Latin American Economies

A question from the mailbag:

A commentator on NPR yesterday stated that it appears a big part of what is wrong with Latin American economies is not lack of resources or money, but a lack of an adequate legal structure. Essentially, he seemed to be saying that if Mexico, Brazil, etc., had a Uniform Commercial Code, they would progress by leaps and bounds. Does this resonate with you?

The Uniform Commercial Code has a number of articles (ironically based on the European model also used in Latin America). Article 1 covers general matters. Article 2 covers sales of personal property. Article 2A covers leases of personal property. Articles 3 and 4 govern primarily the use of checks as payment systems although it is drafted generally enough to cover some other less well known financial arrangements. Article 4A covers electronic funds transfers. Article 5 governs letters of credit. Article 6 which once covered sales of substantially all of the assets of a business has been largely repealed. Article 7 covers warehouse receipts. Article 8 covers the mechanics of transferring stock certificates. Article 9 covers the use of personal property as collateral for loans.

The case that most of this is economically critical is modest. Articles 3 and 4 were for many years largely superceded by Federal Trade Commission regulations on holder in due course doctrines and by Federal Reserve Regulations, since operationally, almost all checks are processed through the Federal Reserve. Article 5 is generally supeceded in most respects by detailed contacts involving sophisticated parties. Warehouse receipts were not an important economic crisis when the UCC was adopted and aren't now. There is no compelling reason for a uniform law of stock certificate transfers, since states individually incorporate corporations, and for decades the internal rules of transfer agents governed long before Article 8 was revised to reflect this reality.

Articles 2, 2A and 9 provide most of the actively litigated cases under the Uniform Commercial Code, and each of these transactions is governed by civil code provisions in Latin America that are very similar to from country to country, because they largely have a common source. Honestly, most of those rules aren't terribly different from those in the United States, although there are some differences. The biggest difference is Article 9 which provides a very streamlined way to obtain and enforce agreements to use personal property as collateral for loans.

This doesn't mean that a lack of an adequate legal structure isn't a key problem in these countries, but often the real problem isn't primarily a lack of adequate statutes. Indeed, you would find very great similarities between civil codes in recently developed nations, like South Korea and Japan, to less developed nations in Latin America.

Less affluent countries in Latin America differ from more affluent ones in Europe and Asia, despite the similar legal statutes, to a greater extent as a result of commercial and legal institutions and organizations.

Many of these institutions are financial. Here are a few:

* Until the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation came along, bank failures were far more common, which discouraged people from making their funds available to the financial industry to be invested professionally. There was a natural incentive for investors to take unreasonable risks since they got all the gain if it paid off, and depositors paid almost all the cost if it didn't.

* The Federal Reserve System, through voluntary membership by private banks, has provided a very efficient payment system using checks. This ironically, isn't a big problem in most other countries where the same institutional function of creating a working payment system is normally filled by the Postal Service which offers the equivalent of passbook checking accounts from which money orders can be issued with less conflict and litigation than in the United States.

* The New York Stock Exchange makes corporate stock a much more attractive investment because, by centralizing trading in corporate shares, particular investors aren't locked into a long term investment. This institution, in turn, is supported by local brokerages affiliated with NYSE members, which facilitate the purchase and sales of corporate shares and give people the advice they need to have confidence enough to make the investments, by investment banks that facilitate the process of taking a privately held company public by building a coalition of brokerages to sell shares of a company that needs equity financing, by institutional investors like insurance companies and pension funds, which provide wisdom to the market and a depth of liquidity, and by venture capital companies, which bring small start up companies to the point where a nationally oriented investor will consider seriously a stock market purchase of their stock.

* The bond market, in turn, depends not only on a centralized market and on the network of brokers, but also upon key institutions like Standard and Poors that rate the default risk of bonds in a standardized way, greatly reducing the research costs involved in participating in the market, and indirectly regulating the terms of the bonds issued through requirements to obtain particular bond ratings. The vast majority of big business and governmental financing comes not from banks, but from bond offerings sheparded by investment banks through brokers to institutional and high net worth individual investors.

* The creation, in turn, of large numbers of large, private sector corporations, keeps businesses largely free of political influence on their business policies except through direct, generally applicable legislation. And, the custom of having most stock exchange traded companies have 50% or so of their value in equity as opposed to debt, buffers the corporate sector from economic downturns, since equity holders don't have to be paid in bad times.

* The widespread use of private commercial banks as a payment system, created a marketing tool for the widespread use of consumer and business financing. People can come to their local checking account handler to get a car loan, a credit card, a mortgage, a small business loan, or whatever. Commercial practices without the force of law have largely made this possible. One key institution is the collection agency. Credit reporting is largely a function of major lenders going to the same centralized source to collect their debts and then benefitting from the centralized information that this makes available. And, credit reporting is key to making loans at reasonable interest rates commensurate with the risk involved. Another key institution in the loan making field, particularly morggage lending, is a reasonably accurate appraisal industry. A third key to lending is the widespread availability of governmental guarantees and third party purchasers for commercial loans.

A very large share of all loans to small businesses, first time home buyers with limited abilities to make down payments, and college students for their educations, are made with guarantees from government agencies that set lending standards, leaving the commercial bank to be basically a risk free marketing institution. A great deal of automobile loans and conventional mortgages are promptly sold by commercial banks to third party investment companies which sell bond and shares on the stock exchange backed by purchased loans which are rated and grouped on a standardized basis so the risk can be controlled.

Credit cards are also often resold, rely heavily on good credit reporting, and have also served the economically useful role of minimizing transaction costs for consumer lending and serving as a payment system even better than checks because they involve less paper and less credit risk for the merchant. This is worth a significant (often 3%) share of sales to merchants who no longer have to offer store credit as was common place before credit cards. Yet, the institution of the credit card invented in the 1960s, did not involve any major new law and indeed, is still governed almost entirely by contract rather than by statute.

There does need to be some means of promptly and efficiently foreclosing upon mortgages (normally a special expedited procedure or a non-judical process), repossessing cars when loans code bad (normally without court supervision at all, subject to liability for improper acts), and evicting people who don't pay rent (normally a special expedited court process) to make the financial markets work. But, good underwriting keeps these cases to a minimum and greatly limits losses when they do happen and sets interest rates sufficient to pay for inevitable losses from time to time. Also, transactions are typically mass produced to make any legal case, if one arises, very straightforward. If you borrow money from a bank and use the money to buy a car, you can't complain to the bank if the car doesn't work. They have you sign a note and you either pay or you don't pay, and that is all that matters to the judge and can be proven with business records exclusively because the transaction is intentionally kept very simple.

What most of the developing world lacks that developed nations have are the institutions, and honesty in the institutions that do exist. You can't have a large private sector without stock exchanges, brokerages, institutional investors to mediate investments, a largely money based economy, truthworthy public accounting firms and bond rating agencies, venture capitalists and a pool of people who trust these institutions enough to put their money into them. You can't have a functional business and consumer debt system without a branch banking system to market loans, centralized collection services that rate people's credit, and institutions that feed this kind of lending with outside money or guarantees.

It it hard to have economic growth without the liquidity provided by sound debt and equity financial markets.

If the government doesn't regulate product safety well, you need institutions like Underwriter's Laboratories, that do.

It doesn't take a lot of contract law to provide a foundation for very complex institutions. But, it does take an educational establishment to churn out people like accountants and lawyers and brokers and bankers, and it does take institutions to hire them, and it does take a culture of integrity to guard against corruption.

The legal structure does matter, but only a small portion of it comes from the laws. And, the structure doesn't have to be the American norm. But, if you don't have American institutions, you need substitutes that get the same thing done in the end. Singapore, for example, has almost no mortgage market and almost no private ownership of real estate, but a very good system of government leases of property to private individuals, and a strongly anti-corruption culture.

Building respect for the law often has to start very basic. Malaysia is setting up national commissions to encourage people to respect public toilets (also a major dilema in Singapore), rather than leaving them grotty. But, it is hard to get people to respect things like paying car loans and mortgages, until you have community consensus on using public toilets appropriately.

Basic problems of attitude are common. In most of Africa, traffic laws are pretty much ignored. In Mali, one of the big problems with setting up solar panels to power a community well and provide fresh water is keeping the solar panels from being stolen or damaged. It is one thing to have property rights on the books, and it is another to get people to take them seriously, with common theft being a major impediment to economic development in Tanzania. Tax collectors who take bribes are a major problem in many transitional economies that greatly impair economic development. One of the keys to the success of the Grameen Bank in India was its focus on creating social pressures to repay small business loans. In Nigeria people trying to poach oil from pipelines is a major problem. In much of Latin American, electrical, phone and other utility services are often poached. In the United States, some of these attitudes can be traced to very active courts in the Colonial era which quickly processing vast numbers of relatively petty complains in summary proceedings, with case loads immensely higher than any court in the United States today.

Much of the misery of the developing world also comes from the lack of what in the United States would be local government services or utilities, and the tax collection capacity that makes them possible. Simple things like a water and sewer systems, trash collection, building code enforcement and elementary education are life and death issues in much of the world. Most basic policing and resolution of minor disputes is also provided by local governments in the United States. But, these local government institutions prove very hard to keep in place for a variety of reasons.

