Deinonychus antirrhopus

Oh For Goodness Sake

This column by Michael Moore is typical of his fatuous style. The core of the article is right here in the following paragraphs,

Hanging out around the convention, I've encountered a number of the Republican faithful who aren't delegates. They warm up to me when they don't find horns or a tail. Talking to them, I discover they're like many people who call themselves Republicans but aren't really Republicans. At least not in the radical-right way that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft and Co. have defined Republicans.

I asked one man who told me he was a "proud Republican," "Do you think we need strong laws to protect our air and water?"

"Well, sure," he said. "Who doesn't?"

I asked whether women should have equal rights, including the same pay as men.

"Absolutely," he replied.

"Would you discriminate against someone because he or she is gay?"

"Um, no." The pause — I get that a lot when I ask this question — is usually because the average good-hearted person instantly thinks about a gay family member or friend.

I've often found that if I go down the list of "liberal" issues with people who say they're Republican, they are quite liberal and not in sync with the Republicans who run the country. Most don't want America to be the world's police officer and prefer peace to war. They applaud civil rights, believe all Americans should have health insurance and think assault weapons should be banned. Though they may personally oppose abortion, they usually don't think the government has the right to tell a women what to do with her body.

There's a name for these Republicans: RINOs or Republican In Name Only. They possess a liberal, open mind and don't believe in creating a worse life for anyone else.

We can do the same thing with people who are Democrats.

Should the government enact laws that are to protect air quality, but drive up gasoline prices? Lets not forget that John Kerry, that good Liberal Democrat, has been using this in his campaign for months now.

Should we pass laws that force employers to pay all employees the same dollar amount? After all, why shouldn't we just have parity between men and women, why not parity among everybody in a given industry? Oh...wait, you don't like that idea? You think things like experience, education, and attendance/timeliness should count as well?

Do you think that the U.S. should not respond to attacks on the country or its citizens? Do you think that the government should not only promote equality before the law, but should enforce equality of outcomes? Should we blow a hole in the budget the size of Mt. Kilimanjaro so that everybody can have health insurance? Should you be unconstitutionally deprived of the most efficacious manner to protect yourself (i.e., banning any and all firearms without amending the Constitution)? And should abortion be free upon demand and used as a form of birth control instead of much cheaper methods?

If you are answering no...or pausing and thinking, then maybe you aren't a Democrat. Most Americans are not in alignment with the fringe of either party (and Michael Moore is quite on the Left fringe). Most Americans tend to have a decent libertarian streak to them. You leave me alone, and I'll leave you alone...for the most part. This is true for many Democrats as well as Republicans. This is why many from both sides can appear, with superficial questions, to be in accord with opposition.

Also, the difference between mainstream Democrats and Republicans is rather small. Bush is called a "radical right-winger". How so? Because he is strongly opposed to abortion and gay marriage. That is about the sole basis for this claim. He isn't a small government "radical" like I am. He isn't a revolutionary in terms of government regulations. Then there is the Prescription Drug Bill, where the Democrats main beef was it wasn't big enough. If anything these issues point to Bush being more in line with big government Democrats.

John Kerry Endorsement

I think we should all vote for John Kerry because of his service in Vietnam and Cambodia.

No asking any pesky questions about his voting record, whether or not he actually was in Cambodia, or things like how he'll cut taxes, raise spending, and balance the budget. Simply acknowledge Kerry's greattness for having spent 4 months in Vietnam and Cambodia then vote for him.

Survey: Employee Health Benefits to Shrink

This article notes that employers are looking to hold the increase in benefits to 10%. To accomplish this, the employers will be increasing deductibles, co-pays and eliminating certain benefits altogether.

Still even with a 10% increase in benefits this will mean that wages will increase at a lower rate or perhaps even decline in some instances. This is why I think the complaints that wages are stagnant and/or declining are disingenuous (here is a nice example--also note the economic illiteracy in the quoted section: inflation adjusted wages exhibiting a positive growth rate are growing at a rate in excess of the rate of inflation).

Anyhow when we look at the data on total compensation from the Bureau of Labor Statistics we see the following,

I don't know about you, but I see the hourly compensation data increasing from 1995 on. Could the story linked above about the paltry rise in the wage and the increases in total compensation be linked? Could the increase in benefits be squeezing the wage rate as firms attempt to ensure profits?

The Mystery Deepens

Former Secretary of the Navy, John Lehman, says the following about Kerry's Silver Star citation bearing his name,

"It is a total mystery to me. I never saw it. I never signed it. I never approved it. And the additional language it contains was not written by me," he said.

He thinks it might have been signed with an autopen.

Over at InstaPundit a reader sends in this comment,

When I got a law school transcript reissued to me a couple of years ago, it was certified by someone who wasn't the registrar when I was there. That doesn't mean I didn't graduate in 1997 because someone else signed it in 2002.

I don't know Navy process, but Kerry may have asked for a new certification in the 1980's, and Lehman's signature may have ended up on it as a matter of course.

But Glenn also notes the change in the citation and the fact that the "V" does not exist for the Silver Star, hence suspicion is still warranted. I agree. My inclination is as follows: the probability there is an innocent explanation is still much higher than the nefarious explanation. Still it would be nice if Kerry released all of his military records. Seems thing it should have already happened given the importance he has made out of Vietnam for his candidacy.

Is There a Housing Bubble?

ECRI says no. The opening comment is quite telling,

If this is a US housing bubble, it will be the first time everyone has accurately predicted it.

Which of course should make everybody question the idea that we are currently in a bubble. Typically when there is a bubble nobody sees it as a bubble.

Not only has everyone predicted the bubble for three years now, but everyone also has predicted the pin: rising interest rates. When mortgage rates did indeed rise in anticipation of the Federal Reserve (news - web sites)'s rate increase, the high-flying homebuilders' stocks deflated on cue. Since early March, Toll Brothers is off 11 per cent, Centex is off 21 per cent and Lennar Homes has shed 20 per cent, though Pulte Homes has managed to rise slightly.

The US housing market may be a bubble or be well on its way to becoming one, especially on the coasts. But the problem with that prediction, and making bets against the homebuilders' stocks, is one never knows when the bubble pops or just deflates.

As the saying goes, Indeed.

Second Quarter GDP

The Bureau of Economic Analysis has released its preliminary GDP numbers for the second quarter and it is bad news: a downward revision. GDP (annualized) growth for the second quarter was a sluggish 2.8%.

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

I don't think Bush is going to get much help from the economy as the data are indicating we are still in the "soft patch" and maybe for sometime as oil prices remain high.

Greenspan on Social Security and Medicare

Greenspan has returned to a topic he has discussed before: the approaching problems with Social Security and Medicare. The basic problem is that the government may have promised more than it can deliver.

Retired Admiral Speaks Out

Retired Admiral William L. Schachte Jr. has given two interviews (the print version can be found here) and disputes Kerry's claims about his first Purple Heart.

"Kerry nicked himself with a M-79 [grenade launcher]," Schachte said in a telephone interview from his home in Charleston, S.C. He said, "Kerry requested a Purple Heart."

As for enemy fire we have the following,

Schachte described the use of the skimmer operating very close to shore as a technique that he personally designed to flush out enemy forces so that the larger swift boats could move in. Around 3 a.m. on Dec. 2, Schachte said, the skimmer -- code-named "Batman" -- fired a hand-held flare. He said that after Kerry's M-16 rifle jammed, the new officer picked up the M-79 and, "I heard a 'thunk.' There was no fire from the enemy," he said.

Via Debunkers.

Update: Seems it might have just got worse for Kerry.

But the official records on Kerry's Web site only add to the confusion. The DD214 form, an official Defense Department document summarizing Kerry's military career posted on johnkerry.com, includes a "Silver Star with combat V."

But according to a U.S. Navy spokesman, "Kerry's record is incorrect. The Navy has never issued a 'combat V' to anyone for a Silver Star."

Naval regulations do not allow for the use of a "combat V" for the Silver Star, the third-highest decoration the Navy awards. None of the other services has ever granted a Silver Star "combat V," either.

And that isn't the only problem. Why does John Kerry's DD215 (which revises the DD214) list 4 Bronze Combat Stars when Kerry was eligible for only 2 Bronze Combat Stars? Also, why are there three citations for his Silver Star (and all three have different language)? And how come there are two citations for the Bronze Star? And finally, according to the Washington Post, how come Kerry hasn't released his fully service record?

Reporting by the Washington Post's Michael Dobbs points out that although the Kerry campaign insists that it has released Kerry's full military records, the Post was only able to get six pages of records under its Freedom of Information Act request out of the "at least a hundred pages" a Naval Personnel Office spokesman called the "full file."

Now my inclination is to go with the position that Kerry did earn all of his medals, but this isn't good news for his campaign.

Update II: This Op-Ed by Dr. Martin Fackler gets it right, IMO.

John Kerry has presented his Vietnam record as his major qualification to be president of the United States. It is, therefore, the duty of the American public to scrutinize that record carefully. And it is the duty of candidate John Kerry to facilitate that scrutiny. If all the senator's claims about his four months in Vietnam are factual, it would be to his great advantage to facilitate such scrutiny.

That is precisely right. Instead of calling everybody liars Kerry should present the facts...all of them (i.e., authorize the release of his complete military record). To do anything less immediately leads to the Kevin Drum syndrome of speculation as to what Kerry is hiding.

Terrorists Claim Responsibility for Downing Russian Jets

It was just on the NBC 4 news, and I don't have a link yet.

