Article by the McCubbi!

Proposition 13 and the California Fiscal Shell Game

Colin McCubbins & Mathew McCubbins
Stanford Working Paper, December 2009

Abstract: We study the effects of California's Tax and Expenditure Limitations, especially Proposition 13. We find that Proposition 13 was indeed effective at reducing both ad valorem property taxes per capita and total state and local taxes per capita, at least in the short run. We further argue that there have been unintended secondary effects that have resulted in an increased tax burden, undermining the aims of Proposition 13. To circumvent the limits imposed by Proposition 13, the state has drastically increased nonguaranteed debt, has privatized the public fisc, and has devolved the authority to lay and collect taxes and to spend the proceeds so gained. The devolution of authority has been among the swiftest growing aspects of government finance in California, to a far greater extent than in other states. Lastly, we argue that the new tax and spending authorities that have been created to circumvent Proposition 13 have led to a reduction in government transparency and accountability and pose an increasing threat to our democracy.

(Nod to Kevin L)

Germany Blinks

Wow.

I admit I am shocked (but not awed). The Euro Nations have put together a large ($1 trillion or so) contingency fund to defend their common currency and stock markets are so far rejoicing.

But what shocks me is the fact that the ECB (European Central Bank) is now going to be directly buying government debt.

In other words, goodbye Central Bank Independence, hello Weimar 2.0???

I would call this Wow and Yikes, not Shock and Awe.

Judging Gender

Since we are likely soon to have a new female associate Justice on the SC....

Untangling the Causal Effects of Sex on Judging

Christina Boyd, Lee Epstein & Andrew Martin
American Journal of Political Science, April 2010, Pages 389-411

Abstract:
We explore the role of sex in judging by addressing two questions of long-standing interest to political scientists: whether and in what ways male and female judges decide cases distinctly — "individual effects" — and whether and in what ways serving with a female judge causes males to behave differently — "panel effects." While we attend to the dominant theoretical accounts of why we might expect to observe either or both effects, we do not use the predominant statistical tools to assess them. Instead, we deploy a more appropriate methodology: semiparametric matching, which follows from a formal framework for causal inference. Applying matching methods to 13 areas of law, we observe consistent gender effects in only one — sex discrimination. For these disputes, the probability of a judge deciding in favor of the party alleging discrimination decreases by about 10 percentage points when the judge is a male. Likewise, when a woman serves on a panel with men, the men are significantly more likely to rule in favor of the rights litigant. These results are consistent with an informational account of gendered judging and are inconsistent with several others.

Several questions occur.

1. "Panel effects"? That is not the way I would have talked about panel effects. What is meant here is the presence or absence of at least one woman on the "panel" deciding. Makes sense, but panel data is an established term.

2. The rap on SDO'C on the court was that she was erratic. (She wrote McConnell v. FEC, which was bizarre, for example). So the difference (and there may not be one) between men and women may be in the variance, not the means. And in spite of the anecdote about Sandra D., it may well be men who have higher variance. I have no idea. Just saying that the difference in the second moment would be an interesting thing to measure...

The wisdom of Tyler Cowen

He tweets:

"Some people hate me for this view, but TARP is looking better all the time."

I agree. Maybe it worsened moral hazard issues down the road, maybe some of the money has been spent beyond the intent of the program (GM anyone?), maybe it was bigger than it needed to be, but TARP and quantitative easing by the FED pretty clearly worked and worked well.

As a lagniappe, most of the money is actually getting paid back.

What do you think I am, a cuttlefish?

I am very late to this party, and for that I apologize, but have y'all seen the "green porn" and "seduce me" videos by Isabella F. Rossellini on the Sundance Channel?

Freaky-deaky to say the least.

Here is the homepage, where you can learn about the genitalia of ducks and the lack of genitalia of female bedbugs courtesy of a deranged Italio-Swede actress.

As Tyler would say, it's self-recommending!

QOTD

"People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election." Otto von Bismarck

hat tip to Keith Gaddie

Markets in everything: Pork-o-meter edition

Sadly this isn't for the kind of pork we really need protected from (which I should have realized right away given that it was invented in Kazakhstan), but it's still awesome nonetheless:

ALMATY (Reuters) – Scientists in mainly Muslim Kazakhstan have come up with an instant test for the presence of pork in food, a popular newspaper reported on Monday.

The plastic-stick test detects food molecules that are found only in pork, which is forbidden by Islam but is easily found in the Central Asian state, Megapolis weekly said.

"It's no secret that some chefs cheat and add pork to beef to make the dish cheaper," the newspaper wrote on Monday, saying the practice was widespread in Kazakhstan.

"When you get your beef patty, cut off a couple of small pieces and drop them in a glass of water. Stir, shake, put the test stick in ... In a minute or two you will see the result."

Megapolis said it was unclear when the test, in which the stick changes color as in a pregnancy test, would become widely available.

I have to say that I think it IS pretty clear when this product will actually become widely available: Never!

Plus, I really admire the onions of a newspaper in Kazakhstan calling itself "Megapolis".

Kudos!

Laptop Dance: How Could This Go Wrong?

If you are going to steal laptops, you might not want to give full descriptions of same on Craigslist, within a week, and try to sell them in the same city.

Or, maybe you would.

Bass Ackwards Redux

I have been claiming that Greece is not ruining the Euro, but that the Euro ruined Greece. Now, compulsive tweeter Felix Salmon provides a provocative tidbit in support of this thesis:

"Greece had a primary budget surplus for every year from 1992 to 2000"

In other words, joining the Euro somehow got lenders to believe that Greece was no longer Greece.

People, they (the lenders) deserve whatever haircut they end up getting.

A good jobs report

+290,000 in April (231,000 in the private sector (yes we still have one)), and March's number was revised upward from 162,000 to 230,000.

More details:

More confident employers stepped up job creation in April, expanding payrolls by 290,000, the most in four years. The jobless rate rose to 9.9 percent as people streamed back into the market looking for work.

The hiring of 66,000 temporary government workers to conduct the census helped overall payroll growth last month. However, private employers -- the backbone of the economy -- boosted jobs, too. They added a surprisingly strong 231,000 positions last month, also the most since March 2006, the Labor Department reported Friday.

The unemployment rate rose from 9.7 percent in March to 9.9 percent in April, mainly because 805,000 jobseekers -- perhaps feeling better about their prospects -- resumed their searches for work....

Also encouraging: The employment picture in both March and April turned out to be stronger than previously thought. Payrolls grew by 230,000 in March, better than the 162,000 first reported. And, 39,000 jobs were actually added in February, an improvement from the previous estimate of 14,000 losses.

QOTD: British election edition

"The country has spoken — but we don't know what they've said,"

--former Liberal Democrat leader Paddy Ashdown

Well Hung Parliament

Brit Labour Gov Goes Up in Flames, Down in Seats!

Actually, Labour lost, and should have lost power, but the districts are so distorted in terms of seats/votes ratio that I don't see how the Brits even call these things elections. Also, the LD surge turned out to be just puff, no real blow.

And so the pound gets pounded.

This just in: A = A

From the comparable Scott Sumner:

"I think the Great Depression was caused by NGDP falling from $106.7 billion in 1929:3 to $49.8 billion in 1933:3. "

In other words, the Great Depression was caused by..... THE GREAT DEPRESSION.

Yikes!

What part of non sequitur do you not understand?

In reference to immigration, I keep seeing and hearing the phrase "what part of illegal do you (insert derogatory epithet here) not understand?" given as the beginning and ending of any debate.

I guess this is supposed to mean that fact that something is illegal means we should have zero tolerance for it?

