From the New York Times today:

Critics of the teaching of evolution in the nation’s classrooms are gaining ground in some states by linking the issue to global warming, arguing that dissenting views on both scientific subjects should be taught in public schools.

In Kentucky, a bill recently introduced in the Legislature would encourage teachers to discuss “the advantages and disadvantages of scientific theories,” including “evolution, the origins of life, global warming and human cloning.”

I don’t think I ever learned about human cloning in high school science class, except perhaps in passing, somewhere, to mention how or why it is possible – which seems to be a discussion not requiring a “teach the controversy” clause.

Then again, perhaps it is my scientific fundamentalism, that pernicious belief in the impeccable logic and repeatedly proven utility of the scientific method, that bedevils my ability to see that science is actually just a collection of political and religious theories (which also happen to be radically left-wing and heretically atheistic, of course).

On the other hand, I think the previous paragraph is full of horse shit.

The fellow who introduced the aforementioned bill says:

“Our kids are being presented theories as though they are facts,” he said. “And with global warming especially, there has become a politically correct viewpoint among educational elites that is very different from sound science.”

You see, this is a challenger who should be easy enough to mollify. He simply thinks that the scientific meaning of the word “theory” is the same as the colloquial, everyday meaning of the word “theory.” Fair enough.

Theories in everyday life are a bit like hunches. We say “I have a theory about why men can be such bumbling buffoons” or “I have a theory about who stole the bed from my room” (long story). What we mean is that based on some reason, but no methodical examination of evidence, of course, we think we have an idea about why or how something happened. In scientific terms, our everyday “theories” are more like hypotheses.

Scientific theories, on the other hand, have evidence to support their assertions and are refined as more evidence becomes available. If evidence suggests the theory is wrong, another theory can be formed that better explains the evidence. The theory of evolution, then, is not the product of old Darwin’s daydreaming. It has a whole lot of evidence to back it up, and the evidence since Darwin first composed his theory (which itself was formed from the evidence he examined in great detail while exploring the Galapagos Islands) has only served to strengthen the explanatory power of Darwin’s theory.

Intelligent Design, on the other hand, posits that evolutionists haven’t explained everything yet (as if this were to therefore suggest that evolution can’t explain what it already does explain, which is a whole lot of the natural world). ID says, in effect, that if evolution has not yet explained some biological phenomenon, or if a particular biological phenomenon just seems too complex to imagine it being formed by evolution (even if evolutionary theorists have shown how such a thing might be formed by evolutionary processes), then there must be some (non-denominational, not-God, just-Intelligent Something) hand guiding the development of life. Of course, such a divine presence might exist – but the whole problem is that to postulate the existence of such a divine presence is to suggest something that cannot be falsified and is thus not a scientific explanation. Evolution does not require the non-existence of God, nor does it require the existence of God; it simply has nothing to say about the topic, because science inherently cannot comment on the existence of a being that is outside of the bounds of time, space, and material existence.

But science does a damn good job of commenting on things that are within the bounds of time, space, and material existence. It is the reason life is a lot easier for a lot of people today than it was in the past, it is the reason medicine has come so far, and it is the reason that people are able to create the incredible machine on which I am typing this blog (as well as the internet to which I am posting it, which is arguably more magnificent still). To say that science is just another way of seeing the world, or just its own secular religion, is to say that the knowable, material world is just another way of existing, no more real than the umpteen spiritual non-material worlds that we can imagine might exist. That is a belief very much akin to nihilism: the belief that nothing in the world really exists, and thus that the world is meaningless.

Sure, a devout religious person (not to say that others cannot be equally nihilistic -they can – or that all religious people, devout or not, are nihilistic -they are not) who exhibits this kind of nihilism does not really believe the world is meaningless or that it doesn’t really exist; presumably such a person eats, for example, which is to acknowledge the necessities of the material world. Probably such a person has beliefs that suggest that the world has a very deep, eternal meaning as well. But that is no excuse to act as if the methods by which we learn about the material world are just another version of religious belief, based on subjective revelation and open to any speculative alternative.

Science is based on free inquiry and requires fact-checking and open minds; and, being humans, some scientists don’t always live up to their own standards. That’s true. But just as free inquiry and the necessity of a degree of reasonable skepticism are essential to science, so is disagreement that explains the evidence. It is not enough to say, “I think you’re wrong.” What must accompany such disagreement is “I think you’re wrong, here is why,” and, most importantly, “here is the alternative that better explains the evidence that you are failing to explain.” Certainly some folks will say that Intelligent Design proponents have provided an alternative theory that better explains the evidence. But “a theory” cannot simply be speculation; it must also be falsifiable (as evolution, as well as global warming, are). Intelligent Design is not falsifiable, and is thus not a scientific theory, and is therefore not fit to enter a science classroom.

Scientific illiteracy seems to be only part of the problem here, however. The rest is politics, although I have a “theory” (not a scientific one, mind you), that scientific illiteracy has a lot to do with that problem, too.

When faced with a scientific concept, global warming, which conservatives overwhelmingly do not believe and liberals overwhelmingly do believe, we have a perfect example of a society that doesn’t give a damn about knowledge; this is a nihilist’s controversy.

