Going into yesterday’s Alabama runoffs, the Republican gubernatorial contest revolved around rumors of a big, teacher-union-generated Democratic crossover vote in favor of Dr. Robert Bentley, along with speculation that his opponent, Bradley Byrne, might have gained crucial momentum by accusing Bentley of being a Democratic or union stooge.
Bentley beat Byrne 56-44, and a cursory look at the returns shows no evidence of any massive Democratic crossover vote. In fact, turnout was down 6 percent from the primary, with no apparent relationship between Republican turnout numbers and those counties with or without significant Democratic contests to keep Democrats on their side of the line. Moreover, Byrne did quite well in most of the counties with a big Democratic constituency. There was some anecdotal buzz yesterday about Democratic crossover in isolated locations (e.g., Madison County, where Republican turnout actually dropped 17 percent), but most election officials said it didn’t seem to be happening.
The much more likely explanation is that Bentley got the bulk of voters who cast ballots for Tim James and Roy Moore in the primary, hardly a stretch since both their campaign managers endorsed Bentley. James voters in particular probably discounted Byrne’s attacks on Bentley as no more credible than Byrne’s earlier attacks on their candidate.
In any event, future Republican candidates who think demonizing teachers unions is a failsafe strategy should take a close look at Alabama.
In the two congressional runoffs, nothing that unusual happened, either. In the 2nd district Republican contest, “establishment” candidate Martha Roby easily dispatched Tea Party activist Rick Barber 60-40, beating him nearly three-to-one in their common home county, Montgomery, where the fiery pool hall owner did not gather his armies effectively. Roby will now face Democratic incumbent Bobby Bright in what is expected to be a close race in November.
And in the 7th district Democratic contest, where the Democratic nomination really is tantamount to election, Terri Sewell, who had superior financial resources and significant national support, defeated Shelia Smoot 55-45, with the key being Sewell’s 54-46 margin in Jefferson County, where local races boosted turnout.
Last Friday, the Jerusalem Post reported that some 265 Israeli soldiers were lured into a cybersecurity trap, unwittingly revealing the location of a secret Israeli military base.
Soldiers who formerly served at the secret facility set up a Facebook group to serve as a mechanism to share stories and reflections about their time at the base. It was a “public, closed” group, which means the wider Facebook community could learn of the group’s existence, but applicants must request membership from the group’s organizer.
The location was exposed when a journalist requested membership, which was granted without vetting his (non-existent) military credentials.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution, a soldier intimately involved in the army’s cyber operations said the group is one example of many serious security breaches by [Israeli Defense Force] soldiers in online social networks.
“It’s a security failure and they made a big mistake,” the soldier told The Media Line. “There is a reason why this base is a secret and this will undoubtedly cause harm, allowing Israel’s enemies to get important information and use it to attack Israel.
“Not only did they set up a group,” he said, “they set up the group publicly, rather than by invitation only.”
…
“Beyond national security, it is also a safety issue,” the source continued. “In the past Hezbollah operatives would set up a profile pretending to be Israeli women and ask to be friends with soldiers or join soldiers’ groups on Facebook. Over time through the status updates Hezbollah learned a bit about the soldiers, where they lived and were able to connect the dots. In theory, they could eventually kidnap that person,” he explained.
What’s the proper policy response? Should the IDF ban all its soldiers’ access to Facebook? That’s usually the American military’s knee-jerk response. According to Danger Room’s Noah Shachtman, education is the key. Here’s what he said in a PPI policy memo on a proper response to open-network, military-centric cyber threats:
The armed forces find it much easier to ban something than to educate its troops about responsible use. MySpace and YouTube are inaccessible from Pentagon computers – even though the military makes extensive use of the sites. Thumb drives are mostly forbidden as well, even though battlefield units rely on them to swap data in lonely places where bandwidth is hard to find. In the name of information security, information flow has been restricted. Meanwhile, secret overhead surveillance feeds are routinely left unencrypted; with an off-the-shelf satellite dish and $26 software, militants can see through the Air Force’s eyes in the sky. It’s a problem the military has known about for more than a decade but never bothered to fix. According to the Wall Street Journal, “the Pentagon assumed local adversaries wouldn’t know how to exploit it.”
Clearly, there needs to be a rather serious re-evaluation of military information assurance. The Pentagon needs to do a better job of figuring out theoretical risks from actual dangers; secret drone feeds can’t be left open while blogs are placed off-limits. Troops also need to be trained – and then trusted. The military routinely gives a 19-year-old private the power to kill everyone he sees. Surely, if that private can be taught to use an automatic rifle responsibly, he can be educated in computing without sharing secrets.
Militaries have give-and-take relationships with social networking sites. Yes, there are clearly vulnerabilities, but Facebook, Skype and Twitter are morale-boosters — they let troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere stay connected to their families.
The military’s heavy-handed — shut-it-down mentality — kills morale and troops will get around the blockages anyway. As a former DoD civilian employee, I can give you multiple internet-based email services that allow access to your officially-blocked Gmail address.
Education is the only solution, and the military needs to embrace.
When it comes to economic conditions, I’m generally a glass-three-quarters-full kind of guy. Take unemployment. Quick—what was the risk in 2008 that an American worker would experience at least one bout of unemployment? Chances are you thought that that risk was higher than one in eight.* But figures from government surveys indeed suggest that thirteen out of fifteen workers (or would-be workers) had not a single day unemployed during the first year of the “Great Recession”.** (Incidentally, the recessions of the mid-1970s and the early 1980s were also called the “Great Recession” by some commentators.)
The 2009 data won’t be out until later in the year, but if last year ends up comparable to the depths of the early 1980s recession, then the average worker will “only” have had a seven in nine chance of avoiding unemployment.*** But these figures overstate economic risk because some unemployment is voluntary and much of it is brief. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the chance that a worker experienced an unemployment spell lasting more than two weeks during the three years from 2001 to 2003 was just one in thirteen—a period covering the last recession.
