.... this was really the last lap.
I think that it is not all that unlikely that the incumbent president will be retained. Refer to the September 29 post on this blog for the reasoning behind that horror. I also think it is actually quite likely that the incumbent president will win the "regular"--in person on election day--vote and that vote will be widely reported. These reports will be acted on as if they were true and some of the more disturbing oh-that-can't-happen possibilities that have been floated will become much less unlikely.
**White House claims victory and sues to stop additional counting. The worst-case scenarios for a Supreme Court resolution of the election immediately come into semi-serious play. I don't think this will happen because the Supreme Court will decline to hear the case until the matter has gone through the system; I don't think any of the nine want to be involved in another ballot counting exercise.
**The incumbent's campaign and the Republican national and state committees fight house to house, or more accurately board of election to board of election, to freeze the election. As the September 29 post indicates, the Republicans have exhibited the determination, tenacity, and discipline to do the local organizing and campaigning necessary to elect secretaries of state and turn out the squads of lawyers and other riffraff needed to make this workable. In the meantime, the Democrats have spent their time celebrating their diversities of identity (but specifically leaving out the largest identity) and creating catchy but horrifically divisive and ineffective political slogans. See September 30 post.
**Gangs of armed ass clowns quickly descend on the various bureaucratic backwaters engaged in counting the votes, and depending on the outcomes there, rally on the White House and "stand by." In their own minds--and I'll keep the words short enough to fit that mold--"He's in. He's ours. You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hand."
I'd never have thought myself able to write a paragraph like that until I saw Michigan allow armed gunmen to roam their State House and a president of the United States tell such elements that this is OK. Please understand these people are America's brown shirts, no matter how cheerful the tropical patterns on their Hawaiian costumes.
Why do I think these are not the impossible outcomes we all wish they were; even the president's team isn't actually hoping for a clusterbugger. Last night the network news reported survey data that about 60 percent of Democrats had either already voted or intended to vote by mail or other early voting mechanism. About 30 percent of Republicans had or intended to use non-standard voting mechanisms.
No big deal so far, but when the results are being counted almost all of the early ballots will be among the last counted. The in-person-on-election-day results are often reported at the polling places several times during the day. These reports are a big part of the unofficial results reported on TV and other instant-gratification media. With a much higher part of that standard vote counted on election night and most of the early ballots out of the count until much later that night , and not complete until days later, the TV counts that might very well set off the disaster cascades set forth above. I hope that won't be true, but my hopes are frail, faint, and generally unrealized. Sorry.
Thursday, October 29, 2020
Thursday, October 22, 2020
Clear some space in the trophy case
Presidential hopeful Biden has announced that upon inauguration he will restore America's place at the table of the Paris Climate Treaty and rejoin the World Health Organization (and perhaps other pieces of the United Nations bureaucracy). The Left rejoices, and it's possible that the Swedish Academy has called in their engraver for another peace prize commission.
This is why I flinched hard before dropping my ballot into the dropbox with the circle for Biden/Harris filled in. Even allowing that much of the substance of these premature policy pronouncements might be sound, the process is flawed. These organizations have gone out of their way to disadvantage the United States and support our economic competitors and political opponents.
In the Paris Climate Treaty case, we had accepted pressure to pledge billions of dollars to the Green Climate Fund to help developing competitors implement climate standards that would be less burdensome than those imposed on our enterprises. I'd rather direct the billions to American workers and enterprises than to an organization that has been alleged to have insufficient operational transparency and financial accountability.
WHO and the rest of the UN apparatus would make part of a good leftish case for not having representation by state as is the case in the US Senate. The principle of one nation, one vote is a huge problem in the offended-by-America world of the UN bureaucracy. And there is no House of Representatives allocated by population or, better yet, contribution. All that aside, Red China stole our lunch in the political system that actually exists and cashed in a few of our sandwiches to hobble WHO when the world needed to be responding to an outbreak of a new, flu-like virus in Wuhan.
