Polling: Name This Fallacy

Sorry, I don't know whether this fallacy has a name (it's not the ecological fallacy, by the way) but it seems to be quite common among political pundits. I'd call it the fallacy of homogeneity if that weren't such a snooze.

The mistake is in thinking that all members of a sample are alike. For example, exit polls after the 2004 election revealed that "moral values" was one of the most important issues to voters, and 79 percent of those voters voted for Bush over Kerry. "Oh, no!" said many Democratic talking heads. "Better not talk about gay rights, or abortion, or drug legalization, or..."

The problem is that all voters are not alike. So in fact, we don't know if a single vote was changed because of Bush's and Kerry's positions on moral values. In particular, evangelical Christians are (I imagine) inclined to say that moral values are important to them. But they are not swing voters; they were going to vote overwhelmingly for Bush anyway. Were there any undecided voters who were swayed by a candidate's position on moral values? We don't know.

More recently, I heard Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC announce that the myth of NRA influence was dead, because a new poll showed that while 26 percent of respondents said they would be more likely to vote for a candidate who had an NRA endorsement, 39 percent say they would be less likely. That's a striking result, but hang on a minute. If you were Heidi Heitkamp, the newly elected senator from North Dakota (Democrat, pro-gun) would this make you change your position?

Probably not by much. Most likely, most of that anti-NRA 39 percent is people who were pro-gun-control to begin with. The question that interests Senator Heitkamp is, what do the percentages look like in North Dakota? And we can't tell.

Burdens on the Producing Class--Movie-Producing, That Is

A rather breathless story in today's New York Times talks about how millionaires are considering moving out of California. The state's new top income tax rate is 13.3 percent, and that combined with the new top federal rate of 39.6 means that the rich face a top tax rate of 51.9 percent! (Actually, if you add those two numbers you get 52.9, but never mind).

One small problem with this calculation, which all these rich people's accountants surely know: state taxes are deductible on your federal tax return. That means rich people face an effective state tax of (1-.396)*13.3, or 8.0 percent, for a combined rate of 47.6 percent. In fact, once you take account of deductibility all the differences between states shrink. I don't expect to see Hollywood moving en masse to Texas anytime soon.

The Four Hours and the Two Hours

Now that the Super PAC threat has failed to materialize, Congress seems to have lost interest in doing anything about campaign finance reform. Yet the problem hasn't gone away. A 2012 poll finds that three-quarters of Americans think there is too much money in politics, and a similar number think that this has given the rich more influence than other Americans.

Think this might contribute much to Americans' sense of alienation from their government? You'd be right.

But that's not all. The Huffington Post recently published what it said was a slide from a Power Point presentation given to new Democratic representatives, showing a reasonable allocation of time in a representative's day. The slide calls for four hours per day to be spent on the phone raising money. This is much as they should spend on all official duties. Of the time spent on official duties, two hours is spent on the floor or in committee meetings, that is, doing what we  ordinarily think of as legislating.

This is truly shocking. Our legislators spend only two hours a day legislating (and often less than five days a week), not because they're lazy but because they feel they have no choice. No  wonder they often seem to be talking past each other-- they barely see each other. It's no secret that the floor is often empty, but I always assumed it was because legislators were at committee meetings or otherwise working behind the scenes. Turns out they're on the phones, trying to make sure they have enough money to spend another two years on the phone.

That's the paradox. Apparently, members of Congress don't even like it. Imagine how you would feel spending four hours per day begging for money over the phone; now imagine how it must feel to someone who is way above average in ego and self-centeredness. If you're a Congressman, almost half your day is spent doing stuff you hate--in order to be able to continue doing the same thing.

Why don't politicians do something about it, by enacting public financing of campaigns? I can only offer guesses. One would be that the existing system probably does favor incumbents. Another is that it favors Republicans, who have been the staunchest opponents of public financing.

But another problem has also been the Constitutional difficulties, since recent Supreme Court decisions, of keeping big money out. Nancy Pelosi has even been reduced to calling for a Constitutional amendment to permit regulation of corporate speech, which is both inadequate and unachievable.

