Category: Uncategorized

Did Nikki Haley Help Kill Cap-and-Trade?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The big development in non-election news from Washington this week has been the collapse of bipartisan negotiations for cap-and-trade legislation, caused by Sen. Lindsey Graham’s defection. Said defection has been a long time in the making; earlier Graham broke off longstanding negotiations with Sens. Kerry and Lieberman on climate change, allegedly because he was angry with Harry Reid for hinting that immigration reform might come first in the Senate. Now that Reid’s backed off that idea, Graham’s been forced to more or less flip-flop entirely on climate change, and is now backing a far less ambitious bill introduced by Richard Lugar that would have no cap on carbon emissions.

The CW has suggested that Graham’s happy feet on climate change is the product of pressure from his Republican colleagues in Congress who don’t want any “cap-and-tax” bill and basically don’t want any cooperation with the Obama administration and congressional Democrats. But I think the problem may be a little closer to home for Graham.

Earlier this year, a couple of Republican county committees down in South Carolina raised eyebrows with censure resolutions aimed at Graham for his support for cap-and-trade, comprehensive immigration reform, and TARP. One of those committees was from Lexington County, which happens to be the residence of Nikki Haley, who then became the only gubernatorial candidate to embrace Graham’s censure for ideological heresy.

Now maybe it’s a coincidence that Graham threw in the towel on cap-and-trade the day after Haley became a national political rock star in the wake of her strong (49%) performance in the SC Republican gubernatorial primary, but maybe it’s not. Graham won’t be up for re-election until 2014, but as Bob Dylan once said (though not in the context of climate change): “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

I bring this up in part as a reminder to progressives who are naturally sympathetic to Haley as a woman and as a minority member who has been accused without much evidence of being a cheat and a liar, and called a “raghead” to boot. That’s all well and good, but don’t forget she is also a serious hard-core conservative who eagerly identifies herself with the Jim DeMint, take-no-prisoners wing of her party, and who may have just played a role in blowing up what was once a promising effort to deal with one of the most important challenges facing the country and the world. To be sure, she should be judged on her ideas and record and not subjected to gender-based double standards or sexual innuendo. But make no mistake, her “ideas” are really bad from any progressive point of view. She’s only a breath of fresh air in SC politics if you think, like she does, that the good ol’ boys who’ve been running things are dangerously liberal.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Photo credit: World Economic Forum’s Photostream

A Look at the New U.N. Sanctions on Iran

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The new United Nations Security Council has adopted a new round of sanctions against Iran. And they have some bite. But how and if they’ll truly be effective remains an open question.

Let’s start with the nuts and bolts. The sanctions compel Iran to comply with international inspections and to cease uranium enrichment. Failure to do so gets them this:

  • A strengthened arms embargo, prohibiting nations from exporting to Iran battle tanks, armored combat vehicles, large-caliber artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, and missiles or missile systems.
  • The resolution imposes financial and travel sanctions on specific Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) individuals and companies involved in Iran’s nuclear and missile program.
  • Nations are authorized to inspect suspicious Iranian air and sea cargo for illicit items, interdict shipments in port and on the high seas, and confiscate any banned items found.
  • The Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL) is sanctioned for its role in transferring nuclear and missile program components. IRISL vessels have also been repeatedly caught exporting weapons to Hamas and Hezbollah.

But it’s never that straightforward. Let’s take a look at what’s going on underneath the surface.

The Security Council resolution was adopted by a 12-2 vote, with an abstention from Lebanon, whose divided government includes members of Iranian-backed Hezbollah. The two “no” votes came from Turkey and Brazil, countries that had negotiated a uranium-exporting deal with Iran. Unfortunately, as you can read here, that deal fell woefully short of what the U.S. and rest of the international community needed to feel comfortable.

Frankly, the Obama administration mishandled Turkey and Brazil’s attempts to mediate. The White House should have cautioned the intermediaries not to go public until the deal was acceptable to the U.S. and Europe (you know, the countries Turkey is in NATO with…). American and European rejection of the deal has caused gnashing of teeth in Ankara and Brasilia (not to mention two “no” votes on the final resolution), splitting the global effort to rein in Iran.

Iran, as you might expect, remains defiant. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad continues on his rhetorical hot streak, calling the sanctions “annoying flies.” And to a certain extent, he’s right. As Thomas Erdbrink and Colum Lynch’s excellent article in yesterday’s Washington Post details, Iran does a pretty darn good job getting around them. And then there’s the possibility that Iran could use the sanctions as a domestic political tool to rally Iranians against the “American oppressors.”

But perhaps atop the list of concerns sits Beijing. Sure, China voted for the sanctions, but at what price? Check out this post to see what sort of sweetheart loopholes China secured for its energy companies in exchange for its support. Phew. It’s a lot. A confusing mess of a lot. On the one hand, it seems like the international community has passed a resolution with some teeth, but could sanctions end up being ineffective or, worse, counterproductive?

In the end, sanctions’ benefits are often indirect, subtle and not guaranteed. To get a sense of why sanctions are passed, bear in mind the Obama administration’s real goal: It’s not to inflict direct economic hardship, but rather, to raise the burden Iran must bear to obtain a nuclear weapon.

Sanctions can help the international community do so in two clear ways:

  1. Diplomatic isolation. Of course, Iran has been fairly isolated for years and years now, but it doesn’t hurt to reinforce that sense of isolation from the international community on a regular basis. That’s why, incidentally, the Turkey/Brazil split and recruitment of China and Russia all matter. Getting the world on the same page against Iran sends a message of strength.
  2. When sanctions force Tehran to rearrange shipping contracts, sell vessels to front companies, move money, set up laundering and smuggling operations, stay at home from travel, etc., etc., those are all “costs.” To maintain a something close to the status quo, Iran has to invest time, money and political capital (both at home and internationally) to work around them.

The idea is that one day, Iran will wake up and say, “Huh. We’re alone in the world and working like hell to beat these things. Maybe we should sit down and talk this whole situation through.”

That day may never come, but it’s the best alternative the international community has.

Photo credit: wallyg

Coast to Coast

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

For those of us in the politics biz, Tuesday night was a long night, with returns trickling out over a eight-hour period. Despite the best efforts of headline writers to impose some order on the 10 primaries, one runoff and one special-election runoff, there was no overriding pattern or big theme to these elections: just a lot of individual contests whose importance we mostly won’t even know until November. I won’t try to cover everything that happened; you can consult news sources for detailed results. But there were some pretty interesting happenings.

The biggest surprise for the chattering classes (and I’ll plead innocence on this one, since I consistently labeled it as too close to call) was the survival of Democratic Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, whose dominant performance in Pulaski County (Little Rock), her opponent’s home base, was crucial. The heavy commitment of resources by the labor movement on behalf of Bill Halter will be second-guessed for quite some time. And once again, it’s been established that you don’t mess with Bill Clinton in his old stomping grounds.

