Tag Archives: Glenn Reynolds

Voting Rights Doublespeak

18 Tuesday Jan 2022

Posted by in Voter Fraud, Voting Rights

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The so-called insurrection that took place on January 6, 2021 (J6) has obsessed Democrats seeking to ram through a “voting rights” bill that they hope will advantage them in future elections. Oh, and to legitimize proposed new powers for agencies in the fight against “domestic terror”, and to somehow disqualify Donald Trump from holding the presidency again. We can thank a couple of moderate Democrats for shutting down the election bill, at least for the time being, by refusing to eliminate the filibuster.

The Real Threat to Voting Rights

If your real aim is to undermine ballot security and make it easier to cheat, you’d have to work hard to beat the election bill pushed by the Biden Administration: the Freedom To Vote Act (FVA). In their fashion, however, the Left prefers to stake-out phony rhetorical high-ground, replete with spurious charges against the opposition alleging racism and subversive, anti-democratic intent. Joe Biden demonstrated this vividly during his ill-advised speech in Georgia last week.

Here is a fairly thorough summary of the FVA, including an earlier version passed by the House last March. The overarching thrust of the bill is to substitute federal for state authority over the election process. States would not be permitted to demand that voters produce photo IDs. The bill would also require automatic voter registration at the department of motor vehicles and other government agencies, on-line registration, same-day registration, more days of early voting, excuse-free, notary-free, and witness-free absentee ballots, and extended counting of late-arriving ballots.

Democrats in the House of Representatives have now used a NASA funding bill as a shell for all these federally-prescribed protocols. Reportedly, this bill would legalize ballot harvesting nationwide, but that does not appear to be the case. Nevertheless, it includes all of the other provisions cited above, and many others.

While Congress certainly has the power to regulate elections, states were given the primary authority for conducting elections under the Constitution:

“The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing Senators.”

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 helped secure minority voting rights that plainly exist under the Constitution, and it prescribed federal review of certain changes in state voting procedures (some aspects of which were struck down by the Supreme Court). However, never before has such sweeping federal authority been proposed as to the range of mechanics involved in casting and counting ballots. Ballot security would be compromised by several provisions of the legislation.

While voter registration should be relatively painless, it should not be so painless that non-citizens find it easy to register. That is likely to be the case under automatic voter registration. Surely many non-citizens have much to recommend them, but they have not yet demonstrated their commitment to the nation through earned citizenship. The right to vote is a benefit of citizenship; it serves as an inducement to learn about our system of government through the naturalization process. These individuals might not be interested in going to the trouble, however, or they might be loyal to a foreign power. Do we really want such individuals to have a vote? And to the extent that their interest is focused on public benefits, they surely do not have an equal claim to natural-born but similarly-situated Americans.

Voter ID is a safeguard against voter fraud, and a huge majority of Americans support it, including majorities of minorities. The very idea that a photo ID requirement would “suppress” the legitimate votes of minorities is based on the presumption that those voters might have difficulty obtaining identification such as a drivers license or other government ID. Oh really? We can safely file that contention under “the bigotry of low expectations”.

Extensive use of absentee ballots was intended to facilitate voting during pandemic restrictions that were expected to reduce the safety and efficiency of polling places. However, most developed countries ban “mail-in voting”, regarding it as a prescription for voter fraud. That threat seems all too real given the lax standards proposed in the FVA.

The Threat to Political Opposition

The House investigative committee looking into the January 6th melee may recommend new intelligence powers for the federal government. Those powers aren’t needed to investigate the Capitol riot: the FBI has been in possession of teams of video evidence, and it has broad powers under the PATRIOT Act and other measures. Here’s Patrick Eddington from the link above:

“… the FBI already has unbelievably sweeping authority to surveil individual Americans or domestic groups without ever having to go before a judge to get a warrant.

Under an investigative category known as an assessment, FBI agents can search commercial and government databases (including databases containing classified information), run confidential informants, and conduct physical surveillance, all without a court order.”

The simple truth is that certain congressional Democrats and the Biden Administration are attempting to use the Capitol riot as an excuse to turn federal law enforcement against their political enemies. The claim by Biden, the guy who bragged of being mentored by Klansman Robert Byrd, and the same man who praised George Wallace on several occasions, is that his opponents are “domestic terrorists” and/or “white supremacists”. We’ve seen quite enough of this chicanery already. Having suffered through a lengthy “Russian collision” charade, a willingness to completely ignore massive riots and property destruction by BLM and Antifa activists in 2020, and an orchestrated attempt to treat concerned parents of schoolchildren as “domestic terrorists”, we’re expected to believe that these stooges need more power?

The J6 Fiasco

And that brings us back to the Capitol riot. It was, as Glenn Reynolds has said, a clownshow and a mess. But speaking of insurrection, let’s hope the FBI is keeping its eye on violent leftists as well, who perpetrated some unquestionably treasonous escapades in the not very distant past. From Legal Insurrection:

“…leftist rioters … attempted to stop the peaceful transition of power during President Trump’s inauguration. … did anti-Trump leftists riot, attack and injure police, set cars and buildings on fire… …

… the multi-day May, 2020 assault on the White House that left at least 60 Secret Service agents wounded and forced President Trump to be whisked away to a bunker for his personal safety.”

Even more dangerous leftist attacks on the Capitol building have been perpetrated, such as bombings by the Weather Underground in 1971 and the Armed Resistance in 1983.

Many people were hurt in the J6 riot through no real fault of their own, including Ashli Babbitt, who was shot and killed by a Capitol police officer shortly after she attempted to stop attackers from smashing windows. Nevertheless, those who breached the Capitol building were mostly a bunch of hapless goofballs encouraged to run amuck by certain instigators. Among those were the Oathkeepers, a gang who marched around in stack formation wearing gear that looked vaguely militaristic. They brought no weapons to the Capitol (though they had some stashed in the VA suburbs). Apparently, one of them did assist a crowd in barging through a door to the Capitol. Their activities on J6 have been described by one pundit as LARP — live action role playing. Nevertheless, there was much talk among them of interfering with the transfer of power to “the usurper”, as they called Joe Biden. And now, eleven of them have been charged with insurrection and sedition. Members of the Proud Boys were also at the Capitol, some of whom fought with police.

But what really happened to make things go off the rails on January 6th? This article by Joseph M. Hanneman offers an excellent discussion of the events of that afternoon, and the subsequent investigation. He notes the mysterious absence of a number of individuals involved in the breach of the Capitol and grounds from the FBI’s “Seeking Information” list of over 1,500 photos. That includes one Ray Epps, whose incitement was otherwise fairly well-documented. Some suspect certain parties with no interest in seeing Donald Trump remain in office actually encouraged the rioters, up to and including the FBI. Would that surprise anyone after the Whitmer kidnapping operation or the Russian collusion hoax?

The vast majority of the crowd on J6 came to the Capitol grounds to conduct a peaceful protest in the vain hope for congressional action to put a hold on the counting of electors pending state election audits, investigations, and court challenges. Many of those arrested were denied due process, and were held for months with no charges filed.

