Matt Yglesias

Obama: Gimme Money

I’m not sure if it’s the audacity of hope, but it certainly takes some kind of audacity to follow up a seven-network 30 minute prime time ad buy with a fundraising email pleading poverty:

Our spending plans have been stretched by John McCain’s negative attacks and the overwhelming resources of the Republican National Committee.

As of October 15th, John McCain and the RNC together had nearly $20 million more in cash than the combined total of Obama for America and the DNC. And just this week, we’re facing new and unexpected spending against us in Montana and West Virginia.

There’s some impressive illogic in that last sentence. McCain being forced to play defense in Montana and West Virgina is spun as an unexpected problem for the poor, cash-strapped Obama campaign. It’s clever.

Getting Paid

Kate Sheppard takes a look at who’s getting paid in the energy and environment sphere. Oil and gas interests love Republicans (drill, baby, drill) who get 76 percent of their money. Coal likes Republicans, but not quite as much, giving the GOP 70 percent of their cash about even with “general mining interests” who give 69 percent to Republicans. Agriculture tilts Republican, giving them 60 percent of their money. The auto industry is split 50-50 with Carl Levin (D-MI) as the leading individual at $120,999. Then comes “environmental groups and individuals” who have an overwhelmingly pro-Democratic tilt.

Prison Currency

As everyone knows, in prison you use cigarettes as a medium of exchange. Except in 2004, federal prisons banned smoking. Ergo, they banned cigarettes. Ergo, you need a new medium of exchange. Thus, via Alex Tabarrok, the rise of the mackerel:

Mr. Muntz says he sold more than $1 million of mackerel for federal prison commissaries last year. It accounted for about half his commissary sales, he says, outstripping the canned tuna, crab, chicken and oysters he offers.

Unlike those more expensive delicacies, former prisoners say, the mack is a good stand-in for the greenback because each can (or pouch) costs about $1 and few — other than weight-lifters craving protein — want to eat it.

I can think of some good reasons for the rule preventing prisoners from holding cash (”Money they get from prison jobs . . . or family members goes into commissary accounts that let them buy things such as food and toiletries”) but the mackerel situation seems a bit absurd. It seems to me that the prison system ought to create an in-house currency like Disney Dollars or chips at a casino for prisoners to use as a medium of exchange.