Israel-P.A. Talks Test

Last night the Israelis' self-imposed moratorium on new settlements in the occupied territories expired. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu has said he cannot continue the moratorium, citing lack of support for such a move in his coalition Cabinet. The Israelis' counterpart in the negotiations, the Palestinian Authority, has threatened to pull out of the newly re-established face-to-face negotiations if the Israelis begin to start new "illegal" settlements.

There is an "easy" solution to this problem, and whether they arrive at it quickly will be an excellent indicator of whether these two parties wish to make a deal. (The alternative is that they just showed up to please the US and President Obama but don't really care to do it.) The solution starts from a recognition that the draft settlement that both sides have seen and studied allows for some swaps of territory: some of the West Bank going to Israel, similarly-sized swaths of territory going from Israel to the proposed new Palestinian state. Further, most of those land swap areas have already been identified, and for the ones going to Israel, well-populated already with Israeli settlers.

All that is needed is for Israel to draw conservatively the map of territories they are due to get--conservatively meaning not aggressively, i.e., not including within the zones land that that is disputed in previous negotiations--and announce they will only build new settlements within those zones. The PA does not have to agree to the specifics of these zones of new development at the present time, but merely to tolerate it.

Such an "agreement" would be a great starting point for future negotiations; essentially, they would agree to take a large set of potentially contentious content and put it in a briefcase of agreed topics. One of them would be the PA's contention that all the Israeli settlements in areas beyond the 1967 boundaries are illegal. It would also put the framework of the discussion into a new agreement rather than trying to re-create the status prior to 1967, which was an unacceptable one for Israel.

Two cautionary notes, though:

1) there would probably not be much agreement on new settlements in East Jerusalem, and the Israelis would be well-advised to be extra careful about targeting any new areas there; and
2) Sharon's Wall--the safety wall the Israelis have been putting up in occupied Palestinian areas to separate priority zones of Israeli interest from the Palestinians--could easily be a complicating factor. The Israelis are unlikely in this scenario to identify much beyond the Wall, but neither should they assume everything on "their" side of it is agreed (especially if it had not been agreed in the draft maps of prior negotiations).

More Jobs? How About Less Work?

Here's an essay I wrote in June, 1994 for a writing class that I turned up the other day looking through old papers.

Here's a notion that is political heresy but that we had better learn to handle: finding full-time jobs for all Americans who can work is impossible, and trying to make it happen is bad public policy. If we need proof that full employment is an unsustainable proposition, we need only look at Wall Street's recent responses to the news that unemployment has reduced. It's only going to get worse.

Expressing the argument in simple terms of social behavior, producing all the goods and services Americans want requires a great deal less than the full-time effort of all our able-bodied adult population. This statement is oversimplified in that it considers the United States as a closed system. However, consider the following questions: If we produce for poorer countries and sell to them, won't that just enrich us further and perpetuate their poverty? And, as for richer countries (if there are any), why should we work to put bread on their inhabitants' tables if they are not inclined to do it for themselves? These should serve to start to show that international trade can only address the domestic employment challenge in a limited, short-term fashion. Its role is instead as a balancing process in which the comparative advantages of different nations are utilized to add value through greater economic efficiency.

Greater efficiency leads among the reasons why we should expect ever greater unemployment in our future. Quality management efforts have dictated relentless improvements in manufacturing processes. Service and manufacturing companies alike have realized savings through pruning middle management. The owners of international capital have demanded the liquidation, downsizing, or relocation of unprofitable operations. These products of the "Invisible Hand" of market economics are inevitable, and they have positive effects in rising productivity and keeping American industry, yet there is no law of macroeconomics which tells us that their net result on employment will be positive or even neutral.

Reductions in the level of employment in America may also result from structural changes to eliminate unproductive work, particularly in the public sector. Government social services programs at all levels will certainly undergo the same kind of pitiless scrutiny for productivity improvements that occurs in private industry and in non-profit agencies. We will all insist on it, to reduce both the budget deficit and the amount of wasteful spending. "Star Wars" missile defense programs will lose their funding (and those in those programs will be displaced), not because they are unnecessary for security, but because we will come to realize they just don't work: the task of intercepting an incoming ballistic missile is basically an impossible one. Support for the national manned spaqce program is likely to evaporate except in the areas which depend on it to maintain jobs.

Similar considerations of localized unemployment effects have postponed the expected peace benefit from the Cold War's end, a major reduction in military expenditures for weapons development and base personnel. Public understanding already exists that such "pork-barrel" decision methods are unethical, but they are accepted as a political fact of life. Structurally, voters have no method of penalizing the representatives of other areas for their selfishness. Recognition of the intrinsic nature of this governmental waste combines with the voters' powerlessness to change it, producing increased cynicism about politics and decreased willingness to fund governmental activities. These changes, too, will in time lead to reduced public-sector jobs.

Time is a factor which will tend to increase the gap between the number of employable individuals and the number employed full-time. Actually, we are now in the beginning of a period of a predicted labor shortage, when demand exceeds supply for certain skilled professions. Indeed, the market for current graduates is the strongest that it has been for many years. This will give way in a few years, though, to a steadily rising tide of new entrants to the job market, the children of the baby boom. To make things worse, the long-term forecasts which emphasize the huge surge in retirement-age people beginning about 20 years from now rarely note that, with pensions and savings shrinking, many of these people will need to continue work well past age 65, again causing excess job-seekers.

A future for America in which unemployment is endemic among its youth, even the most educated segment, should not be so surprising an idea. The fully-developed economies of Western Europe have had such a condition for decades now. Those societies have endured the strains such conditions bring, largely through extending the term of parental support and through developing a variety of forms of casual, informal, and part-time labor.

These are the types of adjustments we will need to make in American society. The marketplace does the best job of allocating a scarce commodity, which employment is already and will become more so. However we must give employers the variety of tools they will need to employ people rationally, instead of forcing a dichotomy between those who Have and Have-Not work. In civil society, we must develop new norms of equity in the distribution of employment--for example, it may not be the case that "one can always find work if one tries". Politicians can add value through responsible statements which recognize the limits of our society's capacity to provide employment, and through restraint in advocacy of localized solutions which work to the detriment of the general public.

What we all must try to do is develop creative solutions that recognize that employment is not a binary variable. As an example, consider the current debate over national health insurance. Putting the burden of payment solely on large employers of full-time workers will tend to decrease their number and further concentrate their burden, thus producing a job-destructive cycle. A more creative approach would provide partial benefit credits for part-time and temporary workers. This would also leave the way open for an enhancement in which work credits and associated health benefits would accrue to those performing critically important unpaid work, like caring for elderly relatives or responsibly raising children.

Accepting less-than-full employment is political heresy only because of the financial insecurity it implies, not because we all want to spend all of our lives at work.

A couple of the arguments are dated, like the one about the end of the Cold War, but most of them are as relevant or moreso now--note that this was written when the debate about Hillarycare was active. As for me, at that time I was looking from the inside out (i.e., I was one of the overemployed), but though that has flipped, I still feel the same way. The tech boom gave way to the war on terror and then to artificial props through financial engineering; now that those bubbles have burst, forming the Great Crater, the government's attempts to artificially produce employment are falling short, yet the politicians' pronouncements (from either party) on the subject have not progressed one iota.

Evolution Works Both Ways

Friday evening Bill Maher aired a brief bit from his old show "Politically Incorrect" in which current Tea-bagger Senate candidate in Delaware Christine O'Donnell asked the trenchantly stupid question, "Well, then, why aren't monkeys evolving into humans?"

My counter-question would be, "How do we know humans aren't evolving into monkeys?" Or indeed, into something far worse.

If we keep selecting for stupidity--something that poll results suggest Americans are on the verge of doing this election--our legislators will create an environment in which morons like them will survive and propagate themselves. If you've seen the recent "Nature" series on dogs, you will understand that intentional selection can work far faster and more dramatically than random, natural selection.

So, in a few generations we--or most of us--may be mobs drooling and hanging from artificial cellphone trees which don't work any more. The isolated remnants of homo sapiens will be hiding out in places like Hawaii and Bali that are hard for our neo-simian relatives to knuckle-drag their way to.

Inexplicable--That's What You Are

The apparent decision by the House of Representatives not to call a vote on the extension of the "middle-class tax cut" is pretty much indefensible. If there were more time until the election, I would say that a groundswell of opinion would cause them to change their minds and have the vote, but there is little time before the session will recess for the final election campaign, so I have little hope for a change of heart.

The House Democratic leadership is saying that they wanted a vote, but have been persuaded not to do so by the Senate's "leadership" punt. I can actually understand--somewhat--why the Senate would not bother to push the issue now; with a couple of Blue Dogs (Lieberman, Nelson of Nebraska) opposing the Democratic program of tax cut extension for the middle class and none for those with annual income over $250,000, and with an apparently united Republican opposition, the proposal would never even make it to the floor: it would be stopped by a filibuster and never get past the procedural votes.

For the House, it's a question of political strategy, then. The arguments about policy, or about economics, or even support for the White House's recommended policy--all of which militate clearly for a tax cut extension for the middle class, perhaps only a temporary one--are largely beside the point, given the low likelihood the Senate will be able to get it through. It's simply a question of whether having a recorded vote for a middle-class tax cut--nothing about the Republican-and-Blue-Dog-backed tax cut extensions for the wealthy need even be mentioned, given the House's rules and Democratic control over them--will help Democratic House members in tough races.

