Obama

Barack Obama has filed papers for his Presidential Exploratory Committee as of Tuesday January 16, 2006. This adds an additional candidate to the seemingly eclectic mix of presidential hopefuls in the 2008 election. Long expected to be a candidate, this official announcement startled few.

Along with Hilary Clinton, Obama leads the pack right now for democratic contenders, but the race is by no means decided. Clinton and Obama should have no trouble attracting enough media attention to easily assist fund raising attempts. The implications for the 2008 race are profound. Never before have political limits been so stretched. For the first time in history, the nation boasts a female Speaker of the House. Nancy Pelosi has also done a spectacular job redefining the party's role in the 110^th congress. Dennis Hastart (R – IL), the previous Speaker clung to a 24% approval rating. Pelosi is riding high on a 43% approval rating. Reverend Jesse Jackson ran a campaign in 1984 which was first intended to break the racial barrier for a Presidential candidate. Obama, the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review, is still a Freshman Senator.

Obama depicts his lack of Washington experience as a plus. The campaign centers around the concept that it takes an outsider to fix the problems inside the beltway. Though this is rhetoric heard before, Obama's youthful and charismatic character will prove to be a formidable challenge for other Democrats to overcome. He also shows potential to increase voter turnout with a change of face. Many voters have become apathetic about elections as a result of their disgust with the candidates. The trend towards finding more youthful, energetic and charismatic figures as compared to the elderly lackluster candidates may help encourage more voters to come to the polls on Election Day.

The closest historical example to a candidate with Obama's charisma might be William Jennings Brian, a progressive who ran on a campaign of free silver in 1896. (He also ran unsuccessfully in the two subsequent elections). Obama thrust himself into the national spotlight with his own “Cross of Gold” speech at the 2004 Nominating Convention. Time will tell as to whether he will end up crucified, or save a Democratic Party itching to gain control of the White House.

HR 1498 - The Chinese Currency Act

The United States trade deficit hit a record $69.9 billion in August, up from $68 billion in July. The deficit with China rose to $21.9 billion and China’s continual trade surpluses in 2006 indicate that the United States drives the road of ballooning trade deficits. US workers watch helplessly as their jobs drift overseas and domestic consumers increasingly purchase foreign goods as a result of the deficits. “Made in the USA” is no longer what it used to be.

To make matters worse, the Chinese government intentionally depreciates the value of its currency, the Yuan, by holding vast amounts of both US and other foreign securities. By purchasing and holding US treasury bonds, China has effectively pegged its currency to the dollar and consequently, keeps prices artificially low inside of its borders with an excess supply of Yuan in the market. China acquires $20 billion worth of foreign security holdings monthly and soon will surpass one trillion dollars of outside currency held. The amount China spends annually on depressing its currency is equivalent to one quarter of its exports worldwide, effectively a twenty-five percent export subsidy according Peter Morici, former chief economist at the US International Trade Commission. House bill HR 1498 reverses this trend, allowing the United States to curb the unfair Chinese measures that have let the deficit swell to its current size by justly taxing Chinese products.

China’s protectionist actions hurt US manufacturers already contending with low wage earning workers in China. In the globalized world, the effects of Chinese trade policy are not restricted to the manufacturing industry. Companies use undervalued labor to export services such as healthcare. X-rays and MRI scans of American patients are analyzed overnight by licensed doctors overseas and ready for American physicians in the morning to act on. Thus, as medical jobs are also outsourced, the impact of Chinese governmental policy resonates all over America, not solely in our factories.

These arguments are not new, nor are they unique to the United States; however, a notable solution for the United States lies within trade law. China’s twenty five percent export subsidy is tantamount to a tariff protectionist measure that lies outside of World Trade Organization (WTO) parameters for acceptable protectionism. HR 1498, the Chinese Currency Act, declares Chinese currency manipulation as unfair and encourages the US to take legal action against China under US trade law by imposing countervailing duties. This would allow the United States to tax incoming products from China to offset the effects of the subsidy. The bill helps the US by making it more expensive and ineffective for the Chinese government to pursue their currency devaluing practices.

