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R, Robot: Could this be the election that validates automated polls as more accurate than regular polls conducted by humans? Robopollster Rasmussen may have more riding on the New Jersey results than Obama. Mark Blumenthal (citing Nate Silver) discusses whether the reluctance of some potential voters to answer automated surverys eerily replicates the reluctance of some potential voters to ... vote--in effect giving robo-polls an effective screen for "likely" voters.** .. Also, in an especially exciting development, the Incumbent Rule may make a comeback ... P.S.: If robopolling really does focus accurately on "likely" voters, this latest Rasmussen-heavy health care chart will terrify wavering Democrats. ...
**--Post Election Update: Rasmussen and the other robopollsters were more accurate, but Blumenthal now attributes this to their "simulating a secret ballot, thus pushing voters harder to make a choice" between anti-Corzine candidates Christie and Daggett." Does this mean the robots' "likely voter" screen wasn't any better? ...10:30 P.M.
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Bonus Conditional CW: If conservative insurgent Doug Hoffman defeats the Democrat in New York's 23d District (after Republican party candidate, Dede Scozzafava, dropped out)--
Old CW: Sure, Scozzafava is a moderate Republican but that's what her constituents want.
New CW: It's a conservative district, what did you expect?
9:49 P.M.
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kf--Always the Positive Spin: The UAW's Ford workers have rejected contract concessions that would have almost-but-not-quite lowered Ford's labor costs to match GM and Chrysler's new costs, which are said to almost-but-not-quite match Toyota and Honda's. But is that really so bad? It means pattern bargaining is broken. The UAW strategy was always to take labor costs out of the auto industry's competitive equation by making basically the same deal with each of the Big Three. Yet Ford's workers obviously saw that their company was doing better than Chrysler or GM, and they refused to get in line. It's now clear that the fate of even unionized auto workers will vary with the success or failure of their individual employers. They're back to competing against each other, not just against the "bosses." ... P.S.: Too bad the GM and Chrysler bailouts, with their minimal UAW contract concessions, may have given Ford workers an excessively rosy impression of what it really means to have a failed employer. Were Ford workers scared enough to avoid the UAW's too-little-too-late tradition of concessions? Obama has short-circuited bankruptcy's shock-and-awe function. ... And not just in this case. [via RCP] ... 3:33 P.M.
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That Mid-term CW in Full:
Old CW: Wow, Corzine's a goner. Voters are pissed.
New CW: Mixed message! Mixed message!
Next CW: What do midterms mean, anyway?
2:21 P.M.
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Uncensored Twitter Vitriol Unleashed! Someone calls Stephen Fry "a bit ... boring." Can't have that. ... More evidence that many celebrities have skins of pre-Internet thinness. It seems plausible that they would have to be insulated--or have their public insulated--from what's really tweeted about them. ... 2:21 P.M.
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Hostages to Fortune: Mid-term Edition [E.A.]
[NPR Host: ...[N]ext week, the off-year election could be a political weathervane for the Obama administration. ... E.J., what do you - what do you find of interest in next Tuesday's elections?]
I think the weathervane is going to be going in circles in the end. I mean, what you're looking at in New Jersey, an embattled Democratic governor, Jon Corzine, on today's numbers is likely to squeak out a narrow victory. He's run a very, very tough campaign against Republican Chris Christie. It's as if Corzine lost the referendum on himself, then he turned it into a referendum on Christie, and Christie lost that one. And there's a third party candidate called Chris Daggett who's drawing off enough votes that Corzine will come through. And Corzine has hugged Barack Obama.
--E.J. Dionne, All Things Considered, Friday Oct. 30
John Corzine by all estimation is going to be reelected Governor of New Jersey.
--Walter Shapiro, KCRW's Which Way L.A.?, Thursday, October 22 **
Reader submissions accepted. (Email to Mickey underscore Kaus at MSN dot com). ...
P.S. I was sure this Bob Shrum column would yield a potentially embarrassing quote, riddled as it was by the assumption that Gov. Corzine was headed to unexpected victory (because unlike Creigh Deeds he "refuses to yield on core Democratic values.") But it's worded very carefully. ...
**--Maybe Shapiro left out the qualifiers speaking on a radio show? Here's the written version: "Aided by a superior Democratic get-out-the-vote drive, Corzine is now widely expected to prevail ..." 2:16 P.M
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Too Catty to Twitter--The mask of adopted authority slips: Someone who admits he thought the Ford Fiesta was "already out" --i.e. being sold in the U.S.--is maybe not the go-to expert to explain the "5 Reasons Ford Bounced Back." ... 2:14 P.M.