Simply asking nicely to be let back into these clubs with our hat in our hands and their hands in our pockets looks like diplomatic malpractice to me. Don't declare now that you'll rejoin because whole hat-to-hands-to-pockets scenario will definitely play out. Negotiate some conditions that recognize the outsized financial, scientific, and technical contributions that will have to come from the United States to address climate policy (broadly construed to include the economic impacts) and international public health.
This is why I flinched hard before dropping my ballot into the dropbox with the circle for Biden/Harris filled in. Even allowing that much of the substance of these premature policy pronouncements might be sound, the process is flawed. These organizations have gone out of their way to disadvantage the United States and support our economic competitors and political opponents.
In the Paris Climate Treaty case, we had accepted pressure to pledge billions of dollars to the Green Climate Fund to help developing competitors implement climate standards that would be less burdensome than those imposed on our enterprises. I'd rather direct the billions to American workers and enterprises than to an organization that has been alleged to have insufficient operational transparency and financial accountability.
WHO and the rest of the UN apparatus would make part of a good leftish case for not having representation by state as is the case in the US Senate. The principle of one nation, one vote is a huge problem in the offended-by-America world of the UN bureaucracy. And there is no House of Representatives allocated by population or, better yet, contribution. All that aside, Red China stole our lunch in the political system that actually exists and cashed in a few of our sandwiches to hobble WHO when the world needed to be responding to an outbreak of a new, flu-like virus in Wuhan.
Simply asking nicely to be let back into these clubs with our hat in our hands and their hands in our pockets looks like diplomatic malpractice to me. Don't declare now that you'll rejoin because whole hat-to-hands-to-pockets scenario will definitely play out. Negotiate some conditions that recognize the outsized financial, scientific, and technical contributions that will have to come from the United States to address climate policy (broadly construed to include the economic impacts) and international public health.
Monday, October 19, 2020
Some things that confuse even me
Where does the Trumpists’ virulent antipathy to the Affordable Care Act comes from?
Yes, it’s an incredibly irresponsible piece of legislation, even by the loose fiscal standards of the Democrats, but I rarely hear a peep about its reckless entitlement. What I’ve had to see of it in operational detail, however, has looked pretty cleverly, even intelligently, thought out.
Unfortunately, all healthcare finance today is based on an insurance scam dating back to some wartime wage-and-price control issues from WWII: The 1942 Stabilization Act was passed with provisions designed to limit employers bidding for workers on the basis of cash pay; the actual result of the act was that some employers began to offer health insurance benefits instead. And insurance may not be the best financial approach to paying for medical care.
Where does the anti-Catholic bias come from?
In the past, it was a fear that a Roman Catholic’s loyalty would be divided between America and Rome. Well, we’ve had to come to terms with an administration headed by an agent of influence for the Russians; I’ll take Francis over Vladimir any day. And I’m a solid back-pew Episcopalian.
Today, the enmity seems rise more from the perception that practicing Catholics have an expansive view of the sanctity of life and a repressive view of the joy of sex. In any case, there has been no suggestion that Amy Coney Barrett will be more loyal to the Vatican than the Constitution.
How has political hatred has gotten this far in America?
Transportation dollars and anarchist cities: The Transportation Department said it will use a presidential memo calling for punishing “anarchist jurisdictions” when deciding which cities should get money under coronavirus grant program meant to spur innovative “exposure mitigation measures,” such as contactless payment systems and improved disinfection techniques. What part of Syria is the Secretary of Transportation from? (oops, that's "what part of Kentucky")
Publicizing death rates by partisan voting results: "The maps of the changing political geography of COVID-19 make this vividly clear. From mid-March to June, the excess death rates were highest in states leaning Democratic, and the more strongly they tilted in that direction, the greater the excess. However, in mid-July, the pattern reversed, with the burden of excess death rates growing highest in Republican leaning states. As we enter the fall, the rates of excess deaths are now highest in the states that lean most Republican." Who would release an analysis like this to the public? Why an Ivy League university, of course.
