Last Sunday, August 14, 2011, was the 76th anniversary of FDR's signing of the Social Security Act.
My great grandmother, who was born in 1870, was a sixty-five year old widow the year the act was signed. I don't know if she ever received much in the way of benefits after they started being paid in 1942. I do know that she received most of her support the old fashioned way - from her children.
In fact, she never owned or even rented a place of her own. She would simply live with one of her children until she decided it was time to move on. She would pack a suitcase, get on the bus and travel to the town where another child lived. The first the next host knew about it would be when the phone rang and my great grandmother announced, "I'm at the depot. Come get me."
It helped that seven of her children lived to adulthood. That spread the burden a bit.
Last Sunday was also the 76th anniversary of efforts to attack or do away with social security. That battle isn't over.
Friday, August 19, 2011
Moderation
"There's nothing in the middle of the road but yellow lines and dead armadillos."
Jim Hightower
(You don't have to be from Texas to get this, but it might help)
Jim Hightower
(You don't have to be from Texas to get this, but it might help)
Thursday, August 18, 2011
Arrest of Voters in Wake County North Carolina
Last Saturday's New Bern Sun Journal published an article about the arrest of three voters in Wake County on charges of voter fraud in 2008: here.This morning's News and Observer reported an additional arrest on similar charges.
All four cases apparently involved voting by absentee ballot (or at one-stop early voting) and subsequently voting at the normal voting precinct on election day. According to newspaper accounts, none of the accused attempted to impersonate another voter. They were legally registered voters eligible to cast votes in the election.
Would voter ID have prevented these four cases? No.
So what went wrong and how can this kind of double voting be eliminated?
First, we should recognize the magnitude of the task. In 2008, 444,013 Wake County voters out of 593,043 registered cast ballots in 189 precincts. If only four of those voters voted twice, my calculator can't display the percentage of error, it was so small. There are just too many zeroes after the decimal.
Secondly, until the charges are tried and evidence put before a court, we won't know whether any fraud was committed. A judge or jury might find inadvertence rather than intent.
The truth is, procedures are in place that should have caught and prevented double voting in these four cases. On the other hand, it is human beings who carry out these procedures. No organization is likely to achieve perfect results in any human endeavor. But improvement is in order.
How to do even better in the future? (Better, that is, than 99.999999999%)
Find the source(s) of the problem. I see two sources.
1. In 2008 Wake County had to print poll books for all 593,000 registered voters prior to one-stop. After one-stop but before election day, each precinct's poll book had to be manually corrected to show one-stop and mail-in absentee voters who had already voted. This is an enormous task.
2. Wake County uses optically scanned paper ballots instead of Direct Record Electronic voting machines. While the M-100 optical scanner has proven to be highly accurate with properly completed ballots, the system does not prevent the voter from making errors. In one of the cases charged, the voter explained that he inadvertently failed to vote on the reverse side of the paper ballot when he voted at one stop, and went back on election day to complete the back of the ballot. Direct Record Electronic voting machines like the IVotronic machines we use in Pamlico County would have reminded the voter of additional pages, informed him if he had left any selections blank and prevented him from selecting too many candidates for an office, thus spoiling his ballot. The paper ballots do not provide such safety features.
In Pamlico County, our Board of Elections strives for perfection. And we are constantly trying to improve our performance.
We are fortunate not to have to print poll books for more than half a million voters. On the other hand, we have limited resources. An advantage of being a small county is that we are able to try out new improvements more easily than the very large counties in the state. Last year, for example, we were able to introduce On Site Voter Registration Database (OVRD) to about half of our precincts. This system of computerized poll books greatly reduces the chances for errors like the four cases of double voting in Wake County.
We look forward to even more improvements in OVRD in the coming year.
All four cases apparently involved voting by absentee ballot (or at one-stop early voting) and subsequently voting at the normal voting precinct on election day. According to newspaper accounts, none of the accused attempted to impersonate another voter. They were legally registered voters eligible to cast votes in the election.
Would voter ID have prevented these four cases? No.
So what went wrong and how can this kind of double voting be eliminated?
First, we should recognize the magnitude of the task. In 2008, 444,013 Wake County voters out of 593,043 registered cast ballots in 189 precincts. If only four of those voters voted twice, my calculator can't display the percentage of error, it was so small. There are just too many zeroes after the decimal.
Secondly, until the charges are tried and evidence put before a court, we won't know whether any fraud was committed. A judge or jury might find inadvertence rather than intent.
The truth is, procedures are in place that should have caught and prevented double voting in these four cases. On the other hand, it is human beings who carry out these procedures. No organization is likely to achieve perfect results in any human endeavor. But improvement is in order.
