"the last of the New Deal liberals"

Aside from being one of the last WWII veterans, Lautenberg has also been called one of the "the last of the New Deal liberals."

Since we covered ideology and federalism recently and will start looking at political parties soon enough, this gives us an opportunity to discuss this transitional period in history. With his death, we are sloso given the chance to speculate further on what factors lead to changes in public policy. Often it has less to do with people changing opinions on certain matter, but instead generations with shared opinions replacing generations with others.

Some related readings - If you are inclined:

- Frank Lautenber, the last of the New Deal Liberals.
- Wikipedia: Liberalism in the United States.
- Wikipedia: New Deal

I'd recommend this one especially:

- How classical liberalism morphed into New Deal liberalism.

I like its introductory paragraph. 2305s should especially recognize the point the author is making here: 

Classical liberalism is synonymous with a faith in reason, which had arisen out of the Enlightenment as a reaction to claims of divine rule by the clergy and royalty of the late Middle Ages. It found expression in the thoughts of many writers across Europe and the British Isles, including John Stuart Mill, John Locke, Baron de Montesquieu, Voltaire, David Hume, and Immanuel Kant, as well as in the political arguments of America’s founders, particularly Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and James Madison. Liberal freedoms were primarily freedoms of the mind: freedom of thought, of expression, of religion, and of self-invention without regard to the customs of caste, creed, or crown. Above all, liberalism implied both an ability and a responsibility of people to think for themselves, to create their own destinies, and to follow their own consciences. Examining the evolution of liberal belief since its founding, the liberal theologian Reinhold Niebuhr observed in an article published on July 4, 1955, in The New Republic, that liberalism in the broadest sense was characterized by a commitment “to free the individual from the traditional restraints of a society, to endow the ‘governed’ with the power of the franchise, to establish the principle of the ‘consent of the governed’ as the basis of political society; to challenge all hereditary privileges and traditional restraints upon human initiative.”

Public executions as social control

A journal kept by a prolific German executioner who worked in Nuremberg from 1573 to 1618 has been found and published, with commentary.

Here's an interesting bit from a review. Note the two sentences in bold. They point out what governments sometimes do to keep the population in line. So are public executions instruments of coercion?

Frantz Schmidt was a master executioner. He had a notarized certificate to prove it. He apprenticed under a master; he paid his journeyman's dues. He mostly worked in the imperial city of Nuremberg during his forty-five years of service, 1573-1618. He executed 394 people: men, women, and some boys and girls. Schmidt, always poised, delivered a good death, whether he beat you to kingdom come with a wagon wheel or applied the pitch and touched the flame, slipped the noose or cut off your head.

A "good death" was meant to shock and awe the locals, to keep them ruly in the absence of any effective central authority during some seriously unruly times. Executions were carefully orchestrated, ritualized brutality that sated the drive for retribution, with clear rules and conduct. The fathers of Nuremberg, a city then at the zenith of its power and wealth, hired Frantz Schmidt: reliable, honest, pious, reflective, loyal, sober Frantz, a rare bird in the world of executioners. Literate, too, and Joel Harrington's The Faithful Executioner has drawn on Schmidt's personal journal to shape an involved and evolved portrait of this terrible, ancient, and utterly familiar instrument of state violence, one who here inspires gawps of horror and aches of pity.

An Empty Boston

There are tons of sweet images of an empty Boston from last Friday - and some are having a field day debating the wisdom of locking the city down - but the bombers were found and either caught or killed, so the lockdown served its purpose. After the final arrest, the city celebrated, so the move seems to have received support.

Nevertheless, it is one of the more unique examples of police power in a major city in recent memory. We had to face something similar after Hurricane Ike and a 7pm curfew was imposed on Houston. It wasn't strictly enforced, but it was largely followed. And driving through a dark, empty city was eerie.

As we begin to review for the final and think about the consent of the governed, and how this manifests itself, it might be worth thinking about this as one of the more unusual examples.

What types of jobs will be available in the future?

