This week’s flap over the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation’s decision to stop making grants to Planned Parenthood affiliates is a case in point. Before this story broke, I planned to write sometime in the next few weeks about my personal dilemma as a pro-choice Republican (did I mention I have a contrary nature?) when it comes to supporting candidates who seek to attack Planned Parenthood financially.

My response is to create my own personal matching program. For every dollar I contribute this year to a GOP candidate or to an organization like the Log Cabin Republicans, which supports Republican candidates regardless of their position on abortion rights, I plan to give a dollar to Planned Parenthood. In most cases, this will reduce the amount I give to Republican nominees.

The amounts are trivial, but the principle is important to me: I want a Republican Party that makes room for people with social views like mine. I can’t encourage this outcome by supporting Democrats, as I generally did until a few years ago. I can foster a broader-based Republican Party by being a Republican (because the party’s positions on private enterprise and the role and scope of government are reasonably close to my own), while limiting my donations and making counterbalancing contributions to support other principles that the party rejects, such as marriage rights and reproductive choice.

With the news that the Komen foundation is ending its grants to 19 Planned Parenthood affiliates, I have decided to expand my matching program. My wife and I make several donations every year to Komen, in support of friends and relatives who participate in walkathons and other fundraising activities to fight breast cancer. We won’t turn our backs on these efforts, though I suspect some of our circle will now skip the Komen events. Regardless of one’s views on abortion, Komen is doing good work, and I see no reason to boycott the group. But Planned Parenthood does good work too, against breast cancer and in all areas of reproductive health. So, as with the GOP, any contributions we make to Komen are going to be limited, and we are going to match those contributions with equal gifts to Planned Parenthood.

Social Security is the reputed third rail of U.S. politics, but abortion is actually the high-voltage wire of American discourse. Businesses and other neutral parties usually try to avoid touching the issue, since it almost invariably means offending close to half the population. Thus it came as a surprise that the Komen organization dropped its longstanding relationship with Planned Parenthood based on the mere initiation of an investigation by Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., into whether the organization is using federal funds to help pay for abortions, which would be illegal.

Planned Parenthood insists that it complies with the law, and Stearns has not issued any findings to the contrary thus far. Short of incontrovertible misconduct or gross carelessness on Planned Parenthood’s part, however, there is likely to be serious disagreement over whatever Stearns finds. In all probability, Planned Parenthood does not directly use federal money to pay for abortions, but the organization’s clinics do provide a wide array of services. Money that is spent on general overhead or on administrative expenses can be viewed as funding abortions and abortion counseling, or not, depending upon one’s perspective. People will see what they want to see.

Unlike losing the Komen grants, which are a tiny part of Planned Parenthood’s funding, a cutoff of federal money could deal the organization a serious blow. National Public Radio reports that Planned Parenthood spends about $1 billion annually. When the GOP-controlled House of Representatives voted last year to cut off federal funding, Politico said Planned Parenthood was receiving $80 million, or about one-quarter, of the $317 million annual allocation of Title X funding.

Komen’s founder and CEO, Nancy G. Brinker, released a video yesterday denouncing “scurrilous accusations” that her group had caved to pressure from anti-abortion activists, portraying the change in position as simply an attempt to manage her group’s resources more effectively.

Yet anti-abortion leaders make no secret of their desire to use defunding to shut down Planned Parenthood clinics, which offer a broad range of services, in order to curtail access to abortion. “We should end the day when the largest abortion provider is the largest recipient of [Title X] federal funding,” said Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., who introduced the cutoff measure. The defunding move died last year in the Senate, but a similar fight is likely again this year.

Christianity Today reported this week that that nearly half of Planned Parenthood’s total budget comes from various federal, state and local programs, and commented that “Employee scandals, government deficits, and budget-cutting lawmakers have provided a rare opportunity for pro-life groups to advocate for defunding Planned Parenthood.” To abortion rights supporters, this sounds cynical and heartless. On the other side, people who oppose abortion – and this includes most Republicans – believe that they are saving innocent lives, and that they have a right to ensure that their tax dollars do not pay to keep the lights on in a facility that provides abortion services.

To me, the question boils down to what remaining options will be open to the poorest, most defenseless women in our society. No matter what happens to Planned Parenthood, or to Roe v. Wade, women of means in the 21st century will always be able to safely control when and whether they bear children. A frightened teenager with supportive parents can get the help she needs. The fortunate women in families like mine need not rely on Planned Parenthood clinics to be screened for breast cancer.

I think every woman should have the same opportunities, so I’ll support Planned Parenthood regardless – in fact, in spite of – those who seek to defund it. That’s the Republican way, after all. With smaller government and a modest tax burden, I’m supposed to be in charge of my own choices. I find this choice pretty easy to make.