Well,

Speeding is illegal but.....
Driving while texting is illegal but....
Not reporting all tips or gifts on your income tax is illegal but.....
Making sales in cash and not reporting the income is illegal but....
Smoking marijuana is illegal but......

We could literally list scores of things that are clearly illegal but cause most people little or no consternation. There are also tons of things that are illegal but carry inconsequential penalties.

Hey, that is immigration reform I could really get behind.

Fine all illegals $5.

There, two problems solved.

Pickin' & Grinnin'

Speech Unrecognition

This is one of the coolest things I have read in a long time. Worth reading the whole (very long) thing.

It is very interesting that there is a huge difference between speech to text, and text to speech. I often use Adobe's listen-to-text feature to be able to hear a dissertation or a paper read aloud to me on a long drive. Just plug my laptop into the auxilliary jack on the BMW (it's supposed to be for your iPod or MP3 player, but it works on anything that has an audio jack). Start up the PDF reader by clicking on "Read out loud" (which, bizarrely, is in the "View" menu on Adobe).

Wouldn't work well on a diss with a lot of tables and equations, but works fine for lots of theses in poli sci.

It is rather amazing that the reverse process, speaking and having the computer record the words, basically doesn't work at all. Optical scanning works quite well, with error rates below 5%. But audio speech-to-text... 80%, tops, and even then you are better off typing it straight from voice, for most purposes.

Reform Bites

Betsy has a good story on election reform in Arizona.

I am not a fan of taxpayer financing of elections. If you want to get money out of politics, get government's hands off our money. The reason that election outcomes are so crucial right now is that government has metastisized into nearly every aspect of our lives.

To make elections less expensive, make them less important.

Ph(UNNIES)d

The Ward Boss supplies some excellent comic material, here.

I would add, to the list of things you will never see in a published paper:

"The reason that some of the indep vars are logged and some are squared and some are linear is that none of the results come out right otherwise."

Cinco de What?

Here are my favorite Cinco de Mayo songs.

First, the incomparable Liz Phair:

Next, the comparable Lil Rob:



Finally, it turns out that Obama's Spanish is even worse than Mungowitz's!

Zombie Joseph Beuys?

FYI, Mungowitz, here are the top 5 reasons why I don't vote:

5. So Bryan Caplan can't make fun of me

4. No tax deduction given for voting

3. It only encourages them

2. I work in a university, so I already interact with plenty of officious bureaucrats

1. No jury duty

(context for title is here)

Libertarians Dissed, and I Commit Election Fraud

Very interesting. I went to vote today, of course. (Angus does not vote, which mystifies me. Of COURSE he is right that voting because you affect the outcome is silly. But voting because it makes normal people nervous....THAT is really fun. Of course, at this point Angus has 34 years of virginal non-voting streak at risk, so perhaps I don't blame him after all).

Anyway, I went to vote. I was #306, and I went to the poll 10 minutes before closing time. ("You.... you are number #306! Get in line!" I love being an arbitrary number chosen by the state. Perhaps I should get used to it, if laws like the Arizona "Extra Real ID" rules spread to other states).

Except there was no line. I was the only one there. Four poll workers, and me. Yes, they are volunteers. But they are volunteers working for the state. And... well, let me tell you.

I give the front line lady my name. She finds my entry in the "Giant Special Book of People Who Have the State's Permission to be Citizens, and Other Secret Things." And says, "Please state your name." Since that is what I had just done, and that is how she found my listing, I was giggling. (Angus, see what you are missing, man?) Then, "State your address."

I said, "10020 Bushveld." She looks up, suspicious. "Bushveld WHAT?"

"Lane," I said, amazed. "10020 Bushveld LANE." She nods, still suspicious. Now, I was #306 for the day, in a place where the polls had been open since 6:30 am. They are only getting a little less than 4 people every 10 minutes, or 24 people per hour, voting. There couldn't have been much demand for vote fraud. She just didn't like the look of me, I think. (Yes, I was wearing dirty shorts, a ripped t-shirt with a spaghetti sauce stain, and flip-flops. Again, Angus, man, so many chances to enjoy this).

She starts to explain to me which ballot I can vote. North Carolina's D and R parties have chosen to have semi-open primaries, where D registered voters vote D, R registered voters vote R, and unaffiliated voters can vote either.

Except that there is a third party, the Libertarians. Actually on the ballot. Except there were no ballots. This may make some sense, because I think that no Libertarian primary is contested this time around. Still, we have a Senate candidate, Dr. Michael Beitler, and I was looking forward to voting for him. We did all that work to get on the ballot, and I was looking forward to it. If you look at the list of candidates who filed for office, and paid fees (pdf here), you'll see there are more than 20 Libertarian candidates for statewide, federal, or state assembly seats. We did all that work, and got on the ballot. And then I got more than 2% running for governor. So we are ON THE BALLOT.

The lady is flustered by my Libertarian registration, which is there plain as day on the record. She goes to ask Uber-voting-spiel-fuhrer. They argue, she gestures, he peeks at me. Then he comes over and asks, "Sir, what is it you want to do?"

Now I start to giggle again. I did not say that I was there to watch the baseball game, and have some margaritas. Instead, I said, "I want to vote. I thought this was the voting precinct for my address, and..."

He interrupts, though not rudely, and says, "Yes, but who are you going to vote for?"

I raise my eyebrows, and my voice (there were two people behind me now): "I have to tell you who I'm going to vote for? Is this some kind of profiling? I thought we had secret ballots!"

The voting-spiel-fuhrer, who was painfully earnest, actually dropped his mouth open and then turned beet red. "Da... boh... No, I meant which party do you want to vote for?"

"I want to vote in a way that doesn't violate North Carolina's election law. I am registered Libertarian. I want to vote for my party, as the law dictates. Are you telling me I can vote in another party's primary?"

He said, "We can't have a different ballot for each party. What if the Greens, or the ... the...." (he couldn't think of any other parties) "....wanted to vote? It would be too expensive to print ballots for every party."

So, I said that the Greens, the Constitution, the Socialist Workers, the Farm Union, and Moonies couldn't possibly ask for a ballot, because they are NOT recognized parties in the state of North Carolina. The Libertarians, by contrast, are fully recognized, and are on the ballot. So his example made no sense. None of those parties were authorized to field candidates, but the Libertarians are authorized, and in fact do have candidates, including Mike Beitler who is running for the Senate nomination.

The poor fellow held up pretty well. He said, with an air of finality, "You just tell us which ballot you want, Democrat or Republican, and we'll give it to you."

I said, "Republican." (I wanted to vote for my friend BJ Lawson, since there were no Lib ballots). And I voted, and I got one of those "I voted" stickers, and I went out to the car.

But I still think that the poll workers were mistaken, and that I should not have been allowed to vote in a partisan primary other than the one I am registered for.

And, I was struck by a question whose answer I don't know, at all. What is rule for the Libertarian Party? When we have primaries in 2012 (we are likely to have contested primaries for both Governor and President), will our ballot be open, semi-open, or closed? I do not know the answer to that.

what if Yakov Smirnov had been from North Korea?

I think things would have gone much like this.

Here is my favorite:

Chang Man Yong works on a collective farm in North Korea. He goes fishing, gets lucky, and brings a fish home. Happy about his catch, he tells his wife: "Look what I've got. Shall we eat fried fish today?"

The wife says: "We've got no cooking oil!"

"Shall we stew it, then?"

"We've got no pot!"

"Shall we grill it?"

"We've got no firewood!"

