Financial Crisis Sliced Wealth and Income

The median family, richer than half of the nation’s families and poorer than the other half, had a net worth of $77,300 in 2010, down from $126,400 in 2007, the Fed said. The crash of housing prices explained three-quarters of the loss.

This vast loss of wealth was compounded by a loss of income, as the earnings of the median family fell by 7.7 percent over the same period.

Via Tyler Cowen.

So, the median family wealth in the United States was down about 40% as a result of the financial crisis (thirty percentage points from reduced housing prices and the balance from reduced wealth of other kinds), and the median family income was down 7.7%.  Two decades of wealth creation were wiped out.

The fact that the financial crisis would have a wealth reducing effect was apparent immediately.  The fact that it would so dramatically affect median family, rather than having a greatly disproportionate impact on the very affluent, was not.

Recovery to pre-crash levels of income, employment, and wealth continues to be something that will not happen for many, many months, although one can argue that using a bubble inflated false level of wealth from 2007 is an inappropriate benchmark for a recovery.

Alaskans and Finns Would Disagree.

From Chuckle-A-Duck (an exceedingly worthwhile, gag without storylines webcomic).

Sacred Legacies In A Changing World

One of the time honored tropes in fiction is what I sometimes like to call the "Sacred Legacy." Perhaps it is a favorite for me because I have a probate, trusts and estate practice.

A sacred legacy is something passed from one generation to another, pragmatically, a parent to a child, but sometimes skipping a generation or sometimes passing to a mere member of the next generation mentored by a member of the older one.

A sacred legacy generally includes some kind of duty of responsibility, and often a secret.  It may be a duty to continue to wage war on an ancient evil, to serve a noble family, to care for a shrine or relic, or to perpetuate a secret or a secret society, or simply to carry on a business or take over the task of caring for a dependent of the person making the legacy. 

Is it part of the destiny of the recipient who must decide if they will rise to the occasion and fulfill their destiny, or will abandon it to go their own way.  Usually, the next generation either immediately accepts the sacred legacy and must live up to the expectations that come with it despite their own inadequacies, or try to avoid their destiny for a prolonged period of time only to ultimately cave in to it because the character in the next generation ultimately recognizes that the duty give to them really must be fulfilled by someone in furtherance of the greater good, and finding no other volunteers.

These stories have great moral and community power when one spends one's live in a system were real power vests in people selected on a hereditary principle, like monarchies that are more than symbolic, a few of which still persist today.  A Prince's willingness to accept the duty of managing his fief well has deep consequences for his subjects.

In real life in the modern American world, sacred legacies tend to be rare, although some semblance of them can be found here and there.

Multigenerational family businesses tend to be rare, although they do exist.  Few businesses survive that long, and most that do either go public, or cannot continue to operate when a founder retires, or are sold to an unrelated successor in a private business transaction.  A business that stays in a family for every two generations is uncommon, successful business successions often take place during the life of the parties, and a multigenerational business that persists for even as long as seventy years, even so humble a business as a gas station, like the Wilson Family Conoco at University and Bonnie Brae in Denver is rare.  Intense pressure to take over a family business is the rare exception rather than the rule.  While many Americans are self-employed, few have self-employment in a business that has value over and above "buying yourself a job" that is susceptible to being passed on to the next generation.

Few parents die before their children become adults and many children who need adult guardians pre-decease their parents. 

American religious institutions tend to be operated like large non-profit organizations, often democratically by congregations or delegates selected from congregations.  Perhaps the most notable successions that resemble sacred legacies in the modern American religious scene are the succession of the Papacy, and the Jewish hereditary kohanin priesthood (despite its birthright lifetime transition rather than true legacy status) which survives in part by being relatively undemanding relative to the Bat Mitzvah expectations of all members of the community who become adults in the religious community.

Americans have abrogated not only aristocracy, but almost all legally binding multigenerational debts and punishments, civil and criminal - the property of a decedent may be subject to debts of a decedent, but apart from a residence or vehicle being inherited subject to the loan for which it is collateral, the usual course of affairs is for debts to be settled within a year or two of a death, and for inheritances to be received otherwise free and clear.

Children tend not to feel bound by the parents commitments, political, ideological, religious, professional, or otherwise as adults, although there have been a handful of notable political dynasties in the United States, a handful of instances of widows stepping into their late husbands' political shoes, and many instances of multigenerational military service.  However, the U.S. military isn't, any longer at least, an institution in which nepotism and family ties in and of themselves are commonly viewed as having great weight once one enlists or playing much of a role in meeting the standards for being enlisted.

Legacy admissions to colleges and universities tend to be isolated single events during the lives of the older generation carrying benefits but few obligations that wouldn't accrue at any institution of higher education, and multigenerational legacies like society debutante ball admissions also tend to take place during the lives of the older generation and to be brief and unburdensome obligations.

