Political Science is turning up some interesting biases. It is now known that undecided voters are very partisan and probably have made their mind up already based on those biases. Another new data point is that
the federal reserve behaves differently when a Democrat is in office than when a Republican is.
The Federal Reserve Bank behaves very differently when the White House is occupied by a Democrat than when it is occupied by a Republican. The Fed Funds Rate, the primary lever used by the Fed to manage the nation's economy, tends to rise during Democratic administrations and fall during Republican administrations. This pattern may help explain why Republicans have controlled the White House more frequently than Democrats in recent decades.
For
pollsters like Nate Silver who use a fundamental form of modeling which takes into account the economy as a baseline for re-election, the so-called federal reserve being hawkish on inflation when a Democrat is President and a Dove when a Republican is can lead to a different baseline for Democratic incumbents and challengers.
This poses a real issue as the Federal Reserve is supposed to be politically independent. One of the reasons for a politically independent Federal Reserve bank is that monetary decisions will be based upon the good for the economy rather than for the good of whichever political party is in power. Both the Washington and Westminster system have moved in this direction believing that an independent central bank is good policy.
The US has seen more inequality than most countries during the neoliberal period from the 1970s to today, and even after the big financial crash of 2007, in equality has intensified in the US. We
see CEOs arguing that the deficit is the biggest problem facing the US rather than unemployment.
It is possible that this partian nature of monetary policy from the federal reserve is an outcome of this inequality. It looks like the US is moving to a class society in one way or another which is really sad if that is the case. The amazing political economy that brought us the first man on the moon, the internet, the iphone and universal internet search is sadly unwinding itself from its potential over class bias.
More:
Matthew O'Brien has a counter view of the same study:
In other words, there hasn't been a persistent bias -- though there may have been in the 1970s -- and both parties have plenty of reason to say the Fed has helped their political opponents. ... Central bankers are human, and like the rest of us humans, they have political preferences. Sometimes -- ahem, Alan Greenspan -- they act on those preferences, but for the most part they do not, at least in the post-Volcker period. Central bankers are technocrats first, humans second.
O'Brien argues that the Federal Reserve were acting like technocrats first rather than partisans, subconscious partisans or humans.
Phoenix Eats Out is the restaurant review site for
Phoenix,
Scottsdale and
Old Town Scottsdale which lists the modernist and contemporary restaurants, taverns and bars in the greater Phoenix area.
This is the list of the most popular restaurants pages from phoenixeatsout.com that have been viewed the most;
My personal favourite restaurants in Phoenix are
AZ88,
Postinos,
Bomberos with
Grazie,
Humble Pie,
Orange Table,
The Vig,
Fez and others coming close behind. View the complete list with the photo-journalistic style images on
phoenixeatsout.com
Arizona is an outdoor state and has lots of hiking in the city and around the state. Phoenix is unusual for most cities in having several large mountains in the center of the city with great hiking. Anyone who comes to Phoenix has to do the
Echo Canyon trail on Camelback and the
Summit Hike on Squaw Peak or Piesta Peak. The views of the city, suburbs and surrounding mountains are wonderful from Camelback and Piesta Peak.
For more experienced hikers there is the McDowell Mountains in North Scottsdale that has several difficult and strenuous hikes in
Tom's Thumb and
Bell Pass. Alternatively, you can hike the highest mountain in Arizona. At 12,600 feet
Humphrey's Peak is a long and difficult hike.
Between 2004 and 2009 this site,
southsearepublic.org, was a constitutional blog based on scoop which focused on Australian and global constitutional issues.
One of the strongest aspects of it was the development of constitutions by those involved in the blog. These constitutions are the outcome:
The constitutions were built using principles from Montesquieu's separation of powers, the enlightnment's universal political rights and the ancient Athenian technology of sortition and choice by lot.
South Sea Republic started in 2004 as an Australian constitutional blog in 2004 based on scoop software. It was an immigrative outgrowth of Kuro5hin. The archives for each year since then;
The articles are ordered by views.
I am an Australian living in the United States as a permanent resident.
I am a software developer by trade and mostly work in Java and jump between middleware and front end.
I originally worked in the New York area of the United States in telecommunications before moving to Washington DC and
working in a mix of telecommunications, energy and ITS. I started my own software company before heading out to
Arizona and working with Shutterfly. Since then I have joined a startup in the Phoenix area and am thoroughly enjoying myself.
I do a lot of photography which I post on this website, but also on flickr. I have a photo-journalistic website which lists
the modernist and contemporary restaurants in phoenix. I have a site on the
Australian Flying Corps [AFC] which has been around since the 1990s and which I unfortunately
lost the .org URL to during a life event; however, it is under the
www.australianflyingcorps.com URL now.
The AFC website has gone through several iterations since the 90s and the two most recent are
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2004-2002) and
Australian Flying Corps Archives(2002-1999) which are good places to start.
