Results from yesterday’s primaries in Indiana, North Carolina and Ohio showed that on occasion the conventional wisdom is right.
Dan Coats did indeed win a Senate nomination in Indiana with an unimpressive (39 percent) percentage because the hard-core conservative vote was divided between Sen. Jim DeMint’s (R-S.C.) favorite, Marlin Stutzman (who finished second), and paleoconservative John Hostettler.
Lee Fisher did indeed parlay superior money, name recognition and endorsements into a fairly comfortable (56/44) win over Jennifer Brunner in Ohio’s Democratic Senate primary.
And in the North Carolina Democratic Senate primary, Elaine Marshall and Cal Cunningham are indeed headed for a runoff on June 22, with Marshall leading the first round a few percentage points short of the 40 percent threshold for outright victory. As expected, Ken Lewis ran third, though with a relatively strong 17 percent.
A PPP survey over the weekend showed Marshall leading a hypothetical runoff contest 43/32 with a quarter of the vote undecided. I guess we will see just how much money Cunningham’s friends in the DSCC are willing and able to raise to help him overcome that lead.
In House races, the closest thing to a real upset was in Indiana, where endangered incumbent Republican congressmen Mark Souder and Dan Burton narrowly survived. This disappointed journalists who had prepared “anti-incumbent mood” pieces in advance.
Rep. Larry Kissell (D-N.C.) won his primary pretty easily in North Carolina, and self-funded conservative Tim D’Annuzio will be in a runoff in his effort to take on Kissell.
Next up on the calendar is Utah’s Republican State Convention on Saturday, which will determine the fate of endangered Sen. Bob Bennett, who may have fatally displeased conservatives by co-sponsoring bipartisan health reform legislation. One of Bennett’s chief tormenters, Red State’s Erick Erickson, is already moving on to an effort to demonize the guy who appears to be running second ahead of Bennett in delegates, so it must not look good for the incumbent.
Fifty-three hours — that is how long it took our law enforcement agencies to apprehend Faisal Shahzad, the main suspect in Saturday’s attempted Times Square bombing. The only thing faster has been Republican efforts to once again politicize a failed attack. Just like they did after the apprehension of the failed Christmas Day bomber, Republican leaders wasted no time yesterday trying to spin up mass hysteria by reminding us that we need to be living in a heightened state of perpetual fear, that Constitutional rights are meaningless, and that, oh yes, this is all Democrats’ fault.
Take Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA). At a speech he gave yesterday at the Heritage Foundation, the House minority whip made it abundantly clear that he believes the entire country should be living in a permanent state of nationwide panic:
[Yet] with each close encounter, my fear is that the country goes on heightened alert only as long as the media tend to cover it. All too often that means hours and days rather than permanently.
Does he not realize there are hundreds of thousands of American service members at war right now and have been for going on nine years? Cantor went on to say:
Many of the same critics who groused about how we failed to connect the dots prior to 9-11 are today repeating the same pattern. As a result, America is at risk of slipping into the type of false sense of security which prevailed before that September morning.
Rudy Giuliani could not have said it better — noun, verb, 9-11.
Equally disappointing was the predictable line of attack dragged out by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Rep. Peter King (R-NY). The two pounced on the administration and the Department of Justice for reading Shahzad his Miranda rights after he was taken into custody — even though the suspect was interrogated (and apparently sang like a bird) before those rights were read. McCain said it would be a “serious mistake” to read the suspect his Miranda rights, while King was quoted as saying, “I know he’s an American citizen, but still.”
Republicans are blatantly suggesting that we ignore what our Constitution requires and our Supreme Court has mandated. They proudly embrace the argument that this suspected criminal — who is, whether you like it or not, an American citizen accused of committing crimes on American soil — has no protection under American laws. This is a very slippery slope.
Even Glenn Beck (yes, Glenn Beck!) disagrees with this, stating yesterday that this is no time to “shred the Constitution.”
This “strategy” of fear-mongering coupled with the casual application of due process and the rule of law is pathetic, predictable and dangerous. Republicans continue to insist that every act or attempted act of terrorism on American soil must be met with a militarized response straight from an episode of “24.” They ignore, at our peril, the long and successful track record our criminal justice system has in convicting these terrorists.
I fundamentally believe that there is only one way the terrorists “win,” and that is when we ourselves destroy the very ideals that are the foundation upon which our nation stands. Republicans seem to have no issue tearing down those pillars by themselves.
A year ago, when laying out his vision of fast trains zipping between major cities like they do in Europe and Asia, President Obama invoked the words of Chicago architect Daniel Burnham: “Make no little plans.”
Last month, Obama’s top rail administrator, Joseph Szabo, was in Chicago touting little plans — and slow trains — at a congressional field hearing about how the administration spent $8 billion in high-speed rail grants.
Trains might travel at or near 200 miles per hour overseas, but such velocity isn’t really necessary in the U.S., Szabo, chief of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), said. “There are some that believe that only investments yielding 200-mph service will yield benefits. The facts show otherwise,” he asserted in testimony before a House Transportation and Infrastructure panel.
Instead, he said the FRA “views high-speed and intercity passenger rail service in the context of the transportation markets served and the needs of the passengers rather than as a race to see how fast a piece of equipment can move.”
Such criteria helps explain why the FRA allocated more than half of high-speed rail grants to projects that don’t qualify as high speed by international standards. They include extending conventional Amtrak service from Portland, Maine, north to Brunswick.
Szabo praised Amtrak’s current trains between Boston and Portland as an example of modern service that attracts passengers — a rather breathtaking rewriting of the line’s actual history. Seventy years ago when the Boston & Maine Railway operated the line, trains made the Boston-Portland trip in one hour, 50 minutes. Today, Amtrak takes two hours, 25 minutes — or a third longer — to cover the same ground.
It’s this kind of regress, rather than progress, that has turned America’s once-superb railway system into a marginal operation outside of the Boston-Washington Northeast Corridor.
Szabo acted as the cheerleader for other rail grants handed out by his agency, such as $1.1 billion to add sidings and signals between Chicago and St. Louis to increase train speeds to a maximum of 110 mph.
When rolling out his rail plans a year ago, President Obama said that 110 mph was only a first step in attaining the type of fast train networks found in places like France, Spain and China. But a year later, the FRA bureaucracy seems ready to make the “first step” a long-term goal, which will only guarantee that America stays on the slow track behind the rest of the world.
I know you’re not supposed to tout your own work on blogs, but for this, my inaugural post for Progressive Fix, I can’t resist.
