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My Beautiful and Talented Wife (The BTW) pointed me to this story from Lisa de Moraes in this morning's Washington Post about what's available to watch on cable TV today.  The money quote:

And nothing says "founding fathers" like a 17-hour MSNBC "To Catch a Predator" marathon, including two blocks of extra-special "Predator Raw: The Unseen Tapes.

I'm heading to the movies, where Maxwell Smart and Indiana Jones await.

Stan asks an excellent question:

If consumers are willing to pay higher prices for gasoline, why should we think that energy companies are going to do anything but charge those higher prices?

I'm not one who blames oil companies for high prices.  I'm more impressed by how quiet the media gets when oil prices are low.  In the U.S., we act as if God decreed low energy prices. We act as if the laws of supply and demand don't apply to us.

You don't have to spend much time driving in Europe to see the difference that high gasoline taxes make.  People drive smaller cars, mostly diesel fueled, and public transportation is first class.  People also live very close to their jobs and to all the services they need.  They actually walk to market.  What a concept?  It keeps you slim too!  Try walking to most U.S. stores, and you're very likely to end up as a pedestrian fatality.

Oil is undoubtedly a private good, but it's one that takes a lot of investment and a long time to bring to market.  As we economists like to say, oil supply is quite inelastic in the short-run and inelastic in the long-run too.  Demand for oil is quite inelastic in the short-run and inelastic in the long-run too.  Therefore, price volatility is to be expected.  However, despite repeated experience to the contrary, Americans never seem to get used to oil price volatility.  Neither does our government.

Our federal and state governments subsidize gasoline, tax gasoline, restrict the refining of gasoline, impose stringent air pollution requirements on the refining and use of gasoline, and fail completely to buffer the price volatility of gasoline.

An economist facing such a situation would generally recommend a variable tax to even out such price volatility and to establish a rational long-run incentive to increase oil supply, to increase conservation of its use, and to create alternatives.  We simply don't do that.  What more proof do we need than highways full of SUV's and an army of unemployed auto workers?

We did establish the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in 1975, but we restricted it's primary mission to "national security" and not to "economic security."  Furthermore, it stores crude oil, not gasoline, so it's of little short run use.

Our refineries are operating at peak capacity, and there's no spare capacity to be had because we don't like foul smelling air near any of us.

What to do???  As my kids say, "DAAAAA!!!" Cut back on the use of gasoline, establish a variable tax to stabilize its long-run price, and develop alternative fuels.  We have the know-how; we have the ability; we just lack the will.

The top line numbers in today's Employment Situation news release from the BLS showed net job losses in the establishment survey (-62,000), making for a total of 438,000 net jobs (0.32%) lost since the December peak, and the unemployment rate holding steady at 5.5 percent.

With more bad news, we are likely to hear news reports about the unequal burden of the labor market contraction.  I was curious in particular to see how female heads of household were faring.  The BLS reports their unemployment rate on a seasonally unadjusted basis, so the following chart shows 40 years of annual data, measured in June of each year, for all persons (in the civilian noninstitutionalized population) 16 and over, all women 16 and over, and all female heads of household:

A few features of the chart stand out: 

First, prior to 1980, the unemployment rate for women was always a percentage point or more higher than that for the whole population.  Since 1980, it has averaged only 0.2 percentage points higher. 

Second, in the few years before 1975, the unemployment rate for female heads of household was reliably below the unemployment rate for all women.  Since then, it has averaged nearly two percentage points higher.  

Third, this gap narrowed to about 1.5 percentage points between 1999 and 2001.  It has since averaged over 2.2 percentage points and has ticked up since last June.

At some point in the past month or so, John McCain and Barak Obama or their advisors have both said that they will pay for some or all of what they're proposing with reduced military spending. 

The problem is that, even if all US troops are withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan, it's not at all clear that the Pentagon budget will fall much or even at all.

