Area Attitudes Towards Immigration

From the Houston Business Journal comes a report that both states that area attitudes about immigration is shifting negative, but also that Latino immigrants are, contrary to some allegations, assimilating into American culture:

Houstonians are increasingly concerned about immigration and its effects on the region, according to the latest annual Houston-Area Survey. But survey research also shows Latino immigrants are quickly assimilating into U.S. society.

The 2008 survey, designed and directed by Stephen Klineberg, professor of sociology at Rice University, and his students, was conducted by the Center for Public Policy at the University of Houston between Feb. 15 and March 5.

The number of respondents who described the arrival of large numbers of illegal immigrants as a "very serious" problem for Houston rose from 43 percent in 2006 to 61 percent this year.

By far the most frequently cited reason for this concern was the perceived strain on public services caused by illegal immigrants.

The negative attitudes have spread beyond undocumented immigrants. The proportion of area residents who favor taking action to reduce the number of new immigrants, legal and otherwise, coming to the U.S. grew from 48 percent in 2004 to 63 percent this year.

"No matter how you ask the question," Klineberg said, "every measure shows growing anti-immigrant sentiment."

The data on the actual experiences of Latino immigrants in Houston, meanwhile, reveal a steady and rapid assimilation into the American mainstream.

The proportion of immigrants who report household incomes above $35,000, for example, increases from 16 percent for those who have lived in the U.S. for nine years or less, to 22 percent for those who have been here more than nine years and 42 percent for those who have been here more than 19 years. The numbers rise to 52 percent in the second generation (U.S.-born Latinos with immigrant parents) and to 57 percent in the third generation.

Similarly, the proportion of Latino respondents who conducted the interviews in English rather than Spanish rises from 17 percent among the most recent immigrants to 49 percent of those who have lived in the U.S. for 20 years or more, and to 98 percent of third-generation Latinos.

Things to consider as you review 2301 and 2302

2301:

This class was essentially about the principles of government, how those principles led to the design of the constitution, and how political forces flow through it.

Our constitutional democratic republic is just one of the many ways that governments can be organized. It carries with it certain assumptions about the relationship that ought to exist between the individual and government and specifically what government ought to provide for the individual. The unique fact that the U.S. was established by a written document which articulates certain principles in the form of an argument, sets it apart from almost every other system of government attempted. Understand what these principles are and the nature of the argument, as well as the alternative systems that exist.

Principles are one thing, their embodiment in a constitutional system is another. Understand the debate concerning what type of national governing system works best. Federalist #10 and 51 are vitally important, as is the reasoning underlying the system of federalism and checks and balances. Be able to identify specific factors associated with each. This is the appropriate time to introduce Texas and local governments. What roles do states have in the national order? How about cities?

Civil rights and liberties have, and continue to have, contentious histories in the U.S. and Texas. Each defines the relationship between the individual and the state, but with a difference, know the difference and be clear on the definitions between the two. Each of the issues above (checks and balances, federalism and civil rights and liberties) are most clearly understood by virtue of Supreme Court decisions.

Please be clear on the role that the Supreme Court has played in defining each of these issues and recall the specific court cases that we discussed. Our coverage of elections allowed us to revisit the concept of democracy and the question of what in fact qualifies the U.S. to be considered democratic.

Know the system of elections established in the Constitution and the relative merits of direct and indirect elections. Know how the ruling classes can manipulate elections and the manner in which elections have evolved over American history. There are constitutional issues involved here, especially concerning the drawing of congressional districts, but also concerning the financing of elections. We are politically equal, but not socially or financially equal. To what degree can the law compensate the former for a lack of the latter?

Political parties are not in the constitution, but as we have discussed in class, help organize the political process--both internally and externally. Understand the origins of political parties and how they have been modified over time. Know the names of the major parties and especially the current two including the issues they stand for, the groups that support them and how their power has changed over the past century and a half. Know the unique nature of the party system in Texas also.

Public opinion, interest groups and the media are separate ways that political interests can impact the governing process. Each is constitutionally protected, meaning that there are constitutional questions related to the extent of each liberty. Know the issues related to the formation of public opinion, especially the role that ideology plays in helping people make sense of the political world.

Though James Madison pointed out the problems associated with interest groups, and argued that the republican system was primarily designed to limit the violence of factions, recent commentators have pointed out that the existence of an interest is not enough to form a group. Know the factors leading to interest group formation and what these groups do once organized in order to ensure they are heard.

An enlightened citizenry is essential to the governing process, and the media is essential to giving the public the information necessary to become enlightened. But what impact does the media in fact have on the governing process?

2302:

The purpose of 2302 is to introduce you, thoroughly, to the institutions of American government. It is assumed that you have taken 2301 and are familiar with the nature of the national constitutional system and the role that state and local governments play within it, as well as the political organizations that shape the various interests that exist within the country.

We began the semester by reviewing some of these organizations as well as the terminology needed to efficiently conduct the class. Be able to answer a small number of questions related to these issues, especially those related to the constitutional system. There will be a handful of questions about the basic design of each of the three types of institutions (legislative, executive, and judicial) and the differences between the designs in Texas and the United States. Be prepared to address questions related to how each institution keep the others in check. Also remember how the members of each institution are elected.

For the legislature, recall that individual members have goals and objectives and their actions are oriented towards these goals. Think about this as you review the roll of committees and political parties. Be prepared for questions about the bill making process as well as questions about who represents us (meaning the ACC campus) in Washington DC and Austin.

For the executive, remember the changes that have occurred in American history over the role the president is to play in the governing process. What factors have led to the increased strength of the position? How do presidents use their power and how do they get the information necessary to make decisions?

What makes the judiciary unique? On the national level at least their are certain factors associated with how they get their positions which tell us what we might expect from members of the judiciary that might not be true for other office holders. What about the ambiguous nature of the judiciary's power and role in the policymaking process? Remember the key controversies associated with judicial power. Also remember which court case is responsible for the principle power of the judiciary.

We touched briefly on public policymaking, giving specific attention to economic, social welfare and foreign policy. I will not ask a tremendous number of questions about these policies, but be prepared for addressing institutional questions, such as who does what. Know how authority for each policy area is divided among the different constitutional institutions.

In short, since this class has primarily been about institutions, I want you to focus primarily on institutional questions. The goal should that after leaving this class that you understand what sorts of things are in fact occurring when you read or hear a news item about actions from the legislature, executive or judiciary. I'd like you to not only know what in fact is going on, but retain enough information about the process to be able to predict what the likely outcomes are.

Government is essentially the embodiment of the rules that societies have developed for dealing with how to get along. This class has been about understanding those rules.