And will these be good jobs? Are face with increased inequality in the future? Here's commentary:

The NYT wonders if the good jobs are gone, and whether governmental policies can address this issue. Can the market - on its own - create the next wave of middle skill jobs that will limit increased inequality?

Richard Posner points out the various ways that technological advances displaces - but does not eliminate - labor. While he mentions jobs that do not require high IQ's he points out that many jobs that are specialized - including the practice of law - are vulnerable.

He has this scary point to make about driverless cars:

Take the case of the driverless car. This technology is advancing very rapidly and has great promise for reducing labor costs (drivers), traffic accidents (for example by eliminating drunk driving), traffic violations, and traffic jams (by optimizing speed, lane usage, and choice of routes and times). There are approximately 4 million truck, taxi, limousine, and bus drivers in the United States, not to mention gas station attendants and traffic policemen. Not all these jobs will be eliminated overnight, but they could go quite fast.

He also points out that these trends - coupled with increased life expectancy - wil lincrease the dependent population:

These trends bear on the current debates over the size of government. Technological advances are increasing longevity, and with it an increase in the dependent population. By reducing demand for workers, and therefore employment and wages, in many labor markets, the same technological advances may be creating a second dependent population, consisting of people of working age and their children who cannot support themselves without public assistance that will either replace or augment wages. Republicans may therefore be tilting against windmills in thinking that the size of government can be reduced.

Gary Becker tells us that the future will not be kind to low skilled workers, and that the rewards for skilled workers may not be as great as they have been in the past:

During the past 30 years the market for workers with few skills has been weak pretty much everywhere. The reason is that economies, including developing economies, have increased their demand for knowledge workers at the expense of low skilled workers. The future is not likely to be any kinder to workers with little education and few other work skills.

Various forces have favored skilled workers during the past several decades; indeed, many of them began much earlier. Technological changes and automation, including the development of computers, the Internet, and electronic controls, have reduced the demand for certain types of skilled workers, such as secretaries and clerical workers. They have increased the demand for workers who command considerable knowledge, and who know how to access any additional knowledge necessary to perform various tasks.

He is critical of governmental policies that impede the incentives for individuals to increase their skill levels, as well as those that limits access to the opportunity to do so.

What information do we really respond to?

The Dish flags a blog, which flags a UNC study about what types of information people best respond to.

We might be told how many calories are contained in a meal, but that information can be abstract, so we don't really respond to it. But we do if we are told how much exercise might be needed to work that meal off. Here's their example about how this information might be best communicated:

A study by researchers at UNC’s medical school, published in the journal Appetite, showed the kind of choices people make when randomly presented with different types of menus with differing levels of nutritional information: one with no nutritional info, one with calorie info, one with calories plus the minutes of walking required to burn the calories, and a fourth with calories plus the distance required to burn off the calories.

"People who viewed the menu without nutritional information ordered a meal totaling 1,020 calories, on average, significantly more than the average 826 calories ordered by those who viewed menus that included information about walking-distance," writes Scientific American. People who saw the menu with walking-distance info also ordered less than people who just saw calorie info.

Such a finding goes along with what researchers at Johns Hopkins have found. Signs posted on beverage cases in a convenience store about how much exercise it would take to burn off a bottle of soda (about 50 minutes of running) were much better at dissuading adolescents from buying sugary drinks than signs with just the calorie content. The researchers at UNC say they’re interested in bringing their study into the real-world as well--starting with the university cafeteria.

I always think information like this call to question the degree of free will and autonomous decision making power we have. Our decisions seem easily influenced.

Do you really know what's best for you? Does government?

A recently published book makes a provocative claims that fits with some general points I like to make when we begin both 2305 and 2306 (though I'm not sure I do a good enough job). What is government for? And in order to tie this into political conflicts involving ideology - which tend to contain predisposed opinions about whether the public or private sector (government or the individual) can best make decisions - we sometimes wonder what the "liberal" and "conservative" approach to certain problems might be.

