"Precisely the tools we need to continue successfully disrupting the enemy's plans..."

Because you never know when the next sign of the terrorists on our soil will be wicked mean Islamofascist roosters:

Sneak-and-peek warrants debated
Patriot Act used to search for evidence in cockfighting case

Acting under the authority of the Patriot Act, the agents had obtained a search warrant that allowed them to clandestinely enter the property, search for evidence and not tell anyone about it until the government or a judge was ready to let the owners know they’d been there.

Just after midnight on May 13, 2004, a small team of FBI agents crept into the legendary Del Rio Cockfighting Pit in Cocke County.

Originally touted as a tool in the struggle against terrorism, the Patriot Act now was being used in the hills of East Tennessee as part of a shadowy war that had been going on for decades, a struggle that pitted the federal government against a homespun Appalachian culture that had churned out generation after generation of proud outlaws.

Read the whole thing. The sneak-and-peek provisions of the Patriot Act are being used for threats to our Great Way of Life like cockfighting. Feeling safer yet?

Et tu, Gunyou?

John Gunyou's op-ed piece in the Strib today:

New motto: Buck passes through here

In the aftermath of the Interstate 35W bridge collapse, a stream of public officials have praised the goodness of Minnesota's response to the tragedy, have vowed to get to the bottom of it and have pledged to immediately rebuild. It's been heartwarming, but a little unsatisfying. I keep waiting for someone to apologize.

Not so much to accept blame, but rather to acknowledge responsibility. It's unfair to think that anyone would cavalierly sacrifice public safety for political gain, but what about a simple apology for not doing everything they reasonably should have to prevent such a tragedy?

It's one thing to try, and fall short; it's quite another to not even make the effort. It's increasingly evident the Pawlenty-Molnau administration ignored the advice of bridge experts to take remedial action. Worse yet, the administration still has no viable long-term plan to improve, much less maintain, our state's critical transportation infrastructure.

After twice vetoing the Legislature's attempts to put such a plan in place, Gov. Tim Pawlenty offered up a scheme to fund our needs at only 10 cents on the dollar -- with 30-year bonds. Worse yet, he wanted to pay off that debt by cutting into already inadequate maintenance resources. That doesn't build any more roads or bridges over the long run; it simply borrows against the future.

So, what about that sincere public apology? To dodge any responsibility for their sins of omission, the folks in charge have perfected the art of the non-apology. Here are a few glaring examples:

• "It came out of the blue." This excuse is more compelling for unpredictable natural disasters, but never when the responsible parties have ignored multiple warnings. The night of the disaster, Pawlenty emphasized that no prior inspections had raised any concerns. [this is King Banaian's black swan] When this claim proved bogus, he quickly shifted to the "but no one ever told me to close the bridge" defense.

• "I did what the experts told me to" is another popular dodge. Except, in this case, the experts did advise state Transportation Commissioner and Lt. Gov. Carol Molnau to weld steel plates onto the supports of her "structurally deficient" bridge, but she ordered them to come up with lower-cost options. Rather than address the underlying structural problems, she chose to put a new deck on the bridge to make things look better. That unfortunate decision was an apt metaphor for the shortsighted philosophy of this administration -- rather than make critical investments in basic infrastructure, just slap on a new coat of paint.

• "It's not my job" was the old standby trotted out by President Bush. He declared that states are responsible for bridge maintenance to divert attention away from multiple reports about our crumbling national infrastructure. In his world, the federal government is apparently responsible only for rebuilding the foreign infrastructures it destroys. [check out Spot's The condition we're in]

• "Let's not play the blame game." The Taxpayers League offered up this evasion, which was quickly parroted by its rapidly dwindling cult of no-taxers. It's the diversion most often used by those with the most egg on their faces. If your professed goal is to starve the government beast (or force the unrealistic reprioritization of inadequate resources), one of the inevitable consequences is deteriorating public infrastructure. [Michael Brodkorb's initial theme]

• • •

Where's Harry Truman when you need him? Today's leaders seem to have a sign that reads, "The buck passes through here." The non-apology has become the refuge of those who'd rather act resolute after the fact, than actually demonstrate forward-thinking leadership.

We can hope the bridge collapse was enough of a proverbial two-by-four between the eyes to get the attention of those responsible for our public infrastructure. It certainly got ours.

John Gunyou is Minnetonka's city manager. He was Minnesota's finance commissioner in the [Arne] Carlson administration.

Spot has decided to discontinue the professional division of the Spotty™ award, or Mr. Gunyou's piece would have earned one.

Carol Molnau ought to fall on her political sword. If she won't fall on it, she should get a little push.

Technorati Tags: 35W bridge collapose, Carol Molnau Tim Pawlenty, black swans, blame game, Michael Brodkorb, King Banaian, John Gunyou

Veering into the kitsch

Do you remember, boys and girls, that at some point after 9/11, our national mourning took an alarming turn toward graphic art of children firemen with big, sad eyes and crocheted American flag tissue box covers? There is hardly an issue, nor clear thinking about it, that can't be obscured or smothered in kitsch.

We are heading in that direction over the 35W bridge collapse. Spot offers as Exhibit A the Sunday Star Tribune's Opinion Exchange page one op-ed piece called A measure of who we are. In it, the author of the piece, Deborah Morse-Kahn, extols the virtues of Minnesotans that we on display when the bridge fell: the work of the first responders and ordinary citizens in the rescue effort, the medical response, the volunteers and donations to the Red Cross.

Exemplary, indeed.

But Morse-Kahn reports:

It was local media guy Joe Soucheray who said to a New York reporter, "On 9/11, everyone ran out and the first responders ran in. Here in Minneapolis, an interstate bridge falls at rush and everyone runs in!" That reporter's response had to be: "Everyone runs in? Who are you people?"

Please notice, boys and girls, that Morse-Kahn tells us what she thinks the big city reporter must have replied, not what s/he actually did say. Spot has no trouble believing the accuracy of the smug, self-satisfied remark from Soucheray.

As long as we're putting words in the big city reporter's mouth, how about these:

Are you kidding? You never heard about occupants of the towers who assisted the disabled and injured get to safety or died trying? You never heard about volunteers who drove for hundreds of miles to pick over the pile of rubble for days with their bare hands? You never heard about all the volunteers who set up aid stations in churches and other buildings in what should have been the shadow of the towers to help survivors connect with their families and families search for the missing? You got a lotta damn nerve, pal.

