The attempted Christmas Day terrorist attack on a commercial airliner has brought attention to the Senate’s failure to confirm President Obama’s nominee to head the Transportationa Security Administration, Erroll Southers. The Senate Homeland Security Committee approved his nomination in November, but he has yet to come to a vote, in part due to Republican Senator Jim DeMint’s hold on the nomination. Sen. DeMint opposes Southers because he fears unionization of TSA personnel, but there may be a bigger issue with the Southers nomination.
As I noted back in November, Southers was censured by the FBI for asking law enforcement personnel to conduct a background check on his ex-wife’s boyfriend. Now, the Washington Post reports, it appears he provided inaccurate testimony about the incident.
Southers first described the episode in his October affidavit, telling the Senate panel that two decades ago he asked a San Diego Police Department employee to access confidential criminal records about the boyfriend. Southers said he had been censured by superiors at the FBI. He described the incident as isolated and expressed regrets about it.
The committee approved his nomination Nov. 19. One day later, Southers wrote to Lieberman and Collins saying his first account was incorrect. After reviewing documents, he wrote, he recalled that he had twice conducted the database searches himself, downloaded confidential law enforcement records about his wife’s boyfriend and passed information on to the police department employee, the letter said.
It is a violation of the federal Privacy Act to access such information without proper cause. The law says that “any person who knowingly and willfully requests or obtains any record concerning an individual from an agency under false pretenses shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and fined not more than $5,000.”
In his letter, Southers said he simply forgot the circumstances of the searches, which occurred in 1987 and 1988 after he grew worried about his wife and their son, who had begun living with the boyfriend. The letter said: “During a period of great personal turmoil, I made a serious error in judgment by using my official position with the FBI to resolve a personal problem.” He did not specify the data system he accessed.
This past week, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said he would seek to force a vote on the Southers nomination when the Senate comes back from the holiday recess.
Twirip says:
Southers has also refused to answer questions asked of him by Senators. He’s holding up his own nomnation.
January 1, 2010, 9:12 amDG says:
The guy’s underage son was living with someone that he suspected (correctly) was a wanted felon. I think some slack is reasonable here.
January 1, 2010, 9:26 amMuskrat says:
Is it still technically “reporting” if all you do is cut and paste from the e-mail from whichever Senate staffer/GOP operative spoon-fed this to you? I’m not saying they shouldn’t have passed this on, just that they should man up and admit they’re being used as a conduit.
January 1, 2010, 9:30 amOctavian says:
A day late and a dollar short.
January 1, 2010, 9:42 amcommon_sense says:
I have a lot of questions about this post (if it’s so important, why the delay in nominating someone; unionization) but this isn’t one of them. Although technically a crime, I can’t say I wouldn’t do the same thing if I thought my child was in danger. Indeed, I’d question someone who wouldn’t put their child’s safety before future career prospects.
January 1, 2010, 9:56 amRichard Nieporent says:
Shouldn’t we expect an FBI agent to obey the law or is that only for little people like you and me? If he had knowledge of a crime then he should have reported it to the police rather than violate the law. Is this really the person you want heading the TSA?
January 1, 2010, 10:11 amneurodoc says:
There are two separable issues here, aren’t there? We have the question of whether this information Southers and the testimony he gave should disqualify him and we have DeMint’s (DeMent’s?) use of a hold to block a vote on the nomination until Southers (or presumably any other nominee for TSA head) until the senator is satisfied on the unionization issue. I don’t see how the former has any bearing on the latter, nor anything else that casts DeMint in other than an unfavorable light.
Speaking of holds in the Senate, can someone explain how they work? I thought they were like secret blackballs, but here we have an openly acknowledged one and it seems that it will require the entire Senate to waste a lot of time to deal with it. Why should the objection of a single senator to a nomination be allowed to do this? Are there limits on this practice, e.g., a senator couldn’t put a “hold” on a Supreme Court nomination, delaying a vote after hearings, could they?
January 1, 2010, 10:14 amTwirip says:
I don’t see how you can say that, and you did not elaborate. DeMint is blocking his nomination until such time as Southers answers some important questions. If you believe that Southers should be confirmed regardless, explain why.
January 1, 2010, 10:22 amneurodoc says:
What are the background details to which you allude? What felony did the ex-wife’s BF commit? If the guy was subject to arrest (“wanted”) at the time, was he arrested after Southers found him out?
January 1, 2010, 10:23 amTwirip says:
That’s wonderful. And you should not be awarded a sensitive government post on that basis.
January 1, 2010, 10:24 amHans says:
DeMint is right to oppose unionization of the TSA, which would undermine passenger safety and the TSA’s efficiency, flexibility, and adaptibility in the face of terrorist attacks, as the Washington Examiner has noted.
The TSA is already much less effective than the private security firms it replaced, and much more likely to fail to detect fake bombs, which is remarkably bad, given the shortcomings of many of those firms.
Amazingly, the TSA is praising its own performance for the year, and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano claims “the system worked” despite the recent narrowly-averted terrorist attack that the TSA did nothing to prevent.
January 1, 2010, 10:36 amgracchus says:
Shouldn’t there be a statue of limitations on misconduct for nominees? It was over 20 years ago, he was punished as the FBI saw fit, and he has more than two decades of performance after that on which we can judge him. The notion that any mistake a nominee makes should haunt them for life only deprives us of good nominees.
As to the unionization issue, my limited understanding of federal agency unions is that they have only as much power as supervisors are willing to give them. The air traffic controllers had a union.
January 1, 2010, 10:42 amcommon_sense says:
Twirip, I never said he shouldn’t pay a price for breaking the law. But I question anyone who says they know, without doubt, that they would sit by in such a situation. They thought their child was in a dangerous situation, and they could find out relevant information by looking at a database at work. Sure, it’s easy to sit here on a Friday morning without a child in actual danger and say we wouldn’t. I wonder if it would be so easy if we truly believed a child was in danger. If it was without cost, it would be the obvious thing to do. The costs are what make it a hard decision. Willingly submitting to the costs afterwards might make it honorable. All that being said, if I were a senator, I wouldn’t hold this nomination up over this point. We’ve gotten to the point where every nominee has to be without warts, and it seems obvious that there aren’t enough qualified people in DC that meet the standard. At some point, the positions going unfilled are more harmful than putting someone in the posts who is not perfect. It might be better to let the President fill the posts with the people he wants and let the President succeed or fail based on their performance.
January 1, 2010, 10:44 amSteve says:
DeMint is right to oppose unionization of the TSA, which would undermine passenger safety and the TSA’s efficiency, flexibility, and adaptibility in the face of terrorist attacks, as the Washington Examiner has noted.
The same Washington Examiner that described Obama’s Interpol order as “maybe the most destructive blow ever struck against American constitutional civil liberties”? Awesome source there dude, I’m sure they’re totally objective and accurate!
Anyway, just have a vote (or “force a vote,” as Prof. Adler terms voting on a Presidential nominee over the objection of a single Senator). If people want to vote against the guy because they oppose unionization of the TSA, or any of this other stuff, they are perfectly free to do so.
January 1, 2010, 10:53 amBC says:
I think the issue is more his misrepresentation of the facts to the Senate panel. He first said he asked an employee to do the searches, then after the committee approved his nomination, he issued a correction that stated he did the searches himself.
January 1, 2010, 10:58 amRichard Nieporent says:
The notion that any mistake a nominee makes should haunt them for life only deprives us of good nominees.
To paraphrase a former president, it depends what your meaning of good is.
We’ve gotten to the point where every nominee has to be without warts, and it seems obvious that there aren’t enough qualified people in DC that meet the standard.
Wow, what a stringent requirement we are setting. I’m beginning to think that being a lawbreaker is a prerequisite for being nominated by the Obama administration to head an agency.
January 1, 2010, 10:58 amArkady says:
I dunno. Any of them reached the depths of this guy? Seriously, just askin’.
January 1, 2010, 11:06 amHans Bader says:
A study found that the TSA is more than twice as likely to fail to detect a fake bomb as the private security firms it replaced. And TSA’s failure rate is three or four times as high as the few remaining private firms still allowed to handle airline security.
In tests, TSA failed to detect fake bombs 60 percent of the time at Chicago’s O’Hare airport, and 75 percent of the time in Los Angeles. Yet the Obama administration plans to make TSA even more bureaucratic and inefficient by introducing collective bargaining, which will make it even harder to get rid of lazy employees and demand high performance.
January 1, 2010, 11:06 amJoseph Slater says:
I’ll second Steve’s point that Hans’s link to the absurd claim that collective bargaining would hurt TSA has no actual argument, and is just a completely hackish conclusion. In fact, there is no evidence that the very limited collective bargaining rights most federal employees have has ever interfered with national security, before or after 9/11.
Again, many public safety officers have collective bargaining rights — including the police, firefighters, and EMTs who responded so heroically on 9/11. And the bargaining rights federal employees like TSA folks would get are very limited: most federal employees can’t bargain over wages and hours of work, for example.
And since DeMint’s public statements about Southers have been focused on the union issue, I too wonder whether the issue the original posts references is the real reason.
January 1, 2010, 11:22 ambyomtov says:
And since DeMint’s public statements about Southers have been focused on the union issue, I too wonder whether the issue the original posts references is the real reason.
Of course it isn’t. DeMint has talked about unionization only.
What’s going on here is obvious. DeMint is being criticized, rightly, for his hold, so now someone is putting this story out as the “real reason” so as to deflect the criticism. Unfortunately the Post and Jonathan are letting themselves be used as acomplices.
If DeMint thinks the incident disqualifies Southers then he should have brought it public attention a long time ago, and then let the vote proceed.
January 1, 2010, 11:29 amHans says:
The newspaper I linked to did have an “actual argument” for why unionization and collective bargaining would harm the TSA:
Union-mandated “collective bargaining would cripple the TSA,” it said, stripping the TSA of “its flexibility to move people . . . and change protocols when it believes there is a terrorist threat,” requiring “TSA managers to share sensitive intelligence information with union negotiators . . . increasing the possibility of damaging leaks,” and restricting managers from rewarding “high-performing screeners or fire those unable or unwilling to perform their duties in an efficient manner.”
Some of these criteria, such as sensitive intelligence information, distinguish the TSA context from local law enforcement agencies that have collective bargaining.
January 1, 2010, 11:30 ambyomtov says:
The newspaper I linked to
Which you wrote, and linked to twice in one comment, and which in turn linked to more articles you wrote several more times until the links came to a dead end.
January 1, 2010, 11:34 amHans says:
The Obama Administration is also undermining the security of railroad passengers by gutting an expert, highly-rated, anti-terror agency at Amtrak, which Amtrak’s unions hate, despite its efficiency, because it is not unionized. Political cronyism is also playing a role in the gutting of Amtrak’s Office of Security Strategy and Special Operations (OSSSO). Ultimately, OSSSO’s “highly-specialized officers” will likely be replaced by unionized employees with “alarmingly low pass rates” in “basic” classes.
January 1, 2010, 11:34 amHans says:
No, Byomtov, contrary to what you mistakenly believe, when I referred to “the newspaper I linked to,” I was referring NOT to my commentary in the Examiner, but to the Washington Examiner’s own editorial, “No unions for air safety workers,” Examiner Editorial, December 31, 2009.
I did separately refer to my own commentary on ANOTHER point (to save space and repetition in the comment thread), but I did NOT characterize it as a “newspaper” or link to it as such, in my comment at 11:30 a.m., or elsewhere.
January 1, 2010, 11:38 amHans says:
USA Today earlier chronicled how the TSA is doing a worse job than private security companies in detecting fake bombs, failing three or four times as often:
TSA “Screeners at Los Angeles International Airport missed about 75% of simulated explosives and bomb parts that Transportation Security Administration testers hid under their clothes or in carry-on bags at checkpoints, the TSA report shows. . .At Chicago O’Hare International Airport, screeners missed about 60% of hidden bomb materials that were packed in everyday carry-ons — including toiletry kits, briefcases and CD players. San Francisco International Airport screeners, who work for a private company instead of the TSA, missed about 20% of the bombs, the report shows.”
– Thomas Frank, “Most Fake Bombs Missed by Screeners,” USA Today, Oct. 17, 2007.
This is one of the many links contained in my Examiner commentary (to be distinguished from the separate Examiner managing board editorial I also linked to, which I referred to when I was talking about the “newspaper.”)
Thus, it is not true that I cited simply to “dead links.” (It does appear that one of many links in a commentary I in turn linked to is dead, apparently a web page that no longer exists; but the other links in it appear to work).
January 1, 2010, 11:51 amjccamp says:
Demint is the senior member of the Aviation Operations, Safety and Security Subcommittee of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation committee, so he does seem to have a legitimate interest. He wants a debate and floor vote on Southers’ nomination. Harry Reid wants a voice vote (acclamation) only. The issue appears to be greater than the individual (Southers) but more with Obama’s pledge to allow unionization of the TSA, which Demint claims will hamper good security practices and nimble management able to respond quickly to threats. Demint sent Southers a letter back in October asking if Southers will allow unionization. Southers has not responded.
Demint isn’t the only one playing chicken with other peoples’ safety, for his own political purposes. I’d say both sides are equally culpable.
January 1, 2010, 11:53 amMike says:
This sentiment is reasonable. It’s a background check. If a cop pulls me over for not wearing a seat belt, he can run my name through a database. Hardly a big deal to run my name through NCIC.
ChoicePoint gives you a free background check on yourself – which doesn’t involve NCIC searches, but still shows you what type of information you can find out about people. Privacy is an illusion.
Still, How likely is it that he didn’t remember having run the searches?
It seems that he must have lied to Congress.
January 1, 2010, 11:53 amKen Arromdee says:
I don’t think that letting him slide on a broken law that most of us would have broken in the same situation really counts as weak requirements.
January 1, 2010, 12:01 pmSG says:
Which you wrote, and linked to twice in one comment, and which in turn linked to more articles you wrote several more times until the links came to a dead end.
And I, for one, appreciate him not cut-and-pasting the whole thing inline here. So, now that the authorship is resolved, care to address the argument?
It seems reasonable to me that if unions have any utility at all, then allowing TSA workers to unionize will have some affect on their functioning (their work rules, staffing levels, firing procedures, etc), their cost (wages & benefits, overtime pay, etc) or both. It seem the burden should be on those supporting unionization to make the case why the unionization of TSA would be beneficial to the nation (note: not why it would be beneficial to TSA workers), not on others to justify why unionization should be opposed.
January 1, 2010, 12:01 pmHans says:
Senator DeMint should also look into the Administration’s sacrificing safety for the sake of unionization in other areas, such as railway safety.
The Obama Administration is apparently undermining the security of railroad passengers by gutting an expert, highly-rated, anti-terror agency at Amtrak, which Amtrak’s unions hate, despite its efficiency, because it is not unionized.
Political cronyism is also playing a role in the gutting of Amtrak’s Office of Security Strategy and Special Operations (OSSSO). Ultimately, OSSSO’s “highly-specialized officers” will likely be replaced by unionized employees with “alarmingly low pass rates” in “basic” classes.
January 1, 2010, 12:02 pmJoseph Slater says:
Hans:
Beyond what Byomtov said, your articles are just conclusions. No evidence, no examples, no arguments based on facts, just conclusions. As to your attempt to distinguish police, (i) it’s not clear “security” and “public safety” are distinct — if you think collective bargaining rights prevent flexibility for first responders; and (ii) as you might know, the rest of DHS has collective bargaining rights.
Finally, your preferred solution would seem to be to return airport screening to the private sector. Do you realize that private-sector airport screeners have collective bargaining rights — and that the NLRA rules that would cover such folks give many more rights to unionized workers than the federal sector law that would cover TSA does?
January 1, 2010, 12:04 pmRichard Nieporent says:
I don’t think that letting him slide on a broken law that most of us would have broken in the same situation really counts as weak requirements.
What we are talking about is respect for the law by our government agency heads. Are you willing to let them pick and choose the laws they have to obey?
January 1, 2010, 12:17 pmSteven Appelget says:
So Bader links to his own posts to support his arguments. Neat trick, that.
January 1, 2010, 12:18 pmneurodoc says:
As I understand it, DeMint is blocking Southers confirmation until such time as Southers satisfies DeMint’s concerns about unionization at TSA. That is about as separate and distinct an issue from the concern about Southers admitted improper use of a database more than two decades ago as I can imagine. If DeMint is unwilling to see someone who might go along with unionization of TSA appointed to head the agency, then let him vote no when it comes to the floor. It is outrageous, IMO, that he should hold up a vote on the appointment for this reason, though. And if now DeMint will say he won’t remove his objection because he also wants to know more about that improper use of a database back then, I
January 1, 2010, 12:21 pmthink we can see it as disingenuity.
Joseph Slater says:
Along the lines of what neurodoc just posted, I again will say that all the statements I’ve seen from DeMint have to do with the union issue, not the database issue. If somebody can point me to a comment from DeMint stating otherwise, I would be interested.
January 1, 2010, 12:23 pmSW says:
Hans: This is at least the third time this week you’ve posted the same comment on Volokh, each time misrepresenting the USA Today article. It’s telling that you did not complete the quotation of the paragraph: “The TSA ran about 70 tests at Los Angeles, 75 at Chicago and 145 at San Francisco.”
And the conclusion of the study: That SF0 screeners (which is a much smaller airport than ORD or LAX) were more often tested and therefore better able to pass the test.
At least now you admit that the study is old.
January 1, 2010, 12:28 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
I think we’ve already answered that question. Is not our Treasure Secretary a tax cheat?
January 1, 2010, 12:35 pmneurodoc says:
If unionization poses the threat to our national security that Hans and Hans Bader (different people?) contend it is, then why isn’t DeMint being joined by other senators in an effort to block unionization of TSA? And why aren’t they taking steps to block unionization rather than block Southers’ appointment? Is it a South Carolina tradition that its senators use these means to achieve their own ideologic ends?
January 1, 2010, 12:38 pmMike Rudolph says:
Let he(she) who is without sin cast the first stone.
January 1, 2010, 12:45 pmJoe says:
Mention was made about “lying” to Congress. The original post spoke about “inaccurate” comments made that he himself told the committee about after testifying.
Also, given the context and 20 year time span, I truly don’t see this as a reason not to vote for the guy. I also find it almost amusing to suggest that loads of people in that sort of position never accessed private information in a comparable situation.
This does not mean it’s okay. But, it does mean that there should not be a “one strike and you are out” rule. It is one that will be totally hypocritical when practiced in the real world especially given the number of jobs out there to fill.
Not the same thing, but this is why I thought at the time that the whole ‘nannygate’ issue in the Clinton years (which popped up once again with Linda Chavez) was ridiculous.
We let pass (in a bipartisan manner) a whole lot worse than this sort of thing, including events much more recent than um 20 years. The fact that Republicans like DeMint who have a clear reason to hype on it have not (resting on something else) underlines to me that there really is no “fire” there. Sanctimonious talk about “lawbreaking” really is hard to take seriously, particularly when made by Republican supporters.
January 1, 2010, 1:04 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
It’s “let him” or “let her”, Mike. Take out the clause and you’ll see: “Let him cast the first stone.”
I’ve never cheated on my taxes.
January 1, 2010, 1:15 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Besides, it’s not just that Geithner cheated on his taxes. It’s that he didn’t pay up until he was caught, and then he didn’t pay back the stuff before the statute of limitations ran out, although he did owe that. And that he claimed that the problem was that he used TurboTax – that was the sum total of the need he felt to understand the tax code, although it had been explained to him that his taxes were a special case. And that the Treasury Dept runs the IRS.
January 1, 2010, 1:19 pmMike Rudolph says:
Actually we’re both wrong — Not that I want to get into a holy war on here — I used that quote because it bothers me when the Dems use petty attacks on the Republicans and vice versa. Who among our elected officials or any of the citizens in this country is without “sin”.
