the weaker party

Sunday, June 13, 2010

Area Representatives – 111th Congress

Friday, June 11, 2010

The Book on Pelosi

Nancy Pelosi's speakership has become a subject of analysis and study. Here's a recently released one:

Senate Proposal to Limit EPA Regulatory Authority on Greenhouse Gasses Defeated

From the Washington Post.

Senator Murkoski's Resolution (see text here) would have overturned the EPA's finding in December 2009 that greenhouse gases endangered the public health and welfare, and they therefore had the right to regulate them as a pollutant. Murkowski wanted Congress to have that authority, independent regulatory agency, like the EPA. Her proposal raises questions about where and how to strike a dividing line between legislative and executive functions.

- FYI: What is a Senate Joint Resolution? (from wikipedia)

The EPA used its rulemaking authority (see process detailed here) to establish these regulations last year. Click here for the advanced notice of the regulations sent our June 11, 2008. In the notice the EPA mentions that its authority to make such regulations was found to to be constitutional in Massachusetts v. EPA. For additional information on the EPA's rulings click here.

This story is a terrific example of the interplay between institutions, and levels of government, that are a direct consequence of the separated powers, the checks and balances and federalism. It also points out the difficulty Congress has with coming up with any solutions on polarizing issues and helps explain why bureaucratic agencies sometime step in if there is to be action at all on these problems. But doing so raises questions of accountability, which is Murkowski's point. The bureaucracy is not restrained by electoral forces, and is free to make decisions based on its professional judgement. This is either a good or bad thing depending on one's ideological leanings and opinions on how expansive the democratic process ought to be.

Texas Republicans Turn Green

Sort of. In an obvious attempt to split the Democratic vote, the Texas Republican Party has worked to get the Green Party on the ballot for 2010. Democrats don't like it a bit and are trying to dig up a scandal over this. I'm not sure what's illegal about this though.

- Green Party makes the Texas ballot
- Republicans Go Green
- Texas Secretary of State Says Green Party Petition is Valid
- Texas Democrats Sue Green Party
- TX Democrats file suit: Who funded Green Party petition drive?

File this under 2301: elections and the consequence of the winner take all system.

Report on the Imperial Presidency

I was just tracking some information down on John Conyers, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, and ran across this report from March 2009 on accusations that the Bush Administration's use of executive power bordered on the imperial. Its quite partisan, but introduces the concept of the Imperial Presidency, which my 2302s study when we cover the executive.

For what its worth, there are allegations that Obama has picked up where Bush-Cheney left off with similar abuses. Glenn Greenwald at Salon beats this drum quite a bit. Power once acquired is difficult to relinquish.

Thursday, June 10, 2010

California's Top Two Primary

Proposition 14 passed in California and could radically change party competition in the state.

- Overview.
- Comments.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

Too Much Information?

Does our easy access to current events and newly published books and ideas distract us from the really important stuff?

Maybe.

I wrestle with this as prepare subject matter for class. How much attention do I give to the everyday give and take of government and politics and how much to I devote to the timeless issues related to how a group of people decide how to govern themselves?

CQ Update on Congress 6-8-10

Something to chew on today. Congressional Quarterly provides daily updates on major activity in Congress. This gives us some context for class discussion. You can sign up for these as well if you go to their site.

Today in Washington

The House considers minor bills and resolutions under suspension of the rules.

The Senate begins debate on a package extending various tax breaks and unemployment benefits, along with other expired programs.

The President meets with advisers; visits a Wheaton, Md., senior citizens’ center to tout improved Medicare drug benefits in a tele-town hall session with groups around the country; meets with Sen. Byron L. Dorgan, D-N.D.; hosts congressional picnic dinner at the White House.

In Washington, the Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Malaria and Tuberculosis holds its conference and awards dinner, with appearances by Annie Lennox; Ashley Judd, Board of Directors, PSI; Michel Sidibe, Executive Director, UNAIDS. Keynote address by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. 7 p.m., Renaissance Washington Hotel, 999 9th St. NW.

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Top Stories

White House Orders Agencies To Pinpoint Least Important Programs The White House on Tuesday instructed federal agencies to compile a list of their least important programs that add up to at least five percent of their budgets as the administration begins preparing next year's budget. [Read More]

House Chairman Defends Unwanted Jet Engine as Job Creator The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee upped the ante Tuesday in the debate over an alternate engine for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter by tying the program to the need to create more jobs. [Read More]
Feinstein Calls for Inquiry Into Israeli Raid on Aid Flotilla In a significant departure from most colleagues, Sen. Dianne Feinstein called Tuesday for an "impartial inquiry" into the Israeli commando raid on a humanitarian flotilla carrying aid to the Gaza Strip that left nine activists dead, including one American. [Read More]

Health Science Experts Urge Stronger Food Safety Regulation The Food and Drug Administration needs more resources and a more focused, risk-based approach to safeguarding the nation's food supply, according to a report released Tuesday. [Read More]

Senate Democrats Seek To Restore Medicaid Funds, Hit Oil Industry Harder Senate Democrats unveiled their proposed changes to a tax and benefits bill on Tuesday and urged quick passage of the measure, which now carries a price tag of about $140.2 billion and would add about $77.5 billion to the federal deficit. [Read More]

Monday, June 7, 2010

Republicans in the Senate Try to Limit the EPA

From Ezra Klein's WonkBook:

The Senate will debate stripping the EPA's authority over climate change Thursday, reports Taylor Rushing: "The debate will center on a Thursday vote on a disapproval resolution by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) that would block the EPA from enforcing emission rules under the Clean Air Act...Murkowski is bringing the resolution forward under the Congressional Review Act, which prevents any filibusters and only requires 51 votes for passage. Murkowski has said she has about 41 votes, including Democratic Sens. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas."

Wondering what the Congressional Review Act does? The Congressional Research Service has you covered. Bottom line: Senate can't filibuster, but the president can veto, and that means Murkowski's resolution would need 2/3rds of both the House and the Senate to make it into law.

Do Pollsters Know How to Correctly Determine Who the Likely Voters Are?

Maybe not.

Presidential Power and the Gulf Oil Spill

From the National Journal, some commentary on the state of presidential power. While executive powers have expanded considerably over the past century, it still has practical limits. Campaign rhetoric aside, presidents aren't Superman. And while we hear concerns about Obama's apparent attempts to expand executive power we nevertheless, we also hear calls that Obama should do more to contain the oil spill, which requires him to usurp more executive power of course. We did the same with Bush and terrorism, as well as other presidents and whatever crises happened during their tenure. We want executive power both expanded and limited at the same time. We criticize presidents for abusing power, and for not using it.

