Thomas Jefferson on the permanence of laws

Today is a good day to reflect on the permanence of laws, and whether they do require changing, as society changes:

Composed from A letter from Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, July 12, 1816, The Jefferson Papers, Library of Congress

A Tour of Gerrymanderland

Welcome to the Baltimore Beltway Bus Bonanza!

For the next hour, traffic permitting, we're going to take you on a 49 mile loop loop around Baltimore, and across 4 of our 8 great Maryland Congressional Districts. Here's a map, with the points of interest along the way. This bus is equipped with seatbelts, so fasten them up, and pull out your map and the congressional bingo sheets and keep score as we drive.

View Larger Map

Right now, to get us started, we're at A, the exit ramp on I-695 for I-95 south, north west of Baltimore. We're gonna drive clockwise around town, and since 695 doesn't actually make a loop, we'll do as best we can and start by going south on I-95. You with me?  Please sit back and enjoy the view.

Alright. We're starting in MD District 2, represented in the US Congress by Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger [D]

... 5 minutes later

Ok folks, the split for 895 is coming up here at B, we're gonna stick with 95.

... 1 minute later

Hey - there's C, Rt 40, and - MD District 3. District 3, whose congressman is Rep. John Sarbanes [D] borders district 2, that makes sense of course.

... 1 minute later

Just crossing Rolling Mill Rd now at D, back in District 2...

... 3 minutes later

Hey look below, 895 joining us again and Poncast St coming up at E - back in District 3 everyone.

... 5 minutes later

Now, under the tunnel we go, and look, there's F, the 395 interchange heading into the city - and - hey, we're in District 2 again... Ain't it fun?

Wait no, we're already at G and now we're in District 3 again. Hm. They must have drawn districts 2 and 3 so that 95 wove them together or something.

... 3 minutes later

Alright, H: I-695 is coming up, we're heading north.

... 1 minute later

We're now at I, passing Rt 1 and leaving MD District 3, entering District 7, home to Rep. Elijah Cummings [D]. If you need to use the facilities in the back of the bus, this is the time to do so, this is the longest break we'll have on this trip and you don't want to miss anything, now do ya! You know, I've always thought District 7's shape kinda looks like a small dog with a large head yipping at the mailman. You see it?

... 10 minutes later

Alright, wake up folks. Millford Mill Rd comin' up here at J, - you know it's funny - we're still in District 7 - but folks - those living both east and west of us are both in our old friend District 2. But don't worry, we'll get you out of District 7 soon.

... 50 seconds later

Here we go - K, passing by the I-795 exit ramp, we're gonna stick with 695 for the rest of our trip, but hey, at least we're back in our home district, District 2.

... 1 minute later

Wait - sorry, (L) the I-795 entrance ramp is joining us on the right, and we're now in District 3 again.

... 6 minutes later

We're now at M on your map, folks. The people joining us on the right here, they are coming out of Baltimore on I-83. If you look to the left you'll see District 2, but on this side of the freeway we're still in District 3. But have patience, we'll join them soon.

... 2 minutes later

Sure enough, we're at N, and here on the right are the folks joining us from I-83 southbound, leaving District 1, 2, or 7 - who knows which district they came from up there - wave hello, and hello to District 2.

... 2 minutes later

We're now passing Rt 146, Dulaney Valley Rd, O on our map. The area immediately to the left (or North) of the road is Hampton - those folks are in District 1, represented by Rep. Andy Harris [R]. District 1, by the way, is MD's largest district, area wise, and stretches all the way south and across the Potomac down to Ocean City and beyond.

... 4 minutes later

P for Perring Parkway, Rt 41, coming up, We're now in District 3 again.

... 4 minutes later

And here we are at Q. We're all the way home again, passing Lillian Holt Drive, we reenter District 2.

Thanks for joining us, it's been a blast - in and out of 4 congressional districts 12 times in only 50 minutes - that's gotta be some kind of record, huh folks?

Don't tell poor Rep. Andy Harris [R] of District 1, though - it takes him 5 hours and 20 minutes to just to drive from one end of his district to the other, staying within his district:

View Larger Map

And don't even get Rep. John Sarbanes [D] of District 3 started on the cost of gas, he has to spend an entire work day crisscrossing central Maryland to get to his constituents:

View Larger Map

Thanks again, folks - Don't forget to leave a tip for your poor congressman and state delegate, if you can figure out who they are, and be sure to thank them for creating such an interesting form of democracy in our fair state - your souvenir map is available at http://planning.maryland.gov/Redistricting/redistrictingIMap.shtml.

Oh, and before I forget:

Vote No on Question 5 on election day

More:

Baltimore Sun Editorial, October 21, 2012: Against Question 5 

From http://www.elections.state.md.us/elections/2012/ballot_questions.html:

Question 5 - Congressional Districting Plan

• Ballot Language
• Non-Technical Summary
• Senate Bill 1, Chapter 1 of the 2011 Special Legislative Session

Random Info Chart - DC Schools Test Results

Google public data explorer has a slew of interesting datasets, including test scores for DC schools.  It goes to show that you can’t judge every DC school with a single statement, other than perhaps to state that the achievement gap between good and bad DC schools is far too wide:

Today’s Prediction: Republicans beat Democrats 41-59

“See, it’s not that the democrats are playing checkers and the republicans are playing chess.  It’s that the republicans are playing chess, and the democrats are in the nurse’s office because once again they’ve glued their balls to their thighs.”
- Jon Stewart @09:10/10:05

Health care - An open letter to Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (MD-7)

Congressman Elijah Cummings of Maryland's 7th congressional district organized a town-hall style conference call this evening, and ours was one of the phone numbers called.  Below is my response.