Supreme Court Shift

In their overview of today's papers, Slate Magazine notes a story in the Los Angeles Times analyzing a subtle shift in the standards the Supreme Court is using to decide cases:

"The LAT goes inside with a piece that takes a look at how the recent Supreme Court decisions about voter ID requirements and lethal injections illustrate "a subtle but profoundly important shift in how the justices decide constitutional questions." In the past, the court would regularly declare that certain laws were unconstitutional if they simply had the potential to violate someone's rights. Now, the justices want actual proof that rights have been violated."

This fits within the broader framework of standing, who in fact has the ability to bring a case forward to the court? How do we determine who has been impacted by a law? Proof that a right has been violated is a tighter standard than a potential to violate that right. This limits the role that the courts can play in the remediation of disputes, which has been a procedural goals of the conservative movement as I understand it.

From the LAT article comes speculation about how this shift might impact legal strategies:

After these setbacks, some advocates are rethinking their legal strategies.

Election law experts were quick to say it was a mistake to have rushed the voter ID case to the Supreme Court before there was any evidence of its actual effects.

Ohio State University law professor Daniel P. Tokaji said the Indiana ruling carried "an important lesson for voting rights lawyers who lose in lower courts: Think long and hard before seeking Supreme Court review," he wrote on an election law blog. "It's fair to point out that plaintiffs' lawyers put together a pretty weak case."

Mortgage Industry Pushback

The New York Times reports that the mortgage industry is pulling out the stops to halt proposed rules that would tighten eligibility for future loans, a move that could jeopardize future business opportunities though consumer groups state that they will ensure that future loans will not be given to suspect borrowers.

The rules are proposed by the Fed, which has been given authority to pass laws pertaining to mortgage standards. The rules "would force mortgage companies to show that customers can realistically afford their mortgages. It would require lenders to disclose the hidden fees often rolled into interest payments. And it would prohibit certain types of advertising considered misleading."

The story points out the weight of the industry interest groups involved in the responding to the proposed rules and attempting to minimize their impact:

The plan was criticized in separate filings by three of the industry’s most influential trade groups — the American Bankers Association, the Mortgage Bankers Association and the Independent Community Bankers of America. More modest concerns about some of the provisions were also raised by the National Association of Home Builders and the National Association of Realtors.

Autocracy Returns

Robert Kagan argues in the New Republic that autocracy is making a comeback, best witnessed in the rise of China and Russia.

In it he offers an interesting alternative definition of democracy as apparently offered by Russia's Putin:

Since the mid-1990s, the nascent democratic transformation in Russia has given way to what may best be described as a "czarist" political system, in which all important decisions are taken by one man and his powerful coterie. Vladimir Putin and his spokesmen speak of "democracy," but they define the term much as the Chinese do. For Putin, democracy is not about competitive elections so much as the implementation of popular will. The regime is democratic because the government consults with and listens to the Russian people, discerns what they need and want, and then attempts to give it to them. As Ivan Krastev notes, "The Kremlin thinks not in terms of citizens' rights but in terms of the population's needs. " Elections do not offer a choice, but only a chance to ratify choices made by Putin, as in the recent "selection" of Dmitry Medvedev to succeed Putin as president. The legal system is a tool to be used against political opponents. The party system has been purged of political groups not approved by Putin. The power apparatus around Putin controls most of the national media, especially television.

He later argues that the leaders of both countries believe democracy would weaken them:

The rulers of Russia and China believe in the virtues of a strong central government and disdain the weaknesses of the democratic system. They believe their large and fractious nations need order and stability to prosper. They believe that the vacillation and chaos of democracy would impoverish and shatter their nations, and in the case of Russia that it already did so. They believe that strong rule at home is necessary if their nations are to be powerful and respected in the world, capable of safeguarding and advancing their interests. Chinese rulers know from their nation's long and often turbulent history that political disruptions and divisions at home invite foreign interference and depredation. What the world applauded as a political opening in 1989, Chinese leaders regard as a near-fatal display of disagreement.

So the Chinese and Russian leaders are not simply autocrats. They believe in autocracy.

There was a time not long ago when the fall of communism made otherwise sensible people believe that the countries of the world would inevitably march towards democracy. No longer.

White House Ghosts

As my 2302's are wrapping up their papers on presidential speeches there comes a highly touted book on presidents and their speech writers complete with a website dedicated to it.

Cultural Awareness and the Fundamentalist Mormons

The Chron has a front page story on the efforts to ensure that care takers for the children removed from the fundamentalist compound are culturally sensitive to them and their background. It contains a draft of a "cultural awareness guide" that provides a blow by blow account of how a group of children can be conditioned by a group of adults. It includes a glossary covering the terms they are likely to use and what they may mean.

It's a great read, Here are few highlights:

-Have a deep instilled fear of the outside world.
-The safety of the family is first priority.
-Universal/communal parenting: many adults serving in parenting roles.
-Puberty is considered the onset of adulthood.
-Males’ dominant females.
-Their Prophet or President is seen as a persecuted martyr.
-Distrust of all outsiders especially of government and the criminal
justice system.
-Adults are monitors and censures of the children’s behavior and will
discourage any disclosures. Older children will take on the monitoring
role when adults of the community are not present.
-Children have received formal coaching on how to behave themselves.
-Electronics, including TV and radio, are prohibited. However, many
women and older boys have had cell phones.
-Minimal outside source of media, including books with factitious characters.
-April 6th (Joseph Smith’s birthday) is their only significant holiday.
-Children, while in care, especially young boys, have made
derogatory remarks to staff of color.
-The children appear to cooperate but may not. They will demonstrate
politeness but may disclose little and/or contradictory information.
Children in care were initially extremely compliant, but are beginning
to “act out” after separation from parents
-Children are socialized to believe that sexual activity with adults is positive.
-The color “RED” is not acceptable for clothing
-Children, while in care, have made negative comments concerning women
wearing jewelry.
-Boys, while in care, have been upset that men are not clean shaven,
and are not wearing long sleeve shirts.
-Members of the Fundamentalist Latter-day Saint sect believe they are
following the true Mormon faith. They claim their authority to practice
plural marriage comes through early LDS Church leaders. The FLDS
Church teaches that a man must be married to three or more wives for
eternal exaltation.
-Lost Boys: Young, unmarried men who are exiled from fundamentalist
communities. They usually have little education and few skills to help
them live on their own. Some are more susceptible to drug abuse and
other problems because they have been told they are going to hell.
Some have been told they were asked to leave for being a bad influence
but most believe it is because they are competition to older men who
are looking for wives.

Just out of curiosity, how might this story be playing out if Mitt Romney was
still running for president?

Precinct 666

So I'm in the process of inputting census data in a spreadsheet for each of the 930 precincts in Harris County and I was reviewing work so far and happened to notice that no one lives in precinct 666!!

Is this deliberate or could it be that ...

