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The President’s New “Better Buildings Initiative” Builds on a PPI Memo

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

President Barack Obama today announced a major new policy agenda to improve energy efficiency in commercial buildings by 20 percent by 2020, and it looks like he’s been reading PPI’s memos.

Last November, PPI released a policy memo calling on the President to support commercial retrofits as a key to powering America’s economic recovery. It called for a “targeted set of short- and long-term policies to spur jobs and drive investment in retrofitting commercial buildings”. With one in four construction workers unemployed, an aggressive plan to upgrade commercial buildings will not only create jobs, but it will also make small businesses more competitive.

The President’s new Better Buildings Initiative (announced on today’s visit to Penn State University to spotlight the school’s recently developed “Energy Innovation Hub”) is a signal of support for commercial retrofits as a driver of America’s economic recovery. The White House estimates that this will generate energy savings of $40 billion by 2020 for American businesses.

To meet this goal, the President proposed a number of policy actions. The most significant is to change the existing “Energy Efficient Commercial Building Tax Deduction” into a tax credit. Currently, the tax code provides an incentive to building owners for retrofitting buildings through a tax deduction of $1.80 per square foot.

Bipartisan support for the tax deduction already exists. Recent legislation from Senators Bingaman (D-NM) and Snowe (R-ME) on energy tax incentives would increase the deduction to $3.00 per square foot. Groups such as Rebuilding America, a broad-based coalition of labor, business, utilities, manufacturers, and policy groups, support updating the commercial building tax deduction to make it more usable for existing buildings. Rebuilding America issued a press release saluting the President’s Better Buildings Initiative.

Other elements of the Better Buildings Initiative include a ramp up of energy efficiency financing opportunities for commercial retrofits, with support from the Small Business Administration; a competitive grant program at the state and local level called “Race to Green”; an initiative to encourage CEOs and universities to commit to increase the energy efficiency of their buildings, called the “Better Buildings Challenge”; and a Building Technology Extension Program.

Jones Lang LaSalle, the nation’s second-largest commercial property manager, called the President’s proposal “exactly what’s needed to jump-start major energy and carbon reduction initiatives and to create jobs and efficiencies that enhance our global competitiveness.” (A White House fact sheet is available here.)

The President’s announcement on commercial retrofits sets the stage for renewed efforts in Congress to pass clean energy legislation. This will be part of deliberations in Congress over the President’s Budget. Over the past year, energy efficiency policy has garnered the support of Republicans and moderate Democrats alike. The Better Buildings Initiative goes a long way to outline a strategy for innovation and competitiveness in America and should be supported in the debate over the President’s Budget.

Can Mubarak Follow South Korea’s Path?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As the world holds its breath to learn if the Egyptian people’s amazing struggle for democracy ends with a breakthrough or a bloodbath, President Hosni Mubarak would do well to consider the South Korea option.  Ultimately, Korea’s dictators and democracy were both winners.

Like Egyptians, South Koreans endured decades of American-backed dictatorship.  In the spring of 1987, Korea’s military government held sham elections not unlike the ones held in Egypt last November. However, in both places, a combination of repression and rising expectations proved a combustible mix. If the actual trigger for Egyptians was the sudden overthrow of Tunisia’s dictatorship last month, Koreans drew inspiration from the “People Power” overthrow of Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines the year before. Indeed, “Marcos” became a code word for Korean reporters to describe their own dictatorship.

As in Cairo today, student-led demonstrations drew hundreds of thousands into the streets of Seoul 24 years ago. Like Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Korea’s Christians played a supporting role at the outset. After weeks of clashes and tear gas, on June 29 the government announced that a free and fair direct presidential election would be held within six months. Given that almost exactly seven years earlier, the military unleashed a crackdown that killed over 200 citizens, the question we must ask is, what had changed?

When facing persistent social unrest, all dictators invariably undertake a cost-benefit analysis of cracking down versus opening up. In 1980, Korea’s coup leaders correctly determined that there would be little or no cost for killing. Indeed, within months of wiping the blood off of his hands, General-turned-President Chun Doo-hwan was one of President Ronald Reagan’s first foreign guests at the White House. Later that same year, Seoul was awarded the 1988 Summer Olympics.

China reached a similar conclusion in June of 1989. After two weeks of martial law, the butchers of Beijing calculated that firing on demonstrators in Tiananmen Square would be of great political benefit and little cost. Indeed, foreign investment actually increased in 1990 and exploded thereafter.

Far from incurring any costs, China and Korea’s dictators were rewarded for their bad behavior. For the United States, the price was much higher. A generation of Koreans became virulently anti-American because of our support for a hated regime. Can the U.S. afford such blowback in Egypt?

In Korea in 1987, by contrast, not only were the demonstrations much larger than in 1980, but the Reagan Administration was now insisting that the Chun regime begin the transition to democracy. More importantly, Korean military leaders revealed later that they had considered a crackdown, but feared losing the Olympics if they had turned the streets of Seoul red.

Many pundits have declared that the United Sates is a mere bystander to the struggle for democracy in Egypt, powerless to shape the outcome. This could not be further from the truth. Not only does the U.S. provide $1.3 billion a year in foreign aid (largely to the military no less), but the U.S. is also Egypt’s leading trade partner.

Since last Friday, the Obama Administration has only hinted that future U.S. assistance could be linked to the government’s behavior. If he has not already done so behind the scenes, President Obama must not waste a moment to make it clear to Mubarak that if the Egyptian army opens fire on innocent demonstrators, U.S. aid stops and sanctions begin. Thugs will prove unequal to the task of quashing the uprising. If Mubarak still decides to clamp down, then it is time to reevaluate all U.S. overseas assistance. If we cannot shape outcomes in the country that is our second leading aid recipient, then it is time to conduct our own cost-benefit analysis.