Create institutions and the right attitudes, and you can create prosperity. But, legislation, per se, is rarely the major culprit.

Former Mayor Sentenced For Acquitted Conduct

The 30 months sentence imposed upon former Mayor Campbell of Atlanta, Georgia, who was acquitted of corruption charges, but convicted of tax evasion charges, was never the less based upon the corruption charges of which he was acquitted. What the U.S. Supreme Court was thinking when it approved this deeply corrupt practice that abridges a defendant's a right to a jury trial, I don't know.

Determination v. Brawn

Sometimes determination beats brawn. Case in point. The fifteen pound cat that chased a black bear up a tree.

While the fact isn't well known, house cats are incredibly effective predators, and one of the leading causes of extinction worldwide.

Observation of free-ranging domestic cats shows that some individuals can kill over 1000 wild animals per year, although smaller numbers are more typical. . . . Recent research [10] suggests that rural free-ranging domestic cats in Wisconsin may be killing between 8 and 217 million birds each year. The most reasonable estimates indicate that 39 million birds are killed in the state each year. Nationwide, rural cats probably kill over a billion small mammals and hundreds of millions of birds each year. Urban and suburban cats add to this toll. . . .

Worldwide, cats may have been involved in the extinction of more bird species than any other cause, except habitat destruction. Cats are contributing to the endangerment of populations of birds such as Least Terns, Piping Plovers and Loggerhead Shrikes. In Florida, marsh rabbits in Key West have been threatened by predation from domestic cats. Cats introduced by people living on the barrier islands of Florida's coast have depleted several unique species of mice and woodrats to near extinction.

As another example, house cats have wiped out many New Zealand's many native bird species (see also here and many of Australia's native marsupial species (but see an opposing view here). The case of cat v. bear shows why this is true.

An Anti-Initiative Ad Campaign

At Soapblox, I was asked by ubikibu:

[H]ow do you make the necessarily subtle point to the general public that Colorado has made it far too easy to introduce ballot measures, and that it has led to some hasty intiatives that would likely have been handled more intelligently by our elected Reps?

It's like making an argument against "democracy." More voting = good, right? Well, not always. I'm just not sure how we could ever slow or reverse this trend.

I think it can be done. If Republican PR guys can come up with ads that convince people that universal health care is bad, and that John Kerry isn't a war hero, it should be far easier to produce an ad that supports a genuinely good idea honestly.

I see a TV spot opening up with mock ups of Doug Bruce and his co-sponsor (or perhaps even an animated Beavus and Butthead) sitting at the only seats filled in the Capitol on the House Floor, and their lawyer acting as Speaker of the House conducting mock debate. A caption reads -- initiatives are drafted by a couple of people in private who are accountable to no one but themselves.

Then, you cut to the doors in, galleries, and committee halls with signs say "Buzz off." The caption reads "No representatives of the public can insist on amendments to improve proposals that have the right general idea, in the legislature, 90% of bills receive some amendments before final passage."

Then, you cut to a the full text of the longest initiative introduced in the last couple of years, slowly scrolling down the page with a narrator reading the legalise. Caption reads: Most voters didn't know TABOR would cap college tuition. Most voters didn't know immigration 55 stopped by the Colorado Supreme Court would have rolled back property rights in Colorado's constitution. Etc.

Then, scoll a long list of initiative proposals, highlighting the really stupid sounding ones. Narration: Do you want Democracy with laws written by special interests who are accountable to no one and decisions made by soundbite, or do you want laws written with wide input from people elected to represent you and carefully examined before a final vote.

It could work.

Charles Finney Where Is Your Christian Legacy?

Tony Campolo at the Huffington Post mentions Charles Finney, one of the co-founders of Oberlin College, my undergraduate alma mater, as an Evangelical Christian who was a leader in progressive social movements like abolition and women's sufferage (he could easily have added prohibition, the town of Oberlin was dry until just a few years ago, and the anti-Masonic movement, which resulting in the entire baseball and football team being expelled, which went hand it hand with them at the time).

Campolo also rightly notes that William Jennings Bryan did carry on that part of the Evangelical tradition a little longer. But, then, outside the African-American community, the trail of progressive Evagelical religion seems to grow cold.

Campolo notes the apparent indifference of the Evangelical Christianity today towards the plight of the poor, bringing up the old saw that "Evangelicals are people who believe that life begins at conception and ends at birth." And, the notion of a liberal Evangelical really does seem to have become an oxymoron these days.

Of course, back then people who felt like that, once the party was formed, were Republicans, as the Republican party from its formation and until well past the end of Reconstruction, used to be the liberal political party on social issues. Indeed, a number of county by county and state by state election result maps separated by a century or so are striking in the extent to which there was a true reversal of the party affiliations while political ideologies remained remarkably stable over more than a century in geographic areas as small as a county.

Oberlin College was no exception to this trend. The political inclinations of the folks at Charles Finney's Oberlin certainly stayed with the institution, but the Evangelical Christian movement did not.

When I was there the number of Evangelical Christians, while more numerous in the community than Republicans, was small. In an effort to give Christianity a second chance, maybe it was just the Lutherans who were mistaken, I spent my time there affiliated with Christ Episcopal Church, and the college student group there probably outnumbered all of the Evangelicals on campus, and other mainline Christian churches had similar modest sized quite followings, especially amongst the less politically inclined conservatory of music students who often were headed towards careers in sacred music. But, hell, even the Trotskyists probably outnumbered the Evangelical Christians.

The theological seminary left for Vanderbilt in the 1960s, and was converted into a dorm (it was called "Asia House" when I was in attendance), around the same time that Oberlin entered its "modern era" characterized by fewer curriculum requirements, a student run experimental college, co-ed dorms and later co-ed bathrooms in some of those dorms, and so on.

Did Finney's remarkably Christian centered progressivism simply secularize? Did it migrate out of the Evangelical movement in a religious realignment to parallel the political label changing? Or did it simply die out with its missions accomplished and no more on the immediate horizon? What happened?

Some traces of Finney's legacy comes up in Southern Democratic party politics.

Until the 1960s and the Republican Southern strategy, the Democratic party was the dominant party of white Southern Evangelicals. Evangelical Dixiecrats were Democrats with something of a populist cast. And yet, until then, Evangelical Dixiecrats were Democrats with something of a populist cast. Huey Long was no believer in civil liberties or civil rights or the rule of law for that matter, but they did embrace a vision of society that was generous to the less well to do. Huey Long's 1928 campaign "slogan of 'every man a king, but no one wears a crown'—[was] a phrase adopted from William Jennings Bryan."

Did hearts harden as Americans left rural America in droves during the Great Depression only to find impovershed cities? Long, for example, turned against FDR and started to oppose New Deal legislation and plotted to realign the political parties with a third party designed to split the left before he was assassinated.

Did it happen in the 1950s, when Eisenhower embraced in "God We Trust" on coins, "Under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance and the like as a part of the Red Scare as a finger in the eye of the "godless communists" as World War II became the Cold War, and Christianity became an "us" versus "them" affair, instead of a domestic dialog?

The Republican "Southern Strategy" to win support in the 1960s from White Southern Dixiecrats, who were often also Evangelicals, by opposing the civil rights movement concluded the transition of the Republican party from the party of Lincoln to the party of abortion and tax cuts of the 1980s that eventually offered us conservative Christian George W. Bush as a Presidential candidate. Even George Wallace favored stronger social programs for the less well to do at the same time he was taunting hippies and standing up for segregation, and started out in his political career as a progressive. Does the transition has no deeper roots than this?

I don't know where or when it happened, but somewhere, the Evangelical Christian legacy of Charles Finney either died or was transformed and relabeled. I don't really know what happened to it, but, as I note above, there is certainly plenty of suggestive evidence on the issue.

Hat Tip to Colorado Comments.

Life Good Without Parol Evidence Rule In Israel

Suppose you have a signed written contract which is on its face unambiguious. You might want to introduce evidence about the negotiations that went into drafting it, for purposes of interpreting it. In almost every American jurisdiction, you can't, and even if you do by mistake, the court can't consider it.

The reason for this rule, which is popular with practicing lawyers, is that it, in theory, should make a contract lawsuit cheaper. Introduce the contract into evidence, offer evidence showing that the contract wasn't modified, introduce evidence of the breach of contract (often from business records), present a damages calculation, and voila, the case is done, with little or no testimony concerning the terms of the contract itself. An increased range of relevant testimony, in theory, means more depositions, longer trials, and more uncertainty.

Except, that in reality, it doesn't. Israel used to have a rule very similar to the parol evidence rule. Then, Apropim came along about a decade ago and ditched the rule. A decade later, the Israeli Supreme Court, under a special procedure to take a long term view of past precedents and see if it made the right call, unanimously agreed that this was a good thing, and has not produced the horrors the practicing bar predicted at the time.

