Homelessness in the E.U.: Rectifying a Right

In late 2025, the E.U. Commission presented its first European Affordable Housing Plan. The E.U.’s involvement in “social housing,” which translates into federal funds being used to provide housing beyond homeless shelters for people who cannot afford to house themselves, implies that the programs of the states had been insufficient. The U.S. could take a lesson from the Commission’s plan, which is cleverly multi-pronged in tackling the societal problem. Both in the E.U. and U.S., both federal and state funds were needed even in 2025 when neither economy was in recession. It is better to increase the supply of affordable housing when times are good than when unemployment is soaring. This is an exception in the E.U. to the usual pattern wherein the E.U. increases its competencies, or enumerated powers, in periods of one crisis or another. Russia’s multi-year invasion of Ukraine, which borders the E.U., and the Union’s foreign and defense activity demonstrate how European integration has typically been enhanced by crisis rather than when times are good.

Homeless in both the E.U. and U.S. was a problem in 2024. In its “9^th Overview on Housing Exclusion” in 2024, Feantsa estimated a total of 1,287,000 people “rough sleeping, staying in night shelters, or temporary accommodation” in the European Union.[1] According to the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank, 771,400 people were homeless in January, 2024—an increase of 118,300 from 2023.[2] The total population of the E.U. at the end of 2024 was estimated at 450.4 million, and that of the U.S. was 341.8 million (whereas the respective states tended to cluster in the tens of millions). That works out to .0028% and .0023%, respectively. This may come as a surprise because in Europe, housing is more likely to be viewed as a right than in the United States.

Dan Jorgensen, the E.U. Commissioner for Energy and Housing (and the first such commissioner in E.U. history), said at the time of the Commission’s presentation of its proposal, “Housing is not just a commodity; it is a fundamental right. We must mobilise every euro and do everything in our power to make sure that in Europe everyone can afford a decent place to call home.”[3] In the U.S., the lax regulations on investor-speculators on houses, condos, and even apartment buildings evince a commodities-orientation to residential real-estate, whereas in the E.U. the homelessness problem may have more to do with insufficient supply rather than the salience of a political ideology favoring business or disfavoring the poor as deserving their plight.

I contend that permanent housing as a right is a better political ideology than is the business-commodity view of housing units both because being homeless takes such a terrible toll of the human psyche and because society should be obligated via the market or else the state to supply permanent housing because economic interdependence is endemic to a society as opposed to Hobbes’ state of nature, where life is short and brutish. Put another way, being in the state of nature in terms of housing while being in a society does not work because a society and a state of nature are mutually exclusive. 

It is inconsistent to insert, especially within city and even a town, even a slice of Hobbes' state of nature, whether in the form of sociopathic violent gangs for which law in south Chicago in Illinois is wholly disrespected, or homeless individuals in a town or city. Having the state of nature within a society is not like Yin being in Yang, and vice versa, in Chinese philosophy; rather, the state of nature inside a society contradicts the necessity that Kant argued is inherent to law, whether public or moral law. Furthermore, to tolerate homelessness within a society is like inserting a vice like vengeance into omnibenevolence—a point that Nietzsche makes in claiming that the Abrahamic deity is “dead” in the sense of having been discredited by being both vengeful and perfectly benevolent, which are incompatible with each other. Even though the effort to rid humans of vengeance is laudable, the cost in assigning the vice to God was surprisingly overlooked, and still is. Similarly, the utter incompatibility of homelessness and society is seldom recognized. 

By the end of 2025, it was well beyond time for the E.U.’s Commission to come up with a plan to rid the Union once and for all of the sordid plight of homelessness. Ridding Europeans of the constant, underlying existential angst that does not leave a mind that is subtly aware that homelessness could occur in the future can be expected to result in happier, more relaxed people and thus less interpersonal strife. It is indeed realistic that the E.U., together with the member-states, could together, as a shared competency, eliminate  the problem of homelessness in 2026 by relaxing state rules on whom can receive housing assistance (i.e., not just the very poor), using federal “European Social Housing” funds to get homeless people immediately into at least short-term housing (even hotels), and incentivizing the construction of more housing units to meet the demand, and even reducing housing prices and rents for everyone. The sordid commodity perspective in America would be exposed as severely flawed, as it reflects elected officials across that Union being in the campaign-financing pockets of private finance and business rather than looking out for, or protecting, all constituents from the horrible experience of being homeless. Just in virtue of being a human being—how we are hard-wired and how vulnerable the human brain or mind is to the incapacitating harm from severe, existential stress—something beyond short-term housing should be ensured unconditionally. How a human mind reacts to being homeless ought to justify the unconditional aspect, as those who do not work must wander around at all times and be subject to theft is a callous ideological belief.

---

1. “What is Homelessness,” Feantsa, Feantsa.org (accessed 16 December 2025).
2. Lisa McKay and Kenneth Cowles, “Who Is Homeless in the United States? A 2025 Update,” The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, March 14, 2025.
3. Vincenzo Genovese, “EU to Revise State Aid Rules to Address bloc-wide Housing Crisis,” Euronews.com, 16 December 2025.

The E.U. on Ukraine: On the Human, All Too Human

On August 17, 2025, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with Ursula von der Leyen, president of the E.U., as a precursor to both of them meeting with Don Trump, president of the U.S. on ending Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. President Von der Leyen had decided to accompany Zelensky to Washington in part to potentially play interference should the U.S. president again publicly berate Zelensky to his face and in part to protect Zelensky should Trump’s position/pressure be too pro-Russia (i.e., pro-Putin). To virtually all Europeans and to many Americans, Trump’s verbal outburst at Zelensky in the Oval Office had been shocking, especially as it seemed to be pre-meditated and orchestrated. Taking emotional advantage of the head of a state being invaded by the empire-scale Russia can assuredly be reckoned as being a bad host, and even low class for the president of the empire-scale United States. International relations do indeed contain a very human element, and in fact leaving it out of an analysis of an international situation is nothing short of negligent.

