1/31/2005
Tuckered Out
by Matt Singer on 11:12 pm.
I went down to Helena today to testify in favor of Governor Schweitzer’s “Best and Brightest” Scholarship Plan. There’s a news story already up on the Gazette site. My friend Kim got quoted:
“Students don’t have jobs anymore to fund their spring breaks to Mexico. They’re working to pay their rent,” said Kimberly Pappas, a University of Montana student.So did Geoff Gamble, President of MSU. Tons of people spoke in favor: Governor Schweitzer; Rep. Branae (B-town represent); Deputy Superintendent of Public Instruction; Gamble and Dennison, his UM counterpart; students from UM, MSU-Northern, MSU, and Capital High School in Helena. I thought they had all done a nice job, so I just testified by talking about the bar fights that get started in Western Montana during the summer between raft guides and firefighters. Raft guides, you see, hate fires because they bring smoke. And where there’s smoke, there are no tourists. And lack of tourists causes the raft guide’s spring of money to run dry. Firefighters, on the other hand, love fires (I’m sounding rather Brooksian here). Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Where’s there’s fire, they fight it. And fighting gets them paid.
Thus, UM’s enrollment, I believe, is closely connected to the beginning of fire season. If the fires start roaring too early, the students working as raft guides can’t make it to campus in the fall because they have no money. If the fires come too late, the firefighters don’t make enough money. Hence, in Missoula, we time our fire seasons to boost enrollment.
The Chair called me a comedian.
Right.
Anyways, I’m pretty forking tired. So I’m going to bed.
| Comments (0) | Permanent Link | Categories: policy, political |
1/30/2005
Real Reason for Bush Visit to Montana?
by Matt Singer on 10:43 pm.
Maybe it isn’t to get Democratic support.
Maybe it is to get some Republican support.
| Comments (1) | Permanent Link | Categories: montucky, policy |
Supermarket Lines and Market Failures
by Matt Singer on 5:36 pm.
John Kay, in his book Culture and Prosperity, discusses the failure of the American Business Model (his name for the neoliberal plan sketched by IMF, World Bank, and Washington). He makes a number of interesting points, through the use of metaphors and anecdotes (an approach that earned some criticism from Michael Vesth).
One story focuses on the self-correcting nature of simple systems. Veseth highlights supermarket lines. When you are ready to checkout, you really don’t need to spend a lot of time figuring out which line is shortest, as they will all be about equal in length. Others do the job for us and the system is efficient. The market works. Even in a situation with 10 customers all headed to check out simultaneously, waiting time will generally be pretty reasonable even if only 2 customers pay any attention at all to which line they get into.
And, of course, the greater disparities that arise in length, the more prone someone is to pay attention to find a shorter line.
| Comments (0) | Permanent Link | Categories: economic, policy |
1/29/2005
Hmmm
by Matt Singer on 2:12 pm.
Well, this is an interesting situation. Bush’s new HHS Secretary said in 1998 that polygamy is Constitutionally-protected freedom of religion. HHS is obviously in charge of welfare money and polygamists are among the largest inappropriate recipients of federal welfare money.
Mike Leavitt is clearly a Saint, as Mormons prefer to call themselves. The interesting thing here is that the Democratic leader is also a Saint, which leaves Democratic Senators in a weird position in attacking this stance of the LDS.
Also interesting will be whether any Republican critics of same-sex marriage will raise this as a concern. Here I am thinking of Dobson, Santorum, and others.
Personally, I don’t think polygamy should be viewed as Constitutionally protected. The statutes in question are religion-neutral. As for whether polygamy should be legal, I’m undecided.
For people interested in more on Fundamentalist LDS, the history of Mormonism, and the fundamentalist strains present in the modern church, I heartily recommend Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven. Krakauer begins by investigating murders committed by Fundamentalist Mormons and ends up painting a rather damning indictment of a church all to accepting of its most radical adherents.
| Comments (2) | Permanent Link | Categories: books, policy, political, republicans |
Hats off to Senator Baucus
by Matt Singer on 12:21 pm.
