Rick Perry vs World

20 March 2007

Of sanctimony and revolving doors

The SAEN/Chronicle's Peggy Fikac wrote up Chris Bell's new career move: DC lobbyist!

I seem to recall Bell relying quite significantly on lobbyistphobia quite frequently during his campaign. I have nothing against lobbyists; most are good people. Chris Bell's holier than thou sanctimony followed by his benefiting from the revolving door? Amusing, but not unexpected.

Imagine that I'd told you in March 2003, that both Tom DeLay and Chris Bell would be out of Congress in 2007 after both had been admonished by the House Ethics Committee. Which one would the media caricature suggest would cash in by becoming a lobbyist?

Related: Chris Elam skewers Bell. I got another hearty laugh about Bell withdrawing from the three-way runoff.

Posted by Evan @ 03/20/07 05:45 PM | Comments (0)

I think I'll keep renting

Tim Harford, in Slate:

English economist Andrew Oswald has shown that across European countries, and across U.S. states, high levels of home ownership are correlated with high levels of unemployment. More conventional factors such as generous welfare benefits or high levels of unionization don't explain unemployment nearly as well as the tendency to own houses. Renting your home and staying flexible do wonders for your chances of always finding an interesting job to do.

I haven't read the study, so I can't vouch for it.

Intuitively though, I buy it. Think about how many times you or someone you know didn't pursue a specific job or a different type of career because of home ownership. I can come up with quite a few just among kids my own age.

Of course, encouraging home ownership is one of the most prominent social engineering aspects of the federal tax code.

Posted by Evan @ 03/20/07 03:01 PM | Comments (0)

The Rise of the Realists

WSJ: (sub. req'd)

Realist thinkers, who favor more of a pragmatic rather than ideological approach to foreign policy, are starting to find greater traction after years of being overshadowed by the neoconservatives who have dominated President Bush's administration.

As their star rises, some of those realists have created an informal base at a Texas institution founded and named after another Bush: The George H.W. Bush School of Government and Public Policy at Texas A&M University, named after the father of the current president.

...

The Bush School plans to establish a foreign-policy institute similar to ones at Johns Hopkins University's School for Advanced International Studies. SAIS hosts a range of think-tank-like institutes, which mix academia with more direct policy influence. More than a dozen of its faculty members serve as advisers to the federal government; this month, Condoleezza Rice -- considered a realist when she became secretary of state -- tapped SAIS Professor Eliot Cohen to help reformulate administration policy in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Bush School's version, called the Brent Scowcroft Institute for International Affairs, will be led by Mr. Scowcroft and offer one-year research fellowships to midcareer military officers and civilian government employees.

Rather fascinating that Poppy Bush is naming a branch of his school after one of the foremost GOP critics of his son, isn't it? Of course, HW is famously loyal to his aides, so perhaps there's that too.

It will be interesting to see if this affects the practice of realism in govt. Democrats have largely shunned realism over the past century, although some congressional Democrats have occasionally made realist-sounding speeches in the past few years. I presume this is mostly oppositional politics. On the other hand, W's administration has clearly shied away from balance of power considerations, at least publically.*

The title of this post is a reference to James Mann's seminal The Rise of the Vulcans. Many of the Vulcans were once considered to be realists.

In any case, it would be a feather in A&M's cap if this institute eventually rivals that of Princeton and Johns Hopkins.

* Some argue that the war in Iraq was a grand balance of power strategy, removing the Saddam/Sunni blocker on Shiite Iran. In practice, it may turn out that way.

Posted by Evan @ 03/20/07 07:00 AM | Comments (0)

Who pays income taxes

I blame those Bush tax cuts.

(Hat tip: WSJ)

Posted by Evan @ 03/20/07 06:14 AM | Comments (2)

19 March 2007

300 review

The previews of 300 make it look stupid. There is no way I'll see this movie, I thought to myself months ago on seeing the trailer. But, through a twist of fate, I decided to see it.

Awesome. Perhaps the closest comparison is to Braveheart; only not as realistic, not quite as good, but not as long either.

