Stu's Views

Okay Cleveland and Boston fans (I know you're out there) this post is for you (as well as any Yankee fans reading this. The possibilities this weekend.

Yankees sweep, Indians sweep: First round is Cleveland at NY and Angels at White Sox

Yankees sweep, Indians win 2 of 3: Ditto

Yankees sweep, Indians win 1 of 3: Ditto

Yankees sweep, Indians swept: One game playoff betw. Cleveland and Boston for the wild card. If Cleveland wins they go to NYC and the Angels play the White Sox. If Boston wins they play the White Sox and the Angels come to New York.

Yankees take 2 of 3, Indians sweep: Cleveland at NY and Angels at White Sox.

Yankees take 2 of 3, Indians take 2 of 3: Ditto.

Yankees take 2 of 3, Indians take 1 of 3: One game playoff betw. Cleveland and Boston for the wild card. If Cleveland wins they go to NYC and the Angels play the White Sox. If Boston wins they play the White Sox and the Angels come to New York.

Yankees take 2 of 3, Indians swept: Angels at New York, Boston at White Sox

Yankees take 1 of 3, Indians sweep: One game playoff between NY and Boston. First round, Cleveland at NY/Bos, Anaheim at Chisox (unless Anaheim sweeps this weekend in which case they host Cleveland if NY wins the playoff game).

Yankees take 1 of 3, Indians take 2 of 3: This is the dreaded two playoff game scenario. The Yankees play Boston on Monday. The winner is the AL east champ while the loser plays Cleveland on Tuesday. I won't go through the first round chances here.

Yankees take 1 of 3, Indians take 1 of 3: Boston at White Sox, Angels at Yankees (if the Angels sweep this weekend, they would have home field here).

Yankees take 1 of 3, Indians swept: Ditto

Yankees swept, Indians sweep: Cleveland at Boston, Angels at White Sox.

Yankees swept, Indians take 2 of 3: Ditto.

Yankees swept, Indians take 1 of 3: One game playoff between NY and Cleveland. If Cleveland wins they go to Boston and Angels play the White Sox. If NY wins, they go to Chicago and the Angels play Boston.

Yankees swept, Indians swept: Yanks at White Sox, Angels at Boston.

Enjoy.  

I was getting ready to post yesterday on the growing air of scandal surrounding the Republican Party in Washington when I saw the news of Tom Delay's indictment. I took the rest of the day off to celebrate.

It couldn't happen to a finer gentleman and representative of the people. Actually Delay is one of three people in politics about whom I would openly enjoy an indictment and for whom legal troubles are growing. The other two are Karl Rove and Grover Norquist. Between Rove, Delay, and Norquist we have the masters of control of the executive branch, legislative branch and Republican interest groups.

And wouldn't you know it, all three are in trouble. Delay's problems are now front page news. Rove is still waiting to hear the results of independent prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury investigation into the Plame leak and those close to him are apparently quite concerned. Norquist has multiple ties to indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff (as does Delay) and is quite likely to get mentioned in the multiple investigations that surround Abramoff (including apparently a murder investigation).

Now of course I would love to see the Three Little Pigs indicted for pretending to care about "moral values" in order to polarize the country when all they really care about is destroying the basic functions of government. I would like to see them indicted for a deep lack of caring about the least fortunate who most depend upon government for survival. I would love to see them indicted for working to steal the 2000 election and pretending that a vast majority of the country agrees with them. And I would like to see them indicted for manipulating the better instincts of the media while utilizing the media's worst instincts in order to deliberately mislead the public.

But until that happens, their existing legal troubles will do just fine.  

In class this week we discussed why members of Congress vote the way they do. Scarcely had the class concluded when the Judiciary Committee voted 13-5 for the confirmation of John Roberts to the Supreme Court with three Democrats voting to confirm. This week the Senate as a whole will likely vote and Roberts will be confirmed with between 65 and 70 votes.

