This, according to Politifact, is 2011's "Lie of the Year." Which is unfortunate because it's true.
Indeed, Politifact's Lie of the Year article seems to acknowledge as much in describing the object of Democratic scorn, the GOP's FY2012 budget proposal (associated with House Budget chairman Paul Ryan):
Introduced by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the plan kept Medicare intact for people 55 or older, but dramatically changed the program for everyone else by privatizing it and providing government subsidies.
If the difference between the situation for those subject to the GOP's plan and those who are exempted from it (i.e. those 55 or older) is that Medicare is "kept intact" for the latter, the point has been conceded. The clear implication, of course, is that Medicare is not kept intact for those young enough to be subject to the GOP's plan. And indeed it isn't.
So, despite Politifact's self-congratulatory and sanctimonious follow-up to the outcry over their mystifying choice in which they blame the ideologues of the "Echo Chamber Nation" for not recognizing how their "independently researched information" has "disrupted the status quo," the essential facts remain:
Medicare
GOP (Ryan) Budget
Public health insurer (CMS) exists
✓
x
Gov't reimburses doctors and hospitals for medical services rendered to seniors
✓
x
Guaranteed benefit
✓
x
Seniors must look for private commercial insurance plan
x
✓
Medicare is a public health insurance plan that pays seniors' doctor and hospital bills. The fact that it reimburses providers directly is part of its great power. It can thus tell hospitals that if they want to receive reimbursements from it, the hospitals must provide emergency stabilizing care regardless of citizenship or ability to pay. It can subsidize graduate medical education by folding extra money directly into its reimbursements. It can jumpstart a health information technology revolution by offering bonuses to participating doctors and hospitals who start using electronic health records. It can provide incentives for providers to offer higher-value care and begin changing the ways they deliver that care.
Those things are all gone under the GOP's budget, which instead pushes future seniors to look for Anthem or Aetna or some other private plan if they want coverage. Not right away--which is the only point Politifact even tries to offer in its own defense. Because the proposal grandfathers in existing beneficiaries and people within 10 years of becoming eligible for Medicare, the program doesn't end overnight. It dwindles over time as, starting in 2022, no one is allowed to enroll in it and those grandfathered into it die off or are squeezed out of it by a shrinking provider network and rising premiums.
Yes, it's phased out instead of abruptly eliminated. But last I checked, phasing something out is still ending it. And as Politifact implicitly conceded, under the GOP's proposal Medicare is no longer intact for future generations. So I'm afraid it's true. In April 2011, the Republicans voted to end Medicare.
WASHINGTON - Squeezed by rising living costs, a record number of Americans — nearly 1 in 2 — have fallen into poverty or are scraping by on earnings that classify them as low income.
The latest census data depict a middle class that's shrinking as unemployment stays high and the government's safety net frays. The new numbers follow years of stagnating wages for the middle class that have hurt millions of workers and families.
"Safety net programs such as food stamps and tax credits kept poverty from rising even higher in 2010, but for many low-income families with work-related and medical expenses, they are considered too 'rich' to qualify," said Sheldon Danziger, a University of Michigan public policy professor who specializes in poverty.
"The reality is that prospects for the poor and the near poor are dismal," he said. "If Congress and the states make further cuts, we can expect the number of poor and low-income families to rise for the next several years." [...]
About 97.3 million Americans fall into a low-income category, commonly defined as those earning between 100 and 199 percent of the poverty level, based on a new supplemental measure by the Census Bureau that is designed to provide a fuller picture of poverty. Together with the 49.1 million who fall below the poverty line and are counted as poor, they number 146.4 million, or 48 percent of the U.S. population. That's up by 4 million from 2009, the earliest numbers for the newly developed poverty measure.
I don't want to read too much into Obama's Osawatomie speech last week yet but it's a positive sign that maybe, just maybe, we'll see a strong Democrat on the campaign trail who isn't afraid to talk about frightening levels of inequality.
Now, this kind of inequality -- a level that we haven’t seen since the Great Depression -- hurts us all. When middle-class families can no longer afford to buy the goods and services that businesses are selling, when people are slipping out of the middle class, it drags down the entire economy from top to bottom. America was built on the idea of broad-based prosperity, of strong consumers all across the country. That’s why a CEO like Henry Ford made it his mission to pay his workers enough so that they could buy the cars he made. It’s also why a recent study showed that countries with less inequality tend to have stronger and steadier economic growth over the long run.
Inequality also distorts our democracy. It gives an outsized voice to the few who can afford high-priced lobbyists and unlimited campaign contributions, and it runs the risk of selling out our democracy to the highest bidder. (Applause.) It leaves everyone else rightly suspicious that the system in Washington is rigged against them, that our elected representatives aren’t looking out for the interests of most Americans.
But there’s an even more fundamental issue at stake. This kind of gaping inequality gives lie to the promise that’s at the very heart of America: that this is a place where you can make it if you try. We tell people -- we tell our kids -- that in this country, even if you’re born with nothing, work hard and you can get into the middle class. We tell them that your children will have a chance to do even better than you do. That’s why immigrants from around the world historically have flocked to our shores.
And yet, over the last few decades, the rungs on the ladder of opportunity have grown farther and farther apart, and the middle class has shrunk. You know, a few years after World War II, a child who was born into poverty had a slightly better than 50-50 chance of becoming middle class as an adult. By 1980, that chance had fallen to around 40 percent. And if the trend of rising inequality over the last few decades continues, it’s estimated that a child born today will only have a one-in-three chance of making it to the middle class -- 33 percent.
It’s heartbreaking enough that there are millions of working families in this country who are now forced to take their children to food banks for a decent meal. But the idea that those children might not have a chance to climb out of that situation and back into the middle class, no matter how hard they work? That’s inexcusable. It is wrong. (Applause.) It flies in the face of everything that we stand for. (Applause.)
Now, fortunately, that’s not a future that we have to accept, because there’s another view about how we build a strong middle class in this country -- a view that’s truer to our history, a vision that’s been embraced in the past by people of both parties for more than 200 years.
I'm working my way through Deep Space Nine and I just got to my favorite episode of the first season, Duet. The series itself picks up shortly after the end of a four decade occupation of one world by another. Duet probes some of the backstory and very clearly establishes the parallel with the Holocaust. The former occupiers, the Cardassians, are transparent analogs of the Nazis, having brutally pushed their victims, the Bajorans, into forced labor camps and engaged in a genocidal campaign against them.
This particular episode is about the apparent capture of a Cardassian war criminal, the former commander of a concentration labor camp during the occupation. As the episode title suggests, the episode revolves around the interaction of one of the series' main characters (a Bajoran woman who fought in the resistance against the occupiers) and the Cardassian prisoner. A great episode and the performance from the "Butcher of Gallitep" is especially fantastic.
Well worth watching, particularly for the payoff at the end, if you haven't seen it before.
For some reason, smart people continue to repeat a misconception, and smart people continue to quote smart people repeating that misconception. The reason the health reform law's biggest pieces--the expansion of Medicaid and the launching of health insurance exchanges where people will be able to choose from a variety of private health insurance plans--don't go into effect until 2014, the misconception goes, is that a trick was played to make the numbers work out right. If only that trick hadn't been played, the law would already be fully in effect and in significantly less danger of being torpedoed after the next election.
