January 2012 - My Time to Waste

Where Do I Live?

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones has a blog post up about the “voter fraud” that South Carolina is trying to fight with I.D. requirements. It turns out that there is no evidence of the claimed fraud. Discrepancies are invariably the result of simple clerical error (although one dead person did manage to vote by casting his or her ballot early and then sneakily dying before election day.)

This leads Kevin to:

Despite Newt Gingrich’s infatuation with having MasterCard run our country’s immigration program, anyone who’s ever worked in the private sector knows that keeping customer and prospect mailing lists clean is a huge pain in the ass. If you manage to stay even 95% accurate, you’re a genius. That’s doubly true for voter registration rolls, which are a nightmare of people moving, dying, getting married, registering twice by mistake, providing incorrect addresses, and so forth. After any election, you can always find thousands of discrepancies if you look hard enough.

Twenty years ago I met my wife and moved in with her. Not surprisingly, we never stopped getting mail for her ex. But it was weird when my ex started getting mail there! Two years ago we moved to another city an hour away. I do not believe that we have received any mail from my ex here, but we have received mail for my wife’s ex.

The White Pages Neighbors site (a cool or frightening site depending on one’s perspective) lists as residents in our home my wife, her son and her ex. I’m not listed. This is despite the fact that the phone number is in my name.

Neverland, Sandbox, Tomato, Tomäto

This afternoon I listened to a fairly good chunk of NPR’s Fresh Air. I heard the interview with the musician, songwriter, singer Stew. I particularly noted Stew’s comments about what happens when one gets to do what one loves.

Stew explained that when you only do what you love, you never have to grow up. You can just keep on playing in the sandbox. The corollary (in my mind) being that having to do something you do not love causes maturity. This made sense to me and I made a mental note of it.

Later in the day I was talking to Jay at the lumberyard and he brought up Joe Paterno…wondering if they would have fired him if they had understood how bad his health was. This led to a brief discussion of Paterno’s legacy which led to a brief discussion of Bob Knight’s legacy.

I commented that I kept waiting for Knight to mature, to grow up.

Now I am a bit surer of the truth of Stew’s comment.

Back When Houses Had Front Porches

Once upon a time, mostly in the late 19^th century, a successful campaign strategy was a front porch campaign where the candidate mostly stayed home and accepted visitors and gave speeches to groups who showed up.

Given how things are going for Mitt Romney, maybe he needs to adopt a front porch strategy. My money says that Romney has a front porch.

Solo Wall Piece

Yoko Ono’s 1964 book Grapefruit: A Book of Instructions and Drawings has been reissued. I’m not a big Yoko fan, myself. I remember her chiefly for her half of the Double Fantasy album by her and John. John’s half was excellent. Yoko’s half unlistenable.

But to the book! A Matthew Slaughter has posted a review of the book on Amazon. His review includes this:

“Grapefruit” is filled, for the most part, with short, koan-like “pieces” such as “Wall Piece for Orchestra.” Yoko directs the piece as follows: “Hit a wall with your head.”

This immediately brought to my mind a class I had in high school. I suspect it was the only class I had in four years in which I sat in the very last row. The back of the chair was up against the painted concrete block wall. I discovered that if I moved my head away from the wall just an inch or so and then quickly moved it against the wall I was rewarded with a very low tone that emanated from the entire wall. And, most importantly, it did not hurt (I guess I have a hard head.) Through the year I performed occasionally, successfully not doing it so often that I would be discovered.

Sometimes my Solo Wall Piece seemed to go completely unnoticed, but there were times when I could tell that the teacher heard it and was looking around trying to see where the sound was coming from (funny that I have no idea who the teacher in this class was, or which class it was!).

I always wondered what kind of reactions, if any, where taking place in the next room.

I had no idea I was following the instructions of Yoko Ono!

Hat tip: Ann Althouse

Occupy the First Amendment?

So it seems the Occupy movement has gotten around to the courts. Specifically, the Supreme Court and the Citizen’s United decision.

At least some of the protesters are looking for a constitutional amendment to undo the Citizen’s United decision (I’m not sure why they would protest at the courts for that, but there it is). I doubt such an amendment is possible, but I am reasonably sure it is a bad idea.

I am no fan of the quantities of money that flow into politics. But I have to believe the answer is transparency. When an ad is on TV, or in the mailbox or wherever, the party paying for the ad should be prominently displayed. Complete information on where the money came from should be easily found on line. When an individual is the source of money, the individual’s job/business needs to be identified.

Money does corrupt, but when the whole transaction is open to scrutiny, the voters can choose what corruption they want to vote for. Consumers can choose what businesses they do or do not want to patronize.

Maybe that would not work. But I would rather try it first before we start carving out exceptions to the First Amendment.

Hat tip: Ann Althouse

Keystone Pipeline

As part of the two-month extension of the payroll tax cut, GOP officials demanded an expedited decision on the project.

And Obama did the only thing he could do given that limitation. He stopped the project.

Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly, at the end of his post on the subject, includes this claim that Obama’s decision was an act of courage:

Bill McKibben, 350.org founder and Keystone XL protest leader,issued a statement this afternoon, lauding President Obama. “[T]his isn’t just the right call, it’s the brave call,” McKibben said. “The knock on Barack Obama from many quarters has been that he’s too conciliatory. But here, in the face of a naked political threat from Big Oil to exact ‘huge political consequences,’ he’s stood up strong.”

Ann Althouse thinks the decision was pure politics:

It wasn’t so much a question of whether he should make the right decision or do what would help him get re-elected. It was which way to decide would better help him get re-elected.

Althouse is probably closer to the truth.

I may be mistaken, but I detect a hint of snark in Althouse’s comment. Since Obama has stopped trying to compromise with the Republicans and started being more confrontational, I have come across many complaints from the right about how Obama is now in “campaign” mode.

