Rand Paul: Political Amateur

One of the benefits of staying at a hotel while vacationing at the beach is that there are free copies of USA Today available to anyone who cares enough to pick them up. Since I'm not a regular subscriber, I figured that this would be a valuable opportunity to expose myself to a wider variety of news coverage and opinion writing than what is found on the pages of The Washington Post and The New York Times. And lo and behold, I was proven correct this morning when I opened the paper to discover an op-ed by Kentucky senatorial candidate and arch-conservative Rand Paul detailing his personal political philosophy. Despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that Paul's piece featured a noticeably lower quality of argument than those that are found in the WaPo and the Times, I found it to be a perfect example of a point that I made on this blog a few weeks ago: In modern day America, there are a striking number of individuals who have achieved or are actively seeking incredibly powerful leadership positions in fields about which they understand very little of practical importance.

You see, Rand Paul is a man whose background is in medicine. Specifically, he's a career ophthalmologist. Now, he has decided to run for a seat in the United State Senate, which is arguably the most important legislative body in the history of the world. Yet as today's op-ed makes painfully obvious, Paul is pitifully ignorant about subjects such as political science and history that are intimately connected with the job of governing.

For example, Paul describes himself as being a member of "the vast coalition of Americans — including independents, moderates, Republicans, conservatives and "Tea Party" activists — [that] share many libertarian points of view." As any political scientist can tell you, though, that list hardly encompasses a "vast coalition" of anything but rightward-leaning American voters. Members of the Tea Party have been shown to be overwhelmingly Republican, and members of the Republican Party are almost uniformly conservative. Furthermore, the terms "independent" and "moderate" mean hardly anything when discussing politics- people may describe themselves with these labels, but they still vote in just as partisan a manner as those who are self-identified Democrats or Republicans. In essence, Paul's "coalition" is merely a singular segment of the American electorate that he has chosen to describe both in terms of its ideological dispositions and its party loyalty.

Paul also demonstrates a woeful understanding of history by asserting, "Our Founding Fathers were clearly libertarians, and constructed a Republic with strict limits on government power designed to protect the rights and freedom of the citizens above all else." In reality, there were quite a few Founding Fathers who clearly were not libertarians, notably Alexander Hamilton who is perhaps best known for successfully lobbying to create the First National Bank, an institution whose modern-day heir, the Federal Reserve, is pure anathema to libertarians.

One could forgive an ophthalmologist for not knowing these finer points since they wouldn't be of much use when performing surgery on people's eyes, but it seems likely that they would come in handy for a legislator who is trying to enact sensible public policy measures that take into account the nation's history and its contemporary political landscape.

Executive Overreach Is Not the Real Problem With American Politics

I understand that Charles Krauthammer must be under intense pressure to come up with new grounds for criticizing the Obama administration every week, but yesterday's effort was truly ridiculous. Let's go through point by point:

First, Krauthammer blasts the administration for a memo discussing ways that the Department of Homeland Security could go about normalizing the status of certain illegal immigrants without Congressional action. "Regardless of your feelings on the substance of the immigration issue," he fumes, "this is not how a constitutional democracy should operate. Administrators administer the law, they don't change it. That's the legislators' job."

Except, as Ryan McNeely points out, when we're talking about matters of national security. Then, it's apparently kosher for memos to be issued by the Justice Department stating that the Geneva Conventions are irrelevant in the War on Terror and that waterboarding and prolonged sleep deprivation are legitimate interrogation techniques that do not constitute torture.

Next, Krauthammer complains about the regulations that the Environmental Protection Agency seems prepared to place upon carbon emissions. Although Krauthammer means for this to serve as another example of extra-Congressional legislating by the Obama administration, he undermines his own argument by pointing out that a 2007 Supreme Court decision explicitly directed the EPA to take such a step in the absence of Congressional action on climate change. The authority for the agency to do so ultimately derives from the Clean Air Act, a piece of legislation that would seem to qualify as an acceptable product of the democratic process having been passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the president.

Krauthammer also attacks Obama for allegedly refusing to boost security along the U.S.-Mexico border unless Congressional Republicans show a willingness to compromise on a way to offer illegal immigrants who are already in America with a pathway to citizenship. No matter that Obama has already sent over a thousand National Guard troops to the border and yet appears no closer to a deal on comprehensive immigration reform; according to Krauthammer, he is subverting the public good in favor of scoring a political victory. "[B]order enforcement is not something to be manipulated in return for legislative favors," he opines. "It is, as the administration vociferously argued in court in the Arizona case, the federal executive's constitutional responsibility. Its job is to faithfully execute the laws. Non-execution is a dereliction of duty." It's amusing to witness Krauthammer making an argument like this since I presume he is a member of the camp that would like to see Republicans defund the Affordable Care Act should they retake Congress in 2010 or 2012. Wouldn't that also be a failure to execute the law? Yet even if Obama were guilty of politicizing his administration's enforcement of the law, it would hardly be the first time that a president had committed such a sin: note the Bush administration's gutting of the Justice Department's civil rights division and of the epic incompetence and malfeasance of its environmental regulatory agencies. Do those cases not represent a broad failure to execute the law in an appropriate manner, or does Krauthammer simply care more about enforcing laws related to halting illegal immigration rather than those meant to guard against racial discrimination or pollution?

Finally, Krauthammer sums up his argument by noting that the traditional check on federal expansion has been the fact that legislation must first be approved by both houses of Congress in order to take effect. This allows the elected representatives of the people to decide what constitutes an appropriate amount of power to cede to the federal government. As Krauthammer's examples of immigration reform and environmental protection illustrate, the federal government is now assuming authority through other means. But this doesn't signify an authoritarian power-grab so much as it signifies a legislative system that is hopelessly antiquated and ineffective. As it stands today, President Obama would not have very much trouble passing comprehensive immigration reform, cap-and-trade legislation, or any other major liberal legislative initiative if only both houses of Congress operated, as they traditionally have, under majoritarian rules. After all, the American people granted Obama's party overwhelming majorities in both chambers during the 2008 election. Yet, because Republicans have twisted arcane Senate rules so that the upper chamber is now governed by super-majoritarian rules, the president has had to go outside the traditional channels of power in order to enact his agenda. Krauthammer is right to suggest that our political system is not presently functioning in a way that ensures the optimal implementation of policy, but he is wrong to lay the blame for that upon the executive branch. Rather, the blame rests with the legislature, specifically the Senate.

The Blind Side of The Blind Side

The Blind Side seems to be generally recognized as one of the best sports movies of the past several years. And why shouldn't it be? It features a knock-out performance from Sandra Bullock, a parade of cameos from famous college football coaches, and an uplifting story that everyone can walk away feeling good about. But to the sociologist in me, there are some troubling aspects of the film that I feel it's necessary to comment upon:

Most generally, The Blind Side suffers from the same problem as many movies in the "feel-good" genre: By presenting a true yet highly atypical story of an impoverished youth attaining success with the help of some kindly benefactors, it leaves viewers with the impression that America truly is a place where anything is possible and where the rags-to-riches miracle is still alive and well. Unfortunately, there's plenty of data showing that to be false. It may be that I'm overly pessimistic about this, but I fear that many people finish watching The Blind Side and think to themselves, "Gee, it's great to live in a country where there are generous people like the Tuohys to take care of disadvantaged youth like Michael Oher! We are such a compassionate and equitable society, aren't we?" The more appropriate response, I believe, would be to think, "What about all of the other poor kids out there who aren't fortunate enough to be six-and-a-half feet tall and 300 pounds and who, therefore, don't catch the eyes of wealthy aristocrats or football coaches at elite private schools? Isn't it a shame that the richest and most powerful nation in the history of the world has chosen not to provide for them?"

