Pretty much everyone and their brother will have the NFL on their TV this Sunday at 1pm. And normally so would I. But this Sunday at 1pm I’ll be watching the USA vs. Ireland in the Rugby World Cup. And you should too.

First off, I should say that the Giants game isn’t until 4pm. If it was at 1, I’d probably tape the rugby. So disregard what I’m about to say if your favorite NFL team plays at 1pm. But if your plan is to watch some random early game that you don’t actually care about, do yourself a favor and watch the rugby game instead. Here’s why. Continue reading →

Music Question: what are the best otherwise-unavailable B-side of all time? That is, what are the best rock songs ever initially released only as the B-side of a single (i.e. not available on the full record). I have eight candidates in mind:

1. Strawberry Fields Forever, The Beatles. This is probably the winner. The Beatles had begun recording for what became Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, but Capitol records was interested in having a single, stat. So they took the first two tracks recorded for the album — Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever — and put them on what they called “a double A-side.” And then left them off of the new album. It’s amazing to imagine what Sgt. Pepper could have been if you put those two songs on it and, say, dumped Within You, Without You. There are many other Beatles candidates, since they often left singles off their albums. One that comes to mind is  the up-tempo version of Revolution, which appeared originally as the B-side to the Hey Jude single.

2. Yellow Ledbedder, Pearl Jam. I can remember sitting at a friend’s house in like 1993 or 1994 when someone walked in with the Jeremy single on cassette import. This made no sense to me, because I think everyone in the room owned Ten. It was the first time I had consciously encountered a B-side that was not from the LP.

3. Raw Ramp, T. Rex. This is probably my favorite T. Rex song. It’s on the back of the Bang a Gong (Get it On) single off of Electric Warrior. If you buy Electric Warrior now, it’s included as a bonus track.

4. Pink Cadillac, Bruce Springsteen. This was the back of the Dancing in the Dark single in 1984. I don’t think there’s any question that it is the better song on the single. Evidently, it was cut from Born in the U.S.A. to make room for I’m Going Down. I would probably have chucked Working on the Highway.

5. Highway Chile, Jimi Hendrix Experience. The back of the The Wind Cries Mary single.

6. Hey Hey What Can I Do, Led Zeppelin. It really is shocking that this wasn’t put on Led Zeppelin III. It was just the back of the Immigrant Song single. I think it’s in my top 5 favorite Zepp songs.

7. Into the Groove, Madonna. I would guess that most people think this is on the soundtrack to Desperately Seeking Susan. Nope, it’s the back of the Angel single from Like A Virgin.

8. Sweetest Thing, U2. The back of the Where the Streets Have No Name single. Probably a good thing it was left off The Joshua Tree; it doesn’t really sound like the rest of that album.

Other candidates? Continue reading →

You hear the following (or similar) almost constantly from some segments of the middle-brow chattering class:

Why is candidate X  still running for President? He is polling at 2% and has no chance.

There is a simple answer: there are lots of reasons to run for President of the United States, and only one of them is to become President of the United States. Here is a partial list of such reasons:

* to become President of the United States

* to get picked Vice President of the United States

* to raise awareness for an issue

* to represent a regional and/or radical ideology

* to become a Secretary in the next President’s cabinet

* to join the list of potential candidates four years later

* to expand your network of fundraising

* to challenge your party’s orthodoxy on one or more issues

* to increase your private sector market value as a commentator or author

All of this also ignores one of the most common reasons — trying to catch lightning in a bottle and hit that 80 to 1 longshot. And a certain level of self-delusion that can convince a campaign that a 10,000 to 1 longshot is actually a 50 to 1 longshot. But leave that aside.

The bottom line is that you can’t assume all candidates are in the race for the purpose of winning the race. For some reason, people see this as obvious when you talk about 3rd party candidates (i.e. Nader), but fail to grasp that the same dynamics are at play in major party primaries. And I think people often underestimate the effects. Without getting all Overton Window-y here, I think it’s pretty sound logic that the inclusion of wider ideologies within party debates can not only alter the preferences of the primary/general electorate, but can also reshape the public perception of the more popular candidates, thus contributing strongly to the outcomes. Again, for some reason this all seems obvious when a major party co-opts the popular plank of a third party candidate, but not as obvious when the challenge comes during the primary and from within the major party.

So, if there’s still enough money to keep the lights on at campaign headquarters, there are lots of reasons to stay in the race, at least until the advantages of dropping out and endorsing another candidate outweigh those reasons.

