Environmental Policy Links, 2-28-12

Envia Systems, in the Silicon Valley, has developed an electric vehicle battery that would allow a car to travel 300 miles between chargings

Paul Krugman on solar vs. fracking

The BBC reports that fish stocks are being severely depleted in many places and explores some potential policy solutions

Scientists are being hampered in their study of global warming

The Economist argues climate change will be single most important thing, retrospectively, in 100 years

Due to decreased demand for gasoline and excess refinery capacity, the US is actually now a net exporter of gasoline

Here's the West End Bus Rapid Transit Plan and and an update on its implementation 

They're installing the "green roof" on Nashville's new convention center 

The Economist writes about the dangers of being tangled up in green-tape

Here's the lowdown on some leaked documents from the Heartland Institute, which funds scientists who seek to discredit global warming

Links, 2-22-12

Rich Santorum garnered some attention after calling the idea of schools run by state or federal governments "anachronistic"

For the first 150 years, most presidents home-schooled their children at the White House, he said. “Where did they come up that public education and bigger education bureaucracies was the rule in America? Parents educated their children, because it’s their responsibility to educate their children.” “Yes the government can help,” Mr. Santorum added. “But the idea that the federal government should be running schools, frankly much less that the state government should be running schools, is anachronistic. It goes back to the time of industrialization of America when people came off the farms where they did home-school or have the little neighborhood school, and into these big factories, so we built equal factories called public schools. And while those factories as we all know in Ohio and Pennsylvania have fundamentally changed, the factory school has not.”

The Economist has a feature article on Cass Sunstein's efforts to streamline federal government regulations.

NJ Governor Chris Christie says Warren Buffet "should just write a check and shut up" if he thinks that the wealthy should pay higher taxes

Ruth Ann Dailey has "a civil solution to the same-sex marriage angst".  She writes that the problem with many gay marriage laws is that they result in "religious oppression" and make religious conservatives "second-class citizens".  She cites the case of DC which passed a gay marriage law requiring that "'every third party' recognize same-sex marriage as legitimate".  The result, she says, is that Catholic Charities ended it's foster care rather than allow gay couples to adopt babies and discontinued health insurance rather than provide coverage to gay spouses.  Her solution is for the government to offer only civil unions to all citizens, straight or gay, and for churches to choose which unions they recognize as marriage or not.  She says the approach has worked in California, where the San Francisco diocese now simply offers health insurance coverage to a "second adult" in the household "regardless of relationship".

Rick Santorum has polled ahead of Mitt Romney in the last six national polls, including leads of 10+ points in three of them.

Thomas Friedman writes that a third-party candidate is likely if the Republicans nominate Rick Santorum.

Mitt Romney spent far more money than he took in during the month of January, erasing his large lead in fundraising.

Frank Bruni writes that people are too focused on drugs when they discuss the deaths of Whitney Houston and Amy Whinehouse.  He says that alcohol does far more societal damage than do drugs but that nobody seems willing to confront the problem -- excise taxes have markedly declined over the past few decades in real dollars, for example.  Therefore, he argues, we need to level a pigovian tax on alcohol to account for these negative externalities.

President Obama wants to cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 28% but eliminate enough loopholes, exceptions, and subsidies to make the tax cut revenue neutral.

The economy looks like it's recovering, but there's always the danger that gas prices, local/state government funding cuts, turmoil in Europe, or some unforeseen shock (e.g. the Nuclear disaster in Japan last year) could derail growth.

Links, 2-20-12

3 of the 4 candidates have declined to participate in March 1st debate CNN is sponsoring in Atlanta, which means that the debate next Wednesday in Arizona could be the last debate of the primary season

Here's an interesting piece on various attempts to quantify the conservative-ness of the Republican candidates.  Santorum is rated more moderately on economic issues and more conservatively on social issues than Romney.  Correspondingly, newspapers mention social issues in conjunction with Santorum's name far more often than they do with Romney's name (and vice-versa with economic issues).  The keywords most frequently used in conjunction with Santorum's name are sex/sexuality, gay rights/gay marriage/same-sex marriage, and birth control/contraception.  Meanwhile, tax/taxes, stimulus, and wealth/wealthy/rich are most frequently used in articles discussing Romney.