How to do even better in the future? (Better, that is, than 99.999999999%)
Find the source(s) of the problem. I see two sources.
1. In 2008 Wake County had to print poll books for all 593,000 registered voters prior to one-stop. After one-stop but before election day, each precinct's poll book had to be manually corrected to show one-stop and mail-in absentee voters who had already voted. This is an enormous task.
2. Wake County uses optically scanned paper ballots instead of Direct Record Electronic voting machines. While the M-100 optical scanner has proven to be highly accurate with properly completed ballots, the system does not prevent the voter from making errors. In one of the cases charged, the voter explained that he inadvertently failed to vote on the reverse side of the paper ballot when he voted at one stop, and went back on election day to complete the back of the ballot. Direct Record Electronic voting machines like the IVotronic machines we use in Pamlico County would have reminded the voter of additional pages, informed him if he had left any selections blank and prevented him from selecting too many candidates for an office, thus spoiling his ballot. The paper ballots do not provide such safety features.
In Pamlico County, our Board of Elections strives for perfection. And we are constantly trying to improve our performance.
We are fortunate not to have to print poll books for more than half a million voters. On the other hand, we have limited resources. An advantage of being a small county is that we are able to try out new improvements more easily than the very large counties in the state. Last year, for example, we were able to introduce On Site Voter Registration Database (OVRD) to about half of our precincts. This system of computerized poll books greatly reduces the chances for errors like the four cases of double voting in Wake County.
We look forward to even more improvements in OVRD in the coming year.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Russia and Gorbachov
Yesterday's Der Spiegel On Line, the internet version of the German magazine, published a very interesting interview with former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachov.
Gorbachov plainly has had enormous influence, not all of it planned, on the shape of the world today. The interview, headlined 'They Were Truly Idiots' (referring to his former Kremlin colleagues), is notable not only for the insider's tidbits, but for the light it sheds on Gorbachov's essential humanity. He was an important transitional figure, and we should be grateful for the role he played.
Gorbachov plainly has had enormous influence, not all of it planned, on the shape of the world today. The interview, headlined 'They Were Truly Idiots' (referring to his former Kremlin colleagues), is notable not only for the insider's tidbits, but for the light it sheds on Gorbachov's essential humanity. He was an important transitional figure, and we should be grateful for the role he played.
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Speaking of New Ideas
How to get people working again, generate revenue, reduce the deficit and stimulate the economy by increasing aggregate demand - not a new idea, but a proven one:
Or this:
"Among those calling for a mix of cuts and revenue are onetime standard-bearers of Republican economic philosophy like Martin Feldstein, an adviser to President Ronald Reagan, and Henry M. Paulson Jr., Treasury secretary to President George W. Bush, underscoring the deepening divide between party establishment figures and the Tea Party-inspired Republicans in Congress and running for the White House.
“I think the U.S. has every chance of having a good year next year, but the politicians are doing their damnedest to prevent it from happening — the Republicans are — and the Democrats to my eternal bafflement have not stood their ground,” Ian C. Shepherdson, chief United States economist for High Frequency Economics, a research firm, said in an interview.
As for the longer term, Ethan Harris, co-head of global economics research at Bank of America, wrote this week that “Given the scale of the debt problem, a credible plan requires both revenue enhancement measures and entitlement reform. Washington’s recent debt deal did not include either.”
How to cure the unemployment problem?:
"This isn't hard. Hire people to build things with the free money the world is offering us."
Posted by Mark Thoma on Monday, August 15, 2011 at 10:08 PM in Economics, Unemployment
Or how about this:
"The only policy that will really help is an increase in aggregate demand."
"The right policy can be debated, but the important thing is for policy makers to stop obsessing about debt and focus instead on raising aggregate demand. As Bill Gross of the investment firm Pimco put it recently: “While our debt crisis is real and promises to grow to Frankenstein proportions in future years, debt is not the disease — it is a symptom. Lack of aggregate demand or, to put it simply, insufficient consumption and investment is the disease.”
Bruce Bartlett; Bruce Bartlett held senior policy roles in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations and served on the staffs of Representatives Jack Kemp and Ron Paul.
Or this:
"Among those calling for a mix of cuts and revenue are onetime standard-bearers of Republican economic philosophy like Martin Feldstein, an adviser to President Ronald Reagan, and Henry M. Paulson Jr., Treasury secretary to President George W. Bush, underscoring the deepening divide between party establishment figures and the Tea Party-inspired Republicans in Congress and running for the White House.
