Men society esteems as great or as leaders seem incapable of maintaining fidelity to their wives. Thanks to Katie Dunne for sharing this article on FDR's sexual exploits entitled, "The Women the President Loved":

The charming, pretty Lucy was employed by Eleanor Roosevelt as her social secretary in 1913. Five years later, a stricken Eleanor discovered a bundle of love letters from Lucy to her husband—at which point, Eleanor wrote, "the bottom dropped out of my particular world." She offered Franklin a divorce, but his mother threatened to disinherit him, and his political adviser cautioned that accepting it would destroy his chances of becoming president. FDR returned to his wife, promising that he would never again share the marital bed—or see his lover, who married a man 29 years her senior.

Other adulterous historical figures of purported greatness include: Any Kennedy Man, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Bill Clinton, Nelson Rockefeller, Michael Jordan, Frank Gifford, Eddie Murphy, Mike Bowers, François Mitterrand, Eliot Spitzer, etc. I encourage you all to add to this list.

How would society judge a powerful woman if she were to cheat on her husband? Does adultery say something about a person's overall character that would be a legitimate assessment of their ability to be a leader? Why does society seem to give these men a free moral pass? Can anyone famous resist the waves of people who want to have sex with them or are the temptations simply too many and too great for anyone? Is there a nexus between the ego necessary to achieve a position of power and the likelihood of adultery, in other words, perhaps it is the nature of people who become famous rather than the affect the position has on their morality? Why do these men get married at all if they wish to spread their seed across the continents like cream cheese on a bagel?

Some men want everything. Springsteen once sang, "Poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be king and a king ain't satisfied till he rules everything." Men who have the egos necessary to reach levels of public power tend to be like modern Genghis Khans, simply wishing to conquer as much territory as possible, including as many women as possible. It is awful and sad and disgusting. FDR's story made me particularly sad because of Eleanor's pain, which is easy to feel even today. Why couldn't he feel it? Why are some men never satisfied?

P.S. Side note about adultery laws in the U.S.:

Is a single person in an adulterous relationship guilty of adultery? All but seven states punish both people involved. Colorado, Georgia, Nebraska, North Dakota, and Utah only punish the married person. In the District of Columbia and in Michigan, when a married man sleeps with an unmarried woman, only the man is guilty, but when a married woman sleeps with an unmarried man, they're both guilty. Most laws make no exceptions for couples who are separated or in the process of obtaining a divorce. Punishments also vary. Adultery is a felony in Massachusetts, Michigan, Oklahoma, and Idaho, and a misdemeanor everywhere else.

In practice, adultery laws matter little: Only one case--against an Alabama man--has been prosecuted in the last five years. Most states have not enforced their adultery laws since World War II.

Labels: adultery, Billy Joe Mills, greatness

In much the way that Charlie Murphy was awed by the aura of Rick James, so too the electorate has seen an angelic aura surrounding Obama . . . at least until recently. I have predicted for many weeks, but neglected to publicly post, that no politician can endure a competitive presidential election with their luster and aura in tact. I no longer consider that to be a prediction but rather a description of Obama's present reality.

Mini-scandals have compounded and eroded the mystery of Obama. Reverend Wright converted Obama from a person of ambiguous race to a full-fledged African American, which has harmed him with the less progressive elements of moderate voters, especially white moderates. The God and Guns bitter comment converted Obama from an optimistic unifier to an elitist liberal who looks down on the lives of middle America. Ties to Rezko have eroded him too. To be clear, these are the perceptions of the voters, not my own feelings. I think that both sentiments have logical difficulties but in politics logic is rarely vital.

Even Brian, the once faithful servant and worshiper, wrote to me, "Both candidates are over-hyped. Obama is over-hyped b/c people think his above-average qualities (good speaker, etc.) are more important than they are." Brian also admitted that just as he views McCain as a "normal politician," so too he views Obama in the same light.

McCain has lost it too. In 2000 he created the template for Obama's current campaign, but in the eight intervening years he lost his luster from the cruel barrage of speculation and accusation that stabs at every public figure. All great politicians were during their time just another normal politician. George Washington's military and political abilities were constantly assaulted. John Adams was viciously hated and attacked by Hamilton, Jefferson and others. Controversy swarmed Jefferson during his presidency. Lincoln endured lies and personal attacks.

If Iraq stabilizes and Middle Eastern democracy flourishes, it's possible that even Bush will be viewed favorably in the future. It's possible that McCain and Obama will be viewed with luster and glow in the future, but it is impossible for them to be viewed as such now. This impossibility is sad in some sense, we all yearn for a politician capable of fundamentally changing politics. Someone honorable and brilliant and moderate in the right ways and progressive in the right ways and conservative in the remaining ways. Perhaps that person exists, but lacks the political fortitude and pragmatism to survive the political tournament. It is only once our immediate passions have been tempered by the steady logic borne from the passage of time that we view a politician as a Statesman and a Great.

