Jon Henke's blog

This is interesting:

• Daily Kos, the biggest political blog of all, has approximately 734,000 visitors/day.
• Hot Air (Ed Morrissey and AllahPundit) has approximately 567,000 visitors/day.

Instapundit isn't doing too bad, either, with his daily traffic up to 376,000/day. The traffic trends of Daily Kos and Hot Air are even more interesting...

Daily Kos

• April '08: 29,262,488 (visits)
• March '09: 23,987,984
• Traffic: -5,274,504

Hot Air

• April '08: 7,616,673 (visits)
• March '09: 17,897,554
• Traffic: +10,280,881

Last month, Simon Owens found that post-election blog traffic declined 58% on the Left, compared to 36% on the Right.

There is no simple explanation for this.  Obviously, the Left's higher baseline and more contentious 2008 primary/election season plays a part.  But I suspect we'll be rediscovering something we had previously learned in the 90's and 00's: the internet is good for insurgencies and opposition.

This exit poll statistic is a candidate for most underreported fact of the 2008 election.

Those who said race was an important factor voted 55 percent to 44 percent in favor of Obama.

So, as Mike Turk had predicted last year, racism was a more common factor among Democrats than Republicans in the 2008 election.

This may explain why the 'racism factor' stories disappeared so quickly after the campaign, replaced (if it was discussed at all) by "race not a factor in election" stories.

Paul Krugman's commentary from 2003, when the deficit was $374 billion.

It has been obvious all along, if you were willing to see it, that the administration's claims to fiscal responsibility have rested on thoroughly cooked books. [...] There's no mystery about why the administration's budget projections have borne so little resemblance to reality: realistic budget numbers would have undermined the case for tax cuts [2009: spending increases & new programs]. So budget analysts were pressured to high-ball estimates of future revenues and low-ball estimates of future expenditures ...

Furthermore, this time huge deficits have emerged [2009: increased] just a few years before the baby boomers start retiring and placing huge demands on Social Security and Medicare. ...

But haven't administration officials said they'll cut the deficit in half by 2008 [2009: 2013]? Yeah, right. I could explain in detail why that claim is nonsense, but in any case, why bother with what these people say? ...

The last defense of the budget deficit is that it helps a depressed economy — to which the answer is "yes, but." ...  And yes, deficits are appropriate as a temporary measure when the economy is depressed — but these deficits aren't temporary ...

Still, do deficits matter? Some economists worry, with good reason, about their long-run effect on economic growth. But I worry most about America's fiscal credibility.

You see, a government that has a reputation for sound finance and honest budgets can get away with running temporary deficits; if it lacks such a reputation, it can't. Right now the U.S. government is running deficits bigger [2009: much, much bigger], as a share of G.D.P., than those that plunged Argentina into crisis. The reason we don't face a comparable crisis is that markets, extrapolating from our responsible past, trust us to get our house in order.

But Mr. Bush [2009: Mr. Obama] shows no inclination to deal with the budget deficit. On the contrary, his administration continues to fudge the numbers and push for ever more tax cuts [2009: spending increases & new programs]. Eventually, markets will notice. And tarnished credibility, along with a much-increased debt, is a problem that Mr. Bush [2009: Mr. Obama] will pass along to other Congresses, other presidents and other generations.

The 2009 deficit is estimated to be $1.7 trillion.  So take Krugman's 2003 criticisms and multiply them by 4.5.  And the long-run deficits are much, much worse, too.

Now, there are legitimate - if unproven - economic arguments that, in the absence of many monetary options, rapid and very temporary fiscal stimulus/deficit spending can be beneficial in reducing the deadweight loss of a potential output shortfall.  But these are not temporary deficits. 

• They are structural - even under the administration's absurdly optimistic economic assumptions, the deficits remain very large. Under the CBO's economic assumptions (pdf), they never go below $658 billion.
• They are permanent - CBO estimates the 2019 deficit at over $1 Trillion (pdf).
• They are driven by entitlements - Entitlements currently amount to about 45% of the federal budget, and that percentage increases dramatically in coming decades.  Yet Obama wants to dramatically expand entitlement spending (e.g., health care).

Republicans irresponsibly ran up enormous deficits during the Bush administration.  Democrats are now doubling down on the disaster.   Republicans and Democrats have played a game of chicken with tax cuts and spending in recent decades.  That's been a major strategic mistake.  Democrats have the advantage, because the majority of long term spending is structural.  When the bill comes due, taxes or inflation will rise dramatically.  For everybody.  At all income levels. There's simply no way around it.