So as I’ve been following the debate about unemployment insurance and whether it actually worsens the unemployment rate, I’ve actually been open to the idea that being able to receive benefits for up to two years might create perverse incentives. The research is not as uniformly dismissive of the idea as some liberal assessments have implied (go to NBER’s website and search the working papers for “unemployment” if you want to check this out yourself).
In particular, the idea that there were 5 people looking for work for every job opening struck me as sounding overly alarmist. So I started looking into the numbers to determine whether I thought they were reliable. The figures folks are using rely on a survey from the Bureau of Labor Statistics called the Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, which unfortunately only goes back to December of 2000. But the Conference Board has put out estimates of the number of help wanted ads since the 1950s. Through mid-2005, the estimates were based on print ads, as far as I can tell, but the Conference Board then switched to monitoring online ads. You can find the monthly figures for print ads here and the ones for online ads here. The JOLT and unemployment figures are relatively easy to find at BLS’s website.
When I graphed the two Conference Board series (which requires some indexing to make them consistent–the print ad series being an index pegged to 1987 while the online series gives the actual number of ads) against the number of unemployed, and then the JOLT series against the unemployed, here’s what I found:
I’ll just say I was shocked and that I am much more sympathetic to extension of unemployment insurance than I was yesterday.
*The post originally said one in ten, which was wrong (the result of mistakenly using a figure I had computed for an older age range). Technically, the the figure was 13.2%, or 1 in 7.6.
** The original post said nine out of ten.
*** The original post said that if it reaches the depths of the 1990s recession, then the average worker will have had a five in six chance of unemployment. I located data for the early 1980s recession, which is a better comparison to the current one.
PRESS CONTACT: Steven Chlapecka—schlapecka@ppionline.org, T: 202.525.3931
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Tuesday, July 20, Representative Ron Kind (D-WI) and Michael Mandel, former BusinessWeek chief economist and founder of Visible Economy LLC, will join the Progressive Policy Institute for a policy briefing and the release of “The Coming Communication Boom? Jobs, Innovation and Countercyclical Regulator Policy,” a policy memo focusing on job growth in innovative industries and the role of regulatory policy in aiding economic development.
Rep. Ron Kind (D-WI), Co-chair, New Democrat Coalition Task Force on Innovation and Competitiveness Michael Mandel, Founder, Visible Economy LLC Will Marshall, President, Progressive Policy Institute
WHAT
The briefing will outline the latest trends in innovation and job creation, and offer a future outlook for the communications sector as a driver for economic growth. Rep. Ron Kind, co-chair of the New Democrats Coalition Task Force on Innovation, will offer opening remarks at 12 p.m. Immediately following, Mandel will discuss and offer recommendations from his memo. This event marks the official release of the PPI policy memo “The Coming Communication Boom? Jobs, Innovation and Countercyclical Regulator Policy.”
WHEN
12 p.m. – 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, July 20
WHERE
U.S. Capitol, Room H-137, East Capitol St and 1st St NE, Washington, D.C.
MEDIA COVERAGE
The event is open to the press. Media wishing to attend should contact Steven Chlapecka at 202.525.3931 or schlapecka@ppionline.org.
Today’s political feature is the runoff in Alabama, which I previewed in the last PPI political memo. As noted then, turnout patterns will probably be the determining factor in the GOP gubernatorial runoff, with the big question being whether Democrats will cross over in significant numbers. In the congressional runoffs, Democrat Terri Sewell is the favorite to win virtual election to the House in the 7th district seat vacated by unsuccessful gubernatorial candidate Artur Davis, and Martha Roby should be able to turn back viral ad star Rick Barber in the Republican contest in the 2nd district. In most of the state, voters will be suffering through hot, humid weather with possible thunderstorms.
The primary state up next on the calendar is Georgia on July 20, and the highly competitive Republican gubernatorial primary there was roiled yesterday by Sarah Palin’s endorsement of former Secretary of State Karen Handel. It’s not clear yet whether Palin’s endorsement was one of those one-off interventions that have often characterized her activity this year (viz. her endorsement of Terry Brandstad in Iowa without so much as a phone conversation), or will be followed up by more active engagement. But it was well-timed: Handel has been moving up in the polls recently, holding a strong second place behind long-time front-runner John Oxendine in a SUSA poll released last week. Much as happened in Iowa, Georgia’s social conservatives have not reacted well to Palin’s endorsement, and former congressman Nathan Deal, who has been battling Handel for a runoff spot, put out a release expressing disappointment in Palin for supporting “the most liberal Republican in this race.”
Rhetoric aside, Handel’s profile in the race is actually pretty similar to that of another recent Palin endorsee, South Carolina’s Nikki Haley, at least before hamhanded allegations about Haley’s sex life and background took over news coverage and vaulted her to a landslide runoff victory. Like Haley, Handel is positioning herself as a “conservative reformer” taking on the state GOP’s good ol’ boys, and her single biggest problem, poor fundraising, may have been offset by the attention she’ll get from Palin’s endorsement. Right now an Oxendine-Handel runoff is the most likely outcome next Tuesday, though both Deal and a fourth candidate, Eric Johnson (who’s been running copious television ads) will fight her tooth and nail to the finish.
An even bigger name than Palin got involved in Georgia’s Democratic gubernatorial primary over the weekend, as former president Bill Clinton endorsed Attorney General Thurbert Baker. This wasn’t that big a surprise, since Baker was Hillary Clinton’s highest-profile Georgia supporter in 2008 (at least after John Lewis defected to the Obama camp). And there are no signs that the Big Dog will actually show up in Georgia to thump the tubs for Thurbert. But Baker definitely needs the help. Long assumed to have a virtual lock on a runoff spot opposite former Gov. Roy Barnes, Baker’s late-developing campaign has struggled to get off the ground, and recent polls show Barnes headed for a primary victory without a runoff (there are two other significant candidates on the ballot: former Secretary of State David Poythress and Democratic state legislative leader Dubose Porter). With some more attention, Baker might have a chance to keep Barnes below 50 percent: he’s an African-American in a state where a majority of the likely Democratic primary voters are African-American, and he’s lately found a distinctive issue by coming out for an electronic bingo initiative to help forestall education cuts.
