Category: Government

Eternal vigilance is the price of integrity, Coach Gennaro.¹

I forget where I first saw this story (Balloon Juice, I think), but the case of a Utah State Trooper tasering a motorist deserves sufficient attention for the way it demonstrates excessive police use of tasers. The video, in case you’ve missed it:

Before going any further, my take: Mr. Massey was resisting arrest. The officer, John Gardner, needlessly escalated this incident into a pissing match, given that he could’ve simply written that Mr. Massey refused to sign the ticket. He did not choose that route, instead preferring a display of authority for the sake of authority. His actions leading to the Mr. Massey getting out of the car were unnecessary and demonstrate a lack of fitness for police work. However, the point stands that, in an escalated scenario, Mr. Massey resisted arrest. That is incidental to what transpired as a result.

Courtesy of Michael D. at Balloon Juice, this editorial in the Salt Lake Tribune:

… If you watched closely, and heard Gardner order Massey to put his hands behind his back, there’s no doubt that by walking away, Massey was resisting arrest. There’s no doubt that the use of the Taser was justified; that an attempt to physically subdue Massey may have forced both men into oncoming traffic.

The use of the taser was not justified. First, Trooper Gardner made no other attempt at lesser force to subdue Mr. Massey. Second, he tasered Mr. Massey in the back. Third, he tasered him as he approach the traffic lanes. Fourth, after he tasered Mr. Massey, Mr. Massey fell back, clearly either in or dangerously close to the traffic lane.

In this entry Kip states the reasonable:

A big part of the problem with tasers is that they were originally marketed as a substitute for guns, but have become a substitute for exertion. Tasers are, increasingly, not used to save lives but to merely make cops’ lives easier.

If the rule were: “Never use your taser unless you would also be willing to shoot your firearm…” then I can’t imagine too many incidents of “taser brutality.” … But instead the rule seems too often to be: “Use your taser whenever you perceive a risk to yourself.” Or, worse: “Use you taser whenever you deem it convenient.”

That simply cannot be right — not to the tune of 50,000 volts.

Exactly. The four violations – five if you count the initial, unnecessary escalation – demonstrate that Trooper Gardner’s use of the taser was indefensible.

For what it’s worth, this kind of nonsense occurs on almost every new episode of Cops. I love Cops, but it’s getting increasingly unbearable to watch because of the police state inclination it highlights. It’s basically an orgy of tasering and moral superiority over drug users. When I watch, I’m more often rooting for the “bad” guys. It’s uncomfortable, like watching someone try to humiliate me while he has food stuck to his face.

¹ Headline reference here.

The disease is feelgooditis.

Grover Norquist offers support for a rather peculiar, anti-liberty amendment to the U.S. Constitution:

A bipartisan revulsion at this recrudescence of an aristocracy – Democrats think there have been too many Bushes, Republicans think there have been too many Clintons – has led concerned citizens (OK, me) to launch a campaign to enact a constitutional amendment to ban this practice. The draft now circulating was written by the legal scholar Bruce Fein and reads:

Section 1. No spouse, sibling or child of an elected or appointed federal, state or local official outside the civil service may immediately succeed that official in the same elected or appointed office.
…

This amendment is in keeping with other restrictions on who can run for office in the US. Presidents must be at least 35 years old; senators, 30; congressmen, 25. Presidents must be born in the US. Fifteen states have enacted term limits on state legislators of six, eight or 12 years.

Indeed there have been too many Bushes and we’re certainly poised to have too many Clintons. Voters already have the power to avoid that outcome, although it’s still unclear whether enough will exercise such wisdom, so that isn’t the point. The problem is wrapped up in Norquist’s precedent.

This proposed amendment is not in keeping with other restrictions. The restrictions he cites are tailored specifically to individuals, designed to preserve the best opportunity for a qualified person concerned first with America’s interests to arise to the office of President. With some of the charlatans we’ve had, it clearly isn’t foolproof. But the design is obvious and easy to defend.

Instead of such wise, minimal restrictions equally applied to every individual American (natural-born, of course), this proposed amendment offers further restrictions for a tiny minority of citizens. To prevent something we feel is terrible – something that has never occurred in the office of president – we wish to prevent possible “unfair” benefits by placing unfair burdens. We would deny equal opportunity to individuals for what is not their doing.

