Category Archives: Politics

Odd poll: Rahm Emanuel more negatively rated than Eisenhower traffic

Posted on by

One challenger to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel used some dubious questions to find how the mayor ranks compared to other disliked things:

The poll, with questions tailor-made to grab headlines, was paid for by Ald. Bob Fioretti (2nd) and conducted Sept. 26-29 by Washington D.C.-based Hamilton Campaigns…

Fioretti’s pollster was apparently looking to put a new twist on the issue by testing the mayor’s unfavorable ratings against some high-profile enemies, including the Bears’ archrival Green Bay Packers.

Of the 500 likely Chicago voters surveyed, 23 percent had a “somewhat unfavorable” opinion of Emanuel and 28 percent had a “very unfavorable” view of the mayor.

That’s an overall negative rating of 51 percent, compared to 49 percent overall for morning traffic on the Eisenhower. Conservative-leaning Fox News Channel had a slightly higher unfavorable rating in Democratic-dominated Chicago while the Packers stood at 59 percent.

Odd comparisons of apples to oranges. As the article notes, it sounds like a publicity stunt – which appears to work because the article then goes on to give Fioretti more space. Giving space to bad statistics is not a good thing in the long run with a public (and media) that suffers from innumeracy.

Two thoughts:

1. I could imagine where this might go if Emanuel or others commission similar polls. How about: “Chicago’s Mayor is more favorably rated than Ebola”?

2. How did the Packers only get a negative rating of 59% in Chicago? Are there that many transplanted Wisconsin residents or are Chicago residents not that adamant about their primary football rival?

Even if Northeastern states have lost 40% of their House seats, has the region lost that much influence?

Posted on by

Large-scale population shifts can have all sorts of effects including the loss of seats in Congress:

The Census Bureau reports that population growth has shifted to the South and the result is that the 11 states that make up the Northeast are being bled dry of representation in Washington…

Deep in a recent report, for example, the American Legislative Exchange Council tabulated how the drop in population relative to the rest of the nation cut the region’s power in Washington. While the states from Pennsylvania to Maine had 141 House members in 1950, they are down to 85 today, a drop of some 40 percent.

California and Texas combined have more House representatives..

“This result is one of the most dramatic demographic shifts in American history. This migration is shifting the power center of America right before our very eyes. The movement isn’t random or even about weather or resources. Economic freedom is the magnet and states ignore this force at their own peril,” said the report.

The last quote is particularly interesting as the population center of the United States has indeed kept moving further and further west (and a little south). Yet, even with the loss of seats from Northeastern states, New York City is still the #1 global city. Additionally, this region is close to the city of Washington D.C. which seems to be doing just fine in terms of wealthy counties and communities and a growing presence among large cities. Does having less seats in Congress necessarily mean the Northeast has lost 40% of its influence in American life? How many lobbyists are located in the Northeast compared to other places? Where are the institutions of higher learning from which many politicians and other elites come from? Where are the large media organizations?

It would also be interesting to see where these Northeast house seats have been lost. Is it primarily from large cities or more from mid-sized cities and more rural areas that have had steady population losses? Is this more of a Rust Belt phenomenon that affects cities like Buffalo, Rochester, and Worcester more than Boston, New York, and Philadelphia?

Some conservatives dislike suburbs too

Posted on by

Critiques of American suburbs are not just limited to Democrats; some conservatives also don’t like suburbs.

Less well-noticed is that opposition to suburbs – usually characterized as “sprawl” – has been spreading to the conservative movement. Old-style Tories like author-philosopher Roger Scruton do not conceal their detestation of suburbia and favor, instead, European-style planning laws that force people to live “side by side.” Densely packed Paris and London, he points out, are clearly better places to visit for well-heeled tourists than Atlanta, Houston or Dallas.