Probably the second biggest story of the night was Nikki Haley, who came within an eyelash of winning the South Carolina Republican gubernatorial nomination without a runoff. Rep. Gresham Barrett finished a distant second, and is already getting pressure to drop out save the GOP the trouble of a runoff. It’s clear in retrospect that the maelstrom of the last two weeks, in which Haley was hit with two separate poorly documented allegations of marital infidelity, gave her a significant sympathy vote and all but extinguished the ability of her opponents to get any kind of message out. Meanwhile, state rep. Vincent Sheheen scored an impressive majority win in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, and can now spend his time raising money and watching future developments, if any, in the Haley saga.

The third biggest story of the night was in Nevada, where the easy victory of Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle in the Republican Senate primary gave Harry Reid the matchup he wanted for November. Angle benefitted from the implosion of longtime front-runner Sue Lowden, and from national conservative support. Third-place finisher Danny Tarkanian faded in the clutch even more than Lowden.

Speaking of the Tea Folk, their movement had a very mixed evening. Establishment Republican candidates turned back Tea Party-affiliated challengers in Virginia and New Jersey. But in South Carolina, Rep. Bob Inglis, who made the mistake of voting for TARP, was knocked into a runoff by local DA Trey Gowdy, and will be the heavy underdog going forward.

One result with significant 2012 implications was in Iowa, where as expected, former Gov. Terry Branstad beat conservative firebrand Bob Vander Plaats for the Republican gubernatorial nomination. But given his many advantages in the race, Branstad’s nine-point margin of victory was underwhelming, and should warn potential presidential candidates that the social conservative forces represented by Vander Plaats could be more formidable than ever in the 2012 caucuses. Certainly Sarah Palin, whose late endorsement of Branstad enraged some of her Iowa fans, will need to do some repair work if she’s interested in entering the contest that will begin in Iowa.

And finally, in a result that got virtually no national attention but that could prove important down the road, California voters approved Proposition 14, which abolishes party primaries in favor of a “jungle primary” in which the top two finishers, regardless of political affiliation, meet in a runoff if no candidate wins 50 percent.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

A Progressive Lesson from Reagan (Seriously)

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Peter Beinart has a must-read in the latest Foreign Policy on the mythology of Ronald Reagan — and the conservative movement that keeps perpetuating it.

As someone whose first job in D.C. was interning at a lobby firm that had — no kidding — a framed portrait of St. Ron in every office, I relish lines that tether President Reagan back to his terrestrial home, such as:

During his presidency, Reagan repeatedly invoked the prospect of an alien invasion as a reason for the United States and the Soviet Union to overcome their differences. Whenever he did, [National Security Adviser Colin] Powell would mutter, “Here come the little green men.”

That’s some delicious red meat right there.

But if we focus there — and Reagan haters are apt to do just that — we miss the real lesson. Beinart might douse ice water on the conservative narrative of Reagan, but he makes a strong case for the lesson that Obama can and should learn from The Great Communicator:

Reagan’s political genius lay in recognizing that what Americans wanted was a president who exorcised the ghost of the Vietnam War without fighting another Vietnam.

Americans loved Reagan’s foreign policy for the same reason they loved the 1985 blockbuster Rambo, in which the muscle-bound hero returns to Vietnam, kicks some communist butt, and no Americans die. Reagan’s liberal critics often accused him of reviving the chest-thumping spirit that had led to Vietnam. But they were wrong. For Reagan, chest-thumping was in large measure a substitute for a new Vietnam, a way of accommodating the restraints on U.S. power while still boosting American morale.

[…]

Obama can, and should, be Reaganesque in his effort to project great strength at low risk. That means understanding that America’s foreign-policy debates are often cultural debates in disguise.

Reagan was a master of symbolic acts — like awarding the Medal of Honor to overlooked Vietnam hero Roy Benavidez — that made Americans feel as though they were exorcising Vietnam’s ghost without refighting the war. Obama must be equally shrewd at a time when he has no choice but to retreat from Iraq and eventually Afghanistan. That means more than ritual incantations about flag and country; it means rhetorically challenging those who unfairly attack the United States. From a purely foreign-policy perspective, publicly confronting Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez when they malign the United States, or calling out universities that ban military recruiters from campus, might seem useless. But for U.S. presidents, there is no pure foreign-policy perspective; being effective in the world requires domestic support. [emphases added]

If Democrats are going to close the ever-elusive national security gap and strongly defend what I’ve called a sterling record on national security, they’re going to have to swallow some pride and steal one from the Gipper.

Photo credit: Fresh Conservative’s Photostream

The Turnaround Challenge: Improving Our Worst Schools

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The following is an excerpt from Will Marshall’s introductory remarks at the PPI Capital Forum – Turnaround Schools: Rising to the Challenge:

PPI has had a longstanding interest in school reform, going back to 1990, when we first started to agitate for this idea called charter schools even before the first school was opened in St. Paul, Minnesota. And throughout the years, we’ve worked on all kinds of reform issues. And we’re very happy today to talk about one that’s really heating up right now, this question of how you turn around low-performing schools in our cities and also in our rural communities.

Arne Duncan, our secretary of education, laid down a challenge last year with his Race to the Top fund. He challenged school leaders to turn around the 5,000 chronically underperforming schools in America and he’s made, I think, marvelous use of the bully pulpit of his job to leverage change around the country. It helps when you have $4 billion, too. That makes that bully pulpit all the more powerful. But really incredible changes in state legislatures and cities and contracts negotiated between school leaders and teachers’ unions, all before a whole lot of money has actually been spent, so it’s a heartening example of strong and bold political leadership.

And in the administration’s blueprint for reauthorizing ESEA, this turnaround challenge is embedded in that as well. Challenged states, states with lots of low-performing schools, are going to be required to turn around five percent of their lowest-performing schools, based on student achievement and growth and graduation rates, in order to qualify for grants from the federal government. So fortunately, in my view, we have a president and a secretary of education who are as serious as a heart attack about thoroughgoing school reform.

And we saw that in this case in Rhode Island, in Central Falls earlier this year, when the school authorities there, or the city, fired all the teachers in their local high school after they couldn’t come to an agreement about reforms there. And the president and the secretary of education, sort of, stood up for that, behind that decision. Now, they’ve since rehired the teachers because they’ve been able to work out a deal that will allow for reform to go forward there. But it was heartening to me that they didn’t flinch because this urgency is absolutely essential.

