At the Munich Security Conference in February, 2025, Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy bluntly asserted, “I really believe that the time has come that the armed forces of Europe must be created.”[1] He could have said in 2023 after Russia’s President Putin had sent tanks and bombs into Ukraine; instead, the inauguration of President Trump in the U.S. that was the trigger. “Let’s be honest,” Zelenskyy continued, “now we can’t rule out that America might say ‘no’ to Europe on issues that might threaten it.”[2] At the time, Trump was planning to meet with Putin to end the war without Britain and a number of E.U. states at the table. After all, they had failed to push Putin off Crimea in 2014, and even in 2025, they were not on the same page on how to defend Ukraine militarily. Amid the political fracturing in Europe, Ukraine’s president was urging that the E.U. itself have an army, rather than merely the 60,000 troops for which the union was dependent on the states. Even on being able to borrow on its own authority, the E.U. was hamstrung by the state governments that were more interested in retaining power than in benefitting from collective action. It is difficult to analyze Zelenskyy’s plea without including the anti-federalist, Euroskeptic ideology that was still eclipsing the E.U. from realizing a more perfect union.
Monday, February 17, 2025
A European Army: A More Perfect Union
Friday, February 14, 2025
E.U. Defense: The State Governments Exploit a Conflict of Interest
Sometimes lemons can make use of
political gravity to become lemonade. Of course, behind the lemons are human
beings, who are of course innately economizers, political actors and moral
agents. When accosted by proposals that additional governmental sovereignty be
delegated from state governments to the federal level, state-government
officials feeling the gravitas of narrow self-interest are inclined to resist
even if the transfer is in the political and economic interest of the union as
well as all of its states. I am of course describing a drawback that goes with
state governments having too much power in a federal system, whose interests are
not always identical with those of a particular state or even those that
pertain to the state level as distinct from the federal level. I submit that a
federal system in which such dynamics are ignored in favor of focusing on particular
issues, such as the E.U.’s increased need for defense given Russia’s unprovoked
invasion of Ukraine, can gradually slip “off the rails” toward dissolution or
consolidation. By ceding the E.U. itself (i.e., the federal level) additional authority,
including for revenues and expenditures, the European Council, which is
composed of the state governors, could “kill two birds with one stone,” as that
saying goes. Those birds would be unbalanced state power in the E.U. at the
expense of a common purpose, and Russian President Putin’s military adventurism
in Eastern Europe.
One casualty of excessive state
power in a federal system is accountability that the federal institutions could
exercise on state governments whose officials willfully violate federal laws
and regulations. Those officials, I submit, are all too acclimated to turning
the “lemon” of being held accountable in the federal system into “lemonade” by
turning a proposal made by a branch of government at the federal level for more
authority at the expense of the power of the state governments (and thus of
their respective officials!) into a proposal to suspend the federal measure of
accountability on the state governments. In short, the state governors would be
saying to the federal officials: You want more federal power? We reject that
and will exercise the requested power ourselves and we need you to waive a
federal constraint, which some of us have been violating, in order for us to exercise
the power. I contend that this is how the following can (and should) be
interpreted and understood.
On February 14, 2025, the
President of the E.U.’s executive branch, the Commission—a name that seems more
imposing than The White House—announced that she would “propose to activate the
escape clause in the [union’s] fiscal rules in a bid to ‘substantially’ boost
member states’ defense investment.”[1]
Alternatively, the federal president could have carried through with her
earlier proposal to increase the E.U.’s own authority in defense, thus enabling
the union to benefit in terms of security from collective action instead of
each state doing its own thing. Arguably, such collective action would be
necessary should the U.S. back off from defending the E.U. against potential
and actualized threats from Russia.
From the perspective of a governor
of a state in the E.U., the benefits from going beyond coordinating to pool
military defense at the federal level are less important than gutting the federal
requirement (in the Stability and Growth Pact, which is really a federal law
rather than a pact) that state fiscal deficits be “under 3% of GDP and
debt under 60% of GDP” of a given state.[2] Seeking to obviate the Commission’s Excessive
Deficit Procedure (EDP), which includes penalties, including fines, on
violators, the governors meeting in the European Council had only weeks earlier
stated a preference for putting the EDP on ice so the states could increase
their defense spending (and not have to pay fines) instead of enhancing the
Commission’s defense competency (i.e., enumerated power) at the expense of the
remaining sovereignty that the states still had.
Eight states—Belgium, France,
Hungary, Italy, Malta, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia—were in violation of the limits
on deficits and/or debt. It is no coincidence that the governments of the E.U.
states of Poland, Italy, Greece and the Baltic states had been requesting that
the Commission review the required limits on state deficits and debt. It also
no coincidence that at the “informal” session of the European Council held only
weeks earlier, the state officials considered lifting the required limits to be
“among the least controversial options on the table.”[3]
Waiving being held accountable is of course not controversial for the people
who would otherwise be held accountable. Relative to the Council, the power of
the Commission and the Parliament individually and even combined was
insufficient to object, citing both a federal system’s need that state
governments be held accountable when they violate federal law and regulations
and the defense-benefits from the collective action in energizing the E.U.
competency on defense.
