There's been a lot of talk recently about "cancel culture". To pick a prominent recent example, the firing of David Shor seems to have bothered almost everyone - even skeptics of the idea of "cancel culture" seem to mostly think that firing a data analyst for sharing a respectable academic study about how the public reacts to protests was awful. And this isn't the only one - there are lists of many dozens of well-publicized examples out there(here's the best such list I've come across).
This debate really stepped into high gear online with the release of an open letter in Harper's magazine, signed by over a hundred prominent people. Since then, there's also been a poll of Americans which shows that there's real public concern, on all sides, over this issue. And there's cause for real concern too. A majority of people worry about expressing their views, a majority want to get other people fired for expressing opposing views, and there's a non-trivial amount of overlap between the two groups. And while the left seems somewhat worse, the right is still pretty bad.
Unfortunately, "cancel culture" is a pretty ill-defined term in many ways. Let's look at the Shor case. Is the key part the firing? The fact that it was a left-wing group that got him fired? Was the criticism he got before-hand "cancellation"? How about the part where he got kicked off an email list? That doesn't affect his livelihood, after all.
This is also made more complex because it doesn't take a lot of pressure to really clamp down on people's behaviour. Note that systems like China's "social credit" are largely about going after comparatively small parts of people's lives (buying train tickets, etc.) in order to keep minor dissent down. If you threaten jobs, you'll naturally get even stronger reactions.
If a view has 20% support, and you think people need to be fired for expressing it, you're advocating for 20% unemployment if people aren't cowed. This is awful, but it's also worth noting that it won't even work. You'll merely divide society between those who employ the left and those who employ the right. (This is a big part of why we have Fox News.) So you're basically just exacerbating tensions for no real long-term gain.
---
There's some real tension here, between encouraging speech but not encouraging toxic speech, advocating social consequences but not overly severe ones, and a host of other issues. And like all balancing acts, it's tough to get it exactly right. But I think I have a fairly good set of rules that would prevent the worst of it on all sides.
1. People are always allowed to disagree with anything you say, and you should expect them to do so. Simple verbal disagreement(even by large numbers of people) is not "cancellation", and should not be treated as a threat by itself. You need to be able to deal with it.
2. Violence in response to speech is always wrong. This includes inciting others to be violent on your behalf, or credible threats of violence.
3. Getting people fired in response to speech that's not directly related to their job is usually wrong. In order to be an exception, I think you need to meet the following criteria:
a) The speech must be significantly unpopular. If you start firing people en masse for supporting Biden or Trump, you're basically trying to declare half of society anathema. I would suggest a rule of thumb of 10% support. This is well above the margin of silly responses on polls, so a view that hits 10% actually has real-world support, and it's above the level where the truly loathsome views get to (e.g., open neo-Nazis). But it's well below the level where you'd be opening mainstream views up for cancellation. It's also a convenient round number.
b) More specifically, it must be that unpopular at the time. Dredging up old people's letters to the editor from 1957 about how they were worried about interracial marriage does no good, because they've probably changed their opinions since then, and because you're punishing people for something that wasn't seen as wrong when they did it. There's a reason every decent constitution bans ex post facto punishment.
c) The speech must be truly offensive. Thinking that the world is flat makes you a crank, but it doesn't affect your ability to flip burgers or balance a ledger.
d) And, most importantly, the speech must be theirs. Don't go after people over something their kids or parents wrote - guilt by association is a terrible system.
4. Boycotting and ostracism over speech is often wrong. I won't tell you how to spend your money or who to be friends with, and I won't impose rules as strict as the above on who you ought to support. But stop and consciously consider whether the offense is large enough to justify the response. For boycotts in particular, remember that a firm keeping someone employed is not generally an endorsement of their views, unless they're the firm's spokesperson or CEO.
5. If you have to think about whether you're being a dick, you probably are. Stop and reconsider.
6. Be (sanely) courageous. If someone's speech is threatened, stand up for them if you think you can. This may come at some cost to you, but if nobody will pay that cost, we all lose.
It's important to note that these are not rules any societal agency can enforce. Government will pass no law on this topic, and despite point 6, employers will likely not save people's jobs based on this reasoning. These are rules of how you should act. And, more to the point, these are rules of how I will respond to your cancellation efforts, and how I will try to conduct myself.
That said, I think they're good rules. I haven't seen any better ones out there. And I'll encourage everyone to follow these rules. Stop trying to destroy the 10%.
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Politics. Show all posts
Saturday, July 25, 2020
Saturday, January 18, 2020
Balancing the US budget
As a conservative political geek, you hear a lot about the importance of governments balancing their budgets. This is good and proper - fiscal responsibility is a core conservative value - but I think we sometimes make the error of glossing over what's involved in making that happen. Balancing the books isn't supposed to be something we yell at the other side about, it's supposed to be something that we actually try to do. But like a lot of things in politics, it's a lot easier to yell about how the other guy should do it than it is to do it yourself. Since I don't like it when either side acts superior or demands things from others that they can't do themselves, I want us to actually understand what we're asking for, and know how we'd do it.
On this basis, I posted a challenge to balance the US federal budget in a Facebook group a few days ago. (I picked the US budget because the group is mostly American, and because the available data is far better than the Canadian budget). And naturally, as with most of the times I post this sort of thing, I did it and nobody else even tried. It seems like it'd make an interesting long-form blog post, so I figured I'd adapt it to here.
A few notes before we get started.
1) This is really damn hard. The Americans are running a deficit of over a trillion dollars a year, or about 23% of all the money they spend. A lot of the comments I got there were astonishment at how harsh the changes I was proposing were, but frankly I thought I was gentler than was likely to actually happen in practice if someone did demand the deficit get fixed tomorrow.
2) This is going to be ham-fisted. I do not have the full US budget breakdown, and even if I did, I don't have the time or interest to dig into it in the necessary level of detail. I tried to make it realistic-ish, but this cannot be taken as an actual plan that should be implemented by anyone in Congress. And while I tried to make it reasonable, there's probably some stuff here I'd change on a closer analysis even if I didn't have access to any new data sources - this took me a while, and I probably dropped a few balls while I was juggling my priorities.
3) I'm not actually advocating this. Because it's so ham-fisted, and because the impact would be so jarring, I can't say that making the changes I outline below would be a good plan. (The first group might be, but anything beyond that is more scary than pleasant to think about.) This is a thought exercise, not a policy proposal. I want to know what serious cutting looks like, and I want to get a sense of how bad things are, so I know when it might be best to stop pushing for a while.
4) For the same reason as #2, this is going to assume a static analysis of the 2020 budget numbers. I am not the CBO, and I do not have access to models detailed enough to estimate second-order effects of all these changes. In practice, you could safely assume that they'll do a few hundred billion of damage to the bottom line, and leave the county with a deficit like the Bush years. Modest by comparison, though still a bit scary overall. In reality, this would require a substantial phase-in period, but for the sake of this analysis we're assuming that the phase-in has already happened.
5) I'm not making major changes to anything outside of the budget here. We might want to say that(e.g.) they could cut prison spending by legalizing weed, or improve social security's balance by investing their trust fund in the market, but those aren't budget changes, so I didn't consider them.
6) For brevity, all dollar values are in billions, and I've merged some categories. I've rounded things off (the official stats are in millions), but at the level we're working at, the differences are immaterial.
All values are taken from the official GPO budget tables, except where other sources are linked. Section 2 is tax revenues, section 3 is spending.
The Status Quo
TOTAL REVENUES: $3,645
TOTAL SPENDING: $4,746
DEFICIT: $1,101
Revenue breakdown:
Personal income taxes: $1,824
Corporate income taxes: $255
Social Security/Medicare taxes: $1,295
Excise taxes: $109
Alcohol/Tobacco: $23
Obamacare insurer/device taxes: $17
Gas taxes: $43
Airports: $17
Other: $9
Other: $161
Estate/Gift taxes: $19
Customs fees: $48
Fed deposits: $49
Other: $45
Expense Breakdown:
Defence: $738
Personnel: $163
Ops & Maintenance: $290
Procurement: $139
R&D: $100
Atomic energy defense activities: $25
Other: $21
International Affairs: $53
Humanitarian aid: $25
Security aid: $14
Conduct of Foreign Affairs: $13
Science, Space, and Technology: $35
Science: $13
Space flight: $21
Energy: $4
Natural Resources/Environment: $44
Water: $11
Conservation and land management: $13
Recreation: $5
Pollution control: $7
Other: $8
Agriculture: $19
Farm subsidies: $14
Research: $6
Commerce: $-5 (yes, that's negative)
Transport: $101
Ground: $66
Air: $22
Water: $12
Other: $1
Community and Regional Development: $36
Disaster relief: $21
Other: $15
Education and social services: $112
K-12: $43
University: $39
Social services: $19
Training: $7
Other: $4
Health: $1,301
Medicare: $685
Health care services(Medicaid, mostly): $572
Training: $39
Health&Safety: $5
Income Security: $514
Federal employee retirement: $152
Unemployment: $31
Housing assistance: $50
Food assistance: $79
Other income security: $196
Other: $6
Social Security: $1,107
Veterans: $218
Income security for veterans: $110
Healthcare for veterans: $86
Other: $22
Justice: $69
Law enforcement: $37
Litigation and justice activities: $17
Jail: $7
Criminal justice assistance: $9
General government: $32
Debt Interest: $479
Offsetting receipts not included above: $-110 (again, negative)
First Pass - The "Easy" Stuff
For my first pass through the numbers, I made a bunch of changes that I think are actually justified on policy grounds, or at least generally reasonable ways to save money without wrecking things too badly.
- Kill farm subsidies: $14.
- Push education down to the state level: $112.
- Raise gas and airport taxes to equal the related transportation spending: $28.
- Reduce military spending on most things down to 2017 levels (but not R&D or procurement - tech advantages matter): $73.
- Raise Social Security taxes to be high enough to pay for the program's costs long-term(by hiking rates, not the cap on earnings to be taxed): Per the trustee's report, this is a long-term shortfall of 1% of GDP, or about $193, so we'll say that.
- Raise taxes on the rich enough that normal people don't rebel at that last provision. About 17% of national income is earned over the cap(note: 2014 numbers, so it might be a bit higher today), and we'll tax it at a bit higher a rate than the SS tax hike, so say $50.
- Find 5% of the budget to cut in everything except Social Security and debt interest(and the above-cut programs): $148.
---
A separate analysis of tax credits, based on this excellent list of existing tax credits, shows me that there's not a lot of money to be had in tightening up loopholes, but it did find me two provisions I'd be happy to change.
- I'd eliminate estate and gift taxes, but also eliminate the step-up basis on capital gains at death and the carryover basis on gifts. Instead, I'd move to the Canadian system, where death is a deemed disposition. I'm going to make the (likely oversimplified) assumption that these provisions are the only ones affected, so the $19 estate tax revenue is lost in exchange for a $52 capital gains tax at death and $3 on gifts, for a net positive impact of $36.
- Deductions for muni bonds and state and local taxes are silly. $32 in new taxes.
SUB-TOTAL: $686, leaving a deficit of $415
This deals with over half the deficit, but we've used up all of the big headline changes that can be made easily.
Second Pass - Cutting Spending, The Nitty-Gritty
In the first pass, I've done a lot of the fixing with a heck of a lot of tax hikes - $339 of tax hikes, compared to $347 of spending cuts - so I want to focus more on spending cuts for a while.
- Federal employees are pretty numerous - about 2.2 million civilians(see section 16 of the budget tables). Cutting their compensation packages somewhat ought to be doable in the context of a change this large. Let's say we can cut their average all-in compensation (including benefits) by a few grand each. That saves us maybe $7. (Side note: This is a far lower percentage of government expenses than I'd have ever thought. If they all make $100k in total compensation, it's still less than 5% of federal outlays)
- I suspect international aid is probably somewhat too rich for the blood of a nation cutting spending like this. Let's trim it by a quarter, and save $10.
- Environmental policy is important, but there's no way current regulations and spending is done well at all. Cut everything by a quarter, save $11.
- I know healthcare is even more of a third rail for the federal budget than social security, so I'll tread lightly. (I kind of want to raise the Medicare age, but I'd get immolated just for musing about it, so no). The 5% cut imposed above is probably about as much as I could really squeeze it. But I'll drop the training budget by a quarter, and save $10.
- I love science and space flight, but the federal government can't reasonably spend as much as they are. Again, knock off 25%, save $9.
- I excluded military R&D and procurement from the "back to 2017" hammer above, but I don't think I can maintain that. Knock them back down, and after the 5% cut above save $63.
- I'll 2017-ize a lot of other categories as well - stuff that's grown in recent years without any cause I know of, and which can reasonably be pared back by the last few years of growth. (I know this process excludes the impact of inflation and population growth, but that's why they call it "cutting").
> agricultural research
> the USPS
> "other advancement of commerce"
> community development and area development (whatever makes those two separate line items)
> "other income security"(which has grown when all other welfare has stayed flat or dropped)
> income security for veterans (ditto)
> justice, and
> general government.
That's another $82 after the 5% flat cut above.
SUB-TOTAL: $192, leaving a deficit of $223
Third Pass - Grasping Nettles
There's a few categories I've been consciously trying to exempt from my cutting thus far. In particular, welfare and seniors welfare(Social Security/Medicare). While businesses and workers should hopefully be able to adjust to changes, the very poor and retirees are less able to do so. They have minimal income, and thus can't easily cushion themselves. I think I can eliminate the deficit without hitting welfare spending any more than I have above, but seniors can't keep getting a pass. SS and Medicare are 42% of the budget, and so far they've only been 6% of my spending cuts (there was the flat 5% hit to Medicare, for $34). That will have to change.
- Surprisingly, raising the eligibility age isn't the fix here. It's age 67 for SS(nominally), but making Medicare also age 67 will help less than I expected. The CBO has an analysis, and while it doesn't give annual details out to age 67, the age-66 effect would be $5 in improvement to the deficit (because most of the savings would be lost to Obamacare subsidies, or net tax impacts). So let's say we get the same from the extra year, and pushing it to age 67 will save us $10.
- That means we're means-testing. If we implement a clawback designed so that the top 5% of earners lose their benefits entirely and the next 10% lose an average of half, that saves us 10% on the budget for each. That's $175.
SUB-TOTAL: $185, leaving a deficit of $38
With that, cuts to SS/Medicare are now $219 billion, or 30% of total spending cuts. This is still on the low side compared to their share of the budget, but I think that's proper policy - they shouldn't be expected to carry as much of the burden as working-age people.
While I'm grasping nettles, let's do this right. Employer health insurance being tax deductible is a $215 tax hit. I don't want to unwind that totally, but I think 10% inclusion is reasonable - if your employer spends $10k on your group benefits, you're taxed as if you earned $1k. If nothing else, this should help make people see what the cost of the benefits is. This is $22 in new revenue.
One I was eyeing earlier is a tax credit for increasing research expenses. I think that might be a good target - it's probably a lot of admin overhead for companies, and this sort of thing is usually just a way for politicians to talk about how they're supporting the economy. Besides, the left will go crazy if we don't hit corps at least a little bit. That's $16 if we axe it.
SUB-TOTAL: $38, leaving no deficit!
The Results
Total spending cuts are $724 billion(15.2% of the budget), and total tax hikes are $377 billion(10.3% of federal taxes). The new federal budget is $4.022 trillion per year. And I'm being strung up by an angry coalition of government employee unions, socialists, anti-tax crusaders, seniors, soldiers, and modern monetary theorists. Isn't life grand?
