This year, the US Census Bureau started out with a rather aggressive attempt to make sure everyone was counted. The bureau sent out extensive forms to each permanent residence, requiring the forms to be returned by April 1st, but later extending the deadlines well into June and making radio commercials to prod people into sending in the materials as early returns were pathetic.Change the exact numbers, to a population of 308,745,538 in the United States and 6,724,540 in Washington state, and the number of seats changing hands (Texas gained four seats, Florida two, Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, South Carolina, Utah and Washington one, while New York and Ohio each lost two seats and Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania each lost one), and the story looks almost exactly the same in 2010.
Meanwhile, local bureau employees were supposed to take to the streets to count the homeless. Though their attempts were well-documented, urban special interest groups contested the figures almost from the start, claiming the bureau had mis-counted by as much as one-half.
The census takers also had the duty to visit households where forms had not been returned. These visits resulted in rumors that some houses had been counted twice, or that others had sent in two forms and been visited but still hadn't been tallied.
Regardless of the objections, the census bureau has now released its final figures, subject only to appeals. Our population in the United States is now 249,632,692, an increase of 23,086,887 from 1980, meaning that each of the 435 seats in the House of Representatives should have 572,466 constituents.
Here in Washington state, our population has gone from 5,346,818 in 1980 to 6,216,568 now, meaning that our state has earned another seat in the House of Representatives, to be carved out of Rod Chandler's 8th and John Miller's 1st congressional districts.
The states that really will gain in influence, though, are California (7), Florida (4), and Texas (3). Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia also gained seats. New York lost 3, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania 2, and Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Montana, New Jersey and West Virginia all lost a single seat.
What does this mean in political terms? The gains were primarily made in Republican areas, but in the primarily Democratic Hispanic population. We'll have to wait and see.
Showing posts with label United States. Show all posts
Showing posts with label United States. Show all posts
Thursday, December 30, 2010
Culture: 20 Years, 59 Million Later
TORONTO, ONTARIO - Twenty years ago, I filed the following Student's Notebook report from Bellevue, Washington:
Monday, December 6, 2010
Economy: Putting a Very Public Face on It
TORONTO, ONTARIO - At long last, the mainstream media in the United States has started to focus occasionally on the long-term unemployed. I found it especially significant to hear a systems engineer from California as a guest on the NPR talk show On Point when it explored the topic, as that could have easily been me with slightly different life decisions. Yet, it was another radio show that provided an example that may resonate with just about anyone that's lived in northern California in the past generation.
On Brian Copeland's Sunday morning talk show on KGO in San Francisco, he took a call twenty minutes into his third hour from a Mike in Vallejo. The Mike was soon revealed to be Mike Pechner, the well-known meteorologist who worked at rival KCBS in San Francisco for forty years. I even knew Mike Pechner's name before I moved to the area from listening to the station at night from Seattle and while visiting the area--for people that grew up listening to KCBS for news, Pechner was an absolute institution. Probably nobody was more closely identified with morning weather forecasts in the Bay Area than Pechner, certainly not for as many years as Pechner was on the air.
Furthermore, I had met Mike Pechner. Besides being a radio personality, he is a railroad enthusiast, a member of many of the fan groups that I also participated in while in the Bay Area and especially active surrounding any railroad in the north bay where he made his home. He has been an outspoken advocate of the restoration of service in that region, all the while providing expert forecasts to railfans who wanted to check out train action on Donner Pass around snowstorms.
So, needless to say, I perked up when it became clear that it was Mike Pechner calling in. It turns out that since he was laid off by KCBS, he has become a member of the long-term unemployed. He described how he has unsuccessfully tried to pursue alternate careers to broadcasting but that his age--he is now 64--was proving to be a major problem. About the only way he had found to earn a partial living was substitute teaching--but with the rash of teacher layoffs in California, this was becoming less and less frequent.
Anyone that has met Mike Pechner knows that he is a hard worker--and I suspect most people who heard him on the radio don't have much difficulty imagining that. While I haven't seen him since I moved out of the area, I had heard second-hand even before this radio call that he is nearly as vigorous today as I remember him from a decade and a half ago. He is a classic example of an older worker with a lot to offer the world--but in this economy, he's just another member of the long-term unemployed.
