Trump as Your Rogue Mailman

Trump creates so much daily chaos that it is easy to lose track of why Congress has moved ahead with impeachment hearings. A simple analogy to explain his conversation with the Ukrainian president might help.

Congress authorizes social security payments. Of course, they are just legislators so they don’t actually deliver the check to recipients. Your mailman – a part of the executive branch – does that.

Imagine that the mailman tells the social security recipients on his route that he’s running for city council and he will give them their check but first they have to make a public statement claiming that his political opponent is involved in a corruption scandal.

Once this is revealed, you would expect an investigation into the mailman’s behavior. You would not be surprised if he were fired.

So, what does that have to do with Trump’s situation?

Congress – the House and Senate – authorized money for the Ukraine. Why? Largely to defend itself from Russia. Russia has already invaded – and now occupies – the Crimea. (Another quick analogy? Imagine that Mexico had taken Texas from the US because a chunk of its residents spoke Spanish. That’s essentially what Russia did by invading and taking Crimea from the Ukraine.) Russia may have plans to take more – perhaps even all – of the Ukraine. The US would rather deter Russia with a show of support than to wait for Russia to again attack and force the US and NATO to either just watch Russia conquer the Ukraine or force a war between NATO (the Ukraine is not a member of NATO but has applied to join) and Russia. Congress wants to check Putin’s aspiration for conquering former Soviet territory.

Trump, apparently, does not.

Just like social security checks, Congress has authorized money for the Ukraine. Just like social security checks, Congress does not actually deliver the check. Trump’s White House – which is, like the post office, a part of the executive branch – delivers that money. And just like our rogue mailman, Trump was using his position of power to withhold money as a way to get something of personal value. He was asking the Ukrainian president to declare that they were investigating Joe Biden for corruption before Trump would deliver the Ukraine money Congress had already authorized.

Trump is not a monarch. He is subject to laws just as every other citizen. And when he uses the executive office to extort foreign heads of state to do him a personal favor, he is as much in violation of law as the mailman who extorts the social security check recipients on his route. 

The Most Overlooked Reason for Growing Polarization in Congress

An interesting study here depicts how little overlap there is in voting in Congress compared to what it was decades ago.

As you can see, Republicans and Democrats are more clearly voting along party lines.

Why?

One overlooked reason is likely the reliance on national media and the easy access of anything a politician has said. Once upon a time a politician could say things that let him establish a brand but then go negotiate and vote in ways that might suggest he was insincere about his campaign promises. To win in many districts you have to be clearly conservative or liberal. Then, once the vote comes, you have to vote consistent with those promises or you will be taken down in the primary. And your constituents will know about it because you can't hide your record or speeches in this age of Google and online data.

It is possible that we aren't getting compromise that helps a government to function because politicians aren't allowed leeway to negotiate. Instead, they're expected to be "true" to their principles and promises which means they're unable to compromise and reach agreement. The result? Even when one party owns both houses of congress and the white house it struggles to pass any significant legislation.

A Simple Proposal for Making Congress Sane and Effective

Budgets are the clearest expression of values. Right now they are negotiated slowly and if a vote comes down to just one or two senators, say, those senators can dictate terms that give their state far more power than the other 48 to 49 states.

If our goal is to have a government that actually represents all 50 states equally - from the most conservative to the most liberal to include everything in between, there is a simple way to do it, as follows.

Require every member of Congress - Representatives and Senators - submit a budget. Don't negotiate. Just submit. Those budgets will be made public to the people in their district. Those budgets will also be averaged together to be the new budget.

This would have so many advantages. One, no one district would have more or less influence than any other. Two, extremists would be marginalized rather than given more power. A person who wants to slash funding for EPA to zero and a person who wants to double its budget would cancel each other out. Three, no one person would be able to hold the budget hostage; members who missed the deadline for submitting a budget would simply have no influence on the new budget.

The result? Less drama, diminished influence for extremists, and more business-like results for the Congress. Most importantly, it would make sure that EVERY district was represented which, it seems, should be the objective of a representative government.

