Keep this in mind when viewing the news

An excellent piece by a former AP reporter, discussing how news organizations report about Israel, but I find this point to be true about nearly all news reporting:

The world is not responding to events in this country, but rather to the description of these events by news organizations. The key to understanding the strange nature of the response is thus to be found in the practice of journalism

I don’t know President Obama or Sarah Palin, or for that matter people like Steve Ballmer or Steve Jobs (public figures I’ve met in person).  I only know the description provided to me by other people. Same thing goes for big organizations, even countries, the only (partial) exception being the ones where I have personally worked or lived. When I do have some first-hand experience, I almost always find that outside reporting, even when factually correct, puts emphasis differently than I would.

Robin Hanson’s Overcoming Bias blog is another source of wisdom on the overall subject of how to avoid being fooled by what you read or think you know.

Do you believe in evolution?

Keith Blanchard makes an excellent point. Writing in The Week under the title "Why you should stop believing in evolution”, he says:

So if someone asks, "Do you believe in evolution," they are framing it wrong. That's like asking, "Do you believe in blue?"
Evolution is nothing more than a fairly simple way of understanding what is unquestionably happening. You don't believe in it — you either understand it or you don't. But pretending evolution is a matter of faith can be a clever way to hijack the conversation, and pit it in a false duality against religion.

 I have found that most non-science majors I know — even those who are otherwise well-educated — can’t describe evolution in a concise enough way to convince me that they really understand it. When pressed, it becomes clear that what they really believe in is “science”, or “what my teachers taught me” or “what other college-educated people believe”.

The same is true of many other topics where it’s tempting to ridicule those who don’t believe like you do:

• Do you believe in the danger of GMO (or nuclear energy or the Keystone Pipeline)?
• Do you believe in global warming?
• Do you believe vaccines cause autism?
• Do you believe in God?

When you don’t understand something, you can be easily fooled by somebody who does, which is why it’s dangerous to dismiss unbelievers as ignorant—often you’ll find they are more informed than you are, precisely because they’ve had to dig deeper into the issue in order to withstand criticism of an unpopular position.

To me that explains facts like why those who identify with the Tea Party are more likely to visit science museums, or why climate science literacy has no correlation with political identity.

What about you? Do you understand climate change?

What's worth reading in the news?

We like to think that, of course, keeping up with the news is important. “Citizens of a democracy need to stay informed about current events.” But how well informed are you after reading the news?

For example, let’s say there’s a plane crash and you spend a few hours that week watching and reading the most up-to-date accounts. Nearly all of that news will be speculation: about the cause of the accident, the number of casualties, how it might be prevented, etc. Eventually, perhaps years later, somebody will write up a thorough report of what actually happened. The whole thing will be summarized in a Wikipedia article that you can read in a few minutes — and you will be better-informed than you were for the hours spent on the speculation during the time of the event.

I wanted to get a rough estimate for how much of the news is like this. One way to tell is to compare the past with the present. Of the news you read in the past, how much of it actually turned out to matter? So I looked at a copy of The Economist from this date in 2007 to see how many of the articles actually mattered. Here is the section on Politics This Week, their summary of the supposedly most-important items of that week. 

• An investigation of Alaska political corruption. None of the people or events highlighted are relevant today, except perhaps the brief reference to Sarah Palin — who was a political unknown at the time.
• Black vs Hispanic race relations: could have been written yesterday, including the quote from “Presidential Candidate Barack Obama”, who it notes was outpolled by a crushing 46 percentage points by candidate Hillary Clinton.
• A sidebar about gangs in Los Angeles:  mostly still relevant.
• The US Attorney General is under fire over the questionable legality of a terrorist surveillance program. Not much has changed, though now the US political parties have switched sides over who is on the hot seat.
• An article about lending for student loans laments the overall political ineffectiveness and divisiveness of Congress, though again by now the parties have switched sides. Tuition costs keep rising and student debt is getting out of hand. Blah blah blah.
• Some cities are issuing ID cards for illegal immigrants. I’m not sure how this whole trend turned out, so it would be interesting to see a follow-up article.
• A discussion of Republican presidential candidates thinks Newt Gringrich has a chance at the nomination. Waste of time to read this.
• A Lexington discussion of the announced sale of the Wall Street Journal to Rupert Murdoch is as relevant a discussion today as it was then. That is, those who opposed the sale probably can claim they were right; ditto for those who thought it wasn’t a big deal.

