South Dakota Politics

Politics, Law, and Ohio Elections

File this one under politics vs. law. From Ryan J. Reilly at TPM:

A federal judge sided with the Obama campaign on Friday and ruled that Ohio made an "arbitrary" decision when it took away early-voting rights for most voters but carved out a special exemption for military and overseas voters.

Ohio allows "early voting" in the three days prior to the election. The legislature acted to abolish early voting, except for uniformed and overseas citizens. The Obama Administration sued and it just won a victory in court.

The Romney Campaign attacked the Administration on the grounds that it was trying to stop military personal from voting. This may have been good politics but it was bad logic. Whichever side won, military voters would get to vote three days early. If the Administration had lost, those voters (and overseas voters) would be the only people to enjoy that privilege.

It is pretty clear what the strategy was behind the change in law. Most of the people who vote early are apparently inclined to vote Democrat. Ending early voting for most voters doesn't necessarily mean those folks won't vote, but it might mean that some of them won't vote. Military voters are probably more inclined to vote Republican. This would be unlikely to result in more than a small advantage for the GOP, but in a very close election it might make the difference.

Politically speaking, it is hard to defend the change in the law. Manipulating the election laws to benefit one party over another is hardly unusual in American politics. See gerrymandering. It is hard to see it as anything other than an unfortunate consequence of the system.

Legally speaking, this looks like a very dubious result. There is no reason why the election laws can't make special allowances for certain classes of voters. Disabled voters, for example, might be given more time to vote or special machines. Uniformed citizens might be allowed to vote early or even late, as a concession to the sacrifices they make. A state might provide ballots in languages other than English but they don't have to provide ballots in all languages or ballots specially designed for the learning impaired.

What if Ohio had not had a general early voting rule, but had created one specifically for citizens in uniform? Such a regulation would make plenty of sense and I am guessing would have been more difficult to challenge. It would have resulted in exactly the same situation. The logical implication of the district court decision is that any advantage given to one group of voters but not to others is a violation of constitutional rights. That looks to me like a bad rule.

The Left Plays the Race Card

I am always a little nervous when a reporter or some similar public figure is fired for an impromptu remark. Everyone makes mistakes. On the other hand, if you are going to fire someone for an unpremeditated statement, it should probably be something like this. From The Politico:

TAMPA, Fla. -- Yahoo News has fired Washington bureau chief David Chalian after he was caught on a hot-mic during an online video broadcast saying that Mitt Romney and his wife, Ann, had no problem with African Americans suffering as a result of Hurricane Isaac, a source familiar with the situation tells POLITICO.

"They're not concerned at all. They're happy to have a party with black people drowning," Chalian said over a break during the ABC News/Yahoo News webcast, in reference to the fact that the GOP convention in Tampa is taking place as Hurricane Isaac makes landfall on the north Gulf coast.

That is hate speech. On the basis of no evidence whatsoever, Chalian attributed the vilest of sentiments to Mr. and Mrs. Romney. Both Chalian and Yahoo apologized to the Romneys. Yahoo's apology, given their action, is acceptable. Chalian revealed himself to be one of those people who have trouble disagreeing with people without hating them. At the very least, this makes him a dubious choice for a bureau chief.

It is no surprise that MSNBC is less scrupulous. Chris Matthews hates Republicans as much as Chalian does. Again from The Politico:

On today's edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe, Matthews told Priebus that Republican attacks on President Obama's welfare stance, as well as Mitt Romney's remark about his birth certificate, were evidence that the Republican party was playing "that little ethnic card... the race card," and called it an embarrassment to the party.

Romney's remark was quite stupid but calling it racist is just as stupid. As for Obama's welfare stance, if that isn't a legitimate policy issue, what is? The Administration clearly contemplated weakening the work first requirement of the 1996 welfare reform. See Mickey Kaus for a clear parsing of the issue. Matthews is saying in effect that it amounts to racism to criticize Mr. Obama, at least on select issues. That is playing the race card.

I haven't watched all of the speeches at the Republican Convention, but I have watched Mia Love, Artur Davis, and Secretary Condoleezza Rice. All three were very fine. I can't help noting that Condi dropped a hint about an African American girl becoming President. The crowd roared.

This much is undeniable: all three were welcomed with enormous enthusiasm by the conventioneers. That is dispositive. Republicans are about as uncompetitive among African Americans as it is possible for a party to be among any demographic. By contrast, African Americans are welcomed into the Republican Party with prominent places on the convention agenda and wild applause. If Republicans are in love with Love and Davis and Rice, but Obama not so much, that's because the former are Republicans and share their principles whereas the latter is not and does not. Only a fool or a knave or both can interpret that as racism.

MSNBC agrees with me, in their fashion. From the Daily Caller:

One of the left's favorite attacks on the Republican Party is that it is the party of old white people, devoid of diversity and probably racist.

If you were watching MSNBC's coverage of the Republican National Convention in Tampa on Tuesday night, you might believe those assertions, since missing from the coverage was nearly every ethnic minority that spoke during Tuesday's festivities.

In lieu of airing speeches from former Democratic Rep. Artur Davis, a black American; Mia Love, a black candidate for the U.S. House of Representatives from Utah; and Texas senatorial hopeful Ted Cruz, a Latino American, MSNBC opted to show commentary anchored by Rachel Maddow from Rev. Al Sharpton, Ed Schultz, Chris Matthews, Chris Hayes and Steve Schmidt.

What would be the use of selectively ignoring three black and one Latino speaker except that their presence obviously confirms my point? To put it mildly, the Party that presents such faces to represent it has less to apologize for than journalists who try to keep such faces invisible.

The Tactics of the Intactivists

Foreskin Man was apparently active around the globe recently. A regional court in Cologne, German, found that circumcision of a child below the age of consent was a crime. A governor of Vorarlberg Province in Austria banned circumcision of boys at state hospitals as "physical abuse." An initiative banning the procedure gained enough signatures to be placed on a San Francisco ballot, before a Judge tossed it off.

It hasn't been all one way, however. Germany's parliament endorsed the right of Muslim and Jewish parents to have their infant sons circumcised. Though the resolution was non-binding, it appears that the parliament is preparing legislation to back it up.

Male circumcision is a vital part of the Jewish religion and is important to Muslims as well. So important is it to the former that a ban on this procedure would be seen as "outlawing Judaism". It is difficult to imagine an American or European government going that far. Religious liberty is one of the core principles of modern liberal democracy. Indeed, it virtually defines the peace treaty on which liberal government is based. In return for accepting the authority of the secular state, religious groups can practice their various faiths without being molested.

This doesn't mean, of course, that religious liberty confers immunity to the laws. To take the extreme cases, a religious minority cannot practice human sacrifice or allow adults sexual access to minors. Somewhere between those extremes and teaching your kid Hebrew, a line has to be drawn.

While a reasonable person might believe that male circumcision is repugnant or unhealthy, there is simply no case that it justifies a broad violation of religious liberty and parental authority. In the United States, most circumcisions are motivated by health concerns rather than religion. That this is at least as reasonable as the other side is indicated by the following news, from the New York Times:

The American Academy of Pediatrics has shifted its stance on infant male circumcision, announcing on Monday that new research, including studies in Africa suggesting that the procedure may protect heterosexual men against H.I.V., indicated that the health benefits outweighed the risks.

But the academy stopped short of recommending routine circumcision for all baby boys, saying the decision remains a family matter. The academy had previously taken a neutral position on circumcision.

In short, this is the kind of judgment call that parents are called upon to make. Let them make it. If circumcisions offends you, print your literature and make your speeches. If you try to legally ban it that makes you a busybody. While you are printing your literature, you might want to make sure there aren't any foreskin comics in the mix. There is no doubt that some of the force behind the intactivist movement is old fashion hatred of Jews.

The First Rule of the Science Fight Club: Fight

Matt Ridley is the best popular science writer in the business. I offer that observation as an example of the topic that Ridley concentrated on in three recent pieces for the Wall Street Journal: confirmation bias. While I can objectively defend Ridley's excellence, the main reason I rank him so highly is that he confirms a lot of what I already believe. Consider that mea culpa properly filed.

Ridley's first installment exposes a conceit of scientific culture.

There's a myth out there that has gained the status of a cliché: that scientists love proving themselves wrong, that the first thing they do after constructing a hypothesis is to try to falsify it. Professors tell students that this is the essence of science.

Yet most scientists behave very differently in practice. They not only become strongly attached to their own theories; they perpetually look for evidence that supports rather than challenges their theories. Like defense attorneys building a case, they collect confirming evidence.

