And every Audrey Hepburn film. Except Funny Face.

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She recounts how the two brothers took the oil company that their father left to them (and two other brothers, whom David and Charles bought out), and, after renaming it Koch Industries in their father’s honor,  turned it into the second-largest private company in the U.S., with holdings that include “oil refineries in Alaska, Texas, and Minnesota, . . . Brawny paper towels, Dixie cups, Georgia-Pacific lumber, Stainmaster carpet, and Lycra.” WIth their money, they’ve taken to donating funds to organizations that share their views. Among them are the Cato Institute, a nonpartisan libertarian think tank, the Mercatus Center, an economics think tank based at George Mason University in Arlington, Virginia, and the Institute for Justice, a libertarian public-interest law firm that spends its time fighting “eminent domain abuse” and onerous bureaucratic red tape.

Though Mayer accuses the brothers of “[subsidizing] a pro-corporate movement,” even she acknowledges that their money hasn’t been limited to their own financial interests:

The Kochs have gone well beyond their immediate self-interest, . . . funding organizations that aim to push the country in a libertarian direction. . . . Many of the organizations funded by the Kochs employ specialists who write position papers that are subsequently quoted by politicians and pundits. David Koch has acknowledged that the family exerts tight ideological control. “If we’re going to give a lot of money, we’ll make darn sure they spend it in a way that goes along with our intent,” he told [an interviewer]. “And if they make a wrong turn and start doing things we don’t agree with, we withdraw funding.”

It’s not clear what the problem is with this. It’s perfectly fine for individuals or organizations to try to affect public debate. The wealthy and powerful are not denied that right, and Mayer notes (and does not object to) George Soros’ Open Society Institute spending up to $100 million a year in the U.S. George Soros happens to support greater social welfare spending, and the Kochs don’t agree. Are they prohibited from spending money to support freer markets just because it would benefit them?

As Joseph Lawler notes, the language she uses to describe the Koch brothers is awfully extreme relative to the activities she’s describing. In response to Mayer’s description of David Koch’s promotion of libertarianism as “[funding] stealth attacks on the federal government, and on the Obama Administration in particular,” Lawler asks

If that is how you describe peaceful, lawful activism, then what words are left to describe, for instance, the actions of al Qaeda, which funded an actual stealth attack on the federal government?

Though Mayer weaves a good story, she mostly weaves it by insinuation of political impropriety, unfounded by evidence. (She does cite maintenance and safety failures at Koch Industries in the 1990s, some serious, including a leak that led to an explosion that killed 2 people. Safety failures are lamentable and should be corrected, and Koch Industries should comply with the law and face consequences when it fails to. But any large organization is bound to make mistakes—sometimes serious ones; such mistakes don’t disqualify the corporations from defending their own interests.)

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Update: Lots of folks have commented on Mayer’s piece. And, apparently, Koch Industries saw fit to link to my blog post. I’m happy for the attention, and just in case anyone’s wondering, nothing (and no one) prompted my post but the questionable innuendo in the New Yorker piece.

—Nathan, August 30, 2010 at 9:52 p.m.

Gerald’s companion hasn’t moved his feet. He stands on the sidewalk, shouting, “Hundred million dollar man! Have you seen my friend? He’s a hundred million dollar man!” The bus begins to move, and Gerald, head held high, shuffles down the aisle before depositing himself in a seat near the back door of the bus.

“You’re gonna make it, Gerald!” the friend calls out. The friend’s words are inaudible, since the windows are sealed against the hot afternoon sun, but his enthusiasm is apparent from the movement of his fists punching the air as he shouts his prophecy.

Seated and looking forward as his friend passes from view, Gerald’s city-man habits try to kick in, telling him to kill the smile, even if he’s thrilled to death. But his beaming smile can only be tamed ever-so-slightly, just enough to show everyone that he’s really trying. In case they’re looking. And he hopes they’re looking. Because he doesn’t care if they’re looking. He’s a hundred-million-dollar man, after all.

Gerald rides the bus, his would-be lottery ticket rubbing against his quadriceps like something more substantial—perhaps a credit card—in his pocket. He can’t help but think about that lottery ticket. He has all but forgotten the book that he nestled in the crook of his left arm and pressed against his rib cage. The title is obscured by his arm, but the publisher-author declares itself in clear, gold-foil letters that stand out from the forest green, faux leather cover: Alcoholics Anonymous.

Gerald’s smile can’t be contained the whole ride home.

