Guest Post: Prioritizing the Issues that Matter to the Millennial Generation

Last week, downtrodden college graduates from parent’s basements around the nation seized upon a rare occasion to celebrate. This was bigger than Occupy Wall Street or the Ron Paul Revolution – of course I’m talking about President Obama’s evolution.

According to my Facebook news feed, a good sample of recent college graduates, the most important issue facing our republic is gay marriage and whether or not the President publicly expresses his honest or politically expedient opinion on the matter.

President Obama wore his official position on civil unions about as well as Mike Dukakis wore his tank helmet. Does anyone really believe that the President hadn’t supported gay marriage in private from the start? Do those believers also think that the President’s miraculous epiphany coincidentally came to him a day before a $15 million Hollywood fundraiser?

President Obama only publicly stated what everyone else already knew about him without substantively changing any policies. It’s political gimmickry, a total sideshow to more important problems, and frankly an insult to the intelligence of his supporters and the general electorate.

As a1icey observed:

“[the President] said North Carolina should be allowed to ban gay marriage and showed no inclination of fixing the effects of DOMA on the internal revenue code, federally regulated benefits, HIPAA and family and medical leave, among other federal regulations he controls…”

In short, the President has backed his words with zero actions.

The sycophants in the media and the elite apply to Mr. Obama a type of pro forma Enron-styled accounting for honors and accolades. Therefore it is hardly surprising to see that Newsweek has already beatified the President and titled him “the First Gay President.” So confident were they in their proclamation that they even dispensed with the customary equivocating question mark.

A politician’s pandering and the media’s response should not perplex anyone. What is confusing is the effusive reaction of young people. It is fascinating that people care very little about the rights they exercise the most frequently, but care very deeply about the rights they will never exercise.

How can a demographic group with 50% under/un-employment feel so strongly about gay marriage, which like abortion, global warming, school prayer, and national language is a luxury issue? Surely less than 50% of our generation is planning to gay marry any time soon. But it’s a certainty that 100% of our generation daily exercises the rights to property, trade, and freedom from coercion. Yet the Administration’s war on these fundamental rights has hurt most the very young people who seemingly care little about their protection. The youth response to Mr. Obama’s views on gay marriage is akin to North Korean peasants celebrating their leader’s decision to legalize private jet travel.

You need not have any opinion on gay marriage or its legal nuances to find our generation’s (or the religious right’s) attitudes troubling. Whether or not this country has gay marriage or not doesn’t really concern me. What is worrying is the total lack of prioritization of issues in the national political debate. Agitators on both the left and right encourage politicians like Mr. Obama and Mr. Santorum to deflect important dialogues in favor of resurrecting hot-button social issues in the midst of an economic depression.

One of my friends suggested that our generation reacted so strongly to the President’s empty gesture on gay rights because it is the last major issue that divides us from our parents’ generation. However, this is hardly the major issue that puts us at odds with our parents.

Young people overwhelmingly support gay marriage.

Our generation should be more upset that our parents’ and grandparents’ generations designed a lavish welfare system for themselves at our expense. To add insult to injury, they couldn’t be bothered to rear enough of us to pay for all of it. These inter-generational fissures are most visible in places like Southern Europe in which our generation faces 50% unemployment (not under-,un-) while their parents demand that they be able to retire in their 50s with “free” healthcare and fat pensions.

Government transfers as a percentage of GDP have tripled since 1960.

My fear is not only that Americans face a fate similar to that of Europeans, but that these are not just economic issues. A large number disaffected young men, prolonged recession, large debts, and cross border imbalances increase the likelihood of global conflict and even a world war. That to me is a lot more important than forcing North Carolina to legalize gay marriage and why it is disturbing to see that many of young people care more about gay marriage than the issues that keep them unemployed.

Young people favor bigger government 60/40.

Young people favor expanding government intervention in health care.

Little differentiation in opinion between the young and old on entitlements for the elderly.