If President Mubarak has time to read to the end of the Korean case, he might even fully embrace the decision to open up. Largely free and fair elections were held in South Korea in December 1987 as scheduled, but due to a divided opposition, the military’s candidate (and a leader of the previous coup and crackdown no less) managed to win the election. We will never know if there would have been a military coup had one of the opposition candidates won. Once a civilian was elected president five years later, Chun and his successor did briefly spend time behind bars, but they are now living out their days as elder statesmen.

Korea’s transition to democracy was conservative and gradual, but democracy was the ultimate winner. Korean legislators may still favor fistfights over filibusters, but Korea is now the most vibrant democracy in Asia. It is not too late for Mubarak to start Egypt down that path.

Reviving Jobs and Innovation: A Progressive Approach to Improving Regulation

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Today, the U.S. is suffering from a regulatory paradox: Too few and too many regulations at the same time. On the one hand, financial services were clearly under-regulated during the 2000s, making financial reform essential. Similarly, President Obama’s healthcare reform bill was a key first step to reining in medical costs.

But in other areas we see an accumulation of rules and regulations over the past decade. The trend started with the vast expansion of homeland security regulation under the Bush administration and continued through the first two years of the Obama administration.

That’s why President Obama should be applauded for issuing his executive order “Improving Regulation and Regulatory Review” on January 18. The order asked agencies to pay more attention to promoting innovation as part of the regulatory process. In addition, agencies were directed to come up with a plan for reviewing their existing significant regulations.

However, the president’s executive order did not go far enough. A regulatory ‘self-review’ process has been tried repeatedly in the past, and it’s always fallen far short of expectations. Regulators have a tough time trimming their own regulations, given internal bureaucratic pressures. But don’t blame the agencies—neither Congress nor the executive branch has a good way of reviewing and reforming existing regulations, even when they have become outdated or burdensome.

The regulatory system needs a mechanism to address this need for periodic review. We propose a Regulatory Improvement Commission (RIC), an independent body analogous to the BRAC Commissions for evaluating military base closures. This is designed to build on the president’s executive order, and in the process improve its effectiveness. The RIC will take a principled approach to evaluating and pruning existing regulations, gather input from all stakeholders (not just business or just agencies), and do so in a manner that ensures we protect public health, safety, and the environment.

Download the entire memo

Introducing Wingnut Watch

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

This is the inaugural edition of a new P-Fix feature entitled “Wingnut Watch,” which will appear each Wednesday.  I’d like to take a few moments to explain why we are doing this.

It’s our belief that the conservative movement, and through it, the Republican Party, is on an ideological bender at the moment that has become one of the primary obstacles to any sort of bipartisan effort to address the country’s most pressing problems.  It’s hard to say exactly when this bender began. There has always been a hard-core conservative faction in the GOP that opposes any cooperation with the partisan “enemy,” that deplores most of the bipartisan domestic policy accomplishments that have occurred since the Great Depression, and that counsels Republicans to seek political victory by polarizing the electorate as much as possible.

Not since the 1964 presidential campaign, however, has the conservative movement been so radicalized, or so dominant in the GOP.  The wingnut right’s rise to power is in part attributable to an ideological sorting out of the two parties over the last thirty years, but also to the persistent belief—crystallized by the policy failures and corruption of George W. Bush’s administration—that lack of strict fidelity to “conservative principles” and complicity in “big government” were preventing the GOP from consolidating a majority coalition in the electorate.  This faith in a “hidden majority” favoring extremism is common to ideologues of all stripes, but has gone viral among conservatives since 2008, thanks to the virtual conquest of the GOP by the Tea Party Movement (the latest incarnation of the party’s conservative “base”) followed by a smashing midterm election victory.

At this point, a vast array of issue positions and perspectives considered exotic until very recently have become common among conservative opinion-leaders and Republican pols alike: economic troubles are always the result of “big government” and excessive taxation and regulation; global climate change is a hoax designed to create a rationale for government takeovers of businesses; centrist market-based approaches to universal health coverage once associated with moderate Republicans are “socialist” efforts to destroy private-sector medicine; the Second Amendment is designed to enable “patriots” to prepare for armed resistance to “big government;” the constitutional jurisprudence of the last seventy-five years should be overturned in favor of Gilded Age limitations on the federal government;  states should be able to nullify federal legislation; treaties, alliances and international law threaten U.S. sovereignty; safety net programs represent an immoral “redistribution” of income; progressive taxation and/or taxation of income is incompatible with economic growth; a return to the gold standard is advisable—it goes on and on.

A superficially confusing feature of contemporary radical conservatism is the projection of extremism onto the opposition, which has led not only conservatives but many “neutral” commentators in the mainstream media to blame ideologues and partisans on both sides of the barricades equally for polarization and gridlock.  Without question, there are “moonbats” on the left who can rival the “wingnuts” of the right in terms of policy extremism, ferocious opposition to bipartisanship, subscription to conspiracy theories, and policing of politicians according to ideological litmus tests.  But at present, there is no comparison between the political power of the radical left and right.  There is no “triangulation” permitted by Republicans against the hard right, and rarely any public grousing in question of the wisdom and values of the Tea Party Movement.  Those who identify with the GOP orthodoxy of just a few years ago are ruthlessly attacked and systematically exposed to primary challenges, regardless of the impact on Republican general election prospects.

While some on the Democratic left are bitterly angry with the policies and political strategies of the Obama administration, they’ve had remarkably little impact on rank-and-file voters, much less elected officials, and there is nothing remotely like Fox News as a propagator and enforcer of ideological and partisan unity. Moreover, the radical left’s claim that the political center is a dead end for Democrats has been heavily dependent on the wingnut right’s efforts to undermine bipartisanship and paint all Democrats as leftist.

