Earth Day in Denver Is A Big Day For RTD This Year

Today is Earth Day, a celebration near and dear to my heart because my father was involved in the original Earth Day, not so long before I was born.

One of the notable experiences of my own adult life has been to bear witness to Denver's transit system come into being from almost nothing when I arrived in Denver.

RTD's Big Year

In honor of the day, Denver's Regional Transportation District is opening its 22.8 mile commuter rail A line from Union Station to the Denver International Airport today. (This also connects Denver's Gateway and Stapleton neighborhoods by rail to downtown.)  Tomorrow, all rail lines in the RTD system will be free and there will be parties at each of the new A line stops.

This is the one of several major transit expansions for the year for RTD, which has also brought a revamped fare structure. Overall, RTD is adding 50.7 miles to its electric rail lines this year, in addition to 18 miles of bus rapid transit infrastructure along U.S. 36.

This dramatic expansion of transit in Denver will make the city one of the best served by transit in the country, and regional municipalities are working hard to leverage that by authorizing high density transit friendly zoning near rail stops - evidence of which is visible across the metropolitan area.

A Brief Historical Detour.

From 1886-1950, Denver had intracity rail service provided by the Denver Tramway Company, but this was discontinued in 1950.

The tramway made use of a variety of types of streetcars, including conduit cars (until 1888), cable cars (until 1900), and trolley cars (until 1950). At the height of its trolley operations, the tramway owned more than 160 miles (260 km) of track and operated over 250 streetcars. By the end of trolley service, only 64 streetcars were still in use.

The Denver Tramway Company continued to exist an provide bus service in greater Denver until 1971 when its assets were sold to the City of Denver.  Denver in turn, transferred the assets to the Regional Transportation District (RTD) which it created in cooperation with neighboring jurisdictions and the state legislature in 1974.

Denver's current light rail system opened with only the 10.5 mile "Central Corridor" light rail line in October of 1994, after 44 years without rail.  The 8.7 mile Southwest Corridor light rail line opened in 2000 (shortly after I moved to Denver).  The 1.8 mile Central Platte Valley spur of RTD's light rail service opened in 2002.

On the map above, the portions in dark blue/purple represent the 40 miles of transit were in place or under construction before FasTracks was approved.  Of this, 19 miles of which, basically the entire Southwest leg of the project, was part of the T-REX project which started land acquisition in 2002 and was completed in 2006.

The 12.1 mile W line from Union Station to Golden added in 2013 (shown in aqua on the map above) was added as part of FasTracks (which was approved by voters in 2004 ballot initiative). Denver's Union Station itself was overhauled in 2014.

Thus, in the year 1999, when I moved to Denver, there were only a 10.5 miles of the Central Corridor light rail line that was just five years old (and was less than two years old when I move to Colorado) and there was no bus rapid transit. At the end of 2019, there will be 96.6 miles of rail and 18 additional miles of bus rapid transit in the region. Denver also has many bus lines that offer frequent bus service along many of the metro area's major arterial streets, that provide service that rivals intracity rail in convenience without the infrastructure costs associated with rail lines.

The FasTracks project has more than doubled the size of metro Denver's transit system, even excluding portions shown in green, which may never be completed, unless new funding is found. If FasTracks is ever completed as planned it will rival the peak size of the Denver Tramway Company's transit network of 1886-1950.

This Year's Other RTD Expansions

Earlier this year, it launched bus rapid transit (BRT) service along U.S. 36 to Boulder and a second free downtown shuttle service.

This summer, a 6.2 mile stub of a commuter rail B line from Union Station to Westminster (a first installment of the planned 41 mile commuter rail to Boulder and Longmont) will open.

This fall, an 11.2 mile commuter rail G line from Union Station to Arvada and Wheat Ridge will open.

And, this winter before the end of the year, the R line extending the existing light rail service to 9 Mile station in Aurora by 10.5 miles, all of the way along the I-225 corridor to the A line will be completed.  All of the track has been laid for the R line now, but it still takes months to get it ready to enter service.

Many new rail stations are opening in connection with the new lines and the downtown Denver's Civic Center bus station will also be rebuilt into a larger RTD bus depot now that the Market Street station hub in LoDo has been replaced by services offered at Union Station which a developer has purchased for a mixed use office, commercial and micro-apartment project.

The expanded bus rapid transit, shuttle, and rail services will also entail a major overhaul RTD's bus services, particularly its longer trip regional and express bus services.

Coming Attractions

There are still some loose ends to the FasTracks project, approved by metropolitan Denver voters in 2004, to complete after 2016.

The portions to be completed through 2019 are shown in orange on the map above.

Public-private partnerships put two of the remaining portions ahead of the schedule dictated by available funding. A commuter rail line will go north from Union Station along I-25 (only 13 miles of the planned 18.5 miles of the line is set for expedited completion in 2018 with the last 5.5 miles coming later, perhaps much, much later) and a 2.3 mile extension of the light rail line along I-25 to the Denver Tech Center to the Skyridge Hospital (set to open in 2019).

The remaining parts of the project are shown in green on the map above.

Lagging at the very end of the FasTracks project will be a 0.8 mile continuation of the 30th and Downing light rail line will be continued to the A line (the Central Rail Extension L line), a 2.5 mile extension of the Southwest rail line to Highlands Ranch. The scheduled dates for these projects hasn't been set, but appears to be after 2035, unless new sources of funding can be identified.

The Highland's Ranch extension probably will receive corporate sponsorship and assistance.

It would be a great shame to make the final 0.8 mile extension needed to complete the central part of the plan wait another two decades, but no private or public co-sponsors of that relatively tiny part of the overall plan have come forward and RTD is basically out of money for the near future. The W light rail line is the most recent light rail comparable in Denver, and it cost $707 million to build, greatly over budget due to various management mistakes, with completion in 2013 and was 12.1 miles long for an average of $58.4 million per mile.  At that rate, it ought to cost about $47 million to build the Central Rail Extension L line, some of which has already been expended for environmental impact statements and planning.  This would serve not just people in Northeast Denver neighborhoods, but also people en route to DIA from all points to the South who would like to bypass Union Station. (Also, with a slight additional modification requiring no new stations and less than a mile of additional rail, the Central Rail Extension L line could be extended to connect with the N line to the North as well as the A line to the East, allowing commuters from northern suburbans to bypass Union Station en route to the Denver Tech Center.)

Finally, an extension of the commuter rail B line the rest of the way to Boulder and Longmont from Westminster (the existence of a BRT substitute already in place to Boulder makes this a lower priority).  The FasTracks proposal called for a commuter rail line from Denver to Boulder to Longmont.  But, the last leg from Boulder to Longmont would provide almost no benefit relative to bus rapid transit according to recent studies, so it will probably never be built.  As the Denver Post editorial board explains:

Total daily ridership on bus and rail would increase by only 300 riders by 2035 if the $1.15 billion line were built to Longmont, according to a recent analysis by the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project of RTD's Northwest Area Mobility Study. Not only that, travel time actually would be longer on the train than in rapid transit bus — 71 minutes on the rail from Longmont station to Union Station compared to 53 minutes by rapid bus.

Work on these last two parts of the B line for a total of 35 miles of rail line is not scheduled to begin for another 24 years, i.e. not until 2040.

Colorado's Intercity Transit Service

The transit picture for greater Denver also includes "Bustang", an affordable intercity luxury commuter bus service, provided by the state, on I-25 from Denver to Fort Collins and to Colorado Springs, and along I-70 from Denver to Glenwood Springs.

This service, as much as anything, demonstrates by example that the limited market for this service doesn't require high speed rail (at least in the I-25 corridor where high speed rail would be least expensive with $9.8 billion in construction costs for 135 miles or so of track from Fort Collins to Colorado Springs, where population densities are greatest), because most of I-25 on this route is fast (75 miles per hour, only slightly reduced for select stops by bus), because luxury buses can provided the amenities that high speed rail users would seek, and because the amount of demand for the service is fairly weak even at very modest prices.

I-25 tends to be gridlocked every rush hour in the Denver metropolitan area (and savvy Bustang users can transition to RTD transit to avoid that rather than going all of the way to the downtown stop), but absent snowstorms and major construction projects, I-25 is rarely congested enough to significantly slow traffic in the rest of the Front Range.

Put another way, high speed rail on the Front Range is only attractive enough to secure economically viable demand if it is materially faster than driving or flying, at a not much greater price.  "High speed" rail service along the I-25 corridor that goes 95 mph, for example, would provide almost no benefit relative to driving your own car on that route.  But, perhaps at 180 mph, high speed rail along the I-25 corridor might begin to make sense if it wasn't too expensive and Front Range urban areas other than greater Denver started to experience a great deal of population growth.

