So the last post was about relief efforts, and one way to change things up a little. This post is far less charitable.
As we already established, there seems to be near-universal agreement that the government botched this up big time. I'm not entirely sure, as I said, what our expectations were for the government's response to Katrina and her aftermath. Given that the government cannot magically create levees from thin air or order the Hand of God to reach down and pluck people from rooftops, I'm wondering whether our expectations weren't perhaps a bit out of line from the get-go.
But the government did some things wrong. Among the worst was the inability to plug a breach in the Lake Pontchartrain levy early in the day on Tuesday. Plans had been made to have concrete and sand dropped in by helicopters to plug the breach as early as 0700 that morning; yet nothing happened until sundown. Faster action here could have prevented a lot of water from getting into the city.
What caused that breakdown is a matter for other agencies to determine; I'm sure there will be plenty of blame to go around. Jump with me and we'll look at some other issues.
We'll start right off with this rabidly anti-Bush article in the Washington Post. The gist of the article is that Bush "repeatedly requested less money for programs to guard against catastrophic storms in New Orleans than many federal and state officials requested, decisions that are triggering a partisan debate over administration priorities at a time when the budget is strained by the Iraq war."
The article at least follows this up by saying that, even had all the money that every agency had requested been fully funded, new levees and the like still would not have been in place in time for Katrina. So why bother bringing it up at all? Ask the WaPo. This is just evidence that people are looking to attack and place blame, and any little thing is enough pretense for doing so. Should we blame the Prez for chincing on strengthening levees, when not chincing wouldn't have fixed the levees, either? I find it hard to take that complaint seriously, and I don't like Bush so I'd normally support any attack on him. This one's just too weak.
It is interesting, though; the Bush administration has shown no particular desire to avoid or limit deficit spending in the least. How much more money would levee repair have cost? Were the savings really worth anything in the long run? I'd have to say no.
Of course, this topic just leads into the next one, which is, how many of the National Guard troops that the states of Mississippi and Louisiana would ordinarily rely upon to react to disasters were busy fighting over in Iraq? This article also from the Post notes that there are 3700 Louisiana National Guard troops in Iraq, and at least a brigade from Mississippi. The article also claims that as many as a third of each state's Guardsmen are in Iraq presently. No plans are made to send these folks home; instead, other states are stepping in to help out.
The Guard is what it sounds like, the "National Guard." They are meant to be the front line of homeland defense, to be used as governors need to deal with crises as they strike each state. National Guard troops can, of course, be nationalized, as the president has done to fight his war in Iraq. This nationalization--most famously used by Dwight Eisenhower to integrate the Arkansas school system--has generally been done to move Guard troops from one state to another to handle emergent crises. Taking the Guard overseas is not really meant to be done except in extreme situations.
I think my disagreement with the Iraq war is well enough known. Among numerous other problems it's caused is, of course, the taxing and deployment of supposedly homeland based National Guard troops. The Guard has been overused in this war. Guard jobs are not as highly sought after as before; Guard recruiting failed to meet its goals for several months this year along with recruiting into the regular Army and Marines. This means that, when this is finally over the Guard comes home to do their regular job (both their regular civilian jobs, as individuals, and their unit's jobs as tools for the state governments), there will be trust problems and recruiting problems lingering, damaging readiness and limiting the Guard's usefulness to states.
Don't for a minute think that 3700 Guardsmen couldn't have been put to good use by the state of Louisiana. That is a very big hole that the federal government created and was then ill-equipped to fill. This is Bush's war, and that is Bush's hole.
Overall it seems people want to--and perhaps are forced to--lay the blame at the feet of the Bush administration. No less a GOP stalwart than Newt Gingrich had some unpleasant comments for the government's response to Katrina. Said Gingrich--a potential 2008 presidential candidate--the sluggish response to Katrina "puts into question all of the Homeland Security and Northern Command planning for the last four years, because if we can't respond faster than this to an event we saw coming across the Gulf for days, then why do we think we're prepared to respond to a nuclear or biological attack?"
Gingrich makes a strong point, but fails to follow it up with suggestions to fix the matter. He's a smart guy, maybe he's working on it. No matter; Gingrich's attack points out that it's not just Democrats who are critical of Bush and his administration's response.
FEMA director Mike Brown--who is a former commissioner of judges and stewards for the International Arabian Horse Association and had no emergency management experience at all when he was made deputy director of FEMA in 2001 as a plum for his active support of the Bush campaign in 2000--blamed local emergency management coordinators in Louisiana for not doing good job of telling FEMA what to do. Brown may not know what he's doing, but that's no excuse for FEMA sitting around with it's thumb up its rear waiting for Louisiana to give it orders.
Of course, what's sometimes overlooked in all this is, aren't we all somewhat at fault for the rampant development that created New Orleans and Biloxi? Who built New Orleans in the first place?
Turns out it was the French. That no one in the White House has yet criticized France for bequeathing a doomed city to us back in 1803 shows a remarkable restraint. But really, we have much more than the French to blame. The same philosophy that led us to drain the Everglades (which we're now paying $10B to restore) is also responsible for damming and diking the Mississippi river in such a way that we've essentially created Plaquemines Parish out of what was once raw Gulf of Mexico. By channelling the river and its silt out that narrow finger of land, we killed off the old bayou swamps that once protected New Orleans from southern floodwaters. The state of Louisiana has lost 700 square miles of wetlands since the Mississippi was diked, wetlands that could have absorbed much of the worst rising floodwaters in the aftermath of this storm.
Then there's Mississippi. When Camille came ashore with 210 mph winds in 1965, the Mississippi Gulf Coast was a sparsely populated stretch of shoreline with a few scattered small towns and hotels. Today it's the booming engine of Mississippi's (albeit limited) economic growth, the fastest growing region of the state and home to 9% of the population. I'm not saying Mississippi is to be blamed for encouraging growth on their seashore; after all, Mississippi is (along with Louisiana) one of the poorest states in the country, and much like North Dakota part of their problem is climate. The seacoast is just the nicest place to be. But why didn't the state do more to ensure that new residents with no memory of Camille understand the importance of heeding evacuation notices?
Loss of property was bound to happen. A lot of the loss of life could have been prevented, though, with better education and greater government assistance with mandatory evacuations. Sadly, a lot of people with ignore any evacuation warning, mandatory or not. Many of the poor simply can't leave, and many of the stubborn just plain won't.
Which brings me to my final point. Does it really matter who is at fault for the sluggish response and the magnitude of this disaster? In the long run, instead of placing blame, isn't it always better to figure out what went wrong--not who messed up--and fix it? And isn't it much more important now to support the recovery efforts to the greatest of our abilities and stop bickering over why those efforts didn't start earlier and work better? Once we've evacuated the refugees, cared for the sick ad wonded, cleaned up the area, and given people the green light to go back to what's left of their homes and start over, then we can start asking why the response wasn't better coordinated, faster, more efficient, and all that. And when we do, we need to remember that what matters is learning lessons and ensuring they don't happen again, not laying blame.
05 September 2005
Charity work
This is the first in a series of five posts on Katrina over the next day or so. It also gives me a chance to try out a new feature, categories. I'll go back and categorize everything else over the next couple weeks. (Edit: actually, there won't be any categories until Mozilla fixes their Greasemonkey add-on to plug the massive security breach it contains.)
I refuse to believe anyone reading this blog at this late date might not know how to help victims of Katrina. But I nonetheless feel I must link to my two favorite charities here, both of which are very deeply involved in Katrina relief efforts. First of course is The Red Cross; second is UMCOR, the United Methodist Committee on Relief.
I've really wanted to take a leave of absence and go out there and volunteer in person, get my hands dirty in relief work instead of sitting up here in my nice cozy house with my great view and sending money so other people can get dirty. I felt the same way after Ivan destroyed Grenada last year. So far, though, I haven't yet found an appropriate relief agency that's ready to do the kind of work I want to do. Texas is doing a good job of providing hands and bodies to care for the Astrodome refugees, and I haven't seen many other places that are seeking volunteers. Yet. I'll keep you posted.
