On my visit to Arlington, I was overwhelmed not with the Christianness of the place but rather with its militariness. It is the spirit of the military, of honor and pride and gratitude and dignity, which prevails there. There are a sufficient number of Stars of David on the tombstones to demonstrate that not everyone buried there is Christian -- but there is more than sufficient gravity and sobriety to the place to demonstrate that everyone buried there is honored for their service. It would not be reasonable to assume that Arlington National Cemetary is an endorsement of Christianity. Rather, it is an endorsement of military service.
I originally came for the SSM, here, following Freddie deBoer. (717 comments total, since January 28, 2009, not counting this one.)
As I recall, other places kept coming back here, including Sullivan, Will Truman's blog, and a bunch of other people bemoaning the collapse of Culture11. I lurked for a while, and realized that this had become the place to be. I found writers here linking back to my blogspot blog, got a mutual-link-admiration society going as I kept on coming back, recognizing kindred spirits looking for intelligence, context, analysis, and something better than partisan bickering.
Why do you relate gridlock specifically to a Presidential system?
Gridlock is a result of two things -- first, the absence of a politically palatable resolution to a problem, and second, the existence of hyperpluralism within interest groups influencing policy. I don't think that either Presidential or Parliamentary systems of government deal with such a confluence of events very well. Each fails in its own way, but both will fail.
To be sure, in a Presidential system the legislature acts and the President vetoes, or the President acts and the legislature overrides, and the result is often stasis. Good if you like stasis, bad if there really is a problem that needs solving.
I realize that a parliamentary government ensures that the executive is a member of the plurality of the legislature and hopefully a member of the majority in the legislature. This seems like it ought to help. But parliamentary systems do not guarantee against the fragmentation of multi-party coalitions, intra-party cleavages, or special interest group capture of key policymakers. When a tough problem arises, and there are many different interest groups powerful enough to keep their own oxen from getting gored in the solution, you'll have either stasis (same problem as in a Presidential system) or a collapse of the governing coalition (which creates political instability). While this phenomenon seems more obvious in highly fragmented polities like Israel, it can take place in strong party system too, like in Australia and Canada recently.
I can think of no better example of the problems that can result from a gridlocked parliamentary system than what we can see happening right now in Greece. You've got a tough problem there, combined with powerful interest groups, and no deft hand at the wheel. The result: a government teetering on the brink of disintegration, street violence among other forms of resistance instigated by interest groups, and even adoption of apparently necessary measures meets with refusal from within the government. Indicative, overall, of an erosion of the rule of law.
If parliamentary systems are structurally better than Presidential in respect to avoiding gridlock, that improvement strikes me as very modest. The problem of gridlock is inherent in democracy; the solution is to be found not in the structure of government but rather in the maturity of the electorate.
Speaker Cahalan, Assemblyman Burt Likko votes "nay" and disappoints Con Law geeks and would-be Second Framers everywhere.
The basic superstructure of the institutions of government is fundamentally sound, and the risk of damage from attempting an overhaul far exceeds the possibility of incremental improvements.
The system is not broken. Maybe our politics are, as suggested by the fact that we've been picking a bunch of weenies to hold high office within the Federal government, and ought to choose grownups next time around instead. But that's not the Constitution's fault.
I think that's not a fair read of Rawls. Nor is it good math.
Simple arithmetic suggests that we'd arrive at {A+B} getting $4,891.11 per year with pooling and equitable redistribution. That's a tax of $108.89, or 2.18%, on {B} which seems close to negligible, but a huge impact on {A}. But Rawls would be equally comfortable with each member of {B} paying maybe $25 each, with the result that {A} makes $1,200 a year and {B} nets $4,975 a year.
He would resist quantifying the process in such a manner altogether. Remember, Rawls is a political philosopher, not a policy wonk. As long as {A} arrives above an economic threshold whereby its members were able to survive with a modicum of dignity, and meaningful opportunities for entry into {B} were available, Rawls would say that the demands of economic justice had been met even if only very few people from {A} ever ascended into {B}.
