Follow Dobson's Lead!

I've seen various blog entries today that either poked fun at or expressed outrage over the report in today's NY Times that Rev. James C. Dobson is planning to use his political muscle to unseat any Democrat who blocks Bush's judicial nominees (link). He already has a hit list of six targeted Dems (Ben Nelson of Nebraska, Mark Dayton of Minnesota, Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Jeff Bingamen of New Mexico and Bill Nelson of Florida).

I think the above reaction is all wrong. We should neither laugh at it, because it is a serious threat. Nor should we condemn it, because Dobson is simply doing what we should all be doing. We should all be using our political influence to put the existential heebie-jeebies into our elected representatives. People like Joe Lieberman and Olympia Snowe should never go to bed without the nagging realization that any of us might bring about their political downfall.

Who knows? Maybe if more politicians were afraid of us like they are afraid of Dobson then maybe they might have to actually think about what they are doing instead of simply shrinking away from anything that causes pain.

Take Dobson seriously and follow his lead. That's what I say.

Frameshop available for download

I've recommended Jeffrey Feldman's Frameshop diaries before. They are some of the best work on Lakoffian style framing that I have seen online.

Well, the enterprising individuals at DogFight04 have taken on the task of collecting Feldman's work and publishing it in a downloadable e-book format (pdf-link). I recommend downloading this, printing it out, reading it and then handing out copies to others.

Mea Culpa

I owe Joe Trippi an apology. In my previous post about campaign consultants I unfairly lumped him in with some of the worst examples of political consultancy and completely misstated his actual power within the Dean campaign.

Here is Joe's response to that post:

Uh....I had absolutely zero control of the Dean campaign's check book. Governor Dean specifically placed someone in the campaign who was in charge of budget and spending because of the situation to describe. The fact is that at the time of my hiring I told the Governor that I did not want to get paid -- it is also fairly well documented that I received $165,000 for the 13 months of work on the Dean campaign. And Alice is right consultants try to get hired by the winner before the race even starts -- the front runner almost always has more money and you end up with a better win/loss record. So you got to wonder what I was thinking when I went to work for a guy who was zero in the polls, had less than $100,000 in the bank, and when he wanted to hire me I told him I didn't want to be paid. Could it maybe, just maybe, be that I actually gave a shit?

Also in defense of the 8 time loser rap on Shrum and others -- I could point out that since 1968 63 Democrats have run for Pres

Thanks for the clarification Joe. I knew that you weren't in charge of the money, but it was one of those facts that slipped through the cracks. I can only plead temporary insanity.

I still think it's irresponsible to keep putting people with losing records in charge of important campaigns like Kerry's. That "63 Democrats" number means that Shrum has been in charge of 1/8 of all Democratic presidential campaigns since 1968 and every one a loser. That's not exactly an inspirational record. Is it really a surprise that many Democrats might start questioning that kind of record and why Dems keep hiring the guy?

(BTW, I have heard from others that Shrum has a much better record running state level races. Maybe he should stick to what he is good at.)

The title to that post was facetious. I don't really want to kill the consultants. I just want the campaigns to be more like Dean's, where it was the supporters that were the #1 force (in tandem with the candidate of course) and the consultants are only in service to that force.

The payment structure for consultants can be a corrupting influence even if the consultants themselves are not corrupt. Worse, it can also breed suspicion within the minds of the campaign supporters. A fact I am sure you, Joe, are well aware of considering some of the criticism you received from Deaniacs after the Dean campaign imploded. When Democratic leaders start losing the trust of their supporters then the party is really in deep crap.

Still, I shouldn't have lumped you in so casually with this criticism since you are an innovator in the very thing I am advocating. For that I am profoundly sorry. It was both a thrill and a horror to see that you read this little old blog of mine (the horror being the context). I hope you will stick around.

"My nation is silent"

The best disaster eyewitness interview

(Courtesy The World)

Right-Wing Safari

I've generally avoid most right-wing blogs because any time I have read them it has usually resulted in nothing but increased blood pressure. I've decided, as part of my effort to expand my horizons in the blogosphere, to start paying more attention. I won't be following most of them on a regular basis, but I will use the DAOU REPORT as a launch point for explorations into right-winger land.