As you’ve probably read elsewhere, Senator Baucus is holding firm on social security. Max knows that privatization is the wrong policy for Montanans. He knows it is simply too expensive and will hurt future retirees. If you’re another Montanan who wants to thank him, please give him a phone call, write him a letter, or send a little electronic correspondence.
| Comments (0) | Permanent Link | Categories: policy, social security, there is no crisis |
Whoa
by Matt Singer on 11:47 am.
Not to rush to judgment, but if these allegations are true, someone deserves to be in some pretty deep shit:
Five Bridger High School special education students who allege they were required to remove cancer-causing asbestos materials, mouse feces and a dead cat from buildings are suing Bridger school officials in federal court.
The suit is being brought by Cliff Edwards, Montana’s most successful trial lawyer. Defending the case is Jeff Weldon of Felt, Martin, Frazier, Jakob, & Rapkoch. Emphasizing how small of a state this is, let me just explain all the various connections I have to all these attorneys. Cliff Edwards used to live across the street from me, when I was in pre-school. His son, John Edwards, was my sister’s best friend in first and second grade. Johnny Edwards went on to be known as Johnny Montana, UM’s great quarterback. Edwards is also the attorney representing Alan and Stephanie Shammel in their case against Canyon Resources and he was a financial backer of the anti-I-147 campaign.
The connections I have on the other side are greater. My mom briefly worked for Felt Martin, as we refer to it. In high school, I was debate partners with Rapkoch’s daughter. Weldon used to work in the same firm as my father, where they were friends, before he left to work for Senator Max Baucus, Superintendent Linda McCulloch (D), and eventually School District 2 in Billings. Apparently, he has now returned to private practice.
Weldon is pretty clearly a big D, as is Edwards. They are also, by all indications, both very good attorneys. Which makes me guess that if there is truth to these claims, this lawsuit will be settled.
| Comments (1) | Permanent Link | Categories: general, health care, montucky |
1/28/2005
Foresight
by Matt Singer on 4:35 pm.
I’m heading over to a meeting at Daniel Kemmis’s house in fourty minutes. Kemmis is the Director of the Center for the Rocky Mountain West. He has connections to the Brookings Institution, is a former Speaker of the Montana House and Mayor of Missoula, and the author of several books on democracy. The meeting tonight is to discuss some political issues and it had been a while since I read any of his work, so I thought I would google him.
I found one very interesting article on how the Democrats lost the West and what it means for the Democratic Party. He wrote it in ‘99:
For much of its existence, the Democratic Party was referred to by friend and foe alike simply as “The Democracy.” It got that name because it vigorously and stubbornly espoused the cause of democracy in the face of substantial segments of American society that had grave doubts about it.It took two catastrophes.[...]
If Jefferson could return to Washington, he almost certainly would be appalled by today’s remote, unresponsive, bought-and-sold decisionmaking system and its corrosive effects on the polity.
[...]
Voters are fed up with both parties. Members of the party whose name rings proudly of democracy should be especially troubled by this trend.
[...]
Much has been made of the Republican Party’s domination of the South. But Republicans exercise even more solid control over the interior West. Three-quarters of the congressional districts in that region are held by Republicans, and there are now no Democratic governors in the 1,200-mile-wide swath between Missouri and Iowa and the Pacific Coast states.
I am from Montana, and I happened to be on the East Coast during the 1998 elections. There, I heard a leading Democratic tactician analyze the election results and draw lessons for 2000 from them. One of the recommendations had to do with consolidating Democratic gains in what was threatening to become the solidly Republican South. Emboldened by this mention of regional politics, I asked if Democrats were at all concerned about the Republicans’ tightening grip on the West.
The hard-boiled reply was: “There isn’t anybody there. There are fewer electoral votes in the interior West than in Pennsylvania. We have to concentrate our attention where the votes are.”
Feeling a little like chopped liver, I contented myself with observing that since feeling like you count for something is so fundamental to democratic citizenship, a democratic party should be wary of an approach that tells a whole class of people they don’t count.
[...]
The good done by national environmental legislation has undoubtedly been historic in its proportions. But it has also produced an unintended regional side effect. Because of the concentration of public lands in the West, the national environmental framework has fallen far more heavily on this region than on any other. It has left a majority of Westerners feeling tyrannized and colonized. Jefferson, who built his political career out of precisely such feelings, might well say that the party he founded is now in such pathetic shape in the West because it has not responded to Westerners’ most genuinely democratic aspirations.
