Category Archives: Politics

Assassination, Gaddafi, and Bin Laden

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Instapundit recently posted about how there has been general support for the assassination of Osama Bin Laden. Being involved in assassinations is a tricky area for the United States, particularly since we were implicated in some nefarious activity back in the 1950s through the 1970s (see the Church Committee report of 1975). Here how this has played out in recent days:

1. The recent attack on Gaddafi was intended to kill the Libyan leader. This is not the first time the US has attempted this with the earlier efforts coming in a bombing attack in 1986. This would seem to fit the classic definition of assassination: the killing of a foreign leader when his actions against the United States were not part of a larger war.

2. The recent killing of Bin Laden is being called an assassination by some but doesn’t seem to be in the same category. Bin Laden was not a political leader and I’m sure he had been named something like an “enemy combatant” by the United States. Because he was killed as part of a war effort (the “war on terror”) and he wasn’t a politician, this isn’t really an assassination. The problem comes in here when the media talks about assassinations as any attack on a prominent person. Not all such attacks are assassinations.

In both of these cases, people have made the argument that killing “the head” of the organization (al Qaeda or Libya) would be better than fighting a more traditional war. Perhaps so – but such actions might be against international law (see a quick discussion of the ambiguities here). And whether the killing of one person actually gets rid of larger, structural problems is another matter (witness the case of Iraq and the death of Saddam Hussein).

I recently thought of an example that illustrates some of the problems with assassinations or “targeted killings”: imagine that a foreign leader called for the killing of President Obama because of US actions around the world. I imagine that we would be fairly outraged: how dare another country threaten our voted-in leader. But is this much different than NATO leaders openly discussing killing Gaddafi?

How to offset the lower gas tax revenues from electric car drivers

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With more electric cars coming to market, more state governments are discussing how to offset the loss of gas tax revenues from electric car drivers:

After years of urging residents to buy fuel-efficient cars and giving them tax breaks to do it, Washington state lawmakers are considering a measure to charge them a $100 annual fee — what would be the nation’s first electric car fee.

State lawmakers grappling with a $5 billion deficit are facing declining gas tax revenue, which means less money to maintain or improve roads.

“Electric vehicles put just as much wear and tear on our roads as gas vehicles,” said Democratic state Sen. Mary Margaret Haugen, the bill’s lead sponsor. “This simply ensures that they contribute their fair share to the upkeep of our roads.”

Other states are trying to find solutions to the same problem, as cars become more fuel-efficient and, now, don’t use any gas at all.

The two main options for this are either to impose an annual fee or to base payment on how far the car travels. But the cost-per-mile approach seems to have several disadvantages (including a good amount of opposition) even though it seems like it would be the closest to the gas tax (the more you drive, the more you pay).

The last paragraphs in the article seem to hold the key: this is another instance when government is trying to catch up to the newest technology. On one hand, governments don’t want to discourage the purchase and use of electric vehicles. On the other hand, roads still need to be built and maintained. Additionally, most states are facing large deficits and can’t be going about taking in less revenue.

Regardless of what route is taken, it seems like it would be better to make decisions like these sooner rather than later so that future electric car drivers know what they are getting into.

Tim Horton’s as “a place where Canadian values are articulated”

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Politicians are well-known for visiting local restaurants and meeting with potential voters. In Canada, this means that politicians head to Tim Horton’s:

As we enter the home stretch of the election, the most dangerous place to be is between a politician and a Tim Hortons photo-op.

In recent weeks, the doughnut chain has become the parties’ preferred shorthand for patriotism, with leaders battling to sell their image as the Everyman with each double-double…

“It’s not just a coffee shop; it’s a place where Canadian values are articulated,” explained Patricia Cormack, associate professor of sociology at St. Francis Xavier University. “Tim Hortons is connected (through marketing) to community and sacrifice and immigration and family — all those themes that politicians want to attach themselves to.”

The restaurant, in a way, has become the Canadian equivalent of what former vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin called “Main Street USA.” Only in this case, it’s a $2.5-billion multinational personifying the people — an irony not lost on those following the campaign online.

This sociologist makes it sounds like politicians want to ride the coattails of Tim Horton’s effective marketing campaigns. As one might imagine, this close identification with a particular large corporation rubs some people the wrong way. The story cites one citizen that suggests more candidates visit Starbucks. There is only one problem: Tim Horton’s is much more popular than Starbucks in Canada.

A 2009 Harris-Decima survey found Tim Hortons people outnumbered Starbucks people by a ratio of 4-1 in Canada, with the former brand traversing age, class, gender and even political philosophy.

