cerebralpaladin

Bar exam

Sat, 16 May 2009 05:48:24 GMT

Suckage has been avoided.

California Special Election Propositions

Sat, 02 May 2009 21:54:44 GMT

So, California is having a special election to consider six propositions. Unlike last November, when I had a mix of ones that I felt strongly about and ones I wasn't sure on (or was ambivalent about), this time I pretty much have no clue on any of them. I'm going to give my capsule thoughts on each, but I'm really writing this in the hope of triggering a discussion and getting other people's feedback more than out of any belief that I've figured out the right way to vote on any of these.

All of these propositions deal with various aspects of the budgeting process. I'm going to start by saying that, in general, I'm aware of the fact that California has a FUBAR budgeting process with a lot of mandatory funding requirements from previous Propositions and a fair amount of debt; that I believe that in bad economic times (i.e. now) the state should run a deficit and that in good times it should run a surplus/pay down debt, notwithstanding California's balanced budget amendment, in part to avoid strengthening business cycle fluctuations; and that education spending is really important. Those are the values that inform my consideration of these propositions; unfortunately, getting from those values to Yes or No is more challenging than you might think.

1A. Proposition 1A is the big structural one. It would increase the size of one of the state rainy day funds (i.e. force the government to spend less when times are good, in theory to pay for spending when times are bad). At the same time, in conjunction with 1B, it would make it harder to suspend payments to the rainy day fund for certain education purposes during bad times, which might make its practical effect counterintuitive. Also, it changes how money can be spent out of the rainy day fund, allowing it for various forms of infrastructure spending and one-shot spending and making it harder to commit to new ongoing spending. Frankly, I don't have a strong understanding of what the net effects of 1A would be. Its opponents argue that all of the apparently good rainy day fund stuff is actually essentially a trojan horse, designed to make this look good when it's actually bad. I'm not sure, but they may be right. 1A would also extend several taxes (part of the sales tax, part of the vehicle license tax, and part of the income tax) for another couple years. While at some level taxing to avoid a deficit is a good thing (as opposed to running up more debt-- obviously, taxes themselves are not a good thing, although necessary), these taxes are pretty regressive-- even the income tax, which is on a progressive structure, increases the rate for EVERYONE by the same amount, which means that the functional effect is much more severe on the poor. Consumption taxes, of course, are notoriously regressive.
Current Opinion: No. Confidence: Extremely low.

1B. 1B rejiggers some of the spending requirements imposed by previous propositions to supply money for K-14 (i.e. elementary through community college) education programs. 1B would eliminate some obligations to make additional payments in the next couple years, and then make additional payments drawn from money set aside by 1A in future years. It's thus something of a cut now, pay later approach to education (I think). I'm a big proponent of education spending, but I'm not sure this structure is good. Nobody submitted an opposition to 1B-- maybe that implies that all of the major stakeholders agree it's good? Not really sure.
Current Opinion: No. Confidence: Extremely low.

1C. This would try to squeeze a little more money out of the lottery system. First, it would allow the state to sell bonds backed by the future income stream from the lottery, letting us get money now that we would pay back later. That's probably a good thing, in light of the current economic situation. This is the big price tag proposition-- the plan would be to borrow $5 billion, to fill most of the current $6 billion budget deficit. This would also allow the lottery to pay out more in winnings than the current 50%, which would probably increase lottery ticket sales. I tend to support the existence of the lottery, basically on libertarian and squeezing out the numbers rackets grounds. There is also some value to the state deriving revenues that people think make their lives better, as opposed to just taxing. At the same time, lotteries draw their revenue disproportionately from the poor. To some extent, they sell hope and take money from people who really need the money. So there's some value in having a badly run (i.e. not profit-maximizing) lottery-- it squeezes out the niche for organized crime, let's people get a little hope, but doesn't do as much damage to people's finances as a well-run lottery would. (In this way, it's kinda like state-run liquor or cigarette monopolies). So I'm a little wary about making changes that will make the lottery more profitable. There are also some weird effects that I don't know how to think about-- do lottery winnings produce positive effects because of high velocity of money effects as people blow it? Do people use lottery winnings to bail out friends and relatives who are badly in need, thus transferring wealth to people with a higher marginal utility of money? Or do they just waste the money, end up in debt, and produce net distortive effects that make society less well off? I don't know. My current thinking is that we have to close the short-term budget shortfall, cutting $5 billion worth of spending would be a disaster, so borrowing $5 billion is worth it even with some bad effects.
Current Opinion: Yes. Confidence: Low.

1D: Reallocates money allocated by a previous Proposition to children's services (specifically, various forms of early childhood education, I think) to help cover the general fund deficit this year. The amounts involved are substantial, but not huge-- roughly $600 million the first year and $250 million the next couple, compared to a budget deficit of $6 billion and a total budget of $103 billion. So it definitely falls into the category of not all that much in the grand scheme of things, but as they say, a hundred million here, a hundred million there, and pretty soon you're talking about real money. I'm really worried about this source of funds, but there are some reasons to think that these programs are overfunded currently (i.e. have money that they're not spending because they don't need it). Also, even if I support these types of programs, this sort of dedicated funding streams is precisely what screws up the budgeting process.
Current Opinion: Yes. Confidence: Extremely low.

1E: Much like 1D, but this time going after mental health dedicated funds. The lead proponent of this wrote the mental health funding Proposition that this prop would modify. The amounts of money are small by budgetary scale (about $230 million). I lean towards backing it basically on the strength of who the proponent is and the fact that he's very clear that this is robbing Peter to pay Paul but that in the current environment, forcing discretionary cuts may hurt vulnerable population's more.
Current Opinion: Yes. Confidence: Very low.

1F: This is political theater. It would prohibit raises for state elected officials (mostly the legislators, but also various other officeholders like the state treasurer and state board of education) in years when there is a budget deficit (basically, when the budget is balanced as passed, but revenues decrease from expectations over the course of the year). It has a trivial effect on the state budget directly (a 1% raise for everyone covered is $160,000/year total-- in a state where hundreds of millions are "small" budgetary amounts, a hundred thousand is darn close to infinitesimal). It might have a bigger effect by changing legislators' incentives, making them more likely to balance budgets with a little cushion. That strikes me as a bad thing, on net, because the balanced budget requirements already limit the ability to run deficits in years like this one, when the state should.
Current Opinion: No. Confidence: Low. Importance: Extremely low.