Put another way, to the E.U. state governors, removing the federal constraint on state spending that is not covered by tax revenue and resisting the delegation of additional governmental sovereignty to the federal government are more important—both for self-interested reasons—than strengthening both the union’s federal system, such that the federal level could effectively hold violating state governments accountable and thus make federal law real rather than mere parchment, and the union’s ability to stand up militarily as a unit rather than conglomeration to Putin, especially as the U.S. was sending clear signals of a desire to pull back from defending Europe from Russia. The triumph of narrow, private-benefit-delimited—self-interest over the good of the whole—in this case, Europe—and the related (i.e., not coincidental!) political weakness of federal officials to be a check on the exploitation of the conflict of interest at the state level are themselves (and especially together!) internal threats to the viability of the European Union. Lest the threat be presumed to be solely external, from Russia being militarily in the Ukraine, E.U. citizens could have done worse than exchange their binoculars for microscopes, at least for a while.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
Saturday, February 8, 2025
The Patriots for Europe Party: On Anti-Federalism
The Patriots for Europe party’s officials had high hopes for their party at the party meeting. At the time, the only sitting governor at the state level was Viktor Orban of Hungary. In the E.U.’s parliament, the party held only 89 seats, but this was enough to make the party third after the European People’s Party (EPP) and the Socialists and Democrats party (S&D). The Renew Europe had slipped in the last federal election. To gain more seats, and more governorships at the state level, the Patriots for Europe party had taken positions on a variety of issues, so as to attract more single-issue voters.
André Ventura, the leader of a political group in the E.U. state of Portugal, said at the Patriots’ meeting, “We have to reconquer a Europe that is ours and that belongs to us. A Christian Europe.”[1] That E.U. society had long before become secular was not the point; rather, the party was against the contentiousness of anti-assimilation Muslim immigrants from Africa, and especially their refusal to accept free-speech even on matters of religion. Therefore, this plank should not be confused with the revivalism of evangelical Christianity in the 1740s, wherein a conversion experience was newly stressed as part of the litmus test for whether a person is or is not a Christian. In 2025, calls for a Christian Europe were really about going back to the days of a relatively homogeneous E.U. culture. By relatively, I mean to account for the expected cultural differences that exist from state to state in any empire-scale federal system.
Indeed, one of the main benefits of federalism is that the system is able to deal with those differences without the polity being rent asunder by political conflicts between individual states. In calling for the return of governmental sovereignty to the states, which means even doing away with qualified majority voting at the federal level, even cultural differences within a more narrow Christian European society could throw a confederated (rather than dual-sovereignty-based federated) E.U. against the rocks within a decade. At least some governmental sovereignty must be delegated by the states to a federal government (rather than a confederated council) for conflicts between states to be resolved before they become insurmountable.
Diluting its anti-federalist, states-rights political ideology, the Patriots for Europe party was also against federal regulations because they stifle business, the Green Deal for the same reason, and LGBT rights because they are progressive. For example, Andrej Babis criticized the parties in power then in the E.U. for imposing “regulations that strangle businesses and [E.U.] citizens.[2] A pro-business voter could thus vote for the PfE party in the European Parliament and a social conservative could vote for the party so transgender men would not be allowed to be on women’s sports teams and use women bathrooms in the E.U., while still believing that returning the delegated federal sovereignty to the states would destroy the union. Yet because the party contains that plank, voting on business-interests or social ethical interests would make it more likely that the E.U. could be vitiated. Put another way, being pro-business or anti-trans does not mean that someone is a Euroskeptic to the point that the E.U.’s governmental sovereignty should be vitiated.
2. Ibid.
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
On the U.S. President as Chief Executive
As the chief executive of the U.S.
Government, the president is tasked with executing the law—the passage thereof
involving both the Congress and the presidency. It follows that a president
cannot legally stand in the way of appropriated federal funding of projects and
programs once such allocations have become law. For otherwise, a president
could simply ignore appropriations passed by the Congress and signed into law
by a previous president. The powers of the unitary executive would reach
dictatorial proportions. Within roughly one week of being sworn into office for
his second term in 2025, U.S. President Trump decided to pause all foreign aid,
and “grants, loans and other federal assistance . . . to ensure spending is
consistent with Trump’s priorities.”[1]
Those priorities, I submit, would properly have influence on bills in Congress
that were not yet laws, as per the legislative veto-power of the presidency and
the ability of a president to put pressure on members of Congress by speaking
persuasively directly to the American people. The value of leadership available
to a presiding role should not be ignored. In terms of symbolic leadership
befitting a presider in chief, refusing to enforce laws sends the wrong signal.
To be sure, delaying rather than cancelling funding that has
already been appropriated as law may fall within reasonable discretion that
goes with the executing, and thus executive, function. However, the size, or
magnitude, of the federal spending being held up but not cancelled may test the
test of reasonableness. This may also be so if the political dimension—that
is, the salience of political judgment in the issues involved—is significant.
