War on Bridges

MITHRIDATES
Some folks don't think our infrastructure is in bad shape — or at least don't think it should be a priority of the federal government. As Bill Kristol wrote a few months back, if the government wants to spend, it should spend on national security above all else:

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If you think some government action is inevitable, you might instead point out that the most unambiguous public good is national defense. You might then suggest spending a good chunk of the stimulus on national security — directing dollars to much-needed and underfunded defense procurement rather than to fanciful green technologies, making sure funds are available for the needed expansion of the Army and Marines before rushing to create make-work civilian jobs. Obama wants to spend much of the stimulus on transportation infrastructure and schools. Fine, but lots of schools and airports seem to me to have been refurbished more recently and more generously than military bases I’ve visited.

First of all, having bridges that don't fall down, faster trains, and pot-hole free roads is an "unambiguous public good." Increased productivity, better safety, and lower auto maintenance costs all come with the package. It's not "make-work" if it improves all those things. The "recentness of refurbishment" argument is amusing in its absurdity and irrelevance, but not worth any more ink (pixels?). I don't mean to argue that expansion of the army and national defense aren't important (they are), but let's move beyond the knee-jerk rejectionists and accept that it is a necessary and good thing to invest in infrastructure improvements.

But we've got another problem. Returning soldiers are more prone to suicide, violence, and unemployment than the rest of society. There are some programs to help find employment for returning veterans, such as Hire Vets First, but according to Veterans Today, many service members "possess limited transferable job skills or very little civilian work experience".

So what do these two problems have to do with each other? Simple. Besides toppling armies, killing terrorists, and maintaining order, a great deal of the work in Iraq and Afghanistan has been — you guessed it — improving infrastructure. By building roads, bridges, and schools the US military is not just trying to win hearts and minds, but improve the economy of these war-ravaged countries so that the populace has better alternatives than opium-harvesting and suicide-bombing. These soldiers with supposedly "limited transferable job skills" have been improving infrastructure while under fire from the Taliban, Sadrites, and Al Qaeda.

If we are going to spend billions — trillions? — on war and infrastructure, it seems sensible to leverage the skills - and assist in the transition to civilian life - of our veterans. And — cue feigned outrage from the Right — this is a case where direct involvement from that most fearsome institution, the federal government, might do better than piecemeal tax incentives and local organizations. A vet might not have any clout trying to get a union card to work construction — the man said "son if it was up to me . . ." — but a dedicated federal infrastructure corps could easily transition returning soldiers to good (and needed) jobs at relatively little cost and great benefit to us and them.

This need not be limited to regular infrastructure improvements. We can keep the Right happy — or at least less sad — by adding the Mexico security fence to the top of the list of projects. This is a win-win opportunity, and there's a cost to doing nothing . .

I've Just Revolutionized Grocery Shopping

PHUTATORIUS

Here's how: you put scanners into the shopping carts.

Customer comes to the store, get a cart with a built-in scanner. He wanders the aisles, fills up his cart — and every time he drops something in, he scans it first. His bill is instantly totaled by the time he's done shopping. Shopper swipes a credit card — that could be built into the cart, too — and he's paid and can go straight out to his car. Done. Easy. Brilliant.
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Oh, sure, the tabloid publishers won't like it: their marketing model depends on people standing, bored, in a checkout line. You could expect to see a number of front page stories in the Weekly World News and National Enquirer: Shopping Cart Scanner Explodes, Mauls Family of Four. But I'll take those bastards on.

What store in its right mind would do this, Phutatorius? Who's gonna stick expensive electronic equipment on grocery carts that sit out in the rain and snow and get bashed around in the parking lot? A fair point: how about the scanner snaps onto the bars of the grocery cart? How about you pick one up at the door, and you return it on your way out? Huh? Huh? POW! You have questions — I've got answers.

