Politics, Government & Public Policy: August 2003 Archives

Cruz Bustamante is running for governor of Aztlan, in California. I really hope this story hits the mainstream news, because it looks pretty devestating to me.

LOS ANGELES — California Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante (search), the grandson of Mexican immigrants who counts improving race relations among his biggest pursuits, refused Thursday to renounce his past ties to a little-known Hispanic organization considered by critics to be as racist as the Ku Klux Klan.

Instead, Bustamante, who is running to be governor of California, praised the Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan, or MEChA (search), and said he still supports it. ...

MEChA's motto is "for the race, everything. For those outside the race, nothing." Critics say affiliation with that kind of group could spell political ruin for a white candidate and are upset that little attention has been paid to Bustamante's relationship with the group. He belonged to MEChA while attending Fresno State University in the 1970s. ...

According to the organization's constitution, "Chicanas and Chicanos must ... politicize our Raza [race] ... and struggle for the self-determination of the Chicano people for the purpose of liberating Aztlan."

Aztlan (search) is the area that is currently the southwest United States, but Mechistas claim Aztlan is their homeland to be returned to Mexico and the group says white Americans who currently govern these areas must be removed from power.

Uh, yeah. He only moderately supports turning California over to Mexico. That's like "moderate" Nazis, "moderate" Klansmen, and "moderate" communists.

The problem isn't solely that he was a member of the organization in his youth, 30 years ago, but that he still refuses to renounce its racist, treasonous agenda even now. "Liberating Aztlan" from America is just as treasonous a goal as was held by the South before the Civil War. Is it possible that California could elect a governor who wants to secede from the Union?

I've seen Fox run some articles on the issue, but nothing on Drudge, the LA Times (big surprise), the WaPo, the NY Times... or really anywhere else. Oh right, except my beloved blogosphere! Instapundit has a couple of posts about it, and so does Clayton Cramer.

If Arnold was really slick, he would turn down campaign contributions entirely. It's not like he needs a few more million dollars, and it would generate great publicity. He has said several times that he won't be beholden to special interests and that he's rich enough that he doesn't need anyone [else] to buy the election for him, so why doesn't he stand on that and make a huge issue out of it?

This SFGate article (via Rough & Tumble, and awesome source for California political news) gives us some insight into the various campaigns.

Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger is getting the financial help he promised he would never need in his race for governor as California business interests poured $788,000 into his campaign committees over the weekend.

Again, why bother? That's spare change to him, and the publicity that turning away all money would generate would be incredible. Typically, rich candidates don't want to look like they're buying office by spending all their own money, but in this particular case it wouldn't be a bad thing.

Democratic Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante received a $321,000 contribution from one of the state's leading Indian gambling tribes and Peter Ueberroth, a Republican businessman running as an independent, raised $368,600 in the past few days.

Bustamante is owned by the gambling industry and Mexico, everyone already knows that. It's interesting that Ueberroth raised more money than the Lt. Gov., considering that he's not generally considered a major candidate.

Gov. Gray Davis, fighting to fend off the Oct. 7 recall, raised $353,000 over the weekend, including contributions from two longtime Democratic donors who had been appointed by the governor to state positions.

And then there's Davis, who gives people jobs and then takes kick-backs to fund his political career; a crooked form of re-investment, I suppose.

Unfortunately, the article barely mentions Tom McClintock. Bill Simon has already pulled out of the race, and McClintock will probably give up soon as well. Without Simon running it's conceivable that McClintock could get the plurality he needs to win, but it would still be a long-shot and staying in will increase the odds of Bustamante ceding the state to Mexico.

On the other hand, maybe it would be in the Republicans' best interests to leave the state with a Democratic governor if the alternative is a liberal Republican. If Arnold doesn't end up taking the conservative fiscal positions that are necessary to turn the state around, then the "R" next to his name will only serve to allow the Democrats to evade the blame for our dismal situation.

According to the Mississippi Supreme Court, only the mother of an unborn child has the right to kill that child.

JACKSON, Miss. — The Mississippi Supreme Court, in a decision criticized by one of its members as an assault on Roe v. Wade (search), held Thursday that a fetus is a "person" under state law and wrongful death claims can be filed on its behalf. ...

Presiding Justice Jim Smith, writing for the court, said Thursday's ruling in the lawsuit brought by Tucker had nothing to do with abortion. He said doctors performing abortions are still protected by Mississippi law.

"Tucker's interest is to protect and preserve the life of her unborn child, not in the exercise of her right to terminate that life which has been declared constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court," Smith wrote.

That strikes me as a little odd. Even the pro-choicers seem to recognize the incongruity of the decision.

Sondra Goldschein, state strategies attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union said she was troubled by the court's definition of a fetus as a "person."

"Anytime the fetus is recognizable as a person it chips away at the foundation of Roe," she said.