"There are some things we have to do at home to get our house in order. No. 1 is we shouldn't be running up budget deficits." - Barack Obama - May 2006

The Washington Post's Jose Antonio Vargas is doing "a monthly feature that invites five thinkers across the online political and cultural spectrum to grade President Obama's WhiteHouse.gov."  Vargas was kind enough to include me in his panel, along with Craig Newmark (Craigslist), Andrew Rasiej (Personal Democracy Forum), Ellen Miller (Sunlight Foundation) and David Weinberger (Harvard Berkman Center). The first column went up yesterday.  Read the whole thing to see the grades it was given.  

However, in the interests of transparency and because there were a number of important points I wanted to make, I will post the questions from Vargas and my complete answers. (and note that Whitehouse.gov has continued to evolve since I first wrote these comments)

1) In your own words, how would you define transparency? Accessiblity? Engagement?

Transparency: For many politicians, transparency simply means disclosing (a) what they are legally obligated to disclose, and (b) any additional facts that help the politician.   That is important, but it isn't really transparency.   Transparency is about disclosing the process and details.  Authentic transparency is about disclosing that information immediately and automatically, without having to be asked, regardless of whether it helps or hurts the political office.

Accessibility:  Accessibility is simply the degree to which Whitehouse.gov is understandable and navigable.  It is important for users to be able to figure out how to get where and what they want, but it is also important for users to be able to understand what Whitehouse.gov is trying to communicate.  It is both, "Can I find what I want?" and "Do I understand what they want me to do?"

Engagement: Engagement is the difference between brochure-ware (a website that simply talks at you) and community (a website that also listens and involves you in the product).  Engagement at Whitehouse.gov is about bilateral responsiveness between the Obama administration and the community of users, but also about communication within the community of users.   Most importantly, engagement is not simply about giving people a chance to speak and vote, but giving them a chance to choose.

2) In your mind, what's the mission of WhiteHouse.gov?

The mission of Whitehouse.gov should be three-fold:

• Whitehouse.gov should provide citizens with a window into the process and product of government.
• Whitehouse.gov should provide the Obama administration with a platform to communicate thoroughly and quickly.  Rather than simply providing an archive of old news, Whitehouse.gov should be used to respond to and make news.
• Whitehouse.gov should give the public a chance to participate in the process of government and interact with the Obama administration in ways previously only available to a very few people.

3) As it stands, what grade would you give the site?

If I were to grade the site on what it could be, I would give it a D.  It is clean and clear, but impersonal.  The blog is more of a White House PR Feed than what we generally think of as a blog.  Opportunities for interaction are virtually non-existent.  So far, the water looks promising, but you can't swim there.  Yet.

But on the progress they have made so far, I give them a solid B.  There are things they could do better, but I have faith that the brilliant team they have working on the site have their heads and hearts in the right place.  I hope their good intentions and good ideas can overcome the practical problems they will encounter.

The era of the printing press is ending.  The era of Wordpress is beginning.  We are all publishers now.  How can journalism survive?

Clay Shirky concludes that newspapers will die, but journalism will survive through experimentation with various business models.  He's basically correct.  I think the fundamental problem is that the return to scale is disappearing.  When you no longer need a large, granite building on Main Street, a printing press and a massive support structure to do journalism, the organizations who insist on keeping them will have to evolve or die.

So, what comes next?  Clay Shirky and Yochai Benkler both suggest various business models that may emerge (some already are).  I think we'll see the re-emergence of the ideological and partisan press - they're generally better at story-telling, because they have a story to tell - with fewer neutral/objective press organizations which can provide independent mediation for the competing claims of the partisan media organizations.  Utlimately, I think that's positive.  After all, organizations with an ax to grind are the most likely to have the fury needed to turn the wheel

Here are a few approaches I think we'll see...

• Niche Journalism: If the return to scale stops increasing at a much smaller level, then we should see those returns going to expertise, instead.  The specialization may be topical, geographic or ideological/partisan, but 1000 specialists working independently should be able to provide more value than 10 organizations each employing 100 generalists. 
• Indeed, we're already seeing this.  Talking Points Memo is doing ideological niche journalism. Ars Technica, Wired and GigaOM do technology niche journalism.  The Leaderboards at Memeorandum, Techmeme and WeSmirch are full of more good examples.
• Dynamic Journalism: Why are news stories a static product?  We're already seeing Real Time Journalism (as-it-happens reporting that creates a story arc, rather than after-the-fact reporting) from outlets like The Politico and Talking Points Memo.  That will almost certainly expand.   But the blogosphere exists, in part, because people are unsatisfied with the news, so there is room for more dynamic reporting - that is, an organization which covers a story in an almost Wikipedia-like model - updating and correcting a story as it emerges - with a team of editors and reporters collaborating (with input/feedback from the public) to create what amounts to a single "same facts" overview of a broad story.
• Non-profit Journalism: Non-profits may not earn a monetary profit, but monetary profit isn't the only ROI.  Ideological magazines (e.g., National Review, The Nation, Weekly Standard, Reason, Washington Monthly, The American Spectator, The American Prospect, Human Events, Mother Jones, The New Republic) may not earn a profit very often (or at all), but much of their value comes from the exposure and publicity they provide for ideas and information.  That has a great deal of value to many people and organizations, even if that value cannot be monetized.  I expect to see a great deal more funding of journalism by the people and organizations who want that kind of ROI. 

