Happy Birthday to Terry Hall of The Specials and The Fun Boy Three, 53. I'm not sure how I didn't know this (or maybe I just forgot), but looking this up I found out that he co-wrote "Our Lips Are Sealed" with Jane Wiedlin. Of course I know the great Fun Boy Three version of it, but didn't realize that it wasn't just a random and brilliant cover.
The good stuff:
1. Want the story on the effects of changes in marginal tax rates? Christina Romer has it.
2. Opposition to Romney is based on issues, not his religion -- that's what Michael Tesler finds over at YouGov.
3. Jamelle Bouie makes the case that Republican opposition to Justice Sonia Sotomayor is an overlooked and important factor in Latino political orientation. Plausible!
4. Paul Waldman argues that Rick Santorum will go pumpkin as soon as the campaign is over. As I've said, I take the middle ground here -- I don't think he's anything like a strong favorite for the next open nomination, but I do think he's bought himself more of a future than Waldman sees.
5. And why al Qaeda has a "dog food problem," explained by Adam Serwer.
Monday, March 19, 2012
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Sunday Question for Liberals
Ah, I think I'll do a names question today -- those are always popular.
Should Barack Obama be re-elected, it seems likely that he'll have openings at (at least) two key cabinet posts: Treasury and State. Who do you want to see filling them?
Should Barack Obama be re-elected, it seems likely that he'll have openings at (at least) two key cabinet posts: Treasury and State. Who do you want to see filling them?
Sunday Question for Conservatives
Will Ron Paul's libertarian campaigns have any long-term effect on the Republican Party? If so, on what policy positions?
Saturday, March 17, 2012
What Mattered This Week?
Will the massacre by an American in Afghanistan have long-term consequences? I sort of doubt it...it might accelerate what was already going to happen, but I sort of doubt that much of the coming withdrawal will really be caused by this latest disaster.
The situation in Syria remains grim.
Back home...the GOP nomination contest continued basically unchanged, with Romney losing another possible opportunity to shut things down without harming his lock on the nomination at all.
I'm not sure what to make of the deal over judges. I guess it depends on what comes next.
What else? What do you think mattered this week?
The situation in Syria remains grim.
Back home...the GOP nomination contest continued basically unchanged, with Romney losing another possible opportunity to shut things down without harming his lock on the nomination at all.
I'm not sure what to make of the deal over judges. I guess it depends on what comes next.
What else? What do you think mattered this week?
Friday, March 16, 2012
Friday Baseball Post
Yeah, we've got a new playoff system. No, I'm not particularly happy about it. I continue to believe that the real problem here is Bud Selig, who makes changes on the fly in response to (1) his personal preferences and (2) the last thing that went wrong. It's no way to run a multi-billion dollar industry.
However, I do take issue with some of the complaints about the new system. In particular -- and I'm very late to respond to this, but the issue alas isn't going away -- I'm going to disagree with some of the usually very sensible Joe Sheehan's comments in SI.
Joe's complaint is that the new system can, in the right circumstances, be brutal for the second-best team in a league. He lays out the worst-case scenario, in which two great teams are in close competition for a division title. Since avoiding the WC play-in game (or as he calls it, the Coin Flip game) is a big deal, both teams would go all-out to the last day. Meanwhile, if it played out the right way, some inferior team could have a lock on the 2nd WC slot and rest and set its rotation for the game.
Well, OK. That stinks for the second-best team. But Joe's solution is to dump the WC altogether go with just three playoff teams per league, giving the top one of the three a bye round. I don't really get this. How is it better to just send the losing great team home rather than giving them a 50/50 chance to continue on?
Not that I care a lot about second place teams: I don't think that the system should be designed to be "fair" to them. They lost; they're lucky, as far as I'm concerned, to continue on at all. If they're improperly seeded or otherwise disadvantaged, tough luck.
