Some Successful Scott Walker Blogging

I've been critical of the Scott Walker bloggers in the past, but maybe things are changing. This is the kind of post that in my mind really works and it was refreshing to see this kind of content.

Since their goal is to get Walker elected and not just get hits on their blog, I'm reposting the whole thing. Visit the Team Tosa blog at the link for more.

"Dead Heat" | Scott Walker for Wisconsin Governor

Nate Silver - a liberal, yet very astute analyst, at the FiveThirtyEight blog on the New York Times website - said this yesterday about what candidates say when they are behind:

When a candidate appears to trail in a race, he’s going to give you a story about how he’s going to come back (or if he’s a little more enterprising, why he isn’t really trailing in the first place). He’ll talk about how the dynamics of the race are exceptional, about how his internal polls, which are printed on really nice letterhead, show the race to be a dead heat. And he’ll give you some tidbits: Union workers in Wilkes-Barre are breaking 2 to 1 for him, you know, and wait ’til you see his September fund-raising numbers, because people are getting energized, just now getting energized, about this campaign, they’re really getting energized, and that was the plan all along, don’cha know.

The Barrett campaign apparently followed Silver's commentary to the letter. In an email from the Barrett campaign this morning:

Our pollster emailed me last night with some exciting news that I want to share with you: we've captured the momentum and with less than five weeks to go, this race remains a dead heat.

By the way, Nate Silver now gives Scott Walker an 84.2% chance of winning the election.

Government to Adopt New Rules. Lobbyists Rejoice.

Congress Tamps Down on Annoying Commercials - Blog - OpenCongress

Come 2012, climate change, unemployment, the broken U.S. immigration system, and campaign-finance corruption may very well be unaddressed national catastrophes as a result of Senate gridlock. But, hey, at least watching TV will be a little less irritating. Maybe.

The Commercial Advertising Loudness Mitigation Act has been kicking around Congress for a few years now thanks to Rep. Anna Eshoo [D, CA-14]. Yesterday, before adjourning for the midterms, the Senate passed it under unanimous consent, following up on the House’s passage of it last year and moving it forwards toward becoming law.

The bill is simple. It calls for the Federal Communications Commission to issue, within 1 year, regulations implementing the highly-technical volume guidelines that were drawn up recently by the “Advanced Television Systems Committee,” an industry group that sets standards and issues recommendations, insofar as they pertain to commercials. It also gives the FCC power to issue a waiver to any “television broadcast station, cable operator, or other multichannel video programming distributor that demonstrates that obtaining the equipment to comply with the regulation […] would result in financial hardship.”

If there was a ever a recipe for the continuing the symbiotic relationship between big government and big business it has to include "highly technical guidelines drawn up by an industry group" and the ability of a government agency to issue waivers for said guidelines.

If you think this is a good way to run a country you have not been paying attention so wake up!

Wal-Mart in Africa & Headline Prediction

If you're an investor, you can consider this your official wake-up call on Africa.  When companies like McDonalds and Wal-Mart make a big foray into a market, they are telling you that they've done the homework and the population of that market is ready to join the rest of us in the 21st century. 

via thereformedbroker.com

Wal-Mart is moving into Africa.

In the not too distant future the headline, "Chinese Labor Unions Seek Protection Against Low Wages in Sub-Sahara" will no longer be found only at The Onion.

Posted via email from rhymeswithclown's posterous

Folkbum on Social Security

Steve Kagen was recently promoted to "Pants on Fire" status for his attack ad on Reid Ribble over Ribble's stance on Social Security. Erstwhile liberal Wisconsin blogger Folkbum uses the occasion not to defend Kagen, but rather to further his one man crusade against what he calls the "zombie lie" that Social Security is going bankrupt.

The problem is, Folkbum's entire argument only works if you treat Social Security in isolation from the rest of the federal budget. As if the SSA would still be mailing checks regardless of whether or not the U.S. Government itself remains solvent. Is this really the right way to consider Social Security?

Here is what the Congressional Budget Office has to say about the future of entitlement spending, including Social Security:

All told, CBO projects, the aging of the population and the rising cost of health care will cause spending on the major mandatory health care programs and Social Security to grow from roughly 10 percent of GDP today to about 16 percent of GDP 25 years from now if current laws are not changed. (By comparison, spending on all of the federal government's programs and activities, excluding interest payments on debt, has averaged 18.5 percent of GDP over the past 40 years.) To put U.S. fiscal policy on a sustainable path, lawmakers would have to substantially reduce the growth in outlays for those programs relative to the amounts that CBO is projecting--or else match that growth with equivalent declines in other federal spending, corresponding increases in federal revenues, or some combination of the two.

So in other words, spending on just the mandatory entitlements will grow so large that all other government spending would have to be reduced to 2.5% of GDP just to match the average level of spending over the last forty years.

Of course, the major factor driving this increase is Medicare, but Social Security is definitely part of the overall picture. Considering it separately lets everyone feel better about Social Security sure, but ignores the larger context where Social Security resides. It's like only looking at a healthy limb on a tree whose trunk has begun to show signs of rot. Does anyone really believe the checks would continue uninterrupted if the U.S. faced a major fiscal crisis?

It may be imprecise to say Social Security will bankrupt us. It is certainly correct to say that mandatory entitlement spending by the federal government, of which Social Security is a large part, represents a major challenge to the continued fiscal soundness of the United States government. Furthermore, addressing this challenge will take a lot more than tinkering with a few tax rates or eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse. Even the muted language of the CBO conveys that there aren't any easy answers.

Far from driving a stake through the heart of a "zombie lie," pretending Social Security isn't really related to the larger budget does little but delay the day when we have a serious conversation about entitlement reform.

