Politics, Economics and other Stuff

Pater Galbraith News

The NYT reports:

Peter W. Galbraith, an influential former American ambassador, is a powerful voice on Iraq who helped shape the views of policy makers like Joseph R. Biden Jr. and John Kerry. In the summer of 2005, he was also an adviser to the Kurdish regional government as Iraq wrote its Constitution — tough and sensitive talks not least because of issues like how Iraq would divide its vast oil wealth.

Now Mr. Galbraith, 58, son of the renowned economist John Kenneth Galbraith, stands to earn perhaps a hundred million or more dollars as a result of his closeness to the Kurds, his relations with a Norwegian oil company and constitutional provisions he helped the Kurds extract.

In the constitutional negotiations, he helped the Kurds ram through provisions that gave their region — rather than the central Baghdad government — sole authority over many of their internal affairs, including clauses that he maintains will give the Kurds virtually complete control over all new oil finds on their territory.

Mr. Galbraith, widely viewed in Washington as a smart and bold foreign policy expert, has always described himself as an unpaid adviser to the Kurds, although he has spoken in general terms about having business interests in Kurdistan, as the north of Iraq is known.

So it came as a shock to many last month when a group of Norwegian investigative journalists at the newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv began publishing documents linking Mr. Galbraith to a specific Norwegian oil company with major contracts in Iraq.

Interviews by The New York Times with more than a dozen current and former government and business officials in Norway, France, Iraq, the United States and elsewhere, along with legal records and other documents, reveal in considerable detail that he received rights to an enormous stake in at least one of Kurdistan’s oil fields in the spring of 2004.

As it turns out, Mr. Galbraith received the rights after he helped negotiate a potentially lucrative contract that allowed the Norwegian oil company DNO to drill for oil in the promising Dohuk region of Kurdistan, the interviews and documents show.

He says his actions were proper because he was at the time a private citizen deeply involved in Kurdish causes, both in business and policy.

When drillers struck oil in a rich new field called Tawke in December 2005, no one but a handful of government and business officials and members of Mr. Galbraith’s inner circle knew that the constitutional provisions he had pushed through only months earlier could enrich him so handsomely.

As the scope of Mr. Galbraith’s financial interests in Kurdistan become clear, they have the potential to inflame some of Iraqis’ deepest fears, including conspiracy theories that the true reason for the American invasion of their country was to take its oil. It may not help that outside Kurdistan, Mr. Galbraith’s influential view that Iraq should be broken up along ethnic lines is considered offensive to many Iraqis’ nationalism. Mr. Biden and Mr. Kerry, who have been influenced by Mr. Galbraith’s thinking but do not advocate such a partitioning of the country, were not aware of Mr. Galbraith’s oil dealings in Iraq, aides to both politicians say.

Some officials say that his financial ties could raise serious questions about the integrity of the constitutional negotiations themselves. “The idea that an oil company was participating in the drafting of the Iraqi Constitution leaves me speechless,” said Feisal Amin al-Istrabadi, a principal drafter of the law that governed Iraq after the United States ceded control to an Iraqi government on June 28, 2004.

In effect, he said, the company “has a representative in the room, drafting.”

DNO’s chief executive, Helge Eide, confirmed that Mr. Galbraith helped negotiate the Tawke deal and advised the company during 2005. But Mr. Eide said that Mr. Galbraith acted solely as a political adviser and that the company never discussed the Constitution negotiations with him. “We certainly never did give any input, language or suggestions on the Constitution,” Mr. Eide said.

When the findings based on interviews by The Times and other research were presented to Mr. Galbraith last weekend, he responded in writing to The Times, confirming that he did work as a mediator between DNO and the Kurdish government until the oil contract was signed in the spring of 2004, and saying that he maintained an “ongoing business relationship” with the company throughout the constitutional negotiations in 2005 and later.

Mr. Galbraith says he held no official position in the United States or Iraq during this entire period and acted purely as a private citizen. He maintains that his largely undeclared dual role was entirely proper. He says that he was simply advocating positions that the Kurds had documented before his relationship with DNO even began.

“What is true is that I undertook business activities that were entirely consistent with my long-held policy views,” Mr. Galbraith said in his response. “I believe my work with DNO (and other companies) helped create the Kurdistan oil industry which helps provide Kurdistan an economic base for the autonomy its people almost unanimously desire.”

“So, while I may have had interests, I see no conflict,” Mr. Galbraith said.

Kurdish officials said that they were informed of Mr. Galbraith’s work for DNO and that they still considered him a friend and advocate. Mr. Galbraith said that during his work on the Constitution negotiations, the Kurds “did not pay me and they knew I was being paid by DNO.”

Mr. Istrabadi, who was also the Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations from 2004 to 2007, said the case was especially troubling given the influence of Mr. Galbraith’s policy views. In his writings — some of them on the Op-Ed page of The Times and in the New York Review of Books — he is generally identified as a former ambassador or with some other generic description that gives no insight into his business interests in the area.

Mr. Galbraith, for many years on the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has a long relationship with the Kurds. In 1988, he documented Saddam Hussein’s systematic campaign against the Kurds, including the use of gas. He served as United States ambassador to Croatia between 1993 and 1998. In September, he was fired as the No. 2 official with the United Nations mission in Afghanistan after he accused the head of the mission of concealing allegations of electoral fraud.

Views of Mr. Galbraith’s business ties are harsh within the central Baghdad government, which has long maintained, in stark opposition to Mr. Galbraith’s interpretation of the Constitution, that all the oil contracts signed by the Kurdish government were illegal.

Referring to the Constitution negotiations, Abdul-Hadi al-Hassani, vice chairman of the oil and gas committee in the Iraqi Parliament, said that Mr. Galbraith’s “interference was not justified, illegal and not right, particularly because he is involved in a company where his financial interests have been merged with the political interest.”

Citing what he said were confidentiality agreements, Mr. Galbraith refused to give details of his financial arrangement with the company, and the precise nature of his compensation remains unknown. But several officials, including Mr. Galbraith’s business partner in the deal, the Norwegian businessman Endre Rosjo, said that in addition to whatever consulting fees the company paid, he and Mr. Galbraith were together granted rights to 10 percent of the large Tawke field and possibly others.

An internal DNO document dated Dec. 3, 2006, which was first obtained by Dagens Naeringsliv, indicates that a company called Porcupine, registered in Delaware under Mr. Galbraith’s name, still held the rights to the 5 percent stake at that time, while a company associated with Mr. Rosjo held the other 5 percent.

Mr. Eide, the DNO executive, said that as far as the company knew, Mr. Galbraith’s work was proper.

“To our knowledge, Mr. Galbraith in 2004 was working as a businessman with no political assignments,” Mr. Eide said. “Given our network model and limited experience and knowledge from the region at that time, our evaluation concluded that we should use Mr. Galbraith to advise DNO in the first stage of the project.”

As revelations began appearing in recent weeks, Mr. Galbraith at first issued qualified denials stating that he had never been party to any arrangement in Iraq technically referred to in the oil industry as a production-sharing contract. But industry insiders say that the rights could have been couched in different terms — not an ownership stake, but a conditional right or option to become part of such an agreement at a future date.

Estimating the value of any stake in the Kurdish fields is difficult given the political uncertainties. But Are Martin Berntzen, an oil analyst at Oslo’s First Securities brokerage, said the Tawke field alone has proven reserves of about 230 million barrels, a figure likely to increase as new wells are drilled.

“Given no political risk, a 5 percent stake should be worth at least $115 million,” he said, though he emphasized that he knew nothing about Mr. Galbraith’s arrangement.

A possible indication of Mr. Galbraith’s estimate of the deal’s worth may be discerned in a London arbitration case in which Porcupine and a Yemeni investor who now apparently holds Mr. Rosjo’s former share are seeking more than $525 million from DNO, according to a filing reported on the legal news Web site Law.com. Oil analysts in Norway played down the likelihood of a reward as large as the claim.

According to DNO, the claim represents up to 10 percent of the value of the regional production contract, which the Norwegian oil firm now shares with a Turkish energy company after Kurdish authorities reviewed the previous deal and barred “certain third-party interests” from participating further. At a shareholders meeting on Wednesday, Mr. Eide refused to name Mr. Galbraith as a claimant in the case. He acknowledged, however, that DNO lost a procedural ruling in the case last May, and he said a final decision on damages was expected in early 2010.

In his response, Mr. Galbraith would say only that “my contractual relationship was with DNO and is the subject of pending arbitration.”

South Park does Glenn Beck

Pretty good, but not quite so strong on the finish.  Wait a bit for the episode to load. 

Taxes vs Cap and Trade: the international dimension

David A. Weisbach (Chicago) has posted Instrument Choice is Instrument Design on SSRN.  Here is the abstract (via TaxProf blog):

This paper analyzes the choice between taxes and cap and trade systems (also referred to here as a permit system or a quantity restriction) as methods of controlling greenhouse gas emissions. It argues that in the domestic context, with proper design, the two instruments are essentially the same. Commonly discussed differences in the two instruments are due to unjustified assumptions about design. In the climate change context and within a single country there is sufficient design flexibility that these differences can be substantially eliminated. To the extent that there are remaining differences, there should be a modest preference for taxes, but the benefits of taxes are swamped by the benefits of good design; even though the very best tax might be better than the very best quantity restriction, the first order of business is getting the design right.

In the international context, however, taxes dominate more strongly. The design flexibility available within a single country is reduced in the international context because of the problems of coordinating systems across countries and minimizing holdouts. Moreover, the incentives to cheat and the effects of cheating are not equivalent for the two instruments in the international setting. Because climate change will require a global system for emissions, these considerations mean we should favor taxes for controlling greenhouse gas emissions.

I have pretty clear cut preferences for emission taxes over cap and trade schemes, partly for international coordination and political economy reasons.  So it is nice to see that topic come up -- it seem surprisingly absent in the discussion.   Not clear if Weisbach's analysis holds up under scrutiny, but it seems like analyzing the international dimension is essential for understanding how these schemes are going to work. 

And together, they fight crime!

from Fistful of Euros:

A Vietnamese immigrant, brought from that war-torn country as a tiny child.

A baron, the grandson of a princess, who lives in his family’s five-hundred year old castle.

A widow who once worked for the patent office.

A paraplegic.

A huffy gay man.

A former captain of paratroopers.

A mother of seven.

They are…

…Germany’s new conservative Cabinet.

Not sure this counts as a Cabinet that 'looks like Germany'. Actually, in terms of the demographics not too bad.  A younger group than I would expect, but that may relate to the need for 'freshness' (i.e. lack of scandals and previous bad publicity).  For instance Rösler is 36, von Guttenberg 37, both in positions (Health, Defense) that could be career damaging in the current environment.  

A Vietnamese immigrant, brought from that war-torn country as a tiny child.

A baron, the grandson of a princess, who lives in his family’s five-hundred year old castle.

A widow who once worked for the patent office.

A paraplegic.

A huffy gay man.

A former captain of paratroopers.