Closing the achievement gap in this country is proceeding at an agonizingly slow pace. It has been since the mid-’80s. And I think it’s really smart for our national leaders to target the worst-performing schools in the country. You know, of the bottom 5,000, 2,000 of those are responsible for 70 percent of all school dropouts, so it’s a good idea to focus on the ones that we really need to get on the triage table.

But obviously, there are some large and controversial questions about turnaround, which we want to explore today. I think there’s going to be ferocious political resistance if we start moving down this road. It’s going to make what’s gone before look like a picnic. You know, we’re talking about closing schools, the firing of many, and in some cases all, teachers in a school.

And obviously, there’s going to be blowback. Already, we’re seeing dissension on the Democratic side. This week, Rep. Judy Chu of California, a Democrat, came out with a report which is critical of the blueprint, calling it punitive. And then on the right, you have, on the conservative side, you have a lot of folks who believe it’s not punitive enough and who think that, really, the only remedy for failing schools is to close them down and reopen as charters, or maybe under private management.

So we’ve had high-profile defections from the reform camp, like Diane Ravitch, who we’ve worked with down the years. And in some respects, that’s puzzling to me, but so this question’s becoming increasingly fraught. Fortunately, we have a stellar group of folks here to talk about it today, to explore this issues….

First, let me just, you know, define the terms here because I think particularly for the non-experts, the laypeople, this whole turnaround issue’s sort of murky. What are we really talking about when we say turning around schools? Well, in the blueprint there are four models of intervention that school leaders must pursue to deal with low-performing schools, the bottom five percent. One is transformation, which entails firing principals and adopting research-based instruction and extended learning time – new governance models, structure.

The next is the redundantly named turnaround model, which entails the same things as transformation, except you can fire half of the school staff. The third model is the restart, to convert or to close down and reopen a school under a charter operator or another educational management organization. And the last and obviously most drastic is school closes and reopen – and sending kids to high-performing schools elsewhere in the district, if you can do that.

So our purpose here today is to explore the administration’s blueprint, to drill down on this question of what we know and don’t know about best practice and turnaround schools and to focus particularly on what turnaround means for Washington, D.C., which is why I’m so glad, thrilled to have Chancellor Michelle Rhee here today. Why focus on Washington? Well, one, we’re all here. This is where we work and play and I often think that Washington is an invisible city when it comes to the great national policy debates.

[…]

We want a beachhead for innovation, but we’ve still got a long way to go. We’re still on the margins of a big public school enterprise with 50 million students. And frankly, the quality in the charter sector’s been really uneven and the scale of effort is just not sufficient to what we need. So as an authorizer, I can say that our challenge is the same one that you face, Chancellor, which is to reduce the number of low-performing schools and increase the number of high-performing ones. And it’s a hell of a lot harder to do than it sounds.

And the stakes are absolutely enormous. I’m not going to go over the stats, which probably everybody in this room knows, about the achievement gap. One number just did leap out at me. It was in the Brookings Institution’s “State of Metro America” report, which said that 85 percent of black and Latino adults in the United States lack a bachelor’s degree – 85 percent. What does that tell you? That tells you that our public schools are not preparing lots of folks for success – not preparing them for college, which is increasingly a minimum passport to career success.

That’s a huge problem. Nothing is more important, I think, in our country right now than solving it and getting school reform right. Obviously, it’s critical to our ability to compete and win globally. But even more, it’s critical to our ability to reverse the really disconcerting tendencies towards inequality, economic inequality, that have opened up in the last decade or so, and to redeem this country’s central political promise, which is equal opportunity.

For a full transcript of the event, click here (PDF). For the video, click here.

Photo credit: WzrdsRule

Lincoln, Reid, GOP Women Top List of Primary Winners

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

It’s hard to tease a coherent story line from yesterday’s primaries in 12 states, so some random observations will have to do:

  • Labor unions sure know how to waste their members’ money. A group of unions poured $10 million into the Arkansas U.S. Senate primary to defeat the Democratic incumbent, Blanche Lincoln. Lincoln, aided by native son Bill Clinton, staved off a challenge from Lt. Gov. Bill Halter. The bruising primary battle, however, has left her running far behind her GOP opponent, Rep. John Boozman. What was labor thinking?
  • It was a big night for Republican women, including one who wasn’t on any ballot. Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina, Nikki Haley and Sharron Angle not only won, but generally ran to the right of their opponents. Fiorina and Haley got timely assists from the endorsement of “Mama Grizzly” Sarah Palin.
  • Any child can grow up and be elected governor of California -– as long as they amass a fortune on the way. Whitman, one of eBay’s founders, spent a staggering $71 million of her own money in rolling over another Silicon Valley millionaire, Steve Poizner, who could only scrape together $24 million. Whitman will now face Jerry Brown, whose decision to devote his life to public service rather than making money has left him a relative pauper.
  • Maybe South Carolina isn’t as backward as everyone thinks. After a GOP state legislator called President Obama and Nikki Haley “ragheads,” Jon Stewart joked that South Carolinians can’t even get their racial slurs right. But in picking Haley to be their nominee for governor, Palmetto State Republicans opted not only for a woman but also the child of Sikh immigrants. First Bobby Jindal, now Haley: Are South Asians becoming the GOP’s preferred ethnic minority and answer to complaints that they lack diversity?
  • The dice came up for Sen. Harry Reid. He got his wish when Tea Party acolyte Sharron Angle beat two more moderate contenders for the Republican Senate nomination. The Reid camp figures Nevada voters, however tired they may be of him, aren’t ready for an alternative that makes Barry Goldwater look like a mushy moderate. Angle wants to shut down the federal departments of energy and education, and open Yucca Mountain to nuclear waste. And Reid’s son Rory won the Democratic nomination for governor.
  • Blogs may not be a stepping stone to higher office. L.A. gadfly Mickey Kaus won a paltry 5.3 percent of the vote in his primary challenge to Sen. Barbara Boxer. However, since Kaus only spent $40,000, his dollar-per-vote efficiency may be higher than Whitman’s. And he wins a consolation prize for running the most entertaining campaign of the season.

Photo credit: PittCaleb’s Photostream

Prognosticating the Primaries

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The busiest primary day of the year has arrived, with 10 primaries, one Senate runoff and one House special election runoff on tap.

Since I’ve earlier analyzed most of these races here (and here, and here), today’s memo will focus on the bottom line: Who is likely to win in the big statewide contests?

Arkansas Senate Democratic runoff: too close to call. The CW suggests that Bill Halter will knock off Blanche Lincoln, thanks to a relatively poor showing by the incumbent in the primary, and a stalwart effort by unions on Halter’s behalf. But in a very low turnout runoff, it’s all about getting the vote out, and we’ll have to see if Halter can get voters back out in areas like southern Arkansas, where he crushed Lincoln in the primary.

