Politics, Government & Public Policy: December 2003 Archives

Howard Dean says he'll back whichever Democrat wins the nomination.

Dr. Dean repeated his promise to support whichever Democrat wins. "Any of them are better than what we've got right now," he said.

Really? Al Sharpton would make a better president than George Bush? C'mon.

Chris over at Interesting Times posts some Dean numbers from Google but makes "absolutely no claim that these numbers have any real meaning". Fair enough, considering that they're based on the number of searches performed on Google for the names of the various candidates. Go take a look, I can't quote his graphics here.

In the same spirit, I like to track the lines over at Tradesports to see what the gamblers -- the folks who put their money where their mouth is -- think of the situation. The following graphic shows that Dean is far-and-away the favorite to win the nomination.

Compare that with the numbers from three months ago:

If I were one of the candidates spending my own money on a campaign, I'd use this market to bet against myself to offset my expenses in the event of a loss. (Which may be illegal, but oh well.)

It's perhaps interesting to note that over the past three months, while Dean's odds of winning the Democratic nomination have been improving, the odds that President Bush will win re-election have also been rising.

But don't worry, these numbers don't mean anything. Heh.

GeekWithA.45 rants against complacent gun owners who "don't vote like they own guns". He has a lot to say about gun politics in New Jersey, but his most significant statement is something that I've thought myself on several occasions:

The problem is that "gun crime" is on the verge of undergoing a sea change from predators using guns to take what they want, be it life, limb or property, to "gun crime" being defined as any of a myriad of minor violations of rules that have no real bearing on anything beyond themselves. In some corners of the USA, the level of discipline and awareness required to lawfully retain your arms and stay out of jail far, far exceeds what is natural and just.

I don't consider myself a "gun nut", but I do believe that the right to keep and bear arms is fundamental to liberty; my recent experiences with Hawthorne Police Chief Stephen Port have raised my level of awareness on the issue.

Heed my words: over-legislation will be the downfall of democratic government. When there are too many ineffective laws people (rightly) begin to lose respect for their government. God's purpose for governments is simple: punish those who do evil, and encourage those who do good.

[HT: reader S3, who sends me lots of great links.]

The world is getting fatter -- which is great for me because it cuts down on competition and improves my relative position -- and it's time for someone to do something about it! Who will save us? The government, naturally. Kim du Toit (who has also given me some great gun-buying advice) sums up my feelings rather well, but unfortunately I can't quote much of what he wrote because I try to keep this site family-friendly (for all the kids who love reading about artificial intelligence, international politics, and theology).

Dick Morris has some insight into the structural problems facing the modern Democratic party; most of his observations are commonly known, except for one I hadn't considered before:

Their [the far-left Democrats] ascendancy is paralleled by the solidification of the Democratic minority in Congress, cemented in place by the 2001 reapportionment in which GOP leaders drew district lines to concentrate Democrats in Democratic districts and keep Republicans and independents in marginal areas.

The result has been an inoculation of Democratic congressmen against defeat in general elections. But, with huge numbers of Democrats in their districts, they do have to fear primary contests, particularly on the left. This realization impelled the election of California’s Nancy Pelosi as minority leader and marks the House Democrats’ move to the left and to irrelevancy.

I can see how redistricting could lead to a minority party electing more extreme candidates, as majority and independent voters are siphoned into seperate districts. Since Congressional reapportionment only takes place once every ten years, the Democrats will face tough primaries that will empower far-left candidates for quite a while, even if Howard Dean loses ignominiously in 2004.

In a particularly adroit politlcal move, Governor Arnold has uses his executive power to authorize more than $3 billion in funds to be paid to cities and counties who lost money due to the re-lowering of the car tax.

Saying he had no choice, Schwarzenegger invoked a provision in the state's budget law and unilaterally ordered the money sent to local governments that stand to lose millions in revenues from a canceled increase in the state's vehicle licensing fee.

