September 2002

Kaus is officially a cheerleader

Kaus is officially a cheerleader and not a journalist

Kaus offers up comments on welfare again and loses any sort of balanced approach. First, welfare caseloads are down. This may or may not be a good sign. One of the features of welfare reform is that states have every incentive to cut-off recipients and so we see an increase in administrative cut-offs. From his link, we don’t have an analysis of what kind of cut-offs are they so whether this is good or not is hard to tell.

Admin cut-offs are for violating rules. Adding to this, caseloads should be dropping since many states are hitting the 5 year time limit–though many are evading this as well.

The second piece of news is also mixed. It is great that black children are moving out of poverty, but what does that mean about other race poverty since overall child poverty is constant? Probably that rural poverty isn’t being improved and that is going to be a serious test of welfare reform. Rural poverty is much harder to target as are rural schools.

Welfare reform did some good things, some bad things (permanent residents) and some things we just don’t understand yet. Kaus seems intent on using every piece of evidence to prove his point. The problem is he is supposed to be a journalist who has some objectivity.

Hack Attack Dick Morris says

Hack Attack

Dick Morris says polling is now unreliable. Actually, it is Dick Morris who is unreliable. Polling is more challenging now than in the past, but Zogby has overcome this by taking care in getting a random, but representative sample. Other pollsters still fall within the margin of error so the whining is, as usual for Morris, what is unreliable. Likely voter models have always created divergence and now we are simply adding another layer of checks to ensure validity. Other pollsters are already following Zogby’s lead.

How to avoid the mistakes

How to avoid the mistakes of your father and find entirely new ways to screw-up

Learning from other people’s mistakes usually means one looks at the mistake, analyze what went wrong and then adjust behavior accordingly. Instead of doing this as a deliberate process, one could also choose to do the oppositve of the previous action and hope. It seems to me that this is what David Broder is describing. He discusses it as a radical departure from the recent past for Republicans. I see it as avenging Daddy without much thought as to the consequences.

Help Wanted: Food Taster to

Help Wanted: Food Taster to protect against fundamentalists

Lincoln Chafee needs a food taster according to John Breaux. Actually, the Rs can’t lose him. If they did, Rhode Island elects a Dem in his place. They ought to have learned to treat him with kid gloves given his threats to defect. You don’t see any spanking Zell around do you?

The compromise seems reasonable with limitations on union protections being primarily served in areas critical to intelligence or other security issue.

The ultimate solution is to install effective oversight. Regardless of the procedures, appropriate documentation solves the problem.