Category: Uncategorized

Facebook and Twitter Alone Can’t Sustain Democracy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

From Tunisia to Egypt to Libya, as governments in countries continue to teeter and fall, the voice of a new generation bolstered by the internet is opening doors for democracy. But though the celebrations in the town squares of Tahrir and Mohammad Bouazizi are still fresh, brutal crackdowns in Iran, Libya, and Bahrain show how fragile the call for democracy is – and why technology alone can’t sustain democratic revolution.

Over the past month, the world watched as legions of young tech-savvy Twitter and Facebook users banded together in a virtual civil society to create change in their governments. Using a new, free, and open tool such as the internet was a powerful way for the first plugged-in generation in history to demand change. When their respective government bodies attempted to censor the protesters, a world-wide safety web was immediately cast for the photos, videos, and online messages that would mobilize, organize and encourage the citizens. The rules of political organizing had been changed — freedom was literally in the air.

Social media is filling an important vacuum in these revolutions: social media is becoming the fabric of civil society that is otherwise missing from autocratic states. A vibrant civil society with a strong NGO community is the glue that keeps any democracy together. It takes a multitude of organizations, student groups, institutions, and other volunteers to safeguard the fresh, new democracies that are springing up in countries such as Egypt, Liberia, and Ukraine. Without a strong civil society and an independent open economy where citizens feel safe, democracy will fail.

Strong and independent non-government groups support democracy by providing a channel for every citizen to work within to achieve change in policy and to safeguard hard-won freedoms.

Such independent groups provide necessary forums for citizens to moderate conflict, teach democratic principles, and push for political change in a peaceful and legitimate manner.

If the United States wants to help citizens protect their new democracies around the world, we ought to start with the basic foundation of our country – that a government for the people and by the people requires more than Facebook and Twitter. Capacity-building NGOs and volunteer citizens must band together to offer their country a support system during these fragile times.

Americans and like-minded countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic can lend a hand, organizing advocacy groups that can mobilize the NGO community and citizens. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, ‘Freedom Fighters’ traveled around the globe to share their first-hand knowledge with these stakeholders of other emerging countries.

Social media has played an integral part, but for an effective follow up to virtual revolt, an old fashioned civil society is what these fresh new democracies require. Though the door to democracy has opened in some countries, it will take a strong, independent civil society to ensure that it will not be slammed shut once again. As the online world comes face to face with the military might of the entrenched powers that be, there is a need for on-the-ground organized citizen engagement and dialogue.

Gov. Scott Stages a Trainwreck in Florida

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Why is Florida’s rookie Republican Gov. Rick Scott hell-bent on rejecting $2.4 billion in federal funds for a Tampa-Orlando high-speed railway? Is it because his argument that Florida taxpayers would be “on the hook” for cost overruns was about to be exposed as a bunch of hooey?

Until Scott announced he would veto the rail program on Feb. 16, the new 84-mile rail line was going to be put out to private bid. It was an open secret in business circles that expected bidders, including Japan’s JR Central (builder of the high-speed Shinkansen) and South Korea’s Hyundai Rotem (builder of Korea’s bullet trains), would be willing to pay for Florida’s $280 million share of the project, plus any construction cost overruns and operating losses, in return for a 30-year lease on the Tampa-Orlando railway.

In other words, the private sector, not the Florida taxpayer, would cover any non-federal costs for the project. Since such a revelation would throw a monkey wrench into Scott’s ideological stance that “Obama rail” is “a federal boondoggle,” he tried to veto the program before it got to the bidding stage.

But Scott may have overstepped his state constitutional authority. Two state senators, Republican Thad Altman and Democrat Arthenia Joyner, filed a lawsuit Tuesday before the Florida Supreme Court arguing that Scott exceeded his powers by “retroactively vetoing” the project after the legislature voted to move ahead with the project and prior governor, Charlie Crist, agreed to accept the federal rail funds.

According to the suit, “The legislation implementing high-speed rail and the appropriation of the state and federal monies were fully accomplished prior to the election or inauguration of the Respondent, [but] once elected, Gov. Scott has refused to permit the Grant Amendment to be executed by the Florida Rail Enterprise,” thus halting the process of issuing a so-called “design-build-operate-maintain-and-finance” contract with a private bidder.

Predictably, Scott roared back yesterday by saying the two legislators overstepped their bounds by criticizing him. “Fortunately for the taxpayers of Florida, nothing in Florida law compels the Governor … to pour millions of dollars into a black hole during the historic fiscal crisis with which the state is presently grappling,” wrote Scott’s general counsel.

Scott vowed to veto any future appropriation for high-speed rail by the Florida legislature and added imperiously that he would reserve the right to declare the federal government’s stimulus package, from which the high-speed rail funds were derived, “an unconstitutional infringement on his rights as governor.”

The governor’s intransigence has set off a scramble by federal, state, and local officials to circumvent his office and save the long-planned project. Local governments, including Orlando, Tampa, and Miami, have formed a coalition they said could assume responsibility for putting the project out to bid and ensure that a private company would cover any construction cost overruns. A group of mayors presented the plan to Scott earlier this week, but he did not budge from his anti-train stance.

There is no dispute that the project would create about 30,000 construction jobs in the economically depressed central part of Florida and aid tourism by providing a fast ride from Orlando International Airport to Disney World.

Scott campaigned for office promising to create thousands of new jobs for Florida. But those jobs are to be created “his way” by building new roads, expanding local ports and cutting taxes, not by accepting a program whose job creation might rub off favorably on Barack Obama during the 2012 presidential election.

Scott may be speeding toward his own political fall – his poll numbers are slipping – but at the moment he seems to have the momentum to bring down the Obama administration’s most “do-able” passenger rail project. So far, it’s unclear whether the White House wants to stand up and fight Scott or redirect the federal funds to places like California and New York where the governors are openly campaigning for the money.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood has given Scott until the end of Friday to accept or reject the federal rail funds. Doubtless we know what Scott will do. The Florida story, however, won’t be over until the local entities give up on their plan to take over the project and the state Supreme Court weighs in on the constitutional issues raised by the Altman-Joyner suit.

