What's Wrong with the Senate

Ezra Klein puts up a letter from the LBJ library regarding the passage of Medicare as a way of showing the unprecedented nature of the filibuster today.

I read the letter before he added his commentary though and assumed that the "what's wrong with the Senate" referred to the fact that out of just the couple Senators named it included two Kennedy's, Al Gore's dad, and Evan Bayh's dad, and he was making a point about the fact that the Senate is (has always been maybe, I don't know?) the most important old boys club in America and frankly most don't give two craps about the vast majority of Americans so long as they get 52% of the vote every six years.

The Economists Have it Out

I spent 30 mins of my very precious time (I'm not claiming to be high and mighty, just that given my recent work load that's directly 30 mins of my sleep time) to read about the all-out-war among economists, started by a NYT article written by Paul Krugman (How Did Economists Get It So Wrong?), and followed by John Cochrane's and David Levine's responses.

There are actually many more ripples caused by Krugman's article -- just do a simple google search and you'll have more than you'll ever wanna read.

I'm clearly not in a real position to respond, given that I don't know much about macroeconomics, and that I'm nowhere near where all these guys are in terms of accomplishment. I'll just give my humble two cents:

1. To be honest, I've lost most of my respect for Krugman since he's gone "mainstream." Call it my obsession for the beauty of mathematics, he has basically just gone "intuitive" with all of his arguments -- which, don't get me wrong, given his intellect he still convinces most people -- and the formal logical arguments are muddled and unclear at best, and the premise in which the arguments are made is not any more realistic than the models of the macroeconomists that he so fiercely attacked.
   
2. I don't claim to cure the world of AIDS or feed all starving children in my work -- as a theorist, I only assert that my models have a flavor of and may advance the understanding of how some things work in the real world. I know some macroeconomists go a little wild with data to show that their model works, but even from my very moderate understanding, they are very well aware of their limitations, and there is very far from a consensus even within the neoclassical school.
3. Don't get me started on behavioral guys. I have no problem with behavioral economics per se, but I think that the field as it stands right now is giving itself a bad name. One: the assumption (irrationality) implies all possibilities -- hence you're always right (you gotta be); two: running with this assumption gives you absolutely no predictive power. And from what I understand we're not in the business of story-telling and simply booking-keeping historical events related to economics.
   
4. Calling people names and making personal attacks are just not cool... we're not in kindergarten anymore, and doing so only serves to weaken your arguments
   

Getting the Moderates Onboard

I am someone who is pretty stubborn in his principles and self assuredness, so I can appreciate the continuing holdout by folks like Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson on health care. But if I were Harry Reid trying to whip up the last of the democratic votes for the impending bill this is how I would approach it.

I think a commitment to bipartisanship is important. But it must be shared by both parties or it become a case of bargaining against oneself and gamesmanship. The republicans in the gang of six - except possibly olympia snowe, but I'm still not even sure of that - have spent the past few months mocking kent conrad and max baucus. Despite his giving them every opportunity to participate to the point of excluding democratic voices, they were in front of cameras making a mockery of the only man willing to give them a voice and a pen.

Why were they able to do this?  Because they assumed that a hand outstreched in friendship is incapable of being retracted. And in doing so they took that goodwill and dedication to doing the right thing for the American people - the most sacred task of those wise men and women we send forward - for granted. Rather than participate, they have abdicated.

And thus, with the cecession of the republican party from our governance, the only remaining partner for moderates to negotiate with is senators rockefeller, schumer, and the progressive wing of their own party. Within that dynamic the end result is much further from ben nelson's beliefs than our traditional orientation.

So, participating in the republican ruse on health care may better align the outcome of this bill with their moderate beliefs. But enabling them to walk a path to irrelevance may be even more dangerous to achieving their vision on the great work that is still to come.

Posted via email from dmaten

The Public Option

Some folks are now reporting that Senator Reid si going to kill the public option from the Senate health care bill. At the same time, CBO has come out with a score for the two public options and found a strong one would save $110b over ten years (and a weak one $25b).

How does a public option save money? Basically it would reduce the amount of subsidies we need to give out by driving down the cost of insurance through increased competition. With that in play, it seems like a pretty easy middle ground would be to put in place a trigger that if in five years private insurers hadn't bent the curve such that subsidies are $11b a year lower than projected then the public option would kick in. Obviously the devil is in the details, and you would need to keep the heat on. But essentially it is a you find it or we will kind of ultimatum.

Make sense or am I missing something?

Social Media

I am sure someone else has already come up with this, but just as a self reminder of a random thought I had this morning. While social media is new, social marketing has been around forever. Just think of those sunday afternoon football parties at bars sponsored by budweiser around the country. The aim is to create a venue for social interactions, generate some fun for those who meander in, then hope they link that the ad signs on the wall and the occasional free beers they get from the girls in tight outfits.  Maybe even do some fun branded games or get some marketing research.

With social media it is the same thing. It is all about creating a playground for people to come. Then worry about getting your message through, because if it isn't fun nobody will come anyway.

Posted via email from dmaten

Afghanistan

The big afghanistan review is out from general mcchrystal and unfortunately it is exactly what I expected, and the lessons of general patreus have been fully internalized among the current crop of combatant commanders.

The old saying goes when you have a hammer every problem looks like a nail. Well, our services (or at least the army and marines) have discovered the screw driver. Unfortunately they haven't realized it can be turned in either direction.

In afghanistan the problems are that the government is too corrupt, the afghan forces are not combat effective, afghan/coalition troops are unable to provide population security in regions with taliban forces, coalition troops keep killing civilians and alienating the population, and there is uncertainty about our level of commitment. The solution (according to mcchrystal) is more resources for the afghan government (more money to skim), increased training for afghan forces, and more coalition troops (which may help immediately with population security but will also increase the pace of civilian casualties and increase incertainty of our role over the long term - see Vietnam). This somehow constitutes a new "strategy," even though he concedes we are already doing all of these things. Somehow doing them "more aggressively" will be "revolutionary to our effectiveness".

Later, mcchrystal writes about the need to "redefine both the fight itself and what we need for it." But again, there is nothing new here other than the need for even more troops. Yet over the past year, as the number of troops has already risen by tens of thousands, we have been going backwards. It is in the face of these troop increases that we land upon this decisive moment. And in response all we get is something that reads like a mckinsey report; as though using words like innovative, improve, and strategy in concert with new, redouble, and change has the capacity to unilateraly shift the so-called "center of gravity".

The report does have a useful analysis section. It breaks down the insurgency into three groups. It makes the important connection that the Taliban's strength draws primarily from the fact that they are not corrupt and unaccountable like the central government, that they realize they cannot reclaim control while the country is occupied by a substantial ISAF force, and that they are at most nominally allied with "al qaeda" for pragmatic reasons. But it then casts aside these important nuggets of insight with empty talk about how, somehow, bringing in the 101st airborne division will make the afghan government less corrupt. Worse, it suggests that the ISAF forces should be given more money and autonomy to buy off locals with economic support, which only exacerbates the lack of coordination, undermines the government, and increases the opportunities for corruption.

The fatal flaw of the plan lies in the hubris of the plans author. To hear the man previously charged with running our dark prisons talk about the need to change the "opeational culture" is disturbing on a moral level. But more so, all his discussions of "aligning" (i.e. unifying) the various commands in play and stepping up the operational tempo against the Taliban while simultaneously making friends assumes a totally unrealistic level of judgement, control, and opportunity by every grunt out in the mud.

I am impressed by how thoroughly mcchrystal deploys the term "failure". It is everywhere, imminent, and always paired with our choices. This goes back to the lessons of patreus. Make anything other than your options equal "defeat" and hide behind your uniform. If there is anyone americans respect it is the uniformed services, and if there is anything we hate it is losing. The result is you can back even the president into a corner with no where to go but for your plan.

"Micro-Blogging"

I have tried Twitter for a few weeks now, and while I like what it does for business & people getting news & ideas across, I reject labeling Twitter "micro-blogging".