That's what Spot would have said.

 There is a natural tendency to trowel over the bridge with alternating layers of empty sentimentality and self-congratulation. It makes people feel better. That's okay, but not when it comes at the expense of a healthy discussion of what happened and why. The Minnesota civic character—regrettably—is more revealed by what happened in the months, and even years, leading up to the collapse that it is by what happened when it fell.

Before the many put out their shoulders patting themselves on the back for the efforts of a relatively few, the many need ask themselves, did I vote for the political leaders at the helm leading up to the debacle? And if the answer is yes, these persons have to ask themselves, "What was I thinking?"

And just by the way, Spot doesn't recall seeing any pictures of Joe Soucheray up to his neck in the Mississippi River.

Technorati Tags: 35W bridge collapose, Joe Soucheray, first responders, Red Cross, Minnesota civic character

The condition we're in

WARNING: MORE JOHN RALSON SAUL AHEAD

At least part of the reason we can't keep the bridges in good repair is that we have lived on a war footing since the beginning of the Cold War.

No, Spotty, that's not true. Peace has broken out several times during this period.

Perhaps grasshopper, but from an economic standpoint we have not acted as though that was the case. By the way, do you know the definition of peace?

People and nations getting along without fighting?

"Peace is a period of lying and stealing between two periods of war." Kidding, although not entirely.

 We really didn't get the knack of this war footing stuff, however, until Jack Kennedy appointed one of the best and the brightest, Robert McNamara, as the Secretary of Defense. A former Ford top executive (he was a little ahead of the Pinto era, but not much), McNamara came in, dragging his industrial methods behind him, convinced that he could rationalize and improve defense spending. He set about doing that as the Vietnam war ramped up.

One of Bob's big ideas was that we could have more and niftier military research and development if we just had more units produced over which to amortize that R&D. But even a big, powerful country like the US can only absorb so much military hardware. Sad, but true. What to do? "I know," says Bob, "we'll export the bejesus out of our hardware and drive that unit cost down. And that's what Bob did.

Other countries, especially the perfidious French, also had the same idea. It must have been a really good idea! Our friend JRS says:

Our reliance upon military economics began as a conscious attempt by technocrats to treat the burden of military expense in the same way that we treat any commercial economic problem — that is, in terms of profit and loss. This approach, they felt, would also strengthen our foreign policies and reinforce our national independence.

But the central theme was economic. Modern weaponry, they argued, was too expensive to be viably produced for the needs of a single nation. It followed that we had to produce more and sell the surplus abroad. As General Michel Fourquet wrote, when head of French military sales, we must "admit as the basic rule that its industries can only live by exporting."

Of course, it may not have occurred to Bob that in the long run there would be so many countries with defense industries out there seeking to export their own arms that it would not only not be a zero sum game, but the everyone was going to wind up losers, both in economic and non-economic (dare we say real?) terms. At first it was mostly the Western powers and the Soviet Union, each selling to its own former colonial or "client" states. But it wasn't long, especially after the breakup of the Soviet Union that several so-called "emerging states in Central Europe and, say, Brazil, in South America got into the game, too.

As the game progressed and competition increased, it became more and more important for governments to support their native defense industries through export assistance programs: generous loan terms and "foreign aid." It is not uncommon, for example, for a US weapons supplier to secure an export contract and the government ends up financing the deal on concessionary terms or giving the money to the foreign government to "pay" for the weapons, or some combination of both. In other words, the government is really the buyer and maybe the maker of bad loans. On the books, the weapons manufacturer who makes the sale looks good, but from a national accounting and wealth accumulation standpoint, it isn't nearly as desirable.

The trade deficit numbers that you see reported, boys and girls, would be even worse if we owned up to the fact that the weapons export funny business didn't really earn as much in foreign exchange as the dollar values that are reported suggest.

It is not unlike the governors throwing money around to try to attract "bidness," or even a sports team. Well, okay, it's not exactly like that, but you get the idea, boys and girls.

On the "non-economic" side, we have the fact that we're helping create a world awash with arms; we constrain our foreign policy decision making, and we're giving away the family jewels. The first item in the list is self-explanatory. In the case of foreign policy decision making, when weapons are marketed, there is pressure by the manufacturers to get approval of the export sales; this pressure is economic, not political. The initial sale also creates a market for spare parts, which the manufacturers are loath not to supply, for fear of appearing to be an unreliable supplier, again creating economic pressure for the government to approve something that might have contradictory foreign policy considerations.

With respect to the family jewels, it is obvious that putting military technology into the hands of potential adversaries and their friends is dangerous. Shipment diversions, falsification of end-user certificates and the like happen frequently. Iran-Contra was a weapons diversion escapade run by the Reagan administration.

Here's what JRS has to say:

Weapons cannot be transformed into banal economic material because they are not banal economic material. The defence of a nation is one of the few sacred duties of a society, along with such things as the maintenance of justice. You do not sell justice. You do not sell legislative seats. You do not sell off the presidency or the prime ministership. You do not sell officers' commissions. You do not sell the interests of your country. All of these things are basic to the modern democratic state. It goes without saying, therefore, that you do not sell your own defence.

Weapons are an integral part of a nation's defence. Every important strategist from Sun Tzu on makes clear that the best defence is the avoidance of war through superior leadership. Failing that, it is the fighting of a fast war with as little physical damage as possible. The wise nation or alliance, therefore, keeps its weapons to itself in order to maintain whatever advantages they may offer. It refrains absolutely from arming anyone else.

See, boys and girls, he even spells like a Canuck.

Well, this is all very interesting, Spotty, but what does it have to do with infrastructure?

Isn't it obvious? The United States spends more on military R&D than any other kind, and it spends more on the military than the rest of the world combined. (Spot doesn't have links immediately available for those to assertions, but Spot is on a dial-up for a couple of days and it's hard to get links; anyway they are both figures in common discussion and are non-controversial)

But doesn't the military R&D filter down to civilian applications?

You mean "aren't our tractors much better because we have the Abrams tank?" Maybe so, grasshopper, but it's a damn inefficient way to fund civilian R&D. You've posed a trickle down theory, grasshopper, which is about as helpful as the trickle down tax voodoo that the Republicans have sold.

