The Federal Court Judge to shoebomber Richard Reid during Reid's sentencing hearing, wherein he was sentenced to life in prison plus 80 consecutive years, a $2 million fine (and $5,478 in restitution to American Airlines):
This is the sentence that is provided for by our statutes. It is a fair and a just sentence. It is a righteous sentence. Let me explain this to you.
We are not afraid of any of your terrorist co-conspirators, Mr. Reid. We are Americans. We have been through the fire before. There is all too much war talk here. And I say that to everyone with the utmost respect.
Here in this court where we deal with individuals as individuals, and care for individuals as individuals, as human beings we reach out for justice.
You are not an enemy combatant. You are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any war. You are a terrorist. To give you that reference, to call you a soldier gives you far too much stature. Whether it is the officers of government who do it or your attorney who does it, or that happens to be your view, you are a terrorist.
And we do not negotiate with terrorists. We do not treat with terrorists. We do not sign documents with terrorists.
We hunt them down one by one and bring them to justice.
So war talk is way out of line in this court. You're a big fellow. But you're not that big. You're no warrior. I know warriors. You are a terrorist. A species of criminal guilty of multiple attempted murders.
In a very real sense Trooper Santiago had it right when first you were taken off that plane and into custody and you wondered where the press and where the TV crews were and you said you're no big deal. You're no big deal.
Reid's was an almost identical case to the underwear bomber. You can't read the above and then seriously think that somehow the federal criminal justice system is not tough enough or can't handle these jerks.
In the course of my career I've met a number of federal judges and federal prosecutors from the Southern District of New York (where terrorists would be prosecuted). These are hardcore, deeply serious people. They are the best lawyers and judges in New York, which makes them probably the best lawyers and judges in the country. The underwear bomber couldn't even light his drawers on fire properly. I have no doubt who would win between him and the SDNY federal prosecutors in a match of wits or will.
(Hat tip Andrew Sullivan)
Wednesday, February 03, 2010
A Real GOP Plan for Healthcare
Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan has come out with a detailed, real plan for healthcare reform, that (according to the CBO score) would actually drastically curtail healthcare cost growth (details here). The downside is that it looks like it would do so on the backs of some of America's most vulnerable - seniors and lower income folks.
The main part of the plan would essentially privatize Medicare and Medicaid by replacing guaranteed care with vouchers that could be used to purchase insurance. The value of the vouchers (initially set around $11,000/year) would be set to increase at a much slower rate than the projected cost of healthcare, so that a voucher that was good for a Medicare-level insurance plan in 2010 might pay for only a fraction of the cost of care in 2020.
Other parts of the plan involve a refundable tax credit of $5,700 for families to purchase care, the creation of state-based exchanges, tort reform, and number of other ideas.
I disagree with a lot of what's in it, but it's a positive sign that Ryan (ranking Republican on the budget committee) has crafted a serious, good-faith counter-proposal. Too often the GOP has resorted to merely shouting "no" at Democratic proposals, and you can't negotiate with "no." Ryan's plan shares some similarities (in spirit at least) to the Wyden-Bennet plan that came out last summer, which I really liked because it focused on putting consumers of healthcare in the drivers seat, and giving them information to choose from an array of policies. (the big difference is that Wyden-Bennet would have made sure that seniors and lower-income families had the resources, through government subsidies, to actually pay for the various choices).
The big deal here is that, when Congressional Republicans counter Dem plans with serious plans of their own, negotiations can be made and deals can be struck. Ezra Klein had an excellent interview this week with Ryan (available here) that had an interesting (and telling) exchange:
Klein: So there are a couple of folks out there who do this. You, Wyden, Pete Stark, who feel safe enough to propose big things. But how do you deal with the fact that nobody is wrong about the political benefits of this stance of full opposition? Republicans are doing well at it this year. Democrats did it nicely in 2006. No one is wrong about this. You and I agree that market incentives matter. And the market of elections pushes against cooperation.
Ryan: This is my 12th year. If I lose my job over this, then so be it. In that case, I can be doing more productive things. If you’re given the opportunity to serve, you better serve like it’s your last term every term. It’s just the way I look at it. I sleep well at night.
On healthcare reform, entitlements, the deficit and debt, we need people to propose big ideas, even if we disagree with them. Even though I would fight tooth and nail to keep Ryan's ideas on Medicare from ever becoming law, I welcome him to the debate.
The main part of the plan would essentially privatize Medicare and Medicaid by replacing guaranteed care with vouchers that could be used to purchase insurance. The value of the vouchers (initially set around $11,000/year) would be set to increase at a much slower rate than the projected cost of healthcare, so that a voucher that was good for a Medicare-level insurance plan in 2010 might pay for only a fraction of the cost of care in 2020.