TOTAL REVENUES: $3,645 > 4,022
TOTAL SPENDING: $4,746 > 4,022
DEFICIT: $1,101 > 0
REVENUE BREAKDOWN:
Personal income taxes: $1,824 > 1,929 (high earners tax, muni/SALT elimination, employer health insurance deduction down to 90%)
Corporate income taxes: $255 > 271 (ending research expansion tax credit)
Social Security/Medicare taxes: $1,295 > 1,488 (SS breakeven tax hike)
Excise taxes: $109 > 137
-Alcohol/Tobacco: $23 > 23
-Obamacare insurer/device taxes: $17 > 17
-Gas taxes: $43 > 66 (pay for ground transport)
-Airports: $17 > 22 (pay for air transport)
-Other: $9 > 9
Other: $161 > 197
-Estate/Gift taxes: $19 > 55 (in cap gains taxes)
-Customs fees: $48 > 48
-Fed deposits: $49 > 49
-Other: $45 > 45
EXPENSE BREAKDOWN: (All cut by 5% unless otherwise stated)
Defence: $738 > 568 (all 2017'd)
-Personnel: $163 > 137
-Ops & Maintenance: $290 > 233
-Procurement: $139 > 99
-R&D: $100 > 65
-Atomic energy defense activities: $25 > 19
-Other: $21 > 15
International Affairs: $53 > 39
-Humanitarian aid: $25 > 17 (extra 25% cut)
-Security aid: $14 > 10 (extra 25% cut)
-Conduct of Foreign Affairs: $13 > 12
Science, Space, and Technology: $35 > 24 (extra 25% cut)
-Science: $13 > 9
-Space flight: $21 > 15
Energy: $4 > 4
Natural Resources/Environment: $44 > 31 (extra 25% cut)
-Water: $11 > 8
-Conservation and land management: $13 > 9
-Recreation: $5 > 3
-Pollution control: $7 > 5
-Other: $8 > 6
Agriculture: $19 > 4
-Farm subsidies: $14 > 0 (killed)
-Research: $6 > 4 (2017'd)
Commerce: $-5 > -19 (USPS and other advancement of commerce 2017'd)
Transport: $101 > 96
-Ground: $66 > 63
-Air: $22 > 21
-Water: $12 > 11
-Other: $1 > 1
Community and Regional Development: $36 > 29
-Disaster relief: $21 > 20
-Other: $15 > 9 (2017'd)
Education and social services: $112 > 0 (all moved to states)
Health: $1,301 > 1,147
-Medicare: $685 > 572 (means testing, eligibility at age 67)
-Health care services(Medicaid, mostly): $572 > 543
-Training: $39 > 27 (extra 25% cut)
-Health&Safety: $5 > 5
Income Security: $514 > 467
-Federal employee retirement: $152 > 144
-Unemployment: $31 > 29
-Housing assistance: $50 > 48
-Food assistance: $79 > 75
-Other income security: $196 > 165 (2017'd)
-Other: $6 > 6
Social Security: $1,107 > 996 (means testing, but no 5% cut)
Veterans: $218 > 185
-Income security for veterans: $110 > 82 (2017'd)
-Healthcare for veterans: $86 > 82
-Other: $22 > 21
Justice: $69 > 55 (all 2017'd)
-Law enforcement: $37 > 28
-Litigation and justice activities: $17 > 14
-Jail: $7 > 7
-Criminal justice assistance: $9 > 6
General government: $32 > 23 (2017'd)
Debt Interest: $479 > 479 (no 5% cut)
Offsetting receipts not included above: $-110 > -117 (cut to federal employee compensation included here)
---
And, as one final note, I'd like to point out that the Transportation budget has four categories - Ground, Air, Water, and Other.
What the hell goes under Other?
The other three match three of the four classical elements, so is this the federal investment in Floo powder?
On this basis, I posted a challenge to balance the US federal budget in a Facebook group a few days ago. (I picked the US budget because the group is mostly American, and because the available data is far better than the Canadian budget). And naturally, as with most of the times I post this sort of thing, I did it and nobody else even tried. It seems like it'd make an interesting long-form blog post, so I figured I'd adapt it to here.
A few notes before we get started.
1) This is really damn hard. The Americans are running a deficit of over a trillion dollars a year, or about 23% of all the money they spend. A lot of the comments I got there were astonishment at how harsh the changes I was proposing were, but frankly I thought I was gentler than was likely to actually happen in practice if someone did demand the deficit get fixed tomorrow.
2) This is going to be ham-fisted. I do not have the full US budget breakdown, and even if I did, I don't have the time or interest to dig into it in the necessary level of detail. I tried to make it realistic-ish, but this cannot be taken as an actual plan that should be implemented by anyone in Congress. And while I tried to make it reasonable, there's probably some stuff here I'd change on a closer analysis even if I didn't have access to any new data sources - this took me a while, and I probably dropped a few balls while I was juggling my priorities.
3) I'm not actually advocating this. Because it's so ham-fisted, and because the impact would be so jarring, I can't say that making the changes I outline below would be a good plan. (The first group might be, but anything beyond that is more scary than pleasant to think about.) This is a thought exercise, not a policy proposal. I want to know what serious cutting looks like, and I want to get a sense of how bad things are, so I know when it might be best to stop pushing for a while.
4) For the same reason as #2, this is going to assume a static analysis of the 2020 budget numbers. I am not the CBO, and I do not have access to models detailed enough to estimate second-order effects of all these changes. In practice, you could safely assume that they'll do a few hundred billion of damage to the bottom line, and leave the county with a deficit like the Bush years. Modest by comparison, though still a bit scary overall. In reality, this would require a substantial phase-in period, but for the sake of this analysis we're assuming that the phase-in has already happened.
5) I'm not making major changes to anything outside of the budget here. We might want to say that(e.g.) they could cut prison spending by legalizing weed, or improve social security's balance by investing their trust fund in the market, but those aren't budget changes, so I didn't consider them.
6) For brevity, all dollar values are in billions, and I've merged some categories. I've rounded things off (the official stats are in millions), but at the level we're working at, the differences are immaterial.
All values are taken from the official GPO budget tables, except where other sources are linked. Section 2 is tax revenues, section 3 is spending.
The Status Quo
TOTAL REVENUES: $3,645
TOTAL SPENDING: $4,746
DEFICIT: $1,101
Revenue breakdown:
Personal income taxes: $1,824
Corporate income taxes: $255
Social Security/Medicare taxes: $1,295
Excise taxes: $109
Alcohol/Tobacco: $23
Obamacare insurer/device taxes: $17
Gas taxes: $43
Airports: $17
Other: $9
Other: $161
Estate/Gift taxes: $19
Customs fees: $48
Fed deposits: $49
Other: $45
Expense Breakdown:
Defence: $738
Personnel: $163
Ops & Maintenance: $290
Procurement: $139
R&D: $100
Atomic energy defense activities: $25
Other: $21
International Affairs: $53
Humanitarian aid: $25
Security aid: $14
Conduct of Foreign Affairs: $13
Science, Space, and Technology: $35
Science: $13
Space flight: $21
Energy: $4
Natural Resources/Environment: $44
Water: $11
Conservation and land management: $13
Recreation: $5
Pollution control: $7
Other: $8
Agriculture: $19
Farm subsidies: $14
Research: $6
Commerce: $-5 (yes, that's negative)
Transport: $101
Ground: $66
Air: $22
Water: $12
Other: $1
Community and Regional Development: $36
Disaster relief: $21
Other: $15
Education and social services: $112
K-12: $43
University: $39
Social services: $19
Training: $7
Other: $4
Health: $1,301
Medicare: $685
Health care services(Medicaid, mostly): $572
Training: $39
Health&Safety: $5
Income Security: $514
Federal employee retirement: $152
Unemployment: $31
Housing assistance: $50
Food assistance: $79
Other income security: $196
Other: $6
Social Security: $1,107
Veterans: $218
Income security for veterans: $110
Healthcare for veterans: $86
Other: $22
Justice: $69
Law enforcement: $37
Litigation and justice activities: $17
Jail: $7
Criminal justice assistance: $9
General government: $32
Debt Interest: $479
Offsetting receipts not included above: $-110 (again, negative)
First Pass - The "Easy" Stuff
For my first pass through the numbers, I made a bunch of changes that I think are actually justified on policy grounds, or at least generally reasonable ways to save money without wrecking things too badly.
- Kill farm subsidies: $14.
- Push education down to the state level: $112.
- Raise gas and airport taxes to equal the related transportation spending: $28.
- Reduce military spending on most things down to 2017 levels (but not R&D or procurement - tech advantages matter): $73.
- Raise Social Security taxes to be high enough to pay for the program's costs long-term(by hiking rates, not the cap on earnings to be taxed): Per the trustee's report, this is a long-term shortfall of 1% of GDP, or about $193, so we'll say that.
- Raise taxes on the rich enough that normal people don't rebel at that last provision. About 17% of national income is earned over the cap(note: 2014 numbers, so it might be a bit higher today), and we'll tax it at a bit higher a rate than the SS tax hike, so say $50.
- Find 5% of the budget to cut in everything except Social Security and debt interest(and the above-cut programs): $148.
---
A separate analysis of tax credits, based on this excellent list of existing tax credits, shows me that there's not a lot of money to be had in tightening up loopholes, but it did find me two provisions I'd be happy to change.
- I'd eliminate estate and gift taxes, but also eliminate the step-up basis on capital gains at death and the carryover basis on gifts. Instead, I'd move to the Canadian system, where death is a deemed disposition. I'm going to make the (likely oversimplified) assumption that these provisions are the only ones affected, so the $19 estate tax revenue is lost in exchange for a $52 capital gains tax at death and $3 on gifts, for a net positive impact of $36.
- Deductions for muni bonds and state and local taxes are silly. $32 in new taxes.
SUB-TOTAL: $686, leaving a deficit of $415
This deals with over half the deficit, but we've used up all of the big headline changes that can be made easily.
Second Pass - Cutting Spending, The Nitty-Gritty
In the first pass, I've done a lot of the fixing with a heck of a lot of tax hikes - $339 of tax hikes, compared to $347 of spending cuts - so I want to focus more on spending cuts for a while.
- Federal employees are pretty numerous - about 2.2 million civilians(see section 16 of the budget tables). Cutting their compensation packages somewhat ought to be doable in the context of a change this large. Let's say we can cut their average all-in compensation (including benefits) by a few grand each. That saves us maybe $7. (Side note: This is a far lower percentage of government expenses than I'd have ever thought. If they all make $100k in total compensation, it's still less than 5% of federal outlays)
- I suspect international aid is probably somewhat too rich for the blood of a nation cutting spending like this. Let's trim it by a quarter, and save $10.
- Environmental policy is important, but there's no way current regulations and spending is done well at all. Cut everything by a quarter, save $11.
- I know healthcare is even more of a third rail for the federal budget than social security, so I'll tread lightly. (I kind of want to raise the Medicare age, but I'd get immolated just for musing about it, so no). The 5% cut imposed above is probably about as much as I could really squeeze it. But I'll drop the training budget by a quarter, and save $10.
- I love science and space flight, but the federal government can't reasonably spend as much as they are. Again, knock off 25%, save $9.
- I excluded military R&D and procurement from the "back to 2017" hammer above, but I don't think I can maintain that. Knock them back down, and after the 5% cut above save $63.
- I'll 2017-ize a lot of other categories as well - stuff that's grown in recent years without any cause I know of, and which can reasonably be pared back by the last few years of growth. (I know this process excludes the impact of inflation and population growth, but that's why they call it "cutting").
> agricultural research
> the USPS
> "other advancement of commerce"
> community development and area development (whatever makes those two separate line items)
> "other income security"(which has grown when all other welfare has stayed flat or dropped)
> income security for veterans (ditto)
> justice, and
> general government.
That's another $82 after the 5% flat cut above.
SUB-TOTAL: $192, leaving a deficit of $223
Third Pass - Grasping Nettles
There's a few categories I've been consciously trying to exempt from my cutting thus far. In particular, welfare and seniors welfare(Social Security/Medicare). While businesses and workers should hopefully be able to adjust to changes, the very poor and retirees are less able to do so. They have minimal income, and thus can't easily cushion themselves. I think I can eliminate the deficit without hitting welfare spending any more than I have above, but seniors can't keep getting a pass. SS and Medicare are 42% of the budget, and so far they've only been 6% of my spending cuts (there was the flat 5% hit to Medicare, for $34). That will have to change.
- Surprisingly, raising the eligibility age isn't the fix here. It's age 67 for SS(nominally), but making Medicare also age 67 will help less than I expected. The CBO has an analysis, and while it doesn't give annual details out to age 67, the age-66 effect would be $5 in improvement to the deficit (because most of the savings would be lost to Obamacare subsidies, or net tax impacts). So let's say we get the same from the extra year, and pushing it to age 67 will save us $10.
- That means we're means-testing. If we implement a clawback designed so that the top 5% of earners lose their benefits entirely and the next 10% lose an average of half, that saves us 10% on the budget for each. That's $175.
SUB-TOTAL: $185, leaving a deficit of $38
With that, cuts to SS/Medicare are now $219 billion, or 30% of total spending cuts. This is still on the low side compared to their share of the budget, but I think that's proper policy - they shouldn't be expected to carry as much of the burden as working-age people.
While I'm grasping nettles, let's do this right. Employer health insurance being tax deductible is a $215 tax hit. I don't want to unwind that totally, but I think 10% inclusion is reasonable - if your employer spends $10k on your group benefits, you're taxed as if you earned $1k. If nothing else, this should help make people see what the cost of the benefits is. This is $22 in new revenue.
One I was eyeing earlier is a tax credit for increasing research expenses. I think that might be a good target - it's probably a lot of admin overhead for companies, and this sort of thing is usually just a way for politicians to talk about how they're supporting the economy. Besides, the left will go crazy if we don't hit corps at least a little bit. That's $16 if we axe it.
SUB-TOTAL: $38, leaving no deficit!
The Results
Total spending cuts are $724 billion(15.2% of the budget), and total tax hikes are $377 billion(10.3% of federal taxes). The new federal budget is $4.022 trillion per year. And I'm being strung up by an angry coalition of government employee unions, socialists, anti-tax crusaders, seniors, soldiers, and modern monetary theorists. Isn't life grand?
