Week of: |
3:15 PM
ANWR polling
A new national survey indicates that the American public is mostly against drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)—53 to 38 percent. Of those with "intense" reactions, 44 percent strongly opposed the drilling while only 25 percent strongly supported it. Meanwhile, an overwhelming majority of those polled—73 percent—disapproved of the Bush administration's attempt to slip drilling legislation past the Senate through the budgetary process. And an equal number would prefer that the U.S. rely less on oil and gas and more on conservation and alternative energy sources.
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2:15 PM
Are immigrants and terrorists the same thing?
The ebb and flow of populations across borders was not too long ago taken as evidence of an ever-smaller, more productive globalized world. But after 9/11, the traversing of borders has taken on a distinctly menacing connotation. The REAL ID Act that recently passed the House links tries to take advantage of this link by hiding immigration reform behind the facade of national security, albeit in a rather disingenuous fashion—for all of its security provisions, the Act would not have kept any of the 9/11 hijackers out of the United States.
But it's not just the U.S.; politicians in Britain have also tried to pursue their own pet immigration reforms under the guise of fighting the war on terror. Candidates in the upcoming UK elections have been trying to outdo each other on the subject of who can keep out the most foreigners. But much of this may be a manufactured crisis. While polls show that Britons consider immigration a top concern, The Economist recently reported that asylum applications are in fact down by 60 percent since 2002, and the government has recently set a quota on work permits. But instead of addressing immigration issues in a calm and sensible manner, the British government is trying to capitalize on a general fear of foreigners that is driven, perhaps, by the specter of terrorism.
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12:48 PM
Still a terrible deal
Kevin Drum seems to agree, at least in principle, with the Washington Post editorial page's rationale for favoring private accounts:
Their reasoning is simple: private accounts invested in stocks should have pretty good returns, and these high returns will allow benefits to be cut enough to bring the system closer to solvency.
As far as it goes, that's perfectly reasonable. Private account returns are highly unlikely to be the 4.6% they cite, but they'll probably be higher than 3%, and that means that investing in stocks is likely to be a good deal for retirees who make wise investment decisions.
But the Bush privatization plan will still be a terrible deal for most people even if they do get "pretty good returns". Let's go through this once more: The Bush plan, as we've heard it so far, would allow workers to divert money into private accounts over the course of their lifetime, and then, upon retirement, the government would collect back that "loan" plus interest by reducing your traditional Social Security benefit. The amount taken off that traditional benefit is the amount you put into private accounts plus 3 percent interest. So obviously if your private account investments net a 3 percent return (after inflation and administrative fees), you break even.
But there's one other crucial component to plan that the Post is missing. As the president himself has admitted, private accounts will not do anything to fix the long-term solvency issues of Social Security. In fact, they would make things much worse. So in addition to the cuts you receive due to private accounts, Americans would also have to take a very large additional cut in the benefits they're already guaranteed. This second massive cut would be necessary to pay for the $4.5 trillion deficit the Bush plan would create over the next 25 years.
When it all adds up, everyone is much worse off—a median twenty-something worker today can expect a yearly benefit of $19,700 under what the current system can pay if we do absolutely nothing have the shoddy economic growth expected by the Trustees. But with private accounts, plus the cuts to shore up Social Security's current solvency issues, plus the additional cuts made necessary by privatization, those same workers could expect a yearly benefit of around $13,097 with "pretty good returns". You would have to do much better than "pretty good" to come close to the same benefit you would have received under the "do-nothing" plan the Democrats are advocating. That's the big problem.
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10:30 AM
Democrats try the parliamentary model
Call it a spine or call it obstructionism, but as Ron Brownstein chronicles in the Los Angeles Times today, "Democrats are mounting a much more aggressive and unified opposition to President Bush than they did following his election in 2000." Most encouraging, I think, is this little tidbit about John Kerry's leading role:
Kerry is assuming a day-to-day opposition role unprecedented for recent presidential losers. He has even conferred with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who initially led the Labor Party when it was a minority in Parliament, on how to build an opposition party.
Why Tony Blair? As with minority parties in various parliamentary systems, the Democrats have no hope of taking part in the legislative process over the next two years. The president, for one, has near total control over his party—to the point where he can do a bit of arm-twisting and get Rep. Jim McCrery to completely reverse his stance on Social Security. Meanwhile, House Speaker Dennis Hastert has already said that he won't pass any bill unless it's supported by a majority of Republicans. And, as the Democrats learned during Bush's first term, any amount of compromise—on Medicare, or tax cuts, or Homeland Security—only gets you a bad bill and further attacks from the right.
So a British-style "opposition party" is the right model, and Tony Blair is the right person to consult. The British House of Commons has been described as a place where a "continuous election campaign ... is fought," and that seems wholly apt. As far as Social Security is concerned, a full-throated defense of the program should suffice. That means not just noting that President Bush's plan entails steep benefit cuts and trillions of dollars in borrowing, but also stressing the larger importance of "social insurance". Compromise, meanwhile, is probably out of the question. Some Democrats have quietly supported private savings accounts in addition to the traditional Social Security program, but it's highly doubtful that this sort of compromise would ever make it through the GOP-controlled legislative process without some truly awful provisions tacked on.
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5:01 PM
A new definition of 'terrorism'
Now that the House has passed the Real ID Act, country is one step closer to being officially opposed to allowing terrorists in the country. Who counts as a terrorist? Anyone who is a
representative of a political, social, or other group that endorses or espouses terrorist activity, has received military-type training from or on behalf of any organization that, at the time the training was received, was a terrorist organization…[or] an alien who is an officer, official, or spokesman of the Palestine Liberation Organization [PLO].
