Posted 3:28 PM by Robert

Associated Press Botches Execution, Morality, Journalism (So What Else Is New?)

Do reporters and editors have to go to some special school, or have some exotic surgery performed on their brains to remove the moral center, to run an article about a "botched" execution without a single mention of the name of the killer's victim or the circumstances of the murder, and without any mention of any attempt on the reporter's part to obtain the views of the victim's family?

Does it matter that the killer is fully named in the article, described by his named relatives in the most sentimental terms possible ("God chose my uncle to change history!") and that his irrelevant ethnicity is specified, while his victim is dismissed as a nameless "manager of a Miami topless bar 27 years ago?" Does it matter that the article is without any mention of the hideous aggravating circumstances of the victim's murder that warranted imposition of the death penalty?

Here is an entire article from the Associated Press - a very sick place:

Family denounces botched Fla. execution

Fri Dec 22, 11:54 PM ET

A Puerto Rican man whose botched execution in Florida renewed opposition to the death penalty in the United States and this island territory was buried Friday in a ceremony attended by about 100 people.

Angel Nieves Diaz, a career criminal condemned for killing a manager of a Miami topless bar 27 years ago, was given a second dose of deadly chemicals as he took more than half an hour to die on Dec. 13.

At the funeral in suburban Rio Piedras, family members said they hoped the notoriety of Diaz's case would boost the international campaign against capital punishment.

"God chose my uncle to change history," said Jackeline Nieves. "Now the death penalty isn't seen as something normal. It's seen as the worst, most inhumane method."

Medical experts said the 55-year-old convict could have experienced severe pain as needles that were supposed to inject drugs into his veins were instead pushed all the way through the blood vessels into surrounding soft tissue.

The case prompted Florida Gov. Jeb Bush to suspend all executions in the state as a commission examines its lethal injection process.

The U.S. Caribbean territory abolished capital punishment in 1929. However, federal prosecutors can seek the death penalty in some cases because Puerto Rico is subject to U.S. federal law.

The Associated Press doesn't think the victim is worth his name, but I'll publish it here: Joseph Nagy. I never heard of Mr. Nagy before, but I have known some Hungarians by that name - and since the AP saw fit to belabor his killer's ethnicity, I'll mention this groat of evidence concerning his victim's possible heritage. The AP tells us that about 100 people attended the killer's funeral (but no mention as to how many attended for larger political purposes). But neither the AP nor the public court records available online provide a clue as to how many people showed up to see Mr. Nagy off this earth - or what his family had to say at the time or now.

Even in the flush of advancing its political agenda in an article like this, the AP has an obligation to remember that the life of a long-dead manager of a Florida topless bar had value, the man who harbored that extinguished life had a name, and the circumstances of his death have meaning. So here - reproduced from an Eleventh Circuit opinion rejecting one of the killer's appeals - are the aggravating circumstances of the murder on which the death penalty was imposed:

The four ... aggravating circumstances were "Diaz was under sentence of imprisonment, had previously been convicted of another capital felony, ... committed the murder during a kidnapping, and committed the murder for pecuniary gain.

It's also worth noting the Florida Supreme Court's direct-appeal opinion had noted that the killer's "prior record in this instance includes an armed robbery, two escapes, the assault and battering of correctional officers, and a conviction for murdering the director of a drug rehabilitation center by stabbing him nineteen times while he slept."

I wouldn't wish unnecessary pain on anyone, even a killer in the course of his execution. But unnecessary pain sometimes happens. And if it has to happen to someone, it couldn't happen to a more appropriate person that someone like the killer described in this AP article.

Posted 12:42 AM by Robert

Mr. Rago Dissents

Is it odd that having run an article subtitled "Wow, Time magazine really is out of touch with the Internet age" (reproduced from American Spectator) only yesterday, Opinion Journal today carries an article by the Journal's editorial staffer Joseph Rago proving that Wall Street's own can at least match Time magazine on that particular out-of-touch front?

Mr. Rago's effort will doubtlessly attract lots of Blogosphere commentary, so I will indulge in but a few observations. I leave it to the reader to determine if she agrees that Mr. Rago comes dangerously close to ignoring many of the enormous differences among blogs - starting with the title of his article (which he may or may not have chosen): The Blog Mob. I also ask the reader to consider whether the best blogs have any of the characteristics Mr. Rago purports to identify.

For example, does Mickey Kaus's blog, Kausfiles, ever show serious signs of the mob mentality Mr. Rago conjures? Please. Is it true, as Mr. Rago insists, of even the better reaches of the Blogosphere - again keeping Kausfiles in mind as but one example - that "Every conceivable belief is on the scene, but the collective prose, by and large, is homogeneous: A tone of careless informality prevails; posts oscillate between the uselessly brief and the uselessly logorrheic; complexity and complication are eschewed; the humor is cringe-making, with irony present only in its conspicuous absence; arguments are solipsistic; writers traffic more in pronouncement than persuasion . . ." And if Mr. Rago's criticisms are to be limited to the less well done portions of the Blogosphere (taking that "by and large" escape hatch), they would amount to the nearly tautological observation that the not-well-done is not well done, on the Blogosphere as everywhere. Yes, indeed. And it is also true that a man is liked by his friends, Mr. Rago.

But it is with respect to the Blogosphere's relationship with the mainstream media that Mr. Rago's errors are most interesting - perhaps because he considers no examples at all (other than Henry James and his arthritis). He is certainly correct that the Blogosphere draws heavily on direct reporting of the mainstream media. But the mainstream media - in the past often working in far less than fully competitive environments - have developed many ways of distorting the products of their own reporting. One need look no further than Rathergate to see the valuable role played by the Blogosphere in blocking an election-distorting gambit practiced by CBS News repeatedly for many years. So is Mr. Rago correct that "The blogs are not as significant as their self-endeared curators would like to think. ... Instead, they ride along with the MSM like remora fish on the bellies of sharks, picking at the scraps." Perhaps that is a question best asked of now minimally employed "sharks" such as Dan Rather and Mary Mapes.

Mr. Rago apparently considers himself to be a "shark." My guess is that his own belly is bound to be nipped by lots of his "remoras." Somehow I think he's about to find out how insignificant their bites really are.

Posted 9:14 PM by Robert

Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club? What's That?

This New York Times article by Elizabeth Jensen and Lia Miller purports to recount what the article calls the "short but contentious history of Air America." Many odd characters and twists are recounted in a history where "business and politics always mixed, and that was the problem, critics contend." Tart recriminations are now reportedly flying.

But none of those reported recriminations has anything whatsoever to do with the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club. Indeed, the Times article make no mention of that organization at all. Its name is not mentioned. Not even an allusion to this worthy organization made.

All of which is more than passing strange, because Air America has an extensive history and economic relationship with the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club, as the New York Post summarized:

Six officials of the Gloria Wise Boys and Girls Club stole $1.2 million from the group, money meant for needy kids and seniors, a city probe has found. Investigations Commissioner Rose Gill Hearn calls it "disgusting" - the worst case of wrongdoing by a non-profit contractor she's seen since taking office.
Thank goodness the thieves will be going to jail for a very long time - and paying back every cent, and then some.
Well, actually, that's not quite true.
In fact, nobody is going to jail.
Not even for a single day.
And the crooks get to keep most of the cash they stole. Four weren't even charged, and after a few brief years, the two who were charged can return to nonprofit work - to loot again, perhaps.
For that wrist tap, thank Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, whose office prosecuted the case.
Something is wrong with this picture.
Hearn was right to label the shenanigans "disgusting." Her report said fraud "was an accepted way of doing business" for these execs. "Rather than reflecting actual events," the group's records "were made to say whatever suited the executives' purposes." Want details?
* Under their direction, the group improperly gave $875,000 to left-wing Air America radio (which features comedian Al Franken) while a Gloria Wise exec maintained a financial stake in it.

There's plenty more. For example, the New York City Department of Investigation has commented:

DOI asked Air America to repay the $875,000 to an escrow account controlled by DOI. Thereafter, Air America repaid only $50,000 to an escrow account that is not controlled by DOI. DOI is pleased that Piquant LLC, the current owner of Air America, has agreed to DOI's request that, in lieu of making $50,000 quarterly payments, Piquant transfer the full $875,000 to the escrow account.

And lots more.

But all of that escapes Elizabeth Jensen and Lia Miller. And apparently nobody at Air America cares enough to hurl any recriminations on this topic. But, then, if the ever-opportunistic, pseudo-crusading Mr. Sptizer doesn't care, why should the Times?

Posted 12:43 AM by Robert

Some Questions Regarding Herr Doktor Professor Paul Von Krugman's Wages Theory

What Herr Doktor Professor Paul Von Krugman wrote in his October 6, 2006 column The War Against Wages:

So what's keeping paychecks down? Major employers like Wal-Mart have decided that their interests are best served by treating workers as a disposable commodity, paid as little as possible and encouraged to leave after a year or two. And these employers don't worry that angry workers will respond to their war on wages by forming unions, because they know that government officials, who are supposed to protect workers' rights, will do everything they can to come down on the side of the wage-cutters.

