“In Virginia, I’ve argued,Democratic candidate Creigh Deeds, who on his record and on the issues had much to recommend him, suffered at least in part from identification with Obama and the national party.

“The disapproval of Obama among Virginia voters, which began to climb in late July, may have affected their enthusiasm about Deeds. In the final edition of the exit polls, 51 percent of Virginia’s voters disapproved of how Obama has done his job, and 94 percent of them voted for McDonnell. More important, perhaps, is that a lack of enthusiasm about Obama and the national party may have affected turnout.”

It’s true– according to the New York Times exit polls, 51% of voters in Virginia disapproved of Obama, and 94% of those people voted for McDonnell.  That group alone gave McDonnell about 48% of the total vote count.  But– McDonnell didn’t squeak by.  He got about 58% of the vote.  That other 10% came from people who support Obama.  The problem for Deeds wasn’t the approximately half of people who disliked a Democratic President and voted Republican in a closely-divided state, it was the fact that of the 49% of people who approved of Obama, 20% voted for McDonnell.  Had the race been a referendum on Obama, Deeds would have fared far better than he actually did.

To be fair, most of the piece focuses on the issue of turnout.  But even there, the case is weak.  The author spends time mulling over the lack of enthusiasm among African Americans in 2009 as opposed to 2005, but this had no bearing on the outcome of the race– even in 2005, African American voters constituted less than 1% of those casting ballots in Virginia.  He argues that high unemployment is suppressing Democratic turnout, but in Virginia, unemployment has only risen to 6.7 percent– not full employment, but not the pressing issue that it is elsewhere in the country (in the past year, unemployment in Michigan has risen by 6.4 percentage points)– and, more importantly, it’s even lower in heavily-Democratic Northern Virginia, where turnout would be more of an issue for Deeds.  While it’s tempting to try to put a more interesting– and more nationally-relevant– spin on the race, it’s much easier to make a credible argument that the lack of turnout for Deeds was a function of the fact that people just didn’t like him.  Creigh Deeds’s problem wasn’t Barack Obama’s unpopularity, the problem was Creigh Deeds’s unpopularity.

So, while the author’s other points about the 2010 elections may very well be true, they’re not proven by this particular race.

Cantaloupe from Bigg Riggs

]]> http://www.thereconstruction.org/2009/09/21/happy-fall/feed/ 0 http://www.thereconstruction.org/2009/07/28/on-enjoying-your-work/ http://www.thereconstruction.org/2009/07/28/on-enjoying-your-work/#comments Tue, 28 Jul 2009 23:06:28 +0000 McCormick http://www.thereconstruction.org/?p=308 From a friend:

One thing that’s hilarious to me is, I had this job that paid me well.  I saved up.  I bought a nice blender.  Instead of buying a 2-dollar skirt at goodwill, I bought an expensive one at a real store.  It was lovely, but it didn’t fill the void.  I think the cliches about that are pretty true.

Quincy Adams at The RBC is absolutely right that the control system for Metro trains, as described in the Washington Post, contains a fundamental design flaw.  I’d argue, however, that an effective solution can be designed that is far simpler than Quincy’s suggestion.  In fact, the system could have been designed far more safely, without requiring technologies that weren’t available when the system was built (such as GPS or most other positive-location technologies).  All that was necessary was that the system be designed according to a fail-safe philosophy.

Quite simply, a fail-safe design requires that the default action of the system be the one that results in least harm.  An example can be found on high-speed trains in Europe– if the operator removes his foot from a sensor on the floor for more than a specified amount of time, an alarm is sounded and he’s given a few seconds to tell the system that he’s still alive by pressing a button.  If he doesn’t, the train stops itself.  In fact, almost all trains already have fail-safe systems in parts of their design, such as their pneumatic brakes, which are forced off by the application of air pressure (which compresses springs that apply constant force towards the brake rotor) and are applied when pressure is removed– so that in the event of a pneumatic failure, the train automatically comes to a stop.

The specific idea underlying both of the previous examples is pretty clear– the safest default action for a train (as opposed to, say, an airplane) is usually “stop immediately”, not “full speed ahead”.  In the case of the Metro train system, sensors should be designed to send a positive signal when a train is not present.  Under such a design, two desirable outcomes occur: a sensor failure cannot result in a collision (it instead results in train stoppages requiring manual operation to bypass), and the failure is immediately brought to system operators’ attention.

While such a system can be inconvenient if sensor failures are common, noisy failures generating inconvenience are almost always superior to silent failures generating death.  Also, of course, if the system wasn’t designed to be fail-safe because such failures are common, then it should never have been put into operation.  There may be something I’m missing, but from what information is available, this seems to be an inexcusable failure in design.

Disclaimer: Like Quincy, I am also not a transit engineer, and am also relying on the information from the Post.

A final note: the above is exactly why I’ve disabled cruise control in my car.  If I were to fall asleep or be otherwise incapacitated behind the wheel, I’d rather my foot lift off the accelerator and the car slow down than have it continue to hurtle along, à la Beck: stock car flaming with the loser in the cruise control.

