Asymmetrical Information

I understand what you're saying. Cheap things cost less money, and it makes no sense to compare unlike things on a dollar basis. I've been guilty of this fallacy. But it doesn't make Bush's 9/11 commission record much prettier.

For purposes of comparison, the September 11th investigation is getting $3 million and one year. Off the top of my head:

-A study of legalized gambling got $5 million and two years.

-The Whitewater investigation got $70 million and eight years.

-Clinton's commission on race (which didn't produce anything of value, and was generally a bad idea) got $2 million and one year.

And remember, it's not just the money, it's the stonewalling from the Bush administration. They resisted an independent commission for almost a year. They appointed Henry Kissinger and John Lehman. They've never fired anyone for intelligence failures that contributed to 9/11. These are not the actions of an Administration that wants to get to the bottom of things.

Um, what Ted said.

Or, here's another way to look at it: assuming that President Clinton is average in the endowment department, the Whitewater investigation works out to about $11.6 million per inch.

Um, what Ted said.

Or, here's another way to look at it: assuming that President Clinton is average in the endowment department, the Whitewater investigation works out to about $11.6 million per inch.

You are absolutely correct on this one, reletive budgeting is complete nonsense; as is the call for across the board budget cuts based on percentages and not cost/benefit analysis.

Of the two examples you give, both should recieve all resources needed. The shuttle because the nation owes those that risk their lives for the good of all an explanation when those lives are lost. 911 because preventing future similar occurances required understanding how the initial event transpired. Unfortunately, personal preservation seems to be hindering that particular investigation.

Getting a handle on what the $3 million represents is a bit tricky too, unless it is explicitly laid out. Everybody involved in the investigation is already on the payroll. Is their pay being attributed to the investigation, or does the $3 million represent net new outlays induced by the investigation? I dunno.

Insert "and was generally a bad idea" after the Starr comment too, and then I put in another vote for Ted's comment.

I also agree that relative budget comparisons across category types ARE foolish, that is unless the comparing party wishes to itemize the compared expenditures, and then explain the objections in detail.

Does anybody remember the $1B spent on Flight 800? If so, willing to bet the budget for the shuttle commission stays below $500M?

We should limit government’s involvement in our lives as much as possible. Inherently, the public sector is going to waste more money than the private. A politician is always tempted to prove their interest in a particular challenge by voting to spend a significant amount of money---regardless whether its required or not. Their political opponents will also not hesitate to charge them with starving to death the proverbial widows and children. This is merely ho-hum reality and should not surprise anyone. Lastly, the money doesn’t come out of the politician’s pocket. It’s usually a lot easier spending other people’s money

Hey, let's not forget that the Iran/Contra investigations took even longer and cost even more--and successfully prosecuted far fewer people--than the Whitewater/Lewinsky shindig.

So this is an argument for spending more on the 9/11 commission? In order to do what? Those others were criminal investigations. This is not.

And what, in the end, do you expect it to do? Find some people to string up by their thumbs? Someone to pillory? Saying "I just want to know what happened" is a fool's errand when there are literally tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people involved in some way or the other with the events that led up to this.

Frankly, I wish we had no commission at all. But if we do have one, the measure is not to compare it to the Whitewater investigation, for God's sake.

Tell me, how much do you think the Warren commission on the Kennedy assassination cost? And for whatever it did cost, what did it get us but 40 years of conspiracy theories, still going strong.

Inherently, the public sector is going to waste more money than the private.

Depends on your definition of waste. The majority of new technologies and medical breakthroughs come from government funded research. I don't think that's a waste.

A politician is always tempted to prove their interest in a particular challenge by voting to spend a significant amount of money---regardless whether its required or not.

Anyone who's participated in corporate budget planning knows that this isn't limited to the public sector.

Their political opponents will also not hesitate to charge them with starving to death the proverbial widows and children. This is merely ho-hum reality and should not surprise anyone.

All business is war, not limited to the government. This is true within businesses and between them. Ask any CEO.

