Quintessentially American

Charles Murray writes a piece this weekend in the Washington Post that, pushes the Tea Party line that modern elites are totally out of touch with "mainstream America."

Taken individually, members of the New Elite are isolated from mainstream America as a result of lifestyle choices that are nobody's business but their own. But add them all up, and they mean that the New Elite lives in a world that doesn't intersect with mainstream America in many important ways. When the tea party says the New Elite doesn't get America, there is some truth in the accusation.

This article makes the mistake made by Sarah Palin and many others in elevating niche, regional American subculture(s) to "mainstream America," and then excluding everyone who doesn't participate in the subculture from "real America," even though this really defines the majority of Americans as somehow less than American.

Murray writes:

With geographical clustering goes cultural clustering. Get into a conversation about television with members of the New Elite, and they can probably talk about a few trendy shows -- "Mad Men" now, "The Sopranos" a few years ago. But they haven't any idea who replaced Bob Barker on "The Price Is Right." They know who Oprah is, but they've never watched one of her shows from beginning to end.

Talk to them about sports, and you may get an animated discussion of yoga, pilates, skiing or mountain biking, but they are unlikely to know who Jimmie Johnson is (the really famous Jimmie Johnson, not the former Dallas Cowboys coach), and the acronym MMA means nothing to them.

They can talk about books endlessly, but they've never read a "Left Behind" novel (65 million copies sold) or a Harlequin romance (part of a genre with a core readership of 29 million Americans).

They take interesting vacations and can tell you all about a great backpacking spot in the Sierra Nevada or an exquisite B&B overlooking Boothbay Harbor, but they wouldn't be caught dead in an RV or on a cruise ship (unless it was a small one going to the Galapagos). They have never heard of Branson, Mo.

Here's the thing - The Price is Right gets 5 million viewers a week. Seven million people a year go to Branson. By Murray's own admission, 29 million people read Harlequin romances (worldwide). There are 300 million people - so each of these things that Murray cites as an element of "Mainstream America" is actually only something that a tiny fraction of Americans do. And really - "The Price is Right" Harlequin novels and cruises? It seems like, for Murray, Mainstream America = retired southerner ladies.

On the other hand, I'll submit my experiences and those of my friends and co-workers--urban New Yorkers in their late 20s and 30s who mostly have graduate degrees from "fancy schools". I can tell you that almost all of the guys, and most of the girls, watch the NFL (which averages 16.6 million viewers per regular season game), and we all know the Jimmie Johnson on the Fox pregame show. Most of us have been to Disney World (30 million visitors per year). We watch the same reality TV that the rest of the country does - American Idol, Teen Mom, Top Chef,* and almost everyone I know saw Avatar and Dark Knight.

Murray makes a really bold, and incorrect, claim that certain types of experiences, the kinds that tea-parties have, are "quintessentially American" while others are not:

There so many quintessentially American things that few members of the New Elite have experienced. They probably haven't ever attended a meeting of a Kiwanis Club or Rotary Club, or lived for at least a year in a small town (college doesn't count) or in an urban neighborhood in which most of their neighbors did not have college degrees (gentrifying neighborhoods don't count). They are unlikely to have spent at least a year with a family income less than twice the poverty line (graduate school doesn't count) or to have a close friend who is an evangelical Christian. They are unlikely to have even visited a factory floor, let alone worked on one.

However, let me rewrite the paragraph above:

There are so many quintessentially American things that few members of the Tea Party have experienced. They probably haven't ever attended a meeting of a Bar Association or bought food from a CSA, or lived in a neighborhood where they weren't part of the racial majority. They are unlikely to have used mass transportation (shuttle bus to the rental car lot doesn't count). They are unlikely to have taken a philosophy class (college or grad school does count). They are unlikely to have taught at a school where most of the kids had an income of less than twice the poverty line. They are unlikely to have a close friend who is a Jew or a Muslim or an atheist. They are unlikely to have worked on a trading floor or software design team or know what a derivative or Ruby on Rails is.

At the end of the day, America is a really big place, with room for many types of quintessentially or mainstream American experiences. I'm willing to grant Murray and the Tea Partiers that going to Branson, taking a cruise, joining Kiwanis and watching The Price is Right are authentically American, even though though these are things are niche activities undertaken by relatively small numbers of Americans.

I don't pretend to say that my experiences are like those of everyone else, or even most people, and I don't say that they're necessarily better, but I do think they're just as American, and I'm just as American, as Murray or the Tea Partiers.

*I will note that Murray has a point where scripted TV is concerned. I've never seen an episode of NCIS and have never heard anyone talk about it, and I only saw Two and a Half Men once on a plane (although, to be fair, it was a flight to Milwaukee so I think I should get some "real America" credit for it).

Harvest

I'm on vacation in the Sonoma Valley and did some wine tasting and vineyard touring yesterday. One of the interesting things we learned from the guide was that, depending on rain levels, an entire crop of grapes may have to be harvested in just one or two nights (yes, nights- for reasons having to do with keeping the grapes from getting crushed in the baskets, they're harvested at night when they're colder and firmer). And this wouldn't just be at one vineyard either, if it's early November and rain is on the forecast, the whole region needs to harvest at once. Also, the better wineries (basically anything that comes in a bottle as opposed to a box or jug) harvests by hand, which is really labor intensive.

I lay all this out to point out that this work would be impossible without migrant labor. Although growing grapes and making wine takes manpower, the workforce in Naps or Sonoma needs to grow exponentially at harvest time, which means that those workers need to have other work at other times of the year in other places, because you wouldn't want people justsitting around on unemployment for the whole non-harvest season. As American citizens have not shown much interest in itinerant agricultural labor, this job is being done by immigrants, mostly undocumented because the US doesn't give out nearly enough agricultural labor visas to bring in legal workers, and because migrant workers often move between the US and Mexico depending on the growing season. If people who want to conduct mass exportations were taken seriously we would it would destroy the wine industry (and probably most of our vegetable farming as well) in the US and basically put mistaken of the US citizens who live in central California out of work. Since nobody is going to let that happen, its best to remember that people advocating full deportation are not in fact to be taken seriously, and that we should look to some kind of real solution for regularizing the status of undocumented workers.

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An unnecessary provocation

A group opposing the Cordoba House just won permission from the New York MTA to place ads opposing the project on busses citywide.

The ads — which are scheduled to be printed and posted on city buses within ten days — feature an image of an “airplane headed toward the burning World Trade Center” next to a building that’s labeled as “WTC Mega Mosque” and the words “Why There?”

It's nice to know that those opposing the Cordoba House, who allegedly are worried that the mosque would be an "is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts." [sic (Palinese)] and inflame the grief of 9/11 survivors and families, think that those families are tough enough to see images of the burning world trade center drive by then on busses all day.

Test

I just got a new droid x and installed the mobile blogging software and I'm trying it out. Hopefully it will make it easier to post more frequently since I'll be able to post on the go.

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Justice

I have not yet read the whole of Judge Walker's decision in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, but the concluding paragraph is pretty powerful:

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. ...Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

One other critical point in this decision, is that Judge Walker, operating as the "finder of fact" (the role typically played by the jury in a jury trial) issued a finding fact on a number of critical issues. This is kind of inside-baseball legal stuff, but it's really important. A court of appeals, even the US Supreme Court, must defer to the facfinder with regard to facts from the trial. The appellate court can say that the facts aren't sufficient to support the judgment, but they can't quibble with the facts themselves.

Ambinder has a rundown of the facts here:

1. Marriage is and has been a civil matter, subject to religious intervention only when requested by the intervenors.

2. California, like every other state, doesn't require that couples wanting to marry be able to procreate.

3. Marriage as an institution has changed overtime; women were given equal status; interracial marriage was formally legalized; no-fault divorce made it easier to dissolve marriages.

4. California has eliminated marital obligations based on gender.

5. Same-sex love and intimacy "are well-documented in human history."

6. Sexual orientation is a fundamental characteristic of a human being.

7. Prop 8 proponents' "assertion that sexual orientation cannot be defined is contrary to the weight of the evidence."

8. There is no evidence that sexual orientation is chosen, nor than it can be changed.

9. California has no interest in reducing the number of gays and lesbians in its population.

10. "Same-sex couples are identical to opposite-sex couples in the characteristics relevant to the ability to form successful marital union."