But those with businesses that want to take advantage of the Small Business Lending Fund (SBLF), created last year as part of the Small Business Jobs Act, had better be prepared to discuss both. To qualify for loans from institutions participating in the SBLF, businesses must certify that none of their principals has been convicted of, or pleaded no contest to, a sex offense against a minor.

The SBLF provides capital to community banks that can, in turn, lend to small businesses. It has nothing to do with children or sex offenses. As far as I know, there is no evidence that those convicted sex offenders are less capable than anyone else of running a business that can create jobs, or that sex offenders are less likely to repay their loans.

This little-known provision is just one example of a growing array of collateral consequences, which are legally imposed civil limitations that those convicted of crimes must face after their penal sentences expire. Some post-sentence restrictions are justifiable on public protection grounds. For example, those convicted of criminal offenses involving dishonesty, breaches of trust or money laundering may be barred from working at institutions insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. Yet other collateral consequences, such as the SBLF exclusion, have little apparent relationship to the crimes they target. These restrictions seem to exist solely as an added punishment, on top of the sentence prescribed in the criminal laws.

Because of collateral consequences, convictions can have long-lasting ramifications for civic participation, employment, housing and eligibility for public benefits. These barriers can affect former offenders long after they’ve completed their official sentences. The American Bar Association has identified 38,000 separate statutes that contain collateral consequences. According to Stephen A. Saltzburg, who worked on the ABA project, 84 percent of these legal barriers are job-related, which contributes to an 11 percent reduction in wages for those former offenders who are able to find work.

Drug convictions come with an especially heavy load of collateral consequences, and can lead to disqualification for federal and state assistance, including food stamps and public housing. Students convicted of selling or possessing drugs can also lose their federal financial aid, including eligibility for work-study programs. Given the income gap between those with college degrees and those without, this policy seems notably counterproductive, forcing those convicted of drug offenses to accept a future of lesser-paid work rather than giving them the opportunity to eventually become more productive members of society.

Even in some cases where the laws purport to protect the public, the effects can be unnecessarily devastating for those seeking fresh starts after serving their sentences.

In one particularly egregious example, sex offenders in Miami were forced to erect a tent city beneath the Julia Tuttle Causeway after the city passed a law prohibiting them from living within 2,500 feet of anyplace where children gather. In a densely packed city with a normal complement of schools, parks, playgrounds and houses of worship, the sex offenders were left with nowhere else to go. One man told The New York Times in 2009 that he had the money to rent an apartment and had looked at 17 prospective places, but none of them would enable him to comply with the law. His driver’s license listed his address as “Julia Tuttle Bridge.” After three years, the tent city’s residents were eventually relocated by the Miami-Dade Homeless Trust.

According to a working group of judges, law professors and lawyers formed to study the issue of collateral consequences in New York state, “collateral consequences of criminal prosecutions are growing in number, scope and duration.” Because collateral consequences are the product of a wide assortment of statutes, administered by a diverse collection of agencies, they cannot be controlled through sentencing, and there is no easy way for defendants or their attorneys to learn all of the possible consequences of any given conviction. As the working group noted, this makes it “extremely difficult for judges, practitioners and the public they serve to fully appreciate what lies ahead” and “bedevils efforts at appropriate sentencing and competent counseling.”

Bit by bit, we are letting politics take the place of justice, and in the process we are forgetting the principle that an offender should be allowed to start anew after paying his or her debt to society. We are creating sweeping categories of crimes that carry life sentences in prisons without walls. This is not making our society safer, and it certainly is not making it fairer or better.

Lawmakers have a responsibility to protect the law-abiding public from crime and from criminals. I would grant that lengthy sentences and post-prison restrictions are, in some cases, the most effective barrier to recidivism. But another barrier to recidivism is to allow former criminals to rejoin law-abiding society by rebuilding their lives on solid foundations.

That’s hard to do while living under a bridge.

Set aside my skepticism of dire climate change forecasts. I won’t deny what is happening right in front of me. In sports and politics, at least, today’s climate is radically different from that of my youth. Baseball’s season opener has migrated to Tokyo and moved up to March 28 and 29, when the Athletics will face the Mariners this year. We will be nearly a week into February when the Giants confront the Patriots in this Sunday’s Super Bowl, beneath a roof in Indianapolis. And, for all practical purposes, the presidential primary season ended yesterday with Mitt Romney’s Florida victory over the remaining Republican field.

Granted, Romney is far away from amassing the delegate total he will need to secure his party’s nomination at the Republican National Convention in late August, and Newt Gingrich vows to take his battle for the nomination all the way to the convention floor in Tampa. Rick Santorum continues to fight on as well, and Ron Paul says he has no intention of ending his quirky and low-budget libertarian quest. Paul is the only remaining GOP candidate who has yet to win a single state. He has a good chance of keeping that record intact.