Of course you haven’t cheated on your taxes however I’m sure I could find ONE fishy item in your past that, if you were an elected official or for that matter any public figure, could be used to discredit you. The point of the Bible passage in a political context is that we should disagree with the opposition on important things and not petty things.
John 8:7 (King James Version)
7So when they continued asking him, he lifted up himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.
January 1, 2010, 1:28 pmRowerinVA says:
I’m sympathetic to the fact that this illegal activity took place 20 years ago; people do learn, change, improve. Sometimes. So, we look to whether there are indicia of whether this nominee has changed for the better, or whether he has stayed the kind of break-the-rules, everyone-does-it type that he was in the 1980s.
What’s our data point? Here’s four: on the extremely important issue of how he explained this incident in his Senate application, was he forthright? Did he check his records and make sure his statements were truthful and complete? Is it plausible that he misremembered so important an incident, when he had been censured and very nearly fired by the FBI? Where he made “mistakes,” do they appear to be random rather than deliberate — for example, do the mistakes as often cast him in a too-negative light as they cast him in a too-positive one?
No, no, no, and no. Case closed: he remains dishonest.
So, we aren’t so much judging him by his illegal behavior 20 years ago as by his failure to demonstrate that he has changed, and even his demonstration that he is still fundamentally dishonest or at the very least, tremendously careless to the point of overweening arrogance.
January 1, 2010, 1:35 pmrpt says:
Happy new year, Mr. right to work press release. Minimum wage-no benefit security personnel are certainly the way to go.
January 1, 2010, 1:41 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
I’m not wrong. If you’re going to use the formulation “let [he or him] who is …” it’s “him”. The subject is the understood “you” – “[You] let him who is without sin cast the first stone.”
Either way, it does not mean we should have no standards at all. Should we open the prison gates and let all the murderers and rapists out because we have gotten a speeding ticket?
January 1, 2010, 1:43 pmrpt says:
Hans=Hans Bader=Corproate Enterprise Institute lobbyist/spokeperson.
January 1, 2010, 1:44 pmCornellian says:
Does DeMint have some basis for thinking the TSA will become unionized if Southers is appointed and will not become unionized if Southers isn’t appointed? Or is DeMint just holding up Southers until he can extract some kind of promise from the White House on unionization?
January 1, 2010, 1:44 pmrpt says:
Typical Hans.
January 1, 2010, 1:45 pmorca says:
“Sen. DeMint opposes Southers because he fears unionization of TSA personnel.”
How bizarre.
Does he hate all police unions?
January 1, 2010, 2:00 pmTweets that mention The Volokh Conspiracy » Blog Archive » Our Embattled TSA Nominee -- Topsy.com says:
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Eugene Volokh, Eugene Volokh. Eugene Volokh said: Our Embattled TSA Nominee: The attempted Christmas Day terrorist attack on a commercial airliner has brought at.. http://bit.ly/6wshn9 [...]
January 1, 2010, 2:01 pmJones' Cell Mate says:
I love it. After being caught improperly accessing confidential information and turning that information over to law enforcement, Southers lies about his efforts. Then, when asked why someone whose default position is to abuse his access to sensitive information is fit to run the TSA, he actually invokes the “I did it for the kids” defense- and people buy it.
I’m starting to think all of our currency should have Mencken’s picture on it.
January 1, 2010, 2:06 pmInstapundit » Blog Archive » JONATHAN ADLER: Our Embattled TSA Nominee. “As I noted back in November, Southers was censured by … says:
[...] ADLER: Our Embattled TSA Nominee. “As I noted back in November, Southers was censured by the FBI for asking law enforcement [...]
January 1, 2010, 2:12 pmTwirip says:
Why don’t you ask those other Senators?
January 1, 2010, 2:15 pmTwirip says:
Because ….. Republicans are in the habit of appointing lawbreakers to important government posts?
Sounds like you’ve got the sanctimonious talk down pat yourself.
January 1, 2010, 2:19 pmTwirip says:
It would be nice if they were not all tax cheats, don’t you think? I don’t think it’s asking too much that they obey the same laws they impose on the rest of us.
January 1, 2010, 2:21 pmluxurytwist says:
I don’t think anyone is arguing that every nominee for every position has to be perfect in every way, but is it really too much to ask that someone who is nominated for a post that directly affects our policies and laws on privacy not be specifically a miscreant on privacy issues? Seriously?
Do the apologists here really not see the difference between this offense and if he had been dinged for a nanny problem?
January 1, 2010, 2:39 pmpchuck says:
So this is the best Obama can do for TSA? Honestly?
January 1, 2010, 2:40 pmJoseph Slater says:
Luxurytwist:
But do you have any evidence that the database issue it the basis for DeMint putting a hold on Southers? Because again, all the statements I’ve seen from DeMint on the issue reference the union issue but not the database issue. I won’t claim to be an expert on all things DeMint, so again, if anyone can show me otherwise, I would be interested.
January 1, 2010, 2:46 pmluxurytwist says:
Slater, are you saying I’m only allowed to be concerned on exactly the same terms as DeMint? Why do I give a fig what he thinks? Let’s consider this ourselves, instead of being knee-jerk partisans.
January 1, 2010, 2:52 pmOctavian says:
Not surprisingly, “yes.”
January 1, 2010, 2:54 pmjccamp says:
First, the database issue is not insignificant. I believe that accessing, say, NCIC for personal reasons can be charged as a wire fraud, a felony, although it seldom is. It was a termination offense in my agency.
Next, I believe the issue of unionization is reason for the objection by Demint. Harry Reid was trying to force a vote (on the nominee) by acclamation (“All in favor, say ‘Aye’. The vote carries.”) without any debate (over the nominee or unionization) and no recorded vote, so that those who have postulated “Let it go to a vote” don’t understand the dynamics. Demint is trying to force a floor debate on unionization by using the nominee as a stalking horse, so to speak. Reid is doing the opposite, avoiding the larger debate by avoiding any debate on the nominee.
Whether you agree or disagree that unions might hamper TSA reaction to threat, I don’t see why a debate could not be helpful.
January 1, 2010, 3:11 pmEric says:
Has anybody really checked to see if his story about “the kid and the criminal” really holds water? First he gave phoney-baloney info to the committee, then when he discovered there were records, he quietly amends his story, and we are supposed to believe him? How do you not recall the details of an incident like that, where rightfully your career should have been in jeopardy, and you had so much emotional interest in it because it was “for the child?” More likely he is still lying about trying to use the records to get revenge, not protect anyone.
Or he has committed so many of these “incidents” in his career (and only got caught once) that he can’t remember the details of each one…
Eric
p.s. unionization is an excellent reason to keep the nomination on hold…
January 1, 2010, 3:14 pmKevin R.C. O'Brien says:
There are several separate issues here as far as I can see.
1. Southers’s previous abuse of his position to stalk his ex-wife and the guy that replaced him in her affections. For you or me, that would be multiple counts of a serious crime, but because he was “special” he simply got a letter in his file saying he’d been a bad boy, and he evaded punishment by promising to be more careful next time.
2. Southers’s misrepresentation (until someone made him backpedal), under oath, of incident #1, and the extent of his personal involvement. For you or me, this would be perjury and we’d be looking at checking into accommodations provided by the fine folks at the Bureau of Prisons. But because he’s “special,” he gets a mulligan, and a wink and a nod from the fine folks in Congress — after all, who are they to get upset about a little lying? It’s their mother’s milk.
3. Southers’s interest, or lack of the same, in bringing the benefits of unionization to the quasi-sentient carbon-based bipeds of TSA. It figures that this comparatively trivial matter is the one someone in the Senate (DeMint) has picked as his hill to die on. Let’s assume arguendo that Wagner Act unionization would make the TSA sluggish, ineffective, and incompetent, and bring it to cross-purposes with its ostensible raison d’etre. After all, that’s what it has done for, say, the moribund auto and steel industries. In what material way would that TSA differ from today’s TSA? Sure, it would probably cost us more, but TSA already costs us more every year, and has no affect on travel safety, and does not even inconvenience terrorists — just tourists. The number of terrorists caught by the TSA in its eight year reign of error is holding hard at zero, and Southers won’t change that.
Is Southers exactly the kind of bum who can only thrive in the low expectations of government? Yes. Is he a man whose adherence to law (and the Constitution) is demonstrably situational? Yes. But can he make the TSA worse? Probably not. He can’t make it any better, either. It’s basically welfare for its employees, nothing more.
Look at the previous inmates of TSA’s corner office. Kip Hawley. David Stone. John Magaw. Southers is just a new clown in the same old clown suit. No point getting excited about him, unless your game is partisan politics and he’s your shuttlecock du jour.
January 1, 2010, 3:19 pmSouthers: Almost a Perfect Fit for the TSA « Buttle’s World says:
[...] buttle @ 12:32 On the plus side, he’s sleazy and dishonest. On the minus side, he’s only admitted to a misdemeanor. I thought the Dumb Bastard (as Tammy Bruce calls Him) only appointed actual [...]
January 1, 2010, 3:32 pmPerseus says:
Minimum wage-no benefit security personnel are certainly the way to go.
And where is the evidence that unionization actually improves security?
Hans=Hans Bader=Corproate Enterprise Institute lobbyist/spokeperson.
Typical RPT ad hominem.
January 1, 2010, 3:48 pmJoseph Slater says:
For the record, were TSA to be unionized, it wouldn’t be “Wagner Act” type unionization. Federal employees have a much more restrictive statute that covers (most) of them. It doesn’t allow strikes and doesn’t allow bargaining over many subjects that private sector workers covered by the NLRA can bargain over (e.g., wages and hours of work).
And again, all the other lower-mid level employees at DHS have these limited collective bargaining rights (and most police, firefighter, and other emergency workers have even broader collective bargaining rights). And again, were TSA to be privatized (as seems to be the wish of many here), all those workers would instantly get FULL NLRA bargaining rights.
Plus, despite Hans’s hackish unsupported conclusions to the contrary, there is no evidence that collective bargaining rights interferes with the efficiency of first-responders / emergency workers.
And I still haven’t heard that DeMint’s reason for the hold was anything other than the union issue.
So unless somebody can show me something different, I’m sticking with my opinion that DeMint is just being a knee-jerk, anti-union hack, and to that extent, he’s putting dumb ideology over national security.
January 1, 2010, 3:56 pmJoseph Slater says:
Perseus:
I think DeMint has the burden of proof to show that unionization could hurt national security. Again, all the rest of DHS has collective barganing rights, as to police, firefighters, etc.
January 1, 2010, 3:57 pmRuss says:
It’s kinda sad when partisanship has degraded our judgment to the level where some of us are defending a law-breaker and abuser of government power.
We’re not talking about someone who failed to stop at a stoplight or used a coupon out of date – this individual used power given him in a government position to do something which all of us would go to prison over. Additionally, it sounds a great deal like he was stalking an ex, which most of us would have found as a possible troubling precursor to something far more foul.
Lots of people have spoken glibly about his trying to protect his underage child, but no one has yet presented any evidence of what the guy’s crime was. Please, if you have such evidence, then show it to us for mitigation, and then explain why he didn’t use the system to rectify the situation.
Additionally, though a while ago, he then turned and lied about it. Don’t try to paper over this with “Well, all politicians lie.” They do so b/c we let them get away with it. Saying such things is deflection simply b/c you have no further defense beyond “They all do it.” How does that play in court?
When our governmental overlords don’t have to follow the laws they impose on the rest of us, we’re no longer in a democratic society – we’re treading dangerously close to the tyrannies we’ve seen throughout the world, especially when those in power start pushing the boundaries even further and still getting away with it.
January 1, 2010, 4:04 pmJones' Cell Mate says:
It’s kinda sad when partisanship has degraded our judgment to the level where some of us are defending a law-breaker and abuser of government power.
You mean we shouldn’t support a candidate with a dubious track record (and honesty problems) simply because he’s wearing the right jersey? Even when his malfeasance directly implicates the concerns that his team claimed to have had for the last decade? Russ, you’re talkin’ crazy- you must have been all up in the champagne room last night.
January 1, 2010, 4:18 pmRyan Waxx says:
From what I can make out of the evidence, there are three different issues here:
1. The original offense of using government databases to do personal snooping: This would be an extremely serious problem… if happened 5 years ago instead of 20, or if there were other similar incidents in the man’s more recent past. But it didn’t, and there hasn’t. Standing alone, I don’t think this is enough.
2. The inaccurate testimony given to congress: From what I understand, the man realized his mistake and turned himself in before anyone discovered the discrepancy. That makes me believe it was an honest mistake… and even if it wasn’t, the info is out in the public domain, mainly because of his own reporting of it. Its hard to see why this is disqualifying.
3. The unionization issue: On the one hand, people who purport to be unable to see the problem in having an organization unconcerned with the performance of security duties going about creating work rules that impact how those duties are carried out seriously need remedial lessons in human nature.
On the other hand, does having an opinion on the subject of unionization disqualify the man? Can he actually singlehandedly decide to allow unionization, without approval from his boss Obama? And if it’s Obama’s decision, then didn’t that ship sail when we elected Obama?
January 1, 2010, 4:25 pmSG says:
I think DeMint has the burden of proof to show that unionization could hurt national security. Again, all the rest of DHS has collective barganing rights, as to police, firefighters, etc.
I disagree, the person who’s proposing the change bears the burden of proof. That’s you. What benefit to the nation’s security do you see TSA unionization providing?
January 1, 2010, 4:27 pmThe plain truth says:
The events as transcribed in this continuing episode is seemingly becoming all the more typical of the way its done on the hill isn’t it. Our gosh-darn administrators never seem to come clean.
A government can be a blessing if it is well administered. And yet as more business practices of the 111th congress are revealed the more acrimonious revulsion I feel, and I am seriously fearful the administrators of our republic aren’t competent enough or honest enough to do the business of the people. The coin of the realm of the current group of late can be described as suspending reality (or blatant lying) and then quickly stick something up our behinds. Has the current crop of citizens living within our culture become so corrupted and incompetent in their personal industry as to need despotic government?
January 1, 2010, 4:33 pmJoseph Slater says:
Ryan:
You are correct in saying that ship sailed with Obama. On the other hand, I note that despite your apparently very strong opinions on the subject of unionization, you fail to note any problems that unionization has created for emergency, security, and public safety workers. Could you, for example, explain to me what problems collective bargaining rights for the NYPD, NY Fire Department, and EMT workers created on 9/11? Or give an example of collective bargaining rights interfering with a response to any emergency?
January 1, 2010, 4:33 pmPerseus says:
Somehow, I don’t think that President Obama will follow President Reagan’s example (PATCO) and fire such employees in the event that they conduct an illegal strike.
And since you have provided no reason to believe that unionization will actually improve security in any meaningful way, I’ll stick with my opinion that you are just being a knee-jerk, union hack (so typical among my fellow academics), and to that extent, you’re putting dumb ideology over national security.
January 1, 2010, 4:33 pmPAULV says:
A private company will lose a government contract for poor perfomance. There is a restraint on unions for private companies that does not exist for government unions. The TSA is not known for quick adjustments to changing circumstances and unionization will not help. DeMint wants a debate that Reid wants to avoid. Why does Reid want to avoid a debate? reid is delaying the vote, not DeMint,
January 1, 2010, 4:34 pmJoseph Slater says:
Perseus:
I’m actually sure Obama would act quickly and punitively to punish illegal strikers.
Second, again, since public safety workers like police and fire routinely have bargaining rights and all other employees at the DHS have bargaining rights and there is no evidence that this has caused any problems in security or response to emergencies, I would say the burden is on DeMint to show why it would be a special problem for TSA. Or I might even say the union side carried its burden.
In other words, there is a long, specific track record of collective bargaining in public safety agencies, and it supports my position. Hacks choose to ignore that history, and I note you are ignoring it.
January 1, 2010, 4:46 pmSG says:
Let’s assume arguendo that everything Mr.Slater supposes is true – TSA unionization will have no impact on national security, DeMint is solely motivated by anti-unionism and the lack of TSA director is harming national security. Even if all these are true, Southers and the Obama administration are the ones putting the nation at risk by placing their desire to allow the TSA workers to unionize ahead of the security needs of the nation.
The only way I can see to justify refusing to concede on this is if 1) you believe the lack of a TSA union actively harms national security or 2) you feel unionization of the TSA is more important than national security. Which one is it?
DeMint may be mistaken about the security implications, but I believe he is sincere in his anti-union stance for TSA workers. The TSA union might not be Wagner Act, but that’s certainly what people think of when they think of union. And on a slight tangent, do you think a Wagner Act union for TSA workers would be harmful to national security?
January 1, 2010, 4:49 pmcommon_sense says:
It is almost impossible to show that unions restrict emergency services because there aren’t any counter-examples that I’m aware of. Much like the bailout, we don’t have good evidence of what would happen without either unionization or the bailout. Having done some pro-bono work for a large city police department, my general sense is that the unions made things harder, rather than easier. A good example is the difficulty in punishing police officers. It was almost impossible, and the logistical difficulties kept most supervisors from trying. This, combined with qualified immunity, protected some bad behavior. The counter to this is what would happen without a union–it is entirely possible that some superiors could abuse the disciplinary process. With the ongoing increase in professionalism among police supervisors, I think this is less and less of a problem. Like most unions, the time for them is past and now they are a drag on systems. I don’t see the justification in adding more of them, especially among emergency responders.
January 1, 2010, 4:56 pmaeolius says:
I thought that the Bush rule is that we don’t ask questions about what happened years ago.
This guy was wrong, took his reprimand and went on.
Demanding perfect behavior for public service started in the Thomas hearings and the Clinton witch hunts.
January 1, 2010, 5:03 pmIt is appropriate that this appears on a legal blog. As lawyers have done their part in tearing down witnesses credibility by magnifying normal human frailties.
None of us are without sins. Perhaps before being admitted to the Bar, lawyers should be forced to undergo the scrutiny of the standards of behavior they often impose on others
SG says:
common_sense:
Or suppose the unionized workers are no less effective per person, but cost 50% more. That’s a different axis that’s being ignored, but that’s a real cost and one morne by the tax payers. If nothing else, we could have had 50% more security workers for the same cost.
Either the union affects some change relative to a non-union workforce, in which case we can meaningful discuss what changes they affect on what impact that has on their ob performance, or they don’t affect a change in which case they’re unnecessary. But I wish Mr Slater would stop telling me all the stuff a TSA union isn’t going to do and start telling me what it is going to do and so there could be a meaningful discsussion on the merits.
January 1, 2010, 5:10 pmArthur Kirkland says:
The problems (abuse of information, memory issues) strike me as sufficiently substantial and on-point to suggest that another job (with another layer of supervision, if nothing else) would be more appropriate for this nominee.
Regarding unionization: if the employees want to form a union, a union it should be.
January 1, 2010, 5:32 pmJohn Oh says:
In 2006, an ICE agent used the same database to gain information about an illegal alien charged with a serious felony who was allowed bail on the charge of “agricultural trespass.” When that material surfaced in a campaign ad, aimed at the DA running for Governor responsible for the downgrading (and many, many others), the ICE agent was fired and prosecuted criminally. If he had been found guilty he would have gone to federal prison.
That’s how serious unauthorized access of the NCIC database is.
How Southers got by with a mere censure is puzzling, and I think the recent controversy about the ICE agent may have helped Southers refresh his memory.
January 1, 2010, 5:43 pmSG says:
Regarding unionization: if the employees want to form a union, a union it should be.
For private sector employees I agree with you, but I don’t think public sector employees (i.e., voters) should be able to unionize. Unionizing allows them to effectively be on both sides of the table. See California, New Jersey and New York for how this works out in the long run.