11. "Marrying a person of the opposite sex is an unrealistic option for gay and lesbian individuals."

12. "Domestic partnerships lack the social meaning associated with marriage, and marriage is widely regarded as the definitive expression of love and commitment in the United States.The availability of domestic partnership does not provide gays and lesbians with a status equivalent to marriage because the cultural meaning of marriage and its associated benefits are intentionally withheld from same-sex couples in domestic partnerships."

13. "Permitting same-sex couples to marry will not affect the number of opposite-sex couples who marry, divorce, cohabit, have children outside of marriage or otherwise affect thestability of opposite-sex marriages."

Further costs of the "death panels" lie

Further to my earlier post on Atul Gawande's article about the fraught nature of end-of-life decisions and the importance of thinking and talking about them frankly and early... it turns out that Sarah Palin's death panels lie not only scotched the provision in the healthcare bill that would have reimbursed doctors for having these conversations with seniors, but it also leads a third of seniors to still believe that a "government panel" will make end of life decisions for them.

Beyond all the policy problems the death panels lie caused, the fact that people still believe it has the potential to cause all sorts of extra anxiety in the elderly who believe it. They may be less likely to talk to their doctors about end-of-life issues, or might seek to conceal symptoms to avoid being subject to the imaginary death panels.

I've said this before, but I think it continues to be important to point out that when people in power lie to make citizens afraid of the government, there are serious, serious consequences, almost none of which are borne by the liars or others in power. As a political "tactic," the death panels lie worked quite well for the right - it made it much harder to pass healthcare reform (and made the bill that passed less potent than it might ahve been), it clearly turned a number of voters away from Obama and the dems, but this comes at a cost - which may well be that some number of terminally ill people go untreated, or are incorrectly treated, or suffer much more anxiety and pain in their last months than would have happened if Palin and others had told the truth.

Glenn Beck's Gold Scam

If you follow Glenn's advice and buy gold from Goldline, you're getting so badly ripped off that gold would have to nearly triple in price just to make back your investment. The Big Picture explains here

As usual, Senators find "waste" in programs helping kids, no waste in defense

The New York Times reports that:

four senators this spring refused to approve a $425 million package of federal grants for the Boys & Girls Clubs of America after staff members looked at the organization’s tax forms as part of a routine vetting process and were surprised to learn that the organization paid its chief executive almost $1 million in 2008 — $510,774 in salary and bonus and $477,817 in retirement and other benefits.

The Senators, which include Republicans Chuck Grassley and Tom Coburn (the article doesn't list the other two), apparently are worried that federal dollars are footing the bill for the nonprofit's salary largesse. Of course, nobody seems to be concerned that the taxpayers are footing the bill when defense contractor Raytheon (where 90% of its income, or $22 billion, comes from government contracts) pays its CEO $15 million a year, or that Lockheed (70% of revenue, or about $35 billion, from government contracts) paid its CEO $24 million.

Of course, to members of a party that likes to mock things like nonprofits or community organizing, presumably any idiot can run an organization like the Boys & Girls clubs, which oversees 4,000 clubs with 50,000 employees and $1.4 billion in revenue. Of course "[a] nearly $1 million salary and benefit package for a nonprofit executive is not only questionable on its face but also raises questions about how the organization manages its finances in other areas", as Coburn said about the Boys & Girls club. But in real, old-fashioned "private industry" like defense contracting, it's important to have somebody who makes $24 million, or about 25 times what the Boys & Girls Club pays, running the show. You'd never have any question about how defense contractors "manage their finances," especially when Raytheon and Lockheed combined for over $9 million in lobbying congress in the second half of 2009 alone...

Lee not Custer

A heartbreaking, long, but incredibly important piece by Atul Gawande in the New Yorker (here) on how our current medical system excels at fighting disease but critically fails at helping terminal patients decide when to focus on improving the days they have left.

The simple view is that medicine exists to fight death and disease, and that is, of course, its most basic task. Death is the enemy. But the enemy has superior forces. Eventually, it wins. And, in a war that you cannot win, you don’t want a general who fights to the point of total annihilation. You don’t want Custer. You want Robert E. Lee, someone who knew how to fight for territory when he could and how to surrender when he couldn’t, someone who understood that the damage is greatest if all you do is fight to the bitter end.

More often, these days, medicine seems to supply neither Custers nor Lees. We are increasingly the generals who march the soldiers onward, saying all the while, “You let me know when you want to stop.” All-out treatment, we tell the terminally ill, is a train you can get off at any time—just say when. But for most patients and their families this is asking too much. They remain riven by doubt and fear and desperation; some are deluded by a fantasy of what medical science can achieve. But our responsibility, in medicine, is to deal with human beings as they are. People die only once. They have no experience to draw upon. They need doctors and nurses who are willing to have the hard discussions and say what they have seen, who will help people prepare for what is to come—and to escape a warehoused oblivion that few really want.

Gawande describes what doctors can do to help people through these decisions:

I spoke to an oncologist who told me about a twenty-nine-year-old patient she had recently cared for who had an inoperable brain tumor that continued to grow through second-line chemotherapy. The patient elected not to attempt any further chemotherapy, but getting to that decision required hours of discussion—for this was not the decision he had expected to make. First, the oncologist said, she had a discussion with him alone. They reviewed the story of how far he’d come, the options that remained. She was frank. She told him that in her entire career she had never seen third-line chemotherapy produce a significant response in his type of brain tumor. She had looked for experimental therapies, and none were truly promising. And, although she was willing to proceed with chemotherapy, she told him how much strength and time the treatment would take away from him and his family.

He did not shut down or rebel. His questions went on for an hour. He asked about this therapy and that therapy. And then, gradually, he began to ask about what would happen as the tumor got bigger, the symptoms he’d have, the ways they could try to control them, how the end might come.

The oncologist next met with the young man together with his family. That discussion didn’t go so well. He had a wife and small children, and at first his wife wasn’t ready to contemplate stopping chemo. But when the oncologist asked the patient to explain in his own words what they’d discussed, she understood. It was the same with his mother, who was a nurse. Meanwhile, his father sat quietly and said nothing the entire time.

A few days later, the patient returned to talk to the oncologist. “There should be something. There must be something,” he said. His father had shown him reports of cures on the Internet. He confided how badly his father was taking the news. No patient wants to cause his family pain. According to Block, about two-thirds of patients are willing to undergo therapies they don’t want if that is what their loved ones want.

The oncologist went to the father’s home to meet with him. He had a sheaf of possible trials and treatments printed from the Internet. She went through them all. She was willing to change her opinion, she told him. But either the treatments were for brain tumors that were very different from his son’s or else he didn’t qualify. None were going to be miraculous. She told the father that he needed to understand: time with his son was limited, and the young man was going to need his father’s help getting through it.

The oncologist noted wryly how much easier it would have been for her just to prescribe the chemotherapy. “But that meeting with the father was the turning point,” she said. The patient and the family opted for hospice. They had more than a month together before he died. Later, the father thanked the doctor. That last month, he said, the family simply focussed on being together, and it proved to be the most meaningful time they’d ever spent.

One point - the health care reform bill included funding in Medicare that would reimburse doctors for the time spent having these conversations with patients. This provision was tagged by the right as the infamous "death panels" and was taken out of the bill.

National Debt and Global Power

Economist Tyler Cowen, writing about the US national debt, makes the following point-

At some sufficiently high debt-gdp ratio, it becomes a foreign policy issue and a big one. Postwar UK had a high debt to gdp ratio, and to this day it is a fine place, but that debt meant the end of England as a world power, for better or worse. The U.S. for instance used financial issues to push England around and they basically had to give up on their overseas commitments. A very high debt ratio here would mean the end of the U.S. as a global world power, again even if gdp does OK. A global power needs the option of spending a lot more, quickly, without asking for anyone's permission. Your mileage on a U.S. retreat from the global policeman role will vary, but it's the elephant in the room which hardly anyone is talking about.