A mother of seven.

They are…

…Germany’s new conservative Cabinet.

Not sure this counts as a Cabinet that 'looks like Germany'. Actually, in terms of the demographics not too bad.  A younger group than I would expect, but that may relate to the need for 'freshness' (i.e. lack of scandals and previous bad publicity).  For instance Rösler is 36, von Guttenberg 37, both in positions (Health, Defense) that could be career damaging in the current environment.  

Standardized State School Testing

The WSJ reports:

More states lowered their standards for academic proficiency in recent years than raised them, and nearly all used exams that fell short of federal testing benchmarks, according to a new study.

The research, issued by the U.S. Department of Education, called into question the rigor of tests that states select to comply with student-improvement mandates of the federal No Child Left Behind law. It also cast doubt on claims of educational progress made by many states.

Education Department analysts found that 15 states lowered their proficiency standard on at least one fourth- or eighth-grade test of reading or math between 2005 and 2007. Eight states raised the bar.

States have long been suspected of lowering testing standards to show improvement under the NCLB law. The fresh research is sure to figure into the debate over reauthorization of the law, which has been attacked both by conservatives and liberals.

The federal law requires all students to be proficient in reading and math by 2014, but leaves to each state the job of measuring achievement.

Which lead me to look up the report.  From the summary:

• Most of the variation (approximately 70 percent) from state to state in the percentage of students scoring proficient or above on state tests can be explained by the variation in the level of difficulty of state standards for proficient performance.
• In both reading and mathematics, the 29- to 30-point distance separating the five highest and the five lowest NAEP scale equivalent of state standards for proficient performance was nearly as large as the 35 points that represent approximately one standard deviation in student achievement on the NAEP scale.

Not that it is clear to me what standards should be, state or federal. 

The Nuclear Option is starting to look good

Richard Yeselson writes:

We are living through the Californiafication of America--a country in which the combination of a determined minority and a procedural supermajority legislative requirement makes it impossible to rationally address public policy challenges. And thus the Democratic president and his allies in Congress are evaluated on the basis of extreme compromise measures--supplicating to dispassionate Wise Men like Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman, buying Olympia Snowe a vacation home, working bills through 76 committees and countless "procedural" votes--rather than the substantive, policy achievements of bills that would merely require a simple majority to pass.

It is sheer good fortune that the Democrats had 59/60 Senate seats this cycle and thus were able to pass any stimulus at all, albeit the inadequate one they did. Think about it: With a robust 56 Senate Democratic seats, the stimulus would have failed--and otherwise, Galston/Brooks would be talking not about Obama’s "going too far," but, rather, about a "failed Obama presidency." And they would be wrong. What we would be witnessing--and are still witnessing--is a failed system of democratic governance. It’s something procedural liberals should be deeply concerned about and should remedy as quickly as possible.

Which starts to make the establishment of majority voting in the Senate attractive.  Back in 2005 the 'nuclear option' got a bit of play, with Republicans thinking about abolishing the filibuster for judicial nominations.  I blogged about it quite a bit, but I never got up the courage to fully endorse the nuclear option then.  But, even if silent, I liked the idea, since supermajority voting creates very bad incentives in legislatures: with supermajority voting a member of the opposition party has the pivotal vote if the governing party does not have a large majority, and it often is in that representative's interest to create bad legislative outcomes, since voters will in the next election vote against the majority party and turn towards the opposition party.  Not the way you want to run a country or a state. 

So when are supermajority rules a good idea?  Well, the obvious case is when societies are so divided that minorities will not accept majority rule without extra-parliamentary action (like violence or secession -- in private organizations supermajority rules make sense since...hm, good question), so supermajority rules just anticipate that reality in a lower cost fashion.  Nevertheless, in most cases constitutional rules protecting minority interest are probably preferable, since that maintains an accountable legislative process.     Good question...when do you get (efficient) non-legislative supermajority rules? 

It also raises the question why the filibuster persists.  Seems mostly like a private benefit for Senators to me.  

Update #1: Robert Powell has an APSR article, The Inefficient Use of Power: Costly Conflict with Complete Information, which seems to argue, and I'm interpreting here after just having skimmed the paper, that  socially inefficient legislative entrenchment with supermajority rules occurs when legislative power shifts are sufficiently volatile and predictable, i.e. designed to undercut legislative accountability (though not quite in the perverse 'we give you bad stuff so you vote against our opponents' way I outlined above -- just in the 'you still get what you voted against' way).  

Tax Structure and State Objectives

Bruce Bartlett recommends Junko Kato's book Regressive taxation and the welfare state: path dependence and policy diffusion.  I'd not heard of this book, though I read Kato's first book when it came out.  Since this is an important and timely topic, I googled some of the recent literature.  There's more out there, but these papers that seem to state one perspective, a perspective I'm quite sympathetic to, succinctly. Though I'm not sure political scientists fully understand that labels don't necessarily indicate tax incidence -- or maybe they just need to get their papers out the door. 

Jeffrey F. Timmons, The Fiscal Contract: States, Taxes and Public Services

Using data from approximately 90 countries, I show that the more a state taxes the rich as a percentage of GDP, the more it protects property rights; the more it taxes the poor, the more it provides basic public services. The catch is that total revenue typically has no effect on property rights or basic public services. Furthermore, there is no evidence that states tax the rich to benefit the poor or vice-versa, contrary to state-capture theories; nor is there any evidence that taxes and spending are unrelated, contrary to state-autonomy models. Instead, states operate much like fiscal contracts, with groups getting what they pay for.

Jeffrey F. Timmons, Left, Right and Center: Partisanship, taxes and the welfare state

This article argues that partisans tax their supporters, challenging, in particular, the notions that the welfare state is primarily an instrument of redistribution and that left wing governments tax the rich to benefit the poor. Using insights from the tax compliance literature, data for 18 OECD countries from 1970-1999 and historical vignettes from the 1950s onward, I show that countries with more long-term left influence finance welfare expenditure primarily through regressive taxes on consumption and labor, rather than progressive ones on income and capital. Furthermore, I provide preliminary evidence showing that countries with more right wing influence raise more revenue from income and capital. These findings indicate that conventional accounts of partisanship, taxation and the welfare state need re-evaluating. While left wing and center parties have been vital for the development of the welfare state, the extent of redistribution is exaggerated. Political parties act like insurance agents, not Robin Hood.

Thomas R. Cusack and Pablo Beramendi, Taxing Work: Some Political and Economic Aspects of Labor Income Taxation

This paper examines the development of tax regimes across the OECD countries in the latter part of the 20th century. It pays particular attention to taxes on labor income. A number of results emerge from this examination. First, not only do taxes on labor income represent a major drain on private households; they have become the mainstay of many of these countries’ public sector finances. Second, taxes on labor income, and not taxes on capital, appear to be the preferred instrument of finance for those economic and political interests that advocate and support a strong (and thereby expensive) welfare state. There is little “free lunch” to be had in these welfare states; if anything, “socialism in one class” seems to be the rule. Third, while the effort at financing the welfare state this way comes at cost in terms of loss in employment, the magnitude of such loss is inversely related to the degree of wage coordination in the labor market.

Also nice is Thomas R. Cusack, Torben Iversen, David Soskice, Economic Interests and the Origins of Electoral Systems

The standard explanation for the choice of electoral institutions, building on Rokkan’s seminal work, is that proportional representation (PR) was adopted by a divided right to defend its class interests against a rising left. But new evidence shows that PR strengthens the left and redistribution, and we argue the standard view is wrong historically, analytically, and empirically. We offer a radically different explanation. Integrating two opposed interpretations of PR – minimum winning coalitions versus consensus – we propose that the right adopted PR when their support for consensual regulatory frameworks, especially of labor markets and skill formation where co-specific investments were important, outweighed their opposition to the redistributive consequences; this occurred in countries with previously densely organized local economies. In countries with adversarial industrial relations, and weak coordination of business and unions, keeping majoritarian institutions helped contain the left. This explains the close association between current varieties of capitalism and electoral institutions, and why they persist over time.

What counts as evidence for any of these views is the hard part...

Baden-Württemberg has a Ministerpresident from Mühlacker

I can't keep track.  Stefan Mappus, born 1966.  The Faz and the SZ report...there seems to be a certain lack of enthusiasm for Mappus, but also the recognition that Oettinger was, well, what the word?   Not clear to me what happened, except for Merkel getting her ducks in a row (a la system Kohl?):

Für alle in der baden-württembergischen CDU kamen die Entwicklungen der vergangenen Tage überraschend. Das gilt auch für Oettinger, den am Donnerstagnachmittag aus dem Kanzleramt die Bitte um Rückruf erreichte. Im Gespräch mit Angela Merkel erbat er sich ausreichend Bedenkzeit für den Schritt, den er am Samstag als Chance bezeichnete, die er nicht auslassen könne. Die Kanzlerin drängte aber, schließlich musste die Personalie auch in den Koalitionsverhandlungen, die kurz vor dem Abschluss standen, zum Thema gemacht werden.

Einen Tag, bis Freitag, habe er Bedenkzeit, sagte sie und bat Oettinger um strikte Diskretion. Der beriet das Angebot daraufhin im engsten privaten Kreis - und sagte zu. Erst am Samstag sickerte die Information langsam aus den Ritzen der nordrhein-westfälischen Landesvertretung, wo die Koalitionäre tagten.  ...

Letztlich ist Mappus schon seit Jahren damit beschäftigt, Ministerpräsident von Baden-Württemberg zu werden. Aber die Ideen und Programme, die ihm in dieser Zeit eingefallen sind, verrät er entweder noch nicht - oder es ist ihm noch kein überzeugender Einfall gekommen.

Der bisherige Fraktionschef Mappus steht bei manchen in Stuttgart im Verdacht, eine Art autoritäres Regime etablieren zu wollen. Einigkeit in der Partei besteht für ihn darin, dass man es so macht, wie er will. Manche in der Fraktion haben fast Angst vor ihm.

Franz Josef Strauß ist eines seiner Vorbilder, wobei ihm seine Gegner zugestehen, dass er eine körperliche Ähnlichkeit mit Strauß besitzt und wie Strauß den Pilotenschein. Letztlich weiß man bei Mappus aber nicht genau, ob er wirklich konservativ ist, oder ob das einfach die Nische ist, die sich anbot.

Smoke filled rooms and a pretty critical press. I assume his looks are important for the public's perception.  (photo)

Update #1: I'm not trying to fight the culture wars here...still, what is going on? 

Raising the VAT and the official pension age

The SPD is trying to analyze it severe election defeat.  From Sigmar Gabriel, the party's expected new leader, this week:

[D]ie Agenda-Auseinandersetzung in unserer SPD hat wie
ein Treibsatz gewirkt und letztlich das Entstehen einer zweiten
Abspaltung (nach den Grünen in den 70er Jahren) bewirkt. Und Themen
wie die Rente mit 67 oder auch die Mehrwertsteuererhöhung in der
großen Koalition hat die Glaubwürdigkeit der SPD tief erschüttert.
Viele unserer Erfolge (z.B. das Ganztagsschulprogramm in der Agenda
2010, der Atomausstieg, die Erneuerbaren Energien mit ihren 280.000
neuen Jobs usw. usw.) sind nicht sichtbar geworden, obwohl wir hart
dafür gestritten haben.