Conservatives (I am failing to provide nuance here for the sake of convenience; not all conservatives fall into this category, of course) believe that global warming is based on bad science. They point to the fact that Al Gore invests in alternative energy companies, the improper handling of information by scientists at East Anglia, and short term events such as snowstorms or brief periods of cooler weather to say that global warming is obviously bunk. None of these are scientific rejections of global warming, although some of them border on the pseudo-scientific.

Liberals tend to have the same junk science orthodoxy, only they happen to believe that the scientists are right. But they also like to tout environmentalism in ways that seem to justify the conservative hysteria about “science” as a new religion.

The fact is, politics has to deal with science, and inevitably it is going to turn sometimes into very strong political disagreements. It does not have to be the case, however, that politics has to take the place of science; there’s plenty of room for disagreement on political decisions that mutually acknowledge the scientific evidence at hand on a given topic. But no correct decisions are going to come out of a political debate in which one side claims the apocalypse and the other claims that the science in question is categorically false. The evidence must be considered primary. There is real disagreement on the exact effects of climate change. But that disagreement only extends so far. It does not include the “theory” (not scientific) that every major scientific organization in the world along with the vast majority of scientists in the field of climate research are in a socialistic cabal to destroy prosperity and brainwash the youth. That is horse shit.

So we have a situation in which the politics is failing to stick to politics and religion is failing to stick to religion, and, yes, sometimes science is even failing to stick to science (in the case of scientists advocating political outcomes; although this is not the case, contrary to popular discourse, with the IPCC, which expressly avoids specific policy prescriptions). All of these fields, it is true, have overlapping claims and must sometimes wrestle with one another. But there MUST be a recognition underlying such disagreements that the scientific method is a very powerful tool for understanding the physical world and, more broadly, that evidence is required for anyone to make any kind of claim that they expect other people to believe. To eschew the rigor of scientific thought is to eschew civilization. We cannot survive, in the long run, without it.

And the most sickening aspect of the political attempts to “teach the [disingenuous] controversy” in classrooms is that these politicians and perversely ironic school board members plan to teach children that science is just another way of knowing things, no better at explaining the physical world than the Bible. They plan to teach children nihilism, and in so doing, the more they succeed, the more they doom our future to even dumber ideological warfare than that which characterizes our present political horse shit. I implore them to stop.

Of course, the irony of replacing the overly simple answer to the question posed, Barack Obama, with the equally simple answer, Progressivism, seemed quite lost both on Mr. Beck and on the hollering crowd. After all, what does he mean by Progressivism, (in both parties!, he adds) exactly? The recent documentary shown on Mr. Beck’s program suggests that the answer is something akin to lurking fascism and communism, the impending slaughter of 40 millions from intentionally evil redistributive policies and racism. Progressives are kind of like Nazis, which are a lot like Soviet Communists, and the evidence is clear: Che Guevara appears on a whole lot of youthful T-shirts, and Hitler was a (National) Socialist, and progressives are pretty much socialists. IT’S ALL CONNECTED. Like Mr. Beck said in his CPAC keynote, the only difference between progressivism and communism is the difference between revolution and evolution: a gun or a piece-by-piece change.

There are a lot of good reasons, as the above suggestions drawn from Mr. Beck’s CPAC speech and recent television shows make clear, to find Mr. Beck an exaggerating conspiracy theorist. Yes, he’s a little paranoid.

But what about the folks who admire Mr. Beck – many of them, at any rate – who call themselves Tea Partiers? According to a recent Economist/YouGov poll:

Tea partiers give their highest approval—from a list of possibilities—to two national figures: Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck. More than 60% of tea-party identifiers have a favourable view of each of them.

In a recent article in Newsweek, conservative columnist Jonathan Kay wrote the following of the recent Tea Party National Convention in Nashville:

I consider myself a conservative and arrived at this conference as a paid-up, rank-and-file attendee, not one of the bemused New York Times types with a media pass. But I also happen to be writing a book for HarperCollins that focuses on 9/11 conspiracy theories, so I have a pretty good idea where the various screws and nuts can be found in the great toolbox of American political life.

Within a few hours in Nashville, I could tell that what I was hearing wasn’t just random rhetorical mortar fire being launched at Obama and his political allies: the salvos followed the established script of New World Order conspiracy theories, which have suffused the dubious right-wing fringes of American politics since the days of the John Birch Society.

This world view’s modern-day prophets include Texas radio host Alex Jones, whose documentary, The Obama Deception, claims Obama’s candidacy was a plot by the leaders of the New World Order to “con the Amercican people into accepting global slavery”; Christian evangelist Pat Robertson; and the rightward strain of the aforementioned “9/11 Truth” movement.

According to this dark vision, America’s 21st-century traumas signal the coming of a great political cataclysm, in which a false prophet such as Barack Obama will upend American sovereignty and render the country into a godless, one-world socialist dictatorship run by the United Nations from its offices in Manhattan.

I read this and shook my head, because I didn’t think things were that bad. But remember this as well: the Tea Party convention was small and, of course, a self-selected group of people with the most interest in hearing from an echo chamber of other Tea Partiers. That means that while there was clearly some representation of the broader views of Tea Partiers there, the fact that about 48% of Americans (Economist/YouGov) have a somewhat or very favorable view of the Tea Party movement is not as horrifying as it could be.