This is not protectionism to shield infant industry from competition, nor is it protectionism to help gain first-mover advantage like the United States did with Boeing, or Europe with Airbus. Chinese trade practice is unjust and the United States is justified retaliating through the WTO. This administration has been unsuccessful in forcing China to abide by international trade standards, despite China’s membership in the WTO. HR 1498 gives the United States legal recourse to tax Chinese products, helping domestic producers and bringing much needed revenue to the government.

While counter tariffs may appear a short term solution, the effects of HR 1498 are long term. Other countries are currently inclined to follow China’s example and manipulate their currencies to maintain competitiveness in world markets. By taking a firm stand against unethical action by other governments, the United States signals to China and others that the United States and WTO members will not tolerate exploitative trade practices. Moreover, HR 1498 helps keeps jobs here at home in the United States for both manufacturing and the service industries by leveling the playing field. It helps preserve the legitimacy of WTO agreements by preventing individual countries from circumventing them. The bill helps the United States stand strong at a time when US political capital is scarce in the international community. The US needs to turn down the road of significantly reducing trade deficits, not allowing them to exponentially grow. HR 1498 is a step in that direction.

Ridin' Dirty

I mean, White and Nerdy. Weird Al feat whoever, (link: YouTube)

It makes it infinitely funnier if you have seen the original music video, can be accessed here

Enjoy!

Immigration

The effect of immigration on wages has more or less been a mystery to most people - not unlike quantum physics. Most people have an opinion on it; few understand it. It seems, as usual, the goverment is confused. The House and the Senate recently both passed legislation relevant to illegal immigrants - HR 4437 called for the criminalization of illegals, and the corresponding Senate bill called for the road to legalize them.

There has been a lot of literature on this subject matter. The earliest analysese considered immigrant workers as perfect substitutes to domestic labor. Of course, we have come a long way from arcane homogeneity assumptions - now articulating these ideas in models with "nested" complex labor functions, etc.

Out of curiousity, before I go on, let's take a quick poll - what is your take on the effect of immigration on wages?

Comments on In Vitro Meat

The original post can be found on my friend Arun's site by clicking here. I'm not responding to the post so much as going with it in a new direction.

As Arun puts it, its "meat grown on trees" to keep things simple. They artificially culture meat so that it does not rely on killing the animal in order to get to its insides. There are a number of pros and cons, including how it doesnt take the life of a cow to get steak, but also that its not natural so there may be other problems associated with it.

The wikipedia article above has all the issues surrounding this creation covered pretty well. I want to talk about some other possible advantages and disadvantages to Meat grown on Trees.

The population of the world is well over 6 billion people. Its slated to grow at astronomical paces as birth rates exceed death rates globally. Although many developed nations have reached low stable population growth rates, most countries (notably the third world including many places in Asia and Africa) have a predominant number of young people as their core population. Sure, we have countries like Italy which have negative population growth rates, but the majority of the countries are experiencing positive growth. This isnt neccesarily only a bad thing, at the most fundamental level it means people are living longer then ever before, made possible by technological advances.

This population growth brings problems of its own, especially as resources are inequally distributed and many people cannot feed themselves. As the population keeps rising, the world (not in the next two years but over a long term) will eventually encounter some form of food shortage or the inability for institutions to get food to those who need it at an acceptable rate. The time frame we are talking about spans several hundred years, long after our time but the problem is foreseeable. Perhaps we can do something about this:

Suppose that Scientist Samuel S. Smith Sr. perfects this technology of In-Vitro meat, the real question that arises, beyond the moral ones as to whether vegetarians or vegans will have problems with it, is whether we can actually feed people on it and help alleviate some of the problems of starvation. Can we actually feed this cultured meat to hungry people to people at a low price. (Let's assume economies of scale and say that if governments like the US, Canada, Britain and others all mass produced this in labs to send off to more needy areas, costs of production will be sufficiently low and subsidized by private charities that currently bring food to the hungry).

