Coyote Blog

As mentioned in the updates to this earlier post, the Obama transition web site has, at least temporarily, purged out all the real content they had up about specific programs and legislative goals.  So, as a public service, I will help fill this information gap by re-posting an article I wrote about 9 months ago on the "Patriot Employer Act" sponsored by Barack Obama and likely a kernel for early 2009 legislative action:

Posted 2/13/2008:

It turns out, according to Barack Obama, (who hales from the party that doesn't believe in questioning anyone's patriotism) that I am not a "Patriot Employer." This is from the text of Senate Bill S. 1945 of which he is a co-sponsor (My snark is interspersed in italics): Patriot Employers are to be given tax breaks over unpatriotic employers (I presume this means that their tax rates will be raised less in an Obama presidency than those of other folks) with "patriot employers" defined as such:

(b) Patriot Employer- For purposes of subsection (a), the term`Patriot employer' means, with respect to any taxable year, any taxpayer which-

`(1) maintains its headquarters in the United States if the taxpayer has ever been headquartered in the United States,

OK, I guess I can comply with this. Though I am not sure the best way to begin an Obama "kindler gentler foreign policy" is to tell the nations of the world that we will be taxing their company's income in the US at a higher rate than our own companies.

`(2) pays at least 60 percent of each employee's health care premiums,

So the #1 determinant of patriotism is not commitment to individual rights but paying 60% of employee health care costs. I guess I am so unpatriotic

And, just from a practical standpoint, 90% of my employees are seasonal, hired for about 4 months of the year. To be patriotic, I have to pay their health care costs all year long? Also, since most of my employees are retired, they are on Medicare or an employee retirement medical plan. If they pay $0 in premiums and I pay $0 of that, do I get credit for 60%? Maybe the government can mandate a solution for zero divided by zero, like they did for the value of pi years ago

`(3) has in effect, and operates in accordance with, a policy requiring neutrality in employee organizing drives,

I presume neutrality means that in a hypothetical union drive, I do not express my opinion (and likely opposition) to said unionization drive? I am told that this also entails allowing card checks rather than hidden ballot voting. In other words, patriotism is being defined here as 1) giving up your free speech rights and 2) opposing hidden ballot voting. Uh, right. Besides, if a union organized our company, as unlikely as that would be, I would probably have to do a Francisco d'Anconia on the place.

`(4) if such taxpayer employs at least 50 employees on average during the taxable year-

`(A) maintains or increases the number of full-time workers in the United States relative to the number of full-time workers outside of the United States,

In other words, we don't want American companies growing overseas. This could also be called the "give up international market share act." This implies that it is unpatriotic for US-based Exxon to explore for oil in Asia and that it is more patriotic to let the Chinese national oil company do it. This implies that it is more patriotic for Coke to lose market share in Germany than to gain it. This means that it is more patriotic for Mattel to buy its toys in China from Chinese companies rather than run the factories themselves (and thereby be accountable themselves for product quality and working conditions).

This is beyond stupid. We LIKE to see US companies doing well overseas. If we have to import our raw materials, we feel more comfortable if it is US companies doing the extraction. Don't we? In the name of patriotism, do we really want to root for our domestic companies to fail in international markets?

`(B) compensates each employee of the taxpayer at an hourly rate (or equivalent thereof) not less than an amount equal to the Federal poverty level for a family of three for the calendar year in which the taxable year begins divided by 2,080,

90% of my workers are retired. They work for me to supplement their income, to live our in nature, and to stay busy. They need me to pay them based on the poverty line for a family of three, why? I will tell you right now that if I had to raise wages this much, most of my employees would quit. Many of them force me to give them fewer hours so they can stay under the social security limits for income. I discussed what rising minimum wages often force me to do here, but just as an illustration, a $1 an hour across the board wage increase would easily wipe out all the money I make in a year and put me into a loss position. In which case the lowered tax rate would not do me much good anyway.

`(C) provides either-

`(i) a defined contribution plan which for any plan year-

`(I) requires the employer to make nonelective contributions of at least 5 percent of compensation for each employee who is not a highly compensated employee, or

`(II) requires the employer to make matching contributions of 100 percent of the elective contributions of each employee who is not a highly compensated employee to the extent such contributions do not exceed the percentage specified by the plan (not less than 5 percent) of the employee's compensation, or

`(ii) a defined benefit plan which for any plan year requires the employer to make contributions on behalf of each employee who is not a highly compensated employee in an amount which will provide an accrued benefit under the plan for the plan year which is not less than 5 percent of the employee's compensation, and

Uh, I am not sure why it is unpatriotic for an employee to save for themselves, but I think 401k plans are a nice benefit. I would certainly offer one except for one tiny fact - ALL MY EMPLOYEES ARE ALREADY RETIRED!! They are over 65. They are drawing down on their retirement, not contributing to it.

This is at the heart of the problem with all US labor law. Folks up in Illinois write laws with a picture of a steel mill in mind, and forget that employment and employees have infinite variations in circumstances and goals.

