Uncharacteristic Comment from Putin

This is a little old, now, but does anyone else find it odd that Putin called us friends and asked Snowden to stop revealing information that could harm us? I can't remember any time that he's taken the United States' side on any issue or in any way acted like our friend, but here he says this.  I wonder what Obama said to him to make him side with us.

For Our Own Good

Everyday we are confronted with new ways the Left wants to make our lives better by restricting our freedoms. Always it's for our own good. Many conservatives call this the nanny state. Outlawing large sodas, forcing healthy young people to buy insurance, forcing healthy young people to buy insurance that covers things they'll never require, forcing us to participate in a government-run retirement plan.

I could go on and on.  It's nice, though, that their benevolence is still restrained by their own self-interest.  None other than freshman Senator Elizabeth Warren, the progressive caucus's biggest coup in the 2012 election is now foregoing the "We're doing this for your own good" mantra with regards to direct depositing Social Security checks. The argument for direct deposit is that many checks get lost in the mail leaving seniors without their deserved funds.

Elizabeth Warren, however, believes that people should have the right to choose how they receive their money. I imagine her new found respect for people's liberty has nothing to do with the paper lobby, who reside mostly in Warren's constituency, and donate extensively to her campaigns (she was the largest recipient in 2012 other than the Presidential candidates), who would stand to lose more of their already depleted customer base.

I guess in this case, what's best for most of America is not as desirable as what's good for Warren and her constituents.

Hollingsworth v. Perry - A Summary

I am dissatisfied with reporting on courte cases. What I'd like to know is more detailed than is usually provided. I'd like the arguments for each opinion. Here I provide my own summary of the Hollingsworth v. Perry decision.

Full Decision
Wonkblog Post

Brief synopsis - The people of California (not the legislature) passed an amendment to their Consitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman. Gay marriage advocates argued that this violated their rights so sued to have the amendment declared unconstitutional. The elected officials of California chose not to defend the amendment, and so advocates of the amendment (regular citizens) defended it. The Supreme Court ruled that the advocates didn't have standing.

Decision (Roberts, Ginsberg, Kagan, Scalia, Breyer) - Without injury, one has no standing to defend an issue in court.

Dissent (Kennedy, Thomas, Alito, Sotomayor) - California law provides that one can defend an issue if elected officials choose not to do so.

My thoughts

Implications - Any law that is passed, if elected officials choose not to defend it in court should it be disputed, and no one can claim a direct harm, then these types of laws will become unenforcable. This kind of defeats the purpose of popular referenda. Popular referenda will only be used when the elected officials don't want to pursue or enact them. Therefore, if they're passed, they'll be indefensible in court.

5-4 Decisions

The degree of polarization in the Supreme Court really scares me. I feel (without any data analysis) that there are too many five-four decisions. I also feel that many of the justices aren't deciding based on law but on their own moral judgments.  If they are deciding based on morality, then I guess 5-4 decisions make sense, but I think that's bad for the country. Those who are doing so, should also freely admit that that is how they're basing their decisions.

This reminds me of a debate between Stephen Breyer and Antonin Scalia in which Scalia claimed that it was better to have nine historians on the Supreme Court than nine ethicists. This, I believe, gets to the real difference between how conservatives and liberal approach the court. Liberals want to rule based on their morality while conservatives want to rule based on the law. This is probably the best way to describe "Legislating from the bench" - defying or rewriting law based on your own preferences.  Note that this does not mean striking down a law is necessarily legislating from the bench. It is only so when the law is struck down based on personal beliefs.

Today the court released a decision on the Voting Rights Act in which it struck down a portion of it. Liberals are extremely unhappy, but it seems as if their unhappy from the superficial idea that the court struck down part of the Voting Rights Act, without really looking at the details (this is a characteristic I've noticed before from the Left).

Look at these "Best Lines from Ginsburg's Dissent." None of them really talk about whether the law is constitutional or not, they just talk about whether there is or is not discrimination. The majority doesn't deny the fact that there's discrimination, they say only that concentrating on certain areas because they were more prone to discrimination 50 years ago but not necessarily today is unconstitutitional.

Corrected: Civil Rights Act should have been Voting Rights Act

Just Deserts

Greg Mankiw, the Harvard economist recently published an essay in which he defends the 1%.

Many on the left side of the aisle can be pretty anti-1%.

Harold Pollack did not like Mankiw's defense of the richest among us. Reading through his entry, though, I'm struck by the arguments he makes.  They seem to lack substance or are beside the point.  Let's look at each paragraph individually.

The first paragraph sets up how Pollack admires Mankiw, and he sets up how this isn't a partisan attack. Of course, after reading the first sentence, I'm bracing for criticism.

His second paragraph attempts to associate Mankiw with someone Pollack believes was actively detrimental to helping lower income people.  Notice, he doesn't say anything about what Mankiw officially believes, only that Mankiw worked for someone that believes those things.  This is weak evidence against him.  You have no idea what part Mankiw played in those policy proposals.  Of course, it's not totally negligible, it's just weak.

The third paragraph also contains no substantive argument. He talks about some economists who share the view and ends it with a quotation without discussing it at all. Does Pollack disagree with what Mankiw writes? Why?  Admittedly, not having read Mankiw's original article, I can't say I see the logic, but I trust that Mankiw has provided the correct context for understanding the idea. Pollack says nothing.

Finally, we get to something useful. Pollack includes a paragraph from Mankiw. The paragraph basically says Mankiw doesn't believe his children have better opportunities than he had even though his children are much better off than he was.

