Voters are Morons, Part 566

I'd like to use this as a an opportunity to mock California voters in particular, but Kevin Drum is undoubtedly right that it probably applies nationwide:

Californians object to increasing taxes in order to pare the state's massive budget deficit, and instead favor closing the breach through spending cuts. But they oppose cuts—and even prefer more spending—on programs that make up 85% of the state's general fund obligations, a new Los Angeles Times/USC Poll has found.

That paradox rests on Californians' firm belief that the state's deficit—estimated last week at nearly $25 billion over the next 18 months—can be squared through trimming waste and inefficiencies rather than cutting the programs they hold dear. Despite tens of billions that have been cut from the state budget in recent years, just a quarter of California voters believed that state services would have to be curtailed to close the deficit.

I remember reading a study which first asked voters if they believed foreign aid should be cut -- the answer being a resounding "yes". The next question was how much the respondents believed we spent on foreign aid -- an amount they overstated dramatically. Finally, when asked how much we should spend on foreign aid, they gave a figure that was something like triple what we spend currently.

The Price of Publication

I am pleased to announce the official publication of my Comment: David Schraub, The Price of Victory: Political Triumphs and Judicial Protection in the Gay Rights Movement, 77 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1437 (2010). As Professor Solum would say, download it while it's hot!

My Favorite Knockouts: Corrales TKO10 Castillo & Williams TKO6 Potter

One of the reasons I love boxing is that it's a sport where the competitors show incredible grit and determination. Obviously, many sports have their share of astonishing comebacks and contestants with incontestable heart. But there is very little that compares to the sheer willpower and desire it takes to comeback from being so hurt that you literally can't stand-up, throwing back, and winning a fight.

The first matchup between Diego Corrales and Jose Luis Castillo is considered an all-time classic, and the 10th round, shown here, is arguably one of the greatest rounds of all time. Corrales had always been a never-say-die sort of fighter -- in fact, he lost his undefeated record to Floyd Mayweather, who knocked him down 5 times across the course of the fight. When his corner finally stopped it after knockdown #5, Corrales, who was hopelessly behind and being battered pillar to post, was visibly furious.



This second one is a little macabre -- just warning. But though it shows a different sort of "comeback", I think it falls into the same category -- a demonstration of an indomitable will to win which I don't think has parallel in any other sport.

Switch 'em Off

A poll surveying American attitudes towards the coming GOP takeover of the House makes it very clear that the Republicans do not carry with them a "mandate". In fact, they asked that very question, and only 17% of Americans thought the elections constituted a mandate from the American people.

Rather, Americans voted in Republicans because they were frustrated with Democrats, and wanted a change. Not that they expect much -- 64% think Republicans will do as well or worse.

So it's basically a classic mid-term in a poor economy. Change for change's sake. It's not an illegitimate opinion by any means. But it's not a mandate.

My Favorite Knockouts: Hernandez KO8 Litzau

It is surprisingly rare for two truly evenly-matched competitors to step into the ring with each other. Generally, it happens in only two situations: Either two prospects, to try and establish which one is "for real", or at the very pinnacle of the sport, where the best (sometimes) fights the best.

A significant amount of modern boxing coverage, though, falls under the category of the "showcase fight". The guy being groomed to be a star is trotted out against an opponent who looks credible on paper, but is pretty much expected to lose and make the prospect look good, feeding anticipation for the prospect/contender's next fight.

But the nice thing about boxing is that the opponent can always be a spoiler. Here, Jason Litzau was the prospect, and Jose Hernandez was meant to be the main course in his coming out party. And for most of the fight, it looked like it. Hernandez did show he could hurt the chinny Litzau with a first round knockdown, but Litzau controlled the rest of the fight, with Hernandez stalking but unable to land. Until Round 8 (go to 1:40 if you want to skip the first round knockdown).



I saw this fight, and the energy was electric. A genuine, underdog, come-from-behind, one shot knockout that was itself a beauty to behold. Hernandez parlayed this into a decently high-profile fight against Rocky Juarez (which he lost), and has since faded into obscurity, fighting and losing one more fight to a journeyman in 2009. Litzau has labored on the fringes for awhile now, getting annihilated by Robert Guerrero in his one title shot. Litzau himself is playing "opponent" for Celestino Caballero's jump up to Junior Lightweight at the end of the month.

Is It Still Moot Roundup?

The first round of the Moot Court is over, and I think it went well. Same moderate concerns about speaking too fast (though none about gesticulation), but this time, they were pretty explicitly couched in terms like "it distracted me from your brilliant substance" -- so, good sign. "The only reason I kept listening [after being exhausted by the speed] was because of how compelling you are" is kind of an odd comment to get, but I'll take it.