So I am unpatriotic, huh. But if forcing companies to contribute to emplee retirement plans is patriotic, why is hiring folks once they are retired to give them extra income in retirement unpatriotic? In fact, maybe I could argue that 100% of the wages I pay go to retirement spending

`(D) provides full differential salary and insurance benefits for all National Guard and Reserve employees who are called for active duty, and

In other words, we of the government are not going to pay our employees (ie reservists on active duty) what they are worth and are not going to give them benefits, so to be patriotic you need to do it for us. We in Congress are not really very patriotic and don't support the troops, so you need to do it for us.

All kidding aside, I would do this in my company if it was applicable, but I really resent being piously told to do so by several Senators who don't really model this behavior themselves.

`(5) if such taxpayer employs less than 50 employees on average during the taxable year, either-...

blah, blah. Basically the same stuff repeated, though slightly less onerous.

Since when did patriotism equate to "rolling over to the latest AFL-CIO wish list?"

I am having a blast at the Change.gov transition site for Obama, now that I have satisfied myself it is not a fake.  Those who doubt that Obama has super-human powers should read this, from the Obama site:

The Obama-Biden plan provides affordable, accessible health care for all Americans, builds on the existing health care system, and uses existing providers, doctors and plans to implement the plan. Under the Obama-Biden plan, patients will be able to make health care decisions with their doctors, instead of being blocked by insurance company bureaucrats.

Under the plan, if you like your current health insurance, nothing changes, except your costs will go down by as much as $2,500 per year.

If you don't have health insurance, you will have a choice of new, affordable health insurance options.

Wow - so now you can go out purchase any care you want - any tests, any procedures, whatever - and no one is going to tell you no.  Everything is paid for.  You have a blank check to go spend.  And, by granting you an infinite supply of care, your cost is going to go down.  Obama is really superman, because no one else in history has figured out how to invert the supply curve or make 2x cost less than x.

You see, it's all about insurers' margins.  If we can just cut down on those fat margins, everyone can have full health care and a pony for less money.  You doctors who are worried about health care, you will have it better too:

Prevent insurers from overcharging doctors for their malpractice insurance and invest in proven strategies to reduce preventable medical errors.

All these years you thought malpractice insurance costs were high because of huge malpractice court settlements that usually bore little relationship to true malpractice, well, you were wrong.  Its because of the insurers and their margins.  We don't have to reform malpractice tort law (which is just as well since tort lawyers were so generous with donations to our campaign), we just have to get insurers to stop overcharging doctors.

To give you an idea of the absolutely huge amount of savings that can be extracted by just pounding on the insurers to give more coverage for less money, let's take a look at those outsized margins they are making.  These are net profit margins reported by Google Finance for 3Q2008 of the largest health care providers and insurers:

Cigna: 3.50%
United Health Group: 4.56%
Aetna: 3.64%
WellCare:  4.08%
Amerigroup: 3.51%
Humana 2.56%
WellPoint: 5.49%

Freaking robber barons!  Look at those outsized margins.  No wonder we have a health care crisis.  By cutting these guys margins in half, Obama expects to reduce the price of health care by 1-2%, which should be more than enough to pay for large increases in services and 30-50% price cuts.

Update: Oh, its magic.  That explains it.

Update #2: OK, the page has come down, as have most all the pages that had any kind of policy detail or promises in them.  I wish I had screen shots, but I can say everything above was cut and pasted directly form the web site.  Could I make that stuff up?  Too bad, there probably were another 10 blog posts in there somewhere.

Update:  Over the weekend, without comment, the Obama team pulled down the language below and put up new, vaguer language without the "required."  Discussion and a screen shot of the original is here.

How do you tax people with who have no money?  Why, you take their labor by force.  It worked when we dragged Africans over here against their will in the 19th century, and it can work today.  From the Obama transition site:

The Obama Administration will call on Americans to serve in order to meet the nation's challenges. President-Elect Obama will expand national service programs like AmeriCorps and Peace Corps and will create a new Classroom Corps to help teachers in underserved schools, as well as a new Health Corps, Clean Energy Corps, and Veterans Corps. Obama will call on citizens of all ages to serve America, by developing a plan to require 50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year.

So what was that about no tax increase for people making under $250,000?  Because my guess is that most high school and college kids made close to zero, but here is Obama seeking to expropriate 50-100 hours of their labor.  Sure looks like a tax to me.  By law, high school kids, by DOL rules, can work up to 1200 hours per year.  For kid that works every hour she can, this is about a 4% tax.  Kids that work less pay a higher effective tax rate, up to infinite for kids not working at all  (hey, this tax is even regressive).  Also, richer kids trying to get into top colleges will be the least affected, as they are already volunteering at a level close to this, so most of the burden of this tax will fall on the poor.

I remember when I was slammed by Obama supporters during the election when I said that his call for "universal" community service meant that he was going to mandate it.  Carefully avoiding being clearer about what he meant before the election, Obama sure has not wasted any time making sure everyone understands he is talking about government coercion here, not volunteerism.

PS- I thought this site was fake, because it was amazing to me to see Obama's intentions stated so baldly after he so strenuously avoided clarifying his position during the election.  But the Huffpo and other sites link to this site as if it is real, so I will treat it as such.