A number of them--Blue Dogs in Republican-leaning districts--put pressure on the leadership not to be put on the spot with this vote. Minority Whip Jim Clyburn was alluding to this when he indicated that a lot of members didn't seem to realize that the proposed cut would actually apply for the wealthy, too (the distinction the Obama White House has been pushing; it's just not a reduction in the marginal rate over $250k in taxable income). Clearly, he wants the vote and thinks it will help them.

The only--and I mean only--justification for the House leadership's decision is uncertainty about what the Republicans in the House might do. Minority Leader John Boehner (the Orange Man, seeking a future House of Orange) has said that he might have to support a middle-class tax cut if that's the only cut on the floor (he then quickly got with the party program, to hold all tax cuts hostage for cuts for the rich), so there is a chance the Republicans would actually vote for the middle-class tax cut, which would deprive the Democrats of exclusive hold on the high ground. Instead, the House Democrats seem to have chosen to hunker down in a besieged fort surrounded by good firing positions.

Thus, the Democrats in the House may be giving up their best chance to have a winning issue for this final, desperate phase of the campaign to keep control, behind a totally incomprehensible rationale.

Inexplicable, indefensible, incomprehensible (and I haven't even pulled out the heavy accusations, like "cowardly", "betrayal", "suicidal")--bad move, House leaders!

In the interests of fuller disclosure, I will say that early in this millennium (roughly 2000-2004), I was in the high tax bracket, and the Bush tax cuts made absolutely no difference in my life. My employer withheld what was needed, and I felt no change when the rate was cut. I say any argument that high income earners will feel pain--expressed as reduced spending--from expiration of the tax cut is bogus. The one exception would be if there is an expectation during the year--say 2011--of a lower tax rate, leading to lower withholding, and then some kind of retroactive increase.

Republican Pledge: Well-Polished

In their Pledge to America, the Republicans seem to have confused a statement of policy with the well-known furniture polish Pledge. When it comes to bringing forward some ideas to help this country in its hour of great need, they come up with canned, shiny, glossy crap.

I know that it is the prerogative of the opposition party merely to provide opposition, and under the unfortunate circumstance of our economy's current condition, it's possible they could even win a house of Congress (I'm unwilling to believe they can win both), but I see no reason for this party's need to exist. Their record from 2001-2008 is reason enough for all of us to resolve that they should never again be allowed near the levers of governmental control, and their new "program" shows they have not come up with anything new since they were justly booted out in 2006 and 2008.

I yearn for a new Era of Good Feeling, such as in the early 1800's when the Democrats had no real opposition party, an era which lasted until they eventually split into competing factions. Americans should feel secure that the Democrats would do this again; there is no need for the Republican party to be around just to have an opponent.

Blair Sells His Book

Tony Blair's new memoir is called "A Journey". I'm not plugging the book, or anti-plugging it, either. I would instead like to make some comments about two or three rather surprising things Blair said in his interview with Christiane Amanpour on ABC's "This Week", last week.

In the late '90's, I admired Blair as symbol of a new, revitalized, progressive-but-pragmatic Britain. After that, I was living in England early in this century: first I saw his generous, heartfelt support for the US in the wake of the 9/11 horrors; then, I watched that loyalty bring him to his disastrous support for the invasion of Iraq in 2002-03. Was Blair courageous in either case? In the first one, one could argue that Blair did what was popular and expected of him, though he did back up that stance with actions. In the latter case, I would say that the clearer profile in courage was that of the late Robin Cook, who resigned as Foreign Minister rather than support the unwise invasion of Irag, in a brilliant speech in Commons that I remember well. I would like to read what Blair says about that speech and his former Cabinet minister, who died rather suddenly a couple of years later.

In his interview, Blair defends broadly the Iraq invasion despite the absence of weapons of mass destruction. Not much of a surprise there; documents that have come forward in recent years suggest Blair knew that the allegation of Iraq's trying to develop nuclear weapons, at least, was a canard. His comment today, and I'm sure it's consistent with how he felt at that time, was that risks must be taken to advance the lifelong cause of the war on terror. He likens that to the Cold War and urges the West to have the same kind of unconditional, long-term commitment to the struggle that we had back then.

For me, this is a major overstatement of the seriousness of the threat currently posed by violent Islamic fundamentalists, and this kind of overstatement leads to overreaction, precisely of the kind that the Iraq War brought, and that in turn gives the terrorists great recruitment opportunities. There is a need to combat Al Qaeda and its ilk, and I am fully prepared to support offensive action in some cases when that will help reduce or eliminate that threat, but what I don't want to hear is JFK-type language that we are going to "face any foe, go to any length" to combat them. Instead, I want to hear that we are taking extremely well-targeted, limited, practical steps to reduce the threat and further isolate this small, fragmented, and harassed band of outlaws from modern Islamic society.

If the first surprise was a negative one that Blair is still talking unlimited, endless war on terror, the second was a positive one: Blair was asked about his relationships with Bill Clinton and with his successor as President. The popular view of Blair today, both here and in the UK, is that he was the lapdog of W, Cheney, and the neo-cons, but what he said in the interview (and, presumably, in his book) was that he was closer to Clinton, and he specifically said, "I'm a Democrat." That's pretty unusual, his identifying with a foreign political party--though I could imagine his political philosophy might have been closer to the mainstream of our Democratic party than the trade union socialist traditional center of his own Labour party--that kind of sympathizing and identification with foreigners, no matter which ones from whatever country, would never be tolerated in this country.

The third surprise had to do with Prime Minister's Questions, the weekly grilling of the Prime Minister by his fellow members of Parliament (and particularly, by the leaders of the opposition parties). Blair was the best I've ever seen at it, and my experience is that he eloquently, knowledgeably and effectively faced down all challenges. So, the surprise for me was his admission that he was terrorized by the weekly ritual: it kept him up at night and stressed him out incredibly. I don't doubt him for a moment, I'm just surprised at his ready admission that it was, indeed, frightening to be at the center of it.

My Last Pre-Election View Pt. 1: The Senate

Pundits typically take a conservative approach to their previews (born of many late electoral changes they didn't see coming, no doubt): assume incumbents win, shift when the evidence is overwhelming, and make the right call late. We don't roll that way (or do we?--see the Bottom Line). This will be the last full-length review; if we see some changes worth noting, we'll make them in the comments.

We refer you to our prior previews from January, February, July, and earlier this week. We don't run from any of that analysis, and we accept that we are somewhat on the leftward tail in terms of expectations. We're looking to the endgame, assuming that Democrats will get their campaign together, that Republicans will have visible fault lines behind their pretended unity, and that voters, especially independent voters, will think twice before they hand the keys back to the Bushites (or the neo-Bushites).

In this view, we will take a look at what two key partisan organizations--the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and the right-wing operation The Club for Growth--have said publicly about which are the key races. And, through implication, which may not be.

Going Where The Rant Leads Us
"The Rant" is a semi-blog operated by the DSCC, and this week they sent a missive--actually, two of them--to me seeking contributions for their races of interest. The first one listed twelve races where they saw a chance and were either asking me to "Contribute" (marked below with a +) or "Defeat Them" (a -). I figure in the former case they want to promote the quality of their candidates, in the latter, they plan to go negative at the Republicans.

As I've suggested before, I think it's best to contribute to individual races where there's a real Democrat with a real chance to win, not just to punt money to the DSCC and let them decide where to spend it. Here are those DSCC-featured races, with commentary from yours truly:

Alaska (-) This might have seemed like a waste of time; Tea Party candidate Joe Miller, a personal fave of Sarah Palin, is a little less of a favorite over Democratic also-ran Scott McAdams than the incumbent ("Establishment", and a personal rival of Palin), Lisa Murkowski. But now, the plot thickens with the announcement that Murkowski is not going to play nice, and will seek to run either as a third-party candidate or a write-in candidate. Either way, it could make things interesting, though I'm not sure it makes McAdams viable or that Murkowski, should she win, would ever caucus with the Dems. Conclusion: Don't bother.

California (+) Barbara Boxer is worth caring about; Carly Fiorina is worth making an effort to defeat. This race is hugely expensive, and pretty close. I am fairly confident Boxer will win in the end. Conclusion: Don't bother--unless you have a whole lot of money to burn.

Colorado (+) Appointed Senator Michael Bennet (and he's been a very good one; pushed hard for the public option, for example) is in a very tough race against right-winger Pat Buck (he likes the TP support, but has drawn the line at birthers). Bennet was behind but has caught up. This is one candidate I've already contributed to, and may do so again. Conclusion: Give now!

Connecticut (-) This is a must-win for the Democrats, and Attorney General Blumenthal has held the lead consistently since Chris Dodd dropped out long ago. The negative is because the Republican candidate, World Wrestling Federation bigwig wife Linda McMahon, is a big, nasty target. Appropriately so. If I were a Connectican, I would work on turnout, because a poor turnout is the only way Blumenthal can lose. Conclusion--No need to give $$.

Delaware (+) Chris Coons may be a nice guy--he's a favorite of Harry Reid--but the real play is negative ads about new upstart candidate Christine O'Donnell (nice, but batty). The best of all would be if they could get ads showing defeated moderate Republican candidate Michael Castle (who would've been a huge favorite if he'd won this week's primary) saying why he isn't endorsing O'Donnell. Don't take our word for it, take the word of the state's most successful Republican politician. Coons should now win if Dems don't relax. Conclusion--see Connecticut.