Lastly, the money doesn’t come out of the politician’s pocket. It’s usually a lot easier spending other people’s money.

Other people? You mean like stockholders?

Seriously, the corporate world is run by greed just as much as politics is. There are certain things that the government is just better at than the private sector. In situations where market pressure works, let the market work (i.e. keep government out of it). In situations where free markets fail, some other entity has to step in.

"Seriously, the corporate world is run by greed just as much as politics is."

Greed is a human vice tempting every single individual on this planet. There is a major distinction, though, between the private sector and the public. The former normally pays a severe price for its blunders. Government entities often survive regardless of the level of their incompetence. Stock owners are far more able to raise hell with failing executives than common citizens can with government bureaucrats. Politicians come and go, but the bureaucrats usually have guaranteed jobs for life

Could someone please direct Mr. Thomson to the DeLong forum? He's harmless. There's probably a string over there where his comment may be relevant.

As for the topic here: people talking in this way are not making a budget proposal. They're trying to dramatize the infinitesimal amount of money and attention being spent on the 9/11 investigation, along the way to making the completely valid point (based on other evidence too) that the Bush administration does not want an investigation.

The Iran-Contra investigation did not get many convictions, but it sure got a lot of pardons. Can't blame the case for that. The Clinton panty raid was probably get-back for Iran-Contra and Clarence Thomas, but if you put the cases side by side, the Republicans still look pretty bad.

One of the footnotes to Iran Contra is that George Bush was never questioned:
http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/walsh/chap_28.htm
Walsh's Report on Bush.

Dean Esmay: have you ever seen the sculpture of the three monkeys: "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil". That's you. The desire not to be told what's going on is a powerful force in American life. What you don't know won't hert you!

Dwight Merideth has a good response to this question.

Without knowing the details of the investigations in question, how can you judge the validity of the budget?

How many lab tests were/are required? How many man-hours in the field? Etc etc.

Saying that since investigation A cost x, and investigation B cost 2x, the current Administration values investigation B twice as much as investigation A is not sound reasoning IMHO.

To try to give a handle on whether $3mil or $30mil is a good budget for a commission, you have to look at its mandate. If the commission is comprised of experts on a narrow matter (e.g. doctors looking at vaccinations) and they are going to principally get together a few times and staff together a report, $3mil is more than enough. But if you are doing an investigative process over several years and are going to hire high priced staff lawyers to serve subpeonas, hey you can spend that $3mil in the first six months and get nowhere. Which puts the (non commission) Special Investigations by DoJ appointments on this scale of effort, whether concerned with the controversies of the Reagan, GHWB, or Clinton administrations.

NPR did an article on the 11Sep01 commission some weeks ago and cited their hiring several high priced staffers and then finding out that they couldn't even pay airfare for their next meeting. That is what you get for trying to do a medium to high intensity effort on a relative shoestring.

Actually, the pardon of Weinberger regarding Iran/Contra was more of an obstruction of justice in that it prevented the investigation from going higher to GeorgeI --who was the one doing the pardoning.

Dean, Zizka was too easy on you. If there is a clue in the case of 911 that would serve to prevent another attack and we didn't find it because people don't want to know the truth..., well just understand that the law correctly punishes one who engages in willful ignorance of an event to the same extent as one who has actual knowledge.

But the question you leave unanswered is to which law you are referring, Tony? The Law of Unintended Consequences? I couldn't imagine any other specific ones....

mm love the sound of moonbats barking in the morning...

as long as you keep the bastard lawyers out of it, any investigation will be incredibly cheap!

assume that gov't salary is max 150k... you can get 10 people full time for a year at 3M (using 2x for resources etc) for this salary...

if you're using outside council at a senior partner level (assume 700/hour) you're talking 3m for them, assuming a 2x multiplier (hahahaha a partner only costing 2x his salary hahahahaha) and 2000 hours (i.e. a year) hahahahahahaha (when all the meetings and travel are billable... be lucky to keep him under 4000)

so you're talking something more like 1 half year of a senior partner (assuming in both cases that they have the requisite staff to support them) or 10 years of senior engineers, spies, generals, etc...

and you wonder why whitewater and iran contra cost a ridiculous amount of money.. it's the fing lawyers (as always).. they're worse than consultants (consultants have to finish their report eventually... lawyers can draw things out forever) although probably not by much

“Without knowing the details of the investigations in question, how can you judge the validity of the budget?”

