Hope is not a plan

Richard Holbrooke and USAID administrator Rajiv Shah are speaking about corruption in Afghanistan before a House appropriations subcommittee this morning. In asking about efforts to deal with the drug trade and the significant role of the poppy crop in contemporary Afghanistan, Republican representative Jerry Lewis led into his question with this fascinating line:

"Perhaps the most lasting example of socialism in the world exists between the U.S. government and agriculture."

This is simultaneously true and particularly surprising to hear from any American politician. Even among ostensibly small-government Republicans, the idea that our subsidies in support of agriculture might be anything as theoretically un-American as "socialism" is treated as an obscenity. Jerry Lewis certainly is a small-government Republican, at least as expressed on his web site, and it's actually pretty refreshing to hear him speak so clearly to the fact that our government does, indeed, run some socialist programs that everyone likes, and that work. His actual question amounted to "We run crop subsidies like crazy here. Why aren't we just buying all the poppies in Afghanistan?"

That's my paraphrase, mind you. He didn't literally say those words.

Jerry Lewis represents the 41st Congressional district, which is more or less the eastern half of San Bernardino county in California. It's not one of California's major agriculture regions, which partially explains why representative Lewis feels like he can get away with doing things like calling agricultural subsidies "socialism."

Posted by parakkum at 08:19 AM | Permalink

We're coming up on the annual meeting of the International Whaling Commission. While debate abounds on a possible deal that would legitimize whaling by countries that are currently doing so under the guise of straight-up objections or "scientific programs" in an effort to reduce overall whale kills each year. The concern, of course, is that this effectively rewards Japan, Iceland, and Norway for having ignored international whaling bans, and may lead to a push to reopen whale hunts out of other nations.

While all this chatter is going on, NPR had an interesting piece on how whale meat is not at all popular in Japan.

"We ate whale meat as children," says a shopkeeper speaking in Japanese. "But we didn't like it."

The desperate, immediate postwar period is the only time in Japanese history when whale meat was consumed nationwide.

Essentially, the freedom to hunt whales, whether there's a market or not, has been adopted as a sticking point by a fairly narrow nationalist sliver who know that it's entirely feasible for very, very small groups to cow the government and the general public.

As a consequence, the nation of Japan has been saddled with a fairly negative worldwide public image that more of its citizens are probably going to want overturned going into the future.

"It is not illegal. But I became aware that by sticking to this minor, minor issue, Japan was gradually losing its friends from the international community," Taniguchi says.

"To be blunt, I became aware that the whaling issue was one of the best ways to lose friends for Japan," he says.

Posted by parakkum at 10:08 PM | Permalink

The results of yesterday's primary election are in - you can read them here. Last night, it looked worryingly like the insurance-scam prop 17 might pass, but this morning's tally gives us the following:

Prop 13 - Cleaning up the law for seismic retrofits - Passed
Prop 14 - "Open" primary - Passed
Prop 15 - Fair elections act - Failed
Prop 16 - PG&E scam - Failed
Prop 17 - Insurance scam - Failed

Prop 13 was pretty much a gimme, and it would have been weird had it failed. I'm a little sad to see Prop 15 fail, but it was an awfully ambitious attempt at election reform, and one that was easily lobbied against.

I'm glad to see that a combined $54 million or so in corporate money did not manage to push Props 16 and 17 through, since both were very much scams meant to rewrite California law to favor two specific businesses.

Finally, Prop 14 is probably going to face legal challenges going forward from members of non first-string political parties who don't appreciate being cut out of the political process during the primary stage.

Overall, though, the costliest, most dangerous propositions did not make the cut, which is a tremendous win for the state of California.

Posted by parakkum at 12:01 PM | Permalink

Reuters reports that Scott Rothstein is facing 50 years in jail for carrying out a billion in fraud via a classic ponzi scheme. Although the first-blush response is to be glad that white-collar crime is being treated seriously - and it should be, as this is a sizable fraud that doubtless hurt many people.

