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Too High Or Too Low, There Ain’t No In Betweens

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Book Review: Going to Extremes, by Cass Sunstein

Back in 2005, a trio of researchers conducted a little experiment on deliberative democracy. They assembled groups of six citizens and asked them to get together to talk about a few politically charged issues (civil unions, affirmative action, global warming). Half the groups were made up exclusively of political conservatives, and half were made up exclusively of political liberals. The result: in almost every group, the individuals took on more extreme positions after talking with the folks who already agreed with them.

Similarly, a study of judicial decision-making found three-judge panels that were all Republican rendered more conservative decisions and three-judge panels that were all Democrat rendered more liberal decisions.

The above experiment and study form the take-off point for Going to Extremes: How Like Minds Unite and Divide, by Cass R. Sunstein, a smart book (now available in paperback!) that sets forth a pithy summary of how group polarization happens. It’s an especially useful guide to the obstacles to open-minded thinking for those of us who are trying to chart a course toward a more moderate politics, and so worth understanding.

The quick takeaway point is that what matters most is information. If you only hear one side of the argument, you are likely to strengthen your convictions that the one side you hear is the correct side. And the more your convictions are strengthened, the more you are likely to seek out only that one side and disregard anyone who comes to you with alternatives. In short, a powerful reinforcing feedback loop.

“A great deal of what we believe, like, and dislike,” writes Sunstein, “is influenced by the exchange of information and by corroboration.”

Sunstein explores a number of entry points into these kinds of reinforcing cascades of corroboration. A surprisingly large number of the entry points have more to do with social instincts than anything else. Individuals defer to other individuals who are of higher status; they defer to family and friends and social groups. Most people want to be liked, and most people have an intuitive sense that a good way to be liked is to agree – or sometimes to even do those whose respect they wish to gain one better. Groups are particular prone to follow confident people – even if those confident people are wrong.

Once people start in on a particular belief path, they tend to be on the lookout for information that confirms what they already think: “Consider the well-established finding that after purchasing a product, people tend to seek out information confirming that their purchase was a sensible one.” And once caught in a cascade of confirmation, it’s hard to get out of it. Sociologists call it “homophily” – a process by which people feel more connected to that which is similar to them.

The problem, Sunstein argues (borrowing a phrase from Russell Hardin) is that most people have a “crippled epistemology” – they know very little to begin with, and if what they know supports their extremism, they have no way to know that their position is extreme.

Worse, “people often ignore powerful contrary evidence,” writes Sunstein. “When people’s false beliefs are corrected, they might become even firmer in their commitment to those beliefs.” (One famous example of this is described in Leon Festinger’s 1956 book When Prophecy Fails, about how members of a UFO cult become more resolute in its beliefs after the group leader’s prophecy that aliens from the planet Clarion would rescue cult members from an earth-destroying flood on December 21, 1954 did not come to fruition)

Sunstein worries that in the modern media environment, self-selection into different camps is easier than ever before. “Many people appear to be hearing more and louder versions of their own views, thus reducing the benefits that come from exposure to competing views and unnoticed problems…The Internet creates more dramatic ‘stratification.’”

The way out of polarization, of course, is the standard bromide of entertaining alternative viewpoints. Sunstein urges “humility and curiosity.” In fact, after reading this article, you should probably immediately go seek out a perspective you disagree with, entertain it, and let it create a slight sense of doubt in all your previous certainties.

But the truth is, you probably won’t go seek that out. Or even if you do, it’s unlikely you will come to doubt your previous ideas. One reason is that what you find will probably be written from a completely different perspective, meaning that it won’t have much to say to somebody who isn’t already a true believe from the opposite perspective.

At the very least, it is helpful to have a certain amount of self-awareness. Sunstein’s analysis of how easily and almost effortlessly one can get caught in a self-reinforcing feedback process of one-sidedness is a little bit scary. What’s remarkable is just how easily the mind closes, and how much constant work is required to fight against it. In other words: those of us who care about moderation have our work cut out for ourselves.

“All Necessary Measures”

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Like a governor issuing an 11th hour stay of execution to a death row inmate, the United Nations has intervened dramatically in the Libyan crisis. Now the world has all the authority it needs to prevent a bloodbath in Libya, and in doing so revive the faltering momentum of the Arab political awakening.

The U.N.’s decisive action was doubly surprising. First because it happened at all; many observers—including me—figured either Russia or China would veto any resolution authorizing military intervention in Libya. Maybe Moscow and Beijing were swayed by the Arab League’s unprecedented endorsement of a no-fly zone, or by Moammar Qaddafi’s bloodcurdling and fully credible promises to obliterate regime opponents.

The second surprise is the sweeping scope of the Security Council resolution, which authorizes “all necessary measures” to protect Libyan citizens. That allows the international community to go beyond imposing a no-fly zone, which wouldn’t stop Qaddafi’s ground assault on rebel strongholds, to a “no drive” zone, which would.

In practice, “international community” means Europe and the United States, probably with some token support from Arab countries. In any case, this coalition needs to act swiftly to stop Qaddafi’s offensive in its tracks. At the same time, we should be arming and training the rebels, as the U.N. resolution also seems to permit, so that the Libyan people can finish the job of liberating themselves from a vicious tyrant.

Another striking aspect of the U.N. vote was that it was not engineered by Washington. The Obama administration was visibly ambivalent about a no-fly zone or anything else that might smack of U.S. unilateralism. It stayed in the background, letting France and Britain take the lead in pressing the Security Council to act.

Perhaps this was tactically adroit, in that a more aggressive U.S. stance might have evoked opposition not only from Russia and China, but also from abstainers like Brazil and India. But Obama’s aloof and passive stance didn’t exactly burnish his leadership credentials, and will undoubtedly fuel conservative criticisms that he is more inclined to apologize for American power than wield it with conviction to support freedom.

In any case, if followed up by decisive military action, the U.N. resolution is a brush-back pitch to Middle East tyrants contemplating using force against their own people. This would embolden freedom movements percolating in the region, though it could also pose awkward questions about Saudi Arabia’s dispatch of troops to help Bahrain stifle Shia demands for political voice and participation.

