Go Ben Go!

Good news from the Fed -- Ben Bernanke is going to set an inflation target (2%, of course I wanted higher, but given the state of expectations this is a move in the right direction). And he's going to buy more bonds. Bank people are saying things like "My expectation is that we are going to get quantitative easing three in April." My expectation is that Ben Bernanke and Mario Draghi are going to keep the recovery going into an Obama second term.

I don't know how good this is long term, though -- as a supporter of higher inflation, I'd rather Paul Volcker had set a 5% inflation target back in the bad old double-digit days, and people's expectations had stuck with that. Now we're going up to a low target rather than down to a high one.

2012 South Carolina Republican Primary Results Map

People liked these maps last time, so let's do them again. I find it quite frustrating that most election results maps don't do some sort of color coding to give everyone a sense of the magnitude of a candidate's victory in different parts of the country. In the case of South Carolina, we can see that the Appalachian foothills in the northwest corner of the state, as well as the counties surrounding Columbia, were somewhat more friendly to Mitt Romney than the rural areas in the rest of the state. Those light-brown ring counties don't seem to have any clear differences from the rural areas; they're roughly in line with the statewide levels of income, education, and African-American population.

Compared to 2008, the big difference was Romney's inability to hold any ground in the corridor between Columbia and Charleston, as well as smaller margins of victory for Romney in the less rural parts of the state. McCain did quite well in this part of the state, for reasons that aren't immediately clear to me.

Ezekiel Emanuel, Supposed Health Care Expert, Doesn't Know What's In Health Care Reform

Ezekiel Emanuel's article claiming that liberals "need to care about controlling health care costs every bit as much as conservatives do" may raise the cost of straw quite a bit. Emanuel seems to have depleted the global straw supply by packing so much of it into the gigantic straw man that is his article. Not one liberal who doesn't care about controlling health care costs is quoted.

If Emanuel wants to understand what liberals think about health care costs, he could look at the health care reform law that just passed Congress, and which all the liberal Democrats in the House and Senate voted for. It implements a wide range of cost controls. It would've had more if the public option hadn't been sacrificed to non-liberal Joe Lieberman, and if the end-of-life planning measures hadn't been demonized as "death panels" by liberal-hating Sarah Palin. The way Emanuel sets up the debate makes you wonder whether he doesn't know what's in health care reform, or if he's just ignoring it so that he can mischaracterize what liberals have been supporting in Congress. I'm not sure which reading is more charitable.

Florida Looks Like SC

Newt Gingrich has cause for optimism about Florida after winning South Carolina. Polling in the states looks pretty similar -- Gingrich had huge leads in late November and early December, but Romney stepped ahead after the big ad blitz that sunk Gingrich in Iowa. (I don't know if the Romney SuperPACs' anti-Gingrich ads were ever on the air in either of those states -- as far as I know it was just the spillover of media effects from Iowa that brought Gingrich's numbers back down.) So Gingrich's ability to come back in SC seems bodes well for his ability to come back in Florida. He had the debates as a source of good free media in SC, and he'll have that victory as a source of good free media in Florida to push him forward.

South Carolina Primary Results in One Picture

This is my takeaway from the Republican primary. The voters who voted tonight aren't interested in Newt's proposal for 21 hours of debate with Barack Obama. They just want someone who's going to kick people in the balls. Which is how Newt has made his bones since the early Clinton Administration.

He kicked Bill Clinton in the balls as long as he was in the House of Representatives, beginning with attempts to detonate any sort of compromise health care bill and ending with impeaching Clinton even after the impeachment message had lost his party seats in the house. He kicked Juan Williams in the balls when he dared to suggested that referring to Obama as a "food stamp presidency" might offend African Americans. He kicked John in the balls when he had the temerity to suggest that someone who is a total jackass to both his first and second wives while sanctimoniously going on and on about Bill Clinton's moral turpitude might be the kind of person that some voters might not want as President. Essentially, Newt's campaign was telling voters that a vote for me is a vote to kick some other in the balls. It might be Barack Obama. It might be "the liberal media" or "the elite". It might be African-Americans. But basically, you could vote for Newt, and Newt would find whoever the closest person was who's different from you in some way, and then kick them in the balls.