None of this matters, because Romney is the only viable candidate in the Republican race. This makes him the winner by default. Gingrich has the resources to run but not to win, at least not in large states that will supply convention delegates in wholesale quantities. He will not even appear on the primary ballot in Virginia, where he has lived for many years, when that state votes on March 6 – otherwise known as Super Tuesday. Romney is far better prepared than Gingrich to fight on multiple fronts simultaneously, as in the 10 Super Tuesday states. Gingrich’s best shot that day will come in Georgia, which sent him to the House of Representatives more than a decade ago. But Romney gets to run in his home state of Massachusetts that same day, and he also is likely to steamroll Gingrich in Ohio, an important and large swing state, much as he did in Florida.

Gingrich will stay in the race for awhile because it enhances his prestige and, ultimately, his income from speaking and consulting. My guess is that he will get out when his continued presence threatens to damage the Gingrich brand.

I am not suggesting that Romney has won the hearts and minds of most Republicans at this point. He has, however, won the support of enough of the Republicans whose primary goal is to unseat President Obama to win the nomination. Once he grabs the nomination, most remaining Republican hearts and minds will follow.

Political climate change does not stop at the primaries. Traditional wisdom holds that average voters do not begin paying attention to presidential campaigns until after Labor Day. I suspect that, barring some dramatic development in late summer or autumn, the outcome of this year’s race will be effectively decided much earlier, possibly by Memorial Day and almost surely by Independence Day.

To understand why, we have to focus on what matters, and what doesn’t, in presidential elections. First, popular vote totals don’t matter, because we don’t elect presidents based on the popular votes; we elect them based on Electoral College votes. Obama (or, much less likely, Romney) could win the popular vote, even by a considerable margin, yet lose the election.

Second, most voters’ minds are already made up. Democrats will support Obama in overwhelming numbers. Republicans will support their nominee, even the Romney candidacy they are lukewarm about, in equally high proportions. In states dominated by one party, such as New York and California for Democrats or Texas and South Carolina for Republicans, the outcome is not in doubt.

The election will turn on the relative turnout among each party’s voters in a dozen or so states that could realistically go either way, and on the way the roughly 25 percent of independent voters divide in those swing states. The economy, or more specifically voters’ perception of their own situation and prospects, will be the deciding factor. So, what ultimately matters is, in a small number of states, a relatively small number of voters’ perception of their situation and prospects – along with the two parties’ ability to turn out their core voters.

There is still time for the picture to change, but I think that by early summer, most voters will have a pretty firm impression of their situation and prospects. They are not likely to respond to some piece of news in October and decide, “Wait a minute. Things aren’t so bad – I’m going to stick with what’s working” or to think “Holy Cow – it’s been four years since Lehman tanked and we still have serious problems. I’d better go with Romney.”

Right now, the picture for Obama is discouraging but not hopeless. We learned this week that GDP growth in the last quarter of 2011 was a disappointing 2.8 percent (based on preliminary figures), and that, worse, much of that growth came from inventory buildups that cannot continue for long. Housing prices continue to fall. Canadian GDP, which is reported monthly and is closely tied to American economic activity, came in yesterday at -0.1 percent for November. The pace of hiring and layoffs has improved lately, but continued soft economic reports like these are likely to lead businesses to stay conservative on their staffing, keeping unemployment high. European debt and austerity measures, Japan’s economic morass, and Chinese monetary tightening are not helping either.

The president needs some good economic news to persuade those critical nonaligned voters to stick with him for another four years. Barring that, Obama and fellow Democrats seem to want to inspire their base to turn out by blaming the economy’s failings on rich people and Republicans, neither of whom core Democrats tend to like very much. The problem is that core Democrats do like to have jobs, pay their mortgages and send their kids to college, and the president needs to convince them that they will do better in his next four years than they did in his first four.

Republican opposition to Obama, in contrast, has been strong and highly motivated since about midway through his first year in office. The president can hope that attacks by Gingrich and other rivals will weaken GOP enthusiasm for Romney enough to depress his party’s turnout in November. That seems like a faint hope to me, but we’ll see.

In baseball, the game truly isn’t over until the last out is recorded, but elections are more like football than baseball. There is a clock, and the game is not official until it expires, and sometimes we see a cliffhanger that goes down to the last second. Other times, however, the result is a foregone conclusion before the halftime show is over. This may well prove to be one of those contests in which the losing side’s cheerleaders keep dancing long after the players know how the game will end.

Bosanek, as millions of us now know, is Warren Buffett’s secretary. She was seated near the First Lady when the president called for a “Buffett rule” that would require people making more than $1 million to pay at least 30 percent of their income in federal taxes. White House image-makers were eager to use Bosanek to symbolize a middle class that is being relentlessly squeezed by a system that favors the wealthy and well-connected.

