Category: Uncategorized

The Cold War Is Over, But the Nukes Are Still Here

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

President Obama sure is spending a lot of time worrying about nuclear weapons this week. Today’s Nuclear Security Summit – a meeting of over 40 world leaders in Washington, D.C. – caps seven days of highly publicized events on nuclear security.

The attention lavished on atomic weapons feels almost anachronistic, invoking a Cold War-era standoff that now seems so distant. Twenty-five years ago, I was a third grader at St. Joan of Arc in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. Once a month, Ms. Elliot would trot my class into the hallway where we’d kneel down and clasp our hands behind our necks. This wasn’t some strange Catholic school ritual – we were “protecting” ourselves from a Soviet nuclear attack.

While I realize now that this defensive maneuver wouldn’t have kept me safe from a direct hit on the jungle gym, the looming threat of a mushroom cloud over the American Midwest felt real.

It doesn’t today. The end of the Cold War, years of American military dominance and improving, if occasionally frustrating, relations with Moscow have effectively banished the threat of mutually assured destruction. Beyond Russia, it’s nearly impossible to imagine China, perhaps the United States’ “near-peer” military competitor but also its financial Siamese twin, launching its nuclear weapons.

But nuclear security must be important – just glance at Obama’s schedule. Before signing the New START accord with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev last Thursday, his administration released its Nuclear Posture Review, an important document that redefines the way America will use the 1550 deployed warheads New START permits. And today the president is convening the summit of world leaders in Washington, D.C.

It’s not only this week. These events are part of a yearlong effort that began last April when President Obama spoke about his vision of a world without nuclear weapons.

It’s a long-term goal to be sure — Obama has been clear that America would retain its arsenal as long as others did. But it’s hardly a liberal fantasy — conservative icons like former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz have joined forces with mainstream Democrats like former Senator Sam Nunn and Defense Secretary Bill Perry to promote a nuclear-free world.

They’re following the legacy of Ronald Reagan, who nearly signed on to sweeping nuclear restrictions with Mikhail Gorbachev in Iceland in 1986, and George H.W. Bush, who signed the START treaty in 1991.

So with no Cold War threat, what’s the urgency? Why is the president wasting time negotiating with countries that wouldn’t dare attack us anyway?

Here’s why — it’s not state-sponsored atomic destruction that’s the threat. It’s the al-Qaeda operative with a nuclear suitcase. That sounds crazy, right? Then again, we never could have imagined that three airliners could bring down the Twin Towers and slam into the Pentagon. President Obama realizes that a nuclear arsenal in the hands of nation-states still poses a threat, albeit from stateless ones.

How, then, does a stuffy gathering of world leaders at a conference center in Washington, D.C. keep the bomb away from a small-fry terrorist? First, curbing nuclear proliferation depends on the large nuclear powers — U.S., Russia, China, U.K. and France — showing a serious and sustained effort towards nuclear disarmament that convinces the smaller nuclear powers — India, Pakistan and Israel — and nuclear weapons aspirants — North Korea and Iran — to feel comfortable without them. That dialogue needs to start on a big stage, particularly for American allies India and Pakistan, who may want to do the right thing but happen to be mortal enemies.

What’s more, it’s the North Koreas, Irans and Pakistans of the world that stand the greatest chance of selling nuclear technology to the black market’s highest bidder. Getting those countries to swear off nuclear weapons planning is critical. Just ask A.Q. Khan — he might be a hero as the father of the Pakistani A-bomb, but he has also sold nuclear secrets to Iran and North Korea in the 1980s and 1990s for tens of millions of dollars.

We need nation-states to control their nuclear scientists, and getting everyone on the same page — as Obama’s doing — is the first step to achieving that goal.

We are long-removed from cowering in the hallway of my Catholic school in Ohio, but that doesn’t mean the nuclear threat died with the Cold War. It has simply changed. That’s why the Obama administration is spending so much time yanking America’s nuclear security policy into the 21st century.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/travlr/

The Party of “Hell No” Parties in New Orleans

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

This marks the first of a series of semi-weekly columns (on Mondays and Fridays, whenever possible) I’ll be doing for ProgressiveFix summarizing and digesting political news from around the country as we head towards the November midterm elections and inch inexorably towards the 2012 presidential cycle.