The full essay is at "The E.U. on Ukraine."

Russia Benefits from Flawed E.U. Federalism

In the E.U., the 27 state governments are able to wield a veto on most important policy proposals in the European Council. Expecting unanimity where not even consensus is enough is so utterly unrealistic at 27 that it may be time to reconsider whether the E.U. can afford such an easy (and tempting) means by which state governors can exploit the E.U. by essentially holding it hostage. To be sure, like the filibuster in the U.S. Senate, the veto in the European Council represents the residual sovereignty that states in both unions enjoy, but extortion for financial gain by means of threatening or exercising a veto in the European Council (and the committees of the Council of the E.U.) suggests that the continued use of a veto by state governments is too problematic to be continued. Residual sovereignty can find adequate representation by qualified majority voting, which is closer the threshold needed to maintain a filibuster in the U.S. Senate. That the E.U. state of Slovakia maintained its veto on a proposed number of federal sanctions against Russia on July 9, 2025 when the European Court of Human Rights ruled that Russia had violated international law in invading Ukraine is a good indication that the veto had outlived its usefulness and was being used by governors for sordid purposes by using the E.U. rather than strengthening it in foreign affairs.

On the very day when Ukraine’s President Zelensky and Pope Leo “discussed the Vatican as a possible location to host peace talks to end Russia’s full-scale invasion” and Zelensky thanked the pope for the Vatican’s help in reuniting 1,350 of more than 19,500 “children taken by Russia after Moscow’s 2022 invasion,”[1] the judges at the European Court of Human Rights, which is not part of the E.U., ruled that Russia’s government had violated international law not only by shooting down the MH17 commercial airliner, but also in “the murder, torture, rape, destruction of civilian infrastructure and kidnapping of Ukrainian children” in Ukraine.[2] Meanwhile, U.S. President Trump voiced frustration at Russia’s President Putin for not being willing to negotiate an end to the invasion, and Putin unleashed “a new record-breaking barrage of drones and missiles against Ukrainian cities.”[3]

On the very same day, the government of the E.U. state of Slovakia confirmed “that it would for the time being maintain its veto on the new package of sanctions that the European Union intends to impose on Russia in response to the invasion of Ukraine.”[4] The additional sanctions would target “Russia’s financial and energy sectors, including the Nord Stream pipelines.”[5] Countries supplying or financing Russia’s war machine would also be subject to sanctions. Besides being politically tone-deaf, the wayward state government did not object to the economic restrictions per se, but rather, to “the proposed phase-out of all Russian fossil fuels by the end of 2027.”[6] But because qualified majority-voting rather than unanimity applies to the phase-out proposal, the Slovak governor “resorted to sanctions, which require unanimity, to extract concessions from Brussels.”[7] What kind of concessions?  Plain and simply, the extortion of the E.U. for money as “compensation” for anticipated financial damages, even though the legal opinion of E.U.’s executive branch is that the E.U. prohibition of gas from Russia would “act as ‘force majeure’ in court and shield governments and companies against damages.”[8]

At the very least, the state’s governor was politically tone-deaf on July 9, 2025, more concerned with exploiting the veto mechanism for money than with the visuals in advantaging Russia by vetoing sanctions as leverage for the fossil-fuel prohibition that is subject only to qualified majority vote. That Slovakia’s government had no objection to the economic sanctions and yet maintained a veto against them in order to gain leverage on the gas prohibition, effectively making that proposal subject to a veto, shows that the veto mechanism was indeed subject to abuse at the expense of qualified majority voting. This hyperextension of the veto mechanism to a bill subject only to qualified majority voting suggests that the two voting mechanisms cannot coexist. Power abhors obstacles, and qualified majority voting is an obstacle to state governments accustomed to being able to veto federal legislation and foreign-policy proposals. If indeed the governmental sovereignty retained by the states is sufficiently represented in qualified majority voting, which is 55% of the states and 55% of the population of the E.U., the veto power is an excessive block by states on federal action and the benefits to Europe that can come from collective action. Both the value of such benefits in federal legislation and foreign policy and the exploitation by state governments of their veto power at the federal level argue against retaining the veto mechanism. Slovakia has laid bare the imbalance in the E.U.’s federal system as bottom-heavy at the expense of benefits that could be realized by collective action. The abuse of the veto authority is sufficiently evident in a veto that benefits Russia being confirmed on the very same day that the top court in Europe on human rights ruled against Russia’s invasion and the Pope met with Zelensky on a way forward on peace even as Putin continued to stall for time to unleash more bombs.

Abstractly speaking concerning the E.U., the whole is more than the sum of the parts, and the whole suffers to the extent that a part is able to direct the whole. That each part maintains its integrity as a unit does not justify any part in being able to hold the whole hostage for financial gain. It is utterly unrealistic to assume that a policy or law of the whole is or should be in the political and economic interests of every part. Lastly, for a part to put itself above the whole is presumptuous and egocentric, which is to say, selfish. Given the salience of self-interest, which stems from self-love, in human nature, undermining mechanisms designed to curb exploitation by selfishness at the expense of overall good is utterly foolish in any political society.

