DeLong on Hillary

Given recent speculation regarding Hillary Clinton as possible VP candidate, the opinions of those who have worked with or around her are of particular interest. On June 8, 2003, when I was so new to the business of blogging I posted stuff (for my classes, primarily) using Microsoft Frontpage, I linked to this comment from Brad DeLong's blog: My two cents' worth--and I think it is the two cents' worth of everybody who worked for the Clinton Administration health care reform effort of 1993-1994--is that Hillary Rodham Clinton needs to be kept very far away from the White House for the rest of her life. She had neither the grasp of policy substance, the managerial skills, nor the political smarts to do the job she was then given. And she wasn't smart enough to realize that she was in over her head and had to get out of the Health Care Czar role quickly. So when senior members of the economic team said that key senators like Daniel Patrick Moynihan would have this-and-that objection, she told them they were disloyal. When junior members of the economic team told her that the Congressional Budget Office would say such-and-such, she told them (wrongly) that her conversations with CBO head Robert Reischauer had already fixed that. When long-time senior hill staffers told her that she was making a dreadful mistake by fighting with rather than reaching out to John Breaux and Jim Cooper, she told them that they did not understand the wave of popular political support the bill would generate. And when substantive objections were raised to the plan by analysts calculating the moral hazard and adverse selection pressures it would put on the nation's health-care system...[sic] Hillary Rodham Clinton has already flopped as a senior administrative official in the executive branch--the equivalent of an Undersecretary. Perhaps she will make a good senator. But there is no reason to think that she would be anything but an abysmal president. UPDATE: Ben White comments: ...Matt Drudge's post strikes me as bogus...Kerry considers the nomination "his turn". He will not stand for someone else to upstage him at every turn. Also, Hillary does not bolster Kerry where he is weak...[Rather, she] emphasizes the problems with the Kerry platform. They are unified [only] in their hatred of the military (there go the votes of the military and their families and friends) [and in their favoring of] increased taxes (ask Mondale how that worked out)... It is true that in the past 50 years there have been times when two rivals have come together on the same ticket: JFK/LBJ and Reagan/Bush. But a Kerry/Clinton ticket would be so disharmonious from a personal and political perspective it is hard to see it happening. EconoPundit's two cents: remember I voted for her because the Clintons took up the Tsongas health-care challenge -- and she lost my vote (and all my once-strong allegiance to the Democratic Party) when she disavowed responsibility for all those pesky undercapitalized small businesses soon to be plowed under by her gleaming new health plan.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 12:29 PM

New Slogan? The "Success Tax"

A reliable source sends us the following abstract of this paper -- William M. Gentry and R. Glenn Hubbard, Success Taxes, Entrepreneurial Entry, and Innovation We found robust results that progressive marginal tax rates discourage entry into self-employment and business ownership. Those effects are large: The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993, which raised the top marginal individual income tax rate, was estimated to have reduced the probability of entry into self employment for upper middle income households by as much as 20 percent. Moreover, those estimated effects were robust to controlling for differences in family structure, spousal income, and measures of transitory income. The paper is available from NBER, which wants $5 for a download. To me this seems kinda steep for what is, after all, a discussion paper -- you write them to generate response and discussion, don't you? -- so I poked around the web and found this, which is either someone's free posting of the paper or an April 2004 (free) draft of same. The paper is as credible as these things get, but in this era of supercomputer global warming models high R-squares and so on are no longer guaranteed persuaders of anything. The paper's true historical contribution may be its use of the term "success tax," which, like the expression "death tax," seems to communicate the essence of the argument in two widely understood words. UPDATE: An alert reader points out Mrs. Clinton's recent words: Many of you are well enough off that...the tax cuts may have helped you...We're saying that for America to get back on track, we're probably going to cut that short and not give it to you. We're going to take things away from you on behalf of the common good. should be noted in this context.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:54 AM

Iraq War's purpose was re-election?

EconPundit has argued the red/blue state differential regarding personal connection with the armed services may decide the election. (In the blue states, it is highly unlikely any one individual either has a relative in the armed forces, knows someone in the armed forces, or knows someone with a relative in the armed forces. In the red states the situation is exactly reversed.) When you think about it, the charge the Iraq war was somehow cooked up in Texas for political purposes is simply one way of recognizing this fact. Jed Babbin states eloquently one thing the upcoming election will test: By teaching the world that the United States would spend the lives of its soldiers pursuing the UN's interests -- not its own -- Clinton told our soldiers that their lives were of less value to him than the empty praise he received from Kofi Annan and the UN. He thus broke the bond that American warriors hold most sacred: a commander in chief's commitment to hold his soldiers' lives in trust. How the troops feel about their current commander in chief will be well known to their families, and their families' friends, by November.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:37 AM

Passion Revisited

Remember how The Passion of The Christ became a box office hit, how it just swept the nation, how it set records, and how the whole thing was debunked by those pointing out the whole thing was organized by church groups with their own agenda. It was just a propaganda event, right? Remember? Well now, it turns out...

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:00 AM

International class struggle...

The give and take between judiciary and military, it turns out, may be global. Good thing I'm not ideological about these things. UPDATE: Reader Timothy, who is an arch-conservative college kid, sends the following comment: I might be an arch-conservative college kid, but it seems to me that if Git-Mo prisoners aren't US Citizens, the Constitution simply doesn't apply to their case. That might be heartless, and it might be bad PR, and it certainly isn't carte blanche to abuse them, but I think it is something to consider. EconPundit's two cents: Well, there's something heroic about the idea of universal values, no? UPDATE II: More here.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:31 AM

Tuesday, June 29, 2004

Failing a Test?

Abd Al-Rahman Al-Rashed on Darfur, genocide, and the new internationalism.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:46 AM

yup...

According to The Daily Times: Internet muckraker Matt Drudge is quoting one senior Kerry source as saying, "I would argue, adamantly, the records should remain sealed -- and out of the hands of John's political enemies." I guess you could say Drudge did indeed rake up some muck there.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:14 AM

Rising interest rates as the gong of doom...

This one isn't too bad, but you should expect many more, mostly alarmist, gloomy, and troubled. There's nothing to worry about so long as the dollar's movements -- up or down -- remain orderly. The Marxist in me keeps brooding about housing bubble possibilities, but, heck, that's just Marx babbling (I hope). You should remember most material pertaining to the economy and appearing in newspapers is written by journalists, not economists. The best of this writing (e.g. Robert Samuelson) benefits from all journalism's training offers. However most -- perhaps 95% -- merely retells the story of troubled, unstable equilibrium, the tale that "we may feel secure this week, but actually the economy is teetering on the brink of economic disaster." Disaster, of course, sells papers. And the US intellectual elite long ago issued a decree denouncing the tale of the invisible hand as boring, false, and ethically incorrect. UPDATE: Enough already with the philosophy... Here's the JEC's new report on interest rates. So what did you think -- they would maybe go down to zero and stay there forever?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:09 AM

Cuts both ways...

If the quiet, early transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis two days ahead of schedule "proves" the terrorists are winning, doesn't this story prove they are losing?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:51 AM

Not until it starts to stink does the inevitable happen...

Today's NYT: Lawyers for the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents the 14 Guantanamo prisoners in the Supreme Court case and scores of others detained there, said they would soon try to meet with their clients and file further petitions, perhaps in the form of a class action. The center of legal activity in the case will almost certainly continue to be the Federal District Court in Washington, where the original petitions were filed. This flood of litigation, perhaps accompanied by a series of evidentiary hearings attended by the individual detainees, alarmed some of the justices. "Each detainee undoubtedly has complaints - real or contrived," Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in his dissent in the Guantanamo case, joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justice Clarence Thomas. "The court's unheralded expansion of federal-court jurisdiction is not even mitigated by a comforting assurance that the legion of ensuing claims will be easily resolved on the merits."

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:37 AM

Antler Dowdifies Reynolds!

Here's Instapundit's take on a subject I've discussed many times with EconoPundit's active email correspondents -- the question of installing the weblog "comments" feature: "...yeah, I really want to give you a platform, buddy..." (Italics added.) Unfair! That's not the whole quote! This was taken out of context! So out of respect to Instapundit we'll relax the normal rules of Dowdification and reproduce a bit more of the paragraph: I GOT AN EMAIL THE OTHER DAY slamming me for not having comments on my site. I get those occasionally, and they're usually nasty enough that they're self-refuting -- yeah, I really want to give you a platform, buddy. . . . But...the worst part isn't the flaming by people who don't agree with you, it's the nasty comments by people who generally agree with you... The other problem [is that] bloggers can be captured by their commenters. It's immediate feedback, and it's interesting (it's about you!) and I can imagine it could become addictive. My impression is that often, instead of serving as a corrective to errors, comment sections tend to lure bloggers farther in the direction they already lean... And since anybody can start a blog, I don't feel that the absence of a comment section on InstaPundit is doing much to choke off free speech. Read the whole thing. I have to say virtually all my EconoPundit-related email is constructive, friendly, intelligent, worthy of posting, and (indeed) some of it is posted by me from time to time. But following Glenn, I think we can say the entire blogosphere is one big "Comments Section" for all the weblogs without comments enabled.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:09 AM

Monday, June 28, 2004

A puzzle...

Bill Clinton hee-haws stuff like this: [T]he new Republicans...never saw a tax cut they didn't like. They basically don't care what happens to all these poor people because they think the only thing that really matters is to concentrate as much power and wealth in the hands of the good guys as possible, people who share their values... And I wonder why the Republicans can't seem to produce anyone equally articulate to speak for people like this man and his wife -- not to mention the people they employ. Via Newmark's Door.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:03 PM

What did they expect?

Here is James Taranto's view on the "Coalition of the Wild-Eyed" ad (You may have to scroll down): Kerry had the opportunity for a Sister Souljah-like moment here. He could have said: "I categorically reject any comparison of the president to Hitler, and MoveOn was wrong to disseminate these ads. But two wrongs don't make a right. I call on President Bush to withdraw his ad." Instead, he tacitly approved of his backers' Hitler analogies, thereby validating the substance of the Bush ad, if not its choice of images. For a guy who served in Vietnam (didja hear?), John Kerry sure lacks courage. I want to add one more consideration to this discussion. Aside from "evil" and killing Jews, what is Hitler most remembered for? The answer, simply, is loud, angry, gravel-voiced grating speeches. Play the ad video again, and ask yourself how anyone might have expected otherwise?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 4:05 PM

Beginning of the end...

My first reaction may be over the top, but I feel by this decision the U.S. judiciary has begun claiming for itself the most basic powers of the executive branch. UPDATE: Not everyone agrees. (If "comments" were enabled you'd find the following from Brock Cusick there): Most simply put, the job of the Executive is to 'do stuff', while the job of the Judiciary is to 'resolve disputes.' The Executive and the prisoners at Gunatanamo and elsewhere have a dispute (obviously), and therefore it is the job of the Judiciary to resolve it. I wouldn't worry. The Judiciary has a long history of bending over backwards to allow the Executive to do his job - especially in military and national security affairs. I wouldn't be surprised if 599 of the 600 are sent right back to Git-mo. Be that as it may, our country also has a long tradition of going to great lengths to see justice done. We're willing to bear the cost of these trials (probably as a class, or expedited in some other way) to make sure that innocents are not locked up by accident. If we did not have trials such as this in the past, I believe it was merely a cost/ benefit tradeoff that worked against them. There's nothing anti-American about this decision. It squares firmly with the US Constitution, and our own sense of doing things the right way. Even if the other guy doesn't deserve it, we owe it to ourselves to hold ourselves to the higher standard.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:22 AM

Calling the blogosphere

Might as well help spread the rumor. Glenn Reynolds got an email from a reader: My Arabic isn't too good, but the local radio in Iraq is stating that Zarqawi has been captured by Iraqi intelligence. All our laborers are chattering about it and seem extremely pleased (most are Kurdish). The post indicates the U.S. military is denying the story, but it is unclear whether this is Glenn's addition or part of the original email. We're going to keep watching the Bush reelection contract all day to see how good news -- if anything more is confirmed -- influences the price.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:33 AM

The earth moved...

