Brett Kavanaugh - Where We Are

Either reader of this blog knows my feelings on Donald Trump, movement conservatism, and the national Republican party. It will come as no surprise that I oppose Brett Kavanaugh's elevation to the Supreme Court.

I also believe that whether he is ultimately confirmed or if it is somebody else on Donald Trump's infamous list of Federalist Society Reactionaries, the legal outcomes will be the same.

So, I can't help but ask why the numerous defenses of Judge Kavanaugh from the right? Regardless of whether Kavanaugh or someone else on the list is confirmed, we can be assured that this 5-vote conservative majority will:

• refuse to find any burden, whatsoever, to be "undue" under the Casey test;
• will likely continue to create exceptions to, if not wholly repeal, the exclusionary rule;
• will hamstring the ability of administrative agencies to participate in rule-making and adjudication, effectively rendering them toothless advisory boards;
• continue to use the 1st amendment as protection against pretty much any meaningful regulation of either the economy or political spending; and
• elevate the 2nd Amendment to the level of sacrosanct and essentially (to the extent it has not already been done) read out the part about "a well-regulated militia."

All of these are longtime conservative policy goals. All of these goals would be advanced by pretty much any one of the Federalist Society judges, as these judges have been groomed in conservative ideology for decades.

So, why the defense of Brett Kavanaugh?

I don't know. I hear people say that he is an innocent man who has been slurred, but I have a few points to add to that:

1. This is not a criminal investigation. "Beyond a reasonable doubt" and "presumed innocent" are fine phrases when we're talking about depriving someone of his freedom. They have no place in what is a job interview for a lifetime, exceedingly powerful, position. Nobody on the right demanded that Hillary Clinton be "presumed innocent" of all of the charges they hurled at her (BENGHAZI!!! EMAILS!!!). I don't recall Donald Trump presuming that Barack Obama was born in the United States. On a personal level, if I was looking to hire a babysitter and heard a rumor that a particular babysitter liked to get drunk on the job and steal from the houses at which she babysat, I wouldn't be looking for corroborating evidence, giving a presumption of innocence, or demand proof beyond a reasonable doubt. The rumor would suffice for me to look elsewhere. My babysitter does not have the power to interpret the U.S. Constitution and determine the breadth of my rights for the remainder of his/her life. A Supreme Court Justice does.
2. In litigation, there are numerous presumptions that we can make based on testimony. A generally known principle in criminal litigation is that a false exculpatory answer, when proven to be false, is pretty strong evidence of the accused's knowledge of his own guilt. Judge Kavanaugh made some fairly ludicrous statements: Beach Week Ralph Club refers to his weak stomach; Renate alumnius [sic] had no sexual connotations, even though Renate Dolphin (the self same Renate) is insulted by the reference; Devil's Triangle is a drinking game (that nobody has ever heard of) and not a sexual reference (that is fairly common). The list goes on and on, but these statements really stretch credulity, and he offers them as exculpatory. While I am not entirely convinced that he is lying, I have significant misgivings about it.
3. Similarly, while a polygraph is not strong evidence of the truth of a statement, it is strong evidence of the speaker's belief in the truth of such statement. Dr. Ford took a polygraph. The results do not demonstrate that her statements were true, but they demonstrate that she believed them to be true. Has Judge Kavanaugh been subjected to a polygraph?
4. Dr. Ford repeatedly requested an investigation into her allegations. Brett Kavanaugh said he would "do whatever the (Republican-controlled judiciary) committee wanted." If he is so innocent of these charges, why is he not demanding an investigation into them? It says a lot to me that when two people are making mutually exclusive assertions, and one of them wants the matter investigated and the other doesn't.

I could go on, but I'm pretty sure the point is clear. 

I also note the defenses of Judge Kavanaugh. Some say "he didn't do it," but given Dr. Ford's credible testimony, Kavanaugh's defenders have a difficult time simply saying she's lying. So, they come up with a series of defenses:

• It actually happened, but Dr. Ford is mistaken about who did it;
• Even if it did happen as Dr. Ford says, it was a long time ago and we should forgive his behavior;
• Even if it did happen, he never actually raped her so it doesn't really matter.