Yes, it’s an incredibly irresponsible piece of legislation, even by the loose fiscal standards of the Democrats, but I rarely hear a peep about its reckless entitlement. What I’ve had to see of it in operational detail, however, has looked pretty cleverly, even intelligently, thought out.
Unfortunately, all healthcare finance today is based on an insurance scam dating back to some wartime wage-and-price control issues from WWII: The 1942 Stabilization Act was passed with provisions designed to limit employers bidding for workers on the basis of cash pay; the actual result of the act was that some employers began to offer health insurance benefits instead. And insurance may not be the best financial approach to paying for medical care.
Where does the anti-Catholic bias come from?
In the past, it was a fear that a Roman Catholic’s loyalty would be divided between America and Rome. Well, we’ve had to come to terms with an administration headed by an agent of influence for the Russians; I’ll take Francis over Vladimir any day. And I’m a solid back-pew Episcopalian.
Today, the enmity seems rise more from the perception that practicing Catholics have an expansive view of the sanctity of life and a repressive view of the joy of sex. In any case, there has been no suggestion that Amy Coney Barrett will be more loyal to the Vatican than the Constitution.
How has political hatred has gotten this far in America?
Transportation dollars and anarchist cities: The Transportation Department said it will use a presidential memo calling for punishing “anarchist jurisdictions” when deciding which cities should get money under coronavirus grant program meant to spur innovative “exposure mitigation measures,” such as contactless payment systems and improved disinfection techniques. What part of Syria is the Secretary of Transportation from? (oops, that's "what part of Kentucky")
Publicizing death rates by partisan voting results: "The maps of the changing political geography of COVID-19 make this vividly clear. From mid-March to June, the excess death rates were highest in states leaning Democratic, and the more strongly they tilted in that direction, the greater the excess. However, in mid-July, the pattern reversed, with the burden of excess death rates growing highest in Republican leaning states. As we enter the fall, the rates of excess deaths are now highest in the states that lean most Republican." Who would release an analysis like this to the public? Why an Ivy League university, of course.
Friday, October 16, 2020
The serious debate on reopening
In this morning's Washington Post, Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) called for debate on the question, "Resolved: Staying in our houses and waiting for a vaccine is actually making us worse worse off--especially the large number of "us" that can't do professional office jobs from home." As she goes on, she has to point out that, unfortunately, this debate in real life has broken down to "the all or nothing choices of 'Cancel Everything' [Against the resolution] or 'Open America for Business' [For the resolution]."
Even more unfortunately, this particular debate doesn't address the more relevant and dire question, "How do we restore an economy that was, by government fiat, required to stop doing business at thousands, if not into the millions, of establishments and our experts saying that the resulting deluge of separations was required by 'the science.' [all genuflect]" We have to answer this question soon. The vaccine will arrive soon, presumably on a pillar of fire or some other sign of the power of science, but the economy won't just rebound.
What are the options? So far we have seen business subsidy programs which, as usual, benefited largely larger firms with well-drilled legal, regulatory, and government affairs departments. According to Forbes on October 1, the airlines, which have all three favor-seeking gangs, were still planning to separate 30-40,000 workers. United has said that 2,500 of their layoffs will be "largely permanent". So, I'm bearish on business subsidies.
We have seen widespread distribution of government checks to families and individuals. This helped replace enough purchasing power to keep many on the right side of the edge, but cost $267 billion. That's $267,000,000,000 to be part of a $3.3 trillion deficit for the year ended September 30. Neither of those look like sustainable figures. So, I'm bearish on individual relief.
I hope some bright minds are on the case. I know this is not a case that is manageable by ordinary economic policy tools. I fear that it will be addressed with those tools anyway. Finding the right tools is the serious debate we really have to have on reopening.
Even more unfortunately, this particular debate doesn't address the more relevant and dire question, "How do we restore an economy that was, by government fiat, required to stop doing business at thousands, if not into the millions, of establishments and our experts saying that the resulting deluge of separations was required by 'the science.' [all genuflect]" We have to answer this question soon. The vaccine will arrive soon, presumably on a pillar of fire or some other sign of the power of science, but the economy won't just rebound.