The WashPo's usually great Sarak Kliff quotes the usually impressive Paul Starr:
Paul Starr makes a smart point in his recent Washington Post op-ed on the health reform law. The law’s unpopularity, he argues, has a lot to do with the fact that it had to be constrained to get a good score from the Congressional Budget Office:
Primarily to ensure that the Congressional Budget Office would “score” the legislation as reducing the deficit, Obama agreed to delay implementation of the major provisions of the law until January 2014, nearly four years after the bill passed. And contrary to his position during the 2008 campaign, the president also agreed to an individual mandate — again, partly to keep down the program’s cost — even though the mandate predictably became the law’s most unpopular provision and the focus of legal and political challenges.
These concessions have had opposite effects on the emotional commitments in the two parties. While opposition to the mandate has become a rallying point for Republicans, the long delay in implementing reforms has left many Democrats discouraged and uncertain about the law’s benefits. The four-year timetable also undercuts any possible political gain from the reforms; the president will have little to show by the 2012 election and little chance of clearing up the confusion and anxieties about the law.
The reality is that those big pieces of the reform law are tough. They're being built state-by-state and are subject to myriad local political hurdles, not least because the Republicans did especially well at the state level in the 2010 elections. But even putting aside the political constraints, the technical and policy feats needed to make this work are substantial. Even in those states that want to make this work and are moving full steam ahead to implement the law, the challenges are very real and the dangers of missing the 2014 deadline loom.
That's part of the reason the federal government is bending over backwards to be as collaborative and flexible as possible. For example, the law provides that states that don't set up their own health insurance exchanges get one set up and operated by the federal government. But through the rulemaking process, the folks at the Department of Health and Human Services are proposing a few more shades of gray--varying degrees of federal control to help states stand up their own exchanges by leaning on federal support for certain key features. States can then conceivably retain autonomy over their exchanges, yet not shoulder the technical and operational burdens of making an exchange work all by themselves.
The point here is that the suggestion that health reform could already be implemented under some scenario is simply wishful thinking. This is hard, uncharted territory: minus pieces of the Massachusetts experiment, no one has ever done anything like this. That's why it's going to work. But states were always going to need time to make it happen.
As Stanek and Andrew are probably well aware of by now, I work in an office with some pretty hardcore Republicans - every day they listen to Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh on the radio, complain about the liberals and certain minorities in the city, etc. etc. Usually I just tune it out and concentrate on my work (I have a handy pair of headphones and an iPhone with a lot of Beatles music on it which has been instrumental in preventing migraines), and they have always been more than pleasant towards me personally so I can't really complain. But a few days ago they mentioned something to me that struck me as overwhelmingly ridiculous. According to them, the conservative radio shows that they listen to have been stressing that businesses are ready to hire again and are sitting on "piles of money", however they want to see how the next presidential election turns out because they're scared that President Obama might win again.
This helped put into words a suspicion I've always had about the Republican party. Maybe my theory is nothing new (Stanek can probably answer that better than I can and I find it hard to believe that nobody has connected the dots here), but considering that business owners and corporate executives are almost exclusively Republican, aren't they essentially holding the economy hostage to support their preferred political party? If what these conservative radio shows are arguing is true, and I don't know if it is or even that they actually said it (and I'm sure as hell not going to re-listen to their shows to find out), then the economy is supposedly getting better but business owners are holding it back because Obama is president. This creates a pretty interesting self-fulfilling prophecy among conservatives who think Democrats are bad for the economy. How can economic strength ever be used to gauge the effectiveness of a Democratic president when businesses are willing to cripple the economy until a Republican is elected? And I know what conservatives would say in response: "Democrats are innately bad for business so employers are just protecting themselves." But all that does is bypass the issue and fuel the self-fulfilling prophecy to carry on.
Again, I have no idea how true this is or if Rush or Glenn Beck even made this argument. However, it still makes me wonder about businesses manipulating the economy for political reasons in general. And as I said before I don't expect this to be all that revolutionary of an idea, but I am interested in what you guys think or know. At least it makes me more confident that President Obama is doing a better job than people seem to think.
P.S. - This is the 200th post at the Speakeasy! Grab a beer and celebrate.
Celebrated ideas man Rick Perry attempted to bounce back from his "oops" moment this week with the release of a bold--non-999--plan. From the man who brought you the optional flat tax comes the plan to "Uproot and Overhaul Washington." What caught my eye were his suggestions for "fundamental reform of the legislative branch." Specifically two items:
Part-Time Citizen Congress:
[...]
The U.S. does not need a full-time Congress that is more focused on increasing its perks instead of reducing spending. America needs a part-time, Citizen Congress – populated with those who choose to serve not for profit, or for the promise of a high-paying lobbyist job, but for the good of their communities, states, and the nation. Even with a 50 percent pay-cut, Congressional members would still make a significantly higher income than the average American.11 [...]
Slash Spending for Congressional Staff: According to the Congressional Research Service, Congress employed more than 15,000 staffers as of 2009.13 In the Senate, the number of staff assigned to senators’ personal offices has more than doubled since 1977; the number of so-called “leadership staff” more than quadrupled over the same time period.14 As the number of staffers grows, so does congressional involvement in nearly every aspect of the American economy.
Why those two in particular? Because they strike me as being an enormous executive power grab.
I can't claim to be well-versed in Texas politics but the word on the street seems to be that Perry inherited a relatively weak office from his illustrious predecessor and found ways to strengthen it, centralizing power through heretofore untapped channels:
For most of history, Texas has been considered a “weak governor” state. That changed under Perry’s leadership. His lengthy tenure as governor has allowed him to appoint political allies in every single state agency, effectively establishing a Cabinet-style government and giving him vastly more power than any of his predecessors.
And now it seems the governor is setting his sights on accomplishing a similar feat in Washington, D.C.; disconcerting perhaps when you realize we already have a pretty strong federal executive. Aside from the obvious ramifications for executive power of slashing Congressional pay and sending Congress home, the gutting of their staffs is particularly significant. To see why, we need only look back at the overhaul of the modern bureaucratic state that occurred in the first half of the last century, particularly under FDR. With the balance of bureaucratic expertise (and raw numbers of staff) tipping heavily in the White House's favor, Congress found itself at a distinct disadvantage.
"Congressional procedure," Life magazine was to note in 1945, is largely "the same as it was in 1789." As for the Senate's basic committee and staff structure, that had been established in 1890. During the intervening decades, government had grown enormously--in 1946 the national budget was three hundred times the size it had been in 1890--but the staffs of the Senate committees had grown hardly at all. To oversee that budget, the Senate Appropriations Committee staff consisted of eight persons, exactly one more than had been on that staff decades earlier. Not only were they ridiculously small, the staffs of Senate committees had little of the technical expertise necessary to understand a government which had become infinitely more complicated and technical. The salaries of congressional staff members were so low that Capitol Hill could not attract men and women of the caliber that were flocking to the executive branch.
A study done in 1942 concluded that only four of the seventy-six congressional committees had "expert staffs prepared professionally even to cross-examine experts of the executive branch." As for senators' personal staff, as late as 1941, a senator would be entitled to hire only six employees, and only one at a salary--$3,000--which might attract someone with qualifications above those of a clerk. So little importance was attached to staff that many senators didn't hire even the six to which they were entitled, and an astonishingly high proportion of the approximately 500 employees on senators' personal staffs and the 144 on the staff of the Senate committees were senators' relatives. The Founding Fathers envisioned Congress as a check on the executive. Congress couldn't make even a pretense of analyzing the measures the executive submitted for its approval.
