Damn ! What the Hell ! I'm Pissed

Results

We guess http://rjwaldmann.blogspot.com is written by a man (59%), however it's quite gender neutral.

Genderanalyzer just questioned my masculinity.

Fuck

Heeey this is not working. I figured I'd add some 4 letter words and try again and instead I got more androgenous

We guess http://rjwaldmann.blogspot.com is written by a man (54%), however it's quite gender neutral.

You female bloggers out there evidently don't use my momma's vocabulary.

update: Oh my god this is wonderful. Via strangedoctrines, of course.

Elisabetta Addis Explains how to make turkey palatable.

She is shocked, shocked that Ezra Klein proposes braising.

I dont remember ever having braised just turkey in my life...!!! If it is just turkey, there is no doubt that your ONLY choice is to broil. I do it "porchettato" which is very similar to the person who broils it after a massage with butter and herbs. The idea is to bone it, to fill the inside with a conspicuous amount of lard or un flavoured bacon chopped up very thinly together with a lot of fresh sage thyme laurel and rosemary, salt and pepper, make a roll, all tied up with the turkey skin out , rub the skin with olive oil, and cover it with a powder made up of sea salt, dry herbs same as above plus some cumin and coriander. Then broil, broil, broil till the skin is crispy and the inside is all white but still juicy, which you know by testing, i.e. pricking with a fork and check the amount and color of the outcoming juice. Can be done with an upper leg, with a breast, and even with a whole turkey. Can be done without boning, but it does not come out well unless you fill the cavity with some moistenable material, like for example unseasoned bread crumbs mixed together with the herbs and pork fat above, and some pre-boiled potatoes, or even oranges or non-sweet apples.
Even then, it is barely edible, come on, it is turkey!!! do you know why they call a dumb person turkey? Because it has no taste!!!!
Braised turkey alone is not fit for human consumption, even if it is braised with wine and herbs. Chunks of turkey meat broiled together with onions and peppers, or onions, potatoes and carrots, plus white wine and herbs, maybe...but still, one does it because turkey is cheap and nutricious, not because of the great taste, come on!!! Tell the blogosphere.

Elisabetta Addis

Do You Love the Rule of Law More than Chocolate Itself.

In "No New Torture Probes" J Goldsmith argues

"the greater danger now is that lawyers will become excessively cautious in giving advice and will substitute predictions of political palatability for careful legal judgment."

Odd I thought he was talking about the legal advice given by John Yoo and David Addington, but he suddenly changes the subject to "careful legal judgment". He is concerned that if the advice of Yoo and Addington is not allowed to over-rule the law, then lawyers might conclude that careful legal judgment is good enough.

For this to happen, those lawywers would have to overlook the difference between those opinions and careful legal reasoning.

I think a bigger danger is that if the advice of Yoo and Addington is not allowed to over-rule the law, then people will stop eating chocolate, because they will note that the advice of Yoo and Addington was not good enough and overlook the difference between the advice of Yoo and Addington and chocolate.

I think it is just about as likely that someone will mistake their legal advice for chocolate or conjugation or Antarctica as for "careful legal reasoning".

A Sign that the end times are nigh

Mark Kleiman criticizes Barack Obama

Mark Warner has now sent out an email to his list asking for contributions for Jim Martin's Senate campaign in Georgia. Kudos to Warner.

Barack Obama has yet to send out a similar message to his list. WTF?

I second the motion. People are wasting time worrying about cabinet secretaries. The game is get to 60 in the Senate and Obama is chickening out.

His problem, so long as he plans on spending a whooooole lot of time with Olimpia Snowe and Susan Collins.

I guess it could be strategy. McCain won in Georgia and Georgians don't necessarily cotton to Yankees (or Hawaiians) telling them how to vote. Still, you know, the money machine would come in handy.

Oh, and, by the way, donate to Jim Martin. He's excellent and Chambliss is horrible and never say never and it aint over till it's over.

In the Airport series.

"I picked the wrong year to quit smoking" -- Barack Obama

I can't figure out how to embed the video here so I will just give you a link to video at Economist's View.

Larry Summers argues that, maybe we shouldn't count on the financial industry to explain what went wrong and how to prevent it as they have some egg on their faces. Good point.

Then he criticizes luddites who blame financial engineering by noting that bad things have happened without fancy financial engineering. He didn't mention World War II or the plague, but I have no idea why.

This isn't an argument about the role of financial engineering in the current crisis.

Jonathan Zasloff is being very interesting over at the Reality Based Community.

