing employment, dollar overvaluation, and technology bust.
• Going forward, broader diffusion of IT throughout the economy points to even greater demand for workers with IT skills and proficiency. In the 1990s, investment in IT propelled job growth for workers with IT skills to twice the rate of job growth in the overall economy. Over the next decade, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects that job growth to 2010 in occupations requiring IT skills well more than three times the rate of job growth in the overall economy.

I really recommend reading the whole thing.

Overall I see nothing yet to get worried about. I actually take comfort in the fact that it is Robert Reich who is one of the people crying that the sky is falling.

Kevin's Continuing (Mis)Adventures in Economics

In this post, Kevin takes Andrew Sullivan to task for misrepresenting what Krugman wrote in his NY Times column.

First off, I think Kevin is misleading by not quoting Krugman in full. Kevin gives us this quote,

A recent study by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities does the math. While overall government spending has risen rapidly since 2001, the great bulk of that increase can be attributed either to outlays on defense and homeland security, or to types of government spending, like unemployment insurance, that automatically rise when the economy is depressed.

Why, then, do we face the prospect of huge deficits as far as the eye can see? Part of the answer is the surge in defense and homeland security spending. The main reason for deficits, however, is that revenues have plunged.

What is the problem? Looks fairly reasonable, but if we were to include next paragraph we'd see why Krugman is being misleading,

Of course, most people don't feel that their taxes have fallen sharply. And they're right: taxes that fall mainly on middle-income Americans, like the payroll tax, are still near historic highs. The decline in revenue has come almost entirely from taxes that are mostly paid by the richest 5 percent of families: the personal income tax and the corporate profits tax. These taxes combined now take a smaller share of national income than in any year since World War II.

Revenues can fall for basically two reasons. Tax rates are cut and/or economic activity that generates the tax revenue declines. With the last recession and tax cuts we had both. For example, according to the October 2003 Cyclically Adjusted and Standardized Budgets: Updated Estimates $58 billion dollars of the deficit were due to the economy. That is 12% of the deficit right there. Now Krugman discounts the "surge" in discretionary spending as only being "part" of the problem while revenues have "plunged". However, in looking at the CBO report it looks like the the tax cuts account for a $255 billion in decreased revenue in 2004 and discretionary spending as $169 in additional spending. In other, words the "minor" effect of discretionary spending isn't all that minor. Further, even if we repealed all of the tax cuts we'd still have a deficit. To not have a deficit we'd have to cut spending. Even cutting all increases in discretionary spending and reversing the tax cuts probably wouldn't eliminate the deficit. Krugman wants to play up the angle of tax cuts. Yes the tax cuts have have contributed to a large part of the deficit, but to discount both the impact of increases discretionary spending and the economic slow down is misleading.

As for Krugman's starve the beat theory, its a great theory, but you don't starve a beast by feeding it tons of food. The simple fact is that government spending has increased dramatically, and will likely not decrease anytime in the near future. Ironically the President you can give some credit to controlling spending (i.e., starving the beast) was a Democrat named William Jefferson Clinton. Go figure.

Gasbag

Link

Ronald Reagan, Jr.

Ronald Reagan, Jr. is what...a college drop out who tried his hand at ballet and then quit, and who is now giving a shot at trying to be a psychiatrist. Not only that he is misrepresenting the facts.

“Iraq never had weapons of mass destruction.” Reagan then sarcastically asked: “What does George W. Bush say? ‘Well, I still think they had them.’ That’s not just spin. That’s dementia, you know.”

Actually Iraq did have WMDs. This is a fact. It now looks like most and quite possibly all of the large stockpiles were destroyed. David Kay has not said that there were no WMDs ever, but that the large stockpiles probably (i.e., with high probability in his opinion) don't exist and haven't existed for a number of years.

The Axis of Liars

I found this article at the Axis of Logic. The problem is the title for that story,

Tony Blair Escapes Justice: Hutton criticises BBC but clears Blair and Campbell, January 28, 2004

Supposedly that is a Telegraph article, but that title of the actual telegraph article is,

BBC and Gilligan criticised over Dr Kelly's death

Changing the title after copying the entire article strikes me as just a tad misleading. Oh well I guess it is expecting too much from a group that publishes stuff by Michael Moore.

I Have A Question About the BBC

Can any of its reporters tell his or her ass from a hole in the ground? My answer upon reading their "blog" is no.

After the Hutton Report which exonerates the Blair government and heavily criticizes the BBC and Gilligan has only resulted in some mild comments from the reporters.

Andrew Marr :: Houses of Parliament :: 1830GMT

The BBC does not have a Chairman of Governors at the moment. That is a prime ministerial appointment. And at a time when relations between the Government and the BBC are probably as bad as they've been for some 50 years, that is an awesome difficulty and responsibility for the Prime Minister.

No Mr. Marr the awesome difficulty and responsibilty is the BBC trying to restore even a shred of credibility.

Nick Higham BBC Correspondent :: BBC Television Centre :: 1822GMT

The BBC's reputation has not been improved, what we've had today is a sort of contest between the government and it's reputation for truth telling.... and the BBC.

The BBC has been weighed and found wanting. With the top man resigning, it may go some way to restoring that trust, but it's going to be a long haul.

Wanting? Found wanting? How about completely and totally embarassed.

It looks to me like they are in almost completely denial.

Guto Harri :: Westminster :: 1745GMT

I think the Government will tread quite carefully in the future. Alistair Campbell's not there anymore, so there's less of a danger of one person deciding to go for all-out war. Despite going about tonight saying that a stain has been removed, many Labour MP's feel very lucky. They didn't expect to escape today so totally unscathed.

Torin Douglas :: BBC Television Centre :: 1720GMT

It was very out-spoken, there was not a lot of balance in there and the BBC has got to look at that..... This puts the whole regulation of the BBC back into play and Tony Blair said that this would be looked at as part of the whole review of the BBC's charter. There is one other issue in that the government appoints the Chairman of the BBC.

Amazing.

Update: BBC Chairman resigns.

"What the report shows very clearly is the prime minister told the truth, the government told the truth, I told the truth. The BBC, from the chairman and the director general on down, did not," Campbell told a news conference.

Fed to Keep Rates Steady

The Fed has sent strong signals that it is going to keep interest rates low. One reason is that orders for costly durable goods was flat in december. There is also the weakness in the labor markets.

"My guess is that the ... (FOMC) will say that the economy is improving solidly, but with the labor markets showing only modest improvement and inflation remaining low, there is little reason to do much for a 'considerable period,'" said economist Joel Naroff of Naroff Economic Advisors Inc. in Holland, Pennsylvania.

Looks Like Kerry Is On A Roll

With his win in New Hampshire, Kerry is now the man to beat. It will be interesting to see what happens on Feb. 3rd. Edwards has the best shot in South Carolina, but as for the places like Arizona, New Mexico and Delaware I don't know. If Kerry comes through with similar support on Feb. 3 I bet at least Clark, Dean and Edwards will stick it out since they'll be looking to see what kind of deal they can swing at the convention. It looks like its going to be a long campaign for the Democrats.

Dean is not out of the race yet as he currently has the most delegates (113 to Kerry's 94). Along with his organization and his money he is still a formidable candidate right now. But unless he can start picking up more support soon he is going to be in trouble.

