Category Archives: Politics

100 Years Too Long

On election day let’s gather round as Californians and celebrate for a moment how important our voices are and that the be heard. How important our massive crop of electoral votes are and how influential they are in selecting the next leader of the Free World. Let’s also consider whether any of that is the case.

Many have argued that the electoral college system undervalues the votes of people in highly-populated states, with small (low-population) states having more electors per capita than large (high-population) states. That’s not what I’m talking about here. I’m talking about the actual effect of how California uses our piece of the pie. To take an arbitrary round number, let’s take a look back at the past 25 presidential contests from 1916 to 2016. A full century of results that encompass many shifts in norms, changes in party policies, and societal development. Pardon the table.

YearWinnerOur PickOur VotesWinning Margin
1916WilsonWilson1323
1920HardingHarding13263
1924CoolidgeCoolidge13246
1928HooverHoover13357
1932RooseveltRoosevelt22413
1936RooseveltRoosevelt22515
1940RooseveltRoosevelt22367
1944RooseveltRoosevelt25333
1948TrumanTruman25114
1952EisenhowerEisenhower32353
1956EisenhowerEisenhower32384
1960KennedyNixon3284
1964JohnsonJohnson40434
1968NixonNixon40110
1972NixonNixon45503
1976CarterFord4557
1980ReaganReagan45440
1984ReaganReagan47512
1988H.W. BushH.W. Bush47315
1992B. ClintonB. Clinton54202
1996B. ClintonB. Clinton54220
2000W. BushGore545
2004W. BushKerry5535
2008ObamaObama55192
2012ObamaObama55126
2016trumpH. Clinton5577

A pattern emerges. For every election in which California’s votes went to the winner, the race was won by more electoral votes than California contributed. In each case, had California simply not selected our electors the results would have stood.

In which of those years would flipping California have changed the outcome? Flipping a state is a big deal; not only do you deny your opponent those electors but you gain them yourself. Remove from consideration the elections that didn’t go with California (1960, 1976, 2000, 2004, and 2016). Those races would have gone the same way with the winner getting extra votes. If California had flipped in 1916 Charles Evan Hughes would have been elected. If we had flipped in 1976 Gerald Ford would have been re-elected.

I propose we Californians calm down a bit about how the presidential vote gets tallied this year and in the foreseeable future. For presidential election purposes we are a protectorate, a non-voting territory that acts as a campaign piggy bank and little more. This isn’t a partisan matter. Republicans and Democrats alike have no cause to care about your vote at the top of the ticket.

The Responsibilities of the Powerful

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In light of all the talk about violence involving police officers recently, let’s fire up the way-back machine and look at what Ramon Llull had to say back in the 13th century about the people who were expected to wield the government’s monopoly on force:

“Item, office of knighthood is to maintain and defend widows, maidens, fatherless and motherless bairns, and poor miserable persons and pitiable, and to help the weak against the stark, and the pure against the rich; for oft-times sick folk are, by more stark than they, beaten and robbed, and their goods taken, and put to destruction and poverty, for fault of power and defence.

“For right as the hewing axe is ordained to cut down trees that hinder ploughing of lands, and carts and chariots and merchandises to pass through the forests, so is the sword of knighthood ordained to cut away and destroy the wicked unworthy weeds and vines of thorns of evil men that hinders labourers, merchants, traitors to travel through the world which is as a forest and wilderness when it is not well tended; of the which evil men should be weeded out by knights, keepers of the law, that good men might live in shelter; and he that is a knight, and does not this, but does even the contrary, should be taken by the prince, or by other worthy, faithful, and honourable knights, and put till dead.

“For when a knight is a reaver, or a thief, or a traitor or a murderer, or a lollard, schismatic or heretic, or in such crimes openly known and proved, then he is unworthy to live, but to be punished in example of others that defoul that most noble and worthy order and abuse it against the points and the properties of that order.”

Hat tip to Gilbert of Hay by way of False Machine for the translation.

This all predates the Lockean notion of the social contract, but strikes me as largely compatible with it. Society-in-general delegates a portion of its collective power to a few individuals who in turn promise to shoulder a greater portion of society’s responsibilities. That nice strong man in blue is supposed to protect those who cannot protect themselves. If he takes to beating and robbing the people, taking their goods and destroying their property, it is of paramount importance that the other men in blue stop him, that they publicly stop him, punish him, and show that the public’s trust is well-placed. Otherwise the social contract is in breach and the public must seek remedy.

