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anonymous

Pakistan and the U.S. Exit From Afghanistan - 1 views

www.stratfor.com/...kistan_and_us_exit_afghanistan

geopolitics gwot

shared by anonymous on 28 Sep 10 - Cached
  • But while the military’s top generals and senior civilian leadership are responsible for providing the president with sound, clearheaded advice on all military matters including the highest levels of grand strategy, they are ultimately responsible for the pursuit of military objectives to which the commander-in-chief directs them.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 28 Sep 10
       
      Which is why I scratch my head when I read or hear (as I did at a recent family function) "Obama is just leaving because of political reasons." Of course he - I mean *we* are - we got into it for political reasons and we'll leave that way. At its core, war is political. I'm amazed at how ridiculously basic a concept that is, and yet its lacking from many person-to-person narratives.
  • The strategy of the guerrilla is to make the option to withdraw more attractive. In order to do this, his strategic goal is simply to survive and fight on whatever level he can. His patience is built into who he is and what he is fighting for. The occupier’s patience is calculated against the cost of the occupation and its opportunity costs, thus, while troops are committed in this country, what is happening elsewhere?
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 28 Sep 10
       
      See also: The rise of conventional powers during this decade-long overmagnification on one region.
  • The occupation force will always win engagements, but that is never the measure of victory. If the guerrillas operate by doctrine, defeats in unplanned engagements will not undermine their basic goal of survival.
  • ...15 more annotations...
  • While the occupier is not winning decisively, even while suffering only some casualties, he is losing. While the guerrilla is not losing decisively, even if suffering significant casualties, he is winning.
  • There has long been a myth about the unwillingness of Americans to absorb casualties for very long in guerrilla wars. In reality, the United States fought in Vietnam for at least seven years (depending on when you count the start and stop) and has now fought in Afghanistan for nine years. The idea that Americans can’t endure the long war has no empirical basis.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 28 Sep 10
       
      This is another one of those fascinating bits of conventional wisdom that's completely wrong. Another is the idea that Afghanistan is the *graveyard of empires*. Both these misconceptions feed our basic need for explanatory stories, but they do so at the expense of realistic observation.
  • Far more relevant than casualties to whether Americans continue a war is the question of the conflict’s strategic importance, for which the president is ultimately responsible.
  • Washington’s primary goal at the initiation of the conflict was to destroy or disrupt al Qaeda in Afghanistan to protect the U.S. homeland from follow-on attacks to 9/11.
  • STRATFOR has long held that Islamist-fueled transnational terrorism does not represent a strategic, existential threat to the United States. While acts of transnational terrorism target civilians, they are not attacks — have not been and are not evolving into attacks — that endanger the territorial integrity of the United States or the way of life of the American people.
  • They are dangerous and must be defended against, but transnational terrorism is and remains a tactical problem that for nearly a decade has been treated as if it were the pre-eminent strategic threat to the United States.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 28 Sep 10
       
      Initial criticisms of the GWOT is that you can't have a "war" on a method. I believe that criticism still stands. It's certainly an untenable basis for conducing national security.
  • disrupting and degrading it — to say nothing of destroying it — can no longer be achieved by waging a war in Afghanistan.
  • The strategic problem is that simply terminating the war after nine years would destabilize the Islamic world.
  • The political problem is domestic. Obama’s approval rating now stands at 42 percent. This is not unprecedented, but it means he is politically weak. One of the charges against him, fair or not, is that he is inherently anti-war by background and so not fully committed to the war effort.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 28 Sep 10
       
