Hobby Lobby

This ruling is not a disaster but rather the extension of one: Citizen's United and its establishment of corporate personhood under the Constitution. This case, supported by the same five justices as in Citizens United, will not have great precedential power. I hope and expect that Citizens United and corporate personhood will be discarded by the Supreme Court in my lifetime.  

Balls and strikes?

"I will remember that it’s my job to call balls and strikes and not to pitch or bat."

- From John Roberts's opening statement in his confirmation hearings before the Senate Judiciary Committee, 2005

“Essentially,” [Justice Stevens] wrote, “five justices were unhappy with the limited nature of the case before us, so they changed the case to give themselves an opportunity to change the law.” Roberts, as a fifth vote (let alone the Chief Justice), had the power to keep the ruling of Citizens United narrow if he so chose. He chose otherwise: to dismantle the 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act while overruling a 2003 case upholding the law and a 1990 case underlying this.

Citizens United says a lot about Chief Justice Roberts as a jurist, but it says more about him as a man.

A problem with school

I was speaking to someone who succeeded financially by inventing an interesting product. I mentioned my decidedly mixed feelings about my educational experience and he noted with conviction that "grades in school reflect obedience as much as they reflect knowledge." I don't know if obedience is the right word but I basically agree. In addition to not disrupting class, there's a more fundamental ability to not just perceive the points that the instructor is trying to make but to adopt their mindset in some way. This ability to perceive and adopt a mindset when necessary is a way to succeed but it is also a trait that facilitates and disposes towards bullshitting as described by Harry Frankfurt. Such bullshit has poisoned our discourse, turning statements into markers for being in a group rather than building blocks for ideas that can be advocated or defended. 

From the phone to the revolving door

Gail Collins illustrating the process behind much of our current political dysfunction:

Once politicians get to Congress, they become acquainted with people who are truly rich. That’s pretty much a necessity because re-election is something else you cannot generally buy for a million dollars. Suddenly, they’re hanging out with folks who have private jets and four houses.

Eventually, many lawmakers begin to feel as though they are making an enormous sacrifice by holding public office for $174,000 a year. And then they’re off to a D.C. law firm or lobbying job, which will pay them huge salaries for knowing the people they know. It will never occur to them that if voters had not given them that stint of public service, they would be processing divorce cases back home in East Cupcake.

My take: 

Word of the day

Obscurantist

"The Classic Function of Wall Street"

A Daily Dish reader wrote that "the financial masters of the universe  [...] truly believe that [...] the work they do is absolutely integral to a well-functioning capitalistic society." John Bogle describes such work as "the classic function of Wall Street" in noting how little of it firms still do:

The classic function of Wall Street is to direct capital to its highest and best uses. Well, let’s look at that. Last year [2011], Wall Street directed about $200 billion in capital to IPOs and other long- term investments. But Wall Street was also an intermediary for $40 trillion worth of trading volume. So only one-half of 1 percent of what Wall Street does is capital formation. Most of the rest is short-term speculation. 

Wall Street has become a casino. I once asked a former Wall Street tax attorney why he thought this had happened and he pointed to the earnings incentives: performance is evaluated on a quarterly basis so it suits a financier to pursue short term gains rather than the sort of long-term growth that isn't really noticeable in three month windows.  

Jazz and reason

Jazz improvisation has logic to it: musicians improvise within chords, chords have logical relationships.

Reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.

          - David Hume

In what other endeavor is this so purely realized?

It's done nothing for us now and we didn't need it then

There was information held by the Federal Government about 9/11 before it happened. It just didn't get from where it was (the CIA) in time to be where it needed to be (the FBI).  Bureaucratic factionalism - the eternal cold turf war - was more responsible than a lack of intelligence for the 9/11 attacks. 

Turf was created when the NSA added divisions to collect telephone metadata. As people were moved and employees were added, interests were created in maintaining a self-perpetuating system that has no purpose other than to sustain itself. As a rule, bureaucrats defend their turf. 

The NSA program has not stopped terrorist attacks. But the President's address on it today didn't threaten its existence. Turf has been created. We'd be better off addressing the cultures and incentives that create it than making more of it.