I believe it was Jamelle Bouie who made the point on Twitter that Biden’s next move could be federal decriminalization of marijuana. It’s a popular bipartisan position, it doesn’t cause a massive shift on-the-ground (since state laws will still be in effect), but it could really move the needle in places like Florida where it would be important to cut down folks like DeSantis as they are picking up steam.
All I can tell you is that my relatives in NH are all on their "dark libertarian" radiant sidequests at the moment, and they also ALL love marijuana. That said, people from NH are fucking crazy, so...I dunno.
There are other important implications: Duly licensed cannabis businesses in states where either medical and/or recreational marijuana are legal cannot get normal banking services.
Following up on my earlier comment: under 21 USC 811(a)(2), the Attorney General has the power to remove substances from the controlled substance schedules. The AG delegated that power to the DEA, and that delegation was upheld by the SC in Touby v. U.S., 500 U.S. 160 (1991).
I think this would have to be done through legislation, but if Biden marked it as an agenda item I bet Pelosi could probably have a bill passed in the House by the end of October; and while it would almost certainly stall in the Senate, raising its salience before the election would very certainly help the Democrats.
1619 NHJ “how I learned to be proud of America despite its flaws and view this country as belonging to all of us even those wronged” would be a good choice, but NHJ thin skinned twitter personality I don’t think would get the results you’re looking for.
It would be a get, but Bush and Michelle is who I’d try for.
While reading the college cost section I was thinking “Mitch Daniels would be a good choice, Mitch Daniels...yes! Mitch Daniels!”
Mitch isn't a lifelong academic. He doesn't even have a Ph.D. Maybe we should find more such people to stock university leadership with. People who believe in the mission of universities but aren't wedded and beholden to the academic industry.
The idea is not bad, but the specific example of a public commission to determine today’s official canon of America’s heroes (by way of a garden or otherwise) seems to me precisely the opposite of calm, boring, and reassuring no-partisan exercise. It will be **very** interesting and distracting, precisely the kind of thing that gives all the fuel to the culture warriors and grievance signalers of all sides. Heck, I’m starting to get angry just imagining it, and I’m not even American !
And sorry, but this is totally fucking un-American. Right? At least I hope most people consider this so. A national government-sponsored "Garden of Heroes?" Really? Mount Rushmore is plenty, thank you very much, plus the odd currency picture, and the presidential memorials in DC. That's more than enough.
If private actors want to do something like this, have at it. Hell, open an "American Heroes" theme park. I find the very thought of federal officials wasting time and public money on this kinda thing off-putting in the extreme. Highly illberal. Sounds like something Franco would do. (Or, yes, Trump). A lot like the "Space Force" now that I think of it. Or repainting Air Force One red, white and blue. So fucking juvenile.
Next time I comment on this I'll tell you what I really think.
It's not un-American at all. There is a very long tradition in this country of publicly sponsored (local, state, federal) monument-building and history-telling through public art and architecture. It's quite a proud history I think.
Not every country, for example, has turned the central part of its capital city into a massive park of monuments and memorials to its founders; in fact it's almost too obvious to merit observing that the National Mall is already our "Garden of Heroes." The United States has a distinctive history of monuments, memorials, parades, etc., noting our past and communicating the national myth (I say this nonpejoratively) and values. I would suggest it is inevitable, wholesome, and necessary for a country built on a sense of nationhood other than race, religion, or ancient common history (cf., Europe, India, China, etc.).
How this can be characterized as juvenile escapes me. Symbol and narrative are important, almost constitutive, elements of American identity and culture. Abandoning that field for a sort of cynical, midcentury liberal approach of absolute public neutrality with respect to history and culture would invite, I think, the sort of cultural fragmentation and dissolution we've already seen—a vacuum which will inevitably be filled by narrower visions of identity. In this country, likely racial ones.
You're absolutely right, but is this supposed to be a description or a prediction? It's closely related to my basic view that if you tell the average American they have to choose between a patriotic attachment to American history and heroes or (racial, climate, whatever) justice... they'll choose patriotism.
I don't advocate "abandoning that field" if you're referring to the way the US currently honors (and has traditionally honored) its heroes*: via a mix of smaller-scale, incrementalist, occasional state action (the odd monument, postage stamps, currency, Arlington, naming public facilities, etc) + a fairly robust level of such activity on the part of non-governmental actors (sports leagues hall of fames, Hollywood Walk of Fame, films, plays, etc). There's a modest, humble, small "d" democratic *decency* (and indeed traditionalist conservatism) about the way liberal democracies like the United States of America usually go about this kind of thing. Government-sponsored grandiosity is illiberal, unserious and valorizes the State in a manner favored by authoritarian regimes. For similar reasons Trump's idea of a bloated military parade a la Paris was quite rightly met with derision (though not enough derision).
*Those proposing a grandiose, vulgar "Garden of National Heroes" are the ones abandoning "that field." What we in America have been doing for 200+ years on this score has worked perfectly well. We gain nothing—and may well lose something—by valorizing a dominant role for the State in this process. And I'll note Matthew (with whom I normally see eye to eye) brings up this idea in the context of, you know, helping one of our two parties politically.
I suppose I just disagree with the dichotomy you make between small-scale and large-scale public displays of this nature. Firstly because there is nothing especially small-scale about, say, the Washington monument or the American flag on the moon. Your assertion that the America does not have a history of grand state-led patriotic symbols, celebrations, and traditions is just false, and probably falser in the United States than it would be in many other countries (France, again, is among the exceptions).
Secondly because there's a continuum here. I hardly think a "Garden of Heroes" is grandiose; a statue garden tucked in some corner of the capital is the definition of small-scale if that has any meaning.
Thirdly because there's nothing inherently vulgar about large-scale patriotic demonstrations. I note again the Washington Monument, or the Capitol itself, or indeed the French Bastille Day parade (which I think is perfectly fine, though I agree Trump's idea of importing the tradition was forced and silly), or the Washington, D.C. fireworks display on July 4, or the entire tradition of grand public buildings from train stations to museums to courthouses, or the tens of thousands of public statues and monuments throughout the country, or any number of other traditions in the U.S. or throughout the world. These are all broadly popular things, and I do not think it is self-evident that they are vulgar. States, especially modern national republics, simply do take the lead in establishing national pride and identity, often in dramatic and large-scale ways. There are many good arguments for why they should (I tried to gloss one in my comment above). That they shouldn't needs to be argued, I think, not simply asserted.
Sometimes you need to do things because they help build a common culture, something we're sorely lacking.
It's tough to do in our current environment so we may have to take baby steps at first, dividing the park into two separate sections, one with "Red" heroes and one with "Blue" heroes. And then, to be clever, we switch the signs and see what happens when people are misdirected. :-)
Why is it more unAmerican than the Presidential Medal of Freedom? The whole idea sounds like basically a garden for those people, which doesn't strike me as especially weird. Michael Jordan, Babe Ruth, Aaron Copeland, and John Steinbeck have all been awarded it.
Or do you also find the idea that Federal officials have been doing this award for 60 something years also off-putting?
>>Why is it more unAmerican than the Presidential Medal of Freedom?<<
Not a huge fan of this either. But if people like it and it's worked "for 60 years" that's great. What it's not is a justification for a Franco-esque lurch into state-sponsored megalith-building to valorize people the government deems worthy of valorization.
What we've been doing throughout our history (see above) works fine. Don't fix what ain't broke, especially when your principal motivation for doing so appears to be political gain.
I want a rent-seeking reduction commission. The purpose would be to identify ways that insiders feather their nests at the expense of the common good. This is a bipartisan exercise. Sure there are oil companies, hedge funds and for profit colleges, but there’s also big pharma, the AMA, ag subsidy recipients, defense contractors, auto dealers, shiftless bureaucrats, and Bay Area home owners, the list is truly massive.
There is a non-trivial chance of coming up with a grand bargain where the fattest red, blue and purple oxes all get gored and we scrape the barnacles off the economy. Even if that failed, expressing frustration at the extent to which the economy has become an inside game and exposing the scale of elite privilege would be useful.
The rent-seeking activity I find especially infuriating is using the power of the state to limit competition. Laws that protect incumbents from competitive threats -- auto dealers, needless licensing requirements (like for cosmetologists for example), NIMBY restrictions on new buildings -- those should be the first to go.
If you want to have a licensing requirement for, say, bleaching people's hair (a reasonable safety requirement, IMO), then have one. But only those hairdressers who use bleach should need it. And it should be, like, a one-day course on how to bleach safely with a required refresher every five or ten years.
Of course, you'd expect hairdressers to have training in how to style hair skilfully, but there's no need for a public licensing scheme for that. Just let different academies sign off their own qualifications and let them have their own reputations.
In Pennsylvania, to obtain a cosmetology license requires 1,250 hours at a licensed (by the state, of course) school of cosmetology. That is 40 hours per week for 31 weeks. Start on January 1, take no weeks off, and you are done in early August.
This is required by the state in order to cut or color hair, or to do a manicure or pedicure. You know, like my Mom used to do all by herself. All to protect incumbents from competition and to close off a path to independence for poor people.
Yeah, I'm aware that these licenses are absolutely ludicrous.
