Count me among the people that regard politics as primarily the art of getting things done — of deliberating on and then distributing out public goods to people, and trying to do this at the lowest costs possible, in the appropriate time horizons, with the greatest impact, and so on. Politics is not poll numbers; it’s not, ultimately, about feelings or even theories. Politics is about doing things.

Adopt this perspective, and the media-wide consensus that Obama has been “weak” on the BP Spill starts to look rather absurd:* the standard for success is a strictly material one; Obama should be judged, in the final analysis, by whether he succeeds at mitigating the effects of this crisis to the fullest extent possible — by whether he helps us plug that (goddamn) hole and then, afterwards, whether he goes to changing the material conditions that allowed the hole to burst open in the first place, the corrupt MMS regulatory regime and our insatiable appetite for crude oil. That is the standard we judge him by.

Theoretically, to judge Obama’s success by the standard of “is he getting it done” you’d need to create “counterfactuals,” where you test his choices against all other conceivable ones. (Note: not stopping the spill doesn’t mean failure; if we had counterfactuals, we might find out that even the best course of action conceivable wouldn’t have allowed the president to stop the spill sooner than he has.) But in practice, the fact of theoretical unknowability doesn’t mean we say “screw it” and decide, instead, to report on people’s perceptions of reality, on feelings or moods or zeitgeist or whatever it is Maureen Dowd is doing. No, it means we work a little harder, investigate the administration’s actions, use our analytical skills to make arguments (with evidence!) for or against them, and then draw conclusions. As it happens, I’ve seen embarrassingly little of that coming out of our press corps.

At the same time, this conception of politics as the material fact of getting goods to people in need helps give us perspective on the political back-and-forths of our moment. There’s a brilliant article out in Slate subtitled “What if political scientists covered the news?” It reads:

Obama now faces some of the most difficult challenges of his young presidency: the ongoing oil spill, the Gaza flotilla disaster, and revelations about possibly inappropriate conversations between the White House and candidates for federal office. But while these narratives may affect fleeting public perceptions, Americans will ultimately judge Obama on the crude economic fundamentals of jobs numbers and GDP.

Chief among the criticisms of Obama was his response to the spill. Pundits argued that he needed to show more emotion. Their analysis, however, should be viewed in light of the economic pressures on the journalism industry combined with a 24-hour news environment and a lack of new information about the spill itself.

Recast Obama’s popularity as a function of the structural forces at play at any given moment — as the result of the slumping economy, the progress of his agenda through Congress, and the fact that a blowout preventer a few thousand feet under the water has been spewing oil for a month — and you start to realize that the narratives about his “feelings” and “leadership” and “tone” are just ex post facto rationalizations. You realize that these narratives, as Jon Chait explains, are most properly understood as “bullshit.”

I think our pundit class would be a whole lot better if they acknowledged these simple truths: first, things happen to countries; then, presidents respond to those things that happen; those responses are bounded by the nature of those things that are happening (say, how much expertise the federal government has on offshore drilling), and, moreover, by the conditions of the world we live in. While the president steers the ship of state, he can’t be held responsible for the conditions of the water.

After all, isn’t this perspective what drew us to Obama in the first place? At the center of his campaign was a promise: to move us beyond the theatrics of politics — beyond the cynical new left/new right vocabulary of our parents, and beyond the erratic “suspend my campaign to fix the financial crisis!!” cowboy politics of his opponent — and towards a politics of reason, deliberation and decency, even when that doesn’t play so well in the media. Towards the politics of getting things done. That was the “change you can believe in” and it is perhaps the man’s deepest conviction: that we can be responsible and civic even in times of great urgency.

So let the guy be calm in crisis. That’s why we elected him, right?

-

* Adopt this perspective and you see why racism is best understood as what you choose to do not what you feel and claim. (Re: Rand Paul.)

Photo credit: U.S. Coast Guard

When Google stopped complying with China’s censorship laws, users could still access the Hong Kong site, where they could see unfiltered results, including ones about Tiananmen Square and Tibet. This was a victory for the former colony, a reminder of why Hong Kong still has much to offer even as its neighbors begin to catch up in economic growth. While China’s economy is still hampered by concerns about the rule of law, Hong Kong’s solid legal system and history of productivity sustain an environment that is ideal for attracting investment. But economic progress has not translated directly into political freedom, as many might have expected. Indeed, Hong Kong’s uniquely vibrant economy may be leading to excessive patience, or complacence, when it comes to political progress.