“Medicare Part E”

Rebranding the public option:

Say hello to “Medicare Part E” — as in, “Medicare for Everyone.”

House Democrats are looking at re-branding the public health insurance option as Medicare, an established government healthcare program that is better known than the public option. ...

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) planned to unveil a proposal to her caucus Tuesday night that would include the public option favored by liberals in the healthcare bill Democrats want to bring to the floor,  according to two House sources.

The plan, called the “robust” option or “Medicare Plus 5” in the jargon that has emerged on Capitol Hill, ties provider reimbursement rates to Medicare, adding 5 percent. Leaders are planning to roll the bill out next week, and are hoping to vote the first week in November

Some Democrats say there’s no need to rename a legislative concept that’s gained steadily in support since being lambasted as a “government takeover” in August.  A Washington Post-ABC poll published Tuesday showed 57 percent of the public supports the idea — up five points since August — while 40 percent opposes it.

“It keeps polling better and better as a public health insurance option,” said a senior Democratic aide. “I don’t think it’s changing.” Polling experts, however, have documented that many people don’t know what a public option is, and that small changes in language can cause poll results to vary widely.

via Sullivan

'Inquiry fails to find single trafficker who forced anybody into prostitution'

It seems the UK has been running a large scale police operation to attack trafficking in women this year, and The Guardian writes up the results very forcefully -- quite astounding press coverage from a top tier newspaper.  Not sure what to make of this, but I it would be good to know more.  Part of the context is a new criminal bill before Parliament.  Two articles: 

The UK's biggest ever investigation of sex trafficking failed to find a single person who had forced anybody into prostitution in spite of hundreds of raids on sex workers in a six-month campaign by government departments, specialist agencies and every police force in the country.

The failure has been disclosed by a Guardian investigation which also suggests that the scale of and nature of sex trafficking into the UK has been exaggerated by politicians and media.

Current and former ministers have claimed that thousands of women have been imported into the UK and forced to work as sex slaves, but most of these statements were either based on distortions of quoted sources or fabrications without any source at all.

While some prosecutions have been made, the Guardian investigation suggests the number of people who have been brought into the UK and forced against their will into prostitution is much smaller than claimed; and that the problem of trafficking is one of a cluster of factors which expose sex workers to coercion and exploitation. ...

When police in July last year announced the results of Operation Pentameter Two, Jacqui Smith, then home secretary, hailed it as "a great success". Its operational head, Tim Brain, said it had seriously disrupted organised crime networks responsible for human trafficking. "The figures show how successful we have been in achieving our goals," he said.

Those figures credited Pentameter with "arresting 528 criminals associated with one of the worst crimes threatening our society".  But an internal police analysis of Pentameter, obtained by the Guardian after a lengthy legal struggle, paints a very different picture.

The analysis, produced by the police Human Trafficking Centre in Sheffield and marked "restricted", suggests there was a striking shortage of sex traffickers to be found in spite of six months of effort by all 55 police forces in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland together with the UK Border Agency, the Serious and Organised Crime Agency, the Foreign Office, the Northern Ireland Office, the Scottish government, the Crown Prosecution Service and various NGOs in what was trumpeted as "the largest ever police crackdown on human trafficking".

The analysis reveals that 10 of the 55 police forces never found anyone to arrest. And 122 of the 528 arrests announced by police never happened: they were wrongly recorded either through honest bureaucratic error or apparent deceit by forces trying to chalk up arrests which they had not made. Among the 406 real arrests, more than half of those arrested (230) were women, and most were never implicated in trafficking at all.

Of the 406 real arrests, 153 had been released weeks before the police announced the success of the operation: 106 of them without any charge at all and 47 after being cautioned for minor offences. Most of the remaining 253 were not accused of trafficking: 73 were charged with immigration breaches; 76 were eventually convicted of non-trafficking offences involving drugs, driving or management of a brothel; others died, absconded or disappeared off police records.

Although police described the operation as "the culmination of months of planning and intelligence-gathering from all those stakeholders involved", the reality was that, during six months of national effort, they found only 96 people to arrest for trafficking, of whom 67 were charged.

Forty-seven of those never made it to court.

Only 22 people were finally prosecuted for trafficking, including two women who had originally been "rescued" as supposed victims. Seven of them were acquitted. The end result was that, after raiding 822 brothels, flats and massage parlours all over the UK, Pentameter finally convicted of trafficking a grand total of only 15 men and women.

Police claimed that Pentameter used the international definition of sex trafficking contained in the UN's Palermo protocol, which involves the use of coercion or deceit to transport an unwilling man or woman into prostitution. But, in reality, Pentameter used a very different definition, from the UK's 2003 Sexual Offences Act, which makes it an offence to transport a man or woman into prostitution even if this involves assisting a willing sex worker.

 Internal police documents reveal that 10 of Pentameter's 15 convictions were of men and women who were jailed on the basis that there was no evidence of their coercing the prostitutes they had worked with. There were just five men who were convicted of importing women and forcing them to work as prostitutes. These genuinely were traffickers, but none of them was detected by Pentameter, although its investigations are still continuing.

 Two of them — Zhen Xu and Fei Zhang — had been in custody since March 2007, a clear seven months before Pentameter started work in October 2007.

The other three,  Ali Arslan, Edward Facuna and Roman Pacan,  were arrested and charged as a result of an operation which began when a female victim went to police in April 2006, well over a year before Pentameter Two began, although the arrests were made while Pentameter was running.

It appears that in the UK criminal cases actually go to court.  In the US most accused plea bargain, since going to court is too risky, which means that the US court system doesn't reign in enforcement panics like this one in the UK.  This also appears to mean that lesser charges in the UK actually mean the main charge couldn't be proven, not that a plea was entered to a lesser charge in exchange for the main charge being dropped.  But that's me speculating...

Not the sort of press coverage I'd like to wake up to if I were involved. 

Effects of Starve the Beast Theory?

Bruce Bartlett, Supply-Side Economics, R.I.P.

During the George W. Bush years, however, I think SSE [supply side economics] became distorted into something that is, frankly, nuts--the ideas that there is no economic problem that cannot be cured with more and bigger tax cuts, that all tax cuts are equally beneficial, and that all tax cuts raise revenue.

These incorrect ideas led to the enactment of many tax cuts that had no meaningful effect on economic performance. Many were just give-aways to favored Republican constituencies, little different, substantively, from government spending. What, after all, is the difference between a direct spending program and a refundable tax credit? Nothing, really, except that Republicans oppose the first because it represents Big Government while they support the latter because it is a "tax cut."

I think these sorts of semantic differences cloud economic decisionmaking rather than contributing to it. As a consequence, we now have a tax code riddled with tax credits and other tax schemes of dubious merit, expiring provisions that never expire, and an income tax that fully exempts almost on half of tax filers from paying even a penny to support the general operations of the federal government.

The supply-siders are to a large extent responsible for this mess, myself included. We opened Pandora's Box when we got the Republican Party to abandon the balanced budget as its signature economic policy and adopt tax cuts as its raison d'être. In particular, the idea that tax cuts will "starve the beast" and automatically shrink the size of government is extremely pernicious.

Indeed, by destroying the balanced budget constraint, starve-the-beast theory actually opened the flood gates of spending. As I explained in a recent column, a key reason why deficits restrained spending in the past is because they led to politically unpopular tax increases. But if, as Republicans now maintain, taxes must never be increased at any time for any reason then there is never any political cost to raising spending and cutting taxes at the same time, as the Bush 43 administration and a Republican Congress did year after year. 

Not sure how exactly to think about this theoretically or what the evidence shows in terms of recent history.  I have paid attention to this for the last 25 years or more.  May be time to take another look.  Republicans did raise taxes under Reagan and Bush I, so this is only Bush II, not enough evidence in itself.    The crazy uninformed version of anti-tax ideology is a problem, but it is not clear how much that is a new phenomena and if its effects have changed that much.  But it may be true that sensible Republican tax raisers are thinner on the ground than they used to be.  Which may make our future come out less well than it might.   

Also, I don't see many open flood gates of spending -- just medical entitlements, mostly Medicare and, on a much lesser level, prison spending.  Military spending is high, but less than in the past, though in a much more benign international environment.  Education spending could be more efficient, but it's not over the top, same for infrastructure spending. 

Where people without health insurance live

Floyd Norris of the NYT writes (via. Razib):

Those who lack health insurance now are far more likely to live in states that usually vote Republican — the states whose senators and representatives are least likely to support a law to extend coverage.

That would seem to indicate that Republican constituents are the ones who would most benefit from passage of universal health insurance coverage. But an analysis of Congressional districts within those states indicates that those without health insurance are much more likely to live in strongly Democratic Congressional districts. Many of those contain large minority populations with relatively low incomes.

Texas  is the #1 example.  It would be good to know more.  These are stark differences, not marginal differences in insurance coverage and voting at the Congressional district level.  (map)

Update #1: looking at the map (which is for the population with < 200% poverty line income), there is lots of detail that is non-obvious.  First, there are good and bad states that aren't what you'd expect given their region.  All of New England is good, but NY is bad, especially downstate, but also update (and compare it to the improvement you get when you cross the border to equally depressed upstate Pennsylvania).  New Jersey is bad also.  Alabama and Tennessee are good.  Colorado is bad and Utah is good (well, maybe that's not surprising).  Urban areas are generally worse than rural areas, see for instance Virginia.  Some of this -- how much? -- is simply where recent immigration is, most of it hispanic, see the urban/rural differences and the states: Texas, Florida, New Mexico, California (including the distribution with these states). The midwest does well in part since recent hispanic immigration didn't go there (is this even true?). And again, what is the deal with Alabama? 

Update #2: Jody comments:

There are a ton of Latino immigrants in the upper Midwest now. In a lot of those highly-insured Minnesota counties, the biggest employers are the schools and the county governments. That's a pretty reliable route into insurance. (Also Minnesota has had a robust insurance program for low-income children since the 1980s.)

Yes, there has been a large influx of hispanic immigrants into the Midwest by past standards for that region, but Minnesota isn't a state that has received a lot of this immigration.  States with high hispanic populations in the Midwest are Kansas with 8.9% and Nebraska with 7.5%.  Minnesota is 4.0%, compared to a national figure of 15%.  Connecticut is 11.7%, NY 16.1%.   And then there are places like North Dakota with 1.4% or Maine with 1%. 

My point is that Minnesota still has a small hispanic population.

Going further, I think the high fraction of uninsured recent hispanic immigrants does shape the politics of this issue, see the starting quote of this post.  In some places this is a 'us vs. them' issue, see the infamous 'you lie' outburst thy Rep. Wilson.  