What the New York Times reports on the front page today:

After four years in which pay failed to keep pace with price increases, wages for most American workers have begun rising significantly faster than inflation. .... The average hourly wage for workers below management level - everyone from school bus drivers to stockbrokers - rose 2.8 percent from October 2005 to October of this year, after being adjusted for inflation, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Only a year ago, it was falling by 1.5 percent. .... The fall in unemployment to 4.4 percent and the recent surge in wages, however, raise the prospect that the job market could be on the brink of another strong run, much like the one that lifted incomes in the late 1990s.

Of course, "wages" are just one component of overall compensation, which includes a variety of other expensive and valuable benefits. "Wages" and "paychecks" matter more than they should to Herr Doktor Professor and the Times generally; indeed, they are drawn to "wage" and "paycheck" arguments like moths to flames. There is, for example, no disclaimer or distinction made between of "wages" or "paychecks" and "overall compensation" in either Herr Doktor Professor's October column or in today's "news" article. On the other hand, nobody seems to have a good grasp on what is happening to true worker compensation in the United States - including people who focus on overall compensation. So although one can go far criticizing Herr Doktor Professor and the Times broadly on this count, I prefer to ask a far narrower question today:

If, as Herr Doktor Professor says, what had been keeping paychecks down was major employers like Wal-Mart having decided that their interests are best served by treating workers as a disposable commodity, paid as little as possible and encouraged to leave after a year or two, then does the recent rise in paychecks reported today in the Times mean that major employers abandoned or softened that approach? Have those major employers decided since October 6 that their interests are not best served by treating workers as a disposable commodity? If so, why? Why now?

And, most importantly of all: Why does the Times' "news" article, which takes up plenty of column inches with various analyses of why wages have fluctuated, not even mention Herr Doktor Professor's key theoretical insight into the main cause of wage stagnation?

Sheesh, you'd almost think that the economic reporters at the Times don't care a bit about what Herr Doktor Professor has to say on this topic. Surely that can't be true. Can it?

Just asking.

Posted 8:06 AM by Robert

The New York Times Sinks Into A Florida Swamp

Even by the low standards of New York Times economic reporting, David Leonhardt's article in today's edition surely reaches a new low in breathlessly announcing:

The truth is that the official numbers on house prices — the last refuge of soothing information about the real estate market on the coasts — are deeply misleading. ... In reality, homes across much of Florida, California and the Northeast are worth a lot less than they were a year ago.

Unlike Mr. Leonhardt, the Man Without Qualities takes no position on what the "truth" or "reality" of the current residential real property market may be. I have no idea what the real estate market is doing right now, and (again unlike Mr. Leonhardt) I have no idea where to look for that "truth" and "reality" other than in those admittedly imperfect statistics reporting actual sales that he finds so unworthy.

But I do know this: Auctions of houses of the type described in this article generally produce prices quite a bit lower than what could be obtained if the house were marketed in the usual way. That's why the "usual way" is "usual." So it is nothing short of idiotic for Mr. Leonhardt and the Times to look to such an auction in Naples, Florida for the "truth" and "reality" of the housing market in the "finding" that "on average, the houses that changed hands at the auction had fallen about 25 percent in value since 2005."

Here's a hint for Mr. Leonhardt and his handlers at the Times: Pretty much any competent realtor or probate or bankruptcy attorney will tell you that an auctioned house brings in about 25% less than the then-current market value of the home - although the statistical spread can be wide. This effect is not a secret. Many home buyers look to buy homes from probate sales, for example, even in the absence of an auction. But "normal buyers" generally don't go to such auctions - only speculators and bottom fishers normally go. One reason for that is that unlike normal real property sales such auctions allow for no financing or any other contingencies. In other words, don't even think about making a bid at such an auction and then going to your bank for the appraisal and loan and detailed home inspection. At an auction, you pretty much just write the check for the full purchase price on your way out the auction house door. That kind of thing tends to push prices down - and a 25% reduction on usual market prices is a pretty good result in a house auction.

Since the auction described by the Times yielded prices about 25% off year-ago prices, the auction appears to actually suggests that the Naples single family home market has not changed much over the last year. But Mr. Leonhardt completely misses all of that.

Of course, Mr. Leonhardt does not just rely on this one auction for his conclusion that the "truth" and "reality" is that home prices are in free fall. No, no, no. He also quotes a few realtors, who opine that in their local markets the "truth" and "reality" is that home prices are in free fall without any supporting data whatsoever, and despite government and other statistics to the contrary. And, despite his reliance on realtor oracles, Mr. Leonhardt apparently never asked his realtor contacts what the normal relationship is between the prices of auctioned homes and homes sold in the usual way - an enquiry that would have deflated his Naples example.

So economic reporting in the New York Times has come to relying on what realtors tell the reporter. No support required. No follow up questions. Just like that.

Could the Times go any lower?

Posted 3:32 PM by Robert

Is The Court Planning To Excise The Religion Exception?

The New York Times reports regarding a federal court challenge to some aspects of the President's faith-based initiatives:

Judge John C. Shabaz of Federal District Court dismissed the lawsuit for lack of standing, finding that the officials activities were not sufficiently tied to specific Congressional appropriations. Taxpayers objections to the use of general appropriations could not be a basis for standing, he said. The president's Faith-Based and Community Initiative was created through a series of executive orders and not by Congress, he noted.

The decision was overturned, and the lawsuit reinstated, in a 2-to-1 ruling by the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in Chicago. Writing for the majority, Judge Richard A. Posner said the distinction cited by Judge Shabaz made no difference. Judge Posner said the plaintiffs were entitled to challenge the conferences as propaganda vehicles for religion even if they were neither financed through a specific Congressional appropriation nor made grants directly to religious groups.

As a general matter, people do not have standing, based solely on their status as taxpayers, to challenge the expenditure of federal money. The Supreme Court's precedents have carved out religion cases as an exception to this general rule.

In its appeal, Hein v. Freedom From Religion Foundation, No. 06-157, the administration is arguing the exception is a narrow one, designed to prevent the specific historic evil of direct legislative subsidization of religious entities, a definition that the administration says does not apply to the conferences. For the federal courts to permit such a lawsuit, its brief asserts, would upset the delicate balance of power between the judicial and executive branches and open the courthouse door to anyone with a generalized grievance.

The Administration's position may be insufficiently ambitious. The exception that the Court has carved out for religion cases to the general rule that plaintiffs do not have "standing" based solely on their status as taxpayers to challenge the expenditure of federal money is all but indefensible. There is no good reason to treat religion as a special case. Indeed, the Court's exception runs quite contrary in spirit to the growing body of Court precedent affirming that generally applicable rules may not carve out religious exceptions. Moreover, there are many signs that at least the conservatives on the Court view the Court's "standing" rules as needing tightening. That was, for example, much in evidence during the Court's recent hearing regarding "global warming." Federal court "standing" requirements are essential to upholding the Constitution's requirement that federal court jurisdiction be limited to "cases and controversies." There is no good reason to suspend or weaken that requirement just because religion is involved. And there are plenty of indications that the Court is fed up with the annual deluge of religion cases brought on what often seem like general policy grounds by plaintiffs with no real connection to the issues supposedly driving the action. (One can almost hear the annual wails from the great white palace on Capitol Hill: "What, yet another damn slew of annual creche cases!?")

Looking at the matter from another perspective, one might ask: Why has the Court accepted review of a Seventh Circuit case written by one of the most able judges in the country, Richard Posner, where there is no split in the Circuits, and Judge Posner's opinion itself is probably correct - and certainly not seriously wrong? It is highly unlikely that Judge Posner needs "correcting" - he knows how to construe existing Supreme Court precedent better than almost any other person in the world. Moreover, the "exception to the exception" his opinion overturned has little independent merit if one accepts the Court's existing precedent. So why did the Supreme Court agree to review Judge Posner's decision?

Well, if the Court wants to reverse its own precedent and abolish the exception that the Court has carved out for religion cases, one would expect the Court to accept an appeals court decision that gets the existing law (that is, existing the Supreme Court precedent) right - and then reverse. (UPDATE: In fact, that appears to be just what the Court is doing to reverse its own recent decision permitting the limited use of racial criteria in public education.) Is that what the Court is up to now?

We'll just have to wait and see.

Posted 12:36 PM by Robert

The Two Misters Webb

The "icy exchange" between President Bush and Virginia Sen.-elect James Webb has occassioned a great deal of comment (here and here and here and here, for example). We are told that perhaps the exchange has turned Webb into something of a folk hero among critics of the president, who have longed for someone to challenge his bravado, or that maybe his refusal to play "gentlemanly political games" has renewed questions about how well Mr. Webb fits in Congress, where compromise is almost always key. Others assert that Webb was a "jerk" - or perhaps, on the contrary, that it was Mr. Bush who made sounds of the "rattling little aggressions of our day" (this last take seems particularly far fetched).

