Liberal Outpost

Well, we won nationally but were thumped locally. After the election returns were in, I remembered one of the reasons I had been inactive in local politics in previous years: it is hard to feel like you can make a difference in such an extremely Democratic district. There did not seem to be much return on months of canvassing. We did, however, do better than we have in any year since 1994. It will be interesting to see if the bump outlasts the Obama presidency. If the Democrats stay this far to the left, then perhaps the local GOP can win some elections.

This is the first canvass free/conference free weekend in months. It feels great. I will have my week's lectures written by Sunday evening. I expect a pop in math output too. Clearly politics do not mix brilliantly with research - too distracting.

Amazingly I have heard nothing about the election in the faculty lounge for months. Perhaps my colleagues simply preferred not to think about the approaching wave. Wednesday I heard exactly zero comments about the election at work.

In one last attempt to help the candidates, I volunteered to electioneer for 4 hours on Tuesday, after my various University commitments were fulfilled. I was sent to pass out GOP literature at a polling site uncomfortably close to campus. I saw one overt Republican all evening. I arrived hours before the evening rush, too early for electioneering. I was not joined by other electioneers for over an hour. All the others represented liberal groups. Most were pleasant, and perhaps amused at my quixotic efforts. One lady, however, responded to my pleasantries with the revealing question: ''How can someone be a Republican?" I told her that it was difficult for anyone who understood economics or who objected to the government dictating the minutiae of his life to to be otherwise. She then launched on 'the Party of No' and castigated the GOP for opposing the healthcare bill. The discussion reminded me of grad school days. When I pointed to specific features of the bill I found objectionable (although I am opposed in principle to more or less the whole package) she would more often than not deny the existence of the offending feature. Clearly ignorance and denial are essential features for maintaining the liberal belief system.

Unfortunately, her belief system triumphed over mine in the local elections that night.

Fraud in the Voting Booth?

My county, like so many Democratic counties, has a long history of voting irregularities. It is hard to guess what impact this has on elections since the Democrats massively outnumber the Republicans anyway. This is my first year experiencing this first hand, and I am not sure how to interpret what I see.

Last weekend was the end of canvassing walks. This weekend I decided to substitute phone banking for walking. I am not overly fond of the phone and would rather contribute in most any other way to retiring the Democrats this election, but clearly phoning voters and urging them to the polls was the way to contribute yesterday. I settled in at GOP HQ with a bounded but seemingly infinite list of phone numbers to call. Shortly after I began calling to urge voters to the polls, a distraught woman dashed into headquarters. She was a designated GOP poll observer at the nearby polling site (early voting). She had arrived a quarter of an hour before the legal opening of the polls to find voters already filling the voting booths marking their ballots. When she identified herself and asked what was going on, the Democratic election officials barred her from the polling place. Happy for a reason to leave my phone, I trotted up the hill to the polling site and asked the GOP electioneers whether things were proceeding appropriately. They were (appropriately) barred from the actual polling site, but were able to confirm that the polls had opened early. I returned to HQ and phoned the county GOP chair to have him file a complaint.

Was anything wrong actually taking place? I don't know. Election officials may have decided to open early to accommodate the long lines of voters waiting to cast their votes. On the other hand, they may have opened early in order to open before the GOP observers and judges were in place. Perhaps ballots sans voters were fed into the machine before the GOP witnesses arrived. Perhaps not, but years of Democrats cheating at the ballot box makes a man paranoid. I have not yet heard the outcome of our chairman's complaint.

I returned to my phone and my finite but large list of GOP voters. I have learned on my walks not to identify myself as a GOP volunteer after hearing one time too many, ''Which ones are they, the Republicans or Democrats?" I now identify myself as an X County Republican volunteer. A few score calls later, the X County GOP secretary arrived at HQ. I had a bone to pick with her. Earlier that week I committed a cardinal error of life in our modern world; I sent her an email with my analysis of the vote numbers we had seen so far and their implications for our candidate (better than other people believed). Included in the email was a sarcastic comment about one of our underperforming candidates. The secretary liked the analysis and emailed it to the entire X County GOP, all the candidates, and our district officers too. Perhaps she emailed it to the WSJ too, but I haven't checked.
I was too amused to be really annoyed, but I did have to ask what the underperforming candidate said. Apparently he was not pleased, but he has a good sense of humor, and I am sure he will find it funny (but perhaps not for several weeks). I asked the secretary, tongue in cheek, if she was trying to get me kicked out of another GOP organization.

If you are a Republican (and a U.S. citizen and registered voter) and haven't voted yet, get out and vote Tuesday. If you are a Democrat, spend Tuesday curled up with a good economics text. If you are a visitor from Europe, Asia, Australia, or Africa, I am not sure why you read my blog entries on local politics, but hello, glad to have you here.