A quick google got me these two figures. It would be interesting to know what these figures look like once one accounts for age, income, occupation, industry, job tenure etc.  I'm surprised that hispanics do so much worse than blacks.  Is it higher public employment by blacks, while hispanics are in traditional non-public industries (agriculture, construction, service work).  And this incidence of non-insured statues does, I think, help explain some of the politics here, at least the Republican opposition. 

There's also a very steep gradient in insurance status by citizenship: 12.9% of native born citizens are not insured, 18.% of naturalized citizens, and 44.7% of non-citizens. 

Real world process

Michael Crowley writes:

During the 2008 primaries an infamous Hillary Clinton ad warned that Barack Obama was unprepared for that hypothetical middle-of-the-night phone call announcing an international crisis and demanding a fast and decisive response. But real life is now demonstrating that national security decision-making is, with rare exceptions, something completely different. Obama's Afghanistan policy deliberations aren't about emergency phone calls and snap decisions. They're about grinding through meeting after meeting after meeting, over the course of weeks (even months, depending on how you want to measure) and reaching a hard decision after weighing vast loads of evidence and opinion. As the NYT details:

The meeting on Wednesday was Mr. Obama’s third with his full national security team. Another is scheduled for Friday to talk about Afghanistan and then a fifth is planned, possibly for next week. Mr. Gibbs said the president was still several weeks away from a decision.

For his part, meanwhile, Obama once zinged Hillary at an Iowa primary debate by joking that he was "looking forward to you advising me" in the White House. This photo from today's principals' meeting is a vivid reminder of who was more prescient on both scores. (Photo)

'A President who will fight for you'

The theme during the Presidential election campaign, especially from the Clinton and later McCain camps, that Americans need 'a President who will fight for you' always struck me as weird and an odd analysis of what ails us.  I was reminded of this by MY today, who, quoting Brendan Nyha, writes

[T]here’s a misperception among journalists that the president can easily move public opinion. As we’ve seen again and again over the years, it’s simply not true, but the lack of followup by the press means that the lesson is never learned. (At most, a failure to move poll numbers is blamed on some specific aspect of president’s message or strategy.) So we repeat the same cycle over and over again.

I think this is a pretty insidious aspect of our political culture. It’s not just that media commentary overemphasizing the president’s ability to shape opinion is inaccurate, it has a really detrimental impact on people’s ability to organize and effect political change. People are strongly encouraged to believe that the key to achieving policy change is to elect a president who’s friendly to their views. Then when that turns out to be insufficient they don’t move on and do additional organizing in House and Senate races. Instead, they tend to become frustrated with the president they worked to elect. But why blame the victim of congressional obstruction rather than the perpetrator? Well, people always seem to find a way to tell themselves, if only the president had fought harder he would have gotten it. He must have lost because he didn’t really care.

Afghanistan Strategy

Jim Henley enters the WP pundit contest (via Ezra Klein):

There’s been much discussion lately about whether to pursue a counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy in Afghanistan, or a more limited counterterrorism strategy. It’s important for the ordinary American to have an understanding of the difference, and to understand why it takes more troops and costs more money to pursue counterinsurgency.

In a counterinsurgency strategy, America hangs around a foreign country for years and years, occasionally killing people who live there, while pretending it’s for their own good. This takes a lot of people because the military, and the civilian parts of the government that control the military, are very specialized. You need people to do the hanging around, people to do the occasional killing of people that live there, and even more people to do the pretending. As you might imagine, pretending to foreigners that killing them is for their own good is hard! Not just anyone can pull that off with a straight face, and you need a lot of people who can. Remember how upset people got at those town halls over the summer? That was for "death panels" that didn’t even exist. Now imagine that you actually are occasionally killing people’s neighbors! Basically, you have to hold an awful lot of town halls.

In a counterterrorism strategy, America hangs around a foreign country for years and years, occasionally killing people who live there, but doesn’t bother to pretend it’s for the sake of the foreigners themselves. So you need people for hanging around and occasionally killing people, but you don’t need nearly as many people "in theater" for pretending. You need a few to pretend that you know so much about the foreign country that all the people you occasionally kill had it coming. But that’s it.

Under counterterrorism, most of the pretending happens right here at home, and consists of pretending that your counterterrorism strategy is awesome! Also that having to engage in counterterrorism for years on end is perfectly ordinary and isn’t a sign that something went really wrong back there somewhere.

Here’s the thing, though. Even under a counterinsurgency strategy, you have to do at least as much pretending at home. (The counterinsurgency strategy is awesome! etc.) So the pretending at home part of counterterrorism doesn’t constitute what policy experts call an "incremental impact." And we have plenty of people to do it anyway, including politicians and major newspapers.

Which strategy should America pursue in Afghanistan? Unfortunately I’m out of

Political Process and Policy

Ezra Klein summarizes at the end of one of hist posts:

[T]his is the inverse of the old joke about the stranded economist who finds a can of food and tells his distraught companions, "okay, assume a can opener." In politics, we often do the opposite: We assume we don't have a can opener, or more to the point, we assume we don't have a smoothly functioning Congress able to resist pressure from special interest groups. Under that set of assumptions, most policies don't work. But it's not the fault of the policies. It's the fault of the policymakers.

The SPD in the South

I looked up how the SPD did in the voting district I was born in.  A bit under 300,000 voters:
CSU      45.6%
FDP      15.9%
SPD      12.9%
Greens 11.5%
Left       4.9%

The SPD is fighting it out with the Greens for 3rd place.  Not what a party aspiring to provide the German government should be doing. 

The town itself produced CSU 53%, FDP 18.6%, SPD 10%, Greens 6.8% with 13,800 votes cast.

20 Years of an United Germany

Voter Participation in last Sunday's federal elections (via Zettel).  Berlin and Hamburg are white blobs broken out on the right.  Are those alienated CSU voters in eastern Bavaria? A more gradiated color scheme here. 

Hometown Election Results

The German election results for the town I grew up in:

CDU        33.63%
SPD         21.31%
FDP         19.30%
GRÜNE    12.51%
DIE LINKE  8.27%
NPD          0.95%
REP          0.46%
Piraten     1.94%

Nothing too noteworthy, except that Die Linke being at 8% is impressive. 

German Exit Polls

This is quite something.  According to exit polls the FDP even beat the SPD in younger demographics, basically the 25-35 age range.  That's nationwide, not just in the well off areas.  The SPD leads in no class group, getting beaten among the unemployed by Die Linke, and by the CDU among workers and retirees.  The strongest SPD voting block is Beamte, where they get up to 27%, but the CDU still got more Beamte as well with 35%.

I cannot find results for the town in Germany where I grew up.  The county -- actually the Wahlkreis -- went 35.2% CDU, 20.7% SPD,  18.5% FDP, 11.8% Green and 7.8% Linke. And that's better for the SPD and worse for the FDP than for the state as a whole. The SPD no longer looks like a Volkspartei electorally.  

Update #1: this is an even worse national result for the SPD than the 23.4% they got in 1893, you need to go back before 1893 to find a lower vote fraction for the SPD.  And they were on an upward trend then.  Worst post-war result was 1953 with 28.8%.  

CDU/CDU/FDP it is

No surprise recovery for the SPD in the last few days, or at least not enough to matter.  CDU a bit over 33%, SPD at bit over 23%, FDP over 14%!  SPD down 11% from the last election.  CDU down 1%.  So yes, being in the grand coalition took out the SPD.  

My home state Baden-Wuerttemberg has the SPD down to 20%, CDU 33%, FDP 18%, Green 14%.  So more SPD decline there too, down almost 10% from the last federal election. 

Update #1: as more results come in, the SPD in Baden-Wuerttemberg is now at 19.3%, FDP at 18.9%. Also interesting: Linke get 7.1% in BW.  No wonder the SPD is in trouble. 

Update #2: now I need to research who is actually in the FDP leadership, since I'm totally out of touch. 

German Political Party Secularism

Formatting problems with tables...

Short version without tables is that I looked at the polling at the World Values Survey, a reputable outfit, for Germany in 2006. 16.6% of CDU voters agree that ‘Politicians who don´t believe in God are unfit for public office.’ 5.6% for SPD voters, 14.3% for FDP voters (!), 8.9% for Green voters, 6.8% for Linke voters, 3% for NPD or Reps.  However around 36% of all Germans who go to church once a week believe this. But that is only 8.1% of the population, compared with 36.2% in the US. 

For comparison, the US polling data from the same source for ‘Politicians who don´t believe in God are unfit for public office’ has 26% of Democrats agreeing, 46% of Republicans, 28% of Independents.

Polarization

From the most recent Research 2000 poll:

BARACK OBAMA

	FAV	UNFAV	NO OPINION
ALL	55	38	7
MEN	48	46	6
WOMEN	62	30	8
DEM	85	7	8
REP	4	93	3
IND	58	35	7
OTH/REF	53	39	8
NON VOTERS	62	30	8
WHITE	46	47	7
BLACK	88	4	8
LATINO	67	28	5
OTHER/REF	66	27	7
18-29	79	16	5
30-44	43	48	9
45-59	63	30	7
60+	41	53	6
NORTHEAST	82	10	8
SOUTH	27	67	6
MIDWEST	62	31	7
WEST	59	34	7

The regional polarization here is just astounding . It looks like Obama's approval among white Republicans in the Northeast is about the same as among white Democrats in the South.  And the weird thing is that good parts of the South went for Obama over McCain, so the polarization is even higher if you disaggregate further down -- 'the South' is a big place. 

Killing Pigs in Egypt

The NYT reports:

When the government killed all the pigs in Egypt in an attempt to combat swine flu, it was warned the city would be overwhelmed with trash. Now, it is.  ....

People do not take their garbage out. They are accustomed to seeing someone collecting it from the door.

For more than half a century, those collectors were the zabaleen, a community of Egyptian Christians who live on the cliffs on the eastern edge of the city. They collected the trash, sold the recyclables and fed the organic waste to their pigs — which they then slaughtered and ate.

Killing all the pigs, all at once, “was the stupidest thing they ever did,” Ms. Kamel said, adding, “This is just one more example of poorly informed decision makers.”

When the swine flu fear first emerged, long before even one case was reported in Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak ordered that all the pigs be killed in order to prevent the spread of the disease.

When health officials worldwide said that the virus was not being passed by pigs, the Egyptian government said that the cull was no longer about the flu, but was about cleaning up the zabaleen’s crowded, filthy, neighborhood.

That was in May.

Today the streets of the zabaleen community are as packed with stinking trash and as clouded with flies as ever before. But the zabaleen have done exactly what they said they would do: they stopped taking care of most of the organic waste.

Instead they dump it wherever they can or, at best, pile it beside trash bins scattered around the city by the international companies that have struggled in vain to keep up with the trash.

“They killed the pigs, let them clean the city,” said Moussa Rateb, a former garbage collector and pig owner who lives in the community of the zabaleen. “Everything used to go to the pigs, now there are no pigs, so it goes to the administration.”  ...