The Economist is a pretty high-brow news source, so many of these articles are based around facts and trends that don’t change a lot. In fact, other than the speculation about the upcoming Presidential election, I’m impressed at how much is worth re-reading.

Still, were you better off reading this issue, or should you have spent your time on something else?

 

 

 

 

The real reason for the 40-hour work week

Why do Americans work Monday through Friday and take weekends off?

Labor unions say we should thank the rise of organized labor in the early 20th century, whose tireless efforts on behalf of workers forced selfish capitalists to give their employees a break.

Henry Ford, in an article published in World’s Work Magazine in 1926, says his company switched from 6-day/48 hours to the modern work week in order to give workers a break. Many people still quote Ford as the visionary who paid his workers extra so they could afford to buy his cars. [see this excellent account from Ooomf, reprinted at TNW]

But I have a much simpler explanation: Henry Ford paid his workers more, and gave them weekends off because he didn’t want them to work for his competitors.

Google gives its employees free food. Will future labor historians look back and thank the visionary Google management for putting people above profits? Or is it just a clever way to keep employees longer at the office? If you have free food at the office, why go on a networking lunch with somebody from outside?

Most employers really do care that their employees have relaxing leisure time, but even if they didn’t, a 40 hour work week is a good idea if for no other reason than to raise the stakes for your competitors.

The FDA needs to be more Bayesian

John Wilbanks is one of my favorite open science geeks (I even met him once in person, when he did a presentation for Microsoft Research). In a blog post this week, he writes a well-reasoned explanation for why the “Evil FDA shuts down lone entrepreneur” narrative is wrong.

Tech companies like 23andme, he writes, think in a “Bayesian” way, where the safety or “truth” of a medical claim is a probabilistic concept that depends on the number of data points (i.e. users). This doesn’t sit well with the FDA, to whom Truth is a binary fact: something is either safe or unsafe, period:

That “traditional” submission to the FDA would be of a very specific kind of analysis based on randomized controlled trials. It is designed to keep bad things from happening to people, not to make sure good things happen to people.

He concludes, correctly, that this is a clash of cultures and that if 23andme wants to succeed (and he hopes they do), they need to accept reality. This is how the FDA works. They should have known that:

[U]ntil the FDA learns how to deal with Bayes’s rule and its discomforts - and until DTC companies figure out a business model that isn’t based on massive loss leadership - we’re going to keep coming back to this clash of culture and business models. Both sides need to make some changes if we’re going to avoid doing this over, and over, and over

But why must “both sides” make changes? I’m reminded of similar advice given to Chinese dissidents that they need to “work through the system”, rather than make public their often misleading and “socially irresponsible” opinions.

I am able to make up my own mind about 23andme’s “marketing” claims, and so can you. The FDA, regardless of how understandable their position, is wrong. Shouldn’t those of us who believe in open data just say so?

The Post-Pasteurian world

As a long-time fan of food writer Michael Pollan (read more here and here), it was inevitable that I’d read his latest, Cooked- A Natural History of Transformation (short summary: it’s great) and while there I stumbled upon an excellent paper in Cultural Anthropology by MIT scientist Heather Paxon that describes a viewpoint that is becoming more persuasive the more I understand it: the bacteria and microbes that surround us are nearly all friendly.

A tiny, tiny number of microbes are unfriendly (and make no mistake, a bacterium like Listeria monocytogenes, is extremely unfriendly), but the entire national regulatory system tries to kill these small bugs, at the expense of the vast majority of microbes that are friendly – and necessary.

Whereas Pasteurianism creates in citizens expectations that the state will ensure a safe food supply, such that “food panics” throw into doubt “the state’s ability to regulate business and bodies” (Dunn 2007:36), post-Pasteurianism questions whether state regulators have only the interests of citizen-consumers at heart.