Freedom and Prosperity

Hong Kong has flourished as the economic crown jewel of the developing Chinese nation, with considerably higher income levels and standards of living than other Chinese cities. In 2007, Hong Kong’s GDP per capita reached $42,000, compared to the mainland’s $5,400. Still, China has enjoyed unprecedented growth rates since opening its markets, and recently some Chinese cities have been catching up to Hong Kong.

Shanghai, for instance, just surpassed Hong Kong’s economy in GDP. But, rather than creating a threat to Hong Kong’s dominance, this reflects little to no change in the economic landscape. As Harvard political scientist Roderick MacFarquhar explained, “The population of Shanghai—14 million—is almost exactly double that of Hong Kong. It was inevitable that it would overtake Hong Kong.”

Moreover, Hong Kong maintains a major advantage over Chinese cities: a reputation for quality control and safety that stems from its long history of British oversight and regulation. “China’s rich come down to HK to buy property because the property rights and laws are so clear. Chinese parents come to HK to buy milk powder because they know it’s not tainted here,” said Harvard senior and Hong Kong resident Alexandra Chen.

Furthermore, investors are confident that their assets will be secure in Hong Kong, given its British common law system and strong commitment to property rights. With these unique advantages, Hong Kong is seen as the default choice for hosting financial transactions. Until the mainland establishes an equally strong legal regime, it will forfeit to Hong Kong an advantage that will become increasingly significant as the Chinese economy becomes more complex and prone to legal disputes.

Long March to Democracy

Since decolonization in 1997, Hong Kong has been ruled as a “special administrative region” of China under a “one country, two systems” policy, which has granted Hong Kong considerable economic freedom and some political autonomy. Hong Kong’s political system retains its British traditions of semi-direct democracy, with an article in its constitution, the Basic Law, that promises universal suffrage at some point in the future.

But, as of now, that democratic promise is only partially realized. Half of the 60 seats in Hong Kong’s legislature are voted on by the population, and half are chosen by a smaller electorate of corporate bodies and special interest groups. And the election of Hong Kong’s chief executive is even less democratic—he or she is chosen by a 400-member election committee and then appointed by the Central People’s Government in Beijing.

Pressures to Democratize?

Although the central Chinese government promised universal suffrage in Hong Kong by 2007 under the original Basic Law, Beijing has not followed through. It has postponed direct elections twice, first to 2012, and then to 2017. Beijing also continues to condemn pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong residents have made some noise over this apparent failure to live up to the Basic Law. In 2005, some 80,000 citizens protested for direct elections outside the central government’s office. In February, hundreds of protestors flooded the streets to call for the release of pro-democracy activist Liu Xiaobo, convicted by the People’s Republic of China for “subverting the state.”

And in another dramatic push for democracy, legislators from each of Hong Kong’s five electoral districts resigned suddenly this past January, forcing special by-elections—a sort of referendum on universal suffrage—throughout Hong Kong by the end of the year. The protests on Liu’s behalf and the resignation of the five legislators earlier this year represent growing demands for Beijing to stop dragging its feet. But these rumblings of discontent hide a surprisingly widespread conservatism and cautiousness among the general population of Hong Kong.

Popular Contentment

Despite the agitation earlier this year, Hong Kong as a whole has been noticeably muted in calling for democracy. The referendum triggered by the five legislators will, in fact, turn out to be less of a statement than the pro-democracy parties had hoped: the moderate parties and the leading pro-Beijing party have refused to take part, rendering the election meaningless, as the pro-democracy candidates will retake their seats uncontested. Chief Executive Donald Tsang seems poised to strike a deal between all of the parties, not satisfying the pro-democracy legislators’ calls for immediate democracy.

Furthermore, the public seems to favor a gradual, cooperative approach to the implementation of reform. As Peng Qinghua, head of China’s liaison office in Hong Kong, said publicly, “This [referendum] is a total violation of mainstream public opinion that wants stability, harmony, and development.” Almost half of the elected officials in Hong Kong are from pro-Beijing parties, not the more staunchly pro-democracy parties. This representation reflects a fundamental contentment among the people of Hong Kong with their semi-democracy.  “As long as the government is relatively efficient and clean—which it is—most people are only concerned about their pocketbooks,” said Chen.

The gradualist sentiments expressed by government officials and by the public seem to indicate that popular attitudes towards democratization are far less urgent than recent events might suggest. Rather, calls for immediate democracy emanate from an activist political minority; the general attitude is more cooperative and even patient.

Growth Versus Rights

Although recent, highly publicized political events seemed to indicate full-throated support for democracy, many Hong Kong residents pay more attention to their economic well-being than to their political rights. Legal rights in the city provide a level of sufficiency for daily life, and citizens feel secure with their property and livelihoods. Combined with the promise of continually rising incomes and standards of living, the political status quo stalls any real push for free elections.