As for the “threat to the nation” posed by the crowd on J6, I found this Marco Rubio quote to be apropos:

“I don’t care how many candlelight vigils and musical performances you have from the cast of Hamilton, you’re not going to convince most normal and sane people that our government last year was almost overthrown by a guy wearing a Viking hat and speedos.”

Conclusion

Democrats still hope to vote to eliminate the Senate filibuster and then pass the FVA. That is a pipe dream at this point, but they would come to regret eliminating the filibuster in due course. They have used it themselves to defeat legislation hundreds of times in the recent past. The filibuster has its shortcomings, particularly its inability to restrain executive power. Nevertheless, it has never been more critical as protection against a tyrannical (and slim) majority in Congress.

The Freedom To Vote Act is doomed to failure. Still, no one should forget the mendacious rhetoric employed by Joe Biden and the leftist Democrat leadership in Congress on the issue of election integrity. Nor should anyone forget their dishonorable, anti-democratic intent to devalue legitimate voting rights.

COVID Hysteria and School Reform

24 Monday Aug 2020

Posted by in Education, Pandemic, School Choice

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Many haven’t quite gathered it in, but our public education system is an ongoing disaster for many low-income and minority students and families. The pandemic, however, is creating a major upheaval in K-12 education that might well benefit those students in the end. But before I get into that, a quick word about National Public Radio (NPR): it doesn’t make its political leanings a secret, which is why it should not be supported by taxpayers. Yes, like many other mainstream media outlets, NPR serves as a political front organization for Democrats (and worse).

Last week, NPR did a segment on “learning pods”, which I’d describe as private adaptations to the failure of many public schools (and teachers’ unions) to do their job during the pandemic. Glenn Reynolds passed along an interpretation of that NPR segment from a friend on Facebook, which I quote in its entirety below (bold emphasis mine). It was either this segment or else NPR has taken it down … but that link more or less matches the description. The post is somewhat satiric, but it captures much of what was actually said:

“Hilarious NPR, last week’s edition. They had an hour-long segment on learning pods. Participants: Host (white woman), Black Woman Activist, Asian Woman Parent, School-System Man.

Slightly editorialized (but true!) recollections below.

Host: In wealthy areas, parents get together and organize learning pods. What do we make of it?

School-System Man: Inequitable! Inappropriate! Bad! We do not support it!

Asian Woman Parent: Equity requires that we form these pods to educate our own children! Otherwise, only the rich can get education! Rich bad!

Host: Rich bad.

School-System Man: Rich horrible! They withdraw kids from public schools during the pandemic, so schools have less money!

Asian Woman Parent: We have no choice. You are not teaching.

Host: But what are you doing for the equity?

Asian Woman Parent: Why are the parents supposed to be doing something for the equity? That’s why we pay taxes, so professionals do something!

School-System Man: We cannot fix equity if you are clandestinely educating your own children, but not everyone else’s children!

Asian Woman Parent: The proper solution would have been to end the pandemic. But Trump did not end the pandemic. So, we must do learning pods. As soon as the pandemic is over, we’ll get back to normal, and everyone will catch up.

Everyone [with great relief]: Trump bad. Bad.

Black Woman Activist: No, wait a minute. This sounds as though in a regular school year, black children get good education. And they are getting terrible education! Unacceptable!

Host: Bad Trump!

Black Woman Activist: Foggeraboutit! It’s not Trump! It’s always been terrible! Black children are dumped into horrible public schools, where nobody is teaching them! So, my organization is now helping organize these learning pods for minority kids everywhere.

School-System Man [cautiously]: This is only helping Trump…

Black Woman Activist: Forget Trump! Don’t tell me black kids get no education because things are not normal now. When things were normal, their education was just as bad!

School-System Man: Whut??? How dare you! Our public schools are the best thing that ever happened to black children.

Asian Woman Parent: I’ll second that. Public schools in my neighborhood are just svelte.

Black Woman Activist: That’s the point! You live in a rich suburb, and your kids get a great public school! Black kids don’t!

Asian Woman Parent: If Trump managed the pandemic properly, we would not be having this conversation.

Host: Bad Trump!

Everyone: Bad Trump!

The end.”

Ah yes, so we’re back to blaming Donald Trump for following the advice of his medical experts, most prominently Dr. Anthony Fauci. And, while we’re at it, let’s blame Mr. Trump for following federalist principles by deferring to state and local governments to deal flexibly with the varying regional conditions of the pandemic, rather than ruling by federal executive edict. Of course, some of those state and local officials botched it, such as Andrew Cuomo. That’s tragic, but had Trump followed a more prescriptive tack, the howling from the Left would have been even more deafening.

We know that children are at little risk from the coronavirus. Nor do they seem to transmit the virus like older individuals, but teachers unions are adamant that the risks their members face at school would far exceed those shouldered by other “essential” workers. And the unions, not shy about partisanship even while representing public employees, want nothing more than to see Trump lose the election. So the unions and the schools districts they seem to control hold parents hostage. They collect their tax revenue and salaries while delivering virtual service at lower standards than usual, or no service at all. (Of course, public schools in some parts of the country are in session.) 

The teachers’ unions and public schools might get their comeuppance. The situation represents a tremendous opportunity for private schools, home schooling, and innovative schooling paradigms. Many private schools are holding classes in-person, more parents are homeschooling, and alternative arrangements like learning pods have formed, many of which are quite cost-effective.

Pressure is building to allow education dollars to follow individual students, not simply to flow to specific government schools. You can buy a decent K-12 education for $12,000 a year or so, and it’s likely to be a better education than you’ll get in many public schools. (One of the panelists on the NPR segment smugly called this an “insidious temptation”). At long last, parents would be allowed real choice in educating their children, and at long last schools would be incentivized to compete for those students. That might be one of the best things to come out of the pandemic.

Rioters Inflict Racial Injustice

02 Tuesday Jun 2020

Posted by in Free Speech, racism, Terrorism

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My fervent hope is that the reaction of horror to George Floyd’s murder is universal. However, my perspective on the violence that’s erupted over the week since is also one of disgust. The perpetrators are using Floyd’s death as an opportunity to unleash attacks that undermine civil society and often hurt people of color more than anyone.

The peaceful protests against police brutality and racism in cities across the country are earnest calls for reform, and they also represent fine tributes to all victims of racism. But a different dynamic takes hold when peaceful protesters are infiltrated by violent elements. Agitators use the cover of the protests and typically begin to dominate the scene as darkness falls, though sometimes it happens in broad daylight. The violence, arson, looting, and shooting are perpetrated by a combination of those whose political motivations go well beyond needed reforms to the justice system and other opportunists who are primarily interested in loot, or just a riotous a good time. There are also some otherwise non-violent protesters emboldened by the agitators to cheer on these acts of violence.

As others have said, the rioting does not serve to honor George Floyd in any way, and it does nothing to end racism or racial victimization. By cheering on these malefactors you lose any legitimate claim as an enemy of racism. The rioting, if anything, brings harm to the black community. Black lives are lost in the strife, such as the retired police captain in St. Louis who was shot Monday night defending his friend’s pawn shop. Blacks are also losing their livelihoods as a consequence of the destruction.

