One of the many, many reasons to hope the unusually silly GOP primary season stretches on and on is that eventually we get to New York (April 24). Maybe all the way to California (June 5). What if California actually matters? If Newt and Santorum are still hanging on, how are they going to pander shamelessly to California voters?

I’ve gotta think Rick Santorum’s latest line is not going to play, without adjustment, in New York or Los Angeles: “Because you don’t live in New York City. You don’t live in Los Angeles. You live like most Americans in between those two cities, and you know the values you believe in.”

What will the pivot be? And remember: one week before California’s 172 delegates go up for grabs the candidates have to be banging for all they’re worth about how awesome Texas is (152 delegates).

It’s not at all surprising that most US media have yawned at today's news that a UN rapporteur has found that the US has treated Bradley Manning in a cruel and inhuman fashion. But it does highlight a rather interesting inequity.

On the one side of the balance sheet, we have Richard B. Cheney. This gentleman, now in private life, is a self-admitted and unrepentant perpetrator of war crimes – specifically, of ordering the torture of Al Qaeda detainees. Along with other senior members of the Bush regime, he is also guilty of the outsourcing of even viler forms of torture through the extraordinary rendition of individuals to regimes notorious for torturing prisoners (including the dispatch of Maher Arar, who was entirely innocent, to the torturers of Syria). The Obama administration has shown no enthusiasm whatsoever for prosecuting Cheney, or other Bush senior officials, for their crimes. While Obama has effectively admitted that they were torturers, he has indicated, both through public statements and continued inaction, that he would prefer to let bygones be bygones.

On the other, we have Bradley Manning. He appears to be a confused individual – but his initial motivation for leaking information, if the transcripts are correct, were perfectly clear. He was appalled at what he saw as major abuses of authority by the US, including incidents that he witnessed directly in Iraq. There is no evidence that his leaking of information has caused anything worse than embarrassment for the US. Yet he is being pursued by the Obama administration with the vengefulness of Greek Furies. While Manning was being kept in solitary confinement, and treated in an inhuman fashion, Richard Cheney was enjoying the manifold pleasures of a well-compensated private life, being subjected to no more than the occasional impertinent question on a Sunday talk show, and the inconveniences of being unable to travel to jurisdictions where he might be arrested.

It would appear then that the administration is rather more prepared to let bygones be bygones in some cases than in others. High officials, who ordered that torture be carried out and dragged the US into international disrepute, are given an _ex post_ carte blanche for their crimes, while a low-ranking soldier who is at most guilty of leaking minor secrets at the lowest levels of classification, is treated inhumanely and likely, should he be convicted, to face life imprisonment.

So here’s my proposal. It’s perfectly clear that Richard B. Cheney will never be prosecuted because a prosecution would be politically inconvenient. If that’s the Obama administration’s decision (and it’s pretty clear that it _is_ the Obama administration’s decision), then the administration should own it. The president should grant Richard Cheney a pardon for his crimes. Simultaneously, as an acknowledgement that the high crimes of state officials should not go unpunished while the lesser crimes of those who opposed the Iraq war are exposed to the vengefulness of the military tribunal system, Bradley Manning should receive a complete pardon too.

I can’t imagine that Richard B. Cheney would _like_ getting a presidential pardon. Indeed, I rather imagine that he’d vigorously protest it. It would serve as the best formal acknowledgment that we’re likely to get that he is, indeed, a criminal. Obviously, it would also be an unhappy compromise for those who think that he should be exposed to the full rigors of the law. But I personally think that it would be an acceptable compromise (others may reasonably disagree), if it were applied to both sides rather than just one.