Exactly. The radical Left is only interested in a never ending investigation of the Bush administration. This would encourage fruitcakes like Oliver Stone to create a new conspiracy theory on a daily basis. The reality is that we are already thoroughly studying the events surrounding 9/1. A generously funded federal commission would simply be an exercise in overkill. it would indeed be an excuse for its members to live the good life at the expense of the taxpayers. More importantly, the left wing haters of George W. Bush will never be satisfied.

This is tangential, but not completely unrelated.

The lovely Jane wrote: It's nonsensical to say "We're spending $3 million to investigate 9/11, but $1 billion to buy new cruise missiles", just as it is to say "We're only spending $48 a month for the drugs that are saving my life, but we're spending $324 a month on the Buick".

There is a valid point that is masked by the drugs vs. Buick analogy as Jane frames it, though.

Namely, in Jane's analogy, both the drugs and the Buick are working. "We should be allocating money by how much it costs to accomplish each goal," she writes.

The point that people who make drugs vs. Buick-style arguments tend to be getting at is that those areas where we are allocating less money are also the areas where our goals aren't being accomplished.

In other words, the Buick works fine but these drugs aren't keeping me alive. Therefore, we should be spending more than $48 on drugs / keeping-me-alive-related items.

I agree completely that even if spending is increased to the level at which putatively underfunded programs are working, there may still be huge disparities in spending vs. other programs, because different things cost different amounts to do.

(and the inevitable) But...

Just because different goals cost different amounts to achieve doesn't mean we are actually now spending what it costs to achieve them. That is the point these people are making, if you interpret them most charitably.

The classic liberal example of military vs. education spending is instructive as a valid form of the argument you denigrate. You know the sayings: "If only the army had to have a bake sale" etc. etc.

An intelligent liberal making this argument isn't saying we should ignore cost and automatically spend more on our highest priorities even if they can be achieved cheaply. Rather, their words disguise some assumptions:
(1) We could do the job of defending our country effectively while still spending less on defense
(2) We are not effectively educating our children, and spending more government money on education is the way to fix this.

Therefore, we should spend more on education, and the comparison to defense spending is indeed meant to show that our priorities are out of whack, not by ignoring the fact that defense costs more, but by suggesting that there is a lot of waste in defense spending and a lot of need for more money in education.

Card-carrying anarcho-capitalist that I am, I can't say I agree with the liberal argument, but I can defend the line of reasoning. Given those premises, it isn't "hogwash."

Yes, this is the most charitable interpretation of the argument. I'm sure many uses of the argument don't take cost into account and are indeed hogwash. Just not all of them.

In situations where free markets fail, some other entity has to step in.

It would follow that in situations where both free markets and democratic government fail, some third entity has to step in. I'm available!

Libertarian fruitbat: There are actually countries in the world with almost no lawyers. Saudi Arabia is one, and whatever you call Red China these days is another. Check 'em out. You might like it better there.

Your accounting of the investigation cost was apparently meticulous, but incomplete. How many paperclips would be used, for example? You didn't even get into that. (You seem to be the only one here to really think that budgeting is really the issue here.)

At my URL I have miscellaneous sources on Bin Laden et al before and right after 9/11.

Corrected URL.

Too much coffe this morning.

You can also find countries with development and standard-of-living levels comparable to the US, but fewer lawyers per capita -- so what does that prove?

It proves they have less crime ;->

anony-mouse:
I guess it indicates that lawyers are the price we pay for low taxes, low regulation.

Comments are Closed.