Stu's Views

Sometimes it feels like I am one of 20 or so people left who follow the NBA. Oh well at least that is 15-20 more than follow the NHL. So for those other 19 here is how this season looks:

East

1. Miami: The second best team in the east last year got a lot better in the offseason. Shaq has a shot at another title.

2. Indiana: Talk about a team and a player that has something to prove. Look for Artest to contend for MVP honors (as long as he can hold his temper).

3. Detroit: The players will want to prove it wasn't just Larry Brown. Well no, but he was a big part of their success the past two years.

4. New Jersey: Jason Kidd will make sure there is enough ball for Carter and Jefferson. They'll win the Atlantic and be seeded third which should get them back to the second round of the playoffs.

5. Cleveland: LeBron's coming out party with a decent supporting cast. Fifty wins and the second round are within reach.

6. Philadelphia: Iverson always seems on the verge of breaking down. But he is one of the toughest players in NBA history and he carries Philly (with Webber's help) to another 45 wins.

7. Washington: They'll miss Hughes but Arenas will take his game to another level and I've always like Caron Butler.

8. New York: I always pick the Knicks as high as I can possibly justify. If Brown gets through to the dunderheaded players, if Curry stays healthy, and if Isaiah doesn't do anything very dumb, a short trip to the playoffs is possible.

9. Chicago: They'll miss Curry, although look for Sweetney to have a breakthrough season.

10. Boston: After Pierce, they are left with a bunch of kids. A lot of potential but it's a year for growing pains.

11. Milwaukee: Nice trade for Magliore last week although it makes us wonder what Bogut's going to do. With Ford coming back, this team could surprise.

12. Orlando: Dwight Howard on his way to being the next Kevin Garnett. They need more however (much like current Kevin Garnett has experienced).

13. Toronto: They have become a non-descript franchise, much like . . .
14. Atlanta: The death of Jason Collier is what this season will be remembered for in Atlanta.

15. Charlotte: Emeka Okafor is counting the days until free agency.

West

1. San Antonio: Go ahead, find a weakness. Keep looking.

2. Denver: Melo beats LeBron to the conference finals but mostly because of his superior supporting cast.

3. Houston: McGrady is the early pick for MVP and for his first playoff series win.

4. Dallas: Stuck with the second round blues. Good enough to win 50-55 games and get there but not to win.

5. Seattle: The team that has advanced furthest in terms of using SABR style techniques in basketball. This will get them back to the playoffs.

6. Phoenix: Will luck into a third seed with a Pacific division title but will have an unimpressive season due to the Stoudemire injury. When he gets back, though, watch out.

7. Sacramento: Still a fair amount of talent here, particularly if Bonzi Wells meshes with Bibby, Stoyakovic, and Miller.

8. Utah: My biggest mistake in last year's picks was overestimating them. Why not make the same mistake twice?

9. Memphis: I underestimated them each of the last two years. Why not make the same mistake 3 times?

10. Golden State: This year's darkhorse. Watch for them to contend for two thirds of the season or as long as the Baron remains healthy.

11. Los Angeles Lakers: Is there anyone outside LA who doesn't want to see Kobe and Phil Jackson fall on their face in their reunion endeavor?

12. Minnesota: Kevin Garnett. And . . .?

13. LA Clippers: They actually have three good players. Unfortunately this is not a 3 on 3 tournament, it's the NBA.

14. Portland: Still trying to shake the "Jail Blazers" image. Once they are done with that, maybe they can focus on becoming good again.

15. Hornets: They have been dislocated by Hurricane Katrina. Chris Paul has to win Rookie of the Year just to get them to 15 wins.

It hasn't been the best of weeks for the Bush Administration. Of course with Rove, at least for the moment, escaping indictment it could have been worse. How much damage has been done to Bush and what happens now?

The Miers withdrawal first: conservatives are crowing that they forced the withdrawal and Democrats are all too happy to let them take credit. The reality of course is more complicated. If Miers had a record like that of John Roberts, extreme talent and expertise on constitutional law but unclear views on abortion and gay marriage, she would have been confirmed by a wide margin. Sam Brownback and Tom Coburn would not have been able to stop her.

