Ways in which McCain is better than Obama

This post is more intellectually challenging and shorter than one on ways that Obama is better than McCain. I also feel like doing it now before it gets too close to the election to matter. And, Obama has been disappointing lately with the FISA bill and supporting execution of rapists. Also some Democrats are going after McCain for temporarily breaking under severe torture while a POW, an inexcusable tactic that makes me feel contrary.

So:

• The maverick thing - yes it's overplayed and McCain's flipped on a lot of things to get the nomination, but it's also partly real. Where has Obama bucked Democratic Party orthodoxy?
• Ethanol - McCain opposes domestic ethanol subsidies and the 54-cents per gallon tariff on Brazilian cane ethanol. The domestic ethanol is bad while the Brazilian ethanol might be environmentally okay. Obama takes the opposite position on both, and is tied intimately to Big Corn.
• Fighting wasteful military spending - McCain has done this, while I'm not aware of Obama taking on anything yet.

Anything else? This battery thing of McCain's isn't important enough. While I'm not anti-nuclear power, I don't think massive subsidies are a good idea either. I think more free trade is marginally better than protectionism, but that doesn't quite fit the non-partisan criteria I'd like to use here.

Other suggestions are welcome, especially ones that aren't along the lines of "McCain is more conservative than Obama on issue X, and I believe the conservative position is better, so McCain's better."

Matt Yglesias joins the ANWR-climate change bandwagon

He also supports the idea of allowing drilling in ANWR as a concession to get Obama's climate change plan through Congress. He even supports it for the right reason - to get two Alaskan senator votes to break a filibuster. I think it's possible it could pick up other votes too - maybe not for passage, but for getting Democratic senators to support cloture to end a filibuster.

In other Yglesias-related stuff, he views Obama's dropping out of public financing as hypocritical while McCain's acts are significantly worse lawbreaking. Agreed on McCain, but I wouldn't call Obama's action as hypocritical. I would call it promise-breaking though. Obama has some reason to break this promise, but he should be clear about it, and it's a bad precedent for his other promises, like that he would filibuster the bad FISA bill in Congress.

McCain was asked the C-word question and refused to answer it

There was a minor splash several months ago when Cliff Schecter's book, The Real McCain, reported that McCain blew up in front of three reporters in 1992 when his wife Cindy was teasing him, and called her the C-word. McCain's campaign denies it happened, but McCain himself refused to answer whether he'd done it when asked at one of his town hall meetings (to listen to him, go to On The Media, start the June 13th show, and advance to minute 11:30).

So where does that leave us? In some cases a refusal to answer is an admission, but in this case it's a harder call. The US News link above states ambiguously that it tried to track down the sources: "An effort to arrange to speak with Schecter's sources was unsuccessful, though the author described in some detail the positions held by the sources at the time of the alleged incidents and their whereabouts today." My guess is that US News thought they had enough info to figure out who the reporters were, but the reporters wouldn't talk.

So I think the ball's in Schecter's court, with the exception that I agree with Mark Kleiman that there's enough legitimacy for the mainstream media to force McCain himself to answer the question. Schecter, meanwhile, needs to go to his sources and say that the campaign has denied it's happened therefore they should do the right thing. Schecter also needs to ask his sources what prominent newsperson they'd trust to preserve anonymity, and get that person to interview them. I've also scrolled through Schecter's prolific blog postings - he mentions the issue once, but hasn't been able to move the ball any further.

One sidenote is how Wikipedia should handle this. It's been discussed and shot down repeatedly at wiki, apparently. I brought it up in the talk section for one article. At this point I wouldn't include it in wiki, but I'm less sensitive to feelings here at the blog.

Finally- if the prominent "newsperson" was Oprah Winfrey and she got it confirmed, that would pretty much be the end of McCain's campaign.

A McCain Court could allow recriminalization of homosexuality

Conservatives think that the potential for making appointments to the Supreme Court will work to McCain's advantage. While I agree that on some issues the public is to the right to the Court's present position, the public is also to the left of where McCain's appointments could take it.

