Elections

While running into a local grocery store to grab a couple of supplies this evening, I had to pause for a moment and wonder if I was in California, rather than Connecticut.

You see, I was stopped heading in by a gentleman looking for signatures on a petition.

It seems that the petitioning has begun in Connecticut to get Nader on the November ballot.

Of course, I signed…not because of any fondness for Nader, but because the folks who write ballot access laws seem to succumb to conflict of interest, and write such pesky legislation so as to maintain the advantages currently enjoyed by the D/R duopoly, and I’d like to do my part to fight against such tyranny.

The smell of political silliness is in the air here in Connecticut.  An article in the Courant mentions:

• Connecticut is required to have a ballot question every 20 years on whether to call a convention to amend the state’s constitution;
   
• This November will see an appearance of the bi-decadal question on the ballot;
   
• Groups supporting an anti-same-gender amendment to the state constitution and the introduction of the ballot initiative are ramping up a campaign to encourage voters to vote “yes” to the question.

While I’m all for periodically revisiting the fundamentals from which our legal and regulatory system works, I tend to distrust politicians’ and activists’ attempts to improve something that isn’t necessarily broken.  That distrust is doubled when folks seeking to meddle with the status-quo have ulterior motives.

For example, longer-time readers of this blog should be aware of my thoughts on same-gender marriage – I feel that the notion of a bureaucrat or politician dictating whom God or Mother Nature may marry to be silly at best, arrogant at worst.  I wouldn’t mind seeing a roadblock or two set up to interfere with those who would aggravate that silliness/arrogance.

On the subject of ballot initiatives – while I can see the attraction to the idea, I can also see the potential for great mischief to be caused through attempting to game the tyranny of the majority.   Besides, given the small size of Connecticut, both in terms of population and geography, state legislators seem particularly responsive to the will of the people.   For a recent example, consider the recent hoopla over requiring gas company franchises to permit franchisees to grant cash discounts.

We apparently don’t need ballot initiatives in this state to see silliness occur.

Given the level of responsiveness we already have in state government, why the heck should we want to give up the sanity that is supposed to be imposed by filtering legislative changes through theoretically wise elected representatives?

However, I suspect that I’m in the minority on this matter.  So, if we are going to endure the ordeal of ballot initiatives in this state, could I at least get the right to mace aggressive petitioners written into the state constitution, or the state’s do-not-call law amended to prohibit robocalls from political campaigns and campaigns for/against the initiatives of the day?

For the past couple of weeks, I’ve noticed that Obama and McCain have started to beat upon one another on various dimensions of the issues of taxation and Social Security.

Annoyingly, real life has prevented me from offering my €0.02 worth until now.

Oversimplifying, the discussion seems to be focused around Obama’s various plans to increase taxes on individuals earning more than $250,000 year, both through income/capital gains taxes, as well as Social Security payroll taxes.   McCain is publicly calling for making the Bush tax cuts permanent, reining in spending, and promising to work across the aisle on Social Security reform.

A few thoughts come to my mind:

• A hat tip goes in Obama’s general direction for daring to broach the subject of Social Security.  It takes political chutzpah to touch such a sensitive subject on the campaign trail and daring to make a specific proposal, and I respect Obama for having done so.  It’d be nice if McCain would offer some specific ideas, rather than just railing against the hit to the $250k+ income crowd.
   
• Having said that, I can’t help but wonder if anyone’s thought through the potential implications to the economy of imposing such a potentially large shock to the super-affluent crowd.  Granted, such folks are already making plans for the lapsing of the Bush tax cuts at the end of 2011, but I do wonder about unintended consequences of major, short-notice changes to tax law.
   
• I am disappointed that so much of the public debate seems solely focused on the tax side of the equation.  Surely I’m not the only person concerned about the unsustainability of our current spending spree.  Yet I don’t think I’ve heard much discussion on just what the two candidates are thinking of doing about that problem, other than bickering over tax policy.

