Land Ordinance of 1785

Today marks a significant date in U.S.and in surveying history:

The Land Ordinance of 1785 was adopted by the United States Congress on May 20, 1785. Under the Articles of Confederation, Congress did not have the power to raise revenue by direct taxation of the inhabitants of the United States. Therefore, the immediate goal of the ordinance was to raise money through the sale of land in the largely unmapped territory west of the original states acquired at the 1783 (Treaty of Paris) after the end of the Revolutionary War. Over three-fourths of the area of the continental United States ultimately came under the rectangular survey. This was important because it provided easily recognized land descriptions, which in turn contributed enormously to the orderly and largely peaceful occupation of the land. The rectangular survey also provided the units within which economic, political, and social development took place.
The Ordinance of 1784 was a resolution written by Thomas Jefferson (delegate from Virginia) calling for Congress to take action. The land west of the Appalachian Mountains, north of the Ohio River and east of the Mississippi River was to be divided into ten separate states. However, the 1784 resolution did not define the mechanism by which the land would become states, or how the territories would be governed or settled before they became states. The Ordinance of 1785 put the 1784 resolution in operation by providing a mechanism for selling and settling the land, while the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 addressed political needs.
The 1785 ordinance laid the foundations of land policy until passage of the Homestead Act in 1862. The Land Ordinance established the basis for the Public Land Survey System. The initial surveying was performed by Thomas Hutchins. After he died in 1789, responsibility for surveying was transferred to the Surveyor General. Land was to be systematically surveyed into square townships, six miles (9.656 km) on a side. Each of these townships were sub-divided into thirty-six sections of one square mile (2.59 km²) or 640 acres. These sections could then be further subdivided for re-sale by settlers and land speculators.
The ordinance was also significant for establishing a mechanism for funding public education. Section 16 in each township was reserved for the maintenance of public schools. Many schools today are still located in section sixteen of their respective townships, although a great many of the school sections were sold to raise money for public education. In later States, section 36 of each township was also designated as a "school section".
Knepper notes: “Sections number 8, 11, 26, and 29 in every township were reserved for future sale by the federal government when, it was hoped, they would bring higher prices because of developed land around them. Congress also reserved one third part of all gold, silver, lead, and copper mines to its own use, a bit of wishful thinking as regards Ohio lands.” The ordinance also said “That three townships adjacent to Lake Erie be reserved, to be hereafter disposed of by Congress, for the use of the officers, men, and others, refugees from Canada, and the refugees from Nova Scotia, who are or may be entitled to grants of land under resolutions of Congress now existing.“ This was not possible, as the area next to Lake Erie was property of Connecticut, so the Canadians had to wait until the establishment of the Refugee Tract in 1798.
The Point of Beginning for the 1785 survey was where Ohio (as the easternmost part of the Northwest Territory), Pennsylvania and Virginia (now West Virginia) met, on the north shore of the Ohio River near East Liverpool, Ohio. There is a historical marker just north of the site, at the state line where Ohio State Route 39 becomes Pennsylvania Route 68.

Thanks to this Act, plane passengers can look down at the nearly perfect one mile squares which cover the nation's landscape.  It set up the 6 mile by 6 mile survey township. It also gave us the Section, Township, Range system of identifying every parcel of property in the Public Land Survey System.  It also greatly simplified the complex and nearly indefinable system of metes and bounds descriptions, which allowed surveyors to separate out the best land for themselves and their favored clients.  Later, the Act of May 18, 1796 altered the numbering system for sections in townships, and only two surveys in Ohio were conducted under the numbering system of 1785:

The Land Ordinance of May 20, 1785, allowed for the subdivision of government lands, and the subsequent sale of those lands which brought about the largest number of freeholders of property in the history of the world.  It is one of the greatest legacies of the United States.

Disability Insurance, Where Social Security is Broken

Ezra Klein:

But Social Security’s disability program is area of obvious dysfunction that doesn’t get a whole lot of attention. Damian Paletta has a great Wall Street Journal piece this morning that highlights just how out of control the program has gotten by focusing on one judge, David Daugherty:

In the fiscal year that ended in September, the administrative law judge, who sits in the impoverished intersection of West Virginia, Kentucky and Ohio, decided 1,284 cases and awarded benefits in all but four. For the first six months of fiscal 2011, Mr. Daugherty approved payments in every one of his 729 decisions, according to the Social Security Administration. …This breakdown is one reason why Social Security Disability Insurance — one of the federal government’s two disability programs — is under severe financial strain. It paid a record $124 billion in benefits in 2010 and is on track to become the first major entitlement program to go bust. Government officials said last week it is expected to run out of money in 2018

Since welfare reform took place, this tends to be the place where people end up when they are looking to be on the dole.  That is very problematic, since disabled people do need assistance, and being associated with goldbrickers doesn't do them any good.  Apparently, in Tennessee, attorneys advertise about how well they can get you onto disability.  One good thing for the disabled, many of the people who go on disability but aren't disabled are white, so that makes disability less of a target for conservatives, since it is their base, and not black or brown people abusing the system.