One final note that should concern those of us on the Right: while the Right has used the internet to expand the media criticism it had been doing for many years, the Left has been busy using the internet to build their own media infrastructure.  At this stage in the Wordpress era, the entrepreneurs have come from the Left.  The Right needs new infrastructure and new guards.  That is going to require an investment in these new business models.

There has been an interesting discussion on "the widespread and baseless grants of anonymity by journalists", which shields sources - especially government officials - from being accountable for their allegations.   Glenn Greenwald says this produces "manipulative and distorting effects", including that "there is no accountability whatsoever when they make false or misleading statements."   Journalists who are willing to participate in that game find themselves with better access; journalists who require more accountable sources find themselves cut off.

But Julian Sanchez astutely points out that sources "request “background” or “off the record” status at the beginning of a conversation", so "you don’t know which it is until you hear what they’ve got to say, which often requires agreeing to a source’s terms—at which point you can’t go back on the agreement if they’re just giving you the party line."

The various 'just stop doing it' solutions don't seem likely to help resolve this problem, since (as Alex Massie points out) there are strong incentives for both journalists and sources to continue doing it.

It seems to me there is a much easier solution, though: anonymous sources who knowingly burn a reporter should be burned.

If an anonymous source turns out to have knowingly lied or defrauded the reporter - violating the reporter's confidence and credibility - the reporter should be free to blow the whistle, to expose their identity or their affiliation so that the source, not the news outlet, can be accountable for the fraud.

If a reporter will not blow the whistle on fraudulent sources, they're complicit in the fraud.

Helpfully, this doesn't require endless conference debate and guild approval.  Reporters can just adopt the new rule for sources.  Immediately.  Unilaterally.  Like TechCrunch's recent decision not to accept embargo demands, you can rewrite the rules and force others to honor a rule that makes much more sense.

President Obama has issued a signing statement, contradicting some things he said during the campaign.  But signing statements are just a procedural shortcut past a very serious problem of legislative collusion.  There is a better solution.

President Obama's signing statement...

[A]fter Democrats criticized former President George W. Bush's signing statements, Mr. Obama issued one of his own, declaring five provisions in the spending bill to be unconstitutional and nonbinding...

...would seem to contradict his previous arguments. 

• In a 2007 letter to a constituent, Senator Obama said, "The President can veto a bill or sign it into law, but the Constitution does not grant him authority to determine when he can ignore those he signs." 
• In a 2007 interview, Senator Obama said, "it is a clear abuse of power to use such statements as a license to evade laws that the president does not like", and "I will not use signing statements to nullify or undermine congressional instructions as enacted into law.
• In a 2008 campaign event, when asked, "Do you promise not to use Presidential signage to get your way?", candidate Obama said "Yeah" and added that "We're not going to use signing statements as a way of doing an end-run around Congress."  That was captured on video... 

The issue of signing statements is complicated, and I don't intend to make a blanket pronouncement on the matter here. It comes down to a tension between speed and quality of legislative action: "Congress sometimes includes minor constitutional flaws in important bills that are impractical to veto."

But signing statements do not resolve the important questions of Constitutionality; they simply kick the can down the road.  Signing statements are a procedural shortcut that allow politicians to maintain the omnibus approach to legislation. 

The legislative bundling process sacrifices quality, oversight and accountability in exchange for speed.  This is a very bad collective decision making process.  It is unaccountable and collusive. 

The solution would be an unbundling of legislation.  That is, the legislature should consider and vote on each legislative item separately - each earmark, each rule, each amendment.  While this might seem prohibitively complicated for a massive bill, it need not be.  Line item voting could be accomplished with a simple box-check form submitted at the time of the formal vote, with the final bill composed of the individual items that recieved a majority vote.  This could also simplify the legislative reconciliation process. (NOTE: We should also ask ourselves why we would tolerate a legislative process so complicated that legislators cannot consider each element of a bill)

President Obama has pledged to change the Bush administration's approach to signing statements, but only in degree, not in principle.  That will not improve the government's perverse collective decision making process.   Legislative unbundling could resolve that problem, but that would require accountability and responsibility.  Neither Republicans nor Democrats appear interested in that. 

Bob Herbert peddles one of the Left's favorite myths....