But we didn't feel it. No damage to report.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:26 AM

Sunday, June 27, 2004

Letter to Jonah Goldberg

From The Corner: Last week Slate ran an "explainer" detailing the compelling legal reasons for the the unsealing of Jack Ryan's divorce file. As I recall, John Kerry's divorce from his first wife was also not "friendly" and the record of these proceedings is still under court seal. Question: When will the Chicago Tribune be petitioning the Massachusetts court for release of the Kerry file? Here's the referenced Slate article. UPDATE: This is now the lead story at Drudge, who quotes Judge Schnider: [In] a public court system...protection from embarrassment cannot be a basis for keeping from the public what's put in public courts...The openness of court files must be maintained, so that the public ... can be assured that there is no favoritism shown to the rich and powerful.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:24 PM

WMD?

I posted one link possibly connected with this yesterday, but this is important enough to move up in case more develops. One source is reporting a mustard gas attack in Iraq.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:56 AM

Market forces and rent seeking behavior...

File this under the subheading "No Monopoly is Forever." (If you're puzzled about the "rent seeking" aspect, just ask yourself why lay-filing of legal papers has become such a profitable little growth industry?)

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:16 AM

Someone has to say it...

Glenn Reynolds has a nice set of links showing the new hostility between the Nader camp and Michael Moore. Moore used to be Nader's pal -- now he isn't. As Nader puts it: A few weeks ago, Michael, I sent you a message...It simply asked you to come back to your progressive constituency and take on the two-party monopoly of our rigged election system -- to challenge the pro-warlike, corporate party with two heads, wearing different makeup when it comes to playing toady for Big Business. These are the giant multinationals who have no allegiance to our country or to communities like Flint except to control, deplete or abandon them. It is not that your views have changed, with an exception or two. It is that your circles have changed. Too much Clinton, not enough Camejo. There's an obvious point that needs to be made here. Nader is wrong. Michael Moore has not sold out. Rather, the Democratic Party has thoughtlessly blundered leftward to a degree not yet recognized nor understood. Demonization of the military, of business, and especially of those "giant multinationals who have no allegiance to our country" is now mainstream Democratic Party, not far-left-wing. Consider this non-Moore documentary, which last year languished unreleased on the shelf but is now preparing for a tour of indie and art houses throughout the country. The Democratic Party claims "the middle," but words don't make reality. It is rather a weak alliance implicitly based on the mutual victimhood of its participating groups, but explicitly based on no core set of beliefs other than sneering disdain for Red America and its institutions. And, by default, Chomsky and Negri have come to occupy the ideological core of the Democratic Party.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:24 AM

Saturday, June 26, 2004

Precautions...

Hope this is just a rumor: DEBKAfile's military sources report: US troops in Iraq ordered to start carrying gas masks this week and stay within reach of centers distributing anti-contamination suits. This week's NATO summit and sovereignty transfer in Iraq believed high danger points. UPDATE: This, via Petrified Truth, may start explaining what's happening.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:05 PM

Just theory, but...

Here's the "Coalition of the Wild-Eyed" Bush '04 video. It's really quite good. Yesterday the Bush reelection contract jumped upward dramatically mid-day. I'd credit the "...Wild-Eyed" video, or perhaps this, or perhaps this, or maybe some combination of same. A reasonable working hypothesis is Bush/Cheney '04 are perceived as holding most of their strength in reserve, which means every time they "let go" even in trivial ways (like swearing at Pat Leahy) the betting public sees their chances increasing significantly. Remember the basics of market theory -- all available information (including the reality of what strong-preference big players like George Soros are doing) is "crystallized" in that single magic datum: the current prevailing price.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:56 AM

Don't read if you are squeamish...

Out on my factory floor yesterday at about 10 am, violating all my posted safety rules I used a machine inappropriately and crushed my left ring finger. The machine's safety circuits worked properly, so all I got was a split fingernail -- painful but ultimately threatening to no more than touch typing and excess blogging. At the emergency room they reassembled my fingernail with what looked like some antiseptic-medical version of duct tape. Duct tape! What a wonderful invention. It certainly has changed the world.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:55 AM

Friday, June 25, 2004

The most sincere form of flattery...

From Command Post: In a one-minute speech on the House floor Wednesday, Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Penn.) noted that the Vietnamese government has weighed in on the Iraqi prison scandal. "But the official communist Vietnamese news agency isn't citing the Geneva Convention or the U.N.," Pitts said. "It's citing testimony given by John Kerry in 1971." EconoPundit's theorem #14a, you may recall, is rest-of-world criticism of the US is never anything more than recycled sound bytes originating with the US left.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:43 AM

Ryan and Clinton

Jonah Goldberg: ...Bill Clinton swore in a "60 Minutes" interview that his problems with women were behind him and implying that were it to happen again it would be a major issue (why else insist that they were behind him?). Hillary Clinton said that if the Lewinsky thing were true it would be a major issue, as did much of the press and Congress at first. Bill Clinton ran for office promising "two for the price of one," and made his wife and marriage central components of his presidency -- including giving his signature policy proposal to her. Bill Clinton was in office and hit on an intern which -- when feminists cared about disproportionate power relationships and all that -- was a pretty big deal. Clinton tried to brand Lewinsky as a stalker. Clinton created new executive privileges. He was the chief enforcer of America's federal sexual harassment laws. Meanwhile Ryan was a pig with his wife. Wasn't in office. Isn't married to his wife. Isn't planning on making her an equal partner. Didn't lie under oath. And, as far as I understand it, didn't even lie at all -- he kept secret court records secret. Now, as I said yesterday I think Ryan should go. But if the hypocrisy card is going to be played, let's play it both ways. Why aren't Democrats defending Ryan if they think the comparison is even remotely apt?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:33 AM

Thursday, June 24, 2004

Guess this means...

This just came in the email: The Progress for America Voter Fund (PFA-VF), the leading conservative 527 political organization, today launched a million dollar television advertising campaign in New Mexico and Nevada. PFA-VF's new 30-second television commercial...is entitled "What If..." As an opinion leader, we thought you might like to preview a copy of our new ad. Please feel free to post it on your website as a service to your readers. You and your readers can find out more about PFA-VF on our website at www.pfavoterfund.org. Heck, who would have thought. Me...an opinion leader.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 2:08 PM

What they're saying at home...

Why do they hate us? Maybe because of this: As part of MEMRI's TV Monitoring Project, Saudi government controlled television channels including TV1, TV2 and satellite channels such as Iqraa TV, are continually monitored.(1) These channels include shows with leading Saudi religious figures, professors, members of the royal family, government leaders and intellectuals. Constant themes within Saudi television shows include: calls for the annihilation of Christians and Jews, rampant anti-Americanism and antisemitism, support for Jihad, incitement against U.S. troops in Iraq, and the coming Islamic conquest of the U.S. Segments from these TV shows can be found at www.memriTV.org... Just an example: The Coming Islamic Takeover of the U.S. Saudis often discuss the issue of the U.S. becoming a Muslim state in the future. On a March 17 broadcast on Iqraa TV, Saudi preacher Sheik Said Al-Qahtani discussed this issue, as well as the cases in which Muslims are permitted to declare a defensive Jihad: "... We did not occupy the U.S., with 8 million Muslims, using bombings. Had we been patient, and let time take its course, instead of the 8 million, there could have been 80 million [Muslims] and 50 years later perhaps all the US would have become Muslim... What should a Muslim do if he is attacked in his country, on his land? In this case, there is no choice besides defense, self-sacrifice, and what religious scholars call - Defensive Jihad... We attacked their country, and this caused them to wake the dormant enmity in their hearts... Especially since there is global Zionism, the enemy of Islam, and Judaism, and fundamentalist Crusaders... They interpret this whole incident as only the beginning and thus there is no choice but a preemptive strike."

Link posted by Steve Antler : 2:00 PM

At a complete loss...

Okay, I have commented out the banner ad as well as the Intrade Box (both separately and together). I have reduced the size of all graphics I think may slow things down. I have cut the history down to fifteen days, then down to the absolutely minimal number of five posts displayed. Slow loading in all cases. I am at a stopping point; I've totally exhausted my knowledge of these things. Time to change hosting service? Time to move EconoPundit aaarrrggghhhhhh!!!!!

Link posted by Steve Antler : 12:04 PM

Remember how simple it all sounded?

We've got to get money out of politics! That's right, we've just got to get money out of politics. You know...money...we've got to get it out of politics... Right?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 11:16 AM

Sa-ha-llllowwww...

Ever since last night whenever I log onto EconoPundit to savor my own wonderful writing I experience extremely slow loading. It feels like forever, staring at the little specimen banner ad at the top waiting for something else to happen. Is this just me or is everyone having trouble? My email is now fixed. Please let me know.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:00 AM

Communication lines are down...

As anyone who's tried to get thru has noticed, my email server crashed in flames last night at roughly 7:30. Hopefully powers that be will fix it some time today.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:16 AM

Wednesday, June 23, 2004

Conflict of interest?

DAVID A. LIEB, Associated Press: A Democratic group crucial to John Kerry's presidential campaign has paid felons - some convicted of sex offenses, assault and burglary - to conduct door-to-door voter registration drives in at least three election swing states. America Coming Together, contending that convicted criminals deserve a second chance in society, employs felons as voter canvassers in major metropolitan areas in Missouri, Florida, Ohio and perhaps in other states among the 17 it is targeting in its drive. Some lived in halfway houses, and at least four returned to prison. ACT canvassers ask residents which issues are important to them and, if they are not registered, sign them up as voters. They gather telephone numbers and other personal information, such as driver's license numbers or partial Social Security numbers, depending on what a state requires for voter registration. Felons on probation or parole are ineligible to vote in many states. Doug Lewis, executive director of the Election Center, which represents election officials, said he is unaware of any laws against felons registering others to vote.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:55 PM

Remember when we called it a "bibliography?"

Lots of great links and a good summary of media bias from Bruce Bartlett.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:11 AM

When is a bubble? When is not a bubble?

Marginal Revolution considers whether we're in a housing bubble. Bubbles are real but hard to define? Try this one: you know you're bubbling outward when, in addition to everything else and outweighed by everything else prices are rising because they are rising. Substitute "inward" and "falling" and you have the rest of the definition. UPDATE: More at QandO, with links and price info.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:03 AM

Teaching tonight...

Follow the red arrow to Roosevelt University's historic Auditorium Building.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:57 AM

When words have meaning, and when they do not...

Vaclav Havel writes on North Korea in the Washington Post. Contrast his use of the word "gulag" with that of Sidney Blumenthal.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:50 AM

Not grandpa's monetarism anymore...