Unscathed

Though Obama has taken a pounding recently, his numbers have barely budged. This says something about the underlying dynamics of the current political race. Just two years ago pundits were still talking about a political realignment towards the Republicans. No more. Alan Abramowitz makes the case that the opposite is happening and recent talk of the internal damage that Democrats are inflicting on themselves is nonsense.

There's no question that the past few weeks have been rough on Obama. The Clinton campaign has hit him with everything including the kitchen sink in an effort to throw his campaign off stride and yes, he has made some mistakes. Some of this was inevitable, of course. As a relative newcomer to the national political scene, Obama was bound to face increased media scrutiny once he became the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. But all of the hand-wringing on the part of liberal pundits ignores one key fact: Obama has come through this series of controversies relatively unscathed. His favorable ratings have come down to earth, but they're still higher than Hillary Clinton's and, according to some recent polls, John McCain's. And he's still leading Clinton among Democratic voters and running even or slightly ahead of McCain in most recent surveys of general election voters.

As Jonathan Cohn recently pointed out, the fact that Obama is running even or slightly ahead of McCain in the polls after enduring weeks of relentless pounding from Hillary Clinton is itself rather remarkable and speaks to the underlying realities of the 2008 election. And once the Democratic nomination is settled and the party unites behind its nominee, those realities should become readily apparent, even to the Washington pundits.

According to every known leading indicator, 2008 should be a very good year for Democratic candidates at all levels. There are many factors that point to an across-the-board Democratic victory in November, including the extraordinary unpopularity of President Bush, the deteriorating condition of the economy, the unpopularity of the war in Iraq, and the fact that Americans prefer the Democratic position to the Republican position on almost every major national issue. However, the most important Democratic advantage, and one that has received relatively little attention in the media, is the fact that for the past six years the Democratic electoral base has been expanding while the Republican electoral base has been shrinking.

Since 2002, according to annual data compiled by the Gallup Poll, the percentage of Americans identifying with or leaning toward the Democratic Party has increased by about seven percentage points while the percentage identifying with or leaning toward the Republican Party has decreased by about six percentage points. Fifty-two percent of Americans now identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party while only 39 percent identify with or lean toward the Republican Party.

He also points out that Democrats who are notoriously difficult to organize and get to the polls are far more cohesive this year and have been voting in record numbers.

Back in the 1970s and 1980s, it was very difficult for Democratic presidential candidates to hold their party's diverse electoral coalition together. That was because Democrats were ideologically divided and Republican presidential candidates like Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan found it relatively easy to pick off conservative Democratic voters when they were running against liberal Democratic candidates like George McGovern and Walter Mondale. Since the 1970s, however, the American electorate has undergone an ideological realignment with conservative voters strongly loyal to the Republican Party and liberal voters reliably pulling the lever for the Democratic Party.

Today, there are very few conservative Democrats or liberal Republicans left either in the leadership or the electorate of the parties. The result is that national elections are fought between two ideologically cohesive parties. In this type of electorate, the party that does a better job of uniting and turning out its supporters usually wins. In 2002 and 2004, that was the Republicans, but by 2006 it was the Democrats who had the advantage. Their advantage has continued to grow in the past two years.

A big part of the reason for the growing Democratic edge in party identification is the fact that Democrats now enjoy a large advantage among voters under the age of 30, as well as among African American and Hispanic voters. All three of these groups have been turning out in record numbers in the Democratic primaries, and there is no reason to believe that they will not also turn out in large numbers in November. Based on the early indicators of voter interest, the 2008 presidential election could very well witness the highest turnout of eligible voters in the postwar era, and that can only be good news for Democrats. With a unified Democratic Party, a clear message of change, and a strong grass-roots effort at mobilizing the Democratic base, on January 20, 2009, Barack Obama will be taking office as the head of a unified Democratic government. And John McCain will still be a member of the minority party in the United States Senate.

We will see.

Expanding Probable Cause

The right against unreasonable searches and seizure was weakened by the Supreme Court in a unanimous decision in the case of Virginia v. Moore.

Virginia police violated procedure by searching a man they pulled over for an offense punishable by a citation. A citation does not justify a search, only an arrest allows that to happen, but he was searched anyway and the police found 16 grams of crack cocaine.

Among other things the court saw no historical reason why citations should be treated differently than arrests and that there is a legitimate government interest served in allowing the search to continue based on the discretion of the police at the scene. That's my best take anyway.

The case uses as precedence a notorious dispute from Lago Vista where a woman was arrested an detained for not wearing seat belts and having seat belts on her kids.

Mortality Inequality

From the National Center for Policy Analysis, a new way to think about inequality, but one that seems to have a ready remedy:

There is a steady increase in "mortality inequality" -- a
term for a widening gap in life expectancy -- between the richest and
poorest counties in the United States from 1983 to 1999, according to a
study released by researchers at Harvard University and the University
of Washington.

To judge from the cause-of-death data cited in the Harvard-Washington
study, the main driver of mortality inequality in the '80s and '90s was
the rise in diseases springing from personal behavior, says IBD:

o Deaths from smoking-related diseases -- lung cancer and
congestive heart failure (an effect of diminished lung
capacity) -- rose among the poor, especially for women.

o So did deaths from chronic diseases (such as diabetes)
related to obesity.

A bright side to this otherwise grim news is that the diseases most to
blame for the widening longevity gap are often preventable or
treatable, according to Christopher Murray, an author of the study.

Smoking- and obesity-related diseases, of course, are preventable by
personal choices, aided by education and encouragement. You don't
need access to high-cost doctors and hospitals to quit smoking, get
more exercise and eat less. Insurance is important, but it
doesn't give you a healthy lifestyle, says IBD.

In related news, employers are being given the right to discriminate ( in terms of health insurance and even employment itself) based on life style choices. One area where they will not be able to discriminate is on genetic issues, such as propensity to disease including cancer and heart disease.

About the Conventional Wisdom on American Engineers

A Business Week article from a few years back challenges the idea that the U.S. is producing fewer engineers than China and India.

Is America losing its competitive edge in engineering? Top Silicon Valley executives, U.S. think-tanks, industry associations, and university deans have all pointed out dropping enrollment in American science and tech programs and warn of a brewing problem. And in a November survey of 4,000 U.S. engineers, 64% said outsourcing makes them worry about the profession's future, while less than 10% feel sure America will maintain its leadership in technology.

Such gloom is reinforced by a raft of oft-cited statistics: the U.S. graduates only 70,000 engineers a year, and enrollment in engineering schools is declining fast. India, meanwhile, turns out 350,000 engineers annually, while Chinese universities produce 600,000, by some estimates. Indeed, with Asian techies earning anywhere from a quarter to a tenth of what their Western counterparts do, doomsayers might ask why any intelligent young American would pursue engineering.

