I recently reading an excellent book about the Spanish Civil War (Spain in Our Hearts, by Adam Hochschild). Looking back on the events of 80+ years ago in Spain keeps bringing to mind the Arab Spring. It also brings to mind the Berns call for a new Revolution.
We memorialize, indeed almost worship, our own founding fathers revolution, and tend to see revolutions around the world by people seeking government by the people as a wonderful thing.
But looking back at history one is tempted to conclude our revolution was as successful as it was in part because of fortuitous circumstances that seldom arise in modern reality. Our revolt against England was relatively amicable, we were culturally nearly identical and England was far away so atrocities were few and in the end England's pride was dented and they lost some tax Revenue, but the battle was more a test of wills. The English public would not have tolerated the sort of scorched earth military tactics England might have used to put down a revolt by their darker skinned subjects in other parts of the world.
Revolutions within a single country tend to be much uglier, more like our own Civil War. Zero sum games where the losers are crippled and carry resentments for generations.
The Spanish Civil War, like the Arab Spring involved uprisings where the powers that be were pushed aside by an left leaning modernist uprisings seeking to completely remake society. They are inherently zero sum games, for every gain by the people there are huge losses by the upper strata of the society. The people gain an apparent victory, only to have a more repressive regime imposed militarily.
In Spain Franco ruled for 40 years or so and it was only after he died that modern democracy could begin to develop in Spain. Is this what the Arab Spring countries can look forward to?
Certainly in most of the famous revolutions of recent history - Russia in 1917. Spain, China after WW II - revolution produced decades of repression and misery.
Perhaps Bernie should stop talking about revolution and start talking about evolution. Move away from the language of winners and losers toward aiming to improve the lot of those at the bottom without demonizing those at the top. Clearly China's communist party has recognized that evolution is their key to avoiding revolution.
Friday, June 17, 2016
Thursday, June 16, 2016
Who Is likely to Perpetrate a Mass Shooting?
I haven't seen any data on the subject but running my mind back over the litany of mindless mass shootings over the last couple decades, it seems like every one of the shooters was a young man (I don't recall if the wife of the San Bernardino shooter took part in the actual shooting).
Given the difficulty we have as a nation coming to grips with any kind of effort to keep guns out of the hands of possible terrorists perhaps it would help to focus on identifying the characteristics of those who actually do the shooting.
Criminal statistics have shown for years that most violent crimes are perpetrated by young men, mostly between ages 18 and 25, perhaps that is where we should start with limiting access to killing tools. Perhaps people under the age of, say, 30, can't buy a weapon without going through some rigorous process of training - sort of like licensing drivers. We would also have to make it a crime for anyone to sell or give weapons to persons of that age to avoid having them just get someone else to buy one for them.
Given the difficulty we have as a nation coming to grips with any kind of effort to keep guns out of the hands of possible terrorists perhaps it would help to focus on identifying the characteristics of those who actually do the shooting.
Criminal statistics have shown for years that most violent crimes are perpetrated by young men, mostly between ages 18 and 25, perhaps that is where we should start with limiting access to killing tools. Perhaps people under the age of, say, 30, can't buy a weapon without going through some rigorous process of training - sort of like licensing drivers. We would also have to make it a crime for anyone to sell or give weapons to persons of that age to avoid having them just get someone else to buy one for them.
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
Paying People More Reduces Corruption? Maybe not.
Government folk and economist's have traditionally intuitively ascribed to the view that corruption in government, sports or politics is a product of low pay and if you pay people more, corruption would go away.
A recent study in Ghana suggests maybe not. In 2010 Ghana began to move public officials to a new salary structure. The first and biggest beneficiaries were police officers whosr pay doubled. One hope was the police would stop extorting money from drivers at roadblocks. It just happened that a large survey of Ghanian truckdrivers was already underway. Drivers with all the right paperwork were asked to keep track of how many times they were stopped and how much the had to pay to police and customs officials along the way.