The bad news – the Michigan state legislature passed the bill denying RAs recognition as public workers, on a party-line vote, and it is heading to the governor, who has announced he will approve it. The legislation has been hustled through incredibly quickly, to prevent the opposition from mobilizing. The interesting news – this, together with other similar of the Republican state government, is pushing Michigan unions into looking for a referendum on organization rights.

bq. Michigan unions are fighting back with a sweeping proposal that would enshrine collective bargaining rights in the state constitution and put them beyond the reach of state lawmakers. The measure would serve as a pre-emptive strike against a possible right-to-work movement in Michigan, and potentially could undo some of what the state Legislature has done in the past 14 months related to unions and bargaining powers. It also could serve as a get-out-the-vote rallying point for Democrats as they seek to re-elect President Barack Obama this fall.

bq. … Union members and other supporters would need to collect at least 322,609 valid voter signatures by early July to put the proposed constitutional amendment before Michigan voters in November. The measure reads that “no existing or future law of the state … shall abridge, impair or limit” the collective bargaining rights outlined in the proposal. That could nullify possible Michigan efforts to pass a right-to-work law, which would prohibit labor contracts that require workers to pay union representation fees. Michigan Republicans are divided on the issue, but debate has intensified since Indiana recently became the first Rust Belt state to adopt such a measure.

I have no expertise _at all_ in Michigan state politics, but this seems a hopeful step. Rick Kahlenberg has a recent op-ed and a new book (PDF of first chapter) arguing that the right to unionize ought to be included in the Civil Rights Act. That’s a long term project, but state-level efforts like the one starting in Michigan might help it along a bit (it would be nice to see Scott Walker go down too while we’re at it).

In the long tradition of tenants trashing the gaff as they’re finally evicted, ICANN’s outgoing CEO seems determined to burn down the house he’s been renting for the past three years. ICANN’s Costa Rica meeting was addressed this morning by Rod Beckstrom, who’s in his last couple of months on the job. In an effort to salvage his tattered reputation, Beckstrom seems to be following his standard m.o. of shifting attention to the suddenly glaring failings of the organization that’s decided to terminate his employment.

(Avid readers may remember my intervention at an ICANN meeting in San Francisco a year ago on the lasting damage Beckstrom has done to ICANN’s international reputation and staff. Soon after, the Board of Directors decided not to renew Beckstrom’s contract, and launched a search process that will culminate next month in the announcement of a new CEO.)
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Since it’s starting to filter into debate, it’s probably time that the paper that John Quiggin and I have written on Keynesianism in the Great Recession be released into the wild. It’s currently under journal review, but still has some holes (we figured it was at the stage where it would be helpful to have reviewers point out what we needed to do rather than try to model their likely responses internally). So, it’s here for downloading – and criticisms, comments and suggestions for improvements will be gratefully received. NB that both John and I have participated in this debate – but we have tried, as best as we can, to look at what happened not from the perspective of whether the people who were winning at any one point in time _deserved_ to win or not according to our subjective criteria, but instead, whether there are general explanations (independent of the quality of the arguments on the one side or the other) for the influence of different arguments at different times. In short, we’ve tried to write a paper about what happened, and why, rather than what should have happened. NB also, that we are aware of some holes (e.g. the fit between some of the theory, and the practical application is not as tight as we would like), and would love to hear suggestions for improvements.

Update: It would be particularly interesting to hear from people with strong, divergent perspectives, so as to make sure that the piece reflects as much information and as many points of view as possible. People should also feel free to email me at keynespaper@henryfarrell.net if they would prefer to make criticisms or suggestions privately rather than in public.

David Graeber’s three social principles – hierarchy, exchange and communism – are useful devices to think about the world, particularly when you become sensitized to the way in which one can turn into or mask another. One site of human interaction that may be illuminated by Graeber’s principles is the modern university: perhaps especially the British version which has evolved from nominally democratic modes of governance to extremely hierarchical ones within a generation.
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Will Wilkinson makes what seem to me very astute comments about the Cato Institute’s partisan profile. The occasion is the ongoing Koch-Crane conflict. But these comments are important more for the way they point up typical deflections that occur when the light of ‘ideal’ theory is refracted through the lens of partisan desire, playing tricks on our view of the landscape of actual politics.