[...]
I pray it will not take the catastrophe of losing the White House in 2000 to persuade Democrats to rethink this approach. Then they would almost certainly find themselves reviewing an Electoral College map with essentially no Democratic votes from the interior West and a Senate bereft of Western Democrats.
I just took another look at his books on Amazon.com. If anyone wants to get me his latest book, This Sovereign Land: A New Vision for Governing the West, I’d read it, and potentially even review it right here.
Imagine the possibilities.
| Comments (2) | Permanent Link | Categories: books, cultural, democrats, general, montana, policy, political |
National Review Discovers Voting Rights
by Matt Singer on 4:07 pm.
And calls for a revote in Washington State:
We have generally decried the recent trend toward attempts to settle elections after the fact in the courts. But the voting controversy in Washington State is a special case.”What, pray tell, is so special? Aha, here we go. It seems that
it is impossible to know who truly won the Washington gubernatorial race between Republican Dino Rossi and Democrat Christine Gregoire. Gregoire has just taken office, having overtaken Rossi in a second recount. Her winning margin: 129 votes out of 2.8 million votes cast.As opposed to the margin down in Florida in 2000, which was huge, the size of China, I’d bet.
The Editorial then goes on to accuse King County of being able to unfairly help Gregoire. Look, I’m sorry that there’s one huge forkin’ county in Washington that votes Democratic. That’s what urban counties do. For other examples, see all of America.
And what, pray tell, should be done about this? A re-vote, of course. That makes sense. Rossi is effectively arguing that any time these things are close we announce a do-over. No one claims the American system is perfect. But, honestly, a re-vote?
I remember briefly raising this as a hypothetical in the Florida situation until my Dad calmly explained why re-votes are a horrible idea. It seems pretty easy now. After a little while, I even came to accept the Florida result. Florida was, basically, a statistical tie within the margin of error that we accept within our republic. That’s what Washington is now. These things happen. So we look at the evidence at hand and give it to one side or the other. But we don’t re-vote. Now, I’m still upset that electoral votes aren’t proportionally distributed, since that would have had a huge impact in Florida, and it would reduce the likelihood of lawsuits, since they could only net 1 or 2 EVs, not 25.
But the National Review’s reasoning here is blindly partisan.
| Comments (3) | Permanent Link | Categories: general |
Calling Larry Kudlow
by Matt Singer on 2:41 pm.
Paul Krugman just bitch-slapped the President. Again.
What are you going to do about it?
| Comments (0) | Permanent Link | Categories: policy, social security |
Matt Yglesias Slaps the Trib
by Matt Singer on 2:36 pm.
Matthew Yglesias is not impressed with a Great Falls Tribune story. It looks like it came from Gannett, though. Thank heavens there is no blemish on my great state.
| Comments (0) | Permanent Link | Categories: general |
Some Questions for the Privateers
by Matt Singer on 2:35 pm.
Via OxBlog, we find a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed proposing a system of privatization that exists without insecurity!!!!!! Here’s the plan:
A risk-minimizing system of private accounts should have four essential elements. First, it should be available only to younger workers with investment horizons of at least 25 years until retirement. Second, the choice of investments should be restricted to a few simple alternative mixes of funds balanced between stocks and bonds with withdrawals permitted only under extreme circumstances. Third, the investment funds offered should be very low-cost index funds that can be run by private investment firms at costs as low as one-hundredth of 1%. Fourth, the private accounts should incorporate the automatic rebalancing feature described below.OK, so what we’re talking about here isn’t freedom, but rather a handful of options. We can’t simply take 4% of our payroll taxes and gamble with it, hoping to strike it rich for retirement? That’s probably good, but it’s also problematic. If the government requires that we use one of a number of government-sanctioned accounts, what is there to prevent political deals from being cut that would allow certain fund managers access to this lucrative pile of loot. Shady dealers, in turn, invest in risky stocks being handled by other friends. And the people whose money it is are left locked out.
And if political issues are not a consideration, why not simply shift the trust fund assets? Why not sell off the bonds and buy up stocks in some combination to just increase returns for everyone in the pool?