Naked Capitalism Link of the Day

Today's link from naked capitalism: Anxiety keeps the super-rich safe from middle-class rage, at the Guardian:

But the gap between the richest 1% or 2% and everybody else in the top 20% or 30% is now so great and growing so rapidly that, one might reasonably think, it should change the terms of political trade. The income distance may be huge but the social distance is not. Those in the top 2% and the next 28% have often been to the same schools and universities. More important, they compete for scarce resources: places in fee-charging schools, houses in the best areas, high-end personal services. The super-rich have provoked raging inflation in the prices of these goods. Many of the not-so-rich were born into the professional classes and high expectations. Now, to their surprise, they find themselves struggling. In income distribution, their interests are closer to those of the mass of the population than to people they once saw as their peers.
They are not, however, imminently likely to join a crusade for equality. This generation of the middle classes has internalised the values of individualist aspiration, as zealously propagated by Tony Blair as by Margaret Thatcher. It does not look to the application of social justice to improve its lot. It expects to rely on its own efforts to get ahead and, crucially, to maintain its position
As psychologists will tell you, fear of loss is more powerful than the prospect of gain. The struggling middle classes look down more anxiously than they look up, particularly in recession and sluggish recovery. Polls show they dislike high income inequalities but are lukewarm about redistribution. They worry that they are unlikely to benefit and may even lose from it; and worse still, those below them will be pulled up sufficiently to threaten their status. This is exactly the mindset in the US, where individualist values are more deeply embedded. Americans accepted tax cuts for the rich with equanimity. Better to let the rich keep their money, they calculated, than to have it benefit economic and social inferiors.
As Runciman observed, "most people's lives are governed more by the resentment of narrow inequalities, the cultivation of modest ambitions and the preservation of small differentials" than by the larger picture of social justice. That applies as much to the professional as to the working classes.

I've long been puzzled by why my friend who never made more than $50,000 a year thinks people who make $75,000 to $100,000 are overpaid and need to sacrifice, while thinking that people who make $1,000,000 have earned it and should be able to keep more of it.  I think it's just that he really doesn't know anybody who makes a million a year, while he knows a lot of people in the 75 to 100 thousand range, and he sees that they blow money on stuff they don't need.  It still seems strange, but I think he associates the million a year person with some amazing invention or something, and that they worked hard to get that money.  I tried to point out that such people make enough that they can pay higher marginal rates on very high amounts of income, but he tells me that they deserve what they get.  I think eventually people in the middle class will get mad at the super rich, and if they do, those guys up top better watch out.  When the scales fall from peoples' eyes, they are going to be out for blood.

One other note, today's links showed me one of the best post titles of all time: Longtop Financial: lessons in the morphology of sin, loss of virginity and your 17 year old daughter, at Bronte Capital. 

Waiting Out the Flood in the Bar

The New York Times features the denizens of Strick's, a bar where the last residents of Eagle Lake, Mississippi wait out the flood:

Every night they sit in this mostly empty bar, throwing back some beers and eating a communal dinner of hamburgers or crawfish or whatever was brought in by the last person to visit a grocery store.  They tell stories, watch television and talk about any number of things, but usually about the latest measurements of the river, the state of the levees on which they depend for survival and their disappointment in the less hardy souls who took off at the first hint of danger.

“A bunch of people are real sorry they left,” said Tim Stennett, 52, a building contractor who took over the bar when Strick himself — Mike Strickland, formally — handed off the keys.
Mr. Stennett’s wife, Sheryl, became the bartender, though the Stennetts leave the keys with anyone who wants to drink late. Drinks are paid for on the honor system. In keeping with the handwritten admonitions posted throughout the bar, overnight tabs are frowned upon.
The Eagle Lake community, which sits between an expanse of cornfields and picturesque Eagle Lake itself, is a popular spot for fish camps and weekend homes. But most of the residents live here full time, making the 35-mile commute into Vicksburg for work.

If you have to wait out the flood, this seems like a good way to do it.  I'd guess if I were in the town, the chances are better than 50-50 that I'd be hanging out there.

