The boringly choreographed Senate hearings!

Of course, I know nothing about the law. But, as a citizen commentator, I did not particularly care for the celebrated John Roberts line that his job was to play plate-umpire and call balls and strikes. I did not care for it because the supreme court is a place where the definition of the strike zone itself if defined. To carry the metaphor more, well, they can also call a balk. Ok, enough with that baseball stuff. My point is that the Supremes figure out what the law can be, or cannot be, and it is not reducible to a simplistic balls/strikes analogy.

But, Roberts set up the formula for relatively easy confirmation hearings. And Alito followed that same strategy. And so did Sotomayor. This sucks! I am so glad that a legal expert like Ronald Dworkin can explain so well why it sucks:

[Sotomayor] repeated at every opportunity throughout the hearings, that her constitutional philosophy is very simple: fidelity to the law. That empty statement perpetuated the silly and democratically harmful fiction that a judge can interpret the key abstract clauses of the United States Constitution without making controversial judgments of political morality in the light of his or her own political principles. Fidelity to law, as such, cannot be a constitutional philosophy because a judge needs a constitutional philosophy to decide what the law is.

Thanks, Professor Dworkin.

And Dworkin also points out how tweedledum and tweedledee, er, Republicans and Democrats alike play this game:

Sadly, practically everyone concerned in judicial confirmation hearings—senators and nominees—has an overriding interest in embracing the myth that judges' own political principles are irrelevant. Sotomayor was, of course, well advised to embrace that myth. Her initial statement, and her constant repetition of it, made her confirmation absolutely certain; she could lose the great prize only by a candor she had no reason to display. She was faced by a group of Republican senators who had no interest in exploring genuine constitutional issues but wanted only to score political points, if possible by embarrassing her but in any case to preen before their constituents. They scoured her record of extrajudicial speeches for any sign that she actually doubts the myth so they could declare her a hypocrite who is not faithful to the law after all.

Democratic senators had no wish to challenge the myth either. They only wanted to protect her from questions that might supply ammunition to her opponents, so they offered her endless opportunities to repeat her empty promise to follow the law. Only President Obama, in a remarkably candid statement, seemed to challenge the myth. The law, he said, decides 95 percent of the cases but that leaves 5 percent to be decided in the judge's "heart." Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona asked Sotomayor if she agreed with Obama on this point. No, she roundly declared, I do not.

So the minuet was choreographed, and any illumination ruled out, before the hearings began.

Dworkin's conclusion--recommendation--is far from optimistic:

What is to be done? Nothing, I fear, until the idea that judges' personal convictions can and should play no role in their decisions loosens its grip not just on politicians but on the public at large. Perhaps a brave senator, who declares that he will not vote for any candidate who does not respond to questions like those I described earlier, may begin that process. But the only realistic solution is longer-term. In a book recently reviewed in these pages I suggested that our politics would be improved if high school classes were encouraged to explore political issues in a much more sophisticated way than has been customary.^[14] An enlightened discussion of the Constitution and of constitutional adjudication would be an essential part of such courses.

A "brave senator"? Hmmm .... add to the list of political oxymorons!

More on if healthcare now, then education next?

In a previous post, thanks to the chart there, I wondered if education might be next after (if?) healthcare reform is done.

First, my support for healthcare reform is not triggered by increase in costs. That to me is not why society ought to be concerned.
My rationale for supporting healthcare is similar to why I am ok with paying taxes for public transit--some people, for various reasons, are unable to transport themselves. Society ought to provide them with a basic transport system so that they, too, can get to where they need to go.
My support for healthcare reform is only to that extent--to make sure that there is a minimum level of healthcare for every single person within our borders. In fact, I care not whether they are legal or illegal, just as I don't care whether the bus passenger is legal or illegal.

Which is why I put that chart up--the chart that shows that the increase in cost has outpaced inflation. I simply do not care for that logic. Here is a reductio ad absurdum: if we find that the price rise in farm produce lags behind the price index, will we then want to increase the farm produce price? Oh wait, we indeed do that through the massive agriculture subsidies that work their way to screwing up the lives of poor farmers in Africa or India!!! (Note to myself; stay focused here!)