Coffee Plus Booze Equals Bliss

My trial is over for the day and this bit of health news was just too juicy to wait:

In a study of more than 125,000 people, one cup of coffee per day cut the risk of alcoholic cirrhosis by 20 percent. Four cups per day reduced the risk by 80 percent. The coffee effect held true for women and men of various ethnic backgrounds.

Drink up!

Programming Note

There will be no posts today, as I am in trial.

Colorado's WMD Legacy

The news is full these days of how North Korea, Iraq, Iran and every other nation on the face of the earth seems to have ambitions to obtain weapons of mass destruction like atomic bombs and nerve gas. They have nothing on Colorado.

The uranium for the only atomic bomb used in anger was mined in Montrose County, near Nucla, Colorado. We processed nuclear materials at Rocky Flats, Northwest of Denver. We made nerve gas at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal, near Commerce City. And, of course, the nation's nuclear forces are still commanded from NORAD headquarters near Colorado Springs.

People who create nuclear, biological and chemical weapons don't have horns and a pointed tail. Many are in nursing homes across Colorado.

This doesn't mean that the weapons of mass destruction threat is something to take lightly. It is just as bad as your nightmares imagine it to be. And, it still takes a brutal soul, like Chemical Ali, to order mass slaughter.

Al-Majid [aka Chemical Ali] was appointed governor of northern Iraq in March 1987, marking the beginning of a sustained offensive, known as the "Anfal Campaign", by Iraqi troops against the Kurdish population.

Kurdish organisations describe the events which followed as genocide.

A decree signed by al-Majid, dated 3 June 1987, stated: "Within their jurisdiction, the armed forces must kill any human being or animal present in these areas."

Human rights campaigners say the Iraqi army then proceeded to kill tens of thousands of Kurdish civilians in gas attacks and by summary execution.

But, the United States carried out mass killings itself in World War II when it felt that the stakes were high enough, and it could happen again.

The Western Slope nuclear facilities are now a municipal golf course, although the Japanese are inquiring about securing nuclear fuel for their power plants from the area. Rocky Flats is being turned into a nature preserve, and the Rocky Mountain Arsenal already is one (I went fishing there with my kids this weekend, on a catch and release basis), although the cleanup will not be complete until 2011 and the visitor's center haunting notes that some animals in the perserve as expected to die as a result of the chemical wastes on the site until clean up is complete five years from now.

Many of Denver's military bases have closed. One is now an upscale new urbanist development, Lowry, and another is a biomedical research and hospital center, Fitzsimmons. But, we do have a past as a state which isn't pretty, however much we have done to beautify it and put it behind us. It is worth taking a moment now and then to recall that fact.

Why Buy Renter's Insurance?

You buy renter's insurance because you never know when a motor vehicle might fly through your wall and ruin you stuff. While the linked incident didn't happen in Denver, I personally know of three such incidents in Denver within the last three months.

Free Wi-Fi Meet Colorado Blvd

While my own Denver neighborhood and that of my Capitol Hill office are brimming with coffee shops offering free Wi-Fi, and it is also available all through the 16th Street Mall area in downtwon Denver, free Wi-Fi hot spots have been remarkably rare on Colorado Boulevard aka Denver's longest strip mall, which is dominanted by Starbucks, the coffee chain known for non-free Wi-Fi service.

Stepping in to fill the gap is Dazbog coffee which had a free coffee filled grand opening at its newest location at the confusingly named 3773 Cherry Creek Drive North aka Ptarmigan Place near Alameda and Colorado Boulevard in Denver (Cherry Creek Drive North runs from Virginia and Colorado to 1st Avenue along the Northern shore of Cherry Creek the actual stream of water, Cherry Creek Drive South runs along the Southern shore of the creek, and there is also in the vicinity, running more or less perpendicular to them, Cherry Street in Glendale.)

It isn't really anything special, but it fills a serious deficit in the area.

Bad Guys Review, Part One

Every once and a while I dip my toe into the conservative political blogosphere just to see what's up. Today I checked out Little Green Footballs. What's there? In short, all anti-Islamic posts, all the time.

Indeed, it is facinating the watch the wheels turn. Muslims are bad. Iraq is succeeding. Muslims are bad. Unless they've been transformed into good guys by U.S. successes. Muslims are sending the world to hell in a handbasket, but our government respects their religion. And, on and on and on. Interspersed are "U.N. sucks" posts, but they seem to be intertwined with the fact that the U.N. is an institution where Muslim nations have some influence.

Initial hypothesis: The conservative blogosphere has bought into the Iraq War and War on Terrorism (ooops, "the Long War"), hook, line and sinker, and won't retreat ever, no matter what happens.

Of course, this is only a first impression.

10th Circuit Cites Blog

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals cited the Sentencing Law and Policy blog (although was unswayed by its observations), in a recent sentencing opinion. Slip Op. at page 21 (describing Douglas Berman, the blog's proprietor, as "a leading academic chronicler of sentencing decisions.").

The decision, while ultimately unfavorable to the defendant, who received a downward departure from the sentencing guidelines overturned on appeal, does do a thoughtful job of examining the contradictory mess that the Booker decision has spawned with its remedy (theoretically increased judicial discretion) that seems inconsistent with its basis (protecting the right to a jury trial). The decision, U.S. v. Cage, is one the first significant published sentencing decisions made since Booker addressing out of guideline sentences in the 10th Circuit, a federal appellate court territory that includes Colorado.

Estate Tax Repeal Defeated.

The Senate failed to end a filibuster of an estate tax repeal effort. The vote was 57-41. Four Democrats joined all but one Republican, Voinovich from Ohio, to force a vote on the issue. Two Democrats didn't vote. Sixty votes were required.

This leaves us with the status quo. Now, each person can leave $2,000,000 to heirs at death or in large lifetime gifts combined. The estate pays a 46% tax on the rest. The rate falls to 45% for 2007-2009. The exemption increases to $3.5 million in 2009.

In 2010, the estate tax is abolished. But in 2010 current law, which forgives accrued taxes on unrealized capital gains at death will be replaced by a provision that limits that boon to the first $1.3 million of assets in an estate (subject to certain exceptions) with the rest taking a "carryover basis" meaning heirs will have to pay taxes on capital gains accrued during the decedent's life if the assets are sold. In 2011, the exemption returns to $1 million and the rate goes back up to 55% plus a 60% "bubble rate."

The gift tax remains on the books for this entire period with a $1,000,000 and a nominal tax rate identical to the estate tax (effectively, it is about a third less due to the way it is calculated). The gift tax rate in 2010 will be 35%.

This is a horrible mess, so everyone expects that further negotiations will take place. But, this may not happen until after the 2006 election. The GOP wants a campaign issue.

One Republican proposal being considered by Senate negotiators would drop the rate to 15% and increase the exemption to $5,000,000. Democratic Senator Baucus, who voted for cloture in exchange for a promise to have his proposal considered as an amendment, would have had graduated rates of 15%, 25% and 35% apply to estates.

Another possibility, one that doesn't seem to have much Republican support, as they want to go further, but might attract support if the composition of the Senate changes in November in the Democratic party direction, might be to freeze the estate tax at 2009 levels, i.e. a 45% tax rate and a $3,500,000 exemption, perhaps accompanied by indexing of the exemption amount and increasing the gift tax exemption to match the estate tax exemption.

No one really expects the law to run its course all the way to estate tax reinstatement in 2011, but in the face of massive deficits and deep partisan divides over the issue, it is hard to say. Needless to say, this makes estate planning difficult with the law just six years in the future hopelessly muddy.

Research in Progress

Usually, I limit myself to scientific results that are clear and well established. Today, we'll dip our toes into the realm of the merely possible.

Solar Power and More

Contemporary solar cells turn one solar photon into one electron, even if the photon has enough energy to release more. Similar problems plague other solid state optical devices, like solid state lasers. The quantum mechanical equivalent of friction dissipates the rest, knocking atoms back and forth to create heat instead of freeing up more electrons to generate current. Scientists are now onto a phenomena known as "quantum dots" that may escape that friction by making semiconductors of precisely the right size, in the vicinity of 8 nanometers in current trials, with the right materials.

Current photovoltaic cells are 15-20% efficient. With quantum dots, it might be possible to more than double this efficiency to 42%.

Will it happen? There are two downsides. First, the semi-conductors often involve molecules made of highly toxic lead, and rare metalic compounds such as telluride. Yes, no shit, such stuff actually exists, I looked it up. Thus, solar cells with quantum dots could become both environmentally unfriendly and expensive.

Second, it isn't clear that the nanoscale phenomena can be easily scaled up to make useful amounts of current. A highly efficient solar cell that only generates nanocurrents has only niche applications.

An Asthma Cure?

Denver's own National Jewish hospital has a trial in place, reported on the front page of yesterday's Denver Post, which would revolutionize our understanding of asthma, the respiratory ailment that causes constricted breathing and often limits the physical activity of children.

Researchers think that bacteria may cause as many as half of chronic asthma cases. The bacteria may be the same, or a similar bacteria to the one that causes pneumonia, but less intense. This wmeans that it might be possible to cure many cases of asthma with the right antibiotic.