So, as a public, do we say that we want limited government in principle, but demand expansive power in practice? Is we wish government to be limited, we have to accept the idea that certain things are going to happen without our control or influence -- like huge oil spills. Do we really, collectively, want that? I think the American public is conflicted about governmental power and attitudes about Obama's response to the oil spill encapsulate that.

Here's the story:

The Gulf, Unplugged: When it comes to stopping the Gulf oil spill, we don't hear the president shouting 'Yes, we can!'
by Will Englund

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Looking for more?

This week, the Obama administration made a show of the various ways it is taking care of business connected to the oil spill -- steps that are significant and most likely necessary, but none of them having any effect on the gusher itself.

Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department is opening a criminal investigation into the disaster. President Obama held a Rose Garden ceremony to introduce the co-chairmen of a commission charged with figuring out how to prevent another such catastrophe. (They are Bob Graham, the former senator and Florida governor, and William K. Reilly, who was President George H.W. Bush's Environmental Protection Agency chief, back when the Exxon Valdez was hitting the rocks.)

As always at such events, the two eminent commissioners kept mum, but that may have been especially prudent in this instance, in which no one, at the moment, has a good solution to the unfolding disaster.

Obama doesn't have the luxury of silence. He has to talk about this mess. Last week, at his press conference, he veered into long explanations of what the government could and could not do, and what it should be doing.

In the Rose Garden, he was a little more trenchant and a lot terser. Yet White House reporters later badgered press secretary Robert Gibbs about whether the president has displayed sufficient rage over the BP spill. Gibbs parried and talked around the question and, before the dialogue had played itself out, several dozen more barrels of petroleum, at least, had flowed out of the Deepwater Horizon well and into the Gulf of Mexico.

Neither a raging president nor commissioners nor crusading prosecutors can stop the oil. All may have a role to play in the larger story surrounding the event but none is central to the solution.
In the meantime, Obama isn't getting very good marks on the spill. By margins of 5-to-10 percentage points, polls taken in late May show that more Americans disapprove than approve of his handling of the crisis. Conservative critics lambaste the president for not doing more about the spill and accuse him of plotting to use it as a pretext to halt offshore drilling. Public support for drilling has dropped dramatically, however, since the "drill, baby, drill" days of 2008; support fell from 62 percent to 45 percent in CBS News polls.

Americans have come to expect their presidents to be able to set right anything that goes wrong. It's an idea that presidential candidates like to nurture -- and maybe none more so than Obama, with his "Yes, we can" slogan -- but no president, once in office, can live up to that expectation. Theater, and a sense of timing, though, can help.

Ronald Reagan went to Berlin and demanded, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" And when, two years later, the wall did come down, Reagan's supporters seized on it as proof of his genius and daring. If Obama had gone down to the Gulf at the right moment and declaimed, "BP, plug up this hole!" it wouldn't have stopped the oil any more than Reagan's speech brought down the wall, but it could have been thrilling to his allies.

It wasn't always like this. The biggest oil spill in U.S. history was the Lakeview Gusher, in California. It blew in March 1910 and went on for 18 months. President Taft appears to have said nothing about it. Two statewide Democratic candidates made a point of driving by it one day -- to enjoy the thrilling sight of a fountain of crude.

The Gulf spill, whatever its ultimate dimensions, will clearly inflict far more environmental damage than Lakeview did, given its location. But this is also not an era that is receptive to an "accidents happen" outlook on life.

Obama has been lucky in one aspect: Oil companies are about as unpopular as health insurers. BP makes a handy villain (and the British accent of its CEO, Tony Hayward, may reinforce the point). Polls show that virtually no one approves of BP's handling of the crisis. One puzzle is that an administration that is powerless to address the physical problem -- the oil welling up from below -- has been so slow to turn against the oil company that drilled the hole in the first place.

How a Bill Becomes a Law

A nicely done chart.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

Race, Peremptory Challenges and Impartial Juries

Here's an editorial highlighting a recently released study which claims that race is still being used to strike people from juries despite the practice being declared to be a violation of the right to a fair trial in Batson v. Kentucky in 1986.

This applies to 2301 in both our civil liberties and civil rights sections. It's a civil liberties issue because the right to an impartial jury is meant to ensure that government cannot use its power in an arbitrary fashion and make convictions against certain individuals, or groups of individuals more or less likely. It's a civil rights issue because prosecutors in certain states are accused of using it specifically against defendant on the basis of race. The assumption is that a conviction against an African-American defendant is more likely if there are no African-American on the jury.

Relevant Links:
- Batson v. Kentucky.
- The Study: Illegal Racial Discrimination in Jury Trials.
- Peremptory Challenges.

Friday, June 4, 2010

Are Institutional Changes Necessary to Solve Economic Crisis?

William Galston, writing for the Brookings Institution, thinks so and outlines some proposals.

He begins by pointing out previous periods in American history where institutional change was needed to solve crises.

1 - The replacement of the Articles of Confederation with the Constitution helped solidify the newly formed nation.

2 - The passage of the Civil War Amendments (the 13th, 14th and 15th) resolved the ambivalent relationship between the national and state governments in favor of the former.

3 - The creation of the Federal Reserve, the Department of Defense and other large agencies allowed the nation to position itself effectively internationally.

He details a variety of institutional changes he considers necessary to handle our current fiscal mess.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

A Couple Views of the Constitution

Arguments about the meaning and proper interpretation of the U.S. Constitution continue:

- E.J.Dionne discusses David Souter's recent speech criticizing the doctrine of original intent.

update (6-5-10): Linda Greenhouse comments on the speech also. Souter argues that the Constitution contains values that are in conflict and Justices must reconcile, or choose, among those values.

update (6-11-10): Dahlia Lithwick comments on the same speech and thinks Souter is telling Americans to grow up.

- George Will thinks Obama is leaning too far to the Wilsonian approach to the Constitution, which allows for "unlimited" power, and not enough towards Madison's more limited view of governing power.

Do Minor Parties Really Impact Major Parties?

Charles Kuffner looks at recent Texas races and sees little evidence that they have -- though Greens are more likely to affect Dems than Libertarians are to affect Reps. Given current volatility, this year might be different.

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

Is There a Right to Racially Discriminate?

From the Washington Post: Can Private Clubs Segregate? If not, what allows government to intervene?

Halliburton Increases Donations for Members of Committee Investigating Gulf Oil Spill.

Story in Politico. It pays to hedge bets.

Touching the Third Rail

Should the retirement age be pushed back? Here's some discussion on the topic. Doing so would instantly make Social Security solvent for generations, but proposing doing so might be political suicide.