I don't care if the costs go up faster. Because, to a large extent that is a result of the advancements in our lives and how much more affluent we are now compared to even a few decades ago. Here is the Nobel laurate (HT) Robert Fogel on this:

The main factor is that the long-term income elasticity of the demand for healthcare is 1.6—for every 1 percent increase in a family’s income, the family wants to increase its expenditures on healthcare by 1.6 percent. This is not a new trend. Between 1875 and 1995, the share of family income spent on food, clothing, and shelter declined from 87 percent to just 30 percent, despite the fact that we eat more food, own more clothes, and have better and larger homes today than we had in 1875. All of this has been made possible by the growth in the productivity of traditional commodities. In the last quarter of the 19th century, it took 1,700 hours of labor to purchase the annual food supply for a family. Today it requires just 260 hours, and it is likely that by 2040, a family’s food supply will be purchased with about 160 hours of labor.

Consequently, there is no need to suppress the demand for healthcare. Expenditures on healthcare are driven by demand, which is spurred by income and by advances in biotechnology that make health interventions increasingly effective.

Now, therefore, if controlling cost is our over-riding objective, then higher education will run into more trouble than even healthcare will.

Cover your nose and mouth when you sneeze. Why?

Football players get "A" grades because ....

How about this?

The econ professor goes to the intro to macro-econ class, and finds that the entire football team is there.
He is shocked, and asks them what the deal is--what brought the entire team to his class on macroeconomics.
The QB replies:
"We are super-confident you will give every one of us a passing grade. Because, we are 'too big to fail'"

So, I thought this was hysterically funny when I cooked up this joke while walking along the river two or three evenings ago. Turns out that I was not the only one thinking about this humor; here is the Onion Radio News:

We debate about healthcare .... thanks to science!

As always, Heather Mac Donald is on target and without too many words:

The current fury over government-subsidized medicine, alleged rationing, and end-of-life health care has been made possible, however, only because science has pursued a “culture of life” with patient rigor and dedication, allowing human beings to keep each other alive long past the sell-by date of decaying organs and a fragile nervous system. The parade of horribles that Enlightenment naysayers usually trot out—mostly Nazi eugenics and possible atomic warfare—is short compared to the astounding benefits that scientific skepticism and the demand for empirical proof have showered upon humanity.

Yes, the advancement of science has had quite a few side-effects that have not been good to humanity or the planet. But, we have to go forward with science, making sure we are able to prevent mistakes as much as possible.
A long time ago, back when I was in high school, one of the essays we read in our English class was by Isaac Asimov, where he provided an argument for "no way but forward"--I think that was the phrase he used in that essay. Of course, he was a science guy--a doctorate in biochem--and a science fiction guy thinking about what the future might be like. But, in that essay he did recognize the kind of side-effects that Mac Donald points out.

To some extent, we won't know what the (mis)uses of a scientific advancement might until after the event. So, a precautionary principle might not be of much help either.

At the end of it all, what we are dealing with now is a "happy" problem--about quality of life as we get old, about whether spending thousands of dollars only to extend life by three months is worth it, etc. I way prefer these problems to what used to be the past: mothers dying in childbirth, infants dying before their first birthday, most adults not living past 50 years of age, ....

Life is wonderful now. Thanks to science and rational thinking. Enjoy it!

9.7% unemployment. Jobless recovery sucks.

Krugman:

the purpose of stimulus is, first and foremost, to mitigate unemployment. The fact that the economy may be technically in recovery is irrelevant.

At Calculated Risk, which Krugman had linked to:

According to the BLS, there are almost 5.0 million workers who have been unemployed for more than 26 weeks (and still want a job). This is 3.2% of the civilian workforce.

The good news is there wasn't much of an increase from July. The bad news is many of these 5 million long term unemployed will start exhausting their extended unemployment benefits soon. According to the projections by the National Employment Law Project about 0.5 million will have exhausted their benefits by the end of this month (September) and about 1.5 million by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, Roubini warns about a possible "W" shaped recession:

There are also now two reasons why there is a rising risk of a double-dip W-shaped recession. For a start, there are risks associated with exit strategies from the massive monetary and fiscal easing: policymakers are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. If they take large fiscal deficits seriously and raise taxes, cut spending and mop up excess liquidity soon, they would undermine recovery and tip the economy back into stag-deflation (recession and deflation).

But if they maintain large budget deficits, bond market vigilantes will punish policymakers. Then, inflationary expectations will increase, long-term government bond yields would rise and borrowing rates will go up sharply, leading to stagflation.