And Healthcare for All ....

We're on the first step towards turning healthcare into a right rather than something one needs to earn. I should feel wildly enthused about this, but instead I feel a little queasy.

In the last decade, we've committed trillions to foreign occupation, stabilizing our banks, and now, healthcare. We fund doctors, bankers, and soldiers. The lesson is clear: go to college or join the army.

Legislation to provide universal healthcare is both wonderful and awful. Wonderful because we finally say that everyone deserves it. Awful because the bribes needed in order to pass this legislation are going to cost untold billions. As expensive and as uncertain as war is, at least everyone gets excited about it. Congress votes for war to prove their courage and because they are scared to death that they might lose their seat if they don't. By contrast, supporting healthcare has little going for it so the legislators hold out for a series of bribes, the most obvious being the fact that this bill does little to curtail healthcare costs (at the same time that it guarantees that the government will cover the cost) and the fact that even families making 400% of poverty level ($88,200 per family) are eligible for tax credits. (If you have to subsidize nearly everyone in order to afford the legislation, doesn't everyone have to pay for the subsidies?)

Coverage has been expanded but taxpayers aren't paying more and the the healthcare industry is not accepting less revenue. That only means one thing: we're subsidizing the medical market AND the bond market.

Universal healthcare is a wonderful thing - or would be, if only our democratic process weren't so sick. This is the same country that during our invasion of Iraq, for the first time in our history gave a tax cut while going to war. Now, the quiet and seemingly thoughtful Obama may prove himself as reckless as Bush by passing legislation for a tax cut and universal health care in the same year. This kind of fiscal recklessness just seems unhealthy.

Today's Big Idea for Congress

I generally dislike term limits. They seem to me a way to ensure that the lobbyists have all the experience and the legislators are perpetually going - but never getting - up a learning curve. With that said, I'd like to propose term limits of a particular kind.

Here in California, we are about to provide the second recessionary dip courtesy of a mandated balanced budget. California's requirement that budgets be balanced inevitably exacerbate the highs and lows of business cycles. When the economy is booming, the state gets more revenues and floods the economy with some combination of tax cuts and spending. When the economy is faltering, the state gets less revenue and makes things worse by increasing taxes or cutting spending.

Governments need discretion to raise taxes and cut spending during booms and lower taxes and increase spending during recessions. Governments can offset swings in the economy.

But of course, once you give a legislature power to run deficits, there is no stopping them. And, as they did through most of the last administration, they run deficits even during a boom time.

So, how do we allow legislatures the power to offset recessions without enabling them to create chronic deficits? I'd like to propose a "three-deficits and you're out" policy. Members of Congress can vote for deficit spending - but only three times before they are out. They have the tool to offset recessions but not to avoid hard choices regarding spending cuts and tax increases.

This proposal might need one other provision to make sure that the legislature doesn't fail to offset recessions. Not only would they have only 3 deficits, but they'd be allowed nation-wide unemployment of only 10%. Local recall elections would be triggered by the third recession in a congress person's career and nationwide recall elections would be triggered by 10% unemployment rate.

And once we get that in place, I think that we ought to have a similar policy for the declaration of war. Knowing that they are ordering soldiers (and foreign civilians) to death by the declaration of war, a congressperson ought to be able to authorize only one war before hitting his or her quota. "Not only am I willing for our young people to die in this conflict, but I am sacrificing my own seat to authorize it."

I am aware that there are a few details that would need to be worked out, but as a blogger, my work is done.

Convict Nearly Wins Senate Seat - Or The Paradox of (Reductionist) Politics

It is a testament to Stevens' popularity — he was once named "Alaskan of the Century" — that he won nearly half the votes, even after his conviction. He routinely brought home the highest number of government dollars per capita in the nation — more than $9 billion in 2006 alone, according to one estimate.
With Stevens gone "it's a big gap in dollars — billions of dollars — that none of the other members of the delegation, Begich, whoever, could fill," said Gerald McBeath, chair of the political science department at University of Alaska Fairbanks. "There is no immediate replacement for him." [full story here]

The idea behind the reductionist model of the world is simple: what is best for the part(s) is best for the whole.

