Demon Sheep!

Shut it down folks, this is the best political ad of all time. Except maybe this one.

Question of the Day

“If the Fifth Amendment’s explicit guarantee — that one shall not be deprived of life without due process — does not prohibit the U.S. Government from assassinating you without any process, what exactly does it prohibit?”

-Glenn Greenwald

More on the President’s ability to assassinate Americans who are suspected of terrorism.

Update: Friedersdorf: Actual Death Panels…

Reads for Tuesday

San Diego Union Tribune on California’s woes.

Then there’s the fact that the establishment argument builds off the bogus premise that petulant voters have kept California’s taxes artificially low via Proposition 13 and through their support of the constitutional mandate that taxes can only be raised by a two-thirds vote.

But the truth is California is among the most heavily taxed states in the union despite these obstacles. Its sales, income and gasoline taxes are among the very highest in the nation. Its corporate tax is the highest in the West. And even with Proposition 13, its property taxes are about the national average.

Fred Hiatt on killing DC’s school voucher program.

The Obama administration said it was going to respect science and respond to evidence — a contrast, many Democrats said, to the previous regime. So why is President Obama killing off the program that offers the best chance to find out if school vouchers work?

Megan McArdle on observing the partisan merry go round.

It may not make much difference, from a libertarian’s point of view, when the presidency or control of congress changes hands.  But it does provide a hilarious spectacle.

Economic Populism: Incoherent & Loving It

James Surowiecki writes in The New Yorker this week about the incoherent policy preferences of the American people, particularly economic populists. He notes that part of it may be exaggerated anxiety from the downturn and I don’t disagree. I do think there might be a couple of other important reasons.

Reason 1: Partisan Fire Stoking

Those attractive worldviews peddled by partisans for political advantage not only are incompatible with but often directly undermining of more nuanced views of policy. So the right got much deserved criticism for the hyperbole and intemperate language meant to rile up the American public against health care last summer. The left gets less criticism though perhaps equally deserved for their hyperbole and intemperate anti-corporate populism meant to rile up the American public to support government action.

It’s entirely reasonable to point out that some elements of the Democrats’ health care plans were deserving of critical evaluation if not outright criticism just as it is to point out that some corporations behave in ways that are counter to the public interest. However, the intemperate language used on both sides seeks to establish a good versus evil, us versus them, fervency that does not lend itself to nuanced thinking or holistic approaches to public policy.

Reason 2: Cultural Effects of Political Choices

This is something of a theme today. This time it will be more ‘bideologically’ presented.

Conservatives in between language that praises the virtues of personal responsibility have really pushed forward an idea that government action of any kind is to be mistrusted and opposed. As such the wisdom of “common-sense approaches” and the average is revered and discussions of public policy are hampered by that bias.  They’ve really shaped the public consciousness to look at the level of government intrusion and the size of government rather than particulars of this or that program and as such it’s a narrative filled with dissonance. Conservative government employees complain about the overall size of government but protest cuts in their own field and broadly people have negative views about the level of government without commensurate ideas about what specifically government should or should not be doing.

Liberals (used broadly of course) have been the advancing army of collective action and government entitlements for as long as most Americans can remember. The thing about entitlements is the gratefulness of achievement is ephemeral, after which they become well entitlements. This makes reform, however needed, exceptionally difficult and it means that politicians (and government) don’t get credit for solvency or mitigating problems, because after all one feels entitled to benefits not grateful that they didn’t lose them. To some degree it also increases pressure on government to provide increasing benefits (again broadly defined). If local government builds a park for me this year, next year I’m going to want them to do something else. It’s very “if you give a mouse a cookie.” Which doesn’t mean it’s highly problematic, just something to be culturally expected.

Combine the two and you have a populace that always wants you to be doing more for them than you are right now, is blind to the myriad of ways in which government benefits them on daily basis because after all they’re entitled to such things, who also has an overall pessimistic and parsimonious view of government but is parochial with respect to their own benefits.

