Archive for the 'Politics' Category

The dues of “Club California”

Published on 3/3/2010 in Economics and Politics . 0 Comments Tags: .

“… are increasingly to benefit the staff rather than the members.”

I wish I could recall where I heard that quote – in reference to the California financial crisis, brought upon California largely by the public employee unions. Aside, I have heard almost no media recognition of the one-third of the Obama $800B “stimulus” that was specifically targeted at handouts for the state public employee unions. Where do people think the federal taxpayer money given to the states went — library books?

Excerpt from Michael Barone

Public-sector unionism is a very different animal from private-sector unionism. It is not adversarial but collusive. Public-sector unions strive to elect their management, which in turn can extract money from taxpayers to increase wages and benefits — and can promise pensions that future taxpayers will have to fund.

The results are plain to see. States such as New York, New Jersey and California, where public-sector unions are strong, now face enormous budget deficits and pension liabilities. In such states, the public sector has become a parasite sucking the life out of the private-sector economy. Not surprisingly, Americans have been steadily migrating out of such states and into states like Texas, where public-sector unions are weak and taxes are much lower.

Barack Obama is probably the most union-friendly president since Lyndon Johnson. He has obviously been unable to stop the decline of private-sector unionism. But he is doing his best to increase the power — and dues income — of public-sector unions. One-third of last year’s $787 billion stimulus package was aid to state and local governments — an obvious attempt to bolster public-sector unions. And a successful one: While the private sector has lost 7 million jobs, the number of public-sector jobs has risen. The number of federal government jobs has been increasing by 10,000 a month, and the percentage of federal employees earning over $100,000 has jumped to 19 percent during the recession.

(…) Obama and his party are acting in collusion with unions that contributed something like $400,000,000 to Democrats in the 2008 campaign cycle. Public-sector unionism tends to be a self-perpetuating machine that extracts money from taxpayers and then puts it on a conveyor belt to the Democratic party.

More from the American Thinker:

Obama and the Democrats have been well-rewarded for their patronage. Unions contributed up to 400 million dollars to Democrats in 2008 and engage in skullduggery to advance their aims. The latest revelation: a union-funded slush fund secretly targeting GOP candidates through the use of money-laundering and front groups. Unions have funded all sorts of political activity — undoubtedly the major reason Obama, in one of his first acts as president, ended union disclosure rules requiring them to report how their members’ dues were being spent. So much for transparency.
This is one reason why the recent Supreme Court decision leveling the playing field, allowing corporations to exercise their First Amendment rights by contributing to candidates, inflamed unions and President Obama. He violated precedent by attacking the Supreme Court in his State of the Union address. Maybe the title should be changed to State of the Unions.
Franklin Roosevelt, of all people, was alert to the danger of this collusion between politicians and unions. He maintained that “the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service.” Yet it has been transplanted; today, a majority of union workers for the first time work for the government. And the government has brought good things to them.

Government work is one sector of our economy that is booming (besides pawnshops and bankruptcy lawyers). Rich Lowry noted the paradox: We suffer, and government workers prosper.

For most Americans, the Great Recession has been an occasion to hold on for dear life. For public employees, it’s been an occasion to let the good times roll.

The percentage of federal civil servants making more than $100,000 a year jumped from 14 percent to 19 percent during the first year and a half of the recession, according to USA Today. At the beginning of the downturn, the Transportation Department had one person making $170,000 or more a year; now it has 1,690 making that.
The New York Times reports that state and local governments have added a net 110,000 jobs since the beginning of the recession, while the private sector has lost 6.9 million. The gap between total compensation of public and private workers has only widened during the downturn, according to USA Today. In 2008, benefits for public employees grew at a rate three times that of private employees.

With Absolute Power, Team Obama Grows Stupid

Published on 2/15/2010 in Politics . 0 Comments

Michael Barone isn’t coy about how he reads the U.S. political winds:

How could such smart people do so many stupid things? That question, or variations on it, is being asked in Washington and around the country about the Obama administration.

The same people who directed the campaign that defeated Hillary Clinton and routed John McCain, a campaign that raised far more money and attracted far more volunteers than any before it, have within a year come up with a legislative program that is crashing in ruins and that, to judge from recent polls, has left the Democratic Party weaker than I have seen it in almost 50 years of closely following politics.

