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The Future of Scottish… Scotch… Scots(?) National Security Policy

[ 108 ] December 29, 2013 | Robert Farley

Brandon Valeriano has some thoughts on how an independent Scotland might conceptualize its national security:

In March of 2015, a cry goes out in the town centre, everyone reacts quickly.  Valuables are hidden underground; women and children are stored in hideaways to be kept safe until the danger is over.  The sacred and expensive items in the church are removed and the priests flee – they are often the first targeted.  The town moves to the defenses, but there is little that they can do to counter the oncoming scourge.  The Vikings are off the coast of Scotland, again.

Given that House Windsor has decided against a name that could strike terror into the hearts of the hill-savages-beyond-the-wall, the Scottish position indeed seems relatively secure.  If independence happens, this will make Scotland a remarkably interesting case study for security scholars; how do states that fundamentally face no security threats conduct security policy? The answer, most likely, is that Scotland will tend to take as models those countries it most closely resembles, although even in this context Canada and Ireland offer remarkably different defense profiles.

My guess is that if political entrepreneurs take sufficient advantage of Scottish nationalism to actually win independence, the new Scotland will feel compelled to compete with England in military terms, although the nature of this competition is far more likely to be “look how cool our new fighter is compared to the English” rather than “let’s re-fortify Hadrian’s Wall.”  For these reasons, unless the Eurofighters are passed directly to the new (presumably independent) Royal Scotland Air Force, I expect that Scotland would go a different direction, opting for either the Gripen or the Rafale.  This is to say nothing of the eventual disposition of the Royal Navy in case of Scottish independence, a problem that will be enormously complex and costly to work out.

NFL Week 17 Open Thread

[ 147 ] December 29, 2013 | Erik Loomis

Chip Kelly is pretty much my favorite coach in football history. This is his essence in 5 seconds.

Incidentally, 5 seconds was also the average time of possession in an Oregon scoring drive during his time with the Ducks.

Let this be your Week 17 open thread. Go Seahawks, Go Eagles. I also really want to see Jon Kitna play tonight. Evidently, Rick Mirer was busy when Dallas called.

We Will We Will Mock You

[ 319 ] December 29, 2013 | bspencer

I’ve been following, with great interest, Roy’s coverage of Pajamagate. As someone who takes her humor wherever she can get it, this, the most bizarre of “gates,” seems to be the gift that keeps on giving.

Something I’ve noticed throughout the coverage is that one theme keeps emerging again and again. The theme is “We’re mocking you. See? WE’RE mocking YOU.”

I know it’s always bothered the wingnuts of the world that liberals often act as if they’ve cornered the market on humor, mockery and snark. I just didn’t know it bothered them that much.

Apparently it has. They’re pretty obsessed with the idea the idea that liberals have been finally been BURNED. The need for this to be true shines through in all their ridiculous screeds on Pajamagate, even though I’m fairly certain they don’t mean for it to.

What’s more, their frustration seems to be growing. I guess they expected liberals to say “Pajama Boy has been mocked. We’ve lost the right to snark.” Or for Obama and the architects of the ACA to say “Pajama Boy has been mocked. Let’s scrap this idea of making healthcare affordable for everyone. It’s just not worth it now.”  It’s really quite bizarre.

Wounded Knee Anniversary

[ 46 ] December 29, 2013 | Erik Loomis

123 years ago today, on December 29, 1890, the United States Army massacred between 150 and 300 Lakota at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, effectively ending the active military engagements of the wars of American conquest. We might not even call Wounded Knee a military engagement given that this was Lakota (and other Plains tribes) resistance as apocalyptic religious movement rather than warfare. But some Lakota did have guns and about 25 U.S. soldiers were killed.

Of course, that was hardly the last violence committed against Native Americans, including the allotment of their land, corruption at the BIA, Indian schools and the suppression of native religions and languages, the stealing of natural resources, and termination in the 1950s. Take a moment to remember how our nation was built on the wanton murder of indigenous peoples.