Given its legal structure and its tradition of freedom of expression, Hong Kong will continue to attract the businesses and investments that propel its economy. As long as the risk differential between the Chinese and Hong Kong economies exists, Hong Kong will flourish and its population, complacent with its relative wealth, will favor a gradualist approach toward democratization, waiting on promises of political freedom made years ago.

Tiffany Wen ’11 is a Staff Writer.

Photo Credits: Flickr (Trodel, Ed meister)

In Will’s article, William Gale, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-director of the Tax Policy Center, opines that the anti-tax movement, in which he includes Americans for Tax Reform and the various Tea Parties, “just hate all taxes,” and will therefore oppose any tax increase. But it’s not entirely that simple. I don’t presume to speak for ATR or the Tea Parties per se, but fiscal conservatives generally recognize what Chief Justice John Marshall observed in McCulloch v. Maryland, that “The power to tax involves the power to destroy.” Government should not use the tax code to pick winners and losers, so to speak, since it can effectively outlaw activities through excessive taxation, hindering a given industry to the point that it can no longer operate profitably. In the next section of the article, Will notes that the gas tax “raises a thorny issue of fairness,” since some citizens drive more than others; this fairness question in fact applies to all excise taxes, and places government in the position of arbitrarily redistributing income from one group of citizens to another in the name of what it considers the general welfare. Citizens and politicians, moreover, frequently disagree as to just what constitutes the “general welfare,” and therefore differ as to which industries and activities should be promoted and which discouraged. Given these facts, it is better in most cases to allow the market to answer this question, and to confine federal tax policy to either a flat income tax or a consumption tax.

Carbon consumption is a very rare instance in which a corrective tax is warranted, given the broad bipartisan consensus that America must wean itself from dependence on oil: even citizens who reject the notion—or the urgency—of climate change would generally agree on the need to curb the massive wealth transfer to rogue oil-producing countries. Will is correct in his implication that what he calls the “anti-tax establishment” thinks taxes in general are too high and would oppose any tax increase. What he appears to overlook is that it is not necessary to raise the overall tax rate in order to discourage gas consumption through the tax code. He briefly mentions that rebates might be used to “correct the regressive elements of the tax,” but why not simply return the entirety of the gas tax revenue through a rebate? Better yet, why not use the extra revenue from the gas tax increase as a means to cut the income tax rate to both encourage energy conservation and alternatives and spur economic growth at the same time? I’ll confess I don’t know how the “anti-tax establishment” would respond to such a proposal, but I find it hard to believe that a revenue-neutral proposal that reduces our dependence on sponsors of terrorism and involves an income tax rate cut would elicit significant opposition from the Right.

Parenthetically, a gas tax is not the only way to reduce oil consumption, and probably not the best. As I have noted in the Harvard Salient (though I am by no means the first to do so), a revenue-neutral carbon tax would be more comprehensive, and probably cheaper to collect. I have also explained in the HPR that urban traffic congestion could be substantially reduced through congestion pricing, which has been used with great success abroad.

All that said, Will is absolutely right that government should take action to reduce gas consumption, that the tax code is probably the best way to do this, and that the American political environment makes this extraordinarily difficult. But it’s not fair to blame the “anti-tax establishment” as an obstacle to reform when what he is talking about could easily be achieved without a net tax increase.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia.

To put it lightly, baseball fans on twitter and Facebook were generally extremely displeased initially with Jim Joyce and his blown call. His Wikipedia page, which has now been cleaned and locked from edits, was quickly vandalized.

“James A. Joyce III AKA F*****g Jew (October 3 1955 – June 2, 2010) is the worst umpire in Major League Baseball who has worked in the American League (AL) from 1987 to 1999 and throughout both major leagues since 2000…

*COMPLETELY* f****d up Armando Galarraga’s perfect game against the Cleveland Indians on June 6th, 2002. ARE YOU KIDDING ME.

Joyce recently blew a call to ruin a perfect game. He is now the greatest troll in baseball. DUDE NEEDS TO BE FIRED”

While most fans were not as vehement as the vandals on Wikipedia, they were quick to pass judgment on Joyce. Joyce’s actions today proved that those judgments were false, and his mistake was due to simple human error. He was able to overcome the controversial situation by owning up to his mistake and displaying his genuine guilt. He was transparent and honest. One can only wish that politicians were as honest and straightforward as Joyce was. Unfortunately, many politicians prefer making excuses instead of directly addressing the issues they are faced with.

