Mid-decade Redistricting

David Broder argues in an op-ed piece in the Post today that California and the nation will be a better place if there were more competition in the congressional and state legislative districts. He advocates Governor Schwarzenegger's plan to shift the power to draw district lines away from the legislature and into the an "independent" body, as the state has done in the past when there have been districting plan impasses.

In his piece, he foresees these arguments but I'm going to make them anyway.

Although much of the problem with the system is that it is designed by the legislature themselves, the 2001 plan was made on a bipartisan basis and represents much more of a diplomatic effort to reach across the aisle than we've seen in California politics since the 1960s, let alone the partisanship that we saw in the criminal campaign led by Tom DeLay to redraw Texas lines mid-decade. Redistricting mid-decade sets a horrible precedent and delegitimizes our democratic process more than safe districts do.

California's safe districts are also a product of the political, racial, and economic self-sorting that has accelerated in the last decade. People like living near people who look and think like they do, that's jsut the plain hard truth. Go to San Francisco, Stockton, Berkeley, or Irvine and you will see exactly what I'm talking about. Schools and cities are more segregated today than they have ever been. This makes it damn hard to draw competitive districts. Example: tell me how you would draw a competitive district in San Francisco? Would you go across the Golden Gate Bridge or the Bay Bridge? Of course not? Would you extend it further south? There are only Democrats on the peninsula, that wouldn't work. The state is filled with examples of this. It's easy for Mr. Broder to throw stones but I'll remind him that he has never drawn district lines. Let's see him squeeze a competitive district out of DC!

The state's constitution and past court decisions mandate that districts be as compact as possible, that districts cross as few county and city lines as possible, that districts must be contiguous, that assembly districts be nested within a senate district, and that you cannot draw lines that distinctly disadvantage racial minorities in electing a minority candidate. This set of rules creates a very rigid framework for designing district lines - there really is not that much give in them. The state made a bargain with the devil back in 1991 redistricting: they gave up competition in the state legislature so that they could boost minority representation. The plan created many majority-minority districts and, understandably, made many districts very safe. Undoing that deal with the devil would endanger those minority seats and we might see a return to an even more white-dominated legislature. Does Mr. Broder want that?

Criticizing California's legislature for becoming more partisan is unfair given the political climate in the US at large. Congress is obviously as paralzed by partisanship as the California state legislature is. Most of the gridlock in the state legislature is due to the arcane, populist-era requirement that the budget earn two-thirds majority in order to pass. Any increasing partisanship is mostly due to the self-sorting mechanism described above. I've actually looked at some district data over the last thirty years and I noticed a distinct drop in the margin of victory in many districts just after redistricting, largely because the master planners or the legislature were trying to even out some of the most lopsided districts.

In short, most of the problem is not with the legislature in California. Many of the causes of the incumbency advantage here are external to the legislature or due to political realities that they actually had no control over - the high threshold for budget passage, for instance. Finally, any indictment against California's safe seats needs to be leveled against the state legislatures across the country and the country as a whole in gerrymandering it's congressional district lines. And Mr. Broder, please don't promote DeLay-like behavior, it's just no healthy for anyone.

ASUC politics is stoopid

It's difficult to go on campus around the ASUC elections. You really can't walk across campus without getting hounded by candidates or their sign-toting lackees. Do they really think it's all worth it? I guess it looks good on the resume, but what do the kids who aren't running get for holding the signs out there for countless hours, baking in the heat? They have nothing to gain but the appreciation of a bunch of politico-losers in the ASUC senate. Shameful.

Maybe their time would be better spent by washing cars for tsunami relief or tutoring underpriviledged children. If all the parties agreed to a multilateral cease fire then they could all put down their signs and make some real differences in the world.

Warriors fans as an imagined community

On March 17 I was fortunate enough to go to a great Golden State Warriors game. I hadn't been to a basketball since I was seven or eight and this was a great one to go to. The Warriors eked out a narrow victory over the Sacramento Kings. Because the Kings are relatively local and have a huge fan base in the Bay Area, there was almost as much purple in the audience as there was blue and gold.

What struck me about the game was the fans. Granted, the Warriors and Kings fans were relatively peaceful, but they still exhibit fierce loyalty to their teams. I wondered why fans feel so emotionally attached to the fortunes of any specific team.

First, it seems almost entirely arbitrary whether you would be a fan of the Kings or the Warriors if you lived in the Bay Area. For much of the Bay Area Sacramento is closer to or faster to get to than the Oakland Arena. So geographic proximity wouldn't have much of an impact on your choice of self identification as either a Kings or a Warriors fan. Indeed, I believe if one studied the fan base of the Oakland A's and the San Francisco Giants one would find that there is very little or no correlation between geography and team loyalty. There must be another more powerful factor influencing fans loyalty.