Other parts of the plan involve a refundable tax credit of $5,700 for families to purchase care, the creation of state-based exchanges, tort reform, and number of other ideas.
I disagree with a lot of what's in it, but it's a positive sign that Ryan (ranking Republican on the budget committee) has crafted a serious, good-faith counter-proposal. Too often the GOP has resorted to merely shouting "no" at Democratic proposals, and you can't negotiate with "no." Ryan's plan shares some similarities (in spirit at least) to the Wyden-Bennet plan that came out last summer, which I really liked because it focused on putting consumers of healthcare in the drivers seat, and giving them information to choose from an array of policies. (the big difference is that Wyden-Bennet would have made sure that seniors and lower-income families had the resources, through government subsidies, to actually pay for the various choices).
The big deal here is that, when Congressional Republicans counter Dem plans with serious plans of their own, negotiations can be made and deals can be struck. Ezra Klein had an excellent interview this week with Ryan (available here) that had an interesting (and telling) exchange:
Klein: So there are a couple of folks out there who do this. You, Wyden, Pete Stark, who feel safe enough to propose big things. But how do you deal with the fact that nobody is wrong about the political benefits of this stance of full opposition? Republicans are doing well at it this year. Democrats did it nicely in 2006. No one is wrong about this. You and I agree that market incentives matter. And the market of elections pushes against cooperation.
Ryan: This is my 12th year. If I lose my job over this, then so be it. In that case, I can be doing more productive things. If you’re given the opportunity to serve, you better serve like it’s your last term every term. It’s just the way I look at it. I sleep well at night.
On healthcare reform, entitlements, the deficit and debt, we need people to propose big ideas, even if we disagree with them. Even though I would fight tooth and nail to keep Ryan's ideas on Medicare from ever becoming law, I welcome him to the debate.
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
New poll shows fewer than half of Republicans are certain that Obama wants to beat the terrorists.
Polling outfit Research 2000 has a startling poll of Republicans out today (which was commissioned by liberal site Daily Kos) that's pretty depressing for anyone hoping to find common ground:
-36% believe Obama was not born in the US, and 22% are unsure
-only 43% said no to the question "do you believe Obama wants the terrorists to win?"
-53 to 14% believe that Palin is more qualified to be president than Obama
-23% (and 33% of Southerners) believe their state should secede
-73% (with 19% unsure) think that open gays and lesbians should not be allowed to teach in public schools.
-77% believe the book of Genesis should be tought as fact in public schools.
-Only 56% believe that contraception should be legal.
I'm sure that a poll of Dems could dig up some crazy, fairly widely-held beliefs as well (I read someplace that 20% of Dems think Bush had advance warning about 9/11)... but I don't think that the crazy is nearly this wide or this deep. Moderate Republicans - take a close look. This is your party - you can accept it, try to change it, or decamp for saner pastures.
Monday, February 01, 2010
This is why demanding bipartisan solutions doesn't work
James Fallows writes:
I got this note from someone with many decades' experience in national politics, about a discussion between two Congressmen over details of the stimulus bill:
"GOP member: 'I'd like this in the bill.'
"Dem member response: 'If we put it in, will you vote for the bill?'
"GOP member: 'You know I can't vote for the bill.'
"Dem member: 'Then why should we put it in the bill?'
In most countries with parliamentary systems, this is how it works - the government/majority proposes a bill, and the loyal opposition all oppose it. However, in those countries, the bill then passes by majority vote, and the majority is then held accountable - either lauded and reelected if people like the bill, or turned out of office if they don't.
In the US Senate, we're stuck with a system where there is increasing lock-step party-line voting, and no real negotiation, but where the "majority" can't pass its bill because it needs a supermajority vote. As we're seeing, this is a recipe for gridlock and chaos.
I got this note from someone with many decades' experience in national politics, about a discussion between two Congressmen over details of the stimulus bill:
"GOP member: 'I'd like this in the bill.'
"Dem member response: 'If we put it in, will you vote for the bill?'
"GOP member: 'You know I can't vote for the bill.'
"Dem member: 'Then why should we put it in the bill?'
In most countries with parliamentary systems, this is how it works - the government/majority proposes a bill, and the loyal opposition all oppose it. However, in those countries, the bill then passes by majority vote, and the majority is then held accountable - either lauded and reelected if people like the bill, or turned out of office if they don't.
In the US Senate, we're stuck with a system where there is increasing lock-step party-line voting, and no real negotiation, but where the "majority" can't pass its bill because it needs a supermajority vote. As we're seeing, this is a recipe for gridlock and chaos.
Friday, January 29, 2010
Engaging the Opposition
During both his 2000 and 2008 campaigns, John McCain had a minor proposal that I thought would be fantastic - that the President should, every week, address the Congress in the manner of the British Prime Minister's Questions. This was derided as a gimmick (and after watching McCain in the debates would have been disastrous for him to pursue).