So those who favor pragmatic progressivism have a special interest in understanding, and if possible, bringing to an end, the current extremist trend on the right.  This column will pursue the former in hopes that it will encourage the latter.

But I’m not interested in conducting a carnival sideshow that cherry-picks and mocks radical conservatives who do not have any actual political power.  I won’t follow the birthers and the white supremacists, won’t indulge in Nazi analogies, and won’t assume that every raving from the lips of Glenn Beck has been internalized as marching orders by Republican politicians.  The degree of craziness in the conservative mainstream right now is large enough that exaggeration is unnecessary as well as unfair.  And where conservatives do try to exert some control over their more delusional comrades, I’ll give credit where credit’s due.

Next week’s column will include, among other things, a preview of the Conservative Political Action Committee conference in Washington, which used to be one of the primary vehicles for hard-right vetting of Republican pols (particularly presidential candidates), but which has now, in a revealing sign of the times, become suspect as insufficiently intolerant of diversity and dissent.  Stay tuned.

Three Lessons From the Chaos in the Middle East

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As the foreign policy community begins a reevaluation of conventional wisdom about the Middle East, an obvious consequence in the aftermath of events in Egypt, one of the many questions that will get revisited is how to incubate a Palestinian state. It would be a pity if that track escaped the same needed consideration, or proceeded without an eye towards the pressing lessons emerging, even as the riots continue to simmer and the dominoes continue to teeter.

If the chaos sweeping the Arab and Muslim world has shown us one thing, it’s that Arab regimes in the Middle East come and go. If it’s shown us two things, it’s that regimes in the Middle East come and go, and that when they go, there had better be healthy liberal, secular democratic opposition groups ready to enter the vacuum. Otherwise the result is what we’re seeing now in Egypt, where the choices are between hostile political Islamists on the one hand and, on the other, a reshuffled version of the same regime that’s been ruling the country for decades.

One lesson that needs learning, then, is that an Arab state without an organized middle class is not only doomed to failure, but ALSO that the most organized oppositional forces sweeping the Middle East are basically one-man-one-vote-one-time Islamism. It’s not enough to have a middle class, and one can’t wave a magic wand or sprinkle fairy dust to make it happen. A middle class needs time to develop, to breath, and to become a recognizable political bloc with recognizable political interests channeled through recognizable political parties.

And that’s exactly what Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad is attempting to accomplish in the West Bank. His economic initiatives, coupled with his institution-building programs, should not just be viewed as ways to increase the average Palestinian’s standard of living. More than that, they’re attempts to ground a future state in something like a civil society, the ultimate goal being to prevent a political vacuum from engulfing a future Palestinian government.

The Prime Minister knows that Hamas is ready to fill that vacuum and, having seen the creeping theocracy that is the Gaza Strip, he knows what the consequences would be if the Iran-backed terrorist organization ever succeeded.

The trick for the rest of us, of course, is to ensure that the process is allowed to play out – for the Palestinians and in Egypt – and that Fayyad’s efforts are allowed to become robust.

Economic peace should be allowed to take hold – and deeply encouraged – before political imperatives, lest still-fragile Palestinian institutions get overwhelmed and crumble.

And if we have learned a third thing from events this week – and more on this soon – it is that peace in the Middle East must be between institutions and societies, not simply with Arab political figures, whose future is far too uncertain across the Arab world for us, or our friends in Israel, to bet the farm on their survival.

Why We Are Watching This Clown

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

I normally try to stay away from this stuff, but the latest Glenn Beck blaze of paranoia on Egypt is just too much of a train wreck to miss. In 12 terrifying minutes, Beck outlines the contours of a Middle East that is ON FIRE, and promises to devote the next several episodes to giving his viewers the whole TRUTH, the TRUTH that “has no agenda,” the TRUTH that the mainstream media doesn’t want to tell you.

“I’m not going to give you the two minute sound-byte,” teases Beck. “I’m not going to treat you like you’re a moron. I’m going to treat you like you really do want to understand what’s going on in the world.”

Okay, we all know he’s crazy. But what I keep trying to understand, every time I catch a glimpse of Beck, is why do 2.5 or 3 million people tune in to watch this guy every night? Clearly, he’s figured something out. And as amusing as it is to gawk at the loop-de-loops of insanity, there’s got to be some deep psychological nerves that he’s satisfying.

Let me offer three hypotheses:

  1. The puzzle-solving boost. The neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran writes that “we are hard-wired to love solving puzzles.” In particular, we seem to most enjoy solving puzzles with sudden flashes of insight, “Aha” moments that give us a little flash of positive good feeling. This probably explains the appeal of conspiracy theories generally. Everybody loves a good mystery. And Beck’s most disturbing moments are kind of like that: he throws a bunch of oddly-sized puzzle pieces on the floor, and then promises to show how they will all fit together in an instant “aha” moment. It’s like puzzle-solving porn.
  2. The smarter than everyone else boost. What Beck is consciously doing is letting his viewers in on something exclusive, some privileged view of the world that allows them to feel superior to those who aren’t in the know. These are viewers who have probably spent much of their lives feeling intellectually insecure. But by providing a simple, secret explanation for what’s going on the world, Beck is peddling an ego boost.
  3. Anxiety needs some respect. Beck’s rants are fear-driven, and in that respect they must resonate with a sense of unease that seems to be plaguing too many Americans these days. But this is especially dangerous. Risk expert David Ropeik writes that “when it comes to perceiving and responding to danger, human brains are hard-wired to fear first, and think later.” Beck’s rants are fear-driven, and once the fear part of the brain is activated, the logic part of the brain just doesn’t function as well.