There’s a lot of drivel being bounced around among Tea Party folks and the more mainstream CPAC convention, although the same has been true of left-wing types during the Bush administration and of populist-motivated political groups generally. Still:

tea-party members are overwhelmingly convinced—more so than Republicans—that Barack Obama is a socialist (85% say he is). Only 34% of all Americans (and 66% of Republicans) believe that is the case. (Economist/YouGov)

It is quite clear, of course, to anyone who pays attention to sources in addition to right-wing ones that Barack Obama is not a socialist, current health care reform proposals, whatever their faults, have never been close to a “government takeover,” and that most Congressional Democrats act like idiots, but are not socialists. Oh, and Barack Obama does not seem to have any deep-seated hatred for white people.

But sympathetic readings of the Tea Party movement don’t tend to focus on the absurd claims of talk show hosts or the bizarre conspiracy theories propagated by right-wing mainstream and alternative media outlets, or on raging speeches by Tea Party protest attendees. Rather, when being sympathetic toward Tea Partiers, the modus operandi is to claim that the spirit of outrage against a bloated government pandering to special interests is the motivation of the Tea Party, and that it is an ethos that most people can get behind.

There’s some truth to the Tea Party-sympathetic claim that people are just angry with the inefficiencies and vagaries of the political process as it currently stands, and that a movement that grounds itself in rage associated with these common sentiments is sure to get a decent level of support from that alone.

The problem with the Tea Party stems from these observations by Mr. Kay in another recent article in the Canadian newspaper the National Post:

For people who claim they want to change America, the speakers in Nashville spent very little time discussing what they would actually do if they ran the country. Smaller government was the dominant theme — but not a single speaker, to my knowledge (I wasn’t able to attend all of the overlapping breakout sessions), actually identified a government program that should be cut, or how. Everyone agreed Mr. Obama’s health-care plan would wreck America. But no one discussed how health-care costs might be controlled under a status quo that has 17% of American GDP going to medical costs.

The Tea Party is not a policy-oriented movement; it is founded on an appeal to sentiment – specifically, sentiment ranging from nationalistic to staunchly individualistic. That’s a problem for the Tea Partiers only in the sense that it means anyone elected by them, should such an occurrence ever come about, must only appeal to that sentiment and have a cleanly conservative record in order to gain support.

A straw poll at CPAC identified Ron Paul, the libertarian Texas Congressman, as a handy winner for president, with 31% of the vote, followed by Mitt Romney – who won last year – with 22%. Ron Paul had only 13% of the vote last year. There’s a clear shift among conservatives toward libertarianism and away from mainline Republicans — sort of.

The odd bit about the Tea Party is that their economic views are essentially libertarian, but just about everything else about many of them is not libertarian. Protectionism, disregard for fiscal discipline if it’s related to national security, nativism, and religiously motivated social conservatism are all directly opposed to most kinds of libertarianism – in particular, the libertarianism of Ron Paul.

The divide, then, between ethos and specific views is probably the Tea Party’s biggest but often ignored problem. They are essentially romantic Republicans by ideology, but claim to be libertarians. On the other hand, the answer might simply be a semantic problem: they claim to be libertarians, sometimes support Ron Paul types, but otherwise support the romantic Republicans Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin (neither of whom, except with regard to fiscal policy, is particularly libertarian).

Of course, the lack of specificity involved in being an emotional rather than intellectual movement can also be beneficial for the Tea Party: they can appeal to people who might ultimately totally disagree with one another, but who both identify as a conservative American patriot.

The real political consequences of the Tea Party, then, are dependent on who can speak their language best; the difference between the concrete policies advocated by one possible object of Tea Party support and those of another, meanwhile, are quite large. The Tea Party is an ethos, not an ideology, and its consequences, if any, will be determined by who can tap into that ethos successfully. On the one hand, there is the possibility of someone like Sarah Palin, who is essentially a political embodiment of the Tea Party ethos with little serious concern for public policy. On the other hand, there is the possibility of someone like Ron Paul, who is much more of a policy wonk with philosophical roots that, given the right PR campaign, can appeal to the Tea Party ethos. The divide between the two is massive, but the Tea Party often seems hardly to notice. If the Tea Party movement is to have any electoral consequences – which it almost certainly will for at least this year’s midterm elections, but may or may not by the time 2012 rolls around – the outcomes are quite variable, and will depend, it seems, more on narratives than on policy proposals.

And then Scott Brown was elected, President Obama gave the State of the Union and decided to take on the banks, President Obama decided to back down on health care and talk a little more to Republicans, and the pending outcome of health care reform became rather uncertain.

Well despite the shifting newsroom tides, health insurance is still a big problem.

The New York Times reports:

Facing relentless fiscal pressure and exploding demand for government health care, virtually every state is making or considering substantial cuts in Medicaid, even as Democrats push to add 15 million people to the rolls.

The rest of the article is a litany of lose-lose decisions for state governors to make about spending money that doesn’t exist, cutting people from Medicaid when they need it most, and trying to squeeze revenues out of sales, tobacco, and alcohol taxes.

