Mitt's Dog Whistle Misfires

I can't help myself but comment on Mitt Romney's instantly famous remark:

“I’m not concerned about the very poor. We have a safety net there. If it needs a repair, I’ll fix it. I’m not concerned about the very rich — they’re doing just fine,”

Romney was assailed for saying he doesn't care about the poor, and defended on the ground that he also said he wanted to make sure the safety net was well patched, so his remark was "taken out of context."
But I don't think Romney misspoke at all. His saying he doesn't care about the poor is actually a dog whistle to the far right, who hate the poor and think that they are coddled by welfare. But he is basically decent, too, so he added that he wants to preserve the safety net, saying that as if it's a simple item on his to-do list. In saying that, Romney dog-whistled in reverse, because the right doesn't much like the safety net, or honestly think it's counterproductive. They are also very suspect of decency. So Mitt said two things, meaning them to balance each other. But he managed to offend everyone, even the people to whom he was actually pandering.

Our Tiny Little Debt Problem

One of the oddities about the recent debt debate is the failure to recognize how small our problem is in one critical sense. While our deficits and government debts are high in absolute terms and high in relation to GDP, because interest rates are low, our debt service costs are actually quite low as well.

Going back 20 years to 1991, net interest as a percentage of federal government outlays has fluctuated between 5.0% (the low-point in 2010) and 15.4% (1996). This year, the estimated net interest expense is 6.5% of outlays, near the low end of the spectrum. As a percentage of GDP, the government’s interest expense is less at 1.6%, about as low as it has been since the 1960s. These figures, however, are expected to rise, partly due to an assumption that interest rates will rise and partly due to the rising debt level. Countries with real debt problems like Greece or Italy are required to pay interest rates that are many times the rate on U.S. treasury bonds.

But even after the projected increases, our federal debt service will remain low by historical norms. So there may be no real crisis and no reason to expect that the ratings agencies have any legitimate reason to downgrade U.S. bonds (except perhaps the government’s apparent inability to increase revenues above their historically low levels).

2 Cents on the Trillion Dollar Debt Crisis

As the debt and deficit debate proceeds towards Armageddon (or not), it seems to me that most people, even the politically aware, have checked out. That’s what I’ve been doing more or less, and why not? Even before one starts to fathom a solution, one has to decide whether it’s really a problem, or how much of a problem. Last night, president Obama said: “We would risk sparking a deep economic crisis — this one caused almost entirely by Washington. Defaulting on our obligations is a reckless and irresponsible outcome to this debate.”

But Speaker Boehner responded by saying that a stopgap measure he has proposed is Obama’s creation He urged the president to sign a Republican plan to raise the debt limit. “If the president signs it,” he said, “the ‘crisis’ atmosphere he has created will simply disappear. The debt limit will be raised.” Everyone says everyone else’s deal is a non-starter, full of gimmicks, and in bad faith. MSNBC viewers watch and believe something very different from Fox viewers—and it’s all based on who one believes.

Then there is the legal issue of whether Obama can simply declare the debt limit raised without any legislation at all. This argument, not uncontoversial, was offered by law professors Eric Posner and Adrian Vermeule. They contend:

Our argument is not based on some obscure provision of the 14th amendment, but on the necessities of state, and on the president’s role as the ultimate guardian of the constitutional order, charged with taking care that the laws be faithfully executed. When Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War, he said that it was necessary to violate one law, lest all the laws but one fall into ruin. So too here: the president may need to violate the debt ceiling to prevent a catastrophe — whether a default on the debt or an enormous reduction in federal spending, which would throw the country back into recession.

But whether or not there is a default—or whether it can be legislated or decreed away-- the underlying debate is real, so I decided to take a look at some of the numbers, which are available in a panoply of historical tables supplied by the Office of Management and Budget

Here are some of the numbers I found interesting:

On taxes (or revenues): Since 2000, tax receipts as a percentage of GDP have been declining. In 2000, the government revenue as a percentage of GDP has declined from 20.6% to 14.9% in 2010. It’s tempting to blame this all on the Bush tax cuts, but that can’t be right since the decline, while starting under President Bush has ebbed and waned. By 2004, taxes as a percentage of GDP fell to 16.1%. But then they started to rise, cresting at 18.5% in 2007. This level—between 18% and 19%— is pretty standard since 1960.