Labels: Barack Obama, Billy Joe Mills, presidency

A long standing finding in economics is the Easterlin Paradox, which is that there is no correlation between happiness and money above a certain base level. Easterlin found that once humans, no matter their country, reach a certain level of income (I believe it was $15,000), their level of happiness stagnates. New research by Justin Wolfers attempts to hack down the Easterlin Paradox. Wolfers claims that greater wealth does in fact make people happier. This research gets at the old question of whether money can buy happiness. It is interesting to think of happiness as a commodity and as the production and consumption of happiness rising with a country's wealth in the same manner as cars or computers.

Wolfers has done four great posts summarizing his research on the Freakonomics Blog. Actually, the first post on that link is actually one by Arthur Brooks who claims that conservatives are happier than liberals. It is possible that one contribution to this phenomenon is that some American liberals seem to hold guilt about their privileged position in life. Furthermore, religious beliefs and church communities tend to make people happier and conservatives are more likely to be religiously active.

Labels: Billy Joe Mills, economics

The New York Times published an article entitled Inmate Count in U.S. Dwarfs Other Nations’. Author Adam Liptak wrote:

The United States has less than 5 percent of the world’s population. But it has almost a quarter of the world’s prisoners. Indeed, the United States leads the world in producing prisoners, a reflection of a relatively recent and now entirely distinctive American approach to crime and punishment. Americans are locked up for crimes — from writing bad checks to using drugs — that would rarely produce prison sentences in other countries. And in particular they are kept incarcerated far longer than prisoners in other nations.

First, I think it's a fallacy to believe that the trend of an increasing prison population will continue. It's on an unsustainable, financially and politically, path. Second, America ought to reconsider its broad philosophy of incarceration. Morally and financially it makes more sense to rehabilitate than it does to punish in the hopes of sating some schadenfreude or of some ethereal notion of retributive justice. I am a pragmatist and a utilitarian. What makes the most sense though is fixing what might be the biggest problem in the United States and the root of many evils: poor rural and urban education systems. I'm too busy to find the data, but there is a high correlation between lack of financial prospects because of lack of education and likelihood of imprisonment.

We have a higher rate than Russia: 751/1000 vs. 627/1000. However, I have to wonder how much of our higher incarceration rates are attributable to us being unduly harsh and how much is attributable to our superior law enforcement abilities? We also have a higher financial capacity to imprison lots of people. In other words, perhaps other countries would be imprisoning more people if they had the resources to do so.

The U.S. dominates in many arenas, but in this one we would be wise to be humble and look for solutions from overseas.

Labels: Billy Joe Mills, law, prison

Peter Orszag, the director of the Congressional Budget Office, spoke at the University yesterday. He has been uniquely aggressive, compared with past heads of the CBO, in promoting the notion that the federal budget is on an unsustainable path and that our core fiscal problem is the rising costs of health care, not any of the issues that get more media attention like Social Security or home mortgages or Iraq. Here is a choice excerpt and graph from the CBO's Long-Term Budget Outlook:

Significant uncertainty surrounds long-term fiscal projections, but under any plausible scenario, the federal budget is on an unsustainable path—that is, federal debt will grow much faster than the economy over the long run. In the absence of significant changes in policy, rising costs for health care and the aging of the U.S. population will cause federal spending to grow rapidly. If federal revenues as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) remain at their current level, that rise in spending will eventually cause future budget deficits to become unsustainable. To prevent deficits from growing to levels that could impose substantial costs on the economy, revenues must rise as a share of GDP, or projected spending must fall—or some combination of the two outcomes must be achieved . . . The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that under current law, federal spending on Medicare and Medicaid measured as a share of GDP will rise from 4 percent today to 12 percent in 2050 and 19 percent in 2082—which, as a share of the economy, is roughly equivalent to the total amount that the federal government spends today. The bulk of that projected increase in health spending reflects higher costs per beneficiary rather than an increase in the number of beneficiaries associated with an aging population.

The graph below represents the long-term budget forecast under two different scenarios:

Thanks to Professor Richard Kaplan for pointing me to this data, for those who do not know him, he is one of the most brilliant, devoted and knowledgeable professors at the University of Illinois, or anywhere for that matter.

Labels: Billy Joe Mills, economics

Facebook has a new feature called Lexicon that "counts occurrences of words and phrases on Walls over time." It might be a good tool for judging my generation. Obviously there are statistical problems with it, but it's fun to play around with nonetheless (for instance, people are probably less apt to talk about sex on a public message board than they would be in a private setting). I'm pretty sure that it was just recently launched, but there's already the Unofficial Facebook Lexicon Blog. Google has a tool similar to Lexicon called Zeitgeist. Below are some interesting searches that I ran.

Clinton vs. Obama - Obama has significantly greater numbers, probably because of his relative popularity with youth. But notice what should be of concern to Obama supporters, activity for both Obama and Clinton has dropped to nearly match pre-primary levels. Interest is waning and fatigue is numbing the short attentions of youth. The graph of McCain vs. Obama looks similar.

Sex vs. Book - Surprisingly, "book" gets more mention than "sex." However, sex ties in sex vs. books.


Love vs. Hate - Love dominates hate. Notice the spike in love near Christmas and Valentine's Day. Also notice the slight recession of hate near Christmas.


