Occam's Razor

Last week was a good week to stick your head in the ground. Unfortunately, we are not ostriches so we were left to endure two major tragedies instead: the Boston bombings and an explosion of a fertilizer factory in West, Texas. The former got disproportionate attention, but the latter actually caused more deaths.

Last Monday’s twin bombings near the finish line of the Boston Marathon murdered three people including a boy, left at least thirteen people with severed limbs, and more than 178 people were treated at local hospitals. It was arguably the first major case of terrorism within the United States since September 11, 2001. For some of us who were in or around the events of 9/11, these bombings evoked visceral reminders of that day. I was one of the people caught in Washington, D.C. that day. My way of coping last week was not to watch videos of this event, but otherwise the news was inescapable. The total deaths were really four if you include the MIT police officer Sean Collier, who was killed by gunfire from the bombing suspects, brothers Dzhokhar and Tamerlan Tsarnaev early Friday morning. Police killed Tamerlan, the elder brother on Friday morning. His brother Dzhokhar is now in hospitalized and in custody after a wild manhunt that shut down Boston and surrounding areas for much of Friday.

The visceral reaction to this incident was understandable, given that the Boston Marathon is a huge public event and perhaps the premier running event in the United States. In a sense it was an attack on all of us because it was so indiscriminate. The chaotic reporting of the event did not do credit to the media, social media or crowdsourcing. What was impressive was the effectiveness of law enforcement at city, state and the federal levels. Within three days of the event officials had identified two suspects from thousands of images in and around the event, and within four days one suspect was dead and the other was captured wounded in nearby Watertown after an extensive and scary manhunt that shut down the Boston area. Less noted by the press was what had not occurred in the twelve years in between these events. We know of some of the planned terrorist events that were thwarted by law enforcement over these years, and there are doubtless many more that we do not know about. This incident also demonstrated that when these events occur we can marshal the right resources to effectively manage and contain the event. We have also put in place an infrastructure that is generally effective at preventing most of these incidents. Our law enforcement community deserves applause from all Americans for their forceful and effective response to these tragic bombings. The citizens of Boston proved their resilience as well, by offering assistance to victims of the bombing and by keeping their cool while neighborhoods swarmed with SWAT teams.

Adding to the surreal nature of these events was the rejection by the U.S. senate of expanded background checks for gun purchasers last week. The legislation would not have stopped the bombings themselves, which were wrought by low-tech pressure cookers placed in backpacks. However, had the law been in effect it might have kept the Tsarnaev brothers from acquiring weapons in the first place. During the shootout with police Thursday night, the brothers outgunned the police, at least as far as the number of bullets exchanged. As the nearby Newtown incident demonstrated, it’s not hard to buy lots of bullets in this country. Both brothers were able to acquire guns that were used to kill Officer Collier. Authorities had previously interviewed the elder brother Tamerian because the Russian government believed him to have Chechen sympathies. If they appeared on any watch list, it did not appear to have kept them from getting guns.

While the news from Boston riveted our attention, arguably the explosion at the West Fertilizer Company in West, Texas near Waco on Wednesday was more newsworthy. While it’s unclear if the Boston bombings could have been prevented, the incident in West was eminently preventable and exacerbated by the Texan stubbornness not to allow zoning laws. Currently there are fourteen confirmed deaths and more than 160 people injured, mostly residents of this small Texan town. The town’s volunteer firefighters made up a plurality of those killed. They first successfully evacuated residents from a nearby nursing home before the plant exploded. OSHA had not inspected the plant itself since 1985. The Department of Homeland Security, which is supposed to regulate fertilizer factories like this one but depends on these factories to self identify themselves never was notified. The destruction amounted to sixty to 80 homes completely destroyed, including a fifty-unit apartment building. Fifty to 75 additional homes were damaged. The only good thing about the explosion is that a fire started at the plant before it exploded, allowing responders to get the elderly out of a nearby nursing home and residents from neighboring homes before the explosion. It’s hard to imagine what the death toll had been had there been no warning.

This incident is a prime example of a wholly preventable accident. Even if the accident could not have been prevented, zoning laws could have kept industrial areas far away from residential areas, as is common in the vast majority of states except for states with something prickly up their rears, like Texas, who think “freedom” trumps basic public safety. The state of Texas is hostile to zoning regulations of any sort, so it’s perfectly okay to put major industrial plants like this fertilizer storage facility close to residential areas. An incident like this would normally have state legislatures scrambling to enact zoning laws to give jurisdictions authority to put public safety first. This is unlikely to happen, so something like this is bound to happen again.

In fact, it has. Texas, known for its refineries as well as many other hazardous industries, has a sorry history of large and preventable industrial accidents. In 1947, the Texas City Disaster killed at least 581 people and left only one person alive in the city’s fire department. The culprit was a ship loaded with ammonia nitrate, the same stuff that blew up in West Texas, except it was on a ship and 2,300 tons of the stuff went up at once, creating an explosion so powerful it had the force of a nuclear bomb. Also in Texas City in 2005 the Texas City Refinery exploded, killed 15 people and injured 170 others, making it roughly equivalent to this latest incident. If you feel somewhat ghoulish, check out this slide show of large Texan industrial accidents. They will have a familiar ring to them.

Since 9/11 we have done a lot as a country to reduce terrorist incidents like the Boston bombing. We obviously could do more, but we could clearly do a lot more to prevent large-scale industrial accidents such as occurred in West, Texas last week. Like terrorism, it requires putting the public good ahead of private profit and convenience. Let’s hope we learn some new lessons here at least, but like the NRA’s successful effort to get the Senate to turn down legislation for expanded background checks of gun purchasers supported by ninety percent of Americans, it seems that Texans will put stubbornness ahead of public safety once again.