I had a rant against the Federalist Papers, and then this article ran in the WSJ

There have been two anti-millenial pieces posted in the last two days in the Wall Street Journal: “Why Colleges Don’t Teach the Federalist Papers” and “To the Class of 2012.” They deserve to be discussed together, but I have very separate issues with them.

Regarding the Federalist Papers, I have had the misfortune of reading them in recent months. Why we revere propaganda pieces in this day and age is beyond me. The only possible reason for reading the Federalist Papers is to laugh riotously at all the “promises” the nationalists made to those devoted to freedom and independence. My favorite is Number 46. I can save you the time and energy of reading the whole thing as Number 46 shows you all you need to know. The topic, according to modern compilations, is “The Influence of the State and Federal Governments Compared.” I chose this one because the particular logical fallacies involved was so completely disproven by the end of the 20^th century, and they were disproven party by the operation of the modern tax system.

And not even our greatest legal minds understand what these documents contain. Recently Justice Scalia made headlines by mocking the Healthcare Act, saying it was so long it could hardly be considered a law at all. Scalia might be pained to be reminded of Hamilton’s words in the 78^th Federalist Paper, “It has been frequently remarked with great propriety that a voluminous code of laws is one of the inconveniences necessarily connected with the advantages of a free government.” Or, in modern English, free governments need a lot of laws. Original intent clearly shows that our notion of freedom anticipates long pieces of legislation, and the accompanying interpretative case law and regulations. Sorry Scalia.

The truth is no one can read these documents. I would have said anymore, but they were not really designed to be read for their content to begin with. In fact, their goal was an absence of content. The goal, as with most propaganda, was to repeat themselves over and over with blatantly false statements and convictions and preposterous predictions of the future. They repeated themselves until people were embarrassed into thinking they must be true. We should be ashamed of their role in our history. These documents do not have any bearing on truth, either then or now. Some may specialize in the propaganda used to create Phase One of the American Republic. But it will not serve to create a healthier conservatism in our young people to continue to expose them to suspicious statements of opinion.

And the second article. The second article made me all the more furious about these issues. The author criticizes mid-20th century knowledge of recent college graduates. I am sick and tired of every conversation and every opinion piece beginning in this manner. Face it: I am 25 and I have no idea who was president in 1956 (disregard that I went to school in England as a child). We live in a knowledge economy that encourages specialization. I do not need that information, therefore I have efficiently left it out of my brain. If I ever need it, I will go to Wikipedia and learn it. Depth is ranked over breadth these days. And that is because the depth is so much deeper than it ever was before.  If you are really judging candidates by this criteria, you are not an efficient consumer of intellectual labor.

I am a certain kind of conservative, and because we are so rare, I spend a lot of time among a related group of conservatives who are obsessed with our lack of civic knowledge as a generation. The author of the article goes on to say we are competing globally. What good does it do to my global knowledge to hold extraneous facts about American history that are little more than trivia? It’s just not relevant to the kind of questions I address and raise on a daily basis. These paternal rants are really getting out of control and need to stop. These authors are right to require such historical rigor of their children but not of the generation as a whole. In fact, my parents didn’t emphasize learning mid-20th century American history. We learned about economics at the dinner table, and how market forces work. That is our niche.

I’m sorry that Mr. Berkowitz and Mr. Stephens feel so woefully out of touch. But they should keep that between themselves and their psychiatrists.

je lui demandai où ils allaient ainsi. Il me répondit qu’il n’en savait rien, ni lui, ni les autres

Sous un grand ciel gris, dans une grande plaine poudreuse, sans chemins, sans gazon, sans un chardon, sans une ortie, je rencontrai plusieurs hommes qui marchaient courbés.

Chacun d’eux portait sur son dos une énorme Chimère, aussi lourde qu’un sac de farine ou de charbon, ou le fourniment d’un fantassin romain.

Mais la monstrueuse bête n’était pas un poids inerte ; au contraire, elle enveloppait et opprimait l’homme de ses muscles élastiques et puissants ; elle s’agrafait avec ses deux vastes griffes à la poitrine de sa monture ; et sa tête fabuleuse surmontait le front de l’homme, comme un de ces casques horribles par lesquels les anciens guerriers espéraient ajouter à la terreur de l’ennemi.