So, that's my current thinking. What do other people think?

Local Propositions

Mon, 13 Oct 2008 21:47:17 GMT

There are also four local propositions on my ballot. Since I got some very useful feedback on the California props, I figured I'd post about these as well, even though I'm not sure any of my readers except Orichalcum can vote on them.

Prop A: This would issue $840M of bonds to pay for seismic safety improvements of the Santa Clara Medical Center, which are apparently required by state law. If it fails, the Medical Center will apparently have to close its trauma center and eliminate half of its beds. Notably, there were no arguments against included in the voter guide, because none were submitted. This seems like a good thing-- closing the local trauma center because its buildings don't meet seismic safety requirements seems like a bad thing. And while the spending is substantial, that has benefits during a period of potentially disastrous economic slowdown. This could be a boondoggle, but I'd expect to see objections in the voter guide if it were.
Recommendation: Yes. Confidence: Low.

Prop B: Authorizes a 1/8 cent sales tax to pay to operate and maintain an extension of the BART to include Milpitas, San Jose, and Santa Clara, to be collected only if state and federal funds are secured to pay for construction of the extension. Subsidies for mass transit are a good thing, and it would be nice to be able to reach the BART more easily than by taking the Caltrain almost to San Francisco. Sales taxes are generally bad taxes, but VTA may not be able to get any other type of tax. It seems like there's some dispute between San Jose, which dominates the VTA board, and the more suburban communities that would also have to pay the tax.
Recommendation: Yes. Confidence: Very low.

Prop C: A nonbinding plebiscite on whether to approve the VTA's long-range plan-- this has no direct effect. I'm not sure that I care at all about the outcome of a non-binding vote. Also, the plan is apparently complicated, covering hundreds of items, and I have no idea what all is in the plan. I don't have any idea how to approach this.
Recommendation: ???; maybe leave this blank on the ballot? Confidence: None.

Prop D: This would eliminate the requirement that the VTA submit a plan to the voters every 6 years, instead submitting it to a "Citizen's Watchdog" panel. The VTA claims this would save money. I think it would eliminate things like Prop C in the future. I'm inclined to support this-- it sounds like the Citizen's Watchdog panel is pretty toothless, but so is a nonbinding plebiscite on policy, and frankly, people without a clue voting on whether to endorse a nonbinding plan seems like a total waste of everyone's time.
Recommendation: Yes. Confidence: Low

If anyone has any insight on these, please share it. As should be apparent, I really feel uninformed, but I still need to vote (or abstain) on these.

California Propositions

Sat, 11 Oct 2008 20:40:30 GMT

I just got my ballot in the mail, so I figure it’s time to start seriously thinking about the votes that aren’t obvious. Since I’m in California, that mostly means a whole lot of propositions. Here are my thoughts; I’d welcome comments, especially on the Props that I mention low confidence on.

Proposition 1 and 1A: These are both measures put on the ballot by the legislature that would authorize a major (just under $10B) bond issue to fund a high speed rail development between LA and SF, with the possibility of later expansion. I’m not clear what the difference between the two is—they seem to be backed by the same people and opposed by the same people. In general, I support the development of high speed rail. It’s a classic public good, with a natural monopoly and a lot of positive externalities, so it makes sense for it to be gov’t funded. Also, during periods of economic weakness, deficit spending by the gov’t is a good thing: it helps stimulate the economy and produces jobs, and the deficits can be paid back after the economy recovers. Because CA requires a balanced budget by state constitutional law, bond issues are the only way to do that. With a deep recession likely and a depression possible, fiscal stimulus is a very good idea, although the credit crunch could drive up the cost of borrowing money. So while I’m normally a deficit hawk, right now I’m in favor of big borrowing. On net, this seems like a good thing. My only real question is whether I should be voting yes on both, or only on one.
Recommendation: Yes on both; Confidence level: High that it should be yes to at least one; low that it should be yes to both.

Proposition 2: This would require humane conditions for certain livestock purposes. In general, I’m in favor of humane treatment of farm animals. At the same time, I’m concerned about a race to the bottom problem—this could result in much more food being shipped in from areas that don’t have similar rules. Also, CA can’t ban the importation of non-complying food, because of the Commerce Clause. So this may have the net effect of harming the environment (more fuel etc. on shipping food) without improving the actual conditions for any animals. The real key is what the effect will be: better conditions while still raising food in California, or a flight to Mexico and neighboring states.
Recommendation: Not sure. I was leaning yes, but the more I think about the likely consequences, the more I lean back towards no. Thoughts? Confidence level: Very low.

Prop 3: Another bond issue, this one for children’s hospitals. This is substantial, a little under $1B. The same general arguments in favor of Prop 1 apply here, although the public benefits of children’s hospitals are probably smaller. This could be a big give away to wealthy doctors, or it could be a good program—not entirely clear. At the same time, I think the fiscal stimulus arguments remain strong right now.
Recommendation: Yes. Confidence level: Low.

Prop 4: Requires a waiting period and parental notification for abortions for minors. This is basically a straight-forward question of whether people support abortion rights. Parental notification laws probably cause abuse and definitely cause a certain amount of unsafe abortions.
Recommendation: No. Confidence level: High.

Prop 5: Establishes drug treatment programs to divert nonviolent drug offenders from the prison system; reduces prison terms for some drug offenses, mostly minor ones. In general, drug laws are overly punitive in the United States and waste substantial law-enforcement resources (especially in the form of prison costs). This looks like a positive shift towards emphasizing treatment and reducing incarceration.
Recommendation: Yes. Confidence level: Medium.

Prop 6: Requires higher spending on law enforcement and prisons and creates new crimes and increases sentences. This proposition worries me—it creates spending obligations without raising revenue, which is likely to mean cuts in other areas, and it increases California’s already too high incarceration rate. While more police might be a good thing, longer prison terms is almost certainly a bad thing. There may be some good things in here—for example, my understanding is that increasing police staffing levels is cost-effective, saving more in reduced crime than it costs—but there’s also likely lots of bad stuff, and this will further screw up California’s budget process, which is already FUBAR.
Recommendation: No. Confidence level: Medium.

