Madison and Romney

At the risk of giving it more attention than it deserves, I want to go back to Mitt Romney's remarks about "47%" of the people being unwilling to vote for him. Part of the problem with these remarks is that, as Rich Lowry points out, they confuse three distinct groups.

Lowry goes on the characterize the remarks as a bad idea poorly stated. To the extent that Romney was suggesting that people who pay no income tax will not vote for him, he's wrong.

Nor would it be fair to say that everyone who does not pay income tax or receives governmental assistance does not take personal responsibility for themselves.

But given that Romney doesn't call for raising taxes on low income people or abolishing social welfare programs, I don't think he meant to say that. I think he was trying to stay - in a cobbed up way - that there are voters that he has no chance to win over and that a substantial reason for that is that they benefti from and do not pay for an ever increasing web of entitlements. Because of this, they have little interest in controlling the growth of the social welfare state. This, I think he meant to say, is a bad thing.

And that was a good point poorly stated.

Having large percentages of the public who don’t pay taxes and receive government aid is probably not healthy for democracy. As Madison wrote in Federalist No. 10, permitting a majority to exact money from a minority is a dangerous thing:

“The apportionment of taxes on the various descriptions of property is an act which seems to require the most exact impartiality; yet there is, perhaps, no legislative act in which greater opportunity and temptation are given to a predominant party to trample on the rules of justice. Every shilling with which they overburden the inferior number, is a shilling saved to their own pockets.”

This doesn’t mean that there ought not be a social safety net or provision of public services. No one who followed Romney’s record in Massachusetts or the positions that he has taken in the campaign can make the case that he disagrees (even if they want more government than he does.) Madison’s observation does suggest that there is a “tipping point” – a stage at which the disconnect between the receipt of benefits and the obligation to pay towards them becomes problematic.

 

Cross posted at Purple Wisconsin

Clueless in Seattle

I have been watching the NFL for a long time. The first game I can remember was between the Packers and the Los Angeles Rams in November of 1965. I've been hooked ever since.

I have never seen anything like last night.

It's not just that there was a spectacularly bad blown call at the end of the game. That happens. It was not even that there was a series of blown calls - all of which were necessary to put the Packers in a position to lose that game. I've seen that.

It's not even that these replacement officials are spectacularly incompetent. It is becoming quite clear that officiating an NFL game is a very difficult thing to do.

The thing about last night is the clinging stupidity on display. It is the utterly brain dead obstinence.

The refusal to reverse the call was extraordinary. I don't see how any sentient human being with a basic understanding of the rules of the game could watch the replay and fail to understand what had really happened.  It is as if the referee, not satisfied with being incompetent, doubled down and went for feckless.

For this, the replacements can be cut no slack. I can understand why they were unable to officiate the game properly. I cannot understand they lacked the courage to clean up their mess.

But the obstinence that is most stunning may be that of Roger Goodell and the NFL owners. This was not some one-off, incredibly bad performance by the officials. It is the culmination of three weeks of games being spoiled because they are being officiated by people who are not up to the task.

I get the thinking. The NFL believes, with reason, that it is so popular that its fans will tolerate an adulterated product for as long as it takes to resolve its dispute with the referees.

I wouldn't be so sure.

It is, as I said, not unheard of for a game to be decided by a bad call. It is rare that an officiating mistake is as gobsmackingly wrong as this one, but that is a matter of degree and not kind. What may catch up to the league is that this appears to be happening as a result of a deliberate decision by league management. It’s hard not to think that the NFL is being penny wise and pound foolish.


Cross posted at www.sharkandshepherd.blogspot.com

Politics and 9-11-12

I often read things that seem to beg for a response only to find that I just can't get to it - maybe for several days and maybe not at all.
James Causey's column in last Sunday's Journal Sentinel had a passage that I found to be stunning. In a column on why, in his view, we are better off than we were four years ago, he wrote:

He ended the war in Iraq. He brought thousands of troops home. He killed the No. 1 terrorist in the world. He restored America's standing with its long-term allies in Europe.

To channel Joe Biden, this literally made me stop reading. It struck me last Sunday as wildly implausible to suggest that the country is more secure and the world is a safer place than it was four years thanks to the leadership of President Obama.
The war in Iraq ended because it's military objectives were achieved. They were achieved largely because President Bush (belatedly) adopted a "surge" strategy that Senator Obama had opposed. You can't claim credit for what you did not do and would not have done.
The fact that the US military finally caugnht up with Osama bin Laden when Barack Obama was in office was undoubtedly an act of justice. But his richly deserved demise was hardy a significant victory in the war on terror. Bin Laden had long ago been driven to irrelevancy.
To say that we are "respected" is another way of saying that we have moved toward a very different view of America's role in the world - one that deemphasizes assertiveness and exceptionalism and emphasizes multilateralism and acceptance of a greater degree of limitation on American power.
Had I written on Sunday, I would have questioned whether this is a good thing and emphasized the simultaneous - and related - deterioration in our relationship with Israel and Iran's nascent emergence as an pre-modern fundamentalist state with nuclear weapons. The President has fomented the former and doesn't seem to have much of an answer for the latter.
I might have written about the dangers - as well as the hopes -  presented by the Arab Spring.
Today, the events of 9-11-12 would seem to further undermine the notion that the Obama Presidency has improved our lot in the Middle East or rolled back the threat posed by radical Islamicist movements - movements which, I hasten to add, should not be confused with Islam in general.
Indeed, the astonishing events in Libya, Egypt and elsewhere seem to be precisely the things that happen when our willingness to step back is seen as feckless by those who understand strength and not reason.
This is not to say that the President doesn't "care" about what happened or that he really "supports" Islamicist objectives. He does care and he doesn't support the goals of terrorist organizations. But it does fairly raise questions about how this threat is best resisted. It does prompt a debate about how American interests are best protected.
The argument about whether the statement condemning the obscure video that supposedly "set off" these protests was released before or after the Embassy in Cairo was actually besieged is beside the point. The larger question is whether the struggle against fundamentalist Islamicists can be won by failing to robustly acknowledge the values of western society. On that, the statement - which was clearly issued in anticipation of violence - struck the wrong note.
People have a right to do and say offensive things. Freedom of expression is one of the pillars on which our society is built and falling over ourselves to condemn an offensive movie that hardly anyone has seen is not the right message to send. (It is also fundamentally different from the Bush administration's response to the Danish cartoons.)
Beyond that, these attacks have nothing to do with this silly little movie. They were premeditated and coordinated acts of aggression that used the video as a pretext. Now is not the time to say that we "understand" the irrational or to suggest that we will work with the Libyan and Eygptian governments in the same way that a crime victim works with law enforcement.
What happened this week is intolerable and the unqualified message should be that it will not be tolerated.
What's happening in Iran is intolerable and it is fair to ask whether we should have a more robust plan to end it.
As Iran goes nuclear and our embassies are besieged, it is fair to ask whether the President might not find time to meet with our most important ally in the Middle East? It is fair tp wonder whether this was the time for another Las Vegas fundraiser.
The answer to those questions may depend on just what we want America's role in the world to be.The answer to that one may help us decide whether, in this area, we are better off than we were four years ago.

