Mugabe and Ian Smith

A number of people seem to be having trouble with the logic of Ian Smith's rebellion against the wishes of other people that he turn his country over to black majority rule back in the 1960's when everyone else was doing it. OK, everyone except South Africa. One such article notes that "Few could argue with the logic of redistribution when some 5,000 white commercial farmers owned two-thirds of the best arable land in a country of millions of blacks."

I'm not sure why this is so difficult to argue against. First, prior to white settlement, there weren't millions of blacks. There were fewer than one million, because without white farms, the country did not produce enough food to feed that many people. Second, there simply isn't any evidence that the black farm workers were ready to run the farms, let alone the entire country. They have been in charge for 30 years now. They now have most of the land, and they are producing less and less. They are on track to starve by the millions.

Much has been made of the 30,000 people who died in the bush war, mostly black insurgents. That was over a period of 15 years. Mugabe, not long after coming to power, killed 20,000 Ndebele civilians in one year. The loss of life, when you consider the collapse of the life expectancy, has been in the millions under Mugabe.

It's really hard to make a good argument that Zimbabwe, under any plausible scenario, would have been better had Ian Smith conceded in 1965 that black majority rule was inevitable.

No help from China on oil prices

Wall Street was thrilled today by the news that China is raising the domestic price of gasoline and diesel for its consumers. This, we hope will reduce demand for petroleum products in China and lead to a decline in the price of oil.

This is dreaming. If there's one thing that experience should have taught us by now, it's that gasoline is largely price inelastic, particularly in the short term. In this country, prices are up around 35% over the past year and demand has dropped about 3%. The Chinese are upping price by 18%. Should we expect more than a 2% drop in demand? They represent only about 10% of world consumption, although the fastest growing component. A 2% drop in a 10% segment means an overall reduction of .2%. Hardly a ripple in the supply stream.

We're going to $5 gasoline. Thanks to China's move to increase prices, that day will probably be postponed by a week.

Save AgriVino! Abolish OLCC!

It has just been reported that Agrivino is going to close its doors in early July, due to the narrow interpretation of certain liquor control laws that the Oregon Liquor Control Commission has adopted. They are saying that AgriVino's high-tech Enomatic system is illegally allowing "self-pour" by customers.

AgriVino was planning to provide a very high-tech system for dispensing tastes. Economatic is "state-of-the-art wine dispensing and preserving system," which allows the dispensing of single tastes from wine bottles without exposing the wine to air. Instead, carefully measured one-ounce quantities are pushed out by argon, a noble gas that does not react chemically with wine, into the customer's waiting wine glass.

The problem is that the customer was supposed to pay at the front desk, receive a card, and use the card to sip wine until the money ran out. However, the cashier did not physically handle each pour; the computerized system did this. No can do, says OLCC.

This despite the fact that the central computer was keeping track of the number of pours for each person and would stop delivering when it felt that the customer was drinking too fast. At the price of a sip, this strikes me as a pretty academic concern, but they made the effort. In the real world, this would be among the best regulated and least excessive environments for drinking wine in Oregon.

OLCC wants us to believe that they are forced into this position by ORS 471.360(b), which they say prohibits "self pour" by customers. If you read the statute, you'll see that it says:

(b) No licensee of the commission shall permit any person to mix, sell or serve any alcoholic liquor for consumption on licensed premises unless such person has a valid service permit issued by the commission.

Notice that the statute forbids any unpermitted person to serve liquor. It does not say that, at every step, a permitted person must be taking part. In restaurants, the waiter does not pour every glass of wine. In a tavern, the waitress will almost never pour from the pitcher of beer.

Clearly, OLCC does not require a permitted person to physically take part every time an alcoholic beverage flows from a container into a glass, but they are insisting that AgriVino do this, even though it would destroy the efficiency that makes it possible for them to offer the public such wonderful wines at reasonable prices.

This is not over.

The Way out of Iraq -- Money

From the start of the Iraq war, I was plagued by the sense that there was simply no peaceful solution through which the U.S. could exit. It now seems that combat deaths are setting new lows and although there hasn't been much tangible political progress, the rhetoric doesn't seem to be all that strident.

I have never claimed to understand the Iraqi mind, so I never tried to say for sure how far they would go with their antipathies towards one another. Pretty clearly, the Kurds despised the Arabs, probably with more fervor and more justification than the Sunni/Shiite split within the Arab community. I have felt all along that the Kurds would not give up their share of oil, about 40% compared with their 20% representation in the population. This meant that the remaining 60% of oil revenue would perforce be divided among the 80% of Iraqis who are Arabs. I was pretty sure that the economic conflict would form on sectarian lines and would be bloody.

But the economic conflict may be unnecessary. At $30/barrel, there wasn't enough cash there to make everyone happy. Even the $30 wasn't clear profit, as the Iraqi infrastructure would have absorbed a lot of it. But $120 is a whole new ballgame. Just on the back of an envelope, it looks like Iraq would have enough money to bring all the Shiites into the middle class and let the formerly prosperous Sunni administrative and professional class be prosperous again. Subtract the economic imperative, and there may not be enough enmity left for a civil war.

Arabs are historically very good at math (think "Al Gebra") and the thought may have occurred to them as well. They need to stop killing one another in order to get rid of the occupation and cash in. There is so much cash available that the corrupt political class (essentially a redundant phrase) can become spectacularly rich without depriving their less privileged supporters.

I'm going to now predict that a combination of fatigue and greed will lead to a modus vivendi in Iraq among the factions. One of the conditions will be that Americans leave. The super embassy in Baghdad may become an issue. But the violence will decline and we'll eventually stop spending our resources there, so we can devote them to the consequences of food riots elsewhere.

Run, run! The oceans are becoming acidic!

Plagiarism in the Digital World

In my previous post on Clergygate, I remarked that ideas should not be held responsible for their supporters. It wasn't an original idea. In fact, it may have been almost the same wording that someone else used earlier, although that person in turn may have borrowed the phrase. I could try to track it down, since search engines make the job so much easier now, but it's not worth the effort.

I will simply admit that I don't invent every phrase I use. It would be almost impossible to track down everything we know we're borrowing, let alone the many phrases that our subconscious minds allow us to think are original but which came largely intact from some previous source.

Surely, it shouldn't matter when political candidates borrow freely. In February, Obama was accused by the Clinton campaign of plagiarism in a speech. Who cares? We don't elect people to office with the idea that their platforms are original. Why should it matter if they language in support that closely mimics some prior speech by someone else?

Especially since almost no words that come out of a candidates mouth are his own anyway. They are produced by speechwriters. Does anyone think that George W. Bush actually composes his thoughts in the language you hear from him in formal situations? Not likely. But no one accuses him of plagiarizing his own speechwriter. If we're going to demand originality, let's be consistent.

Being responsible for supporters

I recall several years ago when I formed an organization known as OLL -- Oregonians to Limit Lawyers. It was a small organization, consisting of precisely myself and my mimeograph machine. OK, it wasn't technically a mimeograph, but the I like to recall it that way as a more colorful story. As an organization, however, it was definitely just me.

Our platform, using "our" in the imperial form now, was that there were already too many lawyers in Oregon and the private law schools at Willamette and Lewis & Clark were sufficient. The University of Oregon should close its. I sent out a memo to all the candidates for the state legislature, asking for their position. It was a campaign year and indeed, a few responded. Most ignored me.

I actually got a little publicity out of it and people sent me letters. One guy even sent a check, which helped cover my printing and mailing costs. Unfortunately, they seemed generally to be nut cases. I felt then, and feel now, that we have too many lawyers and the state should get out of the business of producing more of what taxpayers want less of. But it became clear that this position attracted an undesirable number of wackos, so I dropped the campaign.

I remember this situation as I watch the current presidential campaign unfold, with candidates now busily trying to explain their relationships with clergymen whose views on public matters make my anti-lawyer adherents look statesmanlike.

This is sad. Ideas should not be regarded as responsible for their supporters. No one (except perhaps some talk show host somewhere) has ever suggested that Barack Obama planned to take advise from Jeremiah Wright should he be elected, or that McCain shares Hagee's views on Hitler. As a practical matter, their support should not matter to the voter.

It's actually a bit more disturbing that although McCain now condemns Hagee's theoretical views, he hasn't moved an inch from the mindless pro-Israeli policies that Hagee's theology led him to. Obama is at least separate from Wright as regards practical impact. McCain seems like a nice guy, but when you consider that he thinks not only the Iraq War but, in retrospect, the Vietnam War as well have been good ideas, it worries me.

The Problem of the Median Home Buyer is Nonsense

I have a keen ear for statistical nonsense. Once again, I hear that it's a
great crisis in this country that a person with the median income cannot afford the cost of the median home in his area. This is not only not a crisis, it's something close to a mathematical certainty.

Not quite, because it's not certain that the average person will pay as much for a house as he can afford. Some will buy homes that are well within their abilities, although it is now clear that some others were spending above that level. But for the sake of argument, let's suppose that builders will build enough home at every price level that everyone can find a home at the highest price they can afford, which is not true but good enough to make this point.

