Schierer Space

Nice one Jim. The Physics is Phun blog recently identified the silliness of the Washington Post with regards to listing voting results sorted by - yes, can you believe it - astrological sign.

What does this lead to? Undoubtedly… campaign ads:

Coming to your TV soon:

Perhaps this ’service’ by the Washington Post is being provided to allow us to analyze how voting preference is completely NOT functionally related to astrology. It might be fun (in a data-geek sort-of way) to see if particular signs favor membership in Congress, or in a particular party.

SO since I’m pretty much a data-geek, I decided to dive into the pseudo-science:
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Since it seems that now that the 2006 election is 3 months behind us, the 2008 election is in full swing. I won’t claim to be particularly politically aware, but I have become more an more motivated in the last 12 years to do something.

For starters I am going to investigate a premise that I have toyed with for a few months, but first I will identify some interesting sites I have come across in the process of researching for this premise.

The first has the same name as the title of this post. The Moderate Majority is a web site that states:

Our hope is that partisan people on the far Right and the far Left cannot leave this site without getting mad at something we’ve written (which means they’ll probably think we favor the “other party”).

I like that approach. It sort-of follows the concept that “A compromise is an agreement whereby both parties get what neither of them wanted” (Author Unknown). My corollary is that the majority of people will be best served by the approach that most perturbs the ends of the political spectrum.

Unfortunately the site appears to be somewhat dated in several areas. The supporting data for the Budget area appears out of date, although I think the premise holds. The International section is clearly out of date. Although the proposed middle east plan is intriguing, it is clearly impossible now that a Palestinian government has asserted itself (however unsuccessfully).

The allegory used to explain the current health care crisis is both amusing and revealing. It shows just how ridiculous the current situation of “insurance” really is. Clearly the current approach is unsupportable and some radical changes will be required to straighten things out. With a baby on the way, I’m not eager to give up my cushion of employer paid health-care, but sacrifices will certainly be needed.

So as mentioned a few posts ago, I have been gathering data to determine whether Bush made any attempts to rein in Medicare spending when he and his Republican cronies controlled all three branches of government. As expected, he did not… or more specifically:

Despite the media gnashing about the president’s ’slashing’ of medical coverage (which will only help his party with their base), in reality the cuts are token relative to the signifcant growth achieved by this president (and his Republican congress) 5 years ago. Don’t take my word for it, I’ve included the data below!

For those who may wish to investigate other Federal budgetary matters, there is an archive of budgets and related documents at the US Government Publishing Office (or GPO). Unfortunately US budgets can only be browsed online as far back as 1996 (probably because 1996 is when then Vice President Gore invented the internet). Historical summary records can be viewed as far back as 1789 (probably because 1789 is when then President George Washington invented the Federal budget).

So what does it mean to ‘cut Medicare’? Looking at a news article or two and the actual budget data, I have deduced that this means that the expected spending over the next 5 years is declared to be less than the expected spending over the same 5-year period as stated in the previous budget. What it does NOT (necessarily) mean is that the spending for next year will be less than this year. So in the case of a growing expense like Medicare, the rate of growth is decreased (or perhaps the baseline). But by how much?

At the risk of emulating H. Ross Perot, I have included a chart. (This graph was made using OpenOffice:Calc and the GIMP proving that data and graphics analysis can be performed on completely free products… but I digress.) You may download my Federal Budget Spreadsheet if you wish.

First an overview. Each line series represents the actual spending and the estimated future spending which were reported in a particular budget document. The budget documents run about 2 years ahead, so the 2008 document (released last week) contains actuals for FY 2006 and predictions through 2012. As a result, each document contains 7 years of numbers (at least during the Bush administration, the Clinton administration provided considerably more data in their summaries).

There are several features of this graph that I wish to call your attention to. The first is that the FY2008 budget (blue squares) does in fact represent a decrease from the budget of FY2007 (maroon rhombus). With the exception of a few points, FY2008 represents a reduction from the budgets of FY2006 (yellow triangles) and FY2005 (light blue triangles). So far, the media is correct and the Republican base should be cheering. The president has controlled the evil entitlements.

