Wednesday
Memory Lane 3
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Tuesday
Memory Lane 2
|Monday
Memory Lane
|Saturday
Horseradish
|Friday
This blog will make you something something
If you haven't had your fill of standing in line this election day, Ben & Jerry's is giving out free ice cream from 5-8 PM. This is a terrible idea, a non-zero number of people won't be willing to wait in two lines on one day and will choose the one that leads to deliciousness. Maybe I shouldn't care about whether people who make such poor choices vote, but I do.
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Thursday
List of infamy
Wednesday
Ok, flashback
Yglesias, in a widely and correctly praised post from almost exactly four years ago:
While one might argue those are policies of the Bush Administration and so anyone winning this election will constitute a change, they're all endorsed from by the Republican party, both at its top-levels and at its base. Without repudiating the Republicans, and not just Bush, there is no chance of reversing direction. John McCain is a Republican.
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Christopher Hitchens, in one of the few insightful things he's said about the war on terrorism, took the chance in his final Nation column to criticize those on the left "who truly believe that John Ashcroft is a greater menace than Osama bin Laden." At the time, I thought it was a very sharp remark. I never supported Bush and always hoped he would lose in 2004 since I thought his policies were misguided, but many people seemed to me at the time to have lost all sense of perspective about who the really threatening enemies were. Suskind's article along with other pieces of evidence of what one might call the creeping Putinization of American life (the Sinclair incident, the threatening letter to Rock The Vote, the specter of the top official in the House of Representatives making totally baseless charges of criminal conduct against a major financier of the political opposition [shades of Mikhail Khodorovsky], the increasing evidence that the 'terror alert' system is nothing more than a political prop, the 'torture memo' asserting that the president is above the law, the imposition of rigid discipline on the congress, the abuse of the conference committee procedure, the ability of the administration to lie to congress without penalty, the exclusion of non-supporters from Bush's public appearances, etc.) are beginning to make me think this assessment may have been misguided. Terrorist forces operating in and around Chechnya have done some horrible things -- I was in Moscow for the big apartment bombings -- but ultimately the most harmful thing they have done was to enable Putin to tighten his grip on power.That was four years ago, and was frightening at the time, but since then those trends have worsened. It's time for a change.
While one might argue those are policies of the Bush Administration and so anyone winning this election will constitute a change, they're all endorsed from by the Republican party, both at its top-levels and at its base. Without repudiating the Republicans, and not just Bush, there is no chance of reversing direction. John McCain is a Republican.
Tuesday
Procedure
Locally, Christine Quinn has scheduled the vote on changing the New York City term limit to three terms for this Thursday, which suggests she thinks she has the votes to pass it, though there are only eighteen declared supporters and twenty-one declared opponents, along with twelve undecided council-members whose vote will be decisive. If you're a New Yorker who opposes this change (arguments against it are discussed below) please contact your city council person, especially if they're one of the undecided. If you're unsure of who your council-member is, enter your address here.
My council-member, Sara Gonzalez, has unfortunately moved from undecided to in-favor. I read earlier today that New York-based third party the Working Families Party is considering running a candidate against her. If she is going to vote for this extension, I hope they find one to at least put a good scare into her.
Nationally, Mark Kleiman suggests that if the Democrats have the numbers to do so following the election, they should eliminate the filibuster. I'm not sure how I feel about this, because in theory I like the idea of a way to measure not just the bear existence of a preference but also its intensity. For various reasons, the filibuster doesn't actually work to do that, but maybe it could be modified to do so. Either way, that's tangential to my point, which is that, assuming Senate rules would allow it, any elimination of the filibuster should phase in two years after its passed, that way another cycle of Senate elections have taken place and the political party eliminating the rule wouldn't be so directly engaged in self-aggrandizement.
I really wanted a “globally” here for structural reasons, but I don't have any global procedural issues to address. Nationally again, I think I favor Sandy Levinson's proposal that Cheney resign on November 5, that Bush appoint the winner of the electoral college to the Vice-Presidency, and then Bush himself resign. He originally suggested (in print, at least) in 1998 that the lapse in time between an election victory and Presidential inauguration was the single stupidest Constitutional provision.
