I just read a piece in the Washington Post that floored me. NFL player Sean Taylor was murdered in November 2007. The piece is about how his 49 year old mother inherited nothing, and how that has left her in dire financial straits. Apparently he used to hand out gobs of money to relatives and bought property for her she cannot afford now. He left $5.8m largely to his daughter, who is now 3 years old. A few lessons are clear:
1. If you depend on someone for your livelihood, consider purchasing life insurance. That's what it's for.
2. Intestate succession is not all that complicated. Here's the basic order of inheritance (who gets your stuff) if you die without a will: (1) spouse + children (2) parents (3) siblings (including half-siblings but not stepsiblings) (4) grandparents (5) aunts/uncles (6) cousins. These are degrees of kinship most people can remember easily. The basic rule is that if there is even one person in the class, they get it all. The next class gets nothing if there is one person in the class above.
3. The rules are a bit complicated between spouse and children (most common issue). The general rule is that spouse gets half, kids get half, although most states give the spouse a certain amount of money (like $50,000 or more) before kids get any. In a community property state like California, the spouse gets all the community property first before splitting separate property (if any) with kids). For most people in most states, these rules mean that unless you have some significant wealth, effectively 100% goes to the spouse even if you have kids. The bottom line is your spouse will get between 50% and 100% of everything if you have kids, 100% if you don't.
4. Note the holes in the rules. The following persons, among others, are nowhere in the line of succession: stepparents, step-siblings, girlfriends, boyfriends, fiance(e)s, unmarried partners of either gender, persons in civil unions except where the definition explicitly extends to inheritance, people you call "uncle" who aren't, uncles and aunts who are related by marriage rather than blood, and pets.
5. Illegitimacy no longer matters. It used to be a complete bar to inheritance. There is still an issue of unrecognized paternity, however.
Unfortunately, Sean Taylor had a kid, but no spouse, something becoming all too familiar. Had he died before the child was born, his mother would have inherited all $5.8m. Had he been married to his child's mother, she would have received 50-100% of the estate. As it stands, the kid gets everything and the kid's mother nothing. This is one of the reasons why marriage is important. And Sean's mother also gets nothing. I read this article and felt ill. Sean Taylor was a very wealthy man and father who left everything to chance. That is callous and irresponsible. I feel sorry for his girlfriend more than his mother. The mother should know better than to depend on a child for income; a girlfriend with a baby should expect to be taken care of.
Know the rules. Prepare. Life insurance may be more important than a will. Remember one thing about all succession, with or without a will: two classes always inherit above all others: (1) government (2) creditors. Life insurance generally (and for obvious policy reasons) allows you to avoid those.
Similar issues arose with Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, where unsettled property rights have effectively impoverished and disinherited thousands. There is a great hidden class discrimination and social cost to our system of legal inheritance borne by those who don't hire lawyers to draw up wills and don't, at least, get married and create legal relationships that way.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Wills, Inheritance, Marriage, and the Social Cost of the Law
Posted by The Law Talking Guy at 2:46 PM 3 comments
Monday, September 28, 2009
German Election Analysis
Or rather analysis of a German election...
Posted by Raised By Republicans at 1:53 PM 12 comments
Sunday, September 27, 2009
Obama, Iran and the Revised Missile Defense System
So a week or so ago, the Obama administration altered the missile defense plan for Eastern Europe. The new plan redirects the system to be better suited to protect Europe from missiles from Iran rather than Russia. This makes good sense. Russia isn't a cuddly teddy bear but they need Europe to keep buying their oil and gas (CIA world factbook shows that all but one of Russia's top export partners are EU member states and they combine for nearly 40% of all of Russia's exports). Starting a war with EU countries (aka most of NATO) would be economic suicide for the Russians. Even if Russia won, they would destroy the EU economy in the process which would be tantamount to killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. So let's stop obsessing about the Russians shall we? Russia is annoying and worthy of wary observation and even criticism from time to time but they aren't likely to be a serious deadly threat to the EU/NATO any time soon. Iran is a different story. Iran has other oil markets (CIA world factbook reports that about 40% of Iran's exports go to China, Japan and S. Korea not Europe) and is governed by a regime that seems to place higher priorities on the usual Middle East nonsense than on the material well being of their citizenry. That could lead to the odd missile being lobbed at Greece or Romania or something. So redirecting the missile plan is a good idea. It's smart. Conservatives who criticize it are just being partisan wind bags. Either that or they are actually delusional enough to think that it is still 1982.