Now Bush has a complicated choice. He has lost a big battle and the Democrats and liberal interest groups haven't even lifted a muscle yet. He is languishing at 30% in the polls and inspires little fear or respect in Congress right now. He could nominate a talented conservative like Michael Luttig to shore up his base and make sure his approval numbers do not drop further. This would provoke a battle royale in the Senate at a time when he has few weapons with which to fight such a battle. Bush could nominate a talented moderate Republican, win confirmation, but lose the only constituency that has stuck reliably with him. Or he could try and find another cipher and have weeks of investigation by people trying to determine their views with an uncertain outcome. My guess is that he will go with option 1, hoping to provoke a fight and distract attention from . . .

The Libby indictment: while I am disappointed that Fitzgerald did not have enough to indict Rove, I have a feeling this is not over. Fitzgerald may be hoping that Libby facing jail time (the evidence on the perjury charge seems particularly strong) will flip. After watching the Fitzgerald press conference (at least up until beginning this entry) I am fairly confident that he wants nothing more than to see that the law is followed. If in the back (or even the front of his mind) he knows there are more indictments that are within reach, he will pursue them.

I said last year that the second term of the Bush Administration would likely be engulfed with scandals both because of the historical tendency for this to happen and the particular disregard for the law that this Administration appears to have. Today's events are the start of that prediction coming to fulfillment.

As someone who studied environmental policy for a while and who resides in a planning and policy school I am well familiar with the idea of NIMBY (not in my backyard). My theoretical experience with NIMBY however usually dealt with siting of prisons or hazardous waste dumps. While I understand that these undesirable facilities have to go somewhere, it is easy to muster sympathy with those who do not want them in their neighborhood.

Recently however I have discovered that NIMBYism extends to facilities commonly seen as social goods not social bads. An article (payment required) in last week's New York Times magazine refers to a collection of high end houses that went up in our neighborhood recently. The article alludes to but does not describe the widespread opposition to the construction which was conducted on largely undeveloped land.

Various reasons were given for the opposition but at its core, current residents did not want an influx of new people, new traffic, and new school age children in their town. The school age children were undesirable because their presence meant the need for more education funding and hence higher property taxes. So a variety of other reasons of varying legitimacy were constructed to delay the building of the houses by a decade.

Maybe one can understand NIMBYism in this context but how about the building of a hospital. The local hospital is relocating and when a potential site was announced, the neighbors of the potential site were up in arms and threatening legal action. A hospital!! My reaction was "Oh good, the hospital will be closer." Apparently I am some kind of freak because everyone else's reaction was "Can you imagine the traffic and the ambulances?"

Economists often get criticized for overly emphasizing self interest (different than selfishness but often confused) and de-emphasizing community values. While I've never been one of those critics, my willingness to defend this emphasis has only grown in light of the experiences described above.

Too busy and distracted to write a longer essay so here are some one paragraph ones.

-- The Miers nomination looks dead to me. Conservatives have still not embraced her and even moderate Republicans are questioning her competence and ability (most notably Arlen Specter, the chair of the Judiciary committee). As hoped, this has all happened without the Democrats lifting a finger. Miers appears to be a nice person who made one really bad decision in her life, accepting this nomination. Now her name may forever be attached to the word "debacle" in all future sentences in which it appears. "One of the first political effects of Karl Rove's legal troubles was the Harriet Miers debacle."

-- As for our friend Karl Rove, all signs (cancelled plans, lack of attendance at key meetings) suggest he is going to get indicted. The word should come down next week and anything less than indictments for Rove and Libby will be a disappointment. Overly optimistic liberals are voicing the hope that Dick Cheney will step down but that seems like a bit too much wishful thinking.

-- The Administration seems to be turning to the realization that it may not accomplish much more in Congress, at least in the short term. As such, look out for their administrative actions. It is an area of policy nearly entirely within the purview of the executive branch. In the past few weeks, EPA and the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services have taken actions that will weaken critical programs. This could be the start of a flood of such actions.