Overturning Roe v. Wade so that abortion is banned outright in some states is one real possibility. Recriminalizing homosexuality is another that's received no attention, and whatever the general public thinks about gay marriage, I don't think they want homosexuals arrested in their homes.

Lawrence v. Texas ended that practice five years ago on a 6-3 vote. Current Justices Alito and Roberts each replaced one vote from the majority and minority of that decision. Had they been on the Court in 2003, it would have been a 5-4 vote for gay rights, leaving Kennedy (whose age will be 75 in the year 2012), Stevens (will be 92), Souter (72), Ginsburg (79), and Breyer (73) in the majority. A single McCain appointment theoretically could flip a future decision and overrule Lawrence.

Two loose ends - first, would they return to and overrule this precedent? Justices don't like to do this, although they might also consider it okay to do so here, considering that Lawrence itself overruled Supreme Court precedent that was 'only' 17 years old. I've no doubt that on the present Court, Alito, Thomas, and Scalia would overrrule. As for Roberts I'm less sure about his willingness to overturn, but it's very possible. My guess is that one appointment by McCain replacing the majority justices makes overruling possible, three appointments makes it virtually certain, and two appointments is a coin-toss.

Second loose end - would they get the opportunity? In law school I learned that it's not clear what happens to laws that are overruled by courts - do they become nullified and no longer exist, or are they existing but are unenforceable? Apparently that hasn't been decided. The Texas law prohibiting homosexual conduct is still on the books, so Texas hasn't done a cleanup and removed the law. I could see a conservative Texas sheriff and conservative Texas DA trying to revive the law during a McCain Administration. A good factual situation for them would be a homosexual rape case where the evidence makes it hard to prove there was no consent - the DA could just bring a homosexual conduct case against the defendant but not the victim. After losing all the way through the Texas Supreme Court, the DA then appeals to the US Supreme Court and we see what happens.

It could be a strange country - gay marriage legal in some states, while gay sex is illegal in others. I don't think criminalizing homosexuality is a winner for the Republicans.

Beaten to the Easterbrook Idiot party

The party's here (via Deltoid). Easterbrook calls for more action to prevent asteroid strikes on Earth, based on a cherry-picked expert's ten-percent worst case scenario. Apply the same standard to the climate crisis and I can tell a pretty scary story too.

I actually don't want to pick on Easterbrook too much. However unfortunate it is that major publications think he has something to say about science, he did eventually give in to reality about climate change - in 2006. The people I really want to pick on are the right wingers, because they eat this stuff up about space risk, but don't want to do squat about climate risk. They need to get their risk assessments in order.

Finally, don't throw the baby out even though Easterbrook blinds us. There is a risk from asteroid impact, although that risk is reducing as NASA continues to search and eliminate near-future risks from larger asteroids. Just because Easterbrook says we should do more, that doesn't mean in this case that we should do the opposite. Doing what we're doing is fine.

Maybe I'm taking Indiana Jones and Kung Fu Panda too seriously

It's too bad that an otherwise-okay movie (Jones) and otherwise-really good movie (Panda) were marred by irrationality. I'm not referring to the woo in Jones and the magic in Panda - that stuff just comes down to whether the films have persuaded you to suspend your disbelief.

The problem is that Indiana Jones teaches that too strong a desire for knowledge is part of what motivates some people to be evil, and the desire can be a killer. Panda says that you can do anything if you really really believe it. The motivator in Jones is just trite. Panda too much resembles the neocon Green Lantern theory that all you need to triumph is to will it to be so. I've had enough of that stuff over the last few years.

Still, if you can set that part aside, Kung Fu Panda was really good - just be sure to tell kids and conservatives not to draw any lessons from it.

Swapping ANWR for climate change legislation

Kevin Drum has the good idea of giving up a portion of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for oil drilling in return for Republican support for real climate change legislation.

