Archive for category Politics
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Life
Weather has bottomed out, work has continued to flatline, law school news is still in limbo with both definitive defeats and incremental victories, gaming has moved back toward single player after BG WoW was saved (thank you Veri, Bus), health is embattled on sleep, gym, and diet fronts, and most importantly…
Family is great – I was able to visit my parents while on a visit to UA Law and had a really good time catching up and talking things over with them.
Subscriptions
I just added a few feeds of note to my RSS reader. Two are for the exploration of sensible economics, and one is for a new “gamer lawyer” track I am trying to envision and construct.
Chicago’s Becker-Posner Blog
Richard Epstein’s Forbes column
Lawyers in a Gamer’s World blog
Knowledge and Decisions after Common Sense Economics
Wanting to shore up my ignorance about most substantive economic arguments I requested of my good friend a couple of books to do just that.
He lent me Common Sense Economics by James Gwartney, et. al, and Knowledge and Decisions by Thomas Sowell.
Results
Both works contributed to a tempering of my unchecked bleeding heart, which I believe stemmed from both a harsh rejection of the moral leanings of the right to which I was exposed in childhood and an enchantment with the oratory and narrative of Barack Obama. Each work contained massive amounts of evidence for the superiority of free markets and argued for free markets, although much of Sowell’s substance flew over my head.
The Theory
One shadow of doubt convincingly cast was that of “hoped-for” results. Defining governmental programs and organizations up front by their hoped-for results helps mask their truly important parts: processes and actual results.
However, articulation also comes under fire as a force opposed to free market decision-making where inarticulate actions like purchases communicate many processes and actual results.
Sowell’s thesis seemed to focus on the differences in the costs of knowledge to different decision makers. He used this framework to explain various societal problems, historical events, and the economic/political/legal status quo. To be honest, the applications of this main point tended to fly over my head. What I take away from it is that those for whom knowledge is cheap and accessible (for example, connected politicians, organized labor unions) tend to hold more power in decision making. But should they? Another component of the argument seems to be that in our current societal setup these groups make damaging decisions because those making them are so distant from the first-hand knowledge held by those affected.
Oh who knows, I probably missed it completely. Seemed libertarian. But plenty of background in history, law, economics, and politics made the read well worth it.
The Content
A few crucial turns in recent American history were highlighted, most notably the expansion of power of the Executive and Judicial branches during the Warren court. I’m now reading Bob Woodward’s The Brethren, which has begun with an expository of how Burger follows Warren.
Certain commonly fallen for fallacies also made a lot of sense. For example, the democratic fallacy often hits American voters who think that options are unlimited and because we live in a democracy we can vote for anything we want. The animistic fallacy describes when one believes order must have been created by design, whereas many disparate chaotic events can actually amalgamate into order.
Common Sense Economics was a great brush up of aspects of econ that I had once known more closely in high school and college. The chapter on personal finance was especially great.
Provoked Thoughts
Telecom executives will complain about regulation stifling their investments then turn around in less than a month and try to perpetuate the regulation that has propped them up in the face of competition from Google. First, hypocritical. Second, a system in which that can be done is one in which government seems to be bought and sold with no real ethical direction.
The power of government with its “threat of violence” as the key mechanism for getting certain behaviors out of the populous is indeed vast, and as Sowell describes overwhelming to all individuals and organizations. Was it overwhelming just now to Goldman Sachs?
I agree that the term “self-made man” is ignorant and arrogant.
Unmonitored monitors, for example, mothers and entrepreneurs, are the most productive people in society. Again, I agree!
The sections on antitrust made me want to lawyer my way into M&A.
Sure, the Constitution has survived for 250 years. But I would ask those who decry some of its stretchier interpretations as perverse: hasn’t the leeway for such changes allowed that very survival?
Upon reading that the founding fathers explicitly rejected Utopian speculations, well, again, I found my suspicions about the left increasing.
Review: The Wire
After months of wavering from computer to TV to frantic iPod sessions on lunch and on the train, today marked the end of Bert’s “The Wire” marathon. Three reasons the series succeeds marvelously:
Raw Reality
First, The Wire might as well be non-fiction.