She's certainly correct, and I suspect that was exactly the purpose intended by some of the people behind the lawsuit. It's the same type of end-run that gun-control advocates try to pull by passing registration laws and limits on magazine capacities. I don't disagree with the decision, but I would vastly prefer it if our legal system weren't so convoluted.

Light Rail in Los Angeles is a joke. I took a whole Saturday a few months ago to ride the length and breadth of our rail system, so I can speak from experience.

First, the train doesn't go where anyone wants to go. I can take it to Downtown LA, but if you're familiar with LA you'll know that there's no reason to go there. Where people want to go is West LA, the Valley, the South Bay, and to the various hellish (but affordable!) eastern suburbs.

Somehow, I live within four block of a train station. I thought it would be fun to ride around and see the city, so I bought a ticket, waited 30 minutes for a train to arrive, and was on my way. Oh, what fun.

If you're not familiar with Los Angeles traffic patterns, let me tell you that Saturday is not a light traffic day; there are no such things. Saturday merely redistributes the traffic to different hours. Late morning and early afternoon on Saturday are the pits, so I was hopeful that by riding the train I could get around more quickly than I could in my car. Not so. Even if you discount the 20 minute walk to the station and the 30 minute wait for the train, it took me more time to get to the Valley (via downtown) than it would have taken to drive. The trains are slow, and infrequent.

So did I save money? Not likely. Even discounting the fact that my taxes subsidize the ticket prices, it would have been cheaper to drive. Plus, the system works on an "honor policy"; there are ticket machines that spit out tickets in exchange for money, but there aren't any gates or guards that actually check tickets. I rode the train for some five hours without seeing anyone other than myself actually purchase a ticket. I think it's strange that many riders could apparently afford gold chains and expensive electronics, but not a few bucks for a train ticket.

Not only does the train go nowhere useful -- slowly and expensively -- but the ride was thoroughly unpleasant. My fellow travelers were loud and obnoxious; the train was loud and vibrated a lot; the windows didn't open and there was no air-conditioning; &c.

Altogether, our light rail system is a horrendous waste of money. Here's an article from 1996 that briefly discusses the corruption and ineptitude involved in its construction.

Even better, here's an op-ed by Wendell Cox, who was a member of the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission in 1980 and who authored Proposition A, which funded LA's light rail projects.

My belief in the value of rail was strengthened by Commission staff and consultants who generally suggested that a rail system was the antidote to traffic congestion and air pollution in the Los Angeles area. Since that time I have migrated to the opposite view, based upon the now considerable experience with new urban rail systems in the United States.

Don Pickrell's seminal US Department of Transportation study in 1989 was the first to systematically evaluate urban rail relative to its objectives and showed generally that ridership fell far short of expectations and that costs were routinely much higher than planned. Since that time, transit agencies have become much better at projecting ridership, largely by producing much more modest predictions --- evidence that expectations can be achieved if only you aim low enough.

The problem of cost escalation, however, remains as intractable. Rising costs made it impossible to deliver the rail routes promised by Proposition A, so in 1990 the voters approved Proposition C to finish the job. During the period, the cost of the Los Angeles to Long Beach light rail line ("Blue Line") escalated from $140 million to nearly $900 --- admittedly part of the increased costs were attributable to system enhancements. But it is unlikely that the Commission would have approved building the Blue Line if it had known the eventual cost. Now, with rail system costs far higher than expected, there is simply no money left to complete most of the promised system, as the Commission's successor, the MTA, has placed a moratorium on further rail construction. The bottom line is that after spending more than $5 billion building rail in Los Angeles, things are worse than before construction started --- MTA bus and rail ridership is 25 percent below the patronage recorded on the bus only system in 1985. The rail system, which carries barely 15 percent of MTA riders is rising toward $400 million annually and will be equal to one-half the annual operating cost of the entire bus system. It is no wonder that the Bus Riders Union has sought legal recourse to limit this distortion.

But the failure of new urban rail in the United States has far more fundamental roots. Despite tax referendum claims that rail can carry the same number of people as up to 12 freeway lanes, no new urban rail system in the US has materially impacted traffic congestion. Indeed, traffic congestion is increasing faster in the rail cities than in the non-rail cities. New light rail lines carry, on average, only 20 percent the passenger volume of a single freeway lane, and subway systems (like the Red Line) average only 40 percent. Even so, less than one-half of rail riders are attracted from cars, with most riders having been forced to transfer from bus routes that previously provided more direct trips.

Just go read the whole thing, before I quote it all.

The Los Angeles light rail system is costing taxpayers around $500 million annually by now (that was written in 1999); for the price of light rail for one year we could add new lanes to freeways that people actually use. I know, it's a revolutionary thought.

In a speech given to supporters at UCLA's Ackerman Hall, California Governor Gray Davis unveiled his new, streamlined, coordinated strategy for beating the recall. It looks like there are three main components.