American Idol vs. President - Mentions of "President" shockingly outperforms American Idol. Obama beats out Idol as well. McCain ties.

Labels: Billy Joe Mills, Facebook, generations

Urbanagora has learned from a credible source that Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich is a closet Dallas Cowboys fan. Even though he occasionally bets on the Bears, Blagojevich has been known to require interns, even those from Chicago, to clip news clippings about the Dallas Cowboys.

Our source reveals:

When I interned for Blagojevich, in addition to clipping quotes about Chicago and Illinois politics, I was told to pull everything I could find about the Dallas Cowboys. On days I only found stories on current Chicago and Illinois events, I was told to look for Cowboys stories, but I was never asked for news about the Chicago Bears.

How can the people of Illinois, and particularly the citizens of Chicago, home of Da Bears, possibly support a Governor who loves the Dallas Cowboys? The Cowboys are the team you root for when you don't have any pride or loyalty to your home city, so instead you opt for supporting "America's Team."

Curiously, here is a Cowboys fan forum talking about Blago's ties with Rezko.

This may be the most compelling reason yet for a recall.

Labels: Billy Joe Mills, Blagojevich, Chicago, sports

There are many government agency that produce an incredible wealth of objective data, unfiltered by the mainstream media. The BLS, the GAO, and the CBO are probably my favorites. A great place to begin any inquiry into the caverns of government data is FedStats.

Anyways, here is a recent report on the subprime mortgage situation.



As a side note, the director of the CBO is coming to campus on April 22nd.

Labels: Billy Joe Mills, economics

It is often thought that the best political strategy is to "tell people what they want to hear." Essentially, you should lie to voters in order to get elected, because it is pragmatic and necessary in the dirty political game. While I agree that in the short-run the best political and social (maintaining and accumulating friendships) strategy is lying and manipulating and catering to desires, over a long-run game composed of multiple iterations it is self-destructive and a poor game strategy. In the short-run, Spitzer, Blagojevich, the Clintons, George Ryan, Enron Executives and countless others, perform well, but in the long-run their strategy causes their demise. Abraham Lincoln once said, "If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem."

The problem for the American voters is the pernicious cycle of short-run manipulation artists being replaced by short-run manipulation artists. Short-run manipulation artists are more likely to be elected in the short-run game than long-run truth tellers, which is the source of this pernicious cycle and the lack of long-run truth tellers in the political world.

The good news is that the advent of the Internet and the quick flow of information minimizes the career duration of the short-run manipulators. Short-run manipulators are successful in the short-run because the public has not yet learned that they liars. Consider that the University of Illinois awarded Eliot Spitzer the Ethics in Government Award in 2004. Objectively, we do not yet know whether Barack Obama is a short-run manipulator or a long-run truth teller, there is evidence for both opinions. I personally feel there is great room for skepticism of Obama's genuine character, especially given that his chief economic adviser told the Canadians that Obama was lying to voters about wishing to renegotiate terms of NAFTA.

Where does this leave us? The best political and social strategy is long-run truth telling. While a long-run truth teller may have difficulty in the first iteration of his political or social game, he will dominate those scenes in the long-run by the accumulated force of his credibility among friends and voters. I have not always been honest with friends, but I hope that I have changed with age and that if I ever enter the political arena that it will be as a devout pragmatic idealist through the avenue of long-run truth telling.


Relatedly, here is a Daily Illini column that I wrote back in August of 2006:

The Speech of the Unknown Statesman

The political season will soon bring waves of political speeches. They will nearly all be fraudulent, disingenuous and overflowing with lies. Of all the national politicians, I can only say with confidence that I have full faith in two of them: Senators John McCain and Russ Feingold. That is disgusting.

How refreshing would it be if a candidate didn't treat voters as idiots to be duped into electing a Potemkin politician? Here is what I believe would be at the core of a speech from an honest and sincere politician. I beg for his future existence:

"The American Revolution is not complete. The War, the Declaration and the Constitution formally took back power from the elite and returned it to its rightful owner: you. But informally and covertly, that power has been maintained and centralized.

Every year politicians get up here and make the same drab, sterile partisan speeches. They tell you that they're from the middle class when their parents attended Harvard. They speak to you with rehearsed integrity and calculated honesty. They have the cold ability to stare into your eyes and lie to you. They tell you to trust them.

I tell you the opposite.

Do not trust me. Force me to earn your trust. Investigate, debate and dig into my life and my beliefs. I am going to stand on this stage for a long time and allow you to ask whatever questions you'd like, free from censorship. I know, I know, my political advisors are about to kill themselves right now. They warned me not to make this speech, they told me to abide by the conventional wisdom. But I don't want to just win this election; I want to change the entire political game.

During my campaign, even if my radical tactics result in a loss, I would like to reinvigorate the idea that politicians are supposed to serve. They are supposed to rise above the overwhelming and innate desires of greed. Can we not find in this country of 300 million just 100 honest and good people to fill the Senate? I meet good people everyday, so why are they not in the Senate? Precisely because they are good people and tend to be too honest to win elections. They lack pragmatism.