Like many liberals, I am going through a painful disillusionment phase with Barack Obama. I am disheartened and saddened by his approach to governing since his reelection. I fear he is setting Democrats up for failure in 2014.

If there is one thing that unites Democrats it is a passion for the needs of the middle class and the poor. Since his reelection Barack Obama is showing signs that he is putting some nebulous legacy and quest to “get things done no matter what the odds” ahead of the best interests of the American people.

The most painful aspect has been Obama’s repeated declarations, most explicitly in his FY2014 budget, that he is prepared to scale back social security cost of living adjustments and increase Medicare payments in order to balance the budget. He says this will only happen if Republicans agree as part of a grand bargain to also raise taxes elsewhere.

Obama is way too smart a politician to not realize that social security is not contributing to the deficit. Indeed in most years it diminishes the deficit by putting its surpluses into the treasury. This proposed means of diminishing social security benefits is through a mechanism called “chained CPI” (consumer price index). Basically it would reduce inflation protections built into social security, on the assumption that people will reduce spending patterns when prices rise, for example going with ground beef instead of steaks. However, the elderly spend a disproportionate amount of their income on health care expenses, which has proven resistant to the “ground beef for steak” approach. Regardless, this would still amount to a cut in income generally compared with inflation for people who can least afford to take the hit. This means they will endure a reduction of standard of living, which is already pretty poor for many social security beneficiaries without pensions or high valued 401Ks. Worse, it would do nothing to control the deficit. Obama appears to be willing to balance the budget on the backs of those least able to afford it, and who contributed to their social security over the years based on certain assumptions which may well go by the wayside. It’s unfair and it is back stabbing.

As for Medicare, the president is proposing means testing, essentially requiring those at somewhat higher income levels to contribute more in the way of deductibles and copays when we use Medicare. There is no question that Medicare is a growing entitlement and there is enormous waste in the system. I am all for removing the waste in the system, which can be done by moving it from a fee-for-service model to an outcome-based payment model. As a driver of medical inflation, Medicare is a laggard not a leader, with significantly lower costs and inflation per enrollee than private health insurance. As for means testing, it is unfair because those who earn more have contributed more of their income over the years toward Medicare, effectively subsidizing the care for those at lower income levels. The tax is 1.45% of your income. Someone making $20,000 pays $290 a year in Medicare taxes. Someone at my income level pays closer to $1900 a year in Medicare taxes. The result of this proposed change would be to charge people like me more for the same benefits when we claim them after having already paid more by contributing more to the system during our working lives. It’s sort of like paying an income tax twice. It is fundamentally unfair.

To add insult to injury, yesterday the president signed into law changes to the STOCK act that essentially undid the work of the last Congress to provide better visibility into stocks owned by members of Congress and the Administration. This was a no-brainer for a supposedly progressive president: veto it.

Meanwhile, the former organization Obama for American has morphed into Organizing for Action, and the organization has been petitioning people like me to contribute to it, supposedly to help promote progressive causes. What is progressive about cutting social security benefits for people in a solvent system? Why would I contribute to an organization that works for a president who wants to do the exact opposite of what Vice President Joe Biden promised in the last campaign: not to cut social security benefits, not even by one dime? How do I get excited about sending them money when they want people to contribute more toward Medicare instead of removing the waste in the system?

The worst part is this could easily set up a repeat of the disastrous 2010 election, which brought in Tea Party members that have largely obstructed work from getting done. What drives people to the polls is motivation. Seniors, already disinclined to vote for Democrats, will be even gladder to vote for Republicans who promise not to cut their social security benefits, as even Paul Ryan has pledged. How do you excite the Democratic base to turn out when they are being asked to enthusiastically endorse an agenda that further stiffs it to the working class and seems more a product of Republican thinking than Democratic thinking?

To say the least all of this is disappointing, which amounts to leaving us Democrats dispirited, which gives us little incentive to vote or to get further engaged in politics, which is supposedly the whole purpose of Organizing for Action. But OFA is really about promoting the president’s agenda, not the people’s agenda. They no longer align.

I will support and vote for true Democrats who will fight for the working class, who will fight to ensure that everyone pays their fair share, including corporations that pay increasing fewer taxes every year. Once these under taxed groups have paid their taxes, then I will consider tax increases on the working class. I will not vote for Republican-lite candidates.

I hope Obama wakes up because he is making a fatal mistake not just to his legacy, but to his agenda and to the needs of Americans. The compromise he is chasing simply will not happen with the current Congress, which is good, because Republicans in Congress will put lower spending ahead of deficit reduction, as they have shown time and again. However, there is no reason to move our goalpost first when they won’t move their post at all. The mere act of moving proves not statesmanship but cowardice because it will show conciliation without affect. It also drains energy from progressives and makes us feel all our energy was for naught.

Democrats would be wise to estrange themselves from Obama and OFA. I know I am until he asks for contrition and puts the American people ahead of the concerns of the rich.

Job growth in March was a measly 88,000 jobs. The unemployment rate dropped to 7.6 percent, but this was largely because many people stopped looking for work. The economy had been looking pretty promising earlier in the year, with steady job growth well in excess of 100,000 jobs a month.

