Category: reason

Art Tavana: What Guns N’ Roses Tells Us about the American Dream


goobyegnr

In 1987, just two years before the collapse of the Berlin Wall would usher in the beginning of what Francis Fukuyama would later call the end of history, the rock band Guns N’ Roses released Appetite for Destruction, an album that would go on to become the best-selling debut L.P. in the history of rock and roll.

Packed with hits such as “Welcome to the Jungle,” “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” and “Paradise City,” Appetite for Destruction wasn’t just another record. It was a cultural milestone, at once the culmination of decades of trends in popular music and the closing out not just of the rock era but a society-wide flirtation with excess, fear, anger, and nihilism. For the next five years, Guns N’ Roses and particularly the band’s front man Axl Rose, would personify an America in rapid flux and change, desperate to move on from a worn-out, post-war consensus on national identity, gender roles, and global hegemony but equally terrified of wading into uncharted waters.

The new book Goodbye Guns N’ Roses: The Crime, Beauty, and Amplified Chaos of America’s Most Polarizing Band, by Art Tavana, is an extended essay on the cultural legacy not just of a band but of a period that informs contemporary debates on politics and culture even as it recedes from our memory. 

Tavana, an LA-based former writer for Playboy and LA Weekly, talks with Nick Gillespie about the attraction of popular nihilism; Axl Rose as the dispossessed son of middle America; how the band’s racist, xenophobic, and homophobic song “One in a Million” reflected national anxiety over coming political, social, and economic change; how the group’s beef with Nirvana, another band that couldn’t quite make it into the post-Cold War era, illustrates the limits of rock and roll; and what comes after the end of corporate mass culture.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2S3eHHe
via IFTTT

Art Tavana: What Guns N’ Roses Tells Us about the American Dream


goobyegnr

In 1987, just two years before the collapse of the Berlin Wall would usher in the beginning of what Francis Fukuyama would later call the end of history, the rock band Guns N’ Roses released Appetite for Destruction, an album that would go on to become the best-selling debut L.P. in the history of rock and roll.

Packed with hits such as “Welcome to the Jungle,” “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” and “Paradise City,” Appetite for Destruction wasn’t just another record. It was a cultural milestone, at once the culmination of decades of trends in popular music and the closing out not just of the rock era but a society-wide flirtation with excess, fear, anger, and nihilism. For the next five years, Guns N’ Roses and particularly the band’s front man Axl Rose, would personify an America in rapid flux and change, desperate to move on from a worn-out, post-war consensus on national identity, gender roles, and global hegemony but equally terrified of wading into uncharted waters.

The new book Goodbye Guns N’ Roses: The Crime, Beauty, and Amplified Chaos of America’s Most Polarizing Band, by Art Tavana, is an extended essay on the cultural legacy not just of a band but of a period that informs contemporary debates on politics and culture even as it recedes from our memory. 

Tavana, an LA-based former writer for Playboy and LA Weekly, talks with Nick Gillespie about the attraction of popular nihilism; Axl Rose as the dispossessed son of middle America; how the band’s racist, xenophobic, and homophobic song “One in a Million” reflected national anxiety over coming political, social, and economic change; how the group’s beef with Nirvana, another band that couldn’t quite make it into the post-Cold War era, illustrates the limits of rock and roll; and what comes after the end of corporate mass culture.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/2S3eHHe
via IFTTT

Biden’s Infrastructure Plan Would Redefine ‘Broadband’ To Justify Spending $100 Billion on Government-run Internet


lrphotos130378

As part of a $2.3 trillion infrastructure proposal, President Joe Biden is pushing Congress to spend $100 billion fixing a problem that mostly doesn’t exist: widespread lack of access to broadband internet.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) estimates that there were about 14.5 million Americans, living in an estimated 4.3 million households, that lacked access to broadband internet at the end of 2019. That’s a serious but narrow problem that’s already being addressed by a combination of private and public efforts. New technologies like SpaceX’s low-orbit satellites can beam broadband internet to homes even in far-flung rural places, and the FCC has already budgeted more than $9 billion over the next 10 years as part of what the agency says is the “biggest single step ever…toward closing the rural digital divide.” The number of Americans without broadband access fell by 20 percent in 2019, according to an FCC report published in January, and it’s likely that the total is significantly less today than at the end of 2019.

But Biden’s infrastructure plan suggests a major change to what counts as “broadband” internet. As a result, as many as 64 million American households could suddenly appear to lack adequate online speed—even though nothing about their current services would change.

With a simple bureaucratic adjustment, the Biden administration could manufacture the appearance of a market failure where one plainly does not exist, opening the door for an expensive taxpayer-funded intervention to subsidize government-run internet boondoggles. Critics charge that Biden’s plan will crowd out private investment in broadband infrastructure while steering money to parts of the country where residents already enjoy state-of-the-art connection speeds. Instead of targeting a small amount of funds toward the truly needy who lack access to fast internet, Biden could end up spending $100 billion only to make the digital divide larger than ever.

“It’s not going to achieve the goal of bridging the digital divide in America,” Deborah Collier, a vice president at Citizens Against Government Waste, a fiscally conservative nonprofit, tells Reason. “It’s just going to throw more money at cities and localities that already have broadband.”

***

To understand exactly why changing the definition of broadband matters, you have to first understand a little bit about how internet speeds are measured and what currently counts as broadband.

Since 2015, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has defined a broadband connection as internet access with download speeds of at least 25 megabits per second and upload speeds of at least three megabits per second. In layman’s terms, that’s fast enough to stream a high-definition movie in the living room while three other people check Facebook, send email, or do some online shopping simultaneously.

A so-called “25/3” connection might not be fast enough for all households, but it is a standard that’s meant to reflect the needs of most Americans. The higher download speeds relative to upload speeds are a reflection of what consumers demand—because the vast majority of internet usage involves downloading, largely due to the huge demand for streaming video. Even after a surge in upload demand during 2020—thanks to all those Zoom calls and everyone working from home—about 93 percent of all internet traffic involves downloading content, according to data from the Internet and Television Association (NCTA), an industry group.

The White House’s fact sheet for Biden’s infrastructure plan calls for “building ‘future proof’ broadband infrastructure.” That term has a specific meaning in the broadband world.

“‘Future proof’ networks often means symmetric speeds,” explains Jeffrey Westling, a technology and innovation policy fellow at the R Street Institute, a free market think tank. In other words, Biden isn’t just calling for faster speeds, but equal speeds between uploads and downloads. Advocates for government-mandated “future proof” networks typically aim for a 100/100 standard—that is, 100 megabits per second in both uploads and downloads.

As a practical matter, those standards are just silly. A typical Zoom call uses about 1.5 megabits per second in upload bandwidth. With a 100/100 connection, “you could have ten kids pretending to do Zoom school but actually doing TikToks while you’re in the other room pretending to work but actually watching Netflix, and still not run out of bandwidth,” writes Scott Wallsten, president of the Technology Policy Institute.

Politically, however, defining broadband connections as “100/100” would mean two significant things.

First, it would radically change the number of Americans who currently have a “broadband” connection to bolster calls for government intervention in the marketplace. According to data from the Technology Policy Institute, there are approximately 4.3 million American households that do not currently have access to a 25/3 internet connection. But there are more than 64 million households—about 40 percent of the country—that don’t currently have access to a 100/100 connection.