This is a really critical point that I'm very surprised national security conservatives aren't making (possibly because most "conservatives" don't actually care about the debt or deficit, only about cutting taxes). It is generally accepted that good credit - the ability to borrow money quickly at reasonable rates - has been historically the single most important factor for countries that want to project power. It was the basis behind the expansion of the British empire in the 1800s, and conversely was a key cause of the implosion of the French monarchy in the 1780s.

The reason is pretty straightforward- most countries tax/spend systems are generally inequilibrium - you take in roughly as much money through taxes, fees, tariffs, etc. as you regularly spend on general operations. However, foreign crises often require quick, heavy expenditures of money- oftentimes double or more the regular cost of running the state. It's not feasible to get that money through taxes - you can't just double the taxload on your citizens in a year and not expect disaster- even very patriotic people who are totally on-board for the war are going to be unable to part with doubled taxes without succumbing to financial catastrophe. Consequently, you have to be able to borrow.

Some of that borrowing can come from a state's own citizens through the sale of war bonds, which are just loans by citizens to the government. Even during World War II, the very peak of war bond sales in a very widely supported war, my back-of-the-envelope calculations indicate that the government's sale of $185 billion in war bonds covered less than half the cost of the war.

Consequently, the government will typically have to reach out to financial institutions and the general credit markets for loans necessary to fight wars, and credit market participants (particularly those in other countries) will not make loans that they think will not be paid back.

In the event of an attack on the country or similar event, I can imagine a surge of patriotism causing defense contractors to operate on IOUs, or soldiers to fight without paychecks, but that will not work over a long war, and will certainly not work for an unpopular war.

All of this is to make the point that, if a government has bad credit, even if it's a large, rich country, it is very difficult to project power. The US's status as a superpower is to some degree based on its navy, airforce, and sizeable standing army, which historically has been generally paid for out of regular revenues. However, the real American power is the threat that, if necessary, we can greatly increase our military spending to put more people in uniform, and more vehicles and weapons on the ground and in the air - as we did in Afghanistan and Iraq. Even now, with two ongoing conflicts, the US military numbers about 1.5 million troops. During World War II, we had 13 million in uniform. That kind of increase in scale would involve serious borrowing, which would not be viable if lenders didn't believe that the US would be able to pay back the loans - and a really high debt, like what's carried by, say, Greece, makes lenders very wary.

This is not to say that I support the deficit hawks' positions that we need to immediately freak out about the debt. The current national debt is only about half of US GDP - a far cry from the rates held by Italy, Greece, Japan, etc. However, it does have a couple repercussions-

1.) Americans, particularly those that care about the US remaining a global power, need to consider the effects of the national debt on our credible ability to borrow in the future to finance military operations.

2.) Given that much of our current military operations are funded by borrowing, which is adding to the debt, we need to think about military borrowing as a finite resource, like oil reserves, and we should weigh the value of adding to the debt to meet current foreign challenges against the need to have credit available for military operations in the future. Think of it this way - the national debt is kind of like a credit card with a limit - does it make sense to run up the card now on wars that aren't strictly necessary, when we might in the future need to use that card for something absolutely vital for our survival?

The GOP's Agenda - Stop, Repeal, Delay, Reject, Subpoena

Given current polling, there's a significant possibility that the Republicans will take over at least one house of congress (with the House much more likely than the senate). Today from leading conservative thinktank the Heritage Foundation, and conservative celebrity/congresswoman Michelle Bachman, we get an idea of what they might do if given the reins:

The Heritage Foundation has a new political action arm, which is urging conservatives to take action on the following issues (via Yglesias):

Take Action: Big-government global warming legislation will destroy jobs and weaken the American economy. Tell your Senators to reject any energy legislation that would harm the economy.

Take Action: Senators cannot fulfill their constitutional duty of “Advice and Consent” with incomplete information. Tell the Senators on the Judiciary Committee to delay a vote on Kagan’s confirmation until they have received and evaluated all the relevant documents.

Take Action Now: In June, Congressman Steve King of Iowa filed a petition that would force the U.S. House of Representatives to vote on repealing Obamacare. We must repeal Obamacare, now! Tell your Member of Congress to sign the petition to repeal Obamacare.

Take Action Now: Senators must know that America should not enter into a treaty that weakens our defensive capabilities and sovereignty. We need to stop the New START Treaty, now! Sign the petitionto make your voices heard.

Michelle Bachman, an actual member of congress who, via her hordes of followers (she actually raised more $ this past quarter than did Sarah Palin), lets slip what she thinks the GOP should do if they win the house:

“Oh, I think that’s all we should do,” Bachmann said. “I think that all we should do is issue subpoenas and have one hearing after another. And expose all the nonsense that is going on. And it’s very important when we come back that we have constitutional conservative leadership because the American people’s patience is about this big.”

Because of course, the main thing standing in between our current situation and a happy, prosperous US with a cleaned-up gulf and full employment is a lack of subpoenas and hearings.

The concrete benefits of the US - Israel relationship

I have periodically questioned, on this blog and in conversations, what kind of concrete benefits the US gets from its relationship with Israel. By concrete benefits I mean outside of those that stem from historic, cultural or religious similarities - ie, why is Israel the top recipient of US foreign aid, and why do we care more about their policy preferences than we do about those of similarly sized Western democratic nations like the Netherlands, Denmark, New Zealand, etc.?

That question has been sharpened in the past couple years, as the Netanyahu government has engaged in policies that are at times contrary to US interests and have also been at times openly hostile to other US allies like Turkey.

David Frum gives some good answers:

First, as the patron of the region’s pre-eminent military power, the United States gains leverage and status. Arab states that cooperate with the United States (e.g. Egypt) get what they want from Israel. Arab states that do not cooperate (e.g. Syria) do not get. The US can deploy Israel’s power to rescue other US clients from enemies (as the Israelis rescued King Hussein of Jordan from the PLO in 1970) or to accomplish strategic missions that the US would rather not dirty its own hands with (the destruction of nuclear facilities in Iraq and Syria, the assassination of terrorist leaders).

Second, Israel is a huge source of information to the US – and the most valuable live-fire test laboratory for US military equipment and doctrine. One of the decisive moments of the Cold War, for example, occurred during the skies over Lebanon in 1982. During the Yom Kippur war of 1973, only 9 years previous, Soviet ground-to-air missiles had wrought havoc upon Israeli aircraft. This time, Syria scrambled its air force to meet Israeli planes: 150 against 150, the largest air battle of the jet age. In just a few minutes, the Israelis downed 86 Syrian craft, suffering no casualties of their own. Microelectronics had triumphed in the test of battle. Soviet histories generally credit this event as the shock that jolted the Soviet elite into realizing that it must try some kind of “perestroika” of its ossifying economic system.

Third: the demonstration effect of the superiority of Western ways in interstate competition. Israel in 1950 had an income per capita not very much higher than that of neighboring Syria. Today, Israel has a GDP per capita comparable to that of most European countries, and higher than that of Saudi Arabia. It has sustained democracy under military onslaught. It is a science and technology leader. The Arab world may not like Israel, but its success sends a powerful “If you can’t beat them, join them” message. And of course part of “joining them” is emulating Israel’s close relationship with the United States.

I think the third is by far the most relevant (the second is not terribly important at the moment, as we have our own two hot wars in which to test our equipment). It's not a perfect argument though. Israel has a lower per capita GDP than the Gulf sheikdoms, and is not much higher than Saudi Arabia (although I would wager that the Israeli median per capita gdp is much higher than in those nations). In addition, as Turkey continues to grow as a regional power with rising incomes, as a muslim nation it will work as a much better model for countries in the region than will Israel.

Gingrich suggests the U.S. look to Saudi Arabia as a model of religious freedom

Following on Sarah Palin tweet that "peace loving Muslims" should "refudiate" plans to build a moderate mosque and cultural outreach center in lower Manhattan (not actually on the ground zero site, or even across the street, or frankly even viewable from ground zero) because of course Muslims = terrorists, perennial presidential wannabe Newt Gingrich has also voiced his opposition to this, and apparently all, mosques:

There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia. The time for double standards that allow Islamists to behave aggressively toward us while they demand our weakness and submission is over.

