Archive for category National Politics
Western Conservative Summit Post Mortem
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Colorado Politics, National Politics on July 12th, 2010
This weekend marked the inaugural Western Conservative Summit. Given the lineup, it would have been a major event under any circumstances. It also marked the successful public branding of John Andrews’s second Colorado think tank, the Centennial Institute. Andrews, of course, was one of the founders of the Independence Institute way back when. That group has tended towards small-l libertarianism over the years, and while there’s probably little there that actually conflicts with most conservatives, II focuses on economic, budgetary, and regulatory issues, largely to the exclusion of social and foreign policy discussion.
The Centennial Institute is clearly intended to be something a little different, perhaps the seeds of a Rocky Mountain Claremont Institute, with which Andrews was associated with some years back. Rather than seeing the Founding as a great Libertarian (large-L) experiment, the Centennial Institute will attempt to promote the growing assertion of individual liberty as a logical destination of, rather than a deviation from, the country’s religious beginnings. It will also not contain itself to state or economic issues, but will take on the war on Islamism, immigration, and, one assumes eventually, social issues.
If so, this weekend’s summit set the tone. The highlights of the weekend for me were Rep. Michelle Bachman, Arthur Brooks of the American Enterprise Institute, Dennis Prager, and Dick Morris.
Rep. Bachman spoke of specific programs she wants to roll back or reform, and of the need to insist that new Congressional Republican leadership actually be what they’re all talking about being – committed to free-market ideas that work, and to rolling back so-called “progressive” legislation, followed by a detailed description of what such an agenda would look like. Her re-telling of the story of the Four Chaplains left me fighting back tears (Tom Tancredo later told me, “I don’t even try to fight them back.”) She’s a remarkably confident and engaging speaker, and to see her live is to see what all the fuss is about.
Arthur Brooks‘s talk was almost certainly the most content-laden, discussing how the debate over free enterprise vs. statism isn’t really an economic debate, but a cultural one. As long as we’re talking about the money, we lose. Free enterprise is a maintream value, one that maximizes not only wealth but also happiness, and the system that is, ultimately, the fairest. Conservatives need to make the moral case, not merely the economic case, for free markets. He backed that up with data, most of which I remember even without taking notes and without the benefit of power points. Brooks makes wonkishness accessible, and AEI is in for a long run of intellectual success under his leadership.
Prager’s talk was also somewhat unfocused and a bit more rambling than his usual fare. But he discussed his American Trinity with his usual entertaining aplomb. And Morris presented both the political landscape, and the governing as well as electoral challenges with conciseness and clarity.
Some of us who were looking for a little more wonkishness and a little less repeatition of the conference’s broad themes were disappointed by some of the presentations. Frank Gaffney, a A-lister on the subject of Islamism if ever there was one, misplayed his time by taking too long to introduce Lt. Gen. Boykin, leaving himself less time to discuss his own subject area. Michelle Malkin’s lunchtime talk was engaging, but lacked a theme. Foster Friess, who could have delivered a free market health-care talk to rival Brooks’s speech, wandered too much to be effective. These shouldn’t take away from what was achieved, but neither are they minor defects, and in future summits, one hopes that speakers can be persuaded to resist the temptation.
Judging from the turnout – over 600 people when 300 had been planned for – and the parade of candidates seeking to make their pitches to the crowd, it’s hard to call this anything but a major success for Colorado’s latest think-tank.
Union, er, No
Posted by Joshua Sharf in National Politics on June 8th, 2010
Much is being made of Big Labor’s stinging defeat in Arkansas, where Blanche Lincoln defeated the union’s hand-picked candidate, Bill Halter, to win re-nomination. Arkansas isn’t exactly a big Big Labor state, but still, this was about $10 million spent in an effort to send a message to Democrats about supporting card check and forced arbitration, and it failed.
What isn’t remembered is that this is the third major defeat for Big Labor Politics this year. The SEIU was a leader in efforts to defeat Scott Brown in Massachusetts, and we saw how that turned out. What slipped between the editorial cracks during the Turkish Flotilla (or as it’s known in the eastern Mediterranean, Fleet Week), was that the SEIU failed in its attempt to launch a third party candidate in North Carolina in several Congressional districts.
If I’m a union member with a defined benefit plan, I’m filing Beck paperwork yesterday, and putting that money into my retirement.
Can You Hear Us Now?
