A letter to Senator John Cornyn

I am planning to send the following letter to my Senator, John Cornyn who has the audacity to claim he represents me or a substantial portion of his constituency. If I am feeling particularly bold, I may even send this to Ted Cruz (god forbid.)

This letter contains some very blunt portions. In my final letter, I will make some minor revisions on these blunt portions in order to improve its persuasiveness: after all, if you are insulting the person you want to convert, then you are, by definition, fighting an uphill battle. I will also write in my name at the bottom.

Without further ado:

Senator John Cornyn,

I have one single question for you: what are you going to be doing to stop the gradual return of unfettered special interest influence in Washington DC?

For decades, really picking up since the advent of political advertising on television, the U.S. political system’s maddening addiction to money, predominantly sourced from special interest groups, has caused Congress to become more and more detached from the needs of the nation and from reality itself.

The problem has been exacerbated by Citizens United v. FEC, which opened the floodgates to theoretically unlimited and more importantly unaccountable money that has flooded our nation’s airwaves with negative and sometimes factually incorrect advertising via the Super PAC (this lack of transparency even goes directly against the wishes of Justice Kennedy’s opinion, which emphasized that Americans needed to know where the money was sourced). During the 2010 midterm elections and again in the 2012 presidential election, inordinate amounts of this Super PAC money was spent, often crushing the political aspirations those who were less well funded.

I, along with many of my fellow Americans, have had enough.

Why is campaign finance reform important?

The first answer comes from Princeton professor Larry Bartel. He conducted an excellent study published in 2005 on Senate voting patterns in the late 1980s and the early 1990s, and observed that you, as a U.S. Senator, don’t seem to give a damn about the poor.

Here’s what he writes:

“My analyses suggest that the views of constituents in the upper third of the income distribution received about 50% more weight than those in the middle third (with even larger disparities on specific salient roll call votes), while the views of constituents in the bottom third of the income distribution received no weight at all in the voting decisions of their senators.” [Emphasis my own.]

Although statisticians caution against making too many extrapolations, one could easily imagine that the new campaign finance landscape enabled at Citizens United has actually made the problem even worse today.

Professor Bartel concluded, “the economic order of the contemporary United States poses a clear and profound obstacle to realizing the democratic value of political equality.” What he failed to mention was that the maddening effect our current system of financing campaigns is directly related to the tendency to overemphasize the views of deranged billionaires. As The Center for Responsive Politics astutely pointed out, during the 2010 midterm election, only 0.26 percent of Americans made campaign contributions exceeding $200, and only .05 percent reached the $2,400 limit. Worse, only 10 percent of Americans made a political donation at all. Although a large number of small donations remain a substantial source of funding for politicians, it is largely overshadowed by a small number of large donations. In other words, the people who fund your political campaigns is horribly lopsided towards the wealthy.

The second answer gives you a compelling personal reason to take up arms against the current system of campaign finance. Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig estimates that congressmen spend anywhere between 30 percent to an appalling 70 percent of their time fundraising. That’s time not spent doing casework for constituents, researching more about the most pertinent issues of the day, or, you know, actually reading your legislation. This fundraising also more than likely includes little quality time actually spent with constituents, many of whom have requests themselves about how you should vote.

In order words, in meaningful campaign finance reform that includes provisions for a robust publicly funded election system, you would be able to spend more time connecting with constituents and, you know, actually representing them. This would restore fundamental republican principles of our governmental system.

The third answer comes from your fellow politicians, state congressmen from states such as Arizona, Maine, and Connecticut that have varying levels of publicly funded election systems. Professor Lessig explains in his excellent book, Republic Lost:

Though the details of these programs are different, the basic structure of all three is the same: candidates qualify by raising a large number of small contributions; once qualified, the candidates receive funding from the state to run their campaigns.

…These “clean money,” or “voter-owned,” elections have had important success. Candidates opting into these public funding systems spend more time talking to voters than to funders. They represent a broader range of citizens than the candidates who run with private money alone. And they have succeeded in increasing the competitiveness of state legislative elections, making incumbents if not more vulnerable, then at least more attentive.

With the possible exception of the final point, all of these are wonderful benefits. Even regarding the final point, if your constituents believe that your opponent can do a better job than you at helping run the country, then it is the simple reality of democracy. Who knows? Your opponent might even do a better job, and if they don’t, you can step right back in the next election cycle.

So what can you do to give representation back to the American people and uphold political equality?