---

1. Gavin Blackburn, “Zelenskyy and Pope Leo XIV Suggest Vatican as Venue for Ukrainian Peace Talks,” Euronews.com, July 9, 2025.
2. Aleksandar Brezar, “Top European Court Rules Russia Violated International Law in Ukraine,” Euronews.com,
July 9, 2025.
3. Jorge Liboreiro, “Slovakia Maintains Veto on New Package of EU Sanctions against Russia,” Euronews.com, July 9, 2025.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.

Is Healthcare a Human Right?

Humanity still has not come to a consensus on what are entailed specifically within the rubric of human rights. Even in terms of those specifics that have come to be generally held to be human rights, such as in designated war crimes and crimes against humanity by international agreement, the lack of de jure and de facto enforcement render such agreement nugatory in practice. As a result, calls for human rights are in effect calls for warring to stop. The enforcement that goes along with laws legislated by governments render any consensus on what constitutes human rights more substantive in practice. This is undercut, however, in empire-scale polities of polities, such as the E.U. and U.S., to the extent that human rights are carved out at the federal level to applied across differing cultures. Such ideological diversity between the American member-states has triggered drastically-different notions of just what are included as human rights to be played out in Congress. The debate over the government-financed health-insurance program for the poor in 2025 illustrates such a lack of consensus, which in turn suggests that the member-states should play more of a role in how or even whether to provide free insurance to the poor. Sometimes, one size doesn’t fit all. In short, the matter of federalism is very relevant up front, before matters of the proper role of government itself and of human rights are decided. In other words, the qualitative and quantitative differences between a union of states and a state are very relevant up front, lest states eventually peel off in utter frustration with a one-size-fits-all approach to policy-making to fit an empire composed of member-states.

As the U.S. Senate considered changes to the Medicaid program, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley acknowledged “that the main cost-saving provision in the bill—new work requirements on able-bodied adults who receive health care through the Medicaid program—would cause millions of people to lose their coverage. All told, estimates are 10.9 million fewer people would have health coverage under the bill’s proposed changes to Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act.”[1] Millions would be relegated to not getting medical attention or going to the emergency rooms of hospitals mandated to treat the uninsured, who would be strapped with unaffordable medical bills and thus bad credit-reports.

That a significant number of poor people in the United States would lose health-insurance was known and anticipated by the legislators. Speaking on the bill as it was taking shape in the U.S. Senate, Sen. Hawley said, “I know that will reduce the number of people on Medicaid.”[2] What, then, justifies the loss of health coverage? The senator answered this question by adding, “But I’m for that because I want people who are able bodied but not working to work.”[3] In other words, being able to have access to medical services should be conditional on having a job. The conditionality itself means that health care is not a human right because such rights are inherently unconditional.

Some or even many of Sen. Hawley’s constituents doubtless favored excluding medical services from being included among other human rights, perhaps in the belief that people who are able to work but refuse to work do not deserve to be kept alive if they fall sick, which in turn can be based on a belief that only the strong of any species should survive. Sen. Hawley represents Missouri, when is generally conservative. Sen. Warren of Massachusetts, on the other hand, would find that the conditionality and thus the exclusion of medical care from human rights much less popular in her member-state. Such a wide divide by state on this question would be unlikely in the E.U., even between the states of Hungary or Poland and Sweden or the Netherlands. The European notion of subsidiarity would thus be more applicable in this case to the U.S. than the E.U., given the greater diversity of ideology on the question in the United States. In other words, federalizing universal healthcare would come with less ideological tensions between E.U. citizens in different states than between U.S. citizens in different states; there was more consensus within the empire-scale European Union than within the American bloc.

The imposition of work requirements as a condition for the poor having access to medical treatments may be just fine with most people in Texas and Utah, for example, and yet be very objectionable to most people in Vermont and Connecticut. To conflate these various member-states as being ideologically and culturally homogenous is suboptimal and comes with political costs as opposition pressure is likely to result where the federal policy is unpopular; more optimal politically would be transferring the program of Medicaid to the member-states so their respective peoples could tailor the program—or even cancel it—according to their respective political ideologies. The notion that policy in another state should reflect one’s own views is anathema to federalism, and even to there being empire-scale unions of states. Toleration within a union is thus necessary lest one size be applied throughout and eventually republics break off in frustration, as Britain did from the European Union due primarily to anti-federalist sentiment.

In short, finding a large gap from consensus in Congress (or in the E.U.’s legislature) can be an indication that a policy question would be better resolved by the member-states than at the empire-level, given the heterogeneity between states on the question. Congress and the federal president applying work requirements on what most people in some states regard as an unconditional human right may be intolerable emotionally to those people, but so too, Obamacare had been viewed as an intolerable overreach of government to most people in some other states. Behind this chasm, ideological and thus as emotional as cognitive, lies a basic disagreement on just what should constitute human rights, and thus be an obligation of government. In other words, besides different political philosophies of the proper role of government, different moral principles are involved on the question of whether government should pay for healthcare for the poor. In a federal system, the matter of where such a divisive policy question should be decided should be decided before both the proper-role-of-government and the human-rights questions are decided, or else the federal system itself would be compromised and thus put at risk.

---

1. Leah Askarinam, “The GOP’s Big Bill Would Bring Changes to Medicaid for Millions,” Apnews.com, June 15, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.