Looking beyond the Middle East, the U.N.’s action breathes new life into the venerable doctrine of collective security, and reinforces new theories that the international community has a “responsibility to protect” not just states from aggression by other states, but peoples within states who are brutalized by despotic rulers or by anarchic violence in places where there is no central authority.

This is a new and compelling principle of progressive internationalism. Obviously, it has to be applied with care, lest the United States get dragged into one conflict after another because no other country or combination of them can do the job. But U.S. progressives—including President Obama—shouldn’t be reticent in defending the principle.

Who Believes in Sputnik?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Many parents can’t decide whether they love or hate the Tiger Mom. Either way, she has focused our collective attention on education in the United States. American students are falling behind students from other countries. In the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) testing of 15 year-old students from 65 countries, our children placed 17th in reading, 23rd in science, and a below-average 31st in math. The results from January’s National Assessment of Education Progress were equally dismal – only 21 percent of the nation’s 12th graders scored ‘proficient’ in science. In his State of the Union address, President Obama called this our “Sputnik moment,” a crisis moment in the history of our country that should shock us into action.

But is it possible to change our educational system in the US? Success in today’s world is based upon proficiency and innovation in science. Multiple factors contribute to our poor performance, but one glaring problem is the disregard of scientific facts by a large segment of our society. Science allows for a certain amount of dissent, but when ideological, political or religious beliefs automatically nullify reasonable scientific facts, there is potential danger.

Many American students are raised to disbelieve some of the bedrock principles of modern biological science, including evolution. A troubling report, published in Science (Jan 28), describes the concern that 13 percent of high school biology teachers actively teach creationism and an additional 60 percent avoid the controversy of evolution. That leaves less than one third of educators who teach the scientifically-accepted truth about evolutionary biology. To succeed in science, one needs to build knowledge from facts. If scientific facts such as evolution are taught to be false, what foundation then have we given our students? This is certainly not a solid one upon which to base innovation or the next great discovery.

Only 39 percent of Americans believe in evolution. Fifty-seven percent do not believe in global climate change. And only 38 percent believe there is no link between vaccines and autism. Solid bodies of literature separate fact from fiction on these topics, but the majority of Americans apparently disregards the truth. If this denial of scientific fact is then passed on to our children, the next generation of Americans will find difficulty not only with the PISA test, but also with the real world challenge of finding scientifically valid solutions to big problems like climate change and finding cures for disease. We need our children to be innovators, but America’s ideological constraints are holding them back.

Everyone has the right to their beliefs. The rub here is how to balance one’s religion, politics, or ideology with the validity of science. Is it not the responsibility of a religion or ideology to make its teaching compatible with scientific facts? Faith, as I understand it, should be enough to account for the unknowable or unexplainable. And it should be strong enough to accommodate scientific facts within its belief structure. This is not a new struggle, but the consequences are greater in today’s information age where the internet can spread data instantly. It took the Catholic Church almost 400 years to vindicate Galileo for his support of the heliocentric view of the universe, despite solid scientific evidence from Copernican times. Today, religions and ideologies not only harm their own credibility by not accepting evolution but potentially contribute to the flawed science education that seems so prevalent in the United States now. In Galileo’s time, some scholars tried to harmonize the new data with Scripture and Church teachings, but were not able to carry the day. Eventually, it became untenable to deny Galileo’s claims; now is that time for evolution and science in general. We cannot wait another 400 years or we will be overtaken by cultures that advocate real science.

Last December, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice gave a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations in December. Near the end of her comments, she called the K-12 education problem in our country a national security issue. “There are a lot of problems,” she said. “Proliferation, Afghanistan, the Middle East. But the US needs internal repair more than it needs anything else.” Now is the time to start that internal repair. We must teach true science to our children, before another country seizes our Sputnik moment.

Gut Check Time For Progressives on Libya: Use of Force

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Qaddafi’s hired mercenaries are closing in on the rebel stronghold in Benghazi. If they overrun the city, two things will almost certainly happen: Any hope for a democratic Libya will die (for now), and thousands of innocent bystanders — women and children among them — will perish as Qaddafi fights to his self-proclaimed “last drop of blood.”

Before Libya’s tyrant launches his final push, there’s news that the international community, including the United States, is preparing, albeit tardily, to act.  U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice said today that “We are discussing very seriously and leading efforts in the Council around a range of actions that we believe could be effective in protecting civilians… The U.S. view is that we need to be prepared to contemplate steps that include, but perhaps go beyond, a no-fly zone.” [bolding mine]

In the most likely scenario, that would mean allied missile strikes at strategic military assets.

It’s clear that the West needs to change Qaddafi’s military calculation, in effect telling him, “advance on Benghazi and there will be consequences.” It appears to be more than just bluster designed to scare Qaddafi into a stalemate — Secretary Clinton has vowed a Security Council vote no later than today. Only a vote will separate those countries that stand with the oppressed from those who are content to tolerate military force used against those yearning for free expression.

This all begs the question: Progressives, are you comfortable with using military force — including airstrikes against strategic military targets — in Libya? Even when Qaddafi tries to pretend that he’s going to be a nice guy by giving the rebels a chance to surrender?

There are clear and compelling reasons to use force in this case, in concert with a progressive internationalist worldview, the belief that America can best defend itself by building a world safe for individual liberty and democracy.  The progressive internationalist now has little choice but to act militarily to stop the mass, indiscriminate killing of Libyans who hold those values.

Here’s why:

1. There will be an international mandate. This operation is hardly one of George W. Bush’s hamfisted “coalitions of the willing”. The key is to ensure legitimacy that avoids putting and American face on intervention.  The U.S. would be a participant, along with Arab League, the Organization of Islamic Conference, and the Gulf Cooperation Council who have all approved a no-fly zone at a minimum, and would very likely up the ante to endorsing a limited strike (which a NFZ implies anyway).