      To which I respond: Presidents are not the same as partisan constituents. They may enter office with one perspective, but the reality of the damnedable profession changes you. Being "anti-war" is a sort of childlike triviality once you've had to manage the unweildy apparatus of the state.
  • The American solution, one that we suspect is already under way, is the Pakistanization of the war. By this, we do not mean extending the war into Pakistan but rather extending Pakistan into Afghanistan.
  • In the past, the United States has endeavored to keep the Taliban in Afghanistan and the regime in Pakistan separate.
  • The Pakistani relationship to the Taliban, which was a liability for the United States in the past, now becomes an advantage for Washington because it creates a trusted channel for meaningful communication with the Taliban.
  • The United States isn’t going to defeat the Taliban. The original goal of the war is irrelevant, and the current goal is rather difficult to take seriously. Even a victory, whatever that would look like, would make little difference in the fight against transnational jihad, but a defeat could harm U.S. interests.
  • Therefore, the United States needs a withdrawal that is not a defeat.
  • Bob Woodward has released another book, this one on the debate over Afghanistan strategy in the Obama administration.
  • anonymous on 28 Sep 10
     
    "Bob Woodward has released another book, this one on the debate over Afghanistan strategy in the Obama administration. As all his books do, the book has riveted Washington. It reveals that intense debate occurred over what course to take, that the president sought alternative strategies and that compromises were reached. But while knowing the details of these things is interesting, what would have been shocking is if they hadn't taken place." By George Friedman at StratFor on September 28, 2010.
anonymous

Krauthammer and "Scientific" Political Analysis - 0 views

fpwatch.blogspot.com/...-and-scientific-political.html

economy politics

shared by anonymous on 22 Oct 10 - Cached
  • Anyone having even a passing familiarity with American politics literature (and as someone with more of a comparative/IR focus, my own familiarity is indeed passing) knows there is precisely one reason the Democrats are going to get punished in a couple of weeks: the economy. Incumbents get punished when the economy is bad. The economy right now is really bad, so incumbents are going to get punished especially harshly. That's really the only story here
  • for all of Krauthammer's harping about the importance of independents, there's really no such thing. The vast majority of self-identified "independents" lean strongly one way or another, though they might be more inclined than strong partisans to punish the incumbent party for a poor economy.
  • anonymous on 22 Oct 10
     
    "Anyone having even a passing familiarity with American politics literature (and as someone with more of a comparative/IR focus, my own familiarity is indeed passing) knows there is precisely one reason the Democrats are going to get punished in a couple of weeks: the economy. Incumbents get punished when the economy is bad. The economy right now is really bad, so incumbents are going to get punished especially harshly. That's really the only story here." By Matt Eckel at Foreign Policy Watch on October 22, 2010.
anonymous

The self-absorption of America's ruling class - 0 views

www.salon.com/...politico

partisan politics

shared by anonymous on 08 Nov 10 - Cached
  • anonymous on 08 Nov 10
     
    "There, ladies and gentlemen, is the mentality of the "groups that matter in American politics." That's what these people are worried about and focused on. Some of the anti-Obama grievances cited by Politico are marginally less trivial though still on the level of political process complaints (rhetorical and communication failures on the part of the White House). But almost all of them are voiced anonymously. That Wall Street and other financial executives have spent the last year petulantly complaining about how unfairly they are treated -- as their wealth continues to boom while the rest of the population suffers -- was, in my view, one of the year's most vivid expressions of the degradation of America's political culture. That "the groups that matter" are preoccupied with these sorts of prerogative-denying slights -- while Politico gives them front-page anonymity to whine about those grievances -- is definitely another. We have the country we have because of the character of the people who run it." Thanks for the pointer, @pyromanfo - By Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com on November 8, 2010
anonymous