South Carolina Republican Gubernatorial Primary: Nikki Haley wins. This race has been All About Nikki in recent weeks, and since primary day has arrived without any real evidence to support the two allegations of marital infidelity against Haley, the whole saga seems to have actually helped her. She’s at 43 percent in the latest PPP poll, with Rep. Gresham Barrett running 20 points behind. I’m going to go out on a limb and predict that the backlash against her tormenters will lift Haley to a win without a runoff.

South Carolina Democratic Gubernatorial Primary: Sheheen/Rex runoff. State Rep. Vincent Sheheen has outspent and outcampaigned early front-runner Jim Rex, but a third candidate, state Sen. Robert Ford, is strong enough to force a runoff.

Iowa Republican Gubernatorial Primary: Terry Branstad wins. Bob Vander Plaats got heavily outspent and outmaneuvered in this potentially close primary with important 2012 implications. If it were a caucus, the arch-conservative might have a chance. But it’s a primary. Sarah Palin’s surprise endorsement of Branstad simply served as the coup de grace. Yesterday a bitter Vander Plaats said: “From where I live in Sioux City, I can’t see Russia, but I can see South Dakota.”

Nevada Republican Senate Primary: Sharron Angle wins. The implosion of early front-runner Sue “Chickens for Checkups” Lowden has been the big story in this race, and she’ll probably finish third behind Tea Party favorite Sharron Angle and basketball scion Danny Tarkanian. Tark the Younger could pull an upset based on GOP voter fears that Angle is the weakest challenger to Harry Reid.

Nevada Republican Gubernatorial Primary: Brian Sandoval wins. One of America’s more colorful gubernatorial tenures will come to a close tonight, when scandalicious incumbent Jim Gibbons loses to Attorney General Brian Sandoval, a prized Latino candidate for the GOP.

California Republican Gubernatorial Primary: Meg Whitman wins. It took her $80 million, and a strategic veer to the right that will haunt her general election campaign against Jerry Brown, but eMeg finally put away Steve Poizner in the late stages of this contest. After a gazillion Whitman ads calling him a dangerous liberal, Poizner might have a future in Democratic politics.

California Republican Senate Primary: Carly Fiorina wins. It only took her about $7 million, but Fiorina closed well against cash-strapped “demon sheep” Tom Campbell and crusty conservative Chuck DeVore. But she has recently lost ground against Barbara Boxer, and her pro-life and hard-core anti-immigrant positions will not help her in the general election.

South Dakota Republican gubernatorial primary: Dennis Daugaard wins. Lt. Gov. Daugaard has been the front-runner all along, and should edge past state senator Dave Knudson for the right to face Democrat Scott Heidepriem. I have to say, the whole contest reads like the credits in an Ingmar Bergman movie.

I won’t even begin to make any prediction in today’s Mystery Election, the Maine gubernatorial contest. According to the one public poll, taken just this last week, 62 percent of Democrats and 47 percent of Republicans are undecided. The “leading” candidate in the Democratic race came in at 13% percent, and the leading Republican at 17 percent. Turnout is expected to be in the teens. Perhaps in the end Meg Whitman should have moved to Maine and saved herself a whole lot of money.

There are a number of interesting House primaries today. One to watch is in South Carolina, where TARP-afflicted Republican Rep. Bob Inglis is in deep trouble against Tea Party activist Trey Gowdy, though a runoff is likely. In a special election (two Republicans made the runoff) to replace Georgia gubernatorial candidate Nathan Deal in the House, another Tea Party favorite, Tom Graves, appeared to be cruising towards victory until a financial scandal erupted, and now he’s in a close race against Lee Hawkins. In California, antiwar activist Marcy Winograd is making another run against Democratic incumbent Jane Harman, though Harman is heavily favored.

In a non-candidate election matter, generally disgruntled Californians are likely to approve Proposition 14, which would create a Louisiana-style “jungle primary” system, essentially abolishing party primaries.

Book Review: The Flight of the Intellectuals by Paul Berman

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Paul Berman may be our most romantic public intellectual. His prose, febrile and epigrammatic, can be intoxicatingly lyrical. He doesn’t so much make arguments as launch crusades. He is a careful scholar, building his cases with close reading and creative exegesis, but the cool erudition barely conceals the hot idealism. “Let us be for the freedom of others,” read the last line of Terror and Liberalism, his most widely read book. Details, word choices and footnotes matter, but it is the sweeping idea that animates his work.

It’s fitting that the cover design for his latest book, The Flight of the Intellectuals, features a Minimalist array of lines, black and white. For those are the terms in which Berman thinks. It’s what makes the arrival of each new Berman book an event – you expect lines to be drawn, challenges issued. It’s also what can get him in trouble.

The Flight of the Intellectuals is a book-length elaboration of a long essay Berman wrote for The New Republic in 2007 about the Islamic philosopher Tariq Ramadan. What’s gotten Berman riled up is the admiring reception Western intelligentsia has given Ramadan, who is viewed by many as the leading reformist voice for Muslims today. Ramadan has urged Muslims in the West to participate in the social and cultural life of their new homes instead of turning inward. But to Berman, the attention he has won is undeserved, even odious. For beneath the veneer of moderation Berman spies ghosts of extremism past and present.

The first third of The Flight of the Intellectuals is vintage Berman, as he traces Ramadan’s genealogical and ideological roots. What he finds is a questionable birthright. “Tariq Ramadan is nothing if not a son, a brother, a grandson and even a great-grandson – family relations that appear to shape everything he writes and does, and that certainly shape how other people perceive what he writes and does,” he opens the second chapter. Ramadan’s grandfather was Hassan al-Banna, founder of the Muslim Brotherhood. His father, Said Ramadan, was al-Banna’s secretary, also a major figure in the Brotherhood. In the Brotherhood, Berman sees a wellspring of dangerous ideas: the imposition of Islamic law, the utopian restoration of the Caliphate, the cult of jihad, the veneration of martyrdom.

In Tariq Ramadan, Berman sees that strain of Islamism. He hears Ramadan’s calls for rationalism, universal values and a more modern Islam, but picks out discordant notes in the background of Ramadan’s thought. Take women’s rights. Berman homes in on Ramadan’s refusal, in a televised debate with then-French Minister of the Interior Nicolas Sarkozy, to condemn the Islamist practice of stoning women who commit adultery, calling instead for a more modest “moratorium.” Berman also flags Ramadan for his past statements on Jews: For instance, Ramadan in 2003 published an essay accusing six “French Jewish intellectuals” (one, in fact, was not Jewish) of abandoning their universalist principles in championing Israel – a thesis that Berman rightly lashes him for. No less troublesome for Berman is Ramadan’s whitewashing of his forefathers’ record. In Ramadan’s telling, the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood is a “man of democratic temperament…committed to rational judgment and scientific truth…a peaceful man, patient and practical,” Berman recounts with raised brow.