The Economist blog Democracy in America writes:

The insurance industry is not like the automotive industry. It does not produce a product. What it does is calculate the actuarial chances that a person will need health care, collect premiums to cover the cost of such care, and then distribute the money to care providers as needed. This spreads the risks of ill health more evenly across society, simultaneously enhancing fairness and reducing risk (thus enabling entrepreneurship)

Most of what the industry does besides those tasks is rent-seeking behaviour that sucks money away from its real mission. In a sense, an insurance company is like a casino: whatever it books in profits, represents money it skimmed off of its customers. (This is not true of HMOs, which actually help organise the delivery of care, and where the profit motive can thus lead to real efficiencies.)

These are not encouraging words. There is a push later on in the post essentially for single-payer, which is unfortunately politically impossible in the United States in the near future. From a policy perspective, additionally, the federal government needs to cut spending; arguably, something like single-payer would do that in the long run, but we need to not default on debt in the short term.

We have a really ugly political problem to solve. Spending is out of control – as it has increasingly been since the day President Bush took office – and yet demand for services is rising in the midst of a painful economy.

President Obama will propose a health care plan passable under budget reconciliation by Monday.

According to the New York Times:

The president’s plan would require most Americans to obtain health insurance or face financial penalties; it would bar insurers from denying coverage based on pre-existing medical conditions, and it would give tax subsidies to help moderate-income people buy private insurance.

Officials said the president’s bill was expected to include a version of the Senate’s proposed tax on high-cost, employer-sponsored insurance policies. It would reflect a deal reached with labor union leaders to limit the impact of the tax on workers.

This is a reform that has some damage control in it, but a lot of what will ultimately amount to temporary provisions. Insurance costs from the above mentioned proposals, it seems, have little reason to go down; in fact, they may very well continue to go up, with an indirect subsidy to insurance companies.

Reasonable disagreement exists on what would be a better idea; single-payer or increasing regulation as well as more market-based solutions are problematic. The issue, as is often the case with policy decisions for both businesses and government, is whether the transaction costs of market provisions outweigh or are outweighed by principal-agent problems of authority-based provisions.

One way or another, the President is on the right track with the deficit commission, needs to return to the separation of commercial and investment banks, and for the sake of both deficits and responsible governance, get the health care system in the right hands with the right structure (whatever that happens to be).

I’m avoiding making sweeping statements about what kind of health care reform is best because I have neither the information nor the time to figure that out. I can speculate about the benefits non-profit health insurance (private or public), buying across state lines, tort reform, and ending denial for pre-existing conditions, but health care is a multifaceted and complex issue. I wish Congress would take note of that fact and pay some attention to researching the matter rather than bellowing party talking points at one another.

Thankfully, as a student of public affairs interested in the issue, I might have some more insight in the next few weeks as I study health care in a political economy class. I’ll get back to you. Meanwhile, Congress dithers ever on.

A lot of people recently have been exceedingly unhappy with Mr. Bernanke, and in fact the institution of the Federal Reserve in general. Such strange bedfellows as Ron Paul, Democrat Alan Grayson, and the uber-liberal blog Firedoglake have supported a Congressional audit of the Federal Reserve, and the titular message from Mr. Paul’s latest book is “End the Fed.”

The primary tasks of the Federal Reserve, which are not always achievable at the same time, are to moderate inflation, promote full employment, moderate interest rates, and serve as the lender of last resorts to commercial banks. The Fed’s politically independent yet politically important role is the root of much of the public consternation with it and its policies.

The Economist’s Free Exchange blog, along with Paul Krugman at his blog The Conscience of a Liberal, have criticized Ben Bernanke for his recent policies. In particular, both argue that a slightly higher average inflation rate would ease unemployment woes – a goal, at least, that we can all get behind.

Mr. Krugman on Saturday wrote:

Olivier Blanchard, normally at MIT but currently the chief economist at the IMF, has released an interesting and important paper on how the crisis has changed, or should have changed, how we think about macroeconomic policy. The most surprising conclusion, presumably, is the idea that central banks have been setting their inflation targets too low:

Higher average inflation, and thus higher nominal interest rates to start with, would have made it possible to cut interest rates more, thereby probably reducing the drop in output and the deterioration of fiscal positions.

In other words, having a little bit higher inflation rates generally may not significantly bring on the negative effects of inflation (since they rates wouldn’t be much more inflationary anyway) but they would allow more room for monetary easing during crisis situations like the current one. That monetary easing, then, gives markets more credit and higher ability to spend, in part so that employers don’t have to start cutting jobs so much. Monetary easing is a primary tool of the Fed to fight recessions, but it has been defunct for some time during the current one because interest rates approached zero, the limit for any possibility of further easing.

Ben Bernanke, however, says this:

The Federal Reserve has not followed the suggestion of some that it pursue a monetary policy strategy aimed at pushing up longer-run inflation expectations. In theory, such an approach could reduce real interest rates and so stimulate spending and output. However, that theoretical argument ignores the risk that such a policy could cause the public to lose confidence in the central bank’s willingness to resist further upward shifts in inflation, and so undermine the effectiveness of monetary policy going forward.

If that’s a little difficult to make sense of, the point is that pushing up some long term inflation rates will cause people to get nervous about what the Fed is up. It is a reasonable concern, since expectations play an important role in inflation and the responsiveness of markets to Fed manipulations.