Prop 7: This is a renewable energy proposition that would increase the amount of renewable energy that utilities are required to provide. It would also, however, make a host of alterations in the laws governing utilities. Most of the big environmental groups oppose Prop 7, arguing that it won’t achieve its stated goals. I’m worried that this is a classic wolf in sheep’s clothing initiative.
Recommendation: No. Confidence level: Medium-low.

Prop 8: Would take away California’s marriage equality and constitutionally require discrimination. I consider this a fundamental moral issue, with an overwhelming equality concern. No church that opposes marriage equality is required to perform (or recognize for canon law purposes) same-sex marriages. And marriage equality doesn’t threaten anyone’s marriages.
Recommendation: No. Confidence level: Nigh infinite.

Prop 9: This would amend the state constitution to provide for “victims’ rights” in parole hearings and similar proceedings, as well as making parole hearings less frequent and putting restitution payments at the front of the line when convicted offenders are fined, etc. Apparently, many of the rights in this initiative already exist as a matter of statutory law. Also, it would substantially increase the lengths of incarceration. Those are already too long in many cases in CA, particularly because of “Three Strikes” laws. This seems like a bad idea—more on prisons, less on things that matter (including actual policing).
Recommendation: No. Confidence level: Medium-low.

Prop 10: An “alternative fuel vehicles” and renewable energy initiative that would authorize $5B in bonds. It would then mostly use those bonds to provide rebates for “dedicated clean alternative fuel vehicles”—vehicles powered exclusively by natural gas, electricity, or a few other sources (i.e. not hybrids). They would get roughly half of the total money, concentrated on heavy trucks, which would get $1B in subsidies. Normal hybrids and the like, with fuel economy over 45 mpg, would get about $340M in subsidies. There would also be financial incentives to fund solar, wind, and other renewable energy and some other related stuff, accounting for the remainder.

Dealing with the global warming crisis is essential. A bond to incentivize the purchase of high efficiency cars and to subsidize renewable energy sources would be a good idea in principle. But this really does look like a give out to companies that sell natural gas based trucks, to the almost exclusion of many other high efficiency vehicles.

Recommendation: No. Confidence level: Low.

Prop 11: This would move redistricting authority for the state legislature from the legislature (which currently draws gerrymanders, mostly sweetheart gerrymanders designed to protect all incumbents) to a commission of citizens appointed through a convoluted process. The commission would consist of 5 Dems, 5 Reps, and 4 independents; at least 3 of each category would have to vote in favor to approve a plan. The plans are explicitly supposed to not favor or discriminate against any incumbent, candidate, or political party.

The current redistricting approach is a total mess. This would probably be better, although with a significant risk of a hung commission shifting authority to a special master appointed by the Cal. Supreme Court. The strong super-majority requirement likely means that partisan deals will be cut. Still, it’s probably an improvement over the current mess. Several organizations that are usually on the right side of these issues (League of Women Voters, Common Cause) are in favor.

Recommendation: Yes. Confidence level: Medium-high.

Prop 12: This would issue a nearly $1B bond to pay for mortgage aid to California veterans. Put on the ballot by the legislature with unanimous support. Historically, apparently the costs of these bonds has been paid for entirely out of the mortgage payments by the participating veterans—in effect, it arbitrages CA better credit to reduce the loan payments for veterans by giving them access to cheaper funding. That probably inflates housing prices slightly, but I doubt the effects are significant. I’m not sure the targeting here is ideal, although certainly our war-time veterans deserve gov’t aid. But it’s probably a small net gain to society at essentially no government cost, so that seems like a good thing.

Recommendation: Yes. Confidence level: Medium-low.

Connecticut Marriage Equality Decision

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 19:18:00 GMT

The Connecticut Supreme Court struck down Connecticut's definition of marriage as limited to a man and a woman today in Kerrigan v. Department of Health by a 4-3 vote. As I did with regard to the California marriage equality decision, I thought that I would give a quick response to this decision. I have only read the majority opinion, not the dissents.

Kerrigan is a substantially better decision than the California In re Marriage Cases decision. Both decisions dealt with states that had "separate but equal" statutory systems for same-sex couples (domestic partnerships in the case of CA, civil unions in CT). So in both cases, the step forward is important, but relatively small-- as notable for what it will do to the overall debate as for the direct legal effect today. Kerrigan is also based solely on the state constitution, and thus cannot be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Kerrigan focuses almost all of its analysis of whether sexuality is a "suspect" class. The court concluded that sexuality is at least a "quasi-suspect" class, and that therefore intermediate scrutiny applies. These are standard terms in constitutional law, and Kerrigan's analysis of what level of scrutiny applies is very thorough and by the book. Importantly, Kerrigan does not foreclose the possibility that homosexuality should be considered a suspect classification, like race or (under CT state law but not federal law) sex. Rather, it holds that homosexuality is at least quasi-suspect (like sex under federal law or illegitimacy) and that there is no need to determine whether it is suspect because the ban on same-sex marriage fails intermediate scrutiny. Kerrigan also did not reach my preferred way of analyzing laws banning same-sex marriage, as discrimination on the basis of sex. It thus avoided In re Marriage Cases mistake of producing bad law at the same time as it produced a good result. Also, by carefully and forcefully arguing for quasi-suspect classification, Kerrigan produced a precedent that may be more likely to influence future decisions than In re Marriage Cases's more haphazard approach.

Kerrigan is a very long opinion, which I consider unfortunate, but it is also a careful and well-written opinion. It focuses on a small number of questions and then addresses those each thoroughly. All told, I consider it both a very good result and a good opinion that will hopefully produce a lot of good in future litigation.

Preliminary thoughts on D&D 4E

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 16:13:17 GMT

Dungeons and Dragons Fourth Edition (“4E”) (actually more like the tenth edition of a D&D game, depending on how you count, but who’s counting?) came out a little over a week ago. I followed the reports about 4E pretty closely, and my expectation was that it would be a very good game for people whose interests in RPGs were different from my own. Nonetheless, I’ll inevitably play a fair amount of 4E because of friends’ preferences and at conventions and so forth, and I figured I might run a 4E campaign at some point, so I picked up the “gift set” of Players Handbook, Dungeon Masters Guide, and Monster Manual as soon as it came out. Since then, I’ve DMed two games—a session of WotC’s “Into the Shadowhaunt” scenario for Worldwide D&D Game Day and a game for 11th level pregenerated characters that I wrote. I figured that I would share my thoughts about 4E.