Letter to a whiny young Democrat - 0 views

www.sfgate.com/...article.cgi

politics partisan whimsy

shared by anonymous on 04 Nov 10 - Cached
  • See what happens when you wallow in hollow disappointment, trudging all over your liberal arts campus and refusing to vote in a rather important mid-term election, all because your pet issues and nubile ego weren't immediately serviced by a mesmerizing guy named Barack Obama just after he sucked you into his web of fuzzyhappy promises a mere two years ago, back when you were knee-high to a shiny liberal ideology?
  • Did you see the polls and studies that said that most fresh-faced, Obama-swooning Dems like you are now refusing to support our beloved Nazi Muslim president because he didn't wish-fulfill your every whim in a week? That he was, in fact, not quite the instant-gratification SuperJesus of your (or rather, our) dreams?
  • The Obama administration sure as hell could've done more to keep young activists inspired and involved. It's an opportunity squandered, no question. Then again, dude was sorta busy unburying the entire nation, you know? And the twitchy Democratic party has never been known for its savvy cohesion. Maybe you can give him/them a break? Whoops, too late.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • And let's not forget a shockingly unintelligent Tea Party movement that stands for exactly nothing and fears exactly everything, all ghost-funded by a couple of creepy libertarian oil billionaires -- the leathery old Koch brothers -- who eat their young for a snack. Who could've predicted that gnarled political contraption would hold water? But hey, when Americans are angry and nervous, they do stupid things. Like vote Republican. It happens. Just did.
  • anonymous on 04 Nov 10
     
    "Oh, now you've done it. See? You see what happens when you young liberal voters get so disgruntled and disillusioned that you drop all your party's newborn, hard-won ideas about Hope™ and Change™, without any patience, without really giving them sufficient time to mature, without understanding that hugely foreign, anti-American concept known as "the long view"?" A hilarious piece by Mark Morford at the San Francisco Chronicle on November 3, 2010.
anonymous

The Case for Obama - 0 views

www.rollingstone.com/...220013

politics partisan

shared by anonymous on 04 Nov 10 - Cached
  • From the outset, it was inevitable that Obama's transcendent campaign would give way to an earthbound presidency — one constrained by two wars, an economy in free fall and an opposition party bent on obstruction at any price. "Expectations were so sky-high for him that they were impossible to fulfill," says presidential historian Douglas Brinkley. "Obama's partly to blame for this: People were expecting a progressive revolution. What the president has delivered instead is gritty, nuts-and-bolts, political legislative work — and it's been rough."
  • anonymous on 04 Nov 10
     
    "The charges are familiar: He's a compromiser who hasn't stood up to the GOP or Wall Street. But a look at his record reveals something even more startling - a truly historic presidency" By Tim Dickinson at Rolling Stone on October 13, 2010.
anonymous

Right Mind - 0 views

www.tnr.com/...right-mind

culture politics partisan criticalthinking

shared by anonymous on 18 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Fox News is awash in experts like Ablow: retired judges, generals, or CIA agents willing to serve as well-credentialed sidekicks for the network’s roster of demagogues. But what makes Ablow so valuable to the network are those two little letters after his name, M.D. He can stamp his medical imprimatur--he’s “America’s psychiatrist,” according to himself--on just about any right-wing political narrative.
  • “If I seem to say things with certainty, it comes from being able to register underlying truths that I feel very clearly about,” he says. “I don’t accept that these ideas have to be relegated to analysts’ couches or therapists’ basement offices. That’s the stuff of stigma.”
  • “I learned a long time ago that to talk about things four years from now was folly.” He’s right, of course, but, when the time comes to make up his mind, Ablow probably won’t keep his audience waiting long for an answer.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Glenn Beck’s show, despite its apocalyptic trappings, is as touchy-feely a show as there is. Nobody on cable news cries as much, emotes as extravagantly, or leans as heavily on the vocabulary of personal betterment. In fact, it’s hard to imagine another talk-show host more in need of a resident mental-health professional.
  • anonymous on 18 Mar 10
     
    "Meet Glenn Beck's shrink" and groan beneath your breath...
anonymous

Right Mind - 0 views

www.tnr.com/...right-mind

criticalthinking culture partisan politics

shared by anonymous on 18 Mar 10 - Cached
  • Fox News is awash in experts like Ablow: retired judges, generals, or CIA agents willing to serve as well-credentialed sidekicks for the network’s roster of demagogues. But what makes Ablow so valuable to the network are those two little letters after his name, M.D. He can stamp his medical imprimatur--he’s “America’s psychiatrist,” according to himself--on just about any right-wing political narrative.
  • anonymous on 18 Mar 10
     