But how accurate are such numbers? And how does the theory of American decline square with the reality that graduates of good U.S. engineering schools seem to have little problem finding jobs? Vivek Wadhwa, a founder of several tech startups and an occasional contributor to BusinessWeek Online who's now an executive in residence at Duke University says he got so disturbed by the anxieties of bright engineering students that he helped supervise a study released in December to get to the bottom of such questions.

The conclusion: Because of fuzzy definitions of "engineering graduate," estimates of Indian and Chinese numbers can be wildly exaggerated, while America's are understated.

Just look at the numbers using consistent criteria. If one counts people who study computer science and information technology as engineers -- as India does -- then the U.S. grants 134,000 four-year engineering degrees annually. Indeed, the U.S. is producing far more engineers per capita than either of Asia's emerging superpowers. Indian schools grants only 122,000 four-year engineering degrees (and almost as many three-year degrees), while China generates 351,000.

The bottom line is that America's engineering crisis is a myth, Wadhwa argues. Both sides in the globalization debate are "spreading propaganda," he contends. India and China are using inflated engineering numbers because they want to draw more foreign investment, while fearmongers in the U.S. use dubious data either to support their case for protectionism, to lobby for greater government spending on higher education and research, or to justify their offshore investments.

So there you go.

Could This Be You?

Mark Taylor, a expert on Generation NeXt (anyone born after 1981) has this to say about this group of people:

The post-1981 generation has the following traits, according to Taylor's research: Consumer orientation; a sense of classroom and workplace entitlement; an assumption that academic and conduct expectations are negotiable; a need for instant gratification; poor critical thinking, problem solving and long-term planning skills; and academic disengagement.

Nice.

Clueless

Here's the latest salvo regarding the low level of knowledge among American students. The author wonders why the presidential candidates aren't talking about this. Good question.

An American kid drops out of high school every 26 seconds. That’s more than a million every year, a sign of big trouble for these largely clueless youngsters in an era in which a college education is crucial to maintaining a middle-class quality of life — and for the country as a whole in a world that is becoming more hotly competitive every day.

Ignorance in the United States is not just bliss, it’s widespread. A recent survey of teenagers by the education advocacy group Common Core found that a quarter could not identify Adolf Hitler, a third did not know that the Bill of Rights guaranteed freedom of speech and religion, and fewer than half knew that the Civil War took place between 1850 and 1900.

“We have one of the highest dropout rates in the industrialized world,” said Allan Golston, the president of U.S. programs for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In a discussion over lunch recently he described the situation as “actually pretty scary, alarming.”

Roughly a third of all American high school students drop out. Another third graduate but are not prepared for the next stage of life — either productive work or some form of post-secondary education.

When two-thirds of all teenagers old enough to graduate from high school are incapable of mastering college-level work, the nation is doing something awfully wrong.

Equally problematic is the fact that we keep talking about this problem without seemingly doing anything about it.

Street Money

The Philadelphia political machine is apparently alive, though not necessarily well, and a peculiar custom has come under scrutiny. From the New York Times:

WHEN Philadelphia ward leaders realized the contest for the Democratic nomination for president would extend through the Pennsylvania primary, it set their salivary glands running. It meant they would have an opportunity to extract street money from the campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. And street money is the manna of Philadelphia ward politics.

Street money is the name for cash given to party committeemen and women who hand out literature and drum up the vote on primary and election days. It comes from the candidates and is dispensed to the party’s 69 ward leaders who, in turn, dole it out to the city’s more than 3,000 committeemen. In Philadelphia, it is a mandatory fee for most Democratic candidates.

Though legal, it has also become a subject for mandatory derision — at least for the Democratic campaigns and those out-of-state political commentators who have been camped out here for the last month. For them, handing out street money, an old political practice that is rarely used elsewhere, is archaic, unsavory or worse.

They aren’t alone. Last week, the Obama and Clinton campaigns announced they would not be dispensing street money today. Mr. Obama cited philosophical objections to paying people to support his candidacy. Mrs. Clinton’s reasons were more pragmatic. As one Clinton supporter, Gov. Ed Rendell, explained it, she has barely enough money to run TV ads, let alone shell out the typical $300,000 in street money a candidate pays.

But there’s another side to what so far has been a one-sided story. Street money — an integral part of our city’s political ecology — has its uses. More to the point, it’s not going away.

Philadelphia is a living museum of American history, where the political machine, though it wheezes and gasps, still functions much as it did 100 years ago. Then, a political campaign was a labor-intensive activity. It took legions to spread the good word about candidates, round up voters to go to the polls and assist in their deliberations by handing out sample ballots containing the names of candidates blessed by the party.

Now that patronage is all but gone, how does a party keep those legions on the job 12 to 14 hours come voting day? The answer, according to ward leaders, is street money. They argue that paying someone $100 for a day’s worth of honest labor for the party and its candidates is more democratic (with a small d) than the millions spent on modern capital-intensive politics, with its pollsters and media consultants and TV ads. And they have a point.

Unemployment vs. Joblessness

A story from the New York Times as filtered through the Center for Policy Analysis:

Men in the prime of their working lives are now less
likely to have jobs than they were during all but one
recession of the last 60 years. Most of them do not
qualify as unemployed, but they are nonetheless
without jobs, says the New York Times.

Among men ages 25 to 54 -- a range that starts after
most people finish their education and ends well
before most people retire - the unemployment rate
is 4.1 percent.

However, only people without jobs who are actively
looking for work qualify as unemployed in the
computation of that rate. It does not count people
who are not looking for work, whether or not they
would like to have a job. But there is another rate
-- called the jobless rate -- that counts the
proportion of people without jobs, explains
the Times.

o The jobless rate is at 13.1 percent for men in the
prime age group, according to the Department
of Labor.

o Only once during a post-World War II recession
did the rate ever get that high; it hit 13.3 percent
in June 1982, the 12th month of the brutal 1981-82
recession, and continued to rise from there.

o Even among women there has been some slippage;
the proportion of women ages 25 to 54 without
a job was 27.4 percent in March.

The government breaks down the figures by race,
and those figures show that over the last year almost
all the jobs lost by men in the 25 to 54 age group have
been lost by whites, with most of those losses affecting
men ages 35 to 44. There have been just a small number
of losses by black men in the 25 to 54 age group and
employment for Hispanic men is still growing, albeit
at a much slower pace than it was a few months
ago.

Source: Floyd Norris, "Many More are Jobless than are
Unemployed," New York Times, April 12, 2008.

For text:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/12/business/12charts.html

Harris County AAA Bond Rating

From a press release:

Standard & Poor's, one of the nation's top bond-rating agencies, recently raised Harris County's bond rating to AAA, a goal toward which county officials have worked for decades. S&P praised the county's "strong financial management" and "low direct debt levels" in awarding it the agency's highest possible bond rating.