What about bagging? you ask. Bag as you go, people. It's real easy, and I know you all can do it. Sing along with me now, to the tune of "Shortnin' Bread":

Scan and bag it as you go,
scan and bag,
take a number, talk to Deli Man,
scan and bag.

Scan-as-you-go is the wave of the future, Brothers and Sisters, and you read it first here at FO.

Mathturbation

MITHRIDATES
A recent Slate article documents attempts by mathematicians to solve the problem of Gerrymandering. There are jokes about circles not tessellating well and talk of algorithms to measure compactness, competitiveness, fairness, county integrity . . . the list goes on. And, in my humble opinion, every single one of the yahoos involved misses the point.

As you no doubt recall, we tackled the issue several weeks ago, but the so-called experts haven't learned a thing. The problem isn't that these guys aren't good at math, it's that they've sacrificed what should be the one overarching goal of a redistricting scheme in favor of algorithmic showboating and myriad minor (and/or dubious) goals.
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Let's be clear about that one primary goal. Currently some political party in power can Gerrymander the districts to favor their party — e.g., lump all the Republicans in one district and get small Democratic majorities in the others. We want to prevent this from happening. Period. The following other goals are comparatively inconsequential:

• The idea of compactness is simple. Try to make the districts so that the people in it are as close to the center as possible. Back in the day this was hugely important. No one wanted to travel too far by mule to go hear some blowhards debate about taxes and tariffs and so there was some merit in making the district look more like a circle than a square. But now this is a nice-to-have provided we don't do anything too bizarre. Internet advertising and organizing have made compactness even less relevant.
  
• Competitiveness and fairness are dubious goals. If it happens naturally that one party does better than its proportion of registered voters in the state suggests it should, well good for them. Let's not go out of our way to impose some sort of penalty on popular representatives. And all the fairness proposals have to do with making sure the Democrats and Republicans are evenly dispersed. We want to prevent the parties from making things uneven on purpose, but it's debatable if we want to codify the importance of these two parties in particular by mandating their proportions in congressional districts.
  
• The idea behind county integrity is to match the districts as closely as possible to county line. Really? Who gives a shit? Does anyone even care what county they're in anymore? We shouldn't give one iota of thought to this absurd metric.

The metrics are wrong; but so is the general approach. One of the ideas is to let someone propose a redistricting scheme and then evaluate how "Gerrymandered" it is based on their scoring system. But the party in charge will no doubt still find some way to manipulate the districts in their favor and get a high "score" under the new fancy algorithm — but this time they'll have the cover of a good score. And all that these other metrics accomplish is to make any scheme and evaluation method more complex and therefore less transparent.

Far better to generate the districts according to an objective procedure. We can easily secure our primary goal with a simple, transparent scheme that can't be manipulated by the party in power.

If those involved were more interested in solving the problem and less concerned with showing off their algorithmic creativity, they'd adopt a system that was simpler, not more complicated. But no one likes the simple answer. It's harder to show off how smart you are with a simple answer.

Besides, Mithriblocks are compact enough and tessellate as well as anything. Of course, it doesn't really matter in the end. Those in power don't want the problem solved. They're better off adopting a fancy algorithm that they can manipulate, even if we're not . . .

Three Lousy Intersections

PHUTATORIUS
It's Friday afternoon, and time now to discuss traffic patterns. A great deal of ink (and blood, too, I expect) has been spilled on this Internet and elsewhere over the quality of driving in the Boston area. I don't mean to deny or gainsay any of it with this post. Boston drivers are freakish psychopaths. As friendly as they may be in other contexts (he writes, rolling his eyes), when they get into their cars, they become awful, terrible people. It's a fact. But the state and local traffic authorities don't exactly make life easy for them.

Take these examples:

(1)


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(2)


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The two intersections depicted above are both classic "T"-style intersections. One road runs perpendicular to another and ends. In the case of intersection (1) (Centre Street, Newton), the northbound driver on Centre Street must turn right into eastbound traffic. Intersection (2) (Park Road and South Avenue, Waltham) presents the northbound driver with two options: he/she may turn left or right onto Route 30 — into eastbound or westbound traffic as he/she chooses.