The downside? Asthma is probably not just a bacterial infection. It may also include elements of genetic suceptibility, allergen exposure and prior immune system conditioning.

HPV Vaccine Approved

The virginity or death camp was defeated at the FDA today as it approved a new vaccine for HPV, one of the few sexually transmitted diseases which cannot be reliably stopped by a condom. HPV causes cervical cancer and genital warts.

Electing Judges Is A Bad Idea

The idea behind electing judges is that voters are able to choose good judges who reflect their values better than elected officials, and that this free judges for owing favors to elected official who might come before them.

In practice, this theory is not supported by the fact. When it comes to elected judges, voters are idiots. The latest example comes from Los Angeles.

[A] highly regarded sitting judge [was] ousted from the bench Tuesday by a bagel store owner who'd barely practiced law in the last decade . . . . Judge Dzintra Janavs, a 20-year veteran of the bench, lost by almost 8 percentage points to Lynn Diane Olson, a Hermosa Beach resident and business owner who only late last year reactivated her state bar membership. . . . Olson, who was rated "not qualified" by the Los Angeles County Bar Assn., outspent Janavs by more than 2 to 1, giving about $100,000 of her own money compared with about $42,000 in contributions reported by May 20 by the judge. . . . Janavs was one of only two judicial candidates of 28 in the county rated "exceptionally well qualified" by the Los Angeles County Bar Assn. . . . Olson and her husband, Michael Keegan, a Hermosa Beach councilman, said they did not target Janavs because of her name, but rather because she was Republican.

Unlike most cases where a sitting judge is ousted at the ballot, Janavs had made no controversial opinions which were in the public eye. The partisan affiliations of the candidates did not appear on the non-partisan ballot. An e-mail campaign emphasized Olson's endorsement by the county's democratic party.

Most of California's 1,500 Superior Court judges never face election. Once appointed, they come up for retention election after six years but only appear on the ballot if someone challenges them. However, if a judge vacates a seat close to an election, the successor is not appointed but is chosen by the voters.

To be clear, Olson's only fault here is being a bit ambitious for her qualification, which is normally something we leave to the voters, and the Democratic party can hardly be faulted for endorsing a registered Democrat over a registered Republican in an election. But, the voters of Los Angeles were uninformed idiots, and unfortunately, this is the norm in judicial elections, not the exception.

Assuming to much of voters is a recipe for bad decision making. Appointing judges is a better solution, and the system employed in Colorado is far superior to that of California.

In Colorado, judges are nominated by blue ribbon panels appointed on a bipartisan basis, appointed by the Governor (or by Mayors outside the state part of the judicial system), face up or down retention elections without opponents after long terms in office, and face voters who receive detailed evaluations of the judicial candidates from a blue ribbon performance evaluation committee in advance of the election. As a result, Colorado has judges chosen largely on their legal merit. Political connections and philosophy do matter, but truly unqualified candidates are weeded out and not made available as a choice to the person making the appointment. And, because Colorado judges don't have to mount expensive campaigns, they don't owe any favors to campaign contributors.

You don't have to rely on my word alone. Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor echos the sentiment (questions are from USA Today, answers are from O'Connor):

Q: Do you think money has polluted the process in some states in which judges are elected?

A: In some states, very much. I came from Arizona, which provided for the election of all judges. I did not think that was a good system because when judges ran they had to spend money for advertising and campaigning to win the nomination and then the election. Where did that money come from? It came from lawyers. And what lawyers? The lawyers most likely to appear before them. I think that's a lousy system.

Q: Did you do anything to change that system?

A: I served in the Legislature, and I tried to get the Legislature to amend Arizona's constitution to put before the people a system of merit selection of judges. I could not get that out of the House of Representatives. I could get it out of the Senate. So I helped organize an initiative drive to get voters' signatures to put it on the ballot. We got enough signatures, we put it on the ballot, and I had decided that I was going to try to be a judge, and I ran for office as a trial judge in the same election the same year that that ballot went before the people. And it passed by a very narrow margin.

If you don't want judges to be legislators, don't elect them.

The Physics of Scale in Action

In aerodynamics, size matters. There is a reason that birds and flying bugs are the size that they are today. Oxygen content in the air can tweak it, but in the same envrionment, there are natural physical "sweet spots" for flying animals. A scale model of a robin a hundred feet tall can't fly. In the same way, a movie giant probably wouldn't be able to walk.

The same principals apply to airplanes and the reverse is also true. If you take an airplane design and make a scale model much smaller than the original, it can do amazing things.

The feats of the radio controlled airplane in the link illustrate this clearly. It does things that would be absolutely impossible for comparable full sized airplane to do. For example, the fixed wing RC plane makes a nearly verticle takeoff without an extra set of thrusters or a tilt wing. It can because of its small scale.

Hat Tip to Defense Tech.

The Estate Tax in Colorado

Colorado does not currently have an estate tax, death tax or inheritance tax. Residents and citizens of Colorado, as well as non-resident, non-citizens who own property in Colorado, are subject to the United States Estate Tax.

In 2004, only 251 people domiciled in Colorado paid estate taxes. The number for 2006 will probably be smaller, as the amount that can pass tax free to heirs has increased this year. In the most recent year for which statistics are available, 2003, there were 29,506 deaths in Colorado See also here, a figure which has been gradually increasing from year to year as Colorado's population has increased.

Thus, less than one percent of decendent's estates in Colorado are subject to the federal estate tax.

Computer Emergencies

You go girl!

By the way, the cartoon strip Day by Day (a sample of which is above) by Chris Muir has both gorgeous art and serious wit, despite its right wing slant. I don't think that either the Rocky or the Post carry it, but one of them should.

Hat Tip to conservative blog Captain's Quarters whose link to the 6-6-6 Day By Day strip brought it to my attention, and to Coyote Gulch which linked to that blog.

Morgan Caroll On Civil Service Protections

Colorado State House Judiciary Committee Vice Chair Morgan Carroll (D-Aurora) (incidentally the Judiciary Committee Chair is Terrance Carroll (D-Denver), no relation), has a blog! And, she is exactly right on the issue of civil service protections for fire and police departments. She states (emphasis added):

There have been recent efforts to “reform” civil service for Aurora’s police and fire departments. While there are some improvements that could stand to be made in transparency of process and improved input from the chiefs of the departments, recent proposals for charter changes in Aurora seem to be more geared toward gutting civil service rather than reforming it.

We emphatically should not gut or remove civil service (but we can improve it). Civil Service protections are born out the realization that when government officials have jobs to hand out that without protections there is a high likelihood that those jobs will be handed out as political favors, reflect nepotism, personal biases, emphasize connections over merit, or revert to the prior patronage system — all of which have the potential for corruption.

She is right. The threats guarded against by the civil service system are as real as they were when it was created. But, many civil service systems do need improvement. While Morgan Carroll doesn't elaborate on solutions, I will.

Some Problems With The Civil Service System

My father, while he was a professor of environmental science, took some time on sabbatical to go to Washington, D.C. to help develop a national drought atlas for his former employer, the Army Corps of Civil Engineers. (The project, by the way, was a great success and probably the greatest scientific contribution of his career; I personally helped him interpret some of the L-moment mathematics used in the project.) As part of the project, he had to round up people from within the department to work on his project. One of his key staffers had been sentenced to the almost mythical form of employee discipline under the federal civil service system. He was left in his job, at full pay, but reassigned to a windowless office in the basement and given no work to do, in the hope that he would quit, or at least, cease to influence any projects. It does happen and is a gross waste. Either the employee should be fired, or the management should be reigned in for making an unjustified decision.

This need is particularly pressing in the case of police departments. In Denver, the flaws in the civil service system that unreasonably limit the extent to which bad cops can be disciplined for apolitical reasons is an even more serious problem than it is in Aurora. Every member of the force who has faced discipline for serious misconduct towards members of the public in recent memory has received an unduely mild punishment as a result, while discpline for technical paperwork violations is unduly common.

But, the problems Carroll describes are a real problem too. Today, you see them mostly in small rural departments, which civil service systems are too small to provide effectively insulation from corrupting political forces. Recently, one rural department in the South, civil service system notwithstanding, was exposed as having guards letting prisoners out of jail on furloughs to use as the Mayor's personal home improvement crew, and to have sex with the Mayor's wife.

It is also worth noting that the civil service system is really a couple of systems.

One part of the civil service system is a merit based system of hiring new employees. This does a very effective job of preventing incompetent people from being hired based on political nepotism. This part of the system is not associated with major flaws, although it does have a tendency to view merit too narrowly.

While the technical requirements of many government jobs are far greater than they used to be, President Jackson's assumption when he instituted an extreme version of the patronage system that many government jobs could be filled by anyone who was literate, remains true in many cases. Many jobs need someone who is good enough, but can be done more or less equally well by anyone who is qualified. To take a particularly clear example, any library shelver or postal delivery person who meets the basic qualifications for the job on a paper and pencil test is probably equally good, and an extra high score on a paper and pencil test is probably meaningless when it comes to the on the job reality. But, by exclusively using paper and pencil test scores to narrow the pool of final applicants, one can often effectively prevent equal opportunity hiring by imposing a de facto requirement far in excess of what is needed for the job.