Scott Brown: Centrist

More evidence of the decentralized nature of political parties in the U.S.

Repeal the 17th Amendment

Part of the Tea Party platform. But is it either feasible, or wise? Are people anxious to relinquish the right to elect their Senators?

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

Stupid News Story

Slate points out how the AP has recycled the same alarmist story for thirty years as if it was news.

Miranda Warnings Narrowed

The Supreme Court narrowed the impact of Miranda Warnings by ruling that a suspect that remains silent has not implicitly invoked the right against self incrimination. Simply remaining silent is not enough to establish that one claims the right to remain silent. The decision continues the current courts march rightward, in this case in terms of the rights of criminal defendant v the police.

The case is Berghuis v. Thompkins

- ScotusWiki.
- ScotusBlog.
- The Washington Post.
- New York Times.
- The Decision.

Monday, May 31, 2010

A History of Political Scandals in the U.S.

Another reason I love wikipedia. Worth a look as the we see whether the Sestak controversy has legs.

Suing Rapists

In 2301, when we cover federalism, we touch on U.S. v. Morrison which -- along with U.S. v. Lopez, seemed to mark the end of the indiscriminate use of the commerce clause to justify endless expansions of federal power. But while the case stated that the federal government lacked the constitutional power to allow women access to its courts for lawsuits against their attackers, the state courts could, and perhaps should.

That availability of these courts has been limited however, as the following story illustrates.

Responsibility Without Control

After reading the Bystander in Chief, it occurred to me that the national government's response to the gulf oil spill, and the increasing criticism aimed at Obama, coupled with the reality that only BP has the technology to adequately address the spill, raises questions about the limits of presidential power in our constitutional system and its consequences.

We've grown used to thinking that the president can solve all problems, and presidential candidates do promise that they can, but can they? Is it realistic to think that the chief executive can adequately handle all possible problems? Remember that the constitution is structured to limit power, and despite the additional powers granted to the executive over the past century, limits still exist. Nevertheless, the presidency has grown in the public's collective mind where we expect the office to possess a magic wand and rid us of our problems. Maybe we should blame FDR and those fireside chats.

Of course since the country has swung against the idea of power in general, and regulatory power specifically, its worth considering whether the ability of the national government to handle emergencies in general (or prevent them) has been hamstrung by the political process. As with many problems we face nationally, I have a habit of blaming the popular sovereign. In this case we want to limit power, except when we want immediate forceful action, then we want pervasive power. Has the political process turned the office of the presidency into a position with responsibility but no control?

Saturday, May 29, 2010

Jay Bybee and the Takings Clause

Slate has a critical piece on 9th Curcuit Judge Jay Bybee's decision in Guggenheim v. City of Goleta which argues that he's engaged in conservative judicial activism by injecting his own view of the Constitution's Takings Clause and ignoring precedent. The decision concerns whether any level of government can, constitutionally, impose rent controls on property, or whether doing so amounts to a "takings."

There appears to be a healthy debate in legal circles about just what the Constitution's authors meant when they wrote that private property could not be taken for public use without just compensation.

Here's an interview on the subject with Richard Epstein.

One of the issues involved is whether a "regulatory taking" is effectively the same thing as an actual seizure of property.

Some background:

- A Brief History of the Takings Clause.
- The Takings of Private Property.
- The Takings Clause, From the Heritage Foundation.
- Eminent Domain, From Findlaw.

Wiki-constitutionalism

Here's useful commentary on the problems that ensue when a country's constitution changes too frequently.

The South v The West

Which region will determine the future direction of the Republican Party?

How to Analyze the Future Direction of the Supreme Court

This article by Tom Goldstein not only provides a terrific overview of what a Stevens less Supreme Court would look like, but more importantly for us, uses a precise methodology for dissecting how the Supreme Court approaches constitutional questions.

It breaks the future down into sections involving:

1 - The articles of the Constitution
2 - Cases involving the Bill of Rights
3 - Non-Constitutional Cases

Each is further divided into those issues that are most topical today. I'll try incorporating this into future lectures, but this is the best thing I've read in some time that details the specific constitutional conflicts at issue today, and how they are likely to shift -- or not -- in the near future.

Can Memories be Manufactured?

Apparently they can. Scary stuff considering how much of our legal system depends on eyewitness testimony and the degree that public opinion is formulated on individual perceptions of what is true and what isn't.

More on the Sestak Controversy

Republicans and conservatives think they have a legitimate controversy on their hands (complete with talk of special prosecutors and impeachment) but there are still questions about whether the job offer was illegal, and how this is clearly stated.

It is argued that three sections of the Pendleton Civil Service Act of 1883, which outlawed the spoils system, are relevant. But since they have (apparently) never been used to prosecute anyone for making a job offer for not running for office. These offers are somewhat common it seems and Democrats are using this argument to claim this is purely a political, not a legal, matter.

Some links:
- Slate.
- Huffington Post.
- Washington Post.

Applying this to class material:

1 - The Progressives are back in the news, at least indirectly. The Pendleton Act was intended to prevent political parties from treating jobs and contracts as goodies they controlled by holding office. Remember that the president not only holds an executive office, but is the unofficial leader of his party. There is almost certainly a great deal of tension in these two roles. In order to successfully be party leader one may well be tempted to do things that inhibit the ability of the executive branch to fully do its job. I wonder if the controversies involving the Mineral Management Service, where appointments were apparently made to political supporters, is similar legally to the Sestak allegations.

2 - Political leaders do all they can, complete with carrots sticks and all number of other things, to influence who runs for office. They do not like it when challengers take on seemingly safe (or safer) incumbents, or the establishment's preferred candidate. Think about this if you ever decide to run for office. Politics is brutal.

3 - And speaking of brutal, has the threat, or reality, of impeachment become just another aspect of the political process? Republicans pushed for the impeachment of Clinton as soon as he was elected. It just took sometime for him to give them ammo. Fringe Democrats were anxious to impeach both Bush and Cheney for war crimes, among other things, while they were in office. The authors of the Constitution were troubled by the idea that impeachments would be used for political purposes, but perhaps it was inevitable that ambitious politicians would do so.

4 - While the conservative media is trumpeting this story, the rest have seemingly determined that this is a non-story and have pushed it behind others. We will see whether they're successful in making independents and others see their way on this issue. Since the press is closely tied into public opinion, we'll be able to track changes accordingly.

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Back From the Grave

The Line Item Veto.

The Center Wins

Here's empirical proof that moving to the right hurt Republican Senate candidates since 2000. Efforts by movement conservatives to force the party's candidates to the right may, if not hurt the party, lower the number of seats they could otherwise win in 2010.