There are many solutions out there, but in my opinion, the best one comes from Professor Lessig. Here is how he explains his plan:

Almost every voter pays at least $50 in some form of federal taxes. So imagine a system that gave a rebate of that first $50 in the form of a “democracy voucher.” That voucher could then be given [in part or in whole] to any candidate for Congress who agreed to one simple condition: the only money that candidate would accept to finance his or her campaign would be either “democracy vouchers” or contributions from citizens capped at $100. No PAC money. No $2,500 checks. Small contributions only. And if the voter didn’t use the voucher? The money would pass to his or her party, or, if an independent, back to this public funding system.

Fifty dollars a voter is real money: more than $6 billion an election cycle. (The total raised in 2010: $1.86 billion.) It’s also my money, or your money, used to support the speech that we believe: this is not a public financing system that forces some to subsidize the speech of others. And because a campaign would have to raise its funds from the very many, it could weaken the power of the very few to demand costly kickbacks for their contributions — what the Cato Institute calls “corporate welfare,” like subsidies to ethanol manufacturers, or tariffs protecting the domestic sugar industry. Cato estimates that in 2009, the cost of such corporate welfare was $90 billion. If cutting the link to special interest funders could shrink that amount by just 10 percent, the investment would, across a two-year election cycle, pay for itself three times over.

You can continue to deny that who funds your campaigns has a substantial impact on the way you vote. Hell, many of you and your colleagues appear to believe that climate change is a hoax and are unmoved by any overwhelming body of evidence that contradicts your ideological views, whether or not they are motivated on kissing the asses of the special interests you serve.

A dedicated few have raised the banner to fight special interests. Buddy Roemer believes in comprehensive campaign finance reform and ran for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination. However, the media that hosted the debates, whose funding via commercials is held hostage by the corporations that make up special interest groups, systematically denied his ability to participate in the debates. Among the developed world, only in America can a former governor and congressmen with views dangerous to special interests and greatly beneficial towards public interest and our nation not even get a chance to express his views in a more public forum.

Another, Arnold Hiatt, the chairman of Stride Rite Shoes, has donated millions of dollars supporting the cause of campaign finance reform. In 1996, he was the Democratic Party’s second largest contributor, funding the campaigns of 40 congressional candidates who supported campaign finance reform.

You are in a unique position to join these early heroes. Should you still feel apprehensive about the entire idea, Professor Lawrence Lessig’s excellent book, Republic, Lost, just may convince you otherwise. If you want a shorter read, I outline some of Professor Lessig’s most important points and added in a little bit of my own analysis in a 15-page blog post:

http://rallytorestoresanityandfear.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-case-for-second-square-deal-kicking.html

I thank you for your consideration for reading this rather lengthy letter.

Sincerely,

An extremely concerned constituent

Substantive "Partisanship" versus "Balance"

I have taken some criticism lately about being excessively partisan and believing that views opposing mine are unequivocally wrong. Personally, I think they should differentiate between partisanship spouted out by Fox News and MSNBC and the partisanship of Will McAvoy in The Newsroom.

Here’s the point: partisanship is not necessarily bad to the extent that it offers substantive reasoning and a healthy dose of logic.

Some believe that I am unfair for not addressing “the other side of the story.” However, does the GOP of today have any justification? Can you think of any sensible American that supports crony capitalism and blatant obstructionism? We don’t negotiate with terrorists like al-Qaeda, so we shouldn’t negotiate with the GOP’s economic terrorism.

I completely agree that the Democrats are inefficient and spineless; however, the GOP is complete trash and stands for NO respectable values; ergo, the Democrats are infinitely better than the Republicans because the GOP has zero usefulness towards the public interest. Until the present GOP Congressmen and its rowdy Tea Party splinter are utterly purged from the political sphere and authoritative center-rights regain control in Washington, it doesn’t make sense to condemn Democrats and let the GOP off the hook. Somebody has to take up the mantle; when even The Economist repeatedly falls into the false equivalency syndrome, the GOP are effectively absolved from full responsibility for all the despicable things that they have done for the past 15 years. Bullshit mountain lives on.

Finally, you might be worried that partisanship risks a degree of populism, perhaps akin to the likes of Paul Krugman. This is a very valid concern (in my eyes, the only valid concern), and something that also makes me concerned.

Here’s what I feel: do you think the dry academic professor can inspire the change in views needed even in the face of overwhelming evidence? Does President Obama generate enthusiasm when he is wordy and flat or when he is making jabs at his opponent? An informed, engaged, and energetic electorate is the other side of the equation, but with our attention spans and utter unwillingness to take the time to understand complex issues, stating the facts in a nonpartisan manner will not attract a whole lot of attention (if they were, then think tanks would have more viewership than cable news). It’s not optimal, and it turns off some people, but it’s one of the few valid options one has to draw attention. If you have better ideas, do let me know.