With all respect to the many commenters, the copious commentary may be missing the most likely root of this exchange: Senator-elect Webb's son probably does not agree with his father's anti-war stance. If that's true, then the elder Webb has very good reason to fear being drawn into a conversation with the President that a more customary response to "How's your boy?" would have occassioned. If the Senator-elect had been drawn into the conversation that the President invited, Mr. Webb père might well have faced the need to either admit that his son supports the war or to dissemble to the President. It's not surprising that the new Senator would choose to evade that choice after his original plan - completely avoiding the President at this gathering - was frustrated by Mr. Bush's attempt to be friendly.

And a serious difference of opinion between father and son probably does exist on this point. How likely is it that Mr. Webb fils - who volunteered as a marine, is now serving in Iraq, and who grew up in a Republican household - is as opposed to the Iraq incursion as the Senator-elect or his supporters? Not very, in my opinion. Moreover, "I'd like to get them out of Iraq, Mr. President," is not the same thing as "He and his buddies would like to get out of Iraq, Mr. President." And the ultimate response of Mr. Webb père, "That's between me and my boy, Mr. President," suggests that father and son may not see eye-to-eye. (According to an anonymous source in The Hill, Mr. Webb confessed that he was tempted to slug the President.) Similarly, another high profile war critic, Cindy Sheehan, has never been deterred by the fact that her son, now-deceased Charlie, re-enlisted after the launch of the Iraq incursion, knowing that his unit would be sent to Iraq. Of course, we don't (yet) know the opinion of Mr. Webb fils, and one would expect him to decline public comment if he does forcefully disagree with his father (although the son's marine buddies may be willing to say more than he would if some enterprising reporter were to ask them). This entire line of thought may therefore be validly criticised as "mere speculation" or "just a guess," at best speculation or guessing supported by general evidence of no great substance. But then, the many other commenters on this "icy exchange" are speculating and guessing no less where they pronounce on what the elder Webb was thinking at the time, or how the President might react in the long run, or how other Senators might take to someone apparently so out of sync with their long established ways (or "gentlemanly games") or how the public might or should respond. The line of thought presented here has at least as much supporting it as do any of those pronouncements.

Posted 8:13 PM by Robert

The Reasonable As The Irrationally Vague And Now The Urgently Utopian?

In the years before 1974's 55 mph National Maximum Speed Limit and three years after its 1995 repeal, Montana had a non-numeric "reasonable and prudent" speed limit during the day on most rural roads. Montana Code Annotated (MCA) Section 61-8-303 said "A person . . . shall drive the vehicle . . . at a rate of speed no greater than is reasonable and proper under the conditions existing at the point of operation . . . so as not to unduly or unreasonably endanger the life, limb, property, or other rights of a person entitled to the use of the street or highway." Montana law also provided a few numeric limits in some narrowly defined circumstances.

The phrase "reasonable and prudent" is found in the language of most state speed laws. Never the less, in 1998 the Montana Supreme Court held that the law requiring drivers to drive at a non-numerical "reasonable and proper" speed "is so vague that it violates the Due Process Clause ... of the Montana Constitution".

But some European traffic theorists have essentially the opposite idea:

European traffic planners are dreaming of streets free of rules and directives. They want drivers and pedestrians to interact in a free and humane way, as brethren -- by means of friendly gestures, nods of the head and eye contact, without the harassment of prohibitions, restrictions and warning signs. ....

The utopia has already become a reality in Makkinga, in the Dutch province of Western Frisia. A sign by the entrance to the small town (population 1,000) reads "Verkeersbordvrij" -- "free of traffic signs." Cars bumble unhurriedly over precision-trimmed granite cobblestones. Stop signs and direction signs are nowhere to be seen. There are neither parking meters nor stopping restrictions. There aren't even any lines painted on the streets. .... "Unsafe is safe" was the motto of a conference where proponents of the new roadside philosophy met in Frankfurt in mid-October.

Of course, many German Autobahns have no specific speed limits.

Are we reaching a point where a lot of European driving could be less regulated than that of Montana? Is it really possible that the Montana Supreme Court that held a simple, well-established "reasonable and proper" standard of speed was "irrationally vague" could tolerate the urban free-for-all contemplated by European traffic planners as safer than the alternative of written specifics?

In short, are we really reaching a point where much European driving, both inside and outside of cities, could be conducted under a system deemed unconstitutionally and irrationally vague by American courts? What would that say about American judicial arrogance?

Posted 8:22 AM by Robert

A Word Of Caution

Barry Casselman from RealClearPolitics makes some good points:

A word of caution to Republicans: Even if there is a GOP surge in the closing days, most of the critical House and Senate races remain too close to call. If some candidates who were written off only a few days ago now have their races "at play," there is no guarantee that Republicans will actually win many or most of these races, or many of the "battleground" contests so important to control of each house of the Congress. In spite of the apparent surge, it might not be a good night for Republicans when the votes ar counted. ....

The Democrats have perhaps taken the greatest risk by allowing a "fellow-traveling" media and even non-partisan pundits to create the expectation of an historic Democratic victory that will restore their party to congressional power and rebuke President George W. Bush. A landslide could happen, but the only "objective evidence" of this has been a myriad of volatile political polls, few of which may have been accurate or instructive. Political polling has become a lucrative industry as we begin the 21st century, but the quality of polls has been in decline for decades.

John Podhoretz has recently said that most political polls this year are "garbage," and that the pollsters know it. The low initial response to pollsters by the public is one of the reasons why the "margin of error" is much larger than pollsters will admit. With hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, it is no wonder that most pollsters maintain a cabal of silence about the true value of their product. In virtually all of the contested major races this year, there are numerous polls which have attempted to measure voter sentiment. There are local and state polls (mostly by newspapers and universities), and national polls conducted by consultants and pollsters for cash and for media attention that promotes their polls. ...

I am convinced (and believe it can be undeniably demonstrated) that the so-called margins of error in most political polls is not the usual three to five points, but really ten points or more. If that is so, the dependence on polls by the media and politicians is not only unjustified, but is likely to misinform the public. This year the evidence is rather overwhelming in that similar polls taken at the same time with similar samples have come up with such divergent results. Who is to be believed? ....

I agree with Barry on this as far as he goes. But I think the new problems with the polls are far worse than their concealed margins of error. Many public polls appear to have acquired, perhaps fromtheir media paymasters, a new concealed bias towards the left. Barry points out that at least one poll (the Star Tribune private poll) has confessed to such a naked bias in the past. But there is lots of evidence that other pollsters-for-hire are giving the left-wing media what it wants and pays for: Left-leaning polls that support left-leaning articles in left-leaning media outlets. For example, how else does one convincingly explain a Washington Post/ABC News Poll from a polling company (Sampling, data collection and tabulation by TNS of Horsham, Pa.) in the aftermath of the Foley pseudo-scandal - a survey whose sample base included 41% more Democrats than Republicans? Of course, pollsters delivering biased results have a problem close to election day: The vote will expose the bias unless the pollster finds a "last minute surge." Gee, that seems to be happening now. Zogby has been particularly embarrassed by this kind of trickery in the past.

Hey, it's a cheap way to fill newscolumns as long as the suckers don't catch on!

I have some serious issues with another of Barry's comment from the same column

:It has been observed by some that in the closing days of this year¹s elections the Republicans appear to be surging. If this is so, it is because most of the undecided voters this year were those who usually vote Republican, and they are coming home to vote for their party on Election Day.

What does this analysis do for one's understanding? Attributing causation to some voters "coming home" to their historical party affiliation is not very useful, especially in this election where putative shifts in party affiliation in the past 2 years seem to be a highly controversial aspect of the polls themselves. Why were normally GOP voters disaffected in the first place? - have those factors changed? If they were so disaffected, why are they "coming home" now instead of not voting at all? After all, "not voting" is what many pollsters and media had emphatically predicted for these putatively disaffected voters. Why does that prediction seem to be failing? For example, some fiscally conservative voters were supposedly disaffected by a Republican Congress spending too much. Have those voters suddenly realized that Congress has not been spending so much after all? I don't think so. Were they really so disaffected in the first place? Attributing causation to historical party affiliation is accounting or history, not causation - and it certainly does nothing to help one make predictions even one day in advance.

Posted 8:05 AM by Robert

A Likely Slide Towards the GOP From Now To Tuesday

I think there is a very good chance that undecided voters will break disproportionately towards the GOP in this race - especially in Congressional races. By common admission, the putative appeal of the Democrats is limited to essentially one issue: Discontent with progress in Iraq. It is worth noting that that discontent has not been enough to beach Senator Lieberman in his deep blue state, but such is supposedly the Democratic advantage.

