10/31 Swing State Power Rankings

In honor of All Hallows Eve, today’s Swing State Power Rankings will focus on the five states Demockracy believes will be most likely to keep us up past the bewitching hour on Election Night with dirty tricks, hanging chads, and provisional spooks…

5. Pennsylvania

Unlike most swing states, Pennsylvania does not have early voting. Therefore, polls could be flooded. Long lines and dirty tricks may ensue.

4. Missouri

Missouri is known for Election Night chaos. In 2000, polls were held open for several hours to accommodate those who still hadn’t been able to vote. These problems resurfaced this February on Super Tuesday.

3. Colorado

As one of the top-tier tipping point states and one of the last competitive states to close its polls, Colorado has the potential to keep us up with fright! If the election is not decided by the time Colorado begins to tabulate their votes, expect all eyes to turn to the Rockies.

2. Ohio

After 2004, how could Ohio not be near the top of the list? A maldistribution of voting machines caused seven or eight hour lines in some areas. For instance, many students at Kenyon College didn’t get to vote until 2 am, AFTER Ohio had been called for George W. Bush. Why? There was one working voting machine for thousands of voters. Ohio has a new Secretary of State this year, but election irregularities would not be a surprise. Obama has called thousands of lawyers to the Buckeye State.

1. Florida.

2000. Hanging Chads. Supreme Court. December. Enough said…

Tracking Poll Update: 5 Days To Go

With five days to go until Election Day, it’s official that McCain is surging. Surging to a five or six percentage point deficit that is. The movement appears to have occurred Saturday, Sunday, and Monday. As you see in red below, Obama was up by about eight percentage points in the sample (10/25) that included last Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Next, also in red, you see that Obama was up by six percentage points in an independent sample (10/28) from Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Based on my massaging of the data, the worst day of polling for Obama appears to have been Sunday. Over the course of the campaign, there has been some convincing evidence that Obama polls slightly worse over the weekend when many of his younger supporters are not as likely to be home to answer pollster’s calls. However, since today’s results include Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday interviews, they should be a fairly accurate gauge of the current state of the race.

Date	Gallup	Rasmussen	Hotline	Research 2000	Zogby	IBD/TIPP	ABC	7-Poll Adjusted Average
10/20	9	4	5	8	6	6	9	6.7
10/21	10	4	6	8	8	6	9	7.2
10/22	8	6	5	10	10	4	11	7.6
10/23	6	7	5	10	12	1	11	7.3
10/24	7	7	7	12	10	4	9	7.8
10/25	8	8	7	12	9	4	9	8.1
10/26	9	8	8	11	5	4	7	7.6
10/27	10	5	8	8	5	3	7	6.7
10/28	7	5	8	7	4	4	7	6.0
10/29	7	3	7	6	5	3	8	5.5
10/30	7	5	6	5	7	4	8	6.0

What does this mean? Well, Obama was up by about seven or eight percentage points last week. This week he is up by about five or six percentage points. I think it’s likely that McCain will pick up another percentage point or two this coming Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, which will make the difference three or four percentage points in the final tracking poll numbers. If I had to guess the popular vote, based on current trends, I’d have to go with a four-percentage point Obama victory. However, your guess is as good as mine.

The next update will be Saturday.

The FCC Won’t Let Me Be, or Let Me Be Me

Hey, look! It’s my new column! The title of this column, “Lawful Dissent,” was suggested by Brad Epstein, and I think it’s very appropriate. A little history: since I took a communications class at Miami University in 2003-04 dealing with First Amendment law, my hunger for the law has been ravenous. I’ve taken up armchair legal reading as a hobby (hey, some people play with toy airplanes), and while I feel like I bring some degree of depth and understanding to the law, I am by no means a lawyer. I have come upon my knowledge through inquiry, not official study, in much the same way that NPR’s Adam Davidson knows economics or Chris Mooney knows science — it’s the topic of their journalism. So, too, is the law the subject of my journalism, and I hope to impart to you, the reader, some knowledge about how law works, and especially how the U.S. Supreme Court works.