The book I'm referring to it is Against Autonomy: Justifying Coercive Paternalism and it makes the case that we are far more irrational than we realize, and despite the value we place on individuals making decisions on their own, some limits ought to be placed on those types of decisions. The state - or more accurately, the collective decision we make as a democratic society and then impose on everyone - may be justified in being paternalistic in certain areas. Of course the state already does: Think about laws regarding drug and prostitution, and those of you who are under 21 - and rational - but can't legally drink alcohol. But this provides a more thorough justification for this behavior that is explicitly based on human irrationality rather than rationality.

Full disclosure: I haven't read the book yet, but I've some provocative reviews of it that outline and critique the argument in the book. Here's a good one. This reviewer points out that research has demonstrated multiple places where human rationality fails. Where we are fooled or make errant judgments. Some examples:

- Present Bias: We tend to focus on issue important to us today and ignore tomorrow. 

- Probablity: We tend to not understand the actual likelyhood of different events occurring. Often we over estimate harms associeted with something that occured recently (like the recent meteor explosion) event though they are less likely to be repeated than other events.

- Optimism: We overestimate the likelyhood that we wil suffer consequences from any risky behaviors we engage in.

In a succinct sentence the books author states that “We are too fat, we are too much in debt, and we save too little for the future.” And we are due to the choices we make. Society as a whole suffers from these collective choices, so a degree of paternalism is justified.

This could be worth a class discussion.

In the meantime it suggests to me that I modify some of the slides I've put together detailing the role rationality plays in establishing governments based on the individual. The rationale still holds, but some nod to what research has told us about our actual ability to think rationally seems necessary.

From Foreign Affairs: Capitalism and Inequality

Here's a great look at a problem posed by capitalist economies - one noted elsewhere. They not only lead to inequality, but increased inequality creates the instability that can upend those economies:

Inequality is indeed increasing almost everywhere in the postindustrial capitalist world. But despite what many on the left think, this is not the result of politics, nor is politics likely to reverse it, for the problem is more deeply rooted and intractable than generally recognized. Inequality is an inevitable product of capitalist activity, and expanding equality of opportunity only increases it -- because some individuals and communities are simply better able than others to exploit the opportunities for development and advancement that capitalism affords. Despite what many on the right think, however, this is a problem for everybody, not just those who are doing poorly or those who are ideologically committed to egalitarianism -- because if left unaddressed, rising inequality and economic insecurity can erode social order and generate a populist backlash against the capitalist system at large.

Some feedback on the SOTU Address

The NYT covers the speech here and The Dish links to various reactions here - including a few live-blogs.

The consensus opinion is that the speech targeted policies that would favor the middle class and that Obama spoke with some confidence without being overly partisan - all the while laying out a few potential landmines for Republicans: like his proposal that the minimum wage be increased. He laid out a case for governmental involvement in developing the middle class while the Republican response tried to argue against it. Might be a good point to raise in class. We can isolate the precise goal laid out in the speech and figure out whether the public or private sector is in a better position to achieve them.

A few pointed out that Joe Biden looked very Mardi Gras with his purple tie and green - Newtown - ribbon. He just needed a touch of gold somewhere.



There were no flareups involving Ted Nugent that I heard of - big disappointment. He looks like he regretted showing up:

Did a reduction in Defense Spending lead to a contraction in the economy?

This might end up being a lesson in the danger of quickly cutting spending. It sounds nice, but it has consequences. By the way - most, ok all, of this was stolen from Wonkblog.

The GDP shrank 0.1 % in the last quarter of 2012 even though the private sector grew.

Here's the breakdown in chart form:



And some commentary:

- Yikes! Economy shrank in fourth quarter for the first time since ’09.
- Economy shrinks as federal spending cuts trump private sector’s growth.
- Government is hurting the economy — by spending too little
- GDP Report Is Less Negative Than It Looks

And one more chart that compares the private and public components of ther economy.

96% of Americans receive federal assiatnce of some kind

From the Monkey Cage and the New York Times:

We have unique data from a 2008 national survey by the Cornell Survey Research Institute that asked Americans whether they had ever taken advantage of any of 21 social policies provided by the federal government, from student loans to Medicare. These policies do not include government activity that benefits everyone — national defense, the interstate highway system, food safety regulations — but only tangible benefits that accrue to specific households.

