Thoughts on the "liberal media"

Think about it, folks:

If the media were really a "liberal media"--i.e. in the tank for liberal policies and politicians, would we really be hearing about in the media how liberal the media were?  After all, where do we hear that the media is liberal?  From the media! 

If the media were truly liberal, and trying to promote a liberal agenda--they'd be blathering instead about what a bunch of right wingers they are; and how reality is actually to the left of what the media says.  In other words, they would be trying to shift the Overton window to the left.

But instead, the media goes on and on about how liberal they are, which means that someone is trying to move the Overton window to the right.

So is the media really "liberal"?

The DHT reports.  You decide.

Random Facebook thought for the day...

I've got a great idea for a cheesy sci-fi TV show.  In said show, a group of futuristic astro-archeologists, led by a Really Nerdy Guy played by William Peterson, zooms 'round the galaxy from dead planet to dead planet, trying to figure out what natural phenomenon or act of collective stupidity offed the sentient life-forms that used to live there. 

I'm not sure if Earth gets visited in the premiere, or the finale.


Bonus points if it involves apes and the Statue of Liberty.

I invite suggestions for the name of this show in the comments.

Social Security and "funny money"

Social Security has been in the news lately, with the decision of current Texas governor and GOP presidential hopeful Rick "W²" Perry to refer to the program as a Ponzi scheme.  While his rhetoric has been roundly disputed, and while the decision of W² to firmly grasp the third rail of US politics with both hands so far appears unwise; such rhetoric plays well into the hands of those who believe that the program is on unstable financial footing.

From an actuarial point of view, the Social Security Trust Fund is reported to have sufficient funding to pay all its expected obligations until 2036, at which point the trust fund itself (currently about $4 trillion) will be depleted--an event would sharply reduce benefits were it to occur, but which would not end the program completely.  With various tweaks, such as no longer capping payroll taxes or further means-testing of benefits, the life of the trust fund can be extended many decades beyond that.  (Medicare and disability insurance have more pressing funding problems; this article focuses entirely on the non-medical social insurance).

However, many critics of the program instead argue it is in perilous trouble, with apocalyptic terms such as "bankruptcy" or "fraud" or "Ponzi scheme" thrown around; accusations which are routinely given credence in the press.

What's in the trust fund

A major issue of contention is just what is in the Social Security trust fund.  Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer referred to the trust fund as "a fiction", which contains nothing but IOUs which are, in his words, "worthless".   Other commentators have stated that the trust fund contains "funny money", as though there's a bank vault somewhere in the DC suburbs full of Monopoly scrip or Burger Bucks. 

What the trust fund actually does contain is various types of US government treasury securities--debt which is the US is legally obligated to pay, and is backed by the full faith and credit of the US government.  As such, monies owed to the Social Security trust fund is counted as part of the national debt (Social Security obligations are about 30% of the total public debt of about $14 trillion). 

Mr. Krauthammer is an intelligent fellows, and both know full well how the SS trust fund is structured and what it contains.  Assuming that both are being forthright in their assessments of the situation, it stands to reason that they believe either one of the following things are true:

• The US government will indeed, in the near future, default on its public debt.  I'm sure that Wall Street and the world of international finance (particularly the Chinese), not to mention the many patriotic Americans who directly hold Treasuries in their investment portfolios, will not be happy to hear that the securities widely considered the safest investments in the world, are in fact "funny money" and/or "worthless".  The financial markets, needless to say, don't believe either to be the case, and are happily continuing to by US Treasuries despite a ridiculously low rate of return (and despite Standard and Poor's ridiculous decision to downgrade US debt).
• OR---there won't be a general default on the public debt of the United States, but that the Social Security trust fund--at some point in the future--will be stiffed, either by a targeted default or by act of law.

Smart money bets that they are assuming the latter.

How independent is social security?

In discussing Social Security, it is important to consider its structure, and its independence from, the rest of the US Government.  Under current law, Social Security is structured as a program with separate books from the US Treasury.  It is run by a Board of Trustees (who enjoy wide immunity from political interference), and its operations are prescribed by law:  Payroll taxes come in, social security checks go out.  Excess funds are required, again by law, to be invested in US Government debt, and the Treasury is required to redeem these bonds when they expire.  For a long time, while the Baby Boomers were in the work force, the value of the trust fund grew as receipts exceeded benefits; with the Boomers starting to retire, now the opposite is happening and the trust fund is starting to decline in value.  Presently, the value of the trust fund--which represents the amount of taxes collected over the program's life, minus the benefits dispersed--is around $4 trillion, invested in US securities.   This view of Social Security, as an independent actor separate from the US government, and a creditor thereto, is held by many people.

