Critical Exponent

Today after I work I went to a meeting at the library. There, a (surprisingly small) group of neighbors got together to meet with our state senator and talk about legislative priorities and issues on our mind. It was a good way to learn about issues in Olympia and across the state, and to provide feedback on our view of things.

A great transcript-linked video of the debate, with a timeline, is available courtesy of the New York Times.

My impressions:

• Gov. Palin rose from seeming completely out of her element to acting like the typical politician who sticks to the talking points and tries to spin/avoid facts.

• Both of them seemed more articulate and fluid than their respective principals.

• Gay rights: Biden seemed to issue a strong statement on gay rights, though he did not support same-sex civil marriage. It seemed to me he left the door open, though, by saying there should not be a constitutional distinction. If they make all the federal benefits available to same-sex couples, then they’re effectively creating a civil marriage institution (and I don’t care what they call it, as long as it’s the same for everyone!).

A friend at work suggested the following thought experiment with regards to the current financial crisis:

We are currently considering a $700B bailout for Wall Street. Assume that the value of the homes being foreclosed because of the crisis is the same order of magnitude (more on this below, but that’s tangential to the thought experiment).

An alternative solution could be for the government to take the money that it is about to give to Wall Street, and instead buy out all the bad debt directly from citizens: in other words, give people with bad debts the money to purchase their homes outright. If you prefer, give them just enough money to bring their debt down to a manageable level, and leave them to pay the rest off. Depending on how the numbers work out, this could be cheaper or about the same as the Wall Street bailout. For the sake of argument, assume this alternative is cheaper. Question: why not implement this?

Under these assumptions, this bailout costs taxpayers less than the Wall Street solution. The beneficiaries of the government largesse would be individuals rather than corporations. The profit from the bailout would not go to the companies that would remain solvent and still require payment of their loans; the profit would go to individuals who have part or all of their debt paid off (though the companies would continue to stay afloat because any remaining consumer debt would now be serviceable).

I doubt this proposal would fly, however. I suspect people would resent that neighbors who got into debt over their heads are now being rewarded with a handout from the government that enables them to own too-expensive-for-their-means houses, while responsible folks who bought only as much house as they could afford receive no such gift and are stuck with more debt for less floor space.

But how is this different than the corporate handout? The companies that issued loans to risky borrowers are rewarded with the higher profits of the bubble and the government cash to survive the crash. Responsible companies that did not profiteer from questionable loans did not get the extravagant bubble profits and need no government handouts to survive the crisis.

Something seems wrong, no? Discuss.

[Here's a back-of-the-envelope calculation: One source cites approximately 300,000 foreclosures in August, so estimate twelve times that for the year: 3,600,000 foreclosures. The mean home price in the US is $212,000. Multiplying these two figures, we can estimate that the current value of foreclosed properties is about $763B (actually, slightly higher, since a large fraction occur in CA, where the mean house cost is higher). If we say that only half the mortgage debt needs to paid off for the remaining debt to be viable, we arrive at a $380B bailout, cheaper than but still the same order of magnitude as the current plan in DC.]

UPDATE: DailyKos came out with its own estimate of the numbers, lower than the one I present above.

I am not an economist. I certainly do not understand the ins and outs of the current financial crisis. The bottom line, though, seems to be this: the big shots on Wall Street with the outsize compensation and the opposition to government regulation now need the tax payers to bail them out.

I am willing to believe that, at this point, the only feasible option is the bail-out. However, intervention must come with regulation to prevent this problem from recurring. I think it’s unethical to have an economic system that privatizes the profits and socializes the risk. And it is hypocritical for so many supporters of such a system to belong to the party of “personal responsibility.”

Robert Reich makes the point much better than I can. If you agree, please contact your elected officials.

Obama mentioned gay rights in his acceptance speech even more than Kennedy did (emphasis mine):

We may not agree on abortion, but surely we can agree on reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies in this country. The reality of gun ownership may be different for hunters in rural Ohio than for those plagued by gang-violence in Cleveland, but don’t tell me we can’t uphold the Second Amendment while keeping AK-47s out of the hands of criminals. I know there are differences on same-sex marriage, but surely we can agree that our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters deserve to visit the person they love in the hospital and to live lives free of discrimination. Passions fly on immigration, but I don’t know anyone who benefits when a mother is separated from her infant child or an employer undercuts American wages by hiring illegal workers. This too is part of America’s promise – the promise of a democracy where we can find the strength and grace to bridge divides and unite in common effort.

But then the convention closed with a closing benediction by a Christian pastor. What about other faiths? What about atheists? Why did they have to inject religion into a political event?

Our marriage is less than a month away. Life feels full, as we try to juggle wedding tasks (the meeting of the parents went well), errands we want to get done beforehand (the picket fence is still an abstraction), and relaxation (hah!)

Obviously, I have marriage on the brain, but it seems like I’m not the only one. The New York Times has a retrospective on four years of gay marriage in Massachusetts, complete with a multimedia feature. Then, same-sex marriages are held up as examples of more equitable and non-gender-based power dynamics. And finally, in a shocking development, it seems that heterosexuals themselves are discovering equitable marriage roles.