Worse, Norquist understands the faulty logic at work:

… While our amendment would not have forbidden George W. Bush from running for president eight years after his father or Hillary Clinton eight years after her husband, both Republicans and Democrats see this amendment as sending a message about the other party’s abuse of familial power.

The Constitution is apparently no longer¹ the place to protect the rights of individuals by defining the limits on our government. “Sending a message” to a few dozen individuals is sufficient justification. Again, we should just ignore that voters already have the power to prevent the hideous possibility of dynastic democracy. We’ve generally shown our indifference. I don’t like it, but I also understand that liberty is more important. Supporting it sends a message.

Link via Andrew Sullivan.

¹ The 18th Amendment made this clear. Did the 21st Amendment teach us nothing?

Turned back by force, not turning back by choice.

In his column today, Michael Gerson wrote a disheveled mess on our society’s improvement, allegedly at the hands of government and morals.

On cultural issues, conservatives have been ambushed by hope. …

We’ve had 8 years of hope and 7 years of compassion from our government. The primary results we have to show for it: oral sex in the Oval Office, a never-ending war based on lies, discriminatory laws and amendments, torture by Americans, and a national debt that grows by $500,000,000,000 per year. I’ll accept the word “ambushed”, although we should know better by now. But I’d nix the nonsense about “hope” and government policy.

Still, there’s no amount of change that Gerson can’t attribute to hope expressed through government:

First, societies can, over time, recognize their own self-destructive tendencies and reassert old norms — not just arresting decline but even reversing it. Many Americans, for example, have seen the damaging effects of divorce on children — sometimes from the firsthand perspective of their own childhoods — and divorce rates, especially among upper-income couples, have fallen. …

I’d like to see his data on this. Does staying in a bad marriage harm children? Is it all about the children, or about the sanctity of marriage? Argue either, but don’t mix the two without admitting as much. Rather than seeing divorce rates decline because we’ve seen the harm it does to children, it requires an easier assumption that the age when individuals get married suggests that they’re more mature and developed into people who understand themselves and can co-exist in a stable relationship. Correlation is not causation.

Gerson continues:

… Over the decades the social wreckage of drug use has become undeniable — and the social judgment on this practice has shifted from “stylish rebellion” to “suicidal idiocy.” In many cases, our culture has benefited from the natural healing mechanism of simple sanity¹.

It’s also undeniable that much of the social wreckage is a direct result of government action against drug use, not the drug use itself. The blame does not rest entirely with the user. Surely the moralizer can accept his share.

Also, among my peers, drug use, particularly marijuana, is not seen as stylish rebellion or suicidal idiocy. It’s seen as fun and harmless, a conclusion derived from multiple experiences. I have not tried any recreational drug, as I’ve written before. I don’t even drink. But I understand that my preference isn’t necessarily everyone else’s.

Still, hope overcomes:

Wehner and Levin find that the law of unintended consequences, unlike the law of gravity, admits large exceptions.

Stop and re-read that sentence. I have no doubt that Gerson wins the Internets’ “Stupidest Statement of the Day” award.

What Wehner and Levin actually wrote in their essay, “Crime, Drugs, Welfare — and Other Good News“, the basis for Gerson’s argument²:

There will always be unintended consequences, but even these need not always be for the worse, and the prospect of such unintended consequences should not paralyze us from taking action.

Unintended consequences can be positive. I don’t think there’s any half-intelligent person who would deny this. But they are unintended. Gerson seems so determined to enact government solutions that he’s willing to pretend that it’s possible to design perfect government policies – with only lollipops and rainbows – if we just have enough hope about what government can do. The mere suggestion is absurd but more so the practice, as evidenced by the handiwork of politicians throughout history.

There’s a name for Gerson’s essay: the Care Bear Stare.

¹ Gerson should be a little more consistent about the “healing mechanism of simple sanity”. I recall him actively embracing insanity in June.

² Unlike Gerson, Wehner and Levin seem to place less emphasis on government’s role, noting that the declining divorce rate only appears among the well-educated, upper-income couples. Gerson’s logic implies that poorer people with less education don’t care about the harm to their children. No doubt, he can think of a government program or twenty that might fix that.

Build the proper framework or beware the outcome.