Fortunately, I have already proposed a solution to this problem: instead of trying to keep big money out, we should be trying to get small money in. It turns out that small contributions by enough people completely swamp $100 million donations by a few billionaires. Instead of leveling the playing field with a bulldozer, you might say, we level it with a dump truck. I go through the arithmetic here.  I suggest one possible way of doing this: a $100 refundable tax credit for political contributions. Lawrence Lessig and Bruce Ackerman have both made another, nearly equivalent, suggestion: give all citizens a $50 voucher that they can spend on political contributions.

If the facts were known about the four hours and the two hours, I think there would be outrage. Two hours a day? But this outrage would just curdle into more cynicism unless people were presented with a viable alternative. Increasing small contributions would only not only liberate members of Congress to do their jobs and virtually eliminate the influence of big money on politics. It would make ordinary voters feel, rightly, that they had an influence on government.

I don't know who will pick up this ball. But some entrepreneurial politician could really run with it.

Meme-Busters: On Hammers and Guns

There's a new meme floating around on the right-wing hemiblogosphere: that according to the FBI more people are killed with hammers than guns. This seems to be the last stop in the game of telephone that began with a claim that more people are killed with hammers and clubs than with rifles. The implication, of course, is that it's silly for those liberals to claim that assault weapons are dangerous and should be banned; why don't we ban hammers and clubs while we're at it?

OK, here's the FBI report. These are the relevant points:

• All blunt instruments combined-- rocks, bricks, concrete blocks, baseball bats, hammers, steel pipes, tire irons, golf clubs, frying pans, snow globes, and so on-- kill more people than rifles. This doesn't strike me as surprising.
• On the other hand, rifles plus shotguns kill more people than all blunt instruments combined.
• Guns (mostly handguns, of course) kill seventeen times as many people as all blunt instruments combined.

And you can look it up.

Meet the Hysteric-Americans

A recent remark by Vice President Biden, that President Obama was considering doing something about gun violence by executive order, set off a wave of panic among the gun crowd. Some people, who apparently had never heard the phrase before, interpreted this news as meaning that Obama planned to act unilaterally to confiscate their guns. Cries of  "Chicago thuggery!" and  "Revolution!" and "Dictator!" started filling the Internet.

All of this was ridiculous, of course. Executive orders are common and Constitutional; they can't override existing law. And confiscation? But I started thinking: Haven't I seen this before somewhere?

I had. More than once. In the health care debate, many people firmly believed that Affordable Care Act, essentially a collection of Republican proposals from the last twenty years, was intolerable leftist tyranny and the death knell of American liberty. And some people didn't wait until 2010. I recall reading a right-wing blog just after Obama's election in 2008 (months before the Inauguration)where one commenter said that Obama would be America's last president and its first dictator. It seems that for this group, the sky is falling pretty much all the time. If there's nothing in the news, there's always the (nonexistent) Obama spending tsunami, or perhaps the (nonexistent) rising crime rate.

These people are probably the most important voting bloc in the Republican party. I call them the Hysteric-Americans. You could think of them as similar to an ethnic group--African-Americans and Asian-Americans vote Democratic, Hysteric-Americans vote Republican. But they don't really share a subculture. That retiree in a small Midwestern town? She's one. That foul-mouthed guy with the tattoos who looks like he just parked his Harley? He's one too. (Of course, Hispanic-Americans or Asian-Americans don't really share a subculture either.) Update: The guy in the video linked to above has just had his permit to carry a concealed weapon revoked.

I sound like I'm mocking these people, but I don't mean to. It can't be pleasant to lead a life where the dominant emotions are fear and impotent rage. It's shocking that there are people who, for their own personal ends, deliberately cause millions of people to lead those lives.

Relax, folks. It's not as bad as you think. It's not as bad as they would have you believe.

I Respectfully Request a Six-Month Moratorium on the Following Expressions:

1. "Game-changer"

2. "Going forward"

3. "Footprint" (btw, what's the status of "Boots on the ground" nowadays?)

4. "Game-changer"

5. "... begs the question:"

6. "Game-changer"

A Gun Speech for Obama

"It has become painfully obvious that we have a problem with gun violence in this country. Guns are a very divisive and polarized issue, with strong opinions on both sides. That's OK. In a democracy, what we do is talk to people on the other side, and try to find areas of agreement.