Conservative columnist Ross Douthat follows the trend by pointing out that Santorum thinks contraception should be legal but that both he and liberals agree that abortions should be minimized, writing that "both Democrats and Republicans generally agree that the country would be better off with fewer pregnant teenagers, fewer unwanted children, fewer absent fathers, fewer out-of-wedlock births"

Where cultural liberals and social conservatives differ is on the means that will achieve these ends. The liberal vision tends to emphasize access to contraception as the surest path to stable families, wanted children and low abortion rates. The more direct control that women have over when and whether sex makes babies, liberals argue, the less likely they’ll be to get pregnant at the wrong time and with the wrong partner — and the less likely they’ll be to even consider having an abortion. (Slate’s Will Saletan has memorably termed this “the pro-life case for Planned Parenthood.”)
The conservative narrative, by contrast, argues that it’s more important to promote chastity, monogamy and fidelity than to worry about whether there’s a prophylactic in every bedroom drawer or bathroom cabinet. To the extent that contraceptive use has a significant role in the conservative vision (and obviously there’s some Catholic-Protestant disagreement), it’s in the context of already stable, already committed relationships. Monogamy, not chemicals or latex, is the main line of defense against unwanted pregnancies. 

He continues to argue that the problem with the Conservative vision is that "a successful chastity-centric culture seems to depned on a level of social cohesion, religious intensity shared values that exists only in small pockets of the country" and that the problem with the Liberal vision is that "more condoms, fewer abortions" is not playing out in reality -- that more liberal states sometimes have lower teen birth rates only because they have higher rates of abortion among teens.

The Economist asks how much of the declining crime rate is due to the growing prison population

A new study finds that people grow more tolerant as they grow older

Paul Krugman takes Mitt Romney to task for calling himself "severely conservative," writing that "severely" is usually used to describe a disease (a linguistics prof. at Penn says "severely" is most frequently coupled with disabled, depressed, ill, limited, and injured) and asks if Romney and others have "Severe Conservative Syndrome".

today’s dismal G.O.P. field — is there anyone who doesn’t consider it dismal? — is no accident. Economic conservatives played a cynical game, and now they’re facing the blowback, a party that suffers from “severe” conservatism in the worst way. And the malady may take many years to cure.

Congress will pay for the extension in the payroll tax by auctioning off public airwaves currently used for TV broadcasts to wireless carriers

Here's a chart comparing organ donation rates around the world

This is only sort of related to public policy, but interesting nonetheless -- here are two charts breaking down what men and women want in a partner and how that's changed in the past 70 years.

The majority of babies born to women under 30 are now born out of wedlock, though the stats differ greatly by race and SES: "About 92 percent of college-educated women are married when they give birth, compared with 62 percent of women with some post-secondary schooling and 43 percent of women with a high school diploma or less"

And to round out the trio of articles on marriage and child-rearing here's a piece on how to develop self-control in your child in which the authors say recent books extolling the virtues of Chinese and French-style parenting aren't the only way.

Effective approaches for building self-control combine fun with progressively increasing challenges. Rather than force activities onto an unwilling child, take advantage of his or her individual tendencies. When children develop self-control through their own pursuit of happiness, no parental hovering is required. Find something that the child is crazy about but that requires active effort. Whether it’s compiling baseball statistics or making (but not passively watching) YouTube videos, passionate hobbies build mental staying power that can also be used for math homework.

Economic Policy Links, 2-17-12

Here's an infographic the Congressional Budget Office created to display federal spending, revenues, and deficits, and debt.

An analysis by the CBO projects that TARP ("the bailout"), which authorized spending of $700 billion, will end up costing taxpayers $34 billion because the most of the loans are being repaid with interest.

A poll of top economists find that they strongly agree the stimulus plan created more jobs in the short-run and agree less strongly that the benefits of the stimulus will outweigh costs in the long-run.

As I mentioned in class, the US is currently experiencing its longest period of high unemployment since the Great Depression

Paul Krugman argues that few people understand the debt and, hence, overstate it's significance in the near future.

Here's a story 60 Minutes did last fall on Grover Norquist and "the pledge" that most congressional Republicans have signed to never raise taxes

The Economist says it was wrong to oppose the GM bailout and that Mitt Romney should say similarly

Economic Policy Links, 2-15-12

It looks like the improving economy has also improved Obama's approval ratings.

Congress appears to have reached a deal to extend the payroll tax cut for the rest of the year.

Obama is proposing that we tax dividends for the wealthiest Americans.  David Miller, a tax lawyer, says the so-called "Buffet Tax" won't do much, but a "Zuckerberg Tax" on the value of stock in publicly-held companies would.  A pair of economists also disagree with taxing the rich, saying that we should instead tax inequality itself.

