Then how would you describe yourself politically?
I’m very independent. There’s a great line from Friedrich Nietzsche: A thinking man can never be a party man.
Category: Politics
“As Power Shifts in New Congress, Pork May Linger”
Mr. Stevens, an 83-year-old Republican, and Mr. Inouye, an 82-year-old Democrat, routinely deliver to their states more money per capita in earmarks — the pet projects lawmakers insert into major spending bills — than any other state gets. This year, Alaska received $1.05 billion in earmarks, or $1,677.27 per resident, while Hawaii got $903.9 million, or $746.05 per resident, according to Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonpartisan group that tracks such figures.
Representative Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic leader, and many Democratic candidates have railed for months against wasteful “special interest earmarks” inserted into bills “in the dark of night.” Now their party’s electoral victories mean that Mr. Stevens will hand Mr. Inouye the gavel of the Senate defense appropriations subcommittee, which presides over the largest pool of discretionary spending and earmarks. But if the Democratic leaders are talking about “earmark reform,” that may be news to Mr. Inouye.
“I don’t see any monumental changes,” Mr. Inouye said in a recent interview. He plans to continue his subcommittee’s approach to earmarks, he said. “If something is wrong we should clean house,” he said, “but if they can explain it and justify it, I will look at it.”
business as usual.
Much more on earmarks, including significant Wisconsin activity here.
Wisconsin Senator Herb Kohl and Congressman David Obey (among others) continue to bring home the bacon – cha ching on our kid’s charge cards – :
- 4.7M for military battery technology, mostly for Madison’s Rayovac (Kohl).
- 2.4M for improvements to the Rice Lake Airport (Obey)
- $260K for UW-Madison agricultural grazing research (Obey).
Wisconsin per capita “pork” spending is $47 (Massachusetts is 45) while Robert Byrd’s ongoing efforts to pave over West Virginia requires $327/resident.
Tammy Baldwin’s comments regarding earmarks.
As goes Peoria (Plano?)….
Plano does represent the New Economy, built on skilled, creative people. But it fits neither Brooks’s emphasis on bohemianism among the professional classes nor Richard Florida’s new industrial policy prescribing groovy uptowns with lots of gays. As Harvard economist Edward Glaeser wrote in a review of Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class: “I’ve studied a lot of creative people. Most of them like what most well-off people like—big suburban lots with easy commutes by automobile and safe streets and good schools and low taxes. . . . Plano, Texas was the most successful skilled city in the 1990s (measured by population growth)—it’s not exactly a Bohemian paradise.”
In fact, Plano boomed because it’s cheap—the Stein Mart of towns. It allows residents to live a scaled-up, globalized version of the family-centered life of the postwar suburbs, a twenty-first-century Wonder Years. While you can find a $7 million estate in Plano, you can also buy a perfectly reasonable vintage ranch house, possibly with a pool, for less than $200,000. From that address, you can send your kids to excellent public schools. By contrast, on Kaus’s modest street in Venice, a tiny two-bedroom, one-bath bungalow was recently on the market for $754,000, making it one of the cheapest houses in the area (and the schools are lousy).
Plano is the home of Frito-Lay, EDS, JC Penney, Cadbury Schweppes, Ericsson, among others.
Polar opposite districts top nation in turnout
Jim Sensenbrenner’s (5th) constituents would seem to have little in common with Tammy Baldwin’s (3rd) constituents.
Sensenbrenner’s heavily suburban U.S. House district is the state’s most conservative. Baldwin’s, anchored in Madison, may be its most liberal.
But voters in both places have come to share a striking distinction: They flock to the polls in greater numbers than voters almost anywhere else in the country.
More than 314,000 people voted in the Republican Sensenbrenner’s 5th District on Nov. 7, and more than 304,000 voted in the Democrat Baldwin’s 2nd District.
Only two congressional districts in the nation produced more votes, and both are at-large, statewide seats (Montana and South Dakota) that have a lot more people than other districts.
Ingredients of a 2007 Grand Bargain on Social Security?
So Washington is full of rumours that 2007 will bring a Grand Bargain on social security reform (see Mark Thoma’s take here and Vox Baby here). The Bush team’s plan is to sound sufficiently conciliatory and open-minded that it becomes impossible for the Democrats not to sit down and talk. That strategy just might succeed. Stonewalling is a plausible political tactic when you are in opposition (though still shamefully shortsighted). It doesn’t work so well if you are actually in charge on Capitol Hill, particularly when you announce that retirement security is one of your top legislative priorities.