In polling news, Rasmussen has a survey of general election matchups in the Colorado Senate race, showing another beneficiary of a Bill Clinton endorsement, former state House speaker Andrew Romanoff, running a bit better than incumbent Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO) against either of the two main Republican candidates, Ken Buck or Jane Norton. Colorado’s primary is four weeks from today.
Quinnipiac has released a new poll of the PA governor’s race, which, as in its May survey, shows Democrat Dan Onorato within single digits of Republican Tom Corbett, who leads 44-37.
The first poll in a good while in Indiana, by Rasmussen, shows Republican Dan Coats continuing to hold a big (51-30) lead over Rep. Brad Ellsworth (D-IA) for the Senate, though Ellsworth’s approval/disapproval ratio remains relatively strong at 42-29.
Ed Kilgore’s PPI Political Memo runs every Tuesday and Friday.
Last Thursday morning, I was perched and staring at Tel Aviv in the distance to my left, Haifa to my right, and the vast Mediterranean Sea that seemed to separate them. My crow’s nest view was from a lookout point from the Israeli settlement of Alfei Menashe, which is situated clearly inside the West Bank and guarded by the controversial barrier that separates Israel from the Palestinian territories (I had to chose my words carefully there — the Israelis call it a “security fence” and the Palestinians have far less PC terms for it. In the name of impartiality, I’ll go with “controversial barrier.”)
Israeli settlements in the West Bank have been a lightening rod for criticism and division. The major settlement push took hold under Menachem Begin, Israel’s prime minister from 1977-83, who supported Israeli construction in the West Bank and Gaza Strip as a way to consolidate Israel’s territorial gains in 1967’s Six Day War. In the present context, they’ve become a key issue as the Israelis and Palestinians negotiate peace — as Israelis continue to build new settlements or expand existing ones, it appears as though Israel’s government is interested only in tightening its grip on Palestinian territories, not giving them back.
Construction in and around Israeli settlements came to the forefront in George W. Bush’s 2003 “Roadmap for Peace,” which called for a “freeze on settlement expansion.” Ariel Sharon, Israeli prime minister at the time, suggested that such a freeze was impossible due to the need for settlers to build new houses and start families. The issue has remained controversial ever since.
Occasionally, this family issue has been falsely referred to as “natural settlement growth.” In reality, “natural growth” is completely different. Here’s how it works: legal Israeli settlements are allotted a certain municipal boundary, but construction initially takes place on a small percentage of the designated land. “Natural growth” means that over time, the settlement expands to these full territorial boundaries. As construction continues, particularly for settlements deep on the West Bank, it certainly does look like an Israeli land grab.
In November, the Netanyahu government announced a 10-month moratorium on settlement construction, with an exemption for East Jerusalem. It’s due to be lifted in September.
The latest flare-up occurred during Vice President Joe Biden’s trip to Israel in March when the Israeli Interior Ministry announced the approval of construction of 1,600 new apartments in East Jerusalem. (NB: The Interior Ministry is headed by right-wing Shas Party member Eli Yishai, a rival to PM Netanyahu. The Interior Ministry’s announcement was likely designed to embarrasse Netanyahu during Biden’s visit.)
So, how do we sort this out? What’s the real concern with settlements, and how is the issue leveraged for political posturing?
The first thing to note is that certain settlement construction is more important (worrying) than others. Growth should only be highly controversial in settlement areas that will, one day, certainly be evacuated and turned over to Palestinian control.
If you look at a map of the West Bank, this includes the row of small settlements along the spine of the Jordan River and all those scattered in a seemingly random pattern throughout the heart of the territory. Jewish inhabitants in these locations number anywhere from a handful to a few thousand, and Israeli governments (yes, even those lead by Bibi) realize that they will not be part of Israel after a peace deal. Construction here in any form is unacceptable.
The biggest problem in this regard is Ariel, a settlement some ten miles behind the 1949 Green Line border. With about 80,000 Jewish residents living in relatively new apartment blocks that extend to its full municipal boundaries, both sides acknowledge moving them is probably more trouble than it’s worth. That’s why “new” construction in a place like Ariel technically isn’t that controversial–Ariel’s boundaries are firm, so construction won’t expand Ariel’s reach into the West Bank. Most likely, Ariel will be walled off as a non-contiguous part of Israel (with some sort of a land-bridge to the “mainland”), just like Kaliningrad is separated from the rest of Russia. Or Alaska from the US. Furthermore, a Palestinian state will be compensated with land elsewhere for Ariel.
Moreover, construction in many — though not all — of the settlements in East Jerusalem is less of a big deal than it seems. Certain settlements, like Alfei Menashe in the first paragraph of this post, will very likely become part of Israel in a peace deal. Settlements in Jerusalem, like the Gilo settlement in the city’s south, may indeed be over the Green Line, but it, like Ariel, is a well-developed community that has been considered a regular Jerusalem suburb for decades. It’s clear to both sides that Alfei Menashe and Gilo — communities that have reached their allotted territorial capacity and have no more room for “natural growth”– will become permanent parts of Israel in a peace deal, and, critically, that the Palestinian state will be compensated with land elsewhere.
In other words, continued construction in a place like Gilo is controversial only because it is symbolic and plays well in the media. In reality, building a new apartment block right in the middle of a settlement technically violates the general construction “freeze,” but in reality isn’t a strategic expansion. Even so, Vice President Biden must severely object to these letter-of-the-law violations because they smack of Israeli tone-deafness to this political sensitivity.
