Apparently, politics as usual...

...involves finishing jobs on was elected to do. It just keeps getting more silly in Wasilla. 

Air Canada and Great Customer Service

A quick plug for Air Canada. I fly a fair amount, probably a little more than average. And I am rather forgetful. Indeed, I think I got into academia because it is the only profession that rewards this. Anyways, a few weeks ago I had a series of 6 am flights, meaning that I was bleary-eyed and rundown when I was on the plane. On the second of these flights I left my favourite headphones in the seat back. My parents had bought me a great a noise-canceling set for Christmas that immeasurably improved traveling. I immediately called Air Canada and reported them lost. They said they had nothing on record, which lead me to think another customer was probably now enjoying them. 

Today, I found the headphones in my mailbox. I note that Air Canada paid $11 postage to mail them to me express. This is great customer service. It is surpassed only by the time I left my iPod in the lounge at Pearson and someone at the desk searched for it, found it, and noted the next time I was flying. Boarding that flight, I was called over by someone at the desk to be reminded to pick it up when I landed in Toronto. 

Air Canada is a great airline. It's worth noting. 

How to Help the Poor

Gordon says well a lot of what I think.

Liberty

Watching South Africa

South Africa had an election on Wednesday. We are less than a day away from receiving the final results. I've been following these with great interest, not for the least because this is a crucially important election for the country and the region. 

Three things make this election so important. First, the presidency is likely to go to a man who will wish to change the constitution to his own ends. And we should be concerned about those ends. It was perhaps inevitable that Mbeki would look like a man in an oversized suit, dressed up and playing pretend, after following Mandela. But what a greater decline is marked by the election of Jacob Zuma. Leave aside his rough ways, his polygamy, and his demagoguery. He is a deeply corrupted man. He may be given to the most unhealthy impulses politically. And he has a past that he has not completely squared against the account of history. It likely includes ordering the torture and summary execution of comrades when he was head of the intelligence for the ANC. This is Guantanamo stuff and more. It should disqualify any man from leadership of a great and democratic nation. 

The point should be belaboured. Here, in an article from The Times are some of the things which the Motsuenyane Commission claimed occurred under Zuma's watch. 

Detainees were made to crawl through colonies of red ants with pig fat rubbed into their skin. A prisoner had his lips burned by cigarettes and his testicles squeezed with pliers; a detainee was buried up to his neck before being suffocated with a plastic bag; a woman had a guard masturbate over her because she refused to have sex with security officials. A trainee tried to commit suicide after his girlfriend was “taken away”. People were locked up in goods containers, in suffocating conditions. And people simply disappeared.

This election is important because it risks putting the constitution into the hands of a man responsible for such acts. Good democrats and liberals everywhere should hope that his party falls short of a two-thirds majority. 

Second, the election is important because it marks the official arrival of COPE, a breakaway party from the ANC, and the confirmation of the Democratic Alliance as the largest opposition grouping in the country. The future of democratic politics in South Africa likely lies in a union between these two parties; between the moderate instincts of COPE and the principled and liberal positions of the DA. Such a coalition would also signal the triumph of non-racialized politics over the crude and unfortunately all-too-familiar chauvinism of the ANC under Zuma. 

Third, the DA has won the Western Cape outright and will be able to govern without coalition partners. This is a beauty of federalism: an opposition party will have a jurisdiction in which to prove itself worthy of government. South Africa needs an effective opposition, so we should all hope that Helen Zille, the head of the DA and likely the next premier of the Western Cape, is able to govern effectively. 

You should wish for the days of Bob Rae

The Ontario NDP selected a new leader today. Andrea Horwath has been selected on the third ballot and after a speech in which she spoke out against "theives" and "scabs". I am not quite sure who these people are, but she is undoubtedly striking out a position on the left.

I don't know too many New Democrat activists, but I suspect most of them think that striking out a position on the left is the way forward. Indeed, I think Murray Campbell quite probably captures their thinking well when he notes that Howard Hampton "helped re-establish the party after its devastating defeat in the 1995 election." Of course, he did nothing of the sort.

I've posted a helpful graph. It shows the three-party seat share won by each provincial NDP leader in each election since WW2. It's instructive for two reasons. First, it shows how exceptional Rae's victory in 1995 was. The NDP should not be expecting that kind of performance any time soon. But, second, it also shows how exceptional Rae's average performance was, especially stacked against Hampton's. Contra Campbell and many others, Hampton would have done well to equal Rae's worst performance. And he never did. Horwath should hope for the same.

March 6

March 6th is among the most important days of any calendar year. This is a fact. Among the events of this day: 

• In 1912, Roald Amusden returned from the South Pole to announce his successful expedition the prior December. 
• Joseph Nicephore Niepce, the inventor of photography, was born in 1765. 
• Townes Van Zandt, the great Texan songwriter -- listen to Colorado Girl if you wish to break your heart -- was born in 1944.
• Thomas Aquinas died on this day in 1274. 
• And, Paul-Emile Victor, the French explorer who traversed Greenland in 1934, died on this day in 1995.

But, most importantly, it was the day Luke Smilek, my third nephew, was brought, kicking, screaming, and solving second-year calculus problems, into the world. Congratulations to my sister and beau frere, and hello Luke. 

Last night I dreamt I was a music critic

By some measure, at least.

Various and Sundry, vN

Five random thoughts on a terribly nice day in San Diego:

1.) This is terrible news for Zimbabwe. Morgan Tsvangirai has endured imprisonment, beatings, deportation, and a constant threat to his life. He's done so bravely in the face of a thug. And now he has lost his wife. It's a terrible tragedy. Stack another one upon the pile and ask how much more has to happen in Zimbabwe before someone intervenes. 

2.) The voters actually are wrong sometimes. Just not this time. None of this is an indictment on John Tory's character. It's only to say that you only get so many chances in politics and his are up. So, what does Flaherty do? 

3.) There is some talk of an election in Ottawa. This much is clear to me: the official opposition is within its rights and indeed its responsibilities to ask the federal government to account for all the stimulus money it spends, particularly the constituencies in which it is disbursed. For the government to force an election over this is to show contempt for parliamentary oversight. For the opposition to blink in the face of this is to show disregard for their duties. We all know how this should end. Let's hope it does, for once. Update: The jury is out.

4.) This is a wonderful blog post remembering a great man. 

5.) I have been listening to a lot of Leo Kottke lately and trying to play half as well. I particularly recommend Everybody Lies, Buckaroo, and Julie's House. You'll be wiser and wryer. 

David Myles...

...has won an ECMA for best folk recording for his album 'On the Line.' If you don't own it, you should. I've known David for a lot of years and among a really talented roster of friends he stands above the others. 

Personally, I am quite glad this album's been recognized as it will long be associated with a great time in my life. David played at a party Sam and I held just before we left for Africa. And everytime I listened to music on the bike, I started with his track "I Don't Wanna Know." Even today, I can remember listening to the album as we dipped down into a pasture in Ethiopia and then into a line of trees where the fog was so thick we had to pull over and make sure we were still on the way to Addis.

So, buy his album and listen to it during something special and it will stay with you for a long time. 

Yesterday

I swam in the ocean. Today, I finally warmed up.

Death and All His Friends...

Couldn't make this better. Joe Satriani is going to serve Coldplay at the Grammys. And he plans to film it. This is quite a juvenile stunt but I guess it's his right given how clearly they lifted his tune.

Coldplay sans Chris Martin?

It's being reported that Coldplay are recording tracks without lead singer Chris Martin. This has to be a terrible idea. Without his lyrics -- e.g. "How long must I stand, with my head stuck under the sand? -- what are they besides just another Joe Satriani cover band?

It Knocks On and On

The Monkey Cage pointed me to this great paper by Nathan Nunn and Leonard Wantchekon (who for my money is probably one of the most important political scientists in the world). Nunn and Wantchekon show how the effects of having family members extracted for the slave trade lingers on in people today in the form of lower trust in neighbours, family, and local government. This is a compelling and important argument. From the abstract: 

We investigate the historical origins of mistrust within Africa. Combining contemporary household survey data with historic data on slave shipments by ethnic group, we show that individuals whose ancestors were heavily threatened by the slave trade today exhibit less trust in neighbors, family co-ethnics, and their local government. We confirm that the relationship is causal by instrumenting the historic intensity of the slave trade by the historic distance from the coast of the respondent’s ancestors, controlling for the respondent’s current distance from the coast. We undertake a number of falsification exercises, all of which suggest that the necessary exclusion restrictions are likely satisfied. We then show that much of the relationship between the slave trade and an individual’s level of trust today cannot be explained by the slave trade’s effect on factors external to the individual, such as domestic institutions or the legal environment. Instead, the evidence shows that a significant portion of the effects of the slave trade work through vertically transmitted factors that are internal to the individual, such as cultural norms of behavior, beliefs and values.

You can read the whole paper here. It's a great example of good political science: it is empirically rigorous, takes the question of causation seriously, incorporates elements of culture, and is morally engaged. 

Burning down the House

My old house in Sackville, NB burnt down Sunday. There is a video here. It was a grand old place. I had a room on the side one year and then the big room at the front for two years. We had great guys above us and even better ladies below. And now it's a big pile of ash, I guess. Things come, things go, but this one stings a little.

In other news, I am taking a faculty job at the UofT beginning January 1, 2010.

Basic Elements

My great friend, Maskull Lasserre, is a noisemaker in this week's Montreal Mirror. You can read about his work here. He is a sculptor who fashions pieces from the simplest elements. He calls them artifacts of some time and place. I've always thought of them as snapshots of, if not his mind, then at least his curiosity. His work is worth a good and long look. And if you're ever looking for a partner in adventure he can handle a canoe and a hatchet like no other. 

Working in between heartbeats

Willard Wigan thinks he may be the most patient man on earth. I agree. Wigan creates sculptures in the eye of a needle. It bears repeating: in the eye of a needle. His work is so small and delicate that he can only work between heartbeats, lest he pulse destroy a creation. You can read about him here and here. Or you can watch the great report here. His interview is absolutely touching.

Arthur Spirling...

is now one step closer to answering the question of who would win a fight between a bear and a shark, provided he can get some data on fights between bears and lions. All you need to know is here.

A Good and Full Year

This has been, I am sure, the most full year of my life. I’ve written more, done more, gained and lost more than in any of my previous 29 years.

This was the year that I completed and defended my PhD; the year I rode my motorcycle from the top to the bottom of Africa. The year I began my professional life as an academic and the first year I entered the academic job market with success. It is the year when I took up new collaborations and greatly expanded my academic interests. For all of these things, it marks perhaps the luckiest year in my life.

This is the year when I lost, for the first time, a close family member. It also turned out to be the year that I said goodbye to two good friends, not because of death but because of circumstance, because of matters of the heart, that great “maze of love and fear”, as Josh Ritter has it put.

This year breaks cleanly into four pieces, like a vase dropped square on the edge of its base. Each piece was distinct, with its own rhythms, routines, and logic and joys. The first piece, from January to April, was spent completing my dissertation. I had received a SSHRC post-doctoral fellowship and it required a submission of my dissertation by April 15th. I can rarely claim that I work tirelessly, but I did during this time. I worked well into the night, often working until 2 am so that I could take the late bus back to the Plateau. This routine was broken only to share a meal with my great housemate, to have friends in for drinks, or to meet a friend downtown. These last meetings were something of a chapter-closing, an almost regular observance marking the end of friendship. This friendship remains one of the great prides of my life and its end my great shame. But I like to think it pushed me to work harder, to make my work my prayer, as my mother so often admonishes me. I submitted my dissertation a few days early and celebrated that night at my apartment with champagne and great friends. And then we closed out Pied de Cochon. With this, a great period in my life, and some of the people central to it, seemed to walk off and out of sight.

The next piece of my year was spent at my parents’ home in North Bay. I spent most days in my father’s garage preparing two motorcycles for our trip to Africa, or up at the local university giving a course in European government. I spent many afternoons with my niece and nephew, or enjoying my mother’s company. I spent many of the nights in local bars and restaurants with an old friend, reliving our high school years, enjoying the present, and avoiding talk of the future. All of this happened alongside the same lake I now overlook. This beautiful place was where I privately contemplated my move out West and the journey Sam and I would make across Africa. This chapter closed when I returned to Montreal to defend my dissertation and celebrated with a wonderful dinner with good friends and old professors.

A week after defending my dissertation, Sam and I hosted a send-off party at an old dive of a bar down the street from my old apartment. Our great friend, David Myles, wowed us all. I boarded a plane the next day for London and then Manchester. I attended a great conference and then left for London. I spent a day with friends before boarding a place for Cairo. I met Sam in the Cairo airport a few hours after landing and began the greatest adventure of my life.

I cannot here do justice to the great journey Sam and I took. Ours was not more impressive than the trips of many others, including those we met along the way. But it is enough to say that spending 45 days trying to make it from Cairo to Cape Town, to survive the heat in Sudan, the rains in Ethiopia, the bandits in Kenya, and then the clock to Cape Town, and to do it alongside a great friend, and to come out the other end in one piece is one of the great prides in my life. I shall write more at another time, just as I’ve written a fair bit here.

This third piece ran hard into the fourth. I flew from Cape Town to London on a Monday, and then to Montreal on a Tuesday. I had a dinner that night with old friends. On Wednesday, I flew overnight to Stockholm where I presented some of the research Daniel Rubenson and I completed earlier in the year. That I am routinely given the chance to travel to talk about my academic work is one of the great privileges of my life, even when I do it with a weather-beaten face, a dirty beard, and a tardy arrival. I then flew from Stockholm to Vancouver, spent a jetlagged night in the home of Sam’s parents, and then arrived at UBC the next day to begin the next stage of my life.

The fourth piece of life occurred in Green College, in the department of political science at UBC, in San Diego, and on more flights than I care to remember. I moved into Green, a graduate college, because I wanted to live among other academics, because I wanted to have interesting friends, and because I wanted someone to take care of the parts of my life I let slide when I am working. This has been a success on all accounts. I spent many of my nights in the pleasurable company of these friends, just as I spent many of my days in the department, enjoying the wisdom of older colleagues, the great insight of younger colleagues, and the pleasure of great office mates. That I would also spend a month of this period in San Diego working with James Fowler, most often overlooking the canyon behind his fine house, most nearly completes this great chapter. But there is more. I traveled a lot, giving talks at my alma mater, at McGill, and at Laurer. And I gave job talks in what was a most successful (and I must say fortuitous, lucky, surprising, and on and on) foray onto the academic job market. And, on top of all of this, I made a great friend of unusual kindness and beauty. That I lost her too in that great maze is my only regret of this period. It is a great one, but it stands alone.

It has been a good and full year. And I am a lucky man. I wish only the same for next year, for myself and for you.

Here's a Canadian we can all be proud of...

Well done, sir. This is one of the few times when trying is just as good as succeeding. 

If I were Michael Ignatieff...

I would be thinking hard about two things: 

1.) How I could have an extended honeymoon because the NDP will be loathe to criticize as long as the coalition was still an ongoing concern. This requires that Ignatieff keep the coalition at least breathing. And that he not criticize Jack Layton too much. But it also requires that he find some set of proposals which are publicly popular, anathema to the NDP, and not supported by Stephen Harper. This is difficult, but not impossible. If it can be achieved than Ignatieff can have grounds for arguing that a coalition may be unworkable.

2.) Whether I could form a government alone without giving the NDP any cabinet seats. I suspect this has been considered among his strategists. I will only note that single-party governments have been formed in other countries by parties with less than the 25% of the seats in Parliament. It's tough, but it's doable. 

That said, the smartest course of action is likely scrapping this whole coalition idea in January, reaching some compromise with the PM, and rebuilding the party for a year before forcing an election. If the opposition parties are correct that the PM is leading the country to hell in a handbasket then they'll have no problem assuming power in a year. 

Perhaps a post later on how I would think about the task of rebuilding. A preview: it's not some 308 seat strategy. 