For a movie based on a graphic novel, 300 takes its themes very seriously. Flawed democracy triumphs over autocracy, liberty trumps authoritarianism, and life ought be lived in pursuit of a purpose. Perhaps the reason why the movie doesn't do even better is that some of the more fanciful elements seem to clash with those themes.

The Iranians have filed complaints at the UN over the movie's treatment of Xerxes. But perhaps that says more about them than it does the movie. Yes, Xerxes was made into a rather fanciful villian, but such is the essence of manichaean good vs. evil storytelling. The fact that Ahmandinejad and his government see themselves as heirs to the Persian Empire trumps the "democracy is good" message for them.

8/10.

Posted by Evan @ 03/19/07 09:24 PM | Comments (0)

It's scary when Dennis Kunicich looks moderate

So, I knew Obama's voting record in the Illinois state senate was uber-liberal, but I figured he would've at least taken some steps to moderate himself in the last couple years.

Guess not. Steven Thomma, McClatchy: "Obama more liberal than Kucinich, analysis reveals."

Actually, I take that back after clicking through to the National Journal vote rankings. Obama's voting is slightly less liberal than in his Illinois days. But that doesn't really say much when you're hanging with Kucinich.

Posted by Evan @ 03/19/07 08:59 PM | Comments (0)

1984 Hillary YouTube

San Fran Chron (the other Chron) writes up the anti-Hillary 1984 Mac spoof. It's funny, I thought this was already old news, so I was surprised to find out that this is apparently the first media report on the ad made by Barack Obama supporters.

Turns out it was only put up 2 weeks ago, so I guess it's not that old. And it's got about 550,000 views (between different uploads), but some of that is probably from the Chron's article. I think it had about 150,000 when I saw it 10 days ago.

How long until someone takes credit for this ad? It's genius. They might have some potential as a media consultant.

Posted by Evan @ 03/19/07 04:44 PM | Comments (0)

Of transparent trial balloons

US News:

For media outlets breathlessly selling the story about how Bill Clinton would play the first lady role should his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, become president, well, just hang on a minute. We hear from key Clintonistas that there's an alternative to having Bubba around all the time, stealing the limelight. It's having Chelsea Clinton, the all-grown-up daughter, take over the East Wing. The scenario: Chelsea would move to the White House to handle social functions because the former president would be too busy with his surrogate work for his wife and his ongoing efforts for his foundation, which he'd probably move to Washington. And to keep out of Hillary's hair, he'd step up his already busy travel schedule out of Washington and the country.

Now here's a transparent trial balloon, put up to assauge the fears of a certain subset of Democratic moneymen that Bill would be a distraction if Hillary were president.

This does not strike me as plausible, but instead a PR move by some clever advisors.

Posted by Evan @ 03/19/07 04:00 PM | Comments (0)

Say what?

AP, quoting Mayor Giuiliani on how his law firm has been lobbying for Hugo Chavez's Citgo:

Oh, they'll exploit everything. There are things that make sense and things that don't make sense and that doesn't make any sense. It was one of those political attacks where you have nothing to do with it, you're not involved in it and so it doesn't really worry you very much. What they're doing is lawful and honorable and helping to protect jobs for more than 100,000 Americans."

Uh, lobbying for anti-American Hugo Chavez is "honorable?"

Posted by Evan @ 03/19/07 03:54 PM | Comments (0)

18 March 2007

A surprising statement

Chron politics blog:

The Institute for Politics, Democracy/Zogby Interactive poll found nearly two-thirds of Americans believe there is a bias in the media, with 64 percent saying it is liberal and 28 percent saying it's conservative.

...

But [a different study] found that people see bias as any reporting that does not reflect their point of view.

That logic would suggest that if more people see the media as liberal, and if people see bias when the reporting doesn't reflect their point of view, then the media is indeed left of the political center of this country.

Also surprising was the omission that Zogby's poll found that "two-thirds of political independents feel the same, but fewer than one in four independents (23%) said they saw a conservative bias."

America thinks the media leans left. That's not too surprising, considering that most reporters -- especially at the newspapers that set the narratives of national politics (NYT/WaPo) -- share a remarkably similar set of political beliefs, which tends to be left of center.

Posted by Evan @ 03/18/07 06:20 PM | Comments (0)

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