The left-wing, anarchist agitators are modern blackshirts masquerading as anti-fascists. Their interest, and delusion, is the violent overthrow of our government. They are largely white millennials, mostly male, and largely unemployed as a result of the ill-advised coronavirus lockdowns imposed in many states. Antifa has been prominent in these attacks, often running under Black Lives Matter flags, and the radical wing of BLM participates as well.

These pigs have been coddled by leftist state and local government officials in many cities, who send outmanned police forces to try to keep the damage in check while releasing those arrested the next day. President Trump was absolutely right on Monday to call out the national guard and raise the possibility of deploying military forces where state and local officials are incapable or unwilling to bring these situations under control.

And here’s the thing: all it takes is a few agitators, along with their enthusiastic but less ideological recruits, to destroy communities. There have been larger numbers in big cities, perhaps a few thousand hard-core shit disturbers. Slowly but surely, perhaps due to Trump’s prodding, state and local politicians are awakening and enabling law enforcement to effectively quell the unrest. The agitators, who are fairly well organized, are being infiltrated by moles who will undermine their operations and perhaps aid in prosecuting higher-level organizers and funders at the federal level. In the end, the force of anarchists is fairly small and the local support they manage to stir is fleeting.

While we recoil at the harm inflicted by the riots, another perspective is offered by the equity markets, which have been relatively unfazed through the turmoil. The values of firms in the security business have risen, but otherwise, as one investment strategist says:

“‘Right now it’s limited enough that it’s not perceived as having a meaningful economic impact,’ said Willie Delwiche, investment strategist at Baird. ‘The risk to the market right now is excessive optimism,’ and headlines from protests could simply be dampening that optimism a bit, he added.”

The riots are destructive of lives and economic value, and while we mourn those caught up in these tragedies, the situation does not portend a total social collapse. The overall impact on the U.S. economy expected by markets is not of a magnitude suggesting great instability. This too shall pass, though not easily for the small businesses and employees being ruined by the double jolt of lockdowns and riots.

Besides the outright harm to the black community by the riots, there are other disturbing elements that must be confronted. I keep hearing “White silence = violence”. No, “white silence” is neither responsible for the actions of George Floyd’s killer nor the riots in the streets. What must one say to avoid personal responsibility for the aberrant behavior of Derrick Chauvin and the rioters? What I hear are ignorant excuses and accusations: the violence is inexcusable and it is no one’s fault but the participants, whatever their circumstances.

People of good faith oppose the brutality inflicted by bad cops and a system that tolerates them. It is surely time for some reforms, as the following suggests:

And there are still other promising criminal justice reforms to consider. We need to end the drug war, which is particularly harmful to minority communities.

I bemoan the poor circumstances and education that have burdened many of the disaffected protesters, and even the rioters. I advocate for policies that I believe promote improved education and family stability. I have advocated for a safety net. I have shared my distaste for the unnecessary COVID-19 lockdowns that forced so many of these individuals out of their jobs for several months. But from some quarters, the demands have no end. Not until I bow down on my hands and knees to apologize for the sins of generations past. Who cares if they weren’t my ancestors? I’m white! The next demand is reparation payments to today’s generations of blacks. Don’t complain that impoverished whites won’t share in the gains, though there are more than twice as many of them. They simply failed to capitalize on the opportunity afforded by their privilege. I’m sorry for the sarcasm….

Please mourn George Floyd’s horrible death and support the protests against the brutality that killed him, but do not pretend for a moment that the violence is in any way justified, or that it will create a healthier society. Don’t root for that shit. And don’t cast aspirations at your fellow men and women as if the color of their skin is responsible for the social ills you’ve taken up as a cause. It does nothing to further solutions.

Left’s Pandemic Response: Politics As Usual

17 Tuesday Mar 2020

Posted by in Health Care, Pandemic, Regulation

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The Left asserts that President Trump dismissed and dismantled the nation’s Pandemic Response Team. That’s bullshit. So is the claim that the CDC was defunded. The news media and certain pundits have helped to feed this narrative. Or, as Glenn Reynolds calls those pundits, “Democrat operatives with bylines”.

First of all, the team in question was not at the CDC, a fact that hasn’t always been clear from the commentary on this issue. It was a team of White House overseers at the National Security Council’s “Directorate for Global Health Security and Biodefense”. What happened was this: the senior director of that team resigned after John Bolton was appointed to head the NSC. Bolton might have wanted him out, but what we know is the director resigned. Subsequently, that team was folded into another directorate as part of an long-overdue consolidation. Health experts from the team remain on the NSC staff today. Yet Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH)—and many others since—had the temerity to charge that Trump had fired “the entire Whilte House pandemic team”. Well, at least he didn’t imply that it was the CDC.

Tim Morrison wrote the following in the Washington Post yesterday:

“Because I led the very directorate assigned that mission, the counterproliferation and biodefense office, for a year and then handed it off to another official who still holds the post, I know the charge is specious. …

When I joined the National Security Council staff in 2018, I inherited a strong and skilled staff in the counterproliferation and biodefense directorate. This team of national experts together drafted the National Biodefense Strategy of 2018 and an accompanying national security presidential memorandum to implement it; an executive order to modernize influenza vaccines; and coordinated the United States’ response to the Ebola epidemic in Congo, which was ultimately defeated in 2020.”

This assessment at Brietbart.com quotes former senior NSC official Richard Goldberg:

“Weird. A year later I was inside the NSC working with talented global health/biodefense professionals who coordinated an incredibly effective response to Ebola. They’re still there. Working hard. On .”

It’s true that Bolton sought to eliminate red tape, duplication, and bureaucracy within the NSC, and that was wholly justified. According to Morrison, the NSC staff quadrupled from the 1990s through the second Obama term. Pandemics are supposed to be the CDC’s purview, but the proliferation of administrative layers is what happens as government grows uncontrollably. Leslie Eastman at Legal Insurrection questions whether the U.S. needs a permanent “Pandemic Response Team” in the White House. She quotes GOP Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel:

“JAN 7: CDC established a coronavirus incident management system, two days before China announced the outbreak. … Pelosi began Week 3 of withholding her sham impeachment articles. 

JAN 21: The CDC activated its emergency operations center to provide ongoing support to confront coronavirus. …What were Congressional Democrats focused on? Writing their opening arguments for their bogus impeachment trial.”

Well, bully for the CDC. As for “defunding the CDC”, the facts are this: the proposed budget submitted to Congress by the Trump Administration in February, but never passed, did indeed include cuts to the CDC’s budget, which has grown over the years as it expanded its mission from fighting infectious diseases to matters like obesity, racism, and questions of social justice. The cuts proposed by Trump, however, were primarily to state grants. Actually, the proposal called for increased CDC staffing, and it funded all programs related to infectious diseases. But no matter, because that proposal is unlikely to become part of any appropriations bill that would pass Congress.

True to form, the Left plays politics in the middle of a national crisis. When the Trump Administration told airlines that it was considering banning flights from China in late January, it was called racist. Now, of course, he hasn’t done enough. A huge irony, however, is that Trump’s biggest mistake was in trusting the FDA and the CDC’s authority to develop and regulate testing for the coronavirus. They botched it. In a classic case of over-regulation, they prohibited hospitals and labs from conducting tests developed privately or by academic researchers, insisting that everyone wait for the “approved” test to be distributed. Then, the test they released in early February was flawed, costing additional weeks before testing was available.