The 2008 campaign was an impressive achievement. So, in a negative way, is the 2009 legislative…

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Politics and the “median voter”

Published on 2/7/2010 in Economics and Politics . 0 Comments

The following is how GMU economist Tyler Cowen chose to summarize his NYT op-ed. I agree with most of Tyler’s points, though please keep in mind that the median voter theorem is a one-dimensional (L/R) simplification of voter preferences. And that voter preferences are illusive, especially given that only a few voters are informed (see comment below on the Homer Simpson Voter Theorem).

That’s the header of my New York Times column today, here are some excerpts, starting with the health care issue:

The point here is not to belittle or praise the president, but to point out that his hands are tied. The biggest leftward move in American economic policy occurred during the Roosevelt and Truman years, when the Democrats had the upper hand for five consecutive presidential terms. Because of depression and war, people were looking for real change. Competitive forces in politics were relatively weak, and the Democrats had the chance to make their policies stick.

The Supreme Court’s recent ruling on campaign spending also comes into clearer focus through the median voter theorem. The court ruled that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections. Critics fear that the political influence of corporations will grow, but some academic specialists in campaign finance aren’t so sure.

For all the anecdotal evidence, it’s hard to show statistically that money has a large and systematic influence on political outcomes. That is partly because politicians cannot stray too far from public opinion. (In part, it is also because interest groups get their way on many issues by supplying an understaffed Congress with ideas and intellectual resources, not by running ads or making donations.) It is quite possible that the court’s decision won’t affect election results very much.

Here are the concluding two paragraphs:

The median voter theorem doesn’t predict that the legacy of the Obama administration will be a wash. But it does imply that we might find the most important achievements in areas that don’t always linger on the front page. For instance, the president’s ideas on education, which involve accountability and charter schools and pay for performance, may please the American public and thus make their way into policy. And because education transforms the knowledge and interests of the median voter for generations to come, such acceptance could make for a lot of other improvements.

If you’re looking for change to believe in, and change that will last, the odds are best when political competition is pushing the world in your direction.

Jacob Weisberg has a not unrelated column. And, for another perspective, here are the comments over at Mark Thoma’s blog. A few further points:

1. “How tough Obama is” matters less than is usually portrayed. That is the fallacy of anthromorphizing the outcome of political battles. Obsessing over either positive or negative evaluations of key actors probably interferes with one’s abilities to understand underlying structural forces.  

2. Even the Supreme Court usually tracks voter sentiment reasonably well.

3. On the health care issue, I don’t think the electoral calculations of the Democrats are over.

[From "When Politics is Stuck in the Middle"]
I was amused by AndyfromTuscon’s comment on this piece at Mark Thoma’s blog: the Homer Simpson Voter Theorem .
(…) Here is my alternative to the median voter theorem, which I call the Homer Simpson Voter Theorem. Approximately 30-50% of voters have coherent views on political issues, and these opinionated voters are more or less evenly split between conservative and liberal points of view. The remaining 50-70% of voters have no coherent views on political issues, mostly because they don’t spend any time thinking about them. When it comes time to vote, or answer questions from pollsters these “Homer Simpson Voters” decide on their votes/answers based on what they perceive as normal or mainstream at that moment, and they base their perception of what is mainstream on the smidgen of political information in the media that has managed to slip into their awareness despite studiously not paying attention to political matters. Thus, the Homer Simpson Voter Theorem predicts that politicians cannot stray far from what someone not paying much attention would think is the mainstream view based on headlines casually scanned and snippets of cable news overheard in public places.

The Obama Spell Is Broken

Published on 2/1/2010 in Politics . 0 Comments

Another WSJ op-ed by Johns Hopkins prof. Fouad Ajami begins this way:

The curtain has come down on what can best be described as a brief un-American moment in our history. That moment began in the fall of 2008, with the great financial panic, and gave rise to the Barack Obama phenomenon.

The nation’s faith in institutions and time-honored ways had cracked. In a little-known senator from Illinois millions of Americans came to see a savior who would deliver the nation out of its troubles. Gone was the empiricism in political life that had marked the American temper in politics. A charismatic leader had risen in a manner akin to the way politics plays out in distressed and Third World societies.

Professor Fouad Ajami’s opinion piece garnered over 400 comments. He visits the News Hub to discuss his views and offer rebuttals to criticism.