Update: Finally found a link.

A website known for militant Muslim comment on Friday published a claim of responsibility for the crashes of two Russian airliners, connecting the action to Russia's fight against separatists in Chechnya. The statement was signed "the Islambouli Brigades." A group with a similar name has claimed responsibility for at least one other attack, but the authenticity of Friday's statement could not immediately be confirmed.

Update II: Two things to update here.

First, the Russians are now blaming one of the crashes on terrorists. Second, there have been traces of explosives found on that jet.

Kerry's Marxism Lite, Part II

Well many people are enthusiastic about John Kerry's health care plan. The heart of the plan is a premium rebate pool that will help lower the impact of high cost consumers of heath care have on insurerers. The idea works like this, a small portion of people have very high insurance costs. So high that those covering these people have a strong incentive to make sure somebody else is covering their costs. The premium rebate pool basically acts as a re-insurance program. The government is basically offering isurance to insurance companies. This would lower the costs for those providing medical care/coverage and reduce the incentives to get these people off their plans. This in turn would also lower insurance premiums since when the costs go above a certain threshold the insurance company would not have to pay those costs by itself.

So far, so good. Not a bad plan. There ar some details that are being omitted. First, while this would result in a decrease in premiums it would likely result in an increase in the consumer's tax liabilities. The exact impact on any given consumer is quite unclear, but if this were to remain revenue neutral from a federal budget point of view taxes would have to go up. No problem you might say, Kerry is planning on raising taxes on those who make over $200,000/year. Right, but as has been pointed out before these tax increases, when coupled with Kerry's tax cuts and additional spending don't add up to deficit reduction. Again, one could respond with, "So what, under Bush we have seen a huge increase in the deficit." And you are absolutely right. Here is the problem though: Kerry has been portraying himself as the candidate of fiscal responsibility (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here). Kerry and Edwards point out that higher debt today means higher taxes in the future. Well this is true for a Kerry-Edwards presidency as well (assuming they can get this through Congress).

But that isn't the part that strikes me as having some similarities to Marxism. It is the bullet items in Kerry's description of the plan,

• Provide Health Coverage to Their Workers. Many companies work to provide quality coverage to all their workers. However, some companies have stringent rules that prevent some workers from obtaining affordable health care. To receive the premium rebate, employers would have to provide insurance coverage to their employees.

• Adopt Disease Management and Care Coordination Programs to Improve Quality and Lower Costs. Innovative programs targeting patients with chronic conditions have illustrated that both the human and cost consequences of chronic diseases can be alleviated through hands-on medical management. Employers and their insurers must adopt model programs to receive the premium rebate.

• Share Savings with Workers. By substantially reducing catastrophic costs, John Kerry's proposal will make it easier for employers to offer affordable coverage. Firms will be able to provide higher wages, maintain benefits, and make investments that help employers and workers alike. Health economists predict that these savings will automatically be passed onto workers in the form of higher wages and/or other forms of compensation. If employees do not share in the savings, the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Secretary of Labor would develop policy options to ensure that employers do share these savings with workers.

To qualify for the rebate pool you must adhere to these new rules...these new controls. The last one in particular is troubling. It is pretty much accepted by economists that who pays a given tax is irrelevant. If the tax is levied on the firm it will try to pass those costs on to the consumer. The consumer will react in two ways first by subsituting to un-taxed items (the substitution effect) and to curtail spending in general (the income effect). This means both the consumer and the firm will share part of the burden of the tax. Right now with benefits firms get certain tax benefits as do the employees. By lowering the costs of those benefits the tax benefits change. Should all of the savings go to the employees? Well as an employee I'd like that, but I'm not entirely sure this should be the case. What is distrubing is that John Kerry is willing to force firms to this outcome.

A firm brings together the various factors of production and produces goods and/or services. Firms do this for a profit. The profits go to the firm's owners (shareholders). Some have seen this discrepency between what is paid to the factors of production (the costs) and revenue as rightfully belonging to the worker (labor). Further, this money should be given to the workers. That is the basic concept of Marxism (simplified). That is what I see with the details of Kerry's plan. Now, it is entirely possible that the entire decrease in benefits is translated into an increase in wages/other compensation. However, I am not convinced that has to be the outcome. There are lots of distortions here, and forcing a particular outcome could have negative consequences. If Kerry has some analysis that supports the "correctness" of this position I'd sure like to see it.

This is why Kerry's plan smacks of Marxism. It smacks of the government getting in and mucking around in the market at a low level (i.e. a micro level...micro-managing if you will) ensuring an outcome that in this case is designed to get votes, but may not be the best possible outcome.

Kerry: Cut Taxes, Cut the Deficit

But can he do both? I don't think so. I have argued this point before that Kerry's plans for spending, tax cuts, and tax increases will not mean much for deficit reduction (although to be fair Kerry has said he'd put deficit reduction before spending...now as for his credibility on this one....). Now this article with the Washington Post is saying much of the same thing.

A Washington Post review of Kerry's tax cuts and spending plans, in addition to interviews with campaign staff members and analyses by conservative and liberal experts, suggests that they could worsen the federal budget deficit by nearly as much as President Bush's agenda. If projected savings from unspecified cuts do not materialize, Kerry's pledges could outstrip those of the president, whom the Democrat has repeatedly accused of unprecedented fiscal recklessness.

The comments by Leon Panetta are, I think, helfpful in explaining the problem with activist government.

"You have to begin with the premise that the steps you need to take to reduce deficits are almost diametrically opposed to the steps you need to take to win elections," said Leon E. Panetta, Bill Clinton's first budget director. "You can cut spending and raise taxes or you can cut taxes and raise spending."

So on the one hand we have Kerry and the Democrats decrying Bush's fiscal fecklessness, but on the other hand are promising just as much fiscal fecklessness themselves. Keep this in mind the next time the Democrats are blathering and bloviating about the deficit.

Arnold Kling on Health Care

I recommend reading the entire column. Here are some of the good points,

If employers bear the cost of health insurance, then I'm the Easter Bunny. It is fairy-tale economics to believe that "nice" employers give away health insurance, while "mean" employers withhold it. In reality, employers compensate their employees using a combination of cash and non-cash benefits. Workers bear the cost of health insurance.

Indeed. Here is my post on this. Employees are paid a wage benefits packege. Your "true wage" is actually W = V + B, where V is the dollar amount and B is the hourly dollar amount for your benefits.

What has happened to employee compensation recently? If you look at the data on total compensation per hour compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, you find that the latest figures available show a 4.6 percent increase for the second quarter of this year over the comparable level a year ago. This is faster than inflation, and it might seem to show that workers are doing really well.

And here is the dirty little lie that is spread by the likes of Nathan Newman, Paul Krugman and others. Lets use our simple equation. Your wage is W = V + B. If W is the equilibrium wage rate (and for the sake of argument is constant) and B goes up...then V must decline. You are getting more benefits at the expense of more cash. Don't like it? Too bad, that is how it works thanks to how the tax laws treat benefits.

Another problem with this is that many people would rather have the cash than the benefits, but that isn't how it works. Which would you rather have? A car worth say $25,000 or $25,000 in cash? How about the car or $22,000 in cash? Many people might take the cash since it would allow them to increase their well being more than an expensive care would. This is the problem inherent in transfer programs that force people to purchase a given good.

In recent years, there has been a striking divergence between household and payroll measures of employment. According to households, there are millions of more jobs than there were when President Bush first took office, while there are fewer jobs listed on employer payrolls. I suspect that disintermediation accounts for some of this discrepancy, as workers effectively opt out of employer health insurance by becoming self-employed.

An interesting hypothesis, and I'm fairly confident about it as well. In fact, a student with access to the relevant data could make a very, very nice paper out of this.

Disintermediation is a free-market response that is good for workers who otherwise would be unemployed or receive low take-home pay. Those workers who would rather not buy so much health insurance at the company store are able to obtain the employment and wages they prefer because of disintermediation.

This often gets lost in all the bullshit rhetoric that the candidates hurl around about health care. Yeah it is sad that people sometimes have to go without. However, it would be even more sad for those people who are unemployed and get no wage or benefits.

One factor that Arnold may have overlooked (i.e., it isn't mentioned in the article) is that even if you don't have insurance you'll still get treated if you are hospitalized. So if you are low risk, have no assets and your big worries are things like getting hit by a car then buying insurance is actually a dumb move.

Winning the Peace in Iraq

One of Kerry's main planks in his platform is to improve the U.S.'s policy in Iraq. Kerry has offered an alternative plan to win the peace in Iraq. One of the things in the plan is the following,

Persuade NATO to Make the Security of Iraq one of its Global Missions and to deploy a significant portion of the force needed to secure and win the peace in Iraq. NATO participation will in turn open the door to greater international involvement from non-NATO countries.

While I think this is a good idea, I don't think it will work all that well, or more accurately it will not work as Kerry is claiming. The numbers just don't seem to be there. NATO countries have about 4.35 million troops in their standing armies (not counting the U.S.).¹ Now lets enter the world of fantasy and suppose that NATO countries decide to send 5% of their troops. This would mean about 210,000 troops that would comprise a peace keeping force in Iraq.

