What is freedom?

The recent Supreme Court decision that allows people who have been arrested to have a sample of DNA taken has caused a lot of controversy. Does this help or hinder "freedom"? We hear all the time on TV about "our freedoms" and always in the context that they are a "good thing". It was alleged that al Qaeda hated us for "our freedoms". So I pose the question "What is freedom?" On one level freedom is obvious, but in reality it's a lot more complicated. In the US, we have been taught to believe that we live in a "free society". Is this the result of indoctrination, wishful thinking, or examination of the facts?

I think we can fairly say that in comparison to the old USSR or to North Korea, we are a free society. I can't imagine anyone arguing with that. But what if we compare ourselves to Europe or Australia or Canada - are we freer than they are or not? I assert that depends very much on your definition of freedom. On the face of it, we would appear to be less free. After all, the incarceration rate in the "land of the free" is higher than any peer with which we would wish to be compared. At 5% pf the world's population we have 25% of the prisoners. So clearly, larger numbers of Americans are less free then their counterparts in Europe, etc. And by less free in this context, I am not comparing the quality of freedom, but that Americans are actually incarcerated which is unarguably less free than not being in prison.

But are people in the US otherwise free from government intervention and control. Again, no. The US government actually prohibits its citizens, for example, from visiting Cuba. Most governments might warn their citizens against travel to certain countries, advising them that consular aid may not be available or that governments are known to be hostile. But a government of free citizens can hardly prohibit travel, and yet the US does. So it's far from obvious that people in the US are freer or less free than their counterparts.

As I see it there are two distinct forms of freedom - the freedom to and the freedom from. So deciding relative freedoms involves balancing the weight of freedom to and freedom from. And this is where the US has distinctly more freedom to, but the Europeans, Canadians and Australians have more freedom from. So, for example, in the "less free" nations you are unlikely to be sitting in your house and just randomly murdered by drive-by shooting or some random gang violence, or even in a home invasion. But this is achieved by restricting the freedom to buy as many guns of any types as you like. In reality, I think most of us, within reason, prefer freedom from things. We like that people aren't allowed to be a nuisance, or that people aren't allowed to build really ugly buildings within inches of our own homes. Some people will see it as an infringement of liberties that they aren't allowed to have a raucous party in the middle of the street at 2 am.

So what about taking DNA samples? I can't see that this is fundamentally any different from taking fingerprints or even taking a mug shot. That mug shot or fingerprint stays on file forever and is used to see if prints found at a crime scene match someone previously arrested. Now, it's true that this does seriously impact your freedom to murder people, since it does mean that you are more likely now to be apprehended. So this might act as a deterrent. On the other hand, insofar as it does act as a deterrent, this could significantly increase your freedom from, freedom from rape and murder. So, on balance, I support this decision. The fact that Antonin Scalia dissents may be the most compelling reason of all to support it.

AP Scandal

On the AP scandal, this is a difficult issue. It is pretty well known among intelligence services around the world that you should never share any intelligence with the US that you would prefer to keep secret. Naturally, this hampers national security. Consequently, the DoJ did have a good reason for investigating that leak. At the time of the leak a year ago, the Republicans were OUTRAGED at the leak and demanded the perpetrator be caught. This led to the DoJ investigation. Earlier, the Congress had tried to pass a "shield law" for journalists so that their records couldn't be subject to a subpoena but this law was filibustered by Republicans in the Senate.

So, to summarize, the Republicans refused to grant journalists immunity, and then demanded an investigation and now the AP has been investigated, they are OUTRAGED. I think if the Republicans would stop all this mock outrage and stop being so hypocritical, I might be able to share some of their anger.

The IRS Scandal

This IRS "scandal" is,indeed, rather scandalous. The IRS was totally wrong to single out the Tea Party groups on the basis of their names. However, 501C(4) are given tax exempt status only if they are "social welfare" groups but primarily political groups are expressly forbidden. Let's first remember that NONE of these groups was denied tax exempt status. And THAT is where the scandal lies. All political groups, including liberal political groups, should have been scrutinized due to their political nature and all of the political groups should have been denied.