Consider the following:

1. Much of a peace dividend comes from a reduction in the number of people in uniform when the hostilities end.  But an end to all military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan might not result in that reduction.  In fact, the Pentagon is starting to talk about the need to increase the size of the active duty forces.
2. The military has had to pay huge bonuses to get people to enlist and re-enlist.  Presumably that won't be as necessary if hostilities end and if unemployment continues to rise.  But compensation is going to have to increase in some way and personnel costs are already more than half of the Pentagon budget.
3. Even before Iraq and Afghanistan, there was a general assumption that weapons would have to start to be updated starting around 2010.  Add to that the impact of what was used in Iraq and Afghanistan and procurement costs are likely to be increasing.
4. I'm told that the problems at Walter Reed can be found at many other active duty military hospitals.  If true, that should become obvious as more troops return and are treated.
5. And, although it's not counted in the Pentagon budget, veterans spending will be increasing as Iraq-Afghanistan veterans increasingly get treatment from the VA.

And, of course, this assumes that no other military problem arises in the next few years.

So where are the savings that everyone appears to be relying on?

The New York Times and other media outlets reported today that Rush Limbaugh has signed a contract extension through 2016 worth about $400 million.  Perhaps with an eye toward higher marginal tax rates in the years to come, about $100 million is in the form of a signing bonus.

I think Rush Limbaugh could lay claim to being the original blogger.  The core of his 3-hour weekday show is Limbaugh's commentary on and parody of what newsmakers have said.  Roll an audio clip.  Criticize or find an inconsistency in the speaker's argument.  Lampoon the speaker in the process.  Reaffirm ideological views.  Roll another clip.  He makes no apologies for his conservative ideology and his partisan edge.  You find a lot of this in the blogosphere, except that Limbaugh constructs and distributes his work as audio rather than as text. 

Consider this quote from this Sunday's New York Times Magazine cover story by Zev Chafets.

“Rush is a master at framing an issue and creating a community around it,” says Susan Estrich, who ran Michael Dukakis’s 1988 presidential campaign and has since become a talk-show host herself.

That sounds a lot like what many successful bloggers do.  Listeners can "comment" by calling the show and asking the host a question. 

Consider as well this statement by Karl Rove:

“Rush has completely remade American politics by offering an alternative to the networks and CNN,” [Karl] Rove told me. “For 20 years he has been the leader of his own parade.”

Many bloggers would also characterize their work as providing such an alternative.  Same objective, different medium.

Here's my favorite excerpt from the article:

At dinner the night before, Bill O'Reilly’s name came up, and Limbaugh expressed his opinion of the Fox cable king. He hadn’t been sure at the time that he wanted it on the record. But on second thought, “somebody’s got to say it,” he told me. “The man is Ted Baxter.”

Read the whole thing.

Stan asks an interesting question:

If consumers are willing to pay higher prices for gasoline, why should we think that energy companies are going to do anything but charge those higher prices?

We should not think anything but that, except that we should acknowledge that producers of any good might be willing to trade off some short term profits for greater profits over the longer term.  With gasoline, we are certainly not in that environment, whether or not we ever were.  (Were low energy prices of past decades "teaser" rates?  Did we get discounts on our first "hits" of petroleum?)

He then asks two other questions that come up in various guises when dealing with economic policy:

In other words, in what's supposed to be a market-driven economy, aren't we complaining about the market working?

[...]

Finally, are we starting to think of gasoline as a public good that the government should provide?

On the first of these questions, people complain about the workings of the market all the time.  Well functioning markets allocate resources to those who value them the most--in the sense of being willing to pay the most for them.  The end result of that allocation may strike some as unfair or unjust, particularly if endowments of those resources were initially distributed in arbitrary and unequal ways.  It is my view--an opinion based on a reading of history and an observation of current events--that most interventions that might be done in the workings of the market (i.e., in the determination of the prices as opposed to the distribution of the initial endowments) make matters worse.

On the second of these questions, we absolutely should not think of gasoline as a public good.  Public goods have a specific definition, related to being non-rival in consumption (my consumption of the good doesn't preclude your consumption of it) and non-excludable (the producer of the good cannot prevent consumers from consuming it).  A gallon of gas has neither of these characteristics.  High prices should lead, over time, to more supply.  If government regulations or taxes are interfering with that expansion, that should be the principal focus of government activity.