A U.S. Senator Thrown to the Ground: Security on Steroids

A U.S. Senator being thrown to the ground and handcuffed rather than escorted out of the building because he asked a difficult question for the speaker holding a news conference illustrates not only the bias towards using excessive force that having police power lavishes on human nature, but also a proclivity toward excessiveness without any internal mental check that is entwined in virtually any human brain. That the primary arresting FBI employee was the only person in the room wearing a bulletproof vest inside the federal (government) building may also reveal his penchant for exaggeration—or, going too far without realizing it. The prescription in terms of public policy is a strengthening of checks on law-enforcement employees even, if possible, by embedding other municipal (or federal) employees whose sole function it is to evaluate police conduct either by listening in or observing even in real time. A U.S. senator being thrown to the ground and handcuffed in a federal building in California rather than escorted out of the building evinces a power-trip more base, violent, and primitive than the typical power-trips that occur on the “floor” of the U.S. Senate. It must have been a shock to U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla on June 12, 2025 to be physically shoved to the ground, especially if the rationale for his removal from the press conference was itself an exaggeration.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was holding a news conference in early June, 2025 as protests against the arrests of illegal aliens were going on outside in downtown Los Angeles in California, when U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla said, “I have questions for the secretary!”[1] Even if the senator was trying to visibly score political points with his constituents by interjecting, which, by the way, would be in the realm of the sort of power-trip that is quite common in politics, the reaction of the Trump Administration may point to a trumped up political reason for the violent way in which the senator was manhandled by Secret Service employees and then the FBI agent. The White House accused Padilla of “disrespectful political theatre” and Noem herself accused the senator of having ‘made a scene.”[2] If these opinions were behind the manhandling of the senator, then “criminalizing politics” steeped to a new low: instant violence against the elected representative for being political. The violence itself is much worse than merely charging someone for being political in a way that offends someone else in power.

For its part, the Secret Service lied that Padilla had “lunged at Secretary Noem,” and furthermore that the agents there “thought he was an attacker.”[3] Reviewing the video of the event shows the willingness of people with guns to lie to protect themselves, which I contend is reason enough for additional checks on law-enforcement employees, whether federal or state. That the senator, the most senior Democrat on the U.S. Senate’s Border Security and Immigration subcommittee, announced repeatedly that he was a U.S. Senator belies the credibility of the claim that he was thought to be an attacker.

California’s Gavin Newsom, head of state, chief executive, and commander-in-chief of California’s National Guard (i.e., army) wrote online a poignant point worthy of our consideration: “If they can handcuff a US Senator for asking a question, imagine what they will do to you.”[4] Unfortunately, it doesn’t take much imagining to consider the actuality of employees of a government in law enforcement presuming that the law is theirs to make in real time—casting a blind eye intentionally on the actual law—and lying and threatening even victims of a crime with arrest should they object. Enforcing existing law does not give a government employee the discretion with which to ignore the law and even come up with one’s own law and yet how easy it is simply to ignore this vital point in the carrying out of one’s “duties.” I have witnessed this mentality enough to know that it is too common to ignore, and thus I contend that more checks are needed on law-enforcement employees on the non-supervisory level locally, at the member-state level, and at the federal level in the United States. The problem is worse “on the ground” than has reached the public air-waves.

Even if Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesperson, was right in opining, “Padilla embarrassed himself and his constituents with this immature, theatre-kid stunt” because “he wanted attention,”[5] treating the senator as if he were an attacker rather than simply escorting him out of the building—or even letting him remain and treat the altercation between him and Noem as political—reveals an emotionally jejune, hyper-“trigger-happy” mentality among the Secret Service and FBI employees in that federal building. Such a mentality among government employees who have been given the legal right to use force is, I submit, dangerous, and thus should be exculpated from the ranks of law enforcement in any jurisdiction, lest the trend eventuate in people being surrounded by security simply for being angry and even raising one’s voice at a political event. Treating such as a threat is itself passive-aggressive, which as we have seen can turn outright aggressive given the human, all too human proclivity to go to far. 

Put more plainly, assuming that lies used to cover-up the underlying mental ailment, Secret Service employees who perceived the senator lunge at Noem and thought Padilla was an attacker should be put on mental-health leave so they can relax and untighten, and be subjected to psychological tests on latent aggression, for their sort of power-trip is much more dangerous than that which goes on in the U.S. Senate—and the White House, for this incident is but a glimpse toward a realization that not enough had been done even in multiple jurisdictions to root out the sordid pathology from the field of law-enforcement. De facto absolute power “on the ground” loves a vacuum of accountability, and is even willing to lie to keep it at bay.

---

1. Ali Abbas Ahmadi and Kwasi G. Asiedu, “US Senator Dragged Out of LA News Conference and Handcuffed,” BBC.com, June 13, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.

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.

---

1. James Fitzgerald and Ana Faguy, “White House Pauses Federal Grants and Loans,” BBC.com, January 28, 2025.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.

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."

Bolivia's President Morales: A De-Facto Dictator Undemocratically Removed from Office

Bolivia’s president, Evo Morales, resigned on November 10, 2019 after an audit by the Organization of American States found that the results of the election held the previous month could not be validated because of “serious irregularities,” including “failures in the chain of custody for ballots, alteration and forgery of electoral material, redirection of data to unauthorized servers and data manipulation.”[1] Election officials had stopped the count for about 24 hours without explanation; when the count resumed, Morales’ lead was much greater. Accordingly, along with Morales, the vice president, and the president of the state senate, the president and vice president of the electoral council resigned. Before the end of the day, the two officials of the council had been arrested for “electoral crimes.”[2] Although the state police were justified in arresting the officials, I submit that the police acted beyond their proper sphere when they joined with the military, which also acted beyond its sphere, to force Morales to resign.

To be sure, Morales controlled both chambers of the state legislature, the electoral council, and even the Constitutional Court, rendering the problem of holding the president accountable to the law particularly acute. As for the legislature, the presidents of both chambers resigned along with Morales, making the matter of Morales’ successor quite messy even from a constitutional standpoint. These resignations suggest that the leadership of the legislature would have been unlikely to act as a check on the president.