This paid off already earlier today when I followed a link to an interesting post by Patrick Ruffini. While Patrick speaks from a different perspective than myself, he still offered some useful insights into what Republicans did right in 2004.

Maybe this won't be all that bad?

Of course, now I went and read a post by Adam Yoshida. The shorter version: All our present problems are because Bush didn't go far enough. On 9/11 he should have declared war on the evil that is Islam and dropped a few nukes on Afghanistan. No one would think we were wimps after that!

Ah well.

First thing we do, kill all the political consultants!

Reading the reports of Bob Shrum (8 time loser consultant) getting paid $5 million by the Kerry campaign brings up an obvious question: why aren't these consultants fees at least partially based on whether the candidate actually wins?

How about a double-up bonus? Double your consultants fees if the candidate wins! As it is, the current consultant payment scheme the Democrats use doesn't appear to have any incentive for winning.

How are the American people to trust Democrats when they say they can manage money better than Republicans when those same Democrats keep paying millions of dollars to losers like Shrum?

(Note: Dean isn't immune from this criticism either since Joe Trippi had a similar stranglehold on that campaign's money.)

Update: Just noticed on the discussion linked above that the idea of a "win bonus" is being discussed. Someone made the valid point that such bonuses would encourage consultants to gravitate towards only sure thing candidates, thus hurting dark horses. Perhaps there is a way this could be structured that the impact of this wouldn't cause much problems but would still create the incentive necessary to get the consultants on the side of the candidate that hired them.

Lessons Learned

Speaking of learning from the other side, Patrick Ruffini writes in response to the same Washington Post story linked previously and adds some interesting insight into the effectiveness of 527 groups and blogs:

Case in point: The Media Fund spent $135 million on TV ads, but never got a dime of earned media beyond the perfunctory process stories. Why? Not because they couldn't "coordinate" with the Kerry campaign -- the excuse Tad Devine and Harold Ickes would have you believe. But because they were cookie cutter and focus-grouped-to-death on outsourcing and prescription drugs and they weren't interesting. And if you're working outside the Presidential campaign and you're trying to get attention, you have to be more interesting and more outrageous than the candidate. The Democratic 527s were neither.

In the smaller ambit of blogs -- smaller just for now -- there was quite a bit of debate on which side had done a better side mobilizing blogs. Pre-GOP convention and pre-Ra^thergate, this debate was focused primarily on money. These discussions tended to overlook the blogosphere's potential importance in driving stories and changing the campaign environment in which money was spent. A week later Ra^thergate hit. It changed the way people think, and it turned out to be orders of magnitude more important than all the money contributed through blogs this cycle. Important voices like Power Line, Captain Ed, Blogs for Bush and Red State were able to jolt the MSM from its rotational axis not because they were better funded, but because they were more interesting.

Patrick's point about independent expenditure groups (527s like MoveOn, Media Fund, etc.) is spot on. They work best, I think, when they push the borders of political dialogue in ways that the official campaigns cannot. The Swift Boat Veterans were a prime example of this. The Bush campaign would have been ripped to shreds if they had pushed the crap the Swifties did (as it is they still got some heat because everyone knew that the Swifties were working with approval from the GOP even if no one could prove it.) I might disagree with Patrick that none of the Democratic 527s pushed the outrageous envelope. But they certainly didn't do it to the extent that the Republican groups did.

His point about blogs being used to push stories into the mainstream media is also correct, though I think he doesn't give due credit to the coordination with the other wings of the Republican machine that makes that possible. Left wing blogs simply don't have an equivalent to FOX nor are they likely to any time soon.

But, just as important is the fact that the Democratic party has not yet fully recognized the utility of left wing blogs like the Republican party has. The GOP pays attention to the chatter on the right side of the blogosphere and when something interesting pops up they figure out how to use it to their advantage. The Democratic party, on the other hand, appears to run away from any kind of association with the more colorful elements of the lefty blogosphere. There are plenty of examples of important stories breaking in Democratic friendly blogs, but rarely do you see the party pushing those stories into the mainstream.