Pete's post on gasoline prices obviously hit a nerve.

So here's my question:

If consumers are willing to pay higher prices for gasoline, why should we think that energy companies are going to do anything but charge those higher prices?

Much of this was prompted by Pete's post.  We..and I'm definitely including myself in this category...have lives that assumed that relatively cheap energy would continue.  We have gas guzzling cars, like air conditioning, drive many miles to work, haven't supported mass transit or oil altenatives, etc.   We might not like today's higher prices, but didn't we set ourselves up for this?  Whosever said that prices would always be low?

In other words, in what's supposed to be a market-driven economy, aren't we complaining about the market working?

Yes, I know that supply is being set by a cartel.  But given the amount of refining capability and the worldwide demand, it's not clear to me that pumping more oil would make that much of a price difference in the current environment anyway. 

And even if they could refine more, if prices and profits are higher elsewhere, why should we assume that the additional gasoline will be sold here?

Finally, are we starting to think of gasoline as a public good that the government should provide?

Andrew, as usual, asks an interesting question: "...how long it should take people to make up their minds about how to cast their ballots..."?

Unless the situation has changed dramatically in the past few years, the answer is that the overwhelming number of voters have already decided who they are going to vote for.  Indeed, most voters make up their minds long before the balloting is ever conducted.  My guess is that as much as 80 percent of the electorate know from the start who they are supporting.  That's especially true in the general election where party affiliation, which is obviously known from the start, rather than any issue, is the most important reason for most people.

In most presidential elections, the big question is where the remaining 20 percent or so are going.  Except in years like 1964 and 1972, the indications are that most of these voters really don't start to focus on the election until after Labor Day.  Unlike we denizens of the political and economic blogosphere who live and breath this stuff, for most people most elections take a back seat to to summer vacations, back-to-school, and, believe it or not, the World Series.

This election may be different.  I continue to be struck by the number of political professionals who tell me that it's not clear whether traditional voting patterns will hold this year.  They point to three things: the fact that an African-American will be the nominee for one of the two major political parties for the first time, the anger from Republicans as well as Democrats towards George Bush, and the very large increase in turnout during the Democratic primaries and low turnout in the GOP primaries.

Much of the election fatigue Andrew may be feeling has to do with the process of selecting the nominee rather than the general election campaign.  The truth is that, except at the most general level, the average person in that 20 percent doesn't pay much attention to primaries and caucuses.  Plus, Democrats and Republicans have generally been following just the candidates for their own party's nomination.  That means that, as crazy as it sounds after everything that's happened the past seven months or so, Obama and McCain now have to introduce themselves to the part of the electorate that hasn't made up its mind and will likely decide the election.

So the answer to your question is that we have a long way to go.

I was wondering over the past few days, particularly with the recent media attention devoted to General Wesley Clark's appearance on Face the Nation and its several day aftermath in the news media, how long it should take people to make up their minds about how to cast their ballots in an election like this year's primaries or general election.  The relevance Clark's interview is that I think it is a good example of a political celebrity saying something that is not well considered (to put it charitably), easy to sensationalize in an excerpt, and of almost no consequence in helping voters decide which candidate to support.

Suppose that you had all candidates' websites available and a few nationally televised debates covering domestic and foreign policy were scheduled.  What more would you need?  A few hours on a single day?  Several hours spread over a few days?  Many hours spread over a few weeks?  A couple of hours a week spread over a few months?  I think these categories cover most peoples' answers.  But our current system, which I might charitably describe as many months of campaigning accompanied by daily media inundation, seems to take more time and achieve less in terms of helping voters make intelligent decisions.

The current schedule wasn't designed with the current media environment in mind.  If we cut the duration of the campaign season in half, would we get rid of more news or more noise, like the Clark interview?  I think it would be the latter.

Up on Capitol Hill today, talking to a senior Democratic Senate staff protege, I was asked "What can we do to counter the Republicans on offshore drilling for oil?"  My response was, "There is no short-term fix to our long-term energy problems.  Drilling won't do it because it will take years to land any oil."  "Yes, but the voters think it's going to help now."  I responded, "Now you're asking me for cosmetics, not a solution."