Chang Man Yong gets angry, goes back to the river, and throws the fish back into the water.

The fish, happy to have had such a narrow escape, sticks its head out of the water and cheerfully yells: "Long live General Kim Jong Il!"

Hat tip to LeBron!

Why Hate?

My op-ed published today in the Durham Herald.

It's primary day here in NC. Be careful out there.

Has it really come to this?

We are now going to give awards to soldiers who don't kill innocent civilians?

Really?

Really!!

NATO commanders are weighing a new way to reduce civilian casualties in Afghanistan: recognizing soldiers for "courageous restraint" if they avoid using force that could endanger innocent lives.

The concept comes as the coalition continues to struggle with the problem of civilian casualties despite repeated warnings from the top NATO commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, that the war effort hinges on the ability to protect the population and win support away from the Taliban.

Those who back the idea hope it will provide soldiers with another incentive to think twice before calling in an airstrike or firing at an approaching vehicle if civilians could be at risk.


People, please join me and other libertarians around the world in deploring and protesting these senseless, state-sanctioned murders.

Just So You See What I'm Dealing With....

People meet me, and my wife, and everything seems normal. You have to understand what I'm dealing with here.

The LMM has a cousin / aunt (for Italians in RI, it's hard to tell the difference) who sent us this. Thanks, Shirley!

THE DIFFERENCE IF YOU MARRY A RHODE ISLAND GIRL

The first man married a woman from North Carolina . He told her she was to do the dishes and house cleaning. It took a couple of days, but on the third day, he came home to see a clean house and dishes washed and put away.

The second man married a woman from Florida . He gave his wife orders she was to do all the cleaning, dishes and the cooking. The first day he didn't see any results, but the next day he saw it was better. By the third day, he saw his house was clean, the dishes were done and there was a huge dinner on the table.

The third man married a girl from Rhode Island . He ordered her to keep the house clean, dishes washed, lawn mowed, laundry washed, and hot food on the table for every meal. He said the first day he didn't see anything, the second day he didn't see anything, but by the third day, some of the swelling had gone down and he could see a little out of his left eye, and his arm was healed enough that he could fix himself a sandwich and load the dishwasher. He still has trouble sitting down, though. (Note: Last line revised, in response to comments)

China and the US Debt

China and the United States: The Bonds of Debt, by Donald D. Hester
Professor of Economics, Emeritus
The University of Wisconsin – Madison

Abstract
This paper explores the large and growing indebtedness of the United States to the People’s Republic of China. Beginning with the 1971 reestablishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, international trade between them expanded but was very modest until the mid 1980s. At that point, China under Deng Xiaoping adopted a variation on the successful export strategy that had been pioneered by Japan and the smaller Asian “tigers”. The first section of the paper analyzes the distinctive features of this variation and provides tabular information about trade and foreign exchange balances and the exchange rate between the dollar and yuan. The second section proposes a crude game-theoretic discussion of what each country might gain and lose from their large growing financial entanglement in the short and long run. The third section is a discussion of the limits of the imbalance and how U.S. debts to and Chinese claims on other countries impact the relation between the P.R.C. and the U.S. The concluding section focuses on the paradox of a poor and rapidly growing authoritarian country financing an undisciplined and relatively declining democratic superpower.

Anniversary of Chille's

We are coming up on the 1-year anniversary of the single most commented, most cited, most read, and most downloaded single post in the history of KPC.

It was.... "The Worst Mexican Restaurant on Earth." Enjoy.

Financial Regulation Will Help! Not....

So, now the government is going to fix the financial industry, because markets don't work?

Look, the genesis of the financial crisis was a trap, set by federal government offiicials and regulators.

It was a trap baited with four kinds of tasty cheese:
1. Down payment subsidies, encouraging people to buy houses more expensive than they could actually afford
2. Changes in the definitions of "conforming" loans, with much looser requirements for packaging and reselling by Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac.
3. Artificially low interest rates that served to finance an asset bubble in housing and commercial real estate.
4. An implicit guarantee, made by all of the last four Treasury secretaries, that any decline in housing prices would be treated as a "market failure," prompting government action to prop up prices.

While it is clearly true that private investors behaved both greedily and in some
cases foolishly, these four factors ensured that the financial disaster would be
larger, and last longer, much longer, than would have happened if government had
just left housing markets alone.

Given the temptations to meddle, and given the inability of government officials to
obtain the accurate information that unfettered markets provide through prices,
there is no reason to believe that these new attempts at regulation will turn
out any better than the old ones.

In short, given that government had a substantial role in causing the crisis through
misguided regulation, there is no reason to believe that the new regulatory policies will help.

YYM in Erg Contest

A video of the YYM owning an erg contest. (He's the second from the front, going left to right) He had his best time ever, 6:42 mins for a 2k race. And won his heat.

Information and Portion Size

When Healthy Food Makes You Hungry

Stacey Finkelstein & Ayelet Fishbach
Journal of Consumer Research, forthcoming

Abstract: Do subtle cues for imposed healthy eating make consumers hungry? Imposed healthy eating signals that the health goal was sufficiently met, and thus it increases the strength of the conflicting motive to fulfill one's appetite. Accordingly, consumers asked to sample an item framed as healthy later reported being hungrier and consumed more food than those who sampled the same item framed as tasty or those who did not eat at all. These effects of healthy eating depend on the consumer's perception that healthy eating is mandatory; therefore, only imposed healthy eating made consumers hungrier, whereas freely choosing to eat healthy did not increase hunger.

----------------------

The largest Last Supper: Depictions of food portions and plate size
increased over the millennium

B. Wansink & C. S. Wansink
International Journal of Obesity, forthcoming

Abstract: Portion sizes of foods have been noticably increasing in recent years, but when did this trend begin? If art imitates life and if food portions have been generally increasing with time, we might expect this trend to be reflected in paintings that depict food. Perhaps the most commonly painted meal has been that of Jesus Christ's Last Supper, chronicled in the New Testament of the Bible. A CAD-CAM analysis of the relative food-to-head ratio in 52 representative paintings of the Last Supper showed that the relative sizes of the main dish (entree) (r=0.52, P=0.002), bread (r=0.30, P=0.04), and plates (r=0.46, P=0.02) have linearly increased over the past millennium.
----------------------

Promoting Healthy Choices: Information versus Convenience

Jessica Wisdom, Julie Downs & George Loewenstein
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2010, Pages 164-178

Abstract: Success in slowing obesity trends would benefit from policies aimed at reducing calorie consumption. In a field experiment at a fast-food sandwich chain, we address the effects of providing calorie information, mimicking recent legislation, and test an alternative approach that makes ordering healthier slightly more convenient. We find that calorie information reduces calorie intake. Providing a daily calorie target does as well, but only for non-overweight individuals. Making healthy choices convenient reduces intake when the intervention is strong. However, a milder implementation reduces sandwich calories, but does not reduce total calories due to compensatory effects on side orders and drinks.

(Nod to Kevin L, who always has the skinny)

The EYM Gets His Tooth Back!

A year ago, from Germany, I told the story of how the EYM, dancing on a chair, tried to break that chair with his face. An on-looker described the resulting sound of tooth fragments hitting the floor as "like someone was playing Yahtzee."

Here is the EYM recently.
Here is the EYM after the dentist performed the adatoothtome. (Three operations, total).
He looks good! Of course, being the EYM, he then promptly got a haircut, apparently from someone using a weedwhacker.

Appholes

John Stewart on Apple. Heh.

(Nod to Angry Alex)

Tyler Out Front

So, Tyler had been fussing that the hotel doesn't sell the NYTimes. And, it was raining and blowing pretty hard.