It’s tempting to think that Cato almost never does anything to help the Democrats largely because it’s just too far to the left of the Democratic Party on foreign policy and civil liberties. Yet Cato is equally far to the “right” of the Republican Party on economic policy, welfare policy, education policy, and lots more. Social Security privatization is a forced savings program. School vouchers and/or education tax credits are taxpayer-funded education. Lower income-tax rates concede the income tax. Again and again Cato finds a way to settle on non-ideal, “second-best” economic, welfare, and education policies, and argue for them in away that provides “ammo” to the right. But it very rarely develops compromising second-best policies on foreign policy or civil liberties that would be of any practical use to dovish or civil-libertarian Democrats. Why not? Why was coming out in favor of gay marriage more controversial at Cato (the state shouldn’t be involved in marriage at all!) than coming out in favor of school vouchers (the state shouldn’t be involved in education at all!)? Why not a bigger institutional push for medical marijuana as a second-best, nose-under-the-tent alternative to outright legalization? The fact is that Cato has so deeply internalized the ethos of the venerable right-fusionist alliance that there is almost no hope of it functioning on the whole in a truly non-partisan way. I think its status-quo reputation reflects that.

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Larry Lessig argues (disagreeing with Rick Hasen) that there’s nothing wrong with the anonymity of the people behind the _Americans Elect_ non-partisan third-party initiative.

bq. I’ve come around to support Americans Elect now, but only because I believe it could be a platform for a real reform candidate. If it doesn’t produce such a candidate, I won’t support supporting the candidate it produces. But in this spin, I have never been too worked up about “their transparency problem.” …When we hear that an anonymous contributor has given $10 million to a superPac supporting a particular candidate, we are and should be concerned about that contribution. But that’s because of two distinct, and independent reasons: We assume that even though we don’t know who the contributor is, the candidate will, AND We assume that the contributor’s contribution will lead the candidate to be responsive in ways that we won’t understand. If those two conditions are not met, however, our concern about anonymity should be different, and, in my view, much less significant. … What could the contributor be getting if the candidate couldn’t know who the contributor was? … If there is no plausible way in which the contributions would affect the work or the positions of the candidate, the cost of anonymity is different. … This second point is why I don’t think #AmericansElect has a “transparency problem.” I can’t begin to imagine how the identity of the contributors could possibly matter to the positions that any candidate would take on any of the issues. AE is building a platform to select candidates. They are promising a process to get access to the ballot in all fifty states. Whether a candidate is selected to be on that ballot depends upon his or her winning in the primary/caucus process. A candidate’s alignment with or against the substantive issues of one of the anonymous contributors isn’t going to affect that candidate’s ability to get nominated by AE at all.

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Around 1996, when I had my first paid job in Leuven, and we were all still paying and being paid in francs, guldens, pesetas or deutschmark, I bought this wonderful piece of art from an emerging artist (she may actually still have been a student of art). As the picture shows, her name was Elke, and that’s all I remember, apart from the price (1.000 Belgian francs, which nowadays would be 25 Euros plus inflation). And I also recall that Elke was delighted that I bought her work. Elke, I hope you have made many more of these pieces of art, and that you allow me to reproduce this one here to celebrate International Women’s Day!

NB that there are two differences between this post and my last one. First – there are substantial spoilers beneath the fold. Second, Stross’s book (Powells, Amazon)is a _very_ plausible Hugo nominee for this year (MacLeod’s book isn’t, for the obvious reasons of publication dates etc). Hugo nominations close this week – I’ll try to cover another couple of books that I think could be nominated tomorrow.

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Somewhat later than promised, I was motivated to write my follow-up post to the Greece choose-your-own adventure one. If you recall, the decisions in that post were motivated by advice from “Maynard”, your advisor working for “The One World Government”. In actual fact, there isn’t a One World Government, and the people who have jobs similar to Maynard’s all work for a variety of international organizations which are tasked with doing a job similar to what a global government would do, but without any power to make anyone do anything. Alan Beattie of the FT (full disclosure – a mate, we were at the Bank of England together) has spent the last fifteen or so years covering these international institutions and has now written a book called “Who’s In Charge Here?” (Americans), which in a typically punchy and exasperated style, sets out the complete mess which is the state of global financial institutions today. I will now review that book in the “London Review of Books style” – ie, by writing an essay on a tangential subject of interest to myself, and then tacking on a paragraph or so about the book at the end.
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Julian Sanchez has a post up complaining about all us horrible lefties who are deriving great enjoyment from the fact that, in the Koch/Cato bunfight, shills for the rights of private property are being stiffed by those same private property rights. Corey Robin has a pretty good reply, so go read Corey.

