Coercion vs Consent

A good read for my 2301 as we wrestle with debates over how governments originate.

Conservatives v Libertarians

For 2301s discussion of ideology, here are a couple of critiques a noted libertarian -- Brink Lindsey -- wrote regarding the current state of conservatism.

- Where do Libertarians Belong?
- Another Culture War? No Thanks.

Lindsey does not believe the Tea Party movement actually wants to reduce the size of government -- at least where it matters most: Middle Class Entitlement like Social Security and Medicare. Like the story on the Koch brothers below, his analysis offers a summary of recent political history.

Lindsey and was recently "purged" from the Cato Institute for, the rumor has it, aligning more with liberals than conservatives.

Stories for 8/31/10

A few relevant items today:

- A Washington Post story illustrating the difficulty party's have enforcing unity among their members: A freshman Republican goes against the leadership on Afghanistan.

- The National Beer Wholesalers Association works the Hill.

- Wall Street turns on Obama.

- Does Language Shape How You Think? Politicians have known that words matter for quite some time. An entire industry has emerged around determining which words lead people to think a particular way. Can an entire language do the same?

- Glenn Beck follows his rally with a launch of a new web site.

- The electoral landscape looks better and better for Republicans.

Harris County Judicial Elections

A Rick Casey piece in the Chronicle gives us a peek at how county judicial elections are run.

Investigations to Come?

Politico reports that Republicans plan to launch a variety of investigations of the Obama Administration if they take control of the House and/or Senate after this election. Could an impeachment proceeding be in the works?

My two cents? Don't forget that President Clinton's highest approval ratings were measured the day he was impeached. If the investigations are seem as being entirely partisan by independents, Republicans could easily help Obama regain the popularity he's lost in the past year. The public is very very fickle.

The Economy is Great

For corporations anyway. Corporate profits are back to where they were before the recession. Again, the question is why this hasn't translated into jobs and whether there is a policy government can pursue that can address that.

Here is one theory: The most obvious explanation is that the relationship between labor and capital (to borrow Marxist vocabulary) has changed. Capital has gotten stronger; labor has weakened. Economist Robert J. Gordon of Northwestern University argues that the "shift of executive compensation towards much greater use of stock options" has made corporate managers more zealous cost-cutters in recessions and more reluctant hirers early in recoveries. Lowering the head count is the quickest way to restore profits and, from there, a company's stock price. 

Another, offered below, is that people are not buying anything sat the moment other than what they immediately need. They are paying down debt and saving. Companies know this and see no need to hire new workers. So there are no new jobs for people to apply for.

So here's a question for 2301s. What does this tell us about the role of government at this moment? Do we just hunker down and take lumps until personal debt levels are low enough that people start spending again? What do we do about people who can find no employment? Let them waste away? Is there a moral element here that requires intervention or not?

Personal Debt, Credit, and the State of the Economy

A couple of New Republic articles try to get to the heart of the economy, why we are here we are, and what it takes to get out of it: It was a bubble driven recession, not a typical business cycle recession, and that makes everything worse. Household debt has almost tripled between the late 1990s and 2007. Now people are paying off that debt, which limits current spending and places a limit to any current expansion. Ironically, now that people are doing the right thing (pay off debt, not add to it) the economy continues to suffer.

- William Galston.
- Raghuram Rajan.

The Koch Brothers

This is a terrific insider look at the forces that shape politics.

And a related story about a backlash against the brothers.

The Fed Considers New Action on the Economy

Estimates of the economy's performance in the 2nd quarter of this year have been revised downward and the Federal Reserve is considering whether and how to respond. Given past activities, their tool box is running low.

2302 students should read up on the Federal Reserve -- our central bank, sort of -- which is part of the bureaucratic component of the federal executive branch. It was created in the early years of the 1900s -- interestingly -- due to a financial crisis, and is in charge of the country's monetary policy. One of their functions is to pump money into the economy during recessions and pull it out when inflation threatens. The trick is figuring out when and how to do this. That is part of the debate going on within the fed at the moment.

2301 students might want to consider disputes concerning the propriety of the very existence of the Fed, as well as the institution's insulation from the general population. As we will see, the founders differed on the strength of the attachment that ought to exist between the workings of governing institutions and the immediate preferences of the public. The Fed is very insulated. We should discuss in class whether this is a good idea.

Some links:

• The Fed is currently meeting Jackson Hole, Wyoming (sweet) at a conference organized by the Kansas City Branch.
• Fed Chair Bernacke weighs possible options, most probably purchasing securities, which is an effective way to pump money into the economy.
• Bernacke's best tool may be persuasion.
• Federal Reserve tags from the Washington Post.
• Wikipedia: Federal Reserve System.
• Times Topics: Federal Reserve System.