We Can Do Better on an Oil Spill Liability Cap Compromise

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Last year’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill revealed not just technological problems, but policy gaps as well. Among the most notable of these gaps is the federal limit on liability for oil spills, set at $75 million for offshore facilities. This is three or four orders of magnitude smaller than the damages associated with a major offshore spill like Deepwater Horizon, whose damages are estimated in the tens of billions. Firms that cause more damage than the limit aren’t liable, at least not under federal law. It is only BP’s decision to waive this limit that has kept it from being a much larger problem.

But we may not be so lucky next time, and the spill has greatly increased pressure to increase or eliminate the cap. I and my colleagues at Resources for the Future have written on this and, most notably, the President’s Commission on the spill recommended significantly raising liability caps. Congress could not agree on a measure to do so last year, however, and urgency ebbed in the election season. The problem still exists, however, and discussions in Congress have begun again. The latest development is a potential compromise between Democratic Sens. Mark Begich and Mary Landrieu. But unfortunately, this compromise is likely to make the situation worse, not better.

The Begich/Landrieu compromise has two elements: first, it raises the liability cap to $250 million. This is relatively meaningless given the size of large-spill damages, but let’s set that obvious objection aside for now. The deeper problems with the compromise exist even if the cap number is much higher. The second element is a kind of insurance pool, funded by contributions from all drilling firms, that would cover spill damages above the cap level.

This insurance pool creates problems that undermine any benefit from an increased cap. The first is moral hazard – liability works because, by forcing wrongdoers to pay for damages they cause, it creates incentives to avoid dangerous or negligent activity. But when liability is pooled, these incentives are blunted. Under the compromise, if a firm spilled oil that caused damage over $250 million, it would not pay much for these “excess” damages – but its competitors would. In a sense, the pool lets firms outsource the costs of their dangerous activity, and therefore erases much of the incentive to avoid it. This “moral hazard” is a recognized problem with insurance and particularly pooled insurance. There are ways to deal with it, but it is impossible to resolve it entirely.

But this isn’t the only way the compromise would kill firms’ incentive to operate safely. It would also undercut spill victims’ only real remedy under current law. Critics of the federal spill liability cap often forget that it isn’t the only game in town – spill victims can sue under state law. And with the big exception of Louisiana, state law has no liability caps at all. This means that victims can recover damages even beyond the federal cap levels. Now federal caps do still matter – for procedural reasons and due to protections offered under federal law, it is a better route for most victims. And of course Louisianans are out of luck under either law.

But if there is an insurance pool, victims won’t pursue claims under state law. No good lawyer would advise them to do so when they could just recover from the insurance pool. State liability laws would become largely meaningless, and any incentives they give firms to operate safely would fade. This makes the moral hazard problem even worse. The only remaining reasons for firms to prevent major spills would be avoiding bad press and cleanup costs (which aren’t covered under the caps). And that’s not likely to be enough to increase safety investments, as the recent spill has shown is necessary.

The spill illustrated something we probably should have recognized earlier – that our liability policy for oil spills is totally inadequate. The liability cap was too low when it was passed, and it is far too low now. There’s a very strong case that we shouldn’t have one at all.

But changes to the liability cap won’t happen without compromise. It’s a good thing that legislators continue to discuss the issue and are making such compromises (though getting Republicans on board will be necessary eventually). But whatever political benefits the Landrieu/Begich compromise has, it’s bad policy. It will make the problems with current liability policy worse, not better. The senators risk expending political capital only to make the Gulf less safe. Oil companies and the legislators that champion them may still oppose this compromise, but there will be a certain amount of Br’er Rabbit and the briar patch in their cries. Even if politics means an ideal spill liability policy is impossible, we can do better than this.

The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect those of the Progressive Policy Institute.

Making Sense of North Korea

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

While a revolutionary wave in the Middle East has captivated most of our attention recently, the Korean peninsula remains volatile. In recent months, North Korea has launched two unprovoked attacks, and questions remain about the best way to diffuse the tension, especially with China acting as an enabler.

Yesterday, the Progressive Policy Institute, in conjunction with the University of California Washington Center, held a panel discussion on “Defusing Tensions on the Korean Peninsula: What America—and China—Should Do.”

The event featured: The Honorable Kurt Campbell, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs; Scott Snyder, Director, Center for U.S.-Korea Policy at the Asia Foundation; Karin Lee, Executive Director, The National Committee on North Korea; and Gordon Flake, Executive Director, The Mansfield Foundation. PPI’s Jim Arkedis moderated.

Sec. Campbell’s remarks were off the record (so I can’t report on them), but a lively discussion followed.

Flake kicked off the conversation with a blunt assessment of the obstacles of getting back to the negotiating table, arguing it’s hard to start a discussion when North Korea is beginning from such a bellicose stance.

“The fundamental problem is that if we want to get back to the negotiating track, we can’t enter formal negotiations as long as North Korea continues to assert that it’s a nuclear power and wants to be recognized as a nuclear power,” said Flake. “The question is: how do you get North Korea to change its mind and its position?”

Flake went on to argue that China had to play a major role. But while China and the U.S. used to have a good working relationship, that’s fallen off lately. Flake tried to see things from China’s perspective: “In my mind, China has always had three lousy options: no war, no collapse, and no nukes…In the last year and a half, there’s been a shift. China prioritized no collapse over no war and no nukes, and China came to the position that to do that they were going to back North Korea more openly.”

Flake criticized China for enabling North Korea by “shielding North Korea from the consequences of its actions.” He accused China of blocking investigations, ignoring information, and simply not raising issues.

Karin Lee followed by saying that in light of recent developments, she was almost nostalgic for the six-party talks. “At least the six-party talks put us in a position where China was invested in getting North Korea to do something as opposed to not to do something, and China was much better at getting North Korea to do things that not to do things”

Snyder worried that the U.S. was being torn between working with its traditional allies of Japan and South Korea and working with the more prickly but increasingly important China.

“The issue that is particularly challenging is do people perceive the U.S. as looking at North Korea through the lens of South Korea or through the lens of china,” said Snyder. South Korea is very nervous as to what happens. But the challenge is that we have to manage the tensions and interact with China, and in contrast to the situation in the past where U.S. hegemony guaranteed security, this puts tensions on the management of alliances.”