1. He "accepts" criticism for past "mistakes", without making any apologies. I use quotes because I'm not sure what it means to "accept" criticism -- does that mean he has merely heard it, or that he has considered it valuable, or what? And "mistake" isn't the word I would use for his deliberate abuse of government authority to further his own power. He specifically says that he doesn't apologize, and only to a politician does that somehow equal "accepting" criticism for "mistakes".

"I know that many of you feel that I was too slow to act on the energy crisis," the Democratic governor said. "I got your message, and I accept that criticism."

Davis also acknowledged that he "could have been tougher in holding the line on spending" during state budget surpluses. But he said most of the increases went to education and health. "I make no apologies for that," he said.

Oh yes, maybe I shouldn't have spent vastly more money than we had, but it went towards a good cause! This is the cry of Democrats everywhere, as if simply because a cause it "good" it should be funded by government, with money that doesn't exist.

2. He takes credit for non-accomplishments.

"The Republicans say this recall is about ousting me for past problems," he said in a 19-minute speech televised live around the state. "But my friends, we are getting over our past problems. California did not go dark. I signed a budget. The schools are getting better, and our economy will turn around."

Well gosh, considering that we live in the richest nation on earth I'm sure glad you managed to keep the freaking electricity on! Woohoo! And wait, what's that? You signed a budget? Amazing! And only two months after the constitutionally mandated date! Schools are getting better? Why are they so horrible in the first place? Certainly not because of corrupt bureaucracy and your pandering to the teachers' unions!

This angle is particularly weak for Davis. Sure, the whole country was in a rough period, but no other state is as deeply in the hole as California, and Democrats bear the whole responsibility for that. Ridiculous reliance on taxing the rich led to a budget surplus in the good years, and a huge deficit in the bad years. However, states like Tennessee that rely on a sales tax that spreads the tax burden evenly, are still running a surplus. Go figure.

I've read that one-third of lottery winners declare bankruptcy, but I would hope that a state government that finds itself in a similar situation would have more sense than your typical lottery winner.

3. He shovels the blame onto other people. Such as:

Davis reiterated his criticism of the energy companies, saying federal investigations proved his claim that California was "victimized by a massive fraud." But he said he had "refused to give in to the pressure to raise rates" and pointed out that the lights have stayed on in California for 2 1/2 years -- while power failed throughout the northeastern United States, the Midwest and parts of Canada last week.

Unbelievable. The whole reason there was an electricity problem in the first place is because of regulated rates. We "deregulated" some aspects of production (and, incidently, demand infrastructure investments by electricity companies) but then we refuse to allow them to even break even on their investment. So yes, energy companies did screw us two years ago, but: a) Gray Davis let them, and signed absurd long-term contracts, and b) the source of the problem can be traced directly back to the Democrats in charge of California for their half-hearted "deregulation".

Who else is to blame? Oh come on, that's an easy one.

Davis repeatedly attacked Republicans, saying the recall campaign is part of an "ongoing national effort to steal elections" that the GOP can't win. The governor said it started with the House of Representatives' impeachment of President Clinton and continued into the 2000 dispute over the Florida election results in the presidential contest.

Davis included recent fights in Colorado and Texas over congressional districts as evidence of the GOP "trying to steal" additional House seats. He said Republicans who want to oust him "don't give a rip about past mistakes" and want power.

Clinton: impeached for lying under oath. If you or I had done it, we'd still be in jail.

Florida election results: Bush would have won without Supreme Court intervention under every reasonable scenario.

Congressional districts: Gerrymandering is a strange practice, but hey kids, everybody's doing it! The Democrats are just complaining because they don't have the majority in those state legislatures anymore, and that means they can't gerrymander the districts the way they want. Oh, and who's anti-democratic? Certainly not the state legislators who fled the state so that the duly elected government ground to a halt.

So then, do Republicans want power? Of course! Because they think they can do a better job of running California than Gray Davis has. Is the recall election a "power grab"? Sure, you can call it that. It's an opportunity to put a stop to the disasterous mismanagement of 13% of America's economy. A weak California drags down the whole country, but a strong California will help improve everyone's fortunes. That's a good reason to want power.

FoxNews reports that the Justice Department has approved the procedural changes necessary for the special election, after a federal judge threatened to postpone the recall over concerns that the voting rights of minorities might be violated. Yet another federal judge said he would rule by midweek on whether to postpone the election due to the use of old punch-card voting machines. Uh, if punch-card machines aren't legal, then should we invalidate every election for the past 200 years?

Last week, a third federal judge ordered Monterey County not to send absentee ballots overseas because he's considering postponing the election.

Here's a clue for these federal judges: take a clue from the Bush Administration and butt out.

One interesting note is that a spokesman for the California attorney general seems to indicate (correctly) that it's in the best interests of the public for the election to go forward as planned.

Doug Woods of the state attorney general's office, representing the secretary of state, argued that the ACLU was merely speculating about what might happen Oct. 7 in terms of error rates or other problems with the punch-card machines.

