Reason Magazine - Topics > Politics

Barney Frank to Spend TARP Profits?

acarey@reason.com (Amanda Carey) — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 17:35:00 EDT

The Washington Examiner's Byron York reported yesterday that Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) has plans for the cash coming in as banks repay TARP money:

Last Friday, Frank introduced the "TARP for Main Street Act of 2009," a bill that would take profits from the program and immediately redirect them toward housing proposals favored by Frank and some fellow Democrats.

In other words, Frank wants to take any profit the government would have made off of TARP and immediately spend it on low income housing and mortgage subsidies. Never mind that TARP legislation says that any money the government receives from institutions paying off their bailouts "shall be paid into the general fund of the Treasury for reduction of the public debt."

While most institutions are still struggling to stay afloat, much less pay back TARP funds, it still remains to be seen if the stimulus program will ultimately end up paying for itself. In the meantime however, it seems as if Frank is doing his darndest to prevent what could be a positive outcome. Oh yeah, and did I mention that the U.S. debt is currently over $11.5 trillion?

Reason's Nick Gillespie on the failures of Barney Frank here.

InstaVision Talks With Texas Gov. Rick Perry, Who Makes a Lot of Economic Sense

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 18:21:00 EDT

Over at PJTV, Glenn "InstaVision" Reynolds interviews Texas Gov. Rick Perry on why the Lone Star State is doing relatively well compared to other giga-states such as California, which is in full-on breakdown mode. The secret, says Perry, is low taxes, predictable and minimal business reg climate, keeping spending low, and the like. About the best-kept secret: Texas's legislature meets for only 140 days every other year.

As a former resident of both California and Texas, I can attest to the many differences in the states (especially the weather). I don't think Texas is any sort of paradise, but when you stack the place up compared to virtually every other state in the U.S., it's got a helluva lot going for it.

Watch the interview below. It's about 15 minutes long and while Perry is pure politician (and I mean that in a bad way!), he makes pretty damn good economic sense (while being awful on any number of other issues, such as border enforcement, social freedoms, the drug war, and more).

Reason.tv: Liberal and Conservative Agree on Bill of Rights...Especially That it Should Be Much Shorter!

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:01:00 EDT

Liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans may disagree on all kinds of things, but based on the way they govern, they've reached a consensus that the Bill of Rights is just way too long.

Indeed, with the exception of the Third Amendment (the one about quartering of troops), is there any aspect of the Bill of Rights that they both support without reservation?

Had enough of left and right? Maybe you're ready for some Reason.

What Does Al Franken's Belated Senate Win Mean? Not Much, Says Wash Post

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:22:00 EDT

Incumbent Sen. Norm Coleman (R-Minn.) has burned through millions of dollars in Republican Party cash in a losing bid to challenge and reverse last fall's election. He has now officially conceded, with all the grace of a fox chasing sour grapes. Thus, funnyman Al Franken will now take the stage as a senator from the Land of 10,000 Lakes and ~~no NHL team~~.[*]

What does adding another Dem to the World's Greatest Blah Blah Blah Body? Not much, says the Wash Post:

First, it definitely does not mean that Democrats have a filibuster-proof ticket to passing whatever they want. Though technically Democrats have now reached the magic number of 60 senators, it's worth remembering that for practical purposes, the majority may have just 58. Edward Kennedy is still receiving cancer treatments in Massachusetts, and Robert Byrd is now home from the hospital but with no timeframe for returning to the Senate. When the major procedural votes happen on health care and other issues, will either of those aging legends be able to get to the Senate floor? The question may sound indelicate, but as David Espo writes, "Neither man has been in the Capitol for weeks, and it is not known when, or even whether, they will return."
Second, even if Democrats do have 60 votes, there's no guarantee of unanimity, as the ongoing intraparty disputes over health care illustrate.... Beyond health care, unions are also touting Franken's win as another step toward passage of the Employee Free Choice Act, or "card check" bill. But that measure isn't at the finish line yet either, with multiple Democrats still opposed or at least hedging on it. Climate change is also a long ways from consensus in the chamber.

That said, if having a full-time job keeps Franken from imitating Mick Jagger ever again, then it's all good.

Back in May, I puzzled over what the extended battle between Franken and Coleman, which meant Minnesota had but one vote in the Senate, taught America. The short version: The U.S. Senate is a carrying more dead weight than an Uruguayan rugby team.

Correction: As several readers point out in the comments, Minnesota does indeed have a post-North (pronounced No) Stars hockey squad, the Minnesota Wild. I regret the mistake and my face is as red as Gump Worsley's after taking a puck to his maskless mush.

Why Adultery is Political Suicide

schapman@tribune.com (Steve Chapman) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 07:00:00 EDT

By now, it's clear that Mark Sanford has about as much of a future in politics as he does in sumo wrestling. His confession of adultery was all it took to demolish any hopes he had of running for president—and perhaps even to force him to step down as governor of South Carolina. But why?

After all, we've had presidents who are revered by posterity despite being unreliable husbands. Hardly anyone even remembers now that Franklin Roosevelt had a mistress, that Dwight Eisenhower may have had one, or that John Kennedy had several.

In the intervening decades, we've also become far more aware of just how common such behavior is among officeholders—not only Gary Hart, Bill Clinton, and Rudy Giuliani but lesser-known mayors, governors, congressmen, and water commissioners. Nowadays, finding that a politician breached his marital vows is about as surprising as learning that a professional athlete failed a drug test. If Alex Rodriguez and Jason Giambi can overcome their guilt, why not Sanford?

Other politicians have survived—most conspicuously our 42nd president. In fact, you'd think the Monica Lewinsky scandal would have settled the issue once and for all. Democrats found themselves excusing Clinton's conduct, and Republicans who condemned it wound up on the losing side in both public opinion and the impeachment battle.

When it was over, Clinton left office with a 65 percent approval rating. Trust him with your daughter? Not a chance. But your economy? Sure.

George W. Bush, by contrast, finished his term with an approval rating of 22 percent. Trust him with your daughter? Sure. But keep him away from the economy! Both parties could have drawn the same conclusion: Voters have more important things to worry about than their leaders' sex lives.

Yet here we are again, disqualifying a possible White House aspirant because he couldn't keep his pants on. After two decades of high-level political sex scandals, we seem to have reached a consensus that marital fidelity is actually pretty important in a leader. Given the choice, we would prefer peace and prosperity to presidential rectitude. But we really want all three, and we think we can have them.

Call it residual puritanism or an overdose of religion if you want, but most Americans think wedding vows are not to be disdained. In recent decades, sexual mores have gotten considerably more relaxed, with one major exception: extramarital affairs. A 2009 Gallup poll found that 92 percent of us think adultery is "morally wrong"—which presumably means there are a lot more people who commit it than defend it. Only 40 percent of Americans think premarital sex is morally wrong, and only 47 percent say that of homosexual relations.