“The state is troubled; as a result the system of decision making is disintegrating,” said Galal Amin, an economist, writer and social critic. “They are ill-considered decisions taken in a bit of a hurry, either because you’re trying to please the president or because you are a weak government that is anxious to please somebody.”

Pigs were the champion garbage consumers in Cairo. Goats just don't seem up to the task.

What did Irving Kristol do?

Irving Kristol, the 'founder' of neoconservatism, died this week.  Obviously lots of comments on this occasion.  I liked part of Bruce Bartlett's take, though I cannot quite tell how correctly Bartlett gauges the reasons behind Kristol's influence.  

Bruce Bartlett writes:

I didn't know Irving Kristol well, but I knew him for a long time. There are many people who can say the same thing. He was the central figure in the post-Watergate revival of conservatism and the Republican Party. Sadly, the "movement" that he created, neoconservatism, is pretty well dead. What goes by that name today bears no resemblance to Kristol's creation.

As is well known, Kristol was for many years a man of the left. But its excesses pushed him inexorably to the right. In the 1960s Kristol recognized that conservatism desperately needed to be grounded on serious social science if it hoped to influence public policy and, hence, politics.

Kristol founded a small quasi-academic journal called The Public Interest to build the foundation of a social science-based conservatism. I say "quasi" because, annoyingly to me, it refused to have footnotes or references in its articles.

One of Kristol's most important insights was that there were many academics who had generally liberal views, but came to conservative conclusions on some specific issues like crime, housing, race, labor, taxes and many others. He got them to write articles on these subjects, gradually building an impressive body of research that added depth and breadth to the conservative literature.

At the time, conservatism was very narrowly focused on anti-communism and futile efforts to repeal the New Deal. Conservative publications only published the work of people who were part of the movement and held conservative views on every issue. The idea of a "big tent" that included people who were conservative on only one or a handful of issues was foreign to the conservative philosophy in those days. You had to buy the whole conservative worldview on every issue or conservatives wanted nothing to do with you.

This led to the excommunication of libertarians, objectivists, atheists, isolationists and others that were part of the right, but held views on one or more issues that were inconsistent with the conservative positions of Bill Buckley and the rest of the National Review crowd. The extreme Catholicism of that crowd also tended to push Jews away from conservatism.

Kristol embraced these conservative Jews who felt uncomfortable among the dogmatic Christian conservatives. Eventually, he was joined by Norman Podhoretz, the longtime editor of Commentary, who pushed that magazine well to the right of its traditional base among liberal Jews.

The first clips of Kristol's articles in the Wall Street Journal that I have in my files date from 1976, so that's probably when I first became aware of his work. I don't remember when I first met him, but it was probably the following year when I was working for Jack Kemp, who was very much a devotee of Kristol's work. Just the other day I came across an old copy of The Public Interest on which Jack had circled an article listed on the cover for me to read.

It's important for people to understand that in those days neoconservatism was almost exclusively devoted to domestic, especially urban, issues. There was nothing in The Public Interest on foreign policy. Commentary was more foreign policy oriented, but other than having a special interest in Israel its foreign policy was pretty standard anti-communism. What we call neoconservatism today, which more closely resembles imperialism than anything else, was nowhere in evidence.

As Kristol slowly built the foundation of neoconservatism on solid social science research, it became clear that it needed a political outlet so that its policies could be implemented. Although many, perhaps most, early neocons were Democrats--Daniel Patrick Moynihan in particular--Kristol threw in with the Republicans. In the wake of Watergate they were more desperate and in need of intellectual firepower. This meant that there were many more opportunities for neocon ideas to advance within the GOP than among Democrats, who were going through a post-McGovern, post-Vietnam leftist phase that made them vulnerable to a conservative counterattack.

Kemp was really the central political figure in the neocon infiltration of the Republican Party. He brought along Dave Stockman, who had a number of articles in The Public Interest in the 1970s, and introduced Ronald Reagan to neocon ideas as well.

To make a long story short, Kristol was extraordinarily successful; so successful, in fact, that The Public Interest ceased publication in 2005. He felt that the journal had pretty much achieved all it set out to do and was no longer necessary. Its subscribers received copies of Commentary to fill out their subscriptions.

In the years since, it became clear that Kristol's decision was wrong. There is still a need for serious conservative social science research that has no other publication outlet. Commentary is now just a highbrow version of National Review, which is just a glossy version of Human Events, which has become a slightly less hysterical version of nutty websites like WorldNetDaily. The Wall Street Journal editorial page and the Weekly Standard, founded by Kristol's son Bill, just parrot the Republican Party line of the day.

The intellectual bankruptcy of conservatism today is even greater than it was when Irving Kristol founded The Public Interest in 1965. What passes for a conservative movement these days wears its anti-intellectualism as a badge of honor. But as Kristol correctly understood, right-wing populism has no future and fundamental changes in the direction of government policy must be based on serious research and analysis that is grounded on hard data; that is to say, reality.

One more week

Elections on Sep. 27. 

Card Check Update

snark via Kaus:

Workers at Boeing factory vote to un-unionize. By secret ballot. ... Because when it comes to decertifying unions, union lobbyists insist on the sanctity of the secret ballot. ...

So why do unions get decertified in the US?  Not a close vote here either, 199 out of 267 for decertification. 

Incumbency Advantage of First Termers

The incumbency advantage for first term government leaders appears to be significant in Germany and the US. May not be statistically significant, but so far German Chancellors don't loose on their party's first reelection campaign (i.e. Ludwig Erhard or Bush I don't count). Indeed, it isn't common in the US as well, Carter did it and that made him infamous. Before that we need to go back to, well, who? Ben Harrision in 1892. Even Bush II didn't manage to pull it off.  I know, a couple grand coalitions in there for  Germany, another topic.  And yes, the incumbency advantage turns negative after two terms in the US for the incumbent party.

Update #1: and who was Ollenhauer?  Ran and lost twice, and left little fame behind, at least not that any that lasted until today.  And it took Brandt three tries to win.   

Übersicht der Kanzlerkandidaten in Deutschland von 1949 bis 2009

	CDU/CSU	SPD
1949	Konrad Adenauer	Kurt Schumacher
1953	Konrad Adenauer	Erich Ollenhauer
1957	Konrad Adenauer	Erich Ollenhauer
1961	Konrad Adenauer	Willy Brandt
1965	Ludwig Erhard	Willy Brandt
1969	Kurt Georg Kiesinger	Willy Brandt
1972	Rainer Barzel	Willy Brandt
1976	Helmut Kohl	Helmut Schmidt
1980	Franz-Josef Strauß	Helmut Schmidt
1983	Helmut Kohl	Hans Jochen Vogel
1987	Helmut Kohl	Johannes Rau
1990	Helmut Kohl	Oskar Lafontaine
1994	Helmut Kohl	Rudolf Scharping
1998	Helmut Kohl	Gerhard Schröder
2002	Edmund Stoiber	Gerhard Schröder
2005	Angela Merkel	Gerhard Schröder
2009	Angela Merkel	Frank-Walter Steinmeier

Italian Media

I've seen this claim a lot in the media, including the NYRB, but I've not yet looked into its foundation and context or seen any actual public opinion research:

Alessandro Gilioli, a senior journalist at the L'espresso newspaper, which published the tapes, said: "Around 30m Italians do not have information except from television and all the private and public television stations in Italy are owned by Silvio Berlusconi. "So a lot of people do not know what happened, they have no idea about this scandal and the information is not totally free in Italy. "I can say what I want in my newspaper but it is ready by something like 500,000 people and there 35m people who do not know anything about this thing. "There is not a good penetration of the internet in Italy. Only 10m Italians go to the internet, the newspapers are read by one in 10 Italians and the great majority of the population get their news only from the television stations, which are owned by the prime minister. (link)

Does Berlusconi really have Italians in this tight a media cocoon?  It would be interesting to see media polarization data, both for Italy and across countries.  What stuns me is the claim that the internet isn't helping more.  Again, more data, both for Italy and for other countries, would be helpful. 

Update #1: a Harris poll from 2007 find Italy not to be an outlier in newspaper readership, much higher than the quote above would indicate.  Obviously one might want to distinguish bad tabloids from other papers, but that also applies to other countries.  

Italy does, according to Harris, appear to be an outlier for internet news access, but that is because more Italians get news on the internet than elsewhere (which might reflect how bad TV news is).

Identity Rage?

Sullivan writes:

For the first time in 16 years, the South does not have a native president in the White House. For the first time in 45 years, we have a Democrat not from the South in the White House. In trying to understand the passion and hysteria and anger out there, this may be worth taking into account.

Does this matter?  And how much?  Obama is able to drive some people to rage for reasons that appear to be non-reality based.  Indeed, my wife learned last week that one of our CT neighbors believes Obama is a socialist radical leading the country to ruin.  My wife couldn't figure out where this was coming from, while at the same time trying to escape the conversation. 

Presidential/Chancellor Debate Strategy

From the reporting, the German Chancellor debates -- now in their 3rd round after 2002 and 2005 -- sound very similar to the US Presidential debates, even given the vast differences in the structure of politics.  The FAZ reports:

Wer angreift, hat verloren
Wäre die Frage, wer die nächste Bundeskanzlerin wird, nicht schon längst eine rhetorische: Patricia Riekel und Claus Peymann hätten einen beträchtlichen Einfluss auf ihre Beantwortung: Die Chefredakteurin der Illustrierten „Bunte“ und der bekennende Fernsehverachter nämlich sollen am Sonntag mithelfen, bei Anne Will zu erklären, wer denn nun eigentlich das sogenannte Kanzlerduell gewonnen hat.

Das hat Tradition: Schon in den Jahren, in denen sich die Kandidaten bemüht hatten, mit unterscheidbaren Positionen und Temperamenten die Zuschauer für sich zu gewinnen, betrachteten es die Fernsehsender als ihre journalistische Pflicht, den Bürgern die Aufgabe abzunehmen, die Performance, die sie kurz vorher gesehen hatten, selbst zu bewerten. ...

Die These, dass die zu erwartende Ereignislosigkeit vor allem auf die charakterlichen Dispositionen der Duellanten zurückzuführen ist, ist derart glaubwürdig, dass man sie kaum zu hinterfragen wagt. Es wäre gar nicht mehr nötig, dass beide Kandidaten ihre Charismadefizite auch noch mit dem Hinweis unterstreichen, Sachthemen in den Mittelpunkt stellen zu wollen - was denn sonst? Und trotzdem ist es möglich, dass die Konfliktscheu von Merkel und Steinmeier weniger auf ihre Persönlichkeit zurückzuführen ist, als vielmehr auf die Erfahrungen der bisherigen Kanzlerduelle. Aus der Analyse der beiden Duelle 2002 und 2005 nämlich lässt sich vor allem eine Lektion ablesen: Wer den Gegner angreift, hat eigentlich schon verloren.