2. Major American allies like the U.K. and France have been stalwart supporters of action, and in concert with the U.S., likely bring along other major world powers.  While China and Russia remain hard sells, they’re not exactly democrats interested in this stuff anyway.

3. Protecting democratic movements is a core American national interest. Gen. Wesley Clark staked a dangerous claim in an op-ed that oil was the only core worth protecting, and that while humanitarian disasters were terrible, they were hardly worth getting your hands dirty.  Wrong. I’ll side with Anne Marie Slaughter, who tweeted, “Supporting accountable, open, rights-regarding governments in the Middle East = U.S. strategic interest. Will keep US safer than war in Afg.” And that, in addition to her piece in the NYT, clearly meant she would support military action.

4. The United Nation agreed that the international community has a “Responsibility to Protect” innocent civilians in times of “genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity, as well as their incitement.” UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon said it plainly: “We can save lives.”

5. The international community’s strategic goals are clear, if not bold. At this point, the consensus goal is to protect human life in the face of a humanitarian disaster. While members of the international community may have divergent goals — Secretary Clinton has said “he should go” — Qaddafi’s indiscriminate killing of innocent civilians who desire simple freedom of expression is enough to justify the use of at least minimum use of force to avert that outcome.

Am I a Race-Baiter?

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On Tuesday, I put together some data highlighting the fact that there was a strong correlation between how much Democrats’ partisan identification had declined in the last two years and how white a state is. Since then, I’ve received many comments accusing me of saying that Democrats’ problems exist only because white people are racist.

One comment was extremely aggressive: “The race-baiting on display by Mr. Drutman shows the void of his intellect and his morality since he is deliberately unwilling to find the real reasons Democrats are failing everywhere.” Here’s another: “Yet another incident of failure of the intellectual left in the US. Barack Obama was elected by white voters as well as non-white in 2008; rather than look at what changed to disgruntle these voters (INCLUDING ME!) they play the race card.” And a third (sarcasm alert): “But, here we have it. Solid facts! Whites are racist!”; and a fourth: “Keep playing the race card. Please do.”

First of all, this may seem obvious, but I was merely reporting the data. There is an undeniable correlation between the percentage of whites in a state and the decline in Democratic partisan ID advantage. It also doesn’t take a genius to look at the polling data and see that Democrats and Obama are doing poorly among white voters, especially especially southern and rural whites.

But what impresses me about these comments is how quickly they went straight to the “race card” and “race-baiting.” It’s clearly a sore spot.

Of course, as far as I can tell, there are plenty of honest reasons that one would no longer want to identify as a Democrat that have nothing to do with race. There are plenty of reasons to be frustrated with the Democrats, and plenty of honest philosophical disagreements over what policies would serve the country best. As I wrote in the initial post, statistically speaking, whiteness of a state explains only 13 percent of the decline in Democratic partisan identification advantage. What this strongly suggests is that there are many factors.

But as Ron Brownstein has argued, there is also an emerging “New Color Line” that may have more to do with policy preference than with race, even if the two are sometimes hard to disentangle: “From every angle, the exit-poll results reveal a new color line: a consistent chasm between the attitudes of whites and minorities. The gap begins with preferences in the election.” In particular, the white voters seem to be particularly concerned with the size and role of government.

And it then follows that there are must be ways to address the concerns of white voters without making it about race. America may be becoming a more diverse nation, but it’s not a majority-minority country yet, and whites generally vote at greater rates than minorities. So Democrats need to take this seriously. As my colleague Will Marshall recently noted:

Progressives need to engage white voters more directly on questions about the size and role of government. We should be serious about making government more accountable, about enabling citizens and communities to do more for themselves, and about reining in runaway federal deficits and debts. But we should also stand firmly for public activism to rebuild America’s productive capacities, particularly our run-down infrastructure, curb out-of-control medical costs and make the promise of equal opportunity real for all citizens.

In one sense, the comments I received are quite instructive. They suggest there are white voters out there who feel accused of racism if they vote Republican, and they don’t like that. But they are also quite depressing. They suggest that there are too many Republicans out there who can’t respond to a presentation of empirical data without accusing me (a white who remains a Democrat and Obama supporter) of implicitly accusing them of racism.

I’m a number-cruncher. I’m not a race-baiter.

A Decade of Labor Market Pain

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In February 2001, nonfarm payrolls hit their business cycle peak of  132.5 million. Ten years later, the latest data pegs February 2011 payrolls at 130.5 million, a 1.5% decline. To put this in perspective, the ten-year period of the Great Depression, 1929-39 saw a 2.3% decline in nonfarm employment, roughly the same magnitude.

But even that 1.5% understates the extent of the pain for most of the workforce. I divide the economy into two parts. On the one side are the combined public and quasi-public sectors, and on the other side is the rest of the economy. Public, of course, refers to government employees.  ‘Quasi-public’, a term I just invented, includes the nominal private-sector education, healthcare, and social assistance industries. I call them ’quasi-public’ because these industries depend very heavily on  government funding. For example, social assistance includes ‘child and youth services’ and ‘services for the elderly and disabled’, which are often provided under government contract.

The chart below shows employment growth in the public/quasi-public sector, compared to employment growth in the rest of the economy, with February 2001 set to 100. We can see that public/quasi-public employment rose steadily over the past ten years, and is now up 16%. By comparison, the rest of the private sector  is down 8% in jobs over the past 10 years.

Once again, we look at the Great Depression for an analogy. From 1929 to 1939, government employment rose by about 30%. If we back that out, then private sector non-ag  jobs fell by 6%  over the Depression decade. That compares to the contemporary 8% decline in private non-ag non-quasi-public jobs since 2001.  So by this measure, the past 10 years have been worse for the labor market than the decade of the Great Depression.

Now let’s look by state. I put the chart beneath the fold, because it’s long and weird and I’m not sure if it going to come out right.

Here it is. This chart reports on the percentage change of private employment by state over the past ten years, leaving out the quasi-public sector.