Woods said the speculation does not outweigh the public interest in having the election go forward.

The state AG, Bill Lockyer, is a Democrat (as are all of California's constitutional officers), and he has vociferously opposed the recall from the beginning. I guess I'm overly cynical, but it's unusual to see a public official in California separate their official role from their private agenda.

This is the third in a series on rights, power, voting, and utility.
Part 1: The 19th Amendment -- Good Idea?
Part 2: The "Right" to Vote, and Utility

With all the discussion of the costs and benefits of allowing women to vote, it's natural to ask the next question: why do we need democracy at all? If society could be more prosperous had women not been allowed to vote, then perhaps they shouldn't have been allowed to do so. The problem then, however, becomes a question of who gets to set the goals, and who gets to define "prosperous" (since we're not merely talking about monetary prosperity, but utility, and utility is different for everyone).

Historically, the people who have gotten to define "prosperous" have been people with hard power. Hard power represents the ability to use physical force to compel others to conform to your desires, and is often manifested in the form of armies and weapons, real estate and capital, and the knowledge and desire required to apply these tools to disagreeable circumstances. America wasn't able to break free from England purely by the virtue of our natural rights to freedom and liberty; rather, these rights and our desire to possess them motivated our forefathers to use their hard power to overthrow English rule. It's often said that we "have" a right to this or that, but unless we have the hard power available to seize and defend that right, it's little more than a rhetorical construct.

God may grant us the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but unless we have the hardware to back it up we're likely to have those rights taken away in fact. Our natural rights are not rights that are enforced by God, but they define the extent to which it is permissible to use force against each other, and they define who is right and who is wrong in such conflicts. If you attack me without provocation, God is not likely to intervene to stop you -- but he will sanction my use of hard power in self-defense. (SDB writes a little about hard power as it applies to relations between countries.)

The power to vote is not hard power, but soft power; votes only have meaning as long as those with the hard power respect them. If you look around the world, internationalists want to replace the hard power of armies with the soft power of UN negotiations, international courts (ICC), environmental treaties (Kyoto); however, dictators and strongmen continue to subjugate their people through the use of hard power, and generally show no respect for soft power unless it happens to coincide with their wishes -- take Saddam's treatment of the myriad UN resolutions, for example. Soft power can only be used successfully when those who possess hard power restrain themselves.

As I wrote in part 2, above, voting is not a right; as such, if you are forbidden the power to vote you are not being inherently wronged, as long as your true rights are not being violated. Using force merely to gain the power to vote is not morally acceptable. However, it's uncommon for societies with a single voter (a king), or a small, select group of voters (feudalism, or an oligarchy) to respect the rights of those without hard power of their own.

This situation sets up a rather interesting conflict, assuming those with hard power want to respect the natural rights of those without. Those with hard power can set up social institutions (democracy, courts, &c.) to ensure that everyone's natural rights are protected, but if those soft power structures overstep their bounds they will become burdensome, and they may eventually be overthrown. This perspective views democracy and other forms of soft power as grants from those with hard power who have an interest in respecting the rights of the powerless.

Soft power structures show their true strength over time, as they manipulate the foundations of hard power. For example, the 2nd and 3rd Amendments attempt to permanently diffuse the concentration of hard power, on the basis of the natural rights to private property and self-defense. These words don't factually eliminate the hard power that could oppress you, but over time they work in the minds of men to change their thoughts, and to further ingrain the respect for you rights that led those with power to restrain themselves in the first place. Soft power must entice and coerce hard power, subtly influencing over time.

Democracy has proven to be quite adept at manipulating and controlling those with hard power. America's military is the most powerful force that has ever existed on the planet, and if its generals were able to wield that power at their own discretion they would rule the world. But America's military is under civilian control, and that control is passed on every few years without involving the use of hard power. This principle is not merely written in our Constitution, but is ingrained in the hearts and minds of every man and woman who carries a rifle or drives a tank. They possess hard power, but they restrain its use because of their committment to the powerless.

Was our initial government in 1788, after the ratification of the Constitution, democratic? Yes, although only a limited group of people was allowed to vote. Under our modern system, many more people are allowed to vote, but still not everyone: children, convicts, non-citizens, the insane, the unborn(?). Are we democratic? Certainly. There is clearly a range of suffrage that is allowable under democratic rule, and over time we have moved along that spectrum -- but I don't expect that we will ever move to total suffrage, because those with power (hard and soft) don't think that granting the power to vote to those without it would lead to a better government.

Do children, convicts, non-citizens, the insane, and the unborn have the rights to life, libery, and the pursuit of happiness? Each of those groups of people has their power limited for different reasons, and many would argue that some have rights and others do not, for whatever reason. At the root level, however, the question of granting soft power to these groups comes down to that of the interests of those who currently wield power. And we say no. We may or may not recognize and respect their rights (if they exist, which is a separate issue), but we don't grant them power because we don't think it would be in our best interests They do not possess hard power of their own to use in seizing soft power.