The other big question is Gephardt going to endorse anybody going into MO? There are 74 delegates available there and along with a Gephardt endorsement there is another 7 (these are the delegates Gephardt won in Iowa). Such an endorsement could bring an easy 40 or so delegates.

Employment Survey Divergence

I have noted in the past that there is a divergence between the establishment survey (which surveys businesses about their payroll hires) and the household survey (which surveys households about a number of questions including employment). Typically the household survey has been higher about job gains during this recovery. Many discount the household numbers as being "non-serious". I happen to disagree. This Washington Post article notes that some of the difference could be due to contractors.

Now this clearly isn't the same as increasing payrolls, but it is also a far cry from the Great Depression (many liberal pundits love to compare Bush to Herbert Hoover who was President at the start of the Great Depression). Granted in some cases it may mean a pay cut,

"So many talented people that I worked with in the past are available for freelance work," Gaebler said. "These are people who used to make $150,000 per year and now they are freelancing and pulling in $60,000 to $70,000 while they wait for the economy to turn around."

But $60-70 thousand beats nothing or unemployment I'm sure.

The big question is this sustainable and is it typically the case that one's pay is cut when going from payroll employment to contractor/consultant work.

Electrical engineer Dale DiBernardo, 43, of Oviedo, Fla., said he was happy to double his pay by joining Gibson Audio as an independent contractor. He said the idea of permanence in the workplace was an illusion, and he hopes to prosper by maintaining greater control of his career prospects.

Further, if this disparity persists it means our current unemployment statistics individually do not give an accurate picture of what is going on in the job market. Continually focusing on one survey if this disparity persists is bad economics and could quite easily lead to bad policy.

Somebody's going to Emergency, Somebody's going to Jail

Or not. Al Franken Knocks Down Dean Heckler.

Wise-cracking funnyman Al Franken yesterday body-slammed a demonstrator to the ground after the man tried to shout down Gov. Howard Dean.
The tussle left Franken's trademark thick-rim glasses broken, but he said he was not injured.

Franken - who seemed in a state of shock and out of breath after the incident - was helped back to his feet by several people who watched the tussle. Police arrived soon after.

"I got down low and took his legs out," said Franken afterwards.

Henry Hanks has more on Franken's unusual intrepetation of the 1st Amendment.

UCLA: Stop Free Speech

I went over to SpeechCodes.org and looked up my undergraduate school, UCLA. Apparently UCLA has several policies that substantially restrict freedom of speech.

Here are some snippets from the policies.

Sexual orientation discrimination in the classroom may involve the professor making comments or actions or allow unchallenged comments or actions by students that single out or ignore lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender (LGBT) issues or people. This kind of often inadvertent behavior may discourage LGBT students from feeling safe in the classroom or reaching their full academic potential.--emphasis added

Ignore? So if in discussing some issue, specific reference is not made to people fit the LGBT label, but reference is made to a similar heterosexual group (say a married couple) this is a violation?

Here is another snippet.

refusal to allow LGBT issues or people to be discussed;

What exactly does this mean? It is rather vague to me. What if the LGBT issues are totally irrelevant to the class topic? Would shutting down a discussion on LGBT issues say during a class on differential equations be in violation?

Now admittedly my complaints about the parts of the policy above are a bit silly. I doubt an instructor teaching a statistics course who nevers mentions LGBT issues will get into trouble for such a failure. But this next bit is a bit more disconcerting,

continuous use of heterosexist terms such as making the assumption that all people are heterosexual. Such assumptions evoke images in students' minds and effectively eliminate LGBT people as subjects of discourse even though the elimination may be unintentional, but it nonetheless renders LGBT people peripheral or invisible.

These two sentences combined with other aspects of the policy indeed tell the individual exactly how not to talk. You have to at least occasionally pepper your verbal exchanges with positive references to people who fit the into the LGBT label (yes I'm using the word label on purpose because that is what it is...a label, classification, description, etc.). How come there are no such requirements for heterosexuals? Do people in the LGBT catagory never use derogatory terms to refer to them? Further, if an individual doesn't have a positive view of such people how come this individual now has to make positive statements about them? Apparently keeping his views to himself isn't sufficient.

Such assumptions evoke images in students' minds and effectively eliminate LGBT people as subjects of discourse....

This, combined with the first part is rather onerous. It allows only positive discourse with regards to this group. Any negative discourse (a concept that is totally undefined) is prohibited. While I can appreciate the notion of making all students feel safe and welcome to learn, I think it is a serious mistake to make any group above valid criticism. Are people who fall into the LGBT catagory without any flaws in general that can be discussed?

Frankly I can't see how there can be a serious discussion of something like Gay Marriage (something I have no problem with) at UCLA. There are obviously two sides to the issue, but this policy strikes me as prohibiting the con side. It doesn't allow the issue to be addressed, it merely sweeps it under the rug and pretends it isn't there or only allows one side to have a voice. That is a restriction on the freedom of speech and inquiry. Something a university is supposed to promote.

Dean in Debt Collection?

Well not yet at least, but it looks like the Dean Campaign stuck a local Des Moines eatery with a $963 tab. That's a great way to gain supporters. Wonder if it implies anything about Dean's fiscal policy proposals?

Via InstaPundit.

Europe's Enron

Seems to have turned into a financial blackhole with a $19 billion accounting "discrepency".

Clark and Moore

There has been lots of posting about Moore's over the top comment about Bush being a deserter. Kevin Drum references this article. I've read several articles on Bush's Air National Guard service; some say, "Yes he was AWOL," and others that say, "No he wasn't." Instead of addressing the issue forthrightly, Clark is putting out some spin about Michael Moore's right to free speech. Would somebody tell General Clark, nobody is saying Moore doesn't have a right to free speech. They want to know why you seem to like rubbing elbows with a guy who is such a blowhard.

Hey!

The Joint Economic Committee has an article on their website about the declining number of jobless claims. Complete with a nifty graph. That looks surprisingly like these posts of mine (link, link, link).

I consider this good news. Further, I wouldn't be surprised that if there is a revision to the sample of firms in the establishment survey that unemployment figures are revised downwards.

Update: In comments Arnold Kling reminds me that the unemployment rate is calculated using the household survey--i.e., no revision is possible due to a change in the establishment survey. D'oh.

Still, it is the establishment survey that everybody looks at to see how the economy is doing on job creation. So that is where the correction would be. In other words, several months from now (or whenever the revision is made) the story would be that jobs actually increased by X amount more than previously indicated based on revisions to the establishment survey.

This is one of the things I've pointed out in the past. The establishment survey gives a low number, and the household survey a higher number. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle. The JEC has a graph that shows the disparity between the two surveys.

Should I Go?

News item on the radio right now, the MO Democrat machine is trying to get a presidential debate set up for Saturday night in Kansas City.

Should I go?

Kerry Disses the South

John F-word Kerry doesn't think a Democrat needs the South to win.

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., is discounting notions that any Democratic candidate would have to appeal to Southern voters in order to win the presidency, calling such thinking a "mistake" during a speech at Dartmouth College

{snip}

During a town hall meeting on the Dartmouth campus, Kerry noted that former Vice President Al Gore would be president if he'd won any number of other non-Southern states in 2000, including New Hampshire, West Virginia, and Ohio.