“If 100/100 Mbps or asymmetrical speed similar to this threshold was adopted as the minimum standard, more Americans living in urban areas that already have reliable broadband would become underserved,” writes Will Yepez, a policy associate at the National Taxpayers Union Foundation.

The Biden administration wants to argue that the $100 billion broadband effort is the 21st century equivalent of the federal government’s electrification efforts during the 1930s, which helped bring power to wide swaths of the country. “Broadband is the new electricity,” reads the White House’s fact sheet on the proposal. That comparison looks a lot better if the Biden administration can say there are 64 million households lacking sufficient internet connectivity—even though almost all of them already have access to broadband-level speed.

Secondly, this maneuver would allow for a bit of political favoritism by prioritizing fiber optic internet services over the alternatives that have sprouted up. There are lots of different services that can offer broadband internet at 25/3 speeds: cable connections, fixed wireless, and even new low-orbit satellite systems like the Starlink service recently launched by Space X. But there’s really only one way to deliver reliable 100/100 speeds, and that’s via fiber optic cable.

Of course, fiber internet is also one of the more costly and difficult types of internet service from an infrastructure perspective. It requires digging trenches, laying pipes, and physically connecting each and every household. It’s a practical impossibility for rural parts of the country and tends to be a more expensive option elsewhere. That’s a problem if you’re in the business of providing internet service to people as quickly and cost-effectively as possible, but it’s an opportunity if you’re looking to spend lots of government money on a high-profile infrastructure plan.

“It’s actually going to harm areas of the country that do not even have basic, minimum broadband service,” says Collier. “The funding is going to be redirected away from those areas and put into areas of the country that already have basic or better broadband service right now—just to upgrade those networks to 100/100 speed.”

Put another way: if there are suddenly 64 million American households without access to “good” internet under the Biden administration’s new definition, then broadband providers will focus their upgrade efforts on areas with dense populations. That will likely crowd out efforts to reach households that still lack even 25/3 connections and leave far-flung rural areas behind, again.

“Companies would be more likely to invest in these now more profitable areas rather than focus on those who truly lack reliable access to high-speed internet,” says Yepez.

The Biden administration could end up spending $100 billion to accomplish the proverbial bridging of the digital divide—and then discover that the divide has only gotten larger.

***

A critic might point out that using the 25/3 standard is no less arbitrary than the 100/100 standard, and in some ways that’s correct. The FCC has changed its definition of what counts as “broadband” on three occasions already. The first standard, in place from 1996 through 2010, required at least 200 kilobits per second upload and download speeds. From 2010 through 2015, that was upped to 4 megabits per second for downloads and 1 megabit per second for uploads. It’s been six years since the 25/3 standard was adopted, so maybe it’s time for another change?

“Any new definition should be based on evidence and take into account the tradeoff between the expected costs of achieving those speeds versus the benefits of the increase,” says Wallsten.

The costs of the 100/100 switch are apparent—crowding out investment in non-fiber broadband, a huge increase in government spending to speed up already fast internet in many places—but the benefits are murky at best.

Keep in mind that close to 60 percent of American households already have access to 100/100 speeds, if they choose to pay for them. Most don’t. Those that do rarely use that much bandwidth.

The Wall Street Journal and researchers at Princeton University and the University of Chicago teamed up last year to study the internet use of 53 Journal staffers—people who likely use the internet more heavily than most Americans. The eight users in the study who had connections with download speeds of at least 100 megabits per second used, on average, 7.1 megabits per second of their capacity.

“People who paid for even faster speeds still streamed video at about the same speeds as everyone else,” the Journal concluded. The benefits of 100 megabit connections are “marginal at best, according to the researchers,” and the evidence suggests that most Americans who are paying for internet connections that fast are being “oversold.”

And that’s just on the download side of the equation—the direction that 93 percent of all household internet traffic travels. It’s almost impossible to imagine a scenario where an ordinary American would use 100 megabits of upload capacity.

Of course, the right internet connection speed is going to vary from household to household and user to user. For some people, paying for 100/100 connections might make sense. But there seems to be little evidence to support the idea that 100/100 should be the FCC’s standard for what counts as passable internet access.

If broadband access is indeed “the new electricity,” then Biden’s proposal looks less like hooking up a power line to every house and more like a mandate that taxpayers fund the construction of a hydroelectric dam in every backyard.

There is one final issue here. Having access to broadband is not the same as actually using it. If there is a fiber optic cable running past your house or if you live in an area covered by fixed wireless or low-orbit satellite internet, your household is counted among those that currently have access to 25/3 broadband. That’s not the same as actually paying to use it—something that many Americans either can’t afford or choose not to do.

If the Biden White House was interested in ensuring that more Americans could use broadband—as opposed to creating phantom justifications for spending huge sums of money on municipal broadband—one way to do it would be to subsidize the cost of internet access for low-income households. That’s what some major broadband providers have been urging the White House to do in recent weeks, which both spares non-fiber broadband companies from being declared obsolete and expands their customer pool.

It’s right to be skeptical anytime an industry says that the solution to a social problem is more subsidies for itself. Still, the broadband providers are at least asking the right question. Namely: How do we get more Americans connected to the existing broadband infrastructure that’s already built and available for use?

The Biden administration, meanwhile, is trying to spend lots of money to solve a different problem—one that doesn’t even really exist, at least not in a way that demands $100 billion in new federal spending—and already seems to be setting itself up for failure. The White House’s fact sheet about the infrastructure plan says it “prioritizes support for broadband networks owned, operated by, or affiliated with local governments, nonprofits, and co-operatives,” because those providers have “less pressure to turn profits.”

That seems like a clear indicator that municipal broadband operations will get to move to the front of the line when the Biden administration starts handing out piles of cash to solve the broadband connection problems that don’t actually exist in most places. But municipal broadband has been a major boondoggle in many places where it has been tried—the Taxpayers Protection Alliance has a list of more than 200 taxpayer-funded internet projects that are deep in debt or have been abandoned. Even if municipal broadband didn’t have an established track record of failure, it seems completely unnecessary for the federal government to prop up new competitors to existing broadband providers in places that already have fast internet service.

In some ways, this coming debate over the definition of broadband is likely to mirror the broader debate over what, exactly, should count as infrastructure. The Biden administration and its allies are pushing the idea that everything from health care programs to job training to child care is infrastructure—while only about half of Biden’s $2.25 trillion spending bill is aimed at traditional infrastructure priorities like highways, bridges, rail, and pipelines.

Everything is infrastructure. Nothing is broadband.

The Biden administration should focus on the few remaining pockets of the country where high-speed internet isn’t available, rather than futz with the FCC’s definition of broadband in order to justify spending billions of dollars so residents of urban areas with already fast connections can stream 10 movies at the same time.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3xA3Y7I
via IFTTT

Biden’s Infrastructure Plan Would Redefine ‘Broadband’ To Justify Spending $100 Billion on Government-run Internet


lrphotos130378

As part of a $2.3 trillion infrastructure proposal, President Joe Biden is pushing Congress to spend $100 billion fixing a problem that mostly doesn’t exist: widespread lack of access to broadband internet.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) estimates that there were about 14.5 million Americans, living in an estimated 4.3 million households, that lacked access to broadband internet at the end of 2019. That’s a serious but narrow problem that’s already being addressed by a combination of private and public efforts. New technologies like SpaceX’s low-orbit satellites can beam broadband internet to homes even in far-flung rural places, and the FCC has already budgeted more than $9 billion over the next 10 years as part of what the agency says is the “biggest single step ever…toward closing the rural digital divide.” The number of Americans without broadband access fell by 20 percent in 2019, according to an FCC report published in January, and it’s likely that the total is significantly less today than at the end of 2019.