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"[M]ore people read the Newark Star-Ledger than watch Anderson Cooper": Jerry Skurnik claims I've failed to see the forest for the lede (about CNN's last place finish). The real story is how few people watch CNN and MSNBC and FOX combined:
And it’s not like the bigger names in Cable are reaching a vast audience either. The “giants” of cable news do much better but still reach a puny number of viewers (O’Reilly, Beck & Hannitty reach 2-3 million a night) in a country where 130 million voted for President last year.
Skurnik claims this reinforces his theory of the growing gap between the "two electorates"--the tiny minority of super/faster informed politicos and the vast mass of less up-to-speed voters. But the driver of the two-electorate phenomenon isn't so much the increased knowledge of the superinformed, its the decrease (or leave-it-until-the-last-minute delay) in the common knowledge of the less informed, no? Sure, cable news' audience is tiny in a nation of 130 million voters. It's small compared to the 20 million who watch broadcast network news. But even that 20 million is small in a nation of 130 million voters! What about the other 110 million? There's your lede! (They used to watch Walter Cronkite or Huntley/Brinkley. Now they don't. Do they remain relatively uninformed, or inform themselves at the last minute--and if so, how? On the Web? If so, where? ... Word of mouth from neighbors? Neighbors in the first electorate? Neighbors who watch cable news? ...)
P.S.: I'm not so sure about Skurnik's near-CW point that
Cable news does sometimes play an important role in our politics. But that’s only when a story they report gets picked up by those parts of the media that bloggers & cable news say is dead or dying.
I suspect Dede Scozzafava might disagree. Did the conservative rebellion in her district gain unstoppable momentum because of coverage in the broadcast and newsprint MSM? ... Update: No! It was New Media! [via Insta] ... 2:12 P.M.
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Harvey Weinstein is bailing on his investment in snooty, exclusive social network aSmallWorld.net, the so-called "MySpace for Millionaires." Apparently it's flopping. Gawker argues:
The problem was fundamental: Rich guys don't want to socialize only with one another, and once you let in enough attractive young women and such your VIP site loses [its] cachet and everyone might as well just hang out on Facebook.
I'm not sure Gawker has the second part of the problem precisely right (though A Small World's membership policies seem well-designed to allow "[t]rusted and loyal ASW members who meet certain criteria" to invite "a limited number of their friends" enough attractive young women to keep all the bankers happy. But even assuming that's the dynamic at work, there seem to be at least four distinct possibilities: a) Snooty rich men don't want the kind of women who would sign up to meet only snooty rich men; b) Snooty rich men need a larger pool of women to draw from than a 'limited number of their friends" can provide; c) Even snooty rich letches don't want to be made to feel like snooty rich letches; d) Even non-lecherous snooty rich men don't want a website where their competition is other rich men! They'd rather be the richest guys in an average neighborhood, where the population is easier to impress.
So, is aSmallWorld's unsuccess a victory for social equality? You make the call:
Yes! Attempted stratification undone by the common characteristics (sex drive) of mankind! Sex, solvent of snobbery.
No! The status hierarchy of money just needed a bigger empire in which to recapitulate inegalitarian financial relations as inegalitarian sexual relations!
All the lechery-related reasons suggested above point to "no," yet it's hard to not see aSmallWorld's decline as, somehow, a "yes." How about a dialectical Third Way: In asserting itself outside its own sphere the hierarchy of money nevertheless sows the seeds of its own destruction! [Which would be ...?-ed Facebook] ...
P.S.: Why didn't The Atlantic think of this idea? An exclusive site where "Brave Thinkers" like Pinch Sulzberger and the "Atlantic 50" ("the most influential commentators in the nation") can talk to each other! Writing the first draft of history! Then we charge the Boeing lobbyists $10,000 each to join! And let everyone else pay to watch! It's genius. The American Idea! ... [Isn't that the Atlantic business plan?--ed Not yet fully realized. Email suggestions to David@IoverpaidforthebestopinionwritersinAmericaandnowImdesperate.com] 8:44 P.M.
