For those listening to NARN today, we will take time to discuss Scott Johnson's documentation of Keith Ellison's career with the Nation of Islam: Keith Ellison for dummies . We will also have Alan Fine (5th CD GOP candidate facing Ellison) on, along with the communications directors of the two parties, Jess McIntosh (DFL) and Mark Drake (GOP).

Tune in at 3pm to AM 1280 the Patriot, with streaming audio available from that site, or go to TownHall.com to grab the podcast after the show.

POST-SHOW: I guess the podcast will be up later. Thanks to Jess McIntosh and Mark Drake for fun political banter. Here's the letter to the STrib from Alan Fine that the paper would not take as an editorial. Question: Does Fine represent traditional Republican values? We had a good talk about Iraq in the last ten minutes of the show, so read the editorial then listen from the podcast.

After reading my colleague Tony Akubue's column in today's local paper, I can only say one thing. I know Rudi Volti personally -- our offices were next to each other for two years at Pitzer -- and he should be in no way held responsible for Akubue's column.

I have to hand it to the SC Times' Larry Schumacher for putting more than working notes for stories on his blog. His latest post has two interesting tidbits. First, the meat of the post is that EMILY's List is peddling a poll which shows Bachmann leading Wetterling only by three points. (BvW has a story on the poll.) Schumacher is interested in getting into the guts of the poll but can't because the pollster won't release the information.

Someone from EMILY's List contacted me on Wednesday and asked me what I needed. She said she was reluctant to share all the guts because there were other questions in the poll that would give away strategy.

I said fine, can you just give me the guts of the questions about the 6th Congressional horse race. She said she'd get back to me on Thursday. It's Friday afternoon and I still haven't heard from her.

I'm not a Zogby fan, Larry, but you might want to ask the Times to buy you access for this race. And let's not forget our local pollster, who I hope has something coming up in the next few weeks. Steve?

Then, did anyone notice the link Schumacher included on this story?

Same goes for the KSTP/SurveyUSA poll released earlier this month. It's done by robocalling, which some people around here don't like, but you can look at the guts and draw your own conclusions.

The link for "some people" goes to Meyer and Associates, owned by former Mayor Larry Meyer, a Democrat. Hmmm.

That's what Captain Ed has called the series of lectures at Columbia University by Moammar Qaddafi and potentially Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The latter was disinvited by the school's president, which has prompted the dean who invited Ahmadinejad to quit her position. Ed hopes the lecture series "will come to an end". I guess I'd have to ask why. How much more effective could my lectures on the values of economic and political freedom be if I could have them listen to those who deny them to their people? I don't think that idea is at all as "ludicrous" as Ed says. Perhaps this is why President Lee Bollinger said the ex-dean could pay for Ahmadinejad to come to campus, but that he would not: to have Ahmadinejad speak to a classroom prepared to hear the man in context of understanding genocide, or autocracy, or radical Islam, is befitting an institution that values the free inquiry of ideas. Honoring him with some payment as a university guest as a leader, on the other hand, gives a stamp of approval.

To those who would try to check the slipperiness of my slope by saying "would you invite David Duke?" or "...Louis Farrakhan?" or ... fill-in your favorite villain here? The answer is, it depends on the venue and the academic purpose to which they are invited. Rights to free speech on campus aren't needed for the speech you like; they are vital to gaining understanding of the speech you hate.

Our registrar's office just sent me a note reassigning a student to another advisor. The sender's title? "Customer Service Specialist." You specialize in that? I'd think that's something we're all supposed to do, particularly in a registrar's office, which deals with students, who are ... wait.

The third quarter comes to a close today, and it you heard or read the testimony of Council of Economic Advisors chair Ed Lazear yesterday, you'd've heard a pretty upbeat assessment, as you might have guessed.

What distinguishes this period from the past is that recent large and unanticipated increases in energy prices have consumed much of the strong nominal wage growth. Workers’ paychecks have gone up, but they have had to use a portion of that increase for higher costs of energy such as gasoline and heating fuel. The increase in the price of gasoline and oil products has been one of the most notable changes in our economy during the past year. The period from August of 2005 until August of 2006 witnessed a 22 percent increase in the price of crude oil, and a 32 percent rise in the price of gasoline. High energy prices strain family and business budgets, but throughout this period the economy exhibited resiliency and continued to grow at a rapid pace. Indeed, real growth for the first half of this year averaged about 4 percent on an annualized basis. Since the beginning of August, we have experienced substantial declines in the price of gasoline and crude oil. Gasoline prices have dropped 21 percent since early August, and the price of crude oil has gone from a high of $77 per barrel down to $61 now. This is positive news for two reasons. First, it suggests that inflation rates will moderate as we move forward, and so high nominal wage growth such as we have seen in the recent past will translate into real additional buying power for the typical American worker. Second, lower energy prices are a positive force in growing the economy.

As I noted yesterday, GDP might be 3% higher today if we didn't have a tripling of the price of oil, which would increase the amount of money people earn.

How much of this growth can be ascribed to the Bush Administration? A new report from the Heritage Foundation report suggests that the Administration has made "two steps forward, one step back" in both cutting taxes and increasing the size of government. Two excerpts quantify that.

[T]ax cuts can promote growth if policymakers reduce mar­ginal tax rates on productive behav­ior. The 2003 tax cut was very successful in this regard, reducing tax rates on working, saving, and investing. Key provisions included:

1. Immediately implementing the lower income tax rates that were approved in 2001 but were not scheduled to take effect until 2004 and 2006. This dropped the top tax rate from 38.6 percent to 35 percent and reduced other tax rates by similar amounts.
   
2. Reducing the double taxation of dividends from a maximum of 38.6 percent to 15 percent. This provision significantly reduced the tax penalty on new investment and lowered the tax code’s bias in favor of debt-financed investment over equity-financed investment.
   
3. Reducing the double taxation of capital gains from a maximum of 20 percent to 15 percent. Like the dividend provision, this reduced the tax penalty on new investment and lowered the tax code’s bias in favor of debt-financed investment.

...

Since 2001, the burden of government spending has increased by 2 percentage points of GDP. ...[T]his spending increase is hinder­ing economic performance. Small reductions in the rate of growth may make only a slight difference in the short run. For instance, the IMF study implies that recent spending increases since 2001 have reduced annual growth by 0.1 percent. However, the cumulative effect of even minor differences in growth can have a significant long-run impact on living standards. Indeed, if annual growth is 0.1 percent slower—e.g., 2.0 percent instead of 2.1 percent—total economic output after 30 years would be significantly lower, akin to a reduction in economic output today of $2,740 per household.

On balance the negative effects become more troubling if the tax cuts are not extended. The talk of balancing the budget you hear from Democratic challengers is little more than a call for tax increases, which would undo the one good thing the Bush administration has done with fiscal policy, while leaving the extra spending in place. New programs only would make matters worse.

Loyal reader jw (I just call him this to his face now) sends an article and asks, "Why is it that this argument is accepted for minorities, but not for minority (conservative) viewpoints?" The article begins:

Across the country, campuses are engaged in efforts to diversify the racial and ethnic makeup of their faculties to help prepare their students for a diverse society. But the search committees charged with this task often approach their task in a passive, routine way.

Many committees create a job description that would attract faculty members much like themselves. They advertise the position in publications that people mostly like themselves read. They evaluate résumés of people who often resemble themselves, invite three to five candidates for campus interviews who — again — are similar to themselves, and then make an offer to the person with whom they are most comfortable. Over time that process has inevitably resulted in campuses that are more homogeneous than not.