Overall, I don’t like it. This is significantly a matter of taste, but I also think that the game was badly underplaytested and that it has some significant flaws even for its core purpose. I also found that some of my objections were stronger than I expected. This is based on a small sample set of games, one of those games was a lousy module, and I haven’t been a player in any 4E games—a crucial step in reaching a fair overall conclusion. But so far, I’m not impressed.

Production values

As people familiar with WotC’s recent major publications would predict, the 4E books are attractive, well-presented books with good artwork. A fair amount of artwork is recycled, especially in the Monster Manual, but lots of it is new. It does have a higher amount of “gratuitous” depictions of female characters, but at least most of them are portrayed as competent and strong adventurers who happen to wear unusually low cut breastplates or the like. In general, I was pleased with how the books looked. That said, three out of three of my books had minor printing errors—creased pages, small rips at the top of the pages, and the like. That’s disappointing in a new book, especially a new book that may see heavy use. They’re not bad enough to make me want to deal with exchanging them, but it was annoying. Unfortunately, the writing is also not very clear. There are lots of questions that I’ve had a hard time understanding, and I’m not at all convinced that they present things in a useful, user-friendly order.

The game itself

4E has been radically redesigned from prior D&D versions. In particular, it is now much more “gamist” and much less “simulationist” than prior versions. As far as I can tell, every possible conflict between “what do we think makes the most sense in a game world?” and “what do we think makes for the most fun gameplay?” has been resolved in favor of the designers’ judgment about fun game play. 4E reads like it is intended principally for use as a tactical level war-game with a light veneer of story linking the fights. That’s not to say that you can’t run a role-playing intensive, story oriented game with 4E, or for that matter a simulationist, sand-box style game, but the ruleset does not appear designed to help you.

There are three main aspects of 4E that I don’t like. First, the decision to disregard any pretense of in-game logic really bugs me. Second, combats take too darn long to play through. Third, the game was woefully under playtested.

I care a lot about RPGs having a semblance of internal logic. That’s not a matter of needing everything to model the real-world accurately—at that point, you have no heroic characters, no magic, and an overly gritty play-style. But I get my fun from RPGs out of interacting with an interesting world that feels “real.” Without some feeling of logic, the game isn’t worth playing to me.

4E appears to have been designed with a diametrically opposed viewpoint. For example, traditionally, rogues were limited in their ability to backstab/sneak attack to creatures with recognizable anatomy and vulnerabilities. That created obvious swings in capabilities between foes—the rogue who is deadly against humans or even demons could be worthless against zombies or constructs. 4E does away with that: rogues can sneak attack anything! That giant undifferentiated ooze—the rogue can still find its weak point! It makes the gameplay more consistent, but it doesn’t make sense to me. Some creatures are immune to certain types of attacks, like fire elemental type things being immune to fire. But there are powers that can take away immunities. How can a fire elemental be burned by flames? We don’t know, but 4E doesn’t care—it makes fights more predictable and makes a fire based character more effective to let them have powers that can eliminate immunities, so there you go. Fighters and other non-magically based classes get per-day attack powers where they do extra damage or have a special effect once per day, at their choice. What is that modeling? How does that decision and limitation make sense to the character in the gameworld? Not a concern for 4E. Warlords, another non-magical class, eventually get the power to move all nearby enemies around to whatever positions they like, even throwing them off cliffs or into pits of fire. How can you do that without magic? We don’t need to know or care—the powers aren’t about the flavor descriptions, they’re about the game mechanics in 4E. Now, I can layer on some fanwankery to make this sorta make sense—maybe even the martial classes actually are adepts in mystical combat disciplines complete with ki powers and fast combat rituals. (Earthdawn did something like that.) But 4E’s core rules don’t do that. 4E is designed from a perspective that we shouldn’t care about why or how, what matters is making the fight fun for the players. Which is fine for some players, but not for me.

Second, in my experience, 4E combats are very long and time-consuming, especially at higher levels. In the 11th level game I ran, a fairly straightforward “shake-down” fight at the beginning of the game lasted for three hours. It was fairly tactically interested at the beginning, but by the end of the fight I was bored silly, desperately wishing that my adventure hadn’t been derailed by the first battle. Now, part of that was inexperienced players who were acting more slowly and making less optimal choices than more experienced players would, but only part of that. I would guess that even veteran players might take an hour and a half to get through an encounter like that—simple math suggests that. The characters were dealing damage in the ballpark of 1d10+8, 2d10+7, or in a few cases as much as 5d8+11. They were fighting a set of creatures with a total of more than 600 hps. If the PCs are averaging 20-30 hps of damage per hit, and they’re hitting about half to two-thirds of the time, it will take them something like 35-50 attacks to win that fight—more when you consider rounds in which a character takes an action other than an attack. Even for players who are on the ball, know exactly what they want to do, and act quickly, that adds up to a lot of actions, with the monsters adding another 30 or 45 actions over the course of the fight. 4E greatly increased the number of hit points for both characters and monsters (especially for monsters), while in general reducing damage output—gone are the days of a tenth level wizard doing 10d6 damage to a large group of enemies, or a two-weapon wielding 9th level rogue sneak attacking three times in one round for a total of 18d6 damage. One-shot kills (or effective eliminations from an encounter like paralysis) are also greatly reduced or gone, which probably makes things more fun, but also slows things down. All of that makes 4E good for people who like giant set-piece battles that last for most of the session, but not so good for people who want a four-hour game to include two or three fights plus two hours plus of role-playing.

Also, 4E appears woefully under playtested. There are highly unclear rules that I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out and am still not sure I have right. There are pointless powers that don’t actually work given the rest of the ruleset. And there are examples of terrible math.