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My council-member, Sara Gonzalez, has unfortunately moved from undecided to in-favor. I read earlier today that New York-based third party the Working Families Party is considering running a candidate against her. If she is going to vote for this extension, I hope they find one to at least put a good scare into her.
Nationally, Mark Kleiman suggests that if the Democrats have the numbers to do so following the election, they should eliminate the filibuster. I'm not sure how I feel about this, because in theory I like the idea of a way to measure not just the bear existence of a preference but also its intensity. For various reasons, the filibuster doesn't actually work to do that, but maybe it could be modified to do so. Either way, that's tangential to my point, which is that, assuming Senate rules would allow it, any elimination of the filibuster should phase in two years after its passed, that way another cycle of Senate elections have taken place and the political party eliminating the rule wouldn't be so directly engaged in self-aggrandizement.
I really wanted a “globally” here for structural reasons, but I don't have any global procedural issues to address. Nationally again, I think I favor Sandy Levinson's proposal that Cheney resign on November 5, that Bush appoint the winner of the electoral college to the Vice-Presidency, and then Bush himself resign. He originally suggested (in print, at least) in 1998 that the lapse in time between an election victory and Presidential inauguration was the single stupidest Constitutional provision.
The most useful pie chart you'll see today
Update:I may have found a funnier pie chart, but I think I'm still leaning towards the one above.
Actually, doesn't 100% of the chart resemble Pac-man with his mouth open? But if 100% of it were to be filled in as resembling Pac-man than none of it would resemble Pac-man. What a paradox we're faced with.
Monday
I don't know why I go to extremes
Bob Barr, Libertarian Party Presidential Candidate, and the man who might win Georgia for Barack Obama, drinks five shots of espresso with steamed half-and-half five three times a day. This has been reported in numerous pieces on him, which suggests that either his campaign wants that information out there or journalists, correctly, view it as a good detail to liven up their pieces. I am interested in a medical perspective on the effects of this upon the average fifty-nine year old American male, though not interested enough to look it up.
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Sunday
-Slinger, redux
I'm familiar with a litany of complaints against him, but sometimes Jim Webb is just awesome.
Via Kleiman.
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Via Kleiman.
Thursday
Thirty days has September
Dear people complaining that Obama supports progressive taxation:
Do you know what payroll taxes are? What the Earned Income Tax Credit is? Do you know who Milton Friedman is? Do you know what his relationship with the conservative movement is (hint: he's a tremendous hero of it)? If the answer to any, let alone all, of these is “Yes”, why are you saying such absurdly stupid things?
Your obedient servant-
Washerdreyer
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Do you know what payroll taxes are? What the Earned Income Tax Credit is? Do you know who Milton Friedman is? Do you know what his relationship with the conservative movement is (hint: he's a tremendous hero of it)? If the answer to any, let alone all, of these is “Yes”, why are you saying such absurdly stupid things?
Your obedient servant-
Washerdreyer
Running on empty
Wednesday
Oh man, he used the crazy pills line!
*Though, as the commenters note, while the post makes a good case that most voters don't care about the tactical narratives which get tons of press coverage, it's not clear that what they do care about are the issues, as opposed to some third thing.
**Or Republican consultants are lying to Ben Smith, but I really don't see the angle there.
***That description worked for either of the last two. Also, sending out reporters to catch ordinary people saying stupid things really is kind of a cheap tactic. That is, I'm skeptical of the process used first to gather the quotes for that article and then choose which to use and which to exclude.
Update: Once more, with feeling:
Tuesday
Jaunty Angles
After last week's effluvia of of verbiage, I'm experiencing some verbal blockage. But I liked this article, though I would have been interested in more discussion of the $70,000 cost of the sculpture. How much of that was for bronze, or any other raw materials? How does that compare to the cost of similar sculptures? Admittedly, I'm probably the only person interested in these questions, and my understanding is that print journalists deal with a very strict word limit.
