DNC re-vote insanity

I've actually got a lot of beefs with our current two-party political system, and I'll be making posts on this topic in the future. Probably everyone's aware of the problems with the Democratic primary and Florida and Michigan being stripped of their delegates due to how they scheduled their primaries. Ostensibly, both the Republican and the Democratic parties are private organizations, but in reality, they are so intertwined with the government that I doubt they will ever be dislodged. That's a longer post for another day. But this seems wrong on the face of it. A lawyer is arguing that by depriving the Florida/Michigan Democrats of a say in the Democratic primary, they are being deprived of their 14th Amendment rights. That's a hopelessly wrong argument. The Supreme Court has repeatedly ruled that private organizations have the right to set their own membership and rules, as the Boy Scouts were allowed to restrict membership to heterosexuals. The DNC lawyer has it right:

Joe Sandler, attorney for the DNC, told the three-judge panel that the committee is a private entity and "is actually exercising its own constitutional right by not seating delegates." "The point we were trying to make in court today is that it's up to the parties themselves to determine the best means of selecting delegates to the convention, and it's not really a matter for a court to resolve," he told reporters later.

On the other hand, the primary votes in both Florida and Michigan were paid for by the state governments. I'm not sure that's directly relevant to what happens on a national level with the DNC though. I don't think the government should provide funding so that an organization (that should be private) can hold an internal election. George Washington would be turning over in his grave about how much the parties are entangled in our government.

Macro-economics is not my strong suit...

I confess -- I'm bad at large-scale economics. I'll never understand international monetary policy; I have a hard enough time at the national level. That being said, there are at least two things that annoy me. Of recent annoyance is the subprime crisis; MarkCC has an excellent explanation from a while back. Essentially, both lenders and borrowers made bad decisions about who can afford what and the risks involved, and now much of the bank industry is teetering on collapse. Should the government help out? NPR has an analysis (also somewhat old). I agree with the sentiment there that this would be a 'subsidy for risky behavior'. The government should stay out of this -- the people and institutions involved in this should face the consequences of their short-sightedness; taxpayers should not be left holding the bag on their irresponsibility. Happily, the current resolution seems like a private solution will be implemented. We'll see. The second thing is, of course, the "recession". Economics on a national scale is really about confidence -- and I want to know how much effect does the media have by harping about the recession have on that confidence? Is there any way to quantify this effect? I'm not a media-conspiracy theorist; in general, I think the media tries to be objective and impartial. But in many ways they cannot help but be biased towards making a fuss. As an example, look at how unemployment is reported. There are two distinct metrics for the labor force - "unemployment rate" and "jobs gained/lost". Frequently these two run counter to each other. Here's an alarmist CNN article titled "Job losses worst in 5 years". Buried in there is the admission that unemployment is down. Of course, that metric is possibly deeply flawed; but you can bet that if it were reversed, they'd be reporting it the other way. Ahh, well.