Kevin Drum

It's the GOP's World, We Just Live In It

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| Fri May. 3, 2013 8:45 AM PDT

Ron Brownstein writes about the problems faced by our two major parties:

For Republicans, the key question was whether a congressional caucus rooted in the nation’s most conservative areas could court the broader coalition the party needs to regain the presidency. For President Obama and his fellow Democrats, the issue was whether they could deliver better economic results—or at least formulate an agenda for growth that persuasively contrasted with the GOP’s. Nearly six months after the election, neither side can claim much progress.

His answer to both questions is, basically no. But what he doesn't say is that both of these questions are firmly in the control of just one of the parties. As near as I can tell, the strategy the GOP's brain trust came up with after the November election was twofold. First, try to expand its coalition by reining in its tea party excesses and tamping down a bit on its anti-gay, pro-gun, anti-immigrant wing. Second, if that didn't work—and it was always a long shot—keep the economy in lousy shape so that at least Democrats couldn't take advantage of their paralysis.

So far, it seems to be working. Strategy A, as expected, is on life support. But Strategy B is coming to the rescue. By ending the payroll tax holiday in January and seeing their sequester handiwork take effect in March, Republicans have kept the economy barely dog paddling along.

Inexplicably, they've gotten plenty of help in this project from Democrats, who agreed to the sequester hostage-taking in the first place and never fought very hard in December to keep the payroll tax holiday around for another year or two. But who knows? Maybe Brownstein is wrong. Obama seems to be betting that the American public is more interested in seeing Democrats get tough on the budget deficit than they are in seeing the economy recover. I doubt that, but I suppose anything is possible.

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Chart of the Day: Net New Jobs in April

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| Fri May. 3, 2013 7:54 AM PDT

The American economy added 165,000 new jobs last month, but about 90,000 of those jobs were needed just to keep up with population growth, so net job growth clocked in at 75,000. That's OK, but not great. However, the BLS also revised its job growth estimates for the past two months fairly sharply upward. February's figures are now positively giddy looking.

Overall, the headline unemployment number dropped to 7.5 percent. The number of long-term unemployed declined even more dramatically, and the labor force participation ratio was flat.

Basically, it was all fairly decent news, both in the top line numbers and in the details. If the fiscal cliff deal and the sequester have had a negative impact on the economy, it's not really showing up in the job numbers yet. So far, 2013 is shaping up as a rerun of 2012, which means that although we still aren't recovering at the rate we ought to be, at least we're treading water fairly briskly.

Yes, There Sure Are a Lot of Vacancies in the Executive Branch

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| Thu May. 2, 2013 10:28 PM PDT

Whose fault is it that there are so many vacancies in the executive branch? The New York Times investigates:

The White House faults an increasingly partisan confirmation process in the Senate and what officials say are over-the-top demands for information about every corner of a nominee’s life. Treasury Secretary Jacob J. Lew received 444 questions from senators before his confirmation, more than the seven previous Treasury nominees combined, according to data compiled by the White House. Gina McCarthy, Mr. Obama’s nominee to lead the Environmental Protection Agency, got 1,000 questions from the Senate, White House officials said.

....But members of Congress and a number of agency officials say the bottleneck is at the White House, where nominees remain unannounced as the legal and personnel offices conduct time-consuming background checks aimed at discovering the slightest potential problem that could hold up a confirmation. People who have gone through the vetting in Mr. Obama’s White House describe a grueling process, lasting weeks or months, in which lawyers and political operatives search for anything that might hint at scandal.

Frankly, I'm surprised there's anyone left in the entire country who's willing to go through the modern vetting process just to be an assistant deputy secretary of something or other. The whole process has gotten way, way out of hand.

But what's the answer? Certainly part of the answer is to cut way back on the number of these appointments that require Senate approval. Another part of the answer is some kind of truce about what counts as disqualifying in a nominee. Beyond that, I'm not sure. But the article is worth reading, since this has long been a sore spot for a lot of liberals.