TOTAL REVENUES: $3,645 > 4,022
TOTAL SPENDING: $4,746 > 4,022
DEFICIT: $1,101 > 0
REVENUE BREAKDOWN:
Personal income taxes: $1,824 > 1,929 (high earners tax, muni/SALT elimination, employer health insurance deduction down to 90%)
Corporate income taxes: $255 > 271 (ending research expansion tax credit)
Social Security/Medicare taxes: $1,295 > 1,488 (SS breakeven tax hike)
Excise taxes: $109 > 137
-Alcohol/Tobacco: $23 > 23
-Obamacare insurer/device taxes: $17 > 17
-Gas taxes: $43 > 66 (pay for ground transport)
-Airports: $17 > 22 (pay for air transport)
-Other: $9 > 9
Other: $161 > 197
-Estate/Gift taxes: $19 > 55 (in cap gains taxes)
-Customs fees: $48 > 48
-Fed deposits: $49 > 49
-Other: $45 > 45
EXPENSE BREAKDOWN: (All cut by 5% unless otherwise stated)
Defence: $738 > 568 (all 2017'd)
-Personnel: $163 > 137
-Ops & Maintenance: $290 > 233
-Procurement: $139 > 99
-R&D: $100 > 65
-Atomic energy defense activities: $25 > 19
-Other: $21 > 15
International Affairs: $53 > 39
-Humanitarian aid: $25 > 17 (extra 25% cut)
-Security aid: $14 > 10 (extra 25% cut)
-Conduct of Foreign Affairs: $13 > 12
Science, Space, and Technology: $35 > 24 (extra 25% cut)
-Science: $13 > 9
-Space flight: $21 > 15
Energy: $4 > 4
Natural Resources/Environment: $44 > 31 (extra 25% cut)
-Water: $11 > 8
-Conservation and land management: $13 > 9
-Recreation: $5 > 3
-Pollution control: $7 > 5
-Other: $8 > 6
Agriculture: $19 > 4
-Farm subsidies: $14 > 0 (killed)
-Research: $6 > 4 (2017'd)
Commerce: $-5 > -19 (USPS and other advancement of commerce 2017'd)
Transport: $101 > 96
-Ground: $66 > 63
-Air: $22 > 21
-Water: $12 > 11
-Other: $1 > 1
Community and Regional Development: $36 > 29
-Disaster relief: $21 > 20
-Other: $15 > 9 (2017'd)
Education and social services: $112 > 0 (all moved to states)
Health: $1,301 > 1,147
-Medicare: $685 > 572 (means testing, eligibility at age 67)
-Health care services(Medicaid, mostly): $572 > 543
-Training: $39 > 27 (extra 25% cut)
-Health&Safety: $5 > 5
Income Security: $514 > 467
-Federal employee retirement: $152 > 144
-Unemployment: $31 > 29
-Housing assistance: $50 > 48
-Food assistance: $79 > 75
-Other income security: $196 > 165 (2017'd)
-Other: $6 > 6
Social Security: $1,107 > 996 (means testing, but no 5% cut)
Veterans: $218 > 185
-Income security for veterans: $110 > 82 (2017'd)
-Healthcare for veterans: $86 > 82
-Other: $22 > 21
Justice: $69 > 55 (all 2017'd)
-Law enforcement: $37 > 28
-Litigation and justice activities: $17 > 14
-Jail: $7 > 7
-Criminal justice assistance: $9 > 6
General government: $32 > 23 (2017'd)
Debt Interest: $479 > 479 (no 5% cut)
Offsetting receipts not included above: $-110 > -117 (cut to federal employee compensation included here)
---
And, as one final note, I'd like to point out that the Transportation budget has four categories - Ground, Air, Water, and Other.
What the hell goes under Other?
The other three match three of the four classical elements, so is this the federal investment in Floo powder?
Saturday, March 16, 2019
Freedom's Responsibility
For anyone who hasn't heard the news, a bunch of racist assholes attacked a pair of mosques in New Zealand, killing (last I heard) 49 people. Complete with a live video feed, creepy racist manifestos, and all the other accouterments of terrorist murderers everywhere.
Naturally, the world arose in near-unanimous condemnation of this horrible crime, and rightly so. But I've noticed one thing in the responses gathering a lot of attention - a lot of politicians (mostly on the right, sad to say) seem weirdly reluctant to use "Muslim" or "mosque" to describe the victims. A typical response that got a lot of flak was the pair of tweets from Tory leader Andrew Scheer. The focus is on freedom of religion, not on racists massacring Muslims.
The implication is that this is about fitting this tragedy into their worldview, which has a distinct emphasis on freedom of religion(especially for Christians - almost exclusively for Christians, if you look at the examples that many of these people will inevitably pick. See, for example, Bernier's painfully bad tweet). But it's not about the actual victims, the 49 dead Muslims who were murdered for praying in a mosque.
The flip side of this is the left's view, where it's all about Islamophobia, and freedom of religion is nowhere to be seen. For example, Jagmeet Singh's response. This likewise fits into their worldview where Islamophobia and white supremacy are major threats to the body politic, so likewise it'll naturally be their focus. It's unusual for me to say this, but the left is acting better here, on the whole. They're actually condemning the killers and the ideology that spawned them, and that's the first thing that should happen in any awful crime like this. The root cause of murder is murderers, full stop. (Would that they behaved this way all the time, but I'll give credit when credit's due.)
It really bothers me how badly people are dropping the ball on religious freedom, though. All the discussion I've seen today about this, and about the ham-fisted posts from right-leaning figures, has focused on how they're using freedom of religion as a dodge, a way to avoid taking their ideology the blame for this, and a way to co-opt the tragedy to talk about their pet issues. And a lot of them totally are. But in so doing, they make it seem like religious freedom is just a tool to defend their own beliefs from attack, not a critically important general principle. (Though the limits of Twitter as a medium are also apparent here - when simply typing the word "Muslim" is over 2% of your entire post length, sometimes people might cut it for brevity with no ill intent.)
Religious freedom isn't about the right to choose between boring mainstream denominations like Catholic and Lutheran. The modern concept of religious freedom traces back, at least in part, to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which ended one of the bloodier wars in history. For thirty years, Europe had torn itself to shreds, in large part over religious hatreds. This was an era where you could easily be forced to convert at the point of a gun or sword several times in our life, and where wars were fought over and over again about which religious doctrine would hold sway. The result was a shattered region, some eight million dead bodies, and a general agreement that it simply wasn't worth it to fight a death struggle over religion.
Religious freedom is about the right to choose between Catholic and Lutheran in Europe, in 1648. When they weren't "boring" at all, but were instead sparks that led to major international warfare. When your nation could be ransacked for choosing the wrong language for your Bibles, the right to choose it was a real and important right, and protection of it was key. That conflict has long since died away, and excites no serious passions today. But the principle still matters, because other religious conflicts can kill people just as dead even today. Especially today, as we saw in New Zealand.
A tweet about religious freedom that avoids mentioning Islam and co-opts it to be about Christianity is doing a disservice to everyone involved. Religious freedom is important because it protects Muslims too. In the modern developed world, Islam is "scary" in the sort of way that Lutheranism was "scary" in 1640s Italy - not because it's somehow inherently bad, but because a lot of people worry about it.
Freedom of religion isn't about the denomination itself. It's about freedom of opinion, of conscience, and of belief. It's about taking those cherished freedoms and applying them to everyone, even when we find their views odd. I don't doubt that there are people out there who aren't true Islamophobes, but who find Islam confusing and a bit scary nonetheless. But religious freedom is the principle that even when you think a viewpoint is bizarre or a bit offensive, you let people have it. You don't persecute them, you don't try to kick them out of your society, and you sure as hell don't massacre them by the dozen.
Using "freedom of religion" as a club to advance the interests of your personal religion is a great way to throw away the moral authority of impartial protection of human rights. You take something we've slowly worked towards for centuries and burn it away instead of building it up. The moral authority of freedom of religion won't protect you from your critics if you refuse to extend those same protections to those you criticize(or want to criticize, if you thought you could get away with it).
The left has the correct explanation for today's tragedy. But the right has the correct path forward - respecting the right of people to hold any view they want to hold, and participate peacefully in society. I just wish the sort of right-leaning figures that I'm thinking of would realize that they had the right answer and act accordingly, instead of acting like cheap partisan hacks with something to hide. It'd work a lot better if you were giving something up to build the principle that will defend you, instead of just having your hand out to collect all the goodwill that's been invested by other people over the last 400 years.
Naturally, the world arose in near-unanimous condemnation of this horrible crime, and rightly so. But I've noticed one thing in the responses gathering a lot of attention - a lot of politicians (mostly on the right, sad to say) seem weirdly reluctant to use "Muslim" or "mosque" to describe the victims. A typical response that got a lot of flak was the pair of tweets from Tory leader Andrew Scheer. The focus is on freedom of religion, not on racists massacring Muslims.
The implication is that this is about fitting this tragedy into their worldview, which has a distinct emphasis on freedom of religion(especially for Christians - almost exclusively for Christians, if you look at the examples that many of these people will inevitably pick. See, for example, Bernier's painfully bad tweet). But it's not about the actual victims, the 49 dead Muslims who were murdered for praying in a mosque.
The flip side of this is the left's view, where it's all about Islamophobia, and freedom of religion is nowhere to be seen. For example, Jagmeet Singh's response. This likewise fits into their worldview where Islamophobia and white supremacy are major threats to the body politic, so likewise it'll naturally be their focus. It's unusual for me to say this, but the left is acting better here, on the whole. They're actually condemning the killers and the ideology that spawned them, and that's the first thing that should happen in any awful crime like this. The root cause of murder is murderers, full stop. (Would that they behaved this way all the time, but I'll give credit when credit's due.)
It really bothers me how badly people are dropping the ball on religious freedom, though. All the discussion I've seen today about this, and about the ham-fisted posts from right-leaning figures, has focused on how they're using freedom of religion as a dodge, a way to avoid taking their ideology the blame for this, and a way to co-opt the tragedy to talk about their pet issues. And a lot of them totally are. But in so doing, they make it seem like religious freedom is just a tool to defend their own beliefs from attack, not a critically important general principle. (Though the limits of Twitter as a medium are also apparent here - when simply typing the word "Muslim" is over 2% of your entire post length, sometimes people might cut it for brevity with no ill intent.)
Religious freedom isn't about the right to choose between boring mainstream denominations like Catholic and Lutheran. The modern concept of religious freedom traces back, at least in part, to the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which ended one of the bloodier wars in history. For thirty years, Europe had torn itself to shreds, in large part over religious hatreds. This was an era where you could easily be forced to convert at the point of a gun or sword several times in our life, and where wars were fought over and over again about which religious doctrine would hold sway. The result was a shattered region, some eight million dead bodies, and a general agreement that it simply wasn't worth it to fight a death struggle over religion.
Religious freedom is about the right to choose between Catholic and Lutheran in Europe, in 1648. When they weren't "boring" at all, but were instead sparks that led to major international warfare. When your nation could be ransacked for choosing the wrong language for your Bibles, the right to choose it was a real and important right, and protection of it was key. That conflict has long since died away, and excites no serious passions today. But the principle still matters, because other religious conflicts can kill people just as dead even today. Especially today, as we saw in New Zealand.
A tweet about religious freedom that avoids mentioning Islam and co-opts it to be about Christianity is doing a disservice to everyone involved. Religious freedom is important because it protects Muslims too. In the modern developed world, Islam is "scary" in the sort of way that Lutheranism was "scary" in 1640s Italy - not because it's somehow inherently bad, but because a lot of people worry about it.
Freedom of religion isn't about the denomination itself. It's about freedom of opinion, of conscience, and of belief. It's about taking those cherished freedoms and applying them to everyone, even when we find their views odd. I don't doubt that there are people out there who aren't true Islamophobes, but who find Islam confusing and a bit scary nonetheless. But religious freedom is the principle that even when you think a viewpoint is bizarre or a bit offensive, you let people have it. You don't persecute them, you don't try to kick them out of your society, and you sure as hell don't massacre them by the dozen.
Using "freedom of religion" as a club to advance the interests of your personal religion is a great way to throw away the moral authority of impartial protection of human rights. You take something we've slowly worked towards for centuries and burn it away instead of building it up. The moral authority of freedom of religion won't protect you from your critics if you refuse to extend those same protections to those you criticize(or want to criticize, if you thought you could get away with it).
The left has the correct explanation for today's tragedy. But the right has the correct path forward - respecting the right of people to hold any view they want to hold, and participate peacefully in society. I just wish the sort of right-leaning figures that I'm thinking of would realize that they had the right answer and act accordingly, instead of acting like cheap partisan hacks with something to hide. It'd work a lot better if you were giving something up to build the principle that will defend you, instead of just having your hand out to collect all the goodwill that's been invested by other people over the last 400 years.
Friday, June 30, 2017
Friday Night Video - The Maple Leaf Forever (with bonus blog post!)
(This is nominally a Friday Night Video, but it's also a full-sized blog post)
And so, some very strange things turn into nationalist rallying cries. "We have free healthcare!", as if most of the developed world doesn't - even the Americans run about half of their medical spending through government programs. "Tim Horton's!", as if decent donuts and heavily sweetened coffee is what makes a nation. "That I Am Canadian ad from 17 years ago!", which was a good little rant, but seriously it's a beer ad that's itself almost old enough to drink.
Quebec has always been the exception to this, because Quebec actually has an identity that's based on their own characteristics. For example, healthcare is merely public policy for them, because they don't need it to prop up their self-worth. I've always admired them for it. In my lifetime, English Canada has never felt the same way. We used to have an identity once, back in the days when "English" didn't merely refer to a language, but it faded away in the postwar years as straight-up English nationalism became seen as anachronistic. I know a few who still feel it as strongly as their great-grandfathers, but that's more because I hang out among Tories than because it's popular nationwide.
I think we can do better. So in honour of Canada's 150th anniversary, I'll talk about a few things Canada has to be genuinely proud of. Things we do better than most of the rest of the world, not just the Americans, and the sort of things a real national identity can build itself on if we ever become willing to have one.
1) We Do Immigration Really Well
Immigrants, in practice, tend to be divided into two categories by the general public in most countries - there's the first-worlders, who can come and go as they please without anyone caring very much, and there's the third-worlders, who are viewed with suspicion and need to be sharply limited. In some ways it's understandable - there's so many third-worlders that the numbers would be overwhelming if the walls ever came down - but immigration has huge benefits for both sides if it's allowed to happen, just like every other form of trade.
Canada has one of the highest rates of immigration in the developed world, and yet it's generally not very controversial. There's a few cranks who complain about it, and there's occasional grumblings of "Can't they just learn the language?", but on the whole it's fairly popular. And the reason is fairly simple - we have pretty clear standards of who we want and how to get in, which means we get skilled and successful people. We take them from all over the world, so there's no single demographic group that ever builds up so many members that it triggers a backlash. And we have a fairly strong cultural expectation that immigrants can keep their food and hobbies and such, but they have to follow our laws and work within the democratic system we have here no matter what their homeland was like. (And more often than not, that's why they're here in the first place, so this isn't exactly something the immigrants tend to resist)
It sounds simple, but it's rare in practice. In the US, the stereotypical is a poor Mexican day labourer who's more likely to be illegal than legal. In Canada, the stereotypical immigrant is a small business owner from some random part of Asia. So while they elect Trump to keep the foreigners out, we take in higher numbers and the only politician to even semi-seriously try to rile people up against immigrants got absolutely crushed. It's a great system, and we should be proud of it.
2) We're Stable, Peaceful, and Free
It's almost cliche to refer to Canada as a young country, but a 150th anniversary is actually surprisingly old when you consider the history of states instead of the history of nations. In 1867, when Canada gained independence, Germany wasn't yet a state. In all of the Old World save Europe there's a grand total of eight nations that have had a continuous existence longer than Canada has. Their ruins are older than ours, but their states are newer.
Stability is overrated by some, but when it comes to people running their day-to-day lives, nothing matters more. Not freedom, not prosperity, not pride or honor or history - give people the choice of any of those in a chaotic world or none with stability, and most will pick the stability pretty quickly. It's happened over and over through history. We have stability without giving up any of those other virtues, and that's something to be proud of.
Few countries can endure a decades-long effort to destroy the state without resorting to violence, especially when the movement started out with flashy violence in its own right. Few nations have as long a history of avoiding the ravages of war as we do - the world wars, destroyer of whole continents, involved one lighthouse getting shelled briefly in Canada.
Obviously, this is not uniquely Canadian. Even the exact form of government we have is obviously a British transplant, though we picked up a few ideas from the Americans in the process. Likewise, some of it is a function of our relatively isolated geography instead of our civic virtue. But that's no reason to begrudge it. We do well with what we have, and we should be proud.
3) We're Damn Good Bankers
I confess that I might be a bit biased here, given I work for a big bank, but this is really an underappreciated Canadian virtue. It sounds a bit silly to pick on one sector like this, but bank failures are almost always the proximate causes of ugly financial crashes, and Canada just doesn't ever have any. So when Creditanstalt crashes and takes down the world financial system with it(plus, you know, that whole Hitler thing), the whole world economy falls apart, but the Canadian banks carried on without any trouble. 2008 ripped the American banking system in half and took down several titans, but the Canadian banking crisis was two losing quarters at CIBC - heck, they still made a profit on the year.