I've indicated my partial heresy over ANWR in the past - a friend of mine and occasional commenter here has worked the Alaskan North Slope for years and hasn't seen much environmental damage, and ANWR could be even better protected. Granted, the North Slope isn't a major caribou calving ground like ANWR is, and various measures have been used to underestimate the environmental impact from drilling. Still the likelihood of substantial damage from drilling is small, while the benefit to the Arctic and ANWR from action on climate change is huge.

So would the Republicans bite? Three would, at least - two Alaskan senators and one Alaskan representative. I don't know if any others would, but even two senators is a great catch given the need to get a 60-vote supermajority against the inevitable filibuster. Or if we already have 60 votes, the legislation could be made stronger over the objections of two Democratic senators who would otherwise be indispensable.

A final note regarding climate legislation - here's Ron Brownstein looking very pessimistically at the recently failed legislation, contrary to my Pollyannish view. Ten of the 54 Senate "supporters" wanted major changes that would weaken the bill that was already too weak. We'll need a real political earthquake to change things around.

Would you betray your beliefs after being slapped a few times?

I've been listening to more Intelligence Squared debates via podcast, including "Tough interrogation of terror suspects is necessary."

I think the anti-torture folks could have added a few more arguments. One of them is that I believe "minor torture" must become "torture" because minor pain isn't going to break a committed terrorist.

John McCain wrote that everyone has a breaking point, and after severe torture he reached his own point. I don't personally claim to be a tough guy, but it would take more than minor physical inconvenience, what Rumsfeld referred to as similar to standing at a desk, to get me to betray my beliefs. I expect that these hard, evil terrorists that the pro-"harsh interrogations" folks are talking about as meriting these interrogations are going to be tougher than me, and more like John McCain. The way to break them is torture, so pretending you're only going to barely intrude on comfort is a lie.

The alternative approach is better. Anything else is better.

UPDATE: Testimony from Colin Powell's former chief of staff (page 11):

Likewise, no one seems to have considered what I call the basic soldier test (how could they?—none of them were soldiers and they had removed the real soldiers from their deliberations).

What I mean by this is, for example, if you tell a soldier under pressure to produce
actionable intelligence that he can use a muzzled dog, he will do it faithfully. And when that doesn't work—and it isn’t likely to—the soldier will remove the muzzle. And when that doesn't work, he will let the dog take a bite.

Maybe a two-vote shift will get us climate legislation next year

So the Lieberman-Warner bill failed to pass the Senate, with 48 votes in favor and 36 against. The bill needed 60 votes because Republicans were filibustering, and at first glance, the idea that climate legislation will pick up twelve votes next year seems depressingly unlikely.

Maybe not. From the link, the Dems are saying that six absent senators favored the bill. Elsewhere I've read that four of bill opponents were Democrats. If in 2009, a Democratic President and the full weight of the Democratic Party were brought to bear on those four, telling them to vote however they want on the final bill but that they must vote for cloture to end the filibuster, I think they could come around. That leaves two other votes that need to switch, either from Republicans who come in from the cold or get replaced. Could happen.

Of course, this vote-counting is for the inadequate L-W bill, and Obama's far better proposal might encounter more foot-dragging. We'll see.

One good thing about the L-W bill is the trade provision that I'm sure we'll see in future legislation, requiring emission controls from importers of countries that don't control emissions on national levels. First, if the US doesn't get its act together, this helps legitimize other countries requiring this from our exporters. Second, it supports the idea I've prattled on endlessly about trade agreements being the best enforcement mechanism on the international level for climate regulation. Getting to 60 votes in the Senate to beat a filibuster is hard enough, and a treaty needs 67 votes. Trade agreements, by contrast, need 60 votes for fast-track authority before they're negotiated, then the President negotiates them and submits them to Congress for up-or-down vote with no filibuster.

I think the best result would be a treaty with targets but no enforcement mechanisms - that might get through the Senate - and then enforcement comes through a trade agreement.

Campaign debts and a nifty money-laundering trick

Bloomberg has a good article on the state of play for Clinton's campaign debts that also helps define the problem of candidates loaning money to their own campaigns. Her campaign owes $20 million, $11 million to herself and $5 million to the unliked Mark Penn.

