(Temporary) Move

Due to the insane amount of time it takes to write a decent blog, I'll be putting this project on hold, at least until the fall semester begins.

In the meantime, I'll be posting on "Caffeinated Citizens" with some really intelligent and insightful friends. My first post was published today, so I encourage everyone to check it out. I'll be posting under the name "Drip."

Structural Deficiencies

By this point in the day, everybody’s surely aware of the “structural deficiency” that is to blame for the collapse of a Minnesota bridge on I-35W, resulting in the death of at least five people. Wasting no time in capitalizing on the tragedy, the Daily Kos quickly posted the American Society of Civil Engineers’ 2005 Infrastructure Report Card. Interestingly, blogger “Meteor Blades” didn’t bother including the 2001 grades, which were equally deplorable, instead choosing the numbers that would best lend themselves to somehow implicating Bush:

As the American Society of Civil Engineers Infrastructure Report Card 2005 points out, we're $1.6 trillion behind in infrastructure investment. That, by the way, is the amount of tax cuts Mister Bush tried to get passed in 2001, before he had the Global War on Terrorism™ [sic] with which to shape his legacy. Congress "compromised" and gave him only $1.35 trillion, tax cuts that writer Robert Freeman once labeled a "national form of insanity."

Yes, the ASCE recommends $1.6 trillion in infrastructure investment. Let’s not forget, though, that this is over 10% of gross national income. Not government income (or the much higher level of government spending, for that matter); add up every individual and company’s earnings in the entire year, and that’s the number we’re looking at.

Mr. “Blades” continues:

Congress has appropriated $600 billion (so far, with more to come) for a war that should never have happened. Congress enables the military-industrial complex to vacuum up additional hundreds of billions in taxpayer dollars annually. Congress just approved $25 billion in annual farm subsidies, the vast majority of which go to rich farmers.

Although it sounds like conspiracy theory babble, a legitimate point exists here. The government has spent without restraint, and it isn’t getting any better, what with the Congress’ recent plans to more-than-double SCHIP funding in violation of the Democrats’ Pay-as-you-Go promises (more on this later). But we’re mistaken if we think this is some passing problem of the Bush Administration. This military-industrial complex talk started back in the Cold War era in the 1950s, and all these farm subsidies have been around since FDR, surviving over half a century of changing parties and political players.

It's a shame, but to believe that if we just got the right people in office then everything would change is simple naivete and wishful thinking at its most dangerous. Federal government can be great at providing certain things (such as national defense), but is sure to be horribly ineffective at addressing more local issues. Should the folks in Washington really check up on all our schools, bridges, and water fountains? The inconvenient truth is that politicians at the federal level, no matter their affiliation, will concentrate their time and energy on those things that will provide the maximum return to them, and, come election day, the farmers and oil companies are much more likely to remember the billions of dollars in subsidies they receive than the average voter is to remember those few guys that died a while back on that bridge in that place.

No, the problem isn’t Bush, it’s government. And not just this government, but the government. Let’s take our eyes off the bridge schematics for a few minutes and take a look at where the structural deficiency really is.

California's Democratic Reform?

California lawyer Thomas Hiltachk on July 17 submitted a ballot initiative in his home state that would overhaul the way in which electoral votes are allocated to presidential candidates. As in most states, California currently apportions its electoral votes in a winner-take-all system; in this system, if one candidate wins 51% of the popular vote in the state and the other gets 49%, all of California’s 55 electoral votes (1/5 of the 270 needed to win the presidency) go to the former candidate; the rest are, in effect, uncounted in the actual election of the president. The initiative, entitled the Presidential Election Reform Act, seeks to adopt the voting system already used in Maine and Nebraska, allocating two electoral votes to the state’s overall winner, while the other 53 go to each candidate proportionally, one vote for every congressional district won.

This has sparked outrage: although Democrats have won California in every presidential election since 1988, the vote within the state has been much more divided. In 2004, George W. Bush won 22 districts, despite Mr. Kerry winning by double digits statewide. As the USA Today points out, this creates the potential for the GOP to grab an Ohio-sized chunk of electoral votes (Ohio will have 20 in 2008) simply by changing how they’re counted.

Oh, and it gets better. It turns out Mr. Hiltachk is not only Gov. Schwarzenegger’s elections lawyer, but also the managing partner of the firm that represents the California Republican Party. I guess Hillary Clinton’s “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy” is coming back to (potentially) bite her in ways she could have never foreseen during the Lewinsky scandal.

Hendrik Hertzberg of The New Yorker doesn’t disguise his outrage at the proposal in an article entitled “Votescam” published in this week’s issue. He says:

In a narrow sense, [the initiative is] good if you like Party B, but not so good if you like Party A (in this case the Democrats). Or if you think that in a democracy everybody ought to play by roughly the same rules.

Ironically, he brushes aside the fact that two states already play by different rules, since “they are so small—only five districts between them—and so homogeneous.” But if what we are concerned about is the rules—the process—then size or composition is irrelevant. Furthermore, I like to think that in a democracy everybody ought to play by roughly the same, fair rules. Mr. Hertzberg, if all the other states jumped off a bridge, would you?

The crux of his argument, though, rests in futility. He continues:

Imagine, as a thought experiment, that all the states were to adopt this “reform” at once. Electoral votes would still be winner take all, only by congressional district rather than by state. Instead of ten battleground states and forty spectator states, we’d have thirty-five battleground districts and four hundred spectator districts. The red-blue map would be more mottled, and in some states more people might get to see campaign commercials, because media markets usually take in more than one district. But congressional districts are as gerrymandered as human ingenuity and computer power can make them. The electoral-vote result in ninety per cent of the country would still be a foregone conclusion, no matter how close the race.