But then something happened, and I am not sure why. In 2009, taxes were just 14.9% of GDP. The same was true in 2010. In 2011, the OMB estimate is 14.4%. Perhaps this is due to the “stimulus” tax cuts. But whatever the reason for the drop in revenues, historically low taxes passed under Obama and not just under Bush, are part of the deficit issue.

But spending is part of it, too. In 2000, federal government spending as a percentage of GDP was 18.2%. That figure is as low as it had been since 1966. After that, spending starter to rise. The rise to 2008— spending was 20.8% of GDP— was gradual. But in 2009, spending ballooned to 25.0% of GDP. More, OMB expects it to stay above 22% through 2016. This is higher than it ever was under Bush or Clinton.
To find spending exceeding 22.5% of GDP, one has to travel back to —surprise— President Reagan, when spending was 22.8% of GDP in 1985 (and the deficit was quite high, though only half as high in percentage terms as it is now, even as the ‘80s recession was just as bad as the current one). Also, there does not seem to be a single fiscal year since 1952 (the Korean War) when spending increased by even __ of GDP, let alone 4.3%, as it did between 2008 and 2009. In the post-war era, jumps of 1% are big.

Thus it does seem fair to say that spending in “out of control.” But taxes are out of control too, but not in the sense that they have climbed too high, but that the government has let them fall too low. All of these numbers allow a case that Obama has been somewhat incompetent as president, that he is not the only mature one, a case that David Brooks makes well today.

But to get the debt problem fixed—though it’s still an open debate as to how much of a fix is needed— there has to be a way for both sides to agree to cuts in spending and increases in taxes. If this sounds obvious, well, I guess it is.

Pity the Passengers

The Times has an op-ed about police searches of livery cab passengers. The NYCLU is on the case. But for years the routine civil rights violations of livery cab passengers has gone unremarked.

2 cents on the outer borough livery plan

I have no dog in this fight, but...

Mayor Bloomberg's plan to license a new class of taxis that would be permitted-- for the first time-- to accept street hails in the outer boroughs and northern Manhattan has passed in the state assembly. Predictably the medallion and fleet owners are scrambling. The Senate has yet to act.

Medallion owners are predicting the destruction of their industry. That may be overstating it, but they are right to attempt to protect their investments in medallions which they purchased under the existing rules for as much as $750K.

I think they have a point: When the OB liveries take a fare from Brooklyn to say 34th Street, do you think they will then head back to Brooklyn? I think they will more likely poach a Manhattan fare (something many liveries do already). To do so may be illegal. But who will stop them, especially when customers become accustomed to hailing these OB cabs?

That's the real issue as I see it. If they OB cabs were truly confined to the OBs, then it might not hurt the yellows. But even now livery cabs take illegal Manhattan street hails. Under the new plan, this could get a lot worse. And the yellow cab drivers' earnings will be undermined, with the value of the yellow medallions withing in the wake.

Also, the TLC is also building its empire here. The 30,000 OB street-hail cabs is big new opportunity for regulation.

My Outer-borough taxi solution

I wrote this as an op-ed about a month back. But it went unpublished:

In recent months, Mayor Bloomberg has proposed allowing livery cabs to accept street hails in New York City’s outer boroughs—an idea that has been broached an rejected several times over the decades. Just this week, the City Council passed a plan to increase the fines on cab drivers who refuse outer borough fares.

Both plans are designed, it is said, to improve taxi service outside of Manhattan. But both ignore the realities of the taxi industry. Any real solution must acknowledge how the taxi business works in New York: It’s a three-tier system, and yellow cabs are just one part.

The city’s 13,000 yellow taxis tend to go where the money is: Manhattan south of 96th Street and the airports. This is old hat.

