It looks obvious

It is very hard to predict from how one run a political campaign the way they will be once in office. Even if most of the things being said and promised on the campaign trail are sincere, and usually they are not, the realities of the limited abilities and political constraints forces compromises and changes from the promises given. In many respects the campaign and the actual behavior in office are two distinct entities and the most one can hope is that they following the same guiding principals.

But there are some useful things one can learn about a candidate: an assessment of the candidates agenda, their management skills in how they are running their campaign and the advisors they are choosing, some of their moral callings - the things they choose to do or to avoid doing advancing their chances to be elected and so on. One of the things I love looking at is how the candidates manage their campaign budget. While a candidate can use theoretical terms when promising to do winders with the country’s budget the campaign budget is pretty simple test case for their abilities. On the one hand it is much simpler than the complex budget, and needs, of the country and on the other hand its reflect the general approach, experience and abilities of the candidates and their staff to balance a budget with high pressure to increase spending. While managing the campaign budget efficiently doesn’t ensure the same results on the national level, mismanaging it is an indicator for inability to manage larger, more complex budgets.

So how should one trust Senator Clinton with the country’s economy when her campaign budget is managed so poorly?

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign is continuing to struggle to stay ahead of its bills, finishing March with just $9.3 million in the bank for the primary, coupled with $10.3 million in debt, according to a report filed last night with the Federal Election Commission.

[...]

Mrs. Clinton had ended February with $8.7 million in debt. She collected about $20 million in March but spent about $22 million, adding to her pile of unpaid invoices.

Despite my natural pessimism, these type of questions is a good sign:

Chelsea Clinton is spending long days on the campaign trail telling college crowds about her mother’s positions on everything from health care and student-loan costs to the Darfur crisis and gay rights.

But there is one subject she will not discuss — “The Other Woman.”

[...]

“She really has gotten more questions on whether or not her mother believes the U.S. dollar should be tied to the gold standard,” (emphasize mine - RSM) Reines said. “That’s a question she’s gotten probably 10 times.”

I was wondering how Clinton can maintain her populist rhetoric against the trade agreement with Columbia while her spouse actively support it and financially benefit from it. The answer is simple - postpone the voting until nobody will notice:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says the House will change its rules so as to skirt a requirement that it vote on a free trade agreement with Colombia.

Pelosi says the House will vote on the rules change policy Thursday, effectively putting off a vote on a free trade agreement that is a key priority of the Bush administration.

I don’t argue that this is unique for Clinton. Postponing the vote benefits Obama as well. It is a common practice, which we usually fall for every time. It is only make election debates useless process and make me wonder why bother at all.

The little irony is that I’m not a great fun of trade agreement at all. Although not because I believe in protectionism, quite the contrary - I don’t think that the state should be involve in trade. 

Politic, mostly when the Clintons involved, will always surprise me. Did they really think that the story will surface, mostly after using Penn as scape goat?

On Sunday evening, Sen. Hillary Clinton’s chief campaign strategist, Mark Penn, resigned from his post after it was revealed he was working (on the side) for the passage of a Colombia Free Trade Agreement that his candidate opposed.

But within the Clinton campaign, Penn is not the highest-ranking adviser with financial ties to groups and individuals supporting the passage of the measure.

Former President Bill Clinton has earned hundreds of thousands of dollars speaking on behalf of a Colombia-based group pushing the trade pact, and representatives of that organization tell The Huffington Post that the former president shared their sentiment.

In June 2005, Clinton was paid $800,000 by the Colombia-based Gold Service International to give four speeches throughout Latin America. The organization is, ostensibly, a development group tasked with bringing investment to the country and educating world leaders about the Colombia’s business opportunities.

It is interesting how the ethics of making a decision about trade agreement will be when it effect the President spouse bank account directly will be. It is sure a lucrative business to be in the business of selling access…

Listening to the news, these days, expose the listeners to constant spin of what the voting trends actually mean and why one candidate is still viable. In this constant attempt to create the desired presumptions we are sometimes forgeting that the arguments made by the different campaigns aren’t that smart. Thanks to good satire for reminding us what stupid this kind of spins usually are. 