Spotted Elk, one of the Lakota murdered by the United States Army:

And here’s the mass grave where the military tossed the dead bodies:

“THE INTERNET IS LIKE 10,000 DOLLARS WHEN ALL YOU NEED IS A BITCOIN”

[ 123 ] December 29, 2013 | Scott Lemieux

Finally, the latest refuge from FIAT CURRENCY is here! And remember, as Atlas Shrugged will tell you, that just like GOLD the PONZICOIN derives its full value from inherent worth and does not depend on the valuation of others.

The New Gilded Age in One Christmas Card

[ 90 ] December 29, 2013 | Erik Loomis

Jamie Dimon’s Christmas card basically sums up the New Gilded Age.

You’d also think for all that money Dimon could at least afford the proper number of buttons on his shirt.

And is Pure Beer Good for Me?

[ 47 ] December 28, 2013 | Erik Loomis

Can this be part of the Obamacare fix?

Pull Those Bootstraps You Lazy Slackers

[ 166 ] December 28, 2013 | Erik Loomis

Finally we are getting our lazy welfare recipients away from their t-bones and out of their Cadillacs. This will teach them:

An emergency federal program that acts as a lifeline for 1.3 million jobless workers will end on Saturday, drastically curtailing government support for the long-term unemployed and setting the stage for a major political fight in the new year.

The program, in place since the recession started in 2008, provides up to 47 weeks of supplemental unemployment insurance payments to jobless people looking for work. Its expiration is expected to have far-reaching ramifications for the economy, cutting job growth by about 300,000 positions next year and pushing hundreds of thousands of households below the poverty line.

Hurting the economy is a small price to pay to reinstate morals among the unemployed. And what does America’s Greatest Defender of Civil Liberties think?

“I do support unemployment benefits for the 26 weeks that they’re paid for,” said Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky on Fox News. “If you extend it beyond that, you do a disservice to these workers. When you allow people to be on unemployment insurance for 99 weeks, you’re causing them to become part of this perpetual unemployed group in our economy.”

Oh definitely. I never understood why I didn’t quit my job just so I could have those luxurious unemployment checks.

Here in Rhode Island, 5000 slackers will be forced to fend for themselves. Oh, like you can make an argument that these people aren’t leeches:

Ellen Donlevy has worked more than 30 years in customer service and retail jobs.

She describes herself as a “people person” who likes the camaraderie of working with others, both colleagues and customers. At her last job, with Cox Communications, she says she was often the go-to employee who would be tapped to deal with an irate customer.

But it has been nearly a year since Donlevy has worked.

Her 26 weeks of state unemployment benefits — $411 a week before taxes — have expired, and she joins thousands of Rhode Islanders, considered the “long-term unemployed,” for whom additional, federal unemployment benefits end on Saturday.

“And yes, I’m scared,” says Donlevy.

$411 a week! I’m outraged by the government paying these people enough to pay their rent or mortgage. I for one can’t wait for the increase in the homeless population, foreclosures, domestic violence, suicides, and other social problems that result from lost income and poverty. True freedom of the New Gilded Age comes one step closer.

Universities, money, and intellectual freedom

[ 74 ] December 28, 2013 | Paul Campos

Following up on Erik’s post referencing today’s NYT piece about the potentially invidious effects of industry funding academia (or academics), I’d like to throw out a few hypotheticals, some of which are closely related to some current goings-on in legal academia that I won’t discuss directly at this time. These hypotheticals all touch on the increasingly fraught issue of the extent to which donors should be given the power to shape the intellectual structure of an institution via restricted gifts. (The issue is increasingly fraught because universities are becoming increasingly dependent on private giving in general, and restricted donations in particular, to fund their operations).

Of course all restricted gifts dedicated to supporting research have this effect to some extent: for example if someone endows a chair for the study of constitutional law or financial regulation, that means that relatively more of the institution’s resources will be dedicated to the study of constitutional law or financial regulation than would otherwise be the case. So all restricted gifts are “ideological” in this sense. But what about the following?