That happens to be exactly the argument for why universities are littered with leftist faculty -- the Sixties radicals keep hiring carbon copies of their younger selves. Professor Turner says search committees should be diverse (I believe the term, madam, is "set-asides") and its members should "get outside their comfort zones." It would be interesting to see that be applied to increasing viewpoint diversity.

But the one that caught my eye was her list for what we should include in ad copy to signal we are serious about diversity. Her suggested sentences:

• A record of scholarship in areas related to diversity.
• Experience with a variety of teaching methods or curricular perspectives.
• Previous experience interacting with communities of color.
• Interest in developing and implementing curricula that address multicultural issues.
• Demonstrated success in working with diverse populations of students.

Readers are invited to adjust this list to create a job ad that signals a school is looking to increase viewpoint diversity. SCSU requires such language; in the job ad for a position I am trying to fill for next year in economics, here's the diversity flag:

The successful candidate will have demonstrated ability to teach and work with persons from culturally diverse backgrounds.

Damn near every job ad I see has this sort of language.

As Asian countries continue to move towards service exports, we can expect to see more stories like this about using call centers for more complex services.

Private tutors are a luxury many American families cannot afford, costing anywhere between $25 to $100 an hour. But California mother Denise Robison found one online for $2.50 an hour -- in India.

"It's made the biggest difference. My daughter is literally at the top of every single one of her classes and she has never done that before," said Robison, a single mother from Modesto.

Her 13-year-old daughter, Taylor, is one of 1,100 Americans enrolled in Bangalore-based TutorVista, which launched U.S. services last November with a staff of 150 "e-tutors," mostly in India, with a fee of $100 a month for unlimited hours.

Taylor took two-hour sessions each day for five days a week in math and English -- a cost that tallies to $2.50 an hour, a fraction of the $40 an hour charged by U.S.-based online tutors such as market leader Tutor.com that draw on North American teachers, or the usual $100 an hour for face-to-face sessions.

"I like to tell people I did private tutoring every day for the cost of a fast-food meal or a Starbucks coffee," Robison said. "We did our own form of summer school all summer."

I should note that this girl is 13, and says that she had a hard time at first picking up her tutor's accented English but eventually tuned her ear to it. This runs counter to the complaints we normally hear about inarticulate foreign faculty in universities. And these tutors are getting the kind of help I wish our own universities would spend more time giving to international instructors:

Many of the tutors have masters degrees in their subjects, said Ganesh. On average, they have taught for 10 years. Each undergoes 60 hours of training, including lessons on how to speak in a U.S. accent and how to decipher American slang.

Why wouldn't we do that?

I wonder if St. Cloud's Larry Schumacher reads much of Eric Black? Schumacher notes of Wetterling's absence from the St. Cloud Chamber of Commerce debate yesterday:

Bachmann mentioned Wetterling's absence from several debates this campaign -- most of which have been sponsored by chamber of commerce organizations. She appears to be conceding this territory in the campaign.

Binkowski mentioned that he and Bachmann were the only two at another chamber-sponsored debate in Elk River this morning as well. The reason given for her absence was that she was campaigning on the other side of the district and could not make it back in time.

Black, however, makes quite a big deal about whether Wetterling made a specific commitment to the St. Cloud event, relating a conversation with St. Cloud Chamber of Commerce president Teresa Bohnen. Asked whether "she ever promised or committed to be there," he says she replied,

No, not really promised or committed. We’ve worked on it for four weeks. Wetterling didn’t say yes or no for three weeks. Then a week ago, scheduler called to say she probably couldn’t make it. So I asked them to reconsider. There’s been some back and forth since then. Not until this morning did I get a final answer that she wasn’t coming.

It was reported in the papers well in advance that this debate was on, and the local DFL had to have known that Wetterling was being listed as at least scheduled to appear. Assuming Bohnen's chronology is correct, should they have cancelled this event? And why is it that it's chambers of commerce that Wetterling seems to single out for missing? Is that true? I do not know, but even the rabid anti-Bachmann crowd seems to think Schumacher's take is corrrect.

Maybe Wetterling doesn't want to discuss her tax ad. And after Black did and sought out Wetterling,

Wetterling declined to be interviewed for this report.

Eric, how does it feel to be a Chamber of Commerce?

Mostly in places you don't want to go.

Although oil producers are responding to higher prices, the gains in supply are likely to prove modest because reserves are concentrated in countries where incentives to increase output aren't strong. These are places where the government controls the oil industry or where a lack of economic freedom stifles the private sector.

Two-thirds of the oil is in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and other countries with heavy government direction of the oil industry. Only 15 percent of reserves are in nations with high scores in economic freedom and market-driven oil production—chief among them, the United States and Canada.

And because of that, the cost is rather high, at least according to this guy:

Growth is slower. Inflation and interest rates are higher. I estimate that the tripling of oil prices since 2002 has reduced GDP by 2.4 to 3.2 percent, spread out over a number of years. Most of the losses are behind us now, so the losses through the end of 2007 will likely be about half a percentage point a year.

A USA Today story says that marital status help determine the fall elections. Let's have a look at the data for Minnesota. By Congressional district, here's the share of adult females married and not separated, and the number of children age 5-20. (Districts have roughly 450,000 voting-age adults,) year 2000, from the Census Bureau.

CD--Married--Schoolage Kids (5-19)
1, 60.2, 149544
2, 63.5, 157267
3, 62.4, 140413
4, 47.4, 144041
5, 43.2, 122614
6, 60.9, 159864
7, 60.0, 151546
8, 59.2, 143080

The most Democratic district, the 5th in Minneapolis, has both low marital rates and a small number of children compare to the others. The 4th and 8th, two other seats normally considered DFL-leaning, are next. (The low birthrate in the 8th surprised me.) The 2nd and the 6th would be predicted to be most likely Republican by both marital status and size of families -- while the 3rd, Jim Ramstad's district, has a high marriage rate but fairly low number of kids. Those are likely to be two-earner families, where the higher opportunity cost of having children keeps family size lower.

This is the second of a series of articles by Professor Janet Beihoffer on an op-ed in the New York Times Sunday about Michele Bachmann. The first is here.


This post will address the Orwellian tactic used by the left to confuse the reader by either redefining previously understood definitions of words or simply blurring their meanings. Professor Charles Baxter is a novelist, a writer of fiction. He uses his technique of word play to create a fictional impression in this entire op-ed.

Most people use the term “conservative” to indicate someone with conservative political views which include smaller government, lower taxes, protection of family, America, etc. Yet Dr. Baxter uses the term to describe Ms. Wetterling’s personality, one that is “rather tame and pleasant and sensible – conservative, that is”. This is clever – one could conclude that Ms. Wetterling’s political views are also conservative. However, if one looks at her out-of-state support, one will find very liberal groups making contributions.

Dr. Baxter also labels Michele Bachmann a “suburban radical”. Usually a radical wants to destroy the status quo – Bachmann simply wants to lower taxes and lessen government’s interference in our lives. If one wants to call this “radical”, I’d say most American taxpayers (the 50% who pay close to 100% of the income taxes in our nation) would welcome these changes. However, it is the conservative politicians, in the historical definition of conservative, who want to make these changes to get the government off our backs.