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Items I twittered, or wished I had:
Best News of the Week: According to RiShawn Biddle, Obama and his Education Secretary Arne Duncan really are using the leverage provided by federal stimulus money to force states to allow more charter schools. The teachers' unions "feel betrayed." Hope that's not just for show. ... P.S.: This unashamedly pro-Obama article runs in ... The American Spectator. ... P.P.S.: Biddle also says the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has helped create a "counterweight" to the NEA and AFT. Won't make up for Vista! But it's a start. ... P.P.P.S.: If there are well over a million students in charter schools now, and the federal government is pushing them to grow like Topsy, at what point does a vicious circle set in, with public schools losing their even moderately motivated students, causing them to decline even further, causing even more students to leave, etc.? Not that this public school death spiral would be such a bad thing. We should just be prepared for it. The way we should have been prepared for GM. ... 11:27 P.M.
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Neiman Marcus is stealing The Atlantic's business model ... OK, to really emulate The Atlantic you'd have to throw in David Axelrod, and maybe sub Marc Ambinder for Nora Ephron. ... And then sell the thing to ExxonMobil. ... 11:26 P.M.
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51 is the Wussiest Number: Ryan Lizza reports that, in the White House debate over whether to bail out Chrysler, Obama asked his advisers, "What do you think the percentage likelihood is that , if we give this deal a chance, it will succeed?" Then-auto czarito Steven Rattner answered, "Fifty-one percent." ... What do you think the percentage likelihood is that Rattner's answer was sincere? I hope, for his sake, it's close to zero. There was substantially less than a 51% chance the Chrysler bailout would succeed (if "success" means a viable company). There still is. ... Not being a sophisticated investment banker, I would translate Rattner's answer as: "I know you'd like to approve this deal, and I'm not one to buck the tide, so I'll give you the minimum necessary reassurance, while covering my ass as much as possible (in the 80% likelihood that it fails)." ... P.S.: Lizza's piece is generally encouraging--the country could be in worse hands. But it's vaguely discouraging if for Obama and his brain trust the issue actually turned on whether or not the deal would succeed, which seems a less sophisticated question than whether or not it was worth trying to soften the blow to the Midwest by postponing Chrysler's inevitable failure. Could the whole debate have been Kabuki? ... 11:25 P.M.
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Where's Crossfire When You Need It? Jon Klein's Triumph! CNN now in 4th place, losing to FOX, MSNBC, and itself (HLN)! Somewhere Tucker Carlson is smiling. ... 11:24 P.M.
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It's Only a Draft: The prestigious Atlantic's Chris Good--perhaps as exhausted by the magazine's time-consuming Corporate Lobbyist Moneysuck as prestigious Atlantic columnist Andrew Sullivan after a "marathon twelve-hour session of passion"-- lectures Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal for saying that polls show "the people don't want" the Democrats' health care reform:
... [T]he polling doesn't say Americans oppose Democratic reforms. At best, we can say it's a mixed picture. Of the most recent, reliable, non-partisan major polls--a Sept. 12 Washington Post/ABC survey, an Economist/YouGov survey released Sept. 15, and a Sept. 25 NY Times/CBS poll--only the first shows Americans opposed to Democratic plans (48 percent to 52 percent); the other two show Americans in favor, though NY Times/CBS found that 46 percent say they don't know enough to decide. [E.A.]
The only problem with this paragraph is that in Good's highly selective survey of "the most recent, reliable" polls, he simply ignores the two YouGov polls taken after the Sept. 15 one he cites. Both showed a 51-49 majority opposed to health care reform. In other words, even if you ignore perfectly legit polls like NBC/Wall Street Journal and Rasmussen and use only the three polls Good picks, his sentence should read:
Of the most recent, reliable, non-partisan major polls--a Sept. 12 Washington Post/ABC survey, an Economist/YouGov survey released Sept. 29, and a Sept. 25 NY Times/CBS poll--two of the three show Americans opposed to Democratic plans. The only one showing even a plurality in favor is the wacky NY Times/CBS survey that managed to generate a 46 percent undecided number. [E.A.]
P.S.: Here's a handy page graphing recent polls for Good to bookmark in case he has to write about health care surveys again. It tends to support Jindal, if weakly. ... P.P.S.: This actually isn't a mistake you'd typically make if you set out afresh to look up the recent health care numbers. Maybe that's why I suspect someone fed Good this erroneous story, Dreidl style. Maybe someone he met at the prestigious First Draft of History conference! Who said it was a waste? [Update: Good's choice of polls seems based on an item he wrote about the 'public option' back on 9/29--ed. OK. But who fed him that, I ask you? Never explain by conspiracy what can be explained by laziness--ed Laziness is the Spoonfeeder's Friend!] ... 9:17 P.M.