However, not everyone will buy a home. Even though in America, there is a very high level of home ownership, there is still a segment of the population that will be unable for economic reasons to own a home. Usually, this is a question of income.

About 31% of housing units are occupied by non-owners. Add to that the number of people who don't occupy any housing, i.e. the homeless, deduct the number who are simply happy renting. For the sake of argument, let's call it 20% who would buy a home if they could but haven't got enough income.

Then the class of Americans who would be buying and selling homes is about 80%. The median among them would buy the median home, which is what they can afford (see assumption above). That would be the median of the top 80%, or the 60th percentile overall.

Consequently, people with the median income among all Americans would be around the 38th percentile of home buyers and would NOT be able to afford the type of home which someone at the 50th percentile of home buyers could afford.

This does not say that there isn't a housing price problem. One of our greatest problems is that when we're in our working years, we think we can "save" for our retirement by buying oversized houses which we expect to sell at still higher rates to the next generation so we can live off the capital gain. It's a national "greater fool" theory.

We need to be living more modestly, perhaps renting more often, and putting our money collectively into roads, bridges, and the like, and individually into productive parts of the economy. We can then leave a legacy to the next generation which will allow them to support themselves and us as well. Creating national wealth by building houses is foolishness.

Not so quick, Wall Street

Things seem to be looking up in the financial markets. optimism has returned, it seems.

This is a little premature. Remember that although 1929 had the Great Crash in October, November was a pretty good month. Overall, 1929 wasn't a bad year. 1930 was a bad year. As was 1931, 1932, ...

The usual cycle involves things getting good, people getting too optimistic and overexpanding, then pulling back at the same time. Eventually, demand is unmet and expansion begins again.

This cycle was different. We drove consumption upwards while manufacturing migrated overseas. The engine was, as economists and journalists kept telling us, the housing market, which remained robust even as the trade deficit rose.

The housing market is bust and it isn't going to be fixed. We'll of course need some housing, but not on the same scale. Manufacturing will also not rebound. We haven't had plants cutting overtime, they've just been closing down. They aren't there anymore. And because we aren't really into engineering in this country, the likelihood that the next generation of world class manufacturing will take place in America is slight.

Jobs growth in April came in unsustainable areas -- education, health, government. These are things we do for ourselves. If we want to continue to import what we need and/or want, we need to have something to barter with.

What we produce that the world wants, in exchange for the oil to which we are addicted, isn't a lot. Food, certainly. Some raw materials. A handful of manufactured goods where we're still near the top, like commercial aircraft and software. We also have tourism and higher education, but they aren't significant in the big trade picture. The dollar will fall further and we'll be required to consume less, as foreigners lose interest in funding our consumption. This recession is going to continue for a long time.

Five uncomfortable truths

I'm not usually much of a fan of Thomas Friedman but his editorial this morning was one of his better efforts. "Who will tell the people?" he wants to know. They want to hear the truth, he believes. They want to know what it would take to make America great again. I doubt it, since any politician who tries is successfully beaten down by idiocy, over and over, everywhere, all the time. However, since he brought the subject up, here are five truths to tell the American people.

First, our medical system is atrociously inefficient. We spend more than any other industrialized country with nothing on balance to show for it. We have spectacular abilities in certain specialized areas and we lead in research, but we are crushing our manufacturing sector with costs that other nations do not have.

Second, we have too many lawyers and accountants. Other countries have fewer of these and more engineers. Our children enter the fields where the money is, and as long as we reward people for gaming the system more than engineers who contribute to productivity, we're going to misdirect our best minds.

Third, we use too much oil and we must reduce our use whatever it takes. The first thing it should take is increased cost. Simultaneously, in fact with the tax money that drives up the cost, we should engage in massive research to make our energy use more efficient in general, and less dependent on oil in particular. Drilling in Alaska isn't going to do anything but postpone the inevitable by a year.

Fourth, not all teachers are created equal. I have nothing but respect for people who teach first grade or art, but their skills are not as difficult to find in the market as those of a high school physics teacher. Teachers with real world experience are more valuable than those who have done nothing since college outside of classrooms. The NEA mantras on these subjects are debilitating to education.

Fifth, we can't win the war on drugs. Some people are going to abuse drugs. Not a lot, but some. Let 'em go. Offer free treatment to those who want to get off drug dependency, offer cheap drugs to the addicts so they will stop burglarizing homes to pay for their habits. This is an enormously expensive undertaking with almost nothing to show for it.

None of these positions are politically possible. Even the modest idea of HMOs has been torpedoed by Americans' wish to have no constraints on their use of the highest cost treatment conceivable. The lawyers represent an enormously powerful lobby and for some reason, their argument that they help the little guy is hard to counter. Higher gas prices mean short term discomfort, which nobody will support. The NEA has successfully equated support for teacher unionism with support for education. And no politician can be seen as "soft on drugs."

I'm certainly not the first to identify any of these issues. However, they come up against the sacred cows of both left and right. It's not that Americans don't hear the truth. They don't want to listen.

Gas Tax Folly, the Endless Circle

John McCain is at least consistent, in his notion that we should get relief from the federal gas tax for a few months and just add it to the tab. Hillary Clinton thinks we should have it and pay with an excess profits tax. If for no other reason, I think I'd support Barack Obama for calling this the folly that it is.

We are not in this situation because of greed. Everyone is greedy and always has been, yet five years ago, petroleum fetched about a third of what it does now. The change has been supply and demand, notably the rapid rise of Chinese consumption.

What we need is not a drop in the tax, but a $1 increase. The intent would be to deliberately reduce U.S. demand, which would lead to lower prices for the product. The net effect would be less than $1 for Americans. In the longer term, we could reduce demand by advancing our technology, and we should but we can't do this overnight.

Any demagogic proposal to cut the tax this summer, when supply pressure is already likely to be at its worst, should be denounced. Obama wins this one.

American Generosity Courtesy of China

The Bush Administration has proposed an increase in the level of food assistance provided by the United States. We should all feel proud of this latest example of American generosity.

Except, of course, that we're not paying for it. If George W. Bush had said to the American people, "There are folks starving all around the world. I want each of you to dig into your pockets and come up with $2 to help them," he would have received about almost nothing. If he had asked Congress to institute a new tax that would generate $770 million to cover the aid, he would have been denounced by his own party.

Instead, it's another appropriation with no funding, which means more public debt. Just doing back of an envelope work, it's looking like half a trillion annually to cover the never-ending rise in the monthly cost of Iraq/Afghanistan, the economic stimulus, and slowing revenues due to the recession.

I remember when half a trillion would have been serious money, enough to get people talking, political candidates posturing, and headlines blaring. Not anymore.

Less Good News than Meets the Eye

Wall Street is delighted that the April jobs report shows fewer jobs lost than anticipated and fewer than previous months. On closer inspection, though, we see the usual pattern of earlier months being adjusted downward. The revised figures show more than a quarter million jobs lost in the first four months of the year. There's a good chance that April will be worse than 20,000 when the dust settles in another 60 days.

Worse than that is that the nearly neutral effect of April was achieved by offsetting huge loses in manufacturing and construction with gains in services and government. Generally, a service job is probably worth half one of the first two, so from an economic standpoint, this wasn't neutral at all.

And government jobs are rising. One wonders how this could be. Except for the feds, who simply print whatever amount of money they need, governments are limited roughly by tax receipts, which are falling short of expectations. Apparently they haven't yet adjusted payrolls but it's just a matter of time.

Here in Oregon, the process will be distressing. The annual budget cycle for most less-than-statewide units is intense in May. The figures everyone is using assumes that whatever money has been coming from the state, which is most important for schools and community colleges, will stay at the level promised a year ago. A new state tax projection should be coming out within a few days. When it shows another sharp decline, a lot of those budgets, and hence hiring expectations, are going to need revisions.

The Miley Cyrus Crisis

I would make some superior comments about the stench of hypocrisy, but it doesn't even rise to that level. This is just froth. Miley Cyrus, aka Hannah Montana, has showed that at 15, she has the beginnings of a woman's body and this has shocked the world. A large number of people think she should apologize for the photos Annie Leibovitz took for Vanity Fair.

Miley and her family are retroactively upset. Disney is wildly upset. Parents are furious. Bill O'Reilly is incensed.

And from all of this ...

Vanity Fair will sell more magazines. Annie Leibovitz will get higher fees. Disney will not cancel the show and will continue to reap huge profits. Parents will say nothing to their daughters, or they'd need to explain why showing less skin than is evident on any day at the beach is cause for alarm. The daughters will remain fans because either (a) they don't understand, or (b) they do. An increased number of teenage boys will become fans. Bill O'Reilly will return his attention to Rev. Wright.

And if this turns out to be the wildest moment that a girl who has been earning millions of dollars in the entertainment industry indulges in before she turns 16, then Billy Ray deserves Father of the Year. Nobody needs to apologize to Annie, who has seen all this before.

Stimulus? More like gasoline compensation

The United States consumes about 150 billion gallons of gasoline per year. Prices are higher by about $1 in the last year. That means that the entire benefit of the federal "stimulus" payments to American taxpayers will be enough to offset the increase in gas costs.