Another reason to fear a double-dip recession is that oil, energy and food prices are now rising faster than economic fundamentals warrant, and could be driven higher by excessive liquidity chasing assets and by speculative demand. Last year, oil at $145 a barrel was a tipping point for the global economy, as it created negative terms of trade and a disposable income shock for oil importing economies. The global economy could not withstand another contractionary shock if similar speculation drives oil rapidly towards $100 a barrel.

In summary, the recovery is likely to be anaemic and below trend in advanced economies and there is a big risk of a double-dip recession.

Awful.

And, Ken Rogoff (HT) writes that:

For now, the good news is that the crisis will be contained as long as government credit holds up. The bad news is that the rate at which government debt is piling up could easily lead to a second wave of financial crises within a few years.

Most worrisome is America's huge dependence on foreign borrowing, particularly from China ― an imbalance that likely planted the seeds of the current crisis.

Asians recognize that if they continue to accumulate paper debt, they risk the same fate that Europeans suffered three decades ago, when they piled up U.S. debt that was dramatically melted down through inflation.

The question today is not why no one is warning about the next crisis. They are. The question is whether political leaders are listening.

The unwinding of unsustainable government deficit levels is a key question that G20 leaders must ask themselves when they meet in Pittsburgh later this month. Otherwise, Queen Elizabeth II and Detroit autoworkers will be asking again, all too soon, why no one saw it coming.

How did economists get it so wrong?

That is the question Paul Krugman discusses here. Before we get to that, this cartoon, via Mankiw, explains what economists do:




Now, this is change I can believe in :-)

"Hottest" law school dean against torture

Asha Rangappa writes in Slate that:

whatever we conclude about the effectiveness of torture on terrorism suspects abroad, we will never use it to elicit information from people within the United States. That leaves trust and cooperation as our most promising means of getting intelligence domestically, and maintaining our good-guy image is vital to that effort. Any intelligence obtained through torture has to be balanced against the diminished capacity of the FBI to effectively exploit its intelligence base here at home. We should remember that when we calculate what kind of interrogation is a net gain or loss for our national security.

So, where does the "hottest" adjective come from, you ask? Details here:

There are certain honors that most lawyers aspire to such as clerking for the Supreme Court, or being selected for it. And there are others that descend unwished for, like a boon sent by the gods to the wrong supplicant. One of these is winning the annual contest for hottest law school dean. In 2006, this “honor” went to Yale Law School Assistant Dean Asha Rangappa who the sponsoring web page called “as hot as a fire in a crowded theater.

Now, the last name "Rangappa" almost certainly points to her roots to Coorg, which has a sobriquet of the "Scotland of India." The last name then might mean Kodagu origins?

One of my classmates back in high school was "Belliappa" whose father was "Medappa" ..... wonder whatever happened to him ....

Helicopter parents, not anymore. They are stalkers!

Watch out, undergrads :-)

Facebook, Twitter Revolutionizing How Parents Stalk Their College-Aged Kids

Crazies gather at Burning Man, and Venice

Chris Bodenner, guest blogging at Andrew Sullivan's, writes that Burning Man has begun.

And then throws in the following video about another cult gathering in Southern California's very own crazy place--Venice

via videosift.com

"Roosevelt: The Great Divider". Nice guys don't win!

Read this op-ed in full; an excerpt:

Roosevelt was a divider, not a uniter, and he unabashedly waged class war. At the Democratic Convention in 1936, again speaking to a national radio audience, Roosevelt lambasted the “economic royalists” who had gained control of the nation’s wealth. To Congress he boasted of having “earned the hatred of entrenched greed.” In another speech he mocked “the gentlemen in well-warmed and well-stocked clubs” who criticized the government’s relief efforts.

Roosevelt hived off the nation’s economic elite to win the support of the rest of the country. The vast majority of voters rallied to the president, but for a small minority he was the Devil incarnate. Few today remember the extent to which Roosevelt divided the nation. The sense of unity wrought by World War II blurred the divisiveness of the 1930s. Also, Roosevelt endeavored to ensure that more than half of the country was always on his side. Finally, and most important perhaps, the measures he championed have stood the test of time. It is difficult for Americans today to comprehend how anyone could have opposed Social Security, rural electrification, the regulation of Wall Street or the federal government’s guarantee of individual bank deposits.

Roosevelt understood that governing involved choice and that choice engendered dissent. He accepted opposition as part of the process. It is time for the Obama administration to step up to the plate and make some hard choices.

