An Open Letter To Andre Carson

After thinking about it for a few days, I recently sent this to Indiana's 7th District House Representative, Andre Carson:

I'm writing to you regarding recent news reports that progressive legislators in the House are considering not supporting the Senate Health Care Reform Bill (HCR). As a constituent who voted for you in 2008, I would urge you not to make this mistake.

Yes, the Senate HCR bill is greatly flawed. Yes, it doesn't go nearly far enough in fixing the disaster that is the US health care system. Yes, the reason why we are faced with the current dilemma is the fault of the Senate, not the House. But it is only the House that can save us. It is only the House that can see to it that the last several months were not wasted. It is only the House that can pass a bill, that while flawed, will still materially improve the lives of millions of Americans.

I find myself thinking of another flawed bill, a bill that at the time was rightly criticized for not going far enough. I'm thinking of the 1957 Civil Rights Act. And I'm thinking of how Lyndon Johnson argued that passing the 1957 CRA would break down the wall that had held civil rights legislation back for decades. Johnson said that passing the 1957 CRA would open the door for better legislation later. Johnson was of course proven right.

I urge you and your fellow House progressives to follow Johnson's example and not turn away from this chance to make history.

Now that's how you run a caucus...

This story about Sam Rayburn, the powerful chairman House Interstate Commerce Committee and later Speaker during the FDR administration is too good not to share:

He would never ask a man to do anything against his own interests. "A Congressman's first duty is to get re-elected," he would say, and he would advise young Congressmen: "Always vote your district." If a Congressman said that a vote Rayburn was asking for would hurt him in his district, Rayburn would always accept that excuse. But Rayburn knew the districts. And if the excuse wasn't true, Rayburn's rage would rise. Once, for example, it erupted against a Congressman from a liberal district who took orders from the district's reactionary business interests only because he didn't want to offend them. The Congressman had often used the excuse of public opinion in his district, and, because Rayburn had never challenged him on it, and had stopped asking for his support, was under the misapprehension that that Rayburn believed that excuse. One evening, however, after the Congressman had voted against a bill Rayburn supported, he approached Rayburn, who was standing with a group of friends, and with a winning smile said he sure wished he could have voted with him, but that such a vote would have hurt him in his district. Rayburn did not reply for a long moment, while the deep red flush stated to creep up his head. Then, says one of the men who were standing with Rayburn, in a recollection confirmed by another, Rayburn said:

"Now, I never asked for your vote on this bill. I never said a word to you about this bill. I knew you wouldn't vote for this bill, and I never said a word to you about it. But you come across the room just now and told me you wish you could have voted with me."

"So I'm going to tell you something now. You could have voted with me. I've known that district since before you were born, and that vote wouldn't have hurt you one bit. Not one bit. You didn't vote with me because you didn't have the guts to."

The flush on the huge head was so dark now that it looked almost black. The men standing with Rayburn backed away. "So don't you come crawling across this room telling me you wish you could have voted for the bill. 'Cause it's a damn lie. It's a damn lie. And you're a damn liar. You didn't vote for the bill 'cause you didn't have the guts to. You've got no guts. So let me tell you something. The time is coming when the people are going to find out that all you represent is the Chamber of Commerce, and when they find that out, they're going to beat your ass."

A young state legislator who had considered challenging the Congressman for his seat had dropped the idea because he didn't have enough political clout. Not a week after his confrontation with Rayburn, the Congressman walked into the House Dining Room for lunch and saw the legislator sitting there - at Rayburn's table. When the legislator returned home, he had all the clout he needed, and the Congressman's political career was over. Rayburn drove him not only out of Congress, but out of Washington. He tried to stay on in the capital, looking for a government job or a lobbying job, but no job was open to him. And none would ever be - not as long as Sam Rayburn was alive.

"The Path To Power", Robert A. Caro, pp. 329-330

Analyzing Another Potential Bailout

First our banks failed, then our porn industry calls for a bailout as well. Now our auto industry teeters on the brink of collapse. But another big failure is on the horizon with consequences we cannot possibly imagine.

JDB: Quick! We need a bailout of the chicken wing industry!
http://deadspin.com/5139146/chicken-wing-shortage-threatens-to-destroy-super-bowl

CWK: Also, I demand a chicken wing industry bailout. The cascade effect as this spills over into our chili and potato skins industry is too much for the economy to bear.

JDB: Chicken Wings is an industry TOO BIG TO FAIL! Oh sure, BW3 can weather the initial storm, probably buy up the smaller failing players but if this is allowed to go on our entire sports bar industry could be taken down.

CWK: It's the small local firms like Scotty's Brewpub that will really feel the effects. Think of the small businessman!