PPS - Here is Obama's pledge on taxes from the same site:

Middle class families will see their taxes cut "“ and no family making less than $250,000 will see their taxes increase. The typical middle class family will receive well over $1,000 in tax relief under the Obama plan, and will pay tax rates that are 20% lower than they faced under President Reagan. According to the Tax Policy Center, the Obama plan provides three times as much tax relief for middle class families as the McCain plan.

OK, we are not going to take more money, we are just going to take your labor directly.

Update: Radley Balko adds the chilling speech implications of such a program:

So who gets to decide what constitutes "community service"?  Who gets to decide which causes and organizations will be credit-worthy, and which ones won't?

Something tells me that you'd be more likely to get one of Obama's vouchers by going door to door for one of ACORN's living wage campaigns than, say, volunteering for a libertarian nonprofit organization that advocates against things like government-mandated community service.

Obama supporters will say, no problem, we trust Obama.  Hmm.  The folks who wrote our Constitution designed our government assuming all politicians would be knaves.  Writing laws that depend on the good intentions, fairness, correct incentives, and intellectual capacity of the government folks who run it are doomed to failure.  Would Democrats have been happy to have GWB deciding what community service their kids were forced to endure?  I doubt it.  Well, we don't live in an autarky, and sooner or later GWB's party will be back and making exactly those decisions under such a program.

I predicted it here.  Now see it here:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday that Congress is considering bailing out Detroit's Big Three automakers."We may need to make a statement of confidence in our auto industry," Pelosi told NPR this afternoon. "We're not saving those companies, we're saving an industry. We're saving an industrial technological and manufacturing base... It's about jobs in America."

I wrote why its better to let GM fail.

So what if GM dies?  Letting the GM's of the world die is one of the best possible things we can do for our economy and the wealth of our nation.  Assuming GM's DNA has a less than one multiplier, then releasing GM's assets from GM's control actually increases value.  Talented engineers, after some admittedly painful personal dislocation, find jobs designing things people want and value.  Their output has more value, which in the long run helps everyone, including themselves.

The alternative to not letting GM die is, well, Europe (and Japan).  A LOT of Europe's productive assets are locked up in a few very large corporations with close ties to the state which are not allowed to fail, which are subsidized, protected from competition, etc.  In conjunction with European laws that limit labor mobility, protecting corporate dinosaurs has locked all of Europe's most productive human and physical assets into organizations with DNA multipliers less than one.

Pelosi held a meeting Monday with Democratic leaders to consider a request from Detroit's Big Three automakers for another $25 billion in "bridge financing" to help them survive a huge downturn in auto industry.

I worked for several years for AlliedSignal engines, now Honeywell, here in Phoenix.  At our main engine plant here, we endured a couple of union organizing campaigns that both fell just shy of winning a position for the union.  A reasonable manager might expect that under the Democrat's proposed card-check system which replaces anonymous votes with open petitions, that enough hijinx could be brought to bear to put the union over the top.  I don't now if this is what they have in mind, but...

Phoenix-based Honeywell Aerospace plans to move 700 manufacturing jobs from Phoenix to Mexico and the Czech Republic.

Employees were notified Thursday of the cuts, which will begin in the second quarter of 2009 and continue for three years. Most of the job cuts are expected in the first year.

Workers who asked not to be identified said the news caught employees completely off-guard.

I think the timing just a day after election results in, and the level of surprise, are telling.  Time to get this done now, before the owners have to go cap in hand to their employees to ask permission to run their business as they see fit.  I thought this last bit they added brings a nice irony to the situation:

The announcement came two days after Barack Obama, who has promised to take a hard line with companies that move manufacturing jobs overseas, was elected the 44th U.S. president.

Whatever that means, but it does give yet another reason to get out fast.

I don't often pass on the cartoons that cross my desk, but I thought this was pretty good:

It's fascinating that our local paper, after months of positive Obama coverage, manages to express its first printed criticism of Obama on ... the day after the election.

With President-elect Barack Obama promising tougher government regulations on some sectors, including the financial markets, a handful of business leaders expressed concern Wednesday.

"The key thing is to not choke us to death with regulation," said Ioanna Morfessis, an economic-development consultant and Greater Phoenix Economic Council founding member.

With the faltering of the financial markets and a massive federal bailout this fall, Obama and congressional Democrats, who expanded their majorities with an upset electorate, have called for more federal oversight on Wall Street. Obama also has called for more regulation in the energy and health-care sectors, and Democrats could more strictly enforce environmental rules....

Morfessis said before lunch Wednesday, she received phone calls from 11 entrepreneurs concerned there would be a "higher premium for taking risks or entering new markets."

Incredibly, it looks like Proposition 1A in California is going to pass.  This act authorizes a $9 billion dollar bond issue to start a high-speed rail passenger line from the Bay Area to the LA Area. 

Why do I say "start."  Because even the line's supporters put the minimum cost at $40 billion, so the taxpayers have authorized 22% of the line.  And this is by supporters numbers.  By my numbers they have likely authorized less than 10% of the line. 