Lately, the liberal left has begun to use the term “progressive” to describe themselves. These Democrats want to be “progressive” by giving government more control over our lives. Actually, this is an excellent choice of a word – it implies they are forward thinking. In reality, though, it is used by politicians who want to ignore problems and maintain the status quo in many areas: leave Social Security alone even though it is going broke; leave Medicare alone even though it is going broke; etc. Excuse me – since when do the terms “progressives/liberals” mean maintain the status quo? Ms. Wetterling wants government solutions for all our problems (except national security). How will she pay for her “conservative” but in reality “liberal” solutions? We can only guess that her approach is the classic Democratic solution of raising taxes. But, to be fair, we must acknowledge she may have another solution – it’s just that we don’t know what her solutions might be because she has missed 5 of 8 scheduled candidate forums. Why would Ms. Wetterling refuse to debate her opponents? Could it be that she knows the CD 6 constituents are real conservatives and would not agree with her opinions?

Senator Tarryl Clark left a voicemail at my university office this afternoon while I was in class saying again that she did not receive any funds from Midwest Values PAC MN, the political action committee organized and operated by Al Franken. To see if I could get to the bottom of this, I contacted Andy Barr, political director for Midwest Values. Here is his reply, in full.

Dear King,

Thank you for writing. I just spoke to our compliance officer here at MVP.

We did mail a check, unsolicited, to the Clark for Senate committee on August 16 and our records indicate that it was not cashed. The campaign contacted me this morning, concerned that we had erroneously listed them as a recipient of funds, as they had no record of receiving the check.

I'm not sure whether it got lost in their incoming mail or whether it got lost by the USPS, although, for what it's worth, we apparently had their ZIP code wrong -- we sent it to 56301, and it was supposed to be 56302. (I can't believe mail still gets lost because of a single incorrect ZIP code digit, but I guess it's possible!)

In any case, the campaign confirmed that they were not interested in a replacement check. Accordingly, our next campaign finance filing will reflect this information.

I hope this clears up the matter for you, but feel free to let me know if you have any other questions or concerns.

Andy Barr
Political Director
Midwest Values PAC

It does raise a couple of questions: First, the address for Clark for Senate has a ZIP code of 56301; 56302 is the ZIP code for post office boxes at the central St. Cloud post office only. All the campaign materials indicate a regular street address for Clark for Senate. They also listed 56301 and the correct address on their filing with the MCFB. I don't know how he would believe the correct ZIP code is 56302, nor how he would know what was on the envelope of a letter that is lost.

Second, are there other instances of "unsolicited" checks being returned to Midwest Values? If so, who? And how was this list created? Obviously Midwest Values thought Senator Clark supported their values and that she would accept their check. What led them to believe that?

Let's be clear about one thing: The Clark campaign is adamant they never got the check, and we have to take Senator Clark at her word. I apologize for the error of believing a check sent is a check received and a check cashed.

It has to be this guy, who ends up the story in this piece on how professors are using RateMyProfessor.com for something other than its intended purposes.

If you look up Matthew L. Julius on RateMyProfessors.com, you'll find this comment about the associate professor of biological sciences at St. Cloud State University:

"Dr. Julius is the single greatest instructor that has ever graced a classroom. His patience and kindess can only be truely appreciated once you've seen the raggedy and motely group of students that he lets work in his lab."

He would feel flattered, except he wrote the comment himself (and yes, the misspellings were intentional). In fact, his RateMyProfessors page is peppered with gags like that one, which he composed purely to amuse his graduate students. Mr. Julius says he and his colleagues take great sport in posting remarks about themselves and each other on the site -- so much so that it has become a medium for their inside jokes.

I bet that's a fun department. Someone just posted this on the campus discussion email list -- wasn't me! -- and it will be interesting to see how the administration responds.

Do I look at my own? Sure! And a neither smiley nor frowny face is perfect.

Remember last week when I observed the Humphrey Institute poll saying 45% of its respondents answering a poll on the MN Senate race thought Iraq was the most important issue? At Kennedy v. Machine, Andy notes another poll saying 20% thought Iraq was the most important issue in the Senate race. 45-20. That's a significant difference.

That seems to be the reaction to the fact that my broadcast partner is a political consultant.

[S]ince I have chosen to work in politics I can't hide how I make a living. My life is one big disclosure.

You are able to attack my work for Mark Kennedy, because FEC rules require expenditures to be publicly reported. You are able to see that I was paid a one-time fee from Bachmann's campaign, because it was publicly reported. You are able to attack me for my work with the Campaign for St. Paul's Future, because it was publicly disclosed. You can attack my previous employment with the Republican Party of Minnesota because it was properly disclosed.

Is this fair? Yes, it is and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Part of what makes Michael effective -- and thus annoying to DFLers -- is that he's a pro and a veteran, even though he is young. To be honest, part of my pleasure of doing The Final Word is that I interview Michael. I did not know him before asking him to do the show. My thought was to talk on the air about what he does because it's an interesting side to the political campaign that other shows cannot see. And he's done this long enough that he has a sense of history about how campaigns work.

The left hires people who are not professionals to run blogs. Some like Kos or Joshua Micah Marshall become eminently popular because the left needs nothing so much as a voice telling them to ignore the cognitive dissonance between their push for cosmic justice and the real world they live in. Others become part of the party machine as amateurs, and fail to grasp what it is they are criticizing. Dislike his work if you wish but Michael's a real guy making a real living at a real job, and that means politicians pay him for political research. If I could just make economic research pay so well...

A note about my letter in the Times today. Doug Clark, Tarryl's husband and cheerleader, says she never got money from Franken. Yet Franken's PAC, as I reported before, has an entry in its disbursements of $500 to Clark for Senate, sent out 16 August 2006. You could look it up, sir, if you had a mind to. If you didn't receive the check, then there's an error in Franken's filing.

As other commenters on that story note, Quam and Entenza threw $125 each to Clark on 12/2/2005. Yes, not in 2006, Doug, but it's part of her bankroll that she carried over from the special. Again, you could look it up. In fact, Randy Krebs of the Times had me send them all these links to show him what I wrote was accurate. He said he would provide links but did not. Instead he ran the letter. If what I wrote was false, would they have printed the letter after asking me for the documents?

UPDATE (1:30pm): I just spoke with Randy Krebs. The Clarks have called and asked to place a letter in response. That is of course only fair. They claim, he said, that they never saw a check from Midwest Values, and that they would have discussed whether or not to cash it if they did. Yet Franken reports the disbursement. If they wish to use their pre-primary filing of 8/28 to say they never received money, the problem is the disbursement is dated 8/16/06, so it could have missed the reporting period (perhaps the mail is slow, perhaps Midwest Values was slow to mail it out, perhaps the Clarks didn't check their mailbox ... don't know, could be.) The latest PAC check recorded on that report is 8/2; indeed only one recorded contribution appears after that date from any source.

If they don't remember the check, is it that they don't keep close eye on these things? If they are in such a rush to distance themselves from the check, are they saying Tarryl is different from Al Franken, Rob Reiner, and Barbra Streisand? If so, how? And why the dodge of the date of the Quam/Entenza contribution? Is Clark embarassed by Matt Entenza? If so, when did she decide she were embarassed? Enquiring minds want to know...

The following is the first of several articles about an op-ed run in the New York Times about Sixth Congressional District candidate Michele Bachmann, written by Professor Janet Beihoffer of Metro State.

The New York Times (NYT) published agenda-driven journalism disguised as opinion about Michele Bachmann this weekend. It is worth noting that the author, Charles Baxter, a professor of creative writing at the U of M, was asked to write on the MN US Senate race. Yet, Baxter decided instead to cover the House race in MN’s Sixth Congressional District.