Essentially, The Blind Side hypes a micro-level triumph while obscuring a macro-level failure on the part of American society to appropriately address poverty and inequality. If one thinks for just a moment about the implications of this overall failure, then the feel-good message that the film attempts to portray quickly crumbles. For example, as generous as the Tuohys are toward Michael, the fact remains that their comfortable and privileged lifestyle has been built upon Mr. Tuohy's ownership of dozens of fast food establishments that thrive by preying upon economically disadvantaged individuals who seek to purchase the cheapest food that is available to them regardless of its nutritional value. If the family hadn't stumbled upon the rather visceral image of Michael meandering around aimlessly in the rain one night, then to them he would have merely remained "Big Mike," a kid notable only for his expansive waistline, a feature that would have been due in no small part to the diet pushed upon him by Mr. Tuohy's fast food empire.

A more specific flaw with The Blind Side is that even though it presents a few scenes offering a critical view of the condescending attitudes displayed by many white elites toward Michael and other disadvantaged black youths, the film itself utilizes a grossly stereotypical and classist framework in the construction of one of its most important moments. Without giving away too many details, this scene centers around the first high school football game in which Michael plays. At this point, he is playing for the elite private Christian school into which the Tuohys have placed him and is up against what appears to be a decidedly less exclusive public school made up primarily of what is crassly termed "rednecks." The driving force behind the scene is the apparent crudeness and racism of the opposing team and its fans, and the point of it is to show Michael's acclimation to the rough-and-tumble world of football where he has to protect his new "family," i.e. his team, from a menacing enemy. Yet by employing a stereotypical and offensive portrayal of economically disadvantaged, rural white people, the film undermines its own message of respect and compassion toward the less fortunate. While the Tuohys grow to realize over the course of the film that they have been very insulated from the tragedies facing inner-city youth like Michael, this apparently isn't enough to make them--or the filmakers-- think twice about insulting the "redneck" country folk who likely face a number of the same challenges.

Overall, the movie is entertaining and I appreciated the acting by Bullock, Quinton Aaron (as Michael Oher), and Jae Head (as the family's young son, S.J.). But I wish that films like The Blind Side would make more of an effort to examine the complex social and psychological hypocrisies behind the lives of their main protagonists. Also, it should be conveyed more explicitly to viewers that random acts of charity from upper-crust families aren't a particularly effective social safety net. I understand that it wouldn't have the same cinematic appeal as The Blind Side, but a film about an America with marginally higher levels of taxation being used to fund programs like expanded early education, universal health care, and improved public housing would be one that would realistically be much more uplifting.

Religious Tolerance

Lately, my hometown newspaper has been running a series of front-page stories about the Boy Scouts of America in recognition of their ongoing jamboree event at Fort A.P. Hill. Much of the coverage has focused on dispelling the notion that the group remains a homogenous group of American traditionalists, and today's installment challenged that characterization by attempting to highlight the Boy Scouts' religious diversity. The story leads off with an account of the benign curiosity that many scouts have displayed upon encountering a large inflatable mosque that has been set up at the campsite for the group's Muslim members. From there, we discover that the Boy Scouts love to learn about one another's religious beliefs:

"There are two big things at jamboree," Naqvi said. "The first is trading patches. The second is asking about religion. And then, then they like the activities."

Down the road from the mosque, more than 30 faith groups manned exhibit booths, but Scouts weren't lining up for those exhibits the way they waited for rappelling, snorkeling or archery.

Still, they were asking questions. It may help that one of the scouting awards requires the boys to learn about religion. Many said they are genuinely interested in finding out more....

While Scouts visited worship sites and booths set up by various religions--Quaker, Jewish, Buddhist, Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, Baptist and more--they were often learning for the first time what their tentmates believe.

This sounds really encouraging, especially given the recent spasms of bigotry directed toward the Muslims in New York City who wish to build a mosque and cultural center a few blocks from the site of Ground Zero (not to mention the Muslims in Temecula, California who wish to build one there as well). Yet it also begs the question: How far are the Boy Scouts willing to go in their religious tolerance? Will there, perhaps, be a Zoroastrian Temple at the next Jamboree? What about a Wiccan exhibit? And how accepting are the Boy Scouts of atheists who don't share any of these beliefs?

Well, it turns out that buried at the very end of the article is the answer to these questions:

"If we, as Scouts, don't show what is possible, no one else is going to do it," Hyman said. "What I like most about the Boy Scouts is, from the Boy Scouts' position, they don't care what you believe: Jewish, Christian, Muslim."

"As long as you believe in the God," Naqvi added.

"They say the best way to raise a child is in faith; what that faith is, is up to you," Hyman finished.

So after all that, the Boy Scouts turn out to be just another group that totally misunderstands what religious tolerance really means. It's not simply about respecting those faiths which share a lineage with your own. It's about recognizing and appreciating the right of every individual to hold supernatural beliefs that may be completely at odds with your own. Moreover, it's about understanding that adherence to any faith is a deeply personal decision to which some people never come. If the Boy Scouts truly value religion then they should focus on constructive engagement with those whose perspectives are most removed from their own in order to broaden and strengthen their own beliefs.

Thoughts on Ken Cuccinelli

I would strongly encourage anyone with even the slightest interest in Virginia politics to read The Washington Post Magazine's cover story about Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. It's a memorable profile both because it is well-written and because it sheds light upon the complex history and personality of a man who is rapidly becoming one of the most important legal figures in the country. The takeaway from the piece is that Cuccinelli is a relentlessly hard-working and strictly principled individual with more than a few quirks:

[His] journey from the campus steps of the Rotunda to the courthouse steps in the state capital, which included an eight-year stop as the last conservative GOP state senator from Northern Virginia, was no simple matter of hitching a ride on a movement. Insisting on what he calls principle, even when it might cost him, has earned Cuccinelli a certain reputation for authenticity. It's one of the few points on which Cuccinelli's supporters and detractors agree. With Cuccinelli, they say, what you see is what you get.

By and large, this seems to be a fair assessment. For example, Cuccinelli has remained true to his belief in free speech by refusing to support a military family that is suing the Westboro Baptist Church for picketing their son's funeral. This position has predictably drawn the ire of many mainstream conservatives who, despite their rhetorical support for the First Amendment, care more about the military than about free speech. Cuccinelli has also been a thorn in the side of conservatives attempting to expand the reach of the death penalty. This stance also seems to derive from his instinctive wariness of government.

Yet even with Cuccinelli, there are limits to how far principle goes. Notably, there's this whopper of a quote buried in the middle of the story:

"If you're going to spend money on things, you start at the bottom," [Cuccinelli] says. "And on the human side, as opposed to, say, building roads, that's taking care of those who, through no fault of their own, can't take care of themselves."

Specifically, Cuccinelli is talking about his support for mental health reform. But he might as well be discussing the Affordable Care Act since its fundamental rationale could be described in the exact words that Cuccinelli uses: "Taking care of those who, through no fault of their own, can't take care of themselves."

It's likely that Cuccinelli doesn't sense the hypocrisy. After all, as the article makes very clear, his world is divided into black and white, so he would probably classify lower-middle class Americans whose jobs don't offer them health insurance as being those who are too lazy to take care of themselves. And there's nothing that public policy can do about them, right?

That, in a nutshell, is what makes Cuccinelli so dangerous. He cares passionately about certain social and political causes that he haphazardly deems to be "right" and "true," and he understands how to use the power of his office to promote those causes. It doesn't matter whether there is any logical basis for his beliefs--it's merely enough for him to feel that whatever he is doing stands in virtuous contrast with the rest of the fallen world. This is the same fallacious way of thinking that doomed the George W. Bush presidency to the ash heap of history, and it seems likely that it will eventually do in Cuccinelli as well. The only question is how many innocent lives will he have to ruin before that happens.

