Category Archives: Public Policy and Governance

About That Umpire Analogy…

In the charade labeled “hearings” on Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court, we have once again been treated to the facile comparison of judging and “umpiring,” first used to great effect by now-Chief Justice John Roberts.

There has been plenty to criticize about these hearings, even if the unconscionable and un-American treatment of Merrick Garland isn’t still sticking in your craw. Like so much of federal governance, which has abandoned even the pretense of concern for the common good, the process of selecting a Supreme Court Justice has devolved from a consideration of the candidate’s character and qualifications into a battle for partisan dominance.

Even before the late-breaking allegations that he tried to rape a young woman while in high school–allegations that appear more credible by the day (why else would Senator Grassley have previously secured and pocketed that letter by 65 women saying Kavanaugh was a nice guy), and considerable evidence that he had perjured himself during his prior confirmation hearings, Kavanaugh had emerged as a (very accomplished, clearly intelligent) partisan hack.

We shouldn’t be surprised by either the extreme partisanship or the lack of candor; that’s why he was nominated.

His unwillingness to really engage Senators’ questions, and his pat (non)responses have been par for the course, as the process has become more superficial over the years. The “umpire” analogy is of a piece with the smug responses we’ve come to expect, but my cousin–a doctor with a blog of his own that I quote from time to time–had a perfect reaction to that bit of sophistry:

I usually devote time to exposing health frauds and quackery. But now, I can’t resist bigger prey, namely the U.S. Supreme Court. Recently candidate judge Brett Kavanaugh stated that he likened his Judicial position to that of an “umpire,” an opinion previously attributed also to Chief Justice Roberts during his early hearings in 2005. This assertion, while seeming to express purity and impartiality, is patently false!Why? Because we can first use the example of a real umpire, who works individually in a baseball game and makes binary decisions such as “safe” or “out.” Although usually easily decided, borderline decisions can be resolved by instant video replay, again observed by a single person, usually the umpire himself.

Now let’s extend this analogy to the supreme court: Using the baseball analogy, we place nine justices, or “umpires,” near first base, in order to judge outcomes. A ground ball results in a close call at this base, and our justices then, after thorough discussion, decide that, by a vote of 5 to 4, the runner is out. But the minority of 4 think, possibly correctly, that he is safe. Sound ridiculous? It is!

Here is what makes this scenario so ridiculous. Out of necessity, judges make complex decisions that are subjective, vulnerable to individual bias, education and background, usually require more than one person, and are subject to later reversal by other courts or, in the case of the Supreme Court, even the same court in later years. Examples of reversals are manifold and include such issues as legitimacy of slavery, equal access to public restaurants and schools, etc., etc. Does that description sound even remotely like an umpire? I think not!

I’d say that’s an excellent diagnosis!

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Are Humans Just Self-Destructive?

Another hurricane is bearing down on the east coast; it’s projected to make landfall in the Carolinas, and to wreak havoc–massive rainfall, flooding–in Virginia and inland.

There are people in Puerto Rico still without power, and the island is still dealing with the aftermath of their hurricane. For that matter, Houston hasn’t completely recovered from Hurricane Harvey.

Only the determinedly ignorant continue to insist that these and other disasters are unrelated to climate change. As we’ve been repeatedly warned by scientists (you know–those elitists who actually know stuff), hurricanes gain strength over the warmer oceans that climate change has produced. Meanwhile, our determinedly ignorant President continues to relax environmental rules; most recently, rules limiting methane emissions.

Vox recently considered the insanity of America’s refusal to face facts. Environmental measures are not only necessary for the planet, they would save money. A lot of money.

$26 trillion by 2030.

That, according to the most authoritative research to date, is the amount of money humanity could save through a global shift to sustainable development.

It’s a lot of money. Before you break your brain trying to imagine it, just pause to make a note that it’s a positive sum (uh, extremelypositive), not negative. Net savings, not costs.

That might come as a surprise since decades of conservative and fossil fuel propaganda have made it conventional wisdom that cleaning up our act is expensive — that it costs more than the status quo. It is the argument hauled out against every single pollution regulation.

As the article points out, that argument has always been overstated, but these days, it’s demonstrably, massively wrong. The costs of fossil fuel extraction and pollution have gotten higher and the costs of clean energy have plunged–making it far less expensive to do the right thing than to continue pandering to uber-wealthy oil and gas interests. (Coal is already effectively dead–killed not by “guvment” regulations, but by the market.)

Arguments about the higher costs of clean energy have been less than honest for quite some time,

But these days, it has gotten almost impossible to make sustainability look like a bad deal.