Nostalgia and Politics

E.D. Kain takes a look at Paul Krugman's and his own politics, and how each's nostalgia shapes his views:

At some point you become your own special interest group. You suddenly see the public library as a symbol of everything that has been lost or that you imagine has been lost. You want to retake or protect what is valuable to you, and what you believe is valuable to others. The key question that needs to be asked is this: do these things you value inhibit the freedoms of others? Is your nostalgia inadvertently causing someone harm?
Krugman’s vision of the 1950’s really is a vision of an insulated world, locked precariously in amber. Can it ever really come back? Did it rely too much on the plight of the disadvantaged – women, minorities, post-war Europe? I cannot help but think that the 1950’s never really happened. That my childhood in 1980’s Montana never really happened.
So maybe we should look forward toward a new vision of the good life. If we do, in some ways it will require us to look back at freedoms lost, and that will require some level of nostalgia. But it will also require us to recall that coercion and oppression exist on many levels, that the state is often just the arm of our culture, enforcing whatever freedom-quashing cultural trend exists at the moment – whether that is a long history of women as second-class-citizens or the relatively new (and far more benign) tendency to ban smoking in restaurants and bars.
Krugman talks about an era when kids were free to go out and play in the streets all day, unsupervised and pretty much safe. I’m not thirty yet and I remember that freedom myself.

I think it is interesting that most (white) Americans, including myself, seem to idealize the '50's, and look upon the time as a time to get back to. I think that tends to hold across Republicans and Democrats.  And yet, when it comes to civil and women's rights, Democrats tend to, rightly, look askance at the decade.  Meanwhile, actual Republican policies are more tied to the 1920's or 1890's, as opposed to the 1950's.  Very few people recognize that the U.S. wouldn't have reached such an economically dominant position without the destruction of World War II unleashed on the U.S.S.R., western Europe, Great Britain and Japan.  That position can never be reattained.  The nostalgia is extremely powerful, but misleading.  We now need to determine what sort of a state we want to live in, and how we can afford that.  None of that is fun, but all of that is necessary.

Faith, Education and Income

Interesting post from David Leonhardt:

The chart in the magazine looks at the percentage of people with a four-year college degree and the percentage of people with family income of at least $75,000 a year, using data from Pew. Here are the percentages if the education cutoff is changed to at least some college (including a two-year degree) and the family income cutoff is changed to $50,000:

	%, at least some college	%, family income $50k+
Hindus	84	80
Reform Jews	83	81
Unitarians	81	55
Conservative Jews	79	74
Anglicans/Episcopalians	76	63
Buddhists	74	56
Orthodox Christians	68	57
Presbyterians	64	60
Secular	60	55
Mormons	60	54
Methodists	56	53
Lutherans	53	54
TOTAL U.S.	50	48
Catholics	47	49
Muslims	47	41
Baptists	40	36
Unaffiliated religious	39	37
Pentecostals	33	29
Jehovah’s Witnesses	31	35

Here are the percentages of people with a post-graduate degree and with family income of at least $100,000 a year:

	%, post-grad degree	%, family income, $100k+
Hindus	43	48
Reform Jews	55	35
Conservative Jews	43	35
Unitarians	26	29
Buddhists	22	26
Anglicans/Episcopalians	35	25
Orthodox Christians	28	18
Presbyterians	26	18
Secular	23	16
Methodists	20	13
TOTAL U.S.	18	11
Mormons	16	10
Catholics	19	10
Muslims	16	10
Lutherans	16	9
Baptists	11	6
Unaffiliated religious	12	6
Pentecostals	7	3
Jehovah’s Witnesses	9	3

In every case, the correlation between education and income is extremely strong.

Naked Capitalism Link of the Day

Today's naked capitalism post has a number of good links.  Among them are a story about how Fox News spreads their propaganda, another article about Australia's economy on the brink with evidence that Chinese commodity consumption may be slowing, a good Krugman column and a story about how regulators and banks are making the economy more fragile in enacting the Dodd-Frank "reforms."  I wanted to highlight Indiana Supreme Court: citizens have no right to resist unlawful police entry, at the Evansville Courier-Press:

People have no right to resist if police officers illegally enter their home, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled in a decision based on a Vanderburgh County case.
The ruling overturned centuries of common law, a fact the court acknowledged in the decision, noting that some scholars trace its origin to the Magna Carta in 1215.
The court issued its 3-2 ruling on Thursday, contending that allowing residents to resist officers who enter their homes without any right would increase the risk of violent confrontation. If police enter a home illegally, the courts are the proper place to protest it, Justice Steven David said.
"We believe ... a right to resist an unlawful police entry into a home is against public policy and is incompatible with modern Fourth Amendment jurisprudence," David said. "We also find that allowing resistance unnecessarily escalates the level of violence and therefore the risk of injuries to all parties involved without preventing the arrest."
The court's decision stemmed from a Vanderburgh County case in which a man yelled at police and blocked them from entering his apartment to investigate a domestic disturbance. Evansville resident Richard Barnes shoved a police officer who entered anyway, and was shocked with a stun gun and arrested.