But Biden’s infrastructure plan suggests a major change to what counts as “broadband” internet. As a result, as many as 64 million American households could suddenly appear to lack adequate online speed—even though nothing about their current services would change.

With a simple bureaucratic adjustment, the Biden administration could manufacture the appearance of a market failure where one plainly does not exist, opening the door for an expensive taxpayer-funded intervention to subsidize government-run internet boondoggles. Critics charge that Biden’s plan will crowd out private investment in broadband infrastructure while steering money to parts of the country where residents already enjoy state-of-the-art connection speeds. Instead of targeting a small amount of funds toward the truly needy who lack access to fast internet, Biden could end up spending $100 billion only to make the digital divide larger than ever.

“It’s not going to achieve the goal of bridging the digital divide in America,” Deborah Collier, a vice president at Citizens Against Government Waste, a fiscally conservative nonprofit, tells Reason. “It’s just going to throw more money at cities and localities that already have broadband.”

***

To understand exactly why changing the definition of broadband matters, you have to first understand a little bit about how internet speeds are measured and what currently counts as broadband.

Since 2015, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has defined a broadband connection as internet access with download speeds of at least 25 megabits per second and upload speeds of at least three megabits per second. In layman’s terms, that’s fast enough to stream a high-definition movie in the living room while three other people check Facebook, send email, or do some online shopping simultaneously.

A so-called “25/3” connection might not be fast enough for all households, but it is a standard that’s meant to reflect the needs of most Americans. The higher download speeds relative to upload speeds are a reflection of what consumers demand—because the vast majority of internet usage involves downloading, largely due to the huge demand for streaming video. Even after a surge in upload demand during 2020—thanks to all those Zoom calls and everyone working from home—about 93 percent of all internet traffic involves downloading content, according to data from the Internet and Television Association (NCTA), an industry group.

The White House’s fact sheet for Biden’s infrastructure plan calls for “building ‘future proof’ broadband infrastructure.” That term has a specific meaning in the broadband world.

“‘Future proof’ networks often means symmetric speeds,” explains Jeffrey Westling, a technology and innovation policy fellow at the R Street Institute, a free market think tank. In other words, Biden isn’t just calling for faster speeds, but equal speeds between uploads and downloads. Advocates for government-mandated “future proof” networks typically aim for a 100/100 standard—that is, 100 megabits per second in both uploads and downloads.

As a practical matter, those standards are just silly. A typical Zoom call uses about 1.5 megabits per second in upload bandwidth. With a 100/100 connection, “you could have ten kids pretending to do Zoom school but actually doing TikToks while you’re in the other room pretending to work but actually watching Netflix, and still not run out of bandwidth,” writes Scott Wallsten, president of the Technology Policy Institute.

Politically, however, defining broadband connections as “100/100” would mean two significant things.

First, it would radically change the number of Americans who currently have a “broadband” connection to bolster calls for government intervention in the marketplace. According to data from the Technology Policy Institute, there are approximately 4.3 million American households that do not currently have access to a 25/3 internet connection. But there are more than 64 million households—about 40 percent of the country—that don’t currently have access to a 100/100 connection.

“If 100/100 Mbps or asymmetrical speed similar to this threshold was adopted as the minimum standard, more Americans living in urban areas that already have reliable broadband would become underserved,” writes Will Yepez, a policy associate at the National Taxpayers Union Foundation.

The Biden administration wants to argue that the $100 billion broadband effort is the 21st century equivalent of the federal government’s electrification efforts during the 1930s, which helped bring power to wide swaths of the country. “Broadband is the new electricity,” reads the White House’s fact sheet on the proposal. That comparison looks a lot better if the Biden administration can say there are 64 million households lacking sufficient internet connectivity—even though almost all of them already have access to broadband-level speed.

Secondly, this maneuver would allow for a bit of political favoritism by prioritizing fiber optic internet services over the alternatives that have sprouted up. There are lots of different services that can offer broadband internet at 25/3 speeds: cable connections, fixed wireless, and even new low-orbit satellite systems like the Starlink service recently launched by Space X. But there’s really only one way to deliver reliable 100/100 speeds, and that’s via fiber optic cable.

Of course, fiber internet is also one of the more costly and difficult types of internet service from an infrastructure perspective. It requires digging trenches, laying pipes, and physically connecting each and every household. It’s a practical impossibility for rural parts of the country and tends to be a more expensive option elsewhere. That’s a problem if you’re in the business of providing internet service to people as quickly and cost-effectively as possible, but it’s an opportunity if you’re looking to spend lots of government money on a high-profile infrastructure plan.

“It’s actually going to harm areas of the country that do not even have basic, minimum broadband service,” says Collier. “The funding is going to be redirected away from those areas and put into areas of the country that already have basic or better broadband service right now—just to upgrade those networks to 100/100 speed.”

Put another way: if there are suddenly 64 million American households without access to “good” internet under the Biden administration’s new definition, then broadband providers will focus their upgrade efforts on areas with dense populations. That will likely crowd out efforts to reach households that still lack even 25/3 connections and leave far-flung rural areas behind, again.

“Companies would be more likely to invest in these now more profitable areas rather than focus on those who truly lack reliable access to high-speed internet,” says Yepez.

The Biden administration could end up spending $100 billion to accomplish the proverbial bridging of the digital divide—and then discover that the divide has only gotten larger.

***

A critic might point out that using the 25/3 standard is no less arbitrary than the 100/100 standard, and in some ways that’s correct. The FCC has changed its definition of what counts as “broadband” on three occasions already. The first standard, in place from 1996 through 2010, required at least 200 kilobits per second upload and download speeds. From 2010 through 2015, that was upped to 4 megabits per second for downloads and 1 megabit per second for uploads. It’s been six years since the 25/3 standard was adopted, so maybe it’s time for another change?

“Any new definition should be based on evidence and take into account the tradeoff between the expected costs of achieving those speeds versus the benefits of the increase,” says Wallsten.

The costs of the 100/100 switch are apparent—crowding out investment in non-fiber broadband, a huge increase in government spending to speed up already fast internet in many places—but the benefits are murky at best.

Keep in mind that close to 60 percent of American households already have access to 100/100 speeds, if they choose to pay for them. Most don’t. Those that do rarely use that much bandwidth.

The Wall Street Journal and researchers at Princeton University and the University of Chicago teamed up last year to study the internet use of 53 Journal staffers—people who likely use the internet more heavily than most Americans. The eight users in the study who had connections with download speeds of at least 100 megabits per second used, on average, 7.1 megabits per second of their capacity.

“People who paid for even faster speeds still streamed video at about the same speeds as everyone else,” the Journal concluded. The benefits of 100 megabit connections are “marginal at best, according to the researchers,” and the evidence suggests that most Americans who are paying for internet connections that fast are being “oversold.”

And that’s just on the download side of the equation—the direction that 93 percent of all household internet traffic travels. It’s almost impossible to imagine a scenario where an ordinary American would use 100 megabits of upload capacity.

Of course, the right internet connection speed is going to vary from household to household and user to user. For some people, paying for 100/100 connections might make sense. But there seems to be little evidence to support the idea that 100/100 should be the FCC’s standard for what counts as passable internet access.