Pondering Measure Q

If there’s one item on my November ballot that has rustled my jimmies, it has to be Santa Rosa’s Measure Q. Q proposes to take the seven-member city council, traditionally elected as at-large representatives of the entire city, and divvy them up into separate districts to represent the various neighborhoods and constituencies of various parts of town. They will continue to select a mayor from among themselves, and will continue to server four-year terms.

There are two leading arguments that I have seen put forward by the “no” camp here, both in the form of newspaper articles and push-polls I’ve received at home. Quoted from yesterday’s Press Democrat:

First of all, Measure Q takes away 85 percent of your current votes for members of the City Council. This stifles your political voice, not enhances it as proponents claim.

Second, you now have the ability to vote for all seven council members. If you vote for Measure Q (district elections), you will not be able to vote for six other council members. Consequently those six will no longer be accountable to you. This undermines your influence as a citizen, not enlarges it as the proponents claim.

The stickler in me that perks up whenever numbers come into play immediately sees this as a steaming pile of bullshit. If you reduce my ability to vote for city council members from 7 members to one member, that leaves me with a little over 14% of my number of voted-for council members. So your two arguments for me are that I only get 1/7th of the power and furthermore, in addition to that, I get my voting power reduced by 85%? That’s just repeating one argument twice. This may be nit-picking, but I don’t appreciate being spoken to with those kind of patronizing smokescreen tactics when I’m entrusted with legislative responsibility over my community at the polls.

The more substantial problem with this line of reasoning is that while a resident of Santa Rosa has normally been able to vote for candidates for all seven Council positions, the 2010 census shows my vote is competing with some 167,814 other opinions. So overall I have 7/167815ths of a say in who our representatives are. Split that up into districts as proposed by Measure Q and my voting power becomes, ostensibly, 1/23973rd. No change in the prima facia potency of my ballot. Instead of 7 extremely-watered-down votes, I get one somewhat-less-watered-down vote.

To get a little more practical, in 2008 there were eleven candidates running for four open positions. In 2010 there were seven candidates running for three open positions, some of whom also ran in 2008. In 2012 there are seven candidates contending for four open positions. It’s pretty clear that we don’t have a rough time scrounging up two or more candidates for every open position under the existing system. I consider that a good thing, your mileage may vary.

Trying to stay practical, different segments of the population vote at different rates. Elderly, educated white people are more likely to vote than younger minorities with less education. There are a thousand demographic divisions one could look at, but generally speaking the portions of the population most likely to vote, and thus more likely to see their interests reflected in the City Council Elections tend to be clustered in a section of town that can be broadly describes as the north-east quarter. Most of our Council members in recent decades hail from that area. People who live in the North-west are more likely to vote than their counterparts in the less affluent South-west, and would see their voting power decreased somewhat. Meanwhile everybody else that is already in the habit of casting a ballot will see their per-capita voting power increase.

Regarding the ancillary argument that district representation would lead to intra-Council division and strife, delaying projects that are in the whole city’s interest, it seems to me this has always been the case and likely always will be. Many cities use district representatives successfully, and there is little indication that at-large representation is of any benefit at all.

As somebody who doesn’t live in a bastion of high election participation, Measure Q appears to be in my self interest.

Full text of Measure Q (PDF)

Bickering about tax fairness is dumb

Listening to the radio earlier today, somebody was ridiculing Mitt Romney for claiming in a Univision interview that he had given back nearly 50% back to the community, and that his last two years of taxes indicated this. There were a few points made by the radio host that break down as follows:

  • He didn’t really release two years of his taxes because he hasn’t filed for 2011 yet and only released an estimate for that tax year.
  • His net personal tax rate for 2010 was 13.9%.
  • His charitable contributions were “over 15%.”
  • At one point in the interview he said he gave back about 40% back to the community, based on 13.9% plus 15%. That’s only 29.9% total.
  • His claim that the corporate tax rate of 35% is the reason capital gains taxes are lower than income taxes is spurious.
  • Counting the corporate tax rate of 35% he figures he gave back about 50% of his profits on average for the past two years.

