Money in politics

Pop quiz: how many of the top-ten political "heavy-hitters" over the last 21 years gave more than half of the money they raised to Republicans?

How many are for-profit corporations?

If I hadn't seen the data first, I would have guessed "about half" for both. Wrong!

The Center for Responsive Politics crunched the numbers; results here.

Defining away recession

Back in December, I predicted that the recession would last all year.

I should have thought more deeply about what economists mean when they talk about "recession." The standard definition is "two down quarters of GDP."

I didn't think about the definition of GDP. According to wikipedia:

The most common approach to measuring and quantifying GDP is the expenditure method:
GDP = private consumption + gross investment + government spending + (exports − imports)

Raise government spending, you raise GDP (by definition, assuming you're not crowding out private investment), and voila-- the recession is over! It's simple!

The government has been spending lots and lots of money, and yet unemployment continues to rise. I think it's time to either redefine "recession" or come up with a more relevant measure of how the economy's doing; the current definition make it way too easy for governments to game the numbers and declare "Mission Accomplished, Economy Back On Track."

I'm gonna vote for...

I'm gonna vote for Stephanie O'Keeffe on April 1'st. I knew that before going to the League of Women Voters Candidates Forum last night, because I've read her blog and talked with her at Town Meeting over the last year or two. My front lawn has been decorated with an O'Keeffe for Select Board lawn sign for a few weeks now; I think the endorsement I wrote for Stephanie's web site sums up why I'm so enthusiastic about her:

Thomas Jefferson wrote that ‘the whole art of government consists in the art of being honest.’ Stephanie is a master of that art, and is dedicated to making Amherst's government more honest and transparent. I'm supporting Stephanie for the Select Board because I belive her practical, rational, collaborative approach to solving problems will make the Select Board more efficient, effective, and relevant.

We'll get to vote for two Select Board candidates, so I was hoping that the candidate's forum would help me make up my mind on a second choice.

But I'm still torn.

Hwei-Ling Greeney has a lot of the same priorities as me (lets have efficient government, business development, keep our schools strong...) but I'm not sure her "independent voice" will really help move our Town forward. Compromise and consensus and collaboration are really important if you want to get things done.

Irv Rhodes stressed his wide experience, but I wanted to hear less about who he is and more about what he wants to do, and how he'll do it. That's tough to do in two minutes, but I thought Hwei-Ling and Stephanie and Diana managed to do it fairly well.

Diana Stein said that her background as a scientist would be useful on the Select Board; that appeals to me (I'm married to a scientist, after all), but I have questions about some of her economic ideas.

David Keenan was a hoot.

I did make up my mind after listening to Chrystel Romero and Catherine Sanderson, the candidates for School Committee. I thought Chrystel sounded like a politician-- I heard vague statements about the importance of giving the schools more money, and increasing diversity and making them more energy efficient.

I was very impressed with Catherine; she seems very "data-driven" -- she won't be satisfied with trying to solve problems, she will insist that results get measured so we know whether or not what we're doing in the schools is making things better.

That's a process I can support 100%...

---

EDITED 21 March: Changed to say that I agree with Hwei-Ling's priorities; I shouldn't say that I agree with "many of her ideas", because I really don't know enough about how to run a Town to know whether or not her ideas are practical.

John discovers irony

John McCain can't get out of public campaign financing because the Federal Election Commission can't meet because they don't have enough members (because some Senator named Barack put a hold on a nomination...).

So Mr. Campaign Finance Reform gets tripped up by the rules he helped pass. Oops.

Unfortunately, we'll probably see Yet More Rules to fix the problems with the first set of rules. "This time, we've got Campaign Finance Reform right!", they'll say. Until the lobbyists and special interests figure out how to game the new system, and we'll be right back to where we started.

Ian Ayres and Bruce Ackerman have a much better idea for true campaign finance reform:

We think that each candidate for office should open a "blind trust" with the election authorities into which all private donors must deposit their money. Politicians will no longer be able to determine who has given how much. As a consequence, it will be impossible for them to know whom to reward with special-interest legislation.

