The big rethink
The U.S. Senate doesn’t have it easy these days. George Packer’s full-frontal assault on the upper chamber of Congress in last week’s New Yorker has been making the rounds in the national media, and many have been eager to agree with his excruciating portrait of a dysfunctional institution:
The two lasting achievements of this Senate, financial regulation and health care, required a year and a half of legislative warfare that nearly destroyed the body. They depended on a set of circumstances—a large majority of Democrats, a charismatic President with an electoral mandate, and a national crisis—that will not last long or be repeated anytime soon. Two days after financial reform became law, Harry Reid announced that the Senate would not take up comprehensive energy-reform legislation for the rest of the year. And so climate change joined immigration, job creation, food safety, pilot training, veterans’ care, campaign finance, transportation security, labor law, mine safety, wildfire management, and scores of executive and judicial appointments on the list of matters that the world’s greatest deliberative body is incapable of addressing. Already, you can feel the Senate slipping back into stagnant waters.
Along these lines, E.J. Dionne makes a radical suggestion in his Washington Post column today:
I’ve reached the point where I’d abolish the Senate if I could. It is more profoundly undemocratic than it was when the Founders created it and less genuinely deliberative — problems compounded by a Republican minority’s strategy of delay and obstruction.
Is it time to rethink the basic structure of our representative democracy? The idea isn’t so crazy. As Packer points out, “The upper chamber of Congress was a constitutional compromise between popular sovereignty and state sovereignty.”
If that compromise is no longer necessary, why do we need a Senate? The United Kingdom’s House of Lords, for example, has very little power. There’s no single correct way to structure a government.
Discussion of abolishing the Senate is unlikely travel far anytime soon, but there’s no reason why that’s the case. Sometimes thinking about our future means rethinking our past.
-Sam
Image used under a Creative Commons attribution license from Flickr user cliff1066.
The case for nuance
Human psychology meets politics
The BBC recently published a story claiming that the specter of cross-border violence associated with illegal immigration and drug-trafficking is largely mythical. Indeed, El Paso is among the safest large cities in the country. Nonetheless, the myth of border violence persists. Supporters of the Arizona immigration laws point to the recent death of a rancher as the result of lax immigration policing, and a majority of the population appears to support the new laws.
Why might such beliefs persist in the face of clear evidence? The answer might lie in the manner in which humans interpret the world around them.
The ethics of the House ethics committee
Who do they represent?
The most interesting ethical questions surrounding Charlie Rangel don’t concern him, his villas, or his rent controlled apartments. They are about the operation and purpose of the House ethics committee and what ethical perspective members of the House should bring to bear on the controversy.
Rangel, dethroned former chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, has been charged by the ethics committee with 13 violations, including, among other sins, using his office to solicit donations to school to be named in his honor and failing to pay taxes on and report rental income from a house in the Dominican Republic. Settlement talks have stalled and Democrats are wringing their hands over the prospect of a public ethics trial for a fellow party member. It will not help their chances in the November elections.
A number of ethical perspectives in tension here, and for everyone involved. Here are a few.
First, there is the special obligation one has to himself, his life’s work, and his family. This means wanting to keep one’s job as a Congressman (or to regain one’s job as a chairman), and leads to asking the question: What process and outcome will be best for my election chances?
Second, there is obligation to one’s party, both as a matter of duties to an organization one has freely joined and also as a matter of personal integrity, in the sense of fealty to one’s political and philosophical ideology. This leads to question: What process and outcome will be best for my party’s election chances?
Rockin’ the symbols
The State Senate of California recently voted to strip serpentine of its title as “State Rock” on the grounds that the rock contains asbestos, and is therefore an unwelcome harbinger of asbestos-related cancer. Many geologists, however, contend that the dangers posed by serpentine are grossly exaggerated and that the symbolic move by the California State Senate is an example of political correctness gone awry, with serpentine being used as a bugbear by certain political interests.
In some ways, this could be considered analogous to the “zero-tolerance” for violence policy of many public schools. Last month, a child in Rhode Island was arrested for wearing a hat decorated with an American flag and plastic Army men, on the grounds that the inch-long M16s wielded by the toys violated the school’s no-weapons policy.
Neither serpentine nor plastic army men, it seems, are so offensive as to deserve public condemnation. They do not obviously promote hate, aggression, self-destruction, or any other undesirable tendencies. Some symbols undoubtedly have such grim associations that public disapprobation seems appropriate, but plastic figurines and serpentine are hardly in the same league as Swastikas or conical white hoods.
It’s conceivable that just about any image could be considered offensive to some person, but in the interests of free speech, where do we draw the line? Moreover, is it ever appropriate for free speech (and policies that limit it) to be used to score political points?
-Charles
Image used under a Creative Commons attribution license from Flickr user Laughing Squid
The unintended consequences of prohibition
Illegal immigration and the rule of law
Last Tuesday, the Department of Justice filed suit against the state of Arizona and its governor Janice Brewer, arguing that the state had overstepped its proper role by interfering with the inherently federal issue of immigration. The move fits into a larger debate over how the United States should deal with illegal immigration. One important question raised by this debate concerns the appropriate response to situations in which constant and flagrant violation of the law is the norm.