Take the recent controversy with the White House potentially offering Senate candidates Joe Sestak (D-Penn.) and Andrew Romanoff (Col.) jobs to avoid heated primary races. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs mostly avoided questions on the subject on Thursday, only offering some meaningless comments. “The president, as the leader of the party, has an interest in ensuring supporters don’t run against each other in contested primaries,” Gibbs said and stated that contested primaries are not “altogether fun things.” These remarks help the White House put this issue behind them, especially with a President that won votes based on promises for transparency and claimed the moral high ground from previous administrations. By avoiding the issue and entangling into a web of political jargon, the White House creates room for pundits and critics to draw their own assumptions and conclusions.

I have always found it easier to come out with the truth and offer an apology if necessary even in situations where I am not fully at fault. Jim Joyce knew that and won the admiration of many baseball fans by owning up to his mistakes. Even though political situations are far more complicated than a simple safe or out call, politicians can learn an important lesson in limiting political liability by being more honest and learning how to apologize. Under reasonable situations, most voters are willing to accept that nobody is perfect.

In an editorial in the Washington Post last Friday, Charles Krauthammer wrote that environmentalists are partially to blame for the spill because, thanks to their efforts, oil companies have been forced to drill in very deep water, as the more shallow areas are off-limits for oil production. Sarah Palin was even more militant when she echoed this sentiment in a Facebook note earlier today, writing,

“Radical environmentalists: you are damaging the planet with your efforts to lock up safer drilling areas. There’s nothing clean and green about your misguided, nonsensical radicalism, and Americans are on to you as we question your true motives.”

First of all, here’s why Krauthammer and Palin are wrong. OK, granted, there were several reasons why BP was drilling in water that deep, but there is one reason that trumps the rest: They were drilling there because they thought it would be profitable. If BP thinks it’s going to make money by drilling somewhere, then of course, it will drill there; if it thinks it will lose money, obviously, it won’t drill.

Certainly, it’s cheaper to drill closer to land–or in ANWR, as Palin suggests–and if drilling were allowed in these locations, oil companies would explore those regions first. But there’s only a finite number of wells that can be dug at these sites, and there’s only a finite quantity of oil that can be extracted from each well. And where would the oil companies turn once those resources had been exhausted? Would we expect them to show moral restraint and say, “Well, we’ve dug all the shallow-water wells, better pack up our tools and go home because it’s too risky to drill in deep water?”  Of course not. Regardless of where oil companies were allowed to drill, there would have come a time when it became economically profitable to drill in deep water. Maybe it would have taken them 10 years longer to get there, but BP would have found the deep-water wells, and Deepwater Horizon would have been built regardless of the environmentalists.

But here’s what really frustrates me about Palin’s note: She’s pretending that “drill, baby, drill” is, and always has been, a nuanced energy and environmental policy. According to Palin, “drill, baby, drill” meant–at least in part–that we need to allow only some drilling so that we can avoid other, more risky drilling, and thus mitigate the chance of a catastrophic environmental disaster. Really, is that what “drill, baby, drill” meant? Prior to the Deepwater Horizon disaster, where had Sarah Palin–or anyone–ever expressed that opinion? When had Sarah Palin ever warned of the environmental dangers of deep-water drilling? In fact, based on these comments, it seems she’s always supported deep-water drilling.

No, “drill, baby, drill” is a simple policy: If there’s oil, we’re going to dig a hole and get it. That’s all it means, and that’s all it ever meant.  The Right is kidding itself if they think this overly simple approach to oil policy is going to make the environment safer.

Photo Credit: Flickr stream of Mike Licht

Justice Kennedy, writing for the majority, argued that “Thompkins did not say that he wanted to remain silent or that he did not want to talk with the police. Had he made either of these simple, unambiguous statements, he would have invoked his ‘right to cut off questioning.’ Here he did neither, so he did not invoke his right to remain silent.”

Justice Sotomayor, in her first major dissent, complained that, under the majority’s view, “suspects will be legally presumed to have waived their rights even if they have given no clear expression of their intent to do so. Those results, in my view, find no basis in Miranda or our subsequent cases and are inconsistent with the fair-trial principles on which those precedents are grounded.”

Count me among the dissenters. As Andrew Cohen at PoliticsDaily writes, this decision “is likely to encourage law enforcement officials to continue questioning suspects even where there may be a question about whether that suspect’s right to remain silent has been invoked.” The question is whether you think that’s a good or a bad thing, i.e. whether you want to “give[] the benefit of the doubt of ambiguity during questioning to the police and to prosecutors and not to the defendant,” as Cohen puts it.