Posted by Raised By Republicans at 5:23 AM 5 comments
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
Senator Dukakis?
The Massachusetts Senate gave approval to the bill today to allow Governor Deval Patrick to appoint a successor to the late Ted Kennedy. This puts Mass in line with almost every other state. Mass, however, still requires a special election within 180 days, which is a very good thing. Every state should move in that direction.
Word is that Michael Dukakis wants the job and the BostonGlobe has endorsed him.
I personally am not so sure. Is Walter Mondale available? George McGovern? Anyone else who is a symbol of the kind of liberalism that the Democrats have spent 20 years trying to distance themselves from? I just don't see how putting Obama and Dukakis into the same sentence is a good idea.
Sure, I would like to see Dukakis redeemed in the public eye, and I do enjoy evening up scores from the 1980s when the "Reagan Revolution" created our current financial and fiscal disasters in the public and private sectors. (It is a dream of mine that Ronald Reagan will get the blame for ushering in an era of massive irresponsibility which he deserves. His "something for nothing" message to voters has been absolutely deadly. As Benjamin Franklin observed, democracy can only last until the voters discover they can vote themselves largesse out of the public treasury. The Republican message that you can lower taxes and still have all the entitlements and military spending you want is just that).
On the other hand, I understand that we need a seasoned politician for the role, not just a benchwarmer. Isn't there at least one Kennedy available?
Posted by The Law Talking Guy at 12:47 PM 3 comments
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Real Change in Foreign Policy
For all those who claim that Obama's new foreign policy is all about new atmospherics, it's time to think again. There has been a profound shift - the USA is going to abandon Bush/Cheney's idea of a Eastern-European-based missile defense system, largely in Czech Republic and Poland. The Poles and Czechs are keeping mum for now, awaiting consultation (the leak happened prematurely). My guess is that there is some particularly nice present waiting for them in return for accepting the change. There usually is. Republicans are screaming as if the Cold War were on, forgetting momentarily that they kept saying that missile defense shield wasn't about Russia, but about Iran and North Korea. NATO Sec-Gen Anders Rasmussen spoke favorably of the change in policy.
There is no indiciation that this was done to please Russia, although it will certainly please Russia. It may have been done as part of the START III talks, but again, there is no particular indication of this. It is noteworthy that the Kremlin's response has been muted. For what it's worth, TASS says that President Medvedev is currently earning his keep by playing host to Prince Alois of Liechtenstein. It is also noteworthy that according to TASS, the head of the Duma (a nobody with a big title) said that (my trans.) "On the one hand, it shows a narrower, more objective view of the Iranian situation. On the other hand, it shows a new seriousness about the relationship and strategic dialog between the USA and Russia as the most important factor in global political stabilization. Russia is beginning to understand the Obama administration." The official word, however, is that the Russians are "awaiting confirmation."
I'm delighted because I believe that missile defense system was a financial and political boondoggle designed to reward "new Europe" for its participation in the Iraq War. There appear to be other ways to design the system. And if it does allow the USA and Russia to work together on Iran, that will be a big help.
Some will portray this as a Munich moment, as backing down. It seems to me that, if a trade of some kind was made, it was a good one: trading the illusory for the real. The best safeguard against Iran is not missile defense, but Russian cooperation. The neoconservatives see it exactly the other way around.
Posted by The Law Talking Guy at 7:37 AM 6 comments
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
What Doctors Like and Don't Like About Public Health Care
...And what it tells us about the source of opposition to the public option.