So Barney Frank's career survived his romp with a male prostitute, while John Edwards' fling with a campaign aide made him politically radioactive. Sex without marriage is OK. Sex in violation of marriage is not.

Why not? Because adultery, unlike a frisky bachelor lifestyle, connotes a reckless dishonesty at odds with our basic notions of integrity. Because it shows a lack of respect for the most important commitment that most of us will ever make. Because it indicates that the adulterer will always place his selfish desires above those who depend on him.

There is a cost to this approach, obviously. It disqualifies some smart, dedicated, and able people merely because they suffer a single flaw—and one that apparently is pretty common among the politically ambitious.

But so what? A talented executive can expect to lose her position for a single act of embezzlement. An outstanding journalist may be banished from his profession for one incident of plagiarism.

Of course, those lapses bear directly on how the offenders do their jobs, which is not the case with a governor who strays. But we don't vote for CEOs or newspaper reporters, which means they don't embody our higher aspirations. Americans think those elected to positions of public trust should have enough regard for the public to conduct themselves in an honest, upright way even in matters unrelated to their official duties.

Is it naive of us to believe that a politician who keeps his commitments to his wife will also keep his commitments to us? Probably. But not as naive as thinking that if he betrays her, he'll treat us any better.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Obama Pulls an Agency Out of His...Hat

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:00:00 EDT

"Notice that I am not touching the cards," the magician says, handing the deck to an audience member to shuffle. Another audience member cuts the deck. The magician scribbles on a piece of paper while standing on the far side of the room, noting once again that he is not touching the deck. A third person draws a card. A fourth unfolds the paper to reveal that the magician has correctly guessed the 10 of clubs. The audience gasps. How did he do it without touching the cards at all?

Of course, the answer is simple. He did touch the deck. Casually fanning out the deck after the initial shuffler has reflexively handed the cards back to him, the magician comments inanely "Good shuffle. Looks random." Then he sets them on the table (just so) to be cut and strides off, hands where we can see them.

Human beings are excellent at editing our own memories to conform with a suggested narrative. The magician's "reminders" that he has not touched the deck erase from our minds the fact that he had ample opportunity to examine and position the relevant cards before the trick even got rolling. Part of the fun of the magic trick is when the magician asks his duped audience to recount the chain of events: No matter how carefully they retrace their steps, they omit the incident where he touched the deck simply because they know for sure he never touched the deck. It's called "provoked confabulation," and this particular gambit is on display, sans Bicycle deck, in the current debate over the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Agency and the rest of President Barack Obama's proposed financial regulatory reforms.

In this case, it's about casting adversaries of a massive new regulatory body in a bad light. Check out Obama's rhetorical sleight of hand (sleight of mouth?) on Saturday. First this: "Some argue that these changes—and the many others we’ve called for—go too far. And I welcome a debate about how we can make sure our regulations work for businesses and consumers."

The message here is clear. Obama is not like bad old George W. Bush, who was always stifling debate by talking about national security and 9/11 and stuff. (George Bush used exactly the same trick, of course, occasionally noting how much he loved debate in wartime. Bush got a fair amount of media pushback, though.) No siree, Obama welcomes debate. But then he says this: "But what I will not accept—what I will vigorously oppose—are those who do not argue in good faith. Those who would defend the status quo at any cost. Those who put their narrow interests ahead of the interests of ordinary Americans. We’ve already begun to see special interests mobilizing against change. That’s not surprising. That’s Washington."

Listening to Obama's speech, we walk away with a vague sense that opposing the creation of a big new regulatory body to oversee banking somehow places one in league with, "interests that have benefited from a system which allowed ordinary Americans to be exploited," as Obama went on to describe them. That those who "defend business-as-usual" are doing so under pressure form the special interests sinisterly "mobilizing against change." In fact, even those who are obviously not compromised by any kind of potential financial stake in the legislation (pro-market journalists, say) are also in some way tainted.

But if Obama is challenged on his sly accusation of bad faith, he will simply point to his first statement: He loves debate! He welcomes it. That's what he said, isn't it? He must not be trying to impute bad motives and use ad hominem attacks against his opponents, since we know for sure he likes debate.

In many ways, we're witnessing a replay of the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Consolidating and streamlining agencies sounds excellent—so what if the government picks up significant new powers along the way?—but it's hard to pull off, and not just because of those meddlesome special interests. Obama's 89-page proposal [PDF] takes a lot of individual powers from existing agencies. Bureaucratic turf wars can be bitter struggles. And while no one in the administration is accusing the Securities and Exchange Commission, or the Treasury Department, or the Federal Reserve of acting in bad faith, folks at those agencies have a special interest in what the new agency looks like, too. Congress is on the job as well, inserting compromises and special favors, soothing egos around Washington, and generally trying to look busy.

But as with the magic trick, the relevant sleight of hand has already occurred with the new Consumer Financial Protection Agency. The debate will be ugly, but the House took up the proposal for the new agency this week, and promises to get something passed by the end of July. The rest is just stage business; the deed is done. It was over before the audience knew the magician had even begun.

Katherine Mangu-Ward is an associate editor at Reason. Thanks and apologies to the confabulous Andrew Mayne for supplying the raw ingredients for today's abused magical metaphor.

Mark Sanford Reactions from South Carolinians

acarey@reason.com (Amanda Carey) — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:33:00 EDT

As a native of the (still great) state of South Carolina and a fellow in the Clemson Institute for the Study of Capitalism, I know a fair number of Mark Sanford supporters, and have always been one myself. During the past year I couldn't have been any happier with the way Gov. Sanford handled the duties of office, especially his stance on the stimulus. It's too bad that his image and reputation are now badly tainted.

A brief survey of friends and professors suggests that most are mourning for the damage Sanford's now-public infidelity has caused the conservative movement in South Carolina. A long-time champion of limited government and fiscal conservatism, Sanford has been known around the state for standing on uncompromised principles and beliefs. Many fear that those values will now be questioned even more.

A sampling from my friends around the Palmetto State:

His moral lapse has cast a pall on every idealistically-driven stance he has taken in the recent past, and perhaps throughout the entirety of his governorship.
—Erin Gillespie, Anderson, SC
Sanford represented what true conservatism is supposed to be about. He has always fought hard for his principles, even when it wasn't politically popular, and when something like this happens, it makes it that much easier for the opposition to discredit him. It's a real blow to a movement that was just starting to take hold. —Abby Olin, Beaufort, SC

Some said their general view of the governor was not changed:

Everyone has their vices, and while I feel that Gov Sanford's decisions were extremely poor, it does not change the fact that I agree with many of his public policy decisions.
—Justin Prescott, Florence, SC

Others were not won over by the tearful admission:

I thought, this was a man I could support more than McCain or any past Republican candidates. My trust in him has been shattered. I am severely disappointed in his leadership and have lost faith in the politics of South Carolina....His statement disclosing the truth does not forgive anything.
—Josh Morgan, Columbia, SC
I was shocked and dismayed about this turn of events. I think Sanford will probably have to resign as a result and it will ruin his political career. My thought is he will not make it two more weeks.
—David Woodard, Clemson, SC

As Sanford put it: "This is the first step in what will be a very long process." He was talking about his personal life, but the Sanford supporters in S.C. have a long process ahead of them as they attempt to repair the damage the governor has done to the limited-government cause.