Now we will likely be watching the effects of austerity for the rest of this year and probably next year as well. It won’t seem familiar to many of us who were not impacted by the Great Recession, but it will look familiar to those who live in Europe. Austerity has failed to rectify Europe’s economy although it has caused two recessions. Austerity in Great Britain looks like it is causing a third recession. Yet for some reason in the United States we seem to want to emulate European austerity. The predictable results are starting to be seen in the jobs numbers for March.

To the extent the United States has had job growth over the last few years, it has been due to not following austerity. And this should not be rocket science. What exactly is austerity? It is not living at your means; it is living below your means. The hope is that through frugality one will glean efficiency, competitiveness and an eventual rebound in wealth. Austerity does not mean driving a used car, it means driving a very used car until it falls apart on the side of the road. And after it falls apart, maybe it means not replacing it.

Austerity is being enacted through sequestration, which cuts certain areas of federal spending. It will lead to the furlough of federal workers like me, actual cuts in pay that will give me less to live on and will decrease my standard of living. Some federal workers may have their pay cut as much as twenty percent through the end of the fiscal year. In some sense though federal workers are relatively lucky. At least they will have some income. It’s the vast food chain that feeds off federal spending where the impact is likely to be much greater. I have watched a friend struggle in this climate and my heart goes out to her. It means periods of unemployment, stringing together temporary jobs, working out of town in temporary housing and in general dealing with a lot of stress and anxiety. She is one of many in this situation and with the new pointless austerity trend is for more of it, because of a law posits that austerity is a good idea. For her it means no health insurance and wondering how you are going to pay the mortgage.

But at least she is partially employed, and may get a full time job again one of these days that pays actual benefits. She has some employment. Many other federal contractors are simply unemployed and trying to figure out what to do about it. The bottom line is when you have less money you have less of it to spend. Austerity breeds more austerity. Austerity does not trickle down, it cascades down. None of this should be the least surprising. Any economist could have predicted this. We can now expect modest job growth at best and a cooling economy, which was barely warm, for the remainder of the year, assuming we do not progress into a recession.

To quote Pogo, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” We are choosing austerity and we are choosing to punish ourselves because we can. And that’s what the big squeeze is all about in a nutshell: some small minority of politicians from heavily gerrymandered districts is making it so because they control a slim majority in the U.S. House of Representatives.

In Europe the same economies practicing the austerity are at least as badly off as they were before they were told to be austere. In Greece and Spain, for example, the unemployment rate exceeds 25%. The real cost of planned austerity though is not money but the trail of wounds and wreckage that it causes. It’s in the excess student indebtedness because states won’t subsidize tuitions as much. It’s in young adults who, if they are lucky, can still live at home and try to fend off feelings of hopelessness as they search for good jobs that largely aren’t there. It’s in lives put on hold, if you are lucky, or watching the quality of your life diminish. It’s in putting off fixes to your car for another month, even though the engine needs to be fixed. Austerity multiplies fiscal and personal pain.

It amounts to a game of musical chairs except two chairs are being pulled with each round. In reality though it’s those who are in recession-proof jobs and who have sizable bank accounts that end up back in their chairs. Pain is distributed disproportionately to those not quite so fortunate or quite so prepared.

The multiplying effect is really the uncertainty. No one is quite sure how the sequestration will affect the economy, so they are hunkering down instead. They are not making investments, not hiring people and deferring spending just in case things go from bad to worse. You know you have a problem when Wal-mart is struggling with profitability. Between payroll tax increases, declining wages and poor job growth there is simply less for the least well off to spend, and Wal-mart, which is basically the retailer to the working class, thus has a hard time making profits. So they squeeze their employees some more, resulting in fewer employees, long checkout lines and empty shelves.

About all you can do is in good times to prepare for the bad times. The 401-K has proven a failure as a retirement system, but it is still a source of funds that in good times that I can put money too, and which can’t be taken away in the next round of austerity. And so I have been throwing as much money as I can into it, which includes now that I am over fifty special catch up contributions. The 16.3% of my income going into my 401-K means something else has got to give and that is our savings account, which needs a lot more money. Our daughter is on the cusp of a college graduation and it comes just in time. We really can’t afford to keep her in college much longer. The $1300 or so we pay for her room and board each month has to fatten our savings account instead. And like many Americans, I look for other sources of income: teaching and consulting. The latter has been reasonably good to me lately, even if it keeps me from blogging as often as I would like.

Like it or not we are all in the economy together. Our cheese is being moved and unless we have been hoarding cheese many of us are about to get caught in another pointless austerity experience. What it really will amount to will be more wealth moving toward the wealthy and our pockets will be picked clean.

Sometimes you hate being right. Today on the 10th anniversary of our counterproductive invasion of Iraq, I looked back on my post dated March 17, 2003 are realized, tragically, I called this war right from the start.

Ideology is dangerous. If you have ideology, you don’t have to worry about whether an action is advised or ill advised. You know you are right because your ideology tells you that you are right. That’s the sort of immovable force that is George W. Bush. Morality has become a substitute for critical thinking. Circled by his coterie of advisers who only reinforce his inclinations, he does not feel dissent. When antiwar protesters come to town he is conveniently at Camp David.

…

If you have ideology you can pretend that our forces spread out across Iraq won’t be a target for every fanatical Muslim in the region, and there are plenty. You can pretend that because we can “liberate” Iraq, that the Iraqi people will love us, even though they hold us responsible for years of sanctions. You can ignore the minor problem that Muslims will consider our occupation something like a holy war, and that they will see us as Christians on a Crusade.

This is what “your either with us or against us” gets us as a nation: virtually the whole world is against our preemptive war. Close to half of the American people are against it too. This sort of attitude causes only further polarization, making compromise impossible.