Giving the benefit of the doubt to police and prosecutors in this particular case undermines Miranda‘s moral foundation, its assumption that American values are more endangered by over-aggressive police and prosecutorial work than by over-generous procedural rights for criminal suspects. You may think that’s a good assumption or a bad one, but I just want to point out that even these small cases, where the conservatives merely “refine” and “clarify” liberal precedents, implicate the same values that are at stake in bigger cases.

Andrew Cohen also gives some positive press to David Souter’s Commencement address at Harvard last week. Souter’s speech, which I was not lucky enough to hear in person, was an articulate and passionate defense of liberal or “living” constitutionalism. Souter made three basic claims about the Constitution:

1. Its provisions are often “open-ended” and “call for more elaborate reasoning to show why very general language applies in some specific cases but not in others.”

2. “[I]ts language grants and guarantees many good things, and good things that compete with each other and can never all be realized, all together, all at once.”

3. Constitutionally relevant facts do not “just lie there waiting for an objective judge to view them,” but rather “judicial perception [of relevant facts] turns on the experience of the judges, and on their ability to think from a point of view different from their own.”

We can see all three ideas reflected in the Court’s Miranda doctrine and its offshoots and relatives.

First, there is the realization that the words of the Fifth Amendment are open-ended. According to the text, one may not be “compelled” to be a witness against oneself, but just what constitutes “compelling” testimony? Torturing it out of a suspect surely would constitute compelling him. And maybe (I don’t know) that’s all the Fifth Amendment meant to the Framers. But the Framers didn’t codify the rule that you can’t torture testimony out of someone. They codified a broader rule, meant to last for centuries, as constitutions must.

Second, there is a conflict here between legitimate constitutional values, and it cannot be straightforwardly resolved. One of the Constitution’s main purposes is to “insure domestic Tranquility,” and we have long assumed a general “police power” on the part of the state, that is, a power to secure the public safety and welfare through legislation. Catching and punishing criminals is obviously an important part of that power. But the Constitution also values the rights of criminal suspects and defendants, and clearly worries about the possibility of abuses of the police power. It shouldn’t surprise us that the Framers tried to have it both ways. They knew that we would have to continue the search for the proper balance between various sets of constitutional values.

Third, there is a set of facts that judges must take note of, facts that can’t be gleaned either by looking at the Constitution itself or via abstract reasoning. Judges have to look at the real world to decide whether they should worry more about police and prosecutors abusing their powers, or more about criminals getting off on “technicalities.” For starters, they have to know how often each of those things happens. Nothing in the Constitution is going to tell them whether one or the other is a greater threat to liberty in the here and now.

The one missing link in the constitutional vision laid out in Souter’s Harvard speech is a clear explanation of why the judiciary needs to be a central player in the search for constitutional meaning. Why can’t we trust the legislature to give meaning to the open-ended guarantees of “equal protection” and “due process of law,” to balance police power against procedural rights, and to perceive facts of constitutional import? There have to be two separate arguments on behalf of an active (if not activist) judiciary: first, a historical argument showing that the Framers actually intended to empower the judiciary in such a way; and second, a theoretical argument explaining why judges will be better trustees of (certain?) constitutional values than will legislators.

Alas, I won’t go into those thorny subjects now, but I wish Souter had given them a nod in his brilliant speech last Thursday.

Photo credit: Wikipedia

In 1993, President Bill Clinton pushed the last bill through Congress to increase the gas tax. Even this, however, was watered-down reform; the tax was not indexed to inflation and increased the price of gas by only 4.3 cents per gallon. The modesty of the increase should not be surprising: since 1993, no prominent American politician has seriously supported a major increase in the gas tax. Virtually everyone agrees that supporting the gas tax is political suicide. As Michael Cragg, an energy consultant at The Brattle Group, told the HPR, “It’s hard to see in this political environment how you’d get a gas tax passed.”

A similar consensus exists among economists, but on a different issue. According to a study in the Journal of Economic Literature, the vast majority of economists support a gas tax in order to make the private cost of driving a car reflect its actual social costs: global warming, air pollution, traffic congestion, and highway maintenance. Economists from across the political spectrum—Freakonomics author Steven Levitt, Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, and even the chairman of George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors, N. Gregory Mankiw—have come out in support of raising the gas tax.

How can a policy make so much economic sense and garner so little political support? Significant obstacles, including the anti-tax movement, vested interests in low energy prices, regional differences, and America’s short election cycle, have historically made the gas tax unpopular and unfeasible. Our energy future and climate security depend on either tweaking the tax to make it more politically palatable, or exploring creative alternatives.