What are the options? So far we have seen business subsidy programs which, as usual, benefited largely larger firms with well-drilled legal, regulatory, and government affairs departments. According to Forbes on October 1, the airlines, which have all three favor-seeking gangs, were still planning to separate 30-40,000 workers. United has said that 2,500 of their layoffs will be "largely permanent". So, I'm bearish on business subsidies.
We have seen widespread distribution of government checks to families and individuals. This helped replace enough purchasing power to keep many on the right side of the edge, but cost $267 billion. That's $267,000,000,000 to be part of a $3.3 trillion deficit for the year ended September 30. Neither of those look like sustainable figures. So, I'm bearish on individual relief.
I hope some bright minds are on the case. I know this is not a case that is manageable by ordinary economic policy tools. I fear that it will be addressed with those tools anyway. Finding the right tools is the serious debate we really have to have on reopening.
Thursday, October 8, 2020
Defunding debunked
I'm pretty sure the reporters on the story that has a modest piece of front-page real estate in this morning's Washington Post would disown my title, but their article was headlined "'Defund' ideology collides with reality." (They might also disown the headline writer, but that's a Post problem.)
As I've written before, defunding the police is a really stupid slogan (read "ideological statement"). The reality is that we need the police, so what we need to figure out is how to de-escalate the violence they have become an increasing part of; this is a real problem. The solutions lie in the direction of demilitarizing the police and decriminalizing a large portion of their interactions with us citizens. Being crazy isn't a crime, never mind a crime that calls for chaining a person naked in the street in wintery weather and hooding their head and standing around on smoke-and-joke time while they die. Similarly, suspicion of wanting to bring a knife to a gunfight doesn't seem to me to be a seven-bullets-in-the-back offense. These and the bulk of the sad litany we have been listening to are the reult of the over-militarization of policing and, because the sole tool of the military approach is the firefight, every problem presents itself as hostile action.
Police abolitionists suggest replacing sworn officers with psychiatric interventionists and degreed social workers to handle what is a huge part of what police officers do with their time. An excellent report that came out in the New York Times this past June showed that responses to serious violent crime calls occupied a mid-single-digit percentage of police time. Property crimes and other crime take up 20-30 percent; so about a third of sworn officers' time is spent on responding to criminal reports. Another third is spent responding to non-criminal calls. The rest is taken up by traffic and other, including medical, issues.
There is some obvious truth to the idea that a lot of police work doesn't require, or even benefit from, a militarized approach. However, it is the relatively modest part of the workload requires the disciplined application of force that most of us consider the absolute requirement on the police.
So, a smallish cadre of highly trained paramilitary police and intervention and social work for the rest? Doesn't really work. That's the collision headlining the Post article. Too many of the interventions have the potential to turn ugly even with the best intended therapeutic modalities. The police are sent to these calls because they are effective and part of the effectiveness is the show of force. Counter to that is the "only tool" problem; when "open fire" isn't the right thing, the police need to do something else. And they need to know which set of tools is the right one in the often dangerous and always situations they encounter in the two-thirds of their load that isn't criminal.
As I've written before, defunding the police is a really stupid slogan (read "ideological statement"). The reality is that we need the police, so what we need to figure out is how to de-escalate the violence they have become an increasing part of; this is a real problem. The solutions lie in the direction of demilitarizing the police and decriminalizing a large portion of their interactions with us citizens. Being crazy isn't a crime, never mind a crime that calls for chaining a person naked in the street in wintery weather and hooding their head and standing around on smoke-and-joke time while they die. Similarly, suspicion of wanting to bring a knife to a gunfight doesn't seem to me to be a seven-bullets-in-the-back offense. These and the bulk of the sad litany we have been listening to are the reult of the over-militarization of policing and, because the sole tool of the military approach is the firefight, every problem presents itself as hostile action.