Intense traffic congestion on I-70 from Denver to Glenwood Springs during ski season (and the vulnerability of those roads to closure due to accidents, snow and landslides) make the potential benefits per trip for high speed rail in that corridor relative to bus service much greater.  But, the population density served is much lower in the I-70 corridor than in the I-25 corridor, traffic is low outside of ski season (overall an estimated two-thirds less traffic per year), and the cost of building high speed rail in the mountains is much greater per mile ($16.5 billion from Golden to Eagle, about 120 miles) than on the flat open plains (much of which is open land and farm country) of the I-25 corridor.  On the other hand, since I-70 is near capacity in ski season already, adding rail service could produce substantial interstate highway road construction savings, reaching into the billions of dollars.

(In addition, Colorado has an Amtrak line that runs through Denver, an Amtrak line that grazes the far Southeast corner of the state, irregular season Ski Train service to Winter Park when funding is available, Greyhound bus service, and some smaller intercity bus or van shuttle operators.)

Why Transit?

What does Denver get out of its immense investment in transit that has provided it with a comprehensive system of electric rail service that puts most of the metro area within a modest distance from their nearest rail station?

First, this is a hedge against rising oil prices.  Prior to FasTracks, Denver would basically collapse if oil prices rose too much to make a city connected entirely by gasoline and diesel fueled vehicles economically viable.  Now, if oil prices rise, most metro area residents can replace most of their commutes with a transit system that isn't sensitive to oil prices.

In particular, the new comprehensive transit system makes it viable for someone wanting to go to most of the metro area's commercial center to park and ride with a short range electric vehicle (or bicycle) to a rail station, and then to make the rest of the trip by train.  So, even if we completely ran out of oil, the city could live on, while other cities that were not so far sighted would have to play catch up spending a decade or more when they had no alternatives and construction was much more expensive trying to put a transit system in place.

This said, Denver's transit system is not really a potentially complete replacement of motor vehicles. It is essentially a system for getting commuters and out of town travelers to downtown, the Denver Tech Center and the Denver International Airport that closely mirrors the interstate highway system in the metropolitan area.  It isn't designed to provide neighborhood to neighborhood transportation (which RTD does via buses).

Second, it is a hedge against future interstate highway system congestion.  The A line opening today will already often be faster than trying to get from downtown to the airport on the highway. Denver is creeping into permanent gridlock during rush hours, and rail provides a faster alternative at those times that can be expanded much less expensively than expanding interstate highways with more lanes in the metro area.  The more rush hour congestion grows, the more ridership the transit system will see.

(Incidentally, rail systems are also much less likely to be obstructed in bad weather or due to accidents, making the overall transportation system more robust in bad weather.)

Metropolitan Denver, and the City and County of Denver proper in particular, has been growing like wildfire, pretty much continuously since the early 1980s oil bust, and especially in the last decade and a half.  Denver has gone from being a medium sized middle of the United States city to a world class city of the first or second rank.

Despite seemingly having no natural boundaries (in fact, limited water supplies impose nearly invisible boundaries as Douglas County's ever falling ground water table reminds us), recent construction in the Denver metropolitan area has been at urban densities comparable to major cities with much more restricted natural limits on their available land.  Denver has made excellent use of infill opportunities and land use regulation changes to squeeze more people onto the same land.  And, higher population density is the key to making transit more attractive economically.

Third, it allows for higher density construction in commercial centers without the need to provide parking for new commercial development, while simultaneously increasing the value of housing across the metro area by bringing such much of it closer in terms of travel time to commercial centers than the pre-transit systems.  In a nutshell, transit allows downtown to outsource parking to distant park and ride stations which helps both commuters and people attending sporting, entertainment and civic events in the urban core.

It turns out that it is almost a global, universal empirical economic fact that higher population density is strongly correlated with greater economic productivity per worker.  So, facilitating higher density strengthens our economy.

Without good transit, metropolitan Denver would have to develop more dispersed and lower density suburban office parks that would be less economically productive, and the capacity of central Denver to be a first class sports and entertainment hub for the entire region would be impaired.  Yet, it has consistently been shown that healthier central cities yield economic benefits for entire metropolitian areas.

Fourth, it helps the environment in a city where ozone levels have impaired air quality.

Electric trains are not inherently more environmentally friendly than gasoline and diesel driven motor vehicles.  The coal that fuels much of the power grid in Colorado is very dirty energy.  And, emissions from new vehicles are much lower than their predecessors.

But, the large number of passengers on average per rail car-mile, and the efficiency of electric motors relative to internal combustion engines, tilts the balance back in favor of transit.  Equally important, as Colorado's electric grid (which is already about 25% sourced from renewable energy) becomes greener, everything that relies on electricity automatically and effortlessly becomes greener without any change in consumer behavior.  And, utility companies are in a much better position to be at the cutting edge of green energy innovation than every day consumers.

Fifth, the more extensive transit system also makes it easier for the disabled and other non-drivers (older children, people with suspended driver's licenses, people who can't afford vehicles) to access destinations across the metro area.  From a practical perspective, this is more of a side effect and serves a population that was already willing, because it had no other choice, to use existing RTD bus service to the same destinations which has been in place for decades.  But, it is still a benefit of transit.

Ranking Denver's Transit System

By the end of 2016, only six North American cities have more combined miles of commuter rail and light rail than Denver:

1. New York City 260.8
2. Mexico City 148.75
3. San Francisco 144.2
4. Philadelphia 118.4
5. Washington D.C. 117.0
6. Chicago 102.8
7. Los Angeles 98.5
8. Toronto 93.4
9. Dallas 91.6
10. Denver 90.7 
11. Portland 67.35
12. Boston 64.0
13. San Diego 53.5
14. Atlanta 50.3
15. Baltimore 48.5
16. Salt Lake City 46.8
17. Saint Louis 46.0
18. Montreal 43.0
19. Sacramento 42.9
20. Vancouver 42.6
21. San Jose 42.2
22. Calgary 37.2
23. Trenton-Camden 34.0
24. Cleveland 32.3
25. Pittsburg 26.2
26. Phoenix 26.0
27. Miami 24.2
28. Seattle 24.2
29. Houston 22.7
30. New Orleans 22.3
31. Oceanside 22.0
32. Monterrey (Mexico) 20.0
33. Minneapolis 21.8
34. Jersey City 17.0
35. Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) 17.0
36. Edmonton 15.1
37. Guadalajara 14.9
38. San Juan 10.7
39. Charlotte 9.6
40. Panama City 8.5
41. Norfolk 7.4
42. Buffalo 6.4
43. Memphis 6.3
44. Newark 6.2
45. Ottowa 5.0
46. Tuscon 3.9
47. Tampa 2.7

No city in Latin America other than Mexico City has any urban rail or light rail service with as many miles as Denver's city (the runner up in Latin America, Santiago (Chile) has 64.0 miles of rail, third is Sao Paulo (Brazil) with 46.1 miles).  There are 24 cities with urban rail or light rail service in Latin America other than Mexico City, Santiago and Sao Paulo.

By the end of 2019, Denver will have 108 miles, surpassing Dallas, Toronto, Los Angeles and Chicago, and making Denver first for a non-coastal U.S. city, fifth in the United States, and sixth in the Americas. If the entire FasTracks project is completed, Denver will have 151.6 miles of rail lines and be second only to New York City in combined miles of commuter rail and light rail in all of North and South America.

Melbourne, Australia has 155.3 miles of light rail, Adelaide has 9.3 miles, Sydney will open a new system in 2019 with 45 miles of rail.  Gold Coast, Australia will open a new system in 2018 with 4.5 miles of rail.

Antarctica, unsurprisingly, has no urban rail.

In Africa: there are four suburban rail systems in South Africa (some with hundreds of miles of track), there is a tram system in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia (with 19.6 miles of track), there is a tram and a metro system in Cairo, Egypt (48.4 miles of heavy rail and something less than 36 miles of tram line), there is a tram system in Alexandra, Egypt (20 miles), and there are also urban rail systems in Morocco (one 19 mile line and one 11.8 mile line), Algeria (one 19.2 miles in two systems in Algiers, one 5.6 mile line in Constantine, and one 11.6 mile line in Oran) and Tunisia (one 19.9 mile line). There are also two transit systems under construction in Nigeria (the larger of which will have 22 miles of track).

There are many transit systems in Asia (including Japan) and Europe, many of which are more extensive than most of those in the Americas. See lists of global metro systems, tram systems, and suburban rail systems.

Needless to say, all of these other cities have much larger metropolitan area populations than Denver, and measured by ridership, Denver has a much more challenging task to compete with other major U.S. urban rail systems.

Front Runners On Track To Win Nominations

The Republican Presidential Primary

Donald Trump's solid performance in the New York State Republican primary (well above polling in advance of the race) and strong polling in the states that vote next Tuesday in the Northeast, make the prospects that he will win a majority of the delegates in the first round of voting in Cleveland in July very high.

Running the numbers on a convenient delegate calculator at FiveThirtyEight, it appears that Trump can get away from some pretty lackluster results for the rest of the campaign relative to his current polling, if he does as well in other Northeastern states as he did in New York yesterday.