Snyder also noted that the fact that Chinese president Hu is at the end of his regime also poses some challenges.

But should the U.S. resume talks, as Sen. Kerry recently suggested?

“One trope the administration puts out is that they don’t want to reward them with talks,” said Lee. “But talks are not a reward. Talks are diplomacy.”

Flake, however, argued that until North Korea reiterates the commitment to de-nuclearization agreed on in during the last round of six-party talks, there’s no point. “We want to see some indication of serious intent and purpose,” he said. “That would at least open the groundwork.”

Snyder put it more colorfully: “In response to Obama’s invitation to engage with countries that unclenched their fist, North Koreans gave us the finger. So there should be low expectations”

On whether the Chinese can change their tune on being a little tougher on North Korea, Snyder offered some hope. “The Chinese would like to see North Korea follow in their model, but the Chinese are tired of leading the horse to water. They’re trying to make it drink. So we might be able to engage on how do we extend economic governance.”

Lee agreed: “We should say, you’re trying to get the horse to drink, and it’s not working, so how can we work with you to get the horse to drink?”

Certainly, it won’t be easy. And Snyder ended the panel on a pessimistic note: “The key issue is that North Korea has defined itself as a guerrilla state outside the international system.”

Wingnut Watch: How The Battle of Madison Became an Apocalyptic Struggle for the Right

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

One of the salient realities of politics is that much of the contention revolves around efforts to get the news media and the public to focus on events that reinforce one group’s point of view over others.  There are, of course, front-and-center national and international news developments that literally command attention.  But when it comes to, say, a noisy dispute over a budget in a medium-sized state, you’d normally see one side or the other trying to “nationalize” the event to gain external allies.

But that’s what is most fascinating about the ongoing saga in Madison, Wisconsin: what began as a series of union protests against Gov. Scott Walker’s efforts to take away public employees’ collective bargaining rights, and then evolved into a national cause célèbre for unions and progressives generally, has become of equal importance to the Right, where the belief that Walker is sparking a nationwide revolt against “union thugs” is very strong.

Even as polls in Wisconsin and nationally show Walker with relatively low and flagging levels of support for his confrontational tactics, conservative gabbers are treating the events like the Battle of Algiers.  The highly influential RedState blog has become completely obsessed with Wisconsin and its political and economic implications; on Monday of this week, the site featured no less than five front-page posts on the subject.  Here’s a taste of the tone, from RedState diarist Mark Meed:

I appreciate it might seem unnecessarily provocative to compare union thugs to dogs — especially to those in the moderate attack dog community — so let me offer a “scratch behind the ears” qualification. These aren’t just any dogs, they’re the ones out of “Animal Farm”. These are the pack animals that are inevitably dispatched when socialists run out of other people’s money, and those other people finally notice.

Nice, eh?  But the focus on Wisconsin is not limited to the fever swamps of the conservative blogosphere; it’s breaking out on the presidential campaign trail as well.  Tim Pawlenty released a video with dramatic footage of the Madison protests and ending with the proto-candidate himself gravely intoning: “It’s important that Americans stand with Scott Walker, stand with Wisconsin.” Newt Gingrich recently devoted his Human Events column to a lurid characterization of the Wisconsin fight.  A sample:

In Madison, Wisconsin, we are witnessing a profound struggle between the right of the people to govern themselves and the power of entrenched, selfish interests to stop reforms and defy the will of the people.

Not a lot of nuance there.  Meanwhile, Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels is taking some conservative heat for failing to follow Walker’s lead in declaring war on unions, compounding the hostility he earlier aroused by calling for a “truce” on cultural issues.

There is one underlying difference of opinion among conservatives about Wisconsin that’s worth noting and pondering: while some focus strictly on public-sector unionism, others view the assault on public-employee collective bargaining as just one front in a broader fight against unions and collective bargaining generally.  Most obviously, conservatives are aware of the important role of unions in Democratic Party campaign financing and voter mobilization efforts, and naturally welcome any opportunity to weaken the “other team” (even as they characterize Democratic defenders of unions as parties to a corrupt bargain that shakes down taxpayers and businesses for higher wages and benefits in exchange for political assistance).

But some conservatives are willing to go further and denounce all forms of collective bargain as either corrupt, as coercive, or as incompatible with economic growth.  Here’s Robert VerBruggen writing for the National Review site:

In reality, “collective bargaining” is when a majority of employees vote to unionize, and then the union has the legal right to represent all the employees. In other words, it forces workers to accept unions as their bargaining agents, and it forbids employers to negotiate with non-union workers on an individual basis.

A more colloquial version of this argument was made by a conservative blogger calling himself USA Admiral:

There is no real use for [unions].  If you can’t negotiate your own contracts, you need to be flipping burgers.

The larger, macroeconomic case against unions as an institution in the private as well as the public sector is mainly made by Right-to-Work agitators, but it occasionally is taken up by conservative politicians as well.  It’s probably not surprising that the most overt stance against the very existence of unions was recently made by South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who appointed a corporate labor relations lawyer (i.e., someone whose job is to oppose unions and unionization) to head up the state labor department.  Haley was not shy about her motivation in taking this unusual step: “She [the appointee] is ready for the challenge,” Haley said. “We’re going to fight the unions and I needed a partner to help me do it. She’s the right person to help me do it.”

In the end, the sense that Scott Walker is fighting the ancient enemy of the conservative movement probably best explains why so many conservatives can’t resist blowing the Wisconsin saga up into an apocalyptic struggle of immense importance.  If Walker loses, it will be interesting to see if he’s treated as a martyr or just as insufficiently vicious.

TODAY: Defusing Tensions on the Korean Peninsula: What America-and China-Should Do

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Defusing Tensions on the Korean Peninsula:
What America—and China—Should Do.

Keynote Address:
The Honorable Kurt Campbell
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs

Featured Panelists:
Scott Snyder, Director, Center for U.S.-Korea Policy at the Asia Foundation
Karin Lee, Executive Director, The National Committee on North Korea
Gordon Flake, Executive Director, The Mansfield Foundation

Date:
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
2 p.m.