Reforms initiated by John McCain (credit where due) address some of the problems of candidates loaning money. Other campaigns can help fundraise but can't simply pay off the debts. Debts can be repaid in full before the election, but "only" $250,000 can be repaid to candidates after the election.

The candidate loan problem remains, however, in the period between when the election is actually decided, like it is now for the Democratic nomination to be held in late August, and when the election actually occurs. Winning candidates will get deluged with money from contributors trying to curry favor by putting money in the candidates' pocket through paying off the loans candidates made to their campaigns. Losing candidates who are still powerful, like the Senator from New York, will be even more grateful to people who pay them off.

And while other candidates can no longer bribe a competitor to drop out by paying the loan the candidate made to herself, the fundraising help is significant. Finally, there remains the $250,000 contribution that can happen anytime. Candidate loans to themselves should be abolished.

I also wanted point out a neat trick in money-shifting from Bloomberg:

Unlike the rules for her personal loan, Clinton can tap her Senate campaign account to pay off the vendor debts. While the account had $277,480 as of March 31, she could ask the donors who gave her $23 million for the general election if they would be willing to re-designate that money for her 2012 Senate re-election campaign. That would give her more than enough cash to repay everyone but herself.

People gave to the general election fund because they maxed out the $2,300 allowed for the nomination. Redesignating the money for her Senate campaign and then using that money to pay vendor debts means contributors can exceed the $2,300 cap for the nomination. I didn't know about this, and I wonder how many other loopholes are out there.

UPDATE: NY Times sez it's unclear whether the money-shifting trick is legal.

Climate bet offer to Charles Krauthammer

(After Krauthammer wrote this Op-Ed, I sent the email below.)


Dear Mr. Krauthammer,

Personally, and like many environmentalists, I'm agnostic about nuclear power - its high cost, vulnerability to terrorism, and role in nuclear weapons proliferation balance against its low-carbon footprint in a way I find difficult to judge.

But seeing as you could single out no other way to reduce carbon output in your recent column, I would like to know if you would be willing to bet a substantial amount of money over whether global warming will accelerate in the near future. Specifically, I would like to bet you that warming in the next decade will be at least twice that of the per-decade rate in the 20th Century. That type of warming hardly fits well with the theory of negative feedbacks that you think might keep us all safe.

I expect you might say that I'm challenging you to a bet where you haven't taken a clear position. However, if you advocate doing little beyond expanding nuclear power (and no reasonable expansion of nuclear power alone will solve the carbon problem), then your policy bet is that the climate won't warm enough so that rapid action is required. This policy choice has consequences, so I suggest you and I make the consequences a little more financially direct.

I would note that if you decide against betting because you might lose, then you are applying the precautionary principle and choosing a policy for your wallet, right now, that acknowledges a serious threat from global warming and takes an action right now to avoid that financial threat to you individually. I suggest the same policy choice should apply more broadly.

Maybe I'm overreacting to your column - maybe you would have added support for a carbon tax, increased mileage standards, financial support for renewables and conservation, etc. but you just wanted to say something controversial. I suggest you add those policies in the future. Meanwhile, I will wait for your response to my bet offer.

Sincerely,
Brian Schmidt

A great Obama Campaign ideas aggregator - too bad about the name

The site is called OhBoyObama.com, which reminds me of Chef Boyardee. You can propose and vote on ideas for the Obama campaign, and hopefully the campaign might pay some attention (who knows).

Favorite idea I've seen so far is to import a version of parliamentary Question Time. FWIW, I just posted my own idea, suggesting that Obama promise to reverse the soft-on-crime approaches of the Republican Party, especially related to corporate crimes.

Debating against climate dishonesty

With my usual blogging speed, I just finished listening to the NPR debate topic from last year, "Global warming is not a crisis" (aftermath reviewed by Gavin here).