President Trump “issued an executive
order for a 90-day pause in foreign development assistance pending a review of
efficiencies and consistency with his foreign policy.”[2]
At the time, the United States was the world’s largest international-aid donor;
in 2023, $68 billion was spent for this purpose. That number includes “everything
from development assistance to military aid.”[3]
Interestingly, military funding for Israel was exempted from the delay even
though the ICC had issued a warrant for Israel’s sitting prime minister for decimating
the civilian population of Gaza, the International Court of Justice (the UN’s
court) had ruled the occupation and military attacks by Israel to violate
international law, and Amnesty International had found sufficient, credible
evidence of genocide perpetuated by the Israeli government. If this exception
to the U.S. president’s 90-day delay—and Trump unfroze Biden’s hold on the delivery
of the 2000lb bombs to Israel because, Trump said, that country had bought them—reflects
Trump’s foreign-policy priorities, then the matter of selectively delaying
foreign aid cannot be reckoned as merely technical in nature; rather, the
salience of the political dimension means that even a 90-day delay could be unreasonable
without Congressional consent in the enacting of resolutions or even law.
With regard to pausing grants,
loans and other federal assistance—excepting Medicare and Social Security
benefits—again the sheer scale of the funding involved and the salience of
politics in the decision to delay test the limits to what is and is not within the
reasonable purview of executive discretion in executing federal law that includes
federal spending. “Diane Yentel of the National Council of Nonprofits said the
order could stop cancer research, food assistance and suicide hotlines.”[4]
If so, even a significant delay could be unreasonable as well as contrary to
the law concerning SNAP (federal food-assistance to 42.1 million individuals as
of the fiscal year 2023) because—to put it bluntly—an awful lot of people need
to eat on a daily rather than a monthly basis. Again, the president’s political-ideological
judgment here is arguably debatable (hence suggestive of a Congressional legislative
role even in the delay): delaying food assistance to Americans while exempting
military aid to Israel from delay. Both, and especially juxtaposed, are
contentious politically (i.e., ideologically). Furthermore, the memo delaying
domestic financial assistance, “signed by acting OMB chief Matthew Vaeth, calls
on government agencies to temporarily pause their financial assistance
[programs], so they can review spending that could be impacted by the various
orders Trump has signed” relating to diversity programs, “woke gender ideology,
and the green new deal.”[5]
It is difficult to square such overtly political reasons with a technocratic
delay in the execution of laws. Of course, this is a judgment call, for
the length of the delay is also a relevant factor. Aside from the financial
assistance to Americans bearing on sustenance, a few month’s delay may be
reasonable, but both the scale of the foreign and domestic funding and especially
the political rationales for the delay arguably make the delay a significant
political matter rather than merely an executive function in implementing law.
My assessment should not be
assumed to be in line with my own political ideology, for I oppose affirmative
action programs as being contrary to merit and woke “thought-police” as being
repugnant to free-speech liberty; I am not obliged to “give my personal
pronouns” (in fact, “one” is the neuter third-person singular pronoun in
English). I assume, moreover, that we are all human, all too human in fact, and
thus that none of us have a monopoly on truth to be imposed on others. My
point here is that the use of reason to dissect even a controversial issue, such
as presidential power in the U.S., should not cower to the bullying force of the
mind’s own ideology. Incidentally, this point is vital in distinguishing
between scholarship and opinion-pieces.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
Monday, January 20, 2025
The Tech Industrial Complex
Democracy, Plato and Aristotle
both theorized, is a governmental system that is most susceptible to the mob—meaning
mob-rule. Accordingly, the Electoral College and the appointments of U.S.
Senators by state governments, the latter being the case from the establishment
of the U.S. Constitution to a few decades into the twentieth century, were
meant to limit any damage from momentary passions of the People to the U.S.
House of Representatives. The governments in the United States, like those in
the European Union, are republics in which democracy is a part rather than the whole.
What neither Plato nor Aristotle could foresee in their agrarian city-states is
the threat to democracy by plutocracy—the system of government in which private
wealth rules. It is less understandable why the American electorates have
ignored repeated warnings of the threat, especially as governmental power has
concentrated at the federal level since the war between the CSA and the USA in
1861.
Much like U.S. President Dwight
Eisenhower had done “in 1961 when he expressed concerns about the ‘military
industrial complex’ in his farewell address,” President Biden said in his
address, “’an oligarchy is taking shape in America’ as power and money become more
concentrated in the hands of the few.”[1]
Biden “criticized the ‘tech industrial complex’ and social media, where ‘the
truth is smothered by lies for power and for profit.’”[2]
It seemed likely in 2025 that Biden’s warning would not eventuate in any policies
oriented to breaking up the concentrations of private wealth, which I submit
are inherently incompatible with a democracy. Simply put, seeing billionaires
visibly chatting with government officials during President Trump’s second
swearing-in presents a picture that may suggest that the influence of private
wealth on public policy (and thus government officials) had gained such a foothold
that the confluence could be shown brazenly without fear that the American people
might vote for candidates campaigning on enforcing anti-trust law and raising
the effective tax-rates on billionaires to the point that, with anti-trust, being
so rich from an oligarchic business would not be possible going forward.