Why would Baxter choose to ignore the MN US Senate race? Could it be that the week his assignment was due, the campaign of the Democratic candidate for US Senate (Amy Klobuchar) had to fire its communications director for viewing an unreleased Mark Kennedy ad which was unethically, and possibly illegally, obtained by a blogger and sent to the Klobuchar campaign? And, as it turns out, information from that ad was used by Democrats to survey voters before the ad was released by the Kennedy campaign.

Baxter’s piece showcases many of the various methods used by the mainstream media in cooperation with academia to attempt to influence voters. Subsequent posts will deal with the redefining of terms, omission of relevant facts and the overtly exaggeraged fear the left has of anyone professing any kind of Christianity.

J. Beihoffer

Mrs. S told me as I left the house this AM that there was a 6th CD debate downtown today. And sure enough there was supposed to be. But one candidate chose not to be there.

This is getting to be a habit. And it looks like Wetterling was not planning her daughter's wedding this time. She was getting endorsed by Wesley Clark.

Priorities: Endorsement by loser more important than debate. Noted.

A new Kaiser Family Foundation survey released today shows that health care premiums in employer-sponsored plans rose 7.7% over last year.

This year’s survey recorded the slowest rate of premium growth since 2000, though premiums still increased more than twice as fast as workers’ wages (3.8 percent) and overall inflation (3.5 percent). Premiums have increased 87 percent over the past six years. Family health coverage now costs an average $11,480 annually, with workers paying an average of $2,973 toward those premiums, about $1,354 more than in 2000.

“While premiums didn’t rise as fast as they have in recent years, working people don’t feel like they are getting any relief at all because their premiums have been rising so much faster than their paychecks,” said Foundation President and CEO Drew E. Altman, Ph.D.” To working people and business owners a reduction in an already very high rate of increase just means you’re still paying more.”

“The burden of a fragmented system of coverage falls heaviest on the small employer and their workers,” said HRET President Mary A. Pittman, Dr. P.H. “About two in five small businesses do not even offer health insurance, and those that do require workers on average to contribute significantly more to their premiums for family coverage.”

While there is substantial debate about consumer-driven health care, the survey finds modest enrollment in consumer-driven plans, with 2.7 million workers in high-deductible plans with a savings option, including those that qualify for Health Savings Accounts (HSAs). About 4 percent of covered workers are enrolled in such plans, a rate statistically no different from last year. Relatively few firms that offer other types of health insurance say that they are “very likely” to adopt high-deductible plans that qualify for an HSA (4 percent) or that are associated with a Health Reimbursement Arrangement (6 percent) in the next year.

This answers two things: First, that a substantial portion of productivity increases of workers over the last five years have been received in health benefits rather than wages. Whether this is a good or bad thing would be determined by whether you think the quality and quantity of health care you purchase now is better or worse, greater or lesser than what you bought five years ago. My car payments have gone up 60% over the last five years, but that's because I own two newer cars now rather than a newer but smaller one plus our beater.

Second, if you have the option of a no-cost health care plans and a high deductible plan, it appears you go do the one with no out of pocket cost. I'm just speaking off the top of my mind, but it seems to me that people are highly risk averse to paying for their own health care. This may help explain the continued fascination with single-payer plans, but as Kevin Fleming reports, the tradeoff for the comforts of having taxpayers pay your health care would include a reduced quality of care, periodic funding crises, politically driven inequalities, and of course labor strikes (as salaries of health care professionals are squeezed by a monopsonistic system.) Dr. Fleming also cites patient choice as a benefit; I am wondering how many individuals see choice as a benefit? If they did, single-payer would die a just death.

It's bad enough that I have to worry about whether or not I get a chili pepper on online rating services for professors (here's where you find mine). Now, at least at Pick-A-Prof, you can also acquire their grading histories. (Last link is temporary; permanent link for Chronicle of Higher Ed subscribers.)

Since the company was founded, in 2001, Pick-A-Prof has worked to collect information from the 170 colleges and universities that it covers about how many A's, B's, C's, D's, and F's each of their professors has ever given.

Karen Bragg, the company's director of university relations, says it has succeeded in obtaining the data from most of the institutions. "At some campuses it goes back as far as 20 years," she said.

Some colleges refused to provide the data at first, Ms. Bragg said. "They're not familiar with what they're asking for, or it's not held in a readable, usable file," she said. "It's quite burdensome getting this information."

The company contends that, at public institutions, such information is a public record. It sued the University of California system this past summer after officials on its Davis campus refused to supply some of the grading histories of professors, Ms. Bragg said. The university has since relented and handed over the information, she added.

A spokeswoman for the university system, Julia Ann Easley, confirmed that account but declined to provide details.

...Any student on the Davis campus can now use Pick-A-Prof to find out the average grades given by any professor there, complete with bar graphs showing percentages for each letter grade.

I have noticed on my own campus an increase in the number of students who think paying for a course means they're entitled to a passing grade. Maybe bar graphs are reinforcing that belief.

(h/t: reader jw)

Downloading email today, I find it's taking awhile. I'm still old-fashioned with email -- I use Eudora as I have for more than 10 years from home, and still rue the day the university compelled us to Outlook -- and I check to see how many messages still to come.

839.

Whoa! I stop the download and filter what's there. 600+ go to junk. All bounced messages from someone who's spoofed my domain. (Maybe someone at Xcel?)

Just so you know -- any mail sent on this domain is going to be killed unless it comes to the comments or problems boxes. Those who know me know my other addys. Use them.

The Kool Aid Report uncovers the mystery of my last name.

(You think that's a gratuitous post? Someone just posted on the campus announcement list -- the one where they are to tell us if, for instance, a tornado warning has been called: "Did anyone happen to record the Tyra Banks show which was televised today 9:00-10:00 am? It was quite an interesting exploration of racial stereotypes made by minorities in the U.S." Academics. Tyra Banks. Fill in the rest.)

As I pointed out yesterday, one problem with doing economics for popular audiences is the possibility of being misinterpreted. Another problem is the possibility of having commenters who believe they hold the Rosetta Stone of economics in their hands and spout off all kinds of errant nonsense.

And sometimes they infest other people's blogs. Take for example my good friend Captain Ed, who wanted to post something rather mild on how an AP writer ignores data and relies on anecdote. I didn't comment on it last week because to do that would require me to quit my day job, so many are the examples. And so I didn't look down to see his comments, which contained a dizzying array of comments from people each of whom thought they were right and the others were stunningly ignorant.

Some guy posts "shadow government statistics". Another just KNOWS there are two economies out there. Numerous posters trying to extrapolate from one state or one part of one state to the economy as a whole. An ill-informed discussion of supply-side economics (go read this and learn). Ed looks at me on Saturday with a "can you believe this?" look.

Yes I can, sir. Yes I can. It's why I write on more than economics here.

You should get to this event and thank those who serve to protect us.

Saturday, September 30, 2006 is Minnesotans’ Military Appreciation Day! 9:00 am Start Time.

Join MMAF for an entertaining day in honor of Minnesota’s military personnel, at home and overseas. In addition to remembering our deployed friends and neighbors, this event will be a special “welcome back” for all returned troops, especially those injured overseas, capped with a day at the ballpark with the Minnesota Twins.

Events to include a 5K run, 2 Mile Walk, Celebration Events at the MetroDome “Pad” and a Minnesota Twins vs. Chicago White Sox baseball game with additional MMAF events inside the dome

All registrants to receive tickets to the Twins vs. White Sox, a t-shirt and commemorative pin. Prize drawings also available to those that bring with them the most pledges on day of the event.

MMAF 2 Mile Walk is $15 per person / $50 per family
MMAF 5K Run is $20 per person

Military personnel, their families and Scouts are Free!

