The Problem With Our Democracy In A Nutshell

The Simple Facts

Democratic President Obama's Job Approval
Approve 48.9%
Disapprove 46.5%

Congressional Job Approval
Approve 13.8%
Disapprove 77.0%

U.S. House of Representatives
Republicans 246
Democrats 188
Vacant 1

U.S. Senate
Republicans 54
Democrats 44
Independents Who Caucus With Democrats 2

2016 Generic Congressional Vote
Republicans 43.0%
Democrats 45.3%

It is perfectly rational for a Democrat who doesn't approve of the job performance of Congress to want to vote for a Democrat in order to change control of Congress.  It is perfectly rational for a Republican who approves of the job performance of Congress to want to vote for a Republican to retain control of Congress.

But, what do the at least one-third of likely voters who disapprove of the job that Congress is doing, yet favor Republican in a generic Congressional vote (20% of voters) or have no preference in a generic Congressional vote (12.7% of voters), not understand?

Analysis

You could understand someone thinking that their particular Congressperson is unlike other members of that Congressperson's political party.  But, that possibility goes out the window in a generic Congressional vote.

Seriously.  This is a problem that can't be solved by defending the right to vote.  This is a problem that can't be solved with easier to understand ballots, or more accurate vote tallying equipment.  It can't be solved by reforming the caucus or primary process to elect political party nominees.  It can't be solved by ending gerrymandering.  It can't be solved multi-round or instant runoff voting.

This is a problem that wasn't foreseen by the Founders when they wrote the U.S. Constitution. Nobody worried about this happening when they wrote the Federalist papers to market the new constitution to the people who would have to approve it.  The authors of the Federalist papers even naively thought that the simple expedient of majority voting on legislation by the legislature as a whole would prevent minority factions in Congress from securing legislation that favored minorities to the detriment of majorities.

Even more epically, the Founders did not foresee that electoral politics in the system that they created would primarily become contests between competing political parties that usually solidified two opposing coalitions of factions before elections were held that were stable for many decades at a time.

Is the problem that American voters today, with easy assess to every kind of media and Google, don't know that in Congress, which they are aware is doing such a miserable job, that the House and the Senate are both controlled by Republicans?

I'm sure that there are people who think that Congress is doing a miserable job who don't know that the House and the Senate are both controlled by Republicans.*  After all, this has only been true for less than two years.  For the four years before that, Democrats controlled the Senate while Republicans controlled the House, and for the two years before that, Democrats controlled both the Senate and the House.

But, it is also reasonable to believe that people who don't know that the Republicans currently control Congress make up a pretty small minority of people who actually vote in Congressional elections, because a political party that felt it needed to get this fact across could do so easily and cheaply with a straightforward advertising campaign.  The fact that this source for the problem would imply an easy solution, together with the fact that this paradox is long standing and intractable, suggests that the answer is not so simple.

I honestly don't actually know what does lead to this paradox, although I have no doubt that it has been studied ad nauseam by political scientists.

One possibility is that it is the product of a number of rationalizations.  Voters may believe that other members of the ruling party and not your own representative, is the reason for that failure of Congress to do its job well.  But, again, that doesn't explain why the paradox is present even in the case of a generic partisan ballot.

Voters may blame the President for thwarting the ability of Congress to do its job well. Voters may feel that Congress is doing a bad job because it compromises with a President of another political party too often, and not that it is too partisan.  After all, one of the best predictors of public mistrust of an occupation or institution is the extent to which it participates in negotiations, and mistrust and job disapproval go hand in hand.  This would imply a need for change in party leadership, or primary challenges to put in place more partisan members of the same party, rather than a need to throw the bums out in favor of the other political party.

One fact that supports this hypothesis is that this is a problem that by and large does not afflict countries like the U.K., Canada, New Zealand, Iceland, and Israel that have parliamentary systems that vest almost all executive and legislative political power in a single popularly elected legislative body whose elected leader runs the government as a prime minister.  Somehow, in those simpler systems of undivided government, where all important compromises take place behind closed doors in ruling coalition cabinet meetings, the notion of "responsible government" somehow penetrates the heads of the average voter.  If voters don't approve of how the ruling party or coalition is governing, the voters consistently vote that party out of power.

If necessary, in those countries, politicians form new alternative parties if both the existing loyal opposition and the ruling party are both equally unpalatable options in the eyes of the voting public, and often they succeed in that effort marshaling dissenting experienced politicians from existing parties as the core of the new party.

Any time there is divided government, between the two houses of Congress, or between the President and either house of Congress, responsibility for the state of the political process becomes diffuse and voters are much less inclined to punish incumbents when the political system enters a failure mode. Cognitive dissonance leads voters to strongly favor blaming the other guy's political party if there is any plausible rational arising from divided government for doing so, even in cases like this year's when Congress is completely controlled by Republicans, the public strongly disapproves of how Congress is doing its job, and the President of another political party has positive approval ratings.

At least, that's the theory.  I'll have to try to find some literature to confirm and reject it.

* A Footnote On The Death Of The U.S. Senate Filibuster As A Binding Senate Rule

Strictly speaking, there have only been one time since 1979 (almost four decades ago) that either political party with filibuster proof control of the U.S. Senate (during which the same party also controlled the U.S. House and the Presidency), in the 111th Congress (2009-2011).  This is what made it possible to pass Obamacare over strong Republican opposition.

In theory, in the absence of a filibuster-proof sixty vote majority, a U.S. Senate minority (usually made up mostly of members of the minority political party in the U.S. Senate) can prevent the U.S. Senate from taking final action on a matter indefinitely.

But, in substance, it is been possible to take action in the U.S. Senate by mere majority vote in the U.S. Senate since the lame duck portion of the 113th Congress in November of 2013.  This is when the Senate Democrats exercised the "nuclear option." In other words, Senate Democrats with a Democratic Vice President presiding as President of the Senate, by a mere majority vote, dispensed with the sixty vote filibuster threshold for appointments of nominees other than U.S. Supreme Court justices (and several other anti-democratic U.S. Senate rules), without passing an amendment to the U.S. Senate rules by a two-thirds majority provided for by Senate rules which are never rewritten from scratch as they are in the U.S. House when it reorganizes with each new Congress, because the U.S. Senate is in continuous session and never replaces more than a third of its members at any one time.

President Obama (who was a U.S. Senator from Illinois before he was elected to be the President of the United States) accepted this as a legitimate tactic of U.S. Senate Democrats that was justified and made necessary by anti-Democratic Republican obstinance in violation of historic but informal Senate norms regarding the use of the filibuster.

No Article III court has ever held that any action taken by the U.S. Senate after it exercised the nuclear potion under the new filibuster rules was invalid, because the U.S. Senate has exclusive jurisdiction over its own internal parliamentary rules and disputes over the interpretations of rules are resolved by majority vote.

And, U.S. Senate Republicans effectively ratified the legitimacy of the nuclear option by leaving in place the changes to the filibuster adopted by Senate Democrats in that manner, when they took control of the chamber in January of 2015 following the 2014 mid-term election.

This political precedent effectively means that the remaining filibuster rules of the U.S. Senate and other U.S. Senate procedures protecting minority rights in the U.S. Senate are now really no more than a formalized courtesy afforded to the U.S. Senate minority by the political party in control of the U.S. Senate.  This is because the legitimacy of the nuclear option to change the filibuster rules of the U.S. Senate have now been ratified by all players in the political process.  So, filibuster rules and other procedural rights afforded to minorities in the U.S. Senate can now be changed at any time if the majority's desire to pass legislation or approve a U.S. Supreme Court nominee is sufficiently intense.

Raw Data In The 2016 U.S. Presidential General Election Race

tl;dr Clinton is far ahead of Trump in the general election race at this point.

Summary

Presidential elections are decided on a state by state basis, so the best tools to predict their outcome are conventional wisdom based upon past voting behavior in a state, and state by state general election polling. The conventional wisdom (per CNN) and Clinton v. Trump State Level General Election Polls (per Real Clear Politics and Wikipedia) are presented below.

The threshold to win is 270 electoral votes out of 538 available electoral votes, all of which are in principle bound by the November 8, 2016 election results (although many states allow early voting, and Washington at least used to allow votes to be mailed on election day itself).  All states except Maine and Nebraska award all of their electoral votes to the plurality winner in the state.  Maine and Nebraska allocate some electoral votes based on Congressional District, but in practice this usually mean one extra GOP electoral vote in Maine and one extra Democratic electoral vote in Nebraska, resulting in the same result as if all states were winner take all.