If broadband access is indeed “the new electricity,” then Biden’s proposal looks less like hooking up a power line to every house and more like a mandate that taxpayers fund the construction of a hydroelectric dam in every backyard.

There is one final issue here. Having access to broadband is not the same as actually using it. If there is a fiber optic cable running past your house or if you live in an area covered by fixed wireless or low-orbit satellite internet, your household is counted among those that currently have access to 25/3 broadband. That’s not the same as actually paying to use it—something that many Americans either can’t afford or choose not to do.

If the Biden White House was interested in ensuring that more Americans could use broadband—as opposed to creating phantom justifications for spending huge sums of money on municipal broadband—one way to do it would be to subsidize the cost of internet access for low-income households. That’s what some major broadband providers have been urging the White House to do in recent weeks, which both spares non-fiber broadband companies from being declared obsolete and expands their customer pool.

It’s right to be skeptical anytime an industry says that the solution to a social problem is more subsidies for itself. Still, the broadband providers are at least asking the right question. Namely: How do we get more Americans connected to the existing broadband infrastructure that’s already built and available for use?

The Biden administration, meanwhile, is trying to spend lots of money to solve a different problem—one that doesn’t even really exist, at least not in a way that demands $100 billion in new federal spending—and already seems to be setting itself up for failure. The White House’s fact sheet about the infrastructure plan says it “prioritizes support for broadband networks owned, operated by, or affiliated with local governments, nonprofits, and co-operatives,” because those providers have “less pressure to turn profits.”

That seems like a clear indicator that municipal broadband operations will get to move to the front of the line when the Biden administration starts handing out piles of cash to solve the broadband connection problems that don’t actually exist in most places. But municipal broadband has been a major boondoggle in many places where it has been tried—the Taxpayers Protection Alliance has a list of more than 200 taxpayer-funded internet projects that are deep in debt or have been abandoned. Even if municipal broadband didn’t have an established track record of failure, it seems completely unnecessary for the federal government to prop up new competitors to existing broadband providers in places that already have fast internet service.

In some ways, this coming debate over the definition of broadband is likely to mirror the broader debate over what, exactly, should count as infrastructure. The Biden administration and its allies are pushing the idea that everything from health care programs to job training to child care is infrastructure—while only about half of Biden’s $2.25 trillion spending bill is aimed at traditional infrastructure priorities like highways, bridges, rail, and pipelines.

Everything is infrastructure. Nothing is broadband.

The Biden administration should focus on the few remaining pockets of the country where high-speed internet isn’t available, rather than futz with the FCC’s definition of broadband in order to justify spending billions of dollars so residents of urban areas with already fast connections can stream 10 movies at the same time.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3xA3Y7I
via IFTTT

Biden Brings Back Plan for Free Community College


communitycollegeclass_1161x652_1161x653

In tonight’s address to Congress President Joe Biden is expected to announce a $1.8 trillion spending plan that includes two years of free community college.

The plan, according to the White House’s fact sheet, is for $109 billion to pay for free college, $80 billion for expanding Pell grants that will reduce the need for low-income students to take out loans, an additional $62 billion to focus on retention and to try to improve completion rates at community colleges.

Biden is essentially resurrecting a proposal from President Barack Obama’s administration, one that is popular in education quarters. That’s in part because, really, it ends up serving as a subsidy of college staff, not students.

In reality, community college in America is already extremely accessible and affordable for low-income students. The average student who takes advantage of existing grants and scholarship programs can already attend two years of community college for free, based on 2020 college pricing data.

But the problem is that community colleges have an egregiously bad completion rate. Only about 40 percent of community college students complete their education within six years, the lowest completion rate of all types of colleges in the United States.

The Obama administration’s plan for free community college came with a list of strings attached that mandated institutional reforms and student support programs. This caused the price tag of Obama’s plan to balloon from $60 billion to $90 billion. It’s also why I characterized it as a subsidy for colleges, particularly college administrators, rather than students. It was designed purposefully to increase community college spending.

Biden’s price tag is even higher, and it does include some of the same ideas as Obama’s proposal. His plan for improving student retention is heavy on developing costly administrative support structures: “States, territories, and Tribes will receive grants to provide funding to colleges that adopt innovative, proven solutions for student success, including wraparound services ranging from child care and mental health services to faculty and peer mentoring; emergency basic needs grants; practices that recruit and retain diverse faculty; transfer agreements between colleges; and evidence-based remediation programs.”

Biden’s free tuition won’t be means tested. This is about getting butts in community college seats, as enrollment has seen a massive decline partly connected to the pandemic. Fall enrollment at community college dropped 10 percent over 2019. The drop among students attending college for the first time was even more severe, 21 percent. By comparison, four-year schools only saw a 1 percent drop. The Hechinger Report notes that these low-income students who attended community colleges were the ones who were often hardest hit by the economic effects of the pandemic shutdowns. So while there were financial hardship reasons for the enrollment decline, tuition and fees are not as big a culprit as a pandemic-driven economic crisis.

This proposal will spark a lot of discussion about the role community colleges play in occupational training and statistics on how many jobs “require” a post-secondary degree or special certification. But will any of that discussion focus on how much of this certification is mandated by onerous government occupational licensing demands that may not actually be necessary? We should all at least acknowledge when government spending is offering a “solution” to problems caused by government mandates.

For what it’s worth, the Obama administration did at least make note that unneeded occupational licensing requires extensive hours of training and can cost thousands of dollars. But then, almost comically, his administration also proposed funding the development of new types of credentialing systems that would direct people toward community colleges that had received government grants.

While community colleges are valuable tools to improve access to higher education for low-income students (full disclosure: I got an associate’s degree from a community college before transitioning to a four-year school for my bachelor’s degree), directing billions of dollars in subsidies to an already-affordable college system with such a high rate of baked-in failure seems like pork, not an investment.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3dZOGRF
via IFTTT

Biden Brings Back Plan for Free Community College


communitycollegeclass_1161x652_1161x653

In tonight’s address to Congress President Joe Biden is expected to announce a $1.8 trillion spending plan that includes two years of free community college.

The plan, according to the White House’s fact sheet, is for $109 billion to pay for free college, $80 billion for expanding Pell grants that will reduce the need for low-income students to take out loans, an additional $62 billion to focus on retention and to try to improve completion rates at community colleges.

Biden is essentially resurrecting a proposal from President Barack Obama’s administration, one that is popular in education quarters. That’s in part because, really, it ends up serving as a subsidy of college staff, not students.

In reality, community college in America is already extremely accessible and affordable for low-income students. The average student who takes advantage of existing grants and scholarship programs can already attend two years of community college for free, based on 2020 college pricing data.

But the problem is that community colleges have an egregiously bad completion rate. Only about 40 percent of community college students complete their education within six years, the lowest completion rate of all types of colleges in the United States.

The Obama administration’s plan for free community college came with a list of strings attached that mandated institutional reforms and student support programs. This caused the price tag of Obama’s plan to balloon from $60 billion to $90 billion. It’s also why I characterized it as a subsidy for colleges, particularly college administrators, rather than students. It was designed purposefully to increase community college spending.

Biden’s price tag is even higher, and it does include some of the same ideas as Obama’s proposal. His plan for improving student retention is heavy on developing costly administrative support structures: “States, territories, and Tribes will receive grants to provide funding to colleges that adopt innovative, proven solutions for student success, including wraparound services ranging from child care and mental health services to faculty and peer mentoring; emergency basic needs grants; practices that recruit and retain diverse faculty; transfer agreements between colleges; and evidence-based remediation programs.”