That means that when we hear of construction in settlements, we have to be careful to separate the acceptable-but-tone-deaf construction from the strategically unacceptable. Greater understanding of the strategic and tactical realities of settlements would help diffuse an intense public sensitivity to a highly complex issue.
The recent Bloomberg BusinessWeekcover story by former Intel CEO Andy Grove, “How to Make an American Job,” has stimulated no shortage of reaction in the blogosphere. From the even-handed and the thoughtful, to the politely skeptical and the sharply critical, bloggers and commentators have weighed in on Grove’s essay.
What precipitated this running debate is Grove’s apparent suggestion that, to spur job creation and innovation, the United States should instigate a national-level industrial policy which favors some companies over others. He points to successful Asian economies as potential models. The distinguishing characteristic of the favored companies would be, what Grove asserts is the real engine of job creation, the scaling process:
Equally important is what comes after that mythical moment of creation in the garage, as technology goes from prototype to mass production. This is the phase where companies scale up. They work out design details, figure out how to make things affordably, build factories, and hire people by the thousands. Scaling is hard work but necessary to make innovation matter.
Other commentators have already pointed out that Grove perhaps focuses too much on manufacturing (and specifically technology manufacturing such as semiconductors), and that he misses the critical importance of startup firms to job creation and innovation.
I agree that the long-running lament over the loss of manufacturing jobs in the United States is overdone—much of that employment reduction has come about through productivity gains rather than offshoring. The scaling process Grove celebrates is in fact partly responsible for the loss of technology manufacturing jobs. Since 2000, industry concentration in Silicon Valley has increased dramatically in sectors such as computer equipment manufacturing and semiconductor manufacturing while employment has fallen. Just last week, my colleague Tim Kane published a report on just how much startups matter to net job creation in the United States. As Tim puts it, startups aren’t everything, they’re the only thing.
Finally, Vivek Wadhwa offers what is probably the best take on Grove’s article—Vivek is hugely knowledgeable about innovation in China and India, and offers, as others have not, actual concrete suggestions for how we can reignite economic growth in the United States.
Despite the flaws in Grove’s essay, it should not be dismissed. For one thing, he is a highly intelligent and highly successful entrepreneur who has lived through—indeed, helped shape—dramatic transformations of the U.S. economy.
Furthermore, scale companies are important to economic growth. No one can talk about the economic history of the United States without mentioning the scale companies that, at each stage of development, pioneered innovations, reduced costs and generally helped spread prosperity: Union Pacific, Standard Oil, Ford Motor, Wal-Mart, Intel, Microsoft, Google. Obviously, economic growth cannot solely be ascribed to such firms—they are only one piece of the economic ecosystem and while Grove may have overemphasized scale, he certainly was not wrong to discuss it. But the process of scaling must be contextualized: startups are essential in part because, without them, we do not even get to the scaling process. Competition helps ensure that scaling is accompanied by innovation and efficiency. Once they reach a certain level of scale, large firms depend on the acquisition of startups as a source of innovations and new jobs.
Scale firms can also be merely seen as incidents of deeper factors driving growth. After I gave a presentation on the economic contribution of high-growth firms a few months ago, an eminent economist dismissed everything by saying, “well, yes, but this is all simply explained by information technology; that’s the real story of growth.” The IT-as-the-root-of-all-prosperity argument has been popular in recent years but, as Paul Kedrosky later pointed out to me, this is a “turtles all the way down” type of argument. Behind IT is cheap energy, behind cheap energy is access to natural resources, behind natural resources … and so on. (Scale companies, in fact, could even be seen as a fertile source of knowledge for economists themselves: Thomas McCraw, inter alios, has argued that the rise of scale firms in the second half of the 1800s helped prompt the marginal revolution in economic thought.)
All of this still overlooks the most important part of Grove’s article, a point that escaped me upon first reading: “A new industry needs an effective ecosystem in which technology knowhow accumulates, experience builds on experience, and close relationships develop between supplier and customer.” The reason that the scaling process—rather than simply scale itself—is economically important is the learning-by-doing path by which it proceeds. Knowledge accumulates, innovations come and go, companies iterate back and forth—this is the messy process by which economic growth happens. If this reading is correct, Grove is claiming that the offshoring of technology manufacturing jobs threatens such learning-by-doing. In this formulation, productivity gains in manufacturing can actually undermine future cycles of learning and iterating.
The conversation Grove is trying to stimulate is worth having. It is probably too much to extrapolate technology manufacturing to the entire U.S. economy. There are certainly sectors, aside from manufacturing, in which learning-by-doing drives growth and it is not clear that those sectors have lost such capacity. Software development and certain institutions in the world of health care rely on this process. Yochai Benkler’s work can be seen as emphasizing the extent to which learning and iteration underwrites a great deal of innovation across the economy today.
But Grove’s point should be taken seriously in the sense that real barriers exist to innovation and the scaling process in many areas of the economy. Rather than seeing his article as a call for a government-driven competitiveness agenda or industrial policy, we should read it as a starting point for seeking out release valves at which small changes can be made that would release huge amounts of pent-up entrepreneurial energy. The stunted process of commercializing innovations out of universities leaps to mind as an area ripe for such analysis, as does current immigration policy. The national conversation about innovation and economic growth should be engaged in exactly this type of search.
You no doubt remember the now-infamous flotilla incident of May 31, when Israeli soldiers raided a ship off Israel’s coast and killed some nine Turkish—including one Turkish-American—citizens as they attempted to deliver supplies to Gaza Strip. The issue is of course highly complex and the point of this post is not to pass judgment on who’s to blame. Rather, I’d like to focus on a serious consequence of the flotilla, regardless of culpability: the severely negative impact on Israeli-Turkish relations. It’s critical that these countries get along.