I guess I should give permalinks although they are consecutive posts.

In random order, he asks who should be on the energy team. I have already expressed my view on this issue. I think the Reality Based Community should be the energy team.

He asks "Where is Joe Stiglitz ?" I add what about Paul Krugman. Look the problem is simple, Stiglitz is not a team player. You ask and Summers is he a team player ? The answer is clear -- yes if the team is an administration. If you hire Stiglitz he *will* embarrass you later by resigning and criticizing you.

OK now the big one. Appealing to evangelicals and reducing the abortion rate. Here, I think, Zasloff creates a false dilemma.

Consider Gilgoff's prescription:

For Obama to break the overwhelming Republican dominance of evangelicals in 2012, he’d likely have to deliver on a classic evangelical issue — for instance, pushing legislation aimed at reducing demand for abortion.

Maybe. Congressman Tim Ryan of Ohio has sponsored an act that would work to reduce ... abortions by providing better prenatal care and adoptions services to pregnant moms. Several observers, most notably EJ Dionne, have praised the bill and said that Obama should support it (which I think he will).

But the problem is that that might not be the best way to reduce abortions.

If one if to believe the Alan Guttmacher Institute, which studies these things (although it also has a strong pro-choice bias), the most effective way to reduce abortions is the provision of contraception. The government could for example ensure that contraception is covered under Medicaid, or even mandate that it be part of any health insurance policy.

So ? Why do we have to choose ? The Ryan bill provides assistance to people in need. Even if one were not just pro-choice but pro-abortion one should support it. One should not allow the best to be the enemy of the good (and lose votes too).

Most importantly, there is no need to put all abortion reduction regulation into one bill. Increased access to contraception can be presented as a public health issue (for condoms) and a gender justice issue (for all other contraceptives).

The religious right will be against it in any case. There is no way to convince them by noting that the policy will reduce the number of abortions.

So a bill to help mothers sold as a measure to reduce abortions and used to win evangelical votes and a separate bill sold as a public health/women's rights issue which will also reduce the number of abortions if it is passed over the objections of prominent evangelicals (although I would guess supported by most evangelicals whose reproductive rate shows that they would expect to personally benefit if they think you can take from insurance companies with no problem as I bet they do).

Sometimes you can build a coalition by joining policies each of which is supported by one group. Sometimes its better to build two coalitions by pretending that closely related policies are separate.

I'd say that, this time, it is a no brainer.

I have been flattering myself by attempting to engage in a debate with the great Nate Silver.

update: Ahhh now I understand. Silver has explained things so that I understand the logic of his analysis. The key point is that all challenged ballots are counted as non-votes until the challenge is resolved. This means that if a campaign challenges a decision by the local judge to count a ballot as a vote for their opponent, the tentative count is made assuming that this challenge is successful, while if a campaign challenges a decision that a ballot is not a vote for their candidate, the tentative count is made assuming that the challenge is unsuccessful.

Silver estimates that a larger fraction of Coleman's challenges are of type 1. This means that Franken will gain on Coleman compared to the tentative count if all challenges are rejected, if all challenges are accepted or if challenges are accepted with any probability uncorrelated with the type of the challenge.

The "analysis" below is obsolete, because it was based on my not thinking rationally about the way the tentative count was calculated.

For what it's worth, I wrote:

He is, of course, analyzing the Minnesota recount. I dabbled in that myself.

He has posted most recently here and with an important post here. I have posted here.



Quick summary of basic facts

After ballots were counted by optical scanners
Coleman (R) was 206 votes ahead of Franken (D) out of 2.4 million cast. By law there is a hand recount in which people are required to attempt to determine voter intent from ballots where the scanners found 0, 2 or more votes for senator *and* to check for no-nos on ballots which the scanners counted.

If the representative of one or more campaign disagrees with the local election judge a ballot is "challenged" and a state wide canvasing board has to decide what it means.

Surprisingly the number of unchallenged votes (count so far) for each candidate has declined as more scanner counted ballots are challenged than scanner non counted ballots are counted. This number is being reported in real time and each campaign has an incentive to challenge clearly valid ballots.

In the first days of the recount, the gap was narrowing so that extrapolation would imply a really tiny margin when the issue goes to the state board. However, since then the lead has widened and is now 210, larger than it was before the recount started according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune as of 11:23 pm EST November 24.

