One things many people anticipated in Barack Obama's final days as president was that he would issue a last minute pardon of Hillary Clinton much in the way that Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon. Then people who expected this were surprised when such an event did not happen. Some fans of Hillary Clinton tried to claim this lack of a pardon was based on her having done nothing deserving of a pardon, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.
Given that the White House is inhabited by a Republican, and therefore the cabinet positions are Republican, and therefore the law enforcement apparatus is Republican, there is a good rason for Hillary Clinton to desire a pardon.
Then why would Barack Obama fail to pardon Hillary Clinton? One thing to consider is that in spite of them being in the same party and working together in the same administration, the two actually have never actually gotten along and actually do not like each other very much. His failure to pardon her could be due to him not wanting to do her any favors, as well as a punishment for her having failed to defeat Donald Trump in the general election.
Barack Obama has been shown that he can be quite petty. His behavior in escalating hostility with Russia is definitely an attempt to make things difficult for Donald Trump as he takes office. His failure to pardon Hillary Clinton could be even more petty than dislike. He could also be setting Hillary Clinton up for the uncomfortable position of being dependent on the good will of Donald Trump, making her dependent on his good will after a particularly vicious campaign. This would have the effect of making sure she behaves during the transition. She could have made this transition more difficult, but instead she had to stay on the good side of first Barack Obama and then Donald Trump. If she does anything to make things difficult for Donald Trump, he could always change his mind on the subject of legal activity against Hillary Clinton. This could be why she has been so completely out of the spot light since her defeat. She had no other choice.
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Monday, January 23, 2017
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Why the Government is out of Money
Recently the University of California has provided a microcosm of what is wrong with the government budget. The University system is cutting back programs and tuition is going up to pay for the budgetary shortfalls. Of course, that is not all there is to the story. Not all programs are being cut. The diversity programs are thriving.
The University of California San Diego is cutting its master's degree programs in computer and electrical engineering, showing that according to the leadership of that university it is not engineering that will lead to a productive and prosperous future but it is diversity training that is what students need most to succeed after graduation. Meanwhile prize faculty are being bid away to other schools, such as three professors from the biology department who were offered a 40% raise to teach elsewhere.
Already it is apparent that college education is the most recent bubble to start to go down in an economy composed almost entirely of bubbles. Due to unemployment and underemployment as well as due to the ever accelerating increase in costs, the lifetime earning differential of a college education is falling below the cost of that education. In general college education is becoming a bad investment.
This one example from the University of California San Diego combines many of the problems with government today. Diversity programs are emphasized at the expense of science programs in an education that costs more and delivers less. The political is emphasized at the expense of the economic to deliver high cost solutions that fail to solve anything and due to their cost interfere with actual efforts to solve society’s problems.
Not only have diversity sinecures been protected from budget cuts, their numbers are actually growing. The University of California at San Diego, for example, is creating a new full-time "vice chancellor for equity, diversity, and inclusion." This position would augment UC San Diego’s already massive diversity apparatus, which includes the Chancellor’s Diversity Office, the associate vice chancellor for faculty equity, the assistant vice chancellor for diversity, the faculty equity advisors, the graduate diversity coordinators, the staff diversity liaison, the undergraduate student diversity liaison, the graduate student diversity liaison, the chief diversity officer, the director of development for diversity initiatives, the Office of Academic Diversity and Equal Opportunity, the Committee on Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation Issues, the Committee on the Status of Women, the Campus Council on Climate, Culture and Inclusion, the Diversity Council, and the directors of the Cross-Cultural Center, the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Resource Center, and the Women’s Center.
The University of California San Diego is cutting its master's degree programs in computer and electrical engineering, showing that according to the leadership of that university it is not engineering that will lead to a productive and prosperous future but it is diversity training that is what students need most to succeed after graduation. Meanwhile prize faculty are being bid away to other schools, such as three professors from the biology department who were offered a 40% raise to teach elsewhere.
Already it is apparent that college education is the most recent bubble to start to go down in an economy composed almost entirely of bubbles. Due to unemployment and underemployment as well as due to the ever accelerating increase in costs, the lifetime earning differential of a college education is falling below the cost of that education. In general college education is becoming a bad investment.
This one example from the University of California San Diego combines many of the problems with government today. Diversity programs are emphasized at the expense of science programs in an education that costs more and delivers less. The political is emphasized at the expense of the economic to deliver high cost solutions that fail to solve anything and due to their cost interfere with actual efforts to solve society’s problems.
Friday, March 04, 2011
Economic Power
In Behavior Psychology, there are four options available for modifying behavior: apply reward, withhold reward, apply punishment, and withhold punishment. To promote desired behaviors, one can either reward the behavior or punish the lack. To deter undesired behaviors, one can either punish the behavior or fail to punish the lack.
These are understood in analogy with the "carrot and stick" analogy, wherein one can get a donkey to pull a cart either by offering a carrot or beating it with a stick. One is considered a positive motivator while the other is a negative motivator. The driver can either offer or withhold a carrot, and can either apply or withhold the stick.