Cross posted at Purple Wisconsin.

The "recovery" should have been stronger

In his speech at the Democratic National Convention, Bill Clinton - in that hectoring, finger wagging way of his ("listen to me") - told us that no President could have "fixed" the economy in one term.

Why, not even he could have done it.

History suggests he's wrong. We have a relatively recent example of a strong recovery from a very deep recession in one Presidential term. There may well have been at least one President who could have "fixed" this in four years.

Ronald Reagan.

The economic downturn of 1981-1982 may not have been quite as bad as that of 2007-2009 (although by some measures it was worse), but it was very deep. Unemployment reached 11%. The recovery was far more - and I mean far more - robust than what we have seen during the past three years. The growth rate was over twice what it has been over the past three years and the percentage of persons participating in the labor force rose sharply. Since the downturn of 2008-09, it has remained flat. In other words, measured by the percentage of people working, there has been no recovery at all.

But there's more. It turns out that the central premise of the Clinton/Obama defense of the administration's poor economic record may he ahistorical and wrong.

The story is told graphically by Stanford economist John Taylor in a "chartcast" produced with George Mason economist Russ Roberts (who is also a research fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institute). The central point being made by the Democrats is that the recovery has been so weak because the recession was so deep. The worse things get, they say, the more slowly they get better.

Taylor and Roberts show that this is not necesssarily so. It is simply not true that deep economic downturns are followed by slower recoveries.

In fact, just the opposite seems to be the case. Taylor and Roberts point out that the deeper the recession, the stronger the recovery may be. They refer to Nobel laureate Milton Friedman's  "plucking" model for the business cycle. Friedman used a guitar string as a metaphor. The harder you pull on it, the harder it reverberates and "bounces back."

There is some practical wisdom behind this. A deeper downturn will result in lower inventories, more deferred consumption, heavier reductions in employment such that, when a recovery begins, there is far more upside.

Of course, we can think of reasons why a recovery may not proceed in this way. Indeed, it would be overly simplistic to suggest that a hard fall is always going to be followed by a rapid rise. The point is that Clinton's argment - while superficially logical - may not hold water. Taylor and Roberts show, American recoveries often proceed in a very different way and, in our more recent years, milder recessions have been followed by milder recoveries.

There are two implications for the President's re-election bid. First, this illustrates the weakness of the Presidents'  "well, I stopped the recession" argument. Recessions end quite apart from governmental intervention. In fact, they tend to create the conditions for their own end. Inventories get drawn done and need to be replaced. Work forces can be reduced no more. While I suppose things could get worse in perpetuity, that tends not to be what happens.

So the real questions are, not whether there has been a recovery, but what kind of recovery it has been and how have the administration's policies helped or hindered it. The answer to the first question is easy.  The recovery of the past several years has been the worst of the post war era.

The answer to the second question will be a matter of dispute but we can say this. The President has spent an awful lot of money and left the country in materially worsened fiscal shape. We have little to show for it. To say "well, it could have been worse" and "no one could have done better' is unfalsifiable. It is also implausible.

Second, Taylor and Roberts blow apart the "it's not my fault" theme on which the President is running for relectioon. When Bill Clinton says that even he could not have done better and that "no President" could have, he's - at best - half right.  The so-called "Clinton recovery" actually began when George H.W. Bush was still in office. As I blogged last week, much of what Clinton did right - spending restraint and the absence of grandiose policies - was forced on him by a GOP Congress. He didn't have the votes to do otherwise. As a result, the policies that were actually implemented were nothing like what President Obama wants to do. It may well be that "even he" could not have done better.

But someone else might have. The deep recession of 1981-1982 was followed by an extremely robust recovery.

The President, as I said before, was Ronald Reagan.

Cross posted at Purple Wisconsin

Barack Obama is no Bill Clinton

Tonight at the Democratic Convention is, as I understand it, Bill Clinton Night. Despite persistent reports that the two men are not much enamored of each other, former President Clinton has decided to go Full Bubba in support of President Obama's re-election. That's not surprising. I rather doubt that Mitt Romney is a personal favorite of Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum either. Parties pull together.

The Clintonian move is to claim that Obama is doing - or will do - the same things that Clinton did. These things supposedly led to a strong economy in the mid to late 90s – at least until the tech bubble burst. We've seen the commercials in which Clinton argues that we need to adhere to some unspecified Obama policies that are supposedly just like his own.

Details are not provided.So I guess we'll have to figure it out.  Let's pull up some Nirvana from Paul Ryan's playlist and review federal economic policies in the 90s.

Tax rates were a little higher and, to be sure, President Obama says he wants to return to Clinton era rates for high earners.  But actually, as Michael Tanner of the Cato Institute points out, Obama wants these rates to be significantly higher - about a point higher on ordinary income and a staggering 40% higher on investment income. 

Is that the answer? We know that these rates won't put a ding in the federal deficit.They may, in an economy as weak as ours, be counterproductive. That's about the range of possibility - meaningless to harmful.