Historically, the Middle East’s only semblance of a Muslim democracy has had stable if not excellent relations with Israel. But in the aftermath of the flotilla, Turkey recalled its ambassador to Israel and canceled scheduled joint military exercises with the Israelis. Turkey sought an official apology from Israel and insisted that Tel Aviv pay compensation to the victims’ families. Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s far-right foreign minister, who was in no mood to play nice, flatly refused and then personally insulted the Turkish ambassador in a meeting.
(And for those who really want to get into the weeds of Israeli politics, I’d encourage you to read up on the internal political maneuvering between Lieberman, Israeli PM Netanyahu, and Trade and Labor Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who had a secret meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, probably in an attempt to skirt the caustic Lieberman and smooth things over.)
Suffice it to say that the relationship is in trouble, a point that was reinforced several times over as I traveled in Israel last week and spoke with Israeli academics, government officials, and military members. The vast majority of some of Israel’s leading strategic thinkers found that the degradation of Turkish-Israeli relations was top of the list of immediate problems. More striking, most seemed to believe the problems started well before the ill-fated flotilla, and implied the very nature of Turkish PM Erdogan’s election and his ruling AK Party’s “Islamist” bent was the driving force behind the threat.
That’s not to give Turkey a pass, of course. Its overtures to Iran and exploitation of the flotilla issue for domestic political purposes prompted Philip Gordon, the Assistant Secretary of State for Europe, to rightly signal that Washington’s troubles with Turkey’s recent actions:
We think Turkey remains committed to NATO, Europe and the United States, but that needs to be demonstrated. There are people asking questions about it in a way that is new, and that in itself is a bad thing that makes it harder for the United States to support some of the things that Turkey would like to see us support.
However, the nearly uniform analysis among Israel’s experts remains troubling. To me, it suggested that Israel is deeply bothered by the inclusion of any Islamic strain within a democratically elected government in a Muslim-majority country. Even a democratic government, as Alex Taurel and Shadi Hamid have written, that is lead by “the most moderate, pro-democratic Islamist party in the region today.” Giving up on Turkey and the AKP could come at a price, as Taurel and Hamid argue, and “strengthen those Islamists who see violence and confrontation as a surer means to influence political power.”
This creates an opening for the Obama administration. It’s clear that Israel needs a friend in Turkey, as a military interlocutor, as a potential peace-broker with Syria, and as a Muslim ally and NATO member that stands between Iran and the West. And Turkey needs Israel, to be perceived as an honest mediator in world affairs, and as a source of tourist revenue. And the Obama administration needs them to cooperate for regional stability and solidarity against Iran.
The subject of Israel-Turkish relations was reportedly addressed during PM Netanyahu’s meeting with President Obama last week in Washington. Repairing this damaged relationship should be a particular point of emphasis from the White House to both parties in the months ahead.
Seyward Darby has an amusing piece at the New Republic‘s site with some of the loonier provisions found in state Republican Party platform documents.
It’s all good clean fun, but does this craziness matter? No, suggests the CW; party platform committees these days, at any level, are a sandbox dominated by ideological activists, producing turgid documents that candidates feel free to ignore.
Fair enough, I guess, but what about those states where ideological activists have an unusually important role? How about, say, Iowa, whose caucuses often all but dictate one or the other party’s nominating process?
I strongly suggest a reading of the Iowa Republican Party Platform by anyone who accuses “liberals” or “the media” of exaggerating the extremism of today’s conservatives.
This 367-plank, 12,000-word document, adopted just last month at the Iowa State Republican Convention, is relentlessly kooky. Right up top, before the “statement of principles,” the platform features a long, ominous quote from Cicero about “traitors.” It’s not made clear whether said traitors are Democrats, RINOs, or Muslims, but treason sure seems to be a major preoccupation for Iowa Republicans.
Once you get to the “statement of principles,” it’s hard to miss principle number seven, which would have satisfied Ayn Rand even on one of her crankier days:
The individual works hard for what is his/hers. Therefore, the individual will determine with whom he/she will share it, not the government. No more legal plunder. Legal plunder is defined as using the law to take from one person what belongs to them, and giving it to others to whom it does not belong. It is plunder if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what that citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.
Given that principle, it’s not surprising that elsewhere the platform flatly calls for the abolition of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (along with minimum wage laws), and of the federal departments of Agriculture (!), Education and Energy. It also appears to oppose any anti-discrimination laws of any sort.
Beyond such basics, the Iowa GOP Platform is essentially a compilation of every right-wing consipracy theory-based preoccupation known to man. In a nod to Glenn Beck, the statement of principles mentions “Progressivism” along with “Collectivism, Socialism, Fascism, [and] Communism” as ideologies incompatible with the Founding Fathers’ design. There’s a birther plank. There’s a plank about the “NAFTA Superhighway.” There’s a plank about ACORN. There’s a plank about the “fairness doctrine.” There’s plank after plank after plank opposing the nefarious activities of the United Nations. There’s a plank calling for abolition of the Federal Reserve System. Needless to say, there are many, many planks spelling out total opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage in excrutiating detail, and attacking any limitation on campaign activities or use of tax dollars by religious organizations.
The very end of the platform holds that Republican candidates should be denied party funds if they don’t agree with at least 80% of the platform, as determined by questionnaires asking about every single crazy plank. This is something we should all be able to get behind; I’d love to see not only Iowa Republican gubernatorial candidate Terry Branstad, a notorious fence-straddler on many issues, but the entire 2012 GOP presidential field, have to check boxes next to solemn items like:
We oppose any effort to implement Islamic Shariah law in this country.
If all this madness is really out of the mainstream of Republican thinking, then perhaps the adults of the GOP should expend the minimum effort necessary to say so very explicitly.
In the Washington Independent, PPI President Will Marshall discusses the need for innovation and entrepreneurship in combating the U.S.’ widening income gap:
“What we need is a policy conducive to innovation and entrepreneurship,” said Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute, a think tank. “You need the energy of invention just as we saw in the late 90s. We need another spurt of innovation-fueled growth.”