These last two leave me shaking my head. Obviously in a same-sex marriage gender is not part of the power dynamics, but why should the power dynamics be affected by gender in the first place? And is it really that novel that some straight couples eschew gender roles? I certainly grew up with the expectation that both partners in a marriage share responsibilities equally, and that’s the norm among my friends, too.

The California Supreme Court, that’s who.

By now you’ve heard of the historic decision allowing same-sex marriage. Lambda Legal has a brief analysis of the decision, where they highlight the signficance of the ruling.

What this means personally is that Knox and I need could get legally married in California, though Vancouver remains closer. That’s in principle; it turns out that the ruling is not final unless no appeals or motions are filed within 30 days.

The decision caught me by surprise. Not because I expected the court to rule one way or the other, but rather because the case wasn’t even on my radar. Yes, I knew some cases were winding their way through the courts, but I wasn’t following.

This is a big change from the days of the Massachusetts legal victory and the rallies to defend the state constitution. Or even from more recent tracking of gay issues in the news. Why is this?

Part of this is political fatigue. Eight years of the national nightmare that is George W. Bush have taken their toll. I feel like I’m tuned out of the political process. Even in this presidential campaign, I’m tired of the posturing and plain-folksiness, the moralizing, the hyperbole.

Part of my encroaching apathy, too, is the volume and insignificance of the blogosphere. I’m not saying anything that hasn’t been said before, nor am I reaching masses of people. It’s just a fraction of my friends who bother to check my blog or RSS feed. And face-to-face debates? Much the same. No new points are brought up. Yes, talking to friends and neighbors about issues is a good way to effect change, but it is slow, laborious, and not scalable.

I care about the issues. I don’t care about the noise. More and more I seek refuge in the determinism of computer code, or the plainness of physical activity.

But I’m excited about the marriage victory.

On the issues, I think Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are pretty darn close, particularly when one considers the political realities the winner will face when taking the oath of office. From their records, perhaps some differences can be gleaned, though whether those differences matter— or ought to matter— may well be an unresolvable question.

But dammit if it isn’t upsetting to see the unfairness Clinton is up against!

First, there is the sexism and misogyny with which she is portrayed. You can find one compendium of reports here, and a depressing suggestion that we may be better able to shed racial than gender prejudice here.

And then there’s the divisiveness factor. Many people will not vote for Clinton because she is so divisive, and in so doing for that reason, they perpetuate the very divisiveness they seek to avoid. Moreover, by eschewing Clinton in order to get Republicans out of office, they are playing into the hands of these same Republicans who made her a divisive figure in the first place by focusing the nation’s attention on a protracted, expensive, and ultimately useless witch hunt during her husband’s presidency.

Part of me wishes this could be a controlled experiment, with candidates identical save their gender and race—and with equal baggage. Maybe then we’d see whether indeed our sexism and racism are so ingrained (and which one more so) as to determine our electoral choices. But when people are adamant about voting for “anyone but Hillary” in the general election, how can we deny these prejudices abound?

Between me battling a nasty virus that’s had me bedridden for three days and Knox putting out his back at the last minute, it’s a miracle we made it to caucus at all. But we did! It was exciting to see so many people participating in democracy: it was standing room only for the two hundred folks in room 113.

This was my first caucus ever. Here’s how it works: people declare which candidate they support and volunteers tally preferences and determine the initial allocation of delegates. You get a chance to change your mind, and then each candidate’s supporters choose delegates for the caucus at the next higher level.

My impressions: this is a slow, inefficient process that exacerbates the influence of peer pressure from your neighbors. I think that a primary election would be much simpler. (Oh, wait, we have that too in Washington, except it doesn’t count for the Democrats and only half-counts for Republicans). It seems like a good reason to have neighbors coming together is to propose platform items or initiatives to pas up the political chain. I support that. But to back a candidate? There are so many levels of indirection in the American system, beginning with caucuses and ending with the electoral college.

I think both Clinton and Obama would make excellent presidents, and the substantive differences between them pale next to differences they each have with the Republicans. But for all the talk of experience and change, there’s still a lot of the same old bull flying around on all sides:

• Clinton: “When Hillary is in the White House, no American will be invisible to the president of the United States.”

• Obama: Listen the rousing background music of this clip of Kennedy’s endorsement. It’s like watching Star Wars: A New Hope for the Universe

• Obama’s supporters, for all their enthusiasm, would do well to remember that Obama is not Jesus.

• Dirty cybersquatting: http://www.wa-democrats.org/ is the Democratic website; http://www.wa-democrats.com/ is the Republican website.

I’m actually quite excited about this election. Our eight-year national nightmare will (better!) finally come to an end. But I doubt policies will change as quickly and radically as I think they should.

But change is coming.

We had some friends over for dinner tonight. They told us about a friend of their son’s (they are both in eighth grade) who come out to him recently, by SMS. The son texted back: “Congratulations! That’s awesome.”

It’s a whole new world.