The other issues that arise with it, is how this works out with issues related to genetically modified foods. In so far as we can control the exact types of omega fatty acids inside to change the nutritional levels, we can fine tune the meat to specifications beyond our imaginations. Will this bring a feasible solution to malnutrion? Again, we'll assume that the technology can be perfected so that you wont get cancer by eating the meat.

Then there's the final issue I'll talk about tonight, plain economics. As substitutes for expensive or seasonal meats like Crabs, lobster or some types of steak arise, you could easily be asked at McDonald's or Red Lobster "In Vitro? or Regular? Oh, and you want fries with that?" As costs of meat production decline (and we'll assume that in-vitro tastes as good as real meat) ranchers may suffer some business losses. This would force them to either shift to vegetable farming, or grow their own "meat gardens" Either way, this could bring some dramatic changes to the face of the agricultural industry, worldwide. This would also prevent natural disasters from harming economies. Suppose you are a coastal fisherman, and hurricane Charlie rocks your island. If you cant get out for several days to fish, you're in some serious trouble. Having in-vitro seafood prevents you from being affected by natural variations in output. You being the supplier and the consumer, both are prevented from unnatural spikes in prices. Long run stability in food prices could mean long run stability in economies worlwide, helping promote worldwide prosperity.

Let's not get too ahead of ourselves though, this is like the dream of a hydrogen economies in the late 1970's. We have a ways to go for this to work, but it does look a little promising, at the very least. This isnt the problem/solution of 2006. This is the problem/solution of 2206.

Hella hot deals

Sorry I havent updated in a while, I've been busy with things. I think this post is kinda cool, so read ahead!

This post is dedicated to an awesome site I've been using the past month, called SlickDeals (www.slickdeals.net)

Specifically, I want to refer you to the forums page, and underneath that, the Hot Deals section.

This is a section of the site that is constantly updated. People post deals they find on cool stuff. I have to admit some of the stuff is REALLY Far fetched. They do an insane combination of Price Matching at Circuit City (CC) or Staples and then there's some coupon and then a rebate making the final price of something thats like 80 bucks more like 10 bucks. They call these schemes YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary) depending on if the store accepts the Price Match (PM) and After Rebates (AR) etc etc.

However, a good many of the deals are really legitimate.

More specifically, I want to talk about one my good friend Raghu found the other day.

Fandango was offering a promotion for Al Gore's documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" (IMDB link)

The promotion was as follows: $20 off a fandango purchase. (Current Coupon Code: AnInconvenientTruth5 - it may change) An average ticket (lets assume $10 flat) plus a $1 service charge a.k.a. comission from Fandango leaves us at $11 total for a movie ticket on Fandango. Suppose you bought a ticket for yourself, leaving you with a free movie ticket ($11 -$20 off = $0 charged to your Credit Card) And for those of you schemers, you cant get a $9 credit onto your account, doesnt work that way

Suppose you wanted to be generous and buy your girlfriend a ticket. Thats 2 tickets x $11/ticket making it $22. Take the $20 discount and we get a grand total of $2 for two tickets to see this movie. A night out for two dollars, not bad if your girl tends to be a little hard on your wallet :)

I tried this deal, and it worked. So I told a bunch of friends about it and well got a group of like 12 people to go to see this movie at Santana Row friday night. I liked the movie, but I took a course in Meteorology (METO123: Causes and Implications of Global Change) so I had generally seen/heard most of the stuff in this movie. It was generally entertaining.