 

Living Constitution, Dying Liberty

14 Saturday Mar 2020

Posted by in Living Constitution, Originalism

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What would a “living Constitution” mean if the right wing “gave it life”, as it were? Your answer ought to reveal a truth you’ve probably overlooked if you’re a “living constitutionalist”.

The U.S. Constitution protects the rights of individuals against the coercive power of the state. It offers a thorough bulwark against that power not only by enumerating certain rights, such as the rights to free speech and free association, but also by recognizing the existence and sanctity of a complementary set of unenumerated rights. The Ninth Amendment states:

“The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.” 

The nearly 250 years since the nation’s founding have seen a debate in judicial case law about whether the Constitution should be interpreted based on its original language, or whether modern social and technological realities should change the way it is interpreted. This pits constitutional “originalists” against advocates of a so-called “living Constitution”.

Antiquated? Or Inconvenient?

For example, there is disagreement about whether the Second Amendment right to bear arms is broad, or limited to certain very small arms, or whether it should permit no private ownership of arms at all. Another example: do modern sensitivities men that constitutionally unprotected “fighting words” now encompass opinions that are merely controversial? Do expressions of support for such policies as flexible wages really fall under the rubric of racism, “hate speech”, or fighting words? Here’s one more: does the (unenumerated) right to life allow the state (and so the law) to claim a greater interest in protecting the contentment of a healthy, but reluctant, prospective mother than in the life of her unborn child?

Three years ago, Randy Barnett asked a question about the living constitution amid the debate over the confirmation of Justice Neal Gorsuch, an avowed originalist. Barnett asked:

“Why would you possibly want a nonoriginalist ‘living constitutionalist’ conservative judge or justice who can bend the meaning of the text to make it evolve to conform to conservative political principles and ends? However much you disagree with it, wouldn’t you rather a conservative justice consider himself constrained by the text of the Constitution like, say, the Emoluments Clause?”

That question was followed-up recently by Glenn Reynolds: his thought experiment asks how a right-wing majority might fashion a “living Constitution”, an exercise that should chasten “living constitutionalists” on the Left. He first notes that efforts to fight terrorism can become a real threat to civil liberties. As such, they represent a form of living constitutionalism. Will your on-line behavior and your phone calls be closely monitored, perhaps searching for various keywords? Will formerly unreasonable searches and seizures be sanctioned by an anti-terror, living Constitution? We haven’t gone very far in that direction, even in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, but it’s easy to imagine a wave of support for such a revision under certain circumstances.

We’ve certainly witnessed erosions of civil liberties under the so-called “War on Drugs”. The courts have not always stood in the way of extra-Constitutional actions by law enforcement. A right-wing living Constitution might sanction certain searches, seizures, and confiscation of private property, to say nothing of the intrusion into the choices of individuals to use drugs privately. The same is true of the “War on Prostitution”.

Imagine a right-wing judiciary interpreting various forms of audio, video, and virtual reality content as violations of standards of “decency”. Imagine a case involving a restrictive FCC ruling of this nature, and the Court finding the FCC’s censorship constitutional at the federal level, not merely at a community’s level.

Imagine state legislation that forces the Court to weigh-in on whether federalism and states’ rights outlined in the Tenth Amendment outweigh the federal regulatory powers conferred by Article I’s Interstate Commerce Clause. Crazy? Maybe, but a conservative Court could decide that such an interpretation could permit state taxes, pollutants, or other restrictions on residents or businesses domiciled in other states.

Originalism? Or “Stretch” Originalism?

Reynolds mentions a few other possibilities, but without more detail, some of these examples seem muddled because the hypothetical interpretations could, conceivably, represent sound originalism, as opposed to conservative distortions of original intent. But perhaps these are all matters of degree, rather than kind. This includes the possibility of a conservative Court rolling back New Deal Court decisions related to price supports, wage supports, labor practices, and Social Security.

The same ambiguity applies to Reynolds’ brief discussion “one-man, one-vote” decisions of the 1960s, which leaned upon the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause to effectively prohibit states from apportioning either congressional districts or state legislative districts in any way other than proportional representation. This can result in discrimination against certain interests in states having diverse geographies with dissimilar economies or cultures. A conservative court might well chip away at the one-man, one-vote principle out of deference to original intent. This might not be an unreasonable interpretation of the unenumerated powers of states contemplated by the Tenth Amendment.

Then there are so-called reproductive rights. The pro-abortion Left would be aghast, but not surprised, to see a conservative court reverse key decisions that have been made in their favor. The rights to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” are mentioned explicitly in the Declaration of Independence, but not the Constitution. Nevertheless, they are presumed to be among those unenumerated rights recognized by the Ninth Amendment. Thus, with respect to abortion, the dividing line between original intent and living-constitutional overreach by a conservative Court is somewhat muddy. But in the view of the Left, a conservative Court might well reach radical decisions regarding the right to life.

Conclusion

The Constitution exists as a set of governing principles, but the founders’ intent was to  shield rights from fickle waves of majoritarianism, or even would-be despots. You might despise conservatism or statism, but this recognition should serve as a warning to heed the original text and its intent, not to view it as a mere nuisance to the interests of one’s agenda and fellow travelers.

I’ll close with Reynolds’ admonition to “living constitutionalists” of the Left:

“All of these [decisions] would be catastrophic for the left, and I’m sure I could come up with many more examples given time and space. Fortunately for the left, Judge Gorsuch appears to be devoted to interpreting the Constitution as it was understood by the Framers (in terms of its ‘original public meaning,’ to use the law professor definition), and not to embracing a living Constitution. … But my advice to those on the left attacking originalist approaches is this: Be careful what you ask for, because you won’t like it if you get it.”

The Federal Reserve and Coronatative Easing

09 Monday Mar 2020

Posted by in Monetary Policy, Pandemic

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Laughs erupted all around when the Federal Reserve reduced its overnight lending rate by 50 basis points last week: LIKE THAT’LL CURE THE CORANAVIRUS! HAHAHA! It’s easy to see why it seemed funny to people, even those who think the threat posed by Covid-19 is overblown. But it should seem less silly with each passing day. That’s not to say I think we’re headed for disaster. My own views are aligned with this piece by Michael Fumento: it will run its course before too long, and “viruses hate warm weather“. Nevertheless, the virus is already having a variety of economic effects that made the Fed’s action prudent.

Of course, the Fed did not cut its rate to cure the virus. The rate move was intended to deal with some of the economic effects of a pandemic. The spread of the virus has been concentrated in a few countries thus far: China, Iran, Italy, and South Korea. Fairly rapid growth is expected in the number of cases in the U.S. and the rest of the world over the next few weeks, especially now with the long-awaited distribution of test kits. But already in the U.S., we see shortages of supplies hitting certain industries, as shipments from overseas have petered. And now efforts to control the spread of the virus will involve more telecommuting, cancellation of public events, less travel, less dining out, fewer shopping trips, missed work, hospitalizations, and possibly widespread quarantines.

