I Don't Need This

From Pollster.com: Most interesting about the current estimates is that if we ignore the classifications and just examine which candidate has a numeric lead, the electoral votes as of today would divide in a perfect 269-269 tie.

Immigration and Housing

Back to my pet idea, the link between housing crisis and immigration. Yesterday's Post had this article:

"The number of immigrants coming to the United States slowed substantially in 2007, with the nation's foreign-born population growing by only 511,000, compared with about a million a year since 2000, according to Census figures released today. "

Say the housing industry was building 400,000 housing units for immigrants since 2000, and selling them, either to immigrants or to landlords who rented them out. All of a sudden, the demand is halved. I believe the housing market is probably inelastic--takes a big change in price to get someone to downsize or upsize. So the change in immigration probably took the pop out of the housing bubble. Once the bubble burst, the Ponzi-style nature of the securitization of debt that the smart boys on Wall Street had engineered made the consequences much worse than they should have been (as they were when the housing bubble burst back in the 80's.)

Dana Says It Better Than I Have

At The Edge of the American West, Dana writes on Pollan' Omnivore's Dilemna. As she notes, many of the health problems of our diet are lower class, while Pollan's suggestions work best for the middle. (Actually I'd say upper middle, since we have no upper class in the U.S., at least none who cook for themselves.)

Obama Is Gore II

Sen. Obama pledges to cut the ranks of middle managers. I've heard that before, from Saint Al Gore.

Forgive my sarcasm, at least he's addressing the performance assessment problem. From a comment I posted:
"If McCain, when he inveighs against waste in DC, would say he would end all problems that rate ineffective on PART it would be a start. If Congress would say the same, it would be a start. Even if OMB is able to impose some order on the executive, it doesn't mean much unless Congress and the appropriations committees buy in. And they don't. Until then, neither McCain nor Obama's promises mean much."

Calming the Waters

Erin asked questions this morning. In an attempt to calm waters, let me observe:

• it's not true this is the biggest thing since..[whatever]. Memory is fallible. I can remember Truman seizing the steel companies (and strikes in wartime). And Sputnik. And Bay of Pigs. And riots in the cities. And Nixon taking us off the gold standard, which seemed maybe the end of the world. And the stagflation of the late 70's. And the S&L crisis. Maybe 100 years from now historians will see this month as the biggest pivot point since 1929, but probably not. After all, just over 7 years ago we were saying 9/11 "changed everything". Did it?
• 700 billion is a lot of money, but I'd bet the net cost is lots lower. It's my memory of the S&L, RTC mess that the net loss was much lower than the figures tossed around earlier. [Correction: looked up RTC on wikipedia which led to this report. Bottom line is people were way off in their estimates of the problem and costs. So it's probably correct to say today we are very uncertain of the size of the problem and the cost. Of course, I'm also making the mistake of assuming the S&L parallels the subprime problems, which it doesn't.]
• Everyone has their own axe to grind. Best to let them grind away.
  

Service in the Military

1 year 11 months and 11 days was enough to convince me I was a natural-born civilian (despite being descended from folks Sen. Webb says were "born fighting"). So I've always been ambivalent about the military. Freakonomics has an interesting post on a Heritage study of the nature of today's military, specifically who serves. (Every candidate with kids old enough has a child who served/is serving in Iraq. That seems a long ways away from the 1980's and 90's.)

There's suspicion over the figures voiced both in the post and the comments. I suspect myself that you have to get into the boondocks of the data to really understand.

Unthinkable Thoughts, a 269 Tie?

As if the bailout weren't enough bad news to obsess over, now comes a Washington Times story on the elections--the possibility of Obama and McCain tying. The FDA should have banned the story from distribution as dangerous to one's health and peace of mind.

10-Acres, Again [Updated]

Forgive my interest in this minutiae (to all except bureaucrats and small farmers), House Ag committee has voted to suspend the 10-acre rule (only farmers with over 10 acres in base are eligible for certain programs) for 2 years to: Give us time to decide how to correct the problem for later years.”

By delaying, they're probably complicating the problem, given there's some one-time decisions (as on ACRE) that farmers need to make.

[Updated--cattlenetwork has some more.

"Decision Dominance"

Is threatened by e-mail. Bureaucrats like "decision dominance", just as parents do: "Do what I tell you". Here's the article, via Next Gov.

[Actually, once you read the article, the colonel is mostly concerning about poorly structured emails, too many emails, personal use of emails, etc.)

The Conservatism of Liberals

From Treehugger, a post on genetically modified sorghum in Africa. I can sort of understand opposition to GM that adds resistance to Roundup, or an insecticide, to a plant. Don't agree with it, but can understand it. I've big problems with opposition to modifying sorghum to have more nutrients or to make protein more digestible. Even if such traits do migrate to wild varieties of sorghum, I don't see the downside. Perhaps it would make wild sorghum better able to compete with other plants, because it's more valuable to animals?