The date revealed that after having their pay doubled the officers erected more roadblocks than before, kept drivers longer and extracted more money.
Rising expectations? More demanding dependants? Or just a culture of corruption?
For more details see the Economist January 30, 2016 issue, page 65.
A recent study in Ghana suggests maybe not. In 2010 Ghana began to move public officials to a new salary structure. The first and biggest beneficiaries were police officers whosr pay doubled. One hope was the police would stop extorting money from drivers at roadblocks. It just happened that a large survey of Ghanian truckdrivers was already underway. Drivers with all the right paperwork were asked to keep track of how many times they were stopped and how much the had to pay to police and customs officials along the way.
The date revealed that after having their pay doubled the officers erected more roadblocks than before, kept drivers longer and extracted more money.
Rising expectations? More demanding dependants? Or just a culture of corruption?
For more details see the Economist January 30, 2016 issue, page 65.
Sunday, June 12, 2016
Odd Quirks in US our law regarding Free Speech
Free speech is the canary in the coal mine for assessing the political health of a country. Although individuals may abuse that freedom in aggravating ways, that aggravation is vastly less consequential than the consequences of allowing speech to be controlled by society, since that inevitably means control ends up in the hands of the most personally ambitious people who cannot separate their own personal beliefs and interests from the greater interests of society, so their instinct is to stifle the speech of anyone who disagrees.
We do enjoy living in a country where free speech is a fundamental value, but there are still some oddities in how that speech is protected in the United States.
One of the most glaringly wrong oddities is the curious application of the constitutional right to free speech in business relationships that has evolved in US Supreme Court decisions.
Corporations exist only because the government creates them. Government sets up rules that if the organizers follow they get certain benefits (most importantly the owners of the corporation are insulated from some responsibility for their actions). But according to our Supreme Court, even though the people who own corporations already have all the free speech rights any citizen has, and even though Government could do away with all corporations tomorrow, government can't regulate corporations ability to spend money to forward the corporations political aims.
Yet those same Corporations (and business in general) can use contracts to limit the free speech of their employees. If a Corporation decides to fire a bunch of US workers and hire cheaper employees overseas, or bring in cheaper employees from overseas, it can pay the employees they are laying off a little bit of money as a severance pay and require those employees to sign contracts in which the employee promises not to say anything the employer doesn't want to hear. For the employee's that get a pink slip they generally have little choice but sign, they have bills to pay and they need the severance money to keep them going while they get back on their feet.
Or if a Corporation is sued by some folks who were damaged by faulty products or services, the Corporation will typically will use the leverage of their ability to prolong lawsuits interminably to extract contracts where the victims promise not to tell the world about the corporation's bad behavior. So the rest of society remains clueless and vulnerable to the corporation's bad activities.
Both of these seem wrong to me. Corporations are not people, they are creatures created by government for economic purposes, the idea that government that can abolish them at the stroke of a legislative pen can't regulate their conduct in the political arena is nonsense.
Further it seems to me society has an interest in free speech that should trump individual rights to use superior bargaining power to control situations to hide their bad behavior. The law should take a dim view of contracts restricting free speech rights, and any contract with a clause prohibiting certain speech should be void when it a favors a party with a clearly superior bargaining position.
We do enjoy living in a country where free speech is a fundamental value, but there are still some oddities in how that speech is protected in the United States.
One of the most glaringly wrong oddities is the curious application of the constitutional right to free speech in business relationships that has evolved in US Supreme Court decisions.
Corporations exist only because the government creates them. Government sets up rules that if the organizers follow they get certain benefits (most importantly the owners of the corporation are insulated from some responsibility for their actions). But according to our Supreme Court, even though the people who own corporations already have all the free speech rights any citizen has, and even though Government could do away with all corporations tomorrow, government can't regulate corporations ability to spend money to forward the corporations political aims.