If this were true, having 535 congressmen all clamoring for tax breaks and spending for their districts would result in what is best for the country. But actually, the more successful each senator or congressperson is in getting more spending into his / her district, the larger the deficit and the higher the burden on the country as a whole.

To give you some idea of well this reductionist model is working, next year the federal deficit might reach one trillion dollars. And while nearly all individual congresspersons or senators has an approval rating high enough to win by a comfortable margin, Congress as a whole has an approval rating in the single digits.

Congress is not designed to do what is best for the country. It is designed to do what is best for each district. There is a difference. It's not obvious how we'll translate that distinction into policy.

Captain Credit Crunch to the Rescue

This nation faces a credit crunch. Car sales are down from last year. Home sales are down. We're teetering on the brink of - or more probably have already fallen into - a recession because liquidity has dried up, the money has run out.

Last night, the Senate voted 3 to 1 to change this state of affairs by passing a bill that would not only purchase about $700 billion in bad mortgages, but added another $150 billion in personal and corporate tax cuts. Senate leaders hope that these tax cuts will persuade the House to pass the bill.

Apparently, the $500 billion the federal government was already going to borrow from credit markets was not enough. We're borrowing even more to help an economy that faces a credit shortage.

Sadly, the average person does not understand and support this plan.

Crony Capitalism and the Curiously Named House Housing Bill

I think that I may have to side with Bush on this one. It does not make sense to rescue the mortgage industry with legislation that will cost American taxpayers twice. To the extent that the new housing bill actually props up house prices, it'll cost Americans by driving up housing costs along with the price of fuel and food and education. And given that this bill will cost billions, taxpayers will be charged to prop up these prices. Bush was right to threaten to veto the House Housing Bill.

Legislation thus far has seemed to do more to help the financial industry (read, CEOs) then the average person. The finance industry is in trouble because Americans are finally responding rationally to stagnating incomes by cutting back on debt obligations. The finance industry first benefited from growing incomes (up to about 1960) and then from growing incomes coupled with growing debt (from about 1965 to 2000) and then, for most of the last decade, a growth in debt even as incomes stagnated. But the ratio of financial obligations to disposable income has finally come down. Households finally adjusted to lower incomes by accepting less debt. This reversal in the growth of debt means that the financial industry suddenly faces the prospect of stagnating growth.



Not only have median incomes fallen, but households have reduced their debt obligations, as can be seen in this graph of financial obligations (basically the ratio of debt payments to disposable income).



This is not really a housing crisis. Lower prices don't change mortgage payments for people who already own and do make it easier for new people to buy (even those who sell for less can, in turn, buy for less). This is a financial industry crisis. And the financial industry was the largest contributor to both Bush and Kerry's campaigns in 2004. (In the last decade, Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae spent $200 million lobbying government.) After paying so much, they expect returns.

It is worth clarifying who gets those returns. It is not stakeholders like consumers, employees, shareholders, or taxpayers. The returns flow to corporate executives who feel entitled to obscene salaries even while letting down ALL these stockholders.

Freddie Mac's CEO got nearly $20 million last year for his McLeadership. By contrast, Fannie Mae's CEO was penalized for reducing the value of his company by half: his pay was reduced in 2007 by 15% to a mere $12.2 million.

If legislators actually cared about housing, they’d address homelessness. Instead, this seems like another instance of crony capitalism masquerading as pro-business policy. No industry has benefited more from the "privatize profits and share losses with taxpayers" philosophy of crony-capitalism than the financial industry.

Non Sequitur - the Fashionable Language of Politics

It is time to set loose the jesters.

Today, the United States congress debated and passed a spending bill for our troops in Iraq. I can only conclude that the modern language of politics rests heavily on the non sequitur.