It is impossible to come up with any coherent argument together with what you're actually trying to argue in less than 140 characters. (unless we're talking about cryptic ones like "I think therefore I am"). I've tried many times, starting with what I wanna say, then try to trim it to under 140. Hasn't worked once -- for an actual argument, I repeat. Not just "ate dinner today, was nice seeing friends" type "blogs".

I see Twitter as more of a headlines news source and friends chat space. If you look lots of posts include links which takes you to another page for details. Not that there's any problem with it, it's just not a blog. But then again, maybe I'm just ignorant and too narrow about its definition. But I sure hope no one's been writing blogs based primarily on posts like "ate dinner today, was nice seeing friends"??

Another thing, Twitter takes WAY too much of my time. It's no one's fault but mine, but anyway... :)

Debate on the Rationality of Voting

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/08/is-voting-rational.html



It annoys me when ppl start trying to attach bogus numbers to an even more bogus concept of "how much is my vote going to be worth?"



Remember that we're looking BACK now and calibrating these numbers. There is no way any voter, however informed he might be, will be able to come up with numbers for possible legislation differences and the resulting costs for each candidate, compounded by the complexity of the legislative process that depends on the composition of re-elected members. Even the politician and his / her team can't give you realistic numbers beyond their own hopes / guesses, which are often way off from what actually gets passed. You can assume that voters use the numbers that politicians announce via platform promises, but then each voter tweaks it based on his/her subjective beliefs. It's just all a stinking mess, not tractable in reasonable models that one can dream up, much less so in the head of the average voter.



My personal view of why people vote is a combination of subjective beliefs about one's likelihood to matter (I think most people won't get this number right, and to be honest I think many voters are slightly deluded, esp after Florida 2000), and the belief that voting is a right that many before us have fought so hard for, and should therefore be cherished. Well, maybe just in my simple mind...

The Sadness, Doubled

I saw the news of Eunice Kennedy Shriver's passing today (may she RIP), and stumbled upon the tragic story of Shriver's sister Rosemary Kennedy. I hardly ever paid any attention to the history and family tree of this big American Political family, and had not known that Rosemary Kennedy existed until today.

Well, perhaps it wasn't a random coincidence that I didn't know she existed... When I put Rosemary Kennedy in Google search, here are the top 3 returns:

Wikipedia
Newsmax.com - Rosemary Kennedy's Inconvenient Illness
Fatboy.cc - Rosemary Kennedy

Long story short, Rosemary Kennedy had a mental illness that was not well understood or accepted / tolerated, especially in a respectable family like the Kennedy's. She was given a lobotomy at 23, and had since been reduced to the mental and physical capacity of a 2-year-old, and had remained in an institution until her death at 86.

It's an incredibly sad story, and though slightly upset by how Rosemary Kennedy was essentially put away and isolated from the rest of her family, I can understand that it was from a time much different from today. While there is still a ton to be done, I'm proud to say that we as people have slightly progressed since then (at least in terms of how people with mental illness or developmental disabilities are viewed and treated).

An interesting note came out of the Washington Post's obituary for Eunice Shriver today, which makes me think that facts / details about what happened to Rosemary Kennedy are still very much a point of contention. The earlier version of the obit, which can be found (I'm pretty sure in its full and original form) in Kansas City's The Star, writes:

Because medical opinion held that visits from family members would be too upsetting for someone in Rosemary’s condition, no one visited her for years. She died in 2005.

The obit was revised by afternoon in Washington Post's website:

Family members were initially told not to visit because medical opinion held that such interruptions would be too upsetting for someone in Rosemary's condition. According to a spokesman for the Special Olympics, Shriver and her siblings later became frequent visitors to St. Coletta and included Rosemary in family gatherings and other activities. Rosemary Kennedy died in 2005.

Maybe I'm never under public scrutiny and can never understand... why care so much about what the public thinks? Wasn't that what at least in part led to Rosemary Kennedy's unfortunate story?

I want to go on the record as foretelling that the Red Sox will be under .500 the rest of the way and finish third (or maybe even fourth) in the East. I love 'em, but that's just the way it is going to go down.

Disease Diagnosis & Social Norms

Last week I saw a TV segment (was it ESPN?) on surfer Clay Marzo and his battle with Asperger's Disease. The two pieces of information that struck me the most (and still sticks in my mind) about the story are:

1. When asked looking back now whether she would want to change any part of her son's behavior or who he is (with respect to Asperger's I would assume), Marzo's mom said "no"
2. Marzo still goes to therapy sessions to help him learn how to interact with others

While I can understand that a mother takes and loves her son as he is, going to therapy to cope with Asperger's necessarily implies an attempt to change a person, be it on the superficial behavioral level, or a deeper, more subconcious level. It leads me to thinking about disease diagnoses and how that has changed over time.

People who know me know my view about "recent disease discoveries" (ahem inventions) like ADD, ADHD, Dyslexia, and other learning disabilities. I'm much more fond of the old school diagnosis "I'm just not that smart with books" -- which, really, is OK. Everyone's good at different things. I don't care if there's a physiological (neurological) explanation to this. I am born shorter than average, and there's clear physiological evidence to prove it. If we really choose to go down this road, it would be discriminatory not to give me extra boosts and assistance in sports and gym class because I just naturally can't be as good as and compete with others.

With mental / behavioral diseases, I am much much more sympathetic to people suffering from the diseases, but to a certain extent I still object to the direction we're heading medically. The determination that some behaviors are "abnormal and anti-social" is, well, arbitrary and unfair (for me, anti-social does not mean vandalism or killing people (as it is used sometimes); that's just plain criminal). Whatever happened to the celebration of diversity? Does it only apply to the issue of race?

I know people will throw me studies and evidence suggesting that certain group behaviors, or groups with like-behavior individuals, yield better "group outcomes", and so from a macro perspective, we should set behavioral norms and promote adherence to them. But let's move past this macro let's-treat-everyone-like-numbers approach for a second and really think about what it means for each of us individuals.

Tyson Brody, manning Spencer Ackerman's blog, has a really, really important piece for anyone who wants to seriously discuss the Iranian nuclear issue.

In my mind, the three best moves the US could make to resolve the Iranian nuclear issue would be to 1) dump the ambiguity on Israel's nukes, 2) make another big speech on non proliferation and a wmd-free world that specifically mentions the atrocities committed against Iranians during the Iraq-Iran war, and, 3) invite the Iranian President for a one-on-one around the UN session in September. But none of those things will never happen because the simple fact is that US foreign policy has drifted into the very dangerous place where most everyone who is considered "very serious" is either a myopic, lazy realist or a naive, hypocritical idealist.

Make it go Away

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article;jsessionid=E8F9200F90B78B35D7AF05461C5DE5D3.w6?a=408088&f=19

Somehow I can't really get myself worked up about the news that Ortiz used steroids, since everyone did. Were the 2004 Sox a fraud? As I recall they went through the New York juggernot led by um Arod, Clemens, and Giambi.

I mean in the sample that kicked off testing they found enough users to stock four full teams and a few leftovers for the DL. And since it had just about everyone in the top ten for homers it only figures he might be on it.

There is no doubt steroids enhance performance and are bad for you. But as near as I can tell everyone was using, so the case that it have them a competitive edge that would invalidate the team accomplishment seems week.

Electing Republicans

While there are certainly some tangible benefits in terms of committee numbers, I am honestly starting to wonder if the president would be better off if a few of the centrist democrats in the senate got knocked off.

So far they have yet to support anything on the democratic agenda. And if they are dumped then the left bound of whatever gang of 'centrists' emerges, since the senate now seems to require one to pass any major bill, will be substantially more progressive.

The main criticism of this is that the move mirrors the moderate purge of house republicans that is responsible for their current minority status. But I would counter that the success of the President and plenty of other democrats last year shows that there is much more room to the left of Mary Landreau than to the right of Lincoln Chaffee.

No Size Fits All

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=403492&single=1&f=28&sub=Columnist

David Brooks has a great piece on the Presidents new community college initiative. It doesn't go as far as I do - that most kids in 4 year schools don't belong there (and even fewer grad school students do) - but notes the important point that it is those schools that will make up the human capital gap America faces.