"Everybody always makes the mistake of looking South," Kerry said, in response to a question about winning the region. "Al Gore proved he could have been president of the United States without winning one Southern state, including his own."

In the old days, he could probably get away with pandering to New England liberals with a comment like that, but why would he think that this won't come back to haunt him now? Maybe he wasn't pandering, and actually feels this way. I guess Zell Miller was right when he said that Democratic leaders look at the South and say "go to hell".

Link via Instapundit.

Wild Speculation Time

Zogby has Dean essentially tied (within the margin of error) of Kerry in New Hampshire in the latest tracking poll. He includes "leaners", i.e., undecided voters who voiced a slight preference for one candidate.

Time for my baseless and moderately goofy predictions:

1. Kerry
2. Dean
3. Edwards
4. Clark

A) Kerry wins, but by less than 10%, so Dean stays in the race.

B) Lieberman finishes so poorly he drops out.

C) Kucinich announces he will personally lead the manned expedition to Mars.

D) After the NH primary results are known, Gephardt endorses Kerry or Edwards.

(One always has to make an unbelievable prediction. Lieberman dropping out -- that's just crazy talk.)

If correct on any of these predicitions, I will crow loudly. If I miss on all of them, expect deafening silence.

David Kay Round Up

I thought a sort of round up of of some of the posts about David Kay's stepping down would be helpful to people.

An LA Times article (via InstaPundit). The first paragraph has a very good observation,

The former leader of the U.S. hunt for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction said Sunday that intelligence agencies owe the president and the public an explanation for the failure to find large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons after the U.S.-led war.

Later in the article there is more on this,

"My warning to the American public," he said on National Public Radio's "Weekend Edition" program, "is there's always going to be unresolved ambiguity here. The failure to establish security at the end of Operation Iraqi Freedom, and allowing the looting to continue, meant the records have been destroyed, and destroyed forever." Still, he said, "we are very unlikely to find large stockpiles of weapons. I don't think they exist."

Unfortunately I think he is a bit naive here in that this issue is going to be political.

Bryan Preston has a fairly lengthy post as well (also via InstaPundit). Bryan links to a number of articles on this and looks at how different media outlets are portraying what Kay is saying. Here are two of the the articles,

• Telegraph: This article gives the Syria hypothesis considerable detail.
  • Quote:"We are not talking about a large stockpile of weapons," he said. "But we know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam's WMD programme. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved."
• An Associated Press piece: Focuses more on the fact that nothing was found and that Kay believes little is likely to be found. Mentions Syria briefly.
  • Quote: Hans Blix, the former chief U.N. inspector whose work was heavily criticized by Kay and ended when the United States went to war with Iraq, said Sunday the United States should have known the intelligence was flawed last year when leads followed up by U.N. inspectors didn't produce any results.

CalPundit is spinning fast. In that post, he claims David Kay told Reuters the WMDs didn't exist. Actually this is patently untrue (i.e., Kevin is either lying or needs to refresh his memory). When Kay said, "I don't think they existed." The "they" he was referring to were large stock piles. Kevin got that the first time he linked to the Rueters article, but that obviously isn't good enough so now he has to spin it as WMDs simply didn't exist. Kevin also claims Kay has backed off his Syria claim, but I see no evidence of that. Maybe Kevin listend to the NPR program, but until I see a transcript given Kevin's problem getting the facts straight I'll consider it unlikely.

Kevin's post here is truly bizzare. The story goes like this,

Scientists in Iraq realized they could get large sums of money and get into Saddam's good graces if they made WMD program proposals, but then did not build the programs or the WMDs. Kind of a confidence game basically. Thus, Saddam's behavior regarding inspections and disarming. He thought he had weapons so he behaved very suspiciously. We thought he had programs based on the Saddam's behavior and the period with no inspections.

Kevin then concludes this does not "...absolve the Bush Administration." See, the Bush Adminsitration cherry picked the reports and removed qualifiers to make things look worse than they were...you know, kind of like how Kevin is cherry picking what Kay is saying.

Crooked Timeber's article (link) is pretty good in that it has the quotes from Kay on the large stockpiles. No spin there large stockpiles becoming simpley any and all WMDs.

Daniel Drezner does a good job in this post.

The blogging over this Washington Post article from early this week on not finding WMD has been about whether the story stacked the deck against the Bush team. However, since the intelligence community was also off the mark, the key point is that the U.S. was going to be wrong about Iraq no matter what. The important point in the Post story is the bipartisan consensus that intelligence errors -- regardless of the cause -- can damage America's reputation:

Good point.

Drezner also finds this interesting quote from CalPundit,

I think the administration did believe there was WMD in Iraq before the war. What's more, the CIA and MI6 thought the same thing and the yawning silence from both Republicans and Democrats about how our intelligence services could have been so wildly off the mark is a scandal of the first order. Is anyone serious about this stuff?--emphasis added

Uhhmmm...if the CIA and MI6 are "wildly" off the mark, what is with all this cherry picking nonsense? I guess, the story is not only was the CIA and MI6 wildly off the mark, but that Bushies cherry picked these inaccurate reports as well.

Oh well, there you go, take it for what it is. I might add more to this post as I find more articles/blog posts.

Update: Robin Roberts reminds me about this article in the Atlantic. The article is by Kevin Pollack and looks at what went wrong. He pretty much squashes the notion that the Administration cherry picked reports by noting that a great many people believed Iraq had WMDs and programs to make more. This assessment went back to the Clinton Administrations. Pollack does say this though,

The [Bush] Administration stretched those estimates to make a case not only for going to war but for doing so at once, rather than taking the time to build regional and international support for military action.

Which is something like what Dean (a frequent commenter here) has mention numerous times. With intelligence there are two types of failure:

• Type I: This is where you don't give enough credence to accurate reports (e.g., 9/11).
• Type II: You give too much credence to false reports (Iraq's WMDs).

After suffering a massive loss due to a Type I error the problem will be to minimize Type I errors, but this means you likely end up making more Type II errors.

There doesn't have to be anything nefarious about this. It would be nice if some on the Left would acknowldege this.

Update II: Whoops. The Pollack article does have this about cherry picking by the Administrations Office of Special Plans,

As Seymour Hersh, among others, has reported, Bush Administration officials also took some actions that arguably crossed the line between rigorous oversight of the intelligence community and an attempt to manipulate intelligence. They set up their own shop in the Pentagon, called the Office of Special Plans, in order to sift through the information on Iraq themselves. To a great extent OSP personnel "cherry-picked" the intelligence they passed on, selecting reports that supported the Administration's pre-existing position and ignoring all the rest.

Not good. Not good at all. And it gets worse,

The Bush officials who created the OSP gave its reports directly to those in the highest levels of government, often passing raw, unverified intelligence straight to the Cabinet level as gospel. Senior Administration officials made public statements based on these reports—reports that the larger intelligence community knew to be erroneous (for instance, that there was hard and fast evidence linking Iraq to al-Qaeda).

Really bad. It is one thing to make a Type II error above, but this is just unsupportable. People should be fired over this.

I have to agree with Pollack on this one when he writes,

Some defenders of the Administration have reportedly countered that all it did was make the best possible case for war, playing a role similar to that of a defense attorney who is charged with presenting the best possible case for a client (even if the client is guilty). That is a false analogy. A defense attorney is responsible for presenting only one side of a dispute. The President is responsible for serving the entire nation. Only the Administration has access to all the information available to various agencies of the U.S. government—and withholding or downplaying some of that information for its own purposes is a betrayal of that responsibility.

