More on Political Moneyball

by John W Rodat on October 27, 2012

John Cassidy of the New Yorker has a nice explanation of Nate Silver‘s statistical approach to forecasting elections and a balanced view of how much weight to give it. He contrasts that approach with that of David Brooks, New York Times columnist, who describes himself as a pollaholic, but who’s ultimately a skeptic.

So here are our information and forecasting choices, on election forecasting and on an endless variety of other concerns:

  1. Go on judgement, pure gut instinct, anecdotes, and what we personally see and hear.
  2. Rely solely on hard data, collected systematically, with uncertainty systematically taken into account.
  3. Use a combination of both, starting with anecdotes, judgement and gut instinct.
  4. Use a combination of both, starting with the data and balancing that out with judgement, including knowledge of the data and how they’re collected and analyzed.

Option 1 is throwing away lots of information and deliberately, if not consciously, relying on one’s own biases. We’re all familiar with the expression, “I’ll believe it when I see it.” But far too often people invert that logic and “see it when they believe it” – and don’t see it unless they already believe it. They not only risk being blindsided by reality, they risk being further confused about what blindsides them.

Option 2 is also throwing away information, including what may be the most up-to-date and what may be outside of that which is systematically gathered and processed. Henry Mintzberg critiqued Robert McNamara’s management of the United States’s conduct of the War in Viet Nam for exactly this type of failure. I’m paraphrasing here, but Mintzberg asks the question about who knew better who was winning the war, McNamara with his reams of data or the GI on the ground looking into the eyes of villagers? (See also Mintzberg’s Harvard Business Review paper Managing Government, Governing Management.) We’ve talked before and will talk more about the power of more modern information technologies that enable distributed and shared centralized hard data and decentralized soft data, enabling better decision making.

Note here that Silver is not making managerial or political decisions. Regardless of the domain, political or otherwise, others must.

Option 3 risks reinforcing ones own biases with seemingly hard data and, in doing so, it risks misleading others and ourselves.

Option 4, not surprisingly is my preference, not only in forecasting election results, but generally.

None of these choices will make you right all the time. Regardless of the electoral outcomes, there will be great crowing about one approach or the other having been right and that being “proof” of the rightness of that approach. That will be both wrong and misleadingly dangerous.

I think Silver is quite conscious of the weaknesses of his methods and the tradeoffs he makes in his modeling and that he tries to be explicit about them. And it appears that he’s constantly refining, learning and improving. Most importantly, he doesn’t make absolute statements. He expresses his forecasts in terms of probabilities. That’s really all we can ask.

Anyway, take a look at Cassidy’s article. It doesn’t have any equations.

Tagged as: 538, Election, Moneyball, Nate Silver, UTDD

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A “Moneyball” Moment in the Presidential Campaign

by John W Rodat on October 23, 2012

With two weeks to go before the election, James Fallows notes the increasing difference between the perspective of the “old pros” who believe that Romney has the momentum that will lead him to defeat Obama and the poll and economics-driven number crunchers like Nate Silver whose current numbers suggest that Obama has the advantage.

Fallows likens the difference to the confrontation between the “old head” baseball scouts and the statisticians in Moneyball.

They can’t both be right: on the one side, the Republican partisans and political “pros” who say that Romney is on the certain road to victory, and on the other the quants who say No he is not. Of course either side allows for uncertainty about the final outcome: there are still two weeks to go. But about the state and the trend of the race, at this moment, they are in fundamental disagreement. The “pros” tell us that Romney is catching up, the quants say he is falling behind.

In a way this is a perfect test case of the Michael Lewis Moneyball hypothesis. Apart from Silver’s own background as a sports-stats analyst, we have an exceptionally clear case of people judging from their experience, their “bones,” their personal instinct, etc that things are going one way (like veteran scouts saying that a prospect “looks like a Big Leaguer”), while data (on-base efficiencies in one case, swing-state polls in another) point in the opposite direction.

Betting is about odds. And statistics. And rigorous measurement of probabilities. So I’ll bet with Nate Silver.