My overall platform is very liberal. However, my pet issues, restraining corporatism and special interests in government, reflect the radical centrism that The Economist says we so desperately need; this second wave of Progressives is sadly missing from today’s discourse. I am not anti-conservative: I respect the increasingly rare center-right that are willing to make meaningful compromises, pursue smart fiscal conservatism, and regulate against negative externalities. This was embodied in the old guard, which included George Romney, Dwight Eisenhower, George H.W. Bush, and even Richard Nixon. I am against the rabid stupidity that is today’s GOP, and am deeply ashamed at anyone who will vote for 90 percent of the Republican candidates out there.

The Republicans' Six Point Economic Plan

The Republican prescription to the economy can best be summed up in a six-point plan:

1.      Deregulate the financial industry, which is guaranteed to create another major crisis one or two decades down the road, at the expense of the 99.9 percent.

2.      Selectively cut red tape that would allow businesses a carte blanche to burden society with negative externalities, but continue byzantine regulation on immigration, taxation, and social issues, making it much harder to attain the American dream.

3.      Aggressively slash taxes for the "job creators," better known as hedge fund managers whose financial speculation brought the country to its knees and (usually) mediocre or shitty CEOs who get ridiculous golden parachutes for running their companies to the ground.

4.      Make draconian cuts towards discretionary spending, the social safety net, infrastructure, and education (which will be replaced by vouchers that mostly benefit the upper middle class and utterly fail to shore up the system as a whole). You know, the same things that promote social mobility, help out the 99.9%, and ensure the longevity of our economy and very social fabric.

5.      Pick winners (fossil fuels) and losers (renewable energy) even as they decry the concept of picking winners and losers.

6.      Run up the debt because their budgetary plans do not even stand up to basic arithmetic, reducing fiscal flexibility in an inevitable future crisis.

The Democrats are far from guilty for bad governance, but this is a warning to anyone who dares to vote Republican. They do not stand for conservative principles such as simplified taxation, free markets, or even fiscal conservatism. They stand for two things: obstructionism and crony capitalism. They cynically attempt to enrich their biggest donors, allowing these deranged millionaires and corporations to contribute more towards campaigns. This results in a vicious cycle.

It saddens me to see that a party that is the laughing stock of the rest of the world remains competitive at all, let alone is dangerously close to regaining power merely 4 years after 8 years of The Washington Consensus triggered a deep crisis in the U.S. and the Eurozone.

The Foolish War on Drugs: Providing More Effective Drug Enforcement

This article draws heavily from an amazing article on the September/October 2011 issue of Foreign Affairs. However, it also draws from other sources and offers some original thoughts and analysis.

On October 7, Mexico’s marines killed Heriberto “The Executioner” Lazcano in a gunfight. Some believe that it could be a major victory for Mexico. Indeed, 25 of the list of 37 suspected cartel leaders Mexico published in 2009 are out of commission, whether arrested, murdered, executed, or in prison.

Despite this, the war on drugs is foolish and costly. So far, all we have succeeded in doing is making America #1 in prison population and letting 50,000 Mexicans die since the escalation of the drug war in 2006. Mark Kleiman, editor of the Journal of Drug Policy Analysis, explains:

The United States sends five times as many drug dealers to prison today as it did 30 years ago, but this has not prevented the 80-90 percent reductions in the prices of cocaine and heroin over that time, which came as a result of falling dealers' wages and increased efficiency in trafficking. Thus, conventional drug enforcement represents a dead end.

Reforms that Don’t Work

1. Legalization of hard drugs

Legalization of drugs, particularly of marijuana, has been gaining ground over the past couple years. While legalization of marijuana makes sense on both humanitarian and fiscal grounds, the picture is more ambiguous for hard drugs.

Kleiman continues:

A small minority of drug users in the United States account for about 80 percent of hard-drug (that is, non-cannabis) consumption and an even larger share of the associated costs of drug abuse, including crime. Among heavy users of hard drugs, about 75 percent have at least one felony arrest in the course of a typical year. Hard drugs account for about 80 percent of the revenue of Mexican drug-trafficking organizations. All this means that reducing the demand for cannabis or the demand for cocaine among casual cocaine users cannot reduce the northbound flow of drugs or the southbound flow of drug money. Shrinking the market would require reducing the hard-drug use of about three million people in the United States who are both heavy users of expensive illicit drugs and also active lawbreakers.

Legalization of marijuana can definitely place financial pressure on cartels, which rely on marijuana for as much as 40 percent of revenues. It would also substantially reduce prison populations. On the other hand, while legalizing hard drugs can increase access to critical health services such as needle exchanges and STD tests, it may not materially improve public health and might not prevent high-induced violent behavior.

