July links

Tangled mess. A knitting site has banned political discussions due to animosity between Trump supporters and opponents. I sympathize. Maybe it was the right move if people were arguing too much and not sharing enough knitting tips.

Election disinformation starting. Example #1 is about Kamala Harris.

NRA meltdown. This is something to watch. The NRA is embroiled in scandal. But it's also a big player in elections. Will we see any effects? Possibly not because it works mostly locally, not from the top down.

2020 forecast. The prediction by a forecaster who did well in the 2018 election.

Russia laughs at Trump display.  Russian media jokes about the lame military display for the Fourth of July. Oh really? Well, who lost the Cold War? That's right, suckers.

Police misbehaving. This isn't really a surprise. Police in a major city are caught making biased remarks on social media, including white supremacist remarks. However, I thought the comment section was worth reading.

Legal analysis on regulation. From a conservative source this time. An analysis of a recent Supreme Court decision. His prediction is a rolling back of government by regulation. I can't comprehend that, and wonder about chaos ensuing until the Supreme Court finds a good balance.

Historical footnote on rich people getting away with crime. Jeffrey Epstein was a known pedophile, and how did he stay out of jail? Good question. It's harder to charge him than you might think, until someone does it and then the other prosecutors look like wimps or worse. One of them being Trump's secretary of labor, now having resigned.

Trump's master stroke. After the grab-them-by-the-pussy video, Trump barely survived. However, he saved himself by going into attack mode during the next debate, and that was admired by much of the GOP.

Image: newstimes.com

Republican accomplishments in 2017

The GOP had undivided power in the US federal government: presidency, House, Senate, and even a mostly sympathetic Supreme Court. They started the year with all kinds of bragging, but didn't manage to do some major pieces of legislation, including repealing Obamacare, overhauling immigration laws, defunding the horrid Planned Parenthood, reworking trade agreements, etc.

The misses have been well-discussed. What might be overlooked is what was accomplished by these latter day Keyston Kops. (A good summary is here. A summary from a conservative site here.)

Tighter enforcement on immigration. Many groups, including Haitians, have lost special status and are now subject to deportation. DACA for children brought to the US wasn't renewed. Flow across the border seems to be down (a trend over several years). Democrats are being pounded by their constituents over their failure to stop these immigration changes. But that just shows the unrealistic hopes of certain groups since the Dems have almost no power.

The tax reform/tax cut bill was passed, with major changes for both businesses, individuals, and households. It's hard for me to predict how this will affect the country in the long term. It may cause a big increase in deficits. However, if the increases are kept to around $100 billion a year, that's not too large in the scheme of things. So far businesses have responded in positive ways, so there is a chance that the economic benefits will outweigh the economic downsides. We'll have to wait to see, though not everyone agrees. Some are presuming it will be a failure, though partisanship is probably the motive.

Changes in regulations, and a big slowdown in new regulation. I personally think that the stability of much less new regulation is mostly a benefit. I'm not a business owner, but wonder how many are relieved with this change in particular. And I'm not talking about businesses that hope to drill in sea coasts or pollute.

No huge disasters. There haven't been any crises that have started and gotten worse. No blunders that ballooned into disasters. Does that count as an accomplishment? No, but I'm still grateful.

Image: magapill.com

Extras. Not a close fit except for the aspect of a roundup of 2017. The most underreported news stories.

Supreme Court stubs out abortion ban via regulation

When you can't get what you want by fair play, we can always resort to other methods. So it was with the State of Texas. The majority of legislators want to ban abortion, but certain Supreme Court decisions stand in their way.

Enter a different idea: cloak your ban in the guise of health-based regulations. Since we're already drowning in regulations, it's a common method of changing practice, so why not? It's not that hard to lie about the real reasons for the regulation, like pretending that abortion is more dangerous than childbirth and causes more death than the low death toll from colonoscopies.