The Democratic leadership had a choice on Roberts. It was clear that filibuster was a bad idea (Roberts, at his hearings, successfully parried any possible rationale for doing so). The Democratic choice was whether to send a message to Bush by mustering 40+ votes against him or to allow members to make their own decisions and save the party discipline for the next nominee.

Like Kos (many of the Kos diarists were vehemently anti-Roberts but Kos himself was rather neutral), I tend to think that Harry Reid made the right choice. The likelihood of Bush absorbing any message from a close vote is nearly zero. The only message I think he got from a more lopsided confirmation was that if he can find a clone of John Roberts (unlikely given Bush's opposition to cloning) then he will be confirmed. Meanwhile Reid's Democrats can now make the argument, "hey we were reasonable, we confirmed a conservative like John Roberts."

As for why the individual members made the decisions they did, there is a very good analysis here. Basically most of those running for President in 2008 will vote against Roberts, those from very red states will vote for him, and most of the others will vote their consciences.

Once Roberts is confirmed, the real fight begins. I think Bush, fearing that this is his last nominee, will move rightward with his next pick. Here the Democrats and their supporters will have to wage a highly public battle against confirmation.

If I did not study the regulatory process (and did not become a professional baseball analyst), I would be very interested in researching electoral reform. As I mentioned a few posts ago, my basic take on the regulatory process is that political concerns trump procedural concerns. I often wonder if the same thing is true of the electoral process. In other words, how much do the rules of elections matter? Do they make a huge difference or would the best (financed, telegenic, qualified, you fill in the blank) candidate win under most sets of rules.

Earlier this week a panel headed by former President Carter and former Bush 41 consigliere James Baker published a report suggesting numerous reforms to the electoral process. While their proposals on I.D. cards to combat voter fraud have justifiably gotten the most attention, what caught my eye was the proposal to change the presidential primary process.

The commission would continue to have Iowa and New Hampshire lead off the presidential calendar. After that however, there would be four regional primaries, with one occuring each month, starting a month after New Hampshire. The order of the primaries would rotate every four years. The proposal would allow the retail politicking of Iowa and New Hampshire to continue but would allow those candidates who survive these contests (and at least three usually do) to compete on a broader field and have more time to get public and media attention once the New Hampshire primary is over.

My instinct is that this is a fantatsic idea. The proposal would give every state relevance in the primary process at least once every four election cycles (my current state New Jersey hasn't been relevant in ages). I like the field being winnowed by a couple of small states (I wish Iowa and New Hampshire didn't have a monopoly on this winnowing but I don't see how to change that) and then a far greater number of people picking the candidate from this winnowed field.

On the other hand, maybe it just doesn't matter. It's unlikely that once Iowa and New Hampshire voted in 2004, any setup would have led to a nominee besides John Kerry. Similarly George W. Bush, Bob Dole, and Al Gore were going to be very hard to beat in 2000 and 1996. Does process matter? I wish I knew but I think adopting the Carter-Baker suggestions is a good place to start finding out.  

I attended a talk yesterday by Chris Mooney the author of "The Republican War on Science." He has successfully captured and characterized an important aspect of one of the Bush Administration's most harmful policy directions.

Mooney talked about the pincers on science coming from Bush's business supporters and his religious supporters. The business interests want to attack the science underpinning key regulatory efforts. They have been successful by using the Data Quality Act and hope to use the OMB peer review guidelines. The religious interests want to discredit evolution, stop abortion, and prevent contraceptive methods from being approved. They have been successful by pushing intelligent design and staffing HHS advisory committees with people ideologically opposed to abortion, stem cell research, and even contraception.

The dangers here are obvious. There are obviously the short term harms of environmental protections that should be enacted not being enacted and sex education not being taught in schools (to name 2 out of hundreds). These, at least are reversible (with the possible exception of global warming where every year of delay has potentially large permanent costs) with a new election. The more profound danger is the erosion of public faith in science and a willingness to accept ideology and religion as an alternative to it.