The Sanford Crack-Up: Important, Not Important, Who Knows

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:47:00 EDT

Political smarty Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic presents the case for, and against, the national political significance of South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford's adultery scandal. I think "against" wins, but here are selections from both sides of the argument:

It Will Matter:

He's the latest in a line of potential GOP presidential candidates to fall victim to his personal appetites. This means that the GOP primary electorate is more likely to choose a nominee with stellar, unimpeachable family-values, socially conservative credentials, which means that anyone who evinces moderation hasn't got a shot.....
The GOP loses one of its most articulate anti-spending, anti-deficit spokespersons. Sanford's machinations may not have been popular, but he articulated a view of the world that many conservatives share....
This may be a tipping point: a few examples of conservative moralists who cheat on their wives (Vitter, Ensign) can be, perhaps, accepted as evidence that human beings are normal. But at some point, the liberal talking point about GOP hypocrisy starts to have the ring of truth....

It Won't Matter:

the GOP is at a market bottom already. The public's image of the party can't really go down much further....
Most Americans probably didn't know who Sanford was before today, so it'll hard to attribute any massive change in politics to his sudden emergence.....

Sanford was never a viable 2012 candidate because of his eccentricity; to put him in the same category as a Mitt Romney or a Sarah Palin misjudges the impact he would have had.

Reason has blogged every step of this grim and silly little morality play, here and here.

Mr. Kerry Goes to Hollywood

acarey@reason.com (Amanda Carey) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:32:00 EDT

The AP reports that Kerry has asked the Federal Election Commission (FEC) if he can use $300,000 from his campaign fund to invest in a documentary about Iraq War veterans:

The 2004 presidential nominee wants to be an executive producer for a movie tentatively titled "Keeping Faith," by White Mountain Films. Kerry would not be paid, but could get up to a 120 percent return on his $300,000 investment, according to a March 16 letter he sent to the FEC outlining his plans.

Kerry aides have said once federal election officials and the ethics committee rule on his requests, then he will decide whether to pursue his ambitions to become a movie producer.

So what do you do when you lose an election? Follow the Al Gore model: Pick an issue and make a movie about it! It's nice though that Kerry has chosen a topic that does not involve a melting planet and impending doom.

Read the full story here.

Cap and Trade = Iraq War?

kmw@reason.com (Katherine Mangu-Ward) — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:15:00 EDT

From Michael Goldfarb, a friend from my days at The Weekly Standard:

Basically, cap and trade strikes me as the Iraq war of the Democratic domestic policy agenda. It's the overreach moment. It's a massive program that, unlike health care reform, no one is demanding, no one understands, and no one can explain. Cap and trade may be the only thing that can save the Republican party from eight years in the wilderness.

A slightly off-kilter source for this insight, but it might actually be right if people start to see price increases on electricity, gas, etc. fairly quickly.

Catching Up With Motorhome Diarists, Free-Wheeling Friends of Freedom

Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:24:00 EDT

The last time Reason.tv caught up with Jason Talley and Pete Eyre, the duo was just about to hit the open road in a revamped RV to report on small-town stories of repression and nanny-statism, and to meet up with libertarians around the country. And, above all, to avoid the apocalyptic fates that seem to await protagonists in RV-centered movies ranging from Race With The Devil to Lost in America. Click here to watch that Reason.tv interview.

Since hitting the highway in April, the pair picked up a third crew member, Adam Mueller, got arrested (for no real reason) in Jones County, Mississippi, and created a thriving online site and community.

The Motorhome Diaries crew blog and post videos at their site, which features interviews and commentaries from leading libertarians such as Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) and the Cato Institute's David Boaz.

Reason.tv caught up with Motorhome diarists on a recent swing through DC and took a tour of the RV parked just outside our offices on Connecticut Avenue NW. Nick Gillespie talks with the Motorhome Diaries crew about their continuing journey, the shape of individual liberty in the heartland, their plans for the future, and more.

Approximately 3.35 minutes. Shot by Dan Hayes and Meredith Bragg and edited by Meredith Bragg.

For downloadable versions of this, go here now.

Bonus video! The Motorhome Diaries interview Reason.tv's Nick Gillespie, who expresses disappointment that disaster hadn't yet befallen the crew, explains why we're living in the libertarian moment, why you should live your life as a work of art, and much more. Click below to watch both parts. For more info and videos from the Motorhome Diaries, go here.

Free-Market Environmentalism in the New York Times

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 11:21:00 EDT

A "libertarian moment" moment: The New York Times defends attempts to establish quasi-private property in fish in the ocean as a means to preserve them. From its editorial earlier this week:

Under the present system, America’s regional fishing councils, which are run largely by fishermen with federal oversight, set annual catch limits. To meet these quotas, most commercial fleets follow a detailed “days at sea” approach regulating the number of days they may fish, how many fish they may catch and what kind of equipment they may use. The system does not work well. Some people obey the rules, and others don’t. The days-at-sea restrictions often lead to a frantic race to catch as many fish as possible as quickly as possible, which in turn leads to indiscriminate and wasteful fishing.
Ms. [Jane] Lubchenco’s [of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration] alternative would give individual fishermen or groups of fishermen fixed shares — a guaranteed percentage — of the annual catch, then let them set the rules. The theory is that share-holding fishermen will have a vested interest in seeing their resource grow, much like shareholders in a company.
Fisheries that use this system — also known as “dedicated access” fisheries — have prospered in places like New Zealand. The dozen or so American fisheries with catch shares, accounting for about one-fifth of the total domestic catch, have also done well.

Ron Bailey explained and defended the "individual fishing quota" system for New England back in 2005. A Reason Foundation study on how to implement such quotas in the U.S. from 2004.

[Hat tip: reader Ray Eckhart]

Gov. Mark Sanford Disappears?

bdoherty@reason.com (Brian Doherty) — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:41:00 EDT

In a developing story that I hope has a happy ending (or proves to be a non-story ultimately), the would-be stimulus refusenik and small-government maverick South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford hasn't been seen by colleagues or family since Thursday. (His lieutenant governor's office reports getting a phone call from him today.)

In the New York Daily News's account, a state senator, Jake Knotts, who often butts heads with Sanford seems to think his governor's help might be urgently needed, what with this whole Iran situation. But Ms. Sanford says she isn't worried; "He was writing something and wanted some space to get away from the kids." His state security detail won't comment on whether they know his whereabouts.