Tagged as: Election, Moneyball, Obama, Poll, President, Romney, UTDD

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The Presidential Election – Women and Men and the Distribution of Power

by John W Rodat on October 18, 2012

As I’ll be on the West Coast election week, I voted yesterday.

I voted to re-elect President Obama. Those who know me or who don’t, but who read what I write here or on Twitter, certainly won’t be surprised. But if all you know is my fiscal conservatism and my inclinations towards economics, you might be a bit surprised. When I get a few minutes between now and the election, I’ll try to post some commentary about why I chose Obama over Romney. Though I’m inclined toward wonky, there won’t be enough time necessary for deep, serious, and long. Most of these will be short.

So here goes.

The second Presidential debate has produced a flurry of jokes and commentary about Romney’s “binders of women.” A lot of it is pretty funny, even showing up in product reviews on Amazon. Certainly, we understand the politics of the Obama campaign’s appealing to women for their votes and the Romney campaign’s attempting to minimize the loss of women’s votes.

But, Romney’s awkward wording aside, what’s the big deal about equal pay for equal work? Why couldn’t Romney bring himself to say that that’s a no-brainer? Why is this even an issue? Yes, the raw political rhetoric is to women, but the fundamental principle works equally well for men. Regardless of gender, how can one even hesitate to support equal pay for equal work?

At its core, this issue, like so many others in today’s political turmoil, is about the distribution of power and governmental counterbalances to concentrated private power, corporate, community and home.

Romney, the Republican Party, and their funders support increased concentrations of private power, especially by corporations in the marketplace and by employers over employees.

Chris Matthews (as well as others like Alex Wagner on MSNBC) has had Inside the Actor’s Studio’s James Lipton on to analyze debate performance as theatre. Matthews invited Lipton back yesterday to talk about the theatre of the second debate. Watch the whole thing, but here’s what Lipton said about Romney:

He is that boss who tells lame jokes and waits for everyone to laugh – or else. And he keeps everyone off-balance, uncertain and anxious.

Obama is the President. Romney is “the boss” that we didn’t like and we’re not talking Bruce Springsteen here. (Springsteen is supporting Obama).

Or read this killer article by Charles Pierce in Esquire where he says:

But not even I expected Romney to let his entitled, Lord-of-the-Manor freak flag fly as proudly as he did on Tuesday night. He got in the president’s face. He got in Crowley’s face. That moment when he was hectoring the president about the president’s pension made him look like someone to whom the valet has brought the wrong Mercedes.

“You’ll get your chance in a moment. I’m still speaking.”

Wow. To me, this was a revelatory, epochal moment. It was a look at the real Willard Romney, the Bain cutthroat who could get rich ruining lives and not lose a moment’s sleep. But those people are merely the anonymous Help. The guy he was speaking to on Tuesday night is a man of considerable international influence. Outside of street protestors, and that Iraqi guy who threw a shoe at George W. Bush, I have never seen a more lucid example of manifest public disrespect for a sitting president than the hair-curling contempt with which Romney invested those words. (I’ve certainly never seen one from another candidate.) He’s lucky Barack Obama prizes cool over everything else. LBJ would have taken out his heart with a pair of salad tongs and Harry Truman would have bitten off his nose.

And Romney bitched endlessly — endlessly — about the rules, and why this uppity fellow on the other stool was allowed to speak before he was spoken to, and why he didn’t get to speak at length on whatever he wanted to speak on because, after all, he is the CEO of the stage. Jesus Christ, I’d hate to play golf with the man. He’s the guy who counts to make sure you don’t have too many wedges in your bag. He knows every cheap subsection of every cheap ground rule, and he’ll call you on every one of them. You couldn’t get a free drop out of him with thumbscrews, and forget about conceding any putt outside two inches. And then, on the 18th hole, with all the money on the line, he kicks his ball out of the rough and denies up and down to the rules committee that he did it. Then he goes into the clubhouse bar and nobody sits with him.

