JustOneMinute

Fortunately She Is A Democrat Only Running For The Senate

If Sarah Palin had committed a debate gaffe comparable to announcing that there were no Al Qaeda terrorists left in Afghanistan, then stood by while a member of her campaign staff roughed up a reporter trying to follow up on that topic, it is all we would be reading about.

But since Martha Coakley is a Democrats running for Kennedy's Senate seat the people's Senate seat in Massachusetts it is a bit of a non-event.

John McCormack of The Weekly Standard presents his version, with video.

In an update, he tells us that the goon in question is probably Michael Meehan of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.  Is Meehan part of Coakly's staff?  Well, arguably yes - this is from the WaPo:

Democrats have buttressed Coakley's campaign this week, adding fresh money and personnel to her operation and vowing to go after the Republican far more aggressively than they have to date. [That increased aggression is not metaphorical]

The DSCC bought $500,000 in advertising time for the contest, and national Democrats sent a pair of experienced strategists -- Michael Meehan and Hari Sevugan -- to Massachusetts to help lead the attack on Brown [and McCormack!] and oversee the final days of Coakley's campaign. Democrats also have sent fundraising e-mails from Obama and Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.).

The Boston Herald recounts McCormack's story and adds this:

McCormack writes he believes he was pushed by Michael Meehan, president of Blue Line Strategic Communications in Washington, D.C. The Associated Press also identifies the man as Meehan, based on photos and videotape of the incident.

CNN covered the faraway look Ms. Coakley gets when asked about Afghanistan:

Washington (CNN) – Democrat Martha Coakley dodged a pointed question Tuesday about her claim during a Massachusetts Senate debate the night before that terrorists are no longer in Afghanistan.

During Monday's debate with Republican Scott Brown, Coakley questioned why the United States still has troops in Afghanistan. She claimed that the al Qaeda terrorists who were originally targeted by American military action have migrated elsewhere, rendering the mission moot. "They're gone," she said. "They're not there anymore. They're in, apparently Yemen, they're in Pakistan."

A reporter asked Coakley about that claim after a Capitol Hill fundraiser on Tuesday. "Do you stand by that remark?" he asked.

Coakely, standing before a small cluster of reporters and cameras, listened to the question, then quickly looked in a different direction.

"I'm sorry," she said. "Did anybody else have a question?"

No mention of the pushing and shoving, but there attention may have been elsewhere.

Ben Smith of The Politico is advised by the DSCC that the video is a Republican "dirty trick":

Meehan is a veteran Democratic staffer, Bostonian, and Obama appointee to the Broadcasting Board of Governors. An attempt to reach him through his Washington P.R. firm was unsuccessful. But friends said they found the video both inappropriate and out of character.

"It is no surprise that Washington Republicans are trying to use every dirty trick they have to throw the Coakley campaign off their stride, but we are determined to end this campaign talking about the issues that matter to voters, like creating jobs and lowering middle class taxes," said Schultz in a written statement.

The Hill covers this and is also advised that McCormack is a notorious troublemaker, questioning candidates and so on.

Fox News has coverage, including a damning AP photo of Coakley looking on as Meehan looms over a sprawled-out McCormack. 

And from the left, Taylor Marsh rallies for a free press - free to brush up on their mixed martial arts, that is:

I wanted to add something about this race. I’m 100% behind Ms. Coakley, but the scene outside Sonoma restaurant the other night, an upscale, wonderful wine bar that I’ve been to many times, is indicative of the heat right now coming from the right. A video of a “reporter” getting pushed to the ground by someone on Coakley’s staff, which means to me the point was to get something just like this captured on tape.

Pardon me?  The question about the Afghanistan gaffe was just a ruse?  The "point" was to get tape of someone being shoved to the canvas?  Uhh, are the Coakley people knocking people to the deck all over Massachusetts but without cameras nearby?  Is Ms. Marsh routinely knocked down while covering the news?