I will periodically do reports on the various regions, and will also regularly give readers the gist (without a lot of charts, graphs or wonkery) of current polling that is of interest (those interested in charts, graphs or wonkery should visit pollster.com and fivethirtyeight.com). I will also make every effort to lift horse-race analysis from isolated snippets on specific campaigns into a general sense of political trends, and give a taste of the strategic debates that are going on in both major parties.

This weekend’s major political event was the Southern Republican Leadership Conference (SRLC) in New Orleans, which rivals February’s CPAC conference in Washington as an unofficial “kickoff” event for the 2012 presidential nomination contest. Naturally, SRLC featured a lot of speakers who are on the 2012 “mentioned” list, along with a couple of underlying stress points.

The stress points were (1) the widespread unhappiness with unhelpful news from Michael Steele’s Republican National Committee, which no one in New Orleans explicitly mentioned, but which was clearly a subtext (Steele’s own speech quickly emptied the room), and (2) the debate on whether Republicans should or should not be satisfied to be thought of as “the party of no,” more interested in obstructing Barack Obama’s agenda than in offering their own.

My take is that you can forget what the various SRLC speakers explicitly said on the “party of no” meme; they generally, for what it’s worth, spoke out of both sides of their mouths, first denying a hardcore negative message and then endorsing it in every rhetorical and policy specific. Newt Gingrich, for example, emphatically said the GOP had to become “the party of yes,” but then called for an appropriations-driven government shutdown to force major concessions from the president if Republicans win control of Congress this November — which is pretty amazing considering how well that strategy worked for Speaker Gingrich back in 1995 (if you are really young or new to politics, take my word for it: it bombed disastrously).

But the real rhetorical champion (and crowd favorite) of the conference was Texas Gov. Rick Perry, whose speech called for a war not just on Democrats (or “liberals” and “socialists,” as he preferred to call them) but on government itself:

Texas Gov. Rick Perry says Republican congressional candidates must say “no” — no to President Barack Obama, and no to anything that makes Washington relevant to the American people….

He said GOP candidates should tell voters, “Elect me and I’m going to Washington, D.C, and will try to make it as inconsequential on your life as I can make it.”

Now that should give GOPers a good positive agenda!

Meanwhile, Perry’s only real rival as crowd favorite, Sarah Palin, said Republicans should be the party of “hell no” when it came to health reform, and reprised her usual approach of personally baiting the president, particularly on energy and nuclear policy.

 

GOP: Smaller Tent Needed

The other big repetitive theme at the conference was what might be called a rather unnecessary demand that the GOP rebrand itself as relentlessly conservative. Probable 2012 candidate Rick Santorum, who’s been under attack during recent Iowa appearances for having endorsed Arlen Specter against Pat Toomey in 2004, tried to argue that his step was aimed at ensuring pro-life Supreme Court justices, not at accepting any “big-tent” thinking on issues like abortion:

You questioned my judgment, and you have every right to do so. But please don’t question my intention to do what’s right for those little babies.

There was, of course, a 2012 presidential straw poll in New Orleans, and it was a bit of a surprise that Mitt Romney’s vote-buying exercise beat Ron Paul’s, by exactly one vote. Paul, as you might recall, won the February CPAC straw poll by packing the seats with young, readily mobilized supporters. Romney (who, unlike Paul, didn’t show up in New Orleans) utilized a group called Evangelicals for Romney that bought up a bunch of tickets and offered them for free to all comers, and then pre-spun the media by predicting defeat to Paul’s hordes.

Palin edged Gingrich among the presumably non-stuffed boxes (though Palin’s PAC did offer caribou-on-a-stick to attendees), and everyone else trailed badly (notably, Rick Perry took himself off the ballot). As Tom Schaller noted, however, Romney and Paul had limited “second-choice” support (as the straw poll allowed attendees to indicate), so effectively it was a four-way wash. Invisible Primary monitors Ben Smith and Jonathan Martin of Politico adjudged the straw poll as pretty much a nothing-burger.

Poll Watch

A new poll from Dem-leaning Kos/R2K has Democrat Roy Barnes narrowly leading the three most prominent Republican candidates for governor of Georgia; Republican-leaning Rasmussen has all three major Republican candidates for the U.S. Senate in New Hampshire leading Democrat Paul Hodes.

 

Ed Kilgore’s PPI Political Memo runs on Mondays and Fridays.