Signs that summer is drawing to a close:

• School starts today, or so Channel 4 told me on the elliptical this morning. (Apparently—and sadly—that calls for more cops on the Metro.)
• Wearing a short-sleeve shirt meant my arms felt a bit of crispness in the air this morning.
• The shindig I went to on Saturday was called a “late summer garden party.”
• The jeweler I walked by saw fit to hang this in the window:




It’s August, so naturally I expect winter-themed decorations at all fine establishments. (Perhaps the proprietor was trying to be ironic by hanging snowflakes in August. I’ll grant you that. But when goosebumps rise on my arms because of the bite in the air, the irony doubles.)

Eric Morris, a UCLA transportation scholar who writes for the Freakonomics blog, points to himself and Randal O’Toole as examples of people who oppose policies that align with their personal preferences. Both of them are train enthusiasts: the sorts of fellows who play Sid Meier’s Railroad Tycoon and have model train tracks in their basements. Despite their preferences, they both oppose government support for high speed rail in the U.S. O’Toole, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute who inspires strong feelings in the planning community, points to his train love to explain that no, he doesn’t just hate trains. Instead, he explains his opposition to funding for rail projects this way: “I don’t expect taxpayers to subsidize these preferences any more than if I liked hot-air balloons or midget submarines.”

Morris goes on to raise the question of principles versus preferences:

Is supporting policies that go completely counter to one’s own personal preferences to be admired or abhorred? Some might find it eccentric, and it certainly is a minority trait. My experience has been that most people in this world assume that others share their likes, and if they don’t, they will do so with just a little persuasion. In some cases this may be true. But regardless, this is certainly a convenient outlook because it means there is a happy coincidence: the best path to doing selfless good for others just happens to be promoting public policies that cater to one’s own self-interest.

To be honest, I’d never quite thought of the possibility that supporting policies that go counter to one’s personal preferences might be abhorrent. On the contrary, I find it admirable, and a sign that the support is well-thought-out and that the policy probably deserves a closer look. After all, it’s a rarity for someone to oppose his own preferences, because arriving at such a position  involves (a) admitting that  one’s preferences are a little off and (b) potentially depriving oneself of the pleasure that would come from seeing one’s preferences come to fruition. I suppose it’s possible that someone might be knee-jerk anti-preference, but that possibility seems slim. Am I unusual in thinking that way?

One shouldn’t have to spend 100 hours of learning how to cut hair—plus 1,400 hours learning other related (and unrelated) subjects—before offering to cut others’ hair for money. Yes: there are potential dangers in using sharp tools and caustic chemicals around people. But it seems unlikely that 1,500 hours of training is necessary to train a would-be hairstylist not to run with scissors and to follow the instructions on the perm box. All joking aside, though, the danger is relatively low, and what danger there is is already addressed through the harm to reputation and the civil liability that would follow sloppy or dangerous work. I have someone else cut my hair now (Ryan P. at Bang Salon Metropole, in case you want to know), and I wouldn’t go to someone who hadn’t had some training, but that’s because I think a trained hairstylist can consistently make my hair presentable. I couldn’t care less whether the Barber and Cosmetology Board has seen fit to give someone credentials; being employed at a reputable salon that would only hire someone trained is enough for me.

Jonathan Adler points out that major supporters of licensing regimes are often the very folks who would benefit from limiting potential competitors:

Licenses restrict entry and reduce  competition, enabling  those with licenses to capture more rents.  This is actually the case with most licensing regimes, even those that appear to serve a greater public interest than barber licenses.  Though I doubt Yglesias would go this far, I would argue that it’s rare that a licensing regime of this sort is put in place without the support of those who stand to benefit economically, and that many public spirited rationales, including health and safety, are a smokescreen.

Adler goes on to note that licensing and inspection often becomes a tool for characters who exploit their ability to grant or deny licenses and note or ignore infractions.

It’s also important to remember that the creation of a licensing, permitting and inspection, or other regulatory regime hardly guarantees protection of the public interest, even if the system was not created for rent-seeking purposes in the first place.  Government regulators and inspectors are people too, and may shirk their responsibilities, become corrupted, or otherwise fail to safeguard the public interest.  In many major cities, licensing and other local regulatory regimes are opportunities for corruption and graft.

Barber licensing, then, seems not only unnecessary and harmful to competition, but also prone to abuse: more trouble than it’s worth.

Plodding—one foot, then the other, and again—Eric pauses when he recognizes the shiny exterior of one of the local news stations. Raising his head, he catches the tail end of the update on the ticker that runs outside the building. In blazing orange letters, he reads, “LARGEST DROP IN NYSE HISTORY.” Eric blinks once, twice, and sighs. This is not news to him. Then he glances at the next item: “BOMBS EXPLO—.” That’s not his story. He puts his head down, and starts trudging anew.

Empty. That’s what his head is: utterly empty. To think about anything now would be too much. It’s all he can do to keep focus long enough to understand what words say on the newspapers and litter that cross his path. More than anything, he must keep walking. If he comes to an intersection with a don’t-walk signal, he ignores it or turns. He knows he must stop sometime.

