Political Games Forever

Crumby & Co., the office politics game, is now free.

For 1-4 players, work your way up the office ladder. The game is about cooperation and hard work, or back-stabbing and Machiavellian office politics … You get to decide. Fun for the whole office.

Crumby & Co. is a cross between Monopoly and Scruples, where you navigate the office waters by collecting projects and gaining points for promotion. Collect underlings, steal opponent players’ projects, shred files, and much, much more.

Here is a screenshot where the player Brad has just been promoted up the office chain:

It even includes a special Boss Key for emergencies.

You can download it here.

Crumby & Co. runs on Windows 98, Me, xp, Vista, or 7.

Have fun!

“Meanwhile many cities in [North Rhine-Westphalia] are on the brink of bankruptcy.”

from here.

What’s odd is how many forms of government lean forward financially like this.

A responsible individual or business will save x% of his income (say, 10%), to generate investment income and also to draw on in case something disrupts his revenue stream.

(Democratic?) governments as a rule seem to be the antithesis of this.

That is, not for that reason. My guess is that most people vote because they think that by voting they will make some difference to the outcome of the election. This is almost always false.

One person’s vote in a federal election will almost never change the outcome of who is elected for their seat (in Parliament in the U.K., or in Congress or in the Electoral College in U.S. federal elections). It doesn’t really matter how close the race is projected to be – the chances of one vote making the difference in your constituency are very small regardless. In order for one person’s vote to make a difference, the person who won would have to have won by 1 or 2 votes – this almost never happens.

So is Proportional Representation the answer to this particular problem? No. Proportional Representation is similar, because one person’s vote almost never makes a difference in terms of whether a party gets an extra seat or not at the federal level with some sort of proportional scheme. If you have 500 seats, say, and a purely proportional system, with 50,000,000 people voting (these numbers are similar to the German Bundestag, which uses a modified form of Proportional Representation), then to get a seat requires 100,000 votes. What are the chances your one vote would push your party over that line and into another seat? About 1 in 100,000, or a chance of 0.001%. I.e., statistically speaking it will not happen.

(For comparison, your chances of being killed by an asteroid impact are about 1 in 700,000. Campaigns urging people to vote by saying things like “Make your vote count!”, with the inference that one person’s vote will make a difference, would be like campaigns urging people to put large shields in place over their houses by saying things like “Make your home safe from asteroids!”)

Here are some reasons that might be good ones to vote: patriotic duty, want to tell friends who you voted for, want to encourage other people to vote (although this in turn might not be rational if you think you will therefore change the result of the election, unless lots of people’s votes depend on you voting, which is unlikely), possible fine if you don’t go to the polling booth (Australia), congruence of actions with political beliefs and ideals, … No need to delude ourselves about the power of one vote. One vote counts, but unfortunately only once, which almost never makes the difference in elections as large as federal ones.

Continuing on the theme discussed here, Robert Bennett, incumbent Senator from Utah, has lost in the Republican primary. He came not second but third.

Note: 36 Senate seats (out of 100) are up for election in November. Senators have a 6 year term, unlike Congressmen who have a 2 year term, so approx. 1/3 of the Senate seats are up for election every 2 years.

To better understand some of the possibilities for the new British Parliament’s dynamics and tensions going forward, if you’re familiar with Canadian politics here’s a rough analogy given the new seat totals in Britain:

Conservatives = Conservatives

Labour = Liberal

Liberal Democratic Party = New Democratic Party

Scottish, Welsh, and Irish nationalist parties = Bloc Québécois (the Québec nationalist party)

It’s not exact, but if you’re familiar with Canadian federal politics for the last 3 years, it might be of use in understanding what to expect in the U.K. for the next while.

To extend the analogy:

Gordon Brown (incumbent, unpopular Prime Minister leading exhausted party mired in financial scandal, used to be Chancellor of the Exchequer) = Paul Martin (incumbent, unpopular Prime Minister leading exhausted party mired in financial scandal, used to be Minister of Finance)

Tony Blair (long-running, very successful Prime Minister, who finally allows Gordon Brown to become Prime Minister) = Jean Chrétien (long-running, very successful Prime Minister, who finally allows Paul Martin to become Prime Minister)

David Cameron (transformed Conservative party and brought them back into power, albeit in a minority government) = Stephen Harper (transformed Canadian Alliance and Progressive Conservative -> Conservative party and brought them back into power, albeit in a minority government)

Nick Clegg (charismatic, seemed on verge of electoral breakthrough in last election but First-Past-the-Post electoral system stops him) = Jack Layton (charismatic, seemed on verge of electoral breakthrough in last election but First-Past-the-Post electoral system stops him)

This article discusses the Sestak-Specter Senate Democratic primary in Pennsylvania, where according to recent polls Sestak has been narrowing in on Specter’s lead among primary voters.