If the increase went to American producers, then it would at least recycle to some degree, but all the increase is due to the rise in oil prices. More than half of that now goes to foreigners.

What little stays home is going to large oil companies. Do you think that transferring billions of dollars of federal government money to them will offset the catastrophe in housing? I doubt it.

Education spending priorities

The SMART program in Oregon, which uses volunteers to assist students with reading, is being cut. The paid coordinators, numbering about 200, are getting axed in order to save about a million dollars. This despite the fact that taking part in SMART boosts a child's chance of passing the state reading standards by about 60%.

Put this in perspective. Statewide, public spending on K-12 education runs about $4 billion a year. Some 200 coordinators, costing $8 to $11/hour, make SMART happen, along with other private sector contributions. Why are the schools letting this happen?

First, I suppose, because the coordinators would be unionized and with benefits, vacations, etc. would cost twice as much as now. More importantly, volunteers are never embraced by the public schools because they constitute such a danger to the chief argument for high teacher pay. Which is that public teachers are highly educated in their specialties and are consequently much better at teaching.

I'm not questioning that some academic specialties, such as teaching calculus and physics in high school, can't be replaced by ordinary volunteers. Nor do I doubt that there are dedicated and effective teachers who are worth everything they're paid and more. I do doubt that the ownership of a masters degree in education has much to do with it, or even more than a tiny amount of "teach ed" classes for undergrads.

An intelligently organized system of education will use all the assets available to the maximum possible, in order to get the best results for the money. There may be times when you need specialists. On the other hand, without much apparent effect, we taxpayers employ specialists in bi-lingual education to attempt to bring Hispanic children up to fluency in English.

The low-cost alternative is to locate the Hispanic children at age five and figuratively plunk them down in sandboxes with a greater number of English-speaking five-year-olds for a few months. Not only are five-year-olds more effective at this than highly educated adults, they will do it for free. All we need to do is build the sandboxes and employ some adult to keep little Johnny from hitting Maria with his shovel.

The great myth is that the optimum strategy is to employ the most skilled possible people to perform every function, even if you then cannot do enough. This was the issue when I ran for the Lane Community College Board (three times, unsuccessfully). It has not been resolved there either.

The China/Zimbabwe crisis

Some people are taking the isssue of Chinese ship carrying arms to Zimbabwe as posing a problem for China. I doubt it. It should pose an ethical problem for the United States, but I also doubt that it will be recognized as such.

The idea is supposed to be that the Chinese will be discomfited by the prospect of supplying arms to Mugabe after his regime has effectively been voted out of power. This ignores the simple fact that China has never had a problem dealing with Mugabe because there is nothing that Mugabe does to Zimbabweans that the Chinese government doesn't do to its own citizens. In spades. There isn't really even a pretense of democracy in China, so why should they be upset that Mugabe indulges in the pretense and then abrogates it.

This should be a problem for the United States. China is a world power today because we have decided to buy everything they can manufacture, which is most everything we consume. They have no political ethics that we would recognize. Thugs like Mugabe will stay in power because of our obsession with having our consumers goods at the least apparent cost. The situation would be a wakeup call. I'm not holding my breath.

Suffering under Rhodesian colonialism

An AP story describes Mugabe's initial reputation for reconciliation, mentioning that he had offered concessions to whites in 1980. It also states that black africans had suffered under white rule for decades before that.

What exactly does that mean? Prior to white colonists, the population was 710,000. It then grew above 10 million. Life expectancy rose. Literacy, previously zero, became fairly high. Intertribal wars vanished.

Without any question, the whites did not see any likelihood that they could or should turn over the management or ownership of the large farms they had created, and which had produced the excess food that made the population growth possible, to blacks. The general opinion of the outside world at the time of Mugabe's guerrila war was that the whites were just narrow bigots.

Black majority rule has been in place for almost 30 years. Life expectancy is plummeting, and certainly not just due to AIDS. Education is declining. Unemployment is 80%. Inflation is in six figures. Exercising your democratic rights can cost you your life. The seized white farms, formerly productive, are now running at subsistence level or less.

Exactly what did Ian Smith get wrong?

Iraq isn't Germany

Once again, I read in the newspaper this morning that there are parallels between Germany in 1945 and Iraq now. Would that this were so. But isn't.

Starting at the top, George W. Bush isn't a reincarnation of FDR and Bremner was not Marshall. This was managed badly. But it must be remembered that the project was sold to the American people on two premises. First, that Saddam had WMD of which he must be deprived. Second, that the process would be brief and relatively inexpensive.

It would simply have been impossible to go into Iraq with the public knowing that they were looking at a trillion dollar cost stretching over a decade. It was a few tens of millions and we would be out of there in a matter of months. After WW II, we knew what we had to do in Germany, which was to make sure that we didn't do it again. The Germans were thoroughly beaten and knew it. They and everyone else accepted that they had started the war and however the Allies dealt with them, they had no moral cause for complaint.

The Iraqis could be, and generally were, grateful for the overthrow of Saddam, but they then wanted to run their own affairs. By our standards, they would have done so badly, but if ensuring that people have functioning democracies is an imperative, why haven't we invaded Burma or Zimbabwe?

When we leave Iraq, which can't be a moment too soon, we will leave a mess. Whenever we leave, and it's not likely to get any better. The world is full of messes. True, we exacerbated this one, but it's time to cut our losses.

The Zimbabwe Civil War

The odds are increasing that Zimbabwe will descend into civil war as Mugabe has figured out that his neighbors won't do anything about him. He'll play the anti-colonial card to the end. That will continue to work with his core supporters, who don't understand economic reality at all, but the millions who will starve may develop a working hypothesis that Mugabe is the root cause.

At some point, a large number of blacks will form a working partnership with the white farmers. We will then see whether the Western democracies, which were so keen on booting out Ian Smith and "liberating" the country thirty years ago, will have the stomach to stay with him this time. I'm guessing they won't.

Whither Zimbabwe

A hundred years ago, the population of what is now Zimbabwe was perhaps 6% of what it is now. It was possible to feed and house the former population with the attitudes toward social and economic organization that then prevailed. However, the current population is unsustainable without white farmers.

Life expectancy has fallen by about a quarter century since Robert Mugabe "liberated" his countrymen from the oppression of white people. Nevertheless, total population continues to rise. There is simply no way to sustain the population without persuading some of the diaspora to return, but instead, the regime is intent on driving away the few who remain.

Death, as someone once said, is nature's way of telling you to slow down. It's also nature's way of balancing resources and requirements in a population. I doubt that Mugabe's new cleansed Zimbabwe will be able to feed more than three or four million, and with food suddenly no longer in surplus worldwide, it would take an act of serious altruism for donor nations to make up the difference.

The future of Zimbabwe is death on an unprecedented scale. There's little to be done to prevent it. The politics of race in Africa is such that those who have some influence, such as the rulers of South Africa, will not act because to do would be to admit that Robert Mugabe did not produce an improvement in the lives of black Africans and that maybe Ian Smith was not evil.

Instead, they will prevaricate while many, eventually millions of, Zimbabweans die. I wish I could feel more empathy, but when a people collectively commit suicide with their eyes wide open, I figure it's their choice. Not a wise choice, but not one that we are required to overturn.

Gluttony is an Economic Sin, too

I've never been quite sure why the church views gluttony as a sin. Makes you unhealthy and unattractive, but it seems mostly a personal failing. On the other hand, it might be viewed as a sign when the consequence of one person's gluttony is his neighbor's hunger.

We may be moving away from that into a new era, where gluttony is an economic sin as well. We've known for a long time that the American eating habits could not be sustained worldwide without some incredible, and probably physically impossible, increase in food production. This was not a problem as long as the rest of the world was sufficiently poor that they couldn't compete economically for the foodstuffs.

Unfortunately for Americans, the rest of the world is getting rapidly more prosperous and they are developing a taste for more, better, and less efficient (e.g. meat) diets. In addition, there have been some droughts and stuff, but mostly it's demand rather than supply.

If Americans had a lot of self-discipline, this would be an opportunity. We could cut down on our excess consumption of calories and increase our exports, thereby paying for the manufactured goods we love and don't manufacture anymore. More likely, we'll continue to overeat and drive up the cost of our food.

It's time to put food and energy back into the "core" inflation rate. There were taken out, years ago, in order to have a number that changed less month-to-month, but this only works if the fluctuations in food and energy average out. They aren't doing this. Oil going from $30 to $115 is not a fluctuation, it's a sea change.

Has the Surge Worked?

It seems clear to Paul Greenberg that it's working. Has restored his faith, it has. Glory be!

What we seem to have actually proved is that with virtually every available American serviceman on the ground there, we can hold down the death squads. We've been able to reduce suicide bombers.

Meanwhile, with oil revenues estimated at up to $57 billion for 2008, Iraq has become one of the most corrupt countries on the planet and one of the least able to translate its wealth into meeting the needs of its citizens. Perhaps more effective than Nigeria, but definitely near the bottom. I'm a bit of a cynic. I think some of the political good will now being seen, what little there is, results from politicians recognizing that there is so much money that they can divide it up among themselves and all get rich. It will be necessary to provide some cover story for the masses, who will not do as well, but that's always possible, as George Orwell told us decades ago.