Keeping Up With the Latest Benghazi Conspiracy Theories

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| Thu May. 2, 2013 9:45 PM PDT

Have you been keeping up with the latest on Benghazi! Yeah, me neither. But I guess it's time to correct that. It turns out there are two new developments that the wingers are pretty sure will finally blow the lid off the whole thing.

First up is a dramatically anonymous "military special ops member" who told Fox News that there was a team based in Croatia that could have been scrambled to Benghazi in time to do....something:

“I know for a fact that C-110, the EUCOM CIF, was doing a training exercise in ... not in the region of North Africa, but in Europe,” the operator told Fox News' Adam Housley. “And they had the ability to act and to respond.”

....“We had the ability to load out, get on birds and fly there, at a minimum stage,” the operator told Fox News. “C-110 had the ability to be there, in my opinion, in a matter of about four hours...four to six hours.” Being so close, C-110s would have been able to respond had there been a second attack, the source added.

And why are we only hearing about this now? Because everyone who knew about it was afraid to come forward, natch. You know how ruthless Obama can be. Today, though, Billy Birdzell, a former special ops team leader, pretty much torched the whole conspiracy theory. He makes three points. First, Obama ordered the C-110 group to launch at 2:39 am. Four hours later the attacks were over, so the team couldn't possibly have gotten there in time to stop anything. Second, even if they'd been launched earlier, it's fantasy to think they could have gotten to the compound within four to six hours. Third, even if, miraculously, they could have gotten there in time, they couldn't have done anything to stop mortar fire, which is what killed the two consulate guards in the annex.

"The person in the interview is a clown," says Birdzell. Click the link for his extremely persuasive full analysis.

So that's one down, but next up are four, count 'em, four anonymous whistleblowers who are said to be "career-level officials at the State Department and the CIA." One of the State Department whistleblowers is represented by Victoria Toensing, a longtime Republican operative whose name you might recall from both the Monica Lewinsky and Valerie Plame affairs. Ed Henry of Fox News asked Obama about all this at his press conference on Tuesday, but apparently even the vast apparatus of the West Wing can't keep up with the latest Republican conspiracy theories on Benghazi. Obama had no idea what he was talking about. In any case, supposedly the four whistleblowers will be testifying in front of Darrell Issa's oversight committee next week:

House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Rep. Darrell E. Issa, California Republican, has promised bombshells at the hearing, which he says will “expose new facts and details that the Obama administration has tried to suppress.”

....Lawyers Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing, who say they are trying to represent Benghazi witnesses who want to testify publicly about what they know, on Thursday repeated claims that access to their clients was being inhibited by pressure from unidentified administration officials. Mr. diGenova said on Fox News that the hurdles he faced amounted to a “cover-up” and that the Accountability Review Board failed to interview key witnesses for its report, starting with Mrs. Clinton.

And not only did Obama try to "suppress" this bombshell testimony, but now that he's (apparently) failed, the four officials from State and CIA are in considerable danger thanks to their decision to come forward. Issa has so far declined to provide the names of next week's witnesses because, he claims, he's concerned about "possible retaliation whistleblowers could face at the hands of administration officials."

What's it all about? Beats me, but among other things I gather the witnesses are going to rehash old charges about Hillary Clinton turning down requests for more security at the Benghazi consulate and dropping the ball on the night of the attacks. There's also a bunch of background sniping involved in the whole thing, including Toensing's claim that the State Department refused to give her a security clearance and Issa's pique over the rules under which his committee has been allowed to view documents. Beyond that, who knows? I guess we'll find out next week.

George Washington Himself Could Not Get a Revenue Increase Out of the Modern Republican Party

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| Thu May. 2, 2013 3:25 PM PDT

Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part 3:

Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in.