Take a jump and read the rest of the post.
There have been people on all sides criticizing the government's response to this disaster. I'll deal with that matter in an upcoming post. I would like to start, however, by pointing out that I have yet to hear anyone, including government officials, claim that the response was perfectly adequate and on time. I think were anyone to make that claim they'd immediately hear about it from the folks in Louisiana and Mississippi. In short, there doesn't seem to be much doubt but that the government could have done more, faster, to respond to Katrina.
Accepting that as a given, then, it's worth adding that the Red Cross and UMCOR and others were in the area--particularly in Mississippi, which was significantly more accessible after the disaster than parts of Louisiana--sooner than any government agencies. The power companies had trucks and crews assembled and ready to enter the disaster zone before the storm struck. Individual boat owners and the local fire and rescue units were already on scene doing most of the early lifesaving work, long before outside government agencies arrived on scene.
In light of the above, how ridiculous is the idea that the government should contract out a lot of its disaster response?
I'm not talking about the kind of contracts we give to Halliburton. I'm talking about the government giving funding to agencies like UMCOR and the Red Cross and others. If the Red Cross had skiffs and big trucks and everything else that they actually maintained, that had been given to them by the government, could they have operated more efficiently?
Obviously the Coast Guard is going to keep its helicopters. I'm not too worried about the CG response to this event; they were pretty much on the ball (and I think that gets overlooked when people talk about the inadequacy of the government response). What I'm really interested in is, what, exactly, do people think the government was supposed to be doing? What were we expecting from FEMA? What were we expecting from the president? I have yet to hear that articulated.
Those of us who sit on the sidelines (and some of us who are on scene, like Fox's wonderful(ly idiotic) Shepard Smith) find it easy to say, "the government should have done more." Sounds great. But what do we mean, precisely? What do any of us who are out there talking about actually mean by what the government should have done?
This is a tragedy, but not a Greek one. The government is not some god on a machine to swoop in during the last scene and set everything right. This demand that the government "do more" gets circular very quickly. What should the government do? More. What did the government do? Not enough. Hmm. Not very specific.
Who's really got the upper hand on how to deal with natural and humanitarian disasters (and this is surely both?) If you ask me, it's the NGO's (non-governmental organizations) who specialize in charity work, disaster response, and the like. The Red Cross and UMCOR are two of the best disaster-response teams in existence anywhere in the world. They don't have to wait for a spate of four hurricanes to strike Florida in two months to figure out how to respond to a hurricane; they respond to typhoons, cyclones, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes, droughts, famines, plagues, and the like dozens of times a year. They know what they're doing, and they do it very efficiently; after all, when you rely on the kindness of strangers, you have to be efficient with that kindness.
I still haven't nailed down precisely what the government should have done more of. More national guard troops? More Coast Guard helicopters? Yeah, I can see that. But is that all we're talking about here? Given the amount of talk I've heard, I can't imagine that's the case.
But maybe we're going about this the wrong way. Our government is a bloated and ineffecient entity that few of us like even on a good day and most us wish would just leave us alone. Perhaps instead of asking that government to do more, we should ask it to do less. You'll recall, no doubt, that several years ago our esteemed president came up with a plan to have faith-based charities do more poverty-alleviation work with government grants instead of having the government do such things directly. Maybe it's time to revisit that idea. Instead of expecting the government to do "more" after a disaster, we should tell the government to give its budget and its equipment to the Red Cross and other relief organizations, and sit back and let them do what they do best.
I refuse to believe anyone reading this blog at this late date might not know how to help victims of Katrina. But I nonetheless feel I must link to my two favorite charities here, both of which are very deeply involved in Katrina relief efforts. First of course is The Red Cross; second is UMCOR, the United Methodist Committee on Relief.
I've really wanted to take a leave of absence and go out there and volunteer in person, get my hands dirty in relief work instead of sitting up here in my nice cozy house with my great view and sending money so other people can get dirty. I felt the same way after Ivan destroyed Grenada last year. So far, though, I haven't yet found an appropriate relief agency that's ready to do the kind of work I want to do. Texas is doing a good job of providing hands and bodies to care for the Astrodome refugees, and I haven't seen many other places that are seeking volunteers. Yet. I'll keep you posted.
Take a jump and read the rest of the post.
There have been people on all sides criticizing the government's response to this disaster. I'll deal with that matter in an upcoming post. I would like to start, however, by pointing out that I have yet to hear anyone, including government officials, claim that the response was perfectly adequate and on time. I think were anyone to make that claim they'd immediately hear about it from the folks in Louisiana and Mississippi. In short, there doesn't seem to be much doubt but that the government could have done more, faster, to respond to Katrina.
Accepting that as a given, then, it's worth adding that the Red Cross and UMCOR and others were in the area--particularly in Mississippi, which was significantly more accessible after the disaster than parts of Louisiana--sooner than any government agencies. The power companies had trucks and crews assembled and ready to enter the disaster zone before the storm struck. Individual boat owners and the local fire and rescue units were already on scene doing most of the early lifesaving work, long before outside government agencies arrived on scene.
In light of the above, how ridiculous is the idea that the government should contract out a lot of its disaster response?
I'm not talking about the kind of contracts we give to Halliburton. I'm talking about the government giving funding to agencies like UMCOR and the Red Cross and others. If the Red Cross had skiffs and big trucks and everything else that they actually maintained, that had been given to them by the government, could they have operated more efficiently?
Obviously the Coast Guard is going to keep its helicopters. I'm not too worried about the CG response to this event; they were pretty much on the ball (and I think that gets overlooked when people talk about the inadequacy of the government response). What I'm really interested in is, what, exactly, do people think the government was supposed to be doing? What were we expecting from FEMA? What were we expecting from the president? I have yet to hear that articulated.
Those of us who sit on the sidelines (and some of us who are on scene, like Fox's wonderful(ly idiotic) Shepard Smith) find it easy to say, "the government should have done more." Sounds great. But what do we mean, precisely? What do any of us who are out there talking about actually mean by what the government should have done?
This is a tragedy, but not a Greek one. The government is not some god on a machine to swoop in during the last scene and set everything right. This demand that the government "do more" gets circular very quickly. What should the government do? More. What did the government do? Not enough. Hmm. Not very specific.
Who's really got the upper hand on how to deal with natural and humanitarian disasters (and this is surely both?) If you ask me, it's the NGO's (non-governmental organizations) who specialize in charity work, disaster response, and the like. The Red Cross and UMCOR are two of the best disaster-response teams in existence anywhere in the world. They don't have to wait for a spate of four hurricanes to strike Florida in two months to figure out how to respond to a hurricane; they respond to typhoons, cyclones, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanoes, droughts, famines, plagues, and the like dozens of times a year. They know what they're doing, and they do it very efficiently; after all, when you rely on the kindness of strangers, you have to be efficient with that kindness.
I still haven't nailed down precisely what the government should have done more of. More national guard troops? More Coast Guard helicopters? Yeah, I can see that. But is that all we're talking about here? Given the amount of talk I've heard, I can't imagine that's the case.
But maybe we're going about this the wrong way. Our government is a bloated and ineffecient entity that few of us like even on a good day and most us wish would just leave us alone. Perhaps instead of asking that government to do more, we should ask it to do less. You'll recall, no doubt, that several years ago our esteemed president came up with a plan to have faith-based charities do more poverty-alleviation work with government grants instead of having the government do such things directly. Maybe it's time to revisit that idea. Instead of expecting the government to do "more" after a disaster, we should tell the government to give its budget and its equipment to the Red Cross and other relief organizations, and sit back and let them do what they do best.
29 August 2005
A President I'd be proud to listen to
If you wander on over to the 2008 Presidential Race blog, you'll note that down at number 31 on the list of potential GOP candidates is Mississippi Governor, and former national GOP chairman, Haley Barbour. I've always thought Barbour was at best a political hack, and in my gut I still feel that way.