So Texas passed its regulations (after an unsuccessful filibuster by Wendy Davis). Lots of abortion clinics closed down, but at least one sued. The case went up to the Supreme Court, where Anthony Kennedy, typically conservative justice, called bullshit on the regulations. Well, they were bullshit, so I'm glad that he didn't play along. Kennedy has called bullshit on other issues too, including the idea that same sex marriage is dangerous to the institution of marriage and family.

Three cheers for Justice Kennedy!

How far you have to travel in Texas

Image: vocativ.com

Slow motion, preventable tragedy in Michigan

So Flint, Michigan went from having drinkable water to water that was poisonous. The Flint water has caused rashes, smelled and tasted foul, corroded metal parts at a local factory, and increased lead levels in children. This is not what most of us aspire to--to go backwards into greater danger due to unhygienic conditions.

I'm not a fan of endless improvements, especially those that are minor, time-consuming, and mandated without regard to the cost imposed. And, believe me since I work in healthcare, I live with a lot of time-consuming, mandated requirements.

However, safe drinking water is one of the banner achievements of our society. Its loss, in a stupid and wanton way, is a reminder of how necessary regulations are. Somehow, all the clean water regulations in the country and in Michigan didn't prevent this preventable mistake.

I know hardly anything about water regulations, so I don't know if regulations were ignored, or maybe loopholes used. But having worked in bureaucratic organizations, I can imagine that some people knew this water change was a very bad idea, yet they were overruled or not listened to. And maybe someone (a cog in the machine, like me) rubberstamped the changes and they went ahead.

I pray that I'm strong enough to stand up if I'm ever in this situation, but I'm not confident I would be. And I don't know a fail-safe answer either. After all, weren't there already fail-safe regulations already in place, yet this still occurred?

If this was your house, your bath, your water...

Image: mlive.com

Extra. Details (but readable) about the chemistry of water treatment.

Update 2/13/16. Emails warning not to do this. I wish there were more details in the emails about why.

Update 2/26/16. Similar news story, but still not clear as to warnings.

Short: Arrested for a parenting decision

At a time when we have stressed parents trying to make ends meet, I don't think we should add to the burden by questioning non-dangerous parenting decisions. Here's a story. A mother had a shift at work, the 9-year-old daughter was bored sitting at the workplace and wanted to stay at the park instead. Mom said yes, and gave her a cellphone. On the third day of this arrangement, a budinsky parent called the cops or child services. Was the child incapable of looking after herself? There's no evidence of that. So why should the kid be whisked into foster care, and the mother arrested and charged?

Yes, there was the potential of danger, but children do transition from needing full-time adult supervision (minus bathroom breaks and sanity breaks) to being responsible for their own safety. Our laws are wrong if they represent the expectation that a 9-year-old needs the same supervision as a 9-month-old or as a 15-year-old. Please, let's not make it harder on our parents and our kids. Give them more leeway than was shown in this incident.

This is most likely the park. Looks nice.

Image: chronicle.augusta.com

Short: Good news from a plane crash?

Image: businessweek.com

If the plane looks like this, what happened to the soft, squishy passengers inside?

That's the good news. Even with over 300 people aboard, only 2 were killed in the crash. Read this for a brief discussion of why planes are safer. Also consider if this is an example of the type of regulation we want. I'm certainly impressed by this demonstration of the benefits of airline safety.

Short: Miles apart on regulation

"The reductions of toxic pollution required by the pending “Mercury and Air Toxics” standard would save as many as 17,000 lives every year by 2015 and prevent up to 120,000 cases of childhood asthma symptoms." -National Resources Defense Council

"If enacted, the regulations would lead to nationwide employment losses totaling 1.44 million job-years by 2020 and increase Americans’ average electricity bills by 11.5 percent. In some parts of the United States, rates would climb by almost 24 percent." - A coal-power industrial group

One article talks only about the health benefits of a set of regulations. One article talks only about the economic drawbacks. Where can we go for a balanced discussion? None of the top 20 Google suggestions help.