On Supreme Court, Bet on a Safe Pick — and a Big Fight Anyway

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The word coming out of the administration and Democrats in Congress is that President Obama would like to avoid a big fight over his next Supreme Court nominee. And indeed, the emerging conventional-wisdom shortlist reflects the desire for a nominee who can win smooth confirmation from the Senate.

The names that keep popping up are Solicitor General Elena Kagan and federal Appeals Court Judges Diane Wood (of Chicago) and Merrick Garland (of District of Columbia). One less-mentioned name who is still a possibility is Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.

As Stuart Taylor Jr., hardly a liberal ideologue, wrote recently, “It would be hard for Senate Republicans to justify or sustain a filibuster against any of these four, based on what’s known about them. Indeed, Kagan, Garland, Napolitano, and arguably Wood have less problematic paper trails than Sotomayor, whom the Senate confirmed last summer on a 68-31 vote, with lots of complaining but no filibuster.” Indeed, if anything, the picks might be too safe for some on the left. The emergence of Kagan as a frontrunner has already led to some howls of outrage from some progressives who see her as much too accommodating to conservative and centrist views and want a more combative liberal to replace John Paul Stevens.

Bet on Obama to (as usual) block out the noise from the fray in making his selection and pick someone safe. But bet on this as well: whomever he taps will inspire a loud clamor from conservatives, both in the base and on the Hill.

Kagan may very well be the most qualified of the possible nominees (I haven’t studied all their records). But forget about her moderation cooling the temperature over the Supreme Court debate. The right has perpetuated a narrative that simply doesn’t allow for the idea of a moderate progressive. Anyone to the left of Scott Brown (and that might be too generous) is suspect, an enabler of the “most radical administration in American history.” Besides, a Supreme Court fight is the kind of thing fundraisers and the rank-and-file live for. By the time the Beck-Palin-Rush crew is done with Kagan or any Obama nominee, they will be a lightning rod anyway. And, just as with health care, the likelihood is that the left will rally around the nominee once they see the right flip out over it.

This isn’t to say that Kagan wouldn’t win confirmation. All of the four mentioned above are confirmable. But a rancorous debate is probably unavoidable. It’s simply where we are right now. Nate Silver writes, “One other dynamic to watch out for: whether the partisan split on Obama has become so entrenched that whomever he nominates will start out with 35 percent disapproval.” I’ll take the over.

Energy Realism and Hype

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Thanks to new drilling techniques, U.S. natural gas reserves may have doubled, Energy Secretary Steven Chu announced this week. “That’s a big deal because it will be a transition fuel as we go to renewables,” Chu said at a conference hosted by the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Chu’s emphasis on natural gas as a bridge fuel, together with President Obama’s decisions to allow offshore drilling and expand loan guarantees for building nuclear power plants, attest to a new realism in U.S. energy policy. The Obama administration is trying to move the deadlocked energy debate beyond a false choice between fossil and renewable fuels. For now, America needs more of both.

This “no fuel left behind” approach also lays the groundwork for bipartisan cooperation on capping carbon emissions. If Republicans say “no” to things they’ve long demanded, namely more nuclear power and offshore drilling, as part of a comprehensive climate bill, it will be another sign that they are unwilling to help solve the country’s biggest problems.

Some environmentalists (including, apparently, Al Gore) are chagrined over Obama’s support for offshore drilling, which they see as a concession to the “drill, baby, drill” right.  So let’s be clear: offshore production in U.S. waters will not lead us to “energy independence,” nor will it lower prices at the pump. Our share of the world’s oil reserves — even if much more is aggressively produced — is still not large enough to move global oil prices. This would be the case even if there was a truly competitive and free global petroleum market. But the global oil market is not free and competitive — it is dominated by low-cost producers in the Persian Gulf, who are aligned in a cartel and could easily counteract any downward price influence from an increase in U.S. supply. The only way that U.S. oil could directly and dramatically lead to low U.S. gas prices would be for us to adopt the Venezuelan model: nationalize the industry, close the borders, and grossly subsidize the industry. Not gonna happen.

Nonetheless, modest expansions of domestically produced oil would yield modest benefits. Estimates range from a low of 39 billion barrels of recoverable oil to a high of 63 billion barrels. “If ramped up quickly enough, that could overcome the underlying decline rate of current U.S. output and add significant net production for a decade or two, at a time when competition for the oil we are currently importing is likely to be fiercest,” writes energy consultant Geoffrey Styles.

