“I had an internal debate,” Mr. Obama said, “Because I knew that the A.P. was going to take a picture, and they were trying to portray it like Dukakis wearing that tank helmet. But I wanted to make sure that the children who saw that picture knew that even the Democratic nominee for president wears a helmet when he goes biking.”

More than voting

"But voting is not enough. If voting was effective, it would be illegal."

In 2000, John McCain was the candidate who had harnessed the power of internet fundraising and organizing.

In 2004, it was Howard Dean. Famously, in response to a Bush-Cheney $2000 a plate dinner, Dean posted online a photo of himself eating a "$3 turkey sandwich," and in that day matched his opponent's contributions from the wealthy at the preceding dinner (a figure somewhere in the area of $250,000).

This year, it's been Barack Obama. Polls show him ahead, though people can occasionally tend to be poor predictors of how they will actually vote. Political Economists predict that this will work in Obama's favor.

Chances are, then, that Obama will be the next president (63% according to intrade at the moment), which would make it the first time that someone who built a motivated online organization... won. When Howard Dean dropped out, he turned DFA (Dean for America) into DFA (Democracy for America) and continued to use his organization for "campaign training, organizing resources, and media exposure." But what happens when a person with an online grassroots organization wins? What happens to the "Obama" facebook application? A declaration of "Obama elected: job over!" coming from a campaign whose rallying cry was individual involvement would be somewhat nonsequitur.

What we've seen already from Karl Rove's permanent campaign doctrine is more of a permanent media campaign, aimed at disseminating misleading (or blatantly false) information and swaying public opinion. What would a permanent grassroots campaign look like? What if a president readily contacted his supporters with a message of, "I'm working on convincing the congress to pass bill X, and I need your help to contact them and convince them?"

It's bound to be very interesting, at the least.

Locavores, Gas Tax Holiday

Stephen Dubner covers some reasons why people would prefer to eat locally raised food. The four he covers include that "it should be 1) more delicious; 2) more nutritious; 3) cheaper; and 4) better for the environment."

The first and third reasons are fully captured by the pricing mechanism. The argument can be made that the nutritional value may not be fully captured, in that people may not fully consider their future health when deciding what to eat today, or in that people do not consider the detriment their failing health may have to their community. Only in this latter argument would this qualify food-shoppers' negligence as an externality.

The fourth reason, environmental impact, obviously pertains to a community cost that is not captured in the pricing mechanism. Still though, buying local doesn't assure a reduction of energy use, as Dubner cites a recent CMU study indicating that it isn't always the case:

We find that although food is transported long distances in general (1640 km delivery and 6760 km life-cycle supply chain on average) the GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions associated with food are dominated by the production phase, contributing 83% of the average U.S. household’s 8.1 t CO2e/yr footprint for food consumption. Transportation as a whole represents only 11% of life-cycle GHG emissions, and final delivery from producer to retail contributes only 4%. Different food groups exhibit a large range in GHG-intensity; on average, red meat is around 150% more GHG-intensive than chicken or fish. Thus, we suggest that dietary shift can be a more effective means of lowering an average household’s food-related climate footprint than “buying local.” Shifting less than one day per week’s worth of calories from red meat and dairy products to chicken, fish, eggs, or a vegetable-based diet achieves more GHG reduction than buying all locally sourced food.

If a price were placed on carbon emmissions, it would raise the price of red meat and dairy, even if locally produced, in an accurate proportion to the community cost. Likewise, if distantly-produced fish truly has a lower environmental cost, it would be seen in the price paid at the store. People would accurately assess the cost and benefits of their locavore instinct.

It may even be that the increased cost of gasoline could effect the nutritional externality (if it is considered to be such). That is, foods that are less healthy tend to be processed more, requiring a greater amount of energy input. If the cost of the energy input reflected the community cost, processed foods would be more expensive at the store and a little less desirable.*

Of course, McCain is still pushing for the opposite, asking for a gas tax holiday, despite the fact that it received no support from any economist. Anywhere.

The political advantage to this is because of the presumption that since it is a tax on things people regularly buy, they will experience the benefit of the repealing of the tax. Since, at the moment, petroleum is in pretty fixed supply (whether you consider it to be because OPEC limits production or because the world production has actually peaked based on the supply in the ground), the high price of gasoline reflects the fact that more people on the planet are tending to want gas, and thus the price has had to rise to remove some of the people who, well, didn't want the gas as badly. $4 a gallon is the price (currently) at which you can find a buyer for every gallon of gas produced and no buyer gets turned away due to scarcity. If the current 18 cent tax is repealed, and the fuel supply stays the same, the price will stay roughly the same, and the oil companies will pocket the 18 cents (with perhaps an increasing fraction going to OPEC as well).


* - Another similar effect could be found by eliminating the corn subsidy, which is also incredibly difficult, politically, given that, since the subsidy is paid to farmers, people presume (similar to the gas tax) it benefits farmers, whereas it actually benefits consumers (though with distortionary effects regarding cheaper food loaded with high fructose corn syrup), and the companies that make corn-based foods (read: almost everything lately). If the subsidy were eliminated, the price paid for corn at a grain elevator would rise to make up most of the difference (since demand for food in general is pretty inelastic) with the rest of the difference going to other crops that aren't necessarily used to make corn-syrupy-foodstuffs (since demand for corn in particular is elastic in comparison).