So Starbucks is not the answer, at least not for the politician that wants to connect with the “average Canadian voter.” The American equivalent might be going to McDonald’s or Walmart but I don’t think these companies have the popularity that Tim Horton’s has in Canada.

In thinking about this, are there other countries that have something like a “national corporation”?

(I have had one Tim Horton’s experience: it is the only time I have had a combo meal with an apple and a donut.)

Proposal in Hungary: give extra votes to families with children

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A new right-wing government in Hungary is considering an “unprecedented” proposal: give extra votes to mothers with children.

The conservative Fidesz party has made several controversial decisions since coming to power on a populist rightwing agenda, including a crackdown on the media, but the latest proposal could be prove to be its most contentious.

“Some 20% of society are children,” said József Szájer, a senior Fidesz official and MEP. “This is quite a considerable group that is left out of representation. The interests of these future generations are not represented in decision-making.” He added: “We know at first it seems an unusual idea, but in the 50s it was unusual to give votes to black people; 100 years ago, it was unusual to give votes to women.”…

Szájer said he was inspired by the work of the American demographer Paul Demeny, who developed the concept in 1986. Under Demeny Voting, each parent is given half a vote for each child, permitting a split vote in the event that the parents have differing political loyalties.

However, to counter concerns about the Roma winning more votes, Szájer said in the Hungarian case, the move would have “permitted the passage of a law giving mothers the vote on behalf of a maximum of one child”…

The discourse on Demeny Voting first emerged in Germany and Japan in the 2000s as a solution to concerns that policy development is biased in favour of the elderly rather than young families.

Four things seem noteworthy in this story:

1. One of the reasons for giving out these extra votes is to help give more of a voice to younger generations. Considering differences in opinion in some nations between older and younger generations, this may be a problem to address. But would mothers necessarily be looking out for their children as opposed to themselves when voting?

2. This is also an issue of ethnicity: moving this proposal forward has been influenced by feelings regarding the Roma population. Since this proposal might give too much voting power to the Roma (we can assume they have higher birth rates than the rest of Hungary?), it might be limited to one extra vote per family with children.

3. Although the article doesn’t mention this as a reason, I wonder if some of this is driven by demographics, specifically a low birth rate. Like other industrialized nations, whether Japan or other European nations, Hungary has a low birth rate of 9.60 per 1,000 population (according to the CIA Factbook, #200 out of 222 nations). Perhaps this measure is also an incentive for more families to have children?

4. While an idea like this seem to go against typical democratic procedures of one vote per adult, it reminds me of another voting scheme that was set up to deal with an existing social issue. Could more countries and governments seek different voting structures in order to reach certain ends?

Lakoff on Obama: a progressive moral vision plus systems thinking

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George Lakoff has an interesting take on President Obama’s April 13th speech. While the speech was ostensibly about the budget, Lakoff argues that Obama was making two larger points:

1. President Obama was laying out a progressive vision of democracy. Here is how Lakoff sums it up:

The basic idea is this: Democracy is based on empathy, that is, on citizens caring about each other and acting on that care, taking responsibility not just for themselves but for their families, communities, and their nation. The role of government is to carry out this principle in two ways: protection and empowerment.

Obama quotes Lincoln: “to do together what we cannot do as well for ourselves.” That is what he calls patriotism. He spotlights “the American belief… that each one of us deserves some basic measure of security… that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, hard time or bad luck, crippling illness or a layoff, may strike any one of us.” He cites the religious version of this moral vision: “There but for the grace of God go I.” The greatness of America comes from carrying out such moral commitments as Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid.

It would be an interesting public discussion to have over whether these three programs are a moral commitment. I suspect that a good number of Americans would see it this way but this is not the typical angle taken in public discourse.

2. President Obama highlighted the role of systems and how a budget cannot be isolated from other important needs and goals in society:

President Obama, in the same speech, laid the groundwork for another crucial national discussion: systems thinking, which has shown up in public discourse mainly in the form of “systemic risk” of the sort that led to the global economic meltdown. The president brought up systems thinking implicitly, at the center of his budget proposal. He observed repeatedly that budget deficits and “spending” do not occur in isolation. The choice of what to cut and what to keep is a matter of factors external to the budget per se.