Ancient evils turn out to be remarkably scarce in daily life, few secrets not carried to the grave have much potency, and secret societies, like civil organizations that require actual participation by members generally, seem to have mostly withered on the vine. 

Increasing scientific recognition of the role played by genetic inheritance in a wide variety of endeavors has provided something of an intellectual counter-revolution to an environmental and personal choice driven view of an individual's prospect just a few decades ago, but increasing research has also diminished the importance of ritual and personal family interactions in that transmission.  While we would all like instruction books for our lives, apart from medical records, we increasingly don't see instruction from one's own parents as indispensable to our ability to realize our genetic legacies, and research has cast increasing doubt on the importance of parenting in shaping a child's personality or intelligence.

Moreover, as we have urbanized, it is increasingly the case that preserving a place, a tradition, a skill, or knowledge, is almost always the responsibility of many people in which no one individual's contribution is absolutely indispensable.  In a community with a hundred blacksmiths, no one of them has to carry on the trade for the trade to survive, in a community with just one blacksmith, the moral weight on the apprentice smith is much greater.

Is it a bad thing that our society is sufficiently transparent that secret societies and family ties on longer seem to be dominant drivers of our economics and politics? Is it a bad thing that little potent information seems to be hidden for long? Does the allure of secret knowledge harken back to pre-literate deep history (really just a few hundred years ago in many societies) when someone had to accept personal responsibility for carrying on all information that would survive to the next generation?  Has job training and education replaced and bureaucratized what would once have been structured as sacred legacies?  Do we need more forces working behind the scenes for good, or merely to make life more interesting?  Are conspiracies dead?

Open Primary Fail

In a California Congressional district where most primary voters voted for Democrats (who were split in a four way race), there will be no Democrats on the ballot, because the two Republicans on the ballot split the vote less completely and finished first and second in the District's open primary.

Soul Crushing Experiences

The waves of pain that had only lapped at me before now reared high up and washed over my head, pulling me under. I did not resurface.

- Bella Swan, New Moon, Chapter 3, p.84.

While bipolar disorder has a strong genetic component, emotionally powerful events in one's life often come into play in unipolar clinical depression (aka major depression), one of the most common forms of debilitating mental health conditions.

A new study looked at fourteen pairs of identical twins raised together as children, one of whom experienced clinical depression and the other of whom did not. Romantic difficulties were fingered as the likey cause in half (7) of the cases. The other cases were attributed to single traumatic events (2); employment difficulties (1), a mixture of factors (2), and no clear reason at all (2).

The study was: Kendler, K., and Halberstadt, L., "The road not taken: life experiences in monozygotic twin pairs discordant for major depression.", Molecular Psychiatry (2012). DOI: 10.1038/mp.2012.55.

Quotes On Excess

I think I don't regret a single 'excess' of my responsive youth - I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn't embrace.

- Henry James

Moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess.

- Oscar Wilde

Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity, it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.

- John Keats

The faults of husbands are often caused by the excess virtues of their wives.

- Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

Law School Admission Easier

In 2004, about 55% of people who applied to law school were admitted somewhere.  In 2012, 83% of law school applicants were admitted somewhere.  The percentage of applicants who were admitted somewhere but did not matriculate as 1Ls was basically unchanged. From here.

Previous reports have indicated that there has been more of a drop in the most qualified applicants than in less qualified applicants.

Stop Thinking About Zombies

National zombie awareness month is over folks.  Get with the program.  Stop thinking about zombies already.  Perhaps not coincidentally, National Drug Court Month is also over. 

Tomorrow is the 68th anniversary of D-Day.

June is LGBT Pride Month (i.e. Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transexual Pride Month), a designation that commemorates the Stonewall Riots.  Bill Clinton made the proclamation in 2000, and President Obama has done so again in 2009, 2010, 2011 and 2012.  Denver always makes a good showing with Pridefest which is June 16-17, this year.

Also surely not coincidentally, it is also now, Fae Awareness Month (i.e. Fairy Awareness Month), which also ties to Fae Centric the Shakespeare Play, a Midsummer's Night Dream (I once played the father of one of the heroines in it), even though June is host to the first day of summer and not Midsummer.  This year in Colorado, the summer solstice, which marks the beginning of summer, is at approximately 5:09 p.m. on June 20, 2012.  Notwithstanding this discrepency, however, Swedes and Finns celebrate the civil holiday of Midsummer's Day on the third Friday in June.

American's observe Father's Day, the poor and insignificant counterpart to Mother's Day, for which the traditional present is a neck tie (despite their declining popularity), on June 17, 2012.