Although both reward and punishment can be used to bring out a desired behavior, and both reward and punishment can be used to suppress an undesired behavior, the difference between them is crucial.
Since people insist on equivocating between public employee unions and real unions, the protests in Wisconsin have people discussing the power of corporations and why this country needs unions to protect the workers from corporations. This always accompanies an argument about the dangers of economic power. Then there is an appeal for the government to protect the people from corporations.
But what exactly is economic power and how is it different from political power? Economic power is entirely the power of reward, the "carrot." A multi-billionaire, no matter how much economic power he has, cannot force anyone to do anything. All he can do is keep offering more money, more incentive, until people agree to do what it is the multi-billionaire wants.
This stands in stark contrast to political power which is entirely the power of punishment, the "stick." When a political official wants something done, the form it takes is a command with the threat of punishment to back it up. It is true that sometimes the government offers subsidies, which appear like gifts or bribes, but the only time the government has "carrots" to offer is when it has taken "carrots" from others first.
This is illustrated best by Rockefeller Center and by Phizer Corporation in New London, Connecticut. When Rockefeller wanted to build his center, he purchased the property to do so. This was done in 1930, which although after the "gilded age" was still before the modern regulatory state and according to modern conventional wisdom there was nothing to restrain the wealthy from doing whatever they wanted.
There were two holdouts. One property owner wanted far more than John Rockefeller was willing to pay, and the other simply didn't want to sell. For all his wealth he was not able to force the two property owners to sell him for the price he offered.
In the modern age, where the government acts to protect people from the rapacious rich, Pfizer simply bribed the city council of New London to seize the property of the homeowners and deliver it to Pfizer. It is true that modern corporations do have some stick power, but only because some sticks are given to them by the government.
The abuses of modern corporations are a direct result, instead of a cause of, government intervention. Anyone who is arguing that government intervention is needed to protect the people from the power of the corporations is either equivocating economic and political power, or is reversing cause and effect.
These are understood in analogy with the "carrot and stick" analogy, wherein one can get a donkey to pull a cart either by offering a carrot or beating it with a stick. One is considered a positive motivator while the other is a negative motivator. The driver can either offer or withhold a carrot, and can either apply or withhold the stick.
Although both reward and punishment can be used to bring out a desired behavior, and both reward and punishment can be used to suppress an undesired behavior, the difference between them is crucial.
Since people insist on equivocating between public employee unions and real unions, the protests in Wisconsin have people discussing the power of corporations and why this country needs unions to protect the workers from corporations. This always accompanies an argument about the dangers of economic power. Then there is an appeal for the government to protect the people from corporations.
But what exactly is economic power and how is it different from political power? Economic power is entirely the power of reward, the "carrot." A multi-billionaire, no matter how much economic power he has, cannot force anyone to do anything. All he can do is keep offering more money, more incentive, until people agree to do what it is the multi-billionaire wants.
This stands in stark contrast to political power which is entirely the power of punishment, the "stick." When a political official wants something done, the form it takes is a command with the threat of punishment to back it up. It is true that sometimes the government offers subsidies, which appear like gifts or bribes, but the only time the government has "carrots" to offer is when it has taken "carrots" from others first.
This is illustrated best by Rockefeller Center and by Phizer Corporation in New London, Connecticut. When Rockefeller wanted to build his center, he purchased the property to do so. This was done in 1930, which although after the "gilded age" was still before the modern regulatory state and according to modern conventional wisdom there was nothing to restrain the wealthy from doing whatever they wanted.
There were two holdouts. One property owner wanted far more than John Rockefeller was willing to pay, and the other simply didn't want to sell. For all his wealth he was not able to force the two property owners to sell him for the price he offered.
In the modern age, where the government acts to protect people from the rapacious rich, Pfizer simply bribed the city council of New London to seize the property of the homeowners and deliver it to Pfizer. It is true that modern corporations do have some stick power, but only because some sticks are given to them by the government.
The abuses of modern corporations are a direct result, instead of a cause of, government intervention. Anyone who is arguing that government intervention is needed to protect the people from the power of the corporations is either equivocating economic and political power, or is reversing cause and effect.
Friday, April 09, 2010
Who will be betrayed?
Now that healthcare reform has passed, the onerous task of finding out what is actually in it has begun. But some parts are already known. There is a provision that people must either carry insurance or pay a fine, but the fine is lower than the price of an insurance policy. This is coupled with a prohibition against denying anyone who has a pre-existing condition.
Politicians are convinced this will cause everyone to carry insurance for their own good. Economists are convinced that given the nature of the incentives people will only carry insurance when they actually need it and will prefer to pay the fine the rest of the time. Politicians are shocked when economists tell them that people may deliberately opt to not carry insurance given the nature of the incentives.
The situation is completely unsustainable. One way or another something has to give. The question is what exactly will give? As long as the situation continues as designed then the insurance companies will lose money. Who exactly is congress planning on betraying?
At first people will pay the fines rather than carry the insurance. At first the insurance companies will lose money. Then they will petition congress to raise the fine above the cost of an insurance policy. Then one of two things will happen.