Your body was designed to live among many different microbes. The friendly ones, in fact, are partly responsible for protecting us against the unfriendly ones. When you kill every microbe, with scorched-earth tactics like broad spectrum antibiotics or even with pasteurization, something else is lost too, and it’s important not to forget that.

The argument for regulating information

When Nobel Peace prizewinner Liu Xiaobo was imprisoned by Chinese authorities, his captors were unafraid that he alone, a single individual without guns, an army, or even military training, threatens the Chinese government, which has plenty of those items to spare. And few in the government would argue that Liu himself, or his ideas, are themselves irresponsible. He’s a well-educated, perfectly sensible individual well within his rights to think the thoughts he was thinking. No harm if he had simply stopped there.

When you or I, dear reader — the educated elite users of a product like the genetic testing service from 23andme, when we use the information about our genes, few at the FDA will argue that there is a danger. After all, we’re the early adopters, the people smart enough to seek this information in the first place. The trouble is not you and me, it’s them, don’t you know, the unwashed masses out there who may become — how shall we say this delicately? — overexcited, causing themselves potentially tragic — and avoidable — harm.

History shows that the ideas Liu outlined in Charter 08, might actually help China. Reasonable people, those bearing the full responsibility for the stability and long-term future of the country, have no fear of the ideas themselves. Once the country has matured a bit more, once the people are ready for this information, then yes, it may become appropriate to discuss the issues publicly. But right now, here in the real world, where leaders with actual accountability for China’s long-term stability, know that to throw Liu’s ideas out there, wily-nilly, without the proper preparation…well, think of what could happen if those ideas landed in the hands of the irresponsible masses who might be tempted to take action without understanding, as we do, the full consequences.

You see, an expert, whether at the FDA or in the Chinese Communist Party, has been carefully vetted, with years and years of education that brings a better sensitivity to the long-term benefits, as well as the potential downsides, that come with access to powerful ideas.

The government has been very patient with Liu Xiaobo, offering years of warnings, giving him plenty of time to realize the potentially destabilizing consequences of his behavior. The FDA was similarly patient with 23andme, spelling out over dozens of meetings and countless emails, precisely what the experts fear — know — can happen when important information gets into the wrong hands.

Liu Xiaobo has no gun, but many of his potential readers do. 23andme doesn’t perform mastectomies or administer drugs, but many of their potential readers may not be so limited.

You and I may be able to handle a world without sensible regulation of ideas and information. But do you really think that others can?

Is the FDA the only source of experts?

An SFGate blog, supports the FDA’s decision to prevent informed consumers   from having our genes sequenced halt the marketing of 23andme:

Silicon Valley whines any time regulators bog down their ability to “move fast and break things.” But as a society, we’re far better off when a neutral party that isn’t in the business of selling a medical product takes steps to ensure it does more good than harm.

Nobody disagrees about the importance of neutral parties ensuring that products do more good than harm. But isn’t that precisely the purpose of SFGate, the rest of the media, and for that matter, the entire education system? We are surrounded by neutral parties giving their opinions about every product and service we buy. That’s one of the many great benefits of a free society.

The FDA, like any other group of experts, is often wrong.  What makes them so special that they, and only they, should be allowed to decide what kind of information an intelligent American is allowed to have? Can’t I make up my own mind?

Britannicans vs. Wikipedians

Attach a label to a political discussion and people immediately take the same, tired, positions that quickly devolve into heated discussions that more resemble “politics as entertainment” than an honest search for truth. If you really want to resolve some of these disputes, it seems to me that one way to start is by re-categorizing along a different axis.

Instead of dividing the world into Liberal and Conservative or Republican and Democrat, what if we divide everyone into Britannicans and Wikipedians?

Britannicans prefer expertise and experts. They are most comfortable when a well-respected authority is in charge. Wikipedians have less patience for authoritative answers, preferring an iterative approach that gradually converges on truth, rather than single, large revelations.

In most debates over policy or group actions, Britannicans have some big advantages, like decisiveness and accountability. Wikipedians are harder to pin down, and they tend to be more tentative or indecisive.

