Month: September 2012

Nobody knows:

There is little doubt that Mr. Romney will carry Texas. He is a 99 percent favorite in the state, according to the current FiveThirtyEight forecast. But the long-term trend seems equally clear. Despite poor turnout, the Hispanic share of the electorate has steadily climbed, from 7 percent in 1984 to 20 percent in 2008, according to exit polls. At the same time, the non-Hispanic white vote has consistently fallen. In 1984 it was 78 percent; by 2008 it was 63 percent.

The larger question is not if Texas will become more competitive, but when, both Mr. [James] Henson [director of the Texas Politics Project] and Mr. [Robert] Miller [chairman of the Public Law Group at Locke Lord L.L.P.] said. And that largely depends on whether Democrats can improve turnout among Hispanics.

Game of Thrones should really consider switching out their soundtrack with this:

So argue Pat Garofalo and Travis Waldron:

"The basic idea is that sports stadiums typically aren't a good tool for economic development," said Victor Matheson, an economist at Holy Cross who has studied the economic impact of stadium construction for decades. When cities cite studies (often produced by parties with an interest in building the stadium) touting the impact of such projects, there is a simple rule for determining the actual return on investment, Matheson said: "Take whatever number the sports promoter says, take it and move the decimal one place to the left. Divide it by ten, and that's a pretty good estimate of the actual economic impact."

Waldron later adds:

If taxpayers knew the real cost of stadiums, they might choose to keep paying for police officers, firefighters, and other public services instead of spending $4 billion on professional sports facilities. Or maybe they wouldn’t. Maybe fandom is such that we would still prioritize a sparkling new arena or stadium even while we’re cutting those services. The point is, we don’t know, because we never get that discussion.

Matt Bai explores the rush to claim credit for Ohio's recovery – and what it illuminates about our hazy understanding of job creation:

While most of the debate nationally still revolves around why the economy remains so pathetic, there are several pivotal states — Ohio, Florida, Nevada, Virginia — where things are slowly turning around. In these states, the real issue may not be who deserves blame for economic ruin but rather who deserves credit for a rebound, and what really causes jobs to come back after they’ve been lost. Republican governors are saying that unemployment rates have plummeted because of their pro-business policies. The president is saying that the hard decisions he made earlier in his term are finally starting to pay off. And then there’s Mitt Romney, a congenital optimist who finds himself in the uncomfortable position of having to be a total downer, arguing that there really isn’t a recovery at all. “Trust Me: You’re Still Miserable”could be Romney’s bumper sticker in Ohio.

Jared Bernstein sketches out where credit should fall:

[P]ols will always take credit for jobs on their watch—and try to point elsewhere re job losses.  But outside of recession, I wouldn’t take it too seriously.  In recession, the President is very important, and President Obama comes across as effectively stepping up to this plate in the Bai story re Ohio.  In expansions, govs and mayors don’t have much at all to do with the number of jobs the economy generates, but if they’re smart in terms of investments in public goods, they can draw more of those jobs to their states and cities.

Mykonos, Greece, 3.25 pm

Michael Grunwald discusses his new book on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act:

[A]fter the financial crisis, everyone knew it wasn’t going to turn around quickly. That changes the rules on timely, targeted and temporary. You’re not worried about overheating the economy if it didn’t spend out in six months. So what they did was [give] aid to states to prevent layoffs, which went out right away. Food stamps to get money into people’s pockets. And then other stuff, the infrastructure, the clean energy, the health IT — that was understood to take longer. But even there, take wind energy, which obviously it takes awhile to get a wind farm going. By the end of 2008, that industry was dead in the water. The day after the stimulus passed, one of the major wind companies, which was pulling out of America entirely, turned around and announced a $6 billion investment in the United States.

Health IT is another example I love. That’s one of the few where even they would admit there was no pretense of stimulus. The money didn’t go out the door till 2011. But right now, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, health IT is America’s fastest growing industry.

It's amazing what the world looks like from a satellite. (The above is Alaska.) An entire photographic project on these lines is being built by Paul Bourke, a Research Associate Professor at the University of Western Australia. More fractal patterns from space on Bourne's website here. Via Modern Met and Flavorwire.

As I and countless others predicted, and as experience in other countries showed, the end of the persecution of gay servicemembers in the US military has led to a big pfffttt. Adam Serwer sums up a new study:

The study, which was conducted by the pro-repeal Palm Center and was first reported on by Lila Shapiro of the Huffington Post, found no negative impact on military readiness, unit cohesion, retention and recruitment of servicemembers, and morale. The Palm Center conducted "in depth interviews" with 62 active-duty servicemembers as part of the study, which mirrors recent findings by the Pentagon itself.

The gap between hysteria and reality on these questions is yawning. But look: gay servicemembers join the military to fight, not get political. We're damn lucky to have them – as their fellow servicemembers (if not the GOP) understand.

Again, I’ve heightened the sensitivity of the poll of polls – but this sudden dive in GOP voting support must have the Romneyites a little worried. Still, here’s Yuval Levin to tell us not to worry:

At the end of the day, it’s hard to see how these two conventions taken together will move the needle much either way. Good fun for us political junkies, but not a whole lot more.

We’ll soon find out if this is just wishful thinking.

David Sessions holds that the real lesson of the last two weeks was “the incredible smallness of the American political imagination”:

If, let’s say, you were to believe in a society that is not structured around dubious notions of economic deserts and God-given rights, or one that does not dramatize external enemies and romanticize combat against them, or one that is committed to radical inclusion both domestically and internationally, you became painfully aware the past two weeks that you have virtually zero political representation in the United States, and little hope of ever having it. Even in the party that contains many who think of themselves as European-style secular intellectuals, there is an endless parade of cheers for murder and bestowals of glory on those whose children threw away their lives in meaningless battle. I’m sure John Kerry and Joe Biden think of themselves as committed secularists, but their enthusiasm for chasing infidels to the “end of the earth” shows just how primally zealous our political mainstream remains.

Goldtweet’s response to the above speech:

I’ve been told I’m a bloodthirsty warmongering neoconservative, but for whatever reason, I just don’t like all this bragging about killing.

— Jeffrey Goldberg (@JeffreyGoldberg) September 7, 2012

Update from a reader:

I agree with the point but not this example. Biden cited it as justice, avenging a grievous wound that the GOP told us over and over didn’t matter anymore. It did matter, more than I realized until it was done. This was wasn’t flag-draped war mongering preformed in costume and conceived by chicken hawks. No one can argue that our national security has not been enhanced by bin Laden’s death, and if this part of the speech glorified anything, it was Obama’s commitment to that end. Citing it as an example of “cheers for murder” or bloodlust or whatever, is offensive. The only guy making hay of this is the ex-Navy SEAL who wrote a book about it. The real outrages – saber-rattling, unwinnable wars, torture (which has stopped) and imprisonments (which haven’t) – are still stoutly celebrated and defended by the right wing in a savage perversion of patriotism.