Since Clinton’s main claims to the throne are her readiness to handle foreign affairs crisis and that she is fully vetted we shouldn’t be surprise that some might take her to the task. And the Chicago Tribune did exactly that:

One have to wonder why isn’t she emphasizing her role in the Rwanda crisis, she isn’t hiding something is she?

To enforce mandates, or to not enforce mandates? this is, at least part, of the question: 

To see why Clinton’s argument is nonsensical, consider that the country could achieve nearly universal health insurance immediately simply by enacting an individual mandate coupled with a truly draconian penalty for non-compliance. But so what? This would be good for Blue Cross, Health Net, and Aetna, but the worried middle class wouldn’t sleep any better at night knowing the government was going to force it to buy unaffordable insurance than knowing that it might have to go without unaffordable insurance. Clinton understands this, of course, which is why she refuses to discuss penalties or enforcement.

Clinton could reasonably argue that, as president, she would need to accept an individual mandate in order to win Congressional backing for market reforms and subsidies that would truly help the uninsured. Instead, she chooses to claim that mandates are themselves the goal, because doing so allows her to falsely charge that Obama is less committed than she is to the real goal of making affordable health insurance available to all. Her choice of tactics can be rooted only in a cynical belief that her attacks can succeed because the issue is just too complicated for most voters to understand.

As the dust seems to settle about the McCain alleged scandal the Washington Times is looking into the decline of the New York Time:

The New York Times’ recent hit-and-run on John McCain is a moment of reckoning for the "newspaper of record." Certainly the fact that the previously reasonable Executive Editor Bill Keller spent the weekend lashing out at the McCain camp for "trying to change the subject to us … [attempting] to use the New York Times as an opportunity to rally the base," suggests that the Times still has not realized that the rest of the world now regards its pronouncements as just as fallible as the rest of the news media’s. Indeed, its own public editor finds it fallible in this case. As Clark Hoyt wrote over the weekend: "[I]f you cannot provide readers with some independent evidence, I think it is wrong to report the suppositions or concerns of anonymous aides about whether the boss is getting into the wrong bed."

Don Boudreaux trying to clarify a common mistake: 

More generally, it seems difficult for some people to grasp the fact that society and government are not identical — or, more precisely, to grasp the fact that civil society can and does often thrive outside of government influence and, indeed, very often (I would say most often) in spite of such influence.

Few weeks ago I linked to an HBO documentary movie about disturbing problems with the electronic voting machines used in many states. The Onion has a unique take on the issue… 

When government influencing any aspect of our life selling access to decision making become very lucrative business, much more than, for example, giving lectures. It is somewhat naive than to expect those whose fortune depend on selling such access, to limit the phenomena. It is sad, however, that instead of focusing on pleasing the consumer, or competing in the free market, interest group invest in buying such access. The effect on the society and the economy cannot be positive.

From protecting the environment point of view which is better - take a short ride with a car or walking? The answer might surprise you:

This challenge comes from Chris Goodall, the author of “How to Live A Low-Carbon Life.” Mr. Goodall is a member of the Green Party in Britain and a devout environmentalist — he says he has ceased air travel because of its emissions. But he also questions how much good is being done by eliminating short trips by car. In fact, he says that in some circumstances it’s better to drive than to walk.

The story of Siegelman, the former Democratic governor of Alabama, and his corruption trial is disturbing and highly deserve the segment on 60 minutes’

Isn’t it somewhat odd that the candidate that calling to cancel the tax cuts for “the rich” and made it a center piece of her campaign, refuses to release her tax returns?

Clinton’s tipping point may have come when it was announced that her $5 million loan to her campaign came from a fund she shares with Bill Clinton. That puts into play for the general election business deals by the former president that transformed him from an indigent to a multimillionaire and might excite interest in their income tax returns, which the Clintons refuse to release. The prospect impels many Democratic insiders to pray for the clear Obama victories on March 4 that they hope will make it unnecessary for anybody to beg Hillary Clinton to end her failed campaign.