The exit polls are a little odd. In certain respects, Newt fared better among voters that are closer to the median voter than the typical Republican; he did better downscale voters both in terms of income and education. But/ Romney did better in other respects; he lost by smaller margins among women, among people who identify as moderate, and urban voters (although none of the metro areas in South Carolina are particularly large). I'll have some observations about the exits and the county-level results tomorrow.

South Carolina Repubican Primary Benchmarks

This is what the map looked like on election night in 2008. Romney was mostly a non-factor, with John McCain's strong challenge emerging from Mike Huckabee. Most likely,  Romney has absorbed most McCain's voters, while Gingrich will pick up Huckabee's voters. Polls close in a few hours, so we'll know soon.

My Ideas Want To Be Free (As In Beer)

A couple months ago, I discovered that a book I'd co-edited, and on which I was eligible to receive royalties, was downloadable for free on the internet. I was happy about this! What advances my career isn't people paying money for my book -- it's people reading it and being aware of my contributions to philosophical debates. It's why I was eager to submit the paper I mentioned in the previous post to an open-access online philosophy journal.

So I'm happy to see that Senator Jeff Merkley (to whom I just made another big Leadership PAC contribution) has come out against SOPA and PIPA. I once commented to one of his staffers that they should make sure there aren't any health risks associated with being on the right side of too many issues, because if there are, he might hurt himself.

Ricardian Equivalence And Unequal Vividness

It's not that often that my research directly addresses a major issue of the day, but I had a little footnote on Ricardian equivalence in "The Humean Theory of Practical Irrationality," just out in the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy. So I'll say something about that.

The paper tries to solve a problem for those who accept both of two popular theses about desire and action. First, people do whatever they believe will get them what they want. This is a psychological thesis about how people actually act. Second, it's rational for people to do whatever they believe will get them what they want. This is a normative thesis about what the right choice is. It's only about the right choice in the sense of being rational -- in the sense where it's right for the assassin to load his gun before trying to shoot -- not in the sense of being the morally right thing to do or anything like that.

Here's the problem with the two theses: since what we do and what it's rational to do are defined in exactly the same way, it seems that we can never act irrationally. And that's trouble, because it's pretty clear that people do act irrationally sometimes.

In the paper, I argue that "desire" in the psychological theory should be understood as the immediate motivational force that desires exert on you right when you act. Meanwhile, "desire" in the normative theory should be understood in terms of the dispositional strength of desires. We usually describe a sleeping person as desiring various things, even though no immediate motivational forces are operating then. Similarly, we can say that someone desires to marry his girlfriend even if he's on a roller coaster or something and he's not thinking of his girlfriend at the moment. This is the dispositional sense of desire -- it treats our desires as disposition rather than as immediately active forces.

Setting up the theories that way leaves just the right amount of room for human irrationality. Usually, we pursue what we desire more in the dispositional sense. But if we're presented with much more vivid images of the thing we desire less in the dispositional sense, we may pursue it anyway, because vivid images of something make the desire for it more forceful. Someone who's trying to quit smoking will find it easier to give into temptation and smoke again in a smoky bar than while jogging, because the representations of the pleasures of smoking will be much more vivid there.

What is Ricardian equivalence, and what does this all have to do with it? It's the hypothesis that fiscal stimulus can't actually get the economy going, because any money you spend now will have to be paid back in the future, and people will just save the money you give them to pay taxes towards future debts. Paul Krugman and Brad DeLong have been criticizing this idea lately on grounds that there's no reason people would just save the whole amount of the stimulus immediately.

The commonsense psychological point I'd like to add (it's in footnote 20) is that people have a natural tendency to satisfy desires whose objects are vividly represented before them at the moment. So when someone at the bar chooses between buying another drink and saving to pay future taxes, the drink is going to have a pretty big advantage. Our desires are stimulated by the things right in front of us, not the tax burden 30 years in the future.

I kind of wonder if some economist could make a career out of re-running economic models involving how people plan for the future under psychological assumptions that actually fit how people make decisions.

