TRUMP | Has He Revoked Pardons for Obama's Turkeys?

President Obama pardoning a turkey.

Reports are circulating on social media that President Trump has issued an Executive Order to revoke all turkey pardons granted by former President Obama and immediately execute the turkeys.

It is, of course, too late for Trump to execute the earlier turkeys (there were reportedly 16 in all over Obama's eight years) who have gone on by now to Turkey Heaven.

The average life of a turkey is only about three years; the maximum recorded longevity for a turkey is reportedly 12 years.

The reports of the Pardon Revocations are satirical, says Snopes.

FUNERALS | How Many Should Presidents Attend?

I have been getting some emails recently that begin with a terribly sad story about someone who served their country well and then died, and people came from all over the country.

These stories are emotionally charged. They  capture my attention. Then, in the last paragraph, the point of the whole story turns out to be an attack on President Obama for not coming to the funeral.

He should have been there, says the email, and by not attending he is showing disrespect for the person or people who served their country heroically, or tragically, or very well, and so he is a bad person or at least a bad president...

Sometimes there is a comment to the effect that if President Obama can play golf, he can go to the funeral...

We need to put this kind of email in a box with a heavy weight attached and sink it to the bottom of the sea–at least the last paragraph that politicizes everything that went before.

We have only one President, and only four years between elections. How do we really want our Presidents to spend their time in office?

Think about the numbers.

In 2010 there were 2.5 million deaths in the United States. Let's say that a super-strong case for the virtue, nobility, courage and patriotism of the deceased can be made for one percent of these deaths. If we required the personal attendance of the President of the United States at each of these funerals, that means 250,000 funerals per year, or about 1,000 funerals per working day.

Factor in the overseas funerals and other events that the President is expected to attend, and good cases for his attendance make bad principles for how Presidents should spend their time.

Other countries solve the problem by having a head of state who is not the CEO. They have a person who is like a non-CEO Chairman–a monarch like the Queen of England is a good example. In this country the Vice President seems to serve this role. The problem of deciding which memorials to attend still remains, but the task is at least cut in half.

If we want our Presidents to keep their attention focused on national priorities like job creation and international relations, I think we should be critical of calls for them attend more ceremonies.

What do you think?

BLS | Boy Cries "Wolf" Again on Unemployment Data

Funny... but unfair. (Washington Post cartoon, 2011)

Onto her 23, 2014–A New York Post columnist yesterday wrote that Los Angeles, "the city known as America’s story factory", is "making up Census data".

This is a reprise of a challenged report last year  emanating from Census worker Julius Buckmon that the BLS had been "faking" the unemployment numbers in Philadelphia in 2012 to make President Obama look good for his reelection.

The columnist, John Crudele, says the new whistleblower reports that Census workers in the Los Angeles region have been manipulating economic data and that she is now coming forward because she “applauds” whistleblowers in Denver and Philadelphia.

Crudele's report last year was in support of former GE CEO Jack Welch, a self-identified Republican who publicly criticized the BLS in September 2012 when the U.S. unemployment rate dropped to 7.8 percent from 8.1 percent. Welch tweeted:

Unbelievable jobs numbers..these Chicago guys will do anything..can't debate so change numbers.

His tweet was widely critiqued by people who noted GE's own reputation for earnings manipulation. Sample conclusions:

• In the Atlantic, Jordan Weissman argues that poor survey data wouldn't make much difference. He says the unemployment data historically mirror the payroll-jobs data, which are more broadly based. 

• The Census Bureau’s Office of Inspector General looked into Buckmon's report and concluded:

Our investigation did not find any evidence to support allegations that supervisors in the Philadelphia Regional Office manipulated, or attempted to manipulate, the unemployment rate prior to the 2012 presidential election.

• Commerce Inspector General Todd Zinser found wrongdoing on the part of Buckmon, but not his supervisors.

The reason for public concern is that the Census Bureau conducts a survey of about 60,000 households each month to find out who is working and who is unemployed. These surveys are turned over to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, to compute and estimate the monthly unemployment rates, which are usually reported on the first Friday of every month and are closely watched by Wall Street and politicians contemplating reelection.

The LA whistleblower brings to four the number of regions where survey problems are alleged by Crudele - Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver and now LA. (No problems have recently surfaced in the other two regions, New York and Atlanta.)  Each region is divided into Field Service Areas (FSAs) with 10-15 field reps reporting to one supervisor. The BLS requires a 90 percent success rate for interviews to be included in the Current Population Survey. The LA whistleblower told The New York Post:

There are some FSAs that month after month had a 100 percent response rate. That alone should raise flags! I can understand an occasional 100 percent response rate but you have to raise an eyebrow when some FSAs have 100 percent every month.