As for the high court, Morales had argued that it was his human right to run for reelection for a third term even though the constitutional limit was two terms. In 2019, he was running for his fourth term, sailing through the constitutional constraint yet again. Citing the American Convention on Human Rights, the Constitutional Court ruled that the term limits violated Morales’ human right to run for a third term. The Court had a basis to consider the treaty on par with the state’s constitution. In the U.S. Constitution, for example, Article VI, Clause 2 states that a treaty, like the Constitution itself, is the “supreme Law of the Land.” In the Bolivian case, the Constitutional Court put the treaty above the constitution. In general, where two parts of supreme law conflict, one must be put above the other.

Article 23 of the Convention, which covers the right to participate in government, is the relevant part of the treaty. Every citizen has the right and opportunity “to take part in the conduct of public affairs, directly or through freely chosen representative; to vote and to be elected in genuine periodic elections . . .; [and] to have access, under general conditions of equality, to the public service of his country.”[3] Taking part in the conduct of public affairs can be by being elected to a governmental office. Such participation can be regulated “only on the basis of age, nationality, residence, language, education, civil and mental capacity, or sentencing by a competent court in criminal proceedings.”[4] Even though term limits do not fall under any of these legitimate means of constraining the underlying right to the opportunity to run for office, term limits are under general conditions of equality concerning public service, of which serving in elected office pertains. That is to say, being elected to a governmental office falls within public service, and term limits are consistent with general conditions of equality because the limits apply to any citizen. Hence we need not look at the legitimate rationales for constraining the right. I am assuming that the enumerated legitimate means by which to regulate the right to serve in elected office are exceptions to the general conditions of equality. We need not look at the exceptions because term limits satisfies general conditions of equality. The Bolivian Court thus erred in determining whether term limits falls within any of the exceptions.

The Court had no legal justification for putting the treaty above the state’s constitution. The leap in having done so is suspicious because the Court’s primary role is to interpret the constitution. Molares had “packed the court” (i.e., put the sitting justices on the bench),[5] so the errant legal reasoning may have been more the fault of political bias than logic. If so, Molares had control over the judiciary as well as the legislature, electoral council, and executive branch. Without any operative checks on his power, he could turn a democracy into a de facto dictatorship for life. Indeed, up until the end, he controlled the state police and military.

That the police and military are under the executive power of a president does not justify the involvement of the police and the military in taking it upon themselves to remove that president. If the Bolivian military chief made a deal with the opposition party, then he became a partisan politically. In his designated capacity to defend the state from foreign enemies, a military chief does not have the authority to pick partisan sides in a political dispute. Likewise, in unilaterally deciding to stop guarding the presidential palace, the police went beyond their authority and became partisans. That the police kept to their designated duties in arresting the president and vice president of the electoral council suggests that the decision to walk away from the presidential palace was partisan in nature.

Even relative to Morales’s usurpation of constitutional prerogative by running for a fourth term in violation of the term-limit general restriction, the refusal of the police and military to stay within their respective spheres of authority is particularly problematic because they possess weapons. Even in requesting that the president step down, the military chief acted inappropriately because the president is the commander-in-chief. In other words, the military chief evinced an unwillingness to stay within his gift. Such a mentality, plus the legal possession of many accumulated weapons, is why it is important that a military answer to a civilian, such as a president, who is not subject to the military. In a democracy, that civilian is an elected official, and it is not within the purview of a military (or police department) to question the veracity of the election as that would violate the president not being subject to the military (or police). In the U.S., this is why the impeachment and removal from office are conducted by the Congress. This is also university police-departments in the U.S. are inherently problematic from a democratic standpoint, for the chiefs of such departments report to university managers rather than elected officials. 

  

That the Bolivian police and military sided with the president’s political opposition in removing the president from office demonstrates the maxim that the ultimate power in a government lies with whomever can legally hold a (near) monopoly on weapons. Parchment is no match for officials with power and guns if a self-aggrandizing, even aggressive mentality is involved. The matter of holding such officials accountable can be quite difficult, as has been demonstrated by all the failed efforts to hold municipal police accountable in the United States. Unfortunately, a police employee can leverage his or her power to arrest and ultimately to use a gun to be able to act disproportionately (and prejudicially) on even trivial local laws.

On the very evening of Morales’ resignation, I was stopped by a policeman in Tempe, Arizona while I was walking in an alley. He informed me that walking in alleys is illegal in the city, which is home to Arizona State University. Doubtless the local police had looked the other way when students take such shortcuts, but in my case, the policeman assumed that enough residents of the apartment complex where I was living use alleys as shortcuts that he would issue me a formal warning, which means that I would be arrested the next time I was apprehended in an alley. Such a serious matter in Arizona! Being from another state, I felt myself a semi-foreigner there in part because the police tended to over-react, even in demonstrating an excessive police-presence on the supposition that intimidation is the best deterrent. In my case, the policeman was trying to use me as a deterrent for other residents in a low-income apartment complex even though as a research scholar I had very little in common with the other residents (except for the few students who lived there). I had the impression that the policeman was grouping me in with homeless people just because I was carrying my laundry to a nearby laundry-mat. That Arizona was ranked 49^th out of the 50 states of the US on primary education, including High School, suggested to me that I was being confronted by ignorance (and prejudice against the poor) with a gun. So police (and even a military) can go too far even in a state in which democracy is ostensively well-established. Personal discretion can be easily misused by people with the authority to arrest and use lethal force.

