Yes we did!

(Cross posted from Doubting Tommaso)


For me, the election of Barack Obama was, kind of anti-climactic. After having hoped for a Democratic victory for 8 years it was odd to find myself at the end of the night playing "guess that 80's sitcom theme song" with my friends*. Taken as a whole though it was pretty impressive to witness the election of the first black president, the first non-southern Congressional majority since Reconstruction, and the first solidly liberal government since LBJ.

It is certainly possible to win a narrow victory based on personal appeal without winning a mandate. Bush discovered when he tried to privatize Social Security. But that's not what we witnessed. The Democratic victory was a rejection of Bush, yes. But it was also a ratification of the Democratic majorities in Congress who for the last 2 years have sent bill after bill to the white house only to see them shot down. The expansion of the Democratic majorities is a positive vote for Democratic leadership on the environment, the health care crisis, and foreign policy.

Though Americans voted for a clear direction on those issues last night the rickety American political system will make it very difficult for Democrats to institute their agenda. The filibuster - contrived to protect minorities - may allow a recalcitrant and unpopular Republican rump to endanger our environment, our economy, and our nations fiscal standing. We're only going to get what the 4 least conservative Republicans approve of. And that's why I don't feel like the pressure has let up after this election: the fight has only just begun.

I remember 4 years ago, reeling from a Democratic defeat** talking a friend who was of the Republican persuasion. I told him frankly that both sides had gotten their chance to present their plans and that - having won both elected branches - the Republicans won the right to institute their plans relatively unhindered. Soon enough, I told him, we'd have a nice long look at what Republican governance is like and we wouldn't have to debate if it would be good or bad, it'll be self-evident.

Well, you know how that turned out. Last night, the Democrats got their turn. I think they'll do well, but in 2 years we won't have to debate whether the Democrat's platform is good or bad: it'll be clear. Like most Democrats I'm pretty confident the next several years will reflect well on our platform. Let's finally see if we're right!

*For the record, Lydia and I blew away Zack and Lisa.
**A defeat that wasn't nearly as resounding as the one Republicans experienced last night.

(Map courtesy of Mark Newman)

Th GOP coughs it up

The GOP platform presently calls for a total ban on stem cell research, public or private.

I'm not one to make dramatic claims about obscure events, but I think this sinks McCain on the spot. The majority of the country is for this, and it's a very concrete issue that everyone with living grandparents can be brought to understand. Behind the scenes, the GOP likely believes that Evangelicals will swallow the plank the way they swallowed the promise of a gay marriage ban, and that they (Republicans) don't have to actually take the more serious hit you'd associate with actually enacting the thing.

I think this cracks the 'Culture of Life' facade right in half. Gift-wrapped for the Democrats with all eyes on them.

Good thing!

Just this morning I was thinking "Boy, aren't we glad that back in 2005 we all ignored Peter Beinart's advice to kick MoveOn.org out of the Democratic party?" I mean, check out this view from Beinart circa late 2004:

In sharp contrast to the first years of the cold war, post-September 11 liberalism has produced leaders and institutions - most notably Michael Moore and MoveOn - that do not put the struggle against America's new totalitarian foe at the center of their hopes for a better world. As a result, the Democratic Party boasts a fairly hawkish foreign policy establishment and a cadre of politicians and strategists eager to look tough. But, below this small elite sits a Wallacite grassroots that views America's new struggle as a distraction, if not a mirage.

Hilariously he went on to explain the way to fix the disconnect between the grassroots and "a cadre of politicians and strategists eager to look tough" was to get new grassroots:

The challenge for Democrats today is not to find a different kind of presidential candidate. It is to transform the party at its grassroots so that a different kind of presidential candidate can emerge. That means abandoning the unity-at-all-costs ethos that governed American liberalism in 2004. And it requires a sustained battle to wrest the Democratic Party from the heirs of Henry Wallace. In the party today, two such heirs loom largest: Michael Moore and MoveOn.