 

Location:
University of California Washington Center
First Floor Auditorium
1608 Rhode Island Ave. NW
Washington, DC

Register for this event.

If you have any questions, please contact 202-525-3926.

Space is limited. RSVP required.

MEDIA COVERAGE:
The event is open to the press. Media in attendance are required to register in advance of the event to Steven Chlapecka at 202.525.3931 or schlapecka@ppionline.org.

Hosted in collaboration with the University of California Washington Center.

A New Idea To Fix the Housing Market

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The U.S. housing market continues to stumble. The median home price is now at its lowest level since April 2002 and the percentage of Americans who believe that homeownership is a safe investment continues to decline. Meanwhile, policy is largely at a standstill. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner continues to urge a go-slow approach on the phase-out of government supported mortgages through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And all House Republicans can come up with is trying to kill the Obama Administration’s efforts to stem foreclosures through the Home Affordable Mortgage Program (HAMP) and other related programs.

Economist Robert I. Lerman has proposed a cost-effective way to reinvigorate the stalled housing market: The federal government should provide a million vouchers that allow low-income renters to become homeowners and allow some of the two million holders of rental vouchers to convert them into homeownership vouchers.

The plan is outlined in a memo entitled “Homeownership Vouchers: A Plan to Reinvigorate the Economy While Helping Low-Income Families.” It’s written by .

The basic idea is that these vouchers would create a new pool of potential owners to buy up depressed housing stock. Since the federal government already provides rental vouchers, it may as well turn those rental vouchers into ownership vouchers. And actually, doing so would save the government money, since in almost all housing markets mortgage payments would be lower than the market rent.

The plan has other benefits as well. As Lerman writes:

A rise in home prices would reduce the number of homeowners who find their homes worth far less than their mortgages. It would discourage these “underwater” homeowners from walking away from their mortgages; allow more families to refinance at low interest rates, thereby reducing the rate of foreclosures; and, ultimately, it would generate new construction jobs and spur associated job growth. Increased home values also can play an indirect role in job creation, since more small business owners would again be able to use their home as collateral for loans to maintain and expand their business.

In short, “Homeownership Vouchers” is a smart way to stimulate the housing market, expand the dream of homeownership to low-income families, and give the economy some added juice, all while potentially saving the government money.

Read the full report here.

Kerry Challenges Obama on North Korea

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

A rift seems to have opened between the Obama administration and Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on the ever-sensitive topic of North Korea. Sen. Kerry convened a hearing today on the subject, and previewed his own views in a press statement released this morning:

[T]he best option is to consult closely with South Korea and launch bilateral talks with North Korea when we decide the time is appropriate. Fruitful talks between the U.S. and North Korea can lay the groundwork for resumption of the Six Party Talks. Right now, we simply cannot afford to cede the initiative to North Korea and China because neither country’s interests fully coincide with ours.

Let me be clear: We must get beyond the political talking point that engaging North Korea is somehow “rewarding bad behavior.” It is not. [bold mine]

This differs from what Kurt Campbell, President Obama’s Assistant Secretary of State for Asia, had to say on the issue as he spoke during Sen. Kerry’s hearing:

The United States remains committed to meaningful dialogue, but we will not reward North Korea for shattering the peace or defying the international community. If North Korea improves relations with South Korea and demonstrates a change in behavior … the United States will stand ready to move toward normalization of our relationship. However, if it maintains its path of defiance and provocative behavior and fails to comply with its obligations and commitments, it stands no chance of becoming a strong and prosperous nation. [again, bold is mine]

Kerry seems ready to tango, Obama isn’t. Which is it? I could write a diatribe with my own analysis and recommendations, or I could take the easy way out and suggest you attend PPI’s event on North Korea tomorrow. We’ll have Assistant Secretary Campbell and a panel of experts there to answer your questions and see just where the US — and China — should do to defuse tensions on the peninsula. Click here to register. Details below.

Defusing Tensions on the Korean Peninsula:

What America—and China—Should Do

Keynote Address:

The Honorable Kurt Campbell

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs

Featured Panelists:

Scott Snyder, Director, Center for U.S.-Korea Policy at the Asia Foundation

Karin Lee, Executive Director, The National Committee on North Korea

Gordon Flake, Executive Director, The Mansfield Foundation

Date:

Wednesday, March 2, 2011, 2 p.m.

Location:

University of California Washington Center

First Floor Auditorium

1608 Rhode Island Ave. NW

Washington, DC

Click here to register

Homeownership Vouchers: A Plan to Reinvigorate the Economy While Helping Low-Income Families

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

 

While easy monetary policy and a large fiscal stimulus have limited the economic downturn and helped generate modest growth, few believe the economy can grow fast enough to reduce unemployment without the recovery of the housing sector. Yet, no such recovery is in sight. As of late December 2010, the headline story was “Housing Recovery Stalls: Fresh Fall in Home Prices is Headwind for Economy.”1 Construction output remains 30 percent below pre-recession levels and is no higher today than it was a year ago (about 30 percent of all lost jobs were in the construction industry). The unemployment rate among construction workers is about 19 percent, double the national average. There are still 7 million homes in foreclosure or with mortgages that are 90 days delinquent. House prices continue to stagnate.

So far, federal initiatives aimed at shoring up the housing sector have cost tens of billions of dollars but have been ineffective and poorly targeted. The tax credit for homebuyers may have sped up some home purchases, but it did so at a high cost and with benefits flowing to many high-income families. It subsidized purchases that would have taken place without the credit, resulting in a cost to the taxpayer of $43,000 per new home purchased and a total budget cost of $15-20 billion, which was twice as much as Congress expected. President Obama’s Homeowner Affordability and Stability plan has reached only a small percentage of eligible homeowners.

The potential benefits of increasing the demand for owner-occupied housing are enormous. A rise in home prices would reduce the number of homeowners who find their homes worth far less than their mortgages. It would discourage these “underwater” homeowners from walking away from their mortgages; allow more families to refinance at low interest rates, thereby reducing the rate of foreclosures; and, ultimately, it would generate new construction jobs and spur associated job growth. Increased home values also can play an indirect role in job creation, since more small business owners would again be able to use their home as collateral for loans to maintain and expand their business.