    "Meet Glenn Beck's shrink" and groan beneath your breath...
anonymous

Left-Right Isn't About Markets - 0 views

www.overcomingbias.com/...-right-isnt-about-markets.html

politics partisan

shared by anonymous on 08 Apr 10 - Cached
  • political ideology, like most ideology, is a lot more about who should get respect than it is about abstract principles of governance.
  • anonymous on 08 Apr 10
     
    By Robin Hanson at Overcoming Bias on April 7, 2010.
anonymous

Health care reform: A simple explanation, updated - 0 views

politifact.com/...orm-simple-explanation-updated

healthcare layscience scientificadmin partisan politics

shared by anonymous on 16 Apr 10 - Cached
  • The Senate bill does not require employers to offer insurance, but it does impose taxes on employers if they don't offer insurance and their employees qualify for new health insurance tax credits.
  • regulate the exchanges so that insurance companies couldn't discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions, or charge wildly different amounts for similar coverage.
  • Insurers would have to cover preventive care, and they wouldn't be able to cut off coverage unfairly or set annual limits on benefits.
  • ...13 more annotations...
  • expands eligibility for insurance programs like Medicaid and the state Children's Health Insurance Program. All poor people would qualify for Medicaid.
  • People who don't buy insurance would have to pay a penalty on their taxes. Under the Senate bill, the share of legal nonelderly residents with insurance coverage is expected to rise from about 83 percent currently to about 94 percent.
  • promote standardized electronic health records
  • A comparative effectiveness research center would conduct and publish scientific research to find which treatments are the most effective.
  • the new rules aim to pay doctors for good patient outcomes instead of paying them per procedure, also called "fee-for-service."
  • For the large group market, the CBO found that rates would either stay the same or decline slightly. For the small group market, rates would essentially stay the same as well. The individual market is a more complicated story
  • Covering millions of people who are now uninsured would cost billions more per year.
  • Critics say the Democratic plans would lead to health care rationing.
  • The public option is an insurance plan run by the government that individuals can choose over private insurance.
  • The more generous the benefits, the higher the costs.
  • The House measure put more restrictions on how insurers could offer coverage for abortion services.
  • the CBO warns that it's very difficult to put dollar figures on many of these things, because of the size of the health care industry and the inherent unpredictability of major policy changes over many years.
  • It's good to keep in mind that when it comes to health care reform, no one has a crystal ball.
  • anonymous on 16 Apr 10
     
    From Politifact. A basic explanation.
anonymous

"In Palinworld, Palin, By Definition, Speaks The Truth." - 0 views

andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/...rnor-with-a-tv-show-ctd-1.html

criticalthinking partisan politics media

shared by anonymous on 26 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Look: what we have seen this past year is the collapse of the RNC as it once was and the emergence of a highly lucrative media-ideological-industrial complex. This complex has no interest in traditional journalistic vetting, skepticism, scrutiny of those in power, or asking the tough questions. It has no interest in governing a country. It has an interest in promoting personalities and ideologies and false images of a past America that both flatter and engage its audience. For most in this business, this is about money.
  • Roger Ailes, who runs a news business, has been frank about what his fundamental criterion is for broadcasting: ratings not truth.
  • It doesn't matter whether she's uneducated, unprincipled, unaware and unscrupulous. The more she's proven incapable of the presidency, the more her supporters believe she is destined for it. It's a brilliant little gig she's devised. She may be ignorant, but she is not stupid. She has the smarts of all accomplished pathological liars and phonies.
  • anonymous on 26 Apr 10
     
    By Andrew Sullivan at the Daily Dish on April 26, 2010.
anonymous

Why I Am Not a Libertarian - 0 views

sophistpundit.blogspot.com/...why-i-am-not-libertarian.html

politics partisan philosophy

shared by anonymous on 25 May 10 - Cached
  • The first is what I've heard called "first principles" libertarianism.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 25 May 10
       