Wow. So not only does the Real ID Act tighten restrictions on the issuance of driver's licenses and turn the DMV into something resembling the INS, but it also sets out to define terrorism in the broadest of terms—except for the weird and very specific bit about the PLO. The new bill will also give the Department of Homeland Security the authority to deport anyone who once was a member of or supported an organization that was only later deemed "terrorist." A brief eight pages, the entire bill is well worth the read.
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1:48 PM
Perks for ranchers, too...
Last fall the US Senate voted unanimously to declare December 13th the National Day of the Horse, so as to encourage us "to be mindful of the contribution of horses to the economy, history, and character of the United States."
Looks like not everyone was quite so mindful. Buried in last year's omnibus appropriations bill—passed, yes, that very December—is a tiny passage stating that any horse over 10 years old or that has been unsuccessfully auctioned three times could be shipped off to the slaughterhouse. Many animal rights groups now worry that this paves the way for large scale horse removal, a move which some activists have called payback to ranchers for their contributions to President Bush's re-election campaign.
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1:31 PM
The bizarre world of Real ID
As we await final word on whether the House's new immigration bill, the REAL ID Act will be passed by Congress, a brief clarification is in order as to what, exactly, the bill calls for. It's not just about stricter regulations on obtaining drivers licenses. (Though that part of the bill has raised the thorny issue of federal versus state regulation of immigration problems.) It's also about placing the Department of Homeland Security above the law—indeed, above the very possibility of legal recourse—with regards to border control.
Even more worrisome, potentially, is language in the bill that hands the responsibility of determining whether immigrants deserve refugee or asylum status over to the individual discretion of federal border agents—who have of late been rather erratic in their treatment of detainees. The REAL ID Act calls for a rewording and reconsideration in what constitutes a refugee and adds a clause called the "credibility determination." This allows the agent interviewing the applicant to determine an immigrant's refugee status based on their subjective assessment of the applicant’s "demeanor, candor, or responsiveness… the inherent plausibility of the applicant's account." And what does it take to prove that you are, in fact, a refugee? Let's see:
[T]he applicant should provide evidence which corroborates otherwise credible testimony, such evidence must be provided unless the applicant does not have the evidence or cannot obtain the evidence…The inability to obtain corroborating evidence does not excuse the applicant from meeting the applicant's burden of proof.
So you have to have evidence that you're a refugee. Unless you don't have evidence. In which case, you still need to prove you're a refugee. This is the kind of language that will undergo vastly different intepretations in border facilities and airports across the country. It's all sounding disturbingly familiar. A lack of concrete rules is what led guards and interrogators to make up their own rules at Abu Ghraib—let's hope we don't bring this kind of dangerous ambiguity back home.
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9:18 AM
The free markets speak: "More stem cells, please!"
With the announcement from London that Dr. Ian Wilmut—the British scientist who famously cloned Dolly the sheep—was granted license to produce stem cells from human embryos for research in the UK, the Bush administration can't be pleased. Already, state legislators have threatened to advance the march of stem cell research—first with California passing a major bond measure to finance new research and now Maryland and Massachusetts announcing plans for legislation of their own—and now foreign countries are forging ahead. The U.S. federal government now finds itself on the trailing edge of a growing trend.
There's little question that the American public has mostly made up its mind on stem cell research. While the majority of Americans are for it, Bush's religious conservative base is most certainly not—which explains why the president originally restricted federal funding of stem-cell research to a small set of embryo lines, ones that were already in existence in August 2001. However, assuming the economic advantages of stem cell research become apparent at some point, the president may eventually be forced to make a difficult choice—one that could prove deeply divisive within his own party ranks.
There's already indications that he's been feeling the pressure. In a recent article in The American Prospect, Chris Mooney reports:
"It was no accident that [President Bush] provided a very bland, watered down, vague restatement of their policy and their position [in his State of the Union address]," Dan Perry, president of the Coalition for the Advancement of Medical Research, told me. "I have to believe that may presage some opening, some potential willingness to negotiate some kind of a change in the current policy."
Adding to that pressure is growing concern over whether or not America is beginning to fall behind globally. In a recent Foreign Affairs essay entitled "Is America Losing It's Edge", Adam Segal writes:
The United States will never be able to prevent rivals from developing new technologies; it can remain dominant only by continuing to innovate faster than everyone else. But this won't be easy; to keep its privileged position in the world, the United States must get better at fostering technological entrepreneurship at home.
As Segal points out in his article, the US is far from a crisis as far as technological innovation is concerned. But with regards to stem cell research, other countries are beginning to move ahead, a trend that may force the Bush Administration to move away from its earlier opposition.
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8:51 AM
Whose side are you on, anyway?
British officials have for a long time publicly stated that they have been trying to negotiate the release of British national detainees from Guantanamo. But now comes word that they had a hand in sending them there in the first place.
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5:16 PM
Democracy when I feel like it, part 2
Seems like Faure Gnassingbe and Nepal's King Gyanendra had similar schedules this week. First, take over country unconstitutionally. Second, crack down on any and all dissenters. After abolishing Nepal's legislature, Gyanendra has moved onto the second order of business, arresting the country's leading human rights campaigner. The interesting twist is that Pakistan has decided to stand behind Gyanendra's power grab for the sake of fighting terrorism. It will be interesting to see what the Bush administration has to say about their ally's usage of the "t" word.