Some of the chemicals used to bleach and colour hair are dangerous, a straight razor is dangerous. So have a law saying you have to pass a test before you can use those specific dangerous tools, fine. But scissors, a comb, a dryer and hairspray are not dangerous at all, and the worst thing you'll get is an ugly haircut. Let people cut hair, and if they aren't trained how to do it competently, then they won't get customers.
I don't find the hours requirement all *that* onerous. It's the required tuition that's the scam in this particular case. Why not let them get the 1,250 hours apprenticing for, uh, a barber or hairdresser?
"All professions are conspiracies against the laity." - George Bernard Shaw
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment or diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public or in some contrivance to raise prices." - Adam Smith
“…oil companies, hedge funds and for profit colleges, but there’s also big pharma, the AMA, ag subsidy recipients, defense contractors, auto dealers, shiftless bureaucrats, and Bay Area home owners…”
Ag subsidies, yes: if you want to subsidise to keep food prices down, then do that explicitly (food stamps for all, for instance). If you want to subsidise small farms because you think it's good for America to have small farms rather than giant agribusinesses, then do that explicitly (have a cut off or taper based on the number of acres or the value of the land). If you want to subsidise conservation-oriented farm practices, then do that explicitly. If you want to subsidise to ensure that there will be sufficient food in a situation where imports are disrupted, then base that on actual import/export levels, so the subsidies only kick in if there is any danger that the US is importing more calories than it exports (which is a very long way away.
America's milk price support system is especially egregious in my view. The US ought to emulate Canada: limit production (to a level ensuring adequate supply, of course) to prop up prices, and then give needy consumers help to ensure they can afford dairy products. This A) helps keep a sufficient number of dairy farmers in business to secure an adequate supply of fresh milk; and, B) doesn't waste resources. Current US status quo is to directly subsidize production. This drives prices lower (ostensibly good for consumers) but simultaneously puts terrible pressure on small dairy farms, resulting in an ever-shrinking number of producers, and ever-growing concentration of milk production in mega-farms, as well as much more milk than the country can consume (so lots of wasted resources and unnecessary C02 emissions). And then there's the cost to taxpayers. Sheer insanity.
Why not simply scrap the subsidies and let market equilibrium take its toll?
Dairy farming absolutely *sucks*. Consistent, year-round 14-hour days starting at the literal crack of dawn, and extremely expensive capital and automation tools relative to margins. It's no wonder the vast majority of people who inherit such a farm outside of an area where it can be turned into a tourist creamery or cheesemaker wind up abandoning the business. The major reason for concentration is that trend, not anything the government is doing.
There's no reason at all to try to stop that, and no reason at all to subsidize production, or set price floors or production caps.
>>Why not simply scrap the subsidies and let market equilibrium take its toll?<<
That would be my first choice, too. I don't know enough about the history of dairy farming to know why laissez-faire isn't practiced more widely in this area. Presumably a lot of countries make an exception for milk because it's traditionally been considered such a critical foodstuff (especially because of its consumption by children) that a fresh, reasonably close-by supply was considered vital, and so the market alone was considered insufficiently reliable. For various reasons this doesn't seem particularly justifiable in 2022. For one thing long-shelf life milk exists, and could presumably be stockpiled (that's all I ever use in China; was your practice different?).
And then path dependency set in, characterized by noisy lobbies. (Agriculture in general is a hotbed of rent-seeking, lobbying and protectionism from what I can see; it's hardly limited to milk).
My point above was: if you *are* going to interfere in the market, do so in a less wasteful manner than the US does. I don't know what the Europeans do.
1. Long-shelf milk was all I used in China except when we very occasionally decided to splurge. It *sucks* by comparison to fresh. But modern logistics make the delivery of fresh milk easy, so still not an argument for a vast subsidy regime.
2. Given the legendary nature of the CAP, I'm sure EU policy on milk production is not a lodestar. I don't even feel the need to take a casual glance to see what it actually *is*, lol.
Yeah, I've had long-shelf milk a couple times before and it tastes like preservatives and sadness to me. Then again, I'm in a part of the US where I can (and do) buy my milk from a dairy farm locally legendary for their excellent milk. My perspective is skewed.
Agreed - would also say that the ethanol requirement/subsidy is the first one I would go after though. Uses farmland approximately the size of Illinois and is a massive waste of resources.
Can the US export milk? Meaningfully so? That would change the equation, for sure, but my impression is the US produces more dairy products than the market justifies. Which is wasteful.
EDIT: to be clear, the platonic ideal is to neither limit NOR subsidize milk production, and let the market decide. But IF as a society we deem the market can't be relied on in this area, limiting (to prop up prices) is less wasteful than subsidization.
That regressivity can be cancelled out by sufficient help to those who need it. The US system is grossly wasteful. To put it another way, Canada's system manages to do a good job matching supply and demand (which yes, has the effect of making milk more expensive). The US system pushes supply well above demand. That's a lot of extra cow poop, GHG, pollution, and so on, when we could get the desired result (a sufficient and affordable supply) simply by giving people money with which to purchase milk.
Or, better yet, jettison government involvement in the milk market altogether.
The ABA should be at the tippy-top of that list. They are worse than the AMA by at least an order or two of magnitude, relative to actual scope of professional responsibility.
The ABA has very little power. Law schools don’t absolutely need to be accredited by the ABA, if the relevant state board of bar examiners accredits them. The ABA lacks power to restrict entry, so lawyers now make much less than doctors
The ABA's role hasn't been to restrict supply, it's been to artificially pump up demand.
There's no rational world in which the mechanism of enforcement for the ADA or NEPA should be adversarial legal proceedings between private parties, but that's by far the most favorable outcome for the legal community, lol.
That is repeated unto infinity across the legal system.
Though I was unfair, in reality Intuit should be at the top of that list by several orders of magnitude over you lawyers, lol.
However, I’m hardly sure the structure of the ADA owes much to the efforts of the ABA. It might have more to do with the fact that private enforcement actions require relatively few government appropriations
In the absence of tax simplification, paying for TurboTax / Intuit / other is very good value-for-money, especially if we are about to increase the rate of IRS audits. CF NY state sending me a notice that I owed them ~$700 extra because they thought I was resident in NY state for 2021 even though my filing clearly showed that I wasn't. In the absence of having ~$50 of TurboTax audit support, I might have paid that $700 to avoid risking further penalties from failing to demonstrate to NY state's tax office their own error.
Of course, Intuit / Turbotax are ALSO a major source of lobbying against tax simplification.
That latter covers a multitude of sins in a single sentence, probably to the tune of several hundred billion dollars of lost productivity, lol. They're not fully responsible for that deadweight loss, of course, but they play a very large role in it.
They're also the foremost lobbying group against allowing the IRS to pre-fill your damned tax forms to the extent that they can, which for the majority of people is 100%. Possibly even for the *large* majority of people.
$50 multiplied by 100 million or so households is a lot of rent for something that is a complete duplication of effort already done by the Federal Government.
That's not to say Intuit is without value, but that is entirely the point of rent-seeking; extract more revenue than the value you provide would dictate you receive in a rational market.
If all you did was remove Intuit/Turbotax and left the existing tax system in place, Americans would be worse off. The government accidentally created a giant pile of deadweight loss that Intuit/Turbotax slightly ameliorate. They didn't rent-seek to create the deadweight loss, nor would the deadweight loss go away if they were destroyed. Their rent-seeking lies in defending the deadweight loss from tax reform.
So, if you want to reduce deadweight loss in the government caused by government regulation, you should do tax simplification first and let Intuit / Turbotax wither away on their own, since only targeting Intuit/Turbotax would be just as difficult a political fight with close to zero short-term gain.
There’s good things here but the connection between these issues is at an abstract enough level that it’s hard to see how to usefully address them all at once.
I was going to suggest a blue ribbon commission on housing affordability. Might actually do some good! But I doubt Democrats want to remind people at this particular juncture that the rent's too damn high.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with these suggestions, but the premise that there is going to be a slow political news cycle as we head towards the midterms seems pretty unlikely.
The Democrats smartly are not running on “Joe Biden’s agenda” and instead are letting impunity for Donald Trump dominate the news (both DoJ and House investigations), focusing on a bipartisan Electoral Count Act fix, enshrining same sex marriage protection in federal law, and potentially pushing for baseline abortion protections, while benefiting from decline in gas prices and robust job market.
Blue ribbon panels on this or that just won’t break through the noise with voters this fall and are a better idea for when we actually get divided government.
I keep wondering about the Civil Service/Conservation Corp/Red Cross/National Guard type optional program to encourage young people of all types to take a gap year or two, a bit like they do in Switzerland.
Make it have all the bipartisan culture war items you need, physical fitness regiments, gun safety training, multi-culti teamwork building exercises, emergency preparedness training, environmental custodianship missions, food kitchen work, and natural disaster response with FEMA. Get people from all over the country to be shipped out to other parts of the country, to meet people from other parts of the country. Give them free room and board for a year, a small spending allowance, and then a 30k/yr stipend paid out over 24 months upon completion. Give them an additional 30k in grants to be spent at public college, or even mandate some sort of situation where public colleges have to give civil service graduates two years of free tuition. Get the kids of blue collar and white collar workers mixing together. Get the kids of red states and blue states and purple states mixing together.
This would be really, really expensive! There were 15.5 million high school graduates last year.