The Lonely Rebel

Berman contrasts the adulation of Ramadan by Western intellectuals with their shabby treatment of another controversial voice: Ayaan Hirsi Ali. The Somali-born writer’s story has been rehearsed countless times: flight from a forced marriage, asylum in the Netherlands, renunciation of Islam, death threats from Muslim fanatics. Along the way, Hirsi Ali has established a reputation as a scorched-earth critic of Islam. It has earned her the adoration of the American right – and suspicion from the left, which sees her Islam-or-enlightenment stand as unhelpful.

Berman is at his most indignant here. Dubbing Hirsi Ali a “rebel soul,” he denounces the left for turning its back on someone whom he considers a true liberal voice emerged from the Islamist wasteland. Berman is appalled that Hirsi Ali, who has to travel with bodyguards because she has been marked for death by Islamists, cannot find succor in the same intelligentsia that once circled their wagons for Salman Rushdie. And it’s not just Hirsi Ali: Berman ends his book with a litany of liberals who have dared to challenge Islamist fascism and have seen their lives threatened for it. “Salman Rushdie has metastasized into an entire social class,” he writes. Where are the liberal intellectuals to defend them?

That, as the title suggests, is what Berman’s book is really about. Joining Ramadan in the crosshairs are Ian Buruma and Timothy Garton Ash, two champions of Ramadan, both critics of Hirsi Ali. But they also stand in for an entire intellectual cohort, one that Berman now finds suffering from a loss of nerve. “[I]n recounting these quarrels, I have, by the logic of my own narrative, ended up trotting out the dread word courage. This may be the heart of the matter,” he writes.

The particulars of Berman’s case against Ramadan seem, at times, to be a stretch. He gets across the point that Ramadan is a slippery figure – but others have already noted that. Upgrading the charge from slippery to sinister requires some heavy lifting and much hair-splitting on Berman’s part. All too often, Berman mistakes telling footnotes, vague wordings and conspicuous omissions for smoking guns. It’s an impressive prosecutorial performance, but it’s not enough to prove his case beyond a reasonable doubt.

Berman’s book amounts to something else: a radical’s attack on a squishy moderate. For Berman, Ramadan, who modulates his rhetoric depending on his audience, is the kind of ally we don’t need. Pick a side, stand your ground – the ambiguous, the pragmatic, the double-talkers need not apply. Berman dismisses the defense of Ramadan by intellectuals: that he is a valuable critic of Islam from within. And indeed, his indignation at Ramadan’s hedging about Islam’s problems can be contagious – you occasionally find yourself shaking your head (if not quite your fist).

Berman and Liberalism

But Berman’s exacting outlook is ultimately problematic. Hirsi Ali, strident and surrounded by bodyguards, is the model warrior in his war of ideas. It’s a needlessly steep standard – and a counterproductive one. Living under fatwa may be testimony to a critic’s courage, but that’s not the same as a critic’s effectiveness. If the true goal is to modernize Islam and promote liberalism, an effective critique, not just an angry one, is necessary. Berman’s impatience and his insistence on choosing sides get in the way of a clear-eyed assessment of what we need to win the war of ideas: courage, yes, and anger even, but also reason, canniness and humility.

In the years since 9/11, Berman has emerged as one of our foremost liberal hawks. He has been frequently lumped with Peter Beinart (The Good Fight), and Beinart in turn has harked back to the liberals of the Americans for Democratic Action and the anti-Communist left – Niebuhr’s liberals – as his and his intellectual allies’ forebears. But that’s not quite where Berman’s thought takes you. All you need is a minute with Berman’s urgent and certain prose to realize that there is little skepticism here and none of the ironic disposition. He is less a liberal of the Niebuhr variety than a lefty in the mold of an Irving Howe. In his words one feels the force of conviction of the Old Left, the romance of the battle, the thrill of the lonely stand. Indeed, The Flight of the Intellectuals recalls a similar challenge to the intellectual class: Howe’s “The Age of Conformity.” Like Howe, Berman sees himself as an observer and critic of the liberal intellectuals. Replace “conformity” with “cowardice,” and you have Berman’s updated critique of liberalism gone soft.

Berman’s is a necessary voice, but it’s a voice that can only be fruitful in equipoise with the skeptical one of Niebuhrian liberalism. Berman’s untrammeled moralism can leave us stranded (literally) in the dunes of endless desert. But liberal doubt can also lead us down an equally dangerous path of moral complacency and atrophy. What is Berman to liberalism and liberalism to Berman? Each in the end keeps the other honest.

Africa’s First High-Speed Railway Opens for World Cup

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The first high-speed rail service on the African continent kicked off this morning, just in time to zip World Cup fans between Johannesburg’s airport and the suburb hosting the tournament.

Construction of the first phase of Gautrain, named after the Gauteng Province it runs through, was accelerated last year so that the link would be operational for the start of the World Cup on Friday.

Still it was open to question whether the route between O. R. Tambo International Airport and Sandton would actually be ready for the soccer tournament, which is expected to attract half-a-million fans over 30 days of competition. But a certificate to operate the system was issued yesterday after several weeks of successful tests.

The line is less a true intercity railway than a souped-up transit system running at 100 mph. Top speeds have been dampened by the decision to locate stations every four to eight miles along the line.

Nevertheless, the gold-and-blue-trimmed Gautrains have caused a sensation in a country where conventional train service is slow and public-transit investment was banished for decades under apartheid policies intended to keep blacks and whites apart.

Today most middle-class South Africans drive everywhere, clogging the main highways, while the poor depend on mini-buses and foot power. To lure South Africans to the new service, the government has developed elaborate security measures, including closed-circuit cameras in the stations and trains.

The rail line slashes the travel time between the airport and Johannesburg from an hour by road to less than 15 minutes. The second phase, connecting Johannesburg with Pretoria, will be opened next year and will cut an hour from the present highway time.

The project is being constructed as a private-public partnership between the provincial government and a consortium that includes Canadian trainmaker Bombardier, South Africa’s ABSA Bank, and French contractor Bouygues.

The consortium has a 15½-year concession to operate the rail line after construction is completed in 2011.

Photo credit: DazMSmith

Iran Sends Its Own Gaza-Bound Flotilla

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Over the weekend, Iran’s foreign ministry decided it would be a peach of an idea to send an Iranian Red Crescent flotilla to Gaza. If the flotilla reaches the shores off Gaza — and check out a Middle East map and you’ll see that Tehran is going to need some “local help” so it doesn’t have to head around the Horn of Africa — it could create an international firestorm that makes the fallout from the first flotilla look like a three-year-old’s birthday party.