I am deeply ashamed of our president, and aghast at what our country is about to do in the name of peace. We will not have peace, we will only be throwing more gasoline on the fire. Why do they hate us? We will be giving them plenty more reasons, rest assured.

Please tell me this isn’t happening. Please tell me this is all a bad dream.

To the people of Iraq: I am so ashamed by what we did to you and your country. Some of us tried really hard to stop this counterproductive war. Sadly, we were drowned out by an overwhelming chorus of “if you are not with us, you are against us” so-called patriots. Still we marched, we hollered, we wrote our representatives, we petitioned. It was just not enough.

Lots of pundits are puzzling through the politics of the federal sequester that began March 1, trying to figure out how long it will last and what the end game will be. If it were simply a matter of exercising common sense, it would have never occurred in the first place. Neither party claims it wanted the sequester, so a one line law passed by both the House and the Senate repealing the sequester would have done the trick. But of course what parties say they want and what they actually do are two different things. The reality is that neither party nor the White House saw advantage in capitulation and Republicans simply refuse to compromise.

The sequester could be moot by March 26, which is when the current continuing resolution funding the government runs out. If no new resolution is passed, sequester will be the least of the government’s problems. It will simply shut down, except for whatever is considered to be emergency services. So federal employees worried about whether they will be furloughed one day a week will have bigger problems to worry about: total unemployment, at least until something is passed into law. The experience in 1996 didn’t go well for Republicans, so it is probably something they will not want to repeat. Time will tell.

The earliest impact of the sequester is going to be on constituencies that Republicans care the most about: defense and the massive military industrial complex that depends on defense spending. Federal employees may have thirty days to avoid furloughs, but defense contractors won’t be so lucky. This means that Republicans will endure most of the initial heat for blocking a resolution to the sequester. And the impact will fall most heavily in red states. Here in Virginia, our governor Bob McDonnell is already squealing, due to the huge defense contractor community both in the Washington suburbs and in the Hampton Roads area. The bright red state of Texas is also likely to be one of the first to get squeezed as well, as they also have their thumbs deep into the federal defense pie. They also host huge bases where much of the surrounding community has their livelihood dependent upon spending at these bases, such as Fort Hood.

Doubtless the military industrial complex is already frantically dialing their senators and legislators asking them to strike a deal. The only question is how long Republicans will choose to hold out against this squealing. And that depends on Republicans not affiliated with the Tea Party and whether they will bolt. If they find common ground with House Democrats, they would have a majority to end the sequester. This has been the tactic that Speaker Boehner has repeatedly used so far when he cannot convince his own party to take necessary action. What is unclear is whether enough pressure can be exerted to affect this change.

It’s more likely all parties will find a reason to drag it out through March 26. The question then becomes not the sequester, but what can pass a divided congress in the way of a continuing resolution to fund the government. What would normally happen is a split the difference bill between the House and the Senate. The Senate would probably not pass a continuing resolution that funds the government at the sequester rate through the end of the fiscal year without it being softened through tax increases. The House will probably not approve any resolution that increases taxes.

My bet is that in the end it will be the defense cuts that force the bargain and affect political compromise. The rationale from Republicans will go something like this: “We can no longer afford to jeopardize our nation’s security by these unilateral cuts to defense.” The compromise: ditch the defense cuts, but keep the non-discretionary cuts in place, but spread this pain over all discretionary spending. The deal will be in essence to cut the sequester in half, at least through the end of the fiscal year, and leave it in fiscal year 2014 to be figured out through the appropriation process. This way everyone sort of wins. Defense takes a smaller hit, but it will still be considered “manageable” by Republicans. Non-defense discretionary spending will be trimmed as well, but to the 2%-3% level vs. the 5%-6% for the year that has to be spread out through the end of fiscal year 2013 now.

Anyhow, that’s my crystal ball. We’ll see how this all works out, but one thing is certain: it won’t be easy or pretty.

Debt ceiling. Fiscal cliff. Continuing resolutions. Sequestration. So many names but it’s all the same game: it’s Washington’s version of high stakes poker where no one gives an inch until the last minute and maybe not then. This time the game is the sequestration that begins March 1. The prevailing political wisdom is that no one will make a serious effort to stop it. It’s not until we close a few national parks and the lines extend for hours at TSA checkpoints that politicians may get serious and pass something, at least until the next politically designed crisis. That is due to kick in at the end of March when the latest continuing resolution expires.

The sequestration will mandate that all federal agencies including defense take a significant haircut, $1.2 trillion in cuts over ten years, half from defense, half from the rest of government. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are exempt. It’s the discretionary spending that is being cut and it is being cut because it is discretionary, as if it is nice to have spending, not necessary spending.

Quite the opposite is true. Most discretionary spending is really essential spending. Not spending on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid is really nonessential spending. Of course to those who depend on these programs, they are certainly essential spending. In reality, government’s real value comes from discretionary spending. It includes all those services you take for granted but it turns out will really piss you off if canceled or even cut back. Agencies know what to do and will often find the most visible ways to influence Congress and choose to cut these first. It worked during the government shutdown in 1995. Americans get really pissy if they when they are already late for their flight have to wait in long lines to get through security, or their trip to Yellowstone gets canceled or shortened because the park is closed one day a week.

In reality, the threat of sequestration has already thrown a lot of chaos into the economy. Federal spending often sounds so abstract, but federal spending creates and sustains lots of jobs, most of them quite necessary. Defense contractors have already laid off people anticipating sequestration. Uncertainty usually adds to economic fears. That appears to be what is going on right now, and the United States risks going back into recession just because of all the pointless last minute brinkmanship in Washington.