However, I'm dubious that the factions will ever trust one another enough that the U.S. can leave. The kleptocracy probably appreciates that degree of stability that having the U.S. Army constantly around the corner provides. For the U.S. taxpayer, the situation is pretty grim. It will get much worse if McCain wins in November.

Long ago, I figured the worst case for Iraq was 500 billion. How naive I was! We are now in a situation where the armed factions will agree not plunder the country rather than massacre one another if we kick in a quarter trillion a year forever. A trillion dollars is still a lot of money.

Elliott Waves -- The Delphic Oracle Approach to Investing

I am amused by the interest in Elliott Waves, particularly with respect to foreign exchange rates. The adherents of this nonsense are enamored with the possibility of discovering trends through systematic waves in charts of essentially anything. The arguments against are the same as rational people use in many circumstances. For example,

1) If true, this analysis would be self-defeating once discovered. If everybody could make money following the pattern, everybody would anticipate the pattern, destroying the pattern.

2) If true, then the practitioners would not be blogging about it. They would be sitting on the beach in the Bahamas, soaking up the sun. The exchange rate between the Euro and the US Dollar (known as EURUSD to the cognoscenti) has jumped so much in six months that anyone who could use Elliott Waves to predict the trend would now be rich. Many of these people appear not to be rich.

3) If true, there would be no reason, discarding the possibility of altruism, for anyone to spread the word for peanuts. You would not have people selling books or DVDs for $19.95, for Elliott Waves any more than making money from home for a small price, available at the address on your TV screen.

4) Correlation is not causation. It's a common error to try to fit a straight line through a graph of two variables and then discover a causal relationship. It is less often done with respect to wavy patterns, because they are so much more difficult to quantify. But mathematicians know that you can approximate any regular pattern with a series based on sine waves. If you allow enough slop, you can do this with a modest number of them.

History examines the past and offers explanations. It's interesting, but won't make you rich. Science examines the past through experiments and predicts future behavior. The Elliott Wave folks think they have science, but they just have history. Maybe not bunk, but close.

Oregonians are Math Challenged

It's not difficult. If you need a certain amount of money every year, which equals what you expect the long term average to be, then you can't discard the surplus in those years that exceed the average, because mathematically, there will be years below the average.

We didn't see it coming with PERS, and consequently told public employees when we had good years that they could keep the excess for their pensions and that the taxpayers would make it up during the bad years, i.e. when earnings dipped below 8%. The legislature passed the rules in the early 1990's when the money was relatively small and apparently just didn't work out the consequences.

Neither have they figured out the implications of having an almost entirely income-tax based general fund and no serious reserves. In the previous recession, the state was flushing out its treasury with "kicker" checks just as the projections for tax revenues were going south. We ended up with some schools becoming the butt of Doonesbury jokes.

Here we are again. We've sent out record kicker checks in the fall and now in winter, the handwriting on the wall is becoming evident again. The first decline in the revenue forecast was under $200 million. It was, however, enough to essentially eliminate the unappropriated amount in the state's ending fund balances. There are still some reserves, but those will be mostly wiped out with the next estimate.

This may just be the Republicans' blunt tool to achieve control of total government spending, but since it is likely to seriously impact schools, community colleges, universities, highways, and law enforcement, you'd think they would devise something more targeted.

Where is John Maynard Keynes when we need him?

The prevailing political view on economics up until 1932 was that discipline and hard work would cure all that might ail us. After Roosevelt came to power, he changed his mind and adopted the Keynesian view that the economy needs discipline in good times and largesse during recessions and depressions.

We have a new theory, as wacky as the earlier views, which is that profligacy is the key to prosperity. We are now on the verge of recession and the politicians are simply recommending more hair of the dog that bit us. We're here because we didn't want to consider either that running a war would involve some domestic sacrifices, or that running out of petroleum would require us to change out consumption patterns. The consequence is that we are caught unprepared by oil at $105/barrel and the fact that foreigners regard U.S. debt as increasingly problematic.

We need to raise, not lower taxes, and spend the money where needed. We need to invest in infrastructure to employ some of those who were formerly building too many too large houses. We need to invest in research to develop energy-saving technologies. We need to hire bands of shiftless teenagers to accost people at Interstate rest stops and offer to check their tire pressure.

We do not need to write checks to people who are frightened for their futures. Those people, and by May that's going to be most people, will just put the money in the bank or use it to pay down credit cards. There will be a large transfer of debt from the private sector to the public, but there will be no surge in spending. Keynes advocated spending by government, not transfer to individuals who might not spend. This is nuts.

Fortunately there are political minor leagues

It's unfortunate that Obama has lost an advisor who may have had good intentions and perhaps talents, but just wasn't ready for the discipline of actual power. It's bad enough for him that she was unable to curb her tongue during the campaign. How much worse would it have been if she'd stayed out of sight until January and then somehow became a high government official!

Maybe there is a benefit from long campaigns, because it exposes both the candidate and a lot of potential advisors to a lot of inconsequential scrutiny. Whether some Obama campaigner said something indiscreet to a Canadian official is a tempest in a teacup now. Rather like the Eugene Emeralds losing a baseball game. Not a big deal in itself and it serves to weed out those who don't have what it takes.

I'm actually not that distressed to see Obama ditch Samantha Powers since she seems to come from the "moral obligation to fix the world" school of international relations. That's what got us into Iraq and Afghanistan. We don't need to do it again in Darfur.

I accept the idea that bad outcomes are often inevitable and it isn't admirable to spend time and treasure vainly attempting to delay that fact. The people of Afghanistan are not going to have happy lives because there are 25 million of them, squatting in the middle of a stinking desert, with no export product to speak of apart from heroin. Iraqis might, since they have wealth, if we left them alone but it can't be forced on them.

Instead, we have intervened. A half decade later, they are less happy, we are less safe, and we're a trillion dollars poorer (including deferred costs). Knowing this, there are those who want us to save Darfur, militarily since there are no other options. Just goes to show that a fancy university education isn't always enough.

The Archbishop of Canterubury and Sharia Law

He has shown that the only thing less relevant in Britain than the monarchy is the C of E. Apparently, he said in an interview that the incorporation of some aspects of sharia law into the laws of Britain was "inevitable." I assume he was just trying to be tolerant. At some point you need to stop being tolerant, particularly if you're the head of a Christian church, in a country where the development of laws unlike sharia over the past eight centuries has led to a system that guarantees the rights of minorities, against the majority and against troglodyte elements of their own minority. I think the man is simply daft, and since that evidently doesn't disqualify him from heading his church, it reflects on them as well.

Will the federal economic stimulus work? Ask Oregon.

The feds are planning a huge rebate plan to stimulate the economy. Before counting on it to restore growth, they should consider Oregon's experience. Due to its unique "kicker" program, through which Oregon rebates to taxpayers everything above its estimated revenues whenever that excess is more than 2% for the biennium, the Oregon economy was stimulated late in 2007 by the infusion of some $1.1 billion from the state treasury. In early 2008, we should be seeing the results.

In fact, when the governor first noticed that there was some potential for declining state revenues two weeks ago, he figured it would be in the "low tens of millions" for the biennium. One of the Republican leaders in the state legislature, where Republican support for the kicker is institutionalized, knew why:

Senate Republican Leader Ted Ferrioli of John Day said the $1 billion in “kicker” rebate checks sent out by Oregon late last year probably served as stimulus to the regional economy, offsetting some of the downturn hitting other states.

Two weeks later, the actual revenue forecast that the governor had been hinting at was released and, behold, rather than low tens of millions, it was $183 million. The cash vanished into the pockets of taxpayers with hardly a ripple on the overall economy.

This is roughly what Keynes would have predicted. His point was that when people get nervous, they stop spending. They don't become significantly less nervous when they are given modest amounts of money, so they won't change their spending habits much. If you want stimulus, have the government borrow and spend.

Pretty much nobody is Keynesian these days, although a few claim to be. One economist remarked that ""From an economic stimulus perspective, it will have the short-term effect of increasing spending and there will be the Keynesian multiplier effect." But this isn't a Keynesian multiplier, which results from increased government spending. It's just a multiplier.

The Bush theory has been to never stimulate with spending, only tax reduction. Democrats like the idea of spending, but they ignore the other half of Keynes' strategy, which was to cut back spending when times were good. At the bottom, this is a strategy to make economic gains by consuming without working for the money. It plays well in an election year, but it's lousy economics.

Oregon Budget Crisis -- 2008 meets 2002

Tom Potiowsky, the official Oregon state economist whose "Chinese water torture" method of estimating the declining state revenues six years ago were a staple feature of that crisis, is at it again. Tom is probably a good husband and kind to animals, but his inability to see the big picture meant that the legislature didn't grasp the magnitude of the previous crisis until it was upon them, and that the low-ball estimate of revenues led to a great flushing out of the state's coffers last fall (due to Oregon's kicker law, for those of you from out-of-state). Just as the country was starting to head downhill.