Besides Elon Musk, perhaps the richest billionaire in the world at the time, Mark Zuckerberg of Meta (Facebook) as well as the titans of Amazon, Google, Apple, and Microsoft could be seen on television in front of, and amicably chatting with the incoming administration's Cabinet secretaries. Musk was chatting with Trump's proposed secretary of defense in spite of the conflict of interest in Musk owning SpaceX. Zuckerberg could feel comfortable being seen chatting with secretaries and President Trump’s adult sons in spite of his power to minimize political dissent on social media. With 90 days to decide whether to close down or sell Tik Tok, President Trump expressed interest in a news conference in the evening of his second inaugural in letting rich Americans buy into a 50/50 joint venture that would allow China to continue Tik-Tok operations in the United States. Were Zuckerberg or Musk to invest enough that they could exercise control on the company through the American half, the investments could put the two social-media titans closer to achieving monopoly control over social media in the United States.
The real power evinced in the inaugural ceremony was in the seating area where the Cabinet nominees, the tech titans, and Trump's business-oriented relatives were sitting. At one point prior
to the arrival of Trump himself, all of the living former U.S. Presidents, Democrats
and Republicans, were looking across the aisle at the cadre of Trump’s
nominated cabinet secretaries, the billionaire tech titans, and Trump’s business-family.
Those former presidents undoubtedly knew where the real power was, and perhaps
they were surprised to see the public-private collusion so brazenly visible. After
the ceremony, hidden from the public’s view at the lunch in the Capitol, members
of Congress, “Cabinet nominees and business titans within Trump’s inner circle”
mingled.[3]
The luncheon was an “opportunity that VIPs use to mix and mingle with members
of the administration and advance their policy priorities. Apple CEO Tim Cook [was]
seated between Donald Trump Jr and [U.S. Senate] Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.”[4]
I submit that most such mingling takes place behind closed doors, even and
especially in regard to the writing of laws. It is not uncommon for
Congressional committee to use language written by the companies to be
regulated.
Lest President Eisenhower’s warning of the dangers to democracy from the military-industrial complex be replaced by Biden’s warning of a tech industrial complex as if the former had gone away on its own, President Trump promised in his second inaugural address, “Like in 2017, we will again build the strongest military the world has ever seen.” Lest it be forgotten, President Biden has approved weapon-sales to Israel even as it ravaged the residents of Gaza on a scale that openly deified international human-rights law. Rather than assuming that Eisenhower’s problem was only existed in the second half of the twentieth-century, the American people in the twenty-first century would not be wrong in perceiving the tech industrial complex as being on top of the continuing military industrial complex. How many such complexes must there be before a existential threat to democracy itself be recognized and combatted? The sheer power of huge sums of private money, such as the influx of Elon Musk’s millions in Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, and the magnitude of the discretion that Zuckerberg showed he had in unilaterally firing fact-checkers on his social-media company, can indeed be peeled back to reveal just how much the American voters could be manipulated on whom to vote for and even what issues to focus on. Rarely, if at all, did a candidate for federal office propose applying anti-trust law to the social-media’s big companies in the U.S.—an oligopoly. Nor was there any traction from the few voices in Congress suggesting that maybe the U.S. Government should stand up to military contractors by refusing to buy weapons for Israel and give that country’s government money to buy even more American weapons. The shop was open for business; human rights be damned.
The point is seldom made in American public discourse that had the U.S. Government enforced anti-trust law, including stopping tech giants like Facebook and Twitter from peremptorily buying up potential new-entrants in the first two decades of the twenty-first century, a billionaire class would not have been so large, and thus such an implicit threat to democracy. Just in how social-media company financial (and political) interests can be tacitly presented to manipulate internet users in feeds without the voters realizing it, the reason why Biden’s warning was not likely to be heeded at the ballot box can be understood. I submit that the televised images of tech “competitors” sitting together at Trump’s second inaugural points to an inter-related oligopoly instead of a competitive market (wherein new entrants are not bought up). But this is not all that we can take away from having watched the ceremony; we could also see the billionaires amicably chatting with likely high officials in Trump’s second administration, with Musk’s SpaceX having a financial interest in being NASA’s exclusive space-sub-contractor, and with Musk’s “X” and Zuckerberg’s social-media giant having a financial interest in what the Trump administration does about Tik-Toc.
My point is that, had the inherent threat that having billionaires poses to a viable republic been grasped by the American public, then governmental power would have been used such that the Musk, Zuckerberg, Bezos, and other tech managerial-visionaries would not have been able to become billionaires in the first place. As of 2025, and perhaps even back in 1961 concerning the military contractors, the proverbial horses were almost certainly already out of the barn. Thus, the electoral grass-roots energy going forward from 2025 needed to upset the proverbial apple-cart being steered by individual teckie billionaires to advance the financial interests of their respective companies in the halls of American government would be, realistically speaking, virtually unattainable. One of the most remarkable visuals from President Trump’s second swearing-in ceremony was that of the former presidents all looking over at the billionaires' very visible nicities with the incoming Trump officials and Trump's financially-inclined scions. The former presidents looked like bystanders rather than as pillars of power in themselves even though power had presumably been given to them by the People. I’m just glad that it does not fall to me to get the horses back in the barn. Ultimately, the American People since World War II are to blame for not having minded the proverbial shop as a going concern, for they should have known from the Titanic that most of an iceberg is hidden from view under water. Yes, I think people should know that, even with respect to icebergs in the ocean of political economy. Perhaps, though, I think too highly of popular sovereignty, which, unfortunately, is admittedly quite vulnerable to being manipulated. Both the manipulation itself and the sources are very difficult for the public to detect. Whether through social and/or mass media, even just a few very rich people or a large company, or a network of large corporations with oligopolistic shared financial interests can frame what is debated, and keep out what is not. It is precisely because detection is so rare that the visuals coming out of Trump's second inaugural are so important, for they give us a rare glimpse of the nature and dynamics of real power in America.