Well, each of those points has some degree of merit and certain degree of bullshit. Clearly the point about giving back about 40% was him confusing some numbers. Romney would have to have been taking something else into account to get to that number. As for the 50% business, let’s take a look at two fairly naive theoretical situations:

In one case, Romney is a sole proprietor of a business, in the other Romney is a shareholder in a corporation. In one case all his profits are income, in the other case his profits are capital gains. For the sake of argument, let’s pretend that the corporation really pays 35% in taxes:

Romney-as-income Romney-as-corporation
Total Profit $100,000 $100,000
Tithe $(10,000) $(10,000)
Personal Income Tax $(18,824)
Social Security $(12,400)
Corporate Income Tax $(35,000)
Capital Gains Tax $(8,250)
Total Tax Paid $(31,224) $(43,250)
Cash Remaining $58,776 $46,750

That’s a naive breakdown, as it doesn’t take into account several thousand pages of tax code, personal exemptions and deductions aside from a 10% tithe to the Church of Latter Day Saints. Personal income tax is at a lower rate than corporate income tax. Social security tax (which you have to double-up on if self-employed because normally your employer has to match what you see on your pay stub) is lower than the capital gains tax, but capital gains is taxed on dividends and such, which are after taxes so it’s 15% of the 65% post-tax corporate income.

At the $100,000 scale, corporate taxes don’t look quite so drastically unfair, do they? The same dollar value of goods or services were sold, and the liability-limiting corporate setup ostensibly pays more in taxes. And yeah, it works out to about 50%. That’s what I think of as the theoretical tax rate that Romney’s accountant starts with, and that guy’s job is to game it down in his client’s favor.

Ramp that scale up to, say, $20,000,000 instead and it’s a bit different. At the personal level Social Security tops off a little over the $100,000 mark, whereas the capital gains and corporate tax rates have no cap. Several thousand pages of tax codes and subsidies and other shenanigans render hypothetical situations like this moot anyway.

“How much did you give back?” is a loaded question that can take into account a lot of things. Does the questioner mean just Federal Income Tax? All federal taxes? Does that count park fees? Taxes on airfare? On your phone bill? Does it count state taxes? If so, is it just state income tax, or do property and parcel taxes count? Or minimum usage fees from municipal utilities? There are dozens of variations built into that seemingly-simple question. Playing “gotcha” about the specific number Romney cites about how much of his money he kicks back to society-at-large (as opposed to simply spending on himself, his friends, and his family) serves little purpose in illuminating the public about important political decisions in the next few months.

Why the Debt Ceiling doesn't matter

There’s been a lot of hubbub lately about the threat of the United States government defaulting on its loans and other financial commitments because congress hasn’t raised the cap on the maximum amount it is allowed to be in debt by law. Scary thoughts like Social Security checks not going on out, Treasury bonds not being paid out upon maturity, Veteran’s Administration hospitals closing their doors, and other calamaties have been put forward as possible repercussions of this political fuss. Here is, quite simply, why this shouldn’t be a problem even if Congress can’t get its act together in the next week or so:

From the U.S. Constitution:

Article. VI.

All Debts contracted and Engagements entered into, before the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be as valid against the United States under this Constitution, as under the Confederation.

This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

Supreme law of the land means that other laws, regulations, and practices are subordinate to the Constitution, and only laws that are consistent with it are valid. Dig down a little further and you find that it has been amended several times. Of particular interest these days is the 14th time it was amended:

AMENDMENT XIV
Passed by Congress June 13, 1866. Ratified July 9, 1868.

Section 1.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Section 2.
Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice-President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age,* and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Section 3.
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Section 4.
The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.

Section 5.
The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 4 was meant to distance the Union from debts incurred by the Confederacy leading up to and during the U.S. Civil War, but starts with a clear affirmation that the United States federal government will and must meet any and all of its financial commitments.

In the light of the 14th amendment, the debt ceiling is not valid under Article 6 of the Constitution. If the Republicans want to cut spending, they should past more austere budgets, and shame on President Obama for playing along with the scare-mongering.