In addition to marginally reducing our reliance on foreign imports, offshore drilling would create U.S. jobs and lower our massive energy trade deficit. These benefits shouldn’t be exaggerated, but they certainly aren’t negligible. Further, to the extent that our offshore development leads to large and cost-effective finds of natural gas, that is almost certainly a good thing since unlike oil, gas is not as subject to global price pressures or oligopolistic manipulation as is oil. Moreover, to really reduce our greenhouse gas emissions, the United States will have to substitute baseload gas for baseload coal on a large scale and abundant gas developed in an environmentally acceptable fashion (more likely to apply to offshore development than to much of the contemplated onshore development of “unconventional” sources) is a key to that goal.

What about the environmental risks of drilling? Without question, the history of petroleum development and delivery is rife with calamities. The decades-old Santa Barbara spills are still seared into the minds of many and, of course, the Exxon Valdez has not – and should not – soon leave our collective memories. But the former was decades ago and the latter is a compelling argument for even stronger protections in the transportation of petroleum. The next Exxon Valdez could be carrying oil from onshore or offshore sources. But the technology and regulation of offshore production has greatly improved since Santa Barbara, and while one could compellingly argue for even more protections, the fact is that offshore development is much less risky than ever before.

Finally, Obama has deftly maneuvered his political opponents into a tight corner. The White House understands that the paramount goal of energy policy should be to price carbon. That goal is unlikely to be achieved in Congress as long as conservatives continue to fantasize over a supply-side panacea that will lead American to a golden age of “energy independence” and “lower prices at the pump.” This is an energy policy of abdication and isolationism. By taking a balanced approach, Obama has challenged conservatives to take “yes” for an answer — or show that they really don’t believe in their alleged “alternative” path to energy security.

The Five Most Ridiculous Conservative Statements About Obama’s Nuclear Policy

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The other day, I wrote a column about how the president’s focus on nuclear weapons was a solid opportunity to finally achieve some bipartisanship. I won’t rehash those arguments here, but I encourage you to read the piece. Much of the conservative intelligentsia actually agrees with me, and some have noted that any objections to the president’s moves are simply rooted in politics because there is “no substantive disagreement with what Obama has done.” But that hasn’t stopped some from favoring politics over good governance and — as Kevin Sullivan at RCW points out – start a new “silly season.”

So here, friends, are the five most ridiculous conservative lines about this week’s focus on nuclear security:

5. “[T]he real threat today is proliferation and terrorism. This treaty, of course, doesn’t have anything to do with that.” — Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ)

Au contraire — the New START has EVERYTHING to do with proliferation and terrorism. The key to convincing the Irans, North Koreas and Pakistans of the world that building and/or selling nuclear weapons isn’t necessary is to have demonstrable proof that the big nuclear nations are serious about arms control themselves. So we have to start (no pun intended) with the idea that the U.S. and Russia are making a real commitment to limit their own arsenals over time. Don’t expect Tehran and Pyongyang to bite on this immediately, but this is a decades-long project and New START is a good step in this direction.

4. “[W]e don’t need the treaty, we are willing to do these things unilaterally and the Russians will probably do it unilaterally themselves.” — Doug Feith, former Bush Undersecretary of Defense for Policy

Okay, fair enough…maybe both sides would do things unilaterally. But when I bought my house, I felt a lot better knowing the terms of the deal were actually written down. Feith spent a good chunk of his career negotiating arms control treaties for a living, so it’s curious why he’d slap down his former profession. Also, see #5 again.

3. “A friendly reality check for exuberant Democrats on the first day of the Nuclear-Zero Pax Obama — this treaty is almost certainly dead on arrival.” – Michael Goldfarb, Weekly Standard

Actually, Michael, I don’t think it is. Here‘s Sen. Richard Lugar (IN), the ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee: “I remain hopeful that it will be signed and that there will be time assigned on the floor for debate and a vote this year.” And here‘s Henry Kissinger and George Shultz supporting it, too. Ratification will be a tough fight — two-thirds of the Senate is needed — but it’s hardly DOA.