The survey asked about people’s policy usage throughout their lives, not just at a moment in time, and it included questions about social policies embedded in the tax code, which are usually overlooked.

What the data reveal is striking: nearly all Americans — 96 percent — have relied on the federal government to assist them. Young adults, who are not yet eligible for many policies, account for most of the remaining 4 percent.

In The Submerged State, the author points out the invisible ways that government provides assistance for people - may of which are deliberately made invisible.

From the AAS: Public-sector job cuts leave mark on Texas, Austin economies

Something to hit harder in 2306 when we discuss the Texas budget and the bureaucracy. Public sector employment has decreased substantively in the state due to cuts made in the 82nd session of the legislature.

Are we witnessing a changing philosophy concerning governance in the state?

This should be provocative

And it could be a good springboard for class discussion. What kinds of things can government do better than you?

Here's an argument for five specific things:

The big four?

- retirement insurance
- health care
- addressing poverty
- disaster relief

Then there are the little things like road construction etc....

From the story:

The conservative approach to government stems from a basic tenet of free-market economics: that people always act rationally to maximize their own benefits, and that from this rises a general state of well-being for society as a whole. But this isn’t always true. One of the hottest academic disciplines to arise in the last few decades is behavioral economics, which explores the ways in which people behave irrationally. In addition, easy-predictable problems with certain markets prevent us from achieving the best outcomes. These two facts have consequences for how we should think about government in certain instances. There are many ways in which the government can make better decisions with our money than we can, and there are many ways that the Ryan budget would make society worse off by getting rid of government programs.

E.J. Dionne defends strong government

Implicit in much of what we cover in class is an argument over what government should and shouldn't do. Where should the line be drawn between the public and the private sector, and should that line be clear or blurry?

Even though liberals are argued to defend the use of government to promote goals and objectives the private sector cannot - or cares not to - address, they don't do a good job of it, at least according to Dionne who takes then to task for not doing so:


The case for government’s role in our country’s growth and financial success goes back to the very beginning. One of the reasons I wrote my book “Our Divided Political Heart” was to show that, from Alexander Hamilton and Henry Clay forward, farsighted American leaders understood that action by the federal government was essential to ensuring the country’s prosperity, developing our economy, promoting the arts and sciences and building large projects: the roads and canals, and later, under Abraham Lincoln, the institutions of higher learning, that bound a growing nation together.

Both Clay and Lincoln battled those who used states’ rights slogans to crimp federal authority and who tried to use the Constitution to handcuff anyone who would use the federal government creatively. Both read the Constitution’s commerce clause as Franklin Roosevelt and progressives who followed him did, as permitting federal action to serve the common good. A belief in government’s constructive capacities is not some recent ultra-liberal invention.

Liberals, he argues, have been brow beaten into baking off an aggressive defense of governmental involvement in various aspects of life. The national conversation about how to best govern ourselves is lesser as a result.

Should prisons be privatized?

Texas - and a handful of other states - have been privatizing prisons for many years now. Private providers of services are assumed to be able to do so more efficiently then the public sector. But some argue that private organizations should not be granted the coercive power that properly should only belong to a government whose powers rest on the consent of the governed.

Here are thoughts about that issue.

The author points out that: In 2009, the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that prison privatization violates “the constitutional rights to personal liberty and human dignity of inmates who are supposed to serve their sentence in that prison. This is because of the actual transfer of powers of management and operation of the prison from the state to a private concessionaire that is a profit-making enterprise.”

This is likely also applicable to the increased tendency of private entities to carry out military and security functions.

2301s: we can talk this out next week when we start in on federalism.
2302s: this applies to our discussion of the ever expanding power of the executive.

The KH-9 Hexagon Satellite

One of the concerns expressed over cuts to the Defense Department is that it may undermine research and development. One of the by-products of defense spending has been the promotion of technology that first aids defense and then eventually hits the private sector and leads to the development of new products and industries. The list is long - the telegraph, radio, airplanes, jet engines, rocketry, computers, and the internet.