It is clear that the real action is in the ballot challenges. Franken supporters might hope that the Coleman campaign is making a larger number of frivolous challenges aiming to have the lead when the issue goes to the state board. This would put maximum pressure on the board to conclude that Coleman won. Now simple calculations do not support this hypothesis. The Coleman campaign has only challenged 35 more ballots than the Franken campaign.

The assumption that all challenges are frivolous implies that the best estimate of the final count is 185. 77% of votes have been recounted, so, *if* the recount continues this way, then Senator Coleman will be re-elected.

Silver has analyzed precinct level data (my second link to his important post) and found that Franken gained in precincts with no challenges and lost in precincts with many challenges. The very odd thing is that Franken's gain was negatively correlated with challenges by the Franken campaign. This is odd as it is possible to take a vote from one's opponent with a frivolous challenge.

How can this happen ? One possibility is that some precinct level election judges are being unfair to Franken and not counting ballots which should be counted for Franken, so the Franken challenges are legitimate, while other judges are fair and Coleman challenges are frivolous. Frankly that doesn't sound likely to me. I don't assume all Minnesotans are totally honest, but I would guess some are biased this way and some that way and most are just trying to be fair.

Another possibility is that what varies is the number of frivolous Coleman challenges and that the Franken campaign responds with a smaller increase in frivolous challenges. If so, the Franken response is separate information about Coleman campaign frivolity aside from the number of Coleman challenges which has something to do with the actual ballots. (yes I'm miss-using the word "frivolity" as a joke).

Is there evidence that the Coleman campaign has been more aggressive in some precincts than in others ? There sure is. Rock solid proof in fact. The reason, as noted by Silver, is that the rate of challenges has increased enormously and especially the rate of Coleman campaign challenges has increased enormously. There is no reason to think that the fraction of dubious ballots has increase. It is very possible that the difference across precincts is picking up change over time.

Silver's latest graph sure does seem to show increasing aggressiveness by the Coleman campaign and a less increase by the Franken campaign. The tenfold increase in the rate of challenges by the Coleman campaign is very hard to explain without the assumption that, at least recently, the vast majority of challenges are frivolous.

I'd add a time trend to the regression of precinct level data.

A Republican-generated effort to get out the vote for the Dec. 2 runoff election has hit a snag as thousands of requests for absentee ballots have been denied because the applications were not signed.

Many of the unsigned requests came in the form of cards printed by the Republican National Committee and mailed to voters. Republican U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss is in a tight battle to retain his seat by beating Democratic challenger Jim Martin.

The signature line on the RNC cards is easy to miss since it appears after an entry asking voters to enter an address different from their permanent one.

Beating the numbers. Extreme case. In an article by Shannon Brownlee, with Ezekiel Emanuel, there is a really really blatant attempt to use the Rhetorical trick of multiplication to argue that two similar numbers are very different.

Update: The appalling arithmetic abuse is now an op-ed in the Washington Post.

The authors attempt to convince us that one number is much bigger than another by the simple expedient of saying that savings over 10 years are much larger than savings over one year. I wouldn't be surprised if an apples to apples comparison showed that the savings they deride as not "a lot" (just 124 billion per year on an optimistic estimate) are greater than the savings they describe as 1.4 trillion over ten years. They don't note how much of those savings are the derided reduction in private insurance administrative costs.

I excerpt

Myth 3

"3. We would save a lot if we could cut the administrative waste of private insurance.

[snip]

Let's just say that we could wave a magic wand and cut private insurers' overhead by half, to what the Canadian government spends on administering its health-care system -- 15 percent. How much would we save? Not as much as you may think. Private insurers pay a little more than a third of what we spend on health care, which means that we'd cut a little more than 5 percent from our total budget, or about $124 billion. That's not peanuts, but it's not even enough to cover everybody who's currently uninsured.

now refuting myth 5.

Two: Even moderate reform of the delivery system would improve care and save money. The Lewin Group's analysis shows that a bill proposed by Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat, calling for a more comprehensive overhaul of the health-care system than either McCain's plan or Obama's could actually insure everyone and save $1.4 trillion over 10 years. More reform is cheaper.

There is no comparison of savings by eliminating un-necessary treatements vs savings due to eliminating un-necessary insurance companies. Wyden would do both. They present no no evidence on the relative importance of the two sources of savings.

Also the approach of setting up straw men to knock down is irritating.

However, Wyden is wonderful and should always be praised, so I can link to his ad




all via Ezra Klein

In Which Robert Waldmann boldly goes where Nate Silver says number crunching is pointless and wins a big downer has since arrived to a different conclusion.