All of this reminds me of another, similar issue on Capitol Hill: why do Members of Congress introduce so many bills that have no chance of even being considered, nevermind passed? Again, simple answer: there are lots of reasons to introduce a bill: to signal preferences, to appease interests, to put down a marker in a policy debate, to show effort, to enhance bargaining position, to build public support, to gain media attention, and so forth. Throw on that it’s relatively cheap (both in money and time) to write a bill, and the big surprise is not how many are introduced, but that more aren’t. Continue reading →

There’s a long and well-known literature in political science that say Members of Congress have three goals: re-election, increasing their internal power within their chamber, and making good public policy for your constituents (For example, see Fenno). In general, the re-election goals takes primacy, because without it, the other two become unattainable. And contrary to what your cynical uncle says, that’s probably a good thing: if Members did not concern themselves with getting re-elected, both the theoretical and practical underpinings of republican representation tend to fall apart.

This is not the kind of political science that is much up for debate; at this point it’s more or less self-evident to everyone. So what becomes interesting in public choice situations is when the three goals come into conflict: when increasing your power in the chamber means casting votes that hurt your re-election chances; when making good public policy for your constituents goes against their own perception of their interests (and thus your re-election chances); and when increasing your power in the chamber necessitates accepting bad public policy. How Members make decisions when these goals come into conflict is perhaps the most interesting aspect of congressional behavior.

One expansion of this line of thinking is to consider the goals of political parties, which are in essence aggregate collections of Members. There are differences, however. Continue reading →

Warning: history and political science geekery ahead.

Got into an interesting discussion at APSA this past weekend about books that have had large contemporaneous political impacts. The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, came up. So did Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson. The hands-down winner, of course, was Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Setting aside Lincoln’s famous (and probably apocryphal) quote implying that the book started the war, it is without question the most politically influential book in American history. It’s the best selling book of the 19th century save the Bible, and it’s an overtly political tract, despite being fiction (it’s main target, however, is not exactly slavery per se; the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 is more narrowly in its cross-hairs, and despite being an obvious abolitionist piece in its sentimentality and tone, from the post-war received perspective the book kinda identifies more with the growing anti-slavery ideology of the early 1850’s than the (still then) radical abolitionist movement. Remember, the book was written prior to the Kansas-Nebraska Act).

But there’s another book published in the 1850’s that, while probably not known by 1 out of a 1000 people, also had a huge impact on the late-decade descent into war. Continue reading →

Thoughts on Strasmas, Safeco Field, and little league pitch count limits. Continue reading →

Places a kid raised in the 80’s thought he’d never be: on Twitter. I’ll be writing regularly. @mattglassman312.

The institutions of Capitol Hill are falling fast. First they ended the page program. Now comes word that the Hawk n’ Dove is closing in October. Don’t be fooled, either: even though the Hawk will remain a bar location, it’s getting a 100% remodeling by it’s new owners.

Honestly, I don’t love the Hawk. The barroom is overrated, and the entire indoor lunch area smells like a urinal. The private room is great for a small gathering and the waitstaff is definitely friendly, but even my favorite thing on the menu (Park City chicken sandwich) doesn’t hold a candle to a randomly picked sandwich at Mr. Henry’s just down the street.

No, the reason I’ll miss the Hawk are purely Burkean. This was an institution both constitutive and reflective of Capitol Hill. It’s charmingly grimey in the barroom. You’re just as likely to see someone in a $1000 suit as you are someone who looks seriously down on their luck. Everyone talks politics, but even the politicos don’t talk it seriously. No one is going to do you any favors, but the waitstaff is genuinely friendly.

The grandeur of the place is only found in your imagination; seemingly everything has happened there, but anytime you go there, nothing does. The creative destruction of capitalism requires that places like the Hawk eventually move on. I’ll miss it more than I should. Continue reading →

Once again, we seem to be caught in a short-term/long-term problem. I written about this here and here, although that was more in the purely political/democratic sense of the problem.

The problem now is more purely economic (although political/democratic issues still pervade). The short term problem is that we may be sliding back into a recession (or worse). The long-term problem is that much of the western world has massive sovereign debt issues. More after the jump… Continue reading →

You could fill the hayloft right now, as they say, with all the talk about Representative Michelle Bachmann’s (R-MN) candidacy for the Republican nomination for president. And yet I haven’t seen a single discussion of what, from a political science perspective, is perhaps the most unusual aspect of Ms. Bachmann’s campaign:

She is a sitting Member of the House of Representatives.