Milton Friedman's Twist on Hayek

Milton Friedman's Capitalism and Freedom has succeeded Boaz as my political bedtime reading. In my political readings thus far, I have been impressed and educated by Hayek's careful analysis of socialism, aggravated by Von Mises' sloppy analysis of liberalism, and much provoked to thought by Boaz's modern presentation of libertarian principles and their applications. Friedman, however, has been less exciting. Reading Friedman reminds me of reading Shakespeare and remarking on all the 'cliches'. Perhaps Friedman's impact on our current economic thinking has been so strong that his analysis now seems commonplace. I was, however, struck by an observation in Chapter II: The Role of Government in a Free Society. Friedman notes that government action, unlike market action, imposes conformity. The greater the scope of government action, the more areas in which people are forced to conform. Extending the range of the imposed conformity too far works to undermine social cohesion and generate conflict. This is reminiscent of Hayek's assertion that the massive legislation required to implement socialist economic policy is incompatible with democracy: the vast scope of the legislation makes it exceedingly unlikely that a majority can agree on any economic plan, leading socialist proponents to circumvent the democratic process in order to impose their program. (Of course, our current congressional leadership has obviated this obstacle by the simple expedient of convincing the Democratic majority to vote for enormous bills without actually reading them.) Friedman transfers Hayek's assertion from the House and Senate to the electorate: the greater the number and impact of government intrusions into citizens' lives, the more likely any given individual will be strongly opposed to some aspect of government action, with possible consequent disruption of society.

While I find Friedman's extension of Hayek's assertions intriguing, I have not seen much evidence of consequent social disruption. The Tea Party movement suggests that large numbers of Americans have decided that government intrusion into their lives has indeed exceeded their tolerance. Observe, however, that the response is political rather than social. I am not sure what form social disruption is supposed to take, although visions of rioting and striking French workers come to mind. Of course Europeans accept with little protest dramatically greater government control over their lives than Americans endure. Their history, however, differs from ours; in particular, they have never experienced the degree of individual liberty that Americans have long enjoyed and taken for granted. A great conservative fear at the time of the passage of Obamacare was that Americans could be lured into the same servile attitude towards the government.

When wondering how much government intervention American voters will tolerate, one is led to ask to what extent voters accept government impositions simply because they are advocated by their 'team' (i.e. political party)? In the same vein, as most of us ask as soon as we become politically aware, why are attitudes toward homosexuality, immigration, carbonophobia, class warfare, etc. linked? Presumably people choose their positions on issues based on their party affiliation at least as often as they choose their party affiliation based on their stands on issues. Perhaps the rise of the unaffiliated voter is important to consider in this context. As government reach expands, political parties must take stands on an ever wider variety of issues. Perhaps it is becoming ever harder for many Americans to affiliate with either major party; there are simply too many axes of potential disagreement. Unfortunately, opting out is a poor choice. The unaffiliated have little impact at the primary level; so, they share responsibility - through inaction - for the poor choices we often face in general elections. Once again I am led to appreciate the increased voter participation represented by the rise of the Tea Party movement. If the Tea Partiers are successful in rolling back government overreach (admittedly a long term project), then an amusing consequence could be a rise in voter identification with both parties. When the Republicans and Democrats no longer need to take stands on whether it is better to allow a hip replacement at age 70 instead of state of the art cancer drugs at age 75, it will be easier for voters to find a party with which he has no deal breaking disagreements.

"Let all things be done decently and in order."

Both Democrats and Republicans exhibit peculiarities in their candidate selection. Democrats have strong servile tendencies. They like to elect aristocrats, and they refer to their elected representatives as 'rulers'. With the name Kennedy, any charlatan is eligible for Democratic nomination to high office. The Bush dynasty shows the GOP shares this tendency to a lesser degree. The Democrats swoon for their candidates; their candidates "make their knees weak." Before the Tea Party, on the other hand, the GOP often seemed to regard nominations as a reward for services rendered; there almost seemed to be a queue, with candidates 'entitled' to the nomination, simply because they were, by some measure, next in line. How else can you explain nominating candidates like Bob Dole or John McCain, who seemed embarrassed by political principles?

Perhaps the 'reward for services rendered' interpretation was naive. As I became more active in the local GOP this year, I learned to appreciate the great power of name recognition in seeking support from an often uninterested electorate. Perhaps the 'next in line' were simply the best known.