I can't shake the feeling that if a Bushie had decked a reporter that Ms. Marsh would be writing about nothing other than the impending Dark Night and checking the weather reports from Gitmo.  But since it was Dems bringing the muscle she can't even muster a "tut, tut" and goes on to blame McCormack.  Worth remembering.

Earthquake In Haiti

The worst quake in 200 years struck Haiti:

SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic —Rescue teams struggled in the early morning darkness Wednesday to make their way through the rubble of collapsed buildings after a devastating earthquake struck Haiti late Tuesday afternoon.

The quake, with a magnitude estimated at 7.0, caused the collapse of the National Palace, leveled countless shantytown dwellings and brought more suffering to a nation that was already the hemisphere’s poorest and most disaster-prone.

The earthquake was the worst in the region in more than 200 years and left the country in a shambles. As night fell in Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s densely populated capital, fires burned near the shoreline downtown, but otherwise the city fell into darkness.

Americares will be there to provide disaster relief - theyhave been involved with Haiti since 1984.  From their website:

AmeriCares is working with partners on the ground to deliver humanitarian aid and disaster relief. Many local partners are reporting it is difficult to reach staff on the ground near the epicenter of the earthquake.

In December, AmeriCares sent an aid delivery to Haiti of critical medicines and medical supplies to fight serious infections, burns and skin infection and surgical supplies. AmeriCares has been providing humanitarian aid to Haiti since 1984, partnering with local health care organizations throughout the country. We've delivered more that $145 million worth of medical aid and humanitarian relief to Haiti. AmeriCares helps partners serve more patients and avoid running out of basic medicines and medical supplies with regular shipments throughout the year.

Haiti can use our help; Americares can use your help.  The form for online donations is here.

FULL DISCLOSURE:  As a matter of full disclosure I should note that my wife is a fundraiser for Americares.  As a mater of fuller disclosure, I should add that we were donors to the organization before she became an employee, so, like Jonathon Gruber, she is getting paid to do work she believes in.

A Rising Red State Divorce Rate? I Blame Bush (And Cheney. And Osama.)

Nate Silver emphasizes that correlation is not causation, then offers an intriguing chart which suggests that states that banned gay marriage in the early part of the decade (mostly 2004) experienced an increase in their divorce rate in 2008.

Baffling.  Nate takes a stab:

The differences are highly statistically significant. Nevertheless, they do not necessarily imply causation. The decision to ban same-sex marriage does not occur randomly throughout the states, but instead is strongly correlated with other factors, such as religiosity and political ideology, which we have made no attempt to account for. Nor do we know in which way the causal arrow might point. It could be that voters who have more marital problems of their own are more inclined to deny the right of marriage to same-sex couples.

Let me suggest a factor for which a statistical control would be appropriate - military families and military divorces.  Per this article, the military divorce rate for was 3.6 percent for the year ending Sept 30 2009, compared to 2.6 percent in Sept 2001, prior to the deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Those figures do not seem to include veterans and National Guardsmen.  I am just guessing that the New England states whose courts led the charge on gay marriage are also under-represented in the population of military families.  Conversely, plenty of Red states likely to have banned gay marriage also are likely to be overrepresented among to military bases, families, and divorces.

As to whether a 1% increase in the military divorce rate could drive a state's divorce rate from 1.90% to 2.04% (as was the case with Arizona), well, maybe - that is an increase of 0.14%, or 1/7 of the military rate.  Could 1/7 of the Arizona married population have a military connection affected by the Iraq and Afghanistan deployments?  That strikes me as high but not absurdly so.

Pew offers some statistics and thoughts for folks inclined to dig in, as does Nate.