One last quote from JRS:

If part of the responsibility for our economic confusion lies with the weapons industry, is the reason perhaps that arms are not capital goods? They cannot act as an economic motor to drive a fully rounded economy if there are no real costs, no real buyers, and no real return on investment in the form of civil infrastructure. As for singing the praises of the trickle-down effect, this borders on the ridiculous. Why should we tie our industrial investment and development to a method which is both inefficient and reliant upon luck? It is a sign of how flawed the rational system is that we have accepted with docility an economic development strategy which by comparison makes a roll of the dice on the tables of Monte Carlo look like a sure thing. Nevertheless, this system has taken on the form of a squirrel cage. And no one seems to remember how we got in or know how to get us out.

In other words, the modern weapons industry creates swords that can't even be beaten into plowshares.

There is talk now of expanding the size of the military. Apparently enough so that we could get into two disastrous wars at the same time! Or maybe three! Spot says not to look for any substantial bridge building anytime soon.

Technorati Tags: 35W bridge collapose, Robert McNamara, arms trade, civilian infrastructure, John Ralson Saul

Carol Molnau deserves many things

She and her department deserve scrutiny, questioning, and investigation. She and the people who oversee our roads and bridges need to answer some uncomfortable questions about the bridge collapse and the state of the rest of the transportation infrastructure they are supposed to oversee.

She does not, however, deserve scrutiny along these lines:

At a post-bridge collapse news conference last Monday, wearing white Capri pants and a nautical theme T-shirt, she praised the media's coverage...

Dog bites man, apparently several times

This story in the Strib won't be up much longer, so Spot will rip the whole thing off. It's pretty short:

A man picked up Saturday by Minneapolis police for two outstanding warrants is in more trouble with the law after he attempted to choke a police dog, authorities said.

The suspect, 21, was riding in a car with a friend who was pulled over for drunken driving at 1:15 a.m. Saturday at 21st and Penn Avs. N. Police arrested the suspect after learning he had outstanding warrants in Hennepin County for carrying a gun in public and in Anoka County for fifth-degree domestic assault, said Lt. Amelia Huffman.

Somehow the suspect escaped after officers placed him in the back of a squad car. He led police on a foot chase. A police dog tracked the suspect to a nearby house where he was found hiding in the attic. Boldly, the suspect put his hands around the dog as if to break its neck, Huffman said.

"He was determined to get away," Huffman said. But police prevailed.

After the suspect was treated for dog bites, he was booked into the Hennepin County Jail and faces charges of escaping from police custody and assaulting a police K9.

Spot could have written that last paragraph with no access to the police report.

A thump of the tail to SJS.

Technorati Tags: police dogs, really stupid ideas

Send in the yobs!

Boys and girls, your old friend Spot has offended the chief priest at the Saint Cloud Theological Seminary, so of course his loyal vassal "Learned Foot" at the Kool Aid Report (no, Spot is not making this up) has stepped in to protect His Holy Name. You will remember that yesterday Spot had some comments about the epistemological musings of King Banaian about cost-benefit analyses and bridge collapses. In calling the professor's meditations on the subject largely an elaborate parlor trick, Spot said this:

Bingo, grasshopper. Just like our slippery goat owner, the professor has some problems with his arguments. You can't argue that the risk of something is unknowable and then claim that the politicians and the public made a rational cost-benefit analysis. If you don't know the costs or the benefits, you can't possibly do the analysis.

To which Foot, with vise-like logic replies in effect:

Can too.

You can imagine how Spot was staggered by this broadside! Dr. King Banaian, PhD, buoyed by the show of solidarity, leaves a comment for Foot:

I guess the whole idea of sensitivity analysis must have gone over his head. Probably it was down cleaning himself.

On his own site, however, the professor is a little less sanguine:

Yes [you can do a rational cost-benefit analysis without knowing the costs or the benefits], though it's awfully hard. Since I'm writing a course for someone to teach CBA, I have some notes to draw on, but this section is quite hard. This is usually the bailiwick of environmental regulation, where CBA is the most disputed.

Where do you get your data, Professor, the entrails of owls?

The professor has described it for you and described how hard it is! Now, boys and girls, Spot wants you to visualize Carol Molnau, hunched over her desk, pencil in hand, wearing a puzzled expression, and looking over pages of scribbling while thinking to herself: this sensitivity stuff is awfully hard! Get it right Carol, and be sure to show you work! Spot hears that the professor is a tough grader!

Professor Banaian gives us an account of an abstract and elusive process that had nothing to do with the way MnDOT went about its business here. The professor and Foot are just engaging in a craven effort to provide some intellectual cover for the inaction and malfeasance of the Pepsodent administration. The professor has glazed a fancy decorative frosting on a piece of cornbread. It's pretty to look at—at least he thinks it is—but it's still just cornbread.

The professor also writes this, which really takes the cake, so to speak:

. . . Aaron Wildavsky noted "large proportions of people care more about avoiding loss than they do about making gains. Therefore, they will go to considerable lengths to avoid losses, even in the face of high probabilities of making considerable gains." I think this, in fact, is where ol Spot is coming from.

But that doesn't justify using other people's money to avoid those losses, and it doesn't justify the use of poor decisions, and those societies that rely on learning from mistakes, as a strategy to reduce uncertainty, will fare better.  . . .

Well, we're certainly learning from this mistake, aren't we boy and girls?

And the professor's plaintive wail about "using other people's money" is, well, just a stitch!  The Iraq war is costing 12 billion dollars a month. A month. At quarter billion a crack, how many 35W bridges per month is that, boys and girls?

Forty eight.

Right grasshopper. We're spending billions and billions to blow other people's infrastructure up while neglecting our own and the professor complains about spending maybe a little extra money to keep the bridges from falling down?

Conservatives, including Rush Limbaugh although Spot doesn't have a link for you, are trying to make the bridge collapse a priorities problem. That's what the professor is doing, too. If they want to do that, fine. But the competing priority is the biggest foreign policy disaster in the history of the United States, not light rail.

And finally, mea freakin' culpa. Swiftee and Foot jumped on the fact that Spot misspelled res ipsa loquitur in earlier posts. Charge it up to the fact that Spot was not educated by the Sisters of the Order of Penance, or to the fact that Spot's law Latin is rusty. But let them have their little fun; it's the best they've got.