Should Kindergarten Teachers Be The New Investment Bankers?

David Leonhardt, also known as the best New York Times columnist not named Paul Krugman, had an excellent piece published a few days ago examining a recent study done by five economic researchers about the long-term effects of kindergarten education on individual outcomes. Although the entire piece is worth reading in order to understand the background to and methodology of the study, the conclusion boils down to this:

Students who had learned much more in kindergarten were more likely to go to college than students with otherwise similar backgrounds. Students who learned more were also less likely to become single parents. As adults, they were more likely to be saving for retirement. Perhaps most striking, they were earning more.

All else equal, they were making about an extra $100 a year at age 27 for every percentile they had moved up the test-score distribution over the course of kindergarten. A student who went from average to the 60th percentile — a typical jump for a 5-year-old with a good teacher — could expect to make about $1,000 more a year at age 27 than a student who remained at the average. Over time, the effect seems to grow, too.

This is truly meaningful stuff, particularly given that the researchers appear to have identified the driving force behind a good kindergarten education:

Class size — which was the impetus of Project Star — evidently played some role. Classes with 13 to 17 students did better than classes with 22 to 25. Peers also seem to matter. In classes with a somewhat higher average socioeconomic status, all the students tended to do a little better.

But neither of these factors came close to explaining the variation in class performance. So another cause seemed to be the explanation: teachers.

Some are highly effective. Some are not. And the differences can affect students for years to come. ...

Mr. Chetty and his colleagues — one of whom, Emmanuel Saez, recently won the prize for the top research economist under the age of 40 — estimate that a standout kindergarten teacher is worth about $320,000 a year. That’s the present value of the additional money that a full class of students can expect to earn over their careers. This estimate doesn’t take into account social gains, like better health and less crime.

Wow. When one considers that the median salary for a kindergarten teacher in the United States is only $50,678 per year, it becomes clear that this study has revealed a severe misallocation of resources in the American economy.

The obvious public policy response, as I have argued before, should be to raise taxes on portions of the economy that are presently overvalued, such as the financial sector, and use that revenue to boost the salaries of kindergarten teachers. Anyone who honestly cares about the general welfare of American society should accept that this is a legitimate function of government power. Unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer American conservatives who believe that overall public prosperity is more important that unrestricted individual attainment. Hence, we're stuck living in a nation where the best and the brightest reject jobs such as teaching that have very well-defined social benefits and instead pursue absurdly profitable but significantly less productive endeavors such as the wagering of large sums of money upon a variety of complex financial products.

Follow the Leader?

One of the things that has occurred to me over the past several weeks as the morning papers have become filled with grotesque examples of political dysfunction in America is that many state and federal policymakers simply aren't very knowledgable about contemporary policy issues. This is an issue that Ezra Klein touched upon in a post last week, but I feel like he stopped short of giving it a full analysis. Toward the end of his post, though, he seems to get at the root of the problem:

When I've asked Hill staff and elected officials about this, I've gotten an interesting answer: Think about what you need to do to become a politician, they say. Rise up in your local party leadership. Raise a lot of money. Get yourself quoted in the media. Campaign effectively. You don't really need to know that much about policy. And so a lot of elected officials simply don't know much about policy. Even if they wanted to become known as problem solvers and thinkers, they don't have the chops for it, and the pace of modern campaigning means they never have time to develop those chops, either. It's a depressing thought.

Depressing, indeed. I see this phenomenon all of the time at college where the upper echelon of students can be broken into two camps: those who pursue leadership positions that garner them visibility and decision-making power, and those who devote themselves to in-depth research and a heavy course-load in order to gain a complete understanding of a specific subject. Rarely does one find an individual who falls into both of these camps. Although it is likely that innate personality differences have something to do with this (extroverts are more drawn to positions that allow them to become public figures, whereas introverts prefer to quietly go about their own work), I think that Klein is correct to point out that part of the problem is structural. Those seeking positions of leadership and authority spend a disproportionate amount of their time building personal connections and navigating social networks, and therefore have much less time for studying and research in a particular field. Those who do spend their time immersed in academic work often lose out on valuable social capital that their leadership-oriented counterparts obtain by attending parties, joining elite social organizations and asserting themselves in the collegiate community. This leads to an unfortunate dynamic where the students who graduate with the much sought-after "leadership credentials" aren't actually the ones who are best qualified to be making decisions about public policy.

Thus, America winds up with folks like John Boehner as the minority leader in the House of Representatives and Mitch McConnell as the minority leader in the Senate. Boehner may have a nice tan and the ability to charm his acquaintances on the golf course, but he has also demonstrated a total ignorance of climate science by comparing industrial carbon emissions to cow farts. McConnell, for his part, may have been a fine student body president at the University of Lousiville and was obviously likeable enough to become a member of Phi Kappa Tau, but he has proven his economic illiteracy by asserting that the Bush tax cuts actually increased government revenue rather than decreased it despite statements and data from Bush's own economic team suggesting otherwise. This problem isn't merely confined to Republicans, either. Democrat Gerry Connolly of Northern Virginia has also staked out several outlandish positions on economic policy in recent months, raising questions about his own competence in that field.

As with many problems, though, this dichotomy of leadership vs. expertise could be largely solved through structural reform. I'm a fan of this idealized political system put forth by Matt Yglesias in which technocratic bodies in the executive branch draw up policies themselves and then send them to elected legislatures to be voted upon (note: I do not support the final step that Yglesias proposes, that of national referendums). There have been a few encouraging steps taken in this direction by the Obama administration, notably the creation of the Independent Payment Advisory Board to handle Medicare cost control, but we obviously have a long way to go. I know, however, that I would much prefer having actual experts like Tim Geithner and Ben Bernanke drafting a comprehensive package of financial reform that could sent for an up-or-down vote in the Senate rather than having twerps like Scott Brown messing with it at the 11th hour in order to extract a few final goodies for their special constituencies.

A Little Catching Up

During my hiatus from blogging for much of this month, I wasn't entirely unproductive. Here's a letter to the editor that I had published in my local newspaper in which I point out that the decision of my county's board of supervisors to lower the price of water at the onset of a drought was utterly devoid of economic logic. Also, I've been working on my cooking a little bit and so I've decided to share a few recipes that I've enjoyed lately:

Sichuan Chicken Stir-Fry
I made this recipe with the dry sherry rather than the rice wine, since I had the former on hand and not the latter. I also added Mung bean sprouts and served it over fettuccine. The only other difference was that I used House of Tsang's bottled Szechuan sauce rather than prepare my own. This worked out well, although I'd recommend using a little more sauce than what they suggest on the back of the bottle.

Grated Carrot and Avocado Salad
As I was scrambling to come up with some lunch before heading into work on Sunday, I remembered seeing a version of this recipe a few days earlier when I was scouting out preparation options for my avocados. Since I had some carrots sitting around in the fridge, I decided to give it a shot.

The prep only took about 15 minutes and then I cooled it in the fridge for another 15 minutes, which gave me plenty of time to eat and then drive to work. Since my father had been kind enough to prepare hard-boiled eggs that morning for Sunday brunch, I diced two of them up and added them to the salad instead of the suggested protein supplements, tofu or chicken. The only note I would make is that with the Tobasco sauce and egg (or tofu/chicken), it really isn't necessary to add salt. One of my friends also pointed out that this is a rather mushy, non-fibrous dish (particularly if you leave out the seeds, which I did). This can be easily solved by serving it as a sandwich filling or by having some toast on the side, which I found provides a nice complementary taste to the zesty salad.

