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The Supreme Court hears an important argument today. The Thernstroms, Abby and Steve, give us the background.
The Supreme Court is almost the only place in American society where the “frank” debates on issues of race that Attorney General Eric Holder recently called for actually take place. Justices with lifetime tenure feel free to explore — camouflaged as legal argument — the conflicting moral visions that still prevent resolution of America’s most important, complex and divisive domestic issue.
That debate is likely to be very much in evidence today when the Court hears argument in Ricci v. DeStefano. The issue in Ricci was simply stated by Judge José Cabranes, dissenting from a cursory, unenlightening opinion by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. “At its core,” he wrote, “this case presents a straight-forward question: May a municipal employer disregard the results of a qualifying examination, which was carefully constructed to ensure race-neutrality, on the ground that the results of that examination yielded too many qualified applicants of one race and not enough of another?” …
If you’re a hammer, all problems look like nails. That said, Richard Epstein’s National Review essay on the legal causes of the financial crisis is an interesting and important part of the picture. It is typically Epstein, in that he makes the complicated quite clear.
The current financial meltdown has exposed the myth that our nation’s sophisticated, multilayered scheme of government regulation immunizes us from systemic failure. We are realizing that shocks, from both home and abroad, will exact their toll. What is less commonly appreciated is that the very political institutions on which we depend count as a structural cause of much of our current distress. In many cases, the root of our problems lies in the legal restrictions that block the movement of prices and wages in financial markets. It is just this sort of folly that has embroiled the Obama administration in testy disputes with bankers who are desperate to return their TARP money. These banks cannot afford to bleed talent to foreign and start-up companies that operate (for the moment at least) free of Obama’s egalitarian compensation-control shackles.
That said, at least some portion of the current malaise comes from a more prosaic source: We don’t honor the straightforward moral imperative that promises must be kept. Our modern crisis has been brewing since the Supreme Court started inexorably casting aside protection for property and contract in an effort to cope with economic tumults from Roosevelt’s 1930s through Reagan’s 1980s. On this score, our flawed constitutional framework suffers from two related mistakes, both of which are endorsed by acclamation today. The first is the notion that the government may be permitted to disrupt financial transactions between private parties in ways that frustrate the unambiguous expectations of the parties. The second is the idea that the government need not honor its own promises in dealing with private individuals.
These two propositions are stated at a level of abstraction that is likely to draw yawns of indifference from anxious policy wonks who fixate on the latest twists in the fortunes of AIG or Citibank. But these dramatic financial struggles play out against a background of weak contract and property rights — a system that drives political operatives into high gear in times of economic stress.
The legal stability of private agreements offers one powerful bulwark against these mischievous government activities. Once people know that courts will enforce their agreements as made, they have no incentive to beg for government favors to improve their contractual positions. One avenue of political intrigue is closed down. …
Writing for Pajamas Media, Jennifer Rubin says the kid is so Jimmy Carter.
Get out the bell bottoms and the lava lamps. We are going back to the 1970s. This is not a new fashion craze. It is the new economic and international reality. The good news for Republicans: after the 1970s came Ronald Reagan.
On the domestic front we have at least temporarily given up emphasis on free markets and economic expansion. Instead, we are back to expanding government and running up a frightful tab. The debt is piling up, the Fed has the printing press going and the Chinese rightfully concerned we will inflate away our obligations.
On energy, regulatory schemes to increase energy prices and thereby decrease energy usage are now in fashion. We aren’t yet rationing gas by the last digit of car license plates, but cap-and-trade legislation and the pronouncement that carbon dioxide is a threat to the planet have a common goal: restrict carbon output and industrial activity.
Meanwhile, unemployment is edging higher and higher. Forty-six states have seen joblessness increase, the national rate is 8.5%, and more states will be joining those with double digit unemployment in the months ahead. …
John Tierney has advice for people who want to save the earth; “Use Energy, Get Rich and Save the Planet.”
When the first Earth Day took place in 1970, American environmentalists had good reason to feel guilty. The nation’s affluence and advanced technology seemed so obviously bad for the planet that they were featured in a famous equation developed by the ecologist Paul Ehrlich and the physicist John P. Holdren, who is now President Obama’s science adviser.
Their equation was I=PAT, which means that environmental impact is equal to population multiplied by affluence multiplied by technology. Protecting the planet seemed to require fewer people, less wealth and simpler technology — the same sort of social transformation and energy revolution that will be advocated at many Earth Day rallies on Wednesday.
But among researchers who analyze environmental data, a lot has changed since the 1970s. With the benefit of their hindsight and improved equations, I’ll make a couple of predictions:
1. There will be no green revolution in energy or anything else. No leader or law or treaty will radically change the energy sources for people and industries in the United States or other countries. No recession or depression will make a lasting change in consumers’ passions to use energy, make money and buy new technology — and that, believe it or not, is good news, because…
2. The richer everyone gets, the greener the planet will be in the long run. …
Lewis Black has some words for the Earth Day pimps. “Kids Know a Bucket of Sh*t When They See One.”
NY Times financials worsen. Yahoo News has the story. We say, “Yahoo!”
The New York Times Co. fell into a deeper financial hole during the first quarter as the newspaper publisher’s advertising revenue plunged 27 percent in an industrywide slump that is reshaping the print media. Its shares dived after the results were released Tuesday.
The owner of The New York Times, The Boston Globe, the International Herald Tribune and 15 other daily newspapers lost $74.5 million, or 52 cents per share, in the opening three months of the year. That compared with a loss of $335,000 at the same time last year, which was break-even on a per-share basis.
The results in the most recent quarter included charges totaling 18 cents per share to cover the costs of jettisoning employees and other one-time accounting measures.
Even with those charges stripped out, the loss was much worse than analysts expected. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had predicted the New York-based company would lose 4 cents per share.
Revenue for the period dropped 19 percent to $609 million — about $22 million below the average analyst estimate. …
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