Month: November 2010

Douthat's reading of the landscape:

Romney is a vulnerable frontrunner, and there’s room (as I’ve suggested before) for another candidate to swoop in and serve as the bridge between moderates and conservatives instead. But he still has to be considered the front-runner — and note that when he’s at his weakest, it isn’t Palin who reaps the greatest benefits but the persistently underestimated Huckabee. (Besides Illinois, the other state where Huckabee leads is Pennsylvania: He polls at a robust 23 percent there, while Palin and Romney tie at 16 percent.) I’m skeptical that any of these candidates will take the nomination, in the end: I think it’s more likely that the eventual winner will emerge from the Daniels-Pawlenty-Jon Thune pack (or the Chris Christie-Jeb Bush-Paul Ryan pack, if you want to get more imaginative). But from an oddsmaker’s perspective, I think you have to rank Palin third, behind Romney and Huckabee — and possibly behind Gingrich as well.

Razib Khan posts primary polling charts from the last cycle as a warning to crystal ball readers. Contra Douthat, Nate Silver is betting against candidates like Pawlenty and Thune:

The theory seems to be that all of the front-runners are flawed in some way, which is undoubtedly true. But if one of the front-runners flops in some way once the campaign actually begins, I don’t see why it wouldn’t be one of the other front-runners who would pick up their slack: if Sarah Palin’s campaign gets off to a poor start, for instance, it is probably Mr. Gingrich — not Mr. Pawlenty or Mr. Thune — who would get first dibs on her votes.

Could the Tea Party help bring it about?

More and more figures on the right — especially some darlings of the all-important tea party movement — are coming forward to utter a conservative heresy: that the Pentagon budget cow perhaps should not be so sacred after all.

Senator-elect Rand Paul of Kentucky was the latest, on Sunday declaring on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that military spending should not be exempt from the electorate’s clear
desire to reduce the massive federal deficit.

His comments follow similar musings by leading fiscal hawks Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana, a presumptive contender for the GOP nomination in 2012.  Others who agree that military spending shouldn’t get a free pass as we search for savings include Sen. Johnny Isakson, Sen. Bob Corker, Sen.-elect Pat Toomey—the list goes on.

Cato has done some ground work on where to begin at their Downsizing Government project: "As of today, that web site includes recommendations for over a trillion dollars in targeted cuts to the Pentagon budget over ten years."

In the future, it may be a neighborhood near you:

Street lights are an important part of our urban infrastructure — they light our way home and make the roads safe at night. But what if we could create natural street lights that don’t need electricity to power them? A group of scientists in Taiwan recently discovered that placing gold nanoparticles within the leaves of trees, causes them to give off a luminous reddish glow. The idea of using trees to replace street lights is an ingenious one – not only would it save on electricity costs and cut CO2 emissions, but it could also greatly reduce light pollution in major cities.

A reader writes:

Can I say how disappointed I was not to be able to hand a copy of The Cannabis Closet book to my non-smoking, straight-laced, California sister before the Prop 19 vote? I hope that you'll publish that volume in time for the rematch.

We will be publishing it in time for the holidays.

Adam Ozimek focuses on the mortgage interest deduction elimination proposals in the draft plan:

They present two possible plans for this deduction. One abolishes it entirely, and the other one eliminates it for second homes, home equity mortgages, and any mortgages over $500,000 in value. …

I strongly believe that lower house prices right now cause significant externalities. Even if this deduction occurs five years from now, the value of a house today is in part determined by it’s expected future sales price, and thus expected future price declines will be factored into today’s prices.

The externalities associated with low house prices should be less of problem for high income households, since foreclosures and labor immobility are less likely outcomes for them. This suggests there will be less of a downside, but not zero, to the second approach proposed by Simpson-Bowles, which eliminates the deductions for 2nd mortgages, home equity mortgages, and mortgages over $500,000.  Alternatively, a slow decrease of the value of the deduction may limit the impact on prices.

In the long-run, the deduction should go entirely since a) it doesn’t increase homeownership, and b) it’s unclear whether we want to do that in the first place. In the short-run we should be very cautious, and make sure it is repealed it in a way that limits the impacts on home prices, especially in the relatively lower part of the price distribution where it is likely to cause externalities. 

A reader writes:

Do you do the grocery shopping for your household?  I do most of ours, and I've noticed over the past few years that the amount of food in packages is quietly being downsized while prices remain the same. 

Our favorite brand of broccoli now comes in 14 oz. bags, not 16 oz.  Same goes for our favorite brand of pasta.  Our grocery store now sells boxes of ten cookies instead of a dozen for the same price (and has dropped more expensive ingredients like nuts from some of the recipes).  Packages of sliced cheese and lunch meat weigh 7 oz. instead of 8 oz. Pasta sauce now comes in 26 oz. jars instead of 28 or 32 oz. jars.  You get a lot less tuna and a lot more water in canned tuna these days.  And so on.

Now, in itself this doesn't prove that overall food prices have been going up.  (A number of foods have dropped in price recently, for instance.)  But the incredible shrinking package size is something that people notice, despite manufacturers' best efforts to keep it off our radar screens.  It makes us feel like we've been cheated.  And it makes Palin's demagoguery about rising food prices seem intuitively sensible.  (Especially if you are trying to follow a recipe that calls for a 16 oz. can of tomatoes and you can only find 15 oz. cans!)

For the record, I think Palin is a grifter (and a dangerous one at that), who utterly lacks the moral fiber and work ethic to hold high office.  But she has a real knack for exploiting anxieties and resentments.  Her complaint about rising food prices has traction because it confirms our anecdotal observations, not to mention the general sense that ordinary people are being taken advantage of.

Aaron does indeed do the groceries.

A deal appears to have been reached after eight months of stalemate. Marc Lynch analyzes:

This outcome has to be seen as a real letdown from the much-touted idea that the Iraqi people had voted for change in March 2010. But those hopes faded so long ago that I wonder if anyone even remembers them. After the long months of political paralysis, I suspect that most people will just be happy to have a government which can start addressing the many long-neglected issues facing Iraq. It is fortunate that despite the political paralysis, the state has largely continued to function and violence has not really increased overall despite a series of widely reported spectacular attacks. Hopefully the new government will now be able to move forcefully, quickly regain some political momentum, start addressing outstanding vital national problems, and work with the U.S. on its responsible military drawdown. At this point, that's enough.

It seems as if the Iraqis are pushing brinksmanship to heretofore unknown parameters. I remain pessimistic that this government will work as an effectively multi-sectarian entity. But, as always, if events prove me wrong, I will gladly change my mind. And I sure hope I am wrong, or, in the best possible scenario, 60 percent wrong and 40 percent right.