Money buying political influence is what all the campaign finance rules are supposed to prevent, right? So why not just make campaign donations anonymous; seems like a simple, clean solution to a messy problem.

Superpower Skeptic

Here's a thought experiment: would it be so terrible if the United States stopped being the world's military superpower?

What would happen if we reduced defense spending down to the level of, say, Australia (the 13'th largest defense budget in the world)? The US spends over half a trillion dollars a year on the military, Australia spends 14 billion dollars a year-- or roughly half a trillion dollars less than the US.

I was born in Australia-- it's a very nice country. As far as I can tell, Australia isn't suffering because it's not the World's Number One SuperPower. Like the US, it doesn't share any borders with unfriendly neighbors (but my mum tells me that a big worry down under in the sixties was the "Yellow Peril"-- that Chinese overpopulation would force them to invade).

Run the thought experiment in reverse-- what benefits would Australia get if it spent an extra half a trillion dollars a year and became the Worlds Greatest Fighting Force?

I know next to nothing about defense or foreign policy, so enlighten me-- besides bragging rights, what am I getting for that half a trillion dollars that I wouldn't get if we spent 20 billion dollars instead?

Government as Mommy or Daddy?

After getting elected to Amherst Town Meeting, I felt it was my duty to keep an open mind and try to see issues from all sides. So I'm trying to get a handle on exactly what it means to be "progressive," because I bet that's the label that most Town Meeting members would give themselves, if they were forced to choose a label.

Rob Kusner (bicycle riding Select Board guy, and arch-nemesis of bicycle riding Golf Course Crusader Larry Kelley) pointed me to George Lakoff and the Rockridge Institute.

I've read "On Freedom" and "Thinking Points," but found it really hard not to tear their pages up into tiny little pieces as I read, for two reasons:

1. I was looking for utilitarian arguments for the progressive agenda, and instead I found advice on making the progressive agenda palatable to The Masses.

2. I don't fit into either of the two fundamental political "frames." I felt like a Buddhist listening in on an argument between Muslims and Christians; I believe in a Middle Way that makes all their arguments about whether or not Christ was the Son of God or just a prophet irrelevant to me.

According to Mr. Lakoff, progressives argue using the "Nurturant Parent" frame. Conservatives, the "Strict Father" frame. That's true, but there's a third frame-- the "Government is Not My Parent" frame of libertarians. There's a comment on the Thinking Points discussion page that sums it up nicely:

The problem with both the "Strict Father" and "Nurturant Parent" models is that both assume We the People are mere children to be guided to and fro, by either a strict father or a "nurturant parent" (whatever that verbal gobbledygook means).

We're not. We the People ARE the government. You will not find the word "leader" anywhere in the U.S. Constitution. There's a reason for that. We don't elect our "leaders." We elect our "representatives." They are our deputies. They hold those positions by our consent, and are sworn to act on our behalf.

We the People are the source of civil legitimacy, and thus We the People are morally responsible for what our representatives, our deputies do.
-- crissieb

I'm proud to represent part of my neighborhood in Town Meeting. But I'll never forget that everybody who voted for me is a grown-up, capable of deciding for themselves what's best for them.

Right back at ya, Rudy

Rudy Giuliani sent me a letter today. He wants me to send him money, because (he says) I'll be safer from the Terrorists if he's President.

Here's my response:



Thanks for paying the postage, Rudy!

I may have to vote... Republican?!?!