But I took a break and walked down to Starbucks, and they had the NYT. I picked him up a copy.

And then came back up here to my room to write about immigration (article in today's NYT, btw).

And THEN I notice that Tyler had already asked the right question. Now I don't have to write that post. Dude, we're even.

Will I be able to play the piano?

Two young boys walked into a pharmacy one day, picked out a box of tampons and
hurried to the checkout counter.

The man at the counter asked the older boy, "Son, how old are you?"

"Eight," the boy replied.

The man continued, "Do you know what these are used for?"

The boy replied, "not exactly, but they aren't for me. They're for him. He's my brother. He's four. We saw on TV that if you use these you can swim and ride a bike. Right now, he can't do either."

Reminds me of the 1940s era joke: GI gets his hands burned in an explosion in battle in Italy. He wakes up, and sees the doctor examining him. "Doc! DOC! Will I be able to play the piano? TELL ME that I will be able to play the piano!"

The doctor looks carefully. The burns aren't that bad, and there is no bone damage. "You will be able to play the piano beautifully, son."

GI: "Oh, you're a genius, Doc. I never could play before."

Durham Bulls

Took two of my friends from the Erlangen exchange program to a Durham Bulls game.

Here are Tim and Linus biting big ones.

Not sure they really "got" baseball, because it is a complicated game. But the bier and wurst were easily recognized.

bass ackwards

The problem with Greece and the Euro isn't that the fixed exchange rate is foiling Greece from devaluing its way back to prosperity, but rather that adopting the Euro (and the ECB rules) let Greece finance an incredible spending binge at artificially low rates.

If Greece had never joined the Eurozone, it NEVER would have been able to run up so much foreign debt.

My problem with congress in a nutshell

“Balancing the budget and reducing the debt, in my mind, are not ends in and of themselves,” said Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill. “We can't afford to skimp on our children's education, assuring access to quality, affordable health care, retirement security, achieving energy independence, investing in our infrastructure, supporting medical research, creating more jobs.”


The article containing this gem is here.

While I do partly agree with the first phrase to the extent that I don't favor balancing the budget at current spending levels, the hideous combination of arrogance, profligacy and ignorance shown here typifies, to me, how our congress operates (and has operated for quite a while now).

USA roundup

1. First quarter GDP growth estimated at 3.2%, slightly under the forecasted rate of 3.4%. Consumer spending rose 3.6%. Can you say, "the jobless recovery continues?" Thank you, I knew that you could.

2. The oil spill off the coast of Louisiana is no joke, and it may take months just to cap the well (which is below 5000 feet of water).

3. Gilbert Arenas (still in the halfway house for his "guns in the workplace" issues) is being sued for not paying for "5 custom Berettas with 5 silencers" that he ordered from a high end arms dealer.

4. Bullish on Bush? "I been down so long, it looks like up to me."

Fire Protection Services

For you schmoes who dared doubt me, about provision of fire services.....

Well, read and cheer the mighty forces of private self-interest! That's 1979, Journal of Libertarian Studies, for the reference.

(nod to B-Doog, who knows stuff)

Proof that there is a God

Right here.

Russ R on the financial crisis

Russ has a new paper. I like it.

Dissertations

Nick T gives some good advice on dissertations.

I have taken my own shot at this, along with Dave Schmidtz and others. (For the dissertation part, check page 21 and following)

Funny to think of Nick writing about writing dissertations. Seems like just yesterday when he was a newbie in grad school, and wrote this on his blog.... Four weeks later, Nick said I had "outed him." Blogging was a bit more outre and underground in 2004.

Merle Hazard

Merle Hazard. Arthur Laffer sings along, as Bretton Woods.

(Nod to Mike S)

Sad News

Angus Maddison has died.

PPT

Power corrupts, and Powerpoint corrupts absolutely.

New Laptop Design: Roll

Interesting design for "laptop."

Crisis fun

1. Stupidest part of the rescue package that I'm aware of:

Portugal is still slotted to loan money to Greece at a rate very far below its own borrowing costs!

2. Best proposed solution to the Greek crisis I've seen (from the comments on a Yahoo! news story on the crisis):

"Greece: sell Cyprus to the Turks. There, two problems solved! "

It's the Insolvency, stupid!

Yesterday was the day it seemed that everyone figured out the Greek crisis is not one of liquidity but rather of insolvency.

The situation in Southern Europe now seems more and more like the Latin American debt crisis, and to me, the central lesson of that crisis for the debtor countries was, if you are going to default, sooner is much better than later.

One of the main reasons the LA crisis morphed into the dreaded "lost decade" for the debtor countries was that they kept agreeing to refinance and re-borrow and thus dragged out the crises for years.

Today, capital markets are much larger and more open than they were in the early 80s so I don't think this crisis can be dragged out for years even if the countries involved were dumb enough to want to try.

Somehow though, I don't think that the capital markets are going to get thanked for providing this valuable service!

Mencken Rulz

I just love this last passage from Mencken's 1926 "Last Words."

I have spoken hitherto of the possibility that democracy may be a self-limiting disease, like measles. It is, perhaps, something more: it is self-devouring. One cannot observe it objectively without being impressed by its curious distrust of itself—its apparently ineradicable tendency to abandon its whole philosophy at the first sign of strain. I need not point to what happens invariably in democratic states when the national safety is menaced. All the great tribunes of democracy, on such occasions, convert themselves, by a process as simple as taking a deep breath, into despots of an almost fabulous ferocity. Lincoln, Roosevelt and Wilson come instantly to mind: Jackson and Cleveland are in the background, waiting to be recalled. Nor is this process confined to times of alarm and terror: it is going on day in and day out. Democracy always seems bent upon killing the thing it theoretically loves. I have rehearsed some of its operations against liberty, the very cornerstone of its political metaphysic. It not only wars upon the thing itself; it even wars upon mere academic advocacy of it. I offer the spectacle of Americans jailed for reading the Bill of Rights as perhaps the most gaudily humorous ever witnessed in the modern world. Try to imagine monarchy jailing subjects for maintaining the divine right of Kings! Or Christianity damning a believer for arguing that Jesus Christ was the Son of God! This last, perhaps, has been done: anything is possible in that direction. But under democracy the remotest and most fantastic possibility is a common-place of every day. All the axioms resolve themselves into thundering paradoxes, many amounting to downright contradictions in terms. The mob is competent to rule the rest of us—but it must be rigorously policed itself. There is a government, not of men, but of laws - but men are set upon benches to decide finally what the law is and may be. The highest function of the citizen is to serve the state - but the first assumption that meets him, when he essays to discharge it, is an assumption of his disingenuousness and dishonour. Is that assumption commonly sound? Then the farce only grows the more glorious.

I confess, for my part, that it greatly delights me. I enjoy democracy immensely. It is incomparably idiotic, and hence incomparably amusing. Does it exalt dunderheads, cowards, trimmers, frauds, cads? Then the pain of seeing them go up is balanced and obliterated by the joy of seeing them come down. Is it inordinately wasteful, extravagant, dishonest? Then so is every other form of government: all alike are enemies to laborious and virtuous men. Is rascality at the very heart of it? Well, we have borne that rascality since 1776, and continue to survive. In the long run, it may turn out that rascality is necessary to human government, and even to civilization itself - that civilization, at bottom, is nothing but a colossal swindle. I do not know: I report only that when the suckers are running well the spectacle is infinitely exhilarating. But I am, it may be, a somewhat malicious man: my sympathies, when it comes to suckers, tend to be coy. What I can't make out is how any man can believe in democracy who feels for and with them, and is pained when they are debauched and made a show of. How can any man be a democrat who is sincerely a democrat?