January 1, 2010, 5:49 pmOctavian says:
I don’t know about other jurisdictions, but in Michigan, lawyers are forced to undergo such scrutiny. You would know that if you ever had to navigate the Character/Fitness review process for being admitted into the Bar.
January 1, 2010, 5:50 pmOctavian says:
I’m sure a unionized TSA will be just as competent and efficient as the unions for both GM and Chrysler proved to be.
January 1, 2010, 6:00 pmjosh bornstein says:
SG,
You asked for possible ways that unionization could lead to better security. I have several (all are, of course, subject to debate). But that’s true for every single point that anyone makes, on pretty much every issue in every argument.
SG,
January 1, 2010, 6:17 pmThere are probably many more examples. And people of good faith can certainly argue over whether all of them, or any of them would actually occur. You asked for some examples, and I think you now have them. :-)
orca says:
If the Republicans want to start winning elections again, they’ll first have to muzzle right-wing fanatics like DeMint.
January 1, 2010, 6:36 pmDangerMouse says:
Does he hate all police unions?
Interesting that many of you have failed to notice that among some of the biggest problems with unions like police unions, and presumably also the case with a TSA union, is the inability to remove bad people from their jobs. Bad cops are protected by unions. Bad cops, or as the left typically calls them, pigs, are the biggest defenders of unions because it lets them keep doing their bad stuff again and again and again. How can you fire a police officer? In some cities, it has to go through multiple levels of reviews, with multiple incidents, before and cop is sacked. And those reviews are controlled at all levels by police officials, or if not, people friendly to police. The only way a cop can really ever get fired in some cities is if he’s convicted of a felony. Convicted, not charged.
I assume the same would apply to the TSA. Sure, a TSA union, like a police union, won’t stop the dedicated personnel who are first responders. But it will protect bad actors. A TSA official lets a bomb through? Too frigging bad. He can’t be fired, he’s owed a review, and must have had documented history of bad acts before he can be fired.
TSA union = can only be fired upon the second plane blowing up. The first plane being destroyed is just a mistake that can happen to anyone.
Don’t believe me? Do you libs really watch police unions?
January 1, 2010, 6:59 pmDangerMouse says:
Josh, do you live in the real world? Let’s see:
1. Unionization will lead to better working conditions. We’ll have the same workers, but in better working conditions. This will lead to the workers doing a better job, which will lead to increased safety for all of us.
This is patently untrue, as demonstrated by multiple failed school systems across the country. Unionized teachers do not lead to them doing a better job. Instead, it protects incompetent teachers.
2. The better working conditions will lead to more satisfied workers. They’ll be the same people, but happier workers do better work, and this will increase the safety of all of us.
This is essentially a restatement of your first point, and just as demonstrably false.
3. Others will see that working conditions have improved, and that workers there are happier. Even more qualified people will want to work there, under union protections, and almost by definition, better (ie, more qualified or experienced) workers will lead to an increase in the safety of all of us.
Wrong. Instead, what workers will see is that incompetent people are protected by the union, leading to demoralized jobs. Once again, this is borne out in the public schools. Also, plenty of cop unions know that bad cops are protected and hence the good cops get demoralized pretty quickly if they are forced to work with such bad actors. You need to read some cop blogs more.
4. Unionization will lead to higher wages (I doubt a 50% increase, but if you say so.). Even if working conditions are not much better, and even if workers are not much happier, the higher wages will attract more qualified applicants. Again, getting better workers will lead to increased performance (and therefore, more safety.)
When incompetent people are protected by a union in a job that pays a big salary, it means that ethical, honest people will either quit, or become corrupt themselves in order to get that salary.
Honestly, your 4 points bear no realtion to reality whatsoever. You sound like some university professor spouting off the latest marxist theory, without a clue how the real world operates. Public unions protect idiotic employees. Ever hear of the “rubber room”, for NYC teachers that can’t be fired because of union rules, and are paid to sit and do nothing? Or how many cops do you know who have committed CRIMES while on the job, and are still protected because of their union?
The only reason why the libs want the TSA to form a union is so that the union will donate politically to the libs. If you permitted the TSA to form a union, but made it illegal for any union member to donate to those politicians, then there’d be no demand for a union anymore. Period. You know it, and I know it, and the rest of this stupid theorizing about the glories of public unions is just bunk.
January 1, 2010, 7:09 pmRyan Waxx says:
This isn’t necessarily the case. Not only is it a perfect manifestation of blind faith “well of course better work conditions lead to better work done! Umm… why? Because the employees have better work conditions, of course!”… but several common ways unions commonly compel “better working conditions” are counter to the goal of better security.
1. Unionization will lead to higher wages: Taking your own example, it’s clear you’ve done what passes for thinking for a liberal. Now lets take your figure of 50% more wages…
Let us assume first THAT THE FRIGGING MONEY FAIRY DOES NOT EXIST, OK? Can we have that as a starting parameter? Because if you have 50% more wages, and the money fairy does not exist, then you have 50% less workers! I cannot imagine how that would hurt safety, can you?
Now, if what you are proposing that we raise the amount of money budgeted to TSA increases, perhaps with a nice earmark to ensure the employees get the money instead of the admins, then fine. But then the budget increase is what caused the “better work conditions”, NOT the union. And… surprise! That’s possible without unionization.
2. Unions have a track record of pushing for better chances for their employees to get holidays off. Which is great… until you take one second to think “hey, isn’t that when airline security is put under the hardest stress?”
3. Unions love extensive work rules: Who may be assigned where, when they can have their shifts changed. In a system where there are already reports of problems with unstaffed security lines and checkpoints during certain times of the day, I’d like to hear you tell the class just how the happiest employee in the world can improve security at a checkpoint she isn’t at because work rules interfered with good daylong coverage.
4. Unions are known to fight for a smaller percentage of part-time employees for several good reasons from the union’s point of view. Problem is, none of those reasons are good from management’s point of view. This ties heavily into the coverage problem mentioned earlier.
Now, I’ve provided actual reasons based on actual motivations of actual unions why union involvement can be detrimental. You on the other hand made your first three numbered points merely progressively greater exaggerations on the first one. “Unions make better conditions, which magically make satisfied workers, and the happy factor just multiplies itself so that more happy workers come! Oh the happiness!”… and the fourth “advantage” was actually a major problem that you re-spun with a built-in assumption of a major budget increase that has nothing to do with unions at all.
I humbly submit that therefore, the anti-union side is the only side that has posted reasons why they are right on the merits, and the union side so far only has postulated scenarios involving divine unicorn intervention.
January 1, 2010, 7:17 pmmichael says:
Isn’t that pretty much what Woodward and Bernstein won a Pulitzer Prize for doing? ;-)
January 1, 2010, 7:30 pmneurodoc says:
You’re right on the grammar (Let he who is without sin cast the first stone; let him, Joe, cast the first stone); she’s right that Geithner can fairly be said to have “cheated” on his taxes.
January 1, 2010, 7:32 pmneurodoc says:
So again, why if it is a plausible concern that unions might hamper TSA reaction to threat, is DeMint the only one beating that drum? The other 99 senators are indifferent to genuine security issues, or they are all fearful of incurring labor’s wrath, or what?
January 1, 2010, 7:45 pmEH says:
It is appropriate that this appears on a legal blog. As lawyers have done their part in tearing down witnesses credibility by magnifying normal human frailties.
The guy made a choice, and it just so happens that the choice me made was one that went on his Permanent Record. When the cards were dealt, he only opted to take responsibility at the last possible moment (not to mention after possibly perjuring himself. I know, not a real crime). I’m sure the criminal attorneys among us can empathize with the power of contrition at sentencing hearings and how credibly they are viewed.
We have all seen nominees take responsibility for one legal excursion or another right before the vote, in hopes that a little contrition will get them over the hump. Personally, I’d prefer our President’s standards for nominees be a bit higher than that.
January 1, 2010, 7:47 pmmariner says:
Perhaps DeMint should simply have demanded, say, $100 million for his state in exchange for releasing his hold.
January 1, 2010, 7:54 pmneurodoc says:
You may think so, but the Federal Labor Relations Act passed more than 30 years ago and I’m not aware of any efforts by Dems or Repubs to repeal it. (And you point to state governments, subject to their own labor laws, while the conversation here is about the federal government and its labor laws.)
January 1, 2010, 8:00 pmneurodoc says:
You left out a biggie – unions can operate as a check on bad managers and bad management, which is not rare in federal agencies.
January 1, 2010, 8:04 pmjosh bornstein says:
Sigh. It would be great if people actually read the posts of other people. As I made *crystal clear* in my comments, all of my 4 ideas might possibly happen, might possible not happen, and that I was making these points in response to SG, who had said in good faith that she could not come up with any ideas at all. You both (well, mostly Ryan) offer counter-arguments. Which is perfectly fine.
If you guys respond to a post that says, “I can’t think of a single conceivable reason why it was good for Reagan to fire the air control workers.”, I presume that you could offer a few ideas of why it was good. If the opposite were true, and the same poster said, “I can’t think of a single *bad* result that could possibly have occurred from Reagan firing the workers.”, you (being smart people) could have given counter-examples. That’s what lawyers do every day–we make arguments in favor of our clients’ positions . . . even if we may not personally agree with all of them. The fact that I made arguments that you disagree with does NOT mean that I support each of these positions. Or, even if I support them in principle, I agree that they work in practice. I understand that neither of you are lawyers, but you both participate in this blog extensively, so you have a great deal of experience with people on the VC raising arguments that may not be consistent to their individual mores. (This is, to a large extent, a legal blog, after all.)
DangerMouse. Some of your points are simply false. I was a teacher before I went to law school. Have you taught? Are there public school teachers in your family? (My sister and father are and were.) There are horror stories about union protections keeping grossly incompetent teachers on the job. There are horror stories about everything. A few nutjobs going on killing sprees should not result in me losing my 2nd Amendment right to have a gun for self-defense. Criminals and terrorists should not result in a completely loss of my privacy rights, and I know for damn sure you are not suggesting that. Even limiting myself to my own personal knowledge; I can think of 3 instances (in the San Diego Unified School district) where great teachers were protected from unfair retribution only by the presence of their union.)
Ryan: You wrote a lot, and I won’t go line-by-line. But I think you mis-characterized some of my point. I never said that unions ‘magically make satisfied workers. . . .’ I do think I suggested that unionization CAN result in better work conditions, which I think is not only a reasonable point, but is inarguable from an historical perspective. And to suggest that better working conditions MAY lead to happier workers is, I would think, a very logical assumption. I do agree that a “happy” worker does not easily equate to a better-functioning worker. But surely you would agree that–all things being equal–a more-contented worker is more likely to remain at a job, and not quit, right? From what I’ve read about Israeli methods (El Al), their screening process is part science and part ‘art.’ They question a visitor till they are satisfied that the visitor poses no threat. I am assuming that experience on the job goes a long way to making someone expert at this assessment. So, even if better working conditions do not entice more qualified workers; those improvements surely will *retain* more workers, which means that the people doing the screening will be more qualified. If you had to board a flight, and you knew nothing else about the screeners, would you prefer the guy to have one year on the job, or, 10 years on the job?
The unions I have belonged to (teaching; operating a fork-lift truck; bowling alley; security company) *never* pushed for days-off on holidays. Rather, since we were paid a premium for working on those days, almost everyone WANTED to work holidays, and as a result, those with seniority and high performance reviews got first crack at those plum assignments. So, unionization might result in exactly what you want . . . the very best working on the days you were talking about.
Finally, please note that my 4th point was not based on MY assumption of a major budget increase . . . I merely took the assumption that SG had already made in a prior post, and gave a *possible* positive outcome. You may be right that there would be a negative result. But it’s not (in spite of your argument) a certainty. And SG (to repeat myself) was not asking for only arguments that were 100% inarguable, or for arguments that I personally vouched for. She was asking for POSSIBLE arguments, which I was happy to provide.
I think I live in the real world, and as one who supported himself all through undergrad, grad, and law school, I reject that assumption that anyone making pro-union claims does not. You both seem to feel that it’s ridiculous for anyone to argue that unionization can result in better working conditions. To me, that shows an impressive lack of knowledge of our country’s own history. I personally think that anyone who argues that unions always result in a net benefit in every situation are a bit silly. And those who argue that they never result in a net benefit are equally silly. There are simply too many real-life examples of horrific working conditions in non-union shops to believe otherwise. (I do recognize that this is less true recently, with some state and federal rules in place that govern things like minimum wage, safety conditions, child labor, etc..)
January 1, 2010, 8:07 pmneurodoc says:
A TSA union will mean higher wages for TSA employees? If federal employees aren’t allowed to bargain over wages or strike, then how will a union bring that about? Will one of you table-thumpers explain this to us?
January 1, 2010, 8:09 pmjosh bornstein says:
Neurodoc,
January 1, 2010, 8:10 pmThanks for catching my miss. And I’m sure there are many others . . . this is far from my field of expertise.
Mark Field says:
Unions are pretty far down on the list of CA’s most significant problems.
January 1, 2010, 8:13 pmjccamp says:
neurodoc –
“The other 99 senators are indifferent to genuine security issues, or they are all fearful of incurring labor’s wrath, or what?”
You mention something untouched thus far in the discussion, that is, where are the other senators in this debate? I presume that if Demint were out there all alone, Reid wouldn’t have much trouble getting this to a vote. I likewise presume that the Republicans see a chance to hold Harry’s feet to the fire on something and can force a floor debate before a procedural vote to move the nomination to an actual vote by acclamation. Or some damned thing. Maybe Reid is worried about the impact of the database inquiry if an actual debates occurs, so he is trying to muzzle the debate for that reason.
It strikes me as the two parties playing grab-ass with each other, while the real motivations on both sides are largely unsaid. In the meantime, the TSA remains what it has been since its inception – poorly led and poorly managed – not that Southers appears to be the man to change any of that.
But again, why not have a debate on the Senate floor? Maybe there will appear some gem amidst the posturing.
January 1, 2010, 8:21 pmJones' Cell Mate says:
Unions are pretty far down on the list of CA’s most significant problems.
Nope, they are right at the top as they exacerbate California’s most compelling problem- an inability to curb spending. And before you repeat the tired “Propositions are the problem” canard, realize that there are numerate folks among you. As such, any such assertion should be coupled with a legitimate numerical representation substantiating the claim.
Good luck with that.
January 1, 2010, 8:23 pmRyan Waxx says:
Psst. The bad manager is a government employee. Now, try again… in concert with reality this time.
January 1, 2010, 8:24 pmGuy says:
33% less workers. 50% more means “times 1.5″, the reciprocal of 1.5 is 2/3, so 33% less.
I have no real point, just can’t stand bad math.
January 1, 2010, 8:35 pmEH says:
Nope, they are right at the top as they exacerbate California’s most compelling problem– an inability to curb spending.
Well then, what makes the unions worse than “having things to spend money on?” Methinks you’re making a scoping error.
January 1, 2010, 8:39 pmNI says:
Let me suggest an alternative viewpoint.
It’s cold, hard reality that the way to get things done in Washington is by lying, cheating and stealing. Not saying I like it, just saying this is one of many facts of life I don’t especially care for, but that doesn’t change that it’s a fact.
Maybe we should just give up on the illusion that we need or even desire honest people in public office, and instead focus on (1) what policies will they implement; (2) what managerial skills do they have; and (3) are they the vicious, nasty SOBs necessary to get anything done in Washington? If Southers will keep the terrorists at bay, I personally don’t care if he’s never spoken an honest word in his life.
January 1, 2010, 8:59 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Nope.
“Who is without sin” is a clause that can modify a subject or an object. So take it out.
“Let him cast the first stone.”
You can see this with a different sentence.
John, who has a blue shirt, casts stones.
Let John, who has a blue shirt, cast stones.
Which is really
You let John, who has a blue shirt, cast stones.
In the first sentence “John” is the subject. In the second “You” is the subject and “John” is an object. It doesn’t matter if you aren’t using the pronoun. If you are, the first sentence uses the nominative case (He who has a blue shirt casts stones) and the second uses the objective case (You let him who has a blue shirt cast stones).
January 1, 2010, 9:21 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
And if you wake up in the morning safe but without civil liberties? …Don’t tell me about the Patriot Act. That was put through with the appropriate procedures. Souther’s transgression was referred to by him as “an error in judgment”. Fills me with confidence about his respect for the law.
January 1, 2010, 9:26 pmGuy says:
Serious defects in how the law-making procedures generally work in practice notwithstanding…
January 1, 2010, 9:50 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
My point is, you put a procedure in place and then you follow it. You can try to change the procedure if you think it gives you bad outcomes, but until it changes, if it has the force of law, you’re stuck with it. If you have such a procedure that has the force of law, for instance, you don’t go looking up somebody’s records for personal reasons, it is not a judgment call whether you follow it or not.
January 1, 2010, 9:56 pmGuy says:
I understand what you’re saying, maybe I’m just cynical because I gave up on the political branches ever making a good faith effort to follow the rule of law without constant judicial oversight ages ago.
January 1, 2010, 10:05 pmrpt says:
He should certainly do so. South Carolina certain needs it. Unfortunately, the attitude of Sanford, DeMint and Graham is that the citizens and children of the state should suffer for the sake of their ideological purity.
January 1, 2010, 10:11 pmrpt says:
Which is substantially more competent and efficient than GM and Chrysler management.
January 1, 2010, 10:16 pmcbinflux says:
The attempted Christmas Day terrorist attack on a commercial airliner has brought attention to the Senate’s
January 1, 2010, 10:25 pmfailuresuccess to not confirm President Obama’s nominee to head the Transportationa Security Administration, Erroll Southers.Ryan Waxx says:
No, you’re right on both counts. Both on the math, and on the fact that the exact figures aren’t really relevant.
January 1, 2010, 10:31 pmGuy says:
I really didn’t mean to suggest that the figures were relevant, think of it as being like the the nitpicking over whether “he” or “him” is the one who should cast the first stone, which is apparently a far more interesting subject of debate than what Jesus meant by it.
January 1, 2010, 10:37 pmMark Field says:
This is nonsense squared. First, it’s not unions which “exacerbate” the spending problem (though they do support some spending; as does everybody). Second, the “inability to curb spending” isn’t CA’s most compelling problem, or even necessarily a problem at all. What IS a problem is the failure to match spending with revenue. You can have high spending and high taxes, or you can have low spending and low taxes, but you can’t have high spending and low taxes. Well, the modern Republican party thinks you can, but I’m talking about what sensible people know. Third, CA has a problem much more serious than its irresponsible finances (and which causes that irresponsibility): lack of a republican government, resulting from (a) super-majoritarian rules and (b) gerrymandering.
January 1, 2010, 10:40 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
All right, I’ll talk about what Jesus meant by it.
The men who were going to stone the woman taken in adultery were administering the death penalty for her sin. Jesus stopped them from doing it; he also told her to straighten up.
He did not, however, put her in charge of public morals.
Geithner showed contempt for the process we have whereby people are taxed. He showed it three ways: by not paying the taxes he owed, although he signed a paper stating that he understood he was responsible for paying them, and took money that was given him for the purpose of paying them; by claiming, when he was caught, that he screwed up by using TurboTax, in other words, taking no responsibility for understanding his obligations, which he knew were out of the ordinary; and by paying up only what he had to, not the entire bill he owed. I’m not suggesting that we stone Geithner to death. I’m saying that it was wrong to put him in charge of the IRS (among other things) when he has shown himself not to take tax law seriously and to have no respect for his fellow taxpayers.
Is that better?
January 1, 2010, 10:50 pmrpt says:
Laura:
Thank you for the clear explanation on both the scriptural and practical sides of the point.
January 1, 2010, 10:57 pmorca says:
Doesn’t granting tenure to professors cause similar problems?
