❄ List of Blog Entries

I’ve just posted a list of blog entries at http://www.brucelarkin.net/blogs.pdf and at http://www.brucelarkin.net/blogs.html , with hot links to each post. This is more readable.

If the pdf version hot links do not work, try the html version.

To see the most recent posts you may go directly to

my rant blog:    http://blog.learnworld.com/ , since 2003.
my design blog: http://design.learnworld.com/, since 2005.

And I've recently posted several indictments of Republican Party dogma on the Political Design blog. There I try to be temperate. More will come on the rant blog.

Enjoy!

[Bruce‘s Blog. 2011.07.04. [Blog BB01]. Revised 2011.07.06 with addition of html version. Revised 2011.08.06 with new web locations and corresponding URLs. Serial BB01. [http://www.learnworld.com/blog/blog.html]

❄ PLAIN TALK [V]: BUY THE REPUBLIC

❄ This post, and other ‘PLAIN TALK’ posts on this blog, describe in plain language the current Republican Party aims and methods, which I consider a perverse exercise in political design. ❄

Presidents and legislators—and in some states, judges—require vast and growing sums to run for elective office. The link binding candidates to donors appears to be yet stronger in the wake of the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling, which has the effect of freeing corporate donations to political purposes.


The Question

Can Members of Congress be bought? Can control of the US government be bought? And if so, what can be done to prevent its being for sale?

Approaches

I’ve discussed this issue, first in a posting in 2005:

THURSDAY, AUGUST 11, 2005
❄ End the Plutocracy?
“Money is the mother’s milk of politics.”
“The United States is not a representative democracy, but a plutocracy.”

At that time I wrote: “I’m drawn to the ‘pull-only’ rule: rather than candidates’ buying vast advertising time, telephone banks, and lapel pins, why not confine them to their web sites and let each citizen decide whether to look at their messages or ignore them? ‘Don’t call me, I’ll call you.’ ”

And on reflection I’m even more intrigued by putting an end to competitive spending on elections. Locally-financed personal appearances could be archived to web sites, extensive and elaborate but not costly. Anyone, any group, could recommend, interpret, counter, or otherwise voice it’s views about candidate sites.

Does Citizens United [Note 1] create a new imperative? On 21 January 2010, to great controversy, the US Supreme Court issued its decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission. Citizens United argues that §441b of the US Code, which restricts specified corporate “electioneering communication,” is unconstitutional as applied to a documentary film critical of primary candidate Hillary Clinton.

What is important in this decision, then, is not the narrow circumstance around which Citizens United composed its case, but the Court’s removing a key precedent in its several-decades’ commitment to the constitutionality of specific legal limits on corporate political giving.

Nor is it an accident that this case came forward, and was argued before the Court by a well-known partisan of conservative interests, GW Bush’s first Solicitor General, Theodore Olson. The case can be traced directly to the work of a Terre Haute, Indiana attorney, James Bopp, Jr., who told an interviewer that

“We had a 10-year plan to take all this down. And if we do it right, I think we can pretty well dismantle the entire regulatory regime that is called campaign finance law. We have been awfully successful and we are not done yet.” [Note 2]

This opponent of campaign finance law targets not only barriers to giving but also disclosure of donor names and sums. While the decision in Citizens United is only one move, which leaves many regulatory measures in place, the aim is further dismantlement. The end would be a system of legal protection for unlimited secret corporate financing of political candidates and initiatives. Every member of Congress, and Presidents themselves, could be secretly in thrall to hidden manipulators, doing behind the veil of secrecy what figures such as Scaife and Koch have undertaken, with the lesser aid of obscurity and public inattention, in recent years.

In a vigorous dissent to the majority decision in Citizens United Justice John Paul Stevens, writing for four members of the Court, declared that

“The Court’s ruling threatens to undermine the integrity of elected institutions across the Nation.” [Note 3.]

The decision in Citizens United prompted an unusual statement by President Barack Obama in his State of the Union speech to the combined houses of Congress.