Recently information has been declassified about the KH-9 Hexagon satellite, a cold war era surveillance satellite that took high resolution photographs of the Soviet Union during the 1960s and beyond. While attention was paid to the race to the moon, the real advance in space had less to do with exploration and more to do with the increasingly sophisticated satellites placed in orbit that began performing - and continue to perform - variety of functions.

Here are two stories related to the program:
- TOP SECRET: Your Briefing on the CIA's Cold-War Spy Satellite, 'Big Bird'

- Declassified US Spy Satellites . . .

The story points out the role the public sector has played in promoting basic research and development, and how this in turn promotes the viability of the commercial republic.

New FAA Regulations

In the news today is a new regulation by the Federal Aviation Agency regarding the amount of time pilots can fly - and the amount of time they are expected to sleep between flights. As with many things government do - or decide to do - it is in response to a recent event. In 2009 a plane crashed on route to Buffalo, New York, and pilot fatigue was argued to have been a leading cause of the crash.

This is worth pondering in 2301 since one of the ideological issues commonly debated is what the proper role of government ought to be. Does this fit within that framework or not? Apart from ideological considerations comes the real world question of how governmental officials are likely to react - and how the general population might want them to react - when a bad thing happens and we think we know why it happened and that it might be prevented in the future.

One other point for 2301s to consider is the nature of the decision - it was made by an executive agency charged with overseeing air travel. It was not done through a democratic process. Is this a problem?

Some related links:

- FAA Regulations.
- FAA Regulations & Policies.
- Federal Aviation Regulations (wikipedia)

- UPS Pilots sue to be included in the rule.
- Story from WaPo.

FEMA Funding

IN today's 2302 we covered budgeting and specifically the recent conflict over FEMA funding, as well as the role the budgeting process has begun to play in setting public policy. If you can;t terminate a program you do not like (like Amtrak) you can just cut its funds. This has the same effect.

After discussing the nature and age of the agency - mentioning also the disaster relief has a long history in the US - we pointed out that a big problem with funding FEMA is that we never know ahead of time how much has to be spent on disaster relief. We don't know what disasters will happen until they happen. I guess that's why the are called disasters. Global warming models suggest that rising world temperatures make climate related disasters more frequent ans costly. The Washington Post has a graphic that seems to support his:

From the NYT: Why Is the U.S. Losing the Green Race?

A conversation about whether the government can promote the development of an alternative energy industry.

From CNN: Can the Federal Reserve get banks lending?

For discussions about what government can and cannot do:

The Federal Reserve wants consumers to apply for more mortgages and businesses to take out more loans, in order to boost the sluggish U.S. economy.

At least, that's the thinking behind Operation Twist, a policy announced by the Fed Wednesday that's meant to drive down long-term interest rates, thereby making it cheaper to borrow.

But will it really work? Industry experts have their reservations.

"Interest rates will come down, but the effect won't be what the Fed has envisioned," said Mike Fratantoni, vice president of research for the Mortgage Bankers Association.

From the NYT: Our Hidden Government Benefits

The author wonders if attitudes about government would change if people were aware of the "hidden benefits" it offers:

DON’T take at face value the claims that Americans dislike government. Sure, a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll found that 56 percent of Americans said they wanted smaller government and fewer services. Tea Party activists, the most vocal citizens of our time, powerfully amplify those demands. Yet the reality is that the vast majority of Americans have at some point relied on government programs — and valued them — even though they often fail to recognize that government is the source of the assistance.

A 2008 poll of 1,400 Americans by the Cornell Survey Research Institute found that when people were asked whether they had “ever used a government social program,” 57 percent said they had not. Respondents were then asked whether they had availed themselves of any of 21 different federal policies, including Social Security, unemployment insurance, the home-mortgage-interest deduction and student loans. It turned out that 94 percent of those who had denied using programs had benefited from at least one; the average respondent had used four.

Americans often fail to recognize government’s role in society, even if they have experienced it in their own lives. That is because so much of what government does today is largely invisible.