To the casual observer, the Iranian Red Crescent may seem like a harmless international charity intent on do-gooding. It is part of the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement, the world’s largest humanitarian network.

But lest anyone think the Iranian Red Crescent is an independent charity that has made a humanitarian decision to send the flotilla to Gaza out of the goodness of its heart, click here. That’s the Google translation of the announcement of Abolhassan Faghih’s appointment as the Iranian Red Crescent’s president by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. What’s more, the decision to send the flotilla was likely made within the halls of the Iranian foreign ministry in Tehran. Does that sound independent? Indeed, it’s almost certain that Ahmadinejad is using this flotilla as a direct extension of Iranian foreign policy.

And if the situation isn’t handled with extraordinary deftness, it could just spark a war.

Imagine the scenario: An Iranian-backed flotilla attempts to capitalize on the public relations “success” of last week’s tragedy. Israel, having dug its heels in on the naval blockade while sending mixed messages on the humanitarian issue, calculates that the last thing in the world it needs is to hand Iran a propaganda victory. After all, the Israel Defense Force just took out a handful of alleged terrorist divers off Gaza, which is a fair indication that the beating they’ve taken in the international press after last week isn’t going to make them back down.

In the face of impending physical confrontation, Tehran, as we’ve seen far too often over the last year, has little concern for the lives of its own citizens and encourages the flotilla onward. Israel fires. Tehran responds. The situation escalates … you can imagine the ugly fallout.

For the mullahs in Tehran, the situation is a win-win no-brainer. Either breaking the Israeli blockade or having its citizens die at Tel Aviv’s hands would be a massive propaganda victory that could potentially rally disaffected Iranians around the president. And if the situation becomes violent and Iran looks like a victim, it could decrease pressure within the UN Security Council for nuclear sanctions.

If we look purely at the strategic implications of the Red Crescent flotilla, the only way to diffuse the situation is to make aid in Gaza a non-issue. That’s why in light of the obvious humanitarian crisis afflicting Gaza’s citizens, Israel needs to facilitate a massive injection of aid into the strip.

And it better do it quickly. After all, were Iran to somehow fail, someone else would just send another flotilla soon.

Photo credit: Indigoprime’s Photostream

Labor’s Love Lost

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Organized labor may be struggling to attract members, but it apparently has abundant cash to spend on a counterproductive campaign to impose ideological conformity on the Democratic Party.

A coalition of unions has targeted Sen. Blanche Lincoln, who stands accused of excessive moderation. Lincoln’s campaign says the unions have spent $10 million to defeat her in tomorrow’s Democratic primary in Arkansas. As Chris Cillizza reports in today’s Washington Post:

Ostensibly, Lincoln’s opponent is Lt. Gov. Bill Halter. But the practical reality is that she is running against a handful of major labor unions — the Service Employees International Union and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, to name two.

Labor accuses Lincoln of deviating from the party line on two key issues. She opposed the “public option” in health care and doesn’t support the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA), labor’s top legislative priority. EFCA, aka “card check,” would make it easier for unions to organize.

It seems odd to make the public option a retroactive litmus test, especially since Lincoln joined with all the Senate Democrats to vote for the landmark health care reform bill. (She was a “no” on the “fixes” to the bill passed via reconciliation, but health reform was by then already law of the land.) And President Obama himself was less than passionate about the public option, making it clear that he wouldn’t let it get in the way of passing the bill.

As for EFCA, unions are incensed that the bill won’t move, despite endorsements from the president and Democratic congressional leaders. But Lincoln is hardly the only moderate Senate Democrat who has qualms about the bill, which is why it remains snagged. If progressives are honest with themselves, they will admit that EFCA’s provisions for card check elections and for binding arbitration will need tweaking to get through the Senate.

The unimpeachably liberal Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA) has signaled his willingness to negotiate changes aimed at winning moderates’ support. But so far, labor seems more interested in having an issue than in having a bill.

Fine, but is labor’s pique with Lincoln over the public option and card check really worth the risk of whittling down the Democrats’ majority in the Senate, one likely to become even more precarious after the midterm elections?

According to the Post, some labor officials don’t really care if Lincoln loses – the very threat that she and other moderates can be “primaried” for ideological offenses is sufficient to keep them in line. This flexing of labor’s political muscles to intimidate friends may be gratifying, but it’s politically dumb. It ignores the reality that the progressive coalition needs both liberals and moderates to sustain a governing majority, and that if you target moderate Democrats running in moderate-to-conservative states, you’ll enhance the odds of getting a Republican.

Former President Bill Clinton gets it. He’s made several appearances for Lincoln, urging Arkansas Democrats not to get swept up in crusades by outside pressure groups to purge moderates. The curious role played by Halter in this Razorback saga also deserves attention. A card-carrying centrist who worked in the Clinton administration, Halter is no Joe Hill. In allowing himself to be labor’s instrument for punishing a fellow pragmatist, he’s raised questions about his own authenticity, even as he attacks Lincoln for being a captive of Washington.

Even if Halter wins and goes to the Senate, the public option will still be history, EFCA will still be stalled and Democrats will still need moderates from red states to hold onto a majority. Labor also has to operate within the broader progressive coalition, and it can surely find better ways to invest its money than in fomenting dissension within the ranks.

Photo credit: USDAgov’s Photostream

Israel Must Learn to Eat Soup with a Knife

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

I love Israel. From the golden light that falls across the stones of Jerusalem to the banh mi sandwiches made by Vietnamese refugees welcomed by an empathetic Prime Minister Begin, Israel has a beauty and history I hold dear. Keeping this state, and this liberal tradition, safe is why it is so important that Israel understand the depth – and the cause – of its failure last week.

Israel’s leaders lack a fundamental understanding of the threats of the 21st century, or the type of power it takes to quell them. And by misunderstanding, they are endangering their country’s very existence.

Power matters – particularly for a small state like Israel, with an array of real enemies. For many years, Israel has used two primary levers of power. Its immense military might gives it the power to physically destroy its enemies, from bombing Iraq’s nuclear reactor to routing the armies of attacking Arab states. Meanwhile, its friendship with the U.S. augments its armed prowess with the power of an alliance that provides crucial financial support and contains potential threats from countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

But in the 21st century, military power isn’t what it once was. Israel is rarely going to face “clean fights” against armies of clearly identified enemies marching across the desert. Instead, it is going to confront the messy realities of modern, non-state-based warfare. The Turkish organization that sponsored last week’s flotilla had ties to al-Qaeda. A number of individuals aboard were connected to Hamas and other violent organizations. But the boat was also full of peace activists, international diplomats and other well-intentioned individuals who served as (perhaps unwitting) human shields for these more nefarious groups. The smorgasbord of causes on that flotilla was not accidental: it is de rigueur among smart insurgent groups worldwide.

