Coolidge Corner

Ron Paul: More Progressive Than Obama?

That's the question Charles davis asks in this great post at counterpunch:

Ron Paul is far from perfect, but I'll say this much for the Texas congressman: He has never authorized a drone strike in Pakistan. He has never authorized the killing of dozens of women and children in Yemen. He hasn't protected torturers from prosecution and he hasn't overseen the torturous treatment of a 23-year-old young man for the “crime” of revealing the government's criminal behavior.

Can the same be said for Barack Obama?

Please read the engaging piece in its entirety.  I don't point out Obama's failings for laughs. If progressives could get over the Red Team Blue Team BS and examine their values, a coalition of of libertarians and real progressives could bring about some really Change^TM. The big government conservatives despise Ron Paul, yet there he is on the red team, because those on the left (many of whom I know to sincerely hold progressive values) are unwilling to look past team identification.  Sick.

Is this about competition or regulation?

A few weeks back, I had a conversation with my mom, a committed Democrat, in which she said something to the effect of, “I support the public option, because it is important to give the insurance companies some real competition.”  I questioned whether this could be genuine (rather than merely a Trojan horse), if we don’t also remove the barriers to private competition.   Over the weekend, an exchange from CNN’s situation room reminded me of our conversation:

 

(HT: Cato@Liberty)

Axelrod is surprisingly forthcoming , although it is tough to get from the transcript.  He essentially says this isn’t about increasing competition, it’s about regulation.  I wish we could just have the debate on those terms.

Kling & Roberts on the Crisis One Year In

Had the pleasure of being there in person.  Arnold Kling (starts around 7:30) is a little more technical but his insights into policy responses are well thought out and delivered.  Russ Roberts (at 33:00) is a bit more accessible (I think his poker analogy is brilliant).  It was interesting to see him get a little fired up as I am used to him being so polite on EconTalk.

Questions for the Left

During the run up to last year’s election and since, I have been amazed that friends and family who experienced my opposition to Bush have all but accused me of being a Republican partisan and alternately shilling for the rich and hating/not caring for the poor.  Rather than make the (perhaps) equally hurtful accusation that those on the left are interested only in increasing their self-righteous reach into the lives of others and using the heavy hand of government coercion to deliver to themselves and their partisans benefits at the expense of taxpayers, I like to assume we have different understandings of what policies will achieve our shared righteous ends.

In the interest of mutual understanding, here some questions for those on the left:

Distribution of wealth:

Would you prefer a world in which the bottom decile makes, on average, $10 thousand per year and the top decile makes on average $100 thousand (a 10:1 ratio), or one in which the bottom decile averages $25 thousand and the top decile $1 million (a 40:1 ratio)? 

More broadly, do you worry only about the conditions of the worst off, or is there some amount you are willing to set back the worst off if it has an overall effect of reducing inequality? The recession has had the effect of decreasing inequality, as the best off had the most to lose; is this a good thing?

Method of distributing goods:

For some essential goods, we allow a (more or less) free market to provide the goods, and supplement the incomes of those worst off to allow them to purchase the goods (food comes to mind).  For others, the government provides the good to the vast majority through public institutions (K-12 education).  Do you have a strong intuition as to which of these methods is preferable?

Education:

Our K-12 education system involves assigning students to an institution and providing funding at the institutional level.  Additionally, teachers are unionized so it is more difficult to reward outstanding teachers or sanction those who are not performing well.  By contrast, our college and university system features private and public institutions competing for students who are able to secure government funding or loans at the individual level, and allows institutions to make hiring and firing decisions with a great deal of discretion.  Our colleges and universities are among the best in the world while the performance of our K-12 system has been unimproved by steadily increasing funding .  Should we attempt (through charter schools or voucher programs) to expand the choices of all students, or should school choice remain a luxury available only to those who can afford it?