Reduced Fed Transparency: Inflation on the Way?
Last year, we lamented the passing of M3 reporting. This broadest of money supply measures had shown a discomforting increase in liquidity, far greater than what M2 was revealing.
At the time of the M3 announcement, we suspected the Fed was attempting to cover their tracks, disguising an ongoing increase in money supply and an unstated “easing” in Fed bias. Since that time, we have learned: the Treasury Department was also adding liquidity — a duty they have assumed, in part, in addition to the same performed by the Fed. Indeed, based on the credit growth data Doug Noland published last month (October Credit Review), it appears that the Fed has – despite increasing interest rates – actually eased over the last two years.
Feingold on the Long War
Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold addressed the Madison Civics Club yesterday. His speech addressed the Long War. Adam Malecek was there:
Feingold said that Africa also presents a number of critical issues related to terrorism, and that it is a growing haven for many terrorist operatives. He noted that terrorists blew up American embassies in Africa, not in Afghanistan or Iraq, and that the culprits went to South Africa to hide.
He said even though he was well-educated and studied abroad, at 39 years old he didn’t know anything about Africa — and he was on the Foreign Relations committee.
“And I spent 15 years since learning about (Africa). But I offer that as a commentary on how prepared this country was on 9/11,” he said.
Feingold pointed out the fact that the northern part of Africa is only about 20 miles from the Middle East.
“But we don’t think of them that way. We think of them as separate,” he said, adding that the United States needs to work on determining the complicated interrelationships between various nations and terrorist groups.
Useful sites on the Long War:
Andy Hall has more as does Douglas Schuette.
A New Take on Net Neutrality
The debate over net neutrality1 has often focused on video as the dominant medium that made the prioritization of packets either crucial or harmful. However, video is not the offering that will suffer the most if net neutrality becomes a wistful memory. Rather, the users that are likely to be most materially disadvantaged are those that utilize the Net for interactive communications – particularly voice over IP (VOIP) and online gaming. Of these two finalists for the dubious title of “innovation most likely to be stifled to the detriment of everyone by loss of net neutrality,” gaming is by far the more irreplaceable and senseless loss.
Unlike video and voice, ISPs are unlikely to have or be able to obtain a viable material stake in the gaming business and have no replacement for the service. As a result, consumers stand not only to lose their choice of the source of this product, but the very value of the gaming service itself.
Peak Oil Theory – “World Running Out of Oil Soon” – Is Faulty; Could Distort Policy & Energy Debate
Cambridge Energy Research Associates:
In contrast to a widely discussed theory that world oil production will soon reach a peak and go into sharp decline, a new analysis of the subject by Cambridge Energy Research Associates (CERA) finds that the remaining global oil resource base is actually 3.74 trillion barrels — three times as large as the 1.2 trillion barrels estimated by the theory’s proponents — and that the “peak oil” argument is based on faulty analysis which could, if accepted, distort critical policy and investment decisions and cloud the debate over the energy future.
“The global resource base of conventional and unconventional oils, including historical production of 1.08 trillion barrels and yet-to-be-produced resources, is 4.82 trillion barrels and likely to grow,” CERA Director of Oil Industry Activity Peter M. Jackson writes in Why the Peak Oil Theory Falls Down: Myths, Legends, and the Future of Oil Resources. The CERA projection is based on the firm’s analysis of fields currently in production and those yet-to-be produced or discovered.
“The ‘peak oil’ theory causes confusion and can lead to inappropriate actions and turn attention away from the real issues,” Jackson observes. “Oil is too critical to the global economy to allow fear to replace careful analysis about the very real challenges with delivering liquid fuels to meet the needs of growing economies. This is a very important debate, and as such it deserves a rational and measured discourse.”
“Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss”
WSJ: “After more than a decade of Republican rule in Washington, Democratic lobbyists have a lot to celebrate. Just a week after Election Day, they are getting promotions and signing up new clients.”
NYT: “Democratic lobbyists are fielding calls from pharmaceutical companies, the oil and gas industry and military companies, all of which had grown accustomed to patronizing Republicans, as the environment in Washington abruptly shifts.”