On the other hand, Britannicans suffer from the seen vs. unseen problem. They do better when a policy or decision has an obvious precedent, or it fits clearly into an existing category. They can be caught off guard in new or previously-unimagined situations. They hate Black Swans.

Wikipedians, though, thrive in the creative destruction that happens in new or uncertain situations. Even in more familiar contexts, they recognize that decisions have outcomes beyond the obvious, so they are skeptical when somebody appears to “have all the answers”.

Wikipedians see “benevolent dictatorship” as an oxymoron; Britannicans are more sympathetic, preferring to emphasize the “benevolent” part.

Wikipedians are often criticized for being ignorant or misinformed, especially by Britannicans, whom Wikipedians in turn accuse of arrogance or hubris.

Britannicans rely on “mainstream news” like the New York Times, CNN, or Fox; they have great respect for universities, especially those with “prestige”. Wikipedians use a diverse set of news sources, many of which are obscure or highly targeted to specific niches; sometimes they just rely on friends.

On health issues, Britannicans listen to their doctors; Wikipedians try everything, including alternative medicine, supplements, or home remedies. Britannicans might disagree about whether universal coverage is important, but in principal they respect the idea of a national health service, staffed by well-intentioned experts who decide the best medical treatments and policies, making reasonable and impartial tradeoffs between outcomes and costs. Wikipedians would be terrified of such a single arbiter of medical “truth”.

Britannicans like strong, well-funded public education. Wikipedians mistrust anything centralized, so you’ll see them favor a wide range of things, from volunteering in their local school, to supporting charters, to home-schooling.

Wikipedians are by nature skeptical of anything large, including the military, though they’ll have a wide range of opinions depending on what kinds of threats exist. Britannicans too have many opinions, but generally are more comfortable the larger the scope of influence; for example, they prefer a defense based on cross-national units like NATO or the United Nations.

You’ll find religious Britannicans as well as Wikipedians. The idea of a strong, all-knowing God comes naturally to Britannicans, so they also make good atheists if they reject religion. Non-believing Wikipedians are more agnostic; the believers gravitate toward decentralized groups.

The environment is important to everyone, but Britannicans are particularly attracted to Global Warming as an opportunity to impose sweeping international policies. Britannicans who deny global warming are the types who will spend hours pouncing on every fact trying to “prove” the other side is wrong. Wikipedians are more skeptical, either that the consequences are well-understood, or that much can be done. They may respond with personal lifestyle decisions, like buying organic or driving a Prius.

I’m deliberately trying to draw lines that cut through the traditional political divides; I know both die-hard Democrats and Republicans who would find themselves on the same side of this split.

As for me, I think I’m a Wikipedian because I tend to appreciate bottom-up solutions over top-down ones. I’m skeptical of experts (even when I am one myself!) and I enjoy understanding both sides.

How about you?

 

Politics as entertainment

I know very little about Iran, other than the headlines I read in the mainstream US press. I bet you don't know much more than I do, though like me you are probably cheering for the "underdog" Mousavi to beat that awful Ahmadinejad. But if I reflect honestly, I have to admit that I don't really know what's best for Iran, or even the long-term interests of the United States. I cheer for one side because it's "my" side, and because a lot of people I like are on this side.

This is no different than why people cheer for a particular sports team. A Mariners fan doesn't care about baseball in any purely detached or objective sense. He wants his side to win because it's his side. Although you could imagine an objective standard of "Truth" about which team is ultimately the best, even the most well-informed sports nut -- the guy who can recite statistics all day -- is going to cheer for his team, not because it's the "best" but because it's "his". It's not about truth, it's about entertainment.

Most well-informed political junkies are the same: to them, politics is a form of entertainment. It's not about being "right", it's about cheering for and supporting one side, sometimes for no reason other than to oppose the competing side. Sure, they can recite facts and statistics -- they enjoy it! -- but press them on why, or about the truth of the matter, and it comes back to "because my side says so".

I think entertainment gets in the way of truth. Few of us have the time to dig into each policy decision in the kind of detail necessary to come to a real opinion, so it's nice to delegate our thinking to a political party. But combine that with the natural tendency of Type A people to dominate conversations, and we get cacophony. No real understanding, just a bunch of loudmouths who classify everything as either Republican or Democrat.