These activities are burning through our seed corn, by which I mean we are hacking away at essential areas of government. Meat processing plants, for example, may have to close one day a week due to lack of federal inspectors. Weather forecast models may need to be turned off, resulting in forecasts with more uncertainty. Applications for new drugs will take longer to get approved, reducing market advantage and causing pointless suffering and maybe preventable deaths. This money does more than buy stuff and create jobs. It allows government to oversee and regulate. It enables an even playing field so competition can thrive. It makes our modern life possible.

The agency I work for is pondering what to do if, as required, it suddenly loses ten percent of its budget. As it is we work off continuing resolutions, so we have little certainty about how much money we will eventually get or how exactly we are supposed to spend it. Tightening the belt is all well and good, but try tightening your financial belt so that suddenly you had to live on ten percent less. If you knew that you would always have to live on ten percent less, you would probably make major financial decisions like move to cheaper housing, buy a used car, etc. But most discretionary spending is in reality fixed costs. The rent to GSA will not go down. The power company will not reduce rates. You can’t order employees to take a ten percent pay cut although with thirty days notice you can furlough them one day a week. What is typically done in these situations is that truly discretionary spending is cut: travel, training and long term investments like contributions to working capital funds and buying computer servers. This sometimes works in the short term, but it cannot be sustained in the long term and doing this is really counterproductive.

We recently got one of these politically inspired directives to cut travel by thirty percent compared to what we spent in 2010. Probably some political appointee figured that it doesn’t look good. In any case, travel is discretionary. In a pinch you can do without it, right? Watching what this is doing inside our agency, you only want to grimace. The effect is to introduce a lot of uncertainty and to cause project schedules to slip. Cutting travel in our case mostly means cutting travel for testing. This will mean that testers will test remotely. So much money is saved. Unfortunately, the real effect is that productivity drops substantially. Bring people together to test and they test collaboratively and more thoroughly and play off testing scenarios against each other. They are also not distracted by normal business because they are testing in their office. We have documented this many times, which is why we budget sufficient money for travel for testing purposes. The likely result will be inferior tests, which will result in an inferior and/or late product. Certainly many meetings can and are held on line. In fact, most of them are. We have tons of these conference calls and Webex meetings, so many that they often consume our calendars. Sometimes you really need to meet face to face to get work done on time and to an acceptable level of quality.

The effect of sequestration on the economy is already well documented: it causes negative GDP and if continued will probably trigger another recession as well as increased unemployment. Inside the government it will cause fear, chaos, uncertainty, hard feelings and most importantly slipped schedules and more inefficiency, not less.

It’s no way to run a railroad or a government. To work efficiently government must run off a plan. This is not a plan unless the plan is to create dysfunction, in which case it’s a great plan. It’s stupid and counterproductive and is degrading the ability of government to simply govern.

Some habits are hard to break. Smoking. Drinking. Whoring. Eating dark chocolate. (Okay, I don’t know about the first three.) Another bad habit I have developed is going to snarky political web sites. While there are plenty of them out there, arguably DailyKos.com is the snarkiest of them. I wish I could break my addiction to DailyKos but there I am many times a day, obsessively reading the site.

Giving up DailyKos is much easier said than done. I go to it all the time, not so much to read comments (who has time for that, although plenty of people do) but to get the political news I care about. Only it’s always delivered in the most ultra-sarcastic of tones. For a site that supposedly celebrates the diversity of people and values skills like critical thinking, it sure paints all Republicans with the same whitewash. Granted that as a class Republicans seem to be all cut from the same cloth. And yet there is variety among Republicans and conservatives. What is almost universal about Republicans in office is they are almost all intensely weird. But arguably they are no weirder than the denizens on DailyKos. Like, um, me? Am I one of the damned?

You have your socially conservative Republicans. You have your fiscally conservative Republicans. You also have your libertarian-leaning Republicans. Of course, most lately you also have your Tea Party Republicans. They are quite a bit different. On DailyKos though they might as well all be wearing identical Ku Klux Klan robes and burning crosses. They are all portrayed as bizarre, which is obvious from the way they are characterized in posts and captions. They are objects for derision and for our entertainment, so weirdly and objectively wrong that they occupy a unique zone of utter wrongness, not even fit for scorn although of course the scorn is ladled out in extremely generous portions.

Birds of a feather, perhaps? DailyKos’s dirty secret is that its denizens are objectively just as weird and bizarrely opinionated, just in the other direction. I don’t hang out much on conservative websites like redstate.org. I doubt though that their arguments get as heated as they do on DailyKos. Few posters will be taking socially conservative positions on DailyKos, mainly because they are not suicidal, but boy they sure do a lot of arguing about nuances on stuff that just does not matter. The really egregious flamers eventually get banned. Arguments can be both enlightening and disagreeable at the same time. Overall they are a passionate bunch, but they can often take great offense over differences in opinion that really are quite minor. So mostly I read the articles and skip the comments. Who needs all that indigestion?

So why do I bother? I bother simply because the site has political news that is very topical. I bother because they raise a ton of money for progressive candidates, and were instrumental in getting candidates like new Senator Elizabeth Warren elected. I visit because they may be super snarky, but they are endlessly reading polls, assessing candidates and digging into dry facts about various politicians’ political war chests. These things matter in the long run. If you are trying to field better progressive candidates you have to know a ton about your candidate, the competition, and the state or district’s demographics. They have done the research, they have some top notch analysts and they endlessly comb the political news of the day for the nuggets that really matter.