If a man that more than a generation grew up listening to as their weatherman can end up without a job for more than two years, just about anyone can. Besides being a quality radio conversation between two pros in Pechner and Copeland, this segment of a radio program provided the most compelling example of just how bad this economy is for so many people. If everyone in northern California had been listening to the Brian Copeland program and heard the call from Mike Pechner, there would be almost nobody there left not supporting the extension of unemployment or some other assistance to the long-term unemployed. I encourage everyone to listen to it before it disappears from the KGO archives next Sunday.
On Brian Copeland's Sunday morning talk show on KGO in San Francisco, he took a call twenty minutes into his third hour from a Mike in Vallejo. The Mike was soon revealed to be Mike Pechner, the well-known meteorologist who worked at rival KCBS in San Francisco for forty years. I even knew Mike Pechner's name before I moved to the area from listening to the station at night from Seattle and while visiting the area--for people that grew up listening to KCBS for news, Pechner was an absolute institution. Probably nobody was more closely identified with morning weather forecasts in the Bay Area than Pechner, certainly not for as many years as Pechner was on the air.
Furthermore, I had met Mike Pechner. Besides being a radio personality, he is a railroad enthusiast, a member of many of the fan groups that I also participated in while in the Bay Area and especially active surrounding any railroad in the north bay where he made his home. He has been an outspoken advocate of the restoration of service in that region, all the while providing expert forecasts to railfans who wanted to check out train action on Donner Pass around snowstorms.
So, needless to say, I perked up when it became clear that it was Mike Pechner calling in. It turns out that since he was laid off by KCBS, he has become a member of the long-term unemployed. He described how he has unsuccessfully tried to pursue alternate careers to broadcasting but that his age--he is now 64--was proving to be a major problem. About the only way he had found to earn a partial living was substitute teaching--but with the rash of teacher layoffs in California, this was becoming less and less frequent.
Anyone that has met Mike Pechner knows that he is a hard worker--and I suspect most people who heard him on the radio don't have much difficulty imagining that. While I haven't seen him since I moved out of the area, I had heard second-hand even before this radio call that he is nearly as vigorous today as I remember him from a decade and a half ago. He is a classic example of an older worker with a lot to offer the world--but in this economy, he's just another member of the long-term unemployed.
If a man that more than a generation grew up listening to as their weatherman can end up without a job for more than two years, just about anyone can. Besides being a quality radio conversation between two pros in Pechner and Copeland, this segment of a radio program provided the most compelling example of just how bad this economy is for so many people. If everyone in northern California had been listening to the Brian Copeland program and heard the call from Mike Pechner, there would be almost nobody there left not supporting the extension of unemployment or some other assistance to the long-term unemployed. I encourage everyone to listen to it before it disappears from the KGO archives next Sunday.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Politics: Don't Be Certain About Senate
TORONTO, ONTARIO - The prevailing wisdom on the upcoming Federal elections next Tuesday in the United States is that the Republicans will take over control of the House of Representatives, and the Democrats will retain control of the Senate. While many responsible observers emphasize the volatility of the situation--the Republicans could pick up more than 70 seats in the house, or fewer than 40 such that the Democrats maintain control--the election is getting close enough now that big movement is unlikely. Looking at the discrete races involved in the Senate, it strikes me that scenarios in which the Republicans take over are being discounted--because of potential defections.
The election website that I pay the most attention to, Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight.com, now hosted by the New York Times, currently places the chances of a Republican takeover of the Senate at 12%, compared with 83% in the House. Certainly, 12% is far from zero. But, in his extensive model, Silver only accounts for the elections themselves, in which he projects 52.1 Democrats and 47.8 Republicans as having seats. The model doesn't account for what happens with some sitting senators.
After Scott Brown's win in the Massachusetts special election earlier this year, the Republicans have held 41 seats in the Senate to the Democrats' 59. To take control of the chamber, they need 51, as the tiebreaker, vice president Joe Biden, is a Democrat. Most analysts have seats in North Dakota, Arkansas, and Indiana as certain takeovers for the Republicans. That brings them to 44. If the election were held today according to FiveThirtyEight's models, Republicans would also gain seats in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Illinois, and Colorado. That takes them to 49. Assuming that Democrats indeed hang on to contested seats in West Virginia, Washington, and California and the rest of the "safe" seats don't result in any surprises, the Republicans would be two seats short of control.