Well, let's not be too hard on the guy. A lot of pro-war liberals thought that the path to credibility on foreign policy was promising to do everything the Republicans wanted but more competently. Still, it's nice to stand back every once and a while and admire how thoroughly this kind of thinking has been discredited. The left of course has just nominated a candidate who became famous exactly because he disagreed with people like Beinart. MoveOn is part of the fabric of the party. And even the right is debating dropping the alarmist foreign policy positions with the insurgency of Ron Paul.

I suppose next you'll tell me the Governor does gay porn.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Athletic_Model_Guild

Sometimes you click on 'Random Article' and get a little surprise! I guess this must have been public knowledge, but it seems like just the sort of thing that would destroy a career, even today, even in California.

Energy Debate in SF

The Barack Obama and John McCain campaigns will have the opportunity to present their positions on future energy policy and the role of renewable energy in the United
States at a Renewable Energy Forum to take place Wednesday, August 13
@ 6:00 PM. Surrogates from both campaigns and a moderator will engage
in a collaborative discussion of their candidates' positions.

The presidential campaign surrogates are Tim Carmichael, Senior
Campaign Advisor for Obama '08, and Kurt E. Yeager, California Chair
of the McCain Energy Coalition.

I attended this debate, and am displeased to report that it was profoundly superficial. Both candidates' surrogates struggled mightily to support renewable energy energy energy energy, and to link the same to the traditional shibboleths of each party. Carmichael talked about creating green (union) jobs, Yeager talked about winning the cold war. Both candidates dodged tough questions, and by the end of the thing, the moderator was begging them to differentiate themselves.

Particular hilarity was had when Carmichael declared that Obama "opposed offshore drilling, but supported the compromise which sanctioned it." Not to be outdone, Yeager announced on the very next question that McCain "was all for States' Rights, but felt that California should not receive an EPA waiver allowing it to regulate its own carbon emissions."

I was miraculously afforded the opportunity to ask the first question:

"Where does your candidate sit on the spectrum of preferring high energy prices, in order to destroy demand and spur innovation, to preferring low prices, to broadly stimulate the economy?"

Yeager seized the opportunity to rather violently dismiss my question as "an insult to the public," and said that "the citizenry should not have to pay the price for decades of Washington's inaction." I thought this was pretty stiff populism from a Republican. I'd had no idea the Federal Government took its mandate to supply consumers with cheap energy so seriously! The citizenry, of course, pays the price for whatever energy source they choose. The question is simply what kind of price do they pay, and exactly when and to whom do they pay it.

Carmichael was a little more conciliatory. He said that while the results of high prices are a fortunate accident, high prices are not generally desirable. I think he pretty much tried to have it both ways with me there, but then, I already knew Obama's position on the question.

Probably the boldest statements of the night were made by Yeager. Wrongly, in my view, he confidently stated that wind power would not ever amount to much, and that photovoltaics are the magic bullet for our energy problems. We'll watch as that one develops.

In the end, the debate was remarkably true to the popular mass media narrative of the campaigns: Carmichael wasted much time emphasizing the need for "inspirational leadership" and "vision", while Yeager strove to connect energy issues to McCain's "experience", while constantly tripping over facts, and contradicting himself.

The Cat and the Pendulum

On the radio yesterday a House Republican explained that though he didn't expect his party to do well in the next election he expected that sooner or later "the pendulum would swing back the other way" allowing his party to come back to power. This metaphor is a common one but I think it's the hides more than it reveals. A pendulum implies that the various political parties/philosophies stand still while the voting public swings about. The reality is that the political parties and their ideologies are the changing too.

Of course they're changing! We're learning more and more everyday. From how to best administer health care to how regulatory capture can warp well-intentioned plans; voters are going to form different opinions based on new information and experiences. Moreover, the actual problems facing society are changing all the time. Many of them won't require government intervention but some of them will. Any political party that puts ideological fealty over pragmatically grappling with relevant issues is going to be toast electorally.

An Example: When facts on the ground show that "preemptive" war and unilateralism don't work, that creates an opportunity for either party. On the left that meant passing over those who supported the war to nominate a candidate who opposed it from the beginning. On the right it's lead to a renewed interest in isolationists (or "non-interventionists") like Ron Paul. One can only imagine this interest increasing if the right meets more electoral defeats. Either way the parties are changing every bit as much as the populace is.