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Breitbart's Legacy? Rasmussen's latest poll finds, rather unbelievably, that voters say "government ethics and corruption" is now a more important issue than "the economy." With unemployment at 9.8%! Hello? Is this all James O'Keefe and Andrew Breitbart's doing? I can't think of any big recent corruption-related events other than the ACORN and NEA scandals. ... I doubt it is all liberals concerned about the power of the insurance lobby. ... P.S.: This might explain why, while the MSM still gives the ACORN scandals restrained coverage, the pols are running for the hills. They have pollsters too. ... P.P.S.: Rasmussen's survey, taken 9/26 --9/29, was half pre-Polanski, so that seems an unlikely explanation. ... Update: Ambinder writes as if Rep. Rangel's troubles are a central catalyst, which seems unlikely. Rangel isn't that famous. It's more plausible to blame general resentment over Wall Street sleaze and the bailouts. ... 4:02 P.M.
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The Call of Chooch: GM's sales are down 45% from last September (when sales were already bad enough to drive the company into bankruptcy). Chrysler is down 42%. Ford is only down 5%. Car buyers are clearly punishing the two bailout recipients brutally. Robert Farago of Truth About Cars--who has been right before--predicts that GM and Chrysler will both "go down by the end of next year" without a second, new federal bailout. The only question, he says, is whether the two manufacturers will need the cash before the 2010 midterm elections. He adds:
For those of you who say the Obama’s army never really intended to rescue either automaker, that they were simply subsidizing the companies to facilitate a soft landing, I say bullsh[xx]. Washington’s big swinging dicks, led by private equity money men with a similar anatomical affliction, honestly thought they could “fix” Detroit.
Maybe they could have. But it looks like they didn't. ... Most obviously, they seem to have grossly misperceived consumers' reaction to the equities of the bailout itself. And that 45% can't be all Republicans. ... 1:53 A.M.
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Shafer couldn't take a full day of the Atlantic's "First Draft" conference. He tried. ... In the wheat vs. chaff contest, it appears to have been Chaff City. ... P.S.: Is it really true that only 220 people were watching the feed of the Petraeus session? Janet Napolitano drew 132? Those are almost Pseudo.com numbers! Don't tell Boeing. ... [Ah but they were the right 132 people--ed. No they weren't. One of them was Shafer.] ... Bloggingheads is CBS in comparison. ... 2:29 A.M.
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Congress' ego says the time to finish the health bill is now. Congress' id still says "We don't want to get killed in 2010." When the ego says 'yes,' politicians do dramatic things like cancel the Senate's scheduled Columbus Day recess. When id says 'no,' they slow down anyway. They oppose "arbitrary deadlines." They say things like, "We will vote on this when it is ready.”
It looks like the id is winning. From The Hill:
Senior Obama lieutenants, including Vice President Joe Biden, Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag, have all said recently they think Congress can get a bill to the president before the end of the Thanksgiving break.
The comments suggest the White House is trying to light a fire under congressional negotiators, but it doesn’t appear to be working. [E.A.]
The way to change the Congressional id's inclination--to "light a fire"--was for Obama's speech to move the polls dramatically in the direction of public support, especially among likely voters (e.g., seniors). It didn't--at least it didn't enough. ... 12:08 P.M.
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How defensive is Marc Ambinder about the Atlantic's pretentious, journalistically compromising** "First Draft of History" event? Yes, "[t]he company is making money off of this," he admits right off the bat. They are livestreaming it, to their credit, and you can listen to the "vital conversations" at the link above. ... It's going on right now! ... ... P.S.: Right now, Eric Cantor is saying nothing he hasn't said 100 times before and Chuck Todd is treading water. Not vital! I think I have to do some laundry. ... Update: Here are Thursday's breakout headlines! "Blackstone's Pete Peterson worried about the deficit." ...
**--Atlantic is "making money" by staging a conference at which the presence of powerful officials like Larry Summers, David Axelrod, and John McCain, plus businessmen like Citigroup's Vikram Pandit, creates an aura of prestige (and access) sufficient to attract sponsorship from companies like Boeing and Allstate and ExxonMobil. So are they really going to write something that pisses off Summers, Axelrod, McCain or Pandit so much that they don't come to the conference, or don't come to future conferences? At the very least they've engineered an obvious, gratuitous disincentive. ... Never mind pissing off Boeing and Allstate and ExxonMobil. ...
