Daily Kos loves Mark Sanford

As of the afternoon today (June 24th), Daily Kos has 9 threads prominently featuring Mark Sanford's affair. I guess you'd expect that.

Daily Kos has a search feature like most web sites. Try searching on "Edwards affair" over the last year. I'm getting 36 hits, but most are not about John Edward's affair, they are about somebody else named Edwards, or just have the word affair in the text. The help instructions don't help on finding John AND Edwards AND affair in the same posts. - anybody know the trick?

Anyway, and no surprise to anyone, Daily Kos, while accusing Republicans of hypocrisy, is being hypocritical itself. One article posts:

John Edwards, a Democrat, had his political career effectively terminated when news of an affair came to light; a Republican can visit a prostitute wearing a diaper, and find himself easily forgiven.

It should be noted that John Edwards retired from the Senate in 2004, well before his affair became public. One could argue that his political career is over because he lost the Democratic presidential nomination to Obama, though the affair certainly did not help. He initially denied the affair before admitting it. And declaring his political career over may be premature, since the LA Times says he has not ruled out a return to politics.

It's too early to tell what will happen to all the Republicans who have had affairs, but here's a brief tally so far.

John Ensign, Senator from Nevada, resigned his Senate leadership post. He faces reelection in 2012.

Mark Foley, Representative from Florida, resigned from Congress.

Larry Craig, Senator from Idaho, resigned (and then unresigned) in 2007, then effectively resigned by not seeking reelection in 2008.

David Vitter, Senator from Louisiana, solicited prostitutes between 1999 and 2001. The very next day after this was revealed he issued an apology saying "This was a very serious sin in my past for which I am, of course, completely responsible". He faces reelection in 2010. Since it is Louisiana and he was not sleeping with a dead girl, he may well win.


Anyway, this shows that neither Democrats nor Republicans get a free pass for sexual indiscretions. Claims of hypocrisy by Daily Kos are wrong.

Baseball and Cricket Notes

Here's a blog posting I made, speculating that reliever Andrew Bailey should represent the Oakland Athletics in the 2009 All Star Game.

My career as a Cricket prognosticator (I picked the West Indies) may be short lived. Sri Lanka defeated West Indies handily to move into the finals of the 2009 ICC Twenty20, where they will face Pakistan.

It's fascinating that it was the Sri Lanka team's visit to Pakistan in March, where they were the target of a Mumbai-style terrorist attack, that got me started on cricket to begin with. Here's hoping that there are no further attacks at the finals.

Now I'm a Speechwriter

Here's what President Obama should say in support of the Iranian protesters.

Throughout time, humanity has looked to the heavens as a source of wonder and a symbol of freedom and liberty. Today, the Iranian people turn their eyes aloft, seeking inspiration as they proudly march and assemble to support their rights. The United States stands with them in their quest for liberty and democracy. In the timeless words of Rumi

Thirst drove me down to the water
where I drank the moon's reflection.

Now I am a lion staring up totally
lost in love with the thing itself.

Should Obama Verbally Support the Iranian Protesters?

I know there's the fear that any US support (a.k.a. "meddling") for the protesters will draw a knee-jerk, anti-American response from the Iranians. We've got a lot of strained relations going back to the coup of 1953. On the other hand, President Obama is, in many ways, a "clean slate". He is "change", he is a break from our past, and he has a lot of political capital, both in the USA and in the world. This could be his chance for a historic "Ich bin ein Berliner" or "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall" world-changing moment.

National Review Online has numerous posts urging Obama to come out with support for the protesters. Interestingly, Huffington Post and OpenLeft, though not so agressively and forthrightly, also (at least, they seem to me) to support the forces of liberalization. Daily Kos seems mainly to be sleazily using the Iranian people's sometimes deadly struggle for liberty to score political points. The US House of Representatives just voted 405-1 to condemn Teheran's crackdown. John Kerry says we should keep quiet. John McCain says we should speak out, "“if we are steadfast eventually the Iranian people will prevail.”

Now, maybe through back-channels, the US government is in contact with some of Mousavi's supporters, and they are asking for us to keep quiet. Could be. And maybe it will all calm down in the next day or two, though I doubt that.