“With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests –- including foreign corporations –- to spend without limit in our elections. (Applause.) I don’t think American elections should be bankrolled by America's most powerful interests, or worse, by foreign entities. (Applause.) They should be decided by the American people. And I’d urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps to correct some of these problems.” [Note 4]

But in an even more unusual reaction, Associate Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., seated a few feet away, facing the President, was seen to be shaking his head ‘no’, and to mouth words variously reported as “that’s not true” or “not true.” [Note 5]

But we have to ask: are Justice Stevens and President Obama wrong, or exaggerating the effects of Citizens United? A few days after Obama’s State of the Union message a group of Republicans led by former senator ‘Norm’ Coleman and a senior policy adviser to John McCain’s presidential campaign, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, told the New York Times about the forthcoming launch of an advocacy body they call the ‘American Action Network’. The Times reporter wrote that

“ … the Supreme Court’s decision last month in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission potentially will allow the organization to take unlimited contributions from corporations and individuals to use to advertise for or against political candidates.

“‘This administration as well as Citizens United — when you combine the two the prospects for funding these types of efforts are greatly enhanced,‘ Mr. Coleman said. [Note 6]

So at least one experienced Republican battler believes Citizens United hands them an edge … and is ready to say so publicly.

And on 27 June 2011 the Supreme Court struck down an Arizona law providing public matching funds under specified circumstances. Critics of the court’s decision charged that rather than promoting free speech, as the court’s majority contended, the court enabled money to overwhelm those without funds. The Chief Justice wrote for the majority that “Leveling the playing field can sound like a good thing. But in a democracy, campaigning for office is not a game.”[Note 7]

Drafting Problem

Would a system like that outlined above—candidates confined to personal appearances and web sites—meet the First Amendment requirement of ‘freedom of speech’? Would it end, or significantly reduce, money‘s influence on politics? Are there other approaches?

NOTES

[Note 1]:  http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/09pdf/08-205.pdf
[Note 2]:  Quoted in David D. Kirkpatrick, “A Quest to End Spending Rules for Campaigns,” The New York Times, 24 January 2010.
[Note 3]:  Citizens United, Appellant v. Federal Election Commission. Justice Stevens was joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor “concurring in part and dissenting in part.”
[Note 4]:  Barack Obama, State of the Union remarks. Washington, D.C. 27 January 2010. http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-state-union-address
[Note 5]:  Robert Barnes reported Alito’s response: “ ‘Not true, not true,’ he appeared to say (other lip readers think he said, ‘That's not true’) as he shook his head and furrowed his brow. It is unclear what part of Obama’s statement he was objecting to, although he started shaking his head after the president said ‘special interests.’ ” “Reactions Split on Obama’s remark, Alito’s Response at State of the Union,” Washington Post, 29 January 2010. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/28/AR2010012802893.html
[Note 6]:  Jackie Calmes, “G.O.P. Group to Promote Conservative Ideas,” The New York Times, 3 February 2010. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/04/us/politics/04conservative.html
[Note 7]:  Adam Liptak, “Justices Strike Down Arizona Campaign Finance Law,” The New York Times, 27 June 2011.

[Political Design 2011.07.01. Post A29. http://www.learnworld.com/blog/design.html or http://design.learnworld.com]

❄ PLAIN TALK [IV]: PRIVATIZE THE REPUBLIC

❄ This post, and other ‘PLAIN TALK’ posts on this blog, describe in plain language the current Republican Party aims and methods, which I consider a perverse exercise in political design. ❄

Once upon a time we took it for granted—an historical fact—that key services, including schools, hospitals, libraries, postal delivery, municipal utilities, and meteorology, were provided either by the State or by charities (or in today’s argot, ‘non-profits’). There were major exceptions (railroads, telephone, housing, the food system) though there was also public housing and the Food Stamp system. Hybrid systems, such as health insurance sold by for-profit companies but simultaneously Medicare, had also taken shape.

Approaches

One mantra of the Republican Party is that economic life should be in private hands. Whenever there is a choice, or a choice can be created by government diktat, lodge resources and approvals in ‘the private sector’. Never speak of, never celebrate, never acknowledge ‘the public sector’. Characterize the‘public sector’ as activity marked by “waste, fraud, and abuse” and those who work in the public sector as parasites on real Americans, time-servers, incompetents. Not ‘hard workers like us’.

What are the differences between the ‘private’ and ‘public’ sectors? They appear to be these:

[1]  Access to jobs in the public sector is via the civil service, marked by objective criteria and subject to rules against nepotism and any quid pro quo (consider Blagojevich). Access to private sector jobs is unregulated, except insofar as there are legal provisions against discrimination.