It is hard to overstate how rare it is for major candidates for the Presidency to be Representatives. Only one person — James Garfield — has ever gone from the People’s House to the White House.*** One other sitting Representative has won electoral votes, Speaker of the House Henry Clay in 1824. Since the onset of the modern party convention system in 1832, no major political party has nominated a sitting Representative (save the Republican nomination of Garfield in 1880) for the presidency. Representative John Anderson (R-IL) ran as an independent candidate in 1980, and won 7% of the national popular vote. Only a handful of other sitting Members — Dick Gephardt and Jack Kemp in 1988, Mo Udall in 1976 — even come to mind as serious contenders for major party nominations.

[UPDATE: Reports indicate that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) may be seriously considering running. He’d be an instant serious contender.]

This is not to say that having previously served in the House is a detriment for a Presidential candidate. To the contrary, 19 Presidents and 33 major nominees had, prior to their candidacy, been Members of the House.

Why is this? There’s no definitive answer, but here are four explanations with probable marginal effects: Continue reading →

Holy cow: the joint leadership of the House of Representatives just ended the Page Program. It’s been around since the 1820’s. Full text of the Boehner/Pelosi letter after the jump.

Continue reading →

I’m one of the few people standing on Capitol Hill who has not — at least as of yet — been blamed for the S&P ratings downgrade of U.S. Treasuries and related bonds. And I may be the only person on Capitol Hill who isn’t confident that they somehow know what caused the downgrade and, more importantly, who to blame. Seemingly every politician, staffer, pundit, blogger, and crazy uncle in the whole country seems to know the answer to those two questions.

I have but just three points. Continue reading →

In his epic book about heavy metal in the 80’s, Chuck Klosterman writes:

When Open Up and Say Ahh… was released, I remember reading a bunch of reviews where writers claimed it lacked the “rollicking fun” of Poison’s first album, Look What the Cat Dragged In. This confused me, because those same writers had all hated the first record, too.

This phenomenon has recently been transferred to politics. During the course of the debt limit debate, I’ve heard a growing number of liberal voices favorably discuss Reagan, and a smaller (but still significant) number of conservative voices long for the days of Bill Clinton. But partisans hated Reagan and Clinton with a passion that at the time was considered pretty remarkable, even in the context of Nixon and Carter. So it’s sort of rich (but mostly funny) to hear all these cross-party odes to the Gipper and the First Man of Foggy Bottom lately.

As for Poison, it is true that Open Up And Say Ahh… didn’t quite match Look What the Cat Dragged In on the “rollicking fun” meter. But that’s like saying Kobe Bryant isn’t quite as good as Michael Jordan. Continue reading →

There’s an interesting passage in Michael Lewis’ The Big Short, in which he describes how a couple of amateur wanna-be hedge-fund managers made their fortune by identifying (what they saw as) an anomaly in options pricing. Basically, they observed that companies suffering from cataclysmic events (ex: a serious SEC investigation into company leadership) tended to see their option prices drop by a significant amount, often by 30% or more.

But in the long-term, that’s peculiar for many cases: the decreased option price is building in an estimate of the short-term volatility, but the situation isn’t a bell curve; the true value of the stock is probably discrete, either zero if the company crashes,  or not fundamentally affected if it survives. Therefore, there is a lot of money to be made in identifying whether companies will survive their exogenous shock.

I feel like this same thing is playing out with the debt limit. Continue reading →

How do you get a series of related policies through a legislative body when there are large factions with intense preferences against each of the individual policies? Continue reading →

Trivia question: most fans of baseball history know that Indians legend Bob Feller struck out 17 batters in a game his rookie year (1935), when he was only 17 years old.  What most people don’t know is that someone else has also struck out as many batters in a game as they were years old. Who is it? Continue reading →

Too many smart people make the mistake of saying that politicians “lack courage.”  Usually when they say this, they mean something like the following:

1) There’s a significant public policy problem on the agenda; and

2) The politician has to choose between policy X, which is normatively desirable but unpopular, and policy Y, which is normatively sub-optimal but popular; and

3) The politician chooses Y over X.

There are several variations on this, the most common being the rather famous J-curve  I’ve written about before, in which X is a good long-term policy that incurs short term pain, and Y is good short-term policy which produces long-term problems.

In any case, the usual “smart” takeaway is that politicians are risk-averse, care more about re-election than good public policy, and are unlikely to “do the right thing” when “the right thing” conflicts with the perceived results of the next election. Other euphemisms (singular and collective) include “lacks leadership,” “failure of the political class,” and any variation of “hack.” As suggested, this can be applied to individual politicians, or Congress/Washington as a whole.