The Median Voter Theorem argues that elections are won in the middle of the ideological spectrum.

The Sestak Job Offer

Chait thinks its not a real scandal and nothing illegal happened. It brewing though . . .

A Few More Digs on the Rasmussen Poll

- Nate Silver.
- The New Republic.

The Private and Public Sector

E.J. Dionne wrestles with the distinction and how the gulf oil spill muddies it.

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

The Messy Middle Between Hobbes and Locke

Here's a critical, but useful, appraisal of Rand Paul's philosophy from the New Republic. It'll touches on questions of the purpose of founding governments which we hit in the early days of 2301:

Speaking broadly, modern government moves between two poles, each of which has a seventeenth-century thinker as its champion, and each of which is focused on minimizing a particular form of injustice. On one side is Thomas Hobbes, who defended the creation of an authoritarian government as the only viable means of protecting certain individuals and groups from injustices perpetrated by other individuals and groups. On the other side is John Locke, who advocated a minimal state in order to protect individuals and groups against injustices perpetrated by governments themselves. Taken to an extreme, the Hobbesian pole leads to totalitarianism, while the Lockean pole terminates in the quasi-anarchism of the night watchman state.

Aside, perhaps, from the pretty thoroughly Hobbesian state of North Korea, every functional government in the world mixes elements of each of these pure forms—and partisan disputes within nations can often be reduced to conflicts over how Hobbesian or Lockean the state should be on a given issue. There are endless examples. Should health care be delivered by the state, by private entities, or by some mixture of the two? How much should the state regulate the market, and in what areas? And as Rand Paul has recently reminded us: Should racist business owners be free to treat black Americans as second-class citizens? Or should the federal government forbid such discrimination? In each case, to favor government action is to lean toward Hobbes; to oppose it is to favor Locke.

What makes Rand Paul’s position (as he originally expressed it on the Maddow show) noteworthy is that it’s a pure, unadulterated expression of Lockean anti-statism with little admixture of Hobbesian sentiments at all. Paul, like many libertarians and Tea Party activists, is so obsessed with the possibility that the state might commit an injustice that he’s indifferent to the reality of actually existing injustice at the hands of private citizens. As far as these radical Lockeans are concerned, the former is tyranny, pure and simple, while the latter is just life: yeah, it’s sometimes unfair, but freedom requires that we (or rather, in this case, blacks living under Jim Crow in the South) get over it.

But the reason why politics normally takes place in the messy middle between Hobbes and Locke—between the maximal and the minimal state—is that most of us don’t get over it. We recognize that both thinkers have a point. Decent politics—properly liberal politics—involves the attempt to combat both forms of injustice in full awareness that seeking to eradicate one form will often produce an increase in the other. The distinctive glory and pathos of liberal politics can be found in the endless effort to achieve and maintain precisely this precarious balance.

Those who give up on that effort and seek instead to realize one notion of justice to the exclusion of the other are history’s political mischief-makers.

On the Role and Capacity of Government: Is Stability a Realistic Goal?

With apologies to the National Journal, here's another highly relevant article. It gets to the core of the ideological disputes that we've noted are at the heart of questions about the role of government. The national government is expected to provide stability to the financial system, but given its complexity, is this a realistic goal? What, is anything, can the national government do to minimize the risks of the marketplace?

FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS

Is Stability A Realistic Goal?
Can the U.S. government really guarantee the nation's vast and complex financial system? There are few precedents.

Saturday, May 22, 2010by John Maggs

In many ways, the financial reform bill moving through Congress resembles other landmark pieces of legislation. Like health care reform, it tackles a pernicious side effect of America's free-market economy and treats it with a typically light touch by offering a package of incentives and disincentives for businesses and consumers. Instead of forcing banks to become smaller, the bill encourages them to do so. Instead of banning the kinds of home loans that contributed to the housing crisis, the legislation sets up a consumer protection agency that will rely mainly on disclosure to prompt Americans to make smarter financial decisions.

Like other regulatory reforms, the financial overhaul eschews a massive reorganization in favor of shifting oversight functions and responsibilities among several government agencies. The Federal Reserve System will continue to audit big national banks and some state-chartered banks; the two other bank regulators will split the rest, more or less as they do now.
Responsibility for one of the reform package's most far-reaching steps -- imposing the first rules for derivatives trading -- would mostly fall to private companies and big banks themselves, rather than to a government agency. The overhaul package leaves many details to regulators to work out. "It is really just a series of general guidelines," said Vincent Reinhart, a former top Fed official. He supports this conservative approach, saying that it will allow government officials to deliberately work through what rules to change and how to change them.

In at least one way, though, the financial reform plan represents a new approach. Grafted onto the largely familiar array of agencies that regulate banks is a council of top economic officials tasked with counteracting instability in the financial system before it becomes a critical threat. The council will look beyond individual institutions and practices to anticipate bubbles and spot potentially destabilizing financial innovations -- such as the bonanzas that subprime lending and collateralized debt obligations seemed to be a few years ago.

The proposed Financial Stability Oversight Council, as the Senate legislation calls it, is an interagency group of nine people chaired by the Treasury secretary; it would include the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, the heads of other financial agencies, and one or two other appointees (the House and Senate bills have slight differences). Some of its functions approximate the emergency powers that the Federal Reserve and Treasury have traditionally kept for themselves. But giving the council the job of foreseeing problems and acting to preserve stability in the nation's vast and complex financial system is an audacious undertaking, even for the U.S. government.

"It hasn't been tried before," said Morris Goldstein, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. "We don't really know what [the council] will do -- a lot, or perhaps not a lot."

If the council doesn't do a lot, then the separate bank regulators might decide to be much more active and attentive than before. Perhaps the Fed, chastened by the near-failure of the financial system, would take a more active approach to its informal role of overseeing Wall Street and the rest of the "shadow banking system." New disclosure rules, although limited, might discourage banks from using derivatives for highly lucrative speculation. Unlike the subprime-fueled housing crisis, the next financial bubble could be safely deflated by the various bank regulators, even if that intervention deprives the banks they oversee of huge profits. "The [bank oversight] system isn't changing that much," Doug Elliott, a former investment banker and a finance expert at the Brookings Institution, said. "There is a hope, I think, that everyone is going to do better."

But if fragmented oversight again yields regulatory failure and threatens another economic meltdown, the "systemic risk council" could play a significant coordinating role. How would the council define instability? Would it intervene only in a crisis that threatens the imminent collapse of the financial system, or would it move earlier to quell turmoil before it could lead to such a crisis? Would the council act to rein in excessive executive pay that could fuel risky behavior? Would it move to deflate a financial bubble, even if that bubble is making people richer? If consumers are borrowing too much, would the council curtail credit? Would it deal with the domestic effects of an international financial crisis? Most important, if the council took any of these aggressive steps, would it be effective?