* * *

Interesting interview between Adi Schwartz and John Ging of the UNRWA. One legitimate point Ging makes is that the UNRWA doesn't set its mandate -- the UNGA does. And hence, it is the UNGA that is preventing the UNRWA from treating its refugees like all others, and thus perpetuating the conflict by refusing to countenance resettling the refugees. The UNRWA is simply the hand that implements a malignant policy set elsewhere.

Spanish liberals and Western Sahara.

The Ottawa Protocol on Combating Anti-Semitism.

Glenn Beck and Iran are two peas in a pod when it comes to George Soros.

The lame-duck session of Congress included the House Ethics Committee finding that veteran-Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) committed ethical violations. I applaud the Committee for taking these matters seriously, and hope that the incoming Republican majority shows as much diligence in policing the ethical foibles of its own members.

Sen. John McCain has been an embarrassment on DADT, so it's quite just that he be embarrassed over it.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who likely won her write-in bid for re-election to the Senate, has opened fire on Sarah Palin, and is indicating that she will not play any role in tea party-backed efforts to sink the Obama administration.

Three more Oxford academics have resigned from the UCU, alleging it to be infected by institutional anti-Semitism. The final nail in the coffin, it seems, was the UCU's rejection of an Oxford branch-backed motion to disassociate the UCU from the views of noted hate speaker Bongani Masuku, whom the union had invited as part of its boycott Israel agenda.

Reduce the Deficit!

The New York Times has a neat little application that lets you decide how to balance the budget. Basically, it offers an array of programs to cut or taxes to raise, and lets you mix and match them until you balance the budget in 2015 (current projected shortfall: $418 billion) and 2030 (current projected shortfall: $1,345 billion).

One thing becomes very obvious, very quick, and that's that to make any dent in the deficit, you'll have to either raise taxes, or cut defense or entitlement spending. Eliminating earmarks, for example, only nets a savings of $14 billion dollars -- barely 1% of the 2030 shortfall. Reducing troops in Iraq to 30,000 by 2013, by contrast, nets a whopping $169 billion.

I was able to balance the 2015 budget with roughly a 50/50 balance of spending cuts and tax increases. To handle the much larger 2030 deficit, though, I had to resort to more tax hikes, changing the proportion to more like 70/30. Most of the spending reductions came from the defense department, mostly by shrinking the size of the armed forces (particularly the air force, navy, and nuclear arsenals) -- that got me almost $300 billion on its own. Other cuts included slashing farm subsidies and reducing social security benefits for high earners.

On the tax side of things, I returned investment and estate taxes to their Clinton-administration levels, raised the payroll tax cap, instituted a "millionaire's tax" (basically, adding another tax bracket that starts at $1,000,000), eliminated tax loopholes, and established a carbon tax and a tax on risky banks. Altogether, this would reduce our 2030 deficit to a mere $16 billion, while causing us to actually run a 2015 surplus of $269 billion dollars.

But that's just my plan. Go ahead, fiddle with it and try your own!

My Favorite Knockouts: Wilson KO11 Nwodo

I feel like I've been remiss in providing boxing blogging. I did watch Pacquiao/Margarito last night, but I don't feel like I have anything to add -- Pacquiao simply shredded the bigger man in a masterpiece performance.

So instead of searching for a new angle, I figured I might debut a periodic feature -- YouTube clips of some of my favorite knockouts.

The first on the list was the bout that ended up winning ESPN's "knockout of the decade" contest, Darnell "Ding-a-Ling Man" Wilson KO11 Emmanuel Nwodo. Rarely will see as much pure power generated in a single shot as found right here:



Overshadowed by the knockout is the fact that this fight was a scintillating, back-and-forth brawl for the entire bout. Both men alternatively had seized momentum, and I believe at the time of the stoppage Nwodo was still ahead on the cards. But in any fight, it takes one punch to turn it around, and when that punch is delivered by someone with the concussive power of Darnell Wilson -- watch out.

Why Do Politics Stop at the Water's Edge?

The latest scandal burbling out of Washington involves a meeting between House Minority Whip (soon to be Majority Leader) Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) and Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu wherein Rep. Cantor promised to serve as a "check" on the Obama Administration's policies regarding Israel and the Middle East.

The main objection to this is that "politics stop at the water's edge", and that when it comes to foreign policy, America speaks with one voice emanating from the executive branch. Certainly, there is plenty of precedent for this belief, one aggressively trumpeted by Republicans during the Bush administration. And I suppose there is something to it -- constitutionally, control over foreign policy is delegated largely to the executive branch, and there is something deeply unseemly about an American politician tells a foreign leader that he will take his side in a clash between that county's desires and America's.

That being said, there seems to be a fiction being enacted here, which is that there are no substantive political disputes about what American interests are or what American foreign policy should be. There are no inherent American interests, only competing conceptions of what America should be interested in. And nobody is really surprised that Rep. Cantor and President Obama disagree on the question. So why shouldn't Rep. Cantor use what leverage is constitutionally delegated to the House of Representatives to try and enact his favor cluster of foreign policy priorities?