Allowing the money to be floated in the common market, but prohibiting rationale thought from getting involved is not really doing any good and it’s hardly a damn personal account if you get no control over it. It’s a private account and it’s privatization, but there’s nothing personal about it.
| Comments (0) | Permanent Link | Categories: policy, social security |
Good News
by Matt Singer on 2:24 pm.
It’s just a “dangerous game of cat and mouse.” Nothing to worry about.
| Comments (1) | Permanent Link | Categories: foreign, iran, policy |
A Handful of Criticisms Regarding my Terrorism Class
by Matt Singer on 2:14 pm.
I’m currently enrolled in a History class on Terrorism. We’ve basically just started with a few discussions of what terrorism is, how the minds of terrorists work, and some of the fundamental theories of how to evaluate terrorist events. But already, I have some concerns with the class:
- This is petty, but it bothers me. Professor Drake today referred to how Germany was in the 40th percentile for unemployment when the Nazi movement gained strength. Now, I suppose it is possible that in a survey of nations, Germany was in the 40th percentile, but I am guessing (based on historical knowledge and the context in which he said it) that Professor Drake intended to say that unemployment in Germany hovered near 40 percent. These two things have very different meanings. A score in the 40th percentile indicates a performance better than 40% of those included in the survey. A score of 40 percent indicates that two in five fit some criteria. Seen differently, being in the 30th percentile would likely get someone a D, while receiving a 30 percent would be a low F. Language, people, language.
- On the first day of class, my professor said that he thought that terrorism was the number one threat facing the contemporary world. Maybe. What bothered me here is that he stated it with such certainty. There are two threats to the present world that I believe may be greater: water shortage and global warming. Terrorism is a large threat. Nuclear terrorism is a less likely, but more dangerous threat. But it is still geographically contained. Now, I suppose we could be talking about water-shortage-triggered-terrorism. That’s a threat.
- What else? What else? Oh yeah, today he complimented Eric Hoffer, the author of The True Believer, for being prescient enough to understand the mindset of fanatics. He then goes on to comment that Hoffer was forward-looking to understand what the world would be filled with, as opposed to in Hoffer’s ’40’s and ’50’s. Right, because growing up in the depression, watching the rise of communism, fascism, anti-communism, Zionism, and a few others I’m forgetting about would give someone no clue about fanaticism. It’s not like Hoffer saw Russian, German, Italian, Japanese, and Chinese revolutions occur in the world around him. It’s not like he was witness to McCarthyism at home.
| Comments (2) | Permanent Link | Categories: general |
Slight Problem
by Matt Singer on 9:16 am.
Do any other WP users have a problem where a post just deletes a series of characters? This usually occurs for me near where I have some strings of code (end of blockquotes, things like that). It’s a bit annoying.
| Comments (2) | Permanent Link | Categories: general |
Brilliant!
by Matt Singer on 9:15 am.
Steve Hely has a solution to the rampant cartoon lesbians problem:
Imagine this scenario: Two lesbians are meeting in secret, feeling confident and secure as they plot to infiltrate a children’s cartoon. Suddenly, their scheming is interrupted by the piercing sound of a Blackhawk helicopter. It’s “EdSquad: Thunderclap” (my suggested name), the elite force of the Department of Education. Another mission a success; another cartoon defended.Go read the whole thing.But foiling lesbians would be only one of the many tasks of a secret education intelligence unit. Relying on test scores to monitor school progress would be a thing of the past, as EdForce Mongoose (another of my name suggestions) could covertly determine just which children were being left behind. And by whom.
Detention and canceled recess are simply not effective deterrents to bullies anymore. Appeasement has failed. It’s time to let EduStrike Hawksclaw (I’ve got tons of these) clamp down with stun grenades and Bradley fighting vehicles. Spitballs would be preemptively located and destroyed while still in the development stage.
For too long we’ve allowed the Department of Education to go unequipped, while lesbians and children only grow stronger. The sooner the Secretary of Education has human intelligence and first-strike capability, the better. (Emphasis added.)
| Comments (0) | Permanent Link | Categories: general |
Aah!
by Matt Singer on 9:02 am.
This argument with Craig isn’t about liberal or conservative, it’s about my cashflow. He dislikes a proposal by Rep. Rosie Buzzas (D-Missoula) to require keg registration. So far, so good. Now, does something have to be done to hold people accountable when they buy beer for minors? Maybe. Heaven knows that I’ve had a few parties where I haven’t carded at the door, though. [Great. Here come the cops.]