I am not particularly convinced by any of these rationalizations. 

Flood Insurance Subsidies Must Go

The National Flood Insurance program is a disaster on more levels than I can even count. For the uninitiated, allow me to explain:

If you live in an area that is prone to flooding (say, for example, a large, historical city that is below sea level or in a coastal area that historically floods during hurricane season), no mortgage lender is going to want to lend you the money to buy a house there, because the odds are pretty good that the house will flood before you finish paying for it. If your home floods before you finish paying for it, the odds are pretty good that you'll just walk away from the loan, leaving the lender to hold the bag. Now, the lender can either charge an exorbitant interest rate to attempt to account for this risk, the lender can refuse to lend in flood-prone areas, or the lender can require the purchaser/borrower to carry flood insurance.

For areas that are, as a whole, prone to flooding, option #3 tends to be utilized frequently. The problem with flood insurance is the same with lending money to buy houses in flood-prone areas: the odds are pretty good that people's homes will flood. As such, insurance premiums on flood insurance are not cheap. By way of example, a relative of mine resides in Broad Ripple and has to pay upwards of $400/mo (I believe) for flood insurance on his house. $400/mo ain't chump change. It's also the premium for flood insurance in Indianapolis, a place that is nearly 1,000 miles away from the ocean. This insurance is also subsidized by the government.

Needless to say, flood insurance is expensive. That's a big reason of why the government subsidizes it, and for my relative, government subsidy is a good thing, worth untold amounts in flood insurance premiums. I would bet that subsidized flood insurance for those in Speedway who live in the flood plain is likewise a good thing.

I still think it needs to go.

Subsidizing flood insurance, while a well-intentioned plan, has horrible unintended consequences. Here are a few:

1. Because flood insurance is subsidized, it brings down the cost of coastal living and helps contribute to the degradation of our nation's barrier islands, wetlands, and coastal areas. I appreciate a beach vacation as much as the next guy, but the FL panhandle was initially covered in Mangrove trees precisely because it got repeatedly hit with hurricanes during the late summer/early fall. Now that condos can have subsidized flood insurance, all of the coastal areas are now covered in condominium resorts. This is great for Spring Break, but it is terrible for (a) indigenous wildlife; (b) hurricane and weather mitigation; and (c) fossil fuel consumption control (just think about how many power plants have to run to keep all those a/c units going). I could continue, but the point is fairly clear that coastal living contributes to the environmental degradation of those coastal areas. There's a reason that people didn't develop on the coast until about a hundred years ago, and it has very little to do with a supposed distaste for the beach in our Victorian forefathers.

2. Flood insurance is a subsidy for the wealthy, by and large. Who can afford to own beachfront property? I assure you, it's not cheap. Even owning a 2-bedroom condo on the beach can run upward of $500,000, and that's not even in the "stylish" areas like South Beach but rather in the panhandle of Florida. Half a million dollars for a vacation home, and you're asking me to help pay your insurance premiums? Thanks but no thanks. I believe that if government is going to subsidize things, one of the foundational questions should be, "Does this person need the help?"

3. Flood insurance encourages risky behavior. Let's face it, building next to the ocean is risky. If people had to pay the full cost of the risks they bear, they would likely bear fewer risks.

4. Building in flood plains, even if they are away from the coast, contributes to environmental degradation. Wetlands and flood plains are often the same thing, and wetlands act as nature's water filter. We need more wetlands, not fewer. We should not be subsidizing the building of structures in places where our health depends on not building structures. This seems like a fairly elementary principle: don't encourage your populace to do things that are bad for them.

5. Our nation has bigger priorities. We have trillions of dollars in debt. We have trillions of dollars in yet-to-be-funded healthcare and retirement obligations to our populace. We don't need to be handing money to people so they can put their houses in an area where the house is likely to be destroyed, just so we can start the entire ridiculous charade over.

