Comparative Randomness

For the love of all that is random, stop with the presidential comparisons.

Ever since it was clear that Barack Obama would win the election this past November, the media has gone wild with the comparisons to previous holders of the office. No one seems to have noticed that the comparisons aren't all that great.

Yes, President Abraham Lincoln was a great American. He did what he could to hold the Union together. His face in on Mount Rushmore. He was even from the same mid-western state of Illinois.

But President Lincoln's term in office did not end well. He was shot by an unhappy Confederate supporter.

Not a good comparison to use, given the current hostile climate created by some members of the political right.


Then there's the comparison with President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Yes, the country is currently in the middle of the Great Recession, and, just as was done in the 1930s, the blame can be put on the previous administration's inability or unwillingness to act to reverse the tide of a crashing economy.

Again, that president's term in office did not end well. That time it was of natural causes, but one could say that the stress of trying to solve the world's problems can age a person to the point that those causes aren't really all that natural.

The last comparison being made to the president-elect is that of President John F. Kennedy.

Yes, they both went to Harvard; yes, they were both relatively young when elected; and yes, both had the "enough" problem -- Kennedy was thought to be "not Catholic enough" -- among a whole slew of other comparisons.

And yet, JFK's presidency did not end well. His term in office ended on a cold day in Dallas.

No one seems to have noticed the awful thread that floats through all these comparisons: Presidents whose terms did not end with the election of someone else.

So, please world, stop making these comparisons, before someone takes them the wrong way.

Image Credit:
Obama as Lincoln: http://bagnewsnotes.typepad.com/bagnews/2007/06/your_turn_betwe.html
FDR and Obama: http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/Leftist_Obama_Critics_Should_Study_FDR_6426.html
Kennedy and Obama: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/jul/25/obamathenextjfk

Random Polling

The Washington Post and ABC News have declared a winner. Sorta.

The latest polling data gathered by these organizations show that Barak Obama is leading John McCain, 52% to 43%, and that nine percentage points is greater than the margin of error so we can believe that the Democratic candidate has the November election sewn up. Mostly.

Any political science student, especially those who have taken my methodolgy course, should know that national polls mean diddlely in an election that is decided by state totals. For those who must know, right now, how the campaign is shaping up, La Professora is making the following recommendations:

1. Get over it. If you're not registered to vote, you obviously don't care enough. If you are registered, get informed on the issues and the stances of the candidates and their parties. The Republicans and the Democrats have made their respective platforms available online. Being an informed voter is far more important than being informed as to what the nation "thinks". Better yet, try Smart Voter for help on figuring out the issues -- from the national to the local -- on which you will be expected to have an informed opinion before voting.

2. Check out the various websites that predict how individual states will cast their electoral college votes based on polls taken at the state levels, not the national level. The three that appear to be better at it are:
NPR
CNN
and
Pollster

Then there's the possibility that given the fact that there are 538 electoral college votes available, if the states split into blue and red such that there's a 269-269 tie, it will come down to Congress deciding in January 2009. That's a likelihood that at least one British reporter has explored.

If you want to see how likely that is, play with CNN's Electoral Map Calculator, using the data from the other three maps listed above.

In the end, as my romantic partner likes to point out, the only poll that matters is the one taken on the first Tuesday in November.

Random Political Funding

During campaign seasons, I find it safer when asked what I do for a living to say that I'm a stand-up comedienne -- which, given my teaching style, isn't far from the truth. The reason for this fudging is that when politics is heavily in the news, people have opinions. Strong opinions. They think that if their opinion matches that of a professor of politics, they are smart. However, is often the case, my professional opinion can differ from their casual viewpoint, and in those cases they feel the need to argue with me so that I would "admit" that they are smarter than I.

Yet another reason why I do not want this country to pass a law making voting mandatory -- I really don't want the ignorant and the mentally entrenched to be forced to vote.

The problem is that this country contains a number of people with strong political opinions. Thus even the mundane is invaded with discussions of politics. Such was my luck to visit my old religious society on the day that the sermon covered the current political climate.

The minister had been given a request by a member of the congregation to preach on leadership and politics. The minister's passion for the topic was commendable, but her perspective was limited. It is understandable that a minister of any religion would object to the fact that one candidate for president this year has rejected his previous promise to accept public financing, and thus a limit on expenditures. After all, one's honor is tied to one's ability to keep one's word. In this case, the minister was unhappy because "her" guy was breaking a promise.