All lean Republican and lean Democratic states and all but two battleground states have polling. Solid Republican and Solid Democratic states are assumed to vote as conventional wisdom expects unless a poll contradicts that expectation.  Clinton is expected to win the two battleground states that do not have polling (CO and NV) based upon strong Obama wins in those states in 2008 and 2012, although both of these states did back George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004.

Clinton: 374 electoral votes
Tied: 6 electoral votes (Utah)
Trump: 168 electoral votes.

The only states defying CNN's conventional wisdom in polling are Arizona and Georgia which lean Republican but support Clinton, and Utah which is safe Republican but tied.

Polling in seven battle ground states support Clinton (FL, IA, NH, NC, OH, WI, VA).  Clinton has the advantage based upon past Presidential election results in the two battleground states where polling is not available (CO, NV).

The states with polling that have less than a 4 point margin for one candidate or another are: Ohio (Clinton + 3.5), Arizona (Clinton +3.5) Utah (tie), Missouri (Trump +1.5), and Mississippi (Trump +3). The margins of error in the polls are large enough that Trump could lose one of those states simply because polling was inaccurate due to random sampling error.

A slide in Trump support could turn a Clinton lead into an even greater landslide. Clinton support would have to drop 7 percentage points on average for Trump to win (possibly more depending on the polling in CO and NV).  The marginal states at this point are Florida and Arizona.

In national polling, which is less relevant, Clinton leads Trump, on average 47.3 to 40.9, based on an average of seven recent national polls from April 11 to May 9.  The number of percentage points Clinton needs to slide for Trump to lead in national polls (6.4) is almost the same as the number of percentage points Clinton needs to slide for Trump to lead in state polls sufficient to win 270 electoral votes (7), especially considering that the later number includes some rounding error.

We also have no polling from Arkansas, which would ordinarily be a safe Republican state, but may not be with Hillary Clinton, its former first lady, running for President.  Clinton leads in three battleground Southern states (VA, NC and FL) already and Trump's support is soft in two more ordinarily safe Republican states (GA and MS), and Trump trails Clinton badly in Arizona which while not in the South has a lot of Southern transplants. Clinton dominated primary voting in the South despite strong Sanders support elsewhere, demonstrating her enthusiastic support from the base there and familiarity with how to deliver a political message that resonates in the South.  So, Arkansas's six electoral votes could be in play this year as well.  A win in Arkansas would tip the Clinton-Trump electoral college balance even further in her favor.

Some other safe Republican states were very emphatic in their rejection of Trump during the primary season: Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, and Kansas all wanted nothing to do with him. This doesn't mean that Clinton will be viewed as the lesser of two evils in these solidly red states, but his supporters certainly won't be very enthusiastic in those states and he is tied in Utah polling.  Kansas voters still prefer Trump, but we have no general election polling out of Idaho or Wyoming.

The race is almost sure to tighten between now and election day in six months.  But, it isn't obvious that it will tighten enough to allow Trump to prevail in the general election. CNN's prediction market currently gives Clinton a 71% chance of winning and Trump a 29% chance of winning, which in my opinion isn't far from the mark.

State by state polling data, and CNN's conventional wisdom, appears below the break. Where multiple polls are present for a state, the results for the state are the average (without weighting) of the polls that are not stale.  Stale polls, shown in italics, are ignored.

Are Autism And Schizophrenia Inverses Of Each Other?

People's brains change in a person's late teens and early twenties when they experience "synaptic pruning" that strengthens frequently used connections in the brain while trimming away superfluous ones.

In schizophrenia, this process goes overboard and the brain compensates by treating random noise as signals, which leads to hallucinations. People with autism apparently don't trim enough which impairs learning. Thus, it could be that both conditions involve defects in the same process in opposite directions.

These findings may suggest new treatments targeting GABA receptors for "normalizing" synaptic pruning in diseases such as autism and schizophrenia, where synaptic pruning is abnormal. Research has suggested that children with autism may have an over-abundance of synapses in some parts of the brain. Other research suggests that prefrontal brain areas in persons with schizophrenia have fewer neural connections than the brains of those who do not have the condition.

From here.

On the other hand, it seems odd that autism would have a very early childhood onset if it is really related to synaptic pruning.  But, there are also other developmental periods besides late puberty when synaptic pruning occurs, and perhaps an earlier time period is implicated in autism.

Colorado's Legislative Session Ends Tomorrow

Colorado's General Assembly ends its 2016 session tomorrow (by state constitutional mandate) and since every bill must be heard in its final chamber on two different days, today is the last day to get bills that have passed one house out of committee in the second house for a floor vote.

Among the bills that are down to the wire are a bill to gradually phase in grocery store sales of wine and full strength beer, and a bill to replace Presidential election year caucuses with an open primary system in 2020.  There are better than even odds that both bills will pass.

A repeat bill to ban most red light cameras has also passed both houses but faces a likely veto from the Governor.  Critical bills like the annual state budget have already passed and been signed into law despite the fact that there is divided control of the Colorado legislature with Republicans narrowly controlling the state senate and Democrats less narrowly controlling the state house and Governor's mansion (complete with line item veto power).  But, TABOR give anti-spending Republicans considerable leverage nonetheless.

Most Bombing In Afghanistan Is Via Drone

In 2015 the American military, for the first time, used more UAVs to deliver air strikes than manned aircraft in one combat zone. In this case it was Afghanistan, where 56 percent of the air-to-ground weapons used were delivered by UAVs. This is a dramatic shift in Afghanistan because UAVs delivered only five percent of weapons in 2011. In 2015 UAVs used 530 missiles (mostly Hellfires) and bombs (mainly 127 or 227 kg GPS or laser guided ones). . . . This type of aerial attack has, since the 1990s, reduced collateral (unintended) casualties (both military and civilian) to decline over 80 percent compared to previous methods.

From here.

Congress Passed A Major Intellectual Property Law On Tuesday

Congress passed the Defend Trade Secrets Act on Tuesday which President Obama is expected to sign. It largely duplicated state trademark protections, but creates a federal statutory claim that is slightly different and also includes the unprecedented remedy of ex parte seizes of trade secrets containing materials. This is the biggest change to federal intellectual property laws since the American Invents Act in 2011 which reformed patent law. Among other things, it will make a federal forum available for all trade secret lawsuits.

The Pirate Party Is Poised To Win Iceland's Next National Election

No joke! Apparently, there is an international pirate party movement.

Judge Rules On Ballot Access In GOP U.S. Senate Primary In Colorado - Nobody Sure What It Means

I've posted the trial court's ruling on ballot access appeals filed by Colorado Republican U.S. Senate candidates Robert Blaha and Ryan Frazier after the Colorado Secretary of State ruled that their respective Petitioners didn't have enough valid signatures to make the ballot in the comments at Colorado Pols.

The rulings don't calculate what the rulings do to the candidates' vote totals so it is hard to tell who is and is not on the ballot without doing a detailed reconciliation of the order with the Colorado Secretary of State's statement of insufficiency for each petition.

Apart from a tweet from the Colorado Secretary of State's press secretary, there is no official word yet from that office which must certify a ballot based upon the court's rulings.

Frazier apparently thinks that he is off the ballot and is appealing the ruling.  It isn't entirely clear if Blaha is or is not on ballot based upon the ruling.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: The Denver Post thinks that the court ruling brought each candidate closer to qualifying for the ballot, but not close enough.

Bainbridge on Choice of Evils

Trump versus Clinton 

With the election no more or less settled (pace Bernie), many of you may be asking yourselves: How do I choose between two evils? So I've made a short list of your options: 

1. Pick the lesser of the two evils. A.k.a. the Bainbridge option. 

2. Pick the greater of the two. A.k.a. the Cthulhu option. 

3. Pick the one you haven't tried before. A.k.a. the Mae West option. 

4. Reprogram the simulation so it is possible to rescue the ship. A.k.a. the Kirk option.

From Professor Bainbridge.

Alas, we have no programmers capable of option 4, so we'll have to make due with options 1, 2 or 3.

Almost All Economic Gain In The U.S. Since 1979 Has Accrued To The Top 1%

Almost all of the inflation adjusted post-tax, post-transfer payment income growth in the United States in the time period from 1979-2011 has accrued to the top 1% of the income distribution.  Their income has increased at a rate of 3.4% to 3.9% per annum (depending on the inflation index used) in that 32 year time period from $281,000 (in 2011 dollars) in 1979 to $918,000 (in 2011 dollars) in 2011. The top 1% has seen its income relative to the bottom 20% increase by 243% in that time period. Those in the next lower 3% of the income distribution have seen 40% income growth relative to the bottom 20% in that time period.