      This smacks of worshipping a process.
  • The second is utilitarian, or consequentialist libertarianism.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 25 May 10
       
      Voluntary associations are not the only source of good.
  • Paul argued that he was for the part of the Civil Rights Act that ended the legal impositions of Jim Crow, but was against the positive coercive measures taken to try and force desegregation to happen.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • libertarianism, by nature of being an "ism", is a rationalism.  To the extent that it is a cohesive ideology, it demands a rational criteria as a basis for judging the merit of events in human history and human decisions.
  • anonymous on 25 May 10
     
    By Adam Gurri on May 21, 2010
anonymous

Whoa There, Rising Powers! - 0 views

www.foreignpolicy.com/...whoa_there_rising_powers

geopolitics

shared by anonymous on 26 May 10 - Cached
  • Some critics have alleged that the U.S. administration passed up a golden opportunity for peace in a fit of pique at diplomatic interlopers, or that Iran had made painful concessions to fellow emerging nations that it would not make to the West.
  • something important has shifted in the world order, and we will have to get over our flinch reflex. Brazil and Turkey are middle-sized powers -- eighth and 17th in the world, respectively, in GDP -- that live at peace with their neighbors and believe they have a calling to play a role on the global stage.
  • "rhythmic diplomacy," which sounds like jazzercise but in fact, as he put it, "implies active involvement in all international organizations and on all issues of global and international importance."
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • The Brazils and Turkeys of the world are not likely to form a coherent new bloc, but they will be far less inclined than they were in the past to stay within the lines chalked in by the referees of the West.
  • Partisans of a "concert of democracies" have assumed that maturing democracies in the developing world would seek to advance the same, supposedly universal, values prized by their elders in the West, but it hasn't worked out that way.
  • There's no question that Brazil's interests, or Turkey's, overlap in many places with those of the U.S. and Europe; Turkey seeks nothing more ardently than full EU membership, for instance. But in many other places, interests diverge, and the middle powers are inclined to view the current world order as an instrument to advance Western designs, not theirs.
  • For Obama, the really important question is whether he should reconcile himself to an unavoidable clash of interests with rising powers, or try to win them over by offering a deeper and more substantive kind of engagement -- for example, by pushing for a greater democratization of the institutions from which those states now feel excluded. It may be that the only chance to get Brazil to act more like a global citizen is to treat it like one.
  • When I first read the news about the nuclear deal that Brazil and Turkey reached last week with Iran, I flinched. My reflex reaction was: Third-World troublemakers rally to the side of evil-doer in the face of Western pressure. That was, of course, the wrong reflex.
  • anonymous on 26 May 10
     
    "Brazil and Turkey's diplomatic forays may be annoying, but they also signal a huge shift in the way the world works. Is Obama paying attention?" By James Traub in Foreign Policy on May 25, 2010.
anonymous