As Sanford has been talked about as a potential small-government GOP presidential candidate next go-round, Knotts notes:

Sanford would have to quit taking mystery vacations if he wants to trade the corner office for the Oval Office.
"If he don't like the security that SLED gives him in South Carolina, he's going to absolutely hate the Secret Service if he runs for President. They'll go in the bathroom with him!"

In some past Reason coverage of Sanford, he wears libertarianism as a badge of honor; gets embraced by Ron Paul fans; and tries to refuse stimulus money.

UPDATE: Non-story it is---CNN says he's hiking the Appalachian trail.

UPDATE II: In a real "I'm sorry I ever blogged this story" turn, the Palmetto Scoop website speculates that Sanford may have gone hiking in such secrecy because he may have been "naked hiking."

ObamaCare is a Trojan Horse for Socialized Medicine

info@reason.com (Shikha Dalmia) — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 15:00:00 EDT

President George W. Bush concocted the connection between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein to justify the Iraq invasion. Now President Barack Obama is concocting an equally fantastical theory to justify a de facto government takeover of health care.

He is claiming that the way to slash health care costs and achieve universal coverage is by creating a Medicare-style government insurance plan that is open to everyone. In the world that Obama and other universal health care advocates inhabit, Medicare allegedly has done a far superior job than private plans of keeping a lid on rising medical costs. Forcing these plans to compete with a plan modeled after it will—in Obama's words—"keep them honest and keep prices down."

But before demanding honesty from others, Obama will have to show some himself, especially concerning the performance of Medicare.

That Medicare is in serious, serious trouble no one can dispute. Its projected unfunded liabilities over 75 years, from 2007 to 2082, are about $36 trillion, according to the latest Medicare Trustees report. If current trends persist, by the end of that time Medicare will be devouring 19% of gross domestic product—or $3 trillion, an amount equal to the entire U.S. budget right now. It will take a heartburn-inducing 135% increase in payroll taxes to bring it into actuarial balance.

Despite Medicare's dismal record, Obama and his comrades hold Medicare up as an example for the private sector. Why? Because between 1997 and 2006, Medicare's health spending per enrollee grew 4.6% annually while that of private plans grew 7.3%. By tapping this 2.7% difference, they argue that they can perform the triple miracle of reining in escalating health care costs, and at the same time extending health insurance to the 46 million uninsured without imposing any extra cost on the economy.

But this is 21st century snake oil.

Medicare hasn't controlled costs by discovering some wonder drug to deliver new efficiencies that the private sector doesn't have. In fact, the Government Accountability Office lists Medicare as a "high-risk" program, thanks to its long-term financial problems and its vulnerability to fraud. Rather, Medicare has cut costs by deploying the economic equivalent of leech-therapy: slashing payments to providers. The only reason providers haven't been bled out of existence is because they have offset these cuts by raising prices charged to private insurance plans. In effect, then, the good performance of Medicare that Obama and Co. tout has been purchased by beggaring the private plans that they deride.

There is a rich literature testifying to this phenomenon. A study last December by Milliman Inc., an independent consulting firm, commissioned by America's Health Insurance Plans, found that underpayment by Medicare and Medicaid accounted for nearly an 11% increase in the health care costs of private plans. This means that on average a privately insured family is forced to pick up about $1,800 extra every year of the government's slack. Private plans, all in all, are subsidizing government programs to the tune of $90 billion annually.

Milliman's findings are far from ground-breaking. They merely confirm previous research, including a 2006 study by Jack Zwanziger and Anil Bamezai in Health Affairs, which found a clear correlation over the years between decreasing government payments and rising insurance premiums in California. They calculated that a 1% relative decrease in the average Medicare price is associated with a 0.17% increase in the corresponding price paid by privately insured patients.

"Policymakers, in considering the implications of decreasing Medicare and Medicaid payment rates to health care providers, must include the likelihood that some of this reduction will result in higher payment rates by private payers," they concluded. "In turn, higher hospital payments will tend to increase health insurance premiums and reduce private insurance coverage."

In making his case for universal coverage, Obama disregards this reality and emphasizes a different cause for the rise of premiums, namely that private plans are being forced to absorb the cost of uncompensated care for the uninsured, who land in the emergency rooms because they can't get timely treatment. Cover the uninsured through universal health care, he says, and things will be dandy again.

But the fact of the matter is that uncompensated care costs only $40 billion—or about 2% of the $2.26 trillion that the U.S. spends on health care. This is less than what department stores lose to shoplifting every year. "Underpayment by the public programs dwarfs any problem created by the uninsured," says Greg Scandlen, director of the Heartland Institute's Consumers for Health Care Choices program. Indeed, the problem for private plans is not so much that they are being forced to subsidize the uninsured as the publicly insured.

Obama told the American Medical Association in a major health care speech Monday that doctors shouldn't regard a public insurance option as their enemy, but as their friend. He is lying. He has already proposed slashing $200 billion in reimbursements to hospitals to pay for universal coverage. And, if past is prelude, this trend will only accelerate if a government-run insurance plan becomes available.

But ultimately this public option will not be sustainable because it will set in motion a downward spiral in which the more it grows, the more it will raise the costs of private plans. This will drive patients out of these plans and into the public plan, which, in turn, will grow more and eventually drive the private plans out of business.

How will the public plan sustain itself once it has killed the very host it is feeding off? Essentially, by embracing a taxpayer funded, government-run, single payer system. Obama pooh-poohs those who suggest that the public plan is a Trojan horse for socialized medicine. But then Bush too pooh-poohed those who suggested that Iraq would become a quagmire.

Shikha Dalmia is a senior analyst at Reason Foundation and writes a biweekly column for Forbes, where this column originally appeared. Ben Tonkin provided research assistance for this column.

DC Pols Have Forgotten More Sex Than You'll Ever Have in Your Whole Lifetime!

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 20:08:00 EDT

Via the excellent FishBowl DC comes a pointer to this cheeky reminder from FamousDC about a decade's worth of sex scandals (including former-future Washington Mayor Marion Berry's "bitch set me up" tryst, which technically happened in the Pleistocene Era).

Future-former Sen. John Ensign's recent revelation of an-on-the-clock affair clocks in at number 10. Read deep the gathering gloom, which includes a number of scandals I am happy to say that I either never heard of at all or have successfully repressed (e.g., the Rep. Vito Fossella love child bit, Rep. Tim Mahoney [?], Rep. Don Sherwood [??]).

A snippet:

... 4. Sen. John Edwards + Cici from Poison
Ok, so the woman just looked like Cici from Poison but the former Presidential candidate was caught leaving their love nest by the National Enquirer.
Considering the fact that his wife has cancer and his family is generally adorable, it's no real surprised that we have not heard from the boy wonder since.
3. Former Governor Elliot Spitzer + $$$$$ Hooker
The plate on the door of the Mayflower Hotel where Spitizer and his lady friend would rendezvous has been stolen several times.
This scandal had everything ... hookers, hypocrisy and weird, weird sex....