Long-term prosperity, economic recovery, and job creation, he argued, depend up maintaining “investments” — investments in infrastructure (roads, bridges, long-distance rail), education, scientific research, renewable energy, and so on. The maintenance of American values, he argued, is outside of the budget in itself, but is at the heart of the argument about what to cut. The fact is that the rich have gotten rich because of the government — direct corporate subsidies, access to publicly-owned resources, access to government research, favorable trade agreements, roads and other means of transportation, education that provides educated workers, tax loopholes, and innumerable government resources taken advantage of by the rich, but paid for by all of us. What is called a “tax break” for the rich is actually a redistribution of wealth from the poor and middle class whose incomes have gone down to those who have considerably more money than they need, money they have made because of tax investments by the rest of America…

Progressives tend to think more readily in terms of systems than conservatives. We see this in the answers to a question like, “What causes crime?” Progressives tend to give answers like economic hardship, or lack of education, or crime-ridden neighborhoods. Conservatives tend more to give an answer like “bad people — lock ’em up, punish ’em.” This is a consequence of a lifetime of thinking in terms of social connection (for progressives) and individual responsibility (for conservatives). Thus conservatives did not see the president’s plan, which relied on systemic causation, as a plan at all for directly addressing the deficit.

This sort of systems thinking sounds like sociological approaches to the world: the complex social realm can be difficult to understand and predict but settling on simple (often individualistic) explanations leaves much to desired.

I can imagine that conservatives might find holes with Lakoff’s argument, not the least that all of this explanation still doesn’t say much about how the United States could deal with its budget issues. But Lakoff highlights the cultural ideas and values surrounding political debate: speeches and political activities may be about budgets and practical matters but there are underlying values that guide such actions.

The large percentage of Americans who use software or pay someone to do their taxes

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Here is a statistic that gives us some idea about how difficult the American public thinks filling out their yearly taxes is:

More than 80% of individuals hire someone or buy software to help file their taxes, though only 64% of filers owe them, according to the Tax Foundation. So millions of filers pay for help to learn that their tax liability is zero.

I recently finished doing these by hand and while it wasn’t terrible, it was time consuming. While the article suggests both individuals and companies spend a lot of time and pay a lot in order to have their taxes done, it sounds like the tax preparers and software companies have plenty of business…

Politicizing copyright use

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Various outlets are reporting that former Florida Governor Charlie Crist issued a YouTube apology to Talking Heads’ singer David Byrne for using the song “Road to Nowhere” without permission as part of Crist’s 2008 senatorial campaign.  Quoting from the ABA Journal:

In a written statement [dated 11 April 2011], Byrne said he had been surprised to learn that such unauthorized use of a song isn’t all that unusual, and said that he was "feeling very manly" about having protested rather than simply let the issue go.

"Other artists may actually have the anger but not want to take the time and risk the legal bills. I am lucky that I can do that," he stated. "Anyway, my hope is that by standing up to this practice maybe it can be made to be a less common option, or better yet an option that is never taken in the future." [emphasis added]

Such explicitly political use of artists’ music certainly has a long history.  Just a few weeks ago, the ABA Journal published an article by L.J. Jackson titled “Musicians Chafe at Politicians’ Misappropriations of Their Work” which demonstrates that

Crist’s legal problems are not unique.

In 1984, Bruce Springsteen made headlines when he objected to President Ronald Reagan’s use of his hit "Born in the U.S.A." as an anthem for his re-election campaign. The rock icon accused Reagan of subverting the true meaning of the song and playing it at rallies without his consent.

Those were the good old days, when an artist’s biggest campaign concern was a candidate using their tunes to pump up the crowd (permitted with a blanket performance license). But times, they are a-changing, and the proliferation of viral videos, YouTube, and Facebook has opened a Pandora’s box of copyright problems for politicians seeking pop-culture cred. [emphasis added]

Jackson doesn’t elaborate on the “blanket performance license” point, but it’s a major one that bears unpacking.  If a politician has the relevant blanket performance licenses from the relevant performance rights organizations (PROs), (s)he is allowed to play recording artists’ music at campaign rallies.  It doesn’t matter if the artist dislikes that particular politician any more than if (s)he dislikes a particular local radio DJ:  the politician (and the DJ) still have permission to play.

I think there are solid policy justifications for allowing such blanket licenses (and thus largely foreclosing artists’ ability to object to particular uses).  Aside from the enormous transaction costs that would be involved with case-by-case negotiation and approval, music clearly lies at the center of mainstream American culture.  Given music’s powerful emotional resonances which often extend well beyond the intent and control of the original artists, allowing artists to withhold public performance of their recorded music by particular non-profits, schools, businesses, or political campaigns seems perverse at best.  In extreme cases, such denials may even be tantamount to private censorship.

Whether you agree with my policy justifications or not, however, the fact remains that blanket performance licenses for live events already exist.  Thus, the question really is this:  why is the Internet any different?  What makes “viral videos, YouTube, and Facebook…a Pandora’s box of copyright problems” where none exist in the physical world of live campaign rallies, sporting events, or trade shows?

I submit that there really is no difference.  The same transaction cost and First Amendment justifications for blanket performance licenses apply with equal weight to Internet media.  To me, any policy difference appears to be simply a historical artifact.