This afternoon, Hillary was overheard to say that she’d be willing to accept a nomination for Vice-President.

That statement got me to thinking:  What if McCain tapped Hillary for the number two slot?

Even though they differ in politics, McCain and Hillary are good buddies.  I’d bet that Hillary could draw enough support to deny Obama the win.  

Would McCain and Hillary want to win badly enough to set aside their political differences, and share a ticket to maximize their odds of winning, I wonder.

I doubt it…but it’s an interesting thought, isn’t it?

Seen on the AP wire:

Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois sealed the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday, a historic step toward his once-improbable goal of becoming the nation’s first black president.[...]

Obama sealed his nomination based on primary elections, state Democratic caucuses and delegates’ public declarations as well as support from 22 delegates and "superdelegates" who privately confirmed their intentions to The Associated Press. It takes 2,118 delegates to clinch the nomination at the convention in Denver this summer.

From what I understand, reaction from the Clinton campaign was:

"I’m melting!"

(Yes, I know that’s horribly unfair of me.  But, while I respect the Clintons’ skill as politicians, that doesn’t mean I like Hillary.)

So, this is it.  South Dakota and Montana have their primaries today, bringing primary season to a close.

In a normal year, this wouldn’t be a noteworthy landmark.  But this year… pundits, professional and amateur, have been waiting to be able to breathe a sigh of relief.

It’s a shame I’m going to be in meetings all day.   There’s an expectation that a steady trickle of superdelegate endorsements will be made today and tomorrow.  I’ve got to believe that someone (probably the Obama campaign) will have a running tally going, so that the blogosphere can melt down when he clinches the nomination, this evening or tomorrow.

An article in the Wall Street Journal over the weekend reminds us of the rumblings about the federalization of catastrophe insurance possibly playing a role in this year’s election cycle:

The proposal — backed by giant insurers Allstate Corp. and State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co., as well as Florida lawmakers — focuses on "reinsurance," the policies bought by insurers themselves to protect against catastrophic losses. The proposal envisions a taxpayer-financed reinsurance program covering all 50 states, which would essentially backstop the giant insurers in case of disaster.

The program could save homeowners roughly $500 apiece in annual premiums in Florida, according to an advocacy group backed by Allstate and State Farm, the largest writers of property insurance in the U.S.

But environmentalists and other critics — including the American Insurance Association, a major trade group — say lower premiums would more likely spur irresponsible coastal development, already a big factor in insurance costs. The program could also shift costs to taxpayers in states with fewer natural-disaster risks.

"This bill makes it a little bit too easy for the state to go to the federal government for a bailout," said Eric Goldberg, associate general counsel at the American Insurance Association, an insurers’ trade group.

The legislation passed the House with bipartisan support, 258-155, late last year, despite a presidential veto threat. Although a Senate vote is unlikely this year, proponents are trying to make it a litmus-test issue in the presidential race. The two Democratic contenders, Sen. Hillary Clinton of New York and Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, in their recent visits to Florida — a key swing state — have both voiced support for the plan.[...]

The proposal envisions the creation of funds like Florida’s in all 50 states. These reinsurance funds would collect premiums from companies like Allstate, who would benefit because they would be paying less than in the private reinsurance market. That savings would get passed on to homeowners. Then, if a state got hit with a particularly severe disaster, whether hurricane, earthquake, tornadoes or other crisis, federal loans and state-backed reinsurance could step in to cover big losses.

In order to draw congressional support from states with somewhat less disaster risk, the federal program is designed to kick in for events that don’t necessarily approach the catastrophic level of, say, a Hurricane Katrina. In tiny Delaware, for example, federal payouts could begin after yearly losses of less than $300 million. Katrina-related losses in Louisiana, by comparison, topped $20 billion.

On general principle, I’m not a fan of the government stepping in to provide a service that is already mostly-adequately addressed in the open market. 