Whole list here.

Why do we care about the sex lives of the powerful? Mostly, we don't, because it's bad enough looking at these guys (and with the rare exception of someone like former Sen. Helen Chenoweth, it always seems to be guys) with their clothes on, much less imagining forming the beast with two, three, or more backs. But in the cases of folks such as Sen. Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, the rampant hypocrisy brings home the point that most of these people can't run their own lives, much less yours and mine. So there's a lesson to be learned here: Don't do this at home, kids. Or, if you do, then don't run for office. And if you do run for office and manage to get elected, don't moralize in a way that is grossly at odds with your lifestyle.

Glass Houses, Left and Right

CathyYoung63@aol.com (Cathy Young) — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 16:30:00 EDT

Political hate speech has been all the rage in recent days. After the shocking attack at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC by a white supremacist, New York Times columnists Paul Krugman and Frank Rich have charged that the right-wing media are creating a dangerous climate of hate in America. Meanwhile, conservative outrage has focused on David Letterman's nasty jokes about former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and her family's trip to New York—more proof, many commentators argue, that enlightened liberals condone hateful sexist slurs as long as the target is a conservative woman.

The charges on both sides are wildly overblown, but they also point to a real problem—one to which, unfortunately, both sides respond with stones thrown from its own glass house.

For starters: the actions of 88-year-old James von Brunn, who fatally shot a Holocaust Museum security guard, had exactly nothing to do with Krugman and Rich's chief villains: Rush Limbaugh, the king of right-wing talk radio, and Glenn Beck, the clown of Fox News. Neo-Nazis are not part of the following of mainstream or even far-right conservatives; they are people who see the United States government, under Republicans or Democrats, as a tool of Zionist puppet-masters. As conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg points out on website of National Review magazine, one could at least as convincingly link anti-Semitism to the animus toward Israel and its American Jewish supporters in certain quarters of the left. Indeed, Von Brunn's possible targets included The Weekly Standard, a leading conservative magazine.

While the right-wing pontificators are not responsible for von Brunn, that doesn't quite get them off the hook. Limbaugh, Beck, and quite a few other talk show hosts, journalists, and bloggers on the right have undoubtedly trafficked in political paranoia and hate. There has been much irresponsible, over-the-top scaremongering about looming fascism or (Soviet-style) socialism, the imminent loss of our freedoms and even federally run concentration camps. Barack Obama has been cast as Hitler, Stalin, and a radical Muslim mole. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was the target of an assassination joke read over the air on the Rush Limbaugh show by substitute host Mark Davis.

Even if none of this ever leads to violence, it is toxic stuff. But the liberals who rightly deplore it rarely acknowledge the equally toxic stuff on the left—including, not long ago, Bush assassination jokes, Bush/Hitler comparisons, and hysterical claims that Bush's America was five minutes away from fascism if not already there. The left has its own Glenn Beck in writer Naomi Wolf, who published an essay titled "Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps" in 2007 and then a best-selling book called "The End of America." Wolf got to make her case on National Public Radio and the Colbert Report; later, The Huffington Post, a leading left-wing website, published her article calling Sarah Palin "the muse of the coming police state."

That brings us to Palin, a favorite target of left-wing hate, and the brouhaha over Letterman. The acerbic late-night TV host has been skewered for his humor about Palin's "slutty flight attendant look" and, especially, about her daughter getting "knocked up" by New York Yankees player Alex Rodriguez at a baseball game. That joke turned out to be especially unfortunate since the Palin daughter at the game was 14-year-old Willow. Letterman has apologized while claiming he was thinking of 18-year-old single mother Bristol. Palin was grudgingly appeased; some feminists have taken Palin's side, accusing Letterman of sexism.

While Letterman's explanation sounds plausible, his joke was undoubtedly coarse (though, as far as sexism goes, had one of Palin's sons gained notoriety as an unwed teenage father, he probably would have been an equal-opportunity target). But it's hardly the worst of anti-Palin invective. During the campaign, major left-of-center sites including Salon.com attacked her in blatantly sexual language: "Republican blow-up doll," "pornographic centerfold." Comedienne Sandra Bernhard railed against Palin in an unfunny foul-mouthed monologue that included a wish to see her raped. For some on the left, the usual taboos against misogyny clearly do not cover right-wing women.

But the conservative outrage, too, has an element of hypocrisy. Fox News talk show host Sean Hannity has vocally deplored the insults to Palin and leftist "hate speech" in general. But where was he in 2007 when right-wing rock star Ted Nugent called then-Democratic presidential contender Hillary Clinton a "worthless bitch" at his concert and suggested, while brandishing two assault rifles, that she "ride one of these into the sunset"? Actually, Hannity was actively defending Nugent as a "friend and frequent guest on the program" and brushing off complaints about his remarks with a dismissive, "If you don't like it, don't go to the concert, don't buy his new albums."

The stones keep flying from glass house to glass house, which may be why following much of today's political discourse is about as pleasant as wading through broken glass. Wouldn't it be nice if both the right and the left focused a little less on getting offended and a little more on curbing hate and hysteria in their own ranks? One can always dream.

Cathy Young writes a weekly column for RealClearPolitics and is also a contributing editor at Reason magazine. She blogs at http://cathyyoung.wordpress.com/. This article originally appeared at RealClearPolitics.

Reason Writers Around Town: Shikha Dalmia on Obama's Health Care Snake Oil

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:30:00 EDT

President Barack Obama bizarrely argues that a Medicare-style insurance option open to everyone will cure our health care woes. But in her latest Forbes column, Shikha Dalmia argues that just as President George W. Bush concocted the connection between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein to justify the Iraq invasion, Obama is concocting an equally fantastical theory to justify a de facto government takeover of health care.

She writes:

Despite Medicare's dismal record, Obama and his comrades hold Medicare up as an example for the private sector. Why? Because between 1997 and 2006, Medicare's health spending per enrollee grew 4.6% annually while that of private plans grew 7.3%. By tapping this 2.7% difference, they argue that they can perform the triple miracle of reining in escalating health care costs, and at the same time extending health insurance to the 46 million uninsured without imposing any extra cost on the economy.
But this is 21st century snake oil...

Read the whole thing here.

Newt Gingrich Reduced to Quoting Film Version of FDR for Political Inspiration

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 09:15:00 EDT

Newt Gingrich is politics' answer to The Blair Witch Project: A bona fide '90s cultural phenomenon that never made it out of the last decade of the 20th century. Gingrich injected some fun and insight into U.S. politics and engineered a stunning and unexpected Republican takeover of Congress before self-destructing in a mess of hubris and ideological incoherence, and losing a throwdown/shutdown with Bill Clinton. At his best, Gingrich was cypto-libertarian, talking up technology and an open-ended future; at his worst, which was most of the time, he was a big government conservative who wanted to keep things the way they used to be while getting to helm the ship of state. No small wonder that he self-destructed, especially after he couldn't actually lead a movement to cut the size and scope of government, which was his stated goal.

