It's morning in Wisconsin

[CountDeMoney]

Democracy died two days ago.

Fine.  This is what Democracy looks like when it's dead.  Happy??

At least you acknowledge it. 

[The Minsky Moment]

I think cases like CU are a triumph of legal formalism over common sense.  It's true there is no transaction going on: I will give you $X if you vote yea on Bill Y.  And there is a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem in the sense of does Senator A support Bill Y because he knows if he does so he will get (or not lose) the big PAC money, or a Senator A predisposed to support Bill Y anyways, but the reason why Senator A is there in the first place is because he could get financing from the monies interest that support Bill Y?

What really matters IMO is that we have a political system where the available policy options are shaped increasingly by those forces and organizations  that are capable of mobilizing significant sums of money to support political campaigns and electioneering ads.  Where a policy view can't mobilize such economic support either because the benefits are too diffused across society or not easily exploitable for rents, it gets crowded out.  So Sheldon Adelson is going to be able to get airtime for his views on Iran and gambling regs, Hollywood is able to get the adminsitration to focus discussions with the Chinese on treatment of foreign films, the oil industry is able to promote Keystone to the top of the national agenda, and the UAW gets Obama's ear when the adminisration is designing its auto industry bailout plan.  But cobbling together a majority to enact basic tax reform is an effective impossibility because while it would provide a generalized benefit to everyone, it would be at the cost of imposing significant losses on a well organized and resourced few.

So we have avoided most instances of specific IbribeUtake corruption, but at the cost of tolerating a more generalized corruption that perverts policy options and outcomes by facilitating access to those interests that can concentrate funds and crowding out everyone else.

That in itself isn't a GOP-DEM issue because both parties benefit and suffer.  But the differences is that, if one puts the determined group of McCainiacs aside, there seem to be all too many GOPers that are prepared to tolerate this system and whose response is not to try to reduce the role of concentrated money, but instead fight the unwelcome symptoms of the disease from their POV by trying to destroy those sources of concentrated money that oppose their views.

[Admiral Yi]

When you talked about public service unions "bribing" legislators, I assume you didn't mean literally bribery.  My response was in the same vein.

The Court (and its supporters) on this issue did not approve stricly quid pro quos, but they were very comfortable with the thinnest of tissues between the quid and the quo.   As an example, I read in the FT two days ago that approximately 80% of the negative campaign ads broadcast in April 2012 were ads attacking Obama on energy.  The campaign is being funded by various groups created and funded by the members of API.  Is there really any doubt that the companies funding these ads are doing it for any other reason than they expect that a Romney adminstration will extend them more favorable regulatory treatment?

Fair enough Joan.  There are some points I could quibble about, but if moderate Democrats can see the public sector union scam iin the same light as say a paid-for earmark, I can live with that.

[derspiess]

Democracy died two days ago.

Fine.  This is what Democracy looks like when it's dead.  Happy??

At least you acknowledge it. 

Elections have consequences.

[Hansmeister]

5 SC justices who have expressed approval of quid pro quos?  I'd love to hear their names Joan.

When you talked about public service unions "bribing" legislators, I assume you didn't mean literally bribery.  My response was in the same vein.

The Court (and its supporters) on this issue did not approve stricly quid pro quos, but they were very comfortable with the thinnest of tissues between the quid and the quo.   As an example, I read in the FT two days ago that approximately 80% of the negative campaign ads broadcast in April 2012 were ads attacking Obama on energy.  The campaign is being funded by various groups created and funded by the members of API.  Is there really any doubt that the companies funding these ads are doing it for any other reason than they expect that a Romney adminstration will extend them more favorable regulatory treatment?

The only feasable solution is to eliminate the limits of what can be donated to candidates but require full and immediate disclosure so the voters can make up their minds whether they like or dislike from whom the candidates are taking their money and make their choices based on that.