At any rate, the unemployment rate was just reported as having fallen in September to 5.9 percent, below the benchmark 6 percent rate - historically considered the rate below which inflationary pressures are supposed to start. So the decline in 2012 was certainly not off the trend line.

CITYECONOMIST | Blog at 110K views, October 2015

Thank you for reading my blog.

The most-read posts in October were (in order of the number of page views during the month):

Demography, Destiny and the Employment-Population ... Oct 10, 2014

President Obama Visits Chelsea NYC, One-Time Alin... Oct 7, 2014

Workplace Innovation - Where Brazil Was #1 in 2014... Jul 29, 2014

Job Growth Strong, Unemployment Below 6% (Comment)... Oct 3, 2014

How Candy Cigarettes Contribute to the U.S. Budget... Jan 1, 2012

NYC More Catholic, Jewish, Muslim Feb 15, 2008

If you're so smart, why ain't you rich? Oct 11, 2014

Low Labor Force Participation Rate - More Theories... Oct 18, 2014

How FDR's Team Calmed the Panic and Created 70 Yea... Oct 16, 2014

What Caused the Depression? Oct 16, 2014

OBAMA | Visit to Chelsea Area, One-Time Alinsky Battleground

The Presidential Car carrying President Obama is first in line here, with a flag flying on each side of the front hood.
All photos by John Tepper Marlin (for permission to use, email teppermarlin at aol.com).

President Obama has arrived, a few minutes late, to visit the 400 block of West 22nd Street.

I have a bird's-eye view. He is expected to be here for an hour. It's a $25,000-per-guest fundraiser.

The neighborhood is of some importance in the history of community organizing. Saul Alinsky was here to organize the neighborhood, but it did not go so well (see below).

Not a good day to be illegally parked when "No Parking
Tuesday" signs abounded.

During the past few days, there seem to have been 1,000 federal, state and local police and sanitation workers in the area, checking and cleaning and barricading.

For local residents, it has been hard to miss that a VIP is visiting:

• Deliveries to this block were cancelled for today.
• All the Citibikes were removed from the racks in the block (see photo). 
• Two days ago barriers were brought in barricading the entire block and Ninth Avenue to the north and south (see photo).
• All public trash baskets and other "street furniture" (newspaper delivery boxes) have been removed.
• "No Parking Tuesday" signs went up over the weekend.
• This morning the NYPD tow trucks were out to enforce the parking ban. Three of them were just now getting ready to tow cars away across the road (see photo).



Oct. 7 morning - Cleaning the 400 block of West 22nd St.
 Obama is hours away from visiting the white house
the street-cleaning truck is in front of. Note Citibikes
 are removed, and the barriers extend all down the block.

• Sanitation trucks - cleaning trucks and two big trucks full of sand to barricade the block - arrived this morning (see photo).
• Police officers are heavily concentrated in the area, including on top of a couple of buildings (see photo).

The intrusion on the neighborhood of security measures did not go unnoticed and was slated for discussion at the next block association meeting.

So where did the President go? To 460 West 22 Street, a renovated 16-foot-wide brownstone. Neighborhood gossip is the owners spent $10 million on the renovation. But the fact is the owners themselves say it was purchased for $4 million and the renovation cost $4 million.

It is advertised by Douglas Elliman (Eklund Gomes team) for sale with a lofty asking price of $16.25 million. The publicity from the fundraiser will clearly help see the building at some price. (See end of post for more on the house.)

The Alinsky Connection

The neighborhood has a community organizing history, which Barack Obama is surely - as a former community organizer in Chicago - aware of. Obama studied at the Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF),  created by Saul Alinsky with the help of supporters like Marshall Field III, Sears heiress Adele Rosenwald Levy, Gardiner Howland Shaw (an FDR assistant secretary of state) and Eugene Meyer, an investment banker who chaired the Fed under Hoover in 1930-33.

With the help of graduates of the IAF training, Alinsky had an early success organizing the Back of the Yards area, the meat-packing district made infamous in Upton Sinclair's 1906 novel The Jungle. During the late 1930s and 1940s, Alinsky formed the Back of the Yards [Neighborhood] Council (BOYC), which brought together (1) Catholic priests looking to retain and expand their congregations with (2) organizers for the far-left Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee, which was looking for troops to mobilize. The alliance worked well for long enough to establish Alinsky, in the words of William F. Buckley, Jr., as  "very close to being an organizational genius".

Eugene Meyer and his wife Agnes co-owned The Washington Post and in 1945 he wrote a six-part series praising Alinsky's Chicago work.  Assembled as a book called The Orderly Revolution, it put Alinsky on the map.