I am going to edit that rule of the game. I am going to make the pragmatic political step the one of integrity. I can only do this with your help, with your spirit. Along with me, I would like for you to all demand, not hope for, honesty and integrity from your officials. Then we will have accomplished the pragmatic task of aligning the interest of the candidate in getting elected with the interest of the voters in electing a genuine person.

Ironically, the Internet and blogs have made the completion of our distant Revolution possible. Jefferson, Hamilton, Madison, Paine, Henry and many others had visions of American freedom. Let's jointly reincarnate the spirit of the Revolution and enact their vision of genuine liberty."

Labels: Billy Joe Mills

Earlier today I participated in a debate on constitutional interpretation at my law school. What seems like long ago now, my friend Josh Rohrscheib and I once debated jurisprudence in the Daily Illini. In that article, I adopted the Ira Carmen position of essentially converting the judge's role into that of a functional social scientist. Our own Lawrence Solum has a great description of Originalism, with a good summary of where the academic literature currently stands on it. I am going to invite the other three participants in the debate to contribute their thoughts to this post (Ken Logsdon, Jake Briskman, and Omar Jafri). Logsdon presented the pro-Originalist position, while I presented the rebuttal to Living Constitutionalism, which I have pasted below. I cannot defend Originalism, because I do not genuinely adhere to it, but I can attack the moral aristocracy created by Living Constitutionalism, which is what I do in the polemic that I delivered:

The problem with Living Constitutionalism isn't so much with its fair and moderate reading of the Constitution, it is more so with its admittedly rare tendency to produce results which do not comport with the evolving standards of the community. This debate largely comes down less to that of interpretation and more to that of how we view the role of the judiciary in our democratic structure of governance. Living Constitutionalism is useless at its best and vile at its worst. It's useless because mechanisms exist to channel and convert the evolving sentiments of the public into law. It's vile because of the license it grants to a few justices to undermine democratic legitimacy by determining the scope of rights and of federalism. In 1987, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall delivered a lecture, "The Constitution: A Living Document," in which he argued that the Constitution must be interpreted in light of the moral, political, and cultural standards of the epoch, which is essentially what is argued for here today. The question though is who gets to be the barometer of the contemporary moral, political and cultural standards? Our opponents propose that barometer be the justices in some cases, rather than the people themselves as expressed through their legislators. It's a curious concept that a justice would be able to better divine the moral and political attitudes of an electorate than the statesmen elected to gauge that very subject. Rights are something we all enjoy that are so fundamental to who we are as a society that we have decided to remove them from the table of debate and to not allow democratic consideration of them. So I can see three basic mechanisms by which a citizenry can express its preferences for expanding into new avenues of constitutional rights and the balance of federalism: 1) What Ken has laid out through the PI Clause, which would maintain democratic legitimacy, 2) The usual legislative process, which is equipped with great fact finding tools that the judiciary is not equipped with, and 3) the Amendment process. Liberals should fear living constitutionalism as well.

Just as liberals like Hugo Black and Yale's Akhil Amar can be Originalists, so too can conservatives forge new rights under the mask of living constitutionalism. When justices begin pulling rights down from the fleecy golden Platonic clouds (paraphrasing Carmen), it makes it possible for rights to collide. These Platonic pipelines to the ethereal truth begin running into each other. Suppose that you have Justice Alito come along and say I think that moral philosophy and my gauge of the evolving standards of the community tell me that all potential fathers should have an equal say in the abortion decision. 50/50. Suddenly we have contradictory positions based upon the same jurisprudence, and so rather than trying to persuade us to adopt living constitutionalism, you should be doing the opposite, you should be urging us to stick with Originalism, you don't want us having that kind of power, trust me...just as we don't want you having that kind of power either. It's all well and good when living constitutionalism is employed by someone on your side, but it becomes pernicious and poisonous when someone who does not agree with you begins to employ it, which of course, under your framework, they would be free to do. Just think of Scalia's smirking glee.

Rehnquist's Living Constitutionalism article in the Harvard Law Review quotes Lincoln eloquently summarizing the frustrations of the electorate after Dred Scott, "[T]he candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the government, upon vital questions affecting the whole people, is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made, in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions, the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal." The harm that CJ Taney inflicted upon the court's reputation and judicial legitimacy took about a generation to repair, according to Rehnquist. Judicial decisions which usurp the democratic function have the effect of generally lowering the credibility of all subsequent Court decisions, after all, credibility is the force of the judiciary.