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4:17 PM
Democracy? When I feel like it!
The talk of freedom and democracy taking root in the Middle East may be cause for celebration, but a look to Togo provides a sobering reminder that plenty of other countries are still taking a few steps back. On Monday, following his father's death, Faure Gnassingbe seized power in Togo with the backing of the military. Other West African nations have as yet refused to recognize the new government, and though Faure has promised legislative elections, he seems intent on keeping his presidential spot indefinitely.
Normally the European Union defers to France on all matters considering Togo, such as whether to withhold aid or impose sanctions. But France has strong financial ties with the Gnassingbe family, and President Jacques Chirac has merely urged Faure to respect the constitution—something that shouldn't be a problem, given his tendency to change it at will. Unfortunately, without a stronger move from France, it is unlikely the EU will take concrete steps to push Faure into holding elections. Such inaction could provide an example to other African leaders, such as Uganda, with aversions to democratic elections.
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3:42 PM
Meanwhile, the GOP focuses its energies on...
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3:01 PM
"Low performers" in the budget
The President, as we know, is proposing to eliminate 150 programs, with nearly a third of those under the auspices of the Education Department. The cut programs include those that, according to the White House, "are not getting results, or duplicate current efforts, or do not fulfill essential priorities."
Since 2003, the Administration has been rating the supposed worth of programs, using a complex formula known as the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PDF), and then placing the programs in one of four categories: Effective, Adequate, Ineffective and Results Not Demonstrated. The administration then uses those categories to determine whether the programs are worth funding.
According to assessments made over the last two years, 35 education programs—a majority of those slated for elimination—have "not demonstrated results". Some of the programs in question are not exactly crucial, such as the "Exchanges with Historic Whaling and Trading Partners". But others are programs that, at least on the surface, sound important, like vocational training opportunities for students, and Even Start, which offers literacy and parenting classes for young parents living in poverty.
So why did they get cut? A few of them are plagued by poor management, according to the Education Department. Oftentimes, however, "program statutes often contribute by failing to give [the Education Department] the necessary tools to demonstrate success." In other words, an educational program may well be providing an invaluable resource to hundreds, maybe even thousands, and the program may be doing so very effectively. But if the department can't chart its progress under a neat rubric, it's off to the chopping block.
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2:55 PM
Waiting for chaos?
Via Steve Clemons, I see that the UPI's Martin Sieff has a thoughtful analysis of what Howard Dean's chairmanship to the DNC will mean for the Democratic Party. But the crux of the piece, if true, should be wholly shocking to people—Sieff suggests that the Democrats' fortunes in the 2006 midterm elections will depend entirely on whether President Bush leads this country into disaster and chaos or not:
If President Bush's fiscal policies work reasonably well and the U.S. economy remains even in its current condition without any further significant upturn, Dean and the Dems don't have a prayer, whatever they try: The GOP superiority in organization, discipline, funding and media penetration will yet again carry all before it.
But if Iraq gets significantly worse, if a wider conflict, perhaps with Iran, erupts in the Middle East, and, most important of all, if the soaring federal deficit triggers a precipitous collapse of the dollar and flight of international central banks out of U.S. Treasury bonds, then having a focused, angry aggressive message is exactly what the Democrats will need in the campaign of 2006.
Read that again. Apparently, the bar has been set so low that simply averting a financial crisis (and/or a prolonged war with Iran) will count as a "success" for the Republicans in 2006. Yes, the country will still suffer from massive deficits, rising inequality, 50 million uninsured, climbing bankruptcy rates, and uncontrollable health care costs, but that's all irrelevant. If true, that should make this whole debate about whether the Democrats should pursue a Dean-style populist approach or Hillary Clinton-style "Third Way" moderation sort of moot—there are far deeper problems here.
Part of the solution, of course, is to make the Democrats less reactive. Josh Marshall, for instance, has done a very good job not merely in criticizing Republican efforts to phase out Social Security, but in laying out the affirmative case for the program. Sam Rosenfeld over at TAPPED has been on this issue for some time, and noticed that the Democrats are gravitating towards this approach, but could use a boost. But whether the final party message approximates Dean-style populism or DLC-style moderation—and in truth, there doesn't seem to be a yawning gulf between the two positions, substantively—the thrust of it should be affirmative, rather than waiting around for doomsday to strike. One thing I did like about Dean during the 2004 primaries was that he tended to be very proactive, defining ahead of time the terms of the debate—on health care, on the need for balancing the budget, on the war in Iraq—rather than reacting quickly to events on the ground. So whatever his other failings, he might be able to help the Democrats in at least one key respect.
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2:08 PM
Will ANWR drilling finally go through?
With all the hype over the Bush Administration’s budget proposal and its myriad cuts, it's not surprising that many details have gone relatively unnoticed. Take for instance, the administration's presumption that drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR)—a project that has been repeatedly shot down by Congress thus far—will provide the federal government with an estimated 2.7 billion in revenue in 2007.
Under normal procedures, legislation to allow drilling in ANWR would require 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster—votes the White House has thus far been unable to muster up. But by including the revenue from drilling fees in the budget, the administration could potentially get the legislation passed during the budget reconciliation process (explained here), an act that would require only a simple majority.