To stop, though, would feel like death. It would give his mind a chance to move beyond the day’s events. In Washington, hundreds of representatives had thumbed their noses at their betters, refusing to fix the turmoil in the financial sector and among traders. In New York, traders—frightened by Washington—pulled their clients’ money out of the stock market with the firm conviction that it would not be there to pull out tomorrow. In Chicago, Merc traders did their best to save their dreams.

All of them except Eric, that is, for he had no more dreams to save. With the day’s collapse, he lost nothing; everything concrete he’d lost weeks earlier. But today, struggling to break back into the black but only falling further into the read, he realized he couldn’t make it.  With that realization, he had noticed his pulse quickening, sweat beading on his brow, and his stomach twisting and shrink and then to leaping into his throat. He gained a completely novel understanding: he can fear. Before, he hadn’t had the time to be afraid. Earlier today, though, his tomorrows gaped open wide before him as ravenous, gnashing beasts that would consume him, each in turn. These heretofore unknown creatures—tomorrows that threatened rather than beckoned—shocked Eric.

Suddenly, Eric sees that he has stepped onto a bridge. He stops and turns to look at the river below. A breeze blows gently, whispering in his ears. He closes his eyes and lifts his head to catch the gentle caresses more fully against his cheek. He opens his eyes, looking up toward the skyline. ‘Pretty,’ he thinks, ‘and pretty damn impressive.’ As a boy, this had always been his favorite spot, looking up at all the monoliths around him. For the first time in a decade, he notices the buildings and remembers his love for them as marvels of man’s genius. Hell, even Donald Trump’s monstrous tower—one-third of its 90-plus floors built—looks kind of pretty tonight.

He feels a buzzing in his pocket. He reaches into it and lifts out his phone, but not before the buzzing ends. “13 Missed Calls,” the screen tells him. He opens the phone, and scrolls through the list: 6 from his mother, 3 from work, and the rest from friends and that chick he met in Toronto last month. He goes back up to the most recently missed call, squeezes his eyes and holds his breath for a moment, and then presses “Send.”

“Hiya,” he says, when he hears a voice on the other end. A question comes through. “I know, I know, I’m sorry. It’s been—a day.” Another question. “I dunno, Mom. I don’t even want to think about tomorrow.” Yet more questions, insistent. “Well I gotta—.” Eric pauses, fumbling for words.

Sucking the air in deeply, he regains his composure. “Yeah, you know what? Yeah, I’ll be there.” Questions again, but less insistent. “Whatever you had for dinner is fine, Mom. I’ll just stick it in the microwave.”

“Oh, and Mom. I’m sorry I missed Sunday dinner last night. I just—.” Now, he’s interrupted by a command, and then the voice on the other end goes away. Eric brings his hand down from his ear, looks at the phone, and smiles. “Okay, Mom. I love you too.”

I think this is all attributable to nostalgia that Mad Men kindled in me.

HT: Homo-Neurotic.

But alcohol’s effects on a drinker—and the drinker’s relationship with his alcohol—has more to do with what the drinker thinks alcohol should do him than with the direct effects of alcohol. Malcolm Gladwell explored this in a recent New Yorker article, where he described an anthropologist’s findings about the drinking habits of the Camba people of Montero, Bolivia. The anthropologist observed and participated in weekly social gatherings that centered on heavy alcohol consumption. These drinking parties resembled fraternities’ in the quantity of alcohol consumed, but the strength of the Camba’s alcohol wasn’t the measly 8– to 12-proof beer that coeds favor. It was 180 proof—90% alcohol—the equivalent of laboratory grade alcohol. (By comparison, Budweiser beer is 10 proof, and wine is most often 25 to 29 proof.)

But as the researcher explained, “There was no social pathology [at the Camba’s parties]—none. No arguments, no disputes, no sexual aggression, no verbal aggression. There was pleasant conversation or silence.” Contrast that with a college campus, where “beer—which is to Camba rum approximately what a peashooter is to a bazooka—[is] known to reduce the student population to a raging hormonal frenzy on Friday nights.”

If alcohol is less a cause of than an excuse for bad behavior, then the logical thing would be to expect better behavior out of our drunkards.  (Society fails at that task today. As Gladwell wrote, “When confronted with the rowdy youth in the bar, we are happy to raise his drinking age, to tax his beer, to punish him if he drives under the influence, and to push him into treatment if his habit becomes an addiction. But we are reluctant to provide him with a positive and constructive example of how to drink.”)