The second possible factor could be that the players of a specific team represent the people of a specific area. Now, this theory may have held water in professional sports until, say, the mid-1970s, but since sports have become so professionalized with nationwide drafts and nationwide player pools, it is rare that any team has a larger number of players from any one geographic region - even the teams own geographic region. Essentially, it's rare to find a hometown sports player, let alone a whole team of them. So I would guess that fans don't usually feel loyal to their hometown team because of shared experiences or upbringing with the players of the team. There is no personal connection between the players and the fans. One could argue that the players become a part of the community that they are living in, but in reality the fan base would usually live in a different area than the posh communities favored by rich athletes, and it's clear that athletes feel much more attached to money than the communities where they live for a few years.

The third possible reason for strong fan loyalty to specific teams could be that fans equate their team's success with financial gain and prestige of the community. This theory is a hard sell. I see three big flaws in the logic. The first big hole is that fans simply don't think that way. When Jason Richardson sinks a three pointer and Joe Warriors Fan goes ape-crazy, I doubt he's thinking, "Yes, there's $3000 more tax revenue for my community!" That's just not how sports fans think. My second problem with the argument is that studies have shown that there are really minimal financial gains for a community to build a sports venue and host a team. Partly because the prestige of hosting a professional sports team has bid down what team owners will offer to communities in return for bringing their team to a specific area. My third problem with this argument is that it is illogical for a fan to feel that a team's success reflects at all on the quality of the community where the team is based. As noted above, teams are not made of hometown heroes anymore. Some of the worst sports teams are based in areas that produce the best athletes and vice-versa.

The only logical argument that I could see a researcher positing and reasonably proving is that people feel that the "personality" of the team or its star players reflects their own personality or the personality of the community or region. This is a reasonable argument. I can think of a number of examples in the Bay Area alone. San Francisco is a relatively "yuppy" place and the Giants and 49ers and are perceived as yuppy teams. Meanwhile, the Raiders and A's are perceived as "working class" and Oakland is also perceived in the same way. The same arguments could be made about the Philadelphia Phillies in the mid-1990s and culture surrounding the Los Angeles Lakers until just last year. It's arguable how much of this is similarity between the culture of the community and culture of the team is real and how much is imagined to justify and rationalize the community's support for the team.

There is one other way to think about fan loyalty. As one of my professors would say, Benedict Anderson's theory of nations as imagined communities holds true for the fans of sports teams. There is no way that any one Warriors fan could possibly meet every other Warriors fan but he still feels a basic connection with those who have felt the thrill of victory and the sting of defeat along with him through the course of the season. This one of the basic building blocks of national sentiment and the birth of a nation. The nation, meaning a unit of terminal loyalty, to which all other loyalties are ancillary. Raider Nation, anyone?

As a corollary, I think that this is the argument that Thomas Frank makes in his book What's the Matter with Kansas? He argues (mostly with anecdotes) that voters are less focused on their own personal gain in politics and more focused on the "values" of the party or candidate, regardless of how the individual voter stands to gain or lose in decisions made on his behalf. This argument goes against the accepted models of political participation and voting behavior that say that you can predict a voter's behavior based on his perceived economic gain. Maybe we should be researching sports and politics are if they are closely linked in the psychology of Americans. I mean, what is politics if not the extension of basketball by another name?

Here's the Campanile at a few minutes after five. Today was a beautiful day. You can't take pictures like this in every city.

This is my friend Felice. We met at the Free Speech Movement Cafe to have dinner. I had a sandwich and she had an espresso. Not much of a dinner.

Why I don't like the idea of defined contribution plans for public employees

The topic du jour in California this spring (or at least one of them) is the proposal by various conservatives to switch California's public employees retirement plan from a defined benefit plan to a defined contribution plan. The differences are really well laid out in this website constructed by the National Conference of State Legislatures, but the difference is essentially this: defined benefit (DB) plans have a formula that defines your benefits based on the amount of time you worked and other factors, defined contribution (DC) plans are based on defined contributions from you and your employer that are invested in a fund that you can personally manage and that will be your own personal pension fund.

The most important distinction for the purposes of California's debate is that when a DB plan's public fund is invested in stocks and bonds that perform poorly the taxpayers foot the bill. However, in a DC plan the government is under no obligation to help out retirees if their portfolio bombs.