Gavin had the toughest job, I think. Audience members understand that debaters will have certain biases and selectivity with the facts, but they also assume a certain level of honesty they're not going to get from the most prominent denialists. Gavin's role was to inform the audience that the other side isn't honest in its use of studies or facts, and that the lay audience doesn't have the scientific chops to sort through the dishonesty. The audience didn't like to hear that second part, but they need to hear it and they may ultimately absorb it after several hearings. I can say as a darn-well informed layperson that I get lost in some of the scientific arguments, especially the statistical ones, and these people who don't pay nearly as much attention will have to live with that fact too.

I'll add three suggestions: first, Gavin points out in his post that "the number of spurious talking points can seriously overwhelm the ability of others to rebut them." With the advantage of hindsight, that should have been part of the debate message, that the other side will use spurious points that the audience can't decipher on their own and that the pro-science side doesn't have the time to refute in the debate context.

Second, rather than attack the denialist side's credibility in general, the attack on their credibility should be directed specifically at the individuals at the podium for what they have individually done. Crichton and Stott particularly constitute Tim Blair-ish piñatas for this purpose. That's not a typical scientific approach, but the denialists aren't acting like scientists, and people deserve to know that. Maybe, eventually, they will rein in their claims if they find themselves confronted with them in different contexts.

Finally, I disagree with Gavin's conclusion that debates like this aren't worthwhile. Practice refines debate approaches. I know that means the bad guys also get to practice, but if we believe that truth has a tiny edge in persuasiveness over deception, then practice will ultimately favor the truth.

Mashed cauliflower tastes just like mashed potatoes

Time for school lunches to switch over.

That is all.

Short stuff

Yesterday I switched back and forth between watching news of the Phoenix lander arrival on Mars and listening to an NPR program about detainees tortured at Gitmo.

In 1997 I was in Chile when the Pathfinder mission arrived at Mars. I'm not all that given to patriotic expressions, but the widespread fascination that the Chilean news media had with the Mars mission gave me a sense of pride as an American, something my country did that was admired globally. What a strange perspective yesterday, then, seeing the best and the worst of America being expressed.

I feel like focusing on the best instead of the worst. We might know within a week whether the polygonal cracks in Mars' polar surfaces have filled in part with ice, which could only happen if pre-existing ice melted and flowed into the cracks - in other words, proof of liquid water at the Martian surface in geologically recent time periods, and therefore a potential habitat for life.

We need more of the best and an end to the worst.

Counting down to the Mars Science Laboratory liftoff next year....

The nuclear energy dilemma

Thirteen countries in the Middle East have started or revived nuclear energy programs in recent years, reacting to Iran's nuclear energy/potential nuclear weapon program. Iran is just one example of a "peaceful" nuclear program undergoing questionable developments, something that right-wing enthusiasts over nuclear energy completely fail to handle (assuming that serial invasions isn't the best approach). It's also a tough nut for people like me, though, who are skeptical semi-supporters of increased nuclear power.

The question about nuclear energy isn't just whether it's good or bad for the environment, it's also about the potential harm to international security. Not many people have expertise in both areas.*

My sense is that we need to pursue all the low-carbon energy strategies, but how to handle nuclear energy on the international level?

Some ideas:

• To discourage the spread of control of nuclear technology and nuclear materials, new nuclear plants could be located in countries that already possess plants, with the power exported at internationally-controlled prices.
• Massively beefed-up IAEA control of nuclear plants should exist in countries acquiring nuclear power for the first time. Maybe every important job and piece of equipment could be staffed and owned by the IAEA using foreign nationals, except crucial safety personnel. The plants should be run by the IAEA, except that the host country has the right to shut down operations for safety reasons.
• Why should countries newly acquiring nuclear energy have less sovereign ownership than current nuclear operators? They shouldn't - the same rules should apply to nuclear power in countries that have it right now (good luck getting Americans to go along with this).
• As an alternative to submitting American nuclear power plants to IAEA control, the price Americans and other sovereign controllers of nuclear power should pay in return for new countries losing that sovereign power is that we should accept the nuclear waste from those new countries' plants.

I don't think these ideas would look all that attractive to typical American proponents of nuclear power, even if I have no objection to them.



*Al Gore does have expertise in both fields, and he opposes an expanded role for nuclear power, mainly because of the nuclear waste issue (I don't care much about) and nuclear proliferation issue (does bother me).