He goes on to explain that this is "only human". Of course. The human mind is a narrative generator. Our thought and language consist of stories we construct out of the raw material that enters through our senses. Some of these stories are pragmatic. I am allergic to this food so I shouldn't eat it. Some of the stories are all about self-esteem. If they weren't in charge, I'd be doing better. Almost always the motives overlap. We persist in falling failed strategies because we can't admit to being wrong. Methods for rigorous analysis can help bring our narratives in line with reality, but they don't change the weight of the investments that we make in those narratives.

Confirmation bias occurs when we ignore evidence that is inconsistent with our narrative or theory in favor of evidence that confirms it. Despite their official loyalty to the principle of falsification, scientists are as much susceptible to confirmation bias as anyone else. So what corrects for this bias in the progress of science?

Ridley offers an answer in his second installment.

The answer was spelled out by the psychologist Raymond Nickerson of Tufts University in a paper written in 1998: "It is not so much the critical attitude that individual scientists have taken with respect to their own ideas that has given science the success it has enjoyed... but more the fact that individual scientists have been highly motivated to demonstrate that hypotheses that are held by some other scientist(s) are false."

Most scientists do not try to disprove their ideas; rivals do it for them. Only when those rivals fail is the theory bomb-proof. The physicist Robert Millikan, (who showed minor confirmation bias in his own work on the charge of the electron by omitting outlying observations that did not fit his hypothesis) devoted more than 10 years to trying to disprove Einstein¹s theory that light consisted of particles (photons). His failure convinced almost everybody but himself that Einstein was right.

This is obviously right. I say that because it confirms my bias concerns parties in politics. To make policy, like-minded persons have to join together, formulate positions, and work to see them translated into policy. A group of likeminded people is not, however, very open to evidence that tells against their biases. The solution is to have at least one honorable opposition.

Another reason that seems right is that it is not so much the best solution as the only solution. Once you come to grips with the reality of confirmation bias in science and everywhere else, what other solution is there?

In the final installment, Ridley turns to the specific problem of climate change.

Last month saw two media announcements of preliminary new papers on climate. One, by a team led by physicist Richard Muller of the University of California, Berkeley, concluded "the carbon dioxide curve gives a better match than anything else we've tried" for the (modest) 0.8 Celsius-degree rise in global average temperatures over land during the past half-century-less, if ocean is included. He may be right, but such curve-fitting reasoning is an example of confirmation bias. The other, by a team led by the meteorologist Anthony Watts, a skeptical gadfly, confirmed its view that the Muller team's numbers are too high-because "reported 1979-2008 U.S. temperature trends are spuriously doubled" by bad thermometer siting and unjustified "adjustments."

Much published research on the impact of climate change consists of confirmation bias by if-then modeling, but critics also see an increasing confusion between model outputs and observations. For example, in estimating how much warming is expected, the most recent report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change uses three methods, two based entirely on model simulations.

Perhaps you can see the problem. Computer simulations are useful not only for understanding phenomena but for producing results that can be reported to the press. Such models, however, inevitably build in assumptions about what is going on and these are frequently designed to confirm what the designer expects to find.

Ridley does not consider the influence of nonscientific biases, such as political opinions. In the climate change controversies, politics exercises an enormous gravitational force. Most, but not all, of those making a strong case for the anthropogenic global warming thesis and the need for global legislation are comfortable with the idea that governments should exercise more control over private economic activity. Most, but not all, of the critics are not.

The critics of global alarmism are no more immune to confirmation bias than the proponents. The problem with the debate so far has been the constant attempt by the latter to shut it down. We are constantly told that the consensus of climate scientists is that global warming is real and that big changes in our economies are necessary to correct it. Consensus, however, is more often the enemy of good science than its friend. Almost all moments of genuine progress in science happen when some critic successfully challenges the consensus.

I think that Ridley is right on all counts but that is surely subject to confirmation bias on my part. I note that this involves not only political bias but a personal delight at seeing the consensus undermined. Ridley thinks that good science happens when one scientist tries to tear a big hole in the theories of other scientists. The latter either emerge stronger or suffer a deserved collapse. Of course, his preference for an adversarial culture in science may itself be a product of confirmation bias. But again, what else is there?

Not Only Merely Bad

According to the British Independent, the Obama Administration is very concerned that Greece might exit the Eurozone.

The Obama administration will pressure European governments not to let Greece fall out of the eurozone before November's Presidential elections, British Government sources have suggested…

American officials are understood to be worried that if they decide Greece has not done enough to meet its deficit targets and withhold the money, it would automatically trigger Greece's exit from the eurozone weeks before the Presidential election on 6 November.

They are urging eurozone Governments to hold off from taking any drastic action before then – fearing that the resulting market destabilisation could damage President Obama's re-election prospects. European leaders are thought to be sympathetic to the lobbying fearing that, under pressure from his party lin Congress, Mitt Romney would be a more isolationist president than Mr Obama.

President Obama likes to talk about his "top priorities". These are the only priorities he has but he has dozens of them. If the above story is accurate, we can infer that some top priorities top others.

I am not sure whether the following counts as a top priority or a priority at all, since the President isn't talking about it. From Jeff Kearns at Bloomberg:

American incomes declined more in the three-year expansion that started in June 2009 than during the longest recession since the Great Depression, according an analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data by Sentier Research LLC.

Median household income fell 4.8 percent on an inflation- adjusted basis since the recession ended in June 2009, more than the 2.6 percent drop during the 18-month contraction, the research firm's Gordon Green and John Coder wrote in a report today. Household income is 7.2 percent below the December 2007 level, the former Census Bureau economic statisticians wrote.

"Almost every group is worse off than it was three years ago, and some groups had very large declines in income," Green, who previously directed work on the Census Bureau's income and poverty statistics program, said in a phone interview today. "We're in an unprecedented period of economic stagnation."

Of course, an alternative to not talking about the economy is lying about it. James Pethokoukis reproduces this exchange:

Willie Geist, MSNBC: What would you say to that same person that said, 'Well, that hasn't worked for four years. I haven't had the job over time, it's time for a change.'

Stephanie Cutter, Obama deputy campaign manager: Well, I think that worker probably has a good understanding of what's happened over the past four years in terms of the president coming in and seeing 800,000 jobs lost on the day that the president was being sworn in, and seeing the president moving pretty quickly to stem the losses, to turn the economy around, and over the past, you know, 27 months we've created 4.5 million private sector jobs. That's more jobs than in the Bush recovery, in the Reagan recovery, there's obviously more we need to do, and as I said to Mika at the at beginning of the program, I think that unemployed worker probably sees one person in this race trying to move the country forward and that's the president.

Pethokoukis replies:

From the end of the recession in June 2009 through July 2012 — the first 37 months of the Obama recovery — the U.S. economy has generated 2.7 million net new jobs. From the jobs low point in February 2010, the U.S. economy has generated 4 million net new jobs.

From the end of the 1981-82 recession through the end of of 1985 — the first 37 months of the Reagan recovery — the U.S.created 9.8 million net new jobs. And if you adjust for the larger U.S. population today, the comparable figure is more than 12 million jobs.

He provides a nice chart to compare the two:

Obama's economic record isn't only merely bad; it's really most sincerely bad. Job creation has been dismal. Incomes have declined faster during the recovery than during the recession. Oh, and there is that silly business about the federal deficits. From Fox News:

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office projected Wednesday that the deficit for 2012 will run $1.1 trillion, the fourth year in a row the shortfall will exceed $1 trillion.

Four years of trillion dollars a year deficits somehow failed to stimulate economic growth. Go figure. Meanwhile we are nearing another milestone in our national economic history. Again from Fox:

The debt is now lurking just under the $16 trillion mark -- a number huge enough to be almost incomprehensible to the layperson. One way to visualize its magnitude: If you were to spend a dollar every second, it would take you 32,000 years to spend $1 trillion, or a mere one-16th of the debt.

It's silly to ask what the President's plan if he gets another four years. This is his plan. Take any of his budgets and adjust for reality and what you get is, well, reality. The President is worried about the possible effect of Greece leaving the Euro, if it happens before the first Tuesday in November.

An Antigravity Helicopter?

Check out this clip:

 

What the photographer has done, if I understand it, is to sync his camera speed with the helicopter's blades.  The blades are in the same position each time the camera takes a shot.  That's the kind of magic I can believe in. 