Posted by Joshua Sharf in National Politics on May 25th, 2010
In 1994, there was the Contract for America. Earlier this year, there was the Contract From America. The first was top-down, the second, bottom-up.
In the spirit of the latter, and of the Tea Party movement, this morning the House Republican Leadership has launched a new “listening” site, America Speaking Out, designed to solicit and aggregate ideas directly from voters–most likely in advance of the House GOP’s new version of Contract for America, (which they expect to release around Labor Day, as in 1994).
Sensitive to the fact that the Republican Party owes the Tea Party, rather than the other way around, the site itself is very low-key. Instead of hitting people over the head with the fact that the red-white-and-blue reminder that the Republican leadership is running this new site (although it includes all the appropriate disclaimers), the intent is clearly to create a site where people who have conservative and libertarian ideas can feel comfortable and contribute. In my estimation this simple, yet powerful, website has hit the mark in that regard (Twitter hashtag: #speakingout).
I’ve had a chance to tool around the site a little but, and it’s striving to be the garageband.com of conservative political ideas. Essentially, it’s entirely up to the public (with reporting and refereeing guardrails) to suggest, comment on, and vote on ideas, with the cream rising to the top. The risks inherent in such a site are obvious, but it appears that the House Republicans are banking that over time, the adults will sieze control of the conversation, while the trolls and wingnuts will lose interest. It’s an experiment worth watching.
There’s one essential difference between americaspeakingout.com and garageband.com, and it’s the cost of entry. There’s no cost to vote, share, or comment on either, but on garageband.com, the cost of entering a song is the cost of producing the song, which tends to weed out those who aren’t serious. There’s no cost at all to coming up with ideas, and there’s a fine line between putting the wackos out at the curb and appearing to put your thumb too heavily on the scale. This dynamic tends to exaggerate the risks of the trolls taking over the site. One possible alternative might be to charge a small fee to submit an idea, and to reward the winners with cash.
Eventually, of course, the Party will be judged on whether it walks the walk once it is returned to the majority. But right now it’s important that it listens sincerely while courting its natural, yet skeptical, allies who are providing the energy this election cycle–something House GOP Leadership clearly understands.
California Congressman, Kevin McCarthy, is leading the effort to produce the new contract and seems to have correctly decided that this year, top-down is a ticket out of, rather than back into, the majority. I’m currently pursuing him for an interview and hope to gain a little more insight into the project, how it will maintain quality control, or whether it’s really intended to be as free-wheeling as it seems. I hope to have more for you here later this week, but for now be sure to check out the site.
First, They Came For the Salt…
Posted by Joshua Sharf in National Politics on April 21st, 2010
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Obama Administration wants to do for potato chips what the Bush Administration did for the incandescent light bulb:
Packaged food and restaurant meals may face federal limits on sodium, following a report Tuesday from the Institute of Medicine that said high-salt diets are putting Americans at risk of high blood pressure and heart disease.
The institute, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences whose findings have significant influence on health policy decisions, said the Food and Drug Administration should set mandatory national standards for sodium content.
…
But changing the formula of well-loved food products is a risk for manufacturers: Consumers could be put-off by a low-salt version that doesn’t taste the same as the original. The White House and the institute are encouraging the industry to cut sodium collectively, so no one maker is at a competitive disadvantage.
It’s good to know, I suppose, that the President has enough time in-between golfing outings, to worry about this sort of thing. By the way, how’s that whole quitting smoking thing going?
But at another, it’s deeply disturbing, although increasingly typical, that the government feels the need to protect me from myself much of the time. This isn’t fluoride in the water, or even iodine in the salt, both of which are tasteless ways of improving a product already out there. I couldn’t add fluoride or iodine myself, even if I wanted to. This is about making it illegal for me to buy Lay’s potato chips as they are currently made. Because I can’t be trusted with them.
A friend of mine wanted to claim that it was Lay’s that couldn’t be trusted, but this is nonsense on stilts. Otherwise, there wouldn’t be a need to go after the whole industry, “so no one maker is at a competitive disadvantage.” Why would they be at a disadvantage? They could make – and do make – low-salt snacks. I suppose there’s a market segment there, and they make some money at it. But people, given a choice, and they are given a choice, prefer higher-salt snacks. So they must be protected from themselves.