Too bad there is so much chaff in the wheat. Today Marco Rubio’s “water” incident is all over DailyKos. In his response to President Obama’s State of the Union speech last night, this rising star of the right drank from a bottle of Poland Springs while water on camera, without using glass and subsequently grimaced. There is today endless hilarity and comments about this on DailyKos, as if it mattered. I guess it gives them something to talk about, even though Obama’s speech was far more relevant and interesting than a minor imaging mistake by a rising Republican star. Yeah, I watched the clip, and then I tuned out the subsequent discussion. It doesn’t matter at all, except to the super politically charged progressives on DailyKos.

I also look and read most of the recommended diaries. Some of them turn out to be piffle, but about fifty percent of the time they are topical and contain relevant news I generally haven’t seen elsewhere first.

For the most part though, DailyKos is a 24 hour a day carnival show for hypercharged progressives that is chock full of snark and antipathy. Yet, I haven’t found a satisfactory alternative. What I want is a site without the snark but with similar content. I need a site like this where Republicans don’t need to be endlessly lampooned and skewered. Most Republicans simply have to open their mouth. It’s usually the same as putting their foot into it anyhow. However, Republicans are not stupid. They just have wildly different opinions and ways of seeing the world than I do. They may be declining as a political party at the moment, but they are generally astute at where they place their time and money. They know how to gerrymander with the best of them. Like it or not many of our most successful people are hard core Republicans. They may have flunked the course on empathy but they have figured out how to succeed financially and professionally. Their perspective is one that I largely don’t share, but it is one worthy of tolerance, especially from a community that calls itself progressive. (I make exceptions for the Todd Akins among them.) It’s not necessary to say they are wrong about something. Usually it’s simply a matter of documenting what they say and do and let the record speak for itself.

Clearly I haven’t found the site I am looking for, although I like sites like ThinkProgress.org somewhat better when it comes to the tone of their material, but not as much when it comes to variety and depth. At some point though I need to go cold turkey and quit DailyKos. Maybe I just need to read real news sites again, like CNN. Too much partisanship and analysis is probably not a good thing. Preaching to the choir can be fun, but like smoking, drinking, whoring and dark chocolate it’s probably not too healthy.

Wait a minute. Dark chocolate is healthy. Pass me another bag of dark chocolate M&Ms.

I have long suspected there were more than a few screws loose in the leadership of the National Rifle Association. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun”, spake Wayne LaPierre, an Executive Vice President for the NRA a few days after the deaths of 26 people, including 20 students at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut last month by Adam Lanza. The NRA’s reflexive solution to the massacre is, of course, to put more guns in schools, this time to “protect” students from mass killers like Adam Lanza.

To start, they would like an armed guard at every school. There are around 132,000 public schools across the United States. Assuming one armed guard were placed at every school at the modest cost of $30,000 a year, that’s a cost of about $4 billion a year. Of course, most schools consist of more than a couple of classrooms. Here in Fairfax County, Virginia high schools like Westfield, where my daughter graduated, have 3,000 plus students. Assuming 25 in a classroom, that’s 120 classrooms. I’ve been to Westfield High School a number of times of course, and it’s immense. It’s got schools within the school. It’s a huge educational institution. It’s practically a college. It could take five minutes for an armed guard to get to a classroom on the other side of the campus. What do you think the odds are that the campus cop is going to be able to stop a shooter before he has inflicted a lot of mayhem? Okay, so maybe we need more than one guard at one of these larger schools. Let’s say on average we figure we need three armed guards at every school. Suddenly costs have ballooned to $12 billion. And we still have no assurance that a mass murderer can be stopped in a timely matter.

Ah but the NRA and others have another solution. Arm the teachers! Yes, put an easily accessible gun in every classroom in the nation! Put it in the hands of a teacher, a person trained to mentor students, not kill them. If I had a homicidal student, I suspect having a handy firearm would not be of much reassurance. Likely I would be his first target. I would be shot before I could get my gun out of its holster. Guns are like that, you know.

If you think about this for more than a nanosecond, you realize it’s a crazy, crazy thing to do, so crazy that anyone suggesting it is either delusional or simply can’t be bothered to think about it. It’s so crazy that I could scribble on for many pages and still not give you all the reasons why this is incredibly stupid. Here are some of them:

• Teachers are people too, and they can have homicidal tendencies like anyone else. Do we really want to give a teacher a ready means of killing his own students?
• If you dangle a carrot in front of a rabbit, it will probably bite into it. If you put students in a classroom with a gun in it that is accessible, even if it requires a code or keylock to gain entry, what do you think they will be thinking about when their mind wanders? How can I get access to that gun? I don’t have one of them at home. It’s like putting out Playboy magazines for your teenage son and expecting him not to look at the centerfold. Put a gun in every classroom and the likelihood that some student (or faculty member) will somehow use one of these guns increases exponentially.
• It sends the signal that guns are not just okay (they are legal to own, for most adults anyhow) but something that is sanctioned by the school and public authorities in general. Gosh, I want a gun! My cool teacher gets to have one!
• Even a trained police officer has only a 17% chance of hitting the criminal if he fires his pistol. A teacher is likely to have even a lower chance than that, and considering how panicked and nervous they are likely to be, it is likely they will miss the shooter and kill innocent people instead.