But I've had the hurricane coverage on all afternoon, since I got home, and through the noise of chores and laundry and so forth has periodically penetrated the deep Southern drawl of Haley Barbour. I have to stop what I'm doing and listen whenever he comes on. This is a voice I want in the White House. I could listen to him for days. No matter how stupid his policies or arrogant his smirk, Mr. Barbour, unlike Mr. Bush, could still command my attention.
On the other hand, Tony Vasilis, who is on MSNBC from time to time talking about the internet coverage of the storm, is without a doubt the most flagrantly homosexual sounding newscaster I've ever heard. I honestly don't know any gay men who sound stereotypically gay at all, but this Vasilis guy... he's no Haley Barbour.
But I've had the hurricane coverage on all afternoon, since I got home, and through the noise of chores and laundry and so forth has periodically penetrated the deep Southern drawl of Haley Barbour. I have to stop what I'm doing and listen whenever he comes on. This is a voice I want in the White House. I could listen to him for days. No matter how stupid his policies or arrogant his smirk, Mr. Barbour, unlike Mr. Bush, could still command my attention.
On the other hand, Tony Vasilis, who is on MSNBC from time to time talking about the internet coverage of the storm, is without a doubt the most flagrantly homosexual sounding newscaster I've ever heard. I honestly don't know any gay men who sound stereotypically gay at all, but this Vasilis guy... he's no Haley Barbour.
God must really dislike these people
Now this is just sad. It seems a crazy man and his family have formed a church out in sunny Kansas, and, Kansas being flat and dull, they’ve decided to travel to Tennessee to harass mourners at the funerals of two Tennessee soldiers killed in Iraq. America, it seems, tolerates homosexuality. And because of this, God is taking vengeance on our soldiers in Iraq. Never mind that this seems a little arbitrary and capricious for God, that’s what’s really happening over there, so says this fellow Fred Phelps.
Needless to say this goes right back to my “Christianity needs better salesmen” theory from earlier. With the likes of Phelps and his followers (apparently his “parishioners” are mostly his family) traveling around giving Christians a bad name, it’s a wonder there are any of us left. Go home, Fred, and stay there.
The worst thing about it is these bastards actually applied for and received protest permits. I’d like to know exactly who in Smyrna and Ashland City authorized ANYONE at all to hold a protest at a funeral. I can’t possibly think of a valid reason to do that, free speech be damned. There are times when you hold your tongue, and as the authorizing official if you can’t trust these bastards to hold their tongues you do it for them by not letting the permit.
Needless to say this goes right back to my “Christianity needs better salesmen” theory from earlier. With the likes of Phelps and his followers (apparently his “parishioners” are mostly his family) traveling around giving Christians a bad name, it’s a wonder there are any of us left. Go home, Fred, and stay there.
The worst thing about it is these bastards actually applied for and received protest permits. I’d like to know exactly who in Smyrna and Ashland City authorized ANYONE at all to hold a protest at a funeral. I can’t possibly think of a valid reason to do that, free speech be damned. There are times when you hold your tongue, and as the authorizing official if you can’t trust these bastards to hold their tongues you do it for them by not letting the permit.
28 August 2005
The Big One
Say a prayer for New Orleans and all the folks along the Gulf Coast there.
"I'm expecting to come back to a slab," said Robert Friday, who didn't bother boarding up his home in suburban Slidell, La., before driving north to Mississippi. "We may not be coming back to anything, but at least we'll be coming back."
Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard said some who have ridden out previous storms in the New Orleans area may not be so lucky this time.
``I'm expecting that some people who are die-hards will die hard,'' he said.
"I was going to the Superdome and then I saw the two-mile line," the 42-year-old musician said. "I figure if I'm going to die, I'm going to die with cold beer and my best buds."
Fred Wilson, a tourist from San Francisco, who was drinking a rum and fruit juice hurricane cocktail, said: "The only dangerous hurricanes so far are the ones we've been drinking. We can't get out, so we might as well have fun."
"We are facing a storm that most of us have long feared," Nagin said. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime event."
This Nagin is New Orleans mayor C. Ray Nagin, who in a press conference this morning gave the order evacuating the city. In halting speech he read out the evacuation order--then looked up and said, "I wish I had better news." Later in an interview wih MSNBC, Nagin noted that he had packed his family off to Dallas, and had a cot set up in his office in city hall and a room in a hotel, and he'd go to whichever seemed safer. This blog tends to point out a lot of the selfish, unethical, and stupid things politicians do, so this is a good time to remember that at least occasionally they face difficult choices.
As Nagin said, God bless New Orleans.
"I'm expecting to come back to a slab," said Robert Friday, who didn't bother boarding up his home in suburban Slidell, La., before driving north to Mississippi. "We may not be coming back to anything, but at least we'll be coming back."
Jefferson Parish President Aaron Broussard said some who have ridden out previous storms in the New Orleans area may not be so lucky this time.
``I'm expecting that some people who are die-hards will die hard,'' he said.
"I was going to the Superdome and then I saw the two-mile line," the 42-year-old musician said. "I figure if I'm going to die, I'm going to die with cold beer and my best buds."
Fred Wilson, a tourist from San Francisco, who was drinking a rum and fruit juice hurricane cocktail, said: "The only dangerous hurricanes so far are the ones we've been drinking. We can't get out, so we might as well have fun."
"We are facing a storm that most of us have long feared," Nagin said. "This is a once-in-a-lifetime event."
This Nagin is New Orleans mayor C. Ray Nagin, who in a press conference this morning gave the order evacuating the city. In halting speech he read out the evacuation order--then looked up and said, "I wish I had better news." Later in an interview wih MSNBC, Nagin noted that he had packed his family off to Dallas, and had a cot set up in his office in city hall and a room in a hotel, and he'd go to whichever seemed safer. This blog tends to point out a lot of the selfish, unethical, and stupid things politicians do, so this is a good time to remember that at least occasionally they face difficult choices.
As Nagin said, God bless New Orleans.
24 August 2005
All the background you'll ever want on the Solomon Amendment
Not too long ago I wrote about the Solomon Amendment case that is going to come before the Supreme Court next term. It will be argued on November 29.
I’m keenly interested in this topic. I really do hope to go to law school next year, and I really expect to be able to do it only with the military’s blessing; if I am mustered out later this year I don’t think I’ll be able to scrape the money together for law school even with a full scholarship, which is not a sure thing. So, since I’m looking at going to law school as a member of the military, I’m keen on seeing how this legal battle unfolds. And since I intend to visit a couple of top law schools, I’m certainly going to be asking what involvement their students and/or professors have with the litigation.
This is a long one. I’m going to continue to cover this issue as there are new developments throughout the year; I don’t know if all briefs have been filed yet in the case but if I can I intend to read and report on them, and I’ll also report on the media reaction the day of the argument, on the argument itself once I get the transcript, and then on the decision once that’s made available. I think it’s important, and if you agree, there’s more after the jump.
From my point of view, it’s much more significant how a campus treats the military than how a campus treats any LGBT students who may be around. All law schools have strict and enforced anti-discrimination policies, and frankly law schools are probably the most progressive institutions in the country when it comes to sexual orientation rights. I cannot possibly empathize with the gay student who claims that his law school’s permitting the military to recruit on campus is an act of discrimination. But how should I feel, as a member of the military, attending a school (like Duke) where one or more professors and/or students are actively and directly involved in a case that defames the military because of its idiot policy on discrimination? For which of us is the campus environment likely to be worse?
In any event, I found some additional information on the case today while I was bored at work (total work done: 9 minutes. So far. I could so be writing a novel right now.) This could weigh heavily on how the matter is decided, and how important said decision really is.
First thing I discovered, starting from this MSNBC article by Tom Curry, is that some of the nation’s largest and most prestigious private law schools do, in fact, get quite a bit of cash from the federal government.
At first, this seems to make a sham out of their entire argument. How can you call yourself a private school when, as with Cornell University, you receive 20% of your budget—over $400 million—from the federal government? Clemson University receives little more than 25% of its budget from the state of South Carolina, but has the guts to call itself a state institution. Cornell starts this entire argument off sitting in the hypocrite’s seat. Yale, Duke, Harvard, and others all included.