Today, Obama ventured into the House GOP's retreat and spent over an hour taking questions from GOP members of Congress. It's really pretty amazing to watch, and should dispel those rumors that Obama is just an empty suit with a great speechwriter. He clearly knows the policy cold, and does a nice job engaging the Republicans and demolishing a lot of their talking point arguments.
For example, Mike Pence, allegedly a GOP policy expert, questioned Obama about unemployment and the stimulus:
Now, last year about the time you met with us, unemployment was 7.5 percent in this country. Your administration, and your party in Congress, told us that we'd have to borrow more than $700 billion to pay for a so-called stimulus bill. It was a piecemeal list of projects and boutique tax cuts, all of which was -- we were told -- had to be passed or unemployment would go to 8 percent, as your administration said. Well, unemployment is 10 percent now, as you well know, Mr. President; here in Baltimore it's considerably higher.
Now, Republicans offered a stimulus bill at the same time. It cost half as much as the Democratic proposal in Congress, and using your economic analyst models, it would have created twice the jobs at half the cost. It essentially was across-the-board tax relief, Mr. President.
Obama's response:
You're absolutely right that when I was sworn in the hope was that unemployment would remain around 8 [percent], or in the 8 percent range. That was just based on the estimates made by both conservative and liberal economists, because at that point not all the data had trickled in.
We had lost 650,000 jobs in December. I'm assuming you're not faulting my policies for that. We had lost, it turns out, 700,000 jobs in January, the month I was sworn in. I'm assuming it wasn't my administration's policies that accounted for that. We lost another 650,000 jobs the subsequent month, before any of my policies had gone into effect. So I'm assuming that wasn't as a consequence of our policies; that doesn't reflect the failure of the Recovery Act. The point being that what ended up happening was that the job losses from this recession proved to be much more severe -- in the first quarter of last year going into the second quarter of last year -- than anybody anticipated.
So I mean, I think we can score political points on the basis of the fact that we underestimated how severe the job losses were going to be. But those job losses took place before any stimulus, whether it was the ones that you guys have proposed or the ones that we proposed, could have ever taken into effect. Now, that's just the fact, Mike, and I don't think anybody would dispute that. You could not find an economist who would dispute that.
Now, at the same time, as I mentioned, most economists -- Republican and Democrat, liberal and conservative -- would say that had it not been for the stimulus package that we passed, things would be much worse. Now, they didn't fill a 7 million hole in the number of people who were unemployed. They probably account for about 2 million, which means we still have 5 million folks in there that we've still got to deal with. That's a lot of people.
The package that we put together at the beginning of the year, the truth is, should have reflected -- and I believe reflected what most of you would say are common sense things. This notion that this was a radical package is just not true. A third of them were tax cuts, and they weren't -- when you say they were "boutique" tax cuts, Mike, 95 percent of working Americans got tax cuts, small businesses got tax cuts, large businesses got help in terms of their depreciation schedules. I mean, it was a pretty conventional list of tax cuts. A third of it was stabilizing state budgets.
There is not a single person in here who, had it not been for what was in the stimulus package, wouldn't be going home to more teachers laid off, more firefighters laid off, more cops laid off. A big chunk of it was unemployment insurance and COBRA, just making sure that people had some floor beneath them, and, by the way, making sure that there was enough money in their pockets that businesses had some customers.
It mostly went like that. Video of the event below, and the transcript (definitely worth reading if you don't have 66 minutes to kill this weekend on the video) is here.
Today, Obama ventured into the House GOP's retreat and spent over an hour taking questions from GOP members of Congress. It's really pretty amazing to watch, and should dispel those rumors that Obama is just an empty suit with a great speechwriter. He clearly knows the policy cold, and does a nice job engaging the Republicans and demolishing a lot of their talking point arguments.
For example, Mike Pence, allegedly a GOP policy expert, questioned Obama about unemployment and the stimulus:
Now, last year about the time you met with us, unemployment was 7.5 percent in this country. Your administration, and your party in Congress, told us that we'd have to borrow more than $700 billion to pay for a so-called stimulus bill. It was a piecemeal list of projects and boutique tax cuts, all of which was -- we were told -- had to be passed or unemployment would go to 8 percent, as your administration said. Well, unemployment is 10 percent now, as you well know, Mr. President; here in Baltimore it's considerably higher.
Now, Republicans offered a stimulus bill at the same time. It cost half as much as the Democratic proposal in Congress, and using your economic analyst models, it would have created twice the jobs at half the cost. It essentially was across-the-board tax relief, Mr. President.
Obama's response:
You're absolutely right that when I was sworn in the hope was that unemployment would remain around 8 [percent], or in the 8 percent range. That was just based on the estimates made by both conservative and liberal economists, because at that point not all the data had trickled in.