Probably the best analogy to Roe is Lochner. The right to contract is analogous to the right to privacy. The Social Darwinism and economic libertarianism of the day was thought by the justices to be the prevailing and evolving standard of the community. In his famous dissent, Holmes said, "The Fourteenth Amendment does not enact Mr. Herbert Spencer's Social Statics. Some of these laws embody convictions or prejudices which judges are likely to share. Some may not. A constitution is not intended to embody a particular economic theory, whether of paternalism and the organic relation of the citizen to the state or of laissez faire. It is made for people of fundamentally differing views, and the accident of our finding certain opinions natural and familiar or novel and even shocking ought not to conclude our judgment upon the question whether statutes embodying them conflict with the Constitution of the United States. I think that the word liberty in the Fourteenth Amendment is perverted when it is held to prevent the natural outcome of a dominant opinion, unless it can be said that a rational and fair man necessarily would admit that the statute proposed would infringe fundamental principles as they have been understood by the traditions of our people and our law." Lochner was an awful decision and a prime example of living constitutionalism employed by people liberals would disdain: economic libertarians. Holmes was saying that the Constitution defines the rules the game, the peculiar political philosophies of abortion or economics or biology are questions that ought only be answered by the legislatures. The Constitution does not purport and cannot sufficiently answer those political questions even when divined and decoded by the most eminent Platonic philosophers. Many living constitutionalists wish to disown Roe by labeling it as living constitutionalism misapplied or misunderstood, many pro-choicers admit that it is a bad decision. But you cannot disown Roe, without disowning living constitutionalism, you have to accept the good with the bad. When you grant that broad sweep of authority you fling open the flood gates to poorly wrought decisions.

Looking forward to inevitable Constitutional issues...biology and politics. The state should be able to stop a woman from giving birth to a zebra in the future, or to stop super human children from being born, which will absolutely be possible in our lifetime, ehh I'm not sure about the zebra, but the Einstein+Michael Jordan child is reasonable. It is a small constitutional step from Roe to a future justice saying, "A woman has the right of privacy to do what she wants with her body regarding biological manipulations of a fetus." Of course, such engineering would have enormous effects on society at large and would not just affect the woman and her privacy. When you expand the breath of rights guaranteed us you risk building a foundation for future rights that may disquiet and discomfort you.

This is not to say that Originalists cannot disagree. During "the court's 2003-2004 term, Scalia and Thomas voted together in only 73 percent of cases, and six other pairs of justices agreed with each other more often than Thomas and Scalia did." The key however is that is narrows the band of discretion allowed a justice, which if you view the band of discretion as straddling the line of the best outcome, then reducing the variance will tend to produce results closer to the best outcome a greater percentage of the time.

The Judiciary is a bastion of unwavering law. The legislature is a bastion of wavering law. If liberals were happy with the legislative outcomes of this country, they would have no use for living constitutionalism. Living Constitutionalism is an expression of liberal legislative frustration. Frustration that the rest of the country doesn't envision the same vast panoply of rights. Living Constitutionalism states that sometimes the democratic process breaks down and is incapable of properly guiding the country, which is ultimately a theory that states "these people don't know what's best for them and so the educated elite need to dictate it to them because they will eventually, in 20 years perhaps, realize that it's best for them." The problem is, that they could be wrong about the proper moral and social avenue for America. When you grant a justice the authority but not the fact finding tools to act as a legislature, it seems to me that you unnecessarily encroach on the legislative territory. I beg for examples as to when this encroachment would be necessary given the Originalist framework we have proposed.

Labels: Billy Joe Mills, Constitution, jurisprudence

I have long thought that the freedom of the press to be the most significant human right. It is the thick cement foundation of all other rights and privileges due to citizens of a free country. Below I have posted some links to free press rankings around the world and some graphs that neatly summarize the findings. I'm not claiming a causation, but notice the correlation in the world maps between freedom of the press and perception of corruption. Stopping corruption and bribery and embezzlement is one of the keys to economic growth and development, so it is interesting to think of the possibility that a free press could cause economic growth by stemming corruption.

Freedom House's Global Survey of Media Independence:




Freedom House Map:


Corruption Perceptions Index 2007:

Labels: Billy Joe Mills, free speech

From Inside Illinois:

Labels: Billy Joe Mills, University of Illinois

Viewing someone's tax forms is like undressing them in the middle of the Quad. Nothing can be hidden from the IRS. I've heard stories of criminal drug dealers reporting their drug money on their IRS forms but having no fear of the local or federal police authorities because they feared the IRS far more.

Obama is a mystery, but perhaps we can gain an honest viewing of him from his tax returns as dissected by Bloomberg.com:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama and his wife Michelle gave $10,772 of the $1.2 million they earned from 2000 through 2004 to charities, or less than 1 percent, according to tax returns for those years released today by his campaign.

The Obamas increased the amount they gave to charity when their income rose in 2005 and 2006 after the Illinois senator published a bestselling book. The $137,622 they gave over those two years amounted to more than 5 percent of their $2.6 million income.

Bill Burton, campaign spokesman, said the Obamas gave as much as they could afford. He also said the Obamas gave $240,000 to charity in 2007, though they have yet to make last year's tax returns public.