Now that that is out of the way, on with the show! And what a show it is. We may end up seeing “the F-word” and “the S-word” used in open court as The Supremes prepare to restore (or not) the FCC’s power to punish fleeting uses of the above words on broadcast television. The FCC’s power to regulate obscene or indecent content on broadcast television is granted to it by Congress, under the theory that (1) Congress, via the FCC, is the custodian of the people’s electromagnetic waves. The FCC was established in order to regulate the operation of what was then a limited number of frequencies that could be used (although, with modern technology, the fear that stations will bleed into one another is becoming increasingly anachronistic and there are some people out there who feel that the FCC’s role as traffic police of the electromagnetic spectrum is no longer necessary). The FCC does not, despite what urban legend-type emails may say, have the authority to regulate the content of cable television or the Internet (although it may enforce antitrust regulations on the business practices of companies who do business in either sphere).

The history of “obscenity” is interesting. Current case law regarding obscenity comes to us from Cohen v. California (1971), in which plaintiff Cohen was arrested for wearing a jacket upon the back of which was written “F— THE DRAFT” (of course, on the original jacket, there were no letters blanked out). The case made it to the Supreme Court, which ruled in Cohen’s favor. In doing so, it established a multi-prong test for “obscenity”:

1. The content in question must be patently offensive (meaning, no insinuations or double entendres; it’s got to be flagrant) to a reasonable adult applying contemporary community standards (the community could be as small as a town or as big as the country; the Court rightly understood that different communities tolerate different levels of obscenity and chose not to impose a unilateral standard on the entire country).
2. The content must lack significant literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. This is often called the SLAPS test.
3. The content must appeal to the prurient interests. This means sex. Built into the definition of “obscene” is that it must have to do with sex.

If some content passes all three tests, then it is judged “obscene” and not constitutionally protected. In Cohen’s case, prong 1 is true: the jacket is patently offensive. Prong 2 was false: the jacket did have political value, as it was a political statement. Prong 3 was false: the word was being used in the expletive sense, not the sexual sense. And thus, Cohen’s jacket was found to be constitutionally protected.

To return to the present day, FCC v. Fox Television Stations — the case in which Chief Justice John Roberts will decide whether or not attorneys may drop the F-bomb in court — deals with whether or not the FCC was “arbitrary and capricious” in changing its policy to prohibit incidental uses of certain expletives on broadcast television. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the FCC, calling its policy change “arbitrary and capricious” (legal speak for “you can’t just change your mind all of a sudden”).

The controversy stems partly from Bono’s 2005 appearance at the Golden Globes in which he said his award was “really, really f—ing brilliant.” At the time, the FCC refused to call Bono’s language “obscene,” given that his use of the F-word was as an expletive, not in the sexual sense. A Christian organization, Parents Television Council, put pressure on the FCC to punish CBS, and the FCC later reversed itself, called Bono’s language “indecent,” and fined CBS. The FCC took the opinion earlier this year that “even non-literal uses of expletives fall within its indecency definition because it is ‘difficult (if not impossible) to distinguish whether a word is being used as an expletive or as a literal description of sexual or excretory functions.’” The Second Circuit, though, didn’t buy that argument, noting that, yes, it is definitely possible to separate metaphorical uses of words from their “literal description of sexual or excretory functions,” and in fact, Americans do so every day!

The FCC’s crusade against obscenity in the last four years has been wholly driven by Parents Television Council, which created an email form on its website that allows people to complain directly to the FCC. 99% of the complaints the FCC receives come from Parents Television Council. I can only hope that Chief Justice Roberts will actually use the words in court, as tiptoeing around them only increases their mystical quality and reinforces the notion that such words can only be used in their literal meanings.

Signs of Desperation

It is not unusual for John McCain to employ robocalls. It is unusual for him to deploy robocalls in his own state! Robocalls should be treated as a sign of desperation: once a candidate has run out of decent options, the only thing left is the dirty stuff. (Hey, at least it’s not push polling … yet.)