Blurring the Lines with Human Shields

Recently there has been a lot of talk about civilian casualties in the Libyan civil war. Terms like “indiscriminate shelling” are thrown about, painting Muammar Gadhafi’s troops as abject villains. I have no intention of painting them as otherwise, but something keeps coming to mind when I read such reports: why are we only hearing about indiscriminate shelling in rebel-held towns?

To turn this situation on its head, let us look at recent press regarding reform protests in Syria:

Syrian security forces fired bullets and tear gas Friday on pro-democracy demonstrations across the country, killing at least 49 people — including a young boy — in the bloodiest day of the uprising against President Bashar Assad’s authoritarian regime, witnesses and a human rights group said.

49 people killed? That’s terrible. Including a young boy? Those monsters! How could they… wait a minute, hold up there. Who the heck brought a young boy to a protest against a brutally-repressive dictatorship? Against a regime headed by the son of a man that reputedly massacred 10,000 to 40,000 people under similar circumstances in 1982? The Syrian security forces may well be callous, inhuman monsters to fire on a crowd of protesters, but somebody was seriously negligent to let their son attend such a thing. I’m not blaming the victim here, I’m just assigning a fraction of the blame to the people that were supposed to be responsible for him.

Going back to Libya, it seems that rebels have holed up in a close-quarters situation that exposes the local civilians to an undue amount of risk. If they had taken up positions outside the city, Gadhafi’s forces probably wouldn’t be attacking the city. They are using the city and its inhabitants as a shield, in hopes of staying the hands of their adversaries and stirring up the international community against their dictator’s atrocities.

A bit from Al Jazeera on this subject that caught my eye:

Marine General James Cartwright, vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the drones can help counteract the pro-Gaddafi forces’ tactic of travelling in civilian vehicles that make it difficult to distinguish them from rebel forces.

Those dastardly pro-Gadhafi jerks are using civilian vehicles to sneak out of the city. Because it makes them look like… Yeah, it makes them look like rebels. Because the rebels are hiding themselves amongst the civilians. Which makes the civilians look like targets.

Let’s keep in mind that both sides had a hand in this.

Another reason we could make it

Not a sufficient or even sensible reason for California to just break off from the United States entirely, but something I realized last night: California has more teams in the NHL playoffs than Canada does. Canada has 33.3 million people, California has about 37 million. Of course, Canada has 225,000 registered minor players in Ontario compared to California’s measly 4,300.

Of the three NHL teams located in California,

  • The Ducks have 11 Canadian players
  • The Kings have 11 Canadian players
  • The Sharks have 18 Canadian players

Conversely,

  • The Duck have 0 Californian players
  • The Kings have 0 Californian players
  • The Sharks have 0 Californian players

While not as self-sufficient as Minnesota or Massachusetts at providing our own hockey players, I think California has demonstrated a more-than-adequate ability to import high-quality Canadians to supply all of our domestic puck-chasing needs.

Four More Years

Due to the 22nd Amendment to the United States Constitution, we didn’t get a chance to re-elect George W. Bush and carry on his proud stewardship of our nation. Happily, we were able to replace him with a younger, healthier, more ethnic version to carry on his legacy. Looking at a few key policy matters that factored in to my personal voting decisions back in 2008, I see a bit of a pattern forming:

Subject G.W. Bush B.H. Obama
Tax breaks for the stupendously wealthy Yes Yes
Withdrawal date for Iraq Dec 31, 2011

Maybe Later
Occupation of Afghanistan Indefinite Indefinite
Airstrikes in Pakistan 42 times About 200 times
Airstrikes in Yemen Maybe once in 2002 Yes
Airstrikes in Somalia Yes Probably
Illegal detentions in Guantanamo Bay Started it Yes
Illegal wiretapping of U.S. citizens Yes Voted for it
High-level investigation of war crimes Haha, no We don’t want to look back
Says we don’t torture Not torture, honest Not any more, honest
Bombing Libya Renewed diplomacy Dropping bombs like your moms
Can pronounce “nuclear” Nuke-u-ler Nuclear

I write this largely because of my disappointment in Mr. Obama’s speech yesterday. This man used to teach constitutional law, and now seems to think that Article 1, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution can be delegated indefinitely and for whatever whimsical purposed the president likes, that the 4th and 6th Amendments simply do not apply to anybody, and that Article 4 doesn’t make treaties like the Geneva Accords legally binding upon the U.S. government.