Awaiting the President - a view up 9th Avenue from 22nd St.
At left, London Terrace, first U.S. urban renewal project, built
in 1931. At right, Penn South, the ILGWU-sponsored co-op
 dedicated in 1962 by JFK and Eleanor Roosevelt.

Around that time, Alinsky wrote Reveille for Radicals (1946), although his Rules for Radicals (1971, the year before his death) is now better known. 

The Rules were circulating in draft in the 1960s; Alinsky said that in this book he was seeking to provide the kind of guidance to "Have-Nots" (the 99 percent) that centuries ago Niccolo Macchiavelli's The Prince provided for the "Haves" (what we call today the 1 percent).

Less known is that Alinsky was brought in to Chelsea in the late 1950s by Hudson Guild, which obtained for him a $300,000 grant to organize Chelsea. At that time, the area between 23rd Street and 28th Street that was soon to be razed to make way for ILGWU leader David Dubinsky's Penn [Station] South development was still mostly composed of aging tenements, which were largely occupied by the families of Irish Catholic longshoremen and their families.

There was much discussion of a need for urban renewal in the area, and in 1958 the ILGWU plan for developing the area was made public. Dan Carpenter heard of Alinsky's success in Chicago and thought he would be useful in mobilizing Chelsea to address its urban reutilization needs, perhaps with an alternative plan to the one that the ILGWU was working on,

Security officers on the roof opposite the house
Obama is visiting.

Dan Carpenter was originally "head worker" at Hudson Guild, the well-regarded settlement house. He was then named Executive Director. Around that time he married the daughter of the founder of Hudson Guild, John Lovejoy Elliott, who was active with the Ethical Culture Society ("deeds not creeds"). I am familiar with the Society because both of my children went to the Ethical Culture School in Manhattan.

Alinsky's first move, following his Back of the Yards playbook, was to form the Chelsea Community Council, with Hudson Guild as his main local partner. However, at its organizing meeting in 1958, this Council, according to someone who was there and told me about it, fell apart.

The entry tent to the house.

The problem seems to be that Alinsky was following the playbook he had developed in Chicago, where his success had depended on the active cooperation of several Cardinal Archbishops of Chicago - Stritch until 1958, then Meyer and Bernardin. So he recruited Father Robert Dunn of St. Columba's Church on 25th Street east of Eighth Avenue. But this greatly distressed Dan Carpenter and other members of the Liberal Party, because the Catholics in the area operated independently of, and were suspicious of, the local socialists and Communists who led some of the labor union locals.

The Catholic Church was focused on its flock - ministering to the Irish and Puerto Rican residents who constituted, by one report, two-thirds of the 60,000 area residents - and had little time or patience to work with Alinsky's other main partners. St. Columba's and the Guardian Angel Church on 10th Avenue between 21st and 22nd Street were struggling to care for their aging Irish dockworkers and families, at the same time as the influx of Puerto Rican immigrants was changing the character and needs of the congregations.

The house at 460 West 22 Street. Note
Cipriani catering truck and glass-enclosed
penthouse. 

Hudson Guild was seen as challenging Catholic doctrine when, for example, it distributed information in the neighborhood about birth control or the philosophy of the Ethical Culture Society.

So when at the organizing meeting of the Chelsea Community Council, Father Dunn arrived with a list of people he was going to appoint to get things done, the Liberal Party members were distressed. They were expecting a proper election.

Both sides were shocked at each other, and the possibility of a viable partnership among the competing groups was pretty much all over after that. Dan Carpenter - a courtly man with a gentle manner - told me before he died that he was personally glad to see Alinsky leave town.

Dan lived in the 400 block of 20th Street, opposite the Episcopal General Theological Seminary, part of the Chelsea Historic District. He told me the 400 West 22nd Street block was very important during the controversy.

The Clintons have a connection to the story - not just that they named their daughter after the neighborhood (and the song "Chelsea Morning") but also that Hillary wrote her senior thesis at Wellesley on Saul Alinsky.

Looking east from the 400 block of West 22 Street. 

She basically said, according to a report - the thesis was kept under wraps during the Clinton presidency - that Alinsky's methods were not always successful. She could have used Chelsea as a case in point. Saul Alinsky reportedly was impressed enough with her thesis to offer Hillary Clinton a job when she graduated from Wellesley. Instead, she went on to law school; but she kept in touch with Alinsky by mail during the next few years.

The House That Obama Visited

Clever For Sale signs at 412 W 22 St.