To the Honorable Elijah E. Cummings

I'm listening to your town-hall phone call this evening, thank you for organizing this discussion on the healthcare bill. As the President said in his recent press conference - our status quo is a horrible option. But it strikes me that we are facing two main issues here: 1. efficiency, and 2. access.

It is generally agreed upon that in order to afford universal coverage, we will have to lower the cost of coverage. Why is the President and a large portion of the Democratic congressional delegation rushing to increase coverage before proving that we can first improve efficiency?

Your last caller was concerned that increased legislation would only be a source of additional cost rather than savings. Would it not be more prudent - and easier - to first pass a bill that addresses the efficiency question, and then based on the success of that first bill, gradually increases coverage? Would decreasing costs first not also allow people and companies who currently can't afford coverage to finally do so?

You said America is the country that put a man on the moon, but we didn't do it on the first try - we proved the efficiency of the program (and had missteps along the way) before we shot for the moon. I have two kids, and our current national debt is now $11 trillion. With a current budget deficit adding to this debt at a record pace, I find it irresponsible to bet on the efficiency of an unproven program at this time.

Please work with the Blue Dog coalition and the Republicans in Congress and the Senate to emphasize efficiency and cost reduction first and foremost before adding to our bet.

Thank you,

Oskar Austegard

For more information on the need for health care reform, see the non-partisan organization The National Coalition on Health Care.

I’m Free. Free Falling.

No more visiting electoral-vote.org every morning:

from xkcd.com

Yay.

Now I want to see some change. No excuses.

Another XPLANATiON for the Credit Mess

The folks from Xplane take a stab at explaining the mortgage meltdown: (also via Tad)

Political Speeches Worth Watching

From the Al Smith dinner, October 16, 2008:

McCain:

Obama:

Obama’s closing:

As electoral-vote.com points out:

When McCain is left to his own devices, he does pretty well. He can be funny and authentic. If he loses, he may later come to realize that his biggest mistake was hiring Lee Atwater's ghost dressed up as Steve Schmidt. If he had run a positive campaign, chosen Joe Lieberman as his Veep, and just focused on his experience and maverickness (mavericity?) he might have come across as the real thing and attracted all the independents now rapidly gravitating to Obama. Surely it wasn't his idea to hang his campaign on attacks on Obama's tenuous connection with a "washed up old terrorist," as he put it Wednesday. One of the lessons of this campaign may end up being: Be yourself.

The Economy: Who’s to blame?

Image via Wikipedia

Amen to FactCheck.org who lays out a list of some of the causes for the current calamity:

 

 

 

 

MoveOn.org blames McCain advisers. He blames Obama and Democrats in Congress. Both are wrong.

So who is to blame?  There's plenty of blame to go around, and it doesn't fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didn't do. As The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is one of "layered irresponsibility ... with hard-working homeowners and billionaire villains each playing a role." Here's a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:

• The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.
• Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.
• Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.
• Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.
• The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.
• Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.
• Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.
• Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.
• The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.
• An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.
• Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.

The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) is just political grandstanding. We have no advice to offer on how best to solve the financial crisis. But these sorts of partisan caricatures can only make the task more difficult.
–by Joe Miller and Brooks Jackson

 Thank you.

Related articles by Zemanta

• As Economy Weakens, Federal Reserve Officials Consider Lowering Rates
• What the Bailout Means for Mortgage Rates
• Jesse Jackson Jr.: Bail out homeowners
• Commentary: Bailout should treat the root cause, not the symptoms
• Financial rescue 101: What's in the bill
• How the fate of the US economy rests on a Dell workstation

Quote(s) of the Day

Image via Wikipedia

Commentary about the other VP Katie Couric interview (you remember, Biden? Tall, gray-haired dude?  Long-time Senator from Delaware?  Champion of credit card companies and the working man? Suffers from occasional foot-in-mouth syndrome? No?)

From Katie Couric's sit-down with Joe Biden:

"’When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the princes of greed. He said, "look, here's what happened."’ – Joe Biden

Quotable Commentary:

"And if you owned an experimental TV set in 1929, you would have seen him. And you would have said to yourself, 'Who is that guy? What happened to President Hoover?'" 
                                           – Jesse Walker, reason.com

Related articles by Zemanta

• Seriously? Joe Biden Mixes Up Depression History
• Biden has most to lose in VP debate with Palin
• Is this the best we've got?
• US election Joe Biden and Sarah Palin trained for TV debate over 'gaffe' fears
• Couric Makes News With Interviews
• Joe Biden Roosevelt
• Palin Reads 'Most' If Not 'All' Papers

Quote of the Day

“When it comes to politics, there is a mad love of mediocrity in this country.”   Sam Harris, “When Atheists Attack”

The Pendulum Swings/It's All Clinton's Fault

With all the blaming of Pelosi/McCain/Obama for the failure of the bailout bill, it is kind of odd that someone hasn’t brought up every Republican’s favorite whipping boy, Bill Clinton; after all, his HUD was part of starting the whole mess, as reported nine years ago today:

New York Times, September 30, 1999:  ‘Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending’

Of course it was all well intentioned – a backlash against allegations of racial discrimination by Fannie and Freddie.  The result?