The Politics of Abortion

Ruth Marcus at the WaPo has one of the best pieces on abortion politics that I have read. Drawing a tangent on the Akin story, she argues that both the Republicans and the Democrats are cowardly on the subject of abortion. She's right. As to the former:

Akin's essential view — abortion should be prohibited even in cases of rape and incest — is more intellectually coherent than Mitt Romney's.

Akin and Romney say that they believe that the fetus is a person from the moment of conception. If so, the morality of terminating that life should not depend on how it was created — and Akin is correct to oppose such exceptions. (Maternal life is different because, in this worldview, it poses an insurmountable conflict between two lives.)…

Mainstream Republicans — Romney, George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush among them — have never been willing to take the logic of fetal personhood to that uncomfortable conclusion.

There is some obvious truth to this. While virtually all pro-life advocates acknowledge that abortion is justified when there is a threat to the life of the mother, most allow exceptions that are logically inconsistent with the moral principle they defend.

By focusing solely on the exceptions, however, Democrats are "squeamishly" avoiding a collision between their absolutist view and public opinion.

A New York Times/CBS News poll earlier this year offered a snapshot of an electorate disturbingly skeptical of abortion rights: 37 percent said that abortion should be generally available, 23 percent said that it should not be permitted, and 37 percent said that it should be available but "under stricter limits" than currently in place.

How strict? A 2010 poll by Virginia Commonwealth University found the same number as the Times (37 percent) saying that abortion should be available "no matter what the reason" and 44 percent saying that it should be available only "in certain circumstances, such as when a woman's health is endangered or when the pregnancy results from rape or incest."

Marcus would like the Democrats to forcefully argue for abortion as a means of birth control for any woman who might find it convenient. She acknowledges that this involves risks, for the public view is much closer, if not identical to, the general Republican position.

It is public opinion that is confused. If the unborn biological person is not a moral person, then surely abortion ought to be available "no matter what the reason". If abortion ought to be allowed only in cases of rape or incest, doesn't that have to mean that abortion is wrong because the fetus has a right to life? And if that's true, what justifies these exceptions? In this day and age we would be offended by the idea that a child or adult is a lesser person because he or she was, as one of my commenters put it, the "spawn" of rape or incest. That would be Medieval.

Contrary to what Marcus says, both the Democrats and the Republicans take the prudent positions, given their view of the metaphysical question. Focusing on the extreme cases is probably the best shot the Democrats have at keeping abortion legal in all circumstances. This involves no moral compromise on their part.

Republican pro-lifers who allow for exceptions have to make a compromise analogous to Lincoln's acceptance of slavery in the southern states. Slavery is wrong everywhere, but containment rather than abolition was the best policy for putting it on the road to extinction. Abortion is wrong almost always, but accepting certain exceptions that are not justified in principle is the best way to serve the principle.

Abortion is the most fundamental political controversy in modern America. Sooner or later, I am guessing, technology will relieve it. In the meantime the question remains: are all human beings created equal, or not?

Abortion & Moral Personhood

Pro-choice advocates often make the following argument:

What I think these comments do underscore is why we shouldn't have a bunch of politicians, the majority of whom are men, making health care decisions on behalf of women.

That was President Obama speaking at his recent press conference. I copied it from Cory Heidelberger who obvious shares the sentiment.

This is rhetorically powerful. It is also an obvious evasion. In the first place, the claim that pregnancy involves only the mother's interests is demonstrably false. Consider the case of a woman who drinks heavily during her pregnancy, despite being warned repeatedly by doctors, and then delivers a child suffering from severe fetal alcohol syndrome. Is she not obviously morally responsible for the damage she has inflicted on another person? Is it unreasonable to hold her legally responsible for what she did to her child before the child was born? I don't know what to do about such cases, but this is a question for a legislature, the demographic composition of which is irrelevant.

Of course, if she has an abortion she would be immune from legal consequences. This would be different only if you believe that the fetus is not a moral person. In that case, neither the woman nor her doctor have any moral obligations to the fetus and can make decisions about abortion based solely on the woman's interests.

If, however, you believe that the fetus is a moral person, perhaps because it is a living being and human, then you have to conclude that he or she deserves equal protection under the laws.

To say that the woman should be allowed to decide this question makes no sense. We the people do not allow a mother, or a father for that matter, to terminate the life of her three year old child should she come to believe that that is best for everyone. The most extreme pro-choice advocates acknowledge that the human organism becomes a moral person at some point in his or her development even if that point occurs well after birth.

The question of when a biological person becomes a moral and legal person is a public question. Only after you have answered it can you where the boundary between the right to choose and the right to life lies. Cory and I have as much right to form opinions about this and advocate for legislation as anyone.

For Whom the Bell Polls

Let's take a look at the polls. The RCP average gives Obama a 2.7% lead. That includes the CNN and Fox polls, both of which gave Obama much larger leads (7 and 9%). The four most recent polls split. Obama leads by 4 and 1% in two of them and Romney leads by 1 and 2% in the others.

The Fox and CNN polls can't be called outliers. They fit with a series of national polls taken between July 16^th and August 8^th. In both cases the sample size is under a thousand and the sample is of registered voters. As I have noted, the Fox polls has a very large over sample of Democrats.

Of the four most recent polls, two sample registered voters. NBC samples a thousand voters over five days to give Obama a lead of four points while Gallup samples over three thousand voters over seven days and gives Romney two points. Gallup's large samples and long periods have given their poll and unusual stability. Like Fox and CNN, the NBC poll includes a sample of Democrats that is about 9% larger than the sample of Republicans.

The Rasmussen and Survey USA polls include sample sizes of 1500 and 1149 likely voters. The former gives Romney a one point lead and the latter Obama a one point lead.

So what would I tell each camp if I were paid to advise them? I'd tell Romney that, right now he's has a good shot at election. The race is tied and the tie usually goes to the challenger. It actually makes Romney's position look better if you assume that the Fox, CNN, et. al. polls giving Obama a big lead were genuine, because that means that Romney has enjoyed a surge. This may be interpreted as a bump for the Ryan pick, however, and what bumps up will probably bump down.

I would tell Obama that his campaign strategy so far has shown problematic results. He has burned through a lot more money than he has been raising running a full court press against Mr. Romney. As he did so his position seems to have weakened. The most favorable interpretation of this is that the negative campaign succeeded in dampening Romeny's surge, but that would mean that the underlying power of that surge was even greater than it appears.

The most interesting polls released today are from Michigan and Wisconsin. Two polls, both by organizations that lean Democratic, give Romney a lead. The PPP poll in Wisconsin has a sample of 1308 likely voters. It confirms a smaller sample by Rasmussen. Wisconsin voters appear to have largely unfavorable views of both candidates, though Romney does a bit better.

The internals of this poll are interesting. The sample breaks 40 to 30% conservative/liberal and 34 to 32% Republican/Democrat. That leaves a big middle to decide the outcome. It also means, if accurate, that Wisconsin is very competitive, which is great news for the Republican ticket. Wisconsin voters oppose "Paul Ryan's proposal for reforming Medicare" 46 to 40%. The plan isn't winning over anyone to the Republican ticket but neither does it seem to be much of a burden.

The shocking news comes from Michigan. A Baydoun/Foster poll gives Romney a four point lead. I can't find internals for this poll, but Fox Detroit has some interesting news about the Ryan plan. Eric Foster, chief pollster and President of Foster McCollum White & Associates, says this:

In spite of national criticism of the Ryan selection and budget plan, our findings suggest that Michigan voters are viewing both as positives for Romney. 36.11% of Michigan voters are more likely to vote for Romney because of the Paul Ryan selection while only 27.90% are less likely to vote for Romney. That is a positive statistical advantage for Romney of 8.21 points or 29.42%. Tarek Baydoun, statistical analyst for Foster McCollum White Baydoun reflects, "While Romney may have challenges connecting to voters, Paul Ryan seems to humanize him and make him more acceptable to voters like his wife Ann Romney does."

Additionally the Ryan Budget plan is supported by a plurality of Michigan voters. 47.99% support Ryan's budget which includes a major overhaul of Medicare and Social Security while 45.01% oppose the plan. What is statistically interesting is the fact that 41.59% of Michigan voters strongly oppose the plan and only 34.77% strongly support the plan. The margin for Ryan's plan comes from the soft supporters, who outnumber the soft opponents by a four to one margin (13.22% to 3.42%).

Again, it seems clear that the Ryan plan is neither winning nor costing Romney support. Democrats who were gleeful over Romney's choice of Ryan may yet have reason for their glee, but one has to add "not yet". Right now this makes Romney look smart.