Red Line
Disruption at Fort Totten in both directions. Trains are turning back at Rhode Island Avenue & Silver Spring due to a situation outside of Fort Totten station. Shuttle bus service has been established. Expect delays in both directions.

WMATA between 9-10 PM yesterday (unofficial twitter re-broadcast):

Red Line
Disruption at Fort Totten. Trains are turning back at Brookland-CUA & Silver Spring due to a police situation outside of Fort Totten station…

WMATA between 6-7 PM yesterday (unofficial twitter re-broadcast):

Red Line
Disruption at Fort Totten in both directions. Trains are turning back at Rhode Island Avenue & Silver Spring due to a train experiencing mechanical difficulties…

Washington Post:

At Least 6 Killed in Red Line Crash
One Metro train slammed into the back of another on the Red Line at the height of the evening rush yesterday, killing at least six and injuring 70 others in the deadliest accident in Metrorail’s 33-year-history.
The impact of the crash was so powerful that the trailing train was left atop the first train.
Metro officials expected the death toll to rise to at least nine.

WMATA could do better by having slightly stronger wording available for service bulletins in the event that something occurs that shuts down service on their busiest line during rush hour while they try to rescue their passengers.  They could also wait less than an hour an twenty minutes (I received an e-mail alert from them at 6:20 PM) to send out an alert about something that will clearly have a severe impact on service.

What happened yesterday was a tragedy, and improving the safety of Metro service must be the top priority.  After they tackle that, though, I recommend improving their communication with passengers.  It’s really low-hanging fruit; the marginal cost of communication is near-zero. Don’t make riders wait until they’re already in the system to find out that they should have made other plans.  There’s simply no excuse when it’s immediately clear that an emergency like yesterday’s has occurred.  I’m assuming, of course, that the central command learned quickly about what happened (if they didn’t, then it’s a safety issue).

Because Iceland is really just one big family, it’s simply annoying to go around asking Icelanders if they’ve met Björk. Of course they’ve met Björk; who hasn’t met Björk? Who, for that matter, didn’t know Björk when she was two? “Yes, I know Björk,” a professor of finance at the University of Iceland says in reply to my question, in a weary tone. “She can’t sing, and I know her mother from childhood, and they were both crazy. That she is so well known outside of Iceland tells me more about the world than it does about Björk.”

From Michael Lewis’s essay, Wall Street on the Tundra.

Please confine yourself to talking about things you understand. Items I’d specifically suggest you exclude include the alleged mis-measurement of inflation, and any technical aspects of the measurement of GDP.

This morning, you suggested that TARP artificially increased GDP.

Unfortunately, you apparently did not read the passage you quoted in your post, or didn’t understand it– otherwise, you’d have attached some importance to the sentence beginning “The recording of a capital transfer in the GDP accounts does not affect GDP or net government saving”.

I assure you that the folks at the BEA are capable of distinguishing between production and transfers.  A hint to you would have been that the table 3.1 you cite is in Section 3, “Government Current Receipts and Expenditures”, not in Section 1, “Domestic Product and Income”.

Finally, with regard to this:

And there you have it: Pour billions of dollars into insolvent banks, goose the GDP for your troubles.

Ain’t DC Grand?

You are now advised to save your snide remarks for times when they are actually appropriate.  As it’s clear that you’re not able to distinguish those moments accurately, I recommend that simply keep those remarks to yourself.

Thank you.

“IT STARTED with burning tyres and rocks thrown by protesters. Then gun battles erupted between rival soldiers using heavy machine guns, mortars and rockets. The fighting at the weekend in Kinshasa shows that peace in Congo is not yet assured. The battle brought the centre of the capital, a city usually bursting with people, to a standstill.” (from The Economist)

The BBC’s coverage is particularly interesting, however, as it dovetails with the observations of a friend of mine. The BBC mentions that an “analyst who wished to remain anonymous told the BBC that there were serious questions about the validity of some ballot papers, especially a large number of votes cast by voters outside their home areas.” Compare this with a blog entry from my friend Sophie, who was working as an election monitor in the DRC:

“Election day security and proceedings were generally good, with the exception of one potentially unstable situation that we were confronted with involving initially about fifty people unable to vote due to being away from their polling centers. We went into the polling station outside which the very loud and obviously angry crowd was gathered and talked to the chief of the centre de vote. He emphasized that he was following the election code and reported that the crowd was threatening to stone them if they continued to be unable to vote, the police being insufficient to control them…

“On the whole the election was peaceful and pretty orderly, but what we saw represents the psychological aftereffects of a war like the Congo’s – a disrespect for the rule of law and a lingering presumption that when push comes to shove, violence can solve problems. So rather than saying “hey, I’m not able to get back to where I’m registered to vote; I’m really mad about that, but it’s the law and I’ll just have to be prepared to vote next time,” the response is “I’m Congolese, I have my voter’s ID card, but I’m not going to be able to get to the place where I can vote, so I’m going to make them allow me to vote.” It’s going to take a long time for enough trust in the justice of the law and the strength of the state to be established to prevent incidents like that. I just hope the Congolese have enough faith and the new Congolese government can produce enough results for them to stick with it.”