Sun Tzu wrote of formlessness as a method of determining the enemy's vulnerabilities and forcing those vulnerable areas to be the terrain upon which the battle occurs. Nowhere did he write of the successful general allowing his objectives to remain inchoate and nowhere did he write of an army without a general.
It would be one thing if "everyone knew" what OWS wanted. The Outlierdoes as good a job as I've heard of distilling things down as I think can be done: meaningful democracy in place of a corrupt crony capitalism that appears to be, functionally, oligarchy. I can dig it -- plenty of our laws reek of corruption.
But particularly if Mr. Gude's citation of Jodi Dean is right, and the procedure-centric diffuse focus of the movement makes it a "crime" to exclude any grievance, any problem, or any issue from discussion -- and it is similarly a "crime" to speak for others -- and it is similarly a "crime" to not come up with a solution to a problem that fails to comprehensively address its complications -- and it is similarly a crime to offer a complete solution to a problem and thus promise "utopia," then what you have is a recipe for paralysis.
At some point, someone has to prioritize objectives. When everything is a priority, nothing is. If the priority is diminishing the power of large corporations on the creation of public policy, okay, that's a priority and an objective and like I said, I can dig it. I can engage with that idea, try it on for size and see if I like it, I can propose policies that advance that objective and see if other people will rally to support them, and maybe things will actually change.
Perry is a sizeable threat to Romney -- one, because despite his flaws, he's got the political ability to consolidate enough votes to challenge Romney for delegates, and two, because he can raise beaucoup bucks.
He's got to do something to position himself as "the only conservative still in the race." That means getting the Bachmann-Cain-Santorum Overdrive to voluntarily bow out, and preferably to endorse him as they go.
If it's not a Cabinet position, what else might he offer them in exchange for their withdrawal and endorsement?
The guy that no GOP'er is particularly enthusiastic about is nevertheless pretty much every Republican's second choice. To Mitt Romney, then, falls the task of picking off the hardcore conservatives one by one, before they set their egos aside and consolidate around a single candidate. Perry looked good, Cain was the flavor of the month, but the nomination is looking more and more like it's Romney's to lose and there is precious little time left for that dynamic to change.
If I were in Camp Romney, I'd start with moving in to Perry's support, since he is the only one who can compete with Romney from a fundraising perspective. Then, I'd move on to poach Cain supporters, and then Bachmann's. Gingrich and Santorum will almost surely implode on their own before South Carolina's primary, and Paul is neither capable of winning the nomination nor of being edged out at all, so the best strategy is to ignore him until the delegate count is locked up.
If I were in Camp Perry, I'd tell the Big Guy start cutting deals with the other candidates as soon as possible to stop Romney from doing exactly that -- Herman Cain would make a pretty obvious choice as Secretary of Commerce; Attorney General Michelle Bachmann would keep the base happy and nicely polarize the electorate; Gingrich can be named a "Special Policy Advisor" or some such thing that underlines that he's Still Intellectual And Still Relevant. VP spot on a Perry ticket needs to be reserved for a moderate Republican so as to not scare voters back to Obama in the general election, and who can carry a swing state back to the GOP column. John Kasich or Bob McDonnell, maybe.
"I want you to hear this from me. I'm divorcing Sally." [Or Sam, if you prefer, next paragraph mutatis mutandis.]
"What? Why? Sally's beautiful, and she's sweet, and she's funny, and she's smart, and seems to me that any man would be thrilled to have her as a wife. Why would you walk away from that?"
"You see these shoes? Italian leather. Hand-crafted. They've lasted for years and will last a lifetime more if I want them to. Best shoes available anywhere, at any price. And only I know where they pinch."