The reason that there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia is that Saudi Arabia is an Islamic absolute monarchy with no religious freedom. Gingrich here makes the serious logical error that the proper reaction to Saudi illiberality is illiberality of our own.

Gingrich's critical mistake, which is shared by Palin and many others, is his belief that the US is philosophically opposed to Islam, and not repression. To oppose Islam is to oppose millions of our own citizens and hundreds of millions of peace-loving people worldwide, many of whom have no problem with the U.S. It is also to turn our backs on the religious liberty that is a bedrock value of this country.

Thirty years ago, Gingrich's hero Ronald Reagan knew that the best way to fight the repression and illiberality of Soviet Russia was to highlight freedom and liberty in the United States, echoing the same strategy employed by FDR when fighting Nazi repression. It is time for Gingrinch, Palin and co. to realize that the best way to fight the lack of liberty elsewhere is to champion it here.

Back

Apologies to my readers for the lack of posts lately, I had a sort of crisis in confidence in blogging which I'll hopefully be able to articulate in a later post.

In the meantime, a great article by Jonathan Rausch that looks at family patterns in red states and blue states (like the fact that single-parent families, earlier pregnancies, rates of divorce, etc. are much higher in red states), and the implications for gay marriage.

Rausch, drawing on the work of other social scientists, theorizes that in red states, the moral tradition is that "families make adults." Thus, early marriages (often shotgun) and the addition of children are the crucible that form adults. Thus, the focus in red states is on having children within a marriage as main moral driver. This norm, however, creates some problems:

Moral traditionalism fails to prevent pre-marital sex and extra-marital childbirth. Demands for abstinence delay sexual activity, but not much, and often make early pregnancy more likely by reducing the use of contraception This increase in early pregnancy precipitates more early marriages, which are more likely to end in divorce. It also precipitates more unwed parenthood. Premature family formation, in turn, derails education and limits earning potential and increases stress on families. The resulting sense of social breakdown fuels more calls for moral traditionalism. More sex prompts more sermons and more emphasis on abstinence. The cycle repeats.

In blue states, the moral norm is reversed - adults form families, after having achieved their education and made some headway into careers, and the key moral driver is making responsible choices.

Mature adults form families to express and nurture commitment to each other and their children, and to share human capital which both partners have already amassed. Sex comes before marriage, and marriage comes before children, and indeed children need never come at all. The decisions to have sex, marry, and have children are thus distinct and separate. What counts is not the linkage but the timing (not too early, at least not without birth control!). The crucial moral requirement is not that the decisions be linked or made synchronously, but that they be made responsibly.

Rausch sees these differences in moral norms for relationships as a critical piece of determining where support or opposition to gay marriage lies:

In Blue World, gay couples fit the paradigm perfectly. They are responsible adults trying to live more stable, more responsible lives, and trying to improve the prospects of any children they may have. Who could ask for anything more?

In fact, in Blue World, marriage is incomplete if it excludes gay couples! Excluding them sends all the wrong signals about family and responsibility. It would make a hypocritical nonsense of what it is that marriage is supposed to be all about.

In Red World, things look very different. The Red project is to maintain the linkage between sex, marriage, and procreation. In Red World, de-linkage has wrought all kinds of social problems.
Same-sex marriage, in this view, is in some sense the ultimate symbolic assault on what is left of the unity of sex, marriage, and procreation.

It should be clear from my blog what side of this divide I'm on, but it's interesting to think about why so many people, particularly those who are not traditionally religious or homophobic bigots, feel threatened by gay marriage.

Rand Paul and Civil Rights

Earlier this week, GOP Senate nominee for Kentucky Rand Paul stated on Rachel Maddow's show that he does not support the 1964 Civil Rights Act because he doesn't believe that the government has the constitutional authority to tell businesses that they can't discriminate. Paul says he's not a racist, and I'll take him at his word, but Time magazine notes:

Paul has lately said he would not leave abortion to the states, he doesn't believe in legalizing drugs like marijuana and cocaine, he'd support federal drug laws, he'd vote to support Kentucky's coal interests and he'd be tough on national security.

So, according to Paul, the federal government has authority to nationally ban abortion, ban drugs (and support invasive police actions to deter drug use), and support local business interests, but does not have the power to tell businesses engaging in interstate commerce that they can't discriminate by race. Interesting to see where he draws his lines...

More on Miranda rights and terrorism

A friend writes regarding my post this past weekend on Miranda rights and terror suspects. My response is interwoven with his comments:

I disagree with your Miranda post.

As a preliminary matter, you vastly underestimate the degree to which injecting a lawyer into an interrogation changes its dynamics. First, a lawyer's first instruction to his or her client--even if the lawyer plans to advise the client to cooperate--is to stop talking. Generally, the lawyer will then sit down with the client, figure out how much information the client has, in order to then plan a negotiating/proffer session with prosecutors. This wastes valuable time, and it tends to make any proffered information less valuable. This is a critical point, and indeed there is already an exception to the Miranda rule for public safety.

Second, giving a lawyer to a suspect inherently changes the power dynamics of the situation. All of a sudden, the suspect feels less vulnerable, more powerful, and this perhaps makes him less likely to volunteer helpful information about other terrorists. This second point is part of what Miranda is supposed to prevent. But, in this type of situation, Miranda is over inclusive. Miranda's purpose, as you mention in your post, is to protect against coerced confessions. By completely changing the power dynamic of an interrogation, however, it not only tends to prevent inculpatory statements, it also prevents law enforcement from quickly obtaining information that might lead to the apprehension of other terrorists.

I think that this overstating the degree to which timeliness is critical in these cases. Sure, in some cases, we're going to want information immediately in the proverbial "ticking time bomb" situation, or to try to roll up a terrorist network before it gets wind of an arrest. We've already got the public safety exception to Miranda for that. Beyond those situations, I don't see a need for expanding the public safety exception for terrorists, because a decent attorney is also going to know that there's a limited shelf-life to the defendant's useful information, and push for quick disclosure lest the information become stale and worthless as a bargaining chip.

Unfortunately, over time Miranda has come to be perceived as a good in itself--a shibboleth of sorts. But remember that Miranda is only a prophylactic rule for judicial efficiency. Prior to Miranda, court's had too much difficultly determining whether a particular inculpatory statement was truly voluntary. So, for the sake of efficiency, the Supreme Court came up with Miranda: Unless a suspect is informed of his or her rights, courts will presume that the statement was coerced. Obviously, investigators can elicit information from suspects without the interrogation necessarily being coercive. Furthermore, even without the Miranda rule, courts would continue to engage in a case-by-case analysis of whether a particular inculpatory statement was truly voluntary or whether it was coerced.

Looking at my post, I see that I've made the mistake of conflating Miranda with the substantive underlying rights - which is something that I've criticized of others in the past. My point was not so much to idolize the Miranda warning itself, but to try to push back against erosions of the 5th and 6th amendment protections for defendants, which I think are the actual targets when people complain about Miranda. I've read that the Miranda warnings themselves have been empirically shown to not be terribly useful, because anybody who actually understands the underlying rights asks for those rights anyway ("I wanna see my lawyer"), and people who don't understand that they have a real right not to incriminate themselves or a right to ask for an attorney typically don't internalize those rights from the brief speech read off the back of a card from a cop's wallet. What is vitally important is that we not coerce confessions or inculpatory statements from the innocent. This is especially critical in terrorism cases, where an inadvertant or coerced (false) inculpatory statement can lead the suspect, particularly if he is not a citizen, into the legal netherworld of Gitmo, military tribunals, etc.

Therefore, you can see this being a win-win. On the one hand, investigators would be freed from having to read terror suspects their Miranda rights (thus eliminating the risk that the suspect will clam up, wasting valuable time), but, on the other hand, courts would continue making case-by-case determinations about the admissibility of particular inculpatory statements, protecting the terror suspect from improper coercive measures.

