A recent Boston Globe article has highlighted the same thing (h/t EconomistMom).  More and more studies are now confirming that once a person ‘believes’ something, even facts that prove them wrong do not change their belief.

In case you missed that, even when we are conclusively proved to be wrong, we very often don’t change our belief.  We dismiss the facts rather than change our minds.

Which goes a long way towards explaining things like the Birthers, or why so many intelligent people believe Bush’s tax cuts increased revenue, or (not to pick too much on the right wing) the overwhelming belief among Democrats that George W Bush is stupid.

It also goes a long way towards explaining the influence of entertaining (but factually challenged) political commentators (cough, Glen Beck, cough), and the fervor of their followers.

Unfortunately, it means that one of the goals of this blog – to encourage people to think beyond the sound bite – is ultimately doomed.

But I’m an optimist, and ultimately believe (perhaps despite the facts) that there are those who are willing to at least entertain the idea that if the data doesn’t support their belief, they may need to adjust their belief.

Here’s hoping…

Conservative Republicans cried foul.  “It’s inherently wrong and un-American”, says the current governor, and she is “uncomfortable with the intrusive nature of the system”.  It’s an invasion of privacy, and spying on the citizens, says the website of the Arizona Citizens Against Photo Radar.  Oh, and because the technology was developed in Australia, it is also a violation of sovereignty.

The cameras will be turned off this week.

Meanwhile, the state has passed legislation that, in effect, says if you look like you might be Mexican (or not ‘American’), you are required to carry proof of legal residence.  Which, of course, is not an invasion of privacy at all.

This is what passes for conservatism in the US today.  Cameras which catch people clearly breaking the law are “wrong and un-American” while requiring anyone with darker skin to carry proof of residence is simply enforcing the law.

UPDATE:  Now they have Nazis with assault rifles patrolling the border.

Republicans are using the deficit as an excuse to be the party of no.  According to Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell:  “Americans see what’s happening in Europe, and they’re begging us to bring the debt under control, to cut it down before we face a similar fate. Instead, Democrats in Washington just keep piling on, as if they’re oblivious to the consequences.”

Don’t forget that these are the same Republican senators who drafted multi-trillion dollar tax cuts a few years ago.  Cuts that were not ‘paid for’ with spending cuts and clearly contributed to massive US deficits.  Cuts where Mr McConnell was indisputably ‘oblivious to the consequences’.

The time for fiscal austerity was five years ago, not today.

The biggest contributor to the increase in the deficit is the soft economy.  Tax revenue declined dramatically in 2009 as corporate profits dropped, wages and bonuses dropped, and fewer people were employed.  Spending automatically increased as unemployment rose and entitlements kicked in.  The impact of these far outweigh the cost of the stimulus package and TARP.

Consequently, the best way to decrease the deficit in the current climate is to do whatever it takes to get the economy back to strong growth.  One can argue about the kinds of actions best suited for that, but clearly belt tightening is not among them.  Whether this is ignorance on the part of Republican Senators, or an attempt to create a double dip in advance of mid term elections, I’ll leave to the reader to decide.

A few months ago, I thought only a dip in growth in China could stall the recovery.  I didn’t account for Republican senators.

Near as I can tell, this bill started out as a collection of tax break for industries which appear to have done a very good job of lobbying.  Most of these breaks were due to expire, and the bill extends them.  These include tax breaks on things like: maintenance of small railroads; mine rescue team training expenses; restaurant buildings; sale of timber by timber REITs; I could go on but you would lose interest (if you haven’t already).

This part is a bit of legislative sleight of hand.  By initially making these tax breaks expire, the costing of the original bills was lower – since bills are costed on a ten year impact.  Whether the intention at the time was to extend the breaks, we can only speculate.

Onto this pile of tax break extensions, Congress has added the Medicare doc fix – a regular extension of a cost saving program implemented in 1997.  The 97 law says that if health costs increase faster than inflation, Medicare reimbursement rates must drop.  However, this has been ‘deferred’ on a regular basis since then.  Without the doc fix, Medicare reimbursement rates to doctors would now drop by over 20%.  The doc fix will once again push that out for a later Congress to deal with.