Somehow it's fitting that Newt's latest auto-generated missive, delivered steaming hot to your inbox via the intertubes after being typed by a million Max Headrooms in a room somewhere), came out just as news that John Hinckley, Jr. is now freer to roam about the country hit the telscreens.

Here's the former Speaker of the House and soft-core historical novelist taking inspiration not from Robert Taft and not even from the real Franklin Roosevelt but from Jon Voight's portrayal of FDR:

Last week, I had the pleasure of addressing the Senate-House Annual Republican Dinner. The MC for the evening was actor Jon Voight. Before he spoke, a video tribute for Voight was shown, including clips of him playing Franklin Delano Roosevelt in a movie.

In one scene, Roosevelt is being told by his generals and advisors all the reasons why achieving victory in World War II was too hard.

In response, Voight—playing Roosevelt, who, remember, was confined to a wheelchair due to polio— dramatically lifts himself up using the table and stabilizes himself on his non-functioning legs. He then stares down every shocked person in the room and says:

"Don't tell me it can't be done."

It occurred to me, sitting in the audience preparing to speak, that those seven words—"Don't tell me it can't be done"—should be the rallying cry for all Republicans (not to mention all Independents and Democrats who want a better future for America—more on this idea later).

Whole thing here. Me, I'm just waiting for the moment that Cuba Gooding, Jr., playing President Obama, steadies himself on his spindly little arms and vaults over the Oval Office desk and declares, "Three workouts a day—year-round!"

More on this idea later! In the meantime, check out hands-down the most inspiring portrayal of FDR: FDR—A One-Man Show, by Chris Elliott, which really should be mandatory viewing for all past, present, and future American citizens:

Obama Concerned About Deficit; Prepared to Do Anything But Cut Spending

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 08:25:00 EDT

Via Drudge comes this Reuters report that President Barack Obama is losing sleep over federal deficits:

"I am concerned about the long-term issue of our structural deficit and our long-term debt because if we don't get a handle on that, then there's no doubt that at some point, whether it's the Chinese, the Koreans, the Japanese, and whoever else has been snatching up Treasuries are going to decide that this is too much of a risk," Obama said.
"That's why it's so important for us to get a handle on our long-term structural deficit," he said.

Obama predicts that unemployment, currently at 9.4 percent (the highest since 1983), will crack 10 percent by year's end. More here.

It's all well and good that Obama has his eye on structural deficits, meaning pay-as-you-go entitlement spending on programs such as Social Security and Medicare, where fiscal apocalypse is just around the demographic corner. Clearly, these programs need to be changed, and fast (here's a hint on a fix: Don't expect a massive government takeover of the health care industry to save a plugged nickel, though it can always make an annoying system even worse). But if that sort of built-in, ever-expanding spending is part of the problem, then why is the president talking about turning Pell grants into entitlements? This fire has enough fuel already, thank you very much.

More to the point, if spending's the thing, how do you square reports of Obama's literally being kept awake at night by deficits with his actual proposed plan for the next 10 years, which envisions nothing but red ink of historic proportions:

Recall that Obama, that uber-ironic wag, titled his first-ever budget "A New Era of Responsibility" and delivered a document that was chock full of declamations regarding greedy capitalists and evil marketeers who greased the wheels of commerce with the blood young virgins and puppy dogs—and zero cuts, vision, or guidance when it came to restraining government spending.

The press corps, still in its swoon over Obama, will actually take seriously his claims to want to cut spending and be responsible (by which, of course, he means something orthogonal at best to the concept as Ma and Pa Kettle might understand it). Now that Bushtard is outta the White House, you can hear them whisper, we're all wearing big boy pants now, don't you know, and smart guys like Turbo Tax Tim Geithner really know what they're doing (they got, like, 1400s on their SATs!), not like that idiot Hank Paulson (who was really, really smart, the media were telling us just last fall) and the Texas Leaguers Bush 43 brought to town.

And just like a fairy tale, it will all be totally, absolutely 100 percent true. Except for the part where the government actually reduces a red cent of spending.

The Libertarians' Bogart Moment

tcavanaugh@reason.com (Tim Cavanaugh) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 16:56:00 EDT

...and the yield on 10-year Treasury notes hits 4 percent, after an "awful" auction of $19 billion in new government debt. There are many claims about why demand is declining for 10-year bonds backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. Optimists say it indicates impending inflation and thus higher interest rates (and in today's Wall Street Journal, non-optimist Arthur Laffer says inflation is a-comin'). An even more pollyanish view is that investors are finding oodles of neat stuff to put their wealth into as the economy resurrects.

One thing is certain: Big buyers are losing interest in U.S. government debt. There is a clear upside to this, because of the distance between promised largesse and the issuing of debt to pay for it. As Katherine Mangu-Ward noted earlier, the never-popular American Reinvestment and Recovery Act is less popular than ever. Very little of the ARRA's funding has actually been committed. In April the GAO estimated that only $49 billion of $787 billion in stimulus funding was committed to be paid by September 30. A Pro Publica article today tracks the relative chump change that has been paid for transportation, supposedly a cornerstone of the stimulus package.

This means theoretically it's still possible to walk back the stimulus payout, if you can make a political case for it. One way is to use the kind of magic talk politicians love: For every dollar we don't borrow at 4 percent now, we save almost $1.50 over ten years!

For libertarians, the Bogart Moment is an even bolder argument. I've always hated the Bogart Moment, that never-convincing scene where Humphrey Bogart or George Clooney or Ice Cube or Han Solo decides to give up pursuing his own interest and jumps in with the team for the big win.

But in this case, the Bogart Moment could yield wonderful rhetorical results: We don't want to kibosh the stimulus out of buy-gold megalomania or toe-tapping hatred of age-of-consent laws or nostalgia for the days of the Articles of Confederation. This is just patriotism: We just don't want our government bankrupt itself. We're here to help.

Here, by the way, is what happens when you ignore the Bogart Moment, you nattering popinjays:

Larry Summers: Plus-sized Richelieu in the Court of the (Economic) Sunset King

tcavanaugh@reason.com (Tim Cavanaugh) — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 12:20:00 EDT

Skip through the foray into complete fiction in this New York Times profile of President Obama's economic team ("With [an array of economic rescue plans], and the Fed's efforts, the economy shows signs of new life"), and you'll get a pretty good view of the deep, deep loathing chief economic advisor Larry Summers inspires in pretty much everybody. The closest Summers' intimates can come to a kind word is Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's praise that Summers is "pretty good at making the case against anything."