The only way that Cruz has a shot is to get to a contested convention with strong showings in Indiana, Nebraska, Oregon, Washington, Montana, New Mexico, South Dakota, California, and a nearly complete sweep of the currently uncommitted delegates.  Particularly in California that means that Cruz needs a major surge in the polls there between now and the final day of the primary season on June 7.  If Trump can make a strong showing in California, Trump will be the nominee.

Even if Trump falls a little short of the magic number of pledged delegates going into the convention, it is unrealistic to expect that Cruz will be able to capture all, 95% or even 80% of the delegates who are not pledged on a first round vote, even if Cruz has a decisive lead among them.  Thus, Trump can probably afford to be as many as 25 or more pledged delegates short of the margin number when the dust settles on June 7, and can still win the nomination on a first round ballot. (The notion that someone who hasn't even run for President, someone who has dropped out of the race, or Kaisch, if he doesn't drop out of the race before then, could be nominated is sheer fantasy.)

Realistically, there is more than a two-thirds chance that Trump will capture the GOP nomination (particularly in light of the fact that he is the weakest of the three GOP candidates in a general election even relative to Ted Cruz which means that Trump's odds of being President understate the likelihood that he will be his party's nominee this year).

The Democratic Presidential Primary

Similarly, while a lot of attention has been devoted to the question of whether superdelegates unfairly sway the outcome of the Democratic primary process, where Clinton has won 21 contests and Sanders has won 17, given Clinton's strong polling in both the Northeastern states that vote on Tuesday and in California, and totals to date, it looks very likely that Clinton will go into the Democratic National Convention with a majority of the pledged delegates, in addition to almost all of the superdelegates.

Clinton over performed relative to the pace she needs to meet to win the nomination in New York and is likely to do so again next Tuesday, given her solid lead in polls of each of those states and the momentum she has coming off her stronger than expected win the New York.

Thus, a Clinton-Trump showdown in November continues to be, by far, the most likely outcome.

CNN's opinion markets reflect that, giving Clinton a 75% chance of being the next President, and Trump a 15% chance of being the next President (he has trailed Clinton by about 9 percentage points in general election runoffs for months).  The remaining 10% is presumably split somehow between Cruz, Sanders, Kaisch and Republican white knights who aren't in the running.  Realistically, of the three, the odds might be something on the order of Cruz 5%, Sanders 3%, Kaisch 1%, and none of the above 1%.

The odds that the Democrats will win the election in November are about 78%, which makes Republican stalling on a cenerist Democratic nominee of President Obama for the U.S. Supreme Court look like a counterproductive call for conservatives who will be in a weaker position after the election (and who might very well approve Obama's nominee in a lame duck session).

Indeed, the political parties both look likely to nominate the candidate still running who is weakest in a general election, rather than the one who would be strongest in a general election (Sanders and Kaisch, respectively).  Neither of those candidates have much chance at all of winning their respective party's nomination.

The Arizona Senate Race

Incumbent Republican Senator John McCain in tied with his Democratic opponent, Ann Kirkpatrick, in U.S. Senate race polling in Arizona.  Even the slightest of coat tails for Clinton in the general election could flip this seat to the Democrats.

Monarchism Back In Style Among Young American Conservatives

According to Vox, monarchism is regaining popularity on the American right.

The Drone That Changed The Balance Of Naval Power

The most important military technology development, arguably in the last several years, is a $20 million drone ship that can find coastal submarines at an affordable price, which just entered service (see also DARPA and Wikipedia web pages on this drone ship). According to Wikipedia, it can operate autonomously for 60 to 90 days at a time, and the "vessel is 132 ft (40 m) long, weighs 140 tons, and is expected to cost $15,000–20,000 to operate per day, compared to $700,000 per day for a destroyer." It would be used in coordination with air based reconnaissance drones such as the MQ-4C Triton (which cost about $183 million each).

A mine hunting version is also in development, which matters because a Littoral Combat Ship based mine hunting drone project was a bust and the U.S. sold many of its mine hunting ships to other countries before it had a replacement in place.

Since the Falklands War in 1982, at least, it has been clear that in a fight between a submarine of any reasonably modern kind and a surface combatant (even a state of the art one), the submarine wins the lion’s share of the time. Yet coastal submarines (the Scorpene, which costs about $450 million, is typical of the low end of this class of submarine, as is the Russian Kilo-class which China paid about $250 million each to buy) can be quite inexpensive. This makes it possible for countries with large submarine fleets like Russia, China, North Korea and Iran to wipe out most local ships in the U.S. surface fleet.

(Of course, submarines aren't the only threats to surface combatants. They must contend with inexpensive but lethal missile boats possibly in "swarms", new hypersonic anti-ship missiles, and attacks with anti-ship missiles launched from enemy aircraft, as well, are easily to target since they are large and slow, and can't outrun any of these threats. Indeed, the last time a U.S. naval ship destroyed another ship was in a duel with an Iranian missile boat 38 years ago on April 18, 1988.)

Existing ships and submarines for anti-submarine warfare (ASW) are very expensive: $1,843 million each for 1991 design Arleigh Burke class destroyer, about $2,688 million per Virginia class attack submarine, $4,000 million for a Zumwalt class destroyer, $12,900 million for an aircraft carrier (aircraft not included), $500 million for a Littoral Combat ship (once mission module costs are included) (which has had a variety of growing pains as this new class of ship has entered service) and $575 million for its "Small Surface Combatant" successor.

(The Navy has retired the last of its 1979 design Oliver Hazard Perry frigates in 2015, and it has been phasing out its 1978 design Ticonderoga class guided missile cruisers 22 of which remain in service at this time.  The last 1975 design Spruance class destroyer was retired from service in 2005.)

You can buy one submarine tracking drone ship for every coastal submarine in bad guy hands on the planet for less than the cost of one Zumwalt class destroyer.

These submarine tracking drone ships make the difference between coastal submarines being an existential threat to the world’s surface warships, and coastal submarines being a very manageable problem. Once you know exactly where a submarine is, it is comparatively trivial to destroy that submarine with current anti-submarine missiles which can be launched from a P-8 Poseidon patrol aircraft (a modified 737) (at a cost of $257 million each plus ordinance costs, an option favored by the British military and the Australian military. while Japan has a comparable aircraft of its own), or a destroyer, or a helicopter, or a fighter aircraft, or even an armed drone in the not so distant future.

The drones don’t eliminate the threat from long range deep water submarines that make up a lot of Russia’s fleet and a little of China’s fleet, but other drones make even these submarines significantly easier to catch.

A Modest Proposal For Health Care Economics

A committee in the Colorado House of Representatives has passed a bill, on a narrow party line vote, that would require stand alone ERs to disclose their charges so that people utilizing a stand alone ER as opposed to an urgent care facility where charges are much lower for the same treatment, make an informed choice.

I would like to see a law that would make disclosure of all health care provider charges with and without insurance, before providing treatment, and condition precedent to collection of such charges. 

There could be an exception if the patient was incapable due to a health condition of comprehending the charges and there was no other responsible person to whom disclosure could be made who could be located before treatment was necessary, in which case only the average amount paid for insured patients could be charged.

One of the biggest problems with health care economics is that there is rarely meaningful disclosure of prices in the industry, which renders impotent the market forces that usually control prices through competition.  There is really no other industry in the U.S. economy that I can think of which operates in this way (e.g. while lawyers aren't required to provide firm estimates of the total charges in advance, they are at least required to disclose their hourly rates and any standard additional charges to clients in advance as a matter of professional ethics and are also subject to reasonableness requirements that are not infrequently enforce by the courts).

This consumer protection reform would be a good first step towards putting the health care industry on an economic footing that even remotely resembles a rational one.  As it is, there is no real rhyme or reason for the charges for particular health care services in the absence of binding health insurance contracts between insurance companies and their provider networks.

DPS Board Appointee Backs Out To End Controversy

The Denver Post has reported that MiDian Holmes who had been appointed to a vacant Denver Public Schools directorship by the DPS Board, has declined to accept the appointment in the wake of controversy over her misdemeanor child neglect conviction which was not fully disclosed to the board during the appointment process.

Porn Consumption Is Not Correlated With Rape

Free, hard core pornography is currently ubiquitous on the Internet, something that has been increasingly true since 1995 when the Internet first started to catch on.

In the time period from 1995 to 2015, the number of rapes per 100,000 people meanwhile has declined by roughly 50% in an era where any issues related to failure to report rapes is likely to have increased rather than decreased the number of reported rapes (from about 44 per 100,000 to about 22 per 100,000).

Bottom line, a massive, population-wide increase in pornography access has coincided with a massive decrease in rape.

This is inconsistent with the widely touted hypothesis that pornography consumption is a leading order contributor to the likelihood that someone will carry out a rape.