If you really want to minimize deaths by firearms in schools, perhaps the way to do so it not to put guns in our children’s faces multiple times a day, but keep them out of schools, inculcate the value that they should not normally be seen in polite societies, discourage parents from owning guns and if they do have laws requiring weapons to be kept under lock and key. An armed policeman at every school probably has at best a one in ten chance of stopping a shooter with a gun if they get entry to the school.

We could require students to have their person and things scanned prior to entering the school, as we do before boarding a plane. That is likely to be much more effective, but it will also be incredibly time consuming. At Westfield High School all 3,000 students generally arrive within fifteen minutes of each other. It would take a large number of scanners and agents to process this number of students in anything close to a timely manner.

So LaPierre’s suggestion is purely fanciful and speaks of an idealized world, not a practical world. In a practical world we would implement most of the proposals by the Obama Administration instead. It would not be foolproof, because no solution, particularly Lapierre’s suggestion, is foolproof. But it would be a practical and realistic set of steps to minimize these incidents. Law abiding citizens would still be able to keep their guns, just not the clips and ammunition that allow them to pump cop killer bullets into dozens of people within seconds.

If we have to spend $4 billion a year to put armed guards in our schools, I have a great way to finance it. Place a special tax on guns, both when purchased and annually. Place special taxes also on bullets. Use the revenue to hire the guards we need in our schools.

It sounds lawful to me. Considering how lethal guns can be why not also make gun owners liable for illegal use of their guns? I am liable for damages if someone else uses my car and causes an accident. Why should gun owners be exempt if someone uses their gun and commits a crime? Require gun owners to carry a special liability insurance for their firearms. It’s not much, but it is something that helps address the true cost of the mayhem inflicted by so many guns in our country.

One thing is clear to me: we won’t be making schools safer by arming teachers.

It’s clear that Republicans have learned a few things from the 2012 election after all. First, they cannot win at the ballot box, at least not unless they change their policies a whole lot so they can attract moderates, which they seem unable to do for ideological reasons. Second, they have finally looked at demographic trends and have realized that their party is likely in permanent decline. Having pondered these problems the Republican Party has decided to do more of what they excel at: stacking the cards so even if they lose the popular vote, they still win. It’s the Animal Farm strategy: that votes are equal, but some are more equal than others. Only this time, it will be the law.

Republicans want their votes to count more than Democratic votes.  In the 2012 election, their attempt to move the odds in their favor consisted mostly of intimidating voter ID laws. There were also the usual illegal robocalls designed to confuse minorities about voting and insufficient voting machines at minority precincts, leading to long lines. Those efforts proved largely counterproductive. Perhaps out of spite, minorities waited in lines to vote, sometimes for hours to cast their votes.

The latest effort is to create laws in swing states controlled by Republicans to apportion their electoral votes based on who wins the majority of votes in a congressional district. With the exception of two states (Nebraska and Maine), electoral votes are awarded on a winner take all system. However, if Republicans control a state legislature, they already have congressional districts that are gerrymandered so that Republicans are likely to win most of the House seats. It’s logical to assume that if a Republican represents a congressional district, a majority of its voters will also vote for a Republican for president.

President Obama won 51% of the votes in the swing state of Virginia (where I live) and received all of the state’s 13 electoral votes, 11 for its congressional districts and two for its senators. However based on this analysis, if the candidate who won the majority of the electoral votes for the congressional district got one electoral vote, 7 out of the 11 electoral votes in Virginia would have gone to Mitt Romney. It’s unclear how the two votes for its senators would go under this proposal endorsed by the Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus, but with the Virginia legislature firmly in Republican control, it’s likely they would have gone for Romney, meaning that 9 out of 13 electoral votes (69%) would have gone for Romney even though he received just 47% of the vote statewide.

As you can guess, various groups have crunched the numbers. Had swing states had their electoral votes proportioned this way, Mitt Romney would now be president, even though he received just 47% of the popular vote, 4% less than Barack Obama. In short, some votes (Republican votes) would be “more equal” than Democratic votes.

Currently, each state decides how they will award electoral votes. Almost all states use the “winner take all” system. The advantage of this system is that it makes the Electoral College results decisive. With a few exceptions in very tight elections (such as the 2000 election) the winner of the popular vote wins the electoral vote. Of course, the electoral vote is the one that matters. In those exceptions the popular vote mismatch has been very close. In 2000, for example, Gore won the popular vote by .5% but lost the Electoral College vote by just five electoral votes. As we know, the Supreme Court decided this election in Bush v. Gore. The court chose to honor the state of Florida’s dubious certification of its election results.

Most normal people would look at this as a blatant attempt to stack the presidential race in favor of the Republican candidate. Doubtless this is also the intent of the Republican Party, since the proposal is to do this only in swing states where Republicans control the state legislature. The obvious conclusion is that the Republican Party is antidemocratic. In the past, their actions (insufficient voting machines in minority precincts and onerous voter ID laws) were masqueraded. This proposal simply cannot be mistaken for anything other than a blatant attempt when choosing the President of the United States to have Republican votes count more than Democratic votes.

It is a shameless new low for the Republican Party, which cannot win elections using a set of fair rules. It is a tacit admission that they know their party is in permanent decline and that they see the only way to prevent it is to give them disproportionate political power.

One would hope that a case before the Supreme Court would result in a decision to order a level national playing field for allocating electoral votes based on one man, one vote. But most likely the Supreme Court would defer to law and the constitution, which gives states discretion in rules for awarding electoral votes and drawing congressional districts.