Zucchini Bread
This is a very traditional zucchini bread recipe, as I discovered when everyone who ate a piece said that it was exactly like the type that their mom/sibling/friend makes. It's a winner, though, and the only thing that I would point out is that you will almost definitely need to bake it for longer than 40 minutes--think closer to 60 minutes, or perhaps even a little longer if your oven is weak. Also, brown sugar adds a little depth and the walnuts add some crunch, although neither is necessary for the bread to be moist and delicious.

Democracy and Security

Usually Saturday is a fairly quiet time on The Washington Post's opinion pages, but this morning featured an interesting pair of arguments about the Obama administration's decision to resume military ties with Indonesian special forces, known as Kopassus, which have a checkered history of human rights violations. The position taken by an Indonesian human rights activist named Suciwati is that such ties amount to a betrayal by the United States of its democratic ideals since many members of Kopassus still haven't been held accountable for crimes and atrocities that took the lives of thousands of Indonesians during the country's dark days of autocracy:

[T]he Obama administration, seeking to improve ties with Indonesia, has agreed to allow training to resume if the government will ensure that those convicted of abuse would be moved out of Kopassus.

Promises to shift abusers out of Kopassus and into other military units are simply not enough. Members of Kopassus have no fear that they will be prosecuted for serious wrongdoing. The special forces protect members who are implicated in such abuses. Even the few who have been convicted by military courts are largely still serving. This will not change until members of the security service who have committed abuses are brought to justice.

The paper's editorial board, however, argues that Suciwati and other activists are missing the bigger picture:

Accountability for past crimes is essential, and Mr. Gates said the United States will continue to press for that. But the critics lose sight of the enormous changes in Indonesia since the fall of dictator President Suharto in 1998. Indonesia has held multiparty elections and witnessed peaceful transfers of power. The world's most populous Muslim-majority nation, with 240 million people, it remains mostly hospitable to its Hindu, Christian and other minorities. It has fought Islamic extremism and intolerance. And its military is under civilian control. The prospects for human rights in such a situation flourish as long as democracy progresses -- and the United States has every reason to strengthen its alliance and help, as much as possible, democracy to become more entrenched.

I'm really left scratching my head at the editorial staff's position. Throughout their piece, they stress the importance of aiding a large, fledgling democracy like Indonesia without ever explaining how, exactly, resurrecting ties with Kopassus furthers that objective. After all, it would seem to me that providing resources and training to a ruthless, unaccountable, and politically powerful military group might be the least helpful thing that one could do for a young democracy. Why not continue to shun such dangerous and corrupt quasi-political elements and instead boost support for health, education and infrastructure development?

Obviously those writing the editorials for The Washington Post are much more neoconservative than I am and they would probably retort by hyping Kopassus's ability to combat Islamic radicalism, but I think that speaks to a broader problem with the paper's argument. The editorial staff writes under the assumption that because Indonesia is now a democracy and its military is under civilian control, it is immune from ever having to worry about human rights abuses and subsequent cover-ups. But as America knows from both personal experience and from the example of countries such as Brazil, that simply is not the case--liberal democratic regimes are still vulnerable to violent excesses when it comes to matters of national security as well as blatant dishonesty when it comes to matters of personal loyalty. The neoconservative bloc consistently underestimates these threats when contemplating U.S. involvement in international affairs, which is particularly frustrating given that so much evidence exists in support of the belief that rogue and corrupt internal elements pose a much greater threat to the survival of a democratic state than do fringe extremist movements.

What If the US Balanced Its Budget And Nobody Noticed?

Due to a combination of general lethargy and a mid-week trip to Charlottesville, I haven't gotten around to posting my thoughts on this excellent column by Tyler Cowen until now. I think that much of his analysis is spot on, but there's a small oversight included in the column that I feel is representative of a broader problem with the country's present perspective on political economy:

If any financial policy idea is taking a major place on the American and global stages, it is fiscal austerity. It is not that fiscal conservatives have won a grand battle of ideas, but rather that governments realize that the bills are coming due. In the United States, we face rising health care costs and pension problems in state governments, with no clear long-run solution for bringing the books into balance.

As Ezra Klein has pointed out, however, the US Congress has already taken two very important steps toward eventually reining in health care costs: With the passage of the Affordable Care Act earlier this year, an independent Medicare payments commission and a tax on high-value insurance plans and have been scheduled for implementation in 2018.

Now, these two policies in and of themselves will not solve America's long-run budget problems, but as anyone who follows American politics knows, progress is incremental. Once consumers respond to the insurance excise tax by demanding thriftier policies and Congress is forced to take up-or-down votes on Medicare savings measures, it is likely that there will be noticeable downward pressure on health care costs. Upon witnessing that effect, future congresses will work to improve and strengthen the cost-control measures that were included in the Affordable Care Act.

Of course, the natural retort is that Congress won't follow through on these policies. Instead, this line of thinking goes, the Medicare advisory commission and the excise tax will simply be overridden by successive legislation in a similar manner to the Sustainable Growth Rate (i.e., the Doc Fix). But if the private investors who Congress is trying to appease by passing deficit reduction measures choose to ignore those steps, then what is the point of fiscal austerity? America should just go ahead and run-up deficit spending now, while interest rates are low, since it will at least boost the short-run economy while leaving investors no more skeptical than they would've been anyway.

Our Past and Our Principles

Today was a slow news day, so the Washington Post decided to publish an editorial criticizing the addition of a bust of Joseph Stalin to the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Va.

I have a couple of problems with the Post's analysis. First, there's this minor historical misrepresentation:

Not long ago, they [Bedford] installed a bronzed bust of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin to accompany those of Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. They did so despite public protests, the memorial's serious financial problems and the possibly pertinent fact that Stalin played no direct role in the D-Day landings.

While the Post is technically correct, it glosses over the fact that the Allies wouldn't have even had the opportunity for a D-Day strike had it not been for the heroic performance of the Red Army in fighting the German forces to a standstill on the Eastern Front. This success wasn't entirely Stalin's doing, but historians generally recognize that his steadfast, and often ruthless, leadership played a part in sustaining the morale and vigor of the Soviet armed forces and citizenry during this harrowing time.

More importantly, however, it's worth noting that the good/evil dichotomy that Stalin exhibited is hardly a unique facet of his character. In Stalin's case, the contradiction between the two is particularly striking--after all, this was a man who led his country to a remarkable victory in WWII and also presided over a stunning economic transition during the early years of his rule, yet whose hubris and paranoia made him personally responsible for the deaths of tens of millions of Soviet citizens. But it's a curious fact of American life that we casually overlook the dark sides of many historical individuals and organizations that have become accepted and even honored parts of our nation's public life. Sometimes, this uncomfortable reality manifests itself in tiny things--for example, the mascot of my middle school was the Crusaders, named after a group of individuals who engaged in slaughter and rape during the Middle Ages. Other times, though, the incongruity between our heroes and our values is huge, such as when we declare a federal holiday in honor of genocidal conqueror Christopher Columbus, who is responsible for the deaths of millions of natives in the Western Hemisphere (a feat that, when ranked on a per-capita basis with global population taken into account, ranks up there with Stalin's mass murder).

My point isn't that Stalin should be included on the D-Day Memorial--I'd lean toward saying that he should be excluded simply because that seems to be the will of the veterans to whom the memorial ultimately belongs. But before major newspapers publish 500-word rants that look at issues such as this in isolation, it might do some good to consider America's broader inability to reconcile its historical pride with its vaunted principles.