Illinois (-) This is doomed to be a negative campaign in which Republican Kirk and Democrat Giannolias are going to hammer away at each other's faults. The race is and has been genuinely close, but I would be shocked if the Democrats lose: in the end, I expect the Chicago machine to do its job. Conclusion--Let them do it.

Kentucky (-) This is one of those for which the Democrats claim that "there are 15 races within 5 points" is somewhat hollow: Tea-bagger Rand Paul isn't leading by much (the Republicans could've had a much easier time if he'd lost the primary), but I see the lead as more than 5. I gave some to the moderate Democrat, Jack Conway, because I'd really like to see my birth state do the right thing, but it seems unlikely at this point. Conclusion--a bit of a longshot, but it's up to you.

New Hampshire (-) I think the negative tack is the wrong way, because Paul Hodes is a Democrat worth praising. The Republican nominee, Kelly Ayotte, barely survived a tough TP challenge and has been weakened. Conclusion: A good give, though risky.

Nevada (-) Reid's challenger, Tea-bag Sharron "Right" Angle, is about as bad as they come. Going negative probably makes sense, given the dire straits of Nevada's economy--Reid may have delivered some Federal benefit to the state, but it's not nearly enough. The one thing is, Reid's campaign is going to have plenty of money. Conclusion--Don't give, and better hope he doesn't blow it.

Pennsylvania (-) I refuse to believe that Joe Sestak can't beat former Wall Street right-winger Pat Toomey, but Toomey continues to lead by 5-10 points. I consider Sestak one of the best candidates out there. This is technically a seat the Democrats are trying to hold, because of primary loser Arlen Specter's 2009 party conversion, but it's been uphill the whole way. Toomey currently has a small lead, but there is a high percentage of undecided, so there is still reason for hope. Conclusion--If there appears to be a chance, give to Sestak.

Washington (+) Patty Murray's been a good Senator, though not outstanding like her Democratic colleague Maria Cantwell. She's got a tough opponent in Dino Rossi, and it appears she's slightly ahead. The state trends Democratic, so I'm cautiously optimistic; this is an important race because it's one the Republicans would need to win if they're to take over the Senate. Conclusion--I'd certainly countenance a contribution.

Wisconsin (+) This is Russ Feingold we're talking about, after Bernie Sanders probably the most progressive Senator, and he's in a tough race with a rich right-winger. I thought Feingold, who's been raising money for this race for years, had enough money, but this race may be draining it. Conclusion--better give (I did recently), as we'll all be sorry if he loses.

After the initial Rant request, I got another later in the day asking for money on these four races. I think it was an afterthought--better not ignore any triggers that might spur giving--but I don't bite:

Missouri (-) Decent Democratic nominee (Robin Carnahan, of the family of popular deceased Senator Mel Carnahan), but she has an uphill fight against Republican incumbent Roy Blount. Conclusion--I'm skeptical--"show me" you can win, Robin.

Indiana (+) This hasn't been well handled by the Democrats, as Brad Ellsworth gave up his House seat (which will now probably be lost) to step up for this improbable race. Conclusion--Don't bother.

Louisiana (-) Railing against hypocritical right-wing sinner John Vitter might draw some money, but he's going to win, unfortunately. Conclusion--not this time.

West Virginia (+) It would make sense for the DSCC to give to Democratic Governor Joe Manchin, against a rich, free-spending opponent. They need to make sure he wins in this recently Republican-trending state, one that Democrats need to count upon to be sure of their majority, but that doesn't mean you or I should give. Conclusion--let them handle it.

The Club for Growth choices for big-money contributions are Nevada, Florida, Colorado, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. These are well-targeted: each is a hot race with a right-wing Republican nominee with a serious chance to win.

Florida is a special case, and notable because the DSCC doesn't seem to be getting behind its nominee, Kendrick Meek, who would be very supportable--if he had a chance to win (he doesn't). It's almost unfortunate that he is running well since winning the nomination, because he's cutting into the votes of Charlie Crist, who's running as an independent and is the best chance to stop TP Republican star Marco Rubio. I had hopes for Crist's chances, but I see them slipping away, something in retrospect I should've seen coming: third-party candidates often lose support late if the two major parties don't yield the field.

The other race notable in its omission from the DSCC Rants is Ohio: the state is trending extremely badly for Democrats, the Democrats' candidate never caught fire, and the chances there are slipping away.

Bottom Line Time

In terms of candidates to individual races, then, I'm strongly recommending contributions in Colorado, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin; somewhat less fervently, in New Hampshire, Kentucky, Washington, and California; and urging local involvement in Connecticut, Illinois, Nevada, and Delaware (trusting that those races will get plenty of money). The mechanism to give to specific races? You can certainly look up the individual candidates' websites, but one easy way to pick the ones you want to give is through ActBlue.

O'Donnell's upset primary win takes Delaware from "certain Republican gain" to "probable hold". Rubio's pulling away from Crist puts Florida into "probable hold" for the Republicans. This leaves me with the following slightly optimistic assessments of competitive races or seat switches (Nate Silver's probabilities of party turnover appended):

Republican Takeovers
North Dakota, Arkansas --never in doubt (100%!)
Indiana (98%)

Democratic Uphill Struggles
Pennsylvania--would be sort of a hold (92%!)
New Hampshire--would be a pickup (20%)

True Tossups
Colorado (72%), Nevada (52%)

Feeling Somewhat Confident Now
Illinois (55%), Wisconsin (33%), Washington (30%), California (42%), Connecticut (2%), West Virginia (10%), Delaware (6%).

I'd Love to Believe, But Don't See It (reluctantly, Republican seat holds)
Florida (22%), Alaska (5%, but not updated for Murkowski's renegade run), Ohio(7%), Missouri (7%), Kentucky (9%).

I'll go conservative--but against the conventional wisdom--with party holds in all but the three certain or near-certain Republican takeovers. That would make the count Democrats 54, Republicans 44, plus Sanders (who counts as a Dem) and Lieberman (who doesn't, really). The big ones for me then--where I'm going against Silver's current probabilities--are Sestak in Pennsylvania, Reid in Nevada, Bennett in Colorado, and Giannoulias in Illinois. We also need to hold the others we should win (WI, WA, CA, CT, WV, and DE). Silver has approximately equal probabilities for 51-53 Democrats (counting the two independents).

Finally, for those who put their money where their predictions are, there are two Intrade bets I notice: on whether the Republicans will control 50 or more seats, the price is 42 (42%, roughly speaking); if they will control the Senate, it's 22%. The difference is that, with Vice President Biden able to cast the tie-breaking vote, the Republicans actually need 51 Senators to control that house of Congress.

Note: the only real movements in this prediction from my last was giving up on Florida and Crist, backing away on Paul Hodes' chances in New Hampshire, and flipping Delaware from a near-certain Republican pickup to a probable Democratic hold.

Up on the Tightrope

President Obama's announcement of Elizabeth Warren to fill a newly-created advisory position (to himself, and to Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner)on consumer financial products regulation suggests Obama is trying to walk a fine line between doing the right thing for Main Street and annoying Wall Street.

The questions this announcement raises are many: Who will be the nominee for the permanent position as head of the CFPA (Consumer Financial Protection Agency, set up by the recent financial regulatory legislation)? Why isn't it going to be Warren (it's possible she doesn't want it)? Why didn't he just give her a recess appointment? Can she perform as though she were the agency head in the meantime?

I don't know about any of these, though I have been one to call for her nomination, and devil take those who might block her. This seems a bit too cute to me.

The next Main St. vs. Wall St. tightrope walk will be the question of tax policy, and particularly any role Obama might take, now or in the lame-duck session after the election, to try to settle the logjam on any legislation to extend the Bushite tax cuts.

Today on CNBC they were heavily promoting a town hall meeting with the President they will be telecasting exclusively on Monday, and asking their various guests to name one question they would ask him. The best answer I heard was from one of their frequent contributors (I forget her name)1 , which was: What about the capital gains and dividends rate cuts due to expire?

This, to me, is the key question and could be the key to unlock the door. What I've seen from some economists suggests that of the various forms of tax cuts, the capital gains one would be the form that would return the greatest number of new investment in the economy (and thus, new jobs), and that retaining the lower rates on qualifying dividends would do a lot for (some) stocks' values, and that rises in stock values do the most to stimulate spending on the high end (not increases in income; those windfalls go into savings).

Obama should lay down a hard line on restoring tax cuts for high income earners--that he will veto the bill, if necessary--but encourage the "right types" of income through temporary restoration of tax cuts on capital gains and dividends. And, of course, the middle class tax cut, which will go straight into spending and reviving the economy.

Wall Street will be satisfied, if not thrilled. Main Street will be less than outraged. Those insisting on tax cuts for the rich will be high and dry, with no hope of getting them approved. Obama & Co. might even then pick up that couple of Republican/Blue Dog votes which will be required to get the bill through. And wouldn't that be better than just having a talking point for the campaign?


1 She's a funds investor, possibly in tech?, a bit on the wide side, and notably pessimistic about most everything, even her holdings.

San Bruno: Wake Up Again, Already!

The horrific explosion of a gas pipeline last weekend in San Bruno, California (just outside of San Francisco) once again reminds us that we are relying on a system of extracting, refining, and distributing fossil fuels that is collapsing and ripe for replacement.