This should not be surprising. We all read Orwell’s Animal Farm and we noted in the past that other famous evangelist for different life style, harder and less convenient , tend to exclude themselves since although everybody is equal, some equal more.

Pork-barrel spending is known to be an easy way for politician to distribute public funds to support their donors and political allies. However earmarks aren’t the only way and creative politicians find how to harness the environment as well:

Hillary Clinton’s pattern of earmarking federal funds to benefit her campaign contributors is well-documented, but she also uses environmental regulations to reward — and prod — corporate donors. Particularly, she and her husband have championed environmental regulations that narrowly help Corning Inc., which in turn has funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to her campaigns. 

Corning Inc., a manufacturer in upstate New York, famous as a glassmaker, is the lead maker of two technologies that help reduce harmful emissions from diesel trucks. Bill and Hillary Clinton have made these technologies profitable — at the expense of taxpayers and consumers.

Two unrelated, stories from England - the first about yet another attack on the right of people to poison themselves with cigarettes and the idea that people with need government license to smoke. The second story is, wouldn’t it be so sad, is somewhat funnier - concerned with the long waiting time at British hospital’s ER the government regulations set a strict metric on waiting time. Obviously the regulations were not backed up with resources and didn’t provides means to actually comply with the new waiting time restrictions - such details of economics are of no interest. The regulators can be happy, the waiting time metric is being kept, with a small price: 

Seriously ill patients are being kept in ambulances outside hospitals for hours so NHS trusts do not miss Government targets.

Thousands of people a year are having to wait outside accident and emergency departments because trusts will not let them in until they can treat them within four hours, in line with a Labour pledge.

 The hold-ups mean ambulances are not available to answer fresh 999 calls.

An interesting argument of why Iceland economy is doing very well while it is keeping a very high level of welfare state:

Can’t they both be right? Iceland, much like Denmark, is more or less Hong Kong with a huge welfare state. High personal tax rates and redistributive policies certainly do affect incentives to work, save, etc. And certain state-provided services do tend to crowd out private alternatives. That said, it is possible to have high tax rates, lots of redistribution, and no other policies regulating the operation of the market. Neither Iceland nor Denmark leave their markets that unfettered, but it is simply undeniable that they are extremely wealthy, free-market capitalist countries. Indeed, the relative success of countries like Denmark and Iceland is outstanding evidence that the best way to ensure high levels of welfare spending (in tiny, ethnically homogeneous countries) is to let the capitalism rip. 

Bruce Bartlett, which by the way is going to lecture on March 8th at FEE, argue that the mandating the elections for the US senate by popular vote, instead of by the states, was a major mistake as it weakened the states and it lead for, paradoxically, to less individual liberties:

The 17th amendment was ratified in 1913. It is no coincidence that the sharp rise in the size and power of the federal government starts in this year (the 16th amendment, establishing a federal income tax, ratified the same year, was also important). As George Mason University law professor Todd Zywicki has noted, prior to the 17th amendment, senators resisted delegating power to Washington in order to keep it at the state and local level. “As a result, the long term size of the federal government remained fairly stable during the pre-Seventeenth Amendment era,” he wrote. 

Prof. Zywicki also finds little evidence of corruption in the Senate that can be traced to the pre-1913 electoral system. By contrast, there is much evidence that the post-1913 system has been deeply corruptive. As Sen. Miller put it, “Direct elections of Senators … allowed Washington’s special interests to call the shots, whether it is filling judicial vacancies, passing laws, or issuing regulations.”

And last, but not least, link for today. Again from England, the results of philosophical confusion - the mixing between protecting human rights, tolerance and the roll of government is the base of this horrifying story: 

Up to 17,000 women in Britain are being subjected to "honour" related violence, including murder, every year, according to police chiefs.

And official figures on forced marriages are the tip of the iceberg, says the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO). 

It warns that the number of girls falling victim to forced marriages, kidnappings, sexual assaults, beatings and even murder by relatives intent on upholding the "honour" of their family is up to 35 times higher than official figures suggest.