I'm trying to think of a good answer for the next time somebody asks me my political party. I find that the question itself is like asking my favorite baseball team: it's not about any serious discussion of Truth or the issues, it's about figuring out which (of presumably only two -- why is that?) team I'm cheering.

Libertarians aren't really a political party as much as a mindset. Ask what matters to me in the current situation with Iran and, without knowing any facts, I'll give you as reasonable an answer as is possible without a lot of research. But, like domestic political issues, why do I have to cheer for one side or another?

Worst economy since the Great Depression

From the Jan 13th issue of Time Magazine:

The slump is the longest, if not the deepest, since the Great Depression. Traumatized by layoffs that have cost more than 1.2 million jobs during the slump, U.S. consumers have fallen into their deepest funk in years. "Never in my adult life have I heard more deep- seated feelings of concern," says Howard Allen, retired chairman of Southern California Edison. "Many, many business leaders share this lack of confidence and recognize that we are in real economic trouble." Says University of Michigan economist Paul McCracken: "This is more than just a recession in the conventional sense. What has happened has put the fear of God into people."

(oops, forgot to mention the year: this article is from 1992, during what in retrospect turned out not to be much of a recession at all.) [via Marginal Revolution]

If you’re one of those who thinks President Obama is inheriting “the worst economy since the Great Depression”, please check out two years: 

1982 [via David Leonhardt in NYTimes]

The first big blow to the economy was the 1979 revolution in Iran, which sent oil prices skyrocketing. The bigger blow was a series of sharp interest-rate increases by the Federal Reserve, meant to snap inflation. Home sales plummeted. At their worst, they were 30 percent lower than they are even now (again, adjusted for population size). The industrial Midwest was hardest hit, and the term “Rust Belt” became ubiquitous. Many families fled south and west, helping to create the modern Sun Belt. Nationwide, the unemployment rate rose above 10 percent in 1982, compared with 7.2 percent last month.

and, of course, 1973.

I wouldn’t trade today’s situation for either of those two years, and not just because today’s economy is by comparison so much better. It’s impossible to know the future, so who knows and maybe things will get a lot worse. But meanwhile it’s important not to over-react based on over-dramatic headlines.

The reading habits of George W. Bush

I’m skeptical whenever mainstream consensus settles on an opinion about somebody or something, especially when it’s a subject that lends itself to very little first-hand, direct, up-close experience.  For example, It’s pretty well-accepted, both by the general media and by people I hang out with, that our outgoing president is not the brightest bulb who ever inhabited the White House. But I’ve always been skeptical of such a quick-and-easy conclusion.  You don’t get to be President by being a dummy.  There’s enough competition out there to weed out the dim bulbs pretty quickly. 

That’s why I was not as surprised as I bet you were to see that he reads about one serious book per week – far, far more than the general public, and probably more than you do.  In fact, about 40% of Americans didn’t read a single book last year.

According to a WSJ article by Bush friend Karl Rove, the President read the following books in 2008:

David Halberstam's "The Coldest Winter," Rick Atkinson's "Day of Battle," Hugh Thomas's "Spanish Civil War," Stephen W. Sears's "Gettysburg" and David King's "Vienna 1814." There's also plenty of biography -- including U.S. Grant's "Personal Memoirs"; Jon Meacham's "American Lion"; James M. McPherson's "Tried by War: Abraham Lincoln as Commander in Chief" and Jacobo Timerman's "Prisoner Without a Name, Cell Without a Number."

He’s not one-sided, either.  Look at this list of recent fiction:

Besides eight Travis McGee novels by John D. MacDonald, Mr. Bush tackled Michael Crichton's "Next," Vince Flynn's "Executive Power," Stephen Hunter's "Point of Impact," and Albert Camus's "The Stranger," among others.