In a nutshell, that's why we're 58% dependent upon foreign oil.  Every time we have an energy crisis, in 1973, 1979, 1990, and 2008, we rush short-term expedients and cosmetics into law without doing much to solve the long-term problem.  If we were serious about the long-term problem we would never have allowed gas guzzling SUV's onto the road; we wouldn't have starved mass transportation; we would have developed much more renewable energy; we would have done a lot more conservation; and MOST OF ALL we wouldn't have allowed prices to decline after the crisis, killing energy saving investments and leading us right back to profligate energy consumption.

Our energy policy is like our diets.  We diet frequently, but we never stick to our diets long enough or change our lifestyles enough to lose weight. Then, when diabetes and heart disease sets in, we rush to our doctors for the miracle cure that isn't there.

Minnesota Mom's comment to Stan's post on gasoline prices yesterday was right on.  She said, "Whether it is perceived as cheap or expensive really isn't the point. The rapid run up in price has done a number across US economy -- the ensuing inflation is a ripple that effects the price of all goods."  That's what oil prices do, they're volatile. 

Take at look at this Energy Information Agency graph of real (inflation adjusted) gasoline prices at the pump since 1919.  What do you see?  Do you see an upward trend, a downward trend, or a flat trend?  Depending upon the time period, you can see all of the above.  What happens right after every price surge?  Prices drop back to where there were or lower.  Now that we're setting an all-time record, it's hard to imagine gasoline prices dropping that far, but, if history is any guide, eventually that's what will happen.

The policy error is to allow prices to drop that much.  Of course high gasoline prices exact a terrible personal toll and slow the economy.  Today, on the radio as I was driving to Capitol Hill, I heard a poor woman from rural Pennsylvania describe how she had to choose between paying her mortgage and setting aside enough to buy the heating oil to heat her home this winter.  Finally, she decided to ease that choice by cancelling her health insurance! There's something wrong when Americans have to make such choices.  However, we do need to keep energy prices from falling below the thresholds necessary to insure the creation of more domestic energy production and to develop the conservation and production technologies that will get us out of this mess.  After suffering gasoline prices well over $4/gallon this summer, would we have the sense to use taxes devoted to conservation and production technologies to keep that price from dropping below $3.50/gallon or $3/gallon?

Until we learn to live with somewhat higher energy prices, we'll continue to be at the mercy of OPEC and of periodic energy crises.  As long as we demand quick fixes from our political leaders, that's all we will get -- quick fixes that don't work.

The Washington Post ran an op-ed yesterday with the title, "5 Myths About the Death Of the American Factory," by Gilbert Kaplan, an international trade lawyer.  He opens with a bad premise:

Sure, U.S. banking is in trouble, but the longer-term and possibly more damaging threat to the nation's prosperity is the decline of the manufacturing sector.

This is the sort of appeal to industrial policy that governments would be wise to avoid.  Our prosperity is based on our ability to create value in the employment of factors of production that we own (i.e., land, labor, and all sorts of capital).  It is not based on the success of any one sector of the economy, as long as value is being created in other sectors.  To use Kaplan's (weak) line of reasoning against him, how can his statement about the critical role of manufacturing be true when manufacturing is now less than 12 percent of GDP?  (See this table.)

Here's his list:

1. It's all about cheap wages. American workers are just paid too much.
2. U.S. manufacturers can save themselves by investing in innovation.
3. Trade laws and trade agreements level the playing field for U.S. manufacturers.
4. Good management can make U.S. manufacturers lean enough to fight in the international economy.
5. We make high-tech goods here, so we're okay. It's only schlock items that come from abroad.

On #1, #2, and #4, I don't think there is any sense in arguing that the manufacturing sector wouldn't be doing better if wages were lower, if there were more investments in innovation, or if there were better management.  So these parts are simply a matter of hitting some threshold Kaplan has in mind, whether to "save themselves" or "to fight in the international economy." Point #5 confounds what we produce with what we consume and so doesn't make much sense as written.  As I noted above, we only need care about valuable deployment of our factors of production--schlock or high-tech doesn't matter nearly as much.