Remember, this conference obviously did not spring up to fill the need for more Washington conferences. It sprang up to fill the need for the Atlantic to finally start making some money. ... 12:29 P.M.
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Fire Up the Id! Now this is exciting: Over at OMB, Peter Orszag will be posting his "daily step count" as part of the OMB Pedometer Challenge! ... Finally they've figured out a way to make health care reform seem fun and appealing , as opposed to, say, a doomed, moralistic Carter-like attempt to get Americans to change their lifestyles in order to cut costs. ... [Thanks to alert reader J.] 1:10 P.M.
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kf in August, E.J. today.
kf Tuesday, Page Six today (Doris Kearns Goodwin style!) ... 2:17 P.M.
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Politico conveys the latest White House staff boasts about health care strategy:
Top officials privately concede the past six weeks have taken their toll on Obama's popularity. But the officials also see the new diminished expectations as an opportunity to prove their critics wrong ...
Dickerson: Who knew it was all a brilliant plot to lower expectations? ... 9:45 P.M.
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Anti-anti-anti-Orszagism: David Brooks mounts the conventional defense against anti-Orszagism:
The second liberal response has been to attack the budget director, Peter Orszag. It was a mistake to put cost control at the center of the health reform sales job, many now argue. The president shouldn’t worry about the deficit. Just pass the spending parts.
But fiscal restraint is now the animating issue for moderate Americans. To take the looming $9 trillion in debt and balloon it further would be to enrage a giant part of the electorate.
Brooks is being disingenous, I think. The complaint against Orszag isn't that he's worried about the deficit. You could easily have a substantial health reform effort that was deficit-neutral--that didn't add to the $9 trillion, which is the estimated deficit for 10 years. Where Obama and Orszag went wrong was in ostentatiously blabbering about long-term health cost "game changers" beyond that 10 year period, involving a "very difficult democratic conversation" on whether to put limits on treatments toward the end of life. It's the "game changers" that rightly scare people who worry about moving toward Brit-style rationing or other sorts of restrictions..
This discussion of long-term "game changers" was almost entirely gratuitous, policy-wise. 1) They're unproven. Maybe they'll work--i.e. cut costs without affecting care. Maybe they won't. It's irresponsible to make speculative efforts to control long term health costs, something that hasn't been done in this country, the centerpiece of an attempt to extend care; 2) They're long term! There's plenty of time to institute whatever curve-bending changes in medical practice between now and 2019, as eminently respectable policy person Uwe Reinhardt notes; 3) Cutting health care costs isn't the only responsible way to control the deficit. You could also cut other costs (e.g., Social Security) or raise taxes; 4) It was intellectually misleading to argue that spending a trillion dollars to extend health care coverage (and add demand to the system) was somehow the way to control long term costs, which was the essence of Obama's appeal in his address to Congress. Maybe expanded coverage would give the government more monopsony leverage--a not-unscary prospect in iitself, especially if you are "suspicious of centralized government," as Brooks says we Americans are--but basically the two issues seem separable. If you want to control long term costs and shift to a different treatment model you could start doing that independent of efforts to broaden coverage (which, indeed, Orszag proposes doing). There's no clear policy reason--certainly no reason we've been given--that the two have to be linked.
Brooks has it backwards, then, when he suggests Orszag's critics are saying Obama should have put good policy common sense aside for cheap political reasons. The policy groundwork for insisting on legislating "game-changers" now is weak. The only reason to include them was political--the calculation that even a speculative, possibly Potemkin-like effort to address long term costs would appeal to Blue Dog legislators and independent voters. It's this political calculation that appears to have been the big mistake--the curve-bending, treatment-denying talk has scared seniors so much that popular support for the whole package (including among independents) has sunk to dangerous and possibly fatal levels.
P.S.: I've learned the hard way not to question the judgment of John Harwood, but his Obama's-in-good-shape analysis seems a little ... well ... Ambinderish. ... Same goes for Norman Ornstein, who focuses on the inside game (for Senate votes) and ignores the outside game (for public opinion). Is he ...rearranging reconciliation votes on the Titanic! ... And didn't Ezra Klein tell us a couple of weeks ago that the inside game had failed, and now Obama was going to move the argument "to the country" where he'd "marshal public support"? What happened with that? ...