Private Sector Dysfunction

Matt Yglesias wrote an interesting post today detailing a recent experience that he had with private sector dysfunction:

For a while, I had a Verizon wireless broadband device. A few months ago, I decided I didn’t need it any more and called them up to cancel. I was expecting some phone company hell for my trouble, but it actually went fine. Until, that is, I got my next bill from them. What’s especially odd about it is that it’s a bill for zero dollars and zero cents. In other words, they know I don’t owe them money, but they’re billing me anyway. And now it happens every month. And it’s hard to know how to get out of this situation, because I don’t have a Verizon Wireless phone number or account number anymore thanks to the fact that I don’t have an account with them and don’t owe them any money.

Yglesias correctly points out that this sort of incompetence from a public sector agency would garner round condemnation from Americans who are fed up with "fraud, waste, and abuse" in government. Yet these same individuals would never consider using an isolated inconvenience caused by a private company to justify their wholesale loss of faith in capitalism.

As it so happens, I've been bemused by this inconsistency ever since an incident that occurred during an interaction that I had with the very same company, Verizon, that Yglesias mentions. The last time I went to buy a new phone, I was unable to transfer my contacts and personal settings from my old phone's SIM card to my new phone because the Verizon store did not have the necessary machine. Apparently, it had been taken across town to another Verizon store. Now, this didn't cause me any huge problems, but it is comparable to, say, the DMV's camera being broken. The latter case would add to the mystique of the DMV as the ultimate example of bureaucratic ineptitude, yet I doubt the former led anyone in the store that day to forswear ever patronizing a private phone company again.

The obvious retort is that private sector competition should eventually root out incompetence by firms such as Verizon, since consumers will abandon them and move on to companies that are more efficient and responsive. Yet Verizon Wireless remains the largest cell phone carrier in the United States.

None of this is to say that isolated incidents such as the ones that Yglesias and I experienced should totally blacken the reputation of companies like Verizon, but neither should isolated incidents of welfare fraud and long waits at the DMV discredit the entirety of the public sector.

The Living-Wage Movement

Progressivism is a philosophy that has bred many great ideas about how to structure our society and government, but it is not infallible. Thus, I wrote this article about the misguided nature of the living-wage movement, which is a typically well-intentioned initiative that nonetheless is seeking a wholly implausible solution to poverty. Let me know what you think.

America Wants A Free Lunch

A friend of mine was commenting on my last post about the Gulf oil spill when he noted that public support for climate legislation is very high. This statement obviously piqued my interest since support for such legislation in Congress is tenuous at best.

So I did some research about how the American public feels about climate change, clean energy, and political action to deal with these issues. What I found has left me even more disappointed in the present state of the American electorate.

This recent survey done by The New York Times and CBS News seems promising on the surface. After all, 76 percent of respondents said they favored increased regulation of offshore oil drilling and a stunning 89 percent believed that U.S. energy policy either needs fundamental changes or needs to be completely restructured. Furthermore, 59 percent believed that it was very or somewhat likely that the U.S. would develop a major source of energy other than oil within the next 25 years.

Yet this poll also shows that the American public is completely unwilling to take the necessary steps to remake the nation's energy policy and encourage the development of alternative sources of energy. 51 percent oppose the general idea of raising the gasoline tax to fund renewable energy R&D; an even stronger majority of 65 percent said they would oppose that option if it raised the price of gas by $1.00. Essentially, the American people want a free lunch--a clean, cheap source of energy that will magically appear and make oil obsolete.

In terms of the specific climate legislation in Congress, the situation is hardly better. This 2009 poll by ABC News and The Washington Post shows that while 72 percent of Americans still believe the earth is warming, only 53 percent believe that we should use a cap and trade system to cut down on carbon emissions. Once again, a significant majority of Americans seems to recognize that a major problem is occurring and yet remains opposed to any solution that might require some personal sacrifice.

Another factor that contributes to this cognitive dissonance among Americans is, of course, the wild misinformation that has polluted the debate about climate change legislation. Most Americans actually wouldn't see their livelihoods seriously impacted by a cap and trade program, but because they've been convinced that they would they oppose it anyway. Sounds a bit like health care, doesn't it?

Kudos to Clooney

I forgot to post this last week when it occurred to me, but George Clooney is truly one of the greatest actors of all time. This may seem obvious to some who have followed his long career, but I only fully understood it for the first time while watching a 2009 movie of his called The Men Who Stare At Goats.

The movie is essentially a semi-true account of a small town reporter's investigation of the U.S. Army's attempt to use physic powers in warfare. Overall, it was a rather mediocre affair--the plot was fairly incoherent and the back story of the protagonist, played by Ewan McGregor, was hardly compelling. Yet Clooney performed brilliantly as an erratic and mysterious former U.S. psychic soldier who leads McGregor's character into Iraq during the early stages of the American invasion in order to complete a secret mission. While the plot swirled about haphazardly and the other characters remained sadly one-dimensional, Clooney kept me interested with entertaining dialogue and irresistible intensity. I realized that his ability to make a film worth watching despite its overall weakness is the hallmark of an exceptional actor.

Then I got to thinking about the remarkable variety of roles that Clooney has played throughout the years. Clooney performed as Dr. Doug Ross on the TV series ER during the late 90s; as a star-crossed skipper in The Perfect Storm; a slick criminal in the Oceans Trilogy; a sober CIA operative in Syriana; a charming lunatic in Burn After Reading, and a suave yet lonely corporate downsizer in Up In The Air. He also gave an award-winning performance in O Brother, Where Art Thou?, a film that I have yet to see.

Add to that résumé his role as the director of Good Night, and Good Luck, and Clooney has undoubtedly been one of the most tremendous film talents of not only his generation, but of the entire history of cinema.

Liberalism's Discontent

Ross Douthat has a very perceptive column in today's New York Times about the growing liberal angst that is being directed toward Barack Obama. He identifies three reasons for this discontent:

At work in this liberal panic are two intellectual vices, and one legitimate fear. The first vice is the worship of presidential power: the belief that any problem, any crisis, can be swiftly solved by a strong government, and particularly a strong executive. A gushing oil well, a recalcitrant Congress, a public that’s grown weary of grand ambitions — all of these challenges could be mastered, Obama’s leftward critics seem to imagine, if only he were bolder or angrier, or maybe just more determined....

The second vice is an overweening faith in theory. It’s now conventional wisdom among Obama’s liberal critics that the White House has been insufficiently ambitious about deficit spending. The economy is stuck in neutral, they argue, because Obama didn’t push last year’s recovery act up over a trillion dollars, and hasn’t pressed hard enough for a second major stimulus....

But it’s here, with the looming fiscal crisis, that the more legitimate liberal fear comes in. Liberals had hoped that Obama’s election marked the beginning of a long progressive era — a new New Deal, a greater Great Society. Instead, from the West Coast to Western Europe, the welfare state is in crisis everywhere they look. The future suddenly seems to belong to austerity and retrenchment — and even, perhaps, to conservatism.

Although I essentially agree with Douthat on these points, I think he misses an equally important fourth reason for liberals' increasingly critical take on the Obama presidency: the contemporary conservative movement is no longer worth taking seriously. Liberals have thus turned their attention toward improving their own movement since the utter lack of intellectual vigor and principled argument from the opposing side had made it an impossible ideology with which to debate. At this point, the liberal movement feels that there is more to be gained by critiquing a president who shares their basic ideological convictions than by arguing with an opposing movement that considers all major liberal initiatives to be "socialist" and that incessantly spouts outrageous inconsistencies about the deficit, climate change, and national security.

We're All Tony Hayward

The latest in BP's long line of PR gaffes since the start of the Gulf oil spill comes courtesy of, who else, their chief executive Tony Hayward, who apparently took a vacation from the spill zone today by watching one of his yachts compete in a race in England.