Insurgents know what Israel, apparently, does not. Using military means against unarmed opponents is not only wrong, it also strengthens the insurgents’ cause, inflames their supporters, motivates donors and garners great press.

A flotilla of cell-phone-carrying, Twitter- and Facebook-posting activists can ignite the 24-hour news cycle and get their version of events in front of world public opinion long before any country can muster its sclerotic bureaucratic organs. By the time the state responds, the narrative has already been set. Israel becomes the British fighting Gandhi, or the National Guard turning their hoses on Southern civil rights protesters. We know who won those battles.

Fine, many might snort. Israel may lose the weak-kneed support of the so-called “international community” but it is more important to stop real threats decisively. After all, Israel has had to put up with some international hand-wringing for its military actions in the past. But by bombing Iraq’s Osirik reactor, Syria’s blossoming nuclear reactor or the grounded Egyptian Air Force in 1967, it averted real threats that otherwise could have knocked it out of existence.

Force is still a useful, necessary deterrent against military threats from other countries. Threats from terrorist organizations like Hamas, Hezbollah and others that mix humanitarianism and populist appeals with violence are no less real, but as Israel learned in its ill-conceived 2006 war in Lebanon, force doesn’t work as well against them. As America’s own counterinsurgency manual states, insurgents met with force alone simply melt back into the population, their ranks augmented by new converts and their bank accounts brimming with funds from new supporters. The insurgents then live to fight long wars of attrition that sap their enemies physically, mentally and spiritually.

It is that last category that Israel must pay particular attention to, because it risks losing its other lever of power. As Peter Beinart pointed out in a much-quoted story in the New York Review of Books, young American Jews identify with Israel insofar as it lives up to its founding values. They want to support the state that took in the Vietnamese boat people, not the state that mines Palestinian olive groves. Fighting insurgent wars largely through force necessarily leads Israel to violate the spirit of its own humanitarian founding – and to alienate the supporters in America it needs for its survival.

Victory against insurgents requires a new perspective and new tools. As T.E. Lawrence explained, one must “learn to eat soup with a knife.” George W. Bush didn’t understand counterinsurgency, and his failure allowed the insurgent threat in Iraq and Afghanistan to grow and metastasize. Now, Israel’s leaders must master the signature threat of the 21st century. Its hammer worked well against the state-based threats it faced during the first 50 years of its existence. But Israel had better find other options in its toolkit if it is to quell the threats it faces today.

Photo credit: Lilachd’s Photostream

Cutting the Tether Webcast

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Cutting the Tether: Enhancing the U.S. Military’s Energy Performance

Event Webcast – May 13, 2010

Watch live streaming video from progressivepolicyinstitute at livestream.com

Featured Speakers:

Sen. John Warner (R-VA), Ret.
Rep. Tom Perriello (D-VA)

Panelists:

Vice Admiral Dennis McGinn, Ret., CEO, RemoteReality
Colonoel Paul E. Roege, Army Capabilities Integration Center
Richard Goffi, Principal, Booz Allen Hamilton
Chris Myers, Vice President of Government and Energy Programs, Lockheed Martin

Moderator:

James Morin, Esq., author, “Cutting the Tether”

California, Iowa, Nevada Among the States to Watch Next Tuesday

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Next Tuesday 10 states (including California, Iowa and Nevada) will hold primaries, and Arkansas and Georgia will hold runoffs for the U.S. Senate and a congressional special election respectively.

There’s something interesting going on in every one of these states, but national attention has mainly focused on California, Iowa, Nevada, South Carolina and Arkansas.

The marquee California races, the GOP nomination battles for governor and U.S. senator, have become a bit anticlimactic, with Meg Whitman appearing to run away with the former and Carly Fiorina with the latter, according to a whole battery of recent polls (see the trendlines here and here). Total spending in the GOP governor’s race has now gone over $100 million, but Steve Poizner’s stretch-drive efforts to make the primary revolve entirely around Meg Whitman’s refusal to endorse Arizona’s new immigration law don’t seem to be striking much gold. Whitman, at some peril to her general election standing, has continued round-the-clock aerial pounding of Poizner for alleged liberalism on abortion and spending.

Fiorina has been the only Senate candidate recently on the air, though at vastly smaller levels than the gubernatorial candidates, but may also be benefitting from a consolidation of the conservative vote against pro-gay-rights, pro-choice early front-runner Tom Campbell, at the expense of the other conservative candidate, Tea Party favorite Chuck DeVore.

While political junkies might hope for late drama in these races, it’s worth noting that roughly half the vote in California will be cast early by mail.

In both contests, the Democrats (Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer) awaiting the ultimate victor in November have enjoyed the intra-Republican slugfest as an opportunity to raise money, and both have been moving up to solid leads in general election polls.

As always, the California primary ballot has a number of initiatives, but the only one of national significance this time around would create a Louisiana-style “jungle primary” system that abolishes party primaries altogether and sends the top two performers (if no one wins a majority) into a runoff. In the current California atmosphere of deep hostility to the status quo, the initiative has a good chance of passage despite strong opposition from both major parties.

Iowa’s Republican primary is interesting mainly as a barometer of that very influential state’s conservative movement, currently obsessed with overturning last year’s state court decision legalizing same-sex marriage, and its potential impact on the 2012 presidential campaign. In the gubernatorial primary, former four-term governor Terry Branstad (who has been endorsed by Mitt Romney) is the far-and-away front-runner, but the one recent public poll shows hard-core cultural conservative Bob Vander Plaats (Mike Huckabee’s 2008 campaign chairman in the state) within theoretical striking distance. An upset would be very bad news for Romney, and very good news for embattled Democratic incumbent Chet Culver. But Branstad got a late break yesterday when Sarah Palin surprisingly (given the less-than-warm feelings of her close right-to-life allies toward the former governor) endorsed his candidacy. There are also a couple of very competitive Republican House primaries, particularly the contest to choose an opponent for Democratic Rep. Leonard Boswell, in which former Iowa State University wrestling coach Jim Gibbons in the favorite.

In Nevada, the big development has been the steady decline in support for the longtime front-runner in the Republican Senate race, Sue Lowden, and a surge in support for Tea Party stalwart Sharron Angle, who has also benefitted from Club for Growth backing. Two polls this week have shown Angle running significantly ahead of both Lowden and Las Vegas businessman Danny Tarkanian. But Angle presently appears to be the weakest candidate against incumbent Harry Reid, who has been slowly rising in general election polls. Reid will have a big financial advantage over the winner of the GOP primary. Meanwhile, in the governor’s race, scandal-plagued incumbent Republican Jim Gibbons looks almost certain to lose to former Attorney General Brian Sandoval, who will face Harry Reid’s son Rory (who is Clark County Commission Chairman).