Mooney also hit on a key point when discussing the role of the media. Across policy areas, the Bush Administration has successfully taken advantage of the media's thirst for controversy. In science policy they have done so by convincing journalists that there are two sides to every scientific debate. Some scientists believe in global warming and others don't. Some believe in evolution and others don't. Some believe that teaching abstinence to the exclusion of everything else is the most effective way of preventing teen pregnancies while others don't. Journalists are unable or unwilling to evaluate the credibility of the two sides and so they are presented as equal.

Mooney may be too optimistic however in his prescription of educating journalists and relying on them to report scientific debates more accurately. There are too many media sources and too much interest in reporting conflicts rather than one-sided debates. The media is very different than it was 30 years ago when objectivity and integrity were profit maximizing strategies for networks and major papers. One of the costs of this is public understanding of complex issues. One of the costs of that could be a very dangerous direction in public policy. 

If I watched President Bush's speech on the rebuilding of New Orleans in isolation on Thursday night I would have come away with one largely positive sentiment and one vaguely disturbing one. The substance of the speech was surprisingly good with pledges to aid the victims of Katrina and some innovative albeit conservative approaches (tax breaks, vouchers etc,). The substance of the speech bespoke a government that cared about its most unfortunate.

The vaguely disturbing aspect of the speech was the manner of its delivery. President Bush, despite what was clearly an effort, conveyed little genuine empathy for those affected by the storm. One can easily imagine what Bill Clinton or Ronald Reagan would have said and made us feel. Actually one doesn't have to imagine, just look back to Clinton's speech after Oklahoma City and Reagan's reaction to the Challenger disaster. If viewed in isolation, I would have minimized this problem as a stylistic one, unimportant to an evaluation of Bush as President.

But of course we do not view such things in isolation. Bush lack of empathy comes on the heels of his immediate reaction to the storm and his reluctance to cut short his vacation for it. It comes on the heels of his Administration's cutting of funds for FEMA and staffing its upper levels with political hacks. And it comes on the heels of this enervated FEMA's failure to deal with the aftermath of Katrina. These actions tell us that this lack of empathy had real world consequences and is a major problem for the leader of a nation.

We also now have additional context to make us worry about Bush's speech. In the wake of further large scale recovery efforts by FEMA we see that the failures caused by Bush policies continue despite the words of Thursday night. We also have now seen Bush's continued refusal to repeal or even postpone his precious tax cuts to finance the programs he proposed. Bush called for sacrifice on Thursday night. Clearly he wants those who lived in New Orleans to continue to sacrifice but not those in the top income bracket. Perhaps if he gave a speech about a buddy who couldn't afford a second yacht we'd finally see some empathy.  

I had intended to avoid baseball until the postseason but the American League pennant race is too intriguing to not say something about. Also, I'm too absorbed with work to write anything too serious. Finally the pennant race not only involves my Yankees but also the favorite teams of several loyal readers here.

Basically there are six teams that are very close in talent levels and all have fundamental weaknesses. Any of them could win the pennant and any of them could be among the two that could go home before the playoffs. Looking at each team in detail:

Boston:
Will go home early if: David Ortiz returns to planet earth and Curt Schilling was not for real last Saturday. They would like to have the east wrapped up before the Yankees come to town for the last series of the year.
Will be in the World Series if: the Curt Schilling we saw against the Yankees on Saturday is the real deal. One ace pitcher and three decent starters (Wells, Clement and Wakefield) is more than enough with their offense.

New York:
Will go home early if: they win fewer than nine of the fourteen games started by pitchers other than Randy Johnson down the stretch. Shawn Chacon and Aaron Small have been wonderful but there is reason to suspect that as the clock strikes midnight they may turn into pumpkins.
Will be in the World Series if: Mike Mussina comes back and pitches like he is capable of. Like the Sox, the Yankee lineup is so good that two top starters (Johnson and Moose), Gordon and Rivera, may be enough to make a deep journey into October.