So Craig takes issue with the proposal because it increases hassles for merchants. He proposes a different solution:
Let me introduce a radical idea that will not impose costs on merchants: increase the amount of the deposit on kegs, perhaps equal to the cost of the keg.Unless my math is wrong, the deposit is basically already equal when getting a keg of a cheap domestic, at least at my local keg dealer. So I’m concerned that the actual increase will fall only on those beautiful microbrews (yum, Scapegoat). But I think Craig would be wrong that this wouldn’t impose costs on merchants. I think it probably would, through decreased business.
If my deposit was to double on a keg, I’d be inclined to go the growler route more often (I wonder if we’ll institute growler registration). That would hurt the keg merchants, who don’t trade in draft beer. Deposits, even though refunded, are part of the “cost” of a keg (although, again, since they are refunded, they are somewhat different). In fact, if they weren’t some kind of cost, they wouldn’t have any impact.
Ultimately, I think Craig’s plan would prevent some high schoolers from getting kegs. But having gone to high school, I know some kids could still order them on weekends, and I know some college students who would miss out under his plan.
Keg registration may be less than perfect, but it serves one useful purpose for me: keeping more cash in my wallet.
| Comments (2) | Permanent Link | Categories: biographical, economic, montucky, policy, trade |
1/27/2005
Pinochet Accounts (A Choice Even a Dictator Can Love)
by Matt Singer on 9:40 pm.
John Quiggin of Crooked Timber has some thoughts on the Chilean privatization experience. He doesn’t come to any groundbreaking conclusion, but it is one worth remembering:
All of this raises the issue of risk. Under a privatised defined-contribution, your returns, and therefore your retirement, depend heavily on timing. 1981 was a great time to start investing in the Chilean stock market, and also in the US market. At least for the US, 2000 was a good time to get out. Anyone who started investing in the US market in the late 1990s (and didn’t manage to outperform it) is well behind where they would have been if they had put their money into government bonds.It is worth noting that there is little evidence that a switch to a stock-dominated fund is actually going to increase returns. Dow 36,000 claims notwithstanding, didn’t we just learn that there may have been more speculative capital floating around in the US than is really necessary? I know that we talk about the need to raise America’s savings rate and I think that makes sense, but I don’t know that US stocks are really where the supply of great opportunity lies.On average, returns from the stockmarket are higher. But this is just another way of saying that, on average, investors want a higher return to justify the additional risk. So a switch from a defined-benefit scheme to a private accounts scheme with the same average return and higher risk is a real loss, just as if someone sought to repay a debt contracted in 1981 with the same amount in 2005 dollars.
Sure, we can create some sort of opportunity society, but it seems to me that over the past twenty years, with the creation of a new super-rich, and the recent tax reforms that are slowly removing any potential disincentive for these people to try to earn investment income, we have witnessed the removal of any impediments that may have been blocking the flow of investment capital. Indeed, the addition of further capital may only encourage the creation of a riskier stock market. Excess demand could create new supply, supply that couldn’t survive in the current market. Companies that shouldn’t have access to capital will get it.
Meanwhile, even less money is flowing into US bond markets. I don’t know that it’s a good idea right now to decrease the level of domestic demand for bonds.
Regardless, the relevant economics here is over my head at this point, but these are just things that have occured to me while thinking about the Pinochet accounts headed our way.
| Comments (0) | Permanent Link | Categories: policy, social security |
Three is a magic number (Yes it is)
by Matt Singer on 9:33 pm.
Eric Boehlert, in the webpages of Salon.com, breaks the news that Michael McManus is the third columnist in the back pocket of the administration. The Department claims they were not paying McManus for his column-space, but for his expertise on marriage.
Applying the Zephyr Teachout rule, this is still a crime. Actually, even without the Zephyr rule, I would say this is unethical. Receiving paychecks from an Administration while endorsing their policies is not a good system. McManus should have disclosed.
| Comments (0) | Permanent Link | Categories: republicans |
Another Legislative Session, Another Argument with Craig
by Matt Singer on 11:24 am.