Die Kommunikationswissenschaftler Carsten Reinemann und Marcus Maurer hatten in beiden Debatten Zuschauer mit einem Drehregler ausgestattet, um deren unmittelbare Wahrnehmung zu ermitteln. Während polarisierende Aussagen sich zwar als nützlich erweisen konnten, die eigenen Anhänger zu mobilisieren, ließ sich das gesamte Publikum am ehesten durch Gemeinplätze überzeugen, etwa mit der Forderung, die Arbeitslosigkeit zu senken oder Bürokratie abzubauen. Angriffe auf den politischen Gegner dagegen verursachten vor allem Ablehnung bei dessen Anhängern.

Besonders kontraproduktiv war es, sein Statement mit Zahlen oder Fakten zu belegen: dadurch, so schreiben die Forscher, „wurde die Ablehnung durch die Anhänger des politischen Gegners keineswegs geringer, sondern eher noch gesteigert“. An konkrete Inhalte kann sich am Ende sowieso kaum ein Zuschauer erinnern: 41 Prozent etwa sagten im Anschluss an das Fernsehduell 2005, „Schröder habe die besseren Argumente beim Thema Bildung gehabt“, obwohl über Bildungspolitik gar nicht gesprochen wurde. Brillante Argumentationen sollte man also schon deshalb nicht erwarten, weil sie mindestens unnötig sind, oft aber abschreckend.

Wer den Verlauf des Wahlkampfs betrachtet, wird das Gefühl nicht los, dass die Berater der beiden großen Parteien diese Ergebnisse nicht nur sehr gut kennen, sondern längst zur umfassenden Devise ausgegeben haben, die nicht nur das Verhalten im Fernsehduell bestimmt, sondern den kompletten Wahlkampf formatiert, wenn nicht sogar die Politik. Aus dieser Perspektive ist auch die Farblosigkeit der Kandidaten kein persönliches Manko, sondern, im Gegenteil, nur die logische Konsequenz des medialen Anforderungsprofils. Die immer wieder aufkommenden Beschwerden, die Mediendemokratie fördere Selbstdarsteller und Polit-Entertainer, steht jedenfalls empirisch derzeit auf wackeligen Füßen: Wo wären denn diese Charismatiker? Und wie haben es die aktuellen Spitzenkandidaten so weit geschafft?

Nicht mit schwitzendem Populismus beweist man heute wahre Medientauglichkeit, sondern mit der Fähigkeit, all jene Charaktereigenschaften zu unterdrücken, die die Wähler nur irritieren. Vielleicht muss man ja doch all jenen glauben, die immer davon erzählen, wie schlagfertig Merkel im persönlichen Gespräch sein kann und wie witzig Steinmeier. Es wäre nur fatal, wenn sich das herumspräche. ...

Weil es heute Abend vor allem darauf ankommen wird, Mittelmäßigkeit auszustrahlen, kommt das Duell nicht ohne Schiedsrichter aus. Dass der Zuschauer am Ende die Auflösung nicht erfährt, ist auf dem Sendeplatz, an dem sonst zum Beispiel der „Tatort“ läuft, nicht vorgesehen. Die Diskussion über die Performance der Akteure ist längst so wichtig wie das Duell selbst - und vermutlich werden demnächst auch dafür jene Spielregeln und Formalismen eingeführt, die schon die Debatte in Zaum halten sollen. Es wäre auch keine Überraschung, wenn schon beim nächsten Fernsehduell die ersten Blitzumfragen als eigener Themenblock noch im Duell selbst debattiert werden.

Bei den Debatten zwischen Barack Obama und John McCain lieferte CNN seinen Zuschauern die Reaktionen einer Testgruppe bereits als Live-Grafik mit, was unentschlossene Wähler durchaus als Orientierungshilfe missverstehen können. Ähnlich selbstreflexive Effekte ergab auch die deutsche Studie: „Siegerurteile der ,normalen' Zuschauer sind nicht zuletzt deshalb von Bedeutung, weil sie indirekt die Nachberichterstattung der Medien beeinflussen, die wiederum ihrerseits in den Tagen nach dem Duell die Ansichten über den Ausgang des Duells beeinflussen kann“, schreiben Reinemann und Maurer. Jede inhaltliche Analyse erübrigt sich dann: Der Gewinner gewinnt, weil die Zuschauer glauben, dass er gewonnen hat, und zwar, weil die Medien ihnen gesagt haben, dass die Zuschauer gesagt haben, dass er gewonnen hat.

One issue here is that it is clear that both McCain and Obama both are pretty charismatic in their own very different ways, so that the contrast between the debate structure and reception and what 'the truth' was more grating than maybe the case now in Germany.  Hard to tell from afar. 

Electing young unqualified Senators is great strategy

MY makes a good point:

Timothy Noah opens his Ted Kennedy profile on this note: “Talk about inauspicious beginnings. At the tender age of 30, the youngest sibling of President John F. Kennedy and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy seemed pathetically unqualified to enter the U.S. Senate.”

The point is to highlight the irony that Ted went on to become the greatest of the Kennedy brothers. But it’s worth being clear about the fact that he had such an impressive career in part precisely because he initially got a job he wasn’t qualified for. The Senate operates largely on the basis of seniority. A guy who can enter his fifth term and only be 54 years old is a guy who’s going to be able to wield some major influence for a long time. And yet Massachusetts must have had many better-qualified potential senators who, had they gotten the gig, never would have acquired Kennedy’s legacy not just because they would have lacked Kennedy’s skills but because they would have been too [old].

This winds up having some odd systematic effects. It’s nice, for example, to see a veteran progressive legislator like Bernie Sanders get a “promotion” up the Senate. But the man’s 67 years old, so he’s never going to amass tons of seniority and we’re never going to hear about “powerful Energy Committee Chairman Bernard Sanders of Vermont.” And yet Vermont is a reliably liberal state. If some other, equally progressive but much-less-qualified man had won that Senate seat instead, the cause of progressive politics might have been much better served in the long run. In large part, I think this is just one of several reasons why both houses of congress ought to reduce the significance of seniority (and also of committee chairmen) but given the system we have in place it’s something savvy political activists should keep in mind. When you’re looking at a fairly safe seat, it’s very good to find a young candidate.

'A national finance chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in alleged fraud'

from the FT -- not sure what to make of this:

A prominent Democratic fundraiser who served as a national finance chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign has been accused in an alleged $74m scheme to defraud Citigroup, federal prosecutors said on Monday.

Hassan Nemazee was accused of using false documents to secure a loan of $74m from Citi. He was on his way to Rome on Sunday when he was interviewed by federal investigators at Newark Liberty International Airport. On Monday, prosecutors said, he repaid the loan.

Mr Nemazee is chairman and chief executive of Nemazee Capital, which describes itself as an investor in businesses including healthcare, media, oil, insurance and investment banking.

President Bill Clinton picked Mr Nemazee to be US ambassador to Argentina but the 1999 nomination fell through after questions were raised about his business dealings.

Mr Nemazee served as New York finance chairman for Senator John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign, before joining Mrs Clinton’s presidential effort. He also later raised funds for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.

Mr Nemazee, 59, faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted of the bank fraud charges. Mr Nemazee’s lawyer, Marc Mukasey, said: “We are reviewing the allegations.”

Citi said it was co-operating with the authorities.

Mr Nemazee first contacted Citibank in December 2006 to borrow up to $25m and in November last year modified the arrangement to raise the amount he could borrow to $80m, according to the criminal complaint filed in a Manhattan federal court.

Prosecutors allege that Mr Nemazee submitted documents to Citibank that indicated he held hundreds of millions of dollars in various financial accounts.

“Those documents were fraudulent and forged,” and the accounts “either never existed or had previously existed, but had been closed years before”, the criminal complaint claims.

Mr Nemazee also allegedly used fake addresses and phone numbers to mislead Citibank.

“In the event anyone at Citibank made an effort to confirm the existence of the assets reflected on the fraudulent documents submitted by Nemazee, they would in fact be contacting a telephone number assigned to Nemazee himself, and not any financial institution,” Preet Bharara, US attorney for the southern district of New York, said in a statement.

The NYT article is clearer:

Mr. Nemazee was ordered jailed overnight by a federal magistrate judge, while arrangements were being made for his release on Wednesday on a $25 million bond. As part of the conditions of his release, Mr. Nemazee will be subject to house arrest and electronic monitoring, the judge, Ronald L. Ellis, said.

The fraud is pretty standard:

Mr. Nemazee also gave Citibank phone numbers and addresses of various financial institutions that would purportedly vouch for his financial strength, but the numbers were controlled by him, the complaint said.

It said that if officials at Citibank tried to confirm the assets’ existence, “they would in fact be contacting a telephone number assigned to Nemazee himself, and not any financial institution.”

Birthers Update

New Majority writes:

According to Public Policy Polling (PPP), a North Carolina polling firm, only 24% of self-identified Republican voters in the state believe Barack Obama was born in the United States.  47% do not believe that Obama is American born, and 29% of Republicans aren’t sure.

One part of PPP’s data might reassure sentient readers somewhat:  7% of those who voted for John McCain do not believe Hawaii to be a part of the United States.  Now perhaps this is just another irrational expression of Obama hatred.  But, it may also be older voters who never quite absorbed the news that our 50th state is indeed our 50th state.

It's a weird world.  I never run into any of these people. 

Manuela Schwesig Again

The FAZ writes about the SPD's shadow cabinet member:

Dass sie ins „Team Steinmeier“ kam, hat weniger mit ihrer bisherigen Leistung zu tun, sondern mehr mit den Kriterien für die Rasterfahndung nach den wenigen Talenten, die es offenbar in der Partei noch gibt. Die Suche ging ungefähr so: Wir brauchen einen schon etwas bekannteren Politiker, jung, unverbraucht, weiblich, mit Kind, verheiratet, aus dem Osten und fotogen.

What I'd not realized is that Schwesig has previous large scale media exposure:

Sie fiel auf, als nach dem Hungertod der fünf Jahre alten Lea Sophie die Stadtvertreter nach den politischen Verantwortlichen suchten, die SPD dabei an der Spitze, denn es ging zwangsläufig gegen die CDU. Erst beim Sozialdezernenten, der seine Abwahl überstand, dann beim Oberbürgermeister, der abgewählt wurde. Frau Schwesig galt damals schon als derart wichtig, dass man ihr die Oberbürgermeisterkandidatur zugetraut hätte.

Who are the Birthers?

Benen writes

A new Research 2000 poll conducted for Daily Kos [poll here] asked respondents a rather straightforward question: "Do you believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States of America or not?" Since the president was born in the U.S., ideally, the results would be around 100%.

They weren't. There was, not surprisingly, a significant partisan gap. Only 4% of Democrats are confused about the president's place of birth. The number is slightly higher among independents, 8% of whom got it wrong. Among Republicans, though, 28% -- more than one in four -- believe President Obama was not born in the United States.

For a crazy, demonstrably false, racist idea, these are discouraging numbers.

But I was especially surprised by the regional breakdowns. In the Northeast, West, and Midwest, the overwhelming majorities realize the president is a native-born American. But notice the South -- only 47% got it right and 30% are unsure.