Our regulatory system is a bit different than other nations, but not so much so that it should cause this gigantic a discrepancy. Likewise, we bailed out our banks a bit, but less than most other nations. The best explanation I've ever heard is a Canadian cultural bias against taking excess risk, and it seems to fit well enough. And boy, does it ever work in our favour here. In the wake of 2008 when a big part of the world was talking about a "Too Big To Fail Tax" on big banks, all Harper had to do to spike the idea was to point out that it was everyone else who had problems, and the Canadian banking system was fine as it was. Rather than see all their banks move to Toronto, the whole world backed down. It was magnificent - easily my favourite move Harper made as PM - bit it only worked because our banks are eerily stable. They're harder to destroy than a Hilux, for god's sake.
As for pride in our banks...well, telling people to like bankers is an uphill battle, I'll admit. But we should at least be happy that ours screw up a lot less than anyone else's.
4) We're Usually On The Right Side Of History
Most nations have a bit of a spotty record overall. They're the good guys sometimes, they're the bad guys sometimes, who knows. But Canada has, by and large, been on the right side of every conflict we've been in. The Boer War was rather questionable, I'll admit, but in both World Wars, most theatres of the Cold War, and the post-9/11 War on Terror we did our part quite effectively for our size. We invented peacekeeping(which we laud more than we ought, but it's genuinely done good work in a few places), and we're pretty decent at knowing which one to use when. Again, it's not unique, but it's rarer than we might like, and it's something to take pride in.
Honorable Mentions
The food: Poutine, nanaimo bars, butter tarts, and maple everything are all typical Canadian foods, but our immigration system is doing double duty here. I live in the most multicultural city on the planet, and I can eat like it any time I want. It's fantastic.
It's really pretty: Every nation has scenic bits of nature, but the advantage of being so huge is that we have a whole lot more of it than most.
It's home: At root, this is half the reason for nationalism in every nation. Even if it's not the best nation in an abstract sense, it's still mine, and I like it here.
I say we have a lot to be proud of, and we can do better about expressing that pride than ragging on our best friends, or spending $120,000 on a rubber duck, or throwing around airy platitudes, bloated government agencies, and stale beer commercials. We're allowed to be proud of who we are, and I'd like to see us do it a bit more often.
Sunday, May 28, 2017
CPC Leadership - Wrap-Up
I.
It felt like the first time. It was not the first time.
Scheer won in a nail-biter - the closest leadership race I've ever seen, he was behind on the first 12 ballots, and he came right up the middle through the narrowest gap in politics. It was an impressive performance by his team, and I'd like to congratulate him and wish him good luck in uniting the party behind his leadership and defeating Trudeau in 2019,
Now, if you'll excuse me, there's something I need to get out of my system.
ahem
I won't pretend to be happy about this result. I think Scheer was less well-positioned to win the next election, as well as being less likely to do anything useful if he does win. I have a sinking feeling that we might be here in a few years doing this all over again. Trudeau was never going to be easy to beat(even if you don't respect the man's smarts, he has a pretty good team and a boatload of charisma), and we just made it harder.
That said, the comment I made about Scheer and party unity before the vote was "Anyone who leaves the party over him was never ours to begin with". I stand by that. He's a generic conservative, very much like Harper was, and while I think we could do better, we could've done much worse. I have friends who are talking about being sure that they'll vote Liberal to punish the CPC, but I don't agree with their decision at all. I mean, maybe the 2019 platform will be so terrible that it's the right call, but promising to do that two and a half years out is grossly premature. I don't think the platform will be nearly as nice as the Bernier platform that could have been, but I can imagine a platform like Harper's in 2006 that is simple, to the point, and composed of some pretty good stuff overall. I'd happily support that. My gut right now expects something more in the "grudgingly support" realm, with a lot of annoying micro-policy and minimal vision, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong there.
II.
Good platform or bad, though, it'll be a nightmare to win the election. Scheer did astonishingly well in Quebec, but by all accounts he did it by signing up people who'd mostly never vote for us in the general election. I don't expect him to win many seats there, and winning without Quebec is incredibly hard. In all of Canadian history, there have only been four majority governments that didn't need Quebec's votes. Two(1958 and 1984) were nationwide landslides that won Quebec as well, and simply used the extra seats to run up the numbers. One was the wartime election of 1917, where the Conservatives and Liberals, the only two parties of note at the time, basically formed a coalition government and ran a slate together everywhere but Quebec(English Canada went 150-20 for Borden, and many of those 20 were in Francophone-heavy ridings), The fourth and final example of a no-Quebec-required victory was the 2011 election,
2011 looks like an outlier here. It was no landslide(Harper won 39.6%), and it doesn't seem like anything particularly out of the ordinary as elections go. But if you break down the numbers a bit, you see exactly how hard it was. If you exclude Quebec, Harper went from 54% of the seats to 69%, from 39.6% of the vote to 47.7%. That's almost as big a landslide as Mulroney won in 1984. And even then, that wasn't enough on its own. We also needed the worst result for the Liberals in Canadian history(including the aforementioned 1917 election, where they barely existed across 2/3 of the country), with a shockingly strong NDP splitting the opposition vote - without that, we'd still have fallen short of a majority even with the huge support we got in English Canada bolstered by the bare handful of MPs we scraped up in Quebec.
Long story short, Quebec is large, populous, and very different than the rest of the country. You can win elections without them, but it's bloody hard. Scheer already threaded one needle yesterday, but if he wants a majority government, he needs to thread another one that's just as thin. Again, I'd be happy to be wrong here, but I'm not sure he's got it in him.
III.
I expect there's going to be some people who have problems with the process. It always happens after an election like this, especially one where the voting process had as many problems as this election did(for those not in the loop, the process of mailing out ballots to voters was rocky, and I know a couple folks who simply never got a ballot in the mail - normally, not a big deal when you can just vote in person, but when there's only a dozen or so in-person polling locations in all of Canada, it really can be). Likewise, a lot of people had trouble with the "ID in outer envelope, ballot in inner envelope" system, and apparently the spoiled ballot numbers were high. From what I can see, none of this seems to have been targeted at any given campaign, and it was just a rocky process from a party that hasn't run one of these since 2004, and may have forgotten important details about how to do it well.
People will complain, but losing teams always complain about stuff like that. With a race this close it may have even made the difference, but we can't re-run the election to find out, so it winds up being a hazard of the game. I'm not thrilled about that, but I don't want to see people getting too bitter about it.
The other part of the procedure side that I find interesting is trying to figure out how Scheer will extend an olive branch to Bernier's camp. He won fair and square, so he's entitled to run on whatever policy he likes at this point, but if he's smart he'll try to keep the 49% of his party that wanted some pretty radical changes to our approach on-side. He'll keep harping on the things that they agreed on, of course - no corporate welfare(I doubt Scheer really means it from how he cozied up to the dairy farmers, but he'll at least pretend), balancing the budget, and all that. But if he starts talking about one of Bernier's bigger policies, I won't be too surprised. It won't be supply management, of course, nor will it be devolution of healthcare to the provinces, but I think Bernier's equalization policy might be an interesting one. It'll play well with the party base, he can have Bernier spearhead it to take the sting off for the Quebecois, and everyone always whines about the details of the formula no matter what happens, so it gives you political cover for doing just about anything. There's constitutional issues with changing it too much, of course(s.36 explicitly requires the existence of equalization), and the Supreme Court has not been known for its deference to Conservative policy efforts, but I think it's more likely than most.
It'll be interesting to watch, in any case. If Scheer starts acting like the "real conservative" he billed himself as, I think some of my more pessimistic friends may come around. We'll see.
IV.
The last thing I'll note before I start finding something to blog about aside from Canadian politics is that the reporting on this race was profoundly bad. Stupid and obvious questions are par for the course("You were the frontrunner and led on the first 12 ballots, how does it feel to lose?"), but the number of people who didn't even spend thirty seconds to learn the rules was really sad. Talk of "delegates" in reporting was common, some people didn't seem to understand that the votes had already all been cast, and I saw one reporter get Scheer and Bernier mixed up - not in random discussions in the newsroom, no, she asked one a question that was obviously meant for the other, because she didn't know who she was talking to. Argh.
The real gold-star, A for effort, achievement in failed reporting award, though, goes to someone who isn't actually a reporter at all - it goes to Kevin O'friggin'Leary, the guy who could plausibly have won this race if he'd kept his head in the game. After the first ballot results came in, he was talking about how he predicted Bernier was still going to win, but it was going to take longer. He'd originally said a win on the 5th-7th ballot, but now he was saying the 9th ballot. Small problem - that was a completely insane prediction, on the verge of being mathematically impossible. Bernier would have needed to be the second choice of 93% of everyone else's voters, including those of candidates who despised him, in order to win on the 9th ballot. Winning on the 5th would have required him to be over 47% on the first ballot, when O'Leary's(excessively generous, as it turns out) prediction was 35%. Mr. Wonderful didn't seem to understand that all the votes were already cast and candidates couldn't drop off halfway through. Despite having tried to drop out of the race himself and not being allowed to. Good lord, man. I am so glad that he realized he wasn't a serious candidate, because it would have been a disaster to have someone so clueless running the show, and he might have been able to get there.
Edit: I found a journalist who actually covered the race the right way! (Well, mostly - that isn't any Lux I've ever seen)
It felt like the first time. It was not the first time.
Scheer won in a nail-biter - the closest leadership race I've ever seen, he was behind on the first 12 ballots, and he came right up the middle through the narrowest gap in politics. It was an impressive performance by his team, and I'd like to congratulate him and wish him good luck in uniting the party behind his leadership and defeating Trudeau in 2019,
Now, if you'll excuse me, there's something I need to get out of my system.
ahem
I won't pretend to be happy about this result. I think Scheer was less well-positioned to win the next election, as well as being less likely to do anything useful if he does win. I have a sinking feeling that we might be here in a few years doing this all over again. Trudeau was never going to be easy to beat(even if you don't respect the man's smarts, he has a pretty good team and a boatload of charisma), and we just made it harder.
That said, the comment I made about Scheer and party unity before the vote was "Anyone who leaves the party over him was never ours to begin with". I stand by that. He's a generic conservative, very much like Harper was, and while I think we could do better, we could've done much worse. I have friends who are talking about being sure that they'll vote Liberal to punish the CPC, but I don't agree with their decision at all. I mean, maybe the 2019 platform will be so terrible that it's the right call, but promising to do that two and a half years out is grossly premature. I don't think the platform will be nearly as nice as the Bernier platform that could have been, but I can imagine a platform like Harper's in 2006 that is simple, to the point, and composed of some pretty good stuff overall. I'd happily support that. My gut right now expects something more in the "grudgingly support" realm, with a lot of annoying micro-policy and minimal vision, but I'd be happy to be proven wrong there.
II.
Good platform or bad, though, it'll be a nightmare to win the election. Scheer did astonishingly well in Quebec, but by all accounts he did it by signing up people who'd mostly never vote for us in the general election. I don't expect him to win many seats there, and winning without Quebec is incredibly hard. In all of Canadian history, there have only been four majority governments that didn't need Quebec's votes. Two(1958 and 1984) were nationwide landslides that won Quebec as well, and simply used the extra seats to run up the numbers. One was the wartime election of 1917, where the Conservatives and Liberals, the only two parties of note at the time, basically formed a coalition government and ran a slate together everywhere but Quebec(English Canada went 150-20 for Borden, and many of those 20 were in Francophone-heavy ridings), The fourth and final example of a no-Quebec-required victory was the 2011 election,
2011 looks like an outlier here. It was no landslide(Harper won 39.6%), and it doesn't seem like anything particularly out of the ordinary as elections go. But if you break down the numbers a bit, you see exactly how hard it was. If you exclude Quebec, Harper went from 54% of the seats to 69%, from 39.6% of the vote to 47.7%. That's almost as big a landslide as Mulroney won in 1984. And even then, that wasn't enough on its own. We also needed the worst result for the Liberals in Canadian history(including the aforementioned 1917 election, where they barely existed across 2/3 of the country), with a shockingly strong NDP splitting the opposition vote - without that, we'd still have fallen short of a majority even with the huge support we got in English Canada bolstered by the bare handful of MPs we scraped up in Quebec.
Long story short, Quebec is large, populous, and very different than the rest of the country. You can win elections without them, but it's bloody hard. Scheer already threaded one needle yesterday, but if he wants a majority government, he needs to thread another one that's just as thin. Again, I'd be happy to be wrong here, but I'm not sure he's got it in him.
III.
I expect there's going to be some people who have problems with the process. It always happens after an election like this, especially one where the voting process had as many problems as this election did(for those not in the loop, the process of mailing out ballots to voters was rocky, and I know a couple folks who simply never got a ballot in the mail - normally, not a big deal when you can just vote in person, but when there's only a dozen or so in-person polling locations in all of Canada, it really can be). Likewise, a lot of people had trouble with the "ID in outer envelope, ballot in inner envelope" system, and apparently the spoiled ballot numbers were high. From what I can see, none of this seems to have been targeted at any given campaign, and it was just a rocky process from a party that hasn't run one of these since 2004, and may have forgotten important details about how to do it well.
People will complain, but losing teams always complain about stuff like that. With a race this close it may have even made the difference, but we can't re-run the election to find out, so it winds up being a hazard of the game. I'm not thrilled about that, but I don't want to see people getting too bitter about it.
The other part of the procedure side that I find interesting is trying to figure out how Scheer will extend an olive branch to Bernier's camp. He won fair and square, so he's entitled to run on whatever policy he likes at this point, but if he's smart he'll try to keep the 49% of his party that wanted some pretty radical changes to our approach on-side. He'll keep harping on the things that they agreed on, of course - no corporate welfare(I doubt Scheer really means it from how he cozied up to the dairy farmers, but he'll at least pretend), balancing the budget, and all that. But if he starts talking about one of Bernier's bigger policies, I won't be too surprised. It won't be supply management, of course, nor will it be devolution of healthcare to the provinces, but I think Bernier's equalization policy might be an interesting one. It'll play well with the party base, he can have Bernier spearhead it to take the sting off for the Quebecois, and everyone always whines about the details of the formula no matter what happens, so it gives you political cover for doing just about anything. There's constitutional issues with changing it too much, of course(s.36 explicitly requires the existence of equalization), and the Supreme Court has not been known for its deference to Conservative policy efforts, but I think it's more likely than most.
It'll be interesting to watch, in any case. If Scheer starts acting like the "real conservative" he billed himself as, I think some of my more pessimistic friends may come around. We'll see.
IV.
The last thing I'll note before I start finding something to blog about aside from Canadian politics is that the reporting on this race was profoundly bad. Stupid and obvious questions are par for the course("You were the frontrunner and led on the first 12 ballots, how does it feel to lose?"), but the number of people who didn't even spend thirty seconds to learn the rules was really sad. Talk of "delegates" in reporting was common, some people didn't seem to understand that the votes had already all been cast, and I saw one reporter get Scheer and Bernier mixed up - not in random discussions in the newsroom, no, she asked one a question that was obviously meant for the other, because she didn't know who she was talking to. Argh.