The upshot is at least a temporary slowdown in economic activity and concomitant difficulties for many private businesses. We’ve been in the midst of a “flight to safety”, as investors incorporate these expectations into stock prices and interest rates. Firms in certain industries will need cash to pay bills during a period of moribund demand, and consumers will need cash during possible layoffs. All of this suggests a need for liquidity, but even worse, it raises the specter of a solvency crisis.

The Fed’s power can attempt to fill the shortfall in liquidity, but insolvency is a different story. That, unfortunately, might mean either business failures or bailouts. Large firms and some small ones might have solid business continuation plans to help get them through a crisis, at least one of short to moderate duration, but many businesses are at risk. President Trump is proposing certain fiscal and regulatory actions, such as a reduction in the payroll tax, wage payment assistance, and some form of mandatory paid leave for certain workers. Measures might be crafted so as to target particular industries hit hard by the virus.

I do not object to these pre-emptive measures, even as an ardent proponent of small government, because the virus is an externality abetted by multiplicative network effects, something that government has a legitimate role in addressing. There are probably other economic policy actions worth considering. Some have suggested a review of laws restricting access to retirement funds to supplement inadequate amounts of precautionary savings.

Last week’s Fed’s rate move can be viewed as pre-emptive in the sense that it was intended to assure adequate liquidity to the financial sector and payment system to facilitate adjustment to drastic changes in risk appetites. It might also provide some relief to goods suppliers who find themselves short of cash, but their ability to benefit depends on their relationships to lenders, and lenders will be extremely cautious about extending additional credit as long as conditions appear to be deteriorating.

In an even stronger sense, the Fed’s action last week was purely reactive. Scott Sumner first raised an important point about ten days before the rate cut: if the Fed fails to reduce its overnight lending target, it represents a de facto tightening of U.S. monetary policy, which would be a colossal mistake in a high-risk economic and social environment:

“When there’s a disruption to manufacturing supply chains, that tends to reduce business investment, puts downward pressure on demand for credit. That will tend to reduce equilibrium interest rates. In addition, with the coronavirus, there’s also a lot of uncertainty in the global economy. And when there’s uncertainty, there’s sort of a rush for safe assets, people buy treasury bonds, that puts downward pressure on interest rates. So you have this downward pressure on global interest rates. Now while this is occurring, if the Fed holds constant its policy rate, it targets the, say fed funds rate at a little over 1.5 percent. While the equilibrium rates are falling, then essentially the Fed will be making monetary policy tighter.

… what I’m saying is, if the Fed actually wants to maintain a stable monetary policy, they may have to move their policy interest rate up and down with market conditions to keep the effective stance of monetary policy stable. So again, it’s not trying to solve the supply side problem, it’s trying to prevent it from spilling over and also impacting aggregate demand.”

The Fed must react appropriately to market rates to maintain the tenor of its policy, as it does not have the ability to control market rates. Its powers are limited, but it does have a responsibility to provide liquidity and to avoid instability in conducting monetary policy. Fiscal actions, on the other hand, might prove crucial to restoring economic confidence, but ultimately controlling the spread of the virus must be addressed at local levels and within individual institutions. While I am strongly averse to intrusions on individual liberty and I desperately hope it won’t be necessary, extraordinary measures like whole-city quarantines might ultimately be required. In that context, this post on the effectiveness of “non-pharmaceutical interventions” such as school closures, bans on public gatherings, and quarantines during the flu pandemic of 1918-19 is fascinating.

 

 

 

 

 

The Leninists Among Us

29 Sunday Sep 2019

Posted by in Leftism, Marxism, Tyranny

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I suggested recently that the pursuit of zero-sum gains, and zero-sum thinking generally, is a form of social rot. How timely that Gary Saul Morson has offered this interesting essay on “Leninthink” in the October issue of The New Criterion. It validates my conviction that a zero-sum view of the world invites social brutalism and economic cannibalism. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov, better known as Vladimir Lenin, was of course the first premier of the Soviet Union after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. His philosophy was a practical derivative of Marxism, a real-world implementation of a “dictatorship of the proletariat“. Morson describes Lenin’s view of social relations thusly:

“Lenin regarded all interactions as zero-sum.To use the phrase he made famous, the fundamental question is always ‘Who Whom?’—who dominates whom, who does what to whom, ultimately who annihilates whom. To the extent that we gain, you lose. Contrast this view with the one taught in basic microeconomics: whenever there is a non-forced transaction, both sides benefit, or they would not make the exchange. For the seller, the money is worth more than the goods he sells, and for the buyer the goods are worth more than the money. Lenin’s hatred of the market, and his attempts to abolish it entirely during War Communism, derived from the opposite idea, that all buying and selling is necessarily exploitative. When Lenin speaks of ‘profiteering’ or ‘speculation’ (capital crimes), he is referring to every transaction, however small. Peasant ‘bagmen’ selling produce were shot.

Basic books on negotiation teach that you can often do better than split the difference, since people have different concerns. Both sides can come out ahead—but not for the Soviets, whose negotiating stance John F. Kennedy once paraphrased as: what’s mine is mine; and what’s yours is negotiable. For us, the word ‘politics’ means a process of give and take, but for Lenin it’s we take, and you give. From this it follows that one must take maximum advantage of one’s position. If the enemy is weak enough to be destroyed, and one stops simply at one’s initial demands, one is objectively helping the enemy, which makes one a traitor. Of course, one might simply be insane. Long before Brezhnev began incarcerating dissidents in madhouses, Lenin was so appalled that his foreign minister, Boris Chicherin, recommended an unnecessary concession to American loan negotiators, that he pronounced him mad—not metaphorically—and demanded he be forcibly committed. ‘We will be fools if we do not immediately and forcibly send him to a sanatorium.'”

The ruthlessness of Lenin’s mindset was manifested in his unwillingness to engage in rationalizations or even civil debate:

“Lenin’s language, no less than his ethics, served as a model, taught in Soviet schools and recommended in books with titles like Lenin’s Language and On Lenin’s Polemical Art. In Lenin’s view, a true revolutionary did not establish the correctness of his beliefs by appealing to evidence or logic, as if there were some standards of truthfulness above social classes. Rather, one engaged in ‘blackening an opponent’s mug so well it takes him ages to get it clean again.’ Nikolay Valentinov, a Bolshevik who knew Lenin well before becoming disillusioned, reports him saying: ‘There is only one answer to revisionism: smash its face in!’

When Mensheviks objected to Lenin’s personal attacks, he replied frankly that his purpose was not to convince but to destroy his opponent. In work after work, Lenin does not offer arguments refuting other Social Democrats but brands them as ‘renegades’ from Marxism. Marxists who disagreed with his naïve epistemology were ‘philosophic scum.’ Object to his brutality and your arguments are ‘moralizing vomit.’ You can see traces of this approach in the advice of Saul Alinsky—who cites Lenin—to ‘pick the target, freeze it, personalize it.'”

This offers a useful perspective on why it’s so difficult to have civil discussions with leftists today. They have inherited versions of Lenin’s polemic style. You’re more likely to be verbally attacked by the Left than to be engaged in a productive exchange of ideas, as I’m constantly reminded by observing the behavior of SJWs on social media. Leftist retribution is swift. Glenn Reynolds has mused, “As the old saying has it, the left looks for heretics and the right looks for converts, and both find what they’re looking for.” That might be too optimistic!