This is all a result of the corrupt Citizens United decision by the Supreme Court. As these groups proliferated, it overloaded the IRS offices and so they looked for "short cuts" to identify potential abuse. But let me repeat, they were wrong to audit only Conservative groups, but they were equally wrong to grant any of then tax exempt status. As far as I can tell, Karl Rove'r group AND Obama's OFA should also have been denied tax exempt status.

More on Debts and Deficits

In my earlier post I commented on how many people confused the debt and the deficit. Rick Perry, never known for being the brightest tool in the shed, does so here. But I would hope most of my readers are a lot smarter than he.

But I also wish to make a further point about the deficit. We hear all of this talk about a balanced budget but no one ever explains why this is a good idea. Even households rarely balance their budgets. As I explained last time, the important number is the amount of debt as a percentage of GDP. This is analogous to saying that rich people can afford to borrow more than less affluent people, something that should be self evident. In the normal course of events, the GDP increases every year. If the GDP doesn't increase and instead decreases, we call this a recession and we all know this is not good. There are many factors why GDP increases, not least that the population increases, either by childbirth or by immigration. As a result there are more people working, more consumers, more people needing cars and houses, etc. So if GDP rises from one year to the next, it stands to reason that the debt can increase by the same percentage and still maintain the same debt to GDP ratio. Viewed simplistically, if the GDP increases by x% then it is reasonable to increase the debt by x% to maintain the same Debt to GDP ratio. That increase in the debt means that the deficit in that year can be x% of the initial debt. In practical terms that means that, at current values we can run deficits of about $450B per year without increasing the debt to GDP ratio.

Even minimum thought leads one to the conclusion that by far the easiest way to solve the "deficit problem" is to increase GDP. GDP is currently growing at around 2% in spite of the efforts of Congress to derail the recovery. Had we had a robust stimulus package, not laid off al the teachers and firefighters and police around the country, the economy might now be growing at 4% per year and we would be well on our way to solving the problem.

Sadly, the chances of Congress being reasonable any time soon are somewhere south of none, by which I mean they are far more likely to hurt rather than help the economy. I cite the current sequester as evidence.

On Priorities

We hear so much talk these days of budget priorities, especially in the wake of Hurricane Irene with Eric Cantor, the Majority Leader of the House, insisting that other cuts have to be found to balance the aid given to victims, that it got me thinking about proper priorities. The Republicans are also telling us constantly that the nation, like a family, has to balance its budget. So I posited a normal family, still employed, but trying to dig out from debt. And I further posited that they were responsible and planned properly.

So I imagined that they had a family meeting and went through the entire budget and decided where they could cut. They decided they had to pay the mortgage and the car payments, but they did consider buying a cheaper car or delaying replacement when the time came. But they decided to make some sensible measures to cut discretionary spending. Here are some decisions they took.

• To forgo eating out
• When eating in, to reduce portion size and get healthy as well as save money
• Ensure all lights were left off when leaving a room so as to save electricity.
• To limit showers to 10 minutes instead of luxuriating, in order to save both electricity and water
• To run the lawn sprinkler system only twice a week in order to save water

So their system showed a steady decline in expenditures without any noticeable loss of utility and they were pleased with themselves. But one day the father came home and noticed the lights on in the backyard, so he rushed to the back of the house and saw his eldest son playing with the garden house wasting both water and electricity. So he immediately turned off the light and the water and demanded to know from his son where he was going to make cuts to compensate for his profligate use of water and electricity. And while they argued, the fire that the son had been attempting to put out consumed the house and they lost everything.

Now this is a contrived example, but it does seem to me to mirror the totally inflexible Republican approach to budgeting. They are quite happy to argue about where cuts should be made, all the time ignoring that the economy is being destroyed by an unemployment rate of over 9%. A normal family wouldn't have bothered for a minute about using extra water or electricity as their house was being threatened. They would have taken any and all steps necessary to save it. But our Republican friends are far more interested in dogma for its own sake than they are in any common sense solutions.