The real gold-star, A for effort, achievement in failed reporting award, though, goes to someone who isn't actually a reporter at all - it goes to Kevin O'friggin'Leary, the guy who could plausibly have won this race if he'd kept his head in the game. After the first ballot results came in, he was talking about how he predicted Bernier was still going to win, but it was going to take longer. He'd originally said a win on the 5th-7th ballot, but now he was saying the 9th ballot. Small problem - that was a completely insane prediction, on the verge of being mathematically impossible. Bernier would have needed to be the second choice of 93% of everyone else's voters, including those of candidates who despised him, in order to win on the 9th ballot. Winning on the 5th would have required him to be over 47% on the first ballot, when O'Leary's(excessively generous, as it turns out) prediction was 35%. Mr. Wonderful didn't seem to understand that all the votes were already cast and candidates couldn't drop off halfway through. Despite having tried to drop out of the race himself and not being allowed to. Good lord, man. I am so glad that he realized he wasn't a serious candidate, because it would have been a disaster to have someone so clueless running the show, and he might have been able to get there.
Edit: I found a journalist who actually covered the race the right way! (Well, mostly - that isn't any Lux I've ever seen)
Wednesday, May 24, 2017
The Road To Hell
I.
I've spent a lot of time debating over the years, and yet I still manage to find ways to get into trouble saying the same things that have gotten me in trouble over and over again in the past. One of the worst of these is me talking about good intentions.
Good intentions are a pet issue of mine. The first substantial post I wrote on this blog was on the topic, and it's one I find myself going to over and over again. I see society getting polarized and hateful, and I get frustrated by it. Very few people want to watch the world burn, we just disagree on how to build it up. Criticizing the other side for being malicious is totally missing the point. If everyone acknowledged that everyone else just wants to help, you'd eliminate half the malice and spite from politics.
The thing that gets me into trouble is that people hear this argument and think I'm saying something that is on its face quite similar, but that has a huge difference in practice. They hear me saying that other people aren't malicious and that we should respect them as people, and they think I'm saying that we should respect their opinions. Now, it's probably my fault that I'm not more clear about this, but it makes a world of difference.
The first thing you get as a response if you start talking about how someone can be a decent person even when they're wrong is "What, so you think all truth is relative or something?". People treat a knowing defence of the wrong as an attack on truth itself. I see why they'd pattern-match it that way, but that's not what this is about at all.
Even the most basic logic will show that if there's someone saying X and someone saying not-X, one of them is wrong. No amount of feel-goodery will change that. Right and wrong exist - they are not merely in our heads, they are actual truths about the physical world. Some opinions are factually correct, and others are factually incorrect. When someone is saying things that are factually incorrect, being a good person doesn't change that fact - there's no law of physics that says "You're going to jump off a cliff and try to fly by flapping your arms. Normally you'd go splat, but I can see you really mean it, so sure - what the hell". The universe does not care about what we intend, it only cares what we do, and doing the wrong thing will lead to the wrong outcomes. Getting things right is genuinely important.
The problem is, we are flesh and blood, not beings of pure logic. We do not have any infallible tools for telling right from wrong. We have some very good tools for some situations - science, basic human decency, and so on - but those tools all have blind spots, all have weaknesses. Yes, it's easy to be pretty sure today that leeches aren't as good at treating illness as penicillin, but a lot of very smart people have thought the opposite through history. If we want to do better than them, we need to have some humility. Not so much that it leads us to a swamp of nihilism and existential paralysis, but enough that we can at least learn from the errors of those who have gone before. We need to at least notice the skulls.
I do the best I can to find truth. I'm not perfect, because nobody is, but I've given these things a lot of thought over the years. Using the best tools I know of, I've come to a large number of beliefs that I feel confident in the truth of, and I will argue for them passionately and at great length. I try to balance that with humility and acknowledge that others may have good points I haven't considered(and several times in my adult life I've assimilated large chunks of arguments directed against me into my own worldview), but trying to find balance and stay humble is not an excuse for abdicating the responsibility of determining right from wrong.
II.
Like most good ideas, this is hardly original. You see it over and over again in any culture that requires both conflict and camaraderie. Sports teams will try as hard as they can to beat each other, but they don't go around trying to kill each other. People love to quote folks like George Washington arguing against party systems, for fear that they'd break the nation into squabbling factions(and while it's outside the scope of this post to explain, I think he had a pretty good point). The formulation of this concept I like best is much older, though.
"Love the sinner, hate the sin"
I'm not a religious man, so my definition of "sin" will differ slightly from the usual here, but the core of the idea is the same. People make mistakes, and those mistakes should not be ignored. Acting correctly is important, and we should encourage it as best we can. Morality isn't just one of those old-timey concepts like phlogiston that we're better off without. Making mistakes about important things is genuinely pretty terrible - in living memory, we've seen a single error get repeated over and over and kill a hundred million people. Anyone who doesn't hate that sin has lost their claim to humanity, as far as I'm concerned.
The people who made the sin, though, were not simply living incarnations of evil. They had hopes and dreams, loves and hates. They were people, and their lives mattered as much as those of their victims. The only true moral compass in the world is helping people, and people who have made mistakes are still people. We've all made mistakes, and we've all needed to be forgiven our sins. That isn't to say that all sins can be forgiven, but it's a sad thing to have to put down a rabid dog even if it's the right decision.
If someone is wrong, oppose the error. Fight for truth! But when you're fighting for truth, your opponent is falsehood, not a person. The person is what you're trying to save, not what you're trying to destroy. Victory is bringing the other person to truth, not destroying them for their falsehood. And while that's true in a fuzzy love-thy-neighbour sense, it'd also be true even if you didn't care about them as people. If you destroy someone on the other side, you leave a void. If you convert them, you have an ally. Attacking ideas to save people is a force multiplier, as well as a good way to actually be a decent human being.
So yes, I defend people who are wrong against those who are right sometimes. Not because I agree with them, and not because I want to see mistakes spread, but because it's too easy to get overzealous. When you think of something as a struggle, the desire to crush your enemies is a natural one, but we forget in the process that those enemies are people too, and that destroying them is something we'd rather avoid.
I've spent a lot of time debating over the years, and yet I still manage to find ways to get into trouble saying the same things that have gotten me in trouble over and over again in the past. One of the worst of these is me talking about good intentions.
Good intentions are a pet issue of mine. The first substantial post I wrote on this blog was on the topic, and it's one I find myself going to over and over again. I see society getting polarized and hateful, and I get frustrated by it. Very few people want to watch the world burn, we just disagree on how to build it up. Criticizing the other side for being malicious is totally missing the point. If everyone acknowledged that everyone else just wants to help, you'd eliminate half the malice and spite from politics.
The thing that gets me into trouble is that people hear this argument and think I'm saying something that is on its face quite similar, but that has a huge difference in practice. They hear me saying that other people aren't malicious and that we should respect them as people, and they think I'm saying that we should respect their opinions. Now, it's probably my fault that I'm not more clear about this, but it makes a world of difference.
The first thing you get as a response if you start talking about how someone can be a decent person even when they're wrong is "What, so you think all truth is relative or something?". People treat a knowing defence of the wrong as an attack on truth itself. I see why they'd pattern-match it that way, but that's not what this is about at all.
Even the most basic logic will show that if there's someone saying X and someone saying not-X, one of them is wrong. No amount of feel-goodery will change that. Right and wrong exist - they are not merely in our heads, they are actual truths about the physical world. Some opinions are factually correct, and others are factually incorrect. When someone is saying things that are factually incorrect, being a good person doesn't change that fact - there's no law of physics that says "You're going to jump off a cliff and try to fly by flapping your arms. Normally you'd go splat, but I can see you really mean it, so sure - what the hell". The universe does not care about what we intend, it only cares what we do, and doing the wrong thing will lead to the wrong outcomes. Getting things right is genuinely important.
The problem is, we are flesh and blood, not beings of pure logic. We do not have any infallible tools for telling right from wrong. We have some very good tools for some situations - science, basic human decency, and so on - but those tools all have blind spots, all have weaknesses. Yes, it's easy to be pretty sure today that leeches aren't as good at treating illness as penicillin, but a lot of very smart people have thought the opposite through history. If we want to do better than them, we need to have some humility. Not so much that it leads us to a swamp of nihilism and existential paralysis, but enough that we can at least learn from the errors of those who have gone before. We need to at least notice the skulls.
I do the best I can to find truth. I'm not perfect, because nobody is, but I've given these things a lot of thought over the years. Using the best tools I know of, I've come to a large number of beliefs that I feel confident in the truth of, and I will argue for them passionately and at great length. I try to balance that with humility and acknowledge that others may have good points I haven't considered(and several times in my adult life I've assimilated large chunks of arguments directed against me into my own worldview), but trying to find balance and stay humble is not an excuse for abdicating the responsibility of determining right from wrong.
II.
Like most good ideas, this is hardly original. You see it over and over again in any culture that requires both conflict and camaraderie. Sports teams will try as hard as they can to beat each other, but they don't go around trying to kill each other. People love to quote folks like George Washington arguing against party systems, for fear that they'd break the nation into squabbling factions(and while it's outside the scope of this post to explain, I think he had a pretty good point). The formulation of this concept I like best is much older, though.
"Love the sinner, hate the sin"
I'm not a religious man, so my definition of "sin" will differ slightly from the usual here, but the core of the idea is the same. People make mistakes, and those mistakes should not be ignored. Acting correctly is important, and we should encourage it as best we can. Morality isn't just one of those old-timey concepts like phlogiston that we're better off without. Making mistakes about important things is genuinely pretty terrible - in living memory, we've seen a single error get repeated over and over and kill a hundred million people. Anyone who doesn't hate that sin has lost their claim to humanity, as far as I'm concerned.
The people who made the sin, though, were not simply living incarnations of evil. They had hopes and dreams, loves and hates. They were people, and their lives mattered as much as those of their victims. The only true moral compass in the world is helping people, and people who have made mistakes are still people. We've all made mistakes, and we've all needed to be forgiven our sins. That isn't to say that all sins can be forgiven, but it's a sad thing to have to put down a rabid dog even if it's the right decision.
If someone is wrong, oppose the error. Fight for truth! But when you're fighting for truth, your opponent is falsehood, not a person. The person is what you're trying to save, not what you're trying to destroy. Victory is bringing the other person to truth, not destroying them for their falsehood. And while that's true in a fuzzy love-thy-neighbour sense, it'd also be true even if you didn't care about them as people. If you destroy someone on the other side, you leave a void. If you convert them, you have an ally. Attacking ideas to save people is a force multiplier, as well as a good way to actually be a decent human being.
So yes, I defend people who are wrong against those who are right sometimes. Not because I agree with them, and not because I want to see mistakes spread, but because it's too easy to get overzealous. When you think of something as a struggle, the desire to crush your enemies is a natural one, but we forget in the process that those enemies are people too, and that destroying them is something we'd rather avoid.
Thursday, April 27, 2017
CPC Leadership - Strategic Thoughts
This is part of my larger series on the CPC leadership.
I had a big long post planned here - analyzing voter transition matrices, running Monte Carlo simulations, the works - but yesterday's news scotched that.
We all know that Bernier will win now. I mean, it's still possible for Scheer or O'Toole to come up the middle, but we're looking at maybe a 10% chance now. Analyzing who will win has thus gotten a lot less interesting. Instead, this will be a grab-bag post.
1) Leitch is off my ballot. She was a strategic move to block O'Leary, not a conviction vote, and I have no need for such any more. I don't think I'll be replacing her - Blaney was next on my list, and I'm not sure I'd still vote Conservative if he won. It won't make any conceivable difference, but I wouldn't feel good voting for him as leader.
2) O'Leary's decision confuses me a bit. He says he dropped out because he couldn't win the general election, but apparently the moment of truth for him was membership numbers - he saw 60,000 more members than expected and assumed he'd have a tough time winning. I think he's being a bit blustery about his chances. That said, if we take him at face value, his weakness in Quebec is not news. I've been saying it for a year, and while I can forgive him for not listening to my advice, it's been the general opinion of the punditosphere as well. Dropping out because you can't win the general makes sense, but the time to do that was before launching.
I don't think O'Leary really took this job seriously. He didn't understand that party leader is a grossly thankless position of working 80 hours a week in the church basement circuit until you win, he didn't understand that a Prime Minister is not a dictator, and he didn't give his opponents enough respect if he's surprised by a membership of a quarter million. O'Leary spent a year running for the leadership quite openly before he declared, and he lined up a lot of support, but he didn't really lay the proper groundwork that someone with his wealth and connections should have been able to lay.
I mean, seriously, he doesn't actually need to work for a living. If he wanted the job, he should have dropped out of some of his other responsibilities and spent the year learning French in secret. A man of his intelligence and resources can do it if he wants to. Then pop into the race a day before the French debate instead of the day after(or maybe a bilingual debate, to preserve some surprise), and blow everyone away who was ragging on you for not being able to win Quebec. He'd have wrong-footed everybody, proven himself to be an utterly serious contender, and instantly upped his support by like 5% by extending such a clear olive branch to Quebec. He could have done it, and he'd have won the race, and probably the keys to 24 Sussex, if he had. Given that he wasn't willing to put in the work, I'm glad he's out, but alternate universe O'Leary who actually looked into the job and gave it thought before he ran would have been a hell of a lot more interesting as a candidate.
3) The ballots have already been printed, and O'Leary's name is on them - some people actually started getting theirs in the mail yesterday. That means he's going to get votes, and probably a decent number of them between the anti-Bernier protest voters and the people who live under rocks. My bet is he finishes about 6th on the first ballot. Despite being out.
4) Almost every Conservative leadership race in my lifetime has lost a candidate to the Liberals after it finished. Seriously, we've had almost as many defections as races.
2004 CPC: Stronach
2003 PC: Brison and Orchard
2002 CA: Nil.
2000 CA: Martin
1998 PC: Orchard again
1993 PC: Turner, though it took a while
Obvious candidates for that questionable honour this time are Chong and possibly Raitt, as the reddest Tories running, but part of me thinks it'll be someone out of left field, like Lemieux or Blaney. After all, most of those defections have been social liberals jumping over social policy(I've heard from one of his staffers that Brison was basically gay-bashed out of the party, to our shame), so maybe it'll be someone jumping over disagreement with a different policy, like Bernier's social liberalism or hard-nosed fiscal policy.
5) My preferred candidate will probably win. I think this may be the first time in my life that's happened in a leadership race where I live(I've supported folks like Danielle Smith and John McCain and seen them win, but never in Ontario or Canada-level races). This is trippy, but I can get used to it.
I had a big long post planned here - analyzing voter transition matrices, running Monte Carlo simulations, the works - but yesterday's news scotched that.
We all know that Bernier will win now. I mean, it's still possible for Scheer or O'Toole to come up the middle, but we're looking at maybe a 10% chance now. Analyzing who will win has thus gotten a lot less interesting. Instead, this will be a grab-bag post.
1) Leitch is off my ballot. She was a strategic move to block O'Leary, not a conviction vote, and I have no need for such any more. I don't think I'll be replacing her - Blaney was next on my list, and I'm not sure I'd still vote Conservative if he won. It won't make any conceivable difference, but I wouldn't feel good voting for him as leader.
2) O'Leary's decision confuses me a bit. He says he dropped out because he couldn't win the general election, but apparently the moment of truth for him was membership numbers - he saw 60,000 more members than expected and assumed he'd have a tough time winning. I think he's being a bit blustery about his chances. That said, if we take him at face value, his weakness in Quebec is not news. I've been saying it for a year, and while I can forgive him for not listening to my advice, it's been the general opinion of the punditosphere as well. Dropping out because you can't win the general makes sense, but the time to do that was before launching.
I don't think O'Leary really took this job seriously. He didn't understand that party leader is a grossly thankless position of working 80 hours a week in the church basement circuit until you win, he didn't understand that a Prime Minister is not a dictator, and he didn't give his opponents enough respect if he's surprised by a membership of a quarter million. O'Leary spent a year running for the leadership quite openly before he declared, and he lined up a lot of support, but he didn't really lay the proper groundwork that someone with his wealth and connections should have been able to lay.