The Bush administration tried last year to sneak ANWR drilling in during reconciliation, only to have the attempt thwart by the Boxer Amendment, which passed the Senate with 52 votes. This time around, now that Senate Republicans have gained four new seats, it will be difficult to pass a similar blocking amendment. Other efforts to block oil exploration in ANWR, however, include bipartisan bills in both houses that would designate the region in question as a "wilderness", thus precluding any efforts to drill. It should be noted, though, that similar bills, introduced in February 2003 in the House and March 2003 in the Senate, went nowhere.
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11:04 AM
Illness and bankruptcy revisited
Harvard University's Elizabeth Warren has a must-read op-ed in the Washington Post today about the link between health insurance and bankruptcy. As we noted in a post on Warren's study last week, the problem isn't just that people don't have insurance. It's that insurance often fails to cover very serious illnesses, or lapses when people change lose their jobs. At the moment, President Bush plans to chip away at employer-based coverage, which would in theory solve some of these problems were it not for the fact that his "Health Savings Accounts" leave people at the mercy of the open insurance market. Inevitably that means weaker coverage, less incentive for insurance companies to cover catastrophic costs, and—in the end—more bankruptcy. If that's something you can live with, fine, but let's not pretend it's a serious proposal to solve America's health care problems.
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10:45 AM
Evangelicals join the asylum fight
In recent days we've heard of evangelicals calling for greener environmental policies from the Bush administration; you know, be an actual "steward of the earth" and all that. Now we're hearing that religious groups, evangelicals among them, are joining human rights organizations to fight against an immigration bill sponsored by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) that would put restrictions on political asylum—mostly on the grounds that it would make it harder for religious refugees to seek safe haven here in America. Nicely done! In general, I think any talk about Democrats allying with religious conservatives on economic matters is somewhat of a lost cause: social hot-button issues like Sponge-Bob Square-Pants and dirty words on TV will always rile these groups up far more than poverty and inequality do. But tactical compromises on smaller issues—like asylum policy, or sex-trafficking, or environmental law—can be quite effective, and ought to be sought out at every turn.
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10:30 AM
Power to the presidency
As House Republicans begin whispering that President Bush may need to veto the eventual budget that emerges from Congress, in order to keep lawmakers in check, it's worth reviewing a related development: namely, "automatic appropriations,"one of the smaller, sneakier budget rules that the president has proposed this year.
Here's how it works: Normally, if the president and Congress can't agree on appropriation bills, government agencies simply shut down—precisely what happened in 1995 after the vicious battles between Newt Gingrich and Bill Clinton. The new proposal, however, means that in the event of an impasse government agencies would just keep chugging along at the previous years spending. Now that sounds good, but it also gives a good deal more power to the president—since he could hence simply veto appropriations bills and not talk with Congress, without facing any consequences. Indeed, a number of minor rules—like the line-item veto—are cropping up in this year's budget proposal, making the big budget story here not the expansion of the federal government as whole, but the strengthening of the presidency.
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10:11 AM
Kurdistan: The new Ohio
Edward Wong in the New York Times today reports on an Iraq development we've been tracking for some time—namely, that the Kurds will be the all-important "swing voters" in the new parliament and will likely see most of their demands met. Wong also mysteriously claims that "Americans will likely find themselves depending on the Kurds to act as a check on conservative Islamic politicians." Let's talk about this a bit.
Like I said yesterday, Ambassador John Negroponte and other U.S. leaders will want to pay close attention to the finer details of the constitutional debates. If the religious Shi'ite alliance wants to enshrine Islamic family law in the constitution, that's a terrible development, but probably not something we can realistically stop, and hopefully something that will get attenuated by liberal activist judges over time. (Shari'a doesn't speak for itself, and there are certainly liberal interpretations of it.) But if it looks like the Shi'ites want to press for strict clerical control of the judiciary, or afford weak protection for political parties, a free press, and other necessary democratic institutions, then the U.S. will need to step in, and using the Kurds to thwart the Shi'ites' constitutional ambitions will probably be the most likely avenue.
On the other hand, it's hard to see how willing the Kurds are to play this game. They basically want two things: An autonomous Kurdish super-province in the north and control over the oil-rich city of Kirkuk. Millions of Kurds are clamoring for independence back at home, so the pressure to win concessions will be fierce. It doesn't seem like the Kurdish leaders have much incentive to worry about the finer points of Islamic implementation in the south, which means that they could sign off on a more repressive constitution that governs Southern Iraq only.
Speaking of which: The Financial Times today reports that the Shi'ites don't want to enshrine shari'a in the constitution, but will merely stick to the provision in the interim constitution that merely says no law can "contradict[] the fixed elements of Islam that are the subject of consensus." Okay, but politicians say a lot of things, so we'll see.
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10:02 AM
Price indexing vs. wage indexing (don't tune out!)
Here's one for the "Arcane But Important" file: The Bush administration, when it feels like being vaguely serious about social security "reform," has floated the idea of substituting price indexing for wage indexing -- meaning that future benefits would not, as now, reflect improvements in the standard of living, but would just be indexed to prices.
The Congressional Research Service recently did the math on this, estimating what the effect on current Social Security retirees' benefits under such a shift. Result: big drop in benefits. As the Economic Policy Institute notes:
Under the current wage indexation, the Social Security benefit for a person with average earnings over one's lifetime and retiring in 2005 would be $15,336 per year, replacing 42% of the average worker's income. If, however, price indexing had been used instead of wage indexing, that same 2005 retiree would receive only $6,180 per year, replacing just 17% of income. In other words, as the figure shows, a change from wage indexation to price indexation would have meant a 60% cut in Social Security benefits for today's retirees. (emphasis mine)
CRS also looked at how this change would affect people aged 65 and older living in poverty in 2003 (which, by the way, is 3.6 million elderly, or 10.2 percent of the noninstitutionalized elderly). They found that if Social Security benefits had been calculated using price indexation, an additional 7 million elderly would currently be living in poverty, bringing the total to 10.5 million, or 30.4% of the elderly.