Biden’s free tuition won’t be means tested. This is about getting butts in community college seats, as enrollment has seen a massive decline partly connected to the pandemic. Fall enrollment at community college dropped 10 percent over 2019. The drop among students attending college for the first time was even more severe, 21 percent. By comparison, four-year schools only saw a 1 percent drop. The Hechinger Report notes that these low-income students who attended community colleges were the ones who were often hardest hit by the economic effects of the pandemic shutdowns. So while there were financial hardship reasons for the enrollment decline, tuition and fees are not as big a culprit as a pandemic-driven economic crisis.

This proposal will spark a lot of discussion about the role community colleges play in occupational training and statistics on how many jobs “require” a post-secondary degree or special certification. But will any of that discussion focus on how much of this certification is mandated by onerous government occupational licensing demands that may not actually be necessary? We should all at least acknowledge when government spending is offering a “solution” to problems caused by government mandates.

For what it’s worth, the Obama administration did at least make note that unneeded occupational licensing requires extensive hours of training and can cost thousands of dollars. But then, almost comically, his administration also proposed funding the development of new types of credentialing systems that would direct people toward community colleges that had received government grants.

While community colleges are valuable tools to improve access to higher education for low-income students (full disclosure: I got an associate’s degree from a community college before transitioning to a four-year school for my bachelor’s degree), directing billions of dollars in subsidies to an already-affordable college system with such a high rate of baked-in failure seems like pork, not an investment.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3dZOGRF
via IFTTT

This 87-Year-Old Republican’s Bill Would Restore the Second Amendment Rights of Cannabis Consumers in States That Have Legalized Marijuana


Don-Young-3-7-19-Newscom

Nearly 50 million Americans use marijuana each year, according to the latest federal survey data, and the actual number may be more like 70 million once underreporting is taken into account. Under federal law, all of those people are forbidden to purchase or possess firearms, even if they live in states that have legalized marijuana for medical or recreational use.

A bill recently introduced by Rep. Don Young (R–Alaska) and cosponsored by two other Republicans would restore the Second Amendment rights of cannabis consumers by creating an exception for state-legal marijuana use. “When I was sworn into Congress, I took an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States,” Young says in a press release. “That oath does not mean picking and choosing which Amendments to defend; it requires us as Members of Congress to protect the ENTIRE Bill of Rights.” He argues that his bill, the Gun Rights and Marijuana (GRAM) Act, would vindicate both the Second Amendment and the 10th Amendment, which lets states “determine their own cannabis laws, as Alaska did in 2014,” when voters approved a legalization initiative.

Federal law prohibits gun possession by any “unlawful user” of a controlled substance, including marijuana. When you buy a firearm from a federally licensed dealer, you have to fill out a form that asks, “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?” The question includes a warning that “the use or possession of marijuana remains unlawful under Federal law regardless of whether it has been legalized or decriminalized for medicinal or recreational purposes in the state where you reside.”

Cannabis consumers who own guns are committing a federal felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. They are guilty of another felony, punishable by up to five years in prison, if they lie about their marijuana use while buying a gun from a federally licensed dealer.

The GRAM Act specifies that “the term ‘unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance’ shall not include a person by reason of unlawful use or addiction to marihuana.” It is limited to conduct permitted by state or tribal law, so it does not apply to recreational users in most states or to medical users in the minority of states that do not recognize cannabis as a medicine.

“Gun ownership is a significant part of Alaska’s culture and lifestyle,” Young says. “When my constituents chose to legalize adult-use marijuana, they were not surrendering their Second Amendment rights. At a time when more individuals have been purchasing firearms for self-defense, sportsmanship, hunting, and countless other reasons, we have experienced a surge in state-level cannabis reforms. While we make progress in some areas, it is vital that we do not roll back progress in others….The federal government has no business unduly restricting responsible citizens from exercising their rights or restricting states from listening to their constituents and reforming marijuana laws. The GRAM Act bridges this gap. Given that it deals with both gun and marijuana rights, there really is something for those on both sides of the aisle to support.”

Young, who is 87 and has represented Alaska in the House since 1973, is co-chair of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus and a National Rifle Association board member. The original cosponsors of the GRAM Act are Rep. Rodney Davis (R–Ill.), whose state legalized recreational use in 2019, and Rep. Brian Mast (R–Fla.), whose state legalized medical use in 2016.

In theory, as Young suggests, the bill should be attractive both to Democrats who support marijuana legalization and to Republicans who support federalism and the Second Amendment. In practice, however, the gun angle may turn off Democrats, while the pot angle may repel Republicans. Since the GRAM Act is a good test of legislators’ commitment to defending the Constitution, its prospects do not seem bright.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3aNFzBz
via IFTTT

This 87-Year-Old Republican’s Bill Would Restore the Second Amendment Rights of Cannabis Consumers in States That Have Legalized Marijuana


Don-Young-3-7-19-Newscom

Nearly 50 million Americans use marijuana each year, according to the latest federal survey data, and the actual number may be more like 70 million once underreporting is taken into account. Under federal law, all of those people are forbidden to purchase or possess firearms, even if they live in states that have legalized marijuana for medical or recreational use.

A bill recently introduced by Rep. Don Young (R–Alaska) and cosponsored by two other Republicans would restore the Second Amendment rights of cannabis consumers by creating an exception for state-legal marijuana use. “When I was sworn into Congress, I took an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States,” Young says in a press release. “That oath does not mean picking and choosing which Amendments to defend; it requires us as Members of Congress to protect the ENTIRE Bill of Rights.” He argues that his bill, the Gun Rights and Marijuana (GRAM) Act, would vindicate both the Second Amendment and the 10th Amendment, which lets states “determine their own cannabis laws, as Alaska did in 2014,” when voters approved a legalization initiative.

Federal law prohibits gun possession by any “unlawful user” of a controlled substance, including marijuana. When you buy a firearm from a federally licensed dealer, you have to fill out a form that asks, “Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?” The question includes a warning that “the use or possession of marijuana remains unlawful under Federal law regardless of whether it has been legalized or decriminalized for medicinal or recreational purposes in the state where you reside.”

Cannabis consumers who own guns are committing a federal felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. They are guilty of another felony, punishable by up to five years in prison, if they lie about their marijuana use while buying a gun from a federally licensed dealer.

The GRAM Act specifies that “the term ‘unlawful user of or addicted to any controlled substance’ shall not include a person by reason of unlawful use or addiction to marihuana.” It is limited to conduct permitted by state or tribal law, so it does not apply to recreational users in most states or to medical users in the minority of states that do not recognize cannabis as a medicine.

“Gun ownership is a significant part of Alaska’s culture and lifestyle,” Young says. “When my constituents chose to legalize adult-use marijuana, they were not surrendering their Second Amendment rights. At a time when more individuals have been purchasing firearms for self-defense, sportsmanship, hunting, and countless other reasons, we have experienced a surge in state-level cannabis reforms. While we make progress in some areas, it is vital that we do not roll back progress in others….The federal government has no business unduly restricting responsible citizens from exercising their rights or restricting states from listening to their constituents and reforming marijuana laws. The GRAM Act bridges this gap. Given that it deals with both gun and marijuana rights, there really is something for those on both sides of the aisle to support.”