January 1, 2010, 11:08 pmGuy says:
Huh? How often can bombings be blamed on professors? I mean besides Ted Kaczynski. Not saying collective bargaining for the TSA is necessarily going to compromise safety but I don’t understand your counterargument.
January 1, 2010, 11:16 pmPerseus says:
I disagree, but I suspect that President Obama would shower sufficient largesse on them to avoid a strike in the first place.
I’d like to see how that long history evinces meaningful improvements in security as a direct result of unionization (or any other cartel for that matter).
Are you serious? California’s unfunded pension and health benefit liabilities for public employees are enormous, let alone the bloated size and salaries of the public sector. The most famous example of this is the city of Vallejo, which declared bankruptcy in 2008 because the unions (fire and electrical) refused to make adequate concessions.
January 1, 2010, 11:32 pmSG says:
What IS a problem is the failure to match spending with revenue. You can have high spending and high taxes, or you can have low spending and low taxes, but you can’t have high spending and low taxes.
Agreed.
Well, the modern Republican party thinks you can, but I’m talking about what sensible people know.
In the case of California, you have Republicans refusing to raise taxes and Democrats refusing to cut spending (I would argue largely at the behest of public sector unions, but that’s besides the point). I don’t see how you can exempt either party from the blame. The Dem’s could easily pass a budget with lower spending, but they have so far not been inclined to. The Rep’s can’t do that, but they can block tax hikes. But I don’t understand why it should be incumbent on Dems to increase taxes, especially when I don’t see what’s actually being purchased – is the increased spending actually providing a good ROI? I don’t see it.
The whole thing adds up to a dysfunctional government, but it’s a bipartisan problem.
January 1, 2010, 11:38 pmOctavian says:
Bahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What color is the sky of the planet that you dwell upon?
January 1, 2010, 11:41 pmOctavian says:
Good grief! Drinking the kool aid mightily heavily on New Year’s Day, aren’t you. There is no question that GM and Chrysler management is incompetent and inefficient. Unfortunately, the UAW is even more so. In fact, it’s common knowledge in the Detroit suburbs where I live that domestic cars rolling off the assembly lines on Mondays and Fridays are more likely to possess more defects than on the other days of the week because of lingering hangovers from the weekend or union employees getting an early drinking start for the weekend at Friday’s lunch break (if they even bother to return to work at all for the rest of the afternoon since there is always some fellow employee who will punch in for his absentee co-workers who fail to return).
January 1, 2010, 11:52 pmSG says:
josh bornstein, thanks for actually making the argument; I neither agree nor disagree with you. Your argument is colorable and the devil is in the details. I’d like to see the TSA employees randomly tested with high regularity and bonuses given to those who have high success rates and termination of those with low success rates. There’s nothing about a union that precludes this in theory, but there’s something that seems to preclude it in practice. I think it’s because a union is likely to represent the 51% percentile (and lower), not the 90-th percentile.
I’m not averse to paying more, only to paying more without a commensurate return. I am unconvinced that unionizing TSA employees will provide a greater return (can you point to any example where this has been the case?), but I appreciate you making the argument.
January 1, 2010, 11:54 pmOctavian says:
The failure of our domestic auto industry and the UAW’s exacerbation (at best) or facilitation (at worst) of such failure completely debunks the above notion.
January 1, 2010, 11:56 pmSG says:
I meant “But I don’t understand why it should be incumbent on Reps to increase taxes”
January 1, 2010, 11:56 pmOctavian says:
Yeah…then explain why the Republicans are polling much better than the Democrats for the 2010 races.
January 2, 2010, 12:00 amMark Field says:
SG, I substantially agree with you.
“Unfunded” has two potential solutions: less spending; more income. It’s a question of choosing between 2 different models of responsible financing. Of course, everyone gets to prefer his own choice; the point is that the issue should be resolved democratically. But if the people of CA want to pay for lots of pensions, that’s up to them as long as they fund them.
I have no idea what the example of Vallejo (pop. 116,000) is supposed to prove regarding CA as a whole. It would be more apt to mention Orange County’s irresponsible financing methods which led to its bankruptcy, but that was the fault of Republicans and a much larger issue, so I suppose it’ll get a pass here.
As far as unions go, on a statewide level, unions do have influence on the Democratic party, just as businesses have influence on the Republican party. Neither party is actually controlled by these influences, regardless of what partisans say. Both unions and businesses are perfectly entitled to lobby for their preferences. That doesn’t make either one “the” problem.
What makes CA dysfunctional is a political structure which renders responsible government (defined as balancing finances one way or the other) possible.
January 2, 2010, 12:05 amorca says:
The Republicans in Congress are less popular than the Democrats.
And now that the economy is recovering thanks to the Democrats…
January 2, 2010, 12:14 amSG says:
Mark Field:
Public choice theory says this is exactly the outcome that we should expect from public sector unions. Which party bears the most responsibility is secondary to the fact that it’s a non-optimal outcome and it’s an outcome that has been repeated multiple times.
Bringing it back to the topic at hand, we ought to have a convincing (not just colorable) argument that this is in the nation’s best interests (something I’m skeptical of but have not denied) before opening another avenue for this same problem.
January 2, 2010, 12:19 amChrisTS says:
Octavian:
Gee, that was illuminating.
January 2, 2010, 12:25 amChrisTS says:
Guy:
What about Bill Ayers and Bernadette Dorn? And, umm…umm… oh heck.
Guess I have to get out there and do some bombing to keep up with the tenured professors’ quota.* Having never bombed anything, I must be WAY behind.
*Does anyone know where I could get a beginners’ bomb kit?
January 2, 2010, 12:31 amLaura(southernxyl) says:
Chris, I’m sure you could find several options on the internet. It’s like Alice’s restaurant.
January 2, 2010, 12:46 amChrisTS says:
Oh, thank you, Dear. I’ll go looking. :-)
January 2, 2010, 12:58 amChrisTS says:
I just thought of an excellent VC ‘poll’: how many regular visitors to VC are nightowls?
January 2, 2010, 1:00 amGuy says:
In the case of California, neither party is to blame. The fault lies with the referendum system and the voters who consistently vote to limit the state’s power to raise taxes, while at the same time demanding enormously expansive social services funded by bond issues.
January 2, 2010, 1:04 amGuy says:
So how do you become dean? Set off a nuke?
January 2, 2010, 1:12 amSenatorX says:
SG: I’m not averse to paying more, only to paying more without a commensurate return.
Word.
January 2, 2010, 1:20 amJeff Walden says:
Haven’t read the comments, going just from one text search, but: I’m mildly surprised no one has drawn a comparison between this and Palin with “Troopergate”, apt or inapt tho the comparison might be when you investigate the details.
January 2, 2010, 1:44 amPerseus says:
Vallejo is symptomatic of the general fiscal problem faced by California’s state and local governments, which is aggravated by the disproportionate influence of public sector unions on the very representatives that you seem to think would be shining paragons of fiscal rectitude absent the fetters of direct democracy. Of course, if high taxes and representative government were the solution, states like NY (and “Drop Dead” NYC) and NJ or countries like France and Italy would be models for governments everywhere.
January 2, 2010, 2:00 amGuy says:
Corrected myself, referendums are subject to abuse enough, but initiatives lead to complete unaccountability and the high-jacking of government by small special interest groups.
January 2, 2010, 2:15 amneurodoc says:
The discussion here is about federal unions subject to the FLRA, not private sector ones subject to the NLRA (Wagner Act). The domestic auto industry and the UAW fall within the latter, not the former. Do you have any experience or detailed knowledge of the former? I do, having been employed in six (6) rather different agencies in the course of my career; having served as the first elected chapter president of the union in our headquarters office; having served as the president of an association of professionals in federal service; having duked it out myself with corrupt management and done pretty well at it; and knowing, as I do a federal labor relations specialist with a great deal of experience in different federal agencies, a union steward in a particularly dysfunctional agency (USPTO), and attorneys who undertake to represent federal employees. I don’t know how representative my own experiences and exposures have been, but I’m confident that they have left me far better informed than many here about unions in the federal sector.
January 2, 2010, 2:16 amneurodoc says:
Yes, managers in government are themselves government employees, as are their superiors, including the heads of their agencies and departments, as well as the head honcho himself, POTUS. But you do understand, don’t you, that just as the military distinguishes between officers and enlisted, with that distinction a very consequential one, the federal government distinguishes between managers and subordinate employees, that distinction being consequential too (e.g., managers are not part of the collective bargaining unit; disciplinary procedures are different; etc.) So, it is you who should try again in concert with reality, once you have minimally informed yourself about that of which you presume to pontificate.
January 2, 2010, 2:25 amneurodoc says:
The business of senatorial “holds” on nominations was not a well-known thing before the last few years when attention focused on some particular instances, like Jesse Helm’s use of them to bludgeon the State Department into doing what he want of them, like taking care of one of those he personally favored. Or at least I didn’t know that there was such a thing before then. I believe that it only takes one senator, like DeMint, to block a nomination and force the Senate to go to some lengths to overcome their opposition.
Perhaps DeMint’s concerns, or his purported concerns, about the possible impact of TSA unionization on our national security, are not singular to him, but I haven’t heard others voicing them. So, I am, to say the least, skeptical that those concerns are plausible rather than an excuse for his real ones, which are quite simply anti-union/labor any time, any place, under any circumstances. Could be wrong, but if so, please show me some evidence that I am where DeMint is concerned.
(Senator Coburn, confessor and physician to Senator Ensign, also employs “holds” and other measures to stymie the Senate and achieve his ends. Occasionally others do too, including Dems, but we often don’t know about it, since “holds” aren’t advertised.)
January 2, 2010, 2:38 ameyesay says:
neurodoc wrote
Wikipedia has a pretty good explanation. The basic idea is that certain Senate actions require unanimous consent, and senators can withhold consent by placing a hold. Since September 2007, secret holds become public within six session days; some senators make their holds public at the outset. The Wikipedia article does not explain that a hold can be defeated through cloture, but even when 99 senators disagree with a hold, the one senator with the hold is sometimes successful in preventing legislation from coming to a vote simply because of the time required for the cloture process.
January 2, 2010, 2:42 ambillw, Silicon Valley, CA says:
Why cannot Obama find more qualified people who do not have such issues. At this point we need a Director of DHS who has real experience, a stellar record and ability to deal with Congress’s penchant for killing all data mining and pattern recognition programs (profiling) to aid in intelligence. Tht person needs to be able to instill confidence. Southers selection does not do that.
January 2, 2010, 2:48 ameyesay says:
billw of Silicon Valley, if you believe that Southers is not a good candidate for this position, I suggest you communicate your views to your senators, Senator Boxer and Feinstein. You should contact their offices and find out which staff member is responsible for this area and communicate with that individual in each office. It would have been good if you had gotten started shortly after his name was submitted to the Senate, but better late than never.
I think it is unlikely that your efforts will succeed, but you are welcome to try.
When Republicans controlled the Senate, they frequently demanded up-or-down votes on nominations and on legislation, and I think that the Senate should consider Southers and after due debate and consideration of the evidence, there should be an up-or-down vote.
January 2, 2010, 3:41 amDavid Nieporent says:
This assumes that deficits, rather than bloated government, is the problem. But high taxes/high spending is not responsible, regardless of whether the budget is balanced.
January 2, 2010, 6:53 amDaveW says:
And that explains the politics of the issue neatly. Dems want the employees unionized because the union will then give them money – taxed out of the paychecks of workers.
DeMint’s demand that Southers answer the question about his support (or lack thereof) for TSA unionization is reasonable. According to this WaPo article Southers would, under current law, have the power to unilaterally decide that TSA workers could organize.
DeMint is demanding that Southers answer the question of whether he supports TSA unionization. Southers is refusing to answer the question. The question is legitimate in the context of his confirmation since it would be an action Southers could take the first day he walked on the job.
My guess is Southers would support unionization for the above reason but Dems would prefer not to have a debate about this on the merits.
That said, Southers isn’t the problem. The American people elected Obama and elections matter. If Southers fails to get confirmed Obama will simply appoint someone else that will support unionization. The Dems will get their hands into the wallets of these workers one way or the other.
If the voters didn’t want this to happen they chose poorly. If it turns out to be really important to them they can vote for a different president next time.
January 2, 2010, 7:46 amNI says:
Just as a point of curiosity, I wonder how many senators would make it through the confirmation process?
January 2, 2010, 9:13 amdee nile says:
Interesting construction in the post title. Southers is ‘our’ nominee.
What’s the antecedent of the pronoun, Prof. Adler?
I thought he was the president’s nominee.
January 2, 2010, 9:50 amSG says:
Corrected myself, referendums are subject to abuse enough, but initiatives lead to complete unaccountability and the high-jacking of government by small special interest groups.
Direct democracy has certainly exacerbated the problem, but you can see the same fiscal pattern in New York, which has no initiative/referendum process at all. So far, the equation looks like
Public Sector Unions + Democratic Party Governance = Unsustainable Spending
And the looming pension problem is even worse.
January 2, 2010, 10:36 amMartyA says:
Can’t we fix this by just giving Southers an ethics waiver just like we’ve to so many others in our government?
January 2, 2010, 10:48 amHans says:
Unionization led to $150,000 plus compensation for public employees like cops in places like California’s city of Vallejo, which went bankrupt, and in some other California municipalities as well.
Unionization is also likely to damage quality and security in federal agencies like Amtrak.
The Obama Administration is undermining the security of railroad passengers by gutting an expert, highly-rated, anti-terror agency at Amtrak, which Amtrak’s unions hate, despite its efficiency, because it is not unionized. Political cronyism is also playing a role in the gutting of Amtrak’s Office of Security Strategy and Special Operations (OSSSO). Ultimately, OSSSO’s “highly-specialized officers” will likely be replaced by unionized employees with “alarmingly low pass rates” in “basic” classes.
January 2, 2010, 10:54 amneurodoc says:
Thanks for the informative answer. A couple of comments: i) before ’07, these holds were closely held secrets, so the public rarely knew what was going on, in particular which senator was blocking confirmation; ii) if “cloture” will be required to get past DeMint’s “hold” (why has no one used the “cloture” word, if it is the same thing we are familiar with in connection with the more commonly resorted to stalling measure of filibustering?), then I suppose we will know if DeMint is alone in his do-or-die objection to Southers, though we may not know whether security is the issue for others.
January 2, 2010, 11:14 amMark Field says:
This shows that you’re unfamiliar with the differences between state and local funding in CA. Municipalities have even greater restrictions than the state does in how they raise money.
As for whether the representatives would be financially responsible if majority rule were to prevail, the easy way is to look to all the other states where that’s the case. If most of them do succeed at that, then it would be strange to argue that CA won’t.
What seems to be the case instead is that those who oppose democracy (like David Nieporent) are frantic that their anti-majoritarian policies have led to fiscal disaster. They look around for someone else to blame and unions become convenient for that purpose. Affirming their priors is remarkably satisfying for some.
January 2, 2010, 11:18 ammattski says:
It is nice to read a comment by a thinking person once in a while. Thanks, Josh.
What a strange and misleading thing to write. You absolve DeMint of culpability for no apparent reason except you regard him (generally) as an ally?
January 2, 2010, 11:26 amSG says:
As for whether the representatives would be financially responsible if majority rule were to prevail, the easy way is to look to all the other states where that’s the case. If most of them do succeed at that, then it would be strange to argue that CA won’t.
According to the Pew Center on the States, “Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin join California as the 10 most troubled states” and it specifically calls out “California, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Wisconsin, [as having] a history of persistent shortfalls”, whereas “Arizona, California, Florida, Nevada and Oregon, lawmakers’ latitude to respond to the fiscal crisis by raising taxes or cutting spending is limited by their states’ constitutions, ballot measures passed by voters, or other statutory or legal impediments to change.”
So it seems that while CA is particularly screwed in that it lacks fiscal discipline AND has constraints on it’s ability to respond, it’s not alone in either category. I don’t think it’s fair to say that CA is sui generis. Also note that all of the states lacking fiscal discipline are blue states. As long as we’re looking at other states, is there any lesson to be drawn from that?
January 2, 2010, 11:38 amSG says:
What a strange and misleading thing to write. You absolve DeMint of culpability for no apparent reason except you regard him (generally) as an ally?
Did you read the part you didn’t quote? The logic seems sound – if you believe it’s harming national security not to have a TSA director and your nominee for TSA director is being held up due to a desire to unionize and he refuses to back down on the issue, then unionization is being prioritized ahead of national security.
This doesn’t mean DeMint’s right or Souther’s wrong, only that if you accept all the assertions it seems like unionization is being given precedence over national security. Why wouldn’t Souther otherwise give in on the issue?
January 2, 2010, 11:52 amjukeboxgrad says:
nieporent:
Republicans who are allegedly fiscal conservatives generally have no problem with “bloated government” and “high spending” as long as the part that’s bloated is the Defense Department. Military spending is at its highest level since WWII, but I don’t see lots of conservatives calling that “bloated.” We spend as much on defense as the rest of the world combined, even though our major enemy went out of business a number of years ago. Hence the importance of creating a bunch of new ones. Ike was right.
==================
Hans, 1/1, 11:34 am:
Hans, 1/1 12:02 pm
Hans, 1/2 10:54 am
There’s lots of room for more. Why just three?
This would make a good drinking game.
==================
walden:
The comparison is appropriate, because Palin abused her power and then lied about it, on multiple occasions. (One aspect of this abuse that’s routinely overlooked is that she gained improper access to Wooten’s personnel file.) And unlike Southers, she has taken responsibility for neither the abuse or the lying. The moral of the story is this: IOKIYAR.
==================
sg:
“If you accept all the assertions,” then it is equally true that DeMint’s anti-unionization sentiments are “being given precedence over national security.” Nevertheless, you said “Southers and the Obama administration are the ones putting the nation at risk.” This doesn’t add up, unless you adopt the following philosophy: IOKIYAR.
January 2, 2010, 12:02 pmorca says:
Why indeed?
As long as we’re giving in to the demands of religious fanatics like DeMint…why not adopt Sharia as the law of the land if it will cut down on terrorist attacks?
January 2, 2010, 12:03 pmmattski says:
Because the POTUS has the right to his nominee? Because Senator DeMint is not the POTUS?
What gives DeMint a presumption of precedence over the President? Other than you apparently take DeMint’s side?
The President is saying “I want this guy to do this very important nat-security job” and DeMint is saying “I don’t like his position on unions” and YOU are saying this means the President is putting the nation at risk by not filling this very important position!
January 2, 2010, 12:08 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Mattski, I am sympathetic to your argument, but what is the purpose of requiring the Senate to approve presidential nominees?
January 2, 2010, 12:19 pmmattski says:
Laura,
Why does Sen. DeMint think unionization/non-unionization is a higher priority than national security? I think that’s the question.
January 2, 2010, 12:33 pmMark Field says:
I think it’s important to separate out several issues. First, measuring distress in an economic crisis isn’t the best way to test financial responsibility. The best way is to measure it over the economic cycle.
Second, while I think fiscal responsibility is important, it’s not the only test of state government effectiveness. We’d also have to consider the overall contribution to happiness of its citizens.
Third, since you made the comment about blue states, it’s worthwhile remembering that they, speaking generally, subsidize the red states. Take back those federal tax dollars (which the unrepresentative system of the federal government encourages), and the blue states wouldn’t be suffering nearly as much, if at all, in the current crisis.
As a footnote to the last point, I have no personal problem with my taxes going to benefit the people of, say, Mississippi. But if someone’s going to criticize “blue” states for being, well, blue, then let’s take into account the whole picture.
Finally, your description of the states you mentioned as “blue” seems odd to me. You must be referring to presidential elections, but state governments can be very different. AFAIK, FL, AZ, and NV, for example, are quite R at the state level. And even CA has an R governator (who has much more power over our current problems than unions).