Recall the descriptor for another candidate? :-)

The Great Recession: the world changed overnight

I across this blog post, which led me to this NY Times article:

Like steelworkers in the 1980s recession, Mr. Blattman was part of an industry, financial services, where entire companies and divisions collapsed and disappeared. “It wasn’t anything about me personally,” he says. “The world around me just changed overnight. Like East Germany, one day it was there, next day gone.”

That comparison with East Germany I like. it is a different world now, all of a sudden, for many, many occupations and people. The end of this Great Recession, whenever that happens, might not mean much to Mr. Blattman, et al. Cruel, but real. I can only wish them well.
This comment from him says it all:

“Here’s the reality,” he continues. “I used to be somebody, I had a job. Not anymore. Everything ground to a halt. No sense of purpose. No self-esteem.”

You pay for Faux News, but not for the NY Times?

More than a decade ago, after returning from our Europe trip, I contacted the cable company and asked them whether I could get rid of CNN and instead get CNN-international, because the international version of CNN was infinitely better then. The cable company said I could purchase the CNN-international channel at an extra cost, and explained that there was no possibility of picking and choosing my own channels.

I hated this bundling then, and hate it even now. After Faux News came on to the scene, and the more it became insanely partisan, I simply programmed the television to skip that channel when we surfed looking for something interesting to watch.

You can see, therefore, why I like the way Peter Osnos frames this television channel bundling and contrasts with the "free" newspaper/magazine journalism:

Once aware that they are supporting Bill O'Reilly et al, most of my interlocutors shrug and say something about bundling charges on cable or their combined bill, which includes broadband access and even, in many cases, telephones. Paying these bills, which on average are well over $100 per month, is routine now in the overwhelming majority of American homes. There was a movement a few years ago to consider "a la carte" pricing for cable, which would allow customers to choose the channels they wanted. That concept went nowhere because it meant that only popular channels would flourish. Those favored by smaller numbers--my relatively esoteric cable favorites are the Independent Film Channel, Turner Classic Movies, and C-Span-would probably disappear or certainly suffer.

In the current economic media crisis, cable companies have remained consistently strong because of this fee structure, even in the face of a reduced (but steady) stream of advertising, and because cable is among the last things that struggling households would cancel.

Few readers of this piece, I suspect, would be surprised by what I have written so far. But the point of reviewing the issue now is the next question I put to people. "How much would you pay for a monthly Internet subscription to the New York Times?" The answers range from "name the price" to "why should I pay? I already get it for free." And therein resides the challenge: Americans willing to pay for cable television subscriptions to channels they never watch must be persuaded to subscribe to online versions of the publications they read in print or on the Internet.

Health care debate proves democracy in America is well

Thanks to the Internet, I was closely following the news about America and Oregon even when I was out of the country for two months.

Despite that sense of continuity, after coming home I am simply overwhelmed by health care reform debaters — the informed and uninformed alike.

And yet, I am simply delighted with the cacophony created by these intense and loud — sometimes shrill — concerns over the reform. The delight is for a simple reason — the debates are signs that democracy is alive and well in the good old United States of America. The state of the union is healthy, indeed.

Every time I re-enter this country that has been my home for more than two decades, I feel as if I am following in the footsteps of Alexis de Tocque­ville.

The 25-year-old de Tocque­ville toured America in 1831. He ended up writing “Democracy in America,” which is even today a wonderfully rich treatise on America’s economic system, its peoples, and the political process and institutions.

De Tocqueville, like many intellectuals of his day, was fascinated with the American experiment — which had no place for royalty and where leaders did not rule because of any divine right. Instead, America was successfully experimenting with representative democracy. De Tocqueville spent a year observing the process and talking with people.

De Tocqueville wrote in the preface to “Democracy in America” that, “It is not, then, merely to satisfy a curiosity, however legitimate, that I have examined America; my wish has been to find there instruction by which we may ourselves profit.”

De Tocqueville wanted to extract an instruction manual for democracy and see if it could be successfully adapted in his country, France. He wrote: “I confess that in America I saw more than America; I sought there the image of democracy itself, with its inclinations, its character, its prejudices, and its passions, in order to learn what we have to fear or to hope from its progress.”

Such an approach continues on in the contemporary world, too, and the fascination with American democracy persists. While different people are impressed, or disappointed, by various aspects of this American experiment, I always have been captivated by the American penchant for what sometimes seem to be endless debates about public policies, trivial and profound. I suppose writing opinion columns is consistent with this American trait!