Not to be sure, an additional 210,000 troops would help a great deal. However, that number is probably high, lets say too high by half. So we are actually talking about 105,000 troops. Would this help? Yes. But I don't see how it would help bring our troops home sooner. Also, I think this is wildly optimistic. I don't think countries like Luxemborg, Estonia, Lithuania, and others are going to contribute any forces at all. The U.S. is going to have to carry the bulk of this burden as it has always done in military matters. This is especially true if Russia decides not to send any troops. Russia still has a large army of about 1.5 million men. The idea Kerry keeps talking up of reducing the burden on our troops is, I think, misleading.

Update: I thought Kerry said something about bring a significant number of troops home within his first year. Turns out I was right. O'Hanlon is also more pessimistic than I am...and he is probably right too (foreign policy is not my thing). He puts the number at an additional 20,000 troops (for a total of around 40,000 non-U.S./U.K. troops). Granted it would help, but my guess is not in terms of bringing U.S. troops home.

Update II: This item in the Weekly Standard is also amusing.

Who knows what Sen. Kerry believes? Does Sen. Kerry even know?

I know what Sen. Kerrry is thinking: the opposite of Bush. It is really simple really. For Kerry the following algorithm works really well.

• Bush = Bad.
• Therefore whatever Bush suggests is Bad.
• Thus, the opposite of whatever Bush does, suggests or says is Good.

_____
¹I got my data from Nationmaster.com.

Kerry Campaign Talking Points: Short Form

They are liars. They are smearing. It is dirty politics. Nothing but a Republican front group.

Brad DeLong & Macro Forecasts

Apparently Prof. DeLong recieved some new macro forecasts and they are indicating reduced economic growth and a stagnating labor market. The reason: the end of fiscal stimulus and the high oil prices.

This fits with what I have been pointing out in the various indicators lately. I think it will be safe to say that the August payroll survey will look bleak as will GDP for the last quarter of this year.

Brad DeLong--Non-Credible

You know I find this kind of stuff annoying. Brad doesn't like nor does he trust the Bush Administration. Why? Because they are partisan's and will slant things as much as possible in their favor, but it isn't just that. It is that they are on the Right side of the political spectrum.

By the same logic we know that DeLong is a partisan and that they will slant things in their favor as much as possible. So we know that DeLong is not as credible as...as...somebody who is non-partisan.

Now while looking at an issue it is not unreasonable to "consider the source" as they say. But at the same time this is not sufficient when trying to evaluate individual policies.

With regards to this particular case of over-time Dave did a post on this (click here). The conclusion is that just about everybody who works at an hourly wage (not an imputed hourly wage such as myself--i.e., I have an annual salary) are not in any danger of having their over-time pay cut in half. Further, of those jobs that do fall into the catagory where the over-time pay could be cut, the law changes requirement to an option. So this idea that millions and millions are going to have their over-time taken away by the government is simply false.

So Brad DeLong's plaintive cry for a better press corp would be more accurate if it were a plaintive cry for a more liberal press corp.

Some Interesting Comments

In the comments to this post, Kimmit makes the following comment.

Further, even if one is not racist, one can have opinions which end up being antiblack. It is both my opinion and the African-American community's consensus that opposition to Affirmative Action laws is a position which disadvantages the African-American community.

There are a couple of problems with this view, IMO. The first problem is that it rests on a logical fallacy. If 90% of the population has an unfavorable view of homosexuals does this mean that the view is some how valid? I would hope not.

Now one could point to things like college admissions and the removal of affirmative action laws as support for the claim of being anti-Black. It is true that when race was no longer used as a factor in California that number of Black students admitted to state universities declined. However, is this anti-Black? It certainly puts some students at a disadvantage in terms of admissions, but what about such issues as graduation rates, secondary expenditures for tutoring and remedial courses? This issue is in part about how the state is going to allocate part of its resources for higher education. Given the number of state universities the decision is to not let the market mechanism do all the allocation. There are at least two dimensions here. How best to make use of these resources from the state’s stand point, and how the individual can best to make use of these resources.

Now one reason (probably the major reason) that there was a decline is that under-prepared students either were rejected or decided to apply elsewhere. So is it fair to say that supporting a policy that does not encourage under-prepared students to apply to a given university is anti-whatever-group-those-students-belongs-to? Not only does allowing for the admission of under-prepared students mean that there will likely be a prepared student who is denied, but later on the under-prepared students will continue to suck more resources than the prepared students.

Granted, getting a degree from a good university might have some impact on one’s income stream. But does that mean that under-prepared students should be admitted? What about a policy that addresses the preparedness issue of various groups of students? I have heard that many inner-city blacks like the idea of school vouchers. Yet the Democrats are opposed to vouchers. I could be cynical and say it is due only to the fact that the teachers unions are a big Democratic constituency and the Democrats are pandering to that constituency…at the expense of the Black constituency. Are we to conclude that Democrats are now anti-Black and by inference so is Kimmitt?

Further, it is but a short step from saying somebody supports a policy that is anti-Black to racist. And when things are looking desperate, might not this “card” be used to help gain an electoral advantage and further fan the racial flames in this country? Could we conclude that such actions are polarizing, insulting and bad for race relations, and are ultimately anti-Black? After all you start hurling around the term racism and people get angry and defensive. When they get angry and defensive they tend to dig in on their positions and regard their opponent as somebody who is arguing in good faith, but who is now being deceptive and malicious.

And one last fly in this anti-Black ointment we have here. When the use of race was no longer allowed, the number of students going to state universities such as U.C. Berkeley who were Asian went up dramatically. Are we to conclude that the Affirmative Action laws are anti-Asian and that supporters of such laws are also anti-Asian? Suddenly things aren’t so clear cut no are they? Well at least I don’t think they are.

Also, in the comments (same post in fact) was this

Finally (and this one really bothers me), why is it so terrible that a person would moderate their views in the presence of less-than-fully-confirming evidence? I know, I know, "flip-flopper" and all that, but who would you prefer to deal with, someone who has opinions but is capable of changing them when presented with an opposition (or, in my case, since no actual opposing argument was presented, failing to adequately justify the opinion to myself), or someone who holds to their opinions independent of discussion or evidence?

The issue isn’t simply somebody who can change their mind due to the data, but somebody who changes their mind because it is politically easy. For example (and sticking with the above theme), it could have been easy to side with the segregationists back in the 1950’s and 60’s. In the South, politically it was the “easy” thing to do. However, it was not the right thing to do. So changing one’s mind because of new data is indeed a desirable trait, but changing one’s mind simply because it is convenient is not.

Anyways, I thought these two comments were interesting enough to warrant an actual blog post vs. simply responding in comments.

Upgrade and Spam Issues

Well I finally got around to upgrading my MT setup and also installed MT-Blacklist. I am also going to be going back through all the old posts and closing the comments and deleting any spam that Blacklist missed.

Anyhow, if you suddenly find you can't post anymore it is possible you have somehow be inadverently added to the blacklist so send me an e-mail and I'll take care of it (e.g., I noticed that gnxp.com somehow got incorporated into the list which would have banned a rather prolific poster).

Yeah, Drop it with the Record High Crap Already

I've blogged on this before (although with gasoline prices not crude oil prices...but the point is basically the same). Lynne Keisling has blogged on this before. Now it is Prof. Bainbridge who is blogging on this.

Note to all Journalists: Before you proclaim something a record high, adjust for inflation you nimrods.

Sheesh.

Kerry Fights Back

Via Kevin Drum we have this article on Kerry's response to the Swift Boat Veterans.

What is interesting is that Kerry's response is basically an ad hominem argument.

Kerry said the ads, aired by the group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, are funded by a Republican contributor from Texas.

"They're a front for the Bush campaign. And the fact that the president won't denounce them tells you everything you need to know -- he wants them to do his dirty work," he told a cheering crowd at a meeting of the International Association of Fire Fighters in Boston.

"Of course, the president keeps telling people he would never question my service to our country. Instead, he watches as a Republican-funded attack group does just that. Well, if he wants to have a debate about our service in Vietnam, here is my answer: Bring it on!" Kerry challenged.

Instead of responding to the claims, Kerry ignores those and instead attacks the group as a Republican Front. Why isn't Kerry releasing his military record and his personal journal to help clear this issue up? Wasn't that one of Kevin's war cries during the Bush/AWOL controversy?

Reducing Their Brains...

...to silly putty. Both Kevin Drum and Matthew Yglesias don't seem to understand Alex Tabarrok's point.

Today, I begin teaching the Economic Foundations of Law in the GMU Law School. To illustrate the importance of economics for the study of law I begin with a simple example due to David Friedman. There is in the law what is called "a nonwaivable warranty of habitability," which is a fancy way of saying that a dwelling must have certain features such as heating, hot water, sometimes even air conditioning, whether or not such terms are in the lease and even if the lease explicitly excludes such terms. I ask my students who is made better off and who is made worse off by a legal doctrine that says tenants must have hot water? Invariably, the students answer that the doctrine makes tenants better off and landlords worse off. But is this so? Think about it and then read the extension for more.

Kevin and Matthew apparently don't see that the example is a classroom exercise meant to illustrate a larger point. The point is actually simple, but one many people seem not to appreciate in real life. Here is the point,

The point is that laws sometimes prohibit people from arriving at their preferred outcome and instead force them to an outcome preferred by those who pass the law and have nothing much at stake in said outcome.

In fact, Kevin's rejoinder is incorporated in Tabarrok's post...Kevin just isn't bright enough to see it.