January 2, 2010, 12:42 pmmattski says:
Here is a fun, ideological question which bears on the topic of unions & national security:
Are extreme disparities in the distribution of income/wealth helpful or harmful to national security?
Let’s allow that unions are not without their flaws and have been subject to abuse, sometimes extreme abuse, in the past. Nevertheless, one of their purposes is to boost the income of working class people and limit the power of economic elites. A plausible argument can be made that limiting extreme disparity in wealth distribution is a national security issue, as well as a social justice issue. Unions can serve the national interest in that regard. Certainly we should be vigilant against possible union abuses, but that doesn’t mean they cannot serve a positive function for our society as a whole.
January 2, 2010, 12:46 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Matt, evidently deMint thinks that unionization of TSA will negatively impact national security. You don’t have to agree with him to see that he thinks this.
I agree with you that senators shouldn’t hold up appointees because they don’t like their hair color, or the fact that they’re from Mississippi (see Charles Pickering) but I’m not seeing that here.
How so?
January 2, 2010, 12:56 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
This kind of reasoning is how individuals get into debt over their eyeballs.
I’m with you on a complete overhaul of the taxing system, as well as an overhaul of exactly what we should expect the federal government to provide for us. We might actually see some shifts in that whole red/blue thing if that happened.
January 2, 2010, 1:02 pmmark says:
Seriously, is this Souther guy the only person in the entire USofA that is qualified for this job? Which amounts to what? Covering your a@@, protecting your turf from budget cuts? Plenty of hacks like him in the government food chain who haven’t been caught snooping in private files…
Re; Vallejo bankruptcy approach to restructuring debt. It is being closely watched by cities throughout the US. If the courts allow them bankruptcy, the unions, police and fire will have contracts restructured through court, and not collective bargaining. Thus giving Vallejo the upper hand. Most cities in the US would love to find a way out of the idiotic and unsustainable pensions they have agreed to. Not sure how Vallejo got into this thread, but the case will be of great interest to those who have public pensions/jobs.
January 2, 2010, 1:12 pmeyesay says:
David Nieporent wrote
Irresponsible decisions were made that got California into the current mess. The first big mistake was Proposition 13, which limited property tax assessment increases to 2% annually, except when property is sold. Proposition 13 is a lie. Proposition 13 says that it is possible to continue to fund vital public services in an inflationary economy while nearly freezing tax revenues in nominal dollars on existing property owners. This is obviously not true. Proposition 13 perversely causes the heaviest tax burden to be placed on young families buying their first houses or larger houses to accommodate increased family size. More irresponsibility: Gov. Schwarzenegger cut the motor vehicle registration tax, and the top income tax rate was cut from 11% to 9.3%. (Since then, a new top rate of 10.3% was imposed on incomes over $1,000,000.00.) What is irresponsible is cutting vital services. Cutting library hours is irresponsible. Closing after-school recreation centers is irresponsible. Cutting the budget for tuberculosis control is irresponsible. Allowing the University of California to slide toward mediocrity is irresponsible. Higher education is a key avenue for upward mobility, so imposing higher tuition for higher education is irresponsible. A clear majority of the California Senate and Assembly have voted for responsible tax increases, and an irresponsible minority have stonewalled.
January 2, 2010, 1:19 pmStormy Dragon says:
Could you stop projecting your disregard for the rule of law onto the rest of the commenters. Just because you think your personal issues are above the law doesn’t mean everyone around you does as well.
The last thing we need is a TSA head who’s more interested in trying to control his ex-wife than doing his job.
January 2, 2010, 1:23 pmeyesay says:
Laura, extreme disparities of wealth and income may lead the poor to believe that we are not all in this together, and that there are separate systems of justice for the rich and the poor. This leads to social breakdown. When the affluent live behind gated communities and then vote to cut services for those outside the walls, this leads to social breakdown.
Affluent conservatives often forget that in our two-tiered economy, it is the people in the bottom quarter who make life pleasant for the rest of us. The people in the bottom quarter pick our crops, disassemble and package our animals, make up our hotel rooms, clean our offices, and collect our rubbish. Most of us would not be willing or interested in taking these jobs at any price, but these people make our comfortable life possible, and it is socially just that we tax ourselves to pay for government services that assure that they have proper health care, that allow them to retire without poverty, and provide opportunities for them and their children to move up.
January 2, 2010, 1:33 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
eyesay, you’re talking about social justice, not national security.
Now, you can argue that the two are intertwined. However, you will have to advance some arguments about that, because it was reported over and over that terrorism sprang from poverty and despair until people started pointing out the privileged existences that the 9/11 terrorists, and the 7/7 terrorists came from; the Christmas Day bomber was no exception. So I don’t think we can assume that poverty -> national insecurity.
If you want to talk about social justice, that’s fine, but that’s a different discussion. (Do you think that the people in the gated communities are all voting against welfare? Do you think that, for instance, the Kennedys and Kerrys are voting against welfare?)
January 2, 2010, 1:39 pmSara says:
In the above debate, I was struck that no one seems to know (or care?) who this guy is. So I wiki’d him (it may or may not be relevant to some of you):
January 2, 2010, 1:41 pmbillw, Silicon Valley, CA says:
Sara, so he does a paper on “Social Network Analysis”. Don’t take this the wrong way but it is “Intelligence Stupid”. Congress has killed every program from Able Danger to ADVISE – Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement all of which used public data for data mining because the ACLU and others feared privacy issues.The ACLU and others fight CAPPS II which gives the airlines your name address, phone number and date of birth that is on your passport or drivers license. At the same time they fight names on the no fly or terrorist watch list because of confusion over similar names. The purpose of CAPPS II to to solve that problem but they fight any solution. Following data mining is analysis of the data which results in pattern recognition or profiling. Get over it as they say everything about you is on the Internet.Until we give intelligence operatives the tools necessary to do their job we should not name the intelligence folks. We need to blame the administration and congress. Whoever is selected has to have the confidence of the American people. Souter does not. Yes, he has a resume that says nice words but he won’t answer any questions about unionization nor does his resume say anything about his appreciation about data mining, profiling or intelligence gathering. It implies he is in the political correctness camp.
January 2, 2010, 2:03 pmDuracomm says:
eyesay,
California’s budget problems are caused by excess spending (often driven by demands of public sector unions)not proposition 13.
Paul Krugman: If Only California Could Just Raise Taxes
January 2, 2010, 2:17 pmSara says:
Bill – I don’t know why you don’t care to find out what his views (or name?) are but are willing to call them “stupid,” nonetheless. At any rate, we know where you stand.
January 2, 2010, 2:19 pmbyomtov says:
No, Byomtov, contrary to what you mistakenly believe, when I referred to “the newspaper I linked to,” I was referring NOT to my commentary in the Examiner, but to the Washington Examiner’s own editorial, “No unions for air safety workers,” Examiner Editorial, December 31, 2009.
I did separately refer to my own commentary on ANOTHER point (to save space and repetition in the comment thread), but I did NOT characterize it as a “newspaper” or link to it as such, in my comment at 11:30 a.m., or elsewhere.
Hans,
Yesterday, between 10:36 and 12:02, you linked to your own article in the Examiner no less than eight times. Eight times. After six of these, you linked to the editorial, a link you subsequently repeated.
Pardon me for assuming that your seventh link was, like the first six, to your same article. Pardon me also for thinking that you were implying that your article contained your arguments.
I guess you deserve some minimum credit for recognizing that it doesn’t really say anything.
January 2, 2010, 2:22 pmmattski says:
Mark Field wrote: Second, while I think fiscal responsibility is important, it’s not the only test of state government effectiveness. We’d also have to consider the overall contribution to happiness of its citizens.
Laura responded: This kind of reasoning is how individuals get into debt over their eyeballs.
Well, no, Laura. Mark was talking about government spending, not individuals. And the fact–amply demonstrated by history–is that governments can and do run deficits in perpetuity. Responsibly managed debt is a key driver of growth, and that isn’t a controversial statement.
But back to wealth distribution and national security. When society becomes severely stratified people lose their sense of belonging to a whole. When government policy reflects the interests of the rich and seems to neglect the interests of the poor then the poor–rightfully–feel disenfranchised. At a certain point desperation leads to violence.
Another point, “what one does to the least of me, one does to me.” Another one has to do with camels and the eyes of needles. I could go on but I’ll leave it there.
January 2, 2010, 2:29 pmMark Field says:
“Happiness” should not be confused with “pleasure”. Happiness involves long term well being, including solvency.
Just a note: the link in Duracomm’s comment above is, despite its title, NOT to an argument by Paul Krugman. It’s to an article in Reason disputing Krugman’s analysis of CA’s problems. Krugman agrees with eyesay (at least in part; the Reason article only quotes a portion of what Krugman said).
January 2, 2010, 2:33 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Matt,
1 – Mark said that the effectiveness of state government is measured not only by fiscal responsibility, but by overall contribution to the citizens’ happiness. Now, I’ll agree that the misery index is a legitimate concern. But you can’t say, well, it’s irresponsible to take on this debt, but we ought to have so-and-so, we’ll be unhappy if we don’t, so what the heck. That is exactly the same line of reasoning that gets individuals in trouble. If you can’t afford something, you can’t afford it, period. You’re talking about responsibly managed debt – that’s not fiscal irresponsibility, is it?
2 – You say:
I’m not sure about the poor rightfully feeling disenfranchised because gov’t policy seems to neglect their interests. But skipping over that – I can see your argument applying to localized, general crime. I can’t see it applying to national security.
3 – You say:
That is a worthwhile conversation to have, and I’d like to have it, but you’re conflating this with national security. Not seeing the link.
January 2, 2010, 2:39 pmchiMaxx says:
Laura(southernxyl) wrote:
Actually, by making her the centerpiece of one of his most repeated and best known parables, he essentially DID put her in charge of public morals.
(Of course, I also subscribe to the theory that part of his personal motivation for doing this was that he was at a point where he was finally able to let go of his anger at his mother for having born him as a bastard–and the harsh treatment that followed that bastard status, claims of divine paternity notwithstanding, since she wasn’t the first to claim her premarital baby to have come from God; there was at least Leda and her Zeus-inflected swan before Mary and surely others in the intervening centuries–and forgive her by proxy through the adulterous woman. Thus his act and the story was as much about his own sin of anger as any sin committed by the adulterous woman or hidden in the hearts of the men ready to stone her.)
January 2, 2010, 2:46 pmSara says:
Also, while I was wiki-ing Southers I came upon this Washington Post update that says that the Senate committee knew about the discrepancy between the affidavit and FBI documents, before their vote. They decided to support him, anyway.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/01/AR2010010101988.html
January 2, 2010, 2:59 pmmattski says:
Laura,
Different folks have different ideas about what is responsible. That is the nut here. Liberals tend to be more tolerant of gov’t debt than conservatives (although GWB’s record seems incongruous in that regard.) The common conservative complaint: “you’re spending money you don’t have” can have merit or not, depending on the circumstances.
Well, how do you regard Timothy McVeigh- terrorist or criminal? Now, McVeigh’s views may have been colored by some idiosyncratic beliefs but his feelings of disenfranchisement almost certainly had some basis in class differences.
I am saying that economic duress is a problem for society as a whole. The fact that it usually ends up in a toxic mixture with human ignorance (crazy conspiratorial theories) doesn’t make excessive economic stratification less of a problem. It makes it more of a problem.
I’m glad you agree it is a worthwhile conversation to have. For the reasons given I think it does relate to national security.
***Some Americans celebrate our devotion to getting rich, our emphasis on the individual. Other people–many of them impressionable and young–look at huge disparities in wealth and they say: “this is not a just society.” Some of these then go looking for a “just cause” to combat this “unjust society.” An example would be John Walker Lindh.
I’m not saying we can eliminate the problem of crazy radicals. Obviously we cannot. But we can work on creating a more just society and that starts with re-evaluating our fetishization of material wealth and the supremacy of the individual.
January 2, 2010, 3:17 pmJoe says:
Because ….. Republicans are in the habit of appointing lawbreakers to important government posts?
Is this a rhetorical question? The comment anyways was addressed not to appointment but confirmation. And, yes, those in charge of confirmation (selectively) are in the habit of looking the other way on lawbreaking. Most recently, more Republicans than Democrats, given who was in power in the last decade.
But, seriously, Sara underlines that Republicans knew about this issue already. It is not the reason the guy is being held up. The holier-than-thou comments of a few aside.
January 2, 2010, 3:18 pmPerseus says:
I’m aware of the differences, but the point is that state and local governments lavished money on labor contracts that they could ill afford.
And most of those states–both with and without direct democracy–still have persistent structural deficits.
That presupposes ceteris paribus, particularly with respect to spending, which seems highly improbable.
January 2, 2010, 3:25 pmChrisTS says:
We might also want to point out that a dissertation is not aptly referred to as ‘a paper.’
January 2, 2010, 3:28 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Can we agree that if a state runs through its money so that it has trouble meeting payroll for crucial personnel, for instance, that’s a problem? If that happens b/c of a natural disaster that the state couldn’t handle (and got no help from the feds) that would be one thing, but if it’s simply a matter of poor budgeting, i.e., spending money on less crucial things first, can we agree that that is irresponsible?
I don’t have a feel for what McVeigh’s motives actually were. There are many people living in abject poverty in this country and they are not renting trucks and buying diesel and ammonium nitrate, and blowing up buildings. Are you saying that if we spent more money on social programs, McVeigh wouldn’t have been a terrorist?
January 2, 2010, 3:32 pmChrisTS says:
Laura & Mattski:
Since the time of Aristotle, at least, people have recognized that significant disparities in wealth, and the hopelessness of the disadvantaged, create internal threats to security.
Some nations suppress these internal dangers through force, although history usually catches up with such regimes. But, as Aristotle noted, any form of democracy requires a substantital middle class, at the very least, to offset the dispartiy between the richest and the poorest.
And even Aristotle – no defender of the masses – argued on grounds of both justice and security for policies that minimize poverty.
January 2, 2010, 3:57 pmPerseus says:
A clear majority (62-66%) of California voters rejected the proposed tax increases/budget rearranging (Propositions 1A-E). And since the governor is not (for the moment) contemplating any more major tax increases, a representative government without the fetters of direct democracy would not alter the situation.
January 2, 2010, 4:00 pmwws says:
I think one of the best possible things that could happen this next year would be if the State of California were forced to enter some functional equivalent of bankruptcy. Perhaps tell state employees and pensioners that they will be paid in state IOU’s that may sell for a few cents on the dollar. Let the entire state structure come down in flaming ruins – that just *might* be enough of a lesson to teach residents why they should insist on a little bit better system when it gets rebuilt.
January 2, 2010, 4:12 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Mattski and Chris, the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11, and the terrorists who attacked London on 7/7, and the Christmas Day terrorist, came from affluent backgrounds. The person who is in charge of preventing these things can’t think that helping the poor is going to keep us secure. Total non-sequitur there.
This is not a reason to not help the poor, although “helping the poor” is a subject that books could and probably have been written about.
January 2, 2010, 4:22 pmSG says:
Finally, your description of the states you mentioned as “blue” seems odd to me. You must be referring to presidential elections, but state governments can be very different. AFAIK, FL, AZ, and NV, for example, are quite R at the state level. And even CA has an R governator (who has much more power over our current problems than unions).
Sorry, I was unclear. I was not referring to the entire list of states experiencing difficult, but to the subset of states that have had “revenues and expenditures out of alignment” and “a history of persistent shortfalls”. Those states were California, Illinois, Michigan, New Jersey, Rhode Island and Wisconsin. I believe those all have heavily Democratic state governments.
So while I agree with you that the problem is that taxes and spending are misaligned, I don’t think it’s solely the fault of the CA referendum process and/or recalcitrant California Republicans. To be sure neither helps the problem, but this problem seems to recur, and I think it’s worth considering what might be the root cause.
January 2, 2010, 4:23 pmmattski says:
Thank you, Chris. I’m a big fan of Aristotle, particularly in this context.
Heavens, no. I wouldn’t make such a silly claim. But I would advocate for policies that help the poor and restrain the rich on grounds of both social justice and national security.
As Mark Field suggested, it depends on whether this happens in normal times or whether it happens in the midst of a global financial crisis. And in the case of California the causes of their fiscal straight-jacket are complex and involve irresponsibility on behalf of both parties.
January 2, 2010, 4:24 pmPerseus says:
That gives a distorted picture of Aristotle’s position. In criticizing those who reduce the factional (political) problem to one of economics (“economism”, Marxism, etc. in modern terms), Aristotle says: “Yet even if one were to arrange a moderate level of property for all, it would not help. For one ought to level desire sooner than property.” (Politics, 1266b25-30) Democracies in particular tend to be more concerned with the goods of the body (health, wealth, pleasure) than the goods of the soul (stern virtue, wisdom).
January 2, 2010, 4:27 pmSG says:
Why does Sen. DeMint think unionization/non-unionization is a higher priority than national security? I think that’s the question.
Sen. DeMint has made it clear that he thinks TSA unionization will harm national security. He may be wrong, but he is not being inconsistent.
January 2, 2010, 4:27 pmjukeboxgrad says:
laura:
Notwithstanding your convenient examples, yes, it is fair to assume that the people in the gated communities are generally voting against welfare. Things shifted a bit in 2008, but in most recent presidential elections, rich people tended to vote R.
==================
mattski:
And the natural tendency of government is to reflect the interests of the rich, as Adam Smith pointed out.
January 2, 2010, 4:29 pmmattski says:
To be fair, Laura, we were talking (in this instance) about the threat to society posed by laissez-faire gov’t. I think the non-sequitur here is yours.
None of us arguing the liberal side are confused about who attacked on 9/11, even if the Bush administration was (confused).
January 2, 2010, 4:35 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
jukeboxgrad, which president signed welfare reform into law? Hm?
Voting Republican does not equal voting against welfare. People may have all kinds of reasons for voting Republican, including the concept that welfare as we have had it has been actively bad for the poor.
January 2, 2010, 4:41 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Mattski, how is poverty in this country connected to terrorist attacks?
January 2, 2010, 4:43 pmSG says:
And the natural tendency of government is to reflect the interests of the rich, as Adam Smith pointed out.
Yes, so why do (non-rich) people want to keep giving more and more power to government?
January 2, 2010, 4:43 pmDavid Nieporent says:
What if I don’t think “we’re all in this together”? What if I don’t quite see how some people being givers and some being takers makes us “in this together”?
January 2, 2010, 4:54 pmMark Field says:
This still ducks the question, which is the mismatch between revenue and expenditure. It may very well be that prior Vallejo city councils were reckless. The trouble is, there’s no way to know that without more information. And in any case it’s not clear that proof of a problem in one small city would be evidence of the need to constrain the whole CA government in such various ways that fiscal responsibility is implausible.
Well, the current system is pretty clearly a failure. We should at least try republican government as a solution. If that doesn’t work, we can consider other remedies.
I should add that CA (like AZ and TX) also suffers from the failure of the federal government to develop a responsible solution to immigration. In consequence, we here bear costs which should be nationalized at the same time as we’re getting back just 70% of what we pay the feds in taxes. “Ceteris paribus” indeed.
I don’t think it’s the “fault” of the Republicans at all. They are fully entitled to vote their preferences. I do think that the system which allows minority rule (in this case, rule by only 1/3) is the single biggest “root cause”. I also think the initiative process needs to be reformed as well.
I voted against them all as well. My reasons were, obviously, very different than the ones you imply, and I think that’s true for many other people in addition. Your point about the Governor, though, is well-taken.