"We don't know," Goldstein said. "It is an experiment. We'll have to see what it does and how that works."

Like Elliott, Norman Ornstein believes that the risk council won't do much more than sign off on the emergency actions that the government would take in any case to deal with a financial crisis. Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, doubts that the government is about to embark on an uncharted, proactive approach to financial oversight.

Goldstein disagrees. The legislation signals a substantially different and more hands-on regulatory regime, he argues. The repeated promises from President Obama and virtually every member of Congress that expensive bailouts won't be needed (or forthcoming) again have raised the bar, he says. "When lawmakers say 'Never again,' I think there is an expectation that things are going to be done differently, and [the council] is part of that," Goldstein said. "I expect it to try things that haven't been tried before."

We're Not Good At It

The government has long set rules for businesses operating in the market-based economy. Washington has little practice, however, in guaranteeing the outcomes of market activity. The 1,000-point drop in the Dow Jones industrial average on May 6 demonstrated that even in the highly regulated stock market, the government has few tools to prevent a degree of instability that many people would regard as disastrous. Under current rules, only a 30 percent plunge in the market can shut down trading for the day.

In times past, Americans would have blanched at the prospect of the government's guaranteeing the health of an entire industry, even one considered essential to the well-being of the overall economy. In 2009, the Treasury Department loaned more than $100 billion to rescue General Motors and Chrysler, but it put the automakers on a short leash, forcing them to promptly repay most of the money. If they were to falter again, Washington would likely allow them to fail.
The financial system that seized up in 2008 is exponentially larger and more complex than the stock market or the auto industry, and a government promise to maintain its stability is unprecedented.

"When lawmakers say 'Never again,' I think there is an expectation that things are going to be done differently, and [the council] is part of that." -- Morris Goldstein, Peterson Institute for International Economics

To put this commitment into perspective, consider the scope of the health care reform package enacted this year. Imagine for a moment that Washington had empowered a council to guarantee the stability of the U.S. health care system. If medical care, like credit, was scarce or too expensive, the council could intervene to make sure it was affordable and readily available, by acting wherever it chose to head off, say, shocking rate increases, or by guaranteeing medical care to everyone, with or without insurance. This sounds far-fetched because the epic health debate revealed that Americans are hardly eager to embrace government intervention to guarantee such ambitious outcomes.

Compared with many other countries, the U.S. government has tended to take a laissez-faire approach to regulating such essential services as transportation, electricity, and telecommunications. Washington does attempt to preserve the stability of agricultural supply and prices, with only mixed results. Most economists say that the current system of farm subsidies and price controls exists more to boost the farmers' income than to protect consumers.

But even these examples involve industries much smaller and simpler than the financial system, which extends beyond banks to include insurance, mortgage lending, and consumer credit -- sectors that will remain relatively free of federal regulation, even after the regulatory reform package becomes law. The most comparable example of the government ambitiously trying to maintain the stability of markets was World War II and the extensive system of rationing and price controls that the Roosevelt administration used to prevent inflation, hoarding, and profiteering. That intervention was arguably successful, but a more recent iteration wasn't.

President Nixon imposed wage and price controls from 1971 to 1973 to combat inflation and escalating wage demands by labor unions. The move triggered runaway inflation, slow growth, food and commodity shortages, and an era of declining living standards. Economists consider the controls one of the most disastrous economic policy decisions ever by a U.S. president.

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Before The Emergency

Oddly, the debate over financial reform hasn't focused much on the question of whether government can or should try to assume responsibility for stabilizing the financial system. Neither party in Congress has drawn attention to the goals of the systemic risk council or to the very notion that a government body would try to head off instability throughout the financial system before it causes a crisis.

Most of the discussion in Congress has centered on the council's role in managing the shutdown of giant financial companies that fail. The council is supposed to handle this emergency action in an orderly and predictable way, in contrast to the ad hoc, chaotic bailouts and shotgun mergers that took place in 2008 and 2009. This process has been the focus of ideological skirmishes in the Senate between Republicans, who charged that the bill that arrived on the floor would permit bailouts to save faltering banks, and Democrats, who insisted that the opposite was true.

To settle that argument, the first amendment, offered by Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., simply reiterated that the systemic risk council would have no choice but to break up faltering banks and financial companies rather than bail them out. The amendment passed by a wide, bipartisan margin.

In one form or another, the federal government has always taken emergency action to stem financial panics and other crises that threaten the economy, according to Liaquat Ahamed, author of The Lords of Finance: The Bankers Who Broke the World, a 2009 book on the early years of central banking. Congress established the Federal Reserve Board in 1913 to coordinate emergency action, using the power to make emergency loans to counter bank runs and otherwise manipulate interest-rate policy to maintain liquidity in the banking system. Although the Fed and Treasury took actions during the recent crisis that were messy and in some ways unprecedented in size and scope, the interventions essentially followed past patterns, Ahamed said in an interview.

In Ahamed's view, the earliest days of the crisis made it clear that the United States had to do three things to minimize the risk of a plunge that could wreck the financial system. First, the government needed to bolster the capital reserves of banks, which had used holes in the accounting rules to evade reserve requirements; second, Washington needed to take on increased oversight to prevent excessive risk-taking and leveraging; and third, if the first two requirements weren't met, government would need a more streamlined and effective process to handle emergencies.

Steps to meet the first requirement, he said, are well under way. The Fed and other bank regulators, in coordination with their counterparts in Europe, are expected to issue interim capital requirements in late 2010 or early 2011 and to finalize regulations over the next two years. In the past, banks traditionally had capital reserves of 8 to 10 percent of their total deposits, but through "off balance sheet" transactions and other creative accounting, some big banks had shrunk their reserves to perhaps half this level. "Recapitalization of the banks is happening," Ahamed said. "The banks have been preparing for it."

The emerging legislation intends to provide a smoother and swifter process for the government to seize insolvent banks and sell their assets. This process will also allow regulators to capture and execute nonbank financial companies, such as American International Group, that are large enough to threaten the financial system if they fail.

These two functions were already important government responsibilities, according to Ahamed, but the middle role -- seeking to guarantee the stability of the financial system -- is different. The Fed has been responsible for auditing many of the largest banks, and it has important duties to keep interests rates and inflation low and employment and the economy growing.