[update] As Spot was saying before he got caught up yesterday in the ankle-biting comments that the professor left at the Cucking Stool, the entire effort here is to shield Republican decision-making. Spot, for one, is tired of talking about it. [/update]

Technorati Tags: 35w bridge collapose, King Banaian, cost-benefit analysis, Iraq war, res ipsa loquitur, Carol Molnau, Tim Pawlenty

A light sprinkling III

Or, Thus endeth the Banaian trilogy

In his comment to the original King Banaian and the Ford Pinto post, the professor said this:

"...although it was reduced by an appeals court."

The speed with which you ran past that point is truly amazing. Are you a greyhound?

We teach courses in the economic analysis of law, which would have explained for you the decision of the appellate court in that case to reduce punitive damages to the minimum needed to deter bad behavior. See Cooter. The most famous book of these is written by Richard Posner, who sits on the Sixth Circuit. You might wish to rail against him for awhile. Like about this post applying cost-benefit analysis to Katrina. He's much more famous than me, you might get more hits.

(Some of my thoughts come from studying his work. See this review of his 2004 book, Catastrophe: Risk and Response.)

Actually, Professor, Judge Posner sits on the 7th Circuit. And wonder of wonders, he also lectures at the University of Chicago Law School, which sits cheek-by-jowl with the likes of Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand. It perhaps doesn't surprise you, boys and girls, to know that Spot takes his direction in social philosophy elsewhere.

The professor misapprehends Spot's point. Spot was saying that when a jury is faced with the cold, calculating application of the cost-benefit analysis to human life, it tends to react very negatively. It's kind of the John Q. Public reaction. Since the bridge collapse was a political event, it is the public reaction that will count. That everyone on the conservative side—you, Michael Brodkorb, Bob Huge, et al.—are working so hard at keeping the Republicans from getting fingered for this is proof of that fact.

Spot mentioned the reduction of the punitive damage award--to a mere 3.5 million dollars twenty years ago--because it happened, not because it had anything to do with Spot's point.

The general public is not, frankly, going to care what Dick Posner thinks. And you can wave Posner in front of Spot like a little silver cross, and that won't do any good either.

Technorati Tags: 35W bridge collapose, King Banaian, Richard Posner, John Q. Public, Ford Pinto

A light sprinkling II

In a comment to Spot's post King Banaian and the Ford Pinto II, the professor wrote this:

1, 2, and 3 [all arguments as posited by the professor regarding the bridge failure, as set out in the link above] can all be true. You'll forgive me for exploring different sides of the story? Dogs may have one tracked minds; humans get to explore.

First of all, Spot will say that he doesn't think this is an especially academic exercise on the professor's part; it's advocacy disguised as a kind of crack-pot scholarship. The professor's association with Michael Brodkorb may be showing: throw a lot of stuff at the wall and hope some of it sticks.

And now for a little civil procedure lesson. Today, we will be discussing the case of the cabbages. A man alleges that a neighbor's goat ate his cabbages. The defendant consults a lawyer who tells the defendant that it is possible to plead alternate fact theories as a defense to the charge. The defendant authorizes the lawyer to proceed, and the lawyer puts in this answer to the complaint:

1. I don't own a goat.
2. Even if I did, he didn't eat your cabbages.
3. Even if he did, the cabbages were rotten and therefore worthless.

Although a perfectly lawful, and perhaps even rational in a formal rules sense, pleading, it lacks what, boys and girls?

Credibility?

Bingo, grasshopper. Just like our slippery goat owner, the professor has some problems with his arguments. You can't argue that the risk of something is unknowable and then claim that the politicians and the public made a rational cost-benefit analysis. If you don't know the costs or the benefits, you can't possibly do the analysis.

Similarly, it seems disingenuous, or at least odd, to argue (perhaps the professor will retreat to "muse") that a private inspection scheme (there were in fact private inspectors/consultants involved, remember?) would be better when the whole thing was probably, as the professor called it, a "black swan."

Spot thinks there is one comment left.

Technorati Tags: 35W bridge collapose, King Banaian, Michael Brodkorb

A light sprinkling

There was a light sprinkling overnight.

What do you mean, Spot. We didn't get any rain.

No, grasshopper. Spot means a sprinkling of comments from the professor. Let's look at 'em.

Comment to Oh, let's play the professor's stupid little game:

"...the public ... is not willing to accept any prospect of a catastrophe."

Your evidence for this statement is ...?

Ten words, Spot.

1. At what cost?
2. Compared to what?
3. How do you know?

The defect in the professor's argument is assuming that the cost of a disaster can be quantified.

Well of course you're right. Numbers are no match for self-righteous indignation and arrogance to knowledge you cannot have.

If you remember, boys and girls, this is the last sentence of the definition of cost-benefit analysis that Spot quoted:

The guiding principle is to list all of the parties affected by an intervention, and place a monetary value of the effect it has on their welfare as it would be valued by them.

In order for the stakeholders, the "parties affected," to be able to place a value on an "intervention," the stakeholders must possess the information necessary to make the choice, or perhaps more realistically, choose the political leaders who will make the choices that the stakeholders would make. With the benefit of hindsight—oh, damned hindsight that screws up our deformed ex ante thinking!—there are a lot of people who are thinking hard about the quality of economic decision making and the political leaders who were making them. Although they probably won't draw graphs with intersecting lines, so favored by the economics professorial class, Spot believes that many people have already concluded that the incremental cost of government to properly inspect and maintain bridges is a wise expenditure.

And compared to what? Saving the extra nickel or dime a gallon, Spot supposes. Implicit in the professor's question is the Republican attempt to pin this one on light rail, Northstar, health care, et cetera. But Spot doesn't think most people will see it that way. We're in the process of finding out.

Spot's favorite part of the comment is this:

Numbers are no match for self-righteous indignation and arrogance to knowledge you cannot have.

This is the professor's moral error. He lives in the world of incentives and trying to quantify them. But simple rapacity must not drive our philosophy. Spot's indignant—well, outraged would be more apt—about the bridge all right, but it's not self-righteous, it humanist. It is quite sad when you have to get your humanist values from a dog, professor.

That's enough for now. Look for responses to the other comments from the professor later.