Now therein lies the rub for me: I find Rep. Cantor's intervention substantively distasteful, as I think his policy prescriptions are worse for America, worse for Palestinians, and ultimately worse for Israelis. So for that reason, I oppose what he did -- the same as I would oppose a Cantor meeting with the Chamber of Commerce where he pledged to serve as a "check" on the Obama Administration's efforts to regulate the financial industry. But the belief that domestic politics represent something fundamentally different from foreign policy -- the former a subject of legitimate democratic constestation, the latter beyond the bounds of ideological debate -- strikes me as near-entirely fictional.

Breaking: Americans Still Hate Palin

Even with her tea-party-affiliated wing of the GOP in ascendancy, Sarah Palin continues to decline, with over half of Americans (52%, to be precise) viewing her unfavorably. Just 40% have a favorable view of the former half-term Alaska Governor.

Better yet, for Democrats at least, is that her support is growing more polarized -- she continues to register gains amongst Republican voters, but these are counterbalanced by her growing toxicity with independents. All of which spells a Palin nomination for President in 2012 -- followed by a crushing defeat by Barack Obama.

Anti-Soros Anti-Semitism

Jewish leaders from all camps are outraged at the deployment of nakedly anti-Semitic tropes by Glenn Beck in his ongoing crusade against liberal investor George Soros. Soros, a Holocaust survivor, was accused by Beck of being a Nazi collaborator while hiding with a non-Jewish family in his teenage years. This is on top of a wave of rhetoric which, in the words of Michelle Goldberg:

described Soros as the most powerful man on earth, the creator of a ‘shadow government’ that manipulates regimes and currencies for its own enrichment. Obama is his ‘puppet,’ Beck says. Soros has even ‘infiltrated the churches.’ He foments social unrest and economic distress so he can bring down governments, all for his own financial gain.

Beck even borrowed quotes from the rabidly anti-Semitic former Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad.

Soros is a public figure, and thus is a fair target for public attack. But I have expressed in the past and reiterate my observation that many of these attacks have taken on more than a hint of anti-Semitic flavor -- and Glenn Beck has been leading the charge.

Moot Court Round 1.1

My first moot court round (well, half of it -- we each go once as petitioner and respondent in round one) is now complete, and I think it went rather well. The judges told me I spoke a little fast, which I take to be a big victory (normally I speak blindingly fast). They also noted that I overgesticulate, which is definitely true. But they had naught but happy words for my substance and seemed generally pretty satisfied, so, yay.

Senate Changed Paul

The earmark debate is dumb. Earmarks account for an absurdly small percentage of federal spending, so the hubbub over it is almost invariably a way to sound like one cares about the budget without actually having to cut anything worthwhile.

Nonetheless, it has been a bit of a tea party hobbyhorse, and opposition to earmarks was a key element of Sen.-elect Rand Paul's (R-KY) campaign. So much for that:

In a bigger shift from his campaign pledge to end earmarks, he tells me that they are a bad “symbol” of easy spending but that he will fight for Kentucky’s share of earmarks and federal pork, as long as it’s doled out transparently at the committee level and not parachuted in in the dead of night. “I will advocate for Kentucky’s interests,” he says.

Good lord, man, you've been elected for less than a week! At least go through the motions!

I'm reminded of the last panel of this comic:

THOG: Thog wonders how Thog will cope with life outside jailhouse walls. Prison changed Thog.

ELAN: We were only in there for 40 minutes.

THOG: Prison changed Thog quickly.

It's No Better in the Private Sector, Kid

I empathize with Radley Balko's travails to get his refund back from the IRS. But that's because I'm locked in more or less the same battle with Comcast, which has been hanging onto my security deposit and refund for nearly three months now. Same utter incompetence by everyone I've every interacted with. Same shunting from bureaucracy to bureaucracy. Same inability to explain what went wrong, how it went wrong, or how they're planning to fix it. I don't think even the IRS' opening gambit was to allege that Balko owed them additional money, which is how Comcast tried to play me.

GOP Rep. Bachus Blames Palin for Continued Dem Control of Senate

Someone's going to get tea partied come 2012:

Alabama Rep. Spencer Bachus (R) told members of the South Shelby Chamber of Commerce that former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin was probably the reason for the GOP's failure to take control in the U.S. Senate in last week's election.

"The Senate would be Republican today except for states (in which Palin endorsed candidates) like Christine O'Donnell in Delaware," Bachus said. "Sarah Palin cost us control of the Senate."

There's actually a surprisingly decent case for this: Nominating sane candidates flips Delaware, Nevada, and Colorado into the GOP column. That makes things 50-50, and frees up Republican resources to bombard Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), who barely escaped 2010 intact.