Of course they complain of it. Obama is very good at campaigning, too good from the GOP perspective. If they did not want him in campaign mode, they should have been more cooperative when he was in “governing” mode.

Also from Benen’s post:

I’d argue that this is the outcome Republicans wanted all along. The GOP didn’t really want the pipeline; they wanted the ability to whine about the absence of the pipeline. This wasn’t, in other words, about energy production; this was about creating an issue for the 2012 campaign.

I agree with that. But I think this backfires on the GOP (though in the end it won’t mean much either way). Obama now gets credit from the liberals for stopping the project and can persuasively argue to moderates that the GOP tied his hands.

Romney’s Bain, Part 3

There is an interesting tidbit in an article from The Boston Globe titled “The Making of Mitt Romney”. The article is not available free, but there is an excerpt at Mass Resistance.

Through Ampad, Bain bought several other office supply makers, borrowing heavily each time. By 1999, Ampad’s debt reached nearly $400 million, up from $11 million in 1993, according to government filings.

Sales grew, too — for a while. But by the late 1990s, foreign competition and increased buying power by superstores like Bain-funded Staples sliced Ampad’s revenues.

So, one of Bain’s investments contributed to the bankruptcy of another of Bain’s investments. For all I know, that was smart business, but it strikes me as kind of dumb. It constitutes a failure on the part of Bain to recognize that consequences of a trend that Bain helped put into motion.

I can imagine a conversation:

“We have created a situation where we can use our buying power to force manufacturers to sell us their products at lower prices.”

“Hey, this would be a great time to get into manufacturing those products!”

Romney’s Bain, Part 2

Any effort at looking at what Bain Capital did while Mitt Romney was in charge will turn up some info on the paper product plant in Marion, Indiana that Bain owned Ampad acquired in 1994. I have not put a lot of effort into finding more details, so it may be this story is already on the internet somewhere. Well, now it is here too.

Before typing this up, I had a chat with a friend of mine (no liberal, he!) who lives in Marion, reads the paper, and has always seemed to have his ear to the ground to verify my version of events is reasonably accurate.

I was living in Marion in 1994. I got the Marion Chronicle Tribune (no liberal, it!) every day and I read it. Most of what I know is from what I read in that paper.

The local SCM plant was purchased by Ampad. According to this timeline, it was a year before all the employees were let go. They were then allowed to apply to get their jobs back. Almost all of them did apply and did get their jobs back. My friend remembers that the wage scale was cut 25% and all seniority was lost.

Some period of time passed by, I’m guessing a month or so (but maybe just a few days…). The company announced changes in the work rules. The employees grumbled but kept working. This happened a few times (three, four?). The last time, rules were instituted to restrict bathroom visits.

The workers finally went out on strike. They picketed the plant for a period of time (I think a couple of weeks, maybe a month). Then the company announced the plant was closing and moved the equipment out. The jobs were gone.

I am perfectly willing to admit that sometimes companies closing plants is, in the long run, a good thing. It might not ever be for the local community, but it can be for the company’s overall health. These events are sometimes necessary evils.

But what Bain did in Marion was a bit above and beyond the call of duty. Even at the time, I felt it was obvious that the plant was purchased for the purpose of closing it. But someone thought “Instead of just closing this plant, let’s see what we can squeeze out of it first.” The employees were not just let go, they were abused to see what it would take for them to strike.

My memory is that the paper reported a “no comment” from Bain Capital on at least a few occasions. Maybe there is “another side to the story,” but Bain had no interest in telling that story.

Income Inequality is Not the Problem

Now Mitt Romney is getting a lot of criticism for saying that income inequality should be discussed in “quiet rooms” instead of in our public debates. Mitt deserves this criticism. It is absurd to say this does not belong in the public debate.

Apparently, the Obama re-election campaign is going to talk about income inequality a lot. They may or may not be talking about it correctly.

Here is a chart I stole from TPM:

The chart shows that the problem is not income inequality. The problem is income growth inequality. From 1947 to 1979, all income groups saw roughly equal percentage growths in their incomes. This still results in an increase in income inequality. If you are making one million dollars, a 2.5% increase is $25,000. If you are making $25,000, a 2.5% increase is only $625. But that’s OK.

Income inequality, in and of itself, is not the problem. In fact, it is an important feature of our economic system. Incentive does matter. Yes, many of the wealthy got that way by sheer luck or happenstance or accident of birth. But I’m betting (willing to believe…willing to delude myself…too lazy to research it) most of them achieved their wealth through hard work that contributed positively to the overall economy and that most of them did so because of the incentive of wealth (though I think many just were having fun and the wealth was simply bonus).

The problem is income growth inequality. There is going to be a lot of discontent when the wealthiest continue to get even richer while the bulk of the population is treading water (especially relative to inflation) or getting poorer.

Note that the wealthy did better when everyone did better.

Romney’s Bain, Part 1

It seems like all the news is talking about what Romney did at Bain Capital and whether it was good for the economy or not.

I feel like I have a lot of different things to say about this, but if I try to put them all in one post, well, it would probably never get finished.

So to begin with, something simple.

Newt Gingrich has lately decided that what Mitt did at Bain was bad for the country. This is particularly interesting given that just a few weeks before, Newt was taking credit for helping Romney get rich.

“I was part of (the late Rep.) Jack Kemp’s little cabal of supply-siders who, largely by helping convince (President Ronald) Reagan and then working with Reagan, profoundly changed the entire trajectory of the American economy in the nineteen-eighties,” Gingrich said. “You could make the argument that I helped Mitt Romney get rich because I helped pass the legislation.”

So there it is, Newt flip flopping about the master of flip flopping.