Finally, and most important perhaps, there's the political point. Unless us liberals can show that the criminal justice system is flexible enough to handle terror suspects and successfully (but not coercively) elicit information from them about other terrorists, we will continue to be beaten by the radicals, like Giuliani and Cheney, who want terror suspects--including American citizens--declared enemy combatants and water-boarded. So, ultimately, if the public safety exception to the Miranda rule needs to expanded (with legislative approval) in order to save the public's perception that the judicial system can handle terror suspects, I think that's the proper course.

I disagree with this. I think that the most important part for liberals to stand firm on is the empirically correct point that our existing institutions, when properly utilized, are in fact better at detecting, preventing, prosecuting and punishing terrorists than the militarization, torture and disregard for civil liberties advocated by the right. When we waver on this point, as Holder (and by extension Obama) seem to be doing by advocating a roll-back of Miranda, we give credence to the argument that the rule of law and the fight against global terrorism are incompatible.

Revising Miranda

I don't really understand the reasoning behind AG Holder's suggestion that there need to be exceptions to the Miranda regime for terror suspects:

“We’re now dealing with international terrorists,” he said, “and I think that we have to think about perhaps modifying the rules that interrogators have and somehow coming up with something that is flexible and is more consistent with the threat that we now face.”

Police investigating regular crimes (drug gangs, the mafia, etc.) and federal agents investigating terrorism are looking for the same two things when they question a suspect 1.) a confession that the suspect did it, and 2.) information about other people involved or other ongoing plots.

These two pieces of information have very different effects for a suspect who is in fact guilty. Giving the confession is bad for the suspect, because it will land him in prison. However, giving information about other plotters is good, because it can perhaps lead to immunity or a reduced sentence for cooperation.

Miranda rights also effect these two types of information differently - the right to remain silent comes out of the 5th amendment right to not have to incriminate yourself. If you know something about other bad guys (so long as your knowledge doens't incriminate you) you don't have any right to be silent as to that knowledge. The right to an attorney during questioning really just heightens the right to be silent - your attorney will probably tell you not to incriminate yourself, but will probably tell you to rat out your co-conspirators so that you can save yourself.

One conception of terrorists is that they're totally irrational (or at least totally disinterested in their own survival or wellbeing compared to their mission to kill/terrify Americans). If that's the case, then no amount of wheedling, deal-cutting, etc. is going to get information out of them, with or without a lawyer and with or without a reminder that they should remain silent. If this conception of terrorists is right, then Miranda rights are at worst pointless for real terrorists, and are important for the cases where an innocent person is suspected.

However, to the extent that some terrorists are self-interested, rational actors who might be interested in saving their own skin, Miranda is still not a problem from a national security standpoint. When Miranda applies, the suspect is already arrested. This means that he's neutralized for the time being, and even if for some reason he's cut loose, it's highly unlikely that any terror cell will take him back for fear that he's become an informant. This means that, for national security purposes, it doesn't really matter if the interrogators get a confession out of him or not - merely arresting him eliminates him for the foreseeable future as a terror threat. Consequently, if, because of Miranda, he doesn't incriminate himself, it's not really a national security loss.

Moreover, for this type of self-interested terrorist, having a lawyer present is going to help national security goals because the lawyer will advise the suspect to rat out his comrades in hope of getting some kind of leniency. Unlike the "mob lawyers", for example, there aren't (as far as I know) "terrorist lawyers" who have some kind of economic integration with Al Qaeda such that they would advise their clients to clam up for the good of the conspiracy. Most terror suspects are represented by legal aid or public defenders who don't have any kind of loyalty to al Qaeda's goals, and will just try to represent their client zealously, which, in criminal law, typically means finding a way to cut the best plea bargain possible with the prosecutors.

Summing it up, this means that in reality, Miranda rights are at worst a non-issue with terror suspects, and in some situations could speed along cooperation with investigators. Miranda is also critical when the suspect is innocent. So I don't really see any reason why they need to be changed, unless the real reason is something more sinister - the government wants to keep lawyers out of the process so that they can continue unsavory interrogation practices like torture and rendition that lawyers would (justifiably) fight.

Flag Football and Gender Discrimination

Apparently, in Florida, Flag Football has appeared as a competitive, varsity girl's highschool sport, with five thousand girls playing statewide on 75 teams. One would think that "women's sports experts" would applaud the fact that schools are providing another avenue for students to exercise and bridge one of the few remaining gender divides in sports.

Not so.

Various "experts" quoted in the Times article believe that flag football shouldn't count as a girl's sport under Title IX because there's no opportunity to play in college:

No one is saying flag football isn’t a great sport to play,” said Neena Chaudhry, the senior counsel at the National Women’s Law Center, which has brought several cases against high schools alleging violations of Title IX, the federal law mandating gender equity in education. “But I do think it’s relevant to ask questions about whether girls are getting the same kind of educational opportunities as boys.”

...

Ms. Hogshead-Makar, who also serves as the senior director for advocacy at the Women’s Sports Foundation, said girls missed the educational benefits if they did not take a sport seriously.

“That’s one of the things that makes sports such an important experience,” she said. “You’re always striving to get to that next rung.”

Ms. Hogshead-Makar said flag football’s time should be up. “We’ve had 10 years of girls who have not been given other sports opportunities,” she said.

This is ridiculous. High school sports aren't funded as part of some kind of NCAA farm league. An NCAA study found that only about 5-10% of high school athletes go on to play sports in college. The vast majority of high schoolers that play sports do it for the exercise, the cameraderie, and because they like the game - not because it's a path to a scholarship or because they're "striving to get to that next rung."

While it doesn't have a college level for elite athletes, there are tons of recreational flag and touch football leagues around the country. I play on one in New York, a co-ed league that has nearly 100 teams and sells out every season. That may not be of interest to sports experts, who are probably elite athletes (Hogshead-Makar is a 3 time Olympic medalist in swimming), but for the 90-95% of high school athletes who don't go on to play college sports, flag football is just as good as any other sport.

I understand the concern that schools might be trying to weasel out of the Title IX requirement that they spend money equally on boys and girls sports, but, judging by the article, Florida flag football seems to be a totally bona fide sport - they've got real teams, practices, coaches, statewide playoffs. The complaint here, that Florida doesn't have any varsity boys sports that don't have an NCAA equivalent, is pretty meaningless.

Trying to scuttle a popular program that has kids off the couch, exercising and learning skills that they can use in rec leagues and with their families for the rest of their lives in order to pick a fight about non-existent discrimination is worse than pointless because it undermines attempte to fight real discrimination.

An interesting idea

Bryan Caplan suggests separating prisoners (who are already separated by gender) into "weight classes" in order to minimize prison rape.

"Terrorist" vs. "Suspected Terrorist" continued

Building on the earlier post today, this kind of thing drives me nuts-

While complaining about Elena Kagan's decision to deny access to military JAG recruiters at Harvard Law School (because the military violates Harvard's anti-discrimination policy for employers), Ed Whelan of National Review Online says this:

At a time of war, in the face of the grand civilizational challenge that radical Islam poses, Kagan treated military recruiters worse than she treated the high-powered law firms that were donating their expensive legal services to anti-American terrorists.

No Ed, the lawyers donated their legal services to people suspected of being terrorists, not terrorists. That extra word "suspected" makes a big difference. The lawyers I know who have been involved with accused terrorists are doing it to make sure that the government proves that the suspects are in fact terrorists - and not people with the same name as a terrorist, or people who were picked up in a village in Afghanistan that a lot of other terrorists live in, or something like that.

It's easy to think that only actual terrorists get arrested, and that this problem only affects others, and they probably have it coming to them for being involved with terrorists... but that's often not the case.

When I was a senior in college, about 6 months after 9/11, I was coming back from a spring break trip to Italy. Going through passport control, the customs agent stopped me, and started asking a bunch of detailed questions. Apparently I passed, so he let me through. I asked him why I had gotten extra scrutiny, and he told me that apparently there was somebody with my name on a watch list. Now, I have a very anglo name, and I'm white, blonde and unsuspicious-looking enough that tourists regularly stop me for directions in NYC. I can't help thinking what my encounter would have been like at that time if I looked different, or had a different name, or didn't speak English, or was just flustered and couldn't explain myself well. That's why we need to give suspects rights, and lawyers to defend those rights.