I think the above is basically the conventional wisdom. But I think it is quite a bit off. I’ve got five point to make. Continue reading →

Number One – I generally subscribe to the line of thinking that says the surest way to reduce the public and politician appetite for governments spending is to raise taxes and balance the books. Deficit spending — either in the short-term or over the long haul — allows people to get $1 worth of government services for less than a $1 worth of taxes. That’s a strong incentive fore everyone to think positively about spending programs, even ones that are probably not neutrally worth the money. I don’t think any government program is good or bad per se; but I do think that they should be judged neutrally, and that includes judging them based on their true present cost.

This is kind of the opposite of the “starve the beast” strategy that some opponents of governments pending try to employ; instead of refusing to increase taxes, you require an increase in taxes to cover obligations. However, this remedy is sensitive to progressions in the tax code. That is, it works better if the tax burden is shared equally among all, or at least proportionally flat. For example, if the current budget deficit is reconciled by raising taxes only on billionaires, that doesn’t do much to make the average recipient of government spending feel the true cost of the services being received. And so there’s a connection between the cheap cost of government services and the progressiveness of the tax code. My hunch is that’s a secondary reason many people in politics get so worried about raising taxes on the middle-class; not just because it’s, well, raising taxes on the middle class, but also in part because it intellectually exposes the middle class to the true costs.

Number Two – I’m about two press conference mentions of “loopholes” away from kicking in my television. Somehow people in DC seem to have gotten the idea that all tax breaks are “loopholes,” which is pure nonsense. A “loophole” in the tax code is a situation in which someone has cleverly figured out how to save money on their taxes by exploiting an unintentional consequence of the tax structure.  These exists, for sure, and there are many people who make a lot of money by finding them for clients. But the vast, vast majority of things that people are calling “loopholes” are actually intentional tax break carve outs. The child tax credit is not a loophole. The mortgage interest deduction is not a loophole. The untaxed employer-side health care benefits is not a loophole. Oil and gas subsidies are not a loophole. These are intentional pieces of tax legislation, designed for specific purposes (some good, some not so good) and operating exactly as intending. The upshot, of course, is that “fixing the loopholes” isn’t the politics of cleaning up a unintended error that some individuals/companies are exploiting; it’s the politics of reversing an intentional carve-out. And the latter is a lot harder to accomplish than the former.

Question: When you see on the stock ticker that the price of a barrel of oil has gone up (or down), is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Answer:  I think this question is a whole lot more complicated than it first appears.

I bring this up because I’m watching one of the cable news channels and the talking head just said that the price of oil dropped $2 on the bad jobs report released this morning. Now normally, when the framing is gas prices, oil going down is a good thing. But in this case, the framing is “demand in the American economy,” which means that oil going down is bad because it’s an indicator that economic demand is stagnating.

But this is problematic, of course, because it means that no matter what direction oil goes — up or down — we can theoretically be pessimistic (or happy) about it.

Still, there are other angles too. Higher oil prices are good for oil companies, almost all of which are public entities, and most of which are blue-chip stocks that are owned significantly by public and private pension funds, and comprise significant portions of mainstream mutual funds.  So increased oil prices are probably good for your retirement portfolio, and your state governments balance sheet. Higher oil prices are also associated with a decrease in driving (hedged by a marginal decrease in government gas tax revenue ).

On the other hand, increases in oil prices tend to have systematic inflationary effects, since oil underpins the costs of all goods. Inflation is not great for anyone (except maybe the self-employed who have high capital debt, like farmers), and definitely not good for your pension fund. So that’s a factor. My sense is that there are also trade imbalance effects of oil, although I don’t know enough about international finance to say.

But I do think it’s safe to say that an increase (or decrease) in oil prices is not inherently good or bad for the average American. It fundamentally depends on your financial relationship to oil itself — how much do you drive, how much do you (or your retirement fund) have invested in oil-based equities, and what are the inflationary consequences.

You don’t have to be a bleeding-heart liberal to agree that that some proportion of one’s destiny in life is dictated by factors utterly beyond the control of the individual. In fact, my experience has been that despite some arguments to the contrary, conservatives and libertarians are just as willing as liberals to accept such a proposition. The difference, I think, is that conservatives and libertarians are at peace with the consequences, whereas many liberals have a general uneasiness with the idea that individual achievement is ultimately constrained, regardless of effort, by an unequal starting point.

But that’s a different topic.

The question here is simple: if you accept that there are three basic lotteries in life — a genetic one for the innate talents and capacities you possess, a geographic one for the society you happen to be born into, and a financial one for the resources you and your family control at your birth — how would you rank the relative importance of each, and what would you consider as you create your ranking?

More on this later this week. Continue reading →