Police abolitionists suggest replacing sworn officers with psychiatric interventionists and degreed social workers to handle what is a huge part of what police officers do with their time. An excellent report that came out in the New York Times this past June showed that responses to serious violent crime calls occupied a mid-single-digit percentage of police time. Property crimes and other crime take up 20-30 percent; so about a third of sworn officers' time is spent on responding to criminal reports. Another third is spent responding to non-criminal calls. The rest is taken up by traffic and other, including medical, issues.
There is some obvious truth to the idea that a lot of police work doesn't require, or even benefit from, a militarized approach. However, it is the relatively modest part of the workload requires the disciplined application of force that most of us consider the absolute requirement on the police.
So, a smallish cadre of highly trained paramilitary police and intervention and social work for the rest? Doesn't really work. That's the collision headlining the Post article. Too many of the interventions have the potential to turn ugly even with the best intended therapeutic modalities. The police are sent to these calls because they are effective and part of the effectiveness is the show of force. Counter to that is the "only tool" problem; when "open fire" isn't the right thing, the police need to do something else. And they need to know which set of tools is the right one in the often dangerous and always situations they encounter in the two-thirds of their load that isn't criminal.
Tuesday, October 6, 2020
Why we have science deniers
The climate change lobby and the pandemic control lobby make lavish and reverent references to science and scientists. Their appeal to the authorities is coupled with a deep contempt for non-believers. This is especially evident in their disapprobation of what they call climate-change deniers as unbelievers in the sanctity and infallibility of science. This post puts forward an interpretation more informed by the threats the heretics are feeling and their quite rational defence of their interests and their pursuit of happiness.
The denial of the climate change threat is not based on climate science at all and there is no sense in stoking more learned papers and position statements onto the fire. The deeper instinct of the opposition to climate change policy is to the policy itself, with the science denial merely a tactical tool to keep the climate scientists as far away from the levers of political power as possible for as long as possible. In essence, climate change skepticism is a delaying action.
What has to be delayed is the policy prescription that is made more or less explicit by the various gradations and permutations of climate activists. Boiled down to its iron fists, the prescription reads: "Climate change is real and is your fault. You must yield to us all power. We are going to use that power to impoverish you and your children and your childrens children unto seven generations as collateral damage in the crusade to keep the planet as cool as we are."
If you think that is ridiculous, please pay attention to how the current medical science and health policy crisis has played out.
January 9 — WHO Announces Mysterious Coronavirus-Related Pneumonia in Wuhan, China. Unemployment rate (January) : 3.6 percent
January 21 — CDC Confirms First US Coronavirus Case.
February 3 — US Declares Public Health Emergency. Unemployment rate (February): 3.5 percent
March 11 — WHO Declares COVID-19 a Pandemic. Unemployment rate (March) : 4.4 percent
March 19 — California Issues [First] Statewide Stay-at-Home Order
April 16 — “Gating Criteria” Emerge as a Way to Reopen the Economy. Unemployment rate (April) : 14.7 percent
May 28 — US COVID-19 Deaths Pass the 100,000 Mark. Unemployment rate (May) : 13.3 percent
June 26 — White House Coronavirus Task Force Addresses Rising Cases in the South Unemployment rate (June) : 11.1 percent
Over the 3 months ending in September, the unemployment rate has declined to 7.9 percent. An unemployment rate of 7.9 percent has, heretofore, been recorded only in the worst recessions since the beginning of the Current Polpulation Survey used to measure unemployment. So, looked at from the economics and political science perspectives, the answer to the medicine and health science problem was to shut the economy down, accept depression-level rates of unemployment and hope for the best.
The best, apparently, is a well-tested, effective vaccine widely administered at no cost to the patient. At no point in this catastrophe has anyone thought through how to get the world back to producing stuff beyond food, beverages, perhaps clothing, toilet paper, and face masks. The first round of policy did what we do in economic recessions, send money to the unemployed, both corporate and individual, so that demand might be automatically stabilized. It doesn't really work that well in ordinary business cycles and is fatuous in a collapsed based on the scientists deciding that the last miles of the distribution channels--stores, restaurants, service shops, and so on-- were superfluous to requiremnents.