And of course return to an original constitutionalism as far as tthe limits of government power to before FDR assraped it so that it greatly reduces the incentive/compulsion to give money.  People always assume that corporations give money in order to bribe politicians, when it is probably just as likely that they are being extorted by the politicians in the first place.  Microsoft wa famous for not giving any money until they were attacked by the DOJ after Microsoft's enemies gave a lot of money to influence DC.  Microsoft learned real quick that you have to pay to play, or you come under the wheels.

[Valmy]

Elections have consequences.

Not really.  The Germans voted less for the Nazis and that result somehow put them in a position of absolute power.

[Valmy]

People always assume that corporations give money in order to bribe politicians, when it is probably just as likely that they are being extorted by the politicians in the first place.

I have made that point many times.

It is a system where nobody is particularly happy but everybody is compelled to act this way for various reasons.  But then most corrupt systems are like that.  Few peole really like corruption even when it is rampant.  The Corporations would much rather keep their money and the Politicians would much rather not have to spend such a huge chunk of their time fund raising.

In my mind that makes the cause for reform greater not less.

[derspiess]

Elections have consequences.

Not really.  The Germans voted less for the Nazis and that result somehow put them in a position of absolute power.

I was just quoting our president.  Go take that up with him

[Barrister]

5 SC justices who have expressed approval of quid pro quos?  I'd love to hear their names Joan.

When you talked about public service unions "bribing" legislators, I assume you didn't mean literally bribery.  My response was in the same vein.

The Court (and its supporters) on this issue did not approve stricly quid pro quos, but they were very comfortable with the thinnest of tissues between the quid and the quo.   As an example, I read in the FT two days ago that approximately 80% of the negative campaign ads broadcast in April 2012 were ads attacking Obama on energy.  The campaign is being funded by various groups created and funded by the members of API.  Is there really any doubt that the companies funding these ads are doing it for any other reason than they expect that a Romney adminstration will extend them more favorable regulatory treatment?

The only feasable solution is to eliminate the limits of what can be donated to candidates but require full and immediate disclosure so the voters can make up their minds whether they like or dislike from whom the candidates are taking their money and make their choices based on that.

And of course return to an original constitutionalism as far as tthe limits of government power to before FDR assraped it so that it greatly reduces the incentive/compulsion to give money.  People always assume that corporations give money in order to bribe politicians, when it is probably just as likely that they are being extorted by the politicians in the first place.  Microsoft wa famous for not giving any money until they were attacked by the DOJ after Microsoft's enemies gave a lot of money to influence DC.  Microsoft learned real quick that you have to pay to play, or you come under the wheels.

Do you really need to throw in the word "assrape" into an otherwise cogent argument?

[Neil]

I think cases like CU are a triumph of legal formalism over common sense.

Isn't that the world you've been striving to build in your work as a lawyer?

[Sheilbh]

See this is all you have to do freak out Republicans on school vouchers.  Claim 'we need to have a Swedish-style educational system'.

It's being copied (to some extent - profit schools are banned from using them) by the Tories here and seems to be a hopeful policy.  It's not quite the same as the US though - there's no talk of 'defunding' public education or 'escaping' the school system.  Not least because regardless of the motives that language makes you sound a little crazy and scares not just teachers but parents.

Do you really think that communities where almost everyone is from a broken home, high school dropouts are a lot of the parents, crime rates are very high, etc. are going to suddenly produce great students? If you give those kids vouchers, you are going to need to open new private schools--there aren't enough existing private schools to take them, and in any event they wouldn't want those kids. I suspect a lot of the schools that will open are going to be much worse than the schools that currently exist.

That was the experience with New Labour and Academies - they're not private schools but state funded independent schools in deprived areas.  They're being expanded across the country right now and the 'free schools' policy from Sweden has worked there.  I can't see why it wouldn't work here.

One strange feature of our education system which I've just been reading about is how excellent the state schools in London are compared to the rest of the UK.  They're not selective - so it blows the grammar school debate away - but they're really, significantly, extraordinarily better for poor kids.

In the Swedish system all schools (that are in the voucher system, there are still private schools for the rich with tuition and they don't get voucher money) get the same amount of money per student. Students with special needs (disabilities) get a bigger voucher.