2. Drug Courts and Coerced Treatment

Another popular proposal is the use of drug courts to mandate treatment and imprison those who take the drug again during or after rehab. Many Americans agree that drug abuse should be treated primarily as a health problem rather than a criminal problem.

While coerced rehabilitation enforced by criminal penalties seems excellent in theory, it does not work as well in practice because it improperly mixes the treatment and punitive measures. This mixture makes it so that those who are most dependent on drug use are the most likely to be punished. Moreover, racial minorities and lower socioeconomic classes who are more likely to commit (violent) crime to fund their drug abuse are ineligible for drug courts, which undergo stringent background checks. As such, it is conceivable that drug courts sometimes lead to longer sentences than conventional criminal courts.

Kleiman furthers:

Coerced treatment for drug abusers is not very successful, both because drug treatment itself is not very successful and because the coercion is generally more nominal than real. Those on probation or parole are forbidden to use illicit drugs. But that mandate is not effectively enforced. The threat of probation or parole revocation is too severe (and expensive) to be carried out often and not swift or certain enough to change behavior dramatically. As a result, most violations go unpunished. By reducing the severity of the punishment for breaking the rules, it is possible to dramatically increase its swiftness and certainty--and swiftness and certainty matter more than severity in changing behavior.

As a result, drug courts are likely to have mixed results and barely benefit the most dependent people who are responsible for most illicit drug use.

Solutions

The best way to curb drugs and drug violence is fourfold:

• Target the most violence cartels and gangs. When tackling cartels, the aims shouldn't to be to arrest as many leaders as possible, it should be to decrease the level of violence. The best way to do so is to provide a "scorecard" that would identify the most violent cartels and severely crack down on them and only them.

Kleiman enumerates:

The Mexican government could craft and announce a set of violence-related metrics to be applied to each organization over a period of weeks or months. Such a scoring system could consider a group's total number of killings, the distribution of its targets (among other dealers, enforcement agents, ordinary citizens, journalists, community leaders, and elected officials), its use or threat of terrorism, and its nonfatal shootings and kidnappings. Mexican officials have no difficulty attributing each killing to a specific trafficking organization, in part because the organizations boast of their violence rather than trying to hide it. At the end of the scoring period, or once it became clear that one organization ranked first, the police would designate the most violent organization for destruction. That might not require the arrest of the kingpins, as long as the targeted organization came under sufficiently heavy enforcement pressure to make it uncompetitive.

The points of maximum vulnerability for the Mexican trafficking organizations might not even be within Mexico. U.S. law enforcement agencies believe that for every major domestic distribution organization in the United States, they can identify one or more of the six dominant Mexican trafficking organizations as the primary source or sources. If the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration were to announce that its domestic target-selection process would give high priority to distributors supplied by Mexico's designated "most violent organization," the result would likely be a scramble to find new sources.

At the same time, the most violent drug gangs in the U.S. should be aggressively attacked. However, it must also avoid making too many arrests, which would further burden overcrowded prisons.

Kleimen again:

David Kennedy and his colleagues at the National Network for Safe Communities have developed a promising tactic. The Drug Market Intervention strategy, first employed to great success in 2004 in High Point, North Carolina, identifies all the active dealers in a flagrant market area, builds cases against them, arrests and prosecutes a handful of the most violent players, and warns the rest, publicly and simultaneously, that anyone who does not stop dealing is headed to prison. By forcing all the dealers to stop at the same time, the intervention causes the market to disappear literally overnight, and the police make only a handful of arrests in the process. (This is another application of the principle that a credible threat rarely needs to be carried out.) Focusing U.S. domestic b law enforcement on reducing violence and disorder could allow a very substantial cutback in the overall level of drug arrests, prosecutions, and incarcerations. Neither the availability of drugs nor the level of drug abuse in the United States would change dramatically if the current number of drug dealers behind bars were cut in half.

These targeted actions against the most violent groups would not reduce the level of drug trafficking and might even increase violence in the short term by creating disturbances. However, in the long term, they would also considerably decrease the incentives for violence for both sides of the border, which would also increase public support for drug enforcement.

• Renew and revamp the assault weapons ban. Cartels get the lion's share of cheap, convenient weapons from the U.S. In 2010, 80 percent of confiscated assault weapons were traced back to the United States. This would gradually reduce the level of violence over time as ammunition and guns dry up. Of course, the new bill should address loopholes and all automatic weapons, and could even ban ownership of the weapons.

• Increase the compensation of U.S. border guards and law enforcement officials in Latin America. The U.S. can siphon off the enormous funds it uses to maintain its overcrowded prisons to help Mexico fund this. Because the wages of Mexican police officers are very low and their lives are overtly threatened by drug cartels, they have every incentive supplement their income and protect themselves and their families with corruption. Along with the reduction of violence that would accompany the two recommendations above, increased compensation would make enforcement significantly better.