Chicago:
Will go home early if: a historic collapse happens. I actually think they are the worst of these six teams but they had such a good run in the first half that the playoffs are virtually ensured. They will have trouble when they get there.
Will be in the World Series if: Buehrle, Garcia, and Garland pitch like they did in the first half of the season not the second half. They will need great pitching given the worst hitting of any of these six teams.

Cleveland:
Will go home early if: The kids start to feel the pressure and they win six or fewer of their ten games against doormats Kansas City and Tampa Bay. With that schedule, the wild card is theirs to lose. They also have six against Chicago. If they start that stretch with a couple of wins the White Sox may get nervous.
Will be in the World Series if:
Once they get in the playoffs, a solid top of the rotation, a good bullpen and a nice lineup will make them a threat against anyone. They may just be happy to be there though and lose to a more experienced team. Or they may surprise everyone.

Los Angeles:
Will go home early if: They don't find someone beside Vladimir Guerrero to do some hitting. The pitching is solid but unspectacular so some thunder is necessary.
Will be in the World Series if: Vladimir carries them through a couple of playoff series. It seems unlikely that they could beat Boston and New York or Cleveland back to back but they've been there before.

Oakland:
Will go home early if: Their best player, Bobby Crosby, and their best pitcher, Rich Harden, don't come back from injuries very soon. The wild card is looking increasingly remote so they will have to catch the Angels who they only trail by a game.
Will be in the World Series if: Harden and Crosby come back in top shape. They were the best team in baseball for three months. If their best players return, watch out. If not, watch out in 2006.  

The Democrats have been quite strong in their response to the Bush Administration failures regarding Hurricane Katrina. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid have persisted in calling for an independent commission. Pelosi ripped a CNN reporter who parroted the White House's "let's not play the blame game" message. Howard Dean raised the spectre of race in the New Orleans response. And John Edwards' campaign message of "Two Americas" message has had particular resonance after we have the seen the faces of those marooned in New Orleans.

It's not enough. While we can argue over whether the Bush Administration response to Katrina is a greater example of ineptitude and malfeasance than the war in Iraq, one thing is clear. The flooding of New Orleans much greater meaning to the American people.

As I detailed in an earlier post, the Bush Administration response to Katrina grew from a particular ideology regarding the role of government. It is time for the Democrats to hammer that point home. After the Carter administration, and throughout the 1980s the Republicans successfully stigmatized the word "liberal." They combined genuine dissatisfaction with the welfare state with an association between liberal an inability to govern. Now no one to the right of Dennis Kucinich would self-identify as a liberal.

The opportunity to do the same thing with the word "conservative" now exists. Dean, Pelosi and others should be hammering the idea that conservatives believe that the government should not help you at all. They should be unremittingly harsh and use Katrina like Bush used 9-11. Whether you are faced with a natural disaster, bankruptcy, or global warming, you are on your own. The incompetence at FEMA is a direct result of conservatives gutting the agency. Conservatives don't believe in government, why would you trust them in positions of power to use government to protect you.

I of course know that conservatism is more complex than that and is a philosophy with deep roots. But so is liberalism. It is time to recalibrate the national political language. The word conservative should be an insult.  

I thought I would take this opportunity to highlight some of my recently published (and soon to be published) work. For the occasional passerby to this blog, my area of specialization is regulatory policy. The theme that winds its way through my work is that many of the requirements of the regulatory process are window-dressing and that the politics surrounding regulatory issues goes much further to determine regulatory outcomes than procedural requirements.

In a recent issue of the Environmental Law Reporter, I published an article that focuses on my former office, the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). I argue that while much of the attention that OIRA receives is for its role as guardian of cost-benefit analysis in policymaking, in practice this takes a subordinate role to enforcing the regulatory priorities of the President. While OIRA gets criticized stridently for its devotion to analytics, this devotion plays a minor role in OIRA influence on regulations. In contrast, Presidential influence on rulemaking has been generally accepted but it should be the focus of debates on OIRA's role.