So, like I say, arcane but important.
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9:42 AM
Here comes the phase-out!
Josh Marshall posts up a memo on Social Security by Jason Furman of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities now circulating around Washington that's worth a look. It's worth noting, though, that Marshall's summary of the memo—that President Bush's plan would lead to a 2/3 reduction in benefits—slightly understates the matter.
Because the Bush phase-out plan will make Social Security's problems worse and add $4.5 trillion to the debt over the first 25 years, guaranteed benefits are going to need to be cut even further. One way you can do this is by making benefits grow with prices, rather than with faster-growing wages, over time. But Furman points out that with price-indexing, eventually the guaranteed benefit would grow to zero by 2080. Let's just hope the grandkids don't make any poor investment choices, because they'll have no guaranteed safety net whatsoever.
By the by, since liberal pundits these days seem to want the Democrats to "compromise" on this issue and offer ideas of their own—uh, if the president wanted to repeal the First Amendment, would we still be faulted for kneejerk opposition? (Probably…)—let's set the parameters here. As we know, a person in their twenties right now will receive a guaranteed benefit of $19,700 a year. That's if we do nothing, Social Security goes "flat bust," as our president likes to say, and we need to cut benefits slightly to match payroll tax receipts. So I'll happily listen to any Social Security reform that offers at least as much in guaranteed benefits as the "do absolutely nothing in the face of doom" option. Bush's plan would slash my benefits by around $6,000 while adding trillions to the debt. Sorry, not interested.
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5:31 PM
Torture TV
Reality shows are becoming ever more relevant by the day. First—as Onnesha noticed yesterday—we'll soon have ABC's new show, Miracle Workers to tackle our nation's health care problems. Now, to guide us through our national debates on torture, we get The Guantanamo Guidebook. According to today’s Guardian, this latest show will expose seven male volunteers (three of whom are Muslim) "to 48 hours of 'torture lite' including sleep deprivation, the use of extreme temperatures and 'mild' physical contact." Apparently this is the only way we have left to find out just how bad the "stress positions" used in American interrogations really are.
While none of the show's volunteers are subjected to what the U.S., up until recently, defined as torture—that is, "the equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily functions, or even death"—one of the volunteers does quit after "just seven hours suffering from hypothermia."
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5:20 PM
Life after Guantanamo
Right as Condoleezza Rice was heading for Paris to repair relations with French President Jacques Chirac, news came that the last of three French citizens that were being held at Guantanamo would be released. But released into what? The four other French prisoners set free in July of 2004 still remain in French custody under a provision that allows for the detention of those with "potential for terrorism" for up to two years without being charged.
Citizens of Britain haven't fared much better. Recently, in response to requests that a British resident be released from Guantanamo, the country's Foreign Office claimed that the detainee had lost his right to British residency by staying outside of UK borders for over two years. Australia has similarly washed its hands of its own citizens held in Guantanamo, even though the U.S. recently released one Australian detainee without charges. Meanwhile, five Moroccans released from Guantanamo last August appeared in court yesterday. The defendants repeatedly tried bring up instances of torture they had endured while in captivity, but they were reportedly silenced by the Moroccan judge: "The court is not concerned with what happened elsewhere." All five of the defendants insist that they are innocent and have no connections to al-Qaeda or Osama bin Laden. When asked why they had signed testimonies that claimed that they did have connections, they informed the judge that they had been blindfolded when forced to sign.
The gray area concerning the legal rights of terror suspects continues to grow. Last month, U.S. District Judge Joyce Hens Green's (a Carter appointee) recently ruled that the United States could not deny Guantanamo detainees the right to trial. Furthermore, Green ruled that the military tribunals established to determine whether or not detainees are "enemy combatants" to be unconstitutional. However, proceedings are at a standstill pending a government appeal. This appeal is due to a previous ruling by Judge Richard Leon (a George W. Bush appointee) that conflicts with Green's ruling. Hopefully this will get sorted out soon; an enforceable legal precedent is desperately needed here.
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2:32 PM
Can we get some real bias around here?
While we're talking about the Times, I'm having trouble figuring out what's so patently offensive about their Sunday "Week in Review" piece on Social Security by newly-hired reporter Nick Confessore. The good folks at NRO Online are all agog over the fact that a former liberal pundit would be hired to write a news piece for the Times ("bias! bias!"). But near as I can tell, Nick's article just suggests that popular opposition may make it kind of hard for Bush to "reform" Social Security. That's about as anodyne an assessment as you could possibly make—and I don't know anyone, President Bush included, who believes that privatizing the program will be easy—yet Stanley Kurtz calls it "a classic case of deep anti-Bush bias hiding behind a veneer of fairness." Boring!
UPDATE: Oh, okay, maybe the problem is that Nick Confessore dubbed the Bush plan "privatization." Twice! Word on the street is that you're not supposed to do that anymore, per White House orders. So was that the "deep anti-Bush bias" Kurtz spotted? Well, why didn't he just come out and say it? Afraid of looking like a hack, maybe?
