Category: Government

Constitutional Superheroes Created the American Nation

(p. 12) When and how did the United States ­become a nation? This question is the core of “The Quartet.” In his customary graceful prose, Joseph J. Ellis, the author of such works of popular history as the prizewinning “Founding Brothers,” argues that the United States did not become a nation with the Declaration of Independence in 1776. Rather, he says, American nationhood resulted from the creation, adoption and effectuation of the United States ­Constitution.
Ellis declares, “Four men made the ­transition from confederation to nation ­happen. . . . George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay and James Madison” (along with three supporting players: Robert Morris, Gouverneur Morris and Thomas Jefferson). He writes that “this political quartet diagnosed the systemic dysfunctions under the Articles, manipulated the political process to force a calling of the Constitutional Convention, collaborated to set the agenda in Philadelphia, attempted somewhat successfully to orchestrate the debates in the state ratifying conventions, then drafted the Bill of Rights as an insurance policy to ensure state compliance with the constitutional settlement. If I am right, this was arguably the most creative and consequential act of political leadership in American history.”
. . .
Ellis’s “quartet” are constitutional superheroes, the Fantastic Four of American nationalism.

For the full review, see:
R. B. BERNSTEIN. “Gang of Four.” The New York Times Book Review (Sun., MAY 10, 2015): 12.
(Note: ellipsis internal to paragraph, in original; ellipsis between paragraphs, added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date MAY 5, 2015, and has the title “”The Quartet,’ by Joseph J. Ellis.”)

The book under review, is:
Ellis, Joseph J. The Quartet: Orchestrating the Second American Revolution, 1783-1789. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015.

Merton Miller Applauded Bankers Who Cleverly Evaded Government Interference with Free Markets

(p. 12) . . . Merton Miller, a Nobel laureate economist at the University of Chicago, . . . was in many ways the father of financial innovation. Miller praised complex financial instruments, in large part because they helped institutions avoid the law. He applauded bankers for cleverly avoiding government attempts to interfere with markets.

For the full review, see:
FRANK PARTNOY. “Societal Bonds.” The New York Times Book Review (Sun., MAY 10, 2015): 28.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date MAY 8, 2015, and has the title “‘Smart Money,’ by Andrew Palmer.”)

Justice Kagan Cites Dr. Seuss to Show Fish Are Tangible

(p. A16) In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that the real issue in the case, Yates v. United States, No. 13-7451, was that the law is too harsh. It is, she wrote, “too broad and undifferentiated, with too-high maximum penalties, which give prosecutors too much leverage and sentencers too much discretion.”
She added, “And I’d go further: In those ways,” the law “is unfortunately not an outlier, but an emblem of a deeper pathology in the federal criminal code.”
Still, she said, “this court does not get to rewrite the law.” She said it was “broad but clear.”
“A fish is, of course, a discrete thing that possesses physical form,” Justice Kagan wrote, citing as authority the Dr. Seuss classic “One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish.”
It does not matter, she said, that what Mr. Yates destroyed was not a document.
“A person who hides a murder victim’s body is no less culpable than one who burns the victim’s diary,” she wrote. “A fisherman, like John Yates, who dumps undersized fish to avoid a fine is no less blameworthy than one who shreds his vessel’s catch log for the same reason.”
Justices Antonin Scalia, Anthony M. Kennedy and Clarence Thomas joined Justice Kagan’s dissenting opinion.

For the full story, see:
ADAM LIPTAK. “In Overturning Conviction, Supreme Court Says Fish Are Not Always Tangible.” The New York Times (Thurs., FEB. 26, 2015): A16.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date FEB. 25, 2015.)

The book discussed above is:
Seuss, Dr. One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish. New York: Random House, 1960.

Voters Want Texas-Style Economic Dynamism

(p. A23) Surveys and interviews give us some sense of what’s going on. Voters have a lot of economic anxieties. But they also have a template in their heads for what economic dynamism looks like.
That template does not include a big role for government. Polls show that faith in government is near all-time lows. In a Gallup survey, voters listed dysfunctional government as the nation’s No. 1 problem. In fact, American voters’ traditional distrust has morphed and hardened. They used to think it was bloated and ineffective. Now they think it is bloated and ineffective and rigged to help those who need it least.
When many of these voters think of economic dynamism, they think of places like Texas, the top job producer in the nation over the past decade, and, especially, places like Houston, a low-regulation, low-cost-of-living place. In places like Wisconsin, voters in the middle class private sector support candidates who cut state pensions and pass right-to-work laws, so that economic governance can be more Texas-style.