Point #3 gets more to the heart of his argument.  Kaplan argues, correctly I think, that we don't use our trade laws primarily to advantage our producers.  We use our trade laws to try to promote global trade, which in many cases means giving other countries open access to the U.S. consumer without insisting on corresponding advantages for domestic manufacturers.  We could take a more aggressive posture.  We would conclude fewer trade deals and we would raise prices to the U.S. consumer.  And as a matter of policy, that is what we have been very reluctant to do this.  Consider the example of Airbus, which Kaplan cites as an example of succesful trade promotion by European governments.  If those governments want to tax their citizens to provide cheap aircraft for U.S. citizens and others to use, why should we stop them?

This also helps explain why government officials continue to maintain their "strong dollar" rhetoric, even as the dollar is sliding.  Historically, this rhetoric seems to translate into a policy of allowing other countries to intervene in foreign exchange markets to keep the value of the dollar high, advantaging their producers and our consumers and disadvantaging their consumers and our producers, while the U.S. government does not explicitly intervene.  Like our hands off approach to trade policy, this is a policy choice that keeps the U.S. consumer more comfortable.

That policy outcome is coming under more pressure as macroeconomic prices like oil and foreign exchange become more expensive.  The former will hurt manufacturing and the latter will help it, to the extent that it is export-oriented.  But nothing about the current environment suggests the need to promote manufacturing per se, or any other sector of the economy above others.

See also Don Boudreaux at Cafe Hayek for a reaction to the op-ed.

Back in April, I wrote about New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine's "testicular fortitude" when he announced a 2009 budget that proposed tp reduce spending below the previous year by eliminating three whole departments and 5000 jobs.  I was, and continue to be, extremely impressed with what Corzine proposed.

Unfortunately, it doesn't appear as if New Jersey voters are as impressed.  Since he proposed the budget, Corzine's approval ratings have dropped steadily and the primary reason appears to be the spending cuts he proposed.

The irony is that a previous New Jersey governor, Jim Florio, was bounced from office in 1993 partly because he dared to propose tax increases.  Florio then lost the Democratic nomination to Corzine in 2000 when he tried to run again.

So it appears that New Jersey voters don't want a governor who increases taxes and may not want one who cuts spending, but they also want the state's credit rating restored and the budget situation fixed.  In other words, they want a fiscal magician.

Last Wednesday's report on WTOP, the all-news radio station here in Washington, was both startling and priceless.  I'm paraphrasing the second part of this quote, but the beginning is exactly what I heard:

"Well-fed policymakers later today will be deciding whether to increase interest rates."

 It took me a minute or two to realize that the reporter was really saying:

"Well, Fed policymakers later today will be deciding whether to increase interest rates."

The more I think about it, I'm not sure what was actually being reported.  After all, lunch is almost certainly provided at these meetings.

First, some full disclosure: In my day job I have a number of mortgage lending industry clients.?? None of them knows about or were involved in this post in any way.

Dean Baker has a post today using his usual excellent analytic abilities to dissect a story in today's New York Times about the current state of the mortgage issue.?? While I don't always agree with Dean's sense of outrage, his post is definitely worth looking at after you read the Times.

One thing the article and Dean fail to point out is that the housing/mortgage crisis isn't really one problem; it's a steady series of different problems that absolutely defy a single or simple solution.?? Lumping them together as "The Crisis" as the Times does complicates the public policy process.

The problems may have started out when some (but hardly all) subprime borrowers were not able to make their monthly payments as their adjustable rate mortgages adjusted.??

But it then included prime borrowers as well.

Not all of these problems were caused by ARMs.?? As the economy has continued to change, some homeowners with life-changing events such as the loss of a job also began to have a problem.??

Other homeowners are having problems for more traditional reasons -- because one of the wage-earners in the family died or the marriage ended and neither of the now divorced partners can afford the home by themselves.?? But this too is being lumped together even though the rate of death and divorce has not changed much.

