From ProPublica: Old Debts, Fresh Pain: Weak Laws Offer Debtors Little Protection

We're reading through some of Federalist #10 in GOVT 2305 this week and this story reminded me of some of the paper's content. In it Madison argues that political conflict ultimately stems from self interest. We take positions on issues based on how they impact us. Policy tends to be set by which ever side has a majority - so the interests of the majority will be most likely be served.

He offers this little tidbit:

Is a law proposed concerning private debts? It is a question to which the creditors are parties on one side and the debtors on the other. Justice ought to hold the balance between them. Yet the parties are, and must be, themselves the judges; and the most numerous party, or, in other words, the most powerful faction must be expected to prevail.

Based on this, its fair to say that the interests of creditors are far more represented in the legislature that the interests of debtors. The piece in ProPublica illustrates this. It concerns a law that allows wages to be garnished for credit card debt. It's worth considering whether the law presents the best and fairest way to handle credit card debt - or merely one that best secures the interests of the most powerful groups in Congress and those that support them.

- Click here for the article.

The federal law regulating garnishment harkens back to 1968, when the financial life of Americans was much simpler. Time has eroded what even then were modest protections. The law barred creditors from taking any wages from the very poorest of workers, but used a calculation based on the minimum wage to identify them. Since the federal minimum wage hasn't kept pace with inflation, today, only workers earning about $11,000 annually or less— a wage below the poverty line— are protected. The law also allows collectors to garnish a quarter of a debtor's after-tax pay, an amount that government surveys show is plainly unaffordable for many families.

And the law is silent on perhaps the most punishing tactic of collectors: It doesn't prohibit them from cleaning out debtors' bank accounts. As a result, a collector can't take more than 25 percent of a debtor's paycheck, but if that paycheck is deposited in a bank, all of the money in the account can be grabbed to pay down the debt.
State laws, while often more comprehensive than the federal rules, vary widely. Only a handful, for instance, automatically protect a minimum amount of funds in a debtor's account.

When garnishment protections do exist, the burden is usually on debtors to figure out if and how the laws protect their assets.

The problem with Ferguson? Big small government

This author continues a line of argument begun here - one stemming from Madison's criticisms of local government. The problem in Ferguson is that small government are more intrusive in individual rights - especially those of minorities - than are larger governments.

2305 students should note how he couches the argument in terms of ideology.

- Click here for the article.

When the town of Ferguson, Missouri, exploded last month, there was an effervescent moment when right and left agreed on the problem. The problem, Democrats and Republicans concurred, was militarized police. It was the perfect trans-ideological nightmare, combining the right’s fear of centralized authority with the left’s fear of excessive military force.

In point of fact, police militarization bore only the faintest responsibility for the tragedy in Ferguson. At worst, the weaponry at the disposal of the town’s cops made them more aggressive in responding to protesters. But old-fashioned policing tools were all the Ferguson police needed to engage in years of discriminatory treatment, to murder Michael Brown, and to rough up journalists covering the ensuing protests. Police militarization was a largely unrelated problem that happened to be on bright display. Over the ensuing days, it grew apparent that demilitarizing the police might save the government some money but would not address the crisis’s underlying cause, and the momentary consensus evaporated.

The shame of it is Ferguson has exposed a genuine opening for thinking about public life in a way that cuts across traditional ideological lines. The problem is what you might call Big Small Government.

. . . In very different ways, both right and left have exhibited forms of this mental block. The most concise encapsulation of the dynamite on the right is two sentences that appeared in Rand Paul’s widely ballyhooed opinion piece in Time during the Ferguson protests: “There’s a systemic problem with today’s law enforcement. Not surprisingly, big government has been at the heart of the problem.”

Here was Paul laying bare the mechanics of his ideology. Any problem, by definition, is caused by big government. The most identifiable policy relating to big government at work in Ferguson was a program to arm the local police. Therefore, militarization was the problem.

Paul was expressing an almost axiomatic belief on the right that bad government equals big government, and big government equals centralized government. It is not that American conservatives consistently favor the expansion of state and local government, but merely that they see it as inherently superior to the federal version. (In the words of Paul Ryan, “government closest to the people governs best.”) Thus, conservatives have directed their energies primarily against Washington. The association is so deeply rooted that even figures who are staring directly at a different kind of problem—at Big Small Government—simply cannot see it.