Immigration:

As poor as some in America may be, those in many other parts of the world are far worse off.  In addition to helping these masses, allowing them to immigrate lowers the cost of goods and services for Americans.  Should we expand or completely liberalize immigration to expand the opportunities for those who would seek employment here, or do we owe a particular debt to those here who would be adversely affected? 

Trade:

Similar in effect to immigration restrictions, trade restrictions increase costs for all Americans and adversely affect those in other countries who would do business with us, in order to protect particular domestic producers.  For example, President Obama recently enacted tariffs on Chinese tires, which will benefit the United Steelworkers Union but increase by 35% the cost of the cheapest tires, making it harder for the poorest Americans to replace their tires when necessary.  Should we liberalize trade to lower prices and send some of our business to those overseas (presumably less well off) or need we defend domestic producers who are unable to compete at these lower prices?

Interest Groups:

Generally, are you comfortable with directing broadly raised tax revenues to specific constituencies and the accompanying lobbying?  The average wages & benefits of UAW workers at Chrysler and GM in 2006 were $152 and $147 thousand respectively, making the UAW average more than 50% higher than the average PHD professor and far in excess of the average taxpayer.  Ought we use taxpayer funds to insulate these interest groups from competition?

The War on Drugs:

The prohibition of some commonly used recreational substances has vastly increased both arrests and violent crime.  These detrimental effects have and continue to disproportionately harm our most vulnerable, especially minorities.  Nonetheless, Democrats have refused to decry and at times escalated this “war”.  Ought we lift the prohibition on some or all of these recreational drugs?

I’m sure there are more hypotheticals I could come up with, but these make my point - I believe increased government interference and reduced choice not only does not benefit, but in most cases hurts those worst off in our society.  I understand why the unions (be they teachers, steelworkers, autoworkers, police officers, prison guards,etc.) and other potential beneficiaries of government interference and favoritism would support the Democratic party;  it just doesn’t make sense why the idealistic progressives of my cohort do.

9/12 Freedom Works Protests

As you have likely heard, the 9/12 Teaparty Protest was held yesterday in DC.  Having never participated in a political protest, I donned my "Your Mom Hates Freedom" T-Shirt* and headed for the hill.  While the protesters gathered in Freedom Plaza, I found myself asking the same thing I had been for the last week: if the contemplated expansion of government is stopped for reasons I find either trivial or wrongheaded, will the ends have justified the means?  Without getting into it too much (Megan gives a great explanation of the reasons I find compelling here), I don't lose sleep over death panels or illegal aliens, and would support means testing and reduction of current benefits.

Mainstream media coverage to the contrary, I saw more signs quoting the founding fathers than I saw Obamas with Hitler mustaches and birth certificate references.  I was then lucky enough to meet up with some of the reason.tv guys and tag along as they interviewed people along the route.  Nick Gillespie asked each one what their biggest complaint was and overwhelmingly, if not uniformly, they answered "all the spending". 

I was reminded of this near unanimity when I read Jeffrey Miron's commentary this morning:

Today is the national taxpayer march on Washington, a national extension of the "tea-party" protests that occurred this past summer. Here is the group's mission statement:

We’ve had enough of the out of control spending, the bailouts, the growth of big government and the soaring deficits. And we reject the future tax increases to pay for all of this spending and debt down the road. We are gathering on 9-12-2009 to deliver our message in person that we’ve had enough!

The nice thing about this statement is that it identifies the crucial problem: excessive spending. Many anti-government protests focus only on high taxes, without stating what spending should be reduced as well.

Of course, the charge of hypocrisy will be leveled - "Bush increased spending too" after all - but it was also overwhelming how willing the protesters were to denounce Bush's spending but insist two wrongs don't make a right.  It seemed rather than a mere partisan backlash, this was an awakening to the gravity of the situation and the meaning of the word trillion.