The response of Mr. Krugman and like-minded folks, I suspect, is that a meager increase in average inflation is not going to send markets into a panic – especially not when the slightly higher inflation rate becomes the norm.

Probably there is room for reasonable disagreement. But as The Economist wrote in December:

Mr Bernanke does not want to risk a de-anchoring of inflation expectations. He is willing to accept 10% or greater unemployment and the resulting economic and political fall-out in order to avoid that risk. Personally, I think that Mr Bernanke owes us all a better explanation of why he has opted to place so much more emphasis on the price stability aspect of his mission than the full employment aspect.

That, too, seems to be a reasonable question.

Nearly eight years since the war against al Qaeda began, the nation remains mired in the legal ambiguities surrounding the detainees. The debates continue to rage: use the civilian courts or the military commissions? Neither system seems to fit neatly.

Rather than rehashing the debates of the past, Congress now can provide one option for the detention, interrogation and trial of these unique 21st century fighters. Because the armed conflict is itself a hybrid (a mixture of law enforcement and traditional warfare), and the fighter himself is a hybrid (a mixture of international criminal and warrior), it seems logical for policymakers to create one system of justice best suited for the al Qaeda fighters – a hybrid of the military commissions and traditional federal courts – a National Security Court System. Creating such a system also ensures that there is no (actual or apparent) decrease in the credibility and legitimacy of either of the existing systems.

This is an innovative, forward-looking approach. Rather than stretching the functions of either the judicial system or the military, a court specifically addressing the awkward situation of terrorists acting as both criminals and soldiers could be effective, secure, and supportive of basic human rights.

Apparently, however, the book on which the article is based, by the same author, presents a less innovative-sounding approach. David Rittgers of the Cato Institute presents a scathing critique, saying:

Sulmasy argues that the Supreme Court’s invalidation of the military commissions in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld was wrongly decided, as was the decision to grant detainees the right to file petitions of habeas corpus in Boumediene v. Bush. Unsurprisingly, his proposal for a national security court system shares much with Bush’s original conception of military commissions, but he goes even further by trying to revive many proposals that would roll back core civil liberties.

In Sulmasy’s proposed “national security court,” suspected terrorists would be tried in front of a panel of three federal judges, violating their Sixth Amendment right to a jury trial. Defendants would be detained, tried, and imprisoned on military bases, a practice out of step with a federal statutory bar to the military’s direct participation in domestic law enforcement. The Bush administration kept its military commissions more palatable for the public by keeping American citizens and aliens detained in the United States out of Guantanamo. Sulmasy proposes that we bring Gitmo home and open its doors to citizens and non-citizens alike.

Mr. Rittgers presents very valid concerns. I am not sure he makes a convincing case, however. His next move is a slippery slope argument, arguing that the National Security Court will be used on foreign terrorists like KSM one day, American citizen terrorists like Jose Padilla the next, drug offenders after that, and then political dissidents. If that sounds a little disingenuous, there is a good reason. It’s a logical fallacy.

If is an argument that essentially says, “If A, then B; if B, then C; if C, then D; A is true, therefore, D.” Logically, that’s valid, as long as all of the steps in that logical path are true. But there’s no argument given for why prosecuting terrorists in a special kind of court leads to prosecuting anyone except terrorists in a court designed to prosecute terrorists.

I haven’t read Mr. Sulmasy’s book, and this is the first I’ve heard of his argument. But it sounds like it’s worth looking into, and it’s certainly more productive than the talk show back-and-forth drivel we’ve had about KSM’s trial and Mirandizing of late. We have real, contentious issues to resolve, and it’s best we spend time thinking about how actually to do that.

But we cannot take on Wall Street malfeasance punitively. Instead, Wall Street needs a structural fix. I have argued for big bonus taxes and limiting executive compensation, but these, it seems, are insufficient. Instead, the incentives and gambling possibilities for Wall Street firms need to be made better and lesser, respectively.

Risk-taking is necessary for investors; but the money used for that risk-taking must belong to the richer folks who can afford to take the risks with it. If their investments turn out to be a house of cards or otherwise go sour, then regular peoples’ assets need to be protected.

That is why we need to return to the Glass-Steagall separation of commercial and investment banks.

Such a plan, as proposed by former Fed chairman Paul Volcker, is described by the New York Times:

“The banks are there to serve the public,” Mr. Volcker said, “and that is what they should concentrate on. These other activities create conflicts of interest. They create risks, and if you try to control the risks with supervision, that just creates friction and difficulties” and ultimately fails.

The only viable solution, in the Volcker view, is to break up the giants. JPMorgan Chase would have to give up the trading operations acquired from Bear Stearns. Bank of America and Merrill Lynch would go back to being separate companies. Goldman Sachs could no longer be a bank holding company. It’s a tall order, and to achieve it Congress would have to enact a modern-day version of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, which mandated separation.

Glass-Steagall was watered down over the years and finally revoked in 1999. In the Volcker resurrection, commercial banks would take deposits, manage the nation’s payments system, make standard loans and even trade securities for their customers — just not for themselves. The government, in return, would rescue banks that fail.

On the other side of the wall, investment houses would be free to buy and sell securities for their own accounts, borrowing to leverage these trades and thus multiplying the profits, and the risks.