Reductio ad absurdum is a childish game. The fact that a minimum wage of $100/hour is ridiculous doesn't mean that a minimum wage of $7/hour is ridiculous. This is why God gave us brains: to make judgments about how far to take things and how to balance competing interests against each other. Insisting on a minimum level of habitability is partly an economic decision — which explains why color TVs aren't mandated — but partly a matter of both convenience and simple human decency — which explains why hot water and lack of cockroaches are.

For example, what is the actual marginal cost of providing hot water to a tenant? Maybe a few dollars a month at most (the tenant will likely pay his own gas bill) if that. Hence the cost is so low that requiring it hardly results in a major loss for either the tenant or the landlord. But getting carried away with the habitability laws can lead to bad outcomes. Which is precisely Kevin's point and Alex's.

Kimmitt, who is supposedly a graduate student in economics either didn't understand the lesson or didn't finish the post. He concludes this about Prof. Tabarrok,

All this guy is doing is falsely indoctrinating his students into believing that all regulations are stupidly taking the place of private negotiation, by retreating into a fantasy world where negotiations, externalities, informational asymmetries, et cetera do not exist.

This is quite wrong by simply reading the last paragraph of Tabarrok's post,

The lesson here is that a contract is multi-dimensional so if the government changes one dimension of a contract the other dimensions will adjust towards offsetting that change.

In other words, Tabarrok is using a simple example to illustrate a larger point. That larger point is that doing something legally to one dimension of contracts will affect the other dimensions to offset that the potentially negative impacts of the law.

The only thing absurd about Tabarrok's post is the response from the Lefties.

Update: Alex Tabarrok as posted another post on the "Hot Water" issue. I like how he sums it up very, very nicely,

Now suppose that instead of being required to rebate the $50 the landlords are required to spend the money on shoes for the tenants. Now both tenants and landlords are almost certainly worse off since the tenants would almost certainly have used the rebate to buy something other than shoes. The hot water example hardly differs.

Indeed. This is why I prefer cash vs. presents on holidays and my birthday. When a person tries to buy me a gift they have to guess what I want, and chances are they will guess wrong (although this doens't mean I wont like the gift). Cash on the other hand allows me to purchase exactly what I want.

Update: This is also a good take on Alex's posts. It is unbelievable that so many people simply got it wrong...and badly wrong at that. And no, Daniel Davies argument about monopoly power doesn't work either. Passing the law to require an ammentiy does not change the monopolists bargaining power at all.

This is News?

This article asks why aren't more oil refineries being built? Here is the simple answer: If you are it isn't good for profits. We saw this with the California energy crisis. People would ask, "Why would an independent electricity provider take a plant off-line, wouldn't that company be losing money?" Yeah, they'd be losing some money on lost sales. However, if such a closure resulted in a large enough increase in the price then the profits on that firm's remaining generation capacity would more than make up for the losses.

Here is an example with some simple numbers. The demand is 420 MW and there are 5 plants (one company owns two) each with a 100 MW combined cycle gas fired generator. One plant also has a peaker unit (basically a jet engine nailed to the floor for making electricity) for 20 MW (this facility is one of the two owned by one company). Total capacity is 520 MW. Now the way the market would work is that is that the Price Exchange would take bids from the various companies for electricity with the highest bidder necessary to "clear the market" setting the overall price. Now if I owned the company with two plants and the peaker, I'd convienently have one of my 100 MW plants suffer an "unplanned outage". Now to clear the market the Power Exchange will have to take my bid from my peaker unit. Peaker units are notoriously expensive. So now instead of getting say $50/MW for a total revenue of $600 (remember 120 MW); I get $2400 because it costs $200/MW to run the peaker.

Thus you get a quadrupling of the price. Similarly with gasoline refineries. If by closing one refinery I can raise my profits on my remaining refineries to offset the losses I'd be stupid not too shut down one of my refineries. Throw in that nice wonderful barrier to entry caused by NIMBYism, environmental regulations and other things and bingo! No more refineries being built.

Ha Ha Ha, Kevin You're So Funny!

In reacting to Jonah Goldberg's blog post on Bush and Clinton hatred, Kevin writes the following slop,

Tell you what, Jonah. As soon as the most popular liberal editorial page in the country accuses George Bush of murdering one of his aides, maybe I'll give your argument a hearing. And as soon as one of the most influential liberal interest groups in the country starts distributing hundreds of thousands of videos suggesting that George Bush ran a coke ring out of Austin, then I'll really perk up. And when Senate Democrats spend $70 million investigating the Valerie Plame affair — compared to the current $0 — and end up bringing impeachment charges against George Bush, then you'll have me. You'll really have me.

Let's see we have the following,

1. Murder
2. Drug running,
3. A special prosecutor/investigation
4. Impeachement.

Until these conditions are meet the far Left isn't nearly as loony as the far Right was during the Clinton years. Well, lets see what we have,

1. The LIHOP (Let It Happen On Purprose) and MIHOP (Made It Happen on Purpose--yeah its redundant, but that is what it is called) theories about 9/11.
2. Going to war in Iraq simply to get oil.
3. How about the Cheney Energy Task for silliness? Valerie Plame could turn ugly. And then there is Kevin's own personal obsession with Bush's military record...or lack there of.
4. Guess we'll have to re-elect Bush to see about impeachment proceedings.

Gee...3 out of 4 seems pretty good to me. Especially when you consider that the first three for Bush strike me as being far more horrendous than Clinton's first three.

Now I suppose this doesn't mean the Loony Left is worse than the Ridiculous Right, but I'd say they are both whacked in their collective heads. That Kevin doesn't see this suggests that he is seriously out of touch with reality...or as Kevin might say, "unserious". But this really isn't news is it. Kevin being "unserious"...he has turned being unserious into a paying gig.

Terrorism and the Economy

The National Association for Business Economics has polled 172 economists and the leading threat to the economy according to the poll is terrorism.

"If you don't have a secure economy, you can't have a healthy, growing economy," said Duncan Meldrum, association president and chief economist with Air Products and Chemicals. "The next President should put this at the top of his list of priorities."

I think this is something that using this in the election would be a smart strategy. It brings together both the issue of defense and economic policy. For example, the fears of terrorist attacks on oil producing infrastructure has been one of the factors driving up oil prices. The higher oil prices have in turn been acting like a break on the economy in the past few months.

For Kerry it would necessitate a shift in rhetoric though. Kerry's big focus has been on first responders here inside the U.S. Now there is nothing wrong with this, but it does nothing to address the possibilities of attacks on oil producing infrastructure in the Mid-East. In fact, it could increase the chances of attacks in the Mid-East. If the terrorists see it becoming more and more difficult to attack the U.S. directly, they might shift tactics and attack indirectly.

Lack of Blogging

My lack of blogging has been due to a sudden rather large increase in work demands. Fortunately I was able to finish all of my work late yesterday afternoon. So blogging should return to normal starting today.

Tax Burden Shifts to Middle?

Kevin Drum linked to this article at the Washington Post and thought the title, "Tax Burdens Shift to the Middle" was reasonable. And they even present some data couresy of the CBO. And admittedly it doesn't look all that good. The "middle class" is indeed picking up more of the burden for spending when measures as a percentage of federal tax liabilities. However, one thing I learned over the past couple of years of blogging, when dealing with the media or Kevin Drum always check the source. When dealing with both this advice goes double. So I got the report from the CBO (you can look at the pdf here). Here is a handy chart of the total effective tax rates, effective federal income tax rates, and share of federal tax liabilities (i.e., I am giving you more information than either Kevin or the Washington Post).

In other words, while the "middle classes" share of federal tax liabilities have gone up, the effective tax rates have gone down. Measuring one's tax burden is not easy. There is no simple rule of thumb. There are the notions of horizontal and vertical equity, as well as looking at lifetime vs. annual income. Keep this in mind when reading about the tax cuts.

Hmmm...Now That Sound Familiar

Regarding the Kerry-Cambodia imbroglio I found this interesting comment,

"John Kerry was in the Navy, his superiors recommended him for medals, he was honorably discharged. Let it go," John A. Brieden III, national commander of the American Legion, told UPI in summing up his organization's position on the issue. "George Bush was in the National Guard. He was honorably discharged. Let it go."

While my inclination is to agree with Brieden the problem is two fold.

1. The Democrats don't seem to want to let go of the Bush-AWOL story.
2. Kerry has made his service in Vietnam the centerpiece of his campaign, complete with his comment that he is "reporting for duty".

Of course, there is also the blatant re-writing of history on this one,

The Kerry campaign responded, initially, that Kerry had always said he was “near” Cambodia.

Then a campaign aide said Kerry had been in the Mekong Delta “between” Vietnam and next-door Cambodia — a geographical zone not found on maps, which show the Mekong river running from Cambodia to Vietnam.

And not only is it a re-writing of history, but geography as well.

Michael Meehan, a Kerry campaign adviser, told ABC Television: “The Mekong Delta consists of the border between Cambodia and Vietnam, so on Christmas Eve in 1968, he was in fact on patrol ... in the Mekong Delta between Cambodia and Vietnam. He was ambushed, they fired back, he was fired upon from both sides, from the Cambodian side of the border and the Vietnam side during that day in 1968.”

Of course those on the Left who were all over the Bush-AWOL story wont touch this.

So let me get this straight. Kerry did go to Cambodia — even though that was supposedly impossible,...--emphasis in the original

Uhhhm as far as I know nobody said it was impossible that Kerry was ever in Cambodia. The statements were in response to Kerry's claims about being in Cambodia in December around Christmas. These are now false, and the new story was it was in January and Feburary. A shift in the story like this with regards to Bush-AWOL would have produced much blogging on some sites.