The worst hit states, not surprisingly, are Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana. Massachusetts has a big decline as well, though I’m not sure that it’s fair to remove healthcare and education, which have always been primary drivers of the MA economy.  Then we have some surprises, including CT and NJ.  NY,  At the other end, some of the natural resource states show job gains over the decade, as did DC, even after removing govt jobs.

This piece is cross-posted at Mandel on Innovation and Growth

Wingnut Watch: The House Conservative Budget Revolt is (Almost) All About Healthcare

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In a fairly predictable development, the Republican Party and the conservative movement are showing some signs of division over strategy and tactics, if not much in the way of ideological diversity.  The latest indication of underlying fissures was the loss of 54 House Republicans in the vote to enact a second short-term continuing appropriations resolution.

Many observers will likely attribute those “no” votes to a Tea Party-bred determination to maximize budget cuts and intimidate Democrats, and there’s some truth to that.  But the real story is that much of the angst on the Right about budget and appropriations negotiations isn’t about levels of spending, or even the size of government, but about the ideological hobby-horses embedded in the earlier House-passed appropriations bill (H.R. 1) that the Senate quickly rejected.

Two of the ringleaders of the House conservative revolt on spending, the hardy duo of Michele Bachmann of MN and Steve King of IA, sent out an encyclical explaining their vote in advance.  They swore perpetual opposition to any appropriations measure that did not “defund” last year’s health reform legislation—not just money appropriated to implement it, but mandatory spending (e.g., through Medicaid and Medicare) required by it.  Bachmann and King, then, don’t even think the radical appropriations bill passed earlier by the House went far enough, because it did not accomplish their ideological goals.

Overlapping with the “ObamaCare” obsession on the Right has been the fear that House Republicans won’t follow through with the assault on family planning services and other cultural targets encompassed in the original House-passed appropriations bill.   Cultural conservative groups have been rattling sabers about this from the very beginning of the appropriations struggle, as noted by People for the American Way:

Religious Right anti-choice activists are continuing to draw a line in the sand, and dozens of them – including Tony Perkins, Tom Minnery, Penny Nance, Phyllis Schlafly, Charmaine Yoest, Richard Land, Marjorie Dannenfelser, Andrea Lafferty, and Bob Vander Plaats – have signed on to a new letter to Speaker Boehner and Rep. Eric Cantor to ostensibly thank them for supporting efforts to defund Planned Parenthood and remind them that this issue is “non-negotiable.”

Certainly some GOP pols are taking such threats seriously.  As Politico’s David Catanese explained, the more ambitious among them largely joined the rebels:

A breakdown of Tuesday’s vote on a three-week budget bill to keep the government operating shows that a slew of House members considering promotions to a statewide office in 2012 bucked their parties.

The fascinating floor count reveals the complicated and risky political implications across the country surrounding a vote that temporarily avoids a shutdown.

Nine Republicans currently running or seriously considering Senate or gubernatorial bids bucked House leadership and voted “no.”

They include Missouri Rep. Todd Akin, Utah Rep. Jason Chaffetz, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, Florida Rep. Connie Mack, New Mexico Rep. Steve Pearce — all who have been mentioned as potential Senate candidates, as well as Arizona Rep. Jeff Flake, Nevada Rep. Dean Heller and Montana Rep. Denny Rehberg, who have each announced bids for the upper chamber.

Indiana Rep. Mike Pence, also a “no” vote, is likely to run for governor.

This dynamic should be duly noted by those who persistently think Republicans facing tough electoral competition wish to “move to the center” and cooperate with Democrats.  Even if that were the case, Republicans have to survive primary competition, and many now have become convinced by the 2010 results that harsh conservatism awakens a conservative majority in the general electorate.

In any event, as House Republicans, Senate Democrats and the White House struggle towards some sort of compromise on FY 2011 appropriations, it will be important to remember that numbers aren’t everything in this fight.  Many conservative activists view this as an ideal opportunity to grind axes and settle old scores, and a full-fledged revolt could ensue if Republican leaders sacrifice their pet causes in pursuit of an agreement .

Speaking of the views of conservative activists, Public Policy Polling has a new national survey of self-identified Republicans out, and it’s interesting in several respects.

First of all, the poll breaks out Republicans into the 69 percent who are regular viewers of Fox News, and the 31 percent who are not.   The non-Fox viewers are rather notably less conservative, and certainly less supportive of conservative pols, than their Fox-watching counterparts.  For example, Newt Gingrich’s favorable-unfavorable ratio among Fox-watching Republicans is 59-24.  But it’s 31-49 among non-Fox-watching Republicans.  That’s a very big swing.

The poll also shows exactly how big a problem Mitt Romney faces on his health policy problem.  Asked if they would “willing to vote for someone who supported a bill at the state level mandating that voters have health insurance for President,” fully 61 percent said no, while only 17 percent said yes. The very idea of a mandate, even without reference to Obama’s health reform initiative, attracts considerable hostility.  And there’s no way around the fact that Romney has supported and still supports a mandate.

But perhaps the most striking number in the PPP survey is that one-fourth of self-identified Republicans think that the community organizing group ACORN is going to steal the 2012 election for Barack Obama.  ACORN, of course, went out of business nearly a year ago.  It takes a special kind of determination to believe that this never-more-than-marginal group somehow represents a threat to democracy from the grave.

Arm Libya’s Rebels

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In endorsing a no fly zone over Libya, the Arab League has taken the extraordinary step of urging western intervention in the Middle East. Nonetheless, we should resist the invitation to make America the lead actor in the Libyan drama. Our task is to help Libyans win their own freedom, not to win it for them.

We may be running out of time. Over the past week, the tide of battle has turned decisively in favor of forces loyal to Muammar Qaddafi, who have dislodged rebels from several towns, opening the road to their Benghazi stronghold. By the time the ponderous machinery of United Nations consensus-building gets around to authorizing a no fly zone, if it ever does, the rebellion could be quashed.