From the New Republic: The Greatest Threat to Our Liberty Is Local Governments Run Amok: And only a strong federal government can stop them

Here's a provocative article.

It's something we can talk about in both 2305 and 2306, and it reminds me of  counter-intuitive point we will see in Federalist #10. James Madison though that the lack of diverse points of view in local governments were more likely to allow for tyrannical majorities to emerge and threaten unpopular minorities.

Being a wealthy landowner, as were the rest of the Founders, he was worried about what the property less would do to the propertied class. They were in fact a numerical minority. But the same logic applies to any minority group. Local governments - he claims - are dangerous, and the federal government is needed to limit that danger.

The fault lies in the increased number of states that are dominated by one political party, the demise of the press and an increase in voter ignorance about the working of local government. We are not really aware of the abuses happening at the local level because we tune them out.

This is worth a good discussion in class, but its worth noting that a key point he makes is contrary to what we saw in a previous post suggesting that local government are very responsive to the preferences of the electorate. But if the government is responsive only to the majority, and the majority wishes to violate the rights of the minority, there's little to stop them other than the state or federal government.

Here's a bit from the article - note the use of the terms autocracy and oligarchy.

These are boom times for provincial autocrats. In many chunks of the country, state and local politics were once a competitive affair; there was an opposing political party ready to pounce on its foe’s malfeasance. That sort of robust rivalry, however, hardly exists in an era in which blue and red states have become darker shades of themselves. Thirty-seven states now have unified governments, the most since the early ’50s. And in many of these places, there’s not even a remote chance that the ruling party will be deposed in the foreseeable future. The rise of one-party government has been accompanied by the evisceration of the local press and the near-extinction of metro-desk muckrakers (14,000 newsroom jobs have vanished in the last six years), crippling the other force most likely to call attention to official misdeeds.

The end of local media hasn’t just removed a watchdog; it has helped to complete a cultural reversal. Once upon a time, Jefferson and Tocqueville could wax lyrical about local government, which they viewed as perfectly in sync with the interests of its yeoman citizenry. Whether this arcadia ever truly existed is debatable. But it certainly hasn’t persisted into the age of mass media. Nowadays, most Americans care much more passionately about national politics than they do about the governments closer to their homes. They may harbor somewhat warmer feelings toward states and localities, but those sentiments are grounded in apathy. Most Americans can name their president. But according to a survey conducted by Georgetown University’s Dan Hopkins, only 35 percent can identify their mayor. The nostrum that local government is actually closer to the people is now just a hollow piece of antique rhetoric.

With so many instances of unobstructed one-party rule, conditions are ripe for what the political scientist Jessica Trounstine calls “political monopoly”—officials and organizations who have so effectively defeated any potential predators that they can lazily begin to gorge. She writes: “When politicians cease to worry about reelection, they become free to pursue government policy that does not reflect constituent preferences. They acquire the ability to enrich themselves and their supporters or pursue policies that would otherwise lead to their electoral defeat.”

From the Atlantic: Should Citizens Have a Right to Rebel?

In both 2305 and 2306 we analyze Declarations of Independence - of the United States in 2305 and of Texas in 2306. Both have the same structure and make the same basic argument. Governments are based on an implicit contractual agreement between people to establish a system of mutual security and benefits.

Each goes on to establish how the respective governments each group of signees lives under is no longer doing so. Each lists a number of grievances that prove their point. The U.S. document makes the additional case that the King of England was attempting to establish a tyrannical systems by controlling each of the governing powers - the legislative, executive and judicial. Free people refuse to live in such systems, so there's the justification.

But though each declaration makes the point that citizens can rebel and change their governing systems, the United States Constitution does not mention this right. This right is mentioned in the Texas Constitution however, it is in the Second Section in Article One - the Texas Bill of Rights.

All political power is inherent in the people, and all free governments are founded on their authority, and instituted for their benefit. The faith of the people of Texas stands pledged to the preservation of a republican form of government, and, subject to this limitation only, they have at all times the inalienable right to alter, reform or abolish their government in such manner as they may think expedient.

The Atlantic Magazine has posted article pointing out that many countries do have provisions in their Constitutions stating that people to have rights to rebel. But they find this right to be problematic. A quick read through it might help clarify some of the issues associated with the simultaneously trying to establish a government that is stable, but subject to the will of the people. As you will note (especially 2305 students) the framers of the Constitution wrestled with the fact that governments closely tied to the general population were unstable, and lacked the ability to in fact govern.