But there's more than one man's honor at stake here. What is at stake is the honor of all the parties and their members within this year's campaign. Unfortunately, this country has gotten too used to dirty politics. Senator McCain and Senator Obama have each said that he will run a 'clean' campaign. That's great, but the truth is that there are more players on the field than the two campaigns.

In the 2004 election, President Bush was able to run a 'clean' campaign and win because Senator Kerry had to run against both the Bush campaign and the tax-exempt, unregulated 527s, the most notable of which was the 'Swift Boat Veterans for Truth' folks.

So, Obama has decided to refuse public funding. Big whoop.

He said that to limit his funding wouldn't make sense given the previous presidential campaign. Obama fully expects the Republican party and some 527s to come to the ball game with the intention of allowing McCain to keep his campaign clean while slinging the mud at Obama.

That fear may be well founded. McCain strategist Steve Schmidt pointed out that "the candidate who rebuked the Swift Boat Veterans might not do the same this time when it’s his name on the ballot". Top that with reports that while McCain condemned the adverts run by the North Carolina Republican party during that state's primary, he did say that "I am not going to referee, I am just going to run my own campaign." In fact, despite his statements that he did all in his power to kill the ad campaign, the NC GOP chairwoman said that she hadn't been contacted directly by McCain. Thus, the message appears to be that McCain may not like what conservative 527s may do to advance his cause, but he's not going to do anything about them.

On the other hand, Obama may not have much to fear in the way of those attack 527s. Most of the ones that have already geared up were aimed at targeting Senator Clinton. David Bossie organizer of Citizens United and fervent anti-Clinton political player, had "spent 18 months and millions of dollars making 'Hillary The Movie,'" but the problem is that the movie isn't relevant in a campaign out of which Clinton has bowed. After spending so much on the anti-Hillary campaign, the organization is lacking the funds to seriously go after Obama. And they are not the only one suffering from limited funds; Richard Collins' StopHerNow group raised only $8,000 more than it spent in the last reported cycle. The Republican public affairs firm that set up and funded Progress for America 2004 has allowed that 527 to die, mostly out of concern for losing their more money generating clients. T. Boone Pickens, the man who gave the Swift Boat 527 $3 million to run its campaign has, through his spokesperson, announced his withdraw from this year's presidential campaign, disappointing many who had hoped for his financial backing.

"Conversations with more than a dozen Republican strategists find near unanimity in the belief that, at some point, there will be a real third-party effort aimed at Obama." But funding just isn't there at this point; and, when there is funding, it might be too late to make a difference.

However, studies have shown that electoral memory is about six weeks. Thus, if those 527s can gear up before the end of September, they could affect the outcome of the election. Rumor has it that Karl Rove is contacting large donors in hopes of starting up an effective 527 by then.

But there is question as to whether this would be a good thing for the Republican party. A survey of 2,602 adults done the first week of May, 2008 by BYU/Harris Interactive showed that voters are more positive towards campaigns and associated parties that take small donations from individuals rather than large donations from special interest groups. The sentiment was stronger among those who had made donations to a campaign: 68% of this group said that they would view a candidate more positively if that candidate relied on small donations. This would be more significant if not for the fact that only about 11% of Americans donate to campaigns.

On the other hand, all those polled said that the total amount of money raised wouldn't change their view on a campaign or a candidate. Seems that it's not the total amount, but how that amount is raised.

When it comes to Obama's original promise, the voting public doesn't seem to care. In the same poll, 74% of the respondents reported that they would view Obama neither positively nor negatively if he rejected public financing. For McCain, the number was 72%. Those numbers are aggregates. Seems that if respondents are separated by party identification, it's more telling: 78% of Democrats have a neutral position on whether Obama rejects public financing, and 66% of Republicans have a neutral position on McCain's rejection of public funding.

Thus, the minister at my childhood religious society may be one of the few who is disappointed by Obama's "flip-flop" on campaign financing, just as McCain has "flip-flopped" on other issues. A man's word is his honor, but American's aren't worried too much about honor in this presidential race. They want "their" guy to win. Perhaps there is truth to the idea that American voters get the president they deserve.

Don't agree with my opinion? That's your right, and I will defend your right to be wrong. Just as soon as I'm done with my next set at the mic.