Even though Folkbum was a blogger whose endorsement Steve Kagen sought out in 2006 he never does get around to defending Kagen's attack ad, probably because it's indefensible. Despite his somewhat creepy fondness for the word "tea-bagger" I generally like Folkbum's blog, but this is one case where the reader would be well advised to pay no attention to the man behind the guitar.

Excellent Question

Q: If a program is directionally correct and politically useful, but ineffective and inefficient with taxpayer dollars, and if you cannot design a better alternative, do you continue it or kill it?

via keithhennessey.com

Leave it to an economist to so succinctly convey one of the fundamental questions for politicians.

This came in a post about housing policy, but when I read it I couldn't help but also think of Medicare.

H/T Reihan Salam

Posted via email from rhymeswithclown's posterous

Steve Kagen Doesn't Listen to his Constituents

 

A few weeks ago we received letters that our insurance will be canceled at the end of the year. So much for being able to keep your insurance if you like it. Last week we received an e-mail from Congressman Kagen thanking us for our support of the plan. Do any of the politicians really even read their mail? Do they really want any input at all? Makes you wonder.

Dolly Jonas

That's from a letter to the Press Gazette.

 

The question of whether or not Steve Kagen listens to his constituents comes up over and over again.  Ms. Jonas raises it in this letter.  I heard it loud and clear at the listening sessions last summer.  It was a concern both on health reform and (especially?) on Cap and Trade.  If Kagen makes any effort to combat the perception that he is hopelessly out of touch with the people of NE Wisconsin, they don't seem to be having much of an effect.

Posted via email from rhymeswithclown's posterous

Central Planning is not Dead Yet

Liberal blogger Matthew Yglesias reflects on Brazil and offers us this analysis:

Either way it’s global movement toward a model in which the government intervenes in the economy primarily through tax-and-transfer functions rather than through planning. Nothing’s perfect in life, but this trend has served the world pretty well and I think both sides of the equation are very much necessary. This progressive liberal synthesis is taking over pretty much everywhere in the democratic world except the United States, where the GOP remains ideologically unreconciled to the welfare state

The first thing I noticed is that Yglesias also likes to pick on the GOP for wanting to protect popular spending programs like Social Security but not raise taxes.  Perhaps the GOP is conflicted about how to pay for the welfare state, but I'm not convinced that they remain "ideologically unreconciled" to it.

That aside, I couldn't help but think that if only his description of the state of affairs were accurate, how much better off we would be.  If everyone agreed that centralized planning of the economy is a bad idea and we could just debate how big a welfare state was right for America I think things would be much better and we would be in a position to tackle the fiscal challenges that lie ahead.  But I'm not at all convinced that this is really where we are at.

The health reform law offers a case in point.  Yes expanded coverage through government subsidies is a tax and transfer government program.  At the same time the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius sent a letter to the health insurance industry stating explicitly that the government will have "zero tolerance" for "unjustified rate increases."  With the government, apparently, being the final judge of what is unjustified.

When the government sets the standard of what is an unjustified rate increase rather than market participants, I'd say that amounts to central planning.  I'm not sure the world that Yglesias describes, where we have once and for all learned the lesson that planning doesn't work, is one that comports with reality but if it did we'd all be the better for it.

If The Shoe Fits You Must Acquit

Ron Johnson has a new ad out highlighting the fact that a majority of the current U.S. Senators are lawyers, a fact which he thinks is part of the problem in the Senate. At the same time, many on the left are fond of pointing out how obstructionist the Senate is. You would think that these two facts taken together constitute a preponderance of the evidence in support of the idea that we need fewer lawyers in the Senate.

On the other hand correlation is not causality.

Regardless, I thought the ad was great and I'm willing to bet it will be effective. Illy-T offers a spirited defense, noting that many of our Founding Fathers were themselves lawyers. A great rhetorical tactic, but it ultimately comes up short in my book.

After all, we have a constitutional law professor for a President and yet the ACLU finds itself having to sue the government in order to stop the assassination of U.S. Citizens without any judicial oversight.

Here's the Johnson ad:

Reid Ribble Counters Kagen's Attacks

GOP candidate for Wisconsin's 8th congressional district Reid Ribble launched a new feature on his website called The Kagen Lie Detector.

Steve Kagen's recent attack ad on Ribble's Social Security stance was so over the top it's nice to see Ribble fighting back. I thought this particular item was quite telling in relation to Kagen's charge about jobs being moved overseas:

Furthermore, if Congressman Kagen’s “Cap-and-Trade” bill became law (a bill he voted for and supports) it would make it harder for Wisconsin manufacturers to compete. According to the National Association of Manufacturers, “cap-and-trade” could results in as many as 56,000 manufacturing jobs lost in Wisconsin. In essence, Congressman Kagen’s vote would have made it easier for Chinese manufacturers to produce goods than manufacturers right here in the 8th District.

For more information about the economic impact of cap-and-trade on Wisconsin:
http://www.accf.org/publications/126/accf-nam-study

Check out The Kagen Lie Detector for yourself.

Berry Laker: Congressman Steve Kagen's Last Mile

So there you have a 4000 ft sidewalk with new street lights that cost over 700 thousand dollars. Why couldn't they have used black top as a side walk / bike path? Why cement? Why the fancy street lights?

via berrylaker.blogspot.com

Berry Laker with another hard hitting investigative report, complete with pictures!

Be sure to click on the link and read the whole thing.

Posted via email from rhymeswithclown's posterous

JS Politifact Rating of Steve Kagen Attack Ad

The JS Politifact judgement of Steve Kagen's Social Security attack ad on Reid Ribble was definitive:

 

To make his case that Reid Ribble wants to "phase out" Social Security, Kagen lifts a choice 14 words from a 2009 forum. Snipped out: The fact Ribble immediately goes on to say he is worried about the future of Social Security and believes the current system will need to be replaced or modified. Kagen’s statement splices and dices -- and leaves the truth on the cutting room floor. Strike another match. We rate the statement Pants on Fire.