Given that the ideas in play here begin at bad and continue through abysmal, that's probably not a bad trait. (In a piece of good news for rich incompetents everywhere, Geithner and the "populist" Summers agree that companies on the public tit should not be subject to executive pay restrictions.) But what really comes across is Summers' talent for ham-handed palace intrigue, as in this anecdote about the Chrysler debate:

[Austan] Goolsbee argued that rescuing the financial system was one thing, since credit is the economy's lifeblood, but the government should not run an auto company. Saving Chrysler, he added, could further harm General Motors, which stood to gain market share.
The arguments became so heated that Mr. Summers stormed from one meeting, a witness said. While he later included Mr. Goolsbee's objections in a memorandum for Mr. Obama, he excluded Mr. Goolsbee from the decisive meeting with the president.
There, [Christina D.] Romer expressed the objections from the Council of Economic Advisers, but made a point of naming the absent Mr. Goolsbee. That prompted Mr. Obama to ask, "Where is Austan?" He had the aide summoned to state his case, in what some aides took as a rebuke to Mr. Summers. The discussion continued that evening, and Mr. Obama decided on the course Mr. Summers supported.

When I had to edit Summers' very expensive and never-readable op-eds at the L.A. Times, I never got a chance to experience full-frontal Larry, as every change had to be begged through his own Waylon Smithers figure: assistant Michael O'Mary, who is pictured above basking in The Presence. I found O'Mary insufferable, and I regret that my effort to fit in with the MSM kept me from responding to his petulant messages with the "Settle down, Mary" they deserved. But this makes me think maybe the amanuensis was just reflecting the greater insufferability of the boss. In any case, Summers is still in the game to become the next treasurer or Fed chairman, so we may all get another direct whiff of the great man, if only through the smoke signals that will be the only means of communications left once the Obama geniuses are through with the American economy.

We Don't Need No Education

mmoynihan@reason.com (Michael C. Moynihan) — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:00:00 EDT

Ask random members of the professoriate at my alma mater, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and many will confide that too many people—not too few, as recently suggested by President Barack Obama—are attending college these days. This opinion is impolite and impolitic (perhaps, in the context of the American university, we should say "un-PC"). But years of furtive conversation with academics suggest it is commonly held. And one can see why. To the professor with expertise in Austro-Hungarian history, for instance, it is unclear why his survey course on the casus foederis of World War I is a necessary stop in a management-level job training program at Hertz.

This is not to say that some Americans should be discouraged from participating in a liberal arts education. As the social scientist Charles Murray writes in his book Real Education, "Saying 'too many people are going to college' is not the same as saying that the average student does not need to know about history, science, and great works of art, music, and literature. They do need to know—and to know more than they are currently learning. So let's teach it to them, but let's not wait for college to do it."

Take this bullet point, proudly included in a November 2008 press release from the Boston public school system: "Of the [Boston public school] graduates from the Class of 2000 who enrolled in college (1,904), 35.5 percent (675 students) earned a degree within seven years of high school graduation. An additional 14 percent (267 students) were still enrolled and working toward a degree." In a news conference celebrating these dismal numbers, Mayor Tom Menino called for a "100 percent increase" in the number of city students attending college, though offered no suggestions on how to ensure that those students actually graduate or are properly prepared to handle undergraduate studies. Besides, if 14 percent of those enrolled are still ambling towards a degree after eight years, is Menino convinced that the pursuit of a university education was the right decision for these students, rather than, say, vocational training?

Alas, these numbers are not uncommon. (They're often worse in other major American cities.) Citing a recent study by two education experts at Harvard University, former Secretary of Education Margret Spellings sighed, "The report shows that two-thirds of our nation's students leave high school unprepared to even apply to a four-year college." Nevertheless, a huge number of these students are matriculating to four-year universities, incurring mountains of debt, and never finishing their degrees.

The devalued undergraduate degree is one thing when the people doing the devaluing have privately financed their education. It is quite another when the federal government foots the bill. While America debates the merits of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the nationalization of General Motors, and how to fix a broken health care system, the Obama administration has been quietly planning a massive expansion of the Pell Grant program, "making it an entitlement akin to Medicare and Social Security." Read that sentence again. As we spiral deeper into recession and debt, our dear leaders in Washington are considering the creation of a massive entitlement akin to the expensive, inefficient, and failing Medicare and Social Security programs.

According to a report in The Washington Post, Obama's proposals "could transform the financial aid landscape for millions of students while expanding federal authority to a degree that even Democrats concede is controversial." It is a plan that has met with outspoken—though likely toothless—resistance from Republicans. Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), the senior Republican on the House Budget Committee, suggested that the president reform existing entitlements before creating new ones. And, as noted in the Post, Obama is facing resistance from his own side of the aisle as well, with Sens. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) and Tom Harkin (D-Iowa) expressing skepticism towards both the price tag and the necessity of such an expansion.

Beyond the massive cost of expanded Pell Grants, Ohio University economist Richard Vedder argues that, historically, "it is hard to demonstrate that enhanced federal assistance has either significantly expanded college participation or brought about much greater access to higher education by those who are financially disadvantaged." If the idea is expanded into an entitlement, Vedder sees rising demand for higher education leading to significantly higher costs. "When someone else is paying the bills, costs always rise."

With more than 40 percent of students who enter college dropping out before graduation, Vedder's suggestion that "a greater percentage of entering college students should be attending community colleges, moving up to four year universities only if they succeed well at the community college level," seems sound. But the idea pushed by President Obama that, regardless of a student's career aspirations, secondary education is a necessity in 21st century America, ensures that an undergraduate education will become a required (very expensive) extension of every high school diploma.

To the average high school senior, the American university has become an institution that one simply must slog through to reach a higher salary. As one college dropout recently told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "I am determined to finish my degree. A high school job isn't cutting it these days." The former student, the reader is told, simply wants "to do something else with her life," though it is unclear just what that something else is. Perhaps she'll figure that out after getting the degree.

As Charles Murray observed in The Wall Street Journal, "Our obsession with the BA has created a two-tiered entry to adulthood, anointing some for admission to the club and labeling the rest as second-best." But not to worry. If Obama's plan for a secondary education entitlement is foisted upon us—the final cost of which remains anyone's guess—we might soon have a one-tiered system where everyone is second-best.

Michael C. Moynihan is a senior editor of Reason.

5 Reasons Alabama Should Elect Roy Moore, the 10 Commandments Judge, Governator of Alabama

gillespie@reason.com (Nick Gillespie) — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 09:37:00 EDT

Moore is the judge who refused to remove a colossal hunk of rock with the Ten Commandments on them, resulting in a fine from the very court he swore to serve.