During the decades since 1890, when the Senate had authorized a staff of three persons for its Foreign Relations Committee, the United States had become a global power, with interests in a hundred foreign countries. In 1939, the staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was still three: one full-time clerk who took dictation, typed and ran the stenotype machine, and two part-time clerks. As one observer put it, "There could be no adversary relationship between the two branches of government [in foreign relations] because most of the professional work had to be done in the Department of State." Anyone seeking an explanation of the Senate's willingness to allow the rise of the executive agreement, which freed it from the details of foreign policy, need look no further: the Senate simply had no staff adequate to handle the details of foreign policy. The adversary relationship--the relationship that had lain at the heart of the Framers' concept of the American government they thought they were creating--had become impossible in virtually all areas; even Senate Parliamentarian Floyd Riddick had to admit that "with occasional exceptions, Congress did little more than look into, slightly amend or block bills upon which it was called to act."
Unable to analyze legislation, Congress was equally unable to create it.
This was perhaps the most significant alteration in the power of the House and the Senate. The Framers of the Constitution had given Congress great power to make laws, vesting in it "all legislative powers," and during the early, simpler days of the Republic, Congress had jealously guarded that power; as late as 1908, the Senate had erupted in anger when the Secretary of the Interior presumed to send it a bill already drafted in final form. But by the 1930s, with government so much more complicated, bill-drafting had become a science. Knowledge of that science was in extremely short supply on Capitol Hill. There were plenty of legislative technicians with the necessary expertise at the great law firms in New York. There were plenty at the White House, and in the executive departments--the legislative section of the Agriculture Department alone had six hundred employees. In 1939, the Legislative Drafting Service that helped both houses of Congress consisted of eight employees. And of all the scores of major statutes passed during the New Deal, approximately two per year were created by Congress--because, as Tommy Corcoran explained, Congress simply lacked the "technical equipment to draft a big, modern statute."
--Master of the Senate, Robert Caro
Does Perry really want to revert to a time when the legislative branch was so emasculated it didn't have the expertise to even ask executive branch officials to explain themselves?
He seems so stupid but, if only by accident, there's something Johnsonian about him. Stupid like a fox!
P.S. If you haven't read any of Caro's multi-part series (including Master of the Senate) chronicling the rise of Lyndon Johnson, do it. Just do it.
(The Passage of Power is coming in May. I'm going to fucking hyperventilate.)
So far it seems to be a night in which overreaches on the part of overzealous newly-elected Republicans have been repudiated. Issue 2 in Ohio, the anti-union legislation, has gone down in flames. Same day voter registration here in Maine was restored by the people tonight, after the Republican legislature and Governor eliminated it. Even in ruby-red Mississippi a movement to define personhood as beginning at conception seems to have been handily defeated.
One more example to make the point. Way back in January I posted Dis-integration about the demise of Wake County North Carolina's successful effort to integrate schools along socio-economic lines. Flashback:
IN RALEIGH, N.C. The sprawling Wake County School District has long been a rarity. Some of its best, most diverse schools are in the poorest sections of this capital city. And its suburban schools, rather than being exclusive enclaves, include children whose parents cannot afford a house in the neighborhood.
But over the past year, a new majority-Republican school board backed by national tea party conservatives has set the district on a strikingly different course. Pledging to "say no to the social engineers!" it has abolished the policy behind one of the nation's most celebrated integration efforts.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A Democratic-aligned candidate retained his seat on the Wake County school board Tuesday, completing a sweep of the seats up for grabs this year.
Incumbent Kevin Hill beat challenger Heather Losurdo by nearly 1,000 votes Tuesday. The result means Democrats will have a 5-4 majority on the board governing North Carolina's largest school district.
It could also mean a change in direction for the board that decided last year to scrap a decade-old busing plan aimed at making sure schools didn't become too heavily identified as either poor or rich.
So it looks like working people, women, kids, and everyone entitled to political franchise are the big winners tonight. Smile, Teej.
Back swings the pendulum. Here's hoping that it gains momentum over the next 12 months.
Something is happening in cities across the nation, emanating from New York City and stretching to the West Coast (and perhaps ultimately around the globe). This event--I don't know whether to refer to it as a movement yet--is being called Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and it seems to be tapping into the same amorphous anger at ill-defined evils that briefly stirred popular sympathy for the Tea Party. But where the Tea Party's rage was leveled at the government, and more specifically at taxes, the metonymy in OWS's moniker fingers their nemesis: the modern day speculators and robber barons, imaginary or not, who escaped culpability for the depth and length of our financial crisis-induced economic malaise.
And whereas the Tea Party was largely a conscious re-branding of partisan, socially conservative Republicanism (and, yes, to some degree a manifestation of nativism and racism inspired by the President's background), OWS at present appears to primarily consist of left-leaning folks who may or may not have any great affinity for the center-left mainstream political party that's beginning to jockey cautiously for their support.
Time will tell if these demonstrations become a full-fledged movement or if they fizzle out and are quickly forgotten. But I want to comment on the irony inherent in this movement coming, at least for the time being, to be viewed as a rival of the Tea Party. The Tea Party's actual agenda was betrayed by its partisan roots but the idea of it--always a fiction, but a good one--was that of spontaneous anger at institutions that have failed us.
It's a fool's errand to attempt to boil down a complex historical event to a single oversimplified causative factor, but I dare suggest that a common stream of sentiment ran through a number of key social and political events in American history, including the event from which the Tea Party allegedly drew inspiration: the Boston Tea Party. The stream I speak of--a small component, to be sure, of what became a mighty torrent; one of many ripples that built a current which swept down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance, as RFK might say--manifested itself then as anger at the East India Company's monopoly on the tea trade.
I don't mean simply an anger at a profitable corporation, but a revulsion at the perversion of a collusion between government and an interest, a corporation--a telltale sign of a government that has lost its way. This is a theme that would return, most notably at the end of the Gilded Age and the dawn of the Progressive Era. Folks across the land tired of watching the wealthy and connected interests taking power that didn't belong to them to further themselves and their industries at the expense of the people. And in their weariness and their indignation and their desperation they did something spectacular.
Fueled by the simple notion that government was the mechanism by which they could reclaim the power that rightfully belonged to them, these people formed a movement that changed the country. They dethroned the party bosses and democratized the electoral process, they demanded that the wealthy pay their fair share, they protected the working man and the consumer. The muckrakers and the trust-busters, the municipal reformers and the suffragettes didn't shrink from government (or shrink government, for that matter), they used it for what progressives understood its purpose to be. It wasn't enough, as the Roaring Twenties and Black Tuesday would reveal, but it remained the most impressive string of victories in a struggle that has characterized American (and, perhaps, human) history until a paralyzed New York Governor rose on a Chicago stage, supporting himself by resting his hands firmly on his lectern, and pledged himself to a New Deal for the American people.
I don't know if the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon is bigger than just the bailouts, the bonuses, and the banks. I don't know if it's the manifestation of that creeping suspicion that our government--never inherently evil or adversarial, as the Tea Party seems to believe, but an institution for whose success eternal vigilance truly is the price--has once again slipped from our grasp and serves new masters. I don't know what OWS is and I suspect its participants don't quite know what it is yet. But the possibility that it's motivated by the same righteous discontent that inspired generations past to protest by destroying the private property of a powerful joint-stock company or to seize the levers of political power and take back their government is too exciting a prospect to let pass unnoticed. Will modern day progressives demonstrate that the term isn't just a response to wariness of the "liberal" label but instead truly invokes real turn-of-the-(last)-century Progressive roots?
Yesterday we had news of a bold step down in Arizona:
Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer announced Monday that she will defy RNC rules and schedule her state's 2012 primary for Feb. 28.