What's worth noting about these intersections is that in both cases, the driver who turns right is likely to get killed. Here's why: at both intersections, a green-arrow traffic signal exhorts the driver to turn right, even though the same signal does not stop the eastbound traffic. In most modern states, a green arrow entitles a driver to turn his/her vehicle in the arrow's direction — and what is more, the driver is entitled to rely on the signal to stop the traffic on the turned-upon road. Indeed, many (I dare not say all) of the green-arrow signals deployed elsewhere in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts operate in this fashion. Not so at these intersections. And so, if you don't know this, you'll probably be killed. Bummer for you.

Hey Commonwealth — hey Newton and Waltham — how about we sub out these mischief-making green arrows for stop signs or red blinking lights?

(3)


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Intersection (3) (Concord Avenue and Common Street, Belmont) doesn't affirmatively mislead drivers into crippling accidents; here the government provides no guidance at all, right or wrong. There is no traffic signal, no stop sign, no policeman on duty — nothing — to establish a right of way here. What is more, the three roads that converge here meet at something close to identical 120-degree angles, so one cannot draw any inferences as to whether one of these "turns" might be regarded as no turn at all, such that a driver might conclude that by going "straight" he/she has the right of way. The closest thing to a pronouncement on this subject comes from Google Maps, which shows that drivers who approach the intersection from the east and north are on Concord Avenue, and they'll stay on Concord if they turn north and east, respectively. In theory, then, maybe drivers who would turn onto or off of Common Street would have to yield.

Anyone who has ever driven to this intersection knows that this is not how matters play out. There are no street signs that would give notice of the regime I seek to superimpose on this chaos. Drivers on all three roads stop short, pull up, eye one another warily, creep up, honk, glare, proceed, flip one another off. Somehow, some way, we get through it, but not without suffering great agitation and outrage.

Probably the most severe irony is the fact that drivers who make it through the intersection and proceed westbound on Common are immediately treated to a giant, portable LCD screen planted squarely at the Common/Royal fork by town authorities to exhort people, on pain of traffic ticket, to fasten their seatbelts. The Town of Belmont apparently regards the area as appropriate for banal public-safety messaging, but not for traffic guidance. Pfft.

It might be that the railway bridge over intersection (3) precludes the use of traffic signals there. Still, a stop sign stuck in the ground on Common, along with in-ground, side-of-road yellow flashing lights to confront drivers approaching west- and north-bound on Concord could settle the issue once and for all. How frickin' hard would that be to implement?

Mithrimander

MITHRIDATES
In 1812, Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry took a step toward immortality by signing into law a redistricting bill that favored his Democratic-Republican party. Yeah, go figure that the [pick one]s did it first! The Boston Gazette coined the term and published the cartoon and long after the man lost his hard G we're still scratching our heads about how to get rid of Gerrymandering and reinstate impartial and sensible congressional districts.

The problem is two-fold:

1. Find a sensible, simple, objective, non-partisan way to draw congressional districts with each new census
2. Convince the powers that be to relinquish control of redistricting and put it in the hands of someone who will implement the above

Let's deal with problem 1 first. There are numerous pseudo-objective proposals out there that seem nice at first, but in reality favor one party over another.

For example, building the districts around population centers seems like a good, simple way to do things. But who tends to live in the middle of population centers? Well, Democrats. So the first district centered around Philadelphia might very well contain 80% Democrats — the Republicans might gladly concede this district to get several 60% Republican districts in return.

So it has to be simpler than that — moreover, we might want to lose the notion that keeping things like cities in one district is necessarily a good thing. In fact, objectivity should be the main goal so that no one party gets a systematic advantage over another and any imbalances would be small and only come by chance and therefore most likely even out over the course of 435 districts. After objectivity, the only thing we're going to care about at this point is convenience. As much as possible, we'll try to make the districts connected sets.