It is rather amazing that progressives are convinced that man is deluded, badly informed, ill-motivated, and terminally selfish.... unless that man steps in a voting booth or public office. Then, the saints sing from on high and only good things can happen.

Epstein-Zinn-Weil preferences to the rescue (again)

Xavier Gabaix and Robert Barro are, in my opinion, on to something really intriguing and good with their work on the effects of rare disasters.

Now, in a new NBER working paper (ungated copy here) titled "Crises and Recoveries in an Empirical Model of Consumption Disasters", Emi Nakamura, Jon Steinsson, Robert Barro and Jose Ursua introduce a new twist, viz. Epstein-Zinn-Weil preferences.

Why?

Well because of this:

In a model with power utility and standard values for risk aversion, stocks surge at the onset of a disaster due to agents' strong desire to save. This counterfactual prediction causes a low equity premium, especially in normal times. In contrast, a model with Epstein-Zin-Weil preferences and an intertemporal elasticity of substitution equal to 2 yields a sizeable equity premium in normal times for modest values of risk aversion.

People, those are some magic preferences!

Try to Pay Attention....Libertarians are NOT Individualists

Got this asinine cartoon from my man KL....
How confused can you possibly be?

1. Libertarians believe that individual CHOICES, not disjointed individual ACTIONS, are the center of the good society. I have a 2006 BMW 330i. Not a clue how it works, the engine is a complex mystery to me. So, do I do all the work myself? I do not, none of it in fact. I pay an expert to do the service work for me. My choice to purchase a BMW was based in part on the excellent service record of the 330 series. I had a lot of choices, and I chose the BMW. Maybe a good choice, maybe not. But I do NOT believe in the need for, or even the desirability of, total independence and self-sufficiency. Markets always create complex mutual interdependencies that greatly increase specialization and improve welfare.

2. If the government stopped providing coercively "supplied" fire services, what would happen? Would there be zero fire protection? No, volunteer fire departments would take up part of the slack. In fact, volunteer fire departments are a perfect example of voluntary private organizations that would carry most of the water in a libertarian society. We don't necessarily need for-profit firms to do the work, though in larger cities that would probably make sense. This fallacy, that if the government stopped providing the service there would be no new institution to solve the problem, is obvious nonsense. Yet it is essentially the only argument that the anti-libertarian ning-nongs and lefty figjams have in their pathetic little arsenals. It doesn't matter how many times the canard is refuted, you still hear it.

An argument in favor of cloning yourself

Right here people!

(context is king).

Honoring the Government Workers

To Honor the Public Union Workers...A Video From SNL

The audience laughs nervously. It's a bit edgy, borderline racist.

But I did laugh. The contracts that local public employees unions can negotiate are really remarkable.

(nod to the NCM)

Does It Matter if Exchange is "Euvoluntary"?

Is exchange just? Does it matter if exchange is "euvoluntary"? I try to answer these and other questions, here.

Excerpt, with definition of euvoluntary:

Euvoluntary exchange requires (1) conventional ownership of items, services, or currency by both parties, (2) conventional capacity to transfer and assign this ownership to the other party, (3) the absence of regret, for both parties, after the exchange, in the sense that both receive value at least as great as was anticipated at the time of the agreement to exchange, (4) neither party is coerced, in the sense of being forced to exchange by threat, and (5) neither party is coerced in the alternative sense of being harmed by failing to exchange.

In the political world, “power” is measured by the capacity of one person or a group to impose his, or its, will on others through the threat of violence. That is the sense of “coercion” in number 4 above. In the economic world, power in an exchange relationship is measured by the disparity in outcomes if no exchange is agreed upon.

More simply, economic power is the disparity in welfare at the reversion points, or the best alternative to a negotiated agreement. Let’s call this the “BATNA” for short.

Suppose I am considering buying a bottle of water. If I am in a grocery store, and notice that the price is $1,000 per bottle, I laugh and push my cart along. I’ll buy the water somewhere else, or get some from the tap, or choose any of many alternatives. I am almost indifferent, in fact, between buying water at Kroger or buying it at Food Lion, for the market price of $0.90. I have choices.

And, I have money, and we all agree that I own that money and can transfer, and we all agree that each store owns the water, and can transfer it. Finally, the water is not poisonous, and tastes good, so I won’t regret purchasing it, if I choose to do so. So the exchange is euvoluntary.

Now, let’s suppose instead that I am far out in the desert, and am dying of thirst. I happen to have quite a bit of cash on me, but I can’t drink that. A four wheel drive taco truck rolls over the hill, and pulls up to me. I see that the sign advertises a special: “3 tacos for $5! Drinks: $1,000. 3 drinks for only $2,500”. I argue with the driver. “Have a heart, buddy! I am dying of thirst!” He asks if I have enough money to pay his price, and I admit that I do. The driver shrugs, and says, “Up to you! Have a nice day!” and starts to drive off.

I stop him, and buy 3 bottles of water for the “special” price of $2,500. Was the exchange euvoluntary?

It was not. The exchange violates part 5 of the definition, relative equality of BATNAs. My BATNA was death, from thirst. The driver was little affected by whether a deal was consummated (though he got a bit richer), while I was enormously affected. Even though in most important senses the exchange was voluntary (I could have said no), it was not euvoluntary.

(The paper is tentatively forthcoming in Social Philosophy and Policy, September 2011)

Lakers are from Mars, Ron-Ron is from Venus

Here is what Ron-Ron had to say after his Lakers got demolished Saturday night:

"They were aggressive," forward Ron Artest said. "No excuses. I hope nobody blamed the refs. Nobody did, right? They did well. We've got to play basketball."


And here is what Ron-Ron had to say about his 3-point shooting:

"My three-point touch? Oh, I don't worry about that. It's there. I like it," he said. "I missed three layups. I'm more concerned about that."

By the way, he was 0-4 on threes in the game and is shooting 13% on threes for the series.

Quotes are from here.

Nerd is the Intersecton of Dork, Dweeb, and Geek

A most excellent Venn diagram.

Anyone who actually LIKES Venn diagrams (and who says things like, "You can find Nerd at the intersection of Geek and Dork), is of course pretty good nerd material already. Otherwise, you think it's like the intersection of Hollywood and Vine, which is a street corner.

Ode on a Grecian Burn

The Greek bailout is proceeding apace. Their budget deficit was again revised upward and their bond rating accordingly again revised downward, so their debt refinancings are getting ever closer and more expensive. The EU and the IMF are committing around 40 billion Euros in funds.

But, is this a good idea?

Not many people believe the package is big enough to avoid a future restructuring of Greek debt, and now the Fund and the EU will be at the front of the line of creditors.

The Greek economy with its inflexible labor market, low productivity, low R&D spending, corruption, and bloated government sector desperately needs reform. While the Germans are insisting on "tough conditions", giving the money obviously reduces the pressure on the Greek polity to reform. It also reduces the pressure on the Portuguese and Spanish polities to reform as once the bailout lamp has been lit, it is not credible to say "we won't do it again". People, you know I'm talking 'bout moral hazard!

Further, things are so badly out of whack that it is not clear any set of reforms, no matter how tough, can fix the problem. To me, the choice between defaulting now or taking on a bunch of additional debt only to default later is a no brainer: just do it!

Paul Blustein's excellent book on the Argentine crisis shows how delaying the inevitable can just make things worse, and Greece is in much worse shape than Argentina was.