New Hampshire Primary Meaningless Speculation Thread

Dave Weigel has the final Suffolk poll, which I'll rearrange to make it easier to read:

• 37% Mitt Romney
• 18% Ron Paul
• 16% Jon Huntsman
• 11% Rick Santorum
• 09% Newt Gingrich
• 06% Buddy Roemer
• 05% Rick Perry

Note: figures may add up to more than 100% due to rounding.

With the exception of the brief Newt boomlet, Romney has lead wire to wire here. Meanwhile Huntsman seems to be "hoping he experiences the Santorum effect", which is really something that ought to be kept between Huntsman and Santorum rather than shared with the rest of the world. But indeed it seems to be happening, and given that both Paul and Santorum seem to be falling while Huntsman is on the rise, he just might finish second.

My totally meaningless prediction is that the lower-tier candidates will collapse, Romney tops 40%, and Huntsman squeezes ahead of Paul by a percentage point or two. What this means going forward, I have no clue whatsoever.

Anwar Acquitted Of Sodomy

Good news in Malaysia, as opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim is acquitted of sodomy charges. The ruling party's strategy in responding to Anwar's political rise, both in 2008 and in the late 1990s, was to make highly implausible sodomy accusations against him. Many Malaysians realized that the charges were nonsense, but prosecutions went forward anyway. In 2000 he was convicted and sentenced to 9 years in prison before being freed on appeal in 2004. So if you wanted some news from the other side of the world to go along with your Santorum-related speculation, there you go.

If you want to see how utterly insane Malaysian politics can be (the deal with the Mongolian actress and model getting blown up with C4 is one of the craziest things I've ever heard) you can take a look at this post from 2008.

Rick Santorum Photos as New Yorker Cartoons

You may have seen the meme of Buzzfeed, where New Yorker cartoons are re-captioned using Rick Santorum quotes.

I'm intrigued by the possibilities of the reverse. What happens if you take photos of Rick Santorum and caption them with "Christ, what an asshole."?

Good News From The ECB

The cause of more pro-growth policies from the European Central Bank seems to have scored another victory, as new bank chief Mario Draghi has appointed Peter Praet, described as a pragmatist on inflation issues, to head up the Economics division. Praet replaces stereotypically inflation-obsessed German Jürgen Stark, who objected to the ECB's bond-buying program.

With American economic numbers ticking slightly upward, one major danger is that collapse in Europe will bring everything back down. Democrats hoping to do well in the 2012 election should be rooting for pro-growth forces in Europe to defeat the people who want to use recession to fight inflation, with no concern for jobs. Replacing Jean-Claude Trichet with Mario Draghi seems to have been a positive step in that regard, and we can hope that Draghi keeps the good news coming.

No Senators In The GOP Primary

One odd feature of the Republican presidential primary is that there aren't any sitting Senators. This hardly ever happens. The Republicans had McCain and Brownback in 2008, McCain and Hatch in 2000, Bob Dole, Gramm, Specter and Lugar in 1996, and Bob Dole and Laxalt in 1988. On the Democratic side, we had Obama-Clinton-Dodd-Biden in 2008, Kerry-Edwards-Lieberman-Graham in 2004, Bradley as the sole Gore-alternative in 2000, Kerrey and Harkin in 1992, and Gore-Simon-Biden in 1988.

Why did this happen? I guess part of the reason is that Democrats did really well in the 2006 and 2008 Senate elections, clearing out lots of possible candidates. Rick Santorum would've been able to run from the Senate, and George Allen might've been in the race if he hadn't already run in 2008. Even so, the fact that 0 out of the 40 GOP Senators in office during 2009 ran is pretty unusual for a time when the weak economy made Obama look vulnerable. (My expectation early on was that Jim DeMint would run and win, but he decided not to get in for reasons that are his own.)

Santorum Comes From Behind, but Can't Top Romney

Sadly, the final results show Romney ahead by 8 votes. But Rick Santorum (yes, that Rick Santorum) had a remarkable showing in the Iowa caucuses. I still think Gingrich is the most viable NotRomney—if he can finish ahead of Santorum in New Hampshire, and win South Carolina, there's still a path to victory for him—but even then it's a very tough road ahead, and Gingrich obviously doesn't provide the same opportunities for hilarious headlines.