I think its time for Bush to dump Cheney. Loyalty is a good thing, but not when the person you are being loyal too is such a huge liability.

Update III: Just thought I should clarify a bit on this issue with the Office of Special Plans (OSP). What the OSP did was not make the case that there were WMDs. Everybody already suspected this to be the case. What the OSP did do was cherry pick reports that exaggerated the danger level. For example, Pollack's examples were about Iraq getting a nuclear weapon within a year. Prior to the war starting this was indeed a possible scenario. The problem was it was an unlikely scenario. By presenting just that scenario it presented a skewed picture of Iraq.

As Dean notes in the comment, nobody can make the charge that the cherry-picking was over whether or not Iraq actually had WMDs. That was such a universally held common belief that nobody disputed the charge. The only question was to what extent and how much of a threat was actually there.

Carnival of the Capitalists

Carnival of the Capitalists is up at Winds of Change.

Of personal interest to me is Arnold Kling's post on Social Security privatization.

Al Sharpton: Economically Incoherent

My god. Reading the following excerpt from the Democratic Presidential Debates is...horrifying.

JENNINGS: Forgive me, Reverend Sharpton, but the question was actually about the Federal Reserve Board.

SHARPTON: I thought you said IMF, I'm sorry.

JENNINGS: No, I'm sorry, sir. And what you'd be looking for in a chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.

SHARPTON: Oh, in the Federal Reserve Board, I would be looking for someone that would set standards in this country, in terms of our banking, our -- in how government regulates the Federal Reserve as we see it under Greenspan, that we would not be protecting the big businesses; we would not be protecting banking interests in a way that would not, in my judgment, lead toward mass employment, mass development and mass production.

I think that -- would I replace Greenspan, probably. Do I have a name? No.

HUME: Thank you, Reverend Sharpton. Thanks very much.--link

Good. God.

Via EconoPundit.

David Kay Stepping Down

Kevin Drum points us to this article that has an interview with David Kay. Kevin snips out several bits that he thinks is quite damning, but also leaves out some important parts, IMO. Kevin excerpts the following,

Q: You came away from the hunt that you have done believing that they did not have any large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in the country?

A: "That is correct."

Q. Is that from the interviews and documentation?

A. "Well the interviews, the documentation, and the physical evidence of looking at, as hard as it was because they were dealing with looted sites, but you just could not find any physical evidence that supported a larger program."

Q: Do you think they destroyed it?

A: "No, I don't think they existed."

Q. Even though in the mid-1980s people said they used it on Halabja?

A. "They had stockpiles, they fought the Iranians with it, and they certainly did use it on the Kurds. But what everyone was talking about is stockpiles produced after the end of the last (1991) Gulf War and I don't think there was a large-scale production program in the '90s."

But he also leaves out this part,

Q: Is it true that one of the reasons you wanted to step down was because you don't believe that anything will be found, is that true?

A: "No. No, that wasn't the reason. In fact, the reason I thought it important to complete everything is that ... by the time we get to June ... we're not going to find much after June. Once the Iraqis take complete control of the government it is just almost impossible to operate in the way that we operate. In fact it was already becoming tough. We had an important ministry that would not allow its people to be interviewed unless they had someone present. It was like the old regime.

"I think we have found probably 85 percent of what we're going to find.

"The country is such and he hid so much that you can probably spend the next decade of your life in the country, and you will find things, but I think in terms of understanding that program, we're well on the way, almost at the end, so that you can say what went wrong, what they had."

Q: What happened to the stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons that everyone expected to be there?

A: "I don't think they existed.

"I think there were stockpiles at the end of the first Gulf War and those were a combination of U.N. inspectors and unilateral Iraqi action got rid of them. I think the best evidence is that they did not resume large-scale production, and that's what we're really talking about, is large stockpiles, not the small. Large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in the period after '95."

Q. After '95?

A. "We're really talking about from the mid-90s, when people thought they had resumed production."

So it is possible that there are large stockpiles, but we probably wont find them anytime soon if (and that is looking like a mighty big if) they existed.

While Kevin makes the typical comments about the current administration, he ignores what I consider to be a more serious implication. How come our intelligence agencies screwed up so badly...again. Clearly we had an intelligence failure on 9/11 and now it looks like there might have been one on Iraq's WMDs. People believed he had restarted his programs and there was something dangerous going on back into the Clinton Administration.

Now I know intelligence work is extremely difficult and all that, but you'd think that after several years there'd be new information that would cause people to change their views on this stuff.

More From Clark's Big Mouth

I was reading CalPundit and came across this post that tries to make the case that Clark isn't as flip-floppy as he is. The first item was Clark's guarantee about no future terrorist attacks (here is the editorial). Clark's exact words are the following,

"If I'm president of the United States, I'm going to take care of the American people," Clark said. "We are not going to have one of these incidents."

Now that looks like he is saying there will not be any terrorist attacks that will used biological or chemical attacks if he were elected President. Clark then backed off the initial claim saying nothing can be guaranteed. Clark has basically moved from a strong position to a much, much weaker one.

The Columbia Journalism Review engages in a bit of semantical hand waving with the following,

DiStaso's original question accurately mirrored Clark's statements from January 8th and 9th. However, DiStaso blurred fact and fiction in his follow-up question to Clark's original answer: "General, a top priority -- sure, that's everyone's top priority. That's a far cry, some might say, from a guarantee. So..." At this point Clark interrupted DiStaso. "I never used the word 'guarantee.' I never said that, John."

And Clark's right he never did say "guarantee." As you read above, the Concord Monitor editorial board inserted the word "guarantee" with its headline on January 9th.

No Clark didn't use the word guarantee, but he did take a strong position that was pretty much the same. Imagine buying something from a store and they say, "It'll never break down." You'd feel that they just guaranteed their product. If you went back after the product did break down and complained, and they said, "Well, we never said guarantee...," you'd be pissed off and felt you had been lied too.

Now Clark did say his initial statement was too strong, but it is this kind of flip-flopping that makes him look bad (a weirdo as Roger Simon put it). It is also amusing to watch the mental gyrations some of Clark's defenders go through to try to make out that this is really nothing. The correct answer was, "Yes, in effect Clark did make such a strong statement, but then later backed off on it."

Update: This post by Unlearned Hand puts Clark's comment about Kerry being a hero and only a junior officer in a different perspective. Since blogging is a predominantly text based medium such things as tone of voice and demeanor are almost completely lost. In this case, according to Unlearned Hand adding these elements back in change the statement by Clark from one that is ambiguous to one that was belittling.

Personally I wouldn't know as I haven't seen any video on this. Take it for what you will, but Clark is looking more and more like he has Dean's problem: foot-in-mouth disease.

Clark: Pickering Anti-American

In critisizing the President for his recess appointment of Judge Pickering Clark said the following,

"When our president has the audacity to visit the grave of Dr. King on one day and then dishonor his memory on the next by appointing an anti-civil-rights, anti-voting-rights, anti-justice, anti-American judge, then we have not overcome," General Clark said.

Nice job General. The implication seems to be that President is also Anti-American.