Everyone else has had seen declining income or had income growth indistinguishable from zero in that time period.  Avoiding a decline in relative income for those in the 20th to 60th percentiles of income has been made possible only with substantial transfer payments to the middle class.

Questions.

Why has this taken place?  The decline of unions?  Tax and welfare policies?  A genuine change in the way that goods and services are produced that makes the 1% much, much more productive than anyone else?

Is it possible to change this without undue harm to overall productivity?  This depends to a great extent on the answer to why this has happened.  Is it "real" or "artificial" in any meaningful sense?

A 2006 study suggest that this is largely due to incredible income gains in geographically concentrated growth in the IT and financial industry (largely confined to ten of the roughly 3000 U.S. counties).

There is a coincidence between the fall of private sector unions and increased inequality to third-world levels both in Colorado and in the U.S. We are at historic record levels of income inequality and wealth inequality.  A conceptual analysis of the limits of an incentive outlook is here.

U.S. corporate law governing how executive compensation is set may also be a factor.  Inequality may actually be a drag on the economy.  Lack of class mobility is also a concern in the U.S. relative to its peers.

Tax breaks for the affluent are an important factor in rising inequality.  Higher ed tax credits have had very little impact in improving access to higher education.

The mix of occupations in the economy has changed.

Background

This is not some revolutionary new discovery.

I posted an analysis reaching an almost identical conclusion 27 months ago and also 42 months ago (considering causes related to the tax code and bankruptcy code) A 2009 analysis revealed that contrary to the expectation of mainstream economists, this gap survived the Great Recession (and noting considerable geographic variation in the recovery rates).

Kaisch Also Out

CNN is reporting two insider sources who state that Ohio Governor John Kaisch, Donald Trump's last opponent in the race for the GOP Presidential nomination, is dropping out.

This was a rational choice.

It has been mathematically impossible for Kaisch to win a majority of the GOP delegates in the first round for weeks. Kaisch would have had to win roughly 60% of the remaining GOP delegates to deny Trump a first round majority, and would have to win seven more states (all but a couple of those remaining) to overcome the Republican National Convention's Rule 40(b) that requires a nominee candidate to win eight states unless no one wins eight states (as Trump and Cruz did this year).  Even then, Kaisch would be the underdog in a second round vote with fewer delegates going into the convention than Trump.

Yet, Kaisch has only finished first once, in his home state, and then only with his leading opponent (Rubio) not contesting the race.  He's come in third place more often than he's come in second place.  And, Cruz voters at the most conservative win of the Republican party would not naturally have all shifted to back Kaisch, one of the most moderate candidate's running for President this year by comparison.  So, Kaisch in races post-Cruz could have been expected to perform less well than Kaisch + Cruz in earlier polls.  Those poll numbers couldn't secured the delegates and states that Kaisch needed to win under any possible scenario.

The Kaisch bid has been truly a Hail Mary pass for a long time and Cruz's departure, by making it harder to deny Trump a first round majority, had left Kaisch needing nothing short of a miracle to win.  Facing certain failure, and with no big agenda to push, he is dropping out and Trump really is the presumptive GOP nominee having convinced all of his opponents to drop out of the race before he even secured a majority of the delegates.

On to the Clinton-Trump general election.  Clinton may be favored there, but pundits are, I think, overestimating her prospects.  It is more likely to be a close election than a landslide even though conventional wisdom thinks that Trump is doomed in the general election.

Ted Cruz Drops Out!

CNN reports that Ted Cruz has dropped out of the Presidential race, leaving only Trump and Kaisch left in the race that it is mathematically impossible for Kaisch to win in the first round.

Effectively Trump has become the Republican nominee tonight.

And, as previously noted, Clinton is the presumptive nominee in the Democratic race at this point with Sanders having already laid off staff and acknowledged that the Democratic primary is now more about the party platform than the nomination.

Cruz and Trump Go Wild In Indiana

UPDATE TWO: Trump looks like he will win all 57 delegates from Indiana.  If he matches expert expectations everywhere but California, he needs only 99 out of 172 delegates in California (which is mixed winner take all at the state and congressional district level, where he has a commanding lead in the polls over Cruz and Kaisch).  This race is Trump's to lose and again, if he is just a handful of delegates short, a few of the small number of the 146 uncommitted delegates will probably make up the difference in the first round vote.  (The Indiana vote will be 50-50 Clinton-Sanders but the winner doesn't matter, Sanders needed 60% or so to even stay on track.)

We will almost surely be seeing a Clinton-Trump general election, in which Clinton is currently strongly favored to win (by about four standard deviations in the current general election polls; 6.2 percentage points with the total 5,825 person sample of the polls contributing to that result providing a 1.28 point margin of error).

UPDATE: Trump wins big in Indiana.  CNN has called Indiana for Trump with a lead of 20 percentage points over Cruz in early returns.  The Congressional District results that determine a fair share of the 57 delegates from Indiana aren't available yet, but Trump will get at least 33 delegates from Indiana and realistically, will get almost all of the delegates because one part of Indiana isn't that different from another and Trump's margin over Cruz is just that big. Exit polls show Trump leading in every region of the state.  It is increasingly difficult for Cruz to deny Trump a first round win at the Republican convention in Cleveland.  Trump has has commanding leads in polls in West Virginia, New Jersey, Oregon and California that a win in Indiana will do nothing to blunt. END UPDATE

The grown ups are not in charge in the Republican party this year.

As Ted Cruz and Donald Trump fight a pitched battle for Republican votes in today's Indiana primary election all standards of civility, decency, and any attempt to be reality based have gone out the window in what has become a surreal event.

Cruz is throwing ever insult under the sun at Trump in a barrage of personal attacks, while Trump is trying to link Cruz to the assassination of JFK.

Ted Cruz on Tuesday unloaded on Donald Trump, accusing him during a news conference of being a "pathological liar," "utterly amoral," "a narcissist at a level I don't think this country's ever seen" and "a serial philanderer." . . .

Earlier Tuesday, Trump had criticized Rafael Cruz, calling him "disgraceful" after he urged evangelical voters in Indiana to reject his son's rival. Trump also referenced a report from the tabloid National Enquirer -- without naming the publication -- which alleged that it had identified Rafael Cruz in a photo with Lee Harvey Oswald months prior to the JFK assassination. CNN has not independently confirmed that report -- and there is no evidence that it is true.

In fairness, pretty much all of Ted Cruz's attacks have at least some foundation in reality, while Trump's accusation is delusional and could hurt him in the general election:

Mark Salter, a top aide to 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain, tweeted that he'd back Hillary Clinton over Trump. "The GOP is going to nominate for President a guy who reads the National Enquirer and thinks it's on the level. I'm with her," Salter said.

But, from 50,000 feet, it just looks like an out of control food fight and none of this seems likely to make much of a difference in today's contest.

Early indications are that the Cruz campaign is crumbling because he is turning off too many fiscally conservative, socially moderate Hoosier Republicans.  When Cruz thinks that America needs to criminalize masturbation, it is hard to take him seriously. 

We'll see how it comes out this evening.  If Cruz has choked now, Trump becomes the presumptive nominee for all intents and purposes.

What Motivated The Bagel Terrorist?

A popular Five Points bagel shop that opened in 2014 was destroyed in a fire that started in a second floor apartment where a body was found in a closet.

What exactly happened and why remains unclear.  Was the person killed first and then put in a closet? Cowering from invaders who set the place on fire while the person succumbed before he or she could escape?  Was the person on drugs or lost in the confusion trying to get out an failing? Did the bagel shop have anything to do with it, or it was it aimed at the upstairs tenant?

Ted Cruz Too Evil To Be A Satanist

[John] Boehner’s comment is illustrative of how well past time it is to adjust our mythologies to reflect our realities. [Ted] Cruz’s failures of reason, compassion, decency, and humanity are products of his Christian pandering, if not an actual Christian faith. It grows tedious when pedophile priests and loathsome politicians are conveniently dismissed as Satanic, even as they spew biblical verse and prostrate themselves before the cross, recruiting the Christian faithful. Satanists will have nothing to do with any of them.

— Satanic Temple spokesperson Lucien Greaves, when asked to comment on John Boehner’s recent statement that Ted Cruz is “Lucifer in the flesh. I have Democrat friends and Republican friends. I get along with almost everyone, but I have never worked with a more miserable son of a bitch in my life.” (Via Above The Law).