The house at 460 West 22 Street is approximately 5,000 sf, which would put the asking price at $3,250 per sf. The listing says it has a garden in back. It is featured on the "Driven by Design" tour of Architectural Digest. The listing goes on:

Not so effective a sign.

Originally constructed in 1840, this landmarked, Italianate single-family townhouse just underwent a multi-million dollar complete artisanal-renovation and full restoration by Fanuka, Inc. (of Million Dollar Contractor) and Suk Design. Located on Chelsea's most refined block, this house is directly adjacent to picturesque Clement Moore Park, and is within short distance to the High Line, the Hudson River, Avenues World School, and the Dia Museum / Chelsea Art District. At 64' deep, this home features triple exposures and over 6000 sf of indoor living & outdoor entertaining space, which has been pristinely cultivated into a 6-floor [including basement], 4 bedroom / 4 bathroom + 1 powder-room mansion with 4 gas fireplaces and elevator.

According to the New York Times and HuffPost (Blake Fleetwood), the fundraiser is at a building with landmark status and is owned by Bryan Eure and his husband Bill White, the former president of Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum and the chairman of business development firm Constellation Group.

Huge pumpkin outside 460
W 22 St. - trick or treaters,
here is the stop to make!

I fear this post might be viewed as "native advertising" - i.e., advertising that serves the purposes of Douglas Elliman while ostensibly just telling a story.

May I therefore draw your attention to two other houses on the same side of the street in the same block, also for sale, one with three For Sale signs and one with a hand-made sign that notes how much space you would get with this house.

Meanwhile, I recommend that trick-or-treaters stop by 460 West 22 Street at the end of October. Brownstoners on the block take Halloween seriously. They are also pretty organized and I wouldn't be surprised if some lawyers connected with or hired by property-owners in the neighborhood are right now looking for ways to limit the number of events that residents are allowed to have that shut down the block for a week at a time. New York City has a process for approving parades and street fairs, and some of these fairs are less disruptive than this fundraiser was. Stay tuned.

Sources include interviews with local residents and: John T.  McGreevy, Parish Borders: The Catholic Encounter with Race in the Twentieth Century Urban North, Historical Studies of Urban America, University of Chicago, 1996.

The Even Longer War

Afghanistan War Became Longest  U.S. War Ever. But Isn't
the Gulf War  Longer than All 20th Century Wars Combined?

The "Long War" is a term used by Philip Bobbitt in his (long - 1,000 pages) 2002 book to label the battle between fascist and communist  forces in the 20th century. The fight was over which system would replace the colonial system of the previous century. The Long War takes place between 1914 and 1990.

Unlike the 20th century wars, however, the current "War on Terror" has continued uninterrupted since 1990.

Last month, on May 23, President Obama said that the United States can't continue in a state of perpetual war. "This war, like all wars, must end." The New York Times editorial board agreed.

How long have we been at war in the Gulf and how does that compare with how long we were actually at war during the 1914-1990 period?

One answer is a list of wartime periods on a Veterans Administration web site, where it is posted for administrative purposes, to comply with the law on computing pensions and pension eligibility. The VA needs to know whether the United States is at war or not when someone is on active military duty. Under current law, the VA recognizes the following wartime periods:

World War I  - April 6, 1917 – November 11, 1918 - 1.5 years
World War II - December 7, 1941 – December 31, 1946 - 4 years
Korean War ("conflict") - June 27, 1950 – January 31, 1955 - 4.5 years
Vietnam War ("era")  I February 28, 1961-August 4, 1964 - 3.5 years (only in Vietnam)
__________________ II August 5,1964-May 7, 1975 - 10.5 years (region-wide)
Gulf War I August 2, 1990-September 10, 2001, 11 years
________II September 11, 2001, followed by the "Authorization for Use of Military Force" that continues through a future date to be set by law or by Presidential Proclamation.

If I understand the VA website correctly, we can conclude from it the following:

• In August 2013, the Gulf War will have continued for 23 years.
• If we count the Vietnam War as having started only in Phase II (i.e., in August 1964), we have now been at war in the Gulf longer than all four of the prior wars combined. 
• If we count the Vietnam War as having started in Phase I, in February 1961, then the four prior wars add up to 24 years and their duration will be exceeded by the present Gulf War in August 2014.

So our current Gulf War is now, or will be within about a year, longer than the actual U.S. wartime periods in the  "Long War".

EMPIRE STATE BLDG | Signals Vote Total

For the first time, the Empire State Building
shows Electoral College votes on a bar graph.
Photo by JT Marlin from his apartment.

Nov. 6, 2012–For the first time, the Empire State Building today has been signaling the results of the U.S. electoral college vote. (If a lot of Americans have their way, this will also be the last time that the signal will be used. for this purpose.)