Like the Deepwater Horizon explosion and spill--the "Death Gusher"--and a subsequent e platform explosion off Louisiana's coast, San Bruno's disaster was a failure caused by a combination of private greed and regulatory slack. Oil and gas pipeline accidents happen with shocking frequency in the U.S., partly due to the age of many of the pipelines, partly due to the difficult corrosive conditions and stress often caused by external conditions (like weather, seismic instability), but mostly due to the fact that utility companies find it convenient to charge their customers for maintenance and then focus on repair rather than prevention.

It's one thing if pipelines cross uninhabited barren lands, as with the classic Alaska one (though the wildlife may not view them so comfortably), but pipelines in densely inhabited areas require increased measures to isolate and protect the surrounding population. I don't know if containment, as with nuclear power facilities, is a feasible solution, but this is an outrage, poses unacceptable risk, and immediate remedies should be sought, even if the cost to these companies is massive. Sell your PG&E shares!

TP Roll Out

Tuesday's primary election results completed a sequence of remarkable results for far-right activists, working within the Republican party, to remove those whose devotion to extremism, in word and deed, was insufficient.

The most significant result was in the tiny state of Delaware, where a turnout of some 50 thousand Republicans resulted in a major result: the moderate Republican, William Castle, whose success in the general election was considered a foregone conclusion, was nosed out by a political novice, Christine O'Donnell, a sweet young thing whose opinions are pretty batty.

Delaware is an interesting state politically, quite different from neighboring Maryland, and a good example of how the federal system gives added power to small privileged populations. Because of certain state laws, many American companies are chartered there, and the state has successfully established itself as an attractive site for operations centers, for banks in particular. The resulting prevailing political philosophy has been socially moderate, but very supportive of strengthened central government and of large companies' needs.

Joe Biden--who held the seat in contention for 36 years--learned long ago to fit himself into these tendencies, and Castle represented them well, too. O'Donnell does not fit, and so her nomination moves the Senate race from one with a 15-point Republican lead to one where Democratic nominee Chris Coons is 10 points or so ahead. There is still a race to be run, albeit a short one, but the net result is that the Tea Party rebellion against has likely turned a sure Republican pickup into a loss.

Thus far, the net effect of TP seems to be advancing what I would call the Whig Project: the effort to make George W. Bush the 21st-century Millard Fillmore--the last President of his party.

Havanutha Cuppa?It may seem strange that this movement which has revitalized the party--albeit from the outside, in what one of their generals, Dick Armey, aptly has called a "hostile takeover"--and led to much stronger turnout for the primary elections, seeming to have brought the party to the verge of regaining control of the House, that the Tea Party would be a contributor to the party's near demise, but that's the hope and that's how I see this playing out.

In the short run, the Republicans get tea-bagger candidates for key Senate contests like Rand Paul in Kentucky, Sharron "Right" Angle in Nevada, and O'Donnell in Delaware. Others, like Kelly Ayotte in New Hampshire, who barely survived a challenge from the right on Tuesday, have been forced far to the right to fend off the TP threat; Ayotte's lead in polls for the general election contest has been sharply reduced. Ken Buck in Colorado has found the birther army's support to be problematic, and he also finds himself in a tough race.

Those two may survive the brush with the thick white stuff, and Tea Party rebel candidates may yet survive in rightist-tending states like Alaska and Utah. However, the general pattern of the primary season would have to make moderate Republicans wonder what they are doing in such a narrow and vindictive tent, and independents--who on the whole may be receptive to the idea of balancing off Democratic political power in this election--will have to swallow hard and close their eyes before selecting some of these flaky right-wingers.

If the Republicans succeed in TP'ing the House just after Halloween, they may find this to be a Pyrrhic victory, just as they did their victory led by Newt Gingrich and the Contract with America in 1994. Rather than castigating the Bushites for having governed as incompetent, statist, civil liberty-denying, tools of the military-industrial complex, they choose to oppose them on the dubious ground of having been too accommodating to the Obama administration. As if! Much as independents' desires might include a reduction in the level of Federal government activity, the post-'94 history suggests they will not reward an attempt to shut things down, either--particularly if the economic weakness continues.

In the longer run, running against a Tea Party national candidate in 2012 would seem to be a dream scenario for President Obama and the Democrats. If the extremist Republican primary takeover model is not discredited by the 2010 general election results, it's possible it could repeat in the national party nomination process. Sarah Palin could easily pull off a caucus coup in Iowa, survive New Hampshire and win South Carolina, then use the momentum to win the nomination. Such a result could cause a politically-disastrous split in the party, and would regardless suggest a massive Democratic win.

It's a gamble, I recognize. First, Democrats could become overconfident in this year's races; second, the country would be damaged by a Congressional takeover by reincarnated John Birchers. Then, if somehow it were possible that Palin & Co. could win--and the Electoral College makes all kinds of undemocratic outcomes possible--we would be looking an unprecedented disaster in the face, even worse than Bushite Misrule.

TPM Post

I apologize to my reader(s) for the relative silence of the past few weeks: I had to bone up on both Spanish and Italian for oral exams (in Italian: "interrogazioni"), but that is now over. I will now attempt a burst of several postings, and at least one on the key primary elections tonight (whether before or after them, I'm not sure at this point).

First, this one I posted on Talking Points Memo's website today in response to the "news" that the Republicans have come up with an historic "compromise" on the tax cuts (among themselves, that is), the compromise being merely to kick everything down the road for two years (or three years, as Lindsay Graham generously proposed).

This is the classic slow-motion train wreck (remember "The Fugitive" remake?)
With the exception of a few renegades, you won't see many Democrats agreeing to this "compromise", and to put the shoe on the other foot for once, they should have enough votes to filibuster such a lousy deal. Remember, extending the lower rates a couple more years for the wealthy will give the special interests the chance to pull this stuff again in 2012 or 2013, when the debt will be much bigger, and the deficits and the unemployment may be no better.

A much better compromise is to allow certain tax cuts--I have in mind the reduced rates on capital gains and dividends--to continue for a couple of years, because the former will lead to some reinvestment in the economy (much more than lower rates on high-income earners would do) and the latter will help the stock market (which will lead to more spending among the wealthy). The tax rates on the wealthy should expire--now!--while the lower rates on the middle class could be extended (kicked down the road) for a few years, rather than making them permanent. That will make the projected cost of the deal much less than other options.

This is also posted on facebook--TPM has this habit of frequently screwing up my log-in ID, and I couldn't even get to the login screen for this today (as chinshihtang), so I had to use my alter ego name. Solve the riddle--earn a piddle!

Campaign Gets Serious

This is Labor Day weekend, the traditional beginning of the general election campaign. Of course, it's been going on for months, but a lot of the focus has been on primaries--which are still not complete. We've been making forecasts for nine months or more.

There are some very bold predictions being made in these unsettled days of great discontent; most of these bold predictions are favoring the Republicans' chances this year. These are people who are surfing what they see as a great wave of reaction to Democratic control of government, something driven by dissatisfaction of independents and readily seen in recent polling trends. Many of these admit there is no great wave of sentiment, coherence, or incisive argument on the Republican side--it's just anti-Democrat and anti-Obama, which, in our two-party system, can easily be enough.

It's Saturday, So I've Come to Bury Sabato, not Praise It

I have to point out something which I see as a surfing prediction from Larry Sabato, the respected political science professor and longtime electoral commentator at U Va. He has decided to take the spotlight, going public with a prediction that the Republicans stand to gain 47 seats in the House (they need to gain 39 to get control). To his credit, he has seat-by-seat ratings of those he does not consider safe; however, the math does not really add up. Of the seats he rates "Leans Dem" or "Likely Dem", most are currently held by Democrats but three are not. Of those rated "Leans Rep" or "Likely Rep", the majority are held by Republicans, but 17 are not. Of the seats rated "Toss-Up", 28 are Democratic-held, one held by Republicans.

If you credit his calls on the individual races--and for the ones I know about, I have no quarrel with his ratings--the Republicans have net +14, with 29 races as toss-ups. Give half of the toss-ups to the Republicans (plus the one currently Republican), and you get +28 for the Republicans--very close to the 25-30 seat gain I've been predicting all along. Even if you give every one of the toss-ups to the Republicans, you get +42--good enough to change control, but still not the +47 he trumpets.

I have to accuse him of a little intellectual dishonesty here: either he doesn't believe his own ratings on the individual races, or he decided to disregard them to get some headlines. He owes us a little better explanation, particularly after he leads his post by bragging about how he advises his students to stick to the facts and not go with feelings.

There are some good aspects to Sabato's post, particularly his contribution to the analysis of gubernatorial races, a key dimension of this year's election with legislative redistricting coming up. Quite rightly, he's highlighting a big Republican gain in statehouses and its major implications. However, as a New Mexican, I have to complain how he highlights all the races he's expecting to cause change of control, but doesn't mention by name our state, for which he is calling for a Republican takeover. I hope he's wrong there; I'm not sure he is, but I at least think we deserve to mentioned.

Finally, his ratings of Senate seats, which people have focused upon, are generally reasonable and consistent with current polls. He's got the Republicans gaining seven seats, but specifically is not discounting the possibility of a gain of 10, which would give them control of the Senate, too. He also points out an interesting fact, that in the six cases of the House flipping control since World War II, the Senate has also flipped each time, even though some of those changes were not anticipated.