So which do I prefer: the 1995-2011 system with one WC; Selig's new 2WC "fix"; or Joe's division winners only? This is where I'm pragmatic. Joe notes (fairly, I think) that the "division series" round of playoffs hasn't exactly been a big success, and believes that baseball wouldn't be losing much if they removed half of that round by eliminating one series per league. I'm willing to buy his preference for eliminating the WC in the abstract, but I just can't expect MLB to leave money on the table. Even if it's not a huge amount of money. And it's not just the postseason games; it's also that eliminating the WC is going to hurt attendance and ratings for some middling teams, teams that remain plausible winners thanks to the WC. For me, as a die-hard fan, I like Joe's solution -- but then again, for me, as a die-hard fan, I'd be even happier returning to the 1969-1993 system and just living with 7 or 8 team division. But while I'm going to listen to or watch (almost) as many games either way, and if I lived in a major league city I'd attend as many games either way, I know that overall keeping .500 teams alive makes money for them. So I suppose I'd say Sheehan > Selig > old status quo -- but I understand why MLB wouldn't consider Joe's plan.
At any rate: I'm confident that if baseball hired, say, Dan Okrent (who knows a thing or two about game design); Matthew Shuggart (who knows a thing or two about institutional design); Joe Sheehan; and, well, me -- and gave us access to the financial information necessary, we could without very much trouble come up with a system that would give baseball both a meaningful, exciting regular season and a fun and exciting postseason. You all know what mine would look like, but I'm very open to beating it.
However, I do take issue with some of the complaints about the new system. In particular -- and I'm very late to respond to this, but the issue alas isn't going away -- I'm going to disagree with some of the usually very sensible Joe Sheehan's comments in SI.
Joe's complaint is that the new system can, in the right circumstances, be brutal for the second-best team in a league. He lays out the worst-case scenario, in which two great teams are in close competition for a division title. Since avoiding the WC play-in game (or as he calls it, the Coin Flip game) is a big deal, both teams would go all-out to the last day. Meanwhile, if it played out the right way, some inferior team could have a lock on the 2nd WC slot and rest and set its rotation for the game.
Well, OK. That stinks for the second-best team. But Joe's solution is to dump the WC altogether go with just three playoff teams per league, giving the top one of the three a bye round. I don't really get this. How is it better to just send the losing great team home rather than giving them a 50/50 chance to continue on?
Not that I care a lot about second place teams: I don't think that the system should be designed to be "fair" to them. They lost; they're lucky, as far as I'm concerned, to continue on at all. If they're improperly seeded or otherwise disadvantaged, tough luck.
So which do I prefer: the 1995-2011 system with one WC; Selig's new 2WC "fix"; or Joe's division winners only? This is where I'm pragmatic. Joe notes (fairly, I think) that the "division series" round of playoffs hasn't exactly been a big success, and believes that baseball wouldn't be losing much if they removed half of that round by eliminating one series per league. I'm willing to buy his preference for eliminating the WC in the abstract, but I just can't expect MLB to leave money on the table. Even if it's not a huge amount of money. And it's not just the postseason games; it's also that eliminating the WC is going to hurt attendance and ratings for some middling teams, teams that remain plausible winners thanks to the WC. For me, as a die-hard fan, I like Joe's solution -- but then again, for me, as a die-hard fan, I'd be even happier returning to the 1969-1993 system and just living with 7 or 8 team division. But while I'm going to listen to or watch (almost) as many games either way, and if I lived in a major league city I'd attend as many games either way, I know that overall keeping .500 teams alive makes money for them. So I suppose I'd say Sheehan > Selig > old status quo -- but I understand why MLB wouldn't consider Joe's plan.
At any rate: I'm confident that if baseball hired, say, Dan Okrent (who knows a thing or two about game design); Matthew Shuggart (who knows a thing or two about institutional design); Joe Sheehan; and, well, me -- and gave us access to the financial information necessary, we could without very much trouble come up with a system that would give baseball both a meaningful, exciting regular season and a fun and exciting postseason. You all know what mine would look like, but I'm very open to beating it.