Je questionnai l’un de ces hommes, et je lui demandai où ils allaient ainsi. Il me répondit qu’il n’en savait rien, ni lui, ni les autres ; mais qu’évidemment ils allaient quelque part, puisqu’ils étaient poussés par un invincible besoin de marcher.

Chose curieuse à noter : aucun de ces voyageurs n’avait l’air irrité contre la bête féroce suspendue à son cou et collée à son dos ; on eût dit qu’il la considérait comme faisant partie de lui-même. Tous ces visages fatigués et sérieux ne témoignaient d’aucun désespoir ; sous la coupole spleenétique du ciel, les pieds plongés dans la poussière d’un sol aussi désolé que ce ciel, ils cheminaient avec la physionomie résignée de ceux qui sont condamnés à espérer toujours.

Et le cortége passa à côté de moi et s’enfonça dans l’atmosphère de l’horizon, à l’endroit où la surface arrondie de la planète se dérobe à la curiosité du regard humain.

Et pendant quelques instants je m’obstinai à vouloir comprendre ce mystère ; mais bientôt l’irrésistible Indifférence s’abattit sur moi, et j’en fus plus lourdement accablé qu’ils ne l’étaient eux-mêmes par leurs écrasantes Chimères.

 

The Only Guide You Need to Being A Tourist in NYC

(i.e., follow these rules and we promise we won’t kill you and barbecue your remains).

Walking on the sidewalks:

• Do not stop suddenly or stand still in the middle of the sidewalk, particularly at the corner. Move right up against a building or all the way to the edge of the curb if you need to stop for any reason. If you need to send a text message, stop!
• Generally, car rules apply. That means slow walkers stay to the right. In general, if there is heavy foot traffic, you switch to two lanes going into opposite directions, just like a regular two-way road. Never make sudden movements without looking behind you. This includes slowing down or stopping.
• It is generally unacceptable to walk side by side in a group of more than two – even if it isn’t crowded, you will take up the entire sidewalk. Once it becomes crowded, you should walk in single file, even if you are only two people. If you can’t handle this (because you have too many children, for example) don’t come to New York.
• Remember that a lot of New Yorkers commute by foot. We have to put up with you every day and often have to walk and take the subway through many crowded areas just to get to work. Be considerate, think of the traffic jams you sit in for you commute. You are the bad driver in our traffic jam.
• These rules primarily apply near the World Trade Center, in Soho, near Union Square, and in all of Midtown.

Hailing a Cab:

• Do not do this standing in front of a bus stop. That’s for people who need to hail buses. The cabs get easily confused if you get into this habit.
• If you try to hail a cab and a black car stops, this is not a limo. You do not pay extra for these cabs. You must negotiate the price before getting into the cab. Never pay more than what you would pay a yellow cab for the same route. They are illegal and do not pay for medallions, so you should be able to pay less. If they change the price during the route, ignore it and pay what you agreed to. They cannot force you to pay because they are illegal.

Subways:

• Always stand all the way back to let people get off the trains if you are on the platform. Do not simply provide a small funnel-shaped space for people to get off as this slows down the process. Make sure every single person has exited before you begin to get on. If others violate this rule, do not panic and rush to violate it also. You will be able to get on, it is rare that there is not space for everyone.
• People exiting the subway car have absolute priority over you. There is always another train for you (particularly as this is usually during rush hour) but they may have to pay again if they miss their stop and have to turn around.
• Move all the way into the car. Unless you are under 5 feet tall, you can reach the bar that runs parallel to the ceiling. If you cannot move all the way into the car, get out of the subway car when people need to exit, or stand aside as best as you can.
• If someone gets out of the subway car to let others exit, that person must be permitted to get back on first. If you get off temporarily and feel nervous that others will violate this rule, stand to the side and block others with your body and hold onto the side of the car door.
• Take off backpacks and large bags and put them on the floor, or hold them down by your legs.
• Never lean on a subway pole or hook your arm around it. A pole that could otherwise permit five people to hold on then becomes usable by one person. This is extremely unacceptable during rush hour.
• Always remember that many of the people around you are commuting to and from difficult jobs with long hours. They have to put up with you every day, all year round. It is considerate not to yell or speak loudly, and to take the time to observe who is commuting and give them priority for seats.