I wonder if voters knew they were authorizing either a) $40-$100 billion, in effect, rather than $9 billion; or b) a $9 billion white elephant of a rail line that ends up incomplete and going nowhere or c) something that is not really high speed rail and therefore not different from Amtrak service that already exists.  (What are you talking about Coyote, government transit people would never begin a project without full funding and leave an orphaned white elephant in place.)

The state that makes up a huge percentage of the current mortgage and
foreclosure problem seems to not have learned its lesson about
borrowing.

I am generally an optimistic guy, but I wonder if we have gotten to the point where there is a large subset of the population for whom voting is solely for the purposes of boosting self-esteem.  I feel good when I support public transit, so I vote for Prop 1A, despite the fact there is no possible way it will ever deliver any public transit.

I have updated my post on Disney World reviews and advice based on my October trip with my daughter.  Below is a picture from the trip.  I am the one in orange.

TJIC has the silver lining nailed for libertarians:

Let us not forget the good news from the election: one statist, speech limiting, freedom-agnostic candidate lost.

I'm kind of ambivalent this morning -  I knew in advance that freedom was going to lose again in this election, no matter what the outcome.

If I am depressed this morning, it is more about propositions and side issues than about the President and Congress.  Had this been a leftward shift in the county, I could have been satisfied that at least losses in freedom in one area might be substituted by gains in others  (though for me personally, changes in economic freedom tend to have far more direct and immediate impact than changes in social freedoms).

But the only pattern I could see yesterday was not leftward but government-ward.  In the same states where Democratic candidates won with economic interventionist messages, Constitutional bans on gay marriage also won by sizable majorities.   In Arizona, gay marriage was banned, an initiative to limit future tax increases was defeated, an initiative to protect health care choice was defeated, an initiative to soften last year's anti-immigrant legislation was defeated, and a payday loan ban was confirmed.  The voting in some way defies a traditional left-right explanation and is only consistent in that it was almost all the reverse of the libertarian position.  And to make the results even more irrational, nearly the biggest defeat of any ballot initiative in Arizona was for a pay increase for state legislators -- the voters seem to like government but don't trust or respect the individuals employed there.

After the last Bush election, a number of leftish folks claimed they were moving to Canada or France or wherever.  But that's the problem for libertarians in this country -- there is not place to run.  Those who want to run away to a country with a more controlling government have 180 or so choices.  Those of us who seek more freedom have approximately none.

Update: This slight paraphrase from the movie Zoolander encapsulates my thought on this election:

They're the same! Doesn't anybody notice this? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills!

I am actually less frightened by the candidates than by people who seem to get so excited by one or the other of them.

I have voted in a lot of different states, but the way we do it here in my current district seems to work well.  I got my ID checked against the voting record -- the lady may an explicit check to make sure the addresses matched.  Then I got a paper ballot and a black magic marker.  Next to each name is an arrow pointing to the name with a gap in it.  One fills in and completes the arrow pointing to the candidate one is voting for.  Then, when done, the voter takes the ballot to a machine that looks like a big shredder.  She/he feeds the ballot into the slot, and the ballot is automatically read and counted right there.  There is a LED readout on the front with a total ballot count that increments by one if the ballot is read correctly, providing a psychologically satisfying feeling that one's vote has been counted.  At the end of the day no further counting is required, and I presume they pull the vote counts out electronically or with some kind of summary report.  The ballots stay in a locked vault in the scanner and provide a paper trail if the count has to be checked later. 

By the way, no line at all.  Glad I didn't wait 2+ hours last weekend to vote early in order to avoid the lines.  One has to wonder at the decision-making ability of folks who waited hours to vote early to avoid lines that couldn't possibly be any longer on election day.  Good to see such folks out voting ;=)

Can't say this surprises me:

Seriously - couldn't you have predicted the last three in advance?

At least in economic policy, progressives like Barack Obama are deeply conservative.  They want industries, jobs, real earnings, and class positions to be stable and predictable.  No one ever believes me when I say this, but look at the policies.  Trade protectionism protects current industry incumbents and workers, at the cost of poorer future performance due to lack of competition.  Unions attempt to lock in current jobs through numerous controls on work rules, slow or stop changes in technology and work processes that have the effect of eventually castrating the company (think GM).  Socialized medicine tries to lock in the current standard of care for everyone, while reducing the possibility of future improvements.  Redistribution attempts to lock in the current standard of living for everyone while reducing the possibility of future improvements.  I discussed this more European model last week.

I like how Shannon Love summarized it in the context of Obama:

Obama has no concept of business as a creative and experimental endeavor. On some deep unconscious level, he assumes that material wealth is something akin to a natural phenomenon for which no group of humans can take credit. Therefore, he sees distribution as the only serious economic issue and ignores how politics interferes with the actual process of wealth creation.

Though to be fair, I am not sure McCain or GWB understand this either.     (or here in 2005)

I always laughed at Democrats that tried to woo me to their party.  Now I laugh at Republicans too.  MoveOn may get mileage out of attacking Bush, but he has done more for the left/liberal cause than Clinton.  Clinton had NAFTA, welfare reform, and (moderated by an aggresive Republican Congress) fiscal sanity.

