Politics, Government & Public Policy: February 2004 Archives

Annoyingly, one of my senators, Dianne Feinstein, is a co-sponsor of the bill that poposes extending the "assault weapons" ban. Her arguments in favor of the extension, however, are completely vacuous.

“Over the past 10 years, however, the assault weapons ban has worked. It has dried up the supply of these weapons, and their use in crime has dropped by two-thirds. It would be a grave mistake to allow these weapons to once again flood our cities' streets.”

But has the reduced supply actually reduced crime? No one makes that claim.

The Million Mom March also has some pointless statistics about assault weapons.

Assault Weapons: Key Facts

- Assault weapon bans work. In 1989, when President Bush stopped the import of certain assault rifles, the number of imported assault rifles traced to crime dropped by 45% in one year. After the 1994 ban, there were 18% fewer assault weapons traced to crime in the first eight months of 1995 than were traced in the same period in 1994.

So what? Was there less crime, or did criminals simply start using other guns?

- Although assault weapons comprised only 1% of privately-owned guns in America, they accounted for 8.4% of all guns traced to crime in 1988-91.

Again, so what? What are the statistics now? Is any of the reduction of crime over the past decade or so related to the AWB? If there were any such evidence you can bet the ban's proponents would be pointing it out.

The ban is nonsense, and hasn't saved a single life. All it does it restrict liberty, cost us money, and waste our legislators' time.

The monkey is out of the closet, and politicians of all stripes are struggling to shove it back in. Too bad no one has the guts to actually deal with the problem.

Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan (search) has touched off a political firestorm with his call for benefit cuts in Social Security and Medicare for future retirees.

Greenspan told Congress that soaring budget deficits from out-of-control entitlement programs could lead to a "very debilitating" rise in interest rates and threaten the economy in coming years.

Meanwhile, in fantasyland:

Democratic front-runner John Kerry (search) said the way to address the deficit is to roll back tax cuts for the wealthy and "the wrong way to cut the deficit is to cut Social Security benefits. If I'm president, we're simply not going to do it."

Democratic presidential contender John Edwards (search) called it "an outrage' for Greenspan to call for cuts in Social Security while at the same time endorsing making Bush's tax cuts permanent.

Bush said Social Security benefits "should not be changed for people at or near retirement."

If we ignore it, maybe it'll go away! Or at least we won't be in office when the monkey starts hurling poo all over the livingroom.

Greenspan noted that projections show the country will go from having just over three workers supporting each retiree on Social Security to 2.25 workers for every retiree by 2025.

"This dramatic demographic change is certain to place enormous demands on our nation's resources — demands we will almost surely be unable to meet unless action is taken," Greenspan said. "For a variety of reasons, that action is better taken as soon as possible."

He said taking action now would mean that people still working would have time to adjust their retirement savings plans to deal with smaller Social Security benefits.

Greenspan said at some point the country needed to face the fact that the government has promised more in entitlement benefits than it can afford to pay. He said the problem was even worse for Medicare because it was impossible to estimate what types of costly medical advances will be available in coming years.

Most people refer to "the elephant in the livingroom" when discussing huge, obviously important issues that no one wants to talk about. Personally, I prefer "the monkey in the closet". Wouldn't you get pretty freaked out if you opened your closet and a monkey jumped out at you? That's sure not something I'd talk about.

Anyway, Alan Greenspan doesn't like to wade into political waters very much, but in recent Congressional testimony he "urged urgency" in dealing with the looming baby-boomer retirement tidal wave that's poised to swamp the Social Security system -- America's monkey in the closet.

He said the prospect of the retirement of 77 million baby boomers will radically change the mix of people working and paying into the Social Security retirement fund and those drawing benefits from the fund.

"This dramatic demographic change is certain to place enormous demands on our nation's resources - demands we will almost surely be unable to meet unless action is taken," Greenspan said. "For a variety of reasons, that action is better taken as soon as possible."

And what if we don't? Or what if we raise taxes rather than cut spending?

"I am just basically saying that we are overcommitted at this stage," Greenspan said in response to committee questions. "It is important that we tell people who are about to retire what it is they will have." He warned that the government should not "promise more than we are able to deliver." ...

"We are going to be confronted ... in a few years with an upward ratcheting of long-term interest rates which will be very debilitating for long-term growth," Greenspan told the committee if the deficit problem is not addressed. ...