"Terrorism Suspect" does not equal "Terrorist"

Joe Lieberman and Scott Brown are forging ahead with their "Terrorist Expatriation Act":

The Terrorist Expatriation Act, co-sponsored by Senators Joseph I. Lieberman, independent of Connecticut, and Scott Brown, Republican of Massachusetts, would allow the State Department to revoke the citizenship of people who provide support to terrorist groups like Al Qaeda or who attack the United States or its allies.

First thought - ok, this seems somewhat reasonable. You lose your citizenship if you join another country's army (except, oddly, the Israeli Defense Force) so it makes sense that you'd lose your citizenship if you've taken up arms against the US as part of a terrorist organization.

Then I read this part:

The lawmakers said at a news conference that revoking citizenship would block terrorism suspects from using American passports to re-enter the United States and make them eligible for prosecution before a military commission instead of a civilian court.

Whoah, big difference. Stripping citizenship from people who've been convicted in a court of law of aiding terrorists, ok, I can get behind that. But just suspects? Many many problems with that:

Who decides which suspects get their citizenship stripped? Is it anybody who's "suspected" of terrorism? What if Obama told the State Department that he suspected Scott Brown was a terrorist... is Brown's citizenship gone? This is ridiculously unconstitutional - people have due process rights precisely because we don't trust the executive branch (even if we like the guy currently occupying the office) to just be able to punish people on the basis of suspicion

We have repeatedly gotten the "wrong guys" in terrorism arrests. It's easy to get the right guy when you're arresting the underpants bomber on the plane, but it's a much different thing if you're going after supporters who weren't caught red-handed. For example, according to whitepages.com, there are 151 in New York City alone who share the name "Khalid Mohammed" with the 9/11 plotter. It would suck to be one of them and have gotten swept up by the police when intelligence chatter indicated that a Khalid Mohammed was involved... and then have your citizenship stripped because you're now a suspect.

Just this week, journalists mixed up the Facebook profiles of Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad with another Faisal Shahzad, focusing national attention on the innocent Faisal. This is another reason that, before the government takes harsh actions like removing somebody's citizenship, you have the full protection and inquiry of a trial to make sure that the government proves, beyond reasonable doubt, that suspect is in fact guilty of the crime charged.

This wouldn't even help terrorism prosecutions or intelligence collecting. If we've caught a terrorism suspect, he's locked up - he's not using an American passport to go anywhere. Moreover, even if a suspect's citizenship was stripped, the bill of rights generally applies to anybody in the US - citizen or not (that's why, for instance, even undocumented immigrants get provided a lawyer at trial - because the Constitution still applies to them). It's not at all clear that stripping citizenship would be anything more than a punitive measure.

In this country, we have due process for people suspected of comitting crimes because, now and again, the suspect is not in fact the person who committed the crime. Lieberman and Brown, and many other folks, in fear of terrorist attacks, are forgetting this - terrorism suspects are not always terrorists. The reason we have trials and such is to separate out the innocent from the actual terrorists.

Miranda "rights" for terror suspects

Following the attempted car-bombing in Times Square (a few blocks from where I work), despite the fact that law enforcement tracked down and arrested the guy within two days, and he's already confessed, you have the predictable overreacting freakout by the right.

As happened with the underpants bomber in December, the freakout has centered around what a terrible idea it was for the police to read the suspect a Miranda warning. John McCain said that "It would have been a serious mistake to have read the suspect in the attempted Times Square car bombing his Miranda rights" and Joe Lieberman is talking about getting around having to read the Miranda warning by stripping suspects of their citizenship and shipping them to Gitmo (which frankly is too insane for me to even discuss, but Matt Yglesias explains why it's ridiculous here).

Here's why this is unutterably stupid. When police read a suspect the Miranda warning, they are not conferring any rights on the suspect. All they are doing is advising the suspect that he has rights that are already conferred automatically by the constitution. The 5th amendment automatically provides a right to remain silent and not incriminate yourself. The 6th amendment automatically provides criminal suspects the right to have an attorney. It's not like a cop's statement that "you have the right to remain silent" magically creates that right, and that the right doesn't exist absent the statement.

Moreover, because anybody who's ever watched television has heard the Miranda warning, and knows about these rights, it's not like the police are going to somehow trick a terror suspect into giving up information if the suspect isn't told that he can remain silent. However, failing to give the Miranda warning before questioning a suspect does mean that information you get out of the suspect won't be admissable when prosecutors bring him to trial.

Really what this is about is not the Miranda warning at all, but a desire by certain folks to deny fundamental constitutional rights (like the right to counsel, or the right to remain silent, or the right to remain free of unreasonable searches and seizures) from anyone that gets labeled a "terrorist," even if that person hasn't been convicted yet, and even if the suspect is an American citizen.

This is why those same folks like to play games about who gets called a terrorist - underpants bomber and times square bomber are terrorists (because they're muslims) but the guy who flew his plane into the IRS building or the militia members who wanted to blow up cops with IEDs aren't terrorists - the label makes a difference if one group of attempted mass murderers get constitutional rights and the other doesn't.

The Tea Party's solution to gays in the military

Two GOP candidates for congress (Ron Kirkland and Randy Smith) explain at a tea party forum how they handled the issue when they were in the military:

Kirkland, a Vietnam veteran, said of his time in the military: “I can tell you if there were any homosexuals in that group, they were taken care of in ways I can’t describe to you.”

Smith, who served in the first Iraqi war, added: “I definitely wouldn’t want to share a shower with a homosexual. We took care of that kind of stuff, just like (Kirkland) said.”

Assuming that Kirkland and Smith are alluding to a "code red" kind of "taking care of them" (and not the way that a 15 year old would assume that they "took care of them," particularly after hearing Kirkland's follow-up comment - “Things don’t go well in military barracks when you have 50 guys sleeping on top of each other”), I think the voters in Tennessee should be directed to Article 93 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice which notes that "cruelty and maltreatment" is punishable by dishonorable discharge and a year at Ft. Leavenworth.

George Will thinks Hispanics are either illegals, dishwashers or gardeners

From Will's new column defending Arizona's draconian "demand papers from anybody who doesn't look like George Will" law:

Non-Hispanic Arizonans of all sorts live congenially with all sorts of persons of Hispanic descent. These include some whose ancestors got to Arizona before statehood -- some even before it was a territory. They were in America before most Americans' ancestors arrived. Arizonans should not be judged disdainfully and from a distance by people whose closest contacts with Hispanics are with fine men and women who trim their lawns and put plates in front of them at restaurants, not with illegal immigrants passing through their back yards at 3 a.m.

Today's random foreign blogging

Just a thought, but with Greek debt being downgraded today to "junk" status, maybe it would make sense for them to cut their military spending. Greece right now has 177,000 active duty soldiers (4.2% of its population, or more than triple the per capita numbers for the US). Greece also spends 4.3% of its GDP on its military - 25th in the world, and ahead of the US, and way higher than other European countries. Germany, Czech Republic, Belarus, Albania, Denmark, Belgium, Spain, etc. are all at around 1.5% of GDP or less.

Greece's GDP in 2009 was $356 billion, so adjusting their military spending to be more in line with similarly situated European countries would save them about $11 billion a year - something that would probably make the bond markets (and the EU) pretty happy. The communists lost and Turkey is part of NATO, so there's not really any reason to bankrupt your country with military expenditures when you can just freeride off the US like everybody else in Europe.

Does "last hired first fired" really protect teachers?

Today's Times has an article on efforts by NYC Schools Chancellor Klein's efforts to remove seniority protections for teachers, and end "last hired, first fired." I have a lot of sympathy for this effort. While there are a lot of great senior teachers (my dad for instance, who put in consistent effort over 30 years teaching elementary school), I'm not sure that seniority is a great predictor for excellence, or that it makes sense to do layoffs by seniority alone.