The rise of the Tea Party promised an overthrow of the queue. In primary after primary, the 'entitled' GOP candidates were rejected. Unfortunately, in my county GOP, I have witnessed precisely the entitlement mentality that I had naively speculated was the source of Bob Dolian candidates. An important function of our county organization is to endorse candidates in nonpartisan races. In one nonpartisan race we considered recently, we had two Republicans competing. Our evaluation committee reported that one candidate had previously held the position, but was removed from office after committing a criminal offense. The other candidate was new to politics but boasted the sort of business and professional background which usually appeals to GOP voters. I was the only vote opposing the candidate with the criminal background. His appeal? He had more experience.
It was uncharitable to hold his prior offenses against him. I was unaware that the county GOP was a charity. I was appalled. After the meeting was over, I realized that not only were we rejecting a promising new candidate, but that our endorsement of the criminal could potentially cast doubt on all our endorsements of strong candidates. What happens to our credibility when a careful voter sees that we recommend criminals?

I felt culpable afterwards for failing to successfully convince my fellow Republicans. I have learned that the manner of argument suitable for faculty debate is not very successful in political forums. Oh well, maybe next time.

Crypto vouchers and For-Profit Colleges

This weekend I had so many deadlines piling up on me that I decided it was the optimal time to research the for-profit colleges, which have been crowding the educational policy sector of the blogosphere of late. Many conservatives and libertarians, while deploring the distortions caused by government funding of (for-profit and traditional) college education, express an interest in the for-profit education sector - an interest which I suspect is nurtured by their distaste for the liberal academics dominating traditional universities.

I had no prior knowledge of for-profit colleges other than the emails they occasionally send me asking me to recommend potential math faculty to them. My biases are what you might expect - I assumed that these were just diploma mills providing little or no education. My research topic was : what does a math major look like at a for-profit? My research tools went no further than Google. I only looked at a few of the larger for-profits, such as Phoenix and DeVry.

My first discovery was that the larger for-profits I examined are amazingly opaque. You cannot find the lists of courses readily available on traditional universities' web sites. Faculty lists at Phoenix are arranged by college rather than by department, meaning you have to sift through a data dump, if you want to determine who teaches math. Even finding what math courses they offer is difficult. Every query on their website seems to offer different answers. I felt like an accountant hired to assess Enron. The only consistent answer to my queries was : every math course I found was no higher than the level of courses offered by a large public high school; the descriptions sounded lower level than what you would find at a good public high school. Conclusion: within my area of expertise and my narrow investigation, these schools are essentially high schools.

This discovery puts the discussion of government funding of for-profit education in a rather different light. We should really view it as a vast federal government experiment in educational vouchers for private high schools. I have long advocated state funding for voucher programs; federal funding is perhaps constitutional overreach. I think this program, if continued, would be greatly improved if it was extended to all private high schools, and not restricted to those labelling themselves as universities. This would allow students to use the tuition money to obtain an excellent education before college.
(My apologies to all those for-profit colleges of higher quality than the handful I probed.)

Marriage Buffet: A Solution in Search of a Problem

I generally prefer to steer clear of social issues here, especially as a mathematical perspective does not often add illumination to them. Discussions of same sex marriage, however, always lead to the question: what harm does it cause? The answer I most often hear is that legalizing marriage between same sex couples will degrade the institution of heterosexual marriage. My attempts to analyze this answer thus far leads only to the creation of spherical horses.

In order to understand the threat to marriage posed by a government action, we first must consider marriage's relation to the government. Libertarians often argue that government should play no role in matters as inherently personal as love and marriage. A natural libertarian position might then be that the government should recognize no marriage - heterosexual or straight. In fact, libertarians often argue that marriage should exist solely as a religious sacrament. I think this argument is attractive on the surface, but fundamentally incorrect.

Every libertarian I have read asserts that government should protect citizens' property rights. Consequently, the government must prevent fraud and help enforce contracts. From my perspective, the most important contract most people enter into is the marriage contract. Unfortunately, the terms and conditions of the contract have become so weak and vague that it is now essentially ceremonial. Question: does this loss of a clear marriage contract fundamentally degrade the institution of marriage? One way to approach this question is to ask what form an optimal marriage contract should take. What sanction does our society impose - what sanction should it impose - on the man who blithely discards his wife of twenty years and three children, replacing her with a younger lady who catches his eye? Should inability to conceive or bear children constitute grounds for dissolution of a marriage? I don't pretend to have answers for such questions and doubt a satisfactory single answer exists in our pluralistic society, but if a couple is be able to agree to the answer before they wed, then why shouldn't the government help enforce that contract like any other? Of course prenuptial agreements exist, but are generally considered distinct from the marriage contract. Perhaps the Catholic and Presbyterian churches should each offer their own approved marriage contract. Perhaps the Sierra Club and National Public Radio could offer their own approved standard marriage contracts too, each with its own list of duties, grounds for dissolution, and penalties for violation. If corporate America can impose noncompete contracts, why can't similar terms be included in a marriage contract: if you leave without grounds, you can't remarry for n years. The possibilities are endless and entertaining to contemplate.