The argument in favor of giving the bailout and having Greece muddle on, to me, is that European banks have a large exposure to Greek debt and are still fragile from the recent crisis. A Greek default might re-start a general European banking crisis, putting the relatively solvent governments back on the hook anyway. The bailout thus buys time for banks to adjust their balance sheets in an orderly fashion.

In a way, the early attempts to deal with the Latin American debt crisis in the 80s worked this way, but the cost to the debtor nations of stringing out the process was considerable.

People, the only thing that can save Greece is an extremely large hot tub time machine. Lacking that, they should choose the least bad of a set of very bad alternatives, which is, in my opinion default and restructure now.

Nine bins, no waiting

England is screwed. We even have a label that says so.

But.... what the heck? Anyone want to play a little "Nine bins"?

All resources are either substitutable, or renewable, except.... ONE. Our time. That's the one thing we can't get more of. Yet the envirophiles want to waste all our time on religious ceremonies to worship Gaia.

(Nod to the NCM)

He said, He said

So after my Thunder utterly beat down the Lakers last night, Kobe Bean Bryant said:

"I was managing the game exactly how I wanted to," Bryant said. "Unfortunately, it got away from us by them getting out in transition and getting those buckets, I wasn't able to do what I normally am able to do at the end of the game, closing things out and things like that. But I felt pretty good about the way I was managing it."

After digesting this quote from KBB, Tyler Cowen said:

"Kobe should be PM of Greece or Iceland!"

I do know that KBB claims to be fluent in Italian......

Econo-sophistry

In today's NYT, Bob Frank argues that since private markets compress pay differences relative to productivity differences, libertarians should accept government redistribution of wealth/income.

I am not sure there is one single sentence in this editorial that makes sense. Certainly not its imputing of actions and beliefs to "libertarians" or its ritualistic but content free invoking of "economic theory" or its claim of a stylized fact without any supporting evidence beyond one ridiculous example, or its bizarre equation of private pay practices with coercive government actions.

Here, I'll just concentrate on the bad economics.

Frank's example of where pay doesn't follow productivity is carpenters in a framing crew. He says:

The most productive carpenter in a framing crew, for example, might produce twice as much as his least productive colleague, but is rarely paid even 30 percent more.

This is pretty nuts in a number of dimensions.

First, where do these numbers come from? The weasel words "might" and "rarely" are there to cover his ass, but this is just made up out of whole cloth.

Second, a framing crew produces a framed house. It is team production. Marginal products are notoriously difficult to measure in this context and there is a lot of "economic theory" about this issue. It would be almost impossible to verify that one framer produced "twice as much" as another inside of a single crew.

Third, just widen the issue from carpenters on a framing crew to carpenters in general and his point totally fails. The least skilled work on framing crews. Higher skilled are the finish carpenters who do make a lot more money (easily more than twice as much). The highest skilled are artisans turning out custom furniture pieces and they in turn make a lot more money than do finish carpenters (again, easily more than twice as much).

I am not going to put quantitative numbers on these classes (with weasel words to give me an escape valve), but I am confident that, over the trade of carpentry in general, variations in earnings are extremely tied to variations in skill and these variations are quite large.

Frank then claims that the two highest paid workers in an enterprise rarely earn more than the three lowest paid.

Man, I guess CEO pay is really not an issue in this country after all.

Also in Frank's own industry, higher education, this is certainly not the case.

In econ departments and b-schools at least, the two highest paid full professors easily earn more than the three lowest paid assistants.

And of course, if you take the unit of observation to be the university, the gap between highest and lowest "employee" is very very large. OU's president makes over $250K and some staff make less than $25K.

There are a number of fields where pay is close to linearly related to productivity. Piecework jobs in factories and sales jobs on commission are two obvious examples.

Finally, there is a whole literature about the exact opposite case than the one Frank claims to be telling, where there is increasing returns to talent.

Writing, acting, making music, professional sports, and several other fields of endeavor all exhibit this trait.

gREeNT -Seeking

JS writes:

The pursuit of the green cash flow has begun. Here are some Transit and Highway marketing efforts. For a little perspective on the Transit end, here is Thomas Rubin Writing for the Reason Foundation.

Rubin states “The purpose of this critique is not to attempt to show that buses are bad for energy use, air quality, or the economy. It is, rather, to show that any proposal to achieve improvements in any of these through transit, including bus transit, must be based on a realistic presentation of the current situation, the historical trend, and the practical potential for improvement. Any evaluation based on wholly ridiculous bus load factors and misstatements of auto load factors, using this analysis as the basis for future promises of improvements, fails this test badly.”

Jobs labeled green now have the highest market value. “Green” is even better than “free”, because policy makers can justify tax increases to help pay for their winning coalition (link...).

Why Give It Away? Do They Love Us?

KPC Friend Robet Eaton writes:

I saw David Pogue (NYTimes' tech guru) wonder aloud in his blog "why would these cable companies offer free wi-fi service???" It seemed like a scam, or a trojan horse to him.

He got his response quickly, in comments. It wasn't a scam, it was competition. "The free WiFi hot spots are an enticement to ward off defections to Verizon (and its Fios service) and AT&T."

I love how incredulous people can be that actual competition brings about such favorable results for us consumers ...

Well, yes, RE, the incredulity is amusing. But their refusal to update their beliefs can only be explained as religious devotion to a view that markets are bad, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.

Video on Price Gouging

The Bishop sends a video some students did for class.

And the truth will set them free.... Read about the incident itself.

Answer to Matty

Context available here.

Angry Professor

I like the Angry Professor.

This is something that we might do at the Mungowitz house. (Warning: Not PETA safe. Now that Angus is the darling of Greenpeace, I have to be careful...)

Don't Stop That Train....

Train doesn't stop, yet passengers get off. Nice.


(Nod to A.V., who doesn't care--he's just dying to get off)

Force Bad, Persuasion Good. Guns Rule Out Force.

One of those internet sensations going around. Still, worth thinking about.

The Gun is Civilization

Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it.In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad force equations. These are the people who think that we'd be more civilized if all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a [armed] mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger's potential victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat--it has no validity when most of a mugger's potential marks are armed.People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society.

A mugger, even an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state has granted him a force monopoly.

Then there's the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser. People who think that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don't constitute lethal force watch too much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is level.

The gun is the only weapon that's as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weight lifter. It simply wouldn't work as well as a force equalizer if it wasn't both lethal and easily employable.When I carry a gun, I don't do so because I am looking for a fight, but because I'm looking to be left alone.

The gun at my side means that I cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don't carry it because I'm afraid, but because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn't limit the actions of those who would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do so by force. It removes force from the equation... and that's why carrying a gun is a civilized act.

by Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)

Long strange trip

I've been an NBA fan since the late 1960s. I've seen games in Detroit (Cobo Hall), Milwaukee (when they played at the Mecca), Dallas, San Antonio, New York (the Gah-den), New Orleans, Los Angeles (Sports Arena, Fabulous Forum, and Staples).

Tyler and I for years were season ticket holders for the Washington Bullets in the Cap Center (people, we saw Muggsy Bogues and Manute Bol standing side by side).

All of this is preface for saying that last night's Thunder - Lakers game was the loudest crowd and probably most exciting game I've ever seen in person.

As in the previous two games, the Thunder came out extremely sloppy and fell far behind early. They somehow convince themselves that the Lakers are just another team and seem shocked by the intensity of the start of the game.

Kobe had a pretty good first 3 quarters and KD had a pretty poor first three quarters.