All this adds up at least to a bounce for Romney after his VP pick. If that all it is or if it's a mirage, we'll soon know. If Romney can at least stay competitive in these two states, he will force the Obama campaign to spend precious resources on states he hoped to take for granted. If Romney wins these two states, he will get to take another oath of office.

What Akin Said

Missouri Senatorial Candidate Todd Akin may have only one person left who wants him to stay in the race: his opponent, Sen. Claire McCaskill. I haven't heard from his mother. I prefer to think about what someone actually says rather than merely react to the sound of it and I have learned not to depend on printed excerpts; so here is my transcription of Akin's entire offending remarks.

Charles Jaco: "If abortion can be considered in the case of a duct-tubal pregnancy or something like that, what about the case of rape, should it be legal or not?"

Todd Akin: "Well you know, people always wanta try and make that one of those things, well, how do ya, how do ya, how do you slice this particularly tough sort of ethical question. It seems to me first of all from what I understand from doctors that's really rare, if it's a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let's assume that may that didn't work or something. I think there should be some punishment but the punishment ought to be in the rapist and not attacking the child."

What was Akin trying to say? First, that pregnancy as a result of "legitimate" rape is rare and doesn't tell us anything about the moral status of other abortions. That is what persons who are strongly pro-life mean when they make that distinction.

The most offensive phrase in the entire paragraph is "legitimate rape," but Akin clearly doesn't mean acceptable or justified. He intends the opposite meaning: violent, non-consensual sexual intercourse. Okay, as opposed to what? At any rate, it was an extremely unfortunate choice of words.

The second thing he argued is that the female body has mechanisms to prevent pregnancy in such cases. This is an empirical question and one that would be challenge to resolve. I am inclined to doubt the proposition and more doubtful that Akins has any idea what he was talking about. Supposing it were true, how would it help his point? All it accomplished was to make him look like an insensitive buffoon.

Third, Akins takes the pure pro-life position. In the case of a pregnancy due to rape, it is the rapist who is guilty and should be punished. The unborn child is innocent and deserves the same protection as all other moral persons. Most persons who are pro-life make exceptions for at three categories of pregnancy: threats to the life of the mother, severe birth defects, and rape. Akin has every right to his position but pushing it here saves no children. All it does is to divide his own camp.

Moreover, abortion is not what this election ought to be about. Anything that distracts from the economy and the fiscal solvency of the United States hurts any cause that Akin professes to care about.

All three points are obviously subject to debate but none is scandalous, even if the second one is stupid. In politics, however, how you say something and the context in which you say it matter as much as whatever you meant. Akin's clumsy comments managed simultaneously to damage the pro-life cause which he avows, put what looked like a winning Senate campaign in jeopardy, and embarrass the Republican Party nationally.

Just because a Republican candidate for a US Senate seat says something doesn't mean that that is the position of Republicans nationally or even in Missouri. The Democrats will argue that it does, which is what I would advise them to argue were I advising them. That doesn't mean that the Republican Party can escape some responsibility for their candidate.

Republicans have come down on Akin hard to resign. Mitt Romney denounced Akin. The National Republican Senatorial Committee has yanked funding, as has Crossroads GPS, a conservative political action committee. Akin should swiftly resign and let some other Republican try for the seat. When you blow this big a hole in the dike, it doesn't matter what you were trying to say.

I’ve Looked At Crowds From Both Sides Now

It isn't easy to tell how many people show up to a public event, at least when they are standing up. There have been some indications that Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan are drawing large, enthusiastic crowds, while President Obama is having a hard time filling rooms.

It is rather easier to determine what the campaigns think of their crowds. Romney supporters have been circulating a lot of photos of recent rallies. Case in point:

The Republican camp clearly thinks that the crowds look good. What about the Democratic camp?

The New York Times piously informs us that Obama is "drawing big crowds, but not like '08'. The undertow of the story, however, is indicated by these unintentionally hilarious paragraphs.

"We have plenty of time for big rallies," a campaign spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said between the rallies on Thursday. "Our focus right now is on exciting our supporters and winning over undecided voters and the smaller and medium-size events are the best venue to accomplish that because the president can closely engage with the crowd."

Big rallies are expensive, especially given the logistical and security challenges for a president as opposed to a mere United States senator. And Obama campaign operatives, both at the Chicago headquarters and in swing states where Mr. Obama recently has stumped, say the campaign intentionally limits crowds by restricting tickets. The reason is to allow the president to better connect with supporters, aides say.

Now I ask you: what does that sound like? Eight letter word. Begins with 'b'. If the goofy evasion sounded vaguely familiar, Mark Steyn explains why.

ROB REINER: The last time Spinal Tap toured America, they were, uh, booked into 10,000 seat arenas, and 15,000 seat venues, and it seems that now, on their current tour they're being booked into 1,200 seat arenas, 1,500 seat arenas, and uh I was just wondering, does this mean uh…the popularity of the group is waning?

BAND MANAGER DAVID AXELROD: Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no…no, no, not at all. We have plenty of time for big stadium gigs. But our focus right now is on intentionally limiting crowds by restricting tickets – to allow the band to better connect with fans.

Obama continues to lead by a hair in the nationwide polls. He continues to show good numbers in battleground states. Almost all those polls, however, seem to assume a Democratic turnout advantage that would be larger than 2008. I don't think this is a case of biased polling. The Fox News poll that gave Obama a big lead also showed an unprecedented turnout advantage for Democrats. I do think that such an advantage this time round is very unlikely.

The New York Times story suggests enthusiasm for Obama among Democrats is significantly diminished this year compared to '08'. The Obama campaign isn't Spinal Tap on its final tour just yet, but Steyn's parody is dead spot on. When a presidential campaign explains that it is intentionally limiting the size of its campaign rallies in August, that is a campaign that thinks it has to explain something away.

Chuck-fil-A

One of the charges lobbed at Chick-fil-A was that the management imposes its religious views on its employees. From Please Cut The Crap:

Though the company technically "franchises" its stores, it does so in a way that gives it a lot more influence over the franchise's hiring practices. As such, they screen their employees stringently, to make sure they "fit." They ask everyone who applies to disclose their marital status, number of dependents and their involvement with "community, civic, social, church and/or professional organizations." They get away with this because their franchisees are technically contract employees, which exempts them from many of the same laws as everyone else.

Once hired, they exert a tremendous amount of influence over their employees' personal lives, to the point of monitoring their habits outside of work, to make sure they follow "good Christian principles."

I wonder what PCTC would make of this story from the New York Times, courtesy of Ann Althouse. Apparently New York Senator Chuck Schumer exercises a tremendous amount of influence over his staffer's personal lives.

Schumer staff members, put simply, like to marry each other. There have been 10 weddings so far, and two more scheduled this fall — an average of nearly one "Schumer Marriage" (his term) for each year he has spent in the Senate.

Cupid's arrow lands where it will, but many of the couples say that Mr. Schumer, a New York Democrat, has an unusual knack for guiding its journey. He keeps close track of office romances, quotes marriage-friendly Scripture ("God to man: be fruitful and multiply"), and is known to cajole, nag, and outright pester his staff (at least those he perceives as receptive to such pestering) toward connubial bliss.

You have to love the first sentence of the second paragraph, which manages a contradiction. Schumer "is known to cajole, nag, and outright pester his staff" to marry. He quotes scripture as part of his interventions.

The cajoling, nagging, and pestering doesn't stop when a "Schumer marriage" has been made. He then pressures his female staffers to have "Schumer babies".

"After the marriage happens, the immediate question is: when is the baby?" said Mr. Squadron, who is now a New York state senator. "After the baby happens, the immediate question is, when's the next one?"…

Sometimes, Mr. Schumer greets a former staff member, "So, is your wife pregnant again?" Other times, he does not even bother with the question. One former aide, who asked not to be named, recalled seeing the senator bump into a recently married couple, both Schumer alumni. "He just stared down at her midsection and said, 'Well?' "

Can you imagine the indignation that would pour forth from the Left if this story were about a prominent Republican? Starring at a former staffer's midsection and implying that she should bloody well be knocked up by now! Pressuring a woman to have the next baby as soon as the last one is out! Senator Bad Republican obviously thinks that women are merely baby factories.

Contrary to Althouse, I don't think this story celebrates Schumer's behavior. Michael M. Grynbaum scrupulously avoids comment but it's hard not to think that he thinks the Senator goes way over the line.

There is no scandal here. Marriage and babies are good and if the boss wants to encourage the one and then the other among his staffers, that is his prerogative. The worst that one can say, though it would certainly be true, is that Senator Schumer occasionally makes an ass of himself when he goes about it.