This is obviously galling to the average American for a couple of reasons. First, it seems outrageous that an individual as utterly irresponsible and incompetent as Hayward can live a lifestyle so much more luxurious than any that we will come close to experiencing. Also, it is utterly inappropriate for Hayward to be taking a break from the spill to indulge in his chosen lifestyle while hundreds of thousands of individuals along the Gulf Coast are trapped in a situation that has made their traditional lifestyles impossible.

Yet as wrong as Hayward may be to watch yachts race while oil gushes into the Gulf, most Americans are just like him. By that I mean we are continuing to live our typical lifestyles without any regard for how we are complicit in the worst environmental disaster in American history.

I know this because when I filled up my gas tank today, the station around me was packed. We were all there to get a product that is obtained through highly risky methods that can lead to epic disasters such as the Gulf spill, but no one seemed particularly concerned about that today. Rather, we were just trying to fill up so that we could get to graduation parties, river houses, grocery stores, or wherever else our carefree Saturday routines took us. No one was picketing the gas station with signs demanding that Congress pass legislation to put a price on carbon, and people obviously hadn't stayed home in protest of our dependence on such a dirty source of energy. Sure, none of us filling our tanks were CEO of the company at fault for the Gulf spill, but we were all citizens of the nation that is ultimately responsible for the catastrophe. Until we can muster the strength to alter our own comfortable routines, how can we possibly criticize Tony Hayward for his reluctance to do the same?

Value Judgment

Today's Washington Post column by Colbert King is truly excellent and worth reading in full. His discussion of the checkered family histories of several conservative icons really highlights the hypocrisy that these individuals display when they criticize liberals for opposing traditional "family values." Take Rush Limbaugh, for example:

Limbaugh, who dropped out of college after one year, married his first wife, a sales secretary, in September 1977. She filed for divorce three years later; it was granted in July 1980. Limbaugh next married an usherette in 1983; they divorced in 1990. In May 1994, he married an aerobics instructor he met online. They separated in June 2004 and divorced that December.

Two weeks ago, Limbaugh married a Florida party planner. He's still wedded to her as far as I can tell.

This sort of lifestyle is despicable by any objective measure, but the fact that Limbaugh portrays himself as a social crusader makes it even more appalling.

Newt Gingrich is also guilty of philandering and hypocrisy:

Gingrich is one nuptial behind Limbaugh. But he started earlier. In 1962, at age 19, Gingrich married his 26-year-old former high school geometry teacher. Gingrich left her in the spring of 1980. He did return to see her at the hospital where she was getting treatment for cancer. He was there to discuss divorce terms. Formally divorced in 1981, Gingrich remarried six months later.

That marriage lasted until 2000. By his own admission, Gingrich started an affair with a woman 23 years his junior during his second marriage. It was around the time he was taking Bill Clinton to task over Monica Lewinsky.

Gingrich's second marriage ended in 2000, and he married his girlfriend the same year. The current Mrs. Gingrich is still with him, as far as I can tell.

Not only does this behavior make a mockery of the "family values" mantra, but it also destroys any credibility that conservatives may claim to have when lambasting low-income individuals--particularly those who are minorities--for engaging in what they believe are outrageously promiscuous and irresponsible lifestyles unlike those of mainstream Americans. As Limbaugh and Gingrich demonstrate, however, promiscuity and irresponsibility are traits that are much more deeply ingrained in American society. Hence, it's wrong to heap punishment upon the lower classes for their perceived indulgence in such behaviors when, in fact, we're all guilty of them to a large extent.

That being said, I think King's criticism of Sarah Palin toward the end of the column is somewhat off-target:

The same Palin who last week said of President Obama, "It sounds like the inner circle that he has are some Chicago thugs." Well, Palin knows lawbreaking, too.

Her sister-in-law, Diana Palin, half sister of the former governor's husband, got a 15-month sentence this year. Burglarizing the same Alaska house three times for money to satisfy a drug habit is the kind of thing that can get you arrested. Thuggery? How about Sherry Johnston, the mother of Levi Johnston, the high school dropout who fathered Palin's grandson? She was arrested and charged with selling drugs; after pleading guilty to one count with intent to deliver the drug OxyContin she was sentenced to three years.

Because of her medical condition, the woman who was once Bristol Palin's future mother-in-law was released from prison to home confinement, where she wears an ankle-monitoring device.

Just as Palin's criticism of Obama's inner circle was improper, it's wrong to pin upon her the crimes of her sister-in-law and the mother of her daughter's ex-boyfriend. Palin exercises absolutely no control over these individuals, and she's probably as appalled by their behavior as any of the rest of us. This is the rare case where I have to stick up for Sarah Palin, but those examples that King cites tell us very little about her actual character.

Sticky Situation

Ahead of President Obama's primetime address from the Oval Office tonight, it's worth considering what he hopes to accomplish from the speech. Obviously, goal number one is to convince the American public that his administration is on top of the situation in the Gulf of Mexico. But beyond that, will he try to set the stage for broader legislative action to address the twin problems of climate change and America's reliance on fossil fuels?

If he does attempt this, I don't have very high hopes that he will succeed. A recent survey by Public Policy Polling shows that 77 percent of Lousianans still support offshore oil drilling and that only 31 percent have become less supportive as a result of the spill.

There are many signs of irrationality and stubbornness among the nation's citizenry today, but few stick out as much as this. If the most acutely impacted victims (other than wildlife) of a disaster on the scale of the BP spill remain completely unconvinced of any need for future policy changes to make such catastrophes less likely, then what hope does President Obama have of convincing the rest of the nation that comprehensive climate and energy legislation is necessary?

Getting Schooled

Today's Wall Street Journal has a fascinating piece about how schools struggling to cope with significant state and local budget cuts are turning to private businesses and churches for supplementary funding.

There are two ways to look at this: One perspective would hold that this is a brilliant way to keep schools afloat in tough economic times since securing funding through private donations is much less coercive than raising taxes. Furthermore, there are exciting possibilities for public-private partnerships that could endow students with unique opportunities to gain knowledge and skills in specific fields: For example, the opening of a Tennessee Credit Union branch in a Nashville high school that will be operated entirely by students and school staff seems promising.

Upon closer examination, however, private funding of public schools has a number of dangerous consequences. For one thing, the Wall Street Journal article makes it very clear that the churches involved in helping public schools aren't merely doing it for philanthropic purposes:

When his budget for pencils, paper, and other essential supplies was cut by a third this school year, the principal of Combee Elementary School worried children would suffer.

Then, a local church stepped in and "adopted" the school. The First Baptist Church at the Mall stocked a resource room with $5,000 worth of supplies. It now caters spaghetti dinners at evening school events, buys sneakers for poor students, and sends in math and English tutors.

The principal is delighted. So are church pastors. "We have inroads into public schools that we had not had before," says Pastor Dave McClamma. "By befriending the students, we have the opportunity to visit homes to talk to parents about Jesus Christ."

And later in the article:

Mr. McClamma says adopting Combee goes far beyond providing resources like school supplies. "The purpose is to show them the church cares, and that there is hope, and hope is found in Jesus Christ."

"If they want to come in and help, who am I to say no?" says Mr. Comparato, the principal.

He says he would welcome congregations of any faith as sponsors, but adds of his students, "My personal conviction is that I hope through this they'll know Jesus and they'll get saved."

This is all well and good, but what happens if the church finds that students and their families are less than receptive to their particular religious message? My hunch is that the funding will probably be diverted toward a school that is more "Christian-friendly."

And it's not just churches that have their own agenda to promote by donating to schools:

At Sikes Elementary, principal Ann Tankson hands out fliers urging families to flock to "McTeacher's Night" at the local McDonald's, where volunteer teachers flip burgers as "celebrity employees." The franchise gives a portion of proceeds to the school.