The AAA rating is expected to save county taxpayers millions of dollars in borrowing costs. The higher rating tells investors that bonds offered by Harris County are low-risk, making them more attractive to buyers and lowering the interest rates that taxpayers pay in return. And because the county finances many of its largest road, park, library and infrastructure projects through bond financing, the rating boost represents a significant savings to county taxpayers.

"I'm happy to see that Standard & Poor's recognizes what I've known all along, that Harris County has an exceptionally strong financial management team," said Harris County Judge Ed Emmett. "Commissioners Court has set in place a clear, long-standing policy of conservative budgeting, and that policy is paying off nicely for taxpayers."

Some background on bond ratings from Britannica online.

Commentary from the blogosphere.

Discrimination Against Millionaires?

The Washington Post reports today that the Supreme Court will hear arguments in a case involving an exception in the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act that allows a candidate the right to collect additional funds if their opponent spends more than $350,000 of their own money in their campaign. One such opponents thinks that is unfair:

Wealthy, self-financed congressional candidate Jack Davis says the McCain-Feingold Act's "Millionaire's Amendment," which raises the contribution limits for opponents of wealthy, self-financed candidates, is not only unfair but also unconstitutional, and his lawyers will try topersuade the Supreme Court of that tomorrow.

The provision violates his rights under the First and Fifth amendments, gives an advantage to his opponent and imposes reporting requirements that force him to reveal his campaign strategy, says Davis, an industrialist who unsuccessfuly ran for Congress as a Democrat in 2004 and 2006.

But that hardly means he has tired of trying. He announced last week that he will again run for the western New York seat of Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (R), who is departing the House. This time Davis, 75, is pledging to spend $3 million of his money on the effort.

That would bring to about $7 million the amount Davis has spent trying to be elected to Congress -- a total that might serve as Exhibit A in Congress's defense of the law, which was passed to combat the impression that congressional seats can be "bought."

Davis says that is rich. "Look at the big contributors, look at the lobbyists that run things there," he said in an interview. "Are you telling me someone's not buying the election?"

Davis's is the latest constitutional challenge to the McCain-Feingold Act, named for Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) and formally known as the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002. Justices upheld key elements of the act in 2003, but last year the reconstituted court led by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. loosened a critical part of the law regarding corporate and union financing of advertising.

The following takes us to the core legal argument:

Davis and Washington lawyer Stanley Brand say the provision discriminates against candidates who prefer to fund their own campaigns in order to "convey a message of independence from lobbyists, large donors and other political 'insiders.' " The amendment "infringes on the core political speech of self-financed candidates and violates their right to equal protection of the law," Davis's brief maintains.

But a panel of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia disagreed and granted summary judgment in favor of the FEC.

The court held that Davis's challenge "fails at the outset" because the amendment "places no restriction on a candidate's ability to spend unlimited amounts of his personal wealth to communicate his message to voters, nor does it reduce the amount of money he is able to raise from contributors."

In short there is no limitation placed on the activities of the wealthy candidate, only an augmentation of what the challenger can do. Davis argues that this invites the corruption that the law is intended to curtail (the purpose of the act as a whole is to make elections--at least seem--more fair) but researchers mentioned in the article claim to have not found this law to have had much of an impact.

The Pentagon meets the Press

As we cover both the media and foreign policymaking, the New York Times covers a story that ties both together.

In order to counter rising criticism in the press, the Pentagon recruited a number of retired military officers to serve as analysts, thereby neutralizing any commentary not favorable to the war. The story also points out that these analysts have ties to military contractors with vested interests in the war.

In the summer of 2005, the Bush administration confronted a fresh wave of criticism over Guantánamo Bay. The detention center had just been branded “the gulag of our times” by Amnesty International, there were new allegations of abuse from United Nations human rights experts and calls were mounting for its closure.

The administration’s communications experts responded swiftly. Early one Friday morning, they put a group of retired military officers on one of the jets normally used by Vice President Dick Cheney and flew them to Cuba for a carefully orchestrated tour of Guantánamo.

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.

Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.

Considering that the elections of 2006 did not work out so well for the party, it is debatable whether the strategy worked, at least electorally. Given that the war continues, one could argue that business is still fine though. This is what Eisenhower may have warned about though. Military endeavors are as much about business as they are about security.

Jack Brooks' Papers

Longtime area Congressional Representative Jack Brooks recently donated his papers to the Center for American History at the University of Texas.

"During his five decades of congressional service, Jack earned national recognition for his role in passing civil rights and voting rights legislation and as one of the most ferocious watchdogs over government spending and operations," said Brooks’s longtime friend, Gov. Dolph Briscoe. "He literally has saved American taxpayers billions of dollars through his actions in improving government efficiency and eliminating waste."

"Jack Brooks had a storied 42-year career in the United States Congress," said Larry Temple, president of the Lyndon B. Johnson Foundation, which facilitated the donation of the Brooks papers to the Center. "A protégé of legendary Speaker Sam Rayburn and a longtime colleague of Lyndon Johnson, Jack was always an activist and a leader in Congress who got things done."

A listing of all of the landmark legislation that Jack authored or helped pass would consume an entire yellow tablet," Temple continued. "The Center for American History—a neighbor of the LBJ Library—is the right home for these papers. We are all in the debt of Jack Brooks for his generosity in making them available."

Should be worth the trip to Austin.

Craddick Survives

The Chron tells us that reigning Texas Speaker Tom Craddick is likely to remain speaker due to the results of the recent primaries:

Republican House Speaker Tom Craddick, who only months ago seemed to be hanging on to his powerful job by a thread, has emerged from the latest round of elections considerably strengthened. For now anyway.

After fending off a bitter palace coup attempt last year, Craddick gained more supporters than he lost in primary elections March 4 and in the April 8 runoffs.

But a more telling indication of Craddick's momentum came last week, after the primary and runoffs were settled: One of his most ardent critics, Republican Rep. Todd Smith of Bedford, announced his allegiance to the one-time foe.

Smith told Texas Weekly, an online political newsletter, that since the primary results, he no longer believes another Republican can beat Craddick.

"The facts changed and I am reacting to the facts ... I no longer see a scenario where we get a Republican speaker who is not Craddick," Smith said.

O'Connor Denounces Money in Judicial Elections

From the American Constitution Society.

Lawyers, Judges and the Benefits of Donating to Judicial Elections

The Chron has a story today confirming a point we made in 2302 about the consequence of judicial elections: Judges then do favors for the lawyers who give them money, in this case juvenile court judges steer cases to a select groups of lawyers.

A relatively small group of attorneys, some of them old friends and all financial backers of judges handing out work, regularly receives close to half of all the tax-funded appointments to represent the poor in the juvenile courts, a Houston Chronicle analysis has found.

The system, criticized as cronyism by some, has made several attorneys between $100,000 and $200,000 a year on the public dime, according to county payment records from January 2005 to February 2008. It also has saddled a handful, including a few who take outside jobs, with caseloads exceeding the recommended number.