In fact, after Clinton raised taxes in 1993, he cut them in 1997. Not only did he cut them - he cut them on rich people. He reduced the capital gains rate by almost 50%. Revenues rose sharply.
So - no - that's not the Clinton magic that Obama has or will or might bring back.
We did have balanced budgets back in the 90s. These were largely a product of the "peace dividend" following the end of the Cold War, the tech boom and, note this carefully, divided government. But maybe it is the Clinton record of fiscal restraint that our current President has sought to emulate - or might seek to emulate - or is thinking about.

No, that's not it either. If there is anything that we can be sure that President Obama is about - it's a larger federal government that does more things. Clinton said that the era of Big Government is over. For our current President, it's just getting started.

As Tanner points out, during the Clinton years, the federal govenment spent an average of 19.8% of GDP. During Obama's Presidency, it's been 24.4%. While government spending as a percentage of GDP will tend to be higher during a poor economy, the President's proposed budgets - his "plan" - never brings it below 22%. On this issue, Paul Ryan may be closer to Clinton than Obama.

Maybe it's the relative position of the middle class. Maybe Clinton's Presidency brought about greater income equality. Although it's a complicated picture, the "decline of the middle class" story has been oversold. The average American family is much better off today than it was 30 years ago. But we have seen a long term increase in the share of income going to the very wealthy. I question how much government policy has to do with it, but, whatever the cause, rising inequality was a fact of life during the Clinton years In fact, by one commonly used measure, inequality - as measured by income - went up during the Clinton years and not during the George W. Bush presidency. 

Of course, you can slice the numbers any which way to get the result you want. And, as I have written before, I don't think one can assume that the state of the economy is caused by Presidential policies. The point is that we can't point to anything in the Clinton administration and say “this is what we need to do now.” And, to the extent, that we could - say fiscal restraint - the current President is not on board.

There is one huge similarity between Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. After putting both in office, voters came down with a violent case of buyer's remorse and swept Democrats out of Congress in the off year election.

Ironically, it is that similarity that shows how different they are. Clinton's response was to make the best of it and move to the right. He declared the Era of Big Government to be over and signed welfare reform into law. Growth in federal spending was, at least, tempered. He even flirted with entitlement reform and the partial privatization of social security - an effort that fell apart when he was caught perjuring himself in the Lewinsky affair. Again, Bill Clinton even cut taxes on rich people.

It may well be that Clinton did not want to do any of this. I suspect he didn't. But it's what happened.

Obama's response is almost the polar opposite. After his own massive losses, he has doubled down on his commitment to traditional liberalism. In a number of areas - emission regulation, immigration policy, labor policy - he has attempted to do administratively what he cannot do legislatively. Indeed, he has attempted to substantially modify - I'd say abandon - the core of Clinton's signal legislative accomplishment, the work requirements embedded in welfare reform.

For President Obama, the era of big government it not over. It's on hold.

Cross posted at Purple Wisconsin

Ryan did not "lie" about Janesville GM plant

The argument that Paul Ryan "lied' or "misrepresented" the closing of the Janesville GM plant is not even colorable.

Here is what the President said:
 

"And I believe that if our government is there to support you, and give you the assistance you need to re-tool and make this transition, that this plant will be here for another hundred years. The question is not whether a clean energy economy is in our future, it’s where it will thrive. I want it to thrive right here in the United States of America; right here in Wisconsin; and that’s the future I’ll fight for as your president." (emphasis supplied.)

Here is what Ryan said:

"My home state voted for President Obama. When he talked about change, many people liked the sound of it, especially in Janesville, where we were about to lose a major factory.
"A lot of guys I went to high school with worked at that GM plant. Right there at that plant, candidate Obama said: 'I believe that if our government is there to support you … this plant will be here for another hundred years.' That’s what he said in 2008. Well, as it turned out, that plant didn’t last another year. It is locked up and empty to this day. And that’s how it is in so many towns today, where the recovery that was promised is nowhere in sight." (emphasis supplied.)

Let's make a few observations that seem to have eluded Ryan's critics.

First, Ryan does not "characterize" or "insinuate" anything about what the President said. He quoted him.


Second, while Ryan did not say that this constituted a "promise" to keep the plant open, the workers in Janesville might have reasonably understood it that way. The clear implication of Obama's words is that he would bring the government's resources to bear to retool plants like Janesville and that this would keep such plants - including this particular one - open.

Ryan's critics want to argue that the workers should have understand a jesuitical distinction. The President, they argue, only said that "if the government provided resources to the plant, then it would be open for a hundred years.'" He never said that he actually would do what he said he could do.

It was just a law professor's hypothetical, you see, an academic discussion with a group of people about to lost their jobs. Obama was saying that "we can help you" but bot that "you can expect that we will."

If that's what candidate Obama meant, then he is the one who misrepresented his intentions and mislead the Janesville workers. To suggest that Obama did not intend to imply anything about the Janesville plant beggars reality. That he has now been hoisted on his own petard is a product of his own doing.

But let's give him the benefit of what seems to be a rather infinitesimal doubt. Ryan did not say that Obama "promised" to keep the plant open, but only that he told voters that the resources of government could be used to keep plants like Janesville and keep them open. In Ryan's view (and he's got the numbers), that hasn't happened. The President has not brought those resources to bear or, if he has, it hasn't worked. The Janesville plant is closed as are many similarly situated plants across the country.

But what about the fact that this plant closure was announced before Obama took office? That is not relevant to Ryan's critique. Obama was arguing that government could retool plants and keep them operational. That didn't happen.

Beyond that, this criticism of Ryan's remarks is cynical and deceptive. Obama knew - everyone knew - the the Janesville plant was on the chopping block. That's why Obama made his remarks. If he thought it was too late to save this plant and keep it open for "a hundred years," why say anything at all?

The plant closed in April 2009. When that happened and for 18 months thereafter, the President of the United States, not only had strong majorities in the Congress. Not only that,  the federal govenment run by the President, also soon came to own a controlling interest in GM. Couldn't the government have retooled the shuttered plant that it now owned as the candidate told the people of Janesville it could do?