The Fed's responsibility for maintaining the overall stability of the financial system has been more ambiguous, especially in recent decades. Although regulators have stepped up its efforts to stabilize the financial system, "it is also true that the financial system is more complex" than a decade or two ago, Ahamed said.

The Federal Reserve has long had close relations with large bank holding companies such as Citigroup and Bank of America (where Fed examiners actually showed up for work every day at their headquarters). Until recently, though, Fed accountants were not as involved in the day-to-day operations of Wall Street banks -- such as Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, and Lehman Brothers -- that were some of the biggest customers for the Fed's Treasury bills. The chaos of the financial crisis revealed just how little attention the Fed paid to ensuring their stability and how limited were its powers to help them.

This Time Is Different

Ahamed and others contend that the Fed has traditionally served as a kind of systemic risk council for the financial system. They point to the 1998 rescue of the hedge fund Long Term Capital Management. Worth about $4.7 billion at the start of that year, the fund made a number of risky bets in derivatives that went bad, and it faced the prospect of failure as investors tried to withdraw their money.

Long Term Capital Management was involved with every big bank on Wall Street, and its failure arguably threatened similar runs at other institutions. Moreover, a separate and less quantifiable risk was a crash in the value of privately traded financial derivatives of the kind the fund held. The big banks' direct business with the hedge fund represented a few billion dollars in potential losses, but their exposure to the derivative market as a whole was much larger, and that was a major factor in motivating the Fed to act.

The rescue that Federal Reserve Board Chairman Alan Greenspan organized in September 1998 demonstrates how different the new risk council will be. The government used no taxpayer funds to bail out Long Term Capital Management, and the Fed did not even use its emergency lending powers, as it did during the recent financial crisis. Instead, Greenspan and officials at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York were able to cajole the fund's creditors to invest from $100 million to $300 million each, approximately what each stood to lose if it failed. Of course, in 1998, in the midst of the dot-com boom, the rest of Wall Street was otherwise flush with cash, in contrast to 2008.

A hallmark of the Greenspan era, from 1987 to 2006, was the Fed's unwillingness to serve as the kind of guarantor of financial stability envisioned in the plan for the Financial Stability Oversight Council. At the same moment that Long Term Capital Management's derivatives trades were souring, Greenspan was otherwise engaged in killing off an effort by Brooksley Born, then the chairwoman of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, to regulate derivatives. At multiple congressional hearings, Greenspan argued successfully that no oversight was needed -- because the self-interest of big banks and investors would be more effective than any government agency in controlling risk and maintaining stability.

Since then, Greenspan has expressed wonderment at the failures of such market discipline during the financial crisis, but he has not admitted that he might have been mistaken about unregulated trading in derivatives. Ten years after his tidy and privately financed rescue of Long Term Capital Management, one type of unregulated derivative was at the center of the subprime mortgage meltdown, and a related derivative underlay the $182 billion bailout of AIG, which at last count is expected to cost taxpayers $50 billion.

Reinhart has low expectations for the systemic risk council and the rest of the regulatory overhaul because he thinks that Congress is aiming at the wrong target -- preventing banks from becoming "too big to fail." Reinhart, a former director of the Fed's Division of Monetary Affairs, believes that in the 24 years since the government made major changes to the tax code, banks have exploited weaknesses in accounting rules. Banks' "splintering" of their balance sheets, he says, made it impossible for regulators to understand what was going on, for the market to exercise the discipline that Greenspan was depending on, and even for managers of the banks to understand the risks that had accumulated.

Washington's crucial decision to allow Lehman Brothers to fail in September 2008 came after the Treasury Department tried for a week to sell off pieces of the company. The stumbling block, Reinhart says, was that neither the prospective buyers nor Lehman's management really understood the company's liabilities, which at that point were buried in the more than 2,000 affiliates and "special-purpose vehicles" that Lehman had created to conceal its debts. At Citigroup and banks much larger than Lehman, the complications were even bigger, and they got government bailouts because no one wanted to find out what would happen to the counterparties to those trades if all of the banks' activities dissolved. "The problem wasn't that [the banks] were too big to fail -- they were too complicated to understand," Reinhart said.
"We are giving the [risk] council a nearly impossible job," he says, because the complications of stabilizing an entire financial system are almost unimaginable. Reinhart asks rhetorically whether regulatory reform will make the balance sheets of big banks any easier to understand. "If not, then I think the council has a mission it can't accomplish."

The Peterson Institute's Goldstein is more optimistic. He believes that the council will try to use "countercyclical" policy to respond to changes in banks' level of risk-taking, even in the absence of cash-flow problems. As a hypothetical, if banks invent a home mortgage or debt instrument that is producing big profits but arguably creating new risks for the financial system, the Financial Stability Oversight Council could pre-emptively raise capital reserve requirements based on the level of this newfangled lending, he argues. Another countercyclical option, anticipated in the Senate version of the legislation, is a requirement that banks issue a certain level of "contingent capital," bonds that automatically convert into equity if a bank falls into financial difficulty. This would spread the pain of the bank failure to debt holders as well as stockholders.

Would the risk council use such countercyclical means to try to head off the next financial bubble? Goldstein thinks it is possible, but Reinhart is doubtful. When Greenspan issued his famous warning in late 1996 about "irrational exuberance" in the stock market, Reinhart said, no one wanted to listen. The market doubled in the next four years, until the dot-com crash, and Greenspan, according to his memoirs, concluded that even Fed chairmen are powerless to puncture a financial bubble.

No elected or appointed official would risk the political fallout from taking action against a possible bubble, Reinhart argues. At best, a lot of people will be poorer. At worst, he said, government officials risk destabilizing rather than stabilizing the situation.

If we are lucky, former investment banker Elliot says, the risk council's existence will be enough to deter excessive risk-taking. Depending on whether the House or Senate version is enacted, either a two-thirds vote or a simple majority of the council could force a company to sell off some divisions, even if it wasn't yet in financial difficulty. More likely though, Reinhart warns, it will take another crisis to move government to directly address the complexity of large banks that is at the root of systemic risk. "I fully expect it," he said.

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Access to the Courts is Getting More Difficult

Analysis from Slate.

The Supreme Court Rules Against the NFL.

The National Football League, and other sports leagues, are not single entities immune from anti-trust laws. They are separate entities and must compete amongst themselves. They are subject to anti-trust laws spelled out in the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.
.
The case is American Needle Inc, v. NFL.
- Comments from ESPN.
- Washington Post.

Brooks Contasts the Relative Influence of the French and English Enlightenment on the Development of American Government

We went over this in class today and I might make this a required read.

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Finance Reform Bill: Fiduciary Responsibility

More detail on a provision of the finance bill: Financial advisers have to take their clients interests into consideration when doing deals for them.