But like an infomercial, there’s more! What I find MOST interesting is the huge leap in expenditures for the years 2004 - 2008 relative to the budgets presented in 2003 and 2004 (pink and purple triangles respectively). So what happened in 2004 that caused such a dramatic ‘knee’ in the spending curve? And why doesn’t anybody talk about the explosion in spending that occurred in a fully Republican government on a massive government entitlement called Medicare? Interestingly enough, it is in this EXACT period that the predictions of spending from earlier years (2005 & 2006 budgets) almost exactly match the ‘actuals’. So Medicare grew faster during those years and this was no accident. In fact, the growth in those two years completely eclipses any token reduction achieved in the last 3 years.

Conclusion: All the rhetoric in D.C. can not change the fact that any presidential attempt to ‘reduce’ Medicare spending now will not compensate for the growth that was allowed during this administration.

As the news has been busy reporting, the President’s federal budget proposal was sent to congress today. One of the major points that is being stressed is the significant reduction in Medicaire/Medicaid spending. On the surface this is being advertised as an attempt to rein in “Mandatory” spending on these programs. What I found most interesting is that there have been 6 years of Republican lead Congresses for the President to forward this agenda, why wait until the Congress is in Democratic control to make this move?

I’ve been trying to find past Presidential budgets for the last 6 years to compare, but in the process came across a set of charts by the Heritage Foundation (a generally regarded right-leaning organization). Although the final slides, make (IMHO) fairly bizarre claims that retaining the tax cuts will somehow fix the future tax problems, the rest of the discussion is fairly interesting. On one hand this set of charts explains how much the budget has grown in the Bush administration and how debt is reaching record levels. On the other hand, it discusses how Medicare/Medicaid spending are growing faster than any other budgetary area. Strangely the ‘cyclic’ nature of the defense spending is used to explain the exponential growth in recent budgets, yet the extrapolation for all other spending grows linearly 40 years into the future.

Of course, regardless of who’s extrapolation one uses, there is clearly a budgetary problem that will grow with the various social programs.

I especially like Section 4 which shows the discretionary funds (read as ‘pork’) and how the President has failed to exercise his veto (even less than his predecessors) with his party fellows in the Congress. It will be interesting to see if this remains the case (not that it would be so bad to have some of the pork projects tossed in the grinder). Of course the total outlay for this pork spending is in the noise compared to any number of other budget areas ($29 billion in this category in 2006 vs $2.9 trillion budget this year)

Its interesting to see how the most recent Democratic administrations have been the only ones where revenue has exceeded spending. I suppose one can argue that this is due to exorbitant taxation, but who will pay for the debt we are accruing.

So I haven’t answered my original question, but I’ll leave that for another day of research.

Does anyone else have a painful feeling of deja vu when they listen to the news?

“Trust us, we have irrefutable evidence, we’ll show it to you… maybe tomorrow.”

“Military action is always a last resort… but we’re not ruling anything out.”

“Diplomatic means are always our first approach.”

As I recall, last time we heard these phrase we were dropping bombs within weeks.

I listen to the reporters try to make up rationale for our nation’s continuing policy of intimidation and saber rattling. Stretching for the slightest logical reason why antagonizing yet another Middle Eastern country is in our best interest. Almost as if they couldn’t possibly imagine that anyone would be stupid enough to repeat the foreign policy of the last few years.

Am I the only person who shouts at the radio, “Has it occurred to any of you that our leadership may just not be rational!? I think he’s out of his freaking mind!”

Even if one fourth of what the government says about Iran is true (which would be a far better track record than past claims), what possible good can come from threatening them? Terrorists just don’t think like nation states… and nation states don’t have any reason to stop sponsoring them due to outside influence… if anything, it is this insidious warfare that we force other countries into by being the bully of the planet. If every time a foreign power has a view contrary to our own, we threaten them so openly, who can blame them for working against us under the table?
We should engage the leaders of the Middle East regardless of their religion, sect, color or hair style. This is their problem too and only through normal open diplomacy can we possibly hope to understand why the rest of the world is so pissed off with us (and each other).

Ok… I feel better now. At least for the moment.