More procrastination today. This time, watching Ron Paul at Google:



It's so nice to hear a candidate for president talking about principles, and concrete proposals for change. If he gets the Republican nomination (and nobody who knows anything about the nomination process thinks he will), then I think I'll have to vote for him, even though I have the following misgivings:

I think he's wrong about Global Warming (see his answer to a question at around minute 38 of the video). I think there is a true market failure when it comes to global environmental issues. I think it makes sense to try to quantify the imbalance we're causing in carbon emissions, and then impose some kind of carbon tax, with the money going directly towards research, development, and/or deployment of carbon sequestration technologies. That said, I have almost zero faith that our current political system could possibly create a rational, effective system for fighting global warming that wouldn't degenerate into Yet Another "corporate welfare" system like our current agricultural price support system.

I'm also skeptical that he'd be able to actually get things done; I have a feeling our Senators and Representatives will not appreciate him vetoing every single pork-filled piece of legislation that they send to him to sign, and I have a feeling President Paul wouldn't suddenly be willing to compromise his principles if he found himself in the Oval Office. Maybe 4 years of total legislative gridlock in Washington DC would show us that we don't really need the Federal Government as much as we think we do. In any case, it would be a very interesting experiment!

Things really ARE getting better

Amazing presentation by Hans Rosling of the Karolinska Institute in Sweden on the state of the world.

The Lunatic Fringe

It seems to me a lot of libertarians reason themselves into the lunatic fringes of politics.

I'll use gun control as an example, because it's an issue a lot of libertarians love to debate.

The extreme, lunatic fringe position is "anybody should be able to own any sort of weapon they want, and should be free to do whatever they like with it as long as they don't physically harm somebody else (or somebody else's property) with it."

BUT: I believe there are some weapons that need to be regulated because allowing joe-random-person to own them poses a significant risk to the well-being of me and my family. You gotta weigh that risk against the benefits of the weapons.

Take shoelaces: There's a risk there. You might decide to take off your shoelaces and choke me to death. I'm willing to live with that risk (heck, even our "chicken-little" government still lets your shoelaces onto airplanes). Pocket knives are maybe a little riskier (I bet you can kill somebody as easily with a shoelace as a pocket knife, though). Carving knives, axes, chain saws, crossbows, muzzle-loaded muskets, rifles, revolvers, machine guns, dynamite, hand grenades, shoulder-fired surface to air missiles, Sarin gas... there's a fairly continuous range of weapons that vary from "useful tools that can be dangerous" to "weapon of mass destruction."

I don't want my neighbor to keep a nuclear warhead in their basement. Even if she's the sanest person I know, there's a very small chance she'll go nuts and blow me up. That tiny risk, multiplied by the huge consequences, outweighs any benefits she might get from owning such a dangerous weapon (I have no idea what the benefits might be, but I don't collect things-- maybe it would be a status thing, and if owning nuclear weapons was legal you'd have rich collectors competing to see who had the biggest nuke...).

It seems to me most libertarians don't see that gun control is an argument in the middle, grey area between outlawing personal ownership of shoelaces and outlawing personal owernship of nuclear weapons. Most non-libertarians don't see that, either, but I think it would be really helpful if libertarians were more honest in acknowledging that there IS room for argument, and that reasonable people will have different tolerances for risk and different ideas about how much weight to give to the benefit of individual liberty.

Footnote: Personally, I'd say regulating anything that can kill more than, oh, 6 people in a short period of time is perfectly reasonable. That would include cars (plow your car into a crowd of people and you can probably kill a dozen or two), but wouldn't include small handguns or shoelaces.

Mostly...

I'm mostly a libertarian.

I used to be mostly a Democrat, but I've become both more cynical and more optimistic as I've grown older.

I'm cynical about the ability of Government to solve our problems. Most of the really big problems (wars, genocides, environmental destruction) are either the direct or indirect result of government.

I'm optimistic about people, though. Most people are good, and most of the really good things that happen in this world are the result of good people doing great things (how cool is penicillin? Or the Nature Conservancy? Or Wikipedia?).

I'm also optimistic about our future. Soothsayers have been predicting worldwide doom for thousands of years, but overall things are getting better all the time. We know more than our parents did, and learn from their mistakes, and we're getting better at remembering and learning and sharing.