Today is also street cleaning day on my side of the street.  Alas, our block failed to have perfect performance today in removing cars from that side of the street, as my next door neighbor (whom I dutifully tried to alert by knocking on her door before she got a ticket) had left her car parked on the street but was not home.  It is the first street cleaning day since she moved in, and nobody actually reads the fine print on the street signs and put it on the calendar, so she is not really morally blameworthy for her err and I really should have left her a note in advance as a warning.  I've been caught out myself several times in twelve years living in my beloved neighborhood, including the first time.

Finally, I'd like to take a moment to observe the passing of Ed Quillen, a Denver Post columnist noted for his insights about current events informed by Colorado history.  He also brought to my attention such useful concepts as the "Stupid Zone."  He passed too early at the age of sixty-one and will be missed.  By all accounts, he has not become a zombie at this point.

Japan's Full Employment Lost Decade

Krugman notes that despite having had some very bad years, sometimes call the "Lost Decade" from the perspective of GDP growth in its economy, that Japan took a far more modest employment hit than the U.S. did after the financial crisis.  The U.S. remains much worse off from an employment perspective, even now, about four years later.

Quote of the Day

As Confucius said, "Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves."

1st Circuit: Section 3 of DOMA Unconstitutional

A three judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit has held in a unanimous decision that the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), which prohibits federal recognition of same sex marriages and also provides that states need not recognize same sex marriages from other states, is unconstitutional.  The rule applies to Section 3 of the Act which is the part of DOMA that prohibits the federal government from recognizing same sex marriages, and not the full faith and credit provisions.  The opinion opens with the following language:

These appeals present constitutional challenges to section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act ("DOMA"), 1 U.S.C. § 7, which denies federal economic and other benefits to same-sex couples lawfully married in Massachusetts and to surviving spouses from couples thus married. Rather than challenging the right of states to define marriage as they see fit, the appeals contest the right of Congress to undercut the choices made by same-sex couples and by individual states in deciding who can be married to whom.

The Obama Administration had earlier decided to cease defending the validity of Section 3 in the Court, but a defense of the Act's validity was provided by attorneys for DOMA's Congressional supporters.  The decision rested on both federalism and equal protection grounds and was an appeal from a motion for summary judgment at the trial court level that invalidated the law.

The First Circuit, in the Northeast United States, includes many, but not all, of the states that have legally recognized same sex marriage.  The ruling does not create a precedent that directly binds federal courts in other parts of the country, but provides the Obama administration which a much more powerful rationale for treating Section 3 as invalid nationally, in support of its own policy regarding its constitutionality.

The decision could be subject to en banc review by the entire First Circuit, although the relatively liberal First Circuit is unlikely to review this unanimous panel decision about U.S. government administration that the Justice Department supports, and can also be appealled to the U.S. Supreme Court - although often the U.S. Supreme Court will wait until multiple circuits of the federal appellate courts have addressed the issue before weighing in on an issue.

Marriage status is relevant to a wide variety of federal benefit and federal tax issues.

UPDATE (June 1, 2012): A federal district court in California reached the same conclusion on May 24, 2012.

Has Bad Parenting Destroyed The Black Family?

A recent paper by a professor at Howard University (the Harvard of historically black colleges in the United States), argues that "black family instability" and "social violence" in the black community has as a central cause a parenting style that involves "obedience training and rigid physical violence including emotional neglect" traceable all of the way back to West Africa, while not crediting economic causes or concepts such as a "culture of honor."

I don't agree, but have linked to the article to make clear that my view is not the only one out there to explain very low marriage rates among modern African Americans, and more generally, the factors that drive marriage rates. As a rebuttal, I offer an alternative explanation.

The Economically Driven Marriage Rate Hypothesis

Regular readers of this blog know that I have argued instead, relatively consistently for many years, that marriage formation and divorce are driven, at a first order level of approximation, at least, by the extent to which wives are economic dependent upon husbands. The most powerful reason that women marry the fathers of their children, and stay married once they are married, is that they depend economically upon their husbands. It isn't romantic. It isn't the complete answer. It isn't true in every individual case. But, it does explain the overall trends and patterns that we observe quite well.

In this narrative, black family instability (and emerging working class white family instability) is driven by an economic situation in which men are less likely to have graduated from high school or completed some additional higher education than the women who are their prospective spouses, are likely to be unemployed for an extended period or repeatedly during the course of a marriage, and are likely to have incomes when employed that do not greatly exceed (or are less than) the women who are their prospective spouses.

Some of this is question begging. Even if this is the mechanism at work, why do these circumstances arise? Why are working class men, in general, and black men, in particular, worse off than their middle class white peers relative to women of the same circumstances? But, some of these secondary questions also have plausible answers.

What Economic Factors Changed To Shift Marriage And Divorce Rates When They Actually Changed?

But, any hypothesis that looks to deep rooted cultural sources of today's family instability has a serious obstacle before it. Sixty or seventy years ago, in segregated, pre-Civil Rights Act America, it didn't exist. There was not a meaningful racial gap in marriage or divorce rate in the United States eighty or ninety years after the abolition of slavery, in the waning days of de jure segregation based on race and legally and socially acceptable workplace discrimination against women. Moynihan sounded the alarm about the demise of marriage in black America in the late 1960s, and the trend continued for another thirty years or more.