Read the Policy Memo

Maryland Morning: High-Speed Rail’s Leaving the Station…Slowly

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

On February 23, Mark Reutter spoke with Sheilah Kast of WYPR Maryland Morning about obstacles facing the administration’s high-speed rail projects:

[audio:https://www.progressivefix.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/02-23-2011-Reutter-on-MdNPR.mp3|titles=02-23-2011 Reutter on MdNPR]

If you want to read more from Mark Reutter on high-speed rail:

Will Congress Regret Banning Earmarks?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Over in the New York Times, Carl Hulse writes notes that one of the many unique aspects of this year’s unfolding budget clash is that this will be first budget battle without earmarks.

Generally, the disappearance of earmarks been seen as positive development, since everybody loves to hate earmarks. But say all you want about earmarks being wasteful or corrupt (even though that’s a debatable claim), they helped broker compromise. By giving enough members a stake in an omnibus appropriation bill, earmarks were mechanism whereby leaders could assemble a winning coalition to pass a budget bill, a powerful tool to avoid a government shutdown.

Here’s Diana Evans, a professor of political science at Trinity College, from a book about earmarks called Greasing the Wheels:

Pork barrel benefits, the most reviled of Congress’s legislative products, are used by policy coalition leaders to produce the type of policy that is most admired: general interest legislation. This book makes the case that buying votes with pork is an important way in which Congress solves its well-known collective action problem.

And here’s Scott A. Frisch and Sean Q. Kelly, writing in the National Journal last November:

The reality, as we see it, is that without earmarks it will be much more difficult to get moderate and liberal members to go along with spending cuts that may be necessary to reduce the deficit – one of the major goals of the tea party movement.  By eliminating earmarks, tea party supporters may have lost one of their most effective tools for building coalitions to make painful cuts in spending. Earmarks can be viewed as the spoonful of sugar that makes the bitter medicine of deficit reduction go down; without earmarked projects, enacting tough legislation will be even more difficult.

(Frisch and Kelly are the authors of a book called Cheese Factories on the Moon: Why Earmarks are Good for Democracy.)

Remember, even at their height, earmarks accounted for roughly two percent of all appropriations expenditures. And that two percent hasn’t necessarily been cut out of the budget – it’s just been transferred the executive branch for allocation instead of being Congressionally-directed.

Now, I understand that there were some lobbying abuses in the world of earmarks, but my sense is that most offices were actually remarkably transparent about their earmarks (and indeed happy to brag about their projects). I never saw any reason for banning them and thought it was all silly red-herring type politics that distracted us from more difficult but far more consequential fights over entitlements.

Maybe the folks in Congress will figure out how to come to some sort of eventual budget agreement without a bunch of earmarks to grease the wheels, and we’ll all be better off because of it. But I’m beginning to wonder if, when budget negotiations grind to a standstill, the good folks running Congress might wish that they hadn’t prevented themselves from sweetening the pot with a few special district spending programs.

Obama Gets His Comeuppance For Failing the Lobbying Purity Test

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

If you search through the White House visitor logs, you can find me. In fact, I’ve been to the Obama White House twice (though I seem to have two records for the same visit). Let me explain: A good friend of mine worked at CEQ for a while. Once, she took some friends on a tour of the White House. Once, we went to see the Christmastime decorations at the East Wing. However, if I had visited this friend at her office, which was not the White House but instead at Jackson Place, there’d be no trace of me in the White House visitor logs.

Yesterday, Politico ran a story noting this fact and insinuating that lobbying meetings were intentionally being moved to Jackson Place, or to the nearby Caribou Coffee on 17th Street, just so that they wouldn’t show up in the visitor logs. Many bloggers, especially those on the right have jumped all over Obama for this supposed hypocrisy. The ever-clever Michelle Malkin triumphantly rhymed: “Obama lied, transparency died.” Common Cause asked Obama to disclose every meeting regardless of where it occurs.

Now, I really don’t know if the Administration moved meetings off-campus so that they didn’t show up in the visitor logs. It seems to me like a silly thing to do. I’m trying to imagine what visitor would be so terrible that his or her presence in the visitor logs would be an instant scandal. I can’t. Based on what I know about the scarcity of space in the White House, I’m willing to buy the rationale that meetings were held elsewhere just because that’s where space could be found.

But I can see why people in the White House might be unnecessarily sensitive about who they are meeting with. The problem is that from Day One, when the Administration placed a ban on registered lobbyists serving in the White House, it tried to place itself somehow above and beyond the influence of lobbyists.

But as anybody who has spent any time in Washington knows, lobbyists are part of the policymaking fabric in this town, like it or not. To try to govern without at least getting their input and occasional buy-in is simply impossible. There are reasons to be concerned about their influence and power, but simply demonizing them as to-be-avoided-at-all-costs is not helpful, and almost certainly counter-productive.

In many ways, Obama has held himself to a standard that was far beyond reach. Of course he wasn’t going to rid Washington of special interests. But that’s politics. Everybody comes to Washington to change the way business is done. Nobody is ever powerful/foolhardy enough to do so.

One of the reasons that Obama was able to make White House visitor logs public is because the Secret Service keeps close track of everyone going in and out of the White House. When I’ve visited, somebody had to see my ID and check me in. What I can glean from yesterday’s press conference transcript is that this puts me into something called the “the WAVES system.” And when you’ve got an electronic database, it’s easy to make it public. And there’s no reason not to do so.

Maybe meeting disclosure should extend to Jackson Place. Maybe it should extend to Caribou Coffee. Should it extend to every phone call? Every kid’s soccer game an administration staffer attends where lobbyists might have kids playing as well? Where do you draw the line?  Washington is in many respects one big social network. And lobbyists, the majority of whom once worked in government, are part of that network.