The best news to come out of Iowa is that instead of Nate Silver just sort of guessing what's going to happen next, we have some actual data! It's muddled, because Iowa is a Caucus, and because five candidates contested the state with serious resources, but at the very least, we can say that Romney's voters look more like the median voter in some respects (more female in particular) but don't in others (richer, more educated). And that people who self-identify as Republicans seem very uninterested in voting for Romney.

Use the comment thread to make your best Santorum-related, double-entendre-filled headline.

I Gave Mazie Hirono $1000 To Stop Ed Case

As far as I can tell, this year's most important Democratic Senate primary is in Hawaii, where solid left-wing Democrat Mazie Hirono is facing off against right-wing Ed Case. I really don't want to see Ed Case going to the Senate and supporting Republican wars and tax cuts like he did in the House, or getting in the way of Democratic initiatives like Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman. This is the time when I can prevent that from happening. So I've donated $1000 to Mazie Hirono.

Case was in Congress from 2002-2007. While he got

his seat too late to vote in favor of the Iraq War, he announced his support for the war during the campaign and was opposing withdrawal from Iraq as late as August 2006. He's basically the Hawaiian Joe Lieberman -- in fact, he endorsed Lieberman's presidential campaign back in 2004 as well as Lieberman's run for Senate as an independent against Democrat Ned Lamont in 2006. He supported Patriot Act reauthorization and supported keeping Guantanamo open after visiting it.

Lots of Democrats have cast various kinds of bad votes, but what really stands out about Case is his support for cutting taxes for rich people. In 2006, he was one of only 34 Democrats (who sided with 196 Republicans) to support reducing the estate tax. He also was one of 15 Democrats (who sided with 229 Republicans) to support cutting capital gains taxes and dividend taxes. And then there's this crazy vote, which I'll let Down With Tyranny explain with characteristic force:

Back in 2005 an amendment by far right sociopath Jeb Hensarling (R-TX) targeted NPR, PBS, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Title X family planning all in one shot. Only one Democrat crossed the aisle to vote for the most extreme piece of legislation of that session... Ed Case.

Apparently it was legislation to protect lots of tax cuts by cutting spending on programs including those above. And Ed Case was, indeed, the only Democrat to vote for it.

Mazie Hirono, meanwhile, is the kind of Democrat you'd hope for from Hawaii. She has perfect scores from NARAL, Planned Parenthood, the Human Rights Campaign, the Humane Society, and 90% or over on every legislative rating I can see from the ACLU and major environmental organizations. She's got the AFL-CIO's endorsement against Case and has a bunch of favorable ratings from unions. And she has perfect 0% ratings every year she's been in Congress from the Club for Growth, which gives you higher numbers if you support massive tax cuts for rich people. (Meanwhile, Club for Growth contributor and billionare investor Charles Schwab picked out Ed Case as one of the few Democrats he'd contribute to.) She'd also be the first Buddhist in the Senate, which would be pretty neat.

In primaries it's important to think about who could win the general election, and it seems that Hirono has an advantage there. She leads likely Republican opponent Linda Lingle by 6 points in the most recent independent poll, which has Case losing by 2. I was surprised by how well Lingle did in the poll, and I expect Democrats to outperform these numbers in 2012 with a native son running for president and drawing out Democratic voters. But in any event, this doesn't appear to be a case where you lose votes in the middle by supporting a more left-wing candidate.

There are lots of places in the country where I'd be willing to tolerate a conservative Democratic Senator. I could easily accept someone with Case's voting record from Idaho or Alabama or somewhere like that. But having Hawaii produce a conservative Democrat who undermines Democratic initiatives and supports Republican wars and tax cuts is not an acceptable result. Primaries are when you get to prevent that from happening, and I'm doing what I can. If you're interested in helping out too, you're definitely welcome to use my ActBlue page.