Of course, just because somebody reads a lot more than you does not mean they are smart.  But like almost everything else you think you know politics, or the economy, or famous people – things you know only indirectly (from what you read) and by word-of-mouth (from people you talk to) – the real story is far more complicated than you can imagine.

p.s. I wonder if this is one of the books he’s read:

41st district election results by city

The complete official results of the November 4th election have been posted; I haven’t had time to do the analysis I did for the primary, but here’s what I got when I did a quick import into Excel:

• Yup, Obama won Mercer Island (as Surrounded by Water already predicted)
• Marcie Maxwell lost in Bellevue.  In fact, she lost practically everywhere except Renton, but her  2000-vote victory there made up for it.  The chart below is a little deceptive because it lumps into “Other” areas like Briar, Eastwood, and Daniel that really should be considered Renton.  Steve won Newcastle and most everywhere else listed “other”.
• Except for popular Attorney General Rob McKenna, Democrats won everywhere, including Mercer Island.  Governor, Congressman, President – the whole district shifted further blue than at any time in the past 75 years.

 

Area	Litzow	Maxwell	Obama	McCain	McKenna
Bellevue	14,103	13,501	20,439	10,955	19,615
Mercer Island	7,090	6,031	9,718	4,735	9,120
Renton	3,304	5,304	6,098	3,347	5,436
Other	6,639	7,055	9,255	5,881	9,427
total	31,136	31,891	45,510	24,918	43,598

 

Area	McKenna	Rossi	Gregoire	Reichert	Burner
Bellevue	19,615	13,189	17,523	14,670	16,093
Mercer Island	9,120	5,971	8,466	6,550	7,613
Renton	5,436	4,235	5,267	4,273	5,047
Other	9,427	7,314	7,905	7,453	7,484
total	43,598	30,709	39,161	32,946	36,237

 

Note on the above numbers: my totals don’t completely match the official final results posted on the King County Elections page.  I didn’t include write-ins, blanks, overvotes, etc. – none of which made a material difference (I believe), but results in some discrepancies with official numbers.  For example, Marcie’s victory goes to 755 instead of the 748 in the official count.  But hey, I’m just an unpaid blogger so what are you expecting – something professional?

Greenspan Recants (or did he?)

The current financial crisis is an interesting real-life experiment to free market fans like me.  It’s far too early to draw conclusions, but much of the generally accepted wisdom right now is that “pure capitalism” has failed and that the world needs more regulated markets to protect against “excess” and prevent or lessen these crises in the future.

But my belief in free markets is more about information than it is about money.  Most regulations involve one person (a bureaucrat) telling another person (you or me) what to do.  Sometimes that’s necessary:  for example we’re all better off when a central planner decides that everyone must drive on the right-hand side of the road.  But for this to be effective, bureaucrats need to be humble about their terrible disadvantage in information.  No regulator can possibly know as much as you do about your individual circumstances, and this information disparity is the source of why regulation often causes more harm than help.

Those of us who believe this idea have long thought of Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan as an ally, so I was intrigued when I saw news reports (now repeated over and over) that he “changed his mind”.

Except, he didn't. When I look at the actual transcripts, it's clear to me that careless news reporters have simply spun his remarks incorrectly.  Here's the key quote:

Chairman WAXMAN. Well, where did you make a mistake then?

Mr. GREENSPAN. I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interest of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such is that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.

And it's been my experience, having worked both as a regulator for 18 years and similar quantities, in the private sector, especially, 10 years at a major international bank, that the loan officers of those institutions knew far more about the risks involved and the people to whom they lent money, than I saw even our best regulators at the Fed capable of doing. So the problem here is something which looked to be a very solid edifice, and, indeed, a critical pillar to market competition and free markets, did break down. And I think that, as I said, shocked me. I still do not fuIly understand why it happened and, obviously, to the extent that f figure out where it happened and why, I will change my views. If the facts change, I will change.

What follows is his attempt to defend himself against the implication that somehow he was derelict at his duties as Fed Chairman, that ideology got in the way of his performing his legal responsibilities. As someone who obviously cares about integrity, much of Greenspan's testimony is simply responding to those charges, which he thinks are unfair.