Sanchez:

bq. when it comes to the ongoing Koch/Cato conflict, there’s a bafflingly widespread round of herp-derpery rippling through blogs on the left and the right, wherein people imagine it’s clever to point out the supposed irony of libertarian scholars failing to enthusiastically embrace a couple billionaires’ putative property rights over the institution. This is just strange. …I’m not arguing that Congress should intervene somehow. I’m arguing that exercising those rights as they seemingly intend to is a bad idea; that their direct control would, in itself, be damaging to Cato’s credibility; and that I’m not interested in working for the Republican talking-point factory that all evidence suggests they envision. Like rain on your wedding day and other infamous Alanisisms, that’s kind of crappy, but not “ironic” in any recognizable sense. I realize progressives think libertarianism is just code for uncritical worship of rich people, but as that’s not actually the case, the only irony here is that people think they’re scoring some kind of gotcha point when they’re actually exposing the silliness of their own caricature.

Well of course Sanchez is correct. Libertarians are as free as anyone else to criticize people for the way they exercise their rights, they just don’t think the state should coerce people to act in various ways. They can deplore Scrooge like selfishness just as sincerely as any leftie, they just think it would be wrong of the state to force Scrooge to be be nice to the poor. So it goes.

No doubt there are some soft and cuddly propertarians out there who insist on the rights to private property (and hence oppose enforceable positive duties) but who privately devote their time, money and other resources to helping the global (and local) poor. To those libertarians, I apologise in advance. However, to those libertarians who have spent ink and energy arguing that not only would it be _wrong_ to force to rich to help the poor but also that it would be _pointless_ or _counterproductive_ I do not. And then there are those libertarians who don’t even both with _pointless_ or _counterproductive_ but who argue that the strong helping the weak is just _wrong_, namely the Randians. So, pure-in-spirit rights-defenders (of whom Julian Sanchez may be one): just take it on the chin for now and spend some time arguing with the wealthy that, whilst they have a perfect right to spend their money funding Cato (or Heritage, or the AEI) they really could make better use of their rights by sending their cash to the sub-Saharan poor or similar. (See also, this very old post of mine ).

This is less a review of Ken MacLeod’s new novel, _Intrusion_ than a response to it. Ken is famous for having said that history is the trade secret of science fiction (also: for describing the Singularity as the “Rapture for nerds”) – but I can’t help wondering whether history is being overtaken by the cognitive and social sciences. Since Cosma Shalizi and I are both thinking and starting to write about some of the arguments that Ken takes on in his book, I’ll focus on drawing out the ideas. This is obviously dangerous if you do it naively – good novels of ideas play with their subject matter rather than expound it, and take care to leave a lot of space for ambiguity, counter-perspectives, the awkwardness of real human beings with human motivations and so on. And _Intrusion_ is a good novel of ideas. Even so, there may be value in drawing out the ideas that Ken is engaging with – I don’t think that the book mentions the names of Thaler and Sunstein once, but one significant skein of the book argues against them. NB that while I don’t _think_ that there are any major spoilers below the fold, some possible readers may reasonably want to preserve their reading experience from my conceptions and misconceptions of what the book is about. Certainly, people who have already read the book will get a lot more from this essay than people who haven’t. NB also that while I don’t know whether the book will have a US edition anytime soon, it can be ordered from the usual UK sources by US readers, who will also soon be treated to his robots-meet-Calvinism-and-contractarianism-and-the-illusion-of-free-will near future thriller, _The Night Sessions._

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