MORE - RAISING ARIZONA: Per the CDC data provided by Nate we see that Arizona has roughly 24,000 divorces per year.  An increase of 0.14% in the divorce rate is an increase of about 34 divorces [NO!  The 0.14% should have been applied to the overall marriage rate - Divorces rose by roughly 1,650, per Taeyeong in the comments].  Per the earlier article, there were 27,312 military divorces nationwide in 2009.  Since in 2001 the military divorce rate was 2.6%, let's say that (1 / 3.6) is the increase in divorces due to the two wars.  That is roughly 9,000 additional military divorces nationwide.  Could Arizona have picked up 34 of them? [Well, 34 is the wrong number and looked weirdly low, but if there were 1,650 divorces above baseline in Arizona alone and we have 9,000 military divorces above baseline to explain the national result, we are probably going to run out of military divorces.  So add in divorces associated with deployed National Guardsmen and discharged vets, and where are we?  I knew this looked too much like work...]. 

The orders of magnitude certainly suggest that military divorces would be a good place to look (they also suggest I ought to look for my calculator, but who has time?).  Maybe the real answer is that two trends overlapped - a nationwide decline in the "civilian" divorce rate was offset by an increase in the military divorce rate.  The net effect would be a rising rate in states with a higher proportion of military families and the gay marriage result would be a spurious correlation.

So who is going to check this out?  Ride to the sound of guns!

WHO IS RELYING ON RIDICULOUS ARGUMENTS?  Ezra Klein seems to have forgotten what side he is on and what he wrote.  Not a bad strategy, actually, but let's enjoy the fun:

It's common to hear that gay marriage threatens traditional marriage. But Nate Silver runs the numbers and finds just the opposite. Since 2003, states that haven't banned gay marriage have seen an 8 percent drop in divorce rates. States that have passed gay-marriage bans, by contrast, have seen their divorce rates edge upwards. Does this prove causation? No. Does it prove that opponents of gay marriage rely on some ridiculous arguments? Yes.

Huh?  Ezra admits that these numbers prove nothing, then uses them as evidence that the other side makes silly arguments? I'm twisting around like a defensive back covering Larry Fitzgerald.

As to the "marriage under assault" notion, let's turn the kiddies loose on this - here is a black minister from Boston discussing the Massachusetts gay marriage decision back in 2004:

Bishop Gilbert A. Thompson Sr., who as pastor of New Covenant Christian Church in Mattapan heads the largest Protestant congregation in Massachusetts, said black ministers have many reasons for speaking out against gay marriage.

"We're weighing in on this because we're concerned with the epidemic rate of fatherlessness in America and in our community, and we don't think gay marriage helps that cause," he said.

Maybe this minister thinks young black gangsta wanna-bes are less likely to get married if they perceive it as a "gay thing".  Or maybe he is a bigoted homophobe.  Ezra can make the call!

An earnestly liberal friend of mine once explained to me that he couldn't let his view on gay marriage be guided by the homophobia of some inner-city blacks.  I wondered whether he was interested in foisting yet another grand liberal vision onto the black community and risk shattering black families as an unfortunate (yet predicted!) consequence and he glared at me, so it was a typical Saturday night.

MORE UNCRITICAL ACCEPTANCE:  As evidence that when people see results they like their brains stop, I present Joe and the Maha.  And the Prairie guy.

Victory Has A Thousand Fathers

Ben Smith of The Politico tours "Game Change" and discovers that everyone who was anyone in the Democratic Party backed Obama, even if only secretly.  But after much Hillary-bashing the piece closes with Obama offering a mystifying defense (my emphasis):

Neither Clinton comes off entirely negatively. The former president is cannier than his aides, seeing the threat from Obama early on. The candidate appears tough, resilient, and deeply concerned for her daughter.

Only one figure in the narrative appears to dissent from this deeply unflattering view of Hillary Clinton: Barack Obama.

“She’s smart, she’s capable, she’s tough, she’s disciplined,” Obama reportedly told skeptical aides when he offered her the job of secretary of state. “She wouldn’t have to be taught [By whom?] or have her hand held. She wouldn’t have to earn her place on the world stage; she already had global stature. She pays attention to nuance. … and that’s what I want in a secretary of state, because the stakes are so high. I can’t have somebody who would put us in peril with one errant sentence.”

Put us in peril with one errant sentence?  This from the guy who picked Joe Biden for what I guess is the inconsequential role of VP?