Should I Vote?  Yes, probably.  Many libertarians refuse to vote.  They refuse to be party to a choice between Coke-brand statism and Pepsi-brand statism.  I sympathize, and respect their decision.  You won't hear rants form me about the beauty of the right to vote.  But I see two reasons for libertarians to vote.  One is to find ways to register our existence, to try to communicate that just because we don't riot at WTO meetings doesn't mean that a great well of dissatisfaction does not exist among us.  The second reason is ballot initiatives.  While candidate A and B may be equally bad on the freedom scale, there is often a right answer for protecting freedom in the ballot initiatives, and they need your vote.

President:  Libertarian Party Guy.  Yeah, I know his name is Bob Barr.  I don't even care.  I am casting the vote for the idea, not the guy, in hopes that the Republicans, as they rebuild themselves over the next 2 years, might notice there are some libertarians out there looking for a home.  It would be nice to be as excited about a politician as some folks are about Obama, but really, they are excited by their own vision, not his.  We really know little about him, but my sense is that his every instinct about government run counter to mine.  McCain is hardly better, perhaps going Obama one further by matching him on tax increases and economic nuttiness but also throwing in a dollop of conservative restrictions on non-economic civil liberties.  And I think many of us are exhausted by the prospect of another 4 years of foreign-policy-as-penis-extension that McCain promises.

US Congress:  John Shadegg.  If it weren't for Jeff Flake and Ron Paul, I would say Shadegg is about the best we libertarians can hope for of a major party candidate.  Not perfect (he was one of the ones who knuckled under on the second bailout vote) but pretty good.

County Sheriff and City Attorney:  Whoever is running against Joe Arpaio and Andrew Thomas.  Seriously.  I don't even know their names and I am voting for them.  I am sick and tired of Arpaio's schtick (index of articles here).  Anyone who can go on a crime sweep into the 99% all-anglo tony suburb of Fountain Hills and come out with arrestees who are 75% Hispanic is not even trying to be fair.  Andrew Thomas has had Arpaio's back for years, fighting many (losing) civil rights cases for him and prosecuting his critics in the media.

PROP. 100 Protect Our Homes:  Yes.  I am not sure this is even that relevant.  Prevents the imposition of taxes or fees on the sale of real estate  (e.g. no real estate sales tax).  Not sure if this is even a threat,  but I will usually vote to limit the power of government.

PROP. 101 Medical Choice for Arizona:  Yes.  This proposition would effectively prevent state health care laws like that in Massachusetts that require medical coverage and mandate certain types of medical coverage.  In Massachusetts, my current insurance plan (which I pay for and did a lot of research to uncover) is illegal (because it has a higher deductible that politicians want to allow).

PROP. 102 Marriage:  Big No.  I don't expect to change anyone's mind on this, but I am not in the least threatened by civil marriages of gays, and in fact have a number of friends and family members who have taken advantage of the brief window of opportunity in California to get married to their partner.  I am not sure how this can be a threat to me -- last I checked, my marriage is as strong today as it was before gay marriage was allowed.  This issue is sort of the conservative equivalent of the left's obsession with income inequality.  Conservatives tell folks (rightly) that they should be concerned with their own quality of life and not feel somehow worse if there are people who are wealthier.  But, then they tell us all our marriages are going to be worse because somebody over there who we never will meet is going to marry someone of the same sex.

PROP. 105 Majority Rules "” Let the People Decide:  Haven't Decided.  This is a weird one.  This would require propositions raising taxes to be passed only if the "yes" votes they receive equate to 50+% of the total registered voting population, not just of the people who voted that day.  Basically, it makes it impossible to have tax increases in propositions, which I like.  But it is a terrible precedent -- this is simply not how we count elections.  In particular, the "registered voter" number is almost meaningless.  Requiring a super-majority of those voting would be much better law.  I may well vote yes, because I suspect the next 2 years are going to be a heyday of taxation, but I will sort of feel guilty about it.

PROP. 200 Payday Loan Reform Act.  Yes.  Would un-ban payday loan companies in Arizona.  I have always supported choice, even for the poor and unsophisticated.  Payday loans are expensive, but as we have learned from subprime loans, maybe credit to borrowers with no income or assets should be expensive.  More here.

PROP. 201 Homeowner's Bill of Rights.  No.  Created by a pissed off union in a fit of pique as an FU to homebuilders.  Mandates decade-long warranties on homes, and offers a myriad of opportunities for trial lawyer hijinx.  And what problem is it solving?

PROP. 202 Stop Illegal Hiring Act.  Yes, I think.  Again, this is one of those confusingly worded initiates that like to use triple negatives.  But I believe it is a softening of the Immigration / hiring law that I have long opposed.  (related:  E-Verify reviewed here) 

PROP. 300 State Legislators' Salaries.  No.  Changed my mind on this.  At first, I thought current salaries were unreasonably low.  But now I think that they should all go out and get real jobs, and make the legislature part-time.  Maybe they'll meet less often.