In reality, it is unlikely that porn has a first order, or even a second order effect on rates of rapes committed.  The decline in the rate at which rapes are committed per 100,000 people from 1995 to 2015 is quite similar in magnitude to declines in the murder rate, the aggravated assault rate, the robbery rate, and the car theft rate, in the same time period, for example.

At a leading order level, the number of rapes are committed in the United States is mostly a function of overall population size and the overall rate of serious crimes committed.  Second order effects are probably factors like urban v. suburban v. rural population density, regional cultural variation that is stable over long time periods, economic conditions, incarceration rates, and local race and ethnicity mixes.  

Any impact of pornography consumption on the number of rapes committed has less impact than any of those other factors and can only be determined on a statistical basis.  It is probably, at best, on the order of +/-5% or less of the final rate, and that may be a generous estimate.  Certainly, there is no strong correlation between pornography consumption and the number of rapes committed.

Speed Reading Claims Are False

A good summary of the evidence that many common speed reading claims are false can be found here.

Congress Still Broken

Congress continues to be seriously broken when Senators remain willing to support undemocratic rules that allow a single asshole Republican Senator from Utah (Mike Lee) to prevent getting the federal assistance it desperately needs to prevent the criminal mismanagement of Flint, Michigan's water system from afflicting the citizens of this city further (after having killed many residents who died of Legionaries' disease as a result) despite bipartisan support from the rest of Congress.

This is basically corrupt rot and it needs to change.

The Denver Public School Board's Newest Director Needs To Resign Immediately

A newly appointed Denver Public School Board director lied on her application and has a criminal history, which includes a 15-day jail sentence for child abuse, according to court documents. MiDian Holmes was named the new Board Director for Northeast Denver on Tuesday in a special election meeting to replace vacated board member Landri Taylor's seat.

Holmes, 35, was charged with wrongs to minors in 2005, according to court documents. She was sentenced to parenting classes and supervised probation. The case was later dismissed. In 2006, Holmes was charged and pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor negligent child abuse charge with no injuries. She was sentenced to 15 days in jail.

On her application for the board director position, Holmes answered "no" to ever having been convicted of a felony or misdemeanor. The application states that "potential applicants will be subject to a criminal background check.". . . .

More than 20 people initially applied for the opening, and the board narrowed the field to 10 finalists in March.

From here.

There is some merit in limiting the amount of information job applicants should have to disclose. But, particularly when no law prohibits requiring criminal record disclosures for prospective public officials appointed to fill vacancies, there is absolutely no justification for lying about a criminal record in an application for such a vacancy, particularly for a school board applicant when the case involves harm to children. And, in this particular context, there is no plausible way that the candidate merely "forgot" about the fact that she spent 15 days in jail, just ten years ago, for child neglect or abuse.

I might have been sympathetic to the appointee if she disclosed and explained the conviction in a satisfactory way.  But, as the events played out, it is very hard to be sympathetic. MiDian Holmes needs to immediately resign from the office she was appointed to yesterday.

UPDATE: The Denver Post has revised its original story to note that the claim in the press release for her appointment inaccurately says she was a DU graduate when her resume did not claim that she was and asserts that the conviction was disclosed and that the application was worded in a way that wouldn't require this disclosure.

A 9 News account of the same story is found here and suggests that the public records and the candidate's account of the events do not seem to square with each other.

Nonetheless, it is very hard to be comfortable with this appointment when the DPS school board was not up front with the public about these issues with their appointee, when they should have known full well that these issues would come out sooner or later. This remains a case of very bad judgment on the part of the school board, and it still isn't at all obvious to me that Ms. Holmes should remain on the school board in these circumstances. Certainly, my confidence in the DPS school board is diminished.

Ms. Holmes is actually not scheduled to be sworn in until Monday, and while the DPS board appears to back Holmes and she clearly does not intend to resign, the board would be well advised to reconsider its vote and appoint a different candidate before Holmes is sworn in.

SECOND UPDATE:  Further reporting makes pretty clear that Ms. Holmes was not truthful in explaining the incidents that gave rise to her child neglect conviction.

The DPS board should change their mind and decline to seat her on the board.  It looks likely that they will at least consider the option tomorrow:

The Denver school board met Thursday afternoon behind closed doors to discuss the matter with an attorney. After the meeting, Board President Anne Rowe told Chalkbeat the board would hold a special meeting at 5 p.m. Friday to discuss Holmes’s appointment.

A full report of the 2006 incident also reveals that Ms. Holmes initially lied to responding police officers telling them that her three children left unattended all day had been with their father whom they had actually not seen for the past two years, but changed her story when the children told police that they hadn't been with their father.

The U.S. Attorney For Arizona Is Suffering From Reefer Madness

95% of the 305 individuals serving time in federal prison for simple drug offenses are non-citizens and 95.7% were sentenced in southwest border districts — virtually all of them in Arizona. Furthermore, 95.7% of the simple possession drug crimes for which offenders are incarcerated involved marijuana. . . . Only 13 simple possession cases were tried in non-border districts in FY 2014.

From here.

President Obama needs to replace the U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona who is screwing up his handling of marijuana prosecutions in a way that costs the federal government a great deal of money for no valid purpose. Other border state prosecutors deport non-citizen marijuana offenders who could be convicted of simply possession, rather than spending federal scarce federal criminal justice dollars to incarcerate them.

Public Mechanical Clocks Spurred Economic Growth

We find that an increase of 10 percentage points in the diffusion of mechanical clocks can raise the GDP per capita growth approximately 30 percent in a century.

From here.

The methods were as follows:

To achieve these results, we collected information on the introduction of public mechanical clocks in late medieval European cities. We identified a group of early adopters from 1286-1450 and compared this group with the remaining cities in Europe. We studied the population growth rate (which we used as a proxy for economic growth) of these two groups of cities and found strong significant differences: cities that adopted public mechanical clocks early had higher growth rates (30 percentage points higher) than other cities between 1500 and 1700. We found similar results for countries when we measured the impact of the aggregate adoption/ penetration rate on the estimated GDP of a country. We used various estimation strategies to receive this robust result. To avoid endogeneity problems between the dependent variable of economic growth and the main explanatory variables, the building of mechanical clocks, we introduced several instruments.

In particular, we used the distance from the first adopters and solar eclipses as instruments for the likelihood of the implementation of public mechanical clocks. Our results contribute to a better understanding of the effect of GPTs on long-run economic growth. They support the strand of literature that claims that fundamental technological changes cause strong growth effects. However, we show that it takes time for the new technology to translate into economic growth via spillover effects. The penetration not only takes place in different sectors but also fundamentally changes the organization, structure, and culture of a society. Furthermore, our study contributes to the specific study of clocks as a new key technology in late medieval and early modern Europe. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first quantitative exercise that investigates economic growth and mechanical clocks. Our results support the strand of literature that attributes strong but delayed effects to clocks.

The study does little to distinguish economic gains from clocks as opposed to other technologies, so the better interpretation is probably to view public clocks at a litmus test for adoption of a whole suite of early modern mechanical technologies in an area.  But, it is still an interesting historical economic development data point.

A Quick Energy Primer

Different kinds of energy are used in different applications.  For the most part, the fuels competing for use in electricity generation, in transportation fuels, and in heating and water heating, operating is almost completely segregated markets.

Mostly Electricity Generating Fuels

Several different fuels compete in the market for electricity production.  Electricity in turn is used predominantly for lighting, cooking, and digital electric devices (computers, televisions, phones, etc.).  It can be and is used for space heating and water heating but is far more costly than the alternatives.  It is also used to power intracity trains and to power a very tiny percentage of automobiles that are plug in electric.  (Hybrid vehicles, including many ships and submarines, use gasoline or diesel powered electricity generators in addition to directly using those petroleum based fuels.)

* "Thermal" coal is used almost exclusively to generate electricity (a small portion of coal is metallurgical coal is used to make "coke" which is used to make steel, and a small portion of coal output is used in other industrial processes as an energy source, as a filtration medium and as an ingredient for other chemical processes).

* Nuclear power and wind power and hydroelectric power are used almost exclusively to generate electricity.  Historically, wind power was also used to pump water from wells and hydro power was used to operate small factories called mills to process grains and make textiles, but those applications largely ceased a century ago.

Today, hydropower is the predominant source of electricity in many developing countries.  Nuclear power is used heavily in a number of advanced industrialized countries.

* Solar power (apart from passive solar design considerations in architecture which are usually considered an energy conservation design feature to reduce HVAC costs rather than a power source) is mostly used to generate electricity at the utility level, at the individual building level, and at the device level.  Solar power is also used for water heating, both to pre-heat running hot water before it is further heated by other means, and to heat swimming pools.

Mostly Transportation Fuels

* Petroleum is predominantly used for transportation fuel (planes, trains, automobiles, submarines, boats, etc.).  A small portion of petroleum is used for industrial processes.  Heavy petroleum products also known as heating oil, is used for home heating in the Northeast and some very rural areas.  Petroleum is used to generate electricity in Alaska, Hawaii and at local power generators used mostly as emergency back up power, in construction, and in other mobile applications (e.g. carnivals).  Petroleum is also used as an lubricant, to make fertilizers and pesticides, and to make plastics.