Therefore, when government institutions are captured by a president, such as Molares in Bolivia, it is a mistake to look to police or the military to use their threat of lethal force beyond their sphere of authority; their power is too much to rely on their discretion. When a democracy has succumbed to a dictator, the People, who together are the popular sovereign, have a duty to restore their democracy. In a representative democracy, the People are the font of sovereignty, whereas governmental sovereignty is delegated. The duty is not rightly preempted by the will of the police or military, because, as parts of a government, they are below the popular sovereign and its elected representatives. To be sure, the weaponized machinery of the state could fall under the control of the People as they make progress, but the movement would not be led by the police or military. Put another way, the police and military would no longer be so as individuals from those departments decide to join the People against the state. In a democracy, the People, acting as the popular sovereign, are the foundation. For the will of the People to be preempted by the wills of the police or military is itself dictatorial rather than democratic. Even if the heads of the police and military have good intentions in getting rid of a corrupt government, doing so lies with the People even if doing so is extraordinarily difficult.

In conclusion, protecting a democracy, such as against violations of term limits or, moreover, against a dictator generally, is the right and duty of the People acting as the popular sovereign. This duty is particularly pressing when no checks and balances exist within and between the three branches of government, such as when a dictator controls the legislature and judiciary. This does not mean that police or a military share that duty, for they are not only artifacts of government, but also given to the temptation for absolute power owing to the power of the threat of arrest and their use of guns. Also, enforcing criminal law does not extend to assuming a political role, especially if it is partisan. The U.S. Department of Justice, which houses the FBI, is thus not supposed to do the president’s political bidding. It would be ludicrous for the head of the Justice Department to join the opposition party in “requesting” that the president step down; to use the FBI to enforce the “request” would violate the constitutional language that puts the president as the head of the executive branch, as well as the fact that Congress, made up of elected officials, makes the case for impeachment and determines whether the president is to be removed from office. Otherwise, the president’s political opposition could simply call the FBI or even the local police to have the president arrested. The same logic pertains to the military, as if it could legitimately detain or remove its commander-in-chief, thereby violating the constitutional language on impeachment and removal from office as a political matter. The sovereign state of Bolivia violated its democratic system even in how Morales was removed from office in 2019.

---

[1] Kay Guerrero and Dakin Andone, “Bolivian President Evo Morales Steps Down Following Accusations of Election Fraud,” CNN.com, November 10, 2019 (accessed on November 12, 2019).

[2] Ibid.

[3] The American Convention of Human Rights, Art. 23, sec 1.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Guerrero and Andone, “Bolivian President Evo Morales Steps Down Following Accusations of Election Fraud.”

On the Supply and Demand in Housing Markets: Rent Control in California

In February, 2019, Oregon’s legislature passed rent-control legislation limiting rent increases to 7% annually plus inflation. New York’s legislature strengthened the existing local rent-control regulations in New York City. Roughly six months later, California’s legislature passed rent-control legislation limiting annual rent increases to 5% after inflation and strengthening other tenant protections.[1] Not even the largest landlord group and the California Business Roundtable had opposed the legislation in spite of the fact that rent-control even as a concept flies in the face of the free-market ideology that has been so popular in America. Indeed, economists “from both the left and the right have a well-established aversion to rent control, arguing that such policies ignore the message of rising prices, which is to build more housing.”[2] Accordingly, only four of the American states (and Washington, D.C.) had some kind of local rent-control. So what accounts for the rent-control fever that had taken hold in 2019? I want to point to the immediate context then in California, and then to a more theoretical explanation that calls for distinguishing shelter from real-estate investing.

California’s poverty rate of 18.2% was at the time the highest in the United States. San Francisco’s homeless population had increased by 17% since 2017, while homelessness in Los Angeles had increased by 16% since 2018.[3] Homelessness had become a dominant issue politically. Voters had approved “several multibillion-dollar programs to build shelters and subsidized housing.”[4] Assemblyman David Chiu, author of the rent-control legislation, said of the homeless problem, “Protecting tenants is a critical and obvious component of any strategy to address this.”[5] Dampening the fear of displacement was part of this protection. With homelessness at epic proportions and housing markets continuing to rise in many urban areas, the fear could easily become unpalatable particularly for middle-class renters. In other words, a source of instability that renters can typically overlook had become so acute in California that reducing the fear was included in the rationale for the legislation.

More theoretically, the fear a person naturally has at some level of losing his or her shelter without being able to move to another is a byproduct of subjecting housing to an unobstructed market-mechanism. Where laissez-faire capitalism is especially revered, the fear is accepted as a fact of life even though it is not a fact of life in societies in which a safety-net includes housing. Moreover, there is no guarantee that an equilibrium in a given rental market is in line with every resident having shelter. In fact, as many of the California rental markets demonstrated especially in the years leading up to 2019, rising demand does not necessarily translate into enough of an increase in supply. The 7% plus inflation increase allowed in the rent-control legislation was in part intended to encourage more supply. Yet even so, the government had increased spending on subsidized housing. In short, a rising housing market acts on demand and supply in such a way that homelessness can increase; even efforts by government to add to supply (e.g. subsidized housing) may fall short.

Perhaps as in the case of health insurance wherein the U.S. Government used subsidies to see that the poor and middle class have had access to medical care while wealthier Americans could by premium health-insurance on the free market, the matter of shelter could be distinguished from that of real estate; the supply of basic shelter would not be “decided” by a market-mechanism, but by how many people (e.g., homeless) need shelter. Homeless men and woman whose health warrants supervision could be accommodated by group homes or assisted living apartment complexes. The wealthy could still play the housing market, treating houses as commodities. The distinction between shelter and a commodity makes it easier to understand why and how the fear of displacement can be so salient as in California in 2019. The market mechanism is incompatible with shelter viewed as a human right (therefore sans fear).