Posted by Raised By Republicans at 6:45 AM 21 comments
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Another View of the 1989 Picnic in Hungary that Led to the End of the Eastern Bloc
The LA Times just published a portion of a new book on 1989 that involves the so-called "Pan-European Picnic." You all may recall a bit of hullabaloo on this blog last month when the news item about the picnic first surfaced. Hungary was pinning a medal on the border guard who didn't shoot at the East Germans. The new book says the whole thing was organized and masterminded by Hungary's new, young Prime Minister, an economist (!) named Miklos Nemeth. Hungarians had the right to travel to the West as of 1988 (I had forgotten this), but they had agreed not to allow East Germans to go through. This was how they got the deal done. Nemeth wanted East Germans to go through, knowing that if this happened, it could bring down Honecker's regime and perhaps, with it, the whole Iron Curtain and give Hungary real freedom. Apparently he de-electrified the fence with much fanfare and even had the barbed wire stripped away - again with fanfare- but the East Germans didn't seem to pick up on the hint. So when a group of activitsts petitioned for permits for this picnic, he figured out how to use it. So the Hungarian border guard who got the medal was actually following the government's policies, even if the standing orders had not changed. Perhaps the heroism is that he didn't realize the scheme afoot but conscience prevented him from shooting. Now that we have a fuller retelling of the story - that Hungarians were crossing freely - the idiocy of shooting only the East Germans might be clearer.
I am always suspicious of medals awarded years after the fact. The purpose of such awards is usually to rewrite history. Were the present view of the action or person being awarded commensurate with the contemporaneous evaluation, the medal or accolades would have been awarded contemporaneously or soon thereafter. I am not surprised to hear, now, that Hungary would rather honor a lone bodyguard than a former communist leader. This is a reminder that while historians may actually be interested in the past, most politicians' interest in history is only insofar as it can inform and justify their own narratives of action. A fairy tale of a lone border guard changing history is clearly debunked. But we do not have the whole story either. We may never.
Of course, Nemeth doubtless did not believe the result would be his own ouster shortly thereafter. He tried, apparently, to return to Hungarian politics in 2000 but failed as a leader of the Socialists. He was with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development from 1990-2000.
Posted by The Law Talking Guy at 9:02 PM 3 comments
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Here's to You, Joe Wilson
So, cleverer and nastier people than me came up with a better solution to Joe Wilson than censure: give to his opponent. He has now collected more than $550,000 since the Joe Wilson's opponent, Iraq War Vet Rob Miller. A half million dollars was going to take a year of effort and rubber chicken dinners and begging for him. Now it's over in a night. And he didn't have to open his mouth. Money will continue to be huge for him, forcing the GOP to either defend Wilson's seat with their money - and associate more publicly with the scumbag than they have to date. Joe Wilson showed that Republicans don't care at all for tradition and values. They have no respect for a joint session of Congress. So in response to this cracker jackass, real Americans all over the country did what we Yankees do best: fight hellfire with money.
And if you're still mad, like I am, you can dedicate this website to dumbass Joe Wilson: www.fuckthesouth.com .
Posted by The Law Talking Guy at 7:52 PM 11 comments
Farewell and Thank You Dr. Strangelove
Some of our frequent visitors may have noticed that Dr. Strangelove's avatar is no longer on the blog's banner. It is with deep regret that we say farewell to Dr. Strangelove. His contributions to our blog have been thought provoking and informative. Since we first asked him to join us, about a year after we started the blog (if memory serves), he made an immediate and positive impact.
Posted by Raised By Republicans at 4:51 AM 2 comments
Wednesday, September 09, 2009
Review of President Obama's Health Care Speech
At one point I was wondering who would smile first, Barack Obama or my upset toddler (whose Elmo had been displaced). It was a long time before either one happened. It seemed to me that Barack Obama gave the policy ground to the centrists but many liberals what they wanted - anger and some good smackdowns on the Republican blowhards. He basically called Sarah Palin a liar. Which was awesome. In many ways, the speech seemed to me to be a way to mollify the Democratic left to allow them to support the president's compromises. I suspect it worked very well as political cover. Very well. So much for the public option... I wonder if it was ever more than a bargaining chip.