Yet those same Corporations (and business in general) can use contracts to limit the free speech of their employees. If a Corporation decides to fire a bunch of US workers and hire cheaper employees overseas, or bring in cheaper employees from overseas, it can pay the employees they are laying off a little bit of money as a severance pay and require those employees to sign contracts in which the employee promises not to say anything the employer doesn't want to hear. For the employee's that get a pink slip they generally have little choice but sign, they have bills to pay and they need the severance money to keep them going while they get back on their feet.
Or if a Corporation is sued by some folks who were damaged by faulty products or services, the Corporation will typically will use the leverage of their ability to prolong lawsuits interminably to extract contracts where the victims promise not to tell the world about the corporation's bad behavior. So the rest of society remains clueless and vulnerable to the corporation's bad activities.
Both of these seem wrong to me. Corporations are not people, they are creatures created by government for economic purposes, the idea that government that can abolish them at the stroke of a legislative pen can't regulate their conduct in the political arena is nonsense.
Further it seems to me society has an interest in free speech that should trump individual rights to use superior bargaining power to control situations to hide their bad behavior. The law should take a dim view of contracts restricting free speech rights, and any contract with a clause prohibiting certain speech should be void when it a favors a party with a clearly superior bargaining position.
Sunday, May 1, 2016
Why I Left the Republican Party
I started my adult life as a Conservative Republican. I was taught growing up that nothing was more important than having strength in your convictions. President Nixon's promise in 1968 to get us out of the Vietnam war - as it went unfulfilled year after year, began to make me question whether strength in convictions was what really mattered. Perhaps what matters is achieving the best result. For the next couple decades I waffled back and forth between Republicans and Democrats.
Republicans big ideological underpinning - that individuals should take responsibility for themselves - reflects a value crucial to a functioning society. But I have never really liked the Republican tendency to hew so strictly to that ideology that they become oblivious to the plight of the less fortunate. Republicans also talk constantly about freedom - another crucial value - but as they see freedom it tends to mean their freedom to act with impunity to the consequences of their acts on other people.
CEO's walk away with millions of dollars from companies that collapse and cause great damage to their customers? Republicans celebrate their entrepreneurial spirit!
Massacres occurring in theatres and schools around the country? To bad. Can't impinge on any ones right to have a house full of guns - public just needs to get their own guns so they can shoot back.
I also thought in the early years Republicans were probably better at managing an economy - after all lots of noisily rich people are Republicans. But history has emphatically rebutted that notion - the two times in the last one hundred years when Republicans have controlled the show we ended up in the Great Depression and the Great Recession. From the roaring twenties to the Republican wave that took over Congress in 1995 their policies have been rooted in promoting economic wishful thinking.
Now, looking back at nearly 5 decades as a reasonably well informed voter the Republicans have lost me completely. I can't even take them seriously.
So I decided to check my current perception by compiling a historical laundry list of things Republicans have advocated and/or implemented in my lifetime that history revealed as dumb, mean spirited or both.
Economy
After incurring a big national debt from the Great Depression and WW II Congress used very high tax rates on the very wealthy to pay down the national debt. With folks with really high incomes paying over 90% on the top part of their income the national debt was steadily decreasing from 1950 to 1981. (We also enjoyed a pretty strong economy during this period - I suspect rich folks are more inclined to invest in things that produce jobs when the option is paying 90% to the Government). Then Ronald Reagan got elected in 1980 and ignited the Republican obsession with cutting taxes, regardless of the consequences. Didn't stop us from marching off to war, we just have done it on credit and hoped the bill will go away. In the last 35 years, there are about 3 that were not adding to the national debt.
1995 - Republicans change the Capital Gains tax provisions applying to personal housing so anyone who wants to buy a house can get a huge tax free gain when they sell it. Results - Whoops, the housing market became a casino full of speculators flipping houses. It pumped up prices leading to a bubble and housing market collapse.