I suppose what Obama should have said from the beginning was that he was doing the best he can. He was going to make White House visitor logs public because the White House belongs to everyone, and everyone should know who is visiting. But that he also recognized that the White House is not a compound on a hill, and that disclosing visitor logs is not going to capture all the conversations he or anyone on his staff ever has with an interested party. Moreover, he could have also said that he valued the inputs of everyone, be they lobbyists or not. And that he and his staff had enough integrity, thank you very much, to cut through the self-serving BS of lobbyists.

But instead, Obama succumbed to the familiar politics of purity and moralizing when it came to lobbyists. This moment of gotcha journalism, I suppose is his comeuppance. When you hold yourself to unrealistic standards, it’s bound to come sooner or later.

Is the Center Still Vital?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Over at Third Way, Bill Galston and Elaine Kamarck have published a new analysis about the role of moderates in American politics, “The Still-Vital Center: Moderates, Democrats, and the Renewal of American Politics.” It’s a keen paper, and I generally suspect they are right in their basic thesis: American government would work a whole lot better if there were more moderates running the place and that self-identified moderates have a more coherent worldview than many critics think.

Galston and Kamarck have pulled together some solid survey data on moderates, enough to conclude that, “moderates have mixed opinions about the overall stances of the two parties.” They’re more like Democrats on social issues, a little more like Republicans on foreign policy, and about split on economic policy.

But in general, moderates are more likely to support Democrats. Since 1980, the U.S. electorate has hovered around 20 percent liberal, 33 percent conservative, and 47 percent moderate. This means that Democrats need moderates more, since liberals make up only one-fifth of voters. Conservatives outnumber liberals by a substantial amount, so Republicans need fewer moderates to establish a winning coalition. This is the kind of simple math that liberals keep forgetting. Obama, like every Democrat before him, couldn’t have won without strong support among moderates.

But there’s also a puzzle here, and one that continues to frustrate centrists: If moderates consistently represent almost half of the electorate, why are there so few moderate representatives, and why is our politics so polarized?

Galston and Kamarck put a lot of emphasis on primary elections as a culprit, since they are generally low-turnout affairs, in which extremist candidates who are able to mobilize a small but loyal following can win. (Witness Christine O’Donnell winning Delaware’s Republican primary with 30,561 votes in a state of 900,000 people).

They advocate for open primaries so that voters from both parties can participate, which might, as they write, “open up the possibility that moderate and compromise might be rewarded rather than punished.” By all means! But already half of the states do this, and I’ve yet to see any systemic evidence that states with closed primaries turnout candidates any more extremist. Moreover, Alan Abramowitz has made the case that primary voters are actually not that different from general election across a number of ideological indicators.

But the ability of ideologues to triumph in primaries points to a larger problem: that moderate voters tend to be the least engaged and least educated part of the electorate. This extends as well to general campaign work, contributions, and even just talking to other people about politics.

In Abramowitz’s recent book The Disappearing Center (reviewed here by me), he shows that 56 percent of strong liberal or conservatives reported being politically engaged in 2004, as compared to 36 percent of those who “lean” liberal or conservative, and just 20 percent of those who say they are moderate, or of no ideology.  And according to National Election Studies data, 43 percent of self-identified conservatives had a college degree, 32 percent of self-identified liberals had a college degree, but only 18 percent of moderates had a college degree. This is something centrists are going to have to grapple with.

In Abramowitz’s story, the plight of the moderates is mostly a story about less-educated, less-engaged citizens who don’t know or care enough about politics to pick a side. Were they to get wealthy and educated, like the partisans, they would presumably then know enough to pick one of the two distinct teams in American politics. But lacking the means or the will to pick a side, they call themselves moderate, feel disengaged and disenchanted by politics, and try to get on with the business of making a living.

However, I’m not sure about this. Have political moderates instead become less engaged out of frustration with extremism? Feeling that they have nobody in politics who speaks for them, have they simply stopped bothering? Galston and Kamarck come down on the side that moderates are becoming more frustrated as parties have become more ideological. My hunch is that they’re right, though it would be hard to prove this.

For my money, I think probably the best thing we could do to empower moderates would be to reduce obstacles to voting by supporting reforms such as vote-by-mail, Internet voting, same-day-registration, and moving Election Day to the weekend (the vast majority of countries hold elections on Sundays). In many respects, our current voting system effectively privileges the most engaged partisans and those with the most time on their hands, while disenfranchising more moderate voters for whom politics is, unfortunately, often less of a priority. Getting more moderates voting would force candidates to pay more attention to them and result in more moderate candidates. Additionally, instant runoff voting could enable centrist and independent candidates to run for office without worrying about being dismissed as spoilers.

Galston and Kamarck also propose “real redistricting reform” (hard to argue with the wisdom of non-partisan commissions drawing lines, though the fact that polarization extends to the Senate suggests there’s more than gerrymandering at work here), and a highly intriguing proposal that becoming Speaker of the House or Majority Leader of the Senate should require 60 percent support from the entire body (That’s 261 votes in the House, for those of you keeping score at home). This would be quite a change from the current approach, in which the leader is selected by only the majority party, and thus is only responsive to the majority party. But with a 60 percent super-majority, any leader would have to be able to draw at least some support from the opposing party.

I suspect this would have a minimal effect in the Senate, which is already pulled towards moderation by the 60-vote threshold to get anything done.

But could it change the way the House works? Galston and Kamarck argue that “super-majorities guarantee ownership by both political parties.” I guess it depends how the public perceives it. My hunch is that the majority party will still mostly get the blame or the credit, since the public doesn’t really get the concept of super-majorities (think how confusing the filibuster is to your average voter).

Moreover, given how hard it is for even a single party leader to keep the troops who are supposedly on the same team all marching in the same direction, wouldn’t it be even harder to have to steer a larger and more internally divisive army without mutiny? But who knows? Maybe it could work. It deserves more thought.

The bigger problem is that in some respects, the problems of polarization are built into politics: there is a tendency for those who have the most extreme views to care the most deeply, simply because they perceive the most at stake in the outcomes. And particularly in the current political environment, there is a tendency for those most interested in politics to be pulled to the extremes, in part because political discourse offers little guidance for those seeking a middle course – there is a lot more intellectual sustenance and solidarity on both poles.

But obviously, there have been periods in American politics (most recently the 1950s and 1960s) in which there was a Vital Center.  So what happened?