"Tax rate increases of sufficient dimension to deal with our looming fiscal problems arguably pose significant risks to economic growth and the revenue base," Greenspan said. "The exact magnitude of such risks is very difficult to estimate, but they are of enough concern, in my judgment, to warrant aiming to close the fiscal gap primarily, if not wholly, from the outlay side."

It's easy to see what will happen if we don't cut spending: all we have to do is glance across the Atlantic. Europe is facing similar problems, and their vast welfare states are on the brink of economic collapse. They can't pay for their own security, and they're basically stalled technologically. Is that the price we're willing to pay to be babied by Uncle Sam?

However, keeping to my role as a chicken biggle, I'm not going to worry. Once younger generations start dominating the voter pool I expect the boomers' power will be greatly diluted. Everyone under 50 should know they can't count on Social Security for diddly-squat, and we're going to get tired of financing our elders' poor financial planning eventually. Boomers need to start taking responsibility for their own lives, instead of just voting benefits to themselves out of their kids' pockets.

I found a nifty tool that lets you view Senate voting records and thought I'd compare the "Not Voting" rates of Senators Kerry and Edwards for this Congressional term. Not surprisingly, both have "Not Voting" rates above 40% if the entire term is taken into account, but there's a difference to be seen if the timeframe is changed.

Both Kerry and Edwards announced their candidacy near the beginning of September, 2003, so let's only count votes before then. From January, 2003, to August, 2003, Senator Edwards didn't vote 69 out of 320 opportunities (~22%) and Senator Kerry didn't vote 182 out of 320 opportunities (~57%). Strangely, it appears that Senator Kerry started voting more after he announced his candidacy than he had before!

For comparison, other senators missed far fewer votes this term. For the Democrats, Senator Kennedy missed ~4% of the votes, and Senator Feinstein missed only ~2%. For the Republicans, Senator McCain missed only ~1%, and Senator Stevens missed even less than 1%. I selected these senators at random from the ones I knew off the top of my head, and I'm not trying to make a point about the parties but rather about the Senators running for the presidency.

President Bush's approval numbers are dropping, including what's being called his "trustworthiness".

Continuing a decline that has gone on for more than a year, 55% of those surveyed said Bush was honest and trustworthy. That compares to 59% the last time the question was asked in November, and 70% when the question was asked in early January 2003.

Why are these numbers changing?

1. President Bush has actually become less trustworthy, and the poll results reflect an accurate assessment of this difference.
2. President Bush is just as trustworthy now as ever, and the public's earlier high marks were mistaken.
3. President Bush is just as trustworthy now as ever, and the public's current low(er) marks are mistaken.

Which possibility one prefers will reveal a lot. Number (1) seems the least likely, since people don't tend to change a great deal in a short period of time; then again, if anything were likely to change a person, it would be bearing presidential responsibility for the country in such a difficult time.

Most Democrats would probably claim (2) is true, and most Republicans would say (3). The difference, as I see it, is that most Democrats on the angry left probably don't care what the actual answer is and probably don't care if President Bush is actually trustworthy or not -- as long as his poll numbers go down. In contrast, Republicans tend to be more moralistic voters.

I can't wait till the 2020 election -- everyone who could have possibly fought in Vietnam will be too old to run for president.

An article linked by Drudge has some interesting tidbits about Howard Dean.

The Democratic race once had 10 candidates, but the field is now down to five, including Dean, Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton, who haven't won a single contest.

Mr. Dean must love being lumped in with those two wackos.

Senior advisers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Dean, with no hope of winning the presidency, was considering scaling back his campaign sharply - but not formally withdrawing. He was just as likely to cede the nomination and, with hopes of becoming a kingmaker, endorse a rival.

His campaign reached out to Edwards' team, believing Dean's fund-raising prowess could help reshape the race, aides said. But they did not rule out Dean endorsing Kerry, a move they said would seal the nomination for the Massachusetts lawmaker.

I.e., Mr. Dean's decision on who to endorse will be based entirely upon which endorsement will benefit Howard Dean the most, not on which candidate is the best choice for president. Then again, that falls in line with what my impression of Mr. Dean has been from the beginning of the political season.

Howard Dean is poised on the brink of surrender, despite his tough rhetoric, but the truth is that he's accomplished just about everything his supporters could have hoped for.

"We've struggled with fundamentally changing the Democratic Party. Many of the folks now running, including Senator Kerry, have adopted our positions on many issues, and I think that's terrific. We intend to have real change in Washington, and that's what this campaign's about."