But problems in Iraq have been absolutely pounded by the media for a long time now. The information is all out, and has been force-fed for weeks to virtually every voter. Anyone who is going to make a decision to vote one way or the other on the basis of that issue has almost certainly done so already. The rest of the major issues favor the GOP: nearly historic low unemployment, historic stock market highs, stabilized low interest rates, historic high home ownership rates, declining gas prices. Then, of course, there is Karl Rove's famous "get-out-the-vote" machine, for which the Democrats have no real counterpart.

I therefore see the race likely sliding towards the GOP in the next three days, even as the mainstream media proclaim that the Democrats are "taking new territory" and "opening new fronts." This race has some dynamics similar to those of the build-up to the 2004 Democratic Convention: The media played Kerry up prior to the Convention, just as the media have saturated the political marketplace with pro-Democratic Iraq negativism this time around. The result in 2004 was that the Democratic Convention itself could produce little or no "bounce" - in fact, Kerry may have experienced a "negative bounce" from his own Convention. Similarly, most new information and considerations entering the campaign and voters' thinking in the next 3 days will probably of necessity favor the GOP because the Iraq issue has done all it can do already.

The first signs of such a GOP slide may already be evident, as in this article from the Washington Post that purports to sound a death knell for the GOP's election prospects, but contains this overlooked pearl:

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows some narrowing in the Democratic advantage in House races. The survey gives the Democrats a six-percentage-point lead nationally among likely voters asked which party they prefer for Congress. It was 14 points two weeks ago, but this remains a larger advantage than they have had in recent midterm elections.

Omitted from the WP "analysis" is the historical fact that when the GOP trails in the generic ballot by 5% or less, the GOP tends to gain seats in the House. So can 6% easilly correspond to a likely Democratic sweep? Now we are, admittedly, well past the point in the campaign where the focus should be on the generic ballot in calling individual races. But this is a very troubling sign for what is likely to happen among late deciders. Then there is this curious development from Rhode Island:

Mason-Dixon 10/31 - 11/01 Chafee +1.0

Reuters/Zogby 10/24 - 10/31 Whitehouse +14.0

That's quite a slide towards the GOP in a few late days - at least in the smallest state.

This election may yet prove to be a GOP disaster. But I don't think that is the most likely outcome. Not at all.

MORE (from DRUDGE): PEW: Republicans Cut Democratic Lead in Campaign's Final Days... ("A nationwide Pew Research Center survey finds voting intentions shifting in the direction of Republican congressional candidates in the final days of the 2006 midterm campaign.") Pew finds the generic ballot gap to have narrowed to an almost statistically insignificant 4%.

STILL MORE: The above analysis assumes that the public polls are correct - or at least as correct as they usually are. However, I personally think the polls are skewed much more in this race by erroneous sampling and bad likely voter models than usual.

Here are some reasons why I think the polls may be seriously wrong:

Most of the public polls are assuming that GOP party affiliation dropped between 5% to 12% since 2004. Maybe that's true, but if it is its a historic first. There is also a now-hugely disproportionate GOP/conservative "hang up" reaction to pollsters, which is likely resulting in undercounted conservatives.

Then there is what to me seems the bizarre assumption that seems to be built into the pollsters' "turnout models" that Democrats are "enthusiatic." For example, I live in one of the most Democratic neighborhoods in Los Angeles. But I have seen almost no new Democratic bumper stickers or yard signs. Ditto for other pro-Dem neighborhoods, such as Beverly Hills. But in GOP neighborhoods I am told there are lots of GOP yard signs out, and personal anecdote seems to bear that out. Cars owned by Dems sprouted lots of Kerry/Edwards bumper stickers in 2004. (For a while GOP cars have had very few bumper stickers, so this is not a measure of any shift in GOP interest). Then there are the multiple reports suggesting that African Americans (a huge chunk of the Dem base) are likely to sit this one out, and that jewish Americans (a highly important part of the Dem base) are deeply conflicted. What does that leave for a generally "impassioned" Dem base? Something is deeply wrong with this assumption.

Similarly, I think assumptions that conservatives (especially Christians) are going to sit this one out are nonsense. For God's sake, the replacement GOP candidate in Foley's own district is now running dead even with the Dem. And the GOP get-out-the-vote effort is clearly way ahead of the Dems. There there is the big lead the GOP is seeing in early voting - which suggests that GOP enthusiasm and organization is better than that of the Dems.

And I think the Kerry "study hard or end up in Iraq" flap is a much bigger deal than the media want to admit. Kerry has largely derailed a main Dem approach: Try to get voters to believe that a conclusion that things are not going well in Iraq is the same as the incorrect conclusion that Dems would do better. By being such an obvious idiot and speaking his mind (even as he unconvincingly tries to argue that he "flubbed the joke"), Kerry has single handedly refocused that decision in a way highly unfavorable to the Dems - and that's the Dem's one issue in this race.

Other signs that the polls are off-base: the Michigan Senate race is suddenly competitive, but was previously thought to be a Dem certainty, NJ is competitive, all of the GOP congressional reps in CT are leading now, and this squib from Dick Morris: Among independents, the percent that plan to vote Republican has risen from 15 percent on Sept. 22 to 23 percent on Oct. 11 to 26 percent on Oct. 24. While independents are still voting for more Democrats, it’s only by 38-26 compared with 38-15 last month. "Independents are turning to the Republican Party while Republican base voters are leaving it?" That poll is way out of wack somewhere - and I don't think it's the part about the independents.

People who know more than I are not ascribing a lot of effect to the factors listed above. But they seem important to me. Tuesday will tell.

It is, in fact, quite possible to view the current polling data as much more consistent with a Democratic disaster than a Republican one.

AND STILL MORE: (E-mailed by a friend quoting an unknown source):

On the Right, Republicans can’t stand the pollsters, who are blamed for their constant push-polls on behalf of the Left. Their predictable reaction is to avoid pollsters like the bird flu that never quite met the media hype. Today you would almost have to waterboard a lot of conservatives, one by one, to get them to talk to pollsters. You can’t get a random sample if one of your target groups won’t answer. So the data will be wildly skewed.

Indeed, I wonder if a declining interest in this election among Democrats might create an illusion of an increase in Democratic likely-voter "passion" if the only Democrats who will answer pollsters' calls now are the party's wing nuts - since the wing nuts presumably will talk to the pollsters and all say they plan to vote and always have voted. Just a thought.

AND YET MORE: McIntyre and Kaus are on the scent. No surprise there. Latest USA Today/Gallup: Dems +7. That's three generic ballot polls that show dramatic slides towards the GOP. My guess is that the slide will continue and accelerate.

LOTS MORE GOOD THINGS: From Minuteman Maguire.

THE LATEST FROM DRUDGE: Rahm Emmanuel on Republican upswing in the polls: 'This is making me nervous'...'I don't know what to make of it'... Well, Rahm, do you think maybe it has something to do with having too many mainstream media friends who maybe made you peak too soon the way they stole the bounce and momentum from your 2004 convention? Just asking!

BRITISH PRECEDENT? Since june, GayPatriotWest has been expecting a late convergence of the electorate towards the incumbent Republicans based on analogies with the 1992 British election.

GayPatriotWest blogs from West Hollywood, an even more Democratic area than my own Los Feliz, and confirms by e-mail the nearly complete absence of "Angelides" yard signs in his environs.

Here in California the ballot is led by the race for governor - a race in which political insiders tell me Arnold may well be leading by more than twenty points (not the smaller numbers in the public polls). Arnold has also constructed what is said to be a get-out-the-vote machine that makes Rove's models seem obsolete and underfunded. The effects of Arnold's efforts in California could be spectacular - although that is far from guaranteed. In that regard, it's worth remembering that on Tuesday even the race for the US Senate in California will be down ballot. Nothing is impossible, but nothing has been made public that proves that Arnold's lead or machine are as big or powerful as they are rumored to be.

Posted 9:26 AM by Robert

Listening To Bill

Bill Clinton says this about what he characterizes as the Republican strategy for this November:

The Republican strategy is weak, he said. "Let’s forget about global warming and talk about flag burning and gay marriage,” Clinton said. “I don’t know how long you can milk that old cow.”

So Mr. Clinton wants the Democrats to campaign and talk about issues such as global warming, although he personally never bothered to ask the Senate to ratify the Kyoto Accord after (July 25, 1997) the U.S. Senate sent then President Clinton the Byrd/Hagel Resolution condemning the Kyoto Accord by a vote of 95 to 0, with Senator Kerry (for example) voting with the majority against the Accord.

In the mean time, Howard Dean, the New York Times and lots of others on the left are running around condeming the New York Court of Appeals for refusing to impose judicially-mandated gay marriage on that state - thereby making it crystal clear that many Democrats would like to install federal judges who will impose judicially-mandated gay marriage. Republicans are bringing all that up. But Mr. Clinton says that Democratic candidates shouldn't talk about any of that because he doesn't "know how long you can milk that old cow."