- Click here for the article.

Here are a few quotes from the Article:

Why no clause in the U.S. Constitution?

Quite often, the right appears in constitutions written in the immediate aftermath of a military revolt or popular revolution. Such “founding” texts frequently include language meant to justify the overthrow of the old order as well as provide a blueprint for the new. Our Founding Fathers, with their fondness for the idea of natural rights, might have embraced something similar in the United States had the Declaration of Independence not been separated by more than a decade from the drafting of the Constitution.

It's worth noting that the 1876 Constitution was written just after the end of reconstruction, and the ex-Confederates who could now again participate politically were animated by antipathy towards the national government which of course had just forced them to give their slaves.

The right to rebel helps create instability by making it easier to challenge the legitimacy of government officials. It facilitates military coups:

Several of today’s trouble spots, including Mali, Turkey, and Venezuela, have constitutional rights to resist. In many ways, the regimes in these countries couldn’t be more different. But they also share something else: disputed legitimacy at the time of their ascension.

Here’s how this dynamic typically plays out:

Step 1: A government with questionable democratic credentials takes administrative control following a coup or revolution, or else is democratically elected after previously failing to seize power through one of the above. Soon afterward, these rulers consolidate their power by drafting a new constitution—one which includes a “right to resist,” ostensibly meant to serve as ex-post-facto validation of their past attempts to overthrow their predecessors.

Step 2: In Faustian fashion, the proviso becomes a thorn in the side of the administrations that govern under the new constitution, as agitators and enemies wield it to foment instability. When that instability grows great enough, it produces a crisis that topples the very system it was supposed to be legitimizing. And yet, the provision—or one like it—often sticks around in the next constitutional revision, since taking it out might signal weakness or fear on the part of the country’s new rulers.

Step 3: Rinse and repeat.

The right to rebel is less about allowing the people to stage future protests than to justify previous overthrows of the government. But these provisions then provide constitutional authorizations for future moves against the government. It introduces into the constitutional order a destabilizing element, when constitutions are supposed to provide order, along with a manageable orderly way to change policies (at least ideally).

He uses Thailand, Cuba and Venezuela as examples.

Here's the concluding point:

One could argue that the Venezuelan people are better off if a right to resist helps them destabilize the likes of Chávez. And it is likewise possible that since unstable countries tend to write more constitutions than stable ones do—Thailand had 19, Venezuela 26—troubled nations simply have more opportunities to adopt the clause. But the fact remains that constitutions are nearly always written with an eye toward ensuring the survival of the system being created—and the constitutional right to resist can undermine that goal and generate greater political instability.

If politics is the “art of the possible,” a constitution is its canvas—with set parameters limiting the scope of those possibilities. Right-to-resist provisions explode these constraints, potentially providing carte blanche to those who might someday seek to upend the system, and leaving those in power with a constitutional Clause of Damocles hanging over their heads.

The right to rebel most likely fits under the heading of what the framers of the Constitution called direct democracy, which - as 2305 students will note in the section on Federalist 10 - was destabilizing. As we walk through the structure of the Constitution, we'll note the various ways it connects the electorate indirectly with the operations of government. The goal was to provide just enough responsiveness to the preferences of the population to react to it, without destabilizing the governing system.

It's why we have a republic rather than a democracy.

Some things to consider as you go through the class material.
  

 

From The Dish: Democracy’s Discontents

Andrew Sullivan flags a report that says we've always complained about the quality of our government and have worried that things are falling apart.

Maybe that's to be expected in a democracy.

Here's the main article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Note that one of the causes is free speech - we are free to criticize, even if that criticism is unwarranted. Sounds like ground Madison covered in Fed #10. This might cause us to modify our opinions about whether government and/or is in fact "broken."

. . . Lamenting the failings of democracy is a permanent feature of democratic life, one that persists through governmental crises and successes alike.