“Inequality is one of the great structural challenges facing America,” Marshall continued. “It raises questions about whether the American dream still works. … That’s why it demands attention from policymakers as something we’ve got to squarely face.”
On Tuesday, Alabamans will troop back to the polls for primary runoff elections, with nationally significant contests including the Republican race for governor and two congressional races (Republicans in AL-02 and Democrats in AL-07).
Alabama is the rare state that allows voters to participate in a Democratic primary and then vote in a Republican runoff (the reverse is not, however, allowed). With no Democratic gubernatorial runoff, hopes or fears of Democratic crossover has been a major factor in the Republican contest. That’s mainly a function of the longstanding feud between first-place primary finisher Bradley Byrne and the Alabama Education Association, the NEA affiliate that most teachers in the state belong to. Byrne has sought to make his hatred of “union bosses” and particularly AEA the main issue in the runoff, and accuses his opponent, state representative Robert Bentley, of being AEA’s stooge (Bentley did receive a campaign contribution from AEA, and voted with the association on some key legislative issues). Dr. Bentley, whose second-place primary finish (narrowly defeating Tim James and then surviving a recount) was the biggest surprise of that evening, could benefit from a crossover vote, some of it from teachers resentful of Byrne’s endless AEA-bashing, some from his above-the-fray, feel-good message that drew much of its power from the nastiness of the Byrne-James rivalry.
Byrne won 28 percent in the primary to Bentley’s 25 percent. More importantly, he did best in the high-population counties along I-65 (e.g., Mobile, Montgomery, Jefferson, Madison) where the most reliable Republican voters live. Long the favorite of the Alabama business community, Byrne has had a fundraising advantage in the runoff. (Bentley, a prominent dermatologist who once treated Bear Bryant, has self-financed much of his own campaign) Byrne’s other advantage is historical: first-place primary finishers usually win Alabama runoffs.
But the one independent poll (commissioned by an Alabama firm, Public Strategy Associates) released so far shows Bentley with a 53-33 lead. Byrne has challenged the objectivity of this poll, and claims his own internal polls show him up by 4 points. Most independent observers expect a close race, with the size and shape of the runoff electorate being the key variable. The big intangible is whether Byrne’s efforts to tie Bentley to AEA work or backfire. During the primary campaign, Byrne similarly linked Tim James to AEA, and while James is officially neutral in the runoff, his campaign manager has endorsed Bentley.
Waiting in the wings is Democratic nominee Ron Sparks, who could benefit from any bad blood developed during the GOP primary and runoff.
The one big Democratic contest that could draw a lot of voters otherwise available to cross over to the GOP runoff is in Artur Davis’ 7th congressional district, where first-place primary finisher Terri Sewell, a Birmingham bond attorney originally from Selma, faces Jefferson County (Birmingham) commissioner Sheila Smoot. Both candidates are African-Americans, and the survivor is certain to win the general election. The third-place finisher, Earl Hilliard, Jr., is neutral in the runoff, but a political group that endorsed him in the primary, the Alabama New South Coalition, has now endorsed Sewell, while another African-American political group, the Alabama Democratic Conference, which was neutral in the primary, has now endorsed Smoot. Turnout is likely to be dominated by Jefferson County, where there are a number of runoffs for local offices. Sewell has to be rated the favorite given her strong performance in the primary.
Republicans have their own red-hot congressional runoff in the southeast Alabama 2nd congressional district, where first-place primary finisher Martha Roby, the GOP establishment favorite, is trying to hold off a challenge from Tea Party activist Rick Barber. Barber has received a lot of national attention for a viral internet ad entitled “Gather Your Armies,” which appears to suggest that the Founding Fathers would favor another American revolution against the Obama administration. But Roby, who received 48 percent of the vote in the primary, is likely to win.
Poll Watch
In polling news, Rasmussen has a survey of West Virginians testing a hypothetical 2010 special election to replace the late Sen. Robert Byrd (Gov. Joe Manchin is awaiting an attorney general’s ruling on whether he could move the special election up from 2012 to this November). It shows Manchin as a solid favorite over the two likeliest Republican opponents, but also indicates strong opposition to the idea of Manchin appointing himself to the job first. An early PPP poll on Kentucky’s 2011 gubernatorial race shows incumbent Democrat Steve Beshear with better approval ratios than in the recent past, and now running essentially even with two likely Republican opponents.
And in poll-related news, Huffington Posthas acquired the popular poll results and analysis site Pollster.com from its prior owner, YouGov/Polimetrix (which published the site through National Journal). Political junkies will inevitably compare this development to the recently announced partnership between the New York Times and another poll-and-numbers-focused internet site, FiveThirtyEight (where, in full disclosure, I am a regular contributor).
Ed Kilgore’s PPI Political Memo runs every Tuesday and Friday
It’s puzzling that President Obama keeps returning to the combustible subject of immigration. You’d think that, with big financial reform and energy/climate bills hanging fire, he’d have his hands full. And with unemployment stuck at nearly 10 percent, it’s not exactly a propitious time for a national debate over legalizing millions of immigrants who are living and working illegally in this country.
So what gives? Maybe it’s simply that Obama is the son of an immigrant father. Republicans, of course, have a more cynical explanation. They say Obama is throwing a bone to Latino advocacy groups disappointed by his failure to redeem a campaign pledge to move comprehensive immigration reform. Facing a very difficult midterm election, Democrats can’t afford to give Latino voters reasons to stay home.
After the Justice Department sued Arizona this week over a controversial immigration law, the Wall Street Journal accused Obama of being “more focused on branding the GOP anti-immigrant than he is on signing a reform bill.”