I still go the other way: the House will not flip, nor the Senate. My belief in the Democrats' holding such seats as PA, CO, IL, CA, WA, NV, and WI (the first two rated by Sabato as leaning Republican, the others as toss-ups) is more based on Americans' coming to their senses and to the inferiority, or even outright imbecility, of some of the Republican candidates in key contested seats than it is hard poll numbers, but I do have this on my side: not a single general election vote has been cast yet, and polls do not decide any races.

Aid to Pakistan

I have heard lots of pleas for more assistance for the flood victims in Pakistan lately. The UN promised 450 billion (dollars, I think it was) but was having trouble fulfilling that promise with pledges from its "member nations". All the big international charity organizations were using that fact, and the continuing worsening situation, to make topical pleas for more money, too.

What I haven't heard, and I'm somewhat surprised by it, is anything from the US government. If ever there were a strategic case for humanitarian assistance, it would be there. What I've decided is that they decided they don't need to ask or tell anyone--lots and lots of foreign aid money is already appropriated for Pakistan, and some could be diverted from the "hard"--military--assistance which is much more problematic; lots and lots of military transport (air, land, and sea) are already in the neighborhood. The only thing missing is the PR benefit of being seen to come heroically to the rescue. That, I guess, can certainly wait until the crisis ends.

Much more damaging than the recent Wiki-Leaks releases is the fact now emerging that Pakistan's secret service, ISI, torpedoed negotiations for a settlement with the Taliban and arrested key Taliban leaders because they were talking turkey (or some other fowl too closely related) with the US and with representatives of the Afghan government. And not with the ISI, apparently. The Pakistani minders of the Taliban pretended to be surprised when certain raids caught top leaders (even as high as the Taliban #2, who was leading the negotiations for the insurgents), jail them (most of them, temporarily) and release them with a good lecture about to whom they owe their allegiance. These ISI are the folks who will end up spending, or wasting, most of our covert and overt military assistance, no matter who is nominally in charge of the Pakistan government, and of the military.

One non-cynical note: the lists out there of the charities most deeply involved in Pakistan were either the usual ones, or ones that were so unusual they might not be trustworthy. One that clearly has a major, critical role is Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres); they are always on the scene, always worth a contribution.

Also Known As The Factory System

There is a sports story which has had me seething for months, one too important to be covered in just a few notes. College football has three concurrent and interlocking scandals--the continuing stink of the BCS (also known as the Boring Cheesy Series, the Baloney Championship Shit, and the Bullshit College Scandal), the rules violations popping up at the major colleges like fungus, and the degrading round of conference shopping we just went through.

For me, the sins of college football far exceed those of pro sports. Performance enhancement problems like in cycling, or baseball, where the athletes are much clearer in their motivations--they are highly-trained, focused mercenaries, willing to pursue any means to gain an advantage--are much more forgivable. Pro basketball, pro football--it's much the same, but the rigors of the season itself impose discipline, and the players just need to have a modicum of following the laws in the offseason. College sports, though, should--must--have some relation to education, or the presidents of their schools are doing a great disservice by tolerating them. Instead, the players are generally totally uninvolved in higher education, performing a type of indentured servitude which gives them the right to seek professional employment--if they keep their noses clean, show talent or the potential to develop it, and don't get injured too badly.

Due to colleges' cozy deal with the NFL--they perform an important role comparable to baseball's minor leagues (for which the talent is at least paid something)--the period of servitude is three years in college football. That's two more years, or three times as much, as the one-and-done deal college hoops has with the NBA for those who really have the talent, and who are, like most big-time college football players, just biding their time educationally and running a high economic risk waiting for the call.

Yes, the costs of putting on big-time football programs are high, even if the talent is unpaid (above the table, at least); they need to get return on their investment and use the cash-spinning program to fund their money-losing sports programs. Lots of equipment, scouting costs, and the huge salaries of a top-flight coaching staff (bidding against the NFL here)--these are justifications for colleges to search for better conference deals and destroy the existing ones. State budgets are strapped, so the public universities which make up most of the top football schools are more than ever on their own to be financially self-supporting.

Revising Conference Monickers
None of this excuses the shameless hucksterism of this year's off-season conference auctions. The only good news is that contractual requirements slow the pace of all the switches that were determined, so that this year's conference lineups will still be recognizable. Next year, not so much.

So, in the interest of our readers' being able to interpret standings, we review the principal players in the BCS (Bottomless and Completely Stupid). We start with the conference all envy (in football, at least), the SEC (a/k/a Separated from Education Completely). The SEC's brand of near-pro ball and endless supplies of well-fed Southern beef have led to five straight wins in the (Fictional) National Championship game (or FNC), with another expected this year (so don't bother watching to see how the FNC comes out this year). The only cloud on the horizon is NCAA investigations of rule violations at several SEC schools, which could lead to future suspensions from postseason play and even possible forfeiture of some past crowns (as happened recently with USC). The SEC has a history of teams going in and out (see South Carolina, Georgia Tech, Arkansas), but is quite happy with what they've got now and didn't have any active additions or deletions from their roster this year.

Next, there are a couple of big-time wannabee conferences. They can't beat the SEC, but expansion to twelve or more teams would allow them, under the rules, to plop for a big conference championship payday. Those are the Big 10 and the Pac-10; the former has been living a lie for a few years now, since they added Penn State, and soon will get its required 12th, Nebraska; the latter will get a couple of wannabees from near-Pac states Colorado and Utah. The Pac gave up its coastal status years ago by adding the two Arizona state schools, so these two newbies will not change the marginal aridity much. To their credit, the Pac has been fairly flexible about name changes and will shift easily to becoming the Pac-12. The Big Ten has not; I now officially dub them the Big XII.

That will be to recognize reality, but also trying to avoid creating confusion with the suffering and similarly name-inert Big 12, losers of Colorado and Nebraska. Dropping to X will cost them a big payday, so I expect conference kingpins Texas and Oklahoma to go raiding in the near future to get their numbers back up to the required target. There were two other big losers in this round of Let's Make a Deal: one was the MWC (now known as the Mountain Who Cares?), who lost Utah and gained total-hopeless-sellout-imitation-college-with-blue-Astroturf Boise St., which jumped in the mistaken notion that the MWC will be destined to get a BCS automatic berth (Breaking News: BYU, the "Notre Dame of the West", is also departing the MWC: they will go it alone in football and accept a downgrade to the WCC in other sports. Good riddance, I say.) The other loser conference (somebody has to supply the wannabees) is the "Totally Wack" (a/k/a WAC, formerly known as the Western Athletic Conference), which has been through this too many times in the past. No doubt they can find a few more Division I-A colleges looking to move up, in order to fill some slots from their depleted ranks.

The conferences that are really getting away with things in football are the ACC (Also-ran Coast Competition) and the Big (in basketball) East. They both get guaranteed berths in the Big Creampuff Showdown, though their football fortunes have slipped dramatically, along with those of usual conference front-runners Florida State and Miami (respectively, not respectfully). The two leagues have a good cash cow strategy, where the allure of possibly winning the conference and losing a prestige bowl game, along with their admittedly awesome basketball programs (the Big East's roster in basketball is about twice as long as that of football, including some colleges with minor or nonexistent football programs, lone wolf Notre Dame, and conference splitter Louisville), together constitute a winning formula. And, if the football team suffers, cut costs further.

Yes, I am jealous that the football considerations are jerking around the basketball programs. And, no, I don't hate college football, as long as one is talking about non-BCS variety. The football programs where the big money isn't at stake feature football that's more fun, more experimental, and show much more respect for the concept of the student-athlete. On the other hand, the BCS musical chairs game is college presidents' attempt to Polish a Turd: they refuse to look at the real issue, the perennial FNC qualification disaster. They should dump this whole phony, pandering system for a small single-elimination tournament of eight or twelve teams. Instead they cite hypocritically the impact on their "education" of extending the season with multiple games, while trying to barter bigger TV deals and sneak in conference championship windfalls.

Finally, another bit of good news from a different sport: the NCAA basketball tournament, one of the real jewels of amateur sports remaining in the US (men's and women's), dodged a bullet with the calls for massive watering-down of its standards and will implement only a modest expansion in the near future. All I ask is that they just get rid of the NIT, and move the Eastern regional permanently to Madison Square Garden, the week after the Big East Classic.

Sports Notes

The US Open started today; the big news leading up to the tournament was the withdrawal of Serena Williams due to a foot injury. Her absence leaves the women's singles field wide open--as in, there is no favorite. Caroline Wozniacki moves up to the #1 seed, and she has played well in recent weeks, but I am unconvinced that she is ready to conquer the rigors of the Open.

Looking at the draw, the top half is the one is where the important upsets should be expected. Look for Maria Sharapova (#11) to meet Wozniacki in the third round, and quite possibly to beat her. The section of the draw right below should end up with Svetlana Kuznetzova--maybe the most consistent woman player, if not the most talented--playing China's Li Na, who's also very consistent. The quarter of the draw below that is the one that really looks wide open--#4 Jelena Jankovic and #7 Vera Zvonareva are the nominal favorites, but I don't expect either one to make it to the tournament semifinal.

The bottom half of the draw would be similarly wild, except that it contains the real quality of the field in Kim Clijsters and Venus Williams. I expect them to meet in the semifinal and the winner to take the championship in a one-sided final. This could be Venus' best chance in a long while to win another major.