For GOVT 2302: News Sources

For 2302 classes, you'll note that I tend to pull information about the legislative, executive and judicial branches from three principle sources:

- Congressional Quarterly, for information about Congress.
- Ezra Klein's WonkBook, for information about the executive branch and public policy debates.
- ScotusBlog, for information about the Federal Courts, including the Supreme Court.

There are others also, you'll see them on the right hand side of this blog under news review, but these have become my go to sources for info on national governmental issues.

For Texas expect to see info from the following sources:

- Quorum Report -- click on Daily Buzz.
- The Houston and Texas Section in the Houston Chronicle.

Welcome Fall 2010 Students

Tomorrow -- Thursday August 26th -- the fall 2010 semester officially begins and I'll resume posting information to this site. Given the upcoming midterm elections, we should have plenty to discuss. Here are a couple of items that ought to be pertinent to you, some of you anyway.

- The Beloit College Mindset List.
- The Pew Research Center: The Millenials: Confident, Connected, Open to Change.

You are a trippy group of kids you know that?

In 2301 we will cover, late in the semester, the concept of a political generation. This refers to the group of people raised around the same time who share the same attitudes because they were exposed to the same experiences at the same time in their lives -- more or less. You are now being pegged. Now just in case you're looking and around and wondering about who these old people are all around you, here's what we know about the generation that already thinks you're too old.

Money in Judicial Elections

The Brennan Center has released a report on the recent increase in interest group spending on judicial elections. Sandra Day O'Connor has been critical of state judicial elections. Here's a link to her project focusing on them.

 

Economic Transformation.

This builds off the previous post. Richard Florida wonders if the root of our economic troubles is the chaos that naturally occurs when an economic system is undergoing transformation. We are still in the process of changing from a manufacturing to an information based economy. Florida argues that existing policies have to be reexamined in order to allow for the population to fit into this new order, much as they were when we became an suburban, highway driving economy following the Great Depression. Part of the problem is homeownership. Owning a home ties one to a particular place and makes mobility difficult. We have to adjust expectations and policies accordingly, meaning we should stop encouraging people to buy homes, among other things.

Should Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Die?

An ex-president of the Federal Reserve says yes.

- Wikipedia: Fannie Mae.
- Wikipedia: Freddie Mac.
- Wikipedia: Government Sponsored Enterprise.

About Birthright Citizenship

There's controversy concerning whether the opening language of the 14th Amendment actually establishes birthright citizenship. Here's the text:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.
The highlighted text appears to be the tricky part. Are illegal immigrants truly subject to the jurisdiction of the United States? Can they vote and are they subject to a draft, if one were established? The courts have never ruled on this issue -- it took a court ruling to determine that the children of legal immigrants were citizens -- so we simply don't know.

- CRS Report: U.S. Citizenship of Persons Born in the United States to Alien Parents.
- Christian Science Monitor: Is Birthright Citizenship Really in the Constitution?
- Wikipedia: Birthright Citizenship in the United States.
- Wikipedia: Jus Soli.
- Wikipedia: Jus Sanguinis.
-

Proposed Constitutional Amendments

In response to the flurry of suggestions that the birthright citizenship provision of the 14th Amendment ought to be removed, Jonathan Chait lists other Constitutional Amendments "endorsed by mainstrean Republicans."

The Free Flow of Information Act, Media Shield Laws and Wikileaks

Wikileaks, and its ongoing drive to release as much information as possible to the public, has led members of the Senate to modify a bill introduced last year: H.R. 985: The Free Flow of Information Act. The law would be the first federal media shield law, which would provide protection for journalists who wish to keep their sources confidential. Under the law: 

... federal judges could quash subpoenas demanding testimony or information from reporters if the judges determined that the public interest in news gathering outweighed the need to uncover the source of a leak, including, in some circumstances, unauthorized disclosure of classified government information.


Protection under the so-called shield law would also be extended to unpaid bloggers engaged in gathering and disseminating news.
Perhaps not for wikileaks however.

For 2301: Think about not only freedom of the press, but how the courts balance civil liberties against the greater interest of society

For 2302: This is an example of the bill making process, and also the ability of Congress to design the judiciary.

Scientific Journalism

This will be one in a series of posts on the issues associated with Wikileaks -- which I've posted on before -- and its ongoing efforts to make previously secret information available online. This included the recent release of documents related to the ongoing war in Afghanistan.