I see the point, but a modern cell phone is more like a computer than a notepad. The information on it is not open to the casual observer. It requires navigating through several screens to get at the information. A fair amount of the information on the phone is not stored locally in the phone's memory card, but is instead stored off-site and synched with the phone when needed. Should the police be able to open up and start browsing around my laptop as an incident of a search? I say, no, that sort of thing is not reasonably related to the process of arresting me.
And who says the police ought to be able (without a warrant) to look through a notebook after an arrest, anyway? Mad Rocket Scientist offers an analogy to a safety deposit box -- something that pretty clearly does require a warrant before it can be searched.
I don't facebook, either. Still, I'm sure that the commenting in facebook will be better than Forbes' system (which always hangs when I try to register).
Again, this is my general issue with OWS. This really looks like a grassroots phenomenon with few overall leaders -- which means that while we can discern some generalized complaints (corporations have too much power, they get too many favors from government, the little guy gets screwed) I continue to have a hard time discerning any demands. How are the big evil corporations to be put back in their place? What does "the 99%" expect from the government? Single-payer health care? Tuition loans dischargeable in bankruptcy? Tuition loan forgiveness? Guaranteed employment? Cram-downs on mortgages?
I get that people are pissed off and they want things to change, but generalized pissed-offery isn't helpful in terms of what that change is to be.
In the hypothetical in which the cop says "I heard him say he was gonna kill that guy, and then he took out his gun," we have an imminent threat of violence. Obviously an arrest is warranted, and that arrest should include a search of the would-be shooter's person to remove weapons from him and probably restraints on his body so that he is unable to actually hurt anyone.
But I still don't see how searching the would-be shooter's cell phone after the fact is even rationally related to the threat of violence. Even if the statement ("I'm gonna kill that guy") was made in a phone call, the identity of the person on the other end of the call is not relevant to much of anything.
We could change the hypothetical. Maybe the would-be shooter gets arrested for the threat of violence, and then when the guy is cooling his heels, restrained, in the back of the patrol car, the cop finds out there are other outstanding warrants for his arrest. One such warrant includes, I don't know, wire fraud conducted over a cell phone. Even then I think there is still a need to get a warrant before searching through the phone, although now I'd agree that there is probable cause to link the phone to a crime and I'd say the warrant should issue. (I'm not saying the phone shouldn't be searched; it should. With a warrant.)
There is no exigent circumstance, no threat of violence, no ready means of eviscerating evidence, that would require an immediate search of the phone. That's why the search of the phone ought to be done only with a warrant.
Shawn, I know I would be interested to hear about what is going on in this general assembly and at the protest generally -- in your neck of the woods, in New York, everywhere this is going on. The whole thing seems so inchoate to me.
You're out in the trenches and I'm just doing my thing here, working for the man (every night and day, and not losing a minute of sleep worrying about the way things might have been). So what are you all asking for, what are you upset about? Is some kind of a consensus forming out there?
Shawn, if you can read this (somehow, which I doubt if you're incarcerated), say nothing at all to the police. That part that they say on TV about how "anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law?" They don't have to include the clause "taken out of context" and remember that the phrase "court of law" isn't "court of justice." You have the right to remain silent and you have the right to an attorney -- exercise those rights.
On “Of Two Minds At Once”
On my visit to Arlington, I was overwhelmed not with the Christianness of the place but rather with its militariness. It is the spirit of the military, of honor and pride and gratitude and dignity, which prevails there. There are a sufficient number of Stars of David on the tombstones to demonstrate that not everyone buried there is Christian -- but there is more than sufficient gravity and sobriety to the place to demonstrate that everyone buried there is honored for their service. It would not be reasonable to assume that Arlington National Cemetary is an endorsement of Christianity. Rather, it is an endorsement of military service.
On “In God We Trust! (In the GOP? Not so much…)”
And in other, related news....
On “Digging in the Dirt”
No worries, dude.
"
Yes, it's the same back-end edit that was always there, it goes to the admin page. No editing right here.
