Solomon's Seed?

Razib looks at the genetic data about Ethiopians and concludes that (1) the Amhara and Tigrayans have a very different ancestry from the Oromo, and (2) "Ethiopians, in particular highland Ethiopians [i.e., the Semitic speakers], seem to me likely an ancient stabilized hybrid population between a population from Arabia, and a local Sub-Saharan population."

Huckamentum

Democratic pollster says Huckabee's best bet for Republican nomination in 2012.

Who called it in 2008? Oh yeah.

Of course, in light of this blog's past record, Huckabee shouldn't start celebrating yet.

Conservative Domestic Policy Reform in US and Canada

Reihan Salaam sets out an attractive domestic agenda for the Republicans here. Everywhere and always the biggest villains are tax expenditures. Next are cost-plus gummint contracts (and disguised cost-plus contracts). The right sometimes views the first as tax cuts and the second as being friendly to business. It needs to realize that tax expenditures are just welfare and cost-plus contracts are corporate welfare.

The Pithlord's not against a welfare state, but of course we have problems with affordability, especially in healthcare and moral hazard, especially in income support. A bad way to reform is just to means-test everything, since that effectively makes for punitive marginal tax rates on the working poor. The better way is to impose deductibles and then co-payments, which could be means tested. The welfare state needs to think more like an insurance company.

Universal Health Care Safe With Republican Congress

Check out the Republican proposals. Every single item increases government responsbility for healthcare in the US.

The revolution is permanent. There will be much negotiating around the edges. The demographic/cost tsunami will eventually force US politicians, like those in Europe and Canada, to do some unpopular things, although this will be delayed to the last possible moment. But universal healthcare will remain a responsibility of the federal government. Forever.

Good thing too in my view, and enough to ensure that Nancy Pelosi's name will last forever. But it doesn't matter how I evaluate it, since it's really none of my business. The point is as a descriptive matter, BHO has achieved what even LBJ couldn't.

Why Constitutional Monarchy Rocks

There are a lot of Yglesias-haters in the comment box, but I would like to point out that he makes a damn good case for constitutional monarchy.

There is glamour in power. That's an irreducible fact about human nature. But democratic politicians shouldn't have access to that glamour.

Also, for some purposes, we need someone who can make gestures on behalf of the nation. Active politicians can't sensibly do that, because about half the population (give or take) hates their guts.

Unfortunately, Yglesias is too sanguine about actual Canadian practice. Liberals don't understand the monarchy, and have spent a lot of time trying to undermine it, so it isn't as unifying as one would hope. Quebec can't really get into it. And first ministers want the glamour, for the very reason they shouldn't have it, so they try to marginalize those in possession of vice-regal authority.

The crazy thing is that people who should know better think the vice regents are a bigger threat to democracy than the desire of the Prime Minister's Office to presidentialize our system.

Bottom line: You should totally be allowed to call the premier or prime minister "dude."

Midterm Prediction

In the House, I say Republicans 235, Dems 200.

Senate goes 50-50 (counting Lieberman and Sanders as Dems).

Update (October 29): I'm going to have to back out of the 50-50 prediction on the Senate. Can't see the Republicans doing better than 48, counting Murkowski as a Republican. I'll stick with my House prediction.

As for a pre-mortem, if these numbers are about right, I disagree with those who think they are all the result of a bad economy. The primary drivers that the Democrats could not control are (a) regression to the mean after two good cycles for the Democrats and (b) the general tendency for the midterm electorate to be more Republican than the presidential year electorate.

The other major factor is that conservative America is energized, while it was demoralized in 2006 and to a lesser extent in 2008 (although this is part of "regression to the mean"), while the progressive coalition is at more-or-less ordinary levels of unity and energy.

The only way the Democrats could have changed this would have been to govern in a way less likely to anger conservative America. I disagree with those who say this would be impossible, but it would have required not using a once-in-a-generation shot at major legislative change. If the Democrats hadn't pulled off the "stimulus" (mostly liberal wish-list spending) and health care, the conservative base wouldn't be as fired up, and the results would be less one sided. On the other hand, the whole point of political power is to do things, so it may have been a worthwhile choice from the Democratic perspective.

I suspect there won't be much legislation in the next two years, but there may not be a huge blowout between the President and the House either. Just a lot of sniping on the edges, as everyone prepares for the real showdown in 2012. In other words, 2006-2008 with the roles reversed.