UPDATE: An interesting coincidence.  April 30, 2016 was the 50th anniversary of LeVey's Church of Satan (not to be confused with the Satanic Temple).  April 30 is also the day of burning witches in the Czech Republic (a.k.a. Walpurgis night a.k.a. Beltaine).

Soylent Green Is Inefficient

Contrary to popular perception, cannibalism is not an efficient use of scarce resources.  If we want to maximize planetary carrying capacity, vegetables are the way to go.

BYU Loves Rapists, Hates Rape Victims

Brigham Young University is a Mormon educational institution. This means that it applies religious values rathe than secular morality.

So, it isn't at all surprising that it routinely persecutes students who report being raped while taking no action to punish the rapists. According to Sarah Westerberg, BYU's Title IX coordinator, "almost all of the reported rapes and assaults at BYU are false reports made by women that feel . . . morally bad after they're having consensual activities." 

What a remarkable official policy.  But, why would anyone expect anything else from a religious institution? 

In the eyes of Mormons, like most Christians, this is what Jesus would do.  And, both the Bible and the Book of Mormon are full of instances of women being treated like shit with God's blessing and endorsement.  So, maybe they're right.

Republican Presidential Race Nomination Recap

Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and John Kaisch are all continuing to seek the Republican party nomination for President to face presumptive Democratic party nominee Hillary Clinton this year.

Bottom line: I give Trump an 88% chance of winning the nomination (and a 13.2% chance of being elected President), and an 82% chance of a Clinton victory in the general election, mostly because Trump is weak vis-a-vis Hillary Clinton, but also because I think that Cruz is weaker vis-a-vis Hillary Clinton than polling so far would suggest because Cruz's flaws aren't as well known as they might be.

CNN's prediction market affiliate has a 78% chance of a Clinton Presidency and a 19% of a Trump Presidency, which is within reasonable margins of error of my own predictions, which suggests that my views are well within the mainstream of informed opinion on these issues.  And, it isn't impossible that my liberal bias is pulling me to overstate Clinton's chances somewhat.

The Results So Far

There are 2,472 delegates to the National Republican Convention in Cleveland this July.

Trump has 1,002 pledged delegates and he needs 42% of the remaining delegates (271 of 564 including remaining super delegates) to win the Republican Presidential nomination on a first vote at the convention.  After that first vote, the analysis becomes much more complex because pledged delegates cease to be pledged to their candidate at that point.  The magic number at the Republican convention in Cleveland is 1,273 delegates.

It is mathematically impossible for anyone else to win on the first round, even if they are supported by all uncommitted delegates who can vote their preference in the first round.  Ted Cruz has 571 pledged delegates and one super delegate who has endorsed him.  John Kaisch has 157 pledged delegates.  Marco Rubio has 167 pledged delegates. Ben Carson has 9 pledged delegates.  Jeb Bush has 1 pledged delegate.

Rubio and Bush have given Cruz a lukewarm endorsement, and Kaisch has implied that he will join them in that lukewarm endorsement.  Carson has given a lukewarm endorsement to Trump.  But, none of those endorsements releases the delegates for those candidates in the first round or binds those delegates in later rounds.

Key Facts

Unlike the Democratic primary and caucus process, almost all of the remaining GOP races are winner take all, or winner take all partially at the state level and partially at the Congressional district level.

Republican party rule 40(b), which would have to be amended by a supermajority at the convention to change, limits the convention to considering only candidates who have won eight or more states, i.e. to either Donald Trump or Ted Cruz.  Rule 40(b) excludes John Kaisch, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, or some "white knight" candidate who didn't run, from receiving the nomination unless both Trump and Cruz drop out of the race.  (In theory, Kaisch could still win enough of the remaining states to qualify in addition to the one state, Ohio, that he has already won, but in reality this is simply impossible given his past performance and current polling among like Republican voters in the remaining primary states.)

Remaining Races With Predictions

The remaining Republican Presidential nomination races are as follows (with polling aggregated per Real Clear Politics when available):

May 3

Indiana - 57 delegates - Trump 37.5, Cruz 35.2, Kaisch 18.0 - No clear prediction

May 10

Nebraska - 36 delegates - Conventional wisdom favors Cruz (clean sweep) (Trump zero)

West Virginia - 34 delegates - Conventional wisdom favors Trump (almost clean sweep) (Trump 33)

May 17

Oregon - 28 delegates - No clear prediction

May 24

Washington -  44 delegates (proportional) - No clear prediction (At least 15 for Trump)

June 7

California - 172 delegates - Trump 45.7, Cruz 28.2, Kaisch 18.0 - No clear prediction

Montana - 27 delegates - Conventional wisdom favors Cruz (clean sweep) (Trump zero)

New Jersey - 51 delegates - Trump 52.0, Cruz 18.0, Kaisch 24.0 (Trump 51)

New Mexico - 24 delegates (proportional) - No clear prediction (At least 8 for Trump).

South Dakota - 29 delegates - Conventional wisdom favors Cruz (clean sweep) (Trump zero)

Analysis of The Rest Of Primary Season

It is much harder to robustly predict the outcome of the GOP race, because the winner take all nature of the contests (with incomplete Congressional district level data) creates a large swing in close races such as the Indiana race. The three way races also leave open the possibility of tactical moves in which Cruz or Kaisch drops out of contention in a state to give the other non-Trump candidate a shot at depriving Trump of those delegates.

And, the significant share of the remaining delegates that Trump needs leaves much less margin for error.

Analysis of the races give us 5 races to consider further and 84 Trump delegates from easier to predict races, so he would need 187 additional delegates from those 5 races and uncommitted delegates to win in the first round.  If we make a conservative assumption that he will win at least a third of the delegates in the two states with a proportional allocation, his Trump's quota for Indiana, California and Oregon is 164 delegates out of the 257 delegates at stake in those states.

Trump leads in polling in both Indiana and California, which certainly gives him a viable shot at a first round win of the nomination and makes him even more of a front runner than he would have been otherwise.  He not only leads in delegates, but has a path to victory paved with states where he leads in the polls.

But, it is close in Indiana where the close race could make for a wide swing of possibilities. Certainly, Trump gets some Congressional district delegates and Cruz gets other Congressional district delegates in a close race, but a switch of Kaisch voters to Cruz, as the those two candidates suggested briefly, could shift the balance decisively to Cruz in Indiana and deny Trump any delegates from Indiana.

Oregon sits between Trump territory and Cruz territory and I have seen no polling from this mixed winner take all state, so it is hard to predict.

Most California delegates are awarded at the Congressional district level, rather than at the state level where Trump should win if current polling holds up, so neither Trump nor Cruz will get all of California's delegates in all probability, but the polling seems to favor Trump decisively in California overall.

If Trump wins decisively in Indiana, he will probably win the GOP nomination on the first round, as there is little else to dent his momentum before the race goes to California.  But, if Trump loses decisively in Indiana, he has even odds at best of winning a first round vote in the Convention.

At this point, I give Trump a 60% chance of winning on the first round.

Analysis of a Possible Contested Convention

If Trump secures 1,237 pledged delegates backing him in the first round of the convention, or falls a few delegates short but manages to win the backing of the handful of GOP super delegates in the first round, it is all over and Trump is the GOP nominee.

But, if Trump fails, the question is whether the Convention would suspend Rule 40(b) to allow someone other than Trump or Cruz to be considered, and if not, whether Trump or Cruz would win in a second round vote at the Convention.

Trump will undisputedly have secured more delegates by far, more of the popular vote by far, and more states in the Republican primary than Cruz or anyone else.  A Convention vote for Cruz will look like a coup and weaken him, perhaps irremediably with Trump supporters.  In contrast, supporters of other candidates may be disillusioned by a Trump win, but aren't nearly as likely to bolt the party in the end and won't be in a position to claim that Trump's win was illegitimate.

Trump isn't loved by the GOP establishment, but most of the candidates who were eliminated from the race after winning delegates (except Carson) have reluctantly endorsed Cruz, but almost nobody in the GOP establishment likes Cruz.  For example, former Speaker of the House Hastert denounced Cruz as Lucifer incarnate yesterday.  And, Trump has a much greater position to wheel and deal with personal or political favors for delegates than Cruz who has fewer resources and more unbreakable political commitments (and is simply less of a negotiator).

Cruz has tried hard to plant disloyal individuals as Trump delegates, and maybe he's succeeded.  It is hard to know as an outsider to the process.

I give Trump at least a 55% chance of winning in a second round vote against Cruz.  Combined with my prediction that he has a 60% chance of winning on the first round, this gives Trump an 88% chance of winning the GOP nomination in my estimation, with Cruz having perhaps a 10% chance of winning the nomination, and some other white knight having perhaps a 2% chance.