There is nothing surprising about where Mr. Obama finds himself today. He had been made by charisma, and political magic, and has been felled by it. If his rise had been spectacular, so, too, has been his fall. The speed with which some of his devotees have turned on him—and their unwillingness to own up to what their infatuation had wrought—is nothing short of astounding. But this is the bargain Mr. Obama had made with political fortune.

He was a blank slate, and devotees projected onto him what they wanted or wished. In the manner of political redeemers who have marked—and wrecked—the politics of the Arab world and Latin America, Mr. Obama left the crowd to its most precious and volatile asset—its imagination. There was no internal coherence to the coalition that swept him to power. There was cultural “cool” and racial absolution for the white professional classes who were the first to embrace him. There was understandable racial pride on the part of the African-American community that came around to his banners after it ditched the Clinton dynasty.

The white working class had been slow to be convinced. The technocracy and elitism of Mr. Obama’s campaign—indeed of his whole persona—troubled that big constituency, much more, I believe, than did his race and name. The promise of economic help, of an interventionist state that would salvage ailing industries and provide a safety net for the working poor, reconciled these voters to a candidate they viewed with a healthy measure of suspicion. He had been caught denigrating them as people “clinging to their guns and religion,” but they had forgiven him.

Mr. Obama himself authored the tale of his own political crisis. He had won an election, but he took it as a plebiscite granting him a writ to remake the basic political compact of this republic.

Mr. Obama’s self-regard, and his reading of his mandate, overwhelmed all restraint. The age-old American balance between a relatively small government and a larger role for the agencies of civil society was suddenly turned on its head. Speed was of the essence to the Obama team and its allies, the powerful barons in Congress. Better ram down sweeping social programs—a big liberal agenda before the people stirred to life again.

Progressives pressed for a draconian attack on the workings of our health care, and on the broader balance between the state and the marketplace. The economic stimulus, ObamaCare, the large deficits, the bailout package for the automobile industry—these, and so much more, were nothing short of a fundamental assault on the givens of the American social compact.

And then there was the hubris of the man at the helm: He was everywhere, and pronounced on matters large and small. This was political death by the teleprompter.

Please continue reading and note that there is a video interview with Ajami at the Video tab. There we learn that there have been so far 400 comments to his op-ed.

Copenhagen on $2,200 a Day

Published on 1/31/2010 in Politics . 0 Comments

Jonathan Adler reminds us that public servants are not like you and me:

CBS News has been reporting on what the government spent to send over twenty members of Congress, along with staff, spouses, and others, to the Copenhagen climate conference, and what they’ve uncovered isn’t pretty. More here.

Texas accounts for 18 percent of the nation's total population growth

Published on 1/7/2010 in Politics . 0 Comments

Michael Barone

(…) No. 3 in percentage population growth in 2008-09 was giant Texas, the nation’s second most populous state. Its population grew by almost half a million and accounted for 18 percent of the nation’s total population growth. Texas had above-average immigrant growth, but domestic in-migration was nearly twice as high.

There may be lessons for public policy here. Texas over the decades has had low taxes (and no state income tax), low public spending and regulations that encourage job growth. It didn’t have much of a housing bubble or a housing price bust.

(…) Polidata Inc. projects from the 2009 estimates that the reapportionment following the 2010 Census will produce four new House seats for Texas, one for Florida, Arizona, Utah and Nevada, and none for California for the first time since 1850. Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Illinois are projected to lose one each, and Ohio two. Americans have been moving, even in recession, away from Democratic strongholds and toward Republican turf.

Meta-Rules: Base Realignment and Closure Commission

Published on 1/6/2010 in Politics . 0 Comments

Don’t miss this very short essay by Paul Romer at Charter Cities:

We would like to believe that democracy will lead to steady improvement in the rules that a society follows. In principle, it seems self-evident that if a rule is bad, citizens or their representatives vote for a better one. In practice, it is not always this simple.

Sometimes it takes a two-stage decision process to get rid of a bad rule. People must first vote to change a higher-level rule that structures voting on other rules. Then, following the new voting rules, they can vote to change the bad rule.

Political scientists have long known how important the details are in the rules that govern political decisions. Because they are so important, it makes sense to highlight this special class of rules and give them a name: meta-rules, the rules for changing rules. Recent experience with military base closures in the United States shows how this two step process can work.

(…)
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Why Obama’s Poll Numbers Are Plummetting

Published on 12/18/2009 in Politics . 0 Comments

Strong medicine from Barry Ritholz…

(…) My advice?