A chair in originalist constitutional theory.

A chair in the legal rights of the unborn.

A chair in reproductive rights.

A chair in Marxist legal thought.

A free enterprise chair.

Which of these, if any, would be problematic, and why? Should a dean consult with a law school’s faculty before accepting a donation for some of these purposes? Does it matter if the school is public or private? What other considerations ought to be relevant?

. . . to sharpen the question a bit, at what point to the terms of the gift become sufficiently restrictive that it ought to be rejected? As phrased, all of these gifts strongly imply the donor’s desire to see a certain political project advanced. But what if the terms of the gift are explicit? For example: “This chair will be dedicated to producing scholarship that advances [originalist constitutional theory, the legal rights of the unborn, reproductive rights, Marxist legal thought, the legal protection of free enterprise].”

The myth of the government/public interest backup plan

[ 42 ] December 28, 2013 | Paul Campos

From my correspondence, it appears a significant number of potential law students still think of becoming a government lawyer as a kind of backup plan, if their aspirations to get a job with a large law firm don’t work out.

There are at least two big problems with this:

(1) Public law jobs have become far more competitive than they used to be, for three reasons. First, funding cutbacks have created hiring freezes and slowdowns at all levels of government hiring. Second, the severe contraction in the legal employment market means there are far more experienced attorneys now who are willing to consider taking what are advertised as entry-level jobs. Third, the combination of spiraling law graduate debt (the average law graduate now has around $150,000 of educational debt by the time he or she becomes licensed to practice) and the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which forgives all federal educational debt after tens years of non-profit employment (and doesn’t treat the forgiven amount as taxable income) means that from a purely economic perspective, government legal jobs are far more valuable than they used to be to law graduates, despite usually featuring modest entry-level salaries.

(2) For those who are fortunate enough to get such jobs (getting one now generally requires a demonstrated commitment to government legal work, that pretty much disqualifies people who aim for big firm jobs and miss), holding onto them is now apparently much harder than it used to be, at least in places like New York City. A correspondent writes:

I do not know about anything outside of my own observations in NYC, but I have no doubt that there is similar trend in other big jurisdictions with an enormous glut of new lawyers.

Basically, it is like this:

In the olden days, i.e. 15 years ago and more, it was normal for the middle to lower portion of a law school class to search for jobs in small law and government. Prosecutors offices had slightly higher standards than PD offices. PD offices were often seen as enclaves of law students with low GPAs. Most of the lawyers who wanted to work for DA/PD offices could find a job within a year. If you wanted to stay in these jobs, you could. Even if you stayed working in a non-prestigious trial unit for 10 years, it was easy to stay under the radar, collect raises every few years, and perhaps wait for a higher position to open. Or you could go solo by joining the (now dwindling) assigned counsel programs.

Now, the PD offices in NYC all get thousands of applications a year. NYC has five or six PD offices, two per borough except in Staten Island. Also, there are other PD organizations like the Appellate Defenders. There are other family law organizations, civil Legal Aid, etc. It is very confusing, there are tons of government funded organizations and mini-firms.

All of them now follow a more-or-less standardized application timeline due to the enormous floods of applications. It is like applying to law school all over again. You submit in the fall and provide cover letters, resumes, answers to essay questions, writing samples, letters of recommendation, etc. They spend a few months going through the thousands of applications, grant a few hundred interviews, and then pick a few lucky winners.

Most of it is based on nepotism. As I mentioned, I won a felony trial from a case I took over from one of the top trial attorneys at the Bronx defenders, yet they would not even grant me an interview this year (although they are interviewing some 3Ls). This proves beyond any doubt that this organization and others choose candidates based on factors other than experience (such as connections and other behind the doors decisions that they never have to answer for).