Young, who is 87 and has represented Alaska in the House since 1973, is co-chair of the Congressional Cannabis Caucus and a National Rifle Association board member. The original cosponsors of the GRAM Act are Rep. Rodney Davis (R–Ill.), whose state legalized recreational use in 2019, and Rep. Brian Mast (R–Fla.), whose state legalized medical use in 2016.

In theory, as Young suggests, the bill should be attractive both to Democrats who support marijuana legalization and to Republicans who support federalism and the Second Amendment. In practice, however, the gun angle may turn off Democrats, while the pot angle may repel Republicans. Since the GRAM Act is a good test of legislators’ commitment to defending the Constitution, its prospects do not seem bright.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3aNFzBz
via IFTTT

Beware of Big Presidential Speeches During Times of Crisis


Ford2

‘Tis the season for pompous presidential speeches to Congress. Most years we call these prime-time pitches the State of the Union address, though beginning in earnest with Ronald Reagan in 1981, first-term presidents have stepped in where lame-duck executives once stood and delivered something of a less official yet still aspirational pep talk to a Joint Session of Congress. Such we will experience tonight.

In most years this annual exercise in presidential self-importance—which in less imperious times (1801–1912) was delivered in letter form—is an occasion to study bad speech writing, insincere promise making, and palpable crisis-envy, as the man in the Oval Office wishes out loud that the nation was panicked enough to confuse his domestic agenda with yet another “moonshot.”

But sometimes, as in 2021, the national trauma is real. First-term presidents in the wake of widespread calamity tend to go very big in their early-season congressional asks, and they tend to get much of what they want, changing the trajectory of American history.

Lyndon Johnson, in his celebrated 1964 SOTU after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, declared a “war on poverty,” and helped push through the Civil Rights Act. Gerald Ford, post-Watergate and amid the oil shocks of 1975, laid the groundwork for Washington’s star-crossed 1970s interventions into the energy sector. Reagan in 1981 outlined an entire course correction on economic policy, much of which would be enacted during his first term despite a Democrat-controlled House of Representatives. And Barack Obama in 2009, with now–President Joe Biden looking on behind him, bragged about his just-passed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and rhetorically paved the way for what would eventually be known as Obamacare.

So more than usual, Americans should take seriously the words passing the president’s lips tonight, as they have a much higher chance of being translated into policy. Biden in his first 99 days has already sent a staggering amount of money out the door, with hopes of doubling and tripling down. The sheer size of spending, deficits, and debts are placing the country in unchartered territory, but the president also has terraforming ambitions on everything from infrastructure to labor relations to racial “equity.”

We can learn a lot, or at least laugh a little, when looking back through history at comparable presidential speeches, and the policies they helped unleash. So in chronological order, here are bite-sized analyses of the four addresses delivered under circumstances that most resemble Biden’s.

—

LYNDON JOHNSON, 1964

Days in office: 50

Recent national trauma: The November 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy, plus the continuous civil rights protests, clashes, and murders during the previous calendar year.

Elegy: “In these last seven sorrowful weeks, we have learned anew that nothing is so enduring as faith, and nothing is so degrading as hate. John Kennedy was a victim of hate, but he was also a great builder of faith.”

Moonshot: There were two. 1) “This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America….Our aim is not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it.” 2) “As far as the writ of federal law will run, we must abolish not some, but all racial discrimination.”

Congressional control: Democrats 66-34 in the Senate, 253-177 in the House.

Scorecard: Governmental discrimination at the federal, state, and local level was indeed curtailed by the Civil Rights Act, though its Title VII became the backdoor through which positive discrimination was driven through. Poverty, on the other hand, was not at all cured.

Them old mountains sure look like molehills!: The budget, LBJ promised, “will cut our deficit in half—from $10 billion to $4,900 million.” Granted, $10 billion in 1964 was worth around $85 billion in 2020 dollars. But $85 billion in the first six months of Fiscal 2021 amounted to…just around nine days’ worth of deficit.

Libertarian policy porn: “[My agenda] can be done without any increase in spending. In fact, under the budget that I shall shortly submit, it can be done with an actual reduction in federal expenditures and federal employment…. It will be, in proportion to our national output, the smallest budget since 1951.” Federal spending during Johnson’s presidency, needless to say, was not reduced.

Bitter irony: “For our ultimate goal is a world without war.” Seven months later came the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

Did NOT see that coming: “This administration must and will preserve the present gold value of the dollar.”

—

GERALD FORD, 1975

Days in office: 153

Recent national trauma: Watergate (which did not get mentioned), plus ongoing oil shocks.

Elegy: “I must say to you that the state of the union is not good.”

Moonshot: “I am proposing a program which will begin to restore our country’s surplus capacity in total energy. In this way, we will be able to assure ourselves reliable and adequate energy and help foster a new world energy stability for other major consuming nations….We must end vulnerability to economic disruption by foreign suppliers by 1985.”

Congressional control: Democrats 60-37 in the Senate, 291-144 in the House.

Scorecard: The United States did not achieve energy independence by 1985, and the late 1970s were filled with gas lines and more oil shocks.

Them old mountains sure look like molehills!: “This year’s federal deficit will be about $30 billion; next year’s probably $45 billion. The national debt will rise to over $500 billion.” With inflation, those number translate to $145 billion, $220 billion, and $2.45 trillion, respectively. Meanwhile, the federal deficit alone in 2021 will likely be higher, adjusted for inflation, than the entire accumulated national debt as of 1975.

Libertarian policy porn: “Only a reduction in the growth of spending can keep federal borrowing down and reduce the damage to the private sector from high interest rates. Only a reduction in spending can make it possible for the Federal Reserve System to avoid an inflationary growth in the money supply and thus restore balance to our economy. A major reduction in the growth of federal spending can help dispel the uncertainty that so many feel about our economy and put us on the way to curing our economic ills.”

Bitter irony: “If our foreign policy is to be successful, we cannot rigidly restrict in legislation the ability of the president to act. The conduct of negotiations is ill-suited to such limitations. Legislative restrictions, intended for the best motives and purposes, can have the opposite result.” The deliberative 21st century rollback of presidential foreign policy restrictions by Ford administration veteran Dick Cheney helped midwife one of the single most disastrous decisions in the history of American foreign policy.

Did NOT see that coming: “Now, I want to speak very bluntly. I’ve got bad news, and I don’t expect much, if any, applause….My message today is not intended to address all of the complex needs of America.” Can we make this the opening paragraph of all SOTUs going forward?

—

RONALD REAGAN, 1981

Days in office: 30

Recent national trauma: The recently resolved Iranian hostage crisis, but mostly: “All of us are aware of the punishing inflation which has for the first time in 60 years held to double-digit figures for 2 years in a row. Interest rates have reached absurd levels of more than 20 percent and over 15 percent for those who would borrow to buy a home. All across this land one can see newly built homes standing vacant, unsold because of mortgage interest rates. Almost 8 million Americans are out of work.”

Elegy: “Can we, who man the ship of state, deny it is somewhat out of control?”

Moonshot: “I am proposing a comprehensive four-point program…This plan is aimed at reducing the growth in government spending and taxing, reforming and eliminating regulations which are unnecessary and unproductive or counterproductive, and encouraging a consistent monetary policy aimed at maintaining the value of the currency.”

Congressional control: Republicans 53-46 in the Senate, Democrats 243-191 in the House.

Scorecard: Well, Reagan’s first-term economic reforms are the subject of debate to this day. Taxes were cut, spending was not, the deregulation that was launched under Jimmy Carter continued for a while then petered out. But also, inflation was tamed, the economy boomed, and the mood of the nation was noticeably changed.