My one minute movie review:
Gore does a good job of presenting the facts in this movie. The movie does not get boring, although Gore himself is known as a bore. There are interludes to the actual argument which detail Gore's personal life, such as how he almost lost his son and about his personal trips to the North and South Pole, and the Amazon. These do not really detract from the movie but they do shift the focus away from the argument on Global Warming and tell the viewer WHY Gore decided to take on this project of making people aware of Global Warming. He wants to leave a better world for his children to enjoy because he was given this world as a child and enjoyed it as such. The movie is decently humorous (even more if you take a liberal view on things) and did you know Gore had a pony??? LOL

If you care to see the movie (for free, or for a dollar) you can still do so. My Friend Munjal detailed how to do so on his blog, the slick deals page has the old code on it last I checked, so I am going to refer you to his blog HERE. the deal works, and I enjoyed the movie.

The site has good deals, including stuff like a Haircut for $5.99 at Great Clips (link here) and things. Take some time to look at this website, I think on balance its a good site.

If you find any other such sites, comment-link them, good deals are always fun to find. I want to thank Slick Deals for wasting a ton of my time and ruining my life and my wallet haha.

Democracy

Tuesday June 6th is election day here in California.

Yes, thats right. Tuesday June 6th.

Wait, don't tell me. Some of you were thinking "Isn't election day sometime in November?"

Well, technically yes it is. But there are also a number of elections that are held throughout the year for local elections and such things.

Tuesday's election is the primary election for the midterm 2006 election year. Which spurs a couple of thoughts in my head, so I'm going to spell them out here. Definitely feel free to post comments on this one, I feel that this is a pretty important post.

That said, lets consider recent rhetoric all over America, usually espoused by President Bush:

"We are bringing Democracy to the middle east"
"They [islamic fundamentalists] threaten our values and ideals"
"You are either with us, or against us"
"America will never run... And we will always be grateful that liberty has found such brave defenders"
"America has never been united by blood or birth or soil. We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests and teach us what it means to be citizens."
"Chew before you swallow" (Hah, I just had to throw that one in)

So we all know about Democracy and all its properties: power to the people, a government by the people for the people, people's checks on abusive and tyrannical governments, all in all to prevent another King George III. (Or William Henry Harrison, who died in office a month after inauguration because the guy refused to wear a coat in a DC winter. Do we REALLY want these people leading our nation?)

But how much do Americans really care about their democracy that they value oh-so-much and that they want to bequeath to the entire world?

There are approximately 186 million eligible voters in the United States. This means you are over 18 and havent committed any felonies, yet. There are 130 million registered voters. That's only 70%. America already gets a "C-" for voter registration. According to John. W. Dean, about 111 million voters turned out for the 2000 presidential election. Pull out your calculators and plug in the numbers. Thats just under 60% (59.67) of eligible voters who actually cast a ballot in the 2000 election, down from 69.3% in 1964. Then again, thats when JFK was running. (PBS differs with an estimated turnout in 2000 of 54%) With a generous curve, thats a "D-". Uh oh, starting to look like President Bush's College Report Card. And that was only the presidential election. Italy on the other hand, rolls at 92.5% voter turnout, according to PBS. They get an "A."

Lets take a quick look at midterm elections, years not unlike this one. Estimated turnout in 1998: 36.4%. Down from a whopping 55.4% in 1966. The population that votes in presidential elections today, is almost as small as the population that voted in midterms 40 years ago. PBS's data is from the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, which for the most part seems pretty reliable if for no other reason than it has the words "International Institute" in its name.

1998 voter turnout in Mississippi according to the US Election Assistance Commission was 25% Montana had the highest at 51%, Oregon checks in at 45%, Maryland at 39.4% and California at 35.1%

Turnout for primary and non federal elections turns out to be roughly the same, the West Virginia Secretary of State's office published this information regarding their turnout. 1972 showed nearly a 50% turnout rating, and 1998 yielded only 32.15%

I've presented to you the statistics, now what to make of them?

There are a couple of things to account for turnout. Obviously, the candidates are a major factor. If they are as boring and large as William Taft, the population wont want to get out and vote. However, if a candidate can energize and mobilize people with charisma like JFK, turnout increases (see above statistic). but surely that cant be the only reason that 67.85% of the people decide not to vote in an election.