The crystal ball will be much less cloudy on Tuesday night when we have the results from Indiana.

Onto the General Election

In a Trump v. Clinton race, I would give Clinton an 80%-90% chance of winning, call it 85% to split the difference.  Her current margin in national polls over Trump is almost thee standard deviations, but I expect that to fall to quite a bit more than one standard deviation, but less than two standard deviations (95% chance) by the time the general election rolls along as Trump positions himself closer to the center and moderates his publicly expressed views and maybe even apologizes for some of his previous incendiary statement.

In a Cruz v. Clinton race, I would give Clinton a 75% chance of winning which is probably an underestimate given the legitimacy issues that Cruz will face and the fact that lots of Americans haven't yet had time to get to know him and that doing so will reduce his esteem in the eyes of the average voter.  Clinton leads Cruz in national polls by about one standard deviation, but I expect that the gap will grow over time.

In a White Knight v. Clinton race, I would give Clinton a 50% chance of winning (given Kaisch's strong polling against Clinton, but the true legitimacy problem that any such candidate would face).

This gives us a 16.7% chance of a Republican President in the 2016 general election and a 82% chance of a President Clinton and a 1.3% or so chance of a President Sanders (considering less than 2% but more than 1% chance of him being the nominee and the strong likelihood that he would do as well or better than Clinton in a general election under those circumstances).

So the odds regarding the likelihood of various persons being our next President in my estimation are:

* President Hillary Clinton 82%
* President Donald Trump 13.2%
* President Cruz 2.5%
* President Sanders 1.3%
* President Kaisch 1.0%

* Democratic President 5/6th
* Republican President 1/6th

Democratic Presidential Nomination Race Recap

As I will explain below, there is something like a 98% chance that Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic Party's nominee for President of the United States.  You can safely ignore all developments in the remainder of the Democratic Party primary season and not miss anything.

Pay attention to the GOP race between Trump and Cruz instead, where there is at least a ghost of a chance of something interesting happening, even though Trump is overwhelmingly favored there as well.

The Results So Far

Clinton needs 17.4% of the remaining delegates (207 more) to win the Democratic Presidential nomination.

She leads Sanders in pledged delegates 1666 to 1359 (55% of those awarded so far) with 1,016 pledged delegates left to be awarded. A majority of the pledged delegates is 2,021, a threshold which she needs 355 more pledged delegates to surpass (about 35% of the remaining pledged delegates). Sanders needs to win 65% of the remaining pledged delegates to win a majority of the pledged delegates which he needs to make a moral claim that the super delegates should shift their support to him (in the absence of some new scandal impairing Hillary Clinton's prospects that provide an alternative basis to make this claim).

Clinton needs 720 delegates to have an outright majority of all of the delegates in the convention before even considering a single super delegate.  This is only 84 delegates more than she would get in the worst case realistic scenario for Clinton that I outline below, in which she gets at least 636 more pledged delegates, something that could very conceivably happen or at least come very close to happening, if she wins 40%-45% in states where Sanders is favored (instead of the 20% that I've assumed) and 70%+ in states where she is a strong favorite (instead of the 50% that I've assumed) - which would win her about 67 more delegates than I have assumed in a realistic worst case scenario for her.

She leads Sanders in super delegates 510 to 41, with 174 super delegates still undecided at this point. She has endorsements from more than 92% of the already committed super delegates and from 70% of all of the outstanding super delegates.

Key Facts

All Democratic primaries and caucuses in the Presidential race allocate delegates proportionally.

The winner will be decided in the first round vote at the Democratic National Convention, because only two candidates are winning.

Clinton has gotten at least 20% of the vote in every state except Vermont, where she came close.

Remaining Races With Predictions

The remaining Democratic Presidential nomination races are as follows (with polling aggregated per Real Clear Politics when available):

May 3
Indiana - 83 delegates - Clinton 49.6%, Sanders 43% (Clinton expected delegates 41)

May 7
Guam - 7 delegates (Clinton expected delegates at least 2)

May 10
West Virginia - 29 delegates - conventional wisdom favors Clinton in West Virginia (Clinton expected delegates at least 15)

May 17

Kentucky - 55 delegates - conventional wisdom favors Clinton in Kentucky (Clinton expected delegates at least 28)

Oregon - 61 delegates - conventional wisdom favors Sanders in Oregon (Clinton expected delegates at least 12)

June 4

Virgin Islands - 7 delegates (Clinton expected delegates at least 2)

June 5

Puerto Rico - 60 delegates (Clinton expected delegates at least 12)

June 7

California - 475 delegates - Clinton 49.0%, Sanders 42.3% (Clinton expected delegates more than 238)

Montana - 21 delegates - conventional wisdom favors Sanders in Montana (Clinton expected delegates at least 4)

New Jersey - 126 delegates - Clinton 51%, Sanders 42% (Clinton expected delegates more than 63)

New Mexico - 34 delegates (Clinton expected delegates at least 7)

North Dakota - 18 delegates - conventional wisdom favors Sanders in North Dakota (Clinton expected delegates at least 4)

South Dakota - 20 delegates - conventional wisdom favors Sanders in South Dakota (Clinton expected delegates at least 4)

June 14

District of Columbia - 20 delegates (Clinton expected delegates at least 4).

Conclusion

Minimum expected additional Clinton delegates assuming 20% where polling is not available and she is not clearly favored by conventional wisdom, 50% where polling is available and she is favored by conventional wisdom, and per her polling assuming all undecided voters go to Sanders where polling is available: 636

This is basically a worst realistic case scenario.  In it, she is almost sure to win both a majority of the pledged delegates and a majority of all of the delegates by a wide margin.

This prediction is highly robust because the assumptions made are very conservative and because the proportional delegate allocation rules make huge shifts in the popular vote necessary to cause significant shifts in the delegate count, especially when so many of the delegates have already been pledged, buffering any shift in the late polling that could influence the number of delegates awarded.

In this scenario, she can be abandoned by 84% of her super delegates and still win the race.  And, there is no reason to expect that even half of her super delegates will abandon her in favor of Sanders if Sanders does not win even a majority of the pledged delegates, which he will not.

In reality, Hillary Clinton will almost surely win more than 636 pledged delegates in the remaining races, and could afford to lose even more of her super delegates and still win.  Since Clinton's super delegate advantage will be a non-issue, the legitimacy of the nomination process will be untarnished, and Sanders will almost certainly acknowledge defeat and urge his supporters to back Clinton in the general election.

The odds of Sanders winning the Democratic Presidential nomination is much less than 1% in the absence of a major new scandal implicating Hillary Clinton, or a major deterioration in Hillary Clinton's health (e.g. an assassination prior to the Democratic National Convention like the one that killed Robert Kennedy).  The odds of either of those things happening is at most 1-2% or so in my estimation.

The odds the Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic Presidential nominee is on the order of 98%.

The Sanders campaign has basically conceded this mathematical reality, has laid off hundreds of staffers as a result, and is now focusing on putting together a large slate of delegates to influence the party's platform and spreading his message, rather than on winning the Presidential nomination itself.

Secular Parenting Usually Produces Good Kids

Secular Parenting

One of the things that makes me most proud is that my children, who have been raised non-religiously, have each been publicly recognized for their good character both in elementary school and again middle school.  My daughter, in her pitch to become the President of George Washington High School's National Honor Society (spoiler: she won) told her audience that "service is my thing."

My family's experience isn't unique.

More children are “growing up godless” than at any other time in our nation's history. . . 

Far from being dysfunctional, nihilistic and rudderless without the security and rectitude of religion, secular households provide a sound and solid foundation for children, according to Vern Bengston, a USC professor of gerontology and sociology. For nearly 40 years, Bengston has overseen the Longitudinal Study of Generations, which has become the largest study of religion and family life conducted across several generational cohorts in the United States. When Bengston noticed the growth of nonreligious Americans becoming increasingly pronounced, he decided in 2013 to add secular families to his study in an attempt to understand how family life and intergenerational influences play out among the religionless. He was surprised by what he found: High levels of family solidarity and emotional closeness between parents and nonreligious youth, and strong ethical standards and moral values that had been clearly articulated as they were imparted to the next generation.

“Many nonreligious parents were more coherent and passionate about their ethical principles than some of the ‘religious' parents in our study,” Bengston told me. “The vast majority appeared to live goal-filled lives characterized by moral direction and sense of life having a purpose.”