30k stipend and 30k in grants. Add another 30k to cover their free room and board. 90k a year for 15 and half million people is 1.4 trillion dollars a year!
I appreciate your optimism that all 15.5 million students would want to join a program like this instantly, and even that they would like to use the full value of their education grants.
Somehow, I think America's children are worth it, and at least it would be paid out predictably, and gradually, over a few years.
Maybe we can ask a few of the billionaires and and trillion dollar companies to chip in, to invest in the future workforce of the nation.
Also seeing that a program this large might be able to use a lot of the domestic military infrastructure, maybe we could redirect some of the cash from them, and employ veterans to organize these service programs.
The Fed's still busy printing money too, maybe we can go talk to them.
My point is that if we are going to spend some very large sum of money, I think it should be focused on meeting material concerns as opposed to a great gap year experience.
"Think of the children" and "let's soak the rich" are not serious responses to "this would cost $1.5T a year of taxpayer money that the government does not currently collect.
“… encourage young people of all types to take a gap year or two…and then a 30k/yr stipend paid out over 24 months upon completion. Give them an additional 30k in grants to be spent at public college, or even mandate some sort of situation where public colleges have to give civil service graduates two years of free tuition”
So when you wrote, “young people of all types,” you meant only college-bound young people?
You can play bad faith word games and demonstrate your lack of imagination all you want, but being college-bound isn't (and shouldn't) be a class-bound activity. Enjoying a ~30k cash stipend isn't a class-bound activity. Getting out of the house, seeing the country, and doing some civil service training and work for a couple of "gap years" before starting a family or starting a business or making a down payment is also a perfectly fine option than can still be a great opportunity.
The intent of providing a school grant bonus is because many public colleges still offer trades programs, welding programs, nursing programs, etc. If there's anything we've seen after the student debt clemency, is people really are wondering why higher education funding is so effed and what else can be done about it, so giving the feds a better way to negotiate pricing or inject cash into rural programs is a benefit.
Well great, I just proposed a program that would allow anyone, from any class, to afford to go to a community college for two years, tuition free. They'd even have an extra 30k of cash coming in, that they might get to mix in with their other grants or scholarships, particularly the pell grant for kids from poor families. Sounds like it might just about make it inclusive of everybody.
Have you proposed anything that might work better, while also being cross-class, and cross-partisan? I'd be glad to hear it, unless you'd rather things stay exactly as class-exclusionary as they are already.
Yeah, I get it: Your perspective is from the class that considers this idea to be viable, i.e., people for whom high schoolers are expected as a matter of course to be on the college track and are from families rich enough to indulge a gap year. (Make no mistake, it *is* an indulgence.)
Here’s something that is cross-class: Make people with student loans pay them off as promised.
Remember when I asked for any of your alternative proposals? I'm still waiting.
Despite your other dumb mischaracterizations or poor reading comprehension, I'd like to believe no Slow Boring reader is dumb enough to not realize the current debt peonage system is not a cross-class solution.
I have my doubts that there are really all that many problems in the country that are really going to be solved by throwing a bunch of out of state essentially unskilled workers at them. At a certain point you're just paying inexperienced people to do the work that experienced people in the community should be doing just to achieve some nebulous notion that you're bringing people of different backgrounds together for... reasons.
I like the idea, but I would just assume that it would be turned into a dumb progressive indoctrination camp the next time some liberal president gets elected and has a wild hair.
If something like this were to be tried, it would need to be shielded from meddling by executive action.
I really agree and I happened to consider and not go to TfA as well when I was that age. But, this is a smart kid perspective, which I was, but the other side, a failure mode of medium and not smart kids, is to not be able to imagine really ambitious futures for themselves. A lot of the national service ideas would leave some of those young adults with meaningful skills and experiences that could open the door to them being more productive and more connected to their communities in their adult lives.
Now that it's on my mind, let me rant against TfA for a sec... its mission isn't really to help anything in the education system, it's to expose fabulously privileged college kids to the problems of the education system so they go to their elite jobs with a political agenda to help and some charity experience. I find this rather offensive as a teacher actually - my job is not charity work, it's professional work work. A better goal might be to take talented people and actually train them to be teachers!
I see this a lot in effective altruism today. Young people are going to work for mission driven organizations like AI safety right away when it seems like a better move is to build career capital at a regular job first.
"Hey, Republicans. Yes, I know we've had our disagreements. We passed a partisan $2 trillion spending bill in 2021 which helped fuel inflation, duped some of you into helping pass an Infrastructure Bill with another $1T in spending and then rammed through the largest climate spending bill in history. Immediately after that last one was passed, I went ahead and unilaterally paid off the loans for a bunch of people who go around calling you fascists all day."
"Now that all that is over, I'd like you to sit on a commission with Nikole Hannah-Jones so you can prove you aren't racists and totalitarians. Whatta ya say, guys?"
Did the House Democratic majority stonewall everything they agreed with the Administration on in 2018-20 just because Trump passed the TJIA in 2017?
Separation of powers requires us to *not* be petulant children (hard, so so hard, I know), otherwise rule by executive order is utterly inevitable and Congress will continue to drift into irrelevance.
I think it was on a Weeds podcast I heard someone explain that to get a opposing party congressional majority to give the president something, they have to get a lot. Trump (Navarro really) agreed to give Democrats a ton of stuff to get legislation passed in 2020.
What incentive is Biden going to give Republicans to make him look bipartisan?
I'm not sure that any incentive will do it, is the problem. So many of the GOP's House Representatives in particular come from districts so gerrymandered that looking bipartisan is a bad thing for them.
Which is disastrous for the Republic, because its virtually impossible to amend the Constitution and the one we have doesn't work if one or both parties are acting like the House did from 2009-17.
Obviously there needs to be compromise to make that work, hence "stonewall everything they *agreed* with the Administration on". The infrastructure bill was very much something the GOP wanted to be seen voting yes on, because it was entirely inoffensive and something that a lot of GOP governors have supported.
I'm not sure what other low-hanging fruit are out there. I think they could hammer out a deal on a child tax credit and benefits rationalization for low-income families, perhaps.
But I also think the structural incentives that a lot of GOP representatives bring to the table are dead-set against doing anything at all, let alone anything bipartisan.
"But I also think the structural incentives that a lot of GOP representatives bring to the table are dead-set against doing anything at all, let alone anything bipartisan."
I think this is more true of both parties than we would like to admit.
My broader point is that Matt is suggesting this be done to boost Biden's popularity without actually accomplishing much. My rejoinder to that is why would Republican's go along with accomplishing nothing but improving Biden's popularity?
I do think its possible to get substantive bipartisan legislation passed as Biden has demonstrated so far! But you have to compromise, and often the President has to compromise a bit more because they usually end up receiving most of the public accolades.
"I think this is more true of both parties than we would like to admit."
Hard disagree.
The Democrats' core constituencies want it to implement policy changes. Not always the same ones across the 3-4 major groupings within the party, but something. There is always going to be a carrot which can be dangled in front of one or another faction to get them to accept a quid pro quo on some matters of policy.
The GOP's main voting block is now lined up behind it almost purely in opposition to change; they're very much a canvas onto which minor elite-backed changes can be painted, because they mostly don't give a damn about policy. To the extent that they have a fundamental ethos here, it boils down to "keep yer damn hands off my X". No one is ready to give up whatever piece of the pie they've managed to get hold of even if there were to be a big payoff in general welfare. Because of that, there's just no appetite at all on that side of the aisle at the Federal level for even pro-market reforms.
There are a few GOP stakeholders which do care to make changes, but they care largely about incremental reductions in their tax burdens and not much else. Those same stakeholders also mostly don't want their cozily captured regulations to change.
Note that I make no claims about the desirability of the policy changes anyone desires, only the fact that they do have them.
I bet you he would get takers. I don’t think this idea is so obviously good for joe. Seems more to me that there are plenty of republicans past their primaries right now looking to burnish their own moderate cred
No, that isn't what I wrote. I think the idea that Republicans would willingly join one of these "do nothing but help Biden look good" commissions is far-fetched.
Nikole Hannah-Jones signing off on a statue of Thomas Jefferson is less plausible than One Billion Americans. That idea would obviously blow up in their faces.
I think your recent proposal to require porn websites to actually verify that the people who use them are over 18 or get shut down could be the V-chip for our time.
If it generated a lot of pro-and con coverage in the media it would make Biden seem normal and the people who opposed him on this issue seem like freaks. Maybe it would even work!
I love Slow Boring, but I'm having trouble believing such an intelligent person could write the sentence "now derided figures like Thomas Jefferson and Christopher Columbus." Setting aside Columbus, who wasn't an American, what does it profit us to performatively dismiss the polymath founding father because of his failings? He is still one of the most consequential Americans and his words held more dearly by the nation than any other American. A brief slip into presentism bias
I don't understand your take. Matt's noting, accurately, that Jefferson and Columbus are indeed widely "derided" in contemporary US society. They are widely derided! I don't interpret his words to be an *endorsement* of such derision.
What I have trouble believing is that Matt actually thinks a federal "Garden of American Heroes" idea is good on substance.
I assure you Thomas Jefferson is not widely derided. Believing that reveals more about someone's milieu than the standing of Thomas Jefferson. Certainly there are specific things for which he is correctly derided, but on net he is still a revered American broadly speaking.