But there’s always more to the story. In most (though not all) cases, the Law Schools themselves which are at the heart of this matter do not receive federal funding. The Solomon Amendment requires the government to cut off all federal funding to a university if any of its “subelements” refuses to endorse military recruiting. Thus the $400 mil Cornell is getting is for the most part going to science and engineering research, not to the University’s general budget and certainly not to the law program.
This helps to explain why, when the amendment was first proposed in 1994 by New York Congressman Gerald Solomon, the Department of Defense was opposed to its adoption. The DOD, rather than the National Science Foundation or any other element of the government, is the largest provider of public funds to universities. DARPA, the Defenese Advanced Research Projects Agency, distributes billions of dollars to colleges and universities across the country every year, funding research on everything from breathable fabrics to remote-controlled Humvees. The DOD was understandably concerned that some of their biggest DARPA recipients, including Stanford, Yale, and UCLA, might run afoul of the Solomon Amendment; in the end, the cost to the DOD in lost research would be far more significant than any loss in recruiting they might have been suffering.
Look at it this way: all costs aside, if you had to choose between getting a lawyer and getting a remote-controlled tank, which would you choose?
There’s also the matter of Public Law 92-436. This was passed way back in 1972 and, though rarely invoked, is still public law. It reads in part (S.606), “(a) No part of the funds appropriated pursuant to this or any other Act for the Department of Defense or any of the Armed Forces may be used at any institution of higher learning if the Secretary of Defense or his designee determines that recruiting personnel of any of the Armed Forces of the United States are being barred by the policy of such institution from the premises of the institution…”
So the DOD already had a way of punishing universities that refused to let it recruit on campus. Most universities didn’t refuse to recruit on campus; what’s more, Cornell Law’s insistence on not allowing recruiters at its events didn’t matter as long as Cornell University allowed recruiters on campus elsewhere, which it did and does, as do nearly all other major universities.
Further on, P.L. 92-436 reads, “(b) The prohibition made by subsection (a) of this section as it applies to research and development funds shall not apply if the Secretary of Defense or his designee determines that the expenditure is a continuation or a renewal of a previous program with such institution which is likely to make a significant contribution to the defense effort.”
Again, the previous law already in place allowed that DARPA and other research agencies could still fund research at a blacklisted institution if the research was already ongoing. Solomon forbids this.
I never met the late Rep. Solomon and wouldn’t wish to disparage him, but it seems to me that he wrote his amendment without due consideration of its end result. Of course, it was also passed by a majority of both house of Congress, men and women who evidently didn’t consider the end result, either. P.J. O’Rourke once wrote that the law of unintended consequences is the one piece of legislation Congress always manages to pass. Too true.
Solomon does go some steps further than P.L. 92-436. To begin, it removes the idea of discretion from the decision to withhold funds. Instead it mandates the withholding of funds. Further, it mandates the withholding of all funds, not just DOD funds, meaning that even NSF and other agencies interested in giving money to fund research projects that might use facilities only available at certain universities are unable to fund said research. It is not hard to see that the Amendment, if enforced, could have a crippling effect on a wide variety of important research. The United States is already slipping in scientific research against the rest of the world; the last thing we need is to cripple our scientists further just to support the moral desires of politicians. (Yes, that statement had a double meaning.)
Of course, politicians could not leave bad enough alone with the Solomon Amendment. As originally passed in 1994, Solomon only restricted DOD funding from noncompliant schools. It wasn’t until 1997 that Congress expanded the amendment to ban funding from nearly every government agency (except USDA). DOD language inserted into a 1999 amendment loosened the 1997 strictures, withholding all federal funding from an offending subelement (i.e. law school) but only DOD funding from the parent institution. After 1999, the DOD rewrote its own regulations to allow some exceptions. The key exception allowed that a school would be considered in compliance—according to the DOD—if it provided military recruiters a “degree of access equal to that provided to other recruiters.”
Thus after 1999, only if a school could be shown to be prohibiting or preventing the military from gaining access to students somewhere on campus, would that school be found in violation of Solomon. The DOD did find a handful of institutions in violation; all immediately corrected the violation. As an example of how this worked, Harvard Law allowed the military to recruit only at the offices of its Veterans Association, and did not permit its own career counselors to arrange interviews with military recruiters. The DOD thought this was perfectly acceptable. Other schools would refer students to military recruiters elsewhere on campus but would not allow recruiters to interview or place literature in the Law School campus. I would argue that this is actually quite restrictive, but in fact the DOD enthusiastically supported these measures.
Of course, the 1990s ended. And the new millennium ushered in a new administration and new power in the DOD. After the attacks of September 11th, the new DOD leadership decided that the measures that it had previously allowed were, in fact, in violation of Solomon. It is hard to argue against this: the DOD’s existing policy stated that to be in compliance a school must show that “the degree of access by military recruiters is at least equal in quality and scope to that afforded to other employers.”
Reading the regulation literally, it is had to see how a law school career placement division’s refusal to schedule interviews with recruiters or to allow military recruitment literature alongside other employment literature could possibly be considered in compliance.
Then the DOD went a step further; see the above about politicians not leaving bad enough alone. The DOD announced that if any subelement of a school (almost always a law school) failed to comply with Solomon, it would request that Congress withhold all federal funding from the parent institution as well as the subelement. This counterdicted the DOD’s 1999 policy. DOD continued to narrow its definition of compliance over the next year—although no further than had been recommended by Congress in 1997.
As a member and supporter of the military, if not of the present administration, I find DOD’s argument here very persuasive. In a letter to the University of Southern California Law School, DOD said that anything less than equal treatment for military recruiters “sends the message that employment in the Armed Forces is less honorable or desirable than employment with other organizations.”
And that right there, that is the heart of the problem with this whole Solomon Amendent case. By raising the issue in the first place, prominent people at prominent law schools have made service in the military seem like a negative thing. If you won’t even allow the military on your campus, you’re sending a message that military service is not something your students should consider.
I just took the LSAT. It has a lot of questions on it where you must choose the stronger of two arguments, or say why an argument is strong, or what might make an argument stronger. Since I kicked that test’s ass, I feel I have a bit of authority in discussing which argument is stronger (you may disagree; I don’t care).
Argument 1. The military discriminates against gays. That said, there are some gay people in the military; furthermore, not all straight people in the military [myself included] agree with the military’s policy on discrimination. The law school has a policy that explicitly prevents discrimination against gays. Allowing a recruiter onto campus, where he/she might try to recruit students to serve in the military regardless of their attitude towards the military’s policy, totally invalidates the school’s anti-discrimination policy and is discriminatory against gays. An average person, straight or gay, would view the school as a discriminatory place.
Argument 2. The law school allows employment recruiters on campus. It allows literature to be distributed, offers help setting up employment interviews, and conducts job fairs. However, it does not allow military literature to be distributed, does not set up interviews with military recruiters, and will not allow military recruiters to attend job fairs. An average person, military or civilian, would view the school as being anti-military.
I choose argument 2. What do you know, I got it right, since I didn’t miss any of the questions on that section.
It takes a real stretch of logic to get from allowing military recruiters to talk to your students on your campus to being discriminatory against gays. It’s not much of a stretch at all to see that a school that won’t allow the military on its campus is anti-military. And given that, if a school wants to be anti-military, then by all rights the military ought to cut off funding.
Now, the law schools frame their argument this way. This is taken from a letter written by Stanford Law Dean Kathleen Sullivan earlier this year and posted on Stanford’s email distribution list.
I think Dean Sullivan is on to something, but she’s not going to finish her thought. I’ll do it for her. Since the University is not inherently anti-military, but the law school is, and since the University and Law School are physically and financially separate, then the University should drop its affiliation with the law school, and vice versa. It’s all about freedom of association, baby. Perhaps Stanford U doesn’t want to associate with a crowd of anti-military types. No problem. Cut the cord.
