In this clever sketch, That Mitchell and Webb Look channel the mentality behind the legislation discussed in yesterdayís post.
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Category Archives: Politics – General
The wisdom of Will
Tax simplification has been a frequent topic on this blog. So, I was enthused to see George Will knock the ball out of the park in describing the U.S. income tax system while addressing the issue in his WaPo Sunday column:
ìToday’s tax system was shaped by sadists who were trying to be nice: Every wrinkle in the code was put there to benefit this or that interest.î
The proposals that Will addresses would do more for the American economy than virtually any other proposal on the table at this point. Unfortunately, the proposals have virtually no chance of being implemented.
So it goes.
Justice Kennedy notices a couple of troubling issues
Overcriminalization of life and the appalling condition of our countryís prison facilities have been frequent subjects on this blog over the years. At least one member of the U.S. Supreme Court has taken notice:
U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony M. Kennedy criticized California sentencing policies and crowded prisons Wednesday night, calling the influence that unionized prison guards had in passing the three-strikes law "sick."
In an otherwise courtly and humorous address to the Los Angeles legal community, Kennedy expressed obvious dismay over the state of corrections and rehabilitation in the country. He said U.S. sentences are eight times longer than those issued by European courts.
"California now has 185,000 people in prison at $32,500 a year" each, he said. He then urged voters and officials to compare that expense to what taxpayers spend per pupil in elementary schools.
"The three-strikes law sponsor is the correctional officers’ union and that is sick!" Kennedy said of the measure mandating life sentences for third-time criminal offenders.
As Doug Berman points out, perhaps Justice Kennedyís remarks are a prelude to the Supreme Courtís consideration of several important sentencing cases in its upcoming term. At some point, we need to ask ourselves the question ñ why are we doing this to ourselves?
Running into the abyss
17th century philosopher Blaise Pascal observed in his Penses that we run heedlessly into the abyss after putting something in front of us to stop us seeing it.
Neil Barofsky, the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, observed something similar in his quarterly report regarding the troubled TARP program:
The government’s bailout of financial institutions deemed "too big to fail" has created a risk that the United States could face a worse fiscal meltdown in the future, an independent watchdog assigned to review the program told Congress on Sunday.
The Troubled Assets Relief Program, known as TARP, has not addressed the problems that led to the last crisis and in some case those problems have festered and are a bigger threat than before, warned Neil Barofsky, the special inspector general at the Treasury Department.
"Even if TARP saved our financial system from driving off a cliff back in 2008, absent meaningful reform, we are still driving on the same winding mountain road, but this time in a faster car," Barofsky wrote.
Barofsky wrote the $700 billion financial bailout has encouraged more risk-taking because bank executives, who are still receiving massive bonuses, figure the government will come to the rescue the next time they steer their ships nearly aground. . . .
None of what Barofsky reports is a surprise to regular readers of this blog. It was not rocket science.
A better kind of security theater
The Reason.tv video below puts the Transportation Security Administration’s silly security theater policies in perspective, while Bruce Schneier provides another excellent post on the kind of security (including some security theater) that makes much more sense.
Is anyone in Washington, D.C. even listening?
What killed F.D.R.?
This interesting Lawrence Altman/NY Times article examines the theory that that an undiagnosed melanoma contributed to the death of President Franklin Delano Roosevent in 1945.
Of course, regular readers of this blog know that another killer disease — the dire implications of which were not well-known in 1945 — was probably the main cause of FDR’s death.
But despite the historical curiosity, the most important point to glean from FDR’s demise is the importance of continued investment in clinical and scientific research.
We sometimes forget that it was the generation of doctors and researchers who came of age after World War II who embraced the optimistic view of therapeutic intervention in the practice of medicine, which was a fundamental change from the sense of therapeutic powerlessness that was taught to these men by their pre-WWII professors. In short, it has not been that long since medical science has understood that it could cure disease and prolong life.
For example, if FDR’s doctors had known in 1945 what specialists in hypertension discovered in the two following decades, then those doctors would never have allowed FDR to be subjected to the stress of the Yalta Conference that doomed Eastern Europe to almost 50 years of totalitarianism and economic deprivation.
Stated simply, earlier discovery of the research into the implications of hypertension could well have changed the course of human history.
In fact, we all tend to under-appreciate the advancements in medicine since World War II. For male babies born in the U.S. in 1960, the life expectancy was about 66.5 years and for female babies a tad over 73 years. By 2005, the live expectancies had increased to over 75 and 80 years respectively. Although medical advances don’t account for all of those gains, newly-discovered drugs and medical devices — as well as enhanced understanding of disease — have had an enormous impact on improving the quality of life of most Americans.
Thus, as Congress considers reforming the U.S. health care finance system, it is important for citizens to understand that American medical care and research remains the hope of the world. The current health care finance system has generated enormous investment in that medical innovation, which has been a crucial and treasured export of America to the rest of the world.
Let’s think hard before radically changing a system that generated the investment that produced those benefits for us and the rest of the world.
Thinking about security theater
Given the Homeland Security Department and Transportation Security Administration’s typically over-the-top reaction (see also here) to the Christmas Day attempt to blow up a jet flying into Detroit from Amsterdam, one wonders at what point the government’s elaborate "security theater" will finally make flying so miserable that it will choke the life out of the U.S. airline industry? Professor Bainbridge provides a good roundup of the blogosphere’s discussion of that and related issues.
The latest incident also reminded me of this prophetic Bruce Schneier post from about a month ago. Schneier does the best job that I’ve read of explaining why a balance between legitimate and symbolic is helpful in deterring terrorism, but that most of Homeland Security’s security theater is utterly misguided, as well as a waste of time and resources.
The entire post is excellent, but two points he makes are particularly important.