Craig, over at MTPolitics.net, is back to his regular posting speed and is now defining the minimum wage as “Solving Problems that Don’t Exist.” So what’s going on here? Well, Craig is arguing that only a small portion of Montanans are making the minimum wage (roughly 4 percent), so it is not a big deal, and that unemployment is low, which is already causing wages to go up.
Then he makes the following argument, which I think is a bit callous:
I guess there’s a part of me that would like to see them go ahead and increase the minimum wage, then see what happens when the demand for that labor goes away. As prices increase, demand goes down. It’s called the Law of Demand, not the Theory of Demand.Well, first of all, the Law of Demand states that ceteris parabus, when prices rise, the quantity demanded goes down. But there’s a number of reasons why this may not be true in this instance. One of the things we know is that the laws of economics only work perfectly in perfect competition. That state of affairs doesn’t exist. Hence, we need to think this one through more thoroughly.
Now, in Montana, currently, there already is a minimum wage. Now that wage may be below the effective wage floor in the market. The fact that there are workers working for it, though, indicates that it is not a wage floor. That means that the minimum wage is having some impact on the labor market. If it is having the impact Craig suspects, it is leading to higher rates of unemployment. It may simply be leading to a greater juggling of other budgetary costs. As the Gazette article he references points out, one business set a goal of having all workers make $6 an hour and achieved it within a year.
The same article also includes an interesting economic argument that the effective minimum wage in Billings is actually $8 and if businesses don’t pay that, they undermine themselves with high turnover and upset staff. This was clearly evident in the kitchen I worked at in Billings where servers did not tip out. Some servers had last more than a dozen years. The kitchen staff typically left in less than a year. By the time I left, four months into my job, I was the first or second most senior night cook who wasn’t a supervisor or a manager and I was already cooking solo graveyard shifts (those started about two months in). On a night when well-trained cooks worked, we could run a side of the kitchen with two employees. When new cooks were added to the line, it took as many as four to simply run one side of the kitchen. In other words, this restaurant was actually costing itself money through its relentless drive to cut costs by hurting workers.
In this case, what we have is a bad case of assymetrical information, caused by the employer’s own willing blindness. The employer thinks they can cut wages and still attract help. Entry level employees soon get pissed at the hard work and bad wages and leave. Raising the minimum wage would actually likely force the employer into paying a wage more in line with the market, thus reducing turnover, thus decreasing costs and increasing the owner’s profits. Amazing.
There are a number of other reasons why there is little doubt in my mind that an $.85 increase in the minimum wage would be good for the state. One other small one I will mention is a study done that surveyed communities that added living wage laws found that while unemployment increased slightly, the living wage laws helped people overall. That is talking about a significant increase. We’re talking about a relatively minor one (although it nears 20% for the workers impacted).
Thus, my endorsement: raise the minimum wage.
| Comments (2) | Permanent Link | Categories: economic, general, policy |
1/26/2005
Scholarships for Morons
by Matt Singer on 9:33 pm.
TownHall.com had a set of essay contests posted. I thought I would repost for those interested in competing:
- Young America’s Foundation “Exposing Intellectual Morons Essay Contest” – Apparently, some conservative wrote a book about intellectual morons. In this list, they include both Chomsky and Foucault. Regardless, if you read this book and write some sort of essay on it, you could win $2500 for school. Heaven knows I was tempted. You may remember the Young America’s Foundation. Their chairman skippered Hitler’s catamaran during the war.
- The Institute for Humane Studies has an essay contest that almost sounds worthwhile until I remember they probably would not reward my entry: “In an essay of 2,500 words or less, please answer the following question: To what degree are the creative powers of individuals influenced by the structure of the society in which they live? What legal, social, cultural, or educational conditions would be needed to fully realize their creative powers?” This is a question just begging for an answer accepting of social engineering and intelligent but expansive government.
- And my favorite – the “alternative approaches to environmental concerns” essay contest. This brilliant essay contest says that they are not looking for a particular approach to problems, but suggests readings in “private property” and “the tragedy of the commons” when dealing with wildlife. Perhaps unsurprisingly, this enterprising enviro group appears to be connected with Mercatus (of MyDD fame), based on a few links on their web site.
| Comments (0) | Permanent Link | Categories: general, policy |