Obama doesn’t understand Corporate Tax

Obama had my vote in November but after he released his budget, I am less sure. His budget maintains capital gain rates but increases dividend rates back up to ordinary income levels. He could have increased both, but kept them the same. This tax policy decision was beyond retarded – it exhibits cowardice, a very short memory, and a lack of conceptual sophistication on his administration’s part.

About ten years ago, they stopped taxing dividends at the rate of ordinary income and started taxing them like capital gain. For 80 years, trying to avoid dividend tax was the primary drive of corporate financing decisions, business form choices, and controlled many areas of tax and accounting. But CAPITAL GAIN AND DIVIDENDS ARE THE SAME. We made a mistake when we first created the modern corporation. We made a massive mistake in distinguishing between the two for tax purposes. We made a really good choice when we removed that distinction ten years ago. Tax law should never control business decisions.

Interestingly this same shift in perception had already occurred in the area of trusts and estate planning. A notoriously archaic area fixed this problem before our tax system did.

To explain why dividends need to be treated the same as capital gain, it’s best for me to explain the logic of the unitrust.

First: dividends are payments out of the current and accumulated profits of a corporation, based on the number of shares you hold. Capital gain is the increase in value of the corporation, based on the number of shares of the corporation you hold. A corporation can pay out profits as dividends, or they can hold on to them increasing the value of the corporation. Some rules require the corporation to pay dividends, but generally shareholders can dictate whether or not this happens. Really their net benefit is the same either way, aside from the fact that for capital gain some shares must be sold.

Trusts are written to last fifty years. Various estate tax rules and planning needs lead to standard ways to structure a trust. Typically, the income is paid to one person and the principal is paid out at the end of the life of the trust. Income was defined by state governments according to how it was perceived at the time these trusts became popular: rental income on property, interest on bonds (loans), and dividends paid on shares. Principal was the property, bond, or share held by the trust. But money is invested differently now and for mostly tax reasons, dividends are rarely paid. Investments make money through capital gain, purchasing low and selling high.

The unitrust is simply a redefinition of income. Any existing trust, written without anticipating the changes in investment behavior, could only pay out whatever paltry sum came through as dividends or bond interest. People were supposed to live off of this money and couldn’t-the trust sat around basically useless until it ended. Income under unitrust statutes is simplified to 4% of what the trust owns – an assumed rate of growth for a conservative portfolio over the course of several decades. Thus the trustee is authorized to sell some shares to pay income to the person benefiting from the trust.

Unitrusts essentially accept that capital gain and dividends are the same, they are the result of choosing to invest in strong companies. This problem is made worse for high tech investors. Tech companies have such massive R&D costs that they generally have to reinvest all profits into R&D (until they reach the level of stability of Microsoft). Dividends are not just uncommon because of decades of punitive tax. They’re going out of style.

However, dividends were designed to provide a useful purpose. Arguably, leaving stockpiles of cash in the hands of a corporation is not an effective distribution of economic power. Arguably, shares held for dividend payments are held longer and the shareholder will take a more active interest in the company. Arguably, encouraging dividend payouts may help to combat short-termism which is harmful to our culture and economy.

Increasing dividend tax without increasing capital gain is just going to punish less-informed or conservative investors (retired people, small business owners) over people making more risky investments. However we all know Goldman Sachs was the top contributor to Obama’s 2008 campaign. Since in a lot of ways, dividend or capital gain is a choice that a company can make in distributing profits, maintaining capital gain rates just ensures companies advised by Goldman can help shareholders avoid the higher tax, while others less fortunate or well-advised cannot.

