Don't Know Much History...

          As economies around the world continue to struggle to come out of the recession that began in 2008 it seems that (with apologies to Sam Cooke) not only do they not know much history but they have not learned or have forgotten economics.

          Economics is a science, maybe not a hard science, but at least a social science.  As such it must be studied and learned from, with concrete examples and economic models.  Also as with history people must learn from economic actions of the past or they are doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past.  As was recently pointed out, austerity by governments in times of economic downturns does not work to revive an economy.  Today more proof that governmental austerity in an economic downturn does not work and makes the recovery from a recession slower and more painful.  This is nothing new, as the austerity doctrine has been debunked for years and debunked again.

          It is time for Milton Freidman’s 1965 quote that we are all Keynesians to come true.  If not we are bound to continue to have a very slow and painful recovery from the Lesser Depression.

GOP Debates To Date The Loser? The Softball Tossing Media!

          With polls almost closed in South Carolina and numerous debates completed of the candidates for the GOP nomination there is one big loser in the field.  The loser is the media for never asking tough questions and for lobbing softballs at the candidates.

          Other than Ron Paul all of the candidates feel a need to show their toughness against Iran and to threaten to use military force against Iran in order to prevent Iran from possessing nuclear weapons.  When were any of the candidates asked how they were would pay for the actual cost of any such military option when they all want to cut taxes which reduces revenues is constant dollars?  A reduction in overall revenues will meant that in order to finance the cost of the military action there would have to be cuts in other federal programs.  What programs would they cut to pay for attacking Iran?

          All of the Republican candidates want to cut short term deficit spending to revive the economy.  That has been tried in Ireland and has failed.  Ireland has shown that governmental austerity leads to a shrinking and not and expansionary economy.  What economic model are they using to determine that governmental austerity in a recession will revive an economy?

          A Nobel Prize winning Keynesian economist has argued that the amount of spending in the Obama stimulus was too small and that there were too many tax cuts in it.  These arguments were made prior to the enactment of the stimulus plan and not a 20-20 hindsight critic.  What economic model are the Republican’s relying on to show that a sufficiently large enough stimulus with more spending and less tax cuts would not have helped the economy?

          These are policy questions that should have been asked of the candidates but were not.  Instead we had to hear meaningless questions about what the candidates would be doing if not debating in New Hampshire on a Saturday in January or about how a candidate treated his ex-wives.  Maybe they will be asked in a future debate, but I doubt it.

Uneducated GOP Attack on the Courts

As the Iowa caucuses draw near it is time to look at the troubling positions on the judiciary taken by some of the Republican candidates. I will look at the more vocal attackers of the federal judiciary and the failings of the arguments and their lack of understanding the Constitution and its separation of powers.  One of the strongest parts of the Constitution is the independence of the judiciary.  Once appointed as an Article III judge there is life tenure subject to removal for committing high crimes or misdemeanors through the Impeachment process.  This has only been done fourteen times since the adoption of the Constitution.

People seeking to be the Republican nominee for President seem to be unaware of this process and have other ideas about federal judges.

Newt Gingrich, the historian [?], believes that the executive and legislative branches have ceded supremacy to the courts and seems to think that it is ok to call a federal judge before congress to explain a decision that he does not like.  Let’s start with the first complaint.  A review of recent history will show how false this claim is.  In Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company, 550 U.S. 618 (2007) the Supreme Court severely limited the rights of people who have been discriminated in their employment to be able to bring a law suit for damages.  The second law enacted by the 111^th Congress modified the law to make it easier to bring employment discrimination cases.  The enactment of what is commonly known as the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act of 2009 shows what the executive and legislative branches can do when faced with a decision of the courts that they disagree with.  When faced with an unpopular interpretation of the Constitution (as opposed to a statute) the other two branches can take the initial steps to amend the Constitution.  When the Supreme Court decided that burning the flag was protected by the First Amendment multiple proposals to amend the Constitution were introduced in both houses of Congress.  However, none of the proposals ever were passed by the House and Senate and sent tote h states for ratification.

Mr. Gingrich also wants to require federal judges to appear before Congress to explain their decisions.  Having read thousands of court decisions over the years, I have yet to read one decision that did not explain the basis for the decision.  If Mr. Gingrich wants to understand how a judge ruled the way they did, I suggest that he just read the decision.

Next up, Michele Bachmann.  In the debates she speaks about how she believes that activist judges are enacting laws.  There are 51 separate Titles in the United States Code.  However, despite numerous times making this claim she never once says what law was ever enacted by a judge.  She claims to be a constitutional conservative (is that like a compassionate conservative?) but fails to understand the same things that Newt Gingrich does not understand that the courts are not the final arbiter of the laws of this country.  A court may say what a certain law means (because the legislature that enacted it was less than crystal clear as to what certain provisions of a law mean) but the executive and legislative branches can make that interpretation null and void as described above.

Rick Perry does not like activist judges.  However, he does not name any current judges that ate activists.  At least he understands that after a Supreme Court decision that interprets the Constitution in way in that he disagrees with, that there is a way to amend the Constitution.  He wants to amend the Constitution to allow prayer in public schools.  What he does not realize is that there is already prayer in the public schools.  The Supreme Court only outlawed, under the First Amendment, organized prayer in the public schools in Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962).  As Barry Goldwater is reported to have said, as long as there are math tests there will be prayer in the public schools.  This type of unorganized prayer has never been banned by the Court.

I only discuss the three candidates above because they have been the most vocal in attacking the judiciary.   However, the hypocrisy of the Republicans running for President and screaming for States’ Rights (we will not discuss the racial overtones of this phrase here) is unbelievable.  Every Republican running screams for States’ Rights under the Tenth Amendment.  However, when every Republican other than Willard M. Romney and Ron Paul failed to get on the primary ballot in Virginia they have sued Virginia in federal court.  So the Republicans, led by Rick Perry, who could not comply with a state law, are seeking to overturn that law in federal court; Priceless.