The Cancon comes home to roost

Malcolm X on Front Page Challenge (From Yglesias again.)

Low Corruption Derives From Weird Extended Family Norms

Yglesias correctly argues that the social-democratic Nordic/libertarian Anglophone dichotomy is less important than what the two types of cultures have in common (relatively low corruption and good governance, lack of loyalty to extended family):

I’ve been drawn to the “common cultural attributes” thesis just based on the observation that Nordic pop culture (Max Martin, Stieg Larsson, Ida Maria, Robyn) penetrates the Anglosphere very easily and has done so for a long time (Abba, Aha, Ibsen). It still strikes me that the most plausible mechanism here has to do with corruption and good government rather than individualism per se. I imagine that everyone looks out for his or her own interests, but the question becomes what does that balance with. If you balance it with fairly abstract principles of correct conduct, you get good government and enlightened self-interest. If you balance it with loyalty to extended family groups or long chains of personal connections, then you get corruption.

But that’s just ideas I made up.

Yglesias could read the very unfashionable Frederic W. Maitland. The Teutonic cultures all shared a weird set of inheritance structures, in which both collateral maternal kin and paternal kin could inherit. Lots of stuff follows from that.

Don't Feel Bad, Colby

Colby Cosh thinks federalism jurisprudence ought to be clearer than it is.

You would think that Canadian jurisprudence had developed a clear objective rule for settling even the trickiest “double aspect” issues, wherein both federal and provincial governments can claim that some crumb falls within their respective spheres of constitutional power.

You would, apparently, be wrong.

Actually, though, no one has ever been able to predict how the Supreme Court of Canada would determine federalism cases. It's a mess, and it's been that way since Duplessis was unable to stop St. Laurent from abolishing appeals to the Judicial Committee. Since that time, the Court has been split between the terminally confused and those who never wanted to strike down any legislation, provincial or federal, on division-of-powers grounds -- a position more-or-less adopted by the SCOTUS after the 1930s and defended for Canada by Paul Weiler.

Brilliant Kid-Liberal Wonk on Tribal Motivations

Matt Yglesias slams down some honesty about what motivates 90% of political bickering -- tribe:

What I really wanted to talk about, though, was the rhetorical device of invoking a “Texas developer” as the bad guy in this scenario because it highlights some of the trouble progressive urbanists have in making our arguments. Roughly speaking, people on the political left tend to have a tribal suspicion of business people. And I’ll fully admit that I share it. At the same time, there’s a tribal admiration of the figure of the activist and the organizer. So when you see a dispute that pits a developer in a suit who’s probably a huge jackass against some community activists who probably love farmer’s markets and good music, you want to side with the activists against the jackass. But from the point of view of things progressives are actually trying to accomplish on a policy level, it’s generally desirable to build as densely as is feasible on already-developed parcels. And that’s often what jackass developers are trying to do, and it’s often what local activists are trying to block. The developers are not, of course, out to save the environment, it’s just greed.

My own feelings are equally irrational, but a bit more complex. Not surprisingly, in school, I never had much in common with the guys who became our local equivalent of Texas developers. In my twenties, I pretty much exclusively hung out with people who liked farmer's markets and "good" (i.e., indy) music. But as a result, I know the organic activist types' faults better, and they are the ones with whom I had roommate disputes, or bad breakups or who owe me money. So frankly they get on my nerves a lot more than developers, who generally seem to be doing something useful with their life. So I admit that before I am in a position to develop a rational and balanced understanding of the merits, I'm against the activists Yglesias instinctively sympathises with.

What Bugs Me About Michael Ignatieff: A Study in The Argument Ad Hominem

Robin Hanson of "Overcoming Bias" thinks "signalling theory" can tell us something about the left, particularly the wealthy, "post-materialist" left.

Signalling theory arises out of a paradox of game theory. It is often in our short-term self-interest to have a reputation for not always acting in our short-term self-interest. If people think my word is my bond (i.e., I will make sacrifices to fulfill my promises), then they will enter into transactions with me that they otherwise wouldn't and I'll be better off. If people think I am vengeful (i.e., I will make sacrifices to punish those who wrong me), they will avoid harming me when they otherwise would, and so on. From an evolutionary standpoint, the future benefit of having a reputation for doing such things is the explanation for why we have apparently unself-interested emotions in the first place. The trouble is that reputations for generosity, fair-dealing, vengefulness and so on are costly to acquire. So we are built (by generations of natural selection) with an aptitude for cheating: we try to get these reputations on the cheap. These mechanisms can be unconscious, and usually are, since if you can't fool yourself you are unlikely to fool anyone else. Other people are endowed by natural selection with a motive to pierce through my signalling strategies: I'm not.