The world needs to help the rebels check Qaddafi’s momentum now, not next month or the one after. It’s hard to see how that can be done without supplying the rebels with intelligence and the heavy arms — rockets, artillery and tanks — they need to match Qaddafi’s better equipped and organized forces. The rebels, a mélange of military defectors and valiant but inexperienced civilians, also need weapons and tactical training.

Continue reading at The Hill

Why High-Speed Rail Could Still Get Built in Florida

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Contrary to reports in the New York Times and elsewhere, high-speed rail in Florida is not yet dead. There’s a grassroots effort by municipal governments to revive the high-speed line between Tampa and Orlando that Gov. Rick Scott has so zealously tried to kill.

The cities of Tampa, Lakeland, Orlando, and Miami want to create an “inter-local” agency that would receive federal grant money and assume the responsibilities vacated by the state last month when Scott shut down Florida Rail Enterprise and dismissed its staff.

The cities have until the first week of April to create the new entity and bid for the $2.4 billion in federal money that Scott rejected. A major sticking point, once again, is the rookie Republican governor, who is threatening to forbid the Florida Department of Transportation from permitting rail construction along I-4 owned by the state.

The same kind of high-handed arrogance got Scott fired as CEO of Columbia/HCA in 1997 after the health-care giant was slammed with a criminal investigation of its billing practices. Scott insisted that nothing was wrong until several board members found out that the company was in deep legal trouble. Scott escaped the consequences of his actions, but HCA wasn’t so lucky. It paid over $2.6 billion to settle civil suits and federal fines.

So far, Scott has managed to roll over timid state lawmakers and beat back a lawsuit charging that he overreached his authority by rejecting rail funds approved by former Gov. Charlie Crist. A quirk in Florida’s government, however, may allow the rail program to go forward if other officeholders take a principled stand.

Florida is the only state to have three elected executives who serve collectively with the governor on the Florida Cabinet, the decision-making body for the state. This means that the Cabinet, not solely the governor, controls the right-of-way needed for the rail project. So a yes vote by Attorney General Pam Bondi of Tampa, Commissioner of Agriculture Adam Putnam of Lakeland and Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater of Palm Beach could re-start the project over the governor’s protestations.

New developments are undermining Scott’s case. The governor said that he rejected the rail project because he believed it would not attract enough ridership and that state taxpayers could be “on the hook” for operating losses. But a study released last week by Florida DOT estimated that ridership would actually be one-third higher than an earlier estimate and that the line would be profitable, earning $10.2 million in its first year of operation.

Scott also expressed concern that construction cost overruns could add as much as $3 billion to the project, which he said he could not let taxpayers absorb during the current fiscal crisis. But in his self-righteous claims of prudence he forgot to mention that private enterprise – not government – was stepping in to build the railway.

Eight international firms had expressed interest in bidding on the project. Several were expected to cover all potential construction overruns. But before they had a chance to bid on the project, Scott pulled the plug and rejected the federal funds. That’s when the municipalities decided to take ownership of the project.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has done Florida a favor by asking for bids next month on the federal funds rejected by Scott rather than handing the money over to California, New York and other states. This gives Florida another chance.

Make no mistake, Scott’s opposition to fast trains is ideological, not fiscal. If he were on a crusade to rein in all transportation spending in tough economic times, that would be one thing. But Scott is proposing to spend billions of dollars to expand highways (including I-4) and dredge the Port of Miami for supercargo ships that are likely never to dock there, while denouncing “Obama rail” as imprudent.

His maneuvering is as transparent as Gov. Scott Walker’s bid to undercut unions and generally turn back the clock in Wisconsin. It should be recalled that Walker rejected federal rail funds last fall. Now Rick Scott wants to make a bigger splash by denying Obama credit for creating thousands of construction jobs in a swing state in time for the 2012 election.

In a recent letter the four mayors (two Republicans and two Democrats) outlined the economic benefits of fast rail linking world-class tourist attractions, top medical and educational centers and other institutions in central Florida. The Tampa-Orlando line would be a starting point for a comprehensive train system, with 170-mph-plus trains eventually linking Orlando with Miami and Jacksonville.

And what would happen if the project does not go forward? “The decision will not contribute one bit to reducing the federal deficit or lowering the federal taxes Floridians pay,” the mayors noted. What it would demonstrate is how devilishly difficult it’s become to build innovative public works in an era of sound-bite politics.

Tehran Seizes an Opening in Bahrain

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

On the surface, Bahrain’s invitation to Saudi forces is really bad. A small but all-powerful ruling class is fearful that internal calls for democracy could reach the undesirable fervor of the masses’ brethren in Tunisia, Egypt, and in the extreme, Libya. When you dig deeper, it’s even worse: sidelined by 30 years of bankrupt policy in the Middle East, America’s relative ambiguity is providing a unique opportunity for Iran to — however absurdly — identify with its oppressed Shi’ite cousins across the Gulf.

In an effort to snuff out the Libyan option amid ever more vehement protest, the Bahraini monarchy has tried to forge an awkward policy. In near-perfect English, Bahraini crowned prince Saman Bin Hamad Bin Isa Al-Khalifa sought to appease at least the Western governments watching him:

We know that a significant portion of the electoral base feels that their voice is unheard. And they want the respect due to them by — to be given to them by the opposition. They want to sit with them and talk to them. So, you know, at the end of the day, we’re all going to have to live in the same country together. And we’re all going to have to talk to each other.

… while calling in the Saudi military in a desperate and potentially disastrous attempt at crowd control.

Stuck in the middle is the U.S., ally to both kingdoms and free democratic expression. It’s telling, for example, that Washington’s call for “restraint on all sides” was delivered neither from the presidential bully pulpit or Foggy Bottom, but from a lowly National Security Council spokesman. America’s relative inaction is due more to thirty years of bankrupt policy across multiple presidential administrations; while that may provide the White House a plausible excuse, there are still consequences.

Shi’ite Iran is filling the void left by a handcuffed and silenced United States. It’s a shameless and disingenuous target of opportunity, but could be ultimately effective: as the pro-democracy Shi’ite majority in Bahrain look abroad for apparently reform-minded backers, they see Tehran, not Washington, unambiguously standing with them.