We had lost 650,000 jobs in December. I'm assuming you're not faulting my policies for that. We had lost, it turns out, 700,000 jobs in January, the month I was sworn in. I'm assuming it wasn't my administration's policies that accounted for that. We lost another 650,000 jobs the subsequent month, before any of my policies had gone into effect. So I'm assuming that wasn't as a consequence of our policies; that doesn't reflect the failure of the Recovery Act. The point being that what ended up happening was that the job losses from this recession proved to be much more severe -- in the first quarter of last year going into the second quarter of last year -- than anybody anticipated.
So I mean, I think we can score political points on the basis of the fact that we underestimated how severe the job losses were going to be. But those job losses took place before any stimulus, whether it was the ones that you guys have proposed or the ones that we proposed, could have ever taken into effect. Now, that's just the fact, Mike, and I don't think anybody would dispute that. You could not find an economist who would dispute that.
Now, at the same time, as I mentioned, most economists -- Republican and Democrat, liberal and conservative -- would say that had it not been for the stimulus package that we passed, things would be much worse. Now, they didn't fill a 7 million hole in the number of people who were unemployed. They probably account for about 2 million, which means we still have 5 million folks in there that we've still got to deal with. That's a lot of people.
The package that we put together at the beginning of the year, the truth is, should have reflected -- and I believe reflected what most of you would say are common sense things. This notion that this was a radical package is just not true. A third of them were tax cuts, and they weren't -- when you say they were "boutique" tax cuts, Mike, 95 percent of working Americans got tax cuts, small businesses got tax cuts, large businesses got help in terms of their depreciation schedules. I mean, it was a pretty conventional list of tax cuts. A third of it was stabilizing state budgets.
There is not a single person in here who, had it not been for what was in the stimulus package, wouldn't be going home to more teachers laid off, more firefighters laid off, more cops laid off. A big chunk of it was unemployment insurance and COBRA, just making sure that people had some floor beneath them, and, by the way, making sure that there was enough money in their pockets that businesses had some customers.
It mostly went like that. Video of the event below, and the transcript (definitely worth reading if you don't have 66 minutes to kill this weekend on the video) is here.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Stuck on "No"
Capitol maintenance workers should check the wiring on the voting buttons for GOP senators, I think they're stuck on "no."
Yesterday the Senate voted to reinstate the "pay-as-you-go" or pay-go rules for budgeting, under which any new expenditures have to be paid for either by increasing tax revenues or cutting something else - so basically you can't borrow and spend. The rules were in place from 1991 through 2002 (you know, when we balanced the budget and had a surplus) and then were discarded in 2003 when the Bush administration wanted to cut taxes (drop revenue) and implement the Medicare prescription drug benefit (increase spending) and didn't want to cut anything to pay for it.
You would think that, after all their complaints about "sky high deficits" and "irresponsible spending" that the GOP would be all in favor of reinstating pay-go... but not so. Yesterday's vote passed 60-40 in a straight party-line vote with such famed deficit hawks as Mitch McConnell and "Debt and Deficit Dragon"-slayer Chuck Grassley voting against.
Gotta be the wiring, right? Nobody would be that cynical...
Yesterday the Senate voted to reinstate the "pay-as-you-go" or pay-go rules for budgeting, under which any new expenditures have to be paid for either by increasing tax revenues or cutting something else - so basically you can't borrow and spend. The rules were in place from 1991 through 2002 (you know, when we balanced the budget and had a surplus) and then were discarded in 2003 when the Bush administration wanted to cut taxes (drop revenue) and implement the Medicare prescription drug benefit (increase spending) and didn't want to cut anything to pay for it.
You would think that, after all their complaints about "sky high deficits" and "irresponsible spending" that the GOP would be all in favor of reinstating pay-go... but not so. Yesterday's vote passed 60-40 in a straight party-line vote with such famed deficit hawks as Mitch McConnell and "Debt and Deficit Dragon"-slayer Chuck Grassley voting against.
Gotta be the wiring, right? Nobody would be that cynical...
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Working the Refs
The blogs are abuzz this morning with video of Justice Samuel Alito mouthing "not true" after Obama's swipe at the Supreme Court over the recent Citizens United decision that overturned decades of campaign finance law.
Obama's speech:
It’s time to put strict limits on the contributions that lobbyists give to candidates for federal office. With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections.
I don’t think that American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse by foreign enemies; they should be decided by the American people. And I’d urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps correct … some of these problems.
Alito's reaction:
Some people feel that it's completely improper for Obama, as a member of a co-equal branch of government, to criticize the Court (to their faces) in a major speech. Others think that it's equally improper for Alito to be "talking back." Still others generally bemoan the further politicization of the court.