Larry Kudlow offers what might have been called "An Intelligent Person's Short Guide to Modern Inflation."

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:32 AM

Tuesday, June 22, 2004

From the retail trenches...

Find this over at Instapundit -- after you scroll down (you may have to click one of those nifty "read more" icons): [P]lease solicit input from others to broaden your enquiries as I have often believed, and I may be biased but I've had my beliefs confirmed by others in the know, that advertising people are the most overpaid and overrated professional workforce I have encountered...I firmly believe...the entire advertising industry is a huge scam...perpetrated upon the ad buyers and the public... This was the reason for the resistance to Internet advertising -- not because of the ineffectiveness of the medium (reach, media effectiveness, quality of impressions, etc.) or the lack of interest from buyers, it was because it was so accountable relative to other media. Think about it: since when did they attach as much demands from radio listening or tv viewership (Nielsons, GRPs, basic demos) as they did to Internet advertising measurement (1:1 consumption not survey sampling, click through rates, cost per action, refined demo's)? ... Finally, although I have often questioned the circulation figures at daily newspapers, radio and television (yes, there are cooked), the circulation scandal is much more prominent and outrageous for magazines... If you wish to carry this forward and invite your readership to add to this thread, I think it would be greatly beneficial to your readership, business people, as well as consumers as a whole. Either way, I am confident that there are plenty of other "scandals" to be discovered in this highly dubious industry. Okay, EconoPundit is more than willing to carry this forward with two lesser-known facts about retail display advertising in major urban newspapers retailers. First, published rates are about as complicated as the US tax code. Aside from astronomical one-insertion rates for nonlocal business there are multitudes of repeat rates, contract rates, discount builder rates, etc, etc, etc, and it all boils down to this: most of the time a regular advertiser's ongoing rates are negotiated between himself and his ad representative. Second, for anything less than full page ads in the first five pages, position of one's ad in the newspaper has more to do with its effectiveness than anything else. A right page placement above the fold -- preferably top of page -- generates more than twice as many responses as left page, below fold, bottom. A well-positioned ad is a different product than a poorly-positioned one. Genuine transparency would price the product according to position, allowing the advertiser to pay for what he is getting. With a few notable exceptions in some cities, newspapers doggedly refuse to price advertising on this basis. My business has advertised in the Sun Times and the Chicago Tribune since before I was born. Some of my earliest memories are of my Dad's musing over whether this full page ad was worth it, whether a quarter page would have done the trick just as well, whether this layout or copy was better than than that, and so on. Each year advertising rates have gone up as the demonstrable effectiveness of display advertising has gone down. I look forward eagerly to the day we can kiss newspaper display advertising goodby permanently, and devote our full advertising budget to the internet.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 1:53 PM

Again

Al-Jazeera is conveying a report that Kim Sun-il has been beheaded by his captors.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 11:56 AM

It was a dark and stormy night. I mean, last night it was a dark and stormy night but now, actually,...

"Early on the morning of August 19, 1946, I was born under a clear sky after a violent summer storm to a widowed mother in the Julia Chester Hospital in Hope, a town of about six thousand in southwest Arkansas, thirty-three miles east of the Texas border at Texarkana." I know just how he felt. In one draft it was sunny, clear, full of calm repose suggesting future greatness. In next draft it was pathetic fallacy, a stormy controversial life starting as nature rages outside. He just couldn't decide. So...

Link posted by Steve Antler : 11:33 AM

Capital account wags the current account?

If there were one economy in the world that over-all tended to grow faster, whose rule of law and general transparency created a reliable and stable currency, and whose borders therefore represented a most-secure haven for international profits and savings, this economy might experience a chronic surplus on its foreign trade capital account. Its residents, if prone to non-economic folktales in the form of traditional Protestant household morality, might mistake this chronic surplus on capital account as having somehow been caused by too-little saving and investment -- by "living beyond one's means," that is, by supposedly purchasing too many consumer goods from foreign producers. This is the upshot of what I argued yesterday. Now, reader Mike Lion sends us to a new study which tentatively supports this conclusion.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:37 AM

Just in from Jim Geraghty

LOOKING AT THE WASHINGTON POST POLL [06/21 09:31 PM] The ABC News/Washington Post's latest poll was posted at 5:45 Eastern Standard Time. By 7:11 EST, some of my favorite liberal readers were e-mailing in, stating that the "Reagan bounce" had evaporated, now that the Post poll showed Kerry leading Bush 48 percent to 44 percent among registered voters, with 6 percent currently supporting independent candidate Ralph Nader. The sample's pretty big — 1,201 randomly selected adults, including 1,015 self-described registered voters, interviewed June 17-20. The margin of error is plus or minus 3 percentage points. You'll recall the brouhaha over the L.A. Times poll, where the sample included 38 percent Democrats and 25 percent Republicans. This poll isn't quite as bad, but it still seems to be not quite reflective of the electorate (or turnout) as a whole. Among registered voters in this poll, 38 percent describe themselves as Democrats, 30 percent as Republicans and 28 percent as independents. How about this for a headline: Kerry underperforming; holds four point lead in poll with eight percent more Democrats than Republicans? There's nothing wrong with random samples containing more Democrats than Republicans. However -- and this is a big however -- there's no way the public won't see these as attempts to rig the results.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:01 AM

Orientalism

A word which Edward Said and his followers successfully redefined as "racism" may be staging a comeback: If Arab scholarly institutions had an inkling of sense, there would be serious contacts and efforts to translate [into Arabic] many of the impressive volumes in the field of Islamic and [Arabic] literature studies. Unfortunately, however, this is prevented by the religious oppression on the part of the Ministries of Awqaf [i.e., religious endowments] and religious associations and institutions that prevent the translation of many impressive scholarly studies. In short, we are talking to the ignoramus graduates of religious educational institutions or Arab universities that are devoid of learning - those [graduates] who cover up their ignorance by accusing Orientalism of conspiring against Islam or distorting its image. [We are telling these ignoramuses] that had it not been for the efforts of a group of Orientalists in religious, literary, and historical studies, we would never have known much of the heritage in which we take pride - and without making any effort to discover it. Nay, it has come to us readymade, on a silver platter, thanks to the efforts of those Orientalists. We don't have to look far for an example. Let us ask ourselves: How much effort have the Arabs expended in deciphering the Pharaonic Rosetta Stone, and how much effort have the Orientalists expended on this? Were it not for the efforts of those Orientalists who were fascinated by Pharaonic civilization, the world would never have known how to read hieroglyphics. The problem of the Arabs is that they suffer from a compounded ignorance - namely, they are ignorant of their own ignorance. In a world in which religious thought rules, the efforts of the Orientalist scholars cannot possibly revive the civilization of this dead Orient.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:45 AM

When things are best kept to one's self...

Each one of us is the star of his or her own life. If we're lucky that life adds up to moments, decisions, sometimes-haphazard circumstances, all pointing to a meaningful endpoint -- the present -- that feels significant and hopeful. All this is personal however. Rarely does it communicate well. Meaningful though it may be to our treasured inner selves, more often than not it has about as much interest to others as our bathroom habits. This simple truth is painfully underlined by reviews like the following: [We] read about people like Mauria Jackson, with whom he attended his senior class party in high school: "Since Mauria and I were both unattached at the time and had been in grade school together at St. John's, it seemed like a good idea, and it was." That's it. Nothing more about Mauria Jackson, except that she showed up in New Hampshire to campaign for him in 1992, along with hordes of other Friends of Bill. Jackson is not the only person who makes a cameo appearance in "My Life." There are multitudes of them, each of them no doubt treasured by the former president but many of them completely irrelevant to the rest of us. None of them comes alive, not even the main characters of this badly conceived, flatly written, poorly edited book. Not Hillary Rodham Clinton, who comes off as a cardboard saint who is said to be smart and tough and good. Not special prosecutor Kenneth Starr, the book's villain, who comes off as pure evil -- not really a human being at all, more of an incubus. Genuine personal integrity is less involved with sharing than with privacy.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:09 AM

We've been bad so we must be punished...

The Kerry minimum wage language that gets me so upset seems a great example of punitive liberalism.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:52 AM

Monday, June 21, 2004

Because they don't tell the truth?

The scandal spreads. As someone whose small business had to lay out a major chunk for display advertising this week in one of the papers involved, I can only say it stinks. UPDATE: Not that Glenn Reynolds needs me to link to him, but this is important. He remembered something that's so far eluded me, an idea flitting around here and there just outside those boundaries of bloggerthinking. When you compose a blog everyone knows how many people have read what you have written and are reading what you are writing -- down to the last hour, sometimes down to the last person. When it comes to circulation figures the blogosphere is the very embodiment of transparency. UPDATE: A reader sends this nuanced reply: Steve, I am a long-time reader and a huge and dedicated fan of yours (and of Instapundit, to whom I've sent a similar email). However, I must point out that your statement on transparency in blog media is not really correct ("...When you compose a blog everyone knows how many people have read what you have written and are reading what you are writing -- down to the last hour, sometimes down to the last person."). The sitemeters that are used at many blog sites, while useful, are just acounting system. They do not inherently follow industry standards of filtering out traffic from robots, spiders, or (god forbid) misleading usage (no fans of political blogs would ever create false traffic to increase the perception of a following for a particular point of view would they? Of course not). In any event, true transparency (or at least the most open relationship with readers, advertisers, and investors) comes from having a third party audit, from an auditing firm trained to catch and remove those kinds of manipulations from traffic statements. As recent events have shown (both in print and in financial auditing) audits are not inherently perfect, and if someone goes far enough they may be able to cheat for awhile, but overall third party verification is used in print (and in finance) because it adds a tremendous amount of trust to a transaction. Best Regards, David Barlin Note - Not surprisingly, I am the VP of Marketing for just such an auditing firm, www.ipro.com. EconoPundit's two cents -- I'm a fan of symmetric information. I'm for as much widely-available, inexpensive information as possible. Inexpensive.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:04 PM

More?

Via Milt Rosenberg, an addition to the literature on media bias.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:44 AM

Minimum Wage Workers and Minimum Profit Companies

I can't stop fuming over this Kerryism: If we can have trillions of dollars of tax cuts for the wealthiest people, we can fight for a raise in the minimum wage... Does he really think this is some kind of a master/servant problem? All those fabulously wealthy tax-cut-enjoying-cheapskates paying their yacht help minimum wage? The Bush tax may (or may not) have favored the wealthy -- the final numbers just aren't in yet. But the impact of changes in the minimum wage is settled science. We know it exerts a negative impact on workers' incomes and employment, at the same time placing a disproportionate burden on the small, minimum profit companies employing a disproportionate share of the minimum wage workforce. Consider this, from Carolyn Looff and Associates, "Distribution of Low-Wage Workers by Firm Size in the United States," (U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy, 1999), pp. 85, 92: ...The minimum wage does have adverse effects for workers at both small and large firms. [There] was less wage growth among low wage workers at small firms during the period when the minimum wage increased. Among low-wage workers at large firms, the probability of not being employed more than doubled during the period when the minimum wage increased.... There are at least three main findings of the study. First, small businesses continue to employ a greater share of minimum-wage workers than do large businesses. Second, differences in the effects of the minimum wage across demographic groups are small. Third, the adverse effects that do occur appear to affect both small and large businesses. But because small firms hire the majority of minimum-wage workers, it is likely that small firms and their workers shoulder a greater share of any adverse effects of minimum wages than do larger firms and their workers. Check out the study yourself, read the tables, and find out exactly who might be helped or hurt by Kerry's minimum wage plan. I am sick of polished politicans (and their hired help) so far removed from real life of real workers and business they obviously can't imagine life in the real world as lived by real people -- except perhaps as some cartoon with "rich" and "poor" and everything else all blurry. Like Paul Krugman when he rambles on about how he can't see how poor American workers face the day-to-day insecurities they must endure. Like Al Gore when he whines about all those "good jobs" everyone used to have. Real life. It's called real life. What we live -- outside Washington D.C. and off campus.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:40 AM

William Saffire asks

What can the commission do now to regain its nonpartisan credibility? EconoPundit answers:

Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:02 AM

Professor Antler -- why do we always sneer whenever we say the word "bourgeois?"