Maybe not. Maybe it is unreasonable to think that the President should have worried about a GM plant in little Janesville, Wisconsin or recall the hope he tried to give its embattled workers. After all, someone who is causing the waters to recede and the sick to heal can't be bothered with the pedestrian problems of a small town in Wisconsin.

But even if you believe that, it doesn't undercut Ryan's argument. It was fair for him to use Janesville as a metaphor for a promise that unequivocally was made (the President did promise - many time and in many places - that he could use government resources to turn the economy around) and not kept.

Of course, you can argue that the President ought to be excused from the consequences of presiding over the weakest recovery in the post-WWII era. You can join him in what seems to be the theme of his campaign: It's not my fault, America. You can even believe that the only problem with the President's policies is that we haven't had enough of them.

But the fact that you disagree with the implications of Ryan's remarks - theat the President's policies have failed - doesn't make them false.

Cross posted at Purple Wisconsin.

It's Wisconsin's world, the rest of you just live in it.

Wisconsin continues to be the “it” state of American politics.

Vice presidential candidates don’t normally have much impact on a ticket. It is generally more important to select someone who will not hurt the ticket than it is possible to select someone who can help it.  

I may be turned by Badger pride, but this time may be different.

If so, it won’t be so much be because of Ryan himself (although I think he’ll be a hit). It will be because of what his selection says about the campaign that Romney intends to run and how Ryan will help him run it.

Like him or not, Paul Ryan is one of the more serious politicians in America. People my age – and I am not young – have known for our entire adult life that an entitlement crack-up was on the way. Ryan has been one of the few national leaders who have taken that issue seriously and offered proposals to address it. He is one of the only politicians to have articulated a vision of limited government and an America that remains a place where government serves, rather than manages, its population. More fundamentally, he is willing to make the numbers of that vision – what the government takes in and sends out - add up.

He has been, frankly, an adult among children. He has repeatedly demonstrated, as he said this morning, “the courage to tell you the truth.” The fact that he has risen to prominence is one of the more encouraging things about the current political environment.

So it speaks well of Romney that he has selected Ryan. It tells us that he does not simply expect the voters to reject President Obama’s re-election, but to make a case for another view of our national government – one that recognizes that you do, in fact, “build it” and the government’s job is to create the conditions under which you can do so – and not to build it for you.

Ryan will not only help Romney make that case, but is an embodiment of Romney’s willingness to make it. This is a momentous selection.

Cross posted at Purple Wisconsin.

A tragic Sunday

Last week, my wife and I had to go to one of those awful funerals. Funerals are never a good thing, but when someone dies too early or in a way that defies the uneasy accommodations we make with our own mortality, you don't know what to say or to do. I am not going to say more to respect the privacy of the family, but it was a bad one. A very good person taken too soon.

I have come to the view - schooled by loved ones who have experienced things far worse than I ever have or, please God, will ever have to - is that the worst thing that you can do is try to explain or look for "the bright side." The best thing you can do - and it is so frustrating - is to say that I am sorry and I will help you in any way that I can.

Early yesterday afternoon, I left the birthday party of one on my grandsons. Llittle Caleb Richard Esenberg turned 4 on Saturday and it was just another of those nice little milestones on a beautiful Sunday. Then I turned on the radio.

I can't think of anything to say to the families of those who have been lost and wounded other than that we are sorry and to ask how we can help. I can't think to offer any more than that suggested by my Purple Wisconsin colleague, Jim Rowen, “prayers for the victims and the community."

No more. But no less,

Cross posted at Purple Wisconsin.

President Obama stumbles

Back when he was a Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama said that ““I was a constitutional law professor, which means unlike the current president I actually respect the Constitution.”

Fair enough, but I think he missed an opportunity to show that respect.

You may be familiar with the story. A number of big city mayors, including the Mayor of Chicago, former Obama aide Rahm Emmanuel, have suggested that they would place legal obstacles in the way of Chick fil-A’s entry into or expansion in their cities. The stated reason is the opposition of the restaurant chain's President, Don Cary, to same sex marriage.

State action aimed at a business because of its speech or that of its owners or officers would be – and there is really no question about this – blatantly unconstitutional. Numerous legal commentators on the left and right – as well as the American Civil Liberties Union – have pointed that out.

But not our Constitutional Law Professor in Chief.

Why not? It can’t be because he doesn’t have time to get involved in local controversies. He found ample time, for example, to inject himself (inaccurately and inappropriately in the view of many) into the arrest of Henry Louis Gates and the shooting of Trayvon Martin.  It shouldn't be because he opposes Mr. Cary's views on same sex marriage and human sexuality (Chick fil-A has apparently contributed to an organization that seeks to modify same sex orientation.) First amendment rights aren't lost because we disagree with the views expressed by those who exercise them.

This could have been the occasion for Barack Obama to have his first ever Sister Soulja moment – a chance to stand for principle against the excesses of his base.

But I guess not. 

Cross posted at Purple Wisconsin.

Climate convert remains in sin

One of the things that has frustrated me about the debate over global warming is the extent to which it has taken on the aspects of a religious dispute. This is reflected in the common formulation of the question. "Do you believe in global warming?" It has manifested itself in the outrageously dishonest conduct of some of the leading scientific proponents of warming.

And, if you do believe, it appears that you must accept the entire catechism. Global warming exists and proceeds from Man. It is a sin that threatens our existence and requires expiation through the renunciation of fossil fuels and the human flourishing that these have made possible.

And therein lies the problem. One can admit the theoretical possibility that greenhouse emissions could raise average temperatures. There seems to be a sound scientific basis for supposing this to be possible although determining whether it has happened -  given the complexity of the issue and the relative recency of direct temperature measurements - seems very difficult.

But let's put that aside. One can acknowledge the likelihood that man-made global warming has occurred and may continue to occur. Many scientists have so concluded althought there are significant dissenters.

But even that conclusion does not bring us to the Inconvenient World of world of Al Gore. (Actually, its been quite convenient for him.) Doomsday scenarios do not automatically follow from a "belief in" global warming.

Let's use a recent example from this very website. My Purple Wisconsin Jim Rowen wrote a post about a former warming skeptic, William Muller, who has come, praise Gaia, to believe. Dr. Muller came to the altar in a recent column in the New York Times.