The Anti-Tax Establishment

Perhaps the most fundamental reason why a higher gas tax is so controversial is because it hits everybody, and hits them in a very public way. William Gale, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-director of the Tax Policy Center, told the HPR that the anti-tax movement “will seize on every tax,” and the gas tax is an easy target. Represented by vocal advocacy groups such as Americans for Tax Reform and the various Tea Parties, the anti-tax movement “does not make a distinction between distortionary and distortionary-correcting taxes,” Gale said.

“They just hate all taxes,” he continued, “and every attempt at an increase in taxes becomes an opportunity for [their] political gain.”

Looking closer at the particulars of the gas tax raises an equally problematic obstacle: the culture of low energy prices. According to Henry Lee, director of the Environment and Natural Resources Program at Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, America’s energy policy has been governed by a single goal for the last 40 years. “Americans for almost two generations have lived under the idea of cheap energy,” he explained, making it almost impossible to pass laws involving price increases. At this point, such laws could seem almost un-American.

Democratic Divisions

The gas tax also raises a thorny question of fairness. Rural inhabitants, who drive farther and more often than do urban residents, would face steeper costs if the federal gas tax went up. Politicians that represent rural districts are simply responding to their constituents’ concerns by opposing the gas tax.

Gale identified this “urban-rural divide” as one of the two most salient obstacles to the gas tax, in addition to the anti-tax movement. Recognizing these regional disparities raises questions about institutional problems in American democracy. To say, as many do, that lack of progress on the gas tax is part of a Big Oil conspiracy ignores the ways in which representative democracy can often forestall consensus.

America’s short, two-year election cycle is a major barrier to passing a higher gas tax. Politicians tend to ignore proposals that involve an immediate, perceivable cost and provide less tangible, long-term benefits. Thomas Sterner, former president of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists, told the HPR that this is the “big problem” of gas tax politics. In countries with short electoral cycles of two to four years, attempts to increase the gas tax “will only cause protests,” Sterner said. It can be very difficult to promote farsighted, technocratic solutions in a political environment defined by short-term gratification.

Tweaking the Gas Tax

Recognizing that political barriers will make increasing the gas tax difficult, policymakers need to start thinking outside the box. One possibility, Sterner proposed, is the “fuel price escalator,” raising the tax gradually over the course of many years. Sterner said that this is “the only workable model.”

By making the price increases less immediate, the fuel price escalator resolves some of the difficulty posed by an electoral system focused on short-term gain. This explains, in part, how the United Kingdom under Margaret Thatcher was able to move from a relatively low gas tax to one that charges over 300 percent of the retail price, the highest in Europe.

Efficient use of revenue from the gas tax, Sterner said, is also important. The careful use of rebates can correct the regressive elements of the tax and can also make the increase in fuel prices more palatable to rural residents. Furthermore, the gas tax is essential for deficit reduction. “It’s becoming abundantly evident that we need the money,” Gale said.

The current gas tax can no longer keep up with escalating road and highway spending; this year’s highway appropriations were made possible only by siphoning funds from the general budget, which, according to Lee, has never been done before. Lee noted, “You’re going to have to have a change in the system in the next five years,” because there is “no way” Congress can continue propping up the transportation budget with general funds.

A final component of a revised gas tax might be a price floor, which would keep the price of gas relatively stable by taxing the difference if the price dipped below a certain mark. This would create a predictable environment for long-term investment in new-energy technologies that hold the key to a low-carbon economy. As Lee explained, “[Oil price] volatility gets people to under-invest.” By giving investors a stable price they can use to gauge the cost-effectiveness of future energy sources, a price floor could contribute to innovation.

The disconnect between good policy and good politics is one of the most frustrating dilemmas of American democracy. Absent substantive change in the near future, the United States risks heightened fuel price volatility, decreased economic competitiveness, and the negative effects of climate change.

Policymakers will need to search for creative solutions that are both true to the spirit of economic efficiency and more palatable to constituents focused on short-term interests. If they are able to do this with the gas tax, they might learn lessons that can be applied in other difficult and thorny areas of public policy, like immigration and entitlement reform.

Will Rafey ‘13 is a Staff Writer.

Infographic: Neil Patel

Photo Credit: Flickr (Indy Charlie)

More than two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. Childhood obesity has tripled in the last thirty years. For the first time since the Civil War, Americans’ life expectancy may be declining. These facts paint a depressing, and by now familiar, picture.

After decades of failed attempts to convince individuals to make healthier eating choices, it is evident that reducing obesity will require changes in the food industry. Some recent initiatives undertaken by the Obama administration and the Food and Drug Administration will try to contribute to this effort by changing the way people think about food.