Some lawyers who seek a share of the work say local juvenile judges have found loopholes in a state law passed seven years ago meant to take the favoritism out of the appointment process. And some parents complain of lawyers who don't return phone calls, continually reset hearings or pressure their children to plead guilty to crimes they say they didn't commit.

Court-appointed attorneys given the most cases argue that talent and tenacity get them more work. All three judges in the juvenile courts, which see cases involving kids who are abused or in trouble with the law, defend the system and deny playing favorites. When not relying on a random computer system to pick attorneys, each says, he chooses the best attorney for the job.

"All the people who practice in these courts, everybody has known each other for years and years," said state District Judge Mike Schneider. "And you have a feeling of who does what."

But criticism is mounting. In March, state Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, called for a public defender officer for all the courts in Harris County, pointing out that this is the only major urban area in the nation without one. Harris County Commissioners Court agreed to study this issue.

And late last month, a report by a national juvenile justice group studying the county's overbooked juvenile offender system found fault with the juvenile courts in Harris County.

"Defense appears to be lacking here," John Rhoads, a consultant with the group, told a roundtable of officials, including County Judge Ed Emmett.

Here's the beef:

All three juvenile court judges have been accused, privately at least, of favoring longtime friends or campaign contributors when appointing lawyers to represent the poor.

But Shelton and Phillips bear the brunt of criticism. Both received more than 90 percent of their campaign contributions from those they appoint; Schneider took in about 74 percent from these lawyers, according to a Chronicle analysis of contributions since 2005.

Mark Sandoval, an attorney appointed almost entirely in Sheltons' court, has also represented Shelton's wife in a lawsuit related to a fatal car crash involving their daughter, who was convicted of intoxicated manslaughter late last year. Sandoval, who did not return calls for comment, continues to get appointments despite being twice suspended between 1997 and 2000 by the State Bar of Texas for professional misconduct.

And two of the courts' top earners, Sprott and Glenn Devlin, who together earned $1 million from taxpayers since 2005, are longtime friends of Phillips and Shelton. Devlin was Phillips' campaign treasurer and former law partner. And each year during baseball season another top earner, attorney Gary Polland, lets Phillips sit in his seats near home plate for a dozen or so games. The judge says he always repays Polland for the cost of the tickets and has taken pains — including limiting all donations to his campaign to $500 per person — to erase any appearance of impropriety.

For his part, Shelton says he gets no joy from his appointment powers and plans to study public defender offices in other cities. All three judges deny any correlation between contributions and appointments.

In a graphic accompanying the newspaper article, we are told that $75,000 in campaign contributions over three years resulted in almost $4 million in court fees for ten select attorneys.
Not a bad investment.

We may ask whether the problem is the behavior of the officials or the preservation of a system that allows for these relationships to develop and persist.

Interest Group Influence and the Homeowner Bailout

As Congress continues to mull over the precise design of the Foreclosure Prevention Act (S. 2636), is is becoming clear that what started as a process designed to help homeowners has turned into an opportunity for well connected businesses to use the crisis for personal gain.

The New York Times tells us:

The Senate proclaimed a fierce bipartisan resolve two weeks ago to help American homeowners in danger of foreclosure. But while a bill that senators approved last week would take modest steps toward that goal, it would also provide billions of dollars in tax breaks — for automakers, airlines, alternative energy producers and other struggling industries, as well as home builders.

The tax provisions of the Foreclosure Prevention Act, which consumer groups and labor leaders say amount to government handouts to big business, show how the credit crisis, while rattling the housing and financial markets, has created beneficiaries in the power corridors of Washington.

It also shows how legislation with a populist imperative offers a chance for lobbyists to press their clients’ interests.

This has proved especially true on the housing legislation, which many lawmakers and lobbyists view as one of the last opportunities before Congress grinds to a halt amid election-year politics.

In the Senate bill, the nation’s biggest home builders, some now on the verge of bankruptcy, won a provision that would let them claim millions in tax refunds by charging their current losses against the huge profits they made three or four years ago. Other struggling industries would benefit from this provision.

“This is our biggest legislative effort since the Tax Reform Act of 1986,” said Jerry M. Howard, chief executive of the National Association of Home Builders. Hundreds of the association’s members flooded the district offices of representatives and senators while they were home for the spring recess last month.

It is still uncertain how much the eventual bill will help homeowners.

“The Senate legislation gave corporations and Wall Street billions in tax breaks,” Terence M. O’Sullivan, the president of the Laborers International Union of North America, said at a news conference on Tuesday to denounce the bill.

“Tax breaks for corporate home builders won’t help stabilize the housing market, won’t create jobs and won’t prevent a single foreclosure,” he continued. “If anything, this multibillion-dollar windfall will make things worse.”

But it will remind us who has real power in the legislative process and who does not.

Reaching out to the Bitter Voter

Timothy Noah tells us that at the root of the uproar surrounding Barrack Obama's claim that small town working class whites are "bitter" and that Democrats need to find the appropriate way to reach out to them (other than political opportunism) is a degree of confusion about just who these people are, how to best understand their alienation from the Democratic Party, and the best way to bring them back into the fold:

At a San Francisco fundraiser on April 6, Obama uttered his now-famous remark about white working-class Pennsylvanians:

You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years, and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate, and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

This theory of white working-class alienation from the Democratic Party derives from Thomas Frank's compellingly argued 2004 book, What's the Matter With Kansas? To Frank, the proletariat suffers from a form of "derangement" in believing that its woes derive from the decline of traditional values—patriotism, organized religion, self-reliance, the heterosexual two-parent nuclear family, etc.—when the true source of its troubles is a set of economic policies that favors the rich. Republicans have come to win blue-collar votes in elections by portraying Democratic tolerance of racial and cultural diversity as depravity—"abortion, amnesty, and acid," in the famous slogan used against George McGovern in 1972. (This is not a new trick.) GOP officeholders typically set their conservative cultural agenda aside after the election is over to concentrate on cutting taxes, reducing regulation, busting unions, and so forth. But the white working class continues to fall for the bait-and-switch because the demoralized Democratic Party lacks the courage to lure it back with a muscular appeal based on economic justice.

Noah is suspicious that Obama--and Democrats in general--are prepared to reach out to these voters. Why?

First, The white working class isn't the problem; Dixie is. This theory has been forwarded by Paul Krugman and Thomas Schaller, among others. . . . Obama, if he is the Democratic nominee, might as well write off the South, because Democrats can't win there. Princeton's Larry Bartels made the case two years ago in the Quarterly Journal of Political Science. According to Bartels, the white voters lacking college degrees who have abandoned the Democratic Party in droves are nearly all Southerners. Outside the South, the decline among voters in this group who support Democratic presidential candidates is less than 1 percent. Moreover, if the white working class's interest in "guns or religion" indicates derangement or bitterness, then the white working class isn't very deranged or bitter. According to Bartels, there is no evidence that social issues outweigh economic ones among white voters lacking college degrees.