2. “Does anyone think that the Obama administration will use force — much less nuclear force — against Iran? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad certainly doesn’t, to judge by his reaction to the Nuclear Posture Review.” — Max Boot, Commentary

Actually, I think Ahmadinejad does. Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear weapons program over the last decade is the act of a country that’s convinced America would use force against it. After all, we’ve only invaded both of their next-door neighbors. Obama’s nuclear policy only isolates Iran more. Boot says that Robert Gates’ assertion that all options are on the table against Iran is not true. But actions speak louder than words. Judging by Iran’s actions, they still seem pretty convinced of America’s willingness to use force, Ahmadinejad’s bluster notwithstanding.

1. “(Our response is then restricted to bullets, bombs, and other conventional munitions.)” – Charles Krauthammer, Washington Post

Boasting more nonsense than a Phish show, Krauthammer’s piece imagines a scenario where hundreds of Americans are dead due to a nerve gas attack in Boston. Then he claims that the new Nuclear Posture Review ties the U.S. president’s hands because America couldn’t respond with a nuclear strike, and would have to — sigh – respond with just bullets, bombs and the like. Yeah, that’s right – apparently, the only good deterrent is a nuclear one. Really, why would anyone be scared of a conventional military that spends more on bullets, ICBMs and other conventional weapons than the rest of the world combined?

Turnout Rumblings

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As we inch closer to the November 2010 elections, some of the early indicia affecting turnout are showing remarkable numbers predictive of an unusually high turnout for a midterm election.

Now it should come as no great surprise that when asked by USA Today/Gallup if they are “more enthusiastic than usual” about voting in November, 69 percent of Republicans respond affirmatively. This comports with the general sense that Republicans are getting ready to joyfully snake dance to the polls in November to get rid of the socialist usurpers in Washington and restore the natural order of things. But as Nate Silver has pointed out, the same survey shows 57 percent of Democrats expressing unusual enthusiasm as well — a higher percentage than ever registered before a midterm by voters in either party, until now.

At pollster.com, turnout guru Michael McDonald of George Mason University stares at the data and suggests we could be seeing a historic turnout rates this November, since overall enthusiasm levels are about where they were two years ago. He’s pretty sure turnout will exceed that of the last midterm election, in 2006, which was considered a very good turnout year by historic standards.

Normally high overall turnout in a midterm election would be good news for Democrats, but turnout predictions based on voter enthusiasm must note the advantage GOPers have on that measurement. We’ll see if conservative excitement about November can be sustained at its current high-pitch chattering whine, and if Democrats can maintain or increase their own level of engagement.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

China’s Great Leap Forward on High-Speed Rail

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

If we are going to create a new mode of intercity transportation that gets Americans out of their cars — that reduces our dependence on oil from unstable or hostile countries and cuts greenhouse gas emissions -– we have to start thinking creatively.

Like the Chinese. Ten years ago, China still operated steam locomotives on a second-rate rail network. After years of highway building, the government realized that its fast-growing economy and isolated interior provinces could be better served by improved train service.

Before embarking on a rail-building program in 2000, however, China’s leaders made a crucial decision. They mandated state-of-the-art standards for constructing, equipping and operating the new lines. In other words, they would accept only the best technology the world had to offer.

The Ministry of Railways called upon international firms, such as Netherlands’ Arcadis Infra, France’s Alstom and Germany’s Siemens, to enter into joint ventures with Chinese companies to build the bridges, tunnels, track, signaling, cars and locomotives needed for the new railways.

Within a short time span, China developed leapfrog technology. This was vividly demonstrated four months ago when the country opened the world’s fastest rail line. The new service between Wuhan and Guangzhou operates at a 245-mph maximum and a 204-mph average. The trains have cut the 600-mile journey between central China and the southeast coast from 10 hours to three.

The country is on schedule to open in 2012 the centerpiece of its national system, a line between Beijing and Shanghai that will reduce the trip time to four hours from 10 hours today.

New York to Chicago is a similar distance. What would it be like to leave Manhattan on a smooth, comfortable bullet train in the morning and get to the Loop in time for lunch? That journey now takes 18 hours on Amtrak, the antithesis of high speed.

And talk about a project that generates jobs — more than 100,000 people are working on the Beijing-Shanghai line.

The U.S. desperately needs a similar success, the sooner, the better. Once Americans experience the convenience and safety of fast trains, they will demand more and, importantly, will be willing to make the large investments needed to create an efficient intercity network.