 

I hate LEED Certification

LEED Certification began in 2000 and has become extremely popular. We now have LEED version 3, featuring, among other things, an extremely restrictive lavatory water faucet “suggestion.” A lot of LEED decisions seem to be only tangentially related to the environment, like restricting cigarette smoking near entrances. But a place like New York Law School is incredibly susceptible to the alluring PR opportunities.

Do you know why I think that LEED certification is a bunch of bullshit?

The biggest environmental waste in NYC lifestyle/culture is eating at restaurants. Think about it (or read about it). We live in tiny group housing, take the subway to work, and live in an area with a massive supply of water, a system that famously leaks at a rate of 36 million gallons a day. Which isn’t worth fixing, frankly. We have tons of water. But Americans abuse our food supply in a way that’s getting increasing amounts of attention. The EPA is even publishing guidelines to encourage restaurants to waste less food. And New York leads the nation in wasting food. Meanwhile California is in a “water crisis.”

Why all this talk of water? Well, water is kind of the point. In New York, food is wasted at an astronomical rate, food that is already at the end of the supply chain, a resource in its fully consumable form. Ironically, California’s water goes towards growing this wasted food: 25% of America’s freshwater goes towards wasted food, and 80% of California’s water goes to agriculture. That means at least some portion of California’s water crisis is caused by food waste, or excessive food production. One of the most environmentally friendly things a New Yorker can do is prepare food at home, and control the amount of food they waste. I happen to make my food at home a lot. This involves a lot of tupperware and other plastic containers. It involves bringing knives and other silverware to school every day. It involves some elaborate reusable water bottles. But, in a school of 2,500 students, I have no place to clean my containers!

Thanks to our illustrious LEED Certification, there is only one (old) tap, out of almost a hundred, that actually produces a full flow of water. Nevermind how unhygenic everyones’ hands are, this is a major deterrent to preparing your own food. Everyone does a cost/benefit analysis, but convenience always wins in New York. The other taps produce a weak, thin series of water dribbles, that requires constant movement to keep activated, thanks to to a requirement by the LEED certification board that only accounts for a 20% reduction in water consumption.

So I have no water to clean my tupperware, because a state 3,000 miles away has overextended its’ water supply. Our city’s environmental problems are not the same as theirs. Of all the inconveniences we should add to our lives, controlling food waste rates a lot higher than unclean hands.

If people weren’t completely asleep at the wheel, there would be tupperware-cleaning station requirements for LEED certification in NYC.

 

Edit: TIL NYLS did not get LEED Certification – they merely complied (i.e., can call themselves “LEED Compliant” – certification is an additional 500,000 dollars of inspections and such, so props to them for forgoing that….

Courtney Stodden has more revolution in her than all of OWS combined

So, this year Courtney Stodden married Doug Hutchinson. And apparently, that’s not very popular. Her name appears on the list of “45 Things We Should Forget About 2011” but not “The Most Powerful Images of 2011.”  And that is fundamentally wrong.

I am being 100% non-facetious here. I’ve been a revolutionary my whole life, and I know quality when I see it. First of all, there’s nothing morally wrong with what she did. In most of the rest of the world, the age of consent is below 16. America has strange puritan roots that have been exacerbated by our reversion to religiosity since the 1950s. We’re an outlier and it is unhealthy. I believe our absurd relationship with sex causes a huge portion of society’s evils, including white collar crime, child abuse, sex trafficking and other social problems that we can’t talk about. People need to stop this love-hate relationship with sex. More importantly, we need to talk openly about this aspect of human existence. Which is where Courtney Stodden comes in. She throws it in your fucking face. She married someone to have sex with him. It’s the ultimate paradox – she took advantage of a marriage law loophole to do something overtly sexual, and all in the name of Jesus Christ Our Lord and Savior, as she proclaims in lisps on every interview. No one can question the Christian validity of her marriage. That’s the hard part – she’s spotless in her execution.