California voters, please vote no on Prop 98 and yes on 99

The stupidity is back with us again. Feigning anger over the mostly-nonexistent threat of government agencies forcing people to sell their property so the agencies can resell the property to business interests, the property-rights fanatics have again given us an initiative that goes much further and restricts land-use regulation designed to protect the environment.

Proposition 98 specifically defines as a prohibited taking for private use, any regulation "in order to transfer an economic benefit to one or more private persons at the expense of the private owner" (text at bottom of first page). While this is so poorly written that we can hope the courts will gut it, we can't count on that. Any good land-use regulation will provide some economic benefit. Tightening noise restrictions in a mixed industrial/residential area will increase residential property values, for example. Had the proponents written it to say it prohibited regulations with a primary effect or intent of transferring an economic benefit, they would have avoided this problem. I think the failure to write it this way is intentional. I'll also note some incredibly disingenous discussion at the Volokh website that completely ignores this issue.

Other reasons to vote against 98 and for 99 are here. Proposition 99 takes a much more limited approach to dealing with this non-problem; passing 99 with more votes would invalidate 98 and hopefully stop future versions of 98 (which itself is a rehashed version of an initiative that failed in 2006).

Finally, my day job for the last five years involves monitoring land use in Santa Clara County, a 700,000 acre county with 1.6 million people. I don't recall any eminent domain proceedings since I started the job. Where is the problem? I may have missed some proceedings, somewhere, but I'll be even more surprised if they go beyond the standard road-widening issue that would not be affected by Proposition 98. This is just a Trojan Horse scam.

What Obama should say about McCain's climate promises

Obama should continue to tie McCain to Bush, saying something like this:

George Bush, like John McCain today, promised in 2000 to regulate carbon dioxide emissions and to require all power plants to meet clean-air standards in order to reduce carbon dioxide. Two months after he was elected, he broke his promise and fought environmental efforts ever since. On this issue, like so many others, we cannot afford a third Bush-McCain administration.

This puts McCain into a tight spot of dealing with Bush's broken promise. The best he can do is to plaintively say he won't break promises like Bush did, which won't be very convincing to environmental voters and won't exactly energize Republican voters either.

Expanding the blogroll

Ta-Nehisi Coates - politics from an African-American angle.

The G Spot - women's political issues. I've looked for analysis that isn't simplistic application of feminist theory (Duke Lacrosse scandal) or even more simplistic counter-reaction. This is it.

Ezra Klein - good political instincts from this youngster. Usually.

McCain climate proposals vague about India and China

While McCain's climate proposal seems fairly mainstream, if not as good as Obama's, there's been little discussion of his India and China proposals. Here's the text:

....If we are going to establish meaningful environmental protocols, then they must include the two nations that have the potential to pollute the air faster, and in greater annual volume, than any nation ever in history....At the same time, we will continue in good faith to negotiate with China and other nations to enact the standards and controls that are in the interest of every nation — whatever their stage of economic development....Pressing on blindly with uncontrolled carbon emissions is in no one’s interest, especially China’s. And the rest of the world stands ready to help.

So the question is what standards are in the interest of developing nations that McCain acknowledges have little responsibility for the current buildup of greenhouse gases. The good news is that McCain doesn't expressly take the usual hard line position that India and China have to freeze and cut their emissions "equally" with the developed world, despite having per-capita emissions that are one-tenth to one-third of the US emission level. That argument isn't intended to create better regulation - it's intended to kill any possible deal.

On the other hand, McCain doesn't expressly rule out that position. Nor does he take what I'd consider an equitable position - an equal, per capita emission allocation to nations regulating either annual emissions or total contributions to greenhouse gases. Any position by McCain that developing nations should be restricted to lower per-capita emissions than the US isn't going to do well internationally, but whether he'll fight conservatives he point out growing total emissions from developing countries isn't clear. It's vague.

UPDATE: Having scanned Obama's proposal, it's better in general than McCain but no more specific about India and China.