There may be more than a bit of class prejudice at work here. British Tories long have disliked suburbs and their denizens. In a 1905 book, “The Suburbans,” the poet T.W.H. Crossland launched a vitriolic attack on the “low and inferior species,” the “soulless” class of “clerks” who were spreading into the new, comfortable houses in the suburbs, mucking up the aesthetics of the British countryside.

Not surprisingly, many British conservatives, like Scruton, and his American counterparts frequently live in bucolic settings, and understandably want these crass suburbanites and their homes as far away as possible. Yet, there is precious little concern that – in their zeal to protect their property – they have also embraced policies that have engendered huge housing inflation, in places like greater London or the San Francisco Bay Area, that is among the most extreme in the high-income world.

Of course, the conservative critique of suburbia does not rest only on aesthetic disdain for suburbs, but is usually linked to stated social and environmental concerns. “There’s no telling how many marriages were broken up over the stress of suburb-to-city commutes,” opines conservative author Matt Lewis in a recent article in The Week. In his mind, suburbs are not only aesthetically displeasing but also anti-family…

Yet, there remains a great opportunity for either party that will appeal to, and appreciate, the suburban base. Conservative figures such as Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher understood the connection between democracy and property ownership and upward mobility. Much the same could be said for traditional Democrats, from Roosevelt and Harry Truman, all the way to Bill Clinton.

Considering that a majority of Americans live in suburbs plus the long presence of suburban critiques, it is not too surprising that this crosses political parties. As Kotkin points out, a good number of conservatives and liberals live in suburbs and either party could (and has in the past) appeal to suburbanites, even if recent elections have tended to fall along urban/Democrat and exurbs/Republican fault lines.

The trade-off of having insider access vs. passing along bad information

Posted on by

Several journalists are fighting over what boils down to this: can you have access to political insiders and still pass along correct information and/or critical analysis?

Is political science a rigorous field that journalists ought to tap when trying to understand and explain what’s happening in American politics? Will doing so imbue them with a structural understanding of events that’s superior to the armchair analysis provided by journalists and sources who overestimate their own expertise? Or are Washington, D.C., political journalists excessively beholden to so-called experts and their impenetrable jargon, people with no understanding of America beyond an insular bubble, whose track record of awful recommendations includes the Vietnam War, a conflict run by “the best and the brightest”?

Those are rough outlines of the positions taken by two high-profile journalists, Ezra Klein and Thomas Frank, during a much-discussed exchange on American political journalism. They’re actually arguing over a subset of the field that focuses on describing politics as it currently is. My typical focus has been on how Americans ought to govern themselves, rather than the depressing business of how they actually do govern themselves, so I’m commenting here as something of an outsider. In time, we “oughts” hope to persuade Americans to give Klein and Frank a less depressing status-quo to fight over. But there are so many people thwarting us.

Drawing on nine years in the nation’s capitol, Klein acknowledges one class of obstacles. “Washington is a cesspool of faux-experts who do bad research (or no research),” he explained, “but retain their standing by dint of affiliations, connections, or charisma.” Sweet validation! I’ve often suspected that official Washington is populated by enough disingenuous, misinformation-spreading hucksters to fill an underground container of organic waste. No one has better standing to render this judgment than Klein, whose earnest, tireless embrace of deep-in-the-weeds wonkery is unsurpassed in his generation. He wouldn’t assert a whole cesspool of intellectual waste product without having seen plenty of specific examples…

It’s such a wonderful quote: “Washington is a cesspool of faux-experts who do bad research (or no research), but retain their standing by dint of affiliations, connections, or charisma.” Kudos to Klein for saying what many insiders would never acknowledge. But if even powerful insiders who know that solidly enough to confidently declare it for publication won’t name names, the cesspool will never be drained.

A tough problem to overcome: insider access leads to scoops on information and comfy relationships. At the same time, the public might be better served by outsiders who aren’t so beholden to particular political figures or camps.