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2:27 PM
Seek asylum, win detention
Er, I don't have a whole lot to say about this New York Times story about the poor treatment asylum-seekers in the U.S. receive—except, that is, to hock (shamelessly!) this old interview with Mark Dow. It gives a pretty good overview of the issue, and details just what sort of "treatment" immigrants can expect in detention centers as they await rulings on asylum. Good to see the Times finally covering this story.
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1:04 PM
Budgetary clown show
Via Brad DeLong, Stan Collender of the National Journal thinks the Bush budget proposal won't get very far:
It's hard to believe, but a phrase that hasn't been used since Bill Clinton was sending his proposed budgets to a GOP-controlled House and Senate was actually used by a number of Republicans yesterday, just hours after President Bush's 2006 budget was sent to Capitol Hill: "dead on arrival." While the mix of members will shift on each issue, the president may very well have lost his clear-cut majority on budget matters.
Fair enough, though I'm a bit confused as to what Congressional Republicans think would make for a better budget. It seems that the two primary objections from President Bush's own party are: cuts to particular programs, and the yawning federal budget deficit, which the budget doesn't really cure. Okay. But then a sizeable majority of Congressional Republicans have also signed a pledge not to increase taxes. So that solution's out. Meanwhile, cutting discretionary spending even further will only yield very tiny reductions in the deficit. And Bush's two big entitlement "reforms"—including last year's Medicare bill, which will cost $400 billion over the next five years alone, and his vague hints at a proposed Social Security plan, which will cost $4.5 trillion over the next 25 years—will only expand the deficit by huge amounts. So where is fiscal sanity supposed to fit come from? Fairy-land?
Republicans can't control the deficit. Period. They've committed themselves to a whole overlapping series of ideological constraints that all contradict each other and have created a huge impasse. Meanwhile, the deficit swells. The only remaining way out—barring massive inflation that erodes the real value of the federal debt, which would be, um, an interesting solution—is simply to pretend deficits have no economic effect whatsoever. Grover Norquist has already taken that route; who will be next?
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10:49 AM
Making a mockery of PAYGO
The major papers are hitting on all the most overtly despicable parts of President Bush's budget—its cuts for programs that help low-income people and don't really contribute all that much to the deficit; its fundamentally dishonest promise to reduce the deficit. All that deserves coverage, but some of the more insidious measures are tucked deep in the Bush administration's bevy of new budget rules.
Take, for instance, the White House's new proposal for "pay-as-you-go rules." You may remember the original PAYGO rules from the 1990s, when Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich agreed to pay for any new spending or tax cut with either a tax increase or a corresponding budget cut elsewhere. That discipline led to the balanced budgets later in the decade, an eventual surplus, and higher national savings that fueled economic growth. Alas, despite the similarity in name, Bush's PAYGO rules have nothing whatsoever to do with budget discipline.
Basically, the new rule would group together a bunch of entitlement programs—Medicaid, Medicare, disability, veterans compensation, etc. The budget office would then issue 75-year cost estimates for each program. Any new legislation that appeared to increase the cost of a program over the next 75 years would have to be offset with cuts in another similar program, or through an increase in payroll taxes. (More progressive income taxes could not be used.) However, any legislation that increased costs via tax cuts—say, a tax credit for health insurance—would not be subject to this rule.
It seems rather wonky, but the effects are quite real. For one, issuing 75-year cost estimates for anything, let alone health care, is ridiculous. These things are too unreliable. Furthermore, the constrained nature of the offsets limits what Congress can do. They can't close an abusive tax shelter in order to expand Medicaid for children, no, they'd either have to slash other health spending, or increase mostly regressive payroll taxes.
Meanwhile, tax cuts and tax credits remain exempt, which means that Congress will end up favoring these methods and no doubt increase the deficit even further. It's not always clear, moreover, that tax credits are the most effective way of doing things. MIT Economist Jonathan Gruber recently found that if the government wanted to cover 3 million new uninsured Americans, simply expanding Medicaid would be much cheaper than individual or employee tax credits. Yet under the new "PAYGO" rules, Congress would be less likely to pursue the cheaper option, merely because it looks like government spending rather than a tax cut. Apparently the president is under the illusion that tax cuts don't need to be paid for in the end. They do.
Taking a broader view, the indefatigable Center on Budget and Policy Priorities sums up the problem: "[M]ajor deficit reduction occurs only when all sides of the debate are required to accept fiscal discipline in their own favored areas, in return for imposing fiscal discipline on areas of the budget they care less about." Indeed, limiting "pay-as-you-go" to a few entitlements, with odd distortions thrown in, will make it less likely that the budget ever gets balanced.
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10:22 AM
Can the Sunnis and Shi'ites make nice?
As we all know, the most important factor for the future of Iraq—the factor that will prevent a civil war and a major oil-price-exploding, global-recession-making crisis in the Middle East—is whether the majority Shi'a can convince the Sunnis to lay down their arms and join the political process. Spencer Ackerman rounds up evidence that even though Shi'ite leaders say they want reconciliation, they've been taking a number of concrete steps to thwart that process—such as upping the purge of former Sunni Baathists from the new government. We've warned before about this; whatever the Shi'ites good intentions may be, they are as prone to miscalculation and overreach as anyone else. It happens all the time in the U.S.—the difference is that an ill-timed Tom DeLay power grab is merely crass and undemocratic; an ill-timed Shi'ite power grab could destroy the nascent Iraqi state.