Pollack counters that there's income inequality. This, of course, is entirely missing Mankiw's point. Mankiw acknowledges there's income inequality, but he argues that it doesn't cause opportunity inequality.

Then Pollack talks about the lack of wealth mobility. Next he talks about how the top schools enroll the highest income students.  Here, Pollack makes a strong argument that wealthy people have more opportunities/easier access than the poor. He should have stopped here.

He goes on to ask "Why should people's market wages so strongly determine what they deserve to have in life? [Pollack's brother's] just deserts reside in his claim to equal, dignified citizenship, not his meager ability to produce goods and services."

I don't think Mankiw or most Republicans would dispute that all citizens deserve basic services such as healthcare and education. But most of the country believes that when people earn more money they should be allowed to spend it. Pollack seems to be arguing that commanding higher salaries shouldn't lead to consumption disparities, which is just socialism. Is that what he's advocating?

The Objectives of Obamacare

Ezra Klein follows up on his post from yesterday with this one. In it he argues that no one to the right of Obama has suggested an alternative. But what he means to say, is that no one on the right has suggested an alternative that meets his objectives.

He describes Obamacare as "a policy to make sure most every legal resident of the United States has access to comprehensive, affordable health care. In order to achieve that goal, it helps poorer Americans pay for insurance and regulates the products offered by insurers to make sure they’re worth paying for." I imagine that's what he (and liberals) want any alternative to do.

The problem is that this is not how non-liberals would describe Obamacare, and though that may be the goal, Obamacare does so much more than that.  I think people of all philosophies can agree on a policy to make sure most every legal resident of the United States can afford basic healthcare.  The only difference with my wording and Ezra's is that I've reduced comprehensive to basic.  Of course, this goal had already been achieved before Obamacare since anyone can get treatment in an emergency room.  That's why the Republicans haven't really proposed much in the way of alternatives, because they believed this is the important objective, and it has already been achieved.

The difference, I suppose, is that Democrats wanted to exchange basic for comprehensive. Admittedly, I'm not really sure what comprehensive means. This was something lost in the debate, as happens. It's hard for people like me to argue when we don't know exactly what we're arguing about. I would welcome a debate as to what level of care everyone should have but they're not getting.

What I gather this means for liberals is that everyone should have access to an affordable insurance plan that covers preventative medicine and any reason you may want to go to the doctor. Now, if this is really the goal, then all that has to be done is give people the subsidy to afford it. That accomplishes the access goal. But, of course, that's not where the Democrats stopped. In addition, they had to mandate a whole slew of benefits that insurance had to cover and mandated how much insurance companies could charge. If the objective was just granting access, why are regulations necessary?

Because the objective is not "granting access," the objective is remaking the health insurance industry into an industry that liberals approve of.  That industry can't charge seniors more even though they're more costly, can't charge other groups more if they're more costly, can't spend too much on administrative costs. These are all bad practices.

So the goal wasn't only to provide access, but to root out distasteful practices.  To achieve the goal stated above should be relatively simple. All Republicans would need to propose would be to keep the subsidies and cut everything else. (Guaranteed Issue would also need to be addressed, and I think state pools or national pools expressly for the uninsurable is the way to go).

Libertarians versus Liberals

Ezra Klein is a knowledgeable and convincing liberal. Most of the time I have a hard time refuting his arguments as they are consistent opinions that are based in fact.

Sometimes, though, I find a gap in his reasoning. In this piece, I found a couple, and they illustrate the same gaps that many liberals have when talking about issues, gaps that portray their inability to understand the libertarian point of view.

He's talking about how the premiums are very likely to go up once Obamacare hits (for many reasons but adverse selection and mandated benefits are the primary drivers). He argues that this misses the point because people will be purchasing superior insurance. Plus, they'll receive subsidies, so their actual expenses will decline.

There are two gaps in his argument. Let's start with the smaller one. He acts as if these subsidies come from nowhere, when, in fact, the subsidies are of course provided by tax-payers. So, yes, the newly insured might be paying less out of pocket than they were before, but society's payments have increased. But this misses the point, the point is that premiums would have been lower without those mandated benefits. It would be far less costly to insure everyone if the benefits weren't so extensive (no copay birth control, no copay for several benefits, for example).

The larger gap is how he ignores people's choices. He takes for granted that everyone wants the more expensive insurance plan (which I grant is probably the case when someone else is paying for it). He proposes a hypothetical choice between high deductible, low premium, very stingy insurance versus high premium, cover everything insurance. He argues that everyone would choose the latter, and that's what Obamacare is striving for.

If the latter option is so great, why does Obamacare have to mandate these benefits? If everyone who ccould afford it would choose it, why doesn't it already exist? It has to be mandated because no one is choosing it, and Ezra Klein and Barack Obama and all the other liberals think everyone should have that type of insurance no matter the cost.

This is just more evidence that Progressives don't believe that people are capable enough to make decisions for themselves. They've decided that high premium, cover everything insurance is the preferred type of insurance, so you should be forced to have it no matter the cost to you or to taxpayers.

He sums up with this. "The intent of Obamacare is to ensure that almost all Americans are covered by high-quality insurance that they can afford." That's exactly right, the intent of Obamacare was not to ensure that all Americans could afford high-quality insurance, it was that they "are covered." This is the difference between libertarians and liberals, the former wants to make sure you have a choice and do what you deem best, the latter wants to make sure you adhere to what they believe is best for you.