* Biofuels are alcohols and diesel hydrocarbons made mostly from cooking waste and plant matter (e.g. corn and sawgrass) that are mostly used as petroleum substitutes in transportation applications.

Mostly Heating Fuels

* Natural gas is used widely for heating buildings and water in buildings, and for cooking. It is also used to meet peak electricity demands.  It is also used in industrial applications as an energy source and as a chemical feedstock.  There are also a modest number of vehicles (mostly fleet vehicles of businesses like United Parcel Service) that run on natural gas.

Coal Industry In Trouble

This week, the nation's largest coal company, which is also the world's largest private sector coal company (Peabody Energy) has filed for bankruptcy under Chapter 11 (see also here). "Arch Coal (ACI), which owns the second-largest U.S. coal reserves behind Peabody, filed for bankruptcy in January." Coal mining companies, Walter Energy (WLT), Alpha Natural Resources (ANR) and Patriot Coal, all filed for bankruptcy in 2015.

The coal mining industry has been shrinking and consolidating, with smaller producers also floundering. Even these bankrupt companies only lasted as long as they did with artificially subsidized federal coal leases and an ability to ignore the externalities created by the pollution and injuries that the industry creates.

After years of coal plant closures, lost coal jobs, and the rise of cleaner forms of electricity like natural gas, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell announced on Friday [in mid-January of 2016] that the government has put a freeze on issuing new leases for coal mining on public lands. During the moratorium, the government plans to review how the coal mining leases are awarded and could potentially make the leases more expensive for coal mining companies. More expensive leases would both help offset the environmental damage from coal mining and power production and also bring in more royalties for the government.

The announcement is a yet another major blow to the U.S. coal industry. While coal will continue to provide the U.S. with power for many decades, it’s era as the dominant power source could be waning. 

The federal government manages leases for coal mining on 570 million acres of land, and a big portion of that is in Wyoming. About 40% of U.S. coal production comes from federal land. 

A Government Accountability Office report in 2014 found that the federal government was missing out on $1 billion annually because of undervalued coal leases for big coal companies. For years, environmentalists have complained about these outdated leasing policies that were created decades ago. . . . 

Meanwhile, over the summer the 200th coal power plant in the U.S. was in the process of shutting down over the past several years. A study last year found that the coal industry contracted by 50,000 jobs over the past five years.

Last year, it cost Peabody Energy $7.6 billion to produce $5.6 billion dollars worth of coal as coal prices tumbled. Its profit margin on its sales is roughly negative 35%.

Peabody reported a loss of $2 billion last year. Revenue tumbled 17% to $5.6 billion as the average price and amount of coal that it sold fell. It warned of further declines this year due to reduced use of coal by U.S. utilities, along with lower demand from overseas markets. Shares of Peabody (BTU) have already plunged more than 75% this year to trade near $2. The company has roughly 7,600 employees.

Coal has lost market shares to far less polluting natural gas (which fracking has made cheaper and more available) and renewable energy sources:"Over the last 5 years, the price of new wind power in the US has dropped 58% and the price of new solar power has dropped 78%. . . . Utility-scale solar in the West and Southwest is now at times cheaper than new natural gas plants." On two days last year, Colorado's Xcel Energy utility generated a majority of its electricity with wind.

Xcel officials say they already produce 25 percent of their electricity from renewable sources. The recent record wind power surges, where 67 percent and 54 percent of electricity came from wind, happened on windy days when electricity use by residents was relatively low. 

Overall, Colorado utilities on average produce 14 percent of electricity from wind turbines, ranking the state among national leaders. Iowa leads at 31 percent.

For Colorado, at least, the renewable energy industry is also a major source of jobs.  There are 4,700 people in the state employed manufacturing wind turbines, and far more who are employed installing solar energy upgrades for homes and businesses, upgrading the power grid to integrate new renewable energy producers and to maintain wind and solar power generation equipment.  While Colorado is a coal producing state, 19th century court precedents on the rights of mineral owners v. surface owners largely limits Colorado coal production to high quality (least polluting) underground mined coal in relatively small volumes relative to Wyoming and West Virginia.  Colorado employs more people in the renewable energy industry than it does in coal mining.

Most electricity in Colorado is still produced by coal.  Solar power accounts for less than 2% of Colorado electricity generation, but solar power generation costs have plummeted in the last few years. "Coal still powers about a third of the U.S. electrical grid, despite the rapid succession of bankruptcies."

U.S. export sales of coal have collapsed as China's economy has floundered.  And, while oil and gas prices are expected to rebound sooner or later, analysts expect current low prices for coal to be more or less permanent.

Generally speaking, the decline in coal usage has been a good thing.

Coal based power entails not just massive amounts of air pollution relative to natural gas, renewables or nuclear power, but also highly toxic groundwater and surface pollution (coal tailings have significant levels of both toxic and radioactive chemicals making its waste dangerous to a degree comparable to nuclear waste).  Most coal, particularly in coal mining centers in Wyoming and West Virginia, is produced via strip mining, which is one of the most environmentally destructive activities known to man.

Coal production involves high levels of worker injuries in mining it per amount of energy generated, and significant numbers of transportation injuries in getting it from mines to power plants (most often via train or barge), relative to the alternatives like natural gas, renewables or nuclear power.

While nuclear power per volume of fuel mined isn't particularly environmentally friendly relative to coal, nuclear power produces so much more energy per volume of fuel that it doesn't have to be in order to be much more environmentally friendly (and nuclear power generates essentially no air pollution). "One train car full of uranium hold energy equivalent to 3,166,667 train cars of coal."

Coal is used almost exclusively for electric power generation in the United States (and is still the leading source of electric power in the United States), mostly because it is too unwieldy to use for transportation, and because it highly polluting, and therefore requires expensive environmental controls.  The lack of a demand for coal for any other purpose has kept coal prices low.

Initiatives to convert coal to more manageable and environmentally friendly synthetic liquid and gas phase fuels have floundered in the face of low oil and gas prices, which are driven in part by fracking, in part by higher levels of production in the Middle East, and in part by weak economic conditions in China and Europe.

Modern Debtors Prison

The United States Constitution as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court is clear.  You may not incarcerate someone for inability to pay a sum of money, civil or criminal, unless they are able to do so, but are willfully refusing to do so (e.g. if the debtor has control over a foreign bank account over which the court cannot obtain jurisdiction).

In practice, people who don't pay fine only offenses (e.g. parking and traffic tickets and minor hunting, fishing and ordinance violations) are routinely jailed for failure to pay fines.  The dollar amounts look tiny to members of the middle class, but can be insurmountable to those who are on the margins (which makes up a disproportionate share of these debtors).

A testimonial from a Texas municipal judge explains why this is unconstitutional and what judges should be doing instead.

Another circumstance in which incarceration for unpaid debts is common involves remedial contempt citations entered against self-employed parents who owe child support and don't pay as agreed.  In some unusual circumstances, this is proper (and some states have criminal laws calling for incarceration sentences for essentially identical conduct).  But, this also produces little compliance, because usually, by the time a hearing comes around the self-employed person has spent the money and can't deliver it and really shouldn't as a result, be held in remedial contempt incarceration at all.

A third circumstance in which people are routinely incarcerated basically for being poor, is when someone is arrested for a minor offense, bail is set automatically or as a matter of course by the judge in some small amount without regard to the ability of the defendant to pay, and the defendant doesn't have the resources to make bail on the often trivially minor charge.  Typically, something like 90% of indigent defendants can be released on personal recognizance bonds without any worse outcomes than the traditional bail system.

Of course, any incarceration, can led to lots of very bad outcomes: loss of a job or for the self-employed loss of business, loss of custody of children or the turnover of children to foster care, coerced pleads to criminal charges for which defendants are not guilty, homelessness upon release (often with loss of personal property if it is lost in an eviction as is common), interruptions in medical care, invasive strip searches, injuries at the hands of guards or fellow inmates who are incarcerated for more serious and often violent offenses, suicide, and high governments costs for incarceration and the related legal process.

Any just system of justice needs to do a much better job, systemically, of handling these kinds of issues that senselessly and harmfully increase the incarceration rate where there is no sound legal or policy argument for doing so.  These cases are the low hanging fruit of sentencing reform.

10th Circuit Punts In Sister Wives Case

The polygamous family featured in the reality TV show "Sister Wives" were threatened with prosecution for polygamy and moved to Nevada from Utah as a result.  They brought suit in U.S. District Court in Utah to have polygamy, defined as cohabitation with more than one person of the opposite sex, declared unconstitutional.

The State of Utah did a miserable job of briefing the case at the trial court level where they prevailed after various issues of standing and proper parties were established.  On appeal, the briefing by the State wasn't much better.