....he did take CIA guys in — even though that was supposedly absurd...--emphasis in the original

Again, this is a deliberate distortion. The claims by Kerry were for December and those have now proven false, and the Kerry team has completely re-trenched. My question is, why aren't we seeing Kerry's military records. Why aren't these diaries being made available to the public? Wasn't this the kind of demands we had with Bush-AWOL?

...and he did get a hat from one of them — even though that was supposedly a sign of mental instability.--emphasis in the original

To quote the master of snark, "They aren't even pretending to be serious anymore are they?"

Considering that he's mentioned this story only twice, most recently 18 years ago, and it turns out that his only crime is to have tarted it up with a bit of holiday pathos,...

Yes, but if Bush had done it he should be impeached. Puh-lease.

Release the Hounds...errr Scientists

I have to disagree with this idea of Kevin's,

What Saletan doesn't get is that this is exactly right. Forget the details about whether stem cell therapy is good for Alzheimers, or whether embryonic stem cells are better or worse than adult stem cells. None of that is what really matters.

What really matters is that all of these details ought to be left up to scientists, not to administration ideologues. Let scientists decide what to investigate and when. If they go down a blind alley, funding will dry up and they'll go somewhere else. That's how science works.

First a caveat: I am in favor of allowing more research into the benefits of stem cells, and I disagree with Bush's policy on this topic.

However, I don't think we should let scientists research whatever they want to. Scientists are generally fine people, but there is the issue of ethics. For example, when does one stop collecting data on something? This isn't that big of an issue in something like economics which is largely observational, but with regards to medical practices it is indeed important. Here is an example from one of my stats books,

The story concerned a surgical technique designed to clear clogged neck arteries leading to the brain that was found to be effective in preventing strokes in patients suffering from a severe case of blockage. The research team was lead by Dr. Henry J.M. Barnett of the John P. Robarts Research Institute in London, Ontario. Patients, all of whom had symptoms suggestive of blockage, were randomly split into two groups: 331 patients were to be treated with aspirin and the anticoagulant warfarin, and 328 patients underwent the surgical technique known as carotoid endarerectomy. In the first group 26 percent of the patients had a subsequent stroke compared to only 9 percent in the second group. The length of the initial experiment was terminated early because preliminary results indicated that "the patients receiving surgery were doing so well that it would be unethical to continue to endorse conventional medical therapy."--Source: Intermediat Statistics and Econometrics, by Dale Poirier, page 232.

The point is that there are ethical considerations in science and I am not sure that scientists alone should be the ones to determine what is ethical and what is not ethical.

Kevin does say we should have "complete discussion" of the moral elements of things like stem cell research, but in reality Kevin does not want such a debate.

As for the moral arguments, let's insist on a full and complete discussion of those too — without the usual shilly shallying and prevaricating. The idea that a 1-week old embryo is a human being has always struck me as depressing: a nihilistically mechanical view of humanity in which DNA + miscellaneous chemicals = human life.

This is indeed one point of view, but it is only one point of view. I am in favor of keeping abortion legal. I am in favor of it because I don't know the status of a 1 week old fetus. It does seem a stretch to conclude that a 1 week old fetus is identical in terms of being human as a 1 week old baby or a 25 year old woman. It is my uncertainty on this issue that keeps me from removing the decision to have an abortion or not from a pregnant woman. However, this very same uncertainty makes me a bit squeamish about harvesting 1 week embryos so that we can destroy them for the stem cells. Kevin's insistence on an either/or approach to this problem is logically indefensible, IMO. He should be ashamed of himself.

The California Supremes Void Gay Marriages

The California Supreme Court ruled today on same sex marriages and concluded that the San Francisco mayor overstepped his legal authority.

Update: From the article it looks like the Court wanted to look at a very narrow issue--i.e., did the mayor overstep his legal authority. It didn't tackle the tougher question of the constitutionality of denying homosexuals the right to marry.

The court picked only the peripheral issue to ponder: whether Newsom had the authority to do what he did. Justices simultaneously welcomed the city to file a challenge to the constitutionality of California's marriage laws in the lower courts. Several such lawsuits were filed, and a hearing is scheduled next month.

Update II: Where else to go for information on this? The Volokh Conspiracy should be your first stop.

The second to last paragraph may be controversial, and probably should be: There's a good argument that all government officials should have an independent duty to follow the state and federal Constitutions as they understand them -- at least absent a clear court order to the contrary -- and not just do what they think (rightly or wrongly) is unconstitutional simply because no court has yet held it unconstitutional. On the other hand, the California Constitution does have a special provision on this point (art. III, sec. 3.5) that supports the California Supreme Court's position if one treats a mayor as an "administrative agency," "An administrative agency, including an administrative agency created by the Constitution or an initiative statute, has no power: (a) To declare a statute unenforceable, or refuse to enforce a statute, on the basis of its being unconstitutional unless an appellate court has made a determination that such statute is unconstitutional. . . ."

The introdcution to the ruling is also there, so check it out.

Another Lie from Mikey and Rueters?

This Rueters article sur has the smell of a gross distortion. As you know Bush has nominated Porter Goss to head the C.I.A. Mikey was quick to release some comments from Goss,

A day after Bush picked Goss for the top U.S. spy job, Moore on Wednesday released an excerpt from a March 3 interview in which the 65-year-old former House of Representatives intelligence chief recounts his lack of qualifications for employment as a modern CIA staffer.

"I don't have the language skills. I, you know, my language skills were romance languages and stuff. We're looking for Arabists today. I don't have the cultural background probably," Goss is quoted in an interview transcript.

"And I certainly don't have the technical skills, uh, as my children remind me every day: 'Dad you got to get better on your computer.' Uh, so, the things that you need to have, I don't have."

My big screaming question is, are Goss' comments about getting a job at the CIA as a field agent, or to run the agency? Surely they don't expect Goss to be translating Pashtun or Farsi. If that is what is expected of the head of the C.I.A. then this country is toast as our leaders (both Democrats and Republicans) are morons.

So yeah, I don't think a man of Goss' age and current background could get a job at the C.I.A. as a spook. Hell I'd be damned worried if they were hiring men like him. As for his being able to run the C.I.A., he seems more than qualified.

As for Michael Moore, he remains an inveterate liar.

Kids, Don't Try This At Home

What's next, running with scissors?

Caption contest anyone?

Kerry (muttering to himself): "Now, the left, now the right, now the left, now the right..."

UPDATE:

For political balance, we have this photo.

Whoops, An Intelligent Guard...Didn't See That One Coming

Remember Mary Ann Knowles? No? Well she was mentioned in Kerry's speech. Kerry talked about how Knowles had to work each day during her chemotherapy out of fear of losing he health care. Well this nice story turns out to be false.

Only Those Who Have Broken the Law Have To Worry

Aren't views like this supposed to make liberals have nightmares? Guess not.

President Bush could have settled this matter in a flash a long time ago and spared the country a destructive exploration of the limits of journalistic confidences before the law. He still could.

Scooter Libby, the vice president's chief of staff, has now freed at least two journalists from their obligation of confidentiality to him. Presumably, in at least those two cases, he has nothing to hide.

There must be others still relying on a confidence who do have something to hide.

President Bush could make it known either implicitly or explicitly that he wants to get to the bottom of this mystery and that anyone who is asked should free journalists in the way Libby has. If they don't feel they can do so -- which is certainly their right, working in the White House doesn't mean you lose your right to defend yourself -- they should take a leave of absence from their job or quit.

Only if you have something to hide should you be worried. Granted they always have the out of taking a leave of absence or quiting...but hey can't we say the same thing about a U.S. citizen? You always have the option to leave the country.

When I mentioned this possibility some time ago, many readers said this was wrong as it compromised the rights of possible targets of prosecution. But I don't think that's a problem here. Everyone has a right to defend themselves in a criminal probe. But there's no constitutional right to work at the White House.

The problem is that this is where the two intersect. Saying you aren't going to give such a release of confidentiality would be seen by the likes of Josh Marshall as an admission of guilt. Marshall is being a hypocrite, IMO.

More Problems with RFK, Jr.'s "Free Market" Environmentalism

In this post, I was complaining that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. is not really a free market environmentalist. What he is the standard environmentalist who believes the Tragedy of the Commons is some sort of economic law, that a large scale government response is the solution, and the best thing to do is vote for candidates that support this view.

Part of the problem with this kind of view is that it puts things into the political world. This basically means rent seeking. Environmentalists are seeking rents (i.e., seeking benefits via the political process vs. the market process). Large firms are also engaged in rent seeking, but in the "opposite direction". All of this rent seeking is wasteful activity. Valuable resources are being directed to haggling over who gets what, vs. productive activities.

Further, the one-size-fits-all approach inevitably gives way to the one-size-fits-all-but-here-is-a-complex-myriad-of-exceptions. This too is bad in that it takes an army of attorneys to figure out how to operate within the boundaries of the regulations. This will raise the costs of doing business in that market and will inevitably push firms out.

Now some might say, "But that is a good thing, those firms obviously were the ones who were the (worst) polluters. Not necessarily true. These are the firms that were not able to cover the costs of figuring out the regulations, not the worst polluters. Now it could very well be that they are the worst polluters, but this outcome is more luck than anything else.

