Public Policy and Governance – Page 323

Wrong is Wrong

Since the election of Barack Obama, the GOP–aka “the party of no”–has shown impressive discipline, putting party orthodoxy ahead of both the common good and, frequently, sanity. The Democrats, on the other hand, have happily confirmed Will Rogers’ great line: “I’m not a member of any organized political party; I’m a Democrat.” The left wing of the party has pretty constantly criticized the President for not doing more, not doing it more quickly, and not doing what they wanted.

I’ve considered much of this criticism unfair–often it has been the result of not understanding the constraints imposed by Separation of Powers, or the magnitude of the economic threat he inherited. Other complaints have had more merit–contrary to Republican rhetoric, for example, Obama has often seemed too willing to compromise, too reluctant to play hard-ball. But by far the most serious criticism has been his acceptance of Bush-era infringements on civil liberties.

This is a man who taught Constitutional law, a man who stood up for the rule of law as a Senator and who said all the right things as a candidate. It was a relief, after 8 years of a profoundly lawless administration, to cast a vote for someone who could be expected to respect Constitutional limits. That expectation has proved illusory, and Obama’s embrace of Bush-era surveillance measures has been painfully disappointing.

The recent announcement that the President would not veto the current Defense bill , however, is worse. While much of the bill is uncontroversial, its counterterrorism section states that the entire world, including American soil, is a battlefield in the war on terror, and that the U.S. military thus has the authority to arrest and indefinitely detain anyone, even citizens, suspected of aiding terrorists.

I can’t think of anything more profoundly unAmerican.

It’s bad enough that large numbers of Congressmen and Senators support this assault on the Constitution and the rule of law. For Obama–who clearly knows better–to sign it is simply inexcusable. Laura Murphy, the longtime head of the ACLU’s Washington office, said it best:

“If President Obama signs this bill, it will damage both his legacy and American’s reputation for upholding the rule of law. The last time Congress passed indefinite detention legislation was during the McCarthy era and President Truman had the courage to veto that bill. We hope that the president will consider the long view of history before codifying indefinite detention without charge or trial.”

In ordinary times, when we had two responsible political parties, the loyal opposition would provide a corrective to Executive Branch over-reaching. The saddest thing about the farce that is our current political environment is that no such counterbalance exists; indeed, the major movers of this appalling provision include Lindsay Graham and the ever-angrier John McCain. The same GOP that contests the power of the White House to reform health care evidently has no problem handing over the power to arrest and indefinitely detain American citizens.

We can only hope the Supreme Court remains sufficiently “activist” to invalidate this incredibly unAmerican measure.

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Who Should We Trust?

These may not be the times that try men’s souls, but they sure are times that confound economic policymakers.

We have one set of economists telling countries to implement austerity measures, and another group insisting that for now, stimulus is the answer. For those of us who are not trained in the “dismal science,” it’s increasingly difficult to distinguish between medicine and snake oil. Prescriptions sounding eminently reasonable to those of us unschooled in economic arcana turn out to be counter-productive in practice—case in point: research showing that so-called “right to work” legislation just depresses wages without generating the promised economic growth.

So where should we look for advice?

An October paper for the New America Foundation, by Daniel Alpert, Robert Hockett and Nouriel Roubini (not-so-affectionately dubbed “Dr. Doom” after he predicted the mortgage meltdown) proposes a way forward, and the logic seems—at least to this non-economist—pretty compelling.

The authors spend considerable space analyzing “how we got here,” and they note that digging out of the present crisis will be particularly difficult because, thanks to the entry into the world economy of “successive waves of new export-oriented economies,” and the concurrent, dramatic rise in productivity gains “rooted in new information technologies and the globalization of corporate supply chains,” the world economy now has excess supplies of labor, capital and productive capacity relative to global demand. Furthermore, the integration of new economies with competitive workforces has shifted the balance between capital and labor, resulting in income inequality as bad as—if not worse than—the gilded age.

The bottom line, as they see it: it will be difficult to sustain even current levels of consumption without improved wages and incomes, but such increases are unlikely due to the gluts of both labor and capital. In such a situation, austerity simply leads to a vicious downward cycle of weaker demand, weaker investment and more unemployment.

What to do? The authors lay out a three-part prescription: first, a “substantial” five to seven year public investment program to repair America’s crumbling infrastructure; second, a “comprehensive” debt restructuring plan; and third, global reforms to offset diminished demand in the developed world and correct the current imbalance in supply and demand.

The paper is long and quite detailed, and the descriptions of each proposal deserve to be read in their entirety, but I was particularly struck by the logic of the infrastructure recommendations.

Fixing infrastructure now would take advantage of a “historically unique opportunity” to put idle capital and labor to work rebuilding at an extremely low cost and with potentially high returns. Capital costs are now at historic lows, and labor is in abundant supply. It will never be less expensive to fix our decaying infrastructure than it is now.
The American Society of Civil Engineers estimates we need 2.2 trillion to meet even the most basic infrastructure needs. Less than half of that is currently budgeted.
Every billion dollars invested in infrastructure generates 23,000 well-paying jobs. Over the course of five years, such a program would create over 5.52 million jobs.
The CBO estimates that every dollar of infrastructure spending generates a 1.6 dollar increase in GDP.
Fixing our infrastructure is also essential to restoring American competitiveness. China invests 9% of GDP annually in infrastructure—we spend less than 3%. Public infrastructure investment lowers the costs of transportation, electricity and other core business expenses.

Even if these economists are overstating the case, what’s the worst that would happen if we took their advice? Our bridges might stop falling down? Pollution levels would abate? Workers with jobs might have money to spend?

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Who Deserves?