Its this form of Democratic elitism that hurts the party the most.

Political Modernization

Over on the New Democrat Network blog there is an interesting post on technological modernization (link). It is a response to Washington Post article on the GOP's own technological mastery (link). The Republicans, under their incoming RNC chairman Ken Mehlman, have become very good at integrating market research methodology into their political apparatus. NDN says that Democrats need a leader who can do a similar job for them (e.g., Simon Rosenberg, who just happens to be the head of NDN :-).

I'm all for this. But we shouldn't become to enamored of whiz-bang technology. Modernization shouldn't be seen as a panacea. It is just one of the many things Democrats need to get better. We should be careful not to get into a political technology race simply because we will never be able to match the Republicans dollar-for-dollar in their market research efforts.

Nor do I think Democrats have to. 

Democrats have one advantage over Republicans in the race for political hearts and minds: the people are naturally inclined to vote Democratic. Why do I say that? Because, traditionally, Republicans outspend Democrats 2 or 3 to 1. Yet Democrats, despite that disparity, continue to remain competitive in the political arena. This tells me that, given an election without all the market research and Madison avenue glitz, the people are more inclined to vote for Democrats than Republicans. It is through their monetary advantage that Republicans are able to persuade some of those voters over to their side.

Democrats should know their strengths and work with them rather than simply adopting a "take what works for the Republicans and replicate it" strategy. We should always be willing to learn lessons from what works for the other side. But we should take those lessons and integrate them into the Democratic way of doing things. We shouldn't just graft them onto the Democratic body politic like some kind of weird Frankenstein experiment.

That's the kind of mistake the DLC has made.

Time for business to reconsider its support for Republicans?

Brand America not such a hot commodity anymore.

More additions

MaxSpeak, You Listen!

Frameshop

I must once again recommend Jeffrey Feldman's excellent Frameshop series of diaries over on the DailyKOS. Link over and subscribe. He's doing yeoman's work on this stuff.

Following up

Say, whatever happened with this? Anyone gotten any responses from the FCC?

Also added

The Rude Pundit

Lean Left

We're sorry for your loss, now pay up!

Is it any wonder that America has a bad image when shit like this happens?

And remember, this was the way American officials treated American citizens!

"It's my job to be impatient"

I like this Jan "don't be stingy" Egeland guy. He may have backtracked slightly from his initial comment, but his slap to the face of certain parties has resulted in the kind of action that needs to happen.

[Egeland] praised the rapid international response to the crisis, singling out the United States and Europe for their generosity.

Countries have contributed or pledged nearly $100 million in the first few days after the disaster �and it is going up,� Egeland told CNN. �It�s a massive, massive relief effort.�

But �it is sad that there has been a global decline in money available for foreign assistance and humanitarian assistance � and that happens in a growing world economy,� he added. �It�s my job to be impatient, I�ve seen too many starving children.�

Words fail

100,000 and growing

Emergency Action

Check out the Emergency Action Blog for more on what you can do to help.

Feel the Links, again

Special mention should go to Avedon Carol's Sideshow. Avedon does an excellent job of linking to other blogs. It's even a regular feature to highlight stuff from around the blogosphere.

Blogroll Update

Also added:

Bad Attitudes

Seeing The Forest

Helping out

Suburban Guerrilla has a good set of links for making donations to help out the tsunami victims.

Feel the Links

Given my recent comments about the need for bloggers on the left to increase linking to other blogs I figure it behooves me to follow through. As such, here are some new additions to my blogroll.

Amygdala

Crooks and Liars

Feministing

Louded Mouth

NewsHog

Through the Looking Glass

Blogger Tsunami Challenge

LoudedMouth has issued a Blogger Tsunami Challenge.

Stingygate(tm)

Barbara O'Brien of The American Street has some good comments on Stingygate(tm).

Don't Think of an Elephant

One of the arguments George Lakoff has made is that the simple denial of an accusation can add weight to that accusation. He uses the example of Nixon's "I am not a crook" comment. Before he made it, few people openly talked about the possibility that Nixon might be a crook. But, once he uttered that famous phrase, the question of Nixon's crookedness became topic #1 on everyone's lips.