I constantly felt like asking the questions: “Did something like this event actually happen?” ”Can this show possibly be based on reality?” As with every HBO series I’ve seen to date, The Wire seems to depict raw reality. From the tragic flaws explored in depth for nearly every character to the visceral gunshots and ghetto scenery, I feel like the show compromised nowhere and fabricated nothing. That’s not to say I have experience in any of the many contexts visited over the course of five seasons, but the settings, surprises, conflicts and lack of advantage given to either the “good” or “bad” side are something absent from most series that are obviously exaggerated.
The Range of Issues
Second, The Wire delves into scores of contemporary social problems
I’d suggest this show to anyone interested in law enforcement, drug trafficking, gang violence, substance abuse, wiretaps, labor unions, the lagging American education system, shady European drug suppliers, middle aged singlehood and family life, criminal law, local party and race politics, urban blight, journalism’s vulnerability as of late.. well, I know I missed a bunch, but I hope by now you’re getting it. The social commentary here is all over the place. Each segment gets its own arc over a number of episodes in which the issue is introduced, tossed around, shown as horribly complicated, and resolved in an oft unexpected, imperfect manner.
Characters
Third, through rise, fall, life, death, bust, escape, and/or redemption, just about every character is genius.
For the super-deep, super-tragic I’m thinking Omar, Ziggy, Marlo, Stringer, Prezbo, and D’Angelo. But even the simpler guys were great: Wee-bey, Bodie, Herc, are all wonderfully memorable. My biggest question to anyone who’s seen it: do you really think McNulty could be considered the main character? I felt like the others were so well done, their lives so well-related, that I couldn’t see McNulty as any sort of protagonist. Not to detract from his role whatsoever, but just as the show’s creators never really took sides in the outcomes in terms of who wins or loses, they sufficiently keep the focus on characters other than Jimmy to make it a truly epic story.
Well, learn more here. Now I start talking about how the show relates to contemporary me-life. Just one point.
Juking the stats
“Juking the stats,” a crime reduction strategy frequently employed by politicians trying to reach higher office and police higher-ups looking to do the same, is a phenomenon from The Wire that hits close to home. Cedric Daniels, perhaps the most principled cop in the entire show, argues toward the end that the very focus on performance improvement by improving statistics is what has ruined the department.
Level one statistics (those without context) are so savagely abused in the real world. Without the level two statistics, those values that both indicate validity and create the context necessary for those simple stats to become meaningful, most are broken down to garbage. Without being too specific about my work, I have been compelled to juke the stats on a continuous basis. Context, reason, and at many times simple logic, are defenestrated in favor of looking good to someone who is just too busy to look, for more than two seconds, at more than the two digits (or one if we’re doing a particularly bad job) at all costs. I cannot stand how blatantly and frequently this behavior is asked of me not only tacitly but also explicitly.
Looking forward to a potential career as a lawyer in a swell firm, I hope to be adept and thus valuable enough to mold my situation into one where struggling to make billable hour quotas, etc, doesn’t infect my central charge. So if I take away one key lesson from this show, it’s that so as not to become mired in the hell that is compromising principles and reason for meeting arbitrarily set goals, I can be supra-competitive. What I mean by that is, I need to be focused on goals that transcend average competition. This uncommon methodology is something I succeeded at pretty well in high school as a big fish in a small pond, but thereafter I haven’t fared too well. Maybe it’s not the right way of looking at things. Maybe it’s not the only way to remain ethical. Prevention, specialization, and sustainability all come to mind!
In sum, in the long run I don’t want to be forced into juking the stats.
AIG and Iraq
Yesterday at work I pored over this NYT op-ed by Jake DeSantis and realized how complex the AIG bonus situation really is. After I tweeted the link, a coworker and I discussed the whole thing a few times back and forth, and reasoned that the reaction has been a little too hostile, a little too abrupt, and a little too mismanaged.