In summary, both the homeless crisis coming to a head in San Francisco and Los Angeles in 2019 and the incompatibility of shelter and the market mechanism can explain why California’s government took action on rent-control even though it would not solve the homeless problem. For that to occur, the government as well as non-profits and even businesses (e.g., CSR) would need to step in such that the supply would be sufficient to house the demand even apart from ability to pay full rent.  In other words, I submit that shelter in an interdependent society (rather than the state of nature) can be unconditional, in contradistinction to investment in real estate. The fear of displacement alone points to the incompatibility of shelter and conditionality (i.e., the market mechanism); so too did the extent of homelessness in California. Clearly, replying on a market-equilibrium, even if without realizing it, had given rise to severe distortions.

---

[1] Conor Dougherty and Luis Ferré-Sadurni, “California Approves Statewide Rent Control to Ease Housing Crisis,” The New York Times, September 12, 2019.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

Raising Retirement Ages in the E.U.: The Case of Spain

The New York Times reported in 2012, “Spain has a stubbornly high budget deficit, its banks require tens of billions of euros in rescue loans and the government may soon have little choice but to request bailout funds” from the E.U.’s “TARP” program. Nevertheless, the state government’s “budget would actually increase pension payouts 1 percent [in 2013]. The money includes not only pensions for former public employees, but also the social security payments that go to all retired [residents].”[1] Pension expenditures represented nearly 40 percent of the state's budget and 9 percent of the state’s economic output, so one would think that line-item would have been first up on the chopping block. To be sure, cutting sustenance programs such as pensions could actually exacerbate a government's debt because if a resulting decline in demand adds to unemployment. In this case, the politics in the state seems to have gone along with the economics. I submit that Spain could have gone further economically were it not for entitlement politics interlarding the retirement-age issue.
Delaying the increase in the retirement age in Spain from 65 to 67 until 2027 could be seen as a case of politics operating at the expense of what was most needed economically. Given the advances in modern medicine and the universal health-care systems in the E.U., even 67 have been too low and too late. 
Firstly, in the 2010's, the E.U. would struggle with immigration even as more workers were needed. The failure of politics in the state of Spain to jack up the retirement age significantly as early as 2013 may therefore have been a contributing factor in shortchanging the local residents from satisfying the state's need for labor. 

Do the state governments have too much power at the federal level? If so, are Greece and Spain paying the price of the self-interest of more dominant states?  

The E.U. state of Greece demonstrates that going just from 65 to 67 can indeed be accomplished legislatively in a year, even with political protests. “For Greece, the longtime generosity of its pension system — in which large numbers were previously allowed to retire at 50 and younger — came to define the bankrupt condition of the Greek state. In the years before the crisis hit, pension payments in Greece totaled as much as 14 percent” of the state’s economic output.[2] Spain too could have used the decrease in pension costs that a relatively quick raise to 67 would have engendered. Raising the age is distinct from cutting pension amounts, yet the austerity-bred entitlement politics may have spilled onto the age issue. 
Raising the retirement age can be distinguished from the cuts in monthly entitlement programs, such as in the lender-imposed austerity program in Greece. If heath-related exceptions can be made to a higher retirement age based on a generally longer human lifespan, then cutting entitlement programs more than raising the retirement age puts lives at risk. This difference may have been lost in the politics of raising the retirement age in Spain.

1. Landon Thomas, “Pension Dilemma in Europe’s Debt Crisis,” The New York Times, September 30, 2012.
2. Ibid.

Anna Hazare: A Modern Incarnation of Gandhi?

On August 21, 2011 in New Delhi, India, tens of thousands marched in support of Anna Hazare, then in the sixth day of his hunger strike in support of the Jan Lokpal anti-corruption bill. He told the crowd, “Even if the prime minister comes, I will not withdraw my hunger strike until the [bill] is passed in the Parliament. I can die but I will not bend.”[1] What a unique and intriguing statement! To be sure, the man's “professed unwillingness to compromise,” as well as his “occasionally belligerent tone, . . . attracted criticism.”[2] Even so, he inspired mainly hope, particularly from the young. His main constituency, however, was the middle class, who felt alienated and unfairly treated. Hazare self-consciously embraced the model of Gandhi. That model, including the principled unbending, is no stranger in India, yet I am surprised that it took until 2011 for a societal figure so Gandhi-like to emerge and galvanize a mass protest using Gandhi’s methods. Of course, the likeness between the two men could be overstated. How much like Gandhi was Hazare and his political action? For example, would Gandhi have stopped eating simply out of preference for one of two bills before the Parliament? Putting a stop to widespread violence is arguably much more significant than reducing corruption. Also, the demand that conduct be changed is more direct than that a law be enacted unless to abolish an unjust one. 

                              

The uncompromising rectitude plays out differently in the two cases  Gandhi's underlying moral concern made his unwillingness to compromise laudable. Such stubbornness can fall on its face in a legislative context in which political compromise is inherent to the process. In appealing directly to the people for their malicious behavior to stop, Gandhi sidestepped the incrementalism of legislative politics. 

For a refusal to compromise to be a virtue, some pretty convincing principles must be at stake and a clear distinction must be drawn. In other words, a serious moral wrong must be involved. Typically, such a wrong involves great human suffering. Wide-scale  corruption, especially if it involves extortion of the poor and middle class incurs human suffering, but arguably not that which is involved in widespread societal violence that even results in death. In subjecting himself to death, Hazare may thus have been acting disproportionately. Taking up the mantle of Gandhi's method is perhaps not as simple as it may appear. 