But, oh, that 4th quarter was fun. Kobe was 2-10 (10 - 29 total with no free throws) and Durant, who ended up guarding Kobe down the stretch, was huge. The key sequence was KD blocking Kobe's jumper, the Thunder recovering the ball and then Durant hitting a baseline floater on the other end.

Plus I guess Scotty Brooks must follow me on Twitter, because Jeff Green only got 27 minutes of PT to stink it up, rather than the 41 he's been averaging in this series.

Party Time!

Party Strength, the Personal Vote, and Government Spending

David Primo & James Snyder
American Journal of Political Science, April 2010, Pages 354-370

Abstract:
"Strong" political parties within legislatures are one possible solution to the problem of inefficient universalism, a norm under which all legislators seek large projects for their districts that are paid for out of a common pool. We demonstrate that even if parties have no role in the legislature, their role in elections can be sufficient to reduce spending. If parties in the electorate are strong, then legislators will demand less distributive spending because of a decreased incentive to secure a "personal vote" via local projects. We estimate that spending in states with strong party organizations is at least 4% smaller than in states where parties are weak. We also find evidence that strong party states receive less federal aid than states with weak organizations, and we theorize that this is because members of Congress from strong party states feel less compelled to secure aid than members from weak party states.

-----------------------

Are Congressional Leaders Middlepersons or Extremists? Yes

Stephen Jessee & Neil Malhotra
Legislative Studies Quarterly, forthcoming

Abstract: Influential theories of legislative organization predict that congressional
leaders should be selected from the center of their parties. Yet, the extant literature has generally rejected the "middleperson hypothesis," finding that leaders are extremists. We reexamine these findings by testing more appropriate null hypotheses via Monte Carlo simulation. We find that congressional leaders (and leadership candidates as a whole) tend to be closer to the party median than would occur by chance, but also tend to be selected to the left of the median for Democrats and to the right for Republicans. Compared to the pool of announced candidates for leadership positions, winners are not ideologically distinctive, suggesting that factors affecting the ideology of leaders tend to operate more at the
candidate emergence stage.

-----------------------

The multidimensional nature of party competition

Jeremy Albright, Party Politics, forthcoming

Abstract: Left-right is a convenient tool for summarizing the complexities of voter- party linkages in a manner that is comparable across contexts and that avoids the pathologies of preference aggregation in higher dimensions. Yet several reasons exist to believe that left-right is increasingly incapable of summarizing political behavior: the inability of left-right to capture policy concerns beyond economics and religion; the accumulation of new issue concerns over time; pressures for policy convergence stemming from the globalization of the world economy; and the decline of social cleavages that historically structured vote choice. This paper shows that parties are indeed talking about a growing number of issues, they are converging on the left-right scale, and the ideological cues they are sending to voters are
growing increasingly ambiguous. Social democratic parties have in particular been affected by these trends.

Nod to Kevin L.

Come to Durham.... to EAT!

Or so says my EXCELLENT friends at the NYT. Really.

The article mentions two of my favorite places, Crooks Corner and Watts Grocery.

(Nod to Anonyman)

Was He Out of the Basepath?

Jonathan Chait? I am linking Jonathan Chait?

Yes, but it's a baseball play. Catcher missed the tag, because he was falling forward, expecting to get hit.

(Nod to Steve Grant)

1:19 pm: less than 100,000 minutes of Chairity!

The Chairity meter goes below 100,000 today at 1:19.

Oh, BABY!

Earth day special: the bravest eco-warriors

No, people, it's not the Greenpeace dudes ramming whaling boats with their rubber dinghies. It's not the folks who chain themselves to bulldozers at construction sites.

It's the bicyclists of Mexico City!

Mrs. A and I lived in that lovely metropolis for 2+ years and I would rather be slathered with honey and walk through a grizzly bear exhibit than cycle on the streets of Chilangolandia!

"every Ecobici user interviewed said they are gravely concerned about drivers who don't follow rules that allow cyclists to have their own lane. They told of near misses with buses, aggressive drivers leaning on their horns, cars on sidewalks, cars going the wrong way on one-way streets, virtual mayhem at traffic circles.

"Nobody respects the bicyclist," said Gustavo Gonzalez, slipping an Ecobici from a downtown rack. "But I like it. It's a very good program. I wish they'd extend it further.""

So on this earth day let us salute Gustavo Gonzalez and his bike riding cuates: the bravest eco-warriors ever.

Toronto--Not the Brightest Move

"Free" mass transit passes will jump start mass transit use!

Not.

If you sell a condo, you have to buy a year's worth of Metro passes, and leave them in the condo. Which raises the price of the condo by approximately....the cost of a year's passes for the Metro. Which, since that is not the thing most people would buy with that amount of cash, means that buyers will substitute away to other forms of housing.

This is how central cities become ghost towns. They try to use location rents to extract all sorts of social rents, and then when people move out to the suburbs, planners blame greed and racism.

When the actual blame should go to the idiots on the city council.

(Nod to RL, who is looking around)

Chris Dodd Must Go

In which I rant about Chris Dodd. I don't really admire the senior senator from CT very much.

The cool thing is that Michael Moore reams Dodd a new one in Capitalism: A Love Story. Makes it worth watching the movie. (Barney Frank, the rankest Dem on House Finance, also gets pounded by Mr. Moore).

Two Papers on Internet and Information Use, Disintermediation

Is the internet reflecting, or perhaps causing, increased segregation of news consumption and information exposure?


Ideological Segregation Online and Offline

Matthew Gentzkow & Jesse Shapiro
NBER Working Paper, April 2010

Abstract: We use individual and aggregate data to ask how the Internet is changing the ideological segregation of the American electorate. Focusing on online news consumption, offline news consumption, and face-to-face social interactions, we define ideological segregation in each domain using standard indices from the literature on racial segregation. We find that ideological segregation of online news consumption is low in absolute terms, higher than the segregation of most offline news consumption, and significantly lower than the segregation of face-to-face interactions with neighbors, co-workers, or family members. We find no evidence that the Internet is becoming more segregated over time.

-----------------------

The World Wide Web and the U.S. Political News Market

Norman Nie, Darwin Miller, Saar Golde, Daniel Butler & Kenneth Winneg
American Journal of Political Science, April 2010, Pages 428-439

Abstract: We propose a framework for understanding how the Internet has affected the
U.S. political news market. The framework is driven by the lower cost of production for online news and consumers' tendency to seek out media that conform to their own beliefs. The framework predicts that consumers of Internet news sources should hold more extreme political views and be interested in more diverse political issues than those who solely consume mainstream television news. We test these predictions using two large datasets with questions about news exposure and political views. Generally speaking, we find that consumers of generally left-of-center (right-of-center) cable news sources who combine their cable news viewing with online sources are more liberal (conservative) than those who do not. We also find that those who use online news content are more likely than those who consume only television news content to be interested in niche political issues.

(Nod to Kevin L)

Hey General, you just broke my BS meter!

People, sometimes it's just too easy:

School lunches called a national security threat

Retired military officers say kids are growing up too pudgy for service

By MARY CLARE JALONICK

Associated Press Writer

updated 9:36 a.m. CT, Tues., April 20, 2010

WASHINGTON - School lunches have been called many things, but a group of retired military officers is giving them a new label: national security threat.

That's not a reference to the mystery meat served up in the cafeteria line either. The retired officers are saying that school lunches have helped make the nation's young people so fat that fewer of them can meet the military's physical fitness standards, and recruitment is in jeopardy.....

The military group acknowledges that other things keep young adults out of the armed services, such as a criminal record or the lack of a high school diploma. But weight problems that have worsened over the past 15 years are now the leading medical reason that recruits are rejected.