Although I would hate to complicate the work of graphic designers by making the red-blue map “more mottled,” and the loss of campaign commercials is sure to be much-lamented by Americans, this argument commits the classic fallacy of making the good the enemy of the perfect. If gerrymandering is the problem (and no doubt it is, at least, a problem), then let’s work to fix it, not shut down any progress that might run into that snag. Perhaps we should move to repeal the electoral college and instead take the concept of localized presidential voting to its logical conclusion, the individual. But that’s not the argument being made; instead, the status quo is being defended at the expense of increasing the public’s voice.

So let’s just be honest with ourselves: the reason we’re upset about this the Presidential Election Reform Act is because it is a cheap political power play. But all politics is cheap power plays. The motives of those presenting these proposals are irrelevant in analyzing the merits of the proposals themselves, and so should not be considered in their debate. Nor should we sacrifice positive reform on the basis of its likely electoral outcomes. In undergoing an objective analysis of Mr. Hiltachk’s proposed initiative, we may still conclude that his policy is wrong. But then we can at least be sure that our judgment is right.

More Taxes Solve Everything

The Washington Post ran a column today by David Ignatius entitled "A Backlash Against Billionaires." Echoing the sentiments of many in the Democratic Party (at least those running for president), he complained of billionaires' ability to sidestep taxes, placing most of the burden on the lower and middle classes.

Of course, Mr. Ignatius is, like most liberals today, more concerned with appearing to help the poor than actually helping them. Not once does he mention reducing government spending so that we can cut taxes for the poor. Instead, it's raise taxes higher and higher. This might make sense if all our tax dollars were going to building roads and hospitals, but as we all know, far too much government spending is on huge defense contracts, outlandish farm subsidies, and completely nonsensical oil handouts at a time when oil companies are making record profits.

It's that sentiment a try to express in my letter, mailed to the Post earlier today:

I would like to thank David Ignatius for calling attention to our dysfunctional tax system that all too often leaves the lower and middle classes shouldering a disproportionate amount of the tax burden while corporate executives and Wall Street financiers fly under the radar (“A Backlash Against Billionaires,” July 19). What is disconcerting about his argument, however, is that he would choose to raise taxes for the rich rather than lower them for the rest of us.

While it sure would feel nice to slap the wealthy with some hefty new taxes, it’s neither necessary to shift the tax burden nor beneficial to the poor. With billions of dollars a year going to unnecessary farm subsidies, oil subsidies, pork barrel spending, and the like, only a fraction of the increased tax revenue would help those in need. And although a few percent of a few hundred million dollars isn’t going to save Social Security, a few hundred dollars can be the difference between a family just scraping by and having enough to start a college fund.

What we really must do is reduce wasteful government spending so that everyone can keep more of their money. Mr. Ignatius has pointed out a significant problem in our tax system. In solving it, let us focus not on hurting the rich, but helping the poor.

China Outlaws Young Love

China's Ministry of Education (MOE) announced July 14 that it has overhauled the dance program originally slated to enter the primary and middle school physical education curriculum by the end of the year. Originally comprising the waltz as well as six other group dances, the new program allows for students to dance either by themselves or in large groups. Why the change? According to Xinhua News, the Chinese state-sanctioned news agency, its all about the down-home family values -- and intense academic pressures coming from home:

Parents with traditional values are alarmed at the prospect of boys and girls dancing hand in hand, believing the risk of their children falling in love and losing track of exam results would increase.

This is especially interesting due to the Chinese government's efforts to direct students away from the one-track, exam-is-all-that-matters mentality that has produced a workforce with advanced (and useful) technical skills but lacking in the interpersonal skills that foster cooperation and creativity in America. The MOE has already outlawed the use of exam scores in determining admittance into the competitive, nationally-renowned middle schools and high schools that boast a luxuriousness (and intensity) on par with the most selective American prep schools.

But even ignoring the fact that Chinese youths aren't learning the social skills necessary not only for healthy adult lives but for the effective creation and management of large-scale businesses, which rely on high social intelligence, it looks like what the schools really need is a basic economics course.

Diminishing marginal return is the theory that the output produced from each successive unit of input will steadily decline after a certain point. Take, for example, your own productivity at work. You arrive in the morning, get settled in, and for the first couple hours get a lot accomplished. As the afternoon wears on, you'll likely feel yourself beginning to slow down. Even if you're a real tank in the workplace, you can easily imagine that by the 24th straight hour of work, you'll be burnt out and sneaking some Z's behind your computer monitor no matter how high your Blood Coffee Content. But as we all know, rejuicing helps. Go home at 5, come back the next morning at 9, and you'll likely get more done than you would have had you worked the whole night through.

The same idea can apply here. Cracking the whip can lead to good grades, and perhaps even some very nice financial returns, but not as nice as might be attained by loosening the reins a bit. Besides, you can't buy happiness; this is likely the reason that China is having such a problem with suicide among its young adults. Nor can you stop the Internet and/or Love (though believe me, China would like to).

So, China, take a chill pill. Let kids dance, let kids date, and let kids be, well, kids. It will not only provide them a more fulfilling life, but likely a richer one (in monetary times) as well. Localize and liberalize your curricula. Let the administrators in each area that know their students and parents best work with the interested parties to develop the best educational program. Otherwise, you'll end up with the government in Beijing wasting everyone's time debating whether students should be allowed to bump and grind to the latest Lil John beat.