The other part of the merit based systems, the controversial part in the eyes of most reformers and students of public service employment, is the limitations it imposes in firing or disciplining government employees. Simply put, it is too hard to fire employees who are genuinely lazy or doing a poor job. The due process that exists for employees make the likelihood of employee firings or discipline more likely to hinge of the ease with which wrongdoing can be proven, than the severity of the offense. This kind of protection is appropriate in the criminal context or a civil lawsuit involving an isolated incident like a car accident, when we are trying solely to judge a response for something that is done and over. It is overprotective in the case of an ongoing employment situation, where a bad employee is a continuing problem and poses a risk of future harm to the institution and the public, particularly in the case of a bad police officer or fireman.

Solutions To Civil Service System Weaknesses

Probably the best solution in the American context to this problem, is to distinguish between employees who report directly to political appointees and employees who report to career civil service employees. In the case of career civil servants who report to political appointees, the risk of political influence is acute. For civil service employees who report to career civil service employees, there is still some risk of political influence (career civil service managers still have an incentive to please their superiors by acting politically), but this may be outweighed by the need to address the difficult day to day process of managing the minority of public employees who genuinely perform their jobs poorly.

One of the better solutions to this problem would be to dramatically reduce civil service protections after employees are hired, for civil servants who report to career civil service employees (I'll call them rank and file civil servants). While they probably shouldn't be employees at will, in light of the still real risks of political influence involved, the system could be changed. I would suggest that it should be possible for rank and file civil servants to be fired by their career civil service employers without any form of administrative review. Instead, the sole remedy of a fired rank and file employee would be to bring a wrongful termination suit. In that suit, the employee would have to show that no good faith non-political cause existed for the firing, a system similar to that already in place for dismissals on the basis of race or gender or retaliation for private employers. No particular documentation of the firing would be legally required.

Even if this reform isn't implemented in every department of a government, it should, at least, be implemented for public safety employees, for whom the risks of not taking disciplinary action are finely balanced with those of taking incorrect action. There is already a precedent for this, which is the military justice system. Most federal employees are very hard to discipline, but soldiers are subject to the summary and swift procedures of the Uniform Code of Military Justice, which provide only limited due process protections, are far easier to discipline because the risk posed by permitting a person in control of lethal weapons on a daily basis are far greater than those posed by your typical civil servant.

The full protection of the civil service would continue for career civil servants who report to political appointees, but in large governments, like the City and County of Denver, the State of Colorado, or the federal government, this would often reduce the number of employees with full civil service protections by 90%-98%, while still imposing real barriers on the nepotism the system is designed to protect, by retaining full merit hiring protections and by forbidding political appointees from firing or disciplining any civil servant without going through the full fledged civil service protection process.

Why Should Democrats Push For Civil Service Reform?

Civil Service reform is a particular concern for Democrats because we believe that government can do worthwhile things. We need government to work effectively to achieve those ends, and if the civil service system is disfunctional, it is simply one more argument for privatization, even when privatization doesn't make sense. Republicans, in contrast, often simply hate all government and are happy to let it become inefficient in an effort to prove their case.

Army Cargo Plane Program Moving Forward

The Army wants its own fixed wing cargo planes to handle heavy lift helicopter sized loads, faster, with greater range, and cheaper. It will be small than, but similar in concept to, a C-130. This program, despite some hiccups, appears to be moving forward.

[T]he Army is planning on procuring 33 Future Cargo Aircraft between 2007 and 2011 to replace its aging C-23 Sherpa and some of its C-12 Huron aircraft.

The deal is expected to cost about $30 million each, considerably less than a new C-130. No R&D money is involved, as the buy must be off the shelf technology.

So far so far no viable U.S. candidates could meet the Army’s requirements . . . The two contenders for the program, Alenia North America, a Finmeccanica company, and the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. (EADS) North America, a parent company of the European giant Airbus . . . Alenia is based in Italy, and EADS’s office locations include Munich and Paris.

The Alenia proposal, with Lockheed as a local partner, is the C-27J which, as previously discussed at this blog, seems to be the front runner for the contract.

EADS just last week announced a strategic partnership with Raytheon for the FCA competition. . . .

EADS’s current offerings for the FCA competition are its CASA C-295 and CN-235 aircraft. The final offering will depend on the Army’s requirements. The C-295 is in service with the air forces of Spain, Poland and Jordan and will enter service with Brazil and Portugal.

The most notable thing about the Hill article quoted above, is that it is from today. This means that the precarious, yet sensible, FCA program isn't dead yet.

Horrors in Saddam's Kurdistan

Saddam Hussein was not a nice guy. He killed whole villages of non-combatants with chemical weapons. It is one thing to hear that in summary form. It is another to hear it from a U.S. sailor who saw the aftermath first hand and has been wracked with PTSD since then.

The Political Impact of Blogs

You can't get the right answers about the political impact of blogs, unless you ask the right questions.

In his May 26, 2006 article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, "Political Blogs: the New Iowa?" (B6-B8), David D. Perlmutter, an LSU Baton Rogue associate professor of mass communication who blogs at Policy By Blog commits the cardinal sin of political scientists. While his analysis and evidence in support of that evidence is solid, his assumptions and the questions he is asking are the wrong ones.

His biggest blunder comes when he states:

Probably the most important area of research on blogs today is what role they will have in the presidential election of 2008.

If there is any place where blogs will be particularly unimportant, it is the 2008 Presidential election. Why?

Blogs are tools for communicating information. The information conveyed may have collateral impacts, and the information communicated may have spillover effects, but fundamentally, what happens when you write a blog is that you send information to someone, and fundamentally, what happens when you read a blog is that you receive information.

Blogs dramatically increases the number of people who can reach significant audiences without significant investments of money. For most people the printing press provided by a blog is either free, or provided at a nominal price which advertisements catering to the readers of the blog can easily finance. As a diarist on a blog the Daily Kos, the only political blog that gets any meaningful mention in the article, you can get at least a headline with a link to a story in front of hundreds of thousand of people for a few hours, and if others find what you have to say compelling, your story may get prominent billing for the better part of a day.

My own blog has a different "business model" similar to many smaller blogs. I have a good share of traffic from regulars, essentially the vast majority of the left leaning political blog readers in Colorado, who happen to be a very select audience in terms of political involvement and savvy. I also receive a good share of traffic from search engines. This traffic, along with my contributions to Wikipedia and dkospedia, bring basic factual information and my analysis to large numbers of people who know nothing about me. If I write about things that search engine users or Wikipedia readers want to know, this blog can wind up being an international authority on the answer to the query that brings people to the posting.

Other blogs like How Appealing and Coyote Gulch, are news aggregators in particular subject matters, making it easy to know everything of note in a particular subject area, supported by linked authorities, while readers don't have to beat the bushes themselves to look for it.

People who come to a blog, from whatever source, can trust the content, because blogs are typically well sourced. They may not know me at all, but they can look to my governmental, media and other primary or secondary sources to establish that the information I've brought together and summarized and analyzed is solid, something usually impossible for a reader of a letter to the editor, an op-ed piece in a newspaper, or a participant in informal political conversation.

The real power of blogs is the power to fill information deficits. Bloggers following the politics of a state, or a particular political race, or a political policy issue are able to keep particular new developments in context much better than most newspaper reporters. The blogosphere also allows bloggers better access to information that does not yet meet the New York Times standard of things that are "fit to print", but nevertheless, as a collection of rumor, inside information, and esoterica, often unavailable to the general public, allow bloggers to have cutting edge access to relevant information. And, of course, a great way to drive traffic to your blog, indeed the main thing that brought the Drudge Report and Daily Kos to their current places of prominence in the blogosphere and which remains the stock in trade of sites like Crooks and Liars and Colorado Pols, is the ability to provide inside information before it is fit to print or traditional media outlets can publish it.

In light of this, it is almost obvious that blogs are less significant in the Presidential election than in any other part of the process, and that furthermore, the closer you get to election day, the less important they become. By the time the primary races are decided, they are absolutely useless.

This is a simply consequence of the fact that the Presidential race is the most well covered political race in the nation. Even the idiots Jay Leno encounters when Jay Walking know who the President is and by the time election day rolls around, who the major party candidates for President are and what they stand for, more or less.

In contrast, few people have any idea who their state representative or state senator or even Congressperson is, let alone, what they stand for, and most have only a dim understanding of most of the ballot issues. My DD showed convincingly that there have been a number of elections in recent history where a majority of voters didn't even know which party currently controlled the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.

Blogs broaden the group of people who have the inside story about sub-Presidential politics beyond the usual suspects of candidates, political aides, major political party insiders and lobbyists, and increase the depth of knowledge held by the old school insiders. They make it impossible to bury a story. They expand the pool of people involved in crafting a candidate's narrative beyond campaign staff, a P.R. firm, and a couple of newspaper reporters assigned to the relevant beat. They dramatically increase the flow of information about previously uncover political happenings. And, by guiding informed decision makers, by being available for people who want to Google for guidance before making political decisions or forming political opinions, and by influencing opinion leaders, blogs bring this information into the political decision making process.

