Category Archives: Politics – General

The Defense of Freedom

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There is no question that President Obama is confronted with a delicate diplomatic situation in regard to the ongoing political unrest in Iran. But it is ironic that the main issue that is bubbling over on the streets of Tehran is the same one that John Quincy Adams addressed in the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of the illegally imported slaves that is wonderfully portrayed in the Stephen Spielberg movie, Amistad. In a magnificent performance, Anthony Hopkins plays the elderly Adams defending the slaves before the Supreme Court. Enjoy.

Not a good week for freedom

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big government First, in the face of a duplicitous government prosecution and a draconian trial penalty, Kevin Howard was forced to plead guilty to a crime that he did not commit.

Then, the executive branch of the federal government, unchecked by feckless legislative and judicial branches, undermined the U.S. Bankruptcy Code by preferring certain Chrysler creditors over others while improperly using the TARP legislation (see also here) — which was expressly limited to financial institutions — as a basis to loan billions to Chrysler. Moreover, the government’s shots in regard to such matters are being called by a rank rookie.

Finally, the federal government seized $34 million of American citizens’ funds without notice or judicial process simply because those citizens enjoy playing poker.

One of the clearest lessons of the 20th century is that large governments have the capacity to cause unspeakable evil. As these injustices unfold with nary a protest from our leaders, is that important lesson already forgotten?

How did it come to this?

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Judge Kent _3 That’s the question I kept asking myself as I watched former U.S. District Judge Sam Kent be sentenced to 33 months in federal prison yesterday (previous posts here).

I had an early-morning hearing in federal court yesterday and another one in the mid-afternoon. So, instead of returning to my office between hearings, I decided to attend the sentencing hearing for Judge Kent. It’s not every day that a federal judge is sentenced to prison.

The first hour or so of the hearing was stupefying as prosecutors and Kent defense attorney Dick DeGuerin argued over objections to the government’s pre-sentencing report. The main reason for the boredom was that, for the most part, no one except the lawyers in involved in the case and U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson knew what they were talking about. That vacuum of information was a direct result of Judge Vinson’s dubious decision to keep a substantial amount of the information about the charges against Kent under seal and away from public scrutiny.

Judge Vinson’s decision in that regard might have been somewhat defensible had the two victims of Kent’s sexual assaults requested secrecy to preserve what little privacy they could salvage from this ordeal. But neither of the victims requested such treatment, and my sense is that Kent didn’t want it, either.

So, Judge Vinson decided to conduct this case largely outside the public eye for his own reasons. In my 30 years of practicing law, I have never seen the volume of information in a case placed under seal as was done in this case.

In sentencing Kent, Judge Vinson claimed that he was upholding the justice system by showing that even a powerful judge is not above the law. Unfortunately, he undermined that same system by preventing the public from learning the details of the accusations against Kent and Kent’s responses to those allegations.

Although the first part of the hearing could have induced a snooze, the pace picked up dramatically when the two victims of Kent’s assaults made their way to the podium to make their victim statements to the court (one of the victim’s statements is here, courtesy of the Houston Chronicle). Both victims were extremely impressive in their presentations, describing the emotional and family carnage that Kent’s assaults and abuse of power caused. We also learned tidbits of information that likely would have been already been revealed had Judge Vinson not maintained such tight control over information:

The case manager reported Kent’s assaults to her supervisor, who did not take appropriate steps to report it to higher authorities out of fear for her job;

A "culture of fear" existed among employees at the Galveston federal courthouse as a result of Kent’s manipulative behavior and frequent drunkenness; and

Kent is estranged from much of his family.

There was a good bit of discussion from the victims and the lawyers regarding Kent’s alcoholism and his "serious" psychological issues, for which Judge Vinson ordered him to continue treatment. Also, Kent has been rendered virtually insolvent from his funding of the cost of defense of the case.

For his part, Kent did a good job in his statement to the court, apologizing to his accusers, his staff, his family, other judges and "the system." He promised Judge Vinson that he would continue to rehabilitate himself regardless of the sentence. My sense was that Kent was sincere.

I do not know Kent personally. I handled several hearings in his court over the years and never had a problem with him.

However, I know plenty of lawyers who found Kent insufferable and rude (see also here), and I heard the rumors about his alleged favoritism of certain Galveston lawyers, particularly in admiralty cases. In 2001, the Chief Judge of the Southern District of Texas took the unprecedented step of reassigning 85 cases away from Kent that were being handled by one of Kent’s best friends.

And now it appears that Kent was drinking heavily for much of the past decade and that he was frequently intoxicated while at the courthouse. You have to wonder whether concerns about Kent’s behavior impacted out-of-town parties’ decisions in cases such as this one?

So, I circle back to the question I asked at the beginning of this post — how did the judicial career of Sam Kent come to this sordid and sad ending?