Republicans continue to make absurd statements like "If we don't defeat them there they will be fighting us on the streets of our towns and cities." Or, "We want to bring home the troops but not until the job is done." These Republicans have never defined what "done" looks like or offered honest measures of progress towards that definition. They don't even define "them," a vague label that may apply to Al Qaeda, Sunni militias, vengeful Shiites, or innocent civilians enraged by the behavior of occupation forces. The thought that insurgents in Baghdad will suddenly hop into cargo planes and fly across the Atlantic to invade our cities once we have stopped trying to police their civil war is so absurd as to suggest drug use. I'm sure that there is an argument for leaving troops indefinitely in Iraq, but from what I can tell no one shared that argument with House members.

The Democrats have, sadly, countered the Republican absurdities with their own. "This will end the war in Iraq," they say. And they stuffed the spending bill with so much unrelated spending that it reeks of legislative bribery. Worse, it suggests that the congress couldn't even end our misguided invasion and occupation without offering budgetary non sequiturs of their own - provisions for spinach farmers along with money for troops. The war in Iraq will not end as our troops withdraw - it is likely to intensify and may even result in slaughter that borders on genocide.

I don't know whether we're electing officials unable to follow a train of logic longer than a prepositional phrase or whether they think that we are the ones thus handicapped. In any case, I have a suggestion. A non-partisan philosopher, intellectually able and honest, should be seated on the floor of the House and be expected to hit a buzzer every time a politician makes a statement that has not been supported by facts or does not logically follow from previous statements. Either that or it is time to set jesters loose on the floor of Congress, giving these self-important politicians a fitting backdrop for spouting their non sequiturs.

Bureaucracy Busting and a 2008 Presidential Proposal

“The British created a civil service job in 1803 calling for a man to stand on the Cliffs of Dover. The man was supposed to ring a bell if he saw Napoleon coming. The job was abolished in 1945.”- Robert Townsend

This is a third in a series of proposals I'd like to hear from presidential hopefuls.

Congress passes legislation after a series of debates, proposals, and counter-proposals. From that process emerge laws and government agencies. The problem has at least two dimensions: the legislation depends on un-testable propositions and it sets up bureaucracies that can easily outlive their purpose.

A movie is the product of a project. Someone has an idea for a script. A group is brought together to translate that script into an action plan (the producer, director, casting agents, etc., choose actors, location, etc.). Another group is brought together to make the film (actors, camera people, catering, etc.). Another group is brought together to market the film (advertisers, marketing, that guy who does the voice over on the trailers, etc.). These teams are assembled, do their job, and then disband. This is in stark contrast to a bureaucracy that exists day in and day out.

Some parts of the government will probably never become project-focused. We will always have mail service, for instance, and it is unlikely that we'll ever have a team assemble just to deliver mail to your house and then dissolve. But other initiatives could be done as projects. And this could tie in with adding a testable hypothesis to legislation.

My proposal is this. Legislation should be testable and result in project efforts rather than bureaucracies. For instance, if you are claiming that a certain initiative will reduce teen pregnancies, you need a clear proposition about how you will measure that and a prediction of how much you’ll reduce it.

In order to implement legislation, we should rely on project teams instead of new agencies. Do we really need a Department of Reduction in Teen Pregnancy? We may need project teams – one to come in to analyze, another to create educational materials and processes that could be incorporated into schools, for instance. Upon completion of their objective, the project teams would be disbanded.

There is no automatic bureaucracy. Further, the legislation itself expires if the data indicates that it was based on a bad theory. You thought that teaching abstinence to teens and doing away with Planned Parenthood centers that offered contraceptives would lower teen pregnancies but it actually increased it? Your legislation expires and we're back to the status quo - until new legislation can be passed.

Further, constituents would have a measure of the effectiveness of their representative or senator. It would not be enough to pass legislation. Constituents could compare the prediction and actual results of legislation their representative introduced or voted on. We'd introduce some feedback into the system that would create learning for Congress and a quality metric for their constituents. We would soon learn whose worldview was hopelessly out of touch with reality and whose actually connected to reality. And government growth would no longer be automatic.

This would, finally, offer a means to achieve accountability and rein in government spending. And what candidate could say no to that?