Ten thoughts on a coalition government in Canada

• One, coalition governments do not last as long as single-party minorities, on average. Controlling for electoral system, population, and degree of democracy, minority coalitions (which this would be as the Bloc would not be in the cabinet), last about 275 days less than single-party minorities. Blais and Ricard and I have a little chapter on this here.
• Two, there is no reason why Dion could not be Prime Minister until a Liberal leadership race concludes. It would be unconventional, but it is not much different then when a leader takes power after running in what is publicly acknowledged as their last election.
• Three, the Tories have survived on Bloc support enough times that they cannot legitimately criticize the Liberals for doing the same.
• Four, coalition governments are extremely rare in Canadian politics. They have never occurred at the national level outside of the wartime. There was a coalition between the Saskatchewan Liberals and NDP in the last ten years. Prior to that, it’s been at least 40 years since a coalition at the provincial level.
• Five, strictly speaking this is only a coalition if the NDP receives cabinet seats.
• Six, what is occurring now is roughly equivalent to the investiture votes that occur in many other countries. Indeed, of the 20 countries considered in Laver and Shepsle’s Multiparty Government, nearly half (9) have investiture votes. In other words, in many other countries it is thought strange to allow a government to propose policy before the house has decided to approve that government.
• Seven, coalitions and occasionally protracted negotiations over government formation are normal in many democracies. That it is abnormal in Canada does not make it undemocratic. It merely makes it exceptional. By my lights the combination of three, six and seven suggests that this is not actually undemocratic. We may not like it, but the government is the cabinet that commands the support of the House. It is not the cabinet made up of members who got the most votes in the last election.
• Eight, it will be very hard for the Tories to now back away from this. More importantly, it will be very tough for the opposition to back away now. They’ve taken one step over the cliff.
• Nine, the Tories have asked for this to a certain degree. You cannot threaten to bankrupt your opponents (however much they may deserve it) and propose economic policy that is out of step with other countries and arguably with what Canadians want/or expect and not expect a challenge. The opposition is merely doing their job. They are mandated with opposing the government and presenting a government in waiting. If the Governor-General decides that they are to have a crack at Government then it is their right. If you don’t like it you can punish them at the time of the next election.
• Ten, if the GG decides to call an election it is her prerogative. And it won’t be a waste of money!

Giving Thanks

I am in San Diego today celebrating American Thanksgiving. I've been here for most of the last month working with James Fowler, not to mention living at his house and getting to know his great family. It's been a great month in the middle of a great fall. In short, I cannot imagine my professional life going much better than it is right now. I've great reason to be thankful and it's well worth saying.

That is all. Though I will most certainly return soon with a post on changes to campaign finance in Canada.

The election was not a waste of money

I think people think it's clever to say that this election was a waste of money. Rick Mercer banged on about it last night and Peter Mansbridge even agreed. I remember Joe Clark making a similar claim in the 2000 debates, complaining that Chretien had wasted money on an election because he wanted to stave off Paul Martin.

The idea, as far as I can tell it, is that if an election ends with a Parliament similar to the previous Parliament, then we ought not to have had an election. Or perhaps we should just have delayed it. I am not really sure what advocates of this argument actually propose as an alternative. I suppose it's probable that they don't have one.

For me, I think the election was well worth the money. Think of what we've learned: the Green Party is supported by less than one-in-ten Canadians. Voters are not as keen on Stephane Dion (much to my chagrin, I must say) as his backers assumed. Jack Layton's New Democrats are not in fact more popular than the Liberals, they are not poised for a breakthrough in Quebec, and they are now more effective in Alberta than Dion's Liberals. Finally, you can make any number of overtures towards Quebec, but the Bloc is still a formidable party and will capitalize on small mistakes. These are all things which were less clear before the election.

Perhaps most importantly, we've given a leader a fresh mandate to address the economy, provided he can muster the support of other parties.

What's the alternative to this? To let the government last for another year, listen to the bleating about how the Tories are acting without a mandate, and complain about the need to get rid of them? I suppose for those who don't like the outcome of last night's election that this would be preferable. At least then they could keep up the charade of being democrats. But to complain about the cost of the election because you don't like the outcome -- which is what this seems to be -- is to be either a purveyor of easy jokes, a cynic, or lazy. It certainly doesn't make you a democrat. This election was not a waste of money. They never are.

The Paradox of Voting

Don Butler has a great article on the paradox of voting in today's Citizen. You could remove my quotes and I'd still think it was awesome! It's great when a journalist really digs in and figures out a debate.

You can read it here.

Compulsory Voting and Voter Knowledge

My little paper on compulsory voting and knowledge (co-authored with Milner and Hicks) is here. We conducted the experiment in the winter of 2007. That it's in press a year later says a lot about how efficient is the editorial team at the CJPS. It also says something, I should like to think, about the clarity and simplicity of experimental work.

Note: I think the article is gated. Send me an email if you'd like to read it. Here is the abstract:

Does compulsory voting lead to more knowledgeable and engaged citizens? We report the results from a recent experiment measuring such “second-order effects” in a compulsory voting environment. We conducted the experiment during the 2007 Quebec provincial election among 121 students at a Montreal CEGEP. To receive payment, all the students were required to complete two surveys; half were also required to vote. By comparing knowledge and engagement measures between the two groups, we can measure the second-order effects of compulsory voting. We find little or no such effects.

Insiders?

I am sitting in Old Montreal watching the National with the Cynic in Chief. There must be something in the water here, because I am seeing things. Rick Anderson and David Herle are on a segment called "The Insiders". And David Herle is talking about how the end of a campaign is full of people outside the party -- pseudo insiders -- talking about what is happening in the race and how it could be done better. I can only assume that they are both taking time away from the campaign rooms to do this show.

On the Debate(s)

I watched last night's debates with some interest. For the Canadian debate I participated in a great community event with a discussion of the debate at the end. The discussion eventually turned to whether the Green Party should actively throw its support behind the Dion Liberals. It was a great discussion about the moral legitimacy and/or imperative of strategic voting. It's a more muddled question for me now than it was before the conversation, which I take as a sign of a great discussion.

As for the debates themselves, I am not keen to pick a winner or a loser, because I think we all see different things. And it's quite possible for every leader to do well among their respective constituencies and thus discussion of who won and who lost is rather fruitless. Indeed, the most significant recent research on debates suggests that debates do just this. To review the findings of Blais and Perella (two colleagues and friends) consider this abstract:

Almost an entire generation of election survey data was pooled together from the United States and Canada to assess the systemic effects of televised debates. Four questions were posed: (1) Is there a general tendency for evaluations of candidates to improve or deteriorate after a debate? (2) Do evaluations of one candidate negatively correlate with changes in evaluations of opponents? (3) Do debates disadvantage incumbents? (4) Do debates advantage less popular candidates? Using "feeling thermometer" items to measure voter evaluations, four patterns are revealed. First, candidates generally gain points.The supposed mudslinging that characterizes a debate appears not to feed into any notion of cynicism. Instead, voters appear to gain an appreciation for the debaters. Second, a candidate's gain is not earned at the expense of those deemed to have "lost" the match. Third, a debate does not disadvantage an incumbent. A candidate with a record to defend stands about as much chance of benefiting from a debate as a challenger.And fourth, any evaluation gaps before a debate become narrower following a debate. This final effect, which is particularly true of American presidential debates, may reflect a debate's ability to raise awareness of less popular candidates.

Think about that before you prognosticate on who "won" the debate.

Al Walker

My uncle, Al Walker, died Thursday night in Barrie, Ontario. Run through with cancer and unable to go home to die, he instead passed in his sleep. He was 65 years old.

For a small boy, Uncle Al seemed several scores larger than life. He was a towering man with big hands and a huge frame. He was something from an Eisley essay. Into a family of staid customs and Mennonite ancestry came this brandy-drinking, cigarette-smoking, Lincoln-driving salesman. Beneath all this worldliness was a great kindness and generosity.

If I ever knew the story of how he met my Aunt Joan I’ve long forgotten. Indeed, I cannot remember the first time we met. But I remember still their wedding. I remember the moment he waved us into the drive of the cottage where we were staying. The ceremony was held inside another cottage and out of the rain. I remember someone in attendance yelling out for another kiss after their first and everyone applauding the second offering. My mother later told me a story of overhearing Al telling Greg, my cousin and Joan’s son, that he would be the best father to him he could. And so he was.

The obligations of an uncle aren’t clear, so Uncle Al set his own standards. He was kind, giving, and interested. He and my aunt welcomed me into their home for long stays. With great encouragement he listened to my struggle to learn the guitar. And with great patience he listened to me bang on about whatever topic interested me at the time. Indeed, of the great regrets I shall chalk up in my life one is that I did not have occasion -- that I did not make the occasion -- to tell him how much I enjoyed the better part of two summers I spent at his home in my early teenage years. And I shall regret not having the chance to repeat those great visits.

I should hope that my Uncle will exit my life the same way he entered. Not in one instant, but in a series of great memories. That is, that he might continue ghosting around in my memory and thoughts with no clear departure. And that he might remain larger than life.

Sunday Morning Coming Down

A few thoughts on a beautiful Sunday morning on Point Grey.

1.) The NDP is set to announce a child benefit program worth as much as $400 per month per child. The money will be given directly to parents, will not be taxed, and will continue until children are 18. This is highly significant for two reasons. First, it is clearly more generous than the Tory plan, but also much more generous than the proposed child care plan of the Liberal Party. Layton may well have outplayed Dion by waiting to release this policy. While this is enough to push him into the Official Opposition is clearly in doubt, but it is helpful for at least two reasons. One, it appears pragmatic. Second, Dion is likely to atack Layton for a lack of commitment to creating more child care spaces directly. Layton, of course, will turn around and accuse Dion of holding onto old and failed policies. This makes for another distinction between the Liberals and the NDP and it is to the benefit of the New Democrats. For whatever its merits, the Liberal child care policy of creating spaces was never nearly as popular as its advocates suppose.

The second reason why this announcement is so important is because it marks a sea change in policy away from a large state-directed creation of daycare spaces and towards the direct funding of parents. The merits of either system are debatable, but for what it's worth I was always suspicious about the claims of those who wanted to provide state day care, not because I oppose it in principle but because it sounded highly implausible practically. I guess we won't be finding out for a while anyways.

2.) The debates are this Thursday. It's really a toss-up between the American VP debates and the Canadian English debate. I'll be watching the second as I've been invited to a community event to talk about the debates a bit before hand and then moderate some discussion afterwards. Later this week, I'll post my little spiel explaining what I think they are trying to accomplish.

3.) I am similarly speaking at the Killam Foundation dinner at UBC tomorrow night. I was lucky to win a couple of Killams this year and this dinner is to recognize the UBC winners. I'll be talking about my research and, hopefully, demonstrating how the Killam's contribution to research (and Canada) is so significant.

4.) In between these two events I'll be flying home for a funeral. My Uncle Al died on Thursday night. When I can get through putting my memories of him to paper I shall post them as well. We can't avoid these things for long, even if we preface them with three points of useless front matter. In the meantime, I am off into a Sunday morning hoping I'll find something to take "me back to somethin', That I'd lost somehow, somewhere along the way."

On Luck, a Great Week, and Sleepness Nights

I am now at the tired end of a great seven days. Last Monday I took the overnight flight from Vancouver to Toronto and then the hour-long shot to North Bay. There is no flight greater than the one that takes you over Lake Simcoe, Muskoka, the west end of Algonquin, and then over Lake Nipissing and the circle of the Manitou Islands and meets the runway where the hill comes up. There's no flight I enjoy more and no airport I look forward to more.

I spent Tuesday and Wednesday at my parents' house. It was a little more housekeeping and bookkeeping than I like as I had to pack a crate which my father built to be sent to Vancouver. But my parents kindly arranged a great and large party for me to celebrate my breathing return from Africa. It was a wonderful night to catch up with a lot of the people who have been instrumental in my life. And to be reminded of growing up in such a great place.

I flew to Moncton on Wednesday night and slept in Sackville. I spent two days at Mount A giving a couple of lectures and a public talk on altruism and spending preferences. I realized there, too, how lucky I was to have had the experience of living in Sackville and being taught by so many great academics. Their influence still runs through my research. As importantly, I spent an evening playing music with Frank Strain and his crew, and then Loren McGinnis and I finished the night with an early morning run to Amherst. Alas, the Big Stop in Aulac (recently of Old Man Luedecke fame and tribute) is no longer 24 hours. This would be the first of a few 5 am nights.

We spent Friday in Halifax with Andrew Black and his crew. Bed time: 5 am.

Saturday was the third jewel of the trip. David Myles and Nina Corfu got married in Petite Riviere, an incredibly beautiful and genuine town. They don't make towns liek this anymore and they rarely make couples as great as David and Nina. Their's is a great love story and everyone was feeling the vibe. What's more, they had an all-star line-up play their wedding ceremony and then had Garrett Mason play the reception in the firehall. He's Canada's best bluesman and he's worth more than a listen. The particular highlight of the performance were these lyrics:

To the girl on the left with the funky dress on
To the girl on the right with the fishnets on
You can dance the funky bossman all night long.

I don't even know what that means, but it's awesome! The wedding ended with a bonfire by the ocean. Bedtime? 5 am.

Loren and I then spent Sunday at Herman's Island with Blackie. We swam in the ocean (it must have been a kilometer to that bouy!), sat in the hottub, contemplated swinging the golf clubs and ate BBQ. We then raced back to Petite Riviere to catch Old Man Luedecke (who also played David's wedding) before driving overnight to the Moncton airport. Bedtime? Unclear.

So, all of this is to say that at the tailend of string of sleepless nights I am reminded of how lucky I was to grow up in such a great place, to attend such a great institution and to meet such great people. May it always be so.

On the ethnic vote

I note this with great interest. I would also put down a lot of money that the reporter called Blais and he talked to them on background. Someone from the CES must of as there is no cited source for it...

This is what happens...

I guess this is what happens when Larry Bartels finishes with you.

Four thoughts on the election

Without further adieu, demand, or interest, here are my four thoughts on the election:

1.) The Conservatives are obviously desiring a majority, though the ability to fashion this majority is slightly more difficult than the media is making it out to be. It almost certainly requires two things: a much better performance in Quebec than in the previous election (which was already a pretty good showing) AND significant gains in Ontario. Assuming that the Tories' majority comes from gains only in Quebec and Ontario, the party needs a net gain of 46 seats out of the 131 up for grabs. This is not an impossible task, but it's not a simple one. And if it occurs it would signal a rather fundamental shift in the Canadian party system and will certainly doom either the Bloc or Stephane Dion, or both.
2.) We must always remember that the Liberals have an inherent advantage in Canadian elections due to their support among ethnic minorities and Catholics. Read Blais' Presidential Address before you say but. If the Conservatives win it will be because they've finally found a way to break into this group. And I am willing then to call all of my political friends who said it was stupid of Harper to bring up same-sex marriage in the last election. It may have been unsavoury, uncivil, unseemly, whatever, but it certainly wasn't stupid. It was most certainly a part of a longer-term plan to convince these key voting groups that the Conservatives are as much on their side as the Liberals. This is a long-term struggle, but the Tories have proven themselves much more forward-looking than the Liberals in recent years.
3.) Dion should quit talking like the Green Shift is not going to effect anyone negatively. It is. But that's ok. We don't pretend that the cost of cigarette and alcohol taxes are evenly distributed throughout the population. And society is willing to accept them as a necessary tool for addressing externalities. In sum, I liked Dion the Straight Talking Professor more than Dion the Politician, and this policy is the latest example. I also think it plays to his weaknesses and not his strengths.
4.) I am unconvinced Elizabeth May should not be included in the debates. But I am not convinced either. In this case, I can't imagine it would hurt, so why not err on the side of inclusion?

My return

I've returned, to Canada certainly and blogging possibly. Sam and I had a great run from Cairo to Cape Town. It had everything we could have asked for -- incredible scenery, challenging riding, remarkable people -- and then a lot more. You can read about most of it here though some of it must be saved for the book.

I have for a little while been firmly embedded in an office here at the UBC, but not before attending a great conference in Stockholm and spending a night with great friends in Montreal. Now it's down to business on a few projects with other great academics, principal among them Paul Quirk, James Fowler, Dan Rubenson, Arthur Spirling, and Frederick Bastien. I often reflected during the ride on how lucky I am to experience such things. I am equally lucky to work with such great people and I look forward to making the most of it.

I shall get back to it but will blog on the coming election soon.

Various and Sundry

I now have my PhD. I defended last week. This person is mostly responsible for any success I've had. I am long in his debt.

I booked a flight from London to Manchester yesterday under Dr. Loewen. This, of course, is the principal reason I finished a PhD. Let's hope that I get an upgrade to business class and let's hope that no one has a heart attack.