• The HOPE program should be aggressively pursued. Kleiman elaborates:

Frequent or random drug testing, with a guaranteed short jail stay (as little as two days) for each incident of detected use, can have remarkable efficacy in reducing offenders’ drug use: Hawaii's now-famous HOPE project manages to get 80 percent of its long-term methamphetamine users clean and out of confinement after one year. The program more than pays for itself by reducing the incarceration rate in that group to less than half that of a randomly selected control group under probation as usual. HOPE participants are not forced to receive drug treatment; instead, they are required to stop using drugs. About 15 percent fail repeatedly, and that small group is ordered into treatment, but most succeed without it. Fewer than ten percent wind up back in prison.

These impressive results have led to similar efforts in Alaska, Arizona, California, and Washington State; where the HOPE model is faithfully followed, the outcomes are as consistent and positive as those in Hawaii. The U.S. federal government is set to sponsor four new attempts to reproduce those results. If HOPE were to be successfully implemented as part of routine probation and parole supervision, the resulting reduction in drug use could shrink the market--and thus the revenue of Mexico's drug-trafficking organizations--by as much as 40 percent. The potential gains on both sides of the border justify the attempt, despite the daunting managerial challenges.

Because Hawaii is far smaller and therefore imposes a smaller footprint on the government, the results in this program may not be easily replicated. This makes the implementation elsewhere expensive and a bureaucratic nightmare. It would be important for the administrators of successful pilot programs to advise other fledging ones throughout the nation.

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The war on drugs has created severe problems throughout the Americas. In the U.S., it has triggered prison overpopulation and drug dealing violence without reducing the overall level of drug usage. In the Americas, cartels kill many civilians, law enforcement, and reformist politicians, and entrench corruption and crony governance, making it more difficult to solve other social and economic issues. Smart drug policy would help reduce both of these effects.

Syria on the Brink: Using Smart Power to Reduce the Risk of Sectarian Warfare

On March 2011, when Qaddafi gained dangerous ground over the rebels and was about to annihilate Benghazi, the UNSC agreed to a NATO-enforced no-fly zone. However, NATO soon went beyond its stated intentions, performing missions on Qaddafi’s forces on the ground and arming the rebels. In the months after Qaddafi was deposed and executed in October, these unaccountable arms became a major headache: programs for voluntary disarmament faltered, and arms were smuggled into neighboring Mali, causing considerable violence there. Meanwhile, tribal tensions increased, and even the original rebel leader was killed in the clash.

There is much to learn from NATO’s experience in Libya. For one, any military intervention in Syria is grounded in wishful thinking. The population density, sectarian diversity, and the relative irrelevance of Syrian air defenses mean that five military options are highly counterproductive:

• A conventional no-fly zone would not significantly change the situation on the ground.
• Similarly, a “humanitarian corridor” would have limited effectiveness because it is a logistical nightmare.
• An interventionist “no-fly zone,” as seen in Libya, would result in significant casualties. The CSIS believes that even precise airstikes around major urban centers would cause at least 5,000 casualties (the number reported to be killed during December 2011).
• A full-scale invasion would lead to the sectarian bloodbath seen in Iraq.
• Arming the militias will bring down Assad faster, but will exacerbate sectarian tensions.

A lesson we force have taken from Libya and Afghanistan is that allowing "anti-tyranny" rebels to overthrow a government by force merely replaces one evil with another. In Syria's case, it is strongly implied that the FSA and other militias will need substantial arms to take out Al-Assad. What happens afterward? More arms mean that sectarian warfare will get worse because the non-violent, democratic opposition has yet to be unified and will likely turn sectarian themselves.

Here's what the U.S. and the international community should do:

• Stop arming both sides of the conflict, which only escalates sectarian tensions. The U.S. and EU should get as many countries as possible on board to threaten Russia in some way if it does not stop arming Assad. Possible examples include kicking Russia out of the WTO, suspending it of its UNSC membership, or enacting targeted sanctions on Putin, his cronies, and Russia's arms industry until it yields.

At the same time, Saudi Arabia and Qatar need to stop arming the militias too. Both have nakedly geopolitical motivations for helping Syria, and their actions are counterproductive to the future peace and prosperity of Syria and prospects for a long-term alignment away from Iran and towards a balanced relationship with Turkey, China, the EU, and the U.S.

• Accelerate the unification of the non-violent opposition. The silver lining in Libya was that recognizing Libya's Transitional Council gave it much-needed legitimacy. Right now, Syria’s opposition is highly fragmented: new opposition groups are announcing themselves every day. There are two major coalitions: the Syrian National Council (SNC), which includes the Muslim Brotherhood and the National Bloc (elite secularists), and the National Coordination Body (NCB) for Democratic Change, a coalition of leftist parties.