But what really got my attention was the ending when Brooks basically begged the President to seize the legislative reigns. I think there is a pretty good case that the passive nature of the white house is at least somewhat attributable to 'legislative capture' - the idea that with so many of the occupants having come straight from the Capitol they have an excessive deference to congress.

But it is also an unusual inversion of how presidents start terms. Usually the president grabs the reigns early, wages his major battle in the first 18-24 months, and when the dust settles everyone in congress is sick of him and the second half of the term he works around the margins. This president, whether intentional or not, has skipped the initial seige.

The interesting test will be whether folks like Brooks are still salivating for him to fight a big battle 12 months from now. If health care and global warming go to the mats and get done early next year, and they still are looking for the president to lead something bold, there could be the opportunity for something really incredible.

The only question left is, what does the president have up his sleeve?r

Looking Over the Horizon

I noticed that Google Reader has added a new feature recently, the Like. I love the like.

The like does two things. First, in addition to being able to Star or Share a news item, users can now Like it. This essentially creates three levels for users to flag items in their feed. The Star is for personal memory (individual). The Share flags an item for your friends and other followers (group). And now the Like sends a signal out to the public.

Alone this would be a feature of marginal value. But the second piece is that each news item now shows you whether anyone else has "liked" the item. More importantly, clicking on the number of likes shows you all the Reader users who "liked" it and provides one-click ability to either view their google profile or start following them. Essentially it lets you peak beyond the horizon and find others heading in the same direction as you.

Where it gets really cool though is if you apply the enterprise perspective. Imagine if everyone in the US Government was on the same platform to consume all their news and other data feeds. Say you work in USDA cyber security. You probably know a few people in the Agencies and a couple in other Departments that you have met working on projects, so naturally you Follow them. Then one day you are reading the DHS cyber blog and there is an important message with a few likes, so you check out the user names. Next, you read an item on Wired, and you notice someone from SSA liked the DHS item and also liked this one. Then you see an item that is a new report on FISMA best practices that you like, but also this mysterious person likes.

Guess what, you have just discovered someone with the same portfolio and interests as you. So you can do two things. In the old days you would randomly call them up and say "hey we do the same thing" and maybe you'll get lunch once or twice or even find a great opportunity for interagency collaboration. But likely you won't, because based on those few data points and that you have a job to get done building a relationship isn't worth the investment. But now you can just Follow them.

Your investment now is the click of a button and potentially wading through a couple stupid extra items in your Shared stream. But the potential is that they will share some great stuff (after all, we already know you like similar things). And maybe you'll even comment on some items and strike up a digital relationship. Which means that if you finally do move to the "hey lets get lunch" level you already have a good sense of the baseline value you can expect from the relationship.

The idea also has a ton of merit from a systems perspective. Right now, networks (especially in the enterprise environment) are largely based on where people sit. The like system provides a way to connect with people based on what they know. A key feature of the "2.0" world is the notion of meritocracy. The likes are another valuable system for breaking down the traditional walls that silo people and knowledge and then augmenting users capacity so that they can drink from the firehose of info now directed at them.

What an F-ing Jackass!

I was curious about the upcoming movie "The Hurt Locker", so was searching online for reviews. I came across the review by Alexander Marlow, and lemme just say, I was so annoyed by the end of reading it, I wouldn't have wanted to quote him to give him publicity, if not so that people can go read his article and see how much of a ridiculous, pompous a-hole he is.

This is also why as much as I agree with several conservative beliefs and principles, I would never ever call myself a conservative. Or a Republican. Saying it will only leave a foul taste in my mouth.

UGH. See, this is the thing. There's a characteristic that is somehow left out in the description of the modern-day so-called conservative party in the US (or elsewhere? well, that I wouldn't know), and yet this characteristic utterly defines the party and its members. It's that they're all arrogant, paternalistic jerk-offs.

Pardon my french there.

Open Government & "True Democracy"

I was pointed to John Kamensky's post on Collaborative Governance, which was mainly discussing Beth Noveck's new book about "Wiki Government." It was an interesting read, but had lots of jargon and definitions those political science types keep us common folks confused and remain two steps behind.

The idea of opening up the government to hearing more of the public's opinion and allowing for more participation on the citizen (or "grassroots") level has been thrown around a lot, especially since the beginning of the Obama administration (or think back to his online-media-savvy campaigning team).

I know that there is a lot of potential to this approach, and numerous possible benefits to bring us closer to "true democracy" (whatever that might mean, I take it means less power to the rich), but count me among the cynics who see this more as a theoretical, abstract construct that has been nothing more than gimmicks so far.

I don't know anything about the Obama adminstration's "Open for Questions" forum, but if my memory serves me well the "apply for a job in the Obama administration" website was put up with all the buzz but pretty much went nowhere. Who really got a job through this thing other than people that already know someone through his campaign or have worked in his campaign?? (if you do, please let me know, so I can slap myself and stand corrected). My point is, the "open government initiatives" we've seen so far do not appear more than just a dog and pony show. It might have been started with good intentions, but the lack of follow through or sustainable development is embarrasing.

My other concern is the use of online technology to encourage and increase public participation. I don't know about other places people go online, but I myself am a proud purse forum member (haha shamelessly so), and let me tell you, it is ridiculously easy, and I repeat, absolutely ridiculously easy to start an online riot against a particular product or brand. The ability for people to distort information, manipulate opinion, and instigate a rapid contagion of emotions is still something that amazes me to this day. And I myself am pretty good at it as well.

Now perhaps this is what the printed and tv news media is already doing to us, so it's only fair that online means can be employed as well. I do not contest that at all. I am only cautioning that "open technology" as a means to improving governance might not be the be all and end all that so many people are hailing these days.

Here's a cartoonish scenario I offer you to close: imagine when light bulbs were first invented, people found out that there're so many things that they can now do with the presence of light bulbs that they didn't use to be able to do. They also notice that light bulbs emits heat. So they thought perhaps they can warm food up with it, if not cook their steak on the bulb.

Take it as what you may.

NATO: In decline or on the rise?

Mike Tomasky has a piece up in favor of dissolving NATO. It follows up on the Presidents speech yesterday which embraced the idea of the post soviet states joining NATO, noting that if Georgia had been in NATO last summer "the US (and the UK) would in theory be committed to military intervention to defend two provinces in Georgia. That's nuts." And he's right, that is nuts - as nuts as Russia going to war with the US over two provinces of Georgia.

Unfortunately much of IR is a giant staring match. But as we learned in the Cuban missle crisis and afghanistan in the 1980's and countless other of the great powers chess boards, at the end of the day these things come down to not-batshit-crazy people and not mindless, rule following computers. Not to say nuclear annihilation couldn't happen as a result of poor human strategic judgement, just that I don't think that is more likely than it being touched off by a flock of geese or a rogue General.

That said, Tomasky makes the very useful comment that "What I'd rather see out of Obama is some bold thinking about the next generation of alliances." So here's my idea. But what if rather than dumping NATO that next "generation of alliances" was welcoming Russia into NATO? What if Obama had instead said:

For any country - including Russia, if it so chooses - to become a member of NATO, a majority of its people must choose to; they must undertake reforms; and they must be able to contribute to the alliance's mission.

Obviously such a radical proposal would require checking with the rest of the NATO member states, but such a carrot could potentially be a huge tool for fostering the democratic transition in Russia that seems to have stalled the last few years.

Emicus

In the course of a post on Mashable about the use of social media in emergencies, I stumbled across Emicus.

Emicus "is the initial product for U.S. Emergency Operations Center Inc. The company’s mission is to fill a critical gap. While 91 percent of Americans live in areas of the country prone to moderate to high-risk of natural disasters, there is no central source of online preparedness or disaster information. Sources of real time data are minimal at best and today’s social media are hardly utilized."

The service is still in early Beta and the functionality leaves a lot to be desired, but the concept and framework they have started is great. The web is filled with lots of great ideas that just can't find traction and die off, but I think just poking around and thinking about there integrated offerings is well worth it, especially for the risk communication folks.