Complaints about refusals are likewise commonplace. Even as someone who has defended taxi drivers accused of refusing service, I concede that it’s a real problem, though one that tends to be wildly overstated.

But the key fact is that in addition to yellow cabs there are livery cabs and black cabs. Black cabs are taxis that service employees of (mostly large) businesses through expense accounts. Livery cabs mostly service the outer boroughs. They are required to accept passengers by pre-arrangement only and may not accept street hails—though in fact many do. Given the existence of liveries—which outnumber yellow cabs—the idea that the outer boroughs have no taxi service is simply false.

The reason yellow cab drivers can be reluctant to take fares to Brooklyn or the Bronx is two-fold. Cabbies have concerns for their safety. Some of these concerns are imaginary, but some are very real: Taxi drivers are more likely to be killed on the job than police or firefighters. The second concern is economic: When a taxi does travel to an outer borough, it is likely to have to return to Manhattan empty.

Neither concern permits a cab driver to refuse, of course. But while beating up on taxi drivers may be good politics and favorite sport, it does not really address the problem.

Taxi drivers—mostly immigrants, all independent contractors—have never had much voice in corridors of power. But taxi fleet owners do. They will yell loud and long against any plan to allow livery cabs on their turf.

And the taxi owners have a point. The mayor’s plan to let liveries accept street hails would permit the dilution of their monopoly—a monopoly not granted for free, but bought and paid for. It is represented by taxi medallions, which are licenses that sell for as much as $750,000. People buy them based on what they represent: An exclusive on street hails in New York City. The medallions are leased in turn to taxi drivers for as much as $129 per shift.

While the creation of a property right to taxi licenses might not be a perfect system, it has become entrenched over decades. Owners will right fight to protect those rights. Drivers, meanwhile, will protest their loss of business—and ultimately will not be willing to pay as much to lease medallions. Over time, drivers will become less willing to leave Manhattan than ever. In short, by letting liveries take their turf, the city would have changed the deal.

There is, however, a better way: The city should give everyone who owns a medallion another license (or two or three) for free. The second license would apply to a new class of taxi that would be permitted to accept street hails outside Manhattan. This would open up yellow-cab type service in neighborhood where it exists barely or not at all. Perhaps these cabs could be painted a distinctive color of their own, say, lime green.

Permitting green cabs would, of course, dilute the value of the yellow taxi medallions. But since the owners of yellow medallions would be given the green medallions, they would be compensated for their loss. Simply letting current liveries accept street hails, by contrast, would injure the yellow cab owners without compensation.

By attaching a green license to every yellow license, the city could add thousands of cabs if that’s what it wants. And it would do so without causing a loss to those who have borrowed and saved to purchase medallions. The yellow cab industry would be much more likely to accept a plan that protects their rights. And New Yorkers far and wide would have more and better taxi service than they have now.
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Recruiting Rewind - Who Succeeds with Success?

D1CW (http://d1collegewrestling.net) has an interesting feature by Earl Smith comparing recruiting prospects with their results for the high school class of 2006. The feature, called “Recruiting Rewind” and which can be found at http://d1collegewrestling.net/Recruiting_2006.html, reprises a similar report the site did last year for the high school class of 2005 (http://d1collegewrestling.net/Recruiting_2005.html).

The reports list the top recruits coming out of high school and the top college wrestlers five years later when nearly all the recruits would have exhausted their eligibility. There are two results of note. First for the top 20 collegians in the ’06 class, just six were top 25 recruits. Second, of the top 20 recruits, just seven had outstanding college careers. (This total counts Henry Cejudo, who skipped college, but won an Olympic gold medal.) On the other hand, nearly all the top collegians were top 100 recruits, the exceptions being Anthony Robles, who the recruiting touts may have overlooked for obvious reasons, and Stephen Dwyer of Nebraska.

It’s startling that four top-10 recruits flamed out altogether, including two that attended OK State (Jordan Frishkorn of Oklahoma State; Billy Murphy (Iowa); David Rella (Penn State); Ben Ashmore (Oklahoma State)). The number one overall recruit, David Craig of Lehigh, had some success, but the D1C1 formula, which ranks wrestlers based on their NCAA and conference tournament successes, puts him at #41 in his class. Lehigh also attracted the #12 recruit, Pat Flynn, who had little college success.