This raised questions that we usually have no reason to ask about a corporate chieftain’s assistant. Exactly how well does Bosanek fit into the president’s definition, or anyone’s definition, of “middle class?” Does she feel squeezed? Does she endorse the president’s message that her boss should pay higher taxes?

Buffett, the multi-billionaire chairman and CEO of Omaha-based Berkshire Hathaway Inc., brought Bosanek into the public conversation last summer when, in a New York Times op-ed piece, he observed that the share of his income that goes to federal taxes is the lowest among the 20 people, including Bosanek, who work in his office. (The original op-ed column did not mention his secretary specifically, but her circumstances became the focus of many follow-up interviews and much commentary.) Wealthy people, Buffett argued, should pay more than others, not less – a point with which the president heartily agrees.

A funeral on my wife’s side of the family brought me to Omaha last Thursday, just after Bosanek’s moment in front of the cameras. The online world was buzzing about the suddenly famous administrative assistant, and she was front-page news in her hometown. “Buffett calls criticism of his secretary ‘ridiculous,’” the Omaha World-Herald newspaper, which is owned by Berkshire Hathaway, reported. Coincidentally or otherwise, the adjacent story above the fold reported on a hearing in the Nebraska Legislature: “Counties rip plan to drop inheritance tax.”

By raising the topic of his secretary’s income taxes, Buffett inevitably led people to ask how much she is paid. But he and Bosanek both refused to answer that question, saying her personal business is personal. This was true, until Buffett decided to make it the country’s business too.

Buffett apparently disapproved of online speculation about Bosanek’s income and about her and her husband’s recent purchase of a second home in Arizona. “They can’t attack the facts, so they attack the person,” Buffett told the World-Herald. “It’s ridiculous.”

No serious person is attacking Bosanek. Asking about her income, which is necessary to understand and critique Buffett’s argument about taxes generally, is not an attack. Many administrative assistants to top executives (unlike the 82-year-old Buffett, most of us don’t call them secretaries nowadays) earn six-figure incomes, and in my experience, they deserve every penny. If Buffett wants us to address the facts underlying his opinions, he ought to provide some.

Here are a few facts we can deduce without getting too personal. Buffett derives most of his income from Berkshire Hathaway dividends, which are taxed at 15 percent – because the income has already been taxed at the corporate level at rates up to 35 percent. Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway also pay state taxes, which he does not address in his argument. If we consider the total tax burden on income earned by Berkshire Hathaway and passed on to Buffett, it is almost certainly larger than Bosanek’s.

Bosanek and her husband, a delivery truck driver, presumably earn most of their income from wages. Their overall tax rate includes not just income taxes, but Social Security taxes. Social Security will replace a much larger share of their income than it would replace for Buffett, and Bosanek is looking forward to collecting it. “Hopefully in 10 years, when I turn 65 and Warren turns 92, I will be able to convince him to finally retire so I can retire, after working 47 years, and spend some time where the sun shines in the winter,” she told the World-Herald. Buffett and Obama are drifting steadily toward an argument that Social Security taxes should just be folded into the regular income tax system, breaking any ties between what an individual earns, what he or she pays in taxes, and what he or she ultimately receives as a retirement benefit.

Long-term capital gains are also taxed at 15 percent, well below the top rate on ordinary income. The president and many in his party would be happy to see that rate raised, at least for upper-income taxpayers. They seldom mention that most middle-class families pay little or no tax on their lifetime capital gains, which for average Americans arise mostly from of their homes. A married couple can avoid tax on up to $500,000 of gain from selling a principal residence, and can do so multiple times. Other assets get a stepped-up basis when acquired from a decedent.

Middle-class families also do not pay federal estate taxes, for which married couples now have a combined $10 million lifetime exemption. Someone in Buffett’s position could expect to see hundreds of millions, or even billions of dollars of his lifetime wealth accumulation taken after his death, if he wanted to pass that wealth on to his heirs. As it happens, Buffett is a proponent of the estate tax, but he does not actually expect his family to pay much. He has said publicly that he will leave only modest wealth to his heirs, devoting the rest to charity – and thus avoiding the tax. His advocacy of the tax, therefore, amounts to arguing that other wealthy people (though almost none are nearly as wealthy as he) pay a tax that he personally has no intention of paying.

This is as close to a fact-based argument as I can make with the limited facts that the Buffett and his loyal assistant have chosen to share with us.

Like most financial professionals, I respect Buffett’s business acumen. Like most Americans, I take as a given that he, and his secretary, are basically honest and decent people, because most of us are honest and decent, even if we forget to acknowledge this in the heat of our disagreements.