But enough background and theory for now, here's the proposed Mithrimander:

1. Determine n, the number of congressional districts given to a state after the new census
2. If n is even, draw a horizontal line with exactly half the population on either side and apportion n/2 seats to each half; if n is odd, draw a horizontal line with (n-1)/2n (of the total seats and population) above and (n+1)/2n below
3. Repeat step 2, treating each half as a "state", switching horizontal/vertical at each step, until each block has only 1 seat

In the above, we could flip a coin for horizontal/vertical at the beginning in case anyone thinks a north/south split instead of an east/west split favors one party over the other.

The only problem we have — given the regular shape of most of our states — is with a few islands and peninsulas. Basically Hawaii, New York, Massachusetts, and maybe Florida. Some simple adjustment to treat islands as blocks, for example, ought to do the trick, but we can work out the minor details later.

The Mithrimander is perfectly objective, simple to implement, and creates mostly connected districts. It doesn't go out of its way to attain questionable goals (e.g., creating "competitive" districts or keeping cities/counties together). The only worthwhile goal is to ensure that the people are fairly represented in Congress.

Problem #1 solved!

That leaves us with problem #2. How to get the powers that be to adopt this simple, objective proposal. We'll have to leave that one for tomorrow.

PHUTATORIUS
I like it, for all the reasons you've supplied in your antepenultimate paragraph (except for the last sentence, which I'll get to in a minute).

The barriers to getting it done are, of course, considerable. The most obvious is the two parties' shared interest in preserving the districts as they are, given that they've been drawn to carve out such comfortable incumbencies that even vapid personalities like Michele Bachmann can win reelection. And of course the task of district-drawing is assigned to the several states, so you'll have to undertake 50 separate efforts at heroic persuasion rather than just getting it done once.

Here's what I think is more interesting, and maybe it's something you can address in your plan (or your defense of it). Given how info-laden and sophisticated these parties are, they'll both have a strong read on the sort of outcomes this sort of partitioning would generate. As a result, even though to you and me this seems reasonable, neutral, and fair, in any given state we can expect that one party might wholly support Mithrimandering, whereas the other will regard it as a Trojan Horse — based entirely on their reading of the demogeography.

Indeed, I can imagine a situation in which one party would make considerable gains on the other if the first state-slice were made longitudinally. You've arbitrarily (I assume) decided to go with a first latitudinal cut. There's room for argument on this point, and argument there will be, if the facts call for it.

You can politicize anything: consider what I've written in the past about "strict constructionism." One side loves it, because (1) it leads to the outcomes they like and (2) they're able to rationalize away these outcomes as the result of a "neutral" interpretative tool. The other side hates it, because it's a Trojan Horse. To be fair, the Mithrimander proposal is a lot more transparent and a lot less susceptible to perversion than the application of strict constructionism. But the point about politicization still stands. Note that this isn't an critique of what you've proposed per se — it's more of a critique of everything else in the world. So take it as such.

I do have a critique of what you've proposed, and it has to do with arbitrariness. Why all the concern for right angles and north-south and east-west axes? Just because they're simpler and prettier? That would be a fine reason, in your view, because it's so abstracted from what we generally agree ought to be impermissible bases for making district-drawing decisions. But I don't agree that "the only worthwhile goal" is to ensure fair representation. We want our congressmen and -women to go to Washington to represent our local interests. Surely the case can be made that if one of your lines splits a city in half, such that there are two districts, each with half the city and a big chunk of surrounding suburban and rural areas, local interests aren't as well-represented as they might be if one district drew entirely from the city center, and the other from the 'burbs-and-sticks.

Why wouldn't a system that drew concentric circles outward from the city centers be at least as attractive? It would be more complicated to resolve, but potentially more responsive to local interest.

Or am I taking us right down the slippery slope to gerrymandering?