One solution could avoid having to drain the swamp of insiders by balancing insider and outsider perspectives. This is where the power of a news organization could come in. Let’s say the New York Times has reporters both with insider connections as well as people who can take the broad view. The newspaper could work to balance these accounts, not presenting one or the other as better as each other but combining them to give a more complete picture. This reminds me of the job of an ethnographer who seeks to balance the insider perspective (participating in the group/culture under study) but maintaining an outsider perspective (avoiding “going native” and retaining the ability to critically analyze the situation). It might be too much to ask this of any one journalist who has to find some way to get information but a media organization could help pull the pieces together.

Revival of urban conservatives in Southwestern cities?

Posted on by

Politico suggests that urban conservatives may be making a comeback in a few Southwest cities:

Squint, and you can see that Mesa is just one of several places where Republicans are creating a new model of conservatism for the post-Tea Party era, through an appealing blend of fiscal pragmatism and no-nonsense competence. Across the country, Republican cities are building new infrastructure and even embracing trendy liberal ideas like “new urbanism”—all while managing to keep costs in line and municipal workforces small and cost-effective. As the great, Democratic-run cities across the country—Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles—face fiscal calamity, America’s conservative cities are showing that there’s another way…

While Mesa has long pursued the lightly regulated development patterns that one would expect from the wellspring of Goldwater Republicanism, change is afoot. Over the past several years, the city has begun embracing development that’s downright trendy, and implementing policies that will make it more like Portland, Oregon, than Orange County, California…

The flair for new, pedestrian- and transit-friendly development extends beyond downtown. All through the city, Mesa is pursuing development policies that are downright crunchy. The city is undergoing a “road diet,” cutting one six-lane road to two, expanding sidewalks and adding bike lanes. “[We’re] trying to set the table for a more pedestrian-friendly environment,” says Richins, who has served on the City Council since 2008. A sprawling new park, adjacent to where the Chicago Cubs are building a new spring training stadium (another development that Smith spearheaded), has recently opened…

While it’s willing to make investments, Mesa is also lean in ways that more bloated liberal cities can’t boast. Take the City Council. Despite Mesa’s hefty population, council members are part-timers who have day jobs in fields from education to copper mining. City leaders also pay themselves considerably less than those in other cities do. Mesa City Council members make only $33,000 a year, and the mayor is paid only $73,000. (And those salaries represent the fruits of a big raise: Before last year, city councilmembers made less than $20,000 a year and the mayor earned only $36,000.) By contrast, as of 2012, in similarly sized Fresno, the mayor made $126,000; city council members brought home nearly $65,000. In neighboring Phoenix, meanwhile, the mayor makes $88,000 and city councilmen earn more than $61,000.

In fact, Mesa is lean all around. The entire municipal workforce stands at only about 3,200 people, down from approximately 3,600 before the recession, and only the firefighters and police officers are unionized. (The school district is separate from the city.) The city doesn’t hand out the fat union contracts that make infrastructure projects in blue states so outlandishly expensive (and thereby reduce support for infrastructure spending, period). During the Great Recession, when area construction companies were reeling and desperate for business after housing starts had fallen off a cliff, the city inked a number of extremely cost-efficient deals—literally building three firehouses for the price of four.

And the article goes on with brief descriptions of conservative moves in Oklahoma City, Indianapolis, and Colorado Springs. But, while the story of Mesa sounds interesting, this is the problem with such an article: how do we know that these cities are representative of other American cities or of a broader social movement? They may be representative but the article doesn’t give us enough information to know. In fact, the opening of the story makes it sound as if it is strange enough to find even one conservative city, let alone four. So, which is it: are these cities really rare or are there lots of cities like this?

If I had to guess, here is what I would put forward: if you grouped big cities in some different population categories (say 1+ million, 500,000-999,999, 250,000-499,999, 100,000-249,999), you would find more conservative versus liberal cities as you move down the categories. While I don’t have the time to look into this right now, this would be a fairly easy hypothesis to test.