I’ll give two examples. First, 4E gives characters more feats than 3E did—advantages that make a character more effective at certain tasks. In 3E, some feats were great, many were good, and a few were dogs. In 4E, they appear to have taken this to its logical extreme: a handful of feats, mostly restricted by class or race, are pretty good or even great; a few are useful but unexciting; and most of the rest are terrible, almost not worth the complexity of remembering to apply them. For example, one of the basic feats that most combat-oriented characters in 3E would take eventually was Weapon Focus, which gave a +1 to hit with a specific weapon. One out of every twenty attacks would be turned from a miss to a hit by taking that feat, which wouldn’t alter every fight, but can easily change some. The Weapon Focus feat in 4E adds a +1 to damage. At best, that might be increasing your damage output by 10% at first level, but that rapidly falls to insignificant. And that’s one of the more effective feats. Another feat, that you can’t take until 11th level, adds 1d10 on a critical hit—which generally requires a natural twenty. Yeah, adding about 0.25 hp of damage per attack is really useful. Even if you have one of the relatively rare abilities to get a critical on an 18-20, that’s adding an average of 0.75 hps of damage per attack at a point when you’re fighting monsters with between 100 and 600 hps each. As it stands, 4E would almost be better off without the feats altogether and with the class and racial feats folded into the basic powers of the classes and races. It would reduce complexity with very little other changes to how the game plays.

Second, the DMG includes a system of skill challenges—rules for resolving noncombat tasks with a more involved, more satisfying system than just “make a skill check to see if you succeed.” Many other games have had skill challenge systems—the first I can remember was Victory Games’s James Bond 007 RPG from the 1980s, which had a nice extended seduction system. That’s a great idea for a way to improve D&D from prior editions. Unfortunately, as written, the skill challenge system in the DMG appears to be broken. The DMG recommends difficulty numbers based on what level the PCs are—but the difficulties are so high that normal characters who haven’t invested in the Skill Focus feats will fail half the time if they are trained in the skill and three quarters of the time if they aren’t. At the same time, PCs need to succeed at a skill check two-thirds of the time in order to win a challenge. Needless to say, with those numbers, the players will lose the vast majority of skill challenges. (Maybe they should all take the Skill Focus feat—since most of the combat feats are lame, taking a relatively minor bonus to skills may be worthwhile. Of course, if there assumption is that every mid-level character will have multiple Skill Focus feats, they probably should have indicated that somewhere.)

I tried a skill challenge out with the pre-gen characters I made for the game I wrote. Using the difficulty numbers from the DMG, they would have had no chance of succeeding at the skill challenge in the game. I reduced all of the difficulties by 5 from the DMG values—a huge modifier—and was generous about giving them +2 circumstance modifiers, and the players barely won the challenge. That can’t be the right balance. Oh, and if you let characters use the assist another action, where they’re checking against a fixed target of 10, does that make it work? Nope—then the dominant strategy is to have everyone assist the best person in the party, at which point the skill challenges suddenly become laughably easy. The skill challenge system is a really good idea. If they started the development process with what they have now, playtested it and found out why it didn’t work, and then fixed it, they could have added something worthwhile. As it is, they added less than a good Dragon article—some ideas that a good DM can rebuild and redevelop into something worthwhile, but that isn’t usable out of the box. The playtesting process should have caught this and fixed it into something that worked. That it didn’t is a serious flaw.

There are many other minor bits of stupidity. One of the “paragon paths” gives a penalty to saves against fear-based effects it puts on enemies. Which would be kinda cool, except that only one or two of the many fear-based effects that that class has actually give opponents a saving throw. So you have an apparently cool power, that in fact never comes into play. The rules also have lots of unclear little bits. Does the cleric’s Healer’s Lore power modify static healing numbers (i.e. “the target heals 5 hp” or “the target can spend a healing surge”)? If it doesn’t it’s a pretty lousy power. But the general rule appears to be that static numbers don’t get affected by modifiers. Either way is plausible, but you would think a smart experienced gamer could read the rules, look for an answer to an important, obvious question, and get a clear answer. You’d think that, but you’d be wrong. If they had six months of playtesting ahead, they’d be in good shape. But this is the release version.

All in all, I don’t like 4E so far. It doesn’t deliver what I’m looking for in an RPG. And even for what it does deliver, it has a lot of problems in my limited experience. I’m sure that I’ll play it a bunch. But I’m not looking forward to that. Hopefully, my first experiences will be proved wrong, and when I play it, as long as I disregard some of the purely personal taste issues, I’ll find that it makes for really fun and interesting games. Many friends whose opinions on games I respect have praised 4E based on their experiences. I’d love to post a follow-up in a few months saying that I was wrong and 4E is great at what it tries to do. But currently, I doubt that I will.

California marriage equality decision

Fri, 16 May 2008 16:02:32 GMT

As most people probably know, the California Supreme Court struck down the state ban on same-sex marriages yesterday, in a decision referred to as In Re Marriage Cases. Because the decision clearly and explicitly relies solely upon state law grounds, it cannot be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court (contrary to at least some media coverage that suggested that an appeal was likely). I thought I would post some quick thoughts from the perspective of a lawyer.

I have read the majority opinion and the concurrence, but not the dissenting opinions (which are technically concurring and dissenting, but really just dissents). Also, my usual disclaimers about this not being legal advice, I'm not your lawyer, etc., apply, although I do consider this case to be within my field of professional expertise.

It's useful to look at this decision at three levels: policy, law, and judicial craftsmanship.

As a matter of policy, it is terrific. There is every reason to have marriage equality, and the arguments against marriage equality are frankly pretty darn weak. In particular, the only argument against that has any real force is the argument based on the religious nature of marriage, but that falls apart when you examine it. Nobody is requiring the Catholic Church to perform same-sex marriages-- that would, indeed, be unconstitutional as an invasion of freedom of religion. But the Catholic Church (or other institutions with similar canon law provisions) has no right to have the state enforce its definition of marriage on the people, or for that matter to privilege its definition over the definition of other religious groups (such as the United Church of Christ, my church) that permit same-sex marriage. So yay California at a policy level. It's worth noting that what was at stake yesterday was relatively small-- CA already had a strong domestic partnership statute that provided almost precisely the same rights and privileges as marriage, but with a different name. But even so, getting rid of a second-class label on same-sex relationships is an important step forward, and it will influence (I believe positively) the national debate and progress towards nation-wide marriage equality.

As a matter of law, the opinion is so-so. The court has four important holdings: (1) Proposition 22 banned same-sex marriages within CA, not just the recognition of foreign (i.e. Massachusetts) same-sex marriages; (2) the right to marry, protected under the California Constitution's right of privacy clause, includes a right to same-sex marriages; (3) the ban on same-sex marriage does not violate equal protection on the basis of sex; and (4) discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is subject to strict scrutiny (with the obvious corollary that the ban on same-sex marriages fails strict scrutiny).