Now, what’s the harm with wanting people to be healthier? Nothing, I suppose, except that the history of the Food Pyramid, and now the inverted Food Pyramid, and what tomorrow will probably be the Food Hourglass, show that the government really has only the vaguest idea of what diet makes us healthier as individuals, and probably worse than none at all about what will make us healthier as a whole population, where one man’s salt is another man’s poison.
But look at the difference between the logic here, and the logic that was used to pass “health” “care” , excuse me, “insurance” “reform.” In that case, we were (not) told, the government would have to make treatment decisions based on things like quality of life-adjusted years left to an individual. No point in giving that care to someone who wouldn’t suffer as much, and certainly no point in extending one’s suffering, even if the alternative was feeling nothing at all.
In this case, we’re told, quality of life, i.e, the ability to eat tasty food, is at odds with merely living longer. You’ll learn to enjoy eating food the way you’re told, but even if you don’t, at least you’ll be around to eat more of it.
What do they have in common? It’s that you need someone – older and wiser – telling you what to do. You’ll depend on them.
It may be a small thing, less salty potato chips, but it won’t end there. They’ll be after Coke not merely to offer Diet Coke, which I prefer, but to alter Coke Classic’s formula altogether. Only they’ll have to get Pepsi to go along so Coke isn’t at a competitive disadvantage. They’ll start regulating the sugar content in sugary foods. The fat content in those chips will have to come down, too, since that’s the real villain here. Battalions of regulators will have to be hired to descend on restaurants to test their menus’ contents.
It’s not that healthier choices will be available where none were before. It’s that the food that people prefer will simply disappear from shelves, like the corn chips on Super Bowl Sunday, in the picture.
Your life will be marginally poorer, but odds are, you won’t be any healthier for it.
Lipstick On a Pig
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Design, Economics, Stimulus on March 23rd, 2010
Bruce Nussbaum over at BusinessWeek reports that the Obama Administration has hired Edward Tufte, probably the most innovative data design guy around, to help explain the stimulus spending:
“I will be serving on the Recovery Independent Advisory Panel. This Panel advises The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, whose job is to track and explain $787 billion in recovery stimulus funds.”
Make no mistake. Tufte is brilliant. He didn’t invent either one of these graphs, but he popularized them in his book, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. In both cases, click to enlarge.
Here is a Paris train timetable:
And here is a chart of Napoleon’s Moscow campaign. The thickness of the line is proportional to the number of men remaining, and the bottom line is the temperature, which tracks from right to left, as it follows the retreat:
They’re brilliant, simple, clean, and convey huge amounts of information.
Nussbaum is right when he says that this is a smart choice, although I think just emphasizes that the Administration thinks their stimulus problem is one of presentation rather than substance. Bad data can’t be fixed by good presentation, at least not honestly, and I wonder if and when Tufte will get frustrated with the lousy data he’s being asked to present. In fact, it may almost be worse if he succeeds. We’ve seen how poor the stimulus data is already, and superb presentation will only act as propaganda.
For an example of equally inventive data visualization, see here. (h/t: Powerline)
Plus ca Change…
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Stimulus, World's Fair 1939 on March 11th, 2010
From Life magazine, about the WPA pavilion at the 1939 New York World’s Fair:
Last week, as controversy continued to gather over the newly completed WPA building at the World’s Fair, the exhibit seemed destined to become the nation’s No. 1 “boondoggle.” Designed primarily to acquaint Fair visitors with the scope and efficiency of the WPA, the exhibit has thus far created the opposite impression. To build it, $250,000 was appropriated. By the time the Fair opened the pavilion was incomplete and had already cost $544,000 according to its engineers. Though characterized as a relief project, it was discovered thst on one day only 17.7% of the men engaged in building it were relief workers.
Logomania
Posted by Joshua Sharf in National Politics on February 25th, 2010
So by now, most of you have seen the new logo for the Missile Defense Agency:
Look familiar?
Which got me thinking.
Department of Energy:
State Department:
Department of Transportation:
Movies & Parliaments & CFCs, Oh My!
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Health Care, Movies, National Politics on December 24th, 2009
Boy, you don’t see that very often. TCM is usually the paragon of accuracy, but they just credited some actress named, “Celeste Holmes,” when they meant Celeste Holm. Yes, she’s been married 5 times, but not to anyone named Holmes. I’ve never seen them do anything like that before, especially with an actress who’s not only still alive, but still working.