Blogging will be light for the next little while as I head off to ride a motorcycle from Cairo to Cape Town before taking up at UBC in August. You can follow the trip here. If you are inspired by our trip you can take part by making a donation to Spread the Net, a great charity for which we've been fundraising . We've raised $15,000 so far and hope to raise $50,000 with the trip. You can donate here.

Potter Gold

Andrew Potter has a nice and counterintuitive column in this week's Maclean's. Potter argues that negative advertising may not be all bad. He has Warren Kinsella and me in his corner. I am not sure how I would match up in bar fight, but I suspect Warren's a good comrade in arms.

Anyways, it's an article I like, first because of the counterintuitions, but also because Potter cites some of my recent research. The paper is under review, so I won't link to it, but if you'd like a copy email me. In the meantime, here's the abstract:

Some citizens differ in their levels of concern for the supporters of various parties. I demonstrate how such concerns can motivate citizens to vote . I first present a simple formal model which incorporates concern for others and election benefits to explain the decision to vote. By predicting substantial turnout, this model overcomes the “paradox of participation”. I then verify the model empirically. I utilize a series dictator games in an online survey of more than 2000 Canadians to measure the concern of individuals for other partisans. I show how the preferences revealed in these games can predict the decision to vote in the face of several conventional controls. Taken together, the formal model and empirical results generate a more fulsome and satisfactory account of the decision to vote than an explanation which relies solely on duty.

Small pleasures, Vancouver edition

I am sitting in the lounge at Pearson about to hop on the early flight back to North Bay. I flew the red eye from Vancouver.
I am just coming back from the annual meeting of the Canadian Political Science Association. It was a great time. I stayed with Daniel's" family in Vancouver and we spent a good bit of time checking out the city. I look forward to moving there in September. Indeed, I checked out Green and it looks quite agreeable. And I finished up the visit with dinner at Kits beach with the Cynic in Chief.
As importantly, we held our workshop on experimentation and it was a smashing success. I cannot really say I ever read a representative sample of the work read at the CPSA. A lot of it doesn't interest me to begin with and a lot which does seems a bit old. Experimentation is another story, so I was thrilled to spend a day listening to people talk about their projects and then to hear great academics discuss the work. We finished off with a big dinner at Daniel's house after which James Fowler gave a great talk on genetics and politics. Small pleasures, all.

Of Love and Curling

Speaking of great English Canadian music, I think the Weakerthans must be the most clever band in English Canada. I was very taken earlier this spring by "Virtue the Cat Explains Her Depature." I thought it so creatively captured how a cat would think if cats thought like humans (that is to say, as we think they think). Now I am entirely taken by Tournament of Hearts, which is available on their myspace page. The song develops several curling metaphors to describe a man's inability to commit to a woman, culminating in the great chorus:

"Why, why can't I draw right up to what I want to say?"
"Why can't I ever stop where I want to stay?"
I slide right through the day, I'm always throwing hack weight

I've never thrown a stone, but I can still relate. Give it a listen.

So it can't carry on a conversation....

One has to wonder if the Toronto Star thinks that this machine deserves to be stuck in a hole just because it's not good dinner company. The headline says it all, really. Elitists... If it's so boring why did they even write the story?

What's the best album in (English) Canada?

My friend and occasional teacher Charles Blattberg finds it contemptuous how readily English-speaking Canadians will declare something they like to be "the best in Canada" or "Canadian". His basic argument is an elegant one: most of what we refer to as Canadian is in fact English Canadian. So, Sounds Like Canada should be Sounds Like English Canada, etc.

This objection is rooted in Charles' belief that there is an English Canadian nationalism which should be celebrated but should not be held up as definitively Canadian. I don't agree with all aspects of his argument. But it's an argument he makes consistently and passionately and it's well-worth consideration and conversation.

My objections aside, Charles is entirely right about one thing. The Polaris Music Prize should not call itself the prize for the best album in Canada when it has a jury which is probably completely unaware of French music in Quebec and elsewhere and would certainly have no chance of identifying a worthy album recorded in any of the dozens of native languages spoken in Canada. It's ok to choose the best album in English Canada. Just don't say that you're choosing for the whole country when you're manifestly unable to do so.

If you think the Polaris Prize should either change its name or get a more, ahem, Canadian jury, you can write Steve Jordan at steve@polarismusicprize.ca. You can also get his publicists at joanne@indoorrecess.com and/or elanar@sympatico.ca.

Small pleasures, pt 3

In the third post in a continuing though quite intermittent series, I note three new small pleasures:

i) Old Man Luedecke's new album. Chris Luedecke is one of the most creative and original songwriters in Canada today. Aside from his banjo playing -- which is completely anachronistic and thus great -- he's really something of a lyrical master. On his first album he somehow weaved together a story of visiting the Fairview mall and a Footlocker salesmen with the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah, not to mention the heartbreaking bridge in Little Stream of Whiskey. On his new album, Proof of Love, he captures in one line on Send My Troubles Away a great truth: Well, you never know the good in you's been found. As I set to set out for Africa and then to Vancouver, I am reminded by that line alone that we cannot really know when and from where good things are going to come.
ii) The breeze off of Lake Nipissing. It makes long days in the garage pleasurable.
iii) And most importantly, taking the training wheels off my nephew's bike, watching him peddle in a circle in the garage, and then riding all the way down to Champlain Park and back with him, little legs like pistons and a smile as big as the lake.

Make a carbon task costly

There's been much to and fro about Dion's proposal for a carbon tax. Look for it and you'll find it, if you wish.

Here's his idea in a nutshell: he's going to tax heating oil and other carbon emission sources, but not gasoline. Then he's going to cut your income tax. The whole thing is going to be a shift of $15 billion of so.

Here's the consequence: basically no one likes the idea and even less people believe that the tax shift is going to be neutral.

Here's what he should do: propose a carbon tax which is actually going to cost people more if they drive. This would be more effective, more honest, and more believable. And, believe it or not, there's a segment of the population (somewhere between 30% and 40%) who are more likely to support a policy when they are aware that it will cost them something.

I was lucky enough to run some survey experiments on a carbon tax for my dissertation. I may write about them in more detail at some point, or I may continue to embargo the results while they're under review. Either way, two facts stand out: a sizeable amount of the population is willing to pay more in taxes in exchange for a carbon tax. And a sizable portion is also more likely to support the policy when they think it will cost them something.

Herle sees rationality where others see luck

Danistan won't do it, so it falls to me. David Herle has quite the piece in the Toronto Star today. Excerpted from his May piece in Policy Options, Herle lays out a strategy by which Stephane Dion can win the next election. It's a rather simple prescription: first, point out that the Conservatives are far to the right of most Canadians; second, highlight Dion's strength as a different type of leader; third, play up the environment.

I want to leave aside discussion of whether these presumptions are even correct. I suspect at least one of them is wrong, but I've never been asked to run a campaign, so what do I know. I do want to highlight a rather ridiculous paragraph halfway through the article. In justifying his claim that Dion should emphasize his different qualities, Herle argues that Dion won the party leadership because:

Liberals wanted, and sensed that Canadians wanted, something different. They sensed that politics in Canada was ready for a new national challenge, something that transcended the machinations of Ottawa politics. In addition to his passion for the environment, Liberals saw in Dion a man of character and an anti-politician as an antidote to the current mode of our politics. After the sponsorship affair, Canadians needed to believe that the Liberal party was about purpose, not jockeying for partisan advantage.


This is ridiculous. This suggests that delegates calculated, once confronted with the binary choice between Dion and Ignatieff, that Dion was somehow the best man for the job all along. He was a new kind of leader and just what the country ordered. If delegates were so rational at the time, then why did less than one-in-five plump for him in the first place? It is simply not true that delegates selected Dion because he was the best choice of all candidates. No, they selected him because he lucked onto a final ballot in which his opponent was very controversial and far outside the mainstream of his party on three key issues: Quebec, fiscal imbalance, and Afghanistan.

I've written in the past of my admiration for Dion and it abides. But admiration shouldn't ignore the facts. Make no mistake: David Herle is very smart. He is probably one of the sharpest political minds in Canada. But I am left to wonder whether reading rationality and brilliance into luck hasn't impaired his judgment, now and in the past.

Is walking worse for greenhouse gases than driving?

It appears it could be depending on how you get your calories.

These posts at Freakonomics, pointing to a long post calculating the impact of walking versus driving goes some way to turning conventional wisdom on its head. Here's the story: walking requires energy. The fuel for this energy is food. The amount of food required to replenish the calories burnt walking can require more energy and produce more externalities than driving.

I love economics because of its ability to confound conventional wisdom. And no where, perhaps, does conventional wisdom need more confounding than in confronting the very real challenges of climate change.

On the Line

David Myles' new album, On the Line, is to be released in three short weeks. I am sure it's going to be a killer. You can check out a few tracks in advance here.

Bastarache retires

Wayne MacKay is the sensible choice. Let's keep our fingers crossed.

Rent-seeking bloodsuckers

As some of my friends and occassional dinner companions have found out, I don't have the world's most positive view of farmers. Generally, it's a bit of a show, but I do think the evidence is more or less clear that consumers -- especially the poor -- are not well-served by supply management and by the readiness of our politicians to give to farmers subsidies which they do not give to other industries. So, the argument is a bit of put-on because I like being contrarian, and a bit true, because I think the facts are with me. All of that aside, you can be sure I will pull out this article the next time the debate comes up.

It takes no foresight to guess that tobacco demand is going to continue to decline. And it takes no small amount of gumption to complain that "high taxation and anti-smoking policies have had the effect of expropriating their livelihood without compensation." No, all it takes is some incredible romantic sense that one is entitled to compensation because they work in a field as opposed to an office. Never has the term rent-seeking bloodsuckers come so easily to mind.

The Prime Minister, Auschwitz, and Allan Woods Absurd Article

This is an absurd article. Woods never comes out and says it, but he somehow thinks it's wrong that the Prime Minister didn't say anything to reporters after visiting Auschwitz. Instead of giving a speech afterwards, Harper signed a rather eloquent message in a guestbook. As Woods, our intrepid scribe puts it:

That statement was the only clue Canadians have as to what was in Harper's mind as he bore witness to the depravity of Auschwitz, where upward of one million Jews were exterminated, along with more than 100,000 Poles, Gypsies and homosexuals.


What, pray tell, do you think he was thinking? I am guessing, like any human being, that he was overwhelmed by what he saw (indeed, other reports capture his emotional struggle) and wasn't too keen on trying to discuss awful feelings in front of other people. Particularly not someone like Woods. Given the amount of space he's wasted writing on what the Prime Minister didn't say, can you imagine the knots he'd tie if he had said anything?

Woods should take a second to think about whether he is professionally obliged to be critical at every possible opportunity. And then he should do us the favour of not writing about it. No one, I can assure him, will write an article about his silence.

A question/annoyance

Can someone explain to me how the interests of science are served by journals asking all authors to conform to some meaningless and arbitrary document standard for the purposes of review? Why, pray tell, must articles be submitted in 12-point Times New Roman? And why must they be ragged right? And why, for the love of all good and holy, must they be submitted in Word? What about those of us who actually care about offending the eyes of others, have seen the light, and have moved to Latex?

In short, why are authors made to conform to silly and arbitrary standards prior to acceptance and publication, especially when every author already has sufficient incentives to present their work in a clear and professional manner. Sheesh.

UPDATE: As Varnson notes in the comments, it is almost certain that no journal actually uses Word when it comes to setting the journal. Rather, they probably use a typesetting program like latex. You know, the type you're not allowed to submit in in the first place. Sheesh.

Tom Lukiski on Tape

Tom Lukiski is in a world of trouble. The Tory MP was videotaped, seventeen years ago, making extremely disparaging remarks about homosexuals. These comments resurfaced when the NDP opposition in Saskatchewan found the tape in their new opposition offices.

The remarks are vulgar, ignorant, and delivered in a manner which suggests that they did not just come to the top of his head spontaneously and fully-formed. No, he has the swagger of someone who said similar things, several times, probably always to great effect.

Lukiski has issued an apology which includes the claim "They do not reflect the type of person I am. I do not believe in those types of comments."

Whether or not Lukiski is the type of person who still believes this things is precisely the point, I think. Not whether he used to believe those things. I want to phrase this as precisely as possible: the average man, certainly of Lukiski's vintage, viewed homosexuality and homosexuals much differently than most men today do. Much progress has been made towards greater and deserved tolerance in the last 17 years. In fact, I think we can say a near sea-change of opinion has occurred since broad public discussion over same-sex marriage began in earnest in the last four or five years.

I think this is much to the credit of people of a certain age who grew up with views which were ignorant and wrongheaded but widely-held and believed. If we want to make progress towards greater toleration, then we have to be willing to give people the benefit of the doubt and not to play politics with past intolerance.

So, the important question is this: Does Mr Lukiski still hold these views? And, if not, when did he change them? What was the moment at which he cast them aside as useless, incorrect, and uncivil. Maybe he can't define an exact moment, but he could at least try to explain his progression. Provided he does, the matter should be put aside.

I am open to opinions on this, having given my own.

Why Bob Rae's Entry into Parliament Secures Dion's Leadership

There's been some to and froing here and there about whether Rae's entry into Parliament makes Dion's (apparent) leadership woes better or worse. I think the case is pretty clear that things have become better for Dion.

Let's assume five things:

i) Bob Rae would like to be leader as soon as possible.
ii) Michael Ignatieff would like to be leader as soon as possible.
iii) If Dion loses the next election he will be forced out by multiple players.
iv) If Dion is to be forced out before the next election, it will require a much stronger effort then that mounted by one party vice-president, one student council type, and one obscure MP.
v) Such an effort would clearly point to an actively organizing candidate, on the scale of Mulroney contra Clark in 1983, Martin contra Chretien post 2000, or Chretien contra Turner in 1986. A candidate would pay a cost for this.

If you take these as reaonable assumptions, then I think you can back out logically why Dion is now more secure. First, suppose that Ignatieff really puts a push on Dion (which he has not been doing thus far, by my lights). He could perhaps force Dion out, but he too would pay a price for the coup, and this would likely facilitate Rae's rise. Similarly, Rae is now closer to the leadership than he's ever been. But were he to force out Dion, then he would only enable Ignatieff's rise, as he would carry the blame.

Both Rae and Ignatieff, then, would rather wait until after an election (presuming Dion loses) and try their odds in another head-to-head. To make any other move would be to ensure the other's rise.

There is something to this Team of Rivals stuff.

Elections in Zimbabwe

If the logic of political survival sometimes beats one about the head, it also sometimes allows events like this. Zimbabwe is on the cusp of closing a chapter in its history, unquestionably a dark one. If you're inclined, say a prayer that corruption will not win out. If you're not inclined, then just hope. And get ready to share in the joy of Zimbabweans who may be soon rid of Mugabe, that great lost hope.

Choose a Day to Spread the Net

Over at Cairo to the Cape we are selling days of our trip. The idea is simple. If you donate $150 to Spread the Net then we'll designate one day of our trip to you. After the trip is done we'll write up a report of the day for you, include some pictures, and perhaps our maps from that day, or some other momento.

For what it's worth, the day when we ride the pictured road is still available. It's in Northern Kenya. It's going to be so great!

Leo the Lion

One can only imagine this occurred immediately after the cat realized how redundant is its name.

Byelections and Turnout

A point to begin with: we basically know very little about byelections in Canada. If you'd like to see how confused is our common wisdom about what byelections tell us you should read this post at Megapundit. We do not know definitively whether the government is systematically punished in byelections. We don't know when turnout in byelections will be higher or lower than average. And we don't know if byelection winners do better or worse than equivalent candidates in the subsequent elections. It is one of many empirical blind spots in Canadian politics. Fred Bastien and I are trying to shed some light on it in a paper in progress, but I still have no idea about the answer to these questions.

All of that said, I am rather confident that new voter ID laws have absolutely nothing to do with the apparently no turnout in Monday's four federal byelections. First, it is completely unlikely that large numbers of voters knew about these new restrictions and thus abstained from voting. Knowledge sufficient to understand the restrictions would also be sufficient to understand what forms of ID could be used in their place. So it's difficult to believe that new restrictions were anything but a post hoc explanation for some people who stayed home. Second, while there are some stories of people being turned away at the polls, there was clearly not enough of this to drive the decline. If, say, 10% of voters in a riding where refused the right to vote you can be sure you'd have news stories with more definitive sentences than "He's (Charlie Angus) also heard of at least one student being turned away in Vancouver Quadra because of the residency identification rules."