“I think the U.S. has every chance of having a good year next year, but the politicians are doing their damnedest to prevent it from happening — the Republicans are — and the Democrats to my eternal bafflement have not stood their ground,” Ian C. Shepherdson, chief United States economist for High Frequency Economics, a research firm, said in an interview.
As for the longer term, Ethan Harris, co-head of global economics research at Bank of America, wrote this week that “Given the scale of the debt problem, a credible plan requires both revenue enhancement measures and entitlement reform. Washington’s recent debt deal did not include either.”
Monday, August 15, 2011
New Ideas
About this time in every election cycle, we begin to hear candidates, pundits and observers talking about how we need "new ideas."
The belief in new ideas isn't universal, though. Or even belief in novelty of any kind. For example:
"9 The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun."
Ecclesiastes 1:9
At least in human affairs, the preacher who wrote that book seems to be right. The more familiar you are with history, the more it appears that every so-called new idea is just a revamping of some idea long known to humankind.
Even so, if the idea is something you have never heard about, it seems new.
Yesterday's New York Times had an article lamenting not just the paucity of new ideas, but the shortages of any ideas at all. Neal Gabler, senior fellow at the Annenberg Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California writes of The Elusive Big Idea. Gabler observes that not only do we no longer have big thinkers, our best new ideas seem trivial. He attributes the problem to a surfeit of information, readily available over the internet, which paradoxically crowds out thought and ideas.
The economist Jared Bernstein takes issue with Gabler. At least in the field of economics, Bernstein contends, ideas have been suppressed by a confluence of wealth and power.
"The financial crash of the 2000s revealed a confluence of many powerful and socially disruptive forces: levels of income inequality not seen since the dawn of the Great Depression, stagnant middle-class living standards amidst strong productivity growth, solid evidence that deregulated markets were driving a damaging bubble and bust cycle, deep repudiation of supply-side economics, and most importantly, even deeper repudiation of the dominant, Greenspanian paradigm that markets will self-correct." Despite the evidence and the warnings of economists, Bernstein continues, "And yet, at least from where I sit today, we let the moment pass. Far from a debate over a new paradigm, our national political economy discussion is bereft of ideas, leaving us mired in recession as we self-inflict one economic wound after another. Forget new ideas—we can’t seem to correctly apply the old ones!"
Why is that? Bernstein explains: "Why did we squander the opportunity? Not because there’s so much information on the web. It is, at least in part, because the concentration of wealth and power blocked the new ideas from a fair hearing."
The belief in new ideas isn't universal, though. Or even belief in novelty of any kind. For example:
"9 The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun."
Ecclesiastes 1:9
At least in human affairs, the preacher who wrote that book seems to be right. The more familiar you are with history, the more it appears that every so-called new idea is just a revamping of some idea long known to humankind.
Even so, if the idea is something you have never heard about, it seems new.
Yesterday's New York Times had an article lamenting not just the paucity of new ideas, but the shortages of any ideas at all. Neal Gabler, senior fellow at the Annenberg Norman Lear Center at the University of Southern California writes of The Elusive Big Idea. Gabler observes that not only do we no longer have big thinkers, our best new ideas seem trivial. He attributes the problem to a surfeit of information, readily available over the internet, which paradoxically crowds out thought and ideas.
The economist Jared Bernstein takes issue with Gabler. At least in the field of economics, Bernstein contends, ideas have been suppressed by a confluence of wealth and power.
"The financial crash of the 2000s revealed a confluence of many powerful and socially disruptive forces: levels of income inequality not seen since the dawn of the Great Depression, stagnant middle-class living standards amidst strong productivity growth, solid evidence that deregulated markets were driving a damaging bubble and bust cycle, deep repudiation of supply-side economics, and most importantly, even deeper repudiation of the dominant, Greenspanian paradigm that markets will self-correct." Despite the evidence and the warnings of economists, Bernstein continues, "And yet, at least from where I sit today, we let the moment pass. Far from a debate over a new paradigm, our national political economy discussion is bereft of ideas, leaving us mired in recession as we self-inflict one economic wound after another. Forget new ideas—we can’t seem to correctly apply the old ones!"
Why is that? Bernstein explains: "Why did we squander the opportunity? Not because there’s so much information on the web. It is, at least in part, because the concentration of wealth and power blocked the new ideas from a fair hearing."
Sunday, August 14, 2011
About Demand
"I hear politicians say that businesses have money and they should be hiring," said Riddle, a tall, distinguished-looking man who might be cast as the president if he were an actor. "But if you don't have the demand, you don't hire the people."
Aug. 14, LA Times
Here's the rest of the article:
Aug. 14, LA Times
Here's the rest of the article:
Companies are afraid to hire, even if business is improving
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