Links, 10-17-11

A rundown of some interesting links from the past week

The NY Times argues that voter fraud occurs far less often than does voter disenfranchisement in response to a new study finding that 14 states with Republican-dominated legislatures have recently passed 19 laws stiffening the requirements to vote.  The most popular change is requiring government-issued photo ID, which 5 million citizens do not possess (mostly low-income Americans, who tend to vote Democratic).

A new calculation by former Census Bureau workers finds that median income dropped twice as fast in the two years since the recession officially ended as it did during the year-and-a-half long recession itself.  Since 2007, median income has dropped 9.8% to just under $50,000 per household.

The small towns that will lose their post offices under USPS's new plan to avoid bankruptcy are crying foul.

Amazon's expansion makes for an interesting case study in politics.  When Amazon first announced plans to open a distribution center in TN, they did so on the promise that TN residents would not have to pay sales taxes on Amazon purchases.  This promise upset some businesses and legislators, but Amazon threatened to not open any distribution centers in TN if it was not upheld.  After a year of wrangling, the state and Amazon have negotiated a deal to not charge TN customers tax until 2014.  The Governor and many legislators seem to think this was a fair a deal, but a number of competing businesses remain outraged.

Paul Krugman criticizes the Republican candidates' economic plans and concludes that "the G.O.P. has responded to the crisis not by rethinking its dogma but by adopting an even cruder version of that dogma, becoming a caricature of itself"

In the real world, recent events were a devastating refutation of the free-market orthodoxy that has ruled American politics these past three decades. Above all, the long crusade against financial regulation, the successful effort to unravel the prudential rules established after the Great Depression on the grounds that they were unnecessary, ended up demonstrating — at immense cost to the nation — that those rules were necessary, after all.  

But down the rabbit hole, none of that happened. We didn’t find ourselves in a crisis because of runaway private lenders like Countrywide Financial. We didn’t find ourselves in a crisis because Wall Street pretended that slicing, dicing and rearranging bad loans could somehow create AAA assets — and private rating agencies played along. We didn’t find ourselves in a crisis because “shadow banks” like Lehman Brothers exploited gaps in financial regulation to create bank-type threats to the financial system without being subject to bank-type limits on risk-taking.  

No, in the universe of the Republican Party we found ourselves in a crisis because Representative Barney Frank forced helpless bankers to lend money to the undeserving poor.

And last, but certainly not least: here's a story from right here on campus about a focusing event that opened a policy window and resulted in policy changes.  Click the link to read about how a professor flying through the air resulted in visible changes . . .