Sorry if that was confusing for you; I thought maybe I was able to see it if you could not.
"
I originally came for the SSM, here, following Freddie deBoer. (717 comments total, since January 28, 2009, not counting this one.)
As I recall, other places kept coming back here, including Sullivan, Will Truman's blog, and a bunch of other people bemoaning the collapse of Culture11. I lurked for a while, and realized that this had become the place to be. I found writers here linking back to my blogspot blog, got a mutual-link-admiration society going as I kept on coming back, recognizing kindred spirits looking for intelligence, context, analysis, and something better than partisan bickering.
It's a pleasure to be here still.
On “Gridlock, Graft and Governance”
Why do you relate gridlock specifically to a Presidential system?
Gridlock is a result of two things -- first, the absence of a politically palatable resolution to a problem, and second, the existence of hyperpluralism within interest groups influencing policy. I don't think that either Presidential or Parliamentary systems of government deal with such a confluence of events very well. Each fails in its own way, but both will fail.
To be sure, in a Presidential system the legislature acts and the President vetoes, or the President acts and the legislature overrides, and the result is often stasis. Good if you like stasis, bad if there really is a problem that needs solving.
I realize that a parliamentary government ensures that the executive is a member of the plurality of the legislature and hopefully a member of the majority in the legislature. This seems like it ought to help. But parliamentary systems do not guarantee against the fragmentation of multi-party coalitions, intra-party cleavages, or special interest group capture of key policymakers. When a tough problem arises, and there are many different interest groups powerful enough to keep their own oxen from getting gored in the solution, you'll have either stasis (same problem as in a Presidential system) or a collapse of the governing coalition (which creates political instability). While this phenomenon seems more obvious in highly fragmented polities like Israel, it can take place in strong party system too, like in Australia and Canada recently.
I can think of no better example of the problems that can result from a gridlocked parliamentary system than what we can see happening right now in Greece. You've got a tough problem there, combined with powerful interest groups, and no deft hand at the wheel. The result: a government teetering on the brink of disintegration, street violence among other forms of resistance instigated by interest groups, and even adoption of apparently necessary measures meets with refusal from within the government. Indicative, overall, of an erosion of the rule of law.
If parliamentary systems are structurally better than Presidential in respect to avoiding gridlock, that improvement strikes me as very modest. The problem of gridlock is inherent in democracy; the solution is to be found not in the structure of government but rather in the maturity of the electorate.
On “Pop Quiz”
Speaker Cahalan, Assemblyman Burt Likko votes "nay" and disappoints Con Law geeks and would-be Second Framers everywhere.
The basic superstructure of the institutions of government is fundamentally sound, and the risk of damage from attempting an overhaul far exceeds the possibility of incremental improvements.
The system is not broken. Maybe our politics are, as suggested by the fact that we've been picking a bunch of weenies to hold high office within the Federal government, and ought to choose grownups next time around instead. But that's not the Constitution's fault.
On “Economics and Values”
I think that's not a fair read of Rawls. Nor is it good math.
Simple arithmetic suggests that we'd arrive at {A+B} getting $4,891.11 per year with pooling and equitable redistribution. That's a tax of $108.89, or 2.18%, on {B} which seems close to negligible, but a huge impact on {A}. But Rawls would be equally comfortable with each member of {B} paying maybe $25 each, with the result that {A} makes $1,200 a year and {B} nets $4,975 a year.
He would resist quantifying the process in such a manner altogether. Remember, Rawls is a political philosopher, not a policy wonk. As long as {A} arrives above an economic threshold whereby its members were able to survive with a modicum of dignity, and meaningful opportunities for entry into {B} were available, Rawls would say that the demands of economic justice had been met even if only very few people from {A} ever ascended into {B}.