To be fair, Obama picked Hillary after enduring Joe as a teammate for several months.  Still, Obama had to know when he tapped him that Joe's Gaffe-O-Matic is always on high, so whay was it OK to have a VP destined to say stupid things?

I Deplore This Steroid Use For Deeply Personal Reasons

Mark McGwire surprises no one by admitting that he used steroids en route to smashing home runs and records (Inshallah!).  Does anyone care?  I do, for personal reasons.

Although it is a burden I like to think I have mostly overcome, a grim reality of my daily life is that no one - not shop clerks, not drug stores, not reservation desks, no one - can spell "Maguire" the way I like it on their first try.  Everybody want to see a "c" in there somewhere; some people hold out for "K" or even a "Q".

However!  There was a brief shining season when I became a HUGE Tom Cruise fan.  Not only did he show us the money, but back in 1996 he showed us how to spell "Jerry Maguire".  Oh, for a little while I was walking on sunshine.  Then in 1998 Mark McGwire found the juice, hit 70 home runs, and it all turned to ashes.

I've tried to move on, but his steroid use really hurt me and I don't want to see him back in the news.  Full Disclosure.

Krugman Cheerleads For Europe Again

Krugman comes out cheerleading for Europe in a column recyled from two years ago. His point, then and now - when Evil Republicans say that Democratic policies will make the US look just like Europe, energized Dems should proudly say "And loving it" rather than cower with "Sorry about that, Chief".

Krugman continues to ignore some major counterarguments, such as the Europe's looming demographic disaster, their chronic free-riding on the US for defense and health care innovation, and their utter inability to create jobs that would absorb immigrants.  However, anyone interested in learning how to upgrade their disingenuity or present awkward statistics in a positive light will benefit from Krugman's latest.  Some snippets:

The real lesson from Europe is actually the opposite of what conservatives claim: Europe is an economic success, and that success shows that social democracy works.

Actually, Europe’s economic success should be obvious even without statistics. For those Americans who have visited Paris: did it look poor and backward? What about Frankfurt or London? You should always bear in mind that when the question is which to believe — official economic statistics or your own lying eyes — the eyes have it.

Is that how Nobel Laureates in economics are evaluating international economies these days? Paris is prosperous so its all good in Europe?  Geez, the next time Krugman drives though his hometown of Princeton with his eyes open maybe he will come away convinced that it is all good in the US, too.  OK, we all know he will come away envious of the huge homes being put up by the hedge fund heroes that are paid even more than Princeton profs with lucrative book deals, but still - his new position that anecdotes are evidence if they support your side seems like a new path for the once self-described reality-based community.

It’s true that the U.S. economy has grown faster than that of Europe for the past generation. Since 1980 — when our politics took a sharp turn to the right, while Europe’s didn’t — America’s real G.D.P. has grown, on average, 3 percent per year. Meanwhile, the E.U. 15 — the bloc of 15 countries that were members of the European Union before it was enlarged to include a number of former Communist nations — has grown only 2.2 percent a year. America rules!

Or maybe not. All this really says is that we’ve had faster population growth. Since 1980, per capita real G.D.P. — which is what matters for living standards — has risen at about the same rate in America and in the E.U. 15: 1.95 percent a year here; 1.83 percent there.

Per capita GDP matters for living standards but size matters when it comes to political power - as Jim Manzi notes, China is ruling Hong Kong, not vice versa. 

Krugman also seems to accept (or wants to pretend) that low population growth just happened to Europe.  However, small families may have been a logical consequence of a social policy oriented towards small cars, small homes, small job prospects, and huge taxes.  I know I have an old post on this which I can't find which liked to European economists studying that very point, but The Economist noted European free-riding in this area as well:

An expensive welfare state also tends to reduce the size of the workforce.  In arguing for a "libertarian approach" to fertility, Mr Quiggin seems to be implicitly assuming that Europe's birthrate is an exogenous variable, unaffected by the policies in question.  However, there is substantial evidence that in modelling the welfare state, fertility is an endogenous variable:  the more secure the safety net, the less likely people are to have children.  