Vanderburgh County Prosecutor Nick Hermann said the ruling brings Indiana up to date with what already is recognized in many other states.

In some ways, this fits in with the "sovereign citizen" story.  In an abstract way, it is correct that since the Magna Carta, people have the right to protect themselves and their property.  Unfortunately, the methods of resistance may make a bad situation much worse.  I get a bad feeling about this ruling from the perspective of police abuse of power, but at the same time, if police surprise someone in a raid, and the person starts shooting at the "intruders," this is going to end badly.  It is a delicate balancing act, which needs some restraint on both sides of the issue.  Referring to the "sovereign citizens," it is clear that these guys are often going to react very badly to run-ins with police or the courts, and police expecting violent reactions in routine police business makes them more trigger-happy.  It is hard to decide how to handle a domestic disturbance case, when somebody's temper has already flared prior to police involvement.  This ruling is interesting, while being somewhat disconcerting.

A great episode of 60 Minutes

Last night the show featured Robert Gates talking about the Defense Department, Afghanistan's former Chief of Intelligence making the case that Pakistan is hostile to U.S. interests (although I think he is really saying they are even more hostile to Afghanistan's interest) and it highlighted the crazy "Soveriegn Citizen" movement of crazy rightwing potential terrorists.  Here's the Robert Gates video, watch it and compare and contrast him with Donald Rumsfeld.  Bringing in Robert Gates to relace Rumsfeld was George W. Bush's greatest singular decision of his presidency, followed by listening to Condeleeza Rice instead of Cheney in his second term:

Naked Capitalism Link of the Day

Today: Capitalists Who Make vs. Capitalists Who Take, by Dylan Ratigan:

Looking today at our economy, it’s difficult to see who is creating that higher level of value.   Companies pump up their near-term income by accounting tricks, pump up stock prices for shareholders, without creating real value, all of which has had a hugely negative effect on our global economy.
Umair Haque, is at the forefront of pushing for a new way of looking at what, and how, we grow our economy.  He says:

We have a problem — you know, what is this crisis really about? Is it a debt crisis? Is it a liquidity crisis? I think it’s deeper. It’s a crisis of real value creation and we seemed to kind of have hit the limits of our ability to create real value. And for me, real value is what I call “thick value.” And that’s a little bit analogous to what Michael Porter has recently called “shared value.” For me there are three pillars of real value. It has to be sustainable. It can’t go up in a puff of smoke next year like it happened with the banking crisis. It has to be meaningful, that is, it has to reflect real tangible benefits to people on the other side of the transaction of the relationship. And I think that it has to be authentic.

It’s easier to make money in the short-term through exploitation and the extraction and much more labor intensive with a higher failure rate and a much greater degree of challenge to actually advance and create something that is new and different and differentiates in its creation of value.  “So to me, this is a crisis that is about failing to create real value, but it is a crisis of our institutions.  And it’s a crisis that is of things like GDP and corporate profits, and the ways in which we measure and conceive of income.  And so to really get to grips with this crisis, I think we have to begin by taking a cold hard look at those things,” says Umair.

This is an extremely important distinction which should be made.  Much of the growth in GDP in the finance sector is just extracting rents from others.  That is not productive.  When people trumpet private sector activity over government spending, you must ask what value is gained.  Private profit which doesn't increase value doesn't gain society anything.  Infrastructure investment isn't being maintained, and further privatization won't improve that in most cases.  We need to refigure such issues.

Selling Out

AP:

As 2010 drew to a close, the mayor of Newark, N.J., was staring into a budget abyss so deep that he sold 16 city buildings to pay the bills. They included the architecturally significant Newark Symphony Hall and the police and fire headquarters. In New York, the transit authority may sell its Madison Avenue headquarters, complete with an underground tunnel connected to Grand Central Terminal and air rights to build a skyscraper on top.
And soon, if state legislators have their way, private investors will be able to buy plenty of other municipal treasures: power plants in Wisconsin, prisons in Louisiana and Ohio and municipal buildings in Boston.
The Great Government Tag Sale is on. As states and cities struggle with billions of dollars in shortfalls, elected officials are increasingly selling public assets to cover their costs. Sometimes municipalities sell the buildings to pocket a one-time pile of cash and then lease them back so they can continue to use them.

This is pathetic.  We are going to get screwed by private investors who buy these properties, because too many people just hate government.  Taxes on the state and federal level keep getting slashed to help out the people who don't need help, while everybody else has to pay more.  This will not end well.