Point 1 is, in my opinion, clearly correct. While some groups argued that a law passed by initiative that says that only marriages between a man and a woman are "valid and recognized" within California only dealt with the recognition of out-of-state marriages, that argument is a huge stretch. The plain language of the statute covers all marriages, not just out-of-state marriages. Also, it's hard to imagine that voters thought that they were only blocking Massachusetts same-sex marriages. The odd thing is why the court even reached the issue-- it's really irrelevant, because either the CA Constitution requires marriage equality, in which case the statute has no force, or it doesn't, in which case a pre-existing statute prohibits in-state same-sex marriages. This does tie into the constitutional amendment initiative that is likely to be on the November ballot, which uses the same language as the mini-DOMA initiative, but even so, that issue wasn't properly before the court.

Moving on to the substantive, constitutional arguments, the right to privacy argument seems pretty strong. There is an explicit, textual guarantee of privacy in the CA Constitution, adopted to incorporate the developing right to privacy doctrines of the 1970s into the constitution. A line of prior cases apply right to privacy concepts to protect a right to marriage. Given that, there is a good argument for including a right to marriage equality. However, it is important to note the failings of the court in this regard. Saying that a right to privacy and to define your family as you see fit includes a right to marriage makes sense-- but then how do you deal with the polygamy and incest arguments? The majority relegates this to a footnote (n. 52, for those following along at home), basically saying lots of courts have said that polygamous or incestuous relationships are “inimical to the mutually supportive and healthy family relationships promoted by the constitutional right to marry.” In other words, we think polygamy and incest are bad and icky, but we’re down with gay people (with a likely subtext of because they’re people like us, not like those freaky fundamentalist Mormons). I’m not arguing here that there should be a right to polygamous marriages recognized by the state or to incestuous marriages. My point is just that the court was not very effective at distinguishing them. And its methodology here was typical of its overall approach: the bulk of court decisions, including very old ones (citing two late Nineteenth Century anti-polygamy cases), weigh against polygamy, therefore no right to polygamy, but the bulk of cases weigh against marriage equality, but they’re wrong because we can cite this higher principle of a right to marriage. Very, very sloppy, not very persuasive reasoning. Far better to have addressed the matter more directly and persuasively, or to have punted (that’s not before us, there may be good reasons based on abuse, pragmatic concerns, or power dynamics that are different in those cases, bans on polygamy and incest may pass strict scrutiny, we’re not touching it now).

I’m not a fan of their resolution of the sex discrimination argument. First, I believe that argument is fundamentally right: if A can marry B, but A can’t marry C, and the only distinction between B and C is their sex, how is that not sex discrimination? If you recognize that as sex discrimination, then under California law, you apply strict scrutiny (is the law narrowly tailored to serve a compelling state interest) and the law fails easily. Moreover, miscegenation laws were struck down using a precisely parallel argument, except substituting race for sex. But the court rejects this, suggesting that it’s different treatment, but not intended to oppress anyone (unlike miscegenation law, which the court correctly notes were part of a system of racial oppression). Apparently the court is unaware of the history of patriarchy and oppression inherent in the traditional gender norms of marriage-- oh wait, the court mentioned those doctrines, but just didn’t care. Mostly, this seems to be part of an agenda that says sex discrimination isn’t as pernicious as racial discrimination-- a conclusion directly at odds with settled CA doctrine that strict scrutiny applies to both.

However, the court goes on to break new ground by explicitly declaring that sexual orientation is a suspect class (i.e. like race or sex discrimination, state action that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation must pass strict scrutiny). That is a profound and important holding, and I think correct based on the standard for determining whether a classification is suspect. And of course, once strict scrutiny (famously referred to as strict in theory but fatal in fact) is applied, the law is unconstitutional.

It’s worth considering the institutional aspect of this. Should decisions like this be made by courts as opposed to the legislature (and the people acting through initiatives)? In general, courts should act with a light touch when invalidating popularly passed laws, especially when those laws are (A) recent and (B) passed by the people themselves. The court’s argument that the initiative process doesn’t matter in this case because various initiatives have been struck down for violating the constitution (mostly the federal constitution, which is a different issue) gives too little weight to majoritarian, democratic concerns. At the same time, two key principles of constitutional review, in my opinion, are that it should act to protect oppressed minorities and that clear textual provisions should be given full force. Both of those apply, to varying degrees, in this case. Moreover, amending the constitution in CA is pretty easy-- petition by 8% of the gubernatorial vote, followed by a majority vote of the (voting) population. So that means that CA courts should be more aggressive about their interpretations than federal courts-- if they get it wrong, the people can fix it. And indeed, there will probably be an anti-marriage equality amendment on the ballot in November. So overall I think this was a correct legal decision, although I disagree with parts of it.

Finally, let’s talk about judicial craft. The majority opinion is terrible as a matter of craftsmanship. It is long and bloated-- 121 pages! That matters, because it makes the opinion ineffective as a persuasive piece. Many newspapers printed the entire opinion of Brown v. Board of Education-- that was intentional on the part of the Supreme Court, which wrote a short, punchy, persuasive opinion. No newspaper will print all of this decision, nor should they. Nor will future courts find this a persuasive opinion in considering marriage equality cases. Yes, the California Supreme Court will have weight based on its decision and based on the respect that the court commands (it’s probably among the top 5 most respected state courts, arguably the most respected). But it won’t persuade based on the force of its reasoning, and that’s a shame. It includes tons of citations, but often over cites the same small number of sources for pages and pages at a time-- not inspiring confidence that the court has fully mastered the field and is being unifying in its treatment of issues, but rather that the court is picking its friends and then blathering on about them. It dodges some of the tough issues-- when they come up, it says dismissive things rather than persuasively engaging with them and responding to them. It relies on biased nose-counting, citing the number of dissents and so forth in prior marriage equality cases as a reason to discount the weight of the precedent against marriage equality, while counting the majority opinions rejecting the sex discrimination argument (and discounting many of the same dissenting opinions it counted for the overall point) as an argument against adopting the sex discrimination rationale. It wastes time on non-determinative side issues-- did some of the litigants have standing? Who cares? It’s clear that at least one litigant on each side did, so it doesn’t matter whether others did. Similarly, the court could have (and probably should have) limited its consideration to the legal issues that ultimately mattered-- sexual orientation is a suspect class and the right to marry includes a right to marriage equality (and arguably the court should have picked one of those arguments, rather than winding its way through both)-- and then stated that the rest of the issues could be left undecided. It would have made for a much shorter, more powerful opinion. All in all, the opinion just isn’t very good or very well done, which is a real loss for the law and for those of us who care about marriage equality. But at least it came out the right way.

