Joel E Lewis

Charlie’s Chance

2010-03-13T18:35:25Z

Charlie Crist, the sitting Governor of Florida is in the senate primary race of his life against up-and-comer Marco Rubio. 538 has some excellent analysis on his options from here on it. They suggest his best chance to win is to run for the Senate as an independant candidate, disavowing party polarization and the crazy right wing:

Probability of success. Decent; two polls have tested this and found, essentially, a three-way tie between Crist, Rubio and Meek. There are some additional structural disadvantages that Crist would face: it's tougher to raise money as an independent, for instance. Some bad narrative might also develop around the fact that he was a flip-flopper and/or that he had backed down from Rubio. If I were advising Crist, I’d tell him to really embrace the independent label if he made the switch: do a lot of TV, criticize the polarization in the country, criticize the extremism in the Republican Party, say you won’t caucus with either party if you get elected to the Senate, etc. etc. This would be a message mostly targeted to center-left voters, which is where the swing votes would be in a three-way election since Rubio would still presumably clean up with Republicans.

via FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: Charlie’s Sorry Choices.

Big swing state: Check. Opportunity in the Center: Check. Established politician with record of success: check. Charlie has a chance to make a big splash on the national stage, setting up an independent run at the presidency. Best of all, it’s might actually happen because it might just be his best shot. He’s not the perfect candidate, but who is?

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Washington Parties

2010-03-01T16:47:03Z

The NYTimes has an article about the canceling of a old school Washington social scene column, with some interesting insight into how the way our leaders interact has changed and polarized over the last 50 years:

…The Washington that Ms. Quinn covers, one governed by convivial elites who battle by day and clink glasses at night, no longer exists. In the old paradigm, people with different points of view would assemble in various salons of Georgetown and set aside their differences over an Old Fashioned before the coq au vin was even served.

Now the butter knife has been replaced by a machete. People with opposing political points of view are less likely to eat with the loyal opposition at night than to try to dine on them in a quick hit on MSNBC or Fox News. And even once that is accomplished, there is the endless peering into the BlackBerry to observe the day trading in political capital that goes on in blogs, on Twitter and in e-mail newsletters.

via The Media Equation – Sally Quinn’s Column on Social Graces Dies for Lack of Them – NYTimes.com.

This is a little bit of a chicken and an egg debate, but I would guess that politics polarized and anti-establishment, outsider street cred got important for incumbents first, killing what collegiality existed. Now, the social system probably just reinforces those changes by providing less opportunity and incentive for politicians to get friendly with each other.

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Estate Tax and Meritocracy

2010-02-27T15:06:16Z

From a research paper on international management practices and their effect on firm success:

One interesting group are the family firms, defined in our research as firms owned by the descendants of the founder… Those that are family owned and family managed (“Family, Family CEO”) have a large tail of badly managed firms, while the family owned but externally managed (“Family, External CEO”) look very similar to dispersed shareholders [are managed better]. The reason appears to be that… the eldest son becomes chief executive officer, regardless of talent considerations. Many governments around the world also provide strong tax subsidies for family firms; for example, the United Kingdom has many more family-run and -owned firms than the United States and Germany, which is likely to be related to the estate tax exemption for inherited business assets in the United Kingdom. [Emphasis added]

Via “Why Do Management Practices Differ Across Firms and Countries?”

I am a supporter of the estate tax from a meritocracy standpoint (it acts as a partial reset – you can’t have generations of a family sit back and enjoy the success of one generation). Bill Gates and Warren Buffet are also outspoken fans of estate taxes for the same reason; they have willed the bulk of their wealth to charity. This paper suggests beyond the meritocracy benefits, the estate tax actually makes business better/stronger, by encouraging the rise of talented management, whether from inside or outside of the firm.

The paper is full of examples and insights like above, showing how government policy shapes the economic efficiency of corporations. The next most interesting section compared the rigidity of labor laws in a country to the effectiveness of its managers. It’s well worth a skim at the least.

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Throw Out Your Management Textbook

R Stands For Retiree

2010-02-24T03:16:14Z

The Republican base is being supplemented by older generations shifting away from the Democrats, which might have some interesting ramifications for republican policy:

In a way, these figures should make small-government conservatives a lot more nervous than they make partisan Republicans. After all, you can win an awful lot of elections just by mobilizing the over-65 constituency — they’re well-informed, they turn out to vote, and there are more of them every day. But the easiest way to do it, as the Democrats proved for years and years and years, is to defend Medicare and Social Security like McAuliffe at Bastogne. This means that while the energy of activists may be pushing the Republicans to the right on size-of-government issues, the concerns of their central constituency could end up pulling them inexorably leftward on entitlements. (There’s a reason that even South Carolina’s Jim DeMint, in the midst of a CPAC stemwinder, paused to allow that one of the things government “has” to do is “keep our promises to our seniors.”)

via The Party of AARP – Ross Douthat Blog – NYTimes.com.

I had a different read of the situation (but my intuition about the aging base seems right.