The double standard, however, is glaring. If this were about a Republican, the piece would be accompanied by a scathing New York Times editorial. Feminists would be demanding his resignation. Other Republicans would be huddling to decide whether they could afford to support him or not. If this were a corporate manager who is opposed to gay marriage, well, we know what would happen then.

Affirmative Reaction

If you were hoping for change from the hope and change President, you will be disappointed by his reaction on Affirmative Action in higher ed. Richard Kahlenberg has a piece on an affirmative action case and it is one of the most damning exposes on that subject that I have seen. You can find it at the Chronicles of Higher Education.

On Monday, the Obama administration, along with most of the higher-education and business establishment, weighed in with amicus briefs in support of racial preferences at the University of Texas at Austin. Given Barack Obama's mixed messages on affirmative action in the past—he has said his own daughters do not deserve a leg up in admissions and that he understands the resentment toward preferences by whites who do not feel particularly privileged—there was a modest hope that he would break with longstanding Democratic Party orthodoxy to promote a better kind of affirmative action that looks at gaping economic inequalities in our country rather than just counting skin color. He blinked, however, and filed a brief that is unlikely to do anything to change the minds of Supreme Court justices and may do real damage to the president's own re-election chances.

The administration's brief with the Supreme Court argues that even though the University of Texas at Austin was able to achieve substantial racial and ethnic diversity without using race—by giving a preference to low-income students and automatically admitting students in the top 10 percent of their high school—Texas was right to restore racial preferences in the freshman class beginning in 2005 so that the university would better reflect the state's demographic breakdown. This argument is plausible in the policy world but has never been accepted by the U.S. Supreme Court.

How does a university decide which students to admit? Standardized tests like the ACT and SAT are the best indicators of which students will graduate, let alone excel. Unfortunately, relying on such a standard alone would produce a student body that is overwhelmingly White and Asian. African Americans and Hispanics would be very scarce.

The easiest way to correct the racial/ethnic imbalance would be to set aside a number of places for applicants of certain identities. That is called a quota. The Supreme Court ruled quotas unconstitutional in the 1977 Bakke case on the grounds that this amounted to blatant discrimination against non-minority applicants, which it did.

There are alternatives to using race as an admissions criterion that might nonetheless help address the racial imbalance. Here is Kahlenberg from an earlier piece in The New Republic:

The Texas case provides a perfect opportunity for [Obama] to move the Democratic Party beyond the political morass of racial preferences. Indeed, Texas has had success with non-race based affirmative action. After a lower court banned the use of race in admissions decisions in 1996, legislators created two alternatives: one to give a leg up to economically disadvantaged students of all races and a second to automatically admit students in the top 10 percent of their high school. Under these race-neutral plans, UT Austin produced even greater racial and ethnic diversity (21.4 percent black and Latino representation) than it had when using race (18.6 percent black and Latino).

Kahlenberg thinks that "non-race based affirmative action" is both more politically viable and better policy. Americans tend to oppose racial preferences by about two to one but do not oppose preferences for low income or otherwise disadvantaged persons. Race-neutral admissions schemes that target the top 10 percent of high school students will inevitably help minority students in high schools where they are the majority. Shouldn't we target the most disadvantaged? Do Obama's daughters really need preferences?

Why not support affirmative action based on both race and class? Universities have been saying for years that they consider both factors, and yet on the selective campuses, 86 percent of African Americans are middle or upper-middle class (and overall, rich kids outnumber poor kids by 25:1.) At most universities, it is only after the use of race was banned (in places like Texas, California, and Florida) that they stepped up efforts to admit low-income students as an indirect way of promoting racial and ethnic diversity.

Kahlenberg was hoping for change when he wrote his New Republic piece. His Chronicle piece is an expression of disappointment. Instead of promoting policies that force institutions to do the hard work that is necessary to actually give the disadvantaged a leg up, Obama has chosen to support race-based policies that benefit people like himself and institutions that only want the cheapest way to a racially correct bottom line. If he was hoping for change from this President, he didn't get it.

Change is a Fickle Goddess

I spent the last three days backpacking in Wind Cave National Park, a tiny slice of Black Hills terrain. I won't bore you with the slides except to say that I finally managed to see a herd of elk in the wild. About twelve of them wondered just past our camp last night. They are really big, like deer on steroids. It was magnificent.

Three days without news flushed out my system a bit. I am proud to say that I didn't think about the election more than twice and that very briefly. When I did get back in the car, I was curious to see what three news days had accomplished.

I heard Joe Biden on the radio. So he is still alive! He is also still Joe. He said this recently: "Folks, where's it written we cannot lead the world in the 20th century in making automobiles?" Actually, I am pretty sure that that is written in lots of places. I am also sure we ought to be more concerned about the century we are actually living in. And then there is this jewel:

Biden's rhetorical belly-flop yesterday was a doozy. He first told a largely black audience in Danville, Va., that he hoped they could help Obama win North Carolina. He followed that up with the claim that Mitt Romney wanted to "unchain Wall Street." He then switched to a comic down-home accent and bellowed, "They're gonna put y'all back in chains!"

"Y'all"? Now I happen to think that 'y'all' is a wonderful Southern construction. If widely adopted, it would provide English with a genuine second person plural. However, when a politician from Delaware addresses a Southern audience with that word, whether White or Black, he is asking for trouble.

Obama is burdened with Biden. Romney now has Ryan. How is that going? I checked Gallup first. Their seven day average gives Romney a two point lead. No sign of a Ryan thrust or a Ryan drag, there. The other thing that Gallup displays prominently on the right of their main page is the President's approval rating. The three day average shows an approval/disapproval rating of 44%/50%. Those numbers have been moving south for Mr. Obama and haven't improved post-Ryan.

Gallup leads today with a poll of Obama's rating on individual issues. Here are the results:

That strikes me as, well, striking. President Obama gets strong approval on terrorism. That is, however, the only issue on which he is above 50% approval. Education and Foreign Affairs are the only issues on which he is above water. Look at Immigration, Jobs, the Economy, and the Deficit. His approval is in the 30's in each case, and disapproval is well over 50%. His worst showing is on the deficit and no wonder. Still, the numbers most likely to influence the election are jobs and the economy. According to the poll, a solid majority disapproves of his job performance. Those are dreadful numbers.

Obama's biggest problem of course is the appallingly weak economy. The AP surveys a number of measures: economic growth, consumer spending, jobs, income, and concludes that on all these measures this is the weakest economic recovery since the Second World War. If the election is a referendum on this, Obama would lose to Sarah Palin.

And yet, the race seems to be tied. Two possible interpretations of this occur to me at this moment and both may be right. When I and my son walked our backpacks up the hill to the Centennial Trailhead this morning, we found a number of cars there. One had an Obama-Biden sticker on the bumper. I spoke briefly to the owner, not about politics but about the trail he was about to hike, but he let it be known that he was bound for Oregon. I am guessing that he was one of the forty-plus percent that will vote for Obama no matter what. It might be that our body politic is so polarized that it no longer responds to contextual stimulus.

Another possibility is that there is a massive "Bradley Effect" in play. Poll respondents don't want to admit that they are not voting for Obama, for all sorts of interesting sociological reasons. However, when you ask them other questions…It is possible that the first is correct and the second applies to the diminished but potentially decisive independents.

Just right now Mitt Romney may be encouraged by two facts. One is that he and his running mate are drawing very large crowds. Even a very polarized electorate still has some play, as one pole may be more enthusiastic than the other. The second is that Romney seems to be doing very well among young voters. From the Washington Examiner:

For the first time since he began running for president, Republican Mitt Romney has the support of over 40 percent of America's youth vote, a troubling sign for President Obama who built his 2008 victory with the overwhelming support of younger, idealistic voters… In his latest poll, Obama receives just 49 percent of the youth vote when pitted against Romney, who received 41 percent…

Zogby speculates that Romney's selection of 42-year-old Rep. Paul Ryan helped turn more younger voters to him. "It could be his youthfulness," said Zogby of Ryan. Plus, he said, more younger voters are becoming libertarian, distrustful of current elected officials and worried that they are going to get stuck with the nation's looming fiscal bill.

"They want change," said Zogby.

"Change" is a fickle goddess. By definition, she only blesses a candidate once.

The Gorgias Election: the Doctor v. the Pastry Chef

In my favorite Platonic dialogue, the Gorgias, Socrates draws a contrast between sophism and rhetoric, which he regards as pseudo-sciences, and genuine political science. Sophists and rhetoricians have expertise, to be sure; however, they are experts only at telling people what they want to hear. The true political scientist, by contrast, tries to determine and then say what the people need to hear. The former are like cooks that offer you fattening foods and sugary drinks. The latter are like are like doctors and physical therapists.

