Monthly Archives: August 2012

Foreign Law in US Courts

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The Wall Street Journal‘s Law Blog recently ran a piece about the legitimacy of using of foreign law in American courts.  The piece drew heavily from an article on the Volokh Conspiracy, but I want to talk about the concept, rather than the particular case (which Eugene Volokh also used for a concept discussion).

The particular case began with a man and woman who married in Pakistan.  Later, still in Pakistan, the man divorced the woman in a religious ceremony, but neither followed through with a secular divorce.  The woman then remarried while still in Pakistan, and after that, the new couple moved to the US, where they had another marriage ceremony.  This marriage, though, also failed, and the two separated.  The woman had never told her second husband about her first marriage, but in the course of his own divorce preparation investigation, he discovered that first marriage, the religious divorce, and the lack of a secular divorce.  He filed for annulment, rather than divorce, arguing that the woman from whom he was seeking an end to marriage had committed bigamy.  The woman filed for divorce, rather than annulment, insisting that the religious divorce was sufficient to have ended that first marriage.

A trial court, after consulting Pakistani law—which controlled both the secular and the religious marriage and divorce concerning that first marriage—granted the annulment, and a state appellate court affirmed.  Volokh and the Law Blog both say that this use of foreign law in a domestic court was legitimate.  I agree for the narrow kind of case this represents.

The acts in this case, which created the status of each person on which the other relied, were wholly completed within that foreign jurisdiction.  Whether each person could rely on that status, then, needs to consider the law under which that status originated.

But this is a narrow situation.  It cannot apply, for instance, where acts are completed in the US.  This must rule out, for instance, the use of Sharia law to determine whether allegations of spousal abuse in a household in the US are accurate.  This must rule out any legitimacy of any defense of the form “That’s the way we do it in the Old Country.”  Actors in the US are not in the Old Country.

It must also rule out some areas where the actors in the US are acknowledged by all relevant parties to have broken the Old Country’s laws and then come here.  This is what political asylum is for.  A divorce vs annulment question has nothing to do with asylum.  Breaking an Old Country law in defense of the inalienable rights—and associated individual freedoms—that we acknowledge as possessed by all human beings is an area where the foreign law must be held irrelevant.

A Few More Thoughts on Employment

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The Beveridge Curve is a means of depicting the relationship between the unemployment rate and the number of jobs available in an economy.  An example of this curve is given by a Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland article, which asks “Has the Beveridge Curve Shifted?” and is presented below.

Moves along the curve indicate increasing job openings in a growing economy associated with decreasing unemployed workers, or decreasing openings with increasing unemployment in a shrinking economy.  The curve itself can move, also, as structural mismatches between employers’ needs and employees’ capabilities change.  Such mismatches can be driven by technology that creates a gap between skills needed and skills possessed, or job location vs employee location—or by long-term unemployment, which destroys existing job skills that otherwise would be a good match for existing skill needs.

But in such cases, we’d expect the curve to shift back as such mismatches clear (and shift again, as new mismatches develop).  It’s normal for economies to expand and contract on a shorter time frame, though, than that on which structural shifts occur—it can take months or years to retrain, for instance, whereas an economy can contract in a matter of months (typically, in the US, the current dislocation, or those of the 1970s or 1930s notwithstanding).  In fact, the Fed’s article points out that such movements of the curve itself are normal behaviors for our economy in the post-war period.

That’s a long-winded entry into the purpose of this post.  There are two graphs that indicate the failure of the present administration’s economic policies, especially as those policies impact employment capabilities in our economy; both of these are from  Sober Look.  The first graph is this one:

This shows just the sort of structural shift described above, and the shift didn’t occur until after the recession was over—and recall that the recession ended in Spring 2009, before any economic policies of Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama could have taken effect.  Even his $800 billion Stimulus Act spending had not had time to have any effect at the time of the recession’s official end.

Notice that the pre-recession unemployment vs job openings part of the curve is entirely consistent with what we’d expect in a healthy economy—lots (relatively) of openings and full employment, with fewer openings associated with moderately higher unemployment.  During the recession, the decreasing availability of jobs and increasing unemployment followed that curve all the way out to the peak unemployment near 10%.

After the recession, though, and since—a period in which Obama’s economic policies have been able to have their full effect—we see the curve’s shift: even though jobs are becoming more available, unemployment is remaining high, and the drop-off in unemployment, such as it is, is following a higher level of jobs availability—there is a higher mismatch between jobs and job seekers.

This next graph illustrates a major reason why.

This graph shows the number of Americans who’ve been out of work for 27 weeks (6+ months) or more as a per cent of total unemployed.

Notice that sharp, and so far sustained, rise in this long-term unemployment during Obama’s term.  This long-term unemployment produces one of those mismatches described above—the skills mismatch, this time driven by skills destruction through non-use from that long-term unemployment.  Obama’s policies are actively suppressing re-employment.  Even as the preceding graph implies that there are more jobs available now than at the start of his term, job seekers can only find jobs from an increased amount of availability than was the case before the present policies were in place.  The increase in jobs available just isn’t enough to absorb our high unemployment.