"Working people were not just abandoned by big business and their ideological henchmen in government, they were exploited and humiliated. They were denied the productivity gains that should have rightfully accrued to them. [...] As hard as it may be to believe, the peak income year for the bottom 90 percent of Americans was way back in 1973, when the average income per taxpayer, adjusted for inflation, was $33,000. That was nearly $4,000 higher, Mr. Johnston pointed out, than in 2005."

I addressed many of these "stagnant wages" arguments at TCS Daily in 2006 and at QandO.  I won't repeat those arguments here.  Instead, I'll outsource this dispute to somebody Bob Herbert may know: Paul Krugman.  While acknowledging income inequality, Krugman nevertheless realizes that the "morality play" about stagnant wages and oppressed workers was mostly "a statistical illusion" attributable to poor measurements of inflation that underestimate income gains.

[O]ne thing is now clear: the truth about what is happening in America is more subtle than the simplistic morality play about greedy capitalists and oppressed workers that so many would-be sophisticates accepted only a few months ago. There was little excuse for buying into that simplistic view then; there is no excuse now.

I find it remarkable that Republicans have not done more to pursue better measurements of inflation - CPI may be the best proxy we have for inflation, but it is a very flawed proxy.  What's more, Republicans need to demand a re-consideration of the CPI numbers we currently use to evaluate the past 30+ years. The systematic errors in CPI create the statistical illusion that things are getting worse when that clearly is not true.  Indeed, this is a view that has been supported by economists from Paul Krugman to Alan Greenspan, from Brad DeLong to Ben Bernanke.

A more accurate index of inflation would have two crucial effects.

1. It would reduce our long-term deficit, as it would reduce the growth of entitlement spending.
2. It would destroy the Democrats fundamental economic premise.  Inequality may be growing, but the poor are not, in fact, getting poorer.

This is a case where the science - the experts - are on the side that Republicans ought to take.  Republicans should take advantage of that.  We should not let the "would-be sophisticates" of the world - e.g., Bob Herbert - peddle the morality play about "greedy capitalists and oppressed workers".  There is no excuse, either for that simplistic argument or for Republican inaction at this opportunity to accurately recapture the economic narrative.

Robert Reich...

Republicans have made no secret of their wish to blame Obama for the bad economy, and to stir up as much populist rage against his so-called socialist tendencies as politically possible. History shows how effective demagogic ravings can be when a public is stressed economically. Make no mistake: Angry right-wing populism lurks just below the surface of the terrible American economy, ready to be launched not only at Obama but also at liberals, intellectuals, gays, blacks, Jews, the mainstream media, coastal elites, crypto socialists, and any other potential target of paranoid opportunity.

Really?  First Republicans criticize big government, then...the Holocaust?  Are these the Democratic talking points? I understand Robert Reich's desire to carry movement water, but I would think he would have the integrity to carry better water than this.

The 1994 Republican Revolution was the result of public rejection of Democratic overreach.  In response, Democrats accused Republicans of being "angry" and unreasonable.  (See the Time "Mad as Hell" cover accusing Newt Gingrich of perfecting "the politics of anger". It ran immediately after the 1994 election)   The narrative was very effective for the Democrats.

Between this and recent attacks on, e.g., Rush Limbaugh, it's clear that Democrats are trying to resurrect this "angry" narrative before the 2010 mid-term election in order to delegitimize opposition to Democratic schemes. 

Patrick offered some employment-based benchmarks against which we could judge the stimulus a couple weeks ago.  The Obama administration's GDP predictions offer another useful benchmark.  And the Obama administration is betting things will look great.

President Barack Obama's first budget is based on economic assumptions that are significantly higher than the forecasts of many private economists... [...]  Christina Romer, the head of the president's Council of Economic Advisers, defended the administration's stronger GDP forecast ... She also suggested that many private forecasters may not be adequately taking account of the size of the government support that has been put forward, including the $787 billion economic stimulus bill, the $700 billion financial rescue package which the new budget suggests may be doubled if necessary and the administration's mortgage mitigation effort.  "If there is ever a time when we think policy is going to contribute ... now is the time," she said.

That's a very clear benchmark.  The Obama administration has announced that their policy is going to result in significantly higher GDP growth, and they're putting a testable number on their economic theory.  Here are the numbers, with Obama's stimulus benchmark numbers on the left and those of the independent forecasters on the right. 

2009:  -1.2%   -1.9%

2010:  +3.2%   +2.1%

2011:  +4.0%   +2.9%

2012:  +4.6%   +2.9%

2013:  +4.2%   +2.8%

The independent numbers also assume the stimulus spending, so the Obama administration's higher numbers constitute a prediction that the stimulus package will be more effective than is assumed by independent economists.

That is a testable hypothesis.  We should revisit that question in 2012.