Forget Anonymous: Evidence Suggests GOP Hacked, Stole 2004 Election - 1 views

www.benzinga.com/...gop-hacked-stole-2004-election

partisan politics

shared by anonymous on 28 Jul 11 - No Cached
  • "A new filing in the King Lincoln Bronzeville v. Blackwell case includes a copy of the Ohio Secretary of State election production system configuration that was in use in Ohio's 2004 presidential election when there was a sudden and unexpected shift in votes for George W. Bush," according to Bob Fitrakis, columnist at http://www.freepress.org and co-counsel in the litigation and investigation.
  • Ohio was the battleground state that provided George Bush with the electoral votes needed to win re-election. Had Senator John Kerry won Ohio's electoral votes, he would have been elected instead.
  • SmarTech, a private company, had the ability in the 2004 election to add or subtract votes without anyone knowing they did so.
  • ...12 more annotations...
  • The filing today shows how, detailing the computer network system's design structure, including a map of how the data moved from one unit to the next. Right smack in the middle of that structure? Inexplicably, it was SmarTech.
  • A "man in the middle" is not just an accidental happenstance of computing. It is a deliberate computer hacking setup, one where the hacker sits, literally, in the middle of the communication stream, intercepting and (when desired, as in this case) altering the data.
  • Until now, the architectural maps and contracts from the Ohio 2004 election were never made public, which may indicate that the entire system was designed for fraud.
  • SmarTech was part of three computer companies brought in to manage the elections process for Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, a Republican. The other two were Triad and GovTech Solutions. All three companies have extensive ties to the Republican party and Republican causes.
  • Connell was outed as the one who stole the 2004 election by Spoonamore, who, despite being a conservative Republican himself, came forward to blow the whistle on the stolen election scandal. Connell gave a deposition on the matter, but stonewalled. After the deposition, and fearing perjury/obstruction charges for withholding information, Connell expressed an interest in testifying further as to the extent of the scandal.
  • Connell was so scared for his security that he asked for protection from the attorney general, then Attorney General Michael Mukasey. Connell told close friends that he was expecting to get thrown under the bus by the Rove team, because Connell had evidence linking the GOP operative to the scandal and the stolen election, including knowledge of where Rove's missing emails disappeared to.
  • Before he could testify, Connell died in a plane crash.
  • "The 2004 election was stolen. There is absolutely no doubt about it. A 6.7% shift in exit polls does not happen by chance. And, you know, so finally, we have irrefutable confirmation that what we were saying was true and that every piece of the puzzle in the Ohio 2004 election was flawed," Wasserman said.
  • There were three phases of chicanery.
  • First, there was a pre-election period, during which the Secretary of State in Ohio, Ken Blackwell, was also co-chair of the Bush-Cheney campaign in Ohio, which is in itself mind-boggling, engaged in all sorts of bureaucratic and legal tricks to cut down on the number of people who could register
  • On Election Day, there was clearly a systematic undersupply of working voting machines in Democratic areas, primarily inner city and student towns, you know, college towns. And the Conyers people found that in some of the most undersupplied places, there were scores of perfectly good voting machines held back and kept in warehouses, you know, and there are many similar stories to this.
  • After Election Day, there is explicit evidence that a company called Triad, which manufactures all of the tabulators, the vote-counting tabulators that were used in Ohio in the last election, was systematically going around from county to county in Ohio and subverting the recount, which was court ordered and which never did take place.
  • anonymous on 28 Jul 11
     
    "Three generations from now, when our great-grandchildren are sitting barefoot in their shanties and wondering how in the hell America turned from the high-point of civilization to a third-world banana republic, they will shake their fists and mutter one name: George Effin' Bush." If this is true, it's incredibly depressing...
anonymous

Obama's Pyrrhic Defeat - 0 views

andrewsullivan.thedailybeast.com/...obamas-pyrrhic-defeat.html

partisan politics budget ceiling

shared by anonymous on 02 Aug 11 - Cached
  • Zoom out a little. Think of this latest skirmish, that ended tonight, as part of an endgame to a thirty years' fiscal war in American politics. Reagan began it, by betting that slashing taxes would spur growth; he was right and wrong. Growth really did happen in the 1980s; but he bequeathed a debt that is with us today, and that he tried only fitfully to fix on his watch. The early 1990s saw the country draw down that deficit, by continuing Reagan's tax hikes under Bush I and then Clinton, and thanks to a peace dividend. Clinton's eventual surplus was, alas, more mirage than reality, for it hadn't solved the long-term entitlement problem or the healthcare cost problem, and was inflated by the tech bubble. Bush II comes in and wreaks havoc. He doubles down on Reagan on taxes and declares that deficits don't matter, while adding one major new entitlement, two massively expensive wars and throws in a financial collapse as a goodbye present. The result of all this was a recession that helped metastasize the debt even further. This was what Obama inherited.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 02 Aug 11
       