Is it any accident that some employers are now threatening layoffs if Obama is re-elected? Is it a surprise that Romney is encouraging this blackmail? Is it a surprise that the extreme Koch brothers, who have thrown millions into this year’s politics on behalf of Republicans and against Democrats, are in the thick of threatening their thousands of employees? Is it an accident that the same people have been spending millions to destroy unions? No, no, no and no.

Having accumulated the power of extreme wealth, having grown accustomed to it, wishing to justify and validate it, Romney and the people with whom he is most comfortable now wish to reinforce not only the disparities of income and wealth, but the disparities of power. A year ago, I showed how inequality is both effect and cause. If left unchecked, it reinforces itself. Romney, treating the President of the United States, as if he were the “valet who has brought the wrong Mercedes,” has shown us his arrogance and revealed his real instincts from which, regardless of policy papers and positions, but especially those that are lacking specificity or even face validity, his agenda will naturally emerge.

I’ve told my now grown kids that “80 percent of whether you like your work is determined by whether or not your boss is an asshole.” Why on earth would we willingly give even more power – concentrated political power – to bosses who are exactly that?

This is about women of course. It is about the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 that allows legal action against discriminatory pay. But it’s not just about women. It’s about men too. And it’s not just about the 47 percent. It’s probably not even about the 99 percent vs. the one percent. It’s about the danger of increasing, unchecked financial and political power of the last one-tenth of one percent. Because women have been discriminated against more, especially in the higher echelons of power and pay, there’s a gender angle to this. But for the vast majority of Americans, and the vast majority of men in America, it’s also about the increasing imbalances of power that also leave them with fewer resources and less political leverage against the self-entitled, super-wealthy. To think otherwise is to miss the increasingly clear signals, economic, political and theatrical.

Tagged as: Election, Obama, Policy, Politics, President, Romney

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Throwing Good Money After Bad … Over and Over and Over

by John W Rodat on October 16, 2012

Harrisburg, PA is flat broke and the problem is related to its being legally, financially tied to a public authority, the Harrisburg Authority Resource Recovery Facility, which financed and built a waste incinerator.

But this is awful.

Bond Girl (@munilass on Twitter) lays out the detail at “Self-Evident”. This is a longish piece, but at least scan it to see how many times, local officials fended off their looming debt problems by borrowing still more and by hiding that borrowing through increasingly complex and less transparent transactions.

Referring to an ongoing investigation and report, she says:

The report answered many of the questions I raised in my earlier post about the local governments’ motives in guaranteeing the authority’s bond and swap payments and how officials arrived at the fees they charged for doing so. It is clear that the bond deals offered city officials perverse incentives for helping the authority go further and further into debt.

The report also suggests that the underwriter on the authority’s bond deals and the purportedly independent financial advisors hired by the authority, the City of Harrisburg, and Dauphin County actively assisted local officials in evading state laws limiting the amount of debt that municipalities may incur and governing municipalities’ use of interest rate derivatives. Deal participants appear to have advised the authority to enter into derivatives that were either unnecessary or speculative, earning millions of dollars in fees in the process. Deal participants also appear to have provided false certifications to the state that the contracts were “reasonable and fairly priced.” (Emphasis added.)

Read it and you’ll see why she calls for a criminal investigation. But even if no crime was committed, there are object lessons here for local governments, very compelling lessons about analyses (both financial and operational), the risks of governments getting into businesses, and the systemic incentives to repeat the dysfunctional behaviors, in this case borrowing, that got you into trouble to try to get out of trouble.

It makes my head spin. It’ll do the same to yours.

Tagged as: Debt, Harrisburg, Municipalities, Pennsylvania, Public Authority

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Finally Selling the Albany County Nursing Home?

by John W Rodat on October 9, 2012

Referring to the Albany County Nursing Home, back in February, we said, “Sell it Now!”

So if New York does the right thing and tells Albany County that no, they cannot build a new money-losing nursing home, what happens next? And before the State acts, if the odds are say 50/50 or higher that the State will reject the application, what should be done in the meantime?

Sell it. Sell it now.