Burton should have kept his mouth shut. The Obamas gave as much as they could afford...oh really? $10,772 out of $1.2 million is all they could squeeze out? That's a 0.8977% donation rate from 2000-2004.Besides these numbers being disturbing, especially given Obama's supposed devotion to bettering the world and uplifting everyone from poverty and hope and change and yada yada yada, I am suspicious of the fact that his holiness' donation rates have increased in recent years given that he knew he would be running for President in the near future and that these sorts of things would come under public scrutiny. Keep in mind that he hit the national political scene in 2004, is it a coincidence that the very next year his donation rate soared to an incredibly high and generous 5%? In other words, even the slightly higher donation rates were doubtfully inspired by genuine empathy for the world's suffering. Furthermore, we do not know what causes Obama is donating to, they could be things like the Chicago Symphony or the University of Chicago, and not things like preventing the spread of AIDS in Africa. Obama's low donation rates, and the hypocrisy it implies, troubles me more than anything else I know about him.

The hypocrisy, of course, is this lack of donation contradicts Obama's vision that government use higher taxes to collectively pool the incredible wealth that laissez-faire capitalism has generated in order to lift up those who have been left behind. If this is a fair statement of his philosophy, then it is also ironic that he seeks to impede the same American capitalism that has generated that immense wealth by converting us to a Euro-welfare state.

More generally it is important to note comparative generosity, "Syracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks is about to become the darling of the religious right in America -- and it's making him nervous.

The child of academics, raised in a liberal household and educated in the liberal arts, Brooks has written a book that concludes religious conservatives donate far more money than secular liberals to all sorts of charitable activities, irrespective of income."

Also bizarre is that the Obama's appear to own no stocks and do not maintain a 401(k) plan. One reason to not keep a 401(k) plan is if you predict vastly higher tax rates in the future, something his chief economics adviser, Austan Goolsbee, warned of in 2006. Perhaps Obama is planning on future taxes being high because he is planning on raising them himself.

For Prescott and other tax nerds, here is Obama's actual 2006 tax return.

Here is the CNN article describing Obama's challenge of Clinton to release her own tax statements.

Labels: Barack Obama, Billy Joe Mills

Thanks to Lally for alerting me that Charlie Rose recently interviewed one of my favorite authors, David McCullough. The interview with him gets better and better as it goes. Rose happens to have a great website littered with, as far as I can tell, just about every interview he has done. Below I have pasted a select few, but I encourage you to browse the website for your personal favorites.

Rose has the ability to disarm his subjects, he makes them real. He shows us who these people are and how they think. His show has survived the de-education of Americans through television and now we can conveniently learn from society's greats while browsing the Internet. I have always admired the regal and scholarly glints in Rose's voice.

Labels: Billy Joe Mills, television

David Brooks recently wrote an article on pragmatic idealism but without specifically calling it that. “Thoroughly Modern Do-Gooders” says:

Furthermore, we might as well take advantage of this explosion of social entrepreneurship. These are some of the smartest and most creative people in the country. Even if we don’t know how to reduce poverty, it’s probably worth investing in these people and letting them figure it out. The people who fit into this category tend to have plenty of résumé bling. Bill Drayton, the godfather of this movement, went to Harvard, Yale, Oxford and McKinsey before founding Ashoka, a global change network. Those who follow him typically went to some fancy school and then did a stint with Teach for America or AmeriCorps before graduate school. Then, they worked for a software firm before deciding to use what they’d learned in business to help the less fortunate. Now they work 80 hours a week, fighting bureaucracies and funding restrictions in order to build, say, mentoring programs for single moms.

The most succinct way that I can describe my politics, which I hope is a unique fusion of conservative means and liberal ends, is to call it pragmatic idealism. Brian once told me that I should just become a Democrat because a good deal of my political conclusions would be considered progressive. But this friendly hope of Brian’s misunderstands my view of what inspires and drives the world. To me it’s all about money. The world is run by the financial markets and it is most accurately portrayed through the lens of the Wall Street Journal, not our beloved New York Times. I view economics as the single most humanitarian pursuit. But how could this be so? This statement might seem bizarre given that we often equate money with base, anti-humanitarian pursuits. But to me, it is economic growth that saves people. The pragmatism and dirtiness of economic growth allows us to create enough leisure time and security for great, uncompromising, principled authors like Kant or Rawls to write about how we should not be pragmatic and capitalistic. Without the capitalism that Rawls scorned, he would have been a peasant in a field, working too many hours to push on the boundaries of philosophy and art. Capitalism is mankind’s crudest, bloodiest, and dirtiest invention, yet it has also created more humanity and beauty than anything else. The pragmatism of capitalism lies in its ability to conform to human nature, rather than in trying to change human nature to conform to an ideal.

How do we help people trapped in miserable and violent poverty in America, sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and elsewhere? Humanitarian change won’t be wrought by the protestor of sweat shops, the fair trade purchaser and volunteer, the campus crusader, the good-intentioned pastor, or the pristinely principled academic (Stephen Hartnett), rather it will come from the economics nerd reading Friedman and Hayek at the University of Chicago and a politician bold enough to enact that nerd’s theories. The world is about power. Power, informed and guided by the right ideas, propels the world toward good.

Here are three examples of pragmatic idealism. If you are trying to convince people to become vegetarian, instead of appealing to their altruistic instinct that animals suffer pain and understand pain at a level that parallels humans, an advocate should instead appeal to a person's self-interest in having a healthy diet.