Would you accept "fairly" widely derided? I assume you realize Jefferson not only owned slaves, but fathered six children with a young, enslaved woman he likely began having sexual relations with when she was 14-15. We'd call that rape in 2022.
Jefferson obviously remains a titanic figure in American history, and he was very clearly one of our greatest presidents (his personal comportment doesn't change that in my view). Moreover, the "derision" for Jefferson is concentrated on the Left, to be sure.
But his controversial personal details and sexual practices indeed render him "widely" derided in the sense of "disliked, perhaps even intensely so, by a lot of people." But sure, "widely" is far from "universally" (and in this case isn't even close, I reckon, to a majority). Anyway, Thomas Jefferson comes in a for a lot of biting criticism these days—just like Christopher Columbus—that's just reality.
EDIT: For the record, for several reasons I personally oppose taking Jefferson's—or Washington's or Lincoln's—name off schools. It's inane. I'm all for removing the name of Robert E. Lee, though.
If those polling numbers from 2021 are correct, that makes Thomas Jefferson substantially more popular than kittens (76% / 24%), who I don't think anyone would say are "widely derided"
Your kitten analogy is off. To say the least. People who don't want to own a cat usually don't "deride" kittens. Maybe they just prefer dogs! But the millions of Americans who don't like/admire Jefferson in many cases intensely disapprove of his participation in the enslavement economy and his rape of a child. A bit different, wouldn't you say?
Anyway, I'm not exactly sure what you're disagreeing with: as I acknowledged above, I neither fail to recognize Thomas Jefferson as one of our greatest presidents nor do I want to see his name or likeness removed from public record, schools, currency and so forth. (Nor do I claim, as I noted above, that the widespread derision of Jefferson is a view held by *most* Americans). It's a similar dynamic to that involving Winston Churchill: a beloved Briton, to be sure, but nonetheless widely derided by million of Britons. Both things can be true! And are true.
I agree there are millions of Americans who intensely disapprove of Jefferson owning slaves and raping a girl who was 14-15, but his approval/disapproval ratio is so high that I don't think it's at all reasonable to call him "widely derided" -- the derision is mostly contained to the liberal college educated bubble, which produces a very skewed sense of how wide the derision is.
Sorry, have you never met someone who hates cats? There are far more Americans who don't own a cat then there are Americans who disapprove of kittens, but of the Americans who disapprove of kittens many of them do "deride" them. Most of those hate them for their impact on their personal life (allergies / annoying / smell), but then there are also those who rationally deride them because modern-day cats are causing a huge amount of present harm to wildlife [killing billions of wild birds a year]
I probably can't convince you of this because you are in a Thomas-Jefferson-deriding + kitten-loving bubble, but:
The google search for i hate kittens gets 8.43 million results while the google search for i hate thomas jefferson gets 7.14 million results
Although I will note that my first link overstated support for Thomas Jefferson, so instead of "more popular than kittens" it's possible that he's "slightly less popular than kittens", see my reply to BD Anders
Basically, my argument is that if "10-15% of the population disapproves of something" means it is "widely derided" then everything is widely derided.
I don't want to be a pill, but that's a Deseret news op-ed by Scott Rasmussen. Founder of Rasmussen Reports, generally considered the least reliable major pollster. And he doesn't provide polling links.
I know for sure that Matt disapproves of woke efforts to remove Old White Guy names from schools (he agreed with a comment of mine to that effect regarding Lincoln). So my interpretation of his remarks in this post is something like "Snark mingled with disapproval for the woke-ism on this topic he deems unhelpful to liberalism."
Still, if it were an unknown thing, it wouldn't be worthy of mention. And, while I'm perfectly aware a majority of Americans (and voters) hold high opinions of America's Rushmorian historical giants, the critique of such figures is no longer some obscure, under-the-radar phenomenon that is the province of just a few CRT cranks. For better or worse (I'd say "better" for the GOP and "worse" for Democrats) these views have widely ricocheted on social media, and are likewise held by a lot of people, at least in part. I suspect I'm an example of the "in part" aspect—I, a mainstream, not-particularly woke liberal, regard Thomas Jefferson as a historical giant and one of our three or four greatest presidents. But I'm likewise aware like many men of his class he enslaved his fellow human beings and probably sexually assaulted them. I think this latter, more nuanced, more critical, less hagiographic view of Thomas Jefferson and other, similar figures was genuinely esoteric and rare among the general public—if not historians—40 or 50 years ago; but it's now pretty common even if—as I acknowledge—it's still fairly far from a majority.
Have they, though? Did people not know he owned slaves and “ had a mistress” 50 or a 100 ago, or is it merely that it seems like a bigger deal now ? E.g. that we conceive of sexual relations between master and slave (or slaver and enslaved in the new phrasing) and between adult and teen as always sexual assault ?
So, I would wager that it’s not the fact about Jefferson that change as much but our views about race and sex.
Having said all that- I wager that the intelligentsia in every generation had nuanced views. In fact my sense is that understanding of historic greatness was more widespread in the past than it is today, as historical literacy is in decline. Anyone who is well read in history knows great men seldom are good men to quote Lord Acton. Bluntly, it’s juvenile to expect otherwise, and is hardly why they should be celebrated. We celebrate them as great people not as angles.
Looking at other comments this seems to be kind of a minority opinion, but I love this. It's at least possible that boring (almost "secret?!") bipartisanship stands a chance of attracting a reasonable number of sane legislators who understand, at some level, that most normal people hate the "discourse" as it's currently structured.
You had me at "make politics tedious again" - this is my dream!
I'm now imagining much of left Twitter as Grand Moff Tarkin: "Bipartisan commissions? In our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances."
A good idea for a commission and Secret Congress, that probably wouldn't go anywhere because of egregious rent seeking, would be about the US goods shipping and transport industry. It would cover everything from freight rail to trucks to sea and air shipping. It could tackle issues like the contractor/employee status of truck drivers, the upcoming freight rail workers' strike, the Jones Act, and the country's incredibly inefficient and expensive seaports and shipyards. Improving these things could actually have a substantiative impact on people's daily lives.
I don’t mean to derail but I can’t quite believe the NBA representative in the hero garden was to be Kobe Bryant, a rapist. One hopes that would age poorly as the halo effect from his death wore off.
That was my thought, too (and I honestly forgot that he died until I read this comment). If you want to go with an NBA player, how about Bill Russell or Wilt Chamberlain or Magic Johnson?
If you expand it to "Black athletes in the big four team sports," I think the obvious pick would be Jackie Robinson.
I believe it was Jamelle Bouie who made the point on Twitter that Biden’s next move could be federal decriminalization of marijuana. It’s a popular bipartisan position, it doesn’t cause a massive shift on-the-ground (since state laws will still be in effect), but it could really move the needle in places like Florida where it would be important to cut down folks like DeSantis as they are picking up steam.
It's the most obvious Dark Brandon sidequest still available during this chapter.
Biden has come out against Marijuana legalization. For pretty obvious reasons due to family history. I seriously doubt that will change.
Is that actually bipartisan?
Edit: Apparently it is, but Alabama is a bit of an outlier so I'm ina bit of a bubble.
Though few of the polls seem to separate recreational vs medical marijuana, and I suspect that would make a big difference to many people.
All I can tell you is that my relatives in NH are all on their "dark libertarian" radiant sidequests at the moment, and they also ALL love marijuana. That said, people from NH are fucking crazy, so...I dunno.
There are other important implications: Duly licensed cannabis businesses in states where either medical and/or recreational marijuana are legal cannot get normal banking services.
I'd have to double check, but I know the DEA can add or reschedule substances through a normal APA process. I think they can de-schedule, too.
Fetterman wants Biden to do it, so I assumed it doesn't require legislation.
Maybe it's one of those weird theories like "set up abortion clinics in national parks".
Couldn’t they just skip the APA process? Given SCOTUS standing rulings, I don’t know that there is anyone who would have standing to sue regardless.
Following up on my earlier comment: under 21 USC 811(a)(2), the Attorney General has the power to remove substances from the controlled substance schedules. The AG delegated that power to the DEA, and that delegation was upheld by the SC in Touby v. U.S., 500 U.S. 160 (1991).
I think this would have to be done through legislation, but if Biden marked it as an agenda item I bet Pelosi could probably have a bill passed in the House by the end of October; and while it would almost certainly stall in the Senate, raising its salience before the election would very certainly help the Democrats.
1619 NHJ “how I learned to be proud of America despite its flaws and view this country as belonging to all of us even those wronged” would be a good choice, but NHJ thin skinned twitter personality I don’t think would get the results you’re looking for.
It would be a get, but Bush and Michelle is who I’d try for.
While reading the college cost section I was thinking “Mitch Daniels would be a good choice, Mitch Daniels...yes! Mitch Daniels!”
That second act has always amazed me.
He was governor when I was in school in IN and was widely regarded as a puffed-up suit even by conservatives.
Now he’s somehow made Purdue the single outlier delivering quality tertiary education while holding the line on pointless costs?
Can we clone him?
Mitch isn't a lifelong academic. He doesn't even have a Ph.D. Maybe we should find more such people to stock university leadership with. People who believe in the mission of universities but aren't wedded and beholden to the academic industry.