At first glance the history of American politics might look like a fickle populace swing back and forth between two parties. But the party labels disguise the constantly changing ideologies underneath.

So in conclusion let me offer a new metaphor for democratic politics. Voters are like a laser-pointer spot moving randomly around the room and the parties are like two cats trying to catch it.

Fair and Balanced

Now Texas is getting its EPA Waiver requests denied too, even though they wanted a waiver allowing them to use more gasoline, not less. Is there any justice in the world? It just makes you want to give up.

Conservation Psychology, or, "What's it gonna take?"

A useful roundup of twenty years of research into what makes people want to conserve natural resources can be found here.

As someone who tends to believe that a free-market based solution to our worst environmental problems is highly desirable, I found this article very interesting. The article leaves a pretty big question in its wake however: People either have to get emotionally excited about conservation, or someone has to assign a monetary value to the externalities of pollution (nothing gets heads to turn faster than a nickel dropping on a concrete floor). We all love the carbon tax here, so let me go the other way for a second. How could we create a system that would make people visceral about conservation?

One of the worst systems of financial robbery the average worker experiences is income tax collection. The money gets taken out of your check every month, and if the government takes too much, well, you get it back an average of six months later, sans interest. Sorry, our bad!

People grumble about this, but it has an interesting side effect: you sure do race to fill out that form in January, don't you? Because you're going to get a big fat check once you're done. That's your money, and it always has been, but that fact gets lost in the psychology of collecting free money that you'd long ago written off as lost.

Why don't we treat energy the same way? What if, instead of a monthly per kw/h bill, we paid a per-year fee for energy, like rent, due in advance. And what if that fee were clearly exorbitant? Bear with me.

Instead of motorized meters that nobody ever sees or is able to read, you'd get a very colorful, pleasant digital display that went -inside- your front door; you'd see it every day as you left the house. That meter wouldn't display your energy use. It would calculate and display the amount you were presently on course to get sent back to you, at the end of the year.

I bet people would perk up in a hurry.

The Gang of Ten 'Compromise'

The details are starting to creep in about the proposed Gang of Ten Energy Bill, and it looks pretty bad. A removed moratorium on drilling off the Florida coast, in exchange for a bag of magic beans, and a player to be named later:

- A "Sense of the Bill" opining that cars should be 85% non-petrol within 20 years
- Actually renewing the renewable energy subsidy that has been in place approximately forever, expires on January 1st, and amounts to $18b annually
- A $7b handout to the auto industry
- A promise that the drilling will be done "carefully"

Which is of course, what we were all concerned about.

And some Republican somewhere, knowing nothing about what EROEI means, still wants shale oil to be part of the deal.

None of this amounts to an admission that our energy policy is broken, that consumption has outrun production, and that increasing production is a rear-guard action at its very, very best. Even a domestic oil bonanza like the North Sea did nothing for long-run energy prices in the UK. As I've documented in earlier posts, the Red States are over a barrel in this energy crisis, and their representatives continue to lie to them about who got them into this mess. The Democrats' best plans of action, in order, are to

1) Stall, take the White House, then pass a serious energy policy designed to emphasize energy independence, and carbon neutrality.
2) Explain to Americans that Imported, and/or Non-renewable Energy is the new Fascism, and beat the Republicans on the Sunday morning talk shows
3) Force the Republicans to the actual bargaining table, by flexing their actual majorities in our actual National Legislature
4) Juggle bowling pins on C-Span
5) Go on national television and say this:

"I want to be absolutely clear to everybody about this. If I thought that I could provide you some immediate relief on gas prices by drilling off the shores of California and New Jersey . . . if I thought that by drilling offshore, we could solve our problem, I'd do it." - Barack Obama [from Washpost above]

Once again, the threat of somebody, somewhere, having to pay what something is actually worth, has brought another great populist to his knees. When will someone at the Federal level get serious about energy? Hopefully, there are plot twists yet to unfold during the five week recess.

Barack Obama: Too Awesome

It's enough to shake your faith in democracy, really:

But in a nation in which 66% of the voting-age population is overweight and 32% is obese, could Sen. Obama's skinniness be a liability? Despite his visits to waffle houses, ice-cream parlors and greasy-spoon diners around the country, his slim physique just might have some Americans wondering whether he is truly like them.