Only final formalities remain for New York to disapprove Albany County’s application to build a new nursing home. So that step is taken care of.

We also said, that a buyer should “pledge to remain neutral with respect to unionization.” I’m optimistic.

Tomorrow is the due date for the Tentative Budget submitted by the Albany County Executive. We’ll see how it’s incorporated into the budget, but it appears that County Executive Dan McCoy has a buyer for the Albany County Nursing Home.

Tagged as: Albany County, Nursing Home

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What Would You Do? What Should We Do? What Could We Do with Different Care & Support Systems? A Case to Think About

by John W Rodat on October 1, 2012

Paula Hemmings is a nurse, now retired from the Veteran’s Administration (VA). She was the Care Line Director for Geriatrics and Long Term care for Upstate New York VA Healthcare systems. Here’s her take

We had five nursing homes and very little community care. You can imagine the veteran outcry when I started to close Nursing home beds to use the funds for Community care programs. I just kept explaining to the various sites and veterans what my goal was. It took about 2 years but once the community programs such as Home Based Primary Care, hospice, Adult day Day care, respite and homemaker home care was developed at every site the anger subsided.

I am a strong believer that providing community based care will be more beneficial to people and save money.

Note that it can be done. Health care systems can be re-configured with less expense, greater satisfaction and more self-determination.

And here’s the first of two scenarios Ms. Hemmings offered to draw out questions and comments at a recent event sponsored by the Albany County League of Women Voters.

Mr. Smith is a 75 year old widower. He lives in a senior housing apartment in the city. He has friends but his only son lives in Rochester. He is able to maintain himself in his own apartment. He buys food at the local market but needs to take a bus to get there. He does his laundry in the basement of the apartment. He is able to keep his apartment clean.
Mr. Smith has a history of diabetes, hypertension and has been treated for depression since his wife died. He is a state retiree and has Medicare and a secondary policy.
One winter day while walking to the local store for a paper and milk he slipped on the ice and broke his leg. He is now in the local hospital having had his leg put in a cast. He will be immobile for a couple of weeks. He is being discharged home.

And then she posed the following questions:

  1. What kind of services will he need to maintain his function?
  2. How will he make his trips to his doctors?
  3. How will this immobility affect his depression and what services does he need?
  4. What services is he eligible for and what insurance will pay it?
  5. How much will he have to pay on his own?
  6. Who can his son contact in this area to help him provide the appropriate care for his father?

These questions are very immediate and very practical. They’re the sort of questions a nurse will ask in response to a crisis. I’ll add the following questions:

  1. What kinds of services would you want if you were Mr. Smith?
  2. Would you answer the question differently if Mr. Smith were 40 years old rather than 75? If so, why?
  3. How could we answer all of the questions above differently if the services available locally were different?
  4. How could we answer all of the questions above differently if the services available locally were better coordinated?

Feel free to register and comment.

Tagged as: Disability, Long Term Care

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A Life Worth Living

by John W Rodat on October 1, 2012

Our friend and colleague, Constance Laymon, died this past week. She was 46. Here’s Paul Grondahl’s remembrance of Constance.

At age 17, doing typical teenager stuff, Constance fell. Her injuries left her paralyzed from the waist down.

After her injury, she suffered from the depression that one might expect, but she found a path that not only changed her life for the better, it changed the lives of many. In 2002, Constance founded Consumer Directed Choices, which serves as a fiscal intermediary and support, enabling home care recipients to direct their own care.

In addition to running Consumer Directed Choices, Constance was a very active board member of Consumer Directed Personal Assistance Association of NYS, the statewide association of similar organizations. She served on many, many committees and advisory bodies, never wavering from principles of self-determination.