P.P.S: According to Atlantic, Obama is going to seize on his moment of seeming weakness to ... draw lines in the sand! Auspiciously, none of the lines (as reported by Ambinder) is an insistence on Orszag's long-term rule benders. But the night is young. ... 2:46 P.M.
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The New Republic explores new revenue models, Atlantic -style. ... And they're going to viciously attack Christina Romer after she's helped them charge $250 a seat? ... 2:45 P.M.
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"Hot Blue on Blue Action": Joe Klein vs. Glenn Greenwald: Tom Maguire buries his real lede--Is it possible that Glenn Greenwald is not a member of the secretive Journolist? ... P.S.: On the question of whether "Klein pretends to position himself as an observer rather than a rooter at TIME," I would say the answer is no.. It would be futile to do otherwise at this point, anyway--as Maguire notes. ..."Rooter" is too passive, though. More like "player." ... You got a problem with that? ... 2:44 P.M..
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If he were a GOP, TPM would be all over it, no? Sen. Inouye acts on behalf of a constituent, who turns out to be in large part himself (a troubled bank in which his ownership share makes up "the bulk of his personal wealth"). ... Yet Josh Marshall stays silent! ... 3:17 P.M.
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Tragedy strikes Los Angeles as a brush fire narrowly misses the Getty Museum. ... Next time! ... P.S.: I'm assuming all people and art works could be saved. But the buildings? It's an incredible site on which they've built a bunch of bank branches. I was at a lecture there last month and the place already smells moldy. Burned to a crisp would be a sound outcome from a cost-benefit point of view. They could start over and do a better job, while providing lots of badly needed construction jobs. ... 3:16 P.M.
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The future of journalism revealed. ... [via Insta] ... 3:15 P.M.
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No saintlier man has ever walked the earth than the brilliant and beloved David Bradley.** That goes without saying. But how, exactly, would it help solve the ethical problems created by his corporate sponsored "salons" to put them on the record--as TPM's Zacary Roth, Slate's Jack Shafer and Bradley himself seem to believe?
The problem with Bradley's salons, like the problems with WaPo's similar, now-cancelled events, is that they create two big conflicts: 1) The need to avoid pissing off the corporations who fund (and then some***) the salons in the hope of getting access to influential journalists and administration bigshots; and, even more corrupting, 2) the need to suck up to the administration bigshots to get them to show up at the salons where they can be accessed by corporations who are paying for them. ...
Shafer argues that making the "salons" off the record is a key part of Bradley's marketing strategy--it convinces the corporations that they are getting something special.**** Shafer's no doubt right. And generally, "on the record" is good (though "off the record" can be valuable too). Putting the salons on record would also help solve the Atlantic's seemingly congenital "We're Insiders, Aren't We Great, Look at Us" problem. But I don't see how it would do anything to remove conflicts 1) or 2). ... Plus, even if the meetings themselves are on the record, there would still be plenty of time for off-the-record lobbyist-to-player contacts in the halls or at any pre- or post-event cocktails. (Even if there isn't, just encountering someone face to face can make it easier to "access" them later.)....
P.S.: Marc Ambinder's post quoting Bradley's response without daring to link to what Bradley is responding to is a little creepy. Who is this guy, L. Ron Hubbard? What is Ambinder scared of? At least he gets beaten up in his comments.
**********
**--He's also the Last Sucker "ridiculously generous" in his willingness to pay big bucks for opinion journalists, but that in no way influences my opinion of him.
***--Bradley says openly that the salons are "one of our revenue streams."
****--I suspect that the privately funded, non-profitmaking salons Bradley also gives might be another part of the overall effort: If you are a policymaker and you show up at one of his profit-making confabs do you then you get invited to the more exclusive and legit private confab? If your corporation funds one of the profit-making salons do you find yourself invited to the more intimate event? But I am being entirely too suspicious. Bradley is just a wonderful, wonderful man. I am the one who should be concerned--for thinking such bad thoughts. My apologies. ... 4:09 P.M.
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Grats to kf role model Walter Olson, who started his Overlawyered blog 10 years ago. The high process costs of litigation are what lawyers--for obvious reasons--habitually leave out of their let's-have-notice-and-a-hearing-for-everything reasoning. One thing Olson does is to put them back in. ... P.S.: Here's a pithy Olson graf on the litigation vise facing businesses, one aspect of which the Supreme Court addressed in the Ricci case:
How are employers supposed to behave when they face a possible discrimination lawsuit no matter which way they turn?