While those with whom primary blame should rest – the CDS guys – are out of the picture, they have not paid their penance for what they have wrought. They never will be able to. The stakeholders placed an alarming amount of trust in them, far in excess of the repayment they could afford if things went as bad as they did. Thus there is no way to exact commensurate punishment.
So when there is no one left to blame, enter the scapegoat. Looking back to spring of 2003, when so much anger and energy come down from 9/11 were serving as the impetus behind Bush’s foray into Iraq, we can see that a bit of irrationality led to a very controversial war that, regardless of the current outcome, was predicated on a lie.
Comments on that NYT article make a really good point in that cremwen should sink with the ship. But I suppose Mr. DeSantis’ personal touch convinced me that his team is being treated unfairly. And I’ve been convinced all along that a massive majority of people who criticize these bonuses are ignorant of the fact that these guys did not engineer the CDS’. I am certainly that way.
Man, what a complicated problem. But after seeing the Liddy hearings, the Meet the Press eps, the headlines and now this letter, I’m not really outraged at all.
To the Editor: Net Necessity
(Stolen shamelessly from those who coined “net neutrality”)
If you believe this rant is coming from Berticusrex the 70 Tauren Warrior then we both agree that it’s frivolous. But from Bert Forsythe the job-seeker, politcally engaged citizen, and investor it carries a bit of urgency.
Comcast is a de facto public monopoly in many regions of the country. What I argue for here is to tie the standards of the cable companies to standards of the power companies. In a world like this, where information is such an asset, use of the net becomes necessary for so many people.
Think of the people who have had massive damage to their homes or businesses amid the financial crisis as of late. Likely one of their most valuable assets has been imperiled simultaneous with the placement of a barrier to access to their portfolio. This type of anti-synergy seems like some of the societal infrastructure that could widen the income gap from the middle down.
One important clarification to offer is that I don’t advocate the -equalizing- of cable/phone repair standards and practices to those of power. Of course certain work cannot even begin until power is restored. Moreover the importance of power to physiological survival dwarfs that of information services.
But in a post-hurricane Houston, where the economy is reeling, voters are unfortunately being disenfranchaised by mother nature, and like the rest of the country net worths are plummeting, nothing could be more vital to the recovery of such crucial institutions than the restoration of the media by which people stay informed.
Think of the share of people who missed the historic first presidential debate. And think too of those still who won’t get to witness the historic second.
My inquisition here is simple: Is Comcast, and other utility firms, held to the highest standards when disaster strikes? Or are they still allowed to cost hawk and refuse overtime where it saves the shareholders a few dimes?
Clearly not an agency problem as dire as that of Fannie and Freddie, but still, don’t let these guys, whose service feedback ranges only from abysmal to worse, ignore the eventual necessity of information services post-disaster.
Michigan Possibly to be Biggest State in Election
McCain Makes a Run at Michigan, a Wavering Democratic Stronghold
Kicked when down! 
But I’d probably be too busy pulling my hair out to have gotten so interested.
22, 22.
Some more politics – end of the RNC
Media’s response to Palin’s speech
I’ve read Nate & Sean’s commentary, (#2) the WSJ, NYT, and NY Post articles on Palin’s speech and wanted to tease out what I saw in sum since unfortunately I couldn’t be there! I say that mostly for contextual reasons and because I only caught up on her and McCain’s speeches.
Nate & Sean scored it low, taking the subjective stance that it took the acrimony way too far by making no mistake in choosing personal attacks.
WSJ seemed mostly objective. I’m not sure what political orientation it’s stereotyped to have.
NYT was surprisingly objective, but did choose to include some rebuttals clarifying actuality with respect to Obama. I read NYT more than any other paper and honestly feel like it’s not the counterculture bias haven that people charge it to be. Sure all their op-ed’s are loaded with fiery rhetoric, but the front page stuff seems like class journalism. Maybe they just have me fooled and are slowly converting me to bleedingheartliberalism.
And NY Post (read this because it popped up on Google News) wrote more stuff about Giuliani than Palin. They’re definitely taking Giuliani’s side for obvious reasons, but tended to agree and offer no outside information like the NYT did.