Turnout was quite low in Saskatchewan. In fact, in the 41 byelections since 1990, only five had lower turnout. Then again, turnout in the same riding was six points below the national average in 2006, despite the race being extremely close. The likely culprit of this low turnout is rather obvious, I think: first, byelections never have high turnout because of a lack of attention and interest. Second, turnout is declining everywhere, so we should expect to see it declining in byelections as well. Combined, we should expect lower turnout in byelections going forward.

The bottom line: we certainly don't know that low turnout was the result of new voter identification rules. Making hay with Elections Canada over it is probably a little off the mark.

Thank you for smoking....

I just watched Thank You For Smoking (dissertation be damned) and then read this article on Barrack Obama's dirty habit. It's rather funny. And the movie is just great.

Thank you for smoking....

I just watched Thank You For Smoking (dissertation be damned) and then read this article on Barrack Obama's dirty habit. It's rather funny. And the movie is just great.

Rename Metro Lionel-Groulx Metro Oscar-Peterson

Agreed. And while we're at it perhaps we could rename my building at the UdeM which is also named after the anti-semite priest himself.

More Voter Turnout

There's a short CBC piece on my radio bit here, as well as audio here (for those of you wishing to hear the definition of stammering). I'll post the Herald editorial when it comes across the wire.

UPDATE: Here is the Herald piece. The piece references an experiment I conducted with Henry Milner and Bruce Hicks published first as a working paper by the IRPP and then as a research note in the CJPS.

Voter Turnout and the Alberta Election

I am doing a few short interviews on the CBC morning shows in Calgary and Edmonton tomorrow. The topic, as I understand it, is the record low turnout in the Alberta election last Monday. And, if I have my way, about why this really doesn't matter all that much for the legitimacy of the government. Tune in if you get the chance.

After the long drive – Olympic Symphonium at Casa de Popolo

The boys from The Olympic Symphonium rolled into Montréal on Thursday night to play at Casa de Popolo. Road-weary and pensive, they put on a great set between Tyler Messick’s loud and layered pop and the whimsical and eclectic Share.

The Olympic Symphonium is a trio of prolific maritime players: Kyle Cunjak and Nick Cobham (both of whom also play in Share), and Graeme Walker (of Grand Theft Bus). More a project than a band, each member writes their own tunes and then arranges them with the other players. The visual effect is a game of musical chairs with players trading off instruments and lead vocal between each song, and the remaining two members offering up a mix of whistles, harmonies and backing parts. The sonic result is some cross between Bonnie Prince Billy, Calexico, and doo-wop, all at a whisper.

The OS played a mix of songs off their first album, songs off their upcoming album, and a great cover of “No More Workhorse Blues.” There can be little criticism of this trio’s musicianship. They play sparingly and thoughtfully, and the sound is a sum a little greater than its parts. They do not excite but they do calm and impress. I can’t say that the crowd was totally taken by the act. Their set instead seemed like something of a quiet interlude or respite. A break on the side of the road during a long frantic drive. But maybe that’s what they needed and we wanted.

(The great photo above is by Sarah Brideau. Check out her site for some great work.)

The Impala is a Very Popular Automobile: On the Misunderstood Pleasures of Canoeing

Below is a shortened version of an essay I wrote up after Sam, his father, and our friend Maskull paddled the lower Rupert River last summer. It's cross-posted at Cairo to the Cape.

Our plan was simple. Sam’s father, Dave, would fly in from Vancouver on Tuesday night. I would arrive in Ottawa the next morning. Dave, Maskull and I would spend the day collecting supplies, two canoes, and a rental car. We’d leave Ottawa the next morning for the Rupert River, 900 kilometres north, where we’d take four days to paddle to Rupert Bay and then drive home.

It is a rather delicate matter to rent a car when one intends to strap two canoes to its roof without a proper rack, drive far into Northern Quebec, and then leave the car unattended for four days. First, no car is ideally suited for this. Second, no car rental agency wants to give you a car upon which you are going to mount two canoes. We booked a Chevy Impala, an incredibly pedestrian but flat-roofed car ideal for two canoes. We resolved to say nothing of our intention to load canoes atop the car.

Our first problem was that the agency had no Impalas. Our second was that they did not understand why we were refusing an upgrade to a Grand Prix. Standing at the rental desk, Dave and I pondered over the available cars, compared their virtues in a whispered exchange, and then asked when an Impala might be back. Clearly befuddled by our insistence, the clerk offered up that “The Impala is a very popular automobile. I can understand why you would want it.” The screwed-up skin between her eyebrows suggested she did not understand a thing. Hers was not a look of incredulity but bewilderment. We took a Grand Prix.

All rigged up on the James Bay Highway.

***

The Rupert neither winds nor meanders. It runs a wide line 600 km from Lake Mistassini to Waskaganish, the old Fort Rupert on Rupert Bay, at the bottom of the James Bay. In low season, the river flows at 11,000 cubic feet per second. In high season, it flows at six times the rate and drains more than 40,000 square kilometres. It runs between high banks of scraggly spruce and pine. There is rarely a spot even to pull up a canoe, except those cleared by the Cree who travel this ancient highway.

The Rupert does not “flood its banks” or roar unceasingly down a canyon. Instead, it widens out into lakes for much of its length. The only crashing and running is through a series of narrow passes like the Oatmeal Rapids, a kilometre-long, spine-shattering collection of cascades. It alternates between slow water and probable death.

The bottom of the Oatmeal Rapids. Seen from the James Bay Highway.

The James Bay Highway crosses the river 225 kilometres north of Matagami, itself some 670 kilometres north of Ottawa. The journey begins in the bubbling water at the bottom of the Oatmeal Rapids, where the water spills into a bay and then takes a right turn towards White Beaver Rapids. It is just one hundred kilometres from here to the Bay, but one must still portage seven sets of rapids through muddy trails, alder stands, muskeg, and a moose pond. Or, one has to choose a line, steel nerves and spine, and then shoot the white water. We would do both, at great cost and joy.

***

Our first morning was glorious and cold. We put on extra layers, boiled water for oatmeal and coffee, discussed the day’s challenge and looked over maps. We set out and soon met near disaster.

Landing at the top of the first of the White Beaver rapids, we could not find a portage. Instead, we lugged canoes and gear through thick bush, taking more than an hour to travel less than a quarter mile. We dreaded the mile-long portages ahead, picturing them as day-long fights through the thicket.

Perhaps it was the difficulty of this first portage that compelled Dave and Maskull to run the second set of rapids. As Sam and I landed at the rapids’ head, they shot them. We soon saw a canoe overturned and pinned in a fall. Maskull and Dave stood astride their canoe in the running water. They were, somehow, holding their bags and keeping the canoe from folding over the rock.

The canoe was eventually freed; Maskull and Dave paddled a kinked canoe downstream in search of our food barrel. We were on the first day of a four-day trip, and we’d lost all of our fruit, our food barrel, our hatchet, and a few other sundries.

Sam and I warped our canoe through a rock garden around the rapids. When we met Dave and Maskull at the bottom they’d found the barrel in a bay at the bottom of the rapids. We all changed into the only dry clothes we had left, quickly ate something, and then set out. We still had to go some ninety kilometres to Waskaganish.

Camp in the morning

***

It is not true that the rest of the trip was easy. To the contrary, it involved terribly long portages over some tough ground. On the second day, having left the Cat Rapids late afternoon after a difficult portage, we could not find a camping spot until the Bear Rapids, eventually setting up camp in long grass on a landing in the dark. Where we had contemplated luck and the stars the night before, camped on island in the bay between the second and third of the Fours, on this night we would collapse immediately after dinner. We took no joy in the sound of the waterfall ahead or in the accomplishment of paddling thirty kilometres and portaging five.

The next morning we paddled swiftly to Plum Pudding rapids, two sets of long white water. You avoid the first set by paddling a two-kilometre long braid on the south side of the river. After a short portage, you arrive at the water between the two sets. With some courage and short memory, we chose to shoot the second set. This was our greatest triumph. For two minutes we were voyageurs.

Shooting the Second Set of Plum Pudding

Fifteen kilometres later we arrived at Smoky Hill rapids. The portage counts out more than 5000 paces. It was the most difficult and rewarding portage of the trip. Just thirty kilometres from the Bay, the Cree still use nets to catch white fish at landing the bottom of the Smoky Hill rapids, as they have for five hundred years or more. The also use the landing as a recreation area. We had our greatest night here, finishing our last bottle of wine and eating a terribly good chilli. The locals who watched me swim in the rapids from across the river were the first people we had seen in three days.

The next morning was our last on the river and we took our time. As the river approaches the Bay it widens out and braids around a number of reed islands. We ate in our boats, passing around the last of our bagels and sausage. The water here is not quite brackish, but the change in the landscape must be a result of the ebb and flow of the ocean from Rupert Bay. We had just three sets of rapids - all steep, shallow and rocky – to the bay. We ran them all and then paddled onto Waskaganish.

The camp at Smoky Hill Rapids

***

Formerly Rupert House or Fort Rupert, Waskaganish lies half-way up Rupert Bay, which itself lies at the bottom of James Bay. It was the first fur trading post and store for the Hudson’s Bay Company. The Rupert provided a logical route inland to Quebec, a territory hostile to the HBC in its early days. The town was indeed captured by the French at the end of the 17th century and would not return to the Company’s control until 1776. As the Rupert is a great river soon to be dammed, we thought it would be full of paddlers; we were but the fourth group to travel to Waskaganish that summer.

Waskaganish is the third Cree town that Sam and I have visited, and certainly the most vibrant. This vibrancy and activity had a certain irony about it. When we visited Nemaska a summer before – arriving in the dark on our motorcycles and leaving early the next morning – the town seemed dead. The entire town was celebrating a wedding on a sandy point at the other side of the town, so we only met those who stopped by our campsite to visit.

By contrast, Waskaganish seemed full of people, most of them shuffling towards the lodge overlooking the river. But this was on account of death. When soon learned that the previous Friday two teenagers had drowned on a boat trip from Moosenee. At the same time we landed in Waskaganish, Cree were traveling from the other villages and camps for the funeral.

Maskull and I had volunteered to hitchhike back to the highway to get the car. Under these circumstances we were glad to take our leave. Sam and Dave stayed behind to pack our gear and mill about.

When we returned, we decided we would drive back through the night to Ottawa. With the sun coming up along Route 117 and Chelsea seeming like the calmest place on earth, we returned entirely fatigued and satisfied. We were soon to take our individual departures after dividing up the river maps and sorting out gear.

Arriving in Waskaganish

***

It was not long before I returned to my routine in Montreal. It was the same for Dave, Sam, and Maskull, I think. We exchanged emails in the days that followed, sent around pictures, and tried to put to words the joy of the outdoors and the pleasure of this trip.

I would spend the next weeks trying to explain this joy and pleasure to anyone who asked about our trip. How I relished loading up two bags and a barrel and heading into the bush. How I wanted to run more white water. Even how I relished the well-earned cuts and bruises, and how I felt as though I lived more in the five minutes after Maskull and Dave’s dump then I did in a year of academic work and travel.

I think most asked to be polite, but at least some friends and colleagues asked because they wanted to understand this desire to return, to spend one more night sleeping outside, and to run Plum Pudding one more time. I do not think I could ever explain it fully, in a way that could unknot the skin between their eyes. Canoeing is indeed a very popular sport, and the Impala is indeed a very popular automobile.

With apologies to Will Paterson...

I note that Mount A is featured in this story and York is just filler. May it always be so.

Spread the Net

We've announced over at cairotothecape that we'll be supporting Spread the Net on our trip. Please click through to learn about the cause and to donate if you are so inclined.

Cairo to the Cape

For those of you who don't know (hello three readers!), I am riding my motorcycle from Cairo to Cape Town this summer with my friend Sam. We have a site for the trip up here. Please visit often. It will likely get more action than this page in the coming months.

A Prediction

Hillary Clinton will win no more than 5 more primaries between now and the nominating convention.

Spector contra the RCMP

Wow. Norman Spector is throwing some serious bombs at the RCMP. This guy does not mess around.

Charles in Charts

Charles Franklin has some great graphs for Super Tuesday at Pollster.com. It's always fun (for guys like me) to think about how we can show data in an concise and accurate way, and especially in a manner which easily imparts a lot of information. Now, Franklin's charts have not quite reached the status of this, but they are still pretty awesome. Check out the page above and the associated work at Pollster. It's a great website.

On Fundraising

Elections Canada has just released fourth-quarter financial returns for national political parties. The Conservatives have again outstripped the Liberal Party. The Cons raised just under $5 million from 44,000 contributors. This is an average contribution of something like $110. The Liberals, by contrast, raised just under $2 million from about 14,000 Canadians for an average contribution of $143.

The Conservative fundraising machine is still far superior to the Liberal's; they continue to raise more money in smaller donations. These small donations are the key to success in the post-C-24 world. As donors are quite limited in total annual giving, parties who can raise small amounts of money from regular donors are better off. They can return to these donors when in need rather than having to find altogether new donors. So, the Conservatives appear to maintain the advantage, both in total donations and in the average size of donations.

I should note, however, that it is not all bad for the Liberals. Indeed, comparing this quarter's returns with the previous three quarters suggests that they are getting their act together. In the first quarter of last year the party raised just half a million dollars. They increased that to $1.2 million in the second quarter but it dipped down to just $800,000 in the third quarter. So, their fourth quarter was a big improvement. As importantly, they are increasing the number of donors, from just 4300 in the first quarter to 13,618 this quarter. While they average donation per donor is going up (up 17% from Q1) the number of donations is going up faster (up 311% from Q1). This is the key figure and those slogging away in party headquarters should take some real pride in it.

The Liberal Party still has a long way to go in matching the fundraising capabilities of the Conservatives; an ability which is a result not of wealthy donors but an ability to engage partisans. But they are on the right path. Which is all the more reason for Harper to go to the polls soon.

Altruism and Partisanship

For those who are interested, I've been working up a nice little paper on altruism and support for greater public spending (it is the last of my dissertation papers). The data are drawn from a poll of a few thousand people I was involved with last spring. And the measure of altruism is rather unconventional for a survey. Rather than ask individuals about whether they engage in altruistic acts or have an altruistic orientation, we observe their altruism. Specifically, we gave subjects some sum of expected money and then measured how they share it with an anonymous individual (in behavioural economics parlance this is the dictator game). A couple of results are of note, even though the paper is not ready. First, those who are altruistic are more likely to support greater public spending on public and semi-public goods, even when they are made aware that it comes at a cost to themselves in terms of higher taxes. This goes someway in confirming earlier findings which rely on stated rather than revealed altruism. And it goes some way in confronting the argument that people support public spending because they are self-interested and they want to benefit from programs at the cost of others. Second, and this is the more general finding I wanted to flag, I can find no relationship between partisanship and altruism. Tories, Liberals, and Dippers are, on average, equal in their altruism. What is interesting, though, is that their partisanship still matters for public spending, with Libs and Dips supporting greater public spending and Conservative identifiers supporting less. It's a bit of a puzzle I hope to resolve in the next couple of weeks. As always, thoughts are welcome.

Brad Davis

Brad Davis has died, far too young.

A bright young lawyer, Brad worked as a volunteer on Michael Ignatieff's run for Etobicoke-Lakeshore and then became his director of policy on his leadership campaign. He then followed Ignatieff back to Ottawa before returning to Toronto and the practice of law. It was during Iggy's leadership campaign there that I came to know him. He coyly roped me into writing a memo on equalization (which soon led to a lot more memos). He was remarkably smart and a did a remarkable job marshalling together information and turning it into daring policy.

There is no shortage of words to describe Brad: hard-working, focussed, funny, witty, sarcastic, biting, incisive, determined, stubborn, brilliant. I give you everyone in the most complimentary sense. More importantly, Brad was a father who leaves behind a family. So say a prayer for them and for him, and then go out and do something good and that you believe in.

UPDATE: Jane Taber has a succinct and touching obituary on Brad here.

Kenyan Killings Planned?

This is a terribly sad and worrying article.