McCain’s home state of Arizona should be totally safe. And it may yet be safe. But robocalling shows that McCain has scared. And perhaps he is, given polling data that indicate Obama is closing his gap in Arizona. A 21-point lead has dwindled to five points in less than a month. Maybe it’s the heat.

Republicans, Real America, and S&M

John McCain’s arguments about Barack Obama’s tax plan rely upon a misunderstanding of how taxes work, in much the same way intelligent design proponents rely on a misunderstanding of how evolution works in order to get people to believe them. The Internet would call this tactic “FUD,” which stands for “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt,” and it is largely the way McCain has run his campaign. By planting fear of Barack Obama (he “pals around with terrorists”), uncertainty about Barack Obama (he’s inexperienced) and doubt about Barack Obama (he hasn’t even done anything significant in his time as a senator) in the minds of American voters, McCain can focus more on the qualities Obama lacks than the qualities that he, McCain, possesses.

On Meet the Press Sunday, McCain said that “CEOs” of companies like FedEx pay a 35% marginal tax rate. This is an intentionally misleading statement; CEOs do not personally pay any taxes for their companies. A “corporation” is created for the purpose of doing business without fear of personal liability. If the corporation incurs debts, then it is the corporation that is liable for those debts; the personal assets of the employees of that corporation cannot take the place of the corporation’s assets.

The separated assets of the company and its employees mean that the company doles out salaries to its employees. The corporation has a payroll, and employees – which includes CEOs and other executive officers – are compensated out of that payroll budget.

CEOs pay 35%? No, “CEOs” don’t pay 35%. Their companies pay 35%. They don’t personally pay anything, except their own personal taxes. A company pays 35% on its revenues. A person pays depending on his salary. Now, a business owner may decide how much to pay himself as an employee, but that does not change the fact that what the business makes and what the owner makes are separate things. As Obama has observed, 90% of small businesses make less than $250,000 and are therefore incapable of paying their owners an amount that would cause the owners’ taxes to go up. How many small business owners do you know who pay themselves more than $250,000? And if a small business owner does personally make more than $250,000, then he can certainly afford the tax increase. That’s the point of a graduated, or progressive, tax: the marginal tax rate increases as income increases because people who make a lot of money can afford to pay more than people who don’t.

The argument behind giving tax cuts to people who make a lot of money is that they are in a better position to take that tax cut money and purchase things or reinvest that money in the economy. This is called “supply-side” economics because it works on the side of people who, theoretically, provide the economy with goods and services; i.e., business-owners. Give business owners more money and they will employ more people – that is to say, people on the “demand side” of the economy. This is often referred to as “trickle-down” economics because the benefits of tax cuts given to the people at the top (in terms of income) will eventually trickle down to the people at the bottom (in terms of income).

Whether or not the trickle will ever come is unknowable. In the last eight years, we’ve seen the wealthiest classes increase in size, while the middle class has decreased in size. In 2007, the median household income in the United States was $50,740. 4% of households made $200,000 or more. 18.9% of households made between $50,000 and $75,000. In 2000, 2% of households made $200,000 or more, while 19% of households made between $50,000 and $75,000. On average, American households as a group have become wealthier, but only a small group of people has actually been the beneficiary of that wealth.

Obama’s plan to “spread the wealth around” sounds very much like the system Marx envisioned: “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.” The question is, what’s wrong with that? To criticize a plan as “Marxist” is to deploy an ad hominem attack, an attack that addresses the person arguing but not the argument itself. Calling a particular tax plan “Marxist” does not address the argument: okay, if it’s Marxist, what does that mean? What’s wrong with that? Conservatives use “Marxist” as a proxy for “bad” without ever mentioning what is actually bad about the plan.