      This is actually a pretty excellent synopsis.
  • What then? I think the Grand Bargain is the final step
  • The Grand Bargain is a big entitlement-and-defense cut package balanced by higher taxes on those who have done so well during the last thirty years.
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • What has just happened is, to my mind, therefore the following:
  • 1. The Republicans used the debt ceiling as blackmail for a big cut in discretionary spending.
  • 2. But the terms of surrender are to Obama's advantage. He has taken the nuclear weapon of the debt ceiling off the table till after the election
  • He has also made his preferred Grand Bargain more likely to happen with the terms for the super-committee.
  • He has won his own battle: he is perceived as more likely to compromise than the GOP in a country whose independent middle wants compromise.
  • If the battle of 2012 is between low taxes or high taxes, the GOP wins. But if it's fought on whether we should balance the budget solely by spending cuts, often for the elderly and needy, while asking nothing from the wealthy, then Obama wins. 
  • the drama of this deal is far greater than the actual substance
  • anonymous on 02 Aug 11
     
    "So where does that leave us? It leaves us with more time without a real solution to the deepest problems. That's a huge defect in the current stop-gap deal. But it really is just a stop-gap deal. It points pretty quickly to a Grand Bargain in the super-committee, and for the first time has attached real incentives for both sides for it to work." An interesting look at this budget ceiling stuff from Andrew Sullivan. 
anonymous

FAA Shutdown Costs Could Exceed $1.2 Billion - 0 views

www.npr.org/...hutdown-could-cost-1-2-billion

partisan politics budget

shared by anonymous on 02 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • After last night's vote on the debt ceiling compromise, the House adjourned for the summer but left nearly 4,000 Federal Aviation Administration employees, who have been furloughed because of a funding impasse, in limbo.
  • anonymous on 02 Aug 11
     
    "The political impasses is about Republican demands to cut $16.5 million from rural air service subsidies. But The Associated Press reports that during the 10-day shutdown, the government has lost more than $250 million and it stands to lose more than $1 billion in revenue from uncollected airfare taxes."
anonymous

The Debt Ceiling Deal: The Case for Caving (Part 3) - 0 views

www.businessweek.com/...or-caving-08032011_page_3.html

gametheory economics politics u.s.

shared by anonymous on 09 Aug 11 - Cached
  • The Tea Party, in this sense, has succeeded by adopting a rational frustration strategy.
  • You can find fault with the Tea Party’s prescription for balancing the budget—most economists do—but if they hadn’t come to Washington last year, Congress would have waited for a real bond crisis, five or 10 years from now, to create its super committee.
  • We will know, at the close of the next round of negotiations, which game the Tea Party has been playing: Balance the Budget or Kill the King.
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • I appreciate pquincy’s thoughtful comments. With regard to the reference to divorce, it’s also worth noting that – regardless of whether or not there are children involved – almost all divorce cases (along with almost all other civil cases) are resolved through a bargained solution (i.e., a settlement) rather than a trial. But in the vast majority of cases the bargained solution is not achieved until the parties arrive at a critical deadline such as the eve of trial. This is because, prior to the deadline and as suggested by Brams, “each player has an incentive to dissemble” in pursuit of a better outcome for itself. Since each player intuitively understands this, neither views the other player’s assertions about their “bottom line” to be credible, and neither can convince the other of the genuineness of its own position prior to the deadline.
  • Pquincy ‘s suggestion that this problem should eventually become less acute in a repeated game appears to be correct. But in the game of politics, it seems that (as in litigation), a player can be expected to pretend – in the pursuit of self-interest and for as long as it can – that it is less interested in arriving at a bargained solution than it is in pursuing some sort of abstract principle (such as what it would characterize as “justice” or “the public good”).
  • In contrast to some of the other people that have posted comments in response to this article, I don’t think the outcome that was ultimately arrived at in the debt ceiling negotiations can be fairly attributed to Obama’s having played the game poorly. Rather, I think the outcome was attributable to the fact that it was obvious from the outset that Obama’s objective (regardless of whether one wishes to characterize that objective as “preserving the health and safety of our most vulnerable citizens" or “holding on for a few more years to the remnants of a bloated welfare state”) would unquestionably be placed further out of reach if he were to walk away from whatever deal the other side was ultimately willing to grant as of the deadline. He could not credibly pretend otherwise.
  • Although this article muddles a few basic concepts, it serves to illustrate that game theory offers a relatively straightforward explanation for much of the conflict that exists in the world, certainly a much better explanation than is routinely put forth by partisans and commentators. Brams is spot-on. And it's a cop-out to claim that game theory assumes that people are hyper-rational, or that it does not apply when someone is seeking an unreasonable goal. Even if your adversary's goal is, at least in your view, unreasonable or irrational, game theory allows you to understand how you and your adversary can be expected to behave in the pursuit of your respective objectives.
  • anonymous on 09 Aug 11
     