The short version is that several demographic changes led to political sorting, which reduced moderating pressures on candidates. African-Americans migrated to the North and as a result became a more important political constituency. Civil Rights reforms alienated Southern Democrats, freeing the Democrats of their conservative wing and making their caucus more liberal. New Southern Republicans, plus the rise of the conservative Sunbelt, shifted the Republican center of gravity, as did the political awakening of evangelicals.

The decline of machine politics played a role. Without party machines to turn out votes and with new sprawling suburban districts to cover, candidates turned instead to special interests and ideological believers who were willing to volunteer and give money because they felt so strongly. A new political class that cared more about being right than actually winning took over the party mechanisms, creating the perfect breeding ground for ideological candidates.

Meanwhile, as politics became more partisan, it also became nastier. Because the activists who increasingly control the party now feel more is at stake, they became more aggressive – a feedback loop that has left much wreckage in its wake.

What Galston and Kamarck provide is a starting point back from the wreckage: evidence for a fundamentally moderate public, and a distinct “moderate” worldview. (For even more on this, it’s also worth reading Disconnect by Morris Fiorina. Fiorina’s basic thesis is that “the orientation [of the public] is more pragmatic. Far more people position themselves on the issues on a case-by-case basis rather than deduce their specific positions from some abstract principle ….Those who ostensibly represent the American public take positions that collectively do not provide an accurate representation of the public.”)

The big question is how to give moderates a more active role in politics. I suspect there is a bit more work to be done here in giving moderates more intellectual sustenance than they have traditionally received, and providing leadership and discourse that supports moderation as vital centrism rather than mushy compromise, and that fundamentally engages moderates. This analysis is a great place to start.

Six Months Is Too Short For Egypt’s Elections

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Arab revolutions have overthrown one dictator after another in strikingly orderly fashion. There’s an almost biblical quality to it: Tunisia begat Egypt, and Egypt begat Libya and Bahrain. One of the problems of such a linear evolution of revolutions is that we tend to focus on only one at a time. Remember Egypt? Barely – it’s yesterday’s news. And Tunisia feels like it happened in the Bush administration (note: it didn’t).

As our gaze floats from one country to the next, it’s worth remembering that now—when the hard work of democracy begins—is just as crucial a time across the Arab world. Political parties, civil society organizations and democratic institutions are just beginning to form. As in any power vacuum, Egypt’s infant governing class is scrambling first to organize the pillars of democracy, and then to contest power.

In the United States, we have become conditioned to expect things immediately – I’ve taken time to respond to no less than three emails as I’ve written the paragraphs above – rather than applying a good dose of patience as I crank this piece out. To us, the six months set between a revolution and Egyptian elections seems like more than enough time to hold a democratic vote. But when you’re starting from nothing, six months just isn’t enough time.

From WSJ:

As hopes rise for Egypt’s first elections, political parties are sprouting like weeds. Activists, businessmen and community leaders are all forming new parties they hope will widen Egypt’s limited menu of political options.

The nascent parties are both secular and Islamist, but for the most part they agree on one thing: more time than the target for elections—in less than six months—may be needed for these groups to have a real impact. Some also worry that elections too soon would greatly favor the Muslim Brotherhood, which already has a large-scale social organization in place.

And the Washington Post:

Al-Wasat waited 15 years, one month and nine days for official permission to operate, which a court granted Saturday. The party, started by a group that split away from the Muslim Brotherhood to promote a more tolerant form of Islam, has little more behind it than a Web site, the bonds formed during years of suppression and a shared desire for democracy.

An organization so recently banned has no sign announcing its presence, and reporters traveled around the block a few times searching for the office… “We could never meet people here in Egypt,” said Tareq El Malt, an architect and member of the executive committee whose own neighbors don’t know the party exists. Elections are expected in six months, but El Malt said that before the party thinks about winning seats in parliament, it has to figure out how to organize and operate.

Six months is too short for a truly organized, healthy political class to mature into a set of diverse but not scattered parties that can form a stable governing coalition. Is a year? Most probably not, but it would be better.

If the time comes when Egypt’s temporary ruling council delays the vote beyond August, it’s not necessarily because the council is attempting to thwart democracy. It may be just the opposite – a delay, even a relatively short one, would likely significantly benefit the long-term prospects for a stable Egyptian governing coalition.

Have We Finally Reached the ‘End of History’?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Are the current pro-democracy uprisings in the Middle East a vindication of Francis Fukuyama’s theory about the ‘End of History’? Max Borders ponders the question over at the Daily Caller, arguing that the demonstrations in Libya, Tunisia, Bahrain, Egypt, and elsewhere are at least partial proof of Fukuyama’s ideas.

For those uninitiated in Fukuyamaism, the now-Stanford Hoover Institute political philosopher argued in The National Interest in 1989 that “What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such: that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.” In a matter of time, all countries in the world would inevitably evolve in one way or another towards capitalist liberal democracy, because only it can satisfy mankind’s universal yearnings for freedom and dignity.

Looking at the current upheaval in the Middle East, there is some evidence supporting Fukuyama’s argument. The crowds are overwhelmingly calling for democracy. From the Islamists to the Communists, anti-regime protestors seem genuinely eager to put their ideas to the electoral test. For all the talk about Chinese-style market authoritarianism being a sexy ideological competitor to liberal democracy, few of the millions of individuals braving oppression on the streets are demanding local versions of the Chinese Communist Party. The accountability and equality that democracy ideally provides appears to be the most appealing form of government to most of the world. Score one for Fukuyama.

It is equally true, however, that there seems unanswered questions regarding whether the Middle East would embrace either American-style capitalism or social liberalization. For all Borders’ (and Fukuyama’s) entreaties, there is no indication of popular petitions in these protests for free markets or libertarianism. The majority of those in the streets of Egypt and Libya are practicing Muslims and may prefer some form of Islamic democracy. Polls show that the biggest values gaps between the Islamic world and the West occur over the issues of gay rights, women’s rights, and other matters of social freedom. “Muslim publics overwhelmingly welcome Islamic influence over their countries’ politics,” as a December 2010 survey by the Pew Global Attitudes Project found.