Many Washington insiders hold a different view of Social Security--namely, that it's just another government agency among many, and that the trust fund and the Treasuries contained within are little more than an accounting fiction.  In this point of view, Social Security has no more claim on the Treasury than the US Forest Service or the U.S. Board on Geographic Names; and current and future recipients ought to have no expectation of future benefits.  (Indeed, former Wyoming Senator Alan Simpson often refers to "greedy geezers", and infamously called the program a "cow with 310 million tits", implying that the claims of retirees are somehow illegitimate).

Which view is right?  In a way, both.  The key phrase above is "under current law".

If no act of Congress changes the law, Social Security will continue to operate as prescribed until the trust fund runs out (at which point benefits will be reduced to match payroll tax receipts).  But that's a big if--the program is a creation of law, and if Congress wishes to alter or abolish the program, nothing prevents it from doing so.  Nothing prevents a future Congress (and a like-minded, or veto-overridden President) from abolishing the program, ending benefits immediately, and redirecting payroll tax revenues into the pockets of the most job-creating billionaires the government can find.  Likewise, nothing prevents a future Congress from deciding to bolster the trust fund with general fund revenues funded by a new soak-the-rich tax.  And nothing prevents the government from reducing the overall public debt by essentially reducing the trust find size (cancelling or forgiving some of the Treasuries in the process), and reducing benefits accordingly.

Of course, all of these things would take an act of Congress to pull off.  And there is not, at the present time, sufficient political support in Congress or among the electorate to defund the program--it isn't called the third rail of US politics without a good reason, as the governor of Texas is starting to discover.  Social Security is immensely popular, and no generation has a desire to be the generation that pays into the program but gets nothing out of it.

So why do so many conservative politicians speak of Social Security as though its demise is imminent, and as though the post-Baby Boom generations are going to find an empty cupboard when it is their (our) turn to retire and collect benefits?  And why, when the program was running demographic surpluses, were they happy to go spend the money on other things (like tax cuts), but now seem to regard the upcoming pig-through-the-python as an insoluble problem?

The questions are rhetorical.  The answers--are left as an exercise for the reader.

The unanswered austerity question: What level of debt is ideal?

Right now, a big chunk of the political class in the US, including the President, is in the mood for a little austerity.  The public debt is just too high, so sayeth the punditocracy. Some go far as to propose various flavors of "balanced budget amendment", though many such proposals contain other terms (such as requiring supermajorities to raise taxes) that many consider objectionable.  Ignoring salient issues such as the seriousness of deficit hawks (do they really want to lower the public debt, or simply oppose the spending desires of the other party, but don't mind at all spending public funds on their own priorities) and how do we get there, there's a significant question that hasn't really been discussed with regard to the deficit:

Where should it be, anyway?

Should it be zero, forever? 

Should it be zero over a long-term time window (several decades), but permit fluctuations as necessary to deal with short-term economic cycles?

Should a long-term deficit be maintained, albeit at a lower fraction of GDP than we currently have?

Should the permitted deficit be dependent on inflation-adjusted interest rates--in other words, if the bond market thinks the debt is too high, then its too high?  (And given that despite Friday's S&P downgrade, interest rates on Treasuries remain absurdly low--does the market really conclude that the US poses an unacceptable credit risk)?

Should the US government actually attempt to have a surplus?  (And if one assumes that the dollar remains a fiat currency which the US can create or destroy at will; what would the point be of the US having a surplus in its own currency?)

Should Congress be required to use PAYGO accounting--appropriations and taxes need to be balanced, albeit not in the same fiscal year? 

In other words, what is the endgame of austerity?  And what is the justification--economic, political, moral, whatever--for that position?

Simply assuming that it's good for you, without discussing why or in what dose, strikes me as a major opportunity for mischief.

A tale of two stimuli

In response to the Great Recession, the Obama Administration prepared a stimulus package:  The American Recovery and Investment Act injected nearly $800 billion into the US economy, through a combination of tax reductions directed towards the lower income brackets, and accelerated funding for numerous infrastructure projects.  Many economists insisted that the amount of stimulus was too low, but that was the amount the political process could deliver.  There is ample evidence that the ARRA did help arrest the job losses resulting from the 2008 crash of the financial markets, but it did not restore unemployment to pre-crash levels. 