Where were Kent’s "friends" who knew about his excessive drinking and other personal problems, and were in a position to intervene and help him before it was too late?

What are we to make of the federal government’s human resources apparatus that an entire federal courthouse could have been placed under a culture of fear by the abusive behavior of one man?

And doesn’t the Fifth Circuit Judicial Council have some explaining to do on why it issued its agreed order of public reprimand of Kent without interviewing either of the victims during the council’s investigation?

Finally what are we to conclude about our justice system that the Houston Chronicle — which, along with its coverage of Hurricane Ike, should have been won a Pulitzer Prize for its reporting on the Kent case — provides much more information to the public about the crimes of an abusive judge than the prosecution of that judge?

Clear Thinking to begin the week

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The Thinker Former Cardinals and Pirates outfielder Andy Van Slyke from this recent interview ($) in Baseball Prospectus:

"Well, [former Astros pitcher] Mike Scott, to me, is the best pitcher to ever pitch in the big leagues. I went 1-for-38 against him.  .  .  . Mike Scott, when he was at the apex of his career, was actually cheating very well. When he threw that forkball, and he scuffed it all up… he threw 97-98 mph, and then he’d throw a forkball that was in the 90s and I just couldn’t hit him."

Q: Were there a lot of guys "cheating very well" in your era?

"I think there was more of it going on back then than there is today. You don’t really see guys scuffing balls—you don’t see guys with sandpaper—but it was very prevalent when I came to the big leagues. The guys… everybody knew who was doing it. It was just hard to catch them."

Arnold Kling on an upcoming debate that he will be having with Robert Kuttner regarding health care finance:

The debate should be about how the cost-benefit trade-offs and rationing will take place. I will argue that most health care spending should be paid for out of pocket, with insurance reimbursement only for very large expenses over a multi-year period. With consumers paying out of pocket, they will take price into account in making their choices, and they will self-ration. The alternative is to have government officials make the choices about what treatments people are to obtain. I do not think that this is a one-sided debate, in which one position is clearly better than the other. But I hope that Kuttner and I can have this debate, rather than go off into red herrings like drug company profits.

The Financial Times’ Clive Cook chimes in on America’s intractable but nonsensical drug prohibition policy ($) (other posts on drug prohibition are here):

How much misery can a policy cause before it is acknowledged as a failure and reversed?

The US “war on drugs” suggests there is no upper limit. The country’s implacable blend of prohibition and punitive criminal justice is wrong-headed in every way: immoral in principle, since it prosecutes victimless crimes, and in practice a disaster of remarkable proportions. Yet for a US politician to suggest wholesale reform of this brainless regime is still seen as an act of reckless self-harm. [.  .  .]

Strict enforcement,  .   .   .  has reduced drug use only modestly – supposing for the moment that this is even a legitimate objective. The collateral damage is of a different order altogether. Violence related to drug crimes has surged in Mexico and in US cities close to the border, giving rise to renewed interest in the topic.  .  .  . [.  .  .]

Few policies manage to fail so comprehensively, and what makes it all the odder is that the US has seen it all before. Everybody understands that alcohol prohibition in the 1920s suffered from many of the same pathologies – albeit on a smaller scale – and was eventually abandoned. [.  .  .]

Is an outbreak of common sense on this subject likely? Unfortunately, no. Only the most daring politicians seem willing to think about it seriously.  .  .   . [.  .  .]

Somebody in the White House should take a look. This national calamity is no laughing matter.

And finally, Mark Steyn notes the insidious nature of encroaching government regulation over citizens:

The proper response of free men to the trivial but degrading impositions of the state is to answer as [gun owner] Pierre Lemieux did. But it requires a kind of 24/7 tenacity few can muster – and the machinery of bureaucracy barely pauses to scoff: In an age of mass communication and computer records, the screen blips for the merest nano-second, and your gun rights disappear. The remorseless, incremental annexation of "individual existence" by technologically all-pervasive micro-regulation is a profound threat to free peoples. But do we have the will to resist it?

The Tyranny of the Busybodies

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"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

– C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock

The Wavering Rule of Law

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scales of justice So, because of prosecutorial misconduct, the Justice Department decides to move for dismissal of the political corruption case against former Alaska senator Ted Stevens (previous posts here and here).

Meanwhile, Jeff Skilling, who created billions of dollars in wealth and thousands of jobs by revolutionizing risk management of natural gas prices for producers and industrial consumers, sits in a Colorado prison cell under the weight of a barbaric 24-year prison sentence. Skilling’s conviction involved even more egregious prosecutorial misconduct than the Stevens case. The criminal case against Skilling was materially weaker than the case against Stevens, too.

