Politics, Government & Public Policy: January 2007 Archives

Just as I wrote earlier about how government regulation strangles medicine, government regulation also strangles the legal profession by constructing high and arbitrary barriers to entry, mandating foolish education methods, and artificially restricting supply for the benefit of the existing suppliers.

The recent arrest of Anderson Kill & Olick paralegal Brian Valery for practicing law without a license raises a number of questions about how the ersatz Fordham graduate could have gotten away with representing corporate clients in complex litigation--without ever having gone to law school. The more salient question, however, is: Would it have mattered if he had?

Legal education has been taking a beating recently. This month the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching issued a report criticizing the Socratic case method that dominates law-school teaching. According to the report, it does little to prepare lawyers to work with real clients or to resolve morally complex issues. Several months ago Harvard Law School announced a reform of its first-year curriculum to require classes in "problem solving," among other things. There appears to be an emerging consensus that although law schools may teach students how to "think like a lawyer," they don't really teach them how to be a lawyer.

The article focuses mostly on the shortcomings of law schools, but remember that law schools have to teach students to pass the Bar Exams, which are given authority by the various state governments. This accreditation system prevents alternative legal education methods from competing in the marketplace and dooms us to legal mediocrity.

In the good old days, of course, lawyers didn't think they could learn the law through a series of hypotheticals. Instead, like most of the Founding Fathers, they apprenticed themselves to practitioners and learned the skills they needed by doing. The case method was invented in the late 1800s by Christopher Columbus Langdell, the dean of Harvard Law School. (Harvard Law wasn't even founded until 1817.) Formal licensing requirements followed, and soon the state bars imposed exams upon the newly graduated that reinforced the notion that being a lawyer meant memorizing definitions and rules. Along the way, few bothered to ask if clients were actually well-served by a lawyer who knew the difference between assault and battery but couldn't negotiate a plea bargain for someone who had committed either. ...

Law is not brain surgery. It is a skill that can be acquired through practice and repetition. This is perhaps the most interesting lesson from Brian Valery, the over-ambitious paralegal: He fooled those around him who ought to have known best. In the late 1990s, I litigated against another paralegal who later pleaded no contest to five criminal misdemeanor charges of unlicensed law practice. What struck me about him at the time was how good he was at his job. He blustered, bluffed, threatened and cajoled with the best of them. He knew the law and argued it capably. But then again, he learned his trade the old-fashioned way: He practiced it.

Government accreditation and licensing schemes try to guarantee that consumers aren't tricked by unqualified lawyers (and doctors, etc.), but because the schemes aren't subject to competitive forces it quickly becomes apparent that they aren't the best possible solutions.

Consider software engineers: there are plenty of great engineers who learned their trade by doing, many of whom do not have a college degree. Applicants without diplomas face a higher hurdle with most employers than do college graduates, and it doesn't require government licensing to ensure that unqualified engineers are kept out. There are plenty of engineers with college degrees who aren't good for anything. Market forces and private licensing and accreditation can handle the situation more efficiently and nimbly than can the blunt hammer of government.

A black Democrat Congressman has been denied entry into a whites-only caucus by members of his own party and no one seems to care.

As a black liberal running in a majority white district, Tennessee Democrat Stephen I. Jackson made a novel pledge on the campaign trail last year: If elected, he would seek to become the first black member of the Congressional White Caucus.

Now that he's a freshman in Congress, Jackson has changed his plans. He said he has dropped his bid after several current and former caucus members made it clear to him that blacks need not apply.

"I think they're real happy I'm not going to join," said Jackson, who succeeded Rep. Harold Ford, D-Tenn., in the Memphis district. "It's their caucus and they do things their way. You don't force your way in. You need to be invited."

Jackson said he became convinced that joining the caucus would be "a social faux pas" after seeing news reports that former Rep. William Lacy Clay Sr., D-Mo., a co-founder of the caucus, had circulated a memo telling members it was "critical" that the group remain "exclusively white."