The South Carolina Republican gubernatorial primary has turned into a circus of late with all attention focused on allegations of marital infidelity against state Rep. Nikki Haley, the hard-core conservative “reformer” (and Mark Sanford protégé) who took a lead over three rivals right before the allegations broke. If no further proof of the allegations emerges before next Tuesday, Haley will make it into a runoff, though it’s unclear whether Attorney General Henry McMaster (the early favorite), U.S. Rep. Gresham Barrett (who’s been struggling to defend his vote for TARP), or Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer (who has high unfavorable ratings and has been accused by Haley of feeding the allegations against her) will survive with her. In the overshadowed Democratic primary, state Rep. Vincent Sheheen is a slight favorite over state school superintendent Jim Rex, with a runoff possible.

And in Arkansas’ Democratic Senate runoff, there hasn’t been any credible public polling of the Bill Halter/Blanche Lincoln battle, but the shape of the race as a war of labor and business surrogates hasn’t changed since the primary, with unions spending well over $2 million in the runoff for Halter, and business groups running ads attacking Halter on Lincoln’s behalf. Lincoln is mostly relying, however, on personal campaigning with Bill Clinton. And for all the TV ads in this race, it will largely come down to turnout, with Lincoln focusing on African-American voters and Halter trying to get southern Arkansas voters to return to the polls. As the challenger in an anti-incumbent year who exceeded expectations in the primary, Halter is the assumed favorite, but anything could happen if turnout’s low.

Ed Kilgore’s PPI Political Memo runs every Tuesday and Friday.

Prices, Wages, Food and Inequality

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Mike Konczal’s inequality post as a guest blogger for Ezra is getting a bit of attention in the blogosphere. Konczal jumps off of an interesting post by Jamelle Bouie to argue that contrary to those who argue that “inequality isn’t so bad,” the unhealthy nature of the cheaper food that is purchased by the poor negates the fact that the poor face a lower inflation rate. Since he suggests I (and Will Wilkinson) think that “inequality isn’t so bad,” I wanted to correct a misconception that Konczal has about the argument of economist Christian Broda that he is responding to. Broda’s actual argument really doesn’t have anything to do with how healthy the things purchased by the poor are.

Here’s Konczal:

One argument that has become popular recently is that the increase in income inequality isn’t quite as bad because both the rich and the poor have different ‘inflation’ rates — the prices at which goods increase for the rich have been increasing much faster than the prices at which goods have been increasing for the poor. So even though the poor or median person hasn’t had any wage growth, he has much more purchasing power because of this effect.

This isn’t quite the argument that has become popular recently. What fans of the Broda research argue (i.e., what Broda and his colleagues argue) is that the apparent increase in income inequality may overstate the actual increase in inequality because the poor appear to have a lower inflation rate than the rich. If true, then it’s not that “the poor or median person hasn’t had any wage growth,” it’s that they have had wage growth because of their lower inflation rate — and the wage growth has been big enough that it has kept the ratio of rich-to-poor incomes roughly constant.

Think of it this way. Broda and his colleagues find that the prices of what the poor buy (that is, “price” when the satisfaction derived, or utility, is held constant) have risen less than the prices of what the rich buy. That’s because when prices of related goods change, the poor are more likely to switch to cheaper goods, all the while maintaining their overall level of satisfaction with their purchases. If it becomes cheaper to maintain a constant level of satisfaction, then one’s wages have effectively grown. So poor consumers may switch from Green Giant frozen veggies to generics when the latter go on sale, or they might buy their frozen veggies at the chain a couple of neighborhoods over rather than the local grocery store when the latter’s prices go up. Rich consumers, on the other hand, may be relatively unlikely to stop buying Whole Foods vegetables when the plebian chain’s prices are cut. They may not switch to generics as those products become cheaper relative to those on offer at the farmer’s market.

It’s not that we should be excited about how great the generic frozen veggies bought by the poor are compared with the Whole Foods produce. It’s that we should be excited that the poor are either more willing or more able to economize to maintain a constant lifestyle than the rich are, and so inflation eats into their quality of life to a lesser extent than it does among the rich, holding in check other forces that would increase inequality.

Now, Broda’s research is based on purchases of a limited number of commodities and over a limited number of years, but if his findings extend to other goods and services and to earlier periods (which he believes they do), then the implication is that inequality between the poor and the well-off — though not necessarily the richest of the rich — has not grown. We can still worry about the quality of the food purchased by the poor and their health outcomes, but that’s a story about poverty and deprivation, not about inequality or growth in inequality.

Stop the Spill, Pass the Bill

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As diligently as cloistered monks, the commentariat is working hard to calibrate the exact amount of political damage the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is doing to the Obama presidency. Woeful analogies come fast and furious: the spill is Obama’s Katrina, or Obama’s hostage crisis, his Jimmy Carter moment.

All this would be comical if not for the media’s undoubted power to warp public perceptions by converting complex realities into political melodramas. What’s false about this one is its premise: President Obama could find a way to stop the leak if only he would “take charge” of the crisis.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the public doesn’t share the media’s apparently bottomless faith in the federal government’s problem-solving capacities. According to a recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey, only 25 percent of Americans trust the government to do the right thing most of the time. Nearly a third say they “almost never” trust the government to do the right thing.

But what’s really odd, as Jonathan Chait notes today, is the “assumption of presidential omnipotence” that informs the media’s assessment of Obama’s handling of the spill.

Today presidents are expected to take ultimate responsibility for every problem, natural or man-made, and to voice the nation’s emotional solidarity with victims of every disaster. In this vein, James Carville recently blasted Obama for failing to show up and emote in Louisiana as the oil spill threatens its shores.

Obama, always the calmest head in the room, has pointed out that since government doesn’t drill oil wells, it’s not likely to have superior experience and technical expertise when it comes to plugging oil leaks. What the administration can do is what it is doing: keeping pressure on BP to improvise a solution. Facing mounting clean-up costs and plummeting stock prices, the company has every incentive to do so.

The president’s proper role is not to play superhero or therapist-in-chief, but to draw from the crisis the right lessons for national policy. He did so yesterday, underscoring the need to pass energy/climate legislation that’s bogged down in the Senate. The bill, he said, would “accelerate the transition” to a clean energy economy. Crucially, it would for the first time put a price on carbon emissions, which would provide markets with a powerful signal to invest in alternative fuels.

If the spill galvanizes Obama into going all-in for a clean energy bill, as he did for health care, it could yet be turned to the nation’s advantage. But if the disaster leads progressives to vote against the bill, because it also contains incentives for more U.S. oil and gas exploration, the result will be a cruel irony: Congress’ failure to act on clean energy would leave America as addicted to oil as ever.

Photo credit: Deepwater Horizon Response’s Photostream