Perhaps he should work on his marketing technique:

MEANS-TESTING GAINS in both parties as long-term entitlement fix.

Republican Sen. Ensign of Nevada pushes plan to charge affluent beneficiaries more for Medicare prescription-drug coverage. “It makes no sense for Bill Gates’s father to have his prescription drugs paid for by a schoolteacher or a firefighter or a police officer,” the senator says.

Why is the reference here to Bill Gates’s father? I’m all for the basic message of means testing government entitlement payments, but how is suggesting that a son should financially take care of his father any more enlightened than suggesting government should take care of him? Neither example expects the individual to provide for himself. Of course Bill Gates should pay for his own prescriptions, but his money has no bearing on the political legitimacy of his father’s claim to government benefits.

Link via Megan McArdle.

Does “administer justice” mean “put druggies in jail”?

I received a questionnaire in the mail yesterday informing me that I’ve been randomly selected for juror qualification, and that I may be placed in the pool of potential jurors for the 01/08 – 12/09 term. Exciting, except I can think of few less productive ways for me to spend my time. But it’s required by law. It’s also “one of the cornerstones of our democracy and is an opportunity to help administer justice.” I know, because the letter placed behind the questionnaire told me.

I enjoy question 10:

Should I ask why there’s a part a) and part b) to a multiple-choice question?

I want to know how to inform the government that my ethnicity is my business, so I read the note on the reverse side:

Apart from the missing comma, how is checking ethnicity a greater guarantee of non-discrimination than not looking at it because there is no indication at all? If I’m truly randomly selected for jury duty, the “proper” racial mix among the entire pool will occur if the sample size is large enough. I don’t remember as much from my Statistics class as I’d like, but I remember that. It’d be nice if a Congressman or two could, as well, when they’re busy mandating such foolishness.

P.S. Thanks for sending me a form that requires a No. 2 pencil. I’m 34 and childless. I have dozens of those on my desk just waiting for happy occasions such as this.

Can we put the inmates back in the asylum?

There is some nuance necessary, I think, but this Frank Rich editorial is pitch perfect on the situation in Pakistan and how it too closely mirrors the United States. There’s too much goodness to excerpt any particular part as the key. However, I like this:

To believe that this corruption will simply evaporate when the Bush presidency is done is to underestimate the permanent erosion inflicted over the past six years. What was once shocking and unacceptable in America has now been internalized as the new normal.

This is most apparent in the Republican presidential race, where most of the candidates seem to be running for dictator and make no apologies for it. They’re falling over each other to expand Gitmo, see who can promise the most torture and abridge the largest number of constitutional rights. The front-runner, Rudy Giuliani, boasts a proven record in extralegal executive power grabs, Musharraf-style: After 9/11 he tried to mount a coup, floating the idea that he stay on as mayor in defiance of New York’s term-limits law.

This is exactly why I will not vote Republican in 2008, even though I’m ready to not vote Democrat. As detestable as I find the possibility of President Hillary Clinton, she has the polarizing chance to cause Americans to vote for gridlock in 2010. President Guiliani would laugh at gridlock, as if it mattered one iota to his ability to do whatever he pleases. He wouldn’t even raise himself to Bush’s level and pretend that he cares about the Constitution. No thanks.

Link via John Cole.

Simple Arithmetic Without the Economics

Writing on the implications of the proposed Sirius-XM merger, Marc Fisher engages in a discussion of competition based on dubious assumptions. Consider:

Think about it: Can you name one example of a new consumer technology that was guaranteed to a single provider and still served customers well? (Don’t everyone say “cable TV” at once.)

Fair enough on the surface, but how is it economically any more sane to guarantee two and only two competitors in a new consumer technology, as the FCC did? How might the market have shaped up had the federal government not impeded the natural development of satellite radio? We’ll never know, of course, but that isn’t sufficient to say we’ve achieved the optimal market condition. Only the central planner is so presumptuous as to assume such nonsense.

[Sirius CEO Mel] Karmazin, who would be chief executive of the combined satellite provider and is leading the charge for a merger, counters that listeners would benefit by getting the best of both services without having to pay for two subscriptions. To bolster that claim, the companies propose a menu of pricing options: Subscribers could keep their current service at the same price they pay now; add the “best of” the other service for an extra $4 a month; or choose to get fewer channels at a lower price. But while the companies tout these choices as the a la carte offering that cable TV has never consented to, the fact remains that if you want more channels under a combined XM-Sirius operation, you will have to pay more.