It's also worth asking whether the Sunni are really ready to bargain, as seems to be the common (albeit cautious) assumption these days. True, some prominent groups that boycotted the election, like the Association of Muslim Scholars, have indicated their willingness to work on a draft of the constitution. Indeed, many Iraq-watchers assume that most Sunnis would love to take part in the new government if only a) it could guarantee a U.S. withdrawal, b) they wouldn't have to live under a Shi'ite theocracy, and c) they wouldn't be deprived of resources. On this reading, the Baathist "dead-enders" leading the insurgency, along with foreign thugs like Abu Musab Zarqawi, are the only folks who truly reject Iraqi democracy sight unseen.
Is that right? A recent paper on the Sunni triangle by Rashid al-Khuyun, an Iraqi expert on Islam, suggests that the Sunni tribes in Anbar province—whose numbers comprise a considerable bulk of the insurgency—may also reject any sort of inclusion in an Iraqi state. (Many of these Sunni tribes in Fallujah, Ramadi, and elsewhere chafed even under the rule of Saddam Hussein, who showered them with money and resources.) So it's not entirely clear that a political solution will emerge, even if the Shi'ites do hold out the carrot of sending U.S. forces home. As far as I can tell, we need to clear that up before deciding whether a U.S. withdrawal will do more good than harm.
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9:50 AM
Mind the gerrymanders!
Ed Kilgore has a good primer on the issues involved in the anti-gerrymandering fever that's potentially sweeping the nation. Meanwhile, Kevin Drum notices that Arnold Schwarzenegger's plan for redistricting reform in California might actually help the Democrats, and feels guilty for only now changing his mind on redistricting. He had originally opposed the plan, at least in part, because he was afraid that red states like Texas wouldn't "disarm" along with everyone else, giving the GOP an unfair advantage.
That's a valid concern, but as far as pure partisan advantage is concerned, I'd say that any sufficiently large movement against gerrymandering—no matter what states are involved—would only help the Democrats. For one, yes, a liberal movement to abolish oddly drawn and uncompetitive House districts would help the party assume that much-coveted "mantle of reform". But more than that, more competitive elections would on average bolster Democratic numbers. After all, according to one recent Democracy Corps poll (PDF), Democrats have a sizeable nationwide advantage in "generic congressional races." The only thing holding them to a House minority, it can be assumed, is unfair districting across the board. Consider too that the 44 Democratic Senators garnered considerably more votes than the 56 Republican Senators. Good reason to abolish the Senate, sure, but also good reason to think that more small-d democratic elections would lead to more big-d Democratic elections.
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9:27 AM
The varieties of theocratic experience
Now that the United Iraqi Alliance—the religious Shi'ite list endorsed by Ayatollah Ali Sistani—is primed to win a sizeable majority in the new Iraqi National Assembly, there's a lot of talk about whether this means a theocracy is in the cards as far as Iraq's future is concerned. Much of this debate, frustratingly enough, seems to miss the point, or at least could use more nuance.
The first thing to be said is that of course the new Iraq will be governed by Islamic law. This provision was enshrined fairly early on in the interim constitution, which stated that now new law could "contradict[] the fixed elements of Islam that are the subject of consensus." The main debate, then, will be over whether shari'a would be "a main source" or "the main source" of the constitution. Ayatollah Sistani appears to be leaning towards the latter, although it's hard to tell since he doesn't speak directly with the Western press, and we have to glean his intentions from a collage of statements from intermediaries, all of whom may have their own oblique intentions and agendas.
Meanwhile, there's the more specific question of Islamic family law, which governs the details of marriage, divorce, inheritance, etc. Since the Sunnis and Shi'ites have very different interpretations of family law, Iraq may well go back to the system it had in 1959, when each religion had its own court, and minority protections existed for Jews, Christians, etc. (The Kurds will probably want their own system.) Unfortunately that means that secular and middle-class women in central Iraq lose a lot of the equality rights they enjoyed under Saddam Hussein (yes, obviously life was awful otherwise…), but as secular groups don't really have any militias or ways to enforce their own interests, it's difficult to see how this misogynist rollback can be stopped.
The most crucial question, then, will be who decides that Iraq's laws are actually conforming to Islamic law. Shari'a, of course, does not speak for itself. In Iran, a twelve-person Council of Guardians decides these questions, and wields effective veto power over all laws that come out of the parliament. The small size of the council has allowed Iran's conservative mullahs to rather easily consolidate their power and thwart any law they don't like. An alternative would be to set up an independent judiciary with secularly-trained lawyers who consult with clerics on constitutional matters. That still opens the door for abuse-by-clerics, but it creates a more diffuse power center. A third option would be for the religious Shi'ites to forget about enforcing their family law preferences through the constitution, and simply using their legislative majority to pass laws on matters such as divorce, marriage, inheritance. Given that the Kurds and secular groups will probably have enough representatives to veto any unpalatable constitutional changes, this seems likely. It all depends what Sistani means when he threatens to "oversee the drafting of the constitution if he is unhappy with the direction it is taking."
So the devil's really in the details, although it should be said that personalities also matter. I appreciate Ezra Klein's point that Iran didn't start out as a theocracy, and semi-daily involvement by clerics "migrated" into full-blown clerical rule over time. Fair enough, though Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini also harbored a strident anti-Americanism that played a major part in fueling his already-radical philosophy of governing. That as much as anything else led to Iran's isolation and subsequent use of terrorism to conduct foreign policy. Clerical rule in itself isn't sufficient for an Iranian-type state—had a moderate cleric like Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri come to power after Khomeini's death (he was next in line before denounced for being too moderate), Iran might have moved closer to the West and embraced liberalization. Iraq, as we've said before, has more Montazeri-style temperaments than Khomeinis. Leaders like Adel Abdul Mahdi and Ibrahim Jaaferi are, if nothing else, open to liberal ideas on trade, economic development, free elections, etc. None of them would echo Khomeini's famously callous statement on economics: "We did not make revolution to lower the price of watermelons."