S&M

The “S&M” from the title of this article, as you probably guessed, is not that S&M. It’s socialism and Marxism. The word “socialist” has been bandied about of late with regard to tax plans and bailouts of the banks. Either through willful or deceptive ignorance, the people who throw this word around ignore the extant socialist components of our economy. We have a government that collects taxes at all; we have regulatory agencies that limit the things that businesses can do; we even have socialized health care in the form of Medicaid (government health care for impoverished people), Medicare (government health care for the elderly), and the Veterans Administration. Yes, our American veterans, who spent their lives defending our freedoms, are beneficiaries of socialism! Any veteran can walk into any VA hospital anywhere in the country and get treated. And you, the taxpayer, are paying the bill.

Even Alan Greenspan, champion of capitalism, was hypocritically in charge of a government-chartered bank that holds tremendous influence in the free-market economy. And he never once denounced that institution.

There was a time in American history when the economy was more capitalist than it is today. Do you remember having to memorize, in American history class, all of the various “panics” that occurred from 1789 to 1945? Every ten to twenty years, there was a “panic” that crippled the U.S. economy. Each successive panic resulting in either the passage of legislation designed to stop whatever activity caused the panic or an infusion of cash by the government. The Panic of 1907 was notably stopped by J.P. Morgan himself, whose company injected money into the economy to keep it going. The Federal Reserve Act was passed into law six years later, creating the modern-day Federal Reserve system.

The Federal Reserve System helped put a stop to regular panics, but even more important was the influence of a British economist named John Maynard Keynes. Prior to Keynes, the government was viewed by politicians and policy-makers as just another consumer. The government bought things from private industry, entered into contracts with private industry, and collected taxes. But it was still seen as being on par with a consumer or company. And as such, conventional wisdom dictated that it should act like a private company or citizen. When the Great Depression began in 1929, Herbert Hoover’s response was to cut spending and raise taxes. For an individual, this would seem to make sense: when faced with declining revenue and a worsening economy, cut your spending to save money. Raise your taxes (if you’re the government) to increase the money you can bring in.

But that only made things worse. The government, said Keynes, is far more powerful than any single consumer or corporation. With its essentially unlimited capacity to borrow money, the government can influence the economy in ways that individuals cannot. In a time of crisis, the government should cut taxes and increase spending in order to inject money into the economy. Even though this will cause the government to incur a deficit, it should be done in order to repair the economy. When the economy recovers, the government should decrease spending and raise taxes in order to pay off the debt it incurred during the recession. This process of government intervention is known as Keynesianism, and it has been employed by the U.S. government since World War II. And guess what? No more regular panics. The first economic depression since World War II was the oil crisis of the 1970s, caused by a combination of inflation and recession (something that economists didn’t think was possible, by the way).

These calls of “socialism” fall mostly on ignorant ears. Socialism is already here! If you pay taxes, you’re engaging in socialism. The question is, what degree of socialism are we talking about? Some countries have national monopolies that are endorsed or partly owned by the government. Think of Telefónica in Spain, Petróleos Mexicanos, or Petróleos de Venezuela. The United States would have to go a long way toward purchasing ownership stakes in our industries. Although, at least one industry – the railroads – are partially owned by the government. The U.S. government took control of the railroad system in the late 19^th century in order to cut down on corruption. Today, the government still owns the railroads, but not because of corruption. It’s because the costs of running railroads are so high that railroad companies would go bankrupt without government support.

Socialism is alive and well here, and it’s helping Americans in ways that they may not be aware of.

The Fruit Fly Dilemma: Palin’s War on Science

It looks like Sarah Palin has a new enemy in her war on science: a fruit fly.

In Pittsburgh on Friday, Governor Palin, in trying to play the role of “super maverick earmark destroyer,” accidentally tapped into a few of my wedge issues. In a speech to a small crowd, she talked about her son, Trig, born with Down syndrome, discussing him in relation to private school vouchers and earmarks for research that she claims draw funding away from educating children with special needs.

Palin’s constant denial of scientific fact and her willingness to disregard the need for greater scientific inquiry are perhaps even scarier and even more confusing than the “VOTE!” scarf with the donkeys plastered all over it, worn at a rally last week. It’s one thing when she takes the party-line stance against embryonic stem cell research or the disregard that global warming really exists. It’s another thing when she makes the outrageous claim that funding research – particularly on fruit flies – draws money away from special needs education, an issue in which she actually has a direct stake.