In fact, Jim tells us, Muller, with all the fervor of a convert, believes the UN "hadn't raised the climate change alarm loud enough."

That's true in a limited sense. Muller claims to have found a stronger correlation between atmospheric carbon dioxide and less evidence for the contribution of solar activity than a 2007 report by the  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

But,  in an another sense, it's not true at all. Alas, Dr. Muller persists in heresy. He continues to question, writing that "[t]hese facts don’t prove causality and they shouldn’t end skepticism" although they do raise the bar for alternative explanations.

More significantly, Dr. Muller continues to deny fundamental doctrine. Here is how he concluded his piece:

It’s a scientist’s duty to be properly skeptical. I still find that much, if not most, of what is attributed to climate change is speculative, exaggerated or just plain wrong. I’ve analyzed some of the most alarmist claims, and my skepticism about them hasn’t changed.

Hurricane Katrina cannot be attributed to global warming. The number of hurricanes hitting the United States has been going down, not up; likewise for intense tornadoes. Polar bears aren’t dying from receding ice, and the Himalayan glaciers aren’t going to melt by 2035. And it’s possible that we are currently no warmer than we were a thousand years ago, during the “Medieval Warm Period” or “Medieval Optimum,” an interval of warm conditions known from historical records and indirect evidence like tree rings. And the recent warm spell in the United States happens to be more than offset by cooling elsewhere in the world, so its link to “global” warming is weaker than tenuous.(Emphasis supplied.)

Just so you know. I guess Gaia is not through with Dr. Muller.

Cross posted at Purple Wisconsin.

A customer is not providing a subsidy

In today's paper, Dan Bice reports that Obama critic Ken Dragotta has obtained government contracts. I suppose that some will believe that this is ironic or revealing.
Sorry. I can't see it. 

Here's the story. Dragotta has been publicly critical of President Obama's now infamous "you didn't build that" speech. Dragotta seems to believe that he and his colleagues - and not the federal government - built his business, Systems Engineering and Automation Corporation.
But, it turns out, that Dragotta's company has gotten contracts to provide machine parts for the Department of Defense. Hasn't he benefited from government largess? Isn't he a hypocrite?
No, he hasn't. No, he isn't. At least not because he got some government contracts.

The import of the President's remarks - no matter how you read them - is that people benefit from government and that this somehow obligates them to the state and gives it a form of "claim" on their success.

On one level, this is, as others have pointed out, banal and uncontroversial. No one disputes that there are goods and services - national defense would be one - that are best provided by the government. It is well and meet that people pay taxes to pay for them.

If that is all the President meant, his comments are completely irrelevant to any issue in the Presidential campaign. No one is calling for the abolition of government or the elimination of taxes. Paul Ryan's budget, for example, does no more than seek to return federal spending to a level that is more in keeping with its recent historical average.

The reason that the remarks have drawn fire is that - even when taken in context and given a forgiving reading - they do three things. First, they express disdain for success in business, mocking those who believe that their success came from working hard or being smart. Second, they misunderstand the role that public goods play in individual success. We all go to school and use roads. We don't all build thriving businesses. Finally, they suggest that someone who builds a successful business got something that he or she didn't "pay for" and, therefore, owes the state something - something even more than his or her share of the costs of roads, schools and other public goods. In other words, the claim of the state is open ended and limited only be the sufferance of the majority.

Whether that the last contention is true, government contracts are certainly not an example of government larges. Mr. Dragotta' business presumably received those contracts because he offered the best deal on the parts that the military required. He got those contracts because he earned them.
I have purchased an iPod, iPhone and iPad. I download music from iTunes. But I didn't build Apple and Apple doesn't owe me anything. I did it no favors. I paid for products that I thought were worth the price.

As did the Department of Defense when it purchased parts from Systems Engineering and Automation Corporation.
If Mr. Dragotta was arguing that the government ought not to exist or that it shouldn't build the submarines for which his parts are required, he's have some explaining to do. But, as far as I know, that was not his point. The fact that he was able to provide a product that the government wanted at a price it was willing to pay does not mean that the government "built" or has a claim on his business anymore than Apple owes me some free stock.

Cross posted at Purple Wisconsin.

In favor of saving taxpayer's money

In last Sunday's Crossroads section, Steve Walters wrote an article about decreases in state and local employment. I was struck by the following statement attributed to Laura Dresser, a labor economist with _ I'm sorry but its true - a left wing think tank embedded in the University of Wisconsin. (As always, I say this by way of description. Knowing that a speaker has a perspective doesn't meant that we ought to dismiss what they say.)

Asked about the impact of losing 18,800 government jobs in Wisconsin, Dresser said, "That's shrinking the economy."

Really?

What struck me is the use of the transitive verb, i.e., the notion that by reducing government employment we have "shrunk" the economy from some state that it would otherwise have occupied.

That could be true but  doesn't determining whether it is so require knowing a lot more than government employment levels?

Here's the problem. The state is not like the federal government. It can't borrow money from China to finance current operations. While politicians have gotten good at accounting tricks that balance the day of reckoning, it must balance the budget. Whatever level of employment it maintains must be paid for. Paying for government jobs requires - you guessed it - taking money out of other parts of the state economy - in this case, from taxpayers.

Now, that might be a good thing to do. It might even lead to economic growth. The efficient provision of needed roads, education, fire protection, etc. can be essential to a healthy economy. There are even people who might argue that, under certain circumstances (not all), public employees would spend more money than taxpayers and this will boost economic demand. (Count me as skeptical about the how often this is true and whether we can even know when it is true or have the state "manage" demand in this way.)

But to simply say that reducing government employment and allowing taxpayers to keep the money that would have gone to pay them 'shrinks" the economy strikes me as wrong. As I have written before, saving the taxpayers money is not a bad thing.

Cross posted at Purple Wisconsin.