The fewest young adults in 60 years have jobs

When anti-poverty programs run out at certain thresholds, it means that the working poor have the highest marginal tax rates in the country

Jared Bernstein writes that it's time to start working on the next minimum wage increase

Here's an excerpt from an upcoming book the inside story of the second stimulus

And here are some well-regarded essays on recent economic trends that didn't fit on the syllabus:

Chrystia Freeland writes "The Rise of the New Global Elite" that a new elite class is being formed

What is more relevant to our times, though, is that the rich of today are also different from the rich of yesterday. Our light-speed, globally connected economy has led to the rise of a new super-elite that consists, to a notable degree, of first- and second-generation wealth. Its members are hardworking, highly educated, jet-setting meritocrats who feel they are the deserving winners of a tough, worldwide economic competition—and many of them, as a result, have an ambivalent attitude toward those of us who didn’t succeed so spectacularly. Perhaps most noteworthy, they are becoming a transglobal community of peers who have more in common with one another than with their countrymen back home. Whether they maintain primary residences in New York or Hong Kong, Moscow or Mumbai, today’s super-rich are increasingly a nation unto themselves.

Yural Levin writes in "Beyond the Welfare State" that our current economic trajectory is unworkable

The fact is that we do not face a choice between the liberal welfare state on one hand and austerity on the other. Those are two sides of the same coin: Austerity and decline are what will come if we do not reform the welfare state. The choice we face is between that combination and a different approach to balancing our society's deepest aspirations. America still has a little time to find such an alternative. Our moment of reckoning is coming, but it is not yet here. We have perhaps a decade in which to avert it and to foster again the preconditions for growth and opportunity without forcing a great disruption in the lives of millions, if we start now. But we do not yet know quite how. The answer will not come from the left, which is far too committed to the old vision to accept its fate and contemplate alternatives. It must therefore emerge from the right. Conservatives must produce not only arguments against the liberal welfare state but also a different vision, a different answer to the question of how we might balance our aspirations. It must be a vision that emphasizes the pursuit of economic growth, republican virtues, and social mobility over economic security, value-neutral welfare, and material equality; that redefines the safety net as a means of making the poor more independent rather than making the middle class less so; and that translates these ideals into institutional forms that suit our modern, dynamic society. That different vision is now beginning to take shape. Slowly, bit by bit, we are starting to see what must replace our welfare state.

More on the Contraception Controversy

The last three blog posts have linked to articles regarding the controversial new rule enacted by the Obama administration that a number of faith-based organizations would have to include coverage of contraception in their employees' health insurance, and the subsequent compromise on the issue (that insurers will have to provide this coverage for free if a faith-based organization objects to paying for it on legal grounds).  Some were assuaged by the compromise, while others were not.  The Economist writes that this appears to be a battle between the fringes, since most moderates aren't particularly upset.

The Catholic Bishops, however, aren't backing down.  Here's what they had to say about the White House's arguments for the plan and here's their central page on the issue.  Meanwhile, one liberal blogger argues that Obama came out too well in the end not to have planned this from the start, writing that

The fun part of this is that Obama just pulled a fast one on Republicans. He drew this out for two weeks, letting Republicans work themselves into a frenzy of anti-contraception rhetoric, all thinly disguised as concern for religious liberty, and then created a compromise that addressed their purported concerns but without actually reducing women's access to contraception, which is what this has always been about. (As Dana Goldstein reported in 2010, before the religious liberty gambit was brought up, the Catholic bishops were just demanding that women be denied access and told to abstain from sex instead.) With the fig leaf of religious liberty removed, Republicans are in a bad situation. They can either drop this and slink away knowing they've been punked, or they can double down. But in order to do so, they'll have to be more blatantly anti-contraception, a politically toxic move in a country where 99% of women have used contraception.

One of the controversies surrounds a figure cited by the White House, columnist Nick Kristof, and others that (various people have repeated it differently) 98% of Catholic women use contraceptives (Kristof writes that "A national survey found that 98 percent of sexually active Catholic women use birth control at some point in their lives.") The figure is less than precise for a number of reasons -- here's one blogger's dissection of, and response to, the 98% figure.  And here's another blog post by a conservative commentator highlighting some limits to the data.

Here's Politifact's evaluation of the 98% figure (they declared it "mostly true"). And here's the (very short) report from which the 98% figure came.