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Friday
Things blow up
Wednesday
Implicit
I've noticed a trend which I don't like, but do understand, where the supporters of a candidate talk much more about what that candidate's opponent says and does than they do about what their candidate says and does. This is true both in general and more specifically with regards to the debate. The benign explanation for this is that this late in the campaign supporters already know everything they need to know about their candidate, and no information isn't that interesting to them. Other explanations are less positive about supporters' mindsets. And now, as an Obama supporter, I'm going to talk about John Sidney McCain, III.
Sen. McCain:
But I'd like to talk about two points Obama didn't, for whatever reason, bring up in his reply. The first is the degree to which the GSEs are to blame, and the second is the issue of who they donate to.
Because it's over all true that the GSEs have closer ties to Democratic politicians than to Republican ones, many people have an interest in placing as much blame as possible upon them for the current economic crisis. So, the first point to keep in mind about the degree of blame they bear for the crisis is that the GSEs don't originate any mortgages, they buy them from institutions which do. And they can't buy sub-prime mortgages. Sub-prime mortgages are defined as the ones which don't meet the standards they use for deciding what to purchase. After that simple point, things get more complicated, though the answer remains that Fannie and Freddie are not particularly responsible. For an excellent guide to the whole issue, I recommend reading the following three posts, the first and most recent of which quotes (in part) the second, and the second of which quotes (in part) the third. Also, the latter two aren't about the current financial crisis, but instead about the collapse of the housing bubble earlier this year. But since the housing bubble popping is how Fannie and Freddie contributed, to whatever degree they did, to the current crisis, they remain equally relevant.
On the side-issue of donations, it's true that just four years after winning national office, Sen. Obama had, as of the Federal Election Committee's Sept. 2 data, received the second most donations from the GSEs (totaling $126,349.00), and that John McCain, whatever may be true of his staffers, has received the 62nd most ($21,550.00). However, this ignores the distinction between donations from employees and donations from Political Action Committees. Employees give money to candidates for a variety of reasons. For example, my donations to Barack Obama do not, to the best of my self-awareness, have anything to do with whether his administration would be better for my law firm than John McCain's would be. Nevertheless, my donations, by the way OpenSecrets calculates donations from business entities, would be counted as coming from my employer. PACs on the other hand don't just give to candidates for any reason, they give because they need that candidate's support or otherwise feel the candidate's success will serve the interest of the organization or issue they represent. So when the GSE's Pacs donates to you, there's no need to guess about whether the money is being given to further the GSE's interests. With employees, surely some of it is being given for reasons of the business's interests, but how much isn't a known quantity. Anyway, the point of this is, Sen. Obama has only received $6,000.00 from the GSE's PACs, and $120,349.00 from their employees. Many, many politicians, including a large number of Republicans (though not McCain), have received far greater amounts from the GSE PACs than Obama has. Also, since Obama has run the most successful Presidential fund raising campaign in history, his fund raising from any given source will likely look good.
God, I'm writing long posts these days. Hope you read the whole thing, sorry if it was a waste of your time, hope it was informative.
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Sen. McCain:
But you know, one of the real catalysts, really the match that lit this fire was Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I'll bet you, you may never even have heard of them before this crisis. But you know, they're the ones that, with the encouragement of Sen. Obama and his cronies and his friends in Washington, that went out and made all these risky loans, gave them to people that could never afford to pay back. And you know, there were some of us that stood up two years ago and said we've got to enact legislation to fix this. We've got to stop this greed and excess. Meanwhile, the Democrats in the Senate and some -- and some members of Congress defended what Fannie and Freddie were doing. They resisted any change. Meanwhile, they were getting all kinds of money in campaign contributions. Sen. Obama was the second highest recipient of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac money in history -- in history.Sen. Obama responded to this by talking about the entanglements between the McCain campaign and the GSEs via Rick Davis and others, and made a general point about deregulation being to blame for the crisis. The first point completely true, the second is true but too vague, I would have liked like to hear more specifics about which regulations would have helped avoid the crisis if they had been in place.
But I'd like to talk about two points Obama didn't, for whatever reason, bring up in his reply. The first is the degree to which the GSEs are to blame, and the second is the issue of who they donate to.