-- Could this be the start of a resurgent period for Congress. Throughout the 20th century, Congress was weakened at the expense of the executive branch. The only exception was right after Watergate. Plamegate combined with Katrina and the Miers nomination have weakened Bush considerably and given voice to Senators and Representatives, even in his own party. Whether this is a blip or a trend will take a year or so to tell.

This article, appearing in yesterday's New York Times, discussed the increased tuition at state universities and how this increase reflects the creeping privatization of public higher education. As non-state sources, including students, grants, and private donors, fund state universities, the focus of the university inevitably changes from the mission of serving the state to serving those who are providing it with funds.

What the article does not mention is that at the same time, the population of public universities has permanently changed. As a college degree is a minimum requirement for any career the characteristics of college attendees has broadened to include a much wider swath of the American public. This would be beneficial if state universities were prepared to teach these young charges and prepare them to enter the workforce as both educated and competent individuals.

This would be a challenge even if state funds were remaining constant as the preparation of students to enter college has dropped over the last several generations meaning that faculty members have to work harder to teach undergraduates. With less money coming from the state, all of a sudden faculty members have to serve other masters, most notably the need to produce research that will attract grants.

This incentive dovetails nicely with the interests of many faculty members who are all too ready to sacrifice classroom work for research. At private universities where students can make the choice to attend and be lectured by "geniuses" rather than good teachers, this may (and I emphasize "may") be ok. At public univesities, where the vast majority of attendees are there to get an education, it is most certainly not ok.

Given the natural proclivities of many of my colleagues in higher education, the incentives should be the exact opposite of those resulting from this trend to decreased state funding. While this means bold leadership among those who run state universities, it also is incumbent upon state governments to give public universities the resources with which to accomplish their increasingly difficult mission of educating a larger portion of the population than ever before. States will eventually bear the cost of not doing so with a workforce not prepared for the 21st century.

My descent (some might say ascent) into suburbia took another significant step yesterday. My wife and I spent the afternoon at Costco. What's more, given our aversion to shopping at Wal-Mart or its bulk offshoot, Sam's Club, we drove 20 miles to get to Costco. Pressed by day care expenses to save money, we decided to bite the bullet and to join seemingly all of our fellow New Jerseyans in their favorite weekend activity.

So there we were buying a package of 160 diapers and a five pound jar of pretzels at ridicculously low prices (If anyone knows of evil acts by Costco to keep their prices down, please don't tell me. I prefer to believe that it is solely "volume volume volume"). We were very careful not to buy goods that we otherwise would not have bought at a supermarket yet we returned home with our car filled to the brim.

The act of going to Costco is one thing but what shocked me more is that we actually got some enjoyment out of it. This is disturbing on two levels. First is my oft discussed nervousness about getting further and further from my urban roots and becoming a suburban soccer dad. Second, however is the universal fear of becoming one's parents. In ruthlessly searching for good prices and ways to save money (not to mention buying enough garbage bags to take us through the 2006 baseball season) I felt very much like my mom and dad. Terrifying.

Someone stop me before I shop again.

Yes I am aware that the baseball postseason continues despite the Yankees elimination. However unless the LCS's or the World Series reaches a game 6, I am probably done watching. When my team, whether it is the Yankees or the Knicks, loses I am generally too emotionally spent to work up much energy caring about the proceedings from that point forward. Best of luck to the four remaining teams and here are some closing observations.

-- If you needed evidence of the role of luck, just look at the first round. Grafanino gets his glove down, Franco keeps his foot on the bag, and Crosby and Sheffield don't collide and you have three very different series and maybe a couple of different LCS participants. Of the first round series, only the talent differential between St. Louis and San Diego was so great as negate luck, stupid managerial decisions, or a bad slump by a great player at a bad time.

-- Although New Yorkers including myself will have trouble acknowledging this, this season could end up being a very good one for the Yankees. In finding Wang, Chacon, and Cano (all of whom played well against the Angels) the Yankees potentially have three key spots filled with young cheap talent. With their budget, this means their remaining holes (bullpen and centerfield) can be easily filled with the slightest bit of intelligence and creativity. Of course if Steinbrenner is making the decisions, intelligence and creativity may be in short supply.