And for that, I think that Courtney Stodden’s marriage deserves acknowledgement as one of the most historically significant events of 2011.

The Summer of Lulz

I support civil disobedience. Civil disobedience is the antidote to Breivik. It lets off the pressure and anxiety that has infected my generation. While studying the First Amendment, I came to realize that the world is safer if angry people express themselves. A large burning cross is a red alert for those who must keep the peace, while importing fertilizers… just means local farm produce.

There are two sides to the movement lead by Lulzsec, recently arrested Mercedes and Topiary, and the thousands of other anonymous activists. On the one hand, there are activists who just want to create havoc, and seem inspired by Fight Club. They are willing to commit minor crimes. For example, they released user information from Sony when they could have made their point without harming the users (who used the same usernames and passwords on other sites, and lost access to email, among other things).  Then there’s the V for Vendetta activists, people who feel isolated in their commitment to ethics and honesty. As so eloquently put by Topiary, voluntary DDoSing should not be considered criminal, because it is the same as sit-ins for physical businesses. We live in an era where there is no central location or public face to our businesses. For these activists, civil disobedience like DDoSing seems like the only way to get their attention.

Half-way around the world, the Russian government has been suppressing their opposition over the last week with the use of – you guessed it – DDoSing. Livejournal is the largest social networking site in Russia, where many political dissidents and purveyors of uncensored ideas are gathering. Time magazine predicts that the DDoSing will continue for the next few months as the election season heats up.

Anarchists talk about the government as a monopoly on force. This is more true in Europe than in America, thanks to the Second Amendment which is still the law in the South West. Our federal government and its lifetime employees are best served by reinforcing this monopoly. HB Gary, a security firm the FBI has hired to try to combat so called “cyber terrorists,” is developing state-sanctioned malware. They’re a private company, but the government has asked them to do what the cyber terrorists do, so it’s legal.  When the federal government becomes involved in criminal law (where they never belonged) be wary of their monopoly on force, which is ever-expanding. It becomes a perfect playground for them to play the paradox to their advantage. They plan to use this particular tool to attack Wikileaks, which presents a threat to the federal government, but not to American citizens.

We are seeing a trend of the protection of the state over the protection of citizens. There are many secrets being kept, and the facebook generation doesn’t believe in secrets. Even outside of our generation, Americans understand that individuals have the right to privacy, but the government certainly does not. By creating these false wars to distract the population, incite fear and limit civil liberties, they can pretend that the exposure of diplomatic cables (of all things) could pose a security risk to citizens. Even 9/11 was not implemented with the use of any secret government information.

I also believe that all this hacking of corporations and governments won’t tell us anything new. Wading through the molasses of bureaucracy may confirm the web of personal allegiances that lead to the distribution of contracts and bail-outs, the head-in-the-sand approach to the torture and interrogation of Iraqis producing pamphlets on corruption (02:35:46 PM on May 23)… but really the government, our overlords, are all trying to look like they are busy, while secretly being really bad at their jobs. There’s not much to uncover and it might be that the V for Vendetta-style protestors are aiming for an empty space.

The underlying problem is that there is a vast, involuntary system of control that has been implemented by people who once were attendees of the Summer of Love, in the name of fear. Their children, a generation brought up on news television full of high-anxiety voices proclaiming the death of this person, the rape of that person, has had enough.  Exposing the sheer lack of danger is perhaps the best antidote. But the FBI and US Attorneys’ Office may have the last laugh, as they ask for longer jail sentences for their most awake, creative and independent citizens than they get for a murderer or a rapist.

So, what created the Summer of Love? An economic recession paired with a baby boom coming of age. And the Summer of Lulz, during another economic recession affecting the echo of that baby boom, forty years later, to reverse what they’ve done to America.

edit to add: This is an extremely valuable resource how to successfully engage in non-violent civil disobedience: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1B2CF32B0727D3EC

second edit: here is an expose of what really happened last summer: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2012/03/06/hacking-group-lulzsec-swept-up-by-law-enforcement/

third edit: This quotation really captures my whole issue with this area of criminal law: “Currently there are three known classes of players who develop malware and spyware: hacktivists, cybercriminals and nation state.” http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18238326

NYLS: NY’s Pariah School of Law

I’ve felt a little irritated by Matasar’s bland responses to the New York Times article. And plus, he’s defending himself, not the school. And I am sick and tired of being New York’s favorite school to criticize. I’m pretty used to being part of a group with a bad public image (hola, libertarians).  So I want to clarify a few things.