Constance’s family and many friends and colleagues gathered this past weekend for a remembrance and story telling. Some of my favorites were these:

  • Constance once met the Dalai Lama, who approached her when they chanced across one another. Constance’s Mom was quite excited when Constance mentioned the meeting. She asked Constance whether the Dalai Lama had (my words) an aura, or something similar. Constance replied, in a very matter-of-fact manner, “nah, he’s just a regular guy.” Constance wasn’t intimidated or awed by anybody.
  • In a meeting with the NYS Commissioner of Health, Constance received a phone call from a client. (She gave her cell number to all of CDChoice’s clients.) She wasn’t awed by the Commissioner either. But more importantly, the clients came first. She excused herself and took the call.
  • There were numerous stories of Constance’s “swearing like a trucker,” criticizing someone, pushing them … and then giving them a hug. She was demanding of herself and others, but it always had warmth, heart, affection and good intentions behind it.
  • A couple of attorneys, perhaps initially underestimating her, recalled how they had to prepare for meetings with her because she consumed regulations. They said she actually liked reading them and they had to work extra to be ready for her. And these were her lawyers.
  • Sensitive to the current political season and debate, one of Constance’s friends noted that freedom is not merely being left alone by government; rather government may aid in self-determination.

Constance was an advocate (“nothing about us without us”), but her advocacy went way beyond words. She started and built an organization that aids persons with disabilities to live self-determined lives. And she herself was an example of both determination and self-determination.

Constance Laymon’s life was too short. But hers was a life worth living because she chose to make it so. And, by example and deed, the lives of many others are better as well. Including ours.

Tagged as: Disability, Heroes and Heroines

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Social Media Enhances Another Government Function – Catching Bad Guys

by John W Rodat on September 28, 2012

Hey Sheriff. Excuse me officer. Heads up Ms. Publisher/Journalist.

Take a look at this Steve Buttry story.

We all want our journalism to have impact. Well, here’s impact for you: the Wanted by Police Pinboard launched by the Pottstown Mercury’s Brandie Kessler is resulting in arrests.

In a recent Mercury story, Pottstown Police Capt. F. Richard Drumheller said arrests were up 58 percent since the Mercury started publicizing mug shots of people with outstanding warrants.

Brandie explained in a lightly edited email how the Merc is using Pinterest like a post office bulletin board:

When Mandy Jenkins stopped by The Mercury a few months ago and told us a bit about various new social media, myself and reporter Evan Brandt thought Pinterest, because of its photo-focus, would be perfect for a wanted by police list.

I had put a list together in a slideshow on our website long before the Pinterest board, but the slideshow kept freezing or not working and it was difficult to update and difficult to highlight on Facebook and Twitter.

I decided to create a list on Pinterest. It’s great because it’s easy to update, easy to view on a smartphone and you don’t even need a Pinterest account to view it. Plus, it’s simple to post the link on Facebook and Twitter, and our readers love it.

Police departments have told me they have made many arrests as a direct result of the Pinterest board, which is pretty awesome.

Here’s what Brandie told area police chiefs in asking them to send fugitives’ photos for use on the Pinboard:

Pinterest is a sort of digital corkboard and is among the fastest growing social media sites in the world. Many of its users use Pinterest to post or “pin” recipes, craft ideas and other things which they can easily organize using the site. However, we’ve found it’s also a great way to display mug shots.

Pottstown police department has a public list of persons wanted by their department for a variety of offenses. I created a board using a collection of mug shots of Pottstown’s wanted persons along with a snapshot of what each individual is wanted for. I then posted that “board” to our Facebook page, where more than 6,600 (Buttry note: That number is now more than 7,000) of our readers are able to view it regardless of whether they have their own Pinterest log in.

Kudos to Ms. Kessler, the Pottown Mercury, the Pottstown Police, for being creative and to Steve Buttry for spotting the story.

Tagged as: Kudos, Law Enforcement, Social Media

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Nassau and Suffolk County 2013 Tentative Budgets

by John W Rodat on September 26, 2012

Report that budgets for Nassau and Suffolk Counties in NY have been released. Nassau has no property tax increase. Suffolk’s is reported to be under the property tax cap.

More later.