I am reminded of this by the recent events surrounding the disaster in southeast Asia. The United States initially pledged $15 million dollars towards the relief effort. This was actually the largest initial pledge of any country, but it garnered some criticism for its paltry size when compared to the magnitude of the catastrophe and the economic power of the United States. Comparisons of the amount to the estimated $40 million being spent on Bush's inaugural didn't help any.

An obscure UN official named Jan Egeland made a comment about richer nations being "stingy" in their pledges. He didn't specifically name the United States, but the Bush administration was quick to respond to the comment as if it were directed at them. Colin Powell made the rounds of the morning talk shows yesterday angrily stating that "The United States is not stingy."

Mr. Powell, meet Mr. Nixon.

Now the question on everyone's lips is whether the United States really has done enough (the pledge has been raised to nearly $45 million now, but that is still pretty "stingy" compared to the magnitude of the disaster). It has forced Bush himself to come forward and answer the criticisms (though only in a taped statement). Thus elevating the story to an even higher level.

I am unsure whether the accusation is a fair one, at least as far as the initial dollar amounts are concerned. Powell and other administration defenders are right that this was only the initial amount and latter funds would follow once a clearer assessment of where those funds were needed had been made.

But, as public relations go, there presentation on this matter is quickly turning into a disaster. The money is really not the issue. It's the attitude that matters even more. Bush's refusal to cut his vacation short looks bad compared to the quick responses of people like German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder who did what Bush has not. The administrations subsequent comments dismissing "feel your pain" type public appearances at the site of disaster areas completely misses the point. Yes, these are a form of political grandstanding, but they also reassure disaster victims that public officials really are taking their pain seriously.

And Powell's response to the "stingy" issue just makes the administration look defensive, which makes them look guilty, which just adds weight to the initial criticism.

Well, at least the cloud of the tsunami disaster has at least one silver lining.

Blogger nationalism, Part III

An anonymous commenter over on Cernig's blog made the point that some people just don't like blogs that are nothing more than collections of links to other blogs:

I prefer to read posts that are written by a person, rather than look up loads of links proving points.
In fact, if there is a post with loads of links I usually ignore it.
Anybody can quote any other body these days to back them up, and the fact that many people ignore the links leaves the impression that the poster has proved a point because he has lots of back-up.
In fact, the opposite is usually true.
I am interested in what comes out of a person's head when he needs it, and not what comes out of a computer when he is lost for words.
Besides, the best learning experience is listening to other people's opinions.

This comment is very telling. I have at least one leftist friend who gets very upset at me when I just send him links to stories I find interesting and/or that convey some of what I am trying to say. His feeling is that unless I can express my thought in my own words without using the crutch of someone else's thoughts then it just isn't worth his time to read it.

There appear to be some in the blogosphere, such as this anonymous commenter, who hate blogs that are nothing more then collections of links to other blogs. They want original content, not warmed over hash.

I can understand, but it misses the point: a lot of people like warmed over hash. It's the way they are used to receiving the information they need to get through life. They don't have a lot of time for four course meals. They just want their Big Mac and their Super Sized fries, thank you very much.

The last sentence of this comment betrays another aspect of this mindset: it assumes that everyone else wants a "learning experience". This is a faulty assumption. Many people do not have that drive to learn more. They think they've learned all they need to know and anyone who tries to convince them otherwise just comes off as a pushy busy body. To that type of person, a blogger that devotes most of their content to elucidating new thoughts is just a show off.

But a person who can present their thoughts in small bite-sized portions (such as a quick reference to a more substantial bit of reporting/thinking) is a much more appetizing meal for their minds.

I really don't know if this is inherent in the nature of left-wing vs. right-wing thought. It may just be that the egghead syndrome has found its home on the left these days, but could just as easily reside on the right at other times. I strongly suspect that left-wing thought can be presented in bite-sized portions that are consumable by the vast hordes of people who just don't have the desire to engage in a new "learning experience". But the left has become enamored not just in its own thought processes but appears to revel in looking down on the low-brow nature of right-wing thought.