The report unambiguously declares that "Among all women who have had sex, 99% have ever used a contraceptive method other than natural family planning. This figure is virtually the same, 98%, among sexually experienced Catholic women" (p. 4). But it's unclear that the data support that authors' assertions, for a number of reasons -- two of which are particularly important.

1.) The difference between "sexually experienced" and "sexually active". The authors use the former phrase in the quote I pasted above, but the rest of the article and the table they seem to refer to in that quote all describe "sexually active" women -- those "who had sex in the three months prior to the survey" (p. 8).  And, actually, it doesn't even include all sexually active women, since it excludes those who are "pregnant, postpartum, or trying to get pregnant," labeling the women included as "women at risk for unintended pregnancy" (p. 8).  So, it seems like the 98% stat should actually have been written something like "98% of Catholic women between ages 15-44 who've had sex in the past three months and are not pregnant or trying to conceive used a form of birth control other than natural family planning in that same period".

2.) 11% of the women who report using methods other than "natural family planning" used "no method,"  And 4% use "other methods," which mainly includes withdrawal "but also includes less common methods, such as suppositories, sponges and foams" (p. 8).  I'm unclear on precisely what these 15% of women are doing to prevent pregnancy and how, exactly, that aligns with the teaching of the Catholic church, but it seems that the number of sexually active Catholic women who are at risk of unwanted pregnancy and are using non-approved methods of contraception is somewhere between 83% and 98%.  I'm skeptical that any of the 11% using "no method" belong in there, but it sounds like some of the 4% using "other" do.

The problem, of course, is that the most important stat would be the percentage of Catholic women who, at some point during their childbearing years, use contraceptive methods not approved by the Catholic church.  To get that figure, we'd have to survey a large group of women who are at least 45 and ask them what types of contraceptives (if any) they've used (though given that it could change by generation, we could also survey younger women about past use and future intent and calculate total likelihood).  The 83-98% number does not represent that figure, even though that authors seem to imply that it does.  We can, however, guesstimate what the figure might be.

If one uses the most conservative estimates -- assuming those who are not sexually experienced or are pregnant, postpartum, or trying to conceive (the latter group is 14% of married women, the report says) have never used, and will never use, non-sanctioned contraceptives -- then we might guess that only about 50-60% of Catholics ever use these.

On the other hand, more realistic estimates would account for the fact that many of those who are excluded from the sample (the non sexually active and the pregnant/postpartum/attempting to conceive group) and many of those 2-17% who aren't currently using non-sanctioned contraceptives either have used or will use these devices at some point in time (perhaps when they were younger and didn't want children or when they grow older and become sexually active and/or don't want any more children).  Taking those factors into account, a more realistic guesstimate would be that somewhere in the neighborhood of 90% of Catholic women use some method other than natural family planning or "no method" at some point in their lives.  But those are only guesstimates that are loosely informed by the data.

The moral of the story is to never take stats at face value -- not even the descriptions used by trained researchers, and certainly not the parroting of these findings by reporters.

Links, 2-13-12

Romney won the straw poll at the annual Conservative Political Action Committee meetings, edging out Rick Santorum 38-31% and looks to have won the Maine Caucuses, edging Ron Paul 39-36% (though Paul could still end up with more delegates).  Santorum is ahead in the latest national poll and second in two others, leading him to declare that "this is a two-person race right now".  Meanwhile, others are arguing that the Santorum surge may lead to a brokered convention.

The Obama administration announced a compromise on the contraception issue, which drew mixed reactions.  A group of Bishops were not happy, saying that the compromise raised "a grave moral concern," but other catholic groups supported the compromise.  And some secular commentators complained that religious groups are able to do whatever they please in the name of religion -- Nick Kristof cites a stat that 98% of Catholic women use a contraceptive at some point in their lives and concludes

In this case, we should make a good-faith effort to avoid offending Catholic bishops who passionately oppose birth control. I’m glad that Obama sought a compromise. But let’s remember that there are also other interests at stake. If we have to choose between bishops’ sensibilities and women’s health, our national priority must be the female half of our population.

Federal and state officials reached a deal on troubled mortgages with some large, national banks that would award $2,000 to people whose homes were improperly foreclosed upon and allow people currently underwater to refinance at lower rates and make some other mortgage modifications.

A woman in Arizona was declared ineligible to run for City Council after it was decided that her English wasn't good enough.