Put Paul Volcker in charge of Financial Reform.

IT WILL SAVE YOUR PRESIDENCY.

’nuff said . . . [From Why Obama’s Poll Numbers Are Plummetting]
See also Glenn Reynolds where it seems that voters continue to have more common sense than pols:
POLLS: Americans still hate Obama’s plan to bring Gitmo prisoners to U.S. “In the new survey, 64 percent say they oppose bringing Guantanamo inmates here, while 30 percent support it. The president doesn’t even have a majority of his own party on his side. In the new poll, 50 percent of Democrats support bringing Guantanamo prisoners to the U.S., while just 28 percent of independents and eight percent of Republicans do. Opposition to Obama’s policy is spread evenly across the country. . . . The majorities opposing Obama on the Guantanamo issue are even larger than those that oppose him on national health care.”

Political bloggers: We love Tom Coburn and Bernie Sanders

Published on 12/18/2009 in Politics . 0 Comments

David Kopel is brave enough to make some political predictions. I agree with the first two, but cannot comment on the others:

Last week’s National Journal poll of political bloggers asked Left-leaning and Right-leaning bloggers about their favorite political figures. Herewith, the results:

Most-admired House member: On the Left, Alan Grayson. My father’s former campaign treasurer, Denver Rep. Diana DeGette, tied for second. On the Right, tie between Jeff Flake, Mike Pence, and Paul Ryan. I voted for Flake.

Most-admired Senator: On the Left, Bernie Sanders. On the Right, Tom Coburn. I voted for Coburn.

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Climate change e-mail scandal underscores myth of pure science

Published on 12/18/2009 in Climate Science , Politics and Science Policy . 0 Comments

Arizona State prof. Daniel Sarewitz has long been a Seekerblog reliable source on issues of science and technology policy. Here is Sarewitz with Samuel Thernstrom in an LA Times op-ed:

The East Anglia controversy serves as a reminder that when the politics are divisive and the science is sufficiently complex, the boundary between the two may become indiscernible.

(…) We do not believe the East Anglia e-mails expose a conspiracy that invalidates the larger body of evidence demonstrating anthropogenic warming; nevertheless, the damage to public confidence in climate science, particularly among Republicans and independents, may be enormous. The terrible danger — one that has been brewing for years — is that the invaluable role science should play in informing policy and politics will be irrevocably undermined, as citizens come to see science as nothing more than a tool for partisans of all stripes.

(…) Moreover, problems such as climate change are much more scientifically complex than determining the charge on an electron or even the structure of DNA. The research deals not with building blocks of nature but with dynamic systems that are inherently uncertain, unpredictable and complex. Such science is often not subject to replicable experiments or verification; rather, knowledge and insight emerge from the weight of theory, data and evidence, usually freighted with considerable uncertainty, disagreement and internal contradiction.

Thus, we write neither to attack nor to defend the East Anglia scientists, but to make clear that the ideal of pure science as a source of truth that can cut through politics is false. The authority of pure science is a two-edged sword, and it cuts deeply in both directions in the climate debate: For those who favor action, the myth of scientific purity confers unique legitimacy upon the evidence they bring to political debates. And for those who oppose action, the myth provides a powerful foundation for counterattack whenever deviations from the unattainable ideal come to light.

(…) The real scandal illustrated by the e-mails is not that scientists tried to undermine peer review, fudge and conceal data, and torpedo competitors, but that scientists and advocates on both sides of the climate debate continue to claim political authority derived from a false ideal of pure science. This charade is a disservice to both science and democracy. To science, because the reality cannot live up to the myth; to democracy, because the difficult political choices created by the genuine but also uncertain threat of climate change are concealed by the scientific debate.
What is the solution? Let politics do its job; indeed, demand it.
We do not believe that climate change is merely a Trojan horse for a Democratic dream of destroying global capitalism. Nor do we believe that Republicans are so bent on maximizing the profits of the fossil fuel industry that they are choosing to consign their grandchildren to a ruined world. Yet these are only slight caricatures of the fantasies that each side cherishes about the other because the true complexity of the climate debate has been camouflaged by the myth of pure, disinterested science.

That myth has allowed politicians to shirk their responsibility to be clear about the values, interests and beliefs that underpin their preferences and choices about science and policy. (…)
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