Governments have largely nationalised the traditional functions of the family, but in doing so they have not eliminated the need for future generations to care for the current ones in their dotage.  Unfortunately, the assumption of family duties by the state allows people to free ride on the fertility of others—which they seem to be trying to do in massive numbers.  As we've mentioned before, a society where everyone tries to free ride on everyone else is headed for disaster.  Europe's safety nets, or at least the pension systems, may contain the seeds of their own destruction.

Back to Krugmania:

And what about jobs? Here America arguably does better: European unemployment rates are usually substantially higher than the rate here, and the employed fraction of the population lower. But if your vision is of millions of prime-working-age adults sitting idle, living on the dole, think again. In 2008, 80 percent of adults aged 25 to 54 in the E.U. 15 were employed (and 83 percent in France). That’s about the same as in the United States. Europeans are less likely than we are to work when young or old, but is that entirely a bad thing?

"Is that entirely a bad thing"? Really?  Does the notion that unless something is all bad it is good really win arguments on the left these days? Gosh, I want to play too - global warming will expand crop output in some regions and extend the summertime recreation season in New York and New England, so warming is not entirely bad.  That was easy.

Well, maybe Krugman has created the Dem message for the 2010 election - Obama, Pelosi and Reid have not delivered more unemployment, they have delivered more quality family time!  So who is the party of family values now, hmmm?

And now for some real Nobel Laureate quality work:

And Europeans are quite productive, too: they work fewer hours, but output per hour in France and Germany is close to U.S. levels.

They don't work as much, but they produce less! I'm sold.  Put another way, despite our deplorable public schools and willingness to accept unskilled workers (legally and illegally) from anywhere, the US still manages to produce more per worker than Europe.  And this is meant to persuade people that Europe is on the right path?

The point isn’t that Europe is utopia. Like the United States, it’s having trouble grappling with the current financial crisis. Like the United States, Europe’s big nations face serious long-run fiscal issue...

Let's see - Europe has lower population growth, an older population, higher unemployment, less productive workers, and more generous pension and health care programs.  If the US has a looming Social Security and Medicare problem, what do they have?  Well, like the US have they a problem! 

Tyler Cowen is typically cogent in response to Krugman; among his many excellent points is this:

8. Countries have to start from where they're at.  If you're constructing policy advice, you can either build on what a country is really good at or you can try to revise the internal culture of the country.  If you're going to do the latter, come out and say so.  Most of my policy recommendations are based on the former approach, namely strengthening what (the better-functioning) countries already are good at.  I'm not suggesting that countries never change, but getting such changes right by deliberate policy interventions is very hard to do.  I wish to stress this point applies to the pro-U.S. as much as the pro-Europe side.

I'd like everyone to have a sign, which they would hold up when appropriate: "My policies seek to revise the internal culture of my country."  That's OK, but you're raising the bar for your own ideas and don't fool yourself into thinking otherwise.

America has been built on immigration and needs a growing job market that can absorb immigrants in a way that is very different from Europe.  "German" is an ethnic identity' "French" is an ethnic identity; "American" is a state of mind.  Third generation guest workers living in Germany are still Turkish; a person from anywhere can be as American as they want to be overnight.

Jim Manzi may have sparked Krugman's latest Euro-boosting with this piece titled "Keeping America's Edge"; Manzi follows up here and here.

CBS Polls - Obama Down, Health Care Down, Gitmo Up

Obama sure is cooking with gas now!  Or maybe getting gas:

President Obama's job approval rating has fallen to 46 percent, according to a new CBS News poll.

That rating is Mr. Obama's lowest yet in CBS News polling, and the poll marks the first time his approval rating has fallen below the 50 percent mark. Forty-one percent now say they disapprove of Mr. Obama's performance as president.