Let's hope that in November of 2012 the Republicans and especially the Tea Party are sent packing and banished from Washington for a long while.

The S&P downgrade

I'm not an economist but I am capable of rational thought. So here is my take on the decision by S&P to downgrade America's credit rating from AAA to AA+.

The only part of the decision that appears to make any sense at all is their assertion that the political decision making in the US is broken. They are correct in this as the "debate" over raising the debt limit showed. I placed debate in quotes because it doesn't rise to the level of an adult debate on issues. Mitch McConnell has gone so far as to signal that all future attempts to the raise the debt ceiling will be met with the same intransigence. Since the next occurrence will be in 2013, they do have a point that there is a chance the US may not meet its obligations.

At the same time, I find it very hard to believe that anyone thinking of investing in US Treasuries even cares what any rating agency says. Does anyone really think that the Finance Minister of China or Japan, or the Fund Managers at Goldman Sachs consult with S&P before making a decision? I can understand that an investor in India might consult with S&P before deciding to buy municipal bonds issued by Podunk, Arkansas since no one knows all about every bond. But US treasuries are hardly an obscure instrument.

But the story goes back further than that. One of the major reasons for the current recession is that none of the rating agencies were even close to getting the ratings on all of the Credit Default Swaps correct. So the question that arises is why would anyone care what they have to say about anything, since they appear to have a pretty poor record of being accurate.

The US has no problem attracting investment. If investors were at all worried, then interest on US treasuries would be higher than they are.

And let's not forget that they even got their basic mathematics wrong and had to have their mistake pointed out to them by the US Treasury.

So I consider this to be a tempest in a teacup and will ultimately hurt S&P more than the US.

And here is Paul Krugman's take on this.

On Fair Elections

At the heart of any democracy is the election process. If this isn't fair
then the nature of the democracy will suffer. Americans are raised to
believe that the US is the finest democracy in the world and taught that
their elections are fair. While I think this may have been true at one
point, I think the election process in the US today is far from fair. In
fact, I would so far as to say that within first world nations, we have the
least fair election system. So let's examine what I consider to be the flaws
in the system.

Who Can Vote?

According to the Constitution any US citizen over the age of 18 may vote.
There are no other eligibility requirements. Voting eligibility started with
white property owning males over the age of 21 and through a series of
amendments has grown to include ex slaves, women, and ultimately people over
18. This should be the end of the story. But alas, that is not the case.
Over the years political parties have made tremendous efforts to suppress
voting. Let me be clear on this issue. This is something of which both
parties are or have been guilty.
After the civil war it was the Democrats who instituted the Jim Crow laws in
the South that effectively banned blacks from voting. Presently it is the
Republicans who try to stop people from voting. While I find it
unconscionable that anyone would try to suppress voting, I assume the party
that inherently has less support among the population thinks that it can
gain victory by stopping voters rather than by making itself more popular.
Even if that is true, it's despicable and, in my view, akin to treason since
its aim is to corrupt the electoral process. And fair elections are the
foundation of a democracy. Let's take a look at some of the ways voter
suppression is achieved.
Republican campaigns often send out flyers at the last minute to
predominantly Democratic areas made to look as though they are from
Democrats urging people to vote and then directing them to the wrong place
to vote or giving them the wrong date for the election.
Some states are currently passing fairly draconian laws ostensibly to limit
"voter fraud" demanding all sorts of photo identification to vote. These
rules can be difficult to comply with by poor people without transport, or
seniors without access to transportation. As an additional impediment,
Wisconsin is closing some DMV offices, especially in traditionally
Democratic areas. This makes it even harder to get to the DMV. It should be
noted that for all the fanfare about voter fraud, the number of cases has
been infinitesimal. Additionally, such fraud as has been discovered would
not be prevented by these measures. This shows that the measures are solely
about making it harder for Democratic supporters to vote. But I repeat,
Democrats have been just as guilty in the past. Since they are inherently
the more popular party now, they have no interest now in suppressing
turnout.