“The action […] will encourage those banks to extend home mortgages to individuals whose credit is generally not good enough to qualify for conventional loans.

“Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.

“In addition, banks, thrift institutions and mortgage companies have been pressing Fannie Mae to help them make more loans to so-called subprime borrowers. These borrowers whose incomes, credit ratings and savings are not good enough to qualify for conventional loans, can only get loans from finance companies that charge much higher interest rates -- anywhere from three to four percentage points higher than conventional loans.

“In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.”

You can’t cry about a deregulated market not working when the government has its hands all over the cookie jar, tweaking here, muddling there.

Related articles by Zemanta

• The U.S. Government Engineered The Current Economic Crisis
• Putting The Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac Situation In Context
• Bailout: What's in it for homeowners
• Why the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can't be allowed to fail.
• How housing rescue bill can help you
• Freddie, Fannie accounting under legal scrutiny
• American Pendulum

CNN: Campbell Brown on the 700 Billion Bailout

Gratuitous video embed:

Economics: Trade (and Trade Deficits) <> Wealth Transfer

The otherwise excellent Pickens Plan contains one notable misstatement:

"At current oil prices, we will send $700 billion dollars out of the country this year alone — that's four times the annual cost of the Iraq war.

"Projected over the next 10 years the cost will be $10 trillion — it will be the greatest transfer of wealth in the history of mankind."

Pickens Plan, The Plan (emphasis mine)

The local blogger FreeMarket has picked up on this in his Pay us like you owe us piece - this is simply commodity trade, not wealth transfer.  It might best be argued that a) trading dollars for oil unduly affects our balance of trade, and b) we might find better things to trade our dollars for...

Dunnowhatthisis: The New Yorker

Regarding today's controversy - Should we really be surprised that the New Yorker has no discernable sense of humor?

We call this 'Democracy'

Webb opens, closes vacant Senate session

The U.S. Senate was called to order for 11 seconds on Wednesday as the last political scuffle of the year between the White House and the Democratic-led Congress played out.

Nearly all the senators left the Capitol for the Christmas holiday last week, but Democrats are keeping the Senate in session to block President Bush from making any recess appointments -- a constitutional mechanism that allows the president, during congressional recesses, to fill top government posts for up to one year without Senate confirmation.

Sen. Jim Webb, D-Virginia, opened and then immediately gaveled the Senate session to a close. He spent 57 seconds in the chamber.

Unknown Unknowns

I was talking to a colleague about the sad state of Knowledge Management ("if only we knew what we know"), when I decided to get the actual Donald Rumsfeld quote on 'unknown unknowns'. It is indeed a beautiful piece of poetry...

 

The Unknown
As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don't know
We don't know.

—Feb. 12, 2002, Department of Defense news briefing

Read more of Rumsfeld's eloquent (and sometimes not so eloquent) quotes in this Slate article from 2003, compiled by Hart Seely.

Technorati tags: politics, art, humor, goodread

del.icio.us tags: politics, art, humor, goodread

If you have an interest in politics...

...and polls then I highly recommend electoral-vote.com, a site originally created to track the electoral votes of the 2004 presidential election (with great success as it became the most popular polling site of the '04 campaign).  The site now tracks U.S. Senate and Congressional races, basing it's daily prediction on state polls - and never silly national polls like the media seems addicted to.  The prediction as of today is that the GOP retains control of the senate (just barely), but loses the house (by a substantial margin).

The site is run by Andrew S. Tanenbaum, a U.S. computer science professor living and teaching in the Netherlands, he has the honor of having created MINIX, which Linus Torvalds used as a basis for a certain more known operating system.  While Tannenbaum is most certainly a democrat, he is generally true to the facts - and he doesn't skew poll numbers like other votemasters are wont to do.

As I did in the 04 race, I'll add the predictions of the day to the right side of this blog, for all my 7 daily visitors to see.

Tags: politics statistics polls

Politics: Resorting to semantics

The trouble with being a senator - they keep track of what you say and do:

[...] Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist will arrange early next week for the presiding officer of the Senate to declare that it's unconstitutional to filibuster judicial nominees. There's just one catch: On March 8, 2000, Frist himself tried to filibuster a judicial nominee.

Earlier this week on the Senate floor, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer asked Frist about his vote in favor of filibustering Richard Paez, a judge Bill Clinton appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. Frist stammered through the beginnings of an explanation -- "Mr. President, the, in response, the Paez nomination ..." -- and then said he'd return to the Senate floor later to explain his filibuster vote further.

from Salon.com News | Resorting to semantics