Hostess Twinkies are becoming the latest product remade and repackaged into 100-calorie snack packs

No word on how small they will be.  This had to be one of the great marketing blinding glimpses of the obvious:

Hostess launched its 100 calorie cupcakes in 2007, but held off on making a version of the Twinkie because the product was a favorite overall, not just among those looking for low-cal options

Get out of town.  Who would have thought that Twinkies were not a favorite for those looking for low-cal options.

I am happy to see that Barack Obama is not entirely in reality-avoidance mode with his climate policy:

You know, when I was asked earlier about the issue of coal, uh, you know "” Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I'm capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it "” whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.

To folks with any kind of background in economics, this has to be the case.  Reducing the total output of current power plants, and thereby obsoleting all that investment and squeezing supply, at least in the medium term until new capacity of other types can be built, can only lead to a) rationing through blackouts or b) higher prices to ration the shorter supply.  The cost of option a is so high that price is going to have to be the rationing mechanism.  Skyrocket is actually pretty close to what would happen to rates if Obama sticks by his plan of limiting greenhouse gasses to 1990 or earlier levels.  (His explanation is actually pretty poor for the mechanism - pass-through of retrofit costs would likely be minor to the supply / demand balancing effect of shaving 20/30% off supply in a short period of time.

I think a frank discussion of the dangers of a "pollutant" vs. the cost of abatement is a fair one.  I personally think the threat of CO2 is wildly exaggerated, and the cost of doubling or tripling electricity costs will hurt Americans far worse than a few tenths of a degree of warming.

But don't get too excited.  Obama is still living in economic never-never land on other related issues:

yes, there is going to be some increase in electricity rates on the front end, but that over the long term, because of combinations of more efficient energy usage, changing lightbulbs and more efficient appliance, but also technology improving how we can produce clean energy, the economy would benefit.

Sorry, but this is way wrong.  Obsoleting perfectly good infrastructure and wholesale replacing it with trillions of dollars of new infrastructure does not help the economy any more than if a massive earthquake had destroyed the plants.  This is the broken windows fallacy on steroids.  The only benefit from all this cost will be whatever climate benefit we accrue from the CO2 reduction.  For there to be such a benefit, one must assume a) substantial future warming and b) that the current temperature happens to be the best possible temperature we could ever be at.  But that, as they say, is a whole other blog.

I am getting used to the new Typepad editor, but two issues still really cause me to question the sanity of the developers, particularly since this roll out has been going on since June:

• I cannot believe that a blogging engine -- not a generic text editor or HTML editor, but a purpose built blogging engine -- would eliminate the blockquote functionality from the editor.  Have these guys ever, you know, actually read a blog or two?  We bloggers live off block quotes.
• How long has the computing spelling checking been around?  A couple of decades?  About 10 minutes into that 20 year span, developers learned from users that in addition to a "skip" button, they probably needed a "skip all" button.  Because if you write a 5000 word post on the banking crisis and use the "Bernanke" in that post 100 times, it is going to be real boring hitting "skip" 100 times in the spell check rather than "skip all" or even better "add to dictionary."  But, the rocket scientists at Typepad did indeed only put in a "skip" option, a bit like Ford building a car in which the windows won't roll down.

The ethanol industry is struggling and a number of players are facing bankrupcy:

The ethanol industry built tremendous production and transportation infrastructure. It was a "if we build it, they will come" strategy.

Then, the world fell apart. Prices for gas at the pump are back down well below $3 instead of being headed toward $5 as they were in August.

Verasun says it will keep operating, but common shareholders have been crushed to death. The stock was at nearly $18 late last year. Now it is under $.40.

The only quibble I have is in the first sentence.  I would would have written the ethanol strategy as "If we seek rents, they will come."

Jack Tapper of ABC list all of the goodies promised by Obama in just one stump speech.  The list is really staggering, even more so than the usual political BS.  It is way to long to excerpt here.  There are so many outrageous ones, its hard for me to even pick a favorite.  But here are a few good ones:

"eliminate the oil we import from the Middle East in 10 years"

Uh, right.  We are going to completely eliminate half the fuel coming into the economy in 10 years.

"lower premiums" for those who already have health insurance;... "end discrimination by insurance companies to the sick and those who need care the most";

Perfect.  We are going to prevent insurance companies from dong any risk management, we are going to pile on even more "must cover" rules for all kinds of crap from acupuncture to mental health, and by doing so we are going to lower premiums.

This may be my favorite, though:

"reopen old factories, old plants, to build solar panels, and wind turbines"

LOL.  Barack is going to open some of those old GM plants in Flint, Michigan and build solar panels.  Seriously, is this a rhetorical flourish or does he really believe that factories are generic production facilities that can make anything, kind of like those little buildings you make in an RTS?

Update: And if you think that voters just discount all this stuff, don't miss this video of Obama supporters talking about the free gas and house she is going to get.

By the way, none of this will push me to vote for McCain.  McCain promises all kinds of crazy stuff too, its just less compelling stuff to voters.   He is not losing because he is promising less -- I think he is losing because Obama has a better grasp of what expensive shit people want to be promised than does McCain.

From a couple of years ago

Rather than carve them, I peeled away the outer skin and thinned it in the land areas, creating this effect.