Mr. Dean is right; despite his near-certain defeat, his candidacy has done more to shape the upcoming election than even 9/11. Without Dean's involvement the Republicans would have been only slightly more strident about the War on Terror than the Democrats, but Dean's campaign has painted his fellow Democrats into an ideological corner and left politically savvy voters incredibly polarized. Ross Perot may have cost George H. W. Bush the election in 1992, but he didn't do nearly as much to significantly change the scope of the debate.

Howard Dean has done more for the far-left in one year than Ralph Nader has done in his whole career, and in the process he's remade the Democratic party into battering ram for the ideology Bill Clinton tried to leave behind in 1992. Although a presidential campaign is normally seen as a referendum on the incumbent (if any), 2004 is more likely going to be remembered as the last dying gasp of socialism/communism and a vote of confidence in the truly progressive, liberal, and pragmatic approach to government that began in 1981.

Update:
Someone at Opinion Journal agrees.

As the title of this blog indicates, I have no real desire to be anyone's master. Unfortunately, there are many who do, and Donald Sensing has an excellent post decrying the usurpation of power by the judiciary from the American people. As Rev. Sensing rightly points out, most judicial over-reaching stems from the bizarre concept that the Constitution is a "living document".

Last time I checked, no other legal documents are "living" other than inconvenient constitutions. The reason we write things down is so that there's no misunderstanding or reinterpretation later by one of the parties involved.

For example, I have an employment contract that entitles me to a certain wage and entitles my boss to a certain amount of work. It would be ridiculous for me to sue him for higher pay on the premise that, although my contract specifies a specific rate, he now owes me more because our relationship as "matured". We're each certainly free to renegotiate the contract, or release ourselves from it using the mechanisms it defines, but to simply assert that it now means something new because time has passed and circumstances have changed is absurd.

Yet that's exactly what much of our judiciary does every day. When the Constitution was written each part had a very specific meaning, and as a whole it establishes a relationship between the American people and the government that serves us, as well as relationships between the three branches of government. What many judges do by claiming that the Constitution is a "living document" is create entirely new meanings, without regard for the agreement that was made originally and without consultation with the other parties to the contract: the American people and their elected officials.

Congress and the President go along with it by selecting judges who will interpret the contract in agreement with them rather than selecting judges who will enforce the contract as written. It's ludicrous, and the American people should call another Constitutional convention to reign our servants in and re-establish ourselves as sovereign.

Contrary to popular belief, the Vice Presidency isn't a particularly effective stepping stone to the Presidency (except in cases where the President dies while in office!). Here's an Encarta article with some statistics -- which mostly belie the author's concluding sentence.

Sixteen vice presidents have run for the presidency since the founding of our Constitutional system Of those, only four won the presidency immediately -- John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, the first two vice presidents; Martin Van Buren; George H. W. Bush -- and Richard Nixon won on his second try. Five successes out of sixteen attempts isn't a very impressive statistic (seventeen attempts, if you count Richard Nixon's 1960 loss).

Most vice presidents are low profile and don't get to do much while in office. When they run they're generally loaded down with the baggage of the previous administration, and I think the presidency changes hands from one party to another more than half time time if an incumbent isn't running (stats, anyone?).

Fifteen senators have gone on to serve as President. I can't find stats on representatives or governors who have done so (I'm sure there's a lot of overlap). As far as I know, only one president has also served on the Supreme Court: William Taft (who was also the fattest president).

Bill Hobbs has dedicated an entire category on his blog to the question of "Was Bush AWOL?", and he's done a great job shredding the accusation. But I just don't get it. Aren't the people making the accusation the exact same people who said Bill Clinton's draft-dodging wasn't important? It's all nonsense.

Lots of pundits are proclaiming that President Bush is vulnerable because of 50%-ish approval/re-elect ratings in polls, but don't forget that the Democrats have been campaigning against him for almost a year now and the Republican machine hasn't even started rolling yet. President Bush has over $150 million burning a hole in his pocket, just itching for a target. If that target turns out to be John Kerry, expect to see a lot more dirt shoveled up and many more embarrassing revelations.

Update:
And there's more. From 1970:

Kerry said that the United Nations should have control over most of our foreign military operations. "I'm an internationalist. I'd like to see our troops dispersed through the world only at the directive of the United Nations."