 

Go to the link for the whole thing.  It includes the note that Kagen spokesman Allison Jaslow did not get back to the JS on their request for elaboration on the charge.

Posted via email from rhymeswithclown's posterous

Marginal Revolution: How Much Has the Fed Lost?

The Fed has been a financial empath, it has taken on other people's financial pain and put it on its own books.  But all of this shuffling of losses--perhaps not coincidentally from more to less transparent forms--has obscured the fact that when the shuffling stops it's the taxpayers who are the ultimate empaths, whether they volunteered or not.  The taxpayers deserve more than a shell game, they deserve a proper financial accounting which explains where the losses came from and how much ended up on different books, including those of the Federal Reserve.

via marginalrevolution.com

An interesting question from Alex Tabarrok, I doubt a clear answer will be available any time soon.

Posted via email from rhymeswithclown's posterous

The Source of Medicare Cuts

Below is a letter I sent to the Press Gazette yesterday.

In his 9/26 letter, Jim Gayhart writes that, "[t]he health care bill Kagen supported carves out $500 billion over 10 years, mostly through the elimination of waste, fraud and abuse."

Unfortunately, that's simply not true.

The non-partisan Tax Foundation broke down the $500 billion number and much of it comes from changes to the fee for service rates in Medicare and Medicare Advantage.

The ultimate effect of this law still remains to be seen. But it is certainly possible that the Medicare Advantage plans used by many seniors here in NE Wisconsin could change as a result of the health reform law that Steve Kagen voted for.

The Shape of Things to Come and Not to Come

4. Taxes won't be raised much (do the Dems seem to have great love for reversing the Bush tax cuts?), spending won't be cut enough (the recent Republican document is extremely weak), and within twenty years we will have a sovereign debt crisis in the United States, as one day a Treasury auction won't go well. I'll predict, but not favor, the emergency passage of a VAT, a' la TARP, which will restore fiscal stability but lower the long-term rate of growth. When that time comes, the VAT will indeed be necessary, though ex ante I would opt for less social protection and a higher rate of economic growth.

via marginalrevolution.com

That's Tyler Cowen and it's only #4 in a list of twelve. All of them are thought-provoking and worth consideration even on a beautiful Saturday morning.

Predictions about even the medium term are tough, but much of the list seems plausible to me.

Unfortunately, it's doubtful that very few of the 535 members of Congress have thought about these issues in as serious a manner.

Posted via email from rhymeswithclown's posterous

The Shortcut To Serfdom

This is a severely abridged sampling of the manifold ways our civil liberties are under attack. The War on Drugs and The War on Terrorism are the biggest culprits. Unfortunately, the Republican Party — the one that is always fretting about lost liberty — generally lends law enforcement and anti-terrorism efforts their blind support, and appoints too many judges who do the same. As you can see in the quote that begins this piece, it’s thought-leaders go so far as to assert that these issues are less worrisome attacks on liberty than President Obama’s domestic agenda.

I regard the actual, ongoing abrogation of civil liberties in America as the clearer, more present danger, as compared to the unintended consequences of “smooth-talking politicians offering seemingly innocuous compromises.” Indeed, these issues seem to me unsurpassed in their importance.

via blogs.forbes.com

That's Conor Freidersdor writing at Forbes.

I too am worried about the coercive power of Obamacare. At the same time, I'm frightened by the increase in the power of the Executive Branch.

How come many of us on the right are willing to speak out against one and not the other?

Posted via email from rhymeswithclown's posterous

The Real Problem with the Auto Bailout

Former 'Car Czar' Steven Rattner: Inside Obama's Auto Industry 'Overhaul' : NPR

Rick Wagoner testified that the problems of GM and the automakers were of the making of everybody except the management of GM. And we took some exception to that.

On February 17th, GM filed a so-called viability plan, which we felt was way excessively optimistic and didn't at all comport with the realities of the problems that GM was facing.

And we were looking at a massive infusion of additional government money, more than $30 billion at that moment. And it seemed obvious that it's very hard to put that amount of new money behind a CEO who's not only driven the bus off the cliff but doesn't even realize where the bottom of the cliff is and what has to be done to get back up to the top of the mesa, if you follow the analogy.

SIEGEL: You were learning, you were discovering what the corporate culture of GM was, and it was, in a word, appalling.

Mr. RATTNER: It was appalling, but it was both the culture of GM and the substance of GM. Rick Wagoner told the Congress that with another $10 or $12 billion, they could be viable again. The number ended up being $50 billion.

So the management of GM, just a few months before they went into bankruptcy, had no idea of how much capital it would take to bring the company back to a viable position.

SIEGEL: I mean, his chief financial officer didn't seem to know what the cash flow was at GM, didn't seem to know how much money they were spending.

Mr. RATTNER: GM could not tell you on any given day within $500 million how much cash they had, and the result was they had to operate with over $10 billion, sometimes $11 billion, of cash, far more than any other company of its same size or scale.

And by contrast, Ford, which is not that much smaller of a company, could operate with about $5 billion of cash on hand.

Steven Rattner was the head of the Obama auto bailout program.This recent interview on NPR emphasized just how bad an idea the auto bailout was.

Rattner freely admits that GM was in disarray, it's management couldn't control cash flow and was unrealistic about how precarious their position was.  But instead of letting a clearly failed company actually, you know, fail, the government stepped in and bailed out GM.