"And in fact, I think there are substantial areas of agreement between the two sides. Unfortunately, it's been difficult to find those areas of agreement, because some people benefit from polarization. Foremost among them is the National Rifle Association.

"The NRA gets its power because many gun-owning voters assume that someone who gets an "A" rating from the NRA must be better than someone who gets a "B"  rating. They assume this because they think the NRA must be serving the interests of its members.

"Actually, it's the other way around: the members are serving the interests of the NRA. The NRA is an extremist organization, and its opinions are far more extreme than those of most of its members.

"A recent survey showed, for example, that 74 percent of current and former NRA members support background checks for anyone buying a gun, and 79 percent favor background checks for employees of gun retailers. Not the NRA. What about denying guns to people on the terrorist watch list? Seems like a no-brainer, right?  If you think that, then 71 percent of current and former NRA members agree with you. Not the NRA.

"The NRA has in fact been doing it best to scare gun owners into thinking that any politician who disagrees with any of their extreme positions is "anti-gun," "anti-Second-Amendment," and waiting for the opportunity to take away all guns. Here's the fact: Guns are dangerous. Like all dangerous things, they need to be regulated to make sure they don't fall into the wrong hands. Most gun owners know that.

"I haven't seen a poll on the attitude of NRA members toward a ban on assault weapons, but the NRA's attitude toward it borders on hysteria. Yet until 2004 we were getting along fine without assault weapons. These are weapons for which there is no plausible need other than killing large numbers of people. You don't need an assault weapon to defend your home, except in some some adolescent fantasy involving black helicopters or zombies. But it's proven to be very popular among mass murderers. I know that, now these weapons have been legal for a while, people have tried them and find that shooting them is fun. Sorry. If you're going to live among other people, you can't do everything that might be fun.

"Finally, aside from keeping guns out of the hands of dangerously unstable people, we have to try to reduce the number of dangerously unstable people. That means we have to do something to make sure mental health services are available, particularly for adolescent boys and young men. That means-- let's be clear about this-- spending more. Can we do that, with our deficit problems ? Of course we can. Here's the first thing we owe our children and grandchildren: to keep them safe."

Note: I didn't start out intending to say so much about the NRA. But as I was writing, it became apparent that the politics of this issue does not work without confronting head-on the belief of many gun owners that the NRA speaks for them.

What Do We Call the 200 Million People Who Aren't "Job Creators"?

My suggestion: "Job Doers."

American Spring? Time for a Democracy Agenda

There are a lot of policy issues that we can expect to be politically hot over the next couple of years. There is the deficit, of course, and jobs. There will probably be (in fact, probably already is, and should be) a resurgence of interest in global warming. And so on.

But I can't help feeling that the most important issues ahead are what we might call "meta-policy" issues. Specifically, how can we hope to solve all these pressing problems with American democracy as ramshackle as it is today? We need to start talking in a more focused way about how to make democracy work better in the US.

Is this just boring "process stuff" that most voters don't care about? I don't think so. Americans feel increasingly alienated from government. There seems to be an untapped political market for changes that make things work better. What is needed now is to connect a lot of fragmented problems into a democracy agenda. For example:

Elections
Once again, we have seen the folly of having national elections run by partisan state officials. (Remember 2000, when the chief elections official in Florida was the state co-chair of the Bush campaign?)  This year we  had a sudden efflorescence of photo ID requirements, attempts to purge the electoral rolls, attempts to reduce early voting, and, finally, voting lines of up to eight hours. This happened almost exclusively in states controlled by Republicans, and certainly invites the conjecture that Republicans were trying to reduce voting by groups that lean Democratic, such as the poor and students.

That we cannot do a better job on something so simple and fundamental should be a national embarrassment. Other countries can do this; why can't we? The Constitution permits (though it does not require) Congress to oversee Federal elections. National elections should be run by a non-partisan Federal agency, which would set uniform voting days and hours and uniform registration requirements. Oh, and it would make sure there are enough working voting machines. Not rocket science.

Obviously, this will become a partisan issue, and Republicans will paint it as a Federal power grab. But with the striking level of incompetence or worse by state officials in the last election, it is time to put this issue on the table. If nothing else, that will motivate states to do a better job.