Support for his effort on health care reform continues to fade, but Gitmo continues to rise in popularity as a lovely destination resort (one might say, the last resort) for terrorists:

In the wake of the Christmas Day terror attempt, President Obama recommitted to his promise to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Yet more than half of Americans think the U.S. should continue to keep the facility open, a new CBS News poll shows.

Fifty-five percent of Americans think the prison should be kept open, according to the poll, which was conducted from Jan. 6 – 10. Last November, by contrast, 50 percent of Americans thought the prison should remain open, and just 46 percent thought so in February 2009.

A Mini Ice Age Means What?

If these climatologists are right we may be due for a mini ice age:

The bitter winter afflicting much of the Northern Hemisphere is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that is likely to last for 20 or 30 years, say some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists.

...The scientists’ predictions also undermine the standard climate computer models, which assert that the warming of the Earth since 1900 has been driven solely by man-made greenhouse gas emissions and will continue as long as carbon dioxide levels rise.

They say that their research shows that much of the warming was caused by oceanic cycles when they were in a ‘warm mode’ as opposed to the present ‘cold mode’.

So what does this mean?  Some possibilities:

(a) It's a vital reprieve giving us additional time to do things we should have been doing anyway.  For instance, rather than scrapping a perfectly useful coal-fired plant we can replace it at the end of its useful life with newer, greener technology not yet perfected.

(b) it's a head fake, and when the next mini-warming cycle starts in thirty years we will set heat records all over the world.

(c) it is the death knell for adequate public support for slapping a price on carbon emissions.  Is America, where two thirds of adults are overweight or obese, really going to spend twenty years on an energy diet while temperatures drop?  We aren't that good at taking the long view, especially when the science is in flux (Not related, yet related -  eventually the rise in autism, obesity, diabetes and other things will be linked to the rise in the use of sunscreen.  Yeah, because we listened to the scientists who told us that sunshine was dangerous.)

I am hoping for (a) but would bet on (c).  But in (c) I do would support a simple revenue neutral carbon tax, not the preposterous cap and trade that Dems are backing as a jobs program for an expanded AFSCME unionized government bureaucracy.

I Deplore This Vampirism

Glenn links to an article about how humans might deal with a vampire epidemic that ends thusly:

Quarantine, vaccines and cures are all well and good, but when you've got a legion of the blood-sucking undead knocking on your front door—and you're one of a dwindling number of living, breathing humans left on the planet—there's really only one thing you can do: Treat them like mosquitoes. "If you have vampires running around," Crnich says, "you have to eliminate them."

Eliminate them?  Oh, please - tell it to Eric Holder.  Vampires are either human victims of a dread disease or are they a new species that shares most of our DNA and could pass any intelligence test that humans could pass; either way, they would be entitled to normal human rights.  Just because some vampires misbehave it hardly follows that all should be treated as our enemies.  In fact, I can picture Obama winning a second Nobel Prize by flying to Transylvania to deliver an historic outreach speech to the vampire community.

Give peace a chance.

Start With The Woman In The Mirror

Amidst all the to-ing andf fro-ing about Harry Reid's light-skinned, no Negro dialect comments about Barack Obama, I like this from California Senator Dianne Feinstein:

Mrs. Feinstein also said that "I saw no Democrats jumping out there and condemning Senator Lott."

But several Democrats — including Mrs. Feinstein — did in fact target Mr. Lott after his remarks. "This statement casts a dark shadow over Sen. Lott's ability to be a credible party leader," she said in 2002, according to an Inland Valley Daily Bulletin news story. 

Dark shadows?  Well, then, the latest flap casts a light-skinned shadow over Reid's leadership prospects.

LET'S GIVE HIM CREDIT FOR CALLING A SPADE A SPADE:

House leader James Clyburn explains that Reid's comments aren't racist since they came from a loyal Democrat:

Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, the No. 3 Democrat in the House, was among the black leaders who received a call from Mr. Reid. Mr. Clyburn said that Mr. Reid should be judged on the merits of his record to respond to diversity and to advance the president’s agenda.