Technorati Tags: 35W bridge collapose, King Banaian, humanism, cost-benefit analysis, cost of government

Oh, let's play the professor's stupid little game

Spot has mentioned before how King Banaian worships at the altar of the cost-benefit analysis. It's his hammer that turns all problems into nails. All right, professor, let's give your hammer a try. Here a statement of the cost-benefit analysis. It's from Wikipedia, not a classic public finance textbook, but it's pretty good:

Cost Benefit Analysis is an economic tool to aid social decision-making, and is typically used by governments to evaluate the desirability of a given intervention in markets. The aim is to gauge the efficiency of the intervention relative to the status quo. The costs and benefits of the impacts of an intervention are evaluated in terms of the public's willingness to pay for them (benefits) or willingness to pay to avoid them (costs). Inputs are typically measured in terms of opportunity costs - the value in their best alternative use. The guiding principle is to list all of the parties affected by an intervention, and place a monetary value of the effect it has on their welfare as it would be valued by them.

The first thing we might note, boys and girls, is that we are to put a value on the effects of the intervention or lack of one based on the stakeholders assessment of that value, NOT the assessment of a bunch of delusional fools in a radio booth at Patriot 1280. Spot is sorry to have to point out the obvious.

Let's assume (a good economist's word) two scenarios:

First, Spot is thinking of painting his dog house. He can do it now or put it off for a year or two. The benefit of doing it now is that it will immediately look spiffy, pleasing Mrs. Spot. There are probably some entirely non-economic benefits to this, but that is neither here nor there! The cost of doing it now is paying currently for the paint (Spot can't get credit at Home Depot) and investing the labor in the job while Spot could be snoozing in the sun.

On the flip side, if Spot puts the job off, he saves some money currently and protects his siesta time, against the disadvantage that the job will be a little bigger when Spot gets around to it.

Since Spot is the only stakeholder (he doesn't care what the neighbors think), he can—dare we say rationally?—evaluate the cost and return for each option.

The second scenario involves lots of stakeholders: it's the construction and maintenance of a nuclear power plant. If this baby blows, the neighbors have a lot more to worry about than a ramshackle doghouse next door! In fact, the consequences of a major nuclear accident are so great and so unknowable that we literally cannot do a—there's that word again—rational cost-benefit analysis. The costs of the Chernobyl accident over twenty years ago are still reverberating around the world in excess death and disease.

Because of the great and unknowable consequences of an accident, we don't build nuclear power plants to a pretty good level of safety; we are or should be building them as safe as we know how. The fact that none has been constructed in the US for a long time tell us, in fact, that the public demands a level of safety that nobody can meet and still make money.

So, here's the question, boys and girls: is a bridge more like a) Spot's doghouse or b) a nuclear power plant? No professor, the right answer is not "a."

There are obvious parallels between the bridge and the nuclear power plant. In both cases, the public—again, perhaps in contrast to the boys in the radio booth—is not willing to accept any prospect of a catastrophe. It isn't a matter of discussing a range of trade offs like our rational man the professor; the public expects that every damn time they cross the bridge, they will get to the other side. No exceptions. If you can't guarantee that, close the bridge. Just as we would expect a nuclear plant operator to shutter the plant if there was the teensy-est little problem.

The defect in the professor's argument is assuming that the cost of a disaster can be quantified. We'll never figure out what the total bridge collapse cost is in monetary terms, let alone in human terms. Certainly, the cost of fixing the bridge is inconsequential in comparison.

Technorati Tags: 35W bridge collapose, cost-benefit analysis, King Banaian, Patriot 1280

King Banaian and the Ford Pinto II

Spot never really read SCSU Scholars until Charlie called attention to King Banaian's rational economic analysis of the bridge collapse last week. You know what, boys and girls, it's kind of fun. The Dismal Scientist has molted at least three times since the bridge fell into the river:

1. We cannot know what forces were at work to cause the bridge to fail. Maybe we will, God willing, eventually find the answer.
2. The bridge fell, but it was just a consequence of the cost-benefit analysis.
3. And then today: Perhaps it is time to consider private bridge inspectors:

Could this [problem of bridge inspection] be solved by a market for private inspections? If the government does the buying of the inspections, you would have a monopsony; would it provide the right number and quality of inspections? I don't know. I think, though, that we're deluding ourselves thinking that the current inspection system has all the right incentives and only a lack of resources.

Spot never had a professor who pulled such sleights of hand. Remarkable. Spotty has also responded to number 1 and 2. Just scroll down to find them.

The professor has not, apparently, been reading the papers; perhaps you can't get the Strib as far north as St. Cloud! Well, you can read a lot of the Strib stories on the internet, professor, and Spot recommends this one, from just today. It is the story of how inspectors called political leaders' attention repeatedly to the condition of the bridge:

For nearly a decade, report after report showed extensive problems on the bridge.

Here are the first two grafs:

State bridge inspectors warned for nearly a decade before its collapse that the Interstate 35W bridge had "severe" and "extensive" corrosion of its beams and trusses, "widespread cracking" in spans and missing or broken bolts.

Not only was the superstructure in poor condition, but certain components were "beyond tolerable limits," and one of the bridge's piers had "tilted to the north," they reported.

Perhaps Carol Molnau's reading comprehension just wasn't good enough to realize that "beyond tolerable limits" means INTOLERABLE.

I guess those dumb old state inspectors weren't completely asleep at the switch after all! And when the private sector experts came in, guess what? They said the bridge was a stinker, too:

Since the collapse, public attention has focused on consultant reports in 2006 and 2007 that expressed serious reservations about the bridge. But a Star Tribune review of older reports by state inspectors shows that their concerns had been growing since the mid-'90s.

Only from whatever hallowed hall the professor sits in could emanate the screwball notion that private inspectors would have saved the bridge. It is only politicians who could saved the bridge, and they chose not to.

Technorati Tags: 35W bridge collapose, King Banaian, bridge inspections, sleight of hand

King Banaian and the Ford Pinto

One more before turning in for the night, boys and girls. There was a little footnote in one of the professor's posts that Spot wanted to mention:

*-- more on this later as well; worth noting that such calculations can be used to determine the value of a life. See slides 12-13 of this presentation from MIT's course on regulation. I suspect this will make dogs bark.

Spot thinks the professor was saying, "Ha, ha, Spot, we economists can value a human life in economic terms, and there is nothing you can do about it!" Well, you've got Spot there, professor. You know professor, lawyers, and judges and juries calculate the value of human lives every day. It's generally after some human-caused mayhem, and it's a grisly task, professor. But you make it sound like a simple academic exercise. Perhaps to you it is.