Since there are no swing states controlled by Democratic legislatures, Democrats cannot try the same approach, as it will diminish the electoral votes for Democratic candidates. (I seriously doubt it would occur to Democrats, as the principle of one man, one vote is part of our DNA.) So unless the Republican Party can be shamed into abandoning this approach, it is in their short-term interest. If a president actually won the Electoral College and lost the popular vote by four percent my guess is the political cost would be very high indeed. Democracy works on the consent of the governed, and it’s hard to imagine that a majority would agree that the will of the majority should be permanently disenfranchised.

The solution to this mess is simply to elect a president based on the national popular vote. This would require a constitutional amendment that even if it got through Congress would be unlikely to be passed by the states.

This whole proposal is so unbelievably antidemocratic, fractious and audacious that you would think no party in their right mind would propose it. But then, I am not a Republican. I still feel shame.

I got an invitation from President Obama to the inauguration! Okay, it wasn’t from him personally, just from someone on his staff. Scratch that, it was not even from someone on his staff. Instead, I got an automated email invitation because I donated to his campaign. I was given the opportunity to compete for a chance to stand in the bleachers during today’s Inaugural Parade. I declined the opportunity, which even if I won it would have cost me $25. It seems like everything is for sale in this country, including the privilege of watching the President and First Lady maybe wave at you from Pennsylvania Avenue. I used the holiday instead to remove wallpaper from our downstairs bedroom.

However, I did listen to his inaugural address. This one was better than the last one, at least, which was an amazingly mediocre speech from a usually eloquent writer. Like most Americans, I did not know exactly what I would get when I voted for Barack Obama the first time. With the benefit of hindsight I can now assess his first four years. Did he live up to my expectations? Back in 2007 when I decided to support for him I said:

What makes Obama different in my mind is that of all the candidates he is the one who behaves the most like a genuine leader. In these perilous times, we need a leader that can pull us in their wake. He or she must do this while also moving us in a positive direction that moves us back into the international mainstream, addresses the root causes of terrorism, and moves us toward taking real action on global warming. We need someone with sound judgment who also truly grasps the nuances of the bigger picture. In short, we desperately need a president with real intellect and mojo. I have some concerns that Obama’s mojo may be more for show than real, but overall I feel comfortable that it is real.

It’s already hard to remember what a mess was dropped on Obama’s doorstep when he assumed the presidency. One of the most unusual things about today’s inauguration was how ordinary it seemed. The economy is still not great, but it feels like we are fully out of the woods. 7.8 percent unemployment sucks, particularly if you are unemployed, but it beats the high of ten percent we reached in 2009. Obama’s first four years were mostly about keeping the lights on. Unemployment sucked, but it sucked less because long-term unemployment insurance and food stamps kept the unemployed from starving. The stock market has more than fully recovered. In fact, Obama has been one of the best presidents ever for Wall Street. It’s a mystery why Wall Street would not support him this time. He saved their undeserving hides. In March 2009, our net worth had dropped to $687K, most of it from declines in the stock and housing market. Today it is $1.07M. Granted, we have been stashing away more money and paying down debts, but most of this is due to recovery on Wall Street. This would not have happened on its own. It took a lot of leadership, principally from Obama, to turn the economy around. It’s actually progress that we are arguing about deficits instead of the sinking economy. In addition, Obama and a Democratic controlled congress successfully rescued the auto industry, stabilized the housing market and helped lead a resurgence of manufacturing in the United States. Employment may be slowly recovering, but so far there is a net surplus of jobs created during his first four years. During his first term, he created more net jobs that George W. Bush did in eight years. His most important economic achievement was avoiding another depression. It was not a given at all four years ago. Overall on the economy, I give the president a B+.

We need Democratic presidents simply to keep us out of unnecessary wars. Obama exceeded my expectations. He found and killed Osama bin Laden. We are out of Iraq and will be out of Afghanistan by the end of 2014. From his inauguration address today, it sure sounds like he will not get us involved in a war with Iraq or Syria. The United States is now generally respected around the world again. The only thing about his foreign policy that really disturbs me is his failure to close Guantanamo. I am disappointed that he has continued Bush policies regarding electronic eavesdropping. I expected he would be more of a civil libertarian. Yet overall, Obama definitely gets an A here.

Like most liberals, the Affordable Care Act disappointed me. Had Obama chosen to be more engaged in shaping it, it would have been a much better piece of legislation. Even so, getting it into law was a huge accomplishment in itself, since it had not been done before in the United States. Understandably, Obama had plenty else on his plate to deal with at the same time, including the economy. Perhaps it is just the lackluster economy, but health care costs are easing for the first time in many years. It may be a result of the ACA. A solid B here.

I am most disappointed in his lack of leadership on climate change. He did direct funds toward clean energy solutions, and the EPA has issues new rules limiting particulate matter. His most important accomplishment was probably increasing vehicle fuel efficiency standards. This doesn’t solve the problem of climate change, but it dramatically reduces need for oil and will do much to reduce smog and ozone, at least compared to not having the rules. Given Republican domination in the House, it’s not surprising why he saw it as a lost cause. Still, I feel much more could be done here. I give him a D here.

I expected a more progressive president than I actually got. President Obama turned out to be a ruthlessly pragmatic president, which at times was something of a weakness. Still, his strategy has been consistently long term, with short-term milestones if possible that make progress toward a long-term accomplishment. Obama was given a chessboard with the queen captured and only a rook, knight, bishop and some pawns. He has won the queen back. Winning the game though looks like it will be a problem for a future president to accomplish. Obama’s major accomplishment will likely be that he kept moving the ball down the field.

Overall, I am glad that I voted for him. I’ll take a man of practical action in the White House any day over a rabid ideologue of any type.