2. Ibid.
3. Michelle Shen, “Trump Attends Congressional Luncheon Where Key Politicians and Business Leaders Mingle,” CNN.com, January 20, 2025.
4. Ibid
Saturday, January 11, 2025
GDP Per Capita in the E.U. and U.S.: Changing Perceptions
Historically speaking, the
E.U. and U.S. are relatively large in territorial expanse and population, so it
is only to be expected that significant economic (and cultural) differences
exist from state to state in the respective unions of states. In Europe, some
medieval kingdoms have relegated to being but regions in E.U. states. Holland,
for instance, is a region in The Netherlands, which in turn is a E.U. state. The
same can be said of Bavaria (and England, were the United Kingdom still a E.U.
state). To compare the economic inequality in such a region with the inequality
in the E.U. (or U.S.) over all would be deeply misleading. For example, rural/urban
economic patterns that pertain to an economy containing one major city do not
translate into the multiple rural/urban patterns that exist in a modern
(empire-scale) union of states. In short, scale matters, especially in how we make
use of mathematical averages. Comparing
GDP per capita is a case in point; states should be compared with states.
Although recent studies had suggested
that upward mobility was higher in the E.U. than in the U.S., the GDP per
capita in the latter was significantly more in the latter than the former. To
be sure, the gap is less “when adjusted for purchasing power parity (PPP)—which
accounts for cost-of-living differences.”[1]
Also, comparing the E.U. and the U.S. misses out on the significant differences
between states in each of the empire-scale unions; such
differences in turn can be used to compare individual states in one union with
individual states in the other.
It is difficult
to believe that in “the third quarter of 2024, Mississippi’s GDP per capita was
€49,780, just €1,524 less than Germany’s at €51,304.”[2]
That the industrial base in the latter state greatly exceeded Mississippi’s
industry makes the respective numbers all the more perplexing. Because the E.U.
average GDP per capita was €40,060 as compared to the U.S. average of €80,023,
a person might begin to wonder whether a false economic-equivalence has pervaded
both the American and European general perspectives. Certainly geographically,
Americans may be surprised how much smaller Europe is than North America (and,
accordingly, the E.U. in relation to the U.S.). The GDP per capita comparisons may thus be
like superimposing geographic maps at the expense of previously-held
perspectives and assumptions of equivalence.
This is not
to say that every E.U. state was poorer than every U.S. state; Luxembourg’s €125,043
is more than New York’s €107,485.[3]
Nevertheless, it is significant that the figures for Germany, France, Italy,
and Spain are less than those of West Virginia, Arkansas, Alabama, and South
Carolina—each of these being below the U.S. average. It would not be at all
surprising to read that these figures are incorrect, but, then again, the generally-held
false geographical equivalence that Americans and Europeans naturally hold
concerning the E.U. relative to the U.S. may, as a phenomenon of a false
assumption of equivalence, exist economically too.
Were I to attempt
an explanation—not being an economist—I would want to look at whether the
relatively higher tax rates in the E.U. discourage economic activity. I would also
want to investigate the extent to which the shorter work-week in Europe may
also be a factor in the relatively lower GDP per capita. Furthermore, the relatively
generous social policies in many E.U. states may also discourage the long-term
unemployed from filling job openings, thus reducing factory efficiency and
output and lowering per capita averages. Lastly, I would want to know
just how much the different PPPs decrease the gaps of GDP per capita. I
suspect, however, that all of these possible factors operate only on the
margins, rather than explaining the entirety of the differences, given the
magnitudes of the differences. It may simply be that hoch Kultur and
the higher population (urban) density in the E.U. carries with it the false assumption
that the E.U. must be as economically productive per person as in the U.S.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
Monday, January 6, 2025
Certifying a U.S. Presidential Election: A Constitutional Conflict of Interest
That it should go without
saying that a constitution providing a government with its basic framework and
procedures should not contain any conflicts of interest makes it all the more
astonishing when an actual constitution is found to contain a obvious yet undetected
conflict of interest that could be exploited by an institutional or
officeholder and yet is easy to obviate, or fix. The implication in such a case
is that a society can be too comfortable with institutional conflicts of
interest without realizing that if such a conflict is exploitable, it is likely
that it eventually will be even if not right away. Because U.S. President Don
Trump’s pressure on his vice president, Mike Pence, on January 6, 2021 to
refuse to certify the votes of the electors in some of the states did not
result in any serious proposals to have another office than the vice presidency
preside, a societal tolerance for even known conflicts of interests in general
and in a constitution more particularly can be inferred. I submit that such a
tacit willingness to continue with the status quo can eventually put even a republic
itself at risk.