When PPI established its New Economy Task Force 11 years ago, its first product was a pamphlet entitled “Rules of the Road: Governing Principles for the New Economy.” In Internet time, 11 years is a lifetime. But that short but powerful statement still holds up — and, I would argue, is just as relevant today as it was in 1999. This seems as good a time as any to revisit what we said and take stock of how far — or not — we’ve come.
The pamphlet started off with this statement:
The U.S. economy has undergone a profound structural transformation in the last decade and a half. The information technology revolution has expanded well beyond the cutting-edge high-tech sector. It has shaken the very foundations of the old industrial and occupational order, redefined the rules of entrepreneurship and competition, and created an increasingly global marketplace for a myriad of new goods and services.
I would venture to say that it’s even truer today than when we first wrote it. The introduction went on to state:
Yet while economic reality is fundamentally changing, much of our public policy framework remains rooted in the past. This mismatch between public policy and economic reality is not sustainable. … On one side of the political spectrum, policymakers advocate across-the-board tax cuts, a dramatically reduced role for government, and elimination of social regulations. … On the other side of the political spectrum, policymakers advocate increased spending on top-down social programs geared toward income redistribution, coupled with a focus on command-and-control regulation through bureaucratic institutions, ignoring just how entrepreneurial, fast moving, and flexible our economy has become. Furthermore, resistance from both ends of the political spectrum to open trade, global integration, and technological and organizational change threatens to slow the economic changes that hold great potential to yield higher standards of living for American workers
After 11 years, while some progress has been made, all too often policy-makers still view economic and technology challenges through either of these lenses. And those resistant to change, whether groups advocating for strict regulations on “network neutrality” and “Internet privacy,” or restrictions on globalization and trade, continue to be active, if not more so.
How Far Have We Traveled?
The guide offered 10 key rules to policy-makers to encourage an innovation-driven economy. How have we done on those prescriptions? Let’s go down the list:
Rule #1: Spur Innovation to Raise Living Standards
….Because innovation and change are disruptive, they tend to spark strong political demands to insulate affected segments of the economy and slow down economic change. Such demands, while understandable, inherently deny opportunities to less politically powerful interests in the guise of “protecting” those with clout. As a result, to effectively promote growth in the New Economy, government must facilitate, rather than resist, the processes of economic change and modernization as these changes create new opportunities and increased incomes for all Americans.
Unfortunately, the urge to protect the status quo is powerful, as Washington still shows little appetite for upsetting it by enabling or promoting innovation.
Rule #2: Expand the Winners’ Circle
Ensuring that the benefits of innovation and change are spread broadly will require that all Americans, including those not yet engaged in or benefitting from the New Economy, have access to the tools and resources they need to get ahead and stay ahead.
We’ve made some progress here, not the least of which was expanding health care coverage to more Americans (though the effects of reform won’t be felt for years). But more needs to be done, particularly in areas like unemployment insurance reform and better access to lifelong learning.
Rule #3: Invest in Knowledge and Skills
To spur innovation and equip citizens to win in the New Economy, government should invest more in the knowledge infrastructure of the 21st century: world class education, training and life-long learning, science, technology, technology standards, and other intangible public goods. These are the essential drivers of economic progress today.
Not many in Washington would disagree. But it’s a different matter altogether to muster the political will to increase investments in these areas, particularly when it means cutting old economy spending, such as agricultural subsidies.
Rule #4: Grow the Net
The Internet is a critical component of the emerging digital economy. …The information technology revolution is transforming virtually all industries and is central to increased economic efficiency and productivity, higher standards of living, and greater personal empowerment.
Governments must avoid policies and regulations that would inhibit the growth of the Internet or slow progress by protecting business interests threatened by the digitization of the economy. Policymakers should craft a legal and regulatory framework that supports the widespread growth of the Internet and high-speed “broadband” telecommunications, in such areas as taxation, encryption, privacy, digital signatures, telecommunications regulation, and industry regulation (in banking, insurance, and securities, for example).
In some ways Washington has embraced this message. The inclusion of billions of dollars for support for the smart grid, health IT and broadband in the stimulus package was a key step in the right direction. On the other hand, the growing interest in regulating the Internet — such as overly restrictive net neutrality and privacy regulations — suggests that we have gone in the wrong direction.
Rule #5: Let Markets Set Prices
In the old economy, government often regulated prices when national markets were dominated by oligopolies or monopolies. In those cases, the economic costs of government intervention were manageable, and sometimes necessary. But in the new, more competitive global economy, distorted prices are much more likely lead to economically inefficient decisions by consumers and producers and to unfair, politically driven resource allocation. Therefore, in the absence of clear market failures, markets, not governments, should set prices of privately provided goods and services.
It’s still hard for many policy-makers to embrace this rule, but it’s as valid today as it was a decade ago.
Rule #6: Open Regulated Markets to Competition
Economists have long acknowledged that competition keeps prices down. The New Economy creates another critical reason for competition: competition drives innovation, and ultimately provides the greatest benefits to consumers and citizens. Of course, government must continue to provide common-sense health, safety, and environmental regulations. However, government should move away from regulating economic competition among firms and instead promote competition … Through minimalist, yet consistent rules, public policy should also ensure that consumers have the information they need to make educated choices and provide a backstop to protect consumers and citizens from abuse in markets.
Like rule # 5, it’s hard for some policy-makers to resist intervention to regulate competition. We see it most clearly in telecommunications, where some still argue that more government-enforced competition is needed.
Rule #7: Let Competing Technologies Compete
Technological innovation has now become central to addressing a wide range of public policy goals, including better health care, environmental protection, a renewed defense base, improved education and training, and reinvented government. For example, technology provides doctors and patients with state-of- the-art health information systems that improve the quality of care. Similarly, new generations of cleaner technologies can dramatically reduce pollution generated by industrial processes. … We should look for technology-enabled solutions to public problems, but not so that today’s winners are frozen in place at the expense of tomorrow’s innovators.
Amen. While government does need to target technology areas (e.g., clean energy, IT, robotics, etc.), it shouldn’t pick specific technologies within those sectors.
Rule #8: Empower People With Information
In the old economy, information was a scarce resource to which few outside of large corporations and governments had access. In the New Economy, constant innovations in ever-lower-cost information technologies have enabled increasingly ubiquitous access to information, giving individuals greater power to make informed choices. Governments should encourage and take advantage of this trend to address a broad array of public policy questions by ensuring that all Americans have the information they need as consumers and citizens.
Progress on this front: The recently announced National Broadband Plan, for example, takes a number of important steps in this direction.