In response to the budget surpluses of the late 1990s, as soon as George W. Bush got into office, another stimulus act was passed--the so-called "Bush tax cuts"--a $3 trillion reduction in the federal income tax, with the lion's share going to wealthy taxpayers.  One year after the Bush cut was passed, the country experienced a minor recession (mainly caused by corruption and extravagant speculation in the equity markets for high-tech).  Then 9/11 happened, and the US marched off to war to the tune of another $1.2 trillion.  The Bush Tax Cuts, set to sunset in 2010 (done so they could be passed under reconciliation rules and avoid a Democratic filibuster), have been extended once, and many in Congress are angling for their extension again.  The Ryan Budget, voted on by the House of Representatives, would have doubled down on the tax cuts, lowering rates even more--this in a budget bill which was intended to lower the deficit.

Two different theories of how the government can goose the economy--one based on Keynesian economic principles; one based on supply-side economics.  Neither has had much demonstrable success--we're still in a recession, after all--but the response of the political class to the two programs is wildly different.  The ARRA is regarded by much of the body politic to be a failure; a squandering of assets that ought to never happen again--and there even periodic proposals to rescind ARRA funds not yet dispersed.  On the other hand, the political class takes as an axiom that the Bush tax cuts do have a stimulating effect--the moribund economy notwithstanding.  Attempts to raise revenue as part of a deficit-reduction package is opposed on the grounds that We Can't Raise Taxes During A Recession--and the  "Laffer Curve" theory of deficit reduction (that lowering tax rates will increase revenues to the additional economic activity stimulated by) seems to be earnestly believed by many, even though at the current tax rates, it's patently ridiculous.

Why this double standard exists is left as an exercise for the reader.

If users prefer rail to bus (or vice versa), what should be done about it?

Jarrett, writing once again on the theme of bus-rail differences (in preparation for a new book he's working on), writes an article on sorting out the rail-bus differences, along with a followup. In the series, he takes a list of (perceived) differences between bus and rail that were posted at The Infrastructurist, and sorts them into three categories: 

• Intrinsic differences: Real technical differences between bus (including trolleybus) and rail (including, it appears, things like monorails and rubber-tire metros);
• Misidentified differences:  Differences which are related to propulsion rather than guideway type, or differences which arise from how specific lines are implemented in specific systems
• Cultural feedback effects:  Difference which arise from a result of cultural perception, law, or custom.

I won't repeat the list or the analyses here; go read the articles for those details.  However, there is a forest that is being missed for the trees.  Jarrett, I'm sure, knows this, but it merits pointing out.  The discussion of "cultural feedback effects" vs real vs miscategorized differences is important and useful, but there's a bottom line being danced around. That is:

1) There seems to be a quantifiable and measurable preference for rail over bus, at least in much of the developed world.

2) This preference may or may not be rational, may or may not be alterable (to the extent that planners ought to try), and may be conflated with issues dependent on local circumstances or practice, or who knows what else. (True apples-to-apples comparisons are often hard to make).

Given all of that, what should we (transit advocates, planners, decision-makers, or anyone else who cares about this) do about it, whether in planning individual lines or entire systems?  Specifically:

• When and where should planners and decision-makers include modal biases in their forecasts (i.e. "a light rail line will attract X passengers per day, a BRT line will attract Y") and how much weight should these things be given?
• To what extent should transit agencies, et al, attempt to change these views?

There are plenty of schools of thought on the issue.  One one hand, there's a school of thought that says that if reputable data (and proper decision-making requires access to good data) demonstrates a modal bias, that should be reflected in any subsequent analysis, and not colored by political considerations.

There's another school of thought that holds that such biases ought not be considered, especially if they are likely to be irrational (i.e a survey states that 20% more riders will ride on rail than on an equivalent bus line, and the stated reason for that preference is that busses are slow and full of drunks), and that only good "hard" reasons for one choice or another should be considered, such as cost or technical parameters, and that "illegitimate" reasons for a preference ought to be given no weight.  (This view is especially common when the reasons involved can be demonstrably reduced to racism or other forms of prejudice, which good public policy ought to oppose).

Some go so far as to suggest that modal bias (unjustified by tangible differences) is a problem that transit agencies ought to try and solve.