Property values have also fallen for a number of different reasons including overbuilding of new homes and a changing market that has made it much harder to sell existing homes.

Credit is also more difficult to come by and more expensive.

This has led to homeowners having to go to closing with cash or to propose short sales which may not be acceptable to first and second mortgage holders.?? It has also led to some homeowners simply turning in their keys and wallking away from their homes.

And, as a number of stories in recent weeks have revealed, some renters are being thrown out of their homes because their landlords have defaulted on the mortgages to the buidlings in which they are renting.

Add to this other things such as falling property values that have made the homes worth less than the mortgage or the mortage plus the home equity loan.

Everything being discussed today in Washington or elsewhere only deals with one part of an already complex issue that is getting more complicated as conditions change. Simple solutions that only deal with one part of the problem won't end the overall condition and no one shodl expect that to happen.

You're playing golf.?? You're on the 4th hole.?? It's a par 4 and you do it in 3.?? (I know this is hard to believe; just work with me.)

You got a birdie on that 4th hole so, according to golf vernacular, you're "minus 1" or 1 below par.?? But you actually have 3 more strokes than you had at the end of the previous hole, so you're actually "plus 3."

So which is it, minus 1 or plus 3?

I was asked the equivalent of that question yesterday during a presentation I was making on the 2008 election.?? But even though I was the last speaker before the morning session ended and everyone in the room was about to head out with a box lunch for the first tee, the question was about gasoline prices rather than golf.

The question was why were Americans so angry about the price of gasoline when we were paying so much less than most of the rest of the world.

Coincidentlaly, the New York Times today has an interesting, although hardly groundbreaking, article about just that. The chart from the article shows that, including taxes, 12 countries have a lower price per gallon of gasoline than the U.S., while 18 have a higher price.?? All of those with a lower price are oil producing countries.

But my response to the question at the conference had little to do with this chart.?? The issue for most Americans is not what they're paying compared to the rest of the world, it's what they're paying now compared to the about half this number they were paying not that long ago.

By that standard, American anger about the rising price for gasoline is completely understandable.?? By the world standard, it is not.

There are two interesting aspects to this question.??

First, everyone agrees on the number.?? Like the golf example, no one disputes the score.?? The controversy is how to interpret it.

Second, my very strong suspicion is no candidate for office will be able to convincingly and successfully say that that Americans should be happy with the price of gasoline because it's low compared to what consumers pay in other countries.?? That would be the equivalent of telling the golfer that she or he has to refer to their play as 3 more rather than 1 less.?? Anyone who has ever been on a course knows that will never happen.

Wait!?? There's More.?? EconomistMom has a post this morningabout a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll that, among other things, seems to validate why trying to explain with rational arguments why energy prices are rising won't work.

As noted by a commenter on Stan's post, the SAFE Commission struck out as an amendment in committee to a financial services appropriations bill.  Here's how CongressDaily reported it.  Stan was certainly on the money, when he anticipated a reaction that the Congress would not want to outsource its duties (presumably to contine the status quo in which they are simply not being done by anyone):

House Appropriations Chairman David Obey blasted the idea because the commission would be able to force appropriators to implement a solution that they would have no hand in creating and might not be workable.

"This is a great prescription for giving outside academics [the] right to write legislation, which the Congress is just going to have to vote on," Obey said. "In my view, that process is patently ridiculous."

"We have no business adopting an amendment like this, which is not in our jurisdiction, which would sidetrack this bill; we have no business adopting this with 15 minutes of debate," Obey continued.

The view from the Left, which I predicted in my post, was certainly present in the debate:

The debate was turned up a notch by Rep. Steven Rothman, D-N.J., who argued that Republican economic policies, including tax cuts for the wealthy, are responsible for turning a budget surplus in 2000 into a deficit of about $317 billion during the first eight months of FY08, according to CBO.

"Take responsibility for the economic philosophy that you espouse," said Rothman, who added that the upcoming presidential election will be a referendum on Republican economic policies.

What was the response from the Right?