What does Stephen Harper have against sociology?

Posted on by

One academic suggests some reasons why Canadian Prime Minister dislikes sociology:

So what does Harper have against sociology? First, Harper is clearly trumpeting a standard component of neo-liberal ideology: that there are no social phenomena, only individual incidents. (This ideology traces back to Margaret Thatcher’s famous claim that “there is no such thing as society.”) Neo-liberalism paints all social problems as individual problems. The benefit of this for those who share Harper’s agenda, of course, is that if there are no social problems or solutions, then there is little need for government. Individuals are solely responsible for the problems they face…

But there’s yet another reason this ideology is so hostile toward the kind of sociological analysis done by Statistics Canada, public inquiries and the like. And that has to do with the type of injustices we can even conceive of, or consider tackling, as a society.

You see, sociologists often differentiate between “personal injustices” and “systemic” or “structural injustices.” Personal injustices can be traced back to concrete actions of particular individuals (perpetrators). These actions are often wilful, and have a relatively isolated victim.

Structural injustices, on the other hand, are produced by a social structure or system. They are often hard to trace back to the actions of specific individuals, are usually not explicitly intended by anyone, and have collective, rather than isolated, victims. Structural injustices are a result of the unintended actions of many individuals participating in a social system together, usually without knowing what each other is doing. Whereas personal injustices are traced back to the harmful actions (or inactions) of individuals, structural injustices are identified by differential societal outcomes among groups. Sociologists call these “social inequalities.”…

What should be clear, then, is that Harper’s seemingly bizarre vendetta against sociology is actually an ideological attempt to prevent Canadian society from being able to identify, and tackle, its structural injustices. Without large-scale sociological analyses, we can’t recognize the pervasive, entrenched social inequalities that these analyses reveal. And because structural injustices are actually generated by our social systems, both their causes and solutions are social.

One of sociology’s key tenets and strengths is the ability to get beyond the individual level of analysis and look at the bigger picture in society. Think Durkheim’s explanations of sui generis social facts or Marx’s idea that people make choices within circumstances not of their choosing. Harper’s perspective sounds like one that is often identified with Americans, an individualistic approach that tends to ignore social structures and instead looks at whether people work hard or have good morals.

So why doesn’t someone ask Harper directly about social injustices? Certainly he must recognize some. Of course, he might still propose individualistic solutions to these but some are hard to pin solely on individuals such as situations like extreme poverty in developing countries.

People leaving blue states tilting national elections?

Posted on by

An analysis of the “blue-state diaspora” suggests this has helped Democrats in presidential elections:

Over the last few decades, residents of many traditionally liberal states have moved to states that were once more conservative. And this pattern has played an important role in helping the Democratic Party win the last two presidential elections and four of the last six. The growth of the Latino population and the social liberalism of the millennial generation may receive more attention, but the growing diaspora of blue-state America matters as well.

The blue diaspora has helped offset the fact that many of the nation’s fastest-growing states are traditionally Republican. You can think of it as a kind of race: Population growth in these Republican states is reducing the share of the Electoral College held by traditionally Democratic states. But Democratic migration has been fast enough, so far, to allow the party to overcome the fact that the Northeast and industrial Midwest contain a smaller portion of the country’s population than they once did…

The spread of people born in New York State offers a particularly telling example: Of the 20 million Americans alive today who were born in New York, nearly one in six now live in the South. That would have been almost unthinkable 50 years ago, when the share was one in 25…

The first thing we noticed was a major blue-to-red shift: Since 2000, the blue-born population in red states has grown by almost a quarter, to 11.5 million, or 12 percent of the states’ total population.