The good news for Cornell is that their top recruits all performed well, if some not quite up to their recruiting par. Mack Lewnes was ranked #7 as a recruit and he became the third most successful wrestler in his class, behind two-time NCAA champ Jordan Burroughs and Lance Palmer, who was a four-time All American and, like Lewnes, a national runner-up. Lewnes comes out ahead of Jon Readeare and his fellow NCAA champs JP O’Connor and Robles.

Mike Grey was the #3 recruit. He didn’t fare as well in college, but he did rank #16 in his class, juts behind Mike Thorn and Montell Marion.

Justin Kerber was the #22 recruit. Again, he didn’t quite wrestle up to those expectations, but he is listed as #49 in his class.

The year before, Cornell had three top-50 recruits: Troy Nickerson, Adam Frey and Curtis Roddy. Roddy disappeared, but Nickerson won a NCAA championship. Frey, of course, died tragically, but was successful before that.

I suppose the lesson is that a college program absolutely needs top recruits if it plans to succeed. Nearly all the top wrestlers were top-100 recruits, if not top-20. On the other hand, may of the bluest of blue-chippers are long forgotten. Can it be said that some programs squander top talent more than others. Certainly injuries and academic failings play a part. I am not sure whether to be surprised that so many top recruits never succeed. But it would be interesting to make a study of what programs have done most with the least or the least with the most, or which ones have seen their star high-schoolers perform closest to expectations.

Demon Cabbie Rape

Unless I am very wrong, there has never been a proven case of rape by a taxi driver against a passenger. Then why are all the New York papers reporting the alleged rape by a cabbie against a passenger that occurred last week? (Here it is on the Fox website an in the Times.)

It’s not that rape is a rare crime. According to the NYPD, there were 28 rapes last week and 489 on the year to date in the city. But only two are in the news. One is the alleged rape by a police officer, a case where the trial of the officer is winding down.

The other is a purported rape by a orange-turbaned taxi driver in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn.

Here is how the story is being reported:

Cops have released a sketch of the rogue cab driver who they say tied up and raped his passenger at knifepoint at the end of a horrific ride through Williamsburg last week.

The 26-year-old victim told police that she had spent the early part of the night celebrating Cinco de Mayo at Public Assembly on N. Sixth Street. At some point after midnight, she hailed a cab — but instead of getting a ride home, she was taken to a darkened corner of Rodney Street near S. First Street, where the cabbie allegedly pulled a knife, bound her wrists together and raped her.

He then took her cellphone and $20 before letting her go at 6 am."
So she hailed a cab "after midnight" took a five-minute ride and was "let go" at 6 AM.

Here is another particularly imaginative account:

It was a long night, with lots of drinks. You stumble into a cab, as the sunlight is just beginning to show in the distance. You’re drunk, tired and just want to get a few hours of sleep before you have to wake up for work, and you expect a hangover is inevitable.

In the back seat of the taxi, you lean back and close your eyes. You’ll wake up when you get to your apartment in a few minutes. You’ll pay the cabbie and go home. You made it home.

For many New Yorkers, this scenario is not unfamiliar. It could have been you who hailed that cabbie early Friday morning in Brooklyn. It was after 5 a.m., and you had just celebrated Cinco de Mayo at the Public Assembly bar and music venue in Williamsburg.

Are we to believe that this rape occurred over 5-6 hours?

Did she fall asleep and the cabbie waited five hours for her to wake?

But the real wonder is that the press has picked up on this story en masse, all while an untold number of other rapes go unmentioned. It shows a willingness to believe that cabbies are criminals in wait, though there is no evidence to support such hysteria.

The demon cabbie is a persistent myth. It is stoked in particular by the New York Post, which headlined its story, “Woman in cabby-rape nightmare.”

But my bet is that this crime never occurred. And if it did it’s an aberration, which the press fuels as if it were a real fear. The demon cabbie lives!