My interpretation and criticism
Palin is doing a fantastic job of avoiding the blaring screwups that some might expect her to make. The speech was certainly charged like that of a “regular” candidate would have been. I still think she’s on the wrong track though; Sean and Nate make a very good point that she took the Obama attacks overboard. Thus far Obama’s camp has issued some statements criticizing McCain’s VP choice, but the closest to derision I’ve seen is that despite her historic significance and success up to now she’s in with the guy who’s wrong.
Some of these reports intertwined Obama with the scandal accusations, using language juxtaposed to Obama mentions implicating that “the Democrats” have circulated such rumors. She said it herself, the media are the ones squealing here. Whether it’s clear scrutiny or mud-stained bashing, attributing it to the political rivals is a low blow.
Again, overall her speech was slightly above the line to me and could have some serious effect on the polls. But while we’re on pot shots, the remark about community organizers having no responsibility was reprehensible. She just about ruined it by dissing that aspect of Obama’s résumé. I think because he’s been referring to it as such for so long that few people will actually get what a “community organizer” is. Perhaps he avoids explaining it in detail on his site because it wasn’t all that impressive, but if it was something as ambitious and difficult as say Teach For America, he deserves massive credit for it.
If we want to compare Obama to Palin we should look at the time relation of his experience to her’s. In 1992, Obama was past law school and well into his career when she was just beginning as a city council member. Looking at the simultaneity of their experience it’s just a joke to compare.
I’m getting a little too opinionated here, so lets go on.
My “op-ed” of the situation thus far
If continuously going into the worst of neighborhoods as a college grad (who “put off his law school and corporate life”) and dealing with people who both don’t want to be dealt with and who are stuck in cycles of poverty and violence doesn’t involve responsibility, sitting in an office in one’s mid 30s and being paid a comfortable state salary for coming in every day doesn’t involve the resolution to do what it takes. To go even further into the timing of Obama’s experience, the community stuff was his first step into realizing that to fix this, fixing it wouldn’t work. He’d have to join the political foray.
And, unfortunately, it doesn’t end there. The two prevailing themes at the RNC were McCain’s POW ordeal, appropriately promoted by the president and then held onto for days where the DNC went on to talk about policy, and Obama-bashing. Ironically, the closest Bush came to taking part was saying that the left was angry.
Obama has praised McCain’s character and attacked his policies. McCain has now attacked Obama’s character and ignored his policies.
Energy
Russia issues and draft fears aside, energy is tied with education for my personal #2 issue. I hadn’t realized that Palin was so pro-oil, but that is a huge turn-off for me.
- With stuff like this coming out, how the hell can you do anything but aim to reduce drilling? I’m glad the scientific consensus is at least firmer this cycle.
- Global trade consultant Edward Goldberg: “After much wine this [Russian oil guy] gentleman told me that his country is very pleased that the Bush administration wanted to drill in the Alaskan wilderness. In his opinion, the amount of product one could actually derive from there was negligible in terms of need…”
- Friedman does a good job of summing it up.
Petroleum takes geological amounts of time to form. As much as I hate to quip like this: it is where it is. It’s not here. Perhaps I’m hypocritical in saying this but you don’t deal with an addiction by taking just a few more sips. McCain’s statements on energy have begun with oil and trailed off with renewables. Democrats’ begin with renewables and sometimes make mention of limited drilling expansion. Yes, gas prices suck. No, they won’t be down if petro is maintained as the main fuel for any longer.
If Obama wins and is assassinated, heaven forbid, it will have been big oil.
To sum up
I’m eagerly refreshing 538 multiple times daily to track these last couple of months. If he holds Ohio after the next few poll waves I’d begin to bet a lot on him. I can’t wait for the debates because I feel like Obama has a huge edge here, both in the JFK sense of his speaking skills and in regards to the issues. After all, issues got the majority of the attention at the Dem convention – they’ve proven they can speak of them adeptly. And personal vitriol probably wouldn’t fly at a debate about the issues.