For example, my mother-in-law was by all accounts a phenomenal elementary school teacher, who took over a decade off in the middle of her career to raise her kids. When she came back, despite having a ton of experience (and caring more about her students than anyone I've ever met), she was perenially on the chopping block at her school because she didn't have any seniority.

During my time teaching in LA, there were some great senior teachers, and there were some who were just phoning it in to collect a paycheck. There were some amazing junior teachers, and some who were in over their heads. Again, it doesn't make sense to me that, if layoffs have to happen, the lousy senior teachers should be protected and the great junior teachers should be dumped.

In defense of seniority, the article states that:

Unions argue that administrators want to do away with seniority protections so they can get rid of older teachers, who are more expensive. They say that without seniority safeguards, principals could act on personal grudges, and that while keeping the best teachers is a laudable goal, no one has figured out an accurate way to determine who those teachers are.

This doesn't make much sense to me. Administrators want to keep good teachers, but probably also want to maximize their budgets. If senior teachers are good, I can't imagine administrators wanting to get rid of them just because they're expensive. On the other hand, if you have two equally lousy teachers - a junior teacher making $40,000 and a senior teacher making $65,000 - it seems like pretty good policy to toss the pricier bad teacher.

I also don't understand the argument that seniority safeguards are necessary to prevent principals from acting on personal grudges. This argument gets made all the time with regard to tenure, and I don't think it's any more applicable there. Most people work in jobs where there's no seniority protection or tenure. I don't have any tenure or seniority protection as a lawyer, neither do cashiers at Wal Mart, bankers at Goldman, or most other non-government employees. However, most people I know don't spend a lot of time worrying that we'll get fired because of a boss's personal grudge. Moreover, I don't understand how seniority protection protects anyone (other than senior teachers) from grudges - does that mean that it's ok to fire junior teachers over a grudge?

I have the same problem with the "we don't know how to evaluate good teachers" argument. If you walk into any job or office in this country, I can guarantee that the boss will be able to give you a general idea of who her good employees are and who the not-so-good ones are, and could tell you who the company should keep and who they should let go if there were layoffs. Heck, when I was a teacher I could have told you who the good teachers and bad teachers were at my school.

As a caveat, I'll note that the Times puts these arguments into the mouth of generic "unions," without quoting a person or even a specific union, so I'm a little skeptical. Readers who are currently teaching - do you think that these are legitimate reasons to keep seniority - or are they just more ways that the senior teachers (who run the unions) keep their jobs and perks at the expense of the new guys?

Department of terrible policy

There has to be some way for the government to not let this happen:

Mostly, though, Wall Street is making money by taking advantage of its rock-bottom cost of capital, provided courtesy of the Federal Reserve — now that the big Wall Street firms are all bank holding companies — and then turning around and lending it at much higher rates.

The easiest and most profitable risk-adjusted trade available for the banks is to borrow billions from the Fed — at a cost of around half a percentage point — and then to lend the money back to the U.S. Treasury at yields of around 3 percent, or higher, a moment later. The imbedded profit — of some 2.5 percentage points — is an outright and ongoing gift from American taxpayers to Wall Street.

Stop poxing both houses

This kind of "pox on both your houses" thing drives me nuts:

Independents and Democrats at the Cocoa Beach Pier on Wednesday were more welcoming. They said an outsider candidacy by Mr. Crist might give Floridians a way to protest partisan politics. “People are upset with the whole system, and we need more than two parties,” said David Steranko, 39, a registered independent and Internet marketer of vacation packages. “I would really like to see our government stop bickering so much and work on our problems more.”

Look, what people are arguing about within the government is how to go about solving our problems. The endless debate on healthcare reform? That was because Democrats had a proposal to solve the problem of lots of Americans being uninsured, and Republicans thought that the Democrats' plan either wouldn't solve that problem, or would make other problems, like the deficit worse, or were playing for partisan advantage. With financial reform, Democrats perceive a problem (periodic crashes of the economy brought on by Wall Street shenanigans), and are trying to correct it with a financial reform bill. Republicans are fighting the bill, because they either think that it won't solve the problem, or because they'd like to hand Dems a loss. With both of these situations, Democrats (and some Republicans) are actively trying to solve problems - but lots of Republicans are gumming up the works to score political points.

Imagine that, at Mr. Steranko's internet vacation marketing company, he saw that there was a problem (too few people buying vacations), and he had a solution to it, but somebody else at the company spent months blocking his solution because they want Steranko to fail so they could have his job. I don't think that he would say that the right thing to do would be to fire Steranko and his antagonist, and bring in somebody else, because "there was too much bickering, and a third party should just solve the problem."

Question time

Looking back over this site's traffic for the past couple months, it's pretty clear that some of the most popular posts have been where I've answered questions that readers have about complicated things happening in the political world.

A lot of what passes for news about politics really lacks any explanation of the issues - the writers are more interested in talking about the controversy than explaining what the healthcare reform law, or the financial regulation bill, would actually do.

To that end, I want to encourage you to send me questions - you can email me at cnyexpat@gmail.com, post as comments to the blog, or leave them as wall posts on the cnyexpat facebook fan page. I'll do my best to answer anything you send, or at least find a writer out there who's got a good answer. I won't promise to be non-partisan, but I will try my best to be fair and intellectually honest.

If you send in a question, I won't use your name, but I may post all or part of your question to give context to the answer. Please let me know if you'd rather I not do that.

Financial Regulation is not "an endless series of bailouts"

The GOP (primarily Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell) has been making the ridiculous argument that Chris Dodd's financial regulation bill will lead to "endless bailouts" of the banking industry. A couple things should lead you to believe that this is not the case.

1) The financial industry is fighting tooth and nail against the bill. Banks like being bailed out, and they particularly like it if there's a guarantee of bailouts, because it makes it much cheaper for them to borrow money (because if there's a federal guarantee that the banks won't go under, it makes loaning to them less risky, and thus they get a lower interest rate). Since the entire business model for banks like Goldman and Merrill Lynch is to borrow tons of money, and then invest it, lowering their borrowing cost with a bailout guarantee would be like the government subsidizing the cost of planes for an airline. Just as an airline would not fight those subsidies, banks would not fight a law that guaranteed bailouts.

2) Banks are pouring money into the coffers of Republicans who are fighting the bill. They would not do this if the bill guaranteed bailouts (see above).

3) The alleged $50 billion "bailout fund" is, under the bill, actually a liquidation fund that would be used to wind down failing banks, not bail them out. Ezra Klein explains:

Here's how the liquidation fund works: A year after the bill is signed, the secretary of the Treasury begins taxing banks based on the risk they pose to the financial system. This tax must raise $50 billion and last for at least five years but no more than 10 years. So first, that's where the fund comes from: a tax on too-big-to-fail banks, which has the added bonus of giving a slight advantage to smaller banks that won't be laboring under this tax.

When it comes to saving failing banks, $50 billion isn't a lot of money. Think of the $700 billion TARP fund. Or even look at the House bill, which has a $150 billion resolution fund. But then, the $50 billion isn't there to save banks. It's there to liquidate them.

Here's the chain of events: A bank is judged failing. The FDIC submits a plan for the bank's liquidation -- which includes firing management, wiping out shareholders, handing losses to creditors, and selling off the firm -- and gets it approved by the Treasury secretary. Then the FDIC takes over the banks. The $50 billion fund is used to keep the lights on while all this happens. It's there to prevent taxpayers from having to foot the bill for the chaos that will occur between when we recognize a bank is failing and when we shut it down.

Whatever you want to call this, it isn't a bailout. It's the death of the company. And the fund is way of forcing too-big-to-fail banks to pay for the execution.

Unfortunately, the Republican leadership in congress has been making a lot of headway confusing voters on this issue, so it looks like the Administration may cave and drop the liquidation fund. Dropping the liquidation fund (which would be raised by taxing banks) is Wall Street's preferred position, and that's what Republicans are pushing.