Them old mountains sure look like molehills!: “Our national debt is approaching $1 trillion. A few weeks ago I called such a figure—a trillion dollars—incomprehensible, and I’ve been trying ever since to think of a way to illustrate how big a trillion really is. And the best I could come up with is that if you had a stack of thousand-dollar bills in your hand only 4 inches high, you’d be a millionaire. A trillion dollars would be a stack of thousand-dollar bills 67 miles high.” Since the national debt now stands at upwards of $22 trillion, that means the subsequent stack of Grover Clevelands, placed on its side, would stretch from Boston to Miami.

Libertarian policy porn: Like many political speeches of the time (including by Democrats), there was a lot to choose from: “The taxing power of government must be used to provide revenues for legitimate government purposes. It must not be used to regulate the economy or bring about social change. We’ve tried that, and surely we must be able to see it doesn’t work. Spending by government must be limited to those functions which are the proper province of government. We can no longer afford things simply because we think of them.”

Bitter irony: “We’re asking that another major industry—business subsidy I should say, the Export-Import Bank loan authority, be reduced by one-third in 1982. We’re doing this because the primary beneficiaries of taxpayer funds in this case are the exporting companies themselves—most of them profitable corporations.” This is ironic mostly because we’ve always known this agency is corporatist garbage, yet never kill it.

Did NOT see that coming: The word communism—Reagan’s longtime bête noire, was not uttered once. The Soviet Union merited two meager paragraphs.

—

BARACK OBAMA 2009

Days in office: 36

Recent national trauma: The financial crisis of 2008

Elegy: “Now, if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that for too long, we have not always met these responsibilities as a government or as a people….The fact is, our economy did not fall into decline overnight, nor did all of our problems begin when the housing market collapsed or the stock market sank.”

Moonshot: “We must have quality, affordable health care for every American. It’s a commitment that’s paid for in part by efficiencies in our system that are long overdue. And it’s a step we must take if we hope to bring down our deficit in the years to come….Nearly a century after Teddy Roosevelt first called for reform, the cost of our health care has weighed down our economy and our conscience long enough. So let there be no doubt: Health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year.”

Congressional control: Democrats 56-41 in the Senate, 254-178 in the House.

Scorecard: The gap between the Affordable Care Act’s promises and results was wide enough that every Democrat running for president in 2020 ran on drastically overhauling it.

Them old mountains sure look like molehills!: “Yesterday I held a fiscal summit where I pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term in office. My administration has also begun to go line by line through the federal budget in order to eliminate wasteful and ineffective programs. As you can imagine, this is a process that will take some time. But we have already identified $2 trillion in savings over the next decade.” Even adjusted for inflation, those annualized savings of $250 billion (which may have been identified, but were never realized), would at this point cut the 2021 deficit by less than one-tenth.

Libertarian policy porn: “We will end education programs that don’t work and end direct payments to large agribusiness that don’t need them. We’ll eliminate the no-bid contracts that have wasted billions in Iraq and reform our defense budget so that we’re not paying for Cold War–era weapons systems we don’t use. We will root out the waste and fraud and abuse in our Medicare program that doesn’t make our seniors any healthier.” I’m sure it was pretty to think so!

Bitter irony: “To overcome extremism, we must also be vigilant in upholding the values our troops defend, because there is no force in the world more powerful than the example of America. And that is why I have ordered the closing of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.”

Did NOT see that coming: “And to respond to an economic crisis that is global in scope, we are working with the nations of the G-20 to restore confidence in our financial system, avoid the possibility of escalating protectionism, and spur demand for American goods in markets across the globe.” Remember when U.S. presidents warned against trade protectionism?

—

Biden’s speech tonight is almost certainly not to register much of a blip in the history of political rhetoric. But it could mark a further milestone in the history of ever-expanding federal government. Buyer beware.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3gM5v4k
via IFTTT

Beware of Big Presidential Speeches During Times of Crisis


Ford2

‘Tis the season for pompous presidential speeches to Congress. Most years we call these prime-time pitches the State of the Union address, though beginning in earnest with Ronald Reagan in 1981, first-term presidents have stepped in where lame-duck executives once stood and delivered something of a less official yet still aspirational pep talk to a Joint Session of Congress. Such we will experience tonight.

In most years this annual exercise in presidential self-importance—which in less imperious times (1801–1912) was delivered in letter form—is an occasion to study bad speech writing, insincere promise making, and palpable crisis-envy, as the man in the Oval Office wishes out loud that the nation was panicked enough to confuse his domestic agenda with yet another “moonshot.”

But sometimes, as in 2021, the national trauma is real. First-term presidents in the wake of widespread calamity tend to go very big in their early-season congressional asks, and they tend to get much of what they want, changing the trajectory of American history.

Lyndon Johnson, in his celebrated 1964 SOTU after the assassination of John F. Kennedy, declared a “war on poverty,” and helped push through the Civil Rights Act. Gerald Ford, post-Watergate and amid the oil shocks of 1975, laid the groundwork for Washington’s star-crossed 1970s interventions into the energy sector. Reagan in 1981 outlined an entire course correction on economic policy, much of which would be enacted during his first term despite a Democrat-controlled House of Representatives. And Barack Obama in 2009, with now–President Joe Biden looking on behind him, bragged about his just-passed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act and rhetorically paved the way for what would eventually be known as Obamacare.

So more than usual, Americans should take seriously the words passing the president’s lips tonight, as they have a much higher chance of being translated into policy. Biden in his first 99 days has already sent a staggering amount of money out the door, with hopes of doubling and tripling down. The sheer size of spending, deficits, and debts are placing the country in unchartered territory, but the president also has terraforming ambitions on everything from infrastructure to labor relations to racial “equity.”

We can learn a lot, or at least laugh a little, when looking back through history at comparable presidential speeches, and the policies they helped unleash. So in chronological order, here are bite-sized analyses of the four addresses delivered under circumstances that most resemble Biden’s.

—

LYNDON JOHNSON, 1964

Days in office: 50

Recent national trauma: The November 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy, plus the continuous civil rights protests, clashes, and murders during the previous calendar year.

Elegy: “In these last seven sorrowful weeks, we have learned anew that nothing is so enduring as faith, and nothing is so degrading as hate. John Kennedy was a victim of hate, but he was also a great builder of faith.”

Moonshot: There were two. 1) “This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America….Our aim is not only to relieve the symptom of poverty, but to cure it and, above all, to prevent it.” 2) “As far as the writ of federal law will run, we must abolish not some, but all racial discrimination.”

Congressional control: Democrats 66-34 in the Senate, 253-177 in the House.

Scorecard: Governmental discrimination at the federal, state, and local level was indeed curtailed by the Civil Rights Act, though its Title VII became the backdoor through which positive discrimination was driven through. Poverty, on the other hand, was not at all cured.

Them old mountains sure look like molehills!: The budget, LBJ promised, “will cut our deficit in half—from $10 billion to $4,900 million.” Granted, $10 billion in 1964 was worth around $85 billion in 2020 dollars. But $85 billion in the first six months of Fiscal 2021 amounted to…just around nine days’ worth of deficit.

Libertarian policy porn: “[My agenda] can be done without any increase in spending. In fact, under the budget that I shall shortly submit, it can be done with an actual reduction in federal expenditures and federal employment…. It will be, in proportion to our national output, the smallest budget since 1951.” Federal spending during Johnson’s presidency, needless to say, was not reduced.