Update: The last bit of my original post was an amazing howler noted by Tom Bozzo (thanks).
Nate Silver has now analysed the numbers and came to a conclusion very different from mine. I attempted to extrapolate assuming that all precincts are the same and that Coleman challenges are very different from Franken challenges, but are symmetric -- roughly that challenges by a campaign are likely to be frivolous and equally likely to be frivolous. I conclude that, under those assumptions, the probability of a Franken win is very low. I *hope* that the precincts assumption is false.

In total contrast, Silver analyzes the data available so far without either assumption. In fact, he argues that it might not matter much which campaign issues the challenge (I assumed all were claiming that a ballot counted as a vote for the other guy was no vote). He does *not* assume this. Instead he estimates the effect of challenges by Franken and Coleman on Franken's gain by precinct. Then forecasts by taking fitted values for zero challenges.

So Silver is using way more data than I did (precinct level data) and making much different and generally weaker assumptions.

Now it is very important to note that Silver assumes that there are important differences in the behavior of local elections judges. I really assumed that the differences across precincts would be in the behavior of the campaigns as they are challenging more and more with time.

Silver's key assumption is that the best prediction is the fitted value for no challenges. How might that be true ? It could happen if some local elections judges are incompetent and, therefore, challenged a lot. If the final decision is like that of competent judges, then Silver's analysis is valid. However, it is possible that there are challenges because voters in some precincts cast incomprehensible ballots. If it is about the voters, not the judges, I don't see any reason why the central board will behave systematically different from the local judges. I think that Silver is also, implicitly, assuming that the Franken campaign behaves similarly in each precinct, that is a large number of Franken challenges indicates odd behavior by the local judge, not the Franken campaign representatives. I can imagine another possibility which explains the odd result that Franken gains less in precincts where his campaign challenges more. If the results are going against Franken, his representatives get pissed and become more combative. This means bad performance for Franken (just due to chance) implies a high number of Franken challenges. Clearly, I have to assume that the Coleman campaign isn't like that, that they always push as hard as they can say. If that which varies is the rate of frivolous challenges by the Franken campaign, then Silver's analysis is invalid.

In the end, I think to justify Silver's analysis, one has to assume that, compared to the final judgement, local election judges are biased against Franken and that Coleman's campaign is more frivolous explaining the roughly equal number of total challenges. Variability in local judges bias against Franken (relative to the final judgement) explains variability in challenges across precincts. In particular, local judges in Hennepin County (including St Paul) must be very very biased against Franken. Hmmmm well guess we have to wait and see.

Can Franken catch Coleman in the recount ? The most recent news is very bad for Franken. He is now definitely not on pace to pass Coleman before ballot challenges are judged.

Silver argues that the high number of ballot challenges means that there is no way to put odds on the final outcome. I'm afraid I disagree.

The Strib site gives data on challenges too (I used data as of 00:12 EST November 23). Coleman's campaign has only challenged 28 more ballots than Franken's. As an extreme hypothesis, suppose all challenges are ruled frivolous. Then we get Franken will gain 63 not 35 votes out of those precincts for which preliminary results are reported. With 68% of votes recounted, I don't see how one can avoid placing the probability of Sen Franken near 50%. (no I don't see how 206-35 = 180 either, I guess that the strib had the post recanvass Coleman lead at 215 for some reason).

Most strikingly have been almost exactly equal numbers of challenges by the campaigns in Hennepin county so far 254 and 252 thus the ratio of Franken challenges to Coleman votes is significantly higher than the ratio of Coleman challenges to Franken votes.

Now the Coleman challenges might be more frivolous on average. However, it is hard to give a story about first time voters or whatever that implies that there are systematically more Franken ballots that were missed by the scanners yet systematically more Coleman ballots that can be legitimately challenged.

If the distribution frivolity of the challenges by the two campaigns is similar, further upswings in challenge rates are clearly wholly frivolous challenges ,and if the 2 thirds recounted were typical of the whole state (which they aren't but I don't see any patters to who gains where) then one can calculate odds.

So far there are 1982 challenges. Change + challenges equals number of votes where the optical scanner recorded no vote which are at least debated now. so 635 new possible votes detected. I think the assumption that gives probabilities of victory closest to 50% is that these are two seperate sets of ballots (all challenges are of ballots counted by the scanners).

Forecasts assuming that the remaining third have the same distributions as the currently counted 2 thirds. 318 new votes detected on ballots where the scanners reported no vote and a total of 2973 challenges (not counting the extra challenges from increasingly furious frivolity beyond the current level of frivolity which I assume will be rejected out of hand).