So it begins

At about 5 this morning, my wife told me about the Colorado shootings. (She gets up earlier.) She told me of reports, perhaps unconfirmed, that the gunman shot a three month old baby. I really don't have the vocabulary to describe how horrible this is.
But eventually it dawned on me. Someone is going to try to make political hay out of this.
Sure enough, ABC News' Brian Ross rushed to the forefront reporting that someone with the shooter's name seemed to be a member of the Colorado Tea Party. Although the network admitted that it did not know if if the tea party member was the same guy arrested for the shooting, George Stephanopoulos gasped. This, he said, may be "significant."
Turns out that the report was incorrect. Ross and ABC News have retracted the suggestion and apologized.  Bbut here's the thing. Whether James Holmes turns out to be a right wing psychopath, a left wing psychopath or an apolitical psychopath doesn't matter. The operative term is psychopath. How he chose to justify his murderous impulse is of no great moment. The rationalizations serve the impulse; they don't create it.
I appreciate the Grey Pomposities of the Commentariat may not choose to understand that. But it doesn't matter if he's a tea partier or a member of the Occupy movement. Someone does not decide to gun down a theater of people because they hear intemperate rhetoric - something, incidentally, that seems to be spread among all political groupings. A violent nut does not reason from false premises to the conclusion that he should murder a bunch of people.

Reason has nothing to do with it. The kind of pathology that leads to mass murder has deeper roots. The environmental movement doesn't own the Unabomber. The political right is not responsible for Timothy McVeigh. The left isn't to blame for Charlie Manson or Lee Harvey Oswald
I could go on. It wouldn't matter if - as appears not to be the case - the shooter was an illegal immigrant. While it's too early to know for sure,  the incident probably tells us little about, on the one hand, gun control or, on the other,  concealed carry in public places. It is a tragic event, but it's not a political event.

Cross posted at Purple Wisconsin.

Bound for nothin'

Over at National Review Online, Lee Habeeb reflects on the centennial of folk singer Woody Guthrie. Woody, alas, was something of a  communist who performed and his signature song, This Land is Your Land, was intended as a diatribe against private property. Guthrie wrote it as a response to Irving Berlin's God Bless America. Woody, apparently unable to endorse its sentiment, was enraged by Berlins' anthem.

History's verdict appears to be with Berlin. I can't recall singing "This Land is Your Land, during a seventh inning stretch.

Habeeb writes about a verse of the song - often omitted although I have heard it a number of times - that is a direct attack on property rights.

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me,
A great big sign there said, “private property”;
But on the back side, it didn’t say nothin’;
That side was made for you and me.

Pete Seeger - who has sung that verse for years - croaked it out with Bruce Springsteen at President Obama's inauguration. But that simply reinforces the notion that history has been unkind to Woody.
Today's tribunal of the proletariat, the aforementioned Boss, has a net worth of $ 200 million. You can be sure that the signs around his estate down the Jersey shore or 200 acre farm don't "say nothin'."

Whatever frisson the Boss got by singing Truth to Power apparently doesn't extend to off stage life. Woody's socialism has become something of a period piece - trotted out as nostalgia by people who couldn't imagine having to live by it. To quote the prophet, Bono, "don't believe in riches, but you should see where I live."

Of course, as recent history tells us, even discredited ideas can come back. This Land is Your Land  is a catchy little sing along. It's animating philosophy is not a tune we can dance to.

No, actually, we spend quite a bit on schools

One of my guilty pleasures is Sunday evening on my deck with a glass of wine and the New York Times. I don't agree with everything I read (that's the point) but sometimes there is a truly astonishing statement.

For example, there was this piece by Shamus Kahn, a sociology professor at Columbia. In the course of arguing against the notion of meritocracy, he writes the following:

The narrative of openness and talent obscures the bitter truth of the American experience. Talents are costly to develop, and we refuse to socialize these costs. 

Dude, really?

He means more than the cost of education (more on that later), but he  means that as well. The notion that we "underfund" education is a staple of the Amreican left. But it is hard to square with the facts.

The US is at or near the top of the developed world in per capita spending on education. Even as a percentage of GDP, we are at or above the OECD average. (Needless to say, we don't achieve results commensurate with our investment.)

What we spend has been steadily increasing. Relying on government sources, the Heritage Foundation reports that:

Between 1994 and 2004, average per-pupil expenditures in American public schools have increased by 23.5 percent (adjusted for inflation). Between 1984 and 2004, real expenditures per pupil increased by 49 percent.[11] These increases follow the historical trend of ever-increasing real per-student expenditures in the nation's public schools. In fact, the per-pupil expenditures in 1970-1971 ($4,060) were less than half of per-pupil expenditures in 2005-2006 ($9,266) after adjusting for inflation.[12

Again, increased spending has not resulted in increased learning.


We appear to socialize the bejesus out of "these costs." Kahn, perhaps hedging against the truth, goes on to say that the development of human potential requires more than a well-supported school. One needs a "a safe, comfortable home and leisure time to cultivate the self."

Apparently, we must socialize everything.

Cross posted at Purple Wisconsin.

The Obama economy?

One of the most maddening things in our political discourse is the indeterminacy of macro-economic arguments, i.e., the nature and extent of government policy on the economy. One of the dumbest things we do is to assume that the President (or a Governor) has the ability to control - and, therefore, to "run" the economy.

This doesn't mean that public policy doesn't affect the economy, only that the impact is more attenuated and confounded than we think.

So what are we to make of this chart, posted by Harvard economist Greg Manikw, showing labor force participation?

One thing we can say is that there seems to be little support for the notion that Bush era tax cuts tanked the economy. The onset of the recession seems to have been well after they went into effect and, in fact, the years following their implementation were marked by rising employment. Maybe you can argue that the recession was the result of cumulative deficits caused by lower tax rates and increased spending (Bush 43 was a spender), but you'd need to find your support elsewhere.

But conservatives and liberals will read the chart differently with respect to Obama administration policies. Conservatives - and I admit this is my view - will find evidence that Obaman stimuli didn't work. The recovery has been historically anemic and it looks like Obama spent huge sums of money for shovel ready projects that did not exist and stimuli that did not stimulate.

Defenders of the President can take two approaches. The first is to say that it stopped the decline. The chart provides some superficial evidence for that but there are at least two problems. One is that it would be necessary to know how much of the 2009 stimulus package was spent in that year - before the decline abated. The other is that downturns inevitably bottom out. The administration did not expect the package to stabilize employment but to increase it. That did not happen to any material degree.