The men's field is different--deeper and yet more predictable, I think. The defending champion, Juan Martin del Potro, is unfortunately not yet able to compete. I see the tourney boiling down to the following quarterfinal matchups: Nadal (1) vs. Nalbandian (31, on the comeback trail); Murray (4) vs. Berdych (7); an American matchup of Roddick (9) vs. Mardy Fish (17), if Roddick can get by or around Nikolai Davydenko and Fish--playing his best tennis of his career recently--by #3 Novak Djokovic; and Federer (2) vs. the winner of a huge match between Marin Cilic (11) and Robin Soderling (5). After that, it gets very tough to pick, but I'll go with Federer defeating Roddick in one semifinal, Murray over Nadal in the other, and Federer defeating Murray in the final.

Some Brag
Soon after my last sports post, the Reds hosted the Cardinals and were thoroughly outclassed in three straight games. Then, something surprising happened: the Reds resumed their winning ways against lesser teams, but the Cardinals couldn't beat anyone for a while. Now, the Reds have opened up a five-game lead. It's far from over--the big rematch series, in St. Louis, will be this weekend--but the Reds have already exceeded my expectations, and there's a better-than-decent chance they will figure into the playoffs regardless of how that goes.

After only two games, Chelsea already stood alone at the top of the English Premier League, and their third win leaves them with 14 goals scored, none allowed. The tough matchups haven't started yet--they're a couple weeks away still--but Chelsea looks good, without a doubt.

It's a Drag
The NBA is a team sport, but one with stars of the first magnitude. There are signs this summer that some are getting a bit too big for their baggy britches. The Miami Heat has made itself overnight the team everyone loves to hate--even more than the Lakers--with their forced combo of Wade, LeBron, and Bosh. The new fad--like the football Bengals' combo of Ochocinco and T.O.--is players deciding who they want to play with and forming up accordingly.

The other rather miserable development is the US' team for the World Championships in Turkey. Not that the team is miserable--basically they are all second-line all-stars who would like to prove something--but, unlike most other countries' teams, our best players opted out this time. The team has not yet lost, in exhibitions or in the group stage of the championships, but the median expectation for this smallish team (it has only one center, and that's Tyson Chandler) would be third place or so. A lot depends on young Kevin Durant, the clear scoring leader on the team and star of the new team everyone wants to love, the Oklahoma City Thunder (what happened to New Orleans?)

Finally, the team I've adopted since moving out West, Chauncey Billups' and Carmelo Martinez' Denver Nuggets, seems on the verge of breaking up--Billups (who is on the US team) seems to be in decline, J.R. Smith is freaking himself and everyone else out again, Nene managed to get hurt with the Brazilian team, Coach Karl's return from cancer treatment is uncertain, and 'melo has made it clear he's going to do his version of the LeBron Thing next summer, when he'll be a free agent. Maybe I'll have to go back to the Knicks, who are showing some signs of sanity after a decade of madness.

Favre Be It From Me
It's hard to believe how much attention the NFL gets during its preseason. Oh well, it should phase into the real thing soon, though I will hardly notice until the World Series is over. The Brett Favre soap opera raises 24-hour sports journalism to a new high in banality and makes the Vikings the new must "Who cares?" team.

Alfred, Lord Hobbs

Taos suffered a great loss last Friday when our dear friend Alfred Hobbs passed away. He was 83 and had been in poor health for a few months, basically since his return a few months ago from his final round-the-world trip.

What made Alfred so special was his spirit and zest for life; it drew people of all kinds to him, and he was always welcoming, graceful and tolerant. The title above is a bit of a play on words on the poet Tennyson; Alfred in one sense was hardly lordly, being down-to-earth and unpretentious, but he was a fine Southern gentleman, chivalrous and noble in behavior (especially with the ladies).

Did I mention that he looked like a cross between Grizzly Adams and Santa Claus (though he did slim down the last few years, he still had that facial aspect, not to mention a long, white beard and a bright red, slightly misshapen nose)?

The Adventure of a Lifetime
Alfred's life was one of a rogue and wanderer, who found his destination here in Taos (though it never erased the wanderlust, which he would exercise periodically to the end of his days).

He basically ran off from his rural North Carolina home and joined the Marines as an underage 17 in 1944. "His war" was not a bad one, in the sense that he was fully credited as a veteran (which came in handy toward the end when he needed major eye surgery), but didn't end up needing to fight. His unit was mobilized in the Pacific and was one of those which would have faced the daunting task of invading Japan, had it not been for the atomic bombs (at least that's the official story).

After the war, he kicked around for a while, then married a Danish woman. Then, together they took a huge, multi-year adventure through Africa and Asia in a '30's-era London taxi (which they converted into a sort of camper). The taxi eventually made it back to Taos and he preserved it, on blocks, until the present (it's now in the custody of his son in upstate New York). A documentary movie (working title: "Driven") is planned of the great adventure, and of the last cross-country trip he made in it with his son just last year (details below).

He undertook many more trips (six round-the-world trips in all), but after that expedition he went to live in upstate New York and was studying for a Ph.D. in anthropology when he came to Taos in the late '60's to write his thesis on the New Buffalo hippie commune that had been started near here. The paper was never finished, and he stayed here as his permanent residence thereafter. He worked--mostly as an archeologist on road crews, in case some bones or fossils turned up--but not too much. He kept his lifestyle simple and his costs low.

His Ideas
At one point some six or seven years ago, Alfred remarked to me that he had a number of ideas he wanted to propagate while he still could, but that people didn't listen. So, we had a series of interviews on our back porch: mostly just him, me, some refreshments maybe, and the tape recorder.

As it turned out, most of the 3-4 hours of interviews consist of reminiscences--from his childhood, his military days, his travels--but still I got some idea of what he wanted to get across (also from a public meeting he held 2-3 years later).

To a surprising extent, this very tolerant and progressive person's ideas wouldn't be out of place at a Tea Party conclave (minus all the birther and Muslim and socialism nonsense). Alfred had no faith in politicians or top-down reform; he distrusted government meddling. He was looking for a spontaneous movement of the people--leaders not required--to change the way things are done around here and preserve our liberties.

The fullest elaboration of his thinking would've focused on ideas of education: teaching traditional values in a more-or-less Socratic method, learning how to exchange ideas sincerely, with passion, but respectfully. He did have a sense, which came late, of the supernatural and its involvement in human affairs; that part I mostly never elicited too much detail about.

Alfred's memorial celebration was held August 28 at Anglada's. It was extremely well attended (I'd estimate 250-300 people at its peak), cheerful but not overly so (given the recent loss we still felt acutely), plenty of food, plenty of music (something that Alfred really did not care about all that much). Oh, and necessarily so, for one of Alfred's parties, lots of "buddah" (as he would say).

His absence will leave a void, but it will be filled with memories and inspirational thoughts.

For his formal bio, a great picture, and a reference to the movie--and an appeal for money to help finish it--see:

http://www.riverafuneralhome.com/sitemaker/sites/rivera0/obit.cgi?user=244417Hobbs

Political Trivia

The inanity of this year's political season is beyond belief. I continue to have hope that the American electorate will show some good sense when it finally goes to the polls this November, but there is plenty of reason to worry.

TP: Don't Just Beat It, Wipe It
Conceptually, the idea of renovating the Republican Party through a hostile takeover from its core makes sense and is even somewhat appealing. It was certainly time to throw over the Bushite elements who have spoiled the party's image of competent, limited governance. There was something similarly appealing about the grassroots nature of the movement, to the extent it was not merely Astroturf generated by right-wing media sucking wind in a vacuum.

My only complaint is about the quality of the candidates being promoted by the Tea Party elements and about the quality of their leadership. In terms of the latter: Dick Armey? Sarah Palin? Glenn Beck? And the candidates: Sharron Angle? Rand Paul? And these people could actually win?

I endorsed Sarah Palin for the Republican nomination in November, 2008, and I'll stick with that--somehow I can't believe she could ever win, and I do feel that the GOP deserves her as their standard-bearer. It's sad, but I agree with the analysts who perceive that the one who could stop her is Mike Huckabee--if he runs, he either neutralizes her by splitting their shared supporters, or she decides to stick to producing highly-compensated, oil-slick-thin political commentary.

Anti-Obama Fever
What does it mean when a quarter of the population believe President Obama is a Muslim? When only about three-eighths think he's a Christian? Somebody's not paying attention, maybe?

It's perfectly understandable that the Democrats' national fortunes may be sagging this year. For one thing, most independents believe the government works best when control is split between parties. Second, we must expect the governing party's support to suffer when the economy is so weak; so why is there no meaningful debate about revitalizing the economy (extending Bushite tax cuts certainly doesn't qualify, and why would anyone of middle-income or less ever support that idea)?

How can "firing Nancy Pelosi as Speaker" be an attractive campaign slogan when the person proposed to replace her in the job is John Boehner?

As Hillary Clinton once remarked, there is "a vast right-wing conspiracy", and what's got them all conspiring nowadays is the notion that they can demonize President Obama and destroy him with big lies.

Somebody has to step up and say this year's campaign is idiotic, so I guess that's me.

And Now for the Stupid Mosque Debate
(It's the debate stupid.)

Although it is appropriate for opponents of the proposed Islamic center to urge its sponsors to move it, it does not appear there is any legal basis to compel them to move. Anyway, how far away from Ground Zero is far enough to put up a mosque? If, indeed, the proposed Islamic Community Center could be called a mosque...