It’s true that immigration has opened up a fault line between Republican restrictionists and moderates like former President Bush, who won a substantial chunk of the Latino vote in 2000 and 2004. But give Obama some credit: He’s consistently ignored advice from Washington wise men to postpone politically risky undertakings – like health care and the climate bill – until the economy turns up again. His determination to take on the nation’s biggest problems, rather than “kick the can down the road,” is admirable, if impolitic.
But while Obama may be ready to lead, it’s not clear the public is ready to follow. A new Gallup poll finds Americans closely divided on immigration reform. By a 50-45 margin, they favor halting the flow of illegal immigrants over “developing a plan to deal with immigrants now in the U.S. illegally.” The survey also found that immigration is far from uppermost in voters’ list of concerns.
In a major speech on immigration last week at American University, Obama once again showed a fine instinct for the middle ground. He chided restrictionists who imagine that all 11 million illegal immigrants can simply be rounded up and sent home. But he also criticized immigrant advocates who call for a blanket amnesty for all people here illegally. “It would suggest to those thinking about coming here illegally that there will be no repercussions for such a decision. And this could lead to a surge in more illegal immigration. And it would also ignore the millions of people around the world who are waiting in line to come here legally,” Obama said. And he added: “Ultimately, our nation, like all nations, has the right and obligation to control its borders and set laws for residency and citizenship. And no matter how decent they are, no matter their reasons, the 11 million who broke these laws should be held accountable.”
That kind of moral clarity has been missing from liberal discourse on immigration, and it gives Obama a chance to be heard by Americans worried that the flow of undocumented immigrants across our southern border have eroded U.S. sovereignty and made a mockery of our laws. Once that has been stipulated, it’s easier to engage people in rational discussion about a compassionate way to deal with the millions of illegal immigrants working in our communities.
So far, so good. But Obama’s speech contained two large blind spots. One has to do with developing our capacity to enforce immigration laws in the workplace. After all, what attracts undocumented immigrants is the opportunity to work in the U.S. Until we have reliable systems for establishing the identity and legal status of workers, it will be difficult to hold employers accountable for hiring those who came here illegally.
Second, and even more important, the president seemed oblivious to the fundamental mismatch between U.S. immigration laws and our economy. America needs to import more skilled labor to plug gaps for scientists, engineers and technicians throughout our high-tech, high-wage economy. Our immigration system, however, gives priority not to skills, but to family unification.
Rather than simply urge Congress to take up comprehensive immigration reform where it left off back in 2006, the administration needs to think more creatively about modernizing immigration policy, and aligning it more closely with the requirements of U.S. economic innovation and competitiveness. I’ve offered some ideas along these lines, but more fundamental change is needed.
President Obama’s instincts on immigration are sound, but he needs to bring our policies and laws up-to-date in addition to finding a fair and compassionate way of dealing with people who came here illegally to find a better life.
When a presidential hopeful like Mitt Romney signs a Washington Postop-ed attacking the president for an arms agreement with Russia, there’s a tendency among Democrats to shrug and ignore it. Mitt, we all understand, is a former governor with no foreign policy experience who needs to burnish his credentials in this area, even if it’s only by bloviating. And Mitt, we know, is vulnerable on his right flank, partially because the GOP has decisively moved in a more conservative direction since Romney posed as the “true conservative” candidate in 2008, and partially because his sponsorship of a Massachusetts health reform initiative that’s hard to distinguish from the hated ObamaCare is going to be a constant problem for him in 2012.
So you read Mitt’s op-ed and maybe laugh at the extraordinary retro feeling of it all — you know, all the Cold War hostility to the godless Russkies — and note the many right-wing boxes he checked off, from the ancient conservative pet rock of missile defense, to the ill-repressed desire for war with North Korea and Iran, to the ritual denunciations of Obama for his alleged fecklessness in negotiating with bad people. But initially, few if any Democrats had anything to say about it.
That certainly changed Wednesday, when Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) took to the same WaPo pages to pen a devastating riposte to Romney for getting, well, just about all the facts wrong. After tearing Romney apart on missile defense, on MIRVs, on what the treaty would and wouldn’t let the Russians do, and on the bipartisan support for what Obama’s done, Kerry concluded with this well-placed jab:
I have nothing against Massachusetts politicians running for president. But the world’s most important elected office carries responsibilities, including the duty to check your facts even if you’re in a footrace to the right against Sarah Palin. More than that, you need to understand that when it comes to nuclear danger, the nation’s security is more important than scoring cheap political points.
As it turns out, Kerry was nicer to Romney than was foreign policy wonk Fred Kaplan, writing in Slate:
In 35 years of following debates over nuclear arms control, I have never seen anything quite as shabby, misleading and–let’s not mince words–thoroughly ignorant as Mitt Romney’s attack on the New START treaty in the July 6 Washington Post.
Whether or not Romney’s efforts to display conservative ferocity on foreign policy work with the GOP base, he could pay a price down the road in terms of the impact on people who aren’t hard-core conservative ideologues. Talking to progressives, you generally get the sense that while they would fight Mitt Romney like sin itself if he’s the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, they basically think the man’s sane and relatively competent, and wouldn’t threaten the foundations of the Republic like some possibilities they could name. But a few more rabid op-eds on world affairs like Romney’s latest effort will definitely undermine any latent tolerance for Romney in center-left precincts, and will also provide some target practice in case the endlessly flip-flopping former governor’s act gets him to a general election.
When Sen. Lindsey Graham (R- S.C.) recently declared cap-and-trade “dead,” he may have been more right than he realized. Graham was referring to the political prospects for carbon pricing in this Congress, but cap-and-trade has been the tool of choice for limiting emissions of other pollutants — like sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxides — for almost 20 years. The EPA proposed a rule yesterday that could sharply limit the role of trading in markets for those pollutants.