At least some of the Founders felt the same way. Here, for example, is Charles Pinkney at the Convention:
“The people of the U. States are perhaps the most singular of any we are acquainted with. Among them there are fewer distinctions of fortune & less of rank, than among the inhabitants of any other nation. Every freeman has a right to the same protection & security; and a very moderate share of property entitles them to the possession of all the honors and privileges the public can bestow: hence arises a greater equality, than is to be found among the people of any other country, and an equality which is more likely to continue-I say this equality is likely to continue, because in a new Country, possessing immense tracts of uncultivated lands, where every temptation is offered to emigration & where industry must be rewarded with competency, there will be few poor, and few dependent-Every member of the Society almost, will enjoy an equal power of arriving at the supreme offices & consequently of directing the strength & sentiments of the whole Community. None will be excluded by birth, & few by fortune, from voting for proper persons to fill the offices of Government-the whole community will enjoy in the fullest sense that kind of political liberty which consists in the power the members of the State reserve to themselves, of arriving at the public offices, or at least, of having votes in the nomination of those who fill them.”
January 2, 2010, 5:02 pmMark Field says:
The only good Republican president since Eisenhower.
January 2, 2010, 5:04 pmDavid Nieporent says:
First, Prop 13 was in 1978. If California’s been going on for 30 years since then, it’s hard to see how to lay blame at its feet. Second, while one can of course quibble with the precise implementation of the concern behind Prop 13, what was irresponsible was continuing to increase property taxes at >2% per year.
And yet, California’s tax revenues have drastically increased. The problem isn’t that Californians are undertaxed.
See, this is the second time you talked about “vital services” in this post. But then we see what you really mean:
In other words, not “vital services” at all. “After-school recreation centers” indeed. Civilization has survived — even thrived — for thousands of years without taxpayer-funded after-school recreation centers.
The problem is that the left simply refuses to accept that the vast majority of what government does isn’t vital, isn’t necessary, isn’t a good idea. All irresponsible Democratic legislators in California had to do was hold the line at the “public services” being offered in 1978. Or 1990. (And by “hold the line,” I don’t mean freeze spending in nominal terms; all they had to do was limit increases to match inflation and population growth.) And California’s budget would be in good shape. But they refused. They just decided to keep offering more and more “services” that they didn’t have the money for. If you claim that the UC is “sliding” towards mediocrity, then you’re implicitly admitting that it used to be better. Why was it able to be better before, with the lower tax levels that existed at that time?
January 2, 2010, 5:05 pmDGG says:
That’s not my recollection from living in California from the 80s and 90s. We would regularly have spending initiatives and bond borrowing initiatives to vote on at the ballot box and they would regularly pass.
January 2, 2010, 5:17 pmDavid Nieporent says:
The problem is, you’re conflating two very different things. “Disparities in wealth” and “hopelessness of the disadvantaged” are not the same concept. You can have wide disparities, without having poor people in hopeless conditions. No matter how big the gap gets between Bill Gates and me, that doesn’t make me powerless and disadvantaged.
That’s not what Pinckney was saying at all. And as a slaveowner, that would be a rather ironic position for him to take, now wouldn’t it?
January 2, 2010, 5:22 pmSG says:
we’re getting back just 70% of what we pay the feds in taxes.
Not to excuse the abysmal immigration (non-)policy of the Feds, but you can’t have your cake and eat it too. Correct me if I’m mistaken, but I believe you support progressive taxation and some degree of wealth redistribution at the federal level. If so, don’t complain that CA is a net payer of federal tax dollars – that’s a direct outcome of the policies you support.
January 2, 2010, 5:27 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Would that be this Charles Pinckney?
Yeah, let’s quote him on the subject of social justice.
January 2, 2010, 5:29 pmmattski says:
You’re entitled to your opinions but your misanthropy makes them a tougher sell.
That’s true as long as there is some kind of safety net. Otoh, a class of Uber-rich people is a direct threat to democratic rule.
SG:
You think they’ll fair better under anarchy? You might have some basis for that belief but not in history.
January 2, 2010, 6:13 pmjukeboxgrad says:
laura:
I think Clinton was one of our best Republican presidents (and I wrote those words before I saw that Mark had given the same answer). You’ve identified one of the reason I think that. I also think it would be good if we had a two-party system. I wish I knew what your point was.
==================
sg:
It might have to do with hoping that we someday have a government that lives up to the lofty words in our founding documents, which reflect the idea of government for everyone, and not just for the rich.
Also, power not in the hands of the government tends to end up not in the hands of individuals, but rather in the hands of large corporations. Which tend to be even more deferential to the needs of the rich than the government is. So when the government operates as a wholly-owned subsidiary of corporate interests, the rich have the best of both worlds.
==================
nieporent:
Then maybe you should live in a country where the currency doesn’t say e pluribus unum. You would probably be more comfortable with Singapore’s authoritarian capitalism.
January 2, 2010, 6:41 pmSG says:
You think they’ll fair better under anarchy? You might have some basis for that belief but not in history.
Mattski, allow me to introduce you to the logical fallacy fallacy as the false choice. Oh wait, I see you’ve already met…
Just so you know, there are options other than “giving more and more power to government” and “anarchy”. How about limited government? Or even the current amount of government?
January 2, 2010, 6:45 pmSG says:
It might have to do with hoping that we someday have a government that lives up to the lofty words in our founding documents, which reflect the idea of government for everyone, and not just for the rich.
Do you have a different copy of the founding documents than mine? My copy is mostly about general distrust of the government and proscribing limits on governmental authority, not about increasing it’s power in the (vain) hope that this time it won’t get captured by moneyed interests.
They say that insanity is repeating the same actions hoping for a different outcome. How many times do you have to see this outcome repeated before you start trying something different? We now have a pretty compelling theory as to why this outcome keeps recurring – it’s not just some fluke occurrence.
January 2, 2010, 6:54 pmeyesay says:
Perseus wrote, “A clear majority (62–66%) of California voters rejected the proposed tax increases/budget rearranging (Propositions 1A-E).” None of those five propositions were tax increases, so your point fails. Most Californians believe in tax increases combined with spending cuts, but the drown-it-in-the-bathtub Republicans oppose the will of the people and insist on balancing the budget with spending cuts only. This is possible only because California requires a 2/3 majority in both houses of the legislature to pass a tax increase. This is tyranny of the minority.
January 2, 2010, 7:11 pmjukeboxgrad says:
sg:
Didn’t you just say something about false choices? Making government small and powerless is not the only way to protect against the harm done when government is “captured by moneyed interests.” Another approach is to encourage broad education and participation, as a counter to the power of those “moneyed interests.” Therefore it’s no surprise that so much GOP rhetoric is anti-college, and therefore it’s no surprise that most people with a post-graduate education vote D, and therefore it’s no surprise to find Republicans who think poor people should be prevented from voting.
If you think it’s inevitable for democracy to fail, then I wonder what system (“something different”) you think we should try instead.
And when you talk about the importance of limiting government size, power and authority, you mean every part of government except the Department of Defense, right? Because it could never be too big, and it’s certainly not too big right now, right?
January 2, 2010, 7:20 pmDuracomm says:
eyesay,
California’s budget problem is caused by insane overspending.
Full.stop.end.of.story
Failed States
January 2, 2010, 7:34 pmAfter a long spending binge, governors go begging for a handout. It won’t be their last.
Mark Field says:
It certainly was ironic (as was, of course, the support of slaveholders like Jefferson for “republican” government; “the loudest yelps for liberty” and all that). It was also perfectly consistent for Pinkney to say that. His comment was classical republican, the same thing Montesquieu might have said. Nor was Pinkney the only one who expressed similar sentiments; he was just an example.
Why not? We quote Jefferson all the time on “certain inalienable rights”.
I’m merely pointing out that there were people among the Founders who thought that equality of riches was a good thing, even a necessary thing for republican government to succeed. Denying that such people existed seems kind of pointless.
I already acknowledged this in one of my posts above. I have no problem with my tax dollars supporting lazy schlubs in Mississippi like Anderson. I’m just pointing out that the fiscal problems facing CA involve a number of issues and they aren’t as simple as blaming “unions”.
I will say, though, that if I’m going to support you redstaters, the least you can do is not bite the hand that feeds you. :)
January 2, 2010, 7:35 pmeyesay says:
David Nieporent wrote
For 30 years, the University of California has slowly slid from its top Ivy League-level status.
From 1973 to 1981, the U.S. inflation rate was mostly in the range of 7 to 12 percent per annum. During times of inflation, employees need to receive raise commensurate with inflation just to stay even. That means that law enforcement officials, firefighters, teachers, and other state and local employees needed to receive raises in that range just to stay even. Raising property taxes 2% per year does not work in an inflationary economy.
When property is sold, it is reassessed. Economic prosperity including the “Dot Com bubble” helped for awhile, but that bubble burst along with the housing bubble.
Mr. Nieporent, if you don’t think after-school recreation centers, tuberculosis control, and higher education are vital services, well, go live in Somalia. We all have to contribute our share in order to make civilization possible.
January 2, 2010, 7:46 pmDuracomm says:
eyesay,
The democrats have been in charge in california while spending has imploded the states fiscal house. They have done the damage not the republicans.
If Only California Could Just Raise Taxes
January 2, 2010, 7:49 pmSG says:
Making government small and powerless is not the only way to protect against the harm done when government is “captured by moneyed interests.” Another approach is to encourage broad education and participation, as a counter to the power of those “moneyed interests.”
First, small is not equivalent with powerless; a small government can be very powerful within a proscribed domain. Second, there’s good reason to believe that broad education and participation will not provide a counter balance to capture from special interests. From my earlier link:
The larger you make government, the more opportunities for these sort of inefficiencies for a lobby to exploit and the more powerful you make the government, the more incentive you create for special interests to lobby the government. Unless and until you create the New Democratic Man, this sort of capture is an inevitable outcome of your attempts to increase the scope of government.
As you pointed out, government representing the interests of the rich and powerful has been recognized since Adam Smith. Yet you’re still saying that this time we can get it right.
And when you talk about the importance of limiting government size, power and authority, you mean every part of government except the Department of Defense, right? Because it could never be too big, and it’s certainly not too big right now, right?
Since you asked – I think the Armed Forces should be sized appropriately to the missions we’ve asked them to perform. Lets discuss what we want them to do (defend Europe and Asia, patrol international shipping lanes, activity in and above Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, and Yemen) and then we can discuss how big it should be. I do feel that the US bears too much of the burden for preserving the current order, but I don’t know that it would be picked up by other nations if we dropped it, but I think it’s certainly a fair topic of debate.
But I would concede that when it comes to national defense I’d rather err on the side of too much than too little. The best defense is one so powerful that it never gets challenged.
January 2, 2010, 7:58 pmLeo Marvin says:
I’m guessing most people who decry blue state profligacy have no idea it’s due largely to their own red states being the welfare queens of the federal system. Why don’t they know? I blame the liberal mainstream media.
FWIW, half of those states have a Republican governor or governor-elect.
January 2, 2010, 8:01 pmmattski says:
Oh dear. SG, you say there are “other options” but you speak only in terms of the “quantity” of government. I have to say this strikes me as impossibly abstract. In fact I don’t know what “quantity” has to do with it. I would think it’s a question of quality, and that suggests a need for some specifics.
A terrific example would be your link to “special interests” at Wikipedia. To me, that entry cries out for a specific remedy, one which has nothing to do with the size of government and everything to do with the rules and regulations which shape it. And when I read the entry I thought, “well obviously this is a campaign finance issue.” But I haven’t heard you say boo about campaign finance.
That makes me think you eschew the nitty-gritty of policy for vague and generalized notions like “limited government.”
Limited government? What have you told us? And what if anything can you point to, historically, to support your prescription of “limited government”?
January 2, 2010, 8:07 pmMark Field says:
CA has had a Republican governor for 23 of the last 27 years (and 86 of the last 110 years). As SG noted in one of his comments, this effectively requires a 2/3 vote for a Democratic legislature to pass a budget regardless of any other provision in the Constitution.
January 2, 2010, 8:11 pmMark Field says:
It was great for the slaveholders.
January 2, 2010, 8:13 pmSG says:
I’m guessing most people who decry blue state profligacy have no idea it’s due largely to their own red states being the welfare queens of the federal system.
You have to live with the negative consequences of the policies you support, and if you support high levels of taxation and redistribution at the federal level, that necessarily constrains your state’s finances. Most of the complaints I hear from the left-ish side are of insufficient federal taxing and redistribution – well that all comes at some cost and part of that cost is that your state subsidizes other states. That it comes with an opportunity cost ought to be accepted as a given, not raised as an excuse.
FWIW, half of those states have a Republican governor or governor-elect.
Yes, and that is largely a reaction to (at least) perceived misrule by the Democratic party. Similarly, we now have a Democratic President and Congress. But it still looks states with largely Democratic governance have had a difficult time balancing revenues and expenditures. Nor do I think anyone has described CA, NJ, or IL as low-tax states.
January 2, 2010, 8:22 pmSG says:
It was great for the slaveholders.
And your preferred form was great for the proletariat.
January 2, 2010, 8:25 pmDuracomm says:
Mark Field,
From one of my earlier links,
So for those ten years democrats have managed to get the 2/3 vote required to balloon spending and implode california’s budget.
California’s budget problems are caused by overspending not under-taxing.
California’s tax rates are higher than those in texas and california has worse budget problems.
That means the real problem with california’s budget is their insane level of spending.
January 2, 2010, 8:34 pmDuracomm says:
Mark Field said,
You neglect to mention the fact that it was big government power that gave the slave holders the authority they needed to keep slaves.
January 2, 2010, 8:38 pmPerseus says:
Proposition 1A was clearly a tax increase because it would have extended a tax increase that is due to expire. The state’s legislative analyst summarized the proposition as follows: “Measure Results in Tax Increases. If this measure is approved, several tax increases passed as part of the February 2009 budget package would be extended by one to two years. State tax revenues would increase by about $16 billion from 2010–11 through 2012–13.” Only in the minds of people like you does that somehow not constitute a tax increase.
And as I indicated, the 2/3rds requirement is moot because der Governator has (for the moment) ruled out any major tax increases, which means that 2/3rds of the legislature will be needed to override a veto of any tax increase in any case.
But we’re constantly harangued (especially by my fellow academics) that it is racist scapegoating to suggest that illegal aliens impose a significant fiscal burden on state and local governments.
January 2, 2010, 8:40 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
If you think Clinton was a Republican, then I am not surprised that you cannot comprehend my point.
January 2, 2010, 8:50 pmLaura(southernxyl) says:
Equality of riches for a certain class. It was understood that there would be an enslaved underclass. You would make your point a lot more believably if you did not quote such folks.
January 2, 2010, 8:52 pmJeff Walden says:
The difference between “OK” and “OC” for “only counts” seems awfully small to me when I read this comment.
Thinking about it, the difference between Palin and here is that Palin didn’t hide it during the campaign. This guy did attempt to hide it (sorry, I don’t believe his claim of forgetfulness — would a good person really forget his own instances of flagrant misconduct that way?). Seriously, tho…why is it that the “civil liberty defenders” of the left want to overlook what this guy did? I don’t see how you can hold both views at once. Well, except for naked partisanship, I guess.
January 2, 2010, 9:08 pmMark Field says:
My preferred form, as Chesterton said of Christianity, has never been tried.
There’s nothing inconsistent in believing that my income should subsidize those less fortunate than me, while also pointing out that some of those actually live in CA and that federal policy fails to account for them.
I didn’t “neglect” to mention it. The federal government was small before the Civil War precisely because slaveholders wanted to oppress their property. Compared to Northern states of that era, in fact, Southern state governments were small too. Just big enough to keep the slaves in line and make sure none of the poor whites benefited.
But we’re constantly being harangued by the Right about the terrible expense all these immigrants force on us.
With less snark, I’ll add that even if immigrants are a net benefit, it still might be true that they’re less well off than others and the federal government might use tax dollars to alleviate that.
It’s nearly impossible to quote people from the lower classes who lived back then. It’s even less likely to find someone from the lower classes actually attending the Constitutional Convention.
My original point was simply that there were those in 1789 who believed that the US was suitable for republican government because it was so relatively equal in wealth (which was true when compared to Europe, and even true compared to today). Criticizing Pinkney as a hypocrite misses the point, just as criticizing Jefferson for being a slaveholder misses the point that there were actual anti-slavery folk around back then.
January 2, 2010, 9:22 pmSW says:
. . . including, in many of his statements, Jefferson.
January 2, 2010, 9:32 pmPerseus says:
Mr. Field is correct on this point. Take, for example, this exchange between Melancton Smith and Alexander Hamilton during New York’s Ratifying Convention (one of the nifty things about writing a book is that locating quotes like these can usually be done quickly):
Melancton Smith: “Those in middling circumstances, have less temptation–they are inclined by habit and the company with whom they associate, to set bounds to their passions and appetites–if this is not sufficient, the want of means to gratify them will be a restraint–they are obliged to employ their time in their respective callings–hence the substantial yeomanry of the country are more temperate, of better morals and less ambition than the great…”
Alexander Hamilton: “While property continues to be pretty equally divided, and a considerable share of information pervades the community, the tendency of the people’s suffrages will be to elevate merit even from obscurity. As riches increase and accumulate in a few hands; as luxury prevails in society, virtue will be in a greater degree considered as only a graceful appendage of wealth, and the tendency of things will be to depart from the republican standard. This is the real disposition of human nature: It is what, neither the honorable member nor myself can correct. It is a common misfortune, that awaits our constitution as well as all others.”
January 2, 2010, 9:56 pmLeo Marvin says:
It’s not an excuse. It’s a valid response to the (ironic) criticism by some beneficiaries that we’re too loose with a buck.
By that reasoning a Republican governor proves your point and a Democratic governor proves your point. If every possible outcome proves your point, none of them do.
January 2, 2010, 10:14 pmDuracomm says:
Mark Field said,
Millions have been killed trying to reach your preferred form.
The safest, most humane thing is to keep government small. That limits the damage it can do.
January 2, 2010, 10:19 pmLuthien Golden says:
I think if I were interviewed by law enforcement, I’d remember the charges against me and the details of my confession. And I’d probably be able to quote large sections of an FBI censure, chapter and verse. So, yes, I think Souther’s lying to Congress and, yes, that’s a real problem for me.
Do I want someone in charge of the TSA who can – and will – lie to Congress when his butt is on the line? No, I don’t.
January 2, 2010, 10:24 pmDavid Nieporent says:
1) I’m pretty sure the motto was not coined (no pun intended) as an endorsement of the welfare state. In fact, the phrase has nothing to do with any of the issues under discussion here.
2) As I’ve pointed out before, democracy is about the method of choosing the government; it is not about the scope or power of government, and hence is not the opposite of authoritarian. A democracy can be authoritarian, and an authoritarian state can quite comfortably adopt the motto “e pluribus unum.”
2b) Singapore is hardly “authoritarian.” To use that word for Singapore leaves one without a useful word for, say, Syria or Saudi Arabia, Burma or China.
Sure it is. You might want to study some public choice theory.
Nope; sorry. Won’t work. The incentives don’t line up right.
You can’t help your dishonesty, can you? I’m not a Republican, and that quote doesn’t say what you claim, no matter how many times you link to it over and over again.
January 2, 2010, 10:39 pmMark Field says:
You seem to know far more about what’s in my mind than I do. That’s either very impressive or….
Global warming makes it increasingly less likely that the pre-condition for that would occur.
January 2, 2010, 11:03 pmGuy says:
Because he doesn’t negotiate with terrorists?
January 2, 2010, 11:27 pmGuy says:
Seriously, it takes a special type of chutzpah to play a game of chicken with someone, then accuse them of recklessly not veering off when you refuse to do the same.
January 2, 2010, 11:40 pmDuracomm says:
Mark Field said,
Enlighten us, what is your preferred form?