For the unfamiliar, Drosophila melanogaster, more commonly known as the fruit fly, are commonly used as a tool to study genetics. They are an ideal tool for such research because they are easily cultured, reproduce prodigiously, have readily available mutants for study, and because much is known about their genome. We use them to study gene transmission patterns and disease processes, and last year, to build a link between a specific protein and autism. This protein, neurexin, is needed to create functioning neural connections; when defective in humans, it can be a genetic risk factor for autism.

This is a clear-cut example in which Palin’s anti-science rhetoric counteracts the causes she claims to fight for. It also emphasizes further her resistance toward policies that will provide solutions to problems that afflict Americans. We fund research in this country by grants. The process is slow, time-consuming, and often frustrating, but it also is often the only way to obtain funding without being forced to seek aid from the private sector.

Cutting earmark funding of research would be disastrous to the forces of scientific innovation and could prove devastating to an economy that desperately needs to locate “the next big industry.” How do we find the best solution for alternative fuel if the only scientists who can afford to do the research work for Exxon-Mobile and BP? In the mean time, who is going to work out better, cleaner ways of extracting materials that we need to use while we roll out green technology? Who will make sure that medical research is creating new solutions to problems we can’t answer yet? Who will make sure that scientists can perform research that, while not ultimately profitable, will benefit society more than another new pill that can provide relief against erectile dysfunction? Earmarks in research provide a way to ensure that funding is provided to study very specific questions that might otherwise not be addressed.

Just for fun, I downloaded the “Big Kahuna” list of 2008 Congressional earmarks. I read the whole thing – less fun. I won’t deny that some of our money is being used for some pretty strange and perhaps inappropriate things. More than a few items, though, have goals oriented at treating chronic conditions and serious problems. For example, finding ways to measure blood glucose without a needle stick could lead to greater compliance in millions of patients with poorly-controlled diabetes, which could save billions of dollars in health care costs. Aquaculture research helps us better understand how to achieve sustainable, safe seafood supplies. Plenty of the earmarks that Palin rallies so hard against – dear Drosophila notwithstanding – provide funding for projects that aim to help the disabled through the funding of educational initiatives and building renovations.

I won’t pretend to think that the system is perfect where it stands now. But I don’t think that the solution is as simple as Governor Palin would like for it to be, and I don’t think that science is the enemy in budget earmarks, when there are still so many Bridges to Nowhere that account for much greater percentages of earmark spending. And while I agree fundamentally with Palin that more needs to be done to ensure the well-being of disabled Americans, her anti-science sensibilities prevent her from understanding that funding science can be a tool to carry us forward, by allowing scientists to seek innovative answers to the problems we face.

10/29 Swing State Power Rankings

Today’s Power Rankings will be based solely on early voting numbers. So far the top states in terms of percentage of 2008 early voters divided by total 2004 voters are:

5. Florida

Over 2 million voters, or 27% of 2004 total voters, have voted so far in the Sunshine State. Democratic early voters outnumber Republican early voters 45%-40%. This is significant because Republican early voters far outnumbered Democratic early voters here in 2000 and 2004.

4. Georgia

Over 1.2 million voters, or 36.4% of 2004 total voters, have voted so far in the Peach State. African Americans make up 35.4% of early voters.

3. Colorado

Over 800,000 voters, or 37.9% of 2004 total voters, have voted so far in Colorado. Democrats and Republicans are virtually even in the number of ballots requested, and the large majority of early votes have come from absentee voting (80%).

2. North Carolina

Over 1.4 million voters, or 39.7% of 2004 total voters, have voted so far in North Carolina. There have been nearly double the number of early Democratic voters compared to early Republican voters, and African American voters have made up 28% of early voters in the state.

1. Nevada

Nearly 350,000 voters, or 41.4% of 2004 total voters, have voted so far in Nevada. A large majority of early votes have come from Clark and Washoe counties. Similar to North Carolina, Democratic early voters in these two counties outnumber Republican early voters by a margin of nearly 2-1.