The proposed “transport rule” would replace the existing Clean Air Interstate Rule (CAIR). Both are aimed at reducing emissions that affect air quality not locally, but in downwind areas (hence the “transport” and “interstate” in their names). CAIR was issued under the Bush administration but comprehensively rejected by the D.C. Circuit Court in North Carolina v. EPA. CAIR has been in effect since the ruling, but as a zombie regulation. The EPA needs to replace it with a new rule that fits the court’s view of the agency’s powers under the Clean Air Act. The transport rule released yesterday is the agency’s attempt to do this. The rule is massive — 1,300 pages — and reads like a long-form response to the court’s opinion.
So what does this have to do with cap-and-trade? Among the court’s major objections to CAIR was the inability of the EPA to guarantee each state would reduce its emissions sufficiently to prevent interference with air quality downwind. The emissions trading systems set up by CAIR was to reduce emissions overall, and prevent problematic transport of pollution generally, but the EPA couldn’t promise, as the court read the statute to require, that each and every state would reduce emissions sufficiently. The reason for this is interstate trading. CAIR would have allowed emissions sources in different states to trade with each other. This has obvious benefits, as a bigger market is generally more efficient, but it is impossible to know in advance where the emissions reductions will occur. If it is unexpectedly cheap to reduce NOx emissions in Ohio and unexpectedly expensive in Kentucky, trading will happen and Ohio will make deeper cuts. Knowing in advance where reductions will be cheaper is hard (this lack of information is the reason for having a market in the first place). Generally, this lack of foreknowledge is not a problem, since the overall cost of emissions reductions is lower. Under the court’s reading of the Clean Air Act, however, the agency has to know the outcome in advance, at least at the state level.
The transport rule addresses this by largely eliminating interstate trading. Intrastate trading is still allowed, but the rule would only allow interstate trading at the margin, within relatively narrow “variability limits.” The EPA seems to be doubtful that even this small amount of interstate trading will be permitted by the courts. The new rule lists alternative options that do not include interstate trading at all.
It looks like we’ll be lucky if the final version of the new rule includes any interstate trading. Without interstate trading, the emissions reductions achieved by the new rule will be more expensive than they otherwise would be — possibly a lot more (I look forward to analysis from economists on exactly how much). Since the transport rule would replace both of the major cap-and-trade programs currently in operation in the U.S., this would mean an end to interstate emissions trading, at least for the 31 states affected by the new rule. It’s only a slight overstatement to say that cap-and-trade as we now know it would end.
It’s hard to accuse the EPA of timidity or error here. The agency attempted in CAIR to create an interstate market and was (somewhat surprisingly) kicked in the teeth for it by the D.C. Circuit. Though I and many other lawyers disagree with the D.C. Circuit’s reading of the Clean Air Act that led it to reject CAIR, the reading isn’t unreasonable, so it’s hard to place all of the blame on the courts either. Congress ultimately has responsibility for either creating markets for pollution reduction, or giving the EPA sufficient tools to create them itself. The transport rule released yesterday makes it clear that the EPA does not have the tools it needs.
At least some in Congress are aware of this problem, however. The three-pollutant or “3P” bill written by Sens. Carper (D-DE) and Alexander (R-TN) would create new national cap-and-trade markets for SO2, NOx and mercury (a new EPA mercury rule was also rejected by courts). If this bill were passed, it would hopefully include a fourth “P,” carbon, but even without it, the EPA would have the tools it needs. Without it, the transport rule appears to be the best the agency can do. Twenty years after the 1990 Amendments to the Clean Air Act, that should be embarrassing.
As regular readers might recall, back in May I did an analysis which predicted that the furor over immigration policy touched off in Arizona would have its greatest political impact not in the southwest or west coast, but in the Deep South, where a combination of new and highly visible Hispanic populations, low Hispanic voting levels, and red-hot Republican primaries would likely bring the issue to the forefront.
Nothing that’s happened since then has made me change my mind about that, though southern Republican unanimity on backing the Arizona law and replicating it everywhere has reduced the salience of immigration as a differentiator in some GOP primaries, most notably in South Carolina (where in any event the Nikki Haley saga eclipsed everything else).
But in Georgia, whose primary is on July 20, immigration is indeed a big issue in the gubernatorial contest, as reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Jim Galloway:
For the next 13 days, all stops are off when it comes to debating the issue of illegal immigration.
The Obama administration’s court challenge to the Arizona law that gives its peace officers the authority to stop and impound undocumented residents is already serving as a stick to a wasp nest in Georgia’s race for governor.
Former congressman Nathan Deal’s first TV ad of the primary season on Wednesday focused on illegal immigration and a promise that Georgia would soon have an Arizona-style law.
On the answering machines of tens of thousands of GOP voters, former secretary of state Karen Handel left a message of endorsement from Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer. Expect to see Brewer at Handel’s side before the July 20 vote.
The climate doesn’t brook dissent. Democrats have been uniformly silent on the Arizona issue.
As it happens, Deal and Handel are battling for a runoff spot. Handel and long-time Republican front-runner John Oxendine are also proposing radical changes in the state tax code, abolishing income taxes entirely, but so far that momentous issue is not getting the kind of attention generated by the action of another state on immigration three time zones away.
Going into yesterday’s Alabama runoffs, the Republican gubernatorial contest revolved around rumors of a big, teacher-union-generated Democratic crossover vote in favor of Dr. Robert Bentley, along with speculation that his opponent, Bradley Byrne, might have gained crucial momentum by accusing Bentley of being a Democratic or union stooge.
Last Friday, the 
The recent Bloomberg BusinessWeek 
Seyward Darby has an amusing piece at the New Republic‘s site with some of the 
When a presidential hopeful like Mitt Romney signs a Washington Post 
When Sen. Lindsey Graham (R- S.C.) recently declared cap-and-trade “dead,” he may have been more right than he realized. Graham was referring to the political prospects for carbon pricing in this Congress, but cap-and-trade has been the tool of choice for limiting emissions of other pollutants — like sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxides — for almost 20 years. The EPA 
As regular readers might recall, back in May I did an