But Buffett did not make an intellectually honest argument by insisting that his formerly anonymous secretary ought to retain her privacy after she let herself be used as a political poster child. We can only guess that Debbie Bosanek is better-paid than most administrative assistants. We know for a fact that the average assistant does not get camera time at the State of the Union address.

Romney and his wife Ann have very intricate finances, owing to his involvement in the private equity vehicles operated by Bain Capital. When you consider the complexity of U.S. tax laws even for individuals in average circumstances, it takes an almost Herculean effort for people like the Romneys to satisfy the law’s demands. Yet nothing shady was apparent in the 2010 returns that the former Massachusetts governor released, nor in the early-draft version of his 2011 returns (which are not likely to be completed until autumn, when his partnership holdings report their final figures).

The Romneys engaged the international accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers to prepare their returns, and their tax counsel is a partner at Ropes & Gray, a prominent Boston law firm. I have worked with both organizations over the years, and both typically do top-flight work. Their services, naturally, don’t come cheap. You can be sure that no expense was spared in making sure that the Romneys’ tax returns would not ultimately cause any avoidable headaches, either legal or political.

Yes, the Romneys are very wealthy. Yes, they benefit from the 15 percent federal tax rate that applies to long-term capital gains and to dividends from corporations that have already paid federal income tax on their profits. Yes, they give away large sums of money, mostly to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We knew all this without needing to see the specifics on their tax returns. If we are going to disqualify a candidate for the White House because he has been highly successful in business and became wealthy as a result, the shame is ours – not the candidate’s.

But there is one aspect of the Romney returns that I believe will create political fallout, and not just for the Romneys. The majority of Mitt Romney’s capital gains ($12.9 million over the past two years, out of a total of $21.7 million, CNN reported) came from “carried interest” in various Bain partnerships – which means that this income was taxed at the 15 percent capital gains rate, even though it does not meet the traditional definition of capital gains at all.

A capital gain results when a taxpayer disposes of a “capital asset,” as defined in the tax code, at a profit. A capital asset is generally property or a property right, excluding inventory, which the taxpayer acquired through purchase, gift or bequest. If I write a book, my copyright in that book is not a capital asset, because I obtained it through my own labor rather than by purchase. If I sell the copyright to you, I will report ordinary income, taxed at up to 35 percent. But the copyright you just purchased is a capital asset in your hands. If you hold it longer than one year and sell it to someone else at a profit, you pay tax at 15 percent. (I’m smoothing out a few wrinkles in the law here, but this is how the concept operates.)

Bain Capital is in the business of buying companies, trying to expand or improve them, and then selling them. Most of the cash that Bain uses to acquire companies comes from lenders or from investors who, in effect, hire Bain to buy and run companies for them. Bain and its competitors typically charge investors an initial fee of 1 or 2 percent to get into the investments, and another 1 or 2 percent or so per year on the capital that investors commit to Bain’s investment funds. This creates a decent but unspectacular stream of income.

Bain makes its serious money by taking a disproportionate cut of the profits when companies are sold. Typically, the investors keep their entire share of the profits if the investment generates an unspectacular return of, say, 8 percent or less. But if the investor clears that hurdle rate, Bain is typically allowed to take 20 percent of the entire gain. So if an investment yields a 20 percent annualized gain, and Bain takes 20 percent of that profit, the net profit to the investor is 16 percent.

For Bain, the financial kicker in all this is that the company and its partners need put up very little of their own money. They get outsiders to supply the cash, while they supply the savvy and connections that get the deals done and the profits made. Call it payment for services, or call it “sweat equity.” But when all is said and done, it is a payment for Bain’s services, not a gain resulting from Bain’s capital. Remember, the tax law normally treats payment for one’s labor as ordinary income, not capital gain.

The rules allow carried interest to be treated differently. On one level, this makes sense. If Bain only took its annual management fee, its investors would report larger capital gains. The carried interest merely shifts this capital gain from the people who put up the capital initially to Bain, which put up the smarts. Bain also took a risk, since if the investment performed poorly, Bain would not receive the carried interest. Employees typically get paid regardless of whether their efforts are successful; business owners, aka investors, bear the risk of failure. So carried interest is not without logic.

But it also is very difficult to defend this practice in the current environment. Mitt Romney has plenty of capital, and he is entitled to capital gains treatment when he puts it at risk. But it is hard to argue that he is entitled to capital gains treatment for profits he receives without putting any personal wealth into the pot.

President Obama and congressional Democrats have targeted the carried interest rules for several years. Republicans have resisted, but I suspect the Romney tax returns will put an end to that. That end may come soon. Congress must act within the next month to prevent Social Security taxes on wage-earners from rising. Both parties want to extend the current rate through the end of this year, but they are far apart on how to pay for this extension.