I mean, seriously, he doesn't actually need to work for a living. If he wanted the job, he should have dropped out of some of his other responsibilities and spent the year learning French in secret. A man of his intelligence and resources can do it if he wants to. Then pop into the race a day before the French debate instead of the day after(or maybe a bilingual debate, to preserve some surprise), and blow everyone away who was ragging on you for not being able to win Quebec. He'd have wrong-footed everybody, proven himself to be an utterly serious contender, and instantly upped his support by like 5% by extending such a clear olive branch to Quebec. He could have done it, and he'd have won the race, and probably the keys to 24 Sussex, if he had. Given that he wasn't willing to put in the work, I'm glad he's out, but alternate universe O'Leary who actually looked into the job and gave it thought before he ran would have been a hell of a lot more interesting as a candidate.
3) The ballots have already been printed, and O'Leary's name is on them - some people actually started getting theirs in the mail yesterday. That means he's going to get votes, and probably a decent number of them between the anti-Bernier protest voters and the people who live under rocks. My bet is he finishes about 6th on the first ballot. Despite being out.
4) Almost every Conservative leadership race in my lifetime has lost a candidate to the Liberals after it finished. Seriously, we've had almost as many defections as races.
2004 CPC: Stronach
2003 PC: Brison and Orchard
2002 CA: Nil.
2000 CA: Martin
1998 PC: Orchard again
1993 PC: Turner, though it took a while
Obvious candidates for that questionable honour this time are Chong and possibly Raitt, as the reddest Tories running, but part of me thinks it'll be someone out of left field, like Lemieux or Blaney. After all, most of those defections have been social liberals jumping over social policy(I've heard from one of his staffers that Brison was basically gay-bashed out of the party, to our shame), so maybe it'll be someone jumping over disagreement with a different policy, like Bernier's social liberalism or hard-nosed fiscal policy.
5) My preferred candidate will probably win. I think this may be the first time in my life that's happened in a leadership race where I live(I've supported folks like Danielle Smith and John McCain and seen them win, but never in Ontario or Canada-level races). This is trippy, but I can get used to it.
Saturday, April 22, 2017
CPC Leadership - My Ballot
This is part of my larger series on the CPC leadership.
So, I've taken a look at the candidates - the viable ones, the reasonable ones, and the hopeless ones. I've figured out what I care about, and who I think will deliver it. That process is summarized below:
In general, my ballot will be identical to these rankings, with two slight modifications.
1) Peterson vs O'Toole. They're tied, and Peterson is non-viable and awesome enough that I'd even consider putting him above Bernier for reasons described in my last post. I don't intend to do so - it's sort of crass for a Bernier volunteer, and I don't think it'll help anything much - but for the same reasons, I will put him above O'Toole. That vote will never count(I suspect no vote I make below Bernier will ever count), but it's symbolic.
2) Leitch vs O'Leary. They're both deep in my bottom four, but the thing is, they're both viable candidates. If we live in the worst of all possible worlds, the final vote may come down to Leitch vs O'Leary - it'd be an unhappy outcome, but it's plausible if the alt-right is bigger than we thought it was. I don't think that will happen, but I didn't think Trump would win either. As such, I want the one who I find less hateful to be on the ballot. And given a choice between cholera and dysentery, dysentery wins it by a nose. Leitch squeaks into my #10 spot, despite being my #12 preference, because I think blocking her is slightly less important than blocking King Wonderful I.
As such, the following will be my ballot, assuming nobody does anything too stupid between now and when I vote:
- Maxime Bernier
- Rick Peterson
- Erin O'Toole
- Deepak Obhrai
- Andrew Scheer
- Lisa Raitt
- Michael Chong
- Chris Alexander
- Andrew Saxton
- Kellie Leitch
Steven Blaney, Brad Trost, Kevin O'Leary, and Pierre Lemieux will not be getting votes from me, and I couldn't be happier to leave any of them off my ballot.
Edit: One thing I forgot to write up in the first version of this post is my "dream team". As much as I have strong preferences on which of these folks should and should not lead the party, all of them have useful skills, and all of them will quite plausibly be front-benchers in the next Parliament if we win in 2019. Here's how I think they could all be put to the best uses:
Chris Alexander: Minister of Foreign Affairs. Obviously his strongest point, and by all accounts he knows the file backwards and forwards.
Maxime Bernier: Prime Minister, naturally. Failing that, I'd be happy seeing him back in his old stomping grounds of Industry, with Agriculture and Intergovernmental Affairs as strong second choices.
Steven Blaney: Minister of Veterans Affairs. He's held it before, and it's far away from anything that requires me to trust him with actual authority.
Michael Chong: Minister of Democratic Institutions. If he actually stays in Cabinet this time, it's his pet issue that he could do genuinely good work on.
Kellie Leitch: Minister of Health, or maybe Minister of Canadian Heritage - the former because of her medical background, the latter because it's clearly her pet issue in this race, and when you split it away from the immigration file her approach is no longer terrible.
Pierre Lemieux: Minister of Agriculture. He's been Parliamentary Secretary to the role before, and he represents a relatively rural riding. Plus, there's not a lot for him to screw up.
Deepak Obhrai: Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs. I'm pretty enamoured of his "decentralizing the department" idea, and it's always important for a Conservative government to put someone who can take some heat with grace in this file.
Kevin O'Leary: President of the Treasury Board. It might seem low-status for someone like O'Leary, but controlling the purse-strings of the country and being in charge of cost control suits him perfectly.
Erin O'Toole: Minister of National Defence. Ex-military, and he clearly takes the topic seriously. He'd also be pretty good at Environment, I think.
Rick Peterson: Minister of Finance. Great policy, and a strong private-sector CV for the task.
Lisa Raitt: Minister of Transportation. She's a former harbourmaster, has held the portfolio before, and seemed to do reasonably well at it.
Andrew Saxton: Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister. The most obvious financial roles for him are better assigned to others, but he's competent across the board, has a good grasp of a wide range of details, and can be trusted not to screw up one of the more important Question Period roles. This is a bit beneath him, but I don't see any other good fits.
Andrew Scheer: Government House Leader. This is the role where you need to know procedure backwards and forwards, and it's hard to think of a better choice than a former Speaker.
Brad Trost: Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs. When it comes to inter-provincial trade barriers(both legal barriers and regulatory environment differences), he's got a sound policy approach, and it keeps him far away from hot-button social policy.
(Next: Strategic Thoughts)
Edit: One thing I forgot to write up in the first version of this post is my "dream team". As much as I have strong preferences on which of these folks should and should not lead the party, all of them have useful skills, and all of them will quite plausibly be front-benchers in the next Parliament if we win in 2019. Here's how I think they could all be put to the best uses:
Chris Alexander: Minister of Foreign Affairs. Obviously his strongest point, and by all accounts he knows the file backwards and forwards.
Maxime Bernier: Prime Minister, naturally. Failing that, I'd be happy seeing him back in his old stomping grounds of Industry, with Agriculture and Intergovernmental Affairs as strong second choices.
Steven Blaney: Minister of Veterans Affairs. He's held it before, and it's far away from anything that requires me to trust him with actual authority.
Michael Chong: Minister of Democratic Institutions. If he actually stays in Cabinet this time, it's his pet issue that he could do genuinely good work on.
Kellie Leitch: Minister of Health, or maybe Minister of Canadian Heritage - the former because of her medical background, the latter because it's clearly her pet issue in this race, and when you split it away from the immigration file her approach is no longer terrible.
Pierre Lemieux: Minister of Agriculture. He's been Parliamentary Secretary to the role before, and he represents a relatively rural riding. Plus, there's not a lot for him to screw up.
Deepak Obhrai: Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs. I'm pretty enamoured of his "decentralizing the department" idea, and it's always important for a Conservative government to put someone who can take some heat with grace in this file.
Kevin O'Leary: President of the Treasury Board. It might seem low-status for someone like O'Leary, but controlling the purse-strings of the country and being in charge of cost control suits him perfectly.
Erin O'Toole: Minister of National Defence. Ex-military, and he clearly takes the topic seriously. He'd also be pretty good at Environment, I think.
Rick Peterson: Minister of Finance. Great policy, and a strong private-sector CV for the task.
Lisa Raitt: Minister of Transportation. She's a former harbourmaster, has held the portfolio before, and seemed to do reasonably well at it.
Andrew Saxton: Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister. The most obvious financial roles for him are better assigned to others, but he's competent across the board, has a good grasp of a wide range of details, and can be trusted not to screw up one of the more important Question Period roles. This is a bit beneath him, but I don't see any other good fits.
Andrew Scheer: Government House Leader. This is the role where you need to know procedure backwards and forwards, and it's hard to think of a better choice than a former Speaker.
Brad Trost: Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs. When it comes to inter-provincial trade barriers(both legal barriers and regulatory environment differences), he's got a sound policy approach, and it keeps him far away from hot-button social policy.
(Next: Strategic Thoughts)
CPC Leadership - Ranked Ballots 101
This is part of my larger series on the CPC leadership.
I've seen a ton of confusion about how the voting will work for the Conservative leadership race, so I wanted to post something that will help explain it to anyone who's confused.
The procedure being used is a fairly typical ranked ballot. There are 14 candidates, and instead of picking one and hoping they win(as we do in most elections), we get to rank our top 10 preferences in order. Voters fill out their ballots in full in advance, and don't get a chance to change their minds as they see how the voting goes.
Voting is done in rounds. In the first round, your ballot counts for your #1 preference, and all the votes are tallied up. It's important to point out that any rank below #1 is totally irrelevant here - this isn't one where you're splitting up "preference points" or anything like that, it's a single vote going to the single candidate ranked #1 on your ballot. You can rank a single candidate or the full 10, and it won't change anything at this point.
After the first round is done, they figure out if anyone has a majority of votes. If someone does, they win. If nobody has a majority, they figure out which candidate has the fewest votes. That candidate loses, and is removed from the election for all future rounds. The people who voted for that candidate no longer have their #1 preference in the race, so they then vote for their #2 preference in future rounds. Again, this is a single vote going to a single candidate - it's not split up, and your #3-10 preferences still don't matter at this point. Only the single highest-ranked candidate on your ballot will get your vote.
This process repeats until one candidate gets a majority. Each round the lowest-ranked candidate loses and is removed from all future rounds, and that candidate's supporters are moved to their next-ranked choice. If for whatever reason they run out of choices on a given voter's ballot(maybe they only picked one guy, maybe they picked the full 10 but all 10 lost), that voter's ballot is ignored after this point, and their vote plays no further role in the election. It's not a "None of the above" ballot, it's just like you never showed up. As soon as a single candidate gets a majority, the election is over and they win.
One further wrinkle arises from the way the party counts votes. Votes are not the same nationwide - instead of each voter being weighted equally, each riding is weighted equally. This means that voters in heavily Conservative ridings will have less impact on the election than voters in ridings with few members. This does not change how you should vote - you don't get to pick where you vote, and whether your vote is worth more or less you still want the same candidate to win - but it's something to be aware of.
A few strategic considerations arise from this system.
I've seen a ton of confusion about how the voting will work for the Conservative leadership race, so I wanted to post something that will help explain it to anyone who's confused.
The procedure being used is a fairly typical ranked ballot. There are 14 candidates, and instead of picking one and hoping they win(as we do in most elections), we get to rank our top 10 preferences in order. Voters fill out their ballots in full in advance, and don't get a chance to change their minds as they see how the voting goes.
Voting is done in rounds. In the first round, your ballot counts for your #1 preference, and all the votes are tallied up. It's important to point out that any rank below #1 is totally irrelevant here - this isn't one where you're splitting up "preference points" or anything like that, it's a single vote going to the single candidate ranked #1 on your ballot. You can rank a single candidate or the full 10, and it won't change anything at this point.
After the first round is done, they figure out if anyone has a majority of votes. If someone does, they win. If nobody has a majority, they figure out which candidate has the fewest votes. That candidate loses, and is removed from the election for all future rounds. The people who voted for that candidate no longer have their #1 preference in the race, so they then vote for their #2 preference in future rounds. Again, this is a single vote going to a single candidate - it's not split up, and your #3-10 preferences still don't matter at this point. Only the single highest-ranked candidate on your ballot will get your vote.
This process repeats until one candidate gets a majority. Each round the lowest-ranked candidate loses and is removed from all future rounds, and that candidate's supporters are moved to their next-ranked choice. If for whatever reason they run out of choices on a given voter's ballot(maybe they only picked one guy, maybe they picked the full 10 but all 10 lost), that voter's ballot is ignored after this point, and their vote plays no further role in the election. It's not a "None of the above" ballot, it's just like you never showed up. As soon as a single candidate gets a majority, the election is over and they win.
One further wrinkle arises from the way the party counts votes. Votes are not the same nationwide - instead of each voter being weighted equally, each riding is weighted equally. This means that voters in heavily Conservative ridings will have less impact on the election than voters in ridings with few members. This does not change how you should vote - you don't get to pick where you vote, and whether your vote is worth more or less you still want the same candidate to win - but it's something to be aware of.
A few strategic considerations arise from this system.
- There is very little reason to care if a candidate is "viable" or not. If you really like a candidate, vote for them #1, and if they're unpopular then your vote will go to your #2 preference. Your vote is extremely unlikely to be "wasted", and strategic voting plays very little role(other than as noted below).
- Unless you genuinely have no preference between candidates after a certain point, or you feel like you can't support a leader who you wouldn't vote for, you should fill up your whole ballot. At some point it may feel like a choice between cholera and dysentery, but if you think one is better than the other, say so. If it comes down to a choice between those two, and you'd prefer one to the other, you'd do better saying so than leaving it blank and pretending that it can't happen.
- Because of the fact that you can only rank 10 candidates, you can't express a preference between your bottom 4 choices. If you have a preference that you feel is important between your bottom 4, you may wish to move one of them up to 10th place to express that preference. In practice, this means that you should look at which candidates have a real chance of winning, and make sure that all but one of them have a place on your ballot - the one you hate most should be off the ballot entirely, but the others are all better than that one, and so you should have a chance to choose between them if it comes down to that.
- If there's a non-viable candidate who you like second-best and you want to make them look better, but your true first preference is viable, you can safely rank the second-best candidate above the best candidate to artificially inflate their numbers. This is unlikely to do much of value for you or the candidate, but it's a choice you have. (I did this in the 2009 Ontario PC leadership - Hillier was grossly unelectable, but I liked the guy, so I ranked him #1 secure in the knowledge that he couldn't win)
Hopefully that helps anyone who's still confused about the system.
(Next: My Ballot)
CPC Leadership - The C-List (Blaney, Lemieux, Obhrai, Peterson, and Saxton)
This is part of my larger series on the CPC leadership - see that post for my methodology. This post is on the five candidates who I think are not significant contenders, due to having minimal support nationwide - Steven Blaney, Pierre Lemieux, Deepak Obhrai, Rick Peterson, and Andrew Saxton.
Social: 2/4 He wants to reduce immigration, which I dislike, but his justice reforms aren't terrible, and his support for nuclear is a breath of fresh air.
Foreign: 3/4 He's actually decent here. Nothing crazy, nothing offensive, pretty much just generic conservatism.
Governance: 1/3 The only thing I can even loosely class as "governance" is a desire to have Supreme Court nominations be decided by an all-party committee. Which is fine, I guess, but it's not exactly a big deal.
Decency: 1/3 He's taking basically the same line as Leitch on "Canadian values", and while he's been less enthusiastic, it's still not great.
Electability: 1.5/3 He's not known for an abundance of charisma, but bilingualism is good for a point, and he's not obviously offensive.