"You do what you have to do," she says.

So America has apparently regressed to the point where obtaining a healthy education relies upon patronizing a business that sells the most unhealthy food that mankind has ever created.

Perhaps the most serious drawback to this approach, however, is that it amplifies the already-severe inequality that exists in the nation's public school system. For kids in the wealthy suburbs of America's major cities, private donations may be readily available from a plethora of local businesses and wealthy parents. Supplemental private funds will be much harder to come by for kids in urban school districts, however. In those areas, fewer local businesses and private holders of wealth exist to contribute to the funding of schools. Additionally, there is the fact that businesses looking to build up their customer bases by establishing connections with public schools would have a much harder time doing so in impoverished urban neighborhoods (there probably isn't much of a market for tooth-whitening services in East Harlem).

There are, of course, people who would argue as Ann Tankson does that "you do what you have to do" when it comes to funding schools. But many of those people would probably turn around and raise hell about tax increases that would make for a more equitable solution to the school funding problem.

Charter Cities

One of the longest running and most puzzling questions of economics is how best to foster growth and improved living standards in woebegone regions of the globe such as sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Southeast Asia. Stanford economist Paul Romer, who is renowned for his work on modern growth theory, has recently developed what he believes to be a promising new approach to this problem: charter cities.

Essentially, these would be urban areas that would be created in undeveloped nations and administered not by those nations' governments but rather by the governments of successful Western nations. If this sounds rather neo-colonial, it is. Romer repeatedly cites the British experience in Hong Kong as a model for this approach, and predicts that the outcomes will be similar to what has happened in China over the past two decades. Upon witnessing the prosperity and growth of these charter cities, the national governments of underdeveloped nations will be compelled to experiment with other special economic zones just as China did in response to the success of Hong Kong's liberal economic and political structures. Over time, this will lead to the liberalization of the entire nation as more citizens and policymakers realize the obvious gains to be had from such an approach.

This sounds like a great idea in theory, but I am skeptical that it could work in practice. The most pressing problem would, of course, be finding Western countries to administer the charter cities. Without the promise of economic gain for themselves, it's hard to imagine the US, France, or even Sweden lining up to take on the challenge of developing and governing urban areas in alien lands that are, in many cases, hundreds of years behind the Western world.

But even if there were nations willing to take control of charter cities, I have my doubts about whether they would be able to achieve much success. For every Hong Kong, there's an East Timor or a Belgian Congo that stands out as an example of epic colonial mismanagement. Even if one were to argue that Western governments have advanced past the colonial stage of rapacious greed, there is the fact that governing in lands with different customs, geographies and social systems can prove to be immensely difficult. The US has seen this in Iraq and Afghanistan and to a lesser extent in territories like Puerto Rico--no matter how steady your versions of democracy and capitalism may be, there are certain factors unique to every culture that must be taken into account when imposing your particular system upon it. One very simple example of this would be language: How could Western nations possibly expect to find enough translators to administer multilingual cities in Madagascar, Cambodia, Afghanistan, and wherever else?

Moreover, there is the problem of funding. Would the Western nations administering the cities be expected to foot the bill with their own tax dollars? Because, if so, it's easy to see that those dollars would be the first ones to be cut from those nations' budgets. This situation already affects the West's own cities, which tend to be disproportionately harmed by budget cuts during times of recession. Charter cities would be even more severely impacted since politicians could easily demagogue about how tax dollars are being wasted abroad while people are out of work at home.

I'm not willing to entirely rule out charter cities as a means of economic and political development abroad--especially since I haven't yet read Romer's own words about the idea, other than what he is quoted as saying in The Atlantic--but I still think a better approach is to identify legitimate governments that already exist in the developing world with which the West can work to promote growth and development.

No Laughing Matter

This recent Wall Street Journal op-ed by famed economist Arthur Laffer is rather weak. Barry Ritholtz has a good rebuttal here. Part of Laffer's column, though, reminded me of some research that I had done a few months back when writing an article about the Virginia budget. When discussing the effect of tax rates on economic performance, Laffer writes:

It shouldn't surprise anyone that the nine states without an income tax are growing far faster and attracting more people than are the nine states with the highest income tax rates. People and businesses change the location of income based on incentives.

This is the same line of thinking that dominates the Virginia state legislature every time it convenes to pass a budget during lean economic times. Legislators constantly speak of the need to avoid tax increases since they would inevitably drive businesses out of the state, taking with them much-needed jobs.

I was curious as to the validity of this claim and so I decided to do a simple statistical analysis. First, I plotted the number of Fortune 500 companies headquartered in each state (I felt this was a decent indicator of whether businesses found the state attractive) against the tax burden of each state (a statistic that describes the combined burden of state and local taxes upon individual income). Here's what I found:


I used the data sets from both 2007 and 2008 so that state economic performance from both before and during the recession could be taken into account. Overall, though, the results were about the same: the correlation between tax rates and Fortune 500 companies in 2007 was .315; in 2008, it was .332.

I decided to follow this up by plotting state unemployment against state tax burdens to see whether perhaps jobs were lost because smaller businesses were driven away by high taxes. The result:


Again, there is no relationship. The correlation for 2007's data is .069; 2008's data has a correlation of .059.

Two caveats, though:

1) None of this is to say that state tax rates have absolutely no effect of business decisions. I'm sure that if Virginia's top marginal tax rate were increased to 25 percent then businesses would flee. But what the data does suggest is that within a fairly moderate range--say 7 percent of income to 12 percent--the effect of a state's tax burden on business location and job creation is outweighed by other factors such as workforce education, infrastructure, and overall quality of life.

2) I compiled this data a while ago and haven't had a chance to recheck it. So, it's possible that I have made a statistical error somewhere or have misinterpreted some data. If anything here seems amiss, please let me know.

Finally, my sources were the right-leaning Tax Foundation for the data on state tax burdens; Fortune Magazine (online at money.cnn.com) for the location of Fortune 500 companies; and the Bureau of Labor Statistics for state unemployment data.

Virginia Budget Cuts

Kudos to The Washington Post for highlighting the gap between Republican rhetoric and reality in this morning's editorial about the effect of state budget cuts on public universities. However, the paper got it wrong when identifying the culprit behind this sorry situation:

Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) is not to blame for this. The budget cuts were ordered by his predecessor, Timothy M. Kaine (D). Like many governors, Mr. Kaine sought to balance recession-squeezed budgets by cutting subsidies for state universities, figuring the schools could absorb at least part of the blow with tuition hikes.

Kaine, himself, was at one time in the running to become the president of Virginia Commonwealth University. Thus, it's fair to conclude that he was well aware of how difficult the budget cuts would be for higher education. However, his duty as governor was to propose a balanced budget that he felt had a reasonable chance of passing both houses of the General Assembly. Constrained in that task as he was by a Republican-dominated House of Delegates that categorically refused to raise taxes, he was forced to propose a budget that included a menacing array of cuts. Kaine would have gladly raised taxes to pay for higher education if he thought the House would go along with it, but that chamber's abrogation of its responsibility to provide solid public services to the state's citizens meant that it was impossible for him to do so. Blaming the governor is the go-to response in a situation like this, but commentators need to understand that the General Assembly is the group with the real power behind the state budget.

Midnight snack

Some food for thought:

Source: Calculated Risk via Talking Points Memo

Yet despite the fact that the employment situation in America is still bleaker than it has been in decades, the conservative establishment has convinced citizens that our greatest fear should be the federal debt.