In the case of illegal immigration, a number of different approaches are commonly discussed, alone or in combination, such as prevention (a wall or more rigorous border patrols), deportation, punishment of employers who use illegal labor, amnesty, and guest worker schemes. These remedies fall into two general categories. Some focus on integrating illegal immigrants into a more open and transparent system and, in the process, effectively decriminalizing illegal immigration. Others rely on strict policing to stem and discourage the flow of undocumented labor into the country.
At the extremes, supporters of the new Arizona laws argue that tolerating illegal immigration is destructive of the rule of law; opponents argue that attempting to enforce the unenforceable is worse. Read more
“I’m confused, half blind, and sure I’m right!”
If you’re in the mood to be depressed, a story in The Boston Globe reports on a psychological phenomenon known as “backfire.”
Recently, a few political scientists have begun to discover a human tendency deeply discouraging to anyone with faith in the power of information. It’s this: Facts don’t necessarily have the power to change our minds. In fact, quite the opposite. In a series of studies in 2005 and 2006, researchers at the University of Michigan found that when misinformed people, particularly political partisans, were exposed to corrected facts in news stories, they rarely changed their minds. In fact, they often became even more strongly set in their beliefs. Facts, they found, were not curing misinformation. Like an underpowered antibiotic, facts could actually make misinformation even stronger.
The full article deserves a read, if you have the constitution for it (it just gets more and more depressing). One of its conclusions is that this phenomenon “bodes ill for democracy.” No doubt it does, but really, it bodes ill for humanity in general. After all, any form of government is ultimately run by people, people who apparently aren’t as open to new information as we would like. Maybe after reading such an article, the best we can hope is that, as Churchill said, “democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those others that have been tried from time to time.” Let’s hope it’s enough to get us through the night.
-Han
Image used under a Creative Commons attribution license from Flickr user Andrew Aliferis
The Obama paradox
How transformational change and buck-passing make odd bedfellows
Despite a tough economy, weakening approval ratings, and a recalcitrant Republican opposition, President Obama has managed to chase down two longtime liberal white whales, and is hot on the heels of a third (or fourth).
Earlier this year he signed into law a health care reform bill that many regard as the biggest piece of social legislation since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs of the 1960s. Congress is about to approve the largest set of financial reforms since the Great Depression. Now Democrats are hard-charging for a new energy bill (which may include a climate-related component). Even immigration reform seems possible.
While many find it surprising the President has been able to pursue such a sweeping agenda, one little discussed key to his (and Democrats’) success has been the consistent practice of front-loading benefits and back-loading costs:
Health care reform cracks down on insurers right away but won’t force people to buy insurance until 2014. A new consumer financial protection agency kicks in almost immediately under the Wall Street reform bill, but banks won’t feel its full force for more than 10 years. And even Democrats’ nascent immigration reforms include at least an eight-year wait before illegal immigrants can apply for permanent residency – after Obama leaves office.
Some say this is good politics, but is it right? Read more
How many roads must a man walk down?
In the aftermath of Senator Robert Byrd’s death, Alan Colmes notes the right wing critics who continually denounce him as a former KKK member. Colmes thinks that not only are these criticisms insensitive, but also unfair, since Byrd is a changed man who has renounced his past.
Byrd […] changed his views over time. By the late 1970s Byrd was speaking in favor of the Equal Rights Amendment. Eventually, he regarded his vote in favor of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that led to the Vietnam War a sin. In fact, Byrd became a liberal lion who stood up to the Bush administration, invoking the rules of the Senate he knew like no one else to point out that it is illegal to fight without a declaration of war. Robert Byrd evolved as a man. Isn’t that something we all wish for ourselves? And isn’t that the truly Christian way?
There probably is a sense in which these criticisms are unfair (and definitely insensitive), but it seems fair to question Byrd’s position as a US senator. After all, when Byrd was first elected it was because of his racist views, not in spite of them. If he truly is a changed man, should he retain the offices of his former self? Some people might think a person with Byrd’s tainted past should atone for his crimes before being completely forgiven, perhaps believing in the vague notion of a “debt to society” before being allowed the complete rights and privileges of a mutual citizen (or Senator, for that matter).
Photo by Flickr user Nevada Tumbleweed used under a Creative Commons Attribution license
The challenge of social science in constitutional interpretation and public policy
Or: how I learned to stop worrying and love the gun
On Monday, the Supreme Court’s majority decision in McDonald v. Chicago affirmed, with some qualifications, that the individual right to bear arms may not be infringed by state or local governments. Was the Court’s decision appropriate? Does the right to bear arms deserve the same special consideration as other civil liberties, such as free speech, assembly, religion, and due process?
Two possible approaches to this constitutional question are the originalist and consequentialist ones. Originalists probe the texts of the Framers of the constitution and their contemporaries for textual evidence favoring or opposing giving such equal standing to the Second Amendment, while consequentialists are more representative of “living” constitutionalism and examine the empirical impact of gun policy on crime, domestic violence, and accidents.
Both approaches face problems. Read more
The taxes I pay keeps the doctor away
The ethics of “sin taxes”
The other day Marc linked to a New York Times Room for Debate discussion on whether people should be paid to stay healthy. While that post focused on rewarding healthy behavior, much of the current debate and policy centers on restricting and discouraging unhealthy behavior. A common method for doing this is by imposing “sin taxes” on “certain objectionable products.” For instance, taxing cigarettes at a high rate in part to discourage people from purchasing them. These sorts of taxes are often popular with voters, but are they justifiable? Read more
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