Oregon's economist is required to make public estimates of revenues every couple months or so. As the housing crisis was unfolding, Tom figured late last year that the effect on Oregon would be essentially nothing, despite the large role that forest products plays in the state economy. Now he's estimating that the state will take in $183 million (1.2%)less than expected between now and the end of the biennium on June 30, 2009.

State tax revenues in Oregon are overwhelmingly dependent on income taxes, which in turn are quite volatile. Property taxes are quite stable, sales taxes fairly stable, but income taxes depend on growth in a more leveraged fashion. The current estimate seems in line with the national consensus drop in estimates of GDP. Since income tax receipts are going to be much more volatile than that, this projection is probably still optimistic.

Here's my prediction. In six months, the estimate will be for a 3% fall in the 2007-2009 biennium. There will be some modest belt-tightening but tax receipts had a good head of steam at the outset and the shortfall will be manageable in this biennium.

I don't know when the estimate for 2009-2011 will be first released, but I'm going to guess it will be 5% below what the legislature had pencilled in at the end of the last session. The state's reserves, having been rebuilt modestly since the last recession, will have been wiped out by the shortfall in 2007-2009, and the legislature will again have the job of making serious cuts in services.

Of course, I'm the same guy who said the Republicans would have a contested convention in Minneapolis. I haven't given up hope, but it's a lot less likely than it was two weeks ago. So maybe I'm wrong again.

McCain's Premature Celebration

The news of the death of the Republican nominating process, which has dwindled from four serious candidates plus Ron Paul to two serious candidates plus Ron Paul, may have been premature. After being anointed the nominee-apparent with the withdrawal of Mitt Romney, John McCain now needs to note that he subsequently lost two primaries to Mike Huckabee. This can't be good.

McCain has not been reaching 50% in primaries; in fact, apart from 48% in his home state of Arizona, the 42% in California seems to be about his high point, though I haven't seen a chart of all of them. This is not exactly a dominating performance.

In the end, McCain needs to get more than half the votes in primaries with only one other candidate, and he hasn't been doing that. Until now, voting for Romney meant voting for Romney. Now voting for Romney may mean casting your ballot for Huckabee and keeping the thing open. There's no way Huckabee is going to get the nomination, but if he can get enough to stall McCain, remember that Romney did not withdraw. He "suspended" his campaign.

At this point, the best hope for a convention battle seems to be on the Democratic side, however. Obama and Clinton are coming so close to splitting the elected delegates that the super delegates may have the final say. That would be fun to watch.

I notice Chelsea Clinton popping up from time to time. In many parts of the world, the principal progeny of the leaders would be primed for eventual succession to the mantle of leadership. That's how it would be done in India or Pakistan. Or Massachusetts.

Recycling Asian Money

One of the bright spots in today's gloomy reporting is the following:

"Shares of Bank of China dropped 6.4 percent in Hong Kong after the South China Morning Post newspaper reported that the bank is expected to announce a "significant writedown" in U.S. subprime mortgage securities, citing unidentified sources. In Shanghai, the bank's stock declined 4.1 percent."

At times, I have been depressed at the spectacle of Americans rampantly running through their cash while savvy foreigners wait to pick up the pieces. It's nice to note that Asians haven't become entirely successful in their U.S. investments. They sure weren't in the 1990's, when Japanese invested huge sums in U.S. projects that went bust. Now it's the Chinese, trying to switch some of their cash from staid government debt into higher reward vehicles and getting screwed.

So this is how capitalism recycles cash. They sell us everything from shoes to lampshades and we sell them bad investments. Maybe this will work if they're really slow on the uptake.

Asia Wakes Up and the Party's Over

Bad news from the Asian stock markets this morning (afternoon over there). They apparently are even less impressed with Bush's economic stimulus plan than Americans. It has occurred to them that the years of growing their economies at the expense of American manufacturing (China) or services (India) are coming to an end. All America can think of to do is pump more cash into the pockets of American consumers, so they can buy more things from foreigners with no intention of ever repaying them.

The big economic crashes occur when previous crashes recede far enough into the past that too many people are willing to belief convenient untruths. Such as the notion that it's possible to prosper by pushing pieces of paper around that say that everyone is richer without having produced anything of value.

Or that Keynes only applies during recessions. The other side of Keynes was his assertion that during prosperity, governments should run surpluses to offset their deficits during recessions. That, unfortunately, is politically unpopular, so we get stimulus during recessions and then, under Bush, stimulus during the good times as well. The real deficit, including the off-budget expenses for Iraq and Afghanistan and stealing from Social Security, has been running around half a trillion. During a recession, receipts fall, regular expenses for the economic safety net rise, and to this we are adding $145 billion in stimulus costs. Perhaps a trillion in one year?

Here in Oregon, the checks have been mailed out to refund our "overpayments" during the preceding and unexpectedly prosperous biennium. We dodged one bullet when the PERS recalculation of pension investments was made (I think) on December 31, just before the meltdown got really ugly, but sooner or later we'll be confronted, as we were five or six years ago, with annual state revenue forecasts going south. Our tiny "rainy day fund" is going to last about a year and then we'll be back where we were, cutting class days and getting unwanted attention from Doonesbury. It doesn't say a lot for the collective intelligence of Oregonians.

A Reality Check for Kenya

In the 2.5 weeks of unrest in Kenya, the death toll is now reported to be 612. According to the CIA Factbook for Kenya, the population is 37 million. The birth rate is 39 per thousand annually, so 1.4 million a year or 4,000 per day. Infant mortality is 57 per thousand, so 228.

So this "crisis" is killing as many people in a week as there are babies dying in their mothers' arms from natural causes every day. It's a lot sexier to show violence in the media, but it's a minor problem for a country like Kenya.

The real problem is the mathematical fact that you cannot go on growing at the rate they have without eventually imploding from lack of food. Kenya has gone from 6.4 million in 1950 at rates that are dropping slightly as percentages but not in absolute terms. There isn't going to be any place left to grow enough food. They will overfarm until yields start to fall. There will be mass starvation. When? Who knows, but it will make the current dustup look like a Sunday School picnic.

Oregon will matter to the Republicans at least

Unless John Edwards can start showing better results, the Democrats may have decided their nomination by May when Oregon has its primary. But with Romney's win in Michigan, the Republicans have set themselves on course for a convention showdown in Minneapolis. Romney, in his native state, spending hugely and getting no real participation from Giuliani, "won" with 39% of the vote.

Giuliani's swan dive has probably been too severe for him to reverse, and the new polls from South Carolina and Florida suggest that he can't hold the line in Florida, which was crucial to his strategy. But get this. McCain is leading in Florida with 22% of Republican support.

We are getting not yet getting any contests in which all candidates are both viable to local voters and committed in terms of money and organization. We've had Romney vs Huckabee in Iowa, Romney vs McCain in New Hampshire and Michigan. Next we'll have McCain versus Huckabee in South Carolina. Florida will have everyone's attention and somebody may get 100% of the delegates available (not all delegates because the RNC has penalized the state for its early timing) for a quarter of the popular vote.

This actually raises another question about Democracy in America. Those states that have winner-take-all formulas will disproportionately award the winners there compared with states like California that will disperse the results through the state. Since Giuliani is well positioned in several of these, he may get to Minneapolis with a large enough bloc to prevent any other candidate winning on the first ballot, but one which he will not be able to build on because of low national poll numbers.

Bringing us back to Oregon. In May, the modest number of delegates available will look a lot more compelling. I wouldn't want to predict a winner, and it may not matter, because the important point is that the second choices of the delegates will not be visible on the ballot and after the first round, that's what will matter.

I think there's only one news organization in Oregon large enough to investigate and report on this, and that's the Oregonian in Portland. I hope they take this issue on and tell us about the real people who will be running for delegates.

America's Financial Chickens Coming Home to Roost

There are moments in bubbles that afterwards everyone wonders why they weren't challenged at the time. From the Tulip Craze to 1929 to the dot.com bubble (remember Pets.Com?), there are strange happenings that seems crazy in retrospect. At this time, the bubble may turn out to be America's economic pre-eminence in the world, and we may wonder in ten years why we thought it wouldn't turn out badly.

For years, we have been shifting our manufacturing overseas, while continuing to import huge quantities of petroleum. The trade deficit should be enough to scare anyone, but the savants of Wall Street assure us that it's just an innocent sidelight to globalization, which clearly benefits the U.S. along with everyone else.

So while China and India build factories, we build bigger and bigger houses. And when they become so large and expensive that we cannot logically afford them, we get creative about mortgages. The only way that anyone could believe that this would work in the long term is by subscribing to the greater fool theory that there will always be someone ready to buy the house for enough money to justify the financing. Mathematically, it couldn't happen forever.

So rather predictably, the subprime (euphemism for junk) mortgage market has gone south and the banks need fresh capital to cover their enormous losses. Bringing us back to the first point. The sovereign funds, for which you should substitute "foreign governments," are coming to the rescue, having enormous reserves of U.S. dollars due to the trade deficit. These are the IOU's with which we've been maintaining our collective lifestyle and they are coming due. When China wanted to buy an American oil company, we were able to balk. We didn't need them. Now, we need foreign capital to keep our big financial institutions healthy and they are never going to be as American again.