But he eventually reaches his bottom line:

Mr. GREENSPAN. I think that it's interesting to observe that we find failures of regulation all the time, and one of the reasons is a very significant amount of regulation in the economic area is based on a forecast to know in advance whether or not particular products will go bad or the cycle will turn. If we are right 60 percent of the time in forecasting, we're doing exceptionally well. That means we are wrong 40 percent of the time, and when you observe the extent of the broad failure, the difficulty is that nobody can forecast. If you try to take a look at what the private sector does it's precisely the same thing that goes on in government. We at the Federal Reserve had a much better record forecasting than the private sector, but we were wrong quite a good deal of the time and that is reflected in how one views what the appropriate regulatory authorities are because unless you can anticipate the types of problems that are going to happen, it's very difficult to know what to do. And I think that's the problem that this type of thing confronts and I don't see any way in which that's going to be fundamentally changed. We can try to do better, but forecasting is never--never gets to the point where it's 100 percent accurate.

When you look at his entire testimony, it's clear that Greenspan in no way has changed his mind or even modified his fundamental pro-market position. He maintains his strong support for an unregulated market in derivatives, for example, which "are working well" (his quote). The part he doesn't understand (where he'll change his mind if the facts change) relates to credit default swaps--a market that barely existed when Greenspan was chairman and therefore was impossible to forecast.  And who would we be regulating anyway?   He reminds us of this:

"We are not dealing with people who are dumb. We are dealing with, by far, the most sophisticated, thoughtful people about the way markets work who created the major problems".

Enacting regulations to prevent a future collapse of the credit default swaps market would be a waste of time, since (as Greenspan notes) nobody is interested in that market anymore now anyway. But enacting other regulations would simply hamper a market that is already working well 60% of the time. Does anybody think they can get better odds on an alternative system? Exactly which regulations would you enact that would improve upon that record? Greenspan doesn't recant: he just admits he doesn't know.  Do his regulation-happy opponents or the careless reporters know?   Do you?

Maxwell wins

Many of us have been watching the shifting return counts since election night, but now it’s official:  Marcie Maxwell won the election for 41st district state representative over Steve Litzow.  The margin was extremely close:  748 out of 64,394 votes cast, much tighter than the 1591 votes that separated the two of them during the primary election.

I think she won for two reasons:

1. She’s not George Bush.   In a district that Obama carried by 64%,  anybody with a “D” in their name was guaranteed at least 748 voters who wanted their state legislator to end the war in Iraq, end subsidies to Big Oil, end all that corruption in Washington D.C., stop the Born Again Fundamentalists from running the government, help those poor Katrina victims, and make abortion legal again.  If you can fog up a mirror you can vote in this country, and this year the momentum was on the side of Democrats.
   
2. Steve went negative.  Too many people were put off by the petty, irrelevant attack mails that Steve sent, implying that Marcie somehow doesn’t care about student privacy.  Or something – I’m not even sure what he was implying about her.  Anyone who knows Marcie personally (or knows somebody who does – which is half the city of Renton) looked at his ads and rolled their eyes.  Same thing with his comments about Renton school performance; there was a right way to legitimately bring this up as an issue, but Steve came across as somebody who was just picking on the good people of Renton.

The full downloadable results will be ready in early December, and I can’t wait to pour through the numbers so I can update the analysis from the August primary.  Here’s what I’ll be looking for:

• Did Steve carry Bellevue?  I bet he did.  That would be interesting because it challenges the popular explanation that the Eastside is becoming more Democratic.  In other words, it’s possible (even likely) for a Republican to win District 41, even in a terrible year.
• Did education voters make the difference?  Since this is Marcie’s main campaign theme, it will be interesting to see how much the voters agreed.  This didn’t matter much in the primary, so I want to see if anything changed in the larger turnout for the final election.

Meanwhile, Marcie deserves congratulations, and I’m proud to stand behind her as my legislator for the next two years  (Argh, is that all it is?!  After nearly a year of hard work campaigning, the prize is a lot more of those 2-hour drives to Olympia, a diddly state legislator’s salary,  and then you have to do it all over again!

Civics test: 90%

Ouch! I’m disappointed that I got three answers wrong on a new 33-question civics test created by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, giving me a score of 90.1%.