This seems like a fair and equitable solution to me, but then, it doesn’t answer the fundamental question of whether Solomon is Constitutional or not, and no truly anti-military group could resist the chance to defeat the military in open battle, even if just in a courtroom. The Third Circuit, last November, decided that the litigants in this case stood a better than even chance of winning their argument against the government and getting Solomon overturned; they ruled against the government, but stayed their decision until the Supreme Court could have a crack at the case.
Scanning the Third Circuit’s decision (it’s 102 pages long so, no, I haven’t read the whole thing), it seems that the law schools and their supporters may have the stronger case. Quoting Dean Sullivan again,
This is sensible and argues along the lines of established first amendment case law. But is a private university, no matter how much money it gets from the feds, the same thing as a sovereign state?
Perhaps I’m wrong, but it seems to me that Dean Sullivan and the litigants in this case are arguing from a belief that not only do private universities have a right to free association, they also have a right to federal funding. This is a right I don’t believe exists.
The federal government gives each state a significant share of its budget. It does this because the federal government takes in more money—or at any rate budgets more money—than it can legally spend. The federal government cannot order Louisiana to keep U.S. 90 paved to a reasonable level (and Louisiana doesn’t, if you’ve ever had the misfortune to drive on that road). However, the federal government can encourage Louisiana to pave its roads, and gives the state money every year to do so. In Louisiana’s case, this money used to end up in Edwin Edwards’ penny loafers, but that’s beside the point.
Back in the mid 1990s, though, the feds decided that the drinking age should be 21. But the feds can’t make the drinking age 21; it’s a state power. So the feds decided that they would coerce the states into raising their drinking ages by withholding a small percentage of the funding they disburse to the states every year unless the state raised the drinking age. Louisiana was the last to comply, but it did so, after a lawsuit was settled; Louisiana had said the feds couldn’t cut the money supply like that, but the courts found that in fact the 5% figure was not arbitrary or bound to cause an undue burden on the state.
So Dean Sullivan et al are arguing that, like Louisiana, they have a right to federal money, and Solomon’s provision to deny them that money is arbitrary and causes undue burden because it denies them all of that money instead of a small amount. But does a private entity have any right to federal funding at all? The federal government is in contract with the states; the U.S. can no more cut off all funding to Louisiana than it can declare war on Iowa (unless Iowa secedes). The states are sovereigns and are in sovereign contract with the federal government. Stanford has no such contract, and is not a sovereign. It is a private corporation, inherent with the rights of an individual, but no individual has a right to receive government money. Only by meeting the government’s requirements can individuals receive money; and if the government chooses to require you to allow military recruiters on your campus, the only thing you can do about it is stop looking for handouts.
Ah, say the private corporations/universities, but our campus is private property. The government should have to pay to engage in recruiting on our campus. That’s fair enough. Do other employers have to pay to recruit? Hmm… And what do you call the existing hundreds of millions of federal dollars working their way toward your parent institution every year? Does that not qualify as payment? If the government must pay to recruit, then if they don’t recruit, why should they pay?
Ah, it is confusing, indeed. The First Amendment does say that the government cannot coerce you into associating with people with whom you don’t wish to associate. But does denying public dollars to a private institution constitute coercion? Are you a private institution if you cannot survive without public funding? And doesn’t public funding usually come with strings attached? At what point do strings start becoming coercion, and does any of this matter in the context of private institutions? And what happens to Public Law 92-436 if Solomon is overturned?
Yep, it will be very interesting to see how all this comes out. Of course, if DOD would just throw out Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, then this would all be moot. I guess it’s no use wishing for unicorns, though.
I’m keenly interested in this topic. I really do hope to go to law school next year, and I really expect to be able to do it only with the military’s blessing; if I am mustered out later this year I don’t think I’ll be able to scrape the money together for law school even with a full scholarship, which is not a sure thing. So, since I’m looking at going to law school as a member of the military, I’m keen on seeing how this legal battle unfolds. And since I intend to visit a couple of top law schools, I’m certainly going to be asking what involvement their students and/or professors have with the litigation.
This is a long one. I’m going to continue to cover this issue as there are new developments throughout the year; I don’t know if all briefs have been filed yet in the case but if I can I intend to read and report on them, and I’ll also report on the media reaction the day of the argument, on the argument itself once I get the transcript, and then on the decision once that’s made available. I think it’s important, and if you agree, there’s more after the jump.
From my point of view, it’s much more significant how a campus treats the military than how a campus treats any LGBT students who may be around. All law schools have strict and enforced anti-discrimination policies, and frankly law schools are probably the most progressive institutions in the country when it comes to sexual orientation rights. I cannot possibly empathize with the gay student who claims that his law school’s permitting the military to recruit on campus is an act of discrimination. But how should I feel, as a member of the military, attending a school (like Duke) where one or more professors and/or students are actively and directly involved in a case that defames the military because of its idiot policy on discrimination? For which of us is the campus environment likely to be worse?
In any event, I found some additional information on the case today while I was bored at work (total work done: 9 minutes. So far. I could so be writing a novel right now.) This could weigh heavily on how the matter is decided, and how important said decision really is.
First thing I discovered, starting from this MSNBC article by Tom Curry, is that some of the nation’s largest and most prestigious private law schools do, in fact, get quite a bit of cash from the federal government.
At first, this seems to make a sham out of their entire argument. How can you call yourself a private school when, as with Cornell University, you receive 20% of your budget—over $400 million—from the federal government? Clemson University receives little more than 25% of its budget from the state of South Carolina, but has the guts to call itself a state institution. Cornell starts this entire argument off sitting in the hypocrite’s seat. Yale, Duke, Harvard, and others all included.
But there’s always more to the story. In most (though not all) cases, the Law Schools themselves which are at the heart of this matter do not receive federal funding. The Solomon Amendment requires the government to cut off all federal funding to a university if any of its “subelements” refuses to endorse military recruiting. Thus the $400 mil Cornell is getting is for the most part going to science and engineering research, not to the University’s general budget and certainly not to the law program.
This helps to explain why, when the amendment was first proposed in 1994 by New York Congressman Gerald Solomon, the Department of Defense was opposed to its adoption. The DOD, rather than the National Science Foundation or any other element of the government, is the largest provider of public funds to universities. DARPA, the Defenese Advanced Research Projects Agency, distributes billions of dollars to colleges and universities across the country every year, funding research on everything from breathable fabrics to remote-controlled Humvees. The DOD was understandably concerned that some of their biggest DARPA recipients, including Stanford, Yale, and UCLA, might run afoul of the Solomon Amendment; in the end, the cost to the DOD in lost research would be far more significant than any loss in recruiting they might have been suffering.
Look at it this way: all costs aside, if you had to choose between getting a lawyer and getting a remote-controlled tank, which would you choose?
There’s also the matter of Public Law 92-436. This was passed way back in 1972 and, though rarely invoked, is still public law. It reads in part (S.606), “(a) No part of the funds appropriated pursuant to this or any other Act for the Department of Defense or any of the Armed Forces may be used at any institution of higher learning if the Secretary of Defense or his designee determines that recruiting personnel of any of the Armed Forces of the United States are being barred by the policy of such institution from the premises of the institution…”
So the DOD already had a way of punishing universities that refused to let it recruit on campus. Most universities didn’t refuse to recruit on campus; what’s more, Cornell Law’s insistence on not allowing recruiters at its events didn’t matter as long as Cornell University allowed recruiters on campus elsewhere, which it did and does, as do nearly all other major universities.
Further on, P.L. 92-436 reads, “(b) The prohibition made by subsection (a) of this section as it applies to research and development funds shall not apply if the Secretary of Defense or his designee determines that the expenditure is a continuation or a renewal of a previous program with such institution which is likely to make a significant contribution to the defense effort.”
Again, the previous law already in place allowed that DARPA and other research agencies could still fund research at a blacklisted institution if the research was already ongoing. Solomon forbids this.
I never met the late Rep. Solomon and wouldn’t wish to disparage him, but it seems to me that he wrote his amendment without due consideration of its end result. Of course, it was also passed by a majority of both house of Congress, men and women who evidently didn’t consider the end result, either. P.J. O’Rourke once wrote that the law of unintended consequences is the one piece of legislation Congress always manages to pass. Too true.