And second, the white working class votes . . soon . . . won't exist. Less crudely, the white working class will exist, but it will no longer conform to the familiar definition. It will continue to shrink, but not as fast.Bartels defines the white working class as white people who lack college degrees. This notion of the white working class works fine if the setting is 1940, when three-quarters of all adults age 25 and older were high-school dropouts and 95 percent lacked a college degree. Today, however, only about 14 percent of adults 25 and older are high-school dropouts, and only about 70 percent lack a college degree. Fifty-four percent have "at least some college education." These data are included in a new Brookings Institution study by Alan Abramowitz and Ruy Teixeira, who further point out that since 1940 the percentage of workers who have white-collar jobs has increased from 32 percent to 60 percent. Nobody knows what to call the newly swollen ranks of people at the low-income end of white-collar America.

Explaining the Current Financial Crisis

Two stories in the current issues of Foreign Policy attempt to explain how the United State's current financial situation.

The first outlines the eights steps that got us to where we are today.

1. The Fed spikes the punch bowl. In the wake of the dot-com bust and 9/11, the Fed lowers interest rates to 1 percent, the lowest since 1958. For more than 2½ years, long after the economy has resumed growing, the Fed funds rate remains lower than the rate of inflation. For banks, in effect, money is free.

2. Leverage soars. Financial sector debt, household debt, and home prices all double. Big banks shift their business models away from executing transactions for customers to “principal trading”—or gambling from their own accounts with borrowed money. In 2007, the principal-trading accounts at Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Merrill Lynch balloon to $1.3 trillion.

3. Consumers throw a toga party. Soaring home prices convert houses into ATMs. In the 2000s, consumers extract more than $4 trillion from their homes in net free cash (excluding financing costs and housing investment). From 2004 through 2006, such extractions exceed 7 percent of disposable personal income. Personal consumption surges from its traditional 66 to 67 percent of GDP to 72 percent by 2007, the highest rate on record.

4. A dollar tsunami. The United States’ current-account deficits exceed $4.9 trillion from 2000 through 2007, almost all for oil or consumer goods. (The current account is the most complete measure of U.S. trade, as it encompasses goods, services, and capital and financial flows.) Economists, including one Ben S. Bernanke, argue that a “global savings glut” will force the world to absorb dollars for another 10 or 20 years. They’re wrong.

5. Yields plummet. The cash flood sweeps across all risky assets. With so many people taking advantage of cheap loans, the most risky mortgage-backed securities carry only slightly higher interest rates than ultra-safe government bonds. The leverage, or level of borrowing, on private-equity company buyout deals jumps by 50 percent. Takeover funds load even more debt onto their portfolio companies to finance big cash dividends for themselves.

6. Hedge funds peddle crystal meth. Aggressive investors pour money into hedge funds generating artificially high returns by betting with borrowed money. To maximize yields, hedge funds also gravitate to the riskiest mortgages, like subprime, and to the riskiest bonds, which absorb losses on complex pools of lower-quality mortgages known as collateralized debt obligations or CDOs. The profits from selling bonds based on very risky underlying securities override bankers’ traditional risk aversion. By 2006, high-risk lending becomes the norm in the home-mortgage industry.

7. A ratings antigravity machine. Pension funds cannot generally invest in very risky paper as a mainstream asset class. So, banks and investment banks, with the acquiescence of the ratings agencies, create “structured” bonds with an illusion of safety. Eighty million dollars of “senior” CDO bonds backed by a $100 million pool of subprime mortgages will not incur losses until the defaults in the pool exceed 20 percent. The ratings agencies confer triple-A ratings on such bonds; investors assume they are equivalent to default-proof U.S. Treasury bonds or blue-chip corporates. To their shock, investors around the world discover that as pool defaults start rising, their senior CDO bonds rapidly lose trading value long before they suffer actual defaults.

8. The Wile E. Coyote moment arrives. Suddenly last summer, all the pretenses start to come undone, and the market is caught frantically spinning its legs in vacant space. The federal government responds with more than $1 trillion in new mortgage lending and lending authorizations in multiple guises from Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the Federal Housing Finance Board, and the Federal Reserve. Home prices still drop relentlessly; signs of recession proliferate; risky assets plummet.

The second places blame on the actions of ex Fed chief Alan Greenspan (accusations he is attempting to rebuff).

Alan Greenspan’s fingerprints are all over what is fast becoming the worst financial calamity since the Great Depression. Sensitive to mounting criticism that his stewardship of the Federal Reserve led to today’s wrenching crisis, the former Fed chairman has launched a massive public relations campaign to set the record “straight.” Greenspan does make an inarguable point in stating his case for the defense—that it is critical to get the lessons of this crisis right. I couldn't agree more.

But methinks the man doth protest too much. Unfortunately, Mr. Greenspan has been blinded by a dangerous combination of politics and ideology in his own search for those very lessons. It was much the same during the 18 ½ years he spent at the helm of the Fed, guided by the belief that the U.S. public wants rapid, albeit noninflationary, economic growth. A politically compliant central banker, he has stated in his best-selling memoirs that he believes the independence of the Federal Reserve is not set in stone—implying that there is always huge pressure to keep the growth machine humming. A market libertarian, he has long argued that regulatory intrusion slows the economy. Presto—the rest is history—and an increasingly painful one at that. Greenspan’s blend of politics and ideology led to bad economics and a succession of policy blunders whose severity is only now becoming clear.

The MLK Assassination and the Realignment of 1968

E.J. Dionne argues that the assassination of MLK in 1968 helped spur the upsurge on conservatism that tore the New Deal Coalition apart and ended the fifth party era.

The assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and the ensuing riots that engulfed the nation's capital and big cities across the country signaled the collapse of liberal hopes in a smoky haze of self-doubt and despair. Conservatives, on the run through much of the decade, found a broad new audience for their warnings against the disorders and disruptions bred by reform.

. . . It is easy to forget that the core themes of contemporary conservatism were born in response to the events of 1968. The attacks on "big government," the defense of states' rights, the scorn for "liberal judicial activism," "liberal do-gooders," "liberal elitists," "liberal guilt," and "liberal permissiveness" were rooted in the reaction that gathered force as liberal optimism receded.

. . .Liberals themselves share blame for the waning of their movement. Just because right-wing politicians used "law and order" as a code for race did not mean that concern about crime was illegitimate. On the contrary, the country was in the opening stages of a serious crime wave and had good reason to worry about rising violence.

Liberalism itself was cracking up in 1968. Liberals had turned on each other over Johnson's Vietnam policy. The old civil rights coalition splintered as advocates of racial integration warred with the defenders of Black Power, a slogan voiced in 1966 by a young activist named Stokely Carmichael.