Expected Franken gains at end of recount 95 (just 1.5 times gains so far). Maximum possible variance of number of challenges rejected about 743 (for each challenge has a 50 50 chance and I assume that all challenges are between for Coleman and no vote or between vote for Franken or no vote). Maximum possible variance of "newly detected vote is for Franken minus newly detected vote is for Coleman" less than 318 (this is if there are no newly detected votes for 3rd candidates). so total variance of change 1061 so standard error about 10 and Franken is over ten standard errors short of the Senate.

Update: OOOOOOOOOOPPPS standard error around 33 so three standard errors. How embarrassing. Thanks to Tom Bozzo in comments.

Franken's hope depends on systematic differences between re-counted and non recounted precincts and systematic differences in the degree of frivolity of challenges. No pattern is apparent in vote changes by county. The rate of challenges is similar by campaign.

Bummer.

Robert Waldmann

is old enough that I automatically associate the name Ziegler with Richard Nixon's press secretary. That identification is no longer operative. I am writing about John Ziegler who designed and interpreted a poll of Obama supporters conducted by Zogby.

Zogby reports and interprets the results here.

Substantive discussion addresses the claim that two of the questions were biased -- that the answers counted as correct are arguably not correct, but rather expressions of anti-Obama opinion, and that one, testing knowledge about Biden was very obscure. In particular Nate Silver and Carl Bialik at the Wall Street Journal. and, uhm John Zogby all criticize Ziegler and un-named Zogby employees. Also Silver, Bialik and Zogby note that it is unfair to quiz one candidates supporters without quizzing the others. I will talk about this some, but I am interested in close analysis of clumsy rhetoric.

I am interested in Mr Ziegler's use of and views on the English language.

The post has gotten long and readers might not want to waste their valuable time. I will bring my most nearly interesting point up here.


Carl Bialik on a Wall Street Journal blog writes

On the fifth question about older events, “Which candidate said their policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket?”, more voters named McCain than Obama. However, Obama’s cited comments — made in January in a meeting with the San Francisco Chronicle editorial board — referred to bankrupting new coal plants, not the industry. He was speaking about a cap-and-trade system for emissions, something that McCain also has supported.

“We wrote ‘likely’ because of that very caveat,” Ziegler told me. “We had to simplify it, and I stand by the simplification of the question.”

Oh my. Ziegler just said that a false claim can be made true by adding a standard weasel word, evidently just about anywhere in the claim. Bialik's complaint was about the difference between a new coal fired power plant (big) and the coal industry (bigger). He didn't mention whether Obama used the word "skyrocket" or whether that might not correspond exactly in meaning to whatever Obama said. Ziegler clearly asserts that a modification of the allegedly asserted probability of an event (down to likely from unqualified and evidently certain) is a valid response to the observation that Obama's statement was about a different event.

I've never seen a franker assertion of the belief that one can get away with making a false claim by inserting a weasel word. Now here, I think, Ziegler probably thinks he is being, basically, honest. He thinks that cap and trade will bankrupt the coal industry. He has the vague impression that Obama, more or less, admitted that he agrees. He hears a claim that it will make new coal fired plant unprofitable but won't bankrupt the industry. He tones his claim down to "likely bankrupt the coal industry." Ooops he forgot, his question is not about what is true about cap and trade and the coal industry but what Obama said about cap and trade and the coal industry. Generically weakening an innaccurate paraphrase does not make it an accurate paraphrase. In fact, IIRC, the word "likely" makes the paraphrase less accurate as Obama expressed no doubt in the interview.

I think the example is of some interest as it seems to me to be a very frank description of the editing of the question. I think I should be able to understand something from this example. That is Ziegler's statement leaves me totally mystefied. How could someone think that adding "likely" changes a coal plant into the coal industry ? How can someone not understand that a statement can be innaccurate in ways other than being too strong, so that toning it down doesn't make it true ? Why did this guy set himself up for so much ridicule ?



Ziegler reports on the results in a post with the same headline used by Zogby "Survey finds most Obama voters remembered negative coverage of McCain/Palin statements but struggled to correctly answer questions about coverage associated with Obama/Biden"

Try to imagine you don't know who Obama and McCain are and re-read that sentence There is clearly a comparison here, but the structure is not symmetric. First, of course, only Obama voters were tested. It is well known that people prove to be astoundingly ignorant in polls. Quizzing someone's supporters on (alleged see below) facts is clearly not a friendly act.