Socrates is warned that, by challenging and embarrassing the sophisticated intelligentsia, he is likely to end up on trial and will be in a tight spot if that happens. Socrates agrees. He would be, he acknowledges, in the position of a dietician standing in the dock before a jury of children, charged and prosecuted by a pastry chef.

I know Socrates, intimately, and Mitt Romney is no Socrates. Neither is Paul Ryan, so far as I can tell. They belong to the tribe of politicians rather than to the tribe of doctors. Nor, I dare say, are the voters children. Nonetheless, by choosing Ryan as his running mate, Romney has put himself in a situation similar to the one described by Socrates. He has made the election about something: what we need to do but do not want to do.

Consider the condition of the body political and economic. Our economic growth is anemic. Labor force participation is at historic lows. Our yearly deficits have been running, for the last four years, at an average of 9% of the GDP, four times the historical average since WWII. Our major entitlement programs, Social Security and especially Medicare, are growing at a pace that is clearly unsustainable. If you project the trends of federal spending overall over the next several decades, you see a government on the road to insolvency and financial collapse. What is true of the federal government is true of many of our largest states, only faster. Their unfunded liabilities are enormous. We are already seeing a considerable number of large municipalities going bankrupt.

By choosing Ryan, Romney has taken the position of responsibility. We must put our fiscal house in order. The real threat to Social Security and Medicare as we know them is Social Security and Medicare as we know them. If you want to save them, you must stop ignoring the problems and deal with them. If you care about federal programs, or having a national defense, or having a police force and fire department, you are going to have to rein in deficits and reduce future interest payments. This is going to hurt. The pain, however, is inevitable. It will be worse the longer we wait. If you don't like the solutions in the Ryan plan, fine. Come up with solutions of your own.

The President has frequently acknowledged the problems I note here. He has failed to offer any plan to address them, nor has he tried to work with his allies in Congress to produce such a plan. We can be certain that he will not do so between now and Election Day. What he and his surrogates in the Press will do is try to alarm the jury. They will attempt to terrify seniors and women and pretty much everyone who has a stake in federal spending. The doctor is going to poke you with sharp needles! He is going to make you swallow awful medicine! He is going to take away your cheese cake!

Can the doctor party beat the pastry chef party in a major election? I don't know. The biggest task for the Romney campaign is to avoid being bogged down in details and keep the focus on the big questions. They must keep insisting that the things that worry most Americans right now-anemic economic growth and no jobs-are connected to the deficits and fiscal insolvency. You can't solve the one without addressing the other.

Conservative critics of the Ryan choice generally believe that this argument can't be won. People will always choose the pastry chef over the doctor. Romney can win only by running against Obama's terrible economic record. They may well be right. Romney has chosen the more responsible path. If Obama wins, he will have to produce four more years of budgets. Guess what they will look like. Romney will have had his day. Paul Ryan will have his. Besides, the rise of the Tea Party movement suggests that more than a few Americans are worried about the big picture.  

The tough part is what happens if Romney wins. Then he will have to do what Obama had not the courage or imagination to do. That will be very hard. I keep wondering why anyone wants that job.

Romney, Ryan, & the Veep Stakes

When was the last time that a nominee for President chose a good running mate? I am somewhat embarrassed that this question has not occurred to me before now. Let's look at the record. The last two Presidents got stuck with Joe Biden and Dick Cheney. Conservatives may admire Cheney for his council as VP, but it is hard to argue that he was anything other than a burden politically. As for Joe Biden, it is very hard to estimate his influence in the current White House. Politically, he has been a frequent embarrassment. Just ask yourself: when is the last time you have seen him lately?

Looking back at the losers over the same period, we have Sarah Palin, John Edwards, and Joe Liebermann. We now know beyond a shadow of a doubt that John Edwards was a disaster waiting to happen. Thanks to the protection of a sympathetic press, this scoundrel came perilously close to the Oval Office. Palin was a disaster that did happen, at least to John McCain. Maybe she was badly handled, but it is hard to think that she was not a very bad fit for the job. Joe Liebermann is the only one of the five who wasn't a drag as a running mate and might have been a good Veep and maybe even a good President. Of course, his own party tried to sabotage his reelection to the Senate. I am not sure whether that weakens the case for him or strengthens it.

Going back a bit further, we have Al Gore, Jack Kemp, Dan Quayle, and Lloyd Bentsen. That's a much better run: three serviceable picks and one disaster. Quayle was not ready for prime time and was dead weight. Kemp and Bentsen were good enough. Indeed, Bentsen was a lot better than the candidate Dukakis. It's hard to fault the choice of Al Gore. He was not a drag and won the popular vote in his bid for the White House.

That is a pretty mixed record: four reasonably good choices and five obvious mistakes. It is especially troubling when you consider that when a major party nominee picks a running mate, he comes as any one person ever comes to choosing the next president.

Rumor has it that Mitt Romney will announce his choice this weekend. Here is the shortlist, in no order, if the media is right:

1. Rob Portman (Senate-Ohio)
2. Marko Rubio (Senate-Florida)
3. Tim Pawlenty (former Governor-Minnesota)
4. Paul Ryan (US Rep-Wisconsin).

There are three obvious ways to divide this list. One is by disaster-detector. None of these choices look like Sarah Palin. Rubio is probably the least vetted, but he looks solid.

Another is by "swing state" influence. If it comes down to counting electoral votes, Portman and Rubio might make the difference. If Romney is counting on Wisconsin, he is probably counted out.

Finally, there is the choice between safe and daring. Portman and Pawlenty look safe. Rubio is daring. He might help Romney with the Hispanic vote. More plausibly, he might help Romney with independents or crossover Democrats who want to believe that Romney is a big tent kind of guy.

Paul Ryan would be the most daring choice of all. Ryan is a very articulate, personable, and intelligent politician. He looks good on camera. He is also the author of the Ryan Plan. That involves terrible risks. The Obama campaign will run hundreds of ads showing Romney/Ryan pushing grandma over the cliff.

It would also mean that Romney has decided to make this election about the real problem that faces these United States. Whatever you think of the Ryan plan, it is a plan. It is the only plan that anyone has offered that seriously addresses our long term fiscal problems. Maybe it's cruel and unusual, but neither the President nor the Democrats in Congress have offered any alternative.

As I was writing this post, AP reported that Romney has chosen Paul Ryan as his running mate. If so, the choice was an act of statesmanship on Romney's part. It means that this election will be about something. It will be about the fiscal solvency of the United States.

The Obama organization will continue to do what it has done so far: demonize the opposition. Obama may even be compelled to offer his own plan for reducing the budget deficits, but no one on either side will pay attention to it. We know by now what his promises are worth.

The election will then come down to fear vs. responsibility. I wouldn't bet my own money on the latter. If fear wins and Obama is reelected, we are in for four more years of trillion dollar deficits and denial. If responsibility wins, well, the Romney will have to take responsibility. Either way, this is the greatest show on earth.

What They Are Not Talking About When They Talk About Politics

One thing that seems to be true of recent elections, in the U.S. and in Europe, is how innocent they are of any concern, let alone debate, over the real issue facing all of us. One may say of the argument between the Obama and Romney campaigns over proposed changes in welfare regulations that it at least concerned a real issue. That is more than one can say about the quarrels over Romeny's business history. Still, this is not the problem that ought to be concentrating our attention.

You might think that the real issue is climate change. I don't think so for the simple reason that there is nothing we do about it; but if you are right you would still have to agree with my point. Whatever Obama and Romney are talking about right now, it isn't carbon emissions.

Here is the real issue that we are scrupulously ignoring, from Martin Hutchinson at Slate:

Uncle Sam just can't seem to stop living beyond his means. While U.S. consumer credit failed to match its June 2008 peak, outstanding debt of domestic U.S. non-financial sectors still stands at nearly 250 percent of GDP, against 232 percent just before the financial crisis hit. While the consumer has deleveraged a bit, business debt is flat and government borrowing has soared. At some point, this just has to end.

Economists Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff demonstrated that recessions preceded by a financial crash can be exceptionally deep and long, because of the reduction of debt that needs to occur before normal growth returns. Since 2008, with unprecedented levels of fiscal and monetary stimulus, no net U.S. deleveraging has occurred; rather the liabilities of non-financial sectors have grown faster than GDP. While households have cut back (partly through defaulting on mortgages and credit cards) from 97 percent of GDP to 83 percent, business debt kept pace with GDP and the government's balance sheet has soared from 57 percent of GDP to 89 percent.