On “Democracy, pluralism, and Occupy Wall Street”
Sun Tzu wrote of formlessness as a method of determining the enemy's vulnerabilities and forcing those vulnerable areas to be the terrain upon which the battle occurs. Nowhere did he write of the successful general allowing his objectives to remain inchoate and nowhere did he write of an army without a general.
It would be one thing if "everyone knew" what OWS wanted. The Outlier does as good a job as I've heard of distilling things down as I think can be done: meaningful democracy in place of a corrupt crony capitalism that appears to be, functionally, oligarchy. I can dig it -- plenty of our laws reek of corruption.
But particularly if Mr. Gude's citation of Jodi Dean is right, and the procedure-centric diffuse focus of the movement makes it a "crime" to exclude any grievance, any problem, or any issue from discussion -- and it is similarly a "crime" to speak for others -- and it is similarly a "crime" to not come up with a solution to a problem that fails to comprehensively address its complications -- and it is similarly a crime to offer a complete solution to a problem and thus promise "utopia," then what you have is a recipe for paralysis.
At some point, someone has to prioritize objectives. When everything is a priority, nothing is. If the priority is diminishing the power of large corporations on the creation of public policy, okay, that's a priority and an objective and like I said, I can dig it. I can engage with that idea, try it on for size and see if I like it, I can propose policies that advance that objective and see if other people will rally to support them, and maybe things will actually change.
But as it stands, Rufus F.'s reference is trenchant indeed.
On “VIVA LAS VEGAS!!! – Random thoughts about tonight’s GOP Debate”
Perry is a sizeable threat to Romney -- one, because despite his flaws, he's got the political ability to consolidate enough votes to challenge Romney for delegates, and two, because he can raise beaucoup bucks.
"
He's got to do something to position himself as "the only conservative still in the race." That means getting the Bachmann-Cain-Santorum Overdrive to voluntarily bow out, and preferably to endorse him as they go.
If it's not a Cabinet position, what else might he offer them in exchange for their withdrawal and endorsement?
"
The guy that no GOP'er is particularly enthusiastic about is nevertheless pretty much every Republican's second choice. To Mitt Romney, then, falls the task of picking off the hardcore conservatives one by one, before they set their egos aside and consolidate around a single candidate. Perry looked good, Cain was the flavor of the month, but the nomination is looking more and more like it's Romney's to lose and there is precious little time left for that dynamic to change.
If I were in Camp Romney, I'd start with moving in to Perry's support, since he is the only one who can compete with Romney from a fundraising perspective. Then, I'd move on to poach Cain supporters, and then Bachmann's. Gingrich and Santorum will almost surely implode on their own before South Carolina's primary, and Paul is neither capable of winning the nomination nor of being edged out at all, so the best strategy is to ignore him until the delegate count is locked up.
If I were in Camp Perry, I'd tell the Big Guy start cutting deals with the other candidates as soon as possible to stop Romney from doing exactly that -- Herman Cain would make a pretty obvious choice as Secretary of Commerce; Attorney General Michelle Bachmann would keep the base happy and nicely polarize the electorate; Gingrich can be named a "Special Policy Advisor" or some such thing that underlines that he's Still Intellectual And Still Relevant. VP spot on a Perry ticket needs to be reserved for a moderate Republican so as to not scare voters back to Obama in the general election, and who can carry a swing state back to the GOP column. John Kasich or Bob McDonnell, maybe.
On “On Dodging Bullets”
Poor Little Old Me.
"
Two guys meet for a drink.
"I want you to hear this from me. I'm divorcing Sally." [Or Sam, if you prefer, next paragraph mutatis mutandis.]
"What? Why? Sally's beautiful, and she's sweet, and she's funny, and she's smart, and seems to me that any man would be thrilled to have her as a wife. Why would you walk away from that?"
"You see these shoes? Italian leather. Hand-crafted. They've lasted for years and will last a lifetime more if I want them to. Best shoes available anywhere, at any price. And only I know where they pinch."