Prop. 8 Watch: Jerry Brown Edition

Ah, Jerry Brown.

Brown has apparently decided that the upcoming voter information pamphlet will officially describe proposition 8 as a measure to "eliminate the right of same-sex couples to marry." The fact that this is an accurate description has not prevented proposition supporters from protesting on the grounds that it's too loaded. After all, who wants to take away people's rights? (I mean, besides supporters of proposition 8.)

The courts may very well decide that the wording in the pamphlet needs to be changed, but I think a bigger problem is that the arguments against the measure have TOO MANY CAPITAL LETTERS. Learn to use italics, people.

Bush Or Batman?

Via The Radula.

Gratuitous jab at Ron Paul at 2:10; the best scene is near the end, at 3:10.

Who Loves Prop. 7?

Reader Citizen G has been attempting, over email, to convince me that the Solar & Clean Energy Initiative on the November ballot is actually a good idea despite its organized opposition. And it's definitely true that basically all of the considerable funding against Prop. 7 has been provided by energy companies.

But here's the thing: as Ballotpedia lays out almost nobody is actually in favor of the measure. They list fewer than 10 prominent individuals supporting Prop. 7, but have a lengthy list of groups opposed. Notable opponents include:

• 15 renewable energy companies (e.g., the American Wind Energy Association)
  
• 9 environmental groups (e.g., the California League of Conservation Voters)
  
• the California Democratic Party

So while it's no surprise that PG&E, the California Republican Party, and the California Chamber of Commerce oppose Proposition 7, the attribution of bad faith to all of these groups seems implausible, to say the least.

So where's the beef, here? Does any reputable group support the Solar & Clean Energy Initiative?

Update: Opponents of Prop. 7 lay out their objections here (pdf).

The Rand Institute has a study out which essentially recommends a return to the Clintonian system of treating terrorism as a criminal problem, and not a military one. Without going into various theories about the bogeyman, Israel, and oil multinationals, this seems to make rational sense.

Here's what sorts of tilts my pinball machine a bit: check the pie chart. According to the database Rand used to draw some of its conclusions, 53% of the terror groups disbanded in the last fifty years did so on the basis of either political compromise, or outright victory. 53% of the time, the terrorists walk away with at least some of what they wanted.

If terrorism 'works', that says a lot about how the nations affected by it are failing to achieve a consensus of the governed. Given that what a potential terrorist wants is not unconscionable or impossible, (ie, if you're willing to give in anyway) it seems both morally correct, and highly cost effective to make the necessary concessions quietly, and in advance of the actual terror.

Then again, 53% isn't an overwhelming margin of victory. I'd be very curious to see a table of demands, cross referenced to likelihood of victory. What got won? Was it just money? Separatism? Something a western nation might sympathize with? The implications seem critical given the last eight years of failure.

On Affirmative Action

Now that McCain is flip-flopping on affirmative action, let me go ahead and make my in-principle defense of those sorts of racial preferences.

I think there's an instinctive resistance to the idea of "racial preferences" since, in this country, such preferences have tended to be horrifically unjust. Realistically, though, pointing to a long legacy of institutionalized and informal racism to show that affirmative action is, ipso facto, wrong is a "Hitler was a vegetarian" kind of an argument, a lazy non-sequitur.

The right way to think about the issue, I think, is to imagine yourself as the dean of admissions to a college or university. You have made most of your admissions decisions for the coming school year, but you have one more spot to fill, one more student you can accept. Complicating things, however, is the fact that the two best candidates left in your applicant pool are, on paper, identical in every way. That is, they have the same SAT scores, the same high school GPA, the same extra-curricular involvement, etc. Perhaps they even have the same economic background. They appear to be totally the same, except that one is white, and one is black.

Who do you admit?

It seems to me there's a very, very plausible argument to the effect that, even if your only goal is recruiting the strongest possible student body, you should prefer the black student. The reasoning is pretty simple: by stipulation, the two students have accomplished precisely the same things, but one has done it in spite of what were probably non-negligible obstacles due to his race, the subtle and not-so-subtle manifestations of racism in America.