The paradox here is that this trend could be positive or negative depending on the level of analysis. Typically, population loss is seen as a negative thing. If there are large numbers of people leaving New York City, we might ask whether something is wrong in NYC. Actually, New York City may not be a good example because it always tends to draw people but think instead of liberal Midwestern cities, places like Chicago or Detroit or Cleveland, that have lost population and this has been tied to problems within those cities. Yet, the spreading out of liberals could work well on a national scale if those places losing liberals aren’t filled up with conservatives and the liberals who move weaken the conservative advantages elsewhere.

It is hard to imagine that any of this could be planned but I could imagine some interesting future scenarios where political parties encourage enough people to move, perhaps temporarily, so they can vote in a different place to help swing an election.

Drudge Report gets in on the politicization of tiny houses

Posted on by

The Drudge Report yesterday featured this headline and photo regarding tiny houses:

DrudgeReportTinyHousesAug0514

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

While the headline links to a fairly bland story about the increased popularity of tiny houses in the Daily Mail, the tagline and the picture is intended to make another point: Americans are choosing tiny houses because the economy has pushed them into it. If the economy was doing better, assumed to be the case if there was a different president, they wouldn’t choose a tiny house. Perhaps this is what a future conservative president should run on: McMansions for all!

This isn’t the first time people have made political points with tiny houses. In the number of articles I’ve seen about such homes (and in the Daily Mail summary article), tiny house residents often make clear statements that they want to avoid consumerism and live greener lives. Generally, they seem to be favored by educated liberals. However, there is little reason that they couldn’t be supported by rural conservatives who want cheap and mobile housing on land or who want to build their own homes.

Given the relatively small number of tiny houses, perhaps the public discussion over tiny houses can’t help but be political as both sides try to use it to their advantage. If such homes were to become numerous and widespread across the population, the opposite might be true: neither party could risk alienating voters over their choice of a home.

The United States added nearly 17 million people from 2007 to 2014

Posted on by

In the middle of a story regarding the rising price of electricity, I found this surprising fact:

According to the Census Bureau, however, the resident population of the United States increased from 300,888,674 in April 2007 to 317,787,997 in April 2014.

Several quick thoughts:

1. I had a conversation earlier in the day with several colleagues about population stagnation in a number of industrialized countries around the world. The United States is unusual compared to Western Europe which has lower birth rates and lower rates of immigration.

2. It is hard to imagine 17 million people. In other terms, the United States added more than the metropolitan population of London.

3. I’ve had the thought lately that perhaps part of the political morass in the United States these days is due to a political system that is simply difficult to maintain with 317 million residents. Providing for all of these people adds to the difficulties of maintaining bureaucracies (and you need quite a few with the population). A two party system makes it very difficult to represent all of the competing concerns and interests. Reaching consensus can be difficult within a country that prizes individualism.

Linking Tea Party support and residential segregation by education

Posted on by

A recent study suggests Tea Party support is higher in counties with higher levels of educational segregation:

McVeigh and coauthors, Kraig Beyerlein, Burrel Vann and Priyamvada Trivedi, examine why certain U.S. counties are conducive to the establishment of Tea Party organizations. Their statistical analyses show that even after accounting for many other factors, Tea Party organizations were much more likely to form in counties with high levels of residential segregation based on education levels, and that college graduates were more likely to indicate support for the Tea Party if they resided in a county characterized by high levels of educational segregation.

“Acceptance or rejection of the Tea Party’s views on the government’s role in redistributing wealth is shaped, to a large degree, by the extent to which those who have benefited from higher education are set apart in their daily lives from those who have not,” says McVeigh, who specializes in inequality, social movements, race and ethnicity.

“As the article explains, the commonly held view that individuals and families who are struggling to get by are undeserving of government assistance is reinforced when the highly educated have limited contact with those who have been less fortunate.”

I noticed this because that sneaky factor of residential segregation proves influential again. The average resident may not think about it much beyond the immediate value of their home or the nearby school district but where one lives can influence a lot about social life, including with whom you interact.

Of course, if your political perspective is that it is preferable to live in more uniform communities – stereotypically, small towns or suburbs – this may not be a problem…