It’s a disaster and yet, in context, strangely coherent – which is perhaps the most dangerous thing of all.

A Stew of Their Own Making…

Paul Tullis writes at True/Slant about the so-called obesity industry’s victory over “democracy.” It’s a hyperbolic, thinly reasoned piece but makes a good launching point to make a point about the cultural effects of political decisions.

The gist of the piece is that soft drink makers have increased their lobbying efforts, convinced minority advocacy groups that soda taxes will hurt minorities, and thereby defeating a potential soda tax in Congress they’ve somehow thwarted democracy.

Tullis raises an issue,

They not only erected the populist-sounding “Americans Against Food Taxes” to speak their case (never mind the only Americans they were representing were corporations, not people; and the tax was to be on drinks, not food) but funded existing groups supposedly acting in the interest of Latinos and placed industry representatives on their boards.

“Using the argument that higher food and drink taxes would unfairly burden the poor, the coalition recruited a bevy of Latino groups, among them the Hispanic Alliance for Prosperity Institute, the National Hispana Leadership Institute and the League of United Latin American Citizens…

“Why in the world would a Hispanic health advocacy group do this?” asked Kelly Brownell, the director of Yale University’s Rudd Center on Food Policy and Obesity.”

Full Disclosure: Brownell is a former professor of mine.

The answer to that question to me has a cultural component that is often overlooked by the left. That a fair number of “socially optimum” choices involve fairly significant resource trade-offs that do impact the poor and lower middle class. While the new status quo might be healthier, more environmentally friendly, more sustainable, or any number of net positives, you can’t get there without impacting the poor, even if it’s ultimately “for their own good.”

In the last half century or so liberals – now progressives – have relatively successfully pushed for steeply progressive taxation and done so by making the argument that those who can ill-afford to pay, shouldn’t have to. That political mantra has had a cultural effect, now a fairly significant portion of America subscribes to that idea that if it poses economic hardship, someone else should pay for whatever it is that needs to be paid for. It’s a seductive and successful argument that has come at a cost.

Regressive public policy, like food taxes of any kind or gasoline taxes, runs counter to that line of thinking and so a fair number of constituencies who have been conditioned to feel and think as though they’re lives are burdened enough as it is and any government action that increases it is inherently unfair, regardless of the merits, become deeply unsympathetic if not outright oppositional. In other words, if you ask people to sign onto your agenda because government can ease their burdens, don’t be surprised when they reject your plans that may burden them.

I think this goes to show that there really is no such thing as a free lunch, even culturally, and that often times people who push political agendas fail to understand the cultural effects of their actions and how they may come back to bite them later on.

The Stuff Climate Change Conspiracies Is Made Of

Greenpeace calls on Nobel laureate Rajendra Pachauri to resign as head of the IPCC following his refusal to correct erroneous assertions. (h/t Reason) In the wake of Climate-gate, I don’t think the climate change doomsayers can ill afford to keep racking up challenges to their credibility.

To me this speaks to something bigger, that when the success of the enterprise is jeopardized by your own involvement in it, then what you choose to do speaks volumes about both yourself and how you regard enterprise. First, the self-regard Pachauri has for himself is apparent and perhaps his own personal agenda. At the same time, if climate change were as important to Pachauri as he has asserted and important enough to warrant the changes he seeks then he would step down. He’s not the only person who can do his job and his insistence on remaining clouds the work of his organization and undermines the very goals he purports aiming to achieve.

Yglesias Doesn’t Get It

If there’s a parochial public issue that I have – besides DADT – it’s public education.

Yglesias take on teachers’ unions is dead wrong and Megan McArdle explains why. If unions signed onto reforms that resulted in less job protection, more power and ability for supervisors to affect performance reviews and expectations, and used the lure of more money to get it, they wouldn’t be very popular unions. Unions rather fundamentally exist to protect jobs, protect workers from subjective and arbitrary management, and secure benefits that aren’t zero sum for workers.