Remember the story of Karen Murdock, the professor at Century College who created a campus stir for posting the Mohammed cartoons behind a curtain? When we last checked in, her campus had created a policy for departmental bulletin boards. Quite content to leave those be, Professor Murdock proceeded to put up her own bulletin board, next to her office. Many of the faculty in my university have these, and it's not unusual to see some rather outrageous things there as well as on their doors. I'd rather not take them down -- I prefer to expose them. (Sorry to say, the pictures were recently lost when BlogSpot took down my stuff. That's OK.)

But Prof. Murdock's superiors have asked her to take down her own bulletin board, which she put up without so much as drilling a hole, i.e., one had already been there. Are we now in the business of stopping all individual postings? What's next? Her website (were she to develop one)? Her classroom?

I talk to a fair number of reporters as a local go-to guy for economic things. I also co-author the Quarterly Business Report for the St. Cloud Area. The report is in essence two halves -- one is a survey of business leaders, the other a statistical model. I am largely responsible for the statistical model, as that's my training and a fair part of my teaching assignment.

The St. Cloud Times is a partner in publishing the report, and every quarter it comes out I am interviewed for its contents without any real knowledge of how they'll play the story. And when I did this interview this Friday, I admit I was nervous about how this would play, as it's a different forecast than any we've given in four years. The writer of the story, Dawn Peake, is someone we've worked with for two years and I think she's a good reporter, and the story is fine; as far as I'm concerned, if reporters misstate what I say it's more likely I didn't say it right. But to find yourself attached to a headline story is unnerving, particularly when it exaggerates what you said:

Local businesses should brace for slowdown

That's not what we said.

"We've really made no progress compared to our long-term trends," said King Banaian, co-author of the report and chairman of the economics department at St. Cloud State University. "We've just been bumping along."

Local economists are cautious about what the next six months will bring but are not ready to say recession yet. Banaian said economic conditions suggest that the area is clear of a recession until at least March.

"We don't feel like the economy has turned south; it just has turned east — or west," said Rich MacDonald, co-author of the report and director of the Center for Economic Education.

I don't know who wrote the headline -- I'm quite sure it wasn't Peake -- but it's really too strong when compared to those three paragraphs.

To really grasp what we're talking about means you understand uncertainty and risk. Here's the whole report, and you can judge for yourself. We tried to give the impression that what's happened is an increase in risk of recession. To understand that, imagine you had five possible outcomes from an investment, expressed in terms of your rate of return: -3%, 1%, 5%, 9% and 13%. And let's suppose the chances of each outcome are currently 5%, 15%, 60%, 15%, and 5%, so that the expected value of the investment's rate of return is 5%. Now we enter a period of uncertainty, and while none of the possible outcomes change, the chances go to 10%, 20%, 40%, 20% and 10%. The expected value of the investment's rate of return is still 5%, but the probability of making a loss has doubled. Doesn't that affect investment? How do you represent that, and how do you report that?

That was what we tried to get out there. Some fellow* in the comments on the Times article takes a shot at me:

This is why an economist is not a businessman. If a businessman waited for perfect conditions to stick his/her neck out a little, they would never get out of bed. And while they hunker down, some other businessman will seize the opportunity.

King Banian is generalizing...and so am I.

Of course I am -- that's what I get paid to do. And of course those who take risks and guess the economy correctly will get the gains. But I don't think it's right for a forecaster to encourage people to ignore additional risk. My job is to point out the increased risk. What that does is increase the option value of waiting on an investment -- which I know are the words I used in the interview -- which should make one rationally less likely to investment.

You can read the rest of the story to see what MacDonald and I think about the local economy, and you will no doubt here more about it locally in the next couple of days. That kind of headline leaves a mark, and I am sure I'm going to catch hell from a few people.

* -- I found it humorous later on the same fellow says "is hoping with lower energy prices this fall, and leveling off of interest rates...maybe even a slight decline, things will pick up by xmas and for 2007." I guess businessmen tell other businessmen to take a punt; economists don't.

Not that you're ever personal, and that's the problem.

I arrived home 30 minutes ago to find no electricity at my home. Mrs. and Littlest are out, pets are inside, and all I have to get into the house is the garage door opener, which is currently about as useful as a speedbump on a Republican website. Mrs. has recently changed the lock, and I have not gotten the new key. And since she was just running to the store when the power went out, she left behind her cellphone so I can't call her. (I have since found them.)

So I call your emergency line. You might wonder how I know this number, given I am standing outside my house in the rain: I know because I had to do this two weeks ago, so your emergency number is in my recent # list on my cellphone. If you think this is a good thing, that's a problem too, but we'll get back to that.

And just like last time, I get an automated voice system that directs me how to report an electrical outage. Same voice, not quite mechanical, not quite human -- though it is really trying to be, saying "OK" in the same cheery way over and over every time I hit another number for another option. I half expect cheese to come out of my cellphone.

So this pretend-real voice dropped into my phone out of some cheesy horror movie says "we have recorded your power outage report and can tell you your power will be restored at " and here there is this very slight pause as it switches to read a damn timestamp and says "9:52pm. Would you like to report another power outage?"

Now please, WHO THE HELL HAS TWO POWER OUTAGES TO REPORT?????

That's there because that's all this number knows how to do. It does not ever give the option of talking to a live person, on this or any other continent. It is a reporting system designed for your benefit, not your customers'. And of course, because I live in a city, I can't choose to hire a different electricity provider, a fact you know.

And 9:52?? Precisely? How can that be anything other than a timestamp? "Oh don't jump to conclusions," you say, except that I do jump to conclusions after experiencing the EXACT same thing a mere 12 days ago -- you do recall that I said your electrical outage reporting number was in my recent dialed numbers on the cell, yes? -- and being a scientific sort I tested the theory again with my neighbor's phone, in which case it said the problem would be solved by 9:55. 52 or 55? Which is it?

There's a place people like you go. I can tell you that you will be there in exactly four...

(P.S. Those of you hoping I would liveblog Almanac tonight ... well, you try asking the people in the bar to change the channel to PBS.)

UPDATE: 11:20pm -- electricity reappears in the shire. Littlest wakes up from a deep sleep, smiles and walks to the laptop. Order is restored, and this is all a hobbit wants. Meanwhile, the father shakes his fist to the night sky: "9:52 my eye."

Strom didn't tell me about this at MOBapalooza, but I found on his site a Minnesota Piglet Book full of stupid stuff the government spends money on. My favorite entry is the last one, a Viking ship I've driven by in Moorhead.

For heaven’s sake—a state-funded Viking ship?!?! The last time the Vikings were paid off, by English kings in the ninth and tenth centuries, the Vikings took their money and fought them anyway. It looks like history is repeating itself, as the government (taxpayers) is paying tribute to the Vikings once again with a poor return on that investment.

I doubt the Vikings pay off this Sunday, either.

That's Johnny Carson's theory of joketelling. It's also my explanation for the U of M poll University of Minnesota poll which the STrib will use to validate their crappy poll. I'd like to see the survey instrument. Notice the amount of time the report spends on Iraq versus terror. 45% of interviewees said the war in Iraq was the single most important issue, versus 16% saying terrorism. Klobuchar wins 67% of the Iraq vote, Kennedy 72% of the terrorism vote. What do you want to bet the single-most-important question was asked first, to prime the pump? The order in which the questions are asked matters.

Nonetheless, even if you don't think the lead is that large, the survey the Kennedy campaign something important. It is incumbent on them,in my view, to make the connection between Iraq and the war on terror. His current strategy seems instead to focus on domestic issues; the voters are not there. He will need to go out and find them. And if that means 9/11 imagery, well then do it. Your dad's pension, Mark, is falling on deaf ears.