The U.S., in partnership with the EU, Turkey, and again as many other countries as possible, should encourage disparate political groups to these two coalitions: more conservative factions would join the SNC, while liberal secular groups would join the NCB. More extremist parties should be cut off from help unless they moderate themselves; of course, sovereignty must also be respected.

At the same time, the political opposition should be trained. The U.S. can provide the service of its National Democratic Institute or International Republican Institute; it can also provide multilateral support to public interest non-governmental organizations (NGOs). These opposition groups could send representatives to neighboring Turkey or attend sessions on the Internet to be taught accountable governance.

Two further notes: first, neither coalition should be allowed to endorse sectarian undertones. This is especially important to encourage getting the Christian minorities on board, who currently reluctantly support Assad because they fear the alternative. Second, the international community should be lukewarm towards the armed opposition, which has grown increasingly extremist over the months.

Until both the lion’s share of the political opposition and a strong majority of Syrians support a NATO no-fly zone and/or Turkey's soft partitions, any military intervention would reek of imperialism.

• Support the implosion of the Assad regime. One way, as advocated by Richard Haass, president of the Council of Foreign Relations, is to indict Assad's inner circle and large parts of the government with war crimes if they don't withdraw support from Assad by, say, one month after the declaration. Supporters are currently deterred from defecting because Assad's wrath would be severe; this would help balance the incentives.

Meanwhile, anyone who does defect should be given a guarantee (optimally from all of the recognized opposition coalitions) to be given a say in the new government. While it is certainly true that such a balance of power would be delicate and it would be excruciatingly difficult to find the proper balance, it would give them increased incentives to leave Assad, especially the Christian minority.

After Assad falls, the international community should encourage the formation of a technocratic, non-sectarian government and seek to have elections as soon as possible. This transitional government should strictly enforce the systematic dismantling of the militias and account for the alarming circulation of weapons.

These solutions are not infallible. Unifying the opposition could take months. The international community has sat on its hands for so long that there is no optimal resolution regardless of the action taken. The only hope is that things don't get dramatically worse.

An Uninformed and Unengaged Electorate: the Importance of The Newsroom

The long-term sustainability of a democracy revolves around a well-informed and engaged electorate. Today, however, we seem to have neither. Voter turnout is appallingly low compared to other developed countries. Turnout in elections has decreased steadily for the past three decades, directly correlating with the skyrocketing costs of campaigning and the businesses’ virtual monopoly in campaign finance. Even though the 2008 election attracted a large number of youth voters, continued pessimism in the political process associated with polarization, gridlock, the domination of special interests in government (particularly in the aftermath of Citizens United), rapid increase of negative advertising, and disenfranchisement under the Electoral College will likely keep turnout low for the foreseeable future. Turnout for congressional midterms, primaries, state elections, and especially municipal posts is even worse.

At the same time, the most energized segments of both parties also happen to be the most dogmatic and stubborn to compromise. These are the same people who turn out in primaries and produce the “choice” between an incompetent candidate and a fundamentalist nut job time and time again. Elections these days seem to be more about which candidate can turn out more of their party base; as long as this is the case, there is little incentive for politicians to return more aggressively towards the center following primaries.

Few people take the time and effort to thoroughly research the soundness of policy platform, let alone find out general campaign stances at all: policy voting remains a woefully rare phenomenon. For a substantial sum, sweeping generalizations and 30-second campaign ads featuring shallow sound bites, misleading statements, and even outright lies form the extent of a voter’s knowledge, which is shamefully insufficient to cast a truly informed vote. While millions still watch the presidential debates, they will remain a circus until they feature active, live factchecking by the moderators.

Many voters make extremely unreasonable decisions. Some voters are so driven by social issues such as gay marriage, abortion, or gun control that they will vote for a candidate on their stances in these subjects alone. While undoubtedly important, the economy, budget, energy, health care, entitlements, and foreign policy are all more important and tangibly affect far more people. Voting along party lines is simply lazy and completely ignores both the ideological divergence among individual candidates and the drift of party platforms over time. Darron Shaw, a government professor from UT, reckons that 80 percent of so-called “independents” leaning Democrat or Republican (about 88 percent of the 33-40 percent who call themselves independents) remain on the party line. Retrospective voting (are you better off than you are four years ago?) is just as inaccurate because it doesn’t account for whether or not the other party is better or more responsible for a particular situation. Many seem to believe that the president is the arbiter rather than a bystander in economic policy and can dramatically lower gas prices with a single wave of the hand. Policy voting is still a woefully rare phenomenon.