It's not going to stop. The trade deficit rose again in November. Not a single presidential candidate of either party will tell the American people that they need an extra dollar or two of taxes on the price of gasoline to save the country (and perhaps Social Security) from ruin. In ten years, we'll wonder why.

Lancet versus Iraq/WHO

The NE Journal of Medicine's article showing results from a joint study by the health ministry of Iraq and the World Health Organization, includes the following:

Mortality from nonviolent causes was significantly higher per 1000 person-years in the post-invasion period (4.92; 95% CI, 4.49 to 5.41) than in the pre-invasion period (3.07; 95% CI, 2.61 to 3.63)

A great deal is being made of the difference between the reported deaths by violence in the two studies. However, note that the Iraq/WHO study concludes that there has been a roughly 60% increase in the non-violent mortality rate. The Lancet article reported a rather small rise. If you compare total "excess deaths," and figure that the extra 1.85 deaths per thousand in a population of 27 million comes to essentially 150,000, you have the new study showing 300,000 excess deaths in three years, compared with the Lancet's 655,000. Lancet calculated a wide confidence range and, when you add the error range of Iraq/WHO, they probably overlap.

A couple of interesting points. If Iraq/WHO is to be believed, their respondents provided evidence of 100,000 more non-violent deaths than did those of the Lancet study. The participation of the ministry of health, which among other things forbade its morgues from revealing the number of bodies they were receiving, is a little suspect. It wouldn't be surprising that their employees would return from the field and report more deaths as non-violent. It also wouldn't surprise me if a few deaths were "lost," although I have no evidence for that.

Second, suppose that it was Lancet in 2006 that had reported 151,000 excess violent deaths and 300,000 excess total deaths. What would have been the response from the Right? Ridicule, of course. Now they have numbers that are more palatable than Lancet's and they embrace them, without mentioning that the new numbers are wildly worse than the estimates made by either President Bush or Iraq Body Count. A reasonable summary would say that by now, in early 2008, some half million to one million more Iraqis have died than if we had not invaded in 2003.

In closing, however, I can't say that I personally lose sleep over Iraqis dying. The CIA World Fact Book on Iraq gives a 2007 estimate of 2.6% annual population growth. In the midst of this war, the average Iraqi woman is giving birth to four babies. Evidently, procreation remains the Iraqi national pastime, and without our assistance in elevating their death rate, they would even sooner reach the saturation point of their land and experience a mass die off. With our help, that day of reckoning has been slightly postponed.

I still don't think it's worth a trillion dollars.

New Iraqi Death Report Roughly Confirms Lancet

I haven't had time to research everything, but one thing stands out in the reporting of the new Iraq/WHO study of deaths since the invasion. The number of people now dying who would not have been dying without the invasion is in the hundreds of thousands, probably in the half million to million range. This is roughly what Lancet said more than a year ago, extrapolated for another eighteen months. It is wildly higher than either what the Bush administration said at the time or Iraq Body Count calculated.

It is also evident that people report statistics, where precision is extremely important, with very loose language. Contrary to the headline in the above-linked article, 151,000 is not the toll. It's where the toll stood, according to this report, through June 2006. We're in January 2008, and the last two years have been very violent. It doesn't even claim to be "all deaths as a result" but just "violent deaths as a result."

The difference between Iraq/WHO and Lancet is not as great as has been reported. Lancet looked primarily at excess mortality and concluded that it was almost entirely due to violence. Iraq/WHO says that it was a lot less violence but that there was 60% or more increase in non-violent deaths. On the back of an envelope, I get a gross number for them that is within the error range for Lancet. The disagreement seems to be primarily why people die.

This will require more analysis and I'll have another post later.

The Surge is Working! Whatever that means.

John McCain seems extremely proud of his position on Iraq. In particular, he is hoping to capitalize on the "success" of the surge. He describes this as saving American lives, which is the most important thing that any policy change in Iraq could achieve.

This seems a little odd, because the greatest number of lives could be saved if we simply packed everyone into military transports and got them out. We presumably have a mission and in warfare, achieving the mission is generally more important than minimizing casualties. Perhaps the problem is that no one can enunciate a mission anymore, at least one that is plausible enough not to provoke snickers.

My personal crystal ball for Iraq is very cloudy right now, but I'm getting ready for one of my outbursts of relative optimism. In the past, I've soon regretted them, but the law of averages says that sooner or later, I'll be right.

My relative optimism is based on the fact that at $100/barrel, there's enough wealth in Iraq's oil reserves to make every corrupt politician in the country rich. Not every Iraqi, but every politician ("corrupt" is redundant). And it may sooner or later occur to them, as a class, that the only obstacle to being rich is being dead, and some accommodation should be reached. I view the Sunni rejection of al-Qaeda as being in this vein. The jihadists don't want compromise, and we may have passed the point where the Sunnis view their alliance with them as productive, even as a counterbalance to the Shiites and Americans.

From this understanding there might emerge an Iraq comparable to Saudi Arabia. Wealthy enough to make the guys at the top stinking rich and keep the guys at the bottom from starving. Except for a different combination of politicians, not that much different from where we started. There weren't any WMDs and at the outset, there weren't any terrorists. There also was no democracy and few human rights.

But right now, my optimistic view is that we'll end up, a trillion dollars poorer, with the status quo ante. If McCain seriously has a more attractive outcome in mind, I'd like to hear him. If not, it's not a really strong position from which to run for President.

Mike Huckabee? -- Think George W. Bush

You don't need a really long memory to recognize the pattern. A guy who has served as the governor of a Southern state, talks with this homey Southern accent, talks about being a compassionate conservative (although in 2008 that particular phrase has fallen out of favor). And knows absolutely diddly about world affairs. And doubts evolution.

Only the names have been changed. Huckabee feels good. He is a much more polished speaker than W. and is about as successful at self-deprecation as I can remember any politician being. I would not write him off simply because the big-money Establishment must be deeply unhappy at the thought of a Southern baptist hick leading the Republican ticket. It reminds me of a New Yorker cartoon from the 1930s, showing a couple of society dames speaking to each other while a wild-eyed man is haranguing a crowd from a soap box in the background. One of them says, "I never knew people like that could be Republican!"

But Republican he is and the nomination is not inconceivable. Unlikely, because I think W. may have chilled the prospect for Southern evangelical governors for a while, but not inconceivable. We should keep a wary eye open. Just remember how long it took for W. to decide that the best man for veep would be Dick Cheney. The convention wasn't even over before he had sold himself to the Dark Side.

Off to Minneapolis

I'm not sure about the Democrats. With only two true credible candidates at this time, and John Edwards hoping to be a compromise, there is a decent chance that one of them will start pulling away. Caveat: In a couple hundred years, the Democrats have never nominated a woman or a non-white. Racism and sexism may not be fashionable, but they are real and the barrier for either Clinton or Obama may be quite high.

However, it's looking like a cat fight on the Republican side. The latest national poll shows McCain leading with 22% support. That's among Republicans, who represent about a third of the vote, with the others being Democrats or Independents. So the top Republican today is favored by perhaps 10% of the voters, throwing in a few indies and no Democrats to speak of.

The irrelevance of Iowa is shown by the fact that the top two -- Huckabee and Romney -- are third and fourth in the national polls. The irrelevance of New Hampshire is similar, with the Giuliani and Huckabee being effectively no-shows. Then there's South Carolina, where McCain will fight it out with Huckabee. Eventually, Giuliani will emerge to win the Big States, he hopes. Romney will take Utah and Idaho. Ron Paul will get a delegate somewhere.

It all adds up to too much chaos. In the last half century of American history, there has been no brokered convention. I predict that Republicans will break that tradition in Minneapolis next September. I'd lay a 50:50 bet. Takers?

Iowa to New Hampshire, Most Irrelevant to Second

I have an aunt, a retired school teacher, who once told me that at the end of junior high school, all students should be thrown out, the gates locked, and only those who climbed over the wall to get back in should be taught. Maybe we should do the same with presidential elections. Only those people who will put up with something equivalent to the Iowa Caucuses should have their votes counted.

However, this isn't the case, so the results from the Iowa caucuses are irrelevant. They show the impact of very expensive campaigns in a small, unrepresentative state where only the most dedicated show up at all. If someone were to announce next November that a candidate who was ahead after .3% of the vote was tallied from some outlying corner of the country and most of the polls were still open, was "winning big," we'd all laugh. But the equivalent happens in Iowa in January and pundits are busy reading the tea leaves.

On to New Hampshire. There, the turnout will be a large percentage of a smaller state, equally unrepresentative. If Obama carries NH, they'll all be talking about his momentum, with far less than a percent of the voters heard from cumulatively.

We talk about Hillary being third, but the difference between her and Edwards must be in the range of 2000 votes. Next November, it will top a hundred million. This is absolutely nothing but statistical noise. The difference between her and Obama is hardly anything more. I just wish someone would say, "But let's wait for a state that matters, like California or New York." But that wouldn't be news, I guess.

Oregon will still be important

Those who think that Oregon's May presidential primary will be nothing but a formality should look more closely at the polls. Nobody in either party gets more than about 30% support. With some of the big states abandoning the "winner take all" approach, both nominations may still be in play come May.