Solomon does go some steps further than P.L. 92-436. To begin, it removes the idea of discretion from the decision to withhold funds. Instead it mandates the withholding of funds. Further, it mandates the withholding of all funds, not just DOD funds, meaning that even NSF and other agencies interested in giving money to fund research projects that might use facilities only available at certain universities are unable to fund said research. It is not hard to see that the Amendment, if enforced, could have a crippling effect on a wide variety of important research. The United States is already slipping in scientific research against the rest of the world; the last thing we need is to cripple our scientists further just to support the moral desires of politicians. (Yes, that statement had a double meaning.)
Of course, politicians could not leave bad enough alone with the Solomon Amendment. As originally passed in 1994, Solomon only restricted DOD funding from noncompliant schools. It wasn’t until 1997 that Congress expanded the amendment to ban funding from nearly every government agency (except USDA). DOD language inserted into a 1999 amendment loosened the 1997 strictures, withholding all federal funding from an offending subelement (i.e. law school) but only DOD funding from the parent institution. After 1999, the DOD rewrote its own regulations to allow some exceptions. The key exception allowed that a school would be considered in compliance—according to the DOD—if it provided military recruiters a “degree of access equal to that provided to other recruiters.”
Thus after 1999, only if a school could be shown to be prohibiting or preventing the military from gaining access to students somewhere on campus, would that school be found in violation of Solomon. The DOD did find a handful of institutions in violation; all immediately corrected the violation. As an example of how this worked, Harvard Law allowed the military to recruit only at the offices of its Veterans Association, and did not permit its own career counselors to arrange interviews with military recruiters. The DOD thought this was perfectly acceptable. Other schools would refer students to military recruiters elsewhere on campus but would not allow recruiters to interview or place literature in the Law School campus. I would argue that this is actually quite restrictive, but in fact the DOD enthusiastically supported these measures.
Of course, the 1990s ended. And the new millennium ushered in a new administration and new power in the DOD. After the attacks of September 11th, the new DOD leadership decided that the measures that it had previously allowed were, in fact, in violation of Solomon. It is hard to argue against this: the DOD’s existing policy stated that to be in compliance a school must show that “the degree of access by military recruiters is at least equal in quality and scope to that afforded to other employers.”
Reading the regulation literally, it is had to see how a law school career placement division’s refusal to schedule interviews with recruiters or to allow military recruitment literature alongside other employment literature could possibly be considered in compliance.
Then the DOD went a step further; see the above about politicians not leaving bad enough alone. The DOD announced that if any subelement of a school (almost always a law school) failed to comply with Solomon, it would request that Congress withhold all federal funding from the parent institution as well as the subelement. This counterdicted the DOD’s 1999 policy. DOD continued to narrow its definition of compliance over the next year—although no further than had been recommended by Congress in 1997.
As a member and supporter of the military, if not of the present administration, I find DOD’s argument here very persuasive. In a letter to the University of Southern California Law School, DOD said that anything less than equal treatment for military recruiters “sends the message that employment in the Armed Forces is less honorable or desirable than employment with other organizations.”
And that right there, that is the heart of the problem with this whole Solomon Amendent case. By raising the issue in the first place, prominent people at prominent law schools have made service in the military seem like a negative thing. If you won’t even allow the military on your campus, you’re sending a message that military service is not something your students should consider.
I just took the LSAT. It has a lot of questions on it where you must choose the stronger of two arguments, or say why an argument is strong, or what might make an argument stronger. Since I kicked that test’s ass, I feel I have a bit of authority in discussing which argument is stronger (you may disagree; I don’t care).
Argument 1. The military discriminates against gays. That said, there are some gay people in the military; furthermore, not all straight people in the military [myself included] agree with the military’s policy on discrimination. The law school has a policy that explicitly prevents discrimination against gays. Allowing a recruiter onto campus, where he/she might try to recruit students to serve in the military regardless of their attitude towards the military’s policy, totally invalidates the school’s anti-discrimination policy and is discriminatory against gays. An average person, straight or gay, would view the school as a discriminatory place.
Argument 2. The law school allows employment recruiters on campus. It allows literature to be distributed, offers help setting up employment interviews, and conducts job fairs. However, it does not allow military literature to be distributed, does not set up interviews with military recruiters, and will not allow military recruiters to attend job fairs. An average person, military or civilian, would view the school as being anti-military.
I choose argument 2. What do you know, I got it right, since I didn’t miss any of the questions on that section.
It takes a real stretch of logic to get from allowing military recruiters to talk to your students on your campus to being discriminatory against gays. It’s not much of a stretch at all to see that a school that won’t allow the military on its campus is anti-military. And given that, if a school wants to be anti-military, then by all rights the military ought to cut off funding.
Now, the law schools frame their argument this way. This is taken from a letter written by Stanford Law Dean Kathleen Sullivan earlier this year and posted on Stanford’s email distribution list.
The government may tell the University how to spend its federal dollars, but it may not use the leverage of federal funding to tell the University how to spend its private dollars. For example, if a public broadcaster accepts some public funding and otherwise relies on private donations, the government may not restrict the speech it engages in with private dollars. Similarly, if the University accepts federal funding at the Medical or Engineering schools, the government may not restrict the expressive association of the Law School, which is physically and financially separate from those other units and which does not receive federal funding.
I think Dean Sullivan is on to something, but she’s not going to finish her thought. I’ll do it for her. Since the University is not inherently anti-military, but the law school is, and since the University and Law School are physically and financially separate, then the University should drop its affiliation with the law school, and vice versa. It’s all about freedom of association, baby. Perhaps Stanford U doesn’t want to associate with a crowd of anti-military types. No problem. Cut the cord.
This seems like a fair and equitable solution to me, but then, it doesn’t answer the fundamental question of whether Solomon is Constitutional or not, and no truly anti-military group could resist the chance to defeat the military in open battle, even if just in a courtroom. The Third Circuit, last November, decided that the litigants in this case stood a better than even chance of winning their argument against the government and getting Solomon overturned; they ruled against the government, but stayed their decision until the Supreme Court could have a crack at the case.
Scanning the Third Circuit’s decision (it’s 102 pages long so, no, I haven’t read the whole thing), it seems that the law schools and their supporters may have the stronger case. Quoting Dean Sullivan again,
The government may offer financial inducement to the University to comply with federal policies inconsistent with its own, but it may not offer inducements "so coercive as to pass the point at which 'pressure turns into compulsion.'" For example, withdrawing merely 5% of federal highway funds from states that refuse to raise their drinking ages to 21 was held not to deprive the states of autonomy over liquor regulation. By contrast, threatening to withdraw all $800 million of federal funding from a University based on its law school's policy on military recruiters is so grossly disproportionate that it must be regarded as coercing the University to surrender its right of expressive association.
This is sensible and argues along the lines of established first amendment case law. But is a private university, no matter how much money it gets from the feds, the same thing as a sovereign state?
Perhaps I’m wrong, but it seems to me that Dean Sullivan and the litigants in this case are arguing from a belief that not only do private universities have a right to free association, they also have a right to federal funding. This is a right I don’t believe exists.
The federal government gives each state a significant share of its budget. It does this because the federal government takes in more money—or at any rate budgets more money—than it can legally spend. The federal government cannot order Louisiana to keep U.S. 90 paved to a reasonable level (and Louisiana doesn’t, if you’ve ever had the misfortune to drive on that road). However, the federal government can encourage Louisiana to pave its roads, and gives the state money every year to do so. In Louisiana’s case, this money used to end up in Edwin Edwards’ penny loafers, but that’s beside the point.
Back in the mid 1990s, though, the feds decided that the drinking age should be 21. But the feds can’t make the drinking age 21; it’s a state power. So the feds decided that they would coerce the states into raising their drinking ages by withholding a small percentage of the funding they disburse to the states every year unless the state raised the drinking age. Louisiana was the last to comply, but it did so, after a lawsuit was settled; Louisiana had said the feds couldn’t cut the money supply like that, but the courts found that in fact the 5% figure was not arbitrary or bound to cause an undue burden on the state.