Although all branches of the military now meet or exceed recruitment goals, retired Navy Rear Adm. James Barnett Jr., a member of the officers group, says the obesity trend could affect that.

"When over a quarter of young adults are too fat to fight, we need to take notice," Barnett said. He noted that national security in the year 2030 is "absolutely dependent" on reversing child obesity rates.

Hey Kid: Every time you eat a tator tot, you're letting the terrorists win!

Another other shoe drops

The scandal broke in North America, then re-erupted in Europe. Now it's Latin America's turn to proclaim the joys of Catholicism:

The detention of an 83-year-old priest in Brazil for allegedly abusing boys as young as 12 has added to the scandals hitting the Roman Catholic Church in Latin America, even as Chile's bishops asked pardon Tuesday for past cases.

The allegations against Monsignor Luiz Marques Barbosa — and two other Brazilian priests — have made headlines throughout the world's most populous Catholic nation and come amid accusations of sexual abuse by priests around the world.

Latin Americans priests have faced a cascade of accusations of abuse of minors.

A priest in Chile was charged recently with eight cases of sexually abusing minors, including a girl he had fathered.

Chile's bishops' conference issued a statement Tuesday apologizing for priestly sexual abuse and vowing a "total commitment" to prevent it in the future.

YIKES!

spring forward

You gotta admit that this is much better than the alternative of having two sets of clocks!

Jeff Green: please report to the foreman's office

In the Thunder's two playoff games Green is averaging over 40 minutes per game of playing time and simply put, is not producing at all. He has scored in the two games a total of 22 points on 6 of 23 shooting and grabbed a total of 7 rebounds. He also has a total of 2 assists.

That's what we call not showing up, people.

Phone Call for Mr. Green!

Man Pulled Over Driving Barbie Car

And, yes, alcohol was involved.

(Nod to Anonyman, who still has some Barbies in his closet, I hear)

I'll see your civit dung coffee and raise you one.....

I am assuming that India will be taking Ghana to the WTO over this obvious breach of copyright.

If the title of the post seems more out to lunch than usual to you, check here.

Economic Geography

Interesting. P-Kroog's address to the American Association of Geographers.

Excerpt:

Many economic geographers proper were furious at the rise of the new geographical economics. That was predictable: near the end of that 1990 monograph I foretold the reaction, and also explained why I was doing what I was doing:

“The geographers themselves probably won’t like this: the economics profession’s simultaneous love for rigor and contempt for realism will surely prove infuriating. I do not come here, however, to fight against the sociology of my profession, but to exploit it: by demonstrating that models of economic geography can be cute and fun, I hope to attract other people into tilling this nearly virgin soil.”

Actually, the reaction was even worse than I expected. As it happens, starting in the 1980s many geographers were moving even further from mainstream economics -- there was a widespread rejection not just of the assumptions of rational behavior and equilibrium, but of the whole notion of mathematical modeling and even the use of quantitative methods

(Nod to Neanderbill)

The Elastrator

Didn't Ray Bradbury write a book called "The Elastrated Man"? Maybe not.

Anyway, the Bishop sends this little tidbit.

Here's the bigger version, for bulls.

Fear the elastrator. For the elastrator will set you free.

The 10,000 Minutes, and Bon Jovi....

If I have this right (and I may not!), then the Chairity Counter at right will go below the magic 10,000 minute mark just after noon (12:43 pm) on Thursday, April 22.

Of course, the LMM and I will be in the car, headed to Charlotte to get ready for the Bon Jovi concert. (Did you hear that? I think it was one gun shot, the sound of Angus killing himself in anguish...) Yes, Bon Jovi. The LMM likes to pretend that I am John BJ, and I like to encourage this. WHOA! WE'RE HALF WAY THERE! WHOA-OH! LIVIN' ON A PRAY-ER!

She loves it.

Podcastrians! Love, Money, Profits, and Gifts

Russ Roberts and I wonder about a bunch of stuff. Youknowhowwedo.

Careful with that ash, Kazem

Here's one of the best entries ever in the "minister's explain nature" category:

"A senior Iranian cleric has claimed that dolled-up women incite extramarital sex, causing more earthquakes in Iran, a country that straddles several fault lines, newspapers reported on Saturday.

"Many women who dress inappropriately ... cause youths to go astray, taint their chastity and incite extramarital sex in society, which increases earthquakes," Ayatollah Kazem Sedighi told worshippers at Friday prayers in Tehran.

"Calamities are the result of people's deeds," he was quoted as saying by reformist Aftab-e Yazd newspaper. "We have no way but conform to Islam to ward off dangers.""

My thoughts:

1. Man, I have GOT to go visit Iceland!

2. This is a pretty warped and sick view of what causes sex. "Of course I had sex with her your honor, I saw her ankle and her nose. What else could I do?"

3. "When in doubt, blame the woman" seems to be a common position among at least some groups of Islamic clerics.

Here's to Homicide!

This weekend, Mrs. Angus and I were invited to dinner at the Snow household. Clyde is a national treasure and Norman institution and the title of the post was his pre-meal toast.

Clyde testified at Saddam Hussein's trial about forensic evidence from a mass grave of Kurds.

Apparently, Saddam rejected the idea that the grave had anything to do with him, claiming that Iraq was full of mass graves and in all likelihood it was a leftover from the Hittites!

(in other words, as I pointed out during this discussion, Saddam's defense was, "it wasn't me, it was Nebuchadnezzer")

Clyde allowed that, while he knew the Hittites were quite an advanced civilization, he was not aware that they had actually developed digital watches with batteries so powerful that the watches were still running when the grave was exhumed.

Oh.

Fugly

Well, the Lakers had their way with my Thunder this afternoon. OKC was totally unprepared for the defensive intensity of LA and for how rough and tumble playoff basketball can be and got way behind early.

That said, they hung tough and managed to get it semi-close several times in the second half.

People, Kobe is toast! He's pretty much got nothing. I am not sure if that is temporary or permanent, but he is not playing well at all.

Bottom line: Thunder may win a game or two, but their bigs cannot hang with Bynum, Gasol and Odom.

New Jersey Fan So Gross He Even Disgusts Phillys Fans

How gross and disgusting do you have to be to disgust Phillys fans?

I'm not sure where the line is, but this crosses it.

“It was the most vile, disgusting thing I’ve ever seen,” Vangelo said Friday. “He has two fingers down his throat, he lunges forward and vomits on myself and my 11-year-old daughter.”

Vangelo said he tried to push his children safely behind him, and Clemmens punched him in the face. Four or five fans in the next section rushed to help, Vangelo said. They held him until police arrived — someone punching Clemmens in the face as he tried to break free — and an officer was also hit with vomit, Vanore said.

Eeeeeew. New Jersey: So gross it makes Philadelphia look cultured and sophisticated.

(Nod RL)

MM on WAMC, With Allan Chartock

A (let's call it) "wide-ranging" interview with the very nice and interesting Allan Chartock, on WAMC's Northeast Public Radio. A huge audience, by my standards, on dozens of stations in MA, NY, and etc in New England.

My Cuomo bashing had started here....

And then used this way....

I was glad to get to clear this up in the interview. Andrew Cuomo did NOT cause the financial crisis. George Bush, Barney Frank, and Chris Dodd caused the financial crisis. Andrew Cuomo only helped. (Listen to see why I think so!)

There were no bogus rules like this in 1880!

Good Question!

Q: how many education professors does it take to run an acceptable school?

A: more than Stanford has, apparently!



hat tip to Malcolm.