Unfortunately, I do not see what current difficulty such a buffet of personalized choices remedies. I suppose that many engagements would terminate short of marriage when the loving couple is unable to agree on what type of marriage they are entering. When I began toying with the idea of more specific and varied marital contracts, I was thinking of the negative effects of the current very loose divorce laws. However, I'm not sure I would want my spouse to remain with me out of fear of contractual penalties rather than from delight in our mutual companionship. (Of course, someone else may feel differently, in which case the lack of resonance of the idea with my personal situation actually supports the argument for more species of marriage.)

So, I haven't managed to shed any light on any of the questions raised. Classes have begun here. Perhaps I will have to wait until the next class break to actually solve any (nonmathematical) problems.

Extracting Splinters or No Mathematician Need Apply

For the second time in my life I have been asked to leave a volunteer organization. Ouch. The chairman of our local GOP splinter group, the NXC GOP, has requested that I never again attend one of their meetings. This has been the occasion of much hilarity at home and in my county GOP organization.

The first time I was evicted from a political organization, I was a young assistant professor in my first tenure track faculty position. I joined a group of conservative faculty members who met regularly to discuss politics. The leader of the group was a chain smoking Polish emigre professor, who was obsessed with communism and the USSR. We met in his house just a few blocks from campus, its walls yellowed by the never ending plumes of smoke rising from his cigarettes. I was as happy to discuss the USSR as the next person, but it was not my sole interest in life. I pushed to broaden our discussion and activism (in this group, I recall the activism never graduated beyond tongue wagging) to include other issues. In particular, I broached the issue of educational vouchers. Professor Chimney was initially casually dismissive of my suggestion but was subsequently shocked to see that most of the group expressed interest. At the meeting he suggested I research vouchers and lead a discussion at our next meeting. A few days later he called me up and said he did not want 'country club' Republicans like me at his meetings and invited me to leave his group, which I did. Never before or since have I heard the claim that interest in educational vouchers was a defining feature of 'country club' Republicans. Nonetheless, as the group never actually did anything other than talk, I did not mind my forced exit.

Two decades later I have been dismissed from another political group. I have been attending meetings of the Northern X County GOP (NXC GOP). The chairwoman of the NXC GOP is a former campaign director for the loser in the GOP congressional primary in my district. As I have written before, her candidate was an unappealing nativist whose possible nomination I considered harmful to the local GOP. I believe that her goal is to create an organization which can rapidly transform into a campaign organization for him should the current GOP nominee lose. She is hostile to efforts to aid the duly nominated candidate and always structures the NXCGOP's efforts so that they exclude our congressional candidate. With less than a month and a half left before the election, her agenda for our last meeting was the recruitment of candidates for the 2011 municipal elections. (She had neglected to observe that half her membership did not even live in the city limits and therefore could not even vote in the municipal elections.) I have been attending these meetings with the goal of keeping the group in the GOP camp. I frequently announce opportunities for its members to participate in canvassing and other services for our duly nominated candidates. I did not believe the chair wished to make her hostility to the nominated congressional candidate explicit to the group's members, who are not generally partisans for the loser. This left me with room to promote our nominee. Last Thursday, I apparently exhausted her patience. At the beginning of the meeting, I observed that I had not seen many members of the group canvassing on Saturday mornings. The room turned to ice, but little more was said on the subject, except for the reasonable observation that many of the members were working on other campaigns (but for 2012?). I thought no more of it until the next morning when I received an email :

Thank You for showing an interest in our organization. Regretfully, you and the
NXC GOP are not a good fit. We respectfully request that you not
attend any future NXC GOP meetings.

Oh well, at least she didn't accuse me of being 'country club'. My family and the county GOP have been ribbing me ever since. My family observes that I am the only one they know who was threatened with violence by a high school teacher after disagreeing with him on a school advisory committee. So, perhaps my willingness to disagree with people (endemic in the mathematics community) also played a role in my latest expulsion. Luckily, I can counter with the observation that I was not expelled until I brought my wife to a meeting. (She attended her first NXC GOP meeting last Thursday). Perhaps her attendance precipitated my forced departure. She has agreed to test this hypothesis if the county organization gives me too many assignments. If I become overburdened, she has offered to attend her first county meeting and see if this leads to expulsion number 3.