That's a good question! Here's the answer.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 4:56 AM

Clay feet of the colossus...

Niall Ferguson: The U.S. suffers from at least three structural deficits that will limit the effectiveness and duration of its crypto-imperial role in the world. The first is the nation's growing dependence on foreign capital to finance excessive private and public consumption. It is difficult to recall any empire that has long endured after becoming so dependent on lending from abroad. The second deficit relates to manpower: The U.S. is a net importer of people and cannot therefore underpin its hegemonic aspirations with real colonization; at the same time, its relatively small volunteer army is already spread very thin as a result of recent military interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Finally, the U.S. is afflicted by what is best called an attention deficit. Its republican institutions make it difficult to establish a consensus for long-term "nation-building" projects. Read the whole thing. UPDATE: Reader Adrian Nicolici sends the following comment: What do Nial Ferguson and Warren Buffet have in common? They both believe that the rest of the world is somehow independent of the US when it comes to trade and its consequences. If Americans are the world's consumers and Asians and Europeans are the world's producers (at least in terms of trade imbalances), then if either the US stops buying their goods or if they stop funding our 'trade deficit' through the capital account, then I'm afraid it will not only be the US that suffers. If the US has a $40+ billion/month trade deficit with the rest of the world, then when that stops (for whatever reason - Buffet's trade scheme or Ferguson's closing of the foreign capital tap) it will means $40+ billion/month worth of foreign jobs that will be eliminated due to the end of trade with the US - losses that will directly impact foreign economies and send them into a recessionary tailspin. It will also mean that those who hold dollars (everybody) will suffer huge losses, whether they keep them or try to sell them during the ensuing crash. If the US is the world's consumer and is dependant on foreigners for capital infusions, then foreigners are the world's producers who are dependant on the US for its sales. Neither can live without the other! That's the pessimistic outlook. The more realistic and more optimistic outlook is that the rest of the world fuels the US's growth which in turn fuels their own growth and everybody wins. EconoPundit's additional two cents -- I've started wondering which is the tail and which the dog -- the capital or current account? We've been trained to think about these as some kind of moral story, consumption "beyond our means" being "financed" by sale of assets to nonresidents, foreign investment, loans from abroad, whatever. The problem is, it works in both directions. An initiating surplus on capital account can finance imports of consumer goods. Maybe the strength of the US "investment economy" actually generates the deficit on current account?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 4:46 AM

Sunday, June 20, 2004

Sorry but I just don't get it...

On increasing the minimum wage: Kerry...portrayed an increase [in the minimum wage] as economic justice. "If we can have trillions of dollars of tax cuts for the wealthiest people, we can fight for a raise in the minimum wage," he said in Alexandria. Let's simply stipulate (for the moment and without prejudice) the tax code is now somewhat less progressive. And let's assume (unrealistically) no decrease in employment when the minumum wage goes up. Exactly how does the redistribution of income from business owners to workers ethically counterbalance a decrease in the progressivity of the income tax? What am I missing? How do John Kerry and his economic advisors think the economy works?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:11 AM

As time goes by...

My barber is retiring. Sal, EconoPundit wishes you all the best!

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:49 AM

"European Rent-Seeking Politicians Suck Oxygen Out of Economic Growth"? (uh,...bad headline...bad...)

OpinionJournal comments on the Timbro EU vs USA study (we talked about it and linked to it here): But what about equality? Well, the percentage of Americans living below the poverty line has dropped to 12% from 22% since 1959. In 1999, 25% of American households were considered "low income," meaning they had an annual income of less than $25,000. If Sweden...were judged by the same standard, about 40% of its households would be considered low-income. In other words poverty is relative, and in the U.S. a large 45.9% of the "poor" own their homes, 72.8% have a car and almost 77% have air conditioning, which remains a luxury in most of Western Europe. The average living space for poor American households is 1,200 square feet. In Europe, the average space for all households, not just the poor, is 1,000 square feet. So what is Europe's problem? "The expansion of the public sector into overripe welfare states in large parts of Europe is and remains the best guess as to why our continent cannot measure up to our neighbor in the west," the authors write. In 1999, average EU tax revenues were more than 40% of GDP, and in some countries above 50%, compared with less than 30% for most of the U.S. We don't report this with any nationalist glee. The world needs a prosperous, growing Europe, and its relative economic decline is one reason for growing EU-American tension. A poorer Europe lacks the wealth to invest in defense, a fact that in turn affects the willingness of Europeans to join America in confronting global security threats. But at least all of this is a warning to U.S. politicians who want this country to go down the same welfare-state road to decline.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:35 AM

Private temper goes public...

Drudge has the story but no links yet, so I thought I'd help out and talk about Bill Clinton melting down on the BBC. More here, here, and here: He is visibly angry with Dimbleby's line of questioning and some of that anger gets directed at Dimbleby himself. As outbursts go, it is not just some flash that is over in an instant. It is something substantial and sustained," the BBC executive said. "It is memorable television which will give the public a different insight into the president's character. It will leave them wondering whether he is as contrite as he says he is about past events. Dimbleby manages to remain calm and order is eventually restored," he added. UPDATE: Finally, from Drudge, this.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:52 AM

Saturday, June 19, 2004

Major indicator of change?

Here's an item I saw in the newscrawl at MEMRI.ORG: THE HANDS OF THE TERRORIST WHO CARRIED OUT A CAR BOMB IN BAGHDAD YESTERDAY WERE TIED TO THE STEERING WHEEL. (AL-SHARQ AL-AWSAT, LONDON, 6/18/04) (Emphasis mine) If this is true it may indicate reliable sucide bombers are, uh, getting a little harder to find in Iraq?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 1:27 PM

Unlike the opposition...

This may be revolutionary: "Because of the hard work of so many Americans, and because of the good policies in Washington, D.C., our economy is strong, and it is getting stronger," the president said in remarks taped while he was in Washington state. Do you get the subtlety? Here's an American politician who sounds like he actually knows GDP is produced by the private sector!

Link posted by Steve Antler : 11:29 AM

Friday, June 18, 2004

Don't want to hear anything more about Abu Ghraib for awhile...

Check out The Command Post for details and links on Paul Johnson's beheading.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 2:44 PM

Kingston's plan to save $3.9 million...

Bruce Bartlett, who has considerable knowledge on this particular subject, thinks the JEC must pull together and make itself necessary once again. Or else.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 2:18 PM

Been there? Done that?

I know the issue is kind of delicate, but does John Kerry have a position on this?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 12:27 PM

Russia Gave Bush Iraq Intelligence

I think this new story will go a long way toward legitimizing the Iraq War for anyone who can still change his or her mind: ASTANA, Kazakhstan - Russia gave the Bush administration intelligence after the September 11 attacks that suggested Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq was preparing attacks in the United States, President Vladimir Putin said Friday... "After Sept. 11, 2001, and before the start of the military operation in Iraq, the Russian special services, the intelligence service, received information that officials from Saddam's regime were preparing terrorist attacks in the United States and outside it against the U.S. military and other interests," Putin said. (Emphasis added) If I'm right about the upcoming impact of this story, you can expect a sharp increase in the Bush reelection contract for the remainder of today and perhaps even longer. UPDATE: More via Drudge.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:56 AM

Paul Krugman, eat your heart out!

Bruce Bartlett has linked to an important study showing the impact of varying taxation rates on state-to-state migration. The study points to the possibility there may be an economic basis for the long-term US "tax-cutting" trend. Back in my Marxist days I looked for "economic origins" of virtually everything, and to be honest some of these origins were really kinda far-fetched. But in this new "tax-cutting" case I have to admit my mind is racing. Some of the basic links are here: In the long run, population growth -- or lack thereof -- plays a tremendous role in the apportionment of congressional power...Declining state populations [also] create a variety of economic and political problems, including a decline in the tax base and a loss of better-educated citizens to other states. Communities with declining populations can find themselves saddled with the task of maintaining an infrastructure of roads, hospitals, schools, and universities no longer appropriate for their size. Prolonged population decline can lead to political pressure to increase tax rates, which in turn can prompt even more to leave. If politicans are truly members of a rent-seeking "political class," though tax increases may yield short run benefits, rational long-run behavior in competitive tax situations consists of cutting taxes.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:31 AM

McDonalds as Orwellian Victory Gin

A new iron law of weight: just eliminate inequality and obesity will vanish. The problem is, these examples could just as easily have been used by the welfare state's critics, who see its static, risk-free security generating normless intergenerational despair and its attendant self-destructive behavior.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:26 AM

Thursday, June 17, 2004

Shameless. Just Shameless.

Patrick Hynes, of Crushkerry.com, has been named a "Rising Star in American Politics" by Campaigns & Elections Magazine. In a shameless act of self promotion he has posted the article.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:53 AM

9/11 Commission Statement #15

Here's Andrew C. McCarthy on the two mystery operatives: In light of the number of elementary things the commission staff tells us its investigation has been unable to clarify (for example, in the very next sentence after the Iraq paragraph, the staff explains that the question whether al Qaeda had any connection to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing or the 1995 plot to blow U.S. airliners out of the sky "remains a matter of substantial uncertainty"), it is fair to conclude that these two senior bin Laden associates may not be the most cooperative, reliable fellows in town regarding what bin Laden was actually up to. Moreover, we know from press reports and the administration's own statements about the many al Qaeda operatives it has captured since 9/11 that the government is talking to more than just two of bin Laden's top operatives. That begs the questions: Have we really only asked two of them about Iraq? If not, what did the other detainees say? UPDATE: Debkafile weighs in: [The] US commission based its findings on the testimony of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed now in US custody after being captured in Karachi. Many senior counter-terror officials...have long come to the conclusion that he and others let themselves be seized for the sake of advancing a wider al Qaeda disinformation plot. Their mission is to plant red herrings in the path of US intelligence and lead its investigators away from the organization's real operations, especially during reorganizations of the group's command structure and terror networks. ...The designated sacrifice is discovered after tip-offs lead pursuers to his hideout. Under questioning, he spills the tales he has been briefed to reveal -- usually about past operations -- and withholds anything of real value about al Qaeda’s current activities. His interrogation is meant to divert US intelligence from noticing preparations for the terrorist organization's next moves. Being thrown to the Americans for such missions is just as much an honor as dying in combat or a suicide terrorist attack. Khalid Shaikh Mohammed should have been expected, say the experts, to throw sand in American eyes. Instead, he found a way to link Sharon to the 9/11 attacks and get the link accepted in an official report -- just as his masters in their broadcast tapes matter-of-factly tie Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kashmir, Chechnya, Afghanistan and Spain into a single package. This tie-in fits the gospel drummed into every al Qaeda member, from the chiefs to the lowliest courier, that the two enemies of Islam are the Crusaders and the Jews. By falling into the Sharon trap, the compilers of the report cast doubt on their other conclusions, although their final report due next week may make some necessary corrections. The obvious point here is if the Israeli motivation was so important in the chain of events leading up to September 11, why did bin Laden decide to attack America and not Israel? Or why not both?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:20 AM

Just in...