Being separated from banks, the investment houses would no longer have access to federally insured deposits to finance this trading. If one failed, the government would supervise an orderly liquidation. None would be too big to fail — a designation that could arise for a handful of institutions under the administration’s proposal.

Today, the New York Times reports on the largest bonuses on Wall Street; and they aren’t going to Goldman Sachs or AIG:

It turns out that some of the highest-paid financial executives in America work far from the canyons of Lower Manhattan, at companies that have largely avoided the outcry over the return of hefty paydays on Wall Street. [...]

It is a stunning reversal in the old pecking order of pay. Big names on Wall Street like Mr. Blankfein [Goldman Sachs] usually take home far more than staid bankers like Mr. Stumpf [Wells Fargo], whose bank’s biggest business is making home mortgages and loans to corporations.

But since the bailout, the rules of banker pay are bending. Some of the industry’s biggest names are being paid less than relative unknowns. Chief executives, who are usually at the top of the pay heap, are taking home roughly the same amounts as executives who work for them — and sometimes less.

Mr. Stumpf and other executives have moved up the pay ladder partly because the likes of Mr. Blankfein have moved down. And for all the focus on what top executives earn, what is most startling is how many six-, seven- and eight-figure sums are being awarded to Wall Street bankers and traders whose pay often is unnoticed — if it is disclosed at all.

We can conclude quite quickly from these descriptions that trying to limit compensation and punish the damn bankers is fruitless. Any attempt to do so is patchwork and, ultimately, doesn’t solve the bigger problems.

The Obama administration should keep its current leverage tax to reclaim TARP funds, but more importantly it should be fixing the structural problems of our financial industry. Ad hoc regulations, like ad hoc compensation limitations, will not solve the problem – they must, therefore, be avoided for more deeply rooted solutions.

He argues specifically against short-term attempts to make large cuts in carbon emissions, and, although in his other work he may understate the extent of environmental problems, his argument here is quite sound:

Developing nations, as we saw during the Copenhagen summit, are unwilling to make large cuts in carbon emissions because they don’t have the economic resources to do that; they don’t have enough alternative energy (nor does anyone else, really), and their economies cannot reasonably absorb the cost of severely cutting carbon emissions.

As frustrating as it was to see the Copenhagen conference essentially collapse on account of developing nations, especially China’s, aversion to carbon cutting, those developing nations are essentially correct. They can’t really afford to chop carbon emissions without a viable energy source to keep their economies afloat.

Then, to the extent that we developed nations can afford to cut carbon emissions, it would do little good for us to do so as the larger developing nations continue to grow and surpass us in carbon emissions. At that point, lessening the amount of emissions and the extent of climate change has failed; the primary actors have simply been substituted for new ones.

Instead, the price of carbon should be made more accurate with a carbon tax that at least provides some adjustment for the fact of the negative environmental externalities of carbon dioxide emissions.

But that, of course, does not solve the whole problem. Any subsidization of carbon-emitting energy has to be cut. And the search for viable, efficient alternatives needs to be jump-started.

Mr. Lomborg writes:

Consider the most hyped alternative technologies: Together, wind and solar energy supply less than 0.6 per cent of the world’s entire energy needs. They are not only much more expensive than fossil fuels, but there are massive technological hurdles to overcome to make them efficient: direct-current lines need to be constructed to carry energy from the areas of highest sunshine and wind speeds to the areas where most people live, and storage technology needs to be invented so that when the sun doesn’t shine, and the wind doesn’t blow, the world still gets power.

A significant increase in research and development investments a year is needed to produce a real technological revolution. Spending 0.2 per cent of global GDP product – roughly $100-billion a year – on green energy R&D would produce the kind of game-changing breakthroughs needed to fuel a carbon-free future.

Indeed, the problems of current alternative energies need to be worked out, and research institutions as well as the private sector should be involved in that effort; the public sector should provide resources as Mr. Lomborg suggests, since the problem of carbon emissions and climate change is quite a public one.

The wrong approach, or at least the one that is unlikely to make real gains without a miraculous level of cooperation, is to tell economies to slow down, which merely reduces the resources available to create viable alternatives.

I argue that Mr. Lomborg’s long-run focus is important and crucial to our climate change debates. But there are also reasonable short-term actions that must be taken.

While research and development occurs to solve environmental problems and some lower carbon consumption occurs through better pricing (e.g., a carbon tax), developing nations will be looking for transfers of technology and finances to mitigate the immediate effects of climate change. These requests should be skeptically considered – which is not to say that they should be ignored or universally denied, but rather that they should be granted for specific cases only in which climate change can reasonably be determined a major cause of a given problem (this is in addition to regular humanitarian relief, of course, for other sorts of problems and disasters, whether related to climate change or not).

An institutional mechanism is required for deciding on such cases, and it should be multilateral; perhaps the WTO can be used and funds requested, so that the dispute settlement mechanism there can be utilized and, if climate change assistance for developing nations is deemed reasonable, then its costs can be born in shares by developed nations.

Whatever the view one has of the “Skeptical Environmentalist” Mr. Lomborg, his arguments here are sound, and should be taken very seriously and combined with other short-term assistance.