ECRI's Weekly Leading Index

The weekly leading index is up. The index rose from 131.4 the week ending January 9 to the 133.1 for the week ending January 16.

Government Funded Music

Well that is what Mark Kleiman sees as a good idea.

The total now paid for the production and distribution of recorded music (about $10 billion a year) is small enough that O'Hare wants to pay for it out of general revenues rather than a dedicated tax. That makes substantive sense, but might be less politically workable than a self-financed program paid for by taxing data transfer, especially if that could be linked with an effective anti-spam measure. I'd never notice an email tax of a hundredth of a cent per kilobyte, but it would make the peddlers of unclaimed Nigerian bank accounts think twice before sending out their next million messages.

Hmmm, I don't know if I want the government funding the music industry. The paper that Kleiman is relying on (sorry no link as it is a draft and I'm nost supposed to cite it...but Kleiman does have a link from his post) is got some problems with it.

First, is this bogus assumption that downloading is free/costless. This is completely false. When you download a song, even with a fast connection it can still take awhile, and there is no guarantee that you'll get the actual file you want. So there are search costs (i.e., time spend searching vs. doing something else) and there is the download time (time you have to wait to get the music). Further, the is the limitation of having an MP3. An MP3 is stuck on your computer. Unless you have a CD burner or an MP3 palyer (which cost money) your ability to enjoy music via downloading is not as versatile as with a store bought CD.

Second of all, the program the author is suggesting requires a rather intrusive system where basically the government will know what you are listening too. Basically each MP3 would have a "signature" so that when it is played it relays information to a government agency about the song being played. Now the suggested setup would keep the individual's indetity secret, but I'm still not comfortable with such a program that is almost, but not quite spyware.

The idea here is that artists would be compenstated based on the popularity of the song. The more a song is played the more the artists (actually the copyright holder) would recieve.

While in theory it is great, one immediate problem is I don't think the government will keep the costs down. Government agencies are famous for their bloated budgets, lost funds, and misallocated funds. Another problem is that there could still be a problem with gaming. Since the taxes are paid by all tax payers a program that plays a song many times in row spread over several different computers could be used to artificially boost the popularity of an artists songs. For example, a 4 minute song being played continuously over ten computers would result in 1,314,000 additional "hits". Would this be enough to justify the cost of 10 additional computers? What if the computers last for 5 years on average? Now it is over 6.5 million hits. This also assumes that nobody figures out a way to play more than one song at a time on a given computer. So this could be subject to gaming.

A potential problem from a political perspective is that some might want to use the political process to influence what music is "allowed". Imagine all the fuss over the National Endowments for the Arts magnified by 100 (the NEA had a budget of $100 million in FY 2002). Can you imagine Tipper Gore being put into control of an agency that has to disperse grants and royalties to artists?

I much more prefer the approach advocated by David Levine and Michelle Bodlrin which keeps everything in the market place (save for enforcement of laws). I gotta tell you, suggest a government program and these "big government lovers" are all over it.

Wow, I Kind of Agree with Howard Dean

This is from the San Francisco Chronicle website,

Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean on Friday derided Washington politicians who "say anything just to get elected," a slap at his Beltway-based rivals.

Then Dean, not missing a beat, put his foot in his mouth (I'm begining to wonder if this isn't some sort of obsessive/compulsive thing with him),

"I think Alan Greenspan has become too political," Dean said. "If he lacks the political courage to criticize the deficit, if he was foolish enough -- and he's not a foolish man -- to support the outrageous tax cut that George Bush put through then he has become too political and we need a new chairman of the Federal Reserve."

Actually, IIRC Greenspan was critical of the tax cuts. Later Greenspan changed his position on tax cuts when the economy appeared to be slowing.

We have had a very dramatic slowing down. We are probably very close to zero

Greenpsan's term as Chairman is up in June, but Bush is saying he'll reappoint him. Which is probably a smart thing to do as it'll send a reassuring signal to the business community. Dean on the other hand will look even more like a maverick with his rhetoric of ditching Greenspan.

There is also this part that is interesting,

"With all due respect to these folks, they've been in Washington for years and years and years. It's 'you scratch your back and I'll scratch mine,"' he said, mixing his metaphors, "and what happens? We all pay the bill. Ordinary taxpayers are the ones who get the short end of the stick."

While I think Dean is right to some extent, it is ironic that Dean's plans will end up increasing the deficit (by about $160 billion) if he is elected and if he gets his various policies passed.

Here is "Shorter" Dean:

• These beltway bandits spend your money.
• Elect me so I can spend your money.

Emotion over Reason

I should probably put this in a different category than "Politics" but Steve hasn't set up "Flailing a Dead Horse" yet.

Howard Dean prefers emotion over reason, evidently.

A humbled Howard Dean said Thursday, "I have my warts. I sometimes say things that get me in trouble," but argued Thursday that voters will see through the flaws and rally to his troubled presidential candidacy.

"In other words, I lead with my heart and not my head. That's the only chance we have against George Bush," Dean said as he sought to recover from his third-place Iowa finish and the fallout over his scream-filled speech on caucus night that raised questions about his temperament. [emphasis added]

[Link circuitously via Instapundit.}

NBER Dating Committee

The dating committee is considering moving the start of the last recession back into 2000.

The last recession may have started in the twilight of the Clinton administration rather than at the dawn of the Bush administration.

The panel of economists that serves as the official timekeeper for the nation's recessions is considering moving the starting date back to November or December 2000, a member of the group said yesterday, confirming a report in the Wall Street Journal.

This isn't big news as I've blogged about this before. What is different is that there seems to be some who think moving the recession date forward into the last three months of 2000 would be more accurate. The view of moving the date is not unanimous. Also, this part is worth noting,

"Presidents don't have so much to do, in my opinion, with when recessions start," Zarnowitz said. "Clearly the boom happened under Clinton, and the boom generates the bust. And no administration has the power to change that."

Which I think is right. So people shouldn't run off saying, "See, it was really all Clinton's fault." Clinton could have taken some steps to try to prevent a recession, but many at the time felt the economy was going to keep growing. Further, it isn't clear that the steps would have prevented the recession.

But the government recently revised upward its estimate for real GDP in the fourth quarter of 2000, to a gain of 2.1 percent, while revising down its estimate of third quarter GDP that year, to a drop of 0.5 percent. Frankel said he thinks those revisions confirm the panel's current position that the recession began after payrolls peaked.

I'm not sure this is right. Employment/unemployment are lagging indicators. They tend to change trend after the recession starts. So if they started to decline in March of 2001 tht would imply, at least to me, a somewhat earlier recession start date. Throw in the declining GDP in the third quarter of 2000 (although it was increasing in the fourth quarter of 2000 albeit at an anemic rate of 2.1%), and the turn around in the industrial production in mid 2000 and it seems the economy was at the very least getting quite weak.

3rd Party Dean

So I'm wondering when the rumors about Howard Dean running as a 3rd party candidate will start? Is it too soon? Should I wait until after he tanks in NH, or after SC?

To heck with it, I need some instant gratification. Dean's got quite a few qualities that lead me to believe he might run as an independent if he doesn't get the Democrat nomination.

1. Anger.
2. Outsider status.
3. Distaste for the other candidates.
4. Fury.
5. Vocal nigh-unto fanatical supporters.
6. Rage.