Which is where politics comes in beautifully. Political opinions, at least in bourgeois democracies, don't cost us much, if anything. But they can signal (for instance) that we deeply care about the poor, a reputation it is useful to have, without requiring charitable contributions, which can put a dint in one's lifestyle (and therefore other possible status-seeking strategies). The right sees this, if the left does not, and calls on leftists to "do good at your own expense." That's Hanson's theory anyway.

Of course, a reputation for compassion is not the only kind of reputation that can be cheaply bought with political opinions. We, especially men, want a reputation for toughness and clear-headedness. We could get this by risking our bodies, but it is more convenient to get it by advocating muscular foreign policies. The left sees this, if the right does not: hence the "chicken hawk" argument which Dick Cheney and George W. Bush never liked very much: "Prove your manliness at your own risk."

Neither critique is strictly relevant to policy questions. A social program might still do more good than it offsets in charitable donations, even if advocating it provides cheap psychological benefits, and the same is true of a military intervention. But these critiques at least have the merit of dissolving the aura of virtue (whether soft or hard) that floats around arguments for "doing something".

Which gets me to Ignatieff, and the larger tradition of Pearsonian activism he has inherited. What bugs me about him is that he employs the signalling strategies of both the domestic left AND the international right, AND then leverages the contrarianness of doing both simultaneously into a reputation for "thoughtfulness." He's strong but sensitive. That would be appealing if Canada needed a boyfriend, but not if it is seeking a mere adviser to Her Majesty on matters pertaining to the federal government.

Beverley McLachlin or Dick Cheney?

The Supreme Court is pretty anxious about its secrets, even long ago ones.

The Globe and Mail reports that the Court has sent out an e-mail threatening its former clerks with legal action if they talk to a social scientist doing an institutional study of how the court works. The study would have been anonymous.

For reasons discussed by the Ectomorph, it is unwise to get in a legal battle with the appellate court of last resort.

Surely, there's no reason anyone should ever know how really important decisions get made. How did we lose Sunday shopping or legal restrictions on abortion? What happened with patriation anyway? It's none of your damn business.

Thoughts on Binnie on Original Intent

Scalia and Binnie had a set-to on originalism at some forgotten conference half a decade ago. It can be found in (2004), 23 S.C.L.R. (2d).

Binnie acknowledges a heavy debt to his clerk, Patricia McMahon, an academic historian, and I don't think he was just being overly generous.

For the most part, it is reasonably sensible and just rejects a cartoon "original intent" school that no serious person supports anymore anyway. Binnie says he can see merit in Scalia's more sophisticated original semantic meaning views. He points out that nineteenth century courts did not look with favour on extrinsic evidence of what politicians thought they were doing when they enacted statutes, including the BNA Act, but of course Scalia hates that more than anybody.

Binnie notes that originalism has played a big role in the Canadian courts' interpretation of education rights and s. 96 (which constitutes the federally-appointed superior courts).

An originalism that is just about linguistic change won't have much effect on interpretations of a document written in 1982. The only significant change since then is that "sex" now just refers to the act and we would no doubt use "gender" in section 15 if it were written today.

Binnie's defence of the Motor Vehicle Act Reference is no good, though. (Perhaps in another post I'll say why._

People Don't Want a Do-Gooder President

Everyone thinks that people that agree with them or are otherwise like them are more moral than people who disagree with them or are different. That's natural selection, baby.

Still, we can sort of distinguish between the goody-two-shoes in politics and those with a more direct connection to the dark lord. LBJ and Richard Nixon have their defenders: by any reasonable account, LBJ was the most successful liberal president other than FDR. But even their staunchest supporters would be unsurprised to find out they were on the wrong side of judgment day. Joe Clark and Brian Mulroney had basically the same politics, and Mulroney was certainly more successful, but if Mulroney told you what time it was, you'd double check.

