Month: June 2014

Spring-boarding off a recent paper (pdf), Ryan Avent sizes up the Great Recession:

[T]he rich world is setting itself up to suffer through future events like the crisis of the last few years. Because there has been no urgency about moving back to full economic capacity, both interest rates and inflation rates remain at rock-bottom levels across much of the rich world. That means that there is very little cushion in the system against future shocks.

If big trouble strikes central banks will once again struggle to find the will to boost activity, and economies will once again move sideways for long periods of time. Fiscal policy is unlikely to come to the rescue, since the economic morass of the past six years seems to have made the public less tolerant of bold fiscal stimulus and certainly hasn’t done anything for sovereign debt loads.

The most pernicious aspect of this dynamic is its pace. If we woke up tomorrow to find the German economy brought to a screeching halt, we would rush to action, to restore activity there and prevent damage elsewhere. But because this disaster is playing out a bit at a time, such that our expectations slowly adjust, we tolerate it.

Weissmann chimes in:

Typically, we expect economies to fully heal after a recession. But if a downturn is powerful enough, and its effects are allowed to linger long enough, the thinking goes, a country can end up permanently scarred. The unemployed drift from the workforce for good. Companies cut back on investing in new tools or research, which makes them less productive and innovative in the future. Ultimately, the economy’s potential—its size if everything were functioning normally, judged by fundamentals like labor availability and capital stock—simply shrinks. Hysteresis sets in.

And Americans aren’t the only ones supposedly suffering. Most of the developed world appears to be infected, too.

The Supreme Court narrowly ruled that buying a gun for someone else – and lying about it on official documentation – is illegal. Adam Winkler shares the story behind the case:

Bruce Abramski must have known he was going to get into trouble when he bought a Glock 19 for his uncle. A retired police officer, Abramski was familiar with gun regulation. Yet he accepted $400 from his uncle, went to a local gun store, and – as required to purchase the Glock – filled out federal Form 4473. Question 11.a of that form required Abramski to confirm that he was “the actual transferee/buyer of the firearm(s)?” Question 11.a includes, in stark bold lettering “You are not the actual buyer if you are acquiring the firearm(s) on behalf of another person. If you are not the actual buyer, the dealer cannot transfer the firearm(s) to you.” Nonetheless, Abramski signed the form, knowingly lying about his intentions in purchasing the gun for his uncle.

When he was finally caught, Abramski answered with the audacity increasingly typical among a certain class of gun owners: He insisted the law itself was illegal. His lying, he claimed, was perfectly lawful. Surprisingly, he almost convinced the Supreme Court to let him off. Instead, a narrow majority of the Court declined Abramski’s invitation to gut one of the nation’s most important laws designed to reduce easy access to guns by felons and the mentally ill. The ruling is a relief to law enforcement – and a setback for the National Rifle Association.

Tim Murphy elaborates:

In the case, Abramski v. United States, the NRA and other gun groups argued that lying about who would end up with the gun shouldn’t matter if the intended owner could legally own one – and more broadly, that the entire prohibition on straw purchasing was itself a “legal fiction” with no real basis in the law itself. Twenty-six states signed on in support, arguing that the law infringed on their rights to regulate gun sales.

In the majority opinion, Justice Elena Kagan, who was joined by the three other liberal-leaning justices and the swing vote, Anthony Kennedy, emphatically disagreed: ‘No piece of information is more important under federal firearms law than the identity of a gun’s purchaser—the person who acquires a gun as a result of a transaction with a licensed dealer.”

Jeff Shesol examines the rulings:

In his dissent, Scalia—joined by Roberts, Alito, and Thomas—heaps contempt on the majority’s view that the “true buyer” of the handgun in question was not Bruce Abramski, who went to the counter, (falsely) filled out the forms representing himself as the purchaser, and bought the gun, but Abramski’s uncle, who had given him the money and, as arranged, took possession of the gun just after the sale. This, to Scalia, is sophistry. “Abramski’s uncle,” he writes, “was not the ‘person’ to whom the gun was ‘s[old].'” The “plain language of the Act” makes that obvious; so does “ordinary English usage.” Scalia offers a homespun example: “If I give my son $10 and tell him to pick up milk and eggs at the store, no English speaker would say that the store ‘sells’ the milk and eggs to me.”

But Justice Elena Kagan is an English speaker, and here is what she replies in a footnote to her majority opinion in Abramski: “The dissent claims the answer is easy. … But try a question more similar to the one the gun law’s text raises: If I send my brother to the Apple Store with money and instructions to purchase an iPhone, and then take immediate and sole possession of that device, am I the ‘person’ … who has bought the phone or is he? Nothing in ordinary English usage compels us an answer either way.” Scalia, in a retort to Kagan’s reply (this could go on all day!), professes to find it “puzzling” that the majority thought “the answer would be different if the sale involved consumer electronics instead of groceries.”

Paul M. Barrett marvels at the close decision:

What’s amazing about this decision is that four dissenting members of the court – led by Justice Antonin Scalia – were prepared to rule against the federal government in a fashion that would have undermined countless prosecutions of alleged gun traffickers. To put this more starkly: The Supreme Court is one vote away from judicially nullifying one of the most common tools U.S. law enforcers use to deter and punish criminals who send other people into gun stores to purchase firearms and circumvent the federal background-check system.