For example, suppose we have two firms. Firm ABC, Inc. produces a product and emits 10 "units" of pollution. Firm XYZ, Inc. produces another product and emits 2 "units" of pollution. ABC, Inc. has enough profits/revenue to pay for the legal resources to ensure it can go right on emitting 10 units of pollution. XYZ, Inc. on the other hand does not and ends up getting sued by River Guardians an environmentalist group that sues XYZ for not having the right permits. XYZ shuts down. Granted there is a decrease in pollution, but what if a revision to property rights would have resulted in ABC reducing its effluent by 50% and allow XYZ to stay in business.

The point of this hypothetical is to show that large scale government regulations don't always have the best outcome. In fact, it might make it worse.

In 1990 Elinor Ostrom published an influential book, Governing the Commons, suggesting that Hardin's analysis did not apply generally, since local communities often had ways of self-organtization and self-governing to prevent over exploitation of the commons, and that government policy often exacerbated rather than ameliorated the problem by undermining the social connections on which local regulation was based.--Source: Game Theory Evolving by Herbert Gintis (page 257)

Further, this idea that we elect politicians that cater to one set of special interest groups (environmentalists) can lead to the very outcome that Kennedy is railing against. When the other part is in power it might listen to a different set of special interest groups. Further, it isn't at all clear that the Democrats will be dramatically better. For example, the Democrats like being power (just as the Republicans like being in power). To stay in power they might sacrifice some of the goals of the environmentalists to appease other special interest groups (like consumers who also tend to be voters). People like electricity for example and higher bills because of increased reliance on expensive alternative sources might not sit well with the voters. So just as Republicans are often out comassioned by the Democrats and thus lead Republicans to adopt more "compassionate" and expensive social spending programs, the Democrats might move more towards providing the electorate with cheap power. Government intervention can be a double edged sword, and Kennedy isn't bright enough to have figured that out.

Kennedy also complains that unfettered capitalism leads to corporations capturing the government. However, I have to wonder about this given that prior to the progressive movement in the early 1900's there was very little government to capture. The progressive movement created the more intrusive government that industry could use. With a minimal government, then the government's impact is lessened, IMO. For example, the some of the first uses of the anti-trust laws (the Sherman Anti-Trust Act) were against labor unions not the trusts they were supposedly designed to bust.

Kennedy is also opposed to most forms of fossil fuels and nuclear energy. It should make one wonder what will replace natural gas and coal for producing electricity? Solar, wind, and geothermal? Forget it. There is no way to get the amount of electricity needed out of those sources. Nuclear energy has many benefits over fossil fuels such as low emissions. The problem of nuclear waste while a problem isn't insurmountable. So what form of energy is acceptable to Kennedy and will allow the U.S. to meet its current and future needs?

KS 3rd District Update

Kris Kobach won the Republican primary, and will face incumbent Dennis Moore in the general election.

This should be fun, a (what passes for these days) conservative Democrat who voted for the Iraq war and maintains a healthy distance from JFKerry vs. a Republican who thinks GWB is too liberal.

I hope they come to talk at church again this year.

Log-Speck-Eye Indeed

Via Matthew Hoy comes this account of what Kerry did when he (and others heard about the WTC attacks).

I was in the Capitol. We’d just had a meeting—we’d just come into a leadership meeting in Tom Daschle’s office, looking out at the Capitol. And as I came in, Barbara Boxer and Harry Reid were standing there, and we watched the second plane come in to the building. And we shortly thereafter sat down at the table and then we just realized nobody could think, and then boom, right behind us, we saw the cloud of explosion at the Pentagon. And then word came from the White House, they were evacuating, and we were to evacuate, and so we immediately began the evacuation.

Time spent sitting there looking at each other: 40 minutes.

Now granted Kerry is only a U.S. Senator and not the President of the United States, but sitting around looking at colleagues for 40 minutes seems to compare rather badly to Bush's 7 minutes. Would Bush getting up excusing himself 7 minutes earlier have made any difference? Unlikly. Should this be an issue? Well I guess, but considering the complaint is coming from the Democratic Party's nominee who can't seem to make it to intelligence briefings about terrorism it seems comparing Kerry to Bush is only fair game.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.: Prevaricator

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has been hawking his new book, Crimes Against Nature: How George W. Bush and His Corporate Pals Are Plundering the Country and Hijacking Our Democracy, which according to the Grist appears to the environmentalists version of Fahrenheit 9/11.

What caught my eye the most in that interview was Kennedy's attempt to dress himself as a "free marketeer". The fact is that Kennedy is nothing of the sort, not even close. Kennedy has this to say about himself,

Grist: So is the culprit free-market capitalism?

Kennedy: No! The best thing that could happen to the environment is free-market capitalism. In a true free-market economy, you can't make yourself rich without making your neighbors rich and without enriching your community. In a true free-market economy, you get efficiencies and efficiency means the elimination of waste. Waste is pollution. So in true free-market capitalism, you eliminate pollution and you properly value our natural resources so you won't cut them down. What polluters do is escape the discipline of the free market. You show me a polluter, I'll show you a subsidy -- a fat cat who's using political clout to escape the discipline of the free market.

Grist: So you're saying free-market economies have to be controlled by regulations and strong central government?

Kennedy: Laissez-faire capitalism does not work, particularly in the commons. Individuals pursuing their own self-interest will devour the commons very quickly. That's the economic law -- the tragedy of the commons. You have to force companies to internalize costs. All of the federal environmental laws are designed to restore free-market capitalism in America in this regard.--bold in the original

Now it should be obvious that Kennedy has basically contradicted himself. Further, Kennedy is also prevaricating when he talks about both the tragedy of the commons as well as firms internalizing costs.

First, there is no law in economics that says a common resources has to result in the tragedy of the commons scenario. In fact, there are instances where common resources are managed just fine with little or no government internvention. This is the whole point behind the book, Governing the Commons : The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. The book's description:

The governance of natural resources used by many individuals in common is an issue of increasing concern to policy analysts. Both state control and privatization of resources have been advocated, but neither the state nor the market have been uniformly successful in solving common pool resource problems. After critiquing the foundations of policy analysis as applied to natural resources, Elinor Ostrom here provides a unique body of empirical data to explore conditions under which common pool resource problems have been satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily solved. Dr. Ostrom first describes three models most frequently used as the foundation for recommending state or market solutions. She then outlines theoretical and empirical alternatives to these models in order to illustrate the diversity of possible solutions. In the following chapters she uses institutional analysis to examine different ways--both successful and unsuccessful--of governing the commons. In contrast to the proposition of the tragedy of the commons argument, common pool problems sometimes are solved by voluntary organizations rather than by a coercive state. Among the cases considered are communal tenure in meadows and forests, irrigation communities and other water rights, and fisheries.--emphasis added

So we can see right here that not only is Kennedy contradicting himself, but is also clueless. He has an outdated mode of thinking on these kinds of problems. We can see this with later statements in his interview. Here are some examples (please click on the link and read the entire thing so you can be sure of the context),

Industry wants us reading those books that say "50 things you can do to help the environment" because it distracts you from what you ought to be doing, which is joining an environmental group and voting for politicians who support the environment and fighting against the lobbyists on Capitol Hill. I mean, you can go out and buy a car that gets 40 miles per gallon, but it's not going to change the planet. What's going to change the planet is if we have somebody standing up to the auto-industry lobbyists on Capitol Hill to pass standards that require that every car in this country gets 40 mpg.

But consumers buying Priuses is not going to change the globe nearly as much as a law that says you cannot market a car in this country unless it gets 40 mpg. And that's going to happen on Capitol Hill.

Above all, government has a role, which is to say: There's a limited amount of fish out there. It's a shared resource and we're not going to let corporations exploit it in a way that's going to destroy it. We're going to use science and our regulatory authority to make sure that there is sustainable yield.

But government has to say to the automobile industry: Of course they want it, but you've got to make 40 mpg. And if we had that law, within a year, Detroit would be producing SUVs that have the same performance and the same comfort and safety as the ones they're making today.

If your choice is to buy a Prius or go work for a politician who is going to implement the CAFE standards, you better work for the politician. The most important thing you can do is participate in the political process. Support the environmental groups that wage legal action and lobby for these bills.

There you have it. The most important thing is a big government response. No it isn't sufficient to have a tax on SUVs if they are imposing an externality on those without SUVs, we need to have a nationwide standard that forces everybody into the same outcome. It doesn't matter if you literally need an SUV for some completely valid reason...you will drive a 40 MPG vehicle or...who knows, Kennedy might want to make SUV driving a capital offense.

Further, it is not clear that the best way for firms to internalize costs is to force them to meet a uniform standard. There are alternatives to simply enacting a regulatory standard. For example, when the polluting activity is highly inelastic it might be a good idea to resurt to a standard, but when elastic a per unit tax. Even this kind of subtlety seems completely lost on the addle-brained Kennedy. He sees regulation as a hammer and all environmental problems as nails.

It is too bad that a boob like Kennedy is getting so much press. I was watching him on CNN and it was almost painful to watch. He was actually comparing running power plants that burn coal to bank robbery. To him the former were as bad as the latter. The fact that power plants, even if they are polluting and in violation of government standards, produce something useful was completely lost on the lunkhead. Bank robbery as far as I know has nothing at all about that is socially beneficial. For many being able to have electricity is a "good thing". Sure it would be better to have that electricity without the pollution, but the pollution does not negate the social benefits of electricity. And needless to say the simpleton interviewing him let it slide right on by her as if it made perfect sense.

So if you are going to buy a book about common resource problems buy Governing the Commons. It is written by people who actually know things about common resource problems as opposed to an elitist know-nothing.