However, I also have to admit that yes, a chunk of reinsurance cost is a hefty profit/risk load, required to attract the capital necessary to support the business.  If cover were provided with the feds underwriting the risk, then in theory, the profit motive should be eliminated, and arguably less capital would be required to maintain solvency…assuming that the federal government can continue to be thought of as infinitely solvent.

Aside from my small-ell libertarian objection to federalization of cat cover, I also have a couple of practical concerns of the idea:

First, our government seems allergic to fiscal responsibility — it likes to spend money without adequate thought being given to exactly how or when the revenue will be raised.   A catastrophe program like this should accumulate assumed premiums into a reserve fund which can be tapped to pay when disaster strikes, if the program is to be financially viable over the long term. 

I don’t think I’m being too cynical to think that an accumulation of a large warchest of cash will be too tempting for bureaucrats to resist repurposing, as part of accounting magic to hide the national addiction to credit, much as is being done with the Social Security trust fund (and as was done with the Medicare trust fund, before it was depleted).

Such manipulations of the national financial records will eventually net themselves out, but I am extremely uncomfortable with providing the feds another means by which they can deceive the public about our debt problems.

Second, I have reservations about any federal bureaucracy attempting to operate as efficiently as a private business.  I’m not sure that the personal insurance behemoths of Allstate and State Farm would be doing themselves any favors by relying on federal reinsurance to eventually pay out, rather than private reinsurers.

And finally…even though a federally-supported entity might be able to avoid some of the price drag created by a need to provide investors profit, there is still the reality that the underlying loss costs are very high in certain parts of the country.   Do we actually think that a federal agency will have the chutzpah to demand adequate cessions in support of (say) Florida wind exposure, when the head of the executive branch of the government (and therefore the federal reinsurance entity) has to appeal to Florida voters every four years?

With Obama supporting the idea, and Florida still considered a swing state (albeit not as much of one as it would be with Hillary at the head of the Democratic ticket)… I could actually see this mattering somewhat as an issue this summer and fall.

(Note: parts of this post are taken from a post I made last summer.)

Last week, I mentioned that in a winner-take-all, one-representative-per-district system, ending gerrymandering and moving towards a politics-blind method of drawing district boundaries would ease my concerns of two-party duopolistic power, with politicians beholden to themselves more than the citizenry they are supposed to serve.

There are two problems with the scheme I described however: 

First, to the extent that geographic constituencies need to be defined in order to improve the odds of particular groups of interest being represented, a politics-blind redistricting plan would likely erode those groups’ potential influence.

Second, it does nothing to my theory that two-party rule is an artifact of how we determine political representation.

In this day and age, I have to wonder whether it still makes sense for legislative representation to be based solely on geography.   As more of us forge connections that aren’t necessarily constrained by geography, you have to wonder if geography is the best basis to allocate political power.

For example, even though I live in northern Connecticut, I’m at least as interested in the affairs of folks in Boston and New York (the two cities I telecommute to), in southern Alabama (due to family ties), or in assorted other jurisdictions around the country (due to the nature of my work).

However, many of my political concerns — potential government involvement in catastrophe insurance on the coasts, bolstering the changing economy in Alabama’s Wiregrass region, or traffic/transportation related issues around Boston and New York — probably won’t rank terribly high on a list of priorities for my Connecticut-based Congressman.

So why must we be limited to the idea that we can vote for one candidate who happens to reside in the same general geographic region as we do?

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that we live in a jurisdiction represented by 10 legislators, 10,000 voters, two major parties (”D” and “R”) and two minor parties (”G” and “L”).  Today, that legislature would likely take its members from 10 districts (A-J), where election results could look something like this:

Candidates R-A, R-B, D-C, R-D, R-E, D-F, D-G, R-H, D-I, and D-J are elected, giving us a legislature made up of 5 R’s and 5 D’s.   In aggregate, the legislature would look sort-of-kind-of like the political leanings of the entire juris