There are a couple of things that the law considers in addition to the plain economic value of a life. One of these is pain and suffering: the anguish that a person has been put through, perhaps before their death. The little Somali girl and her mother, currently pinned under the bridge, don't you suppose they suffered before they died, perhaps for agonizing minutes or even longer as the water rose or their air supply was exhausted? The economic value of the lives of this young mother and her child were probably not great, but the loss is keenly felt by the husband and father. The law considers this, too, professor; it's called loss of society or consortium.

Spot will confess a bit of confusion about your argument, professor. He thought it was that the prospect of the bridge failure was unknowable. But then you go on to do describe a cost-benefit analysis. You can't really do a cost-benefit analysis for a bridge failure, even if you're inclined to do one, when you have no idea what the cost of the bridge failure will be, in economic terms, and certainly not in human terms as suggested above. And frankly, professor, you don't have any damned idea what the cost of this bridge failure is going to be. You don't have a clue. These are really the unknowns, not your silly-ass musings about probabilities of bridge collapse and what set a failure falls into. Outrageous.

Professor, you live in the same pitiable abstract world as the Ford executives and economists who concluded that the cost in human lives did not justify redesigning the Ford Pinto and relocating its gasoline tank so that it wouldn't explode if rear ended. Do you remember what happened to them, professor? When it learned about the admirable economic decision making of Ford, the jury assessed one of the largest punitive damage awards in American history, although it was reduced by an appeals court. Here's a little bit about the case:

Although Ford had access to a new design which would decrease the possibility of the Ford Pinto from exploding, the company chose not to implement the design, which would have cost $11 per car, even though it had done an analysis showing that the new design would result in 180 less deaths.  The company defended itself on the grounds that it used the accepted risk/benefit analysis to determine if the monetary costs of making the change were greater than the societal benefit.  Based on the numbers Ford used, the cost would have been $137 million versus the $49.5 million price tag put on the deaths, injuries, and car damages, and thus Ford felt justified not implementing the design change.  This risk/benefit analysis was created out of the development of product liability, culminating at Judge Learned Hand's BPL formula, where if the expected harm exceeded the cost to take the precaution, then the company must take the precaution, whereas if the cost was liable, then it did not have to.  However, the BPL formula focuses on a specific accident, while the risk/benefit analysis requires an examination of the costs, risks, and benefits through use of the product as a whole.  Based on this analysis, Ford legally chose not to make the design changes which would have made the Pinto safer.  However, just because it was legal doesn't necessarily mean that it was ethical.  It is difficult to understand how a price can be put on saving a human life.

There are several reasons why such a strictly economic theory should not be used.  First, it seems unethical to determine that people should be allowed to die or be seriously injured because it would cost too much to prevent it.  Second, the analysis does not take into all the consequences, such as the negative publicity that Ford received and the judgments and settlements resulting from the lawsuits. Also, some things just can't be measured in terms of dollars, and that includes human life.  However, there are arguments in favor of the risk/benefit analysis.  First, it is well developed through existing case law.  Second, it encourages companies to take precautions against creating risks that result in large accident costs. Next, it can be argued that all things must have some common measure.  Finally, it provides a bright line which companies can follow.

In the present situation, the public and the voters are going to function as the jury. Go ahead and make you summation to them on the basis of a cost-benefit analysis. Good luck, professor.

[update] When you conclude ahead of time that a certain number of deaths is acceptable, it is, to paraphrase somebody that Spot recently heard, mathematical human sacrifice. [/update]

Technorati Tags: 35W bridge collapose, cost-benefit analysis, King Banaian, MnDOT

Spotty, who is that Ralson Purina guy?

Who?

You know, that fellow you're quoting so much lately?

Oh, you must mean John Ralston Saul.

Yeah, that's the guy.

John Ralston Saul is a really smart Canuck, grasshopper. Here's his website. He's a novelist, essayist, and philosopher with a PhD in history from the University of London. Right now, Spot is working on Saul's book Voltaire's Bastards. Here's a summary of it:

Voltaire’s Bastards: The Dictatorship of
Reason in the West
1992 - Published in: Russia, Spain, Chile, Japan, Italy, France, UK, Australia, Canada, US

In a wide-ranging, provocative anatomy of modern society and its origins, John Ralston Saul explores the reason for our deepening sense of crisis and confusion. Throughout the Western world we talk end­lessly of individual freedom, yet Saul shows that there has never before been such pressure for conformity. Our business leaders describe themselves as capitalists, yet most are corporate employees and financial speculators. We are obsessed with competition, yet the single larg­est item of international trade is a subsidized market in armaments. We call our governments democracies, yet few of us participate in poli­tics. We complain about "invasive government," yet our legal, educational, financial, social, cultural and legislative systems are breaking down.

While most observers view these problems separately, Saul demonstrates that they are largely manifestations of our blind faith in the value of reason. Over the last 400 years, our "rational elites" have gradually instituted re­forms in every phase of social life. But Saul shows that they have also been responsible for most of the difficulties and violence of the same period. This paradox arises from a simple truth which our elites deny: far from being a moral force, reason is no more than an administrative method. Their denial has helped to turn the modern West into a vast, incomprehensible, direction less machine, run by process-minded experts - “Voltaire's bastards" - whose cult of scientific management is bereft of both sense and morality. Whether in politics, art, business, the military, entertainment, science, finance, academia or journalism, these experts share the same outlook and methods. The result, Saul maintains, is a civilization of immense technological power whose peoples increasingly dwell in a world of illusion.

In an even smaller nutshell, boys and girls, Saul argues that Voltaire's rational Enlightenment thinking as a way to discredit the divine right of kings has been turned into little more than an "administrative method."

Is King Banaian, with all his blather about cost-benefit ratios in the face of a major bridge collapse one of Voltaire's bastards, Spotty?

Why, yes, grasshopper, Spot thinks he is.

Boy, that Voltaire guy really go around!

Apparently so.

Technorati Tags: King Banaian, 35W bridge collapose, Voltaire's Bastards, John Ralson Saul, cost benefit analysis

The plot thickens

Scene: The Patriot 1280 studio after the King and the Korb show. The King and the Korb are there, and the have Swiftee on the speaker phone.

MB: This bridge thing is really going south fast.

TS: You got that effing right!

KB: Oh, come on fellas! It's not that bad. I started a meme yesterday that the cause is in the realm of the unknowable. Gave 'em the old professorial razzle dazzle. Risk, reward, uncertainty, black swans, the whole nine yards. It should be taking hold any minute now.

