The New Republic article Ten Things Political Scientists Know That You Don’t by Jonathan Bernstein promotes the article of the same name by Hans Noel of Georgetown University.

This is great article for political junkies who read this blog on a regular basis. If you are a political scientist, you probably know about all this already. After thinking about it for a while, I thought So that’s what political science is all about.

The article itself is published in The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics, Vol. 8 (2010) / Issue 3. From here, you can download the 21 page article.

The New Republic paraphrases item 3 as Elections don’t necessarily do what we want them to do.. I found the explanation of the item to be the clearest and most succinct description of the problem of finding a voting method that does do what we want it to do.

You may or may not agree with some of the ten items, but you may also learn something in thinking about why you do or don’t agree.  For instance,  the scatter diagram of figure 1 in the article could just as easily be used to make the opposite point of much of the text for this item.

A quick and simple animated explanation of how Wall Street Reform will work a…

There is more on What Wall Street Reform Means for You on the White House Blog.

While the video may be telling the truth, you still don’t have to fall for the implied message hook, line, and sinker.

She is right that no job is preordained to be held by an American. If a company can get the job done just as well (or even better) by a foreign worker for less money, then it is the responsibility to the stock holders to make that move. American workers have to figure out what they are going to do to compete. Putting up trade barriers is not the answer.

The excessive pay for chief executives in America is also not preordained. These American CEOs who think outsourcing only happens to the workers will get quite a shock in a few years. What makes Carly Fiorina think that there isn’t a CEO candidate in India that can do her job better and cheaper?

The following comment has nothing to do with whether or not the former American workers of HP have cause to complain. If you are a CEO watching this video and you see the clips of disgruntled American workers and then you see the clips of satisfied workers in India, where would you prefer to hire your workers?

I found a link to the article White America Has Lost Its Mind on the facebook page of friend João Geada.

If you are at all sensitive about matters of race, then don’t bother to click on the above link.  If you can take a joke, and don’t mind a little X-rated language, then feel free to read the article.

But the more you shook your head at it, the more it seemed to have taken root deep in the lizard part of the white nervous system. Obama is not an American. He says he’s Christian, but he has a Muslim-sounding name. He’s not black, he’s not white. . . . Is . . . is he even human?

I take no responsibility for any head explosions caused by reading this article.

From the article in The New York Times, Company Stops Insuring Titles in Chase Foreclosures:

Mark P. Stopa, a lawyer in Florida who represents defaulting homeowners, said that if more title insurance firms began to shy away from insuring foreclosed properties, the entire housing market could suffer. The prices of foreclosures would plummet, because lenders will not issue a new mortgage without title insurance.

How many more shoes are there to drop about the collapse of the housing bubble?  Usually, after the second one drops, you stop waiting for another shoe.  This has got to be at least the third shoe.

Finally, someone graphically illustrates the issue of extending the tax cuts.

If you are watching this or any other video on the home page of the blog, please click on the article title first so that your browser is showing only the one article. This will keep other videos on the home page from trying to steal bandwidth from the one you want to view.

I like to think Goolsbee is making the point that I have been trying to make.

Furthermore, finally we have a Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers who understands that part of his role is to explain things to the voters. This White House White Board is a great idea.

The preamble to the video on www.whitehouse.gov/whiteboard is:

Today we’re trying out something new — White House White Board, in which one of our key players on the White House team will cut through the political back-and-forth you hear every day and break down an issue affecting American families into simple, understandable terms.  Today, Austan Goolsbee, the new Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers here at the White House, tackles the tax cut fight and what it means that Congressional Republicans are “holding middle class tax cuts hostage” as the President has said:

Here is President Obama addressing 26K Cheering College Kids in Wisconsin while 200 other colleges were linked in electronically. He really lays it on the line. How could anyone remain apathetic after hearing this speech?

Thanks to MardyS for posting this on his Facebook page as a reminder to us all.

You can also see this posted in an article on TalkingPointsMemo.com

In the article Return of the ‘Contract With America’, author Joe Conason writes

The Republicans have announced the forthcoming release of the “Contract From America”—a set of legislative proposals presumably intended to replicate the “Contract With America” used by their leaders in the historic 1994 midterm when they won control of both houses of Congress.

The Republicans seem to have trouble with prepositions.  I have always called these things Contract On America. It seems so much like a Mob hit contract, that my title seemed more appropriate.

For another take on the Contract On America, read Clive McFarlane’s piece GOP pledge no pathway to future in the Worcester T & G.

The actual headline of the article is Stimulus Spending On Highways Isn’t Delivering On Job Promises.

This is the classic “the glass is half empty” story if there ever was one.

Based on other people’s comments on the story, my comment was:

Why am I not surprised that people see in this story exactly what they want to see? No matter which side of the political spectrum you are on, this story proves that you have been right all along. Does McClatchy have a magic typewriter hidden away in their offices?

So, you can feel safe in reading the story because it is sure to prove to you what you have always known, whatever that is.