What Economics Brings to the Table

Edward Glaeser, highlighting what he sees as the role of economists, as he finishes his stint blogging at Economix (via Mark Thoma):

Economics marries a predilection for personal freedom with a longstanding tendency to view the interests of the government as being distinct from the welfare of the people. Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations,” modern economics’ founding document, emphasized that point.

In the 18th century, it seemed clear that what was good for King George III was not necessarily good for Britain and certainly was not necessarily good for his American subjects.
Democratic revolutions muddied the waters and made it possible for some to think that the government was a faultless servant of the people’s will, but a healthy skepticism about the benevolence (and competence) of the state continued within economics.
Both markets and governments are quite imperfect, and it is important to weigh their failures against each other.
The world isn’t and shouldn’t be run by economists — many perspectives need to be at the table. But economists have plenty to add: formal models, statistical evidence, a focus on freedom and a sophisticated centuries-old approach to public policy.

Can't really argue with that.  Too bad economists argue like surveyors.

Ohio More Dangerous Than U.S.-Mexico Border

So says CQ Press (h/t John Cole):

Rep. Silvestre Reyes smacks down the Orange Man.

Speaker Boehner should focus on controlling the level of violence in his own state before tarnishing the image of border communities that remain among the safest places to live in America.  As his office asserts that Congress cannot consider reforming our broken immigration system until border violence is under control, the fact remains that the six largest cities in Ohio all have higher rates of violence and crime than every major city along the U.S.-Mexico border.  In fact, the Speaker's own district in Dayton, Ohio saw more homicides in 2009 and 2010 than Texas' four largest border cities combined, despite the fact that Dayton's population of 141,500 is only about one-tenth of the size by comparison.

And the greater violence in Ohio spans all categories:

According to the most recent City Crime Rankings Survey by CQ Press, Ohio's cities have higher rates of violence and crime in every category, including murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, and motor vehicle theft than border communities.

The data:
Murder Rate (National Rate = 5.0 Murders per 100,000 Population)

15. Dayton 25.5
25. Cleveland 20.0
34. Canton 16.6
35. Cincinnati 16.5
69. Toledo 11.3
72. Columbus 10.9
87. Akron 9.7
117. Laredo 7.5
250. San Diego 3.1
252. McAllen 3.0
292. Brownsville 2.2
292. Yuma 2.2
305. El Paso 1.9

Cities Ranked by Highest Rates of Crime (400 total)

7. Cleveland
20. Dayton
22. Washington, D.C.
24. Cincinnati
27. Toledo
37. Canton
47. Akron
49. Columbus
144. Laredo
204. Yuma
221. San Diego
275. El Paso
291. McAllen
304. Brownsville

And what is really amazing is that the murder rate in Dayton was much higher in the 1970's than it is now.  I think the murder rate peaked in 1974.  It is amazing what 24-hour news does to your mind.

Being Catholic and Republican

Daniel Larison looks at Rick Santorum and analyzes the intersection of religious and partisan beliefs:

At the Republican presidential debate on Thursday Rick Santorum was asked about Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels’s suggestion that there be a social truce. Santorum answered, “Anybody that would suggest we call a truce on moral issues doesn’t understand what America is all about.”
That is wrong. In fact, it’s the precise opposite of what America is about. ~Jennifer Rubin

They’re both wrong in different ways. America is not “about” anything in the way that these two mean it. America isn’t a creedal or proposition nation, and it isn’t an idea or an ideological project. Genuine constitutional conservatism is worthwhile, and it involves more than Berkowitz’s warmed-over fusionism, but it isn’t reducible to individual liberty or limited government, and one cannot claim that America is “about” either of these things. Despite their wishes to the contrary, Christian and especially Catholic conservatives cannot correctly attach moral or religious significance to the founding principles of a Whiggish republic.
What I will say in Santorum’s defense is that he has made this mistake because he considers moral issues, especially those that concern the protection of life and family stability, to be vitally important to a healthy and flourishing culture. At times, Santorum seems to want to argue that eternal verities and pre-political loyalties should take priority in how we organize our society and our polity, and he is probably one of the few Republicans to have held federal office recently to understand that obligations to a community and the common good are not the same as accepting the encroachment of the state. Then he often veers off on some strange militaristic tangent or, as he did the other night, endorses the use of torture on detainees, because he has already made the earlier mistake of attaching too much significance to the nation-state. That in turn leads him to support measures that directly contradict the moral principles that he normally defends. Santorum’s views are the unfortunate mish-mash that results from combining Catholic social teaching with Americanism and militarism, as the latter two tend to overshadow anything interesting that Santorum might have to say from his understanding of the former.