You know, I don't really enjoy writing endlessly about Barack Obama's essential powerlessness when it comes to dealing with an increasingly fanatic Republican Party. It's just so damn gloomy and special pleadingish. But I keep getting pulled back in. Today, a friend of mine emails with a short summary of Ron Fournier's appearance on Morning Joe today:

John Heilemann asked Fournier the same question that everyone asks Fournier, which he dodges: well, what would you have the President do? Fournier then said, "let me turn that question back on you" and went off a tangent, but not without dropping in at the end of the segment that Obama can get revenue increases if he just engages with the Republicans. I yelled at the television and scared my 4 year-old. Did he really say that? Yes, he did.

I just don't get it. What does it take to convince the Dowds and Milbanks and Fourniers of the world? How can any of them still believe that Republicans will ever agree to real revenue increases? George Washington himself could rise from the grave and the House Republican caucus wouldn't agree to pass a revenue increase for him. What then? Would Dowd and Milbank and Fournier sigh theatrically and mourn the fact that Washington just isn't the leader he used to be?

Republicans aren't going to let Obama raise revenues. They aren't going to let Obama pass a gun bill—even a watered-down one. They aren't going to let Obama close Guantánamo. They aren't going to let Obama fill the vacancies on the DC Circuit Court. They aren't going to help Obama implement Obamacare. They aren't going to let Obama address climate change. Period.

They've made this crystal clear to anyone who asks. They are true believers and there's nothing Obama, or Fournier, or anyone else can offer them that would break through their glinty-eyed zealotry. There are no deals to be made, no leverage that can be used, and no schmoozing that will change their minds. This isn't an Obama problem, it's a Republican Party problem. Why is such a simple and unambiguous fact so hard to acknowledge?

But just to keep things on an even keel around here, go read Jon Chait's "What Obama Can Actually Do About Congress." I endorse all of it. So you see, I agree that there are things Obama could do better, just as there are issues (like Guantánamo detainees) where Obama himself bears some of the blame for our current gridlock.

Now, none of Chait's suggestions would actually make more than a hair's breadth of difference. But Obama should do them anyway. After all, you never know, do you?

Want to Get Married? Buy a Cable Modem.

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| Thu May. 2, 2013 12:11 PM PDT

Via Brenda Cronin, here's a fascinating study suggesting that faster adoption of broadband internet leads to higher marriage rates. The author, Andriana Bellou of the University of Montreal, presents the basic regression chart on the right, and then runs through a variety of tests to find out whether this is really a causal relationship. After all, maybe tech-friendly places have always produced higher marriage rates. Or maybe sociable people like the internet and also like getting married. Or it could be that causality runs in the other direction: maybe people who are more likely to get married are also more likely to move to tech-friendly places. Etc.

Bellou takes a variety of strategies to test causality. For example, it turns out that broadband penetration in 2000-05 doesn't predict marriage rates in the pre-internet era (1990-95). This suggests that her results aren't due to something special about the geographic areas that eventually adopted broadband at high rates.

Long story short, her conclusion is that this association is probably causal. Other things equal, better access to the internet really does produce a greater number of marriages. eHarmony really does work.

In a way, this isn't too surprising, but there's obviously a lot of noise in the data. I'll be interested to see if her result holds up once the rest of the world starts banging away on it.

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"How Not To Die"

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| Thu May. 2, 2013 11:30 AM PDT

From Dr. Angelo Volandes, on the way physicians routinely treat patients near the end of life:

Physicians are good people. They want to do the right things. And yet all of us, behind closed doors, in the cafeteria, say, "Do you believe what we did to that patient? Do you believe what we put that patient through?" Every single physician has stories. Not one. Lots of stories.

Volandes is making a series of stark videos that he hopes might change that:

The first film he made featured a patient with advanced dementia. It showed her inability to converse, move about, or feed herself. When Volandes finished the film, he ran a randomized clinical trial with a group of nine other doctors. All of their patients listened to a verbal description of advanced dementia, and some of them also watched the video. All were then asked whether they preferred life-prolonging care (which does everything possible to keep patients alive), limited care (an intermediate option), or comfort care (which aims to maximize comfort and relieve pain).

The results were striking: patients who had seen the video were significantly more likely to choose comfort care than those who hadn’t seen it (86 percent versus 64 percent).