Growing Foreign Oil Dependency

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Amid claims by the Obama administration that we need to reduce our dependence on foreign oil—and actual Republican and conservative efforts actually to do so by opening up access to our own gas and oil supplies, protect our coal producers, and their failed effort to facilitate American purchase of Canadian oil—we get this, from The New York Times, no less.

The United States is increasing its dependence on oil from Saudi Arabia, raising its imports from the kingdom by more than 20 percent this year, even as fears of military conflict in the tinderbox Persian Gulf region grow.

The increase in Saudi oil exports to the United States began slowly last summer and has picked up pace this year. Until then, the United States had decreased its dependence on foreign oil and from the Gulf in particular.

If the Obama administration weren’t slow-walking permits for off-shore drilling, closing off Federal lands to oil and gas development, and attacking natural gas fracking, we’d be getting access to increased American oil—and a major product substitute, gas—right about now, instead of having to buy more oil from Saudi Arabia, and thereby enriching a nation that has closed off Israeli access to its airspace should our erstwhile ally want to preempt an Iranian nuclear strike by attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities.

If the Obama administration hadn’t closed off American access to Canadian oil by killing the Keystone XL pipeline, and thereby pushed Canada to sell its oil to the People’s Republic of China (which has its own purposes for getting Canadian oil), we’d have reduced further our dependence on oil from countries that don’t like us all that much.

Some Notes on Energy Subsidies

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Here are some data taken from the US Energy Information Administration’s report Direct Federal Financial Interventions and Subsidies in Energy in Fiscal Year 2010.

The following table is excerpted from the EIA report’s Table ES4, and it shows the amount of subsidy that each energy source received along with the per centage of the total of nearly $12 billion in subsidies handed out that each energy source received.

2010 Total (millions)

Share of Total Subsidies and Support
oal $1,189 10.0%
Natural Gas and Petroleum Liquids $654 5.5%
Nuclear $2,499 21.0%
Renewables $6,560 55.3%
    Biomass $114 1.0%
    Geothermal $200 1.7%
    Hydropower $215 1.8%
    Solar $968 8.2%
    Wind $4,986 42.0%
    Unallocated
Renewables		 $75 0.6%
Transmission and Distribution $971 8.2%
Total $11,873 100%

 

This table, excerpted from the report’s Table ES5, gives an indication of the relative amount of energy we taxpayers are receiving for our subsidy.

Share of 2010 Generation (percent)
Coal 44.9%
Natural Gas and Petroleum Liquids 25.0%
Nuclear 19.6%
Renewables 10.3%
    Biomass Power 1.4%
    Geothermal 0.4%
    Hydroelectric 6.2%
    Solar 0.0%
    Wind 2.3%
Total 100.0%

 

Notice that: coal, natural gas, and oil get 15.5% of the total subsidies while producing nearly 70% of our nation’s energy; renewables get over 55% of the subsidies and produce just 10% of our energy.

As the Wall Street Journal tells us that DoE, which owns the EIA,

…warned that “Focusing on a single year’s data does not capture the imbedded effects of subsidies that may have occurred over many years” for other energy sources.

Of course.  Because if we did consider such things, we’d have to notice that renewable energy subsidies have been costing taxpayers for 40 years—since the ’70s—with next to nothing to show for it.

“Get rid of the subsidies for the fat-cat oil and gas companies,” says Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama.  Ignoring the snide tone of his remark (albeit paraphrased by me), I agree—get rid of the oil and gas company subsidies.  Get rid of the alternative energy subsidies, too.  If the (renewable) energy industry cannot survive in the market on its own, this simply demonstrates that the industry isn’t ready for the market.

At least the oil and gas and coal companies, with their subsidies, are generating actual electricity, though: look at solar—it’s getting 8% of the total subsidies handed out, and generating no electricity (can you say, “Solyndra?”).  Not a watt, except for rounding error to get to that zero.

Some Thoughts on Poverty and Obligation

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Anthony Davies and Kristina Antolin had these thoughts in a Saturday Wall Street Journal op-ed.

Wealth and poverty are catalysts for bringing the rich and the poor together in community, and community is the hallmark of the church’s mission on Earth. Government is not community. Government is one of community’s tools, a coercive one we use when it is necessary to force people to behave in ways they would not otherwise behave voluntarily.

But that word—voluntarily—is key, and it’s where Mr. Ryan’s religious detractors go awry: Charity can only be charity when it is voluntary. Coerced acts, no matter how beneficial or well-intentioned, cannot be moral. If we force people to give to the poor, we have stripped away the moral component, reducing charity to mere income redistribution.

All people have the moral obligation to care for those who are less fortunate. But replacing morality with legality is the first step in replacing church, religion and conscience with government, politics and majority vote. Coercing people to feed the poor simply substitutes moral poverty for material poverty.

What they said.