The UN LIED !!!!!!

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:24 AM

The New Deal's Two Traditions...

Milt Rosenberg sends us to this Irving Kristol essay on Reagan: What supply-side economics--known journalistically as "Reaganomics"--did was to elevate microeconomics over macroeconomics. Microeconomics deals with people and the way they invest their labor and their capital in the market. Macroeconomics deals with the relationships among those majestic but ghostly figures--gross national product, productivity, etc.--which are the lifeblood of the Council of Economic Advisers. The priesthood of distinguished economists objected that a cut in tax rates could be justified only if it was accompanied by a simultaneous cut in expenditures. Supply-siders replied that that strategy would condemn them to wait forever, because in a democracy the political class makes political gains only by spending money for its constituents, not by cutting programs that benefit them. Slowly conservative economists saw the wisdom of the supply-side strategy: A tax policy that energizes the economy, government regulations that are not too destructive, and moderate restraints on spending would have the effect of shrinking the bloated welfare state relative to the size of the economy. The welfare state itself could not be wished away. There is a problem here -- and this problem works against positive, helpful dialogue regarding things economic. The New Deal tradition of economic regulation must be understood as something separate from and independent of the Keynesian tradition of cyclical budget balance and intermittent central bank monetary activism. Regulation has one set of justifications and priorities. Fiscal and monetary policies have others, as well as justifications completely independent of those for regulation. In English I am saying this: you can favor economic regulation without being a Keynesian, and you can be a Keynesian without favoring economic regulation. The case for regulation was and still remains normative in nature, wheras the basic Keynesian policy model is a construct living in the world of science. You can prove the existence of the multiplier. The welfare gain/loss obtained from income redistribution, however, remains illusive, unverifiable, and impossible to discuss intelligently outside the framework of ethics.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:05 AM

Strange nomenclature, disturbing contents...

Must read at MEMRI -- Iranians battle among themselves ("conservatives" versus "reformists"?) over how to deflect Western objections to their nuclear programs. A little sample: To repel the Western threat, Iran's conservatives are recommending intimidating Europe and the U.S. This is the backdrop to the following: 1. A growing number of reports about the recruitment and training of thousands of Iranian volunteers by Iran's Revolutionary Guards for suicide attacks against Western, European, and U.S. targets in Iraq, and their dispatch to Iraq... 2. Reports on the resumption of Iran's project for long-range Shihab 4 and Shihab 5 missiles, by order of Iranian Leader Ali Khamenei -- with Europe and the U.S. as its strategic targets... 3. Statements by senior Revolutionary Guards officials about the existence of a plan to eliminate Anglo-Saxon civilization using missiles and suicide bombers against "29 sensitive targets" in the West, which have already been identified by Iranian intelligence... 4. Statements by conservative papers calling on Iran to quit the NPT, and not to ratify the Additional Protocol... The reformist circles, particularly those surrounding Iranian President Muhammad Khatami and the Foreign Ministry, are recommending a moderate strategy to be pursued via diplomatic channels. Over the past year, they have been negotiating with Britain, France, and Germany to have the Iranian dossier removed from the global agenda; during this time, they were apparently promised by these European powers that the dossier would be closed in exchange for an Iranian commitment to halt nuclear activities and to cooperate fully and transparently with the IAEA... The release of this European draft resolution condemning Iran caused great disappointment in Iran, and brought on a storm of criticism, based first of all on the premise that Europe could not ultimately be trusted to go against its ally the U.S. Furthermore, the conservatives attacked the reformists' exclusive dependence on diplomatic channels, which had proven fruitless,...while the reformists criticized the conservatives for their recent recruitment of volunteers for suicide attacks on Western targets. The reformists explained their opposition to the institutionalization of such mass recruitment by stating that harming Europeans jeopardizes Iran's national interests at a time when Iran needs Europe's support to stand against the U.S. The reformists do not, however, object to suicide operations against Western targets, provided that they are carried out by individuals on their own initiative... I want to explain (for the umpteenth time) material like this from MEMRI is, basically, raw Middle East intelligence made available to all English-reading users of the internet. Prior to MEMRI, openly contradictory public statements -- one in English, another in Arabic -- were commonplace for public figures in the Middle East. Now, with MEMRI bringing major Arabic political documents into translation for Western readers, such behavior is considerably moderated. UPDATE: Here's a little more from the same report: Statements by Dr. Hassan Abasi, theoretician of Revolutionary Guards intelligence, head of the Revolutionary Guards' Center for Doctrinaire Affairs of National Security Outside Iran's Borders, and political expert for the Iranian broadcasting authority, who told a secret meeting of Ansar-e Hizbullah activists about Iran's "locating and spying on 29 sensitive sites in the West, with the aim of bombing them... Our intention is that 6,000 U.S. nuclear warheads will explode in [the U.S.]. We have located the [29] weak points and we have transferred the information about them to the guerilla organizations, and we are acting through them." Abasi added, "We have established a department for Britain as well, and the discussion about bringing about its collapse is on our agenda. We are also operating among the Mexicans, the Argentineans, and all those with a problem with the U.S." ... According to another report, Abasi said, "We defend [the line of] violence and war against the enemies of revolutionary Islam. I take pride in my actions that cause anxiety and fear among the Americans... We have a strategy drawn up for the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilization and for the uprooting of the Americans and the English. Our missiles are now ready to strike at their civilization, and as soon as the instructions arrive from Leader [Ali Khamenei], we will launch our missiles at their cities and installations. Our motto during the war in Iraq was: Karbala, we are coming, Jerusalem, we are coming. And because of Khatami's policies and his 'dialogue among civilizations,' we have been compelled to freeze our plan...And now we are [again] about to carry out the program... The global infidel front is a front against Allah and the Muslims, and we must make use of everything we have at hand to strike at this front, by means of our suicide operations or by means of our missiles."... I read material like this and wonder how I can be living in the same universe as my buddies who divide their time between hating Bush and agonzing over global warming.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:34 AM

When does job growth not equal politcal benefit?

Here's yesterday's LA Times immigration story and the Pew Hispanic Center report on which it is based. And today, find this at OpinionJournal: The cool reaction to Mr. Bush's guest-worker proposals is the most prominent example of party division on immigration. But it's not the only example. The phenomenon has also manifested itself in a number of House and Senate GOP primary races, where some Republicans have teamed up with radical greens and zero-population-growth-niks to intimidate and defeat other Republicans willing to defend immigration. In Congress, Republicans invite population-control advocates posing as conservatives to committee hearings to denounce the Administration's initiatives. Republican Tom Tancredo of Colorado has gone so far as to set up Team America, a political action committee and Web site that bashes members of his own GOP House caucus who aren't sufficiently anti-immigrant.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 3:27 AM

Good economic news that's not fit to print...

Via yesterday's Best of the Web, this "news" that good economic news isn't being reported and the documentation that supports the claim. (Thanks to Bruce Bartlett.) Here's some graphic evidence from the documentation: So what do we learn from this? As the economy improves, ABC News simply stops talking about it.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 3:08 AM

Wednesday, June 16, 2004

And on a personal note...

File this story -- that the Chicago Sun Times has been overstating its circulation figures by 20-40% over the past several years -- with this story about the LA Times and the ongoing buildup of academic literature documenting media bias. I might add that as a small businessman -- manufacturer and retailer -- I rely on display advertising in our local newspapers. Each year rates go up and results go down. The knowledge that circulation has (apparently knowingly) been misrepresented to paying advertisers really fans these advertisers' proverbial flames of discontent. Not that I like these things much, but I'd be amazed if advertisers don't move in the direction of class action within a week or two.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 11:27 AM

Say what?

Isn't this (a) blatantly partisan and (b) completely outside the scope of their official mandate? WASHINGTON - The commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks found "no credible evidence" of a link between Iraq and al-Qaida in attacks against the United States, contradicting President Bush's assertion that such a connection was among the reasons it was necessary to topple Saddam Hussein. I thought they were supposed to investigate intelligence failure rather than add yet another bureaucratic layer for collation and interpretation of intelligence itself. Here's the report so you can judge for yourself. To me it seems like a stretch -- tons of duplication of effort, exactly why government is more often than not the problem rather than the answer. UPDATE: Cutting and pasting text from the Report is impossible, but here's a graphic snippet from p. 12: It seems the final, definitive evidence for the "Bush LIED!!!" doctrine is the word of two (apparently anonymous) senior Bin Ladin associates! It must be asked who are these two senior associates, when did they make the statement attributed to them, and in what context was the statement made? Is it situated, for example, in the middle of a long anti-Bush rant modeled after those originating from the US left? UPDATE II: Though he has a theory which may answer some questions, I've none the less sent an email to Glenn Reynolds asking he put out a bulletin to the blogosphere to find anyone who can identify the two senior associates and the context of their statement. UPDATE III: Ta Da! (...Insert trumpet fanfare here...) Glenn's issued the bulletin! Given Instapundit's traffic, we should have an answer in about ten minutes. UPDATE IV: Still no word as of 9:30 PM Central time, but reader Shawn Smith sends us this: Here's what the media is reporting on the 9/11 commission's staff report: "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States." Here's what the rest of the paragraph said: "Bin Ladin also explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime. Bin Ladin had in fact at one time sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Sudanese, to protect their own ties with Iraq, reportedly persuaded Bin Ladin to cease this support and arranged for contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda. A senior Iraqi intelligence office reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting Bin Ladin in 1994. Bin Ladin is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded. There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda also occurred after Bin Ladin had returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship." Remember the arguments that al Qaeda would never team up with Hussein's Baathist regime because of its secularism. Remember how there was absolutely no connection...then why is Bin Ladin meeting with a senior Iraqi intelligence officer? Why was al Qaeda still in contact with the Iraqi regime even while in Afghanistan? Okay, no collaborative relationship but did we want to wait until a collaborative relationship existed? One other paragraph from the same statement: "With al Qaeda as its foundation, Bin Ladin sought to build a broader Islamic army that also included terrorist groups from Egypt, Libya, Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Oman, Tunisia, Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Morocco, Somalia, and Eritrea. Not all groups from these states agreed to join, but at least one from each did." So there were terrorists in Iraq that joined Bin Ladin's "broader Islamic army"? So, let's summarize all of this: (1) Bin Ladin contacted Hussein's regime several times including meeting with a senior Iraqi intelligence official; (2) at least one terrorist group existed in Iraq that was a part of Bin Ladin's "broader Islamic army". And, Saddam Hussein's Baathist regime had nothing to do with al Qaeda? So much for accurate, non-biased media reporting...

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:05 AM

What he said then and what he says now...

Don Luskin has commentary and critique -- complete with easy to understand graphs and explanatory notes -- on the Paul Krugman error to top all others. Let me say this much: this one involves an official secret memo (containing huge errors in economic analysis) directed to the most important policy makers of the day.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:53 AM

Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Don't read after dinner...