I'm not certain that, in such a scenario, the Democrats would actually hang on to their majority. Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska has a very conservative voting record, and there is persistent speculation that he could be convinced to switch parties. He may face a challenge in the Democratic primary in the next election cycle (though considering the TEA party movement he might well face one in a Republican primary as well--there's little room for centrists anywhere, as Arlen Specter learned in Pennsylvania). Considering that he was accused of holding health care legislation hostage for special preference for his state, it does not seem difficult to imagine that he could be enticed to the Republican side if it were the majority.
However, that only gets the Republicans to 50. They would still need one more defection, and it's pretty obvious who that might be. "Jolly Joe" Lieberman of Connecticut has already shown that he is willing to ignore the Democratic party, running as an Independent (later "Independent Democrat") in his last election after losing in the Democratic primary. He almost became the Republican nominee for vice president with John McCain in 2008--most reports say McCain wanted him and Lieberman was willing to do it, but the Republican establishment wouldn't accept it. Some incentive concerning the pharmaceutical industry in Connecticut, and it would be easy to believe that Lieberman would caucus with the Republicans instead of the Democrats, and with both Nelson and Lieberman, the Republicans would have control.
This scenario seems entirely plausible to me. The Democrats can still maintain control by winning more seats than currently predicted (as finding more than two senators who would be willing to change parties seems far-fetched), but if things play out and eight senate seats change party hands, I strongly suspect it will result in Republican control of the Senate, not the slim Democratic majority it would seem on the surface.
The election website that I pay the most attention to, Nate Silver's FiveThirtyEight.com, now hosted by the New York Times, currently places the chances of a Republican takeover of the Senate at 12%, compared with 83% in the House. Certainly, 12% is far from zero. But, in his extensive model, Silver only accounts for the elections themselves, in which he projects 52.1 Democrats and 47.8 Republicans as having seats. The model doesn't account for what happens with some sitting senators.
After Scott Brown's win in the Massachusetts special election earlier this year, the Republicans have held 41 seats in the Senate to the Democrats' 59. To take control of the chamber, they need 51, as the tiebreaker, vice president Joe Biden, is a Democrat. Most analysts have seats in North Dakota, Arkansas, and Indiana as certain takeovers for the Republicans. That brings them to 44. If the election were held today according to FiveThirtyEight's models, Republicans would also gain seats in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Illinois, and Colorado. That takes them to 49. Assuming that Democrats indeed hang on to contested seats in West Virginia, Washington, and California and the rest of the "safe" seats don't result in any surprises, the Republicans would be two seats short of control.
I'm not certain that, in such a scenario, the Democrats would actually hang on to their majority. Democrat Ben Nelson of Nebraska has a very conservative voting record, and there is persistent speculation that he could be convinced to switch parties. He may face a challenge in the Democratic primary in the next election cycle (though considering the TEA party movement he might well face one in a Republican primary as well--there's little room for centrists anywhere, as Arlen Specter learned in Pennsylvania). Considering that he was accused of holding health care legislation hostage for special preference for his state, it does not seem difficult to imagine that he could be enticed to the Republican side if it were the majority.
However, that only gets the Republicans to 50. They would still need one more defection, and it's pretty obvious who that might be. "Jolly Joe" Lieberman of Connecticut has already shown that he is willing to ignore the Democratic party, running as an Independent (later "Independent Democrat") in his last election after losing in the Democratic primary. He almost became the Republican nominee for vice president with John McCain in 2008--most reports say McCain wanted him and Lieberman was willing to do it, but the Republican establishment wouldn't accept it. Some incentive concerning the pharmaceutical industry in Connecticut, and it would be easy to believe that Lieberman would caucus with the Republicans instead of the Democrats, and with both Nelson and Lieberman, the Republicans would have control.
This scenario seems entirely plausible to me. The Democrats can still maintain control by winning more seats than currently predicted (as finding more than two senators who would be willing to change parties seems far-fetched), but if things play out and eight senate seats change party hands, I strongly suspect it will result in Republican control of the Senate, not the slim Democratic majority it would seem on the surface.
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Politics: Last Refuge of Scoundrels?