I have a hard time seeing Dean throw his support whole-heartedly behind Kerry, Clark, or Edwards, considering his petulant personality. I can see him running as an independent just to screw whoever does get the nomination.

I could be wrong, but he strikes me as an unruly child. I think the best the future nominee (again, assuming it's not Dean) can expect from him is that he'll take his ball and go home in a huff. If he's realllly petty, I expect a 3rd party run.

I'm just speculating wildly, but isn't that what blogs are for?

Rent Seeking, Part II

Yesterday the RIAA filed 532 additional lawsuits against people who download music using P2P software. What is interesting is that the last time the RIAA sued downloaders there was a noticeable decline in downloading activity and this lawsuit follows on a report of a surge in downloading activity.

The renewed push by the Recording Industry Association of America comes just a few days after an industry research firm reported a surge in illegal music downloads over the Internet.

Record companies also are charging ahead despite a federal court ruling in December that made uncovering the names of alleged music pirates more difficult.

What we are seeing here is a classic case of rent protection. In economics rents are profits/benefits that are in a sense unearned. The classic case is the monopolist who uses the market power to increase the price above marginal cost and expropriate part of the consumer's consumer surplus as profits.

Typically discussions of rents is on rent seeking, the pursuit of unearned compensation. However, there is also the notion of protecting what you already have. The P2P trading threatens the music industries monopoly profits and as such they are engaging in rent protection. The current strategy is to scare people who download into abandoning the activity.

My guess is the one of the effects of this strategy will be for programmers to develop programs that hide the users IP number or even provides a misleading number. I'm not a tech guy in this area, but this looks like some people are already thinking along these lines.

The RIAA is stuck trying to defend a position that technology is apparently going to be harder and harder to defend. The old days of music are, IMO, starting to come to a close. I don't doubt that music artists will still make money and that there will be music. For one thing, under the current system most musicians/bands make get very little money from the recording industry. The recording industry seems to only help in terms of getting a band recognized, but it is possible that the P2P programs could replace that. After all radio stations will still want to play music and it would make a lot of sense to observe which songs are being downloaded the most.

Bands might not make a lot of money off of mp3's (or maybe they could if the current laws on intellectual property are changed), but with popularity for a given band could translate into more and bigger concerts. The idea that P2P programs are going to destroy music and result in a decrease in the amount of music being produced strikes me as alarmist rhetoric and not grounded in reality.

A Follow Up to Dave's FMA Post

Professor Bainbridge has a post on this that argues that Bush was being clever. Clever in that Bush is refocusing the debate from "what should the answer be" to "how do we arrive at the answer". Basically, should it be decided in the courts by judical fiat (along with possible backlash), or via the legislative process which might yeild a short term loss, but leave open the possiblity for change later on?

The marriage amendment I suppose could be seen as a sort of threat to the judiciary: "Back off, this should be decided legislatively not by an imperial judiciary. Try to ignore this warning and I'll push for something that'll take it out of your hands for good." Whether this is a credible threat or not is another matter altogther.

If courts had left abortion to the political process, I suspect we would have ended up about where we are now, but our politics would be a lot less venomous. If the courts don't learn from that lesson and cram down gay marriage before the country is ready, I suspect our politics will get a lot more venomous.

I think Prof. Bainbridge has a point here. IIRC, right after the Texas decision there was a definite decline of those who viewed gays and gay marriage favorably. So while the Texas decision could bee seen as a victory it was one of those victories that came with a rather high cost, IMO.

I'm Glad I Don't Live in New York

Sheesh! That is one weird story.

SotU and Gay Marriage

Andrew Sullivan fisks the part of Bush's speech about the FMA. I read that section of the speech, and I can't tell what his position is. The only thing that leapt out at me was his stand against activist judges. I agree with that, but the speech doesn't say much about his position if states do allow gay marriage through the legislative process.

Color me unimpressed. However, I think Michael Demmons is overreacting when he says Bush basically came out in support of the FMA. He hinted at it as a possibility, if activist judges impose gay marriage by fiat. That's hardly the same as outright endorsement of it -- it's more of a Clintonesque vaguery in order to try to have it both ways.

More Good News for Kerry

Looks like his campaign is seeing the benefits of Monday's win. Donations are up 40% with over $250,000 via the campaigns website. Also, they picked up some additional advisors in New Hampshire with Gephardt's decision to leave the race.

Ouch! Cox & Forkum on the SOTU

Check it out.

Dick Morris on the Iowa Results

I agree with Mr. Morris' final conculsions that Bush can beat Kerry and that Edwards would be harder to beat, but I'm not sure I agree with the rest.

For example, the Clintons want to keep control of the party, hence they want "their cnadidate", Clark, to win. Now that Dean has been injured they can't ignore Kerry or Edwards. So what is to stop them from using the same tactics on Kerry and Edwards?

I don't think they can use these tactics to ensure that Clark wins, but they sure could make a quick process a long nasty fight. A long nasty fight could help the Democrats (there is no such thing as bad publicity), but I'm not so sure about this. For one, a long drawn out fight right up to the convention could mean that whom ever is the nominee will be broke or near to it with precious little time for additional fund raising. Also, the nominee will have been heavily attacked just a few months ago, will that fade away enough by November 5th? And the even bigger question will all that in fighting provide the Bush campaign with ready material to use against the Democratic nominee?

My guess is that this isn't all that good for the Democrats, but as Glenn Reynolds says, "I could be wrong".

Oh No

Bevan over at Real Clear Politics points out something that hasn't gotten a lot of attention (yet). Gephardt's withdrawal puts MO back in play for the Feb 3 primary.

Eighty-eight delegates just went up for grabs, making the Show-Me state the prime prize on February 3.

Clark and Edwards have already deployed significant resources in South Carolina. John Kerry, on the other hand, still has the flexibility (we'll have to wait and see about the resources part) to make a bold move into Missouri. Who knows what Howard Dean may do.

Ugh.

Update -- Zgoby doesn't have polling information for MO, and in fact doesn't show it on his map of Feb 3 primaries. Hopefully that will change.

Bush v. Democrats on Spending

Bird Dog over at Tacitus points us to an article by the National Taxpayers Union that supports what I have been saying all along. All of the Democratic candidates for President want to spend more than President Bush increase the deficit. Here are some of their top findings,

1. If the policy agenda of any one of the eight candidates were enacted in full, annual federal spending would rise by at least $169.6 billion (Lieberman) and as much as $1.33 trillion (Sharpton). This would translate to a yearly budget hike of between 7.6% and 59.5%.
2. All candidates offer platforms that call for more spending than would be offset by repealing the Bush tax cuts (using even generous estimates of the tax cuts' impact).
3. The eight candidates have proposed over 200 ideas to increase federal spending, and only two that would cut federal spending. Those two proposals have been offered by Dennis Kucinich (thus, the seven other candidates haven't made a single proposal to cut any spending).
4. Although they may attempt to stress their policy differences, Howard Dean and Wesley Clark would both increase annual federal outlays by roughly the same amount ($222.9 billion vs. $220.7 billion, respectively).
5. Among those candidates considered to be "competitive," Dick Gephardt posts the largest annual spending increase ($368.8 billion), far ahead of John Kerry ($265.11 billion).

Well, the numbers in point number 4 match up quite well with my numbers for Dean.