Bill Clinton has a great record of electing Democrats to Congress, one that has been said warrants him a prominent statue in the lobby of the Republican Party headquarters. In 1992 he was elected with actual net losses for Congressional Democrats. Then, in 1994, he helped the Democrats lose both houses of Congress - from which they have never really recovered, despite picking up a few seats here in 1996. If they listen to him this year, they'll surely extend that pattern.

Frankly, I hadn't fully realized just how bad the Democratic position is going into the fall elections until Bill Clinton made it so clear.

Posted 9:26 PM by Robert

The Pellicano Case And The New York Times Just Keep Getting Stranger

From the New York Times:

What has not been publicly disclosed are the details of the single recording in the government's possession that it says is an illegal wiretap. According to written summaries of F.B.I. interviews seen by The New York Times, the recording concerns events that led to the divorce of a Los Angeles billionaire, Alec E. Gores, from his wife, Lisa A. Gores, in 2001.

If the government fails to crack Mr. Pellicano's passwords and turn up other direct evidence of wiretaps, that means the prosecution's star witnesses could be forced to make their painful private drama public.

Mr. Gores, principal of the private equity firm Gores Technology Group, admitted hiring Mr. Pellicano in 2000 to investigate his suspicions that his wife was cheating on him with his younger brother, Thomas T. Gores, another billionaire investor, according to summaries of F.B.I. interviews with all three family members. (A third brother, Sam Gores, runs the Paradigm talent agency.)

Mr. Pellicano installed wiretaps on both Lisa and Tom Gores's telephones, the summaries show, and confirmed Alec Gores's suspicions that the two had become inappropriately involved. Alec Gores admitted to the F.B.I. that he listened to Mr. Pellicano's wiretaps on several occasions, the summaries show. Alec Gores has not been charged, and has been assured he is only a witness in the case, said his lawyer, Louis Miller, who is also known as Skip.

So, let's see. A man (who happens to have made a billion dollars or so for himself) hires Anthony Pellicano to bug the telephones of his wife and brother - a serious and straightforward felony. He listens to the recordings. He pays Mr. Pellicano lots of money. And he has not been charged, and has been assured he is only a witness in the case?!

Boy is that weird. But there is no indication whatsoever that the New York Times thinks it's weird, or that they've asked Skip Miller or anyone else why Mr. Gores, a man who according to the Times admits that he hired and paid Mr. Pellicano to commit serious felonies, has been "assured" - apparently by the same prosecutors who have indicted Terry Christensen for allegedly doing exactly what Mr. Gores admits he did - that he is only a witness.

And if the Times doesn't find any of that worth asking about, how about this:

Why is billionaire Alec Gores relying on Skip Miller for legal advice in this case? Skip Miller is a highly competent and aggressive attorney who as late as 1994 was still claiming "white collar criminal defense" as a practice specialty. But the most recent description of Mr. Miller's practice provided by the firm he recently left to Meritas (now deleted from the web, but still available in cached form) does not even mention criminal defense as an area of Mr. Miller's practice at all:

His practice is varied and diverse and includes antitrust, securities, employment, energy, defamation/First Amendment, entertainment (motion pictures, television and music), copyright, toxic tort, civil rights, construction, real estate, inverse condemnation and other areas of the law.

Miller defended the City of Los Angeles in a series of cases arising from the operations of the LAPD including: the Rodney King civil rights action; First Amendment litigation brought by the then-Assistant Chief of Police; a dozen lawsuits brought against the Mayor, City Council members, Police Commissioners and City Attorneys arising from the LAPD's Special Investigation Section, culminating in two victories (1996 and 2000) in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals; a $100 million inverse condemnation/civil rights case brought by Southern Pacific Railroad; and has handled energy litigation for private and publicly-owned utilities including the City's Department of Water and Power.

Clients from all walks regularly seek out Mr. Miller's services including artists and actors such as Rod Stewart, Elton John, Nick Nolte, Bob Dylan and a member of the Eagles, as well as domestic and foreign entertainment companies and prominent local politicians including the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors. His practice also includes representing the investors who put a billion dollars into Internet incubator Indealab; winning a $7 million judgment against musician Michael Jackson in a four-month jury trial in Santa Maria; defending the City of Riverside in the nationally prominent Tyisha Miller civil rights case; prosecuting trade secret/unfair competition for the maker of 7 Jeans and on behalf of an investment bank and for a manufacturing conglomerate; and representing the Patron Tequila brand in a dispute with Seagram.

Other prominent cases handled by Miller include prevailing on behalf of a director of Executive Life Insurance Co. after a three-month trial in a multi-billion dollar claim arising from the largest insurance failure in California history; winning sexual harassment trials on behalf of the City of Pasadena and Rose Bowl and a Los Angeles City Council member and the City of Los Angeles; prevailing on behalf of the City of Anaheim in a $50 million dispute with its telecom provider; prevailing in the Ninth Circuit and in two district courts in a series of civil rights cases brought against the City of Beverly Hills and its Mayor, Chief of Police and Councilmembers; defending Beverly Hills against toxic tort claims in connection with Beverly Hills High School; and defending inverse condemnation and contractual disputes against the cities of Carson and Monterey Park.

Did the reader detect anything of a criminal defense nature in any of that? I don't think so. Maybe it's in that "other areas of law." Is that what Mr. Gores is paying for in a case in which the New York Times says he admits he hired Mr. Pellicano to commit felonies on his behalf? Is there some reason why Mr. Gores isn't looking for advice mostly to someone with more criminal defense experience - and having that special someone speak on his behalf to outfits like the New York Times? It's not as though Mr. Gores can't afford whoever he likes.

Posted 8:59 AM by Robert

Contra 1994 V: Democrats Don't Do Libraries Anymore?

James Taranto comments:

E.J. Dionne, a liberal Washington Post columnist, is unhappy about last week's California election results. No, not the Republican victory in the special House election (though he's none too pleased with that), but the defeat of a pair of ballot measures (emphasis his):

The truly sobering news for liberals was in the statewide voting. Proposition 82, the ballot measure that would have guaranteed access to preschool for all of California's 4-year-olds, went down to resounding defeat, 61 to 39 percent.

Not only that, voters also rejected a $600 million bond measure for the state's libraries. A vote against libraries? Yes, the bonds went down 53 to 47 percent.

And bear in mind that these spending measures appeared on a primary ballot at a time when Democrats were holding a fierce contest for their gubernatorial nomination, while Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger faced only token Republican opposition. There were roughly 500,000 more Democratic than Republican primary votes--meaning that a significant number of Democrats voted against both propositions.

Progressives can find plenty of alibis. Instead they need to deal with the sources of voter skepticism about public spending.

... [T]he column got us to thinking about broader trends that may be feeding public skepticism about government.

It has been widely noted that congressional Republicans have failed to live up to their billing as the party of small government, especially since George W. Bush became president. ....

In sum: Republicans favor small government but embrace big government when they have the power to control it. Democrats favor big government but insist that it can work only when they have the power to control it. ...

Taranto makes a lot of sense, of course. But I think the observations in my previous post in this series regarding Prop 82 apply equally well to the failure of Prop 81 (the library bond measure): Republicans (at least those out of government) are less enthusiastic about more debt and public spending on "small government" grounds, preferring such things to be handled more by private means. And perhaps, as Dionne argues, liberals (or "progressives") ought to favor more library spending on principle or political consistency grounds. But there is good reason to think that relatively fewer Democrats care about or have children now (Taranto has, of course, noted this fact in other contexts), and children would be the main users of those libraries, as USA Today reports:

In Seattle, there are nearly 45% more dogs than children. In Salt Lake City, there are nearly 19% more kids than dogs. ... It's not that people in a progressive city such as Seattle are so much fonder of dogs than are people in a conservative city such as Salt Lake City. It's that progressives are so much less likely to have children.

It's a pattern found throughout the world, and it augers a far more conservative future — one in which patriarchy and other traditional values make a comeback, if only by default. Childlessness and small families are increasingly the norm today among progressive secularists. As a consequence, an increasing share of all children born into the world are descended from a share of the population whose conservative values have led them to raise large families.

The news is even worse for Mr. Dionne and his pro-library funding sympathies because some studies have found that the children of liberals read less than children of conservatives, with the liberal children playing more computer games and watching more television than their conservative counterparts. Worse, some studies also suggest that children who play computer games to excess are more disposed to violence than their parents - with the effect on the children apparently detectable in their brains.

Posted 10:14 PM by Robert

A South American Analogue To Zarqawi and Post-Insurgency Iraq?

In 1990 Peru was being savaged by its own "insurgency." That "insurgency" took the form of the neo-Maoist terrorist organization called "Shining Path" - which was at the time busy demolishing as much of Peru's infrastructure and urban fabric, and killing as many middle-class Peruvians, as it could manage. The Shining Path meant by such methods to bring down the reasonably democratic government of Peru. The parallels with Iraq, at least on the surface, are clear.