TORONTO, ONTARIO - A few weeks ago, Walter Rodgers chose to write in his Christian Science Monitor column about the ring's wing perversion of patriotism in the past decade. I think he actually lets the right wing off easy--whenever I've actually been confronted by the kinds of people he describes in the article, I didn't just have my patriotism attacked. They didn't say "you're not a real American" or "you don't love your country as much as I do" or even "you support the terrorists" or some-such.
Instead, they seemed to just assume all that was the case and went straight to "people like you are the biggest threat to the future of the country that has ever existed in its history" and "you should have no right to live in this country." Exactly what line I had crossed to provoke such language was never clear, though any opposition to any aspect of the Patriot Act seemed to be enough (how could an opponent of the "Patriot Act" be anything but "unpatriotic," I guess). Even more strange is exactly where they thought I should go, if I should not be allowed to live in the United States. I seem to have found somewhere, but did they really expect the millions of people that opposed aspects of the Patriot Act or that didn't support the Iraq War to all move to Canada?
Rodgers wrote his column before South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, normally one of the less divisive Republicans, made his comments about repealing the portion of the 14th amendment to the United States Constitution which makes children born to illegal immigrants citizens when born on US soil. I actually have mixed feelings about that issue--most of the rest of the world's countries don't grant citizenship in such situations, but then again most of the people actually calling for a change in the 14th amendment are the same people that seemed to think I had no right to live in the country, either. Is there a slippery slope from one to the other? One wouldn't think so, but that's thinking logically. If the people that don't think children of illegal immigrants are legitimate citizens also don't think I'm a legitimate citizen, what's to stop them from finding a way to take away my citizenship? Just because they'd need to deport millions of people doesn't seem to phase them.
Rodgers points out that people can't even agree what constitutes patriotism anymore, but again I don't think he takes that idea far enough. Each side thinks the other is ruining what made the United States great, though only one is explicitly invoking patriotism. Thus, we can't even agree about how to apply Samuel Johnson's famous 1775 quote, from before the United States was even born, that "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." (Funny how the left won't invoke "original intent" on that one.)
The sad thing about the right's perversion of patriotism is that they may have made meaningless the very concept that they were trying to monopolize, denying the United States one of its elements of cohesion that served it well for more than 200 years.
Instead, they seemed to just assume all that was the case and went straight to "people like you are the biggest threat to the future of the country that has ever existed in its history" and "you should have no right to live in this country." Exactly what line I had crossed to provoke such language was never clear, though any opposition to any aspect of the Patriot Act seemed to be enough (how could an opponent of the "Patriot Act" be anything but "unpatriotic," I guess). Even more strange is exactly where they thought I should go, if I should not be allowed to live in the United States. I seem to have found somewhere, but did they really expect the millions of people that opposed aspects of the Patriot Act or that didn't support the Iraq War to all move to Canada?
Rodgers wrote his column before South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, normally one of the less divisive Republicans, made his comments about repealing the portion of the 14th amendment to the United States Constitution which makes children born to illegal immigrants citizens when born on US soil. I actually have mixed feelings about that issue--most of the rest of the world's countries don't grant citizenship in such situations, but then again most of the people actually calling for a change in the 14th amendment are the same people that seemed to think I had no right to live in the country, either. Is there a slippery slope from one to the other? One wouldn't think so, but that's thinking logically. If the people that don't think children of illegal immigrants are legitimate citizens also don't think I'm a legitimate citizen, what's to stop them from finding a way to take away my citizenship? Just because they'd need to deport millions of people doesn't seem to phase them.
Rodgers points out that people can't even agree what constitutes patriotism anymore, but again I don't think he takes that idea far enough. Each side thinks the other is ruining what made the United States great, though only one is explicitly invoking patriotism. Thus, we can't even agree about how to apply Samuel Johnson's famous 1775 quote, from before the United States was even born, that "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." (Funny how the left won't invoke "original intent" on that one.)
The sad thing about the right's perversion of patriotism is that they may have made meaningless the very concept that they were trying to monopolize, denying the United States one of its elements of cohesion that served it well for more than 200 years.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Politics: US Headed for Greece
TORONTO, ONTARIO - There are some pretty bizarre "truths" floating around about the need to bail out Greece (and potentially Portugal, Spain, Ireland, and Italy), most of them centering around socialism. While the degree of entitlement spending is an element of the problem in Greece and cutting it will have to be part of the solution, it's absurd on the face to claim that it is the root cause. There are plenty of countries with bigger social safety nets who are not in danger of needing bailout (look at basically any country in northern Europe--and no, I don't count Iceland as part of Europe; it deserves a whole separate analysis).
