Big Government

Barak Obama, Constitutional Scholar

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In Barak Obama’s resume was a statement that he taught constitutional law as an “adjunct professor” at U of Chicago Law School. I have never considered this to be a major achievement since adjunct professors are not paid and the subject he taught was more related to his other interests. Constitutional law was not one of them.

At the school, Mr. Obama taught three courses, ascending to senior lecturer, a title otherwise carried only by a few federal judges. His most traditional course was in the due process and equal protection areas of constitutional law. His voting rights class traced the evolution of election law, from the disenfranchisement of blacks to contemporary debates over districting and campaign finance. Mr. Obama was so interested in the subject that he helped Richard Pildes, a professor at New York University, develop a leading casebook in the field.

His most original course, a historical and political seminar as much as a legal one, was on racism and law. Mr. Obama improvised his own textbook, including classic cases like Brown v. Board of Education, and essays by Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Dubois, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, as well as conservative thinkers like Robert H. Bork.

Mr. Obama was especially eager for his charges to understand the horrors of the past, students say. He assigned a 1919 catalog of lynching victims, including some who were first raped or stripped of their ears and fingers, others who were pregnant or lynched with their children, and some whose charred bodies were sold off, bone fragment by bone fragment, to gawkers…

Should we be surprised at his knowledge, or lack of it, on the basics of constitutional law ? Even his attempt to correct his clueless comments about judicial review are incoherent

Apparently unaware of the most basic principles of constitutional law, going back to Marbury v. Madison in 1803, he said:

I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.

And I — I’d just remind conservative commentators that for years what we’ve heard is the biggest problem on the bench was judicial activism or a lack of judicial restraint; that, uhhh, an unelected, uhhh, group of — of people would somehow overturn, uhhh, a duly constituted and — and passed, uh, law. Uh, well, uh, uh, is a good example. Uhh, and I’m pretty confident that this, — this court will recognize that, uh, and not take that step.

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals responded

Overturning a law of course would not be unprecedented — since the Supreme Court since 1803 has asserted the power to strike down laws it interprets as unconstitutional. The three-judge appellate court appears to be asking the administration to admit that basic premise — despite the president’s remarks that implied the contrary. The panel ordered the Justice Department to submit a three-page, single-spaced letter by noon Thursday addressing whether the Executive Branch believes courts have such power, the lawyer said.

Marbury vs Madison is one of the oldest and most basic cases that would be studied by a law student interested in Constitutional Law. The fact that our president does not know this ranks with his comments on speaking “Austrian” in Austria and his estimation of the number of US states.

Is he really this dim ? Did Harvard turn out this affirmative action dullard and inflict him on the country ?

Not yet TEA time…

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Yes, the world is abuzz with the fuss that Irish homeowners are making over the Household Tax. To recap, the Household Tax is a precursor to a property tax, which hasn’t been charged until now. Homeowners are asked to pay EUR100 this year, with an eye towards bringing in a proper tax in 2013. The idea is to get homeowners to self-identify themselves to the government to create the database. (Many government (and indeed health and education) records still are very much on paper.) The deadline for paying this tax was this past Saturday – however, at last count less than half of the suspected 1.6 million households have ponied up.

In fact, there was a protest at the current ruling party’s annual planning conference (called an “Ard Fheis”). An estimated 5,000-plus people turned out to air their rancor against this tax. Indeed, a number of TDs (members of the Irish parliament) have taken to the airwaves to condemn this tax and at least in a couple of cases, hint broadly that people not should pay it. From an American conservative/libertarian point of view, this all looks promising…

…until you hear what the complaints are all about. Almost no one is calling for a cut in spending. A goodly number are piqued that they can’t pay for this bill at the post office. And other voters and government folk are calling for the property tax to be means-tested. Sinn Fein wants to scrap this tax altogether for a flat-out income tax rate hike (which is what a property tax based on income level would effectively become) . In other words, this is really a broad-based call for more soaking the rich. But let’s see where this tax is going to.

It’s being sent to the District Councils – local-based government at the city or county level. And what it’s paying for are parks. Swimming pools. Libraries. And streets (remind me what the Road Tax was supposed to be for?) Meanwhile, still no talk of councillors taking a pay cut. Just asking the homeowners to dig deep to pay for “leisure amenities”. Feh, “leisure amenities”. Let’s get this straight. This isn’t a principled fight over taxation. It’s a squabble over who pays for little Sinead’s swim lessons. As King James II exclaimed at the Battle of the Boyne, GMAFB.

Why Tomorrow’s Craven Politicians Will Save Us (Maybe)

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Today governments across the United States are facing budget shortfalls caused primarily by making promises in terms of pensions and benefits to workers that no longer are supportable. Recently I was in California and I saw this sign in a bathroom at a popular tourist attraction.