The debate has been centered on the cost to taxpayers and whether or not money will be repaid.  But beyond that, what about the opportunity of Ford to capture market share, an opportunity taken away by the government intervention.  There's also the signal sent to other large firms that you can fail, but you really won't fail.  The government will be there to bail you out.  Mr. Rattner seems to be aware of these issues, but they don't seem to matter much.

Ours is a profit and loss system.  It would be nice if removing the loss portion of that relationship resulted in all profit, but that's simply not the case.

The Depths of The Atlantic

Democrats Down in Wisconsin - Chris Good - Politics - The Atlantic

Democratic Rep. Steve Kagen may have dodged a bullet when Tea Partying roofing contractor Reid Ribble won the primary to challenge him, but a GOP poll by Virginia-based Ayres McHenry showed Ribble leading Kagen 49 - 39 percent in mid August.

That's from the online presence of venerable publication The Atlantic.

I'd chalk it up to an author that has no clue that this is a closely divided district in which very few Democrats are re-elected and three terms is unheard of, but even that's not enough in this case.

In this guy's mind Steve Kagen dodged a bullet by getting a general election opponent to whom he was recently trailing in the polls by 10 points.  I just don't see how such a pronouncement passes for good journalism.  As DeLong might say, why oh why can't we have a better press corp?

Regardless, I found this gem in the comments section of the post.  You never can tell the veracity of online comments, but this one certainly sounds like it could be true given the confirmed Kagen gaffes of the past.  Commenter jbeee managers to tackle Feingold and Doyle as well in a really small amount of space:

Well Kagen is an idiot. When he appeared at the school I work at he
promptly told the middle school students "this will show you I am not a
dumbass." Guess what, it just proved it. His commercials are horrible,
he has done nothing in Congress and deserves to be voted out.

Feingold
has overstayed his welcome as well. After 18 years the only bill he
can hang his hat on has been struck down by the Supreme Court. His
first commercial was negative, and virtually every other commercial he
has run since has been an attack ad. The only one that isn't touts how
he can't get along with anyone else in Congress so he is a loner.

In
the Governor's race, this state has been run so poorly by the current
Democrat administration that folks are fed up. The biggest talking
point is a 800B high speed train set to go between Madison and
Milwaukee. There is no need for it, the Dem is for it the Republican
against it. If it goes in it will cost the various communities millions
(as an example one community will have to foot over 5M to build a train
station) not to mention how much it will cost state taxpayers to
subsidize it to keep it running. It is a boondoggle and the Dems really
should have known better.

Fact-Checking Reid Ribble on Social Security

FactCheck.org today posted an analysis of Steve Kagen's recent attack ad, which claimed that GOP candidate Reid Ribble wanted to end Social Security. They note that Kagen's claim rests on selective editing of Ribble's statements and the video included in the ad is truncated so as to render the ad "misleading."

From FactCheck.org:

Ribble does say he wants to eventually "establish a phase out of the current Social Security system into a new system," but the words "into a new system" were edited out in the ad. Ribble also goes on to make it clear in his response that current retirees should not be part of the new plan — whatever it may be. He doesn’t propose any solutions.

Ribble: There’s been a promise made and for those of you in that are in their retirement years, you lived and planned your life based on a promise by your government. And so somehow we have to establish a phase out of the current Social Security system to a new system, and that will have to happen over time. It could happen in a single generation, it will probably require a fair amount of change in retirement age. … I envision a shift in how that system works so that by the time you get there you are not only responsible for your own, but we’ve made tax law available to help you be responsible for your own, and that the government can’t take that money from you and give it to somebody else. That is in fact, a Ponzi scheme.

In a statement to us, Ribble writes that “Congressman Kagen’s commercial completely distorts my view on Social Security. His highly selective editing implies that I want to end Social Security when nothing could be further from the truth.“

We don’t agree that it "completely distorts" Ribble’s view. But it is misleading to say Ribble would force "Wisconsin seniors to fend for themselves," and to suggest that Ribble would phase out the program without replacing it with a new plan.

I have to admit that I'm a little baffled by that last paragraph. FactCheck disagrees that the ad completely distorts Ribble's view and in the next sentence they say that the claim in the ad is misleading. If the ad is misleading, is that not essentially the same thing as giving voters a distorted view of the truth?

For me, this just underscores the point that voters need to make the time and effort to get informed about candidates and their positions. Operations like FactCheck are one more tool for people to use, but there simply is no substitute for being informed.

Addendum Try2Focus comments here.

Reid Ribble on Social Security

Truth is, Ribble envisions a system where "government can't take money from you and give it to somebody else," like Kagen has done so many times by voting to raid Social Security to pay for wasteful government programs. Seniors will have a strong voice with Reid Ribble; it's just common sense and the right thing to do.

via greenbaypressgazette.com

That's from a letter to the Press Gazette by Mary Deckert. Click on the link to read the whole letter.

Posted via email from rhymeswithclown's posterous

Random Senator For President

Well guess who Intrade punters have listed tied with Palin behind Mitt Romney? Why it’s a random Senator from South Dakota with a very square jaw, no record of accomplishments, and the ability to wrack up a monotonic record of orthodox conservative Republicanism without having said anything newsmakingly insane.

via yglesias.thinkprogress.org

That's liberal blogger Matt Yglesias with a rather dismissive take on South Dakota Senator John Thune, who is occasionally mentioned as a possible 2012 GOP presidential nominee.

Yglesias is one of the most shapr-witted bloggers out there, but his rhetoric here fails utterly. The whole time I was reading his description of Thune, all I could think was that if just changed a few words with regards to political leanings, he could have been describing Barack Obama prior to November of 2008.

Posted via email from rhymeswithclown's posterous

The Best Sentence I Read Today

Marginal Revolution: Does the well-off law professor have cause to complain?

A lot of people just like to complain, and that includes complaining about the complaining of others.