But, ultimately, rather than establishing a landmark precedent decriminalizing polygamy, the 10th Circuit held that the case must be dismissed without prejudice as moot, because the Utah District Attorney's office who was sued in the case adopted a policy in May of 2012 that it would only prosecute polygamy cases when they were incident to frauds committed on a prospective spouse or third parties, effectively freeing the Sister Wives family from risk of prosecution.

The end result creates no precedent on the underlying issue of the decriminalization of polygamy (which also would have invalidated a virtually identical Colorado statute), and shifted the official prosecution policy of just one DA's office in Utah that can be changed prospectively at any time. The key language of the ruling was as follows:

The Utah County Attorney’s Office (“UCAO”) subsequently closed its file on the Browns and adopted a policy (“the UCAO Policy”) under which the Utah County Attorney will bring bigamy prosecutions only against those who (1) induce a partner to marry through misrepresentation or (2) are suspected of committing a collateral crime such as fraud or abuse. The Browns fall into neither category. Nonetheless, the district court denied the Utah County Attorney’s motion to dismiss the case as moot and instead granted summary judgment to the Browns.

Thus, the merits of the case are reserved for another day.  The result was telegraphed by the Court of Appeals when it asked for supplemental briefing on the mootness issue.

The family's counsel discussed the ruling in a blog post.  The family has indicated that it will seek en banc review from the 10th Circuit and/or appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.  I suspect that their odds of prevailing on either route of further appeal will be unsuccessful.  This case is a hot button issue that the judges don't want to touch if they don't have to do so, and the mootness issue provides more than a fig leaf to justify their decision, even if it wasn't necessary clearly mandated by the circumstances.

Previous coverage at this blog includes this post.

Upon further reflection, the fact that the litigation forced the Utah County Attorney's Office to adopt a policy effective defanging the bigamy statute in the county of all of the counties in the United States most likely to have polygamous families who do not fall into one of the categories identified by the policy is still a pretty big blow for freedom, despite not making national or regional or even statewide precedent.  The course of the litigation also provides a roadmap for future lawsuits on the subject, discouraging prosecutors elsewhere from trying to enforce similar statutes.  But, by not making a legal precedent, the result defers public backlash that could roll back the progress made thus far until it ceases to be so controversial, and perhaps allows the precedent making cases to be made involving, for example, Islamic or African animist polygamist families who migrate to the U.S., and don't have such a distinctively American historical baggage.

Korean Christianity

A higher percentage of Koreans are Christians than almost any other country in Asia.  Having married into a Korean Christian family and attended a Korean Presbyterian Church for about a year after I got married, I'm well aware of that.  But, an article at The Diplomat does a good job of explaining the phenomena and how it came to be for those unfamiliar with it.

“We think of Korea as the Second Jerusalem,” says Hong Su Myeon, an older volunteer at Somang Presbyterian, a megachurch in Gangnam. He says Korea is leading a wave of evangelization around the world.

At the same time, Hong says, “It’s true that [a lot of] Christianity is corrupt. But there are a lot of hidden true pastors working hard, and their passion for God is why we are so successful in Korea.”

What can be most surprising to a visitor to Korea is that only 29 percent of the population actually identifies as Christian – about three-quarters Protestant, one quarter Catholic. But their zeal is so enormous that it overshadows the 23 percent who are Buddhist, and the 46 percent who say they have no religion at all.

“It is kind of amazing” how zealous Korean Christians are, says Dr. Hwang Moon-kyung, Professor of History at the University of Southern California. “They give you the impression that South Korea is a very religious country when in fact it isn’t. But the ones who are religious tend to be very fervently religious.”

Basically, Christian churches became parts of coalitions against the occupying Japanese, against communism, and finally against totalitarianism.  By picking and winning the right battles, the churches rose in popular esteem.

Protestant affiliation seems to have leveled off, but the Roman Catholic church continues to grow in Korea.

Attendance rates, and the number of Koreans claiming to be Protestants, have stalled. The democratization movement caused many young Koreans to resent the largely conservative, pro-regime roles most churches held. Corruption, internecine battles within the churches, and a singular focus on growth at all costs have also hurt church attendance.

By contrast, the Catholic Church has continued to grow, largely because it is perceived as being progressive, anti-regime, above corruption, and more democratic, ironic as that might sound to reform-minded Westerners. Kim Dae-jung, a well-known dissident during the dictatorships who would later go on to become president and win the Nobel Peace Prize, was Catholic. Though there was a “minjung” theology among some Protestants, that emphasized democracy and freedom during the dictatorship, it was only preached in a minority of churches.

The question remains about how relations between South Korea’s religious factions will continue. Protestants remain a powerful conservative force, picketing LGBT Pride events, demonstrating against North Korea, and even protesting against the introduction of halal meat in some stores, a move meant to attract tourists from Muslim countries. In 2009, some evidence for evolution was removed from high school science textbooks because of pressure from religious groups, and a full third of Koreans – more than the number of Christians – do not believe in evolution.

Former President Lee Myung-back was criticized by Buddhists and the non-religious for stacking his cabinet with members of his own church, Somang Presbyterian, where he is an elder. Current president Park Geun-hye is an atheist, but her conservative power base relies on Christian support.

One fine point that isn't really clearly captured by the article, but it quite important on the ground, is the extent to which Korean Christians they have theologically infused Confucian concepts and morals into the larger evangelical Christian message.

Also, along the same lines, the 46 percent who have "no religion at all" are normally classified as "Confucian" by scholars of religion.  While this philosophical and moral code does not implicate metaphysics as religions usually do, almost everyone in this group would adhere to the Confucian philosophical ideology.  The practical implications of this in the Japanese context has been discussed cogently in T.R. Reid's book "Confucius Lives Next Door" (1999), but can be applied by analogy in the Korean context in most respects (except the rarity of Christians).

Furthermore, while Korea is not as syncretic as Japan (e.g., there is a history of strong tension between Buddhists and non-Buddhists in Korea, rather than the partial adoption of certain Buddhist practices by almost everyone in Japan), it is common for superstitions such as determining baby names based upon the casting of lots and astrology, sometimes viewed as "Chinese folk religion" in China, or "Shinto" beliefs in Japan, to be followed in South Korea even by people who formally identify as Christian.  The formal name for the traditional shamanistic folk religion of Korea is "Sinkyo" which was suppressed not only during Japanese occupation, but also during the preceding Choson Dynasty (1395 CE to 1910 CE).

Post-Script

Is there an accepted name for the collective pagan traditions adhered to by Western Christians in the modern day in the field of comparative religion?

Perhaps folk religion?

For example, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, "don't step on a crack or you'll break your mother's back", fear of the number 13, Leprechauns, the tradition of not looking behind you until the very last moment because if you do you will never see someone again, ghosts, etc.

The Grown Ups Narrative

The Supreme Court justices are the adults in our democracy as the other branches bicker 

Who would have predicted that the last true democrats in Washington might be found on the Supreme Court? 

As partisanship and jockeying for electoral advantage become all-consuming, Congress refuses to do its job, while the White House reaches perilously toward doing Congress’s job as well as its own. The Senate majority and minority leaders no longer work together. President Obama and House Speaker Paul D. Ryan long ago gave up on finding common ground.

Already reviled by the left for Bush v. Gore and Citizens United v. FEC, and by the right for not blocking Obamacare, the court instantly rose to the top of the presidential campaign agenda. Candidates boasted of litmus tests for appointing judges that, until recently, no self-respecting politician would have admitted to. The justices found themselves evenly divided and are likely to remain so for a long time — a scenario, if there ever was one, for gridlock and point-scoring. When Justice Antonin Scalia died, it seemed a safe bet that the court, too, would fall victim to partisan paralysis. 

But so far we have seen the opposite. The justices, Republican- and Democrat-appointed alike, seem determined to insulate their institution as much as possible from the poison flowing through the other two branches. In this brave attempt, they are providing an example of how adults behave in a democracy. . . . 

[Examples of adult behavior on the Supreme Court and the heat the judges are taking for it follow.] 

None of this means the court will always find a route to compromise; the next inflammatory decision could come tomorrow, for all I know. The justices disagree profoundly. Roberts, for example, is suspicious of affirmative action because he sees it as allowing the government to discriminate on the basis of race; Justice Sonia Sotomayor will always be reluctant to limit government’s ability to help victims of past discrimination. 

But while remaining faithful to their core principles, the justices are trying to find a way to make their institution work for the good of the country. That’s the definition of democracy, which so many others have forgotten.

From Fred Hiatt, writing at the Washington Post.

The story captures a narrative near and dear to a great many American Democrats and democrats. We care almost as much as having a political process that is civilized in which the decision-makers act like adults as we do about getting our preferred policy outcomes.