Because it's over all true that the GSEs have closer ties to Democratic politicians than to Republican ones, many people have an interest in placing as much blame as possible upon them for the current economic crisis. So, the first point to keep in mind about the degree of blame they bear for the crisis is that the GSEs don't originate any mortgages, they buy them from institutions which do. And they can't buy sub-prime mortgages. Sub-prime mortgages are defined as the ones which don't meet the standards they use for deciding what to purchase. After that simple point, things get more complicated, though the answer remains that Fannie and Freddie are not particularly responsible. For an excellent guide to the whole issue, I recommend reading the following three posts, the first and most recent of which quotes (in part) the second, and the second of which quotes (in part) the third. Also, the latter two aren't about the current financial crisis, but instead about the collapse of the housing bubble earlier this year. But since the housing bubble popping is how Fannie and Freddie contributed, to whatever degree they did, to the current crisis, they remain equally relevant.
On the side-issue of donations, it's true that just four years after winning national office, Sen. Obama had, as of the Federal Election Committee's Sept. 2 data, received the second most donations from the GSEs (totaling $126,349.00), and that John McCain, whatever may be true of his staffers, has received the 62nd most ($21,550.00). However, this ignores the distinction between donations from employees and donations from Political Action Committees. Employees give money to candidates for a variety of reasons. For example, my donations to Barack Obama do not, to the best of my self-awareness, have anything to do with whether his administration would be better for my law firm than John McCain's would be. Nevertheless, my donations, by the way OpenSecrets calculates donations from business entities, would be counted as coming from my employer. PACs on the other hand don't just give to candidates for any reason, they give because they need that candidate's support or otherwise feel the candidate's success will serve the interest of the organization or issue they represent. So when the GSE's Pacs donates to you, there's no need to guess about whether the money is being given to further the GSE's interests. With employees, surely some of it is being given for reasons of the business's interests, but how much isn't a known quantity. Anyway, the point of this is, Sen. Obama has only received $6,000.00 from the GSE's PACs, and $120,349.00 from their employees. Many, many politicians, including a large number of Republicans (though not McCain), have received far greater amounts from the GSE PACs than Obama has. Also, since Obama has run the most successful Presidential fund raising campaign in history, his fund raising from any given source will likely look good.
God, I'm writing long posts these days. Hope you read the whole thing, sorry if it was a waste of your time, hope it was informative.
Monday
Limiting principle
Some positive developments today in the battle to stop New York City officeholders from using a crisis for a self-serving increase in their power.
City Council Member David Weprin announced plans to introduce a bill tomorrow requiring that any change in term limits be chosen by referendum, and two other council members, Letitia James and Bill de Blasio, announced their plans to pass a bill scheduling such a referendum for next spring. If you're a New York City resident reading this, please contact your council member by phone or e-mail as soon as you read this to kindly suggest that they support these bills. These bills, and the one extending term limits, are expected to come up for a vote tomorrow (Update: I am wrong. Bills are being introduced today (Tuesday) but probably not being voted on for two weeks.). The e-mail I sent my council member is at the end of the post, if you just want to copy and paste it. If you don't know who your council member is, click this link and enter your address to find out.
Friend-of-the-blog Scott Paul has a very good post up at The Washington Note making a slightly different argument against the removal of term limits than I've made at this blog. He talks about it in terms of the error of removing checks on government power in response to a perceived crisis.
Ronald Lauder, who had sponsored the previous two term limit bills and who it appeared had been co-opted by Mayor Bloomberg, stated that he would only support a temporary change to term limits to deal with the crisis, and would oppose a permanent shift to term limits which allows a maximum of twelve consecutive years in office. The permanent shift is what is currently being proposed.
The same article which notes Lauder's current position also mentions, off-handedly, that Mayor Bloomberg began strategizing a run for a third term earlier this year. This was fairly obvious from the rumblings about the idea which have been going around for months, but it also means that he is simply using the financial crisis as an excuse to do something he wanted to do. Shouldn't more people be focusing on that?