Rule #9:Demand High-Performance Government
Government should become as fast, responsive, and flexible as the economy and society with which it interacts. The new model of governing should be decentralized, non-bureaucratic, catalytic, results-oriented, and empowering. …
When designing solutions to compelling public concerns, such as reducing industrial pollution or delivering world-class public education, government should hold organizations and individuals accountable for meeting goals, while allowing them flexibility to achieve those goals. In many cases, industry self-regulation can achieve public policy goals in ways that are more flexible and cost effective than traditional command-and-control regulation, while also enabling technological innovation.
Procedurally, governments should use information technologies to fundamentally reengineer government and provide a wide array of services through digital electronic means to increase efficiency, cut costs, and improve service. Digitizing government is the next step in re-engineering government.
Washington may give lip service to #9, but when the rubber hits the road, much is still the same. Perhaps the main area of progress is using IT to transform government, but even here a great deal remains to be done.
Rule #10: Replace Bureaucracies With Networks
In the old economy, bureaucracy was how we addressed many major public policy problems. In the New Economy, we must rely on a host of new public-private partnerships and alliances.
Rather than acting as the sole funder and manager of bureaucratic programs, New Economy governments need to co-invest and collaborate with other organizations — networks of companies, universities, non-profit community organizations, churches, and other civic organizations — to achieve a wide range of public policy goals.
Yet public policy has only begun to explore the potential of bottom-up, decentralized networks assuming the lead role in solving pressing societal problems. Government needs to co-invest in these efforts and foster continuous learning through the sharing of best- practice lessons. Most importantly, the collaborative network model requires government to relax its often overly rigid bureaucratic program controls and instead rely on incentives, information sharing, competition, and accountability to achieve policy goals.
Of the 10 rules, this last one may be the hardest for policy-makers to embrace. The legacy of government bureaucracy and “programs” as the solution to our problems — rather than government-enabled networks — is so deeply held that new approaches are not even considered in many cases.
More than a decade since we first published these rules, it’s clear that many of our prescriptions remain unheeded. Whether or not you embrace the term “New Economy” is not the point. The U.S. economy is fundamentally different than it was two decades ago. To pretend that it hasn’t changed, and to continue ignoring the shifting landscape, will consign us to economic stagnation. That rules of the road issued in 1999 remain relevant today underscores just how little progress was made in the 2000s, and how much work needs to be done to fully bring America into the 21st century. Policy makers and stakeholders from across the political spectrum need to move beyond the talking points from another generation and embrace policies based on today’s realities.
The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Progressive Policy Institute.
Like observers from all over the partisan and ideological spectrum, I’ve been following the fallout from Arizona’s new immigration law (compounded by conflicting reports that the Obama administration and/or congressional Democratic leaders might be moving up federal immigration legislation in the queue) very closely, given the implications this issue has for both 2010 and (particularly) beyond.
But in his weekly column for National Journal over the weekend, Ron Brownstein has done us all the great service of carefully documenting how far and how fast Republican members of Congress have moved on this subject since the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill in 2006:
Just four years ago, 62 U.S. senators, including 23 Republicans, voted for a comprehensive immigration reform bill that included a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens. That bill was co-authored by Arizona Republican John McCain and Massachusetts Democrat Edward Kennedy. President Bush strongly supported it. The Republican supporters also included such conservative senators as Sam Brownback of Kansas and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky….The measure almost certainly could have attracted the necessary 218 votes to pass the House. But it died when House GOP leaders refused to bring it to a vote because they concluded that it lacked majority support among House Republicans.
Since 2006, Republican support for comprehensive action has unraveled. In 2007, Senate negotiators tilted the bill further to the right on issues such as border enforcement and guest workers. And yet, amid a rebellion from grassroots conservatives against anything approaching “amnesty,” just 12 Senate Republicans supported the measure as it fell victim to a filibuster. By 2008, McCain declared in a GOP presidential debate that he would no longer support his own bill: Tougher border enforcement, he insisted, should precede discussion of any new pathway to citizenship.
So the GOP position was moving rightwards at warp speed even with a supporter of comprehensive immigration reform, George W. Bush, still in the White House, being advised by Karl Rove, who viewed such legislation as critical to maintaining a competitive position for Republicans among Hispanic voters. But it’s shifted even more since then, even though levels of immigration have significantly dropped.
For months, Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., have been negotiating an enforcement-legalization plan that largely tracks the 2006 model with some innovative updates, including a “biometric” Social Security card to certify legal status for employment. On balance, their proposal appears more conservative than the 2006 bill.Yet it has been stalled for weeks because Graham had demanded that a second Republican sign on as a co-sponsor before the legislation is released, and none stepped forward. Even Graham angrily backed away this week, after Senate Democratic leaders briefly suggested they would move immigration reform ahead of climate-change legislation he is also negotiating. Reform advocates suspect that Graham is withdrawing from the immigration effort partly to avoid embarrassing his close ally McCain, who faces a stiff primary challenge from conservative former Rep. J.D. Hayworth.
So it appears that Senate Republican support for comprehensive immigration reform (or to be exact, a more conservative version of it) has dropped from 23 to 1 and perhaps soon to nada.
Underneath this shift, notes Brownstein, is the self-replicating demographic isolation of the GOP, which, as Rove forsaw, could make the construction of a Republican majority much harder in the medium-to-long-range future:
[T]he hardening GOP position also shows how the party is being tugged toward nativism as its coalition grows more monochromatic: In a nation that is more than one-third minority, nearly 90 percent of McCain’s votes in the 2008 presidential election came from whites. That exclusionary posture could expose the GOP to long-term political danger. Although Hispanics are now one-sixth of the U.S. population, they constitute one-fifth of all 10-year-olds and one-fourth of 1-year-olds.
This may not matter to Republican candidates in tough primaries this year, who aren’t looking beyond their noses and figure they can’t afford to get outflanked by opponents who are “getting tough” on immigration. But they are in danger of taking an existing demographic problem facing the GOP and making it immeasurably worse, and more immediate.
This weekend’s bomb plot in Times Square was the third significant terrorist try in the U.S. since August. After Najibullah Zazi‘s arrest that month and the failed underwear bomber on Christmas Day, it was also the third to fail. (Note that I’m leaving out the Ft. Hood incident, which I don’t classify as terrorism.)
Whether or not the Pakistani Taliban’s claims of responsibility prove true, the plot’s simplistic nature and the bomb’s failure to detonate are the latest anecdotal evidence that the terrorist threat has shifted. Out — for now — is the rarer, mass-causality, 9/11-style plot, while “in” is the more frequent but smaller-impact variety.