It's a question HR managers and company lawyers are used to facing every day. Would you rather field the legal claims that result from targeted layoffs, or the ones that result from sacking people regardless of performance? Would you rather face a defamation lawsuit for mentioning the reasons for a problem employee's departure, or a failure-to-warn lawsuit for not mentioning them? Will your policy on religious proselytizing in the workplace get you sued by the believers, or by the atheists?
But Justice Anthony Kennedy's solution to this problem in the Ricci case--that a city can't throw out a job test that winds up promoting whites and no blacks unless there is a "strong basis in evidence" that it would lose a subsequent discrimination lawsuit--seems an unsatisfying solution to the litigation vise.
What if a city, after reading the Ricci decision, decides there's just a wee a bit less than a "strong" basis for thinking it will lose a discrimination case, and doesn't throw out the test (lest SCOTUS smack it down)--and then loses the discrimination case anyway? That it was scared to throw out the test doesn't necessarily mean the test didn't have an unjustified "disparate impact" (The evidence might not have been overwhelmingly apparent at the time, for the city could have guessed wrong.) Justice Kennedy seems to have carved out, not a safe haven but an area of uncertainty where the outcome could typically be "lose lose." ...
But, again, maybe I'm confused or missing something. ...
P.S.: I took this item down briefly when I thought for a moment it was wrong. Now I think it is not wrong. ... 7:05 P.M.
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They're having a terrific time at the Aspen Ideas Festival! Ferguson vs. Fallows was *great,* for example. Too bad you're not invited and you're missing it! ... But you can watch some short video highlights of a few speakers here. ... P.S.: Classic Atlantic operation. Not having a fabulous exclusive party--"inspired thinking in an idyllic setting"--but expecting readers to enjoy being third-class voyeurs at your fabulous exclusive party while the invited Atlantic people tell you (now via Twitter) what a good time they're having. ... 11:05 P.M.
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Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Some conservatives are troubled that the UAW is getting a huge ownership share in GM (about 40%) and Chrysler (over 50%): For example, Larry Kudlow:
What is going on in this country? The government is about to take over GM in a plan that completely screws private bondholders and favors the unions. Get this: The GM bondholders own $27 billion and they're getting 10 percent of the common stock in an expected exchange. And the UAW owns $10 billion of the bonds and they're getting 40 percent of the stock. Huh? Did I miss something here?
The union's ownership so does not seem a problem. It seems a virtue. Let the UAW, as new owner of GM, pay the price for the overgrown work rules of its locals. Let the UAW demand above-market raises from itself. Let the UAW try to raise money from new lenders after the previous round of lenders has been royally screwed (thanks, in part, to the UAW). And then let the UAW try to sell the cars that result.
The most efficient way to balance competing interests, as Michael Kinsley noted years ago, isn't an adverserial system where various singleminded interests duke it out--either in court or on picket lines--but in the head of a decisionmaker who will feel the relevant consequences. As long as the government steps out of the financing picture, the UAW will feel the consequences of its own excesses. Just don't bail them out again! ...
P.S.: One sign that the WSJ's Holman Jenkins may actually be impressed with Obama's "apparent willingness to drive a hard bargain with the UAW" is that in order to attack the union Jenkins had to write a column about the government's hidden subsidies for Detroit in previous decades. ...
Update: The Cult of Bartley complains that
At the next labor contract bargaining session, the union would sit on both sides of the table.
And the problem with that is ...?
The otherwise estimable Paul Ingrassia applies a blanket condemnation of worker-ownership derived from his study of the University of Wisconsin student store. "There's an inherent conflict between the cost discipline required of owners and the understandable desire of employees to make more money for less work (hey, why not?)" There is. It's a conflict we freelancers face every day! Somehow we manage. A "clean and well-run union such as the UAW" should be able to do it too. ...10:26 P.M.
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I meant "benign" in a good way! Jeez, you call Atlantic owner David Bradley a "benign sucker" and all sorts of people want to rush to his defense! Here's what I meant: Practically every magazine I've ever written for has lost money.** That usually doesn't bother the owner, who is typically rich and willing to take a loss in exchange for the prestige or enjoyment of owning a magazine, or the access and influence it brings. It's an ancient and honorable arrangement. Hence "benign." But at various times, Bradley has sounded as if he actually intended to make The Atlantic and its website a going business concern (noises that are still being made). From a 2003 piece by David Carr:
["]There has been a 50-year tradition at the magazine of older male businessmen like myself managing The Atlantic as a philanthropy,'' Mr. Bradley said. ''It was largely subsidized and dependent on finding the next Mort Zuckerman. I think it's possible I may be the last member of that generation, and we have to find a way to make this wonderful magazine support itself.''