I would propose that the Islamic center's sponsors announce that the center will have a permanent exhibition on its ground floor which will promote the argument that the atrocities perpetrated not far away were in all ways un-Islamic, contrary to the precepts of the religion. If they would only do that, the moral argument against the center disappears immediately.

If they won't do that, they may still be able to build it (will their financial backers stay the course?), but what will come? Probably permanently continuing demonstrations against the center....

Financing the Recovery

The Dodd-Frank Financial Reform and Prevention of Self-Immolation Act
I haven't commented on the financial reform legislation as it finally came down the pike. Mostly, it was unobjectionable in the sense that it contains provisions that the banking industry agreed were needed to prevent itself from destroying itself so easily next time.

Think of the banking crisis which caused the Great Crater as being like a person strapping an explosive device to himself, going into a public area, and threatening to blow himself and everyone around to smithereens if the authorities don't come and help him take this thing off.

In that scenario, the new legislation is simply the banks agreeing not to strap explosive devices to themselves anymore, and, if they do, agreeing that the authorities can clear the square of others before they blow themselves up. Sounds OK, but you still wouldn't want such individuals hanging around your kids.

The one thing in the legislation that might put a crimp in the bankers' plans is the new Consumer Financial Practices agency: the banks assumed they could negate the power of that organization from the start, but there's a chance it could still be a problem for them, at least for a short while if President Obama picks Elizabeth Warren for it.

Unfinished Business

I commented at one point that the legislation was too silent on the subject of capital requirements for banks. It's clear now that there was a strategy there--this will be the province of the Bank for International Settlements (a/k/a Basel), and that the rules will be standardized across countries. That's really the only approach that will make sense--otherwise, the US banks would be penalized (or advantaged) vs. banks from other countries. There has been an agreement in principle on the new rules, which will be phased in slowly enough that their impact in restraining lending (requiring higher capital for a given amount of lending, for the most part) will not impede global recovery from the current downturn.

The other big time bomb strapped to public chests out there is Fannie/Freddie (FNMA and FRMC), the government-backed enterprises which insure huge quantities of mortgages, which are losing money hand over fist these days, presenting a potential new bailout issue. It appears to be either bail or jail--letting these organizations fail, or taking away their government backing, would have a catastrophic effect on the weak domestic housing market and simply can't be contemplated at the time.

The solution is pretty straightforward, and I'm sure they'll get around to it eventually. It would be called "recapitalization", and it would be quite similar to what was done through a consortium of banks in the '80's, when sovereign Third World debt volumes threatened to sink all the major banks. Here, the healthy loans in Fannie/Freddie (and there are plenty) would require a smaller amount of capital (using the new rules) once the bad loans are stripped off. Fannie/Freddie used to have rules which kept out the bad loans; they degenerated in the final years before the crisis, but not nearly as bad as some others. The bad loans on their books--a relatively small percentage but still a huge quantity--would be reworked, hopefully very creatively, and the effort put into them would eventually limit damage to something much smaller than what current estimates would suggest.

Where is the Love?

Where is the Loan,
You said was mine oh mine
Til the end of time
Was it just a lie
Where is the loan?

This should be a good situation: the banks are sitting on a ton of money; the companies that might borrow it are sitting on their own tons of money (which makes them great candidates for loans); neither banks nor companies can make enough just pussyfooting around with their piles (i.e., Treasury bills and the like).

What's needed is actually a FDR-style National Recovery Act kind of industrial and energy plan which the companies could rally around and put the system's money to work. The problem with this is all the TP hanging around gumming things up, but that problem isn't going away. The challenge of framing targeted investments to get the economy going (gradually) and moving in logical directions to assist our economic future is one that will have to be handled with a great deal of diplomacy. If it is handled properly (for example, "energy independence" to bring the conservatives on board; the promise of easy profits to get the companies falling in line), it can work.

Rot Reversal

I do get involved in some of these online chat/debate/name-calling sessions, though not as often as I used to do. I often do this under my nom de plume, chinshihtang (usually without caps or apostrophes) so if you want to find some of those you can find them searching Google and some other sites (N.Y. Times, Huffington Post, etc.). The ones I cut, paste, and post on this blog are probably about only 25% of those that I get into, but I generally don't get too much more feedback there than here.

So, why do I bother? Good question, and one that I can not answer in so many words except to paraphrase a writing teacher I had once who said, essentially, that if you don't feel compelled to write, you won't.

Anyway, I'd been thinking about a blog posting about our economic mess and found I'd pretty much said what I wanted in this comment dialogue about a posting called "18 Signs America Is Rotting Right Before Our Eyes". That posting itself was a bit of selective reporting drawing huge conclusions from anecdotal information, so as such not a big deal, but I was touched by the comment posted by a sincere guy named "George":

I agree with the "diagnosis," but would like to hear from people who have good ideas on solutions. They could be categorized as follow: (1) Targeted taxes (increases) and targeted tax breaks (reductions). (2) Major cuts in selected domestic programs. (3) Major cuts in selected military programs. (4) Getting more money in the hands of people who will spend it right-away to immediately boost consumer spending - i.e., the lower middle class, the poor, people out-of-work, ect. (5) Means Test" selected entitlement programs (social security, medicare). (6) Eliminate "corporate tax breaks" to companies who outsource jobs overseas, and give tax breaks to companies who increase their payroll and pay a living wage. (7) Renegotiate U.S. taxpayer interest rate to The Federal Reserve. (8) Remove corporate subsidies and introduce real capitalism into the marketplace. (9) Employ cost-benefit analysis to all unnecessary wars and miltary bases.(10) Charge other nations and companies when the U.S. military is used to protect "their" shipping lanes and locations. (11) Promote "workfare" and public works for able-bodied persons receiving pubic assistance. (12) etc.
You get the idea, George.

And here was my response:

I like what you are doing, George, trying to be constructive. I would say immediately that 3), 6), and 8) are great ideas that should be no-brainers but in this constipated political environment are not. 2) sounds good but will not produce the results many expect. 9) doesn't really make sense--if the war is "unnecessary" there would be no cost-benefit analysis that would change that and make it desirable.

I would like to suggest a general category that I don't see: targeted investment in our nation's future. To give an example, highway investment makes sense to a certain extent to keep the economy flowing, but not all highways and bridges need to be kept up, and minor roads returning to gravel may make sense in some cases (remember the "Bridge to Nowhere" in Alaska?). There should be a strategic assessment of the roads and bridges that are most important. We should be investing in alternative fuels such as natural gas for public transportation, upgrade of rail lines, and research in lower-emission forms of cars and airplanes. We should be investing in upgrading our power grid and providing home electricity inverters so that alternative energy sources will be more practicable. Investment in education is actually on the right track now but should be more strategic in the expenditures.

The macroeconomic debate seems to focus on a point/counter-point between the Keynesians and the supply-siders, neither of which has a good argument to deal with this jobless recovery (a/k/a the shallow ascent portion of The Great Crater). I have plenty of respect for the ideas of deficit spending in a recession, and I do not agree that the stimulus did not "work", in that it stopped a downward spiral, but I think it's clear that we both overspent and overly cut taxes all the way through the lead-in to this economic miasma, so it is almost illogical to expect the same policies to get us out of it.

The high jobless rates we are in are structural in nature and will tend to continue for decades, because this society simply doesn't need to put everyone who wants a job to work in order to produce and consume everything we need or think we need. There is no short-term solution which is really going to work to produce millions of new private-sector jobs, so forget about it, accept the reality, and blame whomever you want.

The key word is "structural": we need to be building a new economic structure suited to our children's and grandchildren's needs--upon that is what it would be worth spending our macroeconomic, legislated (or executively ordered) dollars. I gave a few ideas above.

Baseball View: 2/3 Re-, 1/3 Pre-

Major league baseball teams reach the two-thirds mark of the season (108 of 162 regular-season games) this week, and the principal trade deadline just passed. This is a good time to review the season so far and what remains.

MLB YTD

In my preseason picks, I had a few things right (besides the obvious ones), but there have been some big surprises, as well. Here are the top five unexpected team performances for me, thus far:

1) San Diego Padres--I had them dead last; I was not alone in this. They are over the hump in terms of believing they can win, but that doesn't mean they're in. It looks as though they will have a tough battle down the stretch with the Giants (whom I did see coming; I picked them to win the Wild Card, and if the season ended today, they'd have it).
2) Colorado Rockies--The offsetting error, the team that I picked to win the NL West, is now in fourth place, despite the performance of the most outstanding NL player of the year thus far, pitcher Ubaldo Jimenez. It's not surprising that their pitching, other than Jimenez, has been spotty (or downright poor); the surprising thing has been a relative lack of hitting.
3) Cincinnati Reds--I thought they were a year away from what they have been able to achieve so far this year. They are a great example of the sudden surge in pitching depth; seems like they have a new, young flamethrower emerging every three months (with the flamiest thrower of all, Cuban defector Aroldis Chapman, about ready to emerge). Like the Padres, though, they haven't won anything yet, and they are up against the wiliest veteran team in the league, the Cardinals.
4) Tampa Bay Rays--I am thrilled by their resurgence this year. I had hoped for this; a lot of misfortune to the Botox has contributed to that result.
5) Atlanta Braves--Like the Reds, they came up faster than expected; like Tampa Bay, they've been helped by the ineptness of a key divisional rivals, the Phillies.

