Playoffs?! Playoffs?!

I just caught an alert on C-SPAN that they will be airing coverage tomorrow of the House Energy and Commerce hearing on college football tomorrow. The Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection will hold a hearing titled, "The Bowl Championship Series: Money and Other Issues of Fairness for Publicly Financed Universities."

Are you kidding me?

President Obama has made it clear on multiple occasions that he wants a playoff system to determine the NCAA Division I football champion. Many fans have expressed a similar desire. But, should it really be up to the President or Congress to decide this? I'm a pretty big sports fan, but this seems like a stretch beyond reasonable federal powers.

Now Congress might argue that this falls into their purview because they are Constitutionally required to regulate interstate commerce, or because many universities receive federal funding, or maybe because the NCAA receives special anti-trust and tax treatments.

Whatever the argument may be - even if it is somewhat valid - it sure seems like Congress and the President could spend their time more wisely. Let college football fans, the NCAA and the BCS figure this one out.

Politicians and Public Servants

Yesterday, Arlen Specter (?-PA) made big news by announcing that he will run as a Democrat in his bid for re-election to the Senate in 2010. I consider this to be pretty big news - we don't see politicians switching parties that frequently. This is likely to give the Democrats a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate (assuming Al Franken is seated as Senator of Minnesota). I would not be terribly surprised to see Olympia Snowe (R-ME) and/or Susan Collins (R-ME) switch affiliations at some point either. Apparently, Harry Reid (D-NV) has been working on Specter for a few years.

At some point in the future, I will get around to finishing my analysis of the voting patterns of members of Congress. I have not forgotten this project. In fact, I made good progress on it late last year before other items distracted my progress. It will be interesting to see where Specter rates in this analysis.

However, the point of this post is not to analyze the impact of this affiliation switch. Instead, I think this provides a good opportunity to point out the priorities of politicians and public servants.

I see politicians and public servants as two very different characters. A few weeks back, I introduced my pyramid of governance. Today, I introduce the pyramid of the political priority:

This graphic simply represents the order of priorities for the politician and the public servant. First, let's discuss the priorities of the politician. It should come as no surprise that the politician puts self above all. Arlen Specter made this clear yesterday. He did not try to hide the fact that one of the driving factors (and, frankly, it is clearly the number one driving factor) in his decision to switch parties was his ability to win his re-election bid. Specter is not alone. Indeed most people holding government jobs are looking out for self above all else.

After looking out for number one, the politician's next priority is party. It should be abundantly clear that party affiliation is central to the American political system. Very few individuals who seek public office have success running as independents. This may, on the surface, indicate that politicians may even put party ahead of self. Indeed this thought has crossed my mind before. For example, if Hillary Clinton truly thought she was the best candidate for President, then why not run as an independent? While this would be a clear example of placing self over party, it should be understood that if she had chosen this path, it would have put her own political future at risk. She was still looking out for number one. (Notably, successfully running as an independent or third-party candidate in the United States is a monumental challenge due to ballot-access laws, campaign finance laws, the government-media complex, and a host of other reasons.)

The constituency comes next. Yes. Party and self come before the constituency for the politician. In fact, the constituency is only important to the politician because of elections. Serving the interests of the constituency is simply a means to an end - and that end is winning the next election to stay in power. The political party duopoly has engineered the constituencies of the House of Representatives through gerrymandering over the years so that serving party and self is easier to do without significant risk of consequence from the constituency.

The final priority for the politician is the Rule of Law. This is most unfortunate. If the politician has enough power and does not respect the Rule of Law, then the Rule of Law itself is at risk. When this is compromised, then law is essentially arbitrary. Politicians have breached this boundary in the United States. They have argued for decades for a flexible interpretation of constitutional powers. This has been successfully done both at the federal and state level and across the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government.

As the pyramid above indicates, the public servant has priorities in the exact opposite order of the politician. The public servant realizes that the Rule of Law comes before everything else. This is reflected by the oaths of office taken by government officials who swear to uphold and defend the Constitution. Once the Rule of Law has been breached, then there is no limit on the politician. The public servant understands this and recognizes that the Rule of Law must be upheld even if it against the wishes of the constituency.

This leads us to the public servant's next priority: the constituency. This should be straightforward and is the essence of the term "public servant" - one who serves the public. It may be argued that self should come before party for the public servant. This is a reasonable argument; however, a party which recognizes the Rule of Law as a priority over political power should reasonably come ahead of any individual interest. Regardless of this detail, both party and self are almost a moot point when the Rule of Law and the constituency are served.

