Some facts about elections in the US

Factoid - Corporations that spend the most money on lobbying make more money than Corporations that don't lobby.  The study- a research service created a stock index based on the amount corporations spend on lobbying.  Since 1998 companies that spend the most on lobbying, as a percentage of their total revenues, outperformed other companies.  The "lobby" index outperformed the S&P 500 by 11% a year since 2002.    In one specific example that the researchers looked at in 2004 the lobbying produced a $224 payoff for every dollar spent in lobbying.   Source:  Article in Economist, Oct.1.2011, p.82


Factoid - Voters subliminally exposed to a flag are more likely to vote Republican.  A study found in the US that subliminal exposure to a flag made people more likely to vote Republican.  The study involved 3 sets of questions about political preference, each person filled out a form asking a series of questions on 3 different occasions over the course of a couple months before and after the 2008 election.  The first two asked for preferences before the election.  Some of the forms had a small American flag decorating it, others were undecorated.  There was a statisically significant greater preference for McCain and Republicans over Obama and the Democrats in the answers on the form with the flag on it.  The questionaire after the election revealed that people who saw the flag on a questionaire were slightly over 10% less likely to have voted for Obama.  The result was then confirmed by another study in the spring of 2010, which again found exposure to an image of the flag changed responses to favor Republicans.   An earlier study in Israel had also found showing the national flag impacted voters perceptions of a particular political issue.   Source - Economist, Aug 6, 2011. p70.

What if - we voted for Federal programs on our tax return?

All my life Washington has been spending enormous amounts of time and money fighting over which programs get funded by the Government.   Hundreds of programs live on in the Federal budget because Washington is to busy to pay attention to it, or, more likely, happy to take money from special interests who support a low profile program that is so low profile protecting the program won't come back to bite them in the butt.

An example - I just learned there are lots of little tiny airports around the country that get hundreds of millions of dollars in Federal subsidies - based on a program from decades ago to mitigate the impact of airline deregulation.  That program was supposed to expire after 10 years, but special interests and local politicians seeking to bring home some bacon to get reelected have kept it going for decades.
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What if on our Federal income tax filing we got to check on which programs we support or don't support.

Some core programs would have to be exempt, like defense.

But taxpayers could choose to allocate a percentage of their taxes among programs that give away government funds to individuals or businesses.  School lunch programs, subsidies for farmers, or oil companies or airports.

Whatever percentage of taxpayers support the program determines the amount of money they get.  Below a certain threshhold, say 10% of voters, the program is eliminated.

So programs could plan you wouldn't have every program listed every year, maybe every 8 years.  And to keep the tax form short there would be ways you could vote for whole catagories of programs.

A Grand Bargain for California

The deadlock that has existed in the California legislature for a generation reflects a lack of clear vision on the part of both Democrats and Republicans.  Republicans, who in general regard government as out of control, have successfully pushed anti-tax polices to "starve the beast", most notably the 2/3 vote requirements imposed first by Proposition 13 and later by other propositions.  Their policies have managed to cripple many public services without impacting the real major problem with government, the lack of public control over public salaries and pensions.

Democrats, on the other hand, have castigated Republicans for destroying public services, but been unwilling to address the problem of public employee compensation practices.

We cannot solve the problems in California without getting rid of the 2/3 vote requirements in Proposition 13 and other anti-tax adoptions, but we also cannot go on allowing average public sector compensation to greatly exceed average private sector compensation.

We need someone to step forward and develop a grand bargain for California that does some things like:

1.  Repeals all 2/3 vote requirements, and precludes future adoptions imposing any higher vote requirement than the percentage of votes that approve the adoption.

2.  Links public sector total compensation to average private sector total compensation, but with mean, median and mode tests that flatten the overall salary range.  Public sector managers should not be using comparison to private sector salaries to drive their salaries up into the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

3.  Requires all public programs to be tested for effectiveness every 5 years and reauthorized every 10 years.

Americas most dangerous

When the Gallup Poll asks Americans which presents the greatest danger to America, big government, big business or big labor, somewhere around 60% of Americans choose big government, 20% chose big business.

My first reaction was what planet are these people living on?  What is the evidence that big government is dangerous?   Wall Street just blew up the whole world economy, leaving millions of American's out of work, with lost retirement benefits and foreclosed houses.  The last time we had a similar economic catastrophe it was also Wall Streets doing (the great depression).  Its hard to blame big government for either of these events since those arch enemies of big goverment, Republicans, were in control of government both times for the decade leading up to the collapse (although Republicans are very creative is weaseling out of responsibility).  Although certainly government contributed due to the tentacles big business has that can manipulate government to their ends.

After the last economic blow up Social Security and Medicare are all many people have to make it through their older years.  What's big business done for them lately?

The sobering reality is that what people believe isn't based in reality.  The same marketing expertise that convinces people to pay $5 for a tube of tooth paste that is no better than the $3 generic alternative, has been used by supporters of the big business viewpoint to sell voters a fictional reality.

(Poll results reported on NPR/(Marketplace, 12/14/11)

Things Republicans could do to make me take them seriously - Public / Private partnerships

In a democracy laws are often compromises that are less about finding the best solutions than they are about giving everyone something to make them happy.  So we end up with laws that don't work for anyone except the special interests who know how to work them.  One common compromise has been to make government programs "public private" partnerships.   Generally that means private folks put up some money and take home any profits the entity produces, while public entities absorb the losses.