There is no decade from the past century when it is not possible to find an extended debate among commentators and intellectuals in the democratic West about the inadequacies of democratic politics. This is not true of only those decades when Western democracy was clearly on the ropes, like the 1930s, when it was menaced by fascism, or the 1970s, when it was threatened by inflation and oil shock. It's also true of the prosperous and relatively stable decades as well. In the 1920s, Walter Lippmann led the charge, arguing that democratic publics were far too ill-informed and inattentive to manage their own affairs. In the 1950s, academics worried about the banality and exhaustion of democratic life. Daniel Bell took a positive stance with his claims about the end of ideology, but for the most part democracy was treated as a cumbersome, careless system of government, in permanent danger of being outwitted by the Soviets.

Even the 1980s, which we now look back on as a time of emergent democratic triumphalism, were dominated by prophecies of doom. Consider the two best-selling academic books from the end of that decade. One, Allan Bloom's The Closing of the American Mind(1987), argued that the endemic triviality of mass democracy would destroy the minds of the young, leaving them unable to distinguish good from bad. (Bloom blamed, among other people, Mick Jagger.) The second, Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1988), foretold American decline as the demands of sustaining a global empire would overwhelm the capacity of the American people to put up with them.

The history of modern democracy is a tale of steady success accompanied by the constant drumbeat of anticipated failure. The intellectual commentator who first spotted this distinctive feature of democratic life (and who did most to explain it) was Alexis de Tocque­ville. When he traveled to America, in 1831, Tocqueville was immediately struck by the frenetic and mindless quality of democratic politics. Citizens were always complaining, and their politicians were endlessly throwing mud at one another. The grumbling discontent was frequently interrupted by bursts of outright panic as resentments spilled over.

Yet Tocqueville noticed something else about American democracy: that underneath the chaotic surface, it was quite stable. Citizens' discontent coincided with an underlying faith that democratic politics would see them right in the end.

A political system like this creates plenty of space for writers and intellectuals to tut-tut and throw up their hands in horror. Why? First, and most obviously, democratic politics entails free speech, which must include the freedom to say that democracy doesn't work. Second, democracy is, as Tocqueville put it, an "untimely" form of government. Its strengths are revealed only in the long run, once its restless energy produces the adaptability that allows it to correct its own mistakes. At any given moment, democracy tends to look a mess: shallow, petty, and vituperative. Democracies are bad at rising to the occasion. What they are good at is chopping and changing course so that no occasion is too much for them. Finally, rationalist modern intellectuals are inherently suspicious of blind political faith. It is unnerving to encounter a political system that works only because ordinary people believe that it works. Ordinary citizens get frustrated with the workings of democracy but rarely, if ever, give up on it. The people who tend to lose faith are intellectuals who can't reconcile themselves to the mismatch between the glorious promise of democratic life and its grubby reality.

30 Republicans are forcing the shutdown

2305 students should remember Madison's comment in Fed 10 that minority factions can clog the administration and convulse the society - here's your proof.

- How 30 House Republicans are forcing the Obamacare fight.
- 8 million to 1 ratio.

For 2305 - Catching up with Federalist #10

I have a strong hunch that students don't appreciate Federalist 10 as much as I do, and that reading through the thing is a mundane exercise, but I think its important that you read at least one of the Federalist Papers all the way through at some point in your life. We will do the same for 51 soon enough as well as touch on the arguments in a handful of others.

Remember that this section introduces us to the first of the principles embedded within the original Constitution - republicanism - which refers to the fact that we are an indirect democracy. While the people retain sovereignty, their influence lies in having influence over who holds positions in a variety of governing institutions, specifically Congress, the presidency and the courts. James Madison argues that this arrangement allows both for retaining the principles of self government and for providing the stability necessary for maintaining the republic. This, he argues, is an improvement over previous constitutional arrangements.

As we read through the document I want you to note Madison's assessment of human nature and how he claims the constitutional design compensates for it. It is in our nature to form into groups that promote our understanding of our self interest. It is also in our nature to come into conflict with each other. We create groups in order to pursue our self interest at the expense of that of others. It's not a rosy picture, but it becomes useful one because it allows him to argue that a large republic prevents a tyrannical majority to control the government. Its an interesting approach because instead of arguing that people can be made better, it assumes human nature is a constant, but that this allows for its use to achieve an important objective.

I'll throw out a few other comments about this paper later, as well as the others that will be used to illustrate central principles within the document, but here is a link to past stories I thought illustrate Madison's argument. It might help with class discussion, especially whether Madison's beliefs about the formations of groups are in fact accurate. Mutual interests do not always lead to the creation of equally powerful groups.