The Social Sciences

I thoroughly enjoyed Chris Beam's take on what the news would be like if it were written by political scientists. In fact, I enjoyed it almost as much as Conor Friedersdorf's follow-up about sociologists writing the news. In addition to being quite hilarious, these two articles highlight what I feel are some of the unique strengths and weaknesses of each field.

As someone who is trying to decide between a major in economics, sociology or political science--or perhaps some combination of the three--I have spent plenty of time contemplating each field's characteristics. And what has made the choice of a major so difficult is the fact that each offers unique knowledge that can be applied to the field of public policy.

The specific strength of economics is that it offers the most complete set of tools that I have yet encountered that can be used to solve public policy problems. At its very heart, economics is the study of choice and it therefore focuses on complex incentive structures that determine whether or not particular approaches, regardless of their intentions, will be effective.

Sociology, however, provides crucial insight into what the problems are that need solving. Although economists have a tendency to retreat into the Ivory Tower where everything is about "rational choice" and "productivity," the sociologist recognizes that intractable biases against minorities, women and the poor continue to prevent their socioeconomic advancement.

Political science, meanwhile, allows one to look at all of these issues within the framework of constitutional legality and public opinion. In America, this means realizing the particular opportunities and constraints that our system of government creates for solving public policy problems.

Each field is frustrating in its own way. I am baffled when individuals in the field of economics refuse to consider how irrational beliefs and actions can lead to suboptimal outcomes without proper government intervention. Similarly, it gets under my skin when sociologists argue that the simple solution to poverty is to raise minimum wages, no matter the consequences. Political scientists are perhaps the most troublesome group, because they will tell you that many great new ideas either won't attract votes or are flat-out unconstitutional.

Right now I'm stuck, but this is a discussion that will continue on this blog during the run-up to my declaring a major. What do you think would be a good route to take?

Bhopal and BP

When an Indian court handed down sentences to eight individuals for their roles in the Bhopal chemical disaster that occurred 26 years ago, it barely even registered as news for many Americans. Yet it should serve as a painful reminder that even once an environmental disaster such as the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is finally over, its effects can last for decades afterward. According to The New York Times account, 425 tons of toxic material remain at the Bhopal site to be cleaned up by whatever entity takes responsibility for it first. Moreover, the livelihoods of those affected by the accident--some 578,000 according to government records--remain severely impaired over a quarter century after the tragedy.
Everyone hopes that in 2036 we won't be reading stories like this about BP and the Deepwater oil spill, but we should nonetheless accept the reality that this disaster isn't going away any time soon.

The Sad Case of Helen Thomas

Much is being made about the abrupt retirement of White House correspondent Helen Thomas after some anti-Semitic remarks that she made in an interview last week. I think much of the analysis so far is missing the mark, however. Sure, it's possible that this is what happens when a fiery journalist goes a little too far, or it could be a signal of some deep-rooted problem with journalistic objectivity. But more likely, I think, is that Helen Thomas was just too old to do her job. At 89, very few people are able to function up to a level that allows them to hold a position as important and involved as White House correspondent. Old people act erratically and say things that are outlandish and inappropriate; just ask anyone who has had to take care of an aging parent. Helen Thomas is no exception, and all we've really learned from this sad episode is that someone should have tried to convince her to retire before it was too late.

The Israeli Blockade

Unlike many on the Left, I am somewhat sympathetic to the idea of an Israeli blockade of Gaza. After all, it is the Israeli government's duty to protect the livelihoods of its citizens and, frankly, it's impossible to do that when those citizens are constantly threatened with random rocket-fire. However, as this post clearly explains, the current Israeli blockade is less about defending itself than it is about inflicting indiscriminate pain upon individuals living in Gaza. Denying those in Gaza access to clean drinking water; forcing them to go without electricity for much of the day; crippling the territory's economy and its health care infrastructure: none of these makes Israel any safer from Hamas. Thus, it rings hollow when individuals like Charles Krauthammer whine that the West is attempting to de-legitimize Israeli self-defense by opposing the blockade. As it is currently structured, the blockade is about much more than simply denying Hamas material that they can use to make rockets, as this chart from The Economist shows:

via The Economist

Introduction

Hi, I'm Matt Cameron. No, not that one. Rather, I'm just a student at the University of Virginia whose interests include public policy, culture and sports. For a little over a year I've been writing sporadic opinion columns about the first topic--public policy--for school publications and my hometown newspaper, The Free Lance-Star. Recently, however, I decided to try my hand at a new form of communication: blogging. This hardly makes me unique since everyone and their mother now seems to be joining the legions of online opinionators, but I hope that this will prove to be a value exercise nonetheless. Below is a brief explanation of what this experiment is all about, in the somewhat contrived question and answer format:

Why the title?
The "young" in front of my name isn't merely a weak attempt at styling myself as a precocious artist, a la Young Jeezy or Yung Joc, . It actually refers back to a letter that was written in response to my very first column on the opinion page of The Free Lance-Star. Although the letter's praise is flattering, the "young" should serve as a reminder that I am by no means an expert in the field of public policy. Rather, I feel that my place is to convey complex policy arguments to members of my generation who would otherwise be out of the loop. In doing so, I often find that my own understanding of such matters improves and solidifies.

Why blog?
I've toyed with the idea of blogging for a while, but I've always felt more compelled toward quality rather than quantity with regards to my writing. Thus, I've devoted my time to in-depth research of a handful of political and policy-related issues that I have then written about in long-form (800-1000 words) for the print media. Only recently have I realized that blogging could be a good way to aggregate and record the assorted thoughts and ideas that occur to me between articles. Thus, one of the goals of this blog will be to strengthen my repertoire of knowledge so that I can write better columns in the future.

Equally important, however, is my hope that this blog can turn into a conversation. When writing long-form opinion pieces there is a limited amount of interaction that one can have with readers beyond receiving letters to the editor and occasionally chatting with those who have taken a particular interest in your writing. With this blog, however, I sense an opportunity to receive more--and better--feedback about my writing and my ideas. This will only work, of course, if I can keep things interesting enough to hold readers' attention, but I look forward to this challenge so that I can potentially improve my knowledge and analysis with help from my friends and acquaintances.

What to expect?
Just by virtue of blogging's nature, the writing found here will not be as thoroughly researched and painstakingly edited as that which is found in my columns. I hope that I can make up for this by exploring on a variety of interesting topics which, up to this point, haven't found their way into my writing. Among these will be obscure political and economic issues, for sure, but also things like tea, food and movies that I love but never have had as much time to write about.

Some blog posts will be long (but by no means as long as this one); some will be short; some will just consist of a picture or a graph that I found interesting. But no matter what, the content will be something that I honestly think it's worthwhile for others to experience--to borrow a bit of terminology from Econ 201, the marginal benefit of your reading any individual post on this blog should exceed the marginal cost in just about every case (even taking into account the law of diminishing returns).

One final disclaimer: I am ideologically very far to the left. This does not mean that I refuse to consider or accept opposing views--readers will find as they go along that I am actually quite far from the progressive mainstream on issues such as abortion rights, minimum wages, and globalization. However, it is worth noting that I have firmly rejected the notion of a "traditional America" that so many conservatives embrace. We are a fundamentally different nation today than we were at our founding, and therefore we need to take a fundamentally different approach to how we structure our political, economic and social systems. Thus, there will be a lot of talk about higher taxes, increased government regulation and nuanced foreign policy on this blog. If conservatives can get beyond my sometimes radical propositions, then I hope they will critique my positions in a logical and civilized manner--after all, one of the points of this blog is to incorporate new perspectives into my thinking. And for those who share my convictions, I hope the material that I publish here will help you to stand up to those who shun facts and reason. Progressivism needs to be a bulwark against the onslaught of ignorance and confusion that is currently advancing upon America, and I hope that in its own little way this blog can help with that.