Tagged as: Budget, County

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Before Heading Off on Another Fool’s Errand, Perhaps Looking at the Last One’s Results Would be Worthwhile

by John W Rodat on September 26, 2012

As Albany County Legislators and others get themselves into another tizzy about the Albany County Nursing Home, it’s worth a quick review of the discussion at the PHHPC Committee meeting last week before their unanimous vote to disapprove the County’s certificate of need application. Some may be ready to accept the cover that the State has given them, Perhaps, they’re keeping quiet. But the noise-makers are still at it as if nothing had happened last week. Hell, even Mike Conners, perhaps hoping for a role playing a Constitutional lawyer on TV, has been telling people that the County is obliged under the State Constitution to run a nursing home. That’s not a new argument for him, but it was lame when he first made it and now that half the counties in New York that are operating nursing homes are looking to get out of the business, the argument is just bizarre. Even more bizarre (and that’s a real challenge) is that there are still people around who listen to this argument.

  • The meeting room was full, but because of interest in another application. Only one person spoke regarding the Albany County application.
  • State Health Department (SDOH) and Committee started by referencing two previous deferrals and requests for additional information. The first deferral was last year and the second was in April of this year.
  • State Health Department staff said that this project review had been challenging. There were some good elements in the program design, but that the project was not financially feasible.
  • SDOH staff referenced its own history of approving money losing county proposals, but in this case, the degree of the proposed loss was “very great.”
  • SDOH staff said County had offered a good analytical effort but that the projected payment rates (under Medicaid managed care) may be on the “high end.” They also noted that the proposed construction costs produced capital costs considerably over the “bed caps,” which are upper limits in the allowable costs in the capital component of Medicaid fee-for-service rates.
  • SDOH staff explicitly noted a $5 million incremental (increased) loss combined with the loss of IGT, a major, but uncertain revenue source, in 2015.
  • SDOH staff explicitly referenced the cap on property tax increases and noted the conflict with the proposed in cost and tax increases that would result from this project. This is a precedent. Except for the extreme nature of the Albany County proposal, it might not have happened.
  • State staff compared ACNH costs with those in other skilled nursing facilities (SNFs) in Albany. Albany County’s expenses are much higher than others and would be higher still with the new project.
  • Brad Fischer, the County’s Director of Operations, represented County Executive Dan McCoy. He was the only witness regarding the application. Using “facility of last resort rhetoric, he said McCoy was “supportive of the CON.”
  • Fischer asked that the CON be tabled. When asked how long, he replied “six to nine months.”
  • One of the Committee members noted the “almost 50% loss.” Fischer replied, “we understand the numbers.”
  • Fischer also said the “Executive is seeking an aggressive tack.” He did not elaborate.
  • Fischer said that the Legislature had scheduled a meeting in preparation to override the tax cap.” He also seemed to say that the Legislature was enthusiastic about exceeding the tax cap to support the Nursing Home.
  • Neither Fischer nor anyone else responded when a Committee member noted that they’ve already deferred a decision twice and asked what’s going to change if the County is given more time?
  • A Committee member asked SDOH staff whether the numbers are “plausible?” Rick Cook, Director of the Office of Health Systems Management, says “Albany is assuming a revenue increase from Medicaid managed care.” He doubts it.
  • Cook then says to get an approval, it would have to be a radically different plan and that would require a new CON.
  • The Committee Chairman notes the current County subsidy (the current loss) could be used differently, such as by subsidizing other (presumably private) facilities.
  • Cook says, “this solution might have been appropriate five years ago. It is not now.“
  • The Committee then voted unanimously to accept the SDOH recommendation and disapprove the CON application.

Note a couple of key points.

  • Even with the numbers being as awful as they are, key revenue source, the State is assuming that a key revenue source, IGT will disappear within a couple of years.
  • However tactfully they expressed it, SDOH staff doubts that Medicaid managed long term care will generate additional revenue. Quite the contrary.
  • Albany County has been working on this for years and can’t get out of its own way.
  • The program concept Albany County is obsessed with is five years out of date. If they start over now, a new plan, design, and CON process will take one, probably closer to two years and it will be seven years out of date.

They wasted the very narrow time window during which they might have sold it as is.

Time to give it up and go in a different direction.

Tagged as: Albany County, Nursing Home

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