Tickets

My personal nemesis-who-has-never-heard-of-me Megan McArdle had an extended whine this morning about parking in DC. Her issue:

The District of Columbia is trying to make up plummeting tax revenues by getting the money out of motorists, especially parking. It's using cameras to get 100% enforcement of the street cleaning parking rules, nearly doubling the cost of many parking tickets, and upping the bill on meters-it now costs $2 an hour to park in front of the Watergate, up from $1 last month. This is a twofer: raise more revenue from the meter, and from the parking ticket, because who carries around $4 in change on a regular basis?

As a fellow citizen of the bizarro city of Washington, let me say... boo hoo! I am not really sure her point, other than "I am pissed at the DC government for making me pay more to park." I think she is trying to deploy everyone's favorite Laffer curve to argue that if DC wants to raise more tax revenue from parking they should charge less.

Empirically, I would be quite interested to know how the change in enforcement practices is impacting revenue. If they are getting 100% more per ticket, then cited violations would have to fall by half before their gross revenue went down. Short run it will take people a while to realize they have to be very careful, but long term there is certainly an opportunity for behavior change to lead to that outcome. And same holds for meters.

That said, a simplistic analysis ignores the cost of externalities. For instance, if fewer people drive to work, shift their schedules outside the 9-6 window when meters are on, or people start parking farther away in locations with more favorable restrictions that leads to less congestion. Which is a good thing! The biggest problem in most of downtown DC right now isn't that no one wants to pay $2/hour to park, it is that there are usually too many people willing to pay and so you have to drive around for 15 minutes to find a spot. This not only wastes your time, but slows down traffic and beats on the road (increasing the amount of maintenance the city has to perform). And not to mention the injustice of the city giving away "public space" to drivers, while those who walk or bike are left out in the cold.

And, while I can understand the frustration for Megan and other DC-based drivers, parking taxes are actually one of the most equitable ways to bring revenue into the city. DC already has a big tax burden on residents, but that is because they can't collect property taxes on half the land (because it belongs to the Federal government) and 70% of the people who commute in every day - and use roads and emergency services and other public goods - don't live in the District and so do not produce any income tax revenue either. Diversifying their tax base through tolls and other user fees would be a good thing in the aggregate.

Finally, for the libertarian in me, it seems like one solution would be to get rid of all public parking and sell off street parking. Then the magic of the market and our new greedy parking overlords would optimize cost and use. Except guess what, they already did it in Chicago. And the result has been the elimination of parking holidays, jacking up of rates, stories of excessive enforcement, and an all around boondoggle.

The mirror doesn't lie

Meth dealing. Teenage sex and momma's. Broken high school sweetharts. Shotgun weddings. Crazy aunts with a taste for breaking and entering. Sniping. Dropping out of school. An insatiable thirst for attention and fame, regardless of the source of the notoriety.

Did god send us Sarah Palin just to serve as a mirror for 'real America?'

Friday Morning Fun

One of my beacons of innovation passed along a link for a new service called Moontoast. Basically it is a web conferencing site for finding and hiring experts (micro consulting). At the moment I don't have any particular good idea about adapting this to the gov2.0 world (other than realizing that we have a ton of really smart people who would love to share their expertise), but from a purely idea perspective Moontoast is cool. Check out the video on their front page for a nice 30 second intro.

Smartest guy in the room

There has been quite a bit of debate in the past few weeks about the various attributes of the wall street types that are generally believed to be responsible for the current economic crisis. Are they really smart or really dumb? Do they have any sense of shame or decency? Where is the patriotism?

I don't know a lot of them, but a few. And here is my impression of the commonalities. They went to Ivy or near ivy schools. They got their job based on a few discussions over cocktails (whether that be with a recruiter or friend/family who already works in a firm). They are willing to work long hours (I qualify that, because to them it includes drinks and dinner with clients and colleagues). Few have much if any education in finance or business (tons of philosophy, psych, and government majors). They are convinced that they are 'the smartest person in the room.'

The other thing I would say is that I think it would be healthy for the industry to be forced to diversify geographically. The NYC/western Connecticut, London City, and other big hubs create a bubble where everyone is dependent on finance. This creates a really unhealthy culture that sucks everyone in (and drives away smart people who come mid career).

Special Messages

The Obama Special Olympics line has already been beaten to death.

My personal favorite aspect was Jake Tapper responding to various outlets criticism of his twitter posts by blocking them from following him. Tapper seems like the tennis type - I wonder if he storms off the court if someone calls his shot out (seriously, what an f-ing primadonna).

If we are lucky obama will invite a few Special Olympic bowlers to the white house and get espn 2 to cover the match. I just hope Ron Stone is there to call it. Ham bone!

But I think the whole episode underlines obama's popularity beating the popularity of his policies. The pundits like Tapper will undoubtedly run their mouths today, registering indignation and calls of hypocracy. In the real world, it was another great humanizing moment for the President, who continues to defy the caricatures of liberal and conservative and insteed act like, you know, a regular person.

It looks like Rep. Ellen Tauscher has accepted to be Under Secretary of State for Arms Control. Good for her, as from the little I know she is pretty good on those issues (though I worry whether the fact that all her experience comes from an Arms Service perspective is good or bad).

But given the President's ambitious agenda, I do worry about the wisdom of continuing to pluck real partners (as opposed to back stabbing scum like Evan Bayh) out of Congress. Rahm, Biden, Clinton (and subsequently Gillibrand), Solis, plus a lot of key staffers (plus Napolitano and Sebelius - essentially handing two governorships and potentially a Senate seat in 2010 to Republicans). I think they are all accomplished and qualified, but given that Congress is going to be the roadblock to most of his campaign promises it seems like subtraction by addition.

I am not homophobic, you stupid fag

Christian Brose at FP responds to Fareed Zakaria's much talked about piece by saying, "I'm all for a serious discussion of diplomacy, but unfortunately this isn't it." He then proceeds to offer his own ridiculous rantings which seem to pretty clearly demonstrate that at a minimum Zakaria's observations apply to his world view.

First off, as much as Brose likes to use them as synonims, diplomacy and negotiation aren't the same thing. Diplomacy may involve negotiation, but it also includes dialogue, information sharing, intelligence gathering, exchange, and enforcement. Diplomats and leaders can meet for the purpose of negotiating, but they may be doing another of those activities. The mistake of the Washington foreign policy establishment is ignoring the value of these other functions.

The second elephant in his throwing around of words like "coercion" and "leverage." I think he is roughly right when he notes that negotiating is the "balancing of incentives and disincentives to elicit changes," though I wouldn't be so imperialistic as to include "another party's behavior" since negotiations also changes our bahavior. But he sees it as a zero sum game of horse trading.

It is true that "Damascus's desire to dominate Lebanon is not an interest." But that isn't because they are "illigitimate". Damascus doesn't want nominal control of Beihruit so it can strut around and tell everyone it lords over the capital of a small country witha history of violence and beautiful Mediterranean views. Their interests are internal stability, a chip in their negotiations with Israel, rent, some level of control over a major potential flashpoint in the behind the scenes battle going on between Shia and Sunni, and probably a whole bag of other interests that a white guy in DC who only speaks English could never even imagine. Moreover, even if I thought one of those was "illigitimate" that wouldn't make it any less real or valuable to the Syrians.

In reality negotiating is more a combination of learning (internal and between parties) and arbitrage. The learning comes from the two sides conducting diplomacy, other forms of intelligence gathering, and getting together in a room and talking. Here people reveal their interests (which besides material interests can include things like "I don't want the US to invade my country" or "I want to be able to travel to Europe without fear of being arrested for war crimes"), but more importantly they rank those interests.

Once positive and negative interests are ranked people can trade them. If they can come up with a configuration of trades that each party perceives as providing value in achieving their interests, we have a deal. Finally, the results are codified into an agreement and we all go out an celebrate.