It’s downright scandalous that this statement came from Iran’s Foreign Ministry and not the U.S. State Department:

The presence of foreign forces and interference in Bahrain’s internal affairs is unacceptable and will further complicate the issue… People have some legitimate demands and they are expressing them peacefully. It should not be responded to violently … and we expect their demands be fulfilled through correct means.

But it did. The Iranian government’s hypocrisy could not be more blatant — a scam 2009 election returned Mahmoud Ahmedinejad to power but brought the masses into the streets for weeks of protests. Dissent was ultimately crushed by the same repressive spirit fueling Bahrain’s rulers, a sentiment wistfully cast aside when the opportunism beckons.

The only question in my mind is whether Bahrainis see through Tehran’s lies or grasp on to any semblance of international support they can muster. The White House should speak up — and act — before they have to choose.

Kerry Builds A New Road To Infrastructure Bank

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Showing the kind of bipartisan leadership that has become all too rare these days, Senators John Kerry and Kay Bailey Hutchison have announced a new proposal to improve the way we fund infrastructure and unlock hundreds of billions in much-needed financing for new projects across the country. Their bill has one of those great acronym-friendly names that congressional staff labor to perfect: The Building and Upgrading Infrastructure for Long-Term Development Act of 2011, or for short: The BUILD Act.

Kerry and Hutchison announced the BUILD Act today in a packed Senate hearing room, flanked by the heads of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the AFL-CIO, who both endorsed the proposal and spoke about the shared need that business and labor have for Washington to move beyond its political dysfunction to address the urgent needs for building and maintaining the backbone of our economy and help create jobs. Senator Mark Warner is as an original co-sponsor of the bill and also joined the press conference. Senator Warner issued a similar warning that he delivered at PPI’s infrastructure conference last fall, explaining that we must reverse the decline in U.S. infrastructure investment to make our country a more competitive place for attracting capital investment and jobs in the global economy.

The BUILD Act represents an entirely new approach to the idea of creating a National Infrastructure Bank, one that goes a long way to reconcile the huge levels of needed investment with the very real spending constraints facing the current Congress. Given the realities of the current political environment, their proposal launches the bank on a fiscally responsible scale, while preserving the best principles of political independence and economics-based decision making that make the bank worth doing in the first place. They do this by structuring their bank as a financing authority under the Federal Credit Reform Act, a model used by the U.S. Export-Import Bank and other existing federal lending entities, that allows the bank to shift enough lending risk to borrowers to keep the burden on the government and taxpayers low, which avoids the large capital requirements of traditional infrastructure bank proposals.

By combining a smart financing structure with a 50% cap on the federal share of any project’s total funding, the BUILD Act avoids the high price tag that other infrastructure financing bills often carry. That makes it an innovative approach that needs to be a part of the upcoming debates on the already underfunded transportation bill. As Chamber President Tom Donohue said today, it’s an invaluable part of the solution to how we pay for maintenance and improvements that we can’t afford to ignore, but it can only work if added to a strong foundation of spending in the transportation bill, which he said will also require increasing our 17 year-old gas tax, to meet our current needs and adjust to lower fuel consumption by more efficient vehicles.

PPI has long supported the idea of a National Infrastructure Bank, including the current House bill sponsored by Rep. Rosa DeLauro, the long-time champion for infrastructure in Congress. DeLauro joined other top political, business, and labor leaders to discuss the bank proposal at our infrastructure conference last fall. Economist and infrastructure heavyweight Ev Ehrlich released an excellent paper at that conference laying out some of the key benefits to the bank approach. The experts who participated in that conference agreed that there were many approaches to structuring a bank that would be acceptable and achieve the benefits Ehrlich described, with the caveat that we could not afford to abandon the principles of independence and project selection based on economics, not political logrolling. Senators Kerry and Hutchison have managed to apply those principles in crafting a workable proposal during this time of fiscal austerity, and we at PPI applaud them for their resourcefulness and leadership.

Why Dems Are Doing Worse in Some States than Others: It’s Race, Not the Economy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In 2008, Democrats enjoyed a solid advantage in partisan identification. By 2010, that advantage had largely evaporated. As I detailed in a previous post, in every state, the Democratic partisan ID advantage has declined, and by an average of nine percentage points.

But the decline has not been equal across the nation. In fact, there is a good deal of variation in the change in Democratic identification across states, ranging from a ranging from a drop of 22.2 percent in New Hampshire (from +13.2% to -9.0%) to a drop of just 1.6 percent in Mississippi (see this table for state-by-state numbers).

Why should these changes vary so much from state to state? Are there demographics that might explain this?

As it turns out, the only statistically significant predictor of the decline in democratic partisan affiliation advantage is the percentage of white people in the state. Surprisingly, the state economy (at least as measured by unemployment rate or change in unemployment rate) doesn’t seem to matter.

Unemployment

Let’s begin with the unemployment rate, since a good deal of the analysis around the 2010 election was an “it’s the economy stupid” story: voters blamed Democrats for high unemployment, and voted Republican to express their anger and frustration.

Yet, what’s remarkable about this scatterplot (above) is that the story doesn’t hold up. If anything, the relationship seems to be slightly opposite what the conventional wisdom would lead us to expect: the Democrats appear to have lost more support in states that have relatively lower unemployment rates. However, it is not statistically significant.

Still, it’s possible that what matters is not the absolute unemployment rate, but rather the change. Yet, once again, the scatterplot (below) shows that this is not the case. The more unemployment dropped between November 2008 and November 2010, the less the average decline in Dems’ partisan ID advantage. Though the relationship is actually stronger than above, it is still not a statistically significant one.

These numbers just don’t fit with the story of voters turning against Democrats for a failing economy. Take Nevada: Unemployment jumped from 8.0 percent to 14.3 percent, yet Democrats partisan ID declined by only; Similarly, California: Unemployment goes up from 8.4 percent to 12.4 percent.