Twin forces have been at work in the time period where marriage has weakened.

First, the economic prospects of non-college educated men has stagnated due to fundamental changes in our economy that have favored intellectual contributions over labor, much of which has been automated, seen a labor demand contractions because the same work can be done more efficiently with technology, been off shored, or been impacted by an influx of "fit immigrant" labor.

Second, economic prospects for almost all women have improved as legal and social conventions that kept women out of a wide variety of careers crumbled. A variety of fundamental economic changes also pushed women out of the home and into the paid workforce. Women had fewer children due to the demographic change associated everywhere with increased economic prosperity, due to the improved chances of a child surviving to adulthood, due to the availability of effective birth control and due to the establishment of social safety nets other than one's children in a parent's old age. New technologies (laundry machines, dishwashers, ready to wear clothing, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners) made housework less time consuming even in households that didn't have servants. A more mechanized economy reduced need for the kind of physically demanding labor where men have more of a built in advantge on average. A reduced demand for child labor and extended period of public education for children that freed up women's time while reducing the early economic benefit of having many children. Together, these economic fundamentals, in addition to anti-discrimination laws and changing societal views of women's proper roles have provided a fundamental economic driver for increased labor force participation by women.

It is elementary, if one accepts economic dependency as a first order driver of marriage and divorce rates, that where men's economic prospects are stagnating or declining, and women's economic prospects are surging, that women's economic dependence on men will decline and marriages will become as a result more fragile.

It is not elementary or obvious, but also appears to be true, that middle class women with college eductions married to college educated men, are in fact, more economically dependent upon their husbands than less well educated and affluent women, once they have children. The economic penalty for having children and giving reduced attention to a career in professions that call for college educations is often very great, and college educated men are simply more reliable and substantial providers in our economy than less educated men.

The Educational Gender Gap

Greater economic prospects for women, in general, have strengthened the economic incentives for women to become better educated. And, on average, given the same incentive to pursue an education, girls, more often on average than boys, have better study habits and are prone to refrain from disrupting the classroom in the way that education is currently organized. In short, the average girl's conduct is better suited to being a good student than the average boy's conduct. For children who are in the middle to the top of academic ability, as most children of educated parents who tend to be middle class or upper middle class themselves, the differences in the degree of "good student" behavior between boys and girls isn't great enough to drag a child to greatly impaired levels of academic outcomes. But, at the margins, for children of parents who aren't educated and didn't have much academic ability themselves which is a factor that helped to cause them to fall short of middle class economic success, the differences between boys and girls in "good student" behavior can have a powerful and cumulative effect.

Put more concretely, boys, in general, make more trouble and are less diligent studiers on average, than girls. And, for poor or working class black kids who don't have college educated parents in their lives, that different leads boys to lag the girls a great deal in school, and for that gap in turn to undermine their economic success as adults (and makes crime, the vast majority of which is driven by poverty more attractive). This, in turn, leaves black women with fewer black men upon which they can safely depend economically, and it so happens that black women often prefer black men as fathers for their children, even when they aren't good husband material.

Now, this would seem to leave unexplained why women who are capable of earning college degrees, but want children and want to rely on a husband while they have children, end up pursuing college degrees. In part, women appear to make the choice to have children and rely on a husband while making their own careers a second priority (which is very common in middle and upper middle class couples) only at the point that they are on the brink of doing so, and a significant minority of women choose to focus on careers and often to refrain from having children at all (or at least to postpone having children to the last possible moment permitted by biology). In part, the best possible colleges (and graduate programs) are good places to meet husbands upon whom women can afford to depend economically.

Poor Parenting As Effect More Than Cause

The cycle of child abuse and neglect, even when it doesn't rise to the level of legally sanctionable conduct, and the way one raises one's own child is admittedly a real phenomena that isn't easy to escape and makes cause and effect relationships complex. But, there is also quite compelling evidence that child abuse and neglect is profoundly magnified by poverty and by having unrelated adults in a household with children, both of which can be produced by fractured families and poor economic prospects. A generation of parents who manage to stay out of poverty and keep a marriage together while their are children in the home has a good shot at breaking the cycle. Overall, the case that child abuse and neglect, including poor parenting tending in that direction that is not legally sanctionable is more driven by poverty and familiy instability, than it is a cause of it, seems like the more reasonable conclusion.

Conclusion

This post obvious isn't a general theory of everything. It doesn't purport to answer questions like what is driving the class divisions in our society, or the demographics of those social classes in the first place, only the implications of those economic divisions in the context of everything else on marriage and family stability.