Johnson noted that the study "does not even consider that the temptation to spend more money can increase after entering the White House." George W. Bush, for example, who campaigned as a fiscal conservative in 2000, has presided over a jump in federal spending of 23.7% since taking office. Yet, Johnson still found that even the most parsimonious of the Democrat Presidential candidates would have outpaced the spending run-up under Bush by 15%.

So by comparison Bush is could be the fiscal conservative...but that isn't saying much (well it does depend on how much some of his remaining programs will cost). As Micheal Demmons has noted there is not a single candidate that is worth voting for. All are bad news when it comes to increasing government spending.

Maybe the Democrats and those on the Left will now shut up about he deficit or at least change their tune. What am I thinking, they'll never pass up a chance to demagogue an issue like this. They'll just hope nobody checks for this kind of stuff.

Update: There are claims over in the comments at Tacitus that this report has been debunked. These claims are tenuous at best. First they rest on the complaint that the report compares Bush's acutal spending to the proposed spending by Democrats. While this is true, it is a secondary point in the conclusion and does not change the main point.

The main point of the NTUF report is that all of the Democratic candidates will increase the deficits if they can manage to get all of their proposals passed.

Now that is a rather strong assumption, but noting that if the Congress stays in Republican hands and that this will impair the ability of the candidates to get their proposals passed is if anything an argument for gridlock. It is not an argument to vote Democrat in general, but to vote so that opposite parties control the Executuve and Legislative branches of government, and quite possibly for a Democrat for President and Republicans to be in control of the Congress.

It is my belief that politicians on both sides of the spectrum have a "tolerable deficit". That is, so long as the deficit is below a certain amount the politicians will live with such a deficit.

As for the surpluses under Clinton I think that it was due primarily to a number of factors, the removal of any one of them would have resulted in no surplus and possibly higher deficits. Clinton faced a Congress controlled by the Republicans which made it more difficult to pass legislation. His early big proposal, health care reform, was defeated. Further, there was strong economic growth that lead to a large increase in tax revenue. Remove any of these factors and I don't think there would have been as good a fiscal outcome as we observed. Since it is unlikely we are to observe similar conditions in the next several years it is unlikely we'll see similar fiscal outcomes.

Escape from Neverland!

Michael Demmons had a link to this game. Its sick, but fun...in a sick sort of way.

The State of the Union

Well I had to work late and only came into the radio version about halfway through (i.e., I caught most of the domestic stuff none of the foreign policy stuff).

I wasn't all the thrilled with what I heard. The fact that the economy is doing great is...well...great. However, I'm not sure making the tax cuts permanent is a good idea. Those who say that deficits today mean taxes sometime in the future are right. The only question is when in the future? With Social Security getting closer to using up its surplus I don't see much good news for the deficit in the next 20 years. Either government spending is redirected towards Social Security and Medicare, taxes go up, benefits are cut, or some combinaiton of the three. So making permanent the tax cuts is just going to exacerbate the problem.

On the other hand I don't like the idea of phasing out that tax cuts because it is my belief that politicians have a "tolerable deficit"--i.e., so long as the deficit is below a certain point they'll live with it. Sure the other side will use it as a campaign gimmick, but in the end they both want to be able to spend into the red like that...just on different things. That and I don't like paying taxes either...so part of me wants the tax cuts to be permanent and that part of me wants even more cuts.

The gay marriage thing is just silly to me. I don't understand the problem with it. So two guys or two women want to get married. I still don't see exactly how it'll lessen the value of a heterosexual couple's marriage. This kind of thinking reminds me of Amartya Sen's paradox about liberals. If only people didn't have "nosey" preferences I think this problem would cease to be an issue. But I guess for some people what others do in their bedroom (between consenting adults) is something they just can't ignore.

The steroids thing was a WTFIHTA moment in the car. Uhhh...okay so it is a problem...is this something the White House has to worry about while we are fighting the fucking War on Terror?!?!? I felt like I was suddenly watching Reefer Madness or something. Surely the President of the United States has something more pressing to occupy his time with. Say like focusing on catching Osama bin Laden.

The health care stuff leaves me a bit cold. Given that all of his potential opponents for the next election are offering "Health Care for Freeeeeee" (Larry Miller run amok) my guess is Bush is looking to try and "steal" that issue from them. The problem is that this will undoubtedly result in an increase in government spending. As noted above this is something that the country cannot afford. Not that I expect this to stop Bush or any of the Democrats. After all, who ever wins the next Presidential election will be in office for at most 8 years and whatever problems come up will be somebody else's problem. With the nice pension plan the Presidency comes with and all the speaking fees why give a crap?

I'm less than thrilled with the faith based initiatives as well. Spending tax dollars on religious institutions is not something I find all that appealing. Of course, I don't like spending federal tax dollars in general. In fact, I wish they'd stop it so we wouldn't have to be discussing raising taxes, the deficit and so forth. These politicians are worse than heroin adicts with a serious jones.

Update: Looks like Tacitus is beyond words. Darn, listening to it on the radio means I missed Cheney's water being knocked over.

And this from John Cole is quite funny,

From the SOTU:

"The terrorists declared war on the United States... and war is what they got."

You can almost hear the collective mind explosion at the Democratic Underground.

No kidding, I should go check. Hmmm...looks like most chose not to watch or listen.

Michael Demmons probably has the best summary,

There is no one in this country that is worth voting for this year.

Unfortunately I think he is right.

Thomas Sowell: Manufacturing Confusion

Thomas Sowell bursts the bubble of many of the Chicken Littles about jobs moving overseas.

This happens whether there is or is not free international trade. At the beginning of the 20th century, 10 million American farmers and farm laborers produced the food to feed a population of 76 million people. By the end of the century, fewer than 2 million people on the farms were feeding a population of more than 250 million. In other words, more than 8 million agricultural jobs were "lost."

Now lets be clear here. These jobs did not go overseas as is the case today, but were simply gone. As more machines became available (and I bet their price came down too) more and more farmers were out of work. The jobs were replaced by machines. what happened was that these people went on to the next job.

In Drucker's words, "Nobody seems to realize that we import twice or three times as many jobs as we export. I'm talking about the jobs created by foreign companies coming into the U.S.," such as Japanese automobile plants making Toyotas and Hondas on American soil.

Why would you want to do the above? How about cut down on transportation costs? Granted that doesn't apply so much to computer programming with the internet, but that doesn't mean this is going to be the end of the world. Is the computer programmer simply going to go to work at Walmart for a quarter of what he was earning? I doubt it. Chances are he'll find another job that pays the same wage. It may require retraining, or even a short term decrease in salary, but the idea that everybody is destined to become a Walmart clerk is just silly.

Did Dean Fumble

That is what Robert Moran is claiming,

The Democratic party's primary system is not winner-take-all, like the GOP's...John Kerry did not win all of Iowa's convention delegates Monday night. He won approximately 38 percent of its delegates. This means that if we were to see the results in Iowa replicated in each and every upcoming primary contest...there would be no nominee with the delegates to lay claim to the nomination. Democratic presidential wannabes would then begin to wheel and deal and seek support from the roughly 800 Democratic super-delegates and from each other....The story is not that Gephardt was crushed and is shuffling off to the dustbin of history. The story is not that Kerry or Edwards did so well in a caucus that is a poor predictor of future success. The story is that Dean fumbled his chance to run the tables quickly and is now forced to use his money to defeat his opponents in a more protracted fight...Dean and many of the pundits marched off to battle thinking the war would be short. They were...painfully wrong. They're headed for a brutal war of attrition.--emphasis added

It is going to be fun watching the Democrats beat each other up this year. I wonder if any of the attacks will work their way into Repbulican attacks?