It is a sad reflection of the current state of American rule of law that the DOJ readily concedes prosecutorial misconduct against an arguably corrupt legislator, but ignores it in a shaky case against a businessperson who created many jobs and great wealth.

And how bizarre is it that America’s primary business newspaper rightly decries the government’s abuse of Stevens’ due process rights but continues to ignore even worse abuses with regard to a creative and productive businessperson?
Update: Larry Ribstein chimes in, too.

The Postrel Health Care Finance Articles

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health care finance Clear Thinkers favorite Virginia Postrel (previous posts here) is well-known in health care finance circles for her authorship of a reasoned critique of one-payor, centralized health care plans back in the 1990’s. She now writes for The Atlantic.

Over the past year or so, Virginia has been experiencing serious health care issues, so she has recently penned two extraordinary articles in The Atlantic (here and here) chronicling her personal experience with America’s Byzantine health care finance system. Both articles are must-reads for anyone interested in these important issues, but here are a couple of snippets from the second article that are representative of the wisdom that Virginia provides:

Mr. Daily [a critic] shares a common belief, expressed less dramatically in other letters, that there is somewhere a pot of money dedicated to “health care” which “society” divides between winners and losers. In the United States, at least, there is no health care pot, any more than there is a pot for housing or education or magazine subscriptions. There is simply an economy, which includes health care among other goods, and the amount we spend on health care grows out of the largely decentralized decisions made by individuals and organizations. As productivity increases and prices drop in some areas—food, clothes, entertainment—we can afford to spend more on health care (even without overall economic growth or increased health-care efficiency). [.  .  .]

.  .  . We do not currently treat health care as a right. That we don’t is, in fact, what most letter writers are objecting to. Neither do we regard it exactly as a privilege, to be allocated to the worthy few or even to be limited to those who can afford to pay for it, directly or indirectly. Rather, it is a good, produced and purchased in a complex marketplace through a combination of individual, organizational, and political decisions.

Even this formulation is misleading, however. Health care isn’t a single good, nor, like food, is it easily defined in terms of a minimum to sustain life. Studying other countries’ supposedly universal systems only demonstrates how fraught the concept of “health care” is: one bundle of services in British Columbia and a less-generous one in Nova Scotia, one in England and another in Scotland, one in New Zealand before the election and another afterwards. Arguably the U.S. already has universal care, in the sense that everyone can get some care—if only from an emergency room—for some things, and that citizens (a critical word in this context) without money are covered by Medicaid.

The real issue is how you define “health care.” What gets included is a matter not only of medicine and economics but of culture and politics.

What limitations on health care are Americans willing to accept in return for universal coverage? That is one of the core issues that those who are currently crafting health care finance reform are assiduously avoiding. But true reform will never occur without addressing that issue.

Henderson on the Nature of Government

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Was2165665 David Henderson makes an insightful point about the Ryan Moats/Robert Powell run-in in Dallas last week in which Powell (the policeman) exhibited an utter lack of common sense, much less prosecutorial discretion (and this incident is apparently not the first time that Powell has exhibited this type of behavior):

So what is the essence? The issue of control. Read the abridged transcript of the interaction or, better yet, watch the whole 20-minute video. What comes out loud and clear is that the policeman was upset because the driver, Ryan Moats, tried passionately to tell him the nature of the emergency, whereas what Robert Powell saw as being primary was that Moats wait patiently while Powell wrote him a ticket. Even once a nurse came out from the hospital and assured the policeman that Moats’s mother-in-law was dying, Powell, writing the ticket, said, "I’m almost done." Must get that ticket written no matter why Moats jumped a red light. [.  .  .]

This is the nature of government whether the government employees are policemen with guns on their sides or sometimes in their hands or are teachers in government-financed schools. The whole Powell-Moats incident reminds me of a passage from Steven E. Landsburg’s book, Fair Play: What Your Child Can Teach You About Economics, Values, and the Meaning of Life. Landsburg tells of the propaganda his daughter Cayley’s teachers subjected her to about the importance of not letting the water run when she brushed her teeth. Landsburg writes:

[.  .  .]

Where is the pattern, then? What general rule compels us to conserve water but not to conserve on resources devoted to education? The blunt truth is that there is no pattern, and the general rule is simply this: Only the teacher can tell you which resources should be conserved. The whole exercise is not about toothbrushing; it is about authority.

The Moats-Powell incident is a micro example of the government’s proclivity to exert power arbitrarily. That essential nature is being largely ignored as the Obama Administration runs headlong into seeking even greater governmental regulation over broad sectors of the economy.

Given that one of the clearest lessons of the 20th century is the capacity of large government to cause unspeakable evil, any effort to centralize more power in the federal government should be subject to the most careful scrutiny and not the type of superficial posturing that Congress has exhibited to date.

Count me as not confident that Congress will oblige.