That said, this is the white-collar equivalent of harsh sentencing for crack users while cocaine-snorting lawyers get mild time in club prisons. Rothstein and similar scammers are little fish compared with the significant and ongoing fraud carried out by major financial institutions. It's easy to feel that rush of satisfaction that "something is being done," but it's important to remember that there's continuing, dramatic fraud and a bevy of other crimes being carried out by major financial institutions. The big fish institutionalize their crimes, and still haven't been dealt with.

Posted by parakkum at 10:45 AM | Permalink

Proposition 17 proposes to let auto insurance companies raise or lower your rates based on your history of continuous insurance coverage. The promoters of Prop 17 describe it this way:

"Yes on 17 can save insured drivers up to $250 by eliminating a surcharge for changing insurance companies. 17 allows insured drivers to take continuous coverage discounts with them if they change insurers, just like good driver discounts."

So, is that what the proposition really does? Let's check out the actual changes it makes to the current law.

What it adds:

Auto insurers may offer discounts for having had insurance coverage continuously for some amount of time.

What it cuts:

A clause saying that Good Driver Discounts may not be taken away based on the absence of prior coverage, but that the presence of coverage should be taken into account...even if that protection has a lapse of up to two years.

So, essentially, the law used to suggest that you could qualify for a Good Driver discount even if you went for some amount of time without insurance or without that discount. The revised law would clip that suggestion and say that auto insurers could sort of do whatever they wanted with your rates. Note that all of these are advisory statements in the law, but if things every come to law suit territory, these advisory statements matter, as they speak to the intent of the law. Essentially, this proposition would alter the intent of this part of the law from "Hey, give Good Driver discounts" to "It's cool, do whatever you want when you charge people."

So who's paying for this one?

Well, Mercury Auto Insurance has kicked out a cool $8.6 million in support of this proposition. Do you suppose they think they'll be able to raise your rates if this passes?

Money opposing Prop 17 comes from a variety of private citizens as well as small contractors and taxi companies who presumably can't afford to have their insurance rates freely jacked up. Major money against Prop 17 comes from Campaign for Consumer Rights ($500,000), the Consumer Attorney's Initiative ($325,000), and the California Nurses Association ($225,000).

Given that this is solely an effort by Mercury Auto Insurance to kick up their rates, I have to recommend a No vote.

You can read the full text of the proposition here.

Posted by parakkum at 04:09 PM | Permalink

This proposition is utterly straightforward and yet completely dishonest. Here's the essential text:

"...no local government shall, at any time, incur any bonded or other indebtedness or liability in any manner or use any public funds for the construction or acquisition of facilities, works, goods, commodities, products or services to establish or expand electric delivery service, or to implement a plan to become an aggregate electricity provider, without the assent of two-thirds of the voters within the jurisdiction of the local government and two-thirds of the voters within the territory to be served..."

Wow. So some kind person put together a ballot measure to make sure that our mean city and county governments can't choose to become energy providers without a two-thirds public vote. Sweet! So who's looking out for us so well?

Pacific Gas and Electric to the tune of over $46 MILLION.

Wow, they must really love us, to spend $46 million of our own money to convince us that it's vitally important that we...wait, what did this law do again?

Right. It would make it much, much harder for your local government to break a power company's monopoly and give you choices when it comes to where and how you acquire your electricity.

Remember that you elected your local government. They do the things you elected them to do. If you want PG&E or your local power company to retain its monopoly, vote for city council members who will let them do so. There's no need to have an extra hurdle for establishing alternate power choices - you can already vote your local government into or out of power as you like.

This is PG&E attempt to smash a threat to its monopoly on power in the San Francisco Bay Area, in response to efforts by local cities to offer their citizens alternative sources of electricity.

It boils down to that - this measure is designed to stifle capitalist competition and maintain a monopoly. It's PG&E versus the free market. It's pretty darn un-American, all told.

Money spent in opposition to PG&E's proposition comes from the California Association of Realtors ($25,000), the Utility Reform Network ($10,000), the Sierra Club ($5,500), and an assortment of local voters.

PG&E's spending on this custom-tailored monopoly measure dwarfs any and all opposition. Essentially, all of California is being asked to help PG&E maintain its power monopoly over the SF Bay Area. If you live somewhere else in California and wondered why this was even on the ballot, there you go - it's one big power company trying to smash a bunch of smaller cities who are trying to offer their citizens a free market.