About the same time Republicans created an exception to the immigration law to allow rich people to buy legal residency. Now in the most vibrant cities and attractive parts of the country few citizens can afford to buy a house because wealthy people from other countries are coming in and plunking millions in cash to buy diversification and a bolt hole, even as we vilify the immigrants who do much of the dirty work in this country.
Now despite the lowest interest rates in my lifetime the percentage of folks owning their own home has dropped significantly in the last 10 years. In many parts of the country citizens are priced out of owning a home.
1998 - A Republicans Congress pushes Bill Clinton into cutting banks free of the regulations that hinder them from using depositors money to speculate on whatever they want. Result - Banks pile money into complex derivatives that grow out of the housing market madness. When the housing market stalls it produces the worst financial collapse since the great Depression.
2008 to present - Since the financial collapse Republicans double down on their notions that Government is the problem and essentially freeze Congress into inaction. We have a modest recovery because Congress hasn't done anything really stupid, but Republicans are in denial about the fundamental problem - income inequality has undermined the consumption that drives growth.
Foreign Policy
2003. Republicans invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein was building Nuclear weapons. Whoops, turns out he wasn't, and our invasion ends up costing us lots of money, lots of lost lives and crippled young men, and has sent the Middle East into a spiral of total chaos we still don't see the end of and are trying our best to not get further entangled in.
Civil Rights
Republicans have harvested a lot of votes by advocating (fiercely sometimes) that Gays are not entitled to the same civil rights as other citizens. Turns out even a Republican leaning Supreme Court can't quite jam the notion that Gays somehow aren't entitled to equal treatment into the Constitution.
Environmental Law
Science has been warning us that the globe is warming for a couple decades. I am not aware of any reputable scientist who seriously questions that if the globe warms even a couple of degrees it will have a major impact on our world, but in the face of the evidence for decades Republicans have continuously denied that the globe is warming and fought any effort to address the problem. Now that we are experiencing one extreme weather event after another most Republicans have stopped loudly denying global warming but are still unwilling to do anything about it.
Democracy-
One person one vote is crucial to a functioning democracy but Republicans have take advantage of their control of state legislatures to enact laws making it harder and harder for low income people to vote.
Republicans big ideological underpinning - that individuals should take responsibility for themselves - reflects a value crucial to a functioning society. But I have never really liked the Republican tendency to hew so strictly to that ideology that they become oblivious to the plight of the less fortunate. Republicans also talk constantly about freedom - another crucial value - but as they see freedom it tends to mean their freedom to act with impunity to the consequences of their acts on other people.
CEO's walk away with millions of dollars from companies that collapse and cause great damage to their customers? Republicans celebrate their entrepreneurial spirit!
Massacres occurring in theatres and schools around the country? To bad. Can't impinge on any ones right to have a house full of guns - public just needs to get their own guns so they can shoot back.
I also thought in the early years Republicans were probably better at managing an economy - after all lots of noisily rich people are Republicans. But history has emphatically rebutted that notion - the two times in the last one hundred years when Republicans have controlled the show we ended up in the Great Depression and the Great Recession. From the roaring twenties to the Republican wave that took over Congress in 1995 their policies have been rooted in promoting economic wishful thinking.
Now, looking back at nearly 5 decades as a reasonably well informed voter the Republicans have lost me completely. I can't even take them seriously.
So I decided to check my current perception by compiling a historical laundry list of things Republicans have advocated and/or implemented in my lifetime that history revealed as dumb, mean spirited or both.
Economy
After incurring a big national debt from the Great Depression and WW II Congress used very high tax rates on the very wealthy to pay down the national debt. With folks with really high incomes paying over 90% on the top part of their income the national debt was steadily decreasing from 1950 to 1981. (We also enjoyed a pretty strong economy during this period - I suspect rich folks are more inclined to invest in things that produce jobs when the option is paying 90% to the Government). Then Ronald Reagan got elected in 1980 and ignited the Republican obsession with cutting taxes, regardless of the consequences. Didn't stop us from marching off to war, we just have done it on credit and hoped the bill will go away. In the last 35 years, there are about 3 that were not adding to the national debt.