These ads, on the other hand, would help.

Campus newspapers are renown for some strange writing, even though most writers get their starts there. A new blog called Campus Newspaper Confab has decided to mine that vein of rich badness. I thought about calling foul on ripping a community college newspaper letter to the editor -- that's sort of like having your football team play Temple -- but I confess to laughing a few times. Worth checking out.

A quiz for political candidates and their apologists.

1. A woman bakes a cherry pie, and places it on her window sill to cool.

• Is this pie password protected?
• If you answered no, is it OK to take the pie?

2. The pie is not on the window sill but on her table. The window is open.

• Is this pie password protected?
• If you answered no, is it OK to take the pie?

3. Same situation, except that the window is closed but unlocked.

• Is this pie password protected?
• If you answered no, is it OK to take the pie?

4. The woman has a dog guarding the pie. You have a piece of raw meat. You open the window, throw the meat away from the pie, and -- since anyone knows a dog will chase the meat -- he leaves the pie unguarded.

• Is this pie password protected?
• If you answered no, is it OK to take the pie?

5. If at any point you take the pie, how long before you feel remorse?

• One hour.
• One day.
• Five days.
• Never.

6. Your child takes the pie (should have gotten him into Sunday School!) and comes home with a slice for you and cherry stains on his shirt. How long before you tell the woman your son took her pie?

• One hour.
• One day.
• Five days.
• Never.

Correct answers: C'mon, let's not be judgmental, shall we? The pie was asking for it!

I was unable to get out of town to go see Hanson's talk at the University of Minnesota. Prof. Janet Beihoffer of Metropolitan State the U (my mistake, sorry) did so, and sends this report:

Tuesday, September 19, renowned history professor, Victor Davis Hanson presented his reasons for America staying the course in Iraq. The entire session was “off the cuff” with historical perspectives, facts and figures given with ready ease. More was learned in 45 minutes of listening to this professor than one could find reading any article. He emphasized two key points:

1. All wars and battles, no matter how well-planned and designed, incur unanticipated problems. One key example Dr. Hanson gave was a review of some problems encountered by the Allies after the D-Day Invasion of WWII. Mistakes included accidental deaths, an inability to move forward after the initial onslaught, among others.
2. When people are ignorant of history, going back to the Greeks, Persians, etc., people cannot place current conflicts and events in perspective. Emotional reactions, media hype and agendas replace facts and context. This lack of historical knowledge of the human concerns and military issues influence events and often result in only negative coverage when, in actuality, much good is occurring.

Not grasping these two concepts has resulted in a negative slant on our current struggles. Minutia is emphasized, the big picture is lost. If the Americans and the Coalition pull from Iraq, all fledgling democratic activity in that region (Jordon, Qatar, Kuwait, even Hamas, etc.) will come under severe attack. For the past 50+ years we have tried dealing with the dictatorships, thugs, bullies, tribes, religious extremists and others in the Middle East. All these efforts have failed. The Democracy approach is a last chance.

Of course someone had to ask the inevitable question about the 40,000 civilian deaths and the fact that Iraqis want Americans to leave?

The response was, 40,000 compared to what? There were a minimum of 250,000 Iraqis murdered by Saddam over the past 10 years. How many children died because of Saddam’s corrupt diversion of money from the UN sponsored “oil for food” program to build palaces? The enemy in Iraq doesn’t wear uniforms and thus are counted as civilian deaths. This enemy has murdered tens of thousands of Iraqs. As for Americans staying in Iraq, it is the Iraqi leaders begging the Americans to stay. Unfortunately for so many Americans, recent pleas by Iraqi leaders, made to the US Congress, are not covered in the mainstream media.

It is unfortunate that for 35 plus years American students have been taught only the negatives of our nation rather than its incredible role in the development of a Republic and subsequent democratic systems. When educators emphasize only problems, faith in a system becomes questionable. Churchill said, “It has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried.”

“Believe in the US (United States) system,” said Dr. Hanson. It is the best chance for that part of the world to become a true player in our current world system.

In the 6th Congressional District debate Monday, I remember typing this and saying out loud "wrong!" It was in answer to a question about making permanent the Bush tax cuts:

Wetterling: Proposed incentives for middle class tax cuts. Production is up, people making more are not doing better – people no better off than in 1949.

I tend to be forgiving of candidates who use economic statistics to make arguments -- there are lots of them, it's easy to get confused, it's usually someone looking for a crutch to prop up a bad argument (and I'd rather deal with the argument head-on than snipe the misquoted data.)

But this one was odd because I hadn't heard it said that way before. People are making more stuff but getting less of it. And the 1949 date was really, really new to me.

Google didn't help much, so I went to the first place I always go when I'm looking for Democrat economic talking points, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. (The place originally housed all the disaffected Carter budget people who got tossed in the street when Reagan came to office in 1981.) And off the front page I find this report from three weeks ago that I think was her reference.

Commerce Department data released on August 30 show that in the first half of 2006, the share of national income that went to wages and salaries was at the lowest level on record, with data going back to 1929. The share of national income captured by corporate profits, in contrast, was at its highest level since 1950.

The impression this is to give, and the impression that Wetterling was trying to leave in the debate, is that the middle class is getting squeezed. But if she were to read the American Prospect -- which, being a liberal, she might -- she might have found this article describing the middle class as shrinking only because the middle class is getting above the middle.

What's the matter with the middle class? Democrats like to pin their defeats on national security and culture issues alone, but the progressive economic message is also to blame. What progressives generally say about the economy is unrelentingly pessimistic -- stagnant wages, rising costs, overwhelming burdens of debt. It's a message that doesn't resonate with the middle class -- not only because it's overly negative (by itself political poison), but because it's simply flat out wrong.

Don't believe me? Believe the numbers:

• $63,300. That's the 2004 median household income of people in their prime working years, ages 25-59 (it's $70,000 for married households and nearly $80,000 for two-earner households).
• $248,700. That's the median net worth of pre-retirement Americans, ages 55-64.
• Zero. That's the median credit card debt for all American households.

Drowning in debt? Squeezed to the gills? Living paycheck to paycheck? I don't think so.

These numbers all add up to this one: $23,700, the household income at which a white voter was more likely to vote Republican than Democratic in the 2004 congressional races.

My problem with the data analysis of most people is that it simply doesn't square with the human eye and one's own common sense. It just doesn't sound right; the presence of three car garages in every neighborhood of St. Cloud tells me so. Rose shows data from the Census that the share of American families making $30k-$75k in real dollars -- what you would think of as the middle class -- shrunk 13% while the share of families making more than $100k a year rose by the same amount. Stay married, and your median family income is $70k. Two wage earners? $78k. Those data square with my own eyes.

Democrats who get this have been pushing for lower college tuition and for tax breaks for child care, etc. But these are not exciting, and have been drowned out by candidates calling for troops to come home now from Iraq and for investigating the Bush Administration. And that's the problem with Minnesota's DFL slate this fall, leading with Patty Wetterling.

It's a Sunday night, football was boring because the Vikes had a bye, and you are sitting in the couch wondering why the Raiders are on TV again tonight. You know what you should do? You should go to the TownHall Patriot Radio Rally. 6pm at the Hopkins Center for the Arts. And best of all, if you call 651-289-4444 now and plan a bit ahead, you can go for free. Even liberals know free is good. (They just think everything should be free except for rich Republicans; those would be the ones who forget to call and pay $12.80 at the door.)