That means Arizona will vote a full week before March 6, when a joint RNC-DNC agreement said states can begin holding primary elections without facing penalties at the 2012 conventions. As it is, only Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina can hold officially sanctioned contests before that date.
As we all, know when it comes to presidential primaries and caucuses, those four states to get to go first. And so their response was swift and decisive:
South Carolina Republicans are reacting swiftly to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer’s decision to defy the Republican National Committee guidelines and move her state’s primary to the same date they’ve got for theirs, promising they won’t remain on the calendar together for long.
South Carolina Republican Party Chair Chad Connelly says if his state can’t be alone in picking a presidential nominee on Feb. 28, they’re going to change to do a date when they can — setting off a likely domino effect of early state timing changes.
“We’re not going to share our date with anybody,” the South Carolinian told POLITICO. “Especially, not with any state that violates the rules.”
If South Carolina moves back, New Hampshire and Iowa are likely to as well. Connelly predicted strict consequences for any states — Florida is also looking at moving up its primary, as are others — which push the beginning of the official voting season back into early January.
And if you're wondering how the early states have cemented their vanguard status, it isn't just party rules. Some of them actually have state laws in place:
Traditionally New Hampshire and Iowa have coordinated to protect their early-voting status — with the support of the national parties, and presidential candidates eager for their votes — but with each presidential-election cycle, the pressure has grown from other states coveting candidates’ attention to them and their issues. By law, Iowa’s party caucuses must be eight days before New Hampshire’s primaries, and New Hampshire, by law, requires its primaries to be a week before any state’s similar contest.
The way out of this endless flirtation with one-upmanship is clear. Competing states must pass laws declaring that their primaries must be before New Hampshire's, creating a paradox, the result of which should cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the space-time continuum and destroy the entire universe.
Some feisty audience members at tonight's Tea Party Express Republican Presidential Debate, particularly on the question of whether the uninsured should be left to...die.
Switching next to the true Tea Party candidate (i.e. the guy in the tri-corner hat), he was a bit more direct in his response than was Ron Paul:
Governor Santini is brought to you today by Soylent Red, and Soylent Yellow. And, new, delicious, Soylent Green: The "miracle food" of high energy plankton, gathered from the oceans of the world. Due to its enormous popularity, Soylent Green is in short supply, so remember—Tuesday is Soylent Green day.
I hate to make two Soylent Green references in a row but this time it's really apropos. If you're not familiar with the sci-fi classic (and, really, by now you should be--rent it from the library, Netflix it, whatever), it offers a dystopic vision of the year 2022--an overpopulated, environmentally devastated planet in which food is scarce (leading to desperate measures!). Far-fetched stuff.
How's the food picture looking in the real world in 2011? Not good, it turns out. You can check out the World Bank's Food Price Watch for the details, though suffice to say that food prices have been on the rise.
The consequences of rising food prices are more than just empty bellies and barren tabletops, they manifest themselves on national scales as unease turns to unrest turns to upheaval. As this handy map from Wiki's page on the Arab Spring reminds us, the past nine months have seen tremendous political upheaval, particularly in the Middle East:
Soaring food prices have forced people in many Arab states to allocate a larger portion of their income to the basic necessities of life pushing them deeper into poverty and sparking protests.
Widespread rallies last week in Algeria and Jordan demonstrated the public discontent about the economic situation that could have political repercussions. In the case of Tunisia, a 23-year-old dictatorship was overthrown. [...]
Food prices helped spark riots in Algeria earlier this month, forcing the government to cut import duties and taxes on sugar and cooking oil. Jordan cut fuel taxes and imposed price caps on sugar and rice to preempt unrest. Russia banned wheat exports last year after a poor harvest.
Prices for rice, world's most important and politically sensitive grain, have risen in the past six months, but remain well below 2008 highs.
A similar food price crisis in 2008 led to protests and riots in more than 30 countries.
It's absolutely worth reading the article in full but a few key points jumped out at me:
1. The prognosis is grim.
"Historically, price spikes tended to be almost exclusively driven by unusual weather -- a monsoon failure in India, a drought in the former Soviet Union, a heat wave in the U.S. Midwest. Such events were always disruptive, but thankfully infrequent. Unfortunately, today's price hikes are driven by trends that are both elevating demand and making it more difficult to increase production: among them, a rapidly expanding population, crop-withering temperature increases, and irrigation wells running dry."
2. Failures of our energy and transit policy are exacerbating the problem.
"At the same time, the United States, which once was able to act as a global buffer of sorts against poor harvests elsewhere, is now converting massive quantities of grain into fuel for cars, even as world grain consumption, which is already up to roughly 2.2 billion metric tons per year, is growing at an accelerating rate. A decade ago, the growth in consumption was 20 million tons per year. More recently it has risen by 40 million tons every year. But the rate at which the United States is converting grain into ethanol has grown even faster. In 2010, the United States harvested nearly 400 million tons of grain, of which 126 million tons went to ethanol fuel distilleries (up from 16 million tons in 2000). This massive capacity to convert grain into fuel means that the price of grain is now tied to the price of oil. So if oil goes to $150 per barrel or more, the price of grain will follow it upward as it becomes ever more profitable to convert grain into oil substitutes."
3. Fertile land is the new gold.
"Fearing they might not be able to buy needed grain from the market, some of the more affluent countries, led by Saudi Arabia, South Korea, and China, took the unusual step in 2008 of buying or leasing land in other countries on which to grow grain for themselves. Most of these land acquisitions are in Africa, where some governments lease cropland for less than $1 per acre per year. Among the principal destinations were Ethiopia and Sudan, countries where millions of people are being sustained with food from the U.N. World Food Program. That the governments of these two countries are willing to sell land to foreign interests when their own people are hungry is a sad commentary on their leadership."
4. The scenes in Soylent Green, particularly the riots around the food trucks, don't seem so far-fetched.
"Not only are these deals risky, but foreign investors producing food in a country full of hungry people face another political question of how to get the grain out. Will villagers permit trucks laden with grain headed for port cities to proceed when they themselves may be on the verge of starvation? The potential for political instability in countries where villagers have lost their land and their livelihoods is high. Conflicts could easily develop between investor and host countries."
At least, as a newly minted New Englander, I can take comfort in knowing we still have the vast bounty of the sea to sustain us.
The world's oceans may be completely depleted of fish in 40 years if action is not taken to replenish stocks, the United Nations is warning in a new report.
In a preview of its upcoming report entitled the Green Economy, the United Nations Environment Programme states that "mismanagement, lack of enforcement and subsidies totaling over $27 billion annually have left close to 30 percent of fish stocks "collapsed."
"If the various estimates we have received ... come true, then we are in the situation where 40 years down the line we, effectively, are out of fish," Pavan Sukhdev, head of UNEP's Green Economy plan, told Agence France Presse on Monday.
Well, fuck.
Recently, arXiv Blog reported on a paper posted to the "Physics and Society" section of the arXiv e-print server (basically a free online physics journal) in "The Cause Of Riots And The Price of Food." A trio of complexity theorists examined the evidence and came to the--fairly self-evident--conclusion that "when the food price index rises above a certain threshold, the result is trouble around the world." But what's more interesting is that they gave a rough timeframe for when things might really start to get ugly.
But what's interesting about this analysis is that Lagi and co say that high food prices don't necessarily trigger riots themselves, they simply create the conditions in which social unrest can flourish. "These observations are consistent with a hypothesis that high global food prices are a precipitating condition for social unrest," say Lagi and co.
In other words, high food prices lead to a kind of tipping point when almost anything can trigger a riot, like a lighted match in a dry forest.