Even if our preferred nominee may fail on the merits, we expect that Senate to hold hearings and if the nominee is not rejected in committee, to hold an up or down vote on the merits on the candidate. We expect Congress to pass budgets without playing games of chicken and causing government shutdowns. We expect political rhetoric that we aren't embarrassed to listen to in the presence of a 5th grader. We don't necessarily expect, but dearly want, politicians who agree on the facts even if they disagree on the conclusions that follow from the facts. We expect politicians to try to discuss their differences with each other in a civilized manner and in good faith, and for them to try to find compromises that everyone can live with in the end.

We were troubled by the incivility in the opinions of Justice Antonin Scalia while he lived. Would it have been so impossible for the supposedly brilliant jurist to make his point without being an asshole and a jerk?

It isn't entirely obvious how we got to where we have in terms of process values, or how we restore a more civilized process that encourages politicians to act like grown ups. Maybe incentives need to change.  Maybe we need to change the way that politicians are socialized, as many parliamentary systems do with an interview process followed by a long stint on the back bench. But, it is hard to accept that our current process couldn't be improved somehow.

The Rather Unimpressive Case For Hillary Clinton

I am a progressive. I like Hillary Clinton and I do not feel remotely conflicted. The qualities she’s exhibited over her long career—practicality, resilience, the ability to use the system to improve the lives of the least powerful within it, the ability, above all, to survive—are not just admirable. They’re exactly what progressives need if we are to carry the White House.

From here.

Unlike the author of this thoughtful piece, I am deeply conflicted about Hillary Clinton. I expect more of a prospective President than a mere ability to survive.  There is virtually nothing in the piece to tell us what all of her supposed virtues have actually accomplished, and there is nothing in this piece that convincingly makes the case that Clinton would be more likely to win a general election race against Trump or Cruz.

Consider this from the article:

So here comes my full-throated case for Hillary Clinton for president of the United States.... [four paragraphs urging Progressives not to fall victim to gender biases follow, and then a paragraph explaining that Republicans hated her because she was considered too far left to be in politics in the early 90s, something I don't recall anyone actually saying at the time].... 

a candidate defined by her caution and her frustrating selfcontradictions, seemingly torn between challenging the power structure and gaining enough credibility within that power structure to survive....

When I hear claims about Hillary Clinton, the money-grubbing shill for Wall Street who thinks just like a Republican, I don’t recognize the woman who once snapped at her husband for not fighting hard enough for universal healthcare, telling him, “You weren’t elected to do Wall Street economics.” Similarly, I see no shifty dishonesty in the Hillary Clinton who, in 2005, pushed for a 9/11-style commission to investigate the Bush administration’s failure to respond to Hurricane Katrina, and who today is the woman making the administrative negligence in Flint, Mich., central to her campaign.

Similarly, the Hillary Clinton who traveled to Beijing in 1995 against the wishes of her husband’s administration to declare that “women’s rights are human rights” is entirely recognizable as the Secretary of State who helped to create the Office of Global Women’s Issues and declared that “the United States must be an unequivocal and unwavering voice in support of women’s rights in every country on every continent.” In short, this is the same Hillary Clinton who is today stressing equal pay for women as a racial justice issue, given that the women who are most penalized by the pay gap are black women and Latinas.

And the Hillary Clinton who is “Republican lite,” “more like Reagan than FDR” and “to the right of Nixon” does not seem remotely the same Clinton whose votes aligned with Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 93 percent of the time during the two years they overlapped in the Senate....

[The author then apologizes at length for Clinton's support for the Iraq War in 2002 which Clinton also recognizes in hindsight was a bad call, concluding:] 

So, yes. There are problems with her record, and I recognize them.... 

I want to talk about the woman who has survived 25 years of misogynist hatred and GOP attacks, and came out unbroken and unbowed.... 

It doesn’t hurt that she was the first candidate to advocate overturning the Hyde Amendment on the campaign trail, or that she has been vocal and insistent on equal pay and reproductive rights, or that she has responded to pressure for her campaign to demonstrate a serious commitment to racial justice by reaching out to women affected by police brutality and giving lengthy public statements about the need for white people to recognize their own privilege and take part in resisting and ending racism.

This is all you've got? Where's the beef?

If this is the most full-throated endorsement a progressive can give her, save us all. Enduring twenty-five years of Republicans not liking you isn't exactly an unusual trait for a high profile Democratic party politician, or some unbearable burden.

Does the author really believe that the main reason that we don't have equal pay for women, policy brutality, and racism is that the President doesn't spent enough time empathizing with victims and chiding people who are sexist and racist?

I expect a politician to not just identify problems, but to offer up credible solutions to them, and I have yet to hear those solutions from Hillary Clinton. A full throated supported of Hillary Clinton ought to be able to tell me what credible solutions she has to these issues if they are the hallmark reasons to back her for President.

I'm pretty sure that there aren't many Democratic politicians with experience holding statewide elected office or a cabinet position or Vice-Presidential experience or a background as a top general (as all Presidents to date have had) who support the Hyde Amendment or oppose reproductive rights or support police brutality. Pretty much any two Democrats in the U.S. Senate are going to have votes aligned 93% or more of the time, which means that pretty much any Democratic U.S. Senator isn't going to be absolutely awful.

But, on the whole Hillary Clinton has spent almost her entire political career worried about being too liberal and moderating her positions as a result. She started out as a Republican and transitioned. While this author conjures the image of a hippie in suit, my earliest recollections of her are as a ruthless big law firm law partner protecting the interests of wealthy clients and big businesses, while trying her best not to be entirely evil.

Certainly, I will vote for her in a heartbeat if she wins the Democratic party nomination, which she in all likelihood will do.  A Hillary Clinton Presidency will be profoundly better than four years of President Trump or President Cruz.

But, she epitomizes the politics of triangulation instead of principle, and has backed a lot of bad policies as a result, just as her husband did when he was President (particularly on issues like crime and welfare reform).  The case has been made exhaustively that her moderation and willingness to compromise is necessary for her to accomplish great things, and I really and truly would like to believe that this is correct, but I'm hard pressed to see any evidence that it is true in her case.

I think the Republican smears directed at her, Benghazi and the e-mail "scandal", are total bullshit, even though they could present stumbling blocks for her campaign. I think her successful campaign to have the U.S. intervene in Libya was the right call even in 20-20 hindsight.

But, I don't agree with those who think that the many months of polling showing that Bernie Sanders would do better in a general election against a Republican candidate are wrong. There is more to electability than blinding running towards the perceived "political center".

The weak favorability polling she has isn't just because she is a female politician, some of it is just her personality. Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Elizabeth Warren, and Olympia Snowe have all managed to hold powerful national offices without coming across so negatively. Ultimately, likability isn't what is most important in a President. But, I'm simply not excited about her very conventional and old school campaign and see few strong positive reasons to like her as a candidate (in contrast to negative reasons to prefer her to the alternatives).

She is a candidate who doesn't come across as having much of a positive vision for this nation. I'm not saying that she doesn't have one, but I certainly couldn't articulate for you what it was. She is not out there advocating major policy changes of pretty much any variety that I can discern. To vote for her is to embrace a decision that involves knowing that I will be deeply disappointed with a significant minority of her decisions again and again and again.  Issues like the TPP trade deal. Issues like marijuana legalization. Issues like tax policy and business regulation. She absolutely comes across as beholden to too many monied interests.

She will nominate decent people to be federal judges. Her policy choices will pass muster as at least the lowest common denominator of Democratic policy sensibilities. But, she doesn't offer a progressive voter much of a specific version of progress to hope for.

CNN reveals, however, that Hillary Clinton has at least one policy that I agree with:

Clinton herself pledged in January to "get to the bottom" of whether rumors of U.S. contact with extraterrestrial life were true.

More Star Wars! Yay!

There have been seven movies in the original Star Wars saga released from 1977-2015.  The most recent installment, The Force Awakens has grossed $2 billion, a possible all time record for any movie.  Episode eight is scheduled to be released in 2017, and a ninth and final installment is set to be released after that.

But, the Star Wars universe also includes at least 300 authorized novels set in that universe that are spin offs from the main story (excluding movie novelizations, children's books, short stories, reference books and role playing game spinoffs), and a made for TV animated movie together with a related six season animated television series (Clone Wars) that is a spin off from the main story setting forth the events between Episode III (the fourth released movie) and Episode IV (the first released movie from 1977).

Now, in that tradition of spin off stories, the franchise's new owner after George Lucas sold the franchise, Disney, will be releasing a live action spin off movie, Rogue One, on December 16, 2016. Rogue One tells the story of the theft of the plans to the Death Star that are ultimately used to mount the successful attack on the Death Star that takes place immediately before Episode IV and is alluded to and described summarily in dialog in this original Star Wars movie.

Considering that Star Wars is pretty much the best Space Opera ever written, and that the trailer for the new movie suggests that it fits seamlessly into the whole (albeit a bit darker; Disney refers to Rogue One as basically a "war movie"), more is better and this is great news.

