Archive for November, 2010

Keynes Redux

0
2 years ago
by Michael Weiss in

I men­tioned in a com­ment yes­ter­day that I’m work­ing on an arti­cle dis­cussing the rela­tion­ship between income taxes and unem­ploy­ment. Before I fin­ish that and post it, I wanted to fol­low up on my pre­vi­ous fis­cal analy­sis arti­cle.

I got some inter­est­ing feed­back on that arti­cle. One con­ser­v­a­tive responded pri­vately with what amounted to a “well, duh!” He said that my arti­cle boiled down to the fol­low­ing (para­phrased) statement:

Hold every­thing else con­stant, and increas­ing gov­ern­ment spend­ing, which is included in the GDP cal­cu­la­tion, increases GDP.

On one level, he’s cor­rect. It’s pretty obvi­ous that, hold­ing every­thing else con­stant, increas­ing gov­ern­ment spend­ing will increase GDP in the same year. This is why I looked for an off­set impact. If spend­ing this year increases GDP in future years, hold­ing every­thing else con­stant, then you have a more inter­est­ing story. That’s what I was look­ing for.

Another Election, Another Recount

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2 years ago
by dcpetterson in
A ballot for Norm Coleman from Hennepin County...

Min­nesota Bal­lot from the 2008 Recount (Image via Wikipedia)

It is becom­ing a habit. A third time, and it’ll be a tradition.

Two years ago, there was a pro­longed recount and legal bat­tle over the Min­nesota Sen­ate race. This year, it is the Governor’s seat. The Sen­ate recount was one of the most thor­ough and trans­par­ent in U.S. his­tory, it was a squeaker with the mar­gin of the even­tual win being around 200 votes out of a total of more than two and a half mil­lion cast. Sen­a­tor Al Franken was not sworn in until July of 2009.

(more…)

It’s Worse than You Think

2
2 years ago
by Michael Weiss in
Logo used by Wikileaks

Image via Wikipedia

Update: Novem­ber 30, 10:40AM PST

There’s plenty of talk about the infor­ma­tion recently released by Wik­ileaks. But there’s more infor­ma­tion there than is gen­er­ally being reported.

Two weeks ago, I wrote about the vul­ner­a­bil­ity of our infra­struc­ture to cyber­at­tacks. Do you think Wik­ileaks is the only orga­ni­za­tion to have obtained clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion with­out autho­riza­tion? (more…)

The Tweet of Cthulhu

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2 years ago
by Monotreme in
Cthulhu

Fail Cthulhu, by Robert Cadena

Those of you who know me know I love me my Twit­ter. I am an avid twit­terer (tweeter? twit?) and reader of the live feed. Among my sub­scrip­tions are @Sarah­Pal­i­nUSA and @dav­eweigel, @glen­ngreen­wald and @lar­rysabato. I even fol­low @fivethir­tyeight.

So it was with inter­est that I read about this case from Aus­tralia, which shows the per­ils of live­blog­ging with Twit­ter. As you know, live­blog­ging is one of the most dynamic forms of blog­ging and it’s excit­ing and fun. We did it on Elec­tion Night and had a blast. Using Twit­ter to estab­lish a live­blog is one of the best ways to live­blog, and I never thought about how it might go wrong.

The present Aus­tralian case has all the great tropes: a vil­lianous Old Media mogul, a burned-​​out reporter giv­ing her One Last Scoop with a Bile Top­ping, and just for you, Mis­ter Uni­verse, global warm­ing deniers. In short, man vs man, man vs nature, and man vs him­self. Faulkner would’ve been proud.

Jonathan Holmes does such a great job of sum­ma­riz­ing the facts of the case, I’m not going to do that here. Go to his Aus­tralian Broad­cast­ing Com­pany (ABC) blog, have a read, then come back here and make a com­ment. Or two or three.

We even have some attor­neys here who might be able to opine on the legal ram­i­fi­ca­tions of the case. Know­ing that Com­mon­wealth libel law is quite dif­fer­ent from US libel law, could some­thing like this hap­pen here?