Public private partnerships are almost always a disaster for taxpayers.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac grew out of a pragmatic desire to allow more people to own homes.  But some in Congress who were representing the interests of Financial institutions used their influence to give Financial institutions a cut of the action.  The public private hybrid managed to have the worst characteristics of both and the best characteristics of neither.

Higher Education and Health Care are two other areas Congress has melded an amalgam of government functions with profit motivated private business.  For the last three decades costs for both have risen much faster than inflation, as our systems are subject to few of the controls of the marketplace.

History seems to have demonstrated that if we think some problem needs to be addressed by a Government program, it should be government only program,  Public/private partnerships are a bad idea for everyone but the investors who will be milking the taxpayers.

Making Democracy more fair - Super Majorities defeat Democracy

A couple years ago big business interests hired sharp lobbying groups to put a measure on the California Ballot that would insulate them from paying fee's to cover the costs of damage caused by their business operations.  The lobbying groups, with millions of dollars to work with, qualified a measure for the November 2010 California Ballot, Prop 26, that expanded the 2/3 majority vote requirement enacted by Prop 13 in 1978 to cover fee's imposed on business to prevent or clean up damage their business operations cause.  They probably chose the November 2010 election carefully, as a off year election where turnout would be low, so their advertising dollars needed to sway fewer voters.

In the November 2010 election in California there were 23.5 million persons in California who were eligible to vote.  17.2 million were registered.  Less than 10 million voted on Prop 26.  4.92 million voted for the proposition, 4.27 million voted against it.  It was a approved by a margin of 52.5% to 47.5%.

The 2/3 vote requirement, since it was first enacted in 1978, it has proven to be an almost insurmountable barrier to legislative action on almost everything.  Yet this 2010 law imposing a virtually impossible 2/3 majority requirement on legislative imposition of fee's was approved by only 52% of the voters voting, and about 20% of the residents of the state eligible to vote.

Prop 13, which created the 2/3 vote requirement in 1978 was also passed by a relatively small majority of the voting population.  There were 15 million possible voters in California in June of 1978, a little less than 10 million were registered to vote,  4.3 million voters voted for Prop 13, 2.3 million voted against it.  Only 43% of the eligible voters actually voted, somewhere around 28% actually voted in favor of Proposition 13.

I am not arguing that a low turnout affects what passes and what doesn't pass, if people chose not to vote we have to go with the choice of the people that did turnout.  What I am arguing is that no vote should be able to impose higher approval requirements on future enactments than the percentage by which the enacting law was passed.

The Prop 13 2/3 vote requirement was particularly anti-democratic in its effect on local governments.  The requirement was created in Statewide elections but applies to local governments.  San Francisco and Kern Counties both voted against Prop 13, yet now they are required to get a 2/3 majority vote to impose local taxes or fees.

Lets talk partisan politics for a moment.  The 2/3 tax requirement is generally favored by anti-tax Republicans, in particular big business, who are a minority of voters.  They have recognized it is a way to leverage their votes so their votes count more than people who put a higher stock on good government.  As long ago as the 1930's they managed to get a 2/3 vote requirement to impose taxes on Banks.  It took decades to get that law changed to a simple majority vote.

We need to put a provision in the Constitution that no provision of law can impose a higher percentage vote requirement than the percentage of voters that approve the law.

The relationship of government employees to the private sector

There is a problem inherent in all government - the motivational factors that control private enterprise are not present in government enterprise.

In private enterprise the funds available for salaries are dependent on how well you do what you do.  If you are successful at the enterprise generally you generate more income.  If you make bad decisions or lose focus on what you need to do that fact will be brought to your attention by a loss of income as customers turn elsewhere.

But by its nature government decides how much money government needs and then assesses taxes or fees to produce the money and then decides how to spend the money.

We are all familiar with the most glaring examples of this tendency - dictatorships around the world where the government primarily serves to enrich those in control.  But even democracies have the same problem.  We are experiencing that fact right now with much of the developed world wrapped up in huge budgetary problems due to the tendency of governments seeking to remain in power to be reluctant to tax, but happy to hand out benefits to public employees who are potential voters.

Here is a statistic I find illustrative of the problem.  According to census bureau figures the Metropolitan area with the highest household income in the country is - Washington D.C.  What puts Washington above even Silicon Valley?  Well for starters the average federal employee makes more than $126,000 a year in combined salary and benefits.   Couple that with the fact the town is full of lawyers (1 in every 12 city residents is a lawyer) and that government work is very lucrative (young attorneys make an average of $186,000 a year in Washington compared to the national average of $123,000).

Here is what makes sense to me.  We should be lobbying at the local, state and national level for a Charter or Constitutional amendment that links the salary and benefits of government jobs to the average salary and benefits in the private sector.  Say 98% of the private sector average for equivalent work.  We also cap government salary at some multiple of the average private sector salary, rather than allowing government managers to drive their pay up to extraordinary levels by comparing themselves to salaries in the private sector.

Despite what economist think, not all people are motivated by money.  Many people, once they have achieved a basic level of economic comfort and security, are motivated by service, by the opportunity to do good things for others.  Those are the people we want in government, and they sometimes get pushed aside by people motivated by money.  Let those motivated by money pursue their ambitions in the private sector.

(Statistics taken from a Bloomberg News Article published in the San Francisco Chronicle business section, page D5, October 20, 2011)