One option is that congress will comply with the wishes of the insurance companies and raise the fines. This will cause people to actually try to contest the validity of the fines in court. This will lead to the argument that by paying the fines before they went up people had agreed to the validity of the fines. Those who had not contested the fines in previous years will have their standing questioned. Perhaps congress will, when raising the fines, enact legislation that anyone who had willingly paid the fine in previous years without complaint have no standing in the future.
The other option is that congress will keep the fines low in spite of the complaints of the insurance companies. Perhaps, adding insult to injury, they will raise the fines but still keep them lower than the cost of an insurance policy, directing yet more money that “should” have been going to the insurance companies to the government. This will bankrupt any company that is offering health insurance and direct even more people to a government healthcare plan.
Neither option is attractive, and it is difficult to say which option is worse. But given the current situation as designed in the healthcare reform bill those are the two possible futures.
Politicians are convinced this will cause everyone to carry insurance for their own good. Economists are convinced that given the nature of the incentives people will only carry insurance when they actually need it and will prefer to pay the fine the rest of the time. Politicians are shocked when economists tell them that people may deliberately opt to not carry insurance given the nature of the incentives.
The situation is completely unsustainable. One way or another something has to give. The question is what exactly will give? As long as the situation continues as designed then the insurance companies will lose money. Who exactly is congress planning on betraying?
At first people will pay the fines rather than carry the insurance. At first the insurance companies will lose money. Then they will petition congress to raise the fine above the cost of an insurance policy. Then one of two things will happen.
One option is that congress will comply with the wishes of the insurance companies and raise the fines. This will cause people to actually try to contest the validity of the fines in court. This will lead to the argument that by paying the fines before they went up people had agreed to the validity of the fines. Those who had not contested the fines in previous years will have their standing questioned. Perhaps congress will, when raising the fines, enact legislation that anyone who had willingly paid the fine in previous years without complaint have no standing in the future.
The other option is that congress will keep the fines low in spite of the complaints of the insurance companies. Perhaps, adding insult to injury, they will raise the fines but still keep them lower than the cost of an insurance policy, directing yet more money that “should” have been going to the insurance companies to the government. This will bankrupt any company that is offering health insurance and direct even more people to a government healthcare plan.
Neither option is attractive, and it is difficult to say which option is worse. But given the current situation as designed in the healthcare reform bill those are the two possible futures.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Pragmatic Politics
There are many people who resist labeling their political beliefs by insisting that they are merely pragmatic while everyone else is idealistic. They suppose that gives them an edge in political debates because unlike the ideologue they are simply being practical when they expound their own ideology.
It is a rhetorical tool used to sway the emotions, an attempt to make the opposition appear to be not grounded in reality. In most cases it amounts to little more than a trick. Sometimes those saying that their politics are simply pragmatism actually believe what they say, and that is when the discussion gets difficult.
Someone who actually has no ideology has nothing to say about politics. Someone without ideology is not only not liberal, conservative, or libertarian, that person is not moderate or middle of the road. Someone who actually has no ideology actually doesn't care one way or the other about the outcome of any political contest.
When confronted with that, most who try to avoid claiming no ideology say that is a mischaracterization and that they actually only care about what works.
The problem is how to define what works. What is it they want to accomplish? That will define what works. If the goal is to ensure inflation, increasing the money supply works. If the goal is to ensure greater unemployment, supporting the Employee Free Choice Act works.
What works depends on what goal. As Ayn Rand wrote, "practical" depends on what you want to practice.
What goal is ideology. Nobody who is pragmatic and practical lacks an ideology; everyone who claims to be pragmatic and practical is pragmatic and practical towards some particular goal. Someone with no ideology doesn't participate at all.
When others offer solutions for the recession that involve bailouts, and decry opposition to those solutions as "partisanship" or "ideology", throw the accusation back in their face. Their own ideology is what causes the pro-government solutions, not the lack of an ideology.
It is a rhetorical tool used to sway the emotions, an attempt to make the opposition appear to be not grounded in reality. In most cases it amounts to little more than a trick. Sometimes those saying that their politics are simply pragmatism actually believe what they say, and that is when the discussion gets difficult.
Someone who actually has no ideology has nothing to say about politics. Someone without ideology is not only not liberal, conservative, or libertarian, that person is not moderate or middle of the road. Someone who actually has no ideology actually doesn't care one way or the other about the outcome of any political contest.
When confronted with that, most who try to avoid claiming no ideology say that is a mischaracterization and that they actually only care about what works.
The problem is how to define what works. What is it they want to accomplish? That will define what works. If the goal is to ensure inflation, increasing the money supply works. If the goal is to ensure greater unemployment, supporting the Employee Free Choice Act works.
What works depends on what goal. As Ayn Rand wrote, "practical" depends on what you want to practice.
What goal is ideology. Nobody who is pragmatic and practical lacks an ideology; everyone who claims to be pragmatic and practical is pragmatic and practical towards some particular goal. Someone with no ideology doesn't participate at all.
When others offer solutions for the recession that involve bailouts, and decry opposition to those solutions as "partisanship" or "ideology", throw the accusation back in their face. Their own ideology is what causes the pro-government solutions, not the lack of an ideology.
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