Don’t be surprised if Republicans give up on protecting the carried interest rule. For that matter, don’t be surprised if Romney himself supports a change. He did nothing wrong when he paid his taxes the way the law demands, but carried interest is going to be a political burden this year, and it is one the Republicans may no longer be willing to carry.

Wisconsin usually does not make the list. But the Badger State – not particularly big, not particularly influential in national politics – has become a state that President Obama must carry if he is going to have a decent chance at re-election. The president’s own political chiefs have, indirectly, said as much.

The folks at Obama campaign headquarters last month drew up five possible paths to the magic number of 270 Electoral College votes. As a starting point, all five strategies assume that Obama will carry all the states that Sen. John Kerry won in his unsuccessful 2004 effort to unseat President George W. Bush. This would yield 246 electoral votes this year. Then they add and subtract various states in combinations that would give Obama a victory in November.

Winning Florida, with its 29 electoral votes, would be enough. Without Florida, the Obama loyalists are eyeing Virginia and North Carolina, which the president captured in 2008, or Southwestern states with fast-growing Hispanic populations. Obama campaign manager Jim Messina explained the strategies in a video seeking to rally supporters. Messina said there are over 40 combinations of states that the campaign believes could win the president a second term. But he only presented five, and all five presume an Obama victory in Wisconsin.

This is curious. Wisconsin seems like anything but a safe bet for Democrats these days.

The state is enmeshed in a set of vicious recall battles. Democrats and organized labor have gathered enough signatures to prompt recall elections against Republican Gov. Scott Walker and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch, as well as against four Republican state senators. Petitioners handed over around 1 million signatures, twice as many as required, in their move to oust the governor. Assuming that enough of those signatures are found to be valid, which, given the huge cushion, seems almost certain, elections will be held this spring or summer.

The effort to recall the governor caps a year of political turbulence. It began last winter when Walker proposed a plan to restrict collective bargaining for government workers. The proposal sparked outrage among unions and their allies, and put Wisconsin temporarily in the national spotlight. Over the summer, Democrats tried to win control of the state Senate through a first wave of recall elections. Although Republicans managed to keep a narrow majority in the chamber, two Republican state senators lost their jobs. If they succeed, the next round of recalls would give Democrats control of the Senate and the governor’s mansion.

The seemingly endless battle will have a big impact in November, but nobody knows what that impact will be. Although Wisconsin hasn’t gone Republican in a presidential race since favoring Ronald Reagan in 1984, its electorate is closely divided. “Wisconsin is a deep purple state. We’re about as balanced as can be,” Mordecai Lee, a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor of government affairs, told Milwaukee’s WITI-TV.

It’s possible the recall elections will rally Wisconsin Democrats, spurring them to keep up the fight by heading to the polls in November. However, the recall election will not be cheap. Despite their success in gathering signatures, Democrats are aware the race will be a close one. “If we do win, it will be by a razor-thin margin,” David Obey, a retired Democratic congressman who is considering running against Walker, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Democrats outside the state have expressed concern about sinking money into a statewide election so soon before the presidential race. There is also a chance that adding another hot contest to the year’s election calendar will induce voter fatigue, leaving would-be voters unwilling to summon the energy to make their way back to the polls again in November. In a state as evenly divided as Wisconsin, voter turnout is critical.

In the background, Wisconsin is also considering a proposal that would change the way it allots its Electoral College votes from a winner-take-all model to a representative one based on congressional districts. Maine and Nebraska are the only states that currently determine their Electoral College votes this way, although a similar plan was also proposed in Pennsylvania in September. The plan seems unlikely to take off, either there or in Wisconsin. But if the proposal did somehow pass, it could deprive Obama of the last few votes he needs to win a close race, even if he narrowly carries Wisconsin.

We still have some time before the classic blue and red election map starts to fill our television and computer screens. (Those looking for something to watch in the meantime might consider the live feed of Wisconsin workers processing the 1 million recall signatures, a spectacle that has already attracted nearly 30,000 viewers.) When the familiar map does show up, there will still be plenty to watch in Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Pay attention to Wisconsin too.

But I’m perplexed – or perhaps dazzled is a better word – by the Fed’s announcement yesterday that it intends to hold interest rates at ultra-low levels until at least late 2014. The idea is to encourage consumers and businesses to spend money, confident that the government will not let interest rates rise until a sustainable economic recovery is well underway.

Last summer, the Fed promised to keep rates at rock bottom until the middle of 2013. That was roughly a 24-month window, which is a long time to plan monetary policy in advance. Now, barely into 2012, the promise has been extended to something between 30 and 36 months. That’s about 21 dog years, and close to eternity in Central Bank timekeeping.