The neocon folly - and the one that I think Zakaria rightly points out as endemic throughout Washington - is our desire to serve as the arbiter of what interests are legitimate. Brose claims Russia's real interest is "to force the United States into a position where every decision we make about our own interests in Europe and Central Asia has to go through the Kremlin first." But given that we live in a highly globalized world, why wouldn't Russia want to have a say in our decisions? And more importantly, are our attempts to foment democratic revolutions and support anti-Russian parties in Eastern Europe any less "craven"?

Andrew Sullivan plucked out Brose's line about how terrible it is that we didn't try to "change Iran's behavior" in 2003. But while it may be a great applause line, the sentiment that undergirds it is the epitome of hubris and imperialism. What was needed was a change in our relationship. The same Amero-centric myopia that makes Pakistan, India, China, Russia, and Israel's possession of nukes acceptable and Iran's tinkering anywhere in the nuclear neighborhood illegitimate is precisely what precludes us from sitting down at a table with Iran and treating them as equals, albeit significantly more resource constrained and insecure ones.

And by the way, it is the mainstreaming of this perspective that more than anything else is responsible for the demise of Charles Freeman. It wasn't his hostility towards Jews or Tibetans that got him in trouble, it was his unique ability to really look at things through the eyes of others and offer opinions untainted patriotism or conceit.

Hope it Lasts Longer Than His Presidential Runs

Seriously, can I please take over the press office at USDA. I mean, did Vilsack fire everyone there to save a few bucks (then again, he doesn't talk to anyone who's a career person, so there is no reason to think it is different up there)?

First, there is the appalling "USDA and the stimulus" page. Highlights of USDA's "plan":

* The Act allows up to 3 percent of the funds provided to RD for administrative costs (approximately $130.8 million).
* Broadband loan budget authority and loan levels to be determined by the agency.
* Mandatory funding; reflects CBO scoring.
* Provides $90 million annually through December 31, 2010 and $22.5 million for the first quarter of FY 2011.

(I swear, those are the actual bullet points.)

Then this hilarious story about Gardengate. Vilsack has been running around telling everyone about his "People's Garden." Except it looks like no one has thought beyond the press release and photo op. Turns out the garden has no owner, budget, or plan (and let's not even start on his talk about improving USDA facilities around the country and world) - other than it being tended by "disabled folks."

Kindle

Andrew Sullivan extracts from Farhad Manjoo's review of the Kindle at Slate. I share most of his observations and frustrations regarding the Kindle - the eBook lock-in, the pathetic web browser, the lack of RSS, and the "blog" feature. But he reads the tea leaves and says:

If you're in the market for an e-book reader, you'll probably choose the one that offers the most books, and that means Kindle. (At the moment, there are about 240,000 titles available for the Kindle; the Sony Reader, its closest rival, has fewer than 100,000.) Taken together, these trends all point in one direction—Amazon will come to rule the market for e-books. And as the master of the e-book universe, Amazon will eventually call the shots on pricing, marketing, and everything else associated with the new medium.

In the short run I think Amazon will remain master of the eBook. But I have the feeling that in the long run the complete lock down of the device will hurt them once someone cracks the open format nut.

A relevant comparisson here is the evolution of the MP3 player market. Early on everyone was trying to build their own proprietary silo's. You had the microsoft and sony crowds building their own formats. Rio was the big name doing MP3's; however, they suffered from a clunky app for moving your files to the device. And they each did pretty well because there was no one else out there.

But then the iPod came out and (more importantly) iTunes. This made it easy to add to your iPod. You could rip from any CD or import MP3's. Then came the iTunes store. This let you buy music; however, you could still use all your other music. Then podcasts became cool, and apple added the podcast on iTunes but still let you bring in any other one you wanted as well.

The biggest embrace of this openess is the iPhone platform. Apple built the phone but opened it up to the world for software development. Where the big recurring money is is in being the distribution channel for other peoples efforts. This gives others a stake in pushing the iPhone, and it lets them drive innovation. And it is exactly what is missing from the Kindle and why I see its ceiling as the Zune.

In Favor of Lockdown

I am very sympathetic to the president and VP wanting to get out and about. But please stop the motorcades through the middle of Georgetown and down Penn right in the middle of rush hour. All they do is make everyone sit there for 10 minutes then deal with completely insane traffic. Loved the speech last night, but would love being able to get to work in a reasonable time even more.

WTF

The more I hear about Roland Burris the more I am blown away by just how stupid he is.

And for the record, I blame you for this African Americans. Your community is a rich tapestry of hard working, accomplished americans, yet you insist on being represented by shiesters. When bobby rush started playing the black card, you were the only ones who could stop the Burris train and you did nothing.

Let Them Eat Cake

Tom Ricks on the news out of Pakistan that Swat is getting the Sharia the Pakistani Taliban have been asking for:

I know it looks like a setback but I suspect this might be a smart move. Give the people of Swat sharia law, and see how they like it. Meanwhile, bolster your security forces in the area so they can pick up the ball when the Taliban has sufficiently alienated the populace. Risky? Sure. But better than losing Swat altogether.

I know it is tempting to believe that if we just give them what "they" want, then in no time the people of Swat will see their mistake and come back to Islamibad begging to have the Taliban kicked out (I am just as guilty of falling prey to the vindictive false pragmatism that drives the sentiment). But that was the theory behind sitting back when the Taliban tool power in Afghanistan - and didn't that work out great!

Power matters. People don't really like being at the whim of some theocratic dictators. But when speaking up just gets you and your family killed, people develop an amazing capacity to just get by in spite of the status quo. The key is providing a credible alternative.

For Posterity

Things I am thankful for: LOLing

D shared this post with the comment "The perils of the twittering and inter tubes."

H replied:

So, um, at risk of sounding really, really ignorant, what exactly is twittering???? I feel like I'm one of 15 people under 28 who don't know what it is...

worse yet, even dumb celebs are supposedly "twittering", and I still have no friggin clue what they're actually doing

The whole thing was reminiscent of the South Park World of Warcraft episode.

NYT Goodness

The New York Times was unusually compelling this morning and I wanted to highlight a few interesting articles:

- Roger Cohen has one of the best pieces written on Iran in a while. Cliff notes version: Iran is not some back water, kleptocratic autocracy; it is a sophisticated and complex society in transition. If we want them to keep going in the right direction and make progress on the both the democracy and regional security fronts we need to stop saying our goal is to overthrow the people in charge.

- The business section has a piece about the interesting phenomena that Wall Street "analysts" continue to recommend people buy 95% of stocks whether the market is up or down. Of course since Wall Street makes most of its money on transaction fees and growing the overall capital pool it makes sense that there sole purpose it to get people to buy more regardless of whether or not it is a good buy. On a larger point, this is why small investors actually shouldn't be buying individual stocks; they lack the time, expertise, and clout to actually exercise oversight of their companies and are forced to just follow the waves.

- Also in business, the death of the junket. Big companies are being forced to - perish the thought - only spend money on things that produce business results, rather than paying for executives to take vacations at club med. Ominous warnings from the trade groups that rep corporate spas that the bailout restrictions may put 2.4 million jobs at risk.

Fun with numbers note, they claim the retreat industry is $270m annually and employs 2.4m workers. That means per worker earnings (assuming the Ritz doesn't earn any profit) are $100 a year. Sounds like very credible math at work.

Public Service Announcement

Kindle 2.0 is out.

SNAP!

CNN has a nice feature on food stamps. And they have one of their hosts of American Morning blogging his experience living on under $200 for the next month. They should certainly be applauded for shining light on the issue. But there are a few things I wish they had done different.

First, the feature article seems to only interview African Americans in Washington DC. Would have been nice for them to get out to suburbs and rural areas and show a little more diverse portrait.

The second thing is that while the experiment adds for some interesting - albeit predictable - commentary, I would rather see one of CNN's host's make their whole family live at food stamp levels. Now, that would never happen because no one would ever want to subject their young kids to having to skip meals or eat junk just to get calories. Why? Because the biggest cost of food stamp stinginess is its toll on child development, which has long term impact.