I caught a bit of one of those interminable talking-head debates on television the other day, in which one pontificator was explaining that in America, we work for what we get, and it is thus unAmerican to begrudge wealth to those who have earned it.

I agree. When someone works hard, innovates and creates that better mousetrap, we all benefit. That person has earned what he or she has. I also agree that this emphasis on meritocracy–the belief (however unwarranted) that anyone can compete and succeed if they just work hard enough–is a quintessentially American belief.

What the talking head didn’t seem to understand was that he was in the wrong conversation.

The people criticizing the status quo today are clearly not angry with capitalism, nor hostile to those who have done well by actually producing something. They are angry–justifiably, in my view–with a government that seems to have two sets of rules, one for those rich enough to hire lobbyists and another for the rest of us. They are angry with a system that confers obscene rewards on people who produce nothing, people who simply play financial games and buy influence.

Genuine capitalism requires the rule of law and a level playing field, where the same rules apply to everyone. When some people–or corporations–are able to buy a pass, buy a separate set of rules for themselves, that is no longer capitalism. It’s cronyism, and it violates deeply embedded precepts of American culture.

I’ve always been puzzled by the double standard so many seem to live by: you’ll hear people talk disparagingly about “welfare bums” who “work the system” and don’t deserve our help. And I know there are people who fit that description–although research suggests they make up only 2% or so of welfare recipients. Until quite recently, however, I did not hear similar opinions offered about people with unearned wealth–those who inherited it, or especially those who broke the rules in order to get it. I heard few complaints about corporate lobbyists who “work the system” to get special benefits others don’t enjoy. If we truly believe that merit should be rewarded, and cheating punished, we aren’t doing a very good job of selecting the winners and losers.

What we are seeing right now is a shameful effort to defend unearned privilege, by claiming that the rich are all “job creators,” or that objections to the status quo are “class warfare.” It’s telling that those who genuinely earned their wealth–think Bill Gates or Warren Buffett–are among the most vocal critics.

If we are going to dispense welfare, who truly deserves extra help from the taxpayers? The single mom struggling to raise her children in an economy she did not produce–an economy hollowed out by wars of choice, tax breaks for the powerful and permissive regulations that enabled dishonesty all the way from Enron to the banksters–or the people who run corporations like Halliburton and banks like Citicorp and Bank of America? I’m prepared to concede that we couldn’t allow the financial system to melt down–the consequences would have been horrific for everyone–but now that we have stabilized it, we need to address the inequities of an economic system that demands far more from the working poor than it does from the well-connected rich.

We Americans need to rethink who we are, where our taxes should come from and where they ought to go, and who “deserves” what.

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The Klingons in Florida

Linda Greenhouse’s column in this morning’s New York Times discusses an absolutely appalling policy being applied in Florida. It is aimed at illegal immigration, but I hesitate to classify it as an immigration policy, because it is aimed squarely at young citizens whose parents lack documentation. The state refuses to authorize residential tuition rates for these young resident citizens who enroll at Florida’s public colleges.

It’s as if Worf, from Star Trek the Next Generation, is making policy in Florida. Klingons, as you may (or may not) recall, believe that “dishonor” passes from parent to child. Several episodes of the series drew their dramatic impact from the viewers’ sense of the terrible injustice of holding Worf responsible for crimes his father was alleged to have committed.

Klingons are fictional. Rick Scott, the criminal who is governor of Florida (I use the word deliberately; his company defrauded Medicare of billions) unfortunately is not.

As Greenhouse notes, the U.S. Constitution expressly forbids punishing children for the crimes of their parents.

““Corruption of blood” was a familiar feature of the common law in England. A person found guilty of treason and certain other crimes would be barred from passing his estate on to his children, who would thus inherit nothing but the corrupted blood line. The framers of the United States Constitution considered and forcefully rejected the concept. Article III, the judiciary article, contains this sentence: “The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture except during the life of the person attained.” As James Madison expressed the thought more directly at the time, the purpose was to prevent Congress “from extending the consequences of guilt beyond the person of its author.”

There are two questions here, both pertinent: Where was Florida’s Attorney General while officials were deciding to implement a policy so clearly at odds with what the Constitution requires? And perhaps more importantly, what happened to these policymakers’ human decency?

More GOP Insanity

Back in the Ice Age, when I was still Republican, the GOP used to be a party of grown-ups. It is painful to watch what has become of the Grand Old Party–and even more painful to see what it’s doing to the country.

Neil Pierce’s current column is yet another example. As he reports,

“There’s no sane way to say that America’s criminal justice system is “OK.” It costs over $100 billion a year; it imprisons hundreds of thousands for minor drug possession or sale; overall it’s incarcerating 2.3 million men and woman — the most of any nation on earth.

But that didn’t stop 43 Senate Republicans from recently wielding the weapon of a filibuster to torpedo a proposal by Sen. James Webb (D-Va.) for a bipartisan national commission to undertake a stem-to-stern examination of how we apprehend, try and punish in America.”

The entire column is worth reading, but the essence is that the GOP claims a STUDY of the criminal justice system would be an infringement of “states rights.”

Mull that over for a minute. We have now gotten to the place where simply informing ourselves about what is happening in our country cannot be tolerated. Information has become the enemy.

I suppose I shouldn’t be so stunned; these are the people who deny the existence of global climate change, who insist that evolution is just a “theory” (betraying their ignorance of the meaning of scientific theory), and that people are poor not because they can’t get jobs but because they’re lazy. They’re the people who sneer at educated “elitists.”

So now the party that talks endlessly about the need to cut costs has killed a perfectly reasonable, modestly priced study aimed at determining why we are overspending by billions for a system that is both inefficient and inequitable–a study to help us spend less to make Americans safer.

Welcome to the age of the new and improved “know nothings.”

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