Denial of promotion in academia can be traumatic. For some people for whom the judgment of others is all that matters, it might be a real gut-punch. I suspect for a man like Mike Adams, though -- who has the wisdom to write this while teaching economics -- it's not something that shakes his faith.

If Wilmington doesn't want you, Professor, give me a call.

Gary wants to know.

"But! But! But we have pictures of him with Bush at the White House after 9/11!" Right, because if Bush doesn't take these pictures he would have been accused of wanting to create internment camps for anybody with the wrong amount of melanin, by the same people who defend Awad now. We have pictures of Clinton with Arafat (none too flattering for Bill, either), does that make him a supporter of the PLO's aims?

We knew at the time that Awad was a problem; he's done nothing to renounce his support for Hamas, and Keith Ellison continues to take money and campaign assistance from him. Why is asking Ellison if he is in support of the Hamas movement too when he takes money from its supporters an illegitimate question?

I was always told extracurriculars. So I sang in a chorus that toured Romania, was president of the state Methodist youth organization, and played on a chess team. It turns out that wouldn't help much any more. Nor will good SAT scores.

Admissions offices broke the record this year for the greatest number of valedictorian rejections.

Today, approximately 41 percent of America’s student population has a grade point average over 3.5. Yale has approximately 21,000 applicants annually and only 1,300 available slots. Ninety-seven percent of Stanford's new freshman class were ranked in the top 20 percent of their high schools, and 45 percent ranked in the top 1 percent or 2 percent. Harvard has an abundance of candidates with strong credentials, but it now accepts an estimated all-time-low 9 percent of them.

Two points emerge to me in this piece (sent by loyal reader jw.) First, it appears grade inflation in high school is catching up with students, as even an A- average is not going to guarantee admission to elite schools. Second, since many schools are putting service learning requirements in their curricula, students "going to Costa Rica on a project" can't stand out any more.

And the killer essay? Fuhgeddabouddit. "We never base our decisions on essays. We read them carefully, but we understand how easily they can be purchased or written by anyone. They can certainly illuminate a case, but we'd be foolish to base our decisions on them." Their advice instead? Tell the truth. Most admissions people want students of all types, so the more you can tell of yourself, the more possible it is that you have the part their lacking in that freshman class.

Betsy's Newmark discusses oil price shortages, and concludes that the conspiracy theories we hear now are a product of the drive-by media.

[I]f the media and irresponsible politicians hadn't spread the word in the first place that there was some evil cabal behind the price increase in the first place, perhaps people wouldn't be so ready to believe the Republicans were behind every fluctuation.

Doug can't believe 40% of Americans could be foolish enough to believe that there is all this price manipulation. But look at the state of American economic education. Everyone says it's important to know economics, but 28% flunk a basic quiz administered by the National Council on Economic Education. Students do much worse.

I was a little hard on Independence Party candidate John Binkowski in my 6th CD debate recap last night, but I appreciate the attention the IP gives to where money in the political process comes from and where it goes. (I just think their cures tend to misunderstand the role of the First Amendment in politics.) Another IP regular and former candidate, Dan Becker, identifies the role of PACs in the local races here in St. Cloud.

Of the six candidates, none are running as independents or with a third party.

Jeff Johnson and Tara Westby score the highest for taking in the lowest amount of special interest money. Johnson has done a fantastic job taking in only $300 of PAC money from just two groups. ...

I think it would be wonderful if Larry Haws and Tarryl Clark, as incumbents with great service records in the community, would give all that special interest money back and run on those merits.

Again, for full disclosure, as someone living in the district, I have contributed to both the Westby and Johnson campaigns. As I detailed a week ago, the Haws and Clark campaigns have gotten contributions from a number of big money, out-of-district donors. Now I think, contra Binkowski and, I think, Becker, that one has the right to free speech and give money to whomever one wishes, but there has to be disclosure, and the media (hearing me here, Larry?) should do a better job of reporting those contributions.

So what would it mean to you to learn that Rob Reiner was giving money to Tarryl Clark? You would not really know it. What you'd have to do is follow $2000 from Reiner to his buddy Al Franken, who runs a PAC called Midwest Values. (OK, you can stop laughing now.) Go to the MN Campaign Finance Board and look up that PAC's report. That money is transferred from the national PAC to the MN version. (Notice that Franken's name doesn't appear as the owner, but the list of contributors includes several Frankens.) Now go to where the money is distributed, and sure enough there's $500 to the Clark campaign.

The list of contributors to Midwest Values is a who's who of Hollywood of sorts, including Reiner, Barbra Streisand, Sydney Pollack, producer-writer Lawrence Kasdan, and one "J Smits" of Santa Monica. Numerous New York City-based movie people as well, including Geoffrey Rodkey (a screenwriter who should be shot just for The Shaggy Dog. Littlest would throw in RV for good measure.) You could have fun with that list! The PiPress story says Franken claims he has only received $60,000 from Hollywood, but this must include other PACs than that in Minnesota. Of the one here, $20,500 came from California, $25,850 from New York and only $12,500 from Minnesota. (The national campaign has been covered by Brian Maloney already.)

Hollywood has free speech too, and that should include political free speech (though undoubtedly Hollywood loves McCain-Feingold.) That speech should be subject to the widest disclosure however; as this blog's motto used to quote, sunlight is the best disinfectant.

Thomson Scientific is running a poll on who will win the Nobel Prizes in medicine, chemistry, physics and economics. In econ, the nominees they offer are Bhagwati, Dixit and Krugman for international trade theory, Dale Jorgenson for his work in investment theory and econometrics, and to Oliver Hart, Bengt Holmstrom and Oliver Williamson for trasnaction costs economics, contracts, incentives and corporate governance issues. Thomsom is running a poll and no clear favorite has emerged; all three are good candidates, but I would vote for Jorgenson. I don't see any polls elsewhere, yet.

A week or so ago I blogged about Russ Roberts' article on how we were calculating workers' real wages. Russ writes, to repeat:

How do businesses report their total hours worked to get an accurate number? How much leisure takes place on the job today compared to 1964? How much work gets done at home that the company has no knowledge of? I have no idea. Neither does the BLS.

How does the BLS adjust the weights in the survey? When a manufacturing plant closes and a graphic arts company opens, how do they re-weight the sample? I'm sure they do re-weight, and I'll try and find out how they do it, but does their method result in any systematic bias?

I thought, since I know some folks at BLS -- and I need to, as a heavy consumer of their data -- I would ask. While I have nothing definitive to quote, I got a long, off-the-record answer to some questions which I can summarize for you. Of course, this will be only as good as my summary!

The National Compensation Survey (NCS) directly surveys worker hours. If you have a worker who is paid at some wage, it's not much of an issue -- each firm surveyed has someone who can tell you how many hours they worked. Full time is easy, part-time is estimated, but the examples I was given were reasonable. But, for example, it's difficult to deal with construction workers' seasonality in employment, or workers who work odd four-on, three-off type shifts, or public safety workers, etc. In all cases there's an attempt to build what the weekly schedule is of these workers. These estimates do not usually include overtime (those data come from the CES, more on which below.)

Roberts' point is to the "exempt worker" who doesn't punch hours. In this case one asks what is the expectation between employer and employee for hours to be delivered. Now sometimes they will code a special number of hours for some workers -- tax accountants for example work more early in the year -- but normally you code contracted hours. And you can't code exactly every hour a salesperson works, as successful sales people work more hours than unsuccessful ones.