The DC plans are understandably being pushed by Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association and other "starve-the-beast" type groups because DC plans are one more step that we can take away from the new deal and towards an "ownership society" - whatever that means. DC plans will allow retired public employees to manage their own money and, more importantly from the taxpayers' associations' perspective, will ensure that the taxpayers will not feel the burden of making up the difference between the public employees retirement fund and what the state owes its retirees. We're currently having a horrible budget crisis in California. The state is making billions of dollars of payments to retirees every year in replacement of the money lost in the stock market bubble burst. The governor is looking at this as a possible way to provide more long term budget stability.

It smacks of the privatization of Social Security. That's essentially what it is. So all of the arguments that you could make regarding personal retirement accounts would apply very neatly in Californi. And here's what I don't like about the DC plans and the plans to privatize Social Security: they're both financial industry giveaways. There's no way that a public employee is going to be able to manage his or her portfolio in a competent manner - especially not at the end of a long day in the class room or walking the beat. So these future retirees are going to have to hire financial planners that will keep and eye on their portfolios - for a fee. Under the current DB plan, the state retirement fund (CalPERS in this instance) is able to act as their own financial planner because it has an economy of scale. CalPERS is large enough to hire their own, in house financial planners and manage the money of it's present and future retirees.

I believe that the push to move the state towards DC plans is essentially a corporate giveaway to the financial industry. They will earn billions of dollars in the fees they will charge California's retirees to manage their money. I believe that if you did an analysis of all of the states that had switched to some form of DC plans, you would find that the financial lobby had donated heavily in the election just beforehand to the governors and legislators in those states - more heavily than usual.

In addition to the giveaway to the financial services industry, I think there is one other reason that Republicans are pushing the DC plans in California. CalPERS is one of the largest financial endowments in the world. If there is a social cause that is causing world anxiety, Apartheid for instance, then CalPERS can currently use it's financial bulk to influence the politics of another state or a large corporation. Republicans are nervous about giving that much social power to the retirement fund of a heavily Democratic and progressive state. If you think about it, why else would they want to do it here first?They are relatively untested and if there were a problem with them then the only way that we would know is by looking at the last five years in Michigan because that's the only large state that has ever dealt with them (Nebraska had a disastrous experience and have since switched back to the DB plans).

Now, some would say, "but Saku, if CalPERS could manage their own money then the taxpayers wouldn't be paying for their mistakes and this wouldn't be an issue." And I'll tell you why they would be wrong. CalPERS just like most investors, lost a lot of money in the bubble burst. Even the largest, strongest, best performing mutual funds didn't perform that well over the last few years. Everybody lost money. If we smoothed CalPERS financial performance over a few years so that the peaks and troughs were not so high and low then I don't think that we would be having the same problem anymore. I'm not a pension expert so I'll have to do some research on this one.

President Bush's news conference analyzed

I woke up this morning to the sound of the president lying and evading questions. I've excerpted the juiciest parts of the transcript and pointed out the clear logical flaws or evasive answers (transcript courtesy of the New York Times, courtesy of the White House):

Q Mr. President, can you explain why you've approved of and expanded the practice of what's called rendition, of transferring individuals out of U.S. custody to countries where human rights groups and your own State Department say torture is common for people under custody?

THE PRESIDENT: The post-9/11 world, the United States must make sure we protect our people and our friends from attack. That was the charge we have been given. And one way to do so is to arrest people and send them back to their country of origin with the promise that they won't be tortured. That's the promise we receive. This country does not believe in torture. We do believe in protecting ourselves. We don't believe in torture. And -- (emphasis added)

Q As Commander-in-Chief, what is it that Uzbekistan can do in interrogating an individual that the United States can't?

THE PRESIDENT: We seek assurances that nobody will be tortured when we render a person back to their home country.

Now, the president is saying that the US is "renditioning" people back to their home countries with promises that they will not be tortured. Then why rendition them? He didn't answer the question. By reiterating that we seek assurances against torture, the president is feigning ignorance. Whether or not we seek assurances that these people will not be tortured, why are we sending them to countries (often to third countries, not to their home countries) that are currently using or have been known to use torture? This quotation of Human Rights Watch's Wendy Patten from a VOA article by Dan Robinson clarifies the true nature of "assurances":

"Assurances have been used not to satisfy U.S. legal obligations but rather to circumvent them. They are unenforceable promises from governments that routinely flout their most basis human rights violations by engaging in systematic torture..."

As if we would simply release a high value target with potential knowledge of al-Qaeda operations to a country that can't even keep it's lights on (not that the US can either). If these people were not high value then I guarantee that we would just send them to Guantanamo for interrogation.