Are Republicans “Beyond Redemption?”

1
2 years ago
by filistro in
Senator Richard Lugar

Sen. Richard Lugar (R-​​IN) Image by Ted Lip­ien via Flickr

That’s the sug­ges­tion of John C. Dan­forth, a respected Repub­li­can for­mer Sen­a­tor from Mis­souri and Ambas­sador to the U.N. dur­ing the Bush administration.

Sen­a­tor Dan­forth was respond­ing this week­end to the news reported at Red State that Sen­a­tor Richard Lugar of Indi­ana has been tar­geted for a Tea Party chal­lenge when he runs for re-​​election in 2012.

Richard Lugar is a five-​​term Sen­a­tor with a long his­tory of stand­ing on prin­ci­ple, going all the way back to they days when, despite being a staunch life­long admirer of Ronald Rea­gan, he opposed Rea­gan by sup­port­ing sanc­tions against South Africa’s apartheid gov­ern­ment, a pol­icy that Rea­gan vetoed.

Now, in one of the most treach­er­ous par­ti­san atmos­pheres ever expe­ri­enced in the US con­gress, Lugar is doggedly stand­ing against his party on a num­ber of key issues includ­ing the START treaty (which Repub­li­cans oppose sim­ply because its rat­i­fi­ca­tion will give Pres­i­dent Obama a for­eign pol­icy vic­tory), the DREAM act allow­ing the chil­dren of ille­gal immi­grants a path to cit­i­zen­ship, and the ear­mark reform bill which he con­sid­ers empty polit­i­cal posturing.

RINO

This inde­pen­dent think­ing has not gone unno­ticed by the Tea Party, ever on the hunt for RINOs who, they believe, must be relent­lessly sought out and destroyed with­out mercy no mat­ter who they are or how respected their record might be. “Sen­a­tor Lugar has been an upstand­ing cit­i­zen rep­re­sent­ing us in D. C.,” said Diane Hub­bard, a spokes­woman for the Indi­anapo­lis Tea Party. “But over the years, he has become more mod­er­ate in his vot­ing.” Remov­ing him “will be a dif­fi­cult chal­lenge,” Ms. Hub­bard con­ceded. “But we do believe it’s doable, and we think the cli­mate is right for it and we believe it is a must.”

Sen­a­tor Lugar rec­og­nizes the dan­ger, and the new extrem­ism of a Repub­li­can party that can put even a states­man like him­self sud­denly at risk. “I’m very con­scious of it,” Mr. Lugar said of a pri­mary threat. “I’ve been in pub­lic life a long time.”

Oth­ers are not so san­guine. From the NY Times: “Even after the midterm rout that will remove many long-​​serving mem­bers from Con­gress, the idea that Mr. Lugar would be vul­ner­a­ble to a pri­mary chal­lenge is a chill­ing notion to many Repub­li­cans, a sym­bol of sym­bol­ism gone too far.”

Or, as John C. Dan­forth puts it, “If Dick Lugar, hav­ing served five terms in the U.S. Sen­ate and being the most respected per­son in the Sen­ate and the lead­ing author­ity on for­eign pol­icy, is seri­ously chal­lenged by any­body in the Repub­li­can Party, we have gone so far over­board that we are beyond redemption.”

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Beautiful Bountiful

0
2 years ago
by filistro in

Boun­ti­ful, BC (image cour­tesy of National Geographic)

Boun­ti­ful is a small rural com­mu­nity in the Koote­nay region of south­ern British Colum­bia, near the town of Cre­ston. It lies in a sleepy, peace­ful, incred­i­bly lush agri­cul­tural area, nes­tled in a ring of shel­ter­ing moun­tain peaks. Noth­ing much hap­pens in Boun­ti­ful, ever. So what has caused this lit­tle Cana­dian back­wa­ter to be at the cen­ter of a court case presently under­way in down­town Van­cou­ver, with 33 black-​​robed lawyers in atten­dance rep­re­sent­ing the provin­cial and fed­eral gov­ern­ments, and dozens of advo­cates argu­ing var­i­ous social issues?

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