Alberto Fujimori, a son of Japanese immigrants, was an academic and university president when he scored a surprise victory over novelist Mario Vargas Lhosa and became Peru's president. Fujimori has said that Peru was "an interesting challenge": Cocaine was a $1 billion a year export, inflation was at 7,500 percent and the use of violence as a political tool by the Shining Path and MRTA tore Peru up pretty thoroughly and had come close to tearing it completely apart into social chaos. The Shining Path is believed to have killed more than 10,000 people. In some respects Peru was worse off than Iraq is today.

Nobody seems to dispute that Alberto Fujimori's government extinguished the Shining Path - although there are those who claim the biggest steps were accomplished by "ordinary police work" and not the thuggish, admittedly uber-violent, and perhaps murderous methods of Vladimir Montesinos. Montesinos was Fujimori's de facto head of Peruvian security (MRTA) who was ultimately disgraced and found to have been highly corrupt. Whatever the ways and means, most observers agree that the biggest step in terminating the Shining Path was the celebrated capture of its founder Abimael Guzman - himself a murderous academic who directed and had essentially created the Shining Path.

The death of Zarqawi is not a perfect analogue to the capture of Guzman. For one thing, the Shining Path was essentially the only "insurgency" challenging the Peruvian state. There was no good replacement for Guzman. Some have argued that Zarqawi will simply be replaced as head of al Qaida in Iraq, and his war will go on. But as far as I can see, such speculation is not supported by any real evidence one way or the other. Moreover, there have been reports that Zarqawi's particular ultra-violent and promiscuous form of insurgency was by no means favored by his al Qaida generally. It certainly rankled lots of fellow Arabs - including Jordanians - who otherwise might have been inclined to look the other way. So Zarqawi's vision may have been rather personal, and (if that is so) eliminating Zarqawi may be a better analogue to capturing Guzman than at first meets the eye.

Two documentaries have recently been created about Fujimori's confrontation with Guzman and his Shining Path: The Fall of Fujimori and State of Fear. The Fall of Fujimori shows some real efforts at balance by its maker - although the maker's own beliefs do seem to show through (which is not all bad, since she's a nice person). And it's very well done in most respects, especially the interviews with Fujimori himself and his daughter and the use of archival film. In contrast, State of Fear is a ludicrous piece of agitprop and an attempt to equate current American anti-terrorism efforts with Peru's excesses under Fujimori. But the films are in agreement with the conclusions that taking a single man - Guzman - from the field made a huge difference in the course of the Peruvian anti-terrorist effort. Less comforting, they also both persuasively argue that after the Shining Path was in fact defeated the exceptional powers assumed by the Peruvian government were put to increasingly pernicious use.

Contrary to these film makers (especially the second), I do not believe there is much of a parallel with the US here. But there may be a very important parallel with respect to what we might expect from a post-insurgency Iraq, one forged in the smithy of counter-terrorism politics. That picture is not pretty at all. But at least one has to assume the extinction of the Iraq insurgency before having to contemplate the form of post-insurgency Iraq. In any event, Peru has today largely recovered.

UPDATE: Brett Stephens has some very interesting observations on how the nature of the insurgency may change, and some further information as to how Zarqawi had become estranged from many people one would think have to be on the side of a successful "insurgent" in Iraq.

Posted 7:41 AM by Robert

Dead Again III: Steve Forbes Gets One Right

Steve Forbes, writing in the Wall Street Journal:

The Net Neutrality lobbyists want Congress to pass innovation-stifling restrictions on what companies like Verizon and AT&T can do with the new high-speed broadband networks that these companies haven't even finished building yet.

These networks are the superhighways for transporting Internet content and services. They will also permit Verizon and AT&T to offer Internet-based cable TV programming in competition with the cable companies, which are already competing in telecom services. Slapping these networks with premature, unnecessary regulations would be an inexcusable barrier to the tradition of innovation at the heart of the Internet.

Phone companies are investing billions of dollars in network innovation. They need to earn a return on their investment. One logical way is to use a tiered pricing system that charges a premium price for premium services -- which means super-high-speed services that gobble extra bandwidth on the network. ...

This is the same concept as mail service. If ... you want [a] letter delivered without fail by 10 a.m. the next morning, you upgrade to FedEx and pay for the extra service you need.

Applying this principle to the Internet sounds like the free market at work to me. But the Net Neutralizers have responded with manufactured indignation, claiming that it's discrimination and somehow tramples on the egalitarian spirit of the Internet.

Surprisingly Google, E-Bay and other high-tech companies have become big supporters of this flavor of Net Neutrality; they supposedly fear discrimination from Internet providers. But they have no real evidence to back-up such fears. If problems do arise, then these can be dealt with specifically.

Passing Network Neutrality legislation would be a re-run of the disastrous Telecom Act of 1996 which forced telecom companies to provide network access to competitors at below market prices. That certainly put a chill on network innovation. After years of wasteful lawsuits and regulatory infighting, the network access monster has gone away. But it was a big factor in letting America slip into the high-tech Stone Age, with consumer broadband services lagging far behind what's available in countries like Japan or South Korea. ...

After all, what network operator would be silly enough to keep investing billions in network innovations if the fruits of its innovation had to be given away at below cost?

What network operator indeed?

For his sake, lets hope that Mr. Forbes is only trying to persuade Congress and the general public - and not the "net neutrality" supporters on the Blogosphere! Many of those people supported intellectual property theft supermarkets like Grokster - despite the obviously analogous argument: "What content creator is going to create lots of high quality, expensive content if the profit is to stripped off by file sharing web sites?"

The economic model the Net Neutralizers seem to posit is one in which expensive content and hardware networks can be supplied by a profitless system - or efficiently provided by a system that suppresses efficient returns to the providers, and quite possibly denies them any returns at all. And all of this is apparently supposed to be justified, supported and ultimately financed by the great, new, ever-increasing-returns-to-scale Paul Romerian goodies created through net-enabled activities like people watching purloined movies delivered almost for free from those Grokster-like Bit Torrent supermarkets? Sure, fellas. And no doubt Santa Claus will make up any shortfall. I just can't wait.

Why do the the arguments of the Net Neutralizers sound so much like nostalgia for the fever swamps of the late 1990's internet boom? Could it be that so many of the people writing the copy for the Net Neutralizers today are the same people (and their intellectual legatees) who fronted for the profitless 1990's boomers? Lawrence Lessig's bloviating, of course. But Paul Romer's own website today includes the giddy boast that he "was named one of America's 25 most influential people by Time magazine in 1997." Does Professor Romer have no awareness of what was going on in his immediate intellectual and financial vicinity at that time? Perhaps he should do a back-of-the-envelope calculation of how much investment was misdirected within, say, 10 miles of his current Stanford office during those years.

Could it be that so many of these Net Neutrality supporters also supported those who told us in the 1990's that "stickiness" and "hits" and the rest of the palaver of that busted era had replaced (or, better, "transcended") prosaic considerations such as "net revenue" and "cost of capital" as the variables de jour. Or could it be echos of the 1990's profitless boomers telling the world such things, and that anyone who didn't agree with such things, that "you just don't get it," with a manufactured indignation uneasily similar to the tone Mr. Forbes correctly identifies in the Net Neutralizers today?

I think it's something like that.

Posted 11:04 PM by Robert

Dead Again II: Tecer Camino Extraño

Here is a paper purporting to describe a "third way" in the net neutrality debate. I don't agree with the approach of this paper, or even that the approach it sketches is actually a "third way" at all. But the approach of this paper is vastly more sophisticated than the Lessig approach - and the paper points that out as politely as possible. And at least the incentive and market power economics set out in this paper are not cartoons. The "Third Way" is sketched this way:

In short, we propose a three-part, "third-way" solution:

• Congress should require broadband providers to state their broadband access and usage policies in clear terms. ... The FCC should monitor such behavior and take action against those firms that fail to comply with them. In addition, any firm selling "broadband Internet access" must make available a basic and growing level of open, unmanaged Internet access. Firms that do not meet this FCC-defined requirement would be prohibited from calling any of their services "broadband."

• In order to ensure that broadband providers do not abuse their market power, Congress should charge the FCC with the responsibility of overseeing the use of discriminatory access arrangements to make sure that any such arrangements do not harm competition (and consumers). ...

• Congress should provide financial incentives to companies investing in broadband networks (allowing first-year expensing of broadband investments and exempting broadband services from federal, state, and local taxation), but only if broadband providers provide a best-efforts, open Internet data pipe to their customers with average speeds at least as fast as the evolving FCC definition.

The "full disclosure" requirements are fairly innocuous, but also seem fairly irrelevant. The actual rates and access policies of internet providers are easily determined. So the extra FCC involvement seems to add little. The focus on "broadband" as a kind of magic word borders on the childish.

That some internet providers hold market power does create its own issues. Those issues are the exact same issues raised all the time in antitrust law. There is no clear reason why supplemental antitrust laws need to be created here, especially since the economic dynamics of the internet are at the moment so protean and ill-understood.