I'm pretty much fine with how this went down. Anyone who's followed the Supreme Court since 2000 or so knows that the Court is already heavily politicized, and the public (rightly, in my opinion) views it thus. Even if the Court is a completely neutral arbiter, Obama's just working the refs, the same way that Boeheim or Belichick or any other coach (representing a particular team) will jaw at the referees in a game if he or she thinks that they've made a bad call.
Part of being a ref is having to be able to take a little of that and then go on and do your job fairly for the rest of the season. I don't mind if Alito complains under his breath - I'm sure most of the zebras do that to, they just don't have the cameras on them at the time. What i will care about is if Alito or anyone else on the court uses this as an excuse to rule less than fairly on an issue important to Obama in the future.
Obama's speech:
It’s time to put strict limits on the contributions that lobbyists give to candidates for federal office. With all due deference to separation of powers, last week the Supreme Court reversed a century of law that I believe will open the floodgates for special interests — including foreign corporations — to spend without limit in our elections.
I don’t think that American elections should be bankrolled by America’s most powerful interests, or worse by foreign enemies; they should be decided by the American people. And I’d urge Democrats and Republicans to pass a bill that helps correct … some of these problems.
Alito's reaction:
Some people feel that it's completely improper for Obama, as a member of a co-equal branch of government, to criticize the Court (to their faces) in a major speech. Others think that it's equally improper for Alito to be "talking back." Still others generally bemoan the further politicization of the court.
I'm pretty much fine with how this went down. Anyone who's followed the Supreme Court since 2000 or so knows that the Court is already heavily politicized, and the public (rightly, in my opinion) views it thus. Even if the Court is a completely neutral arbiter, Obama's just working the refs, the same way that Boeheim or Belichick or any other coach (representing a particular team) will jaw at the referees in a game if he or she thinks that they've made a bad call.
Part of being a ref is having to be able to take a little of that and then go on and do your job fairly for the rest of the season. I don't mind if Alito complains under his breath - I'm sure most of the zebras do that to, they just don't have the cameras on them at the time. What i will care about is if Alito or anyone else on the court uses this as an excuse to rule less than fairly on an issue important to Obama in the future.
Oddly, it didn't take the Taliban 10 years...
The Times reports: Even before the conference started, President Karzai said in a BBC interview that it could take 5 to 10 years for Afghan forces to take over from the American-led coalition fighting the Taliban and even longer — 10 to 15 years — to end his country’s dependence on financial aid to sustain its military.
So let me get this straight... Afghan forces are supported by the US, which is spending five times Afghanistan's entire GDP on the war, much of it going to training, yet it's going to take 5 to 10 years to train Afghan soldiers to beat the Taliban. The Taliban, of course, is also made up of soldiers from Afghanistan. Why is it that the Taliban's training methods are so much more effective than ours that, despite living in hovels and caves and being hunted by predator drones, they have managed to already train their soldiers?
This "5 to 10 years" stuff couldn't at all be related to the fact that Karzai is widely considered to be corrupt, incompetent, and to have rigged his recent election, and that when the US leaves he'll be kicked to the curb, could it?
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
State of the Union reaction
A lot of stuff, and a lot of good stuff in tonight's speech, which I'm sure will be dissected all over the media for the next few days. My off-the-cuff take:
- The tone was great- Obama came across as above the fray, successfully chiding the squabbling congress (specifically the Senate) and even going after the Supreme Court's recent campaign finance decision. I think he looked loose, comfortable and confident, and successful - and nothing sells like success (or, as Ezra Klein put it, "the best defense is not being on defense")
- Very glad to hear him make a stand on financial reform, and specifically state that he'll veto a bill that doesn't actually accomplish it. I think this is an area where, in the short term, there may be more to gain by vetoing a shoddy bill, because it will show the financial world that he's serious, and allow him to show the GOP as obstructionists.
- I thought the move on climate change and clean energy was great- gently mock the fools who don't believe in climate change, and then engage them with the arguments that, even if they don't believe climate change is real, energy efficiency = saving money and green tech means jobs.
- I like the focus on entrepreneurs and exports - the best way to dig ourselves out of the financial hole is to grow our way out in a sustainable way, and that means building businesses and selling stuff to other countries. Nice to see a Dem who understands that this is important, and that business isn't always the bad guy.
- On the way he handled healthcare reform, I agree with Matt Yglesias: I think he made the right call. The speech is a speech to the American people, especially to people who follow politics pretty casually, and regular people don’t want to hear about congressional process. The reality is that this is going to have to be worked out behind the scenes, behind the dread closed doors. But one of the main points of the speech was to get the focus on Obama and Obama’s themes and off closed door dealmaking. So he emphasized the need for action and correctly situated the call for health reform in a broader context of economics reform.