The goal of these extended promises is to reduce uncertainty. But there can be too much certainty in government, just as there can be too much sunshine when you drive westbound on a highway in late afternoon. The glare can be blinding.

Maintaining today’s interest rates only makes sense, if at all, on the assumption that economic conditions will warrant mega-cheap money for the next two to three years. The Fed clearly expects this to be the case. Slow hiring in the United States, continued high unemployment, modest inflation and, especially, continued financial turmoil in Europe (accompanied by government austerity and economic contraction) make the case for the current policy. This scenario could, indeed, play out – but so could a lot of others.

The U.S. economy might rebound more sharply and quickly than the Federal Reserve presently expects. Or Europe might get its financial house in order sooner, bringing down government borrowing costs while hidebound private industry starts to flex its muscles. Or continuing American budget deficits could prompt investors to shun Treasury debt in favor of gold and other commodities, forcing inflation higher despite slow growth.

Before last summer, we had a pretty good idea how the Federal Reserve would react in those situations. A generation of vigilance against inflation gave us reasonable confidence that if prices began to seriously spike, the Fed would tighten credit, even if doing so drove unemployment higher in the short term. Loosening again would be possible once inflationary pressures abated.

The promise that the Fed made last summer and extended yesterday introduces a new variable. Conditions may change. The Fed has reserved the right to react to changed circumstances by altering its monetary policy – but doing so could be perceived as going back on its promise, damaging the central bank’s credibility for years to come. So the Fed is likely to be reluctant to tighten its policy earlier than it said it would, even if future developments make tightening desirable.

The question is how much pressure it would take to induce the Fed to change its stance. Nobody, not even the current members of the Fed’s rate-setting Federal Open Market Committee, can know for certain. The rest of us must choose between two assumptions. The first is that, despite its comforting words about keeping rates where they are for an extremely long time, the Fed will ultimately do whatever it thinks it must. Anyone who believes this will consider the low-rate pledge an empty promise, and if enough people believe this to be the case, the pledge will fail to encourage any change in financial behavior.

The second option is that the Fed will hold on to its low rates as long as it possibly can, consistent with its pledge, but perhaps inconsistent with actual economic developments. If you believe this, then you have to believe the Fed has monetary policy on autopilot. The result could well be an inflationary surge and a dollar crash. Once it finally did act, the Fed would probably overcompensate by excessively tightening policy to re-establish its inflation-fighting credentials. We might end up with a short-term recovery at the cost of a harsh recession afterwards.

An economy the size of ours does not change direction readily, but when it does move, it can do so with surprising speed. Imagine if the Fed had tried to set monetary policy three years ahead in mid-2006. We were proceeding merrily through a debt- and real estate-fueled expansion, and almost nobody foresaw the crash that came in 2008 and the following recession that extended well into 2009. The Fed’s policy at the time, which was to react as circumstances dictated, gave it the flexibility to move creatively and forcefully to stem the damage and protect the global banking system. There is a risk that its current longer-term pledges will gum up our monetary machinery, leaving it permanently behind the curve.

I understand why the central bank wants to offer as much reassurance as it can. There is nothing reassuring, however, about pretending to know more about the future than we actually know. Economic decision-making in the political branches of our government is already chronically slow, which makes it more important than ever to have a responsive and responsible central bank. I know Bernanke and his colleagues are trying to help, but please, folks – pull down the visors. We can’t see where we’re going.

In their eyes, modern wars always took place somewhere east of Paris. But the Falklands War was real. It resulted from a long-simmering dispute between a fading Old World power and an ambitious but underachieving New World nation.

Now the treeless, chilly, sparsely settled South Atlantic islands are becoming a hot spot in international relations once again. Britain and Argentina are still at the center of the dispute, but larger powers including Brazil and the United States could easily get dragged into the mess this time as well. The Falklands continue to command attention far beyond their intrinsic worth to anyone who does not live there.

The British-ruled territory is situated 300 miles from the Argentine coast. It has a total land area of 4,700 square miles, less than the state of Connecticut. Its two main islands, and around 750 smaller islands, are collectively home to fewer than 3,000 residents.

But there may be a lot of oil nearby. “The area is underexplored and highly prospective,” Evan Calio, a New York-based Morgan Stanley analyst, told Bloomberg. Together, four oil wells planned for development this year could produce about 8.3 billion barrels of oil. That much oil is enough to light some serious political fires; in the Falkland Islands, there are plenty of old conflicts to ignite.