All of this looks like a pretty unappealing bit of legislation, so a few tax increases – mainly targeting successful investment managers (including yours truly) – are thrown into the mix to make it look less like just a costly bill.  Still, a pretty unappetizing plate full.

To spice things up, Congress has added a small stimulus package aimed at assisting the longer term unemployed.  This would extend unemployment insurance (and COBRA health insurance) for people who have been out of work for some time and exhausted their state based options.  This bit would cost about $40 billion, and is probably a timely and effective bit of stimulus for a country still struggling with high unemployment.

This allows Nancy Pelosi to say: “It’s about jobs.”

Which, of course, is not entirely accurate.  If it’s about jobs, enact the unemployment extensions and throw out the rest.

Why can’t elected representatives have the fortitude and integrity to tackle each of these issues on their own merits, instead of trying to hide their special interest deals in a bill that is “about jobs”?

Ms Lowden has provided a great source of material for comedians, but the real issue is the belief among many that the free market can provide appropriate health care solutions.

A pure free market health care system would, in my opinion, result in lower cost of health care – probably much lower.  The trade off is that it would exclude some care from those who could not afford it – or chose to spend their money on other things.

What Sue Lowden is really saying, is that Americans should only get the health care they can afford.  If you have chicken pox and a chicken, and you find a doctor (and pharmacist) willing to trade the chicken for the zovirax, no problem.  But if you have chicken pox and no chicken, well that’s poor planning on your part.  If you get cancer, or need dialysis …

Americans, to their credit, generally reject this kind of health care system.  They believe health care should not be only for the wealthy.  So there are public hospitals and Medicaid and other systems in place so that if someone shows up at a hospital with a broken leg, or a gunshot wound, or failing kidney, they receive treatment regardless of their wealth or insurance.  Health care has become a common good, like roads, where people cannot be excluded from its use.

Except, apparently, to Republicans like Sue Lowden.

The view from down under is that the US needs to decide whether health care is a common good or a private good.  The current system treats health care as a common good in usage but a private good in payment.  That is not only the root of its problems, but is ultimately unsustainable.

No one puts this better than Thomas Friedman.  In a recent article, Friedman suggests that health care reform may be Obama’s “single most important foreign policy achievement”.

According to an American negotiator, all throughout the arms talks, which paralleled the health care debate, the Russians kept asking: “Can you actually get this ratified by the Senate” if an arms deal is cut? Winning passage of the health care bill demonstrated to the Russians that Obama could get something hard passed.

The rest of the world was watching the health care debate closely, even in Australia.  The passage of the bill put a spring in Obama’s step, but also sent a message to the world that he was a President that could tackle the tough issues.

The view from down under is that a strong American president is a prerequisite for effective foreign (and domestic) policy.  It’s not only Rush Limbaugh that hopes Obama fails, it’s also Hugo Chavez, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Osama bin Laden.

The poll also illustrates the difference between the general and the specific.  Although only 5% want to reduce the deficit through increased taxes, 59% of Americans favor raising taxes on families making over $250,000.  Maybe they don’t think taxing the rich will reduce the deficit, but it still sounds like a good idea.

When asked what areas of the budget should be cut, the only one supported by a majority (71%) was foreign aid, which represents about half a percent of spending (most of which goes to Israel).  About three fourths of government spending is on defense, social security, medicare, medicaid, and mandated programs that generally fall under the ‘aid to the poor’ category (unemployment, welfare, etc).  80-90% of Americans oppose cuts to any of these areas.

Yet, most Americans said a candidates position on the deficit was either very important (47%) or the most important factor (10%) in deciding whom to support in the next election.  Another 25% said it was somewhat important, so presumably 82% of Americans will care about their candidate’s position on the deficit.

If this poll is an accurate reflection of voter feelings on election day, it would suggest Democratic candidates focusing on reducing the deficit by raising taxes on the wealthy should prevail over Republican candidates talking about cutting taxes and reducing spending.  The view from down under is that the poll is not accurate in this regard, and when it comes time to vote people won’t care about the deficit as much.   Voters will weigh their candidate’s stand on the deficit with all the other factors, and probably accept a general ‘concern’ about the deficit as sufficient.  Since any firm proposal for deficit reduction (other than raising taxes on the wealthy) will meet with voter rejection, a heightened level of rhetoric is all we’re likely to hear, and next year’s Congress will continue to have no mandate for deficit reduction.