But, in my view it is important to first, find empirically sound that appear to drive major social issues. You won't come up with the right solutions unless you know the true causes. It doesn't make sense to resort to arguments that causes like moral failings and bad parenting drive these problems when those are aspects of human nature to a great extent that have roots from time immemorial, and the problems we see are not nearly so ancient. Resorting arguments related to moral failings and half millenia old cultural legacies is a variant on the fallacy of assuming that the world always has been and always will be the way that it is now, when in fact, the world is profoundly different than it was a century ago, or even more recently.

Finally, I don't want to inaccurately convey the impression that the most naiive and direct response to an economic dependence hypothesis in marriage implies, i.e. that the solution to our problems is to leave women in thraldom and turn back the clock. We as a society need women's full contributions to our interhousehold economy to reach the kind of affluence we have as a society. It isn't so surprising that it might take more than one or two generations to fully retool our economic and social institutions to achieve that objective without experiencing negative side effects. But, it takes time and an understanding of the forces that are driving how we are behaving now, often without consciously realizing why we are acting as we are ourselves even, to devise better alternative that meet all of our economic, cultural and personal goals better.

Civil Rights Liability Still Broken

Because of negligence on the part of government officials and the agencies they work for, no one tells you or your jailer that you won an appeal of your criminal conviction with twenty to forty year sentence and are held in prison for another seventeen years as a "pre-trial detainee" awaiting a retrial until you bring a flawed habeas corpus petition that somehow is routed to the right person and wins your freedom.

You bring an lawsuit for a breach of your civil rights to compensate yourself for seventeen years of wrongful imprisonment. Are you entitled to relief, or even to a trial where you can present your case?

No.

Plaintiff-Appellant Buxton Craig Heyerman was imprisoned for more than seventeen years as a pretrial detainee after a state appellate court reversed his criminal conviction and remanded the matter to the trial court. He filed a civil rights action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against Defendants-Appellees, alleging that this lengthy detention violated his Sixth Amendment speedy-trial rights. Defendants-Appellees are not liable for the alleged constitutional violation under § 1983, however. Therefore, we affirm the district court’s grant of summary judgment in their favor.

Critically, the people who wronged this formerly convicted individual did not have an intent to violate his civil rights in the sense meant by the law, and merely negligent harm or institutionally defective processes that don't meet a similarly high level of entity level intent to harm don't give rise to liability.

Once again, a takings jurisprudence in civil rights cases would get to the real essentials of the matter, and provide substantial and simple relief in what should be an easy case.

Authorship Slippery

Academia has a whole world of customs surrounding authorship credit for academic papers. Sometimes, it can be overinclusive, particular in "big science" fields:

[I]n experimental particle physics, my field of research, you just need to be accepted as a member of a large collaboration and you are done: papers will be published with your name on them even if you cannot spell their title. I have been in this business for almost twenty years, and my paper count is well over 700. My H-Index is probably in the whereabouts of 60 or so, which would be stratospheric for almost any other field of research, but is not uncommon in high-energy physicists of my age. You might be asking yourself whether I consider those papers as my own. Did I write them ? No, I only wrote or helped writing a small fraction of that large number. Did I at least review them ? No, I only reviewed maybe two hundred of them (and believe me, that is a large fraction for the field's standards!). Hell, did I read them all at least ? No, I cannot even say I read all of them; perhaps I read a third. If this coming clean with my true contribution to papers I signed shocks you, please consider: I did not ask to sign those papers -it is automatic!

Lessons Learned

1. Never split up at a huge event like Bolder Boulder without designating a place to meet up afterwards.

2. Piano movers are so worth the money.

3. Good gin is infinitely superior to run of the mill gin.

4. If you bring one thing home to work on from the office, there is a decent chance that it will get done; if you bring two things home to work on from the office, neither will be completed.

5. Reading the relevant portions of the World Almanac and Wikipedia is usually sufficient to make you better informed than the average "expert" on a television news program.

6. You save a great deal of time reading the transcript of the State of Union address afterwards rather than listening to it live, interrupted by applause every second sentence.

7. Hang up your suit jacket in the car while you drive to your destination if you want it to look sharp when you arrive.

8. People who tells you that you can trust them because they are Christians are probably untrustworthy.

9. People will mortgage their cat to carry out the intent of a deceased or comotose person that was actually expressed personally to them by that person when they were conscious even if they disagree with it; but people will doubt their intent if they hear it for the first time after they are deceased or comotose.