An interview with the commander of the May 29 attack at Khobar Saudi Arabia has been translated at MEMRI. Here's a sample: We had tied the infidel by one leg [behind the car]. We left the company [compound] and met the patrols...When the patrols blocked the way, [we] had no chance of returning by the same route, so we went another way -- ...a distance of four kilometers...The infidel's clothing was torn to shreds, and he was naked in the street...full of people, as this was during work hours, and everyone watched the infidel being dragged, praise and gratitude be to Allah...When we arrived at one of the bridges, we encountered an ambush of...[Saudi government troops] and the guards of the Americans, and we exchanged fire...When we crossed the bridge, the rope...snapped and the body of the infidel fell in the middle of the intersection, between the four stop signs, and everyone who was stopped at the stop signs saw the infidel on the day that he fell from the top of the bridge. Lots more, very similar to this, only worse. UPDATE: And don't forget this important question -- what even-higher goals could this death cult achieve if only it possessed atomic weaponry?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:24 PM

Inflation and interest rates...

There's lots of nonsense circulating about interest rates and how they're influenced by federal deficits. A quick rule of thumb is the following: there's no way to demonstrate a relationship between the two. The so-called "crowding-out" effect is doctrine, not settled economic science. What is settled, however, is the relationship between inflation and interest rates. Put simply, because of both market forces and correct policy implementation, rising inflation must mean rising interest rates. (A fun explanation, one that never fails to captivate, is the story of what happens when inflation exceeds the rate of interest. Another time.) There will be an inflation announcement this morning. Consider it an announcement about interest rates.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:13 AM

Title doesn't refer to cable news...

Lots to think about in Alejandro Escalona's critique of Vicente Fox's economic policies. Aside from supporting Victor Davis Hanson's contention undocumented Northward-immigration enables a continuing failure of Mexican economic policy, some of the numbers are enough to wake you up in the middle of the night: The growing number of Mexican immigrants in the U.S. is a clear indicator of an unequal economic system that forces thousands to look north for work. As a result, Mexican workers in the U.S. have become the second-largest source of income for Mexico, after oil revenue. Last year Mexican remittances soared to a record $13.3 billion, exceeding foreign investment and tourism. Mexico now is the largest receptor of remittances in the world... According to Banamex-Citicorp, remittances have registered on average a 17 percent increase annually in the last nine years. At this rate, the money that Mexicans wire back to their families soon could surpass oil export sales as the most important source of income for Mexico. In fact, some economists believe Mexico's economy would collapse without the money that Mexican workers send annually to their country. It's no wonder that Fox calls the approximately 10 million Mexicans who live in the U.S. "heroes." The Bank of Mexico indicates that the country's gross domestic product grew 1.3 percent in 2003, after two years of stagnation, due to the growth of the domestic market and the increase in money Mexicans in the U.S. sent to their families. According to the Inter-American Development Bank, nearly one in five Mexicans regularly receives money from relatives who work north of the border. An estimate by pollster Sergio Bendixen indicates that remittances help sustain a quarter of Mexico's 104 million people. It is common knowledge we're supposed to worry about the newly-soaring current account deficit of some $48.3 billion. It is staggering to realize about one-third of that deficit can be either explained or modified by net foreign remittances from US to Mexico. UPDATE: Whoa there EconoPundit! An alert reader suggests I am absent-mindedly comparing monthly and annual figures here! Oops. Sorry. Will update and correct later when time permits. Again, sorry.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:38 AM

Maybe not everyone will get so excited...

This is helpful and cool.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:31 AM

Monday, June 14, 2004

Isn't this censorship? Discrimination? Bad business practice?

Crushkerry.com has tried to place radio advertising with Air America. Air America, their financial problems notwithstanding, has refused to take paid advertising placed by their political opposition. Kind of interesting, actually. Does Air America think their followers will immediately change their politics if they listen to the opposition's ads?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 1:24 PM

Be nice to them even though...

Heard Rush Limbaugh broadcast of excerpts from the just-finished Bush Clinton Tribute at the portrait unveiling. A carefully-crafted series of true statements -- with additions, qualifications, and nuance left out. Many would see this speech as a lesson in Christian behavior.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 11:43 AM

An Internet Experiment in Political Science

The Red Cross is now charging the US with potential war crimes over its incarceration of Saddam Hussein. You can test the political neutrality of the Red Cross via the following simple internet experiment in political science. First, search Yahoo or Google on the terms "Red Cross"+"Israel", then repeat the same procedure substituting for "Israel," in turn, "Palestinians," "Syria," "Jordan," "Saudi Arabia," "Egypt," and indeed anything else you can think of. Ask yourself if the results suggest anything about the politics of the International Red Cross.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:16 AM

Sunday, June 13, 2004

Coming soon...

Iran now demands it be accepted as the newest member of the world "nuclear club." Europe must soon decide whether it can accept as part of the nuclear club a nation whose president has officially called for the elimination of another nation through proactive use of nuclear weaponry: ...Muslims must surround colonialism and force them [the colonialists] to see whether Israel is beneficial to them or not. If one day...the world of Islam comes to possess the weapons currently in Israel's possession [meaning nuclear weapons] - on that day this method of global arrogance would come to a dead end. This...is because the use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world of Islam.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 2:14 PM

In Memoriam Punditwatch

A little "just-fell-thru-the-cracks" fact addressed by Colin Powell on Meet the Press this morning is the extent to which Iraq (1) was, under Sadam Hussein, a welfare state, and (2) will have to move in substantially more-market-oriented directions in the very near future.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 11:37 AM

Happy Birthday EconoPundit

After our good friend Bill Hobbs was kind enough to contribute EconoPundit's name and post one or two test items, my first post to EconoPundit was exactly one year ago today. If you visit this blog regularly and haven't felt moved to, um, put a few pennies in the EconoTipjar as of yet, how about throwing a few dinars in this direction as a little EconoBirthday present?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:47 AM

Signficance of the Alexandria Declaration

There are rough spots in this document -- but given who sponsored the conference, who attended, and what it was intended to achieve, a reasonable observer might conclude the Bush doctrine has been confirmed and vindicated by some of its worst enemies: In the section on political reform, the declaration cites the need for "genuine democracy" which requires "freedom of expression in all its forms," "free, regular, centralized, and decentralized elections" and "the highest possible level of decentralization that would allow greater self-expression by local communities." ...In the section on economic reform, the declaration declares the need "to free the national economy and turn it efficiently in accordance with market mechanisms."...In the section on social reform, the declaration calls for "developing a pattern of family relationships that would help create an independent, distinct and free individual," "reviewing some of the values that continue to negatively affect Arab life such as submissiveness and obedience," "affirming the role of the media in re-building the values that support development and modernization" and "directing Arab societies towards acquiring, disseminating and producing knowledge."

Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:36 AM

Those who do not learn from history...

Just one of a series of must-be-read articles now available online. Forget Roberts' recent trade arguments, and read this instead: The pro-entrepreneurial policies supported by Ronald Reagan and supply-side economics pose a massive threat to interests of the rent-seeking Democratic and Republican establishments, as well as to the ideological commitments of left-leaning media and academic pundits. It is not surprising, then, that the American public has been subjected to an unprecedented disinformation campaign against "Reaganomics." The campaign was carefully crafted to appeal to conservatives who have long been convinced that public debt is a certain road to national collapse. President Reagan was shown to have increased the public debt even more than the despised Jimmy Carter. President Reagan's policies had left Americans uniquely burdened with red ink, and the country was collapsing beneath the "Twin Towers of Debt." Only another tax increase could save us. The twin towers of debt were budget and trade deficits, and the implication was that only Americans were burdened with these ills. As the result of them, we had been rendered economically uncompetitive, hopelessly in debt to foreigners, and at their mercy. The day the Japanese stopped buying our Treasury bonds, interest rates would skyrocket, and our economy would plunge over the precipice. Moreover, federal irresponsibility had encouraged corporate and household debt to explode as well. Wherever one looked, the U.S. was smothered in debt. This story has been repeated relentlessly for a decade despite its lack of any factual basis. Throughout the dis-information campaign, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) twice a year published internationally comparable statistics on public, corporate, and household debt that reveal nothing unique about U.S. debt levels. If we have too much debt, so do our competitors in the Group of Seven industrialized countries. If we are dependent on our G-7 partners to finance our debts, who is financing theirs? Please, please, read the whole thing and all the other articles accompanying this one! These are all from 1992 -- and everything that's happened since confirms what was being said way back then!

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:30 AM

Saturday, June 12, 2004

Bush reelection contract...

Okay, yesterday it traded in the 58's and some profit-taking has to follow -- the question is how much, and will the upward trend continue thereafter?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:51 AM

Imagine EconoPundit as a gossip column...

As usual, the center of all the truly hot and really important international diplomacy continues to be... CHICAGO! Ankara acts to smooth over diplomatic friction sparked by PM Erdogan charging Israel with state terrorism. Meeting Israeli Labor leader Peres at Chicago event, Turkish PM stressed his wish to maintain friendly relations with Israel, offered good offices for solving Israel-Palestinian dispute.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:37 AM

Deregulatory forces at work...

Even as is this story gets virtually no major press coverage, it repeats itself daily and now seems a credible answer to the question "what happened to the WMDs?" The answer is simple. Market forces are at work allocating the WMDs as you read this. Some, perhaps, are being transported and sold as weapons, but many if not most are simply being dismantled and sold for scrap. Since the major evidence for this story is being gathered by UN staff, I think we can say the inspections are finally working in one sense or another. There is nothing new or suprising about any of this. Similar trading in certain metals, for example, went on after the collapse of the Soviet Union. UPDATE: Check out these comments from someone who knows more about the scrap metal business.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:06 AM

Friday, June 11, 2004

Charles Krauthammer: Reagan was more than just an optimist

Charles Krauthammer: Reagan was more than just an optimist: "The nuclear freeze and the accompanying hysteria are an embarrassment that liberals prefer to forget today. Reagan's critics completely misunderstood the logic and the power of his nuclear posture. He took a very hard line on the Soviets who had broken the nuclear status quo by placing missiles in Europe. Backed by Margaret Thatcher and Helmut Kohl, Reagan faced the Soviets down -- despite enormous ``peace'' demonstrations throughout the West, including the largest demonstration to date in American history (New York City, 1982) -- and ultimately forced the Soviets to dismantle the missiles and begin their overall retreat."

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:16 AM

Can't deal with it today...

Go see what Luskin and his great readers say about Krugman's latest.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:20 AM

The frontier still means more elbow room...

Many (possibly controversial) US/Europe econocomparisons in this report. (Thanks S.P.!) I found this one particularly striking: In all of Europe there are only four countries in which the average household member's living space is greater than that of his counterpart in the poorest of US families. If the EU were a US State, says the study, it would be right down there with the poorest of the poor.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:53 AM

It all adds up...