If you would like to see people lifted from poverty in poor countries, you should support sweatshops, as many liberal economists do, as a necessary means. If sweatshop protestors or fair trade activists succeeded in ending all sweatshop activities in Country X, the owners would simply move the sweatshops to Country Y resulting in many people losing their jobs in Country X without any means of creating new jobs. Furthermore, let’s say a sweatshop activist convinced every single American to never buy a sweatshop product again, which is the most successful apex they could reach, it would still say nothing of the purchasing habits of the other 6 billion people on the planet. Perhaps instead the activist could get an MBA or a JD and try to climb the corporate ranks of a multinational corporation so as to influence their policies from the inside. Change most often occurs inside institutions, rather than outside them.

Many of the leaders we consider to have held unwavering idealism actually practiced pragmatic idealism, my favorite example is Gandhi. He studied to be a lawyer - the most dreadfully practical degree available. Here is from the Philosopher’s Magazine, “Although Gandhi’s emphasis on intentions and duties often allows us to relate him to Kant, he is not really a Kantian. First, Gandhi describes himself as a ‘pragmatic idealist.’ He focuses on results. When he acted with good intentions and according to moral duty, but did not succeed in resisting hegemonic British imperialism, alleviating poverty and suffering, or overcoming caste prejudice and oppression, he evaluated his position as a ‘failed experiment in truth.’” In a book review of Gandhi’s Economic Thought, “Dasgupta repeatedly illustrates Gandhi's pragmatism towards social and economic issues combined with his lucid, timeless and ideal ethical code.” Here you can read a book called Gandhi and Pragmatism. In a university speech, Gandhi’s grandson once “reiterated to the audience the necessary elements to achieve non-violence and the pragmatism that his grandfather's philosophies hold in dealing with terrorism effectively.”

My problem with conservatives is that they often ignore the potential humanitarian power of their ideas, or rather, they are too self-serving to devote themselves to being an agent of God or of Good – they lack idealism. My problem with liberals is that they are often so concerned with actualizing their idealistic conception of the world that they forget to enact the pragmatic means necessary. Perhaps the strongest, or at least the most frequent, objection to pragmatism is some form of Kantian idealism which states that anything but the purest of means will corrupt the purity of the ends, and so the preference seems to be on not accomplishing to be death in a blaze of principled glory rather than sacrificing even an inch of principle in order to achieve some progress – think Ralph Nader, the Green Party, and many academics. Libertarians are sometimes guilty of this as well – Tom and Ron Paul come to mind. My biggest problem with Obama (and Clinton as well) is that he is preaching a brand of economics that died many years ago among economists. But to me, the highest ideal, the highest moral has always been realization of the end intended, or least a compromised version resembling it.

Conservatives are generally right about how the world works but they are generally wrong about where the world should go. Liberals are generally wrong about how the world works but they are generally right about where the world should go. My goal with this post is to convince both sides to learn from the other – I know that is a task I must personally accomplish more often. This is a muddy world dripping with pragmatic evil that can be stabbed only by pragmatic good.

Labels: Billy Joe Mills, philosophy

Congrats to Katie Hamilton, my former colleague on the Illinois Student Senate, for becoming famous for a day in Chicago's big pond.

The Sun-Times article begins by saying, "The Sun-Times has been punk'd. 22-year-old die-hard Cub fan and Tribune intern Katie Hamilton has won the Sun-Times' "Zell No!" video contest with her take on Twisted Sister's 'We're Not Gonna Take It.'" Apparently, the Sun-Times did not know she was a Tribune intern when they awarded her first place. At the moment she's featured on their homepage.

Her winning this contest is ironic because the Sun-Times has been all over the Wrigley renaming story, zealously covering it on a daily basis. They've done so, we can suspect, because of the on-going Chicago newspaper war. I have heard that the Sun-Times is in serious financial trouble and may not survive the next decade or so. So it seems they've been trying to use the antipathy generated by the possibility of Zell renaming Wrigley to chip away at the Trib's readership.

Here is the Trib's article on the story.

Labels: Billy Joe Mills, University of Illinois

I would like to introduce you to "a most peculiar man." Here are selected paragraphs from Amanda Reavy's SJR article entitled, "Shooting victim a loner, Web philosopher":

William “Bill” Geiser lived a solitary life at the Bel-Aire Motel except for when he wanted to give employees and fellow tenants a hard time. But he also had his own Web site, where he posted essays about what he called a “world-class philosophy.” But those who dealt with Geiser -- who was shot and killed by police Saturday after police say he tried to stab an officer -- on a daily basis said his bark was worse than his bite . . . Geiser also created a Web site in which he posted essays he wrote about astrology, theory and a “bold, new, world-class philosophy” he called SYNTHESISm. The philosophy, Geiser wrote, was inspired by Buckminster Fuller . . . A “lifetime activity schedule” he also posted included a stint as U.S. president in 2028-36, followed by construction of a place called STAR-PORT city, where he was to be mayor until 2050.

