By The Beachwood Mystery Debate Theater Affairs Desk

The Beachwood Mystery Debate Theater team of Tim Willette and Steve Rhodes gathered at Beachwood HQ to watch the Iowa Caucus returns come in. Has the media been voted out yet?
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Pre-Caucus E-Mail Exchange
Tim to Steve: We should make up our own pointless rules about caucusing as we go. “Little known fact: bald men get two votes.”
Appended:
After a Hillary Clinton appearance in Ames this week, for instance, one of her local precinct captains – whose job it is to corral and organize his or her candidate’s supporters on caucus night – said he frequently hears from Hillary backers who have, well, absolutely no clue what’s expected of them.
“They’re like, ‘Do I have to do something? Do I have to give a speech?'” he said. The next day, a local field organizer recounted the same experience, groaning: “These people don’t even know what a caucus is!” He wasn’t exaggerating: At one campaign’s focus group, the Iowans present asked whether the exercise they were engaged in was the actual caucus.
– “The Mechanics of Caucusing,” The New Republic

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Posted on January 4, 2008

By Kenzo Shibata

Those of us who are junkies for The Wire are familiar with the cute portmanteau “COMPSTAT” (Comparative+Statistics). On the show, this was the program implemented by the Baltimore City Police Department that was intended to reduce the crime rate by targeting the city’s bleakest sections. The premise was simple: District commanders (and consultants) would hold regular meetings where they looked at crime statistics in their respective areas and developed strategies to combat the epidemic.
Instead of these meetings being used for strategic purposes, though, they amounted to district commanders berating their respective precinct commanders over the high level of homicides in particular areas of the city. The immense pressure put on the precinct commanders led to what was described pejoratively as “juking the stats,” or fudging the numbers. Particular crimes would be reclassified and dates would change on toe tags.

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Posted on January 3, 2008