Finally, the whole "special incentive" aspect of this proposal seems downright perverse. Congress and the FCC are not better able to determine the needs of the internet, and the economy's needs for internet services (broadband or otherwise), than is the market. This is a huge step backwards - and anything but a "Third Way."

But perhaps the most disturbing aspect of this "Third Way" is the complete absence of any considerations pertaining to the regulatory capture issues that would be raised by the scheme itself. It's all very nice to say that the FCC (or any agency) will do this or that nice thing to the people and firms it regulates. But history shows that's not how things often work out in practice. Just what are the likely regulatory (and lobbying!) incentives that might be created by a scheme that couples big federal financial give-aways with lots of authority by a (captured) FCC to exclude competitors in the market it was supposed to facilitate? One shudders to imagine. But one shutters more to realize that the authors of this "Third Way" haven't even bothered to try to imagine - or at least to write about it here. Has the history of FCC protected competition been better than the competitive history of the unregulated internet? I don't think so.

UPDATE: IP Central points out Tom Hazlett's article The Wireless Craze, the Unlimited Bandwidth Myth, the Spectrum Auction Faux Pas, and the Punchline to Ronald Coase's "Bigt Joke" (2001), which details the dreary history of the FCC's success in supressing new technologies (pp. 405-451).

Posted 9:02 AM by Robert

Catching Some Z's

Ding, dong the Z-man is dead! And it is right and meet and just to celebrate June 7, the day after D-Day, as Z-Day.

But June 7 was not just the day Abu Musab al Zarqawi went to claim his virgins (or his grapes - the "virgins" who the Koran supposedly promises await Islamic martyrs in paradise may just be ''white raisins'') and the Iraqi government moved towards completion with the key appointments of two apparently competent and appropriate ministers. It is also the day on which Allied and Iraqi forces moved to seize well over a dozen insurgent sites, sites said to have been monitored for weeks and disclosed to the Allies and Iraqis by the same sources that fingered the Z-Man. The seizure of these sites is said to have yielded a "treasure trove" of intelligence pertaining to the insurgency.

Al Qaida is said to have a "cellular" structure - meaning that the location of, and other information pertaining to, its components is supposed to be very closely held. Members of each component generally are not supposed to possess information pertaining to other components. Yet the information source who turned in al Zarqawi apparently had lots of information about a large number of components. All that suggests that the intelligence source within the Zarqawi camp was very highly placed indeed.

How high? Well, on June 7 Strategy Page ran this curious and fairly amazing item (thanks to Saint Onge for drawing my attention):

Zarqawi Scheduled for Martyrdom

June 7, 2006: The relationship between terrorist leader Abu Musab al Zarqawi and and the mainline al Qaeda leadership continues to deteriorate. Zarqawi's recent audio messages have not only attacked the U.S. and the Shia-dominated government in Iraq, but also Iran. He's even claiming that the U.S., Iran, and Shia in general, are in cahoots to destroy Islam. He has also called for continued attacks against Shia.

Except for his verbal attacks on the U.S. and the Iraqi government, he is almost totally distanced himself from the central leadership. Other al Qaeda leaders have been trying to down play anti-Iranian and anti-Shia rhetoric, and have been strongly discouraging attacks on civilians.

Given that Zarqawi has become a loose cannon and that his actions are handicapping Al Qaeda's efforts, it seems reasonable to expect that an accident may befall him at some point in the near future. If handled right it can be made to look like he went out in a blaze of glory fighting American troops or that he was foully murdered. Either way, al Qaeda gets rid of a problem and gains another "martyr."

Saint Onge points out that the timing of this post is remarkable, which it is if the post went up before reports of the hit appeared.

Regardless of when the post went up, it's contents are surely remarkable (if they are correct) regardless of when the post went up. Could it be that someone high up in al Qaida itself turned in al Zarqawi and identified those insurgent sites?

Had al Zarqawi become so inconvenient that al Qaida HQ decided it was time for the Allies to catch the Big Z Man, or for him to be catching the Big Z's?

Just asking!

Posted 10:37 PM by Robert

Dead Again

It is an old Chinese proverb of great carrying power that "It is better to start poorly and finish well." The personal history of Professor Lawrence Lessig suggests that he has not read it.

After a very fast start followed by lots of increasingly ill deserved adulation, Professor Lessig seems in recent years to have formed an absolute determination to come down hard on the wrong side of every hot dispute in which he takes an interest concerning intellectual property law, and especially the internet. He has praised the wisdom of copyright pirate enablers such as Grokster, employing arguments bordering on ludicrous that were quite properly and unceremoniously discarded by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court's rejection of his ludicrous assault on the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act was correct and thorough and unimpressed and ultimately distinctly unkind (his main argument was dismissed in a curt footnote). Sadly, one could go on for a bit with Professor Lessig's recent missteps.

Now there is a new dead end of Lawrence Lessig: Congressionally mandated "network neutrality." Little can legitimately be said in favor of this effort to freeze the internet into a form that it happens to have (or may have had) at the moment or in the recent past, although the reader is invited to read Professor Lessig's linked effort to do just that. There is nothing sacred about that current form. There is nothing less destructive and anti-freemarket about federally mandated internet rate structures proposed by Professor Lessig than there was about the federally mandated railroad and trucking rates that hobbled the nation's economy for decades. The correct (and wealth creating) principle under which the internet has developed is simple: Minimal regulation. The legislation proposed by Professor Lessig and Representative Markey would grossly violate that principle for no apparent benefit.

There is one positive aspect to this new camino extraño down which Professor Lessig proposes to drag the internet: At least he is presenting his position to the legislature instead of arguing in the courts that his radical (and erroneous) approach is already dictated by the Constitution or existing statute, as he did in his prior efforts noted above. But so far Congress has wisely been as unimpressed with Professor Lessig as the Supreme Court was in his earlier efforts. By a lopsided vote of 321 to 101 the House today passed a bill that rejects mandated network neutrality, and does nothing to prevent the phone and cable providers from charging Internet content providers a premium for carrying services like video offerings that could rival those of the telecom companies – and not including the Markey amendment. One hopes the Senate has as much sense as the House on this topic.

I could write quite a bit more about the irrationality of mandated network neutrality. But an article on the topic aptly titled The Web's Worst New Idea does a pretty thorough demolition job on the pretensions advanced by Professor Lessig. As the article points out:

Increasingly, and with the backing both of the Moveon.org crowd and "Don't Be Evil" Google, a movement is afoot to give these entitlements the force of law. Congressman Ed Markey has introduced a bill to "save the Internet" by codifying Net neutrality principles in law. The FCC would be charged with enforcing "non-discrimination" and "openness" rules.

Does such FCC regulation sound like the spirit of the internet the reader has known? Of course not. That’s the old “regulated industry” model of the communications industry that the internet rejects and always has rejected. Once again, Professor Lessig pretends to the role of the visionary (even the revolutionary), while his actions and positions are those of a tired reactionary.

Posted 8:56 PM by Robert

Contra 1994 IV: Childless, Depressed Democrats?

The 50th Congressional District did not hold all of the interest in yesterday’s elections. Actor Rob Reiner's ballot initiative - Proposition 82 - to tax the "rich" (those earning more than $400,000 per year) to pay for universal preschool for four-year-olds was defeated yesterday in California by 61% to 39% - carrying only three out of 58 counties in the entire state. Why the big defeat?

Writing for Opinion Journal’s subscriber e-mail service Political Diary, John Fund explains:

Liberals like philanthropist Eli Broad and the Los Angeles Times editorial board turned against the measure when they realized their goal of universal pre-K coverage had been hijacked by the unions. Democrat Senate President Don Perata repudiated his early support of the idea, saying he couldn't justify subsidizing preschool for parents already paying for it. Even more significantly, parents with kids in pre-K, 80% of whom attend private facilities, realized the Reiner initiative represented a takeover of pre-K by the existing public school monopoly. While the initiative ostensibly would have offered parents a choice between public and private providers, the actual options available for the subsidies would have been determined by government education officials.

That's fine as far as it goes. But California voters have also rejected school vouchers more than once, even (perhaps especially) where the vouchers provided lots of real school choice. Rejecting school vouchers delivers every child whose parents cannot afford private education into the hands of those same school unions. So why the different result now? The dramatic fall of Proposition 82 is even more curious given the passage in 2004 by 53.7% to 46.3% of Proposition 63:

Should a 1% tax on taxable personal income above $1 million to fund expanded health services for mentally ill children, adults, seniors be established?

Why were Californians willing to soak the "rich" to permit the state to fund mental health services for "everyone" but not to provide services for pre-school children? It would be interesting to see a far more detailed breakdown of how voters reacted to Propositions 63 and 82 than I have seen. But in the mean time, one might ask the preliminary question: How would Propositions 63 and 82 be expected to appeal to core Democratic interest groups and constituencies?