Here's my opinion: If the demonstrations continue, and if the regime's response grows more oppressive, as signalled by Khamenei's Friday sermon, we must speak out. Maybe it will backfire. But the guiding principal should not be realpolitik, whether it succeeds or fails, but that it is the right thing to do. Whatever one may think of Jimmy Carter's term, his support for human rights was the right thing to do and helped win the cold war. Whatever you may think of Ronald Reagan's and George W Bush's foreign policy, they were right in supporting the spread of freedom and democracy.

I'm not saying invade Iran unilaterally. I'm not suggesting new rounds of sanctions. I'm saying we should express strong support for the principals of freedom. Who can argue with that? A main reason we are in this mess is that we did the wrong thing back in 1953. Two wrongs do not make a right. Today, we have the opportunity to do the right thing and start a new era of friendship with the Iranian people. Obama and Hillary Clinton have praised "soft power". Use it. Obama should go on TV, cue up Battle Hymn of the republic, and read inspirationally from the Declaration of Independence. O.K., some of that may be overboard, but you get the idea. :-)

ICC World Twenty20 Semifinals are set

Details here. Today, it's South Africa, undefeated winner of group E, vs. Pakistan, runner up in group F. Tomorrow it's Sri Lanka, undefeated winner of group F, vs. West Indies, runner up in group E. The winners will meet June 21st at Lord's in London.

For no particularly good reason (I know little about cricket!) I'm picking West Indies. They are playing well without huge contributions from their star player, Chris Gayle, and I expect him to come up big in the playoffs. Sri Lanka has been noted for some new innovations to the old game.

Lawyer sues for Breast Cancer

A lawyer sued the Oakland As over a free giveaway on Breast Cancer Awareness Day. The litigant, Alfred G. Rava, seems to specialize in sex discrimination giveways - here's one where I agree with him. What's most interesting is that Mr. Rava lives in San Diego. Somehow, he "just happened" to be in Oakland that very day to suffer the outrageous discrimination of not getting a floopy plaid hat. Here's a case where he sued over a Angel's Mother's Day promo. He must be really up on all the free promotions various baseball teams give away!

If he donated the settlements to charity (hmm, anti Breast Cancer initiatives???) then I could applaud him as a bold crusader for equality. But he doesn't. Apparently, he's just a lawyer looking for an angle, and this is his.

News from Iran

A good update on election events in Iran is here on Open Left.  Good presentation and facts, other than the conclusions, which are a standard progressive mantra that the US should basically apologize and blame Bush.

However, Bush now seems even more morally correct in his unstinting opposition to the Teheran regime, ineffective as it was.  And President Obama's speech in Cairo, which was a highly praised start on the "let's be friends" approach, does not appear to have worked to soften the Teheran regime.  Now, maybe it did inspire the people to support Mousavi - time will tell.

Frankly, if apologizing and blaming Bush would work, I'd say go for it, use this triumph of style over substance to achieve a good goal.  And I don't have many good ideas for US actions either.  We need to subtly support the liberals, and perhaps, under Obama, this can be done more successfully, with less anti-American backlash, than under Bush.

Addendum: after some discussion on OpenLeft, I came up with this US strategy.  The idea is to help the liberals there without just hurting them by drawing an anti-US reaction.

Obama says something like "we apologize for 1953, and, as part of our penance, it is our duty to see that democracy succeeds this time, therefor we will help the liberals as part of our apology".  (I'm sure he would be a lot more elegant!)  In this way, instead of some Iranians having a knee-jerk anti-US reaction against the liberals we are trying to help, they see it as part of our apology and support it.

Could that work?

Better Math for the Previous Article on Prop 13

In the previous article, I divided two percentage increases, which is incorrect math. I should be dividing the factors of the actual increases.

Between 1980 and 2006, property tax revenue increased from 6.4 to 43 billion, a factor of 6.7 times.

Over the same time period, population and inflation increased by a combined factor of 4.

Dividing 6.7 by 4, we see that property tax revenues, in spite of Prop 13, are up by 1.675X. Or 67%. Not surprising because property values are up by over 4X. Accounting for compounding, this is a healthy increase of 2% a year. Not surprising because property values are up by over 4X.

Whatever the effects of Prop 13 on fairness and the 2/3 requirement to raise other taxes, it has not resulting in any precipitous decline, let alone any decline, in property tax revenues.