So, add it up, and what Glenn Beck is offering millions of anxious viewers is a chance to validate their fears and then illogically salve them by providing the psychological high of solving a puzzle that allows them to feel superior by being privileged to some secret, exclusive knowledge.

I’m not sure what the antidote is, but I’m guessing it’s not simply marginalizing Beck for his craziness, fun and ego-boosting as that may be. I do sincerely believe that the conspiratorial fear-mongering that comes out of the Beck empire is a serious, serious problem for our society, but it also taps into some serious psychological needs out there. More to think about here.

Import Recapture Strategy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

From the NYT, on rising Chinese export prices:

Markups of 20 to 50 percent on products like leather shoes and polo shirts have sent Western buyers scrambling for alternate suppliers…..Already, the slowdown in American orders has forced some container shipping lines to cancel up to a quarter of their trips to the United States this spring from Hong Kong and other Chinese ports.

It’s time for state and local economic development agencies to start honing their import recapture strategies. By ‘import recapture strategy’, I mean the judicious use of loans and other aid to help rebuild and restart manufacturing production and jobs that were lost to foreign factories.*

Yes, I know that sounds weird after all the manufacturing jobs that have been lost.  Anecdotally, the price differential between China and the U.S. was on the order of 35%.  Given the price jumps in the pipeline, all of a sudden the cost of U.S. production might be in spitting distance for some industries.That’s especially true since domestic manufacturers have the advantage of being close and flexible.

I’m talking here both high- and low-tech production here. The question is which industries are ripe for import recapture, and how many jobs could be created. Here I’m going to tell you an important  little secret–you cannot rely on the BLS import price data to tell you where the gap has closed between import and domestic prices. Two reasons:

* The BLS does not measure the difference between the price of imports and the price of the comparable domestic goods.   Just doesn’t.  Never has. It’s a gaping hole in the data.

*The BLS  does measure changes in import prices–but very very badly (see here and the conference proceedings here). To understand how badly, take a look at this chart, which supposedly tracks the price of Chinese imports.

If you believe this data, the price of Chinese imports into the U.S. has been effectively flat (plus or minus no more than 4%) for the past seven years, through the biggest import boom in U.S. history, the biggest financial crisis in75 years, and a 25% appreciation of the Chinese yuan against the dollar.  As the saying goes, “this does not make sense.”

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

Are Lobbying Expenditures Really Leveling Off?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Roll Call is reporting today that annual Washington lobbying expenditures dipped slightly in 2010, marking the first time since expenditure data became public in 1996 that the amount of money has not increased. The decline was small: from $3.6 billion to $3.5 billion (according to CQ MoneyLine). But it’s worth asking: does this mark some kind of leveling off of lobbying in Washington?

Some background: there has been a remarkable increase in lobbying expenditures since 1998, when a mere $1.44 billion was spent on lobbying. More organizations have come to Washington, and in particular more companies are spending more money on lobbying. OpenSecrets.org has the history, and there’s been roughly a steady 7 percent annual increase in lobbying since 1998.

If there truly is leveling off, it would be a remarkable development. But I’m skeptical.

One possibility is that more reports will be trickling in late, and this early report will turn out to be an underestimate.

A more likely possibility is that the reporting is inaccurate. Organizations and companies may be reporting less lobbying in response to the Obama administration lobbying rules, which create all kinds of hurdles for former lobbyists who want to serve in the administration. In 2008, OpenSecrets counted 14,214 registered lobbyists; in 2010, it counted just 12,484 – a decline of 12 percent.

There is good reason to believe that a lot of lobbyists have increasingly decided it was better not to register, or even just slightly adjust their portfolios and work schedules so that they technically didn’t meet the definition of a “lobbyist” under the Lobbying Disclosure Act. The Senate Office of Public Records, which keeps track of these registrations and reports, is perpetually understaffed and not well-equipped to go after anybody.

If this is the case, it’s a shame, because it means that by unnecessarily demonizing lobbyists, the Obama lobbying rules may have actually made the practice of lobbying less transparent by encouraging fewer lobbyists to register and publicly file reports.

Of course, it’s also possible that with the passage of heath care and financial reform, as well as the breakdown of climate legislation, the big lobbying dogs have less reason to be active, and with two years of gridlock ahead, it’s possible some interests realize nothing is going to get through, so why waste the money? But both health care and financial reform have major agency rulemakings ahead, and gridlock may actually require more lobbying grease.

Still, if it is a leveling off, I suspect it’s only a temporary one. As I argued in my Ph.D. dissertation on the growth of corporate lobbying (which accounts for about two-thirds of all lobbying expenditures), “More and more companies are discovering that Washington matters to their business, and those who do are sticking around and increasing their political capacities. As a result, corporate lobbying activity is likely to continue to expand for the foreseeable future, with large corporations playing an increasingly central role in the formulation of national policies.”

There’s simply too much at stake, and still for many large corporations, the amount of money they spend on lobbying is still a rounding error on their annual budgets (and much less than they spend on advertising or R&D). Rather, I suspect more and more companies will continue to realize that the reality is they can’t afford not to be lobbying.

Let’s Get Pragmatic on Gun Control

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As the debate over gun law reform continues in the wake of Jared Lee Loughner’s shooting spree in Tuscon, the biggest challenge will be finding a pragmatic solution that both sides of the gun control debate can support, and still addresses the fundamental issues in a comprehensive fashion. After all, gun control has historically been one of the most contentious areas in American politics.

Typically, on the subject of reducing gun violence through legislation, the loudest voices can be divided into two camps. On one side, guns are considered not merely instruments of violent people, but as actually creating or perpetuating violence. This group tends to focus on prohibiting certain configurations of firearms in the hope that if certain types of firearms are banned, criminals will be unable to inflict as much damage per incident.