Update:

Reason.tv footage from the event is up.  Compared what I saw to the coverage you have seen:

*If you have a funny or compelling explanation for what this means, let me know.  Daisy got it for me because she knows I love freedom, but the best I have come up with is "It's a 19th Amendment Joke" which either gets dumb stares or vitriol.

Hitting Restart

Having not blogged in almost 9 months, I wanted to explain my reasons for stopping, report on some pretty big changes in my life, and explain my hopes for the blog now that I plan to begin again.  Since hits have dwindled to fewer than one a day, and my family and friends know most of this, this is largely for my benefit – but bear with me.

Part of my reason for starting the blog in the first place was to provide an outlet for my interest in economics, law, and policy (and by unfortunate extension – politics).   Ultimately, the hours spent on google reader and fits and starts blogging weren’t enough; I wanted something more closely related to my interests than the excel jockeying bankruptcy consulting provided.  While I am somewhat embarrassed to put it in words as it sounds so naïve, I decided to assist in the defense of liberty, the best next step, given my talents and nature, would be to become a lawyer.

So, while traveling 5 days a week consulting for troubled companies, I studied for and took the LSAT and applied to law schools.  While awaiting responses, I guess because rethinking and redirecting my professional life had sparked a broader re-evaluation of my priorities, I asked Daisy, my girlfriend of five years, to marry me.  

Fast forward to today – I have left my consulting position, my fiancé Daisy and I are packing for a move to D.C. where I will be attending Georgetown University Law Center, and I want to begin blogging again.  I hope going forward I can continue to address the policy questions that interest me, and by extension the politics involved, without becoming so heated.  Also, I will probably be blogging more about all the other exciting, interesting, befuddling and galling things that I encounter in my changing life.   Nick Gillespie stated the libertarian position nicely:

First and foremost, we believe that politics—a rotten, zero-sum game in which the winners rub the losers' face in dog shit like a schoolyard bully—should not be the primary focus of human activity. It should be squeezed into the smallest box possible so that individuals and the communities they form can get on with far more interesting and exciting and liberatory stuff.

While I will continue to lament the increasing control of government over my life, I also want to spend more time celebrating the control I exercise over my life – and all the fun that comes of it.

Surely there is some irony here

Mark Cuban, the man behind watchdog site BailoutSleuth.com is being sued for insider trading, which if allowed, would have helped prevent (or lessen the severity of) both the current crisis and the Enron/Worldcom debacle, thereby alleviating the need for BailoutSleuth in the first place.

Department of Hole Related Analogies

I have always liked the "Department of Hole Digging and Filling" analogy for make work fiscal stimulus.

This is a nice hole related analogy for the bailout.

In The Know: Should The Government Stop Dumping Money Into A Giant Hole?

Obama, Race and History

I will have plenty of time to evaluate Obama's proposed policies as they unfold, but I want to comment on the perceived and actual significance of the occasion.  Likely because I am too young to have lived through segregation and grew up in too liberal of a neighborhood to have witnessed real racism, I have trouble seeing the historic first as a particularly important thread in the narrative.  As I listened to CNN pundits point out that it was a monumental event and that we have transcended race and then proceed to discuss the event without reference to his politics, or any other substantive point, but instead focus on his race (or half of it), I couldn't help but remember a conversation I had with my mom when I first learned what affirmative action was. I was in 5th or 6th grade but the thrust of my question remains pretty clear in my memory: "I thought what race people are isn't supposed to matter?"  Commenter Cynical in CA on The Agitator put it nicely into libertarian terms:

Race is among the most pernicious forms of collectivism. Identification with race, whether as a member of or a detractor of, negates the individual. That is the essence of racism, of all collectivism — the negation of the individual. I heard A LOT of collectivist speech last night, qu’elle surprise.

The fact is, the variation within a given group is far larger than the variation between groups.  To say that his election represents a great leap forward for the African American community while many African Americans' face difficult circumstances they will find little improved today is frustrating.  It’s more frustrating still that 95% of African Americans voted for him despite his seeming willingness to continue rewarding a broken public education monopoly which limits their opportunities and to increase funding for a drug war which is incarcerating them for consensual crimes at draconian rates.

