Beating swords into plowshares: If you could cut the Pentagon's budget, what would you spend it on?

So with the usual amount of depressing news circulating through, I set myself a happier task, which nicely dovetails with this piece by Daily Kos' Meteor Blades on military spending:

How much could I cut the U.S defense budget and what would I spend the proceeds on?

The rules were designed to make this somewhat realistic. I'm not trying to eliminate the Pentagon's budget entirely, unilaterally disarm, or make the Air Force hold a bake sale to buy necessary equipment. The idea here is simply to identify some reasonable spending limits for the American military machine (kind of like the discussions we have for regulatory agencies, health care funding research and infrastructure spending), and then think about what sorts of programs (or tax cuts, or deficit reduction) we could implement with the savings.

Figure 1 shows U.S. military spending as a percentage of national GDP between 1962 and 2015, based on GDP figures from the Bureau of Economic Advisors and spending figures from the White House's Office for Management and Budget. This number represents military expenditures, but doesn't represent veteran services or health care (i.e. funding for activities under the Department for Veterans' Affairs.) Notice how the figure generally steadily declines, though it does ramp up during the Vietnam War, the 1980s Reagan build-up and the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. The 1990s peace dividend is clearly visible as well, reflecting the end of the Cold War.

In 2015, according to GDP figures, from military spending represented about 3.16 percent of GDP. In a world in which we made decisions that maintained a reasonable military investment, what might defense spending look like? I came up with plausible three candidates.

Scenario 1: We reduce military spending to the lowest level of spending (Fiscal Year 1999) in which we spent about 2.7 percent of GDP on military spending.  This scenario would give us roughly $82 billion (all peace dividends will be rounded down) in funding to allocate elsewhere.

Scenario 2:  We reduce military spending to levels of the Republic of Korea (South Korea), which is about 2.6 percent of GDP, according to the Stockholm Institute for Peace Research in 2014. I thought this seemed reasonable, since the ROK is an advanced industrialized democracy, participates at a reasonably high level in international operations and faces a clear and presents military danger from North Korea, both of which necessitate large investments in the armed forces. Cutting to this level leaves us with a annual peace dividend of about $101 billion.

Scenario 3: We could really give into the hippies and spend only the percentage of our GDP that an average country spends on the military: 2.3 percent of GDP.  This would leave us with a cool $155 billion to spend.

Note that all three of these scenarios would leave use spending at least double any other country in the world in absolute amounts of defense spending.

Head below the fold to see what I came up with to spend my peace dividend under each scenario. Some funding proposals are fairly detailed, but most (e.g. the preschool and parental leave are rough back-of-the-envelope calculations at best) Let me know in the comments what you would do with your surplus.

Could a union have prevented this adjunct's death? Maybe not -- but it could have helped.

Slate's LV Anderson has a really thoughtful and well-researched piece up on the circumstances surrounding the untimely death of recently dismissed Duquense adjunct professor Margaret Mary Vojtko.Vojtko's death became a national story when Daniel Kovalik, a lawyer for the United Steelworkers Union, wrote an op-ed about it in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, suggesting that the university's treatment of its adjuncts and its demoting of Vojtko (and non-renewal of her contract) played a large role in her desperate situation

Anderson chronicles the Duquense administration's attempts to aggressively block an adjunct union drive, by suing to overturn an National Labor Relations Boad-administered election in which 85 percent of adjuncts voted for a union. However, she also raises legitimate questions about whether a union could have averted Vojtko's personal tragedy.

I think the structure of a contract probably could have helped some, though it possibly might not have prevented Vojtko's untimely death or helped her accept support to treat her likely hoarding tendencies. 

Most labor contracts implement mandatory evaluation points for promotion/ or retention protections and a series of steps called progressive discipline for long-term workers who need to improve. The idea is that managers need to have a right to manage, workers need to have fair treatment and due process. Negotiating a labor contract ensures that both sides have a say and recourse in the matter.

One object of the evaluations and discipline process is for a worker to get useful objective feedback about her performance on a routine basis and given opportunities to improve if she's not meeting standards. Steadily increasing sanctions avoid arbitrary discipline or  at least provide contractually agreed upon discipline. Guidance and support should help a worker improve, or get treatment if necessary -- which is often helpful for employees who are battling addiction or other mental illnesses.

The process also provides worker protections: a clear, transparent grievance process would give the worker the chance to both productively discuss issues with her supervisor and confront them in a legally binding process if necessary, avoiding the clunky and slow appeal to the Employment Equal Opportunity Commission Vojtko was pursuing when she died. 