I think that last argument is supposed to be a zinger. If you want more, you must pay more. Holy Batman, the injustice! It’s good to clear that up, since under the current dictate from the FCC, if I want more channels, I have to pay… more? Oh, wait.

The danger in offering packages with fewer channels is the same risk cable TV companies have warned against for years: If consumers can pick and choose channels, that undermines the whole business, because inevitably, the bulk of the audience will spend most of their time listening to a relative handful of channels. Less popular channels, now subsidized by a flat subscription fee, would wither away.

We must have competition, except when it interferes with anyone’s preference for what should be offered.

How long would more obscure, low-rated satellite programming such as Sirius’s Underground Garage rock or NPR Talk channels or XM’s Cinemagic movie music or choral classical outlets survive in a monopoly, a la carte system? And if the range of programming narrows, what is satellite offering that AM and FM do not?

And if a merged Sirius-XM stopped offering content compelling enough to “force” people to pay, wouldn’t the departure of subscribers to free radio be a fairly important incentive to offer more content? How does this competition thing work again?

Virtually anyone can start an Internet radio station these days [ed. note: if you can afford the exorbitant royalty fees for a format that generates little revenue.] and play an intriguing mix of music. But only XM and Sirius — and National Public Radio, perhaps — have the resources to produce a great range of creative, professionally produced programming: Bob Dylan’s explorations in music and storytelling on XM; original radio dramas; XM’s Artist Confidential series of sessions with big-name performers; and specialized programs for truckers, gays, Latinos, NASCAR fans, Broadway lovers, opera buffs, movie-music mavens, presidential campaign addicts and on and on.

That programming diversity is what justifies giving XM and Sirius a chunk of the government-licensed radio spectrum. …

No, the central planner’s belief that such programming diversity is the correct mix for customers, whether customers want it in sufficient quantity to justify its cost, is the excuse offered to perpetuate a two – and only two – competitor market. This, despite the evidence cited earlier in the essay that most subscribers to either service listen to a small subset of the offered channels.

… Reducing the two services to a satellite monopoly will inevitably bring about a diminution of choices, along with higher prices. …

This is a blanket statement unsupported by the case made in the essay. Prices only rise if the subscriber wants more content. I know I’m supposed to be outraged by that, but I’m not. And if the merged company dumps the niche programming he likes, he cancels his subscription. That’s a useful signal to the company. If it happens enough, imagine how the company might respond with some combination of more content and lower prices. But that only occurs if there are two – and only two – competitors. Because that’s the free market.

… At XM’s Washington headquarters, the number of producers and DJs would decline, meaning more formulaic programming — if XM even remained here. How long would Karmazin keep production facilities in both the District and New York, where Sirius is based?

An individual how lives in Butte and wants to hear both Howard Stern and her beloved Pittsburgh Pirates should care about the employment prospects of producers and DJs in the Washington, DC area, why? Based on what Sirius and XM have said, she could get both for less money than she would have to pay now, but only if the companies merge. How is she harmed?

Aside from the gain I’d likely receive as a Sirius investor and the definitive gain I’d receive if my Sirius subscription included Major League Baseball, this merger should occur because the government has no legitimate basis to be involved, much less deny a free market outcome based on some subjective criteria of consumer benefit.

We must break the law to defend the law.

In its editorial today, the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board demonstrates its abandonment of liberty in favor of authoritarianism and reverence for acting tough. It’s not necessary to go beyond the opening to know that the editors have lost all intellectual credibility:

Democrats welcomed Michael Mukasey as a “consensus choice” for Attorney General only weeks ago, but incredibly his confirmation is now an open question. The judge’s supposed offense is that he has refused to declare “illegal” a single interrogation technique that the CIA has used on rare occasions against mass murderers.

Why the mock scare quotes on illegal? If it’s just one interrogation technique, presumably among many, why worry if it gets singled out and prohibited? Assuming that waterboarding amounts to torture, does it matter how many times it’s been used, or how awful the alleged mass murders committed by the tortured?