In fact, given the chaos on the Republican side, it's conceivable that no one will arrive at their September convention with 51% delegate support. In a brokered convention, it's going to be important what the delegates' second choices are, and that's not going to be on any primary ballot, Oregon's or otherwise. The decision in September may be made by people we have elected for one purpose but about whom we really know nothing.

In parliamentary systems, party leaders are chosen by party activists, not the general electorate. At election time, voters can choose between leaders but they can't pick just anyone. This seems less democratic than the way Americans elect a president, but I'm not so sure.

War? What War?

We are approaching the fifth anniversary of our invasion of Iraq. We have stationed so many troops there that we have essentially none left in reserve for any other conflict. The cash cost is around $15 billion per month. On an accrual basis, including the veterans benefits that we'll be shelling our for the next five decades, it is much more.

Yet when I check Google News, I see nothing whatsoever today (December 30) about Iraq. Pakistan, yes. The Patriots' perfect season, yes. Thankfully, nothing about Britney Spears today, but also nothing whatsoever about Iraq. We spend about $300,000 every minute. Every six seconds or so, we squander enough to pay four years of college tuition for some deserving young person of limited means. But it isn't news anymore.

Nationalism would be a step up for Africa

The election results in Kenya are close and violence is breaking out between the supporters of the two candidates, who come from the Kikuyu and Luo tribes, respectively. Homes are being burned down simply because the owner belongs to the wrong tribe.

The idea of nationalism, particularly in an adjective like "nationalistic," conveys a failure to grasp the universal brotherhood of man and is not much in favor in intellectual circles these days. But it should be remembered that nationalism originated as a form of progress, through which men rose above the narrow focus of tribalism and provincialism. William Pfaff has written extensively on nationalism at the most powerful political force in the world today.

Which explains a lot about the problems of Africa today. Nationalism, or even racism, would be very helpful. Kenya has been independent of Britain for four decades now and it's discouraging how little progress has been made in this regard.

We should pay close attention to David Hicks

The Australian David Hicks has been released from jail. He was kept for five years at Guantanamo without charges, a fact which should make us all afraid. He was fortunate enough to have the Australian government, tardily and unenthusiastically, pressure the U.S. to do something, which resulted in his pleading guilty to some vague charges of supporting terrorism, followed by a modest term of imprisonment.

However, the evidence is clear that the US sees nothing wrong with establishing a Gulag into which throws people and keeps them for years without charges. Hicks was evidently small potatoes, a confused young man who made a fool of himself. But note that he was not engaged in action against the US government in any meaningful way. He was captured by the Northern Alliance, not US troops. Besides, the US has never declared war on Afghanistan.

Are the others in Guantanamo like Hicks? Is this a camp full of people who are mostly guilty of deeply disliking the US, as well as Christians and Jews perhaps, in a country where this was fairly normal? I'm afraid we rounded up a lot of people on fairly flimsy evidence and now we don't want to admit that. So we're going to keep them there forever, because the "war" on terrorism is scheduled to last until doomsday.

A government that will do that to them today is one that will do it to us in the future.

Chaos Theory and the 2008 Campaign

Chaos Theory holds that complex non-linear system can arrive at radically different results after extremely similar initial conditions. I have a feeling that the 2008 campaign will show this principle in action. Candidates surge and then fall back based on small factors. Timing is everything. If you surge just in time to do well in Iowa and New Hampshire, you may carry the day. On the other hand, with "leaders" coming around 30%, some other primary at some other time may change things entirely.

Leading us to wonder, why do we elect the president this way? Why would we allow sentiment attaching to these states as historically early to continue giving them such undue importance? When the result just confirms underlying trends, this isn't necessarily bad, but we're coming into a year when the problems may come into focus.

Suppose, for instance, a candidate does well from January through March and becomes the anticipated nominee. However, round about May, he starts saying really odd things about foreign policy and the party faithful start to have second thoughts. Could the nomination be denied in August?

Thankfully, we have Mike Bloomberg to fall back on.

What part of "casus belli" doesn't Iraq understand?

Turkey has bombed Kurdish rebels in Iraq and the Iraqi government is in a snit. First off, they maintain that the bombing was futile, that the Turks spent their time bombing unoccupied places. Right. This is a real country, with a modern army and serious weaponry, and they can't hit anybody?

They go on to blither about how Turkey has interfered in Iraq's internal affairs. When people from inside your country attack the military forces of your neighbor, that's one of the standard, legitimate reasons to go to war. Turkey has not interfered, it has invaded, albeit briefly, and with sufficient reason. They are to be applauded for their restraint.

The Iraqis naturally are loath to describe it as an invasion, having been invaded once and after almost five years remaining occupied. But someone needs to explain clearly to the Iraqi Kurds that they get their three provinces, but nothing from Iran, Turkey, or Syria. Them's the breaks.

A lot of knowledge is also a dangerous thing

Richard Feynman was known for coming into his classes at Cal Tech and remarking to the students something along the lines, "You know, as I came through the parking lot today, I saw a car with the license plate WBX 828. What are the chances that a car with that license plate would be in the parking lot this morning? Must be a million to one against." He was trying to point out the difference between something that was merely unlikely and something significant.

That distinction has apparently been lost on the FBI, which arrested an entirely innocent man in the "Waddling Bandit" case, and in fact won't apologize because they correctly followed their procedures. The procedure, evidently, was to cast their net very widely, looking for people who roughly matched surveillance tapes and a rough profile.

Now the FBI is planning to develop a huge database of biometric information in order to catch criminals and terrorists. This makes me very nervous. I probably closely resemble some criminal. It seems that the FBI is willing to take its best available match and take action and someday it could be me, rather than Brandon Mayfield or Robert Christie. It could be you.

You say Romney's Mormon, I say Huckabee's Baptist

Huckabee's inability to formulate a concise political position with respect to Romney's Mormonism seems to be troubling a lot of commentators. Juan Cole seems particularly exercised over this, comparing Huckabee's views on having a Mormon as president with the rule in Iran that only a Shiite can be president.

Such blather! We could solve the problem by requiring candidates for national office to have no religious beliefs whatsoever, but that wouldn't be popular. The compromise has been to allow private religious beliefs on the understanding that they won't interfere with public policies.

However, the minute you allow Huckabee to run and also to be a Southern Baptist, you must allow him to privately belief that Romney is a heretic. He should have been smart enough to adopt an absolute refusal from the first to answer any questions about any other candidate's religion, but no one should have asked him and his answers should have been stricken from the record.

The reverse is also true. Mormons think that mainstream Christians are in deep do-do themselves. Mainstream Christians, pretty much by definition, think that Joseph Smith didn't get a second set of prophecies through a special revelation from an angel in upstate New York. Southern Baptists may call them heretics, but everyone thinks they're nuts.

I've never quite understood how highly religious people can say that they will not let their religious beliefs interfere with their conduct in office. However, there is enough diversity in America that no one can impose religious uniformity, even if they want to. Given that, I don't think anyone--Mormon, Baptist, Catholic, Jew, Muslim, whatever--should discriminate against a political candidate of another faith, merely because he is likely to burn in eternal damnation.

Beer and Ethanol

The price of beer is evidently on the rise, due to increases in the cost of materials such as barley. Farmers are using corn to make ethanol, hence using more barley to feed livestock. The total availability of agricultural grains in America is not going to change much. As Economics 101 tells us, when you have a basically fixed supply and you increase demand, you'll increase the price. Nothing surprising here.

The federal government's interest in ethanol shines a bright light on the perverse way in which politics works in America. We will not mandate higher gas taxes, which would shift people to cars that use less fuel. Instead, we mandate the usage of ethanol in the fuel. Being less efficient than gasoline (otherwise, the mandate wouldn't be needed), the ethanol raises the cost of driving, but not very much. Instead, people are permitted to continue driving inefficient vehicles, while passing the cost along to everyone who drinks beer or eats cornflakes.

I predict that Congress will continue the ethanol mandate, especially since they will need to rescue the investors who have started too many ethanol plants. I also predict that they will not do any of the obvious and effective things.

Hurricane Season 2008

It seems that the Colorado State University experts have put out their predictions for the 2008 hurricane season. It is making headlines. The story also notes that they have been wrong for the past three years. They say there will be seven hurricanes next season. I say there will be six. Why doesn't Reuters come out and interview me?

What we're seeing is that the development of hurricanes depends, as Chaos Theory has shown, on remarkably small variations in conditions that lead to either big storms or fizzles. This is hard to predict at a distance of twelve hours. It is impossible to predict a year in advance. There appear to be some minor correlations with ocean temperatures, which in turn are difficult to predict a year in advance.

The number of tropical storms continues to be above the long term average, which I attribute mostly to better technology. On that basis, we had a slightly more active than usual season in 2007, but as anyone who watched it knows, it was pretty boring. There were in fact far fewer days than normal when there were at least on hurricane active in the North Atlantic.

So to predict a slightly more active than usual season is pretty much to say average with new data gathering. When the weatherman says the chance of rain is 50%, it means he has no clue. Much the same with these "experts."