Image source: http://www.gocomics.com/nickanderson/2008/06/20/?campid=0&ssns=9&

Super Random Delegates

During campaign season, whenever I'm asked what I do for a living, I tell the asker that I'm a stand-up comedienne. Mostly because I really don't want to get involved in a discussion of who will/should win the current election. This year is worse than most.

I've been interviewed a number of times by student reporters so far. And each time I have to dance around the question of who will/should win. You see, I work for the government and it is against federal and state law for a public employee to appear to be campaigning.

Yet, the students want to know: will it be Obama v. McCain or Clinton v. McCain? There a simple way of deciding for yourself, the CNN Delegate Counter.

I've run the numbers and the information is interesting.

As it stands right now -- April 25, 2008 -- the numbers do not look good for Clinton, despite her recent win in Pennsylvania. The delegate counter shows, when setting all of the remaining primaries and caucuses at the same level as she won in the last primary, that Ms. Clinton would need to convince 68% of the remaining super delegates that she would be the best candidate to beat McCain.

Further playing with the numbers reveals that should she win 61% of all the remaining contests and of the super delegates, she'd still be one delegate short of winning the nomination. It's not unconceivable that she might win by such a large margin. She did, after all, win 70% of the Arkansas vote in February. Okay, so that was the only time she won more than 58% of any state, but this is American -- the Land of Possibility.

And the blundering politicians.

There is every possibility that Barack Obama will shoot himself in the foot politically. Howard Dean seemed impossible to be beat until his unfortunate yell of enthusiasm four years ago.

The reality is that the super delegates could end the political morass that the Democrats find themselves by all of them signaling their support for Obama. If they did that, he'd have 5 more votes than he'd need for the nomination. If they did the same for Clinton, she'd still be short of the 2,025 votes needed by 130.

Let's say that in all the remaining primaries and caucuses the two candidates tie, fifty-fifty. And let's say that, in the states and territories where the number of delegates are odd, the split favors Clinton. She would need 76% of the remaining super delegates to cast their vote her way.

Completely Random Thoughts

It has been a while since La Professora has visited the Land-o-Randomness, and, in that time, she has seen and heard quite a bit. So much so that those bits have crowded out the usual higher thoughts. In the interest of clearing the head so that the coming semester could be started with a fresh perspective, here is a random selection of oddities.

1: "Organic Salt"
There are days that I truly do wonder about the American educational system. Usually it's because I'm reading some rather atrociously written student essay, but this time around it is what someone said that has me, and a couple of other folk, alternatively giggling and agast.

For the winter holiday in which gifts are exchanged, I had recommended to the sibling of my romantic partner that she purchase gourmet salt as a gift for said romantic partner. So, off she went to the local gourmet food shop with her mother in tow.

At this point, I should mention that her mother used to be a professor of Chemistry and a former dean of sciences at Ohio State University -- not a dumb woman, that one, and she certainly didn't raise any idiots either.

The selection being made, they placed on the check-out counter a canister of Himalayan Pink Salt. I've seen the salt; it is indeed pink -- the chemistry geeks in the house tell me that has something to do with ferrous oxides, or some such; what do I know, I research military politics.

The sales clerk begins to gush, telling our heroines that she just loves the Himalayan Pink Salt because it is -- and they assure me that she actually said this -- "totally organic".

If you don't understand why the former professor of Chemistry had to bite her tongue to keep from correcting the sales girl, you need to go back to your science instructor and demand either a refund or a refresher course.

Oh, and the way, according to the sales girl, you can tell that it's "totally organic" is that it's pink -- unlike regular table salt, which has been bleached!

One hopes that someday she'll figure out why two women were horrified at her statement, and it's not because she revealed the "secret" that table salt is bleached.

2. "Traveling Sucks"
Well, that one is fairly self-evident.

We were 36 hours late arriving at our holiday destination this year because the first flight of our trip was canceled and the soonest they could get both of us on the same flight was two days later.

While I used the time at home productively -- I graded; the fewer termpapers I had to take with me, the lighter my bags -- the above mentioned romantic partner spent the time on the Internet reading horror stories about the airline that had canceled our flight. Trust me when I say do not try this at home.

The trip back was uneventful -- for everyone else. For me, not so much. Let's just say that a G.I. bug and air travel do not make for a good combination.