In an article in the New Yorker, Wikileak's founder (Julian Assange) states the following: “I want to set up a new standard: ‘scientific journalism.’ If you publish a paper on DNA, you are required, by all the good biological journals, to submit the data that has informed your research—the idea being that people will replicate it, check it, verify it. So this is something that needs to be done for journalism as well. There is an immediate power imbalance, in that readers are unable to verify what they are being told, and that leads to abuse.” Because Assange publishes his source material, he believes that WikiLeaks is free to offer its analysis, no matter how speculative.

This fits into 2301s discussion of the media. The web has transformed journalism and raised questions about who in fact qualifies as a journalist. The job involves collecting and processing information. It seems that Wikileaks is trying to make the former easier and opening up the latter to all comers.

- Wikipedia: Wikileaks.
- NY Topics: Wikileaks.

What Separates Government from Organized Crime?

In Mexico in the 1960s, not much.

Jonathan Rauch on Democracy, Free Speech, Government etc...

He does a much better job with this than I do. The key to well functioning societies? Trial and error.

The New Normal

These may be two most depressing articles a college student -- or an unemployed person -- could read. Is the current unemployment rate -- 9.5% -- the new normal? Some economic indicators are actually pretty good. Can our economy exist comfortably with high unemployment? Can our society? Can you? Will public opinion eventually adapt itself to this new normal?

- Krugman.
- Peck.

Is the Senate Broken?

George Packer says yes, and it's stirred up the bloggers.

Christina Romer -- Head of the Council of Economic Advisors -- to Step Down.

The Huffington Post claims her resignation is due to conflicts with official within the Obama White House Staff (The CEA is part of the Executive Office of the President): Romer's resignation came amid a report that she had been frustrated that she didn't have as much access to the president as Larry Summers, director of the White House National Economic Council.The story mentions a New Yorker article which also highlighted conflicts between Romer and Summers:

Romer had run simulations of the effects of stimulus packages of varying sizes: six hundred billion dollars, eight hundred billion dollars, and $1.2 trillion. The best estimate for the output gap was some two trillion dollars over 2009 and 2010. Because of the multiplier effect, filling that gap didn't require two trillion dollars of government spending, but Romer's analysis, deeply informed by her work on the Depression, suggested that the package should probably be more than $1.2 trillion. The memo to Obama, however, detailed only two packages: a five-hundred-and-fifty-billion-dollar stimulus and an eight-hundred-and-ninety-billion-dollar stimulus. Summers did not include Romer's $1.2-trillion projection. The memo argued that the stimulus should not be used to fill the entire output gap; rather, it was "an insurance package against catastrophic failure." At the meeting, according to one participant, "there was no serious discussion to going above a trillion dollars."

Given the increased possibility of a double dip recession, perhaps the decision to not go over a trillion dollars, almost certainly a political decision, was unwise. Previous posts have highlighted the conflict in the Obama White House between the political team and the economic team over how best to deal with the recession.

8/7/10: Update

Here's some background on her resignation and how the story broke. The author tells us it had been known for weeks, but the story broke before the White House could annouce it and has beem trying to contain how the resignation has been framed. The author points to the comments specifically:

Check the comment section on Hotline On Call, and you'll get a sense of how challenging it is for the White House to contain a story once it breaks. Larry Summers is the bad guy; HE should have been forced out; HE hates women; he's muscling women who have good advice out of the way; why is the president so reliant on him and Tim Geithner, anyway?



A sample:


"Summers was the worst pick ever, along with that weasel Geithner and Rahm "Karl Rove" Emanuel. At least Romer was a progressive voice to counter the the Harvard/Chicago axis that represents Goldman Sachs, Wall St and the kind of unfettered, unregulated, "free"-market larceny that has been eroding this country's economic vitality for 30 years, while making the rich much richer still. Summers and company are the same ding-dongs and charlatans posing as economic gurus who have enabled the on-going plunder of America
"The person writing this could be a world-renown policy expert or someone with great insight into the motivations of the White House economic team. Or, he or she could be a crank. One would not know from reading the commentators' post that Summers is among the most forceful advocates for more spending...that Summers and Romer were among those who pushed the Senate and the House to consider a state bailout bill that, two weeks ago, had no chance at passing.

Suddently this story has shifted from one about economic policymaking to media relations in the age of the internet. Which raises a question: Has the increase in available information actually increased public ignorance of government, politics and public policy due to the increase in the noise that purports to be informative?

California Gay Marriage Ban (Prop 8) Overtuned by Federal Judge

Both the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the 14th Amendment played a role in the decision. In our discussion of civil rights, we discuss the gradual increase in the application of each to the various distinctions that the law continues to make between groups of people. Discrimination by the majority has become tougher to justify under federal law.

Everyone expects this case to wind up in the Supreme Court. The only question is when.