10. Trial judges frequently don't do what the applicable law would seem to indicate that they should do.

11. Always document passwords and user names.

12. Regularly back up your hard drive.

Witches, Demons And Monotheism

The Biblical injunction against witches ("thou shall not suffer a witch to live"), implicitly assumes that witches exist. Exodus, in the several trials Moses endures before the Jews leave Egypt, even acknowledges that priests of other gods have real power, albeit not as great as the God of the Hebrews. The Gospels and other books of the Christian New Testament embrace a demon possesion theory of mental illness and routinely cure mental illnesses with exorcisms, a rite retained by the Roman Catholic church and some non-Roman Catholic Christians. Indeed, the rite of exorcism has more biblical support than much of what Christians actually do ritually today. The Hebrew Bible and Christian New Testament alike a full of angels. The Koran recognize the existence of Jinn, another species of metaphysical beings.

Whatever monotheism means, it does not, in the context of systems of religious belief conventionally described as monotheistic mean that God has a monopoly on the exercise of supernatural power.

It also appears that free will appears to be a freedom in these religions that is granted not just to metaphysically natural humans, but to demons and angels and witches as well. Whether it is for lack of an ability to do so, or from some ulterior and perhaps unknowable reason, God does not in practice appear to interfere with the free will of even supernatural beings very often and when God does, he seems to do so only in a focused, intentional, personal exercise of divine power by one of his Earthly agents.

The "tradition" doesn't seem to offer any particular affirmative reason that free demons who can possess the minds of humans, intervening angels, or genuinely powerful witches no longer exist, or why at least they might be much more rare now than they once were. Very few Christians or Jews in the developed world (I don't have enough personal experience at that level with Muslims or Third World Christians to know) still leave in such a demon haunted world. American Christians generally don't leap to the conclusion that a mentally ill person is likely suffering from demon possession and that someone they might encounter might be a witch who needs to be executed for witchcraft. Intuitive belief has raced far ahead of doctrine for most of us, even those who claim a Abrahamic religious affiliation.

Colorado Is The Make Or Break State In 2012

Several respected political commentators have identified Colorado as the marginal state that a winning Presidential candidate must win to capture an electoral college victory in 2012. This status, as a swing state rather than a Republican stronghold, has taken place mostly in the time period after I moved here in 1996 during which the urban economy has diversified and there has been a great deal of both conservative and liberal migration into the state from elsewhere. A relatively well organized and financed Democratic party leadership and liberal support network attributable mostly to a dozen or two really strong leadership and donor figures and iconic candidates have also been critical to this shift.

The most recent poll from CNN today in the President race showed President Obama with a four percentage point lead in the Presidential race over Romney, as of last week, which is very similar to the national figure and the figure in other swing states, with a margin of error of about +/- three percentage points.

What Makes Colorado Politics Distinctive?

Most Coloradans are not natives and we don't show much of a bias towards natives in our voting behavior either. Our politics are cleaner than they are in most states and not nearly as controlled by an entrenched old guard. This is due in part to a fairly comprehensive package of good government measures and favorable political conditions. Many of the pieces of these good government institutions have individually serious flaws, but the overall picture is one of a broad commitment in the political culture to transparency and efficiency. I list some of the more important institutions and political conditions below, as well as some of the key points of unfinished business in which our institutions clearly are flawed.

Political Conditions

* a state population and geographic area that are middling compared to other states and that have not outstripped the "design parameters" of state government institutions,
* a state capitol easily monitored by the press and public in our major economic center,
* few opportunities for interjurisdictional arbitrage compared to most states since our major population centers are not near the state's boundaries,
* healthy state level civil society institutions representing all major components of the political spectrum to facilitate collective efforts to advance broad based legislative, policy and movement based agendas outside the framework for formal political parties (e.g. the Independence Institute, Focus on the Family, the Gill Foundation, the Piton Institute, the Bell Foundation, the Colorado Progressive Coalition, an active political blogosphere, etc.)
* a lack of a dominant political party in recent years due to demographic shifts and a changing state economy,
* the absence of a dominant statewide religious affiliation,
* strong and largely stable regional hetrogenity in political identity taht also limits gerrymandering opportunities,
* multiple sustained periods of economic prosperity, good Denver Mayors, and good, but moderate Governors,
* a political history that is more Yankee than Southern,
* until very recently, a highly competitive mass media market in metropolitan Denver,
* a better educated than average population,
* a multiracial rather than a monoracial or biracial ethnic makeup,
* no meaningful history of slavery,
* a relatively short state political history in which the state has had a much smaller population for most of that time period.

Some of the negative political conditions in the state, however, include a strong, relatively recent (1920s) history of Ku Klux Klan domination of Colorado politics, an excessive number of demogauges, and a lack of political will to acknowledge that taxes are a necessary way to fund governmental services that contribute real value to the state by significant proportions of our population, and the perpetual isolation of some outlying areas of the state from political power.