Not from IN but I recall Daniels as having a reputation as being pretty wonky for a Republican politician.
And he's referred to here as an "uber wonk" lol https://www.edweek.org/education/opinion-gov-mitch-daniels-uber-wonk-on-indianas-ed-reforms/2011/05
He's dismissed here as a presidential candidate in an article titled "We Don't Need No Wonk" https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/we-dont-need-no-wonk-stanley-kurtz/
Yeah Daniels was portrayed as super wonky in Game Change iirc
The idea is not bad, but the specific example of a public commission to determine today’s official canon of America’s heroes (by way of a garden or otherwise) seems to me precisely the opposite of calm, boring, and reassuring no-partisan exercise. It will be **very** interesting and distracting, precisely the kind of thing that gives all the fuel to the culture warriors and grievance signalers of all sides. Heck, I’m starting to get angry just imagining it, and I’m not even American !
And sorry, but this is totally fucking un-American. Right? At least I hope most people consider this so. A national government-sponsored "Garden of Heroes?" Really? Mount Rushmore is plenty, thank you very much, plus the odd currency picture, and the presidential memorials in DC. That's more than enough.
If private actors want to do something like this, have at it. Hell, open an "American Heroes" theme park. I find the very thought of federal officials wasting time and public money on this kinda thing off-putting in the extreme. Highly illberal. Sounds like something Franco would do. (Or, yes, Trump). A lot like the "Space Force" now that I think of it. Or repainting Air Force One red, white and blue. So fucking juvenile.
Next time I comment on this I'll tell you what I really think.
(IMHO:)
It's not un-American at all. There is a very long tradition in this country of publicly sponsored (local, state, federal) monument-building and history-telling through public art and architecture. It's quite a proud history I think.
Not every country, for example, has turned the central part of its capital city into a massive park of monuments and memorials to its founders; in fact it's almost too obvious to merit observing that the National Mall is already our "Garden of Heroes." The United States has a distinctive history of monuments, memorials, parades, etc., noting our past and communicating the national myth (I say this nonpejoratively) and values. I would suggest it is inevitable, wholesome, and necessary for a country built on a sense of nationhood other than race, religion, or ancient common history (cf., Europe, India, China, etc.).
How this can be characterized as juvenile escapes me. Symbol and narrative are important, almost constitutive, elements of American identity and culture. Abandoning that field for a sort of cynical, midcentury liberal approach of absolute public neutrality with respect to history and culture would invite, I think, the sort of cultural fragmentation and dissolution we've already seen—a vacuum which will inevitably be filled by narrower visions of identity. In this country, likely racial ones.
You're absolutely right, but is this supposed to be a description or a prediction? It's closely related to my basic view that if you tell the average American they have to choose between a patriotic attachment to American history and heroes or (racial, climate, whatever) justice... they'll choose patriotism.
I don't advocate "abandoning that field" if you're referring to the way the US currently honors (and has traditionally honored) its heroes*: via a mix of smaller-scale, incrementalist, occasional state action (the odd monument, postage stamps, currency, Arlington, naming public facilities, etc) + a fairly robust level of such activity on the part of non-governmental actors (sports leagues hall of fames, Hollywood Walk of Fame, films, plays, etc). There's a modest, humble, small "d" democratic *decency* (and indeed traditionalist conservatism) about the way liberal democracies like the United States of America usually go about this kind of thing. Government-sponsored grandiosity is illiberal, unserious and valorizes the State in a manner favored by authoritarian regimes. For similar reasons Trump's idea of a bloated military parade a la Paris was quite rightly met with derision (though not enough derision).
*Those proposing a grandiose, vulgar "Garden of National Heroes" are the ones abandoning "that field." What we in America have been doing for 200+ years on this score has worked perfectly well. We gain nothing—and may well lose something—by valorizing a dominant role for the State in this process. And I'll note Matthew (with whom I normally see eye to eye) brings up this idea in the context of, you know, helping one of our two parties politically.
I suppose I just disagree with the dichotomy you make between small-scale and large-scale public displays of this nature. Firstly because there is nothing especially small-scale about, say, the Washington monument or the American flag on the moon. Your assertion that the America does not have a history of grand state-led patriotic symbols, celebrations, and traditions is just false, and probably falser in the United States than it would be in many other countries (France, again, is among the exceptions).
Secondly because there's a continuum here. I hardly think a "Garden of Heroes" is grandiose; a statue garden tucked in some corner of the capital is the definition of small-scale if that has any meaning.
Thirdly because there's nothing inherently vulgar about large-scale patriotic demonstrations. I note again the Washington Monument, or the Capitol itself, or indeed the French Bastille Day parade (which I think is perfectly fine, though I agree Trump's idea of importing the tradition was forced and silly), or the Washington, D.C. fireworks display on July 4, or the entire tradition of grand public buildings from train stations to museums to courthouses, or the tens of thousands of public statues and monuments throughout the country, or any number of other traditions in the U.S. or throughout the world. These are all broadly popular things, and I do not think it is self-evident that they are vulgar. States, especially modern national republics, simply do take the lead in establishing national pride and identity, often in dramatic and large-scale ways. There are many good arguments for why they should (I tried to gloss one in my comment above). That they shouldn't needs to be argued, I think, not simply asserted.
Sometimes you need to do things because they help build a common culture, something we're sorely lacking.
It's tough to do in our current environment so we may have to take baby steps at first, dividing the park into two separate sections, one with "Red" heroes and one with "Blue" heroes. And then, to be clever, we switch the signs and see what happens when people are misdirected. :-)
Why is it more unAmerican than the Presidential Medal of Freedom? The whole idea sounds like basically a garden for those people, which doesn't strike me as especially weird. Michael Jordan, Babe Ruth, Aaron Copeland, and John Steinbeck have all been awarded it.
Or do you also find the idea that Federal officials have been doing this award for 60 something years also off-putting?
>>Why is it more unAmerican than the Presidential Medal of Freedom?<<
Not a huge fan of this either. But if people like it and it's worked "for 60 years" that's great. What it's not is a justification for a Franco-esque lurch into state-sponsored megalith-building to valorize people the government deems worthy of valorization.
What we've been doing throughout our history (see above) works fine. Don't fix what ain't broke, especially when your principal motivation for doing so appears to be political gain.
I want a rent-seeking reduction commission. The purpose would be to identify ways that insiders feather their nests at the expense of the common good. This is a bipartisan exercise. Sure there are oil companies, hedge funds and for profit colleges, but there’s also big pharma, the AMA, ag subsidy recipients, defense contractors, auto dealers, shiftless bureaucrats, and Bay Area home owners, the list is truly massive.
There is a non-trivial chance of coming up with a grand bargain where the fattest red, blue and purple oxes all get gored and we scrape the barnacles off the economy. Even if that failed, expressing frustration at the extent to which the economy has become an inside game and exposing the scale of elite privilege would be useful.
The rent-seeking activity I find especially infuriating is using the power of the state to limit competition. Laws that protect incumbents from competitive threats -- auto dealers, needless licensing requirements (like for cosmetologists for example), NIMBY restrictions on new buildings -- those should be the first to go.
If you want to have a licensing requirement for, say, bleaching people's hair (a reasonable safety requirement, IMO), then have one. But only those hairdressers who use bleach should need it. And it should be, like, a one-day course on how to bleach safely with a required refresher every five or ten years.
Of course, you'd expect hairdressers to have training in how to style hair skilfully, but there's no need for a public licensing scheme for that. Just let different academies sign off their own qualifications and let them have their own reputations.
In Pennsylvania, to obtain a cosmetology license requires 1,250 hours at a licensed (by the state, of course) school of cosmetology. That is 40 hours per week for 31 weeks. Start on January 1, take no weeks off, and you are done in early August.
This is required by the state in order to cut or color hair, or to do a manicure or pedicure. You know, like my Mom used to do all by herself. All to protect incumbents from competition and to close off a path to independence for poor people.
Yeah, I'm aware that these licenses are absolutely ludicrous.
Some of the chemicals used to bleach and colour hair are dangerous, a straight razor is dangerous. So have a law saying you have to pass a test before you can use those specific dangerous tools, fine. But scissors, a comb, a dryer and hairspray are not dangerous at all, and the worst thing you'll get is an ugly haircut. Let people cut hair, and if they aren't trained how to do it competently, then they won't get customers.
I don't find the hours requirement all *that* onerous. It's the required tuition that's the scam in this particular case. Why not let them get the 1,250 hours apprenticing for, uh, a barber or hairdresser?
"All professions are conspiracies against the laity." - George Bernard Shaw
"People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment or diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public or in some contrivance to raise prices." - Adam Smith
Wow, what a pithy and insightful quote by Shaw (I was already familiar with the Smith quote).
“…oil companies, hedge funds and for profit colleges, but there’s also big pharma, the AMA, ag subsidy recipients, defense contractors, auto dealers, shiftless bureaucrats, and Bay Area home owners…”
…labor unions…
Ag subsidies, yes: if you want to subsidise to keep food prices down, then do that explicitly (food stamps for all, for instance). If you want to subsidise small farms because you think it's good for America to have small farms rather than giant agribusinesses, then do that explicitly (have a cut off or taper based on the number of acres or the value of the land). If you want to subsidise conservation-oriented farm practices, then do that explicitly. If you want to subsidise to ensure that there will be sufficient food in a situation where imports are disrupted, then base that on actual import/export levels, so the subsidies only kick in if there is any danger that the US is importing more calories than it exports (which is a very long way away.