If that is correct, all the stimulus spending we have been doing is only delaying the inevitable and ensuring that it will be more painful and injurious. Perhaps we can't return to previous periods of steady economic growth until we pay down the burdensome debt. I think that this is common sense.

The first stop will be the federal deficit, which inevitably must come down. The corporate sector will likely need more equity, which would dent stock prices generally. Though anathema to policymakers, higher real interest rates would allow consumers to rebuild savings and discourage further indebtedness. Whatever the solution, it's hard to see a trifecta of negative real interest rates, rising stock prices and trillion-dollar deficits lasting too much longer.

Okay. But what will have to happen for the federal deficit to be brought under control? Gabriel Horwitz and David Kendall writing in The Politico have a suggestion.

Democrats launched two great economic initiatives in the 1960s that would change the country. President Lyndon B. Johnson's Great Society declared a war on poverty and ushered in two of the nation's most crucial entitlement programs – Medicare and Medicaid. A few years earlier, President John F. Kennedy embarked on the New Frontier, an investment agenda to make the United States the world leader in space, communications, science, education and infrastructure.

Fifty years later, these two children of Democratic presidents have taken radically different paths. The younger child, the Great Society, has grown to be fat and happy. Counting Social Security, the three major entitlements grew from 15 percent of federal spending in the '60s to nearly 50 percent today. The older child, investments, is starved. NASA, the New Frontier's crown jewel, is a shell. Total spending over all federal investments, from highways to space stations to defense, has declined from one-third of our budget to one-seventh today. Is it any wonder our schools are average, our roads clogged and our scientists mostly imported?

It's time for Democrats, as parents of entitlement programs, to put them on a diet. And soon — because time is not on our side. Entitlements are set to go on a decades-long growth spurt starting this year, as baby boomers start retiring. At the same time, the Budget Control Act passed by Congress will further shrink investments. How much? Today, there is a $1 trillion gulf between spending on major entitlement programs and the money we devote to public investments. In 2022, the gap is expected to be $2.6 trillion.

This, of course, is the biggest problem we face. Our entitlement programs are on an unsustainable course even if you don't mind that they are starting to squeeze out all other spending. The fiscal crises that driving municipalities across the map into bankruptcy are not only microcosm of the macro-problem, they are more weight on the scale.

It is no wonder that this is not a campaign issue. Who wants to run for office by telling the public that everyone has to lose weight? I don't have any confidence that Mitt Romney, if he wins the White House, will have the courage or wisdom to address the problem. I am not even sure that any courage or wisdom would suffice, until the really grizzly crisis is upon us.

The only thing I am sure of is that the current occupant of the White House will spend the next four years, if he gets them, doing what he has been doing for the last four. He will ignore it. I am also pretty sure that the Democrats, if they retain control of the Senate, will continue to do what they have been doing for the last three years: failing to produce a budget.

Shameless Lies

I already understood that Mitt Romney was a very bad man, at least according to the Obama Campaign. I didn't imagine that he was actually a carcinogen.

That is about as dirty and mendacious as one could imagine a political ad to be, in this day and time. It piles one bald faced lie on top on another. As I pointed out previously, the "vampire capitalism" storyline about Bain and GST is false. Bain did not acquire GST to shut it down; rather, it invested $100 million in modernizing the plant. Though GST ultimately failed, Bain kept it alive for eight years.

As CNN reports, Joe Soptic's wife did not lose her health insurance when Soptic lost his job. She did not become ill "a short time later" but five years after the GST plant closed. Ms. Soptic's death is tragic to be sure. It is a vicious fabrication to blame it on Mitt Romney.

Much the same is true of Harry Reid's now infamous statement that Mitt Romney paid no taxes for ten years. From the Washington Post's Fact Checker:

"The word's out that he [Romney] hasn't paid any taxes for 10 years."

— Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Aug. 2, 2012

Reid has generated a lot of controversy with his claim that presumptive GOP nominee did not pay any taxes for 10 years. He originally told the Huffington Post that a person who had invested with Bain Capital had called his office and told him this. Then, he told reporters in Nevada that "I have had a number of people tell me that."

Reid refused to identify any of his "sources," and the claim is manifestly false.

Romney has refused to release more than two years of tax returns, citing a precedent that is not very credible; he earned three Pinocchios for that claim. Most presidential candidates in recent years have released more than two years of returns, so Romney may be paying a political price for failing to release more. But Romney's 2010 return and his estimated 2011 return do show that he paid substantial taxes in those years.

Fact Checker Kessler awards Reid four well-deserved Pinocchios. I would not go so far as George Will and call it "McCarthyism." Reid was not accusing Romney of treason. It is comparable. Like Joe McCarthy, Reid made a flamboyant accusation based on information he claimed to have but refused to show. For the leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate to make such a claim from the Senate floor makes him not just a liar but an utterly shameless liar. He doesn't care that he demeans himself, his office, or his chamber; he is willing to prostitute all those things to win an election.

I don't expect honesty in a political campaign. This is not the dirtiest Presidential campaign in American history, not by a long shot. It is almost certainly the dirtiest in decades. I make no claims here about the honesty of the Romney campaign. I do recall how Democrats persuaded themselves that they lost the White House in 2000 and 2004 only because the Republicans were willing to fight dirtier. If they lose this time, they won't be able to take refuge in such illusions. It doesn't get much dirtier or dishonest than what I have described above.

Famers Market Week

It's Farmers Market Week here in South Dakota, and I say two cheers. I love Farmers Markets. I had a wonderful meal at the Mercado de San Miguel in Madrid. It's not really a Farmers Market. It is an open air market with some produce and a lot of food and wine to be had cheap. Locals pick their tapas meals out there and eat them standing at high tables, as I did.

There is a great Farmers Market in St. Paul, within sight of Clouds In Water Zen Center. The market is so hippie-dippie that my earring hole opened up. The local Aberdeen Market is smaller, of course, but it has the same festive atmosphere and wonderful assortment of fragrance and color. I picked up a bag of large chili peppers. They were labeled "anchos", though I think that term is strictly correct only when they have been dried and smoked. They were poblanos, but I say close enough.

Buying locally is a great way to get good fresh food in its season. It is also a great way to meet and support some of the folks who actually grow what you put on your table. It's a lot of fun just to walk around in a Farmers Market. Let's raise that to two and a half cheers. If I cut the rating short by one cheer, it is only because I don't believe the major selling point that is these days made about "buying locally."

There is no reason to believe that it's better for the environment or somehow morally laudable to buy locally produced food. The environmental argument almost always turns on transportation costs. Food at a distance from where it is grown obviously has to be shipped. Planes, trains, and trucks burn fuel and belch out carbon. Food grown locally still usually has to be shipped, only not so far.

That would matter if the cost of transporting food from producer to consumer represented more than a small fraction of the energy invested/greenhouse gases produced between the seed row and your refrigerator. It doesn't. Christopher L. Weber and H. Scott Matthews published a paper in Environmental Science Technology in 2008 analyzing total greenhouse emissions for food production per U.S. household. They calculated the entire life cycle emissions. Here is part of their abstract:

We find that although food is transported long distances in general (1640 km delivery and 6760 km life-cycle supply chain on average) the GHG emissions associated with food are dominated by the production phase, contributing 83% of the average U.S. household's 8.1 t CO2e/yr footprint for food consumption. Transportation as a whole represents only 11% of life-cycle GHG emissions, and final delivery from producer to retail contributes only 4%.

That four percent is the bottom line in the context. Buying locally is not going to make more than a very small dent in the greenhouse emissions produced to feed you and me. That should not be surprising. Modern farming is energy intensive at a vast number of levels. Modern transportation is much less so. Buying locally now means that you might shave off an infinitesimal part of that four percent.

For that four percent to make a difference, we would have to radically restructure our food distribution systems. We aren't going to do that and there is no reason to think that it would help if we did. Small farms are not necessarily more efficient or cleaner than large ones. If anything the opposite is true, for the same reason that a family living in an apartment complex in an urban environment has a smaller carbon footprint than a family living in a house in Mayberry.

Some cities could switch to feeding their populations locally, but the savings in greenhouse gases and energy would be miniscule. There is a reason why food production is concentrated and some food is produced in some places rather than others: it's cheaper. Cheaper means lower energy costs and that has to mean lower emissions.