Maybe, MAYBE, we would send someone to Saudi Arabia once, find out he got tortured - and then never rendition anyone to that country. But there is documentation that this practice has skyrocketed under this administration (although it was, admittedly, pioneered during the Clinton years). I'm glad to see, as reported in the the VOA article, that lawmakers are getting fed up with this. For real though, what do John McCain and other former POWs have to say about this? Widespread use of extraordinary rendition is one of the sources of shame that this president has brought to our country. Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, "Jeff Gannon", and extraordinary rendition are all going to come back to bite us. This is why the world hates us.



Speaking of the world hating us, why even bother appointing Paul Wolfowitz to lead the World Bank? Hey George, just do like your dad and barf in the lap of every world leader - it would translate the same way. Better yet, why don't we just refurbish the statue of liberty into a cowgirl displaying a ginormous middle finger to the rest of the world. Here's the Wolfowitz segment of the news conference:

Q Paul Wolfowitz, who was the -- a chief architect of one of the most unpopular wars in our history ... is your choice to be the President of the World Bank. What kind of signal does that send to the rest of the world?

THE PRESIDENT: First of all, I think people -- I appreciate the world leaders taking my phone calls as I explained to them why I think Paul will be a strong President of the World Bank. I've said he's a man of good experiences. He helped manage a large organization. The World Bank is a large organization; the Pentagon is a large organization -- he's been involved in the management of that organization. He's a skilled diplomat, worked at the State Department in high positions. He was Ambassador to Indonesia where he did a very good job representing our country. And Paul is committed to development. He's a compassionate, decent man who will do a fine job in the World Bank. And that's why I called leaders of countries and that's why I put him up.

Again, he didn't answer the question. The fact is that Paul Wolfowitz is the face of America' s war in Iraq (arguably second to Donald Rumsfeld). Wolfowitz advocated an invasion of Iraq within one week of September 11th. This was long, long before we had no evidence that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. It sends a horrible signal to the rest of the world when we entrust a logic-pooh-pooing maniac with the weighty charge of pulling developing countries out of poverty. What kind of a message does that send to the countries that are supposedly being helped by the World Bank. Make no mistake about it, the World Bank is an arm of the US government; we actually own 51% of the assets (I think). This is like sending US convicts into Southeast Asian and North African States as Peace Corps volunteers. This is like consulting the local Megan's list for prospective babysitters.

One after another, the president's appointments have been the most ironic and confidence-sapping people who could have possibly been appointed. First, we have the torture-apologist turned top law enforcement officer, Alberto Gonzales. Next, we have the woman who put the intelligence in "bad intelligence" nominated and confirmed as the diplomatic personification of the US, Condoleezza Rice. Now, we have the hallucinating prognosticator of candy and flowers becoming the US' front man in the very part of the world producing terrorists. Wolfowitz is looking out for one subset of the population of the world - and you better believe it's not going to be Togolese farmers. I hate to say it, but birds of a feather flock together. We should begin expecting the president appoint the last person who we would ever expect him to appoint.



Next, the president was asked about his fundamentalist judicial appointees and the Democratic filibuster in the Senate:

Q Mr. President, your judicial nominees continue to run into problems on Capitol Hill. Republicans are discussing the possibility of ending the current Democratic filibuster practice against it. And Democrats yesterday, led by Minority Leader Harry Reid, went to the steps of the Capitol to say that if that goes forward, they will halt your agenda straight out. What does that say about your judicial nominees, the tone on Capitol Hill? And which is more important, judges or your agenda?

THE PRESIDENT: Both. I believe that I have a obligation to put forth good, honorable people to serve on the bench, and have done so. And I expect them to get a up or down vote on the floor of the Senate. This isn't a new position for me, or the -- I've been saying this for the last several years. And they ought to get a vote. They're getting voted out of committee, but they're not getting a vote on the floor. And I don't think it's fair to the candidates, and I don't think it's fair to the administration for this policy to go forward. And so, hopefully, the Senate will be able to conduct business and also get my nominees a vote -- an up or down vote on the floor of the Senate.

Is it really that unfair to ask that an appointment to a federal bench be able to earn a three-fifths margin of the Senate? I mean, three-fifths! It's not like they need a unanimous vote - or even two-thirds. I would like my federal juddges to not be so (insert bigoted opinion here) that they can't get forty rich white guys to agree to give them a job. If I were a (insert bigoted opinion here) then I wouldn't expect people to give me any job I asked for. These judges are on record questioning whether women should be working outside of the house, they oppose abortion in cases of rap and incest, and - let's be honest - they probably enjoy putting young black men in prison for the rest of their natural born lives.