On the other side, consider New Hampshire: Unemployment goes up from 4.3 percent to 5.4 percent (both among the lowest in the nation), but Democrats lose 22.2 percentage points in partisan ID advantage; Or South Dakota: Enemployment up from just 3.4 percent to just 4.5 percent, but the Dem partisan ID advantage falls up 10.4 percent.

Manufacturing

Another possibility is that what matters is the economic make-up of the economy, and in particular, perhaps states that rely disproportionately on manufacturing are more likely to have a lot of anxious voters, since manufacturing is a dying industry. But if we plot the decline in Democratic partisan ID and the manufacturing as share of the state GDP, there is no relationship.

Seniors

Another possibility is that Democrats are losing out in states with more seniors, since senior citizens are reportedly turning against Democrats. A scatter-plot shows a clear relationship, though not quite a statistically significant one (but close!). Generally, the more seniors in a state, the more Democrats have lost in their partisan ID advantage. However, the number of seniors explains only three percent of the variation in the Democratic vote share decline.

Whites

Finally, we come to the share of white voters. Here we have a consistent pattern, and one that is statistically significant (and explains 13 percent of the state-level variation). For every ten percent increase in white voters as a share of the electorate, the predicted decline in Democratic ID advantage is almost one full percentage point (the one outlier in the lower left is Hawaii, which is highly Asian. Without that outlier, the relationship would be even stronger).

This re-emphasizes the problems that Democrats seem to be having with white voters. (Democrats have not enjoyed parity with Republicans among white voters in 20 years, but 2010 was especially bad, with white voters breaking 62-to-38 for Republicans in the mid-term elections.)

This explains why the Democratic decline in diverse states like California (47 percent white) and Nevada (66 percent white) is less than in lily-white states like South Dakota (90 percent white) and New Hampshire (95 percent white), even though California and Nevada have much higher levels of unemployment.

These results exist regardless of economic circumstances (these findings are robust even in a statistical model that controls for all the other possible factors discussed).

Conclusions

The brief summary of this analysis is that race may matter more than the economy for  why voters have been identifying more and more as Republicans for the last two years.

Of course, there are obvious caveats to this interpretation, most significantly the fact that I am playing around with state-level data, as opposed to individual-level data.

But the patterns are discouraging for Obama and the Democrats. Much prognostication has argued that the number one factor for 2012 will be the unemployment rate, because historically, the unemployment rate has been a very strong predictor of whether the incumbent party wins or not. This analysis suggests that something else is going on as well. Democrats are having a hard time with seniors and particularly white voters, and it’s not just a story about the state of the economy.  Democrats ignore these scatterplots at their peril.

Update: I’ve written a response to some of the comments entitled “Am I a Race-Baiter?”

How Gallup’s Partisan ID Numbers Could Mean Trouble for Obama in 2012

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In looking ahead to 2012, I’ve been playing around with Gallup’s State of the States numbers on political party affiliations. Gallup asks people whether they identify as Democrats or Republicans, and really pushes Independents to pick a side, which means that you can get a pretty good picture of where voters are

In 2008, Democrats had a party affiliation advantage in 42 states, and that affiliation advantage was at least 10 points in 28 states. In 2010, just two years later, Democrats enjoyed an affiliation advantage in 28 states, and had an advantage of more than 10 points in just 12 states. On average, Democratic Party affiliation advantage has gone down by 9.0 percentage points. In other words, the country went from being solidly Democratic to just slightly so. But it gets a little more troubling for Obama when translated into Electoral College math.

Since Democrats seem to enjoy a party affiliation advantage in Gallup’s polling that is slightly higher than the state voting patterns (Gallup thinks this is because Republicans vote at higher rates), in 2008, the state with the lowest Democratic affiliation advantage that went to Obama was Virginia, which was +9.0% Democrat. If that threshold carries over to 2012, and the party affiliation numbers remain the same, the Republican candidate would pick up at least 358 electoral votes, possibly more, since a couple of states that had even higher Democratic advantages than +9.0% voted for McCain in 2008.

Looking ahead to 2012, the key will be the states in the more than five percent but less than ten percent Democratic advantage range. Here we have a whole bunch of probable swing states: Iowa (+5.1%), North Carolina (+5.2%), Minnesota (+5.4%), Ohio (5.6%), Pennsylvania (6.4%), Michigan (+7.3%), and Washington (+7.7%). If Obama takes these seven states (but still loses West Virginia, which is +9.7% Dem, but he lost last time at +18.9%) Dem, he gets 271 electoral votes, just enough to win.

Key swing states that have fallen below the five percent Democratic advantage now include: Nevada (+4.5%, down from +11.3%), Florida (+3.1%, down from +9.1%), Wisconsin (2.6%, down from 17.8%(!)), Colorado (+2.6%, down from 10.7%), and Virginia (-0.3% down from +9.0%).

Obviously, there is a fair amount of time between now and November 2012, and things could shift back in the other direction. Since we know independents broke strongly for Republicans in 2010, it’s a decent bet that a fair amount of the shift toward Republicans comes from independents, and that those independents could be won back. Moreover, the Republican presidential field continues to look week.

In a subsequent post, I’ll be dealing with what I think is a very intriguing question raised by these numbers: that there is a good deal of variation in the change in Democratic identification across states, ranging from a ranging from a drop of 22.2 percent in New Hampshire (from +13.2% to -9.0%) to a drop of 1.6 percent in Mississippi (already a pretty red state).

Why has the Democratic advantage fallen much more precipitously in some states than others? And could knowing why help Democrats at all? Stay tuned.

A Navy Fighter Pilot’s Perspective on the No-Fly Zone

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In 1999, I was a Navy F-14 pilot enforcing a no-fly zone over Southern Iraq.  As I climbed into my cockpit, I was confident – confident in our mission to destroy Saddam Hussein’s brutal Republican Guard units, confident in my ability to distinguish foes from the innocent Iraqi civilians we were protecting, and confident in the legitimacy and wide support of an United Nations-backed mission.