3. Unpaid Wiretaps.
While the Bush administration is trying to get amnesty for telecommunications companies for allowing Homeland Security to tap their customers' lines, it seems that those same companies would really like to get paid. Turns out that the FBI is in arrears with its wiretapping bill, and so the companies have been cutting access until the government pays up -- even for the legally obtained taps. Man, I could write gobs on this, but the punchline is so evident, that I couldn't begin to do it justice.

4. Election season.
Seems like the campaigning will never end.

For the first day of the Winter Session course on American Politics, as it was the day before the Iowa caucus, I had the students do a simulated caucus to vote on the best food for studying -- I'm weird, but I'm not crazy enough to actually have the students vote on real political candidates. Today, we covered how the Democratic Party allocates its convention delegates to the states. Then we went on to the far less complicated discussion of special interest groups.

(If you're interested in testing your AmGov knowledge, every day until the 18th, I'll be posting on my "other" blog the daily quizzes)

In the interest to helping out those not in the political know, here are some websites that you may want to visit in order to become a more informed citizen:

CNN has a pretty (and I mean that in both sense of the word) good site for understanding what is going on with the primaries and the caucuses: Who's up, who's down, who's out.

Smart Voter, a site produced by the non-partisan League of Women Voters, gives all sorts of useful information, most important of which is where to vote and what is on the ballot for individual citizens.

Once you know where to vote, you may want to know for whom to vote. Two different sites have popped up to help folks pick the best candidate for themselves. I'm not sure how helpful they really are, as I got two different "matches" from them; so take the suggestions with a large grain of salt, pink or otherwise.

The first is produced by USA Today. This one is interesting because it not only asks questions with slightly more exhaustive answer sets -- sorry, the methodologist in me can't help grooving on that -- it also allows the respondent to "slide" the importance of the answer groups. As an added benefit, you can compare you responses with the "average" American's opinions. Needless to say, I'm nowhere near being "average".

The second is a website created by some group called SpeakOut.com. Never heard of it before, but the candidate match quiz seems decent enough. Given more time, I might go explore a little more the site.

There were more sites that offered to match me to my dream candidate, but first they wanted to get all sorts of personal information about me, such as where I lived and what I would like to buy online. Message to Overstock.com: get stuffed.


And that's the current batch of ideas on which I would have written more, had I really wanted to do so.

Tell you what, if you're in need of more time killers, here is a short list of cartoons I like and thus read often enough:
The dark comic on the life a boy and his squid: Lio.
The twisted comic on the life of a succubus and a fairy: Pibgorn.

Still need something to do rather than what you're supposed to be doing? Suck it up! 'Cause I gotta write tomorrow's quiz.

Voting Randomly

Anyone who knows me knows that I'm not in favor of mandatory voting. If the ignorant schmucks don't want to vote then they should not be forced to by the government.

In 1993, the federal government passed the National Voter Registration Act (Motor Voter Law) to make it easier for people to register to vote. Perhaps too easy. At one point, I had two cars; one registered in Santa Barbara and the other in San Jose -- the two places I spend a good part of the month commuting between -- and for the next two elections I received sample ballots at both addresses because the DMV registered me at both locations. If I were inclined, and I'm not, I could vote in the morning in one place and drive to the other to vote in the afternoon.

One man, one vote; one Professora, two votes....

It would seem that I'm not alone. The National Center for Policy Analysis reported that in Los Angeles County there were 78,000 duplicates out of the 3.6 million voters registered there. It would seem that a number of them took advantage of this and actually did vote multiple times.

If that weren't bad enough, the same report showed that the State of California estimated that between 14 to 24 percent of the registered "voters" were illegally on the voter rolls. Seems that the state, in its attempt to clean out possible fraud, sends out postcards to voters who haven't voted in a while, and only if the card is returned as 'undeliverable' by the post office is the voter struck from the rolls. I happen to know for a fact that the dead of Santa Barbara rise on Halloween to vote in the November elections -- my mother, who had been dead for two and a half years, voted in the 1994 election: "her" signature was there when I went to sign mine right below. Yes, I had visions of 1960 Chicago.