It is unreasonable to expect public officials to be ideal public servants in all cases rather than politicians. After all, it is human nature to put self above all other priorities. This is an inherent issue with any structure of governance which underscores the need for adherence and enforcement of the Rule of Law. Unfortunately, public servants are few and far between as our system has evolved to favor politicians above all else. That is the order of the day and will lead to the destruction of this nation.

Lions and Tigers and...Glowing...Dogs? Oh My...

I haven't written anything in quite a while, but admittedly not for lack of inspiration. There's been a ton of stuff I've wanted to write about (and could have) but then got distracted with something else and by the time I got around to it again, it was "old news." Enough excuses though...

Lately, as I've grown bored of listening to the same music over and over again, I've started watching various TV shows from hulu in my office while I'm working (I can't work without music or tv...some kind of background noise). Hulu is pretty cool I've discovered--I've re-watched all the episodes of Kitchen Nightmares (rules), kept up with Hell's Kitchen and even stumbled upon some new shows--Ghost Hunters and Ghost Hunters International (I've always been fascinated with "reality" paranormal investigator shows) and a ridiculously entertaining show called Destination Truth. I'll leave you to check the show out if I've sufficiently piqued your interest but suffice to say that any show where they're investigating "Icelandic Elves" is worth watching.

I was looking for something new today when I happened upon the show Fringe. The commercials I've seen for it have looked mildly interesting.and people I know have said it's decent, so I thought I'd give it a shot. Turns out it is a pretty darn good show and its overall "subject" is definitely thought-provoking (if far-fetched)--a group of government agents who use so-called "fringe" science to investigate bizarre crimes. By bizarre, I mean things like people who have their brains liquefied by a pattern flashed on their computer or a commercial air flight terrorized by a passenger who transforms into a werewolf-looking creature during the flight. The episodes on hulu don't start until 8 or 9 so I didn't see the beginning of the series but a lot of the episodes I've seen so far seem to have some plot line (either minor or major, depending on the episode) related to bio or chemical terrorism that is eventually thwarted by the team (who are supposed to be part of Homeland Security).

Sure, this stuff is really far-fetched but it watching these episodes today reminded me of a thought that occurred to me last night (although I think the episode was from earlier in the week--I was watching it on DVR) while watching news coverage about the swine flu on Glenn Beck. He had on a guest who was talking about swine flu and I heard him mention something about the only possible "good" effect might be some degree of stabilization of the chaotic Mexican government that we've been hearing about so much before the new story of swine flu took over. Over the past month, I was hearing on a daily basis about the "imminent danger" to the U.S. posed by lawless Mexican drug gangs and the inability for the corrupt Mexican government to do anything about it. Now, I'm actually rather ashamed to admit that it occurred to me that I thought it would be entirely plausible that our government would somehow covertly release a virus into another country in order to serve its own purposes somehow. This is the kind of stuff that happens in TV shows (like Fringe)...not in "real life," right? You'll probably be pleased to know that after thinking about the situation for a few minutes (at least given what I know now) it really doesn't make sense that the U.S. government would have been behind the swine flu outbreak in Mexico. What is particularly disturbing to me, however, is that I still believe it's entirely possible our government would do such a thing in general.

A second--and related--thought I had while watching Fringe (who knew a sci-fi TV show could be so thought-provoking?) was about what sorts of weird, grotesque experiments the government (of course, not only the government) could be conducting in secret. Is it really so out of the realm of possibility that there are horribly wild genetic mutations or some sort of wacko genetic engineering that could turn a person into a wolf-looking creature? I'm not a biologist or geneticist but genetic mutations can do crazy, crazy things (take a look at trimethylaminuria, alkaptonuria or harlequin ichthyosis for just a few examples)...and if this is true, it's not such a stretch to think that the government or whoever could figure out how to do these things intentionally.

This is disturbing to me, in particular because I see hints of these things happening now--the various stories about cloning that pop up periodically; genetic selection; strange medical experiments and they're usually played off and accepted by most in the name of "curing disease" or equally as dubious. Coincidentally, I happened to see this headline from a Yahoo! news article as I was getting ready to shut down my computer before leaving work: "SKorean experts claim to have cloned glowing dogs." This is scary stuff, folks...

(Photo from Yahoo!)