Volandes published that study in 2009, following it a year later with an even more striking trial, this one showing a video to patients dying of cancer. Of those who saw it, more than 90 percent chose comfort care—versus 22 percent of those who received only verbal descriptions. The implications, to Volandes, were clear: “Videos communicate better than just a stand-alone conversation. And when people get good communication and understand what’s involved, many, if not most, tend not to want a lot of the aggressive stuff that they’re getting.”

Jonathan Rauch has the rest of the story here. It's worth a read.

Republicans Not Even Pretending Anymore That They Aren't the Party of the Rich

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| Thu May. 2, 2013 10:38 AM PDT

Obviously I haven't been keeping up with Republican shenanigans at the state level. I knew about all the abortion restrictions, and I knew about all the voting restrictions. But somehow I missed this:

Friction over tax policy within the GOP has flared in states such as Louisiana, Nebraska, Kansas and Ohio, as Republican lawmakers raise concerns over projected revenue losses from income-tax cuts. Three of those states shelved big income-tax cuts that would be paid for by broadening the sales tax, and in Kansas, legislators will return next week to a continuing debate over the size and speed of proposed cuts.

Last week, the Indiana legislature passed a plan giving Gov. Mike Pence an income-tax cut that was smaller and phased in over a longer period than his original proposal. Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin agreed to an income-tax-cut deal with Republican lawmakers, but they postponed it until 2015 over revenue concerns. North Carolina lawmakers have been discussing a tax overhaul for months but haven't come up with a plan.

Really? I knew about Bobby Jindal in Louisiana, and his plan to scrap the (progressive) state income tax and make up the revenue by raising the (regressive) state sales tax. But Nebraska, Kansas, Ohio, Indiana, Oklahoma, and North Carolina have all been contemplating the same thing?

WTF? Is this now a conservative thing? Did ALEC or the Heritage Foundation release a white paper about this last year? What possible excuse can they be offering for such a direct tradeoff between lower taxes on the well-off and higher taxes on the middle class? Why risk their reputations on such a transparent sop to the rich? Have they now officially given up even pretending?

Chart of the Century: The Keeling Curve Edges Up to 400 ppm

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| Thu May. 2, 2013 8:56 AM PDT

For the past few months, the Keeling Curve, which measures atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations at Mauna Loa Observatory, has been rising toward its annual late-May peak. Right now it's at 399.5, and any day now it could pass 400 ppm for the first time in modern history. So take a nice long look. This could be the last time in your life that you get to see carbon dioxide levels below 400 ppm on planet Earth.

Fannie and Freddie Ought To Be Wound Down

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| Thu May. 2, 2013 8:20 AM PDT

Will 30-year fixed-rate mortgages disappear if the federal government doesn't guarantee them via Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? Dean Baker cries foul:

This can easily be shown not to be true by the market in jumbo mortgages. These are mortgages that are too large in value to be insured by the GSAs. A large share of these mortgages are 30-year fixed rate mortgages. Also, while it is less common today, prior to the housing bubble banks did hold a substantial share of their mortgages, typically around 10-20 percent. Since the government was not guaranteeing these mortgages, the banks must have felt the guarantee was unnecessary to get them to issue 30-year fixed rate mortgages.

I'd add that most other countries don't have agencies like Fannie and Freddie, but manage to have robust mortgage markets anyway. (Sometimes a bit too robust.) It's true, I think, that the traditional 30-year fixed is a bit of a historical artifact in the U.S. that isn't common elsewhere, but so what? There's no reason to stay hooked on the 30-year fixed just because it's been around for a long time. We should be concerned with proper regulation of the mortgage market—down payment requirements, income requirements, interest rate limitations, etc.—not with saving a particular kind of mortgage. Variable-rate mortgages work fine throughout the world with proper regulation but without GSAs like Fannie and Freddie, and they can work fine here.

Fannie and Freddie need to be wound down gradually. There's no need for a big bang. But they're relics of an earlier age and we should be willing to get rid of them.

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