On 13 December last year, the group wrote to the US government pointing out that global food prices were about to cross the threshold they had identified. Four days later, Mohamed Bouazizi set himself on fire in Tunisia in protest at government policies, an event that triggered a wave of social unrest that continues to spread throughout the middle east today. [...]
Today, the food price index remains above the threshold but the long term trend is still below. But it is rising. Lagi and co say that if the trend continues, the index is likely to cross the threshold in August 2013.
If their model has the predictive power they suggest, when that happens, the world will become a tinderbox waiting for a match.
So, if that analysis is correct, perhaps we have two years before the shit really hits the fan.
Mitt Romney took a bit of heckling today on the campaign trail, leading to a memorable line:
DES MOINES, Iowa — Mitt Romney, who likes to promote his years in the private sector when out on the stump, offered a glimpse into his own business perspective at the Iowa State Fair on Thursday, telling a group of hecklers, “Corporations are people, my friend.” [...]
“We have to make sure that the promises we make in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid are promises we can keep, and there are various ways of doing that,” Mr. Romney said. “One is we can raise taxes on people.”
“Corporations!” the protesters shouted, suggesting that Mr. Romney, as president, should raise taxes on large businesses. “Corporations!”
“Corporations are people, my friend,” Mr. Romney responded, as the hecklers shouted back, “No they’re not!”
Move over, Soylent Green, and eat your heart out, Heston.
In honor of the abuse Obama has taken over saying this:
The president said that “the other thing that happened, though, and this goes to the point you were just making, is there are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers. You see it when you go to a bank and you use an ATM; you don't go to a bank teller. Or you go to the airport, and you're using a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate. So all these things have created changes in the economy, and what we have to do now -- and that's what this job council is all about -- is identifying where the jobs for the future are going to be; how do we make sure that there's a match between what people are getting trained for and the jobs that exist; how do we make sure that capital is flowing into those places with the greatest opportunity. We are on the right track. The key is figuring out how do we accelerate it.” [...]
That same New York Times story quoted various economists discussing automated machines displacing workers. William C. Dunkelberg, chief economist at the National Federation of Independent Business, for instance, said "We don't have 11 million unemployed farmers today because over time farmers and their children transitioned into different sectors. We don't usually have this kind of shock, though, that displaces a lot of workers at once."
But conservatives are trying to use the president seizing on the example of an ATM machine – hardly new technology -- is to paint the president as unaware of how the economy works.
My apologies to the Cleveland Indians for the jinx. If it's any consolation, the Colorado Rockies are in town and since they are my other favorite team that means the Indians should have about a 50-50 chance of snapping right out of this cool streak.
Stanek wasn't kidding: the Indians have indeed been good so far this season. (I have a habit of causing sports teams to hit slumps by being confident they are better than so and so and will win, so I am attempting to keep this post in the past tense and will refrain from making predictions). Today they just finished a 3-game sweep of the Cincinnati Reds, not too shabby of a feat by itself. And in that series we saw a little bit of everything. Tomlin won a pitching duel yesterday against Homer Bailey, dealing him his first loss of the season; today they jumped on Volquez's shaky outing and didn't quit when the relievers came in, soundly beating the Reds to make up for Carrasco's below average start; and they didn't give up Friday with their comeback victory despite being down four runs into the sixth inning.
The series against the Reds typified Cleveland's season as a whole: they have found ways to win the game. On days where their offense wasn't stellar their pitching stepped up, and vice versa. Pitchers like Tomlin and Masterson have really found a groove and have had surprise years so far, and Carrasco and Carmona are keeping us in games (with a few exceptions). The lineup is producing when they need to, which has been occurring pretty much across the board - made all the more more important with Choo's struggles early on and the DL issues we've had with Grady Sizemore and now Travis Hafner. There have been a lot of pleasant surprises (especially with the lineup), and even more importantly it seems to me like they are working as a team, finding ways to win even if their go-to guy isn't doing it that night.
They've had their share of good luck and weak opponents, but we were supposed to be one of those weak teams too. Our age is another reason for optimism - we have a lot of young players who are learning early on that even in the majors the game isn't over until the final out. How will the season end up? Well it's a hell of a long road to October, and I refuse to predict how the next months will go and end up ruining another team's chances of winning (I'm only sort of kidding). But the past two months have been fun regardless of the end result.
Though there's only been a month of baseball, we here at TFS shouldn't let it pass unnoticed that the Indians just had the best April they've ever had. And they're riding high at the top of the standings. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Hat tip to TJ for giving me the spark I needed to do something I’ve wanted to do for a while: post my rankings of all ten Star Trek movies (the eleventh is a reboot—it doesn’t count). To give the appearance of some kind of scientific basis to these rankings, I’ve tabulated scores for key things that matter to me when watching Star Trek movies: the interaction between the characters I know and love, as well as with any new ones introduced in the movie; the themes or message I take away from the film; the strength of the plot; the quality of the villain; the impressiveness of those uniquely sci-fi aspects of the movie (this is Star Trek, after all); and a final catch-all category, “enjoyability,” which is essentially my way of quantifying how much I want to watch this movie.
As is customary with these kinds of lists, we'll start with the worst and work our way up to the best. Also, for the uninitiated, the number in parentheses after each movie title is the order of the film in the franchise.
Star Trek: TMP is a hideous movie. The costumes are ugly, the sets are boring, the color scheme is almost sickening. The plot itself is extremely slow-paced and while there's an interesting bit of sci-fi at the center of it all, by the time you find out what it is you barely even care anymore.
Fundamentally, The Motion Picture is about getting the band back together, a decade after they drifted apart. In that goal it was successful, so we owe it that little debt of gratitude. And it gave us our first glimpse of modern Klingons and introduced the music that eventually became the opening theme of a new series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, eight years later. But ultimately I find it difficult to sit through the whole movie so it's got to come in dead last.
I'm not sure what to say about this one. As with the previous generation, the transition of the TNG crew to the big screen was a bit rocky. The film loses major points for taking one of my favorite characters and making him obnoxious for the entire movie. More seriously, the send-off they gave to one of the greatest and most significant characters in Trek history was absolutely disgraceful. It had no emotional import, no meaning, and felt utterly disconnected from what came before. Compare with the relevant send-off of a beloved character in TWOK to see how to bid farewell (if only temporarily) to a great character with love and respect.
On top of that, the villains were weak and the sci-fi MacGuffin at the heart of it all is nonsensical. Really, the Nexus/energy ribbon concept was just confusing and seems to be based around ignoring that motion is relative (i.e. in reality, there is no difference between you going to something and something coming to you).
Insurrection might be the single biggest instance of squandered potential of any Trek movie. It’s set during one of the most momentous periods in Trek history, as Deep Space Nine fans know: the Dominion War, a massive conflict in which no less than the fate of the entire Alpha Quadrant (!) hung in the balance. And yet, aside from passing reference to the ongoing war, the film’s plot had nothing to do with it, instead centering on some relatively small potatoes. It’s as if you were watching a movie set aboard the USS Iowa at the height of World War II and there was nary a mention of the global conflict consuming the planet. Presumably, following the darkness of the preceding film (First Contact), the producers were anxious to get back to some lighter Trek but, man, what a waste.
That said, the movie did have some promise: a mysterious opener and hints of intrigue but ultimately its plot felt irrelevant and the sci-fi concept at its core was a bit of a yawner. There was some nice advancement of the character’s relationships and Insurrection is arguably the most visually pleasing of any of the Trek movies because of the stunning locations in which it is set. This one’s not a bad way to spend a rainy afternoon but it’s not among the best Trek has to offer.