Time to strip Guergis of her cabinet post

I am with Dion on this one. Helena Guergis should be made to resign for revealing that Dion and Ignatieff were to visit a provincial reconstruction team while during their visit in Afghanistan. Leave aside Guergis' uncivil claim that it was somehow ironic they were visiting the soliders they apparently don't support. And leave aside too her claim that she doesn't know why it took them so long to go. (Answer: because her department set that as the date for them). And leave aside the assertation that this revelation endangered the lives of Dion and Ignatieff. All of that is rather irrelevant as soon as you consider that Guergis revealed top secret information. This is highly contrary to her obligations as a minister. It also reveals a surprising lack of judgement or seriousness.

If Bob Coates was made to resign for potentially exposing NATO secrets to strippers, then Helena Guergis should be made to resign for actually revealing top secret information to that salivating press corp in Ottawa. And shame on them for even publishing the stuff...

No Torture, No Vote

From the blog of my friend Jim Johnson, I read that the National Review is withholding its endorsement from John McCain. Now, this is not only because he supports the reasonable accommodation of millions of hardworking and taxpaying residents of the US. And it's not only because he opposes tax cuts during war time. No, it's also because he does not support the US waterboarding prisoners.

For those of you who don't know, every reasonable person in the world thinks that waterboarding is a form of torture. Also for those who don't know, the National Review Online is ridiculous and unworthy of your readership. Find it for yourself, if you like.

Sir Edmund Hillary, 88

Sir Edmund Hillary has died. Shed a tear or go climb something high humbly.

On Cynics

I think I would be better at the cynic schtick if I could do it half as well as Dan. The evidence herein.

On Cinema

I saw two great movies last week: I'm Not There and No Country For Old Men. The first is the fictionalization of Bob Dylan's life from the time of his emergence to his motorcycle crash in 1966. Dylan is portrayed by six different characters, none of whom actually go by Dylan's name. The best moments are provided by Cate Blanchett - she captures all of Dylan's posturing, nervousness, deceit and brilliance - and by Jim James and Calexico's rendition of Going to Acapulco. The rest of the movie is merely great.

No Country For Old Men is something different entirely. I did not enjoy a minute of it. I cannot wait to see it again. The brothers Coen have not made their best movie, but they have set a recent standard for faithful adaptation of a novel and for unremitting tension. If you want to get a sense of what happens when a man takes on a task and a landscape bigger then himself, unaware of its danger and sure of his ability, watch this movie and consider how ignoble and plain is the protagonist's end.

That shall likely be it until the New Year, so best of the season to my three readers.

Romney goes half way

Here are excerpts from Mitt Romney's speech tonight. They include nothing on how he justified belonging to and proselytizing for an officially racist organization. I guess he's saving that explanation for the full speech.

If you think I am being hard on Romney, you're wrong. Any man who follows a religion which believed just thirty years ago that blacks lacked souls and denied them the sacrements should be made to explain if he was at least uncomfortable with this doctrine. If his response was that it took a "revelation" to church elders to correct his view, then you have to wonder whether he'll look to similar revelations when he's in the White House.

There should be, of course, no religious test for the presidency. But we should be willing to expect a candidate to explain his adherence to a racist doctrine, just as he should be made to explain whether he believes the commandements of elders in his church take precedence over the US constitution and its laws.

A question for the RCMP Commissioner

What exactly is the purpose of the RCMP going to Poland to look into Robert Dziekanski's "medical history as well as his criminal history in Poland." I can understand the need to investigate the first, indeed it is relevant to figuring out whether he died because of some precondition or because the officers electrocuted* him and then proceeded to kneel on his chest and throat, entirely contrary to the RCMP's own guidelines. But why the second? It must be because police officers can somehow smell a criminal and thus don't have to ask any questions before using lethal force. We know just need to confirm their intuitions.

A criminal history is entirely irrelevant to police action in this case. A man in distress was killed by the RCMP despite posing no lethal threat to them. Whether he was a criminal in Poland or not is irrelevant.

Let's just hope that when the RCMP officers get off the plane and try to clear customs in Warsaw that they don't smell like criminals to the officers there.

In other news related to the RCMP, apparently you can fear for your life even when you have a gun stuck in the nape of someone's neck. Strange.

* Can we stop using Taser as a verb? We have a suitable word already: electrocution.

The genetics of voter turnout

A little more than a year after this, Fowler and Dawes have released another working paper demonstrating a genetic component to the decision to vote. Rather than relying on twin studies, however, this time they have obtained genetic mappings from subjects in a multi-wave, long-term study of adolescents in the United States. The results are extremely interesting, especially because they identify two genes which play a role in the decision to vote, and because these genes interact with religiosity. This at least partially answers the question of why the religious are more likely to vote without relying on an argument about the skills gained through religious observance.

This, I should think, is the future of political science.

My favourite line, by the way, is "Genes are the institutions of the human body."

Is Paul Pritchard a hero?

Hardly. Paul Pritchard, you probably know, is the 25 year old man who filmed Robert Dziekanski being electrocuted and then pinned on the chest and throat by the RCMP. He was one of many witnesses not only to Dziekanski's death, but also his confusion, delerium, panic, fear, breakdown, unravelling, distress, and helplessness.

Let me be entirely clear: Pritchard is a hero only because the RCMP killed someone in whose distress he was taking great pleasure and entertainment. Indeed, in an interview with CBC Radio, Pritchard said he thought he could use one man's distress for entertainment and perhaps some noteriety. Lucky for him, the RCMP proceeded to kill the man he merely mocked. Had they not, he would have been just another person uploading someone else's shame onto YouTube.

If you want to find a hero in this, it's Sima Ashrafinia, the only bystander with the courage and compassion to try to help Dziekanski. Let's not glorify Pritchard any more than we have. His 15 minutes were up as soon as the media obtained his tape.

To William Elliott, An Open Letter

Dear Commissioner,

I understand you are concerned that "growing misperceptions are eroding the public's confidence in the RCMP." Une petit suggestion: I would be more concerned about proper perceptions. For example, that the RCMP actively covered-up its role in the extradition of a Canadian to face torture in Syria. Or, par example, that an RCMP officer recently got off shooting a captive citizen in the back of the head. Or, that four officers, in seeing a man in distress, thought the best course of action was not to ask those around what had happened, not to seek a translater, or not to take more than a minute to assess the situation, but rather to run him through with 50,000 volts of electricity. It strikes me that you might want to be concerned with these perceptions. Then move on to the misperceptions.

Peter

Presidential Politics Get Nasty, but Maybe Not Enough

The Times Online has a nice summary story on the latest controversies in the presidential primaries. Despite the fact that the nominating conventions are still 8 or 9 months away, things are already getting nasty. Two things are going on. First, the Clinton folks are suggesting on background that they have some nasty business on Obama, but are refusing to share it. Who knows if they do. Either way it's hardball politics.

The second story is that in the last week someone was calling around Iowa doing some message testing on Mitt Romney, most of which turns on his Mormonism. The basic story is that some firm is calling households asking them, after 20 or so questions, whether they'd be more or less likely to vote for Romney for the nomination if they knew about some of the features of his relgion. Many, including Romney, have been mistakenly calling this is a "push poll". It's not. Push polls don't waste 20 questions before imparting negative information. They get right to it, because they are meant to reach several multiples more people than a poll which is message testing.

Nomenclature aside, what I think these stories are missing is a more central question. Namely, should voters be less likely to vote for Romney since he is a Mormon? Now, I for one don't really care if Romney follows the Mormon god or Zeus, but I would like him to answer the following question: Did he believe before 1978 that black males should be full participants in his church's sacrements? Because his Church certainly did not. No, they had to wait for a "revelation" before they realized that skin colour shouldn't preclude full participation. Religion is a private matter, perhaps, until it calls into question a politician's commitment to equal rights. So, let's take these questions out of polls and put them into a larger public space. I wonder which journalist will be the first to ask Romney when it dawned on him that his Church's doctrine was racist.

UPDATE: I guess this must be the reason why Romney doesn't want to talk about his religion. You don't want to give youth the idea that you could be an active leader in a church which had a fundamentally racist doctrine and then still become President.

Dear X Grad:

Nice Ring. Don't let the door get you on your way out.

Mount A is Number #1 again. As it always should be.

Harper in a Jam

Clearly, this promises to be a sticky situation for Harper. One can only hope he is able to preserve his spread in the polls in the face of this. Otherwise, questions may begin to be raised about whether he is lacking the royal jelly. In other words, he may be toast.

Think MMP could have won? Think again.

Daniel Rubenson and I cooked up the following op-ed. It didn't get picked up, so I've posted it here.

Advocates of electoral reform suffered a great blow with the defeat of a Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) system in the Ontario referendum earlier this month. Recommended by a non-partisan Citizens’ Assembly, this new system was endorsed by prominent Canadians of every partisan stripe. It was, they claimed, a more democratic electoral system. Yet the reform still lost, almost two-to-one.


Like an athlete after losing the season’s last match, advocates of MMP look to place blame. They argue that the proposal was little understood, and Elections Ontario’s education efforts fell short of the mark. They assert that holding the referendum during an election drowned out any real debate on the reform. Had the referendum stood alone, Ontarians would have paid attention to the issue and understood the proposal. Under those conditions they surely would have voted for reform.


They argue, in essence, that the result did not accurately reflect the public will.


These claims are probably impossible to prove. They are also likely wrong.


Reformers wag an accusatory finger at Elections Ontario, claiming that the organization did not educate or inform voters enough. They say: The campaign was too neutral and failed to communicate the values supporting MMP.


We say: Casting aside the questionable idea that a neutral government agency should play a role in promoting some democratic values over others, their objection still rings hollow. Why? Because voters don’t need to know the details of a policy to know whether or not they should throw their support behind it.


In-depth knowledge of electoral systems may thrill many-a-political scientist. And many of them think this knowledge is crucial to being a good citizen.


But this view is both elitist and wrong.


Modern political science demonstrates that voters effectively use a number of short cuts, or heuristics, to make the same decisions they would make if fully informed. They talk to their neighbours and friends. They look to their political leaders. They even look to the opinion pages of newspapers.


Citizens find these shortcuts in countless places. And with even a minimal amount of information, voters make choices consistent with the decisions they would make under different conditions.


What if the referendum wasn’t held during an election? Would it have had a better chance? If voters were more exposed to the arguments for electoral reform, would they be more likely to give it their support?


In short: Were the arguments for electoral reform winning arguments?


As scholars of public opinion, we wanted to know which side had the most convincing arguments in the electoral reform debate. We conducted an experiment during the last week of the referendum campaign using the Innovative Research Group’s online survey panel.


We presented participants with one of six arguments for MMP and one of six for the status quo. For example, “A first past the post system is better because it creates strong majority governments that can implement their policies” vs “A mixed member proportional system is better because parties should get the same share of seats as their share of the vote.” We had participants in the survey choose between them.


Our results are clear. The argument that every Member of Provincial Parliament should be locally elected overpowers every argument for MMP. In head-to-head match-ups, no argument from advocates of MMP convinces a sufficient number of voters to prefer the new system.


The arguments do not favour MMP. Even if voters paid sustained attention to the referendum, it is not clear that they would have been convinced by what they heard.


Even though the MMP loss was a blow to electoral reformers, it was not a blow for democracy. “Losers’ consent” is among the most important features of a proper democracy, where those on the short end of an outcome accept it as fair.


No doubt, this is difficult. But the idea of electoral reform has its own persuasive force and will not die with this loss. However, it's crucial that those who claim to be great democrats begin to act less like sore losers looking for someone to blame, and more like a team determined to do better next time around.

Into the Wild

On Friday, I headed to the Parc with three great friends to see Into the Wild. The film is everything the critics have claimed: beautifully shot, elegantly and sparsely scored by Eddie Vedder, and terribly well-written. This is much to Sean Penn's credit, however great the original accounts by John Krakauer.

For those who don’t know the story, the movie recounts the real life journey of Chris McCandless, a young, idealistic, ram-rod righteous, and driven man. A fresh graduate of Emory University, he gives away his remaining college fund to Oxfam, intentionally ends contact with his family, and decides to tramp across America. After two years, he makes his way to Alaska, heading alone into the bush in April. He soon finds an abandoned-bus-turned-hunt camp. He is terribly unprepared, carrying a meagre 10 lb bag of rice, a rifle, a pad and sleeping bag, and other sundries, including a guide to local flaura and fauna. He has no proper map, and thus no firm knowledge of the topography of his surroundings.

He has, apparently, little knowledge of the local wildlife, either. In June, McCandless' journal records the shooting of a large moose, which Krakauer claims was a large caribou. These are not similar animals. If Krakauer’s account is correct, and if Penn’s portrayal is wrong, then this suggests the McCandless was quite distinctly unprepared for his adventure.

Despite this unpreparedness, McCandless survives until July. He decides then that he has proven his point, tested his resilience, and that the time has come either for an end to adventures or for a new one. But as he leaves his camp and makes his trek back to the road, he finds that the waist deep finger of a river he crossed on his way out is now a chest-deep and raging arm of water. Writing "DISASTER" in his journal that night, he is left to again scratch out an existence from the abandoned bus. What the movie does not reveal is that the river could be easily crossed just a few miles upstream. With no map, McCandless could not know this. He is instead left again to his devices.

McCandless eventually starves to death, probably because he was eating a poisonous root, misidentified in his field guide, which prevented his body from absorbing any nutrients. His body is found some weeks later, alone in a blue sleeping bag his mother had knit for him many years earlier.

The scene of McCandless’ death, if the metaphor is not too crude, is simply breathtaking. It is some strange mix of horror and stoicism. It is also likely wrong. If Krakauer is to be believed, McCandless’ death was not welcome. Rather, those who found his body first found the following note on the outside of his bus:

"S.O.S I need your help. I am injured, near death, and too weak to hike out of here. I am all alone, this is no joke. In the name of God, please remain to save me. I am out collecting berries close by and shall return this evening. Thank you. Chris McCandless. August ?”

This was no welcomed death. There was no evidence of courage. There were no signs of a stoic passing. Instead, there were just signs that a young man’s luck had finally run out, that his righteousness had gotten him no where, and that he knew it.

There is no question: this is a breathtaking movie. And it is angering. There is no undue compassion invoked for McCandless. But, still, I cannot understand why Penn does not go the extra step and tell the story with extreme accuracy. Why does he omit, for example, that McCandless was an afternoon’s walk up the river from safety? Why does he not reveal McCandless’ ignorance of ungulates? And why, even at the end, does he omit the trip of his half-brother, one of six-half siblings of which Penn only reveals one, to retrieve his ashes? Why does he say it was only his sister who made the journey?

This is a breathtaking movie because it tells a true story and tells it well. But it was a story which needed no embellishment, and it’s for shame that Penn chose to ignore some fundamental truths.

Team Player

Denis Coderre has turned down Stephane Dion's offer to make him Quebec lieutenant. I guess he should quit now. He does have an MBA, after all. He could open a restaurant called Team Player.

A Personal Note

I just had the most positive customer service experience of my life with Bell Mobility. Not just with Bell Mobility either. And I am not being sarcastic. Honestly.

Magna and the CAW

I worked for Frank Stronach and Magna Int. for two summers. Watching the executive operations of a company was one of the luckier opportunities in my life. The highlight of both of these summers was occassionally bumping into Stronach, or listening to him wax to summer students in the boardroom, or watching him at the head of an employee meeting in a plant. He is strangely charismatic and so consistently unpredictable. This "Frank Factor" has, at times, probably discounted the stock of Magna. But it's hard to imagine what Magna would be without him. So, when this was announced today, I was greatly suprised. But I wouldn't bet against its long-term success.

On the MMP Referendum

There is a lot of grumbling in the media today about the failure of MMP to win the referendum. A lot of it is coming from academics. Here's a nice example.

I don't have much to add to this debate, save the following three points:

i) There is absolutely no evidence right now that the Elections Ontario education campaign was ineffective. There are some rather esoteric statistical reasons for why this can be said with confidence, but it's true.
ii) There is little evidence that I know of which suggests that the arguments for MMP are more convincing than those for FPTP, when they are pitted head-to-head.
iii) We don't know if the YES side's campaign was effective or not. Indeed, their materials may very well have turned voters off electoral reform.