MITHRIDATES
The latitudinal cut is arbitrary. That's why I suggest flipping a coin. You could even flip a coin at each step. One set of coin flip outcomes might favor the Dems, but by putting in the randomness, it's very hard to rig and very hard to complain (well, easy to complain, but harder to convince anyone reasonable that your complaint is legitimate). The expected absolute benefit to either party would be smaller if the outcome were the result of several independent coin flips. Just have Ernst and Young preside over the coin flips or something like that.

The problem is — as you mentioned — going from a system gerrymandered to favor one party to a system that is objective. If you go from a system that gives the Republicans one more seat than they would get under a fair system, well then the Republicans are going to complain.

I do not think rectangles are inherently prettier than circles, and they are certainly not simpler (a circle needs one parameter; a rectangle two). But you can't cover a state with disjoint circles the way you can with the rectangle-like (the parts on the boundary will of course not be straight and right-angled) Mithriblocks.

Your idea about circles starting at city center was addressed above in my example of "pseudo-objective" solutions. That first circle might very well be 90% Democrat because it's all inner city. That's why we want to avoid anything that picks out certain features and focuses on them — this makes it too easy to manipulate for partisan gain.

Moreover, if you really did concentric circles, that second district would be a ring, which I don't think is ideal in terms of convenience (more convenient than, say, randomly assigning each individual to a district, sure, but still not very convenient).

You say splitting up a city makes city interests potentially less represented. I don't know about that. They'd have less representation in each district they were in, but in more districts. I don't know that it's inherently better to have a "city" district and a "country" district. You'd have one representative voting "city" interests and one "country" interests with no reason to ever compromise. It might be better to have two moderate representatives who have to appeal to broader interests. I don't know for sure that splitting interests is a better outcome for the world, but I don't see that it's obviously not — and I prefer a system that ignores these types of things in favor of objectivity anyway.

PHUTATORIUS
Geez. Did I even read your post? You anticipated and accounted for half of what I wrote — and I wrote it all anyway, like I'd had some great revelation. I did read the post: I swear. I just didn't go back and read it again two days later when I wrote the comment.

But to your last points — I think there is something to the view that the more uniform the interests are, the better represented they will be. This is the underlying rationale for having congressional districts (indeed, a Congress) in the first place. And you have accepted a certain amount of this, by choosing to work within the district framework. After all, why hang on to districts, if we're going to radically overhaul the system?

The district framework is not constitutionally mandated: Article I, § 4 simply leaves matters to the states, while vesting Congress with the authority to override the states' judgments on how to elect their representatives. (It's a federal statute that inflicts the district framework on us.) So it might well be possible, notwithstanding what I wrote earlier, to implement the Mithrimander fix in a single federal statute.

If you were interested in abandoning local interest entirely (and I don't think you are), you could dispense with the districts and simply have all the voters in a given state vote for all that states' representatives — subject, I suppose, to the caveat that this approach might overempower voters in, say, California, because they're electing 53 representatives, whereas in Alaska it's just one (although I don't think that system would raise any constitutional issues — it would just piss people off).

But I suppose your approach does the job of optimizing local interest representation under 'mander-pure conditions.

MITHRIDATES
I'm not interested in abandoning local interests. I think districts are good for that — and better obviously than just everyone in the state voting for everyone. You will get at least local interest from the Mithriblocks (yes, I like typing that word) — you just might not get specific group interests such as city or merchant (from back in the day). But it will certainly be local.

I'm glad that this could all be done by federal statute. We'd have to do some analysis, but as long as the near-term impact didn't change the expected breakdown by much, there's hope. And of course, you make this take effect ten years down the road so no one needs to vote their self-interest by voting against.

One more thought on shape. An advantage of Mithriblocks is that they will all be rectangularesque. The way you can tell a Gerrymandered district is by its odd shape. So it will even look fair and objective to a casual observer — this might not be true for some complex arrangement involving several circles around different population centers. There is something to be said for transparency, I think.