- The budget freeze is a ridiculous gimmick- in comparison with the overall deficit there's not enough money in discretionary, non-security spending to make any difference, and that spending disproportionately impacts the poor. I think it also falls into the GOP's rhetorical trap that "spending" means social programs, and that social programs are the only things that get cut. I'm all for cutting waste and bad programs, but don't tell me that there's no waste in military or veterans spending (really? we need rudolph the red-nosed laser-plane?)
Actually, we still do make things in America
A common complaint by folks on all points of the political spectrum is that "we don't make stuff in America anymore, people just sit in offices shuffling papers around." It turns out that this is in fact just not true, as you can see from the chart below, which shows that, except for periodic recession-related dips, industrial production in the US has grown at a pretty steady clip and is currently more than double what it was in the 1970s. In fact the U.S. manufacturing sector, at $3.7 trillion in 2008, was bigger than the entire economies of all but Japan and China.
I think the reason we hear so much about "America not making things anymore" is threefold.
First, we don't make a lot of the name-brand commercial goods that actually carry a tag: clothes are made in Indonesia, Mexico etc., TVs in Taiwan or Japan, etc. Many of the products made in the US don't have "made in the USA tags" because they're things like industrial chemicals, computer chips, or building materials; or they're things like planes (Boeing) or heavy equipment (Caterpillar). The big change from the 1950s is that, other than cars, the US doesn't make a lot of durable consumer goods, other than computers.
Second, another big change from the 1950s is that the American manufacturing sector employs far fewer people. Companies have automated many of their processes, so as a percentage of the workforce, factory workers are far fewer than they used to be.
The third reason we hear the "we don't make things in this country any more" refrain so often is that the media (who are often the ones pushing this story) are typically quite isolated from areas where actual factories are located. Back in the 1950s (and earlier) factories were often located in central cities to be close to the workforce. For various reasons (white flight, rising land cost in popular downtown areas, taxes) factories decamped to smaller cities, rural or exurban areas, and especially to low-tax and anti-labor areas in the South. At the same time, the national media concentrated even more heavily in the very coastal cities (NY, DC, LA) being vacated by manufacturers. During this same period, the US experienced increasing educational stratification, where starting as early as elementary school, kids bound for desk jobs and kids bound for the factory floor wound up in different classes or different schools. Increasing population mobility meant that more people left their hometowns (and their hometown friends) when they went to college. The upshot of this is that in many cases, political and media elites don't actually know anybody that works in manufacturing - they know their classmates from college or law school or journalism school or whatever, but have lost touch with their former neighbors who may have gone on to work in factories. Of course to these people (myself included) it seems like we don't make anything anymore - we don't know anyone who makes anything!
The ultimate lesson from this is that a.) we should stop freaking out about how we don't make stuff anymore. (We do! However, we do need to figure out how to export more goods to other countries); and b.) as Matt Yglesias (from whom I borrowed the above graph) notes, this means that the problems of displaced industrial workers are to some degree different from the issue of whether the US is doing enough manufacturing.
Monday, January 25, 2010
FYI: The Debt and Deficit are Different
A relatively minor, but important point:
The deficit is the annual gap between money received by the government and money spent by the government. For instance, say the federal government brings in $1.5 trillion in tax revenue in 2010, but spends $1.8 trillion. The deficit, or gap between income and expenditure, is $.3 trillion (or $300 billion).
The national debt is the accumulation of each year's budget deficit, so to find it you add up each year's deficit (and subtract any time there's a surplus), so the current national debt = budget deficit for year 1 + deficit for year 2 + deficit for year 3 - surplus for year 4 + deficit for year 5, etc.
Thus, the NY Times should know better than to say:
"The payoff in budget savings would be small relative to the deficit: The estimated $250 billion in savings over 10 years would be less than 3 percent of the roughly $9 trillion in additional deficits the government is expected to accumulate over that time."
This should be $9 trillion added to the national debt. Again, this is a minor point, but it's really important to note, when you're trying to, say, describe how much debt Obama is adding to the country (on top of mountains of debt added by Reagan and Bush) vs. the current gap (largely caused by the fall in tax revenues) in government income vs. expenditures.
The deficit is the annual gap between money received by the government and money spent by the government. For instance, say the federal government brings in $1.5 trillion in tax revenue in 2010, but spends $1.8 trillion. The deficit, or gap between income and expenditure, is $.3 trillion (or $300 billion).
The national debt is the accumulation of each year's budget deficit, so to find it you add up each year's deficit (and subtract any time there's a surplus), so the current national debt = budget deficit for year 1 + deficit for year 2 + deficit for year 3 - surplus for year 4 + deficit for year 5, etc.
Thus, the NY Times should know better than to say:
"The payoff in budget savings would be small relative to the deficit: The estimated $250 billion in savings over 10 years would be less than 3 percent of the roughly $9 trillion in additional deficits the government is expected to accumulate over that time."