Eventually this will have to change.  As Ben Bernanke said last week:

The arithmetic is, unfortunately, quite clear. To avoid large and unsustainable budget deficits, the nation will ultimately have to choose among higher taxes, modifications to entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, less spending on everything else from education to defense, or some combination of the above. These choices are difficult, and it always seems easier to put them off–until the day they cannot be put off any more. But unless we as a nation demonstrate a strong commitment to fiscal responsibility, in the longer run we will have neither financial stability nor healthy economic growth.

The anti incumbent cannons are loaded and pointing directly at Congress.  A recent AP/GfK poll found that while 53% of Americans think Obama is doing a good job, only 22% think Congress is doing a good job.  This is also remarkably bi-partisan.  61% of Americans think the Democrats in Congress are doing a lousy job, and 67% think the same of Republicans.

In worse news for incumbents, almost half of those polled want their own member of Congress replaced.  In the past, most people have tended to complain about Congress as a whole, but have supported their own member.  Now this dynamic is breaking down, and is no doubt the reason so many incumbents are retiring rather than face re-election.

In Texas a sitting Senator (Kay Bailey Hutchison) challenged a sitting Governor (Rick Perry) in the Republican primary (which in itself is quite remarkable).  Governor Perry pulled out a convincing win with a campaign that highlighted the Senator’s ties to Washington.  Hutchison, who was leading the polls going into the race, got 30% of the vote to Perry’s 51%  - the tea party candidate picked up the other 19%.  Perry’s anti-Washington tactics are likely to be widely copied in other states.

Both the left and the right are trying to take advantage of the sentiment.  Organisations from Moveon.org and the SEIU to tea partiers and NFRA are seizing the moment to either pressure sitting members to vote their way, or replace them with candidates who will.

The view from down under is this is likely to make Congress even less effective.  Replacing sitting members of Congress with others who are either more to the left or more to the right will only guarantee future deadlock.  The US will get more grandstanding and less compromise.

From the abstract:

We find that blog readers gravitate toward blogs that accord with their political beliefs. Few read blogs on both the left and right of the ideological spectrum. Furthermore, those who read left-wing blogs and those who read right-wing blogs are ideologically far apart. Blog readers are more polarized than either non-blog-readers or consumers of various television news programs, and roughly as polarized as US senators.

The study discusses how blog authors of similar political persuasion tend to reinforce each other’s beliefs and push further from the center, with something similar occurring among blog readers.  Only 6% of those who read political blogs read both right and left wing blogs.  The remainder, 94%, read only left wing or right wing but not both.

Which fits in with a few earlier comments on polarization of the US electorate, but suggests the View From Down Under is unlikely to appeal to the majority of blog readers.

Which is fine by me.

UPDATE:  There is also a cool chart in the study showing how liberals watch PBS Newshour and conservatives watch Fox News.  We all knew that, but the graph is well presented.

Here is Obama compared to the last two one-term Presidents – George HW Bush and Jimmy Carter.  So far, Obama is tracking pretty closely to Jimmy Carter’s trajectory.

Not looking so good for Obama, although I was also interested in the amazing collapse in popularity of Bush Sr.  His popularity in early 1991 was nearly 90%.  One year later he was below 40% and never recovered.  Perhaps he was better at being President than campaigning for it.

Let’s have a look at how Obama  is tracking against two very popular two-term Presidents: Reagan and Clinton.

Hmm.  Obama not looking too bad here.  Slightly more popular than Reagan at this point in the Presidency, slightly less popular than Clinton.

Clearly what counts for re-election is how popular a President is at day 1400, not day 400.

Final point of interest:  Obama v George W.  The Sep 11 attacks had an extraordinary impact on the popularity of the President (as well as Congress).  Interesting that at the 2004 election, W was down to just over 50% approval, and deteriorated pretty consistently after that.