Romney's economic plan - FAIL

It's time for me to accept that Romney may well be Republican nominee, despite the appearance that half the Repub base can't stand him. Since I live in Massachusetts, I've experienced Romney as a governor but I can barely remember it. That indicates that he wasn't a great governor or an awful one. That's the sum of my firsthand experience. For any other questions, I have to research just like anyone else. This comment from an Atlantic blog seconded my impression of him and prompted my flurry of Romney research:

"He's seeped himself in the republican orthodoxy with a wink wink and nod and a smile at the camera.  I think he can largely free himself from that come the general election." --Atlantic post

My impression of Romney as a campaigner: polished delivery, strong on the details, personable, moderate. I don't remember many policy proposals, but the entire field has been rather lean on policy (except 9-9-9), so that's par for the course. I had to look at the goods, so I skimmed Romney's 87-page economic plan.

The good news is that the plan is not a typical Republican conservative supply-side fairy tale. Of course there's Obama-bashing on every other page, but there's some promising stuff too. What I liked:

• Lower tax rate on cap gains, dividends, interest, but importantly, only for tax payers under $200,000.
• Cut corporate rate to 25% and end rules that discourage repatriation of overseas profits.
• An explicit shout-out to Simpson-Bowles' recommendations on tax reform - broader tax base, simpler, fewer deductions.
• A cap on regulation that measures compliance costs, and doesn't allow an overall rise in compliance costs.
• A bit of respect for Dodd-Frank disguised as criticism.
• Cut, cap, and balance but at 20% of GDP, not the 18% level that most conservatives quote.

What I didn't like:

• Eliminate estate tax (but this is such a Republican plank, I'm not too surprised).
• Mention of the illusory tax compliance cost of $400 billion a year. I don't believe we spend 2.7% of our GDP in tax compliance. Where the spending is concentrated, in complex business arrangements,  will likely remain.
• A poke in the eye at the auto industry over the bail-out--UAW made out, but investors (carefully not called creditors) got screwed. I predict he'll change his tune on this one in the general campaign.
• Only small fixes to Social Security.
• A shout-out to Ryan's plan to voucherize Medicare, but with unspecified differences. This void shows how dangerous a definite policy commitment would be. I doubt that Romney will choose the deeply unpopular voucher approach.
• Turn Medicaid into a block grant. (I'm on the fence as to whether this will be beneficial or not.)
• Support for a balanced budget amendment that is more a strait-jacket than a workable plan.
• Tough talk about sanctioning China for currency manipulation.

Gaping holes in the plan:

• No plan for the uninsured or for lowering health care costs.
• No specific areas of spending cuts, but a reduction of the federal workforce by attrition.
• No proposed federal budget with numbers.

So, my overall impression is that the plan isn't extreme considering it came from a Republican: no major tax cuts, a reasonable goal on regulation. But it fails in two essential ways:

• It isn't a plan unless it contains actual numbers.
• It isn't honest about what will be painful. 

This plan is meant to get Romney elected, and only then will we find out if he'll grapple with tough issues. I'm sure no one is surprised that Romney is playing it safe.

 ...but don't expect a straight answer.

Should I review Michele Bachmann's plan now? ... No, I'll stick to real candidates.

Update 12/13/11. Romney announced his plans for Medicare reform, and they look a lot like Ryan's plan to voucherize the program.The big advantage of vouchers is that the federal government can decide how much to spend year-to-year. A big disadvantage is that it puts cost-containment onto insurance companies. To be fair, cost-containment is the boogey man in all Medicare plans. ...Oh, it's not a voucher, it's premium support. Don't ask me to explain the non-existent difference between the two.