So instead of arbitrarily kicking her out and cutting her workload, Vojtko's supervisor could have instituted a formally agreed upon procedure, provided warnings and kick-started the evaluation process. Vojtko would have had representation, protection and retained much of her dignity in the proceedings. She also have the ability to keep administrators in line with the ability to file a grievance.

Additionally instead of ad-hoc attempts to help from various faculty, a clear process established by a mutually agreed upon contract and (hopefully good) working relationship would have been in place to determine precisely what support the college needed to provide.

In short, under a labor contract, managers would have guidance on and the ability to manage, and workers would have representation and access to protections and support.

And note how this entire discussion also omits the higher wages and better health insurance that union contracts often bring, both of which might have eased Vojtko's stress over paying for her cancer treatments and helped her get treatment for her hoarding tendencies.

I think it most certainly could have made a difference.

Afterword:

I should note that Anderson's article really gets at who Vojtko was as a person. Anderson doesn't lionize her as part of a cause, or engage in victim-blaming. It's wonderful chronicling, excellent storytelling and respectful to the many facets of Vojtko's life and her complicated situation.

Additionally, see Anderson's work on adjunct working conditions and options here. Slate, give this women a raise already.

Finally, kudos to Duquesne's student paper for first reporting on the story and hinting at some of the deeper issues surrounding Voktjo's dismissal and death. It's tough for novice reporters to handle a story like this, and they succeeded as well as anyone could expect them to do so -- especially with defensive administrators likely staring over their shoulders.

Political Cues and Stealth Campaigns, or "How we elected a complete wackaloon to the Houston Community College Board of Trustees"

And just when I thought that local Houston elections had gone reasonably well in the "let's not embarrass ourselves in front of the country" metric,  I find out that Dave Wilson, a noted anti-LGBT activist, busybody and general slime ball who makes a living as an infected boil on the body politic, beat a respected incumbent on the Houston Community College Board of Trustees. Great.

Via the ever-handy Charles Kuffner  (criticizing the Houston Chronicle's coverage):

So a 24-year incumbent gets ousted in a race decided by 26 votes, and what do we learn about his victorious opponent? Just that he’s a “small-business owner”. Not that he’s a notorious, longtime anti-gay activist who ran against Mayor Parker in 2011 and is currently embroiled in a legal battle against the Harris County Democratic Party over his attempts to run for County Commissioner while claiming his business address as his residence. Not the fact that he meddled in the HCC 1 race by sending one of his patented attack mailers, sliming Zeph Capo and Kevin Hoffman for being gay. Not the fact that the mail he sent on his own behalf would make you think he himself was African-American, which he is not. Just, you know, a “small-business owner”. Nothing to see here, folks.

 Incidentally, Kuffner entitled his post "Why Stealth Campaigns can Work," which is a great statement about the political science behind how Wilson got elected.

In crowded, low-profile local races on ballots with lots of items, information is at a premium. Voters don't have time to extensively investigate every race, so they rely on cues. (Political Party is an example). What Wilson did was pretend he was black to get a heavily African-American community to identify with him. In effect, he scrambled the cue to voters in order to mislead them.

It's the same principal that helped unscrupulous petition gathers get Michigan's notorious 2006 Proposition 2, the so-called "Michigan Civil Rights Initiative" that banned affirmative action, on the ballot. Canvassers would go door-to-door in African American neighborhoods and tell them to sign up to support civil rights.

It's also the same reason why "Right-to-Work" or "Freedom-to-Work" campaigns are so lethal. Their proponents cloak anti-worker union-busting laws in pro-worker language to camouflage their true intent.

Guess I won't be teaching at HCC anytime soon. 

And Kuffner's criticism of the Chronicle here is spot on. By not even mentioning Wilson's past or tactics and identifying him merely as a "small business owner" they actively aid his deception. Of course, it's often tough for reporters -- especially new ones, and I've been there -- to know the history of local politicians, but some one in the editorial chain should have caught this one.

For more on cues, how voters use them and how political operatives use false rhetoric to hide them, check out the work of political scientists Arthur Lupia and Matt McCubbins. Or read George Orwell.

On the bright side,  Wilson has never claimed to be Santa Claus. Clearing that bar means he's at least marginally better than at least one congressman I could name.

State aid and college tuition costs

So I have a new article up at Thesis Web magazine.

The general conclusion is that cutting state aid for higher ed leads to large tuition hikes.

I know this is shocking to many state legislators.