It doesn't take a Nobel Prize in economics to understand the basics of the problem in Greece. Corruption is rampant--listen to any coverage of the Greek economy, and it soon turns to envelopes stuffed with cash in quite a variety of contexts. As a corollary that is not surprising when corruption is common, trust in government is almost non-existent, and hence people openly don't pay taxes. It's not hard to understand the mentality that leads one to deal with corruption in daily life and reject contributing to generic corruption. When the government doesn't receive the expected income from taxes, it's very hard for it to impose measures that allow it to deal with a financial shortfall such as has occurred in the current worldwide economy. All it takes are a few added factors--say, an financial firm helping a government to falsify its books--and a situation like the one in Greece comes to pass.
Greece isn't going to get out of its problems just by cutting public spending. It will require a cultural transformation. People will have to pay taxes. People will have to report and not participate in corruption. People will have to believe in government. Exactly how that's going to happen when the government has just demonstrated that it certainly did not deserve trust in recent times, I really have no idea. Whereas there does seem to be some hope of restored faith in government in most of the other countries currently on verge of crisis in Europe, it's hard to see how it happens in Greece, and thus it's hard not to expect Greece to have to leave the European Union and go through an extended period of economic collapse.
Those in the United States should not be sanguine about what is happening in Europe. The call for evading taxes has been on the rise in the United States my entire life. The attitude of the editorial page of the largest-circulation newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, regularly glorifies the concept of avoiding taxes. Some readers of the paper have been known to argue that it is patriotic to NOT pay taxes. It's not a long conceptual road from that attitude to the inability of government to collect taxes as has happened in Greece, especially when government is completely ineffective. I've made this argument before--California is in deep financial trouble precisely because it cannot act to resolve it; its government is too divided to agree on a plan to resolve its problems, not because there is no conceptual way to do it. Combine lack of government will with tax evasion and getting out of a bad financial situation is close to impossible. California in particular, and the United States as a whole, are heading that direction.
Funny how socialist countries that do have functional governments, minimal corruption, and near-universal tax compliance seem to be doing just fine.
It doesn't take a Nobel Prize in economics to understand the basics of the problem in Greece. Corruption is rampant--listen to any coverage of the Greek economy, and it soon turns to envelopes stuffed with cash in quite a variety of contexts. As a corollary that is not surprising when corruption is common, trust in government is almost non-existent, and hence people openly don't pay taxes. It's not hard to understand the mentality that leads one to deal with corruption in daily life and reject contributing to generic corruption. When the government doesn't receive the expected income from taxes, it's very hard for it to impose measures that allow it to deal with a financial shortfall such as has occurred in the current worldwide economy. All it takes are a few added factors--say, an financial firm helping a government to falsify its books--and a situation like the one in Greece comes to pass.
Greece isn't going to get out of its problems just by cutting public spending. It will require a cultural transformation. People will have to pay taxes. People will have to report and not participate in corruption. People will have to believe in government. Exactly how that's going to happen when the government has just demonstrated that it certainly did not deserve trust in recent times, I really have no idea. Whereas there does seem to be some hope of restored faith in government in most of the other countries currently on verge of crisis in Europe, it's hard to see how it happens in Greece, and thus it's hard not to expect Greece to have to leave the European Union and go through an extended period of economic collapse.
Those in the United States should not be sanguine about what is happening in Europe. The call for evading taxes has been on the rise in the United States my entire life. The attitude of the editorial page of the largest-circulation newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, regularly glorifies the concept of avoiding taxes. Some readers of the paper have been known to argue that it is patriotic to NOT pay taxes. It's not a long conceptual road from that attitude to the inability of government to collect taxes as has happened in Greece, especially when government is completely ineffective. I've made this argument before--California is in deep financial trouble precisely because it cannot act to resolve it; its government is too divided to agree on a plan to resolve its problems, not because there is no conceptual way to do it. Combine lack of government will with tax evasion and getting out of a bad financial situation is close to impossible. California in particular, and the United States as a whole, are heading that direction.
Funny how socialist countries that do have functional governments, minimal corruption, and near-universal tax compliance seem to be doing just fine.
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