[N]onreligious family life is replete with its own sustaining moral values and enriching ethical precepts. Chief among those: rational problem solving, personal autonomy, independence of thought, avoidance of corporal punishment, a spirit of “questioning everything” and, far above all, empathy. . . .

[S]ecular teenagers are far less likely to care what the “cool kids” think, or express a need to fit in with them, than their religious peers. When these teens mature into “godless” adults, they exhibit less racism than their religious counterparts, according to a 2010 Duke University study. Many psychological studies show that secular grownups tend to be less vengeful, less nationalistic, less militaristic, less authoritarian and more tolerant, on average, than religious adults. . . .

Secular adults are more likely to understand and accept the science concerning global warming, and to support women's equality and gay rights. . . . Atheists were almost absent from our prison population as of the late 1990s, comprising less than half of 1% of those behind bars, according to Federal Bureau of Prisons statistics. This echoes what the criminology field has documented for more than a century — the unaffiliated and the nonreligious engage in far fewer crimes.

Democratic countries with the lowest levels of religious faith and participation today — such as Sweden, Denmark, Japan, Belgium and New Zealand — have among the lowest violent crime rates in the world and enjoy remarkably high levels of societal well-being. If secular people couldn't raise well-functioning, moral children, then a preponderance of them in a given society would spell societal disaster. Yet quite the opposite is the case.

From the Los Angeles Times.

Note also, with respect to the prison population, that the average incarcerated person is younger than the average adult, because most crimes are committed by adolescents and young adults. A random sample of U.S. adults with the same age and ethnic makeup as the population of adults incarcerated in the United States is much more likely to be religiously unaffiliated than that general population of the United States which includes a much larger share older adults who are much more likely to be religious.

Secular Living And Social Class

If your intuition is that this is a case of high socio-economic class values, or ethnic values, transmission from parents to children, you are mostly, but not entirely, wrong.

Non-Hispanic whites and people who are more educated or more affluent, are more likely to be secular.  But, the differences in likelihood of being non-religious along class and ethnic lines are far more modest than most people would naively assume.

For example, people who are religiously "unaffiliated" make up about 20% of whites, 16% of Hispanics and 15% of African-Americans.

The breakdown (from the same source) by education is as follows:

The breakdown by income is similarly, only modestly tilted towards affluence relative to the general public:

An atheist or agnostic has the same likelihood of having "some college" or being in a lower middle income range as members of the U.S. general public, even though an atheist or agnostic is less likely to have no college education and is less likely to be in the lowest income category.

Secular population of the United States is much younger than the religiously affiliated population of the United States, however. "A plurality of atheists and agnostics (42%) are ages 18 to 29, and just 9% are 65 and older. By comparison, about one-fifth of the religiously affiliated (18%) are ages 18 to 29, and a similar portion are 65 and older (19%)."

This is not because secular people tend to convert to a religion when they become adults. It is uncommon for people raised non-religiously to adopt a religion as an adult. President Obama, who was raised non-religiously, but converted to Christianity as an adult, is an outlier in that respect.

Complicating parenting issues, however, there is also a significant gender gap in religious affiliation. Men are much more likely to not have a religious affiliation or to be actively atheist or agnostic, than women.

Secular people age 30+ are also about 10% less likely to be married than religious people in that age bracket (only some of which is attributable to a younger age distribution within that age bracket), and secular people under age 30 are almost half as likely to be married as religious people in that age bracket (again, with only some of that difference attributable to a younger age distribution within that age bracket).

Most secular people were raised in religious households.  Only 4% of households in the 1950s that produced the Baby Boomers were non-religious, and only 11% of the households that produced Generation X were non-religious.  Far larger shares of both of these age groups are non-religious today.  But, given that 30% of people aged 18-29 are religiously unaffiliated, the age people are most likely to be when they first have children, this may not be true for much longer.

What Do Secular People Believe?

About three in ten people who are not religiously affiliated specifically identify as atheist or agnostic.

About one in ten religiously unaffiliated people are looking for a religion that is right for them, but haven't found it yet.

About four in ten religiously unaffiliated people consider themselves to be "spiritual but not religious."

The likelihood that someone without a religious affiliation will have spiritual or supernatural beliefs not commonly viewed as religious in the United States (e.g. believing in astrology, ghosts, or the existence of magical spells) is roughly the same as the likelihood that religiously affiliated people hold such beliefs.

U.S. Teen Birth Rate At All Time Low

Teen birth rates are lower now than they have ever been in the history of the United States, although they remain high by the standard of other developed countries.

According to the Center for Disease Control the trend towards lower teen pregnancy rates has continued with only modest interruption since 1991 and was particularly pronounced in the eight years from 2006 to 2014 (the latest year for which data are available). "In 1991, the birth rate among females age 15 to 19 was 61.8 per 1,000. As of 2014, that number has declined to 24.2 per 1,000."

Birth rates are down a whopping 51 percent among Hispanics age 15 to 19 since 2006, and down 44 percent among black teens, according to a survey of census data by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Teen pregnancy rates among whites also fell by a third.

From here. 

This has reduced racial and ethnic disparities in teen birth rates.  Hispanic teen birth rates (38.0 per 1,000) are now about 9% more than black teen birth rates (34.9 per 1,000), which are in turn about twice the white teen birth rate (17.3 per 1,000).

Greater use of contraception and especially long term contraception has been an important factor in the change: "use of long-acting contraceptives like IUDs and implants jumped from 1 percent of teens a decade ago to 7 percent in 2014." But, teens are also simply having sex less often.

Abortion rates per teen pregnancy have been more or less constant during this time period (resulting in dramatically fewer teen abortions as a result).

Dealing With Writer's Block

A very constructive guest post at Charlie's blog discusses some of the most common causes of writer's block (and it very often does have mundane causes) and how to address them.  

The opening line, a long neglected glasses prescription that is causing non-specific symptoms that is wrecking havoc with your life, is something that actually happened to me two or three years after graduating from law school and then moving to Colorado.  I had been having awful headaches for months, a number of inexplicable close calls while driving, and just generally felt awful.  

I went home for Thanksgiving, stopped by my usual childhood optometrist, because I hadn't been for a while and wanted a new style of glasses for the new Western Colorado me, and voila, all was explained.  My prescription was much, much worse than five years earlier when I'd gotten my last pair of glasses towards the end of my college career.  And, in just a few days, all of the symptoms that I hadn't know that I'd been suffering from were gone.  

Sometimes problems with very complex effects have very simple causes.

Blaha and Frazier Fail To Make Colorado GOP Senate Primary

The primary in the race to be the Republican candidate to oppose incumbent Democrat Michael Bennett will have just two candidates:

* Daryll Glenn, an African-American former military office who was the sole candidate to make it on the ballot via the caucus process (and who will command the top line on the ballot as a result) who has raised almost nothing for his campaign so far, and

* Jack Graham, a retired insurance salesman and former CSU athletic director who has raised more money than any other candidate and is one of the most liberal GOP candidates in the state (and was a Democrat until not so long ago), who got onto the ballot by Petition.  By the end of March he'd raced about $300,000 and loaned himself another $1,000,000, although a big chunk of that was spent to get on the ballot via the petition process.

Neither of them have ever previously held any elected office.  CORRECTION: Glenn in an El Paso County Commissioner.  Graham is a first time candidate.  I apologize for the inadvertent error. Glenn's political experience may give him an edge over Graham in addition to his conservative bona fides.  Advantage Glenn. END CORRECTION.

These are the only two candidates who will appear on the ballot because the other three candidates who tried to petition onto the ballot Keyser, Blaha and Frazier all failed to submit enough signatures to the Colorado Secretary of State to get on the ballot.  Both will probably appeal this decision, but Blaha and Frazier each have bigger shortfalls than Keyser did and will be hard pressed to win an appeal.

An unnamed legal expert thinks Keyser will get back on the ballot when a judge rules in his challenge tomorrow.  I am far more skeptical.

Primary election ballots must be turned in by voters by June 28, 2016, and given Colorado's penchant for mail in ballots, many will be cast far sooner.  The remainder of the Republican U.S. Senate campaign in Colorado, now that we finally know who will be on the ballot (subject to appeals in the next few days) will be highly compressed.

The primary will tell whether conservative politics and political experience (which clearly favor Glenn) or money and name recognition (which favor Graham) matter more in the GOP primary.

