tough crowd

In between investors complaining about banks repaying the massive bailout known as TARP and the bankruptcy of the American auto industry, I notice nobody posts comments though I get a regular stream of visitors. I like getting comments because they allow me to tailor the posts to what you want to hear about.

Anyhow, I got bored reading about Maine considering becoming the second state to have a unicameral legislature and thought about what would happen if Texas did the same. I proposed therefore a grand scheme in which it would work on the same principles as the US Congress, but in reverse. Instead of having that popular votes divided up by individual districts to give more populous areas more votes, the individual administrative units would each get a vote as in the Senate. Since Texas has 254 countries ranging from the 67 people who live in Loving County to the nearly 4,000,000 in Harris, a wide range of rural to urban representation is possible. To balance out such a plan, urban areas will be given one extra representative for each hundred thousand people within the county, so Harris County(Houston) would have 37 total seats (1+3,693,000/100000). In total this system would have a total of 407 seats, with 45% of the votes in urbanized counties and 55% rural. It would make for interesting elections when you had some rancher from West Texas representing his 67 people just the same as the 37 for Houston. Since the county lines are not redrawn every decade, this would prevent gerrymandering and create a greater voice for the smaller, less populous parts of Texas.
The county seat of the future most powerful county in Texas

final debate, final analysis

To borrow a tired cliche, McCain accomplished too little, too late. He finally came out swinging and bringing up the dubious connections Obama has with people like the terrorist Bill Ayers and Obama's propensity for government largesse. When McCain referred to Obama as "Senator Government" I actually saw a spark of life in their campaign. Unfortunately, a quick joke won't roll back the huge market losses, the bailouts, the high oil prices.

McCain also brought up the issue of school vouchers which are long overdue. Competition between schools for students is necessary because the current educational system is stuck in neutral since the current funding allocation gives high funding to both high and low performing schools. This means that the incentive for a poor performing school to improve is not that great since a lot of funding will dry up if there is too much improvement. If students could choose where the tax money for education went, then school districts would have to treat the students and parents as customers rather than serfs. As it is now the taxpayer is only seen as a dollar amount by the school districts since they are tied to the land via geographical school tax assessment. Vouchers will free the taxpayer from the school district fiefdom, which is long overdue.

Market volatility and political reality

Last week saw people losing over half their portfolio value in one week, and Monday saw the largest absolute increase in the Dow in history, so are happy days here again? The answer is that we will not know until the injection of capital into the financial system is completed. If(and that is a big if) the bailout plan succeeds the velocity of money should increase, which would avoid a depression since a low velocity means money is not being loaned out or used to purchase goods and services.

Even if the bailout succeeds, the political landscape will be changed by the economic realities of the last eight years. The first lesson is that the Republican party cannot claim to be the party of financial responsibility as they have presided over the complete removal of any spending restraint. Secondly, the McCain/Caribou Barbie campaign is in very dire straights with three weeks left in the election. Since early votes are already beginning in some states and will all be starting by next Monday, this last debate is really the final gasp in the campaign. If McCain comes across as badly as he has the last two debates, with stumbling and playing for a tie, prepare for the polls showing Obama up double digits to increase. Is the debate performance going to be too little too late?