Speaking on January 6, 2024, U.S.
Vice President Kamala Harris referred to her constitutional duty of presiding
in a joint-session of Congress tasked with certifying the election that she had
lost as something she took very seriously. The American people should not have
to worry about whether a vice president might exploit the presiding role by resisting
or thwarting a peaceful transfer of power. “Today was obviously a very
important day,” she said, “and it was about what should be the norm and what
the American people should be able to take for granted, which is that one of
the most important pillars of our democracy is that there will be a peaceful
transfer of power.”[1]
Such a transfer lies at the core of representative democracy, so it is
important that any risk of any impediment, whether an opportunistic person
outside of a constitution or something lying in a constitution itself, be minimized.
It is not, in other words, a minor matter.
Simply tasking the loser of an
election with presiding over the counting of votes and the announcement of the
winner should give anyone pause. At the very least, no one should be duty-bound
to perform such a function—which can be thought of as “rubbing one’s face” in
the affair, which can feel humiliating to the person.
Furthermore, politically, whether
a vice president is a candidate for president as Harris was or is pressured to
do the partisan or personal bidding of a president as Pence had been, having a
partisan office preside is itself problematic not only for the
presidency itself in terms sheer credibility, but also for a vice president in
terms of the election process itself. Simply put, the vice president who is
running for president or for another term as vice president is an active player
in the contest and thus should not preside over the tabulation and
certification of the results. As simple as this is to grasp, it must be
difficult for enough Americans that the problem has been allowed to persist.
This is especially damning
because the conflict of interest is easy to remove. The chief justice, or any
justice, of the U.S. Supreme Court would be a natural fit for the presiding
role as the judiciary is not (supposed to be) partisan. Put another way, a sitting
president pressuring the vice president to declare some state slates of
electors invalid is more likely than pressuring the chief justice to do that
same. Institutionally, given the separation of powers in the U.S. Government, reaching
out to the chief justice would be much more difficult than trying to pressure a
vice president of one’s own administration. Having the chief justice, who swears
in presidents, preside over the Congressional counting of the Electoral College
votes for president as both the sitting vice president and Speaker of the House
look on makes so much sense that it is sad state of affairs when the status quo
is almost mindlessly retained even four years after the conflict of interest could
have been exploited, with a riotous mob of partisans literally breaching the Capitol
to convey additional pressure.
Putting the loser of an
election in the position of having to publicly announce the victor is the smoke
that points to an underlying constitutional conflict of interest; a mob pressuring
a loser on a presidential ticket to abuse the presiding role of the vice
president is more like fire than smoke. That the ensuing public discourse did
not contain a proposal of a constitutional amendment assigning the task to the
chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court reflects very badly not only on the
elected office-holders (and the media), but also on the American people, as it
is government ultimately by the people. Perhaps a people gets the government,
and constitution, that they deserve, for institutional conflicts of interest
should be obviated whether in government, business, or in non-profit institutions.
Neither institutional relations nor processes should contain conflicts of interest that can be exploited because human nature is itself rather inclined to exploit them because of the instinctual urges that manifest as self-, office-, and institutional-interest even at the expense of the interest of the whole. Even though governments and economic systems tend to be based on such interests, the latter don’t have to be encouraged by the ongoing existence of institutional conflicts of interest. Continuing with the status quo can itself be thought of as a choice—one that reflects a certain underlying set of beliefs and assumptions that are valued, and even the extent of basic awareness. Having seen not only smoke, but even fire, a people can indeed be faulted for having insufficient awareness, and this verdict is perhaps even more damning than that which concerns the naivete concerning human nature being able to withstand conflicts of interest without exploiting them in the long run. The sting of these verdicts hurts all the more when an institutional conflict of interest can be obviated relatively easily with a solution that is, or should be, obvious. Because power is that which is channeled in a political constitution, risking the exploitation of a conflict of interest that is in a constitution is not a smart choice if a viable, ongoing republic is desired.
1. Aditi Sangal, “Congress Certifies Trump’s 2024 Election Win,” CNN.com, January 6, 2025.
Wednesday, January 1, 2025
Undermining the U.S. Supreme Court: Non-Jurisprudential Ideology and the U.S. Constitution
As in the case of the Roman
Empire, which internal corruption likely weakened and even
destroyed centuries after that empire had been a republic, modern republics are
also not immune from internal decay. Even though political corruption can go
under the radar, especially if systemic rather than merely episodic or around
particular office holders, the subtle, gradual impact can be just as destructive
than had Carthage defeated Rome’s general, Skippio Africanus, in north Africa. Making
subtle decadence all the more embarrassing is the fact that it can be right
under the noses of upstanding office-holders. I contend that this is the case with
Chief Justice John Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court.
In his annual report in
December, 2024, Roberts “slammed what he described as ‘dangerous’ talk by some
officials [in the two other branches, or arms, of the U.S. Government] about
ignoring court rulings,” as that could result in a judiciary that is less than
independent of the legislative and executive branches and their respective members.[1]
Both Republicans and Democrats had “hinted at ignoring rulings in recent years.”[2]
To Roberts, that every presidential administration “suffers defeats in the
court system—sometimes in cases with major ramifications”[3]—is
the main reason why some presidents, including Andrew Jackson, have been
tempted to leave it to the high court to enforce its rulings rather than rely
on the executive branch. But this explanation ignores something else—something just
below Roberts’ nose.