More strikingly, there appears to have been no negative coverage of Obama Biden or no non negative coverage associated with McCain. Ziegler and the zogby staffer(s) insert their claim that the coverage of McCain was "negative" (used a pejorative term in contemporary political coverage as opposed to "critical" which is neutral) and does not characterize the questions about Obama/Biden (which were all critical). Furthermore he asserts that the criticisms of Obama and of Biden are "correct" and does not assert that the negative coverage of McCain and of Palin is correct.

Would Ziegler and the Zogby staffer(s) have been equally likely to write correctly answer questions about coverage associated with Obama/Biden">"Survey finds most Obama voters answered questions about coverage associated with McCain/Palin statements but struggled remember negative coverage of Obama/Biden" ? I don't think so either.

Or how about we remove all words which depend on the survey results and leave only that which Ziegler and Zogby inc brought to the data

"Survey finds most Obama voters ... negative coverage of McCain/Palin statements but ... about coverage associated with Obama/Biden" To mee that seems to suggest that the media were biased against McCain, yet it has nothing to do with input from anyone not employed by Zogby except maybe Ziegler.

Ziegler and the Zogby staff were unable to achieve formal balance, by using the same words for negative coverage of McCain and negative coverage of Obama. I conclude that they are not very skilled at rhetoric.

OK now some textual analysis of the questions.

"Which candidate won their first election by getting all of their opponents kicked off the ballot" Allegedly correct answer -- Barack Obama. The ignorance of Obama supporters of a ballot challenge in a long past Illinois election is not surprising. Ziegler admits that his result may have been partly due to the obscurity of the events in Obama's and Biden's lives. My point, however, is that the question and proposed answer amount to an opinion not a fact. It is a fact that, on Obama's initiative, all of his opponents were kicked off the ballot in his first election. It is not a fact that this was necessary for his win. The word "by" implies causation. The question and answer assert that the ballot challenge caused the victory, that is, assert the counterfactual claim that if any of the other candidates had remained on the ballot Obama would not have won.

Also "Kicked off" is a dead metaphor which measn "removed." It doesn't imply actual physical violence by means of a foot, but it is charged language which makes Ziegler's bias more obvious than it was before (if that is possible).

"Which candidate has clothes that their political party reportedly spent $150,000 on"

Hmm which sentence contains at least 2 grammatical errors ? I know don't get stoned in glass houses, but a preposition isn't the sort of thing you should end a sentence with. Also "candidate" is singular and "their" is plural. Clearly her gender has to be supressed to get correct answers below 100% (only 86.3% got it right -- some Obama supporters really have been hiding under a rock) but "his or her" is gender neutral and singular while "their" and "his and her" are gender neutral and plural.

"Which candidate said that they could see Russia from their house ?"

Oh my, Bialik told me this, but I didn't believe it. The answer which is marked correct is "Palin." The correct answer is "none." Tina Fey and Palin look alike, but they are technically two different people (plural) not one person (singular, that would be one very very singular person indeed).

OK so don't know much about Rhetoric (my interest). Don't know much about grammer (like I could care less). Overestimate Sarah Palin's ditziness !!!!!!!!!

Told You So

Mark Kleiman notes that "The two health-insurance trade groups have now endorsed an individual mandate for health insurance coverage."

This Prof Kleiman expected this to happen. He explains why.

I too expected this, at least since July 8 2008 (same explanation).

Best of all, I recently tried to explain it to Paul Krugman (I mean via a blog which he doesn't read).

Matt Yglesias told you so too.

Worthwhile Federal Budget Accounting Reform

Matt Yglesias quotes the CBO

Consistent with the budgetary treatment of financial assets purchased under the TARP, the federal budget would record the cost of such loans using procedures similar to those specified in the Federal Credit Reform Act, with an adjustment to account for market risk. On that basis, CBO estimates that the expected cost of the proposed loans would be roughly 70 percent of the aggregate face value—or about $17.5 billion. That estimate takes into account the current financial condition of firms that would qualify for loans—as demonstrated, for example, by current market interest rates on outstanding
debt—and reflects historical data on defaults and subsequent amounts recovered

The procedure is to assume that the Treasury should be exactly as risk averse as the private sector. This is totally insane and, in fact, has it exactly backwards. If a market tanks we *want* the deficit to grow (That's called an automatic stabilizer).