The last thing that would be nice would be for them to use the feature to put some context around their stimulus bill coverage. When the Nelson-Collins deal cut a few billion for SNAP that is something that has real consequences. It would be nice for someone to move beyond the "bipartisan" and "moderate" rhetoric and talk about the substance. Like "Instead of providing families living below the poverty line an extra $30/month to deal with rising food prices, the new Senate bill will provide people doing well enough to buy a new car with a $2,500 tax cut." Then again, I have a feeling I know which of those groups most CNN producers are in.

Why Iran Picks on the Holocaust

Over at the FP Shadow Government blog Christian Brose mentions the tirade by Iranian Ali Larijani at the Munich Security Conference.

Larijani launched into a 20-minute rant about America's many historical sins against Iran, enumerating them as he went, beginning in 1958 with the backing of the Shah (#1) and continuing on up to the recent war in Gaza (#10 as I recall). Presumably this was just the abridged, modern history. Surely the Declaration of Independence was an affront to Persian dignity and an attempt to destabilize the Zand dynasty.

Emphasis mine. I know a lot of people are pretty annoyed by the ongoing official discourse by the Iranians on the Holocaust. But there is actually a neat little message wrapped in it that people seem to all miss.

The Holocaust was a major, historic tragedy in the West. And there is no dispute that it occurred - there are mountains of evidence. In Iran, the regime of the Shah was an undeniably brutal and tragic period in their history. And that it was abetted by the US is not in dispute - there are mountains of evidence. We rightly denounce them for casting doubt on the Holocaust; but when the Iranians mention the horror and pain of that period all they get is smug little remarks like above to the effect of "stop crying about it". The past does matter - all of it.

Another solution

Of course the more spiteful part of me would prefer to see obama play this gambit with year stimulus bill.

1. Get republican leaders to publicly declare that they do not think government spending has any positive impact on mitigating the recession and that the bill should have less spending. Try to get a dollar amount of how much smaller the spending piece should be in an on the record quote.

2. Repeat the quote from step 1. Repeat it again. Then acknowledge you are listening to their concerns and will be introducing a new version that meets their lower threshold.

3. To meet that lower dollar amount take a hack saw to every dollar that will hit a state with two republican senators. If you need more cut half the dollars going to states with a split delegation. That's your new proposal.

4. Release the proposal. Make sure to repeat the quote from McConnell or whomever about spending not doing anything at least twice. Brand the deal the republican plan. Announce that since you have met their demands they had better vote for it or shut up. Tell people if they prefer the house version they should contact their senator and tell them to support the democrat version.

5. Sit back and enjoy.

The alternative is to tell the republican governors they had better start cutting commercials against their senators or you are going to take the senate repubs up on their state aid is pork proposal.

White House Blues

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/04/AR2009020402835.html

EJ Dionne, who is rapidly emerging as a go to guy for getting the Obama message out (a Bob Novak of the left), has a good piece today on the highkacking of the stimulus debate. Everyone is carrying on about tiny pieces, republicans are disingenuous and allowed to get away with it, there is bipartisan support from governors, etc etc. But he had one anonymous white house quote I found really telling:

"We lost a week."

Remember Obama the campaign, where everything was about the long term strategy. As McCain won week after week, he kept slipping further and further behind. It really was a pretty remarkable feat in retrospect
Fast forward today and that quote makes me wonder if part of the problem is them getting caught up in the weekly wars. It explains the almost daily token issue - ones they themselves recognize are pretty inconsequential - that is thrown under the stimulus bus and the slavish devotion to at least one bipartisan photo op every few days. People don't need the president making the rounds talking about how he has changed the process, they need a solution.

A Community of Non-Community

Finally, someone is vocalizing my frustration about the absolutely dismal failure of Washington DC to clear out snow and ice after a gimpy little "snow storm" last week, or all the snow storms before that.

I know none of you who live in NW DC truly truly claim DC as home, and don't care or in fact probably hate your neighbors, but please just put a little salt on your part of the sidewalk.

Now to Mr. President: the thing that you should really be introducing to DC is not "flinty Chicago toughness", it's neighbor ethics, or "snow/ice ethics", and giving a bit more of a damn about the place in which we're all temporarily residing.

Been here 5 years and I have still not changed my mind about the number one reason why I don't like DC -- it is the epitome of racial and class segregation, with those in power having every intention of keeping things this way. And did I say that these DC transients are all a bunch of arrogant, self-important pricks?

I know I'm also part of the problem here, but I really do feel for those that live here, and know only DC as their home. Sorry for trespassing.

Good Takes Time

Josh Marshall passes along the story that:

President Obama is "frustrated by the public perception that the recovery bill was becoming laden with partisan pet projects."

I am not sure where the partisan label comes from. But on the pet project side, wasn't that inevitable? If you are only going to give money to "shovel ready" projects then some member of Congress or Governor has to have a plan sitting in their back pocket. And if we actually need rapid stimulus there is nothing wrong with this, since the alternative is allocating giant blocks of money to agencies, setting up grant applications, giving people 6 months to apply, weeding through them for the next year, and finally dispursing the first dollars in 2011 (at which point the economy is completely in the crapper).

I am pirating this from somewhere else (can't remember exactly where though) but while the goal is for government spending to be good, fast, and cheap, you can only pick two. With the size of the stimulus we haev already picked cheap, so what is the other one going to be?

Grrr....

I am always sort of amazed by the implicit hegemonic tone in the work of otherwise great national security writers. The US not only spends more on their military - from troops to procurement to R&D to war gaming to military aid to non democratic states - then the rest of the world put together. We also are far and away the biggest arms dealer. We have traded nuclear secrets, supported coups, armed drug-peddling rebels, and backed death squads. And we are the only nation to drop a nuke or launch a sustained carpet bombing campaign against the civilian centers of another country (Japan, Germany, Vietnam, Serbia twice, and Iraq).

So forgive me if our criticism of countries like Iran rings a little hollow. People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones. Today I read that Iran claims they have launched a satellite into orbit and am told it is a "troubling development". First, people need to stop calling every technological leap by a non allied country "troubling". The funny thing about science is that you just need smart people and a few bucks (relative to the size of most economies) and you can indigenously replicate anything I can do. The US keeps spending massively to upgrade the effectiveness and breadth of our weapon systems, which means unless other countries want to have to worry about becoming the next Iraq they have no choice but to invest and try to at least prevent the technology gap from continuing to grow.

I think Iraq was a mistake for a lot of reasons. But the biggest from a long term perspective has to be the introduction of preemptive war into the IR equation. This adds a whole new level of instability because it does show that people are willing to go straight from bad mouthing you to bombing you in an instant. It is this paradigm that we are now applying to everyone else for the benefit of the defense establishment. There is good reason to worry about things blowing up around Iran, but it is less that they are driven by cowboys and more that you have the possible next Israeli PM saying they may have to nuke Iran if the US doesn't sell them even more advanced weapons.

The saddest part is that there is a pretty simple solution (conceptually, not to actually build) to all of this. Like trade, you just have to move to a rules based system of security. Then again, that means we wouldn't be able to back death squads and invade countries willy nilly, so guess it won't happen any time soon.

It seems the Obama people have yet another stupid plan to gut the Federal workforces management ranks. Despite my own personal struggles with the Federal beaurocracy, I actually agree with Darryl Perkinson (sans the length of service):

In my 29 years, I have worked with only a handful of people that had no business being employed in the government. I have seen people in the wrong jobs at times, but if they were properly placed they could function and be useful.

The biggest problems facing the government are related to human capital (along side the broken IT process). But it isn't that their are too many Feds. It is that no money is put into training and development, mentorship and the career ladder are a joke, the hiring process is completely broken, way too many contractors (and not enough oversight), too much energy is wasted babysitting clueless political appointees and members of congress, and risk aversion created by politicals jumping at the opportunity to throw middle managers under the bus as soon as anything goes wrong (rather than fostering organizational learning).