Whose interests really matter to legislators?

According to a recent study, state legislators think their constituents are more conservaties than they really are, which makes representation a bit problematic:

Broockman and Skovron find that legislators consistently believe their constituents are more conservative than they actually are. This includes Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives. But conservative legislators generally overestimate the conservatism of their constituents by 20 points. “This difference is so large that nearly half of conservative politicians appear to believe that they represent a district that is more conservative on these issues than is the most conservative district in the entire country,” Broockman and Skovron write. This finding held up across a range of issues. Here, for example, are their findings for health care and same-sex marriage:

The X axis is the district’s actual views, and the Y axis their legislators’ estimates of their views. The thin black line is perfect accuracy, the response you’d get from a legislator totally in tune with his constituents. Lines above it would signify the politicians think the district more liberal than it actually is; if they’re below it, that means the legislators are overestimating their constituents’ conservatism. Liberal legislators consistently overestimate opposition to same-sex marriage and universal health care, but only mildly. Conservative politicians are not even in the right ballpark.

A commentators tries to understand why:

The study authors don't really get into why. But here's one theory: The overall political views of a district are less important for policymaking than the organized political groups in a district, and conservatives have since the 1970s pursued a strategy of robust organizing within states in the service of pushing conservative policies. In recent years, anti-abortion groups in particular have worked to lobby state legislators, vastly outstripping abortion-rights groups on the ground in state after state and creating a powerful constituency for change in a socially conservative direction.

Matthews says the data show that "epistemic closure on the right is real," but I don't think it's that conservatives are out of touch with their constituents and unwilling to listen to others, so much as as that they are in touch with a highly organized infrastructure of pressure groups dedicated to lobbying them to vote even more conservatively than their overall constituency might wish. Liberals have never been able to (or, more commonly, sought to) match the extent of state-by-state organizing and statehouse lobbying of conservative groups and causes, even though comparatively small investments can reap major rewards in such environments.

In short, conservative groups have done a better job organizing than liberal groups. This fits a theory we pursue in different parts of this class. While democracy is understood as being rule by the people, and democratic institutions are made accountable to the electorate, organized groups are better able to send clear messages to elected representatives. Its not the people who rule, but the people who are members of better organized groups.

Mob Justice in Nigeria

This is a pretty gruesome story and I only link to it because the author points out the speed of vigilante justice. It only takes seconds for a mob to decide to act against someone - which is hardly time to determine whether it is appropriate to do so. Remember that the purpose of a republic it to slow the procedures down so that reason, not passion, can be applied to disputes.

Why worry at all about the working class vote?

A few posts below some clarifying detail - regionalism - was provided about the white working class vote for Obama and Romney. Buried in some of the links provided was a more ominous note about whether their vote was even worth worrying about as a purely policy making matter, this applies to anyone in, or any group representing, the needs of the lower classes (the poor and kinda not so well off).

Policymakers tend to not pay attention to them, and shifts in their attitudes about public policy tend to have little or no impact on policy. This is not true for the wealthy. This seems like an obvious intuitive point, but some research has been published providing empirical proof.

Here's a link to work done by Martin Gilens who claims that inequity in the responsiveness of elected officials threatens the ability of the US to call itself a democracy:

In a democracy, all citizens—the rich, middle-class, poor alike—must have some ability to influence what their government does. Few people would expect that influence to be identical: those with higher incomes and better connections will always be more influential. But if influence becomes so unequal that the wishes of most citizens are ignored most of the time, a country’s claim to be a democracy is cast in doubt. And that is exactly what I found in my analyses of the link between public preferences and government policy in the U.S.
And here's a link to a recent book - the Unheavenly Chorus  - that looks at the nature of organized interest in the nation and come to the same conclusion:


The Unheavenly Chorus is the first book to look at the political participation of individual citizens alongside the political advocacy of thousands of organized interests--membership associations such as unions, professional associations, trade associations, and citizens groups, as well as organizations like corporations, hospitals, and universities. Drawing on numerous in-depth surveys of members of the public as well as the largest database of interest organizations ever created--representing more than thirty-five thousand organizations over a twenty-five-year period--this book conclusively demonstrates that American democracy is marred by deeply ingrained and persistent class-based political inequality. The well educated and affluent are active in many ways to make their voices heard, while the less advantaged are not. This book reveals how the political voices of organized interests are even less representative than those of individuals, how political advantage is handed down across generations, how recruitment to political activity perpetuates and exaggerates existing biases, how political voice on the Internet replicates these inequalities--and more.