January 2, 2010, 11:44 pmjukeboxgrad says:
duracomm:
The 1999 US budget, submitted in 1998 by Clinton, was $1.7 trillion. The 2009 US budget, submitted in 2008 by Bush, was $3.1 trillion. “In 10 years,” that’s an increase of 82%, “in nominal terms.” Just a little perspective.
Not many conservatives were accusing Bush of “insane overspending” at the time he was doing his insane overspending. Therefore they lack credibility. As Bruce Bartlett has explained.
People who argue for small government only when their tribe is not running the government have no credibility.
================
sg:
Yes, because we don’t have any other good choices. America is an experiment. I’m sorry you think the experiment is doomed.
No one is holding a gun to our heads forcing us to be the world’s policeman. That’s a choice we made for ourselves. And why do we stick with that choice? Because the people who get rich making weapons need us to have new enemies now that the USSR is gone.
The USSR erred on the side of too much and the result was bankruptcy. We’re headed in the same direction.
In the long run, owning lots of guns means nothing if our work force is not healthy and well-educated. Without health and education there can be no real prosperity, and without real prosperity there can be no real national security. I find it hard to understand why Republicans find this hard to understand. Maybe they just have a hard time seeing past the walls of their gated ghettos.
================
laura:
If no one has ever introduced you to the concept of being a D (or R) In Name Only, then I am not surprised that you cannot comprehend my point.
We generally respect and revere the Founders even though they were “such folks:” that is, people who failed to live up to their own rhetoric, in some important ways. That doesn’t mean we should discount their rhetoric, or fail to live up to it, ourselves. On the other hand, creating a permanent “enslaved underclass” seems to be a major goal of the GOP.
================
walden:
Palin repeatedly denied that Monegan was pressured to fire Wooten until a tape emerged which made it impossible for her to continue that charade. So she did indeed hide it and lie about it for as long as she could. She “didn’t hide it during the campaign” only because it had already been unhidden, by people other than her. But she still continued to lie about it.
Why is it that you want to overlook what Palin did? Naked partisanship, I guess.
January 2, 2010, 11:55 pmjukeboxgrad says:
nieporent:
I’m pretty sure the motto was not coined to encourage people who think we’re not all in this together.
Really? Feel free to to explain how the idea of ‘out of many one’ has “nothing to do with” the idea that we’re all in this together. One person who might want to hear your explanation is Newt Gingrich, since he said this:
And that pesky moonbat Glenn Beck said the same thing:
And former Bush official Tom Ridge said the same thing:
As usual, you’re inventing your own reality.
Tell it to the Bush State Dept, which said this (2004):
And tell it to Paul Wolfowitz, who also applied that word to Singapore. And tell it to Weekly Standard, who also applied that word to Singapore.
As usual, you’re inventing your own reality.
If you’re not a Republican, then you’re something even worse.
Let’s review. In another thread, someone else said this:
You responded as follows:
Feel free to explain how this means something other than this: poor people should be prevented from voting.
January 2, 2010, 11:57 pmDavid Nieporent says:
No, as usual, you’re substituting googling and pattern matching for thinking, plus your usual attempt to deflect attention from liberal failings by saying “Conservatives did it first/do it too.” Why do I care what Newt Gingrich, Glenn Beck, or Tom Ridge said? If you were actually going to employ an appeal to authority, you would have to cite someone from the 18th century, not 20th, to illustrate what it meant. And for it to be relevant, you would have to show it to be an endorsement of the welfare state, since that’s how it was raised in this discussion.
No, as usual, you’re substituting googling and pattern matching for thinking, plus your usual attempt to deflect attention from liberal failings by saying “Conservatives did it first/do it too.” In fact, the Bush state department did not call Singapore authoritarian; neither did Paul Wolfowitz. Neither did “the Weekly Standard.” The first two called a specific action authoritarian, not the country. The closest is the third, but that was Ellen Bork, not “the Weekly Standard,” but that qualified it by calling it “soft authoritarian.” But why should we care, anyway? Googling the words “authoritarian” and “Singapore” and finding a web page or article where they were both used does not constitute an argument. That’s pattern matching.
A socialist? Nope. Guess again.
Well, first, “poor” and “property requirements” are different; you somehow fail to read carefully when it suits you. Second, my response makes no statement whatsoever about what “should” happen; you somehow fail to read carefully when it suits you.
January 3, 2010, 12:22 amDuracomm says:
jukeboxgrad said,
True that.
Now kindly point to where I have argued against small government.
That would help your credibility.
January 3, 2010, 12:26 amMark Field says:
A republic: sovereignty in the people; majority rule (subject to a few limitations not relevant in this thread); representative government. Remarkably enough, this thread has doubled in size and diverted off topic simply because I suggested such a government for CA.
January 3, 2010, 12:28 amDuracomm says:
jukeboxgrad,
Thanks for mentioning bush’s disastrous spending.
The problem is obama’s runaway spending is making bush look like a fiscal conservative.
January 3, 2010, 12:32 amMaking Bush Look Like a Piker
Luthien Golden says:
You equate property ownership with poverty and that’s not necessarily true. People throughout Appalachia are dirt poor, but many of them own their land.
The Founders established property ownership as a requirement for voting because property taxes were one of the few ways that the govt could raise money. They figured that the people who were going to be taxed should decide if the project was worth the money.
It also wasn’t that hard of a requirement to fulfill, considering that the majority of people came here to accumulate property – whether it was a farm on the frontier or a cottage in one of the nation’s many villages.
Btw, didn’t you used to post on the old Powerline forum? The nick sounds familiar.
January 3, 2010, 12:33 amjukeboxgrad says:
nieporent:
What you call “pattern matching” is what other people quaintly call ‘showing proof.’ Something you usually don’t bother with, including now.
You obviously don’t care, because you don’t mind creating a reality that has nothing to do with the one inhabited by everyone else (including them).
For some odd reason, you’ve cited this number of 18th century authorities to demonstrate that the words meant something different back then: zero. I wonder why that is.
Also, Gingrich, Beck and Ridge all made their statements in modern times, and this thread exists in modern times. What’s relevant is how those words are interpreted in modern times. You have your own peculiar interpretation, and you’ve cited this much proof in support of your interpretation: none.
Let’s review. You said this:
I responded as follows:
Why did I say that? Because “e pluribus unum” is commonly understood to mean “we’re all in this together.” And that’s reflected in the multiple examples I cited. You’re trying to pretend that this interpretation is wrong, and you’ve cited this much proof in support of that pretense: none. As usual, you’re creating your own reality.
They said this:
Saying the Singapore government has an “authoritarian style” is materially different from calling the government authoritarian? Really? Your pedantry is a hoot.
Really? “Poor” and ‘lacking property’ are not essentially synonymous? Hopefully you can tell us about the magic GOP dictionary which explains that. You said this: “I don’t see what’s so wrong with property requirements for voting.” So you have no problem with poor people voting, as long as they own property. Which means they’re not poor.
You said this: “should people with no ties to a community and who pay nothing in taxes be allowed to vote to impose taxes on others?” I highlighted an important word. For people who speak English, your rhetorical question is the equivalent of this statement: ‘people with no ties to a community and who pay nothing in taxes should not be allowed to vote to impose taxes on others.’
So your “response makes no statement whatsoever about what ‘should‘ happen,” except where it makes a statement about what “should” happen.
It’s interesting to notice that you have three choices:
A) Argue that the position you expressed is correct
B) Withdraw the position you expressed
C) Pretend that you never expressed the position you expressed
Only someone like you would pick C.
January 3, 2010, 2:23 amjukeboxgrad says:
duracomm:
Why should I? That’s a complete non sequitur. I have never claimed that you have “argued against small government.” I have suggested that you argue in favor of small government only when your tribe is out of power. Now kindly point to where you have argued against large government when your tribe was running the government and making it larger.
Your credibility would be marginally enhanced if you can show that you called it “disastrous” while he was doing it. Did you? Presumably you spoke up to complain when Cheney said “deficits don’t matter.” Right?
You are pointing to an article that shows projected deficits over a 10-year period, as if Obama is responsible for that, even though Obama will be in office for no longer than 8 years. Lots of articles do this, and it doesn’t help their credibility.
Wake me up when Obama doubles the national debt. That’s what Bush did. Better yet, wake me up when Obama triples the national debt. That’s what Reagan did.
==============
luthien:
If I own property, I’m not terribly poor. By definition. But it’s no surprise to discover that Republicans are ignorant about what it means to be truly poor. This reminds me of when McCain thought it was a joke to define rich as income over $5 million.
The Founders established property ownership as a requirement for voting because they supported slavery. Slaves generally did not own property. And property taxes did not finance the federal government. They were paid to state and local government. “The largest source of federal revenue from the 1790s to the eve of World War I” was tariffs. So I think you’re confused.
Yes. Until the Powerliners got embarrassed and started deleting entire threads, including hundreds of comments.
January 3, 2010, 2:23 amDavid Nieporent says:
It may be what you call “showing proof,” but that’s only because you don’t understand what proof actually is. See, “other people” understand that statements have context, and pattern matching pulls random words or phrases out of context. So when someone says that a crackdown on protests at a financial summit in a particular country is authoritarian, the pattern matcher sees the name of the country and the word “authoritarian” and thinks that the speaker is claiming the country is authoritarian; the person “showing proof” knows that in fact there’s a difference between claiming that a particular action is authoritarian and claiming that a country is authoritarian.
Like Homer Simpson, you don’t know what a rhetorical question is. My question wasn’t one. It was an actual question.
Correct. (But only by accident, since your question was intended to be rhetorical.)
January 3, 2010, 3:38 amDavid Nieporent says:
Your unlikeability would be marginally reduced if you stopped pretending god appointed you as arbiter of other people’s “credibility.”
January 3, 2010, 3:57 amGuy says:
Originalism applies not only to Constitutional interpretation, but to questions of national identity, social justice, and proper morality?
Not only does your link fail to support the theory that homeless people should not be considered to be poor, also I’m not about to take the Heritage Foundation’s subjective idea of who counts as “really” poor as authoritative.
January 3, 2010, 4:09 amGuy says:
And until I read comments in this thread, I thought that that idea had been universally rejected in this country.
January 3, 2010, 4:11 amSG says:
No one is holding a gun to our heads forcing us to be the world’s policeman. That’s a choice we made for ourselves.
I agree with you on this. The question is how do the costs of maintaining the peace compare to the cost if we were to withdraw from that role. I absolutely agree there would be a near-term savings. I’m not convinced (in either way) that there would be a long-term savings. I don’t have confidence that we would be able to remain neutral in the skirmishes that would likely break out.
If we could avoid becoming entangled, I would have no problems in scaling back the military and leaving the rest of the world to fend for itself.
In the long run, owning lots of guns means nothing if our work force is not healthy and well-educated. Without health and education there can be no real prosperity, and without real prosperity there can be no real national security.
The US spends ridiculous amounts on education with relatively little to show for it. We could have a lively debate on why that is, but the fact remains. I agree there are problems in education, but it’s not due to a lack of funding.
Likewise we could debate the merits of various health care proposals, but it’s not even remotely a competitive issue. The overlap between the workforce and people who have major health problems is almost by definition 0; if you have major health problems you can’t be working. The vast majority of “health care” that matters as far as having a competitive workforce is public sanitation and antibiotics and those are not (yet) a problem.
January 3, 2010, 4:13 amDavid Nieporent says:
No; it just applies to the reason why the phrase “e pluribus unum” appears on our currency, since that decision was made in the 18th century.
The Heritage Foundation was neither using a subjective idea nor its own idea at all; it was using the official census bureau definition.
January 3, 2010, 4:21 amSG says:
Seriously, it takes a special type of chutzpah to play a game of chicken with someone, then accuse them of recklessly not veering off when you refuse to do the same.
I do not believe Sen. DeMint is playing chicken. I think he is sincere, albeit possibly mistaken, in his belief that unionization would harm national security.
January 3, 2010, 4:31 amPerseus says:
You must be getting your American history from Lyndon LaRouche affiliated websites again because Founders such as Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Paine, Adams, Wilson, Randolph, Pendleton, Dickinson, et al. did not justify property requirements for voting (introduced during the colonial era) on those grounds (many in fact opposed slavery). If you bothered to read what they wrote, you would discover that their main arguments were that the poor lacked a sufficient stake in society, lacked adequate education, were apt to be unduly influenced by the rich, and might expropriate the property of the rich.
As for taxes, tariffs did provide the bulk of revenue for the federal government, but excise taxes on coffee, tea, and, of course, distilled spirits (igniting the Whiskey Rebellion) were also levied. And you are also wrong about the federal government not levying property taxes. It levied a direct tax on land, houses, and slaves in 1798 (sparking Fries’s Rebellion). It might also be noted that Madison thought that Hamilton’s carriage tax was a property tax and hence unconstitutional (because direct taxes must be apportioned), but Hamilton successfully defended it as an indirect tax in Hylton v. U.S. (1796).
January 3, 2010, 5:02 amGuy says:
I’m less certain of his sincerity, but even if he is, I think a sincere belief from the Democrats that unionization would not interfere with national security, and that this nominee is the best man available for the job is sufficient to carry their burden as far as not showing willingness to sacrifice national security goes.
The Heritage Foundation was arguing the the definition of “poverty” (their scare quotes, not mine) was broader than the truly poor. In any case, the proposition that some poor people own land is not incompatible with the proposition that people who don’t own land are poor, and certainly not incompatible with the proposition that there is a strong correlation between not owning land and being poor.
January 3, 2010, 5:45 amGuy says:
Also there seems to be some equivocation in this discussion between people who don’t own land and the homeless, which are certainly not coextensive groups in any sense. If we are discussing the homeless specifically, then it would be ridiculous to say that they are not poor.
January 3, 2010, 6:37 amDuracomm says:
Jukeboxgrad says,
I guess you and obama should stop complaining about bush’s spending because your ludicrous statement
“even though Obama will be in office for no longer than 8 years.”
applies to bush also.
Let me repeat an important quote from the article.
Obama campaigned on fiscal responsibility yet when it comes to spending he is successfully performing the herculean task of
Making Bush Look Like a Piker
January 3, 2010, 10:24 amFury says:
Readers should also consider the amount of the national debt that doubled under G.W. Bush and tripled and Reagan, how much did the national debt rise for Reagan, Bush, Clinton, G.W. Bush and Obama at the one-year point in office, two-year, etc.
January 3, 2010, 10:54 amMark Field says:
What you’re missing is that virtually all of the projected deficit is the result of Bush Administration actions. See here for a handy chart.
January 3, 2010, 11:12 amDavid Nieporent says:
Nobody claimed the homeless weren’t poor. The claim was the converse: that not all poor people are homeless.
January 3, 2010, 12:57 pmDuracomm says:
You can’t fix a deficit problem by steadily increasing spending, and obama is on a spending bender.
Bush Deficit vs. Obama Deficit in Pictures
January 3, 2010, 1:31 pmSG says:
I’m less certain of his sincerity, but even if he is, I think a sincere belief from the Democrats that unionization would not interfere with national security, and that this nominee is the best man available for the job is sufficient to carry their burden as far as not showing willingness to sacrifice national security goes.
I’m afraid I’m no making myself clear. I am also assuming Southers is sincere in his belief that unionization would not harm security – there’s a fundamental impasse in their respective positions and due to Senate arcana, Southers will not be confirmed as long as he holds to his desire to unionize.
Given this scenario, Southers unwillingness to concede on the issue seems like a revealed preference – unionization is more important than national security. Otherwise, I’d imagine he’d make a statement like “While I believe there is no conflict between unionization and TSA’s ability to fulfill its duties, with one bomb brought on board a plane and more threatened, now is not the time to allow this vital agency to be leaderless. I will not allow this issue to impair our nation’s security at this time, so I assure Sen. DeMint that I will not allow TSA workers to unionize, but I hope that this issue can be revisited at a later time.”
But he doesn’t – he (so far, anyways) sticks to his guns. Doesn’t this give us some insight into how he prioritizes the issues?
Note, none of this assumes either one is right (or wrong) on the merits or that either are pushing for an end state that think will be harmful to national security. It’s only a argument as to how Southers (and presumably Obama) have prioritized national security relative to unionization of TSA workers.
January 3, 2010, 2:12 pmSG says:
What you’re missing is that virtually all of the projected deficit is the result of Bush Administration actions. See here for a handy chart.
C’mon, this analysis is blatantly, ridiculously dishonest. Do you really believe this or are you just hoping you can fool people who don’t bother to look (or think)? The “analsyis” includes whoppers like “Most of the Bush tax cuts expire after December 2010 (partway through fiscal 2011). We added the cost of extending them, along with continuing AMT relief, from estimates prepared by CBO and JCT.”
Guess what? If the Obama administration extends the tax cuts and AMT relief, at that point they cease to be Bush tax cuts and become Obama tax cuts. Likewise, when Obama continues deployments in Iraq and increases the deployment in Afghanistan, he owns the war costs incurred during his administration. Using this absurd logic, Bush didn’t run any deficits, he merely inherited them from FDR (SS) and LBJ (Medicare).
Meanwhile on this planet, the best projected Obama yearly deficit is greater than the worst Bush yearly deficit and the Obama administration is now talking about spending $139B of TARP money that was budgeted but has gone unallocated. BTW, I believe this is also added in as “inherited Bush deficit”
Why don’t you go back to whining about how your preferred federal policy of progressive taxation and income redistribution means your state has less money. That’s at least mildly amusing, kind of like listening to someone complain about how much it costs to much money to fill the gas tank on their SUV.
January 3, 2010, 2:40 pmLN says:
So all you have to do to win a political argument is say that it’s a matter of national security. Then if your opponent sticks to his guns, it proves that he’s unserious about national security — certainly not as serious as you are. If your opponent folds, then the argument is over anyway.
It’s always interesting to see what the champions of intellectual honesty come up with.
January 3, 2010, 3:08 pmSG says:
So all you have to do to win a political argument is say that it’s a matter of national security.
No, you have to make a convincing case that it’s a matter of national security. DeMint’s complaints could be completely disingenuous. I was only assuming good faith on both parties to remove that from the discussion.
If something is a priority, you will sometimes have to make tradeoffs on other issues to achieve your priority. That’s what it means to make it a priority. Yes, that means sometimes a negotiating adversary can use that priority to force you to compromise on other, less important issues. So what? Politics ain’t beanbag.
So, bringing this all back around. It certainly appears that the Obama administration is prioritizing TSA unionization over getting a TSA director confirmed, nor are they not making the argument that unionization is important to national security. I don’t see any way to view that other than they prioritize unionization ahead of national security. How do you see it?
If those priorities are a political loser, that’s a decision they have to live with. This will only work as the political kryptonite you posit that the electorate on the whole views national security as a third rail (which I believe they do), but if politicians have to back down on other priorities in the face of a colorable national security counter-argument, that’s just democracy in action. I don’t see this as fundamentally different than Dems regularly running on “Republican’s are going to cut your SS/Medicare”.
January 3, 2010, 3:40 pmjukeboxgrad says:
nieporent:
When are you going to show that I have pulled “random words or phrases out of context?” You haven’t shown that, and you’re not going to, because I haven’t done that. This is one more in a long series of bare assertions you have made. I have cited Gingrich, Beck and Ridge to demonstrate that “e pluribus unum” is commonly understood to mean “we’re all in this together.” You claim otherwise. So where’s your proof?
Except that Gingrich, Beck and Ridge didn’t use the phrase in the 18th century. They used it in modern times. And so did I. And the phrase is being printed on our currency in modern times. Therefore what’s relevant is how the phrase is used and understood today, not how it was understood in the 18th century. And aside from that, we’re still waiting for you to demonstrate that it ever meant something different from what it means today.