Outrageous! Oh no, wait, I accidentally swapped every instance of "white" and "black" in the story... it's actually white Representative Stephen I. Cohen who is being denied entry to the Congressional Black Caucus. I wasn't mistaken, however, in noticing a complete lack of interest in the story by the mainstream media.

And, of course, the idea that a "Congressional White Caucus" would be allowed to exist would be as absurd as the "Young White Scholars" club I proposed for my high school (where whites were an actual minority).

Now that New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson has announced his candidacy for the presidency in 2008, the Democrat primaries are shaping up to be one of the most brutal and least substantive in history. It's hard to imagine Hillary Clinton accepting any position other than presidential candidate, which means that Barack Obama and Bill Richardson will have to duke it out for the vice presidential nomination. Richardson's resume is far more impressive, but I imagine that race will play the largest factor in picking the winner. Which racial group will the Democrats cleave to?

Hispanics are growing faster than blacks and are less wholly aligned to the Democrats than are blacks, so a Richardson nomination could swing a lot of votes to the left. However, many blacks are growing disillusioned with the Democrats and snubbing Obama could finally fracture the 90%+ blacks who vote for the Dems, swinging votes to the right. It's hard to say which would do more damage.

Finally, if the Republicans hope to defeat the race/gender perfect storm the Democrats are brewing they're going to need to come up with some serious ideas with broad attraction across the electorate. Trying to match the Dems' race/gender-baiting would be playing into their hands, and if the Reps put up a woman or minority who isn't a natural fit they'll get annihilated by the Left. The good news is that there are substantive policy issues that Americans want dealth with and that Democrats can't handle, like Social Security reform, tort reform, and so forth. Unfortunately the Republicans haven't been too keen on these issues either, but at least that reluctance has left some impressive fish for the candidates to fry.

The Democrat's push for "universal health care" is misguided for a host of economic reasons, and will probably be disastrous for cost and quality of care, but I'm sure many other bloggers will make those points with more details than I feel inclined to look up. What's significant to me is the modern view by all leftists and many non-interested people that the government is the proper vehicle for charity.

The first fact to accept is that health care will be best and cheapest when it is left to the free market. Competition and choice yield products with the most benefits at the lowest prices to consumers. However, a corollary is that the free market will also price some people out of health insurance; that is, in a free market system there will always be some people who cannot afford something.

(Let's ignore for a moment that health care prices are high because of government interference via over-regulation and licensing monopolies like the American Medical Association. Plus, our health care is amazingly good, and the high prices buy us longer, high quality lives than any humans have ever enjoyed throughout all history. Why should that be cheap?)

So what's the best way to take care of those people who are priced out of the market? The Left's inclination is to simply put the whole system under government control, but by eliminating competition prices will skyrocket and quality will plummet, thus hurting everyone. There's got to be a better solution, and there is, and it's not new.

It's called charity. Instead of the government putting a gun to our head and taking money from our wallet to buy services for other people, those with a desire to help the less fortunate can choose to give their money away of their own free will. Aside from the immorality of robbing one man to benefit another, the charity system has the advantage of maintaining competition within the market. Because of that competition, charity dollars will buy much more and much better health care than government dollars. In addition, most charities operate with volunteers and have low overhead, exactly the opposite of government bureaucracies.

The only remaining question, then, is whether or not Americans are willing to give. I think the evidence shows that we are. America is the most generous nation on earth... so why don't the Democrats see that? Because leftists are part of Non-Giving America.

Nowhere is the divide in values more on display than in religion, the frontline in our so-called "culture war." And the relationship between religion and charity is nothing short of extraordinary. The Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey indicates that Americans who weekly attend a house of worship are 25 percentage points more likely to give than people who go to church rarely or never. These religious folks also give nearly four times more dollars per year than secularists, on average, and volunteer more than twice as frequently.

It is not the case that these enormous differences are due simply to religious people giving to their churches. Religious people are more charitable with all sorts of nonreligious causes as well. They are 10 percentage points likelier than secularists to give money to explicitly nonreligious charities like the United Way, and 25 points more likely to volunteer for secular groups such as the PTA. Churchgoers were far likelier in 2001 to give to 9/11-related causes. On average, people of faith give more than 50 percent more money each year to non-church social welfare organizations than secularists do.