Elsewhere: Civil Liberties and Dems;
At Greg's place today, I talked epistemic closure and running against fantasy Obamas. Two things to add: one is that anyone in the GOP should be well-positioned to escape the conservative feedback loop, it should be campaign operatives whose jobs depend (sort of) on knowing how to appeal to swing voters. The second is that I'm not sure how much of a difference any of this makes in campaigns -- it certainly didn't appear to hurt Republicans in 2010, although of course it could have despite their landslide. I think the more serious danger is to governing, not electioneering.
(Why "sort of"? Their jobs actually depend on creating the impression among candidates and within the community of campaign professionals that they know how to appeal to swing voters. Which is probably, but not necessarily, related to actually knowing how to do so).
And at Post Partisan, I questioned whether we'll get a fight over the Civil Liberties plank in the Democratic Party platform this summer. Or, to put it another way: those who care about these issues certainly should make a major effort to retain and improve the plank from the 2008 platform. Yes, I know all about the overall importance of party platforms. But my guess is that most Democrats believe what they said in 2008 and earlier, or at least would be very uncomfortable flipping in public. So what's needed is a way to pin them down, and I'm not sure what else is readily available.
I'm putting the 2008 plank below the fold.
Why Blame Congress?
The answer, of course, is that Congress is unpopular. However, just because everyone hates Congress, that doesn't mean that Congress is to blame for everything.
I'm responding here to a post by Matthew O'Brien, who reports that economists blame Congress for failing to do two obvious (to the economists, that is) things: tax reform, and infrastructure spending.
I'm okay with blaming "Congress" for not passing tax reform. The problem with tax reform is that (1) it tends to give generalized benefits and particularized costs, and (2) it's rarely at the top of either party's priority list. I do think that it's possible we'll get tax reform should the elections return divided government, and I'd probably blame democracy in general rather than Congress in particular, but I have no problem with an assertion that the structure of the US Congress tends to make the general democratic preference for avoiding policies with specific, visible costs even worse.
But infrastructure? No way. The infrastructure problem isn't the fault of Congress; it's all about the Republican Party. You get a landslide win for the party that wants to slash government spending, and you're going to have less spending. Especially if that party wants to slash spending but also ran against Medicare cuts, opposes Social Security cuts to current recipients, and supports increasing military spending. So blame the GOP, or even blame voters (although I wouldn't; they didn't have a specific choice about roads and bridges and the rest), but don't blame Congress.
The general rule about all these things is that it's a lot easier to blame either something that everyone hates (Congress) or something high visibility (the president) than it is to actually figure out who is responsible. But if you either just want to understand what's going on or especially if you want to affect public policy, you're far better off if you do the hard work of figuring out exactly who does what and why.
I'm responding here to a post by Matthew O'Brien, who reports that economists blame Congress for failing to do two obvious (to the economists, that is) things: tax reform, and infrastructure spending.
I'm okay with blaming "Congress" for not passing tax reform. The problem with tax reform is that (1) it tends to give generalized benefits and particularized costs, and (2) it's rarely at the top of either party's priority list. I do think that it's possible we'll get tax reform should the elections return divided government, and I'd probably blame democracy in general rather than Congress in particular, but I have no problem with an assertion that the structure of the US Congress tends to make the general democratic preference for avoiding policies with specific, visible costs even worse.
But infrastructure? No way. The infrastructure problem isn't the fault of Congress; it's all about the Republican Party. You get a landslide win for the party that wants to slash government spending, and you're going to have less spending. Especially if that party wants to slash spending but also ran against Medicare cuts, opposes Social Security cuts to current recipients, and supports increasing military spending. So blame the GOP, or even blame voters (although I wouldn't; they didn't have a specific choice about roads and bridges and the rest), but don't blame Congress.
The general rule about all these things is that it's a lot easier to blame either something that everyone hates (Congress) or something high visibility (the president) than it is to actually figure out who is responsible. But if you either just want to understand what's going on or especially if you want to affect public policy, you're far better off if you do the hard work of figuring out exactly who does what and why.
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