Wall Street Journal review of Romney's plan

Debating with Ron Paul

No, I don't get the pleasure of debating Dr. Paul, but I do get to debate a few of his (always) avid supporters. Here are a few observations:

• They assert that life would be better without the federal oversight, but they never provide any data to back up the contention. Their belief is based on a faith and hope, not data. This isn't unusual in politics, but Paul supporters tend to think of themselves as more intelligent, so pointing this out galls them.
• Since they don't have an answer when you point out that their politics are based on faith, they don't come back with any answer. The conversation is over. They probably move on to someone who won't ask any hard questions.
• There's a strong strain of nostalgia for times before the federal government got so large (either before the first federal income tax, before the New Deal, or before Teddy Roosevelt). I definitely have sympathy for this longing for a time when a brave person or family could go to the frontier and homestead without farming regulations, water regulations, estimated tax payments, housing standards, gun permits and waiting periods, etc. But getting rid of government won't bring back that period. We'd still be the more crowded country we are now.

Maybe this is the vision that draws such fierce support to Ron Paul--you wouldn't have various governments or other entities telling you what you have to do. You can drink raw milk. You can sell raw milk without being closed down. There's something good there. But how can we enable the good without opening the door to the ruinously bad?

Maybe you don't try to prevent the bad. You accept both the good and the bad that freedom and liberty bring. Maybe Ron Paul supporters shouldn't say it would be much better under these policies (more accurately, lack of policies), but it would be freer. That isn't the choice our society made before, but it's worth looking at our decisions again.

Coming to your street soon...

Update 10/19/11. Here's a highlight from the comments. Nick points out that that personal autonomy (ie., freedom) is the fundamental ideal for Paul. That prompted me to see him as a fundamentalist, which means he won't make decisions on a rationalist basis. He's also somewhat utopian, believing (or proclaiming) that a return to his view of constitutionalism will cure many of the problems in this country. In either case, he never acknowledges the possible drawbacks to his policies. Reality isn't allowed to impinge on his ideal world. It's really quite bizarre--how he'll call out the failures of others, but never think he or his firm beliefs could lead to any failures.

Compromise on Regulation?

This post dates from early September, and was one of those odd occurrences that I reported in Political Reboot. It seems like ages ago. It's worth a quick look for environmentalists, and haters of bureaucrats and shills for industrial polluters.

 Sept. 2, 2011

Obama is stopping implementation of regulations proposed by the EPA.

(Apologies for that sentence, but that's what it takes to put the idea into the fewest words possible. Two agents: Obama and the EPA. Two objects: proposed regulations vs. their implementation. I'm bored already.)

I'll try to rouse myself by talking about things that matter: jobs and people's health. Very few people (other than Ron Paul) want to go back to the 1960's when pollution was rampant, our rivers were poisonous to varying degrees, and there were basically no controls.

We want some regulation, but we don't want it to be the fief of bureaucrats who use miniscule test results to build up their own sense of power and importance by protecting us from an almost imaginary danger. I've intentionally put this is derisive terms because I think it's true of some regulators. On the other hand, some regulators are trying to save us from small but real threats that could kill or disable perhaps 2 out of 50,000.

Republicans are corruptly using the focus on regulation to help big industry avoid important regulation. Under the mantle of protecting small businesses from choking regulation, the repubs are trying again to allow power generators to avoid the requirement for better pollution scrubbers.

Call me skeptical, but I don't think there are many small businesses that run coal-fired power plants. But of course it would be terrible to waste this opportunity to delay pollution controls yet again. After all, eight years of avoiding updating under Bush weren't enough. I'm holding on to this article to refute the inevitable talking pointy-heads on the comment threads [alternative link, but same article].

Post-speech score card

Obama gave an energized speech last night. He definitely seems to have grabbed the ball:

1. He wants to continue the Security Security Tax partial holiday and extend it to small businesses.
2. He wants to use a Republican state program and go national with it to help the unemployed.
3. He promises to strip back regulation that chokes small business, but only small business.
4. He wants to do a batch of infrastructure projects.
5. He wants Congress to act now, not wait 14 months until after the election.