This should be $9 trillion added to the national debt. Again, this is a minor point, but it's really important to note, when you're trying to, say, describe how much debt Obama is adding to the country (on top of mountains of debt added by Reagan and Bush) vs. the current gap (largely caused by the fall in tax revenues) in government income vs. expenditures.
The Stimulus and the Bank Bailout are DIFFERENT THINGS
At a local political meeting last week, a number of Upper West Side Dems were complaining about the failures of the Obama administration to "get anything done," and that all that's been accomplished is bailing out the greedy bad guys at big banks.
Not only only does this kind of talk back up GOP talking points and demoralize progressives, it's also flat wrong. The public, many Dems included, have a tendency to conflate the bank bailout and Obama's stimulus package. These are completely different programs.
The bank bailout, or TARP, was signed into law by President Bush in the fall of 2008, and loaned funds to troubled financial institutions. The stimulus package was passed by Obama, and had nothing to do with bailing out banks. The chart below lays out what the stimulus money is going for:
Note for a second that huge blue more-than-quadrant of the pie - $275 billion of the stimulus went to tax cuts, equal to about $1,000 per person in the US. The Obama administration made the decision to cut payroll taxes (which everybody pays) over the course of an entire year, so that people would get the money slowly and spend it as they got it, for a maximum stimulation of the economy - instead of sending a big check (with an accompanying letter from the Prez of course) which most people use to pay off credit cards or mortgage, which has a much smaller stimulating effect.
Also take a look at the $41 billion for local school districts and $79 billion for state fiscal relief - almost all of that money went directly to making sure that teachers, cops, firefighters and other state and local government employees kept their jobs. That's around 500,000 jobs saved over two years.
Now take a look at the $20 billion for health IT (information technology), $32 billion for transforming the energy transmission and generation system, $10 billion for scientific research, $6 billion for expanded broadband and $10 billion for mass transit. Pre-2008, this was only-in-your-dreams money for progressive domestic projects. That's a huge, $88 billion dollar investment in our nation's R&D, energy and transportation infrastructure that's going to have an enormous payoff down the road (on top of the immediate jobs it's providing).
Contrary to the Glenn Beck's of the world, this is not some huge giveaway to big corporations or to the lazy poor - the stimulus bill combined massive relief for working families with an enormous investment in America's future. And, surprise surprise, it's actually working. A USA Today survey of 50 prominent economists found that the stimulus saved 1.2 million jobs.
So before you complain that the administration only cares about banks, and that Obama hasn't done anything, make sure you know what you're talking about.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Governing by Political Pressure
Matt Yglesias has a very good post on the underlying problem with Obama's attempt t governing so far:
What I’ve come up with is that neither of these are really the crucial game. What’s been missing from Obama’s approach is what, for lack of a pithy name, I’ll call “objective political pressure.” One of the striking things about the Obama presidency is that throughout his time in office not a single Republican Senator has been in serious fear that he or she is going to lose her seat in 2010. That was true even when Obama’s approval ratings were in the high-sixties. And it’s true even though Obama won a number of seats represented by Republicans.
...
The Obama/Baucus theory of writing a bipartisan health care bill seemed to basically amount to “have a lot of meetings with Chuck Grassley.” A different theory would be “have Tom Vilsack run against Chuck Grassley with a nice war chest so Grassley feels it’s in his interests to strike a deal.”
One can think of a number of states where this would be helpful - Iowa definitely. Maine, which has gone Democratic in the last 4 or 5 presidential cycles (and where Collins or Snowe could be pressured). Delaware. This is also applicable to conservative dems, although you have to pick your challenges with care. FDR in 1936 tried to purge conservative/obstructionist Dems from the Senate and failed miserably. A senator like Ben Nelson, in deep-red Nebraska, is significantly more popular than Obama or the generic democratic party, and only stays elected by running on the theme that he's "not really a Democrat". An attempt to primary Nelson would at best lead to a victory for the primary candidate (who would then go down in flames in the general) or would maybe just irritate Nelson so that he's less interested in any of Obama's other priorities (or alternately jumps ship to the GOP).
This kind of pressure work if used judiciously. Arlen Specter was a moderate Republican, and I would have expected him to be a moderate-to-conservative Dem when he switched parties. However, because he's being primaries by Joe Sestak, he's now a pretty liberal Dem. Kirsten Gillibrand was a conservative House member, who has become much more liberal as a Senator, partially because of the threat of primaries from the left. In states that are fairly liberal, or states that Obama won (like Indiana), it's reasonable to think that the threat of a viable primary opponent might make the Evan Bayhs of the world a bit more willing to play ball.