Even as Roberts “lamented that
‘public officials’ . . . had ‘regrettably’ attempted to intimidate judges by ‘suggesting
political bias in the judge’s adverse rulings without a credible basis for such
allegations,” the chief justice dismissed the claim of political bias as “inappropriate.”[4]
I submit that the claim has sufficient basis to be taken seriously, and,
furthermore, that it goes beyond questions about the ethics of particular justices,
such as Thomas’ acceptance of vacations and Alito allowing his wife to fly a
right-wing flag at one of their houses.
Proverbially with a straight
face, the chief justice wrote in his 2024 year-end report that the role of the
judicial branch is “to say what the law is.”[5]
I submit that the justices do more than that. Just in the media referring to “the
conservative 6-3 majority” contains the implicit assumption that there are indeed
conservative and liberal justices and that such labels go beyond referring to
jurisprudential hermeneutics (i.e., approaches to interpreting the U.S. Constitution)
and even what opinions on what law itself is. Emphasizing what the words in the
document meant in 1787 versus what they mean today, or privileging the original
intent of the delegates at the U.S. Constitutional Convention versus interpreting
the text in terms of the modern world are just two examples of how the words
conservative and progressive (or liberal) could appropriately be applied
to court justices in a way that delimits the extent to which their ideology can
play a role.
I submit that when Justice
Sandra O’Conner wrote the U.S. Supreme Court’s majority opinion before the
oral arguments in Bush v. Gore—the ruling that effectively gave George
W. Bush the federal presidency—something more political than jurisprudential
hermeneutics being applied was in play. That O’Conner had been a Republican in
Arizona’s lower house from 1969-1974 may have something to do with why she subsequently
wrote the Bush v. Gore opinion for the conservative, Republican-nominated
majority before even oral arguments were heard.
Furthermore, that justices who
were against abortion constituted the majority opinion that overturned Roe
v. Wade (1973) may suggest that a non-juridical ideology played a role, and
thus that those justices went beyond merely deciding what the law is to stating
what it should be. That the justices who constituted the majority in the
Citizens United (2010) case were conservative, and thus likely
pro-business, may have meant that the nonjuridical economic ideology of free,
unencumbered markets even manifesting with money being free-speech was in play.
On the other ideological side,
it is likely that attitudes towards race played a role in the liberal majority’s
opinion in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education (1954) that separation is
not equal and thus racial segregation in public schools is unconstitutional. Similarly,
the finding of an implicit privacy right in the due process clause of
the U.S. Constitution in order to render abortion legal in the Roe v. Wade decision
may point to an extra-judicial ideology bearing on life and abortion, and even
religion, as being in the driver’s seat.
When moral, political, cultural,
or even religious ideologies or beliefs are salient in a judicial decision,
then the designation of conservative or liberal points to a
broader judgment both as concerning the justices themselves and their respective
rulings. If such broadly-informed judgment is really what the electorate in a
republic should bring to voting, then the implication is that public matters
requiring or even just fitting such broad judgment should not be decided by
unelected justices. I submit that such deference is precisely the point on
which Roberts and his court (as well as other, past courts, including that of
Warren) has lapsed. Individual judges and even an entire court can thus be seen
as opportunistic in short-circuiting the prerogative that actually belongs to
the popular sovereign: the people. This does not mean that the will of a
majority of an electorate should trample over individual rights, as a judiciary
is rightfully charged with protecting such rights precisely because a majority of
an electorate may act heedless of minorities, as can legislatures and even presidents;
but defending rights from majoritarian tyranny does not mean or require a judge
coloring beyond the jurisprudential lines on a page to impose one’s own
exogenous ideology, which anyone could do—hence the deference.
That the U.S. presidency,
which unfortunately has been partisan at the expense of the credibility needed
to preside, nominates U.S. Supreme Court justices and Republican or
Democratic U.S. Senators (and occasionally an Independent) confirm the nominees
means not only that politically conservative or liberal justices can be
expected to be sitting on the bench, but also, and perhaps more importantly— though
unfortunately almost invisible to the naked eye—the selection process itself is
culpable in essentially exporting political judgments from the American
electorates to the unelected justices. In short, Americans should not be
surprised at all that political ideology, infused with moral, economic, and
even religious valued beliefs, has such an impact in U.S. Supreme Court
decisions. The U.S. Constitution itself is biased in favor of this, and that
the amendment process is itself so hard to complete means that the vulnerability
to partisanship on the bench that is structural in the document is effectively intractable.
Being human, all too human,
all of us would love to imprint our respective ideologies on law, whether
statutory or common. So, we should all have the means to do so through the
vote. Essentially, I am arguing that popular sovereignty—government by the
people rather than vice versa—has unwittingly ceded too much territory to the
U.S. Supreme Court under the subterfuge of an expansive notion of judicial
interpretation. Ironically, there is thus a silver lining in this respect to the
anti-abortion justices imposing their moral or religious beliefs in overturning
Roe v. Wade because as a direct result, some state legislatures have voted
on legislation bearing on abortion and even the voters in some states have been
able to exercise their popular sovereignty by being able to vote directly on
the matter via referendi.[6]
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. That last word is the plural form of referendum; you can blame Latin, and ultimately the Romans whose empire fell at least in part due to corruption within. No human social artifact can be expected to last forever.