The UK system will be the same plus a pupil premiums which is extra money for kids on free school meals (very poor).  It's interesting that noone over here talks about it as a 'voucher' system though, similarly it's interesting that the emphasis hasn't been on bitching about the teaching unions but about the Local Education Authorities.  Teachers are very much praised by the reformers

In the Swedish system all schools (that are in the voucher system, there are still private schools for the rich with tuition and they don't get voucher money) get the same amount of money per student.

Again that's the same here (already), most of our schools aren't selective except on those grounds.  So they can't use tests for example.  Some counties have kept grammar schools though, so they do test.

Probably.  But as things stand vouchers are a fraction of the amount spent on public school kids.

Here the system is moving so that x amount of money is attached to each pupil, more money is attached to kids with learning difficulties or from very poor backgrounds.  That money follows the pupil if they go to a non-profit school (if the reforms continue probably to for-profit schools too) or to an academy or to a 'free school'.  The schools will be competing for pupils because they want the money.  Bad ones will close, good ones expand and establish subsidiary schools.  That, at least, is the theory.  We'll see how it works, but I personally think it's one of the better reforms the government's pushing.

[PDH]

Do you really need to throw in the word "assrape" into an otherwise cogent argument?

Assrape, assrape, assrape, assrape.

[The Minsky Moment]

People always assume that corporations give money in order to bribe politicians, when it is probably just as likely that they are being extorted by the politicians in the first place.  Microsoft wa famous for not giving any money until they were attacked by the DOJ after Microsoft's enemies gave a lot of money to influence DC.  Microsoft learned real quick that you have to pay to play, or you come under the wheels.

There is some truth to that but then ask yourself who were the "enemies" tormenting Microsoft: to a great extent they were corporate competitors (Sun, Oracle, Netscape, IBM etc).  In that respect the Microsoft case was just a later iteration in a lognstanding pattern - recall that in Michael Porter's original book on competitive strategy as published around 1980, he noted the use of antitrust law as a tool for attacking and constraining competitors.

What this story has in common with chasing earmarks, featherbedding government contracts, and writing special breaks into the tax code is that they are all varieties of rent seeking behavior.  Corporations are the major players here - not because corporation are uniquely wicked, but because the larger corporations tend to have high levels of resources to dedicate to rent seeking and a coherent centralized management structure that helps them pursue such goals effectively.

[Hansmeister]

People always assume that corporations give money in order to bribe politicians, when it is probably just as likely that they are being extorted by the politicians in the first place.  Microsoft wa famous for not giving any money until they were attacked by the DOJ after Microsoft's enemies gave a lot of money to influence DC.  Microsoft learned real quick that you have to pay to play, or you come under the wheels.

There is some truth to that but then ask yourself who were the "enemies" tormenting Microsoft: to a great extent they were corporate competitors (Sun, Oracle, Netscape, IBM etc).  In that respect the Microsoft case was just a later iteration in a lognstanding pattern - recall that in Michael Porter's original book on competitive strategy as published around 1980, he noted the use of antitrust law as a tool for attacking and constraining competitors.

What this story has in common with chasing earmarks, featherbedding government contracts, and writing special breaks into the tax code is that they are all varieties of rent seeking behavior.  Corporations are the major players here - not because corporation are uniquely wicked, but because the larger corporations tend to have high levels of resources to dedicate to rent seeking and a coherent centralized management structure that helps them pursue such goals effectively.

Which is why the only way to address this is by taking away the politicians ability to hand out candy through limited government.  The more powerful government is, the more corrupt rent-seeking you end up with.  Attacking political spending is simply attacking the symptoms, not the cause.  The problem is that the reality clashes with the left's fantasy of the efficacy of bigger government so they create this fantasy of trying to ban money and free speech of groups they don't like to create some sort of immaculate political dream world .

This is why the left always fails, their ideals have no bearing on reality.

[Sheilbh]

How do you take away politicians' ability to spend?  Who gets that ability if not them?  I'm just curious how that applies in reality.