Extending the logic one step further, we should also expect more of the positive effects of alcohol out of the sober. After all, alcohol’s effects aren’t all bad. Indeed, many of the effects that are so deleterious on a large scale and positively desirable at lower levels. It’s “liquid courage” many shy, would-be ladies’ men. It’s the conversational lubricant that makes forced social gatherings—like workplace happy hours where you realize why you don’t normally hang out with your colleagues after hours—enjoyable (or at least bearable). And it’s the relaxing influence that helps audiences let down their guard (there’s more to a comedy club’s 2-drink minimum than just inflating the tab).

So, if alcohol’s negative effects are mostly in imbibers’ heads, then its positive effects are too. My own acquaintances bear that out. One friend dislikes the reliance that lots of folks have on mind-altering chemicals to enable them to do what they want (her caffeine habit notwithstanding). She says that she can get as wild and crazy as the next would-be pole-dancer, but without alcohol and without claiming or actually losing control.

Similarly, most of my friends with alcohol allergies or intolerances seem to manage social situations just fine, whether they’re chatting up strangers or getting their groove on. And, many Mormons seem to do just fine organizing alcohol-free gatherings; the gatherings themselves can often get plenty wild—or at least a bit loosey-goosey—without crossing the line into pandemonium.

Even if teetotaling isn’t necessary, alcohol is still too often and too easily used as a crutch. It’s an excuse for bad behavior, and its absence is likewise an excuse for not being able to loosen up or muster up the courage to get over one’s hang-ups. But it’s not a particularly good excuse, and it needn’t be such a crutch.

So, I have some friends and family that want me to start a small revolution over the nomination of Elena Kagan for Solictor General. What do you think of her?

I am sorta scared that this is definitely a prequel to the replacement of Ginsburg. I’m thinking Kagan is perhaps left of Ginsburg too?

I thought this might be right up your alley.

Thanks,

Josh

My response? No: neither Josh nor conservatives generally should oppose Elena Kagan’s nomination to be the United States’ Solicitor General.

Dean Kagan might be more leftist than Justice Ginsburg or whomever she might replace on the Court (emphasis on both mights), but being on the left (or on the right) does not disqualify someone from being the Solicitor General. To get through this current nomination, Kagan should demonstrate that she is qualified to act as the federal government’s advocate before the Supreme Court. This includes demonstrating a willingness to defend the all of the laws of the federal government, including the laws she disagrees with. She has demonstrated that ability in her nomination hearings.

Josh’s key concern isn’t Kagan’s qualification to be Solicitor General, though. Rather, Josh suspects that Kagan, the outgoing dean of Harvard Law School, is in line to take a spot on the Supreme Court when the next vacancy occurs. Several legal observers share his suspicion.

Opposing Kagan’s current nomination would continue a unfortunate, harmful D.C. pastime. The game—blocking your opponents’ potential Supreme Court nominees—goes something like this.

President Bush’s nominees were often the pawns in this game. Peter Keisler’s nomination was defeated this way. Miguel Estrada’s, too. (His particularly distasteful ordeal was recounted here. It’s noteworthy that he has endorsed his Kagan, his former classmate, in her nomination.) Kagan herself has been subject to this before. Her nomination by President Clinton, to the D.C. Circuit in 1999, was defeated this way.

But the nation’s judicial process is more than a game, and it does not benefit us when our judges (and those in prominent legal positions) are forced through a tit-for-tat nomination process. Qualified and interesting candidates get culled from the nomination pool (or never let themselves be considered). Lawyers who might otherwise advance legal debate silence themselves, fearful of creating a record for the opposite side to fulminate against. Blameless individuals must endure name-calling and invective that is disrespectful of them and the judicial process.

Beyond the negative effects of this game, the players in it seem to take a dim view of the president’s prerogative to nominate individuals whose views fit his own. The president, duly elected by at least 270 electors, is entitled to nominate qualified individuals whose understanding of the law and the Constitution fits his own. As we have heard many times, “elections have consequences.” Though it may be hard for electoral losers to accept, a key consequence of a loss at the ballot box is the loss of the ability to put their preferred nominees on the bench. And it’s not appropriate to do an end run around this presidential prerogative by opposing potential judicial nominees at an earlier stage.

But the electoral losers should take heart: in America, neither of the major parties is ever out of power for long. Today’s conservative minority, loud while on the outside looking in, will be tomorrow’s conservative majority. When the White House is again in Republican hands, conservatives will (rightly) talk about the president’s right to nominate the sort of judges he promised to nominate. They were talking that way just last year.

We should not be naïve: this game did not start with Obama’s inauguration. Or Bush’s or Clinton’s, for that matter. It likely will not end. Democrats will rage against Republican obstruction this term (ignoring their own obstruction, the way this blog post seems to), and Republicans will rage again in a term or two. Perpetuating the game, however, harms America and its judicial process. We should not aid and abet in that harm.

Note: This post was edited for style and for spelling errors on February 26, 2009.