On a somewhat unrelated note, how is this for an unintended consequence?

Glibness, Inteligence, and Palin

Daisy (my girlfriend) has informed me that many of her friends, most of them Smith graduates, believe me to be a "radical republican" based on my outspoken views on the election.  Given my vocal opposition to the expansion of government, our large military, non-defensive wars, the war on drugs, legislating morality, protectionism, nationalism, anti-immigration sentiment, . . . the list goes on; this is incredibly comical to me.  Then again, because I consider the vast majority of my acquaintances intelligent, yet find that the vast majority of them seem to be completely enamored with Barack Obama, a politician so vile and self serving I would hesitate to allow him near my children or relatives let alone vote him into a position of power over me; I do tend to harp more on the failings of the left than the failings of the right.  Recognizing this necessary bias, here is some more evidence of my radical republicanism: I agree with Todd Zywicki's defense of Sarah Palin's intelligence. His central point:

Some thoughtful people simply have a tendency to confuse intelligence with the ability to be glib, or more precisely, to bs. And I think that is much of what it comes down to--if Palin doesn't know the answer to a question, she just isn't that good at making something up.

I think this can be fleshed out a little more.  Many on the left went to colleges and universities dominated by leftist professors.  They learned to parrot the views of their professors without thinking deeply about the views they had adopted.  At the same time they came to the conclusion that their view were a result of this education.  That they believed the same things as their professors, and their professors were really thoughtful, even if their understanding of the arguments involved were only sufficiently developed to return an A-/B+ on the final exam, was evidence that their views were the intelligent ones.  The corollary is that those with whom they disagreed, weren't as much in opposition as ignorant.  That if only those in the flyover states had read the books they have read, or had received the education they had received, there would be no disagreement.

If this is the position from which one approaches politics, the glib BS artist will sound more intelligent.  By forming academic sounding sentences, using adverbs, and uttering vaguely progressive sounding words, the BS artist is able to bring the thoughtless leftist back to his or her college days.  "Ah, this is the person I should parrot,  they have thought about their views and sound intelligent, this is the right point of view to adopt and pass off as my own."  One moment from last weeks debate struck me as particularly illustrative of this point.  In response to a question about appointing judges in the context of Roe v. Wade, Obama uttered the following nonsense:

I am somebody who believes that Roe versus Wade was rightly decided. I think that abortion is a very difficult issue and it is a moral issue

To be clear, Roe v. Wade was NOT decided on moral grounds.  It was not decided that the unborn were not rights-bearers in the moral sense.  The court in fact decided not to answer the moral question at all and instead decided to rule on privacy grounds.  If one believes that abortion is a moral issue, and that abortion is morally permissible, the emanations and penumbras from which the court fashioned the right to privacy would be the WRONG way to decide the case.  For a constitutional law professor, the inability to answer this one without mixing up the facts of one of the most important cases of the last century is damning evidence of incompetence or agenda.

Then again, if you are the type of coastal elite leftist who I describe above, the answer would be great comfort.  "He holds similar views to my own on abortion, he speaks confidently, and uses words like 'referendum', he is intelligent and his views are the ones I will adopt."  Unfortunately, for those who can see through the BS, in this case those who might have actually read Roe v. Wade, his willingness to spout nonsense is evidence not of his intelligence, but an impeachment thereof.

Update:

So, now that the election is over, more stories come out.  I still think Zywicki's points regarding the difference between being smart and being glib apply to Biden and to a lesser extent Obama.  Also, I think we need to take these charges from the staffers of a recently routed campaign with a grain of salt (I can't believe she didn't know whether Africa was a country or a continent).  Notwithstanding all of that, to the extent this is true it says very little of whoever was managing McCain's campaign.