There are a lot of significant points which can be made about this subject.  Daniel pursues how pro-life voters became enmeshed in a bargain with the international interventionalist in support of wars which run counter to their moral values, and how the culture war is a way for the war hawks to co-opt the social conservatives to their war views. 

I think it is interesting to look at how Democratic and Republican Catholics cater their views about which social teachings by the Church are important to follow based on their party's interests.  Democratic Catholics are more likely to support gay marriage,labor unions, the legality of abortion and welfare programs, while being opposed to the death penalty and the war in Iraq.  Republican Catholics often want bans on gay marriage and abortion, destruction of unions, an end to welfare programs and support both the death penalty and the war in Iraq.  It seems like political platforms trump Church teaching nearly every time.  Not exactly a good trend for the stability of the Catholic Church in America.  I would guess that is a contributing factor to making "Former Catholic" the second largest "religious group" in the United States.

Update:  I neglected to mention torture.  Santorum explicitly supported the use of torture on detainees during last week's debate.  Daniel mentioned it, and I hate to leave it off the list of positions against Catholic teaching which Republicans have embraced.

Chinese Food Safety and the Political Class

James Fallows notes that China may face some real muckraking reform, or maybe not:

- From China Geeks, which translates material from the Chinese press and blogosphere, an English version of a very important story from Southern Weekend,  南方周末, as fearless a reform publication as you will find in China, about a true "let them eat cake" saga underway there now.

At a time when tainted-food scandals are erupting all over the country, the story describes a special farm and food-supply system for government bigshots, to spare them exposure to the heavy-metal laden, adulterated, and otherwise contaminated food the rest of the population ingests. People often compare early 21st century China to early 20th century America, when industrial abuses gave way to the Muckraking and Progressive era. We'll see whether reformers can get similar traction there. If you want an idea of what makes ordinary people in China angry, check out this story.

Wow, that has tremendous potential to bring about massive reform, or it may bring a government crackdown on such media outlets.  Heavy-metal laden, adulterated and otherwise contaminated food.  That is a disturbing situation in a country with 16% or so of the world's population.

Bush-era War Criminals Continue Claiming Torture Located Bin Laden

Barry Ritholtz takes the offensive against the torture works meme.  He highlights Dan Froomkin making the case that torture slowed down the investigation:

Indeed, as Dan Froomkin notes in a little-noticed essay, torture actually delayed by years more effective intelligence-gathering methods which would have resulted in finding Bin Laden:

Defenders of the Bush administration’s interrogation policies have claimed vindication from reports that bin Laden was tracked down in small part due to information received from brutalized detainees some six to eight years ago.
But that sequence of events — even if true — doesn’t demonstrate the effectiveness of torture, these experts say. Rather, it indicates bin Laden could have been caught much earlier had those detainees been interrogated properly.
“I think that without a doubt, torture and enhanced interrogation techniques slowed down the hunt for bin Laden,” said an Air Force interrogator who goes by the pseudonym Matthew Alexander and located Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, in 2006.
It now appears likely that several detainees had information about a key al Qaeda courier — information that might have led authorities directly to bin Laden years ago. But subjected to physical and psychological brutality, “they gave us the bare minimum amount of information they could get away with to get the pain to stop, or to mislead us,” Alexander told The Huffington Post.
“We know that they didn’t give us everything, because they didn’t provide the real name, or the location, or somebody else who would know that information,” he said.
In a 2006 study by the National Defense Intelligence College, trained interrogators found that traditional, rapport-based interviewing approaches are extremely effective with even the most hardened detainees, whereas coercion consistently builds resistance and resentment.

I would think that an examination of human nature would tell you that would be the case.  When your enemies resort to torture, they are proving your belief in their inherent evil.  It becomes heroic in your mind to resist them as much as possible.  Because you are suffering physical pain, you have to tell them things, so you make stuff up.  They can't know what is true and what isn't, so they have to try to confirm these stories, leaving you with time to embellish more, and come up with reasons for why they couldn't confirm what you'd told them. 

Whereas, treating the detainees with respect, trying to build trust, undermines the detainee's belief in his enemy's inherent evil.  It is likely that long exposure to the "enemy" will humanize him and convince the detainee that he and the interrogator aren't as far apart as previously believed.