There’s a lot to like in Nemesis. I enjoy its (admittedly underdeveloped) exploration of the nature of identity and what makes us who we are, and it was the first Trek movie to take us to Romulus and plunge us into Romulan politics, though in a way that strains credibility a bit. It has a very sci-fi-y premise and a pretty intense space battle—the bread and butter of a fine Trek movie—and a huge tip of the hat to what I’ve judged below to be the best film in the franchise.
Despite the positives, something about this movie feels a bit lacking. It almost seemed to me that perhaps it was cobbled together too fast and thus the opportunity to really refine it into something fantastic and meaningful was lost. And that’s a shame, considering this is the last we’ll ever see of the adventures of the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The movie suffers significantly from the absence of the titular character. It also distinctly has the feel of what it is: the middle movie of a trilogy, albeit one with a significant loose end to tie up (as the name suggests). The movie isn’t big on the sci-fi factor, though it relies heavily on quasi-religious Vulcan mysticism to drive the plot. Also, I absolutely hate when a character who appeared in a previous film gets recast and is played by a new actress. That’s my single biggest gripe with this movie: if they couldn’t get Kirstie Alley back, they should’ve just written out the Saavik character.
But a movie about risking everything to save a friend can’t be all bad and certainly this one isn’t. All the Trek that came after this movie owes a debt to Christopher Lloyd’s (yes, Doc Brown) portrayal of the Klingon villain this movie. Sure, the character had sort of a villain-of-the-week feel but Lloyd played him brilliantly and in doing set up the template for all later incarnations of Klingons.
#5: The Undiscovered Country (VI) Characters: 8 Themes: 9 Plot: 7 Sci-Fi-Ness: 3 Villain: 3 Enjoyability Factor: 7 Total: 37
From the very beginning, Star Trek had political overtones built into it. The Klingons in the original series are understood to have been a stand-in for the Soviet Union, while the virtuous Federation corresponded to the United States. But by 1987, when the Star Trek: The Next Generation (set about a century after The Original Series) premiered, peace had been made between the Federation and the Klingon empire. So in 1991, when the real-life Cold War had ended and the cast of The Original Series was looking for its last hurrah on the silver screen, it was only natural to tell the story of how peace was made between the Federation and its long-time adversary.
The result was an enjoyable tale, rife with political assassinations and kangaroo courts, daring escapes and enduring friendships, and the challenges of letting go of old hatreds and confronting old demons. This movie also marks the first time that Spock seemed entirely back to his old self since The Wrath of Khan. Aside from a pretty cheesy main villain and a general lack of significant sci-fi attributes (which, in a film like this, probably shouldn’t even be considered a weakness), this was a pretty good flick. And it’s the first in my list to make into the top half of Trek films.
#4: The Final Frontier (V) Characters: 9 Themes: 10 Plot: 6 Sci-Fi-Ness: 6 Villain: 1 Enjoyability Factor: 7 Total: 39
This movie generally ranks lower in most people’s lists of the Best of Trek, in keeping with the well-known Curse of the Odds (as you can see, it’s the only odd-numbered Trek movie to make it into the top half of my list). But despite its flaws—of which there are many—I like this film a great deal. Despite Spock still being a little off, this is probably the movie with the original cast that comes closest to capturing the amazing Kirk-Spock-McCoy dynamic that made the TV series as fun as it was. Some fans find the interaction hammy and perhaps even cringe-worthy at times, but I enjoy it.
But more importantly, it showed us something you almost never see in Trek: hints that even in the utopian future of Trek dominated by technological magic and a whole lot of bold going to distant reaches of the galaxy, a certain existential emptiness lingers even among the mighty Starfleet. Religious sentiments in Trek are generally reserved for ancillary races; they’re often portrayed as curious inclinations of outsider (i.e. nonhuman) races. Interesting, but eccentricities that seem to have largely been abandoned by humanity. The Final Frontier is, in large part, about the search for God—and, indeed, it raises the question of what we even mean by “God.” It’s about pain and the human experience and the search for something beyond ourselves.
Despite that, it’s not an overtly religious film. No answers are suggested, it merely shows that even in Trek, human beings are still compelled to ask the questions that, presumably, will forever consume us no matter how advanced science and society become. So in spite of the movie’s many deficiencies (which I won’t go into here—just watch it, they’re not hard to notice), it has a special place on my list for boldly daring to go where Trek rarely does.
#3: The Voyage Home (IV) Characters: 10 Themes: 9 Plot: 9 Sci-Fi-Ness: 8 Villain: 3 Enjoyability Factor: 10 Total: 49
This one is just fun. It concludes the trilogy begun by Wrath of Khan and it does it with a classic sci-fi device (time travel! To 1986!), an important objective (to save the Earth itself!) that can only be achieved with a somewhat unlikely acquisition (…whales?), and lots of fun with the setting. There’s really not much more to say about this one, other than “go watch it.”
First Contact is hands-down the best of the TNG crew’s movie adventures. It helps that they tip their hat to The Original Series (the character of Zefram Cochrane first appeared in an episode of TOS), while putting their own spin on it. And how about that interplay between the plot and the sci-fi aspects? Time traveling back to a momentous event in sci-fi history—the invention of warp drive by humanity!—to save the planet from assimilation by the Borg? And how about the interaction of those elements with the characters, particularly Data’s quest to become more human and Picard’s demons left over from his own (brief) assimilation by the Borg during the TV run of Star Trek: The Next Generation?
This is a fast-paced, fun movie. The stakes are high, the sci-fi is good, the characters are at their best. Awesome flick.
#1: The Wrath of Khan (II) Characters: 10 Themes: 8 Plot: 9 Sci-Fi-Ness: 9 Villain: 10 Enjoyability Factor: 10 Total: 56
The Star Trek film against which all others must be measured (and, almost certainly, none will ever surpass). TWOK set in motion the great trilogy in the Star Trek movie franchise (Star Trek II-IV), a story arc that took us beyond death and across time.
TWOK had it all: a compelling, entertainingly over-the-top villain played to perfection by Ricardo Montalban, and one Trek fans were already familiar with (Khan didn't emerge out of the blue, after all, the character first appeared in a 1966 episode of Star Trek, setting up the film's revenge angle); a major, yet believable, revelation about a major character's history; some terrific sci-fi elements, with villains who are explicitly genetically-enhanced products of the Eugenics Wars and a plot revolving around the awe-inspiring Genesis Device, part doomsday device and part Godlike creator of life; themes of life and death, youth and age, and the needs of the many vs the needs of the one that are always worth exploring; a great score; and an extremely poignant ending.
It’s not as flashy, visually, as First Contact but the meaning and emotional import with which they were able to imbue every frame of the film using elements perfected during the TV run (e.g. Kirk’s swashbuckling ways and Spock’s flawless logic colliding in the final “Kobayashi Maru” in the final minutes of the film) and the elephants in the room (e.g. the aging of the cast between the end of the TV run and the start of the films) more than make up for it. This movie is solid gold.
But don't take my word for it on these rankings. By all means, watch some Trek. And let me know where you think I've gotten it wrong.
WASHINGTON — After clamoring loudly about their plans to curtail federal spending, House Republicans announced Thursday that they would cut $32 billion for the remainder of the fiscal year — a minuscule amount compared with a projected annual deficit of nearly $1.5 trillion.
The Republican proposal is effectively $58 billion less than the domestic and foreign aid programs in President Obama’s budget request for 2011 — far short of the $100 billion in cuts that Representative John A. Boehner promised before the November elections that catapulted Republicans into the House majority and made him the speaker.