Bitter irony: “For our ultimate goal is a world without war.” Seven months later came the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.

Did NOT see that coming: “This administration must and will preserve the present gold value of the dollar.”

—

GERALD FORD, 1975

Days in office: 153

Recent national trauma: Watergate (which did not get mentioned), plus ongoing oil shocks.

Elegy: “I must say to you that the state of the union is not good.”

Moonshot: “I am proposing a program which will begin to restore our country’s surplus capacity in total energy. In this way, we will be able to assure ourselves reliable and adequate energy and help foster a new world energy stability for other major consuming nations….We must end vulnerability to economic disruption by foreign suppliers by 1985.”

Congressional control: Democrats 60-37 in the Senate, 291-144 in the House.

Scorecard: The United States did not achieve energy independence by 1985, and the late 1970s were filled with gas lines and more oil shocks.

Them old mountains sure look like molehills!: “This year’s federal deficit will be about $30 billion; next year’s probably $45 billion. The national debt will rise to over $500 billion.” With inflation, those number translate to $145 billion, $220 billion, and $2.45 trillion, respectively. Meanwhile, the federal deficit alone in 2021 will likely be higher, adjusted for inflation, than the entire accumulated national debt as of 1975.

Libertarian policy porn: “Only a reduction in the growth of spending can keep federal borrowing down and reduce the damage to the private sector from high interest rates. Only a reduction in spending can make it possible for the Federal Reserve System to avoid an inflationary growth in the money supply and thus restore balance to our economy. A major reduction in the growth of federal spending can help dispel the uncertainty that so many feel about our economy and put us on the way to curing our economic ills.”

Bitter irony: “If our foreign policy is to be successful, we cannot rigidly restrict in legislation the ability of the president to act. The conduct of negotiations is ill-suited to such limitations. Legislative restrictions, intended for the best motives and purposes, can have the opposite result.” The deliberative 21st century rollback of presidential foreign policy restrictions by Ford administration veteran Dick Cheney helped midwife one of the single most disastrous decisions in the history of American foreign policy.

Did NOT see that coming: “Now, I want to speak very bluntly. I’ve got bad news, and I don’t expect much, if any, applause….My message today is not intended to address all of the complex needs of America.” Can we make this the opening paragraph of all SOTUs going forward?

—

RONALD REAGAN, 1981

Days in office: 30

Recent national trauma: The recently resolved Iranian hostage crisis, but mostly: “All of us are aware of the punishing inflation which has for the first time in 60 years held to double-digit figures for 2 years in a row. Interest rates have reached absurd levels of more than 20 percent and over 15 percent for those who would borrow to buy a home. All across this land one can see newly built homes standing vacant, unsold because of mortgage interest rates. Almost 8 million Americans are out of work.”

Elegy: “Can we, who man the ship of state, deny it is somewhat out of control?”

Moonshot: “I am proposing a comprehensive four-point program…This plan is aimed at reducing the growth in government spending and taxing, reforming and eliminating regulations which are unnecessary and unproductive or counterproductive, and encouraging a consistent monetary policy aimed at maintaining the value of the currency.”

Congressional control: Republicans 53-46 in the Senate, Democrats 243-191 in the House.

Scorecard: Well, Reagan’s first-term economic reforms are the subject of debate to this day. Taxes were cut, spending was not, the deregulation that was launched under Jimmy Carter continued for a while then petered out. But also, inflation was tamed, the economy boomed, and the mood of the nation was noticeably changed.

Them old mountains sure look like molehills!: “Our national debt is approaching $1 trillion. A few weeks ago I called such a figure—a trillion dollars—incomprehensible, and I’ve been trying ever since to think of a way to illustrate how big a trillion really is. And the best I could come up with is that if you had a stack of thousand-dollar bills in your hand only 4 inches high, you’d be a millionaire. A trillion dollars would be a stack of thousand-dollar bills 67 miles high.” Since the national debt now stands at upwards of $22 trillion, that means the subsequent stack of Grover Clevelands, placed on its side, would stretch from Boston to Miami.

Libertarian policy porn: Like many political speeches of the time (including by Democrats), there was a lot to choose from: “The taxing power of government must be used to provide revenues for legitimate government purposes. It must not be used to regulate the economy or bring about social change. We’ve tried that, and surely we must be able to see it doesn’t work. Spending by government must be limited to those functions which are the proper province of government. We can no longer afford things simply because we think of them.”

Bitter irony: “We’re asking that another major industry—business subsidy I should say, the Export-Import Bank loan authority, be reduced by one-third in 1982. We’re doing this because the primary beneficiaries of taxpayer funds in this case are the exporting companies themselves—most of them profitable corporations.” This is ironic mostly because we’ve always known this agency is corporatist garbage, yet never kill it.

Did NOT see that coming: The word communism—Reagan’s longtime bête noire, was not uttered once. The Soviet Union merited two meager paragraphs.

—

BARACK OBAMA 2009

Days in office: 36

Recent national trauma: The financial crisis of 2008

Elegy: “Now, if we’re honest with ourselves, we’ll admit that for too long, we have not always met these responsibilities as a government or as a people….The fact is, our economy did not fall into decline overnight, nor did all of our problems begin when the housing market collapsed or the stock market sank.”

Moonshot: “We must have quality, affordable health care for every American. It’s a commitment that’s paid for in part by efficiencies in our system that are long overdue. And it’s a step we must take if we hope to bring down our deficit in the years to come….Nearly a century after Teddy Roosevelt first called for reform, the cost of our health care has weighed down our economy and our conscience long enough. So let there be no doubt: Health care reform cannot wait, it must not wait, and it will not wait another year.”

Congressional control: Democrats 56-41 in the Senate, 254-178 in the House.

Scorecard: The gap between the Affordable Care Act’s promises and results was wide enough that every Democrat running for president in 2020 ran on drastically overhauling it.

Them old mountains sure look like molehills!: “Yesterday I held a fiscal summit where I pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term in office. My administration has also begun to go line by line through the federal budget in order to eliminate wasteful and ineffective programs. As you can imagine, this is a process that will take some time. But we have already identified $2 trillion in savings over the next decade.” Even adjusted for inflation, those annualized savings of $250 billion (which may have been identified, but were never realized), would at this point cut the 2021 deficit by less than one-tenth.

Libertarian policy porn: “We will end education programs that don’t work and end direct payments to large agribusiness that don’t need them. We’ll eliminate the no-bid contracts that have wasted billions in Iraq and reform our defense budget so that we’re not paying for Cold War–era weapons systems we don’t use. We will root out the waste and fraud and abuse in our Medicare program that doesn’t make our seniors any healthier.” I’m sure it was pretty to think so!

Bitter irony: “To overcome extremism, we must also be vigilant in upholding the values our troops defend, because there is no force in the world more powerful than the example of America. And that is why I have ordered the closing of the detention center at Guantanamo Bay.”

Did NOT see that coming: “And to respond to an economic crisis that is global in scope, we are working with the nations of the G-20 to restore confidence in our financial system, avoid the possibility of escalating protectionism, and spur demand for American goods in markets across the globe.” Remember when U.S. presidents warned against trade protectionism?

—

Biden’s speech tonight is almost certainly not to register much of a blip in the history of political rhetoric. But it could mark a further milestone in the history of ever-expanding federal government. Buyer beware.

from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/3gM5v4k
via IFTTT