In short, blogs tend to make lower level political decisions better informed and hence, less quirky and random. They also, of course, boost candidates more like themselves and candidates who are willing to engage bloggers. Blogs keep the heat on after the election by monitoring candidates much more carefully than a traditional media outlet usually does.

The fact that the left wing political blogosphere is larger than that on the right, and the many of the right are listening to often outright deceptive talk radio, instead of reading more factually supported blogs, also means that decision making on the left is growing more informed than that on the right as a result of blogs.

Knowledge is powerful when you opponent is lying or distorting the truth. And, since this seems to be the perennial situation in our day and age for left wing bloggers facing dishonest conservatives, the blogs are a tool of left wing power.

Invisible Tattoos

It is now possible to do tattoos (called UV tattoos) that are invisible except in black light. Some people use them for highlights on regular tattoos, others use them to look conventional in the office but tattooed in the dance club, and of course, the possibilities for secret societies wishing to mark their members are obvious.

Self-Determination and Kosovo's Future

Serbia asserted its independence today, in the same breath accepting Montengro's independence. This leaves on the table two main issues in the Balkans, the desire of the Serbian Republican with Croatia's federal system (the Republika Srpska) to achieve independence on one hand, something forbidden by the Dayton Accords, and the desire of Kosovo to achieve independence from Serbia.

The U.S. and the E.U. a month ago firmly opposed an independence bid for the Republika Srpska.

Talks over the final status of Kosovo are in progress in Vienna. There are genuine differences over details like divisions of property and internal debt. There are also deep differences over the big issue of whether Kosovo should have greater autonomy within Serbia, which is the Serbian position, or full independence, which is Kosovo's position. The U.N. official leading the talks seems to favor Kosovo's position.

Belgrade's platform for the upcoming Kosovo status talks envisions broad, internationally guaranteed autonomy for the province as an alternative to full independence. . . . Serbia favours an international agreement with Pristina, for a term of 20 years. Such an agreement would be signed by the UN and Serbia . . . . Kosovo would have a constitution and independent jurisdiction in most areas. However, Belgrade would retain jurisdiction in foreign policy, border control, human rights protection, monetary and customs policy and the protection of religious and cultural heritage. Kosovo would have full financial autonomy. It would conduct its public finance policy independently, with the possibility of taking out loans with international financial institutions and acquiring direct foreign investments.

The Kosovo Albanian side, however, has said it will not settle for anything short of full independence. . . . . "If Serbia continues to be destructive, the international community has another option, under which it will simply proclaim Kosovo an independent and sovereign state," Berisha told Radio Free Europe.

UN deputy envoy Albert Rohan, who has been chairing the direct talks, has said Belgrade is advocating "unrealistic positions", although he also called on the Kosovo Albanian side to show more flexibility.

Ahtisaari has said he expects discussions on the status issue to begin in mid-July.

NATO has committed to backing up any U.N. decision.

It looks like the U.N. will be pushing hard for Kosovo's independence, if ratified in a referrendum whose outcome is largely a foregone conclusion. But, the U.N. will also likely push to have independence for Kosovo limited by provisions of Kosovo's own constitution and/or international treaties with Serbia, which would provide the human rights protections and protections for cultural and religious heritage which Serbia has sought to retain jurisdiction over in an autonomous state (the flexibility referred to by the U.N. representative), but not foreign policy, currency or border control for Serbia.

Simply put, the rest of the world righly believes, given Serbia's recent history, that it can't be trusts to have authority over Kosovo and is in no position to claim the high ground on human rights.

International opposition to Kosovo's independence is not really true opposition to the idea of an independent Kosovo, but the fact that the international community has pushed hard and continued to do so to obtain Serbian consent is really a reflection of concern about opening up the can of worms associated with the notion of unilateral declarations of independence by a portion of an existing sovereign state.

If Kosovo and East Timor can have internationally recognized independence, why not Transdniestria, and South Ossetia? Why not the Republika Srpska? Why not Iraqi Kurdistan and Iraqi Sumer? Why not Islamic Northern Nigeria? Why not Chechnyia and Abkhazia? Why not Aceh? Why not Northern Ireland and Scotland? Why not Quebec? Why not Taiwan? Why not Palestine? Why not Kashmir? Why not Tibet? Why not the interior of Columbia? Why not Southern Sudan?

The better share of civil wars in the world are independence struggles, and an international precedent of a right to unilateral self-determination who give hope for international support to all of them. The hope of the U.N. negotiator is that this could be distinguished because it would involve consent of the sovereign state giving up the territory, and that Serbia might give consent because it is effectively a defeated part in an international war (which put NATO in Kosovo) and because it might face harsh international sanctions if it insisted on continuing an undemocratic rule of Kosovo. If this strategy works, the Vienna talks will have effectively put of the question of when unilateral self-determination is valid to another day. But, ultimately, leaving that question unresolved, as this choice does, also fosters war, but leaving no clear yardstick to determine whose self-determination bids are valid, and whose are not.

It isn't clear to me that drawing a line that determines which claims for self-determination should be honored, and to what extent, have to be as standardless as they seem. Most plausible claims for self-determination have a number of characterists in common, all of which should generally be present prior to international recognition of a new state:

(1) The boundaries of the proposed region involve a contiguous region with (a) the current boundaries of a semi-autonomous region within an internationally recognized sovereign state, (b) the boundaries of a previously sovereign state which lost its autonomy through non-consentual means, (c) a long standing, i.e. several decades old, at least, de facto boundary established by military means or by a consentual treatment after autonomy is lost by non-consentual means, or (d) the de facto boundaries are widely acknowledge by all parties to the dispute.

(2) The proposed region is very distinct politically, ethnically or culturally from the larger sovereign state, and has a strong regional identity.

(3) Those seeking separation are willing to use violence, non-violent mass protest, or the powers granted to them in their capacity of legitimate leaders of an existing semi-autonomous region to express an unwavering commitment to independence.

(4) The leaders of the independence movement do not need to rely on the central government to maintain order or conduct governmental affairs, and the proposed independent state is large enough to function on its own. The proposed region is capable of establishing all institutions of a sovereign state and protecting their own borders militarily once recognized with their own financial resources.

(5) The rump of the sovereign state left after the proposed independent region leaves is capable of functioning fiscally and conducting normal governmental affairs.

(6) Independence has the genuine democratic support of a majority of people in the region which seeks independence.

(7) Independence would not open the door to a great likelihood human rights abuses by the newly independent nation of the population at large or an ethnic minority within the newly independent nation, or the rump of the sovereign state remaining after independence is granted. Independence is likewise favored if it is likely to end human rights abuses by an existing central government, and is disfavored if it is likely to end genuinely effective measures to protect human rights of a central government, in any of the resulting countries.

These factors should generally be evaluated by proponents of independence, opponents of independence and the international community through its individual members and the relevant general purpose international institutions such as the United Nations and any other general purpose regional institutions like NATO or the EU, in Europe, for example.

These tests decidely favor self-determination. Many of the independence movements identified above would be entitled to independence under this formula. Thus, the notion that are ever circumstances when unilateral independence is justified suggests strong that in many of the current civil wars plaguing our world, that the proper course of action is for the sovereign state facing the civil war to give up and grant independence to the restive region, giving into the demands made by the insurgents.

But, by requiring that all seven factors be present, sufficient limitations are established that fear of a slippery slope that would lead to endless devolution is largely defused. It has the mixed impact of providing a road map to insurgents and consolidators alike, to achieve their ends. Colonizing a region, a la West Bank settlements in Israel, make autonomy less justified. Ethnic cleansing, a la Bosnia, encourages it. Violent may be favored as a tool to escape domination, while repression of opposition and denial of half-measures like regional autonomy may be favored as a way of keeping a nation together. The human rights condition mitigates these incentives, but does not end them.

Still, these conditions are largely ways to measure a fait accompli, and encourage all involved to recognize an already achieved reality in legal arrangements, rather than an artifically set of guidelines to govern international conduct. We got our current set of international boundaries through means no less ugly. But, perhaps, if the de facto rules of the game were publicly stated, we could, as an international community, at least forshorten the period of civil war and bloody conflict that often preceeds independence and goes on for miserable decades for all involved.

Technical Difficulties Today.

Blogger has been out of commission most of the day.

By way of compensation, I offer you the case of Morgan Stanley v. the Cat From Outer Space.

In Support Of The Hearsay Rule

The hearsay rule excludes from evidence in trial, statements of a witness who is not subject to cross-examination, subject to a number of exceptions. While not the only one (an authenticity objection comes to mind), this would be one of the better grounds to exclude evidence that a ghost of a murder victim told a psychic that a criminal defendant was not guilty.

Maybe they don't have this rule in Brazil where a woman was acquitted of murder based on this evidence. Although, given the fact that the prosecution failed to object to its introduction, and the fact that in the U.S. acquittals cannot be appealed by the prosecution, I'm not sure that the result would have been any different under U.S. law.