This attitude of, "if it isn't original and illuminating than it isn't worth my time" is a form of elitism and it isn't a surprise that it turns off the masses.

Hell, it turns me off and I usually agree with what the "elitists" are saying.

More Blogger Nationalism

Yesterday I commented on a post by Jesse Taylor where Jesse talks about how, in the blogosphere, the right is better at promoting lesser known voices than the left is. Instapundit, the most widely read right-wing blog, devotes nearly all of its content to links to other blogs while the most popular blogs on the left (Atrios, Kos) sometimes actually look down on this practice. Atrios does a fairly good job of pointing out other people's work, but I never get the sense that Duncan is doing so out of any sense of obligation to elevate those people's opinions. DailyKOS, on the other hand, has gone the community/diary blogging route which has created another layer of incestuous linking (diarists link to each other more than they do to other blogs).

I must confess that I didn't actually read the blog post by Cernig that inspired Jesse's post (how ironic <snerk>). If I had I would have read some really good thoughts on this whole phenomena:

A few days ago, I was reading comments on one of the big liberal blogs that complained about how the largest right-wing bloggers seem to find, groom and promote other right-wing bloggers. The gist of the comments were that it was all a conspiracy to find extra propagandists for the Republicans, extra mouthpieces to spout Bush's agenda. The comments seemed incredibly shortsighted to me. For one, magazines like Capitalism Magazine or Reason are continually publishing new work from new commentators because they, like MichNews online, realise that fresh voices, fresh perspectives, on their shared ideology are a very healthy thing. Without encouraging new blood, a movement can too easily become trapped into incestious back-patting and stagnate - exactly what MoveOn have accused the DNC of doing. Secondly, even if it is all a right-wing plot, why the hell not? It's an incredibly effective tactic to raise up another friendly voice and say "our opinions are not exactly the same on every issue but we recognise our common ground is greater than our differences", far more effective than the faction fighting which may yet become the club which the right will beat the progressive movement to death with. If liberals are elitist amongst themselves, what chance of convincing the man or woman in the street to vote against the right?

I don't want to go so far as to say that the top bloggers on the left really are elitist. But it would be perfectly natural for them to fall into the trap of only linking to each other and less and less often to the "insignificant microbes". That the left blogosphere appears more susceptible to this problem gives rise to the question: is there something inherent in leftist/progressive politics that leads to this kind of self-imposed isolationism?

Like Cernig, I will acknowledge that this kind of post may just be interpreted as sour grapes. But that is really besides the point. I don't want to promote myself (well, I do, but promoting myself is not the point of this post). The point is whether this is a real problem and, if it is, what do we do about it?

Tough Sell

Plan for Social Security relies on an immediate, familiar Bush strategy

WASHINGTON -- The run-up to President Bush's plan to deal with Social Security is looking a lot like the run-up to his plan to deal with Saddam Hussein.

The expected Social Security shortfall has been a perennial domestic concern in much the same way that Hussein's intransigence with arms inspectors was a perennial foreign-policy concern: From the White House to Congress to think tanks, policy makers worried about it, but presidents (including Bush) felt no immediate need to deal with it.

Then Bush decided to focus on it, and suddenly a long-term concern became intense and immediate.

"Perennial concerns" are a common feature of governance. Every government in the world has had to deal with problems that persists for long periods of time (short like the last decade with Saddam, long like the centuries long conflict over the holy land). These are frustrating problems because, despite the best efforts of the most honorable men and women, they remain unfixable. Often what happens in these cases is not a permanent solution but a acceptable stalemate (e.g., the "One China" policy with respect to Taiwan). These compromises may not eliminate the problem, but they keep the problem from blooming into a full blown crisis.

That kind of solution is not acceptable to George W. Bush. Bush doesn't like stalemates. He doesn't like problems that continue to itch at the edge of his consciousness. He just wants the problem to go away.

This is an understandable position. Who among us wouldn't want those bothersome problems to "just go away"? Who among us wouldn't be tempted to use the vast powers at Bush's disposal to do just that?