But the editors can’t help themselves:

… [All of the Democratic Presidential candidates would] disqualify a man of impeccable judicial temperament and credentials merely because he’s willing to give U.S. interrogators the benefit of the legal doubt before he has top-secret clearance.

Since when do government officials get the benefit of the doubt before prisoners? Last I checked, the government must prove guilt. Until it does, the accused is presumed innocent. It’s quite the anti-conservative stance to trust government first and only.

But it’s possible to give some credibility to the stated position. Judge Mukasey hasn’t reviewed the documents. That means he can’t and shouldn’t rule on whether or not specific U.S. interrogators have engaged in torture. That would be for later inquiry. However, it is possible to state whether or not waterboarding as an interrogation technique constitutes torture, absent any details or facts from alleged instances of its use.

Could there be a clearer demonstration of why voters don’t trust Democrats with national security? In the war against al Qaeda, interrogation and electronic surveillance are our most effective weapons. Yet Democrats have for years waged a guerrilla war against both of these tools, trying to impose procedural and legal limits that can only reduce their effectiveness. Judge Mukasey is merely collateral damage in this larger effort.

The editors are no doubt aware that the question is not the validity of using interrogation and electronic surveillance to uncover threats to the United States. The misdirection is telling about their character, but I’m more concerned with why they would be so opposed to procedural and legal limits. Effectiveness over costs? If that’s your position, be honest and agitate for a police state. You’ll argue what you want without falsely smearing opponents.

There are a few more informative points in the editorial:

Most important, [Mukasey’s] discretion serves the American people by helping to keep our enemies in some doubt about what they will face if they are captured.

Right, because if we say we don’t torture, then they won’t waste time preparing for torture. They’ll spend more time planning ways to kill every American. That’s time they now spend figuring out ways to avoid folding after being tortured interrogated. See, being forthright that we’re moral and humane would mean we lose.

What’s really at stake here is whether U.S. officials are going to have the basic tools required to extract information from America’s enemies.

U.S. officials have always had sophisticated (i.e. not basic) interrogation tools required to extract information. Those sophisticated tools were developed using our intelligence and reliance on the credibility of the information extracted. But the might-is-right crowd have dismissed intelligence in favor of brute force. When you’re too stupid to understand that sophisticated psychological techniques are more effective, you begin to think that torture is good and should be considered a basic tool.

But about that information:

Yet those interrogations have generated “thousands of intelligence reports.”

Thousands of intelligence reports… hmmm. How many of those proved accurate and how many proved to be a say-anything-please-make-the-torture-stop fiction that wasted U.S. resources in pursuit of a dead-end?

As for waterboarding, it is mostly a political sideshow. The CIA’s view seems to be that some version of waterboarding is effective in breaking especially tough cases quickly. Press reports say it has been used only against a few high-value al Qaeda operatives like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Zubaydah.

The CIA does not dictate what is and is not a legal interrogation method in the United States, alleged effectiveness notwithstanding. But that doesn’t matter, right? We only use it on deserving individuals. See, those who have been convicted of crimes in a court of law deserve it. Moral relativism, anyone?

It is possible to be serious on the threat facing our nation from enemies without getting hysterical and dismissing the reason our country exists as a quaint relic of the past.

Different Responses to the Same Exposure to Risk

This story is from last week, but it’s too useful to ignore:

As the wildfires that ravaged Southern California for five days lost momentum yesterday, representatives of the insurance industry said the estimated $1 billion in fire damage would have little if any impact on homeowners’ rates in California or the rest of the nation.

“It’s well within the range of losses we expect to see in California every few years,” said economist Robert Hartwig, president of the Insurance Information Institute. “That means the rate in this area is already reflected with the risk associated with wildfires.”

Private businesses have an incentive to plan for the possibility that risk will turn into reality. This should not shock anyone, yet we constantly hear calls for government interference. Generally it’s because people are too immature to pay the full cost of their risky decisions, but the next line of the article offers another complaint.

After Hurricane Katrina and the Florida hurricanes in 2004 and 2005, insurance premiums in the Gulf area and parts of Florida doubled over three years, according to institute records. When 2006 turned out to be relatively hurricane-free, the higher premiums contributed to record insurance-industry profits.