There is a quote from Robert Redford in Three Days of the Condor** that honestly reflects my opinion on the topic of leaving the US  (Redford is Joe Turner, running away from the CIA, while Joubert is an assassin-for-hire):

Turner: I'd like to go back to New York.

Joubert: You have not much future there. It will happen this
way. You may be walking. Maybe the first sunny day of the spring. And a
car will slow beside you, and a door will open, and someone you know,
maybe even trust, will get out of the car. And he will smile, a
becoming smile. But he will leave open the door of the car and offer to
give you a lift.

Turner: You seem to understand it all so well. What would you suggest?

Joubert: Personally, I prefer Europe.

Turner: Europe?

Joubert: Yes. Well, the fact is, what I do is not a bad occupation. Someone is always willing to pay.

Turner: I would find it"¦ tiring.

Joubert: Oh, no "” it's quite restful. It's"¦ almost peaceful.
No need to believe in either side, or any side. There is no cause.
There's only yourself. The belief is in your own precision.

Turner: I was born in the United States, Joubert. I miss it when I'm away too long.

Joubert: A pity.

Turner: I don't think so.

A great line, particularly in a movie steeped in cold war weariness.  Anyway, I was listening to some rant on NPR about leaving the US if McCain won the election, and I asked myself if I had to leave the US, what would be my rank order of countries to which I might move.  My list is highly influenced by language (at 46 I hardly feel like learning a new language) and by countries of which I am knowledgeable.  Here is what I came up with:

1. Australia
2. Bermuda
3. UK
4. Canada
5. Singapore
6. the Netherlands
7. Switzerland
8. Spain
9. Germany / Austria
10. Costa Rica

Here are some notes on the list, as well as some explanations of countries left off:

• I have yet to meet an American who did not enjoy living in Australia (and many long to go back).  I came within about 5 minutes of living in Bermuda about seven years ago.  I have always liked the UK and have spent many summers there.
• Ireland might belong high on the list, but I have never been there and am not that familiar with it.  But my sense is that if I really were to research it, Ireland would make the top 5.  I could also probably have rattled off a number of other British island colonies, but kept it to Bermuda.
• Canada ... its like a whole other state   (this is a line I uttered at business school once, echoing the then-current "Texas ... its like a whole other country" advertising campaign.  It was not well-recieved by our northern neighbors.  I still think a few Canadians are trying to hunt me down up there
• Been to Singapore a few times.  An odd place, but certainly a liveable one.  Last gasp of the English speaking choices on the list.
• Netherlands and Switzerland are both fairly capitalist-friendly nations with good support for a displaced English speaker.  I have spent more time with the Dutch, so it is a bit higher, but Switzerland is freaking gorgeous.
• Spain is on the list mostly as a language play.  Not a huge fan of the Spanish government, but I speak the language well enough to pick it up quickly.  Good beaches, and the south coast has many of the appeals of Provence without the prices (and the French).  A couple of years ago this probably would have been Argentina.  I really loved Argentina when I was there, but I am scared a bit by the current political and economic climate.
• I like Austria, and Germany is OK.  Not America but perfectly reasonable places to live.
• If I am really running not just form the US but the first world in general, I might pick Costa Rica.  A pretty good government, particularly for Latin America, beautiful, and plenty of places to be secluded (and/or hide, if the need were to arise).
• I considered the Czech Republic.  Prague seems to be the white-hot destination for American tourists, and they certainly know their beer.  But I suspect that Eastern Europe has several more decades of work before the every day conveniences and creature comforts to which I have become accustomed in the US are prolific there.
• Scandinavia is too freaking cold.  Maybe if I were single I might find some appealing reasons to reconsider...
• There may be some country like Monaco that would suit me perfectly but of which I am wholly unfamiliar.

Readers are welcome to propose their own priorities in the comments.

** Postscript: Three Days of the Condor is one of my favorites, for a couple of reasons.  First, I always loved Faye Dunaway.  Second, and more important, I like thrillers that have a more languid pace.  I know that sounds weird to say, and if I were a film critic I might have the right words, but there is something about the music and the editing and the pacing that almost stands in contrast to the urgencies of the plot itself.  Despite being on the run through the movie, Redford never actually runs.  No car chases either.  Sort of the antonym to the shaky rapid-cut camera action of, say, the Bourne movies.  Other movies I would put in this same category are LA Confidential (maybe my favorite movie) and perhaps the newer version of the Thomas Crowne Affair. I might put Chinatown on this list too, but then since 3 of the 4 would include Dunaway, one might think my first rather than my second criteria was driving the list.

By the way, even action movies could learn something from this.  The first Indiana Jones movie was great in part because the action scenes were interspersed with quiet scenes.  The audience gets to rest from time to time, and the action is highlighted by the contrast.  You can even have some token character development.  Later Indiana Jones movies fell into the trap of going for non-stop adrenalin.

Apparently, even before the first train starts carrying passengers (sometime in December), Phoenix's new light rail system is already forcing bus fares up.  (via a reader)

Before the Valley's light-rail service ever begins, the cost to ride the train and city buses may be headed up.