The possibility that Specter will be defeated by Sestak on the Democratic side would add him to a list of high-profile Senatorial candidates supported by the “establishment” of their parties who have been severely shaken by primary challengers. The most obvious is probably Marco Rubio, who forced Florida Gov. Charlie Crist to leave the Republican primary and run as an Independent. (Now, Rubio is the establishment candidate, but it wasn’t long ago that Senator DeMint caused waves by endorsing Rubio contra Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.) Now Specter on the Democratic side, who’s supported by people like the Chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. A similar sort of thing is occurring in Kentucky with Republican candidate Rand Paul, who is now ahead of Mitch McConnell-backed Tray Grayson. (Grayson just lost the endorsement of James Dobson, a high-profile conservative figure, who has instead endorsed Rand Paul, and DeMint has just bucked his party again, endorsing Paul.)

Back to the Sestak-Specter article. I found this part interesting, quoting the Pennsylvania Democratic Party Chairman who is a Specter-backer:

“It’s a race under 15 points. I respect the heck out of the [DSCC], the White House and everyone else who is stepping up. We’re all singing from the same hymnal,” Rooney said. “We knew going in it’s not going to be some cakewalk. For crying out loud, [Sestak’s] a member of Congress with $5 million dollars.”

What’s interesting is that the article doesn’t mention how much money Specter has raised.

As of March 31, 2010, Specter had raised $15M. Sestak had raised $3.5M. Specter had $9M on hand, Sestak had $5.3M (the only number mentioned in the article). So, as of the last reporting period Specter out-fundraised Sestak by more than 3:1 and had almost twice the cash on hand. Like McCain’s primary campaign in Arizona against Hayworth (where the numbers are even more lopsided), this speaks to a structural weakness in the primaries for Specter’s candidacy.

David Obey, Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee (one of the most important Democrats in the House), announced he was retiring from WI-7 (Wisconsin’s 7th district) ahead of November’s looming House elections.

In Congress Forever 2010, if you look at Wisconsin you can start to understand why (this screen is from the point of view of the Democrats, so + for percentages indicates Democrat ahead, – indicates Republican ahead):

In the current 2010 scenario, his seat is the second most vulnerable in Wisconsin, with the Republicans starting just 4 percentage points behind. The most vulnerable for an incumbent is WI-8 with Steve Kagen (D), who according to the methodology used to setup the scenario looks to be in worse condition than Obey.

Obey probably had much better information available to himself than we do.  Contemplating the chances of a loss, he probably decided it was better to quit than risk being run out by the voters with pitchforks.

This is probably similar to Sen. Evan Bayh’s (D) decision to quit earlier, as well.

Reports suggest Governor Crist of Florida believes he will not win the Republican Senate primary against Marco Rubio, and so is about to run as an Independent. This is similar to the strategy Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman used (successfully) in 2008 when he lost to Ned Lamont in the Democratic primary.

A big question with an Independent bid is finances. Will Crist have enough money to fund a strong campaign without official Republican backing?

This article suggests some Republican donors will want their donations back from Crist’s campaign. One interesting line in the article states Crist “still boasts a $7.6 million war chest.”

That sounds oddly like the amount declared in his campaign’s March 31st report ($7,631,858). In other words, that number is probably out of date. My guess is that it’s lower now.

The article suggests as much later on: ““We’re not planning on taking no for an answer,” [Connolly] said flatly. “If he’s spent $7.5 million in a month, that’s a pretty good indication of how he’ll be spending taxpayer money in Washington.”” A month from when? It’s April 29th – that is, almost a month from March 31st.

Regardless, Crist’s advantage over Rubio as of March 31st was significant enough ($7.6M to $3.9M) to suggest he’s not completely out of it.

[Update: this article has more details on Crist's independent campaign. It also claims he has $6M in the bank, instead of the $7.6M claimed in the article linked to above, which makes more sense.]

Interesting fact:

Arizona Senate Bill 1070 probably wouldn’t have been signed into law if previous Governor Janet Napolitano hadn’t resigned to become Secretary of Homeland Security – leading to Arizona Secretary of State Jan Brewer becoming the new Governor of Arizona.

Also: Governor Brewer’s approval ratings increase ahead of 2010 Arizona Gubernatorial election.

Also: Increasing profile of immigration changes the dynamics for a number of Congressional seats in 2010 – in particular, it raises concerns about marginal Democratic seats.

Related: Congress Forever 2010 here.

OpenSecrets.org has numbers for fundraising for Senate candidates (and House candidates):

As of March 31, 2010, John McCain (R, incumbent) had spent $16M and had $27M on hand.

J.D. Hayworth, who has moved up significantly in Rasmussen polls, had spent $0.4M and had $0.7M on hand.

See here.

The Arizona Senate primary is August 24th, 2010 …