The SBOE Revisions

Our esteemed State Board of Education has been newsworthy recently.

Here are the revisions to the social studies curriculum that have been raising such a fuss. This doesn't include the changes made last week. I'll post them when I find them.

Background and comments:

- Washington Post.
- Fox News.

Ex-Justice O'Connor Argues in Favor of Merit Selection of Judges

Story here. This is timely for my 3 week 2301 since we are about to read through Federalist #51.

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Help Stabilize the Debt

Make your own budget.

Questions for Libertarians

In light of Rand Paul's statements regarding the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Ezra Klein has additional questions for Paul. These are worth chewing on as we discuss the proper role of government.

Understanding the Senate's Finance Bill

We should discuss the major components of the finance bill passed in the Senate soon.

Here they are:

- It provides for the oversight of sale of derivatives
- It creates a Consumer Protection Agency
- It creates a council of regulators to look for systemic risk
- It applies restrictions on large failed banks
- It establishes that executive compensation be set by independent directors
- It prohibits banks from making investments that do not benefit clients
- It establishes that companies selling complex financial products must retain part of the risk of these products.

For amendments that failed, click here.
If you have time to kill, here's the bill itself.

The bill now goes to a conference committee where it will be reconciled with the House bill already passed. Nothing is set in stone, but typical lobbying rules do not seem to apply, almost certainly due to voter anger.

Special Prosecutor Requested to Investigate Job Offer

A California Representative -- Republican -- wants a special prosecutor assigned to investigate whether the Obama Administration broke the law by offering a member of Congress an administration job if he would not run against Arlen Specter.

Apparently these offers are not unusual, but its a good example of checks and balances.

The Director of National Intelligence Resigns

Story here.

Commentators argued that the position, designed after 9-11 to coordinate the 16 agencies which gather intelligence, has no real power and needs to be redesigned. Some argue that the position should be eliminated and the CIA Director should serve as coordinator of the U.S. Intelligence Community.

- Wikipedia.
- Times Topics: U.S. Intelligence Community.
- Times Topics: Dennis C. Blair.

Do Cameras Affect Police Behavior?

Speaking of the media . . . though this story is about reality shows, not newspaper journalism. Do we act differently when the camera is on us? Do police? Considering that some want the Supreme Court to be televised, does this story suggest this would be a bad idea?

Rand Paul and the Demise of the Local Press

Josh Green has an interesting theory why Rand Paul, who did not talk about the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on the campaign trail at all, was suddenly tripped up by questions about it on the Rachel Maddow show.

Due to the recent demise of newspapers, especially on the local level, Senate candidates are no longer forced to face tough questioning on the local or state level. Paul was able to sail through by only offering stump speeches and never had an aggressive reporter pestering him about positions on issues he does not wish to talk about. He was therefore unprepared for Maddow.

Considering that part of the job of the press is to give us information about political candidates, its worth speculating about what this means for the amount of information we get about lower level candidates in general. This episode will probably also encourage political candidates to simply not talk to reporters. This is a lesson many politicians learn. Sarah Palin certainly did.

Friday, May 21, 2010

Arizona Immigration Law Divides Republicans

Democrats too, but not as badly.

Finance Reform

Financial regulatory reform passes the Senate.

Andrew Sullivan has links that break the bill down.

Graphics from the NYT.

Defining the Tea Party as Extreme

The Rand Paul civil rights comment may allow Democrats an opportunity to paint the Tea Party as too extreme for the voting public. And apparently they have been banking on something like this happening. The public will not automatically see Paul as extreme unless Dems can successfully portray him as such.

Paul is apparently continuing to stir the pot, seemingly suggesting that the feds shouldn't dig into the BP and Masset Coal disasters. Accidents happen.

While this is going on, moderate Republicans may be making a comeback in New England.

Presidents, Rich and Poor

Here's background on the relative net worth of presidents.

Thursday, May 20, 2010

Can a Poll be Biased?

Daily Kos slams the Rasmussen Poll.

And Pollster.Com slams Research 2000.

Ugly, Therefore Guilty

Speaking of civil rights and equal protection under the law.

The Consequences of Rand Paul's Win in Kentucky

A couple of thoughts some pundits are offering after (the other) Dr. Paul's victory over the Republican establishment's candidate in the Kentucky Primary:

1 - The establishment is in trouble and the activists are moving the party further to the right and forcing out the heretics. Paul may be too conservative for Dick Cheney.

2 - Paul's objections to civil rights, including questions about the wisdom of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, have introduced new questions into the upcoming elections. Do private businesses have a right to discriminate?

Election 2010: Democrat wins Special Election in PA - 12 to fill John Murtha's Seat

Republicans had hoped to pick this one up. The early take is that a conservative Democrat (pro-gun, pro-life, said he would have voted against health care bill - but will not vote to repeal it) can still win elections. House elections are not national, they are district by district.

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

The Right to Competent Counsel -- Part 2

From the New York Times comes a story about who you do not want to represent you if you are accused of a capital crime:

A good way to end up on death row in Texas is to be accused of a capital crime and have Jerry Guerinot represent you.

Twenty of Mr. Guerinot’s clients have been sentenced to death. That is more people than are awaiting execution in about half of the 35 states that have the death penalty.

And next comes a chilling kicker:

“People who are well represented at trial do not get the death penalty,” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has said.

So what does this say about our justice system? Equal justice for all or are those who can afford it effectively allowed to be treated according to different rules? Is this a constitutional violation? If so how?

- Heres a previous post on the same subject.

Tuesday, May 18, 2010

A Test Case?

So in class today we had some fun tossing around a kooky little idea. Let's say you consider environmentalism to be akin to religious belief -- the whole "mother earth" Wicca type thing. If that's true (if) then isn't the Environmental Protection Agency, an executive agency designed to promote environmentalism (a religious belief) a form of state religion? If so (again, if) than doesn't the EPA violate the establishment clause?

I'll offer extra credit points to whoever want to put a brief together making that argument. We could have a press conference and announce a lawsuit. I bet Glenn Beck will take us seriously even if we dont.

Debating the Revolving Door

Some discussion of the phenomenon at the National Journal.

Texas Doctors are Dropping out of Medicare

At an alarming rate says the Chron. This is an unintended consequence of a 1997 effort to reduce spending on medial care.

A related story:
- Medicare Pay Cuts Averted, Cobra Extended — Why All the Sad Faces ...

Monday, May 17, 2010

Stanley Fish Comments on the Arizona Law Banning Ethnic Studies in K-12

Enjoy.

Do We Have Too Many Elections?