But even if you get hired by one of these DA/PD organizations, it is not the end of the struggle. In the DA/PD organizations, you are assigned to misdemeanors for the first two years. Many organizations can get rid of you after the first two years for any reason, or they can promote you to low-level felonies, grand jury stuff, that sort of thing. Some people move between departments, like they go from vehicular crimes to sex crimes to narcotics, etc. But for the most part, the offices now look more like pyramids than they did in the olden days. If you get stuck doing low-level crimes for more than a few years without getting promoted to a higher level of responsibility or supervisory role, you will be booted eventually. Why would they keep you doing low level crimes for more than a few years, paying you raises every two years? Instead, they can replace you with a new desperate law student who can do the same work for the lowest possible pay grade.

Now, plenty of people voluntarily leave DA/PD offices for greener pastures after a few years — which has always happened. But the pastures are not so green on the other side, so there is less of this. Most people know that going solo is risky at best.

I feel lucky that I made close to what I would have as an entry level PD this year (without benefits). It makes me feel like I actually have more job security and a greater capacity to increase my income by continuing to figure out the best ways to market my niche services. And I may get onto some of the assigned counsel panels in the next few years, which would give me a steady income (the bar associations block new lawyers from these panels until they have a few years of experience). In some ways, I feel lucky to have started the solo journey now instead of ending up here after doing a few years with PD organizations and suddenly getting booted because I did not make friends with the right supervisor. It is better to get the foundation of the solo practice started sooner rather than later, I guess.

But that is also scary when you think about it. Again, the DA/PD organizations are a bit of a scam for the thousands of people who think that they can stay in government jobs to wait out the 10-year loan forgiveness…because many of them will not last that long.

Wall Street Lackeys in the Academy

[ 37 ] December 28, 2013 | Erik Loomis

As a historian, I don’t really have an opportunity to sell out by using my professional positions to provide expert testimony for Wall Street. But I wonder what that would be like. Evidently, it buys you a really nice home. And there are plenty of academics willing to become complete hacks.

And in a squat glass building on the University of Houston campus, a measure of the industry’s pre-eminence can also be found in the person of Craig Pirrong, a professor of finance, who sits at the nexus of commerce and academia.

As energy companies and traders have reaped fortunes by buying and selling oil and other commodities during the recent boom in the commodity markets, Mr. Pirrong has positioned himself as the hard-nosed defender of financial speculators — the combative, occasionally acerbic academic authority to call upon when difficult questions arise in Congress and elsewhere about the multitrillion-dollar global commodities trade.

Do financial speculators and commodity index funds drive up prices of oil and other essentials, ultimately costing consumers? Since 2006, Mr. Pirrong has written a flurry of influential letters to federal agencies arguing that the answer to that question is an emphatic no. He has testified before Congress to that effect, hosted seminars with traders and government regulators, and given countless interviews for financial publications absolving Wall Street speculation of any appreciable role in the price spikes.

What Mr. Pirrong has routinely left out of most of his public pronouncements in favor of speculation is that he has reaped financial benefits from speculators and some of the largest players in the commodities business, The New York Times has found.

While his university’s financial ties to speculators have been the subject of scrutiny by the news media and others, it was not until last month, after repeated requests by The Times under the Freedom of Information Act, that the University of Houston, a public institution, insisted that Mr. Pirrong submit disclosure forms that shed some light on those financial ties.

There are lots of examples of academics becoming lackeys of industry. I recently discussed the Johns Hopkins black lung program almost completely controlled by one faculty member who denied nearly every single black lung claim, forcing thousands of people to spend their last days in miserable poverty.

Of course, one doesn’t have to support progressive positions. But taking corporate money in exchange for your expertise and not disclosing it is about as immoral as it gets.

Kudos to the Times for taking on this subject.

We Don’t Need Sherrod II

[ 59 ] December 28, 2013 | Scott Lemieux

The stories are sufficiently vague and from unreliable enough sources that I hope Lis Smith is still working for de Blasio. But to state what should be obvious, if she’s pushed out it’s a disgrace and an early black mark for his administration. She didn’t do anything wrong and she’s not even accused of doing anything wrong. If he’s anything that he’s cracked up to be caving to an utter non-scandal created by misogynist bullies shouldn’t merit a second’s consideration.

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