Battleground Snapshot: Florida

Of all the states that are still realistically in play, pride-of-place belongs once again to the Sunshine State–at least in terms of electoral votes. A person would have to have been living on Mars (or, at the very least, not involved enough in the unfolding political drama to be reading these words) not to know that Florida’s 27 electoral votes constitute a whopping ten percent of the total necessary to secure the White House. So why aren’t both campaigns running more exclusively in such a plum target?
The short answer is, all other things being equal, that it would indeed make a lot more sense to follow Hillary Clinton’s leftover advice from the primary campaigns and focus on fewer, riper targets like Florida and Ohio (for the Democrats) and Pennsylvania (for the Republicans). Trouble is, all things are not equal–especially in Florida. Most people who don’t live in the state (as does this author) think of it in understandably thumbnailed terms as a place disproportionately represented by seniors, Hispanics, and the hospitality industry.

By those metrics, of course, it should be a ripe state for Democratic plucking. However, there are some small problems with this. First, the term “Hispanic” (always offensive, but perhaps nowhere more so than here) would presume to lump citrus farm laborers and light industrial employees in the central portions of the state together with the large and growing population of more Republican-friendly expatriates from Cuba. Mr. McCain’s high-profile waffling on immigration reform probably hurts him with both camps, but the shocking bellicosity of his foreign policy stance probably wins back most of the latter group.

Second, the senior vote, which normally leans Democratic, is complicated by the obvious demographic (not to say ethnic) disparities between the candidates. However, Mr. Obama’s choice of Joe Biden for his running mate, and Mr. McCain’s failure to pick either Charlie Crist or Joe Lieberman, have both tilted the senior vote back toward Obama. In addition, the Obama campaign has recently done a much better job of targeting McCain’s senior-unfriendly positions on Social Security and health care.

Next, the heart-of-Dixie voters are, of course, solidly pro-McCain, and make no mistake: they constitute nearly as sizable a voting bloc here as in other, more demonstrably “southern” states nearby. According to a recently published demographic breakdown, Florida ranks 13th in the nation for military veterans and seventeenth in the nation for both self-identifying “Evangelical Christians” and the percentage of voters registered as Republican. All of these statistics may be attributed to the Dixie vote.

In a “normal” election (is there any such thing?), the three most heavily populated counties in the state, down in the southeastern corner–Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach–are supposed to go heavily for the Democrat (together with the counties containing Daytona, Gainesville, and Tallahassee). The bulk of the state is supposed to go heavily for the Republican, and the gigantic, monolithic suburb that stretches from Tampa Bay to the Atlantic Ocean along the Interstate 4 corridor is supposed to decide who wins. But this year there are signs that the normal coalitions may be significantly more fluid. For example, a ballot initiative that would constitutionally prohibit gay marriage seems to have had little traction in pitching up the culture wars, particularly against the backdrop of a recent story ranking the state third in the country for foreclosures. By contrast, the Jewish senior vote has been comparatively cool in its support for Senator Obama, even after his selection of the wildly popular Joe Biden to be his running mate.

It’s possible to find good news for both candidates in the literal state of the race here as well: One recent report indicated that the in-person early voting has been breaking by an improbably large 2:1 margin for Obama, and a second has suggested that Obama’s lead in this department has already surpassed the built-in advantage that Republicans always enjoy with mail-in absentee ballots. By contrast, the polling for the state has been improbably volatile in the same time period that so many other places seem to be in the middle of a clear blue trend. In addition, the McCain/Palin team is hopeful that the Mahoney scandal, coupled with the emergence of the campaign’s latest narrative–“Obama the redistributor”–will rally their demoralized troops on Election Day.

Under any scenario, Florida may be an unusually big plum (or would that be a big orange?), but it is also an unusually difficult one for either party to count on. With so many factions, so many media markets, so many contradicting agendas and galvanized constituencies, with such high-profile voting irregularities and clunky machines, and no scientifically repeatable metric for anticipating who will turn out and who won’t from race to race (compare 2000 to 2004), it would seem that any candidate basing his or her electoral fortunes on Florida is making an enormous, not to say reckless, gamble.