Reich in WSJ

Robert Reich's unpublished copy of his recent WSJ article:

That's why it's important that all revenues from carbon auctions be cycled back to citizens. And rather than launch another endless debate over how and to whom – a payroll tax cut for people earning under the median wage? a cut in capital gains? – it would be well to agree to the simplest possible formula: Every adult citizen should receive an equal share. If the carbon auction yields $150 billion in the first year, for example, each of America’s 150 million adult citizens should receive a Treasury check of $1000.

Such direct and simple repayments – what analyst Peter Barnes, who has been pushing this idea, wisely calls “dividends” – deal with another problem. Although the balance of economic studies suggest that the cost of a cap and trade system will be
modest, particularly to the extent it induces companies to reduce their emissions, inevitably some costs will be involved and be passed along to consumers. The cost of doing nothing about climate change will be far higher. But consumers Who are already walloped by high fuel and food costs will be in no mood to accept even modest additional price increases. Hence, the yearly dividend checks will be a welcome offset.

And to make the dividend checks really useful to people, they should be paid out on a monthly basis, the same as Social Security checks. Moreover, that way citizens can be continuously reminded of what they're giving away, and what they're getting back for it.

Our atmosphere belongs to all of us. It seems only reasonable that corporations should have to pay to use it. The citizens of Alaska and Alberta, Canada get yearly dividends from the oil companies that take away their natural resources. Why shouldn't the same principle apply when industries use the biggest common resource of all?

It's great to see someone of relatively high profile pushing such a good idea.

FYI

I've had very little time this week (I'm playing guitar in the orchestra of a musical production) so I'll forward without comment this fantastic article from the Philadelphia Inquirer about the coming end of car culture.

A note on bias & spin, using the context of McCain's Health.

You've probably all heard about McCain's recent divulging of his health care records. I tend to think this is a topic of little importance: if something were to happen to John McCain as president, rendering him incapable of performing his duties or perhaps dead, we'd find another president. The president should be determined by the criteria of who will do the job best.

Of course, as we've also heard, the means by which he revealed his health information to the press gave many suspicions. There were 1,173 pages of health records, and the press were allowed three hours to view them with no cameras, phones, or internet access. The three hours occurred on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, when (presumably) people aren't paying as close attention to the national news. The suggestion is, of course, that there was some intent to conceal or at least downplay some of the contents of these records. Stated positively (as many did), it displays McCain's media savvy.

So, to cite today's google search of "McCain Health" provides the following at the top:

McCain's Physicians Say He Is in Excellent Health
Wall Street Journal - May 23, 2008
McCain's health. Evidence of melanoma surgery in 2000 is obvious to anyone who sees his puffy left cheek and prominent scar. The campaign has made efforts ...
McCain medical records show skin cancer concern, healthy heart CBC.ca
McCain deemed fit to serve Baltimore Sun
McCain's Medical History: What Will it Show? ABC News

Mostly positive, with mention of his melanoma history. Further down you can find a longer list of his health concerns.

So, I'd like to propose that there are three major categories of news regarding this story:

• Positive things about McCain's health ("fit to serve!" "healthy heart!")


• Negative things about McCain's health ("melanoma!" "kidney stones!")


• Things about how this information was presented to the press

I'd be curious, first of all, who of the general population had been exposed to any of the contents of those categories without being exposed to all three. Though the summarizations mostly focus on the first category, I saw no news story that didn't cover all three categories. I would suspect that those people who didn't hear either of the latter two categories of information likely have not payed attention to the story at all, though I certainly have no data to suggest this.

So let's again presume that any bias in the media could run in two directions: those favoring McCain would ideally only mention the first category, those against would ideally only mention the latter two. Those who argue for either side would consider the mention of the opposing category to be indicative of, well, the other side's bias, i.e., "Cover the way McCain released this information to the press, will you? Typical Liberal Media!" Again, remember, all the categories do contain accurate facts.

The conclusion and thesis (and perhaps, hopefully, a guiding principle in covering news here) will be that bias and context are inversely related, i.e., to reduce the bias of your media outlet, increase the context in the stories. Cover all three categories regarding McCain's health records. Conducting research? Reveal and report who payed for the research. Reporting on a poll? Say how the questions were worded. In each of these cases, this greater amount of information may seem as though it is spun, if only because it is reducing the previous spin of omitting that information. But the spin of greater information cannot be considered true spin, it is only the continuation down the path of the limit function toward objectivity.

This does, however, only cover the bias category of omission: deciding which facts to report and which not to given a limited amount of time. Other bias might include linguistic bias, which is inherent in the words chosen, or perhaps just the language used. And once we consider how much of human thought depends upon the language we are taught, we see how far away we are from objectivity on the aforementioned limit function.

Budget Hero

Play Budget Hero, provided by Marketplace of American Public Media.

Note that many environmental measures can have an overall effect of shrinking federal government, and actually tend to function as a revenue booster rather than a revenue spender.

I also didn't score to well with health care (it was my first try!) but I'd also like to think that the game underestimated the effect of environmental policy on people's health and well being. Not that I'd expect that to take care of most health care costs; I'd probably take a little more money from defense than the game allowed.