The second ploy is to criticize the President from the left - an attack that is unlikely to drive voters into the arms of Romney. On this view, the problem is that the stimulus - as humongous as it was - needed to be larger. The only problem with what didn't work is that we needed more of it.

If both of these arguments seem like matters of faith - susceptible of neither proof or disproof - it's because they are. Both seem implausible to me but I don't think I could prove them to be wrong.

What I do know is that - fairly or not - this is a tough record on which to run for re-election. If Obama is re-elected, it will be historic. Presidents tend not to be re-elected with numbers that look like this.

Cross posted at Purple Wisconsin

ObamaCare - it whirls - it twirls - it hops - or not.

I was intrigued by Guy Boulton's article on what appear to be wildly conflicting characterizations of what ObamaCare "will do." He reports on various explanations for this, including claims by some that the administration has "failed to sell" the plan and others who blame our contentious political environment.

The argument that "we just haven't explained things well" is a time-honored dodge in American politics. It is almost always wrong. The number of speeches given by the President in support of the new law is exceeded only by the number of rounds of golf he has played. He's selling. The public is not buying.

It is certainly true that our political environment is fraught with contention, although I'm less certain that this is anymore true today than it has been at many times in our history.
I'd suggest that one of the reasons that we can't agree on what ObamaCare "does" is because no one really knows.


The Affordable Health Care Act is - and I date myself here - a Rube Goldberg machine on steroids. For those of you who are unfamiliar with him, Goldberg was a cartoonist who drew far fetched and complicated devices that would accomplish simple things - say peeling a potato - in convoluted ways.

ObamaCare is an enormously complex contraption built on a series of assumptions and deferred decisions. It assumes that one can force insurance companies to cover everyone at a price largely unrelated to the risk presented by an insured -  if only everyone would buy insurance. It presumes that everyone will buy insurance if only we can impose a penalty - no, a tax - that is not as high as the policy will cost. It gambles that more employers will provide health insurance and that the cost of a health insurance policy can be lowered if only we mandate that polices must cover more with less cost sharing and if only we can penalize - er, tax - employers who fail to provide these more expensive policies - again, at a level that is less than the cost of purchasing the policies.

It asks us to assume that Medicare costs can be reduced by appointing a panel of experts who will "do stuff" that won't involve rationing care. What is that stuff? No one knows.

As Mona Charen recently wrote, ObamaCare is a 2700 page law that creates  "159 new boards and commissions; more than $500 billion in new taxes (and counting); the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a rationing board whose decisions are unreviewable by the courts and practically untouchable by Congress itself; restrictions on religious liberty; Medicare cuts; affirmative-action mandates for medical and dental schools; huge new authority over one-seventh of the U.S. economy for the secretary of health and human services, and open-ended regulations of the way doctors and others perform their jobs."

In her book, The Truth About Obama Care, Sally Pipes writes that the Affordable Health Care Act contains "a dizzying array of rapidly moving parts. Some whirl clockwise, others twirl counter-clockwise and even more leap up and down like pogo sticks." Putting aside how we might attribute which movement to which provision, the point is that the law contains numerous provisions that could prove disastrous if they don't go together "just so" and others designed to do contradictory things that it is hoped will come out "just right."


But it's worse than that. Writing in the Claremont Review of Books, Charles Kesler writes that Nancy Pelosi's infamous statement that we must "pass the bill, so that we know what is in the bill" is a misnomer. Reading the bill tells you precious little about what will actually be done.Most of that is left to subsequent rule making.


And it gets even worse. The Affordable Health Care Act was passed in 2010. Almost all of its provisions were designed not to go into effect until after the President runs for re-election this year - in 2012.
When does that ever happen? Here we have what we are told is the biggest and bestest reform ever. It is so good that we better not let the public experience its many blessings until after President Obama is safely re-elected.

Why do you suppose that is? Here's a hint. It wasn't because the Obama administration thought that a more rapid implementation of ObamaCare goodness would make the 2012 campaign too easy. It isn't because they wanted to give the Republicans a break so as to make the election more "sporting."

In light of all this, is it any wonder no one can agree on what ObamaCare "will do?"

Cross posted at sharkandshepherd.blogspot.com.

Recusal and the individual Justice.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court is in the news again, splitting evenly in its review of an order by Justice Michael Gableman declining to recuse himself in a case in which a law firm (but not the individual lawyers) which represented him in a disciplinary proceeding represented one of the parties. He also declined to recuse in another case in which his individual lawyer was involved but which arose well after the representation concluded.
In both cases, the argument for recusal was based, at least in part, on the fact that the firm provided its services on a contingency basis. It did not charge Justice Gableman and could be paid only if it prevailed and was awarded fees pursuant to a seldom used fee shifting statute. It is likely that the fee award would have required legislative approval.

So what did the Court split over? I think its fair to say that the division was over one serious issue - albeit one that was resolved prior to this case - and one that is not as serious.

Let's start with the latter first. In cases such as this, an individual Justice must  decide whether he  believes that he can decide the case impartially. Everyone agrees that the full Court can review that determination for the limited purpose of determining that it happened, i.e., that the Justice involved  considered the issues and decided he could proceed. In this review, however, the full Court does not "second guess" the Justice, i.e., it does not decide whether or not his decision was right, only that it was made.


Three Justices decided that Justice Gableman did so. The other three said, essentially, that they could not tell. With all due respect, their argument isn't very persuasive. It rests on the following.

The motion to recuse Justice Gableman was based, as I wrote, on the nature of his fee arrangement with the firm representing him. In his order denying the motion to recuse, Justice Gableman, in reciting the basis for the motion,  characterizes it as an predicated upon the fact that "Michael Best &
Friedrich firm was involved in the cases and had previously represented me.”

Chief Justice Abrahamson, writing for Justices Bradley and Crooks, thinks this a fatal flaw because the actual basis for the motion was that Justice Gableman " received allegedly free legal
services from Michael Best." Thus, according to this group, Justice Gableman "deliberately or accidentally" mischaracterized the basis for the motion and may not have considered the actual arguments made by the party seeking recusal.