As to the moral argument, I like supporting local farmers and ranchers. I know some of these folks and they are literally salt of the earth. I am not sure that they would be better off if they were somehow denied access to national and international markets. I don't know anyone growing grapes in Chile, but I am sure that they are fine folks as well and I know they need to feed, house, and clothe themselves just like I do. Raising the standard of living in such faraway places might be just as morally laudable as benefitting my friends here at home.

So two and a half cheers for your local farmers market. They enrich the community and those poblano peppers will make for a wicked plate of fajitas. It might be best not to think that buying there makes you a better person or that you are saving the planet.

Batman v Occupy Gotham

Christopher Nolan's third and apparently final film in his Batman series is not nearly as good as the second film, if only because there can only be one Joker and very unfortunately there will never be another Heath Ledger. Still, it is a very good film and a fine end to this magnificent superhero trilogy. Both films were serious, in their way. This one might be more serious.

The Batman is hardly the only superhero to be closely associated with the essence of darkness. I would only mention The Shadow. More and more over time, however, the Batman came to be a figure of spiritual darkness, a good but haunted man in a world that seems to shape itself around his own inner demons. Bruce Wayne has something of a luxury, if you can call it that. His spiritual darkness takes physical shape in the world and so, from time to time, he can beat the living crap out of it. I am guessing that a lot of folks suffering from depression would gladly trade places with Bruce. The central questions regarding his character throughout the trilogy is whether he has a death wish (yes) and whether he is capable of denying it.

In The Dark Knight Rises, the Batman (Christian Bale) is coaxed out of retirement by a visit from Cat Woman (Anne Hathaway). For some reason she is never called "Cat Woman." Hathaway is one of those marvelous assets for any director: an actor with an unforgettable face and a range that, if rather narrow, comes alive in a variety of different dramatic contexts. When the Cat walks out of Wayne Manor wearing the necklace that once belonged to Bruce's mother, he is incurably infected with cat scratch fever. No Freudian interpretations will be considered here, except…

Bruce comes out of his seclusion just in time to confront Bane (Tom Hardy), basically a guy with a professional wrestler's body and a scary mouth-mask stolen from the alien in Predator. Above street level Gotham City is enjoying a period of peace. Below the streets, Bane is preparing something very nasty.

The film is long (two hours and forty-five minutes) and the plot is unwisely crowed here and there, but I can't say that I ever lost interest. The twin dramas of Bruce Wayne's salvation and Gotham's were handled in a compelling and satisfying way.

There is a lot of buzz about the political implications. They are there. Bane's army, both in the sewers and even more so when it emerges to take control of Gotham, does look an awful lot like an Occupy Wall Street crowd, only with weapons and without all the tobacco. Bane's minions conduct show trials of the rich, with judgment pronounced by a man sitting on top of a very large pile of desks. That image is probably the most brilliant one in the film. Bane promises that he is turning Gotham over to "the people". He promises that Gotham will survive. These are very cruel lies. His purpose is utterly nihilistic.

There is also a clear connection between Bane, once we learn his story, and Middle Eastern terrorism. I will avoid spoilers here, but the movie does exploit one truth very well. All revolutions, even the most laudable and benign, have a bit of nihilism mixed in. In the best cases, the revolutionaries recognize this and take precautions to control it. In the worst cases, and probably in most cases, the nihilistic element becomes a driving force.

That is clearly what Bane and "The League of Shadows" represents. There is something in the human soul that wants to tear everything down. It makes no difference to mention the legitimate grievances, for the grievances are merely what this spirit feeds on. We can't do without this part of the soul. It is probably necessary to human creativity, including the desire for liberty. We ought never to trust it too much. It all too easily becomes demonic and terrible. The Dark Knight Rises contains a serious meditation on this.

NBC Skewers Itself on the Barb of Racial Sensitivity

I am filing this one under schadenfreude. NBC stuck one of its lower paws in its mouth in a really big way last week. From The Examiner:

On Thursday night, just moments after 16 year-old Gabby Douglas won the gold medal in the women's individual all-around event at the 2012 Olympics in London, NBC took a commercial break where they ran an ad for their upcoming show, "Animal Kingdom". Keep in mind, this is a show NBC has been running ads for during the course of the first week of the Olympics. The ad features a monkey hanging on gymnastics rings.

Immediately after the ad was shown, social networking circles, particularly Twitter, blew up, claiming NBC was racist for showing a gymnastics monkey moments after an African-American girl won a gold medal at the Olympics. Before the break, anchor Bob Costas is talking about how Gabby's victory could inspire more African-American girls to become interested in gymnastics and then, boom, the ad.

There is nothing funny about Gabby Douglas. I watched her performance. Apart from the sheer perfection of it, I felt the same kind of tribal satisfaction that I enjoy when one of the Twins hits a homer off of a Yankee pitcher. Don't laugh, it has happened. Gabby is an all American hero. Go USA!

There is nothing funny about monkeys either. However, when NBC put the Animal Kingdom ad just after Bob Costas finished emphasizing Douglas' identity in a typical cliché, thus igniting a fire storm on Twitter, that made for something very funny. Imagine for a moment that Fox News had done something similar! The New York Times editorial staff would be all over that one.

No reasonable person can think that this had anything to do with racism. It was surely an accidental juxtaposition of two clips that had nothing to do with one another. I am guessing that the Costas remarks were live. It would have taken a very savvy and quick thinking technician to have guessed that the commercial in the queue would make for some very unfortunate culture chemistry.

Racism is a terrible thing. When it genuinely rears its ugly head, it needs to be called out. Unfortunately, it is frequently used as a weapon in political fisticuffs, mostly, but not exclusively, by the left. So Tea Party activists and virtually any critic of the present Administration are constantly accused of racism merely because they criticize a Present who happens to be an African American.

NBC's discomfort is amusing. It should not be an important part of the story of Gabby Douglas. Her racial identity is part of her story, to be sure. It is scarcely the most important part. She is a young woman of enormous talents who got the opportunity to show all of us how much beauty and grace the human being is capable of. That is an American story and a human story. It is, I trust, the story that will be remembered.

Chick-fil-A

I am just back from a quick trip to my ancestral soil in Northeast Arkansas. I have only one thing to confess: although I ate catfish, dry rub pork ribs, and a steak cooked over a possibly illegal charcoal fire, I did not eat at Chick-fil-A. I dearly wish I had done so. The WaPo explains:

It's not every day that the leader of a big business steps into a national debate that has the potential to offend many of its customers.

But Dan Cathy, president of the popular fast food chain Chick-fil-A, has done just that, saying on a radio show that "we're inviting God's judgment on our nation when we shake our fist at him and say we know better than you as to what constitutes a marriage. And I pray God's mercy on our generation that has such a prideful, arrogant attitude that thinks we have the audacity to redefine what marriage is all about."

Following backlash after those remarks, Cathy then told the Baptist Press in an article posted July 16 that he is "guilty as charged" and is very "supportive of the family — the biblical definition of the family unit."

That put Chick-fil-A into the boiling oil of the political kitchen. There are two issues involved in the "backlash". The first one is easy. Chicago Alderman Proco "Joe" Moreno promised to deny business permits to Chick-fil-A because he is offended by the views of its management. Mayor Rahm Emanuel backed him up. Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino made similar remarks.

This is blatantly unconstitutional. If government officials threaten to deny a person or a firm a business license because the former are offended by the political/religious opinions of the latter runs afoul of both the free speech and free exercise clauses of the First Amendment. The threats are probably hollow but they demonstrate that Moreno, Emanuel and Menino do not understand or do not care about civil liberties.

The propriety of boycotts and protests against Chick-fil-A is a trickier question. If I discovered that a restaurant I frequently visit made substantial contributions to causes I vehemently oppose, I would probably deny that firm my patronage. Most of us, myself included, don't worry a lot about this kind of thing simply because deciding where to eat is difficult enough. Still, it's reasonable to wonder how many pennies you fork over for a dinner are going to support some outfit that might give you indigestion. That is responsible consumer choice.

By contrast, the fact that the owners or managers of a company hold opinions that offend me should probably be irrelevant. Should a Jew refuse to enter a cab driven by a Muslim, or vice versa? That kind of thinking tears at the fabric of a liberal society. I may care what contributions Barnes and Noble makes when I buy a coffee to drink while I make use of their free Wi-Fi, but I probably shouldn't care (and I don't) what gods they pray to or what they think about abortion or female circumcision.

I am in favor of legal same sex marriage and so I am at odds with Dan Cathy. I think that freedom of speech and freedom of religion are more important and so I wish I had made it into a Chick-fil-A for a quick bite.