On “Jerry Blows The Call”
I see the point, but a modern cell phone is more like a computer than a notepad. The information on it is not open to the casual observer. It requires navigating through several screens to get at the information. A fair amount of the information on the phone is not stored locally in the phone's memory card, but is instead stored off-site and synched with the phone when needed. Should the police be able to open up and start browsing around my laptop as an incident of a search? I say, no, that sort of thing is not reasonably related to the process of arresting me.
And who says the police ought to be able (without a warrant) to look through a notebook after an arrest, anyway? Mad Rocket Scientist offers an analogy to a safety deposit box -- something that pretty clearly does require a warrant before it can be searched.
On “Throwing Down the Gauntlet”
Egads. I wish I had time to do this. Free editing from other smart people sounds great.
On “Jerry Blows The Call”
"Container" advocates -- please consider this recent case. I'm interested in your reaction.
On “I’m on Facebook”
I don't facebook, either. Still, I'm sure that the commenting in facebook will be better than Forbes' system (which always hangs when I try to register).
On “Some Occupied Thoughts”
Again, this is my general issue with OWS. This really looks like a grassroots phenomenon with few overall leaders -- which means that while we can discern some generalized complaints (corporations have too much power, they get too many favors from government, the little guy gets screwed) I continue to have a hard time discerning any demands. How are the big evil corporations to be put back in their place? What does "the 99%" expect from the government? Single-payer health care? Tuition loans dischargeable in bankruptcy? Tuition loan forgiveness? Guaranteed employment? Cram-downs on mortgages?
I get that people are pissed off and they want things to change, but generalized pissed-offery isn't helpful in terms of what that change is to be.
On “Jerry Blows The Call”
In the hypothetical in which the cop says "I heard him say he was gonna kill that guy, and then he took out his gun," we have an imminent threat of violence. Obviously an arrest is warranted, and that arrest should include a search of the would-be shooter's person to remove weapons from him and probably restraints on his body so that he is unable to actually hurt anyone.
But I still don't see how searching the would-be shooter's cell phone after the fact is even rationally related to the threat of violence. Even if the statement ("I'm gonna kill that guy") was made in a phone call, the identity of the person on the other end of the call is not relevant to much of anything.
We could change the hypothetical. Maybe the would-be shooter gets arrested for the threat of violence, and then when the guy is cooling his heels, restrained, in the back of the patrol car, the cop finds out there are other outstanding warrants for his arrest. One such warrant includes, I don't know, wire fraud conducted over a cell phone. Even then I think there is still a need to get a warrant before searching through the phone, although now I'd agree that there is probable cause to link the phone to a crime and I'd say the warrant should issue. (I'm not saying the phone shouldn't be searched; it should. With a warrant.)
There is no exigent circumstance, no threat of violence, no ready means of eviscerating evidence, that would require an immediate search of the phone. That's why the search of the phone ought to be done only with a warrant.
On “Protests in Des Moines – League Blogger Arrested?”
Shawn, I know I would be interested to hear about what is going on in this general assembly and at the protest generally -- in your neck of the woods, in New York, everywhere this is going on. The whole thing seems so inchoate to me.
You're out in the trenches and I'm just doing my thing here, working for the man (every night and day, and not losing a minute of sleep worrying about the way things might have been). So what are you all asking for, what are you upset about? Is some kind of a consensus forming out there?
"
Shawn, if you can read this (somehow, which I doubt if you're incarcerated), say nothing at all to the police. That part that they say on TV about how "anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law?" They don't have to include the clause "taken out of context" and remember that the phrase "court of law" isn't "court of justice." You have the right to remain silent and you have the right to an attorney -- exercise those rights.
On “Using a Phone”
Damn kids with their damn rock music! Get off my lawn!
On “Vote”
Why am I proud that I voted for the winner?
On “Good Enough”
Good luck, man. An entire novel is a tough slog; I've tried it a few times and haven't had the perserverance to finish yet.