To act on climate change effectively, one must look at the full picture. Merely shutting down as much economic activity as can be managed in a war on carbon is only a solution in a world in which people have no other needs, concerns, or problems. That is not our world. Progressive action is needed, not heavy handed self-punishment.

The Environmental Protection Agency said new data showed that, even after taking into account increased fertilizer and land use, corn-based ethanol can yield significant climate benefits by displacing conventional gasoline or diesel fuel.

Corn-based ethanol drives up food prices; its production increases demand for corn for ethanol, lessening the supply available for food. Alternatively, if the supply of corn increases enough to satisfy the ethanol demand for corn so that price remains the same, the land then being used to grow corn for ethanol is unavailable for food crops. One way or another, crop land gets used to make fuel that could just as well be produced from other sources. Why encourage such waste?

In December 2009, The Economist reported:

The worst example of a wasteful subsidy is America’s support programme for home-grown corn ethanol, which is coupled with tariffs on cheaper sugar-cane ethanol from Brazil. The programme has raised global food prices (and thus increased malnutrition among the world’s poorest); lined the pockets of America’s farmers; given policies to cut carbon a bad name; and cut little, if any, carbon.

The recent EPA decision needs serious scrutiny, since just about every previous study of ethanol has concluded that it is inefficient, wasteful, and in fact destructive to global food markets.

On the other hand, the same Economist report writes:

Carbon pricing keeps government out of management decisions and allows managers to choose between different ways of cutting carbon. According to a paper by Carolyn Fischer, of Resources for the Future, and Richard Newell, head of America’s Energy Information Administration, a carbon price is around twice as efficient as a renewable portfolio standard (which requires power companies to generate a certain proportion of the power they sell from renewable sources) and about two-and-a-half times as efficient as a renewable-energy subsidy.

A carbon price can be set either by a tax or through a cap-and-trade system. Europe already has such a system and America, Australia and Japan are trying to set one up. Norway and Sweden have carbon taxes and France soon will (though none of them covers much of those countries’ economies). The European Commission is also now looking at a tax. Both methods have advantages and drawbacks, but tax wins out for simplicity and stability.

While it would be unwise to suggest that one approach to energy policy is acceptable and all others should be dispensed with, there are other renewable sources to invest in that are clearly superior to corn-based ethanol.

But Slate reminds us that Congress, ultimately, has to pass the repealing law, and that that will be exceedingly difficult.

Christopher Beam writes:

First, Gates is appointing a study group to figure out how best to implement the repeal if it’s passed. That means examining potential changes in Pentagon policies on benefits (say, if two men are married), base housing (can they live together?), fraternization (can they, er, hang out?), and misconduct. The study will also examine questions of whether or not gays in the military hurt “unit cohesion”—a phrase that became a rallying cry for DADT supporters when it was passed in 1993. That could take as long as a year. The military would then have another year actually to put the policy in place. And this is assuming Congress actually passes the law repealing the policy. Which may be the trickiest part.

And further:

If the new study reveals even a shred of doubt that gays serving openly could affect their ability to win in battle, Congress will flee. As Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., put it, the primary purpose of the military is “not to promote civil rights or individual justice, but to prevail in combat.”

The conclusion is that repealing DADT could take years.

I fail to see how a unit that outlaws recognition of one’s identity can properly be cohesive. Apparently the difference between homosexuals and, at another time not so long ago in history, blacks in the military for those of the lackadaisical approach to civil rights is that we can pretend, like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, that gay people aren’t gay, and get rid of them if someone says they are; whereas the trait of skin color, alas, is too obvious to let that go for too long. I also fail to see how Israel’s military has lost its cohesiveness as a result of allowing gay people to exist within its ranks. Bigotry is not the common sense prudence its proponents suggest.

In a moving blog post at Cato@Liberty, Jason Kuznicki makes a powerful defense of liberty and a scathing critique of foolery.

Do check out the video, first of all, on the post itself, in which Peter Sprigg of the predictably named Family Research Council suggests that sodomy should be re-criminalized, and that the Supreme Court decision in Texas striking down sodomy laws – in 2003 – was “wrongly decided.”

Mr. Kuznicki writes:

…which is easy for him to say, of course, because he’s unlikely to be affected by the law. As someone who is likely to be affected by the law, I’m tempted to criminalize Peter Sprigg. Liberty is never more negotiable than when it’s liberty for someone you don’t like.

What is it that I don’t like? I don’t like putting people in cages. Whenever we can reasonably avoid it, we should. Liberty means liberty even for people we think are weird, or disgusting, or immoral — provided that they do not hurt us or our own legitimate interests. Lawrence v. Texas, for which the Cato Institute filed an amicus brief, is one of the most important expressions of this idea in our time.

Once liberty applies only to the things that we like, we have abandoned the true idea of liberty entirely. From that point on, you and I, as enforcers, must cling ever more tightly to arbitrary power. If we don’t, then someone else may come along, take that power, and criminalize us. A free society leaves the misfits alone, because sooner or later, everyone is a misfit, in some way or another.

And how ironic that in a society professing such liberty, the institution that defends this society as well as the laws that govern it, do not embrace the same logic of civil liberty. It’s appalling, revolting, and discouraging. As a person of 20 years of age, I hope upon humanity that my generation learns from the despicable failure of the generation whose members are the influential leaders of today.