Steve Kagen's Social Security Attack Ad

In case you missed it, Steve Kagen started running an attack ad against GOP opponent Reid Ribble over the weekend. The accusation of the ad was that Ribble advocated for "phasing out" Social Security. Scott Crevier has put together a great post detailing exactly how this accusation simply isn't true and how there is much more to the story than what Kagen presents in the ad:

All Ribble is doing is recognizing the fact that our CURRENT Social Security system is broke and needs fixing. In Kagen’s ad, Ribble says, “somehow we have to establish a phase out of the current Social Security system”. But if Kagen had played Ribble’s quote for just FOUR MORE WORDS, you would have heard this, “somehow we have to establish a phase out of the current Social Security system TO A NEW SYSTEM.” It sure makes a difference doesn’t it? Ribble does NOT want to leave our Wisconsin seniors to “fend for themselves.” He wants to phase out the CURRENT system. Words matter folks.

I encourage you to go to Scott's blog and get more details about Kagen's misleading attack ad.

Posted via email from rhymeswithclown's posterous

Steve Kagen's Changing Sources of Campaign Cash

The Green Bay Press Gazette offers a look at the WI-8 race, but I'm not sure exactly what it is they are reporting. First, they offer this:

Kagen said there is a difference between PACs that contribute to him versus other candidates.

"I haven't accepted any donations from big oil, big banks, big health insurance companies," Kagen told the Green Bay Press-Gazette. "I want many legs under the economic table, and that's small business."

And then later in the same article

His support from PACs in 2006 totaled $316,000 and was largely from groups within the health industry, the national party and those with strong Democratic ties such as labor groups, according to FEC records.

So they include a quote from Kagen saying he doesn't accept donations from "big health insurance companies" and they note that much of his 2006 PAC money came from groups in the "health industry." It's no wonder voters are confused. If you go to OpenSecrets.org, you can check the numbers for yourself.

The fact of the matter is that in the 2006 the PAC money was dwarfed by Kagen's self-financing. He contributed about $2.5 million of his own money, so it' not hard to see why $300,000 doesn't really make much of a difference.

In this cycle, however, things have definitely changed. The Press Gazette let's Kagen tell you that he is against "big oil, big banks, big health insurance" but instead of just taking him at his word, perhaps we should check his actions.

Kagen voted in favor of the stimulus, Cap and Trade, and the Obama health reform. So while he is apparently against "big health insurance" he doesn't have any problem with big government.

He also doesn't seem to have a problem with big labor. The Sunlight Foundation, which advocates for transparency in government, reports that the Labor sector alone has contributed over $200,000 to Kagen during this election cycle.

Berry Laker considers the same article and concludes the PG gave Kagen a pass. I'd like to disagree, but it' really hard to do so. At the very least, the article presents a confused picture of what is going on in Kagen's campaign. Voters really need to educate themselves if they want to have any hope of making the right decision in Novemeber.

Letters: Feingold, Kagen aren't representatives | postcrescent.com | Appleton Post Crescent

Mr. Kagen lied through his teeth when confronted with the fact that a substantial majority of voters were against the bill. He said with a straight face that it wasn't true in his district. Mr. Feingold said that he voted for it "reluctantly" because it wasn't as far left as he would like it to be.

Conspicuously absent from both of their advertising campaigns is any mention of those voting records. Why do you suppose that, on that subject, they're both hiding under their desks? The fact is they both voted to destroy the best health care system on earth, and they both voted to squander three-quarters of a trillion of our hard-earned dollars on the so-called stimulus bill, a total pork barrel failure.

via postcrescent.com

That's Dick Zeihen writing to the PC. Be sure to check out the link for the whole letter.

Posted via email from rhymeswithclown's posterous

The Two Sides of Trade

The Real Conundrum: Why the Hell Do We Care if China Manipulates Its Currency in Our Favor?

Here’s a little editing fun of Harold Meyerson’s article in today’s Washington Post:

“This week, committees on both sides of Capitol Hill will plumb the conundrum of Chinese currency manipulation. The conundrum isn’t that — or why — China is manipulating its currency: By undervaluing it, China is systematically able to underprice its exports, putting American (and other nations’) manufacturing consumers and businesses that purchase China’ cheap imports at a significant disadvantage. The conundrum is why the hell the United States isn’t doing thinks it should do anything about it.

via cafehayek.com

The strike-throughs and bold are an intended to note the myopic nature of the original argument.

While of course both are caricatures and don't necessarily provide a completely accurate picture of the world as it is. The first view, that trade with China is all bad all the time, is one that has proven incredibly resilient to counter-argument.

International trade will be front and center in the race for WI-8. Steve Kagen has already made it clear that he is anti-trade and doesn't miss an opportunity to remind the voters of this.

The one thing I can't tell from his statements, however, is whether he's come to this position after a careful study of the effects of trade on consumers and employees, or if his anti-trade stance is based on the fact that Labor organizations provide so much of his campaign cash.

Posted via email from rhymeswithclown's posterous

Congressional Oversight Panel: Congressional Oversight Panel Assesses the TARP on the Eve of Its Expiration

Economists surveyed by the Panel raised severe concerns about moral hazard. The Panel sought the input of four prominent economists on the effectiveness of the TARP. These experts generally agreed both that the TARP was necessary to stabilize the financial system and that it had been mismanaged and could pose significant costs far into the future. Further, the economists unanimously felt that the program created significant moral hazard. TARP offered its funding on relatively generous terms, without requiring participating institutions to enter liquidation or receivership, remove failed managers, or wipe out existing shareholders. The fact that the government chose not to impose such stringent costs meant that the TARP's moral hazard costs were much greater than necessary.

via cop.senate.gov

In general capitalism is a profit and loss system. When failed firms are bailed out by the government and don't ever realize their losses, does anyone believe those losses simply evaporate? Or are they merely shifted somewhere else, somewhere less visible. Future tax payers are almost certain to feel some of these losses as they pay down the debt incurred to rescue our financial system.