Electoral Process Institutions

* fairly short term limits for almost all state and local offices,
* widespread use of mail in voting, early voting and voting centers that allow people to vote in person at more than one location,
* the availability of ballot issues at the state level to break Gordian knots in the legislative process,
* fairly open ballot access mediated by political parties that have considerable power via the causus process in most cases,
* better informed decisions in the nomination process for down ticket, low profile elected partisan offices (in which the nomination process often effectively decides the outcome in the general election since the smaller geographic areas involved in these races often have a dominant political party) as a result of the ability of the caucus process to provide information to the members of the party involved in the nomination process that is not carried out very effectively by the media,
* the power of political parties to fill legislative vacancies (e.g. when they arise due to personal scandals involving the incumbents) with interim elected officials chosen by the party of the politician vacating the office,
* blue ribbon commission reapportionment rules for most state elected offices,
* strong campaign finance rules.

The most glaring institutional problem with the electoral process in the state, which is typical of most U.S. states, is its reliance on unitary partisan elected officials for election administration. Another problem is that constitutional provisions that make it too easy to get technically flawed ballot issues with a basic thrust that is population before voters. Yet another concern is the exceeding high procedural barriers to re-election faced by elected officials who change parties in the middle of a term of office.

Institutions Related To Governmental Operations and Transparency

* a fairly small, part-time legislature,
* limits on personal financial gain for politicians,
* comprehensive lobbying regulations,
* broad and effective open records and open meetings laws,
* strict state civil service restrictions,
* signficiant Gubinatorial authority to reorganize the state government organizational chart,
* merit appointment of all state judges with little local political input,
* state constitutional limitations on tinkering with the details of the income tax laws,
* a line item veto for the Governor on state spending,
* meaningful legislative oversight of new state regulations,
* joint legislative rules in the bicameral legislature including a joint budget committee,
* a strong legislative services office role in the legislative process (drafting bills, doing constituent service work, and generating revenue and expense estimates on a bipartisan basis),
* pioneering work in providing online access to matters of state and local government,
* Sunset laws,
* a strong commitment to adopting well drafted proposed uniform state laws,
* a legislatively appointed state auditor
* strong limitations on the Governor's direct authority over both K-12 and higher education,
* independently elected state executive branch officials (the state treasurer, secretary of state and Attorney General) with fairly weak bureacratic resources and fairly narrow mandates.

The most glaring institutional problems with governmental operations and transparency is an overconstrained state budget, in which it is almost impossible to comply with all pertinent state constitutional requirements, federal mandates, state laws, and political processes during periods of declining revenues; there is more than one way to solve the problem but something has to give.

Local Government Institutions

* a non-partisan consolidated City and County government in Denver, the state's largest central city,
* home rule protections for local governments,
* strong limitations on the authority of the elected state school board over local school boards,
* meaningful school choice options within the public K-12 school system,
* well functioning non-partisan multijurisdictional local government institutions to provide services such as water basin management, public transportation, cultural institutions and sports stadiums, criminal prosecutions, general jurisdiction courts, vocational education services, special education services, suburban fire protection, suburban library services, and surburban park and recreation services,
* popular checks on elected officials via easy ballot access for recall elections and citizen initiatives at the local level,
*healthy  local government civil society institutions such as Denver's neighborhood associations, parent-teacher associatioons, organizations to address homelessness, and Glendale's local political parties to facilitate public participation in governmental activity at the local level,
* limited local government discretion over the details of property tax administration.

The most glaring fault with the organization of local government is the imbalance between authorized sources of revenues for local governments and the demand for services that flow from the authorized tax bases. There are also problems with institutions such as the conduct of partisan elections for technocratic positions like county coroners.

General Considerations

In sum, our politicans and our voters have shown bipartisan support for a variety of good government proposals. The political culture in Colorado's General Assembly, while it has recently experienced a rough spot, is also generally more collegial than in most states.

Tough taxpayer bill of rights provision in the state constitution, and other constitutional and statutory limits on government spending and authority, mute the effectiveness of many common attackes on liberal politicians, because in Colorado liberal politicans don't have the power to implement the kind of fiscal agenda that many liberals would favor without voter approval. Fairly geographically localized islands of and clines of political preferences in the state limit the usefulness of gerrymandering in Colorado. Colorado's adult population is better educated than the average state, despite the fact that the states lags in producing its college graduates locally.

The state's swing state status reflects a regionally diverse internal state geography, with liberal strongholds like Denver and Boulder, Southern style conservative strongholds like Colorado Springs, moderately liberal resort areas and college towns, mostly conservative rural communities on the Front Range, libertarian leaning rural populations on the Western Slope, conservative exurbanites, moderate first ring suburbanites, and Hispanics who trace their roots to before the places they live were part of the United States in places like Pueblo and the San Luis Valley.

While organized labor is weak in Colorado relative to former manufacturing centers in the Northeast and Rust Belt, its high level of organization and capacity to mobilize people and moderate amounts of political money mean it is still an important part of the Democratic party coalition here. Our conservatives embrace both social liberalism and economic proposals shared by Republicans, but ultimately, the conservative coalition in Colorado is a bit more economically conservative than socially conservative relative to conservatives nationally. While the numbers shift from month to month, an intuitive mental model in which active registered voters are 35% Republican, 30% unaffiliated, and 35% Democratic, while not quite right, is a pretty practical way to roughly summarize the long term average situation.