For the full commentary, see:
David Brooks. “The Field Is Flat.” The New York Times (Fri., MARCH 27, 2015): A23.

To FDA Aging Is Not a Disease, So FDA Will Not Approve Drugs that Extend Life

(p. D1) Some of the top researchers on aging in the country are trying to get an unusual clinical trial up and running.
. . .
The trial aims to test the drug metformin, a common medication often used to treat Type 2 diabetes, and see if it can delay or prevent other chronic diseases. (The project is being called Targeting/Taming Aging With Metformin, or TAME.) Metformin isn’t necessarily more promising than other drugs that have shown signs of extending life and reducing age-related chronic diseases. But metformin has been widely and safely used for more than 60 years, has very few side effects and is inexpensive.
The scientists say that if TAME is a well-designed, large-scale study, the Food and Drug Administration might be persuaded to consider aging as an indication, or preventable condition, a move that could spur drug makers to target factors that contribute to aging.
. . .
(p. D4) Fighting each major disease of old age separately isn’t winnable, said S. Jay Olshansky, another TAME project planner and a professor at the school of public health at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “We lower the risk of heart disease, somebody lives long enough to get cancer. If we reduce the risk of cancer, somebody lives long enough to get Alzheimer’s disease.”
“We are suggesting that the time has arrived to attack them all by going after the biological process of aging,” Dr. Olshansky said.
Sandy Walsh, an FDA spokeswoman, said the agency’s perspective has long been that “aging” isn’t a disease. “We clearly have approved drugs that treat consequences of aging,” she said. Although the FDA currently is inclined to treat diseases prevalent in older people as separate medical conditions, “if someone in the drug-development industry found something that treated all of these, we might revisit our thinking.”

For the full story, see:
SUMATHI REDDY. “To Grow Old Without Disease.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., March 17, 2015): D1 & D4.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 16, 2015, and has the title “Scientists’ New Goal: Growing Old Without Disease.”)

Henry Paulson Fears Chinese Economy “Will Face a Reckoning”

(p. B1) About 340 pages into Henry M. Paulson’s new book on China, a sentence comes almost out of nowhere that stops readers in their tracks.
“Frankly, it’s not a question of if, but when, China’s financial system,” he writes, “will face a reckoning and have to contend with a wave of credit losses and debt restructurings.”
. . .
(p. B2) Like the United States crisis in 2008, Mr. Paulson worries that in China “the trigger would be a collapse in the real estate market,” and he declared in an interview that China is experiencing a real estate bubble. He noted that debt as a percentage of gross domestic product in China rose to 204 percent in June 2014 from 130 percent in 2008.
“Slowing economic growth and rapidly rising debt levels are rarely a happy combination, and China’s borrowing spree seems certain to lead to trouble,” he wrote.
Mr. Paulson’s analysis in his book, “Dealing With China: An Insider Unmasks the New Economic Superpower,” is all the more remarkable because he has long been a bull on China and has deep friendships with its senior leaders, who could frown upon his straightforward comments.

For the full commentary, see:
Andrew Ross Sorkin. “DEALBOOK; A Veteran of the Crisis Tells China to Be Wary.” The New York Times (Tues., APRIL 21, 2015): B1-B2.
(Note: the online version of the review has the date APRIL 20, 2015, and has the title “DEALBOOK; A Veteran of the Financial Crisis Tells China to Be Wary.”)

The book discussed above is:
Paulson, Henry M. Dealing with China: An Insider Unmasks the New Economic Superpower. New York: Twelve, 2015.

Instead of Becoming a Lobbyist, Harry Reid Would “Rather Go to Singapore and Have Them Beat Me with Whips”

Finally an issue on which Harry Reid and Mitch McConnell can agree:

(p. A14) “I’ve had calls from lots of people,” Mr. Reid said. “For example, Al Gore called me. Maybe I want to do something with Al Gore? I have no idea.”

But on one matter he was clear: He said he would not be a lobbyist.
“I’d rather go to Singapore and have them beat me with whips,” he said.