The political issues of the time are also a major factor. President Bush in 2004 was able to mobilize a HUGE section of his conservative base by calling for the gay marriage amendment and privitization to social security. President Clinton made his way to the White House in 1992 by harping on the economy. Andrew Jackson waltzed into Washington the second time around in 1832 by railing against the Nicholas Biddle and the Bank of the United States to win 59% of the popular vote.

Seriously though, these are not solid enough reasons to justify NOT voting in an election. "My vote won't make a difference," is probably the number one justification by Americans for not voting in an election. This statement has become increasingly false in recent years, as elections of all kinds, presidential, congressional, and gubernatorial have all been the closest in recent memory. Handfuls of votes do make a difference, now more than ever.

I dont need to go into any political theory to tell you why having the right to vote is important. They bored the hell out of you with that stuff in 4th grade. And 8th grade. And in 11th. And in 12th. And in college.

While writing this post, my friend Raghu made an important observation. The United States is not a direct democracy, like the Athenians had it set up. The US is a representative republic. We elect people to make our decisions for us. This means that getting the right people in office is even more important, and therefore your vote becomes even more crucial. We try our best not to have Bozo the Clown running the show. (instead we choose the terminator)

Now I'm not saying average people are not qualified to govern. Andrew Jackson believed that a government by the people should be run by the people, and he introduced the spoils system. What I am saying however, is that people really should care more about who their leaders are. Yeah, you've heard this before. But seriously, people don't take enough advantage of it. For me, its not so interesting. I live in a pretty solidly democratic area, and the Democratic Candidate for office will win easily in my precinct. This post is really directed to all those who dont live in pre-determined precincts. Florida. Ohio. Iowa. Wisconsin. New Mexico. Swing States. This is where voter apathy is most harmful, because you are the people who decide our fate. I think the lack of turnout in these areas is most shocking, because voters here can directly feel the most power, as their choices determine the future of this nation.

Not every election is as interesting as the vice presidential election of 1800 Thomas Jefferson vs. Aaron Burr. Then again, not all are going to be as boring as FDR's 50th reelection. The primaries wont be as interesting as the November election, and midterms arent as interesing as presidential elections. However, each election is important. There are more laws than those set up by the Federal government, city and state laws govern your actions just as much as federal laws.

We speak of democracy, but we rank 139th out of 172 democracies as of 2003. Some have proposed the solution of mandatory voting laws. There are several problems with this, and for a complete analysis of that, see John Dean's Article here. I think a better solution, an idea floated by some a long time ago is a national election holiday. This would make either a full holiday, or a half day out of all election days, giving working citizens time off specifically to go to the polls and cast their ballot. The cost of this is minimal really, since the social costs of not voting are higher than the economical cost of a few hour's pay. If the wrong person gets into office, and the economy tanks, you are going to be worried about a lot more than the few dollars you lost casting your ballot. Ways around losing those bucks are already present, including voting absentee days before an election and dropping your card off in a postage paid envelope, literally at zero cost to the voter. You can make a decision in the conveniance of your own home, the weekend before the election if you so choose. At least vote this way, if you have a job and cant make it to the polls.

Having a job doesnt prevent you from going to the polls. Polls are usually open from 7:00 AM until 8:00 PM, well after working hours hopefully so working citizens can get their ballot in before the polls close. Polling stations are distributed throughout residential neighborhoods, so you dont have to go far to cast your ballot either. Mine is literally a mile from my house. I can walk there if I so chose.

Dont know who your candidates are? Google them. Resources are available online that include platforms and endorsements. The Registrar of Voters sends out an information pamphlet weeks before the election. You may also go to sites such as www.smartvoter.org

The system has been set up much more conveniantly than the Jim Crow times of the 1800's. Things have been designed so everyone can cast a ballot who is eligible. The turnout for this country in recent years has been a disgrace. From the country that brought democracy to the world, its a sign of pure hypocrasy. Lets live up to the ideals that we gifted to the world, and get out there and actually cast your ballot. There is no such thing as an unimportant election, or a vote that "doesn't count."