For months now, critics have assailed plans in California to link Los Angeles and San Francisco with 220-mph trains as too grandiose and pricey. But guess what? The Chinese government has just signed a cooperation agreement with the California High Speed Rail Authority. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is expected to travel Beijing for talks with rail ministry officials to hammer out a deal.

The Chinese have expressed interest not only in selling equipment for the new railway, but to help finance the line’s construction by diverting some of China’s vast reserves of U.S. dollars into direct infrastructure investment.

This comes on the heels of a reported Chinese offer to invest $7 billion in a bid by a private group to build a 185-mile high-speed railway along Interstate-15 from Las Vegas, Nevada, to Victorville, Calif.

By insisting on the highest standards, China overcame years of inertia and pivoted itself to the forefront of a 21st-century transportation revolution.

Maybe the Chinese model — backed by Chinese capital — will help America overcome the technological timidity that now leaves us with Amtrak and the still-unfulfilled dreams of something better.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/henrie

Neo-Confederate History Month

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As most readers have probably heard, Virginia’s Republican Governor Bob McDonnell got himself into hot water by declaring April “Confederate History Month,” in a proclamation that did not mention the rather pertinent fact that the Confederacy was a revolutionary (and by definition, treasonous) effort to maintain slavery against even the possibility of abolition.

After the predictable firestorm of criticism, McDonnell allowed that it must have been a mistake not to mention slavery in his proclamation. And then he repeated his rationale for the whole idea, which was, he claimed, simply a matter of promoting tourism in anticipation of the sesquicentennial of the Civil War’s outbreak. Tourism!

I’m sure most conservatives will consider McDonnell’s act of contrition sufficient, while many liberals will cynically conclude the whole thing was a dog whistle to the far Right, much like his earlier and less notorious commemoration of March 7-13 as Christian Heritage Week, in honor of the Christian Right’s revisionist theory that the Founders were theocrats at heart.

But as a white southerner old enough to remember the final years of Jim Crow, when every month was Confederate History Month, I have a better idea for McDonnell: Let’s have a Neo-Confederate History Month that draws attention to the endless commemorations of the Lost Cause that have wrought nearly as much damage as the Confederacy itself.

It would be immensely useful for Virginians and southerners generally to spend some time reflecting on the century or so of grinding poverty and cultural isolation that fidelity to the Romance in Gray earned for the entire region, regardless of race. Few Americans from any region know much about the actual history of Reconstruction, capped by the shameful consignment of African Americans to the tender mercies of their former masters, or about the systematic disenfranchisement of black citizens (and in some places, particularly McDonnell’s Virginia, of poor whites) that immediately followed.

A Neo-Confederate History Month could be thoroughly bipartisan. Republicans could enjoy greater exposure to the virulent racism of such progressive icons as William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson, not to mention Democratic New Deal crusaders in the South like Mississippi’s Theodore Bilbo. The capture of the political machinery of Republican and Democratic parties in a number of states, inside and beyond the South, by the revived Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s, would be an interesting subject for further study as well.

Most of all, a Neo-Confederate History Month could remind us of the last great effusion of enthusiasm for Davis and Lee and Jackson and all the other avatars of the Confederacy: the white southern fight to maintain racial segregation in the 1950s and 1960s. That’s when “Dixie” was played as often as the national anthem at most white high school football games in the South; when Confederate regalia were attached to state flags across the region; and when the vast constitutional and political edifice of pre-secession agitprop was brought back to life in the last-ditch effort to make the Second Reconstruction fail like the first.

Bob McDonnell should be particularly responsible, as a former Attorney General of his state, for reminding us all of the “massive resistance” doctrine preached by Virginia Senator Harry Byrd in response to federal judicial rulings and pending civil rights laws, and of the “interposition” theory of nullification spread most notably by Richmond News Leader editor James Jackson Kilpatrick.

Any Neo-Confederate History Month would be incomplete, of course, without reference to the contemporary conservative revival of states’ rights and nullification theories redolent of proto-Confederates, Confederates, and neo-Confederates.

Having flirted with such theories himself, Bob McDonnell probably wouldn’t be interested in discussing them in the context of Civil War history. But that’s okay: A greater public understanding of the exceptionally unsavory tradition that conservative Republicans are following in claiming that states can refuse to accept health care reform would be valuable without an explicit discussion of current politics.

So give it up, governor: If you are going to have a Confederate History Month, at least be honest enough to acknowledge that the legacy of the Confederacy didn’t die at Appomattox.