Two forces are acting as a pincer, making the decision more and more obvious.

First, the future damages of climate change are coming into clearer focus, and, more to the point, the damages have arrived, here in the present, in brutal fashion.

And second, the costs of sustainable technologies and practices (e.g., solar panels) have fallen at a dizzying rate in recent years, especially in the energy sector.

The article (which is lengthy) goes on to provide the data that supports the point, complete with charts, citations to research and quotations from heads of state, including former (real President) Obama. I encourage you to click through and evaluate the evidence.
In my opinion, the article’s single most telling point was this acknowledgment of the central challenge we face.

For all their numbers, models, and charts, it’s the one thing reports like this can never tell us: how to conjure leadership and political will — how to induce business and political leaders to cooperate for mutual long-term benefit in spite of short-term differences.

But that’s just the basic human moral project, isn’t it? It’s the central dilemma of our nature and our history: how to cooperate across tribal lines, how to construct systems that bind and benefit widening circles of people. If we knew how to accelerate that process, we’d probably be doing it! Or rather, we are accelerating the process, as best we can, but it remains frustratingly slow.

Residents and visitors are currently evacuating the Carolinas. As they drive out–bumper to bumper, according to friends caught up in this particular event–we and they might think seriously about a world in which such evacuations become routine, at least until rising sea levels take back those beaches we like to visit.

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French Lessons

France has a growing middle class. The United States has a shrinking middle class.

I realize that Americans are reluctant to learn from other countries (most prominent example: healthcare, where we insist on spending twice as much for much poorer results, because hey! we’re Amurica and we know best about everything…), but we really could learn a lot if we were so inclined.

According to the Washington Spectator (link unavailable), America’s middle class has dropped from 60% of all households in the 1980s to 50% in the mid 2010s. Meanwhile, the French middle class rose from 60% to 68%.

The poverty rate for U.S. children in two-parent families in 2010 was 13.7%; in France, it was 8.2%. (That was for children in two-parent families. For all American children, the child poverty rate is 21%; in France, it is 5.7%. As the Spectator points out, the damaging effects of growing up poor are well-documented and socially undesirable.

Why the difference? What does France do right that we don’t?

Although the article fails to mention it, that health care system I referenced is a huge asset to French families, especially families with children. Just knowing that an unexpected illness won’t wipe you out is a big stress reliever, as is the knowledge that you can take a sick child to the doctor without the visit making you late with the rent.

Although the article doesn’t mention health care, it does focus on three other aspects of French social policy that are very different from ours, and that the author finds particularly important: paid parental leave, affordable child care and the French tax system.

In France, paid family leave replaces 100% of the average wages earned by women in the three months following birth or adoption. Eight weeks of paid leave are mandatory, although many businesses offer more. The U.S., in contrast, is the only developed nation that does not have a national paid leave program; as a result, some 25% of new mothers return to work within ten days of giving birth. (It hurts even to type that statistic; I remember how long it took me to feel up to par after childbirth!)

The French child-care system is even more impressive to someone like me, who struggled to find adequate childcare despite having the financial wherewithal to pay for it. France has creches–childcare centers for infants and toddlers under 3–and part-time centers that operate both before and after school. There are other centers that open on days when school is out, and during summer vacations. And all of them are subsidized by the French government. The cost to a family is approximately $1.25 per hour per child.

In the U.S., the after-tax cost of childcare is equal to 38% of average U.S. wages, one of the things that makes parenting an expensive proposition and is a disincentive to women with children entering the workforce.

Finally, French families with children are taxed at a lower rate than families without children. The disparity in tax rates, the maternal leave policy and the generous subsidies for comprehensive child care are all justified by the French belief that children are an investment in the future of the nation.

Clearly,  American policymakers don’t see it that way.

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The Trouble With Tariffs

I try to read a variety of information sources, but I will be the first to admit that–if it weren’t for my architect husband–Engineering News Record would not be among them. It is a print publication that considers itself “the construction resource,” and focuses on matters like the reason for that Italian bridge collapse and the technology of road paving. These are subjects that fascinate my husband, but usually aren’t among my preoccupations.

However, there is a real virtue to reading such publications for a policy person, because they report on the practical implications of what might otherwise be abstract and ideological policy debates. That is exactly what the most recent issue did in its discussion of Trump’s misbegotten tariffs, in an article titled “Equipment Readies for Tariff Fight.”

As the article reported, “the reality of new surcharges on all sorts of imported materials and finished goods has begun to reverberate through the global supply chain for construction equipment.” And that global supply chain is complicated–something a ham-handed and ill-considered policy can disrupt in unexpected ways and with unanticipated consequences.