Posted via email from rhymeswithclown's posterous

Touch of Grey: WI-8 Edition

A quick look at the Brown County unofficial vote totals reveals the following:

In the GOP primary there were over 26,000 votes cast. The winner, Reid Ribble, got a little over 14,000 of those.

At the same time, current Congressman Steve Kagen received almost 7500 votes. Keep in mind that this was an uncontested primary and basically meant nothing for Kagen, yet almost 7500 people voted for him. I'd like to believe that these came from people who were motivated to go to the polls in order to vote for Tom Barrett, but that primary was practically non-contested.

That leaves me to conclude that in Brown County there are at least 7400 committed hardcore Democrats who turn out to vote no matter what. Does anyone doubt what a formidable asset such a group can be in a tight general election?

If you combine Roth's 7000 votes with Ribble's it yields a total of about 21,000 or about three times the number of Kagen's votes. Looking at the total number of ballots cast, there were about three times as many Republican ones as Democratic ones.

In other words, WI-8 is still most likely a closely divided electorate, and the general election could all come down to who shows up to vote.

Ribble has remarked on just how hard he has worked up to this point. I'd say now is when the real work begins.

It's All Over But The Voting

At least the first round is.

Be sure to get out and vote today.

Information on registration and where to vote can be found at this link.

The American Conservative » Delaware Crosses the Neocons

But there’s more at stake beyond the obvious. A quick Republican turnaround after the party’s losses in 2006 and 2008 promises to efface the memory of what went wrong under George W. Bush — and thereby save the neocons’ reputations. Saved too will be the Republican congressional leadership, which shows no indication of having learned any lessons from the catastrophes of the past decade. For McConnell, Boehner, and friends, retaking Washington means returning to business as usual: deficit spending (complete with an utterly symbolic war on “earmarks”), hyping of foreign threats, and everything else that falls under the cheery rubric of “national-greatness conservatism.

via amconmag.com

A quick return to GOP business as usual is a real possibility and a real downside to GOP gains this election.

That's no reason to hope Democrat wins though. It just means that we need to be vigilant about what the guys in office are doing once they get there.

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Why No One in WI Fears Citizens United

Citizens United was the Supreme Court decision that struck down part of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law and opened the door to unrestricted corporate funding of political advocacy. To many on the left, this decision represented a gross miscarriage of justice and predictions of the corporate takeover of the electoral process have been plentiful.

The highest profile case of corporate funding so far has been the one involving the Target Corporation, whose contributions to a politician hostile to gay marriage resulted in a substantial backlash.

Right here in Wisconsin, especially in the 8th congressional district, the dire predictions of negative corporate influence on elections are easy to dismiss when you look at the current circumstances.

First, we have news this week that outgoing governor Jim Doyle contributed $1,000,000 to the Greater Wisconsin Committee PAC. The GWC is a non-profit corporation with tax-exempt status. As an independent advocacy group they do not support or oppose individual candidates. However, they also have a political action committee (PAC) that can (and does) work to support and oppose specific candidates such as Scott Walker. Is it any surprise that Doyle's largesse went to the PAC arm of GWC?

Next, we have our congressman, Steve Kagen, who currently has over $700,000 cash on hand to defend himself in a general election that lasts only six weeks. That amount of cash is more than ten times what the nearest GOP candidate has on hand. Before you go thinking such an overwhelming cash advantage represents the heartfelt desires of the people of WI-8 to see Kagen returned to office, you should check the source of his funds.

For every dollar Kagen raises from individual donors, he raises more than a dollar from political action committees. Lawyers/Law Firms are number two on his list of donors by industry, and at least five of the top twenty are related to unions (almost all of this from union PAC's, not individuals).

I realize that it's possible in our two party dominated system for the pendulum to swing the other way. Also, it's clear that groups on the right use the tax exempt organization/PAC conglomeration to advocate for candidates that they prefer. But the way things stand now, it's not hard to see how Citizens United seems a lot less menacing than its opponents claim.

Mortgage Market Mess

Fixing America’s Broken Housing Market - Project Syndicate

But that is precisely why a government-managed mortgage market is dangerous. Distorted interest rates, official guarantees, and tax subsidies encourage continued investment in real estate...

Current US policy is befuddled, to say the least. The Federal Reserve Board is no longer the lender of last resort, but the lender of first resort. Credit risk in the mortgage market is being assumed by the government, and market risk by the Fed. No one should be surprised at what has now happened: the private market has essentially disappeared...

In short, government policies to support the housing market not only have failed to fix the problem, but are prolonging the deleveraging process and creating the conditions for Japanese-style malaise. Avoiding this dismal “new normal” will be difficult, but there are alternative policies with far better prospects of returning the US and the global economy to prosperity.

Corporations have learned how to take bad news in stride, write down losses, and move on, but our governments have not. For one out of four US mortgages, the debt exceeds the home’s value. Evictions merely create more homeless people and more vacant homes. What is needed is a quick write-down of the value of the mortgages. Banks will have to recognize the losses and, if necessary, find the additional capital to meet reserve requirements.

No, that's not the Cato Institute. It's Joseph Stiglitz!

My Questions for Roth on Afghanistan

Candidate Roger Roth's stance that he would not have voted for the Afghan war supplemental has generated a large amount of discussion leading up to the primary next week. As far as I know Roth has never wavered in this position and Roth supporter, and veteran, Dale McNamee has been vocal on blogs covering WI-8 in support of Roth's position.