A recent example is Rep. Carolyn McCarthy’s (D-NY) recently introduced bill to reinstate the ban on extended capacity magazines. The ban would limit firearm magazines to holding no more than 10 rounds. While it is difficult to articulate a need for an extended magazine in any civilian application, as a practical matter, changing magazines takes less than two seconds. This is not really an effective way to prevent shooting sprees as demonstrated by Seung-Hu Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter, who had nearly 20 magazines on him and went through half of them before committing suicide.

The other camp believes that putting guns in the hands of more people will counter gun violence by enabling ordinary citizens to defend themselves against criminal attacks. This group tends to introduce legislation to ease restrictions on carrying weapons, concealed or openly, and has recently gone so far as to attempt to legalize students and teachers arming themselves on college campuses. Any amount of time spent on or near a college campus after hours will cause most people to question the wisdom of arming mass groups of college students.

A more pragmatic approach, centered on comprehensive background checks and screenings to keep guns out of the wrong hands is necessary. This approach is also largely supported by both sides. Such an approach, unlike the polar alternatives, can deal with the fundamental issue surrounding the Tuscon tragedy, which is that Loughner was able to purchase a gun to begin with. This is a man who was removed from his community college because his professors, administrators and fellow students recognized that he posed a danger. Yet, 5 months later he was able to legally purchase a Glock 19 pistol, passing a background check without being flagged.

We need to work harder to identify and properly deal with people who are so psychologically troubled or demonstrably criminally inclined that they pose a legitimate risk to society. The signs were there with Loughner. Why was he not subsequently submitted for a 72-hour evaluation? Why is there not a system in place where, if a person is deemed to dangerous to attend Algebra class, he is not automatically flagged as, at least pending evaluation, too dangerous to purchase or own a firearm?

We need to develop a framework of comprehensive background checks and screening that is consistent across every state and includes exposure to a qualified firearms trainer who can evaluate, among other things, an individual’s capacity to safely and responsibly possess a firearm.

A proper information technology backbone is desperately needed in order to make a comprehensive background check system work.

Currently, each state government is responsible for reporting information to the federal system as a separate operation. A ridiculous mix of proprietary, incompatible, and isolated information systems throughout the country slows down, or even prevents, the exchange of relevant information.

According to research by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, 18 states have reported zero citizens with mental health records that would preclude them from owning firearms to the national background check database. It is the 21st century, and there needs to be an open standard for all levels of government information systems that ensures interoperability so that manual information exchange is not necessary.

Such a system must allow hospitals, police departments, schools, states, counties and cities to enter information once, and have it immediately available to the federal system. Loughner would not have been able to pass a background check if the information had such a system been implemented.

As important as effective background checks are, however, no technological solution can surpass the effectiveness of human judgment. More comprehensive training and screening should be required before someone is able to purchase a firearm. This training should give a certified firearms instructor enough exposure to the applicant to provide sufficient opportunity to evaluate their potential for responsible gun ownership.

Had Loughner spent 5 days with a trainer, part of whose job it was to evaluate a person’s ability to responsibly own a weapon, perhaps his clear psychological instability could have been flagged and the gun would have been kept the gun out of his hands.

Most professional weapons training programs are designed, in part, to filter out those who are unfit to be armed. Such a requirement for civilian ownership could greatly reduce the likelihood that an unstable individual could legally purchase a firearm, independent of the severely limited background check system

If our legislative leaders focus on constructing this type of framework, both sides of the gun control issue can find something to be happy about. Proponents of gun control can be satisfied knowing that far more effort is going into ensuring that dangerous weapons, of any configuration, do not end up in the wrong hands. Proponents of the individual right to bear arms can be satisfied that, unless they exhibit behavior or criminal tendencies that should disqualify them from gun ownership anyway, their rights to bear arms will go unmolested.

While every tragedy cannot be prevented, common sense steps can be taken to keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of dangerous people. A framework that focuses on a solid system for comprehensive screening is a good first step.

How to Avoid the Infrastructure Blind Side

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In listening to President Obama talk about infrastructure in his State of the Union Message, I couldn’t stop thinking about last year’s great movie “The Blind Side.” A young, talented, left-handed quarterback fades back to pass, surveys the field, has three receivers open and…bam, once again he’s crushed by a bull-rushing defensive end, who once again rolls over his right guard.

President Obama may have greatness in him, and he may become great, but where infrastructure is concerned every time he steps up to the lectern I have to shut my eyes – it’s that scary.

First, President Obama doesn’t have the personnel in place for a successful – let alone ‘we do big things’ – infrastructure initiative. Think about it: who in the White House is in charge of infrastructure? And when has a signal initiative ever been successful without someone in charge?

Whether this is our Sputnik Moment or not, infrastructure is rocket science. If the U.S. Is to double our spending on infrastructure (moving from $150 billion year to $300 billion), someone in the White House needs to provide clear signals and hefty shoves to the Department of Transportation and the Department of Energy, as well as to the responsible officials (governors and secretaries) in the fifty states. Currently there is no one…bam.

Second, there is no overall infrastructure plan. A sustained increase in U.S. competitiveness does not require magical investments, whether in high-speed rail, the smart grid, electric cars and renewable energy – truly wide-open receivers downfield. It requires a clear consensus vision of the global challenge, and of which projects are strategic to responding to that challenge, and its opportunities.

The President not only needs to build a team, he needs to create a vision for that team – it is what great presidents do. Infrastructure built now provides value for 20-30 years, so where does the U.S. want to be in 20-30 years, and how – specifically – are we going to get there? Otherwise we will continue to spend incredibly scarce political, financial, and managerial resources on projects that are immaterial to our success. Unless the President’s team – and right now we are all on his team – is driven and directed by a vision of national competitiveness and renewal…bam.