-- I've underestimated the White Sox at every turn this season. Their pitching is downright excellent and while their lineup is weak, it is clear the team plays well for Guillen. That said on an even field I would still pick the Angels. With the Angels exhausted by the Yankee series the field is not even. I'll pick the Angels in seven but a White Sox win will not surprise me.

-- All logic points to picking the Cardinals in the NL and I was ready to do so. However the Astros have a feel about them right now. They also have great starting pitching. The 18 inning game was a classic and the type of game gives a team confidence it can do anything. I think the winner of the NL will win the World Series this year and I'm picking Houston in 6 to be the NL rep.

We've (or more accurately, my wife has) had to pick up our son early three times. Once because he was sick, and twice because he wasn't sleeping there and therefore getting very cranky. He has also stayed home a couple of times due to illnesses caught at the day care center.

The center itself seems to have someone new in the "baby" room every week. They are plagued by the constant turnover familiar to the child care industry (hard jobs for low pay don't have good retention rates). Each new person needs to familiarize with each child's needs but can't do that when caring for four children at once. And the legal limit of four babies to one provider is often not maintained despite the best efforts of the center.

My wife and I are extremely lucky. Being a professor means flexible hours (less so during the semester but still better than nearly any other job). My wife operates her business out of the home which means she can go get our son within ten minutes of a phone call. Still we both feel ourselves falling further behind in our work with each passing day.

It is hard for me to imagine how it would be if like most people, we weren't so lucky. Working couples (or single parents) and their kids survive no doubt but it seems far too close to the edge to be a wise way to raise children as a society. Greater parental leave rights for those who want to spend time at home are needed. For those who need to work but can't afford a nanny, far greater attention needs to be paid to improving child care. Subsidized payments (which some states have) for parents, better salaries and affordable training for providers are a start. It's just a start but we need to do something.  

When I first heard about the Bush choice of Harriet Miers for the Supreme Court, I thought it was a head fake. The Bush Administration would let the Democrats bash Miers as unqualified and a Bush crony. Perhaps some Dems would unfavorably compare Miers to John Roberts. Then when the nomination was in trouble, they would pull it and nominate someone supremely qualified and conservative like Michael Luttig figuring that the Democrats did not have the political capital to knock of two nominees in a row.

If this was the strategy, then it has already backfired. Much of the criticism of Miers has come from the right. This includes such unlikely sources as Ann Coulter. The criticisms have been both about Miers' lack of qualifications and her lack of conservative credentials. The Republican base was expecting a reward for five years of steadfast support. Instead they got a cipher.

Now I've come to see the Miers choice as a "screw you" to the Republican base and to the Supreme Court as a whole. I've long maintained that Bush and Rove really don't care about abortion, gays and cloning except at election time. Now Bush does not need to run for reelection and he does not need his base. What he (and Rove and Cheney) do care about is their true base, wealthy individuals and corporations. Therefore they want someone who will be reliably pro-business on the court without provoking huge opposition with their socially conservative views. Miers fits the bill nicely.

Of course there is no reason to think that Miers is the least bit qualified to be a Supreme Court Justice. As the Decembrist noted a while back, having some non judges on the court is not a bad thing. Thurgood Marshall, Earl Warren, and William Rehnquist were all non-judges who did ok as Supreme Court justices. But they were all supremely qualified to sit on the bench with distinguished careers in politics or as advocates before the Supreme Court. Miers fits none of these qualifications.

If the conservatives rally around Miers, this will leave Democrats with a dilemma. Clearly Miers does not belong on the court but is she better or worse than the alternatives? Hopefully the hearings will provide an answer to this question. In the mean time however (and perhaps for longer) Democrats should keep their mouths shut and follow Harry Reid's lead. It is not often in Washington that the Republicans engage in the circular firing squad maneuver. Democrats should stand by and watch to see if the conservatives bring down Miers and use the time to make up their minds about what to do if she is left battered but standing. By then, there might be Karl Rove indictments and more bad news for the Bushies and any Supreme Court fight might be easier to win.  