It also turns out that, contrary to popular mythology, beagles do not like blueberries. At least one beagle doesn’t.
I’m the last person on this and several other planets to realize this, but the Internet is, quite simply, the most amazing tool ever devised by the mind of man. Thirty-fice years ago, my father took me to a movie, a cartoon. I remember exactly one thing about it: something standing on a keyboard, saying that it was going to commit suicide and “go to that big typewriter in the sky.” Now 35 years ago, when you got to the theater at 12:30 for an 11:45 showing, you walked in, sat through the last half, and then sat through the first half, eventually uttering the words, “this is where we came in,” and left. That scene, the one with the suicidal something standing on a typewriter, was where we came in. So it’s also where we left. So it’s also the only thing I remembered.
I won’t say it kept me up nights. Lots of other worries to do that. And B.I. that would have been the end of it. But I would google the phrase every once in a while, and maybe some keywords like, “typewriter movie cartoon.” Nothing. Until finally, something. Which something is available streaming on Netflix. So I watched until I got to the scene I remembered, shouted “Aha!” in joyous triumph. And then I said, “this is where I came in,” and left.
…
There’s been a lot of discussion about the un-repealable sections of the Senate’s Health Care Assimilation. Let’s be clear – there is no such thing as an un-repealable law. Parliaments can’t bind future parliaments, and Congresses can’t bind future Congresses. The Democrats are claiming that this is merely a routine alteration in Senate procedure, as opposed to Seante rules, but in either case, the courts are unlikely to intervene.
But there it is in black and white: any attempt to repeal the rationing panels will “not be in order.”
Not so fast there, Slots. When the Republicans have retaken both houses, presumably the Senate and House parliamentarians will rule that their repeal measures are out of order. The chair will so rule. Or the chair will rule the other way. One side will move to over-rule the chair. At that point, all hell will break loose, but a vote will be taken. If the Republicans try to overrule the chair, then the Dems will try to grind process to a halt to avoid a vote. If the Dems are ruled against, the chair had better be damn sure he has the votes before making the ruling.
As of 2005, the chair can be overruled by a majority vote:
Appealing Rulings of the Chair. By House tradition, the presiding officer’s rulings on points of order raised by Members are seldom appealed. As a result, the House has a relatively large and consistent body of precedents based on rulings of the chair. If the chair’s ruling is appealed, the full House decides by majority vote whether to sustain or overrule this ruling. Because this vote is viewed as a serious test of the chair’s authority, it is typically settled along party lines, with the majority sustaining the chair. In contrast to the Senate, there are only a few situations when the House’s presiding officer does not rule on points of order.
In the Senate, the presiding officer’s rulings on points of order raised by Senators are frequently appealed. The full Senate votes on whether to sustain or overrule the ruling. Under Rule XX, the presiding officer has the option of submitting any question of order to the full Senate for a majority vote decision. He is required to submit questions of order that raise constitutional issues, and those concerning the germaneness or relevancy of amendments to appropriations bills, to the full Senate. Senate votes on appealed rulings of the chair, and on points of order submitted to the full body, often turn on the political concerns of the moment rather than on established Senate practices and procedures. As a result, the Senate has a smaller and less consistent body of precedents than does the House. Yet, because the Senate usually operates informally, it is a more precedent- than rule-regulated institution.
There’s a scene in Barbara Tuchman’s, The Proud Tower, where the Speaker of the House forces a debate on the so-called, “silent quorum,” where the minority could prevent a quorum by just refusing to answer the roll. It’s transcendent political theater, with a Texas congressman whetting his knife on his boots, other representatives storming the podium, congressmen vocally denying their presence. In the end, Speaker Thomas Reed (R-Maine) had his way. If this bill passes with such a provision, I for one would feel cheated if I didn’t get to see a similar scene play out on C-SPAN.
This is why it is critical that Republicans not just wash back into office on a wave of popular anger of what the bums have done. They have to win with a mandate to roll this thing back. They have to go in having made it politically palatable to vote that way, and they have to tie Obama personally to this legislation, and keep tying him to it. The large jump in Rasmussen’s “strongly disapprove” rating for Obama was almost certainly a result of the first cloture vote. The Dems aren’t operating inside a Beltway Bubble, but in an underground steel-reinforced titanium Beltway Bunker. But if the Republicans don’t promise to undo the damage, it may well end the party within a few election cycles.