It seems to make sense that Proposition 63 would naturally have a broad base of support. Many mental health services are often not included in medical insurance coverage. But mental health services might at least in principle be used and/or needed by anyone - although one's estimate of the likelihood that one will personally need them is likely strongly affected by one's general world view. Many more people - including family members - might see themselves as possibly or actually required to pay for such services for other people if the need arose. So its not too hard to see Proposition 63 appealing to a lot of self interest, especially of a broad class of people of modest means. Indeed, it's not hard to imagine that more Democrats than Republicans were drawn to this proposition by prospective or actual personal need, since some polling results indicate that Democrats are more prone to depression and less happy than Republicans, as suggested by this chart:



Republicans are happiest even when a Democrat is in the White House. They’re also happier regardless of income. The rich are happier than the poor, and church goers (who skew Republican, of course) are also quite happy. So there appears to be lots of room for Democrats to see themselves as potentially or actually in need of mental health services.

But what about Proposition 82? Here the most natural base of support is parents and prospective parents of pre-school children. In general, Republicans do not favor programs of the type Proposition 82 sought to create. But how many parents and prospective parents of pre-school children are Democrats? Married women generally lean Republican. Unmarried mothers doubtless lean Democrat, but by definition there is no husband to vote along side the mother.

And consider some rather substantial mostly Democratic groups: Unwed fathers and many deliberately childless people, including most homosexuals. Why would such people enthusiastically support a proposition that would provide services they will never use and that would not relieve them of any likely financial burden?

Is it possible that Proposition 82 failed so miserably because the Democratic Party now includes so few people that care about children?

Posted 4:52 PM by Robert

Contra 1994 III: Counting Voters Who Weren't There

Republican Brian P. Bilbray and Democrat Francine Busby were not the only candidates seeking to represent California's 5oth Congressional District. Independent William Griffith and Libertarian Paul King also sought that honor. Yesterday, 1.53% of that District's voters (1,875 voters) favored Mr. King and 3.67% (4,492 voters) favored Mr. Griffith.

It is a notoriously dangerous game to assume that if a multiparty election were winnowed down to only two candidates, voters for the minority candidates would vote in any particular fashion (or vote at all). That doesn't stop some people from doing exactly that, as Ralph Nader discovered when Al Gore's supporters accused Mr. Nader of stealing what might have been Mr. Gore's margin of victory in Florida in 2000.

But it seems to me that if one is looking to the 50th District for indications of whether the Democratic ideas and principles (as contrasted to actual human candidates) have gained in popularity nationally since 2004, it is perfectly legitimate to look at the ideas and principles favored by the minority candidates and ask: Do these ideas and principles of such minority candidates in general resemble more those of the Republicans or the Democrats nationally?

Mr. King is a Libertarian. While some ideas and principles advanced by Libertarians resemble those of the some Democrats, such as the right to use the drugs of one's choice and perhaps to abortion - as a consequence of one's right to control one's own body, although Libertarians deeming a fetus to already be an individual may not favor abortion rights at all. But on the whole, Libertarian ideas and principles are generally seen as more resembling those favored by national Republicans. That suggests that Mr. King's 1.53% does not represent much (probably no) increase favor for Democratic ideas and principles.

What about the Independent Mr. Griffith's 3.67%? Well, Mr. Griffith's campaign website has this to say about his ideas and principles:

Immigration: NO AMNESTY. NO GUEST WORKERS. NO EXCEPTIONS.

Taxation: … I pledge to work to repeal Amendment XVI and the Federal income tax (AND the so-called "inheritance tax"….

Budget: The budget and deficit are seriously out of whack. .… The fiscal woes of our country can all be traced to gargantuan federal spending.

The United Nations: GET US OUT!

Gun Control: … I am unalterably opposed to "gun control legislation" in any of its insidious forms….

Abortion: I oppose Roe v. Wade. I am unalterably opposed to abortion as a birth-control method. …

Environment: We need to CONSERVE our environment. … [W]e ought to be doing all we can - without infringing on property rights, without crippling business - to ensure a healthy environment for our children, and for THEIR children. … I will not classify myself as an "environmentalist" … but I WILL go on record as being extremely concerned about conservation, and preservation. I am in favor of reducing, if not eliminating, dependence … on fossil fuels - and of developing naturally renewable energy sources. I am a proponent of nuclear (pronounced NU-klee-ar) power. I will seek to advance research and development of nuclear fusion, solar power, wind power, hydroelectric power.

Mr. Griffith also has things to say about “Executive and Judicial Cowboying,” Technology” and “Elections,” which the reader can peruse for herself. But to my eye, it is very difficult to see in anything offered by Mr. Griffith a movement towards anything Democratic. With some quibbles, the drift seems to be quite the opposite. For example, Mr. Griffith deplores the federal budget deficit - a position often taken by Democrats. But he is also clear that he would not support reducing that deficit by increasing taxes - only by reducing spending. In fact, he wants to eliminate the income tax completely. None of that seems to be a shift to the left from where the country is now, but rather to the right (if one forces things into a one-dimensional model).

According to the California Secretary of State, Mr. Bilbray enjoyed a margin of 3.87% over Ms. Busby, prior to accounting for late arriving absentee ballots. It is by no means clear that voters favoring Mr. King or Griffith would have voted for either of the main party candidates if the minority candidates hadn't been in the race.

But it also seems that those 5.2% of voters who favored minority candidates in the 50th District exercised their choice in favor of people having ideas and principles a good deal more akin to those of the Republicans than the Democrats. In other words, by a margin of 9.07% (pre-absentee ballots), the voters of the 50th District seem more unhappy with Democratic ideas and principles than they are with those of the Republicans. That seems significant in terms of viewing the 50th as a "bellwether" of the November elections, as the Democrats and mainstream media - and some others - have been insisting for months.

Posted 8:50 AM by Robert

Contra 1994 II: Bring Out Your Not-Quite-Dead Democratic Hopes!

Hopes of Democrats to take at least one house of Congress in November are not quite dead. Much could happen between now and November. But yesterday’s election results suggest that, like Monty Python's Cartman, practical political analysts shouldn't be too finicky about the difference between the current state of such hopes and actual death.

Yesterday's special House election to fill the San Diego area seat once occupied by corrupt and disgraced Randy "Duke" Cunningham was by far the most-watched election nationally. The victory of Republican Brian Bilbray over Democrat Francine Busby is being widely described as "narrow," in a "solidly Republican district," and marred by Busby's "verbal gaffe" (that illegal immigrants needed no papers to vote) in the final days of the campaign that supposedly damaged her candidacy. But Mr. Bilbray was not an incumbent (an additional advantage Republicans will generally hold in November). He also overcame the Cunningham corruption scandal, meaning that the "Republicans are corrupt" message Democrats were hoping would bring them at least the House had scant effect even in a district in which the message was at its strongest. But most significant of all is this: Busby barely exceeded the percentage won by Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) in the 2004 presidential race. Busby's margin is nothing short of a disaster for Democrats' November hopes. It is also worth remembering that Democratic turnout may have been increased by the hotly contested California Democratic gubernatorial primary, although the tone of that campaign had recently turned so negative that Democratic turnout may have been tamped down a bit. The agony of the liberal Los Angeles Times over that primary and other Democratic statewide showings is summed up nicely in today's editorial:

The Democrats' shrill and shallow campaign ads may be off the air, but Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger embarks today on a statewide bus tour. Maybe the winner of Tuesday's Democratic gubernatorial primary can take a few days, a few hours — OK, a few minutes — to pause and consider how to articulate a more positive message about the state's future. The primary did little to boost the enthusiasm Democrats feel for their state candidates, and voters were also skeptical about two ballot measures to increase public spending on preschool and libraries.

"Shrill and shallow" pretty much sums up the nature of national Democratic efforts, too. But the mainstream media is still in the denial stage after yesterday's quasi-death, including the New York Times coverage of Tom Kean Jr.'s Republican nomination to challenge Democratic Sen. Robert Menendez in New Jersey. Even the Times had to grudgingly admit that early polls indicate "a tight race," although the coverage labors mightily to suggest that Mr. Kean has problems with the Republican base - while supplying no real evidence of such problems.

What is most striking about what happened in New Jersey yesterday is that the Republican candidate for the Senate in that liberal, pro-Democratic state is highly viable. Indeed, the Times reports that Mr. Kean is "attacking Mr. Menendez as a corrupt political boss with dubious character." Yet this is a year in which the mainstream media tell us corruption is supposed to be an issue working in favor of Democrats. And, of course, we are also told that this is a year ripe for a big Democratic win generally. Yet there were few signs of such a coming win in either California or New Jersey, states in which the signs should have been strongest.

If history is a guide, the November elections will bring some normal Democratic gains - midterm elections normally do favor the party not holding the White House - although the 2002 elections were an exception. And some strong individual Democratic candidates will probably chalk up special personal victories (CUSTOMER: Who's that, then? CART MASTER: I dunno. Must be a king. CUSTOMER: Why? CART MASTER: He hasn't got shit all over him.) But it's looking less and less like a Democratic year.