The Power and the Money

The southern problem

  Some commentators, like Bill Maher, have been worrying over the fact that the Democrats have lost the self-identified "white" vote since the 1964 election.  Barack Obama did better than most, they say, but he still didn't win it.  And that, they believe, is a problem.

Now, I don't understand why it's a problem.  But let's put that aside for a moment.  Do the Democrats have a problem with self-identified whites in presidential elections?

I punched up the exit poll data to find out.  And what did I discover?  The following:

Share of the white vote:
                                             Obama    McCain
Former confederate states:       31%       68%
Other states:                            50%       49%
2004 blue states:                      52%       47%

To be clear, these are not arithmetical averages across states.  They are the share of self-identified "white" people who stated that they voted for each of the major candidates for the synthetic jurisdictions listed on the left.

The Congressional results aren't broken down as easily, but considering as the Democrats won 56% of the Congressional vote versus 52% of the presidential one, then I suspect that their share of the "white" vote was even higher. 

Question to readers:  is it a problem that southern whites really don't like Democrats? 

This land is my land, this land is your land

 Where have I been?  Well, I've been travelling a lot lately.  An interesting combination of academic or personal and election work.  Conference in Miami?  Chance to lobby your relatives' state representative to pressure Governor Crist into extending early voting hours!  Paper presentation in Cleveland?  Chance to knock on doors.  Got to go to a family gathering in Fort Lauderdale?  Opportunity to talk to a small business organization about what a Democratic administration means for them.  

And so, I am now in North Carolina.  Today I discussed HSBC's purchase of Banistmo and the future of the Panamanian banking industry with an anonymous banking executive in Charlotte.  Tomorrow I go off the clock, and work to get Barack Obama elected the next president of the United States.  

I've seen a bit in my travels.  Watch this space.

Reposted from a parallel universe

  A casino, a liquor store, a Bureau of Indian Affairs office, a corrupt judge, a BATF operation gone way wrong, and a bewildered FBI investigator trying to understand how the high price of Coca-Cola fits into the other strange goings-on in San Cristobal County ...

“In syncretistic religions, Scully, the attributes of one religious figure,” Mulder taps a case containing a weeping St. Catherine, “are given to another. In this case, John the Baptist’s connections with water: rivers, dunking ...”

“Baptism?”

“... made him the prime candidate to represent Chac, the Mayan water god.”

“I see. Like a mid-season replacement.”

Mulder glowers. “Now, traditionally, fermented corn mash was used as the sacrament in Mayan ritual, mixed with some magic herbs. A little binge, a little purge, and soon you're seeing visions.”

Scully looks around at the vaguely Catholic ornamentation encrusting the church. “I can’t imagine why.”

“The Spanish must have stopped the magic mushroom part of the ceremony, but you still had the folk belief that to receive the numinous, you had to expel the profane. Hence the burping contest we saw at Mass.”

“And that’s where the Coca-Cola comes in.”

“Yeah. What a racket. No wonder El Jefe owns the bottling plant.”  Mulder looks up at a garish mural, Salome being presented with the martyred St. John’s head. Not too many redheads in Spanish colonial religious art.

Argentina’s inexplicable pension nationalization

 I’ve been asked to discuss what's going on in Argentina.  So what’s going on in Argentina?  The short answer seems to be simple:  President Fernández just made a huge political mistake.  She’s nationalized the pension accounts funded by mandatory contributions in a most unwise fashion for a rather unnecessary reason, and probably sealed her political doom in the process. 

Hat tip:  Leticia Arroyo Abad. 

There are two ironies.  The bigger one I’ve already mentioned:  AFAICT, it’s bad politics, rather than just bad economics.  The smaller personal irony is that I am not a fan in general of “privatized” pension schemes in general (although they can, if designed right, increase savings) and I am certainly not a fan of the Argentine scheme in particular, yet I find myself thinking that ending the scheme the way the government wants to do it is simply insane.

And the weirdest thing is that it seems politically insane.  Weren’t the Kirchners supposed to be excellent politicos? 

As often, though, it gets a little complicated.  And so, more below the fold.

A ditch not dug

In 1911, U.S.-Latin American relations almost took a dramatic turn for the different.

In October of that year, the head of the Panama Canal Zone's civil administration, Maurice Thatcher, told a U.S. Senate committee, “We must have courts ...  I would like to see an American civil population here ... These Americans would come here to live, make their homes here, and they would prefer to live under the dominion of the American government, under American laws.” 

George Goethals, the rather un-Brooklyn-like Brooklynite in charge of construction thought differently.  “Introduce the franchise, and we’d go to pieces.”  The Taft administration agreed with Goethals.  The Canal Zone was not to receive elected government, civil courts, or even private property.  The Zonians remained a population of transients.  (Vocal, obnoxious, and slightly-crazy transients, but transients.)

But what if Thatcher had won the argument?  The Zonians would have owned farms and businesses.  They would set their own tax rates.  They would elect their governor.  The strange monopoly that the federal government held over ancilliary businesses would not last.  The Zonians would not all work for the federal government.  They would be a settled population, certainly larger than the actual Canal Zone population, which bounced around 50,000 in the 1950s and '60s.  And it is hard to imagine them lacking a non-voting representative in Congress.

Under such circumstances, could Congress have agreed to give the Canal Zone back to Panama?