If high school for these students was a race, they both reached the finish line at the same time, but odds are good the white student had a head start. It is therefore likely that the black student ran faster. It is therefore reasonable to prefer to admit the black applicant. Note that this is true even if you do not care about "diversity" in your student body.

Now, you might object that this argument is too probabilistic: maybe the black student faced more difficulties than the white student, but maybe not. And this is true; race, here, is serving as a proxy for factors we cannot evaluate directly. But so what? The same can be said for an SAT score or a GPA. The goal for an admissions committee is to acquire as much relevant information about the applicants as is practical. Information about race is both relevant and easy to obtain.

The upshot of all of this, I think, is that if it makes sense for a university to prefer a black student to an otherwise identical white student - and my argument is that it does make sense - then I think the case in favor of affirmative action in general is very strong. Of course, particular affirmative action policies might, say, give too much weight to race, but I do not find it plausible that race should have no weight at all.

P.S. - If information about race is, in fact, relevant, then it shouldn't surprise us that when affirmative action policies are challenged in court, selective organizations like universities, businesses, and the military rise to their defense.

P.P.S. - Note that analogous arguments can be mustered to consider other possible factors in admission. My sense is that, in addition to race, factors like SAT scores, GPA, and economic status hold up pretty well to the "hypothetical committee" test, but that things like volunteerism, extra-curricular participation, and athleticism hold up more poorly.

Crimes And Misdemeanors

My dad points out that this chart, which illustrates the key players in various Bush administration scandals, doesn't even include the Valerie Plame fiasco.

I'd add that what's really impressive is that all of those scandals are really just the criminal stuff. You can make a pretty good argument that most of the damage that Bush has done he did through totally legal means.

Self-Service In Oregon

Oregon's ban on pumping your own gas came up over drinks last night, and I was thinking that it's kind of weird that that law hasn't been overturned. I mean, presumably if lots of Oregonians really didn't want to pump their own gas, then station offering full service would dominate the market with or without a law.

Apparently, though, on November 2, 1982, voters in Oregon rejected a ballot measure that would have allowed gas stations to offer self-service fueling stations. And by a healthy 58-42 margin, no less. So the voters seem to feel pretty strongly that even letting other people pump their own gas would be bad.

A Mild Defense of McCain

Jon Chait and Matt Yglesias are dumping on John McCain for being a shameless flip-flopper. Which he is.

I think the comparisons to Barack Obama's relative consistency, however, are a little bit unfair, since Obama is currently winning. Right now there's not a lot of pressure on Obama to change his positions, but it's hard to say what kind of moves he'd be making if his situation was as desperate as McCain's.

Converting miles per gallon to cups per mile

Though I do love Paul's more philosophical posts I thought I'd change things up a little by responding to this post on one of the NYTimes blogs:

“Miles per gallon is misleading and can play tricks on our intuitions,” Prof. Soll said in a press release, which also links to an interactive quiz.

Profs. Soll and Larrick offered an alternative metric: gallons per mile. Expressed in gallons used per 100 miles, 18 m.p.g. becomes 5.5 gallons per 100 miles, and 28 m.p.g. becomes 3.6 gallons per 100 miles. And the difference is suddenly obvious: nearly two gallons every 100 miles, or a difference of more than $8.

I thought that it'd be interesting to measure gas volume more directly. Instead of using 100 miles, just use one mile and use the appropriate household measurement.

Table of US Cups of Gas used per Mile traveled

Mpg	US Cups per Mile	Example car
10mpg	1.6 Cups per Mile	Bentley Azure Convertible
15mpg	1 Cups per Mile	Jeep Grand Cherokee
20mpg	.8 Cups per Mile	Toyota Tacoma
25mpg	.6 Cups per Mile	Model T
30mpg	.53 Cups per Mile	Toyota Corolla
35mpg	.45 Cups per Mile	Volkswagen Jetta
40mpg	.4 Cups per Mile	Honda Civic Hybrid
45mpg	.33 Cups per Mile	Toyota Prius

I just threw this together pretty quickly so please forgive me if I rounded a little or compared cars across different years and features.