You could see, I think, the irritation in the chamber as the Republicans realized that they were likely to lose, lose big, and that there really isn't much they could do. Max Baucus' announcement earlier today was a pretty big blow to their hopes of scuttling the bill. Senator Snowe was smiling too, particularly in response to the small business exemptions. The big hope, that the Democratic left could be persuaded to kill the bill, may have failed tonight.
The speech was unusually combative and not particularly inspiring. I think the point was also for the President to "own" the bill. That, too, I think he did.
I've been starting to wonder. Is the reason we saw such extremism on the far right this summer precisely because there was nothing else they could do?
Posted by The Law Talking Guy at 7:45 PM 4 comments
Saturday, September 05, 2009
A Must-Read Article!
Paul Krugman, the nobel-prize winning economist and NY Times columnist who sometimes goes in for more polemic than he should, has just written an excellent and quite long article about the economics profession, its past and future. It is rare that I just say "go read this," but that's what I'm urging. Among other things, he seems to praise Larry Summers, which is a big thing for him to do since they have been otherwise perceived as rivals.
Here's his conclusion after considerable detail: "So here’s what I think economists have to do. First, they have to face up to the inconvenient reality that financial markets fall far short of perfection, that they are subject to extraordinary delusions and the madness of crowds. Second, they have to admit — and this will be very hard for the people who giggled and whispered over Keynes — that Keynesian economics remains the best framework we have for making sense of recessions and depressions. Third, they’ll have to do their best to incorporate the realities of finance into macroeconomics." Please, don't comment on this post without reading the article.
My take on this piece that he's basically correct that the efficient market hypothesis, in both strong and weak forms, has simply failed too often to continue to be the basis of macroenomic social science.
However useful rational actor assumptions are, and they are very useful, particularly for micro theory, macroeconomics has to deal with the fact that there is enough irrational behavior to distort the macroeconomic world. The engine of this needs to be explored, not assumed away. One thing to focus on is the source of capital accumulation - profit. Profits should be very modest in a world of perfect competition. One might suggest that profits, which lead to the accumulation of capital that drives capitalism, depend in no small measure on the inefficiencies in the market. Perfect competition pushes profits toward a minimum level; imperfect competition allows extraction of much higher rents for some. The ability to produce a product and sell it consistently at 50% profit to you is a source of great capital accumulation, but depends on imperfect market forces. Arbitrageurs should eliminate large profits, the ability to buy something at X price and sell it immediately at X+Y price for Y profit. When that doesn't happen, large profits can be reaped over sustained periods. Thus, relatively small amount of irrational behavior may take on oustized importance in the economy for the simple reason that it is a main source of capital accumulation.
Posted by The Law Talking Guy at 10:19 AM 6 comments
Friday, September 04, 2009
Friday Levity
A little bit of humor before the long weekend.
Jimmy Kimmel, on David Paterson shaving his beard:
"This makes Governor Paterson the first governor to get rid of his beard since former New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey filed for divorce."Enjoy your Labor Day weekend!
Posted by Bell Curve at 11:21 AM 4 comments
Thursday, September 03, 2009
Teachers and Merit Pay is a Bad Combination
Obama has come out in favor of pay-for-performance for teachers. He has made it one of the main parts of his educational reform initiative. I am not sure yet how he plans to structure this pay-for-performance plan, if at all. However, I am not keen on the idea.
I object to this notion for many reasons. The first is that merit systems in general have huge flaws. I have worked under various merit systems, from retail commission, to formal merit systems in government and corporate America. I always find them unfair to the employees and often corrupt. Education, like medical care, is not a business. And you can't use pay systems designed for cooperate, profit driven businesses for schools.