Outside the South, this madness is gaining very little traction, and remains a fringe conspiracy theory. Within the South, it's practically mainstream.

Breaking down the cross-tabs here would be useful, but that data doesn't seem available.  Since it is a white and Republican phenomena by a large margin, it may be the majority view for white southerners (indeed, only a minority of all southerns, white and black, will assert Obama is born in the US) and it is clearly the large majority view for white southern Republicans.  Indeed, less than half (42%) of all Republicans nationally will assert that Obama was born in the US. On the other hand, this is not much of problem in the Northeast or Midwest. 

Manuela Schwesig is in the SPD's Shadow Cabinet

The SPD has put out its shadow cabinet for the September general election, and the slot of the Family and Social Affairs Ministry went to Manuela Schwesig, who I'd not heard of before.  She is 35 years old and her current German wiki write-up is:

Nach ihrem Abitur am Gymnasium Seelow war Schwesig von 1992 bis 2000 Mitarbeiterin des Finanzamts Frankfurt (Oder) und studierte an der Fachhochschule für Finanzen in Königs Wusterhausen. 1995 schloss sie ihr Studium als Diplom-Finanzwirtin ab. Sie wechselte danach an das Finanzamt Schwerin.^[1] Seit Mai 2002 arbeitete sie im Finanzministerium des Landes Mecklenburg-Vorpommern,^[2] in dessen Referat 320 ^[3] sie zuletzt als Amtsrätin mit Fragen der Öffentlichkeitsarbeit und Organisation für die Steuerverwaltung befasst war.

Mit 29 Jahren trat Schwesig in die SPD ein.^[1] Sie gehört dem Vorstand des SPD-Kreisverbandes Schwerin und dem Landesvorstand der SPD an. Seit 2004 war sie Mitglied der SPD-Fraktion in der Schweriner Stadtvertretung, wo sie seit 2004 stellvertretende Fraktionsvorsitzende und von Oktober 2007 bis Oktober 2008 Fraktionsvorsitzende war.^[1][4] Seit dem 6. Oktober 2008 gehört sie als Ministerin für Soziales und Gesundheit dem Kabinett Sellering an. Ihr Vorgänger Erwin SelleringMinisterpräsidenten Mecklenburg-Vorpommerns.^[5]. Seit dem 30.7.2009 ist Maunela Schwesig Mitglied im Kompetenzteam des Kanzlerkandidaten Frank-Walter Steinmeier zur Bundestagswahl 2009. Hier zeichnet sie verantwortlich für den Bereich Familie und Soziales.

What do make of this?  Four years of city council work and a bit over a half year as a social affairs and health secretary in a state government, along with work experience in tax administration and press affairs (what basically sounds like human resources work) seems a bit little for somebody you're putting forward for a Federal Government minister post.  On the other hand, the SPD probably doesn't want this slot in any future government as much as any coalition partner would want it (it is considered a traditionally right wing 'church' associated ministry, sort of a balance for the labor ministry), so this is in some ways a 'game changing' public relations move, as well as an attempt to build up Schwesig for the future, not a irresponsible move to actually get Schwesig a minister post.  Not that it looks like the SPD is going down to much more than a historic defeat right now -- but who know, two months is a long time in politics. It may also just be a case of Ursula von der Leyen -- who has a much much better CV -- envy. Oh, one argument: she's not a party hack, only having joined the parts as a 29 year old, so she didn't spend her twenties in the Juso and instead got to do other things with her life. 

Photo:

A Biden Gaffe?

Who would have thought.  Or maybe not, who knows?  via Larison.  Here is the start of the WSJ reporting on its interview with Biden:

Vice President Joe Biden said in an interview that Russia's economy is "withering," and suggested the trend will force the country to make accommodations to the West on a wide range of national-security issues, including loosening its grip on former Soviet republics and shrinking its vast nuclear arsenal.

Mr. Biden said he believes Russia's economic problems are part of a series of developments that have contributed to a significant rethinking by Moscow of its international self-interest. The geographical proximity of the emerging nuclear programs in Iran and North Korea is also likely to make Russia more cooperative with the U.S. in blocking their growth, he said.

But in the interview, at the end of a four-day trip to Ukraine and Georgia, Mr. Biden said domestic troubles are the most important factor driving Russia's new global outlook. "I think we vastly underestimate the hand that we hold," he said.

"Russia has to make some very difficult, calculated decisions," Mr. Biden said. "They have a shrinking population base, they have a withering economy, they have a banking sector and structure that is not likely to be able to withstand the next 15 years, they're in a situation where the world is changing before them and they're clinging to something in the past that is not sustainable."  ...

Despite Russia's economic and geopolitical difficulties, Mr. Biden said, Moscow could become more belligerent in the short term unless the U.S. continues to treat Russia as a major player on the international stage. He said Russian leaders are gradually beginning to grasp their diminished global role, but that the U.S. should be cautious not to overplay its advantage.

"It won't work if we go in and say: 'Hey, you need us, man; belly up to the bar and pay your dues,' " he said. "It is never smart to embarrass an individual or a country when they're dealing with significant loss of face. My dad used to put it another way: Never put another man in a corner where the only way out is over you."

Update #1: the NYT reports Biden Criticizes Russia in Move Called ‘Perplexing’.

As I wrote back on the day Biden was nominated for VP: 

Well, if it is Biden I'm not thrilled. 

Biden is deeply problematic, not in the same league as Palin, but not somebody I want as VP. 

Obama polls well

Obama polls well and much better than Bush.  via many blogs, Pew polls public opinion around the world.  Best results in Western Europe, worst in Middle East and Russia. 

Paul Thissen is running for Governor of Minnesota

One of my freshman college roommates announced for Governor of Minnesota yesterday.

The Minnesota Post reports:

Thissen is smart, young, handsome, articulate and Minnesotan as all get-out. In this very large field of Dem guv candidates, he may have the lowest name recognition of all and is certainly among the dark-horse candidates. But, as I try to remind myself daily, there is no meaningful scorecard in a race for endorsement that will last another year and will probably be decided based on the second- and third-choices of a group of delegates who haven't even been selected.

How does entry into this market work?

Ezra Klein writes:

As told to the Wall Street Journal's Laura Meckler:

The battle heated up in June, when [OMB Head] Mr. Orszag visited Capitol Hill to discuss health care with a small group of House Democrats. The meeting started well, with one lawmaker after another echoing his message that spending controls were critical to any health-care overhaul, according to two administration officials.

Then one member said her top priority was winning higher payments for oxygen suppliers, the officials say. Mr. Orszag was taken aback. Officials had been trying for years to cut payments to suppliers of oxygen and other medical equipment, which critics say are inflated. Yet when a new competitive bidding process was set to take effect last year, industry supporters in Congress were able to delay the plan. They are still fighting to block changes.

"One of the reasons we currently have such disjointed and skewed incentives is that we have an excessively political process," Mr. Orszag said in an interview.

Orszag's big idea right now is to depoliticize the process a bit by taking decisions about payment for oxygen out of the hands of individual members of Congress and putting them into the hands of an independent panel of experts modeled off of MedPAC. But note something important about it: It's not an idea meant to solve a particular policy problem. It's meant to solve a particular political problem.

So how does entry (and exit) of firms in the oxygen medical equipment market work?  There must be serious barriers to entry if prices are too high, but what are they?  What is the industrial organization here? 

Health Reform

Jonathan Chait writes:

The reform effort is necessarily getting unpopular. Why? because the health care story people are getting is about haggling, backbiting, and legislative morass. The Republican message is that health care reform is evil big government that will raise your taxes and ration your care while exploding the deficit. The Democratic "message" these days is all about process -- if you see a Democrat quoted, he's probably saying that we can still pass a bill, or castigating his colleagues for moving too slowly or too quickly, or simply bolstering the Republican critique. In this context, it's literally impossible for public opinion to move in a friendly direction for reform. People -- even supporters of reform -- just get angry.  ....

Democrats simply have to accept that health care reform is going to be polling badly when they vote on it. There's no mechanism in the current media configuration that would allow them to convey the details of the plan in a positive way without getting overrun by negative process stories. It's just not possible. What they have to focus on is which alternative is likely to make them better off: reform passing or reform failing. It's an easy call, which is why I think reform will pass.

Why we will have Carbon Offsets

The WSJ writes:

The Obama administration continued its offensive on the climate bill, but from a different quarter—trying to assuage the fears of the all-important farm-state senators who can make or break the climate push in the Senate.

A number of administration heavyweights—Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, EPA administrator Lisa Jackson, and science advisor John Holdren—told the Senate Agriculture Committee to relax. Farmers will make out a lot better with climate legislation than without it, enjoying “significant net benefits.”

Secretary Vilsack brandished a new report from the Agriculture Department. The upshot? Thanks to all the last-minute goodies included in the House climate bill, farmers stand to rake in a fortune from so-called carbon offsets. That extra income will more than compensate higher energy prices, he said.

To wit: Farmer’s incomes will take a hit in the short term, falling by 1% through 2018. Things will get worse by 2027 (a 3.5% decline) and even worse by 2048 (a 7.2% decline.) That’s because things like fuel and fertilizer will cost more under the climate bill.

But farmers’ net incomes will keep rising, because they will be literally standing on a gold mine in the form of carbon offsets, which will become increasingly valuable. The goods:

EPA’s analysis projects annual net returns to farmers of about $1-2 billion per year from 2012-18, rising to $20 billion per year in 2050. USDA’s analysis strongly suggests that revenue from agricultural offsets (afforestation, soil carbon, methane reduction, nitrous oxide reductions) rise faster than costs to agriculture from cap and trade legislation. It appears that in the medium to long term, net revenue from offsets will likely overtake net costs from HR 2454, perhaps substantially.

It might be even juicier; the EPA’s Ms. Jackson estimated the value of agricultural offsets at more than $3 billion in 2020.

And wait—there’s more. “[W]e believe our analysis is conservative – it’s quite possible farmers will actually do better,” Secretary Vilsack said.

That’s because farmers also stand to make a fortune off of other government energy policies, such as ambitious mandates for renewable energy and biofuels that will create lucrative, mandatory markets for crops and even agricultural waste.

Agricultural interests are skeptical of the USDA’s findings, arguing that a lot of sectors will still take a beating under the new legislation.

But it seems clear the administration has figured out exactly where it needs to push to make sure the climate bill has a chance in the Senate.

I'm with Krugman here...

Obama makes me happy.  For instance I thought his press conference this evening was good.  If Obama goes down, it is going to be because of things I like and love about him. 

Krugman writes:

I found Obama’s health care presentation so impressive — so much command of the issues — that it had me worried. If I really like a politicians’ speech, isn’t that an indication that he lacks the popular touch? (A couple of points off for “incentivize” — what ever happened to “encourage”? — but never mind.)

Seriously, it’s really good to see how much he gets it.