For the full story, see:
ADAM NAGOURNEY. “Reid to Head Home on New Mission.” The New York Times (Thurs., APRIL 3, 2015): A14.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date APRIL 2, 2015, and has the title “Harry Reid Hopes to Ensure Democrats’ Success as Tenure Winds Down.”)

Obama’s Harvard Constitutional Law Professor Likens Obama’s Climate Change Policies to “Burning the Constitution”

(p. A1) WASHINGTON — Laurence H. Tribe, the highly regarded liberal scholar of constitutional law, still speaks of President Obama as a proud teacher would of a star student. “He was one of the most amazing research assistants I’ve ever had,” Mr. Tribe said in a recent interview. Mr. Obama worked for him at Harvard Law School, where Mr. Tribe has taught for four decades.
. . .
Next week Mr. Tribe is to deliver oral arguments for Peabody in the first federal court case about Mr. Obama’s climate change rules. Mr. Tribe argues in a brief for the case that in requiring states to cut carbon emissions, thus to change their energy supply from fossil fuels to renewable sources, the E.P.A. is asserting executive power far beyond its lawful authority under the Clean Air Act. At a House hearing last month, Mr. Tribe likened the climate change (p. A15) policies of Mr. Obama to “burning the Constitution.”
. . .
While Mr. Tribe is one of the nation’s foremost experts on constitutional law, and has argued some Supreme Court cases related to environmental law, he said he has never specialized in the Clean Air Act.
. . .
It is widely expected that the fight over the E.P.A. regulations will eventually go before the Supreme Court. If it does, Mr. Tribe said that he expects he “may well” play a role in that case — which would be argued before two other former students, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Elena Kagan.

For the full story, see:
CORAL DAVENPORT. “Laurence Tribe Fights Climate Case Against Star Pupil From Harvard, President Obama.” The New York Times (Tues., APRIL 7, 2015): A1 & A15.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date APRIL 6, 2015, and has the title “Laurence Tribe Fights Climate Case Against Star Pupil From Harvard, President Obama.”)

Purdue President Mitch Daniels Opposes “the Bureaucratic Accreditation Process”

(p. A9) As a college administrator, Mr. Daniels has . . . taken notice of the bureaucratic accreditation process that is a prerequisite for receiving federal funds. Six regional groups blessed by the Education Department, as well as a coterie of program-specific organizations, sign off on an institution’s programs. The ostensible goal when Congress coupled federal funding with accreditation in the 1952 G.I. Bill was to protect students from colleges hawking worthless degrees.
That hasn’t happened. Instead, universities devote considerable resources to a useless process. Almost no institution misses the mark, and since accreditation is done geographically, an upper-tier school like Purdue is accredited by the same agency that has given accreditation to Indiana University East, where the six-year graduation rate is about 18%.
Purdue pays $150,000 annually in direct accreditation fees, working with any combination of 17 agencies–but that doesn’t include time. Stanford University Provost John Etchemendy said in a 2011 letter that the school spent $849,000 in one year of a multiyear accreditation. “One suspects you have some basic inertia and some folks would rather spend their time being busy with this than doing something more productive,” Mr. Daniels says with a faint smile. “I refer of course to the people on other campuses.”
‘All this time and money and in the end some really lousy schools get accredited, so I’m not sure what the student–the consumer–learns. An awful lot of make work involved, or so it seems,” he says. Sen. Lamar Alexander (R., Tenn.) is considering reforms, including untangling accreditation from federal funding, an idea that Mr. Daniels says “ought to be looked at.”

For the full interview, see:
KATE BACHELDER, interviewer. “THE WEEKEND INTERVIEW; How to Save American Colleges; The Purdue president on freezing tuition, how to reduce student debt, and busting the accreditation cartel.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., April 25, 2015): A9.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date April 24, 2015.)

Incandescents Better than LEDs at Allowing a Good Night’s Sleep

(p. D6) Studies have shown that such light, especially from the blue part of the spectrum, inhibits the body’s production of melatonin, a hormone that helps people fall asleep.
. . .
Devices such as smartphones and tablets are often illuminated by light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, that tend to emit more blue light than incandescent products.

For the full story, see:
KATE GALBRAITH. “WIRED WELL; Can Orange Glasses Help You Sleep Better?” The New York Times (Tues., APRIL 7, 2015): D6.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the title “WIRED WELL; Can Orange Glasses Help You Sleep Better?”)