While it’s good news that the possibility of thousands of deaths in a single attack has decreased, there’s a sobering reality about this morphing modus operandi: Sooner or later, one of these small-fry, rig-it-up-in-my-garage plots is bound to work. While the recent cases aren’t connected to the same ultimate terrorist authority, their frequency and near-success indicate that similar attempts will keep coming, perhaps as often as three or four per year.
Amateurs may throw these plots together, but they stand a great chance of success even in an era of improving cooperation between police and intelligence services. A U.S. counterterrorism official points out something in today’s WaPo that I’ve believed for a long time: “‘Unsophisticated’ can still cause a lot of pain and misery… These events are so hard to detect in advance. If there were a foolproof way of finding people before they acted, whether it’s the [snipers] in D.C. or someone who puts a bomb in his car . . . it has to be understood how very difficult this business is.”
That’s where the White House has come up a bit short. While President Obama’s initial statements praising the NYPD and vows “to do what’s necessary to protect the American people” are important, they create the public expectation that the government actually can provide complete security, 100 percent of the time.
Instead, the White House should marry tough-minded rhetoric with an explanation of the evolving threat. It’s a delicate dance to be sure – it’s unnatural for any president to acknowledge chinks in America’s armor. Fortunately, complex explanations play to President Obama’s rhetorical skills, and its possible to envision a speech that strikes the right tone of strength, vigilance, caution and honesty about where we stand against an evolving threat.
The stark likelihood of an eventual success dictates the White House shouldn’t miss the opportunity to engage the public on this critical national security issue.
With our limitless capacity for outrage these days, it’s always nice to read a sober and reasonable take on the kerfuffle du jour. Today, it’s ITIF’s Daniel Castro’s memo on the Facebook privacy imbroglio.
For those who missed it, the world’s most popular social networking site has come under fire for its recent changes to its privacy policy. In the crosshairs are two new innovations: instant personalization and social plugins. Instant personalization is a pilot program that allows a few partners — Yelp, Microsoft Docs, and Pandora, to date — to use data from a Facebook user’s personal profile to customize their experience on their site. The latter enables websites to place a Facebook widget on a page, which would allow users to click on a “Like” button or post a comment that would automatically show up on a user’s Facebook feed. In both cases, users have to opt out of the service if they don’t wish to use it.
The changes predictably sparked an uproar from Facebook users and privacy advocates. The indignation even swept through the halls of Congress, with lawmakers registering their displeasure. But as Castro reminds us, it’s all much ado about not much:
Many Internet companies clearly intend to continue to find innovative ways to use personal data to deliver products and services to their customers. While Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg may or may not “believe in privacy”, it is clear that Facebook thinks that companies should respond to changing social norms on privacy and that the overall trend is towards more sharing and openness of personal data. So going forward, no Facebook user (or privacy fundamentalist) can continue to use the service without admitting that the benefits of using the website outweigh any reservation the user has about sharing his or her personal data. As the saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
Certainly some users may still object to this tradeoff. But if you don’t like it, don’t use it. Facebook is neither a right nor a necessity. Moreover, it is a free tool that individuals can use in exchange for online advertising. In fact, one high-profile Facebook user, the German Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner, has already threatened to close down her Facebook profile in protest of Facebook’s new privacy policies. Users that feel this way about Facebook’s changes should vote with their mouse and click their way to greener pastures. Companies respond to market forces and consumer demands, and if enough users object to the privacy policy of Facebook, these individuals should be able to find a start-up willing to provide a privacy-rich social networking experience.
Castro doesn’t weigh in on whether Facebook did, in fact, violate its stated privacy policy, leaving that question to the Federal Trade Commission and noting that any organization that deviates from its policy should be held liable.
But the outcry that greeted the revelation that a corporation might use valuable consumer information for its benefit is a real Capt. Renault moment. My guess is that after the fuss dies down, most users will stay on Facebook, recognizing that the benefits of using it outstrip the risks and inconveniences. If the scandal makes people more informed and vigilant about personal data and privacy — both online and off- — then all the better.
Of course, online privacy remains a big, unresolved issue, and we need to continue to press government to update our laws to protect consumers in a fast-evolving information environment. But, as Castro points out, the next time Facebook changes its privacy policy, “let’s not act like this is a national emergency.” We consumers actually have a lot more power than we think we have.
There are three actual elections this week: party primaries in Indiana, Ohio and North Carolina, all on May 4. The Republicans are offering the main show in the Hoosier State, with former Sen. Dan Coats trying to hold off hard-right challenges for another Senate nomination from former U.S. Rep. John Hostettler and state senator Marlin Stutzman. Hostettler has a well-established following among Indiana conservatives (but not much money), while Stutzman is benefitting from national right-wing support, notably from Sen. Jim DeMint’s Senate Conservative Fund, RedState.org and Mike Huckabee. But a Survey USA poll that came out last week gives Coats a significant lead (36 percent for Coats, 24 percent for Hostettler and 18 percent for Stutzman) as his rivals split the True Conservative vote. The same poll shows all three handily defeating Democrat Brad Ellsworth at this point in the cycle.
In a House primary with less ideological freight than the Senate race, Indiana Republican Rep. Mark Souder, a member of the class of ’94, appears in danger of being upset by self-funding opponent Bob Thomas.
Over in Ohio, the Democratic Senate primary pits Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher, a long-time statewide elected official, against Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner. Fisher has had a big financial advantage and labor support, while Brunner has drawn a lot of attention from the progressive netroots. But a new Suffolk University poll last week shows Fisher building a big (55 percent – 27 percent) lead as Election Day nears. Both Democrats have been running even with or ahead of Republican nominee Rob Portman, in a seat being vacated by Republican George Voinovich (one of those oft-forgotten Dem opportunities that could offset likely losses).
And in North Carolina, a big field of Democrats is competing for the chance to take on Republican Sen. Richard Burr, one of those GOPers who looked pretty vulnerable early in this cycle. It’s been a relatively low-key primary and turnout is expected to be very low. The two long-time front-runners, Secretary of State Elaine Marshall and former state senator Cal Cunningham are both expected to fall short of the 40 percent of the vote needed to avoid a June 22 runoff. Marshall has drawn some netroots support, while Cunningham was reportedly lured into the race by D.C. Democrats who felt Marshall wasn’t electable. A third candidate, Ken Lewis, an African American attorney, could do well enough to become a big factor in the runoff.