This item is cross-posted at The New Republic.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/carlwain/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

KickSTART to the 21st Century

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The president got a New START. Now he needs the Senate to ratify it.

This should be a no-brainer. When Presidents Obama and Medvedev signed the treaty, dubbed New START, in Prague today, they were doing a lot more than concluding a dry, complex arms reduction agreement. The accord is a pragmatic and essential first step in strengthening American security.

The Cold War is over, but the weapons remain. Though we no longer fear global thermonuclear war between America and Russia, a nuclear explosion in an American city would be an unimaginable catastrophe. There are still 23,000 nuclear weapons held by nine different nations. Our military and security leaders agree: nuclear terrorism and the emergence of new nuclear states are the greatest threat to our nation. To prevent these threats we have to reduce the global stockpiles, secure all weapons material and block new nuclear-armed nations.

The New START treaty is part of the administration’s effort to develop a comprehensive national defense strategy that focuses on these 21st-century threats. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mullen gave his emphatic endorsement:

Through the trust it engenders, the cuts it requires, and the flexibility it preserves this treaty enhances our ability to do that which we have been charged to do: protect and defend the citizens of the United States.  I am as confident in its success as I am in its safeguards.

That is why this administration worked for a year to secure this follow-on to the 1991 START agreement, which was a legacy of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Those presidents knew, as did Nixon, Kennedy and Eisenhower before them, that sustained attention to arms control reductions made the U.S. stronger and safer.

The New START will make this country more secure in several ways. It lowers the limits on deployed strategic bombs to levels not seen since the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. It also establishes a cutting-edge verification process that allows us to track Russia’s nuclear activities and verify their reductions. Our intelligence agencies will enjoy enhanced monitoring capabilities that will give them greater knowledge of Russian nuclear forces and plans.

We will also gain greater international stability. This treaty is a key step in gaining the global cooperation that we need to prevent nuclear terrorism and the spread of nuclear weapons. It will also help us to box in hostile states like Iran and North Korea by clearly reaffirming the U.S.’s and Russia’s commitment to disarmament, and move other states to take the steps necessary to secure nuclear materials and block nuclear weapons trade and development — steps that are often expensive or cut against the commercial interests of many key nations.

A Bipartisan Issue – But Will We See Bipartisan Support?

This is why New START has broad, bipartisan support from former military and national security leaders. Former Republican Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger and former Democratic Secretary of Defense Bill Perry and Sen. Sam Nunn (D-GA) have lauded the treaty (PDF) as an important step.

But there are problems standing in the way of quick Senate action. For one thing, there are nuclear Neanderthals that remain inside the beltway, clinging to Cold War theories and strategies. And the partisan rancor in Washington has become almost radioactive, with cheap political point-scoring taking precedent over the business of governance. Remember that treaties need to be approved by two-thirds of the Senate — a heavy lift considering the political environment.

Can the U.S. Senate rise above the partisan bluster and Tea Party talking points and focus on what’s good for American national security? The New START is an integral part of a smart, strong and pragmatic nuclear policy plan. Senators should approve this treaty before they take off for summer vacation.

Whitman’s California Buy-Out

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Query: is it possible for a political candidate to spend too much money on too many television ads? California Republican gubernatorial hopeful Meg Whitman seems determined to find out.

Those who read my recent piece on the California governor’s race may recall the amazement with which Golden State cognoscenti are viewing eMeg’s barrage of early ads. It’s not just the size of her ad buys that’s impressive–you can’t, after all, exceed saturation levels–but it’s the timing. Her “introductory bio” ad started running night and day all across California during the Winter Olympics, long before the June primary, and very long before the November general election. If possible, her attack ads on primary opponent Steve Poizner have been even more ubiquitous, and she’s just put up a new “positive” ad that’s very hard to miss.

As political reporting site Calbuzz noted this week, no one really knows if Whitman’s strategy will work:

Two months before the primary election for governor, Meg Whitman’s unprecedented campaign spending — including another cool $20 million tossed in late Monday — has hit the standard quantum limit of politics: its effect on the governor’s race has moved into unknowable territory.To any would-be prognosticator, seer or soothsayer Calbuzz offers this verbum sapienti: Like scientists mulling data from the Large Hadron Collider, we have no idea what the effect of $100-150 million in campaign spending will do in a California statewide election, because we’ve never seen anything like it.