Forcing the Industry to Change

Many cities and states have taken the initiative in the fight against obesity by passing laws which put pressure on companies to make their food healthier. New York was the first major city to order a trans-fat ban in its restaurants, after a failed public education campaign. Other cities and states have followed suit and many are now also considering soda taxes and calling for reductions in salt content.

Kelly Brownell, director of Yale’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity, told the HPR, “You simply can’t do enough education to begin to compete with the food industry. We need to change the fundamental drivers of the obesity problem such as food marketing and the cost and content of food.” Local initiatives have been effective so far and have also had some positive unintended consequences: after facing trans-fat bans in major cities, nearly all fast food chains have removed trans fats from their national products. When faced with restrictions in large markets, it is often more efficient for companies to implement changes across the board.

But the most effective way to force the industry to change may be to create federal laws similar to those passed by lower levels of government. The food lobby, however, stands in the way. As Brownell explained, “The tobacco experience might be very informative here. The federal government had its hands tied because of lobbying by tobacco companies, and early on real action took place in cities and states.” But, she continued, “once enough victories occurred there, the federal government had cover and was able to take action.” Food companies will only change “if there is a threat of national government action or if these companies have to make changes for public relations reasons,” said Brownell.

Mobilizing the Public

The latter strategy is also being explored. The Obama administration has made fighting obesity a priority, with First Lady Michelle Obama’s “Let’s Move” campaign encouraging young people to exercise. The First Lady has worked with the FDA to increase public awareness, and a major focus has been nutritional labeling.

Siobhan DeLancey, a spokeswoman for the FDA, explained in an interview with the HPR that the FDA “has partnered with the First Lady … to make sure nutrition labeling is accurate and informative for people to rely on and make healthy choices in their day-to-day lives.” But she also acknowledged that even with this improved information available, consumers may not necessarily follow it. “With a busy lifestyle, it is difficult to spend the necessary energy and time to really comprehend food labels,” DeLancey said.

While improved food labels and the First Lady’s information campaign are potentially parts of the solution, an important—and often overlooked—step in the fight against obesity is getting the public to understand how much power the food industry has. For example, Pepsi recently announced that it will remove all sugared beverages from secondary schools in the United States. While this is a welcome move, Brownell cautioned that we have to make sure companies “don’t simply take their marketing muscle and apply it elsewhere like the Internet or store displays through which they can still encourage children to drink sugared beverages.” In order to ensure that companies such as Pepsi make and market healthier products, the public will have to confront them head-on and pressure them to take the correct action.

With the support of the Obama administration, the fight against the obesity epidemic is making strides. Nevertheless, it is important to realize that continued progress depends on changing the culture of food in the United States. As Brownell concluded, “We need to create the public sentiment to encourage change and then force companies to change.”

Neil Patel ‘13 is the Graphics Editor.

Ultimately, the initiative process provides an important opportunity for Americans to participate in self-government. But flaws in its implementation have indicated the need for  checks on the system, such as higher thresholds for signatures and a role for the legislature in proposing competing initiatives.

The People Speak Too Easily?

Although most of the Founders did not favor direct democracy, initiatives were eventually incorporated into several states’ constitutions because citizens demanded more direct ways of enacting policy change. As Tom Harman, a California state senator, told the HPR, “Sometimes, the initiatives are a populist reaction to a legislature’s inactivity on issues of importance to the voters.” He continued, “I value the initiative process, and I totally support the people’s right to make decisions, especially when the legislature won’t.” But many critics contend that this is not always a healthy solution to legislative inactivity.

Many call for increased legislative checks on the initiative process, particularly during the signature-gathering process.  For an initiative to qualify for the ballot in California, the number of signatures supporting the measure must be at least five percent of the total votes cast in the last gubernatorial election if the initiative proposes a state statute, or eight percent if it proposes a state constitutional amendment. Some have suggested that these low thresholds make it too easy to place misunderstood or poorly thought-out measures on the ballot.

Several critics have also proposed banning the use of professional signature gatherers, who have little personal investment in the initiative and can persuade citizens to sign documents they do not understand. Nonetheless, reforming the signature-gathering process might not be constitutionally feasible. As Thad Kousser, a professor of political science at the University of California, San Diego, told the HPR, “The courts have taken a clear line against restrictions on paid signature gathering since the 1920s.”