Certainly, Rogue One is a much better contribution to an ongoing fictional universe than the critically deplored movie Batman v. Superman which has tanked at the box office, deservedly so despite the usual big motion picture studio big dollar production values.

Ultimately, a good story, which doesn't cost much more than a bad story, matters more than the extravagant means used to communicate that story.  Rogue One sounds like a wonderful story to tell. Batman v. Superman, not so much.

Caucus Nomination System Strong In Colorado (Updated and Corrected April 12, 2016)

Background

In Colorado, there are two ways that a candidate for a major political party (i.e. Democrat or Republican) can get on the primary ballot to be the party's nominee for a particular political office. You can be nominated through the caucus process, or you can file a petition to be placed on the primary ballot.

Party insiders who advance to county and subsequent conventions following a closed precinct caucus selection of the nominees to be placed on the primary ballot in the other 94% of the primary races and an even smaller percentage of all candidates utilized this route.

A candidate needs 30% support in the caucus process to get on the primary ballot, so no more than 3 candidates can make it onto the ballot that way.  Unsurprisingly, petitions come mostly in races with crowded fields of candidates where there is no incumbent running and the person who win the party nomination has a reasonable chance of being elected in the general election.

This can produce surprises.  Incumbent Republican Congressman Lamborn came very close to not making it onto the primary ballot this year with just 35% support in the caucus process in a race against one of his former aides.  He was just 18 Congressional District Assembly votes away from losing the race (which would have dispensed with a primary and since there is not Democratic candidate for the safe Republican CO-5 seat, would have immediately made the caucus winner the Congresswoman elect in the district).

The first candidate in the race for the GOP nomination in the U.S. Senate race, an African American Air Force veteran, won more than 70% of the caucus process vote on the strength of a good stump speech, removing the widely assumed front runner in the race (a sitting state senator) from the primary ballot, along with two other contenders seeking a place on the ballot through the caucus process.

On the whole, this is a good thing.  The caucus process insures that candidates nominated reflect the political views of the rank and file of the party that they claim to represent, and caucus participants typically hear speeches from each candidate before voting, so their decisions are often better informed than those of primary voters, especially in down ticket races that get less media attention. Caucus participants also tend to be more familiar with the political players in a particular electoral district and so will often know or know someone who knows many of the candidates in advance of hearing the speeches.  

The process of campaigning for a seat through the caucus process, while arcane, is also much less expensive than a campaign directed at the general public.  Primary voters weigh in only in a few hotly contested races that get more media attention and have substantial active factions of the party supporting each candidate.  The cost of running someone for an office where there is an uphill battle in the general election is also lower, reducing the number of uncontested races.  The caucus process also reduces expenditures for the Secretary of State's office, which need only consider petitions of candidates who opt out of that process.

The petition process often draws only candidates who are less popular with the party rank and file, and I suspect that petition candidates do less well on average, in primary elections, than caucus candidates, although I haven't run the numbers.

This Year's Races

Federal Offices

This year, there are nine federal offices that come before the voters (President-Vice President, U.S. Senate, and seven House of Representatives seats).  

All of the candidates except four of the dozens plus Republicans seeking the party's nomination for U.S. Senate to challenge incumbent Senator Bennett filed petitions to get on the primary ballot (there is no Presidential primary in Colorado).

Thus, of the 16 possible nomination races in which a petition option was available, just one actually had candidates petition onto the primary ballot (about 6%).

Colorado General Assembly

In the Colorado General Assembly this year, there are 65 seats in the state house, and 18 seats in the state senate up for election. Thus, there are potentially 166 state legislative primary races in which petitions could be filed, but petitions were actually filed in just 8 of them (about 5%).

Two Democrats and one Republican filed petitions in state senate races (each in a different district). Five Democrats filed petitions in four state house races and four Republicans filed petitions in four state house races.

Miscellaneous State Offices

There are 22 district attorney offices, and 3 on CU-Regents seats and 3 state school board seats at issue this year.

There are also eight non-partisan retention elections for Colorado Court of Appeals judges and many non-partisan retention elections for Colorado District Court and County Court judges. There are also eight RTD board seats up for election in 2016, but those races are non-partisan. Also notably, Castle Rock will be having a non-partisan recall election of three members of its City Council including its Mayor, over annexation and growth issues.

Two Democrats filed petitions in the District 1 CU-Regent Race (greater Denver), one Democrat filed a Petition in the District 2 (Denver) District Attorney race, and one Republican filed a Petition in the District 17 District Attorney race (Adams and Broomfield counties in suburban north Denver).

Thus, of about 56 possible miscellaneous races, petitions were filed in 3 of them (about 1.4%).  

Summary of All Partisan 2016 Races

In all, of about 238 races were petitioners to be placed on the primary ballot were available, petitions were filed in just 12 of them (about 5%) by 17 candidates (at least one of which has been rejected as having insufficient signatures).  Only 3 races (about 1.4%) had more than one candidate seek primary ballot access by petition. Each of these races also have candidates getting onto the ballot via the caucus process.

The final list of primary election candidates will appear at the Colorado Secretary of State's website and will be finalized by May 2, 2016.

Another Murderer Claims He Was Obeying God

Kevin Lee Lyons of Centennial, Colorado was convinced that God had his back as he came before a judge charged with shooting his wife and another woman (both of whom lived) and with shooting and killing a doctor who lived nearby and tried to stop him.

His motive is unclear, but given that one of the victims was his wife, it appears to be one of those all too common domestic violence incidents.  

For what it's worth, the Bible speaks favorably about domestic violence on numerous occasions, so he might be right about God being on his side. God's support probably isn't enough to acquit him, however, although he does seem to be angling for an insanity defense.

Tax Havens Considered In Light Of The Panama Papers

In the biggest leak of confidential law firm information since a junior employee leaked confidential information from tobacco tort defense firms that went on to devastate the industry, papers leaked from the records of Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonsecca have revealed a treasure trove of information about tax haven bank accounts of prominent international figures across the globe. Tyler Cohen collects some other related links to the economic issues related to the scandal at Marginal Revolution.

Few Americans are implicated because they prefer venues of common law legal traditions like Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, St. Nevis and St. Kitts, as well as domestic asset protection venues.  The Swiss, who invented the tax haven industry, have been out of favor for many years among both Europeans and Americans after having caved to pressure from foreign authorities to crack down on tax haven abuses.

Maintaining a Panamanian bank account is itself perfectly legal in most of the world.  

But, combined with shell companies and disregard for domestic tax laws that is impossible to detect without an improper leak of documents like this one, Panamanian bank accounts have been a global go to source for money laundering, tax fraud, fraudulent concealment of assets to hide the fruits of government corruption by top officials, to conceal assets from soon to be ex-spouses and creditors, and to hide patterns of influence.  

Simply put, it is a pain to have a foreign bank account, and typically, only people with illicit reasons or a tax evasion motive use them.  People with legitimate international financial interests usually establish accounts in non-tax haven jurisdictions where they do business or in legitimate major international financial centers like London or New York or Tokyo.

The dicey thing about tax haven/asset protection jurisdictions is that for the most part, these opportunities exist as a result of loopholed in domestic laws that permit them to be beneficial.  Tax havens typically have little economic activity of their own, and both the source of the funds and the places that they invest the funds are typically the countries that are the victims of these legal loopholes and have ample power to collectively punish tax havens if they wish to do so.  Indeed, there have been a couple of times in U.S. history when the U.S. military has intervened when countries in the greater Gulf of Mexico tried to stiff U.S. creditors.

In this respect, tax havens bear a great deal of resemblance to the Islamic fundamentalist Salafist movement that has in turn given rise to Islamic terrorism, which is funded almost entirely from the oil wealth provided by the Western countries these movements have sometimes targeted. Terrorist organizations, however, tend to be less sophisticated and traditional, than the corrupt international financial networks that are the lifeblood of international tax havens like Panama.

Famous Last Words?

Young also would like to develop an alligator habitat adjacent to the lagoon . . . he said, "so you can actually scuba next to a 10-foot alligator and not get eaten."

From here.

Does this not sound like a horror movie or tort lawsuit waiting to happen?

Hillary Clinton As Vampire

I personally don't think there is any real world political message you can make that legitimately makes Hillary Clinton a metaphorical vampire.  But, the photoshopped picture (from here) is still an awesome artistic feat.

Stopping For A Moment

A vile germ has had me at its mercy since Thursday night.  Apart from an hour delegating tasks and juggling my calendar, I've done nothing in the last seventy-five hours but sleep, writhe in coughing spats trying to sleep, listened to music, and soaked in phantasmagoric fever dreams.

But, there is something to stripping away all of the artifice and bustle, letting music seep into your very being, floating divorced from everything but emotion.

It is centering, in a way.  An emotional reset.  A consolation prize, at least.

Sunday Mashups

and

Just because.

In other silliness, a recent headline captures the absurdity of the otherwise not notable story:

Police: 2 arrested after fight over crab legs turns violent