The fallacy of the "ticking time-bomb" scenario which torture proponents use to soften opposition to torture is that if a detainee has information of an "imminent" attack, you need to know the anticipated timing of the attack, which you likely don't, and the detainee must be forced to give up the information quickly.  He actually knows how long he must resist torture to allow the attack to go off, and he knows the factual information about the attack, which you don't.  He can send your manpower off on wild-goose chases in a situation in which time is of the essence.  In other words, the situation in which torture advocates try to prove the necessity of torture is actually the least-likely time in which torture would ever work.  The person being tortured holds all the cards, and in his mind is engaged in a noble struggle against evil opponents.  The torturer is making it less likely that he will get his information.  So far, I have not seen any evidence that utilizing tactics used by tyrants throughout history to get forced confessions from political opponents has ever produced usable intelligence anywhere outside of the obviously fantasy world of 24, where one man is able to stop years of planning in a single day.  Dick Cheney and his henchmen should be tried for their crimes.

Update:  Andrew Sullivan discusses Cheney's campaign:

So in order to defend torture, Cheney has to say that it's a success when the tortured tell lies. Heads he wins, tails we lose. Moreover, in the last two years or so, torture has been forbidden - although its legacy remains with war criminals protected by the US government, in violation of Geneva - and it was after those two years of a return to decency that bin Laden was found and killed. As for the Bush administration's over-arching goal - democratization of the Middle East - it was only under Obama that we got the Green Revolution in Iran, the successful revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, and the power-struggles now happening in Syria and Libya. When these Bush administration fanatics are presented with clear evidence that Obama has been far more successful against terror and its causes than they ever were, they return to their precious, their torture program, and claim ludicrously that, without it, bin Laden would not have been captured. Rumsfeld joined in the chorus of mass distraction this weekend on the same basis. All this really tells you is that these people realize that if their torture regime is definitively found to have been counter-productive in their lifetimes, if bin Laden was caught two years after the torture program was ended and with no evidence it helped, then their barbaric policy will be exposed once again as unnecessary, un-American, unproductive, and a violation of core human values.
Cheney calls investigations into war crimes that went beyond the authorized torture techniques "an outrage." Well, he would, wouldn't he? He knows where the war crimes trail ends up - in his office. And he knows where he should be if we were governed by the rule of law: in jail. The real outrage is that he is still walking free - and doing all he can to entrench torture in the American way of war.

I've got to agree.  Cheney is the worst of the worst, and a giant coward.

More on the Endgame

John Mauldin, over at the Big Picture:

Let me jump out on a real limb. I was having dinner last Monday with Christian Menegatti, the #2 economist at friend Nouriel Roubini’s economic analysis shop. We were comparing notes (imagine that), and he said their opinion is that the US has until 2015 before the bond market really calls the deficit hand. Knowing that Nouriel is seen as the ultimate bear, it makes me nervous to put out my own even more bearish analysis.
I think the crucial point will be reached in late 2013. If the bond market sees a serious move to control the deficit, I think they let us “skate.” Then we Muddle Through. But if not, I think we begin to see some real push-back on rates then.
Why so early? Because bond investors are going to be watching the slow-motion train wreck that is happening in Europe and especially Japan. It is one thing for Greece to default (which they will in one form or another, with lots of rumors flying this morning), yet another for Japan to do so. Japan is big and makes a difference. Japan could start to go as early as the middle of 2013. As I have said, Japan is a bug in search of a windshield. Whenever this happens, 2013 or a year or so later, it is going to spook the bond market. The normal indulgence that a superpower and reserve-currency country would be accorded will become much more strained. It will seemingly happen overnight. Think Lehman Brothers on steroids.
I think the chances we will deal with this potential crisis are about 75%. Not doing so is such a horrific outcome that I think politicians will do the right thing. See, I am an optimist. (What was it Winston Churchill said? “You can always depend on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the other possibilities.”)

He is endorsing $3 in spending cuts for every $1 in tax increases.  I would think more along the lines of drastically overhauling the heath care sector with single payer, slashing defense spending and wrapping up the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, (and Libya), then $2 in tax increases/tax reform for every $1 of spending decreases.  I think he is right that the deficit and debt are huge issues, but I think he is slanted too much in an anti-government direction.  Likewise, he is much more optimistic about Republican politicians being able to fix this mess.  So far, I have yet to see a decent likely candidate for the GOP nomination in 2012.  I sure don't want any of the guys who participated in the debate last week running the country.  He also doesn't mention issues we may face with resource scarcity or climate change.  We face a lot of hurdles in the near future, and we're going to have to put aside much of our enmtiy with our political opponents and make true shared sacrifice.  So far, I don't see much of that from Republicans.  I don't even see them acknowledging what I think are pretty obvious facts.  This is going to be a tough process.

David Hume's Birthday

Crooked Timber (h/t Mark Thoma) marks David Hume's 300th birthday on May 7 (April 26-Julian calendar):

David Hume was born 300 years ago today. His influence on philosophy is well recognized. His influence on the social sciences, rather less so. Dan Sperber proposes that readers of his blog celebrate this anniversary by selecting particularly relevant quotes. Sounds like a good idea – let me start the ball rolling by stealing a particularly appropriate one from Cosma Shalizi.

