On 3 December 2009, the New York Times reports U.S. Judge Opposes Republicans on Elections [Tactics]. (I added the bracketed word.)

The Republican National Committee will not be able to use election tactics that have been linked to suppression of voting by racial minorities without court supervision, a federal judge in New Jersey has ruled.

The measures, known as “ballot security” programs, were the subject of a lawsuit between the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee that ended with a consent decree in 1982. Under the agreement, some election tactics could only be used with court approval, including the creation of voter challenge lists, photographing voters at the polls and posting off-duty police and sheriffs officers at the polls in minority precincts.

(…)

In an opinion issued on Tuesday, Judge Dickinson R. Debevoise of Federal District Court ruled that the Republicans failed to show that conditions had changed enough to justify changing the agreement.

“It does not appear that the R.N.C.’s incentive to suppress minority votes has changed since 1982,” Judge Debevoise wrote, citing statistics showing that most minority voters support Democrats. “It appears that the R.N.C. has been largely unsuccessful in its efforts to attract minority voters. Until it is able to do so, it will have an incentive to engage in the type of voter suppression that it allegedly committed in the actions that led to the enactment and modification of the consent decree.”

In Organic Mechanics (Financial Times, 26 Nov. 2009), Clive Cookson, Gillian Tett, and Chris Cook discuss applying evolutionary biology concepts to understanding and stabilizing complex economic systems.

Bankers and financial economists are working with mathematical biologists to learn lessons about resilience from natural ecosystems – from fisheries to forests – and from the spread of disease. The exercise is certainly of more than academic interest. Andrew Haldane, executive director for financial stability at the Bank of England, says the regulatory structure for banking may be shaped by studies now in progress that treat global finance as a “complex adaptive system” like a living ecosystem.

-RichardH

A nice, concise, ten-minute summary of Adam Smith’s life and writings by Glasgow Professor Chris Berry.

Read it or watch the video … or both.

– RichardH

In his 11 November 2009 NY Times blog post, The Agony of Fox Business, Paul Krugman writes

Clearly, the Fox Business crew is having a very hard time. They bill themselves as being truly pro-business — not like those leftists at CNBC. But they aren’t really pro-business; they’re pro-Republican. They’d like you to believe that it’s the same thing; but there’s this awkward fact that markets have, you know, gone up under Obama.

And this isn’t just a phenomenon of the last few months. Look back at stock returns under recent presidents, which is easy using a clever gadget at Political Calculations. Taking real, dividend-inclusive annual returns on the S&P 500, I get:

Reagan: 10.08%
Bush I: 10.16%
Clinton: 14.35%
Bush II: minus 5.81%

Tax-hiking Democrats are supposed to be terrible for business; I mean, Norman Podhoretz whines that Jews should be conservatives because Republican policies are better for the economy. But the data just refuse to say that — and that’s even if we restrict ourselves to the stock market, never mind job creation, wages, poverty and all that.

So the whole idea of Fox Business is problematic. It’s Fox, which means that it’s basically an arm of the GOP; but that’s a terrible match for business coverage, because the economy just refuses to punish liberals and reward conservatives the way it’s supposed to.

Looking back further, the “S&P proof” is not ironclad but it sure tends to support Krugman’s contention:

Annualized Rates of Return with Dividend Reinvestment and Adjusted for Inflation

Eisenhower (1/53-1/61) 13.85%
Kennedy (1/61-11/63) 9.29%
Johnson (11/63-1/69) 7.10%
[Kennedy & Johnson together (1/61-1/69) 7.87%] Nixon (1/69-8/74) MINUS 7.74%
Ford (8/74-1/77) 11.63%
[Nixon & Ford together (1/69-1/77) MINUS 2.40%
Carter (1/77-1/81) 1.25%
Reagan (1/81-1/89) 10.08%
Bush I (1/89-1/93) 10.16%
Clinton (1/93-1/2001) 14.35%
Bush II (1/2001-1/2009) MINUS 5.81%

Obama (1/2009-9/2009) 31.91% (and that’s just thru Sept!)

Looking over the longer periods, by the S&P 500 measure:
The laggards are: Nixon and Dubya.
The big winners are Clinton and Ike.
And the biggest winner so far is … you know who.

Hey, Barack. You’re looking good!

To The Members of the California State Assembly:

I am returning Assembly Bill 1176 without my signature.

For some time now I have lamented the fact that major issues are overlooked while many
unnecessary bills come to me for consideration. Water reform, prison reform, and health
care are major issues my Administration has brought to the table, but the Legislature just
kicks the can down the alley.

Yet another Legislative year has come and gone without the major reforms Californians
overwhelmingly deserve. In light of this, and after careful consideration, I believe it is
unnecessary to sign this measure at this time.

Sincerely,

Arnold Schwarzenegger

***

Note: According to the San Francisco Chronicle (Oct 28, 2009), Gov. Schwarzenegger sent this message to explain why he was vetoing a bill dealing with financing for the Port of San Francisco. Bill 1176 had been submitted by San Francisco Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, who (at a dinner in San Francisco on Oct. 7) had called the governor a liar and shouted from the audience to “kiss my gay ass.”

On 12 October 2009, Max Fisher wrote in The Atlantic A Free-Market Case for the Public Option.

A public option would, crazy as it might sound, make health insurance a free market. If there exists a government-run plan, which by all accounts would be basic and geared towards affordability, consumers will have the ability to opt out of the private insurance market. Private providers would finally have real incentives to provide a better product and innovate by building an insurance plan stronger than public insurance.

On 3 March 2009, I pointed to Michael Lewis’s April 2009 Vanity Fair article, Wall Street on the Tundra, about the fall of the Icelandic banking system and economy.

On 9 Oct 2009, Robert Jackson wrote a follow-up in the Financial Times: Iceland After a Year of Financial Crisis.

In the 5 October 2009 issue of The New Yorker, John Cassidy gives in Rational Irrationality-The real reason that capitalism is so crash-prone a nice behavioral finance analysis of what went wrong with our financial system.

On 9 August 2009, Tim Harford wrote The Economist’s Guide to Happiness in London’s TimesOnline.

Note: This link is (very, very) distantly related to my 20 September 2009 pointer to Michael Sandel’s PBS series on Justice.  [I hope some of you saw the first Sandel show.]

Two years ago, Michael Sandel (Harvard Professor of Government) offered an online course to Harvard alumni.  The course was called “Justice” and it was superb.

Our local PBS station (WGBH) is televising a series by Professor Sandel titled Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?
The series begins in Boston on Sunday, Sept. 20, 2009.
For televising on PBS, 50 minute classes are cut to 30 minutes each and two classes are shown each Sunday.

If this series is televised in your area, I strongly recommend it to you.

UPDATE 26 Sept 2009: The New York Times has an article on the series:
Morals Class is Starting; Please Pass the Popcorn.