The Myth of Anti-Incumbent Elections

Over at SameFacts, Andrew Sabl flags two teriffic charts that illustrate the fact that "anti-incumbent" elections don't exist. In the post-WWII era, there have been very few elections that saw equal numbers of Democratic and Republican incumbents defeated, and in those elections, the total number of unstead representatives is very small. The closest thing to an anti-incumbent election was 1992, where redistricting played a substantial role in a number of Democratic defeats despite an otherwise positive year for Dems.

This has little in the way of implications for the 2012 elections, except that if you believe the current polling that suggests House Republicans have worn out their welcome, it's unlikely that there will be many Dems in conservative districts who lose.

Why Newt Is Going Nowhere

I really don't see much chance of a Gingrich resurgence in Iowa at this point -- his favorable / unfavorable numbers look bad enough that it's hard to see how he comes back. So it's a good time to look back at Jonathan Bernstein's old analysis of why Gingrich couldn't win and see how it played out.

Bernstein put a lot of weight on the strong anti-Newt sentiments of party actors. I didn't understand why this was a big deal, because I couldn't see what a bunch of GOP Congressmen were going to do in the next couple weeks to pull down Gingrich's poll numbers. Now it looks like it wasn't what they were going to do, it was what they'd already done. Support from party actors is important for fundraising and having good staff, and Gingrich had neither. (It didn't help that he was up against a ridiculously wealthy candidate and a bunch of his staff had given up on him earlier in the campaign.)

As a result, Gingrich didn't have the money to defend himself against the Romney-led assault that was blasting him with $34 in negative ads for each $1 he was spending in Iowa, and he didn't have the staff to make sure he was on the ballot in Virginia. (His whole 'Pearl Harbor' schtick about not making the ballot would've been offensive if it wasn't so laughable. That would've been like Pearl Harbor if we lost all those ships because we never maintained them and they just sank.)

One other thing we didn't see was Fox News and conservative media rushing to Newt's defense against the more moderate Romney. As a matter of fact, the perfect example of a GOP media personality with books to sell -- Glenn Beck -- came out strongly against him. That's the part of the Republican Party that could've saved him by putting enough pro-Newt stuff on the air to counter the insane amount of money Romney was throwing at him. But they clearly didn't feel any need to do that.

Merry Christmas!

Donkeylicious and Conspiracy Keanu wish all of you a Merry Christmas!

If you're looking for some good cheer, I'd recommend Ezra Klein's article on how Obama has done pretty well in his negotiations with Congressional Republicans throughout 2011. Obama often ended up offering concessions that made it look like he was losing at the time, but for a variety of reasons they didn't really amount to much of anything terrible. For example, the supercommittee failed to do anything, so we got $500 billion in defense cuts and the same amount in other spending cuts which don't include major entitlement programs that help the poor. I don't know how much credit Obama deserves for the fact that it looks like the Bush tax cuts won't be renewed, but that's definitely a good thing for those of us who want the government to be adequately funded in the future.

Ron Paul Is For States' Rights, Not Libertarianism

Let's say you don't want the federal government to ban abortion. There are two ways you might go from there. First, you might give individuals the right to decide, letting women choose whether or not to have abortions. Second, you might leave the issue of abortion up to states, so that each state can permit or ban abortion as it pleases.

Protecting individual rights is the genuine libertarian option. If you want to respect people's rights to make their own choices about their bodies, you'll make sure the right to have an abortion is put into the hands of the people. This may require the federal government to interfere with what some states are doing, if they pass laws banning abortion. But libertarians shouldn't have a problem with this. If some Americans were enslaving other Americans, any reasonable libertarianism would push the government to stop that. If a state is doing the enslaving, the federal government should stop the state from doing so, to protect individual rights. Individual rights, after all, are what make libertarianism appealing.

Ron Paul mostly wants to turn the issue of abortion over

to the states. (Not entirely -- he wants the Federal government to ban dilation and extraction as a method of performing abortions, but I'll set that aside for now.) This is in keeping with a number of his other views. He's against having the Federal government ban flag burning, but sees it as an appropriate thing for states to ban. His comments on the Lawrence vs. Texas decision, where the Supreme Court ruled Texas'

sodomy laws unconstitutional, express his views most clearly:

The Court determined that Texas had no right to establish its own standards for private sexual conduct, because gay sodomy is somehow protected under the 14th amendment "right to privacy". Ridiculous as sodomy laws may be, there clearly is no right to privacy nor sodomy found anywhere in the Constitution. There are, however, states' rights – rights plainly affirmed in the Ninth and Tenth amendments. Under those amendments, the State of Texas has the right to decide for itself how to regulate social matters like sex, using its own local standards.