The Texas Eagle Forum Poses Some Final Solutions to America's Muslim Problem

The Texas Eagle Forum has a plan for countering the existence of Muslims in America:

In the U.S., there are Muslim training camps across the country actively planning attacks on American soil. Young Americans are being converted to Islam in our jails, our military, public schools and universities, and in churches that preach Liberation Theology. Muslims have gained two seats in the U.S, Congress and have won seats in state and local races. Public school textbooks are becoming pro-Islam and anti-Christian. Muslims are buying Fortune 500 companies and high tech companies. There is a Dow Jones Islamic Index. Islamic banks, insurance companies and mortgage companies are springing up across the country. Our open borders welcome Muslims.

The challenge to America is to stop the spread of Islam in the U.S. before it is too late.

SOLUTIONS:

1. Congress MUST outlaw Shariah and international law
2. Eliminate Muslim government employees
3. Outlaw Muslim terrorist organizations, such as The Muslim Brotherhood, CAIR, etc.
4. Muslims should be ineligible to run for political office
5. All Muslim military personnel should be removed from the U.S. armed forces
6. Monitor mosques
7. Shut down terrorist training camps in the U.S.

Query the coherence of claiming folks are converted to Islam inside churches which preach "Liberation Theology". One would think they'd simply become adherents of the branches of Christianity that believe in liberation theology.

Also, pro tip -- when one simple wants to release an employee from their job, we usually term that "firing". "Eliminate" is a verb that sort of connotes killing.

Not Worth a Dog's Dinner

An Oakland cop who shot an unarmed and restrained Black man on a subway platform received two years in prison after being convicted of involuntary manslaughter. It was the shortest possible sentence absent probation (the harshest potential sentence was 14 years). The involuntary manslaughter rap itself was itself the most lenient charge Grant Mehserle could have been convicted of -- a fact which also led to considerable unrest when the verdict came down.

As Oscar Grant's family pointed out, this is less time than Michael Vick was sentenced to for his dog-fighting ring -- thus adding another name to the list of humans we value dogs more than. What is the victim's family supposed to think about that? Such is the nation we live in -- the same one, incidentally, which sentences men who abuse and kill their wives more leniently than women who kill their abusers. Nowhere more than in the criminal realm to we express more clearly the notion of whose bodies matter more, and whose bodies matter less; which criminals we are inclined to give the benefit of the doubt to, and which ones we take it upon ourselves to lock away for extra time.

Fuzzy Math

The Yahoo headline is Republicans take aim at cost of Obama’s trip to India.

But as the article later points out, the Republican claims that the trip will cost $200 million/day -- advanced by luminaries like Mike Huckabee and terminally unhinged Michele Bachmann -- are flatly false. There's no basis in reality for them. Claims that Obama will be accompanied by 10% of the US Navy are also, unsurprisingly, wildly false.

Why isn't the headline "Top Republicans Lie About Cost of Obama's India Trip"? This is an open and shut case.

Gray's Anatomy

D.C. mayor-elect Vincent Gray is beginning his transition. I think outgoing mayor Adrian Fenty did excellent work for the city, but what can you do -- its residents didn't like his style (and there were definitely stylistic missteps along the way that could have been averted). It never seemed clear to me what, if any, substantive differences Gray had from Fenty, so the best we can hope for is that Gray will largely continue down the same path -- but in a more friendly, deliberate fashion.

Also, as a citizen of the United States, I am personally humiliated by this sentence:

Gray said he plans to meet with GOP congressional leaders soon to urge them to allow the city to manage itself.

It is flatly embarrassing in this day and age that the mayor of our nation's capital has to walk up to Capitol Hill and beg Congress for the right to self-rule.

The Roots of Obama's Lack of Rage

A lot of folks are angry that Obama hasn't been more angry -- that he hasn't "used the bully pulpit" to channel hellfire populist rage. Well, there's a good reason for that:

President Obama is a black man--and, as such, has unique cause to be wary of the adjective "angry."
[...]
Even when Obama has been at his cucumber-coolest--and has earned abuse from the left and center for it--figures on the right have aggressively tried to hang the "angry black man" label on him. A June editorial in The Washington Times (entitled, bluntly enough, "Angry Man Obama") cited his "tough guy" persona and "bullying undercurrent" and tied him to Spike Lee. A year ago, Rush Limbaugh described the school-bus beating of a white student by black students as typical of "Obama's America"; in the run-up to the midterms, Glenn Beck accused the president of "inciting people." The idea that Obama is driven by fury is prevalent enough on the right that Dinesh D'Souza could take it as a given in the title of his Amazon bestseller The Roots of Obama's Rage. Idiotic though it may be, this is not a narrative the president wants to fuel.

As Ta-Nehisi Coates astutely summarizes: "Frankly, I would not bet on the consistent returns of any black man who regularly employed anger in a room full of white people."