We will and we must, with the strongest conviction, reject bigoted tyranny. That means Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, that means the Defense of Marriage Act, and that means instead instating civil marriage, at the federal level, allowed for any two people in this country, regardless of sex, gender, or identity, who want it. All of these reforms are begun now, and they must be carried through.

Mr. Hayden properly points out that, “We got it wrong in Detroit on Christmas Day. We allowed an enemy combatant the protections of our Constitution before we had adequately interrogated him.”

I say this is a proper point because, having greater knowledge now, further from the time of the arrest and brief FBI interrogation of Abdulmutallab, it is clear that other intelligence departments should have been present and that interrogation should have lasted longer.

It is firmly out of the question to use “enhanced interrogation techniques” on anyone, because they are ineffective, and that is not what I am referring to – and shame on the fools who claim(ed) that that is the only effective policy available.

Rather, as Mr. Hayden writes:

In the 50 minutes the FBI had to question him, agents reportedly got actionable intelligence. Good. But were there any experts on al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in the room (other than Abdulmutallab)? Was there anyone intimately familiar with any National Security Agency raw traffic to, from or about the captured terrorist? Did they have a list or photos of suspected recruits?

That is a fair assessment of an interrogation that should have been handled much more comprehensively and effectively. It is possible that the only way to conduct such an interrogation would be, upon capturing a terrorist, to classify him as an enemy combatant, so that his right to remain silent is waived for a time. As I recently suggested, to do so and then to return the suspect to the justice system might be a workable policy. There are almost certainly legal logistics that would require attention to work out such a system, but if it is doable, it is desirable.

In his op-ed, Mr. Hayden goes on to point out that Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair:

suggested that the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG), announced by the administration in August, should have been called in. A government spokesman later pointed out that the group does not yet exist.

…In August, the government unveiled the HIG for questioning al-Qaeda and announced that the FBI would begin questioning CIA officers about the alleged abuses in the 2004 inspector general’s report. They are apparently still getting organized for the al-Qaeda interrogations. But the interrogations of CIA personnel are well underway.

That, indeed, is ass-backward and must be fixed immediately. The HIG, by the way, sounds something like what I have been suggesting without quite realizing it. Here is a Justice Department outline:

the Task Force recommended that the HIG should coordinate the deployment of mobile teams of experienced interrogators, analysts, subject matter experts and linguists to conduct interrogations of high-value terrorists if the United States obtains the ability to interrogate them. The primary goal of this elite interrogation group would be gathering intelligence to prevent terrorist attacks and otherwise to protect national security. Advance planning and interagency coordination prior to interrogations would also allow the United States, where appropriate, to preserve the option of gathering information to be used in potential criminal investigations and prosecutions.

Finally, I must note the idiocy of the super-hawks at the Weekly Standard on this matter. Stephen Hayes writes yesterday:

We have yet another example of this short-sighted approach today [allowing Abdulmutallab to remain silent]. According to the Associated Press, Malaysian authorities detained 10 suspected terrorists who are believed to have ties to Abdulmutallab.

The AP reported: “The government-linked New Straits Times newspaper said foreign antiterrorism agencies told authorities the suspects were in Malaysia and were linked to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, a young Nigerian accused of trying to detonate a bomb during a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Dec. 25…They include four men from Syria, two from Nigeria, and one each from Yemen and Jordan, said Syed Ibrahim Syed Noh, head of a rights group that assists people held under Malaysia’s Internal Security Act, which allows indefinite detention without trial.”

Who are these suspected terrorists and what do we know about them? Surely the CIA is pressing its Malaysian colleagues for more information on these detainees.  And perhaps they are known to the U.S. intelligence community. It’s possible that the U.S. government provided the intelligence that led Malaysian authorities to the suspected terrorists.

If those reports are true, wouldn’t it be nice to ask Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab who they are, how he came to know them and why he was in league with them?

To disagree with the manner in which Abdulmutallab was questioned is legitimate if one can provide a good justification. I think I have done so above and elsewhere. But Mr. Hayes is providing evidence that, in all probability, is exactly the opposite of his point. Are we to suppose that Malaysia magically gleaned information on Abdulmutallab’s associates, or are we to suspect, much more probably, that the United States was able to get at least some of that information and provide it to Malaysia?

Mr. Hayes notes the possibility, then pretends like it doesn’t really matter, after all, if the United States might have provided information obtained either directly from Abdulmutallab or from other sources; there’s a political pot-shot to make, Damn it!

In reality, we have no idea who came up with the intelligence on these 10 guys, but the likelihood seems to lie with the U.S. – and if that information did come from the U.S., as Mr. Hayes fleetingly points out that it very well might have, how can it be reasonable to assume that no one knows who the people arrested are or what connection they had to Abdulmutallab? If that information isn’t known, why would anyone arrest the 10 people who were arrested?!

The Weekly Standard folks need to tone it down and remember to use their logic, or provide some further evidence. Ironically, if it weren’t for their love of torture and sensational rhetoric, the Weekly Standard folks might actually make some sense on security issues.

Indeed, the premise that the administration needs to do a better job of interrogating terrorists is one I agree with, having the information available now. That’s probably, however, as far as my agreement with Bill Kristol’s operation goes at this point, however.