Unity: 1/2 The biggest group he offends is the Bernier camp, who probably aren't going to leave no matter what, but he really offends us quite a lot. If he somehow became PM, another Bristol Aerospace-type screwjob like the one that kicked off the Reform Party seems more plausible than with any other candidate.
TOTAL: 9.5/25 Ugggh.
Social: 0/4 This is clearly his signature issue, and not in a way I like. He's a Bible-thumper, all about social conservative pet issues. I can tolerate being in the same party as socons, but I don't agree with them at all on this stuff.
Foreign: 2/4 He's fairly pro-military, and like I said for Bernier, simply saying "radical Islamic terrorism" out loud is worth a couple points. No actual policy regarding other countries aside from the obligatory support for Israel, but this is a good starting point.
Governance: 1/3 Free speech has somewhat morphed into a socon issue recently, because they're the ones who are most likely to get shut down these days. I believe in it as a generic, not to try to win debates, but that still means socons pushing free speech can make decent allies here. No big stuff like Bernier or Chong, but it's something.
Decency: 0/3 His post about the massacre of a bunch of Muslims was all about why we should oppose a nonbinding motion that mentioned Islamophobia. I'm normally willing to give a fair bit of credit to socons, even when I disagree with them, but that was profoundly terrible.
Electability: 0/3 He'll do well in rural areas west of Quebec, but everywhere else he'll be eaten alive. Given that those areas are the ones we'd win with a stuffed animal in charge of the party, no points.
Unity: 0.5/2 Like Trost, he'd be a sop to the socons, and everyone else would run screaming.
TOTAL: 4.5/25 Profoundly awful, and I'm very glad that he's got a lower chance of winning than I do.
Fiscal: 3/6 Much like Alexander, it's standard-issue Tory policy with a bit too much emphasis on ways governments can create jobs - almost half his economic policy is ways to expand the mandate of the Business Development Bank of Canada. He says lower taxes and private investment are the way to do it, but he doesn't actually act like he believes it.
Social: 3.5/4 Sensible immigration policy, good law and order policy, and a very sensible avoidance of the usual hot-buttons of gay marriage and abortion. I'd like to see a higher immigration target, and like all candidates besides Chong the environment is a bit of a notable hole here, but those are quibbles. Very good overall.
Foreign: 3/4 Some interesting stuff here. He pins the blame for terrorism primarily on the hopelessness of people living in dictatorships, which is an angle you don't see much of(but which seems closer to the mark than the bombing-based theories), he takes a very sensible line regarding Trump and the Muslim ban(basically, work with them on security but don't let them dictate our policy), and he has the suggestion of abandoning multilateral trade deals in favour of bilateral, going so far as to suggest dividing NAFTA into three separate bilateral deals(which I think will add too much overhead to be practical with existing deals, but as a future emphasis makes sense). I don't agree with him on all of it, but he seems to at least be grounded in reality, and he talks about the issues seriously. That's important, and sadly also quite rare.
Governance: 2/3 Not a lot here, but the one relevant post is extremely interesting. He wants to break up the bulk of the work of the Department of Indigenous Affairs and decentralize its operations into every other relevant federal department, to ensure that the work of implementing the Indian Act is done equally for everyone, whether on-reserve or off-reserve, and to encourage further decentralization and self-government. It's not a fully-fleshed out governance policy, but it shows a depth of thought that most candidates aren't showing, and I have a lot of respect for that.
Decency: 3/3 As should be expected of someone with a personal history of facing discrimination, he's pretty enthusiastic about not doing the same to others. No faults here I can see.
Electability: 2/3 His current material is deeply low-budget, and has an air of the elderly crank about it(weird capitalization, etc.), but like a lot of the others, I suspect that'd be fixed quickly if he had the resources of the whole party at his disposal. Also, he's not very good with French. Otherwise, he's pretty good - a visible minority leader will offset a lot of the usual attacks on Tories, he's got a slightly goofy charm that has served him well, and he seems to be good with the memes. I think he'd do well here.
Unity: 2/2 Everybody seems to like him, and his policy is very middle-of-the-road for the party. He'll have no problems.
TOTAL: 18.5/25 What can I say? I like the guy. He's got a fun style, he seems to actually think about issues, and his policy is good. We could do far worse.
Steven Blaney
Fiscal: 0/6 He's a bit hard to judge here(and on most other issues), because his policy platform is extremely thin. But the biggest thing he's pushing is fanatical support for supply management, and about the only fiscal policy I can see otherwise is a totally unspecified claim about making it easier to pass down family businesses(which is already strongly tax-advantaged) and a desire to have the government drop credit card fees(which is pure NDP populism). Literally nothing that I agree with him on, in the category where any Tory with a pulse should at least be able to score 2 or 3 on gimmies like a balanced budget.Social: 2/4 He wants to reduce immigration, which I dislike, but his justice reforms aren't terrible, and his support for nuclear is a breath of fresh air.
Foreign: 3/4 He's actually decent here. Nothing crazy, nothing offensive, pretty much just generic conservatism.
Governance: 1/3 The only thing I can even loosely class as "governance" is a desire to have Supreme Court nominations be decided by an all-party committee. Which is fine, I guess, but it's not exactly a big deal.
Decency: 1/3 He's taking basically the same line as Leitch on "Canadian values", and while he's been less enthusiastic, it's still not great.
Electability: 1.5/3 He's not known for an abundance of charisma, but bilingualism is good for a point, and he's not obviously offensive.
Unity: 1/2 The biggest group he offends is the Bernier camp, who probably aren't going to leave no matter what, but he really offends us quite a lot. If he somehow became PM, another Bristol Aerospace-type screwjob like the one that kicked off the Reform Party seems more plausible than with any other candidate.
TOTAL: 9.5/25 Ugggh.
Pierre Lemieux
Fiscal: 1/6 So far as I can tell, he doesn't actually have any fiscal policy posted. One point for not actively offending me.Social: 0/4 This is clearly his signature issue, and not in a way I like. He's a Bible-thumper, all about social conservative pet issues. I can tolerate being in the same party as socons, but I don't agree with them at all on this stuff.
Foreign: 2/4 He's fairly pro-military, and like I said for Bernier, simply saying "radical Islamic terrorism" out loud is worth a couple points. No actual policy regarding other countries aside from the obligatory support for Israel, but this is a good starting point.
Governance: 1/3 Free speech has somewhat morphed into a socon issue recently, because they're the ones who are most likely to get shut down these days. I believe in it as a generic, not to try to win debates, but that still means socons pushing free speech can make decent allies here. No big stuff like Bernier or Chong, but it's something.
Decency: 0/3 His post about the massacre of a bunch of Muslims was all about why we should oppose a nonbinding motion that mentioned Islamophobia. I'm normally willing to give a fair bit of credit to socons, even when I disagree with them, but that was profoundly terrible.
Electability: 0/3 He'll do well in rural areas west of Quebec, but everywhere else he'll be eaten alive. Given that those areas are the ones we'd win with a stuffed animal in charge of the party, no points.
Unity: 0.5/2 Like Trost, he'd be a sop to the socons, and everyone else would run screaming.
TOTAL: 4.5/25 Profoundly awful, and I'm very glad that he's got a lower chance of winning than I do.
Deepak Obhrai
Fiscal: 3/6 Much like Alexander, it's standard-issue Tory policy with a bit too much emphasis on ways governments can create jobs - almost half his economic policy is ways to expand the mandate of the Business Development Bank of Canada. He says lower taxes and private investment are the way to do it, but he doesn't actually act like he believes it.Social: 3.5/4 Sensible immigration policy, good law and order policy, and a very sensible avoidance of the usual hot-buttons of gay marriage and abortion. I'd like to see a higher immigration target, and like all candidates besides Chong the environment is a bit of a notable hole here, but those are quibbles. Very good overall.
Foreign: 3/4 Some interesting stuff here. He pins the blame for terrorism primarily on the hopelessness of people living in dictatorships, which is an angle you don't see much of(but which seems closer to the mark than the bombing-based theories), he takes a very sensible line regarding Trump and the Muslim ban(basically, work with them on security but don't let them dictate our policy), and he has the suggestion of abandoning multilateral trade deals in favour of bilateral, going so far as to suggest dividing NAFTA into three separate bilateral deals(which I think will add too much overhead to be practical with existing deals, but as a future emphasis makes sense). I don't agree with him on all of it, but he seems to at least be grounded in reality, and he talks about the issues seriously. That's important, and sadly also quite rare.
Governance: 2/3 Not a lot here, but the one relevant post is extremely interesting. He wants to break up the bulk of the work of the Department of Indigenous Affairs and decentralize its operations into every other relevant federal department, to ensure that the work of implementing the Indian Act is done equally for everyone, whether on-reserve or off-reserve, and to encourage further decentralization and self-government. It's not a fully-fleshed out governance policy, but it shows a depth of thought that most candidates aren't showing, and I have a lot of respect for that.
Decency: 3/3 As should be expected of someone with a personal history of facing discrimination, he's pretty enthusiastic about not doing the same to others. No faults here I can see.
Electability: 2/3 His current material is deeply low-budget, and has an air of the elderly crank about it(weird capitalization, etc.), but like a lot of the others, I suspect that'd be fixed quickly if he had the resources of the whole party at his disposal. Also, he's not very good with French. Otherwise, he's pretty good - a visible minority leader will offset a lot of the usual attacks on Tories, he's got a slightly goofy charm that has served him well, and he seems to be good with the memes. I think he'd do well here.
Unity: 2/2 Everybody seems to like him, and his policy is very middle-of-the-road for the party. He'll have no problems.
TOTAL: 18.5/25 What can I say? I like the guy. He's got a fun style, he seems to actually think about issues, and his policy is good. We could do far worse.
Rick Peterson
Fiscal: 6/6 This is the sort of fiscal policy I expect from a think-tank, not from an actual politician. No corporate income tax, no corporate welfare, and a flat personal income tax(with a $24k basic exemption), all funded by a GST hike? Crikey. Like with Bernier's plan to eliminate capital gains taxes, I think the elimination of corporate income taxes is going a bit too far, and will raise more distributional issues than it's worth, but nobody can accuse him of timidity here. I'd much rather a politician go into office bold, as long as they're not stupid about it - the rough edges can always be filed off later. The only flaw I see is that his seniors policy is a bit silly, but it's harmless.
Social: 4/4 He wants to dramatically expand immigration, with a focus on economic immigrants, and wants security screening to be done in ways that might actually work. He's pro-choice, pro-SSM, pro-LGBT, and pro-euthanasia, but is willing to tolerate social conservatives despite that. He's got no environmental policy and is a bit thin on law and order, but with those two headliners I really don't care.
Foreign: 1/4 This is his weak spot. He doesn't say anything that I can see on anything outside Canada's borders beyond immigration, and he has no particular experience that makes me think he'd be any good with the issue. I trust his instincts, but not his knowledge of this topic.
Governance: 2.5/3 Some very good stuff here. He wants to let Revenu-Quebec collect federal income taxes in Quebec the way they already collect other federal taxes, to save Quebecers from filing two returns(which is so common-sense that I'm surprised it's not already the case), and he wants to loosen up the Canada Health Act substantially as well. Not quite as expansive as a federalism plan as Bernier's, but it's the closest of any of them.
Decency: 3/3 He seems to actually think before he opens his mouth, and actually care when he does. That's not unique, of course, but it's good to see. Delaying campaign announcements on his Quebec tour when the mosque shooting happened, for example, is a good sign that he actually cares about acting decently.
Electability: 2/3 He's bilingual, has a good resume, and satisfies the whole "not a career politician" kick that voters seem to be on. "Venture capitalist" is a bad line of work for a right-wing politician trying to appeal to the general public, as Romney proved, but other than that he looks good.
Unity: 1.5/2 We may lose a few squishy reds, but I don't think it'll be too bad. He even has a policy for building a stronger party, which is pablum("stronger party" proposals are always pablum), but pablum that other candidates don't seem to be bothering with.
TOTAL: 20/25 Why couldn't this guy have been as famous as O'Leary? He's got a very similar background and appeal, but he's sensible, non-abrasive, has far better policy, doesn't want to rule the country with an iron fist, and actually acts like he's Canadian. This is the sort of candidate I usually wind up supporting, because anyone this awesome is normally grossly unpopular with the broader public. The existence of Bernier is a happy fluke, but in a normal election I'd be one of the lonely few Peterson supporters east of BC.
Social: 1.5/4 He wants to drop immigration levels(as a cost-saving measure, no less, which is profoundly foolish), though he does seem to want to improve it administratively. His environmental policy mostly consists of praying for a technological breakthrough. His justice policy is fiddling around the edges, but it's at least decent fiddling.
Foreign: 1.5/4 Much like Peterson, whose campaign feels very similar, this is a hole. He talks about helping veterans, and he mentions being "familiar with international dynamics" and the importance of good government internationally in passing, but there's nothing concrete there. The closest he comes to real policy is "Expanded trade with the world"(which isn't a headline, that's the entire policy).
Governance: 1/3 Nothing here that I can see, for good or ill.
Decency: 3/3 As with a lot of others, he gets full marks here because he hasn't done anything offensive that I've seen. He talks about how it's a good thing that it's boring, and on this it is.
Electability: 1/3 He's decently bilingual, but doesn't have much else going for him. Unlike the last category, when it comes to electability, "boring" is really not a virtue.
Unity: 2/2 I can't imagine anyone having a problem with him, and he has a slightly-less-pablum-than-usual policy on rebuilding the party.
TOTAL: 14/25 I wanted to like him, but he's actually pretty disappointing now that I've dug into his platform. It's fuzzy, mushy, and not well-considered.
(Next: Ranked Ballots 101)
Social: 4/4 He wants to dramatically expand immigration, with a focus on economic immigrants, and wants security screening to be done in ways that might actually work. He's pro-choice, pro-SSM, pro-LGBT, and pro-euthanasia, but is willing to tolerate social conservatives despite that. He's got no environmental policy and is a bit thin on law and order, but with those two headliners I really don't care.
Foreign: 1/4 This is his weak spot. He doesn't say anything that I can see on anything outside Canada's borders beyond immigration, and he has no particular experience that makes me think he'd be any good with the issue. I trust his instincts, but not his knowledge of this topic.
Governance: 2.5/3 Some very good stuff here. He wants to let Revenu-Quebec collect federal income taxes in Quebec the way they already collect other federal taxes, to save Quebecers from filing two returns(which is so common-sense that I'm surprised it's not already the case), and he wants to loosen up the Canada Health Act substantially as well. Not quite as expansive as a federalism plan as Bernier's, but it's the closest of any of them.
Decency: 3/3 He seems to actually think before he opens his mouth, and actually care when he does. That's not unique, of course, but it's good to see. Delaying campaign announcements on his Quebec tour when the mosque shooting happened, for example, is a good sign that he actually cares about acting decently.
Electability: 2/3 He's bilingual, has a good resume, and satisfies the whole "not a career politician" kick that voters seem to be on. "Venture capitalist" is a bad line of work for a right-wing politician trying to appeal to the general public, as Romney proved, but other than that he looks good.
Unity: 1.5/2 We may lose a few squishy reds, but I don't think it'll be too bad. He even has a policy for building a stronger party, which is pablum("stronger party" proposals are always pablum), but pablum that other candidates don't seem to be bothering with.
TOTAL: 20/25 Why couldn't this guy have been as famous as O'Leary? He's got a very similar background and appeal, but he's sensible, non-abrasive, has far better policy, doesn't want to rule the country with an iron fist, and actually acts like he's Canadian. This is the sort of candidate I usually wind up supporting, because anyone this awesome is normally grossly unpopular with the broader public. The existence of Bernier is a happy fluke, but in a normal election I'd be one of the lonely few Peterson supporters east of BC.