The potential difficulty of their job became clear after Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., following an evening meeting with Senate Democrats, said negotiators had effectively settled on $33 billion in reductions from current spending, a substantial difference from the $61 billion endorsed by the House in February.
Democrats and Republicans are running in two different directions when it comes to the $33 billion figure that forms the basis for the ongoing negotiations on Capitol Hill about how much to trim from the federal budget this fiscal year.
“As I said yesterday, there is no number, there is no agreement on a number,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters on Friday. “We’re going to fight for the largest spending cuts that we can get. And I’m hopeful that we’ll get it as soon as possible.”
But on Wednesday no less an authority than Vice President Joe Biden, who has been involved in the negotiations, said that two sides had agreed to that figure.
Earlier this month, I mentioned that while states have the power to enact certain proposals--like allowing out-of-state health insurance policies to be sold in their markets--none were yet putting their money where their mouth is. Well, one state edged its way a little closer to that possibility this week (though it's still a long away away from actually allowing this):
With supporters arguing it would make coverage more affordable, lawmakers began considering a bill Wednesday that would open Florida to stripped-down health insurance policies from other states.
The bill, which was approved by a House subcommittee, could undergo major changes in the coming weeks. But at a minimum, the proposal refueled a long-running debate about whether coverage requirements --- known as "mandates" --- drive up the cost of insurance in Florida.
Utah recently designated the nation's first official state firearm , choosing the Browning M1911 pistol. I say Ohio shows everyone who's got the bigger balls (figuratively and literally) and makes their state firearm "the Dictator" from the American Civil War.
I don't know if the Dictator could technically be classified as a "firearm", but then again choosing a state firearm is ridiculous anyway so who cares.
A recent piece by conservative columnist George Will—which is earnestly subtitled “Why Liberals Love Trains”—offers this delightful bit of analysis:
Forever seeking Archimedean levers for prying the world in directions they prefer, progressives say they embrace high-speed rail for many reasons—to improve the climate, increase competitiveness, enhance national security, reduce congestion, and rationalize land use. The length of the list of reasons, and the flimsiness of each, points to this conclusion: the real reason for progressives’ passion for trains is their goal of diminishing Americans’ individualism in order to make them more amenable to collectivism.
To progressives, the best thing about railroads is that people riding them are not in automobiles, which are subversive of the deference on which progressivism depends. Automobiles go hither and yon, wherever and whenever the driver desires, without timetables. Automobiles encourage people to think they—unsupervised, untutored, and unscripted—are masters of their fates. The automobile encourages people in delusions of adequacy, which make them resistant to government by experts who know what choices people should make.
Though obnoxiously written, Will’s article gets at the great philosophical schism of our time, of the modern era, perhaps in all of human history: man vs. wild society, individual vs. the collective, E Pluribus Unum.
A slightly more useful tool than trains for thinking about that difference, I think, is from this summary of a report, “Thoughts and Feeling About Health Differences Across Populations in the United States,” which appears as Appendix A in this document. Through interviews with Congressional staffers and health policy folks affiliated with one party or the other, the authors attempted to identify the prevalent frames that shaped the thinking of partisans on the social determinants of health.
The conclusion was that Democrats understand health and the social factors influencing it in terms of a system:
Broadly, the system-deep metaphor refers to the unification and organization of separate entities into a whole. The unity of a system means that the parts are interdependent; these connected parts often operate in a predictable and recurrent pattern with certain results.
For Democrats in particular, the system frame operates on two levels. First, American society as a whole is a complex system that unifies all citizens. As such, all individuals, from the poorest person in the Bronx to the wealthiest person in Manhattan, are interdependent, even if this is not readily apparent. [...]
The second level on which the deep metaphor system operates is that Democrats view poor levels of health as emerging from a complex and interrelated system of social, cultural, economic, and biological factors.
Republicans, on the other hand, conceptualize these factors in terms of a journey:
Where system forms the fundamental lens through which Democrats view society and health, the deep metaphor journey is the predominant frame through which Republicans view American society and health issues. Broadly, journey often frames our discussion of life itself. Journeys can be fraught with challenge or can be smooth sailing; they can be direct or divergent. Some journeys are unpredictable, where others focus on a series of steps that, if followed, will take you to a predetermined place or goal.
The type of journey that a group describes can yield much insight into how they view a given topic. For Republicans, American society as a whole is on a long, unpredictable health journey through time. They use metaphors of winding paths and stress the importance of adaptability in the face of an unknown future direction. [...]
Much as they see America and health care as a whole on a journey through time, Republicans see individuals as on their own health journeys. Echoing the common theme of “individual responsibility,” Republicans view poor health as arising from bad choices along one’s path and the inability to overcome obstacles to health that one encounters along the way.
I can certainly understand that; I'm partial to path metaphors myself. But extrapolating this out a bit beyond health issues, it's an apt way to think about the philosophical gulf between the left and right.
The right sneers that the liberals are "collectivists" because the left tends to think systemically and conceptualizes the individual as being embedded in a broader structure, a structure that inexorably binds the fates of all those who share it. Liberal thought thus often focuses on how to improve various systems. The world is a project, one in which mandatory busing is a plausible mechanism for overcoming centuries of pervasive racism and segregation; publicly-supported low-income nutrition and early education programs coupled with a strong public school system and diversified, subsidized post-secondary education is key to building the well-functioning workforce of tomorrow; and one in which a comprehensive law with multi-faceted moving parts working in concert is a conceivable avenue toward higher quality, lower cost health care.
The left, on the other hand, marvels at the right's uncompromising understanding of liberty and individualism. To the right, "society" as an emergent structure with a meaning and existence independent of the myriad interactions between individuals is a fiction--or at least an unsubstantiated myth. Thus the supremacy of markets is beyond doubt, as they are the embodiment of the journey concept. They revolve around individuals acting in accordance with personal preferences; even the hint of some sort of centralized component, such as the fact that federal legislation is compelling the creation of new health insurance markets as we speak, will raise suspicion among the right.
Crude caricatures through these may be, we can see them playing out even now. The liberal's systems-eye view of power differentials between workers and corporations or, yes, even governments lends itself to an affinity for organization: collective bargaining provides the counterweight in the system that's needed to ensure fair remuneration for labor. The conservative's journey frame reassures him that the determination or negotiation of wages and benefits is a part of the personal journey, to be based on the individual's merits. The phrase "collective bargaining" is enough to give him chills.
And so I find that, despite my initial revulsion at Will's column, it has a certain element of truth to it. Trains are invariably part of a system; something's got to keep them running on time. Cars, on the other hand, are closer to the conservative's individualistic journey metaphor. Of course, I don't think liberals inherently dislike cars. But notice that the pretexts for high-speed rail that Will dismisses as flimsy--combating climate change, bolstering national security, reducing congestion, and rationalizing land use--all imply pursuing rail as part of a collective solution to a collective problem. Each of those issues is a problem to be addressed by tinkering with systems, not by us taking it on individual-by-individual, one at a time, like villains in a Jackie Chan movie. But more narrowly, transit itself is an issue of systems: we're talking about the connections that network our cities, the fabric that binds out society. Roads are part of that same system, of course, but alone in his car and choosing his favorite radio station, the conservative can forget that his journey is only possible because it's embedded in a broader structure (dare I say system yet again?) of crisscrossing, well-defined roads. But no one would accuse cars of being part of a coherent system for collectively achieving a goal.