Modern technology has provided even more opportunities for debates and discussions, in ways that de Tocqueville might never have been able to imagine. Talk radio, call-in shows on television, blogs and discussion forums offer us limitless opportunities to put our First Amendment rights to work, and, boy, are Americans expressing their feelings about health care reform. Of course, there are still the “old” ways — town hall meetings, newspapers, etc.

Whatever de Tocqueville might have meant when he referred to “prejudices” and “passions,” we see plenty of both in the health care discussions.

De Tocqueville praises the superiority of democracy, where “the people are invested with supreme authority,” and one of his remarks is quite appropriate in the context of health care reform discussions where we are trapped in details. He noted that, “The thirst for improvement extends to a thousand different objects; it descends to the most trivial details, and especially to those changes that are accompanied with considerable expense, since the object is to improve the condition of the poor, who cannot pay for the improvement.” How true!

So, even if it is an obvious point, let me make it nonetheless: Whether you and your friends advocate a certain plan or are opposed to any reform to the health care system as it is now, take a moment to celebrate the vibrant health of our democracy, the process and the leaders. And yes, celebrate, too, our fellow citizens who refuse to hide their passions.

As I reflect on democracy in America, I cannot but wonder whether world history might have taken a different turn if we had had such intense discussions — from the grass roots to the halls of Congress — prior to the invasion of Iraq.

For The Register-Guard
Appeared in print: Tuesday, Sep 1, 2009

Worse than the Swine Flu. Lots.

My niece asked me whether the Swine flu was really a huge issue. I told her something like this: It has the potential to become huge. However, it is gaining so much attention because of the potential in the rich countries. Otherwise, nobody would really care. Which is why malaria or other diseases that kill people by the thousands every day in poor countries barely register a blip in the global health radar.

Case in point: an outbreak of diarrhea has already killed more people in one Indian state than the Swine flu has killed in the entire country.

The deaths have been reported in several villages in Kalahandi district, Health Minister Prasanna Acharya said.

Local newspapers put the death toll at 38. Health officials say 237 people suffering from the disease have been admitted to hospitals.

Diarrhoea is a major killer in the world and is thought to be responsible for around 4% of all deaths.

Yet, all the attention is on Swine flu :-(

Meritocracy in America? Not really ....

The historic presidential election in 2000 was the ultimate example of how American politics (and many other aspects of the country's socio-politics) is where lineage and connections count. After all, the two candidates even had the same names of their respective fathers. It was one junior duking it out with another. Both won, and neither lost .... Kind of :-)

Glenn Greenwald has a fantastically satirical post on the American royalty (HT), triggered by the news that President W. Bush's daughter has been hired by NBC as a reporter for "Today." The entire post, and his updates, are simply brilliant. Here is an excerpt; Greenwald lists quite a few in a thematic and funny way, and then notes:

all of the above-listed people are examples of America's Great Meritocracy, having achieved what they have solely on the basis of their talent, skill and hard work -- The American Way. By contrast, Sonia Sotomayor -- who grew up in a Puerto Rican family in Bronx housing projects; whose father had a third-grade education, did not speak English and died when she was 9; whose mother worked as a telephone operator and a nurse; and who then became valedictorian of her high school, summa cum laude at Princeton, a graduate of Yale Law School, and ultimately a Supreme Court Justice -- is someone who had a whole litany of unfair advantages handed to her and is the poster child for un-American, merit-less advancement.

I just want to make sure that's clear.

And how about this paragraph:

They should convene a panel for the next Meet the Press with Jenna Bush Hager, Luke Russert, Liz Cheney, Megan McCain and Jonah Goldberg, and they should have Chris Wallace moderate it. They can all bash affirmative action and talk about how vitally important it is that the U.S. remain a Great Meritocracy because it's really unfair for anything other than merit to determine position and employment. They can interview Lisa Murkowski, Evan Bayh, Jeb Bush, Bob Casey, Mark Pryor, Jay Rockefeller, Dan Lipinksi, and Harold Ford, Jr. about personal responsibility and the virtues of self-sufficiency. Bill Kristol, Tucker Carlson and John Podhoretz can provide moving commentary on how America is so special because all that matters is merit, not who you know or where you come from. There's a virtually endless list of politically well-placed guests equally qualified to talk on such matters.

Neat!

Protest outside the Greek embassy

Image of the day: carbon molecule