Third, from the business point of view, the first two issues – not much of a team, and not much of a plan – are ‘walk away now’ fatal flaws – but there is another issue that needs to be addressed, perhaps the biggest blind side issue of all: how is a sustained infrastructure initiative to be financed in an environment of severe federal and state austerity?

The only serious answer is a National Infrastructure Bank, something that both Democrats and Republicans agree upon – and an idea strongly favored by incoming House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman John Mica.

All of our competitors –China, India, Russia, Brazil, the European Union – have national infrastructure banks. It is a source of strategic advantage in the globalized economy, and needs to be a fully-functioning part of our infrastructure renewal. Without a significant funding source, in the range of $250 billion-$300 billion over ten years, I simply have to shut my eyes in horror…bam, bam, bam.

In watching President Obama step up to the lectern on infrastructure – now for the third or fourth time in his young presidency – I am both fearful and perplexed. The President needs to step back from the field – up to the balcony, as Harvard’s leadership guru Ronnie Heifetz would say – and reflect on what actually needs to be done. To recognize that he needs to be more coach than quarterback, and take the time to find the players (a Team of Rivals he does not have), build the team around a compelling vision (the real job of a President) and finance the effort (you can ‘dream of things that never were, and ask why’ – but if you want to see those things you will have to find a practical, sustained, politically acceptable way to pay for them).

I have to get the nightmare out of my mind of a young, supremely talented quarterback, dropping back to pass – once again – and then…bam. I want my talented President to step up to the lectern and this time, get the who, what, and how of his infrastructure initiative right.

What To Do As Egypt Transitions to Democracy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s bizarre and wandering late-night address to the nation on Friday is almost certainly the beginning of his end.  Mubarak’s tone-deaf offer to reshuffle his cabinet is a ham-fisted attempt to address the Egyptian protesters’ concerns that only underlines his weakened position.  Only one of two paths seems open for Mubarak: that he clings to power through a campaign of violent and bloody repression, or that he flees Cairo to enjoy a luxurious retirement in Switzerland or Saudi. Given the army’s restraint thus far, thankfully the latter seems more likely.

The Obama administration deserves real praise for standing on the right side of history. Secretary Clinton’s remarks on the weekend’s talk shows struck an unambiguous tone as she called for the Egyptian people to “have the chance to chart a new future. It needs to be an orderly, peaceful transition to real democracy, not faux democracy.” Even John Boehner has praised the administration’s handling of the situation.

Should Egypt soon find itself staring “real democracy” in the face, what is the Obama administration’s next move?  The White House would do well to re-read a piece Shadi Hamid wrote for PPI in late 2008, particularly these sections:

Elevate democracy promotion through aid conditionality. The perception that America stands opposed to democratic openings in the Middle East must be challenged head-on so that Arabs and Muslims will begin to feel that they—rather than foreign powers—hold the keys to change within their own societies. The United States can start by articulating a regionwide contract whereby foreign aid is made explicitly conditional on a set of benchmarks, including respect of opposition rights, freedom of expression, and progress toward holding free elections, even if only on the municipal level at first.

Engage political Islam. Democratization will likely further empower Islamists, a reality that the United States must come to terms with. In order to re-establish credibility on democracy promotion—and just as importantly, to show that we have no gripe with Islam—we need to engage in a sustained dialogue with all religiously-oriented parties as long as they fulfill the conditions of renouncing violence and committing themselves to the democratic process. A new administration must begin by stating as a matter of policy that the United States is not opposed to dealing with non-violent Islamist groups and has no problem with parties of a religious character coming to power through free elections.

This would be coupled with the initiation of a U.S.-Islamist “dialogue,” designed to explore areas of tension and misunderstanding. As trust develops, the discussion would move toward the question of how moderate Islamists can help us and how we can help them. In exchange for supporting the political participation of Islamist parties in their respective countries, America would seek to extract certain “concessions” in return, including guarantees that they would respect vital U.S. interests, including standing peace treaties with Israel.

Anybody Home?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

BOOK REVIEW: Disconnect: The Breakdown of Representation in American Politics, by Morris P. Fiorina (with Samuel J. Abrams)

For those who view themselves as political moderates, these are troubling times. Despite the renewed calls to bipartisanship and civility, the reality is that the two parties in Congress are very far apart from each other and continue to show every sign of being far more eager to engage in partisan flame-throwing than in bipartisan problem-solving.

And yet: how did things get to be this way? And what about the supposedly moderate public: how and why do they stand for this? To understand these questions, a good place to start is Disconnect: The Breakdown of Representation in American Politics, by Morris P. Fiorina, a professor of Political Science at Stanford University.

Disconnect is essentially a book in two parts. The first is an extensive compendium of data in support of the claim that there is indeed a widening disconnect between a largely moderate voting public and an ideological polarized political class. The second part is the story of how that disconnect came about.

Just how moderate the public actually is turns out to be a matter of some debate in political science circles. An alternate view – and useful foil for discussing Fiorina’s book – is Alan Abramowitz’s The Disappearing Center (which I reviewed here), which makes the case the current polarization reflects the fact that Americans have sorted into two distinct ideological camps, and that politicians are polarized because the public is polarized (and representative democracy is therefore alive and well.)

Fiorina sees it differently: “The orientation [of the public] is more pragmatic,” he writes. “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.”

Part of the disagreement results from different data employed. Whereas Abramowitz focuses mostly on ideological self-identification and a few hot-button issues, Fiorina incorporates a broader range of issue polling, and finds that Democrats and Republicans are not nearly as far apart on most of the major issues as is commonly believed – on 40 Pew survey items, Democrats and Republicans differ only by an average of 14 points.