1995 - Republicans change the Capital Gains tax provisions applying to personal housing so anyone who wants to buy a house can get a huge tax free gain when they sell it. Results - Whoops, the housing market became a casino full of speculators flipping houses. It pumped up prices leading to a bubble and housing market collapse.
About the same time Republicans created an exception to the immigration law to allow rich people to buy legal residency. Now in the most vibrant cities and attractive parts of the country few citizens can afford to buy a house because wealthy people from other countries are coming in and plunking millions in cash to buy diversification and a bolt hole, even as we vilify the immigrants who do much of the dirty work in this country.
Now despite the lowest interest rates in my lifetime the percentage of folks owning their own home has dropped significantly in the last 10 years. In many parts of the country citizens are priced out of owning a home.
1998 - A Republicans Congress pushes Bill Clinton into cutting banks free of the regulations that hinder them from using depositors money to speculate on whatever they want. Result - Banks pile money into complex derivatives that grow out of the housing market madness. When the housing market stalls it produces the worst financial collapse since the great Depression.
2008 to present - Since the financial collapse Republicans double down on their notions that Government is the problem and essentially freeze Congress into inaction. We have a modest recovery because Congress hasn't done anything really stupid, but Republicans are in denial about the fundamental problem - income inequality has undermined the consumption that drives growth.
Foreign Policy
2003. Republicans invade Iraq because Saddam Hussein was building Nuclear weapons. Whoops, turns out he wasn't, and our invasion ends up costing us lots of money, lots of lost lives and crippled young men, and has sent the Middle East into a spiral of total chaos we still don't see the end of and are trying our best to not get further entangled in.
Civil Rights
Republicans have harvested a lot of votes by advocating (fiercely sometimes) that Gays are not entitled to the same civil rights as other citizens. Turns out even a Republican leaning Supreme Court can't quite jam the notion that Gays somehow aren't entitled to equal treatment into the Constitution.
Environmental Law
Science has been warning us that the globe is warming for a couple decades. I am not aware of any reputable scientist who seriously questions that if the globe warms even a couple of degrees it will have a major impact on our world, but in the face of the evidence for decades Republicans have continuously denied that the globe is warming and fought any effort to address the problem. Now that we are experiencing one extreme weather event after another most Republicans have stopped loudly denying global warming but are still unwilling to do anything about it.
Democracy-
One person one vote is crucial to a functioning democracy but Republicans have take advantage of their control of state legislatures to enact laws making it harder and harder for low income people to vote.
Wednesday, April 20, 2016
Economics - A Difference Between Republicans and Democrats
For Republicans if one person is assigned to do a job that really needs three people to do, no problem.
For Democrats if three people are doing a job that one person can do, no problem.
For Democrats if three people are doing a job that one person can do, no problem.
Tuesday, April 19, 2016
Republicans - Money Trumps Everything.
No, this blog isn't about the Donald, not directly. It's about the fact on every government issue that effects the health and welfare of the entire country Republicans over the last couple decades consistently choose money over public health or addressing poverty.
They weren't so bad back in the early 70's. The Nixon and Ford administrations signed off on laws regulating air quality to reduce toxic emissions into the air we breath, regulating the dumping of toxic materials into the water we drink, more broadly regulating industrial dumping of poisonous substance on the land we live on and requiring government to assess the impact proposed development would have before approving the development.
But for the last couple decades Republicans primary focus has been on getting rid of those nuisance regulations that make business accountable for the damage they cause to the the air we breath, the water the drink and the land we live on. All because it costs business money. "Job Killers" the Republicans say. Yet during that period of time business has done just fine, corporate profits are at all time highs, corporate executives make 300 times the salary of the average worker.
