Couldn’t Help But Notice (090407)

I indicated my disinterest in following the daily ins and outs of a 23-month presidential campaign way back in December (last two paragraphs). Since then, the maneuvering by states wanting to be first, or nearly first, in the presidential primary process has spun out of control. Michigan wants its voters to brave possibly blizzard-like elements in mid-January — maybe, at least based on early results, to more quickly forget a certain football team’s potentially very ugly season.

If the Wolverine State’s move stands, it means that New Hampshire voters, whose state has a law that its primary must come first, will barely have time to put away the New Year’s champagne glasses before they vote. In turn, Iowa’s citizens may be taking Christmas wrappings out to the trash on the way to voting in their caucuses.

All of this will chronologically take place not just weeks, but months before the following took place in previous election cycles:

• An incumbent president deciding not to run for reelection (LBJ, March 31, 1968)
• The “I paid for this microphone” vs. “we were sandbagged” incident (Reagan and Bush, early March 1980)
• Even as late as 1988, the “Super Tuesday” primaries following New Hampshire were on March 9.

There are three words to describe the current reverse leapfrogging: Stark, Raving, Mad. The whole enterprise is in need of a comprehensive top-to-bottom rethink.

Smoke-filled rooms (or perhaps latte-laced lounges, to accommodate 21st century preferences) have never looked so good.
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Texas recently became the 34th state to pass a law giving consumers the ability to freeze their credit. A credit freeze prevents anyone, including you, from accessing your credit information. It is a powerful tool for preventing identity theft (however, it does NOT keep ID thieves from using existing accounts you might have unless you close them all and get new account numbers). If you want or need to buy a house or car, or otherwise have your credit file accessed by a lender or other party, you have to “unfreeze” or “thaw” your credit file, then “refreeze” it when you’re done. More info on credit freezes, and why they are needed, are at this previous BizzyBlog post.

The Wiki entry for “Credit freeze” only lists 25 states with freeze laws. Ohio is not one of them, and I don’t think the legislature slipped in a freeze law in while I wasn’t looking. The Buckeye State should have passed freeze legislation long ago. Better yet, Congress should pass a credit freeze law allowing anyone to freeze their credit (many state laws only allow those who have been victims of ID theft to put freezes on). Ohio Congressman Paul Gillmor has sponsored one such bill (HT Weapons of Mass Discussion), which, among other things, allows for free thaws and freeze restorations (most state laws allow the credit bureaus to charge up to $10 for each thaw and restoration; since there are three major bureaus, it may cost up to $60 during any kind of multiple-lender search for credit). The principal benefit of a national law would be uniform rules for all, just as the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA) apply uniformly nationwide. Legislation of this nature is consistent with the federal government’s constitutional role in interstate commerce.

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From the “Why are you surprised? Department — Cypress Semiconductor CEO T.J. Rodgers and several Dartmouth alums, including Volokh Conspirator and erstwhile sparring partner Todd Zywicki (his latest Dartmouth-related post is here), have used their elected positions as trustees at the school to advocate “controversial” things like halting the deterioration, objectively measured, in the school’s quality of education. Y’know, like having real professors instead of grad assistants teach classes, keeping overhead low so that as much money as possible goes to instruction, etc.

The Empire appears to be on the verge of striking back by taking all meaningful oversight away from the trustees and giving it to an unelected star chamber modeled on Harvard.

If they succeed, the obvious warning to prospective Big Green students is that $48 grand doesn’t buy what it used to.

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A big mistake — a very, very big mistake, noted in a sensible Toledo Blade editorial:

THE reported cash-for-hostages agreement reached by South Korea with the Taliban in Afghanistan is a textbook mistake, with potentially unfortunate consequences for the United States.

….. Although the South Koreans deny it, the understanding in Afghanistan is that they paid cash to the Taliban for release of the hostages, perhaps millions of dollars. That is very bad practice in hostage negotiations because it, in effect, sets a price for future hostages and makes similar kidnappings more likely.

Of course it does.