The richest source of zero-sum gains is through the levers of government, which possesses the necessary coercive power to achieve that aim. When coercive power is so ruthlessly exercised, the appearance of loyalty to those in power becomes paramount for survival. This can make it necessary to display an outward acceptance of fanciful claims:

“Lenin’s idea that coercion is not a last resort but the first principle of Party action. Changing human nature, producing boundless prosperity, overcoming death itself: all these miracles could be achieved because the Party was the first organization ever to pursue coercion without limits. In one treatise Stalin corrects the widespread notion that the laws of nature are not binding on Bolsheviks, and it is not hard to see how this kind of thinking took root. And, given an essentially mystical faith in coercion, it is not hard to see how imaginative forms of torture became routine in Soviet justice.

Dmitri Volkogonov, the first biographer with access to the secret Lenin archives, concluded that for Lenin violence was a goal in itself. He quotes Lenin in 1908 recommending ‘real, nationwide terror, which invigorates the country and through which the Great French Revolution achieved glory.'”

Morson provides this revealing quote from the madman Lenin himself:

“The kulak uprising in [your] 5 districts must be crushed without pity. . . . 1) Hang (and I mean hang so that the people can see) not less than 100 known kulaks, rich men, bloodsuckers. 2) Publish their names. 3) Take all their grain away from them. 4) Identify hostages . . . . Do this so that for hundreds of miles around the people can see, tremble, know and cry . . . . Yours, Lenin. P. S. Find tougher people.”

At least today the Lefties try to dox people first, rather than #2. The hanging might have to come later.

There is a real danger in encouraging such zero-sum notions as redistribution and class warfare. Even today’s preoccupation with identity politics is one of zero-sum emphasis. Furthermore, the concepts of mass victimization and social justice promote a delusion of righteousness, a necessary precondition to the kind of monstrous acts of a Lenin. Anyone truly interested in promoting an atmosphere of social cooperation should recognize the echos of Leninism we see today from Leftists on social media and in the streets. These tyrants must be resisted before we’re all on the wrong side of the ultimate zero sum outcome.

Evil HR: Organizational Fetters, Social Fabians

27 Wednesday Feb 2019

Posted by in Identity Politics, Progressivism, Social Justice

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It is with deepest apologies to my friends in Human Resources (HR) that I admit to a long-standing bias: HR can exert a corrosive influence on a company’s ability to serve customers well and profit at it. I’m sure there are exceptions, but HR often pursues missions that are incompatible with the firm’s primary objectives. I’ve had my own difficulties with HR at employers for whom I’ve worked, and those have been of a mere bureaucratic variety. Today, the dysfunction goes much deeper. Many HR departments are engaged in a sort of Fabian gradualism, subverting free enterprise from within and promoting the doctrine of social justice.

Here are a few reasons for casting a skeptical eye on the contributions of HR:

  • It adds little value in screening applicants for certain kinds of jobs, helping to explain why so many job matches occur via professional networks and external recruiters.
  • I have witnessed HR scuttle simple plans to add interns, paid or unpaid, asserting that our department had no authority to institute such a program.
  • HR dreams up ridiculously ambiguous and complex performance assessment methods, which in the end make very little difference in the structure of rewards.
  • HR insists that “promoting diversity” is a key component of every job assessment, forcing staff to engage in written exercises of creative fluffery.
  • It creates incentives that distort hiring and firing decisions based on demographic characteristics rather than actual job qualifications and performance.
  • HR requires staff time for “diversity training”, an effort that is often resented as an insulting and patronizing intrusion on the time employees have to do their jobs.
  • HR emphasizes rewards to “stakeholders”, with little deference to the primacy of shareholders. It’s one thing for a company to maximize its value proposition to customers and prospects and to provide employees with handsome incentives. Those are fully consistent with maximizing the value of the firm. But “stakeholders” includes … just about everyone. Come and get it!
  • And HR relentlessly promotes the creed of “corporate social responsibility“, which ultimately involves a high order of virtue signaling on environmental and other social issues having little to do with the firm’s business.

It is true that HR is tasked with responsibilities that include minimizing a company’s exposure to various legal and regulatory risks. For example, one objective is to avoid any appearance of “disparate impact”. Even policies having a legitimate business purpose might be challenged if results have a statistical association with demographic characteristics. It’s an unfortunate fact that through efforts to manage that risk, HR serves as a spearhead of government intrusion into the affairs of private companies.

HR has thus become a tool through which collectivist ideals infiltrate business practices, to the detriment of the firm’s performance. These are exactly the kinds of things meant by Fast Company when they say HR isn’t working for you.  

Kyle Smith makes no bones about it: companies should simply fire their HR departments. And many can do just that by outsourcing HR functions. Smith’s arguments are couched in the most practical of terms:

“They speak gibberish.” Yes they do. Nowhere is corporate-speak more pervasive than in HR, where they’ll tell you that the organization’s “core competences” must be “leveraged” via “best practices” by “empowered contributors” within “centers of excellence”.

“They revel in red tape.” To paraphrase Smith, HR could rightfully be renamed “Compliance Resources”. These “paper pushing” functions are drivers of bloat and cost escalation, a manifestation of the familiar cost disease endemic to all bureaucracies.

“They live in a bubble.” HR managers have an inflated view of their role in the organization. Smith quotes an HR executive: ”The organization reports to us. It must meet our demands for information, documents, numbers.” Sounds like a classic central planner. Unfortunately, many companies acquiesce to the tyranny of HR bureaucrats, much to their detriment. But Smith’s point here is that HR executives are often out of touch with the way employees truly feel about the company for whom they work, with an exaggerated view of employee enthusiasm. Yet those executives are given responsibilities for which they should know better.

“They aren’t really in your business.” The skill emphasized as most important for success in HR is communications skills, according to Smith (“… what you and I call talking.“) Knowledge of finance, engineering or technology is noncritical. Fair enough, you might say: their role is different, but this goes a long way toward explaining why HR generally fails so miserably in evaluating job candidates. Can you really expect them to craft policies designed to optimize a business’ use of professional talent?

Jordan Peterson takes an extremely dim view of HR. I share his concern that HR, and HR policies, have a tendency to become heavily politicized. Ultimately, this cannot be of value to a competitive firm. As Glenn Reynolds likes to say, “Get woke, go broke“. Peterson’s perspective is societal, however, and he goes so far as to say HR departments are “dangerous”:

“I see that the social justice etiology that’s destroyed a huge swath of academia is on the march in a major way through corporate America. …

… they’ve become ethics departments. And people who take to themselves the right to determine the propriety of ethical conduct end up with a lot more power — especially if you cede it to them — than you think. And that’s happening at a very rapid rate.

The doctrines that are driving hiring decisions, for example — any emphasis, for example, on equity, or equality of outcome — it’s unbelievably dangerous. You don’t just pull that in and signal to society that you’re now acting virtuously without bringing in the whole pathological ideology.”

The value extracted from firms in the service of achieving “social justice” is essentially stolen from its rightful owners. The penalties don’t end with shareholders; employees and suppliers lose a measure of security from a weakened firm, and customers may suffer a loss in the quality of the product. It is as if reparations must be made to parties who are completely external to, and completely unharmed by, the success of the business.