Our nation is free and prosperous as a direct result of our respect for each other's natural rights. Economic liberty and social freedom have given us a tremendous amount of hard and soft power, and we use that power to create wealth and raise our standard of living, as well as to (hopefully) spread the values that have led to our success. Our experience has shown that rights are more likely to be respected when power is diffused as widely as possible. In response to part 1, a commenter wrote that by recognizing the rights of women (and by granting them soft power?) we have attracted the best and brightest women from around the world, and that they add immeasurably to our prosperity. Our foundational ideas hold that when rights are respected, economic and cultural success follow behind.

Making fine cultural adjustments is difficult and error-prone, as in general we decide against it. It may be the case that granting women suffrage has been a net loss, but it's so difficult to calculate -- and the gross benefits are so obvious -- that the nation (and those with power at the time) decided to err on the side of further diffusion. We do restict the power of some groups based on what most believe are rather clear criteria, but those circumstances are limited and (except for the unborn) mostly non-controversial.

So why democracy? Because democracy tends to diffuse power more successfully than any other form of government, and diffuse soft power limits the interference of those with hard power by subtly manipulating their goals and desires, thereby increasing their respect for the rights of the powerless.

Accoding to WaPo, Arnold is trailing Bustamante in the recent California Field Poll. Donald Sensing thinks that Arnold is facing an uphill battle. However, there are still two conservative republicans in the running that are polling in the single digits.

If Simon and McClintock pull out and add their 17% to Arnold's, the race will look much different. I suspect that McClintock at least will withdraw in a few weeks; Simon doesn't strike me as realistic or humble enough to resign that easily.

It's important to note that people may say they prefer these conservatives over Arnold in a poll, but most of them know that their preferred candidates can't actually win the election. They might vote differently once the ballot is actually sitting in front of them.

Don't buy the spin!

Everyone has probably seen the results of the recent California Field Poll released today, and reported by fair and balanced FoxNews.

LOS ANGELES — A new statewide Field Poll released Friday shows that 58 percent of Californian voters now favor recalling Democratic Gov. Gray Davis (search), a seven point increase over the last Field Poll in July.

Everyone with any sense has known that Davis' recall has been inevitable from the moment it was certified, and this significant 7 point increase just cements the issue.

"It's really, really bad for him," a top statewide Democratic strategist told Fox News. "Because he's been leaning on people all week saying polls showing him in trouble are wrong. Well, what's he going to say now when almost every newspaper in the state on Friday will carry this poll?"

What's Davis going to do?

Top party strategists said Davis urged Democrats not to endorse Bustamante so early because he and his top aides feared it would send a signal that the party had abandoned the governor.

The governor has worked aggressively behind the scenes, Democratic strategists said, to raise money to defeat the Oct. 7 recall. Those fund-raising efforts would have suffered dramatically, Davis argued, by a strong show of support for Bustamante.

He doesn't lay out a comprehensive plan for California's future. He doesn't try to inspire us. He doesn't call on the legislature to scrap the old budget and start over with greater fiscal responsibility and less spending. He doesn't admit any wrong-doing with respect to the energy contracts he signed two years ago. He doesn't take any blame for the horrendous debacle he's made of California's economy. He doesn't recognize his mistakes and show us he's learned anything from them. No.

After all, the problem has nothing to do with him; the problem is simply that he hasn't raised enough money yet! Raising money to further his political ambitions is pretty much all Davis is good at, and now that he's faced with a monumental problem it's what he falls back on. But he's got another strategy as well:

Democrats say Davis has been betting that the media will pound actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who is running for the governor's seat as a Republican, and that his image will suffer as the campaign drags on. Strategists also say Davis will appear in public as often as possible to remind Democrats that he's their leader in Sacramento and that the recall is an assault on the entire Democratic Party.

Since he has no vision or leadership ability to display, maybe he'll get lucky and his chief competition will get buried by a hostile press.

I hope that all the elected officials in Sacramento recognize this recall as an assault on the Democratic way of doing government. As Ann Coulter discovered reading old issues of American Prospect and pointed out in this excellent piece,

In June 2002, the liberal American Prospect magazine was hailing California as a "laboratory" for Democratic policies. With "its Democratic governor, U.S. senators, state legislature and congressional delegation," author Harold Meyerson gushed, "California is the only one of the nation's 10 largest states that is uniformly under Democratic control." In the Golden State, Meyerson said, "the next New Deal is in tryouts." ...

California is, in fact, a perfect petri dish of Democratic policies. This is what happens when you let Democrats govern: You get a state -- or as it's now known, a "job-free zone" -- with a $38 billion deficit, which is larger than the budgets of 48 states. There are reports that Argentina and the Congo are sending their fiscal policy experts to Sacramento to help stabilize the situation. California's credit rating has been slashed to junk bond status, and citizens are advised to stock up for the not-too-far-off day when cigarettes and Botox become the hard currency of choice. At this stage, we couldn't give California back to Mexico.

