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Thursday, October 26, 2006
Mediocrity, trial lawyers, campaigns
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Thinking Right’s free-for-all Friday. Pick a topic:
• Though a fair representative of the culture of the modern world, Sweden’s culture minister steps down after just 10 days in office. The minister, Cecilia Stego Chilo, was revealed to have evaded taxes by paying a nanny under the table and for failing to pay a mandatory TV license fee of about $200 per year for 16 years. Calls to mind the 1970 Senate speech by U.S. Sen. Roman Hruska, responding to criticism that Supreme Court nominee Harold Carswell had been a mediocre judge:
“So what if he is mediocre? There are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they?” The ethically challenged are entitled to a little representation, too. Oops. They already have it.
• Tag — you’re sued! School officials at Willett Elementary in Attleboro, Mass., and a handful of other schools around the country, ban tag, touch football and all chase games during recess. Why? Fear of trial lawyers.
The Manhattan Institute think tank has done an in-depth examination of the “litigation industry” in Illinois. Among its findings: “Viewed as a corporation, Trial Lawyers Inc. has enjoyed annual domestic revenues that exceed those of every single publicly held company headquartered in Illinois: it grosses more than $49 billion —more than the U.S. operations of Walgreens, Boeing or Allstate, over twice as much as Archer Daniels Midland, over three times as much as Motorola, and fully seven times as much as McDonald’s.” Read it at www.ManhattanInstitute. org. Trial lawyer money goes to Democrats; in Illinois in 2004, the Dems got 78 percent.
• Surprise! Two Democratic constituent groups — the NAACP and the Coalition for the People’s Agenda — want three Republicans on the State Elections Board to resign. Why? Voter ID — which, incidentally, the U.S. Supreme Court has refused to block for this election in Arizona.
• Election, please come soon. The campaigns to frighten the base to the polls exaggerate and distort, making small matters large. Here’s a voter guide: If it’s our fault, vote Democratic. If not, vote Republican. What’s “it”? Anything that threatens our security.
• College costs are up 6.3 percent this year, 35 percent over the last five years. One of these days, colleges will invite upon themselves the same market forces that finally rebelled at health care inflation. Former Emory President William Chace worries, and rightly so, that universities will become the gated communities of the well-to-do. The rich can pay; the poor will get financial aid; the working class could find themselves looking in.
• Fat kids? Here’s the solution for those on Medicaid or PeachCare: Give health care providers a 10-year contract to manage the health of say, 10,000 children, at a fixed fee. Providers should be free to offer incentives and to scale co-payments from beneficiaries based on factors such as whether kids lose weight, keep appointments and generally contribute to their own well-being. A few pilot after-school tutorings/exercise/health management programs should also be launched in public schools with high-need populations.
• Single-sex schools? Go for it. All like-needs kids should be assembled in any configuration — time of day, school year, weekend, all-male instruction, ability or any other — that competent educators deem necessary. Atlanta’s Carson Honors Preparatory School has been given permission to open as two schools, one male, one female.
• Another reason to hope for education reform: The Ohio Supreme Court affirms that publicly funded, privately operated charter schools are constitutional. Choice is coming.
• Overstated headline concerning Georgia General Assembly: “Legislative power shift unlikely.” The level truth: “Legislative power won’t shift.”
• I’m now for cloning. Clone Roswell Police Chief Edwin Williams, who for the last decade has notified federal immigration authorities of illegals held in his jail. Of about 3,800 reported in the last 33 months, the feds have picked up 12. A good cop is one doing his job when nobody’s paying attention. The illegal immigration crisis evolved because nobody at the federal level was.
• Jesse Jackson showed up unannounced at a Mark Taylor fund-raiser. That helps Taylor where he doesn’t need it and hurts him where he does: mainstream Georgia conservatives, which includes many Democrats.
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Money and endorsements in politics
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
As the final week of campaigning approaches, the AJC and other newspapers along with unions, interest groups, and associations, wind up the process of endorsing candidates. Endorsements cut both ways. Republicans and conservative Democrats in most jurisdictions in Georgia want the endorsement of the National Rifle Association. Democrats and some Republicans put great stock in the endorsement of the Sierra Club or the local affiliate of the National Eduation Association union.
I suspect we all are swayed pro or con by some endorsements from some groups in some races where the candidates aren’t well-known or well-financed. But in the high-profile state and national races, where most everybody has sufficient information, endorsements are likely to sway few. That’s one reason, incidentally, that I don’t support publicly-financed elections or limits on campaign spending. Campaign spending is a form of free speech. Certainly, quick and proper disclosure of who gives and who gets is vital in campaigns, but I’m not one who thinks big sums indicate big corruption. There are many ways to “sell out” and contributions are but one. A group that can deliver a thousand voters can be more influential than one that contributes a chunk of money used to buy costly campaign commercials that happen to deliver half that many. Besides, billionaires like George Soros have unlimited ways of influencing election outcomes, and candidates who are largely self-financing, like New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine who spent $60 million of his own money six years ago to get elected to the U.S. Senate, don’t need contributions.
With the end of the campaign season nearing, endorsements and campaign commercials rolling, two questions arise: Do endorsements matter pro or con, and if so, which ones? And what’s wrong, if anything, with properly disclosed money in campaigns?
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