Loose Ends... Vol. XL

Have you heard about this story yet? Apparently, Ken Lewis, CEO of Bank of America, was coerced by Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke to complete the acquisition of Merrill Lynch despite Lewis's midnight reservations. Instead of performing his duty to inform shareholders that the deal was not as great as originally thought, Lewis kept mum at the alleged behest of Paulson and Bernanke.

Someone here (at least someone) is a criminal. Let's hope between Andrew Cuomo and the SEC that justice is served. This is totally dirty and not at all surprising.

*****

The swine flu has broken out and has already claimed over eighty lives in Mexico. This is a fairly high mortality rate (approximately 2% in Mexico by current estimates). If this spreads quickly with that sort of mortality rate, then we will be seeing a life-changing event. Add that to the current financial crisis and we truly have events of generational proportions unfolding before our eyes.

*****

I don't have a lot else to say tonight. I did a decent amount of outdoor work this weekend which is not my favorite thing to do. I was also able to catch up on my Google Reader (which is a personal accomplishment). This means I'll spend less time reading and more time writing - or, at least that's my goal. I did finish Atlas Shrugged last weekend too. So, that frees up time as well.

Check out some of the blogs I read:
Market Ticker
Naked Capitalism
Mish - Global Economic Trend Analysis
Of Two Minds
Andy Horning - We Declare

There are a few more that I follow. Those will get you started.

Happy Earth Day

It should not be terribly surprising that Earth Day was first established by a U.S. politician. Senator Gaylord Nelson (D-WI) was the driving force behind the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970. I suppose I'm not terribly surprised that the government maintains an official Earth Day website at EarthDay.gov - from the site:

Earth Day is a time to celebrate gains we have made and create new visions to accelerate environmental progress. Earth Day is a time to unite around new actions. Earth Day and every day is a time to act to protect our planet.

I do not think that there is anything wrong at all with trying to be good stewards of the environment. When I think of such things, I quickly recall the story of "The Tragedy of the Commons." I was quite surprised to learn tonight that this story is only thirty-one years old! In 1968, an article with this title was published in Science magazine by Garrett Hardin. The story basically goes like this: the common ownership of a given resource will ultimately be destroyed by the common owners if they all act in their own self-interest.

This notion was not entirely new, of course. This concept had been known to man throughout history, but this was the first time this particular name had been used for the phenomenon. It was also an escalation point for the political, economic and social awareness of the problem. The growing population of the world was becoming a concern in respect to the long-term availability of natural resources required to support humanity. This concern was also one of the focal points for the creation of Earth Day. As we all know, the debate continues today.

But, over 2,000 years ago, Aristotle said:

That all persons call the same thing mine in the sense in which each does so may be a fine thing, but it is impracticable; or if the words are taken in the other sense, such a unity in no way conduces to harmony. And there is another objection to the proposal. For that which is common to the greatest number has the least care bestowed upon it. Every one thinks chiefly of his own, hardly at all of the common interest; and only when he is himself concerned as an individual. For besides other considerations, everybody is more inclined to neglect the duty which he expects another to fulfill; as in families many attendants are often less useful than a few.

We should be mindful to heed the words of Aristotle today. He recognized the rational self-interest in human action and the peril it causes in common ownership. Certainly the degree of peril increases as the population of the "common" increases; this follows from the decreasing share of ownership of a given individual which must have inverse correlation with self-interest in the use of the resource.

How do we overcome the tragedy of the commons? Some would argue that regulation by a leader on behalf of the ownership is the answer. Simply implement rules on the use of the commons. This leads to concerns. Who will be the leader? How does the ownership population become satisfied that the leader is acting in the best interest of the collective? Will there be special favors? How are the rules enforced? Will force be necessary to do so?

In cases of large common ownership, it is the state that usually fills the role as leader. The questions mentioned above are still all valid. Unfortunately, the larger the common ownership and the more valuable the resource, the more difficult it is to regulate in a fair, effective and efficient manner. And, of course, this also increases the likelihood of non-compliance by individuals in the ownership population. It is the state who can step in with force to curb the rights of the non-compliant individuals and/or punish them in some other form. It should be self-evident that the probability of corruption also increases as the constituency grows.

I propose a different path. We should strive to eliminate common ownership. As Aristotle noted, private ownership will lead to the best stewardship of the resource. Yes, there will be some failures, but, on the whole, results will be better. I can hear my green-minded friends asking, "what about the Earth or the environment as a whole?" Great question. Admittedly, I have no perfect answer. However, significant steps could be taken which may mitigate the concerns expressed.