This just in, via Bruce Bartlett and Robert Barro -- a September 2003 discussion paper with good, reproducible quantification of media liberal bias. Since the method involves hard fact -- counting actual number of news citations of info from think tanks of varying political persuasions -- I think this is the closest thing yet to an argument-ender on the topic of news bias. Add this to this year's May Pew Research study of lopsided political affiliation of media personnel and you have a reasonable explanation of the results found in this new Pew Research study of the US news audience. Find good comments on the new study here and here. UPDATE: To see whether the above cited Groseclose/Milyo paper has generated any academic activity in the past year I did the most quick-and-dirty literature search possible (i.e. google) and came up with David P. Baron, PERSISTENT MEDIA BIAS, Stanford University discussion paper, February 2004 after roughly three minutes of looking: This paper presents a supply-side theory in which bias originates with journalists who have a preference for influence and are willing to sacrifice wages to exercise it. News organizations can control the bias by restricting the discretion allowed to journalists, but granting discretion and tolerating bias can increase profits. Citizens have a demand for news they can use in their everyday lives, but their skepticism reduces demand and leads the news organization to set a lower price for its publication the greater is the bias it tolerates. Lower quality news thus commands a lower price. Bias is not driven from the market by competition from a rival news organization nor a news organization with an opposing bias. Moreover, bias can be greater with competition than with a monopoly news organization... An interesting little literature seems to be building on this subject.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:05 AM

Has something to do with earned emotion...

Report from Joe Sherlock, who reminds us "irony" used to have a real meaning: More Irony: On Wednesday, my wife and I watched the very moving ceremony at the Capital Rotunda. When the Navy acapella group sang 'America the Beautiful' and got to the more obscure third verse, I said jokingly to my wife, "I don't know all the words; I only know the Ray Charles' version." And now, sadly, Ray Charles is gone, too. A great performer. I particularly liked his 1950s blues songs like 'I Got A Woman.' Best Ray Charles story - apparently, he used to come on to his female back-up singers, The Raylettes. When interviewed, one remarked, "To be a Raylette, you've got to Let Ray." By the way, Ray Charles performed 'America the Beautiful' at the 1984 Republican National Convention - and had the whole joint rockin'. Farewell, Mr. Charles, and God bless.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:47 AM

Thursday, June 10, 2004

The spin starts here...

The story: Nine percent of non-seasonal U.S. layoffs in the first quarter were due to outsourcing, but less than a third of the work was sent overseas, the U.S. Labor Department said in releasing new figures on mass layoffs and outsourcing..."In more than seven out of 10 cases, the work activities were reassigned to places elsewhere in the U.S.," the Bureau of Labor Statistics said in its report on mass layoffs for the January-to-March period. The Reuters headline: Outsourcing Causes 9 Pct. of U.S. Layoffs - Govt.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 3:55 PM

Crush Kerry - Kerry Campaign Uh-Oh!

Crush Kerry - Kerry Campaign Uh-Oh!: "A series of e-mails made available to crushkerry.com may mean trouble for the Kerry campaign and the family of charities collectively known as the Heinz Family Philanthropies. The e-mails show employees of the various Heinz Family Philanthropies are deeply involved in John Kerry�s campaign for president, specifically in the recruitment of a speech coach, campaign scheduling, campaign organization, and even the setting up of a healthcare town hall-style meeting. The Heinz Family Philanthropies are tax-exempt charitable organizations and are forbidden to engage in partisan political activity. "

Link posted by Steve Antler : 1:31 PM

RSS, ATOM feeds, Happy Birthday...

EconoPundit is approaching its first birthday, and I'm getting kinda ferklempt, because I never thought a little econoblog with charts and tables directed mainly at economists and economics students could ever draw more than a dozen or so very-intermittent readers. I regularly get email asking that I activate RSS or ATOM syndication. Okay, I'll get that going very soon, maybe today.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:40 AM

Duh, of course! That's the reason!

Peeking over the edges of this article is an interesting (and disturbing) thought: postmodernistic "globalism" in US education is of necessity ahistorical (since POMO tends to reject history generally as "winner's narrative."). Therefore, US kids don't learn history. Via Milt Rosenberg. UPDATE: Yes, I know, there's more. Like the No Child Left Behind act and its funding...

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:09 AM

Just in from San Francisco

If there is a news story politically damaging to your opponents, one reliable way to keep it in permanently in the news is to file a lawsuit.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:56 AM

Wednesday, June 09, 2004

From the "Oh My Prophetic Soul Bureau"

Almost exactly where I told last week's class the price would be this week: U.S. light crude futures fell to a new five-week low of $36.45 per barrel, down 14 percent from their last week's peak at $42.45, the highest price since the New York Mercantile Exchange launched its crude contract in 1983. Let's review the important point: price inelastic (i.e. "unresponsive") supply plus price inelastic demand equals price spikes.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:46 AM

New resource added to blogroll...

I've finally added Daniel Yergin's PBS series The Commanding Heights to the blogroll. This is the WGBH broadband internet version of the series, with timelines, resource materials, scripts, and (best of all) the entire TV series in easy-to-digest 5-minute broadband chunks that play like an old-fashioned Saturday afternoon movie serial. Globalization means imperialism and American hegemony only to the Leftover Left, Islamists, and media types whose heads are still stuck in the 60's for one reason or another. For everyone else it is exactly what it looks like -- those things the poor people of the world want to do to make their lives better.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:45 AM

Interesting analogy, meaning, uh, what?

Dan Rather is impatient with continual media coverage of Ronald Reagan's passing: Once the herd starts moving in one direction, it's very hard to turn it, even slightly...Nationally, the herd has grown tremendously. Ooohhkay -- I think the "herd" is the media rather than the viewing public, but frankly I'm not sure and I'm not even sure that Rather was sure when he made the comment. But think for a moment. Isn't this an interesting peek into Dan Rather's inner life? All that new media -- cable, the internet, talk radio -- or perhaps even the public at large... A herd. UPDATE: That herd -- whatever it is -- seems pretty convinced Reagan's message has lots to do with present day affairs. The Intrade Bush Reelection Contract seems to be stabilizing at roughly 57.7, up from its nine month slide to a low of 53. If I were betting (I'm not) I'd guess by Monday (after the Reagan funeral and all the associated weekend punditry) we'll be seeing 61-65. (Just a guess. EconoPundit assumes no responsibility for its readers gains, losses, etc etc etc.)

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:58 AM

Kids with expensive haircuts driving expensive cars...

Instead of acting in a businesslike fashion -- like boring middle-age business people, that is -- these self-important jerks behaved like first grade boys on a sugar high, left alone in the classroom too long. Much of the public record, this new material inclusive, doesn't suggest genuine lawbreaking. However this is high quality raw material for the Democratic Political Class -- whose business it is to maximize their share of GDP by demonizing deregulation, tax cuts, and capitalism itself.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 8:20 AM

Tuesday, June 08, 2004

Word needs to get out...

This is from yesterday's Best of the Web: Natan Sharansky...tells a story of Reagan in today's Jerusalem Post: In 1983, I was confined to an eight-by-ten-foot prison cell on the border of Siberia. My Soviet jailers gave me the privilege of reading the latest copy of Pravda. Splashed across the front page was a condemnation of President Ronald Reagan for having the temerity to call the Soviet Union an "evil empire." Tapping on walls and talking through toilets, word of Reagan's "provocation" quickly spread throughout the prison. We dissidents were ecstatic. Finally, the leader of the free world had spoken the truth--a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us. Let's remember that Reagan took a lot of flak for that statement--from many of the same people who now criticize President Bush for, among other things, identifying the axis of evil. In 1983 they agreed with Pravda rather than Sharansky. Apparently they are condemned to repeat history. I keep asking my anti-Bush friends the following questions and getting no answers: 1) Exactly what, in your view, is the world-historic significance of Communism's fall, the decline of central planning in formerly "developing" economies, and the rise of global markets? Did these events change your thinking, your politics, your understanding of how the world works? 2) How does your answer in (1) above relate to the current world struggle between Democracy and Islamism?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:13 AM

Sunday, June 06, 2004

Principled leadership without unprincipled nuance...

Via the Corner, a Washington Post Reagan obituary with ideas that will echo and soon find application in present-day political life: [On] the things that mattered most to him and that turned out to matter most to the country, he was both decisive and influenced to an unusual degree by what he had himself seen and done over the years. Many regarded this trait as evidence of his naivete or linked it to his frequent use of dubious anecdotes and his occasional confusion of reality with movieland myth. They might be amused, or appalled, at the idea that his fervent anticommunism -- with all its implications for foreign policy -- could have had its roots in something so parochial as Mr. Reagan's battles with communists over leadership of the Screen Actors Guild. Never mind that a number of respected and influential figures in the last century -- George Orwell being a prime example -- had their own very personal epiphanies on communism, or that Mr. Reagan came, by whatever path, to an insight that eluded many intellectuals in the West far too long. Mr. Reagan could speak with surprising certitude, and a fine disregard for the striped-pants niceties, about the Communist "evil empire" and its ensured eventual consignment to the ash heap of history. He waged his battles for tax reductions with the righteous dedication of one who had been personally nicked by the country's confiscatory postwar income tax rates (and who, somewhat characteristically, hadn't hidden his money in tax shelters). His determination to dispel the specter of nuclear weapons probably stemmed more from his reading of the Book of Revelation than from any briefings or position papers. It led to his insistence on creating a shield against ballistic missiles, which many thought simply preposterous. It goes on -- and everything starts to feel extremely familiar. UPDATE: And as we speak the Intrade Bush Re-election contract continues to trend back upward: My perfectly amateur knowledge of markets tells me it is going to settle back to its previous equilibrium range of 60-63 within the next two weeks. (Anything at or above its current trading range in the 57's, by the way, amounts to a prediction of a Reagan-like landslide.)

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:52 AM

Saturday, June 05, 2004

Maybe, just maybe...

Okay, cue the Leonard Bernstein music from West Side Story ("Could it be? Yes it could! Something's coming, something good!) and look at this plot from BLS payroll survey data, total employment since 1990 and one-month net change plotted directly below. What you have is the current payroll survey in context of the last two recessions and the entire record-breaking 90's boom. It looks kinda good, but before you lose control listen to this. The last two data points are BLS projections, not real data. Any optimism must be tempered with knowledge we're projecting from two good months -- no more. So -- this having been said, the numbers suggest we may be returing to the kind of economic growth enjoyed prior to 9/11/2001.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 6:40 AM

Friday, June 04, 2004

Market Predicted Tenet's Resignation?

I keep looking for clues why, last week, high volume trading of the Intrade Tenet Resignation Contract seemed to signal increased likelihood of his resignation: To the extent we can report the price as a probability (and these instruments are designed so we can indeed think in these terms) market-estimated chances of Tenet's resignation rather suddenly rose from below 10% to about 20%, then settled back to roughly 15%. There's no need to dismiss the results because the market retreated from the 20% peak. All markets have self-correcting mechanisms which counter any current trend to some degree. The real question is, was some information somewhere circulating in such a way as to produce this apparent prediction of a resignation? Via Glenn Reynolds we have this story, breaking this week but likely in preparation last week. Is there more? Involving the CIA?

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:49 AM

About right...

New hiring seems to be on track.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:58 AM

Wednesday, June 02, 2004

More trade? Yes. More unemployment? Well, actually, no.