If I were to suit up today to enforce a no-fly zone over Libyan to help depose dictator Muammar Qaddafi, I would be conducting a murkier – and more dangerous – mission.  First of all, I would not have a clear mission to guide me.  Is it to destroy all Libyan aircraft, to identify and destroy only Qaddafi’s forces, or to just protect civilians from airborne assault?  I would not be able to easily distinguish rebels from government forces on the ground.  Both fighting forces look pretty much the same when you are flying at high speed or high altitude.  I would have none of the policy cohesion and global support that I had in 1999.  Washington, DC would still be trying to sort out what to do.  At the current pace of international negotiations, I probably would have neither United Nations nor NATO support.

I am proud that the United States is considering military actions to “lead from the front” to stop Qaddafi’s planes and tanks from killing civilian protesters.  Yet, the Libyan situation is one that is best resolved with global (or at least regional) consensus. Unilateral action is ill-advised as we have considerable burdens in Iraq and Afghanistan currently. Adding a unilateral military force to the Libyan conflict could unnecessarily burden our military, put additional strain on America as it fights to right its economic course post-recession, and provide additional fodder to those that posit that America routinely acts capriciously and unilaterally.

If the United States were to become involved militarily in the absence of any sort of global consensus, that would take us back to the fragile “coalition of the willing” of the Bush era.  This undermines our work to strengthen NATO and the United Nations as organizations that could take on more global security responsibilities.  When coalitions are ad hoc, it makes for a less predictable and stable climate for our allies to find common ground on which to solve future problems.

We should strive for global, or at a minimum regional, consensus on how to address the Libyan problem.  If the United Nations cannot reach consensus, America should not assume that its actions would be in concert with trans-regional goals.  After all, if our allies are not sufficiently included in the “take-off” planning, they are less likely to be with us for the landing.

Congress and the Obama Administration should strive for policies that would make it relatively safe for a pilot climbing into a cockpit in the near future to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya.  He should know that his aerial bombing targets were properly vetted to distinguish between civilians and armed forces and that the rules of engagement make sense.  He should have the peace of mind to know that America and the global community are behind him 100 percent and that there is recognizable agreement on the preferred diplomatic and military options.

Beware the “Japan Syndrome” Narrative

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Taking Rahm Emanuel’s advice to heart, U.S. anti-nuclear activists are using the emergency in Japan to stoke premature panic in the United States about atomic energy. While the rest of us might want to wait and see what actually happens with the Fukushima Daiichi plant before leaping to conclusions, it’s not too early to draw three conclusions that belie this fearful, “Japan Syndrome” narrative.

First, while Japan is the world’s most seismically active country, vast swaths of the United States aren’t active. We probably won’t be siting new reactors on the San Andreas Fault.

Second, what’s been most striking about the Daiichi plant isn’t its vulnerability, but its resilience. The 40-year-old facility plant has thus far withstood one of the biggest earthquakes in memory, followed by a tsunami and multiple interruptions in power. Scientists say hydrogen explosions have vented minor amounts of radiation into the air.

Third, the health and environmental risks of nuclear energy don’t seem any greater than those associated with other conventional power sources, and in fact are distinctly lower than those of coal-mining and offshore oil drilling.

Continue reading at The Arena on Politico

Where Do NGOs Stand on Intervening in Libya?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

One of the many tragedies of the Iraq War was that the Bush administration presented it as a humanitarian venture when in fact not a single established humanitarian organization supported the intervention. The International Crisis Group and Human Rights Watch, for instance, both argued that the War could not been as a humanitarian venture.

Again we are seeing calls for some sort of humanitarian intervention, in Libya this time. From my former colleague Job Henning to columnist Charles Krauthammer, the U.S. is being called upon to arm the rebels, establish a no-fly zone, or something in between.

Since the humanitarian argument was used so cynically in Iraq in 2003, it’s worth checking in with what the humanitarian groups are actually saying this time around. The results are not what one might think.

Let’s start with the most aggressive: The Genocide Intervention Network has been the lead group calling for the “[e]stablishment of a no-fly zone by willing countries, with the express aim of preventing continued operation of Libyan military aircraft if attacks against civilians continue.” GIN’s position might seem counterintuitive given that nobody claims genocide is taking place in Libya, but the organization’s goal is to stop genocides before they begin. Once the genocide begins, time is already lost.

Only slightly less interventionist is the International Crisis Group. Notably, it says that “forceful measures” – sanctioned by the UN Security Council and the Arab League and African Union—might become necessary to stop the “full-blown civil war.” The ICG’s position is very different from its position on Iraq, when the organization’s president said in March 2003 that the situation in Iraq did not merit an invasion. Still, the ICG thinks “nothing should be allowed to preempt or preclude the urgent search for a political solution” in Libya. At this time, “Western calls for military intervention of one kind or another are perilous and potentially counter-productive.”

And yet, it is significant that ICG’s former president Gareth Evans—who was president in 2003—wrote in the Financial Times that with regards to Libya “it is the responsibility of the international community to provide [basic security], if necessary–should peaceful means be inadequate–by taking timely and decisive collective action through the United Nations Security Council.” ICG’s relative hawkishness on the issue is important, both because it is highly respected and rarely insistent on military solutions. The left-wing Nation magazine has been surprised and troubled by the International Crisis Group’s positions, for instance.

Now to the firmly anti-US-intervention organizations: Amnesty International welcomed news reports in late February of the African Union’s plans to send a mission to Libya. No mention has been made of NATO, UN, or US no-fly zones, however. For its part, Human Rights Watch has called for the regime in Libya to allow relief aid in and refugees out (good luck with that!), but has conspicuously avoided advocating outside military intervention. Unlike other NGOs, HRW does take positions on wars, and so its silence essentially means it is stalwartly against military action.

The latest news is that aid groups are having trouble delivering supplies inside Libya, unsurprisingly. Perhaps if that keeps up, more humanitarian NGOs will call for intervention inside that country. Until then, the scorecard shows mixed enthusiasm for military action among the actual humanitarians.