But these questions are ultimately political ones--decision-makers need to take all relevant factors into account.  I tend to favor providing as much quality data as possible to decision-makers, and letting them handle the politics.  (Not that they will necessarily do a good job here, but that is their job...) And while many non-intrinsic differences may be irrelevant in the abstract, they are often quite relevant in the context of a particular agency or system--if rail solutions gets signal priority at grade crossings as a matter of law whereas bus does not, or if a particular agency is not willing to add a new type of rolling stock to a fleet as part of a system expansion, these are important factors to consider.  If there are changes for the better in the wider environment (cultural, regulatory) that can be made, then plan for those; but transit systems have to exist in a particular place.

And difference which are specific to that place can frequently be just as important as those differences which are universal.

The public employees that conservatives love

This article was originally submitted as a comment in response to an article thread posted in The Daily Dish last December.  It was not chosen for publication there, so I'm belatedly writing it here instead edited slightly for article format, given the recent prominence that public employee unions have had here at DHT.

With all the discussion on the problems of the nation's educational system, and the amount that factors such as teacher compensation systems, school administrations, teachers' unions, and the culture at large have on our underperfoming schools--I think it's worthwhile to draw a parallel between teachers and another class of educated public sector professionals.  This profession is one which is ubiquitous, typically ran at local levels of government, generally unionized, considered to be vital to a prosperous civilization--and one which is also frequently subject to heated public disputes about its conduct and competence, into which public employee unions are frequently drawn.  It is also a profession that, unlike teachers or transit workers, is generally beloved by the conservative side of the political spectrum.

I speak, of course, of police officers.

The Thin Blue Line

Big-city newspapers are filled with accounts of incidents where a cop has an unpleasant encounter with a member of the citizenry (up to and including deadly force).  In many of these encounters, the pretext for the police's conduct is found to be questionable, frequently resulting in community outrage--and the cop in question is invariably protected, seemingly no matter the circumstances, by the local police union.  This is especially the case in places (such as Portland) where the civilian government overseeing the cops generally does not tolerate police misconduct.  But the same behaviors which many on the political right deride in many public professions, particularly in teaching--workplace rules that make it difficult to fire bad teachers, seniority-based promotion and retention policies, and a workforce allegedly more interested in professional solidarity rather than in public service--are routinely praised when observed in law enforcement. 

Law-and-order politicians and activists are often more than willing to sweep abuses of power aside on any number of grounds: the perp had it coming, officers have a tough job, etc.  Praises of the the "thin blue line" are frequently sung.  Many of the excuses which prompt calls of "cry me a river" when uttered by teachers (deplorable conditions, insufficient support from higher-ups) find a sympathetic ear when invoked by the police.  And to be fair, many liberals who are quick to denounce abusive cops are in many cases far less eager to denounce bad teachers--instead blaming the environment, the parents, a lack of funding, etc. for failings in the classroom.

Geese and ganders

Other similarities exist between the police and the public schools.  Both are professions, jobs requiring college degrees, and lots of professional judgment on the part of practitioners.  Both careers involve extensive dealings with the public, including many members thereof who don't appreciate the service.  Both careers also are challenging to manage--the quality of an individual practitioner cannot generally be measured with simple metrics, and attempts to do so frequently produce undesirable results.  And both professions pattern themselves after similar institutions, namely the armed forces and the academy.

Law enforcement in the US is modeled in many ways on the military.  Command structures and ranks are military in origin, and many departments include paramilitary tactics as part of their training (whether warranted or not).  It's not uncommon to hear officers working bad neighborhoods describing the environment as a "war zone".  On the other hand, the severity of the discipline is far less in civilian law enforcement   (Can you imagine a commanding officer trying to discharge a problem soldier being overruled by an arbitrator?) 

Likewise, public education likes to fashion itself in the robes of academia--the teaching staff of a school is called the "faculty", and concepts such as tenure and academic freedom are lifted wholesale from the university context, despite the fact that college professors are generally not unionized (and thus are not protected by collective bargaining arrangements) and public schoolteachers aren't typically engaged in research programs which might be controversial and subject to political interference, the justification for tenure in higher education in the first place. 

I think that a useful political compromise might be this:  What is sauce for the goose ought to be also sauce for the gander.  What's good for teachers ought to be also good for cops.  If someone suggests that we should try to bust teachers' unions and/or abolish other personnel practices which are (arguably) more appropriate for factory workers rather than skilled professionals; ask them how they feel about doing the same to the local police force.  If someone says that teachers are overpaid, ask what they think of the salaries of cops.

And vice versa.