It’s little wonder that companies are outsourcing their HR functions. A classic case is the use of recruiting firms that specialize in identifying talent in particular professions. Another is the outsourcing of benefits management, and there are other functions that can be farmed out. Eliminating bureaucratic bloat is often a focus of firms seeking to rationalize HR. Ultimately, a leaner HR department improves cost control, and keeping it lean reduces its latitude to divert company resources toward endeavors that promote the philosophy of collectivism.

“Othered” By the Left

31 Thursday Jan 2019

Posted by in fascism, Identity Politics, Progressivism

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Progressivism certainly has its discards. The photo showed a trash bin labeled “CATHOLIC DUMPSTER”. Dead bodies were hanging out of the top. A “friend” had posted it on Facebook, ostensibly as humor. I thought it was in poor taste and had the temerity to say so in a comment; naturally I was immediately castigated by a mob for expressing that opinion. The “friend” said that if I really knew him, I’d realize that he loves everyone. That claim was quickly undermined by his partner, who joined the exchange to spew vitriol for Christians. A wiser person on the thread, perhaps detecting a whiff of hypocrisy, noted the likely outrage had the label on the trash bin said “JEWISH DUMPSTER”. Well yes…. Er, maybe. The political Left, it seems, is drifting ever closer to anti-Semitism as well as radical intolerance for Christians. This in addition to outright hostility toward whites, men, or anyone perceived as having “privilege”. The rhetoric is becoming increasingly hateful, vile, and violent.

A recent confrontation in front of the Lincoln Memorial wrapped together several objects of leftist hatred. It involved boys from Covington Catholic High School and left-wing activist Nathan Phillips, an Omaha Indian, as well as a group of black nationalists called the Black Hebrew Israelites. The Covington boys are white, male, Catholic, pro-life, and they wore MAGA caps. They were passive except for chants intended to drown-out shouts of “faggots” from the Black Israelites, but the media almost uniformly portrayed the boys as racist villains in the immediate aftermath, based on incomplete video evidence. It is difficult to ascertain who released the original video, but a longer version proved that the boys were not at fault. Meanwhile, Phillips proved to be a bald-faced liar. He lied about the sequence of events, the behavior of the boys, and about having served in Vietnam. But those lies fueled a media narrative as well as the fertile imaginations of many leftists. The full video reveals that Phillips marched from some distance straight up to one of the teenagers and proceeded to bang a drum in the kid’s face. The boy maintained his composure and kept a calm smile on his face. Later, however, that smile was cited as proof of racism!

A few members of the media retracted the awful things they said about the teenagers and the incident, but others continue to allege that the Covington teenagers were at fault, or that they at least share the blame. Some of the rhetoric is no less hateful than before the full video became available. This is a far cry from the heartfelt entreaties to avoid criticism of any controversial opinions expressed by “the children” in the wake of the Parkland High School shooting. In the present case. the kids have been targeted with a slew of insults and threats to themselves and their families.

Regarding the MAGA caps, I am by no means a Trump enthusiast, but I root for him to do well as our president despite my strong disapproval of some of his policies. You won’t ever catch me in a MAGA cap. However, I do not believe that he and his political base are racist. Trump is an equal opportunity denigrator, but he’s called a racist every time his target happens to be a person of color, as though people of color are always above criticism. Trump is called a racist for his promise to build a wall along the Mexican border to stem illegal crossings, though the same proposal has been offered by many Democrats over the years, including Barack Obama and Check Schumer. Therefore, the very idea that wearing a MAGA cap is a racist signal is transparently political and absurd. That some of the Covington boys wore MAGA caps has reinforced other excuses to target them for vicious criticism.

A further issue is that the Covington boys are privileged, you see, guilty of possessing white, male privilege, even as they defended a black classmate harangued by the Black Israelites. They attend a private school, and so they must be from wealthy families and worthy of progressive hatred. They were in DC for the March for Life, so they are opposed to reproductive choice and must hate women. In fact, it’s been alleged that they were in DC only to oppose the Women’s March. Misogynists!

Hatred for Catholics and for anyone who has attended private schools is always de rigueur on the Left. That was quite clear during the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings. Hatred gushed from the Left not only because they were satisfied of Judge Kavanaugh’s guilt based on unsubstantiated, 11th-hour allegations leveled against him by an SJW, but apparently also because he attended a Catholic boys school! Oh, and he is male. I have another “friend” whose Facebook feed was littered with smears of Kavanaugh, including characterizations of private school kids as “smug little weasels”. As Caroline Lewis said at the time, these “critics” are barbarians. Do you think they don’t want to hurt those they’ve “othered”, or want someone else to hurt them in one way or another? The boundaries of grievance always expand, and will keep expanding until they eat their own.

David French claims that his defense of Christian education prompted an activist to start the #ExposeChristianSchools hashtag. Now, I’m sure everyone who has attended public or private schools can repeat a litany of stories about a few awful teachers they were forced to endure, not to mention the hostile environment that school children often create for one another. But private schools, and religious schools, are often superior options for parents and children. If you don’t like the curriculum, don’t send your kids there. If you don’t think the policies are sufficiently inclusive, or the environment will be unhealthy for your child, then send them elsewhere. But the vilification of an entire segment of the population based on how they choose to educate their children is despicable. They’d ban Christian education if they could… and religion!

Note that the Left’s insistence on state domination is itself a threat of violence. While capitalism and free markets are cooperative in nature, socialism is at its core authoritarian and coercive. If you resist you become an enemy of “the people”, and such enemies will have consequences to pay.

Antifa is unashamedly violent, but it might be only the tip of the iceberg. The rhetoric of the Left has become increasingly hostile toward Christians, Jews, males, whites, Republicans, and of course anyone achieving material success. There is no forgiveness nor genuine love of others in leftist doctrine. Indeed, the “otherism” inherent in leftist identity politics is dangerous and a source of increasing social instability. Their “eliminationist rhetoric” is becoming all too common (scroll down at the link).

For now I’ll continue to engage in the marketplace of ideas. Perhaps it’s becoming a war. Us “others” need to keep voting and never back down. And by all means, be prepared to defend ourselves and our loved ones by any means necessary.

 

 

 

 

 

Bad Idea: Campaign Finance Reform

25 Friday Jan 2019

Posted by in Campaign Finance, Free Speech

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Everyone seems to hate money in politics, and nearly everyone says campaign finance reform is needed to eliminate political corruption… nearly. Money in politics is blamed for allowing powerful interests to “buy” seats in the legislature, or in executive positions, as well as “tit-for-tat” influence over pieces of legislation. But not so fast: attempts at campaign finance regulation in the past have been largely unsuccessful in achieving their goals. Furthermore, campaign finance reforms may have perverse consequences, which I’ll discuss below. More importantly, while “taking money out of politics” sounds noble to many, it starkly implies abrogation of First Amendment rights. Far from “leveling the playing field”, there is a great danger that it would lead to suppression of minority opinions. For those reasons. it’s better to consider other means of ensuring that elected officials behave even-handedly in attending to their duties.

Protected Speech

Former Congressman Ron Paul is highly skeptical that any good can come of campaign finance legislation:

“…campaign finance reform legislation does not limit the influence of powerful special interests. Instead, it violates the First Amendment and burdens those seeking real change in government.”