The problem Yglesias and others have wrong is that teaching isn’t skilled labor or a trade, it’s a profession. It’s a white collar job with a blue collar union and ultimately that’s a cultural divide that will have to be reconciled. The reform oriented wonks Yglesias is referring to are looking at professional reforms that would require working with a professional association as a partner. Instead, they have the UAW of the classroom and we’re stuck with people genuinely mystified as to why things are the way they are and ask questions like,

“Why wouldn’t teachers (or any union member) benefit from a system in which they are rewarded for the quality of the job that they do, provided they term the metrics fair?”

The quick answer because nobody can agree on a metric that the unions think is fair and reformers think is useful.

Yglesias is right about two things, however, the divide isn’t partisan-ideological though sometimes those viewpoints spill into education disagreements. He’s also right that the ideological question is how much weight schools should bear in a transformative sense.

My view on the left-left issue he discusses is that direct labor market intervention is unsustainable in the long run and investment in education is a safer and smarter bet. I also don’t think it’s fair to paint the educational equality crowd as having chosen it is a pet charity to feel better about being opposed to higher taxes. Yet, to use schools as a vehicle for addressing inequality in society at large is clumsy and inappropriate.

Driving, Talking, Texting, & Intuitive Non-Solutions

So on previous occasions, I’ve knocked cell-phone/texting bans as being rather particularly useless.  As it turns out, I was right.

This isn’t a partisan problem or a governance problem, it’s a cultural problem. There’s no statesman like voice to argue for reality but demagogues on the other hand are a dime a dozen and will sell you on all sorts of non-problems and non-solutions.

Buyer’s Remorse

Speaking of political ads, I really enjoyed this now vintage Clinton for President one from December 2007.

Though clearly one doesn’t label presents with what’s in them, it’s still a nice little ad.

Western Guilt

Scott H. Payne writes,

And that there is a subset of nations who are grasping at their soverignty like a magic charm as defense against the grinding process of the ICC is, in some senses, a good thing, frankly. Hiding behind the invaluable notion of soverignty as justification for abbhorent crimes is not only cowardly and preciusly thin as a deflective maneuver, it also fundamentally erodes the very value of the concepot itself. An unwilingness to challenge such flimsy claims for fear of offense only adds fuel to that erosion.

I don’t disagree with Scott but here – though it’s obvious that this could only be written by a Westerner. As a line of thought it only really resonates in the West where sovereignty is more quaint than novel. Yet our own bias is a huge handicap here.

One of the unsung successes of China’s rise has been the resurgent belief that sovereignty matters. Though one can no longer say that to the Taliban or Saddam, the fact is China has persuasively sold countries on the idea that international relations extends to relations between sovereign powers and those relations stop, rather abruptly, at the border. It’s a line of thought that has enabled China to resist the influence of NGOs and international organizations without being ostracized by the international community. By blazing that trail, China – much more than the US, has set back the clock on the growing clout of international agreements, transnational organizations, and the advance of international law.

China has asked the world, what right do you have to judge us? An argument that translates to Sudanese as what right does a Spaniard or Dutchman have to try a Sudanese man for the murder of another one? Which isn’t to blunt the horrors of genocide in Sudan but to point out that in the last few decades, the west has yet to develop a persuasive answer to this question.

Worse still, the west falls back upon condemning the moral horror and often a rush to intervene in local affairs. A line of attack that has a spotty record of problem solving and a strong stench of imperial “outreach.” Indeed the feeling, even if grateful for intervention, is that the wealthy and powerful do as they will, as they’ve done before.

It’s an interesting bind, Scott titles his post, Refuting Might Equals Right, but that’s not quite right. In the scenario, the mighty are rather clearly determining what’s right and then creating transparent – if elaborate – justifications for using their might (or wealth) to achieve this right. This is precisely what happened with Iraq.

That the ICC marshals a different coalition of countries to make largely symbolic statements on behalf of human rights, doesn’t seem like a repudiation of might equals right, it seems more like trading up for a classier, if less effective international gang.