They don't have a plan, so I imagine they will toss the steaming potato over to the economists, who have no relevant terms of reference. Cheap money won't work--money's already cheap. So, monetary policy is out. More spending by governments at all levels is out. The state and local governments can't, they're already tapped out. The Federal government might be able to, but they've already gone trillions--trillions--of dollars beyond once unimagineable trillion dollar deficits. Like the psalmist, we have to ask, "From whence cometh my help?"
For us the answer isn't as comforting. For us, nobody knows. But science was served, and the possibility of impoverishment unto seven generations is on the table. Is it any wonder some will start their defense of their pursuit of happiness by attacking the arcanities of climate science?
The denial of the climate change threat is not based on climate science at all and there is no sense in stoking more learned papers and position statements onto the fire. The deeper instinct of the opposition to climate change policy is to the policy itself, with the science denial merely a tactical tool to keep the climate scientists as far away from the levers of political power as possible for as long as possible. In essence, climate change skepticism is a delaying action.
What has to be delayed is the policy prescription that is made more or less explicit by the various gradations and permutations of climate activists. Boiled down to its iron fists, the prescription reads: "Climate change is real and is your fault. You must yield to us all power. We are going to use that power to impoverish you and your children and your childrens children unto seven generations as collateral damage in the crusade to keep the planet as cool as we are."
If you think that is ridiculous, please pay attention to how the current medical science and health policy crisis has played out.
January 9 — WHO Announces Mysterious Coronavirus-Related Pneumonia in Wuhan, China. Unemployment rate (January) : 3.6 percent
January 21 — CDC Confirms First US Coronavirus Case.
February 3 — US Declares Public Health Emergency. Unemployment rate (February): 3.5 percent
March 11 — WHO Declares COVID-19 a Pandemic. Unemployment rate (March) : 4.4 percent
March 19 — California Issues [First] Statewide Stay-at-Home Order
April 16 — “Gating Criteria” Emerge as a Way to Reopen the Economy. Unemployment rate (April) : 14.7 percent
May 28 — US COVID-19 Deaths Pass the 100,000 Mark. Unemployment rate (May) : 13.3 percent
June 26 — White House Coronavirus Task Force Addresses Rising Cases in the South Unemployment rate (June) : 11.1 percent
Over the 3 months ending in September, the unemployment rate has declined to 7.9 percent. An unemployment rate of 7.9 percent has, heretofore, been recorded only in the worst recessions since the beginning of the Current Polpulation Survey used to measure unemployment. So, looked at from the economics and political science perspectives, the answer to the medicine and health science problem was to shut the economy down, accept depression-level rates of unemployment and hope for the best.
The best, apparently, is a well-tested, effective vaccine widely administered at no cost to the patient. At no point in this catastrophe has anyone thought through how to get the world back to producing stuff beyond food, beverages, perhaps clothing, toilet paper, and face masks. The first round of policy did what we do in economic recessions, send money to the unemployed, both corporate and individual, so that demand might be automatically stabilized. It doesn't really work that well in ordinary business cycles and is fatuous in a collapsed based on the scientists deciding that the last miles of the distribution channels--stores, restaurants, service shops, and so on-- were superfluous to requiremnents.
They don't have a plan, so I imagine they will toss the steaming potato over to the economists, who have no relevant terms of reference. Cheap money won't work--money's already cheap. So, monetary policy is out. More spending by governments at all levels is out. The state and local governments can't, they're already tapped out. The Federal government might be able to, but they've already gone trillions--trillions--of dollars beyond once unimagineable trillion dollar deficits. Like the psalmist, we have to ask, "From whence cometh my help?"
For us the answer isn't as comforting. For us, nobody knows. But science was served, and the possibility of impoverishment unto seven generations is on the table. Is it any wonder some will start their defense of their pursuit of happiness by attacking the arcanities of climate science?
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