“I am one of those who wish to one day live in a color-blind nation,” Mr. Clyburn said. “But the fact is that none of us do today.”

Palin Helped McCain

Talk about your buried lead - after going on at length about how Sarah Palin was a drooling, ignorant liar, McCain strategist Steve Schmidt offers this:

And Schmidt says, on balance, Palin helped the ticket.

"I believe, had she not been on the ticket our margin of defeat would’ve been greater than it would’ve been otherwise," he said.

What Columbia And Harvard Man Could?

From a Mark Steyn headline:

Obama can't say who we're at war with

Well of course he can't - having elected a properly educated Columbia and Harvard man, we look to Obama for leadership on critical issues such as the proper distinction between "who" and "whom", not to mention the vital national security matter of ending sentences with prepositions.  C'mon - this is the President who returned the Churchill bust, so we can hardly look to him for Churchillian leadership.

Now, if Obama could tell us with whom we are at war, that might be helpful.  But can we handle the truth?  Eric Holder seems to think we are at war with the Evil BushCo legacy.

Scaling The Pinnacles Of Liberal Guilt

What's a guilty lib to do?  He'a alredy cowering in a Prius as the big rigs thunder by.  He has euthanized his dog.  He has had a vasectomy so as to avoid burdening Gaia with the carbon footprint of a couple of rug crawlers.  He is boycotting all the right foods and television shows, and he spits on the ground whenever he hears the words "Sarah" or "Palin".  What is left to be done?

The NY Times is here to help - cut up your credit cards!  Why?  Why not!  No, seriously, because the people who benefit from credit card rewards are paying less, which might be forcing everyone else to pay more.  I kid you not:

For several years, I’ve wondered whether my aggressive pursuit of credit card rewards made me a selfish consumer.

After all, the 1 to 3 percent or more of every transaction that merchants pay to accept the cards is a significant cost, and the small local retailers that make neighborhoods vibrant often pay a higher percentage.

Stores then build those fees into higher prices, so people who aren’t earning any rewards can end up subsidizing those who do. Many of these people have no credit cards because they’re financially troubled.

So the risk is that we perpetuate a sort of reverse Robin Hood problem, as Prof. Steven Semeraro of Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego puts it. It’s possible that the poor pay subsidies to finance the rewards of the affluent.

Andrew Martin’s article in The Times earlier this week noted how quickly the fees that merchants pay to accept certain debit cards had risen, too. That suggests a related question: Wouldn’t we all be better off if those of us who use plastic to earn free travel or cash back laid down our cards en masse?

Wow.  We have come a long way from "Save The Whales". 

So this week, I tried to figure out what would happen if we did just pay cash, or if there’s a better course of action for people who spend in a self-interested fashion but still have a conscience.

Still have a conscience that pesters you when you buy things?  Hmm, would writing a check to charity help?  Or back to credit cards, if I pay cash in an expensive restaurant on order to hold down prices, does that benefit "the poor", or other presumably well-off patrons of the restaurant?

Our intrepid Consumer with a Conscience staggered on with an essentially meaningless statistic:

As for the cost to consumers of all the card use, the National Retail Federation figures that the so-called interchange fees that their members pay to accept Visa and MasterCard alone cost an average of $427 an American household in 2008. Add in other fees the stores pay, plus costs for American Express and Discover, and that number could approach $600.

But that number is irrelevant since it includes, for example, the costs incurred by high end stores.  Bringing the prices down at Nieman Marcus won't help the poor.  What the author needs (and good luck) is some category of store catering to both rich and poor, or a commodity bought by both.  Gas stations are the only example that comes to mind.

The author eventually grinds to a non-conclusion, but we are hungry for more.  We eagerly await his study of the impact of his air conditioner use on the rest of us  - does he realize that it heats up the city for pedestrians and those poor enough not have have a countervailing AC?  He ought to be sweltering in his little childless apartment next July.

In The Future, Everyone Will Be Mentally Ill For Fifteen Minutes.

The future will arrive in 2013, although some folks have made a good head start.