There is now a web presence for a group opposing the expansion of term limits. The group is Bigger Than One, a nicely evocative title and the site has useful information about the current position of each City Council member on term limits. I have some quibbles with the site's design, which doesn't facilitate the formation of a community of activists in opposition, and lack of transparency, but they're not important enough to discuss now.
My e-mail to Council Member Sara Gonzalez:
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Dear Council Member Gonzalez-
I'm writing as a constituent to express my hopes that you vote against any bill which extends term limits for sitting officeholders. One lesson, both from the past eight years of disastrous federal government and from much of political history more generally, is that removing structural checks on the powers of any government official because of a crisis is a dangerous step, and should only be taken in the most dire necessity. While the current economic situation is very serious, there is no reason to think it has reached that level. If you feel you must take some step towards removing term limits for current officeholders, please your co-Council Members Letitia Williams and Bill de Blasio in sponsoring the bills that would put that decision before all of the voters as a referendum.
Thank you for your time and best wishes-
[Name goes here]
Something that apparently happened
Hollywood Executive 1: Hey, remember that movie Liar, Liar where Jim Carrey played a character who at first lied all of the time and then, through a bizarre twist of fate, went to the opposite extreme and became incapable of saying anything but the most blunt truth?
Hollywood Executive 2: Now that you mention it, yes. Why do you ask?
Executive 1: Because I just had a great idea for a movie about a very negative and cynical person who says “no” whenever anything is requested of them until, through a bizarre twist of fate, he becomes incapable of saying anything but “yes.” It could star Jim Carrey!
Executive 2: Genius!
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Hollywood Executive 2: Now that you mention it, yes. Why do you ask?
Executive 1: Because I just had a great idea for a movie about a very negative and cynical person who says “no” whenever anything is requested of them until, through a bizarre twist of fate, he becomes incapable of saying anything but “yes.” It could star Jim Carrey!
Executive 2: Genius!
Sunday
Either these two things are related or I just felt like embedding video for the first time
Josh Marshall links to an Associated Press news analysis of comments Sarah Palin made at three campaign events on Saturday.
Friday
Earwax
I'm doing some sidebar maintenance, one step of which is replacing my banner links to the old “There is No Crisis” group opposing Social Security privatization and “Network for Justice” opposing a particular change in New York's death penalty law which failed (the change, not the group opposing it) about three years ago (nice work, Andrew Cuomo!) with banner links to other causes which I'm currently interested in. I was going to replace one of them with a banner link to a group opposing changing New York's term limit law, and especially changing it so as to apply to sitting officeholders who would otherwise be out of office in 2010. Unfortunately, there is no such group (or at least no web presence I can find for a group) opposing Bloomberg extending his reign.
This is especially funny in the case of New Yorkers for Term Limits, who still, on their front page, have links to a petition opposing the elimination of term limits for city council members and a text box stating:
Attention All NY CITY Voters!
I'm a bit surprised that no one is talking about the term limit change in terms of precommitment (this wikipedia article sucks. Unfortunately, it sucks less than the non-existent other references explaining precommitment) problems. Ulysses tied himself to the mast for a reason, and term limits make absolutely no sense when you're willing to change them because the person who will be negatively effected by them has done a good job and has skills that are suited to the present situation.
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This is especially funny in the case of New Yorkers for Term Limits, who still, on their front page, have links to a petition opposing the elimination of term limits for city council members and a text box stating:
Attention All NY CITY Voters!
- We support the current NYC Term Limits Law.
- We oppose any efforts to change these limits.
I'm a bit surprised that no one is talking about the term limit change in terms of precommitment (this wikipedia article sucks. Unfortunately, it sucks less than the non-existent other references explaining precommitment) problems. Ulysses tied himself to the mast for a reason, and term limits make absolutely no sense when you're willing to change them because the person who will be negatively effected by them has done a good job and has skills that are suited to the present situation.
Thursday
Seriously, get out of my secret christmas place
Don't know how many people will read this before the debate tonight, after which it will be either far more or less funny (but not equally funny), but this slideshow on Biden's debate prep with Michigan Governor Granholm is great stuff. Link via apo.