This is a brilliant move. The Democrats (in state and local governments) had been positioning themselves to blame local budget gaps on Arnold, pointing out that he had promised to make up the money normally paid to local governments after he cut the revenue from the car tax. Of course, under normal circumstances the governor doesn't have the power to move money around like that, and the blame for any shortfall belongs entirely with the state legislature. Nevertheless, local municipalities were gearing up to blame Arnold for cuts to everything under the sun in what promised to be an epidemic of Washington Monument Syndrome.

Arnold has cleverly turned the tables; by using authority given by the legislature to the previous governor, Grey Davis, Arnold has come through for the local governments and made good on his promise. Naturally, Democrats in the legislature are not pleased.

Legislators have taken a dim view of the new governor's move, saying the money will have to be made up in additional budget cuts. Schwarzenegger said in Sacramento that $150 million in cuts have already been made and revenue projections are $1.8 billion higher than previously expected.

Additional cuts? That's not a bug, that's a feature!

I'm glad to see that the story about Affirmative Action bake sales is still alive in the media, and that more sales are happening all the time at colleges around the country. What's the deal, you ask?

Want to buy a cookie? If you are a white male, that'll be $1; for white females, 75 cents; blacks, 25 cents. The price structure is the message.

Through Affirmative Action Bake Sales, conservative groups on campuses across America are satirically and peacefully spotlighting the injustice of AA programs that penalize or benefit students based solely on gender and race. ...

The cookie rebels are doing the one thing political correctness cannot bear: revealing its absurdity and laughing in its face. They are not merely speaking truth to power; they are chuckling at it.

Wendy McElroy -- a self-described feminist writer whom I really enjoy reading -- has links to stories about reactions to the bake sales held at many different colleges. I'm vaguely aware of what the Bruin Republicans at UCLA do, and if my memory serves me correctly they held an AABS themselves that was (surprise!) shut down by the administrators.

Affirmative action may have had a place in the past, but it's time has come and gone. Those who profit by using affirmative action to distribute benefits are fighting a losing battle.

I have an acquaintence -- let's call him "T" -- who had been receiving diability payments from his "job" for over a year because he found a psychiatrist to write him a note claiming he had a psychological malady called "stress" that prevented him from working. I don't know the exact nature of T's "stress", but seeing as how it stemmed from managing a retail clothing store I find it hard to believe that it kept him from doing any sort of work for over a year. Nevertheless, due to California's absurd workers' compensation system, his employer had no choice but to continue paying T while he sat at home drinking and playing video games.

This type of forced coverage of nonsensical claims is part of what makes California so unattractive to employers, and refomring the workers' compensation system was one of Governor Arnold's top campaign priorities. Republican state Senator Ross Johnson is introducing a bill to implement some changes, and is particularly targeting intangible psychological claims.

Claiming a psychological injury is already the most-difficult kind of disability to prove. But Johnson says because the pain is literally all in the workers' mind, they should have to offer better proof that their employer caused it.

Psychiatrists don't like the sound of that. They say it smacks of discrimination against their field.

Uh, yeah. I'm not a psychologist, but I play one on TV and I've taken a good number of graduate-level psychology classes. The field is 50% BS and 50% "we don't know what it means, but when we do A we get B". Heck, maybe that makes it 100% BS. Anyway, the point is that I have no problem discriminating against a field that has just about as much legitimacy in my mind as palmistry. I'm exaggerating, but you get my point.

His bill would also restrict the reasons for which a worker might claim a stress disability. Pressures that are common to all fields of employment, for example, would not be allowed as cause for a psychological injury. A worker also could not be compensated for a psychological illness that arose from the stress of disciplinary action, job transfer or being fired.

"It is equally sensible to ensure that the everyday stresses we all experience in the workplace do not give rise to a claim for benefits," Johnson said.

Well, duh. It's an unfortunate sign of the decadence of our culture that this even has to be said and coded into law.

Strangely, the California Psychiatric Association doesn't approve of the bill, which would drastically reduce their prestige and clientele.

"We felt that it would create an incentive for an intrusive investigation of patients that would increase costs without benefiting the worker," Hagar [the director of government affairs for the California Psychiatric Association] said. "Psychiatric injury already has a higher burden of proof. And the bill seems predicated on the assumption that there is some sort of evidence of over-utilization of psychiatry, which is absolutely untrue.