The Age of Guided Ammunition

There have been two main competing types of military ammunition, the slug and the missile. The slug comes in various sizes from bullets, to artillery and naval gun and mortar shells, to dumb bombs dropped from airplanes. The alternative is a missile. The prototypical missile is self-propelled, but increasingly, the self-propelled v. hurled distinction is giving way to the distinction between guided and unguided weapons.

The trend is to favor smaller, guided weapons, over larger unguided weapons. The latest artillery shells and airplane dropped bombs have GPS guidance systems that make them look a lot like missiles. This is due largely to a desire to avoid collateral damage caused either by an inaccurate strike, or a strike larger than needed to hit the target. The true target, apparently, is often small, but historically, with inaccurate ammunition, a large explosion has been necessary to make "close" good enough. The trend may also reflect a shift in U.S. military operations from planning for Cold War mass invasion scenarios to a focus on dealing with counterinsurgency actions.

The Navy no longer has any ships with a naval gun larger than the 5" gun on its destroyers and cruisers. The 8" guns and 16" guns on older models of ships have been removed from service, largely in favor of cruise missiles, which deliver similar sized packets of high explosives, more accurately, for a longer range, at a cost of about half a million dollars per missile.

The Army has likewise retired its 203mm (8") howitzer (except for a few remaining national guard units). The largest slug thrower rounds now in use by the U.S. military is the 155mm howitzer round.

Even old school weapons, the Army's 155mm howitzer and the Navy's 155mm advanced gun system on the DD(X), proposed to mute the concern about shrinking naval gun size, are increasingly seen as tools for delivering GPS guided advanced rounds, rather than mere dumb slugs. Some rounds for the Army's new M777 light towed howitzer are even "rocket assisted", which starts to sound a lot like a missile. Proposed new mortar rounds also come in rocket assisted versions. When does a howitzer or naval gun become a small multiple rocket launcher?

There is increasing pressure to convert all 5" naval guns and 155mm howitzers to guided munitions, which would leave the 120mm round as the U.S. military's largest unguided munition. And, the M1 Abrams tank, with its 120mm direct fire main gun, is facing pressure for multiple reasons, such as the limits that its large weight places on its ability to be rapidly deployed, and the effectiveness of other platforms in anti-tank warfare. In the Iraq War, the TOW missile armed Bradley fighting vehicle destroyed more Iraqi tanks than the M1 tanks did with their 120mm rounds, and attack helicopters with Hellfire missiles, and A-10 attack planes with Maverick missiles also destroyed a large share of Iraqi tanks from above. This gets noticed when the M1 was originally designed to engage in tank on tank battles.

The line between the 250 pound "small diameter bomb", which has an integrated guidance system but not propellant of its own, and the tactical missiles carried by fighter aircraft is also growing thinner and thinner.

This doesn't come cheap. The Army's new guided artillery rounds will cost $80,000 each (half of which is R&D). This is twenty times or more what an unguided round would cost, and is similar to the cost of the Army's Hellfire missiles, which it mounts on helicopters as an anti-tank weapon. Both are about 100 pounds in weight as well.

Colorado's Invisible Election

In many Colorado General Assembly races, the election is already essentially over, even though not a single primary has been held. About 19% of the General Assembly races in this election cycle are uncontested. Democratic Congresswoman from Denver Diana DeGette also has no major party opposition, nor does her Congressional District's Democratic party nominee to the State School Board.

The View From My Precinct

Indeed, where I live, the only races with major party contests I'll face at the ballot box in November are the statewide races for Governor, Secretary of State, Treasurer, Attorney General and CU Regent at Large.

I have no local government races (only half of RTD board members face election every two years and this is an off year for my district), a completely uncontested state house race with not even a third party challenge, no state senate race (only half are contested every two years), an uncontested state school board race, no CU-Regent race for my Congressional District (again, only half face the voters every two years and this is my district's year off), and an uncontested Congressional race. Of course, there is no U.S. Senate race in Colorado this year (as happens one out of every three federal elections), and no Presidental race this year.

There are twenty-five judicial retention elections on the ballot for Denver voters this year, but they are almost certain to result in a unanimous vote of confidence.

As I noted before, the only contested issue on my state primary ballot will be the Xcel Energy franchise agreement with Denver and any other municipal issues that end up on the ballot in August.

This is just as well, I suppose. I'll need plenty of space on my polling machine cheat sheet for many ballot issues this year.

The Big Picture

According to Dan Slater, eleven Democrats and two Republicans, in the sixty-five member state house, will not face major party opposition this time around (it is possible that one of the two unopposed Republicans will get a last minute Democratic party opponent today). Two Democrats and one Republican of the eighteen facing election fights this year, will not face major party opposition in the state senate.

Reps. Cerbo, McGihon, Judd, Terrance Carroll, Madden, Weissman, Jahn, Soper, Peniston, and Curry. Kathleen Curry’s place on this list is even more impressive, because that seat was held only two years ago by a Republican, and was highly targeted in 2004. House District 61 is a swing seat, and it shows the amazing job that Rep. Curry has been doing in a rural district.

Also, congrats to the Democratic voters in HD 13. They will get to select the next State Representative for that district, as well. Claire Levy and Jim Rettew both made the primary ballot — but no Republicans bothered to run! . . .

Congrats to Senators Abel Tapia and Paula Sandoval. Both have no Republican opposition. Again, in 2002, Tapia’s SD3 seat was hotly contested, with hundreds of thousands of dollars being spent by both sides on that race.

Republicans seem to have forgotten the basic rule, not unlike the lottery, that you can't win if you don't play.

[O]f the remaining 15 seats up for election this year, Democrats only need to win 6 of those 15 to keep a majority in the State Senate.

The current division of the fifteen contested state senate seats is 9 to the Republicans, and 6 to the Democrats. In the opinion of Mile High Delphi, four of the seats held by Democrats are safe or lean democratic, and there are two Democratic held and two Republican held seats which are "toss ups". Three of the Republican leaning Senate seats this election are open seats being contested by Democrats, while there is only one Democratic leaning open State Senate seat.

Punishing The Victim Story Followup

I noted previously at this blog the case of a fourteen year old Akron girl whom a judge ordered detained, without a hearing, in an adult jail, after she ran away to avoid tesitfying against a twenty year old man who allegedly had sex with her. Twelve days later, aided by a pro bono attorney, an Ohio Court of Appeals panel overturned that ruling and freed her.

Earlier this week, on May 31, 2006, the trial was held. What happened?

First, she showed up in court and testfied:

The teen's former boyfriend, Galo Sanchez-Pesantes, 20, is on trial accused of unlawful sexual conduct with a minor.

Under questioning, she acknowledged lying about her age at times and, at other times, about what happened with Sanchez inside her Norton home. . . .

Prosecutors contend Sanchez knew the girl was 14 when he went to her home Jan. 20, shared alcohol from her mother's supply and then engaged in oral sex with her. Their encounter, prosecutors say, was interrupted by the girl's mother, who accompanied the girl to court Wednesday.

The girl smiled and giggled and mumbled at times during her testimony. She was scolded several times by Common Pleas Judge James Murphy to speak loud enough for jurors to hear. . . .

During cross-examination by defense attorney Karen Brouse, the girl admitted claiming she was 17 or 16 to various people, including Sanchez and on her profile at myspace.com, a Web site where personal ads are posted.

The teen also admitted telling various stories about the January encounter with Sanchez ranging from rape to no sexual contact at all. She testified Wednesday that Sanchez performed oral sex on her. . . .

The girl's attorney, Eddie Sipplen of Akron, said the teen did not run away to avoid testifying. She left home for other reasons and missed the trial, he said.

Then, the jury acquitted the defendant. Jury deliberations were brief, and appeared based on the fact that she stated on the stand that she told many contradictory stories to others about what happened on that day and lied about her age to the defendant and others.

Thus, in the end, the only person punished in the incident was the alleged victim.

Colorado Primary Season 2006 Updated

Peteco at Soapblox has done a brilliant job of summing up the primary season for Democrats in Colorado this year.

There are no statewide race, state school board or CU Regent primaries among Democrats (out of a possible 10). There is one Congressional District primary (CD 7) (out of a possible 7), there are five house district primaries (out of a possible 65), and there are two senate district primaries (out of a possible 18). Thus, there are actually only eight contested primaries in the Democratic party side of the process out of 100 possible primaries, above the county level in Colorado.

Link through if you want the full details. House and Senate District safety per Mile High Delphi and based largely on voter registration. The races and Democratic candidates are as follows:

7th Congressional District

Northern Denver Suburbs. Most competitive district in U.S.A.

Ed Perlmutter, Peggy Lamm and Herb Rubenstein.

House District 1

SW Denver. Safe Dem.

Jeanne Labuda, Alfredo Hernandez, and Margaret Atencio.

House District 13

Boulder. Safe Dem.

Claire Levy and Jim Rettew.

House District 43

Higlands Ranch. Safe GOP.

Edward Behen and Alan Dreher.

House District 51

Loveland. Leans GOP.

Becky Jay and Jodi Radke.

House District 59

SW Colorado (Silverton, Durango, Cortez and Pagosa Springs). Toss up.