Like the election of the Pope, one can see the outcome of the election by looking at the top of the building. But the signal is not polluting smoke but the color of the building itself. The lights at top show progress toward the magic of the 270-electoral-vote target.

The light show is being provided by CNN. The left side of the top of the building shows Romney Electoral College votes in red and on the right the Obama Electoral College votes in blue.

For much of the evening the lights under the bar graph section of the building were red, white and blue. When Obama reached 270 electoral votes, the rest of the lights went to all blue.

The bar graphs were made possible by new LED panels. This is the first use of the new lights. Many Americans would like to end the Electoral College and use the popular vote to decide the election. In that case the bar graph would take on a different meaning.

How Much Must You Give for a White House Invite?

The NY Times today ("White House Welcomes Donors...", Sunday, April 15) had a page 1 story by Mike McIntire and Michael Luo about President Obama's invitations to the White House. Fascinating stuff.

Biggest surprise for me was the degree of White House transparency. The Federal Election Commission (FEC) keeps track of campaign donations (see www.data.gov) and the Executive Office of the President keeps a public log of visits to the White House that is posted on www.data.gov. Inevitably, someone was going to tie these together.

The donation totals are cumulative over three election cycles, i.e., from 2008 through 2012 (first quarter). Surprise (not) - there is a pretty close relationship between how much money you give and the probability of a White House invitation - for this purpose a visit equates to an invitation. The Times story doesn't provide a formula, but here is what I got inputting the numbers from the Times chart - see my chart immediately below.

PROBABILITY OF AN INVITATION y=26.3% + 40.2%x$GIFT (in thousands of dollars).
So if you give $100,000 over a 5.5-year period, your probability of an invitation is 26%+40%x100, which is (26+40)% = 66%.
What this means is that two out of three donors at the $100,000 level visit the White House. 
But a few caveats are needed, and a couple of questions must be asked.

First off, the FEC disclosure reports include gifts of only $200 and above. That excludes many small gifts via the Internet. So there will some invitations to dinner to the Internet givers that wouldn't show up on the FEC reports. The probability at the "zero" gift level is the probability that someone gets a White House invitation after giving only (at least) $200. The probability applies to givers of $200 or more.

Second, the White House visitors' list is hard to navigate for purposes of reconciling the numbers. What rules were followed in deciding who is included from the list of invitees? For example, many overseas visitors show up on the site and they are not permitted to give. Many of visits are labeled as events ("Holiday Party"). Some of the locations to which visitors are invited are strictly public rooms. How was the list narrowed down?

Finally, to draw conclusions that would characterize the Obama White House in any way, would we not need some data from other presidencies? How does the Obama era differ from Bush 43, for example?   

Mayor Koch Makes a Couple of Good Points

Former Mayor Ed Koch doesn't blog, but he does send out from an email list maintained by his law office an occasional letter with his opinion of movies he has seen recently and sometimes he provides some comments on local or national political issues. He has taken positions on individuals in the news, such as candidates for public office.

Today, on the eve of President Obama's much-awaited speech with new proposals for job creation, the Mayor proposes that the President include the proposal that "the bankruptcy laws be amended immediately to empower bankruptcy judges to reduce principal as well as interest."

This would help clear the sticky foreclosure process. Houses lose value when banks push forward their claims slowly. Some banks do not want to reveal too quickly how many mortgages they signed on to are substandard and are being foreclosed on.

The usual argument against allowing bankruptcy courts to write down the principal owed is “moral hazard”. (This is an insurance term referring to the hazard that insurance can remove the incentive for insured owners to look after their property. Over-insurance, for example, creates a moral hazard because the insured gets more from the property when it is destroyed than the property is worth. Someone who is not moral might torch their own property.)

The argument against allowing bankruptcy courts to write down principal is that it would, in the Mayor's words, "encourage future borrowers to borrow more than they could repay."

Then the Mayor delivers his zinger, addressed to the President:

If “moral hazard” were the standard, why were the banks, which made decisions that were financially devastating to this country, bailed out to the tune of billions of dollars by laws enacted by Congress and signed by you, as well as actions taken by the Federal Reserve?  Remember, Mr. President, that banks were given those billions to provide liquidity to businesses, but instead used the taxpayers’ monies to buy U.S. Treasury bonds to enhance their balance sheets with the interest received.

Something needs to be done to finish "marking to market" in the housing industry. Borrowers have received a lot less help from the government than the lenders. The Mayor's proposal would redress the balance for the remaining borrowers. This would be a good addition to the President's proposals.