The one new survey to come out over the weekend provided some expected bad news for Democrats in Hawaii. The winner-take-all special election to replace Democratic Rep. Neil Abercrombie (who resigned to run for governor) is favoring the one Republican in the race over two Democrats, according to a Honolulu Advertiserpoll, which shows former Honolulu city councilman Charles Djou with 36 percent, former U.S. Rep. Ed Case with 28 percent and state Senate President Colleen Hanabusa with 22 percent. Djou would probably have little chance of holding onto the seat in a regular general election in November, but it’s still a loss that House Democrats could do without.
Finally, because today’s crazy state legislative proposals are often tomorrow’s campaign issues, you should check out Jillian Rayfield’s useful summary of nutty offerings from America’s statehouse solons at TalkingPointsMemo. Lowlights include an advance nullification measure that some Minnesota Republicans are pushing; a global warming denial measure in South Dakota; Georgia’s action to reestablish the important right to bring shooting irons into airports; and Arizona’s far-sighted stand against the breeding of human-animal hybrids. There’s also a sobering roundup of the latest state efforts to chip away at abortion rights.
Ed Kilgore’s PPI Political Memo runs every Monday and Friday.
Space is limited.
Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis and not guaranteed.
Tom Colicchio – Chef and Head Judge of Bravo’s “Top Chef”
Joel Berg – Executive Director, New York City Coalition Against Hunger, author of All You Can Eat: How Hungry is America? and former Coordinator of Community Food Security at USDA in the Clinton Administration
CONTACT:
Steven Chlapecka – schlapecka@ppionline.org, T: 202.525.3931
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Tom Colicchio will join the Progressive Policy Institute and FreshFarm Market on Wednesday, May 5 to promote a “Good Food, Good Jobs” initiative—a food jobs program—to fight hunger, foster economic growth and bolster employment.
With almost 49 million Americans living in households that can’t afford enough food, high food prices and skyrocketing unemployment have forced millions of families to choose less healthy, less expensive food. Affordable, nutritious food is key to fighting the chronic problems of hunger, malnutrition and obesity that face many communities throughout the United States. And innovative employment ideas are needed to get the nation back to work. Joel Berg’s report for PPI on this topic argues that, just as the Obama Administration and Congress have supported “green jobs,” they should launch a “Good Food, Good Jobs” initiative, quickly creating food jobs to boost the economy and improve public health.
WHO: Tom Colicchio – Chef and Head Judge of Bravo’s Top Chef
Joel Berg – Executive Director, New York City Coalition Against Hunger, author of All You Can Eat: How Hungry is America? and former Coordinator of Community Food Security under the Clinton Administration at USDA
WHERE: Foggy Bottom FreshFarm Market, 2301 I St. NW, Washington, D.C. (Near 24th St. and New Hampshire Ave.)
MEDIA COVERAGE: The event is open to the media and individual interviews with speakers are available upon request. Media in attendance are required to register in advance of the event to Steven Chlapecka at schlapecka@ppionline.org.
For further questions, please contact Steven Chlapecka at schlapecka@ppionline.org, 202.525.3931 (office), 202.556.1752 (cell).
On the heels of a severe recession, with stubbornly high unemployment and a still-sputtering recovery, economists and policy-makers are casting around for something — anything — that might jump-start economic growth and rapid job creation. One place we might expect them to look for ideas is our own economic history: Where have new jobs come from in the past? What is the pattern of recent economic recoveries?
As it turns out, job creation in the American economy comes disproportionately from new and young companies. Sluggish economic times, moreover, can be the cradle of entrepreneurship: Over half of the companies on the Fortune 500 were founded during a recession or bear market. Entrepreneurs are also responsible for introducing a large share of innovations that improve our standard of living.
One would think, then, that the conditions for job creation would be obvious: Avoid steps that would discourage new companies from starting and that would make it as difficult as possible for them to grow. But alas, one would be wrong. In recent weeks, we have seen signs that policy-makers and legislators still have no clue how to solve the jobs dilemma.
An Assault on Startups?
First, Bloomberg BusinessWeekreported last week that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is targeting the use of freelancers and “perma-temps” by many firms. At issue is the classification as freelancers of workers who remain on a company’s payroll months and even years, a violation of the tax code. Because such workers offer flexibility and help reduce costs, many companies that use them are young and small. As Nick Schulz pointed out, this “assault” on voluntary work arrangements might not be the best idea when we’re interested in encouraging job creation.
Data from the Census Bureau and Bureau of Labor Statistics indicate that the average size of new firms has been shrinking by about one or two employees for several years. On one hand, that’s a potentially worrisome trend as it suggests a Red Queen effect whereby we need to start more and more new companies just to generate a steady level of jobs. On the other hand, as the BusinessWeek story pointed out, this trend also indicates that more new and young companies are using flexible employment — freelancers, independent contractors, temporary workers — as a way to help boost their chances of survival and growth.
Just last week the CEO of a young firm explained to me how he and his co-founder opened up their office space some time ago to anyone who wanted to come in and write software for them on a temporary basis. Some of those who did became full-time employees, while others ended up starting their own companies in the same office. It’s difficult to predict what effect the IRS action will have on new and young companies, but it seems safe to say that it won’t be the job creation elixir for which policy-makers are searching.
Another recent, admittedly less worrisome development was the appearance in the financial reform bill of some provisions that likely would have suppressed startup activity. One provision required startups that raised funding to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission and then wait four months for review. Another hiked the monetary thresholds for “angel investors” — wealthy individuals who play an increasingly important role in financing new companies — which could have worked to prohibit much startup financing.
The anti-startup and anti-angel provisions have since been watered down, but remain testaments to how easily and quietly we might kill the golden goose in this country. Who sits down and asks, How can I depress entrepreneurship today?
Entrepreneurship Essential to Any Recovery
These recent episodes take place against a backdrop of an apparently anti-startup zeitgeist taking shape. An impressionistic gaze at the landscape reveals an increasing tendency for policy-makers to focus on things large and well-established, even as our economy and society are driven more and more by the new and small.
One indication of this is well-known: The rush to bail out some of the biggest and oldest companies in the economy sent the wrong message to potential entrepreneurs. There was a compelling rationale to the actions to save General Motors and Chrysler, just as there was one to pour money into banks and other financial institutions. But the composite signal was perverse: bigger and older are better. The largest banks in the country now have a bigger market share than they did prior to the recession, and these aren’t necessarily the primary sources of financing for new and young businesses. The zeitgeist was expressed quite succinctly in the BusinessWeek story: “It’s easier and quicker to audit smaller businesses.” So there you go — ease trumps dynamism.