"And, it is discriminatory against the field and against the patients who have legitimate injuries."

The problem is that workers are being unfairly benefitted at the moment; this bill tries to level the playing field, and reduce the cost to businesses of absurd claims. Hopefully, those with "legitimate injuries" will still be able to get treatment. However, people like T who get stressed out from folding clothes and adding up numbers should be prevented from leeching off the system.

I generally disapprove of the government using tax money to create incentives for people to do things the government wants them to do. That's why I support a flat tax, even though there are potential difficulties that might prevent the elimination of all current deductions.

Anyway, I was reading the provisions of the new Medicare law and one incentive struck me as particularly misplaced:

It will provide benefits for coordinated care for people with chronic illnesses, and will increase payments for doctors administering mammograms in hope that more are given.

It is perfectly proper for patients to factor in the cost of treatment when they're considering seeing a doctor or having a test. The problem here though is that this incentive is paid to doctors, who will presumably recommend more mammograms simply because they're paid more by the government to perform them! In a non-subsidized system, doctors would make profits by pricing their services to best take advantage of their patients' economic demand. However, when patients pay nothing for medical service, doctors can charge the government anything they want... which is why the payements allowed for certain procedures are limited by law.

By increasing payments to doctors for mammograms, Congress rightly expects that doctors will encourage more of their patients to have them performed, whether they're medically necessary or not. Thus, it's Congress who has made the medical decision, not a patients or doctors. This is exactly wrong, and it's an excellent example of why the government shouldn't be meddling in what should be private affairs.

Democratic Spending Cap

Two news stories about free expression caught my eye today. The first is a ruling by a UN tribunal in Rwanda that hateful words are a war crime.

NEW YORK — With a trio of guilty verdicts yesterday, the U.N. tribunal for Rwanda has established that men armed only with words can commit genocide.

Three Rwandan media executives were convicted by the international tribunal of committing and inciting genocide, war crimes and persecution in a case that will set a precedent for the new International Criminal Court.

Their weapons: the government-sponsored radio station known as "Radio Machete" and "Hate Radio" and a weekly newspaper whose agenda was the extermination of the country's Tutsi majority.

I don't know exactly what statements were made by these three "journalists", but it's certainly possible that their speech was instrumental in aggravating the dangerous racial situation in Rwanda and in leading to the genocide of hundreds of thousands of Tutsis in 1994. Nevertheless, it appears (and I reserve the prerogative to change my mind if further information comes to light) that their speech would have been protected in the United States. It's illegal to threaten violence against a specific person or group, but merely advocating the massacre of a group is protected speech. America has communists, nazis, the KKK, anarchists, &c., all of which advocate breaking various laws.

At least one of these men did more than simply speak, however.

Jean-Bosco Barayagwiza was sentenced to 35 years in prison for his role on the station's board of directors and, separately, for distributing weapons used to kill Tutsi civilians.

That kind of direct involvement makes him an accomplice to murder.

The other story comes out of New York University: "Keep the Sex R-Rated, N.Y.U. Tells Film Students".

In October, a film student at New York University pitched an idea for her video-making class: a four-minute portrayal of the contrast between unbridled human lust and banal everyday behavior.

Her professor approved. The student, Paula Carmicino, found two actor friends willing to have sex on camera in front of the class. The other students expressed their support. But then the professor thought he should double-check with the administration, which immediately pulled the plug on the project.

What's more, university officials said they would issue a written policy requiring student films and videos to follow the ratings guidelines of the Motion Picture Association of America, with nothing racier than R-rated fare allowed, according to Ms. Carmicino and her professor, Carlos de Jesus. The association says R-rated films may include "nudity within sensual scenes."

NYU is a private university, and is no more bound by the First Amendment than the UN tribunal in Rwanda is. That makes it interesting to wonder, however, whether or not a public university would have been compelled to allow the project. I'm not a lawyer, and so I can only speculate on how such a dispute might be resolved, but in my opinion such a project should be allowed. Why? Consider a hypothetical student who wanted to create a religious film, but was restrained so as to not offend his classmates.