The second objection deals with education specifically. Students aren't products in the traditional sense. And the trouble for teachers is that they are proving a service whose quality is pretty tough to measure. The idea that standardized tests are the answer is false. I write standardized tests for a living. And I have said before that using a test that is meant to gauge proficiency or knowledge of students for pay decisions for teachers is an abuse and misuse of the test. People in educational testing should not see this as a boon to their profession, but as a threat to its validity. I know this from first hand experience. When teachers start loosing money due to standardized tests, they will turn the tests into political boondoggles that will render them completely invalid. Their unions will pressure state Depts. of education to dumb them down, recalibrate the cut scores to make passing easier, and the like. When all else fails, blame the test and the people who wrote it. I live this every day in my work. And of that doesn't work . . . blame the teachers. Never ever blame the student.
Merit pay systems based on student performance severely undercut the authority of teachers in the classroom. Students will fail them on purpose because there is no reason not to. So unless there are some serious incentives for the students to preform on these tests, basing pay on them is reckless. Back when I was taking standardized tests, it was merely 3 days of the week I got off early from school because we had testing. I didn't care how well I did. It meant nothing to me. My grades did. That was all that counted.
When California started requiring high school exit exams, the teachers' union got implementation postponed nearly 2 years. It is a minimum competency exam. So when 1 million students failed to pass, they got 3 additional tries. And the media went wild, not about how illiterate our students are, but at how unfair the test was. It goes against the American grain to deny our little sweeties a diploma, sports, band or the like just because some stupid teacher failed little Johnny or because my kid didn't pass some silly exam one time. They had crap teachers. Hello! Your kid failed a basic test after 12 years of school and a host of "crap" teachers? Not one good one in all those years? And what were you doing at home to encourage your kid?
Furthermore, there is the lottery effect. If you are lucky as a teacher to get a nice class, full of upper-middle income, mostly white, English speaking kids, you will do well in a merit system. If, however, you are cursed with an inner city, non-English class, you're screwed. So any merit system would have to take into account the profiles of the students. And guess what! If schools started profiling students, the ACLU would jump on that.
We have been blaming students and schools for years and have seen results only falter. I think we ought to start considering the conduct and motivation of students for a change.
Posted by USWest at 10:23 AM 15 comments
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
Making this Blog a Better Place
I want to be a better blogger, and I want this blog to be a better place. So let me put it out there: We have had more than our share of blow-ups lately, and I sense little resolution. It feels like our modest blogging community has become tense, on edge, as though we are all waiting for the next flame war to erupt.
Does it need to be this way? How can we lower the DEFCON level DEFCON around here? What would make this blog a better place? (And what do we mean by that?)
If we are to improve our blog, I believe the first step is to figure out our common goals. Although our reasons for contributing are likely not identical, we can surely find some common ground. The second step then would be to outline some ground rules, or some principles of etiquette, or some rights and responsibilities as readers and contributors... But however we choose to frame it, I feel strongly that our blog could benefit from a concrete agreement on purposes and expectations.
I don't want to dictate anything, but it often helps to start with a draft. So here are my own suggestions for our common purposes for the blog: To inform, to debate, and to learn about political issues--and to make this enjoyable. An overarching (and probably overreaching) aspiration would be to change the world, especially the United States, in some positive way through our efforts.
I feel like lately we've been doing a fair amount of informing and rather a lot of debating, but not so much on the learning--and I find the whole experience less enjoyable now than it used to be. And as for our larger aspirations, I suspect our readership and influence could be growing faster if we worked at it. Here are my suggestions of what we can do to work better toward could do more consistently to further these goals, in no particular order. [Note on terms: a "post" starts a "thread" that continues with "comments."]