California Property Tax Revenue is way up Despite Prop 13

Would you be surprised to learn that, despite the horrible "straitjacket" of California's Prop 13, property tax revenue has increased at double the rate of inflation and population growth? National Review Online weighs in with some interesting facts.

The claim that Proposition 13 crippled California’s revenue stream also doesn’t hold up. Because assessments can be raised to current values when property changes hands, property-tax revenue went from $6.4 billion in 1980–81 to $43 billion in 2006–07. That’s a nearly 600 percent increase, which is far higher than the combined rate of population growth and inflation over the same period.

Now, population increase over that period was 23.8 to 37.3 million, or 1.57X. And inflation was 2.54X. So CPI+P was almost exactly 4x (a 300% increase). So, assuming that their figure of 600% for property tax increases is correct, that means that property taxes have outstripped inflation plus population increases by roughly a factor of 2X. Probably because the median price for a California house has increased from 100K to more than 450K over that time period. I found some data supporting this 2 times on this chart (look for Chart 2), showing that the assessed value of property, adjusted for inflation, has increased at double the rate of population growth.

So, whatever the cause of California's budget crisis, NRO is correct that Proposition 13's effects on property tax revenue is not the problem. Since that revenue, adjusted for inflation and population growth, is roughly double what is was before Prop 13.

Media Coverage of Obama's first 100 Days

The Pew Research Center has coverage of the media tone and content of President Obama's first 100 days, comparing his coverage to that of Bush and Clinton. They compared coverage from Newsweek, The New York Times, The Washington Post and the CBS, NBC, ABC and PBS nightly newscasts. Wanna guess the results?

Here are the raw data in graphical form:



In an old post, I defined two statistics. The "Rooting for factor" (RFF) is the ratio of positive stories to negative stories about a single subject (or, in this case, a person, Obama). The "Bias factor" is the ratio of RFFs, for example the RFF for Obama vs. the RFF for Bush (or, in the previous post around election time, Obama vs. McCain).

One can easily calculate RFFs of 2.1 for Obama, 0.96 for Clinton, and 0.79 for Bush. This bias for Obama relative to Bush would be 2.1 / 0.79, which is 2.7. In other words, if you were used to seeing one positive portrayal of Bush for each negative story, for Obama you'd see nearly three times as many positive stories.

Pew delves deeper into the data. For Bush, the positive coverage dropped from the first to the second month as his "honeymoon" ended. Obama's coverage remains steadily positive. Obama has received favorable coverage in both news and editorial pages. Bush was generally castigated in editorials. The stories about Obama are more about his character and style, and less about ideology and the actual policies. In a final shock,

"On Fox, the majority of Obama stories were clearly negative in tone, ... On MSNBC, the majority of stories were clearly positive in tone".

Pew suggests that the reason for the difference may not be entirely media bias.

The different focus for Obama coverage may well reflect the reality that his first days in office have been very different from his predecessors .

It seems likely that the strategic nature of Obama’s coverage, and the focus on his leadership, is inextricably linked to the breakneck pace of his initiatives.

One other element that may have affected his coverage is the trend of the news industry—exemplified on the cable news talk shows—toward an ever more immediate horse race-oriented evaluation of the news.

This may be some of it. OpenLeft postulates that the coverage has been positive because Obama has been successful. But deep down inside, we know this. The Saturday Night Live spoofs hit too close: the media, other than Fox, is still in love with Obama. Phil Bronstein agrees - they need to "get a room". Which, in the short run, could be a good thing, as he will need some help and support to get America turned back in the right direction.

California Budget Part Deux

I was unable to easily find a California budget from 1989, but I found a summary of the 2000-2001 budget. Turn to the summary charts near the end. Expenditures for the top 5 Depatments, in billions, from 2000 to 2009, and the percent increase:

K-12 Education 32.4 -> 40.7 +26%
Higher Education 10.9 -> 13.1 +20%
Health & Human Services 24.6 -> 38.0 +54%
Business, Tranport, Housing 7.2 -> 12.0 +67%
Corrections 5.2 -> 9.9 +90%


Now, we have to recalculate inflation plus population increase (CPI+P), since we are starting from a different year than my previous post. The CPI increased from 175.1 to 211.1, which is 1.21X. From schedule 6 of the main budget, we see that population increased from 34.1 million to 38.6 million, or 1.13X. The total CPI+P factor is 1.36X. So, to keep pace with population and inflation, expenditures should have increased by 36%.