Link via EconoPundit.

Pickering: A Follow Up to Dave's Post

The Curmudgeonly Clerk has a post with links to several articles that indicate the treatment Pickering has gotten is a tad extreme.

For example, during the confirmation hearing Senator Schumer pointed out that Pickering resisted giving a cross burner the 7 and a half year sentence. But in reading this article in the Village Voice a different picture emerges. Apparently the ringleader of the cross burning party was going to get off with a misdemeanor and no jail time by cutting a deal. The person who didn't cut a deal the prosecutors wanted to throw the book at him. Pickering thought it was unfair to hit the guy who claimed he did the crime while he was drunk, had no prior history of animus towards blacks, and was not the ringleader should get the maximum sentence. Looks kind of different doesn't it? Sure does to me. Then there is this quote as well,

When he sentenced Swan, Pickering told him that he had committed "a despicable act," and added that this is "an area that we've got to stamp out. . . . We've got to live among each other."

Here is another aritcle in the Atlanta Journal Constitutnion that gives another impression of Judge Pickering.

"We've had debates over everything from Clarence Thomas to the details of some case," Gambrell said. "Judge Pickering is a conservative, but he wants to hear your opinion. And he's amenable to having his mind changed, too."

Isn't having a judge who is open to sound arguments and evidence a good thing? Call me crazy.

Rather, their up-close description of Pickering is that he is a relative progressive on race, a man who in the 1960s, when much of Mississippi was still fighting efforts to kill Jim Crow, testified against a murderous Ku Klux Klansman. He is a parent who, despite a poisonous racial atmosphere around Laurel, bucked white flight to send his four children to newly integrated public schools.

...But he also sought reduced sentences for many black first offenders. He has pushed to establish a racial reconciliation center at the University of Mississippi, his alma mater. And, both on the bench and off, he has pressed white prison officials to ensure the rights of black inmates.

The other links provided by the Curmudgeonly Clerk are,

David Firestone, Blacks at Home Support a Judge Liberals Assail, New York Times, Feb. 7, 2002. (The full text is available for viewing here.)

James Charles Evers, A Brave Judge's Name Besmirched, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 9, 2002.

Bill Rankin, Judge's Handling of One Case Gives His Critics Ammunition, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Mar. 9, 2003.

Neil A. Lewis, A Judge, a Renomination and the Cross-Burning Case That Won't End, New York Times, May 28, 2003. (The full text is available for viewing here.)

Health Care Reform

I noted in the bost below that one of Edwards' talking points is that he'd "stand up to insurance companies, HMO's and drug companies about keeping costs down." I have little doubt this will sound good to many people the problem is its stupid. Just flat out stupid.

It is stupid because if a firm is profit maximizing then it is also cost minimizing at the profit maximizing level of output. In other words, costs are as low as they can go given the institutional environment that these firms have to operate in. You cannot get them to lower costs appreciable without getting the firm to lower output, i.e., less health care. The following graph shows the firms problem. The firm is going to operate at the point where the difference between revenue and profits is the largest (output is 44 and costs are about $170). To get the firm to lower costs the only way to do this, assuming we accept the profit maximizing assumption, is to get the firm to decrease output. For example, at an output of 30 the costs are around $105. Success! Costs are now lowered, but we also have less output. Further, basic economic theory tells us that there were people willing to pay for those goods that are no longer being produced. On top of that, since people were willing to spend the money on this good this implies they wanted that good more than the money and any other good out there. So even though there is a reduction in costs which is a benefit for society, on net there is a social loss when you factor in the lost profits and the decrease in consumer welfare.

It isn't the insurance companies, the drug companies, and the HMOs that Edwards needs to stand up to, but his current colleagues and former colleagues. Edwards was a trial lawyer, he is and people like him are part of the problem. It is the current politicians and lawyers who are, to a large extent, shaping the institutional environment in which the health care firms operate. Changing the rules of the game, so to speak, would have the result of shifting that cost curve (the blue line) up or down. This leads this graph which has the profit maximum occurring at an output of 56 with a cost of $214. Granted costs have gone up, but as I keep pointing out, it is rather rare to get more of something for less. Also, under the old cost structure an output of 56 would have had a cost of $234 and would have been "socially sub-optimal"¹ (i.e., in a market economy it would never happen).

So the people Edwards needs to stand up to are the politicians and the trial lawyers, as well as the insurance companies, drug companies, and the HMOs. After all the latter are a special interest and will want the game rigged in their favor too. However, I don't think any candidate has the intestinal fortitude to take such a stance. The trial lawyers are a huge contributor to the Democrats. The Pharmaceuticals/Health Products industry is a big donor to both parties (although they lean decidedly towards the Republicans). Same for the insurance companies. And it is the same for health professionals.

Here is the bottom line on this topic:

• Health care in the U.S. is expensive because of the way health care is provided
  • If you can't afford care you get it anyways and the cost is shared by those who can afford it.
  • The elderly who are large scale consumers of health care resources are subsidized.
• To keep the same quantity/quality of health care it is going to be just as expensive as it is now, if not more so.
• To reduce the costs of health care overall will require a reduction in the quantity/quality of health care that is provided.

I don't see any other way it can shake out.
_____
¹In the sense of Pareto.

A Big Night for John Edwards

I guess I'll have to stop going to Dean's website so much and start paying more attention to Edwards website.

So is this the begining of the end for Howard Dean? I'm thinking it is. He is starting to just look like a hustler. The "I was invited to worship with former President Carter," trick was comical. Sealing his governor's documents like he has something to hide. His gaffe about the Confederate flag. The boneheaded comment about President Bush needing psycho therapy to work through his "daddy issues" (when Dean himself could be said to have "daddy issues").

As for Edwards, I've just started looking over his website and needless to say I'm underwhelmed. This is a great example of my disappointment,

Responsibility. "When parents bring a child into this world, they have a responsibility to provide a safe home, a good education, and a lot of love. Every parent wants to do the right thing for his or her child. I believe health insurance should be one of those responsibilities and I want to help parents meet that responsibility."

That's it? Man sign me up for Father of the Year! Not only do I provide my son with a safe home, an education, and lots of love, I buy him clothes, toys, food, read to him, and yes...gasp...even provide his medical care. It reminds of Chris Rock,

You're supposed to take care of your kids, what you want a cookie?

And then this blurb about health care was just...words fail me,

Stand up to insurance companies, drug companies, and HMOs to reduce health care costs while improving the quality of health care.

Perhaps somebody should tell Senator Edwards that costs are money that corporations don't get to keep, that is revenue they'd like to keep, but can't if they want to stay in business. Well at least Slate wont have to fill the "Bushism of the Day" if Edwards does manage to make it all the way to the White House. These are even legitimately dumb things to say as well.

Wow, there is quite a bit of good stuff worth blogging about. This guy has some really silly ideas.

Iowa Caucus: Follow Up

My first thought upon reading DaveL's post on the method used in the Iowa caucus was that it sounded alot like a