To inform
* Link to sources to substantiate key assertions, especially primary sources if possible. Subsequent commenters can help out here
* Define unusual acronyms and obscure jargon words upon first use in each thread
* Give people's full names and titles upon first mention in each thread
* Recognize our global audience and specify US/non-US where there could be confusion
* Maintain all original text when editing an existing post: strike deletions and italicize additions. (The HTML tags are "s" and "i" respectively)
* Contract longer posts with the span id="fullpost" tag to keep more threads visible on the first screen
To debate
* Focus posts to a couple of key points
* Respond to the key points of the original post as part of your first comment in the thread
* Acknowledge salient points made by previous commenters before adding your own
* Acknowledge explicitly any mistakes or errors you have made
* Address comments more toward the issue than the individual. Try to dispute the argument rather than the source
To learn
* Re-read the entire thread before commenting, especially the initial post
* Treat all comers equally, regardless of party or national affiliation. Be open to points of view from across the political spectrum and around the globe
* Ask real questions more often than you pose rhetorical questions
* Where possible, approach ideas from a "yes, and" perspective rather than "no, but."
To make this enjoyable
* Be polite, of course!
* Respect one another, especially each other's education and experiences
* Assume the best. First request clarification for any remarks that appear to be senseless, egregiously erroneous, or insulting
* Express appreciation for interesting posts and comments
* Thank new contributors and welcome back rare ones. (Whichever of the five editors comments next on the thread can do this.)
* Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous [George Orwell's sixth and final rule from Politics and the English Language]
Posted by Dr. Strangelove at 5:44 PM 8 comments
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
A Busy, Busy Fall
As I was doing my fantasy football drafts this weekend (Brees in one league, Peyton and LT in the other, thanks for asking....), I was thinking how excited I was about the coming Legislative season. This is it, people. The teabagger whackos will get off the news shows now that the press corps is back from vacation and everyone is returning to Washington to get down to business. Fall 2009-Spring 2010 is going to be the time that President Obama succeeds or fails in his legislative agenda. It sets the stage for the midterm elections, both state and federal, plus the coming census and redistricting/reapportionment. We set the table for the next three years politically. And it's looking very good, I think. Third quarter numbers will come out in about 30-odd days showing an end to the recession - actual economic growth in all likelihood. This will spur optimism, consumer confidence, and fuel a recovery. Plus the real stimulus money will be starting to hit construction. Deficit projections will look better, appeasing so-called fiscal conservatives. I predict some sort of a health care bill will pass that will allow the Democrats to proclaim victory. As I write this, the moon is orange outside, and a hurricane is hitting Cabo San Lucas. Wildfires and hurricanes, floods and legislative action. It's going to be a very busy political season.
Posted by The Law Talking Guy at 9:48 PM 0 comments
Monday, August 31, 2009
Redistricting Redux
I found an intriguing paper on redistricting by Zeph Landau, a mathematician at UC Berkeley. In it he proposes a novel method of redistricting (for two major parties only) which I think The Citizens might appreciate. I do my best to summarize it here.
The essence of the method is to divide the state in two and let the Republicans draw all the boundaries for one part while the Democrats draw all the boundaries for the other. The paper largely deals with the critical issue of how to divide the state initially. It would be elegant if we could do it in the classic way in which two children can divide a slice cake--one cuts and the other chooses--but unfortunately party preferences are not that simple and it is possible for one party to partition the state such that it will be to their advantage no matter which region they end up with.
Fortunately, there is a more robust variant of this method. Start with the most unequal partition possible (the smaller portion containing only enough people to elect a single representative) and then grow the smaller region in mincing steps until the inequality has been completely reversed. At each step along the way, ask the parties to indicate which region they would prefer to redistrict. If at any time the parties prefer opposite regions, then agreement has been reached--but otherwise just wait for that critical juncture when both parties "jump" from preferring region A to preferring the region B--then choose randomly between the proposed partitions from the steps immediately before and after the jump. One can make the method even more robust by running through the entire exercise several times and choosing the final outcome deemed least objectionable by both parties.
This proposed redistricting process has several nice features. First, it avoids the whole "non-partisan" issue. Second, the paper demonstrates that this method can be relied upon to produce an outcome that neither party will find particularly disadvantageous, even when their preferences are based on completely different principles. (For example, one may seek to maximize the size of its delegation while the other seeks to protect its incumbents.) Finally, despite the lengthy description here, this method is actually more practical than most such programs because only a single "cut" needs to be decided upon: after that the individual parties do all the rest of the work.