Moreover, they are not even moving apart that rapidly. In 1987, the average difference across the same 40 issues was 10 percent, meaning that in 20 years, there has only been an average change of four percentage points. Nor has it been consistently in opposite directions. Rather, Fiorina writes: “One sees a nonideological public moving rightward on some issues, leftward on others, and not moving much at all on still others.”

On some issues, Americans prefer more government intervention, on others less. But most of all, “Americans accept conflicting core beliefs and values.” Political views are often ambivalent and conditional, open to revision and re-consideration, as opposed to absolute and fixed. For example, four in five Americans are not sure whether life begins at conception or birth.

Americans, on the other hand, are much more divided in their assessments of political figures. George W. Bush, as we know, was the most polarizing figure in American political history. But Fiorina argues that the reviews of Bush are polarizing not because the public is polarized generally, but because Bush was an extreme partisan.

Fiorina also differs from Abramowitz in the definition of the political class. Whereas Abramowitz sees more people reporting trying to convince others to vote one way or another as a sign of more engaged political class, Fiorina notes that the percentage of Americans who work for a party or attend meetings and rallies is still the same as it was in 1952: 10 percent.

However, those 10 percent are quite different today than they were in 1952. This is one of the big stories of Disconnect. In an era gone by, politics was a clubby game, more concerned with material motivations than ideology. Politics was about compromise and bargaining, about taking care of business. It was no place for purists.

But without getting too nostalgic for the smoky and often corrupt backroom politics of a bygone era, Fiorina notes that all this openness and transparency changed the nature of politics. “The great irony,” Fiorina writes, “is that after this explosion of openness and transfer of power to the people, turnout in elections fell and trust in government plummeted.”

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.

Several demographic changes also led to political sorting. 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.

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.

Fiorina, like Abramowitz, offers little by way of reform. Instead, Disconnect concludes by laying the blame on deep structural forces that must somehow change on their own:

The usual institutional reforms are unlikely to do much to lessen the polarization of contemporary American politics. That polarization has deep roots in a variety of social changes that have increased the homogeneity of each party, widened the differences between the two parties, and encouraged politicians to construct electoral coalitions out of group building blocks that are less encompassing and less representative of the broader public than was the case for most of American history.

The optimistic note, however, is that by Fiorina’s reading, the American public remains quite moderate, despite the partisan warfare that has been dominating Washington. Without at least a moderate public, it is very hard to build a moderate politics.

Obama and Human Rights in the Middle East

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Events over the last few weeks demand a reconsideration, if not a full-scale reevaluation of the wisdom of the Obama administration’s overall approach to democracy and human rights in the Middle East.

Facts are stubborn things, and the reality is that President Obama’s administration has now succeeded where President Bush never did. On his watch, Tunisia’s people rose up in protest over economic corruption and government repression and a dictator fled. The Arab world has a fighting chance at establishing its first true democracy.

At a minimum, those on the right who incessantly take credit wherever freedom blossoms need to grapple with that fact. But even more than that may be called for.

The Obama administration’s approach has not always been perfect, but it does appear, for the most part, rather consistent. And it does appear to have helped. It combines a steady rhetorical insistence on universal principles with an attempt, not always successful, to avoid lending its political support to either governments or protesters—betting on both and neither at the same time—event at times of crisis for regimes.

With events heating up in Egypt, the Obama Administration has done nothing to impede—and in fact has amplified—Egyptians’ calls for change.

With regard to events in Tunisia, Clinton was even more direct. Just days before Ben Ali fled the country, with his government grasping for support, she refused to throw him a rope, telling Al Arabiya: “We are not taking sides.”

Most importantly, the Obama administration has called on the governments of Egypt and Tunisia to respect the rights of peaceful protesters and to refrain from violence. This is by far the most valuable stance the U.S. can take in this moment of instability. An Tiananmen-style crackdown in Cairo’s Tahrir Square would have devastating consequences for Egyptians and Americans alike.

The toughest part has yet to come: Todays’s protests in Egypt are likely to be larger than the ones on Tuesday, and Tunisia has yet to consolidate anything resembling a democratic government. But so far, we have to commend the Obama administration’s approach to both Tunisia and Egypt.

Obama’s Two-Track Approach on Energy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As often happens with State of the Union addresses, President Obama’s speech left a lot of D.C. pundits and policy types unsatisfied and complaining that he didn’t lay out enough specifics, or that he didn’t use clear enough language to endorse one policy proposal or another. And for some of the areas that he breezed through so quickly between his Sputnik references, they’re right to be hungry for more.

But one area where he did manage to send some strong signals was on energy policy. He didn’t lay out a long list of proposals here either, but he made it clear that he plans to push for an ambitious two-part energy agenda: encouraging technological innovation through research and development funding, and pursuing a strong national Clean Energy Standard (CES) that shifts our energy production away from the dirtiest categories of traditional power resources.

Supporting energy R&D isn’t really anything new for Obama, but the 80 percent CES target for 2035 is a more exciting announcement. It’s a bold attempt to take Congress again into the breach of debating a national energy plan, which requires more than relying on innovation alone. It’s a starting point for talking about what we want our mid-term future to look like, and how we intend to realistically manage our energy resources over the course of the next few decades.

One reason Obama is able to set the goal so high at 80 percent is that his definition of “clean energy” in this proposal is very broad. It goes beyond the zero-carbon category of renewables and nuclear, and includes partial credits toward the goal for natural gas and clean coal (see DOE’s fact sheet), a step that goes beyond most CES proposals that have been floated in Congress, and well beyond what many environmental advocates are comfortable calling “clean.” But Michael Levi has done an excellent job providing first-responder estimates of what the country’s generation supply would look like in 2035 under this proposal, and concluded that it’s clearly a more ambitious target than last year’s Senate bill.