The Problem of Citizen-Legislators

Because there is often little transparency in the initiative-writing process, citizens with no legal expertise are able to draft poorly written laws, which sometimes come with unintended consequences. For example, Colorado’s so-called “English for the Children” initiative in 2002 sought to eliminate many bilingual programs from the public education curriculum. Due to the measure’s vague language, however, if the initiative had passed many experts believe that it would also have eliminated English as a Second Language. As Bruce Cain, a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, told the HPR, “[We need] more transparency in the formulation phase. If that were a more public process that allowed for more input, it would improve the quality of measures.”

Additionally, many critics claim that initiatives do not provide voters with enough options. According to Kousser, “Once an initiative qualifies for the ballot, the legislature should be able to put a competing initiative on the ballot by a simple majority vote.” Joshua Pritikin, a volunteer for The Democracy Foundation, which aims to reform the initiative process, told the HPR, “Votes on initiatives are frequently very close. … One possible reason is that the electorate doesn’t really know which way to vote.” In other words, confusion over initiatives leads to a toss-up outcome that doesn’t reflect the voters’ true will. Pritikin suggested that making the initiative process into “a more deliberative procedure,” in which citizens can debate alternatives or participate in a “formal deliberative poll,” would help to alleviate some of these problems.

Reforming Implementation

Some critics of direct democracy also advocate more legislative oversight after initiatives are passed. One proposal Cain suggested was to “restrict the number of constitutional amendments or constitutional changes” that can be passed by initiative, and instead limit initiatives to “statutory changes that can be amended by the legislature after some period of time.”

Many critics also point to direct democracy’s potential to hurt minority groups, a concern that was borne out by Proposition 8 in California, which overturned the California Supreme Court’s decision allowing gay marriage. According to Pritikin, “Initiatives are drafted by their sponsors, and they tend to be drafted in a way that takes a one-sided position and doesn’t incorporate compromise by looking at solutions that are beneficial for all state residents.” In an environment of legislative debate, on the other hand, the need for compromise usually prevents legislators from proposing bills that restrict minority rights.

Initiatives are also a drain on state finances, since most mandate an increase in government spending, and voters often refuse to accept higher taxes to pay for them.  As State Sen. Harman said, “[We] need to get away from initiatives that earmark funding for certain programs. Right now, the bulk of California’s revenue is directly tied to programs via the initiatives process.” He continued, “This has really limited our ability to fairly rein in spending to deal with a multi-billion-dollar budget deficit.” For example, public education  in California faces drastic cuts because it is one of the few state programs from which legislators can remove funding.

Tensions in Direct Democracy

Steven Greenhut, director of the Pacific Research Institute’s Journalism Center, told the HPR that he agreed  with this assessment of  the “abuses” of the initiative system. But, said Greenhut, “I would hate to give up this tool for reform.” After all, he asked, “When the legislature fails, what do you do for reform?”

In many cases, the only way to get the change that people desire is through the initiative process. Reforming the initiative process might have the unintended effect of removing a valuable avenue for the public to exercise its will. As Greenhut concluded, “With initiatives, you get the good, and the bad, and the ugly.”

According to Cain, distinguishing between populist and progressive reforms can resolve some of the problems with initiatives. The ballot initiative itself emerged from populist ideals that sought to bypass the legislature in favor of the people’s will. In contrast, progressive reforms sought to “complement the legislature” rather than “supplant” it, resulting in institutions like referenda and recalls that give citizens more input into the legislative process without undermining independence completely. Fixing the initiative process will require reconciling the tension between populism and progressivism and preserving the initiative’s underlying purpose: in Kousser’s words, to “give voters a little bit more of what they want.”

Peter Bozzo ’12 is a Staff Writer and Andrew Irvine ’12 is a Contributing Writer.

Photo Credit: Flickr (procomkelly)

The Belgian averted his face as we went past. When we were well over the bridge he confided to me that this was the first time he had seen a dead man. I suppose he was thirty five years old, and for four years he had been doing war propaganda over the radio. For several days after this, his attitude was quite different from what it had been earlier. He looked with disgust at the bomb-wrecked town and the humiliation the Germans were undergoing, and even on one occasion intervened to prevent a particularly bad bit of looting. When he left, he gave the residue of the coffee we had brought with us to the Germans on whom we were billeted. A week earlier he would probably have been scandalized at the idea of giving coffee to a ‘Boche’. But his feelings, he told me, had undergone a change at the sight of ce pauvre mort beside the bridge: it had suddenly brought home to him the meaning of war. And yet, if we had happened to enter the town by another route, he might have been spared the experience of seeing one corpse out of the—perhaps—twenty million that the war has produced.

That dead German soldier could just as well be a dead American soldier from Iraq or Afghanistan, whom the vast majority of us will never see because of our military’s demographics.

Photo credit: wikimedia