Anyway, I thought it was pretty interesting. It just goes to show that we can harness the adversarial process in more clever ways than we usually do.
(One technical note: Since party preferences are not necessarily linear, there may be several "jumps" from which one would have to randomly draw.)
Posted by Dr. Strangelove at 8:56 PM 15 comments
Bob McDonnell, Pat Robertson and Fake Education
The liberal blogsphere is all a-buzz about a controversial MA thesis by Republican candidate for the governorship of Virginia, Bob McDonnell in 1989 while he was in the join MA/JD program at what was then called "Christian Broadcasting Network University" and has since been renamed Regent University. The title is "The Republican Party's Vision for the Family: The Compelling Issue of the Decade." Now most of the buzz is about some of the more controversial statements within the thesis itself. From the title, you can imagine some of the highlights: women in the workplace is bad, contraception for unmarried couples is bad, the Roe v Wade ruling is referred to as "the 'legalization' of abortion" (note the sarcasm quotation marks), divorce is bad, divorce and teen pregnancy are "closely related," and a 15 point "action plan" for conservatives. There are also a few choice ideological outbursts like "The family as a God ordained government has an area of sovereignty within which it is free to carry out the duties it owes to God, society, and other family members under the covenant" (page 13).
Posted by Raised By Republicans at 5:20 PM 11 comments
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Massive Political Earthquake in Japan
For nearly all of Japan's post-WWII history, it has been governed by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Despite what Americans may guess based on it's name, it is not a left wing party. It is more like the statist parties on the French center-right. It has established in a Japan a system of subsidies and protectionist policies designed to favor a handful of huge conglomerates like Mitsubishi, Honda, Sony, Toyota, and the like. Once, in 1993, the LDP briefly lost power to a coalition of center-left parties. But early reports on the recent election in Japan are predicting that the center-left Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) will win a majority of the seats in the lower house, enabling it to set up the first single party government in Japan other than the LDP.
Posted by Raised By Republicans at 1:44 PM 7 comments
Cash for Clunkers?
The Supreme Court is revisiting and expected by many to restrict some earlier rulings that had previously bolstered the power of the government to regulate campaign finance--specifically the use of corporate money. After some narrow escapes a few years ago, the McCain-Feingold Act may finally be cornered by the new conservative Bush appointees.
Yet this old-style type of campaign finance reform may be increasingly irrelevant. The aim has always been to limit the influence of big money, but for the first time since the advent of the modern Presidential campaign, the big corporations and big donors did not dominate the political landscape in 2008. They were swamped by a flood of small contributions provided via the internet. Was the little guy able to out-finance the big guy because the corporations were hampered by restrictive legislation? Or has the internet become such a powerful fundraising tool that those restrictions were simply not relevant?
Another interesting aspect to all this is that big donors and small donors appear to have opposite psychologies. Big donors donate in order to purchase political influence, and therefore they are more inclined to support perceived winners. Little donors, on the other hand, contribute out of passion and conviction, and thus they are most inspired to pitch in when they feel their cause is on the ropes. And so in 2008, contrary to all prior conventional wisdom, Obama and Hillary did their best fundraising immediately following their most bruising defeats.
The old dynamic encouraged positive feedback; the new dynamic adds some interesting negative feedback that may tend to draw out the process. It also widens the field in general. We are no longer limited to those candidates deemed to be "serious" by the corporate elite. Ron Paul drew in millions because he was a radical, outside of the mainstream. The equalizing and aggregating effect of the internet not only gives dedicated voters a greater chance to participate in politics--it also draws some of the disaffected back into the democratic process.
So the Supreme Court can go ahead and loosen some of the restrictions on corporate donations... They no longer buy the influence they used to, which was the whole justification for restricting them in the first place. Just don't let them mess with net neutrality.