Marnie asserted that in 2008, Americans were looking for someone more moral as President than GWB, and that Obama has disappointed them. Anyone who had illusions that Obama was something other than a successful Chicago machine politician because of his professorial demeanour and talents was mistaken. Obama's a calculating pol, which he has shown in his realist response to the Iranian fracas.

But were Americans looking for something else? Something more idealistic?

I doubt it.

Let's start with his base. Obama was the perfect embodiment of the McGovern coalition of high-status highly-educated cosmopolitan whites and racial/ethnic minorities. Did they love him because he was moralistic? No, they supported him because he was one of them

Next he won over the partisan liberals (the "Kossacks") who were initially attracted by John Edwards. This is one of the most tribalist groups in American society, for whom procedural scruples are the clearest sign of weakness of character. They were suspicious of his talk of bipartisanship and his professorial approach to ideas he disagrees with, but eventually decided he was the best they were going to get. THEY weren't looking for Jimmy Carter.

But Obama didn't get the whole of the Democratic coalition. In fact, as we may dimly recall, he had a rough ride in the second half of the primary contest. Was that because the other half of the Democratic coalition were looking for greater morality in public life? No, it was because HRC was able to make the white working-class part of the Democratic coalition wonder if this guy had the stones to fight for them.

So in the Democratic primary, no one was looking for idealism and niceness, and in fact the reputation for such characteristics was a liability.

What about the general election? "Yes, we can" and all that crap?

I seriously doubt that anyone not actually enrolled in a liberal arts university bought any of that. Again, it was a liability for Obama that he was putting that "inspirational" stuff forward. However, McCain was not able to capitalize as well as Ms. Clinton, because his Senatorial self-regard is tied up with his image of himself as above the partisan fray. His policy positions are pure moralism. So Obama was able to persuade people that he was old and crazy, and that his vice-presidential nominee was dumb and crazier, and won.

Also, there was a financial meltdown.

Obama's Cairo Speech

First rate. As he admits, of course, it's much harder to actually bring about better relations. But a US President is now actually a positive force.

Reading Judge Sotomayor (II)

I'm not sure about Judge Sotomayor's future as a quantitative social scientist:

While recognizing the potential effect of individual experiences on perception, Judge Cedarbaum nevertheless believes that judges must transcend their personal sympathies and prejudices and aspire to achieve a greater degree of fairness and integrity based on the reason of law. Although I agree with and attempt to work toward Judge Cedarbaum's aspiration, I wonder whether achieving that goal is possible in all or even in most cases.

That seems like a claim that differences in gender and ethnic background explain at least half the variance in decision-making, in other words to an r-sqaured of greater than .5. But she rests it on a mere finding of statistical significance in a minority of cases:

The Judicature Journal has at least two excellent studies on how women on the courts of appeal and state supreme courts have tended to vote more often than their male counterpart to uphold women's claims in sex discrimination cases and criminal defendants' claims in search and seizure cases.

Reading Judge Sotomayor

The full sentence is:

Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences, a possibility I abhor less or discount less than my colleague Judge Cedarbaum, our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging.

"Possibility" must refer only to "inherent physiological or cultural differences", because it occurs in the parenthetical phrase, and the main clause asserts that "our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging."

So it follows that she is *asserting* that gender and national origins make a difference, and not just a difference in plumbing or choice of bathroom, but "in our judging." She is further asserting that this is caused *at least* by differences in life experience, but possibly by other factors.

She is not asserting that this difference is caused by inherent phsyiological or cultural differences, but she is asserting that (a) it's possible and (b) she doesn't abhor or discount the possibility.

She may be limiting the possibility of "inherent physiological" differences influencing judgement to gender, while entertaining "cultural" differences in relation to national origin. This is plausible both because the prospect of inherent physiological ethnic differences affecting judges is highly politically incorrect, and because she doubtless knows that "Latina" is a cultural and not racial descriptor.

Purposes of Federalism

Marnie takes issue with my claim that "it's hard to see why you would have a federation if you don't have free trade within it." and with the connection between intra-federation free trade and the "national treatment" and "most favoured nation status" principles of international trade law.

Free trade within British North America was definitely one of the objectives of Confederation, and it was motivated largely by the loss of the Reciprocity Treaty at the hands of the protectionist and anti-British Republicans. See both the federal "trade and commerce" power in section 91 of the BNA Act and the words of s. 121, "All Articles of the Growth, Produce, or Manufacture of any one of the Provinces shall, from and after the Union, be admitted free into each of the other Provinces."