New companies and the jobs and innovations they generate are not silver-bullet solutions. Yet economic recovery surely won’t happen, or be as strong, without them. Entrepreneurship in the U.S. has been remarkably resilient for about 30 years, with a surprisingly steady level and rate of firm formation. While encouraging the formation and growth of more startups is clearly something that would boost economic growth, it’s not entirely clear how we might go about doing that. What is crystal clear, however, is that we could very well succeed in killing entrepreneurship if we don’t pay attention to what goes on in Washington.
The big news this week was the much-telegraphed announcement yesterday by Florida Gov. Charlie Crist that he will abandon the Republican senatorial primary (where he was in danger of being trounced by Marco Rubio) and instead re-file as an independent candidate in that race.
Crist’s gambit raises a lot of questions, most immediately about how many of his donors will ask for their money back, and how, exactly, he will negotiate the very difficult shoals of an independent candidacy in a state famous for its partisanship. The instant GOP blowback was intense, as Jonathan Martin of Politicoreported:
Immediately after he gave his speech, his campaign manager and two press aides resigned. His mail vendor and media consultant also indicated that they would not remain with him as he pursued a third-party bid.
In Washington, the very GOP senators who had anointed him as the party’s favorite last year castigated him as an untrustworthy opportunist and demanded that he return their contributions and those of other Republicans.
Crist appears determined to run an “outsider” campaign, which will be somewhat difficult for an incumbent governor and former darling of the national GOP establishment. The first post-announcement three-way polls will be very interesting.
While it was completely overshadowed by the Crist drama, the Florida senatorial race was also roiled by reports that billionaire investor Jeff Greene, who bet against the housing bubble and won big, will enter the Democratic primary against U.S. Rep. Kendrick Meek, who had been focused on the general election. Greene is apparently being advised by the eccentric duo of Joe Trippi and Doug Schoen.
The other trend worth watching this week was the sudden dilemma posed to Republican candidates for various offices across the country by Arizona’s new immigration law, which among other things, authorized law enforcement officers to demand proof of citizenship from anyone “reasonably suspected” of being in the country illegally. While virtually all Republicans have defended the Arizona action as an indictment of the failure of the federal government to “protect the borders,” the specific law has struck sparks, particularly among candidates in highly competitive Republican primaries.
In Nevada, for example, the front-runner in the gubernatorial race, Brian Sandoval, who happens to be both a Latino and suspected by hard-core conservatives of being a moderate squish, instantly endorsed the Arizona law. His main opponent, incumbent Jim Gibbons, who has been running as the true conservative candidate, demurred, arguing that Nevada didn’t need that sort of law because it wasn’t a border state. And a third candidate who is trying to outflank Gibbons on the right, Mike Montandon, not only endorsed the Arizona initiative but called profiling by law enforcement officers — the main concern many have had with the Arizona law — absolutely essential.
The furor over the Arizona initiative has not been confined to the West. It may, in fact, have its greatest impact on Republicans in the Deep South, where Hispanic immigration has been visible enough to upset conservatives, but has not yet created a significant voting bloc. Almost immediately after the enactment of the Arizona law, Alabama Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim James, who is struggling to overcome Judge Roy Moore as the Christian conservative candidate in that race, launched an ad attacking his own state’s practice of offering drivers’ tests in languages other than English.
Next door in Georgia, gubernatorial candidate Nathan Deal, who recently resigned from the U.S. House on the heels of an ethics investigation, publicly called for enactment of an Arizona-style immigration system in his own state. And in South Carolina, Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer, who earlier compared subsidized school lunch beneficiaries to “stray animals,” harnessed the Arizona controversy to his own distinctive message in the gubernatorial race by suggesting that immigrants wouldn’t be coming to the Palmetto State if lazy welfare bums were willing to work.
It’s an easy guess that immigration fever will spread in highly competitive southern Republican primaries, and perhaps elsewhere. In general, cultural issues can be expected to pop up where candidates are trying to distinguish themselves in a Republican Party that’s now monolithically — even radically — conservative on economic and fiscal issues.
Poll Watch
In polling news, there were two big national surveys released this week, one by the Washington Post/ABC News, and the other by Pew. The WaPo/ABC poll had some good news for Democrats:
The public trusts Democrats more than Republicans to handle the major problems facing the country by a double-digit margin, giving Democrats a bigger lead than they held two months ago, when Congress was engaged in the long endgame over divisive health-care legislation. A majority continues to see Obama as “just about right” ideologically, despite repeated GOP efforts to define the president as outside the mainstream.
Those polled also say they trust Obama over Republicans in Congress to deal with the economy, health care and, by a large margin, financial regulatory reform. And the president continues to get positive marks on his overall job performance, with, for the first time since the fall, a majority of independents approving.
Pew (PDF), on the other hand, found Republicans drawing even with Democrats on five of six major issues (the exception being energy policy). Go figure.
Ed Kilgore’s PPI Political Memo runs every Monday and Friday.
Where is it most painful to be a highly visible incumbent politician at this particular moment in U.S. history? Perhaps it’s California, where current economic and budgetary discontents are compounding a growing public fury over chronically dysfunctional state government and an imprisoning constitution. Maybe it’s Florida, that fading Sunbelt powerhouse full of simmering regional and ethnic rivalries, whose perma-tanned governor has struggled to make up his mind which political party he belongs to.
But you couldn’t go far wrong by selecting Nevada, a state that shares Florida’s disastrous economic dependence on real-estate speculation and tourism — Nevada currently sports the second-highest unemployment rate in the nation, 13.4 percent, trailing only Michigan — and the special disappointment of being, for many residents, a Paradise Lost. The state’s own demographic and ideological diversity also rivals Florida’s, home as it is to a rapidly growing Latino population (which made up 15 percent of the electorate in 2008), plenty of extremely conservative Mormons, powerful and politically active labor unions, a libertarian heritage of legalized vice and a Republican Party moving so quickly to the right that you can barely keep up with it.
Moreover, Nevada’s three top elected officials are currently Sen. Harry Reid (D), Sen. John Ensign (R) and Gov. Jim Gibbons (R). Reid, the majority leader of the U.S. Senate and never terribly popular back home, has looked like a sitting duck for over a year. Ensign, once considered a rising conservative star, has been exposed as a sanctimonious hypocrite over the course of a particularly sordid adultery-and-cronyism scandal, in which a group of mysterious evangelical allies operating out of a compound on C Street in Washington, known variously as The Family or The Fellowship, were caught unsuccessfully trying to clean up his act or cover it up. Gibbons has had his own, somewhat more cartoonish series of sex scandals — although maybe they were just “relationship scandals,” if you buy his claim that he hasn’t had sex since the mid-’90s.