On other issues, Kerry wants "to almost eliminate CIA activity. The CIA is fighting its own war in Laos and nobody seems to care." He also favors a negative income tax and keeping unemployment at a very low level, "even if it means selective economic controls."

President Bush and the RNC must have stacks of this stuff to turn over to the media when the time is right.

Fellow Bear-Flagger Michael Rappaport has an idea for controlling federal spending: require a supermajority to pass all spending bills greater than 90% the value of the previous year's total. He believes that this threshold will allow a majority to prevent a government shut-down, but give a minority the power to curtail excessive spending.

I see two problems, one substantial and one philisophical.

First, I don't really see how this would reign in discretionary spending. All it would do is require the majority to spend even more to buy enough votes to pass the budget. Part of the reason the Republicans who control Congress haven't cut spending is because their majority in the Senate is so thin that every vote has to be bought. If the Republicans had a five vote majority (rather than one vote), each Senator's support for a spending bill would be worth much less. Requiring a supermajority to pass spending bills would make each marginal vote even more expensive -- particularly if the majority is forced to buy votes from Senators who would prefer to cut spending.

Secondly, I'm not sure I like the idea of undermining the principle of majority rule. I believe that requiring supermajorities is acceptable for some things (particularly at the state level), but I'm uneasy about imposing such a limitation on the will of the majority at the federal level. Would bills that shifted money between departments require supermajorities also, or would they only be needed when the total budget increased? If a simple majority could move money while keeping the total constant (or even 10% lower) budget battles could get very ugly.

The idea is interesting, but I need to consider it more. On the surface it doesn't feel very convincing.

Because I find myself referring to it often, here's a short post about Washington Monument Syndrome.

Symptoms of WMS are generally manifested by legislators who feel under political pressure to cut taxes, cut spending, and stop wasting public money (WMS can also be displayed when legislators want to raise taxes). Regardless of what bloated programs and superfluous bureaucracy is available to be slashed, politicians will pretend there's no fat to cut and insist to the public that if one single penny is taken away from the government budget they'll have no choice but to shut down the Washington Monument.

Such pleas and threats can take many forms. Some of the most popular services that greedy politicians like to line up first for the chopping block are police, firefighters, and education. These services are important to the average voter, and politicians hope that when the public is faced with the false choice of either losing police officers and teachers or raising taxes, people will meekly hand over their paychecks.

The best treatment for WMS is to simply ignore the politicians' apocalyptic warnings. The threats are empty, and there are always lots of expenses that can be cut before the Washington Monument will have to be closed.

Oregon voters soundly reject tax hikes, opting instead for service reductions.

In January 2003, Oregon voters rejected a $310-million income tax increase, leading to a shortened school year, police layoffs and other spending cuts.

When the Legislature passed an $800-million tax hike package in August -- to protect schools and other services from additional cuts -- tax-hike opponents launched their petition drive to repeal the measure.

This type of government income "recession" will lead to cuts initially, but yield efficiency gains over the long-term, just as recessions do in the private sector.

CNSNews has a great piece exposing the bureaucratic mess the Transportation Safety Administration has made of the federal program to arm commercial airline pilots. OF the 40,000 pilots who initially expressed interest in the program, only 4,000 ended up joining.

One FFDO [Federal Flight Deck Officer], who agreed to comment on the "carry protocol" for armed pilots' handguns only if CNSNews.com did not disclose the person's identity, said the regulation is "designed to deter participation."

"A lot of my coworkers have watched what I go through and they say, 'You know what? I'm not signing up,'" the FFDO explained.

The FFDO also believes such comments are the result TSA desires. "I've had so many pilots tell me, 'I'm not signing up for this. I'm not putting myself through this kind of agony to go through what you go through.'

"That is the thing that's really deterring participation," the FFDO added.

What's more, the TSA's regulations appear to purposefully impare the usefulness of the weapons even for the few pilots who do carry them.

Unless the pilot is behind the locked cockpit door, TSA requires that the weapon be holstered, locked inside a hard-sided gun case and stored inside "a bag that is non-descript."

The policy leaves pilots defenseless during the time when law enforcement and security experts agree that the cockpit is most vulnerable.

"The weapon needs to be re-secured in the locked box if the cockpit door is open," Rosenker explained, acknowledging that the regulation would include times during flights when one of the pilots leaves the cockpit to use the restroom or get food. ...

Dean Roberts, a former federal law enforcement officer and pilot, now flies for a commercial passenger airline. He told CNSNews.com that even some pilots with federal law enforcement experience would not apply for the FFDO program because of the lock box requirement. ...