A blogger at Clancco asks:

I wonder what the “free culture” lobbyists have to say about fair use, free culture, and the world is our public domain oyster when it comes to a Republican politician using an artist’s song without the artists permission? We certainly know what Byrne thinks…and it’s not good for Republicans.

I don’t know what “the ‘free culture’ lobbyists” would say, but my response is this:  the political affiliation of the music’s user should not matter one iota.  We can certainly have a policy debate, but that doesn’t mean the debate must (or should) be political.

Pew using word frequencies to describe public’s opinion of budget negotiations

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In the wake of the standoff over a federal government shutdown last week, Pew conducted a poll of Americans regarding their opinions on this event. One of the key pieces of data that Pew is reporting is a one-word opinion of the proceedings:

The public has an overwhelmingly negative reaction to the budget negotiations that narrowly avoided a government shutdown. A weekend survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Washington Post finds that “ridiculous” is the word used most frequently to describe the budget negotiations [29 respondents], followed by “disgusting,” [22 respondents] “frustrating,” [14 respondents] “messy,” [14 respondents] “disappointing” [13 respondents] and “stupid.” [13 respondents]

Overall, 69% of respondents use negative terms to describe the budget talks, while just 3% use positive words; 16% use neutral words to characterize their impressions of the negotiations. Large majorities of independents (74%), Democrats (69%) and Republicans (65%) offer negative terms to describe the negotiations.

The full survey was conducted April 7-10 among 1,004 adults; people were asked their impressions of the budget talks in interviews conducted April 9-10, following the April 8 agreement that averted a government shutdown.

I would be hesitant about leading off an article or headline (“Budget Negotiations in a Word – “Ridiculous”) with these word frequencies since they generally were used by few respondents: the most common response, “ridiculous,” was only given by 2.9% of the survey respondents (based on the figures here of 1,004 total respondents). I think the better figures to use would be the broader ones about negative responses where 69% used negative terms and a majority of all political stripes used a negative descriptor.

You also have to dig into the complete report for some more information. Here is the exact wording of the question:

PEW.2A If you had to use one single word to describe your impression of the budget negotiations in Washington, what would that one word be? [IF “DON’T KNOW” PROBE ONCE: It can be anything, just the first word that comes to mind…] [OPEN END: ENTER VERBATIM RESPONSE]

Additionally, the full report says that this descriptor question was only asked of 427 respondents on April 9-10 (so my above percentage should be altered: it should be 29/427 = 6.8%). So this is a smaller sample answering this particular question; how generalizable are the results? And the most common response to this question is the other category with 202 respondents. Presumably, the “others” are mostly negative since we are told 69% use negative terms. (As a side note, why not separate out the “don’t knows” and “refused”? There are 45 people in this category but these seem like different answers.)

One additional thought I have: at least this wasn’t put into a word cloud in order to display the data.

Two steps for lower taxes

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With taxes due in less than a week, Derek Thompson over at The Atlantic has some solid advice for “beating the Tax Man at his own game”:

First, be self-employed. Second, be very rich.

Among other reasons that the article notes, “money buys access to the smartest accountants and tax attorneys, who have scoured the labyrinthine tax code for the best nooks and crannies to shelter income.”

It may not be the most efficient allocation of overall resources, but it sure does offer a compelling individual ROI.

Going rogue

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Wired’s Nate Anderson has a great write-up over at Ars Technica of the “Legitimate Sites v. Parasites” hearing before the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee today, and it’s not looking good for Internet intermediaries:

[T]he general mood of the hearing was that tough new steps must be taken. As Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) asked [Immigration and Customs Enforcement director John] Morton during his questioning, “What change in the law would allow you to pursue everyone?”

In his written testimony before the committee (PDF), Kent Walker, Google’s Senior VP and General Counsel noted that such an all-inclusive approach would be impossible and counterproductive:

When it comes to offshore rogue sites, no one should think that imposing additional obligations on search engines, social networks, directories, or bloggers beyond the DMCA [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] will be a panacea. If the site remains on the web, neither search engines nor social networks nor the numerous other intermediaries through which users post links can prevent Internet users from talking about, linking to, or referencing the existence of the site. These links or references will themselves appear in search results, and will enable users to reach the site. Simply put, search engines are not in a position to censor the entire Internet, deleting every mention of the existence of a site. If a rogue site remains accessible on the Internet, relying on search engines to try to make it “unfindable” is an impossible endeavor. [emphasis added]

I recommend reading Walker’s full comments for a robust defense of why the notice-and-takedown immunity provided by the DMCA is essential for innovation.

Additional coverage by Politico, Techdirt, CNET, TorrentFreak, RIAA Blog…