The JEC has a great new report tackling the basics of international trade and US employment. From the report: Also found in the report: US still dominates the world in exporting services, US multinationals corporations employ most of their employees within the U.S. As Glenn Reynolds says, read the whole thing. UPDATE: But still, if employment costs were lower we'd be able to (a) sell more abroad, and (b) compete more effectively with foreign-based manufacturing. Both would enable more jobs -- you know, those "good" manufacturing jobs Al Gore misses so much? UPDATE: An alert reader sends in this description of major corps as training to be cynical milkers of the government "cash cow." The problem here -- once again -- is this seems clear only to those already convinced Boeing is basically bad. The spirit of exactly which law was violated? Precisely what was ethically incorrect about anything? Nothing I can find in the article answers these questions.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 1:56 PM

If not now...

Prince Bandar, speaking to his own people in his own language, sounds serious. UPDATE: Very much the same can be said of President Bush.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 12:37 PM

I'm confused...

BuzzCharts has created a new statistical indicator purportedly measuring "sustainability" of new jobs by (if I understand this correctly) dividing quarterly new jobs by quarterly "new" profits. "For establishment economists," they say, "this statistic is very confusing". Yes.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 12:02 PM

The Economics of "Pump at Will"

Qatar's energy minister, currently the president of OPEC, has called on all members to pump oil at will in the next few months. This may be a genuinely historic occasion -- perhaps the first time in the cartel's history its members as a group have abandoned quotas. This "pump at will" call is extremely risky. Crude prices, especially on futures markets, are among the most volatile prices in the world. They will soon be cycling down -- perhaps as low as the mid-$30's/bbl within a few weeks or days. Economic theory predicts a large cartel with members suddenly freed of quotas can experience difficulty regaining quota discipline in an atmosphere of rapidly falling prices. Temptations to cheat -- to retain any market share advantages gained during the period of "pump at will" -- may be too strong to resist for member states. OPEC's demise has been falsely predicted many times, but still it must be said this may be the genuine beginning of the end. Why take the risk of "pump at will?" The answer is that $42/bbl oil represents an equally serious threat to OPEC's continued existence. Relatively cheap ($17-$25/bbl) oil not only destroys economic incentives for conservation, but also those for developing alternate energy sources. Economic incentives are gone not merely for developing far-fetched, economically questionable alternatives like solar, wind, biomass, and high-recovery-cost petroleum (e.g. Alberta tar sands), but also for economically proved alternatives like nuclear or domestic low-recovery-cost petroleum (e.g. ANWAR). By 1991 it became easy to smudge the Democratic Party with the witticism they "loved jobs but hated employers." Democrats' own "Big Oil" demagogery is now creating a similar smudging opportunity for their critics. If oil prices do not fall soon and dramtically they may be come to be called the party that "loves energy independence but hates independent energy production."

Link posted by Steve Antler : 10:09 AM

Watch this space until we think of a snappy title...

This excerpt from a new Howell Raines Guardian editorial, via Glenn Reynolds and Captain's Quarters, is so shocking I genuinely don't know where to begin (for proof, note we can't even think of a snappy title for the post): Now for the hard part of the performance challenge - the economy. Two and a quarter centuries into its history as a nation, America has the most unfair tax system ever and the greatest gap ever between rich and poor. Even a real populist, however, would have trouble taking on these issues frontally. As Al From of the Democratic Leadership Council noted, Americans aren't antagonistic toward the rules that protect the rich because they think that in the great crap-shoot of economic life in America, they might wind up rich themselves. It's a mass delusion, of course, but one that has worked ever since Ronald Reagan got Republicans to start flaunting their wealth instead of apologising for it. Kerry has to understand that when a cure is impossible, the doctor must enter the world of the deluded. What does this mean in terms of campaign message? It means that he must appeal to the same emotions that attract voters to Republicans - ie greed and the desire to fix the crap-shoot in their favour. That means that instead of talking about "fixing" social security, you talk about building a retirement system that makes middle-class voters believe they will be semi-rich someday. As matters now stand, Kerry has assured the DLC, "I am not a redistributionist Democrat." That's actually a good start. Using that promise as disinformation, he must now figure out a creative way to become a redistributionist Democrat. As a corporation-bashing populist, I'd like to think he could do that by promising to make every person's retirement as secure as Cheney's investment in Halliburton. But that won't sell with the sun-belt suburbanites. Not being a trained economist like, say, Arthur Laffer, I can't figure out the exact legerdemain that Kerry ought to endorse. But greed will make folks vote for Democrats if it's properly packaged, just as it now makes them vote Republican, and in terms of the kind of voters Kerry must win away from Bush, I think the pot-of-gold retirement strategy is a way to work. Forget a chicken in every pot. It's time for a Winnebago in every driveway.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 5:32 AM

Tuesday, June 01, 2004

From the "you couldn't make this stuff up" department...

Here's the Associated Press' state of the art energy reporting: WASHINGTON - Nearly three-fourths of the 40 million acres of public land currently leased for oil and gas development in the continental United States outside Alaska isn't producing any oil or gas, federal records show, even as the Bush administration pushes to open more environmentally sensitive public lands for oil and gas development... An Associated Press computer analysis of Bureau of Land Management records found that 80 percent of federal lands leased for oil and gas production in Wyoming are producing no oil or gas. Neither are 83 percent of the leased acres in Montana, 77 percent in Utah, 71 percent in Colorado, 36 percent in New Mexico and 99 percent in Nevada...How much exploration has occurred on the nearly 30 million acres of nonproducing public land leases is difficult to say. BLM officials could provide no details on the number of exploratory wells drilled on those leases, despite repeated requests for that information over the past two months. But with so much public land already available for exploration, environmental groups and local landowners are questioning why the Bush administration is pushing to lease still more federal land to the oil and gas industry, particularly in areas that the groups and some lawmakers want protected as federal wilderness areas. Don't you find the answer to the last question in the article's very first sentence? The Bush administration is pushing to lease still more federal land to the oil and gas industry, in other words, for the simple reason that three-fourths of the 40 million acres of public land currently leased for oil and gas development in the continental United States outside Alaska ISN'T PRODUCING ANY OIL OR GAS YOU MORONS!

Link posted by Steve Antler : 4:30 PM

From the West Coast...

Another milestone in the ongoing religious drive for absolute purity of all our precious bodily fluids.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 9:06 AM

Could this decide the election?

This piece on Kerry and the armed services veterans' vote is okay as far as it goes, but there's one important detail left out. This is something I remember reading but, unfortunately, I can't find the documentation now. It is important, so anyone with sources or links please send them in. A then-unimportant information tidbit of one of those surveys of red/blue state differences involved what might be called "personal connection" with the armed services. In the blue states, it was highly unlikely any one individual either had a relative in the armed forces, knew someone in the armed forces, or knew someone with a relative in the armed forces. In the red states the situation is exactly reversed. Anyone was highly likely to either know someone who was serving, have a relative who was serving, or know someone with a relative who was serving. The degree of personal separation between blue state America and the armed forces was staggering. Big Media (largely concentrated in blue states, after all) has absolutely no clue as to the political implications of this important split.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:52 AM

This week's scandal...

New evidence has emerged linking the daemonic Dick Cheyney to infernal Halliburton.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 7:47 AM

Son of EconoPundit

Here's a note is from my male offspring in California, regarding my take on the Kerry "training wheels" joke: It is Memorial Day and I am by myself in the...office...taking a break...I just wanted to respond to your website about Kerry's wisecrack. I don't think anyone in recorded history has taken as many falls on a bicycle as I have, the most recent one being two years ago on my way home from Downtown...([These are] defensive falls[,]...when you plan it to avoid a pitfall that can potentially be fatal, even if...like [President]Bush [you] are "wearing a helmet.") As I was riding my bicycle, it was late at night and a bus was streaming by in the right lane, of course. There was a very narrow turn and I was braking to keep from hitting the turn at the same time. The bicycle did a forward somersault and I fell face first into the road. The bus went by me and luckily didn't kill me. Another time, back when I lived in Reading, PA, I took another fall when a junk mountain bike that I bought lost the brakes; they became threadbare due to overuse and then the icy roads and the downhill on Mount Penn (elevation 1000+ feet) would probably make them obsolete anyway. I went downhill at a very frightning 40 mph, unable to stop in front of moving cars that began to surface. My choice was two- either take a fall on sharp rocks below me and maybe glass, or keep going to my demise. I picked the prior, which is why I am writing you this letter. I fell and suffered some minor bruises, probably making out better than...George W. Bush. [Despite these falls from my bike] I am going to vote for Kerry this election. [My vote isn't influenced by] his flagrant insult to his opponent; I didn't take the insult personally, and Bush shouldn't either. After all, laughing off wisecracks is what adults do anyway, right? In fact, that really has nothing to do with my decision at all, and as you point out in your website, it would [have given] me a reason not to vote for him. There are other reasons not to vote for Kerry besides his shenanigans. One of them is that he really doesn't give us any reason to vote for him. Where is he? Is Bush running unopposed? He doesn't campaign, at least much, he doesn't make radio addresses, and he, like Bush, is taking vacations at very bad times. I don't like Kerry either. But still, you look at what is going on and you soon realize that bad times are getting worse and worse and worse and worse....... Here is what I mean: The record deficit is getting bigger...What that means is that hospitals, schools, and every single publically funded entity [is being cut back]...[W]hen hospitals are forcibly trimming their staff down due to the lack of funding, you may be waiting hours to get your antibiotics or whatever else you need, especially something that is life or death. And kids in schools: Never, ever, ever, had I seen so many articles in my 29 years on this planet (all right, 20 years as a reader, I started a bit late) of superintendents complaining to the Bush administration about the lack of funding for our schools. Aren't they important at all? Bush said they were, championing his "No Child Left Behind Policy." Still, it doesn't take a genius to realize that schools need money. It is really hard to fund them when there is a record deficit. Then he cuts taxes for the weathiest people in this country. If anything, there has to be someone who wins, right? The weathiest of the wealthy, or the people who helped Bush get to where he is, are winning these days. Meanwhile, there are a lot of people either wondering what is going on, or feel helpless seeing terrible things in the news. Among them are the continual losses in Iraq. No one will deny that these losses of American soldiers are very terrible. But think about who the enemy is. Is it Saddam Hussein and his Baathists? Not anymore. We did what Bush Sr. never could do, nor the Sunnis either: Overthrow Saddam. Unfortunately, that didn't make us friends, certainly not allies, with the Sunnis who tried to overthrow Saddam and couldn't do it. In fact, they are the terrorists who are campaigning to kill each and every American soldier, which is what I told you would happen, remember? The Sunnis are not going away; in fact, Saddam Hussein was very successful in oppressing them and now that he is gone, they are everywhere. The prisoner abuse scandal in Abu Ghraib added Big Oil to the fire. Now not only do they have more justification to attack US troops and peacekeepers than before, but they also have garnered sympathy from a lot of people that used to be our allies. Not good if you are taking foreign policy into the equation of the 2004 election. In any case, the war is costing more and more money and more and more lives, the prior not being as important. Still, the deficit continues to rise for a war that doesn't really have a clear objective, at least now. It is a war that I didn't want, and many other Americans didn't want. It is a war that has caused the United States to sever diplomatic ties with other nations. It is also a war that continues to cause our deficit to go up, creating more problems for this country that Dubya didn't consider (maybe he isn't in charge, though.) I could mention a 1000 more reasons why I think it is time for Dubya to go back to Crawford, Texas and log more miles on his mountain bike, but for the rest of his life instead of just on a vacation, if you know what I mean. I just don't have enough room. That's all. My vote is for Kerry.

Link posted by Steve Antler : 4:58 AM

 
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