There's nothing libertarian about this. It's a defense of the rights of state and local governments to wield tyrannical power over individuals as they see fit. Instead of giving individuals the right to do as they please with their own bodies unless they harm other individuals, states are given the power to "regulate social matters like sex" as they wish.

People Relenting From Idiocy: GOP And ECB

When Democrats displease their party base in negotiations, it's usually because they play things too moderate. It's interesting to see Republicans displease their party base by taking such an extreme negotiating position that the Wall Street Journal wouldn't stand for it and they had to give it up. I've never seen this happen on our side before, but it seems to be what the GOP had to do on the payroll tax cut. I guess the plutocrats want their tax cuts and a working economy so that they can make money.

We're seeing a little bit of positive movement on the economy. Hopefully Europe won't collapse and destroy all that. It's been kind of ridiculous to watch the European Central Bank make such bad monetary policy that the currency they're in charge of may cease to exist, and take the bank with it. Hopefully the new lending they're doing will turn things around.

Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Internal Organs

Rep. Dana Rorhabacher (R-CA): “If they’re dead, I don’t have an objection to their organs being used,” Mr. Rohrabacher added. “If they’re alive, they shouldn’t be here no matter what.”

Apparently, undocumented immigrants can't receive organ transplants, but their organs can be donated for transplant recipients. Awesome.

Kims

Apparently the death of Kim Il-Jong yesterday got misinterpreted by some people on Twitter who don't follow international news very closely. They thought it was Lil' Kim who had passed away. It looks like Detroit ex-Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick is among the confused people, and it's possible that an unclear tweet by Bill Maher was responsible for some of the chaos.

I don't know how North Korea works, and I don't know who does. My hope is the new ruler will be sane enough to allow things to improve in that country, and to not launch nuclear missiles.

Clarity

Katha Pollitt's obituary of Christopher Hitchens is the best one I've seen yet.

As far as I'm concerned, Katha is a better writer than Hitchens. I admire clear writing that precisely expresses subtle thinking. With Hitchens, the bombastic writing was sometimes getting in the way of the ideas, or covering up the fact that he hadn't thought things through clearly. Stylistic flourishes can be awesome when they help get the author's point across, but otherwise they're just distractions, however amusing.

There's A Reason People Don't Like Colonialism

I knew that terrible things had happened in the Congo under King Leopold at the turn of the century, but reading Heart of Darkness didn't really prepare me for the thing about the hands:

To extract the rubber, instead of tapping the vines, the Congolese workers would slash them and lather their bodies with the rubber latex. When the latex hardened, it would be scraped off the skin in a painful manner, as it took off the worker's hair with it...

...Failure to meet the rubber collection quotas was punishable by death. Meanwhile, the Force Publique were required to provide a hand of their victims as proof when they had shot and killed someone, as it was believed that they would otherwise use the munitions (imported from Europe at considerable cost) for hunting food. As a consequence, the rubber quotas were in part paid off in chopped-off hands. Sometimes the hands were collected by the soldiers of the Force Publique, sometimes by the villages themselves. There were even small wars where villages attacked neighbouring villages to gather hands, since their rubber quotas were too unrealistic to fill.

Ron Paul Doing Better Makes Sense

I didn't really think about this much before, but it kind of makes sense that Ron Paul would be doing better this year than last time around. The big thing that'd make Paul unacceptable to the GOP base was insufficiently hawkish foreign policy views, and Republicans get less hawkish when they've been out of the White House for a while. George W. Bush in 2000 was talking about how he'd pursue a more humble foreign policy.

Paul's not a terribly unusual Republican in other respects. You get deviations on issues here and there -- marijuana, for example, and he does take the anti-federal-government thing to a unique extreme. But he's totally against abortion, okay with letting Social Security get defunded, and he doesn't really care about climate change.