Score one more for Christianity. Secularism isn't the only factor that prevents leftists from seeing charity as the solution.

A second core value affecting charity shows up in the belief citizens have about the government's role in their lives. Some Americans (about a third) believe the government should do more to reduce income differences between the rich and poor – largely through higher taxation and social spending. Others (about 40 percent) do not favor greater forced income redistribution. This is a major difference in worldview – not just about taxation, but also about the perceived duty of individuals to take personal responsibility for themselves and others. This difference affects people's likelihood of voluntarily giving to charity. The General Social Survey shows that people who oppose government income redistribution donate four times as much money each year as do redistribution supporters.

Note that the charity gap is not due to anything the government is actually doing; rather, to what people think the government should be doing – in other words, nothing more than a political opinion. This fact throws a wrench into the traditional stereotype that conservatives in America are hardhearted while liberals are the compassionate ones. In the words of one common 2004 campaign yard sign in my town, "Bush Must Go! Human need, not corporate greed." However, the General Social Survey indicates that people who opine that government is "spending too little money on welfare" – not a viewpoint typically associated with George W. Bush's supposedly venal supporters – are less likely to give food or money to a homeless person than people who oppose greater welfare spending. Regardless of which view on welfare is superior, ask yourself this: who will personally do more for a poor person today?

Darn those pesky statistics! It's almost as if Democrats want to spend other people's money helping people that the Democrats themselves can't be bothered to help on their own!

Fortunately the secular, greedy, tyrannical leftists are breeding themselves out of existence.

A third key value affecting charity is reflected in family life. Couples, even when they earn the same amount as single people, are more likely to give to charity, and the simple act of raising children appears to stimulate giving as well – children help us fill the collection plate even as they drain our wallets. Further, family life is the ideal transmission mechanism for charitable values: data show that people who see their parents behave charitably are far likelier to be charitable themselves as adults.

So here's an idea: since the Democrats claim to be the party of civil liberties, how about not sticking a gun to my head and taking more of my money. How about instead encouraging private giving by lowering taxes and withdrawing the government tentacles from every area of life? The poor in America could be cared for better and more cheaply, and no one would have to be robbed to pay for it.

If you've got a few minutes to rub together you could hardly find a better use for them than reading "The Speech" that launched Ronald Reagan's political career, given in 1964 in support of Berry Goldwater's presidential campaign. It is altogether brilliant, and America would do well to hearken back and heed his words.

On "the war on poverty", which our government considers to be ongoing, last I checked:

We have so many people who can't see a fat man standing beside a thin one without coming to the conclusion that the fat man got that way by taking advantage of the thin one. So they are going to solve all the problems of human misery through government and government planning. Well, now, if government planning and welfare had the answer and they've had almost 30 years of it, shouldn't we expect government to almost read the score to us once in a while? Shouldn't they be telling us about the decline each year in the number of people needing help? The reduction in the need for public housing?

But the reverse is true. Each year the need grows greater, the program grows greater. We were told four years ago that 17 million people went to bed hungry each night. Well, that was probably true. They were all on a diet. But now we are told that 9.3 million families in this country are poverty-stricken on the basis of earning less than $3,000 a year. Welfare spending is 10 times greater than in the dark depths of the Depression. We are spending $45 billion on welfare. Now do a little arithmetic, and you will find that if we divided the $45 billion up equally among those 9 million poor families, we would be able to give each family $4,600 a year, and this added to their present income should eliminate poverty! Direct aid to the poor, however, is running only about $600 per family. It would seem that someplace there must be some overhead.

And that was in 1964! We've had a "war on poverty" for more than seven decades now, with so sign of victory. What's our exit strategy?

