Political MoJo

In the National Review, Deroy Murdock doesn't want the Guantanamo prisoners transferred abroad. These "al-Qaeda assassin[s]," after all, could escape from prison in Yemen. No word, of course, on whether the prisoners in Guantanamo are actually as dangerous as he says they are. As far as we know, the truly nefarious prisoners in U.S. custody—including operations planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and recruiter Abu Zubaydah—are off in some undisclosed location around the world. Those left in Cuba, as one counterterrorism official told the New Republic's Spencer Ackerman, are "the ash-and-trash jihadi picked up in Afghanistan," and not the "honest-to-God, cardcarrying members of Al Qaeda--operatives who are worth a shit."

But no! Says Murdock! You don't understand! Army general and Southern Command chief Brantz Craddock recently told us, "We have and we are today still getting information that is relevant, that is actionable, and is supporting our service members in the field in the global war on terrorism." This might be true. On the other hand, it might not. Most of those prisoners have been lounging around in Cuba for three years. How much could they really know? As one official told Ackerman, they can still provide a decent amount of background knowledge—how al-Qaeda works, how people interact, which ethnic groups work with which ethnic groups—but after a time, this too becomes obsolete, as the face of al-Qaeda has changed and the center of the organization's gravity moves toward Iraq. Well, says Murdock, picture this little smoking gun scenario:

Imagine that the FBI caught a terrorist in March 2006 named Mustafa al-Fissi carrying detailed diagrams of the San Onofre, California, and Seabrook, New Hampshire, atomic energy plants. Today, no Gitmo interrogator could ask detainees about the still-undetected al-Fissi. Next March, however, one or more Gitmoites might be persuaded to sing about al-Fissi, his contacts, his bankers, etc. Sending these intelligence sources beyond U.S. control will, at best, delay our ability to connect these dots. If our foreign friends limit access to transferred Guantanameros, FBI agents might stare at al-Fissi without knowing what some of his terrorist brethren know about him.

Okay, that's scary, but really, what kind of argument is this? We can't keep people locked up forever because someday they might—might—know some dude who knows another dude who's related to a terrorist picked up in San Onofre. On the other hand, Murdock has one point right: the detainees will be much better off in Guantanamo than baking in some hellhole prison in Yemen or Saudi Arabia. But that's not an excuse to maintain an extralegal prison that undermines the rule of law and hampers law-enforcement efforts, it's an argument for sorting this stuff out.

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So the census numbers are in: The official poverty rate rose to 12.7 percent last year. And as per our discussion below, those numbers might even understate matters. Interestingly, the number of uninsured Americans stayed the same only because Medicaid and S-CHIP, two liberal workhorses in the healthcare department, managed to pick up the slack. I'd just put that alongside an earlier Washington Post story, noting that, when they return to Congress next month to work on the budget, Republicans are going to have to look deep inside their souls for the courage to hack away at health insurance for children. So the picture is actually about to get much, much worse.

Which brings up a semi-important point: During the run-up to the election, liberals loved to mock Bush and the Republican Party for spending like—wait for it—a drunken sailor, despite the fact that the GOP is supposed to be the party of fiscal restraint. It was all good fun to watch self-proclaimed conservatives like the National Review throw confetti at Bush's feet, and then squirm uncomfortably when the topic of spending was broached, but if anything, I'd sort of like to see those taunts die down. Cuts to Medicaid and other state programs would be really, really bad, and while it's frustrating from a liberal point of view to see Bush, DeLay, Frist and other hypocritical Republicans get away with spending so lavishly while preaching restraint, really, the deficit isn't that bad, and it would be much better if the GOP just failed to curb spending.

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The Washington Post's Jonathan Weisman critiques the poverty and health insurance statistics that will be released tomorrow, noting that the methodology is inevitably flawed and the numbers "overstate some problems and understate others." For instance:

[S]ince poverty levels are not adjusted for regional costs of living, the working poor in expensive urban centers like Washington are routinely excluded from federal programs because their income lifts them above the official poverty line. The rural poor in low-cost states like Arkansas often can afford considerably higher standards of living than their urban compatriots. Yet they may be eligible for food stamps, housing aid, free school lunches and other programs that exclude the urbanites.

That's all true, although I wouldn't say the rural poor have it good, especially in persistently depressed regions such as the Mississippi Delta, Appalachia, or the lower Rio Grande Valley. Nor do the rural poor necessarily have a "cost of living" advantage. For one, job opportunities are much scarcer than in the cities, the physical infrastructure tends to be especially rotten, and the social-support services are considerably more limited than in urban areas. (Not that they're wonderful in urban areas.) Plus, transportation costs can be somewhat higher. On the other hand, concentrated poverty in urban areas comes with its own set of problems, including violence and crime. None of this contradicts Weisman, of course, who notes that poverty rates in any case are probably understated:

Officially, the poverty rate has drifted upward since 2000, from 11.3 percent to 12.5 percent in 2003. But a more sophisticated measurement that the Census also publishes, which accounts for variable costs of living, rising medical expenditures and more accurate price inflation, shows the official rate has consistently understated poverty. By that alternative measure, the percentage of Americans below the poverty line has risen from 12.8 percent in 2000 to 14.2 percent in 2003. Using such measurements, last year the Democratic staff of the Joint Economic Committee found poverty rates nearing 16 percent in the late 1980s.

At the same time, household incomes may be understated because they do not include non-cash income like food stamps. The earned income tax credit was created during the Reagan administration specifically to raise the working poor out of poverty. But by government counting, the program has not lifted a single person above the poverty threshold, Michael said. Since poverty rates are based on pre-tax income, refunds like the earned income credit do not count.

All of that makes sense—poverty statistics should take into account variable costs of living, etc.; non-cash benefits should count toward income—although this is also hardly the only way to count poverty. Some researchers prefer to look at consumption patterns rather than income—after all, if a family is spending little, that could indicate deprivation, although it could also indicate thriftiness—or even various self-reliance programs (at what point can families fend for themselves without government assistance). At any rate, there are a million different ways to slice these numbers up, and obviously the main story is that millions of Americans really are poor, and many more millions really don't have health insurance. Still, without an accurate grasp on the problem here, many who need assistance will be passed over, silently.

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The Fall of a True Believer
The casino millions. The congressional golf junkets. The Senate investigation. How Jack Abramoff gained the whole world and lost just about everything.
By Barry Yeoman

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