Some suggest that one of the reasons voter turnout is lower in the United States than in other countries is that we have more elections, and therefore place a huge burden on voters. Should more positions be appointed? Do terms need to be so short?

Here are two takes on this question

- Matt Yglesias.
- Jonathan Bernstein.

Two Supreme Court Decisions Regarding Sentencing

In one, Graham v. Florida, the court decided 6-3 that life sentences without the possibility of parole for juveniles convicted of crimes less than murder was cruel and unusual punishment which violated the eighth amendment.

In the other, United States v. Comstock, a 7-2 court stated the Congress had the authority to allow continued confinement of some sex offenders who had completed their sentences, even though this power is not an enumerated (or delegated) power granted to Congress in Article One. It was argued on the basis of the necessary and proper clause, though the dissent wondered necessary and proper to do what?

Sunday, May 16, 2010

The Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs

Meet Cass Sunstein.

Texting and Open Meetings

The legislatures of local and other small governments are subject to the Open Meetings Act which is meant to ensure that all meetings, and potential meetings -- such as cases when a quorum is likely to occur by happenstance -- are open to the public. Backroom deals, say made when a majority of a seven member city council somehow finds themselves alone on an elevator, are banned. But might enhanced communications, social networking and texting, also provide opportunities for these secret meetings and subsequent deal making? The Texas Legislature is set to consider this question in its next session.

Abortion Foes Take Advantage of Language in the Health Care Bill

From the Houston Chronicle.

Jaworski Learned From Obama Campaign

The Galveston County Daily News details Joe Jaworski's convincing victory in the Galveston Mayors race and notes that the campaign was run by a woman who learned campaigning from Obama's 2008 race. Heavy emphasis was placed on block walking and communication.

The Future of Miranda Warnings

The recent arrest of the Times Square bomber has led some, and possibly even the Obama Administration, to call for limits to Miranda Warnings. Constitutional tests to the warnings are nothing new, and given the conservative slant of the court it is worth wondering how secure the warnings are. History tells us that in times of threat, civil liberties take a hit.

For my 2301s, this fits into our discussion of the constitution, as a document that defines and limits governmental power, the Bill of Rights, civil liberties, and how the Supreme Court defines constitutional language.

Links:
- Miranda Warnings.
- Miranda v. Arizona.
- Right Against Self Incrimination.
- Fifth Amendment.
- Due Process.
- Warren Court.
- Dickerson v. U.S.
- The Origins of the Public Safety Exception to Miranda Warnings.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

More on the MMS

They apparently allowed drilling in the gulf before required permits were obtained.

Obama calls the relationship between MMS and the Oil Industry "cozy."

Most of the oil spill seems to be hugging the gulf floor.

Are Tea Party Activists Pushing the Republican Party too Far to the Right?

We will only find out in upcoming general elections, but Dana Milbank thinks recent primary votes in Utah and Maine, along with the changes the activists are making to the party platform will pose problems for the party, if not in 2010, in the near future.

Friday, May 14, 2010

What Incumbency Advantage?

Not this year apparently.

Health Care Reform's Costs Adjusted

upward.

MMS to be Split in Two

The much maligned Minerals Management Service is about to be split in two. The part that collects royalties is to be split from the part that actually regulates wells for safety violations. The solution to many bureaucratic problems seems to be a redesign of the institutions at issue. Here's an example.

Oversight Hearings Held on Gulf Oil Spill

The House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held hearings on the Gulf Oil spill.

Direct Democracy in the House

The House Republican leadership is allowing activists to vote on what spending items to cut. What would Madison say about this?

The American Power Act

That's the name given to the climate change bill introduced into the Senate by Liberman and Kerry. Ezra Klein argues that recent events give it less chance of passing this Congress.

- Info on the bill from Open Congress.
- and from Thomas.

Republican Election Strategy in the House

Target committee chairs.

White House Video Blog

Each new leap in technology allows the White House new ways to frame how it presents itself to the public. This doesn't meant the efforts are necessarily successful. Here's a link to the White House's video blog.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Consequences of the Debt Crisis

A few points of view on what the debt crisis means for the services provided for the elderly.

Monday, May 10, 2010

Gates Takes on the Military Industrial Complex

From The Atlantic.

Are We Naturally Good or Naturally Bad?

From a recent study.

Political Knowledge and Political Ideology

A worthy read:

...If we want to know the true impact of political knowledge on political opinions, it's necessary to test that impact while controlling for other variables in a randomly selected sample of adults. Political scientist Scott Althaus has actually done this in his book Collective Preferences and Democratic Politics. He shows that, controlling for a variety of demographic and other variables, increased knowledge makes people more socially liberal and economically conservative (i.e. - more libertarian). That does not mean that high political knowledge necessarily turns you into a libertarian. Far from it. It does mean that it is likely to make you more libertarian than you would be otherwise. The pattern is not completely consistent across all public policy questions. For example, greater knowledge reduces opposition to taxation (I suspect because antitax arguments are less counterintuitive than the protax ones). But it does hold true across most issues.

Finally, low knowledge levels are just one of two major negative effects of rational political ignorance. The second is poor evaluation of the information that we do possess, what economist Bryan Caplan has called "rational irrationality." As I discuss in this article, the fact that there is little incentive to acquire political information for the purposes of becoming a "better" voter implies that most of the information people do learn is acquired for other purposes. Many of these purposes - such as entertainment value and confirmation of preexisting prejudices - are antithetical to rational, unbiased evaluation of evidence. In my article, I explain how rational irrationality may account for the fact that most citizens tend to discount information that goes against their preexisting views and only read and watch those political media that reinforce those views, while ignoring opposing positions. Such behavior is inexplicable if the goal is to get at the truth in order to be a better voter; it is perfectly rational, however, if truth-seeking is not the primary objective.

Executive and Legislative Attention to Auto Safety

In response to Toyota's troubles, the executive and legislative branches have placed automobile safety on their relative agendas.

In the executive, the Secretary of Transportation said that Toyota's response to the crisis would be monitored more carefully, the effective agency is the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

In the legislature, bills are being crafted in the House Energy and Commerce and Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committees. The bill is called the The Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 2010. The car lobby has come out against the bill: "seizing on a provision that would empower the top U.S. car regulator to order a recall when an "imminent hazard" is present."

Their efforts is being spearheaded by "top car-industry lobbyist (and former member of Congress - think "revolving door") Dave McCurdy, president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers."

For more information on the legislation:
- S.3302: Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 2010 - U.S. Congress ...
- WashingtonWatch.com - S. 3302, The Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 2010
- Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 2010, Section by Section
- Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 2010 Unveiled The Truth About Cars