Democrats governed their petri dish as they always govern. They buy the votes of government workers with taxpayer-funded jobs, salaries and benefits -- and then turn around and accuse the productive class of "greed" for wanting their taxes cut. This has worked so well nationally that more people in America now work for the government than work in any sort of manufacturing job.

Coulter is rather colorful, but she makes good points. All 8 of California's constitutional officers are Democrats, the legislature is nearly two-thirds Democrat, both of our Senators are Democrats, and most of our Representatives are Democrats.

Even though it's politically correct to say "well, both parties do it"... not so fast! California Republicans can't wipe their noses without Democrat approval. If Republicans in California share any blame for our current problems, it's only in that they haven't been aggressive enough in opposing the Democrats' leftist agenda. This is what you're voting for when you vote for a Democrat. I hope this serves as a warning for the rest of the country. The Democrats got every item on their wishlist in California, up until a month ago -- and just look where it's left us.

This is the second in a series on rights, power, voting, and utility.
Part 1: The 19th Amendment -- Good Idea?
Part 3: Why Do We Need Democracy?

There's no such thing as a "right to vote". There's the power to vote, but no-one has a natural, God-given right to vote. We have the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but none of those require or imply the right to vote. An absolute dictatorship could respect our God-given natural rights, and be entirely just. For instance, most families don't operate as democracies, and yet most families respect these basic rights.

One my my friends (I hope she's still my friend) responded to my earlier post about the 19th amendment and said that she doesn't want to apply economic principles to civil rights. However, economic principles apply to every human endeavor, whether we recognize it or not. No one needs to come put a price tag on your forehead for there to be a cost associated with the rights and powers you enjoy. That cost is there automatically, regardless of your approval, and economics is merely the study of the costs and benefits associated with everything humans do.

Costs and benefits often aren't monetary -- generally economists refer to "utility" to describe how valuable something is to a person. Love and affection, the power to vote, $1000, clean air -- all of these items have utility to people, and different people will value them differently. When it comes to the power to vote, I hypothesized that if you were to walk up to a random guy on the street and offer him a 20% permanent raise in exchange for his power to vote, he'd probably sell it to you. Most people don't vote, and many who do don't take it very seriously. If Joe Shmoe won't sell his vote for a 20% raise, maybe he will for 50%, or 100%, or 1000%. There's a price, you just have to find it and be willing to pay it. Some people may place infinite value on their power to vote, but I doubt there are many such people -- especially if you separate the power to vote from the natural rights we hold so dear.

With all that understanding, it's quite reasonable to wonder whether or not giving women the power to vote was a wise idea. I agree that it has moral value, and we gain some utility as a society from that good morality, but does that moral utility out-weigh the utility of every effect that has arisen because women can vote? It's possible that that moral utility is more valuable to you than anything else, but I doubt that's the case.

The question is whether or not our present circumstances are overall better or worse than they would be if women had never been given the power to vote. Yes, there is some degree of utility that arises from the moral good that was done in granting women that power, but that utility is not of infinite value.

For instance, the War on Drugs would probably not exist if women couldn't vote; the War on Drugs costs us billions of dollars a year and incarcerates millions of otherwise-innocent people. It also encourages a lot of violent crime associated with the black market. On the other hand, the War on Drugs probably reduces drug use, and reduces the societal costs associated with that. So, your opinion of the War on Drugs can influence your opinion of the total utility gained or lost when women were given the power to vote. There are many other issues that have been affected by the 19th Amendment, and all of them should affect the way you value the power of women to vote.

Courtney has some links to the conversation going on at Dean's World. In the comment section there she promised a post on the subject herself -- but so far, nothing!

Continued in part 3, "Why Do We Need Democracy?"

Update:
Dean Esmay explains some of the thinking during the early suffrage movements.

This CNSNews article about a proposed tax increase in Alabama contains a bunch of good examples of tricks that tax-advocates use to talk people into handing more of their money over to the government.

The complicated Riley tax package relies on tax decreases for some constituencies, coupled with big tax increases for others. The package includes tax increases on income, sales, services, property, corporate profits, insurance premiums, mortgages and deeds, and cigarettes.

Without knowing any more details, it's pretty easy to figure that the raw number of people getting income tax decreases is higher than the raw number of people getting income tax increases. That is, the poor will be paying even less taxes than they do now, and the rich will be paying more. How many of you have ever gotten a job from a poor person? (Government employees, put your hands down.)

Non-smokers and non-home-owners are happy to raise property taxes and cigarette taxes. Ignorant people are happy to raise taxes on corporations, because they don't understand that every single dime taxed from a corporation comes from the public's pocket. Basically, the majority votes to raise taxes on the minorty.