CWK: And of course all the firms the sports bars buy supplies from. I don't think people realize how embedded into the economy the bar food industry is.

JDB: America's over-extension of the chicken wings will also hurt other solid areas within the Sports Bar Market. Sure, the potato skins sector is on solid footing but the weakness of chicken wings will drag it all down.
Not to mention the international effects. China, for one, will feel an impact of an American Chicken Wing Crash

CWK: Why this statistic I have here from the totally unbiased and not at all funded by the bar food industry Center for Bar Food Research (Located in Buffalo, NY) says that unless the "Big Three" sportsbar chains (BW3, Hooters, Damons) get a bailout it could cost the US economy eleventy billion dollars and 3 million jobs.

CWK: If you disagree, then clearly you hate bartenders and food service professionals and want their families to starve.

JDB: Of course, calls to let the Sports Bar Market crash and reorganize on its own into smaller regional or local chains less apt to bring down ancillary markets are roundly dismissed by the CBFR.

JDB: The best compromise I believe would be a nationalization of the Sports Bar Industry, with the government eating the bad Chicken Wing Assets while selling the still strong Potato Skin and Mozzarella Stick sectors. If/when chicken wings rebound, America will then be better off and able to profit from them

I don't think America has faced a crisis like this since the New York Bagel Crash of 1934.

Martin Luther King

Matt Yglesias's post reminds me that today is a great day to post this clip:

So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, Goodbye

Bush countdown created by James Miller

TARP Round 2

Should congress release the second half of the TARP funds? I'm torn.

On the one hand, it's no secret that the TARP has been horribly mismanaged. You've got banks taking money that admit they don't need it. You've got banks using the money to pick up other banks cheaply. Perhaps my personal favorite is the insurance company that bought a bank just so they could qualify for a bailout. My understanding is that all this money is supposed to be used to ease the "credit crunch"; to open up the credit markets allowing businesses and consumers to finance capital needs again. Of course, that's not happening either.

On the other hand, it's not like the bailout has done nothing. The stock market has stopped its free-fall and the much-feared utter catastrophe has been avoided. Jim Manzi more thoroughly lays out what the bailout has done for us, but he also ends with a warning about round 2:

Congress has the right to approve or deny any request that Treasury might make for the second tranche of the additional $350 billion. This should be treated as a separate request. We have the luxury of time, as compared to a few months ago, to vet this request with far greater rigor, and in light of what we have learned. Specifically, before authorizing this money, Congress should perform its oversight function, and demand to know: (1) what underlying risks, not to shareholders or employees, but of systemic financial collapse now exist or are latent that would justify this much money, and (2) how we will avoid the zombie bank problem, including potential application of lending requirements in return for capital, as has been done in the UK.

I supported the original bank bailout, and continue to believe that it was a painful, but correct, decision. However, supporting the next tranche will require a lot of convincing.

It seems to me that we're stuck in a battle between those oft-opposing two methods of decision-making, Cost-Benefit Analysis and the Precautionary Principle.

PP seems to speak clearly in favor the the second round of bailout money. Yes, no doubt much of the money will be used in inefficient and morally troubling ways. But the danger of a global economic collapse far too serious to worry about that. Staving off economic disaster is Job One, and some rich people game the system along the way, that's the price you pay.

CBA is more difficult. Are we getting a good bang-for-the-buck? What is the real risk of collapse, and are we spending too much to mitigate it because the odds are small? What are the real costs of the negative aspects of the bailout and do they outweigh the gains under some time horizons? I'm not going to dare claim I can figure that out; it will require the brains of actual economists and finance experts.

I wish I had some great conclusion to be drawn from all this, but I still don't. I don't know enough about the risks involved to even attempt to resolve this, but I thought I could lay out a little of what's gone through my head this week thinking about it. I'd love to hear others' thoughts in the comments or in followup posts.

Answering the call... Sorta.

I've been a slacker on this, but after thinking about it a bit I can certainly come up with five great albums from this year. I'm sort of in the middle of getting ready to head up to my parents' house for Christmas, so this will be short on insightful commentary, but here we go. In no particular order:

1. At Mount Zoomer by Wolf Parade: I actually only recently picked this up. I loved their first album and had been anticipating this one for awhile. Not sure if I like it as much as the first since I've only listened to it a couple times, but I'd say it's an excellent follow-up.
2. Dear Science by TV On The Radio: Here's a band that just keeps getting better. I love everything they've done and this is no exception.
3. Modern Guilt by Beck: Barry would say I'm being "too obvious" here but I don't think I'm trying to sneak up on people. This is a great album, my favorite from Beck in awhile. I went through a period this year where I listened to it constantly, which makes it a great addition to the list.
   