An Uninformed Electorate: Lack of Education, Information, and Engagement

The stagnation of U.S. public education has certainly created difficulties in robust political participation. A significant number of students graduate high school without a firm knowledge of economics or government. How would these people discern sound fiscal and economic policies from trickle-down voodoo and Hogwarts magic? What would motivate students to vote if they don’t have a good idea on government’s roles and structures?

This problem is inevitably worse among the 7.4 percent of students who dropped out of school in 2010 without even obtaining a GED. Mediocre education is exacerbated by wide achievement gaps among different ethnicities. Many minorities, including Latinos, African Americans, Native Americans, and the poor are even more adversely affected by an inadequate public education system. The electoral problems are catastrophic for the uneducated. Those with poorer educations are likelier to face economic hardship and less likely to vote: why should they take the time and effort to make an informed decision when they have to work tirelessly just to keep food on the table? As a result, ethnic minorities and lower classes are even less able to articulate their minority interests and fight for improved conditions such as robust education reform.

At the same time, increased work hours due to globalization and technological improvements such as the Internet have shifted the precious time of citizens away from political engagement.

Most Americans have longer workweeks than they did 3 decades ago. Remaining free time is occupied by an endless stream of entertainment, including addicting TV series, movies, and video games. Both globalization and the Internet have dramatically decreased our attention span: we find it bothersome or inconvenient to bother trying understanding complex issues that affect us and our nation. It is telling that ratings for televised presidential debates have fallen considerably over the past 3 decades. Not too long ago, we can listen to politicians for a long time; now, we can only withstand minutes. As the average swing voter or moderate becomes occupied by other forms of entertainment, only a polarized core remains. 

In their book Winner-Take-All Politics, Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson note that contrary to popular opinion, America’s coveted swing voters are often the least engaged and informed, typically making decisions on the flimsiest grounds. Do you want these people to dictate the election from the state of Ohio?

Without accurate information, many Americans have a fragmented understanding of the true provisions behind proposed legislation and may oppose policies that are actually in their interest. While a thin majority opposes the Affordable Care Act, half of those who oppose it believe that it doesn’t go far enough. Furthermore, many believe that the ACA hurts small businesses when it actually exempts firms with fewer than 50 workers; in fact, there is far more damage towards the employees of these firms because the employer does not cover a portion of their premiums. Nonetheless, the Republicans spew out these soundbites against a policy they once supported in the mid-1990s, and a surprising large number of Americans buy their lies. In short, the modern Republican Party thrives upon this utter ignorance, offering radical policies whose practicality doesn’t stand up to even modest scrutiny.

The Underperforming Media: The Amazing Race for Ratings and the Rise of Echo Chambers

My favorite JibJab video is “What We Call the News.” It laments on the decline of basic journalistic integrity since the days of the CBS-NBC-ABC oligarchy and the rise of “mindless ballyhoo” and pointless sensationalism.

Indeed, cable news (CNN, MSNBC, FOX), driven by a lust for ratings and profits, do a pathetic job at adequately reporting and explaining the implications of various policies. The media often treats elections like a horse race instead of offering a serious conversation of how policymaking would be affected. Respectable news publications such as The Economist have far fewer readers than they should.

The political slant of all three major cable news networks undermines compromise and cohesion, polarizes the most energized segments of both parties, and discourages civility. Fox News continually spouts out extremist right wing propaganda and vitriol, typically utilizing gross exaggerations to demonize anyone not matching their political ideology. Nonetheless, their influence is so strong that spineless, moderate Republicans are forced to take very conservative stances. During the cap and trade debate, Senator Lindsey Graham, no moderate, worked with his Democratic counterparts to work out a compromise on the bill, but insisted that these discussions be secret. When Fox News found out, Fox launched a concerted campaign against Graham until he backed down in disgrace. MSNBC is similar, albeit less vicious. Even CNN, which is hailed relatively objective, is laden with partisan punditry rather than experts who can provide a detailed and supported analysis. If you’ve watched an average episode of The Daily Show, it isn’t hard to see why CNN is so hated: they also run pointless stories and “cutting-edge technological models” that don’t offer additional substance. These cable networks are bent on proving that their side is unequivocally right and the other side is an evil fascist or socialist.

The rise of the Internet, however beneficial, has facilitated the rapid proliferation of “news.” Not only is news with extremist viewpoints far more accessible, any nut job who has a blog (such as this one) is able to spew anything without any accountability and can more easily connect with readers with similar views. This prolific rise has enabled selective exposure, which allows people to cherry-pick the slants that reinforce their own views.