This is an admittedly very self-serving post. I have no horse in this race, but I am in the process of completing a study on the referendum with Daniel Rubenson. We are both pretty ambivalent about electoral reform, but we are curious about the reasons for the reform campaign's failure or success. To that end, during the election we conducted a series of experiments -- both in the field and in surveys -- to try to answer the questions above. And we now have a survey in the field which will also help to answer them. We'll have no quick answers, but they'll likely be alright and plausible when they do come out, and they certainly won't be as self-serving as those proferred up in the article cited above. It's time that advocates for electoral reform - those great democrats - at least acknowledge the possibility that other citizens may not share their views. Academics should be at the forefront of that.

The case for Dion forcing an election

This is almost certainly a mistake. Advisors to Stephane Dion, presumably the new ones which he has brought in, are counselling him to take on the Tories case by case after the Throne Speech, rather than opposing the speech and triggering an election.

By being outfoxed by Duceppe and Layton, Dion's strategic judgement could be called into question. That is, by allowing them to set their terms of negotiation, he was put against the wall and forced to either accept the government's agenda or call an election. Instead, he appears ready to take a third route, which is to oppose the government on legislation as it comes. This calls his strategic judgement - or that of his advisors - into even greater question. Here is why: this scenario only plays out in two ways. First, Harper gets all the legislation he wants. Second, Dion forces Harper's hand on some obscure piece of legislation and suddenly we're having an election over amendments to the wheat board, or minimum sentences for drug trafficking, or some other small issue. Dion will be seen to have forced the election, and Harper will be able to ask him why he would call Canadians back to the polls over such a small issue.

There is an alternative to this. It is to roll the dice. Oppose the speech from the throne in vigorous terms on the grounds that it is entirely contrary to the Liberal program. Then put it to the people. This is Dion's best course of action. Here's why. First, the opposition within his own party is not going to die down. If they get a clear signal that there will be no election for a year or 18 months they will continue to undermine him. So, the worst case scenario for Dion is that he is eventually forced to step down after a long, Fabian battle. Second, the best he can be in a year from now if he doesn't trigger an election is Leader of the Opposition with 90-some seats. However, if Dion triggers an election, the downside doesn't change. He could still get thrown overboard. But the upside is potentially larger: he could become prime minister if several things fall into place and Harper makes a few mistakes. It seems highly unlikely at this point, but it is not zero-probability. So the downside is the same, but the upside is higher. The only conditions under which waiting make sense are if Dion can force an election under more favourable terms. This seems highly unlikely. Instead, he will have to force it over some small issue, or wait until Harper has pushed through one or two more budgets. The stars are hardly aligned for Mr Dion - and it makes a lot of us honestly sad, because we've had high hopes - but the time to go is now.

UPDATE: It occurs to me that this whole case with Dion after the Throne Speech is a nice illustration of the struggle between leaders and local members. From Dion's perspective, he cares principally about his leadership and advancing his party (with him at the helm). He is as capable of backward induction as anyone else (that is, working backwards from likely outcomes to determine actions), and he certainly must have sensed that now was the time to go. But many media reports suggested the view was not shared by his MPs. This is fair enough: they do not want to lose their jobs either, and probably a third to half of them view themselves as being in marginal ridings. Dion likely doesn't care which MPs win, so long as he has the same number more or less after the election. But those losing MPs do, as their interests are put before those of the party. It's a thought for another post, perhaps.

Oral Roberts "University" scandal

I guess when God tells your father to build a university to God's glory but to name it after himself that something like this is the logical result.

UPDATE: Oral Roberts has assured the OR"U" community that the devil won't steal their university. I imagine the devil already checked the bank balance and figured it wasn't worth the effort. He may want to look into Richard Roberts' account, though. What's the phrase? Ah yes, Chaucerian fraud.

Hitchens Cut Open

Daniel sent me this article. It is Christopher Hitchens' account of finding out that a soldier who he inspired to enlist in the war in Iraq was killed by an IED. Hitchens goes on to meet the solider's family. It's a pretty amazing story of a man coming to terms with the consequences of his words, all the while not using that reckoning to make himself any bigger or proud.

Funny...

Conservative MP Tom Lukiwski, a member of the Commons standing committee on procedure and affairs, wants Mark Mayrand, the Chief Electoral Officer, to read between the lines of Bill C-31. You see, even though the law actually says nothing about Muslim women reveiling their faces, and even though everything Mayrand has mandated accords strictly with the law, Mayrand is in the wrong for not reading into the law so see what it actually meant. You know, like judges do...

Craig Chandler

Craig Chandler must be the singular most comical guy in Canadian politics. Just two weeks ago he was suggesting that those who don't vote Conservative should leave Alberta. Now, Craig doesn't care which conservative party you vote for. Heck, he's run for all of them! But if you want to be Albertan, you must vote conservative. I guess the sad thing is that it's not the most absurd thing he's ever said.

I had an email exchange with Craig today which ended with him claiming that Stephen Harper asked him to run for the leadership of the Progressive Conservative Party in 2003 (a run which he did in fact make). This seems like quite an explosive claim. Chandler is asserting that he was put up for a leadership run by the leader of another party. It would actually be quite newsworthy, I should think, if it were to be believed.

PS Check out the sweet advertising on his website!

On a silly bike...

Mark Richardson has an article on Harleys in today's Star. Now, he's just returned from riding out to Sturgis on an HD, so I guess it's to be expected that his brain wouldn't be working terribly well. Mine often doesn't after a few days in the saddle. Nonetheless, for those of you unacquainted with the world of motorcycles, let me state my point up front: Harley Davidsons are not good motorcycles, if they ever were.

Richardson starts out the article by stating that a Harley can't really be compared with other motorcycles. This is true enough. It is worse than all of its competitors on every practical dimension. But then he somehow draws the conclusion that Harley's still (if they ever) provide value for the money and are still respectable motorcycles. Let me put this as clearly as possible. From every objective standard, Harley Davidson motorcycles are overpriced and provide incredibly poor performance. They can rarely reach even moderately high speeds, they do not handle well in corners, and they have quite substandard pick-up. They are comfortable, but so is a chesterfield. Then again, chesterfields only get about 1000 miles less riding each year than the average Harley.

For the money you pay for a Harley you could generally spend 75% as much and get a Japanese bike which did everything just as well. Now, it wouldn't be a Harley, and it wouldn't have that unique sound which indicates that you are riding on decades-old and antiquated technology. But it will do everything a motorcycle should do better.

This is admittedly just a rant a day after seeing about 1000 Harleys this weekend and probably not a good rider among them. But seriously, if I have to see another middle-aged man buy a bike which he spends more time polishing than riding, totally blissful in his ignorance of what a poor machine he owns, I am going to cry. Or I am going to ride away somewhere that he can't come, or would never think to try.

On a bike...

I passed my 25,000th km on a motorcycle yesterday. My father came across from North Bay on Friday, and yesterday we rode down to Smugglers Notch and Stowe, then across the White Mountain forest and up Mount Washington. This was the single most enjoyable 8 miles of motorcycling I ever completed, beginning in thick forest and ending above the trees in clouds with 25 feet of visibilty.

All in all, it's been a wonderful first bit of motorcycling, of which I should hope for many more bits. I have been meaning for months to write up my trip reports - including the week my father and I took across Spain in March, the loop around Le Gaspesie and down to Halifax that Sam and I did in May, and the 9-day loop Sam and I just completed across the Trans-Labrador Highway, down Newfoundland, back through Sackville and then home. I shall write these soon, I promise. I've been put off only by the difficulty of trying to capture what it is I love so much about being on a bike, away from home and the grind of school. In short, I think it's two things. First, it's a time when I do some of my best and most clear thinking. And it's also time when I do less thinking that any other time. I think it's good for the mind. And I think, to cop Burt Munro, a man lives more in 5 minutes on a motorcycle than some men live in their whole lives. Anyways, more to come...

Cynics Without Borders

With the creation of this blog, I have more or less lost my purpose. Everyone, meet Danistan. Danistan, meet my three readers.

More to be posted soon, but perhaps not until I return from a bike trip to Labrador at the end of the week.

Godwin's Law and Ellison's Dishonesty

Rep. Keith Ellison, the first moslem Congressman in the US House of Representatives suggested yesterday that the Bush administration may have been complicit in 9/11. He also compared Bush to Hitler. But that seems old hat by now. We all know Godwin's law is as true as the rising sun.

I want to try out an argument on you, fair readers. Can we believe that Rep. Ellison actually believes it possible that the American government was involved in 9/11? Put more precisely, would someone who actually and honestly believed that a democratic government was so capricious and brutal that it would kill 3000 of its own citizens actually feel comfortable stating that in public? Consider this thought experiment. If you were to go to the Congo, how loudly and comfortably would you declare that the government is guilty of human rights abuses? How about in Khartoum? How about, to use Mr. Ellison's example, in Nazi Germany. Clearly, Mr. Ellison is either dishonest or he is crazy and suicidal. Surely it's not the latter.

SiCKO

I saw SiCKO tonight. I was affected. And I was pleased that Michael Moore has finally made a movie which appeals not to smugness, distaste for the less intelligent, or intellectual superiority. Instead, he gets right down to the crux of the question: why hasn't American solved the collective action problem of universal health coverage the way everyone else has? Put more bluntly, why is America the only developed country in the world which subjects so many citizens to so much hassle, trouble, trial and effort to get what is their due as humans?

I generally dislike Moore's docs, though I appreciate their quality. But he has overcome my most fundamental objections. He finally seems genuinely caring and shocked by what he sees and makes us see. It's a film worth watching. For all its exaggerations, it gets the central story right and puts the challenge to those who revere American health care.

Bush-league RCMP

Wouldn't it be just as wise to recommend that RCMP officers make it a policy to not shoot those they arrest in the back of the head? Or that they not treat a body any differently even if its theresult of a killing by a fellow officer?

I wish William Elliot all the luck in the world. And I wish Paul Koester a lifetime of sleepless nights.

Hand it to Layton, at least he's linguistically consistent when he betrays his internationalism.

Watch the second and third questions in this press conference and then ask yourself whether Jack Layton's internationalism has ever meant a thing.

UPDATE: J Kay says everything I wanted to here.

UPDATE2: If you want to see the heroes who were killed today, go here. You can go here if you want to see people who don't understand for a minute why these heroes served - probably with chests full of pride.

UPDATE3: I am reminded of this hilarious post.

UdeM denounces boycott of Israeli universities

I am a proud student of the political science department at the Universite de Montreal. I am also a constantly annoyed customer of the institution. But, I must say that this makes me very proud. It is the right thing to do.

Speeding in Ontario

As a social scientist, I found this article very interesting. The article overviews an emerging debate about whether to reintroduce photo radar in Canada. I think it nicely illustrates how poor public policy can be made. The basic story is that there have been a number of recent highway deaths in Ontario related to excessive speed. Obviously, then, speed needs to be reduced. So the minister of transportation has suggested limiting the speed of truckers to 105 km/h. And the Canada Safety Council and the Hamiton Chief of Police have suggested reintroducing photoradar. It's all justified, as the minister of transportation observes, because ""There's no question that there is a correlation between speed and crashes and collisions."" This seems quite obvious. What is not obvious is that introducing video cameras on the highway will break this connection or reduce speed more generally. And it's also not obvious that restricting the speed of transports is in the public interest.

For me, some questions still remain. First, is there actually an appreciable increase in street racing and related deaths ? I mean, aside from the increased media attention on it? In other words, are we really facing an epidemic? And, if we're not, then why is now the time to focus resources on addressing this? Second, does photo radar work? In the cited article, at least, advocates present no evidence that it actually works. Quite the contrary, the article presents evidence that it only slows down drivers when there is an obvious radar van around, and then it does so because drivers (and radio stations, too) don't mind warning one another that there is a van near by. Unless one parks these vans on every street, then there is unlikely to be an appreciable general decrease in speeding. Third, Emile Therien notes that it was politics and not safety that lead to the abolishment of photo radar in 1995. This seems correct. But is it relevant? And, if it is, isn't it relevant that it's politics and not safety which is allowing his calls for a reintroduction?

I can drink to that....

Apparently, people attempting to bring liquids and gels onto planes is delaying air traffic. Of course, it's the fault of passengers, not the fault of either stupid regulations or arbitrary enforcement which just encourages people to push the rules. I wonder what a solution to this might be? Getting rid of the assinine regulation, perhaps?

Prime Minister's Question Time

I do believe I will be spending a lot of time here in the future. Blair is unmatched on his feet. If for no other reason - and make no mistake, I think there are many reasons - it's a shame he's gone.

Political Futures Markets

Slate is running a political futures market, which is an aggregator of four different presidential prediction markets. Political stock markets allow individuals to buy a future which typically pays off $100 for the predicted outcome, i.e. you can pay $20 to bet Obama will win the nomination, and it pays off $100 if he does. By comparing current prices, one can get a sense of the wisdom of crowds on which candidates are favoured.

This has been similarly applied in Canada at the UBC Election Stock Market to great success. They outperformed every pollster in 2006 save SES. A betting person would suggest they will in the future.

Not my job...

And once again a Quebec union leader shows himself to be of unimpeachable judgment. Who honestly uses the "it's not my job" excuse when a man is beating a woman about the head? Apparently we'll have to bargain for basic humanity among STM guards in their next contract.

Crosbie and Martin on the Atlantic Accords

There is a lot wrong with John Crosbie and Roland Martin's opinion piece on the Atlantic Accords in today's Globe. I will limit myself to two short objections.

First, they claim that the Atlantic Accord is an "economic development" deal, like the auto industry in Ontario or aerospace in Quebec. This is a faulty analogy. In both of those cases, there is an argument that these industries would not exist if they were not subsidized. In the case of Nova Scotia, the offshore industry already exists. It doesn't require a subsidy to thrive. Indeed, nothing in the Atlantic Accord is about supporting an offshore industry, it is merely about letting NS keep all of the spoils. When Ontario is allowed to deduct auto industry revenues from its fiscal capacity, then the analogy will hold.

Second, they tell the reader not to worry, because if NS is not an equalization receiving province in 2011-12, then the Accord will run out. But honestly, who among us believes that if you don't count resource revenues, that NS won't be receiving equalization in four years? The obviously will. Despite the claims of Rodney and Co. that the federal government wishes to consign them to permanent have not status, it is in fact the opposite that is true. NS wants to be equalization receiving for as long as possible, which it will be as long as resource revenue is kept out of the equation.

Update: Jason Hickman, in his fair and reasonable comments to my post, notes that Alberta was allowed to receive both the benefits of its oil revenues as well as equalization payments in the beginnings of the equalization formula. One often hears this stated, but with little explanation. After doing a modicum of reading, this is the reality (which is not far off Jason's point, except in its implication). When equalization was formally introduced in 1957, a national average was used and fiscal capacity was calculated using personal, corporate and inheritence taxes. This changed five years later when natural resource revenues were added. Alberta was then dropped from equalization.

The implications of this are clear: it is not true that Alberta was given exceptional treatment. Instead, it was given the same treatment as every other province under the equalization formula of the day. When that formula was changed, Alberta no longer received equalization. Whether it did so with or without kicking and screaming is besides the point. The empirical reality is that no exceptions were made. It seems fair enough to ask that those who invoke Alberta's first experience with equalization as instructive would also embrace the second.

Am I going to cheer for McLaren?

If Lewis Hamilton wins one more race and/or does one more thing like this, I think I am going to start cheering for McLaren (though I should admit I was rooting for him at Montreal). This guy appears to be the real deal: an exceptionally talented driver and a true sportsman. Let's hope this is enough to goad the Rain King out of retirement.

Three Non-Random Thoughts

1.) I've just returned from a couple of days in Wisconsin. I gave a little talk on collective action problems and global health at the World Affairs Seminar. Ten years ago, I attended the Seminar as a high school student. It was a great and important experience then, and returning now was equally important. It easily borders on cliché to suggest that today's youth are the hope of tomorrow and then to assert that the future is in good hands. But, after a couple of days around whip-smart high school kids, all of whom have their hearts in the right place, I am closer to believing the cliché is true.

2.) This is an extremely counter-intuitive but convincing paper. It argues that to maintain trade openness in the United States - to defeat the protectionist racket - greater wealth distribution is required. There is an easy knee-jerk reaction to this argument, but I encourage you to read the paper. It's thought-provoking if nothing else.