The Republicans didn't have any ready responses today. Maybe they're stunned that he's taken the initiative on tax-cuts/regulation/small-business/job-creators away, and even started a countdown clock on them.

But Obama still has to deliver on two promises: the jobs bill itself, and the deficit reduction plan promised for Sept. 18. There will be a lot to pick apart there, since specifics are a bitch. That could very well put Obama back on the defensive.

I'll be watching the developments as closely as I watch a hurricane headed up the coast.

P.S. My opinion is still that no stimulus or policy change is going to make a big dent in the unemployment rate. I did hear some pundit quote a 1% reduction. Maybe that can be delivered, but will it be too small for the price tag?

BIG REVERSAL: (9/15/11) I made a big mistake in this post. The tone is wrong, in that it's quite partisan, too close to cheering on a political leader for a superficial good performance rather than taking a hard look at the policies. It's fine to comment on the performance, but as an analyst, not a fan.

In that light, Obama gave a very strong delivery of a plan well crafted to neutralize an opponent's arguments. At first glance, it is not greater than the sum of its parts, and each of the parts should be considered for its cost/benefit balance.

Why the medicine stopped working

Our economic woes haven't been solved with supply-side tax cuts or Keynesian stimulus, but why? Both cures depend on redirecting money, but lack of money isn't the root of our economic problems. People have buckets of money to invest. Our stock market sloshes around $69 billion every single day. People (including me) have poured $11.8 trillion into mutual funds. Money sloshes into oil futures, CDOs, ETFs, REITs, hedge funds, etc. Everyone is trying to get good return on their bucket of money. Sometimes people are being enticed with slightly higher returns or considerably higher returns to invest with Bernie Madoff or in offshore Icelandic banks or in well-rated but not-so-solid American mortgage-backed securities.

OK, that isn't happening today. But it was happening in the 2000's until about 2008. Some of that money (including some of mine) vaporized in 2008-2009. But much of it was replaced somehow, maybe with quantitative easing (QE) cash, maybe with money we had shipped to China, maybe with money that was sitting on the sidelines. I don't know where all that replacement money came from, but the Dow soared from a low of 6626 in 2009 to a high of 12810 in 2011.

I may not know where all the money came from, but I can guess what it means. Our economy, and economies around the world, are going to be unusually susceptible to financial bubbles. Since around the mid-1990's, we've had a tech bubble, a housing bubble, and an oil bubble. Maybe there's a stock bubble right now. Maybe there's a gold bubble.

With all the available money, why isn't there more investment and growth? Because there aren't strong new ventures to invest in or expansion opportunities, particularly in the US, but also elsewhere in the world where bubbles have popped. Demand is strongly depressed in the US, where people and business are belatedly paying down debt instead of spending and investing. It's not wrong for people and business to do this, because there was too much debt burden. But how can our economy start growing again?

I wish I knew, or wish that old cures (supply-side or Keynesian stimulus) showed signs of working. We might be in for Japan-style economic drift. The only hope I have is that better fiscal management of the federal budget will encourage optimism and new investment. I'd love to see some manufacturing return to the US, new manufacturing that starts small and local with potential to grow, and export-oriented manufacturing based on our natural resources like farming and forests.

To me, this seems like the kind of organic growth that can work... if the environment is right. That means regulation that is light enough to both protect and encourage. We also need taxation rates that don't unduly add to the risk or subtract too much from the reward. However, decreases in taxation need to be measured against the loss of the revenue. Perhaps easing regulation is the more fruitful approach.

Conservatives are saying "Duh!" but that's OK, because this is more a message for liberals. If you want a stronger economy with more jobs available, get over your instinctive distrust of business. What suffocates business suffocates our economy and suffocates our country. The purpose of regulation isn't to tie business up in knots, but to keep people safe. Use it for that purpose only! Abusive regulation is no one's friend.