Just as important is the dependence corruption associated with the sponsors of news publications, especially sources without the critical mass or revenues to function on its own. In Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky explains that advertisers have their own overt or subtle expectations of reciprocity from the media; they can use the struggling publications’ desperation for revenues as leverage to demand a viewpoint more favorable to their own needs. The result is a consensual, corrupt relationship between these publications and their advertisers: the news company gets the critical dollop of money to stay afloat, and the sponsors are granted a mouthpiece for their own agendas.

Major cable networks are not immune: while Fox is able to achieve considerable ratings (extremism literally pays off), calls for the network to moderate its stance are unlikely to be taken lightly by its principal benefactors: far-right figures who have gained enormous wealth under the winner-take-all system, the same sponsors of the GOP. While the effect is minor, even established one-man shows such as Rush Limbaugh must watch to some extent what is said: in February, when Limbaugh railed on about Sandra Fluke and contraception, he lost quite a few sponsors and subsequently apologized.

A Modest Proposal for Comprehensive Reform

When large swathes of Americans refuse to perform the most fundamental civic duty in a democracy, democracy exists in name only. Voting apathy is a deep problem  Thankfully, there are several reforms that can at least alleviate this problem:

• Bills should be limited to 30 pages. This is the grain of truth in Herman Cain’s campaign for “small bills.” When there is a sensible limit on the length of the bill, it becomes a lot easier to detect patronage such as earmarks and loopholes. While it is true that red tape and exemptions require additional pages, this is best left to the regulatory authorities rather than Congress.

In addition, congressional staff should create a 2-3 page bill summary that would illustrate the main provisions of the bill and highlight any loopholes and earmarks that are within the legislation. While earmarks foster dependence corruption by encouraging the district’s recipients to donate in reciprocation and expectation of future earmarks, they may sometimes be necessary to gain a critical vote; the key is transparency.

Congressmen should be required by law (under threat of being censored) to read all major bills word for word and all summaries for more minor bills and social issues. Right now, according to Lawrence Lessig in Republic, Lost, they are often told by their staff how to vote.

• Public Education Must Stress Knowledge of Economics and Government. (For a more detailed overview of public education, see this post).

• Special interests must be curbed through publicly funded elections to help restore trust in the government. (See post).

• There should be some form of publicly-funded media. If the cable networks are sufficiently funded, the effect of manufactured consent would be curbed. Such funding should remain strictly autonomous from who controls government and should require a supermajority or higher to overturn.

Another possibility is the creation of a nonpartisan or logic-heavy channel that explains complex policy issues in a relatable way; it would be like the TV or layman version of the Congressional Research Service and the Congressional Budget Office. Maintaining nonpartisanship would be difficult, but backing up claims with evidence would be a great start from the sorry state of journalism today.

• Voting could be compulsory. This compulsory voting program could be designed like the individual mandate: anyone who doesn’t vote will be taxed (as Chief Justice Roberts would put it) for not engaging in a basic civic duty. Because this would more significantly affect those in poverty, who are less likely to vote in the first place, it could help level out the playing field in the level of voter turnout by race or class.

• The weight of the vote should be determined by competence in an aptitude test. If the Republican Party is so insistent on voting fraud, it is just as fraudulent to vote without a firm knowledge in economics or basic logic. This examination could be taken every year (and, to test retention, retaken just before every presidential election), and would involve basic economics and logic/logical fallacies. Depending on how bad the score is, voters would have the weight of their vote halved or quartered. To reduce controversy, this particular provision can be gradually incorporated and pursued alongside a major overhaul of public education so that more people have the opportunity to demonstrate basic competence in these fields. Derailing political equality is controversial, but it doesn’t make sense for PHDs in liberal arts and especially economics to have the same weight as a rabid high school dropout.

• The Electoral College should be abolished. Right now, 60-80 percent of the nation living in uncompetitive states is systematically disenfranchised from the presidential elections: the minority party has no voice, while the majority party cannot influence the outcome of other states. It is difficult to precisely quantify the reduction in voter turnout in uncompetitive states, but it is likely to be significant.

Even competitive swing states have a miserable time. Every 4 years, states like Ohio and Florida are bombarded the most with political ads and the media; after the election, it becomes a ghost town. The electoral college is unfair for all Americans and for the losing candidate that ekes out a substantial win on the popular vote but barely lost a swing state.

Keeping the Advantages of Democracy Alive

An informed and well-engaged electorate is critical to the long-term well being of our nation and the continuation of sensible policies rather than populist ones. Already, the U.S. is turning Japanese. Parag Khanna writes in The Second World:

“China is so confident in America's lack of appeal that U.S. presidential elections are televised live, perhaps for entertainment.”

I dream of the day when America's political system is actually admired. Right now, it is unequivocally the laughing stock around the world.