Now, time to gear up for the fight in November. It should be close, but winnable.

Why I support Obama

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 20:02:21 GMT

I'm not going to post often on this account, but I wrote an e-mail to some of my Democratic friends encouraging them to vote for Obama. I thought I would repost it here.

I encourage all of you to vote for Barack Obama in the Democratic primary on Tuesday. I start from the belief that either Obama or Clinton would be amply worth supporting over any plausible Republican nominee. However, I think there are strong reasons why Obama is the better choice.

1. A history of accomplishment: Obama has a proven history of accomplishment in his service in the Illinois legislature. One law in particular stands out for me. Obama was one of the first advocates for a law requiring the videotaping of custodial police interrogations in homicide investigations. This is a hugely important reform that dramatically reduces the number of coerced confessions of innocent people, which has the corollary result of increasing the number of actually guilty people who are ultimately prosecuted. However, when Obama began advocating this reform, there was widespread opposition. Almost all of the state’s attorneys (the prosecutors, equivalents of district attorneys in other states) opposed the idea, as did most of the organized police. Obama persuaded state’s attorneys, police chiefs, and his fellow legislators of the importance of this reform. Ultimately, the bill passed with overwhelming legislative support and was signed into law. Now, most state’s attorneys and police recognize the value that taped interrogations provide. They are a useful investigative tool, and they are enormously persuasive to juries, who can actually watch the tape and see that the interrogation was not coercive. And they exist in Illinois because Obama is effective at getting legislation passed.

2. Obama works through effective conflict resolution methods: Obama’s methods of working are highly consistent with a conflict resolution approach. In particular, he does an excellent job of listening; acknowledging respectfully the concerns and interests of other people, including those he disagrees with; and then pursuing solutions that address everyone’s interests. That is a highly effective means of dealing with disagreements. In fact, you can see it in my prior example. The initial position of the police and the state’s attorneys was that videotaping interrogations would interfere with their ability to conduct investigations and secure convictions. The underlying interest there is in successful investigation and prosecution. Obama responded by convincing people that videotaping would in fact serve that interest better, by allowing easier prosecutions in an environment where many jurors distrusted custodial confessions, largely because of a well-documented history of torture in Chicago police stations. By focusing on the underlying interests of law-enforcement personnel, he was able to achieve a major victory without getting locked into a clash between entrenched positions.

While that’s an important approach to getting things done in the legislature or Congress, it is perhaps even more important in foreign policy. We face a perilous world, with a large amount of conflict and potential conflict. To name only a couple examples, North Korea and Iran both pose serious risks because of their nuclear weapons programs and the instability they create in their regions. Conflict-resolution techniques are an important part of how we need to address those problems. By addressing the underlying interests of the countries involved, rather than focusing on their current stated positions, Obama’s approach offers the best hope of a peaceful resolution. It’s not obvious that there is a good solution to either situation. We may not be able to actually convince Iran to dismantle its nuclear weapons program. But a conflict-resolution approach, which listens to, acknowledges, and seeks to address the underlying interests that motivate the other side’s decision-making offers the best hope.

Incidentally, taking a conflict-resolution approach does not mean being a push-over or giving in. It’s perfectly consistent to acknowledge the other side’s interests and to still focus on your interests, and be unwilling to compromise in a way that will prevent you from accomplishing your interests. Obama also sometimes staked out positions where every other member of the Illinois senate took the opposite position. But it means doing things that are most likely to actually achieve your interests, and even when agreement is not possible, disagreeing in a way that makes cooperation and the resolution of other disputes possible.

3. Obama is very smart and thoughtful. Obama is unusually smart and thoughtful for a politician. He takes things seriously, and he takes his responsibility to the Constitution seriously. There were several cases in which he did not vote in favor of bills that passed by overwhelming margins because either the procedure taken by the legislature did not give him the opportunity to adequately consider the bill or because he thought the bill would be unconstitutional. That’s a remarkable approach in a modern politician. Many politicians today cynically support bills that they know would never be upheld as constitutional because they view it as an easy way to score cheap political points. A classic example would be Clinton’s repeated sponsorship of a bill to ban flag-burning, despite the fact that she surely knows that the Supreme Court has invalidated completely identical bills and despite the fact that she opposes a flag-burning constitutional amendment. I think that it is valuable to have a President who actually cares about the limits of the Constitution, especially after the atrocities of the last eight years. I am deeply worried that while Clinton would almost certainly be less authoritarian than Bush has been that she would not push us far enough back.

4. Clinton was badly wrong on Iraq. One of Clinton’s principal claims to be the better candidate is experience. That’s sort of bogus to begin with. It requires considering her experience as First Lady to be worth more than Obama’s longer experience as an elected legislator. But in any event, experience is only valuable if it leads a candidate or officeholder to make the right decisions. Clinton’s track record is not very good. She has had several high profile failures-- most notably on health-care reform. She also got Iraq badly wrong. She, like so many other Democrats, either thought that allowing the Bush Administration to invade Iraq was a good idea or thought that she would take too much political damage if she opposed the war. Either way, she made a bad mistake. (Perhaps an invasion of Iraq to stop the abuses of the Hussein government could have been justified and could have been done right. But even if that’s true, Bush would never have been the President who would have done it right.) Furthermore, she then spent years and years not admitting her gross error. I don’t know if she has finally said that she thinks it was wrong then, but it doesn’t matter. She should have long ago, as Edwards did. Better, she should have voted the right way when she had the chance. In contrast, Obama has been a consistent opponent of the war from the beginning. To be fair, he never faced the situation of having to make a choice in the Senate as to how to vote on its initial authorization. But lacking that “experience” cannot way against having had that chance, gotten it wrong, and then refusing to admit a mistake. I don’t know which candidate will do a better job of extricating us in the least destructive way from Iraq. But I do know that Obama’s record and positions make me much more hopeful about him than I am about Clinton.