Drilling in ANWR

Lately with the high gasoline prices the local radio talk show pundits have been going on about how much we need to be drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). They say this as, if it would somehow magically lower oil prices. While it might have some effect, this notion points to a lack of economic understanding on the part of these pundits.

Let us suppose that drilling in ANWR is allowed. Why would we expect a big drop in oil prices here in the U.S.? Suppose this were true, that the oil companies can sell the oil in the U.S. at a price of say $25/barrel or they can sell on the world market at a price of say, $43/barrel. Which would these oil companies rather do? Sell on the world market.

Thus, the U.S. would still have to pay the current high price. Now of course, the increase in supply, ceteris paribus, would mean a decrease in the price, but how much? Five dollars? That would seem rather large to me and that still wouldn't make a big dent in the price. Considering that the Saudi's have much more oil and are already increasing production and the price is still staying high it seems the idea of drilling in ANWR wont do much.

Also, we have to factor in the time component as well. How long will it take for anything in ANWR to come on-line? One year...two? So the effect over the next few months would likely be minimal at best.

The Economy Is Slowing

I think it is pretty clear that the economy is now slowing. The July Employment Report is out from the BLS and it is rather grim. While the unemployment rate has dropped a tenth of a percent to 5.5% the payroll survey recorded only 32,000 new jobs. Far less than necessary to keep up with population growth and also lower than the approximately 200,000 many analysts were expecting to see. Add to this downward revisions to the May and June numbers and the picture is indeed not good.

The Conference Board is reporting that the U.S. Leading Indicator Index is also down 2 tenths of a percent as well. Also there is ECRI's Weekly Leading Index which has been trending down for months now, although last week it edged up a bit.

It seems like the handwriting is on the wall: the economy is slowing.

Creationist Deception

After noting the goings on in Kansas where creationists have gained ground on the Kansas Board of Eduction, I decided to post some more on neo-creationists and the rather deceptive arguments that are used. One fine example is this article written by William Dembski. It is called, "The Five Questions Evolutionists Would Rather Dodge".

Here is the first questions,

1. The Fossil Record According to Darwin, the absence of intermediate fossil forms “is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.” What new fossil finds, if any, have occurred since Darwin wrote these words nearly 150 years ago? Do they overturn Darwin’s bleak assessment of evolutionary theory? If the absence of intermediate fossil forms holds as much today as it did back then, why should anyone accept evolution?

In typical fashion, Dembske can't let an evolutionist answer this question he has to come up with the answer.

Dodge: Evolutionists have gotten quite good at sidestepping this question with what looks like an answer but really isn’t. Typically they’ll lay out a bunch of organisms or biological structures and say, “Look at how similar these are. They’ve obviously descended from a common evolutionary ancestor.” Evolutionists will then ply you with a mass of details about supposedly well confirmed evolutionary transitions (like those supposedly describing the evolution of horses, whales, or reptiles into mammals).

Dembski then provides a "comebeck" for this dodge which basically amounts to the following: there are lots and lots of fossils so it is likely that given this large sample one can find what looks like a progression, but really isn't.

The problem with this sleight of hand is that it ignores that you just don't put all fossils into a big pile and then look for anything that looks like a progression. You don't take something from 175 million years ago and put it in the progression for something that is 1 million years old. Granted evolution takes along time, but it doesn't take that long.

Transisitional fossils are usually "close" together in geological time scales. For example, Protoceratops lived around 83.5 million years ago to 71 million years ago. Triceratops (notice that both are Ceratopsians) lived about 65 million years ago. Also, there are Ceratopsians that are between the Protoceratops and the Triceratops.¹ Also, there is the location of the fossil. The Triceratops is found in North America, the more primative Montanoceratops is also found in North America (specifically Montana).

But Dembski omits this and makes it sound like paleontologists are selecting transitional fossils from anytime and anywhere. This is not the case.

Further, it is ridiculous for Dembski to mention reptiles and horses as if the fossils are so similar that they would be confused. The Dimetrodon is a mammal like reptile, but it would be damn hard to mistake this sailed pelycosaur for a horse. Ignoring the large sail on the back of the Dimetrodon the leg structure is all wrong. In looking at that picture, can you imagine mistaking something with those kinds of legs for a horse? Neither can I. Is a Dimetrodon similar to a horse? Well I suppose they both have four legs, vertebrea, and other features like ribs, skull, and so forth. But beyond these superficial similarities the idea that one could confuse this with a type of proto-horse is just laughable.

And this is the gist of Dembski's comeback. Paleontologists can pick and choose from the set of all fossils to look for morphological similarities. Stupid peleontologists are comparing reptiles to horses.

Dembski also quotes a paleontologist about the Cambrian explosion, but apparently in a dishonest way,

The Cambrian Explosion so flies in the face of evolution that paleontologist Peter Ward wrote, “If ever there was evidence suggesting Divine Creation, surely the Precambrian and Cambrian transition, known from numerous localities across the face of the earth, is it.” Note that Ward is not a creationist.

According to this site the quote ignores the next sentence that explains how the Cambrian explosion can be explained by evolution. Unfortunately Dembkis does not provide a reference for this quote (rather shoddy work for an academic) so that we could verify the impression Dembski is working to create.

A really sad question is this one,

3. Detecting Design The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is a scientific research program that looks for signs of intelligence from distant space. Should biologists likewise be looking for signs of intelligence in biological systems? Why or why not? Could actual intelligent design in biological systems be scientifically detectable?

Dodge: Evolutionists admit that intelligent design is scientifically detectable in many areas of science, such as archeology, forensics, and cryptography. They even admit that nonhuman intelligence could be scientifically detectable, as with SETI. But they reject out of hand the possibility of detecting design in biological systems. Any intelligence responsible for biological complexity would have to be an unevolved intelligence, and for evolutionists there is no such thing as an unevolved intelligence. For them, intelligence is always the product of evolution.

The reason that unevolved intelligence as a designer of biological systems in nature is because it is outside the bounds of nature. Really, why should we believe in God, when we could just believe in Magic. Or why must it be a Christian God? Maybe Odin really did create life on earth and the end times really are going to have the Midgard serpent eating the world. Once you allow this kind of thing into science there is no stopping anything. It all becomes fair game.

Further, this stands the very basic philosophical underpinnings of science on its head. Must we give all scientific hypotheses equal weight? No. Absolutely no. Surely we don't want elevate the Ptolomeian model of the solar system to the same level as the current model. So what weight should a non-scientific theory recieve in science? How about zero weight. This blather about double standards is once again a deceptive move on Dembski's part. Science isn't about giving all hypotheses equal weight, but about selecting that hypothesis that is most likely true.

The next question here highlights what a bald face liar Dembski has become,

5. Testability What evidence would convince you that evolution is false? If no such evidence exists, or indeed could exist, how can evolution be a testable scientific theory?

Note that evolution is a fact. It has been observed. Hence the only thing to be disproved is the theory of evolution. What would it take to disprove that the earth is round? What would it take to disprove that water is comprised two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom?

The theory of evolution is testable, and can be falsified. The evidence that is necessary to disprove the current theory of evolution would also have to explain the observed facts--i.e., evolution. Whatever replaces evolutionary theory will basically have to explain everything the current theory does and either explain something that the current theory cannot or provides a better explanation.

Dembski continues to mislead, IMO, with this,

It’s important here to see the big picture. The evolutionist J. B. S. Haldane, when asked what would convince him that evolution was false, replied that finding a rabbit fossil in pre-Cambrian rocks would do quite nicely. Such a fossil would, by standard geological dating, be out of sequence by several hundreds of millions of years. Certainly such a finding, if rigorously confirmed, would overturn the current understanding of the history of life. But it would not overturn evolution.

Haldane’s rabbit is easily enough explained as an evolutionary convergence, in which essentially the same structure or life form evolves twice. In place of a common underlying intelligent design, evolutionists invoke evolutionary convergence whenever confronted with similar biological structures that cannot reasonably be traced back to a common evolutionary ancestor.

Finding a fossil of something similar to the rabbit wont work. One must find a rabbit, that is Haldane's test. Evolution not only produces large changes (going from one species to the next) but also small changes such as changes in the shape of the tooth. Early plant eating dinosaurs had peg like teeth that were basically for stripping leaves off of plants. They did no chewing (hence the gastroliths--stones inside the stomach--to assist in digestion). So finding something like the Iguanodon (which had teeth like the mondern iguana and could chew plants) during the same time period as Sauropods would be...odd to say the least. Finding something like a rabit with its highly developed teeth during in the pre-Cambrian fossils would be pretty devastating for evolution. Dembski's appeal to evolutionary convergence is a deception.

This part of Dembski's article is also misleading,

Richard Halvorson, writing for the Harvard Crimson, has aptly remarked, “We must refuse to bow to our culture’s false idols. Science will not benefit from canonizing Darwin or making evolution an article of secular faith. We must reject intellectual excommunication as a valid form of dealing with criticism: the most important question for any society to ask is the one that is forbidden.”

The only people who talk about canonizing Darwin are the neo-creationists. Nobody that I know of who believes in evolution thinks of Darwin as anything but a great scientist. Further, one can question evolutionary theory, but one should do so in a logically coherent manner. Unfortunately Dembski has not done this. All of his work has been shown to be wanting.