Naturally. And if I said that you molested a child, I’m only “claiming that a particular action” is molestation, and I’m not claiming that you’re a molester. Makes perfect sense!
The Bush State Dept. said “the [Singapore] Government’s authoritarian style fostered an atmosphere inimical to free speech and a free press.” You claim this is materially different than accusing the government of being authoritarian. Which makes as much sense as saying that you’re not a molester, because there was only “a particular action” of molestation.
That’s interesting. You said this:
That doesn’t sound like an actual question. It sounds like a rhetorical question. It’s hard to imagine why anyone would ask that question unless they believed that people who pay nothing in taxes should not be allowed to vote. But we can clear this up by asking an actual question: do you think that people who pay nothing in taxes should be allowed to vote? And if we tie together voting and taxes, why not grant more votes to people who pay more taxes? Because one-dollar-one-vote is a superior principle to one-person-one-vote, right?
You are citing a source that says this: “Forty-six percent of all poor households actually own their own homes.” I guess this is your way of telling us that you don’t actually want to prevent all poor people from voting. You only want to prevent most of them from voting, that is, the majority who don’t own their homes. Right?
Incidentally, your source is wrong. “40 percent of bottom quintile families own a home” (link). And only a portion of the bottom quintile is classified as poor: “the official poverty rate in 2008 was 13.2 percent” (link). So home ownership for people living in poverty has to be below 40%, and is probably far below 40%, since home ownership and income are highly correlated (for example, home ownership in the top quintile is about 90%).
They claimed to be using “the official census bureau definition,” but they were not specific about their sources, and they provided no links. And I have shown that their numbers are wrong.
Why is it necessary to point out that “not all poor people are homeless?” No one claimed otherwise. But all homeless people should be prevented from voting, right? And not just that: renters, too. After all, “what’s so wrong with property requirements for voting?”
January 3, 2010, 4:35 pmjukeboxgrad says:
sg:
“Becoming entangled” is a choice we have repeatedly made for ourselves. Why? Because when we do so, certain people make a killing.
The source you cited says this:
If you think ranking tenth makes us “ridiculous” you’re entitled to your opinion, but I disagree.
You might want to consider the possibility that education, like many other things in our society, is distributed very unequally. Which means that we are spending a great deal on educating certain people, and spending relatively little educating many others. So it may indeed be the case that education for certain groups suffers from a lack of funding.
Your analysis is very logical if you ignore any time horizon greater than about 24 hours. Anyone who is well today can wake up quite sick tomorrow. And if you think we’re doing good job of providing health services to poor people, I think you need to make an effort to meet more poor people.
It’s also an argument as to how DeMint has prioritized anti-unionization. Nevertheless, you said “Southers and the Obama administration are the ones putting the nation at risk.” That makes no sense. I have already pointed this out, and you have not addressed this.
It certainly appears that DeMint is prioritizing TSA anti-unionization over getting a TSA director confirmed.
=========================
perseus:
Can you be bothered to provide a citation?
=========================
duracomm:
Where were you when Cheney said “deficits don’t matter?”
You’re citing an article which implies that the deficit over a period of 11 years is attributable to Obama. How does that make sense?
January 3, 2010, 4:36 pmSG says:
If you think ranking tenth makes us “ridiculous” you’re entitled to your opinion, but I disagree.
No, I think spending roughly the same as the rest of the world combined makes us ridiculous – the US spent roughly $500B out of a worldwide total of $1.1T on education.
Or if you prefer, how about on a spending per student basis. According to the OECD, “OECD countries now spend an average of USD 7,343 per student per year between primary and tertiary education, but this masks a broad range of expenditure across countries. Switzerland and the U.S. spend the most, with average annual outlays per student of more than USD 11,000.”
but they also note
“Spending is not necessarily a guarantee of higher quality in terms of education, though: Australia, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands and New Zealand all have moderate expenditure on education per student at the primary and lower secondary levels but are among the countries where 15-year-olds perform strongest in key subject areas.”
Using your preferred metric (% of GDP), that educational powerhouse Saudi Arabia leads the world.
So it may indeed be the case that education for certain groups suffers from a lack of funding
That may be, but you haven’t attempted to show that and there’s little evidence that this is true. For example, according to the Washington Post, “The District [of Columbia's school system] spends $12,979 per pupil each year, ranking it third-highest among the 100 largest districts in the nation.” yet despite this high level of funding, “Tests show that in reading and math, the District’s public school students score at the bottom among 11 major city school systems, even when poor children are compared only with other poor children. Thirty-three percent of poor fourth-graders across the nation lacked basic skills in math, but in the District, the figure was 62 percent. It was 74 percent for D.C. eighth-graders, compared with 49 percent nationally.”
There are definitely problems with our education system, but funding levels just don’t seem to be it, either looking inter- or intra-nationally.
January 3, 2010, 5:24 pmSG says:
It certainly appears that DeMint is prioritizing TSA anti-unionization over getting a TSA director confirmed.
Yes, but he has asserted that he believes unionization will harm national security. Southers has asserted that unionization will not impact national security. Taking both claims at face value, they’re not analogous. DeMint’s claimed position is that he won’t budge due to concern over national security, Souther’s is that he won’t budge due to concern over workers’ rights.
The politics and the merits of the issue is another matter entirely, and one I’m not attempting to address. Although not being an expert on labor law, I am curious about one thing. Joseph Slater wrote that “Federal employees have a much more restrictive statute that covers (most) of them. It doesn’t allow strikes and doesn’t allow bargaining over many subjects that private sector workers covered by the NLRA can bargain over (e.g., wages and hours of work).” Assuming this to be true, what utility does a union provide to TSA employess under these restrictions?
January 3, 2010, 5:31 pmDavid Nieporent says:
That’s not the right question. The right question is: when are you going to admit that you have pulled random words or phrases out of context? Showing that your arguments are baseless is trivial; getting you to admit it is a sisyphean task.
A “molester,” in common parlance, is someone who has committed a single act of molestation. An authoritarian government is not a government that has committed a single authoritarian act. In other words, your analogy is as poor as your social skills.
If you’d like to carry on both ends of a conversation with yourself, then you can decide what each statement on each side of the conversation means. If you’re going to have a conversation with someone else, you don’t get to decide what they meant. If you mean, “I mistakenly interpreted it as a rhetorical question, and I apologize,” then just say so.
What a rather puzzling (rhetorical) question. You claim to want to have read my statement as rhetorical; in fact, you rewrote it so that it was an affirmative statement: “people with no ties to a community and who pay nothing in taxes should not be allowed to vote to impose taxes on others.” And yet now you decide to rephrase it yet again, taking away the conjunctive. So you turn a question about whether people who don’t satisfy either of two conditions into an assertion about someone who doesn’t satisfy one of those conditions.
Or maybe your source is. (Or maybe both sources are right using different definitions, or different timeframes.) But I suppose it’s beyond your comprehension to think that just because JBG googled something up doesn’t endow it with the aura of Absolute Truth.
In fact, they were specific about their sources — I don’t know what report you claim to have read, but they were as specific as your links were — and you haven’t “shown” any such thing. All you’ve “shown” is that one google search found someone who disagreed.
But I guess in your usual spirit of pounding the table, you’re implicitly admitting that your claim that poor and lacking property are “essentially synonymous” was false, since even your source claims that 40% of people in the bottom income quintile — which is not the census definition of “poverty line,” but is a category most people would probably consider poor — own homes.
January 3, 2010, 6:13 pmLeo Marvin says:
Does that mean if Obama lets them expire, you won’t say he raised taxes? What do you suppose Jim DeMint and his friends would say?
January 3, 2010, 7:43 pmSG says:
Does that mean if Obama lets them expire, you won’t say he raised taxes? What do you suppose Jim DeMint and his friends would say?
If he lets them expire, I would say he allowed taxes to be increased, but if he retains them I would say he cut taxes.
As far as DeMint adn friends, I expect them to say whatever focus groups determine has the greatest negative impact.
January 3, 2010, 8:02 pmMark Field says:
I think you’ve lost the context of this discussion. Duracomm’s original claim was that Obama was currently running huge deficits. The chart I provided shows that’s not true.
As for the future, your comment ignores the inertial effects of Bush policy. While it’s true that Obama is now responsible for spending on Iraq, say, he’s only responsible for the amount going forward from Jan 20, 2009. The rest — and it’s a sizeable portion of the deficit — remains Bush’s.
Finally, speculating about future deficits is just that, speculation. If Duracomm is worried about them, then we have to make assumptions about what Obama does. If he continues Bush’s failed policies, then yeah, the deficits will continue to grow. If he changes those policies, then the whole exercise is pointless because we don’t know what those policies will be and there’s no use worrying about projected deficits except those already built in by Bush.
January 3, 2010, 8:06 pmLeo Marvin says:
How can the only possibilities either increase or cut taxes? I’d think there would be one tax neutral option which continues the status quo, and one option that either increases or cuts taxes, depending on whether you define the status quo as pre or post Bush tax cuts.
January 3, 2010, 8:19 pmMark Field says:
It was common in the 18th C for the political class in Britain to argue that only those with property should vote. The claim was that those who worked for the wealthy, but had no property of their own, were “dependents” whose vote would necessarily be the same as that of their patron. They considered this a form of corruption.
This attitude began dying out in the US after the Revolution, but wasn’t completely gone until universal white male suffrage became the norm around the time of Jackson. Even Jefferson, who favored a broad suffrage, wanted to accomplish that by making land available on generous terms.
Federalists particularly opposed white male suffrage, believing that only the better classes should rule. Needless to say, this was self-defeating in the long run (akin to the anti-immigrant wing of the Republicans today).
January 3, 2010, 8:21 pmbillw, Silicon Valley, CA says:
SG and Leo Marvin, today is reality and tax rates today are today’s reality. If congress let’s tax rates increase by not renewing the current the tax rates then tax rates will increase. If they renew todays rates then they remain the same – no increase or decrease. I suggest everyone refer to tax rates not taxes. Congress sets tax rates not taxes. Individuals or other entities pay taxes based the tax rates applied to their adjusted incomes.
January 3, 2010, 8:32 pmDavid Nieporent says:
No, it doesn’t. The chart you provided was talking about the overall ten year deficits, not the current one specifically. Here’s the question: is the budget submitted by Obama balanced? No, obviously not. How big is the deficit in that budget? How does that compare with the last budget submitted by Bush (plus any supplemental spending)?
January 3, 2010, 9:32 pmeyesay says:
I am dismayed but not surprised that David Nieporent and others are saying that Obama is bad because he is presiding over huge deficits. Hello. We have huge deficits because President George W. Bush made some very bad mistakes. He lied us into a trillion-dollar war that has left everyone worse off, and he was the first president to cut taxes in wartime. Republicans promoted deregulation of the financial sector that resulted in a financial meltdown. This mandated the expense of TARP. Keynes was right, during severe economic downturns the government must spend to get things going. Well, we’re in a severe economic downturn, so deficit spending is required. Lay all of this at the doorstep of the Bush administration and congressional Republicans, not on Barack Obama. It is likely that over the next few years, the economy will begin to climb, and then it will be prudent to cut federal spending and also perhaps gently raise taxes, so we can close the deficit. Of course, when we do, Republicans with fight those tax increases every step of the way, so again, lay the deficit at the doorstep of the Republicans. Don’t blame Obama for a war he opposed and inherited.
January 3, 2010, 10:10 pmMark Field says:
The chart I provided includes 2009′s deficit and projected deficits for the next 10 years.
As for Obama’s budget, he hasn’t yet submitted one (unless I missed it). The 2009 fiscal year operated off a Bush budget, subject to supplementals such as ARRA or more spending for Afghanistan. Obama’s contribution to the 2009 deficit is trivial compared to Bush’s.
January 3, 2010, 10:24 pmDavid Nieporent says:
I don’t believe I said the above at all, and I have never defended George Bush’s handling of the federal budget. I have blamed Obama for his policies, which are his own fault, not Bush’s. Bush has to take the blame for his own policies — his massive new entitlement program, his failure to cut any spending on anything at all. His panicked endorsement of TARP. But nobody forced Obama to come up with a craptacular stimulus program that of course didn’t stimulate — just as most conservative economists told him it wouldn’t. Nobody forced him to propose a massive new entitlement program, or a massive drag on the economy in Waxman-Markey, or any of his other debacles. Nobody forced him to keep fighting these wars, and even escalating one. That’s all on him, not Bush.
January 3, 2010, 10:29 pmGuy says:
Maybe that information (modified for inflation, of course) is useful, but since the national debt seems to experience exponential growth in any case, I’m not sure how much weight should be given to it, the local characteristic doubling time is probably the most useful measure.
January 3, 2010, 11:59 pmmattski says:
You are a font of ill-will and misinformation.
“Nobody forced him to keep fighting these wars” — Look, nobody forced him to increase our commitment in Afghanistan, but only a goon would argue that folding our tents there and in Iraq is an option available to him.
Reality-based economists agree that the stimulus is indeed working. Krugman has said all along the stimulus is too small not too large. It’s going to peter out next year and we may see ill effects from that.
January 4, 2010, 7:15 ammattski says:
Stimulus too small, not too big.
January 4, 2010, 7:57 amMark Field says:
There’s a handy chart here which shows what happened to the debt under the post-WWII presidents. To summarize, every president before Nixon reduced the debt (even LBJ). Since Nixon, all Dem presidents have reduced it and all Repub presidents have increased it.
January 4, 2010, 10:27 amDuracomm says:
Maybe we should privatize the TSA.
Lavish public sector pensions and the government worker unions that drive them are going to bankrupt us. This example from ohio illustrates the problem.
More on The Coming War Over Public-Sector Pensions
January 4, 2010, 1:27 pmDavid Nieporent says:
That’s misleading and incorrect. It’s misleading, in that you say “all Dem presidents,” implying multiple ones, when in fact there were only two. It’s incorrect in that the debt increased, not decreased, under these presidents. What decreased — according to the chart; I’m taking it as accurate for now — was debt/GDP ratio.
January 4, 2010, 8:58 pmMark Field says:
It’s your post which is misleading and incorrect. First, everybody knows that there have been just 2 Dem presidents since Nixon (and before Obama). I don’t need to state the obvious any more than I already do.
Second, the only meaningful measure is debt/GDP. If Bill Gates borrows $100,000, that’s very different than if I do.
Third, if Republican presidents can’t even lower the debt/GDP ratio, that’s truly horrifying.
January 4, 2010, 10:38 pmFury says:
Thanks for noting this. I’ll get the data for both of these measures and post in a related post.
January 5, 2010, 9:34 amjukeboxgrad says:
sg:
OK, it’s ridiculous that we spend roughly the same as the rest of the world combined on education, but not ridiculous that we spend roughly the same as the rest of the world combined on weapons. Got it.
And Souther probably believes that preserving his options with regard to how he runs TSA is important to national security. So I don’t buy your claim that the claims are not analogous. You’re just choosing to view one side as sincere and the other side as not. That’s the only reason for you to say what you said: “Southers and the Obama administration are the ones putting the nation at risk.”
===================
mark:
Thanks for explaining this.
77% of our national debt was accumulated under three presidents: Reagan, Bush and Bush.
January 6, 2010, 11:17 amjukeboxgrad says:
nieporent:
You’re spinning like a top in a pathetic attempt to avoid answering a simple question. Your original statement was this:
You claim that those words mean something other than what they obviously mean (that you would like to prevent poor people from voting). So I asked you this question: do you think that people who pay nothing in taxes should be allowed to vote?
Why are you ducking the question?
And since you seem to be whining about the form of the question, perhaps you would prefer it in this form: should people with no ties to a community and who pay nothing in taxes be allowed to vote to impose taxes on others?
I’m sure you will also duck that question, and/or whine about it, even though it’s exactly your own words.
For some strange reason, you’re going to a lot of effort to avoid making a simple, clear statement with regard to where you stand. I think that’s because you already revealed where you stand, and now you wish you hadn’t.
I provided links to official US government sites. Heritage was purportedly citing the US government, but provided no links, and no details. If you can provide links to substantiate their claims, there’s no time like the present. What are you waiting for?
Please explain why the evidence I provided is less convincing than what was offered by Heritage and you. Because you and Heritage offered this much: none. None is not hard to beat.
You cited an article which said this:
Welcome to the wacky world of nieporent, where making a vague claim about “various government reports” is considered being “specific about their sources.” Thanks for the laugh.
Then you must be doing this. Here I provided links to HHS and the Census Bureau. Still waiting for you to show how the facts I cited are wrong.
Naturally, as long as you can’t grasp the difference between a vague claim about “various government reports,” as compared with providing actual links to actual government sites containing actual data.
I didn’t just cite “someone.” I cited the US government, which is supposedly the same source that Heritage used. The difference is that I showed where my numbers came from. They didn’t.
You’re claiming that the bottom quintile should be considered poor? Really? Aren’t you the same nieporent who recently cited a Heritage article arguing that even the bottom 13% aren’t really poor? Here’s an idea: pick one story and stick with it.
Anyway, the relevant category is this: people who don’t own property and therefore have “no ties to a community and who pay nothing in taxes.” Should they be allowed to vote or not? Why won’t you tell us? Simple answer: because you already did.
January 6, 2010, 11:18 amSG says:
OK, it’s ridiculous that we spend roughly the same as the rest of the world combined on education, but not ridiculous that we spend roughly the same as the rest of the world combined on weapons. Got it.
If our population’s educational achievement where as unquestionably superior to the rest of the world as is our military, then it might make a fair comparison. As I wrote in this very thread I’m not averse to paying more, only to paying more without a commensurate return. In education the return is not there.
As I’ve also said, there is a valid argument to be made that we’re overspending on defense, but that’s not relevant to the question of whether we’re getting a good return on investment in education.
Also apples will never be the same as oranges, no matter how much you wish to directly compare the two.
And Souther probably believes that preserving his options with regard to how he runs TSA is important to national security.
Perhaps he believes that, but I’m not aware of him ever claiming claiming that unionization is important to national security, only that it wouldn’t be harmful to national security. If he were making a positive claim about unionization being important to national security then the claims would be analogous and my argument wouldn’t hold.
Are you aware of any such claims about the importance of a unionized TSA to national security by Southers/Obama?
January 6, 2010, 2:44 pmjukeboxgrad says:
sg:
To the extent that you’re somewhat open to those ideas (spending more on education and less on guns) then we’re in so-called violent agreement.
I don’t think we need to hear any such claim explicitly in order to understand that Southers/Obama believe that maintaining their freedom to run TSA as they see fit (including what they may deem helpful to attract and motivate employees) is important to national security. This is called giving someone the benefit of the doubt.
January 6, 2010, 3:26 pmSG says:
I don’t think we need to hear any such claim explicitly in order to understand that Southers/Obama believe that maintaining their freedom to run TSA as they see fit (including what they may deem helpful to attract and motivate employees) is important to national security. This is called giving someone the benefit of the doubt.
This is wrong on at least two levels: First, unionizing the workforce reduces Southers/Obama’s freedom to tun TSA as they see fit. They’re management; unionization constrains management. Second, I am not obligated to assume arguments that they have declined to make. As I understand it, they have commented on this issue and their claim was that unionization was neutral to national security.
Now, I admit to not following this closely so I may be unaware of a positive national security claim which is why I have asked if any positive national security claim has been made. (Although no one has yet found such a claim). But if Obama/Southers are claiming that unionization is neutral to national security and yet refuse to acquiesce on the issue, they’re placing unionization ahead of national security. How else can you interpret their behavior?
January 6, 2010, 4:01 pmjukeboxgrad says:
sg:
If you were in charge, you would be free to look at it that way. Obama is in charge, and it’s within his discretion as an executive to decide that unionization could have a positive effect on employee morale and performance.
I’d like to see the quote.
January 6, 2010, 11:54 pm