The French first settled the islands, which had no indigenous population, in 1764. They were soon displaced by Britain and Spain, from which Argentina was cleaved in 1816 as part of the United Provinces of South America, which also included parts of modern Uruguay, Brazil and Bolivia. After Argentina emerged from the breakup of the United Provinces, it attempted to start a colony on the Falklands (known as Las Malvinas in the Spanish-speaking world) in 1829. But the British never abandoned their claims, and they established permanent control of the islands in 1834. For the past 177 years (excepting the two months after the 1982 Argentine invasion), the islands have been under British administration, and most of the current residents are of British descent. Argentina, however, continues to press its claim.

The 1982 crisis broke out when Argentine troops landed in a sudden attack. Argentina was in the thick of its Dirty War, and its military junta – led by Gen. Leopoldo Fortunato Galtieri – was desperate to retain power. The invasion seems to have been an attempt to rally the Argentine population and to distract Argentines from the economic malaise and human rights violations that were laid at the junta’s doorstep. The British, under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, assembled a task force that retook the islands from the Argentines, hastening the collapse of the junta. Despite the change in government, however, Argentina continued to claim that the islands should be Argentine property.

Now, with the promise of new oil wealth, tensions are rising again. Members of the Mercosur trading bloc, which includes Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, together with associate member Chile, announced that they would bar vessels flying the Falkland Islands ensign from docking in their ports. Argentina has also allegedly tried to undermine the Falklands fishing industry by instructing its boats to capture squid before the creatures’ migration takes them into Falklands British waters.

British Prime Minister David Cameron announced last week that he has held official discussions on how Britain would defend the Falklands in the event of another invasion attempt. “It is important for Britain to send a clear message that as long as people in the Falklands want to remain British, we respect that right of self-determination,” he said. He accused Argentina of a colonialist desire to force the island residents to accept a government they didn’t choose.

Falklands residents have supported Cameron’s declaration. Patrick Watts, a radio broadcaster, told the British paper The Telegraph, “Everyone here was very heartened by this show of support from London and relieved that Britain hasn’t forgotten the incredible sacrifices of 30 years ago. The Argentine threats brought back very unwelcome memories of 1982 for us here, and so we felt very reassured by Mr. Cameron’s comments.”

Argentina, meanwhile, claims that the islands’ residents, most of whose families have been present for generations, are imported occupiers who have no right to determine the territory’s sovereignty. “David Cameron is pursuing a policy of piracy and aggression because at home the economy is collapsing, there are riots in London, and Scotland and Wales want to escape the English empire,” Carlos Kunkel, a member of Argentina’s ruling party, said. Argentine President Cristina Kirchner has promised, however, that her country will consider only peaceful methods of exerting pressure.

The historical claims of the two nations are difficult to unravel. It’s possible, albeit doubtful, that Argentina has some legitimate grounds for claiming it should have been the rightful possessor of the islands back in the 1830s. However, those claims have little relevance to the modern world. No one alive today was aggrieved by Britain’s land grab, if that is what it was, over 175 years ago. American actions at that time were equally expansionist. So was Argentina’s own southward march to the bottom of the continent, which led to decades of war with Native Americans and protracted border disputes with Chile. Argentina’s Mercosur allies have their own histories of aggressive expansionism.

What is relevant today is that the long-time residents of the Falklands are satisfied with their current government. Argentina, which has a history of taking and keeping things to which it was not entitled (ask bondholders whom the nation stiffed in its default just a decade ago), is behaving true to form. It does not deserve much international sympathy.

Americans are prone to side with Britain and the Falklanders. Brazil, however, seems to be set on supporting Argentina’s claims, no matter how ill-founded they are. This is consistent with a general Central and South American tendency toward skepticism of the English-speaking world, whose nations are often perceived as arrogant and imperious. Brazilians may not always consider themselves to be Latin Americans, but in a dispute between a Spanish-speaking neighbor and faraway England, they are apt to identify with the former.

Brazil’s support of Argentina raises the stakes in any potential conflict. Unlike Argentina, Brazil is a relatively well-managed and important emerging power, with growing sway in international affairs. A fight in which the United States takes one side and Brazil takes the other could get ugly.

The best way to defuse the threat is to bring Brazil’s interests more closely into line with those of the world’s better-organized economies. Many U.S. policies, including visa requirements, fail to recognize Brazil’s relative stability and prosperity, instead treating it in much the same way as turbulent Central American nations such as Guatemala. This is very irritating to Brazilian officialdom. The United States and Brazil also lack a tax treaty – practically a necessity for major trading partners – let alone a free-trade agreement. Instead of fostering close trade relations with Brazil, we discriminate against key Brazilian products, including ethanol and citrus.

By opening more doors for Brazil to participate in international trade as a member of the developed world, we can encourage it to use its regional influence in defense of the principles that make trade and development possible.

With or without Brazil’s help, however, it is clear that the Falklands are going to require outside protection, at least for a while. Further oil exploration continues to add more fuel to the old disputes. We need to be prepared to help douse any flames.