America's milk price support system is especially egregious in my view. The US ought to emulate Canada: limit production (to a level ensuring adequate supply, of course) to prop up prices, and then give needy consumers help to ensure they can afford dairy products. This A) helps keep a sufficient number of dairy farmers in business to secure an adequate supply of fresh milk; and, B) doesn't waste resources. Current US status quo is to directly subsidize production. This drives prices lower (ostensibly good for consumers) but simultaneously puts terrible pressure on small dairy farms, resulting in an ever-shrinking number of producers, and ever-growing concentration of milk production in mega-farms, as well as much more milk than the country can consume (so lots of wasted resources and unnecessary C02 emissions). And then there's the cost to taxpayers. Sheer insanity.
Why not simply scrap the subsidies and let market equilibrium take its toll?
Dairy farming absolutely *sucks*. Consistent, year-round 14-hour days starting at the literal crack of dawn, and extremely expensive capital and automation tools relative to margins. It's no wonder the vast majority of people who inherit such a farm outside of an area where it can be turned into a tourist creamery or cheesemaker wind up abandoning the business. The major reason for concentration is that trend, not anything the government is doing.
There's no reason at all to try to stop that, and no reason at all to subsidize production, or set price floors or production caps.
>>Why not simply scrap the subsidies and let market equilibrium take its toll?<<
That would be my first choice, too. I don't know enough about the history of dairy farming to know why laissez-faire isn't practiced more widely in this area. Presumably a lot of countries make an exception for milk because it's traditionally been considered such a critical foodstuff (especially because of its consumption by children) that a fresh, reasonably close-by supply was considered vital, and so the market alone was considered insufficiently reliable. For various reasons this doesn't seem particularly justifiable in 2022. For one thing long-shelf life milk exists, and could presumably be stockpiled (that's all I ever use in China; was your practice different?).
And then path dependency set in, characterized by noisy lobbies. (Agriculture in general is a hotbed of rent-seeking, lobbying and protectionism from what I can see; it's hardly limited to milk).
My point above was: if you *are* going to interfere in the market, do so in a less wasteful manner than the US does. I don't know what the Europeans do.
1. Long-shelf milk was all I used in China except when we very occasionally decided to splurge. It *sucks* by comparison to fresh. But modern logistics make the delivery of fresh milk easy, so still not an argument for a vast subsidy regime.
2. Given the legendary nature of the CAP, I'm sure EU policy on milk production is not a lodestar. I don't even feel the need to take a casual glance to see what it actually *is*, lol.
Yeah, I've had long-shelf milk a couple times before and it tastes like preservatives and sadness to me. Then again, I'm in a part of the US where I can (and do) buy my milk from a dairy farm locally legendary for their excellent milk. My perspective is skewed.
Agreed - would also say that the ethanol requirement/subsidy is the first one I would go after though. Uses farmland approximately the size of Illinois and is a massive waste of resources.
Why limit production? We can export milk, and limiting production seems like a big win for those lucky enough to have production licenses.
Can the US export milk? Meaningfully so? That would change the equation, for sure, but my impression is the US produces more dairy products than the market justifies. Which is wasteful.
EDIT: to be clear, the platonic ideal is to neither limit NOR subsidize milk production, and let the market decide. But IF as a society we deem the market can't be relied on in this area, limiting (to prop up prices) is less wasteful than subsidization.
That regressivity can be cancelled out by sufficient help to those who need it. The US system is grossly wasteful. To put it another way, Canada's system manages to do a good job matching supply and demand (which yes, has the effect of making milk more expensive). The US system pushes supply well above demand. That's a lot of extra cow poop, GHG, pollution, and so on, when we could get the desired result (a sufficient and affordable supply) simply by giving people money with which to purchase milk.
Or, better yet, jettison government involvement in the milk market altogether.
The ABA should be at the tippy-top of that list. They are worse than the AMA by at least an order or two of magnitude, relative to actual scope of professional responsibility.
The ABA has very little power. Law schools don’t absolutely need to be accredited by the ABA, if the relevant state board of bar examiners accredits them. The ABA lacks power to restrict entry, so lawyers now make much less than doctors
The ABA's role hasn't been to restrict supply, it's been to artificially pump up demand.
There's no rational world in which the mechanism of enforcement for the ADA or NEPA should be adversarial legal proceedings between private parties, but that's by far the most favorable outcome for the legal community, lol.
That is repeated unto infinity across the legal system.
Though I was unfair, in reality Intuit should be at the top of that list by several orders of magnitude over you lawyers, lol.
However, I’m hardly sure the structure of the ADA owes much to the efforts of the ABA. It might have more to do with the fact that private enforcement actions require relatively few government appropriations
I’m still hopeful for future MattY post digging into the ADA!
In the absence of tax simplification, paying for TurboTax / Intuit / other is very good value-for-money, especially if we are about to increase the rate of IRS audits. CF NY state sending me a notice that I owed them ~$700 extra because they thought I was resident in NY state for 2021 even though my filing clearly showed that I wasn't. In the absence of having ~$50 of TurboTax audit support, I might have paid that $700 to avoid risking further penalties from failing to demonstrate to NY state's tax office their own error.
Of course, Intuit / Turbotax are ALSO a major source of lobbying against tax simplification.
That latter covers a multitude of sins in a single sentence, probably to the tune of several hundred billion dollars of lost productivity, lol. They're not fully responsible for that deadweight loss, of course, but they play a very large role in it.
They're also the foremost lobbying group against allowing the IRS to pre-fill your damned tax forms to the extent that they can, which for the majority of people is 100%. Possibly even for the *large* majority of people.
$50 multiplied by 100 million or so households is a lot of rent for something that is a complete duplication of effort already done by the Federal Government.
That's not to say Intuit is without value, but that is entirely the point of rent-seeking; extract more revenue than the value you provide would dictate you receive in a rational market.
If all you did was remove Intuit/Turbotax and left the existing tax system in place, Americans would be worse off. The government accidentally created a giant pile of deadweight loss that Intuit/Turbotax slightly ameliorate. They didn't rent-seek to create the deadweight loss, nor would the deadweight loss go away if they were destroyed. Their rent-seeking lies in defending the deadweight loss from tax reform.
So, if you want to reduce deadweight loss in the government caused by government regulation, you should do tax simplification first and let Intuit / Turbotax wither away on their own, since only targeting Intuit/Turbotax would be just as difficult a political fight with close to zero short-term gain.
private enforcement actions are monstrously inefficient. it also sucks that paralegals and social workers can’t handle low asset divorces
There’s good things here but the connection between these issues is at an abstract enough level that it’s hard to see how to usefully address them all at once.
Who wants to be the only person to check their privilege? Not I!
I was going to suggest a blue ribbon commission on housing affordability. Might actually do some good! But I doubt Democrats want to remind people at this particular juncture that the rent's too damn high.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with these suggestions, but the premise that there is going to be a slow political news cycle as we head towards the midterms seems pretty unlikely.
The Democrats smartly are not running on “Joe Biden’s agenda” and instead are letting impunity for Donald Trump dominate the news (both DoJ and House investigations), focusing on a bipartisan Electoral Count Act fix, enshrining same sex marriage protection in federal law, and potentially pushing for baseline abortion protections, while benefiting from decline in gas prices and robust job market.
Blue ribbon panels on this or that just won’t break through the noise with voters this fall and are a better idea for when we actually get divided government.
I keep wondering about the Civil Service/Conservation Corp/Red Cross/National Guard type optional program to encourage young people of all types to take a gap year or two, a bit like they do in Switzerland.
Make it have all the bipartisan culture war items you need, physical fitness regiments, gun safety training, multi-culti teamwork building exercises, emergency preparedness training, environmental custodianship missions, food kitchen work, and natural disaster response with FEMA. Get people from all over the country to be shipped out to other parts of the country, to meet people from other parts of the country. Give them free room and board for a year, a small spending allowance, and then a 30k/yr stipend paid out over 24 months upon completion. Give them an additional 30k in grants to be spent at public college, or even mandate some sort of situation where public colleges have to give civil service graduates two years of free tuition. Get the kids of blue collar and white collar workers mixing together. Get the kids of red states and blue states and purple states mixing together.
AmeriCorps does most of that now but the pay is not great. Great program, could use some better structure and funding.
Exactly, rebirth it with help from Romney, Merkowski, Collins, Rubio, and Kennedy, and make the pay ludicrously good by red state standards.
Tap into Cory Booker's baby bonds argument, that everyone should start their adult life with financial freedom.
This would be really, really expensive! There were 15.5 million high school graduates last year.
30k stipend and 30k in grants. Add another 30k to cover their free room and board. 90k a year for 15 and half million people is 1.4 trillion dollars a year!
I appreciate your optimism that all 15.5 million students would want to join a program like this instantly, and even that they would like to use the full value of their education grants.
Somehow, I think America's children are worth it, and at least it would be paid out predictably, and gradually, over a few years.
Maybe we can ask a few of the billionaires and and trillion dollar companies to chip in, to invest in the future workforce of the nation.