Surveys show that what (most) Americans see as freedom in the realms of sexual preference, marriage, and families looks to many of the world’s Muslim-majority countries as moral decay and decadence. The full separation of religion and state is also less appealing to the world outside the West, where secularism (let alone atheism) is much more frowned upon. None of this is to imply that Islam is incompatible with free markets or liberalism—only that there is no inevitability that they will all necessarily combine.

Rather than The End of History, I would suggest a variation of Fareed Zakaria’s notion of ‘Illiberal Democracy’ is a more accurate indicator of where the world seems to be heading. Writing in Foreign Affairs in 1997, Zakaria presciently saw that while many countries were embracing the ballot box in the post-Cold War world, the rule of law and human rights norms were far less popular. “Since the fall of communism, countries around the world are being governed by regimes…that mix elections and authoritarianism—illiberal democracy,” Zakaria wrote in the book he based on his Foreign Affairs essay. A different form of illiberal democracy might be erupting in the Middle East, one where the full trappings of democracy are united with a deep social conservatism that cannot be considered ‘liberal’ in any sense of the word. These regimes might be more democratic than the ones Zakaria described, but they could be equally illiberal, albeit in a different manner.

Fukuyamians would likely respond, like good Hegelians, that illiberal democracy is just a bump on the inevitable path to liberal democracy. It is a phase that will be experienced but eventually jettisoned as it is realized that the universal yearning for individuals’ self-determination is stronger than any other desires. Perhaps. But history is known to thwart all predictions. But what seems clear for now is that the crowds in the Middle East like the ‘democracy’ part of Fukuyama’s cherished ideology. The liberal part? Remains to be seen.

Wingnut Watch: The Ideological Crusade Behind the Budget Battles

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In Washington and around the country, conservatives are going on the anti-spending warpath, delighting the Tea Party base with tough talk and confrontational tactics.  The amazing scenes from Madison, engineered by new Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, are emboldening GOPers elsewhere (notably in Ohio and Indiana) to go to the barricades in demanding pay and benefit concessions, if not actual suicide, from public employees and their unions.  And in Congress, a government shutdown is beginning to look like a virtual certainty, quite possibly accompanied by the drama of a debt limit collision.

The internal conservative debate on these subjects is being heavily dominated by those counseling “no retreat,” and laboring mightily to explain why a hard-core approach that threatens the daily functioning of government won’t turn out as it did for the short-lived Republican Revolution of the mid-1990s.

But amidst all the dramatics over spending, it’s increasingly obvious that conservatives have a lot of other fish to fry, and are using their demands for big cutbacks in public-sector spending to impose policies and priorities that have little or nothing to do with money.

This is most obvious in Wisconsin, where Walker’s demands go beyond pay and benefit concessions from public employees and aim at severely restricting collective bargaining rights.  Walker and his defenders, of course, claim that no path of budget austerity is compatible with the existence of strong public employee unions.  That’s another way of saying it’s possible to relate all sorts of ideological objectives as having an impact on spending. Interestingly, two Republican governors close to this particular fire, Indiana’s Mitch Daniels and Florida’s Rick Scott (the latter state is not close geographically to Wisconsin, but is similar in the scope of its gubernatorially-induced budget crisis) have conspicuously parted ways with Walker on demanding non-financial concessions from public employee unions.

An even more obvious ideological aspect of state budget “crises” is the determination of nearly all GOP governors to cut taxes and/or create new corporate subsidies even as they claim there’s just no money for spending they don’t particularly favor in the first place.  Walker, in particular, is insisting on both tax cuts and new “economic development incentives” (e.g., public concessions for companies moving into the state) that have significantly worsened the fiscal situation.  So, too, has Florida’s Scott, who is also demanding a major new private school voucher initiative.

The overlap of ideological and fiscal priorities is even more obvious in Washington.  The FY 2011 continuing appropriations resolution passed by the House last weekend is loaded with long-time conservative hobby-horses, including an end to public broadcasting, severe cutbacks in funding for bank regulators and food inspectors, plus an unprecedented assault on federal support for family planning services, including a total ban on use of federal money by Planned Parenthood and an end to the Title X program that funds many clinics dispensing contraceptives.  Echoing the confrontations in Madison, the bill also slashed funding for the National Labor Relations Board by one-third, and 176 House Republicans voted to kill the NLRB altogether.  Meanwhile, Republicans are leaving the Pentagon budget largely alone.

Since the House CR is primarily symbolic, the real tale of the tape will be in the internal priorities Republicans set in negotiations with Senate Democrats and the White House.  But GOP leaders are under intense pressure from the large majority of its Members from the arch-conservative Republican Study Group, and from Tea Party-oriented freshmen, to use budget cuts to completely change the scope as well as the size of the federal government.

Most interestingly, there is a growing sense that House conservatives and the right-wing chattering classes are increasingly favoring a federal government shutdown (which will happen on March 4 if no agreement is reached on the CR or on a short-term stopgap, which Republicans say they will oppose unless it incorporate major spending cuts) not just as a negotiating tactic, but as an end in itself.  Highly influential anti-tax lobbyist Grover Norquist has been explicit about what he sees as the political advantage Republicans would derive from a shutdown: “Obama will be less popular if — in the service of overspending and wasting people’s money — he closes the government down, as opposed to now, when he’s just wasting people’s money.”

More to the point, Republican leaders would like to get rid of the RINO label as soon as possible and earn the trust of Tea Party types. It’s even possible that they are powerless to act otherwise (particularly given the example set by Walker in Wisconsin) or will be forced to engineer a shutdown in order to head off the more economically-consequential defeat of a debt limit measure.

In any event, conservatives are busy reassuring GOP pols that a shutdown won’t produce the sort of political damage the brief 1995 shutdown incurred.  They are typically blaming the 1995 setback on Newt Gingrich’s clumsiness, Bill Clinton’s diabolical political skills, the post-Oklahoma City backlash against government-hating, the malice of the pre-Fox “liberal media”—all ingredients that are missing from today’s impending confrontation.  All these psychological factors should be kept in mind in assessing what happens before, on, and after March 4.