Nowhere in the article does it indicate the likelihood those “record” profits will be later offset by record losses if another Hurricane Katrina occurs. Nor is there mention that the chance of such extreme devastation occurring again is increased by the political insistence on subsidizing the higher risk of living in an area like New Orleans to avoid asking some voters to pay for their own life choices.

Insert random, relevant Orwell reference here.

It’s a fairly effective standard by now that I’m against whatever the Wall Street Journal’s editorial board agitates in favor of. I’d never surrender critical thinking and dismiss its essays without reading the arguments. But if I did, I’d be wrong less often than I’d be right.

For example:

As the Bush Administration winds down, one of its main tasks is preserving Presidential war-fighting powers against poaching by a hostile Congress and expansive judiciary. On this score, last week’s Senate “compromise” on warrantless wiretaps is at best a mixed achievement. In return for Congress’s blessing to continue this surveillance, the White House is ceding some of its Constitutional authority to unelected, unaccountable judges.

Presidential war-fighting powers apparently include the ability to ignore the Fourth Amendment. I missed that in the text of the Constitution, but I’m sure it’s there. Maybe it’s in the Ninth Amendment. Oh, wait…

I do love the mention of unelected, unaccountable judges. Anyone who supports President Bush in his quest for a dictatorial reading of the Constitution has no business challenging anyone as unaccountable, but set that point aside. Judges are certainly accountable to the Congress. And should they really be elected? Opening the rule of law to politics isn’t a particularly conservative position. Of course, the Journal’s editors aren’t really conservatives, in the limited government sense, so the talking point in place of an argument is unsurprising.

On the topic of telecom companies complying with warrantless government requests for information:

The larger principle is whether private individuals or companies should be punished for doing their patriotic duty when requested to do so by the government.

And we’ve reached the point where I stop taking them seriously. We all have a patriotic duty to serve our government. I can’t imagine a more un-American concept.

In the wake of 9/11, President Bush and the Attorney General asked the telecom companies to cooperate in what they told the companies was a legal program.

September 11th? Check. Blind faith in the benevolence of President Bush? Check. Government is always right? Check.

For centuries, the common law presumption has been that private parties should have legal immunity if they comply with such requests.

This sounds suspect, but I’m not an attorney. Wouldn’t companies have attorneys smart enough to request warrants? If they don’t know or ask, they should be immune simply because the government asks? This doesn’t sound correct.

In the absence of evidence that the government’s request is illegal, private actors should be given the benefit of the doubt for cooperating.

Again, obedience should be the default. It’s interesting that the government should always be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Don’t we have our republic specifically because we figured out that such an assumption was foolish?

Of course, if we’re using the preposterously low “in the absence of evidence” as our guide, shouldn’t the telecoms have asked the government to produce a warrant? Wouldn’t the absence of a warrant (“Don’t you worry about that”) be the absence of “the absence of evidence” that the government was engaging in shenanigans?

Imagine a society in which everyone refused such requests for fear of being sued: No airplane passenger would dare point out suspicious behavior by another passenger, and no subway rider would speak up about a suspicious package.

I wonder what they’ve named their straw man. They have to have named him by now, because I’m sure he’ll be around for a long time. It would be tedious to constantly say “hey, you, straw man”.

The airline passenger should and would point out suspicious behavior, but how did that get involved here? The issue is whether the government may instigate – without a warrant – an investigative search of data for alleged suspicious behavior. Set the scenario honestly. The government is going to the individual/company, not the other way around.

[The bill] includes a six-year sunset provision, which makes no sense against a terror threat that is likely to continue for decades.

A decades-long war. Hmm, why would anyone be concerned about setting aside a key Constitutional amendment to give the president broad powers? Gosh, I’m confused.

The great irony here is that, in the name of checking “secret” Presidential power, Congress is giving enormous authority to judges who will also make decisions in secret and never have to answer to the voters.

Unchecked, the president (in general, but President Bush, definitely) would make this decision in secret. When would he answer to voters for his secret exercise of this alleged power? I’m supposed to feel better with less oversight, as long as the kept-in-the-dark voting public can vote with information it doesn’t have? The Constitution is up for a vote?

Yet if the President won’t protect the Presidency, who will?

If the president won’t protect civil liberties, who will? If the Congress won’t protect civil liberties, who will? If the courts won’t protect civil liberties, who will?