This is not to say a benign theocracy will be enough. Iraq will need a few things to ensure that it has a second election, and a third, and a fourth, etc. Healthy political parties with real popular support, for one. A free and critical press for two—Ayad Allawi cracked down on Al-Jazeera with tacit American support, and that sort of thing can't be allowed to continue. The judiciary, as we said will need to be independent. Do the Shi'ites understand these concepts? Noah Feldman, a former adviser to the CPA, recently told me that he suspected they did, though it remains to be seen. In the Wall Street Journal yesterday, famed Iraqi dissident Kenan Makiya worried that the Shi'a only understand democracy's instrumental power, and not the importance of rights in themselves.
Anyway, my summary take on this is that Islamic law and heavy clerical influence, while a terrible thing for at least the women of Iraq, probably can't be stopped. The details need to be watched, however, and if the religious Shi'ites try to limit the mechanisms of democracy, ruling only by decree, then the U.S. may need to consider stepping in.
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2:29 PM
Extreme Health Care
As we know, President Bush has proposed cutting health care spending in his latest budget. But who needs government funding when you've got prime-time television? ABC has long provided us with a star line-up of extreme reality shows to suit our every need. For Americans insecure about their appearance, Extreme Makeover will put you through plastic surgery. For those Americans without adequate housing, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition will essentially give you a new home, complete with plasma television set. And now, for those of us without healthcare, ABC offers Miracle Workers, the show that goes across the country to find people who "urgently need healthcare but do not have the wherewithal to obtain it." At difficult times like this, it’s nice to know that someone is looking out for at least a small handful of Americans. Maybe we can get ABC to tackle Social Security next.
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10:08 AM
A "tough" budget
Ah, it looks like we've finally got a "tough" new budget placed before Congress, which won't really reduce the deficit by very much much, but, by cutting heating assistance to low-income familes, will solve one longstanding and important problem: not enough people taking winter's awesome power seriously enough and freezing to death. (Here in San Francisco, we aren't much bothered by the window, a fact which no doubt contributes to a city-wide decline in moral fortitude.)
Anyway, though I might consider myself something of a budget hawk, none of this is very consoling. Many of the proposed cuts, like reductions in those rather useless farm subsidies, won't actually end up materializing, which means that the poor and powerless will suffer the bulk of the cuts. True, these programs are a tiny drop in the bucket as far as deficit reduction goes, but there it is. And as the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities points out today, much of this may prove counterproductive in the long run:
Large cuts in programs for low-income Americans also would be ill-advised, given the rise in poverty, the widening of the gap between rich and poor, and the increase in the number of people lacking health insurance in recent years. Sizeable reductions in programs for low-income families would exacerbate these adverse trends.
In other words, less may turn out to be more. But we all know how the charade goes; the president isn't concerned with actually balancing the budget. He's concerned with looking "tough". So he submitted a tough budget, and that's what we'll get. Leave it to some future president to actually try to solve the deficit mess.
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9:40 AM
The whole point of safety nets...
On Sunday, the Washington Post got Laura Thomas, a twenty-something writer, to ponder the future of Social Security. The verdict? "People my age are as likely to believe in Social Security as they are in Santa Claus." Fair enough, but fortunately for retirees across the country, the program exists wholly independent of what someone in their mid-twenties does or doesn't believe::
I will be 62 in 2042, the exact year the Social Security Administration forecasts that the system's trust fund will run out of money, and benefits will be cut to match cash flow from tax payments, unless a fix is made earlier. Some say that Social Security is fated to be a distant memory by then, while others say it will be alive and kicking. Either way, I'm looking out for No. 1.
Oy. Let's talk, twenty-something to twenty-something. That first sentence is somewhat true, but something of a red herring. Benefits may indeed need to be cut in 2042 so as to match payroll tax revenue, but even then, those cut benefits will still be substantial. In fact, if Congress makes no changes whatsoever to the system in the next 40 years, and benefits do need to be reduced eventually come doomsday, Laura can expect around $19,700 in annual benefits (in today's dollars), according to the CBO. Laura's grandmother, by contrast, currently gets around $14,900 a year if she's a median worker. So you can see why people dispute the crisis mantra. Young people especially ought to see this.
But the other point is this: No, Laura shouldn't rely entirely on Social Security to fund her retirement. Depending on whether you had already paid off your mortgage and the U.S. had found some way to keep health costs under control, it probably won't be impossible to live decently on $19,700 a year. But some people are accustomed to more. In that case, sure, we twenty-somethings should all take Laura's advice and invest in a 401(k) or put part of our paychecks in a piggy bank. Have fun. But if something goes horribly wrong—say you become part of the millions each year who go bankrupt because of medical emergencies, or say you lose your job for an extended period of time and have to eat into your savings (and can't save towards retirement), or say your 401(k) busts because you invested it all in a shady company—then Social Security will insure that you're not scrounging food out of dumpsters at the age of 68. It's only one leg of the retirement stool, but when all else fails—and for many it does—it's a pretty darn sturdy leg.
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