The majority of reviews, even from Democratic pundits, seem negative, from a small sample so far.  For instance Drum:

Half an hour into tonight's press conference Barack Obama has answered a grand total of three questions.  This is not a good performance.  He really needs to pick up the pace and make his answers crisper and more comprehensible.

UPDATE: Aside from the rambling nature of his replies, I don't think Obama has been good on substance either.  His opening statement had a little bit of good stuff about healthcare security, but he's spent the vast bulk of his time on deficits and cost cutting.  That's just not a good sales job.

UPDATE 2: All done.  I'm curious to hear what other people thought, but this really struck me as nowhere near his usual performance.  Obama avoided giving direct answers, rambled a lot, kept interrupting himself with asides, and didn't explain things in terms that ordinary viewers were likely to understand.  He's supposed to be the communicator-in-chief, but I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people came away more confused than they were when they tuned in.  Bottom line: There were bits and pieces that were fine, but overall I'd give it a C-. 

I thought Obama was as responsive to the two main concerns -- what's in it for me?' and 'can we afford this?'   -- as one can expect in these matters.  Obama looked very much in control to me.  But Kaus' gripping keeps me on my toes:

He's still under the grip of Orszagism! Here we're changing insurance (no more "preexisting conditions") and insuring the uninsured and creating a health care exchange and promoting a public option and generally telling everyone they can stop worrying about having coverage. It's all going to be deficit neutral over a ten year period. Why do we have to also change "the health care delivery system" at the same time? In order to save even more money after ten years?  Doesn't that undermine the reassuring message that if you like your health coverage, nothing will change? Sure. Nothing will change except the entire health care delivery system! Which is going to be redesigned! By experts! Maybe get rid of fee for service--Obama hinted along those lines. All seemingly on the basis of a single article in the New Yorker that isn't nearly as convincing as it's made out to be. (I would like to see Dems apply Orszag's logic--that all Medicare expenses can obviously, without sacrifice be cut to the level of the cheapest provider--to the school system.) ...

I know I'd like universal health coverage. That's been debated ad nauseum. What hasn't been debated--what's been blessed mainly by pronouncements from on high couched in euphemisms and deception--are Orszag's delivery system changes. I'm worried that they will result in denial of treatments that are useful at saving and prolonging lives. Obama's refusal at his press conference to declare that all covered treatments would still be covered is an example of what people worry about. And Obama knows--or even scarier, maybe he doesn't--that the difficult decisions don't involve cheap blue pills that are as good as red pills, but treatments that are the "best" but also the "most expensive"--including cancer drugs like Herceptin and Sutent. 

So maybe Obama isn't playing 'hide the ball' sufficiently.  That's what I like about him...

Update #1: publius didn't like it either, same for Ben Smith. TPM points to the race diversion:

Tonight sums up where we are in America: the headlines are all about, not how to get to secure and affordable health care, the preeminent social inclusion issue relevant to millions of American families, but about African American Obama defending his millionaire friend Skip Gates on the race issue! (Yes, the Cambridge police were stupid, but so was arrogant Skip, who lost his temper and is turning it all into self-promoting race fiction.)

Race trumps social-economic justice: just what the right wing wants, and just what has repeatedly derailed possibilities for redistributive reform since the 1960s.

This was Obama's best chance to get through to millions of ordinary
Americans on health care -- and he blows it, with self-obsessed Skip Gates, the race-obsessed press aiding and abetting all the way.

So I'm concerned here, but actually less so than last week.  And Obama isn't the problem and is taking what still looks to me like a feasible high road. 

Barry Bluestone says public sector unions are behaving badly

Barry Bluestone is one of the more pro-union academics of the last 25 years and a cofounder of  the Economic Policy Institute, an outfit that puts out titles like 'How unions help all workers' or 'How Unions Can Help Restore the Middle Class.'  In today's Boston Globe, Bluestone wrote something I didn't expect to see when I started reading:

Today, less than 14 percent of US workers are members of unions, down from 35 percent in 1955. With membership so low, private-sector unions have lost much of their power and the nation is losing a major force for progressive change.

Will public-sector unions follow the same path? Nationwide, these unions represent over 35 percent of federal, state, and local employees, roughly the same as in 1980. Over the years, they have won improved wages and benefits for their members. Yet the leaders of many of these unions, particularly in Massachusetts, seem to be setting the stage for the same kind of deterioration we see in unions like the UAW.

Teachers unions refuse to make changes in work practices that could help improve the chances of children succeeding in school. Police unions fight against lowering the cost of details at construction sites. The MBTA union and others representing transport workers lobby vociferously against reforming the state’s transportation system. Municipal unions refuse to permit their local communities to join the Group Insurance Commission that would save their towns millions without compromising the quality of their members’ medical care.

As a result, between 2000 and 2008, the price of state and local public services has increased by 41 percent nationally compared with 27 percent in private services. Even in the face of the worst fiscal crisis in decades, many state and local union leaders refuse to consider a wage freeze that could help preserve more of their members’ jobs.

Such action is rapidly losing the support public-sector unions need to survive. Union leaders may think that by working diligently to elect friendly public officials, they can fend off the day of reckoning. But that day is fast approaching. Citizens, and ultimately their elected representatives, will increasingly object to tax increases to pay for what they see as bloated union contracts and poor public service.

Sensing the public’s demand for reform, Governor Patrick and the Legislature have already passed pension and transportation measures opposed by union leaders, and Mayor Menino and Governor Patrick favor an expansion in the number of charter schools.

Ultimately, new ways will be found to provide public services to circumvent public unions. Non-union charter schools will proliferate, not to reduce teachers’ salaries or benefits but to avoid a plethora of work rules that make school reform difficult. Public services will be privatized with private contractors hired to pick up trash (in addition to recycling), to guard prisoners, and perhaps even to fight fires. Public highways may be sold off. The result: public-sector unions will see their memberships and their influence decline.

This will be a tragedy. To move in a different direction, we need to think about a new “grand bargain’’ between public-sector unions and government. Union leaders in the state need to consider ways to work collaboratively with public officials so as to offer quality public services at a reasonable cost to the taxpayer while preserving union jobs for their members.

I assume there is some context here that explains why Bluestone is writing this, but I don't know what it is. 

Card Check Dies

Since I have some past rants complaining about card check, I though it only fair to observe that card check has now died.  Time to move on to things that make sense.   Drum writes:

This shouldn't come as any surprise at this point, but Democrats have decided to drop card check from the Employee Free Choice Act.  It never had unanimous support within the Democratic caucus and Republicans were sure to filibuster it, so it had no chance of passing.

Now there is the cynical take here that card check was always intended as a polarizing bait to mobilize both unions and employers (with both sides of the issue taking credit: 'see, we tried' and 'see, we prevented this') not as a serious proposal to be passed as law.   

How to get out of the mess we are in

Kleiman dares to dream.  It would be nice, but I do think we have a bigger chance of failure than success the way things are going.  Hope I get proved wrong. 

1. We need a climate change bill. Waxman-Markey as passed by the House is pretty lame; as passed by the Senate it will be much worse. Maybe it could be rescued in Conference, but maybe not, and the Conference Report needs 60 votes to beat a Senate filibuster.

2. We need a health care bill, and — for no good substantive reason — it needs to be "paid for." (No one bothered to "pay for" the Bush tax cuts or the War in Iraq, and for that matter no one has to "pay for" the uncontrolled escalation in the budgetary costs of Medicare, Medicaid, and Federal employee [and contractor] health coverage that will result if health care reform doesn't happen.)

3. Finding a combination of new revenues and cost-savings that will make the bill "budget-neutral" in the eyes of CBO and that will also pass the Senate may well result in an inadequate set of health care reforms.

4. But health care can be done under Budget Reconciliation, which precludes a filibuster. The Senate Dems have already agreed not to do Waxman-Markey in that way.

5. A greenhouse gas tax is just as good as a well-designed cap and trade, and much better than the mess likely to emerge out of Waxman-Markey.

6. A greenhouse gas tax can raise quite a bit of revenue.

7. That revenue could be used to help "pay" for health care reform. And a revenue measure is clearly relevant to Budget Reconciliation.

8. So, having scared all the rich folks by threatening an income tax surcharge to pay for health care reform, the Conference that handles Budget Reconciliation can pull a rabbit out of a hat by substituting a greenhouse gas tax for part of that surcharge and using the surplus to craft a better health care plan.

I have no estimate of how likely this is to actually happen, but I don't think it's a remote outcome.

Sarah Palin Update

via Kevin Drum:

Um, did Sarah Palin just write a whole editorial about cap and trade and not mention global warming once?  Yes!  Yes she did!  And the Washington Post printed it! 

How does Palin do this?  She writes:

There is no denying that as the world becomes more industrialized, we need to reform our energy policy and become less dependent on foreign energy sources. But the answer doesn't lie in making energy scarcer and more expensive! Those who understand the issue know we can meet our energy needs and environmental challenges without destroying America's economy.  ...

We have an important choice to make. Do we want to control our energy supply and its environmental impact? Or, do we want to outsource it to China, Russia and Saudi Arabia? Make no mistake: President Obama's plan will result in the latter.

For so many reasons, we can't afford to kill responsible domestic energy production or clobber every American consumer with higher prices.

And I'm not leaving out any supporting arguments Palin makes. 

There are pretty important trade issues here, but Palin doesn't even hint at what they are.

Majority-Minority Areas in China

Fallows writes:

The NYT online has a very nice graphic just now showing the parts of China with significant "minority" population. Minority, in this sense, means one of the 55 recognized groups other than Han Chinese that together make up about 8 percent of the country's population. The screen shot below is not the default version of the graphic, which shows all counties in China with at least 10 percent minority population. Instead it's the version that shows counties where at least half the people are something other than Han.



In a sense the map is misleading, in the same way "Red State / Blue State" electoral maps are misleading about real division of opinion within the United States. The big western areas marked as Tibetan or Uighur are very lightly populated (think Nevada, Montana), compared with the dense, mainly-Han areas of the east. For instance, the ethnic Tibetan areas are shown as covering not just Tibet proper but also parts of the neighboring provinces of Sichuan, Qingai, and Gansu (in all of which places I have been to Tibetan villages). But the total ethnic-Tibetan proportion of China's population is something under one percent. Still, the graph gives an idea of the control issues China has with some of its minority groups.

In terms of population these don't seem to be large groups, though you'd need to know how the Chinese state classifies people's ethnicity.  On the other hand, the map above is most likely based on the same Chinese state sources. Wiki writes:

The People's Republic of China (PRC) officially recognises 56 distinct ethnic groups, the largest of which are Han Chinese, which constitutes about 91.9% of the total population. The 55 other ethnic groups are officially recognised as ethnic minority groups. The large ethnic minority groups in terms of population include the Zhuang at 16 million, the Manchu at 10 million, the Hui at 9 million, the Miao at 8 million, the Uyghur at 7 million, the Yi at 7 million, the Tujia at 5.75 million, the Mongols at 5 million, the Tibetans at 5 million, the Buyei at 3 million, and the Koreans at 2 million.