…
Now it’s the CFCs. Funny, but about 20 years ago, a friend of mine named Ron Bailey wrote a book called, Ecoscam. The one credible threat that the enviros were tossing around was CFCs and the ozone hole. We did ban CFCs, and while it’s take a while for the last of them to waft their way up to the upper atmosphere, there to interact with radiation and destroy ozone, by 2000, CFC levels had begun to decline. Along with the earth’s temperature.
I don’t know if Prof. Lu is correct. But I do know that the jokers over at CRU were making it up, and that NASA was covering for them. I’m not willing to pay Physics Reports $31 to see a paper I’m not qualified to review. But it’ll be interesting to see what the scientific reaction is. So far, it’s all been blogs and newspapers. Eventually, we’ll see whether or not the establishment has learned the right lessons from Climategate, or whether they try to pretend that this paper, along with their own malfeasance, never happened.
But At Least You Keep It If You Keep Making the Payments
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Economics, National Politics on November 25th, 2009
At least we don’t have New York’s or Connecticut’s problem. The New Jersey Nets and associated developers have apparently won the right to take someone else’s property for their own use. Yes, it has to pass through the hands of the State of New York first. But the State Supreme Court has rules that New York can declare Atlantic Yards blighted, pay off the owners at some price the state determines, and turn the land over to developers for a new arena for the New Jersey Nets, as part of a mixed-use commercial and residential development. (That prize of a franchise, by the way, has opened the season 0-153.)
Remarkably, the Court declared that this was an act of judicial restraint, arguing that it was bound by the definition of “blight,” which was completely under the control of the legislature. As with the property in Kelo, the development may not even go forward because of financing. Some parts of the project have already been delayed or canceled because of the economy. The bonds must be issued quickly in order to qualify for certain tax breaks. The article is silent on whether or not the property will be condemned and transferred before the necessary development bonds are issued.
I have no particular opinion on whether the development would be good or bad for Brooklyn. Certainly, it’s better to finance this sort of thing privately rather than publicly. The history of sports arenas and their surrounding neighborhoods is mixed, with football stadiums being about the worst, and shared basketball-hockey arenas doing the best. Coors Field helped revitalize Lodo here in Denver, and the MCI Center (now the Verizon Center) has been a boon for a truly blighted area, downtown Washington, DC.
What’s at issue here is the sanctity of personal property. Aside from the ideological obscenity of taking your property to give it to someone else for their financial benefit, there’s the overall legal and investment environment that’s created when people don’t really own property that they believe they own. That sort of uncertainty has got to limit people’s willingness to invest in their land. And of course, it almost always results in a transfer of property from the less-well-connected to favored groups.
One footnote: this is the same property that the City of New York, in the person of Robert Moses, refused to use eminent domain for in order to build a new stadium for the Dodgers.
More On That Stimulus Money
Posted by Joshua Sharf in Budget, Colorado Politics, National Politics, Stimulus on November 17th, 2009
So I thought, for just a moment, that I had figured out just how Colorado’s Congressional delegation got expanded to upwards of 64 districts. There are two parts to the report – who got the contract and where the work will actually be done. So for this contract, the work is done at Ft. Drum, NY’s CD-23. And here, there’s no Congressional District at all, I suppose. But, alas, it turns out that Colorado’s 23rd Congressional District isn’t mentioned at all on the list, so that can’t be it. It would have made sense, them confusing our Bill Owens for their Bill Owens, but no.
So looking at the list of recipients, I see where Nederland Refrigeration, Air Conditioning, and Heating Corporation received $91,595. I’m not even going to ask.
And about that $912 that the Teller County School District received, that was apparently part of a larger, $10,037 grant. The $912 was for infrastructure, but the project description mentions none of that:
No jobs were created. Funding is being used to assist current employees in obtainining credentialing and improving educational background. Employees are also being trained to communicate with two Hispanic families moving into the area.
So no jobs were created. Current employees are getting to go to enrichment programs, which I’m sure will no doubt raise their market value when they decide to move, and someday may help their young charges do better at school, but hardly counts as “stimulative.” Likewise the Rosetta Stone software they’re getting for the new families moving in. No reason at all to use the money teaching those families English, which is of far greater economic value in an English-speaking country, one would think.
Ah, the Stimulus, the gift that keeps on giving, although not quite in the way it was advertised. Go look at the lists yourself! It’s hours of good, clean fun!