Where Are And Who Are The Swing Voters In Colorado?


Where Are Swing Voters In Colorado?


Ultimately, the make or break point within the state in a close race, when it comes to winning the state's electoral votes, boils down the winning over unaffiliated, middle class (but not upper middle class), fairly politically apathetic voters with enough of a sense of connection and civic duty to at least register to vote, who live in first ring suburbs of metropolitan Denver-Boulder.


Who Are Swing Voters In Colorado Demographically?


The generic and "average" swing voter in Colorado is white, not Hispanic, has some college but didn't graduate from college, isn't in a union, owns a modest home with a mortage in an older suburb, is neither a young adult nor elderly, and is nominally a part of some branch of Christianty but is fairly irregular in church atendance. Relatively few read a newspaper or news magazine or listen to national public radio on a regular basis.  Most are not Colorado natives.  Most have kids. At least one person in their household has a job and every adult in the household probably owns a car. But, they aren't insulated from economic hardship and are economically insecure. If they haven't been divorced themselves, they know someone who has been divorced pretty well.


Who Are Swing Voters In Colorado Politically?


The political views of these swing voters, when pressed to express them, are volatile, but fairly distinct for men versus women (not infrequently in the same household or neighborhod) who often cancel each other out at the polls. These voters tend to vote much more often when the stakes are high (such as during a relatively close President race like this year's) than when the stakes are low. These voters are driven more by character and personality and the general economic situation and ideosyncratic considerations, than by policy platforms to which they have weak commitments. They don't know a lot about politics or public policy in general, aren't well informed about candidates in down ticket races, and don't know much about any ballot issues other than the one or two have have received intense media attention. These voters are as fuzzy about theological and Christian doctrine as they are about politics. They decide who to vote for relatively late, often at the kitchen table while completing a recently received mail in ballot a couple of weeks before the actual election day. They have low levels of confidence and trust in politicians and political institutions generally. They don't go to political party caucuses or political rallies, don't donate more than trivial amounts of money to candidates, don't volunteer for political campaigns, and don't put partisan bumper stickers on their cars.

These are the people who will effectively select the next President of the United States of America. Swing voters in Colorado may be meek, but they decide who will inherit the Presidency.

Record Long Summer Starts Friday Night For DPS

Tomorrow is the last day of school for most Denver Public Schools students (there is a little bit of school to school variation) and due to a new decision on start dates for schools without air conditioning that doesn't extent this academic year's pre-Memorial Day finish date, and moves back the start date for many DPS kids in the fall, it will be the longest summer vacation in recent history for many DPS students.

U.S. Sentencing Laws Unusual

•The United States is among only 20% of countries around the world having life without parole (LWOP) sentences. LWOP sentences can never be reviewed and condemn the convict to die in prison.

•The United States allows for LWOP sentences for a single, non-violent offense such as drug possession, whereas it is often restricted to multiple, violent crimes in other countries.

•The United States is one of only nine countries which have both the death penalty and LWOP, along with China, Comoros, Cuba, Israel, Kazakhstan, Lesotho, Nigeria, and Zimbabwe.

•There are currently over 41,000 prisoners serving LWOP sentences in the United States, compared to 59 in Australia, 41 in England, and 37 in the Netherlands. On a per capita basis, the United States LWOP population is 51 times Australia’s, 173 times England’s, and 59 times the Netherlands’....

•The United States, Canada, and Micronesia are the only federalist countries known to researchers allowing successive prosecution of the same defendant by federal and state governments for the same crime....

•Under international human rights law, if legislators pass a new law to lighten sentences, offenders have a right to benefit from it retroactively. Though 67% of countries have codified that right, the United States has not....

•The vast majority of countries (84%) account for the age of the offender at trial, leaving the United States in the minority of countries (16%) trying and sentencing children as adults.

•The United States is the only country in the world to use juvenile life without parole (JLWOP) sentences, with an estimated 2,594 juveniles offenders serving such sentences.

From here.

Computers Good At Teaching Math

In experiments at six public universities, students assigned randomly to statistics courses that relied heavily on “machine-guided learning” software — with reduced face time with instructors — did just as well, in less time, as their counterparts in traditional, instructor-centric versions of the courses. This largely held true regardless of the race, gender, age, enrollment status and family background of the students.

From here.

The issued here is a very basic one.  A teacher or professor with any reasonable sized class can't tailor the class to one student.  Inevitably, the teacher must go on at greater length for some students on some topics, leaving others bored reviewing what they already know.  A computer can provided individualized attention in the same way that a personal tutor does, and hence, can avoid this problem.