Today, McNamee had a post up at The Party of Know that discusses Roth's position in detail, I urge you to read the whole thing. I'm personally skeptical that a continued presence in Afghanistan serves our national interest. Not being a veteran, I'm willing to give wide latitude to those who have served, like Roth and McNamee, but that doesn't mean I can't, respectfully, question their position.

From the outset, I want to say that I'm convinced by their argument that a vote against the supplemental does not undercut funding for troops currently in combat. It appears that a vote against the supplemental simply wouldn't fund the expansion of troops that Obama proposed.

One of Roth's objections to the Obama expansion is that it wasn't for the full amount of troops that General Stanley McChrystal, at the time commander of forces in Afghanistan, requested. Obama's troop increase was for 30,000 troops, or 3/4 of what McChrystal requested. So in response to a reduction of 25% in the troop amount, Roth would not vote to fund any of the troops. My first question is does Roth believe that McChrystal himself would agree that Congress should not fund the troop increase, even in its reduced form? That is to say, did McChrystal see his troop request as an all or nothing proposal?

My second question is, if deference to the ground commander is important, then doesn't the commander's opinion on the overall troop level carry weight when deciding how to vote on the supplemental?

Here is current commander in Afghanistan General David Petreaus:

“We have to - absolutely must – remain committed to reducing the loss of innocent civilian life to an absolute minimum in the conduct of our operations,” he said. “In fact, [the United Nations Mission in Afghanistan] actually recognized recently in a report that even as we have tripled the number of U.S. forces on the ground, the number of civilian casualties has gone down by 30 percent, which is a pretty extraordinary achievement, frankly, and something we must stay committed to.”

The biggest issue, Petraeus said, was the resources devoted to the effort in Afghanistan. In January 2009, he said, U.S. forces on the ground in Afghanistan numbered roughly 30,000, and that number soon will be more than 98,000. The number of civilians has been tripled, he added, and funding has been provided for 100,000 additional Afghan security forces.

“What that is enabling us to do for the first time here is to carry out a comprehensive civil-military counterinsurgency campaign,” Petraeus said.

General Petreaus believes that the increase in troops to the 98,000 level is important for carrying out the counterinsurgency strategy, but this apparently doesn't persuade Roth enough to come out in support of the supplemental.

I realize the Congress has the power to declare war and the power of appropriations, but where does the use of these powers cross over into dictating wartime strategy and tactics?

These are all incredibly tough questions, and I don't pretend to have the answer. I'll just add that Roth's stance on this point is by no means a deal-breaker, but it certainly is thought-provoking.

Jerry Bader on McCormick and WI-8

The Jerry Bader radio show on WTAQ included a segment today on the WI-8 race and Terri McCormick's comments about military service from last night's candidate forum. Bader quotes from my blog post on the topic extensively.

I wanted to highlight the segment not just for the self-promotional aspect (though that is nice) but for the last two minutes where Bader examines the current state of the race.

Basically Reid Ribble is a conservative businessman whose resume and abilities present the best chance to defeat Steve Kagen this fall. He has had some missteps in the campaign, so he is not a perfect candidate by any means (these seem to loom larger for Bader than they do for me personally, but the analysis is still correct). Roger Roth, on the other hand, is an exciting candidate who many primary voters might find more agreement with on an issue by issue basis. But there is a sense that this may not be Roth's time (Bader suggests he may be a "green banana").

I'd say this sums up pretty nicely the state of the dilemma for WI-8 voters.

You can listen to the segment here.

Terri McCormick Should Aim Higher

The Outagamie County Republican Women held a forum for the WI-8 candidates tonight. The questions were excellent and there was an intensity befitting the fact that we are only one week from the primary. There was one item in particular though that I think stood out from the rest and not in a good way.

While making a point regarding the war in Afghanistan, Terri McCormick turned to Roger Roth and said that she took exception with something Roth had said because she has relatives serving in Afghanistan and they weren't "lucky enough to be in a hangar," during their tours. For those who don't know, Roth served in the Wisconsin Air National Guard, including three tours in Iraq.

If such a statement sounds bad when you read it here, I can only assure you it was worse to hear in person. The audience groaned and booed. Belittling the honorable contribution of military men and women who don't happen to be in the infantry is bad enough. To make this gaffe doubly stupid is the fact that on the point in question, McCormick had already won.

This particular exchange took place after all three candidates had an opportunity to answer the question of whether or not they would have voted for the recent Afghan war supplemental bill in congress. Roger Roth has stated elsewhere, and repeated tonight, that he would not have voted for this supplemental. A stance that is unusual to say the least among GOP primary candidates.

After this question had been answered by all three candidates, the next question was on education and went to Roth first. Roth spent most of the time for his answer on education re-hashing his position on the war supplemental quite passionately. He quickly added a brief response to the education question on the end of his answer. After this Reid Ribble answered the education question without addressing the war supplemental again.

Then McCormick got an opportunity to answer the education question, which she did, but then she pivoted toward Roth and launched into the war supplemental question again, including the line above that struck such a sour note with the audience.

As I mentioned, Roth's stance on the war supplemental means that he would not have voted to fund the troops in the field because of what he sees as a failing strategy being pursued by the Obama administration. I'm not convinced that this position will resonate with GOP primary or general election voters. Therefore, I don't see any reason why McCormick felt the need to bring this up again.

If asked, I suspect McCormick would argue that she is never one to shy away from a tough position. She would have been well advised in this case to shy away from remarks that demean the valuable service of many members of our military who serve in non-combat roles.

I am willing to acknowledge that given time to reflect McCormick, would likely not agree with her own remarks and that it was the pressure and time constraint of a live forum that contributed to her statement. She could take the first step toward proving me right and offer an apology to Roger Roth.