TS: Pfft!

KB: Excuse me Swiftee, did you just fart at me?

TS: Uh, no.

MB: I think Swiftee is skeptical that's gonna work, King. I am, too. I've been banging the drum that the Democrat party is politicizing this practically since the moment the bridge fell. That pleases the base, but nobody else seems to be buying it. The public is looking for heads. What are we going to do?

TS: Blame the gays. I heard a rumor that Fred Phelps was going to do that.

[laughter]

TS: Well, excuse me. Just trying to help.

MB: We know, Swiftee, and we appreciate that.

KB: Well, if my brilliant initial thrust doesn't do the trick, perhaps we can blame the Democrat party.

TS: Pfft! Sorry. How are we gonna do that?

KB: We can blame light rail and the Northstar line. Money got diverted to these kooky projects and left us penniless to fix the roads and bridges.

MB: Is that true?

KB: Well, not really. Light rail has been a runaway success. It doesn't require as much operational subsidy as the naysayers thought it would. Most of the capital dollars came from Washington.

TS: But nobody rides the Northstar line!

MB: That's because it hasn't been built yet, Swiftee.

TS: Oh.

KB: It's still worth a try, though. So let's spread the word. Swiftee, you're a blog comment machine; see what you can do. Michael and I will blog about the Democrat party culpability.

TS: Culpability?

KB: Responsibility.

TS: Okay.

MB: We'll still have one weapon left in reserve.

KB: What's that?

MB: It was Bill Clinton's fault.

TS: Yea!

Technorati Tags: 35W bridge collapose, Northstar commuter rail, light rail, Michael Brodkorb, King Banaian, Swiftee

It's hard to soar like eagles,

when you consort with turkeys.

Composite picture by Avidor.

Technorati Tags: 35W bridge collapose, Tim Pawlenty

Fred Phelps: God DID knock the damn thing down!

Alternate title: Jesus Shrugged

You can't make this stuff up. Well, okay, Pastor Fred does, but that's not what Spot means. Several days ago now, Spot wrote a post God didn't knock the damn thing down. He was making the point that the 35W bridge failure was undoubtedly the result of human neglect. Apparently, Pastor Fred "God Hates Gays" Phelps believes that God did knock down the bridge:

Reached at the church, Shirley Phelps Roper, who is both the daughter of the pastor and one of the attorneys for the church, said that America, and Minnesota especially, have alienated God by its tolerance for homosexuality, and that the bridge collapse was an act of God’s vengeance. She said:

“The bridge stood place by the word of God and it fell by the word of God…Each of these little events is just a harbinger of the coming destruction of this American experiment. We are delivering the final call of the doomed nation.”

She said, as they have done for years, members of the church would stand “lawfully and peacefully on the public right of way” near the funerals and “put in the air words of praying and instruction and warning.”

The signs that the protesters will wave will read:

“God cast down the bridge… Thank God for 9/11… America is doomed… God hates fags… God hates fag enablers… God hates Minnesota.”

This is an admittedly slender reed upon which to lean, but Spot commends it to Governor Pepsodent and Carol Molnau. It will probably even work in a large segment of the Republican base.

Technorati Tags: 35W bridge collapose, Fred Phelps

Brian spanks Norm

This op-ed piece was in the Rochester Post-Bulletin yesterday. Spot isn't sure how long it will be available, so he's going to rip the whole thing off:

This week, Sen. Norm Coleman defended his support for Republican filibusters -- not only for the recent filibuster against the Levin-Reed amendment, which would have set a timeline for withdrawing American troops from the Iraqi civil war, but for the numerous Republican filibusters throughout the current Democratic-led Congress.

He also defended his recent conversion, since he once said that "I have never supported a filibuster, no matter how controversial the issue." Sen. Coleman offered various arguments based on Senate rules and, more importantly, the Constitution of the United States. Unfortunately, he twisted those rules and the Constitution in the process. Let's compare Sen. Coleman's arguments to what the Constitution and Senate rules actually say.

According to the Senate Web site, a filibuster is "any attempt to block or delay Senate action on a bill or other matter by debating it at length, by offering numerous procedural motions, or by any other delaying or obstructive actions."

The filibuster grew out of an important tradition in the United States Senate, that a senator can address the Senate on any topic, for as long as he or she wants to talk. If a senator has something to say, nobody -- not a judge, not a president, not even the other senators -- can stop him or her from saying it.

Of course, the filibuster can be abused. And it was. So the Senate adopted a rule in 1917 allowing cloture, by which a two-thirds vote can stop a filibuster and let the Senate get on with its work. The two-thirds was later lowered to three-fifths.

Which brings me to Sen. Coleman's first distortion: that the "Senate requires a bipartisan supermajority to pass legislation." Senate rules say no such thing. Many bills pass by a simple majority -- that is, the "yeas" outnumber the "nays," sometimes by a single vote -- sometimes with bipartisan support, sometimes without. The Constitution spells out exactly seven cases when a simple majority is not enough, and none involve passing legislation.

The idea that passing legislation takes a "bipartisan supermajority" is phony. If it were true, then every piece of legislation in the Senate would take 60 votes and Republicans could, and would, filibuster anything and everything that they disagree with.

Historically, the filibuster has been reserved for matters so grave that a senator was willing to shut down the Senate. The Republicans are trying to turn it into a routine device that applies to any legislation that they oppose -- basically, they are willing to shut down the Senate whenever they are outnumbered, even though they lost the last election. That's not how democracy works.

Sen. Coleman also defends his own change of heart about filibustering. Now he claims that he opposed filibustering only against judicial nominations because, he writes, "the United States Constitution specifically prohibited requiring a super majority (60 votes) on judges." The Constitution says no such thing. The constitutional rules for confirming a nomination, judicial or otherwise, are exactly the same as the rules for passing legislation. They all take a simple majority and the Constitution makes no procedural distinction among them.

Finally, Sen. Coleman argues that the Democrats are abusing cloture by filing too many cloture petitions. But the problem isn't that the Democrats are abusing cloture, since cloture is the only way of bringing filibustered legislation to an up-or-down vote where the people's elected representatives can work the people's will. Cloture isn't the problem. The problem is that Republicans are abusing the filibuster, using it to block even routine legislation, and cloture is the only remedy available.