Luckily for him, Ensign is not up for reelection until 2012. Unluckily enough, Harry Reid is up for reelection in 2010, and, seeing as his son, Clark County (Las Vegas) Commission Chairman Rory Reid, is the frontrunner for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination, you’d think that Nevada Republicans would have a straight, clean shot at a sweep that dethrones the Reid dynasty. But it’s hardly that simple, thanks to Byzantine and fractious Republican primaries for both the Senate and the governorship (where Jim Gibbons is still a formidable candidate), the existence of an independent Tea Party ballot line and the always important factors of money and organization, where Democrats have a distinct advantage. Just six weeks before Primary Day, you’d have to say that handicapping Nevada’s political races is something of a crapshoot.
Dating all the way back to November 2008, Harry Reid’s “favorable” rating in Nevada polls has been wallowing monotonously in the high 30s and low 40s, deadly territory for an extremely well-known incumbent, and particularly for a national party leader who claims to be able to represent his state’s values and bring home the bacon as well. The difficulty that Republicans have experienced in recruiting a top-tier Senate candidate has newspapers hesitating to dust off obituaries to Reid’s Senate career. But in head-to-head polls with his most likely GOP opponents, Reid has persistently trailed all of them, sometimes by double digits, and almost never gaining much more than 40 percent of the vote.
After striking out in its attempts to recruit a strong candidate such as former Rep. Jon Porter, Republicans have on hand a field of three major candidates: casino owner, former state senator, party chairwoman, and ex-beauty queen Sue Lowden; realtor and famous-basketball-playing-son-of-famous-basketball-coach Danny Tarkanian; and right-wing grassroots favorite Sharron Angle. Until very lately, Lowden looked to be consolidating a strong lead for the nomination. Despite a somewhat moderate image (particularly on social issues), she won endorsements from national conservative figures like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, and benefited from the general impression that she was far and away the most electable of available Republicans.
But then, at a local candidate forum in early April, Lowden touted the idea that individuals should barter for health services as an alternative to Obamacare, making the particular mistake of mentioning the “olden days” practice of trading chickens for doctor visits. After Jay Leno and others started bagging on her for promoting “chickens for checkups,” Lowden made the puzzling decision to defend her statement — repeatedly — instead of brushing it off and moving on. Now the whole meme has gone very viral. There hasn’t been a Senate primary poll since this all happened, but Tarkanian and Angle — and for that matter, Harry Reid — have to be encouraged by all the laughter at Lowden.
Meanwhile, in the governor’s race, the Republicans’ frontrunner is former Attorney General Brian Sandoval, is struggling nearly as much as Lowden. The perpetually unpopular incumbent, Jim Gibbons, is playing every ideological angle to win re-nomination. Falling back on his traditional popularity among hard-core conservatives, Gibbons has boosted his anemic approval ratings by championing legal challenges to the new federal health reform legislation, and is accusing Sandoval — who has taken the supreme risk of refusing demands to take Grover Norquist’s no-tax-increase pledge — of being a moderate squish. Democrats, figuring that Gibbons is a much easier mark, have been running attack ads on Sandoval that echo conservative criticisms.
A late twist has been the reaction of Nevada Republicans to the draconian Arizona legislation requiring law-enforcement officials to demand proof of citizenship from people who raise “reasonable suspicion” that they are in the country illegally. Sandoval, who is Latino, immediately endorsed the Arizona law, indicating where he thinks his own political bread is buttered. Gibbons took a different tack, arguing that Nevada’s non-border location makes such tactics unnecessary. The third major candidate, former North Las Vegas Mayor Mike Montandon, who is trying to undercut Gibbons from the right, drew cheers during a recent candidates’ debate for taking the following position:
“Why are we answering questions on whether illegal immigration should be legal,” Montandon said. “I support what Arizona did absolutely.”
He added that he supports profiling, calling it the single greatest tool of law enforcement.
That ought to go over well with minority voters, eh?
Aside from the particular dynamics of the senatorial and gubernatorial races, Republicans are uneasily aware that they don’t match up well with Democrats in terms of money or campaign infrastructure. As one reporter put it last month:
The state party itself evoked laughter among several prominent Republicans I spoke to last week.
“There’s a whole lot of unproductive activity going on over there without any rhyme or reason,” said a Republican source, before unfurling a string of unsolicited insults at party leadership.
A key question would seem to be, “Where are the adults?” Can’t someone put a heavy hand on the shoulder of a top-tier candidate and say, “We need you,” or clear the field of primary challengers, or tell Ensign it’s time to step aside?
“That’s usually the role of the head of party,” another Republican source said. “But who is the head of the party? Yeah, there’s your answer.”
Meanwhile, the massive organizing efforts that Democrats put into the 2008 Nevada caucuses and general election are still bearing fruit, their impact sustained by Harry Reid’s campaign cash. Reid’s various campaign committees donated $660,000 — serious money in this relatively small state — to the Nevada Democratic Party in 2009 alone. By the end of March, he had raised over $16 million for his re-election (with an ultimate goal of $25 million) and, after a lot of early spending, still had over $9 million in cash on hand.
By contrast, Reid’s two likeliest general election opponents, Sue Lowden and Danny Tarkanian, who still have to expend themselves in a June primary slugfest, each had just over one quarter-million in the bank at the end of March. Both have some personal money to throw in, but not enough to keep up with Reid’s cash machine.
There are those who look at Nevada and conclude that nothing can save Harry Reid (or his son), not money, not organization, not a scattered and vulnerable Republican Party, not Latino outrage at GOP immigrant-bashing, not chickens-for-checkups, not a third-party candidate, and not even the possibility of a GOP ticket led by Jim Gibbons. It is, after all, a bad year to be an incumbent, much less a Democratic incumbent, much less the Democratic leader of the U.S. Senate. But add all of these factors together, in a year when Nevada Republicans are committing one unforced error after another, and almost anything could happen. Republicans probably shouldn’t bet the farm on victory.
Things look grim for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Heading into tonight’s third and final debate, his Labour Party trails not only the Conservatives, but even the Liberal Democrats, who usually finish a distant third. London odds-makers don’t give much for Brown’s chances of pulling off a Harry Truman-like upset.
If the pollsters and bookies are right, the May 6 election could end a remarkable, 13-year run in power by the “New Labour” tandem of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. But in Britain, electoral victory is denominated in parliamentary seats, not popular votes. The Lib Dems’ unexpected rise, behind a breakout performance by party leader Nicholas Clegg in the first debate, has scrambled the race in ways that make a variety of untoward outcomes possible, if not probable.
Many observers are predicting a hung parliament if the Lib Dems win enough seats to deprive either of their opponents a majority. This would trigger intense efforts by Labour and the Tories to woo the Lib Dems into a coalition government. In any case, however, the result likely would be curtains for Gordon Brown.