But even if all the "deadwood", as the Californian secretary of state calls the deceased voters, were eliminated from the rolls, it wouldn't change a basic fact: Californians, like most US citizens, do not do their civic duty on a regular basis. The state reported that in the last election, 56.2% of the registered voters went to the ballot booth. That seems impressive, except when you realize that the qualification is 'of registered voters'. Of a population just over 37 million people, fewer than 16 million are registered. What this means is that when calculating the percentage of people who voted against the total who are eligible to vote, the number drops to below 40%.

Some scholars like to point out that the reason why voter turn out has been so low is that the youth of the country cannot be made to care about politics. They may have a point. In 1971, the 26th Amendment to the US Constitution was passed, giving the right to vote to 18-year-olds. Thus it was that over 11.5 million voters were added to the voter rolls in one fell swoop. The following year, 55% of 18-24 year olds voted. Sadly, by 2000, that number had dropped to 37%. That was a presidential election year -- the trend is that more people, regardless of age, vote in those elections than in non-presidential elections. In 2002, a non-presidential year, youth turnout dropped to 19%.

The solution, says Assemblyman Joe Coto (D-San Jose), is to make graduating high school students register to vote or they can't have their diploma. Well, except if you're not old enough to vote. Or you're not a citizen. Or if you put your opt-out request in writing....

this could be as silly as the proposal put forward in 2004 by Senator John Vasconcellos (D-Santa Clara) which would give 14-15 year olds a quarter of a vote and 16-17 year olds a half of a vote as a way of 'electoral apprenticeship', as "Training Wheels for Citizenship".


The problem isn't that the youth of America aren't voting -- that's a symptom of something greater: a severe lack of understanding of government and political issues. A survey of California high school students done by the California Campaign for the Civic Mission of Schools showed that "Despite taking a course in U.S. government in their senior year, students' knowledge ... is modest, at best. Students only averaged a little over 60 percent correct on the commonly used survey items designed to test civics content knowledge, a low 'D' on common grading scales." Their senior year!

I'm sorry, if the high schools are turning out students who barely understand the political process, I don't want these ignorant schmucks voting. So, let's not require them to register to vote in order to graduate; let's make them score higher on civics knowledge surveys before allowing them to graduate, let alone allowing them anywhere near a ballot box.

After all, we expect immigrants to pass a citizenship test before they're allowed to vote, why should we expect less from those ignoramuses who were merely lucky to have been born here?

Photo Credit: http://www.yougottareadthis.com/img/al-gore-florida-voter-1.jpg

The Price of Randomness

I never been one for conspiracies, but something rather odd is happening at Bay Area gas stations.

In the weeks leading to Election Day, the price of gasoline had been steadily going down. Back in May, the price of a gallon of 87 octane gas was $3.25 -- by European standards that was still rather cheap, but still rather high for the US. From that high it had been steadily, by two or three cents each time, decreasing. Three months later, at the same station, the price was at $2.98.

Then the run up to the elections began. Newspapers covered the ballot measures and the various impacts each would have. One of those measures was the “Alternative Fuel fund” which would require oil companies to pay into a research fund that would make their industry less lucrative in the long run.

The price of gas began to steadily decline.

A barrel of oil hardly dipped at all, and at times would rise to a new high; yet the price of a gallon of gas continued to fall at the local station.

Within two months, the cost of filling up my gas tank dropped to a level less than it had been all year. On Election Day, it was at $2.25 – a full dollar less than it had been five months before – for a gallon of the low octane gas at the station I’d been watching. There were similar low prices at all the local stations.

The day after the election, each of those stations raised their prices. Not by a couple of pennies, but by as much as 8 cents. On Saturday, I drove by the local station and imagine my surprise when I saw that they had raised the price again, by another 6 cents: a total of 14 cents altogether.

On Tuesday gas was $2.25 and on Saturday it was $2.39! Within the space of four days, it would now cost me a little over a dollar and a half more to get a full tank of gas. In four days, the price rose to a level from which it took a month to creep down, pennies at a time.

I don’t consider myself to be paranoid or given to conspiracy theories, but something rather odd is happening at Bay Area gas stations, and I don’t think it was merely increased demand on the part of drivers – that can happen around the holidays. I think the oil companies were trying to win California voters over, making us think that gas prices weren’t that bad and we don’t really need to pass a measure that would make them pay into a fund that would go toward research that would make their own product less in demand. Perhaps we bought it, because the measure was voted down.

Then the price of gas went back up.

Photo Credit: http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/images/blpic-gasprices.htm