. . . For decades before the 1960s, conservatism was held in contempt by large swaths of the intellectual and political class. It was one of the great achievements of William F. Buckley Jr., whose death we mourned a few weeks ago, to insist that respect be paid to the great tradition whose cause he championed.

The Unitary Executive Continues...

In the latest installment of the long running dispute concerning the extent of executive power during a time of war--or the extent of the "commander in chief" powers--a memo has surfaced articulating that argument.

It's author--John Yoo--focuses primarily on torture and states that all but a handful of techniques the "shock the conscience" are not only permissible but are contained within the inherent powers of the president and are beyond the ability of Congress to restrict.

At that time Yoo was a Justice Department official, but the Justice Department itself retreated from the position, which apparently was not accepted by military lawyers either. Democrats in the Senate have been responsible for making the memo public.

Here is a link to the memo part one, and part two.

It's Medicare Stupid

The Nation Center for Policy Analysis reminds us that the real fiscal crunch will not be in Social Security but in Medicare:

Rarely in Washington does the president get to propose legislation that Congress is required to fast track. Such an opportunity exists right now and it pertains to the most serious domestic policy problem this country faces: the rising costs of Medicare, says John C. Goodman,
president of the National Center for Policy Analysis.

According to the trustees, Medicare's unfunded liability is $74 trillion -- five times that of Social Security. According to the Congressional Budget Office, health care spending is on a course that
could crowd out all other government programs. Clearly the time has come for fundamental reform, says Goodman.

How can we reduce the costs of Medicare? According to Goodman, we should:

o Reward doctors and other health care providers who raise
quality and lower costs through improving patient
communication and access to care, and by teaching patients how
to be better managers of their own care.

o Provide beneficiaries who have chronic diseases with
training, easier access to information, and the ability to
purchase and use in-house monitors, which would help them
manage their own care as well or better than conventional
physician care and at lower costs.

o Revise the reimbursement system to remove the many barriers
to innovations in using those treatments efficiently and
effectively.

These are just a few of the many things that can be done to control the rising costs of Medicare while improving care and health at the same time. These steps will not be enough by themselves to put Medicare and our health care system on a sustainable course, but timely action by the president and Congress can make a big difference, says Goodman.

Source: John C. Goodman, "Markets and Medicare," Wall Street Journal, February 23, 2008.

For text:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120373015283387491.html

For more on Health Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/?Article_Category=16

Gerrymandering and Party Polarization

From the National Center for Policy Analysis, an overview of a report stating that 10-15% of polarization is due to gerrymandering. This is lower than previous claims. They conclude that each party is simply more in tune with the preferences of those who identify with them:

When Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry signed off on a particularly distorted legislative district in 1812, bequeathing the "gerrymander" to American politics, did he lay the groundwork for today's partisan rancor? That's the question three political science professors set out to answer. Ever-more-sophisticated gerry­mandering techniques protect the jobs of incumbent politicians, the usual theory goes, allowing them to ignore moderates and indulge the whims of their most bloodthirsty constituents.

Clearly, a seat on Capitol Hill is one of the safest jobs around:

o In 2002 and 2004, for instance, 99 percent of competing incumbents in the House held on to their jobs.

o Even the Democratic surge in the last election didn't prevent 89 percent of House Republicans from keeping their seats.

o Yet the professors argue that gerry­mandering bears little responsibility for the collapse of bipartisanship.

Their analysis of recent congressional voting records shows that polarization has increased nearly as much in the gerrymander-proof Senate as in the House. One of the best explanations for a Congress where most politicians vote a straight party line is simply that political parties are now better aligned with the views of their constituents than they were 50 years ago. Republicans, for instance, have won the loyalty of conservative southerners who used to
vote Democratic, and Democrats increasingly represent northeastern moderates who used to support the GOP.

The effect of gerrymandering on this kind of "sorting" was approximately zero, the authors found. Overall, they conclude that gerrymandering accounts for, at most, 10 to 15 percent of the upswing in polarization since the 1970s.

Source: "Safe Seats, Crazy Partisans?" The Atlantic, March
2008; based upon: Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal,
"Does Gerrymandering Cause Polarization," Princeton
University/University of California at San Diego/New York University,
October 23, 2006.

For text:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200803/primarysources

For study:

http://www.princeton.edu/~nmccarty/gerrymander11.pdf

Two Sides on Troop Reduction

Slate's Today's Papers reports on conflict within the Bush Administration over troop levels in Iraq:

The Wall Street Journal leads its world-wide newsbox, and the Los Angeles Times fronts, Defense Secretary Robert Gates telling a Senate panel that he wants to resume troop withdrawals quickly. The statement came hours after President Bush officially backed Gen. David Petraeus' plan to indefinitely halt any further troop withdrawals after this summer, a story that leads the New York Times and Washington Post. "I've told him he'll have all the time he needs," Bush said while also emphasizing that the war "is not endless."

and

Gates made sure to note that although he no longer thinks the number of U.S. troops in Iraq will fall to 100,000 by the end of the year, "the hope, depending on conditions on the ground, is to reduce our presence further this fall." A similar sentiment was expressed by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Although these divisions within the Pentagon are well-known, "rarely have they been aired publicly," says the LAT.

The President and our commander in Iraq seem to support one thing while the Secretary of Defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff support another. A consequence of a large decentralized executive branch perhaps?

The GOP Youth Vote

Seems non-existent, but hasn't always been the case. David Frum speculates about how the GOP lost the youth vote:

What's driving the young people away? Four things.

1. Young people react to the success or failure of the first politicians they know. The twentysomethings of the 1980s, for example, associated the Democratic Party with the malaise of Jimmy Carter — and the GOP with the triumphs of Ronald Reagan. Today's Republican Party is associated with a wave of disappointments and embarrassments: Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, congressional corruption scandals, the mortgage crisis.

2. The Reagan years were a time of prosperity for young workers. Unemployment plunged, wages rose, housing became more affordable. The Bush years have not been so favorable. The cost of a college degree rose faster than pay for college graduates. New college graduates saw their wages actually drop after inflation. And the costs of housing have outpaced incomes for just about all young people.

3. The Republican Party has become increasingly identified with conservative Christianity. Younger Americans are becoming more secular and more permissive. In particular, young Americans have become increasingly tolerant of homosexuality and increasingly willing to have children outside marriage. While unmarried births have dropped among teenagers since the welfare reform of 1995, unmarried births have actually been rising among women in their 20s.

4. Today's twentysomethings are browner and blacker than those of the 1980s. Hispanics and Asians both tilt strongly Democratic, as of course do African-Americans.

So that's it. His remedies are for Republicans to focus on Social Security taxes, present a "sunnier" face on their social issue positions, emphasize the environment, and start proving they can deliver on promises.