Enforcement

Before heading off on vacation, Matt Yglesias did a post on trade wars and noted correctly that:

The details of roquefort’s problem, the key issue is that in a "trade war" like this, everyone loses:

1. The Europeans won’t buy our beef. We’re mad.
2. So we refuse to buy their cheese.
3. This doesn’t help our cattle guys. But it does make me sad, since I love roquefort.
4. And it’s terrible for some French dairy farmers.
5. So maybe they’ll have enough political clout to persuade the Europeans to retaliate by refusing to buy a wider set of our goods.
6. At which point everyone is even more worse off.
7. Bad scene.

It’s a downward spiral of mutual retaliation that makes people on both sides of the Atlantic poorer.

Of course an alternative solution to save us from this bad ending would be for the French to have not put up their trade barriers in the first place. Standards-free trade - open trade with no labeling requirements, quality standards, or enforcement of basic worker protections on the producer side - is a bad thing. But so long as French consumers are being told that the beef they are buying has been injected with hormones the government has no business banning or taxing it. If Frenchmen are really that concerned about the living conditions of the food being slaughtered for their tasting pleasure they won't buy it, the local supermarket won't order it from the American cattlemen, and we will stop importing it to France - what we like to call the free market.

But why do we have to retaliate? Because we have a rule based system that governs the terms of international trade. If everyone just did "what was best" there wouldn't need to be rules. But most states act in their own self interest.

Since the US exports beef it is safe to assume that French ranchers costs per pound of beef are either more than than the American cost plus the cost of freezing and shipping it across the Atlantic, or French farmers raise less cattle than Frenchmen want to eat. But French cattlemen decide they want more money so they lobby their government, and since the President likes his job and wants a second term he orders his trade department to ban US beef. America, your move.

We have a choice: retaliate or not? If we do not retaliate Matt gets to eat his roquefort, the French cheese producers keep making money, and American cattlemen keep getting screwed. If we retaliate, well, we know how the story ends. But there is a missing future piece to this equation. If the French know we will retaliate - regardless of how much it pisses off the DC foodie crowd and lobbyists - it will make them think twice next time before they decide to BREAK THE RULES and send us all into the trade equivalent of mutually assured destruction.

I think Fox / the Simpsons should sue the Church of Scientology

Guess this is my slow day at work... actually, it's my more productive day at work, and hence the time to surf a bit at lunch.

On with my theme about religion, here's another post. This is quite unbelievable, the exploitation of "minors". Shame on you, Scientology!





Oh, and in case you're still baffled by the contents of the recording, this is Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson, urging you to go to some Scientology event.

Lifting of Bishops' Excommunication Angers Many

As a strong proponent of the separation of church and state, I believe it is critical that the church also refrains itself from any participation in politics, or taking actions as a political statement. It's difficult and often almost-impossible to disentangle having a religious view in the political sphere (a la "what would Jesus do") and having the church act like a state, but I can't stress how important it is that it must be done.

For one, this whole excommunication business is nonsense to me. While officials at the Catholic Church act with the blessings and influence of the holy spirit (at least so they claim), they're not infallible, and more importantly, they are not God themselves. As such I do not believe they have the right to judge or deny anyone of their prospect for salvation -- supposing that we indeed need to do all the sacraments etc. that the church demands in order to stay on God's good side. So either they're lying hypocrites, or they're playing God.

Now then, what do you do with a fellow believer that is absolutely coo-coo, and may possibly stand for pretty evil beliefs? Well, restating that "not all Catholics' views are those of the church's" is a good start. Following church doctrine, the Catholic officials might also urge the four excommunicated bishops to repent and confess their sins. After all, some of the stuff they're quoted as saying were from decades before; maybe there's been a change of heart since. I'm also sure that just as us mere mortals, these bishops have sinned at some point in their lifetime, and hence the urge left in such vague terms is not a direct condemnation of any kind.

Judge not, and ye shall not be judged.

I should be the first to shut up since I admit I do judge, occasionally. But I hope others do better than me. And I hope that the Catholic Church (my Church) would stand for love and forgiveness and acceptance that they preach, and leave the judgment to God when the time has come.

Conservative Hyperventilation

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Guantanamo Baywatch - The Final Season

The Arcade Wire™: Airport Security

The Importance of Spokespeople

Meet the Press this morning had Larry Summers and John Boehner talking about the stimulus package.

At first during the Summers piece I was getting really annoyed at David Gregory and then realized the problem wasn't him, it was that Summers is a terrible interviewer. By the time Boehner was done I was almost ready to personally write a billion dollar check to poor Bill Gates and forcibly shut down every State government (ok that is a slight exaggeration).

In case Larry finds himself within earshot of a microphone anytime soon here are some ideas.

If someone asks why you should give states $1.5 billion for retaining thousands of police officers instead of giving every American a check for $5, it is because recovery takes businesses not afraid of being robbed, not everyone buying an extra latte or extra value meal.

If someone wants to know how you could possibly let the Bush tax cuts expire, the answer is simple. Tax cuts cost money too. And if we have to choose between helping a handful of millionaires and millions of middle class American families - our police and teachers and military and factory workers and bridge builders - I will always choose the latter.

And if someone wants to know why you aren't 'forcing' banks to lend you note the irony of Democrats being yelled at for not intervening in the market, remind the interviewer you have only been in office for 5 days, inform folks that you don't have voting rights, and suggest that if that is a problem maybe we need to think about nationalization.

On a larger point I am glad to see the return of subject experts to government, but letting communication idiots - and Larry Summers has a long history of tying himself in knots - near microphones only makes the job of fixing things a hell of a lot harder.

Your moment of zen

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=303695&f=24

NYT has an in depth piece on a new worm that is scaring the heck out of security folks. But in the midst of then piece there is this great graf:

"Yes, we are working on it, as are many others," said one botnet researcher who spoke on the grounds that he not be identified because of his plan. "Yes, it's illegal, but so was Rosa Parks sitting in the front of the bus."

If I ever end up in court I am totally stealing that line! And 'because of his plan' sounds insanely sketchy - who is he, Dr Evil?

On a related note, if government is worried about security vulnerabilities they could cut their risk.(and costs) by 25% if they just stopped buying Microsoft products. The value of their suite is integration and consistency of user experience, which are the things we completely suck at (and thus do not leverage).

First Rule of Fight Club

Megan McArdle breaks the first law in talking about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict:

I think the time for a two state solution has probably already passed - I don't know anyone who gives a convincing rendition of a viable Palestinian state on the remaining territory.

I have long considered the two state solution to have died in 2000. The CW seems to be that it was a case of Arafat pushing for too much, but I think that interpretation hinges on a pretty myopic assessment of the Palestinian position. As Hamas today and the PLO years ago were frequent to mention, the Palestinians have been the Middle East's red headed step children for A LONG TIME. Which means waiting another decade for the right deal is acceptable to their side.

But every year that passes makes things a lot more difficult on the Israeli side. The Arab and Jewish settler populations are growing rapidly in Israel. And the artifacts of occupation continue to migrate further towards the Jordan River (I went to an amazing presentation a few years ago by AJPJ).

Of course the next step in all of this is acknowledging that there is no principled reason to support a Jewish state over a pluralistic liberal democracy (well, unless you buy into the thesis that Arabs are culturally incapable of sustaining democracy), but baby steps.

Breaking News: Arabs Suck

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article;jsessionid=D78B384E505C6FA372587C938D6B73E1.w5?a=303365&f=20

That may as well be the headline of this opinion disguised as news piece in the NYT. The story is disorganized and meandering (Did you know Arab schools are terrible? Did you know Arabs are hypocrites? Did you know Arabs have different national interests?). But the bias and sense of 'the region is a mess and it is all their fault' is pretty clear.

What would be more informative and interesting would be for the NYT to give a voice to the many progressive Arabs who have been fighting for years to bring better education and social services and equality to the region (or at least someone who didn't just learn that not everyone supports pan arabism).

I am by no means an expert on the region, but they at least deserve credit for recognizing their problems and things like the GCC, building King Abdullah City, and the growth of SABIC (and yes I know those accomplishments are all in the Gulf, give me a break that is most my know knowledge in the region).