Why the hell does the CBO assume that an agent which benefits from taking risk away from the private sector should be risk averse ? I think the reason is clear. If publicly owned assets were valued in a half way rational way major purchases of, say, common stock would be counted as gains for the Treasury (reducing net debt etc). That is, it would suggest that the US government should invest in index funds. Now we can't have that. That can't be a good policy. So we have to make the totally nonsensical assumption that we want the deficit to be constant rather than high in recessions and low in expansion in order to not conclude that such a policy would have an effect on national welfare similar to finding $ trillion worth of goods under a rock.

Obviously I think the social security trust fund should be invested in index funds. The case agains is that if we assume it is very important that the deficit be constant and not counter cyclical then such a policy would be no better than current policy. I can't imagine a weaker policy argument.

I say public sector assets should be valued by the expected payments discounted at the current T-bill rates. No correction for risk. Now really, the Federal Government should be risk seeking, but I am willing to compromise. This does imply that the public sector can profit (reduce it's net indebtedness) by investing in risky assets.

In particular I betcha the Treasury profits from its loan to Goldman Sachs *and* I think that the outcome in dollars gained or lost is an unbiased estimate of what we should care about which has no public sector risk aversion (rather the opposite but I am willing to compromise).

A Comment on Andrew Sabl

I can't log in to comment on the RBC. I don't know why.

Mark Kleiman proposed "A Populist Substitute for Farm Subsidies."

in brief

Through whatever mechanism, reduce the amount of subsidy paid (e.g., by finally putting an enforceable upper limit on how much any individual, family, firm, or group of firms can collect). For each county where subsidies were paid, total up the reduction and divide that amount by teh population of the county.

Pay out 125% of that amount to each resident of the county in the first year, 120% in the second year, 115% in the third year, and so on.

Andrew Sabl argues that Kleiman doesn't know what populism is writing

Mark proposes replacing agricultural subsidies with cash grants, of steadily decreasing amounts every year, to residents of rural areas. His plan sounds unimpeachable in terms of efficiency, equity, environmentalism, etc., and he wonders why nobody's discussed it.

Short answer: they haven't discussed it because it's un-American. Agricultural subsidies involve paying people for doing What Decent People Do: that is, work—and most particularly, work at growing stuff and raising sources of future barbecue. Cash payments given out regardless of the work done by their recipients involve, well, welfare.

Sabl is wrong about Agricultural subsidies. Subsidies have long been paid for Not working.


Mounting surpluses and increased costs of government programs led to the enactment of a flexible price support program (1954) and of the Soil Bank program (1956), which provided for direct payments to farmers in return for reducing their acreage of major supported crops and required that they leave fallow the land removed from production.

Now Sabl is certainly partly right. His main point is the following

When Mark calls his scheme "populist," he's falsely implying that populism has something to do with equity or distributive justice. But in fact, populism--wherever it has existed, though it's much stronger and louder in the U.S. than in, say, Western Europe--is, above all, producerism. It's grounded in a moral distinction between those who do Real Work (agricultural, or, grudgingly, urban but physical) and those who use their abstract intelligence to exploit the real workers through useless tasks like finance or politics.

This is, or once was, true. However, according to Sabl populists ought to hate Sarah Palin who increased the cash given to each citizen of Alaska for doing nothing.

While recognising that Sabl is absolutely right about the ideology of the original populists (the people's party in the USA) I think he over-estimates the extent to which current US self proclaimed populists really mean "give the money to me" and oppose say AFDC, because it is money going to others not to people like them. Taht is populists can and have been bought off.

That is, I think that Sabl is right and Kleiman is wrong about the best definition of the word "populist," the definition which applies to the most self declared populists in history, I don't think that populism as he correctly defines it is really such a strong force in the USA.

Frankly, I think that current self declared populists have more in common with the Democratic party pseudo populists like pitchfork Ben Tilmann (perfect name for a populist showing his ancestors were Northern European plowmen by the way) than the original populists. I believe that most of them use the rhetoric of populism to dress up interest group politics, regionalism, and racism. I'm sure they can be bought off.

The Dow Breaks the Brad Barrier

Yesterday the Dow closed at 7,997.28 a full 2 and a zero point 72 points below the Brad Lower Barrier of 8 and some zeros. Does this mean that it's heading for somewhere between 1,249 and 800 ? I don't like to make predictions, but I would guess no.

Brad DeLong noted "The Dow-Jones Industrial Average has spent 25 of the past 40 years--62%--between 800 and 1250 or between 8000 and 12500."

the Odyssey of a Trachea

In great medical news a new piece of Trachea grown from her own stem cells has been translplanted into a woman in Barcelona.