- Story in the NYT.
- A digital copy of the ruling here.
- A complilation of comments from Andrew Sullivan.
- A summary of the relevant facts in the ruling.

This is the latest in several rulings against gay marriage laws, but there's a twist: Andrew Sullivan points out a comment from one of his readers that Republican appointed judges were responsible for all these recent rulings:

"The Prop 8 case now makes three consecutive judicial opinions holding that laws prohibiting same-sex marriages have no rational basis. Interestingly, all three were authored by judges who were nominated or appointed by Republicans. Today’s Northern District of California opinion was authored by Judge Vaughn Walker, who was nominated by Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Last month’s District of Massachusetts opinion was authored by Judge Joseph Tauro, who was nominated by Richard Nixon. The Iowa Supreme Court (unanimous) opinion was authored by Justice Mark Cady, who was appointed by Republican Governor Terry E. Branstad."

There are some who argued that this decision might help drive conservatives to the polls and punish Democrats for their party's support of same sex rights, but if Republican appointed judges are responsible for these rulings, what's the point in that? Can elections play any role in this process? Or have the courts decided that homosexuals are, following Fed #10, a minority to be protected from the tyranny of the majority? This removes these policies from the direct impact of the electoral process.

Its Still the Economy Stupid

A story in today's NYT illustrates the point. Voters tend to be motivated by the economy (pocketbook voting) more than other factors, and vote against who ever is in power if the economy sours. What got Democrats voted into office in 2008, works against them in 2010. So, what happens if the economy is still bad in 2012?

This also complicates the idea that voters send messages about which policies (health care, education, climate change, gay marriage, etc...) with their votes. Perhaps its just about the economy, and everything else is secondary.

Does the Public Always Gets What it Wants?

Some of you are diving into public opinion at the moment, and one of the simplistic points made in the lectures is that in a democracy, shifts in public opinion tend to drive public policy. But we are a republic, not a democracy, and certain institutions (including the Senate) are designed to allow a minority to halt the majority. That seems to be the case with climate change legislation:

Despite polling showing public support for climate and energy policies, the Senate is unable to pass even a vastly scaled-back bill that only addresses the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. And that's because a perfect storm of a sharply partisan Senate, ailing economy and the polarizing and complex issue of climate change has made it impossible to pass any type of energy and climate bill, no matter how much the public supports it.


"There has just not been the debate and consideration of energy legislation that would lead to a successful result," Sen. Richard Lugar, R-Ind., said. "Essentially, one group of senators believes that any energy bill had to have a cap-and-trade or a carbon pricing mechanism. That was the red line. Without that, it was not a valid bill."

The more than two dozen Democrats Lugar is referring to aren't alone in supporting a limit on carbon emissions. Almost two-thirds of Americans also support limiting greenhouse gas emissions, according to the latest Society for Human Resource Management/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll, conducted with the Pew Research Center.

People Like Pork

So says the National Journal:

Despite being fed a steady diet of political vitriol about the evils of earmarking, Americans are more likely to vote for a congressional candidate who brings home the bacon, according to the latest Society for Human Resource Management/National Journal Congressional Connection Poll, conducted with the Pew Research Center.
In addition, the public is nonplussed about partisan standard-bearers. More respondents by far said it makes no difference to their vote if a candidate is affiliated with President Obama, former Republican Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, or the tea party movement.


Funneling money back to the folks back home was the only factor that would indicate support for a congressional candidate.

This applies to both 2301 and 2302.

In 2301 we over elections and the factors which lead voters to choose one candidate or party over the other. While people like to talk about principles, we tend to be driven by pocketbook considerations. Who in fact is going to provide us with the material needs we need to live our lives?

It's a similar point in 2302 when we cover the legislature. We say we don't like earmarks, but we punish members of Congress who don't provide them for us. Member of Congress know this, and it helps explain why they seldom give serious thought to deficit cutting. Again, we like it when they say they want to cut the deficit, but we punish them when they do, especially when it means that we must lose a local spending project.

This brings us to another point from 2301: The quality of public opinion. Are we truly rational? Do our individual preferences make sense in the aggregate? 

Blogs v Science

An author wonders why science blogs, at least the popular ones, spend so little time discussing science:

Clearly I’ve been out of some loop for too long, but does everyone take for granted now that science sites are where graduate students, researchers, doctors and the “skeptical community” go not to interpret data or review experiments but to chip off one-liners, promote their books and jeer at smokers, fat people and churchgoers? And can anyone who still enjoys this class-inflected bloodsport tell me why it has to happen under the banner of science?

The same point can be made about political sites of course. Perhaps there's something in the medium itself that encourages the juvenile, or are we living in a superficial age?

Partisanship Today

Necessary reading from Jonathan Rauch.