Also seeing that a program this large might be able to use a lot of the domestic military infrastructure, maybe we could redirect some of the cash from them, and employ veterans to organize these service programs.
The Fed's still busy printing money too, maybe we can go talk to them.
My point is that if we are going to spend some very large sum of money, I think it should be focused on meeting material concerns as opposed to a great gap year experience.
"Think of the children" and "let's soak the rich" are not serious responses to "this would cost $1.5T a year of taxpayer money that the government does not currently collect.
Good thing I also mentioned reapportioning the military budget and mentioned how it would be an investment in up-skilling the workforce. ;)
You also offered that your program “might be able to use a lot of the domestic military infrastructure.” As if the military isn’t using it.
Is the military using it for more productive activity? I sure don't see it.
“… encourage young people of all types to take a gap year or two…and then a 30k/yr stipend paid out over 24 months upon completion. Give them an additional 30k in grants to be spent at public college, or even mandate some sort of situation where public colleges have to give civil service graduates two years of free tuition”
So when you wrote, “young people of all types,” you meant only college-bound young people?
Nah. Make the 30k usable also for non academic professional training or for a down payment for your first apartment or your first business. Easy fix.
Naw, this is an idea that stems from a particular view of the US. People of the wrong class need not apply.
You can play bad faith word games and demonstrate your lack of imagination all you want, but being college-bound isn't (and shouldn't) be a class-bound activity. Enjoying a ~30k cash stipend isn't a class-bound activity. Getting out of the house, seeing the country, and doing some civil service training and work for a couple of "gap years" before starting a family or starting a business or making a down payment is also a perfectly fine option than can still be a great opportunity.
The intent of providing a school grant bonus is because many public colleges still offer trades programs, welding programs, nursing programs, etc. If there's anything we've seen after the student debt clemency, is people really are wondering why higher education funding is so effed and what else can be done about it, so giving the feds a better way to negotiate pricing or inject cash into rural programs is a benefit.
“…being college-bound isn't (and shouldn't) be a class-bound activity”
Maybe it shouldn’t be, but it is.
Well great, I just proposed a program that would allow anyone, from any class, to afford to go to a community college for two years, tuition free. They'd even have an extra 30k of cash coming in, that they might get to mix in with their other grants or scholarships, particularly the pell grant for kids from poor families. Sounds like it might just about make it inclusive of everybody.
Have you proposed anything that might work better, while also being cross-class, and cross-partisan? I'd be glad to hear it, unless you'd rather things stay exactly as class-exclusionary as they are already.
Yeah, I get it: Your perspective is from the class that considers this idea to be viable, i.e., people for whom high schoolers are expected as a matter of course to be on the college track and are from families rich enough to indulge a gap year. (Make no mistake, it *is* an indulgence.)
Here’s something that is cross-class: Make people with student loans pay them off as promised.
Remember when I asked for any of your alternative proposals? I'm still waiting.
Despite your other dumb mischaracterizations or poor reading comprehension, I'd like to believe no Slow Boring reader is dumb enough to not realize the current debt peonage system is not a cross-class solution.
I have my doubts that there are really all that many problems in the country that are really going to be solved by throwing a bunch of out of state essentially unskilled workers at them. At a certain point you're just paying inexperienced people to do the work that experienced people in the community should be doing just to achieve some nebulous notion that you're bringing people of different backgrounds together for... reasons.
I like the idea, but I would just assume that it would be turned into a dumb progressive indoctrination camp the next time some liberal president gets elected and has a wild hair.
If something like this were to be tried, it would need to be shielded from meddling by executive action.
That’s wonderful, but goes against the rising (or already dominant) ethos of both parties at the moment, I fear.
I really agree and I happened to consider and not go to TfA as well when I was that age. But, this is a smart kid perspective, which I was, but the other side, a failure mode of medium and not smart kids, is to not be able to imagine really ambitious futures for themselves. A lot of the national service ideas would leave some of those young adults with meaningful skills and experiences that could open the door to them being more productive and more connected to their communities in their adult lives.
I don't think many people doing Swiss Civil Service or Conservation Corps think they are joining some great idealistic altruistic force.
Now that it's on my mind, let me rant against TfA for a sec... its mission isn't really to help anything in the education system, it's to expose fabulously privileged college kids to the problems of the education system so they go to their elite jobs with a political agenda to help and some charity experience. I find this rather offensive as a teacher actually - my job is not charity work, it's professional work work. A better goal might be to take talented people and actually train them to be teachers!
I see this a lot in effective altruism today. Young people are going to work for mission driven organizations like AI safety right away when it seems like a better move is to build career capital at a regular job first.
"Hey, Republicans. Yes, I know we've had our disagreements. We passed a partisan $2 trillion spending bill in 2021 which helped fuel inflation, duped some of you into helping pass an Infrastructure Bill with another $1T in spending and then rammed through the largest climate spending bill in history. Immediately after that last one was passed, I went ahead and unilaterally paid off the loans for a bunch of people who go around calling you fascists all day."
"Now that all that is over, I'd like you to sit on a commission with Nikole Hannah-Jones so you can prove you aren't racists and totalitarians. Whatta ya say, guys?"
Uh...no thanks, Joe.
Lol. This is how our system is meant to work.
Did the House Democratic majority stonewall everything they agreed with the Administration on in 2018-20 just because Trump passed the TJIA in 2017?
Separation of powers requires us to *not* be petulant children (hard, so so hard, I know), otherwise rule by executive order is utterly inevitable and Congress will continue to drift into irrelevance.
Stonewall everything - No. Stonewall a lot - yes.
I think it was on a Weeds podcast I heard someone explain that to get a opposing party congressional majority to give the president something, they have to get a lot. Trump (Navarro really) agreed to give Democrats a ton of stuff to get legislation passed in 2020.
What incentive is Biden going to give Republicans to make him look bipartisan?
I'm not sure that any incentive will do it, is the problem. So many of the GOP's House Representatives in particular come from districts so gerrymandered that looking bipartisan is a bad thing for them.
Which is disastrous for the Republic, because its virtually impossible to amend the Constitution and the one we have doesn't work if one or both parties are acting like the House did from 2009-17.
Obviously there needs to be compromise to make that work, hence "stonewall everything they *agreed* with the Administration on". The infrastructure bill was very much something the GOP wanted to be seen voting yes on, because it was entirely inoffensive and something that a lot of GOP governors have supported.
I'm not sure what other low-hanging fruit are out there. I think they could hammer out a deal on a child tax credit and benefits rationalization for low-income families, perhaps.
But I also think the structural incentives that a lot of GOP representatives bring to the table are dead-set against doing anything at all, let alone anything bipartisan.
"But I also think the structural incentives that a lot of GOP representatives bring to the table are dead-set against doing anything at all, let alone anything bipartisan."
I think this is more true of both parties than we would like to admit.
My broader point is that Matt is suggesting this be done to boost Biden's popularity without actually accomplishing much. My rejoinder to that is why would Republican's go along with accomplishing nothing but improving Biden's popularity?
I do think its possible to get substantive bipartisan legislation passed as Biden has demonstrated so far! But you have to compromise, and often the President has to compromise a bit more because they usually end up receiving most of the public accolades.
"I think this is more true of both parties than we would like to admit."
Hard disagree.
The Democrats' core constituencies want it to implement policy changes. Not always the same ones across the 3-4 major groupings within the party, but something. There is always going to be a carrot which can be dangled in front of one or another faction to get them to accept a quid pro quo on some matters of policy.
The GOP's main voting block is now lined up behind it almost purely in opposition to change; they're very much a canvas onto which minor elite-backed changes can be painted, because they mostly don't give a damn about policy. To the extent that they have a fundamental ethos here, it boils down to "keep yer damn hands off my X". No one is ready to give up whatever piece of the pie they've managed to get hold of even if there were to be a big payoff in general welfare. Because of that, there's just no appetite at all on that side of the aisle at the Federal level for even pro-market reforms.
There are a few GOP stakeholders which do care to make changes, but they care largely about incremental reductions in their tax burdens and not much else. Those same stakeholders also mostly don't want their cozily captured regulations to change.
Note that I make no claims about the desirability of the policy changes anyone desires, only the fact that they do have them.
I bet you he would get takers. I don’t think this idea is so obviously good for joe. Seems more to me that there are plenty of republicans past their primaries right now looking to burnish their own moderate cred
Wait, I can understand thinking that getting bipartisan support on the Chips bill was a dupe, but what was dupey about the infrastructure bill?
No, that isn't what I wrote. I think the idea that Republicans would willingly join one of these "do nothing but help Biden look good" commissions is far-fetched.
Maybe something on the opioid crisis? I've heard some conservatives mentioning that as a concern.
Many GOP-controlled states, like WV and OH, are heavily involved in opioids litigation
Nikole Hannah-Jones signing off on a statue of Thomas Jefferson is less plausible than One Billion Americans. That idea would obviously blow up in their faces.
I think your recent proposal to require porn websites to actually verify that the people who use them are over 18 or get shut down could be the V-chip for our time.
If it generated a lot of pro-and con coverage in the media it would make Biden seem normal and the people who opposed him on this issue seem like freaks. Maybe it would even work!