Next on the list would be the degree of collapse of the Orioles, which I had thought may be an improving team (it may yet be, but not meaningfully for this year), and the continuing rise of the late-starting Chicago White Sox.

On an individual performance level, there are several surprises, but generally the positive ones (like, for example, Jose Bautista on the Blue Jays, or Rickie Weeks on the Brewers) have not translated into major team success. The one exception I would note is the combo of Vladimir Guerrero, who has had a great season so far for the Texas Rangers (moderately surprising, as he seemed to be in decline the past couple years), and Josh Hamilton; their hitting has been a key component in their developing a large lead in the AL West.

Yet to Come

American League
There are really two races remaining in the AL regular season: 1) the AL Central rematch between Minnesota and Chicago; and 2) the three-way race in the AL East (and for the Wild Card) with New York, Tampa Bay, and Boston. The latter race could realistically be down to two after this weekend, if Boston doesn't hurt the Yanks in their series in New York.

One might say that it doesn't matter whether New York or Tampa Bay wins the division, but I would disagree with that. If the likely scenario unfolds with one winning the AL East--with the best record in the league--and the other the Wild Card, the rules would set the WC against the second best of the division winners, which I would expect to be Texas. Although I picked the Yanks to win the pennant (not much of a stretch, I admit), I would look to a possible first-round matchup with the Rangers as a likely route to getting the Yanks out of the way in the postseason, before they build up a head of steam. So, I do care, and I want TB to take the division. I won't be happy with anything but a Tampa Bay-Texas AL Championship series, in which I now like the Rangers (due to their acquisition of Cliff Lee).

The conventional wisdom is that the ChiSox' surge will continue and push them well past the Twins, but I'm not buying that. I see some weak spots in Chicago's pitching, which I think will lead to a cold streak before long and keep the race close until the end. Still, they are probably the better bet, and I'm willing to pull for them for our President's sake (he's a White Sox backer).

National League
In the National League, every postseason spot is seriously contested, with no sign that the tension will end soon. Late trading moves by most of the contenders will have significant effect on the pennant races, too.

In the East, the Phillies' pickup of Roy Oswalt gives them a reasonable facsimile of last year's postseason star, Cliff Lee, whom they should've kept. That failure still rankles me, and I'm actively rooting against them, for the division and, more critically for me, for the Wild Card. Josh Howard's injury gives me hope for that outcome. The Braves have emerged as a team with a good mix of youths and veterans, with a sense of purpose to win now (Bobby Cox's last year, seems like it's likely to be Chipper Jones' last, and also closer Billy Wagner's, at least according to him, and he should know). I'm moderately confident of the Bravos' ability to hold off Philly, as long as they have no more setbacks to their pitching rotation (the recent loss of Kris Medlen hurts, but another loss would be fatal).

In the NL West, San Francisco has slightly better pitching than San Diego, with similarly anemic team offense. This looks to be a tight race, possibly coming down to a key failure in the Padres' pitching (most likely, on a road trip), or a key hitter on one team or the other (Adrian Gonzalez, say, or Pablo Sandoval or newcomer Pat Burrell on the Giants) either getting real hot, real cold, or injured. The Dodgers and the Rockies have fallen out of the race, but will be playing key games down the stretch against the contenders and are likely spoilers.

In the NL Central, the Cardinals have shored up their pitching with Jake Westbrook, which should help both down the stretch and in the postseason, if they make it. And I would have to say I expect them to get in, and to do well. The Reds' emergence--a good blend of young hitters, young starting pitching arms, and good defense, is the most exciting development in recent years (at least since Tampa Bay's emergence). I fear they might be overmatched (because of lack of experience) in a head-to-head for the divisional title, but I'm hoping they can stay with the Cards until the end, and that that will be good enough for a Wild Card berth (over the East and West's second-placers--so, another reason to root against the Phils).

I will stick with my preseason pick of the Cards to win the NL pennant, and the World Series, though of course I hope I will be wrong here, too.

Historical Notes
My preseason World Series pairing of the Yanks and Cards features the two teams with the most World Series wins (the Cards' 10 slightly ahead of the Athletics' franchise--we won't discuss the 27 titles the Yankees have), and they have played many times in the World Series in the past (I didn't check to see if it is the most frequent matchup, but it's certainly one of them). Somewhat surprisingly, though, they haven't opposed each other in the Fall Classic since 1964. Of course, I am hoping my prediction is wrong and that, in fact, neither team makes it, but I'd still say it is the most probable single matchup.

If the Phillies overcome my moral resistance and make it to the NL Championship Series, they will be gunning to make history, as the first NL team to three-peat for league pennants since...the 1942-44 Cardinals. Eight teams have won twice and come up short in the third try since then, from most recently:

1995-96 Braves (lost in '97 NLCS to the Florida Marlins, who won the Series;
1991-92 Braves (lost in the '93 NLDS to the Phils, who lost the Series)
1977-78 Dodgers (were beaten out in the NL West in '79 by the Reds, who lost to the eventual Series winner, the Pirates);
1975-76 Reds (in '77, despite George Foster's breakout 52-HR year and the midyear trade for Tom Seaver, the Reds finished a distant second in the NL West, the loss of mojo blamed by us Reds' fans on the preseason trade of Tony Perez);
1967-68 Cards (lost in '69 to the Mets' team of destiny);
1965-66 Dodgers (lost to the aforementioned Cards);
1955-56 Dodgers (lost out to the Atlanta Braves);
1952-53 Dodgers (lost out in '54 to the Giants, who actually won the Series).

Before the Cards' wartime threepeat, there had been in the modern era three consecutive NL pennants for the New York Giants (1911-1913) and the 1906-08 Cubs. The alltime NL record of four consecutive pennants is held by the New York Giants, from 1921-24.

Nickel and Dime-ing US (and Tuppence, too!)

Stamp Act Reaction

In the 1770's the reaction to the Stamp Act was the original Boston Tea Party. This year, Congress is expected to authorize a 2-cent increase in the first class postage, from 44 to 46 cents. Under the current regime, Congress can not/will not subsidize the Post Office, requiring it to support itself like a business, but on the other hand it must approve any increases in postage. The financial situation at USPS is such that Congress really has no choice.

My reaction and advice to the postal unit: why stop at 46 cents? Go on up to 50 cents, a respectable round number, accompanied by a promise not to raise rates for, say, six years (two-cents every other year is about the recent pattern). Take the windfall revenues and do some real upgrading of capabilities, and maybe you won't even need to increase in six years.

Always Forever Now

When the Post Office inevitably gets its OK to raise the prices, there will be one of those great investment opportunities: buy the "Forever" stamps at 44 cents just before the rates go up, and you can save on the cost increase--as many stamps as you want!

This seems to be one of those calculated business decisions: balancing the time value of money against the expected "leakage" rate (people will lose some of the stamps they buy and never use them), but for the sophisticated stamp investor, it would make sense to buy about six months' worth of stamps, which, assuming a uniform rate of usage, would give a return of just under 5% for an investment with an average duration of three months. That's a return worth cashing your Treasury bills to obtain.

I, though, won't be taking much advantage of this opportunity. Most of my stamps come to me free from certain charitable organizations who think that their commitment to me--expressed by placing stamps on their return envelopes--will be fully reciprocated by contributions. I haven't done the math to see if that's true or not (I do give to them, but only a fraction of the time), but I do appreciate the willingness to save me trouble. (I've never forgotten Brooklyn Union Gas, which had metered prepaid postage on their return envelopes 15-20 years ago; do they still?) Instead, I take the trouble to save those envelopes, cut off the uncancelled stamps, and I eventually glue them onto other return envelopes of billers which are not so accommodating.

I see that, rather than helping me pay them by putting the postage out there (for which they would get paid sooner--American Express charge cards, take notice!), the debtor community prefers to "hock" me to pay through the Internet (allowing us to do the heavy lifting for them). They should back that up by giving us a postage-stamp's worth of rebate for our trouble.

Optimal Purchase of Socks

On another topic, totally unrelated except by the identical theme of "common-sense consumerism", I am shocked--shocked!--to find that I have not yet posted the results of my lifetime's worth of close observation on the best strategy for purchasing socks.

I presume that all you readers share certain tendencies: accidentally to occasionally pull too hard and tear irrevocably single socks, the nature of laundry machines to somehow randomly "disappear" a sock, a preference for wearing socks that actually match each other. If one grants all these, then there is a single, best strategy for buying socks.

You should buy exactly three pairs of socks--the same color, brand, and size--at a time. If you do this, then, over time, individual sock attrition will not leave you with a drawer-full of single socks. Instead, your pool of that particular style of sock will eventually pare down to two pair, and, over a long period of time, one pair--at which time you can examine the survivors to see if those two are worth keeping in the rotation.

Buying less than three pairs will mean the remaining socks will not get their full use before reducing to the useless status of <2 (and buying a single pair of socks is the moral equivalent of unjustly condemning one valid sock to permanent isolation in the dead drawer); buying more than three pairs will mean you are over-committing to a single style and color (i.e., boring). Of course, this strategy doesn't work so well if one goes for the ultra-modern "toe socks" which fit each toe snugly and therefore have a sense of right sock and left sock--I discourage their purchase for that reason, except for use in rare occasions of luxury or foot ostentation.