Misrepresenting the facts is bad enough. But misrepresenting the Constitution itself is just plain wrong. After all, we could just look it up.

Brian Melendez is the chair of the Minnesota DFL Party.

Spot says the Constitution is probably hard reading for the senator. Norm undoubtedly gets his constitutional instruction from Mitch McConnell and Trent Lott.

Technorati Tags: filibuster, Norm Coleman, Brian Melendez, Mitch McConnell, Trent Lott

Oh Bob!

Here's one of the Republican party faithful from out in Spot's neck of the woods, in a letter in the Strib on Tuesday:

It's time for everyone -- including gas tax proponents -- to take a step back, a deep breath and grab hold of a little logic. Regardless of whether the governor signed or vetoed the transportation bill (with the gas tax included), the money would not as yet have even started to be collected. So the reconstruction work on the I-35W bridge or any other bridge wouldn't even have been in the proposal stages, let alone under way.

That bridge, for whatever the reason, was destined to collapse. As of today, we don't know why -- 40-year-old bridges aren't supposed to just fall down. But I do know this: Even if we collect a dollar-a-gallon road tax, much of that money won't go where it is supposed to go. Just look at New Orleans and how it spent its levee money.

We've suffered a major catastrophe, and we have bonded the way communities are supposed to bond. So when I hear a politician say, "We're going to get to the bottom of this!" I cringe a little, because it really means, "We're going to pin this on somebody!"

Why not continue the bonding and healing process and leave the vendettas for another day?

BOB HUGE, EDINA

Bob is, Spot almost need not say, an idiot. Let's count some of the reasons why, boys and girls.

First, the bridge's "destiny" was not to fall. If your people had taken care of it Bob, it would still be there.

Second, money raised by gasoline taxes are required by law to go into road transportation.

Third, while Bob almost certainly likes to think that "the levee money" in New Orleans was somehow stolen by all the darkies down there, there was and perhaps still is considerable confusion about whose responsibility the levees were:

But the officials still gave conflicting opinions about who is responsible for operating, inspecting, maintaining and making emergency repairs to the levees that protect the city.

Asked directly who was responsible for emergency repairs to New Orleans levees, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers official and a Louisiana state official both said the Orleans Levee District -- at least in the early stages of an incident.

When the former president of the levee district -- a local body -- was asked, he said the responsibility "unequivocally" falls to the Corps of Engineers.

"I look at it from the standpoint, from my level as ... they are the head. They are the brains. They have the engineering, the design, the overall [expertise]," said James P. Huey, former president of the Orleans Levee District Board of Commissioners.

The confusion also was evident in the days immediately following Katrina, but with a different tilt, testified Col. Richard P. Wagenaar, district engineer for the Army Corps of Engineers.

When corps workers attempted to reach the site to help, a local contractor turned them away, Wagenaar said.

"He literally blocked our equipment from operating on the bridge," Wagenaar said.

Committee members said the confusion over responsibility still has not been resolved.

"My mom didn't raise dumb kids, and I'm a little confused as to who has ultimate responsibility," said Republican Sen. Norm Coleman of Minnesota. [italics are Spot's]

If your boy Norm is confused, Bob, it has to be complicated, right?

Fourth, Bob, this session's veto was not the first time Governor Pepsodent vetoed a gas tax increase. He did it a couple of years ago, too, and he ridiculed a good man, Ron Erhardt, in the process. You might be interested to know Bob, although probably not, that the recently-successful ballot measure to dedicate all of the motor vehicle sales tax receipts to transportation was part of that same bill. Since it was a ballot measure, it went on the ballot for the voters over the governor's veto. The deferred maintenance on roads under Pepsodent's watch has become, well, huge.

Fifth, but certainly not last in importance, Spot has no desire to bond and heal with you and your ilk, you parsimonious scrub.

Technorati Tags: 35W bridge collapose, gas tax, Ron Erhardt, Tim Pawlenty, New Orleans levees

The professor bakes a sophist's pie

Perhaps it would impress a callow, wide-eyed freshman, Professor Banaian, but not a skeptical old dog. Spot is talking about the professor's rejoinder to Spot's Calculating our losses.

The professor begins by postulating three sets of bridge failures, with 3 being a subset of 2, and 2 being a subset of 1:

1. all bridge failures,
2. all bridge failures for which we can figure out what happened after it fell, and
3. all bridge failures for which we could have predicted the failure ahead of time.

Spotty, this guy sounds like Donald Rumsfeld: There are known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. Do you suppose he's obfuscating like Rummy?

We'll get into that in a moment, grasshopper. Wait—you know, you're right grasshopper—both the professor and Rumsfeld have that same eerie pedantic quality, don't they?

Then the professor says we know that the late 35W bridge was in the first set, but we don't even know if it is in set 2 yet, so how could it be in set 3?

Yeah, Spotty, how could it be in set 3?

As Spot pointed out in his linked post, without proper maintenance, every bridge is in set 3. Every one, failed and unfailed alike. In fact, if you accept the existence of a set 1—or assume it as the social "scientists" are wont to do—you've already lost the game. Here's the real world way to look at it:

1. all bridges will fail if not maintained,
2. it is uncertain as to how each bridge will fail, but it will fail eventually,
3. a "vanishingly small" (to use the professor's term) proportion will fail in an unexpected way,
4. the more heavily-traveled a bridge is, the greater the chance of its failure and the greater the consequences of that failure, and the public expects that vigilance and prudence will increase with the importance of a bridge,
5. the proper husbandry of bridges is assumed by the public, in part because members of the public can't do it on their own, and
6. the public will have a "vanishingly small" tolerance for screw-ups in the maintenance of bridges.

Look, boys and girls, we might find some absolutely stunning, unexpected physical explanation for the bridge failure. We could also, Spot supposes, find that it was bombarded by gamma rays from a cloaked Klingon warbird. But Spot thinks—and the public will, too—that ordinary malfeasance was afoot. The public is going to apply Louis Nizer's "rule of probability" and conclude that's what happened. Res ipsa loquiter.

Of course, the professor wants to talk about sets and uncertainty and risk, and he hopes to hell you'll buy the Klingon warbird theory. But just listen to, or better watch, Governor Pepsodent and Michael Brodkorb; they already know you won't.

Technorati Tags: 35W bridge collapose, Tim Pawlenty, King Banaian, Louis Nizer