Steve Gordon lays out the case for Moore in tongue-in-cheek fashion. They include national media exposure ("we can be sure that Alabama will be highlighted on a daily basis on programs like The Tonight Show, The Daily Show and Bullshit!. We'll also be helping the national economy, as sites like The Onion and Wonkette will have to hire additional writers to keep up with us.") and increasing religious diversity ("With respect to religion, Alabama is one of the least diverse places I've been. The institution of the worship of idols made out of stone will go a long way to re-establish our primal pagan [and pre-Ten Commandments] values.")

More, including Moore's theocratic beliefs on the gays and the gambling, here.

Identity Politics, Left and Right

schapman@tribune.com (Steve Chapman) — Thu, 28 May 2009 07:00:00 EDT

Some people are unhappy to hear President Obama suggest that attributes like gender, ethnicity, and "empathy" are critical in choosing a Supreme Court justice, and it's hard to blame them. When I hire a lawyer, I don't care about that person's ancestry, complexion, theological preoccupations, reproductive equipment, or personal warmth—I care about getting the best advice and representation.

Likewise for Supreme Court justices. Find me a tedious brainiac who reads the Constitution exactly as I read it, and I don't care if that person would fit in at the Chapman family reunion. Reducing a selection for a vitally important office to a demographic formula is not the path to sound constitutional interpretation.

Conservatives rightly lamented Sonia Sotomayor's suggestion that female Hispanic judges make better decisions than white males. At National Review Online, Kathryn Jean Lopez ridiculed the odd notion, raised by one commentator, that her diabetes would deepen her judicial wisdom.

This is not to deny the value of a diversity of backgrounds and experiences in an institution like the Supreme Court. We all understand the world through our personal environment, and the more exposure we have to other people's experiences and perspectives, the better off we are.

A daughter of Puerto Rican parents raised in a housing project may have insights into police abuses or the drug war or regulation of taxicabs that a white man who grew up middle-class in Indiana would not. The white guy, however, might also know some things she wouldn't.

But that is a long way from asserting, as Sotomayor has, that "a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life." A wise Latina, like a wise WASP male, understands she has no monopoly on rich experiences or vital truths. She values what her life has offered without letting herself be constrained by it. If she's a judge, she recognizes her obligation to strive for impartiality.

So conservatives have reason to be wary of Sotomayor's approach to judging. But it's a little late for most of them to decry identity politics. Few objections were heard from Republicans in 1991, when President George H.W. Bush decided that the ideal person to fill the vacancy left by Thurgood Marshall, the court's first black justice, was Clarence Thomas, who just happened to be black as well.

Bush did his best to have it both ways. He insisted that race was irrelevant and that Thomas was simply the "best qualified" candidate in the country. But he also said, "(I)f credit accrues to him for coming up through a tough life as a minority in this country, so much the better."

Back then, conservatives played the identity game gingerly, as if they were slightly embarrassed. But they have since learned to make the most of it. The most recent and regrettable example is Sarah Palin, lustily cheered by Republican audiences last year not because she had the credentials and ability to step into the presidency, but because she was the Right Kind of Person.

First, she was a woman, picked to attract disappointed Hillary Clinton supporters, as Palin shamelessly highlighted: "Hillary left 18 million cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling in America. But it turns out the women of America aren't finished yet, and we can shatter that glass ceiling once and for all."

Second, she was not one of those effete urban elitists but a real American—small-town girl, beauty queen, hockey mom, "Bible-believing Christian" (as she put it), mother of five, and moose hunter.

Rep. Robin Hayes (R-N.C.), said she was controversial because "liberals hate real Americans that work and accomplish and achieve and believe in God." Palin herself celebrated her brethren from small towns, which she called "all of you hard-working, very patriotic, very pro-America areas of this great nation."

Of course it's useful to include the perspective of small-town residents in formulating policy, just as it's a good idea to consider the impact of laws on Latinos. But to imagine that either group—or any group—has a unique claim to wisdom or goodness is only to prove that no group is immune to foolishness.

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Is the Abortion Debate Changing?

david@davidharsanyi.com (David Harsanyi) — Wed, 27 May 2009 16:30:00 EDT

As an atheist and a secular kinda guy, I practice moral relativism regularly. Still, I always have struggled mightily with the ethics and politics of abortion. Apparently, I'm not alone.

A new Gallup Poll claims that for the first time since 1995—when the question was first asked by the organization—most Americans consider themselves to be "pro-life" rather than "pro-choice."

The straightforward question asked of participants was this: "With respect to the abortion issue, would you consider yourself to be pro-choice or pro-life?" Fifty-one percent responded that they were pro-life, and 42 percent said they were pro-choice. These percentages are the reverse of what was found in the same poll in 2006.

What happened? Is it possible that the nation has undergone a gigantic attitudinal shift on the fundamental issue of abortion in only three years' time? Logically, it seems that the entire framing of the debate has become antiquated and far too simplistic for the questions we face. Anecdotally, I would say it's possible. I know I've changed my views.

After a life of being pro-choice, I began to seriously ponder the question. I oppose the death penalty because of the slim chance innocent people will be executed and because I don't believe the state should have the authority to take a citizen's life. So don't I owe a nascent human life at least the same deference? Just in case?

Now, you may not consider a fetus a "human life" in early pregnancy, though it has its own DNA and medical science continues to find ways to keep the fetus viable outside the womb earlier and earlier. It's difficult to understand how those who harp on the importance of "science" in public policy can draw an arbitrary timeline in the pregnancy, defining when human life is worth saving and when it can be terminated.

The more I thought about it the creepier the issue got. Newsweek, for instance, recently reported that 90 percent of women whose fetuses test positive for Down syndrome choose to abort. Another survey showed that only a small percentage of mothers even use the test. So what happens when 90 percent of parents test their fetuses? Does it mean the end of the disorder, or are we stepping perilously close to eugenics?

What about future DNA tests that can detect any defects in a fetus? What happens when we can use abortion to weed out the blind, the mentally ill, the ugly, or any other "undesirable" human beings?

Recently, Sweden's National Board of Health and Welfare ruled that women are permitted to abort their children based on the sex of the fetuses. In the United States, a woman can have an abortion for nearly any reason she chooses. In fact, a health exemption for the mother allows abortions to be performed virtually on demand.

If you oppose selective abortions but not abortion overall, I wonder why? How is terminating the fetus because it's the wrong sex any worse than terminating the fetus for convenience's sake? The fate of the fetus does not change; only the reasoning for its extinction does.

Now, I happen to believe (as civil libertarian and pro-life activist Nat Hentoff once noted) that the right to life and liberty is the foundation of a moral society. Then again, I also believe a government ban on abortion would only criminalize the procedure and do little to mitigate the number of abortions.

Obviously, these are a few of the complex and uncomfortable issues to ponder. Maybe this poll tells us that the dynamics of the abortion debate are about to change, that Americans are getting past the politics and into the morality of the issue.

Then again, it's entirely possible that I'm just projecting.

David Harsanyi is a columnist at The Denver Post and the author of Nanny State. Visit his Web site at www.DavidHarsanyi.com.

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