In a true democracy, the preferences and needs of all citizens deserve equal consideration. Yet equal consideration is only possible with equal citizen voice. The Unheavenly Chorus reveals how far we really are from the democratic ideal and how hard it would be to attain it.

2301 and 2305 students who have finished reading through Fed 10 and our subsequent analysis of interest groups should not find these allegations surprising.

From the Atlantic: This Is What Freedom Looks Like

This a very brief note in the Atlantic, but it touches on a theme we covered in the classes where we read through Fed 10. Democracies tend to be disruptive. One way to look at the recent violence in Middle Eastern countries - the ones transformed by the "Arab Spring" - is that its a consequence of the demise of authoritarian rule. Not only are people increasingly free, they are free to express themselves in ways that might seem - excessive.

It probably worth comparing what's going on in the Middle East with our own episodes of violence to see if there's much difference between the two. Remember that the complaint against democracy was its tendency towards violence.

So whose political model is superior? The United States' or China's?

I strongly recommend you read the two articles linked to below:

The pro-China author has some interesting points to make about our democratic system - which should sound familiar to my students:

In the history of human governance, spanning thousands of years, there have been two major experiments in democracy. The first was Athens, which lasted a century and a half; the second is the modern West. If one defines democracy as one citizen one vote, American democracy is only 92 years old. In practice it is only 47 years old, if one begins counting after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — far more ephemeral than all but a handful of China’s dynasties.

Why, then, do so many boldly claim they have discovered the ideal political system for all mankind and that its success is forever assured?

The answer lies in the source of the current democratic experiment. It began with the European Enlightenment. Two fundamental ideas were at its core: the individual is rational, and the individual is endowed with inalienable rights. These two beliefs formed the basis of a secular faith in modernity, of which the ultimate political manifestation is democracy.

. . . The American Federalists made it clear they were establishing a republic, not a democracy, and designed myriad means to constrain the popular will. But as in any religion, faith would prove stronger than rules.

The political franchise expanded, resulting in a greater number of people participating in more and more decisions. As they say in America, “California is the future.” And the future means endless referendums, paralysis and insolvency.

In Athens, ever-increasing popular participation in politics led to rule by demagogy. And in today’s America, money is now the great enabler of demagogy. As the Nobel-winning economist A. Michael Spence has put it, America has gone from “one propertied man, one vote; to one man, one vote; to one person, one vote; trending to one dollar, one vote.” By any measure, the United States is a constitutional republic in name only. Elected representatives have no minds of their own and respond only to the whims of public opinion as they seek re-election; special interests manipulate the people into voting for ever-lower taxes and higher government spending, sometimes even supporting self-destructive wars.

In essence he is arguing that the limits that had allowed for stability in American politics have been eroded and we may be less able, as a nation, to solidly address our current problems. We are, he says, too democratic - less the republic than we once were. 2301s - who have just finished Fed 10, should understand the point he is making.

He argues that the greater restrictions on popular participation placed on China's people by their leadership will make it easier for the nation to handle and respond to ongoing changes in the economic and political environment.

Frank Pasquale sees flaws in the argument and suggest that China's model is not quite as stable as is suggested, and may be suffering from the same divisive factors that are impacting us.

Republicanism and Gay Marriage

2301 students ought to read the following post by Andrew Sullivan, who has been an advocate for gay marriage since the 1990s. He details the evolving argument regarding what process ought to be used to establish such a right. If you read Federalist #10, and have understood the tension that exists between popular sovreignty and individual rights, the argument should seem familiar. Are rights best established in the courts, the legislature, or by the people in popular referenda? Each has their relative merits and demerits.

He points to the recent debates in the legislatures of Washington and New Jersey as an example of what can happen in the legislative branch that does not necessarily happen in the general public, and suggests that this was part of the reason we have a republic, not a pure democracy. Give it a read.

2301s ought to think about this in terms of the subject of the week 2 question regarding what unalienable rights might exist beyond the three listed in the Declaration of independence and how we might be able to determine what they are. The process used to determine this question may be more important than the substantive question of what these rights might end up being.