The key concept to understanding how we got into this predicament is the word “craven”. Here is the official definition per Webster:

lacking the least bit of courage : contemptibly fainthearted

Politicians lacked the courage to stand up to public sector workers, predominantly the unionized ones like teachers, firefighters, and policemen, because negotiating with them seemed to be all downside:

1) If they are angry, they can go on strike, disrupting schools, hospitals and essential public services
2) They are voters (predominantly Democratic) and represent a (mostly) unified voting block that is prepared to petition to achieve their goals in the media (which is usually sympathetic to their cause, since they are mostly Democratic, too)
3) Many of them (Police, Firefighters, and to some extent teachers) present sympathetic postures to the public; fighting with them is a no-win situation (even if you win, you lose)
4) Their army of retirees often are still local and also vocal and organized and prepared to demonstrate as well, although they are not in a position to block essential services

Thus the “craven” route was simply to capitulate – write up promises to TODAY’s government workers and RETIREES and then just “kick the can” into the future to the date when those promises came due. Today’s politicians won’t be there when the bills come due (Daley most famously sold off Chicago’s assets, signed long term unaffordable deals for labor peace, and walked off into the sunset) so this fits their short term strategy to a tee.

However, in the near term, I think that politicians’ inherent “craven” behavior will work in REVERSE, giving us an opportunity to tackle the root cause of the problem. How do I come to that (preliminary) conclusion?

It is simple – there are really only two solutions available for politicians today (in places like Illinois, California, and Detroit, where it is literally collapsing) and in the near term in more well run or well funded places:

1) Raise taxes AND cut services drastically to pay for union benefits and pensions
2) grab a hold of the problem, cut payments to today’s workers and retirees and cut their benefits and costs, thus leaving more dollars for services TODAY and the opportunity to AVOID tax increases

So let’s say that you are a politician running for office in a few years – what do you promise constituents?  You have to promise #2 – that you won’t cut services today and won’t raise taxes – or you won’t get elected.  I’d love to see people run for office on a platform of #1 and get elected – it won’t happen.  Now what will actually happen a lot is that politicians will promise #2 but do a variant of #1 to get elected (because it is VERY hard to take on the entrenched unions when you come into office) – but then the financials will collapse further and they will be FORCED into making a harder choice, or they will come up for re-election and be drummed out of office.

Soon the EASIER or “more” craven approach will just be to get elected on a basis of reducing government costs on the backs of existing workers and retirees and chopping compensation to avoid raising taxes or reducing services.  Thus the entire process that led to our current debacle will operate in reverse, with bad consequences and subsequent demonizing for government employees as the root case of the issue.

Government workers, especially unionized ones, will see many victories but a long term defeat on all these issues.  In the end sympathies won’t be enough to offset the crippling taxes and immense service cuts that are necessary to pay for past politician promises.  The politicians will side with the majority, who will have to reform the system, even though this reform will be rocky and filled with failures and vitriol.

Politically craven behavior, which dug this grave, will work in reverse.  This is a hope, at least.

Cross posted at LITGM

Quote of the Day

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Kevin D. Williamson:

Under our current arrangements, market forces are eliminated or excluded in more than half of all U.S. health-care transactions (and the president’s health-care reform, if it stands, will reduce the scope of real market activity radically), while in K12 education, market forces are excluded in 90 percent of the transactions or more. It is not a coincidence that these are among the worst-performing sectors of American public life. The tragedy is that they are among the most important. Once the 1985 [regulatory] regime was in place, the development of wireless Internet and similar products ceased to be in the main a political problem and became an engineering problem. We have dysfunctional political institutions, but Americans are excellent at solving engineering problems. Where it is possible to do so, we reap extraordinary benefits from converting political problems into technical problems. But there is a very strong tendency among self-styled progressives to convert technical problems into political problems.

Wall Street and its Clients

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Ann Althouse has a good post today. I can’t get through her Captcha system so I thought I would post a few comments here. This NY Times op-ed piece is the source for her observations. It is behind the Times’ idiotic payment wall so go to her blog for the link.

TODAY is my last day at Goldman Sachs. After almost 12 years at the firm — first as a summer intern while at Stanford, then in New York for 10 years, and now in London — I believe I have worked here long enough to understand the trajectory of its culture, its people and its identity. And I can honestly say that the environment now is as toxic and destructive as I have ever seen it.

To put the problem in the simplest terms, the interests of the client continue to be sidelined in the way the firm operates and thinks about making money. Goldman Sachs is one of the world’s largest and most important investment banks and it is too integral to global finance to continue to act this way. The firm has veered so far from the place I joined right out of college that I can no longer in good conscience say that I identify with what it stands for.

That certainly states the issue clearly. What does he complain about ?

I am sad to say that I look around today and see virtually no trace of the culture that made me love working for this firm for many years. I no longer have the pride, or the belief.

But this was not always the case. For more than a decade I recruited and mentored candidates through our grueling interview process. I was selected as one of 10 people (out of a firm of more than 30,000) to appear on our recruiting video, which is played on every college campus we visit around the world. In 2006 I managed the summer intern program in sales and trading in New York for the 80 college students who made the cut, out of the thousands who applied.

I knew it was time to leave when I realized I could no longer look students in the eye and tell them what a great place this was to work.

What specifically is the problem ?

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