What I’ve come up with is that neither of these are really the crucial game. What’s been missing from Obama’s approach is what, for lack of a pithy name, I’ll call “objective political pressure.” One of the striking things about the Obama presidency is that throughout his time in office not a single Republican Senator has been in serious fear that he or she is going to lose her seat in 2010. That was true even when Obama’s approval ratings were in the high-sixties. And it’s true even though Obama won a number of seats represented by Republicans.
...
The Obama/Baucus theory of writing a bipartisan health care bill seemed to basically amount to “have a lot of meetings with Chuck Grassley.” A different theory would be “have Tom Vilsack run against Chuck Grassley with a nice war chest so Grassley feels it’s in his interests to strike a deal.”
One can think of a number of states where this would be helpful - Iowa definitely. Maine, which has gone Democratic in the last 4 or 5 presidential cycles (and where Collins or Snowe could be pressured). Delaware. This is also applicable to conservative dems, although you have to pick your challenges with care. FDR in 1936 tried to purge conservative/obstructionist Dems from the Senate and failed miserably. A senator like Ben Nelson, in deep-red Nebraska, is significantly more popular than Obama or the generic democratic party, and only stays elected by running on the theme that he's "not really a Democrat". An attempt to primary Nelson would at best lead to a victory for the primary candidate (who would then go down in flames in the general) or would maybe just irritate Nelson so that he's less interested in any of Obama's other priorities (or alternately jumps ship to the GOP).
This kind of pressure work if used judiciously. Arlen Specter was a moderate Republican, and I would have expected him to be a moderate-to-conservative Dem when he switched parties. However, because he's being primaries by Joe Sestak, he's now a pretty liberal Dem. Kirsten Gillibrand was a conservative House member, who has become much more liberal as a Senator, partially because of the threat of primaries from the left. In states that are fairly liberal, or states that Obama won (like Indiana), it's reasonable to think that the threat of a viable primary opponent might make the Evan Bayhs of the world a bit more willing to play ball.
Message to "start over" Dems: if you couldn't get the public option with 60 votes, you're not getting it with 59
Anthony Wiener this morning on CNN said that the Dems should "hit the reset button" on healthcare and go back to the drawing board because "Somewhere in all of the machinations here, in all of the insider deals" to get to 60 votes, they've "walked away from some of those popular things" in the bill, such as restoring "choice and competition with the public option."
Apparently Wiener has much higher hopes for the new, non-filibuster-proof Senate. I fail to understand how you take a Senate that had 60 votes and would not pass a public option, swap Ted Kennedy for a Republican and get a Senate interested in restoring the public option to the bill.
Wiener of course is not foolish enough to believe his own asinine ramblings. He wants to run for Mayor of NYC in four years, and he knows that NYC democratic primary voters want a public option. Consequently, for Anthony Wiener (who, as a congressman, currently has great health insurance) it's better to be seen as the guy fighting for a completely unrealistic "reset in order to get a public option" than to be a bit player in a compromise bill that a lot of lefties are unhappy with, but still covers 35 million currently uninsured Americans.
Apparently Wiener has much higher hopes for the new, non-filibuster-proof Senate. I fail to understand how you take a Senate that had 60 votes and would not pass a public option, swap Ted Kennedy for a Republican and get a Senate interested in restoring the public option to the bill.
Wiener of course is not foolish enough to believe his own asinine ramblings. He wants to run for Mayor of NYC in four years, and he knows that NYC democratic primary voters want a public option. Consequently, for Anthony Wiener (who, as a congressman, currently has great health insurance) it's better to be seen as the guy fighting for a completely unrealistic "reset in order to get a public option" than to be a bit player in a compromise bill that a lot of lefties are unhappy with, but still covers 35 million currently uninsured Americans.
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
No health care reform = 45,000 preventable deaths each year.
Every wavering Democrat (and all the obstructing Republicans) need to be hammered again and again with this message: right now Congress has the power to pass a healthcare reform bill that will cover almost every American. Because they have the ability to pass it, if they don't (because they're afraid, or bought off, or think it's a political advantage not to pass it) it will be their fault that people are going to die because they don't have insurance.
That's what's at stake.
Their votes for this bill are not a game, it's not just a "win" or a "defeat" for one party or another, it's not a way to stick it to the Ivy League guy in the White House or prove your populist cred. This bill would cover 35 million Americans who don't have health insurance, and 45,000 of them died last year because they didn't insurance. A classmate of some of my wife's colleagues, a student at John Jay, took a semester off from grad school and in doing so lost his insurance. During the period where he had no insurance, he started feeling sick, and knew that he needed to see a doctor but wanted to wait until he had insurance again through school (because in NY, insurance for the period while you're waiting for the semester to kick in again can cost up to $700 a month). While he was waiting to get insurance again, he died, alone in his apartment.
That's what's at stake.
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