As you can see, the savings really happen on the far end with people switching from gas guzzlers to slightly more fuel efficient cars. Getting hippies like me to buy priuses surely doesn't hurt but it's not the main solution.

I Know What I Know

Gregg Primo Ventello, Associate Professor of English at Kansas City, Kansas Community College, has written an essay complaining that his administration's requirement that he "document how [he assesses his] teaching methods and [his] students' learning" leaves him feeling "mildly violated". It's one of the absolute worst set of arguments I have ever seen. And as a graduate student in the field of education, and as a teacher of middle school students, I've seen a lot of lousy arguments.

Ventello's essay contains precisely one correct claim, namely that "[r]equiring documentation of assessment is a failed attempt to hold educators 'accountable.'" This is basically true, since assessing learning is notoriously difficult and administrators don't like to admit that they're not holding people accountable.

So let it be said that the paperwork Ventello despises is, in fact, essentially a waste of time and energy. The rest of the reasoning offered in the piece, however, isn't just wrong, but patently absurd. Consider whether the following argument would hold water in any other professional context:

Before the mandate for documentation, we assessed ourselves and our students because we love our content, and how well we convey that content to our students deeply concerns us. Assessment, for a teacher, is an internal requirement.


The origin of this internal requirement is what the Greeks called “eros.” Socrates speaks of this in the Symposium. Eros can be defined as passion for work, any work -- whether it’s teaching calculus, playing the saxophone, or plumbing a house. It depends on the individual. Eros is the reason I fill with unabated joy when doing the work that I love. It is what causes time to fly while engaged, and what also causes time to stop when forced to do work that is, as Audre Lorde put it, “a travesty of necessities, a duty by which we earn bread” (Lorde, 1984, p. 55).

...

Eros is why we assess our teaching on some level at every moment of our professional day, and why we often cannot stop assessing at the “end” of our day. Teachers will do what they must to process their successes and failures. If there is a need to write it down, we will, but often the most productive plan of action emerges through a conversation with a colleague or mentor who shares your passion for the content and its pedagogy.

(Keep in mind, this horribly sophomoric argument is coming from a college-level professor.)

The confusion here is so basic that I actually had to contemplate for several minutes exactly how to articulate it. The best I can do is: We do not take it for granted that individuals are fulfilling their responsibilities on the assumption that they would not have taken on those responsibilities if they were not passionate about fulfilling them.

(But imagine how awesome it would be to be Prof. Ventello's financial planner! "No sir, we don't provide regular statements regarding the status and progress of your investments, because we are deeply passionate about maximizing your wealth. That sort of paperwork would be totally redundant.")

Not only are the empirical assumptions wildly absurd, though, there are also very serious issues of internal coherence. Remember, Ventello argues - correctly, I think! - that "what we do [as teachers] doesn’t lend itself easily to any perfect quantitative measure", and that therefore documentation of assessment in education is bound to be pointless. At the same time, however, he seems to have no doubts about his own ability to pursue "excellence" in teaching:

When we achieve eros, we settle for nothing short of excellence. We continually push ourselves to be better at what we do, and this is why we are concerned with how we use our time. In our pursuit of excellence, we know that our time is best spent engaged in the work that we love. We demand from others what we demand of ourselves. This means that we expect other people to put forth their best efforts because this is what we put forth. Incompetence, carelessness, ineptitude will not go unchecked. We know it exists; we’re not crazy. However, we expect better and will almost always ask for it. Because we care so much for how we use our time, we are forced to assess every minute and every aspect of our lives.

The question is naturally raised: if assessment in education is easily performed by close practitioners, why on earth would it be so inscrutable to a supervisor? There's a deeply unfortunate tendency among many educators to want to have this issue both ways such that they can be supremely confident of their own abilities as a teacher without conceding that other people might be able to evaluate the evidence as well. Ventello's essay illustrates that tendency almost perfectly.

Obviously, assessment in education really is hard, but that's a fact that cuts both ways. It's both the hardest part of being a teacher, and the part of the job teachers tend to deal with least seriously. I think that reality is made all too clear, here.