If this works it will be a functional organ made in laboratorieS.

Also the new organ is a unified European organ. It was made in Spain, Italy and Italy (it probably traveled more than Ulysses)



Once doctors had a donor windpipe, scientists at Italy's University of Padua stripped off all its cells, leaving only a tube of connective tissue.
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Meanwhile, doctors at the University of Bristol took a sample of Castillo's bone marrow from her hip. They used the bone marrow's stem cells to create millions of cartilage and tissue cells to cover and line the windpipe.

Experts at the University of Milan then used a device to put the new cartilage and tissue onto the windpipe. The new windpipe was transplanted into Castillo in June (in Barcelona I assume).

Now that's European Unification I can believe in.

Ah the Good Old Days when half of my spam was pre-approved credit cards. To me the end of the go-go years came the day when I had more spam offering to consolidate my credit card debt than spam offering me credit cards.

I just got a spam which stired memories of the time when the crooks spamming me with credit card ofers knew how to spel dollar

RE: 7,500 Dolars GuaranteedUnsecuredCreditLine‏
From: Centennial One Platinum Card (CentennialCard_bea@denyagreen.net)
Medium riskYou may not know this sender.Mark as safe|Mark as unsafe
Sent: Tue 11/18/08 7:41 PM

Easy credit has gone from being the mainstay of the US economy to a scam at the level of Sani Abache's Widow's bank account in Switzerland.

.007% licensed to Thrill

Seems like old times when the Italian center left beat the Italian center right by 0.007%


Coleman's current lead over Franken is only about 0.007%,

Media Matters by by Jamison Foser

Foser has a devastating critique of, well the interpretation of a PEJ study. He says that the press (Howard Kurtz of course) has accepted the claim that coverage was biased in favor of Obama, based on the clear liberal bias of the fact, in this case including polls.

I steal much of his post, because I think he buried the lede.

Unfortunately, the conservative complaints got some superficial support from a recent study by the Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) that claimed that John McCain has received much more "negative" coverage than Barack Obama during the campaign.

The PEJ study quickly got significant attention from the establishment media and blogs.

But while the study lends rhetorical support to the conservatives' arguments, it is nearly useless as an actual assessment of how the media covered the campaign.

First off, it is worth noting this little nugget about the study's methodology, buried at the end of the PEJ report: "Talk radio stories ... were not included in this campaign study of tone." PEJ offers no justification for the exclusion of talk radio. Not a word. In what surely must be a coincidence, talk radio skews further to the right than any other medium.

Now, here's PEJ's description of how it assesses whether a news report is "positive" or "negative":

To examine tone, the Project takes a particularly cautious and conservative approach. Unlike some researchers, we examine not just whether assertions in stories are positive or negative, but also whether they are inherently neutral. This, we believe, provides a much clearer and fairer sense of the tone of coverage than ignoring those balanced or mixed evaluations. Second, we do not simply tally up all the evaluative assertions in stories and compile them into a single pile to measure. Journalists and audiences think about press coverage in stories or segments. They ask themselves, is this story positive or negative or neutral? Hence the Project measures coverage by story, and for a story to be deemed as having a negative or positive tone, it must be clearly so, not a close call: for example, the negative assertions in a story must outweigh positive assertions by a margin of at least 1.5 to 1 for that story to be deemed negative.

OK ... anyone want to guess what that means in practical terms?

Unfortunately, the few actual examples of "positive" and "negative" coverage PEJ offers do little to clarify its methodology, and less to inspire confidence. For example, PEJ notes:

Some of that positive coverage was related to evidence that the financial crisis was aiding Obama. "Recent economic woes have given Democrat Barack Obama a clear lead over Republican John McCain," declared a story posted on AOL News on Sept. 24, citing a 9-point lead for Obama in a new Washington Post/ABC News poll.

That's what counts as "positive" coverage of Obama? A fairly straightforward report that a poll finds Obama in a "clear lead" over McCain? And, it seems, much of Obama's "positive" coverage consisted of reports like that:

The data clearly point in this direction for some of the explanation. Of those stories that focused mostly on polls, a clear majority (57%) were positive for Obama, while less than a quarter (23%) were negative. Similarly, stories about the electoral map, swing states and campaign strategy were even more favorable (77% positive vs. 6% negative). These represent the most positive element of Obama's coverage.

So, if a candidate is winning, and the polls show that, and the media report that the polls show the candidate winning, that counts as "positive" coverage. Well, OK, it's true that such a story is "positive," but it tells us nearly nothing about the media.