Here is David Harsanyi on the same point:

“Reducing the power of ‘special interests’ in Washington is always a popular issue with voters. The problem, of course, is that every voter considers another group a special interest. … specific campaign finance reform legislation is always about inhibiting someone’s speech.”

Government attempts to curb speech are bad enough, but there is also interest in subsidizing speech arising from certain quarters. Harsanyi is rightly critical of a House bill that proposes to do just that, and Nancy Pelosi has promised to bring the bill to the floor. Among other things, it would authorize a 6-to-1 federal match of small-dollar campaign donations so as to promote “grass-roots” electoral efforts. It is quite simply a bad idea to create a mechanism whereby government bureaucrats can manipulate campaign funding, potentially favoring certain kinds of speech, via the explicit use of funds from taxpayers who might well blanche at the thought of funding certain campaigns.

The bill would also impose new disclosure requirements on large contributions to 501(c)(4) organizations, which qualify as “social welfare” groups under the tax code, and whose “primary” purpose is not campaign-related. To this he says:

“… this obsession with eliminating anonymity is also a transparent attempt to chill speech and undermine minority opinions.”

Let’s face it: to complain about the use of money in promoting speech is to complain about speech itself. We can all speak out loud, but one can’t hope to spread a message broadly without bringing resources to bear on the effort. That’s true whether you are printing, broadcasting, or spreading messages on social media. It almost always takes staff, including creative talent, equipment, media buying power, and usually office space. If you don’t have the requisite resources then you must hustle, press flesh, cajole members of the media, and join with other like-minded individuals, especially those who might agree to commit resources.

Barring a monopoly on speech, choosing a particular scale at which speech becomes unacceptable is itself a denial of the right to free speech. And that right can be exercised by individuals and by associations of individuals. As to the latter, the form of association makes no difference: the union, nonprofit, and for-profit corporate forms are all valid associations through which individuals can speak as one, just as all for-profit media corporations have always exercised their First Amendment rights. That was the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizen’s United vs. Federal Election Commission (FEC) in 2009, which remains oddly controversial. Again, if you think the ability to speak from a large platform is too much, then you are also willing to restrict speech by for-profit newspapers and television networks, and you are a tyrant.

Money and Electoral Success

In any case, virtually all campaign contributions originating in the for-profit corporate sector come from employee political action committees (PACs), not from corporations themselves. And since Citizen’s United, there’s been little uptick in campaign contributions from for-profit corporations. In fact, according to this report on campaign finance, unions have been much more aggressive than businesses in leveraging the Citizen’s United decision. The report also demonstrates the unsurprising fact that incumbents tend to spend much more on elections than their challengers. However, the authors note that across incumbents, greater spending is associated with lower vote shares, while the reverse is true across challengers. That just means, however, that incumbents must spend a lot to defeat a serious challenger.

Jeffrey Milyo made the last point more than 15 years ago:

“Most systematic studies, however, find no effect of marginal campaign spending on the electoral success of candidates … How can this be so? The best explanation to date is that competent candidates are adept at both convincing contributors to give money and convincing voters to give their vote. Consequently, the finding that campaign spending and electoral success are highly correlated exaggerates the importance of money to a candidate’s chances of winning.”

There is also a lack of evidence that politicians trade their votes for campaign contributions:

“… donors tend to give to like-minded candidates. Of course, if candidates choose their policy positions in anticipation of a subsequent payoff in campaign contributions, there would be no real distinction between accepting bribes and accepting contributions from like-minded voters. However, studies of legislative behavior indicate that the most important determinants of an incumbent’s voting record are constituent interests, party, and personal ideology.”

A tremendous disparity exists between public perceptions of the importance of money in political campaigns and the actual magnitude of campaign spending. Again, from Milyo:

“If campaign contributions do not buy favors, then why is so much money spent on politics? In fact, scholars of American politics have long noted how little is spent on politics. Consider that large firms spend ten times as much on lobbying as their employees spend on campaign contributions through PACs, as individuals, or in the form of unregulated contributions to political parties (i.e., soft money).”

Milyo’s article was written well before the Citizen’s United decision. At the time it was still illegal for corporations to make campaign contributions, but that seems to have made little difference.

In an Appeals Court decision in 2010, Independent Expenditure Committees (Super PACs) won the right to accept contributions from corporations and individuals beyond federal limits. Super PACs, however, are technically prohibited from coordinating their activities with political candidates for federal office. In fact, Super PACs have been known at times to work at cross-purposes to the political parties whose candidates they generally favor. Furthermore, there is very little evidence that corporate contributions provide more than a small share of Super PAC funds, not even via “dark money” contributions via 501(c) organizations.

Futile Reforms 

Ron Paul (linked above) notes that powerful interests will always find ways to support policies by which they stand to profit. Those interests often benefit from regulatory policies that create burdens for smaller competitors, spending programs that bring fat government contracts, and subsidies in support of favored activities or technologies. However, restricting campaign finance is a particularly troubling and ineffective approach to combating these efforts. As Milyo says:

“The consensus among academic researchers is that money is far less important in determining either election or policy outcomes than conventional wisdom holds it to be. Consequently, the benefits of campaign finance reforms have also been exaggerated.”

Beyond the lack of evidence that reform is needed, Milyo argues that restrictions on campaign contributions may have nasty unintended consequences. First, cross-sectional studies across states have shown that limits on contributions lead to less electoral competition and lower voter turnout. Second, less campaign advertising reduces interest and awareness of candidate positions among voters, also suppressing turnout. Finally, there is a real danger that incumbents can manipulate reform legislation in order to create electoral barriers to potential challengers.

Alternatives

There may be better ways to reduce the influence of moneyed interests on policy than campaign finance reforms. Term limits obviously shorten the duration of the incumbent advantage as well as corrupt actions by any office-holder who is somehow “bought and paid-for”. Most Libertarians favor term limits to reduce corruption and encourage the kinds of “citizen legislators” idealized by the nation’s founders. Others make an opposing argument that it is our electoral duty to remove legislators from office at the ballot box, and therefore term limits were left out of the Constitution for good reason. Still others say that term limits might make corrupt politicians too keen to act quickly.

Another idea is based on the “revolving door tax” often mentioned by Glenn Reynolds. Not infrequently, government bureaucrats are offered lucrative positions with firms whom they regulate, or they take on these firms as private clients once they leave government. Needless to say, this creates perverse incentives for self-interested public servants. Reynolds suggests an additional tax on subsequent income earned after accepting such an offer. Extending the idea to politicians would mean an additional tax on income earned by any former office-holder accepting work for a firm or industry specifically targeted for benefits under legislation they sponsored during their term. There is much detail to be fleshed out, but the idea is fascinating.

Conclusion

Campaign finance reform is futile: there will always be creative ways around it, so it generally doesn’t reap rewards. Campaign funding itself is rather ineffectual at the margin in generating electoral gains. Moreover, campaign finance reform is an endeavor that is almost guaranteed to run afoul of our First Amendment protections of free speech. In addition, the result may a reversion to a less-informed and less interested electorate, lower voter turnout, as well as manipulation of the reform process itself.