Still, that’s better than 49% mean score of the 2500 people test-takers nationwide. In fact, it’s way better than every single category sampled:

Group	Score
Income > $100K	55
Democrat	45
Republican	55
Age 18-24	47
Age 45-64	52
Doctorate	72
Undergraduate	57

The study's authors somehow convinced 164 elected officials to take the test, and their average score was 44% – five points lower than the general public.

These questions are pretty basic: multiple choice answers to questions about the First Amendment, the purpose of the Federal Reserve Bank, names for the three branches of government. Yes, some of them were a little tricky, but I don't think you can be an informed voter if you don't know this stuff.

Take the 5-minute test yourself and let me know how you did:

http://www.americancivicliteracy.org/resources/quiz.aspx

Free coffee at Starbucks

I dropped in on West Mercer Elementary school this morning:

and then I went downtown and got one of these for free:

Incidentally, I disagree with the idea that irresponsible or uninformed people should vote.  If you’re unsure about a candidate or an issue, please don’t guess – you’ll likely just make things worse.

If you want to know what I think about issues, read these posts.  If I’m wrong about something, please leave comments so I can change my mind.

Sign Waving to Commuters

If you want to say something to Mercer Islanders, you can’t beat the intersection of Island Crest Way and 40th as a place to publicize your message.  A large percentage of the island drives past it every morning, and they’re your captive audience until the light turns green.  There must be an election or something this week, because here’s what we had this morning:

Can you spot the three City Council members in these photos?

I wonder how crowded it’ll be tomorrow morning?

Confidence in Fred Jarrett

I think there are at least two kinds of politicians: the "populists" and the "wonks". Too many politicians are populists, who treat government like a popularity contest: a grown-up version of the Homecoming King and Queen (come to think of it, a lot of politicians are former homecoming kings).

We need more wonks, which is why I'm voting for Fred Jarrett. Meet him in person like I did this weekend and you'll see why: he is knee-deep in the details about the issues that matter to him (and me): like education  and transportation.

Here are a couple of areas where he changed my mind:

• Vote no on I-985: I'm partial to cars--it's far and away the most important way people get around, and I disagree with the do-goodies who push ultra-expensive mass transit that won't help a bit. I figured there's enough opposition to I-985 that it won't pass anyway, but I want to send a message that cars are important. Not anymore. Fred thinks it's likely to pass, unfortunately. I agree with him that it would be a disaster (micromanage how traffic lights get synchronized? Puh-lease)
• It’s possible to get bad teachers to quit, through policy changes that don’t have to upset their union.  Best example: make pensions portable.  A lot of middle-aged teachers would love to change jobs but the golden handcuffs of their generous pensions are keeping them there.  What if we could make their pensions portable?  through defined contribution (like the 401k that I have) or through something else…  I think that’s the single best way to improve schools.
• Tolling on I-90.  Fred’s opponent, Bob Baker, talks like it’s a simple matter of “just say no”, but in fact Bob Baker’s naive stance would make matters far worse for Mercer Island.  [this deserves its own post, like the one from Surrounded by Water]

I'm not surprised the non-partisan Municipal League gives Fred the highest rating for our district.

Stop by the Education Funding blog he runs with several other legislators for more wonky details.

Seattle Times Endorses Steve Litzow

The Seattle Times endorsed Steve Litzow in the race for 41st State Legislative District. You have to chuckle at their follow-on comment

His opponent, Democrat Marcie Maxwell, a member of the Renton School Board, is passionate about education but doesn't seem to have an original idea about the topic.

Ouch!

Their rejection stings even more when compared to the kinder comments they made when they passed on Fred Jarrett’s competitor, Bob Baker, who they at least encourage to “stay in local politics”.  It’s clear they agree with the Municipal League’s non-partisan assessment that Marcie just isn’t as qualified.

Note how quickly Steve added the Seattle Times endorsement to this brand new campaign video:

Compare it to a similar one released by Marcie’s team a few weeks ago:

I think the Seattle Times assessment is accurate.  I don’t know any Democrats who are enthusiastic about Marcie.  If you are, and you really think she’d be a better legislator, especially on education issues, please let me know in the comments.  Do original ideas matter in this race?