3.) Dan Leger has more courage than ninety-nine percent of other journalists. He sets aside some serious myths in today's Chronicle-Herald regarding the current debates over equalization. I've avoided blogging on the topic, though I've had some great back and forth with some of my smarter friends in Nova Scotia. For the time being, let me say that Leger captures my sentiments, as does this piece by Coyne.

Party Switching in Malawi

I am neither here nor there on the proper etiquette of floor-crossing. If forced to choose, I'd say MPs are free to sit in whichever caucus they want; their voters can pass judgment at the next election. So, I merely note with interest that Malawi's Supreme Court disagrees, and has empowered the speaker of that parliament to expel MPs who switch parties. This ruling could effectively topple the Malawian government. It kind of puts Garth Turner and Peter Van Loan's ongoing spat into perspective.

The final episode

I just finished watching the final episode of the Sopranos. I am not sure I will ever see another television show of this calibre. It was simply breathtaking.

Hey Jeff Watson...

Hey Jeff Watson, how does this sound? When you learn to speak French, however badly accented, then you can make fun of Stephane Dion's accent by mimicking it in members' statements, just before Question Period. But, how about until then you just stick to making statements in your normal voice?

For the Driver

I have been jammed up with writing (and riding) over the last couple of weeks, so posting has obviously been sporadic. However, I really wanted to note this news story. I think it's one of compassion and remarkable empathy. I should hope that I would have the grace to act equally in such a situation. I also note how much it reminds me of this great song.

Why read Tim Shipman when you can read Wikipedia?

The Sunday Telegraph ran an interesting piece yesterday on Fred Thompson, the former Senator and current Law and Order actor who is quite likely to contest for the Republican presidential nomination. After reading the piece, written by Tim Shipman, I looked up Thompson on Wikipedia to get a little more background on him. Then I wondered if I was reading the same article again.

Of Thompson's first foray into acting, Shipman writes:

"He was then asked to play himself in a 1985 film about a real-life judicial corruption scandal in Tennessee, supposedly because the producers could not find a professional actor who could portray him plausibly."

The wiki say:

"The 1977 Ray Blanton-Tennessee Parole Board scandal later became the subject of a book and a movie titled Marie (1985) in which Thompson played himself, supposedly because the producers were unable to find a professional actor who could play him plausibly."

That's a very close crib.

The next paragraph is an even more intentional lifting. While Shipman leaves the quotes in context, he does nothing to indicate that the preceding sentence is basically directly from Wikipedia. Thompson writes:

"He has been a popular choice for on-screen authority figures, playing variously a White House chief of staff, a CIA boss, a highly placed FBI agent, and a senator. As one New York Times critic noted: "When Hollywood directors need someone who can personify governmental power, they often turn to him.""

The wiki is:

Thompson would go on to appear as the amoral demagogue "Dr. Knox Pooley" in a five episode story arc of the TV series Wiseguy (1988), and has also been in subsequent feature films, including No Way Out (1987), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Cape Fear (1991), and In the Line of Fire (1993). A 1994 New York Times profile described his authoritative character roles as such: "The glowering, hulking Mr. Thompson has played a White House chief of staff, a director of the Central Intelligence Agency, a highly placed F.B.I. agent, a rear admiral, even a senator. When Hollywood directors need someone who can personify governmental power, they often turn to him."

I've checked the history on the wiki, and there is nothing indicating that it was rewritten to reflect the Shipman article. So it seems pretty clear that Shipman used Wikipedia, which is great. The problem is that he plagiarized it, which isn't great.

Advance voting in Ontario

The Ontario government is proposing extending voting hours and doubling the number of days for advance voting in the October election. They think this will stem declining turnout. It won't and it comes at the risk of making election outcomes less coherent. I have a paper which tries to show why, but you'd be even better to read this paper.

On the Greens and the Liberals...

Having just returned from a great day of academic meetings in Chicago, here are my quick two-cents on the May-Dion deal:

i) May has just torpedoed the chances of every other Green candidate save her. Suppose a voter wants to support environmental action. Why in the world would they waste their vote on the Green candidate when they can vote for a Liberal candidate who comes with Ms May's seal of approval.
ii) There is nothing unseemly or untoward about this. At worst, it is awkward. The logic of a plurality system is that the number of parties is always being winnowed. This is why the Progressive Conservatives and the Alliance merged (and, by the way Monte, that happened in a backroom as well). That May has recognized that she cannot win and achieve her objectives on her own and has essentially merged with the Liberals is to her credit. As for Dion, not running a candidate in Central Nova is a small price to pay.
iii) It will be extremely hard to estimate and demonstrate after the election, but I think this is worth 2 points for the Liberals.

On Belinda...

What exactly do you call someone who entered politics with so much promise but then left after just three years as an MP with a reputation for speaking out against their party's leadership, doing their own thing, and generally finding the role of an MP unstimulating? A dilletante? A flake? A self-serving ambition-driven shell? Well, today you call him the Prime Minister.

Thanks, Barry.

Haven't the Bee Gees done enough to wreck music already? Now, this?

On private schools and "tax breaks"

Today, the Sun has a fairly good article by Joan Bryden under a ridiculous headline. You can find it here. Here's the jist of the story: in the past when parents receive scholarships to reduce the private school tuition of their children they also had to count that scholarship as income. So, despite also paying property taxes and provincial taxes, these parents also had to pay taxes on money which never actually passed through their wallet. The federal government decided to stop taxing these scholarships in this year's budget (just as they decided to stop taxing my university scholarships in last year's, though the subject of Mr. Flaherty buying me a motorcycle is for another post).

Now, the Liberals think this is unfair. Gerard Kennedy is calling it the subsidy of private schools or something like that. And Ted over at Cerberus, who in my mind is the best Liberal blogger, is also all over this. Is this really a battle the Liberals want to fight? They want to stand for taking more money from parents who want the best education for their kids and are willing to pay for it in addition to paying taxes for schools they don't use? Oh, did I forget to mention that Kennedy also informed us that this measure is meant to appeal to the party's "social conservative base"? What say the experts? I'll leave it to Alex Usher: ""If it's speaking to their base, it's speaking in semaphore with postage-sized flags."

I just don't understand some of the battles this party is trying to fight.

Une petite question, version 112

I agree with Wells, Coyne, Cherniak, the lot. Calling Stephane Dion a vendu is really cheap. It's an insult that some folks here in Quebec like to use for those who stand up for Canada and for the reality that Quebecers are better off in the federation. In the case of Mr. Dion, it's usually been deployed against him after he has exhausted separatist/sovereignist logic. It's been used against him often, so I can't imagine he gets too hurt by it now. His skin is pretty thick. But still, he certainly doesn't deserve it.

But let's run with the argument that it is an unforgivable insult. What say backers of former Prime Minister Paul Martin, whose campaign deployed it against Chretien in 1990? If he can be forgiven for it, why not Harper?

A good question.

The Globe and Mail's Jeff Shallot raised a great question on CTV's Question Period this morning. Why, when the government has made so much of greater citizen input on judicial appointment committees do they not have a single civilian on the search committee to find a new RCMP commissioner? (The committee, if I recall, is composed of a former RCMP commissioner, the PM's security advisor, and two former Supreme Court Justices. All qualifed people, I should like to say).

I, for one, do not have strong objections to the Conservatives' method for judicial appointments. Especially when judicial appointments have hardly been non-partisan in the past. But, why not extend the principal of greater citizen involvement to the RCMP? Especially when the top brass of the RCMP are bringing themselves into such disrepute? And especially when the RCMP has no civilian oversight as it now stands. This seems like a great beachhead to take in the reform of the organization.

Is Air Canada double ticketing?

I actually like Air Canada. I've taken twenty flights since January, all of them on Air Canada (or a SA partner). They've all been pleasant, and their staff have been helpful (for instance, when I missed a connection mostly because of absentmindedness).

But today I was booking a flight to Chicago in two weeks. Air Canada offers the cheapest direct flight from Montreal. The indicated price with taxes and fees was $511. But then, just as I was about to hit click the price jumped to $554. I don't understand why, and I don't understand how this is different from double ticketing, a fraudulent practice in which stores "mistakenly" put two prices on an item but insist on charging the higher price at the register.

It's hard to know what to do in this case. Do I wait until I can talk to someone at AC, or do I book and then complain and hope to get the difference. If I do the first, I risk a higher price. If I do the second, I risk no refund of the difference. Damned if you do...

Three thoughts on the Quebec election

I provide these without links (and with apologies):

1.) It is unclear to me exactly why this outcome advantages Harper. The argument being advanced this morning is that this shows that there is a stronger conservative sentiment in Quebec than we knew about a day ago. And this sentiment is particularly tied to social values, concerns about the family, and concerns about immigration. But can Harper really hit hard on those issues in Quebec (especially reasonable accomodation) and not pay an electoral cost in the rest of the country, especially among the visible minorities he is so assiduously courting?
2.) You can call Dumont Le Pen if you like, but what last night's result shows is that when mainstream parties fail to address the concerns of a large part of the population - that is, when they fail to lead on those concerns and to set the agenda - then more marginal forces can grab a hold and make them a winning issue. It's a heresthetic (look it up), and it worked masterfully for Dumont, particularly because the other parties were not proactive.
3.) Boisclair is obviously done. And this hurts Charest. While I think he can hold on, it is made marginally more difficult by the fact that the PQ will soon be without a leader. If disgruntled Liberals can throw Charest over the side fast enough they can elect a new leader and premier - perhaps finding him at a Jean Talon market - while the new PQ leader is still finding his feet (or his way back from Ottawa).

Back from Spain

I am back from Spain. I spent two days in meetings with some great academics, including this guy and this guy. I am really lucky to be involved in a project with them and others examining public opinion towards immigration in Western Europe.

After two days in Barcelona, my father - who flew in a day after me - and I mounted a couple of motorcycles and headed across the country for six days. We rode past Valencia the first day, down to Grenada the second, up Gibraltar (to the very top) and off to Seville the next day. On Thursday we headed to Albacete and on Friday we stayed in Tureul. Saturday we returned to Barcelona, 3000 kms wiser and no younger from all of the coffee we drank. There can be little doubt that Spain is a first class bike country. Pictures are soon to follow. (For those interested, this is a first-rate outfit from which to rent bikes).

In the meantime, I am back to experimenting on students and writing about the effectiveness of direct mail.

Freedom lovers mourn...

... but this is a good ruling if you, like me, believe in the independence of voting. If you don't believe in it, one read of this guy should change your mind.

Who would you be more surprised to see at Harvard?

Apparently, Andre Boisclair was surprised to see so many people with "slanted eyes" at Harvard. As a friend said, I am sure they were surprised to see a university drop-out there. What a dick.

The logic of political survival hits one about the head

Unfortunately, this is what the logic of political survival looks like in Zimbabwe. May Mugabe ride into the syphillis-sunset before this gets any worse. And maybe those who still celebrate him as a hero could saddle up with him.

Halifax Taxis

Halifax taxis are absurd. For some reason, cab drivers there are legally obligated to keep their lights on even when they have a fare. If you've ever tried to flag a taxi there on a cold night then you'll know the frequent dissapointment of full-but-lit cabs passing you by. But this isn't the greatest absurdity. If you read David Rhodenheiser's column today in the Daily News, he points out that taxi licenses - i.e. the right to possess a taxi number - sell for just $50 a year. And they are owned for life. Yet, taxis are being leased for as much as $500 a month. Now, in a bout of economic illiteracy, Rhodenheiser suggests that this is leading to the exploitation of cab drivers who are paying the $500 a month to lease the licenses. Of course it is no such thing, as these drivers are neither compelled nor coerced into leasing the licenses. Rather, the travesty is that the Halifax council would price so meagerly a commodity which is obviously of much greater value. What should be occurring, of course, is that Halifax taxpayers should be receiving the market rate for every cab which is on the road, which is apparently about 120 times what they are receiving now. But what do you expect from a city that goes so far as to force cab lights to stay on when the cab is taken?

On compelled testimony and preventative arrests

I have to admit, I am actually baffled as to who is right in today's debate over two controversial provisions of Canadian anti-terrorism legislation. On the one hand, the Conservatives are claiming that the ability to compel testimony and perform preventative arrests is crucial in the prevention of terrorism. On the other hand, the Liberals are saying that these provisions endanger civil liberties. But they've never once been used in the five years they've been on the books in Canada. So both positions seem a little empty to me. I am open to comments, but I'd like to hear especially why we should keep/repeal a law which doesn't seem to do any harm or any good.

Of Yellow Knives and Kicking Horses

Two Friday's ago I had a great birthday party. Early the next morning I headed out on a flight to Calgary. It was too early and clearly wasn't booked with much foresight. I was heading to Yellowknife to hang out with some old friends. I arrived later than expected on account of a missed connection in Calgary.


With the illustrious Loren

I spent three days there, and did the whole circuit - the Gold Range, Bullock's (where I had the best fish of my life), and some hiking on a lake. The political scientist in my couldn't pass up on a visit to the Legislature, which to my knowledge is the only non-partisan Westminster system in the world. It's arguable if it functions well, but it sure is interesting.

On Tuesday I flew to Calgary and travelled to Kicking Horse to ski with some old and new friends. In all, it was a good enough week to forget about all the troubles of getting older. Now I am back to work and the new troubles of executing an experiment. But I shan't complain; I could be a fish on someone's plate or some other fate.

The Logic of Political Survival

Among the great books recently written in political science, Bueno de Mesquita et al's The Logic of Political Survival must make the list. It basically tackles a fundamental question of political science: why is it that bad governments (particularly undemocratic ones) can survive for so long? To make the long story short, they argue that governments with medium-sized selectorates (which is a generalization of electorates to include non-democratic selection processes) are able to survive by enriching their selectorates at the cost of the larger public. This works best for selectorates which aren't too small, because when they are too small it's easier for someone else to put together an opposing and winning coalition (think of military coups). And in selectorates which are too large it becomes more efficient to allocate goods on more fair grounds. In medium-sized selectorates a bad leader can stay in power for a long time. For the case of Zimbabwe, that seems to be what this article is demonstrating.

Mugabe is basically allowing his presidential guard to thoroughly pillage Zimbabwe by taking advantage of things only available to those in the selectorate: favourable and contrived exchange rates on US dollars, cheap gasoline, and (until recently) productive and well-kept farms. This hardly proves Bueno de Mesquita et al's argument (indeed, it is open to some real criticism). But it does a nice job of illustrating it.

Garth Turner and a by-election

As most know, Garth Turner joined the Liberal caucus yesterday. No complaints from me on that. I think MPs are free to sit in whatever caucus they please and whenever they want. And I don't think that they should have to run in by-elections to do it.

That said, Turner's position is too cute by half. After taking Emerson out to the Blogshed in January for not running in a byelection after he joined the Tory caucus, he now says that he'd be willing to run in a byelection in Halton if Stephen Harper called it. But obviously Stephen Harper can't call it, as Turner has not resigned. Now, Turner claims that were he to resign he doesn't trust that Harper would call a prompt byelection (it can effectively be delayed for a year) . And that's fair enough. It's Harper's prerogative and I am not sure I would call one either. But that is totally beside the point that Turner could at least hold up his end of the bargain: he could resign and put Harper's feet to the fire to call the byelection. But he is unwilling. And by his standards do you know what that makes him? It makes him just another heart-breaking politician. And to think that a lot of us thought this guy was different.

From this morning's Chronicle-Herald

Don't kill yourself about makin' it
Be takin' it easy, but be takin' it
There's enough out there who are fakin' it
Don't let 'em take the joy that you make on your own

- Old Man Luedecke

Five Thoughts

I have been coming up against deadlines for the last seven days or so, so I shall share five (more or less random) thoughts:

1.) If I were a politician or a person engaged in politics, I would be quite concerned about the incivility involved in suggesting that the Auditor General is in the backpocket of the federal Tories. Or in suggesting that Stephane Dion's campaign may have been funded by illegal money (a likely liable to which I won't link). I am always puzzled about why people who are upright, pure as the driven snow even, get involved politics when they believe it is otherwise full of bad, corrupt, crooked and manipulable people. I realize that it may be a dominant strategy to always slag your opponent as incompetent or unethical or worse, but in the end everyone loses when politics is debased. It kind of reminds me of two prisoners in separate interogation rooms...