The 2010 election was a tidal wave that swept the Republican Party into power. I'm not talking about at the federal level (though the U.S. House elections could be described similarly), I'm talking about state-level elections. Take a look at where things stand at the state level now, in the wake of the 2010 elections:
And to condense that information into a single map I've put together myself (instead of stealing it from NCSL) with some shading to indicate the degree of Republican control over the levers of state power:
So now we've got an interesting situation. The Republican Party is typically--particularly during the 2010 election cycle--considered to be a conservative party. That often manifests itself as a declaration that the size of the federal government ought to be reduced and its powers and responsibilities pared down. "Let the states run their own affairs!" some of them exclaim. Their bias, rhetorically at least, is to leave governmental functions to state governments unless it's absolutely necessary for the federal government to assume them.
That party is now in a position of tremendous power in state governments across the nation (a reality that traditionally blueish states like Wisconsin are just waking up to now, apparently). So one might expect some of the Republican standby policy suggestions to be implemented in at least some states. Taking health care as an example, the national Republican party often likes to push suggestions such as insurance market deregulation, tort reform, and across-state-lines health insurance purchasing.
Good news for them: all of these things can be done at the state level. To take a Republican favorite: any state may allow out-of-state insurance policies to be sold in its insurance market. That would bring the insurer competition to the state's market that Republicans claim to desire and it doesn't require any federal action. So I perused the websites of the state legislatures of the red-tinted states to see what kind of action is happening on this front now that Republicans have such a prominent role in the nation's state-level politics.
As near as I can tell, interstate purchasing bills have been introduced in the legislatures of only six states (and of them, only the bill in Missouri seems to have actually made it as far as having a committee hearing thus far):
A bit of an anemic showing given the alleged Republican affection for this idea. Perhaps the Party of the Tenth Amendment is waiting for action at the federal level? Time will tell.
But the fact remains that the Republicans now hold power in quite a few states and they supposedly have a philosophical predilection toward letting states handle most kinds of policy reforms, leaving the federal government out of it. It will be fascinating to see how much of their erstwhile national agenda (e.g. the federalization of tort law or federal laws allowing interstate insurance purchasing) they push in the states. My guess is that it won't be quite as much as one might expect.
A few months ago, Stanek messaged me with an interesting observation: it's curious to see all the nostalgia these days for a supposed "time before corporations" in American history when we consider that we are a country that was literally founded by one (that's not his argument verbatim, just my summation of it). I know almost nothing about economics so I won't comment on American corporate history here. However, I've always been one to keep an eye out for tidbits that fly in the face of the generic, vague, or flat-out false "facts" about U.S. history that get thrown around, especially those used for political arguments (what I call "twisted history"). It's not that I'm a buff for alternate history or that I go out of the way to find any facts I can that support my own opinion, but I do keep the door open while reading for when those facts do happen to show up. And at the very least if it turns out that I'm wrong then my own views on history will have been challenged for the better.
Thus, with all the generalized comments these days about returning to a time in American history when the government never told us what to do and that the states should be calling the shots, it made me laugh when I caught this brief mention in Ira Berlin's Many Thousands Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in North America of South Carolina telling its citizens what to do:
"...other strictures were added, including limitations on movement of slaves and penalties against white persons who traded with slaves. A recapitulation of these laws in the 1691 slave code forbade slaveowners from giving slaves Saturday mornings free, 'as hath been accustomed formerly.'" (page 68)
To me, there is something incredibly ironic about the government of South Carolina, of all places, not only attempting to force its citizens to do something (that is, be more cruel to their slaves) but also trying to control the free market. But to be fair, Berlin shows throughout the book that the north had its share of reprehensible laws regarding slavery and individual rights too. This passage in particular caught my eye:
"Often the punishment meted out to free blacks drove them back into bondage, as the Pennsylvania law enslaved free blacks found to be without regular employment, and who "loiter[ed] and misspen[t]" their time." (page 187)
Freed blacks being enslaved for not spending their time the way the state thinks they should... I understand the different mindset whites had back then towards African Americans but regardless, that is a pretty significant showing of just how intrusive state governments could be back then. Of course libertarians might argue that government at any level should stay out of our lives, whereas I would counter that that's likely one of the ways slavery got started in the first place.
Anyway, I don't really have an overall argument here. It is generally true that government wasless intrusive in 18th and 19th centuries. The examples I pointed out were also from the colonial era, although to me it's a hard argument to say colonial governments were any more intrusive than early American state governments. Additionally, these laws are hundreds of years old and have little to do with the governments they are associated with today; if conservatives in South Carolina or Pennsylvania want little or no government interference today then that's their political ideology. I just like pointing out that governments at all times and in all places have had a tendency to try and tell people what to do, for better or for worse. In many instances in addition to the two that I listed, things weren't as hands off and "free to do as you please" in the previous centuries as certain people like to believe. Ironically, you would think that having a system of slavery would make that self-evident...
One (brief this time) addendum to the last post. In thinking more about the N&P-related bit of Vinson's ruling, I find a piece of it very puzzling. Here's an extended quote to get the point across:
One of the amicus curiae briefs illustrates how using the Necessary and Proper Clause in the manner as suggested by the defendants would vitiate the enumerated powers principle (doc. 119). It points out that the defendants are essentially admitting that the Act will have serious negative consequences, e.g. encouraging people to forego health insurance until medical services are needed, increasing premiums and costs for everyone, and thereby bankrupting the health insurance industry--unless the individual mandate is imposed. Thus, rather than being used to implement or facilitate enforcement of the Act's insurance industry reforms, the individual mandate is actually being used as the means to avoid the adverse consequences of the Act itself. Such an application of the Necessary and Proper Clause would have the perverse effect of enabling Congress to pass ill-conceived, or economically disruptive statutes, secure in the knowledge that the more dysfunctional the results of the statute are, the more essential or "necessary" the statutory fix would be. Under such a rationale, the more harm the statute does, the more power Congress could assume for itself under the Necessary and Proper Clause. This result would, of course, expand the Necessary and Proper Clause far beyond its original meaning, and allow Congress to exceed the powers specifically enumerated in Article I. Surely this is not what the Founders anticipated, nor how that Clause should operate.
[...]
If Congress is allowed to define the scope of its power merely by arguing that a provision is "necessary" to avoid the negative consequences that will potentially flow from its own statutory enactments, the Necessary and Proper Clause runs the risk of ceasing to be the "perfectly harmless" part of the Constitution that Hamilton assured us it was, and moves that much closer to becoming the "hideous monster [with] devouring jaws" that he assured us it was not.
The defendants have asserted again and again that the individual mandate is absolutely "necessary" and "essential" for the Act to operate as it was intended by Congress. I accept that it is. Nevertheless, the individual mandate falls outside the boundary of Congress' Commerce Clause authority and cannot be reconciled with a limited government of enumerated powers. By definition, it cannot be "proper."
Legislation often has unintended consequences so I agree with the sentiment here insofar as any decision upholding the mandate on N&P grounds would have to do a good job thinking through some tests or conditions for understanding the word "necessary" in future applications to similar cases. As I said in the last post, however, I don't think it should be absurdly difficult to boil down to basics what separates this application to a law involving health insurance markets from future silly attempts to apply this logic to tea or car markets.
All that aside, the argument here seems to be: "Yes, the mandate is necessary but only because the rest of the law makes it so! Therefore, by [my] definition, it must be improper!"
Is he saying here that the very fact that the rest of the law makes the mandate necessary is itself the very thing that makes the mandate improper? That is, if a provision is necessary for a law to function effectively (i.e. without self-imposed negative consequences), it is by definition improper.