1. Jim Yardley, “Thousands Back Antigraft Hunger Strike in New Delhi,” New York Times (August 22, 2011). 
2. Ibid.

Should Health Care Be a Right?

In the Spring of 2019, President Trump promised that a Republican alternative to "Obamacare" would soon be unveiled; the majority leader of the U.S. Senate, Mitch McConnell, quickly informed the president that the prospects of such legislation passing the Democratic-controlled U.S. House were zilch. This virtually guaranteed that health care would be play a salient role in the upcoming 2020 presidential race. The underlying question, I submit, has been whether health care ought to be a right, which the government would be obligated to ensure. Such a right would obviously not be one of those that hold government back (e.g., the right to liberty). Whether a right ensured by government or holding government back, the nature of a right is such that it is to be respected by others, whether individuals, organizations, or the state. Such respect, being an obligation, constrains those others. Hence, health care as a right has been controversial in the U.S. 
The Senior US Senator from Illinois, Dick Durbin, said the following just before one of the votes in December, 2009 on the Affordable Care Act, the health-care insurance reform legislation initiated by President Obama: “Thirty million Americans who currently don’t have health insurance  have the peace of mind of knowing that they have health insurance,” Mr. Durbin said. He added, “This is a real debate over whether or not health care is going to be a right or a privilege in America.”[1] By using the word, privilege, Sen. Durbin was implying that having access to health care on the sole basis of whether a person has money is unfair. 
If being wealthy is a good indication of being worthy of survival, then it may be assumed that health care for all, whether through private, non-profit, or government insurance, would undermine survival of the fittest. This in turn takes fit to mean strong or good. Were the humans in the financial sector before the financial crisis of 2008 strong or good? Does not fraud point to an underlying weakness? When Dick Fuld was CEO of Lehman Brothers before it collapsed, was he a strong leader or a pitiful man whose ambition got the best of him? 
In "survival of the fittest," fit has to do with fitting in with a changed environment. Such fitness, or fit, is on nature's terms rather than necessarily according to our notions of strong and good. For instance, a young drug dealer in a large city may have twelve "baby mamas." This means that the man had impregnated twelve women, who had been attracted to him on some basis that they valued. The sheer number of offspring suggests that the man was successful in reproducing himself; he thus fit well in his environment on this nauralistic basis. If survival of the fittest lies the availability of health care, should that man be covered while a poor religious man who has contributed to society without earning much money or having children should not? 

See also "Congressional Cuts to Foodstamps: Violating a Human Right?"

1. David Herszenhorn and Robert Pear, "Parties Stay United as Health Bill Clears Steps in Senate," The New York Times, December 22, 2009.

Structural Reform and Economic Sustenance in European Austerity

Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland on January 25, 2013, Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank(ECB), said the bank’s program to buy the bonds of heavily indebted E.U. states had been “very helpful” in reducing the perception that the euro was on the verge of collapse. He also pointed to the structural reforms that heavily indebted states had enacted as “now bearing fruit.”[1] He urged those governments to continue to implement structural reforms so those states could take advantage of the ECB’s low interest rates and easy credit to banks. In short, the strategy of the ECB was to use monetary policy as leverage for long-term-oriented structural reforms at the state level. Political risk analysts listening to the central bank official likely came away with a more optimistic stance on the long term prospects for the E.U. economy.

Even though the progress achieved already on the debt crisis provided “light at the end of the tunnel,” the matter of structural reforms at the state level was subject to politics and was thus more uncertain. Also, economic conditions could worsen, hence making it politically and economically more difficult to make the needed structural changes. Chancellor Angela Merkel of the state of Germany warned the governors of heavily-indebted states such as Greece and Spain against the impulse to reduce the pace of structural reform in the face of economic stagnation. She pointed to the record unemployment numbers announced in Spain on January 24, 2013 as fodder for the anti-austerity political forces there. She further observed that “experience tells us that often pressure is required to enable structural reform.” The obstacles could have come from political officials or bureaucrats at the state level, and even from the people, upset at the economic austerity cut-backs hitting themselves and even the poor who depend on funding for sustenance. Advocates for those people were doubtlessly contesting that survival in the short run should not be sacrificed for long-term structural reform. 
Interestingly, making a qualitative (i.e., difference in kind) distinction between government programs that keep people alive on a daily basis and all the other budget items could actually permit more budget cutting because so much would be found to be subject to cuts without risking lives. In the U.S. at least, the qualitative difference has typically been made between domestic and military spending. This dichotomy has enabled huge increases to military programs even as cuts to food assistance have been proposed. Of course, the unemployment caused by a cancelled defense contract could put people in danger of losing their house or going without food. However, such individuals would be covered by the continuance of the programs providing sustenance as long as they were held apart from the other spending categories. Having an indirect effect on sustenance, such as military contracts can, does not render a particular budget item itself in the category of vital programs for sustenance, such as building more halfway houses for the mentally ill who are homeless.  This reflects the American culture more, wherein much more is deemed conditional than in Europe, where the principle of solidarity has been and is still more salient politically.
In short, long-term fiscal reform need not be at the expense of people eating and having shelter as well as medical care. Based on the firm foundation of human rights, programs primarily geared to sustenance can be isolated and protected such that the structural reform can be implemented more smoothly. Buffering sustenance programs from the massive cuts everywhere else would significantly reduce the vehemence of the protests and soothe the path of structural reform by isolating the entrenched officials and bureaucrats as the only primary obstructionists. 

See also Essays on the E.U. Political Economy, available at Amazon.  

1. “Davos: ECB’s Draghi Says ‘Real’ Economy Still Stagnant,” Deutsche Welle, January 25, 2013.