Incumbent Senator Michael Bennet has lots of things going for him in this race.  He has a mountain of campaign funds.  He has more and more relevant political experience than either candidate.  He can legitimately say that anything that the unpopular Congress has done is not his fault.  He can benefit for Hillary Clinton's coattails and from the generally higher Presidential year voter turnout that usually favors Democrats.  He has a statewide campaign network in place and ready to go.  He doesn't have to fight off a primary contestant so had can campaign as a moderate Democrat just as he has governed.

On the other hand, neither Glenn nor Graham are your run of the mill Republican candidates. The political winds seem to be favoring outsiders this year.  And, no race other than the Presidential race will get more free media this year in Colorado, so a lack of funds is somewhat less of a handicap.

Still, both of these candidates are clearly from the Republican B team and both face long odds to win in November this year.

Can You Copyright A Language?

A truly brilliant bilingual Klingon-English amicus brief argues that no one can claim a copyright in the constructed Klingon language. Some context is available here.

Among other things, it notes that legally binding weddings and contracts have been carried out in Klingon, government officials have made public announcements in Klingon, that it has one native speaker (I know the child's father personally), and that words spoken in Klingon have provided a basis for a criminal conviction.

Case law is cited by analogy, but the case is largely one of first impression.

Technological Advances Continue Unabated

A lengthy blog post mentioned at Marginal Revolution recounts the really stunning capacity of scientists and engineers to relentlessly continue to make technological advances even in mature industries, with a compendium of charts and figures across a wide variety of industries.

The progress made in information technology, battery technology, energy efficiency, and solar panel prices are particularly impressive.

8000 Posts

Between this blog and its sister blog, Dispatches at Turtle Island, including this post, I have now made 8,000 blog posts since July 3, 2005 when it all began, a little less than 11 years ago.

There have also been 6,484 comments published and not deleted in that time period (countless spam comments are deleted on a regular basis as are many accidental double posts by legitimate commenters).

Between the two blogs there have been more than 1.5 million page views since Wash Park Prophet began. Recently, there have been about 785 page views of the combined two blogs on an average day, although it varies a great deal, with posts that attract a great deal of interest (e.g. posts on state and local races during election season) often garnering far more interest, while other days are slow, particularly when I go a while without making any new posts.

Life Imitates Art Again

It isn't unusual for the engineers who design military equipment to reference science fiction.  For example, a whole line of sniper detection devices used by the U.S. military have names that reference the science fiction/western hybrid series Firefly.  But, some defense industry engineers from China have taking the imitation of science fiction meme to a whole new level. 

They've decided that the world needs real life Daleks.

Daleks from the British Science Fiction comedy "Dr. Who".

China's new armed guard robot called the Anbot:

Edward Snowden, the U.S.’s most famous whistleblower, tweeted of the Anbot from Russia: “Surely this will end well.”

The Anbot will have either a Taser or electric cattle prod and will be used for guard duty, routine policing and riot control.

Precedents Trump Texts

The following was recently posted at the Legal Theory Blog:

David A. Strauss (University of Chicago Law School) has posted The Supreme Court, 2014 Term—Foreword: Does the Constitution Mean What it Says? (129 Harvard Law Review 1 (2015)) on SSRN. Here is the abstract: 

The conventional view is that constitutional law begins with the text of the Constitution and proceeds from there. But that misdescribes U.S. constitutional law. Controversies in constitutional law are, almost always, about the meaning and effect of precedents, not about the text. Many important principles of constitutional law are inconsistent with the most natural reading of the text. The precedents govern the text, rather than the other way around; the text becomes important only when there are few precedents. 

Constitutional law, in a word, is not a text-based system, but a mixed system in which provisions of the text are treated roughly like precedents: they are expanded, limited, qualified, reconceived, or all-but-ignored, depending on how the law develops, and on judgments about how the law should develop. 

Highly recommended!  Wrong, wrong, wrong!  I think most readers of LTB have already read Strauss's wonderful and brave piece, but if not, download it while it's hot!Posted by Lawrence Solum on April 27, 2016 at 03:44 AM | Permalink

Unlike Lawrence Solum, I tend to think that David A. Strauss is not just right, but is rather obviously right in a descriptive sense of how constitutional law actually works in practice.

In the European civil law system, any judge can use the text of a statute to trump a statutory interpretation of that text.  In the English common law system of jurisprudence, in contrast, precedents interpreting statutes are especially strong and are honored even when they call for an unnatural reading of the text, in order to promote certainty.  The "super precedent" status of cases interpreting statutes, which can in principle easily be amended by the legislature doesn't apply with quite the same force in constitutional cases.  But, the same general method of construing statutes in light of precedents still applies.

Examples of non-obvious interpretations of the United States Constitution that have the force of law as a result of precedents (not exclusively, but often, from the U.S. Supreme Court) are legion.

For example, there is no way that you could determine from the face of the 11th Amendment to the United States Constitution that it codifies state sovereign immunity from suit.

Another Week Of Primaries; More Certainty

* Clinton need just 18% of the remaining uncommitted delegates (pledged and super) to win the Democratic nomination.  Almost all of the Democratic contests remaining are proportional.

It is virtually impossible for Sanders to become the Democratic party nominee at this point. It will take her until June 7, for her to seal the deal.  But, by then, she will need only about 11% of the delegates remaining (or less) to cinch the nomination.  In polling, Clinton and Sanders are currently neck and neck, and I can't think of any primary that Sanders has won by an 82-18 margin.  Clinton can direly screw up once or twice in the next month and a half and still win out of sheer force of inertia.

Her odds of winning the Democratic nomination at this point are well in excess of 95%.  Maybe 97-98% would be more realistic.  In all likelihood, she will win the race for pledged delegates handily, in addition to dominating the ranks of the super-delegates and winning the "popular vote."

* Trump has 988 delegates after today and he needs 1237 (249 more).  So, he needs about 43% of the remaining delegates, which would be a problem except that he is a decisive front runner in West Virginia, New Jersey and California, has a narrow lead in Indiana, and is likely to pick up a few extra delegates here and there, at least in the few states that award GOP delegates proportionately.

Trump may not have the cakewalk that Clinton has ahead of her for the remainder of the primary season.  But, he can manage to be a fairly mediocre front runner and still cinch the nomination on a first round vote with pledged delegates alone.

And, it stands to reason that a front runner in the primary and caucus process nationwide is going to be so hated in Cleveland that he can't wrangle at least some uncommitted delegates.  So, he can actually still win in the first round with some undetermined number of delegates less than 43% of those remaining.  Certainly, Trumps path to the Republican Presidential nomination is much more straightforward than it is for anyone else.

Cruz needs a miracle.  It is mathematically impossible for Cruz to win in the first round with the support of his pledged delegates even if Cruz wins every single remaining delegate in every single GOP primary remaining.  The only shot Cruz has is to receive massive defections of pledged candidates in his favor in a second round of convention voting, and it isn't at all obvious that this would go his way in a two way race between Trump and Cruz who are the only two candidates even eligible to run under current GOP rules that are unlikely to be changed this year.

Trump needs a few weeks that don't absolutely suck.

Trumps odds of winning the Republican nomination are about 75%, with Cruz at about 20% and everyone else combined at less than 5%.  Indeed, those numbers are probably unduly hard on Trump and too favorable to Cruz and unnamed white knights.  Maybe the real numbers are more like 85%-13%-2%.

Also, any Cruz win must entail what amounts to a GOP establishment coup.  Trump is pretty much guaranteed to have a plurality of the delegates and votes going into the convention.

Econ 102 Didn't Tell Me This Could Happen

When I took macroeconomics in college, we assumed that interest rates would always be positive. Who would buy a government bond with a negative interest rate, we thought?  Obviously that couldn't happen.

Except, it has, in both Japan and Germany, both of which are respectable industrialized countries who financial policies are not run by lunatics.

And Then There Were Four

Just one candidate for the GOP nomination to the U.S. Senate race in Colorado against incumbent Democrat Michael Bennett made the June 28, 2016 primary ballot via the caucus process: Darryl Glenn, who made his career as a military officer before retiring.

Four more candidates have tried to Petition onto the ballot. So far, one has made it, Jack Graham (the retired CSU athletic director and insurance salesman, not the famous Texas pastor), a moderate Republican who used to be a Democrat (who made it onto the ballot even though 43.4% of his signatures were invalidated), and one has failed, John Keyser.

At valid petition must signatures from 1,500 signatures in each of the state's seven Congressional districts from registered to vote Republicans who have not signed any petitions previously reviewed by the Colorado Secretary of State Williams (who happens to be a Republican) in the race.

Keyser was 86 signatures short in the Third Congressional District and 29.8% of his signatures were found to be invalid. Keyser has five days to appeal the decision and plans to do so, but he has less than even odds of prevailing in that attempt.  He would need to validate 6% more petition signatures to get on the ballot.  What went wrong?