My correspondent makes a good point, though, in the difference between NCS and CES (from which we get the monthly payroll employment figures as well as average hourly earnings). The former is a survey where someone spends maybe an hour talking to someone to get a feel for the data, whereas the latter is data collected by a field economist and evaluated off-site; the average wage is a number written down by a payroll clerk. There are changes coming to the series that would allow better measurement.

A new paper from the Education Schools Project says there's a lot not to like about teacher training. I have read only the executive summary of the report, and it's damning enough. Selected quotes:

• Unlike law and medicine, in education there is no standard approach to preparing teachers. The length of programs varies from one to five years and programs are offered at the undergraduate level, the graduate level, or both.
  
• ...alumni and students complain that too often the experiences of faculty members were not recent or long enough. As a result, they say, lessons are often out of date, are more theoretical than practical, and are thin in content.
  
• In addition to being disconnected from schools, faculty members remain disconnected from the rest of the university because their research is considered lacking in academic rigor by their faculty peers.
  
• Universities use their teacher education programs as “cash cows,” requiring them to generate revenue
  to fund more prestigious departments. This forces them to increase their enrollments and lower their admissions standards. Schools with low admissions standards also tend to have low graduation requirements.
  
• More than half (54 percent) are products of Masters I universities, but students at these universities have, on average, lower standardized admission test scores and high school grades than their peers at doctoral universities. The faculties at Masters I institutions
  are the products of less distinguished graduate schools than their colleagues at doctoral universities. ... Controlling for experience, the study found that students with teachers prepared at Masters I universities have significantly lower growth in math and somewhat lower growth in reading than those with teachers who prepared at doctoral universities.
  
• Teacher education in the United States is principally a mix of weak and mediocre programs.

Following the format I had for the 15A debate, this is an unedited transcript of my notes of the 6th CD debate in St. Cloud, held around the corner from me at the Whitney Senior Center about ninety minutes ago. There were several Cities reporters in attendance -- including Eric Black -- as well as Larry Schumacher from the local paper. This was sponsored by Courage House, Goodwill, Easter Seals, and other groups assisting seniors and the disabled, so their four questions are the first four asked here. Topics are people with disabilities, chronic conditions, public policy roles.

(late add) Post-debate, I saw an email of the Survey USA poll, also shared to me verbally by someone else: Bachmann 50%, Wetterling 41%, Binkowski 5%, undecided 4%. I have a hard time believing 96% of voters have made up their minds. If so though, the next step of the campaign should be a very negative attack on Bachmann. How long before it happens.

UPDATE (11;45pm): Worth comparing my notes below to Gary's. I should also note this point made by Schumacher about the new Wetterling ad/bio:

The thing I don't get is, Wetterling is a household name throughout most of Minnesota already. Plus, she ran for this seat in this same district two years ago. Why do we need to be introduced to her?

Impressions and comments follow.

starting late due to traffic (Bachmann, Hauser moderator)

515 Bachmann arrives, still waiting for Hauser.

533 Hauser arrives -- caught in traffic looking at Rogers damage.

534 Bachmann (Rep) “joy to talk about the least among us”, federal tax attorney and 23 foster children, 5 of their own. These issues are important to me, no easy answers.

536 Binkowski, (IP) “appropriate sitting between other two candidates as the pendulum swings back and forth.” Know how to save a dime. Mountains of debt and an energy legacy.

538 Wetterling (DFL) rehearsed speech. Crawling out of bed one day deciding not to let the bad guys win. Gave law enforcement the tool to go after the bad guys; Amber plan. I hear their challenges, middle class being squeezed, more going out than coming in (gas, education, health care). We can do better.

Four questions from Courage Center.

Q. Health care. People at risk often rely on public health care. What changes would you provide.

W: Programs in Medicaid are usually successful, people go off. Can’t cut, must continue to fund, hand up not a handout. People want to get off Medicaid.
Bi: Medicare/Medicaid very important, largest unfunded liability. Created a program that requires a rising birth rate to sustain. Too many retirees/too few payers-workers. The way to save is to raise age of eligibility, raise cap on where we keep paying into the system. Fiscally they are a great danger to our country.
Ba: Barriers to obtaining these jobs. People with disabilities try to get education and training to be self-sustaining. MN is a leader in this. People can earn skills and break through barriers. We want programs like Medicare/Medicaid as a stopgap, mainstream people into our communities. Demographics are large problem.

Q. Transportation. Access for people with disabilities, what to do about public trans for them, particularly in the rural areas.

Bi: Important to have rail/bus/light rail/roads. More mass transit needed to wean off oil. Important balance.
Ba: Threat of commonality in the district. Everyone talks about it. More roads, intersections, bridges, as well as transit. People overwhelmingly use roads. Look at airport as well. Access for people with disabilities; MN a leader. Often most cost-effective thing they can do is to provide enhancement. Need more lanes on I-94!
W: Transportation key issue. We need mass transit; Northstar needs to be extended to STC. Wasted time now costs more. Connects people to jobs, more time with families. Ethanol and alternative energy is needed. More subways as well. People spending more than $50 more per week on gas (???)

Followup on Northstar:
Ba: Cost-effective transportation system. Northstar not cost-effective from Big Lake to STC. Have to see if it works to Big Lake first.
Bi: Can’t widen roads, too expensive compared to Northstar.
W: Hiawatha was overmatched. People want it, it’s going to happen so pay now rather than more later.

Q: Welfare to work passed in 1996. Funding to states, states will run it.
Ba: States need to have flexibility and control. What we’ll fight for is local control. Block grants to individuals would be good too – the poor need flexibility to make their own choices.
W: TANF is block grants to states. Health care challenges. Each of us is one serious illness away from bankruptcy. TANF sets standards. It worked for a friend of W and worked for taxpayers.
Bi: Tenet of IP is to return control to the local level, agrees with Bachmann. We can give block grants and welfare-to-work programs, but the best way to make people successful is to build our economy and let it create good jobs. Supports fair tax.

Q. Housing. Affordable accessible housing is an issue with declining budgets. How to provide to people with disabilities?
W: Part of middle class squeeze. Daughter works in this area to keep disabled in their homes. Much cheaper than institutionalization. Huge squeeze, people not making it.
Bi: Seek to preserve housing grants for elderly and disabled. We have community support from all around here in St. Cloud. We can take care of each other.
Ba: the great news is how well the economy is doing. Unemployment 3.7%. Well below the national average. 10% of all jobs created in nation created in MN. Tax cuts under Bush were temporary – will make the cuts permanent. *wetterling people boo, Bachmann people drown out with applause*

Followup, what’s your position on the Bush tax cuts? Make permanent or repeal?

Bi: Tax cut as foolish as a tax hike. The Bush tax cut helps created capital gains, doesn’t help as much as fair tax. Need fundamental reform of the tax code.
W; Proposed incentives for middle class tax cuts. Production is up, people making more are not doing better – people no better off than in 1949.
Ba: Repeal capital gains and estate tax. Fair tax means every purchase you make you pay additional 23¢ per dollar.

Q. Most important issue.

W: Safe communities. No homeland security without that. Help with first responders. Need to improve communications between the people.
Bi: Reform elections and how money affects politics. I’m beholden to no one, the others’ campaigns are run from Washington, they’re too tied to DC interests.
Ba: Many terrorists still trying to attack us. Nothing more important than foreign policy and homeland security. We are at war, we all love this nation, the first duty of government is to safeguard the people. Secure the borders, illegal immigration a big issue.

Q. Renewable energy.

Bi: We can lead the world in renewables. Why can’t we just we are going to get off oil? Build up wind turbines.
Ba: Gas up, gas down. We want it to stay down. But we’re dependent for the foreseeab