2.) I have an abiding interest in immigration and asylum and how these issues sometimes affect politics and public opinion. As a tangent to this tangent, I ocassionally read literature on migrants or refugees. Like books by this guy. And of what I've read Zagajewski's Refugees is among the best (and I found it on a great blog).

3.) Speaking of literature, this is quite a good short story. And here is the movie.

4.) What of my motorbike, you ask? Safely stored away for winter? Alas, it is true. But the stars are aligning for a week's riding in Spain avec mon pere. I'll be riding a sport-touring bike for the first time, though about half displacement of my father's normal ride. But at least we'll both be renting the same bikes for this trip. Pictures shall be sure to follow. As will, I am sure, yawning from the crowd uninterested in bikes.

5.) The Jerdon's Courser is an amazing bird, though not because of its rather distinct if modest markings. Rather, it was long believed to be extinct until it was rediscovered in 1986. But, even today there likely less than 200 in the world, so ornothologists still know very little about it's behaviour. This relates to nothing but the truth that for many things there is a light that never goes out, even when we're certain it has.

And thus end my meagre offerings.

Once more through the Northwest Passage

One of the pleasant surprises of this blog is that it's reconnected me with old friends. It's also occasioned the crossing of paths with people I may not otherwise have met. This happened with this post. If you read the comments, you'll see that Peter Brock's daughter wondered if I had known her father. I had not, but I had been taken by his obituary in the Halifax Chronicle-Herald. He was a man who had lived quite a life, topped perhaps by his sail through the Northwest Passage (a journey, I should think, which at once makes him perfectly Canadian and perfectly heroic). Unfortunately, the article to which I linked is no longer on the CH site. So I've retrieved it, and reprint it here in full. May we all have adventures a tenth the measure of Peter Brock's.

Man who conquered North West Passage dies in bike-car crash; Victim was also an award-winning author and environmental activist

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Peter Brock, whose journey through the Northwest Passage earned him distinction as 2006 Nova Scotia Sailor of the Year, died Tuesday when he was struck by a pickup truck while cycling in Bayswater.

The 73-year-old sailor, author, artist and musician was remembered Wednesday as an exceptional man with a passion for the ocean and the solitude it provided.

"He was one of these people who didn't like to be in the spotlight," his wife Margaret Archibald said in an interview from their home in Blandford.

"He had a good year. He got his boat through the Passage, won this award . . . and he was feeling good," she said. "Things were going well for him."

In 1996, Mr. Brock and his wife began a five-year journey onboard their 42-foot sailboat, Minke, the second boat Mr. Brock had built himself.

They left Nova Scotia, sailed down the east coast of the United States, past Cuba, Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and through the Panama Canal, eventually ending their voyage at Vancouver Island.

In 2003, Mr. Brock set out to sail through the North West Passage, going as far as he could each summer, before leaving the boat behind to return home. This summer, he completed the adventure and sailed to Labrador, where Minke is expected to remain until next year.

Brother-in-law David Archibald, one of two people who accompanied him on the last leg of his trip, called it "a wonderful experience." "He was only the third person, I think, to ever sail a boat he built himself through the North West Passage."

Barbara Pike, past-president of the Nova Scotia Yachting Association, said Mr. Brock is well respected in the sailing community.

"He was just an amazing person . . . who took on this adventure and shows the sport of sailing is for all ages," she said.

"There have been very few people who have actually sailed through the North West Passage, particularly in the size of boat he sailed. To attempt to do it, then to accomplish it, is just a major feat."

Mr. Archibald said Mr. Brock was also an accomplished pianist, and a "tremendously warm" person, with an interest in many things.

He authored two books, including Variations on a Planet, which won the Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia's Evelyn Richardson Memorial Literary Award for best non-fiction book in 1994.

Mr. Brock was also an environmentalist, particularly troubled by clearcutting, who had once worked with the CBC and was involved in the development of the Discovery Centre when it opened at Scotia Square, Mr. Archibald said.

"He's never been an individual to be involved in anything mainstream, 9-5. He was very much an individual who struck his own way in life and did what his passion led him to do."

Mr. Brock was struck from behind by a half-ton truck while cycling along Highway 329 in Bayswater. The accident happened at 4:10 p.m. RCMP believe the 44-year-old driver was blinded by the sun and did not see him.

The case remains under investigation but police do not believe alcohol was a factor. The road was clear at the time, police said.

Mr. Brock is survived by his wife, Margaret Archibald, children Jeff and Laura, and stepdaughter, Janice. ( 'He had a good year. He got his boat through the Passage, won this award . . . and he was feeling good. Things were going well for him.'

Rabble Babble or down with math

My roommate has suggested to me on occassion that Rabble.ca is, shall we say, a little out there. And it generally comes up in the context of some rant I have about some site on the right. But, for all the faults of, for example, Small Dead Animals, I could not ever imagine a post this inane appearing. This thing stretches the mind.

Cute

Now that Nova Scotia has benefited from having its natural resources excluded from equalization it wants everyone else's natural resources counted at 100% so that it can reap a bigger windfall. That sounds like a campaign for fairness if I've ever heard of one. It's like demanding higher tax rates on everyone else after receiving a tax amnesty.

In the Beach, Out of the Cold

I wrote earlier about a group of people in the Beach (or the Beaches) who seemed to think that it was their right to tell a church it could not house twelve homeless people one night a week for twelve weeks. It seems their objections have been overcome, and the Church now has the go ahead.

Of course, all of this was absurd from the start, for the following three reasons:

i) A church shouldn't have to ask anyone for permission to undertake its duties, provided they are within the law.
ii) The total lack of evidence that such programs increase crime rates and reduce property values aside, there are already homeless people in the Beach. That they go unnoticed is just one more reason to support the program.
iii) If you think that government alone is going to solve the problems of homelessness than you are hoping against hope. Objecting to those organizations who are trying to step into the breach is to take an active role in worsening the conditions of those on the street.

Thankfully better senses have prevailed. Now, I wonder what are this person's views now. Someone should ask her, and someone should remind voters that she tried to stop this.

UPDATE: I've recieved quite a good comment about this post, which I shall reprint in it's entirety. I am happy to strikethrough the last paragraph of my original post, though I shall leave it up for the purposes of transparency. Thanks, Sean.

I live in the area, and I appreciate your attention to this issue. My neighbours who have opposed this project have dishonoured themselves and embarassed our community.That said, I'm not sure that Sandra Bussin ever actually opposed the project, her rather tortured comments on the matter notwithstanding. In discussion the other night with a fellow trying to whip up opposition to the Church's proposal, he saved his fiercest criticisms for Bussin, accusing her of fixing the consultation process in order to ensure that the proposal would succeed. In addition, she has been quoted in other local media as supporting project. I'm no supporter of hers, and she's certainly made a hash of things, but I don't think that she can fairly be described as an opponent of the project.Sadly, the real opponents continue to hide behind their lawyer, refusing to publicly identify themselves or even indicate their number. We have no way of knowing whether the protest was organized by a small or large number of protesters. I gather there were a number of mildly concerned residents who were glad to attend the meeting and obtain more information, but each of these people I spoke with was at pains to distance themselves from the people who hired the lawyer, claiming not to know how those homeowners were. The Church made a tactical error, I think, in not challenging the opponents to identify themselves, allowing them to delay this worthy initiative in the most cowardly possible, besmirching the whole community without putting their personal reputations on the line.

Liberals/NDP/Conservatives/Everyone buys headlines at Bourque!!

There is a growing story over the sale of headlines at Bourque Newswatch, the popular news aggregator. I must say that I can't blame Bourque for selling headlines - it's his prerogative. But it does seem a little like payola.

Anyways, some have their knickers in a knot because they claim Bourque has a secret plot to sell space to Conservatives. The problem is, it's not terribly secret. The second problem is, he seems to sell space to everyone. One need only to click on his pitch page to find this list of "clients who count on us to get their message seen, heard, and actioned":

Air Canada, Liberal Party Of Canada, New Democratic Party of Canada, Conservative Party of Canada, Ontario Chamber of Commerce, BMO, Canadian Renewable Fuels Association, PC Party of Ontario, Glaxo Smithkline, Canwest-Global, Canadian Payday Loan Association, Canadian Medical Association, Friends of the CBC, Rick Mercer's Report on CBC, Canadian Chemical Producers Association, Canadian Labour Congress, Canadian Medical Association, Labatt's, IPEX Thermoplastic Piping, Rx&D, Forest Products Association of Canada, Canadian Alliance, Fitness Industry Canada, Canadian Tire, Canadian Labour and Business Centre, Rittenhouse, TDBank, Liberal Party of Ontario, Belinda Stronach Leadership Campaign, John Tory Mayoralty Campaign, Marijuana Party, Saskatchewan NDP, Canadians For Equal Marriage, Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation, Vancouver Film School, Summa Strategies, Pollara, SES Research, Biotech.Ca, Prospectus Associates, BC Liberal Party, Canadian Foundation for Innovation, Riley Information Services, Compaq, CIBC, Cadillac, CasinoAcura.Com, SportsBetting.Com…and many, many more!

Time capsule found at Mount A

Given that it was found in Trueman House it's probably just full of dirty underwear.

UPDATE: Glenford sends this link to a great Argosy story with a couple dozen pictures of what has been found. And it actually does include a letter to Scooter.

Cree opposition to Eastmain 1-A

I've now written and lost two post on this topic. The new Blogger is crap, apparently. Here's the short version: The Globe has a story this afternoon on emerging Cree opposition to the Eastmain 1-A hydro project. The project will need to the diversion of the Rupert River and the flooding of 400 sq/km of land (which is a lot or a little depending on perspective).

The Chief of Chisasibi is opposed (though his community is about 400 kms from the Rupert). I for one am torn, and my feelings are captured by a quote from Chief Mukash of the Grand Council of Crees: “When you lose something, when you lose a loved one, you go through a phase of grief. But in the end there's always light at the end of the tunnel.” Or a bay at the end of the river, so to speak.

UPDATE: And for a great example of uninformed but passionate opinion, check out the Globe discussion. It's like SDA on steroids.

UPDATE2: I've shamelessly copied and pasted a pretty breathtaking photo of the Rupert. You can see a whole slideshow of these here.

Update3(more or less unrelated): Speaking of SDA and great photos, I recommend you check out these. McCormick is a hell of a photographer.

I am guessing this happened in the hot tub

I can't believe I am wasting my 100th post on this.

Just a thought

A little inside baseball: If I was going to write a long post about how Conservatives engage in character assassination and unreasonable attacks - say, like this - then I would probably erase a post just four down which suggests that ministers of the crown support terrorist organizations - say, like this.

I, like a lot of people, think that questioning Dion's patriotism and loyalty because he has French citizenship is pretty lazy, insipid, and obstinate. Even if this guy is doing it. But it's well within every citizen's rights to be lazy, insipid, and obstinate, so we shouldn't shed tears over it.

UPDATE: Coyne sends on the following (available in its entirety here):

"Anyone who questions Stéphane Dion’s patriotism is either a fool or a scoundrel. After the service he has done this country, after the abuse he has suffered in its name, to cast even the slightest doubt on his loyalty to Canada shames those who would try."

So, as in a lot of things, Coyne is right and I am wrong. He did not question Dion's patriotism and loyalty. He's no Ezra Levant. Though I must say that the rest of the linked column isn't his most convincing piece.

What if no one voted?

Political scientists have spent a lot of time and energy trying to figure out why and when people vote. This book is a great overview of the research, this article is rather pathbreaking, and this argument is quite compelling.

Common to all of these arguments is something of a paradox: why vote when your vote is rarely if ever decisive? Well, there appears to be at least case when it's pretty close. Nova Scotia held a special by-election yesterday for the African-Nova Scotian seat on the South Shore regional school board. No one voted. This shouldn't be terribly surprising. School board elections are low participation affairs; by-elections are even more so. And I don't think the African Nova Scotian population on the South Shore is very high, so the electorate is small. But still, file this one away as the exception which proves the rule.

Rodney MacDonald: The Scene of the Accident

What is going on in Nova Scotia? And what is Rodney MacDonald thinking? The Herald is announcing that Ernie Fage is resigning for the second time in a year. The first time it was for lobbying the business development outfit in Nova Scotia to give a loan to a company which rents some of his extensive land holdings in Cumberland County. This time it's for leaving the scene of an accident. In November. And it appears he was intoxicated.

From my perspective what is most damaging in the long-term is the following snippet:

Joe Gillis, the premier’s spokesman, said earlier Thursday that Mr. Fage told the premier about the crash before Christmas.

“Mr. Fage told him there was a minor accident and that it was reported to the police as well as the insurance,” Mr. Gillis said.

When asked if the minister told Mr. MacDonald he had left the scene of the accident, Mr. Gillis said no.

“But the premier had no reason to think otherwise or think anything else but what the minister had told him,” he said.

Earlier Thursday, the premier told reporters the crash was minor and proper procedures were followed in reporting it to police.

This just does not seem probable. Either the Premier (and his staff) were totally incompetent in questioning Mr Fage on the incident, or they thought they could wait it out, or he didn't tell them and someone is lying. Whichever one it is, this is outrageous. Add it up to another poor decisions by an immature and unready Premier.

UPDATE: The CBC reports that Fage reported the accident December 1st, a full week after it occurred. It would be rank incompetence to not ask when an accident occurred and when it was reported. And it would be incompetence of another order of magnitude to not fire a minister who waited a week to report a potential crime.

UPDATE2: Canoe is reporting that Fage only told MacDonald just before Christmas. Apparently it just came up in a conversation. It strikes me that withholding this information from your leader for a month is just another cause for firing.

Malcolm Gladwell, Mysteries and Puzzles, and General Tao

A lot of people like Malcolm Gladwell. He's written a couple of interesting books, as well as a mountain of magazine pieces. This is a good example. It's an interesting article, ostensibly about Enron but also about some sort of distinction between mysteries and puzzles. It's pretty entertaining, and chocked full of interesting anecdotes. But I think it just confirms what I suspected when I read Blink last spring (I read it cover to cover on a flight from Liverpool to Seville, so thankfully I didn't invest too much in it). Gladwell is taken by interesting theories from the social and physical sciences (in Blink it was the idea of heuristics and preconscious information processing), but not seriously enough to actually test them. Rather, he just fits evidence to them, and when that doesn't work, he just plays around with the definitions. It's actually quite unsatisfying. Unfortunately, his anecdotes are interesting enough that I get sucked in. It's like General Tao chicken: it's always a better idea at the start than at the end.

The empirical effects of minimum wage increases

There is a pretty lively if not totally well-informed debate occurring on a couple of blogs. As with a lot of things, Cherniak got it started with a post on the Ontario NDP's proposal to increase Ontario's minimum wage to $10 (it is currently at $7.75, but is moving to $8 soon). He's added a couple of other posts, and he has seen responses from MyBlahg and Plawiuk.

The problem with these posts - and especially the comments which follow them - is that none of them seem to know or at least acknowledge that there really isn't a consensus on what the effects of minimum wage increases are. And to the degree that a consensus is emerging, it's that any measurable effects are negative, but quite slight. The Economist summed up the shift in thinking quite nicely in an article last October:

The academic argument—and there has been plenty of it in recent years—has focused on the employment effects. Elementary economics would suggest that if you raise the cost of employing the lowest-skilled workers by increasing the minimum wage, employers will demand fewer of them. This used to be the consensus view. But a series of studies in the 1990s—including a famous analysis of fast-food restaurants in New Jersey and Pennsylvania by David Card at Berkeley and Alan Krueger of Princeton University—challenged that consensus, finding evidence that employment in fast-food restaurants actually rose after a minimum-wage hike. Other studies though, particularly those by David Neumark of the University of California at Irvine and William Wascher at the Federal Reserve, consistently found the opposite. Today's consensus, insofar as there is one, seems to be that raising minimum wages has minor negative effects at worst. Lawrence Katz, an economist at Harvard University and signatory of the EPI's letter, agrees that “most reasonably well-done estimates show small negative effects on employment among teenagers”. **

I know some folks will insist that what works in theory (or in their conception of economic theory) should work in practice. Others will reject conventional economics as biased in its approach. But these objections just won't cut the empirical mustard. So, before someone of whatever political orientation starts telling you what the consequences of minimum wage increases will be, remember that the people who actually get paid to study this stuff don't really know themselves.

** (I note and particularly like the Card and Krueger article cited, because it used a natural experiment to call into question years of wisdom based on more conventional observational studies).