"This is the first revenue package we have seen that addresses the state's critical issues in education funding shortfalls, infrastructure development and building the kind of quality of life that we advocate is essential for economic development," said Buckalew.

Everyone wants educated children, but most seem blind to the fact that the government is terrible at education. Infrastructure development is actually a reasonable use of public funds, but "quality of life"? What does that even mean? How does a government "build quality of life"?

The tax increases "will be a net job creator," Buckalew said, giving the state a better public and higher education system.

The only way tax increases can create jobs is if they create government jobs; every government job is paid for by the public, and generates no new wealth. In a very real sense, government jobs are negative jobs that cost the community more than they put back in.

Fiscal conservatives contend that the state hasn't done enough to trim the bureaucracy and refinance state debt. But Buckalew disagrees, saying the state is having the most trouble funding education, teacher health insurance costs and the prison system.

Riley himself has warned that Medicaid prescription drugs, nursing homes and state troopers will also face cuts without new tax revenue.

"Go tell someone in a nursing home: 'I'm sorry we have budget problems; go find other arrangements,' '' Riley told Alabama's Times Daily.

That's called Washington Monument Syndrome -- if we cut one more penny out of the budget we won't be able to afford to keep the Washington Monument! Oh no! The ploy is normally based around dire warnings that cutting the budget will force the state to fire police officers and firefighters, close schools, starve children, and toss old people out onto the street. It's entirely absurd, of course, because there are generally an uncountable number of pork projects that can be cut long before it becomes necessary to empty the jails or start forced euthenizations.

Careful observers will note that there are never budget items that can be reduced or cut in real dollar amounts. If an item gets a smaller increase than the bureaucracy hoped for, that's considered a cut. We wanted 5% more money, but we only got 4%! That's a 1% budget cut! At least according to spend-happy liberals and the media. Most people know intuitively that their government is wasteful and inefficient, but to bureaucrats it's unthinkable that their personal government fiefdom could actually shrink just because they don't need so much money to perform the tasks they've been given.

These tricks and distortions are the same types of rhetoric you'll see Democrats haul out every election cycle to try to manipulate the gullible and the foolish. Keep your eyes open.

Update:
Chip Taylor comments and says I'm wrong about the job issue. I did treat the issue a bit too shallowly, and I agree with him that not every government job is a gross drain on society (although on net, when you consider the public sector job it is replacing would be more efficient, most government jobs are a loss).

This is the first in a series on rights, power, voting, and utility.
Part 2: The "Right" to Vote, and Utility
Part 3: Why Do We Need Democracy?

Call me old fashioned, but women voters? What planet are we on? Beam me back up to the mothership.

As Dean Esmay notes, it's been 83 years, and what have women really done for us? Prohibition -- good move. That worked well. Oh sure, it was ratified before women could vote, but it was their idea. Let's see... that's pretty much it.

Let's be serious here though and really consider. Are we as a nation better off having given women the power to vote? I agree that from a moral perspective it was the right thing to do, but I don't think the issue is that black and white; there were substantial groups of women opposed to granting women suffrage.

If you told me, Michael, the country could have a 20% higher standard of living if we were to go back in time and start again as a monarchy, I'd say "sign me up!" I think most people would be willing to trade their vote away for a substantial salary increase. Any individual would sell their vote for the right price, so it's not unreasonable to speculate on the costs and benefits of women's suffrage.

Each individual woman has more freedom than she would otherwise have had, and each individual man has less power than he would otherwise have had -- at least as far as voting goes. But women tend to vote socially and economically liberal, so it's possible that men have more freedom now than they would have had if women had not been allowed to vote, simply because women may have voted for more civil liberties than men alone would have. However, it's also possible that women's liberal voting tendencies have reduced our freedoms, considering that modern "liberals" aren't really all that concerned with maintaining liberty. Similar hypotheticals can be set up with regard to the economy.

It seems likely that if women had not been given the power to vote, more conservative/libertarian laws would have been enacted than actually have been. Women are big supporters of the War on Drugs, for example, and big social spenders. Therefore, those who hold conservative/libertarian positions would probably have a government more to their liking if women had not been given suffrage.

I'm not a historian, but I play one on TV, and if you look through history you'll realize that the position of women in America is really an aberration. Through out every culture, through out all time, women have never been as free and powerful as they are in the United States right now. In an absolute sense, giving women equal social power was an act of indulgence for men; women are physically weaker than men, and in might-makes-right societies that weakness translates directly into social subjugation. It's quite reasonably arguable that the power of women in America is against the "natural order" of the world, and it would be difficult for any materialist to disagree.

I expect that most people who are reading this believe that women's suffrage is a Good Thing. I hope that none of my female readers have taken offense to this topic. Even though I agree that women have God-given equality with men, I'm not convinced that giving them equal social power has resulted in a net gain for society -- or either men or women separately.