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A Look Inside the Tea Party

Focus on the Big Slice

2010-02-23T23:52:45Z

FiveThirtyEight makes a good point:

4.) I’m surprised how unimportant estate and gift taxes are to the overall scheme of things. Even before the generous estate tax credit of the last few years (essentially exempting estates worth less than $3.5 million), estate and gift taxes are remarkably unimportant from a total revenues perspective. It’s obvious they serve another purpose such as the theoretical prevention of dynastic wealth transfer.

via FiveThirtyEight: Politics Done Right: An In-Depth Look At the Federal Budget.

We spend an awful lot of time debating about the smallest parts of the budget. Instead of talking about medicare and social security, we debate foreign aid and the “Death tax”. Most Americans think Foreign Aid is our largest expenditure, but it doesn’t even warrant its own mention. Earmarks also get a lot of attention, but they are only about $20B out of a $3 trillion dollar budget.

We should be spending our time solving our big problems: Social Security, Medicare, Safety Net Programs, and Interest make up 60% of our spending. Controlling social security and medicare spending and then putting in place a plan to control our deficts and debt are the budgetary priorities we should focus in on and fix.

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Just Enough to Get By

2010-02-24T00:00:09Z

How Moderates think:

Like Mr. Brown, Ms. Snowe said she did not think the measure went far enough, and she also protested the Democratic decision to bar any Republican amendments. But the senator, who was particularly supportive of some business-oriented provisions in the measure, said those concerns were outweighed by the need to show Americans that Congress was acting. [Emphasis added]

via In Passage of Jobs Measure, a Glimpse of Bipartisanship – NYTimes.com.

So Olympia doesn’t think this legislation is good, but is going to vote for it anyway just to show that congress still does stuff now and then. Really good problem solving Congress, really good. No wonder your work product always shows such attention to detail and quality.

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Imaginationland and Intellectual Property

2010-02-20T15:50:16Z

Imagine a world where when you leave a job, instead of telling you to pack your desk, they tell you to:

… deposit your ideas at the door before passing through the brain scanner to make sure you aren’t taking any ideas with you. And don’t forget to leave any thoughts you brought with you from home this morning; they are now company property.

via Barbie, Bratz, and the Employee Brain Battle – Bloomberg.com.

For those not in the know, the creator of the very popular Bratz doll thought up the idea while working at Mattel (producers of Barbie). At the time, she was under an employment contract that made any ideas she had property of Mattel. As an aspiring entrepreneur who has signed a similar (though more limited) contract myself, the idea is scary. In fact, the fight between employer and employee for intellectual property might be the legal battle of our time.

Why innovate if your company will take it from you? In this case, some manager at Mattel didn’t see the potential of the doll, the creator believed in it so took the risk of starting her own firm and bringing the product to market. Now that it’s a success, Mattel wants back in? In this future, to be innovative you will you need to avoid the corporate world entirely. Why would Mattel want an injunction against a successful product they have the rights to? If the creator took all the risk of realizing the product design and making it a hit, should Mattel get all the credit after the fact? Will the supreme court become involved? This is a case worth watching.

Are we entering a world where our corporations will be allowed to steal our creative product? To attack our imaginations?

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Don’t Get Lost In the Buzz

2010-02-23T23:10:04Z

Good overview on what buzz is, what it isn’t, and what to watch about it. Most perspective shifting part for me:

Q: Could Buzz become bigger than Twitter?

A: It already is:

While we can’t pinpoint an exact number, Twitter has probably around 18-25 million users worldwide. Heck, let’s say there are 30 million to be generous. Gmail has over 38 million uniques in the U.S., and that was back in September 2009. Worldwide, that number is simply larger.

via Google Buzz Has Completely Changed the Game: Here’s How.

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Meet Bruce

2010-02-20T15:36:42Z

Bruce Bartlet is one of the writers of Capital Gains and Games, an excellent policy analysis blog, with writers who can provide great insight from their time as Washington insiders, but always rise above the talking points you hear on TV.

My favorite contributor there is Bruce Bartlet (bio). Bruce is best described as a member of the Reagan White House, who has left and now publicly criticisms the Republican party for its sharp turn right and towards style over substance.

Every time I read one of his articles, I feel like I learn a little something about the issue at hand – and you really can’t ask for more than that.

But if you are only good read him once, read about how Republicans have become increasingly unwilling to compromise, and how that is hurting us.

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Information Tech and the Future of Government

2010-02-20T15:34:20Z

Interesting talk about the technology revolution’s ability to remake government, from the leader of Britain’s Conservative Party.

What really strikes me looking around the world today is that information technology has remade retail and remade media consumption, but there are still huge industries it hasn’t begun to touch – Finance, Health Care, Energy, Education, and Government. Those also happen to be the more complex and heavily regulated industries – coincidence? For examples, compare Kayak.com to Bankrate.com, and searching for answers on turbotax.com to irs.gov (The IRS doesn’t even bother to define the jargon in its answers, so if you are confused about what a term means, you need to consult an expert).

For those budding entrepreneurs out there, think of ways to remake those industries with good information technology, and you might have a winner on your hands.

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