Andrew Saxton
Fiscal: 4/6 Not as bold as some, but a very detailed portfolio of smaller measures that are all individually good. That said, he talks about lower taxes, but doesn't actually propose any tax cuts, and when he's got a detailed proposal that includes the fiscal impact of eliminating the LSVCC credit and turning the $5 bill into a coin, that tells me he doesn't actually intend to cut taxes at all. This is a really odd hole in his plan, and calls into question the rest of it, so I'm docking him a point.Social: 1.5/4 He wants to drop immigration levels(as a cost-saving measure, no less, which is profoundly foolish), though he does seem to want to improve it administratively. His environmental policy mostly consists of praying for a technological breakthrough. His justice policy is fiddling around the edges, but it's at least decent fiddling.
Foreign: 1.5/4 Much like Peterson, whose campaign feels very similar, this is a hole. He talks about helping veterans, and he mentions being "familiar with international dynamics" and the importance of good government internationally in passing, but there's nothing concrete there. The closest he comes to real policy is "Expanded trade with the world"(which isn't a headline, that's the entire policy).
Governance: 1/3 Nothing here that I can see, for good or ill.
Decency: 3/3 As with a lot of others, he gets full marks here because he hasn't done anything offensive that I've seen. He talks about how it's a good thing that it's boring, and on this it is.
Electability: 1/3 He's decently bilingual, but doesn't have much else going for him. Unlike the last category, when it comes to electability, "boring" is really not a virtue.
Unity: 2/2 I can't imagine anyone having a problem with him, and he has a slightly-less-pablum-than-usual policy on rebuilding the party.
TOTAL: 14/25 I wanted to like him, but he's actually pretty disappointing now that I've dug into his platform. It's fuzzy, mushy, and not well-considered.
(Next: Ranked Ballots 101)
CPC Leadership - The B-List (Alexander, Chong, Raitt, and Trost)
This is part of my larger series on the CPC leadership - see that post for my methodology. This post is on the four candidates who I think are unlikely to win the election, but who have significant support within the party - Chris Alexander, Michael Chong, Lisa Raitt, and Brad Trost.
Fiscal: 3/6 Pretty standard conservative policy on most things - lower taxes, balanced budget, blah blah. That'd be 4/6, but he supports a lot of fairly intrusive government programs in various areas, though - his daycare strategy is downright Paul Martin, and he believes way too much in the power of job creation programs.
Social: 1.5/4 Doesn't seem to have much to say here aside from the environment(where he's a bit Liberal-flavoured, but not bad). What does come up is unimpressive, though - a lot of stupid little tax credits, a lot of government micro-programs, and he's against legalizing pot.
Foreign: 4/4 Generally pretty good - specific policies on a lot of hot-button topics(Ukraine, Syria, Cuba, etc.), though the details can be a bit off. I think his Syrian plan is unrealistic, and the Ukraine policy gets the date of the Russo-Georgian war wrong by three years, but those are quibbles - it's a low-budget campaign, the staff work will improve if he wins. Also, his trade policy is excellent. He thinks like I do, more or less, and he talks about these issues seriously. Definitely his strongest point.
Governance: 1/3 Doesn't seem to much care about federal/provincial division of powers, and is proposing a lot of new programs in provincial jurisdiction. Nothing truly awful, but the continuation of a pretty mediocre status quo.
Decency: 1/3 He's been one of the biggest people throwing red meat at the alt-right. He was one of the people pushing the 'barbaric practices hotline", he's been doing "Lock her up!" chants, and the like, with no remorse that I can see. Not as enthusiastically terrible as some others, but not good.
Electability: 2/3 No real slam-dunks, but he's fluently bilingual, seems reasonably personable, and doesn't have any huge skeletons in his closet that I'm aware of.
Unity: 2/2 I can't imagine any Tories leaving the party over him.
TOTAL: 14.5/25 I can live with him, but I'm not enthusiastic.
Social: 2/4 Nothing huge here aside from the carbon tax, but he gets serious points for being the only guy with the guts to propose it.
Foreign: 1/4 So far as I can tell, he has no posted foreign policy whatsoever. I suspect I won't hate whatever he does, but if he doesn't talk about it, he only gets token marks.
Governance: 3/3 His signature issue, and the one that IMO answers all the "Why are you even a Conservative?" questions - on this issue, he's a classical Reformer. I think his exact approach could use a bit of work, but he's talking about it seriously, and seems to mean it when he says he wants to weaken the PMO and give power to MPs. I have a ton of respect for that.
Decency: 3/3 No messing around with dark arts, no skeletons in his closet I'm aware of, and he resigned Cabinet over an issue of principle and shows up to events in Alberta to talk about the merits of a carbon tax. Full marks here.
Electability: 1.5/3 I'm generally a believer in the "People would rather vote for a real Liberal than a faux-Liberal Conservative" school of thought, and he does have some issues there. But otherwise, he's got a pretty good argument to make about why he's a good leader, and I think he'd do okay. His biggest problem is that the issue of principle he left Cabinet over was the Quebec-as-a-nation vote, which is one that will not win him many friends in la belle province. Bilingualism will soften the blow compared to some of his opponents, but he won't do great.
Unity: 0.5/2 He's pissed off a huge chunk of the party talking carbon taxes, and while I tend to agree with him, that's not going to help much. The only saving grace is that those people have nowhere to go right now, but they're a part of the party known for fissioning off(cf. Reform, Wildrose, etc.), so that won't help much.
TOTAL: 16/25 A bit of an oddball, but I actually like the guy. Not my first choice, but we could do worse.
Social: 1.5/4 There's almost nothing here besides healthcare. It's not terrible healthcare policy(though it does run afoul of the whole "The Constitution says that healthcare should be provincial" thing), but there's basically nothing on the environment, law and order, free speech, religious hot-buttons, or anything else.
Foreign: 2.5/4 Thin, but good. Rebuilding the armed forces, UN reform(which will never happen, but is good to support), plus the usual support for allies and opposition to dictators. There's no explicit mention of free trade, but infrastructure to support trade is mentioned. She'd get more if she expanded it out, I suspect, but this isn't bad.
Governance: 2/3 The only thing here is a one-sentence "Decentralizing Government" policy, but that's the core of what I want from governance policy, so it's worth some points.
Decency: 3/3 Like a lot of others, she gets full marks here simply for being inoffensive. It saddens me that the bar is so low, but it's good that she can clear it, unlike the ones who would prefer to dig a tunnel underneath the bar.
Electability: 1/3 She doesn't speak French, and she has a tendency to be pretty mushy and non-specific. She'll help shed some of the baggage of the Conservative brand, I think, but it'll be hard to make a positive case for why she should win, which means she'll be relying on Trudeau offending the public badly. That's not a good bet.
Unity: 1.5/2 She's definitely on the red side, and from Ontario, which will make the West think a bit about fissioning off Reform-style, but I don't think she'd offend them enough to pull the trigger.
TOTAL: 16.5/25 I tend to roll my eyes at fluffy red tories, but they're a lot better than Bible-thumpers or alt-right edgelords(or, god help us, the ones who are two or three of those at once). I wouldn't be terribly enthusiastic about PM Raitt, but I'd vote for her.
Chris Alexander
Fiscal: 3/6 Pretty standard conservative policy on most things - lower taxes, balanced budget, blah blah. That'd be 4/6, but he supports a lot of fairly intrusive government programs in various areas, though - his daycare strategy is downright Paul Martin, and he believes way too much in the power of job creation programs.Social: 1.5/4 Doesn't seem to have much to say here aside from the environment(where he's a bit Liberal-flavoured, but not bad). What does come up is unimpressive, though - a lot of stupid little tax credits, a lot of government micro-programs, and he's against legalizing pot.
Foreign: 4/4 Generally pretty good - specific policies on a lot of hot-button topics(Ukraine, Syria, Cuba, etc.), though the details can be a bit off. I think his Syrian plan is unrealistic, and the Ukraine policy gets the date of the Russo-Georgian war wrong by three years, but those are quibbles - it's a low-budget campaign, the staff work will improve if he wins. Also, his trade policy is excellent. He thinks like I do, more or less, and he talks about these issues seriously. Definitely his strongest point.
Governance: 1/3 Doesn't seem to much care about federal/provincial division of powers, and is proposing a lot of new programs in provincial jurisdiction. Nothing truly awful, but the continuation of a pretty mediocre status quo.
Decency: 1/3 He's been one of the biggest people throwing red meat at the alt-right. He was one of the people pushing the 'barbaric practices hotline", he's been doing "Lock her up!" chants, and the like, with no remorse that I can see. Not as enthusiastically terrible as some others, but not good.
Electability: 2/3 No real slam-dunks, but he's fluently bilingual, seems reasonably personable, and doesn't have any huge skeletons in his closet that I'm aware of.
Unity: 2/2 I can't imagine any Tories leaving the party over him.
TOTAL: 14.5/25 I can live with him, but I'm not enthusiastic.
Michael Chong
Fiscal: 5/6 His policy here seems pretty good overall - tax cuts, tax code simplification, and no wild cards. He name-drops Jim Flaherty way, way too much, but that's a minor sin. The biggest problem I have is that the bulk of his income tax savings go to the upper-middle-class, while the funding mechanism for them(removal of tax credits and a carbon tax) hits everyone quite broadly. That's going to cause some ugly distributional issues.Social: 2/4 Nothing huge here aside from the carbon tax, but he gets serious points for being the only guy with the guts to propose it.
Foreign: 1/4 So far as I can tell, he has no posted foreign policy whatsoever. I suspect I won't hate whatever he does, but if he doesn't talk about it, he only gets token marks.
Governance: 3/3 His signature issue, and the one that IMO answers all the "Why are you even a Conservative?" questions - on this issue, he's a classical Reformer. I think his exact approach could use a bit of work, but he's talking about it seriously, and seems to mean it when he says he wants to weaken the PMO and give power to MPs. I have a ton of respect for that.
Decency: 3/3 No messing around with dark arts, no skeletons in his closet I'm aware of, and he resigned Cabinet over an issue of principle and shows up to events in Alberta to talk about the merits of a carbon tax. Full marks here.
Electability: 1.5/3 I'm generally a believer in the "People would rather vote for a real Liberal than a faux-Liberal Conservative" school of thought, and he does have some issues there. But otherwise, he's got a pretty good argument to make about why he's a good leader, and I think he'd do okay. His biggest problem is that the issue of principle he left Cabinet over was the Quebec-as-a-nation vote, which is one that will not win him many friends in la belle province. Bilingualism will soften the blow compared to some of his opponents, but he won't do great.
Unity: 0.5/2 He's pissed off a huge chunk of the party talking carbon taxes, and while I tend to agree with him, that's not going to help much. The only saving grace is that those people have nowhere to go right now, but they're a part of the party known for fissioning off(cf. Reform, Wildrose, etc.), so that won't help much.
TOTAL: 16/25 A bit of an oddball, but I actually like the guy. Not my first choice, but we could do worse.
Lisa Raitt
Fiscal: 5/6 For someone who's always struck me as a very red Tory, this is surprisingly aggressive policy. Broad-based tax cuts, balancing the budget, upping TFSA limits, spending reviews, expanding use of P3s, and even a taxpayer protection act(which I thought went out with the 90s). She's still a bit fond of fiddly incentivization for my taste, she's pro-supply management, and she's light on concrete proposals, but this is still good stuff despite that.Social: 1.5/4 There's almost nothing here besides healthcare. It's not terrible healthcare policy(though it does run afoul of the whole "The Constitution says that healthcare should be provincial" thing), but there's basically nothing on the environment, law and order, free speech, religious hot-buttons, or anything else.
Foreign: 2.5/4 Thin, but good. Rebuilding the armed forces, UN reform(which will never happen, but is good to support), plus the usual support for allies and opposition to dictators. There's no explicit mention of free trade, but infrastructure to support trade is mentioned. She'd get more if she expanded it out, I suspect, but this isn't bad.
Governance: 2/3 The only thing here is a one-sentence "Decentralizing Government" policy, but that's the core of what I want from governance policy, so it's worth some points.
Decency: 3/3 Like a lot of others, she gets full marks here simply for being inoffensive. It saddens me that the bar is so low, but it's good that she can clear it, unlike the ones who would prefer to dig a tunnel underneath the bar.
Electability: 1/3 She doesn't speak French, and she has a tendency to be pretty mushy and non-specific. She'll help shed some of the baggage of the Conservative brand, I think, but it'll be hard to make a positive case for why she should win, which means she'll be relying on Trudeau offending the public badly. That's not a good bet.
Unity: 1.5/2 She's definitely on the red side, and from Ontario, which will make the West think a bit about fissioning off Reform-style, but I don't think she'd offend them enough to pull the trigger.
TOTAL: 16.5/25 I tend to roll my eyes at fluffy red tories, but they're a lot better than Bible-thumpers or alt-right edgelords(or, god help us, the ones who are two or three of those at once). I wouldn't be terribly enthusiastic about PM Raitt, but I'd vote for her.
Brad Trost
Fiscal: 4/6 Pretty generic conservative policy here. Balanced budgets, some tax reductions, and so on. Nothing bold or special except eliminating capital gains taxes(which, like Bernier's proposal to do the same, I oppose for being too distortionary), but generic conservatism is still good here.
Social: 0/4 On top of being a massive Bible-thumper, he seems to have also jumped on Trump's Muslim ban idea. Not just no, but hell no.
Foreign: 2/4 Doesn't have much here, but there's some good talk on trade.
Governance: 2/3 Again, not much here, but loosening internal trade barriers within Canada is good policy, and his approach to regulatory harmonization also seems sensible.
Decency: 0.5/3 He loses points for the Muslim ban, and he genuinely claims that "Democracy is under attack" because a library kicked him out one time, but at least it's not a centrepiece of his campaign to act like a jerk towards people. That drags him above zero, slightly.
Electability: 0/3 No swing ridings anywhere would vote for him between now and the heat death of the universe.
Unity: 0.5/2 We as a party have a history of treating social conservatives pretty badly. They have no other options, because everyone else outright despises them, but we can't run on their pet issues and expect to win, so we dangle a carrot or two in front of them and then exploit them. If one of them was in charge, we'd lose, but it'd help prevent their resentment from building up to toxic levels, which could otherwise happen. That's worth a bit. That said, he scares the crap out of all the other parts of the party, so it's not worth very much.
TOTAL: 9/25 Less obnoxious than some, but still a pretty terrible candidate.
(Next: The C-List)
Social: 0/4 On top of being a massive Bible-thumper, he seems to have also jumped on Trump's Muslim ban idea. Not just no, but hell no.
Foreign: 2/4 Doesn't have much here, but there's some good talk on trade.
Governance: 2/3 Again, not much here, but loosening internal trade barriers within Canada is good policy, and his approach to regulatory harmonization also seems sensible.
Decency: 0.5/3 He loses points for the Muslim ban, and he genuinely claims that "Democracy is under attack" because a library kicked him out one time, but at least it's not a centrepiece of his campaign to act like a jerk towards people. That drags him above zero, slightly.
Electability: 0/3 No swing ridings anywhere would vote for him between now and the heat death of the universe.
Unity: 0.5/2 We as a party have a history of treating social conservatives pretty badly. They have no other options, because everyone else outright despises them, but we can't run on their pet issues and expect to win, so we dangle a carrot or two in front of them and then exploit them. If one of them was in charge, we'd lose, but it'd help prevent their resentment from building up to toxic levels, which could otherwise happen. That's worth a bit. That said, he scares the crap out of all the other parts of the party, so it's not worth very much.
TOTAL: 9/25 Less obnoxious than some, but still a pretty terrible candidate.
(Next: The C-List)
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