1) There are a lot worse schools out there, but they don’t compete in the same market as T1 so T1 doesn’t bother trashing them. We’re criticized because we are in the picture. So let’s start with that: NYLS, in some way, is important to these people – important enough to devote a lot of energy to heckling us.

2) This article did not criticize the school over any other. It used us as an example, but the article maintained that every other school was just like us. The most damning part of the article was the percentage that goes to the universities’ general pot. We don’t have an affiliated university. Which brings me to…

3) Without a large university behind us, we do not have a lot of leverage in the world of journalism. NYLS is just a law school, and our PR department is no doubt much smaller than the one NYU Law shares with the larger university. We are producing one product, a law degree, instead of the whole range of degrees (if you went to Tisch, and NYU Law was continually trashed by the New York Times during your time there, would you give an interview when you are rich and famous? Hell no.) Lawyers don’t get famous, they don’t get to choose their clients, and they are not trained to have subjective opinions, even about newspapers.

4) I was never under any misapprehension about going here. And you know what? “$150,000 in debt [back to this later], three years of drudgery, and the anxiety of passing a bar exam” is not my experience. I have passionately enjoyed every moment, every class, and every person I have met since I matriculated. Bar our graded, mandatory legal writing class which is the bane of every 1L’s existence, it’s hard to imagine a friendlier, happier law school. And all the people from my posh high school, or my posh university, who have toddled off to to their designer T1? They are seething with hatred about their experience. What does that tell you?

5) It is this precise toxic mixture of sour, empty-achievement mainstream professionals, NYLS’s apparent relevance to their lives, and our lack of PR defenses that lead to our ranking of 135. That ranking is based on a poll of what people think of schools. This gives professors, who have a market interest in protecting their version of Tier One, the ability to drop NYLS as low down the ranking as they want.

6) I will grant the media one thing: this is the real scandal here. Yes, law schools are like Ponzi schemes. If you can’t hack it, you lose a huge amount of money with nothing to show for it. But, that’s a risk I relished in coming here. Business school is a orientation session for the country club. Law school is for competitive, driven people. I’m sort of at a loss as to why that’s so bad.

7) You’d be surprised how people manage to skirt the loans issue. From continuing to work in the evenings and on the weekend (even as a full time student), working construction in the summer, ensuring you have a safety net from a spouse or a benevolent parent if things go south, scholarships, and other things, no one is saying this but a lot of people have been able to keep their costs down. Say what you will about NYLS students being blind to reality, a lot of the students here are graduates of the school of hard knocks. What 20-something needs 160,000 a year, even with NYC taxes and rent? It’s a ludicrous figure. Matasar got something right: if you are in law school for the immediate benefits, you have got it all wrong.

8 ) It all comes down to one thing: everyone at NYLS wants to be here. Or at least, they want to be in law school. That’s evident from the massive risks involved. Some of us didn’t get the opportunity to go to a T1 school, but life without legal training just doesn’t make sense. I know that’s the case for me, and I for one am grateful that there is a school out there willing to provide the service.

And PS: Above the Law? Trying to milk our carpenter’s union dispute for further drama was pretty disgusting.

Municipal Governments Need To Fire Individuals

A topic that is making the rounds lately is how each state government is making budget cuts this year. There’s an interesting range of options. Some states have gotten a lot of attention for their attempts to curb public employee unions. New York State’s initial strategy was rather more docile – they offered early retirement packages to state employees. Similar problems occur at the local level.