Monday, December 30, 2024
Jimmy Carter: A Post-Presidential Leader
The association of leadership
with an office, whether atop a government or a corporation, is so tight that it
is easy to overlook U.S. President Carter as a leader rather than as a micromanager.
Carter’s leadership by example, and thus by symbol, came after he lost
re-election. Nelson Mandela of South Africa had led as a symbol in civil rights
before he was elected president, and Gandhi effectively exercised
ethical political, moral and religious leadership without holding any office.
The reductionism or, at the very least, the mere association of leadership with
holding an office biases how we evaluate leaders, as distinct from governors.
The full essay is at "Jimmy Carter."
Friday, December 27, 2024
Salary Averages in the E.U. and U.S.
It can be misleading, even illusory, to cite an average statistic on the entire E.U. and U.S. when their respective member-states differ significantly in their own averages. To be sure, overall averages, such as pertain to an empire-scale union of states covering many subunits are useful in comparison with the overall average of another comparable union. Additionally, in cases in which the state averages do not differ much, the overall average for all of the states aggregated is not misleading. Abstractly, an average of numbers that ranges from 50 to 50,000 is less reflective of the facts on the ground than is an average of numbers that ranges from 50 to 60 because neither of these outliers is much different than, say, an average of 55. In contrast, especially if most of the data from 50 to 50,000 clusters around these poles, then to say that an average of 23,000 represents something actual is dubious and even misleading. It is also misleading to compare the average pertaining to one empire-scale union of states with the average of a state in another such union. Such a category mistake regarding scale and polity-types and levels is commonly made in comparing and contrasting the E.U. and U.S. In an effort to rectify the recurrent cognitive-ideological lapses bearing on trans-Atlantic comparisons and contrasts, a proper comparison of salary averages can serve as an illustration of how to compare “apples with apples, and oranges with oranges” in institutional political analysis that is comparative in application.
As for the E.U., Eurostat
reported that in 2023, “the average annual full-time adjusted salary per
employee ranged from €13,503 [$14,853] in Bulgaria to €81,064 [$89,170] in Luxembourg, with
the EU average standing at €37,863 [$41,649].”[1] I
submit that the difference of the state averages from high to low justifies
using the state averages rather than citing the E.U. average except for
comparing the E.U. to other empire-scale polities, such as the U.S., India, and
China. As for the U.S., the average annual salary per employee ranged from
$45,180 (€41,073) in Mississippi to $76,600 (€69,636) in Massachusetts,
with the US average standing at was $59,384 (€53,986). Again,
the difference of the state averages from high to low justifies using the state
averages, except in comparing the U.S. as a whole to the E.U. as a whole. The
U.S.’s $59,384 (€53,986) average is higher than the E.U.’s €37,863 ($41,649).
To be sure, comparing union-to-union has its drawbacks, for the overall conclusion
that salaries were on average higher in the U.S. than in the E.U. in 2023 masks
the fact that Luxembourg’s average of €81,064 [$89,170] is higher than the
average of $76,600 (€69,636) in Massachusetts.
I submit that the intellectual beauty
in this sterling symmetry is essentially that of logic absent any distortive
ideology that would push someone into comparing the average of a state in one
union with another union overall. As an example of an illogical category
mistake, making a list of averages on salaries per worker by listing Luxembourg
as number 1 and the U.S. as #6 after Austria would omit the averages of U.S.
states such as New York, California, and New Jersey whose 2023 averages are higher
than those of Denmark, Ireland, Belgium, and Austria. If member-states are to
be included, the states from both the E.U. and U.S. must be included to
avoid a misleading and distortive category mistake. Similarly, if the U.S.
average is included, so too must be that of the E.U., whether or not the state
averages are included.
Having demonstrated how the common category mistakes regarding trans-Atlantic political and economic comparisons can be rectified logically, I am under no illusion that such pristine logic will gain any traction, given the sheer intractability of the Euroskeptic, or state’s rights, ideology in Europe even into the 2020s in spite of state-nationalism having spawned two long wars that went global in the preceding century. In The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn masterfully explains why scientific revolutions as paradigm changes are typically resisted so much by scientists who are entrenched in the paradigm enjoying the inertia of the status quo. Both personal interests and emotional as well as intellectual investment in an existing paradigm play a role in elongating the existing paradigm’s life-span artificially. So too, clutching onto political and economic comparisons between a state in one empire-scale union of states and another such union had become more ideological than based in fact by 2024, with denial of logic being just one of the implicit casualties. Old Kant must be rolling in his grave.
1. Servet
Yanatma, “Average
Salary Rankings in Europe: Which Countries Pay the Highest,” Euronews.com,
December 24, 2024. I added the dollar equivalents using the December 30, 2023 euro/dollar
exchange rate of 1.1. The highest rate in 2023 was 1.12 and the lowest was
1.05.