"National treatment" and "most favoured nation status" are non-discrimination principles. Goods produced and services supplied from other countries should neither get worse nor better treatment than those produced and supplied in your own. That's the basic norm of international trade law. It is also enforced between the American states by the courts under the "dormant commerce clause." Unfortunately, it has relatively little (but not zero) support in Canadian constitutional law.

Barry Weingast defines the requirements of growth-inducing federalism as fourfold:

F1. Hierarcy There exists a hierarcy of governments with a delineated scope of authority. (Ideally, Lord Atkin's watertight compartments.)

F2. Subnational autonomy. Do the subnational governments have primary authority over public goods and service provision for their territories? (The subsidiarity principle.

F3. Common market. Does the national government provide for and police a common market that allows factor and product mobility?

F4. Hard budge constraints. Do all governments, especially subnational ones, face hard budget constraints? (Not if Danny Millions or Ahhnold can help it, they don't).

F5. Institutionalized authority. Is the allocation of political authority institutionalized or within the sole control of one of the levels of government?

When you get all five of these, federalism promotes effective government and economic growth. When you don't, it doesn't.

Interestingly, Canada was really only able to maintain all 5 of these conditions when its federation was policed from outside, i.e., by the Privy Council. Since we let the final decisions be made by a branch of the federal government, all 5 of them have declined.

If Diversity and Feedback are good for decision making, then courts must be bad at it

Apparently, there's a vacancy on the US Supreme Court, and President Obama has nominated Judge Sotomayor of the Second Circuit to fill it.

Judge Sotomayor wants made some remarks to Berkeley law students that she hoped a "wise Latina woman" would do better than a white male at the judicial craft.

It has since been clarified that Judge Sotomayor misspoke. She was not claiming that Latina judges are in every respect better than crusty white guys, but only that diversity creates better decision making.

There's no doubt that Presidents deciding on Supreme Court justices have always considered diversity. In the nineteenth century, it was mostly just regional diversity. In the twentieth century, there developed a Catholic, a Jewish and then a black seat on the court. In Canada, we have of course always required three judges familiar with Quebec's civil code, and everyone would like to have an aboriginal nominee with passable credentials. These things are political reality, and there is no sense of "merit" such that it could always and everywhere trump it. Anyway, Judge Sotomayor seems to have the qualifications, along with a moderate and somewhat unpredictable judicial record.

So do the liberals win this argument? No, because the very point they rely on undermines the case for strong judicial review.

There is indeed some evidence that group decision-making is improved when those involved are relatively diverse, and therefore less inclined to groupthink. However, that fact isn't necessarily good for judicial liberalism, as we have come to understand it. No matter what their race and gender, appellate justices are necessarily an undiverse bunch. They have all been indoctrinated in the folk ways of a single profession. They are all in the top decile of intelligence, with extreme workaholic tendencies and bourgeois lifestyles. They live in Ottawa or Washington. They are bowed and scraped to all day by soft-spoken advocates and keener clerks. They almost never encounter the results of their decisions, with the principal feedback they get coming from other judges and law review articles written by people with less life experience than they have.

I'm not one to glamourize either politicians or voters, but they are a more diverse bunch. If diversity's so great, maybe we should leave the big decisions to them

Provincial Procurement Policy and the Federal Trade and Commerce Power

The Obama Administration and Harper Government are exploring a deal where the US would drop the "Buy American" provisions of the stimulus package in return for provincial governments dropping their own local preferences in government procurement.

Stockwell Day is consulting with the provinces, and says he won't do anything unless "most" of them agree.

Constitutionally, I think there is a decent argument that the Feds could pass a law requiring "national treatment" and "most favoured nation" status on provincial procurement rules. In the Inflation Reference, the Supreme Court upheld wage controls affecting the provincial public service. It is widely accepted that valid federal legislation can bind the Crown in right of a province.

The Inflation Reference upheld the federal law on the dubious grounds that 1970s-era inflation was an "emergency" akin to the world wars. But there's a better case that a principled-based law imposing on provincial governments the general requirements of international trade agreements (especially national treatment and most favoured "nation" status) would be wholly constitutional. Indeed, it's hard to see why you would have a federation if you don't have free trade within it.