First, private property rights could extend below the ground and into the atmosphere. With rigorous protection of private property enforced, but not infringed upon, by the state, we could make advances in protecting against groundwater waste and other runoff as well as airborne pollutants. Second, property rights to waterways and other common lands could be sold off in auctions. Alternatively (or in addition to), common ownership could be reduced to smaller, more community-based ownership structures. Finally, common resources such as international waters could similarly be auctioned or partitioned.

These are just a few ideas and I am by no means an expert on this subject. However, I do believe there are practical, pro-market, and pro-environment solutions to the tragedy of the commons. These thoughts are also consistent with my personal views on governance which are outlined in "Individual Liberty and Local Government" where I introduced my pyramid of governance.

The notion of private property extending from the land to the sky was clearly violated with the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918 where property owners were prohibited from hunting certain bird species while flying overhead. (Again, I am not an expert here and did not research this any further to determine if this was the first such violation of the notional definition.) Incidentally, the State of Missouri sued the U.S. Government over this act in a case that went to the Supreme Court. The case was Missouri v. Holland with Missouri asserting that the treaty violated the 10th Amendment. Missouri lost with Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes delivering his opinion that the U.S. Constitution is a "living document".

Ok - so, Happy Earth Day! I want to leave you with a homework assignment. Reflect on resources (goods, services, bank accounts, land, public health, air, etc.) which have common ownership in your life. Putting political ideology aside, think about what works well and what does not in these situations of common ownership. Now... what can be applied from your experiences to the tragedy of the commons?

Saving $1.35

President Barack Obama held his first cabinet meeting today. He "made clear that relentlessly cutting out waste was part and parcel of their mission to make the investments necessary for recovery and long-term stability." The ruthless fiscal disciplinarian called for his cabinet to cut a collective 100 million dollars in the next 90 days. The White House blog has the story here and the fact sheet can be found here.

Now, Obama has admitted already that this is a drop in the bucket. However, he did say, "cumulatively they would make an extraordinary difference... $100 million there, $100 million here, pretty soon, even in Washington, it adds up to real money." How long would it take to add up to real money?

Let's put this in terms the average American understand. I have a graduate degree in math and even I have a hard time comprehending one trillion dollars. Consider the following table:

Sources: Obama FY2010 Budget proposal and U.S. Census population clock.

In this table, we compare the United States federal budget (as laid out in Obama's FY2010 proposal - summary detail available here) with the "average" American household. To get the "average" household, I take per capita GDP as household expenses (GDP is a measure of spending) and pro-rate the data to income and the desired savings.

$1.35... that is the equivalent savings to an American household. I can't imagine how Obama's cabinet could possibly scratch and claw at their budgets to find the equivalent of $1.35. That's pretty much like not ordering fries from McDonald's one time in the next 90 days. Everything else is business as usual.

It takes a lot of $1.35s to add up to "real money" - even for a household with $32k in annual income... especially when they are spending $48k per year.

Loose Ends... Vol. XXXIX

Well, I've been a royal slacker when it comes to posting lately. It is my sincere goal to pick up the pace this week!

I did not attend any of the tea parties this week for predominantly practical reasons as I was out-of-town on business. Perhaps that makes me an uncommitted activist (which sounds like a truthful, yet oxymoronic statement), but I am not sure if I would have attended even if I had been in town. Why? I have to admit I became a bit disgruntled by the way that some mediatainment figures and GOPers such as Sean Hannity latched on in association with the event. I respectively leave Glen Beck off the list based on the speech he gave in San Antonio and the generally anti-Washington sentiment (yes, both parties) he has been pushing lately.

The mainstream media has been correct in reporting that the message in the tea parties is inconsistent. But, to me, that is ok. Some are anti-Obama and pro-GOP. Some are anti-tax. Some are pro-Constitution. Some are just plain anti-government. However, from what I saw, they were decidedly not only right-wing propaganda in support of the Republicans. This is why it pained me to see the likes of Hannity involved. But, the reporting which I saw from both MSNBC and CNN was deplorable. It was disgusting, childish, and partisan.

*****

I have not yet had a chance to read the report from the Department of Homeland Security on right-wing extremists groups. (It is disappointing that I could not find the report on the DHS website.) The Thomas More Law Center has filed suit.