Teen pregnancies, births, and abortions have dropped by almost half since 1990

Here's the article we discussed in class on priming people to walk faster after a fake research study

Here's an entertaining, but illuminating, short video of Tucker Carlson (a conservative commentator) and Paul Begala (a liberal commentator) playing a word association game at CPAC.  Words mentioned by the moderator include unions, poor people, the IRS, and Kim Kardashian

Links, 2-10-12

After Santorum's victories, it's looking more and more likely that these primaries will drag on for a long time.

Michelle Bachmann says that Santorum's victories were a shot across the bow, saying that these elections were the first where voters focused on social issues.

John McCain says low turnout was to blame for Romney's defeats on Tuesday, pointing out that only about 1% of registered voters voted across the three states.  Prior to Tuesday's defeats, Romney had done the best in states with depressed turnout.

This infographic on Congressional wealth has been floating around the internet, so I decided to see if it was accurate.  According to estimates of Congressional net worth posted on the Center for Responsive Politics' website (Members of Congress only have to report their asset in value ranges, so the midpoint of that range is a guesstimate of their true net worth), the median net worth of a member of Congress is just shy of $1 million.  Yes, that means that almost half of all members of Congress (and almost 2/3 of Senators) were likely millionaires according to their 2010 financial disclosures.  The median Senator was worth about $2.5 million and the median House member about $768K.

Gay marriage is once again in the news after it was legalized in Washington (state) and California's ban was overturned in appeals court.  Here's the legal status of gay marriage in all 50 states.

Here's a discussion between liberal columnist Gail Collins and conservative columnist David Brooks on whether Catholic hospitals and schools should be exempt from the requirement that employers must provide health insurance that includes coverage for contraceptives.

Links, 2-8-12

Rick Santorum went for three for three tonight, sweeping to easy victories in the Minnesota caucuses and the non-binding Missouri "primary" (the actual caucuses are a month away), and edging out Romney in the Colorado caucuses as well.  Newt Gingrich, meanwhile, finished a distant third in Colorado, an even more distant fourth in Minnesota, and failed to qualify for the ballot in Missouri.

The results will likely shock many, but not everybody.  On Monday, Ross Douthat echoed a number of other recent columns and blog posts and asked whether Santorum isn't now better positioned to challenge Romney in the Republican primaries.

Here's the graphic on nudges in lunch line design by researchers at Cornell that we discussed in class

After long resisting the idea of "Super PACs," President Obama has decided to allow staff members to make a stronger effort to raise money for the "Priorities USA" Super PAC that supports his re-election bid.

Some Republicans, including Karl Rove, attacked Chrysler's Super Bowl ad "Halftime in America" as a political ad blatantly supporting Obama's auto bailouts that cost the country billions of dollars.  Charles Blow doesn't disagree that the ad was pro-bailout, but disagrees with Rove's characterization of the bailouts, pointing out that Bush wrote the first bailout check and that Chrysler and GM have repaid almost all of the money.

Perhaps adding fuel to that fire, Joe Biden's one sentence summary of Obama's argument for re-election is "Osama Bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive".

There are now about half as many conservative "blue dog" Democrats in the House as there were a few years ago.  There are fewer moderate Republicans as well.

Here is The Economist's take on Charles Murray's new book on the classes drifting apart in America.

The Economist interviews Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize winner in Economics and one of the fathers of the field of Behavioral Economics and they discuss limits to the rational actor model and common mistakes in human decision making.

The Obama Administration is trying to assuage concerns from religiously-affiliated organizations, particularly the Catholic Church, after a new rule was announced requiring all organizations to offer to cover contraceptives in the health care plans they offer to outside employees

In response to the recent debates over Abortion, Andrew Rosenthal asks if abortions are truly rare in America

Links, 2-6-12

The economy added 243,000 jobs in January (257,000 by private companies and -14,000 government jobs), and the unemployment rate dropped to 8.3% -- the lowest in 3 years -- probably in part because banks are starting to lend money again.  The report came as a bit of a surprise, as economists were predicting about 100K fewer jobs created, sending Republicans scrambling to re-write their critical press releases . . . but they eventually recovered, with Reince Priebus, the RNC Chair, saying that "our economy remains unacceptably weak".  Unlike previous reports, this one might signal real long-term growth ahead.  As The Economist reports:

Is the jobs recovery finally for real?
It certainly feels that way. Before getting into the caveats, let's look at January's solid employment report. Non-farm employment jumped 243,000, or 0.2%, from December, the best in nine months. The unemployment rate fell to 8.3%, a three-year low, from 8.5%.
There were no obvious asterisks marring the positive tone of the report. Payroll gains were broad based. Construction rose 21,000, not surrendering any of its mild-weather gains of December. Manufacturing jumped 50,000, corroborating other signs of strength in the industrial sector. Government employment is becoming less of a drag: it fell only 14,000.
Prior declines in the unemployment rate were often the result of people dropping out of the labour force and thus no longer being counted as unemployed. Not this time. In January the number of employed people jumped 631,000, after adjusting for new population estimates. That’s according to the household survey which is used to calculate the unemployment rate, and often produces different results from the bigger and better-known payroll survey.

No one stat can tell us everything, but previous elections indicate that continued growth of 150K+ jobs per month would be good news for Obama's reelection chances. But Paul Krugman cautions that even this rate of job growth will not return the country to full employment until 2019.

Romney easily won the Nevada Caucuses on Saturday.  Here are the entrance poll results.  Next week will bring caucuses in Maine, Colorado, and Minnesota.  Here's the full primary calendar, including past results.

It may be a little late for this, given that it's looking more and more likely that Romney will run away with the nomination, but here's a chart comparing the candidates' stances on the issues.

Sheldon Adelson, whose $10 million in donations to the "Super PAC" supporting Newt Gingrich may be singularly responsible for Gingrich's ability to continue in the race, has assured Romney's backers in private that he'll support Romney even more generously once it becomes clear that Gingrich no longer has a shot.  Romney, meanwhile, now says that he "misspoke" when declaring his lack of concern for the very poor last week.  And Fareed Zakaria chastises Romney for misinterpreting the phrase "Post-American World," writing that in his book of the same title, he begins by writing that "this is a book not about the decline of America but rather about the rise of everyone else."

President Obama is now arguing that his desire for higher taxes on the wealth is based on his own personal faith, saying at the National Prayer Breakfast that "For me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus's teaching that for unto whom much is given, much shall be required"

A cost-benefit analysis of Alabama's new strict immigration law by a University of Alabama economist finds that law could shrink the state's GDP by as much as 6% and cost the state over $200 million in sales and income taxes, though he notes that many of the benefits are hard to quantify, and says the remaining question for state legislators is "Are the benefits of the new immigration law worth the costs?"

Conservative columnist Ross Douthat writes that the coverage of the Komen foundation/Planned Parenthood kerfuffle last week shows that the media have "blinders" on when it comes to abortion

Conservative complaints about media bias are sometimes overdrawn. But on the abortion issue, the press’s prejudices are often absolute, its biases blatant and its blinders impenetrable. In many newsrooms and television studios across the country, Planned Parenthood is regarded as the equivalent of, well, the Komen foundation: an apolitical, high-minded and humanitarian institution whose work no rational person — and certainly no self-respecting woman — could possibly question or oppose.
But of course millions of Americans — including, yes, millions of American women — do oppose Planned Parenthood. They oppose the 300,000-plus abortions it performs every year (making it the largest abortion provider in the country), and they oppose its tireless opposition to even modest limits on abortion.

Liberal columnist Maureen Dowd writes that the reason Gingrich is still in the race is because of his wife.

You can find her anytime standing statue-still on stage next to Newt as he speaks, gazing at him with such frozen attentiveness that she could give a master class to Nancy Reagan . . .
“She’s a transformational wife,” Alex Castellanos, the Republican strategist, told me. “She’s the wife who makes the candidate think he is destiny’s gift to mankind, born to greater things.” . . .
When Barack is cocky and looks at Michelle, he might see her thinking: “You’re no messiah. Pick up your socks.” But when Newt is cocky and looks at Callista, he sees her thinking: “You are the messiah. We’ll have your socks bronzed.”

Links, 2-3-12

Mitt Romney has come under fire for saying "I'm not concerned about the very poor" . . . here's the video of the entire discussion.  And here is both a cynical reaction and Romney's explanation

The other major controversy of the past 48 hours is the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation's decision to eliminate their grants to Planned Parenthood, which sparked an uproar in the blogosphere and on social media sites and prompted NYC Michael Bloomberg to pledge $250K in matching grant money to Planned Parenthood, saying that "Politics have no place in health care".  Update: The Komen foundation has backed off their decision and said that Planned Parenthood is again eligible to apply for grants.