So Dean Sullivan et al are arguing that, like Louisiana, they have a right to federal money, and Solomon’s provision to deny them that money is arbitrary and causes undue burden because it denies them all of that money instead of a small amount. But does a private entity have any right to federal funding at all? The federal government is in contract with the states; the U.S. can no more cut off all funding to Louisiana than it can declare war on Iowa (unless Iowa secedes). The states are sovereigns and are in sovereign contract with the federal government. Stanford has no such contract, and is not a sovereign. It is a private corporation, inherent with the rights of an individual, but no individual has a right to receive government money. Only by meeting the government’s requirements can individuals receive money; and if the government chooses to require you to allow military recruiters on your campus, the only thing you can do about it is stop looking for handouts.
Ah, say the private corporations/universities, but our campus is private property. The government should have to pay to engage in recruiting on our campus. That’s fair enough. Do other employers have to pay to recruit? Hmm… And what do you call the existing hundreds of millions of federal dollars working their way toward your parent institution every year? Does that not qualify as payment? If the government must pay to recruit, then if they don’t recruit, why should they pay?
Ah, it is confusing, indeed. The First Amendment does say that the government cannot coerce you into associating with people with whom you don’t wish to associate. But does denying public dollars to a private institution constitute coercion? Are you a private institution if you cannot survive without public funding? And doesn’t public funding usually come with strings attached? At what point do strings start becoming coercion, and does any of this matter in the context of private institutions? And what happens to Public Law 92-436 if Solomon is overturned?
Yep, it will be very interesting to see how all this comes out. Of course, if DOD would just throw out Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, then this would all be moot. I guess it’s no use wishing for unicorns, though.
No Higher Calling than Public Service
Today brought an interesting article in the Fort Myers News-Press about a the state insurance scam, er, I mean, task force, set up by the state legislature during this year’s session.
It’s called the Task Force on Long-Term Solutions for Florida’s Hurricane Insurance Market, but in reality the commission is constituted more like the Task Force on Long-Term Solutions for Florida’s Hurricane Insurers’ Weak Bottom Lines.
The 12-member task force includes five representatives of insurance companies, a politician who is also an insurance agent, the president of the Florida Homebuilders Association (which wants weaker construction standards), and, in the place reserved for “insurance consumers,” we find the head of a board created by a group of Florida insurance companies.
Given the makeup, what is the chance the board will give any consideration whatsoever to the problem of high insurance premiums? I’m guessing it’s about zero. Yep, this is your politicians, serving you the voters of Florida, and ensuring your voice is heard. Hey, guess how much money the insurance industry gave to politicians in 2004?
It’s called the Task Force on Long-Term Solutions for Florida’s Hurricane Insurance Market, but in reality the commission is constituted more like the Task Force on Long-Term Solutions for Florida’s Hurricane Insurers’ Weak Bottom Lines.
The 12-member task force includes five representatives of insurance companies, a politician who is also an insurance agent, the president of the Florida Homebuilders Association (which wants weaker construction standards), and, in the place reserved for “insurance consumers,” we find the head of a board created by a group of Florida insurance companies.
Given the makeup, what is the chance the board will give any consideration whatsoever to the problem of high insurance premiums? I’m guessing it’s about zero. Yep, this is your politicians, serving you the voters of Florida, and ensuring your voice is heard. Hey, guess how much money the insurance industry gave to politicians in 2004?
Redistricting Update
The backers of the Florida ballot measure to make legislative districts logical and not blatantly favoring one party or politician, as discussed yesterday, has decided to press ahead with the measure. Afraid there isn’t time to gather the requisite 611,000 signatures on a new measure, they’ve decided to let the state Supreme Court decide on whether measure length is a good enough reason to disqualify.
I’ll tell you right now I think that’s a mistake. They’d be better off to craft a new ballot measure and start gathering signatures simultaneously with the older measure. You can just see the self-satisfied little smirk on Jeb Bush’s face in that article: "There is this thing in Microsoft Word that's called ‘word count.’ " Yeah, he’s real broken up about the state division of elections’ failure to do their job, isn’t he? You can bet he’ll be pushing the state Supreme Court to “follow the letter of establish law” and deny the measure a spot on the ballot, like every other elected official in the state.
If you’d like to sign the petitions to fix our redistricting system—and, um, provided you’re a Florida voter—here’s a link to do so.
I’ll tell you right now I think that’s a mistake. They’d be better off to craft a new ballot measure and start gathering signatures simultaneously with the older measure. You can just see the self-satisfied little smirk on Jeb Bush’s face in that article: "There is this thing in Microsoft Word that's called ‘word count.’ " Yeah, he’s real broken up about the state division of elections’ failure to do their job, isn’t he? You can bet he’ll be pushing the state Supreme Court to “follow the letter of establish law” and deny the measure a spot on the ballot, like every other elected official in the state.
If you’d like to sign the petitions to fix our redistricting system—and, um, provided you’re a Florida voter—here’s a link to do so.
23 August 2005
Redistricting
Well, it’s time to follow a developing story again, at least for a while. I should probably update an older developing story, too, but I’ll do it when I bloody well feel like it, thank you very much.
It is intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer that the state of Florida’s method of drawing political boundaries is broken. The same could be said for, oh, about 40 other states as well, almost certainly including your own state, dear reader. (Don’t you hate it when columnists get all smarmy and address you as “dear reader?” What the hell is that all about anyway? I’m not Miss Manners. But I'll try to be better mannered after the jump.)
Here’s what happens. Every ten years, the legislature sits down with a bunch of census data and, these days, expensive computer programs, and commences to choose from among all the voters in the state those that each legislator would most like to have to face in elections for the next ten years. It doesn’t matter which party is in power; both parties do their best (some do better than others) to alleviate the common problem of competition during elections. In Florida during the 2004 elections, of 120 state representatives, 51 faced no opponents whatsoever; 8 faced only write-in opponents; 17 saw their election decided in the party primary; thus only 44 actually faced opponents who both had a chance of winning and who presented voters with an alternative.
Furthermore, of 20 state senators, 11 faced no opponent, and only 6 races featured members of the two major parties squaring off against one another.
Worse still, of the state’s 25 Congressmen, 4 faced no opponents (including, to no one’s surprise, Tom Feeney and Mario Diaz-Balart, who both drew their own districts in 2001), 5 faced only write-in or token opposition, and only 1 (that’s right, just one) faced an opponent who managed to gain more than 40% of the vote. That one, of course, was Krazy Kat Harris--her district is so Republican that only a clearly psychotic person who makes use of Homer Simpson's makeup shotgun could possibly do as poorly as... well, as Harris. No district in the state is designed to be competitive; on average, Republicans who faced "serious" opposition won their districts with 66% of the vote; the two Democrats who faced non-token opposition won with 65.9%.
Now, the jackanapes in Congress and the state leg of course claim that this is actually a GOOD thing, because it shows that the people in each district are happy with their Congressman or woman. This is a lie. No recent poll places national approval of Congress higher than 30%. What's more, few Congressmen can claim better than 50% name recognition in their own districts, so clearly the voters are not in love with their Congressmen. And in the current clime, it’s relatively rare to see a sitting member of either party face serious opposition to re-election in his or her primary; it does happen, absolutely, but only to a handful of office-holders. In short, folks who are in the minority party in any given Congressional or state house district face little to no chance of electing someone from their party. This is disenfranchisement.
So comes the idea, this year, of having an “independent” bipartisan commission draw up our legislative lines for future censuses. (I always think that word should be “censes.”)
Here is an exciting article about the effort from yesterday’s Times.
Let’s see, what does it say there… well, it seems the commission doing the line drawing would have six Republicans, six Democrats, and three members chosen by the state Supreme Court who must have no party affiliation or be members of third parties. That sounds reasonably fair.
Politicians immediately say, well, you can’t claim that a body chosen by politicians will be nonpolitical. Good point. And, by saying it, the politicians are admitting that redistricting is entirely a political process when they do it. So can it get any worse? Probably not.