For K-12 and Higher Education, the increases of 26% and 20% respectively lag the need. But for the three other departments expenditures are way up.

• Health and Human Services (HHS) is up by 54%, which is 1.5X the CPI+P.
• Business, Transport and Housing (BTH) is up by 67%, nearly double the CPI+P
• Corrections are up by 90%, 2.5 times the CPI+P.

What would happen if these departments were brought into line with CPI+P.

• California could save 4.5 billion in HHS.
• California could save 2.2 billion in BTH
• California could save 2.8 billion in Corrections.

In total, this is 9.5 billion in savings, roughly half of the California budget gap. (I've seen numbers ranging from 16 to 24 billion for the gap.)

I realize that some of these increased expenditures may be necessary, but surely these areas and departments would be a good place to start cutting.

California Budget

You can find the 2009-2010 California budget here, with links to summary information here. For example, here are the summary pie charts. Figure SUM-07 shoes that the vast majority of the budget goes to Health and Human Services (28.2%), Corrections (7.3%), Business, Transportation & Housing (8.9%), K-12 Education (30.2%), and Higher Education (9.7%). Any significant cuts in expenditures will have to come from there.

What I found most interesting were the tables at the end of the full budget. Consider Schedule 6. Let's look at data from 1989 and 2009, the last 20 years. For reference, inflation has been about 74% over that time. (or, by 1.74 X)

1. The state population increased by 1.32X, 32%, from 29.1 to 38.5 million. (Note - there may be some discrepancy between this number and the official US census numbers.) Multiplying time inflation yields a factor of 2.3 (or, if you prefer, 130%) for CPI+population (CPI+P) adjustments.
   
2. The number of state employees per 1000 population has increased slightly, from 8.7 to 9.3. This is 6.9%.
   
3. Personal income increased by 2.68X, or 168%, from 601 to 1609 billion. Adjusted for inflation and population growth (CPI+P), that it a 16% increase in average personal income. Since this took place over 20 years, that's about 1% a year. Not earth shattering, but a solid positive number. Note that it's an average, not a median, so lower income Californians may not be faring so well.
   
4. Revenue is up from by 2.52X, 38.7 to 97.7 billion. Adjusting for CPI+P, it's up by 2.52 / 2.3 = 1.097, or about 10%. In effect, we are taxed 10% more than 20 years ago. (Maybe due to the highly progressive tax code and more millionaires).
   
5. Expenditures from the General Fund rose from 39.5 to 95.5 billion. They are tracking revenues, in fact, they are rising slightly slower, about 5%.
6. So, whats the problem? Total Expenditures are way up, from 48.6 to 134.8 billion, which is 2.77 times higher. Adjusting for CPI+P, they are up by 20.5%! Another way to check this math is to view the Total Expenditures per Capita, which rose from $1667 to $3495, or 2.1x. Adjusting for inflation, we again get 20.5%.
   

We have bonded ourselves into this mess. Some of this 20.5% increase is the increased fraction of state employees (see #2 above), 6.9%. A conservative cynic might quip that this proves government is now 6.9% less productive, since it requires more employees to get the same stuff done. It does make me wonder a little what has happened to the huge productivity gains of the computer era. But, in any case, assuming that these state employees are useful and necessary for all the new programs enacted in the last 20 years, that still leaves a 13.6% increase in something. What is that? I think we need to look at the state budget from 20 years ago to find out. I'll see if I can find it for a future post.

Interesting Post by Arianna Huffington

Here.

Not sure I'm ready to buy her premise that we will see the end of right vs. left thinking, but there are definitely a few current issues where the lines are blurring. For example, if a single payer health care system can be more efficient, many conservatives should go for it. How can you argue against saving Americans (and corporations) billions of dollars? In general, so far President Obama seems to be more pragmatic than dogmatic. So there's hope.

My fear is that the talk show hosts and blogosphere are just so combative and unbending in their policies that they could prevent a sensible compromise / coming together. There's a lot of ranting and vitriol on both sides there. Since they self-select for others of their own opinion, there is shockingly little rational discussion.

Ignore it - most are like little children (in some cases, very successful and well-paid little children) trying to draw attention and advertisers.


Addendum: Just saw this article which ties in to a "let's tone down the rhetoric" theme. To which we all sometimes fail, myself included.