I believe no state is doing what should be done, which is firing ineffective individuals on the government’s payroll. Three examples of where this is could help:

My mother teaches at Aguilar Library in Spanish Harlem. Aguilar Library is a public library that provides adult literacy classes, books, and internet resources, among other things. For the truly desperate, it is a resource for writing job applications, warming up in the winter or finding some peace and quiet. Libraries are a catch-all safety net for the many New York City residents that fall through the cracks. To cut their budget, Aguilar Library remains over-staffed, but decreased the number of hours that they are open. Visitors wait outside for the library to open, with nowhere else to go. Another example: New York County arraignments no longer fulfill the 24-hour turn around requirement because night court has been eliminated. Violations can lead to people being held for up to three days.

I worked in the New York County Supreme Court last summer. I sat in on meetings that discussed the retirement packages and several people I met that summer took advantage of it in the fall. The program had a target percentage participation that applied to every state agency uniformly. The court employees felt that it was disproportionately harming them. The judge I worked for was a Judicial Hearing Officer. This role was created because of enforced retirement ages for judges, so that judges who remained sharp and effective could continue working. This judge had at least double the case load of other judges. He ran trials and then heard 15 or more conferences in the evening. He didn’t take any bullshit and he had seen it all. He was very efficient. This spring, because the retirement incentive program didn’t attract enough participants, they discontinued the role of Judicial Hearing Officer, thus retiring this remarkable and infamous judge. It’s so much easier to let go a category of people than actual individuals.

The third example happened in New Jersey. The teaching unions prefer a “last-in, first-out” approach. A friend working for the last two years at a public school in New Jersey was let go last fall under this policy. She was energetic, empathetic, and a sophisticated person. No doubt she was more effective than some burnt out old-timer. Yet they enforced the rule without exception. New York is in the midst of its own dispute about this issue. People think it is so socially acceptable that they are willing to protest in public in large numbers in support of this rule. No one thinks of the customer in the public sector.

Whether it’s unions or a sheer lack of cajones, these employee reduction practices have to stop. What unites all of these tragic inefficiencies is that people really do not like to fire individuals. Yet it happens all the time in the private sector. I have noticed leadership in public agencies tend to be gentle people, not wanting to rock the boat, and certainly far too empathetic for their own good. Because leadership doesn’t require the profit motive, it doesn’t exactly attract strong personalities. In the private sector this would lead to the use of outside consultancy firms, to avoid doing it yourself.

But the problem with state bureaucracies is that it’s more than not knowing how to fire someone. Within them, you begin to make excuses for the problems, you bond with your co-workers, and you become like a litter of pigs happily suckling at the teat of the state. Unlike other professional roles, government jobs still remain lifetime careers. And those satisfied with and able to tolerate the inefficiencies of the system remain and reinforce it. In the private sector, management has a primary task of firing ineffective employees. If you asked a government employee with management responsibilities whether he considered firing incompetent employees to be part of his job description, I imagine his answer would be “no.”

The only way to solve this problem is to ban any alternatives. Budget cuts should not be effected by cutting hours, reversing recent hiring decisions on a purely chronological basis, or by eliminating titles. Department heads should be replaced with hardasses. Failing that, go the consultancy route. Interview each employee. Encourage people to report absences. Require that percentage cuts be met with individual names, that cannot be linked by any categorical bias.

I know the economy has not hit bottom yet. I know this because the flood of municipal bankruptcies has not begun. The placebo of the minor cuts that have occurred are causing damage to the quality of the workforce, and are pitiful in comparison to the size of the problem. This post is an entirely hypothetical conversation. Not only is it remote that any local government could be forced into this practice, they will go into bankruptcy before any action would be taken at their usual pace.

Edited to add:

Here’s our friend Justin Amash standing up for what’s right, while we are on the topic:

just voted no on the LaTourette of OH Amendment to H R 2055, Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations. The amendment strips the underlying bill’s block of an executive order that encourages agencies to use project labor agreements. PLAs typically are union agreements that drive up the price of government contracts and discriminate against nonunion work. It passed 204-203.