Former supporters of independent redistricting, like current gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist and Congressman/beneficiary-of-partisan-redistricting Ander Crenshaw, no longer support the idea. Why? Because their party is now in power. Woo-hoo! Crist cravenly says, when questioned, “Can’t I change my mind?”
I don’t know, Charlie. You’ve been criticizing your opponent Tom Gallagher for changing his mind about abortion and other issues ever since you jumped into this race. So as far as I’m concerned, no, you can’t change your mind. You lost that right you cast the first stone at Gallagher for doing the same thing.
Meanwhile, our current governor Jeb Bush goes out to Miami to help Arnold Schwarzenegger raise money for his campaign to create an independent commission to redraw California’s districts—because an independent commission would likely give more seats in California to Republicans. But does Bush support the Florida plan?
No. Why not? Good question. We’re still waiting on a real answer.
Now today comes word that one of three separate ballot measures the group pushing independent redistricting (a branch of Common Cause) may not be legal in the first place. Why? Too many words.
Of course, the state division of elections, which is supposed to monitor for things like that, approved the ballot initiative’s wording months ago before the group could start collecting signatures (of which they have about 200,000, a third of what they need). Now, it’s too late; odds are the state Supreme Court will invalidate the ballot measure regardless of how many signatures they collect. The only way to fix the matter now is to resubmit the application with corrected wording (it’s only six words too long), get that approved by the state, and then go back and try to get the 200,000 people who already signed the thing to sign the revised petition. This is a massive expenditure of funds and, in the end, it’s more likely that the measure will simply be left off the ballot.
The measure that the six words will invalidate is a measure requiring that congressional and legislative districts be drawn so that they favor no one party or candidate. This is, of course, the most important of the three measures, as it would have come into effect with or without the bipartisan commission and would have permitted citizens to sue the state legislature if they drew districts blatantly favoring one candidate or party. This is, of course, also the most unpalatable of the three measures, as far as the state, the legislature, and the individual politicians, are concerned.
Now, it’s true that the state Supreme Court has never yet invalidated a ballot measure because of wordiness. That said, this is a very, very unpopular ballot measure among sitting officeholders. Almost every politician in the state is going to come out against it, and you can bet that the GOP guys will be criticizing those awful “activist judges” on the state Supreme Court if they don’t invalidate the measure, precedent be damned.
You know how when you see bug flipped over on its back, struggling to right itself, before you squish it you have to sort of watch for a minute? That’s what’s happening right now; the politicians are struggling to stop this thing, and before we squish them, we sort of want to watch them struggle.
It is intuitively obvious to even the most casual observer that the state of Florida’s method of drawing political boundaries is broken. The same could be said for, oh, about 40 other states as well, almost certainly including your own state, dear reader. (Don’t you hate it when columnists get all smarmy and address you as “dear reader?” What the hell is that all about anyway? I’m not Miss Manners. But I'll try to be better mannered after the jump.)
Here’s what happens. Every ten years, the legislature sits down with a bunch of census data and, these days, expensive computer programs, and commences to choose from among all the voters in the state those that each legislator would most like to have to face in elections for the next ten years. It doesn’t matter which party is in power; both parties do their best (some do better than others) to alleviate the common problem of competition during elections. In Florida during the 2004 elections, of 120 state representatives, 51 faced no opponents whatsoever; 8 faced only write-in opponents; 17 saw their election decided in the party primary; thus only 44 actually faced opponents who both had a chance of winning and who presented voters with an alternative.
Furthermore, of 20 state senators, 11 faced no opponent, and only 6 races featured members of the two major parties squaring off against one another.
Worse still, of the state’s 25 Congressmen, 4 faced no opponents (including, to no one’s surprise, Tom Feeney and Mario Diaz-Balart, who both drew their own districts in 2001), 5 faced only write-in or token opposition, and only 1 (that’s right, just one) faced an opponent who managed to gain more than 40% of the vote. That one, of course, was Krazy Kat Harris--her district is so Republican that only a clearly psychotic person who makes use of Homer Simpson's makeup shotgun could possibly do as poorly as... well, as Harris. No district in the state is designed to be competitive; on average, Republicans who faced "serious" opposition won their districts with 66% of the vote; the two Democrats who faced non-token opposition won with 65.9%.
Now, the jackanapes in Congress and the state leg of course claim that this is actually a GOOD thing, because it shows that the people in each district are happy with their Congressman or woman. This is a lie. No recent poll places national approval of Congress higher than 30%. What's more, few Congressmen can claim better than 50% name recognition in their own districts, so clearly the voters are not in love with their Congressmen. And in the current clime, it’s relatively rare to see a sitting member of either party face serious opposition to re-election in his or her primary; it does happen, absolutely, but only to a handful of office-holders. In short, folks who are in the minority party in any given Congressional or state house district face little to no chance of electing someone from their party. This is disenfranchisement.
So comes the idea, this year, of having an “independent” bipartisan commission draw up our legislative lines for future censuses. (I always think that word should be “censes.”)
Here is an exciting article about the effort from yesterday’s Times.
Let’s see, what does it say there… well, it seems the commission doing the line drawing would have six Republicans, six Democrats, and three members chosen by the state Supreme Court who must have no party affiliation or be members of third parties. That sounds reasonably fair.
Politicians immediately say, well, you can’t claim that a body chosen by politicians will be nonpolitical. Good point. And, by saying it, the politicians are admitting that redistricting is entirely a political process when they do it. So can it get any worse? Probably not.
Former supporters of independent redistricting, like current gubernatorial candidate Charlie Crist and Congressman/beneficiary-of-partisan-redistricting Ander Crenshaw, no longer support the idea. Why? Because their party is now in power. Woo-hoo! Crist cravenly says, when questioned, “Can’t I change my mind?”
I don’t know, Charlie. You’ve been criticizing your opponent Tom Gallagher for changing his mind about abortion and other issues ever since you jumped into this race. So as far as I’m concerned, no, you can’t change your mind. You lost that right you cast the first stone at Gallagher for doing the same thing.
Meanwhile, our current governor Jeb Bush goes out to Miami to help Arnold Schwarzenegger raise money for his campaign to create an independent commission to redraw California’s districts—because an independent commission would likely give more seats in California to Republicans. But does Bush support the Florida plan?
No. Why not? Good question. We’re still waiting on a real answer.
Now today comes word that one of three separate ballot measures the group pushing independent redistricting (a branch of Common Cause) may not be legal in the first place. Why? Too many words.
Of course, the state division of elections, which is supposed to monitor for things like that, approved the ballot initiative’s wording months ago before the group could start collecting signatures (of which they have about 200,000, a third of what they need). Now, it’s too late; odds are the state Supreme Court will invalidate the ballot measure regardless of how many signatures they collect. The only way to fix the matter now is to resubmit the application with corrected wording (it’s only six words too long), get that approved by the state, and then go back and try to get the 200,000 people who already signed the thing to sign the revised petition. This is a massive expenditure of funds and, in the end, it’s more likely that the measure will simply be left off the ballot.
The measure that the six words will invalidate is a measure requiring that congressional and legislative districts be drawn so that they favor no one party or candidate. This is, of course, the most important of the three measures, as it would have come into effect with or without the bipartisan commission and would have permitted citizens to sue the state legislature if they drew districts blatantly favoring one candidate or party. This is, of course, also the most unpalatable of the three measures, as far as the state, the legislature, and the individual politicians, are concerned.
Now, it’s true that the state Supreme Court has never yet invalidated a ballot measure because of wordiness. That said, this is a very, very unpopular ballot measure among sitting officeholders. Almost every politician in the state is going to come out against it, and you can bet that the GOP guys will be criticizing those awful “activist judges” on the state Supreme Court if they don’t invalidate the measure, precedent be damned.
You know how when you see bug flipped over on its back, struggling to right itself, before you squish it you have to sort of watch for a minute? That’s what’s happening right now; the politicians are struggling to stop this thing, and before we squish them, we sort of want to watch them struggle.
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