"A prolific signature gatherer wasn't registered in the district he/she was supposed to be registered in," said one source close to Keyser's campaign. "So the sigs were 'valid' but collected by the wrong person.” . . .  One-third of Keyser's rejected signatures were thrown out because of problems with the petition circulators, not the petition signers themselves, according to documentation from [Colorado Secretary of State] Williams' office.

Two more candidates: Robert Blaha (a Colorado Springs businessman who has never held political office) and Ryan Frazier (a former city councilman from Aurora) are still waiting to have their timely submitted petitions reviewed by the Colorado Secretary of State.  Announcements for each of those campaigns are expected later this week.

This is good news for Darryl Glenn, leaving him one less competitor. This is bad news for Jack Graham, who needs to split the vote of Republican conservatives to have a shot at the nomination.

And, it may give Blaha and Frazier chills because high invalidation rates and the fact that someone who signed more than one Petition will be invalidated in their count even if it was valid in a previous count, means that it will be a close thing for either to be found to have a valid petition.

Blaha and Frazier each turned in only a thousand more signatures than Keyser did (about 17,000). Graham turned in about 22,786 signatures. Keyser turned in only 16,067 signatures. A slightly higher invalidation rate for either Blaha or Frazier than Keyser could keep that candidate off the ballot (again, hurting Graham, but helping Glenn and any other candidate who makes the ballot).

In terms of campaign finance, Blaha, who has raised more money than the other conservative candidates and can self-fund, has the edge.  Frazier has raised very little and Darryl has raised even less. Graham leads the fundraising race so far and can also self-fund, but his political moderation hurts him in the primary.

In a two way race, Darryl probably wins, despite his extreme shortfall in cash relative to Graham. In a three or four way race, any of the candidates on the ballot could win on any given day, with Graham faring better in a four way race than a three way race. Frazier is probably the front runner if he makes the ballot, simply due to higher name recognition than his competitors from previous attempts to win higher office, again, despite his lack of funding.

Keyser had led the fundraising raise among conservative candidates in the GOP race until he was eliminated today.

None of the candidates have much of a real shot against well funded, moderate incumbent Democratic Senator Michael Bennett in a year where he will also probably benefit from Presidential coattails and strong general election turnout. Indeed, they are only in this race at all because more prominent Colorado Republicans with a better shot at winning decided not to even try to beat Bennett.

Interestingly, this GOP race for statewide office has two African-American candidates (Darryl and Frazier), and Graham, a rare moderate Republican candidate, any of whom would be greater threats to Bennett than Blaha who is a conservative GOP nominee out of central casting and unlikely to attract much interest from swing voters in the general election.

Colorado was also one of the states most supportive of Ben Carson's candidacy, and has previously elected an African-American Republican to be Colorado Secretary of State.  The Colorado Republican party is just a little bit different than the Republican party organizations of the American South.

Long Term Oil Price Forecast

Oil Price Forecast 2020 and 2040

By 2020, the average price of a barrel of Brent crude oil will rise to $79/bbl (in 2013 dollars, which removes the effect of inflation). That's a result of a significant increase in shale oil production, which will slow after 2021, contributing to a decline in total U.S. oil production through 2040.

After 2020, world demand will start driving oil prices to the equivalent of $141.28/barrel in 2040 (again, in 2013 dollars). By then, the cheap sources of oil will have been exhausted, making it more expensive to extract oil. (Source: Annual Energy Outlook, EIA (U.S. Energy Information Administration), July 7, 2015)

The forecasts all depend on 1) what happens with U.S. shale oil production, 2) how OPEC responds, and 3) how fast the global economy grows. These are all so uncertain that the EIA is unwilling (or perhaps unable) to set a hard and fast forecast. Furthermore, this forecast will probably change dramatically when the new report comes out in 2016. 

The drop in oil prices in 2014 and 2015 caught EIA off-guard. 

Oil prices reached the record high of $145 a barrel in 2008, and were $100 a barrel in 2014. That's when the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) forecast that the price of Brent oil could go as high as $270 per barrel by 2020. It attributed that to skyrocketing demand from China and other emerging markets.

The idea of oil at $200/barrel seems catastrophic to the American way of life. But people in the European Union were paying the equivalent of about $250 per barrel for years due to high taxes. That didn't stop the EU from being the world's third-largest oil consumer. As long as people have time to adjust, they will find ways to live with higher oil prices.

Furthermore, 2020 is only four years away. Look how volatile prices have been in the last ten years. In March 2006, a barrel of Brent Crude sold for around $60 a barrel. It skyrocketed to $145 a barrel in 2008, leveled out to around $100 a barrel in 2014, plummeted to a 13-year low in January, then rebounded 40% to current levels. If many shale oil producers go out of business, and Iran doesn't produce what it says it could, prices could easily return to historical price levels.

The OECD admits that super-high prices would slow economic growth and demand for oil itself. That's because high oil prices can result in "demand destruction." As prices skyrocket, people change their buying habits. Demand destruction occurred after the 1979 oil shock. Oil prices steadily deteriorated for about six years and then finally collapsed when demand declined and supply caught up. (Source: Jenny Gross, OECD Says Oil Prices Could Reach $150-$270 BBL by 2020, WSJ, March 6, 2013)

However, oil speculators could spike the price higher if they panic about future supply shortages. That's what happened in 2008. Traders were afraid that China's demand for oil would overtake supply. Investors drove oil prices to a record $145/barrel. These fears were grossly unfounded, as the world soon plunged into recession, and demand for oil dropped.

From here.

Analysis

As a result of thumb, gasoline prices per gallon are roughly 1/25th of oil prices per barrel.  So, $200 a a barrel oil implies roughly $8 per gallon gasoline.

To recap and to add some of the other big factors in long range oil price forecasting, the more important factors in long term oil prices include:

1.  What will happen with U.S. shale oil production and fracking?

The EIA estimate that this will cease to be a major factor as soon as 5 years from now seems pessimistic.

2.   How will OPEC respond?

Day to day, OPEC matters a lot, but in the long run we would expect its decision making to be driven by the fundamentals.

3.   How fast will the global economy grow?

A small number of large developing countries like China, Brazil, Mexico and India may guide this factor.  This factor may be underestimated in EIA estimates.

4.  Will non-petroleum fueled vehicles reduce demand for petroleum?  To a great extent this is a function of battery technology.

Electric cars with current technologies become more attractive than gasoline/diesel vehicles somewhere in the vicinity of $8-$16 per gallon gasoline.  But, cheaper batteries and mass production price reductions can move that "phase change" point lower.

Note also that developments in hydropower, tidal power, solar power and nuclear power technologies are all almost irrelevant to petroleum prices.  Electric cars cost much less to fuel than petroleum powered cars already and new technologies will only modestly impact that differential.

Honestly, the shift to organic agriculture will probably have more impact on oil prices than the shift to renewable energy sources.

5.  Will there be widespread shifts to more fuel efficient vehicles (e.g. hybrids), or higher occupancy per vehicle-mile traveled (e.g. car pooling and buses), or shorter trips (e.g. to park and ride stations)?

This should start to happen at oil prices lower than the prices necessary to make electric cars more attractive than gasoline and diesel cars (ca. $4 per gallon and up on a sustained basis).

6.  Will petroleum substitutes such as liquid fuels converted from natural gas, coal, ethanol, or biodiesel (e.g. from grease) provide meaningful additional supply?

Some of these possibilities have trigger prices where they start to make sense at oil prices between $50 and $100 per barrel on a sustained basis.  Previous experience and analysis has suggested that the potential for biofuels is much weaker than has been often assumed in the past.

Note that all of the changes in (4)-(6) will significantly slow oil price increases at the threshold level, but probably won't actually reduce oil prices much or remove oil entirely from the economy.

Volatility

It also pays to heed the lessons that oil prices will not evolve in a steady fashion.  They will rise and fall with business cycles, with international conflicts and OPEC policy changes, with new technologies, and with relatively random short term speculative booms and busts.

Also, note that while "Peak Oil" is very relevant to long term oil prices, it is not a stand alone factor. Peak oil may kink the average rate of increase in oil prices up a bit, but doesn't mean that there will no longer be any oil in the economy.

The Price of Prohibition

Would eight members of a Southern Ohio family have been executed in the dark of night if their marijuana grow operations had been legal?

Probably not.

Instead, both sides of some dispute would have probably have hired someone like me to resolve the dispute in the courts.