It is excellent reading.  Commenters added their own favorite quotes.  My favorite came from commenter Geo:

Hume, Of Commerce:
“A too great disproportion among the citizens weakens any state. Every person, if possible, ought to enjoy the fruits of his labor, in a full possesion of all the necessaries, and many of the conveniences, of life. No one can doubt that such an equality is most suitable to human nature and diminishes much less from the happiness of the rich than it adds to that of the poor. It also augments the power of the state, and makes any extraordinary taxes or impositions be paid with more cheerfulness. Where the riches are engrossed by a few, these must contribute very largely to the supplying of the public necessities. But when the riches are dispersed among multitudes, the burden feels light on every shoulder, and the taxes make a not very sensible difference on any one’s way of living.
“Add to this that, where the riches are in few hands, these must enjoy all the power, and will readily conspire to lay the whole burden on the poor and oppress them still farther, to the discouragement of all industry.”

We could stand to consider that again today.

Democracy in Nevada

LA Times:

The problem: two women were tied for second — each with 328 votes — and state law said the victor would be decided "by lot."

Card draws have determined a winner in at least five Nevada races, said Christopher Driggs, a state archivist, all in rural counties whose electorates could probably fit into North Las Vegas City Hall.

At least one election has been settled by flipping a coin, and a tie in a district attorney primary was broken by tossing a die. (The winner rolled a six to trump his rival's five, but his good fortune petered out in the general election, which he lost.)

One of the candidates drew a 5, the other drew a king.

Flooding in the Red River Valley

For the third straight year, the Red River flooded, threatening the Fargo-Moorhead area.  This video is a nice tribute to the citizens of the valley.

Naked Capitalism Link of the Day

Two things.  First, The Fateful Choice, at the Middle East Research and Information Project:

There is nothing new about torture in warfare, even as waged by democracies. What is new (at least in the modern era) is the brazenness with which torture’s proponents have asserted its compatibility with democracy and the rule of law. The Bush administration’s tangle of poor legal argumentation in support of its torture policy need not be rehearsed; the Obama administration was right to rubbish the lot. It has been disgusting, therefore, to see Bush officials emerge from the woodwork to suggest that finding bin Laden came about through torture. Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, for instance, told FOX News that “anyone who suggests that the enhanced techniques, let’s be blunt, waterboarding, did not produce an enormous amount of valuable intelligence, just isn’t facing the truth.” His fellow Republican, Rep. Peter King of New York, went one step further: “Osama bin Laden would not have been captured and killed if it were not for the initial information we got from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed after he was waterboarded.”
A former top military interrogator in Iraq, who goes by the pseudonym Matthew Alexander, has corrected the record by insisting that torturing detainees produces “limited information, false information or no information.” As Alexander and others note, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the operational planner of the September 11 attacks (who, incidentally, was captured at home in a commando raid, not on a battlefield, with a nudge from another $25 million bounty), blurted out nothing of value despite being waterboarded 183 times. He was confronted with the nom de guerre of a courier -- the one whose trail eventually led to bin Laden -- and claimed he had “retired” from al-Qaeda. The nom de guerre and all subsequent actionable leads were obtained from other sources through old-fashioned detective work. These facts have led Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) to contradict Rumsfeld and King, saying: “So far, I know of no information that was obtained, that would have been useful, by ‘advanced interrogation.’” And when the CIA tortured Abu Faraj al-Libbi, another al-Qaeda courier who would have known others, he proffered a fake name that sent the manhunt on a wild goose chase. Torture is thus likely to have delayed the apprehension of al-Qaeda’s master terrorist.
The utility of torture is beside the point, in any case; torture is repellent and degrading of those who practice it as well as those subjected to it. It is also manifestly illegal, under both US and international law. As anyone who pays attention knows, the revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere swept away what remained of the post-September 11 wars’ moral credibility in the eyes of the world. Along with the Bush administration’s deceptions, arrogant doctrines of US dominance and disdainful asides to the effect that “we don’t do body counts,” torture poisoned all of the wars’ fruits, even turning bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, the ugliest caricatures of Arab anti-imperialism, into heroes to some.

This torture was disgraceful and produced misleading and detrimental information, and yet Republicans still defend it and would do it again if they are ever put back into power.  This paper utterly destroys our choices in the war against terror.  It is a must-read.

Second, Edward Harrison has this chart in his article about how much banks in Germany are owed by the periphery states of the Eurozone:

That is stunning and I don't see how they will get that all back.  It is more a matter of how much they lose how quickly.