The issue of raising the Valley's regional fare policy has been brewing for several months as transit officials have struggled to cover
rising gas prices and other increased operation costs, said Greg Jordan, Tempe's transit administrator. Transit and light-rail costs are covered by a half-cent sales tax, which has fallen over the past year.

The real issue is that transit agencies are generally given a fixed pot of money for operating subsidies (in this case the proceeds of a half-cent sales tax) and rail tends to take a hugely disproportionate share of that money, starving out less sexy but more practical and cost-effective bus systems.  Even in the that wet dream of rail planners, Portland:

In fact, 9.8 percent of Portland-area commuters took transit to work before the region build light rail. Today it is just 7.6 percent. In a story repeated in numerous cities that have built rail lines, rail cost overruns forced the city to raise bus fares and reduce bus service. That's a success?

This is even more likely in Phoenix, where buses make far more financial sense than rail, given our very low densities, lack of a real downtown area, and numerous commuting routes.  In fact, not only is it predictable, but I predicted it:

Rail makes zero sense in a city like Phoenix.  All this will do is create a financial black hole into which we shift all of our bus money, so the city will inevitably end up with a worse transportation system, not a better one.  Cities that build light rail almost always experience a reduction in total transit use (even the great God of planners Portland) for just this reason - budgets are limited, so since rail costs so much more per passenger, other transit is cut back.   But the pictures of the train will look pretty in the visitor's guide.

Yesterday I posted on the irony that in the name of "change" and "dynamism," the Democrats are pushing for what basically is an inherently more conservative (little-c), less dynamic economic system that mirrors that of many continental European countries.

Daniel, an American reader who does quite a bit of work in Europe, wrote me:

1) The static nature of the Euro mentality assigns a high cost to ... people ... who try to break the mold. Cost of failure is relatively high. In Italy if your small business declares bankruptcy, you forfeit the right to vote.

2) In Germany, workers are sorted at an early age into "blue collar schools" and "professional schools". I know from my youth, if I had grown up in Germany instead of America, I probably would not be a consultant but more like a janitor (not that there is anything wrong with janitors...).

3) Social services in Europe are hit and miss. In Germany, many people carry private insurance despite the availability of public insurance because of the lack of quality.

4) (this may be a good thing) Italian school children go through a less harsh puberty than American kids. Society has drilled into them that it's not cool to be different, so there are less cliques. When I share my experiences in school with most Europeans they usually make some snide remark about how growing up in a battle zone (primary school) has caused the Iraq war.

5) Highly skilled workers are in many cases no better paid than unskilled staff. In the south of Italy a senior programmer may make 2K euros per month. A secretary might make 1.5K a month. If it weren't for most Europeans fear of moving to new cities, there would be no programmers to hire.

6) Speaking of being afraid to move, many Europeans find the thought of moving to a different city complete alien concept.

7) Life in Euro is a much more comfortable than in America *if* you are European. If you are an immigrant, forget it. After two years of pitching companies in the South of Italy, I have never seen a black person be more than a street side vendor of trinkets. In Italy, there is an unsaid rule that you must be an Italian to ever be a professional.

8) Don't get me started on France.

9) It is illegal for a business to stay open more than it's quota in most European countries. It is illegal to operate a barber shop on Mondays.

Recent circulation numbers showing continued, substantial declines of traditional newspapers give me an excuse to make a point I have wanted to make for some time. 

I am a frequent critic of newspapers.  I think they have lost focus on the hard-hitting investigative journalism which used to be their highest and best calling, instead considering reiteration of an activist's press release sufficient to check the journalism box on some particular issue.  When investigative reporting does occur, it almost always is focused to support the dominant or politically correct outcome, rather than to really challenge conventional wisdom.   Media coverage of any technical issue involving science or statistics or economics is often awful, in large part because journalism is too often the default educational path of folks who want to avoid numbers.  Any time I have been on the inside of some issue receiving coverage, I have generally been astounded by how little the print descriptions matched reality.  Now that I am interviewed more as a source for articles, I never think my views are well-quoted (though that may be my fault for not talking in sound bites).  And, like many, I get irritated that the media's arrogance and self-referential reporting seems to increase in direct proportion to their drop in circulation.

All that being said, the world without healthy newspapers is a bad thing. 

First, we bloggers can blather on all day about being the new media, but with the exception of a few folks like Radley Balko, we're all editorial writers, not reporters  (I consider my role at Climate-Skeptic.com to be more like journalism, but only because there is such a glaring hole on that topic in traditional media).  I couldn't do what I do here, at least on this particular blog, without the New York Times and the Washington Post.  I'm a remora feeding on their scraps.  I can't bring down the big fish by myself, I can only feed on the bits they miss.

Second, and perhaps more important in this world of proposed reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, print media is the mode of speech best protected by the First Ammendment.  This isn't the way it should be -- all speech should be equal -- but in reality goofy regulatory regimes for radio, TV, and even the Internet all offer the government leverage points for speech control they don't have with the print media.  It's why half the dystopic sci fi novels out there have a world dominated by TV -- because that is where government has the most control of speech.

So here's hoping you guys at the NY Times get your act together.