The (sobering) points made by the article can be summarized by a quote from a vice-president of the Association of Equipment Manufacturers: “Everyone loses in a global trade war. Tariffs are taxes on American consumers and businesses.”

Major manufacturers have already raised their prices in anticipation of the higher up-front costs of steel and other materials. According to Senator Chuck Grassley, tariffs the administration aimed at imports of automobile components have also hit heavy-duty trucks, buses, construction equipment, agricultural equipment and industrial engines. As those prices increase, they’ll be passed along, so prices paid by consumers will rise. (There has already been a 32% rise in the cost of hot-rolled, coiled steel.)

Some 30% of of the construction equipment manufactured in the U.S. is designated for export, and the imposition of tariffs has “upended” the industry, which had been anticipating a period of strong sales. As a consequence, according to industry spokespersons, manufacturers are likely to shift production to “places like China or Brazil.”

These tariffs and retaliatory tariffs will put U.S. manufacturing at a disadvantage, because dozens of OEM’s have facilities around the world. It will tip the balance and they’ll just move out of the U.S. to make the equipment somewhere else.

The decision whether to shift the locus of manufacturing is only one of the consequences that has yet to be felt; as the article quoted one construction industry representative,

The point about tariffs is the effect doesn’t come the day after, it comes the year after. The economic impact, the loss of jobs, the loss of business in the community–that is a very long-term effect.

There is a reason that opposition to tariffs bridges ideological divides. Both conservatives and liberals recognize the negative effects of these sorts of interventions into complex and interrelated markets. Unfortunately, we have a President whose policies (if they can be dignified by the term) do not rest on any theoretical or philosophical framework. Instead, he acts out of bile and petulance, complicated by utter ignorance of the matters he is disrupting.

The Engineering News Record says these tariffs pose a significant threat to the construction equipment industry’s prosperity. But the damage isn’t limited to the construction equipment industry. Tariffs pose a significant threat to job creation, consumption and general American prosperity–a threat that could have been avoided had we elected someone competent, or even someone who had–and heeded– competent advisors.

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“I Quit”

Principled people who can do so are fleeing the Trump Administration. Those who cannot afford to take the moral high ground–the government workers with mortgages to pay and children to educate–are valiantly trying to hold their agencies accountable to the rule of law.

Talking Points Memo, among others, has reported on the departure of one who just left: the top watchdog overseeing student loans.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s “Student Loan Ombudsman,” responsible for guarding student borrowers against predatory lenders and scammers, has resigned in a scathing letter aimed at acting CFPB director Mick Mulvaney.

“Unfortunately, under your leadership, the Bureau has abandoned the very consumers it is tasked by Congress with protecting,” Seth Frotman’s resignation letter, obtained by NPR, read. “Instead, you have used the Bureau to serve the wishes of the most powerful financial companies in America.”

Not exactly surprising, in an administration where up is down, failure is success, accurate reporting is “fake news,” and corrupt practices are touted as “good business.”

Frotman’s job was to monitor and review of thousands of complaints from student borrowers. The Obama administration had introduced a number of regulations intended to protect those student borrowers against fraudulent practices; according to Frotman, Mulvaney and Betsy DeVos have worked “diligently” to eliminate those protections.

Frotman’s letter pointed to specific wrongdoing by Mulvaney, NPR reported, including the alleged suppression of a report from his office revealing that big banks were “saddling [students] with legally dubious account fees.”

In May, NPR noted, Mulvaney called for Frotman’s office to be incorporated into the Office of Financial Education, effectively proposing to remove Frotman’s office from direct enforcement actions and shifting it to an educational role.

Regarding another change — the Department of Education’s announcement last year that it would no longer share federal student loan oversight data with the CFPB — Frotman wrote: “The Bureau’s current leadership folded to political pressure… and failed borrowers who depend on independent oversight to halt bad practices.”

NPR has posted a copy of Frotman’s letter here.

My husband often reminds me that–while Americans are distracted by our demented President’s tweets, rages and sundry other embarrassing and destructive behaviors–his administration is busily dismantling the structures of accountable and legitimate governance–stacking the federal courts with right-wing ideologues, eliminating regulations protecting air and water quality, bleeding public schools of the resources needed to educate the country’s children, empowering theocrats, and weakening the rules that restrain the rich and powerful.

Even if November brings the hoped-for “blue wave,” and installs a Congress that takes its oversight responsibilities seriously, it will take years to restore both the rule of law and the American people’s ability to trust that their government is operating on their behalf.

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