4. The Stand Ins by Okkervil River: Ok, here's a band I just discovered this year even though they've been around for quite a while. This album has been in heavy rotation on my iPod ever since. It made me go out and pick up their album from last year, which I'm undecided on after one listen. But this one is wonderful.
5. The Hawk Is Howling by Mogwai: Here's the one I'm betting no one else here is going to have. Mogwai's brand of "post-rock" is not for everyone, but if you this more arthouse stuff, you'll love this album.

There we go. If I had time to write up some better commentary I would, but I'm leaving in two hours and I still have to pack. Wish me luck. I'm driving through Kokomo and my parents live near Michigan, so in the current economy bands of "Road Warrior" style post-(econo)pocalyptic gangs searching for goods to pillage just might be a legitimate concern....

Building the Middle Class

Abdul is angry at unions:

A union spokeswoman says the starting wage for a housekeeper at the Hyatt Regency in Indianapolis is $7.25 an hour, but that same wage in Chicago is $14.25 an hour.

Now let’s apply some common sense to this situation.

Using their math the Indianapolis housekeeper makes about $15,000 annually. Using a standard salary calculator, the Indy housekeeper should make $19,000 to be comparable with the Chicago housekeepers salary. But that’s not what’s happening, using the Union’s own math, the Chicago housekeeper makes about $27,000 a year. So not only is the Chicago housekeeper overpaid, the Unions want the Indy housekeeper to be overpaid too.

Really? I'm not sure what he used for his numbers, so I decided to run my own:

$7.25 x 40 hours/week x 52 weeks/year = $15,080/year
$14.25 x 40 hours/week x 52 weeks/year = $29,640/year

Using this site:
$15,080 in Indy is $17,852.65 in Chicago.
$29,640 in Chicago is $25,036.69 in Indy.

But who's underpaid or overpaid here is a value judgment. If I assume the Chicago rate as my baseline instead of the Indy rate as Abdul did, the Indy housekeeper is drastically underpaid to the tune of $10k/year.

Once upon a time, manufacturing jobs were the ticket to the middle class in America for those without college degrees. But we went through an efficiency revolution in manufacturing similar to the one we went through even longer ago in agriculture. We can now produce even more output with much fewer workers, thus those days are gone. Now, unionized service sector jobs that can't be outsourced are our best chance at creating a new path to the middle class for those without college degrees. I imagine Abdul doesn't like that solution because yes, it means he'll have to pay more for a hotel room. But it also means a whole new group of workers will be able to afford hotel rooms that couldn't before. Conservatives and libertarians think this will destroy growth and kill businesses. But it worked for Henry Ford. It worked during the 50s and 60s when we created the largest middle class in history and experienced our largest period of peacetime growth. I see little reason it can't work again.

Thanks to fellow TCMSO blogger crs for pointing this story out.

I never wanted to be a sysadmin anyway. I wanted to be... a lumberjack!

Ok, time for me to stop slacking and get up my inaugural post here at The Cookieville Minimum-Security Orphanarium (As much as I like the name, I'm quite sure I will never not acronym-ify that ever again).

I've been on-and-off blogging since before it was called blogging actually, my first site going up back in 1999. In my day we didn't have this fancy Blogger or Wordpress, we manually updated static HTML pages! And we liked it! (not really.) Alas, these horribly amaturish scribblings are lost to the void, victim of a failed hard drive and a nonexistant backup strategy (the old adage is true: There are two types of people: Those who've experienced a severe loss of data, and those who will) . That happened in roughly 2003, after I'd moved on to a local Typepad install. After that I had nothing for awhile, then started running Wordpress, briefly blogger, then back to Wordpress again, beginning in late 2005. These archives live on at my personal site.

Alas, I'm clearly not very disciplined at this hear blogging thing, hence the on-again-off-again format changing trip I've taken with the medium. I've always sort of figured I'd be better with a group blog. Now one person doesn't have to carry all the weight, so less chance of burnout. Also, with multiple posters the site can stay fresh while people, now freed from the tyranny of needing to stay current, have the time to put together something worthwhile. Looks like here's the place where I get to see how this works in practice.

I suppose since at the moment my only readership are those who know me, there's not much of a need for a bio. In case there actually is someone interested in a short one, you can see it at the aformentioned personal site. I suppose one might say I'm an IT guy who tempermentally probably should have been some sort of a liberal arts major, who sort of fell into this accidentally for various reasons I won't go into here, and wound up being lucky enough to have a bit of a knack for it. Don't get me wrong, I like the work, and I'm a tech nerd at heart, but if I had to live only in that world I'd go crazy. So hopefully this will serve as an outlet for the other stuff I think about, though tech issues will surely be a topic too.

I think that about sums it up. Thanks to jdb for putting this altogether, recruiting the posters, and gracing me with admin-level access. Onward.