"When I carried a gun as a federal law enforcement officer on an airplane, it was a hassle carrying a gun [on board]," Roberts explained. "The FFDO program has got about 20 more unnecessary steps in the process that make it more hassle than it is worth."

The TSA also prohibits the pilots from discussing any "classified" aspects of the program, forbidding them from revealing any flaws and failures to anyone other than TSA bureaucrats -- even Congress!

Does the TSA actively discourage pilots from applying? Some pilots apparently think so.

Capt. Tracy Price, a founding member and current advisor to APSA [Airline Pilots Security Alliance], is one of the thousands of pilots who say they will not apply to become an FFDO, fearing reprisals from the TSA, their employers or both. ...

"They maintain this kind of thinly veiled threat that it is always a possibility that you could apply for this program and find that, not only are you not in the program," Price added, "but also that your employer-airline has been notified or the FAA [Federal Aviation Administration] has been notified that you've lost your pilot's certificate."

And the psych examination?

The first question with which pilots take exception is, "Would you like to be a fighter pilot?" The question is allegedly intended to identify individuals who might be "overly aggressive" and "prone to risk taking behavior." ...

"We're still getting emails, to this day, from highly, highly qualified pilots, F-16 pilots, B-1 bomber pilots who are being turned down," Price said, adding that many of those pilots routinely have access not only to the firearms they carry on their person as a military pilot, but also to nuclear weapons transported in the aircraft for which they are responsible.

The TSA opposed the FFDO program, so it shouldn't be a surprise that they're implementing it poorly now that Congress has forced it on them. The American bureaucracy is far too powerful.

Despite Congress recently passing a national ban on partial-birth abortions, a judge in Virginia has overturned a state law which also banned the procedure. The basis for his ruling was that the ban "failed to make an exception for the health of the woman", but apparently the judge isn't aware that the American Medical Association has said that the procedure is never medically necessary.

In recognition of the constitutional principles regarding the right to an abortion articulated by the Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade, and in keeping with the science and values of medicine, the AMA recommends that abortions not be performed in the third trimester except in cases of serious fetal anomalies incompatible with life. Although third-trimester abortions can be performed to preserve the life or health of the mother, they are, in fact, generally not necessary for those purposes. Except in extraordinary circumstances, maternal health factors which demand termination of the pregnancy can be accommodated without sacrifice of the fetus, and the near certainty of the independent viability of the fetus argues for ending the pregnancy by appropriate delivery.

Donald Sensing has more on the medical community's view in a post from last year.

When writing the national ban last year, Congress heard testimony from many medical experts and concluded the lengthy preamble of its bill by stating, "For these reasons, Congress finds that partial-birth abortion is never medically indicated to preserve the health of the mother."

Nancy Northup of the Center for Reproductive Rights attempts to use the weight of authority to bolster her side of the debate.

"Courts across the country - including the U.S. Supreme Court - have been clear that such bans are an unconstitutional threat to women's health and lives," Nancy Northup, president of the center, said in a statement Monday.

Fortunately for millions of unborn babies, courts are not the highest medical authorities in the nation, nor the highest political authorities. For the medical side of the question, I'll trust the judgement of the AMA. As for the political: in addition to the national ban, more than 30 states have also banned partial-birth abortions, demonstrating that the majority of Americans are against what is essentially infanticide.

Update:
Xrlq comments and links to a post of his from last year that points out that the federal partial-birth abortion ban is blatantly unconstitutional. He's right, of course. The problem I have with his position, however, is that he's failing to see the forest through the trees.

I'm a federalist, but not because I love federalism. I support federalism because I love liberty, and I believe the separation of powers between national and state governments promotes liberty.

There is no more egregious infringement on liberty than murder, and no matter how federal our country may become if it fails to prevent the murder of a million babies a year it isn't successfully defending liberty. Federal murder laws aren't necessary because every state already bans the murder of adults. Ideally, states will also ban abortion and no federal intervention will be required. However, that not being the case (largely due to federal intervention by the Supreme Court), I'm perfectly happy to sacrifice some federalist principles for the larger cause of protecting liberty.

Any Constitutional system that results in the murder of a million babies a year -- regardless of what other liberties it protects -- is fundamentally flawed. The Constitution, and federalism, should serve liberty, and in cases where they don't I will not be bound to defending them.