Who runs the elections?

In most, if not all first world countries, elections are administered by
independent electoral commissions. However, in the US elections are
administered by political appointees of the state Governor. This leads to
all sorts of shenanigans as you can imagine. Even if the elections are run
fairly, it's not the right way to do things. It's the same principle as
Justice. Justice must not just be done, but justice must be seen to have
been done. That's why court proceedings are open. Imagine if the judge just
issued a statement "I heard 5 cases today, all were dealt with properly".
In 2000 the Secretary of State for Florida was a Jeb Bush appointee called
Katherine Harris. She had the responsibility for overseeing and certifying
the elections. In the 2000 presidential election the co-chairperson of
George Bush's presidential election campaign in Florida was Katherine
Harris. Yes, the same Katherine Harris who was secretary of state. In most
years, this apparent corruption would have gone unnoticed, but with the
fiasco in Florida it all came to light. In addition to the obvious
impropriety of this arrangement some other unsavory facts about the election
came to light. Approximately 60,000 Floridians were removed from the
electoral rolls because they were felons. The truth was that most of those
60,000 merely had names similar to felons in other states. But nonetheless
they were removed from the rolls.
Later we will see how state legislatures interfere in the politics of a
political party other than their own.

Political Parties

In most democracies there are a number of different parties and they
normally span the ideological spectrum from maybe Communist on the left to
maybe an extreme right wing Nationalist group on the right. By knowing a
party's place on the ideological spectrum, it's often possible to predict
their position on various issues. Political parties in the US are different.
They aren't based on ideology, but rather they act more like "gangs". This
is not to say the parties don't have ideologies; they do, but they aren't
what define the party. A party tends to drift to an ideology for convenience
rather than from conviction. For example, the Republican Party fought the
Civil War and freed the slaves. But today's Republican Party can't find a
single minority it likes. The Civil War was fought to keep the Union
together, but today's Republican Party advocates strongly for States'
rights. Or rather it does when it suits it. Similarly, the Democratic Party
today is the champion of the under privileged, but at one time they were the
Party of Jim Crow. Look at the southern Unites States - most southern states
are now Republican whereas 50 years ago they were Democratic. But the
politics of the inhabitants haven't changed at all - the parties swapped
ends.
This functioning of the parties as gangs rather than being driven by
ideology has consequences. For example, a more normal scenario would have
been for the Tea Party to have formed a separate party just to the right of
the Republicans. This may seem like a distinction without a difference but
later we will see the negative effects of this. It also means that the two
parties function as a duopoly. The overriding objective of both parties is
to ensure that no third party can form. They do this by exploiting the fact
there are just the two of them working in cahoots. As discussed above; there
is no independent electoral commission. This manifests itself particularly
in the functioning of electoral debates. The League of Women voters used to
organize debates between the candidates. The casual observer thinks, and
indeed is intended by the parties to think, that the debates are arranged by
an independent agency so as to make them fair. The reality is that the
organizing entity had very little say in the format of the debate. The
candidates themselves would lay down very strict rules about the format,
questions, etc. The duopoly that controls the US political process, i.e. the
Republican and Democratic parties, go to great lengths to ensure no third
party candidates can take part. Further, since the challenger has more to
gain from the debate than the incumbent, the incumbent can use this to bend
the rules of the debate in his or her favor.
This desire by the duopoly to retain control means that it is very hard to
start new parties. This means that new movements get coopted by one or other
of the parties. The Tea Party recently has become part of the Republican
Party. This is done specifically to deny the voter a choice. If the voter
were allowed to choose, the new party might gain traction and thus take away
from one of the duopoly. We will discuss this more later.

