Category: Current Events

Election Day Essay

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Michael Kinsley:

In politics the stakes are not small, except in the sense that the arguments exceed by far any differences in what the two established parties actually do when they have the opportunity to govern. Republicans, as Evelyn Waugh is said to have complained about the British Tories, don’t seem to turn back the clock by a single minute. But Democrats don’t seem to push it forward either.

Recent elections have seen the rise of self-styled militant moderates, following the flag of white-horse candidates starting with the businessman Ross Perot and continuing, so far, through Gen. Wesley K. Clark. Business and the military are two fertile breeders of excessive self-confidence, but the only essential qualification for a white-horse candidate is a total lack of experience in running for or holding elective office. And the only essential requirement for white-horse voters is to be, like Howard Beale in Paddy Chayefsky’s movie “Network,” “mad as hell” and “not going to take this anymore.” It is not essential to know why you are so mad, or what exactly you’re not going to take.

Kinsley is correct on governing practices.

Franklin’s Latest Poll Summaries: “Dem Wave Crested, Advantage Shrinks”

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UW’s Charles Franklin:

Across the board, in Senate, House and Governor’s races, the wave boosting the Democrats crested about 10 days ago. Since then the advantage Democrats have built throughout the year has been reduced by from 1.5 to 3.5 percentage points. While forces are still a net positive to the Democrats, these forces are weaker than they were during the week before Halloween. This implies that the most competitive races will now be harder for Democrats to win and easier for Republicans to hold. This implies that the anticipation of a major surge to Democrats now needs to be reconsidered. While race-by-race estimates still show an 18 seat Democratic gain, and 27 seats as tossups (see our scorecard at Pollster.com here), this reduction in national forces makes it less likely the Democrats sweep the large majority of the tossup seats and could result in total gains in the 20s rather than the 30s or even 40s that looked plausible 10 days ago.

A Chat with JetBlue’s David Neelman

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Judith Dobrzynski:

With Washington often, umm, unable to focus–“It took 10 years to get an energy bill passed that has had little effect,” Mr. Neeleman interjects–he sought counsel on the capital’s ways. As a result, he got professional help on the bill’s language and learned about the legislative process. “The advice I got was to go get RAND and other thinkers to write about it–those are the guys that they listen to,” Mr. Neeleman says. He has spoken with RAND about doing an economic impact study, but has not commissioned one. And, as he put it, “I got a couple professors”–names of people he might enlist in the cause. Who?–I ask. “From the American Enterprise Institute and Brookings Institution,” is his reply.

Mr. Neeleman has also visited the White House seeking support. “They’re looking at it,” he says, but were noncommittal. He believes “it should sail through Congress,” and would be happy to “testify for my country and for our industry.” This earnestness, along with his resolve, is obvious throughout the interview. As I’m leaving, Mr. Neeleman stops me to point out–no, to declaim–a framed quote on the wall outside his office. It’s from Teddy Roosevelt, and reads, in part: It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena . . . who–at the worst–if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.

State by State Voting Technology Roundup

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Computerworld:

State contracted with Accenture in 2004 and launched its database before the September 2006 primary; legality of contract was challenged in court and company was forced to expand state access to proprietary database software. Wisconsin law previously required voter registration only in municipalities with a population over 5,000, which works out to about one-sixth of them; as of January 2006, state law required that all voters register. (Election Day registration is available.) The Century Foundation characterizes Wisconsin’s poll-worker training efforts as unsatisfactory [TCF State report PDF]; those working with the system, in turn, say the new software is slower and harder to use than the old software.

This is Baghdad. What Could be Worse?

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UW-Madison Grad Anthony Shadid:

It had been almost a year since I was in the Iraqi capital, where I worked as a reporter in the days of Saddam Hussein, the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, and the occupation, guerrilla war and religious resurgence that followed. On my return, it was difficult to grasp how atomized and violent the 1,250-year-old city has become. Even on the worst days, I had always found Baghdad’s most redeeming quality to be its resilience, a tenacious refusal among people I met over three years to surrender to the chaos unleashed when the Americans arrived. That resilience is gone, overwhelmed by civil war, anarchy or whatever term could possibly fit. Baghdad now is convulsed by hatred, paralyzed by suspicion; fear has forced many to leave. Carnage its rhythm and despair its mantra, the capital, it seems, no longer embraces life.

“A city of ghosts,” a friend told me, her tone almost funereal.

John Bogle’s Recent San Francisco Talk

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Kathleen Pender:

Bogle believes investors should simply buy the lowest-cost index funds available and hold them forever. His rule of thumb is to take your age minus 10 and hold that percentage of your assets in a total bond market index fund and the rest in a total stock market index fund. For example, a 30-year old would put 20 percent in bonds and 80 percent in stocks.


This strategy nearly eliminates “the two greatest enemies of equity investing — expenses and emotions,” Bogle said.


Bogle’s attitudes have barely changed since he started the first index fund in August 1976.


That fund, now called Vanguard Index 500, has about $112 billion in retail assets and is the second-largest fund after American Funds’ Growth Fund of America, according to Morningstar.

Bogle wrote the excellent “Battle for the Soul of Capitalism“.

Live Blogging Halloween 2006

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Kristian Knutsen:

Tonight’s the big night. The Saturday before Halloween. Freakfest on State Street. Riot gear and pepper spray four years running. What’s going to happen this year? That’s the question on everybody’s minds, from city leadership down to every last costumed reveler on State Street.

The Daily Page is collaborating with The Daily Cardinal to provide continuous live coverage about the State Street parties, along with comments from elected officials, city staff, police spokespersons, and other participants and observers in the 2006 edition of Halloween in Madison.

On Google’s Intentions

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EEkid:

News: Internet privacy? Google already knows more about you than the National Security Agency ever will. And don’t assume for a minute it can keep a secret. YouTube fans–and everybody else–beware.

Google Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the two former Stanford geeks who founded the company that has become synonymous with Internet searching, and you’ll find more than a million entries each. But amid the inevitable dump of press clippings, corporate bios, and conference appearances, there’s very little about Page’s and Brin’s personal lives; it’s as if the pair had known all along that Google would change the way we acquire information, and had carefully insulated their lives—putting their homes under other people’s names, choosing unlisted numbers, abstaining from posting anything personal on web pages.

That obsession with privacy may explain Google’s puzzling reaction last year, when Elinor Mills, a reporter with the tech news service cnet, ran a search on Google ceo Eric Schmidt and published the results: Schmidt lived with his wife in Atherton, California, was worth about $1.5 billion, had dumped about $140 million in Google shares that year, was an amateur pilot, and had been to the Burning Man festival. Google threw a fit, claimed that the information was a security threat, and announced it was blacklisting cnet’s reporters for a year. (The company eventually backed down.) It was a peculiar response, especially given that the information Mills published was far less intimate than the details easily found online on every one of us. But then, this is something of a pattern with Google: When it comes to information, it knows what’s best.