Miss you yet, George? I hardly noticed you were gone.

Hyperinflation and You

As somebody who listens to talk radio and watches news networks on a regular basis, I see a lot of ads from folks like Monex or Goldline. The basic premise is supported by the echo-machine narratives told by the newscasters and pundits, in a kind of disinformation kabuki dance. It goes like this:

The U.S. federal government runs at a deficit. The deficit currently stands at a very large number and contributes greatly to an even larger federal debt. Because the federal government owes this money in U.S. Dollars and the federal government can print additional money to honor these debts, the existence of this debt devalues the money itself. As the value of a dollar decreases, any asset that is defined strictly in terms of dollars would also decrease in value, so buy gold and be wealthy after the United States crumbles into financial oblivion. Gold is presented as both a supremely secure value and a good yield.

This is a pretty attractive chain of reasoning, if only it all added up that way. Rather than listen to the radio and TV pundits (whose paychecks are made possible by advertising from these gold-peddlers), let’s cast about looking for some other source of financial expertise. Let’s keep in mind that everybody has their interests and factors that influence what they say about markets. How about we don’t look at what anybody says about hyperinflation and the price of gold, and instead look at the actions of the bond markets?

When the United States needs another $80 billion to bomb an Afghan village into the dirt, the money can come from three sources: they can levy taxes and fees to replenish the treasury, they can print additional currency to produce the funds directly, or they can sell bonds on the open market. For political and practical purposes, the government is overwhelmingly predisposed to sell bonds. This is what many politicians refer to as “putting it on the credit card.” During the initial bond sale, the interest rates given are determined by auction. This means the Treasury’s bond yields reflect the value investors were willing to place on the good credit of the American government. Investors responsible for about 1.6 trillion dollars (the most recent estimate of our annual deficit) need to weigh all their options, including private financial instruments, securities, and commodities against the perceived dangers of economic and political instability and various actors’ credit-worthiness and arrive at an interest rate that is high enough to merit investment in Uncle Sam’s promise to return payment. Since U.S. Treasury bonds are paid in dollars, inflation has to be taken into account in that decision process.

Bearing in mind that you don’t play around with hundreds of millions or billions of dollars on the open market without knowing your stuff (let’s assume a little faith in the intelligence and self-interest of big-time investors), the yield on a Treasury note needs to at least equal the expected inflation rate or it’s probably not worth buying. As of this writing, a ten-year note will pay out 3.58%. This means that the market-at-large thinks that inflation will be something short of that, averaged out, over the next ten years. We can figure out exactly what the market expects inflation to be by looking at the cost of inflation-protected bonds (which yield a guaranteed rate over whatever inflation ends up happening), which are at 2.45%. 3.58% (10-year bond) minus 2.45% (inflation-protected bond) is 1.13%.

Folks looking to sell you gold, and folks looking to sell ad time for folks looking to sell you gold, say we’re looking down the barrel at a sure-fired guaranteed financial apocalypse. $1,600,000,000,000.00 in bond sales this year says those people are full of it.

As for the notion that gold is a supremely-secure investment (by golly, it’s been valuable since the days of Abraham!), tell this to anybody who invested in gold at $1781.00 per ounce (adjusted for inflation) back in 1980. They can fetch $1432.00 for it today. If they’d bought a thirty-year treasury bond that same year, they’d have locked in about 9.8% at its lowest yield in June. Inflation since then has totaled 166.29% (cumulative), so a $10,000 investment in the T-bill would have yielded $165,222.89 in June of 2010. The $10,000 investment in gold at June 1980 prices (average was $672) would fetch you $21,309.52 at today’s price. Just keeping up with inflation would have fetched $26,500 or so.

Don’t be a sucker, and keep in mind when some chalkboard-scribbling pinhead is trying to get your scared about muslims and blacks and unions, they’re just warming you up for their advertisers.

Four years later

Did anybody really need an NFL game to be postponed for snow to know that somebody had misplaced this country’s collective backbone? I’d like to think we all learned that at least four years ago today, when guerrilla marketing got mistaken for lite-brite terrorism.

I think today would make a great opportunity to everybody to take a deep breath, count to ten, and realize that islamist terrorists do not pose an existential threat to western civilization. Neither does the cartoon network.