In practice, Obama’s CES target is also very similar to the Balanced Energy Portfolio target for 2040 that PPI is proposing in an upcoming paper, but more on that later.

Just as the CES proposal is a new beginning for energy policy this year, Obama’s speech also signaled a new approach to framing the arguments for his proposals, both in what he said and what he didn’t say.

First, what he didn’t say: the phrase “cap and trade” didn’t come up, but that was no surprise, especially after he chose not to say much about it while it was dying a slow and public death in the Senate last year. But some of the other things he didn’t include in this speech are more interesting. He didn’t use the words “climate” or “environment” once. And no mention of global warming, carbon, EPA, or clean air. Apparently Obama not only wants to put cap and trade behind us, but he wants to move beyond the climate debate and talk about energy only in terms of innovation, competition, and clean energy jobs. With so many Republicans in the House now proudly flaunting their rejection of climate science, Obama’s move is politically understandable, even if it’s not morally commendable.

Next, what he did say: Obama’s call to arms was announcing a “Sputnik moment” for clean energy and national competitiveness, rhetoric he and John Kerry have been using a lot in recent weeks. It isn’t clear to me how they are defining this moment, but apparently my confusion is reasonable, since Obama himself wasn’t so clear on it back in 2009 either, when he sent a different message on energy [courtesy of Rachel Brown]:

There will be no single Sputnik moment for this generation’s challenges to break our dependence on fossil fuels. In many ways, this makes the challenge even tougher to solve—and makes it all the more important to keep our eyes fixed on the work ahead.

Frankly, I like Obama’s earlier message more than his new one, because I don’t really subscribe to this idea that clean energy development is a race that we are going to win or lose as a nation. However, I do think we should be taking much stronger steps than we are now to shift our energy use to cleaner resources and grow clean energy industries globally, so if Obama can make that happen by convincing Americans that a Chinese solar research center poses the same type of existential threat to our way of life as Russian rocket technology we couldn’t match in 1956, more power to him.

The best takeaway from Obama’s case for competitiveness is that we need a sustained national commitment to innovation, recognizing it as a comparative advantage we should exploit wherever possible.  This is true not only for clean energy, but for other innovative industries as well, as my colleague Michael Mandel emphasized this week. That commitment needs to be a shared effort that we value as part of our culture, with appropriate roles for the public, private, education, and non-profit sectors. It is a position that all progressives should rally around, because it’s one that will be under attack from the new goon squad of Tea Party conservatives, who want to cut most public spending just for the sake of cutting.

Just as progressives need to present a united front in support Obama’s call to defend well crafted R&D programs in the face of conservative budget roll-backs, progressives also need to raise their voices in support of his Clean Energy Standard proposal. Obama is right that investing in innovation and R&D is the key to finding long-term solutions that will be good for our economy and our planet, but innovation alone is not enough. Robert Stavins made the case last year that carbon pricing and R&D are both necessary, and one or the other alone is not enough, and I agree with his argument for the most part. And while a CES is a less efficient substitute for cap-and-trade, Stavin’s point still holds: whatever the incentive structure, we need a resource planning policy that reshapes today’s energy markets, while we wait for tomorrow’s solutions to become a reality.

President Obama deserves praise for taking a bold step toward an actual energy plan for the country, and he deserves it from all progressives. That means those of us who would prefer to see a stronger approach that includes a price on carbon, or those who are disappointed with Obama for moving too far to the center, should see the CES proposal for what it is: probably the only opportunity we have to move forward on energy resource policy in the next two years (at least), and therefore and opportunity that must be seized if at all possible. It also means that those who have advocated for innovation-only approaches need to extend their enthusiasm over Obama’s speech to support the CES together with other progressives, instead of trying to claim the mantle of leadership for themselves exclusively, as some have done this week.

Both pieces of Obama’s agenda are going to be tough to pass, and it goes without saying that they will require a better plan of attack than last year’s. There are a lot of details to be fleshed out, and some horse-trading compromises as it moves forward that won’t sit well with everyone. But the president has stepped forward this week and shown some real leadership, and progressives should return the favor as he takes the fight to Congress.

The Economist: Red Tape Rising

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI Senior Fellow Michael Mandel talks to The Economist about the interaction between excessive regulation and innovation:

Also unquantifiable is the innovation that may be deterred by regulation. Michael Mandel, a scholar at the Progressive Policy Institute, a think-tank, says some of Mr Obama’s rules, though well intentioned, interfere with the most dynamic parts of the economy. Rules meant to deter the abuse of student aid by for-profit colleges could stunt the growth of college courses taught over the internet; tighter conditions on drug approvals, prompted by much-publicised scandals, raise the cost of drug research, especially for small companies; and “net neutrality” rules could expose internet-access providers to stifling litigation.

Mr Obama’s regulatory surge would be less damaging if it had not followed one by Mr Bush, Mr Mandel says. Because of fears about national security, telecoms and internet companies came under pressure to accommodate federal eavesdroppers. The Sarbanes-Oxley accounting law has made it more expensive for start-up companies to list their stock publicly.

Read the full article.

The Washington Post: Obama’s call for innovation follows slowdown in most sectors, scholars say

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

PPI Senior Fellow Michael Mandel discusses the need to reinvest in American innovation with the Washington Post reporter Brian Vastag:

Innovation scholars point to a “valley of death” where new technologies go to die. The federal government funds basic research. Private industry commercializes technologies springing from that work. But crossing the chasm between the two can be hugely difficult.

“We have investors with lots of money, and we have entrepreneurs with ideas that can get you across the valley of death,” said Michael Mandel, an economist who tracks American innovation for the Progressive Policy Institute in Washington. “But it’s a lot easier when you have a big winner out there, a gleaming star in the distance.”

Read the full article