Reapportionment
You may have heard that Republicans got a minority of the votes for the House of Representatives, even though they won a majority of the seats. The difference is attributable to the venerable institution of the gerrymander, in which state legislators redraw the boundaries of Congressional districts to make sure that favored Congressmen get reelected. After the 2010 election there were a lot of Republican-dominated state legislatures, hence today a lot of Republican safe seats. But this is a bipartisan tradition, which Democrats practice as assiduously as Republicans.

Therefore, changing it need not be a partisan issue, especially since it won't affect Congressional districts until 2022. (Redistricting is only done after the decennial census.) Congress's Constitutional authority surely extends to using a nonpartisan agency to draw districts, and to writing rules for how to go about it. In the long run, I imagine, everyone in Congress would prefer to minimize the chances of being shafted by the opposite party.

The Filibuster
In 1975, the Senate rules were changed to allow a filibuster to be broken with a vote of three-fifths rather two-thirds of the Senate, but three-fifths of all Senators, not just those present. So staying home counted as vote against stopping the filibuster. In addition, the new rules permitted other legislation to go forward while a bill was being filibustered, so a filibuster no longer required actual talking.

Over time, these rules have reduced the cost of filibustering to the point where virtually everything requires sixty votes in the Senate to  pass. It has been a sort of stealth Constitutional amendment, turning the Senate into a body where any legislation requires a supermajority. This, together with an unprecedented degree of party discipline, has made the Senate, and hence Congress, virtually unworkable, contributing to a loss of faith in political institutions.

There is a good chance, I'd guess better than 50%, that this situation will end next January, and that we will go back to what is now called the "talking filibuster," what I earlier called the "honest filibuster." (I intended a touch of irony, like George Washington Plunkitt's "honest graft.")

Campaign Finance
I was as surprised as Karl Rove and Sheldon Adelson must have been to discover that huge pots of dark money did not have discernible influence on the 2012 election. Nonetheless, our present campaign finance system is hugely corrupting, making elected officials the servants of a vast lobbying industry. If there's anything that gives voters the feeling that the game is rigged, that's it. And the public remains interested in reform.

I credit myself with discovering a key fact about campaign finance reform: if you get small contributions from a lot people, you get enough money to swamp the money from big contributors. So you can simply disregard big money, thereby avoiding all the legal and logistical problems of keeping money out.

I suggested one possible approach a few months ago: Give everyone a $100 refundable tax credit for political donations. In order words, political contributions up to $100 are, from the donor's perspective, free. If we assume that half of all tax-filers take advantage of this opportunity, that raises $7 billion a year, which is $28 billion over four years.

(This turns out to be quite similar to the proposal of Lawrence Lessig to give every voting-age citizen a $50 voucher usable for political contributions. That plan is slightly more expensive, about $12 billion a year, but I'm not clear on whether sees this as being every year-- presumably at least every other year, since it's aimed at Congress. He proposes requiring candidates to decline large contributions if they are accepting vouchers, but, as I noted above, I doubt the necessity of that.)

Imagine a world where members of Congress didn't have to be anxious about money.

     *******************

That's a first stab at a democracy agenda. Is it politically feasible? If political feasibility is determined by elected officials and opinion-makers probably not. If by voter support, probably so. The problem, as always, is to coalesce individual opinions into popular opinion.

Puzzles of Oenopolitics

The talks also began on a friendly note: With reporters and cameras briefly allowed in the room, Mr. Obama wished a happy birthday to Mr. Boehner, who turns 63 on Saturday. The president gave the speaker, who favors merlot, a bottle of 1997 brunello wine, a pricey Italian red.

Questions: How does The New York Times know that Speaker Boehner favors merlot? Is this common knowledge inside the Beltway? If so, why did the president give him something else? Why did the Times even mention merlot? Is it trying to imply that president deliberately slighted Boehner? Why would he give a bottle of Italian wine, be it ever so pricey, instead of American wine, especially when there are so many California merlots? What message was he trying to send? And why 1997?

Let's get Fox News working on Brunellogate. To start with, what did Obama give Susan Rice for her birthday?