Rep. Mike Simpson, R-Idaho, was not impressed by Rothman's argument.

"That's bullshit," he responded.

Later, Simpson, who voted to attach the provision to the appropriations bill, explained that Rothman's remarks were partisan and distracted from an attempt to seriously debate an important matter.

"We were having a legitimate debate about how to solve the issue ... and Rothman gets up and turns it into a partisan debate. ... That doesn't solve the problem and what we have to do is solve the problem and get away from all the partisan horseshit; that is why I said it," Simpson said.

The question for Representative Simpson, then, is whether he would be willing to trade something like "making the tax cuts permanent" in order to make the SAFE Commission a reality.  Is there room to deal?

Between now and the November elections, we will likely hear Senator McCain describe his preferences for Supreme Court nominees who will not "legislate from the bench."  I think the liberal wing of the court--including Justice Kennedy writing for the 5-4 majority--gave him a clear example of legislating from the bench in today's Kennedy v. Louisiana decision.  From The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — The death penalty is unconstitutional as a punishment for the rape of a child, a sharply divided Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.

The court went beyond the question in the case to rule out the death penalty for any individual crime — as opposed to “offenses against the state,” such as treason or espionage — “where the victim’s life was not taken.”

[...]

The case, Kennedy v. Louisiana, No. 07-343, was an appeal by one of the two Louisiana inmates, Patrick Kennedy. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 2003 for raping his 8-year-old stepdaughter, whose injuries were severe enough to require emergency surgery. The Louisiana Supreme Court upheld Mr. Kennedy’s conviction and rejected his challenge to the constitutionality of his sentence.

Why do I think this is "legislating from the bench?"  See Justice Alito's dissent, quoted at Volokh Conspiracy:

A major theme of the Court’s opinion is that permitting the death penalty in child-rape cases is not in the best interests of the victims of these crimes and society at large. In this vein, the Court suggests that it is more painful for child-rape victims to testify when the prosecution is seeking the death penalty. Ante, at 32. The Court also argues that “a State that punishes child rape by death may remove a strong incentive for the rapist not to kill the victim,” ante, at 35, and may discourage the reporting of child rape, ante, at 34–35.

These policy arguments, whatever their merits, are simply not pertinent to the question whether the death penalty is “cruel and unusual” punishment. The Eighth Amendment protects the right of an accused. It does not authorize this Court to strike down federal or state criminal laws on the ground that they are not in the best interests of crime victims or the broader society. The Court’s policy arguments concern matters that legislators should—and presumably do—take into account in deciding whether to enact a capital child-rape statute, but these arguments are irrelevant to the question that is before us in this case. Our cases have cautioned against using “ ‘the aegis of the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause’ to cut off the normal democratic processes,” Atkins v. Virginia, 536 U. S. 304, 323 (2002) (Rehnquist, C. J., dissenting), in turn quoting Gregg v. Georgia, 428 U. S. 153, 176 (1976), (joint opinion of Stewart, Powell, and STEVENS, JJ.), but the Court forgets that warning here.

Read the whole post.  I expect this decision to come up with some regularity in the remainder of the campaign.

Pete started this and Andrew added smartly to the discussion.  Here are a few thoughts from someone who has served on a budget-related commission and watched while many others crashed and burned.

1.  It's extremely rare that federal commissions ever solve problems.  They are usually a way to delay taking action on some issue.

2.  The only exception to #1 I can think of is the commissions that have dealt with military base closures.  But this is also the exception that proves the rule.  The base closure commissions were successful because they were created when a consensus had developed that their recommendations more or less would be followed.

3.  There is no such consensus on entitlements.

4.  In fact, there is no consensus of any kind on entitlements.

5.  There has been at least one entitlement commission in the relatively recent past.  It's recommendations went absolutely nowhere, and that was when the deficit was considered to be more of an issue than it is today.

6.  There absolutely is no way to take the politics out of an inherently political decision -- reducing entitlement spending.  That what "a commission" purports to do and it virtually has to fail when the politics of the decision are intractable.