First, Schneier observes that the governmental impulse "to do something" in response to an attack is mostly misdirected:
Often, this ‘something’ is directly related to the details of a recent event: we confiscate liquids, screen shoes, and ban box cutters on aeroplanes. But it’s not the target and tactics of the last attack that are important, but the next attack. These measures are only effective if we happen to guess what the next terrorists are planning . . . Terrorists don’t care what they blow up and it shouldn’t be our goal merely to force the terrorists to make a minor change in their tactics or targets . . .
Even more importantly, Schneier points out that the right kind of security theater — that is, the best way to counteract the damage that terrorism attempts to inflict upon all of us — is to act as if we are not scared of it:
The best way to help people feel secure is by acting secure around them. Instead of reacting to terrorism with fear, we — and our leaders — need to react with indomitability.
By not overreacting, by not responding to movie-plot threats, and by not becoming defensive, we demonstrate the resilience of our society, in our laws, our culture, our freedoms. There is a difference between indomitability and arrogant ‘bring ’em on’ ehetoric. There’s a difference between accepting the inherent risk that comes with a free and open society, and hyping the threats . . .
Despite fearful rhetoric to the contrary, terrorism is not a transcendent threat. A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy a country’s way of life; it’s only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage.
Schneier is spot on. Rather than making air travel increasingly distasteful, Homeland Security and the TSA ought to be encouraging Americans to spit in the terrorists’ collective eye by traveling even more by air under reasonably tolerable and legitimate security arrangements.
Kay Bailey’s health care finance confusion
What exactly is Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison’s political appeal?
She has never seemed to me to have a particularly good grasp of even basic issues. But I never dreamed that she actually supported universal health insurance even while mimicking the GOP party line against such a mandate all these years.
Uwe Reinhardt provides the Senate subcommittee context for Hutchinson’s revelation:
[Hutchison] was proposing that women should not have to decide between spending $250 of their own money to get a mammogram or go without it, and that the key here is to get someone else — either public or private health insurance — to pay for it.
I cannot recall a clearer statement of unreserved support for universal and comprehensive health insurance for America and a more straightforward definition of rationing health care.
I am sure that she would extend her remarkable dictum on rationing to cover routine screening for other cancers as well — e.g., to colonoscopies for colon cancer, to P.S.A. tests and biopsies for prostate cancer or to regular examinations for thyroid cancer.
Furthermore, I would assume that her concern for timely medical attention extends even beyond cancer to the prevention of all serious illnesses — e.g., the control of blood pressure for Americans with hypertension through drug therapy or the prevention of diabetes.
In a nutshell, whether she realized it or not, hers is a clear clarion call for comprehensive, universal health insurance in America.
I don’t agree with Senator Hutchison’s viewpoint regarding universal coverage. However, I understand it and acknowledge that it’s not an unreasonable position. I just don’t think it’s the best way to control the cost of health care services and products.
But why isn’t she honest about her true position?
"People get put in jail for importing lobsters"
The disturbing trend of an increasingly powerful federal government criminalizing all sorts of conduct that should not be criminalized has been a frequent topic (see also here) on this blog.
Adam Liptak of the NY Times, who has written extensively about the over-criminalization of American society, reports that a bipartisan group is finally organizing to do something about it:
“It’s a remarkable phenomenon,” said Norman L. Reimer, executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. “The left and the right have bent to the point where they are now in agreement on many issues. In the area of criminal justice, the whole idea of less government, less intrusion, less regulation has taken hold.”
Edwin Meese III, who was known as a fervent supporter of law and order as attorney general in the Reagan administration, now spends much of his time criticizing what he calls the astounding number and vagueness of federal criminal laws.[. . .]
There are, the [Heritage Foundation] says, more than 4,400 criminal offenses in the federal code, many of them lacking a requirement that prosecutors prove traditional kinds of criminal intent.
“It’s a violation of federal law to give a false weather report,” Mr. Meese said.
“People get put in jail for importing lobsters.”
Nice quote from Meese, but Radley Balko points out that his involvement in the movement would mean more if he admitted his past involvement in the problem.
Thinking about financial regulation
Peter Wallison and Steve Randy Waldman have each written a thought-provoking and important analysis of the effect of regulation on the recent financial crisis.
First Wallison:
What caused the financial crisis?
The widely accepted narrative, prominent in the media and pressed by the Obama administration, is that the crisis was caused by deregulation–the "repeal" of the Glass-Steagall Act and the failure to regulate both derivatives and mortgage brokers–which allowed excessive financial innovation, risk taking, and greed among financial players from mortgage brokers to Wall Street bankers.
With this diagnosis, the proposed remedy is more regulation and government control of the financial system, from the over-the-counter derivative markets to mortgage brokers and the compensation of CEOs.
The alternative explanation is that the crisis was caused by the government’s own housing policies, which fostered the creation of 25 million subprime and other low-quality mortgages–almost 50 percent of all mortgages in the United States–that are now defaulting at unprecedented rates.
In this narrative, the fact that two-thirds of all these weak mortgages are now held by government agencies, or were produced by government requirements, shows that the demand for these mortgages–and the financial crisis itself–originated in Washington.
The problem for the administration’s narrative is that its principal examples do not stand up to analysis: the repeal of a portion of the Glass-Steagall Act did not eliminate the restrictions on banks’ securities activities (they were left unchanged), the mortgage brokers were responding to demand created by the government, and, there is no evidence that the failure to regulate credit default swaps (CDS) had any effect in causing or enhancing the financial crisis.
Without a persuasive explanation for the cause of the financial crisis, the administration’s regulatory proposals rest on a mythic foundation.
And Waldman:
An enduring truth about financial regulation is this: Given the discretion to do so, financial regulators will always do the wrong thing.
Remember — it’s the incentives, folks.