Joe Colgan and Jeff Deitch.

Senate District 24

Suburbs North of Denver near I-25. Leans Dem.

Val Vigil and Lois Tochtrop

Senate District 32

South Denver. Safe Dem.

Jennifer Mello, Fran Coleman, and Chris Romer.

UPDATE: A previously mentioned SD 30 primary appears to be off, as one of the two Democrats in the race has withdrawn due to a family member suffering from a serious illness. Other figures have been adjusted to reflect this change.

Notably, only 6 Democratic party candidates who will face, at least, the primary voters, petitioned onto the ballot (Peggy Lamm, Herb Rubenstein, Margaret Atencio, Jeff Deitch, Jim Rettew, and Chris Romer). Notably, four of those six are in three way races. The other 110 made it onto the ballot via the caucus process.

Dan Slater has a brief summary of the Republican side of the primary ballot:

It looks like the Republicans will have 15 primaries among all of the State House and State Senate districts (this includes SD9, where a primary candidate’s petition has not yet been certified).

One of those primaries is in Grand Junctions seventh State Senate District where there is no Democratic party opponent. Republicans have a six way primary in the 5th Congressional District (centered around Colorado Springs), although a likely primary in the GOP race for the Governor's office appears to have been avoided.

Thus, out of 200 possible primaries above the county level in Colorado in 2006, only 24 primaries will actually be held, and as I note in another post today, 19% of races in Colorado this year don't have a major party contest.

Colorado, The Not So Low Tax State

Colorado's per capita state and local tax burden in 2004 was $3,169. This ranks 25th out of the 50 states, and if you include the District of Columbia, it would be the median state in terms of per capita tax burden. The national average is $3,447.

Colorado regularly makes headlines for its very low level of state taxes. Only Texas and South Dakota impose fewer dollars of state taxes per capita. But, as I've noted before, that doesn't actually mean that Colorado is a low tax state.

Colorado makes up for meager state level taxes, with hefty local taxes. They are an unusually high 59% of the total tax burden in Colorado, compared to a national average of less than 50%. This flows in part from particularly widespread use of local sales taxes, and high property taxes on real and personal property owned by businesses. While Colorado's combined state and local sales tax rates are similar to many states, few states allocate such a large share of that sales tax revenue to local government. Few states tax real property of businesses at the much higher rate than homeowners that Colorado does. And, many states don't have a property tax business personal property at all.

Also, while state level TABOR modifications (TABOR is a state constitutional limitation that requires voter approval to exceed certain government revenue limits), like recently passed Referendum C, are rare, they are very commonly passed at the local government level. Indeed, contrary to the idea that TABOR is really about voter control of tax levels, Republican Governor Owens, this session, vetoed two bills where state legislators wanted to simply allow voters to vote to increase local taxes for various purposes, SB 47 which allowed taxes for health care, HB 1005 for full day kindgarten.

Of course, the other question is whether per capita tax burden in dollars is a fair measure. Colorado is a state with an above average per capita GDP and personal income. The fact that it has only average overall state and local taxation implies that its rate of taxation is below average.

The Vampire Slayer Act of 2006.

Only California's state house could pass the Vampire Slayer Act of 2006. It addresses electrical appliances that suck up electricity from the grid, even when they are turned off.

Disavowing Citizenship Defense Crashes, Burns

A nutcase in a mobile home park charged with several criminal counts in connection with intimidating a witness in an indecent exposure case arising from a trip to the communal shower, tried to claim immunity from criminal prosecution because he had disavowed his U.S. citizenship. Not surprisingly, the Colorado Court of Appeals reminds us that expatriation is not a valid defense that deprives the U.S. courts of jurisdiction, in cases where a crime is commited in, and the defendant is arrested in, Colorado.

How Mr. Jones ever convinced attorney Kathy Goudy, of Carbondale, Colorado, who appears to be a criminal defense attorney with an active appellate practice, to present the issue on appeal is beyond my comprehension.

In other odd criminal case news, the United States Court of Appeal for the 6th Circuit held that if you write and publish a book explaining precisely how to commit a particular type of mail fraud, and then go out and do it exactly as you describe in your previously published book, that the book can be introduced into evidence to rebut your claim that you were duped into participating in a scheme that you didn't understand.

Marine Corps Helicopter Program in Trouble

The Marines had engaged Bell Helicopter to update its UH-1 utility helicopter and derivative AH-1 attack helicopter. Guess what? The project is over budget, behind schedule and has technical difficulties (like that every happens in Defense procurement). But, something remarkable has happened. The Department of Defense is seriously considering cancelling the program entirely. A final decision will be made in the near future.

Hat Tip to Defense Tech.

Republican Anarchists

In most states, the path to a state supreme court judgeship is paved with pious affirmations that you will obey the law. In Alabama, four Republican candidates for this elective post are running on campaigns of ignoring the U.S. Supreme Court.

There are nine seats on Alabama's Supreme Court, all now held by Republicans, and five are up for election.

Recall that this is the state that brought us Governor George Wallace and Judge Roy Moore, who kicked off the current trend by ignoring a specific federal court order to remove the Ten Commandments monument he placed in the Court before he was removed from office.

Justice Tom Parker, who is running for chief justice, argues that state judges should refuse to follow U.S. Supreme Court precedents that they believe to be erroneous.

Another Republican canadidate takes a similar stance:

Alan Zeigler, a Birmingham lawyer running one of the seats, said lower courts should follow direct orders of the Supreme Court in specific cases. But he said state justices have a duty to ignore precedent.

And, so do two more.

Another candidate, Henry P. "Hank" Fowler, a member of Parker's staff, said conservative judges must stop surrendering to liberal Supreme Court opinions "without a word of protest." And lawyer Ben Hand said judges "can't just break the law and then point to the guy down the street in the black robe and say, 'He told me to.'"

The frightening thing is that the Republican judicial candidates who favor ignoring federal law as state supreme court justices are doing well in the polls.

Anarchist tendencies in Alabama also extend to Republicans in the executive branch. For example, when Roy Moore has commanded to obey a court order to remove his Ten Commandments display, the Republican Governor didn't implore him to obey the law. Instead:

Gov. Fob James threatened in 1997 to call out the National Guard to protect Moore's right to display a Ten Commandments plaque in his courtroom.

And, is our Republican President George W. Bush, who has taken the stand in signing statements in connection with 750 different laws that he will refuse to faithfully carry out the laws enacted by Congress all that different?

Does anyone remember the days when the Republicans were the party of law, order and federal authority?

Is it any wonder that Colorado's State Republican Party Assembly was itself anything but orderly (even with 35 sheriff's deputies called in to maintain order)?

The Republican base doesn't like it:

In recent polls, fewer than 70 percent of registered Republicans said they approve of the way President Bush is handling his job, a sharp drop from the 90 percent support on which he once could count. Among self-identified conservatives, Bush's standing is even lower: Just 51 percent rate his performance favorably. . . . while 59 percent of the public disapproves of the way the House and Senate are functioning, the figure among Republicans is 62 percent. Read that again: Republicans dislike the Republican-controlled Congress even more than Democrats and independents do.

Unity08 CEO Jim Jonas captured the sentiment in an interview with Denver Post columnist David Harsanyi:

Jonas contends he personally joined Unity08 because he didn't recognize the Republican Party anymore.

"It sure doesn't feel like the party that I was attracted to as a kid and that I grew up with as a kid - the party I have worked for and will continue to work for forever," says Jonas. "I think we need to get our party back focusing on the critical issues in this country."

I'm not sure when it happened, but the GOP has crossed the rubicon. Once it was a party of conservatives. Now, it is a party of anarchists (or more correctly, lawless dictators and theocrats).

FKA XM-8 Update

The U.S. military has been working since the 1980s to replace the M-16 assault rifle and the M-4 carbine, the main small arms used by U.S. soldiers. The most recent incarnation of the program was called the XM-8 and it was cancelled on Halloween last year based on an audit report criticizing the procurement approach. There was also scuttlebutt that U.S. gunmaker Colt, the holder of the current M4 carbine contract, would have been put out of business if the XM-8 contract and was basically given a reprieve by this delay. Discussion of the decision can be found here, with an emphasis on the argument that the U.S. needs larger caliber small arms than its existing M4 and M16 or the proposed XM-8 (in all cases 5.56mm which is .223 caliber).

It was about then that I lost track of the story. Since then there have been some developments.

A replacement procurement request, also calling for a replacement to the M249 light machine gun has since been issued. The specifications in the new request call for far less reliability and somewhat less accuracy than in the XM-8 program, despite the fact that those standards had already been met in the previous program. Some of the competiting possibilities are noted here, and I suggest that you not stop at the original post, as there are many informative comments.

Meanwhile, a couple of years ago, an entirely separate contract for a new U.S. Special Forces rifle has been awarded to a different design which includes a 7.62mm (.30 caliber) version, for a portion of the order, and this is starting to enter mass production and fielding.

For novices, a carbine is a small automatic rifle intended for use at short ranges, often by troops whose primary duties are to drive vehicles or otherwise act in a support capacity.