One might say that "free legal services' is - deliberately or accidentally - not a complete and accurate description of the free arrangement at issue. But I am sure  that no omission was intended. I am also confident that Justice Gableman understood the nature of the arguments being made for his recusal and, in fact, made clear that he based his decision on "the circumstances of the case ... and the submissions of the parties."

To be sure, he did not expressly address the particulars of the fee arrangement, but no one thinks he was obligated to do so. In fact, the Chief Justice herself writes that "somewhat ironically, Justice Gableman’s Order might have passed muster had he referred to Adams’s allegations generically as “the allegations stated by the petitioner.”

In other words, he would have been OK had he not said anything about why he was asked to recuse himself and simply said that he had considered the request and denied it.

And that's just what he did.

To my eye, reading Justice Gableman's broad and generic description of the basis for the party's recusal motion as reflecting - or even suggesting - a failure to understand them or to consider the party's arguments is cutting the loaf too thin. I think he got the point. He just didn't think he ought to recuse.

Should the Court have decided whether he was he right? This gets us to the second - and more serious, albeit settled - issue. A majority of our state Supreme Court is committed to the position taken by the United States Supreme Court. They do not believe that a majority of the Court has the power to order a brother or sister Justice to recuse. On this view, it does not matter whether he was right - only that he made a subjective determination of whether he should or should not proceed.

There are strong arguments in favor of such a position. I think it is right about 99%of the time. I may, however, disagree with the majority when there is an argument that the failure to recuse amounts to a violation of litigants' due process rights. But that is, as the United States Supreme Court recently made clear, a very rare circumstance - one that was certainly not involved here.

Cross posted at Purple Wisconsin

Nothing "great" about Roberts' opinion

Yesterday we returned from a family trip to Disney World. Hadn't been down there since I took my son in the early '90s. Now we took him, his wife and two of my grandsons. I'm afraid I've changed more than the Magic Kingdom. Something in that is humbling.

On the plane down to the Happiest Place on Earth, I wrote this op-ed for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. One morning, before trekking the Animal Kingdom, I wrote more about the need - and potential - for a limiting principle at the Federalist Society's newly launched SCOTUSreport blog where I have been asked to contribute.  The point is this. If the limited view of the Commerce power endorsed by the Chief Justice and four other members of the Court has any meaning, it cannot be so readily undercut by  a capacious view of the taxing authority. The latter needs a limiting principle that the Chief Justice did not articulate but did suggest.

It is for this reason that the op-ed in Monday's paper by law professors Vikrim and Akhil Amar is unpersuasive. I appreciate that it sets forth the conventional 'liberal" view, i.e., that the Chief Justice was somehow "wise" in deferring to a piece of legislation in which the President had invested "substantial capital." The authors suggest that he has done something like Chief Justice Marshall  in Marbury v. Madison, asserting the Court's authority to say what the law is while avoiding a confrontation with the executive by giving the latter what it wants - for now.

But there are two problems with this view. The first is that it is not clear that Roberts has protected the Court's interest. He was able to avoid a confrontation only by adopting a view of the taxing power that threatens to undercut his view of the commerce authority and the constitutional scheme it reflects.

The second is that Marbury was decided in 1803 and this is 2012. We are well beyond the time in which the Court's authority to say what the law is was controversial. Rather than strike a blow for judicial independence, Roberts - in at least giving the appearance that he took a dive - undercut it. This was not a step forward for the Court, it was a step back.

Having said that, I do think it's a step too far to castigate Roberts' as a "liberal." I think he got too cute by half but I don't expect him to suddenly become something that he has never been.

Thank God for that.

Cross posted at Purple Wisconsin.

Less to leaks than is claimed

As a legal matter, the information concerning "leaks" in papers filed by the District Attorney's office in response to certain motions made by Tim Russell are interesting, but not all that illuminating. (I express no opinion on the merits of the legal issue which the DA was addressing to which, strictly speaking, the issue of these leaks may not be all that pertinent.)

The most interesting is an e-mail from one of Russell's attorneys to talk show host Charlie Sykes from Michael Maistelman, one of Russell's attorneys. The e-mail says that he has "heard" that charges are about to be filed against Darlene Wink and Kelly Rindfleisch. Does this show that Maistelman was a source of improper leaks concerning the John Doe?

In a word, no.

Maistelman, as an attorney for another defendant, was presumably uninvolved in the decision to charge Rindfleisch and Wink. He apparently "heard" about the pending charges from someone else. (Indeed, he has said that the e-mail was based on "gossip.')

This would make him a recipient of a leak - not its source.  There is no evidence that that he was under any legal obligation not to pass it along. Who the initial source was - and whether there was a leak that violated a secrecy order - remains unknown. And that is the more critical question.

Nor does the e-mail establish that Sykes was being “hypocritical” for complaining of leaks from the Doe. To the contrary, it substantiated his complaints, even as it did not reveal the original source.

The September 26, 2010 e-mail from John Hiller to then County Executive Walker is no more illuminating. Apparently Hiller found out that Dan Bice was writing a story, talked with him about the story and reported on the conversation to Walker. In the course of the e-mail, Hiller says that Bice told him that he got "much" of his "information" from one of Darlene Wink's attorneys who send him an e-mail defending her. But what that "information" was and whether revealing it would have violated a secrecy order is not revealed. (Indeed, if the lawyer had breached secrecy, he would have almost certainly asked Bice for confidentiality which he obviously did not. If he had, Bice would hardly have identified him to Hiller.)

Nor does the e-mail establish, as at least one blogger has maintained, that Walker "knew" what was going on in the John Doe. It establishes that Walker knew a reporter was about to write a story.

Finally, the e-mails discuss a small portion of what has leaked from the Doe. They do not establish anything approaching a conclusion that the "defense attorneys" did it. I don't know who the source of these leaks were and neither does anyone else based on what is in the public record.

Of course, these details will be ignored by partisans in their rush to place "blame" for the leaks and advance whatever other speculation and innuendo meets today's political agenda.


Cross posted at Purple Wisconsin