Primaries

Primary elections are not mentioned at all in the Constitution. Ironically
though, the 24th Amendment to the Constitution, guarantees everyone the
right to vote in these elections that are not mentioned anywhere in the
document. Primary elections are an attempt to make democratic a system
whereby party elites picked candidates for election in secret in the
legendary smoke filled rooms. Like most poorly thought out schemes, they are
subject to abuse. Primaries would work quite well if there were an
independent electoral commission. They also work quite well if the
participants behave like ladies or gentlemen. This is why they no longer
work fairly, but instead are actually used to make the process more unfair.
The principle behind a primary election is that "democrats" should be
involved in the selection of Democratic candidates and "republicans" should
be involved in the selection of Republican candidates. I place "democrats"
and "republicans" in quotes to indicate that they are mythical entities. If
one wanted to ensure that only members of a political party were allowed to
vote in the primary election for that party that goal would be very simple
to arrange. But instead, government has effectively said that anyone who
identifies himself or herself as a member may participate. This is open to
all kinds of abuse. Two immediate cases come to mind. In the 2008 Primaries,
Rush Limbaugh urged Texas Republicans to register as Democrats and vote for
Hillary Clinton in the primary; presumably because he thought she would be
easier for McCain to defeat. Although it was unsuccessful, people did it.
Another example is more recent. In Wisconsin some Republican Senators are up
for recall. In order to delay the election, some Republicans entered the
Primary Contest for the Democrats. This forced Democrats to have a primary
election even though there was only one Democratic candidate and a "Fake
Democrat". Both of these examples show that the primary system is inherently
undemocratic. There is no way one party should be able to influence the
other party's choice of candidate.
Another serious problem with primaries is that they are organized by the
state legislature. This means that a Democratic legislature controls the
timing of the Republican primary and vice versa. This can lead, as it did in
2008 to the Democratic primaries being scheduled before the dates set by the
Democratic Party rules allowed.

Redistricting

The Constitution mandates that a census be taken every 10 years in order to
determine how many people there are in each state. Seats are then assigned
in Congress so that each state gets an appropriate number of seats. As the
population migrates, the number of seats in a state may change. When this
happens the legislature of the state has to draw new boundaries for each
district. This is known as redistricting. While this process should arguably
be done by an independent commission it isn't and as such it becomes very
partisan. The party that controls the state legislature controls the
redistricting process. Instead of drawing rational or fair lines they tend
to draw strange shaped districts so as to make their party more successful
at the polls. Typically this is achieved by making some districts that are
overwhelmingly for the opposite party, but then creating a lot of districts
in which your party has a minority large enough to win even in bad years.
The hope is to guarantee your party a majority in the congressional
delegation in excess of that justified by the votes. Not only is this unfair
on its face, it has terrible side effects. Since the general elections are
never competitive, because each seat is a safe Democratic seat or a safe
Republican seat, then the actual election takes place in the primary. Not
only is this inherently unfair, because not everyone can vote in the
primary, but it has the effect of encouraging extremism. For example, let's
take a safe Republican seat. Since the general election is never in doubt,
there is no incentive for someone to move to the center to get Democratic
votes, so someone like a Tea Partier can launch a primary challenge. The end
result of this is that members of each party are driven, by the primary
voters to their respective extremes. And given that, for extremists,
compromise is a dirty word, the members in Washington are terrified to
compromise because they can get a primary challenge. The result is the
absurdly partisan bickering we seen happening now over the raising of the
debt ceiling.

Conclusion

In order to solve the political crisis in the US, what is needed first is an
honest commitment to free and fair elections. Elections shouldn't be
considered a game to be manipulated. Instead the free exchange of ideas
between political candidates and the population is essential to democracy.
The goal shouldn't be the attainment of power by any means, but rather the
attainment of power by convincing a free electorate to vote. To this end, we
should strive towards a real universal franchise, the creation of an
electoral commission to administer elections and a fair redistricting
procedure.
This may need a Constitutional Amendment to create an independent board with
the authority to regulate elections because without this, the US Supreme
Court will continue its current process of allowing elections to be
purchased.