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Wednesday
This year, I'm on the side of the Angels
If anyone is still looking to understand the causes of the credit crisis, perhaps in order to figure out whether or not the bailout plan1 is a good thing to support, the following, which I quote from a commenter at Justin Fox's Curious Capitalist blog, does a funny and clever job of explaining a large part of the crisis. What it leaves out is first, the massive amount of gambling banks and other institutions were doing on the solvency of other companies via credit default swaps, and, as that article alludes to, the massive loans the institutions took out to leverage their bets. This is why far more money is at stake than just the loss of value on mortgage backed securities which the explanation does cover. Second, it doesn't discuss the methods Steve used to sell Bob a mortgage Bob should have known he couldn't afford. If you're interested in that aspect, take a look here. Anyway, the explanation (including why I just started talking about people named Bob and Steve):
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The simplest (and this is simplifying a lot) explanation:1. “Rescue plan,” which bill supporters now prefer due to negative connotations of “bailout” is no less accurate than bailout plan, but changing the names of things due to how they poll is still somewhat dishonest.
Bob took out a mortgage for $1000 from Steve on which he agreed to pay back $2000 over the next 30 years. Steve split that $2000 into five packages of $400 and sold them to Jack for $300 each.* Jack has bough dozens of these little $400 packages. He combines 10 of them from 10 different people into a $4000 security that pays interest. Which he then sells to Jim for $3500.**
Jim says hey, I'm an institutional investor and I got a diversified security that pays steady returns over a 30 year term and is backed by real estate value. Yay me for safe investing! It's even rated AAA by the bond agencies.***
Unfortunately, Bob didn't get the big raise he was counting on at work. Now he can't afford the mortgage payment on his house. So he goes to Steve, his local banker, and asks for a renegotiation. Steve tells him that he can't because the loan has been split up among many buyers and sold several times and they're definitely not willing to renegotiate their fixed rate of return even if Bob can find them.
So Bob defaults on his mortgage, and Steve forecloses on Bob's house to recoup the loan. Unfortunately lots of houses are getting foreclosed and put on the market. Now Steve can't sell Bob's house for $1000. He can only sell it for $500.
Meanwhile, Jim hears about this on the news and realizes its happening all over the country. Jim realizes he has no idea how much, if any, of his securities are actually going to pay out. He tries to sell them to Ted the other institutional investor, but Ted is trying to sell his mortgage securities too.
No one is quite sure how much these securities are worth, but they definitely seem like they're worth less than what was paid for them, and the real estate backing them doesn't look so hot either. So everyone is trying to sell and no one is buying. The value just keeps dropping lower and lower, but still no buyers come.
Now Steve has some nice girl named Judy who wants to buy a house. And two fellows named Ben and Luke who want to start a business and go to college respectively. But Steve can't get any money from Jim or Jack because they're getting wiped out by the falling value of their securities.
Fortunately, Judy has an Uncle Sam who has a money printing machine and he wants to buy up a bunch of these securities so that their value will stabilize and people will start buying and selling them again. Then Steve can get the money to lend to Judy to buy her house, and Luke to go to college and Ben to start his business.
But Uncle Sam's wife, HoR, won't let Sam do it. HoR says that Jack and Jim are jerks who don't deserve to have any money because they don't work hard down at the tire plant like everyone else. And Bob is stupid for counting on that promotion so he shouldn't have taken out that loan in the first place. HoR forbids Sam from buying anything. So Judy doesn't get her house, Ben doesn't get his business, and Luke doesn't go to college. All because HoR wanted to get even with people for being jerks, even though really she just ended up punishing Judy and Ben and Luke who didn't do anything wrong at all.
Then there was a Great Depression and the Economy tanked and everyone lost their jobs. The end.
*Note that at this point, Steve has made a real and immediate profit of $500 and wants to lend out another mortgage right away.
**Jack has also make a $500 real and immediate profit on every "batch" of mortgage securities he sells. Jack wants to go buy more of these from Steve so he can keep buying and slicing and packaging them.
***Jim gets a bonus from his boss for doing so good and borrows money from Steve to buy a bigger house.