5. Obama is much more likely to win in a general election. Electability is not my principal reason for supporting Obama, but it is worth considering. Either Clinton or Obama would be a much better president than Sen. John “I never met a war I didn’t like” McCain or Mitt Romney. But in an election match-up against McCain, in particular, the election would not be a foregone conclusion. And Obama is more likely to prevail than Clinton. Obama is very popular with independents and even draws some Republican support. While Clinton would draw heavy Democratic support, and would even draw the votes of some racist Democrats who would not vote for an African-American candidate, she is unlikely to do well with independents and will in fact turn out a large Republican vote for her opponent. Overall, Obama is much more likely to win. Partly, this relates to the general pattern of being good at listening and at expressing understanding and comprehension (even with disagreement) for other’s positions. Partly, it has to do with history, and the experience of the Bill Clinton presidency. But whatever the reasons, it is a strong, real effect. Notably, Democrats from “red states” or “reddish purple states” have heavily endorsed Obama. I believe that they think, correctly, that down ballot Democrats will win many more races for Senate, House, and state offices if he is the nominee than if Clinton is.

Both candidates face a certain amount of bigotry based on their characteristics-- Obama has to overcome racism, Clinton sexism. That’s deplorable. But I actually don’t think that it is the principal cause of the difference in electability. I don’t think Clinton has very high negatives among non-Democrats (including independents) principally because she is a woman. Rather, I think it is because of a series of mistakes she made as First Lady, including how she handled being a point person on health care reform and some of the public statements she made, as well as the general effect of having been tarred by a long series of attacks on Bill Clinton. So I don’t think that it is a capitulation to sexism to take into account the high negative opinions that will make it difficult for her to win.

I’m all for electing a female President. I was enthusiastic about the idea of Pat Schroder of Colorado running for president back in the day. I think that Gov. Janet Napolitano of Arizona (to name just one example) might make a strong VP nominee and hopefully future presidential nominee. But it’s not inherently sexist to say that Clinton will have a hard time winning, not because she’s a woman but because many people dislike her, and that that’s a good reason to not vote for her in a primary.

6. I’m not convinced that Clinton is clean, and she has run a dirty campaign. Hillary Clinton has a long history of being close to scandals. There were a series of dubious financial deals when she was in Arkansas. A large number of Clinton Administration officials were also, if not directly implicated in corruption, a little too close to it for comfort. While every politician (including Obama) has some unsavory donors who they eventually disavow, Clinton has a disproportionately large number. I don’t know that she’s corrupt-- I hope not. And some of that is the result of having been faced with heavy scrutiny and attack as a result of Bill Clinton’s presidency. But there’s enough of an odor of it to be worrisome. And I have heard second-hand but in my opinion reliable reports of straight-arrow Democrats who worked in Bill Clinton’s White House Counsel’s office who were dismayed by what they saw. Now, perhaps Hillary Clinton would run a cleaner, less questionable administration than Bill did. But if she is going to claim the mantle of the Bill Clinton Administration, she needs to accept the negative aspects of it as well.

Moreover, she has run a campaign that has used lies and crypto-racism. Again, this is somewhat complicated. Most candidates have supporters who lie or say awful things in support of their candidates-- neither Obama nor Clinton is an exception in this regard. But some statements come from campaigns themselves, or from proxies who can be fairly attributed to the campaign. Bill Clinton dismissing Obama’s victory in South Carolina on the basis of the fact the Jesse Jackson won in South Carolina is hard to interpret as anything other than racism. Whether he meant that as belittling Obama as just a black candidate or South Carolina voters as just black voters and thus less worthy of respect is rather beside the point. The Clinton campaign has also engaged in smears and distortions of Obama’s record. They have accused him of not being pro-choice because he voted “present” (rather than “no”) on an anti-abortion bill in Illinois-- notwithstanding the fact that abortion rights groups in Illinois requested a “present” vote. By having clearly pro-choice Senators like Obama vote “present,” they provided political cover for pro-choice Democrats from marginal districts to also vote “present,” and thus to avoid providing political ammunition to their opponents in the next campaign. Technical details to be sure, but the Clinton campaign’s mailers and publicity about it was clearly deceptive and just inaccurate. Likewise, the Clinton campaign (particularly through Bill Clinton) has tried hard to paint Obama as having followed the same “supported the war, then opposed it” pattern as Clinton did, but the facts don’t support their claims. In contrast, I have seen many fewer distortions, slanders, or implicit sexism in the Obama campaign or its close proxies. There are supporters of Obama who say sexist things or distort Clinton’s record, but I haven’t seen that coming from people whose statements can be fairly attributed to the Obama campaign.

The crypto-racism is particularly troubling. The Democratic Party, like America as a whole, has a long history of ugliness on race. By embracing the racism of some Democrats, the Clinton campaign has made itself part of the problem. I’m not saying that I think that Clinton is herself actually racist-- I assume she is not. But I am saying that she has not been being part of the solution, and that her close associates have been contributing to the problem. That should be unacceptable in a Democratic primary.

In conclusion, I think that Obama is the better candidate. He has a history of success. I’m hard-pressed to think of any major accomplishments that Clinton can actually claim credit for. He has a very effective style of dealing with conflicts. Clinton’s style of dealing with conflicts appears to be to escalate them and either lose or reach a stalemate. Obama is unusually smart and thoughtful, with a demonstrated commitment to the Constitution. While Clinton is also very smart, I have been less convinced that she is as thoughtful and certainly less convinced that she values the freedoms embedded in our Constitution as highly. Obama has a much better record on the war-- not the perfect one we would ideally like, but a much better one. Obama is much more electable than Clinton-- and Obama will be more able to effectively use the war against McCain than Clinton, who also voted to support it, will be able to. And finally, the Clinton campaign has lied, distorted the truth, and tried to use racism as a weapon against Obama, and we as Democrats should reject those tactics, especially within the primary campaign. Either candidate will be worth supporting in the general election-- I will donate to and campaign for either. But Obama is the better choice, and I hope that you will join me in helping him become our nominee.

Welcome

Sat, 12 Jan 2008 21:16:26 GMT

Cerebral Paladin is a lawyer, father, husband (of orichalcum), writer, and gamer, among many other activities. His ENWorld Story Hours can be found here at Aphonion Tales, or Journals of a Licensed Diabolist.