The Cost of High Speed Rail

From the NY Times (via Marginal Revolution):

 

But the biggest question mark hovering over the future of high-speed rail in the United States is funding. The $8 billion allocated in the stimulus package is not nearly enough, particularly because it is spread across a range of projects around the country. California’s new system alone could cost $40 billion. State governments will shoulder a substantial share of the costs, and they are grappling with budget deficits.

 

I would say that we in Wisconsin have yet to "grapple" with our budget deficits, but the time appears to be at hand.  This grappling will be made more difficult by additional costs related to HSR.

 

I saw a quote the other day from Transportation Secretary LaHood to the effect that the current HSR train in Wisconsin was "unstoppable".  Perhaps the next governor, if he is so inclined, won't in fact be able to stop the curent project, but I'm pretty sure that the bond market can.

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The Antler Gap

From Wiscsonsin Public Radio:

Walker says he's only been hunting for a few years, and has yet to shoot a deer... Neumann says he killed his first deer at age 13, and has a variety of deer antler racks hanging at his suburban Milwaukee home.

Having not grown up in Wisconsin, I can see how an outsider might scoff at the notion of antler racks hanging in a suburban home. I must be going native though, because I though a suburban home decorated with antlers sounded really cool.

In this case I have a lot of sympathy for Walker, I've sat in the woods a few years now and, well, just sat there. I saw one deer, once, but it was still really dark and I didn't even get a shot. So no, I don't think the antler gap will decide the governor's race.

The WPR story that the quote comes from has to do with deer herd management. Walker advocates for an independent auditor, which he calls a Whitetail trustee, to work with the DNR and legislature on the issue. Mark Neumann by contrast, argues that the last thing we need is another government employee.

So even on an issue like the deer herd we get a sense of the contrasting styles of these two candidates. This seems like another case where Neumann offers a superior approach. Do any Wisconsin voters really think we need to add a deer-czar to our state's government?

Correlation & Causation: NAU Lumberjacks Edition

Earlier this week NPR featured a story about stimulus money used at Northern Arizona University to install electronic scanners to track attendance at large lecture classes on campus.  Attendance is important, the university argues, because attendance improves grades and....(University Attendance Scanners Make Some Uneasy : NPR)

Ms. KAREN PUGLIESE (Vice provost for academic affairs, Northern Arizona University): The stronger a students grade performance in the first year, the far more likely they are to persist at Northern Arizona University and graduate.

I would hope that the time constraint of a morning radio program prevented NPR from featuring the compelling evidence to back up the Vice provost's claim.  Otherwise, I can only conclude that a high ranking official at one our nation's universities has fallen victim to an all too common mistake: confusing correlation with causation.

It's quite possible Ms. Pugliese has the relationship exactly backwards here.  Students who are more likely to persist at NAU for whatever reason (personal work ethic, family pressure, the desire to pursue a certain career, they hate the idea of having a job, the hope of higher pay once they do start working) may be much more likely to have higher grade performance that first year for those very same reasons.

After all, if first year grades were all that mattered, NAU could just hand out A's and save the stimulus money.

For more on correlation vs. causation be sure to check out Economists Do It With Models!

Broken Windows Will Never Make Us Richer

‘Clunkers,’ a classic government folly - The Boston Globe

Why are used-car prices rocketing? Part of the answer is that demand is up: With unemployment high and the economy uncertain, some car buyers who might otherwise be looking for a new truck or SUV are instead shopping for a used vehicle as a way to save money.

But an even bigger part of the answer is that the supply of used cars is artificially low, because your Uncle Sam decided last year to destroy hundreds of thousands of perfectly good automobiles as part of its hare-brained Car Allowance Rebate System — or, as most of us called it, Cash for Clunkers.

And who is disproportionately affected by the spike in used car prices?

No great insight was needed to realize that Cash for Clunkers would work a hardship on people unable to afford a new car. “All this program did for them,’’ I wrote last August, “was guarantee that used cars will become more expensive. Poorer drivers will be penalized to subsidize new cars for wealthier drivers.’’

I'm often surprised at how the political party that spends the most amount of time telling us how much they want to help the poor, also spend so much time dreaming up and implementing programs that hurt them.

By all accounts the Cash for Clunkers was a dismal failure, but that shouldn't be surprising.  Has there ever been a country that has become richer by purposefully destroying its functioning capital?  I doubt it.

Not All Healthcare is Life and Death

It would benefit those who believe that health care is incompatible with the free market to refine their arguments. A stronger liberal argument for socialized medicine would be: let’s let the free market reign in those areas of health care that are most like the rest of the market economy (i.e., non-catastrophic and elective care), and instead focus on socializing the aspects of the system that are most unlike the rest of the economy (i.e., catastrophic care).

Such an argument would begin to converge with conservative calls for consumer-driven health plans. CDHPs seek to achieve something quite similar to what I describe above: they put cash, in the form of tax-free health savings accounts, in the hands of individuals to pay for routine health expenses, while still insuring against catastrophic illness or injury. CDHPs continue to be refined, and are prevented from innovating further by unwise regulation, but they represent the best attempt thus far to segregate the most market-oriented aspects of health care from the least market-oriented. I would welcome liberal thoughts on how to achieve the same.

via nationalreview.com

This is Avik Roy writing at NRO.

This is where we should have started the conversation on reforming healthcare. The potential of markets to improve the system makes greater individual freedom and responsibility in healthcare a good idea. At the same time, conservatism imposes on us a responsibility to the community at large. It begins in the home of course, but radiates out from there.

Unfortunately, our employer-based first-dollar-coverage system tilts too much in the direction of shared responsibility and greatly diminishes the power of markets to drive down costs, increase access, and improve quality. Obama's health reform reinforced this state of affairs.

For a presidency billed as transformational, Obamacare was anything but.

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