"But she's creating pornography with public money!" you might say of Paula Carmicino, if she went to a public school. That woudl be true. However, because of the First Amendment she would (likely) have the right to do so, as long as the the school was providing resources for other types of film as well. If this is objectionable, my feeling is that the real problem isn't with expression that's "too free", but rather with the use of public resources for creating films of any sort, and with the use of public resources for education.

Here's a spiffy chart that tells us how much each state gets in federal spending for every dollar its citizens pay in federal taxes.

The federal tax burden falls much more heavily on some states than others, according to a new analysis of federal fiscal operations. Comparing the federal tax burden by state with an adjusted set of the Census Bureau’s most recent data (2000) on federal expenditures by state, Tax Foundation senior economist Scott Moody has ranked states in order of which got the best deal in 2000 from Uncle Sam’s tax and spending policies. ...

Factors influencing the shifting of federal dollars include the location of people who receive Social Security, Medicare and other substantial federal entitlements, the location of federal employees, federal procurement decisions, and grants to state and local governments.

"Federal employees" also includes military personel, which probably explains why New Mexico has the best ratio of any state, receiving $2.03 from the feds for every $1 its citizens pay in federal taxes. Connecticut -- the richest state in the Union, if I remember correctly -- has the worst ratio, receiving only $0.62 for every $1 sent to Washington, DC. The capital itself gets a whopping $6.49 in spending for every $1 paid, but that's not surprising considering that it's the center of government.

My own state of California was ranked 38th in 1990 and 40th in 2000, receiving only $0.89 and $0.86 per $1 in those years respectively. In 2000, Vermont was the median state, receiving $1.08 per $1 taxed; that the median is over $1:$1 indicates that more than half the states are getting more out of the system than they put in... a phenomenon strangely similar to how the income tax hits individuals. (HT: The House of David.)

Here's a table showing what percentage of income tax comes from various groups of earners, along with what percentage of total income is earned by that group (data gathered from the IRS via Rush's website, 2001).

Income Group	% of Total Income Earned	% of Total Income Tax Paid	Earned:Paid Ratio
Top 1%	17.53%	33.89%	1.93:1
Top 5%	31.99%	53.25%	1.66:1
Top 10%	43.11%	64.89%	1.51:1
Top 25%	65.23%	82.90%	1.27:1
Top 50%	86.19%	96.03%	1.12:1
Bottom 50%	13.81%	3.97%	0.29:1

Of course, these numbers only reflect taxpayers; there are probably millions of low-earners who don't file taxes at all. How much do you have to earn to be in the top 50%? If you're filing jointly, you and your spouse need to earn a combined $26,000 or more to be in the upper half -- and have the privilege of subsidizing the lower half of the spectrum to the tune of approximately 4:1.

Do you notice anything strange about Haward Dean's comments on Hardball last night?

JOSEPH NYE, DEAN, KENNEDY SCHOOL OF GOVERNMENT: Governor, let me take you back to foreign policy. ...

NYE: In Iran?

DEAN: Iran is a more complex problem because the problem support as clearly verifiable as it is in North Korea. Also, we have less-fewer levers much the key, I believe, to Iran is pressure through the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union is supplying much of the equipment that Iran, I believe, most likely is using to set itself along the path of developing nuclear weapons. We need to use that leverage with the Soviet Union and it may require us to buying the equipment the Soviet Union was ultimately going to sell to Iran to prevent Iran from them developing nuclear weapons. That is also a country that must not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons much the key to all this is foresight. Let’s act now so we don’t have to have a confrontation which may result in force, which would be very disastrous in the case of North Korea and might be disastrous in the case of Iran.

Perhaps Dr. Dean can inform me as to the location of this Soviet Union he refers to. I seem to remember an empire by that name, but it was defeated last century.

If President Bush had made this error, you would have read it on the front page of the NY Times.

Plus, his proposed Iran policy is moronic. America is supposed to cough up money to buy all the nuclear materials the world can produce to potentially sell to Iran? Please. Such a policy would create a whole new market for nuclear materials, and give poor nations an even greater incentive to develop the technology.

(HT: Rush on the radio.)