Please leave your opinion. Your concept of "gain" may be purely monetary (what we might normally call "standard of living"); it may include freedoms and liberties aside from the power to vote itself; it may encompass foreign policy; it may involve deep philisophical or religious issues. In any event, please define what you consider to be "gain", and then tell us if we made the right decision.

Update:
Continued in "The 'Right' to Vote, and Utility".

Everyone who wants to run for governor of California has to have their papers filed by 5pm tomorrow. That means $3,500 and 65 signatures, plus a few other forms. So far, it looks like the major players will be:

- Arnold Schwarzenegger (R)
- Bill Simon (R)
- Cruz Bustamante (D)
- John Garamendi (D)

... and a bunch of other random people. It just doesn't feel right, does it? There's something missing: a realistic Democrat candidate. The Dems have got to be writhing in agony over the prospect of uniting behind Bustamante, a virtual political nobody. They've got to be trying every trick they know to pull a rabbit out of the hat, but Feinstein seems intent on not running, and it's hard to imagine any other California resident who could challenge Arnold.

Still, I've got a feeling there's a bit more drama to be had before the deadline tomorrow.

I've written about campaign finance reform before, and the stories about the Democrats' miscalculations and shortcomings keep piling up.

Bush again is spurning public funding in the 2004 primary, and he is shattering his money-raising pace of four years ago.

Democrats say they cannot compete in such a climate. And it's not just 2004 they worry about. The nation's new campaign finance law, which greatly rewards a candidate who can gather piles of $2,000 checks, strongly favors Republicans. That advantage seems unlikely to vanish in 2008 and beyond, several analysts say. ...

The nine Democrats seeking the 2004 nomination are in a bind, party activists say. Even if they choose to abandon public financing and the spending limits that go with them, they can raise nowhere near the sums that Bush is hauling in, these sources say. Some of them contend that only a Democrat with considerable star power and nearly universal name recognition -- Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), perhaps -- will be able to compete under the rules Bush is writing.

The recently enacted McCain-Feingold law bans unlimited "soft money" contributions to national parties, depriving Democrats of a key source of cash from unions and Hollywood figures. The law limits donations to presidential candidates to $2,000, and Republicans have far more supporters able and willing to give that amount of money than do Democrats. ...

"Republicans may be relishing this moment in 2004," Baran said, "but I think they will be breaking out in a sweat if Hillary becomes a candidate in 2008." It takes a politician with strong appeal to his or her core constituents to do what Bush is doing, he said.

And yet the Democrats are the "party of the people", right? Even though they get most of their money from mandatory labor union dues, and rich elites like Hollywood movie stars and trial lawyers? Although the WaPo article focuses on the $2,000 limit, the fact is that Republicans lead Democrats in fundraising at every level except for contributions of over $100,000.

A report released yesterday by the Center for Responsive Politics, a watchdog group, found that, contrary to common perceptions, Republicans have a big advantage over Democrats in donations from small donors, while Democrats are king among only the biggest.

The study, analyzing donations during the 2002 campaign cycle, found that those little guys giving less than $200 to federal candidates, parties or leadership political action committees contributed 64 percent of their money to Republicans. By contrast, those fat cats giving $1 million or more contributed a lopsided 92 percent to Democrats. The only group favoring Democrats, in fact, were contributors giving more than $100,000.

The Democratic elite view themselves as an aristocracy that governs and exploits the masses for its own benefit. It's all top-down. The masters foment discord and anger among the subjects to keep themselves in power. Maybe people are catching on.

I've written about Davis' under-handed attempts to thwart the recall election previously, and via Drudge I see that he's setting up another legal challenge. Unless I'm misunderstanding the article, it appears that Davis wants the California Supreme Court to invalidate part of California's constitution.

Arguing that October's recall election would result in chaos, Democratic Gov. Gray Davis and his supporters say they will ask the California Supreme Court today to delay the vote until the March 2004 primary and also place Davis' name on the ballot. ...

In Davis' petition, his attorneys say that the governor should be allowed to have his name on the ballot as a replacement candidate -- separate from the issue of whether he should be recalled.

The Democrats are challenging part of a state constitutional provision that provides that if an elected official is recalled, the candidate who receives a plurality of votes will be the successor. But the law also states: "The (official) may not be a candidate."

"The governor has a right to be on the ballot," said Michael Kahn of San Francisco, one of the lawyers bringing the suit on behalf of Davis.

Of the 18 states that allow recall elections, California is one of only four states that bar the targeted officer from being on the ballot.

The California Supreme Court doesn't have the power to invalidate any part of California's constitution, and the only way this lawsuit could possibly succeed is if the court oversteps its bounds as the Nevada Supreme Court did last month.

Davis could have filed suit in the federal courts, which would at least have had the authority to invalidate parts of the state constitution -- although I doubt they would have had jurisdiction in this case, any more than they did in the Nevada case, which they refused to consider.