After all the excitement of the season, particularly in the American League, we ended up with six of the eight teams that were in the playoffs last year are back there again this year. The sense of déjà vu may only increase after this week as the predictions below detail.

In some ways picking a playoff series in baseball is harder than picking the regular season. The baseball season, being so long, usually results in the best teams making the playoffs. Playoff series are much more crapshoots. For example lets say that the Cardinals (the best team in baseball) played the Royals (the worst team in baseball) in a five game series. Even if St. Louis has an 80% chance of winning each game, Kansas City would still win roughly 1 in 4 five game series. Obviously the teams in the playoffs are much more closely matched than the Cardinals and the Royals. This means that factors such as managerial decisions, clutch hitting, home field advantage, and most importantly luck play a role in who wins a playoff series. This is a long way of saying, don't hold me to these picks.

New York vs. Los Angeles/Anaheim

These two teams may be the most evenly matched in this round. The Yankees have a big advantage in hitting while the Angels have an advantage in starting pitching on days when Randy Johnson doesn't start. The Angels have a great bullpen but Tom Gordon and Mariano Rivera give the Yankees a shot in every game. The Yankees may regret not getting the fifth game at home but I will stick with my home team which has shown incredible resilience this year. Yanks in 5.

Boston vs. White Sox

The White Sox are probably the worst of the four teams in the AL playoffs which makes Boston the favorites here. That said, the White Sox are well tailored for a short series with excellent starting pitching. The problem for Chicago is that their best pitcher over the past three months has been Jose Contreras. Any Yankee fan remembers how Contreras fares against the Red Sox. Once he sees Big Papi and Manny in the batters box, I fear that the old Contreras will come back. Red Sox in 4.

St. Louis vs. San Diego

St. Louis got a nice break here. They have been playing badly since clinching a playoff spot and this series allows them to get their groove back against a team that has no business being in the playoffs. St. Louis no longer looks as invulnerable as they did a month ago and a very talented team may be able to exploit that. San Diego is not a very talented team. St. Louis in 3.

Atlanta vs. Houston

I've gone through various stages with the Braves. When they first emerged, in 1991, I thought they were great and rooted for them for a few years. I got tired of them by the mid 1990s and started to hope that they would eventually fade. About three years ago I started to marvel at the mastery of Schuerholz, Cox, and Mazzone at engineering a historic 14 straight division titles and feeling sorry that they would in part be remembered for only winning one World Series. Unfortunately that won't change this year as Houston is even better tailored for a short series than the White Sox. I don't see Atlanta winning three games against Petitte, Clemens, Oswalt and Petitte again. Houston in 5

Robert Kaplan is a frequent contributor to the Atlantic and a fairly prolific book writer. I just finished his "Eastward to Tartary" a book he wrote from 1999-2000 detailing his travels in the eastern Balkans, Middle East and the western Caucasus. He portrays life in about ten countries and tries to draw generalizations from his observations.

Kaplan is a realpolitik conservative and this clearly influences his conclusions. While the generalizations he draws are of dubious value, I would still heartily recommend the book. Kaplan has a deep knowledge of history and more importantly, is clearly willing to spend time in obscure but important parts of the world that most journalists ignore (and possibly couldn't find on a map).

It is in these discussions of more obscure countries that Eastward to Tartary is strongest. The first part details Bulgaria and Romania, two of the countries that were behind the Iron Curtain, but receive scant western interest. The third and final part of the book looks at Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkmenistan, and Armenia, all formerly parts of the Soviet Union. This last part was my favorite as I know precious little about these countries and learned a tremendous amount.

The middle part of the book covers the Middle East, including Turkey. Whether it is Kaplan's political bias or the fact that we know so much more about these countries (Israel, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon) this portion of the book was the least informative. It also is somewhat dated, having been written before the second infitada and the recent tumult in Lebanon. I would have preferred that Kaplan have skipped this area and headed further east to Kazakhstan, Uzbekstan, and Krygyzstan. Still he provides a tremendous service to readers by going as far as he does go in Eastward to Tartary so I'm happy to cut him some slack.