Many say that it is unfair to treat guys like Dembski unfairly. They are engaged in a perfectly valid exercise of questioning evolutionary theory. This too I think is a deceptive sleight of hand. I don't object to Dembski questioning evolutionary theory; I object to Dembski's promotion of ignorance and mis-information.
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¹These include Zuniceratops, and the Montanoceratops.

Parochial Election Observations

High- and lowlights of some of the elections in KS and MO.

KS 3rd District.

(Note: as I live in KS, this is the only issue I actually got to vote on). It's a virtual tie between Kris Kobach and Adam Taff for the Republican nomination. Kobach has 87 more votes, but:

Election officials reported about three-thousand provisional ballots in Johnson County, and unknown numbers in Douglas and Wyandotte counties.

Kobach ran his campaign on some very conservative issues. He was strident in his support of the FMA, and his "close the borders to immigrants" stance verges on isolationism.

If Kobach winds up being the winner, I expect that incumbent Dennis Moore will be dancing a jig of glee. Kobach's social conservatism doesn't play well in Lawrence, or, for that matter, with a lot of fiscal-conservative / social-moderates in Johnson County.

MO Governor

In a stunning (but not surprising) upset, State Auditor Claire McCaskill defeated incumbent Bob Holden in the Democrat primary. McCaskill will face Treasurer Matt Blunt in the general election.

McCaskill received 52 percent of the vote, compared to Holden's 45 percent, in complete but unofficial election returns.

Her victory wasn't surprising to me, because Holden had a lot of baggage. His acrimonious and adversarial relationship with the legislature caused a huge mess with school financing last year. McCaskill, OTOH, seems like a person who can get things done. She impressed me a couple of years ago with her sting operation exposing lack of compliance with state sunshine laws by local and state offices.

I'm just speculating, but I think she will probably win in November, and might provide enough reverse-coattails to pull MO into Kerry's column.

MO Amendment 1

Riverboat casinos being the panacea to all that ills a community , Rockaway Beach in SW Missouri wanted one on the White River. The state constitution only permits casinos on the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, so proponents got this measure on the ballot. Included in the amendment were changes to school financing, requiring all of the state revenue from the casino to go to "priority" schools, whatever that means.

Having been sold down the river (npi) several times already on how great casinos are, the voters wisely rejected this amendment.

MO Amendment 2

If only their wisdom had continued on to amendment 2, the gay-marriage ban. This passed overwhelmingly.

I've already heard speculation that the amendment will be challenged in court as violating parts of the US Constitution.

I hate that this amendment passed. I also hate that it's going to be challenged in court. If the federal courts strike it down, they will add fuel to the "judicial activism" argument.

The amendment does nothing to prohibit same-sex civil unions. While I consider civil unions to be an inferior, separate-but-equal, institution, they are a step in the right direction. The people of MO can pass a civil union statute, then in a few years when passions have cooled and they realize this amendment was a mistake, they can repeal it.

I hate my own argument, since it's not very idealistic. I know that civil rights aren't something that should be subject to majority opinion, but I also know that a slow, evolutionary approach is less likely to provoke a backlash (e.g., the FMA).

Kansas City Question 1

Now I'm really getting parochial. This was a hike on hotel and car rental taxes to pay for a new 22,000 seat arena downtown. Despite a massive campaign from Enterprise Rental Cars, this issue passed.

I'm ambivalent about it. The arena could revitalize downtown KC, but only if it's done right. It needs adequate parking, a lot of commercial space in the area for new restaurants and bars, and easy pedestrian access.

Unfortunately, the city has a poor track record with these kinds of projects. Witness the Union Station / Science City debacle.

Right now the arena will be financed by AEG, Sprint, and the hotel/car rental tax. If the city holds true to form, in a few years there will be a call for a bistate sales tax to pay for maintenance or cost overruns or bribes incentives to lure a pro basketball or hockey team here.

Johnson County Sheriffs race

Just kidding. I'm not that parchial.

Creationism in Kansas

Looks like there was a gain for the creationists on the State Board of Education in Kansas. It must be embarassing to live in the state that continually has dubious flirtations with such nonsense.

Update: This article isn't too bad in that it gives pretty good balance to both sides of the argument. However, this part is egregiously wrong,

And the peer review process isn’t perfect.

Thirty years ago, Stephen Hawking’s theories on black holes helped make him the world’s most famous living theoretical physicist.

Two weeks ago, Hawking announced he was wrong.

The problem here is that this idea that the peer review process is about allowing only the "Truth" to be published. The peer review process is not about that, but about ensuring that papers meet a certain standard to be accepted for publishing. The standard is in how the research was done. This is why you see nothing on Intelligent Design in the peer reviewed literature. There is simply nothing to write about. You cannot expect to be taken seriously when the main point of your paper is, "I can't see how this could have come about naturally, so therefore a super-natural force is the only possible explanation."

This part was a mistake by Prof. Neuburger,

Neuberger is willing to allow for the possibility that evolutionary theory is wrong but said nothing in current science undermines it.

“I tell my students at the beginning of the semester that we’re going to talk about evolution as if it’s true,” he said. “Science does change.”

At the same time, he said, “people have been trying — with great motivation — for over a century to show evolution isn’t true, and they haven’t succeeded.”

Evolution is true and it is a fact. It has been observed. Mutation of genes has been observed (and no, most mutations are not harmful, but are benign). It has been observed both in the field and in the laboratory. The theory of evoultion--i.e., the explanation for the diversity of life is "just a theory". Anything that replaces that theory will have to account for the fact that evolution occurs.

The section at the end of the article on faith is also rather good. I like the idea that Intelligent Design could undermine one's faith in God. In fact, I wonder about the need of those who support Intelligent Design to show what would essentially be the finger print of God. Is their faith that weak that they need proof? Kenneth Miller has a great comment on this as well,

“I think, and lots of scientists who are Christians think, the Darwinian model of evolution through common descent, using the laws of chemistry and physics — the notion of the single of life on Earth starting from a single spark fits much better with the story of Genesis than intelligent design does. There have been 23 different species of elephants in the past 5 million years. If you take the designer model, you have a designer that designed 23 species, 21 of which have gone extinct. Two for 23 won’t even get you into single-A baseball.

“This makes you think, ‘What is He thinking?’ or ‘How incompetent can He be?’ and you have a designer who’s constantly having to putz around with his creation.”

Waste Fraud and Abuse

Sounds like a classic case to me.

In all, a dozen people from the FEC attended the Boston convention at an estimated cost of $18,000, commission spokesman Bob Biersack said. The commission expects travel costs for the GOP convention to be about the same.

I really like this quote as well,

"We're up here in theory as ambassadors for the FEC," Commissioner Scott Thomas said of his trip to the presidential nominating convention in Boston with fellow Democratic Commissioners Ellen Weintraub and Danny McDonald.--emphasis added

Usually when I hear the phrase, "in theory", I think that somebody is saying that whatever they are referencing is in reality somewhat different. This leaves me wondering, "Okay so 'in theory' you are there as 'ambassadors', so what is the reality?"

Rather Busy Today

So posting, as you may have noticed, has been light. Hopefully I'll have some time later.

The Gasoline Tax: A Positive Work Incentive?

Here is another article from NBER that has a very interesting conclusion: increasing taxes increases the incentive to work.

The idea is this, since we live in a second best world where the government doesn't have access to first best policy tools, the result of a tax on gasoline might be to increase individuals work incentive. Traditionally, a tax on a good reduces the incentive to work. Part of the issue with regards to gasoline depends on how the price of gasoline affects an individual's valuation of leisure time. If the higher gasoline price means less leisure driving and hence lowers the value of leisure time, then that would make work look relatively more attractive.

The bottom line of all of this is that the "optimal" tax for gasoline is too low.¹ The article says this,

Raising the gasoline tax thus has the triple benefit of lowering fuel consumption, decreasing pollution, and providing an incentive for people to work at a more socially optimal level.

However, this is also true of any price increase. A price increase will have the same effect of lowering gasoline consumption, decreasing pollution, as well as increasing the incentive to work.

Of course, the problem that is ignored in this analysis (at least in the synopsis article) is that it doesn't look at welfare. While there in an enhancement in the overall efficiency of the economy it does not mean that people will experience a welfare gain with a higher gasoline tax. For example, the increase level of work comes at the expense of leisure time. While incomes may also rise, there is the income effect of higher gasoline prices that may offset that. So while there are benefits to raising the gasoline tax, there are also costs.
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¹An optimal tax is one that equates the social marginal cost with the social marginal benefits (i.e., it takes into account both positive and negative externalities that are present).

Political Platforms and Equity Prices

This is an interesting little article on some research that looks at how a presidential candidate's platform impacts equity prices.

For this sample of 70 politically sensitive firms in the United States, Knight confirms that favorable policies play a key role in determining a firm's total value. During periods in 2000 when the prospects of a Bush victory were increasing, Bush-favored firms outperformed Gore-favored firms. Likewise, during periods in which prospects of a Gore victory were increasing, Gore-favored firms outperformed Bush-favored firms. All told, under the Bush administration, relative to a counterfactual Gore administration, Bush-favored firms were worth 3 percent more and Gore-favored firms were worth 6 percent less, representing a transfer of roughly $100 billion from Gore-favored firms to Bush-favored firms. The most sensitive economic sectors include: tobacco, worth 13 percent more under Bush; Microsoft competitors, worth 15 percent less under Bush; and alternative energy companies, worth 16 percent less under Bush.

This is a bit surprising in that it can take months or even years for a president to get policies enacted, yet these potential policies can have an impact on equity prices before<