Nicole Flatow considers the stakes:

One goal of federal gun law is to “keep guns out of the hands of criminals and others who should not have them.” Abramski argued that so long as [his uncle, Angel] Alvarez is a legal purchaser, that goal is not threatened by their transfer. But the dynamic between third-party purchasers and the ultimate user of a gun is more complex than the picture painted here. In gun trafficking schemes, there may be two, three, or more go-betweens who hold the gun before it gets to the ultimate end user, who may be banned from purchasing a gun. Alvarez, for example, could have later sold the gun to another person, who sold it to another. Punishing the person who lies about their purchase in the first place prevents gun traffickers from skirting the law by arguing the legality of the immediate third party.

There is also a second goal of federal gun law, which is to “assist law enforcement authorities in investigating serious crimes.” This pursuit is severely thwarted by Abramski’s purchase of a gun. If Alvarez were to later commit a crime using the gun purchased by Abramski, that gun might be traced to Abramski – the first purchaser on the background check form – rather than Alvarez, shielding Alvarez from the gun used in the crime. Making it a crime to lie about the actual buyer allows prosecutors to enforce the federal law’s fundamental purpose of identifying and vetting gun purchasers, in a climate in which straw purchases are a key component of illicit gun trafficking.

The president is planning to sign an executive order banning anti-LGBT discrimination by federal contractors:

The White House had long declined calls to proceed with the order, arguing it was pressuring Congress to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, known as ENDA, which would apply the protections to all American workers. Like the prior orders on wages, proceeding with the unilateral executive action is a tacit admission by the White House of the grim prospects for getting legislation passed through Congress in the coming years. The Senate passed a version of ENDA last year, but House Republicans have indicated they will not bring the bill to the floor in that chamber.

Not now and not ever. At some point, the administration ran out of arguments for not issuing an executive order like this. I have no issues with it – the government should not be a party to discrimination against some of its own citizens, period. And it may have an impact in shifting the policies of a lot of big contractors. But it will only cover one in ten Ls, Gs, Bs, and Ts in America (although the inclusion of protections for trans people is a real gain). And what will the Republicans do?

Greg Sargent expects a muted response:

Congressional Republicans are under heavy pressure — from people inside the party who want it to broaden its national appeal — to evolve on gay rights. That RNC autopsy into what went wrong in 2012 called for more sensitivity to gay rights as a way of keeping pace with evolving attitudes among young conservatives. A recent WaPo poll found that support for the idea that the Constitution protects the right to gay marriage has hit 50 percent, with 60 percent of those aged 18-39 agreeing.

Family-oriented conservative groups may well criticize this latest move. But his time — unlike in 1998 — if there is no serious backlash among GOP lawmakers to speak of, it will be yet another sign of the speed with which the ground is shifting, and an indication that even Congressional Republicans are increasingly acknowledging the need to keep pace with the culture’s evolution on the issue.

Jonathan Bernstein agrees:

[S]ome Republicans are still running against marriage equality, at least in some states. But has any Republican said one word about the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the last two years?

If you remember the 2004 campaign, or the Clinton presidency, or the years before that, it’s amazing how much things have changed. Republican opposition remains so intense that the Employment Non-Discrimination Act can’t get a vote in the House (though it isn’t intense enough that Speaker John Boehner can allow a vote on the measure and expect his Republican conference to thwart it). Greg’s guess is correct: Very few Republican politicians want anything to do with LGBT issues in this election cycle.

Not well:

Sarah Kliff unpacks the graphic:

A new Commonwealth Fund report looks at how the United States stacks up against other countries on things like access to doctors and quality of care. It pulls from three separate surveys conducted over the past three years: a 2011 survey of sicker patients, a 2012 survey of doctors and a 2013 survey of adults over 18. It also uses health outcome data from the OECD and World Health Organization. This means it captures the experience of the medical system from the people who use it a lot, those who use it a little and the doctors treating them.

The American health care system came in last both in the overall rankings, which pull together data on 11 specific measures of success for a health care system. This includes metrics like how easily residents can access health care, if that medical care is affordable and if its effective. There was no measure where the United States came in first place — our best ranking was coming in third in the effectiveness of our medicine …

Phillip Klein rejects the study:

The problem with the Commonwealth Fund study is that it’s rigged to produce a result that favors socialized health care systems.

The study determines that the U.S. system is worse because it lacks universal health insurance coverage and the report emphasizes “equity” as one of the key factors in evaluating a health care system. But it’s an ideological decision to view equity as one of the most important factors in judging a health care system, just as it is for the study to leave out a factor such medical innovation, which would work to the advantage of the U.S., or choice, which would work against the centralized NHS.

Olga Khazan provides more context:

It’s important to note that one reason for America’s lag, as the authors explain, is our historic absence of universal health coverage. But the data for the report was collected before the full implementation of Obamacare, which dramatically expanded health insurance, so it’s possible that the U.S. may rise in future rankings. And notably, both the U.K. and U.S. ranked low on the “Healthy lives” scale, which considers infant mortality, healthy life expectancy at age 60, and mortality from preventable conditions, such as high blood pressure.

Dave Schuler examines the other countries ranked poorly:

Even more importantly from my point of view the second-worst system is Canada’s while the third-worst is France’s. Since Canada is the OECD country that most closely resembles ours culturally and from a lifestyle standpoint, I think that’s a significant finding, suggesting that even if we were to adopt, say, a single-payer system that would be merely the beginning of the reforms that would be needed here if we truly want to have the best of class healthcare system to which we aspire.