From Brendan Nyhan: New research on political misperceptions

We tend to discount information that causes us to rethink our political beliefs. It bruises our ego to think we were wrong. Madison noted this tendency. Here's research that wonders what it takes to get people to rethink previously held beliefs. Apparently you need to bolster a persons ego while you are persuading them to consider the possibility that they might be wrong.

From John Sides: Social Status and How the Elected Vote

This is a terrific - if disturbing - post:

John Edwards’s $400 haircut. Senator John McCain’s apparently uncountable houses. President Obama’s vacation in Martha’s Vineyard. Most recently, Mitt Romney’s home renovations. These things suggest that many, if not most, politicians at the federal level come from the upper social classes. Certainly they are much wealthier than the average American. But does the social class of elected leaders actually affect how they vote?
Nicholas Carnes, a political scientist at Duke University, finds that it does. In this forthcoming paper, he studied the connection between the occupational backgrounds of members of Congress from 1901 to 1996 and their voting behavior. Occupational backgrounds have proven to be stronger predictors of many political attitudes than other markers of class, like education and income. (The data he draws upon are here.) He uses a simple seven-category typology: farm owners, businesspeople, other private-sector professionals (like doctors), lawyers, politicians, service-based professionals (like teachers), and workers (industrial, farm and union).

As one might imagine, people from working-class backgrounds were only a small minority during this period. In fact, except for the growing representation of politicians at the expense of lawyers — a shift that derives in part from changes in how the data was coded rather than anything substantive — the occupational backgrounds of members of the House have been remarkably stable.
For both 2301 and 2302 - we ought to consider what this means for the quality of representation in the US.

The Web's Impact on the News

Steve Myers points out the power of the web to send isolated news items across the world bypassing normal news organizations. We should consider this next week in 2301 when we consider the impact of tehnology on the news media and the dissemination of information generally:

Last fall, pastor Terry Jones was all over the news with his threats to burn the Quran on the anniversary of 9/11. Seven months later, he followed through, which you probably learned about after rioters in Afghanistan killed a number of United Nations workers and Afghans.

Jones oversaw the burning of a single Quran on March 20 in a thinly attended event at his small Gainesville, Fla., church. Far from the media spectacle of last September, no local news organizations and just one correspondent for an international wire service covered it.

And yet the reaction in Afghanistan is pretty much what people predicted: condemnations, riots and killing.

The way this news leapfrogged over most of the United States to Afghanistan and Pakistan shows how some stories quietly work their way across the Web until someone or something calls attention to them.

And it raises vexing questions for the media about their power to dampen or amplify a story by deciding whether or how much to cover an event – particularly when they know someone is trying to use them.

Is the Imperial President Inevitable?

The renewed expansion of presidential power has obviously driven the publication of several books, here's the latest. Interestingly the author reviewed some of the books we covered below.
















The book's reviewer wonders, as we have mentioned in class, whether the executive branch would inevitably become the dominant branch.

Old v Young: The future has no union.

In class I mentioned that, in my opinion, the budget cutting process would indicate which interests are powerful and which are not. Of course recent history reminds us that the interests of the old are better served than those of the young, and David Brooks sees this playing out in budget battles across the nation. He's worried that this outs future prosperity at risk:

A second austerity principle is this: Trim from the old to invest in the young. We should adjust pension promises and reduce the amount of money spent on health care during the last months of life so we can preserve programs for those who are growing and learning the most.

So far, this principle is being trampled. Seniors vote. Taxpayers revolt. Public employees occupy capitol buildings to protect their bargaining power for future benefits negotiations. As a result, seniors are being protected while children are getting pummeled. If you look across the country, you see education financing getting sliced — often in the most thoughtless and destructive ways. The future has no union.
Clive Crook adds to the sentiment and points out that part of the current dispute with labor unons is that in the past they traded low wages for high future benefits. This shifted the costs to future taxpayers.

Paul Krugman wonders if Texas is neglecting our next generation of children.

A Riot is an Ugly Sink

I dug up a Young Frankenstein movie clip I mentioned in one of my classes last week. Madison's pure democracy perhaps?

From The Lion in Winter

I showed this to a couple of classes today to give them an idea about how King John was portrayed in The Lion In Winter. I noticed that it also fits with our discussion of human nature. The Queen seems to wonder why her sons can't quell their ambitions. Possibly because it is against their natures to do so.