It's funny how Senators' and the Congressmembers' memories extend only as far back as their own party has been in power. The Republicans were pulling this same tactic to block the appointment of Clinton's judges. We here Bill Frist talking about the "nuclear option" these days, but did you ever hear about Tom Daschle or even pugnacious Ted Kennedy talking about the nuclear option in those days. No, of course not (at least I don't think so)! How's this for irony: in a Senate debate today John Kerry for criticized the Republicans for sliding the ANWR drilling provision into the budget (thereby avoiding the possibility of a filibuster). He was then blasted by Alaska Republican Ted Stevens for criticizing a practice that the Democrats used frequently when they were in power. This is the height of hypocrisy.


And this was only the best of half of the news conference, check it out at NYTimes.com, it's like Where's Waldo with logic errors, evasive answers, and out-and-out lies.

Differences in the East Bay

I went to the dentist today. My dentist's office is on the other side of the hills that ring the East Bay, separating Berkley, El Cerrito and Richmond from the cultural wasteland of Orinda and Lafayette. As he leaned over me, he asked me, "how's everything?" I answered, "OK - you?" He said he was OK. Then I realized that, although we live, at most, ten miles apart from each other, in one of the most lively and exciting places in the world, and still we didn't have anything to talk about. His world, on the other side of that hill, could be on the other side of the planet as far as I'm concerned. It's jarring how dissimilar we can be although we live just a few miles apart from each other. I made a comment about how his Representative is trying to avoid being districted into a less competitive district and he responded with a riff about gerrymandering in California. I didn't engage.

I guess America, California, and the Bay Area are all about stark differences. Bankers weaving around beggars in the financial district. Heroine addicts just below the offices of the House Minority Leader. Immigrant day-laborers shoulder to shoulder with Fourth Street's day-time shoppers. North Berkeley and West Berkeley. Berkeley and Lafayette.

Why don't we already have online voting at Berkeley?

As a student at one of the most technologically advanced universities in the world, it's hard for me to believe that we still don't have online elections now in 2005. A Daily Cal editorial dealt with the issue today.

We have a lawsuit filed against our student government that would force the ASUC to offer online voting for students who are studying abroad. This is a great idea, but why stop there? If people are doing banking online then all of us should be able to vote for our pointless senate online, not just students in the Education Abroad Program.

Restaurant Review: Viengvilay

Restaurant Review: Viengvilay
Location: Mini-Asian Ghetto on Hearst Ave. across from North Gate Hall
Type: Asian - Thai
Rating: 2/4

The mini-Asian Ghetto (mAG) on Northside has a completely different feel than the true Asian Ghetto on Durant. For one thing, Northside's is populated mainly by engineering undergrads and graduate students; whereas Southside's Asian Ghetto gives you a cross section of students, townies, and the homeless folks that populate Telegraph. That being said, the restaurants themselves are pretty similar - you just won't be asked for money when you're leaving the mAG.

Viengvilay is pretty representative of the restaurants in the mAG. There's usually one person taking orders and another in the back waiting to cook the food. I like the set-up in Viengvilay because you can watch the chef cook your food and see where she's getting it from and what she's doing with it - that's not always true with these small restaurants. The cashier at Viengvilay is a really nice guy who can ham it up pretty well. The food gets served extremely quickly. I've never waited longer than four or five minutes. Even with speed you don't lose any freshness. Viengvilay offers a small selection of Asian canned beverages that you won't see in every small Asian restaurant.

The decor does a lot with an area that is very small and dark. The walls are painted lively colors and have framed pictures of various daily, Southeast Asian scenes. The chairs are straight out of an IKEA catalog. Actually, I think the whole place is decorated with IKEA furnishings, even the lights. It works well. It makes you feel like you're in a college student's room.

I recommend the Pad Se Ew and Pad Kee Mow, both served with either beef or chicken. These are classic Thai meals that leave you satisfied and won't break the bank like some of the restaurants on Southside - although these meals aren't that cheap. I also recommend the Thai Iced Tea and Thai Iced Coffee, they are both very tasty. However, the Iced Coffee is made with a Thai blend of coffee (probably a Robusta bean) so it has a higher caffeine content and might keep you awake if you have it too late.

One other thing, Viengvilay is a great place to study because it has enough seats to accomodate eaters and studiers and it isn't super busy. The only problem is that it's kind of dark because of the trellis that runs over the long alley that serves as an entrance.

This will be my profile photo.