Then there is poverty. The anti-poverty programs of LBJ have made a huge dent in poverty in this country, although they certainly are not notable for their efficiency. But Republicans talk only about getting rid of the programs, not improving efficiency. They say that the free market will take care of poverty. Odd, given that in the prior history of mankind the free market never managed to come even close to accomplishing that feat.
Then there is Health Care. Anyone that cared could see for the last 40 years the US health care system was a joke. It cost twice us twice as much per person as any other developed country in the world, and produced mediocre outcomes. The people in tiny, relatively poor countries have lower infant mortality and live longer than we do. Yet no progress could be made until we had the one two year period of a Democratic Congress and Democratic President in the last 20 years. Even then Republican obstructionism resulted in a system that is a ludicrous combination of private insurance and public oversight. An improvement but light years from a really efficient system.
The really odd thing about the Republican obsession with money is that history demonstrates they are oblivious to how money works. Twice in the last hundred years Republicans have controlled Congress for a decade or more. Both times they handed the economic controls over to business, confident business knew better than anyone how to run an economy. Both times ended with the world economy blowing up, leaving the world (including us) poorer (although a few really rich people did just fine).
In Republican primaries this last year virtually every Republican Governor touted his ability to balance his states budget. They can balance their budget because most Republican states get more back from the Federal Government than they pay in taxes. The Feds are doing all the heavy lifting on poverty and health care. Florida (Jeb Bush) get $2.44 back for every dollar of Federal Income taxes paid in the state. Ohio (John Kasich) gets 34% of the states revenue from the Federal government.
Sometimes it seems Republicans are too obsessed with getting rich to understand how an economy works.
They weren't so bad back in the early 70's. The Nixon and Ford administrations signed off on laws regulating air quality to reduce toxic emissions into the air we breath, regulating the dumping of toxic materials into the water we drink, more broadly regulating industrial dumping of poisonous substance on the land we live on and requiring government to assess the impact proposed development would have before approving the development.
But for the last couple decades Republicans primary focus has been on getting rid of those nuisance regulations that make business accountable for the damage they cause to the the air we breath, the water the drink and the land we live on. All because it costs business money. "Job Killers" the Republicans say. Yet during that period of time business has done just fine, corporate profits are at all time highs, corporate executives make 300 times the salary of the average worker.
Then there is poverty. The anti-poverty programs of LBJ have made a huge dent in poverty in this country, although they certainly are not notable for their efficiency. But Republicans talk only about getting rid of the programs, not improving efficiency. They say that the free market will take care of poverty. Odd, given that in the prior history of mankind the free market never managed to come even close to accomplishing that feat.
Then there is Health Care. Anyone that cared could see for the last 40 years the US health care system was a joke. It cost twice us twice as much per person as any other developed country in the world, and produced mediocre outcomes. The people in tiny, relatively poor countries have lower infant mortality and live longer than we do. Yet no progress could be made until we had the one two year period of a Democratic Congress and Democratic President in the last 20 years. Even then Republican obstructionism resulted in a system that is a ludicrous combination of private insurance and public oversight. An improvement but light years from a really efficient system.
The really odd thing about the Republican obsession with money is that history demonstrates they are oblivious to how money works. Twice in the last hundred years Republicans have controlled Congress for a decade or more. Both times they handed the economic controls over to business, confident business knew better than anyone how to run an economy. Both times ended with the world economy blowing up, leaving the world (including us) poorer (although a few really rich people did just fine).
In Republican primaries this last year virtually every Republican Governor touted his ability to balance his states budget. They can balance their budget because most Republican states get more back from the Federal Government than they pay in taxes. The Feds are doing all the heavy lifting on poverty and health care. Florida (Jeb Bush) get $2.44 back for every dollar of Federal Income taxes paid in the state. Ohio (John Kasich) gets 34% of the states revenue from the Federal government.
Sometimes it seems Republicans are too obsessed with getting rich to understand how an economy works.
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