Speaking of war, here are some of Reagan's thoughts that seem very applicable to the ongoing Global War on Jihadism:

Those who would trade our freedom for the soup kitchen of the welfare state have told us that they have a utopian solution of peace without victory. They call their policy "accommodation." And they say if we only avoid any direct confrontation with the enemy, he will forget his evil ways and learn to love us. All who oppose them are indicted as warmongers. They say we offer simple answers to complex problems. Well, perhaps there is a simple answer--not an easy answer--but simple.

If you and I have the courage to tell our elected officials that we want our national policy based upon what we know in our hearts is morally right. We cannot buy our security, our freedom from the threat of the bomb by committing an immorality so great as saying to a billion now in slavery behind the Iron Curtain, "Give up your dreams of freedom because to save our own skin, we are willing to make a deal with your slave masters." Alexander Hamilton said, "A nation which can prefer disgrace to danger is prepared for a master, and deserves one." Let's set the record straight. There is no argument over the choice between peace and war, but there is only one guaranteed way you can have peace--and you can have it in the next second--surrender.

Admittedly there is a risk in any course we follow other than this, but every lesson in history tells us that the greater risk lies in appeasement, and this is the specter our well-meaning liberal friends refuse to face--that their policy of accommodation is appeasement, and it gives no choice between peace and war, only between fight and surrender. If we continue to accommodate, continue to back and retreat, eventually we have to face the final demand--the ultimatum. And what then? When Nikita Khrushchev has told his people he knows what our answer will be? He has told them that we are retreating under the pressure of the Cold War, and someday when the time comes to deliver the ultimatum, our surrender will be voluntary because by that time we will have weakened from within spiritually, morally, and economically. He believes this because from our side he has heard voices pleading for "peace at any price" or "better Red than dead," or as one commentator put it, he would rather "live on his knees than die on his feet." And therein lies the road to war, because those voices don't speak for the rest of us. You and I know and do not believe that life is so dear and peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery. If nothing in life is worth dying for, when did this begin--just in the face of this enemy? Or should Moses have told the children of Israel to live in slavery under the pharaohs? Should Christ have refused the cross? Should the patriots at Concord Bridge have thrown down their guns and refused to fire the shot heard 'round the world? The martyrs of history were not fools, and our honored dead who gave their lives to stop the advance of the Nazis didn't die in vain. Where, then, is the road to peace? Well, it's a simple answer after all.

I sincerely hope that the Reagan Republicans are not yet extinct.

Don't think based on the title of this post that a non-governing Congress is necessarily a bad thing, but the recent rout of Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) by Cindy Sheehan demonstrates exactly why the Democrats won't be able to get much done during their tenure in power.

House Democratic leaders were giving their first news conference of the year when the session in the Cannon building was hijacked by Cindy Sheehan and other antiwar demonstrators, some wearing tie-dyed apparel and pins comparing President Bush to Adolf Hitler. Just after Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) vowed, "We're gonna cut the interest rate in half for student loans," hecklers began to chant "De-escalate! Investigate! Troops home now!"

"That is exactly what we're talking about," Emanuel said, trying to appease the protesters. But the hecklers kept chanting, and he fled.

The Democratic leaders in retreat, Sheehan seized the microphone. "We put them back in power," she said of the Democrats. Passing out fliers calling for defunding the Iraq war, Sheehan shouted: "These are our demands. And they're not requests -- they're demands."

The biggest problem with the Democrat party is that their tent became so broad that they had to sacrifice depth. The party is little more than a conglomeration of tiny interest groups who share little in common except their hatred for religion, wealth, liberty, and President Bush.

Sheehan is right: she and her ilk did put the Democrats in power. Now that the Democrats used her to attain power, will they be able to keep their power and use it without kowtowing to the people they represent? If you want to get reelected, you've got to "dance with the one what brung ya", no matter how repulsive she is.

So what can the Democrats do? If they want to win the presidency in 2008, their best bet is to do as little as possible. Emanuel didn't confront Sheehan on her lunacy because she is his base, but he couldn't stay and be associated with her because he's really proud of the job he did orchestrating the Democrat's victory in 2004 and he'd like to keep building his political career. So he did the only thing he could: he ran away.