    Part 3 of the piece.
anonymous

The Ideological Turing Test, Bryan Caplan | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty - 0 views

econlog.econlib.org/...the_ideological.html

politics partisan criticalthinking

shared by anonymous on 23 Jun 11 - Cached
  • [I]f you ask a liberal or a saltwater economist, "What would somebody on the other side of this divide say here? What would their version of it be?" A liberal can do that. A liberal can talk coherently about what the conservative view is because people like me actually do listen. We don't think it's right, but we pay enough attention to see what the other person is trying to get at. The reverse is not true. You try to get someone who is fiercely anti-Keynesian to even explain what a Keynesian economic argument is, they can't do it. They can't get it remotely right. Or if you ask a conservative, "What do liberals want?" You get this bizarre stuff - for example, that liberals want everybody to ride trains, because it makes people more susceptible to collectivism.
  • It's easy to scoff at Krugman's self-congratulation, but at the meta-level, he's on to something.
    • anonymous
      anonymous on 23 Jun 11
       
      Let's see about that...
  • There are important caveats.  Don Boudreaux wisely observes that we should compare liberal intellectuals to non-liberal intellectuals, and liberal entertainers to non-liberal entertainers, not say Krugman to Beck.  I'd add that we should compare people in the same field: Rand's inability to explain Keynesian economics would be no more telling than Krugman's inability to explain Nozickian political philosophy.  (Of course, if Krugman could correctly explain Nozickian political philosophy, that would be fairly impressive).
  • ...2 more annotations...
  • Set up a rough-and-ready ideological Turing Test.  I'll take it first.  Then invite Krugman to make me eat my words.
  • How?  Here's just one approach.  Put me and five random liberal social science Ph.D.s in a chat room.  Let liberal readers ask questions for an hour, then vote on who isn't really a liberal.  Then put Krugman and five random libertarian social science Ph.D.s in a chat room.  Let libertarian readers ask questions for an hour, then vote on who isn't really a libertarian.  Simple as that.
  • anonymous on 23 Jun 11
     
    I still don't know what to make of this, but it's worth investigating, if only to put it to rest or flog it with a whip made of angry horses. "According to Krugman, liberals have the ability to simulate conservatives, but conservatives lack the ability to simulate liberals" Thanks to Adam Gurri for nudging me toward this line of inquiry.
anonymous

Half of US social program recipients believe they "have not used a government social pr... - 1 views

www.boingboing.net/...half-of-us-social-pr.html

government partisan politics socialism

shared by anonymous on 08 Jul 11 - No Cached
Erik Hanson liked it
  • anonymous on 08 Jul 11
     
    ""Reconstituting the Submerged State: The Challenges of Social Policy Reform in the Obama Era," a paper by Cornell's Clinton Rossiter Professor of American Institutions Suzanne Mettler features this remarkable chart showing that about half of American social program beneficiaries believe that they "have not used a government social program." It's the "Keep your government hands off my Medicare" phenomena writ large: a society of people who subsist on mutual aid and redistributive policies who've been conned (and conned themselves) into thinking that they are rugged individualists and that everyone else is a parasite. "
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