February has six primaries/caucuses.  In three of those states (Nevada, Arizona, and Michigan), enough polling has been done to predict a winner -- Romney is the prohibitive favorite in all three.  The Ohio primary in March, however, is a toss-up.

Columnist Nick Kristof asks "Where Are the Romney Republicans?" and, citing a new book on the history of the party, argues that today's Republicans are the outliers -- that throughout history, Massachusetts moderates like Mitt Romney have dominated the Republican Party.

The new book, “Rule and Ruin,” by Geoffrey Kabaservice, a former assistant history professor at Yale, notes that, to compete in the primaries, Romney has had to flee from his own political record and that of his father, George Romney, a former governor of Michigan who is a symbol of mainstream moderation.
“Much of the current conservative movement is characterized by this sort of historical amnesia and symbolic parricide, which seeks to undo key aspects of the Republican legacy such as Reagan’s elimination of corporate tax loopholes, Nixon’s environmental and labor safety programs, and a variety of G.O.P. achievements in civil rights, civil liberties, and good government reforms,” Kabaservice writes. “In the long view of history, it is really today’s conservatives who are ‘Republicans in name only.’ ”
After all, the original Massachusetts moderates were legendary figures in Republican history, like Elihu Root and Henry Cabot Lodge. Theodore Roosevelt embraced progressivism as “the highest and wisest form of conservatism.” Few did more to promote racial integration, civil rights and individual freedoms than a Republican, Earl Warren, in his years as chief justice.
Dwight Eisenhower cautioned against excess military spending as “a theft from those who hunger and are not fed.” Richard Nixon proposed health care reform. Ronald Reagan endorsed the same tax rate for capital gains as for earned income. Each of these titans of Republican Party history would today risk mockery for these views.

Links, 2-1-12

As predicted, Romney cruised to victory in the Florida primary, making him once again the prohibitive favorite to win the Republican nomination.  The primary was, according to one measure, the most negative campaign ever recorded -- 92% of TV commercials were negative.  Here are the exit polls.

Here's a chart comparing the 4th quarter fundraising filings for all the Presidential candidates.  As of December 31, Romney had far more money than the rest of the candidates combined.

A study of compensation of federal workers found that, controlling for other factors, those without college degrees are paid significantly more when employed by the federal government while those with graduate degrees are paid significantly less.

A new study finds that segregation in cities has been reduced, though the article notes that  “the average black resident still lives in a neighborhood that is 45 percent black and 36 percent white" and the "average white lives in a neighborhood that is 78 percent white and 7 percent black."

A study that stirred up some press finds physiological differences between conservatives and liberals

Nashville has offered buyouts to hundreds of residents whose homes were badly damaged in the flood, with the goal of reverting some areas back to greenspace to serve as floodplains.  But 30% of residents have refused the buyouts and rebuilt instead.

Conservative columnist David Brooks writes about the widening social differences between the haves and have-nots.  Comparing what he deems the "upper tribe" (20 percent of Americans) to the "lower tribe" (30 percent of Americans," a new book notes that

 Roughly 7 percent of the white kids in the upper tribe are born out of wedlock, compared with roughly 45 percent of the kids in the lower tribe. In the upper tribe, nearly every man aged 30 to 49 is in the labor force. In the lower tribe, men in their prime working ages have been steadily dropping out of the labor force, in good times and bad.
 People in the lower tribe are much less likely to get married, less likely to go to church, less likely to be active in their communities, more likely to watch TV excessively, more likely to be obese.

Brooks argues that this is counter to the narratives offered by both Conservatives and Liberals and a National Service Program would force members of the two tribes to live and "work together to spread out the values, practices and institutions that lead to achievement"

Liberal columnist Paul Krugman writes that the austerity programs (cutting spending) implemented in a number of countries are only hindering economic recovery.  He notes that Britain and Italy have recovered less quickly from the Great Recession than they did from the Great Depression and argues that we should avoid repeating these country's mistakes by implementing the drastic spending cuts many in Congress advocate.  He concludes by writing that

The infuriating thing about this tragedy is that it was completely unnecessary. Half a century ago, any economist — or for that matter any undergraduate who had read Paul Samuelson’s textbook “Economics” — could have told you that austerity in the face of depression was a very bad idea. But policy makers, pundits and, I’m sorry to say, many economists decided, largely for political reasons, to forget what they used to know. And millions of workers are paying the price for their willful amnesia.