Although I believe people do have a right to provide for their own defense -- and thus have a right to keep and carry some sorts of weapons -- I'm not opposed to all weapons restrictions. For instance, an argument that may support my right to carry a concealed handgun may not have much weight when I start building a nuclear device next-door. But why not? If my neighbor has a nuclear device of his own, I'll need one too to deter him. Right?

Well, I don't think so, and here's why. As fine a job as many police forces do, their primary purpose isn't to prevent all crime, but to increase the cost of committing crimes. In contrast, an individual's (rightful) primary purpose (if they so desire) is to completely prevent all crimes against their person and their family. The police simply cannot be everywhere all the time, ready to prevent every conceivable crime, and it's not even their job to do so. Most police are under no legal obligation to intervene if they see a crime in progress (link anyone?). Their job is to reduce aggregate crime; although they do that by catching specific criminals, police very rarely actually stop a crime in progress.

Extrapolate those thoughts about the police to the government as a whole, and I think you'll see where I'm going. We as individuals grant some of our right to use force to the government and entrust it with the authority to reduce crime (and even fight wars) on the large scale. It's more efficient and more effective to field an Army division than to field 20,000 individuals. When it comes to large scale violence, the government always knows where, when, what, who, &c., and is generally able to respond within a useful timeframe.

Howver, when it comes to small-scale violence, the police are generally nowhere to be found till after the fact, and it's impossible to envision any alternative system. For that reason, individuals must retain the power and authority to protect themselves from small-scale violence. I know what's happening to me, because I'm there.

Of course, crime-prevention is only half the story behind the 2d Amendment -- the right to keep and bear arms is also important because the populace should have the power to protect itself from a tyrannical government, by force if necessary. So should I have the right to own a nuclear weapon to deter the feds? Well, considering the massive infrastructure that would be required to maintain a useful weapon and delivery system, this option is probably entirely impractical (except perhaps for Bill Gates).

A decent argument might be made for arming state troops with nuclear weapons, but is there really a point? When it comes down to it, the American military is made up of common citizens from all parts of the country, not tribe-or ethnic-based conscript units as are found elsewhere in the world. Our best protection from a military coup or a tyrannical government is the simple fact that our soldiers and officers wouldn't obey an order to nuke their own city. Unlike in many parts of the world, the government is made of us, and there is no real them. Sure, there are ideological differences, but none of them are fixed across time, and most families have members from just about every side of the spectrum.

So-called "liberals" who want to restrict individuals from owning small-arms are living in a fantasyland in which an omnipresent, omnipotent, benevolent government solves all our problems. On the other hand, some libertarians I know who advocate completely unrestricted weapon rights are missing the point of liberty also: are you less free now than you'd be if all your neighbors had nuclear weapons?

TM Lutas has a great possible explanation for why we aren't super-sizing our military in response to increasing international threats. It's a question I've wondered about myself, and his explanation sounds very plausible. I won't steal his thunder by quoting it all directly!

Bill Hobbs writes about a particularly perverse attempted-application of the Commerce Clause in whicih some plaintiffs argue that when states use tax-incentives to lure businesses they're purposefully distorting interstate commerce for their own advantage. Apparently, the plaintiffs want the Supreme Court to rule that its unconstitutional for states to compete for business in this way; Bill has a lot more details, and the end result is that such a decision would essentially force all states to adopt identical tax structures.

One of the strengths of our federal system of government is that each individual state can act as an experiment in government -- many different possibilities can be tried, and the least successful states will become uncompetitive until they reform. Federalism is an application of competitive market principles to government, and it's for this reason that many economic capitalists are also strong supporters of "states' rights". Uniform national-level standards eliminate this competition, and thereby eliminate one of the primary engines of improvement that our founders built into our Constitution.

In truth, I think the Commerce Clause should be drastically scaled back, and that states should be given far more autonomy to make their own laws and compete with each other economically and socially. A huge step towrds this end could be taken by repealing the 17th Amendment and restoring the states' representatives to our national government: the United States Senate. If the power of state governments were more stongly protected, they would have more leeway to experiment with policy without interference from the national level; this in turn would foster competition, and lead to greater productivity, liberty, and happiness for all the citizens of our country.