As the beginning of a much broader project, I published a short piece in the Administrative and Regulatory Law News examining two months of regulations. During the two months chronicled (November and December of 1999), 400 regulations were issued. These ranged from airworthiness directives impacting a particular model of airplane to rules governing the building of roads in national forests. I found that federal agencies avoid notice and comment more often than commonly believed, that many rules have only minor changes between proposal and finalization, and that the time between proposal and finalization varies predictably with the types of rules being issued.

Coming soon I will publish an article on the ergonomics rulemaking (no link available yet). The rule looks at the role that various procedures that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) had to go through in order to promulgate the rule (which was eventually overturned by Congress). The paper concludes that only notice and comment had a discernible effect upon the substance of the rule.

There are four weeks left in the baseball season and it looks like we are in for an exciting September. Thoughts on the pennant races:

American League

On the surface the race looks very familiar this year. A team has run away with the central that is very unlikely to make it to the World Series. Meanwhile Boston, New York, LA, and Oakland are fighting for three playoff spots. It's been that way since 2002. If you replace the Angels with the Mariners, it's been that way since 2000. All four teams are talented but have clear flaws and picking between them for a World Series favorite is more difficult than usual.

Right below the surface the seeds of change have been planted however. Cleveland is still in the wild card race threatening to be the first wild card from the AL Central since the wild card was started. Furthermore Oakland, Cleveland and the next two best teams Minnesota, and Toronto are all likely to be better next year. All are young teams run by very bright people. The last three pennant winners (Boston, NY and the Angels) will have to ramp it up during the offseason to maintain their monopoly on power.

As for this year, if forced to pick I'd stick with my preseason picks and say that the big three squeeze through and make it to October to battle it out for the World Series.

National League

By comparison the National League race is a bit dull. The division leaders are all but decided with St. Louis having a gargantuan lead and Atlanta and San Diego having leads that seem safe. St. Louis will go into the playoffs as a prohibitive favorite not just to capture the NL but to win it all and give future Hall of Fame manager Tony LaRussa his second World Series title.

The wild card race is quite exciting however with all four also rans from the NL East and Houston battling it out. The wild card may be the biggest challenge to St. Louis. Houston has an edge with its killer starting staff (Clemens, Oswalt and Petitte are the best top 3 in the majors) and the fact that the four eastern teams will be playing each other. Still Houston's lineup is anemic and Philadelphia and Florida should stay in the race until the end. The pick here is again to stick with the preseason pick and say Philadelphia squeezes out the wild card.

Of the many fine posts that Kevin Drum has put up on the sorry recovery effort in New Orleans, this one may be my favorite. He points out the connection between conservative ideology and the failures of FEMA to adequately respond to Hurricane Katrina.

While President Bush (now) bemoans the catastrophe and says that more needs to be done, the philosophy he has brought to government has been better voiced by FEMA director Brown and right wing mouthpiece Limbaugh. Both said that those who did not heed the warning to evacuate New Orleans essentially deserved their fates. (Grover Norquist added that he worried that the hurricane would divert attention from the need to get rid of the estate tax).

One would be hard pressed to hear a clearer articulation of Bush conservatism (Andrew Sullivan argues that true conservatives disagree but I'm not so sure). A faith in the market to solve all problems is grounded in the belief that people's stations in life are the sole product of merit. According to this thinking the government has no business in helping those who find themselves in dire straits, whether that help is through welfare payments or evacuation from floods.

Would the recovery effort been better if FEMA's budget hadn't been slashed and political officials had heeded the warnings of staff that a flood of New Orleans was the third most likely catastrophe to hit the United States? It is a counterfactual that is impossible to answer. What we can say is that we would have been more likely to save more lives if these actions had not been taken. And a Democratic Administration or Congress would not have made these policy decisions.

Ideology matters. Politics matters. This week is more evidence of that to anyone who wasn't convinced before.

I am largely speechless on the events of the past week in New Orleans and Mississippi. Just thoughts and prayers going out to those caught up in what may end up being the worst natural disaster in US history.

As for the pathetic response to the hurricane and flood, I can add little to what Kevin Drum has done over at www.washingtonmonthly.com. Go check it out and feel appalled.