I suspect he is disappointed. Also, he's overpaying his writers.*** Hence, "sucker." I'm all for it. (I could use someone like that.) ...
**--Original text left out the "Practically." I forgot about Newsweek, which probably was making some money when I was there. But not a lot.
***--"as high as $350,000 ..." 10:14 P.M.
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John Judis predicts that Obama's stimulus and budget will "lift overall government spending from the 30s to well over 40 percent of GDP," maybe even to 45 % of GDP in 2009-- a percentage
more like that of France and Sweden, whose non-crisis budgets total over 45 percent of GDP.
Hmm. If you put it like that, doesn't the Obama presidency begin to look a bit like a ripoff? If we're going to spend 45% of GDP like Sweden, I want a cradle-to-grave welfare state! It doesn't seem like much of a bargain to spend Swedish-style tax dollars for what will remain at bottom an American style fend-for-yourself society (even one with guaranteed access to health care). ... 10:01 P.M.
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Elizabeth Spiers on Portfolio's end, and its editor:
I thought the first issue was appallingly bad but sort of expected that someone there would realize that and make some changes.
That said, I didn't expect that person to be Joanne Lipmann. Conde Nast HR called me after I resigned from mediabistro and asked if I wanted to come in and talk about the new biz mag they were starting. (Or as it amusingly was put to me: "Don't you think it's about time you came in here?" Apparently one's failure to ever apply for a job at Conde Nast is automatically an egregious oversight.) ...I was already planning to launch [web site] Dealbreaker at that point, and I told them point blank that I had something in the works and even told Lipmann what it was. She replied that she "didn't really get the web." ...
Anyway, The details are not particularly interesting, but that's the only interview I've walked out of in ten years thinking, I could never, ever work for this person.
Another writer I respect had a similar reaction to Lipmann. ... Meanwhile, Tina Brown follows conventional etiquette and is as nice as possible to Lipmann. But she's more critical of Conde Nast king Si Newhouse (the man who picked her):
[T]here has been a lurching inconsistency to the way he closed down clever, promising Domino (and then, I am told, experienced regret when he read its glowing obituaries) and cut back Portfolio's excellent Web site while vowing to keep the magazine alive-only to close it anyway.
Brown also buries the lede in her last sentence, hinting at the possible closure of ... The New Yorker. ... But what would she know about The New Yorker? ...
P.S.: Meanwhile, everybody's being very nice to David Bradley, the last benign sucker willing to lose millions overpaying journalists for the right to distribute their prose on glossy paper. ...
P.P.S.: Somewhere, Jim Impoco is smiling. ... 12:24 P.M.
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Bill Clinton in the Oval Office: "I just love that rug." I wonder if that means the same thing as "nice tie"? ... 12:46 P.M.
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Old lists never die: Will Obama ever stop asking me for money? Or is it all fundraising, all the way out? Here's an excerpt from an email I got recently:
From: Obama tor America....
Subject: Join us at the Inauguration
Friend: ...
You helped shape history, and now you can be a part of it.
Ten supporters and their guests will be selected to come to Washington, D.C. for several days of inaugural events. You could be chosen to fly to Washington, attend the welcome ceremony, the Inaugural parade, the swearing-in, and an official Inaugural ball.
Donate $5 or more now. You could be part of the historic events you made possible.
Not only is he still milking his supporters for money, he's doing it in an obnoxious way, no? "Join us at the inauguration" turns out to mean "pay for other people to party at the inauguration you're not going to"! (Even The Atlantic didn't think of that one.) As if Obama's campaign thinks his supporters are not only suckers, but a particular type of sucker--the type of sucker who contributes because of the tiny chance of striking it rich. ... It's like a crude old-left parody of capitalist ideology (except in capitalism there's a middle class, not just a few winners and millions of gullible chumps). ...
Update: Ambinder agrees, then makes the mistake of listening to the other side. ... 2:15 A.M.
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I submit that if the best evidence of Obama's subservience to the Dem "left" is his appointment of ... Leon Panetta, there's not yet much reason to worry about Obama's subservience to the left. ... 1:37 A.M.
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