And whitewashing the negative impact of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict (which extends far beyond just 'the arab street gets mad' - it includes the refugee issue, respect for minority rights, water, and national security) doesn't help anyone. Just because you have a broken leg and migranes doesn't mean you ignore the cancer.

Building the Gay Elite

Andrew Sullivan flags this quote from Bishop Eugene Robinson:

A message to Rick Warren? Let's sit down. I think what would happen, which might frighten him, is that we have so much more in common than that which separates us. I would want to tell him about my relationship with my partner, about how just as in marriage--and by the way I was married so I'm in a position to compare these two - the church believes in marriage because it believes that kind of love between two people, that selfless, self-giving love, is a place where God can show up. And I would like to tell him where God has shown up in my relationship with my partner. Scripture says, "by your fruits you will know them" and the fruits of the spirit are appearing in gay and lesbian relationships, then couldn't he acknowledge those fruits of the spirit and begin to rejoice with us over those relationships.

At the end of the day I think I am a pretty big Contact Hypothesis believer. But elites do very much drive opinions and norms, and so finding prominent homosexuals for them to really engage with as equals (rather than "let me show everyone how inclusive I am, find me some gays for a photo op") is important.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Bishop Gene Robinson

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Bishop Robinson was also on the Daily Show last night and gave a great interview.

Reading List

Reading list:

• Juan Cole on Gaza. Especially on this issue he tends to go a step further than I would, but his argument that the Gazans are trapped in a form of slavery is interesting. Also, for the record my guess is that this whole thing ends either the week before or after February 10 (Israeli electons) based on how Livni thinks the Reservists currently in Gaza will break.



• Andrew Sullivan's Dissent of the Day and response. I doubly agree with his sentiment: "Cry me a river. You can only shame people if they feel ashamed." The only thing I would add is the irony that the hypothical events described by the Dissenter about poor folks who gave money to the Prop 8 campaign sounds a lot like the order of events for many gay men and women who have been outted. I wonder how many time he has been involved in one of those whisper campaigns?



• Glenda Hyatt is fast becoming one of my favorite bloggers (completely absent her great story) and writes about the creation of Disability Savings Accounts in Canada. One of the great shams in America (and until now Canada) is that disabled people who need any government assistance live in constant fear that the will cross one of the million thresholds that will cause the government to cut them off and them to be forced to spend three years fighting to get them back.

Obama's Letter to His Daughters

Not surprisingly, Obama's letter to his daughters is a touching and well written piece.

I only flinched a bit when I imagined Obama's speechwriter pounding out the words of this seemingly personal "to my daughters" letter in a cafe or empty apartment.

I guess as president, no correspondence of his will truly be personal because it will be archived. But upon reflection this seems more a letter of Obama explaining to the world why on earth he decided to put his family through the roller coaster ride of a presidential campaign, with a bit of his-vision-for-this-country (so that he can justifiably talk a lot of fluff with no real substance) on the side.

Then again, I'd just be laughing out loud if this were McCain being the President-elect and publishing a letter to his children. It would just look too forced. Obama, on the other hand, seems to always have an interesting story to tell. Props to him for being able to pull that off, but really, if this goes on too much more I might start to think I'm watching a prime time soap op.

That Change Sure Does Sound Familiar

Laura Rozen over at one of the new FP blogs posts a summary of emails she has gotten from folks who are skeptical about the new administrations "Apply Online" approach.

In fact, the extreme secrecy of the process and the stated rationale of seeking the "best and the brightest" is designed to conceal what is actually happening in the foreign policy transition -- a determined and coordinated effort by Hillary Clinton and her team to maximize their power and position in the administration, thereby preventing Obama's people from running the foreign policy side of the government. (Some would call this a power-grab).

Looks like I am not the only one who thinks it smells more like pr than an actual open process to find the best people to fill spots.

In fairness to the Obama people, the point of political appointees is that above all they are loyal to the folks above them. My issue is the way they pretend to be looking at qualifications - "we are looking for the best and the brightest" - as a pr strategy.

Commercial Break

Totally unrelated to Gaza or nukes or health care (well maybe a little bit this one). On the bus this morning there was a little kid - maybe 3 or 4 - sitting in a window seat staring out intently as the world passed. Then I looked a little closer and noticed the kid was tonguing the window handle! GROSS!

Unfortunately the bus was packed and I was driven away before I could get a quick phone shot. But parents, please keep an eye on where your child puts their tongue.

An Eye for an Eye, or Turn the Other Cheek?

Hands down the most interesting intellectual piece I have read in a long, long time. Possibly ever, but as a stereotypical academic (who's not in physical sciences), I don't ever commit to definitive certainty.

The article's about the British protocol in case of nuclear attack that kills their PM and one other unnamed person in the chain of command. It led to talking about many other countries' / religions' philosophy on the subject. At the end of the day, for decisions as monumental as this one, I honestly think that placing that burden on one person is too much to ask of anyone. From the perspectives of information, knowledge, experience, guilt, responsibility, and the fundamental notion of democracy, this system simply sounds flawed.

I'm off to research and read about strategic ambiguity now. I'm not sure there's an objective "truth" out there that can be sought on this subject, but the status quo needs to be closely examined, that's for sure.

Will Hezbollah Take Part in the Gaza War?

Good question. One way to look at it is to assess their actions. One doing this would note that with the exception of three rockets fired last week - which caused no damage and they responded to by saying they weren't behind firing them - they haven't said a peep except an occasional, obligatory statement that invading Gaza is bad. And that probably means they really aren't looking to get in on the Gaza fight or cause more trouble.

The other take is to just make up hypothetical intentions based on the principles that "Israel is good", "Iran is evil", and "everyone in the middle east is a wholly owned Iranian subsidiary". In this world we assume Hezbollah omnipotence and omniscience and so if a rocket was fired they must have at least ok'd it and since they haven't done anything since that clearly means they are just planning and waiting. And since it is only a matter of time before Iran unleashes them we should bomb Iran now.

Note to Israel, paranoid and delusional analysts are not your friends.

Change you think yo ucan believe in

Ezra Klein has two pieces this morning on food policy and the invocation at one of the inaugural balls that both illustrate the emerging Rovian tendency in the Obama folks that most worries me.

The crux of the problem is that change seems to be little more than a slogan. Rove was the master of surveying the landscape, identifying the big single (or small number of) issue groups, doing the math, and then giving the leaders of each a piece of the pie in return for delivering their constituents. Obama has flipped it a little by using the internet to cut out the traditional movement leaders.

But fundamentally it increasingly looks like most of what he does is a calculated SYMBOLIC move. Worried about selling your stimulus package, trickle it out in pieces with each one to either the right or left of what you want so that you can look like you are giving everyone something in the negotiations. A bunch of folks have rallied around Michael Pollan's book, give him a shout out in an interview and talk about setting up a White House vegetable garden. Evangelicals are feeling nervous, call in Rick Warren. Now the gays are a little nervous, call in Gene Robinson. Just imagine if the Voodoo community could get CNN to give them 5 seconds - the Illinois ball would probably be led off by a shaman.

In the end it looks increasingly to me like another four years of the same old just done by slightly smarter marketers. Change tastes like pretty weak tea.

Return of the Governor

This is a clip from a new conservative documentary, Media Malpractice ... How Obama Got Elected. Hilariously Palin has released a subsequent statement that Ziegler "misrepresents" her and takes things out of context with his editing.

On the Trig thing Andrew Sullivan - not some "nameless blogger" - has been the prime skeptic. And despite her talk about the "facts", the truth is Sullivan has said (rightly) all along that as soon as she releases a single medical record about the pregnancy or the birth certificate that shows she is the mother he will drop it. Until then, I side with him that the onus is on her to prove there is nothing to the rumor that Trig isn't hers.

I also chuckled when she mumbled on about the Couric interview. After two minutes of rambling on about how of course she reads "newspapers" and "magazines" you can see her catch herself and realize she should probably NAME one of these vague categories of periodicals that she reads. So she pulls out the big guns and mentions USA Today(!) and NY Times(!) as her reading of choice.

I will say that like most conservative talking heads she is really good at playing the victim.