But that isn't how the real world works. Attempts to make the problems "just go away" usually create even worse problems in their wake. Maturity requires understanding that you can't fix every problem. It requires accepting a certain level of disorder in order to prevent an even greater level of chaos.

If you really tried to kill every disease carrying germ in your body you'd kill yourself in the process.

Unfortunately, this kind of realism doesn't sell politically. George W. Bush's "just fix it dammit!" has much greater appeal. The problem for us in dealing with Bush is to make realism an acceptable alternative again.

Reality is a tough sell.

Defining victory

Markos Zuniga gives Salon and its readers a crash course in the philosophy behind the new politics:

Editor's note: In an item assessing the rise and fall of political blogs in 2004, Salon's cover story on Monday included the following quote: "Readers of Daily Kos funneled half a million dollars to a 'Kos dozen' of congressional candidates, and every single one of those lost at the polls." Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, the man behind Daily Kos, argues that Salon has missed the point.

The point, as I wrote repeatedly on the site, was not to win those contests. It was to contest as many seats as possible that the party was ignoring. I personally helped Stan Matsunaka get in the race against Marylin Musgrave, and Daily Kos readers pumped in nearly $60K into the race. For that investment, Musgrave had to spend $3 million of her own money, and the NRCC had to spend another $2 million, in order to eke out a 51 percent victory.

That district went from being uncontested four months before the election, to costing the GOP $5 million to defend. That's $5 million that couldn't be used in more at-risk seats.

This is a point I've been trying to make since the "failed" Dean campaign. Victory in politics is not simply a matter of who wins or loses a particular race. The victor is the one who controls the political dialog and can direct the policy direction of the political community for the near term. The latter certainly requires electoral victory because without it you simply don't have the power of the state to back up your policy proposals. But the former is a more amorphous goal that can be achieved without necessarily winning more votes than the other guy. If you can dictate the pace of the campaign and the message of the campaign then you are controlling the political dialog. Dean succeeded at this by forcing the Democratic party to start paying attention to whole swaths of its constituency that it had come to ignore. And, as Markos points out, many Democrats forced Republicans to change their political calculations in the face of unexpected threats.

Yes, this did not ultimately translate to electoral victory. But would not having run these campaigns have done any better? Indeed, would allowing the Republicans to get away unchallenged have allowed them to achieve even greater electoral success? Winning also means not losing and Democrats didn't lose all that many elections this cycle. It could have been considerably worse. Indeed, I am convinced that a non-Dean goaded Kerry probably would have lost by a considerable margin in 2004.

A central message of 2004 is that we must not be dismissive of success just because it isn't as successful as we would like. I have been saying for some time now that reversing the trends of the last 30 years could take an equal 30 years of effort. That we came as close as we did to unseating a war-time President as we did speaks volumes. It is a hint that it may not take us the 30 years I previously thought it would take.

I remain optimistic about the future.

Framing != Lying

Chris Nolan responds to some of the responses he has gotten to his criticism of Lakoff (not mine in particular):

Well, my problem with Lakoff is a little different. I think the Lefty fascination with his emphasis on how things are said belies a condescension that persists among a lot of "progressives," a word Lakoff favors instead of "liberal." The idea, as far as I can make it out, is that since the Republicans lie but disguise their lies as pablum, then Democrats must do something similar to capture votes from folks who aren't sophisticated (that's elitist code, by they way, for "stupid) to understand the smoke and mirror show that's so misled them and caused George Bush to be elected president. Lakoff's take on "framing" and other sorts of talking tricks is, for many, the best way to do remedy this state of affairs.

This is ridculous. It's a thesis that rests squarely on the cynical premise that politics is made up of folks who are totally insincere and that winning is all that matters. Since no one needs to be sincere or truthful to win elections, it doesn't matter what you say, what matters is how you say it. That, my friends, isn't a slippery slope, it's an abyss.

Chris once again betrays his failure to read what Lakoff has said. Lakoff has gone out of his ways on multiple occasions to say that framing is not the same as lying (or spin or disguise or whatever). He makes the point that the most effective frames are those that are truthful even if they only present one side of an argument. The point of good framing is not to sugar coat your ideas but to present your ideas in a way that doesn't immediately cause them to be rejected for unrelated reasons.