TIL that TVs still are required to have V-chips. I wonder if anyone still uses it? Apparently even when it came out, it was barely used.
I love Slow Boring, but I'm having trouble believing such an intelligent person could write the sentence "now derided figures like Thomas Jefferson and Christopher Columbus." Setting aside Columbus, who wasn't an American, what does it profit us to performatively dismiss the polymath founding father because of his failings? He is still one of the most consequential Americans and his words held more dearly by the nation than any other American. A brief slip into presentism bias
I don't understand your take. Matt's noting, accurately, that Jefferson and Columbus are indeed widely "derided" in contemporary US society. They are widely derided! I don't interpret his words to be an *endorsement* of such derision.
What I have trouble believing is that Matt actually thinks a federal "Garden of American Heroes" idea is good on substance.
I assure you Thomas Jefferson is not widely derided. Believing that reveals more about someone's milieu than the standing of Thomas Jefferson. Certainly there are specific things for which he is correctly derided, but on net he is still a revered American broadly speaking.
Would you accept "fairly" widely derided? I assume you realize Jefferson not only owned slaves, but fathered six children with a young, enslaved woman he likely began having sexual relations with when she was 14-15. We'd call that rape in 2022.
Jefferson obviously remains a titanic figure in American history, and he was very clearly one of our greatest presidents (his personal comportment doesn't change that in my view). Moreover, the "derision" for Jefferson is concentrated on the Left, to be sure.
But his controversial personal details and sexual practices indeed render him "widely" derided in the sense of "disliked, perhaps even intensely so, by a lot of people." But sure, "widely" is far from "universally" (and in this case isn't even close, I reckon, to a majority). Anyway, Thomas Jefferson comes in a for a lot of biting criticism these days—just like Christopher Columbus—that's just reality.
EDIT: For the record, for several reasons I personally oppose taking Jefferson's—or Washington's or Lincoln's—name off schools. It's inane. I'm all for removing the name of Robert E. Lee, though.
"Thomas Jefferson — is seen favorably by 80% and unfavorably by 9%"
https://www.deseret.com/opinion/2021/2/15/22284113/presidents-day-most-americans-still-view-the-founding-fathers-favorably-washington-jefferson-lincoln
If those polling numbers from 2021 are correct, that makes Thomas Jefferson substantially more popular than kittens (76% / 24%), who I don't think anyone would say are "widely derided"
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=2ahUKEwi8zvPJwPH5AhVnFVkFHatsDEoQFnoECA0QAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftwitter.com%2Fchrismurphyct%2Fstatus%2F1359162498734321677&usg=AOvVaw2QSrXuifE1e9v2lsvvzcZF
I’d much rather have Jefferson in my home, just to keep from having a litter box. Sure he’d eat a lot more, but I assume he’d be willing to get a job.
Those goddam kitten have had their way for too long
Your kitten analogy is off. To say the least. People who don't want to own a cat usually don't "deride" kittens. Maybe they just prefer dogs! But the millions of Americans who don't like/admire Jefferson in many cases intensely disapprove of his participation in the enslavement economy and his rape of a child. A bit different, wouldn't you say?
Anyway, I'm not exactly sure what you're disagreeing with: as I acknowledged above, I neither fail to recognize Thomas Jefferson as one of our greatest presidents nor do I want to see his name or likeness removed from public record, schools, currency and so forth. (Nor do I claim, as I noted above, that the widespread derision of Jefferson is a view held by *most* Americans). It's a similar dynamic to that involving Winston Churchill: a beloved Briton, to be sure, but nonetheless widely derided by million of Britons. Both things can be true! And are true.
I agree there are millions of Americans who intensely disapprove of Jefferson owning slaves and raping a girl who was 14-15, but his approval/disapproval ratio is so high that I don't think it's at all reasonable to call him "widely derided" -- the derision is mostly contained to the liberal college educated bubble, which produces a very skewed sense of how wide the derision is.
Sorry, have you never met someone who hates cats? There are far more Americans who don't own a cat then there are Americans who disapprove of kittens, but of the Americans who disapprove of kittens many of them do "deride" them. Most of those hate them for their impact on their personal life (allergies / annoying / smell), but then there are also those who rationally deride them because modern-day cats are causing a huge amount of present harm to wildlife [killing billions of wild birds a year]
I probably can't convince you of this because you are in a Thomas-Jefferson-deriding + kitten-loving bubble, but:
The google search for i hate kittens gets 8.43 million results while the google search for i hate thomas jefferson gets 7.14 million results
Examples of people "deriding" kittens or cats:
https://www.mic.com/articles/87001/if-you-hate-cats-you-re-not-alone-and-there-s-a-real-explanation-as-to-why
https://www.thesprucepets.com/reasons-people-dont-like-cats-555642
https://www.reddit.com/r/ifuckinghatecats/
Although I will note that my first link overstated support for Thomas Jefferson, so instead of "more popular than kittens" it's possible that he's "slightly less popular than kittens", see my reply to BD Anders
Basically, my argument is that if "10-15% of the population disapproves of something" means it is "widely derided" then everything is widely derided.
I don't want to be a pill, but that's a Deseret news op-ed by Scott Rasmussen. Founder of Rasmussen Reports, generally considered the least reliable major pollster. And he doesn't provide polling links.
Ramussen from another survey, real numbers:
https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/favorables/presidential_favorables
YouGov (higher net favourability rating than kittens, lower total favourability than kittens since more undecided):
https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/explore/historical_figure/Thomas_Jefferson?content=all
Public Policy Polling from back in 2012, could easily have changed since:
https://www.politico.com/story/2012/02/poll-george-washington-still-tops-073032
2021 C-Span Historian Survey, not the same thing as approval rating:
https://www.c-span.org/presidentsurvey2021/?page=overall
I was pretty sure that part was tongue in cheek? Surely ?
I know for sure that Matt disapproves of woke efforts to remove Old White Guy names from schools (he agreed with a comment of mine to that effect regarding Lincoln). So my interpretation of his remarks in this post is something like "Snark mingled with disapproval for the woke-ism on this topic he deems unhelpful to liberalism."
Still, if it were an unknown thing, it wouldn't be worthy of mention. And, while I'm perfectly aware a majority of Americans (and voters) hold high opinions of America's Rushmorian historical giants, the critique of such figures is no longer some obscure, under-the-radar phenomenon that is the province of just a few CRT cranks. For better or worse (I'd say "better" for the GOP and "worse" for Democrats) these views have widely ricocheted on social media, and are likewise held by a lot of people, at least in part. I suspect I'm an example of the "in part" aspect—I, a mainstream, not-particularly woke liberal, regard Thomas Jefferson as a historical giant and one of our three or four greatest presidents. But I'm likewise aware like many men of his class he enslaved his fellow human beings and probably sexually assaulted them. I think this latter, more nuanced, more critical, less hagiographic view of Thomas Jefferson and other, similar figures was genuinely esoteric and rare among the general public—if not historians—40 or 50 years ago; but it's now pretty common even if—as I acknowledge—it's still fairly far from a majority.
So, things have changed.
Have they, though? Did people not know he owned slaves and “ had a mistress” 50 or a 100 ago, or is it merely that it seems like a bigger deal now ? E.g. that we conceive of sexual relations between master and slave (or slaver and enslaved in the new phrasing) and between adult and teen as always sexual assault ?
So, I would wager that it’s not the fact about Jefferson that change as much but our views about race and sex.
Having said all that- I wager that the intelligentsia in every generation had nuanced views. In fact my sense is that understanding of historic greatness was more widespread in the past than it is today, as historical literacy is in decline. Anyone who is well read in history knows great men seldom are good men to quote Lord Acton. Bluntly, it’s juvenile to expect otherwise, and is hardly why they should be celebrated. We celebrate them as great people not as angles.
He sucked, though.
Looking at other comments this seems to be kind of a minority opinion, but I love this. It's at least possible that boring (almost "secret?!") bipartisanship stands a chance of attracting a reasonable number of sane legislators who understand, at some level, that most normal people hate the "discourse" as it's currently structured.
You had me at "make politics tedious again" - this is my dream!
I'm now imagining much of left Twitter as Grand Moff Tarkin: "Bipartisan commissions? In our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances."
A good idea for a commission and Secret Congress, that probably wouldn't go anywhere because of egregious rent seeking, would be about the US goods shipping and transport industry. It would cover everything from freight rail to trucks to sea and air shipping. It could tackle issues like the contractor/employee status of truck drivers, the upcoming freight rail workers' strike, the Jones Act, and the country's incredibly inefficient and expensive seaports and shipyards. Improving these things could actually have a substantiative impact on people's daily lives.
I don’t mean to derail but I can’t quite believe the NBA representative in the hero garden was to be Kobe Bryant, a rapist. One hopes that would age poorly as the halo effect from his death wore off.
That was my thought, too (and I honestly forgot that he died until I read this comment). If you want to go with an NBA player, how about Bill Russell or Wilt Chamberlain or Magic Johnson?
If you expand it to "Black athletes in the big four team sports," I think the obvious pick would be Jackie Robinson.
Maybe throw Arthur Ashe into the mix.
Agreed. Hard to think of a sportsman Americans are or should be more proud of than Jackie.
Let the baller who is free from rape allegations cast the first stone.
Ok this got me Ken, good stuff