[2]  Private sector corporations are legally bound to seek profit, but efficiency only insofar as it contributes to profit. The public sector is subject to spending oversight, and to strive for efficiency (if that is equivalent to ‘doing more with less’).

[3]  Activities undertaken in the public sector are those chosen by government. Some deliberation as to merits must precede the decision to ‘go’. Therefore they are subject to tests, which may be well devised: does this activity enhance the general welfare? does it make for fairness? can it be performed efficiently? does it preclude other measures that better meet agreed criteria? Of course, they may also be ill-devised (see the note below about government and ‘interests’). By contrast, the only standard required of private sector firms is that they make a profit: it does not matter whether they do so by designing life-saving pharmaceuticals, or pornographic films.

[4]  A private sector firm pays salaries, offers investors a quid pro quo, and—if it is traded and its shares rise in the market—enables shareholder participation in capital gains. The firm may sell itself, passing value to the private owners or shareholders. The ‘business plan’ of the firm shows how its leadership proposes to conduct a profitable activity. In the public sector salaries are paid, but there are no individual investors or shareholders. Start-up and operating costs required to conduct an activity are provided by government, perhaps offset in part by fees. The availability of the service performed has been deemed in the public interest. The activity, budgets, and management are subject to public scrutiny, including ongoing government audit and Congressional oversight.

[5]  A firm which consistently loses money will go out of existence. In that sense, it is dependent on maintaining its clientele. By analogy, a public service is more likely to be rendered—agreed by Congress and the Executive—if it responds to an interest which will reward the activity’s being undertaken by offering political support (such as mobilizing voters and, in today’s practices, direct campaign money).

[6]  The distinction between ‘public sector’ and ‘private sector’ is muddied whenever government adopts a measure which is (a) not in the general ‘public interest’ but (b) puts tax dollars into the coffers of private firms, directly or indirectly. The ethanol-from-corn scheme is a fine example. Many cite defense procurement as a rich source of examples. The problem is evident: we can disagree about whether a given expenditure or policy change is ‘in the public interest’ and endeavor to bring reason to a choice.

The health insurance debate points to another useful distinction. We learned that in some European countries health insurance is required, but is purchased from non-profit insurance vendors. [Note 1] The systems take many forms. For example, terms and practices may be subject to regulation.

It is frequently observed by critics of US systems that the insured are paying for administrative costs that have nothing to do with medical care. Consider an exemplary for-profit insurer. It performs best if it insures only the healthy. It tries to figure out who is ‘unhealthy’ and how to avoid insuring them. It narrowly defines what it covers, and in ambiguous cases refuses payment.The not-for-profit insurer, on the other hand, performs best by supporting the ‘best outcomes for the insured’. Its terms, conditions, payment practices and reimbursement rates may be regulated by a public or quasi-public body. These are radically different structures. In for-profit insurers, managers are guided by perverse incentives to deny insurance, and deny medical care, when they can. Managers of non-profit medical facilities, by contrast, have a positive incentive to achieve the best medical outcomes for their clients, given their funds and competing demands.

Perverse incentives can be seen at work elsewhere. There is a growing literature critical of for-profit prisons [Note 2] and, especially during the GW Bush period, growing reliance on US contractors to perform war tasks which in the past were performed by military personnel or civilian federal employees. [Note 3]

Question

Is the claim sound that ‘private sector’ for-profit companies are superior to government in supplying a service? Some services? What of hybrid systems?

Drafting Problem

Devise an experiment to compare tax-funded (government) and private (‘market’) approaches to a significant issue, such as health care, incarceration, transport, or the custody of nuclear weapons.

[Note 1]:   See Richard B. Saltman, Reinhard Busse, and Josep Figueras [eds.], Social Health Insurance Systems in Western Europe, (Maidenhead, Berkshire, England: Open University Press, 2004), and Saltman, Busse, and Elias Mossialos [eds], Regulating Entrepreneurial Behaviour in European Health Care Systems (Open University Press, 2002), both volumes in the European Observatory on Health Care Systems Series.
[Note 2]: For example, see Richard A. Oppel, Jr., “Private Prisons Found to Offer Little in Savings,” The New York Times, 18 May 2011.
[Note 3]:  Peter W. Singer, “Outsourcing the Fight”, The Brookings Institution, 5 June 2008. [Originally in Forbes.]

[Political Design 2011.07.01. Revised 2011.07.06. Post A28. http://www.learnworld.com/blog/design.html or http://design.learnworld.com]