The best salesman will tell you that a good salesman doesn't need to lie in order to sell their product. They just have to understand how their product fills a need in the buyer and get the buyer to understand the same thing. 

Yes, there is always the temptation to twist, spin, distort and outright lie. But Lakoff also makes the point that when you resort to these tactics it is a clue to others that your position is a weak one. He uses the example of the "Clear Skies initiative" as an Orwellian term that shouldn't upset us. It should instead alert us to the fact that the Bush administration knows that the policy is anti-environmental. They only have to couch it in such terms in order to get it past people's bullshit detectors.

I think I understand where Chris' distaste comes from. I have always hated sales. For years it has always seemed to me to be nothing more than a legitimized confidence game. So anything that smells of anything but the most honest and forthright pitch immediately turns me off.

But, George Lakoff's message is that marketing of ideas, the framing of ideas in order to advance them, is not simply a necessary evil. It is, in fact, the way of all human communication. We use framing all the time whether we realize it or not. Rather than rail against it we need to learn to embrace it and make it work for us.

Blogroll Update

I've gone through and done a much needed overhaul of my blogroll. It pretty much covers every blog that I follow on a regular basis. The one characteristic they all have in common is a working RSS feed. There are a couple of other blogs I follow but not on a regular basis simply because they don't have such a feed (hint hint).

Blogger nationalism

Jesse Taylor makes an interesting observation:

Cernig has an important point on the need to build up an actual blog community on the left. Although I think that part of the conservative interlinkage has to do a lot more with the idea that they're building up some sort of aboveground underground resistance (think Harriet Tubman, but with an advertising budget and a lot more white property owners), and so the very act of blogging is, to them, a statement, some sort of glorious revelation handed down from the good folks at Moveable Type.

You can see it in the year-end conservative blogger fellatings - blogging is a transformational tool reserved solely for the right, and, at this juncture, it's a critical move to push liberal bloggers out of the conversation. Even the most breathlessly wrong "fact-check" makes the conservative rounds in a few hours, whereas it's seemingly much more difficult for a liberal post to get around. Part of it is simply how memes spread - the conservative side of the blogosphere, from my reading of it, when not citing bad TCS columns tends to interlink to one another in a continual reaffirmation of the position and of the importance of the communal declaration of belief. In a Norquistian twist, conservative bloggers promote communalism and liberal bloggers tend to promote individualism, at least in my reading. [emphasis mine - Chris]

I'm not sure if it's elitism as much as it is a lack of the same romantic idealization of this act, but it's definitely something to think about.

Being a low-level blogger (hit counts in the hundreds per day), I notice it whenever someone links to me and such linkage has become rarer and rarer these days. Now, that could just be because I'm not as interesting as I used to be. But it could also be that the rise of community blogs like The DailyKOS have encouraged a sort of blogger nationalism. On The DailyKOS, everyone can write a diary and people frequently link to each others diaries but less often to the outside world, and then only to prominent bloggers.

The rules of diary posting on The DailyKOS say that people who write a lot of diaries should consider getting their own blogs. But my experience is that making that kind of leap actually reduces the level of attention the diarist turned blogger receives. There is a real disincentive to strike out on ones own when it is much safer to just remain in a safe and secure community.

Simplification

A question for budding and not so budding economists out there. It has been said that the transitional cost of the President's suggested Social Security privatization plan is around two trillion dollars. That is, when people start diverting some of their contributions to SS into private investment accounts, it will be necessary to "borrow" money from somewhere to make up the shortfall in money necessary to pay the current beneficiaries of SS. The argument from the "reform" crew is that if we don't do this then the SS trust fund will go broke in about 40 years.

My question is this: what would happen if we were to simply borrow that two trillion dollars and feed it directly into the Social Security trust fund? If we did that, when would the trust fund go broke? Would it ever go broke?

If this would fix the "crisis", why not just borrow the money and have done with it? Why add on to it the whole complexity of setting up these forced investment accounts? Especially considering that there is a real question as to whether these accounts would pay better dividends for retirees down the road than the current system.

This is an honest question even though I suspect I already know the answer.