Posted by Dr. Strangelove at 12:46 AM 8 comments
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Time to Fix the Senate
Until 1913, governors did not fill Senatorial vacancies. The reason is simple: senators were appointed by state legislatures. If one died or resigned, the state legislature of the appropriate state just appointed another. When the direct election of senators was enacted by the 17th amendment, they added a clause to call for special elections in the event of a vacancy. But it was worded thus, "When vacancies happen in the representation of any State in the Senate, the executive authority of each State shall issue writs of election to fill such vacancies: Provided That the legislature of any State may empower the executive thereof to make temporary appointments until the people fill the vacancies by election as the legislature may direct."
When there is a vacancy in the House of Representatives, the seat is simply vacant until a special election is held, usually filling the seat in three to six months. It seems almost certain that the drafters of the 17th amendment wanted to have the same model, except that Article V presents a problem. Article V contains an "unamendable" provision stating that no amendment shall deprive any state of its "equal suffrage in the Senate without its consent." So the Constitution could not be altered to leave a state vacant for any period of time without the state's affirmative consent. Thus they added a clause that a state legislature could (but did not have to) authorize the governor to make temporary appointments pending the special election. It was surely not anticipated that most states would adopt a rule providing for the governor to make temporary appointments to last for up to two years so that the special election would coincide with the regular biennial election of representatives. Yet that is what happened. The point of this commentary is to make it clear that the expectation that vacant senate seats will be filled by governor's appointments was not part of the plan of the orginal framers nor of the framers of the 17th amendment. It just happened, in the same way so many things in our constitutional system have just happened (e.g., the committee hearings on Supreme Court and cabinet nominations, the filibuster, the fact that presidents do not consult with the Senate beforehand in making treaties despite the constitutional provision that the Senate give "advice" on treaties as well as "consent", the ascension of the Vice President to the office of President before the 25th amendment was adopted in 1967, the "sovereign immunity" of states under the 11th amendment, and there are more). When there are clear ill effects to these non-constitutional traditions, it is time to change them. Plainly, there is a democratic deficit that emerges when - for example, today - there are going to be 5 appointed Senators and 5 who were appointed and won election as an "incumbent." Not to mention the Blagojevich-Burris fiasco in Illinois.
It is also very disturbing to see states monkey with the rules for partisan advantage. When Senator Frank Murkowski became governor of Alaska, the Republican legislature arranged for him to be able to appoint his replacement to his then-vacant seat. They did this to circumvent having the then-Democratic governor Knowles from making the appointment. The one-time-only rule was that the seat had to be vacant for 5 days before making an appointment, which was all the time necessary for Murkowski to ascend and appoint his daughter, who still serves. Similarly, in 2004, the Massachusetts legislature adopted its current rule, preventing temporary appointments at all while awaiting a special election, because Mitt Romney (R) was then governor, and the Masachusetts Democrats wanted to prevent him from seating someone to replace Senator Kerry if he won the presidency. Now they want to change the rules again for Kennedy's seat. Were it not also a much more sensible rule to have some temporary appointment (given that every other state makes temporary appointments), it would be incredibly crass to change the rules again. As it is, it just kind of crass.
Wyoming has a more sensible rule that the party of the deceased or resigned senator nominates three names to the governor, who then chooses one. Another possibility for reform is for each state to adopt rules similar to that which Massachusetts may be set to adopt: providing for a special election within 180 days, and for temporary appointments by the governor during that 180 day period. Another possibility, advanced by Senator Feingold (D-WI) is to pass a new constitutional amendment requiring special elections (with or without temporary appointments as states choose) within 180 days.
I think Feingold is on the right track. We need to have special elections in this country for Senatorial vacancies. It undermines the very purpose of the 17th amendment - to have senators directly responsible to the people rather than to state officials - for us to continue as we have been doing. At least the Wyoming rule prevents the worst scenario: a change in parties due to the death of a senator totally undoing the people's choice.
Posted by The Law Talking Guy at 9:18 PM 22 comments