Lies, damned lies, and AIDS infections

Mark Twain had it right. Lies, damned lies, and statistics. All the more so as statisticians have begun to employ more esoteric calculations to derive results far removed from actual data collection. Controversy surrounding historical global temperatures is due to this.

But I don't understand why today we are having Reuters saying that CDC is not yet saying whether their AIDS infection rate figures will rise, while "activist groups" think there are explosive numbers, "almost 50% higher," that are being held back. The actual numbers are 55K vs 40K, which is 37.5%, but who's counting.

CDC wants to take a long look before releasing the results, since they may have policy impacts. However, those who already know what policy impacts they desire can't wait to see if science supports them. "We hope that this is not yet another instance of the Bush administration's suppression of information that could be damaging to their image, especially in light of the fact that the spike in new infections is, at least in part, likely due to failed policies of the administration, including the promotion of 'abstinence-only' prevention messages and the failure to promote condom use," said Michael Weinstein, president of AIDS Healthcare Foundation.

This comes under the "have you stopped beating your wife" category. CDC is under attack for not releasing numbers early, and Weinstein already knows not only that the spike is taking place but what is causing it. He weasels in that he hopes it is not so, but clearly his mind is made up.

"Abstinence only" is a policy designed for teenagers. Teenagers are substantially more likely to die in auto accidents than from AIDS and if they are infected, it's extremely unlikely that it's the result of heterosexual sex with peers. When some high school boy and his girl decide to lose their virginity before the prom, it may get her pregnant but it won't give her AIDS. Bush should give up on abstinence only, but for reasons that have nothing to do with AIDS.

HIV, Diarrhea, and Trauma in Poor Countries

A group in Eugene recently celebrated another AIDS awareness day, I don't recall for what reason, which included someone singing "Imagine a world without AIDS." Well, I can't, frankly. We have made it possible for HIV carriers to live long lives, during all of which they will be HIV positive and hence disease vectors. Unless we convinced tens of millions of people to have only safe sex and/or only safe intravenous drug use, we will always have new cases.

Meanwhile, I don't recall the last diarrhea awareness day. Roughly two million children under six die from diarrhea annually, which is also roughly the mortality from AIDS across all age groups. Another enormous source of mortality in developing countries is bone breakage, which takes place with disturbing frequency due to increasing auto traffic, bad roads, and inexperienced drivers.

I don't know exactly what the per capita cost of providing clean drinking water would be, but that's a readily available solution to most of the diarrhea epidemic. Kiwanis in the Pacific Northwest supports a program through which severe injuries can be repaired with a steel rod and surgery at a total cost of $100 per patient. These people go on to live productive lives without further cost.

HIV/AIDS is a diagnosis which leads either to death or a lifetime of drug treatment. Expensive drugs, even with subsidies, and the survivor remains a vector. The obvious choice would be to provide palliative care, let them die, and focus on the low-cost and effective use of money for the greatest benefit.

But that would be rational and there's nothing rational about our methods of doing good.

Run, run, the seas are rising

Bob Doppelt, a local Eugene environmentalist, wrote in today's Register Guard that global warming will bring incredible pain to Lane County, which we should begin to mitigate now. The odd thing is that his final points, that we cannot cure global warming but there can be no real cure unless we all do our part, is plainly false. Lane County is insignificant in this situation. If we reduced our countial (what's the adjective for county?) carbon footprint to zero, it would have no impact and we'd go right on getting warmer. Conversely, nobody is India or China will change a policy because of what Lane County does, and those folks are actually important.

However, it was amusing as usual to listen to the fright mongering about the rising oceans. Due to the projected 4.6-foot increase, we in Florence should be concerned that the waves will begin washing away our sand.

First, let's take a deep breath and consider the past 20 millenia. Since the end of the last Ice Age, the oceans have risen tremendously. The old seashore lies far beneath the waves. Yet, in case no one has noticed, we have a lot of sand here.

The reason is simply that the Pacific carries a great deal of energy eastward which is dissipates on the coastline. Some of that energy drives sand upwards, against the natural tendency of gravity to send it downward. It isn't a smooth process and stormy seas are net removers, but summer restores sand to the beaches. If you move the beach higher by a foot, the sand will be delivered a foot higher as well.

However, neither the coastline nor the sea level is completely fixed, never has been, never will be, and anyone living next to it deals with that. The rate of change of the ocean is relatively insignificant. The same UN report which underlies the hysteria also provides contradictory graphs of actual history. For instance, in the 60 years after WW II, the oceans rose more quickly for the first 25 years than the next 35. Unfortunately for the climate warmers, the rise was more quickly in the first 25 and during that time, global temperatures fell.

Meanwhile, people along coasts are always insecure about where the ocean meets land, except for a few places where they sit comfortably on basalt. Anyone who builds so close to the shore that a few inches rise will be important during the lifetime of a structure, is nuts. Otherwise, the next builder will start a few inches higher. Hardly the greatest global crisis of the century.

America is driven by fear of litigation

America has come to believe that safety is normal and natural, and anything that in retrospect entailed danger and led to a bad outcome, is a tort. Lawyers keep telling us that this makes life better. It doesn't look like it to me.

In our local Kiwanis club, our meetings are held about a mile from the high school, where an affiliated Key Club operates. One of the members of the Key Club wants to come to the meeting this Wednesday. We need to transport her.

But here's the kicker. Kiwanis International advises each Kiwanis Club that at no time should one Kiwanis member be alone with one youth in any activity relating to Kiwanis. The includes bringing someone to a meeting. So we can't just send one member over to the high school to make the trip, for about two minutes in broad daylight. We need to get two people. If we can do it, fine. Otherwise, I guess it won't happen.

Having the two clubs interact is a positive thing, but we are so afraid of litigation that we are raise barriers that will inevitably lead to less of it. If Kiwanis ran a summer camp with a swimming pool, the insurance liability would be enormous, because some kid might be injured. The same kid, not going to camp, might be injured in his backyard pool, but then there would be no one to sue.

Some people, entrusted with the care of youth through churches, nonprofits, and so forth, have used their positions abusively, but they represent a tiny fraction of the total. Most abuse is in the home. When we insist that all organized alternatives to home activities be perfect, we ensure that there will be less of it and that kids will be at greater risk for more hours. For some reason, we can't fix this.

Perhaps it has something to do with the enormous contribution which trial lawyers make to political campaigns.

Can a seven-year-old blaspheme?

From a BBC blog comes this:

Speaking as a father I do not feel this was a well thought out plan by the teacher. However, I feel that she has done nothing wrong. The children themselves should be punished for having chosen the name of our great Prophet for a lowly bear. The teacher was misguided, whereas the children were malicious. They must be brought to answer for their blasphemy.
Abdullah Al-Zawawi, Sudan

and also this:

The children voted as well. They should lock them up too, as a lesson to anybody who insults Prophet Muhammad.
K K Djibouto, Sudan

I don't think you need to be irrationally anti-muslim to point out that there are no other religions on earth where adherents believe that non-believers, acting in private, should be criminalized for words they speak. Or that seven-year-olds should be punished for their inadequate understanding of theology. The first gentleman distances himself from the mob, but both align themselves with the second view. The first gives his full name and evidently doesn't feel embarrassed to tell the entire world.

To repeat an earlier point, Islam is a self-insulting religion. It shouldn't worry about the impact of infidels on Mohammed's good name.

Muted Muslim Outrage about Mo, The Teddy Bear

We are told that muslim leaders from Britain are trying to win the release of Gillian Gibbons from the Sudanese jail where she has been imprisoned for insulting Islam. A nice gesture, probably as much defensive as anything, since shall we say there hasn't been a lot of support for Sudan in the UK over this. It's making Islam look stupid in civilized countries and British muslims know it.

But where are the voices from Arab countries? Nothing from Egypt, where they are probably afraid of the Islamists in their midst. Nothing from Saudi, where they probably agree. Complete silence from the "secular Shiites" in Iraq, or the Palestinians, or the Syrians, or ...

In fact, the only Muslim voices getting much play in the news are those of Britons. Probably this is because Muslims there think they have no choice, while those elsewhere are afraid of the imams who seriously think Sharia law is appropriate in Sudan and wouldn't mind having it everywhere.

Christianity has had a violent and intolerant past, as has Judaism much farther back, and there are certainly preachers still with us that I wouldn't like to see control the levers of governmental power. There are doubtless tolerant Muslims. In India, the ones I've met seem all to fall in that category. The problem for Westerners is that the ones who aren't control far more of the religious power in Islam than in Christianity and they also control governments, which is not the case with Christians.

That said, Bill O'Reilly and his ilk go far overboard in warning about the threat of militant Islam. There has never been a year when America's toll from Islamic terrorism has come close to the loss of life in auto accidents, and except in 2001, it has never reached the number who die from lightning strikes. The cost of the 9/11 attack is minuscule compared with the expense we've endured since then in response to it.

The lesson of Mo the Teddy should be that while Gilliam Gibbons can soon leave, almost all Sudanese are stuck there. Thankfully, the problems of Islam are almost entirely inflicted on Muslims in Muslim countries. And secondarily, on the rest of us by people who don't understand that.