It's PG&E versus capitalism and democracy, and I have to come down on the side of capitalism and democracy.

You can read the full text of the proposition here.

Posted by parakkum at 03:32 PM | Permalink

The open primary has been on the wish list of many Californians for a long time now. The basic idea is that rather than registered as a Republican so you can vote for the Republican candidate in a partisan race, as the law currently requires, you would be able to vote for your favorite candidate in the primary regardless of political affiliation. The ostensible upshot of this approach would be to let you vote for the best candidate in the primary, regardless of affiliation.

Of course, that's what the general election lets you do.

Proposition 14 would change our current primary election practice as follows:

• Voters could vote for any candidate, regardless of party affiliation
• The top two vote-getters would compete in the general election
• A candidate would not have to list their party affiliation on the ballot

Let's examine these in turn.

Voting for "any" candidate

This seems fine on the face of it, except that, again, it's what we already do in the general election. If we really want to have a system where we all just vote for the best possible candidate, then we should simply dispense with primary elections entirely, except for the national presidential race. The proposed revision would effectively turn all of our partisan primaries into the actual elections, with the two-person race being a runoff, required or not.

The top two go through to the election

Again, this seems to run counter to the idea of a generalized democratic process, unless we want to simply treat the primary election as the actual election. One of the particularly noxious outcomes of this approach is that much of the time, candidates from any alternate parties won't be able to crack the final ballot. Of course, we can return to the notion that this makes the "actual" election basically a required run-off.

One of the potentially negative side effects of this procedure is that even very close runs by third and fourth candidates won't get them there. We could imagine a primary where the favored Republican candidate gets 22% of the vote, the favored Democrat gets 21% of the vote, the Green party member gets 20% of the vote, and the Libertarian candidate gets 19% of the vote...but despite this nearly even split, the Republican and Democrat make it on the final ballot and the Green and Libertarian do not.

Another potentially negative impact is in the focusing effect of this process. Primaries currently represent an opportunity for candidates within a political affiliation to duke it out over the direction their party can take in an election. With an open primary leading to the top two candidates, parties have an overriding incentive to exercise harsh party discipline and keep any dissenting voices stifled and out of the race. A natural consequence is a significant decrease in democracy within political parties.

No need to list party affiliation

Here's the quote:

"...a candidate may have his or her political party preference, or lack of political party preference, indicated upon the ballot..."

But they don't have to! That's what that 'may' means.

In other words, your favorite candidate no longer needs to say anything about his or her political affiliation on the ballot. Less transparency rarely yields more democracy.

Note that the measure would keep party affiliation requirements for certain votes. This is necessary for the presidential primaries, as both the Democrat and Republican National Committees have said that they will throw out results from an open primary.

The overall assessment is that this is a sketchy political maneuver trying to slide in disguised as an improvement in democracy. It will stifle internal party democracy, it will help shut out second-tier parties, and it will let candidates mask their affiliations on election day.

So who's spending money for or against this one?

Money for this proposition is coming from a series of venture capital firms and general contractors. Other funders include Anthem Blue Cross ($25,000), the California Chamber of Commerce ($660,000), Herbalife ($100,000), Schwarzeneggar's "California Dream Team" ($2,000,000), the CEO of Netflix ($257,000), the California Hospitls PAC ($250,000), Hewlett-Packard ($100,000), Blue Shield of California ($50,000), and the California Association of Heath Underwriters ($100,000).

I'm intrinsically concerned about any measure that has significant insurance company backing. More generally, measures with significant corporate backing tend to be about narrowing and reducing democracy, much in the way we can expect this one to do.

Significant money against this proposition has come from the Consumer Attorney's Issues PAC ($46,000), the California Teachers Association ($50,000), the American Federation of State County & Municipal Employees ($50,000), and Jeff Denham ($50,000). There is nothing surprising in seeing support from various employee unions for opposition to a measure that looks to enhance the ability of businesses to buy their way into political influence.

My overall summary is that this measure is a trick, pretending to enhance democracy but actually constraining it rather dramatically.

You can read the full text of the proposition here.

Posted by parakkum at 03:11 PM | Permalink