The article does not link to his website, but I was able to find it. The Geiser Papers are, if nothing else, caverns of lost and wandering intellectual exploration. Bill Geiser, if not a true philosopher, is a man who jumped off the philosophical precipice without proper grounding, without a rope tied around his feet. Whether his philosophy means something significant or new or profound is your decision, I'd prefer not to bias your reading of his papers except to say that in sparsely spaced sentences he kind of makes sense. He was trying to live and explore ideas and love.

His site also reveals that he was conducting a nation-wide search for a wife with a conception of the world similar to his own. He instructs women who are interested in marrying him to send in a "handwritten marriage resume." He also requests "two recent color photographs . . . one of your face and one of you in a swimming suit." He purports to prefer old-fashioned mail because "If I asked for you to email me, I would have such a large amount of email that I wouldn't have time for anything else." He also notes on his own marriage resume that "Several girls have wanted me to marry them because I’m so affectionate."

This SJR article has more details regarding the actual encounter that led to Geiser's death.

Goodbye Bill Geiser, I'm sorry that we didn't quite understand you, perhaps someday we will. I will try to write a Simonesque song about you.

Labels: Billy Joe Mills, philosophy

Dear Professor Krugman,

I respect economists because I see their field as the most humanitarian study possible, given their power to increase the over all wealth of the world, but especially of its poorest parts. That's why I am dismayed by your increasing disinterest in staying above the muddy and dirty fray of common politics and statistical misguidance.

You recently wrote a post in which you touted the employment-population ratio as the best "guide" to how the employment market is doing. I feel that the picture you have painted is rather biased for an economist. Don't you think that other variables are at play here that make that ratio an incomplete picture? Retired persons, because of the onset of the baby boomers, as a share of the population are increasing, which means that we can naturally expect that ratio to decline in the years ahead but that it won't necessarily be a reflection on the health of the economy. Note that the BLS does not define the Employment-Population Ratio in terms of 16-65 year olds, instead it says: "The proportion of the civilian noninstitutional population aged 16 years and over that is employed."

You linked to a post that you wrote a couple of months ago in which you show a biased time sample selection. I presume you wished to influence your readers into thinking that the current ratio is at a historic low. Luckily for you, I love playing with BLS charts, below is the full chart dating back to 1948 (earliest possible year).

No single economic indicator can give an observer the full picture. So while you claim that "The official unemployment rate has been a deceptive indicator," you regrettably chose to present data that is equally deceptive when viewed in isolation of other datasets.

For those interested, below is the historical data on the unemployment rate. Note that it is currently very low in historical terms and also note, as you do Professor, that this indicator does not paint the full picture.

Professor, you know probably 100 times more than I do about economics. It's very possible that this entire post is full of errors, if so, I would encourage you or someone else to point them out. I am only a playground economist.

Regrettably,
Billy Joe Mills

Labels: Billy Joe Mills, economics, New York Times

Make sure you didn't miss today's well-written editorial in the Daily Illini by perennial campus all-star Dan Bolin.

Dan says in part:

Late Monday, I learned that the University administration had been working with one or two members of our nine member SEC to add language to this referenda statement. While other referenda have supplemental language submitted by sponsors, never as an undergraduate or as a law student at this University have I seen the administration impose their own language on a referendum question. The administration's language states: "The result of this referendum question is not binding on the University of Illinois Board of Trustees, the body legislatively charged with oversight of the symbol."

Labels: Billy Joe Mills, Chief Illiniwek, Richard Herman, University of Illinois

From David Brooks today, who was quoted by Greg Mankiw (Mankiw should be required reading for liberals and conservatives who pretend to understand economic policies):

In 2000, McCain ran for president and reiterated his longstanding opposition to ethanol subsidies. Though it crippled his chances in Iowa, he argued that ethanol was a wasteful giveaway. A recent study in the journal Science has shown that when you take all impacts into consideration, ethanol consumption increases greenhouse gas emissions compared with regular gasoline. Unlike, say, Barack Obama, McCain still opposes ethanol subsidies.

Also, Volokh has something to say about our recent gun debates, a topic I personally have little interest in, considering the weight of poverty and disease and lack of education that simply overwhelms significant devotion to gun rights. I had the good fortune of having lunch yesterday with Volokh Conspiracy contributor Dale Carpenter, who presented an excellent case at the law school for why Burkean conservatives should actually favor gay marriage rights. I personally agreed with his arguments, and I also find legitimate logical support for gay marriage in libertarian thinking and in a progressive moral route.

An interesting NYT article that corresponds with my feeling, that many people are rejecting organized religion, even if they are not rejecting God, "The rise of the unaffiliated does not mean that Americans are becoming less religious, however. Contrary to assumptions that most of the unaffiliated are atheists or agnostics, most described their religion “as nothing in particular.” Pew researchers said that later projects would delve more deeply into the beliefs and practices of the unaffiliated and would try to determine if they remain so as they age." Furthermore, there appears to be a trend toward convergence between Protestants and Catholics.

Finally, here is some good analysis on the not too surprising revelation of Blago as Public Official A.

Labels: Billy Joe Mills, Blagojevich, David Brooks, gay marriage, McCain, obama