I could go on and on.

Yes, I recognize that flood insurance protects the value of people's assets. My relative's Broad Ripple house would be worth very little if the cost of flood insurance doubled or trebled; so too would the houses in Speedway that are in a flood plain.

It saddens me that elimination of this program would have so many negative side effects. However, I think that if it were phased out, perhaps over the course of 30-50 years, the hit would not be nearly as sudden, drastic, or sizeable. Nonetheless, given our nation's pressing needs, I believe that continuing to subsidize the vanity purchases of the wealthy at great environmental and human costs is simply a poor policy choice.

This post is purposely written to be a compliment to my post regarding the fruits of one's labor. When people choose to move to flood-prone areas, that is their right. However, they do not have the right to demand that I subsidize that choice.

Food for thought. Happy Thursday.

UPDATE: Apparently I jumped the gun to discuss this prior to Hurricane Irma making landfall. For what it's worth, the National Flood Insurance Program (that subsidizes flood insurance) was $24,000,000,000 in debt before Irma and Harvey made landfall. Given my personal policy choice, I would rather spend $24bn in public money on food or healthcare for poor kids as opposed to subsidizing the McMansions of the wealthy . . . that's just me. Others have their own policy preferences, of course.

The Fruits of Your Labor

In light of Hurricane Harvey's devastation of Houston, I found this piece by Sheila Kennedy (another local blogger and a favorite of mine) to be most enlightening. An excerpt:

Last year, for example, a ProPublica/Texas Tribune investigation found that officials charged with addressing Houston’s obvious susceptibility to flooding had discounted scientists’ warnings as “anti-development.”

That reaction was so typically Houstonian.

For years, Houston has reveled in its “freedom” from “onerous, unnecessary regulations.” 

I suppose Houston, and Texas writ large, and any other area of the country, has the right to implement policies that they believe are in their interests. This is the very essence of federalism. This piece highlights that Houston, presumably after weighing the costs/risks/benefits, decided that doing things like regulating how much concrete a developer can put down or how much wetland can be drained is not worth the cost of doing so.

As I said above, I suppose this is Houston's prerogative. Of course, it reminded me of another common story that we in Indiana hear often about Illinois' budget problems. See here, here, and here, for but a few examples. We often hear horror stories about how the federal government (i.e. the citizens of Indiana, among others) will have to bail out Illinois' failing budget obligations.

I can't help but link the two stories together.

Illinois, like Texas, has the prerogative to set policies that it believes are in its own interest. If Texas wants to pave over wetlands, perhaps that is their right. If Illinois wants to put itself in debt guaranteeing pensions to its public employees, perhaps that too is their right.

The problem comes when they externalize the costs of those policies. As it sits, the citizens of relatively eco-friendly Vermont, Massachusetts, and California are going to be on the hook for the policies of Texas, that surely the citizens of eco-friendly states would view as "penny wise and pound foolish." Similarly, the citizens of Indiana, Tennessee, and Kentucky may be on the hook for the policies of Illinois, which those of us in fiscally prudent states may view as "profligate."

My point is not to evaluate any of these policies on their merits, because all public policy is typically a choice between imperfect options. Perhaps Illinois could have been stingier with their pensions, but they determined that doing so would have a negative effect on their public workforce. Perhaps Texas could have been stricter in its environmental and building regulations, but they determined that doing so would stifle development.

At risk of repeating myself, this is their prerogative. However, it is not their prerogative to externalize the costs of their decisions onto their fellow citizens. If I want to quit my job, that means that I would have more free time to spend with my kids. However, I don't think that I have the right to expect my neighbors to cover the negative externalities of that decision (i.e. I have no right to expect my neighbors to pay my mortgage or buy my groceries).

Of course, there are exceptions to this rule. However, it really sticks in my craw when I hear Texas politicians (who constantly lecture the country on personal responsibility and making fiscally sound decisions) now approach the federal government with their hands out, seeking a bailout from the predictable consequences of their policy decisions.

As you sow, so too shall you reap.