7.  The politics of entitlements are indeed intractable.

8.  A commission cannot make the decisions the U.S. Constitution gives to Congress.  A commission may make recommendations to Congress, but the actual decisions to cut spending or or increase revenues have to be made by Congress itself.

9.  If Congress could make these decisions we wouldn't need a commission in the first place.

Pete is right to say that deficit hawks should unite, but I don't know if the SAFE Act is enough.  It calls for a commission to address:

1. the unsustainable imbalance between long-term federal spending commitments and projected revenues;
2. increases in net national savings to provide for domestic investment and economic growth;
3. the implications of foreign ownership of federally issued debt instruments; and
4. revision of the budget process to place greater emphasis on long-term fiscal issues.

I agree that within a generation, the cost of our long-term entitlement programs will push our fiscal situation into very dire straits.  Our long-term problems will have become short-term problems because we let our current window of opportunity to resolve them close.  But the language in the bill does not mention, and the SAFE Commission would only tangentially have anything to say about, the fact that we cannot bring ourselves to balance the on-budget (or non-OASDHI) deficit to zero.  And until we do that, or unless the SAFE Commission is explicitly empowered to address that in addition to the long-term entitlements, I think that meaningful reform of long-term entitlements is dead in the water politically.

Mind you, I do not use the imbalance in the on-budget account as an excuse for sanctioning the growing imbalance in long-term entitlements.  But the Left, to whom the size of the long-term entitlement safety net is an important policy objective, is entirely justified in resisting a Commission that ignores the rest of the budget.  Had we actually used the Social Security surplus to pre-fund (not just pre-authorize) future Social Security benefits, the task of the Commission would not be so severe.  A dollar is a dollar. 

Instead, the Left will say, had we not transformed trillions in projected surpluses into trillions in projected deficits, then the outstanding debt of the government a generation from now would be much smaller, and future taxpayers could accommodate more of the projected deficits in the long-term entitlements.  A dollar is a dollar.

My disagreement with the Left is that I am more concerned about the intergenerational equity issues here than the intragenerational equity issues. My disagreement with the Left is not that there is some logical inconsistency in the arguments above. 

I think Representatives Cooper and Wolf are on the side of the angels here.  I just think their Commission needs to be more comprehensive in its mandate than what has been proposed.

For more on these issues, see these Vox Baby classics:

• Chairman Ben and the Long-Term Budget
• Which Budget Deficit to Target?
• Rove and Mythology
• The Center for a Responsible Federal Budget

Enjoy!

Deficit hawks are a band of brothers as Shakespeare put it.  We didn't shed any blood in 1415 at the Battle of Agincourt, but we have fought the good fight for deficit reduction on Capitol Hill and across the country.  No two men stand taller in this band of brothers than Pete Peterson and David Walker.  Both appeared before the House Budget Committee this morning to urge the adoption of Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-WI) and Rep. Frank Wolf's (R-VA) Securing America's Future Economy Commission Act, H.R.3654.

Washington commissions are notorious for producing legislative recommendations that go nowhere because they're the right thing to do, but you will lose your next election if you vote for them.  I hope this won't be the case with this one.

The political wisdom exhibited in this bill reflects very well on Reps. Ryan and Wolf and their staffs. They would establish a 16-member commission, comprised of the Secretary of Treasury, the OMB Director, four members of Congress (two from each party), and eight other experts, who will formulate a report and recommended legislation within a year to restrain entitlement spending and to reform the tax system to restore fiscal sustainability and promote economic growth and generational equity.  The proposed legislation, or alternatives from the President or the House Budget Committee, would get priviledged consideration by Congress to ease its way into law.

Neither campaign is spending much time telling younger voters how much debt their parents and grandparents have already accumulated for them and how much more is still to come.  Former Commerce Secretary Pete Peterson says the answer is a staggering $53 TRILLION.  He wrote a book, Facing Up, on this in 1993, which I was priviledged to work on, and Dave Walker has been tireless in sending this message as Comptroller General of the Government Acountability Office and now as President and CEO of the just established Peter G. Peterson Foundation.

As Shakespeare put it, "For he to-day that sheds his blook with me Shall be my brother."