And if one needs further proof of Mr. Obama’s command of the electoral map, consider that he and he alone may comfortably reach the 270 electoral vote total without the need to recount hanging chads.

Tracking Poll Update: 7 Days To Go

With one week to go until Election Day, the trackers are showing some movement toward Senator McCain. Let’s take a look at the last nine days:

Date	Gallup	Rasmussen	Hotline	Research 2000	Zogby	IBD/TIPP	ABC	7-Poll Adjusted Average
10/20	9	4	5	8	6	6	9	6.7
10/21	10	4	6	8	8	6	9	7.2
10/22	8	6	5	10	10	4	11	7.6
10/23	6	7	5	10	12	1	11	7.3
10/24	7	7	7	12	10	4	9	7.8
10/25	8	8	7	12	9	4	9	8.1
10/26	9	8	8	11	5	4	7	7.6
10/27	10	5	8	8	5	3	7	6.7
10/28	7	5	8	7	4	4	7	6.0

These numbers tell us how important context is. First, look at the movement only in the last four days (numbers in red). From this perspective, it appears that McCain is gaining ground at a steady pace. Next, look at the last nine days as a whole. Here we see that the race has been relatively stable, albeit with an overall .7 percentage point movement toward Senator McCain.

Therefore, what these numbers mean depend largely on your perspective. If you view the results simply in the vacuum of the last four days, then yes, McCain is surging. However, if you view these numbers in the context of the last nine days, the race is relatively stable. Statistical training teaches me to err toward the latter, unless shown otherwise. This is because you probably need at least a week of data in order to truly flush out any noise.

Another reason not to make any assumptions quite yet is that the state polling results released today show a steady race and/or a slight movement toward Obama.

In other words, if you want to know whether this movement toward McCain in the composite is real movement, check back in a couple days.

Cristina’s Folly: A Billion Here, A Billion There

The Economist.com in an October 23, 2008 article entitled Cristina’s looking-glass world reports that Argentina President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner has a plan to nationalize private-pension funds that looks like a cunning, shortsighted effort to stave off another Argentina debt default. While Ms. Fernández claims that she is protecting “our workers and retirees,” many economists and opposition politicians fear that the government’s intention is to raid the pension funds to fill a widening national fiscal hole. The private-pension funds have assets of $30 billion and are the largest investors in Argentina’s depleted capital markets. The demise of the private-pension funds would make it far harder for local firms to raise money.

The concern is that Ms. Fernández is likely to give priority to the short-term claims of the public finances at the expense of impoverishing Argentines and their children in the future. Such a fear of government legally looting of funds designated for other purposes is a problem in the United States as well. For example, currently, Social Security tax surpluses exceed government expenditures on social security, allowing the government to legally loot the surpluses and spend them on non-Social-Security related priorities, thereby depleting Social Security assets, which will exacerbate the projected Social Security deficit in the coming years.

Another issue related to United States policy is Argentina’s agreeing to assume all liability (in the many billions) to citizen pensioners for their pensions. An analogous situation is where the United States through perhaps necessary but socialistic corporate welfare agreed in the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 for a bailout of the U.S. financial system. The glib answer is that the U.S. is not economically unstable like Argentina and can therefore afford to take on unreasonable debt in bailouts and unnecessary war and not suffer any adverse credit standing. This road is the economics of the ostrich with its head in the sand. According to Matthew Benjamin, the $700 billion bailout will push the national debt to the highest level since 1954, to more than 70% of GDP. Every citizen’s share of this higher national debt is $37,000 per person.

The late Senator Everett Dirksen of Illinois used to say relative to government expenditure: “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.” The new spendthrift government motto, while profligately sliding down the bottomless pit of debt expansion with unnecessary war and with bailouts caused by government oversight incompetence is: “A trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”

Next Page »