The myth that half of Americans don't pay any taxes

Ahh, April 15th, the best day of the year for well-off people to complain about how many taxes they pay and how nobody else is paying them. This year, the Center for Tax Policy has obliged by providing a study stating that 47% of Americans pay no income tax. That number has given rise to a great deal of indignant commentary, like this from CNN's Scott Hodge:

If "taxes are the price we pay for civilized society," to quote Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., then April 15 is the day that bill comes due for every working American. But that is no longer the case for a growing class of Americans for whom the price of civilized society has been reduced to zero because the tax code's generous credits and deductions completely erase their income tax liability. And for many of these nonpayers, civilized society actually pays them a hefty refund, which is not much different from a welfare check except that it's run through the tax code instead of through the Department of Health and Human Services.

Although the study appears on its face to be correct, the reactions to it miss a really critical point - there are lots of taxes beyond the income tax! Income tax gets the most press, because for well-off people, it's their biggest tax. However, for many lower income people (those who are singled out as free-riders because they don't pay income tax, they give a significant part of their income to the government.

As an example, using the tax calculator at http://www.payroll-taxes.com/calculators.htm, I looked at income and payroll taxes for a person making $25k a year, $50k a year and $100k (without taking into account any deductions):

• A person making $25k a year will pay about $2030 in income tax and $1950 in payroll taxes.
• A person making $50k a year will pay $6800 in income tax but only $3800 in payroll tax.
• A person making $100k a year will pay about $20,000 in income tax but only $7600 in payroll tax (27% of salary).

So payroll taxes are a much bigger deal vis a vis income tax for lower income folks - and those taxes never get refunded back.

Additionally, people with lower incomes pay a substantially higher percentage of their income in sales tax than higher income people. That's because they typically need to spend everything they make, and all that spending gets taxed. If you make enough where you're able to save a substantial portion of you're income, you're not being taxed on it.

So remember, if you hear somebody saying that half of Americans don't pay taxes, it's simply not true. Everybody pays payroll taxes, and everybody pays sales tax (and most people who own their homes pay property taxes) - and these apply regardless of income level, and are typically paid by the poor and working class as a higher percentage of their income than upper and middle income people pay.

Best example of the New York attitude about being in terrorists' cross-hairs

NY Magazine reports that New York subways were targets of a coordinated terrorist attack broken up by law enforcement:

Zazi and his two Queens friends allegedly planned to strap explosives to their bodies and split up, heading for the Grand Central and Times Square stations - the two busiest subway stations in New York City.

They would board trains on the 1, 2, 3 and 6 lines at rush hour and planned to position themselves in the middle of the packed trains to ensure the maximum carnage when they blew themselves up, sources said.

NYMag.com commenter JA2009 writes in response: Our law enforcement is getting the job done. The odds that you'll be the victim of a terrorist attack are lower than the odds that you'll die in a car accident. Don't be pussies. Besides, with our MTA how the hell can these guys plan a "coordinated" attack?

A deft combination of belief in law enforcement, derision of those afraid of terrorists, and gallows humor at the expense of non-NYPD municipal services. This attitude, which I think is pretty widespread among New Yorkers, is precisely why we would be happy to have the KSM trial here.

More on Confederate Heritage Month

The Times ran an interesting editorial today on the selective memory of neo-Confederates:

If neo-Confederates are interested in history, let’s talk history. Since Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Confederate symbols have tended to be more about white resistance to black advances than about commemoration. In the 1880s and 1890s, after fighting Reconstruction with terrorism and after the Supreme Court struck down the 1875 Civil Rights Act, states began to legalize segregation. For white supremacists, iconography of the “Lost Cause” was central to their fight; Mississippi even grafted the Confederate battle emblem onto its state flag.

But after the Supreme Court allowed segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson in 1896, Jim Crow was basically secure. There was less need to rally the troops, and Confederate imagery became associated with the most extreme of the extreme: the Ku Klux Klan.

In the aftermath of World War II, however, the rebel flag and other Confederate symbolism resurfaced as the civil rights movement spread. In 1948, supporters of Strom Thurmond’s pro-segregation Dixiecrat ticket waved the battle flag at campaign stops.

Then came the school-integration rulings of the 1950s. Georgia changed its flag to include the battle emblem in 1956, and South Carolina hoisted the colors over its Capitol in 1962 as part of its centennial celebrations of the war.

As the sesquicentennial of Fort Sumter approaches in 2011, the enduring problem for neo-Confederates endures: anyone who seeks an Edenic Southern past in which the war was principally about states’ rights and not slavery is searching in vain, for the Confederacy and slavery are inextricably and forever linked.

That has not, however, stopped Lost Causers who supported Mr. McDonnell’s proclamation from trying to recast the war in more respectable terms. They would like what Lincoln called our “fiery trial” to be seen in a political, not a moral, light. If the slaves are erased from the picture, then what took place between Sumter and Appomattox is not about the fate of human chattel, or a battle between good and evil. It is, instead, more of an ancestral skirmish in the Reagan revolution, a contest between big and small government.

Matt Yglesias adds:

I would note that apart from contemporary racial issues, something that links the mentality of today’s right to the mentality of the slaveowners and segregation proponents is the white southern political tradition’s very partial and selective embrace of majoritarian democracy. As long as national institutions are substantially controlled by white southerners, the white south is a hotbed of patriotism. But as soon as an non-southern political coalition manages to win an election—as we saw in 1860 and in 2008—then suddenly the symbols of national authority become symbols of tyranny and the constitution is construed as granting conservative areas all kinds of alleged abilities to opt out of national political decisions. Even if you think opposition to the Affordable Care Act has nothing whatsoever to do with race, the underlying political philosophy by which a George W Bush or James Buchanan is a national president but an Abraham Lincoln or a Barack Obama merely a sectional one remains incoherent and pernicious.

"The Dark Knight" as political allegory

As we're coming up on the summer blockbuster season (and it's a Friday afternoon), here are three differing and very interesting views of last summer's "The Dark Knight" as an allegory for the war on terror:

Ian Keegan (here) sees shades of hard-core Zarqawi's rise to power within al Qaeda in the Joker's takeover of Gotham's gangs, and notes the Joker's use of the cheap tools of asymetric warfare. He also notes that:

the real value of Dark Knight regarding the discussion of terrorism, in my opinion, is in its depiction of the effects of terror. As viewers we are placed in the shoes of a populace targeted by a successful terrorism campaign. We see innocent people being attacked and killed, while the police and the Batman are unable to make any progress towards stopping the source of the violence. And even though we are experienced movie-goers who know that in the end the forces of good will prevail, the movie is so well made that we are forced to consider the possibility that the Joker cannot be stopped. How we act, threatened by a seemingly unstoppable terrorist threat?

Spencer Ackerman (here) doesn't buy it:

This misses the point about The Dark Knight in important ways. Batman prevails. He prevails by perverting justice in a very serious way: through blanket surveillance over everyone in Gotham and, inevitably, by stopping Harvey Dent. In a caped-crusader version of Michael Walzer’s “clean hands” argument, he essentially makes a martyr of himself to Gotham by agreeing to do something he knows very well is wrong and accepts that his ultimately-Pyrrhic victory must include Gotham believing him to be the villain. Remember when Alfred says that he stopped the Burmese bandit by burning down the village? That’s how you know good won’t prevail. (And how you know it’s more Sassaman than McMaster.) The Dark Knight, for all its virtues and for all its flaws, is a movie that embraces The Dark Side, however agonized it is about that decision.

Adam Serwer (here) disagrees, and thinks that "The Dark Knight" does in fact work as a liberal critique of Bush-era war on terror tactics:

But of course the point of The Dark Knight is that people can resist such transformations, that they don't have to become monsters to survive. The Joker knows Batman isn't a monster, not really, but he tries to make him one by making him break his One Rule: Batman doesn't kill. You could argue that such things as Hong Kong scene "support" rendition, but this is a comic book movie, and heroes have to do cool things. Within the context of the Batman narrative, the only rule that matters is the One Rule. Moreover, we're given a cautionary tale in the form of Harvey Dent in what happens when government officials start to believe that rules no longer matter.