Tonight’s debate is probably his last chance to reverse Labour’s slumping prospects. It’s on the economy, which would ordinarily be Brown’s forte, but Britain’s economy also has been hammered by the financial crisis. It’s also true that Labour governments, under pressure from traditional constituencies and the unreconstructed “Old Labour” left, spent heavily on public services. Now those services will likely face draconian cuts as the next government grapples with ways to whittle down a huge (by British standards) $236 billion deficit.
But the dismal economic picture isn’t Labour’s only problem. Public worries about immigration also have roiled the race. Brown stumbled yesterday when he was caught on tape calling one voter who expressed such qualms a “bigoted woman.” He then compounded the gaffe by going to her house to apologize, ensuring that the incident dominated campaign coverage.
If the episode underscored Brown’s lack of political touch, it ought to be said in fairness that 13 years is a long time for any party to hold power in Britain. Clegg has bolted from obscurity by tapping into the inchoate desire for “change” that another newcomer, Barack Obama, tapped so effectively here in 2008.
If this really is Labour’s last stand, it’s worth recalling a few things about its significance for U.S. progressives. First, “New Labour” was a joint, Blair-Brown project that borrowed heavily from Bill Clinton’s New Democrat innovation. In a similar fashion, they helped Labour cast off old socialist dogma and revive itself as a modernizing force not only in Britain but in center-left politics generally.
Not the least of New Labour’s achievements was a long economic boom whose chief architect, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, was none other than Gordon Brown. Unlike France and Germany, Britain enjoyed robust growth rates and low unemployment. It also depoliticized monetary policy, created new incentives for work, kept labor markets flexible and encouraged innovation and trade.
Finally, Blair and Brown were, and remain, sturdy friends of the United States. Blair stood with America after 9/11, was a forthright critic of the kind of fashionable anti-Americanism in which Clegg indulges, and risked his career by supporting the Iraq war. Brown likewise has firmly backed President Obama’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, despite mounting pressures within his own party and a war-weary public to bring British troops home.
Americans of course have no business mucking around in British elections. But if Gordon Brown does go down next week, we should recognize at least that we have lost a staunch friend and faithful ally.
For the last three days, I’ve been running around Stockholm giving what seems to be 27 lectures on energy security and/or President Obama’s foreign policy. I’ve spoken at think tanks, the American Embassy (twice!), with MPs, corporate executives, and the guy who wrote the definitive Swedish book about the Obama campaign (“Are you going to have it translated into English?” I asked naively. “Well, I looked on Amazon,” he responded, “and there are already 637 English language books on Obama’s campaign. So I think I’ll start with Danish instead.”) It has been a whirlwind tour thus far but should slow down a bit toward the weekend, which would allow me to enjoy a few days with some good friends in Stockholm.
My energy talks are designed to shed some light on the political framing of energy issues since Obama took office. Since only six out of 10 Americans believe there is solid scientific evidence that the earth is warming, I talk a lot about the $400 tank of gas in Afghanistan and energy independence from power thugs like Vladimir Putin and Hugo Chavez. As a matter of fact, if you’d like the basic gist of a good chunk of my talk, just read this post.
But beyond gasoline and warzones, I’m also banging the drum about nuclear power, a power source that PPI has long supported even as the left keeps it at arms-length, and that is a critical component of America’s drive towards energy independence. I’ve been telling the story of Barack Obama’s embrace of nuclear power in the State of the Union, which was closely followed by a trip down to Georgia to announce the first construction of a nuclear plant in the U.S. in about 25 years.
Why does all this matter to Sweden? Sweden is facing a general election this September. The Red-Green Coalition of Social Democrats and the Green Party is currently in opposition but stands a good chance of beating the incumbent center-right coalition. And that, in a sense, would be a return to normalcy in this social-democratic mecca. I don’t have the numbers of the top of my head, but only about 15 of the last 90 years haven’t seen a Social Democrat in the PM’s office.
And while SD party leader Mona Salin may get there, it will be with significant help from the Greens. The Greens stand to rocket up from 5 percent last election to near 10-15 percent this year. And guess what? They hate nuclear power, falsely believing that it is unsafe and dangerous. Just yesterday, the coalition presented a plan that would tax “excessive profits” of energy companies, including nuclear.
Political insiders here think energy could be one of the more contentious issues within the Red-Green coalition. In the article I cite above, note how the Green Party spokeswoman says that her faction had to compromise, which implies that the Social Dems were resistant to higher energy taxes. But giving the Greens’ increasing appeal, their policy carried the day.
Penalizing nuclear power isn’t natural for the Social Dems — in the ‘60s and ‘70s, they led the charge to build Sweden’s 10 reactors that today produce nearly 50 percent of its power. Indeed, Sweden draws 90 percent of its power from hydro and nuclear, meaning that nearly all of its power is from non-carbon sources. It is an unfortunate about-face to propose taxing an energy source that is established, clean, and safe.
And that’s where I come in — an American progressive who can talk about creative ways to frame energy issues, and use Barack Obama’s nuclear story to give Swedish Social Dems a few reasons not to turn their backs on power sources that they once endorsed and that continue to make sense.
Given the acrimony — former Vice President Dick Cheney last week endorsed rival Marco Rubio and warned Crist that an independent bid would only benefit the Democrats — some speculate an independent Crist might consider a flirtation with Democrats who would welcome a convert, especially one representing a key presidential battleground state.
“They could offer him not only decent committee assignments but real power,” said Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute.
Fifty-three hours — that is how long it took our law enforcement agencies to 
A year ago, when laying out his vision of fast trains zipping between major cities like they do in Europe and Asia, President Obama invoked the words of Chicago architect Daniel Burnham: “Make no little plans.”
Like observers from all over the partisan and ideological spectrum, I’ve been following the fallout from Arizona’s new immigration law (compounded by conflicting reports that the Obama administration and/or congressional Democratic leaders might be moving up federal immigration legislation in the queue) very closely, given the implications this issue has for both 2010 and (particularly) beyond.
This weekend’s 
With our limitless capacity for outrage these days, it’s always nice to read a sober and reasonable take on the kerfuffle du jour. Today, it’s ITIF’s Daniel Castro’s 
Things look grim for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Heading into tonight’s third and final debate, his Labour Party trails not only the Conservatives, but even the Liberal Democrats, who usually finish a distant third. London odds-makers don’t give much for Brown’s chances of pulling off a Harry Truman-like upset.
For the last three days, I’ve been running around Stockholm giving what seems to be