That’s saying a lot, since California was the scene of the 1998 campaign of former airline executive Al Checchi, which broke all the previous spending records. In the end, the Checchi campaign’s torrent of attack ads on Democratic rival Jane Harman appear to have backfired, becoming the main issue in a campaign eventually won by a third candidate, Gray Davis (Davis strategist Gary South memorably described Checchi’s attacks on Harman as a “murder-suicide”).

It’s unclear whether a similar fate could befall Whitman, since she has the luxury of just one significant opponent in each cycle: Poizner in the primary, and Jerry Brown in the general. But if she keeps up her current pace of appearances on the tube, her name ID will soon approach 100 percent, and at that point an undefined but real set of otherwise persuadable voters may get tired of her act, and perhaps wonder if someone so excessive in the spending of campaign dollars is really a good bet to cut state spending, which is her main campaign promise.

You don’t have to have a stake in this campaign to watch Whitman’s experiment in sheer dollar power with a sort of fascinated horror.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

The Greening of Massachusetts

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Much to Mitt Romney’s chagrin, Massachusetts has been in the news a lot recently as the birthplace of President Obama’s new health care reforms. Despite Romney’s protestations to the contrary, Obama’s ideas indisputably grew out of the reforms that the commonwealth enacted a few years ago.

Now it turns out that Massachusetts is also leading the country in another area that will likely become the subject of intense national controversy later this year: environmental regulation and the quest to build a clean economy. In one of America’s oldest and most traditional states, a coalition of business, policy-makers and nonprofits are leading the way in transforming the American economy – and bringing us closer to a clean, green future.

Massachusetts has a distinctive environment that makes clean energy a particularly bright choice. The commonwealth has unusually expensive electricity (from a lack of indigenous coal or natural gas) and a deregulated power market (where utilities do not own power plants).

Recently, PPI convened about three dozen clean tech industry leaders at the beautiful Parker House Hotel in downtown Boston. PPI’s new E3 Initiative held an event keynoted by Massachusetts Secretary of Energy and Environment Ian Bowles and also featuring Nick Darbeloff and Peter Rothstein, president and senior vice president, respectively, of the New England Clean Economy Council.

Secretary Bowles recounted for the audience the advances that have taken place under Governor Deval Patrick. Massachusetts has taken the lead in New England’s Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative covering all major power plants, which caps emissions at 2009 levels through 2015, after which the cap will decline to reduce emissions 10 percent by 2019. Its efficiency programs have been so successful that the state is on track to cut its energy use by 30 percent by 2020. And under the renewable portfolio standard it adopted they have already exceeded their targets. Massachusetts has also built greenhouse gas emission reductions into the state environmental review process, which is leading to greater private investment in green buildings. The state will also provide utility customers with $1.6 billion in incentives to conserve energy at home, including free energy audits and rebates to purchase more efficient appliances.

National leaders looking to Massachusetts for lessons would do well to keep one thing in mind. Just as muscle needs a skeleton for support, structure and politics both matter for environmental regulation. Soon after Patrick was sworn in, and with the cooperation of Massachusetts’ legislative leaders, Massachusetts became the first state in the nation to merge all its energy and environmental agencies (six total) into a single cabinet secretariat with the overall mission of bringing clean energy technology to market, curbing greenhouse gas emissions and achieving energy efficiency.

With that structure in place, Bowles and his team went about achieving their agenda by closely cooperating with legislative leaders in the state House and Senate. Too often American states (or the federal government, for that matter) have seen promising environmental issues die on the vine, as special interests whittle ambitious legislative proposals into pilot projects that fail to achieve the economies of scale and systemic effect necessary for change. In Massachusetts, however, Bowles and his team began working very closely with legislative leaders in 2007, soon after Patrick took office. With a lot of elbow grease and diplomacy, Massachusetts enacted six major energy and environmental laws achieving broad energy reform, greenhouse gas reduction and comprehensive oceans management.

In advance of the battles certain to come this summer in Washington about a carbon control system, the E3 Initiative was proud to showcase Massachusetts’ pioneering work on achieving a clean economy. With smart ideas, proven economic benefits and steady political talent, we can see results instead of gridlock.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mnsomero/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

A Nation of Startups

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

A distinct sense of unease permeates the traditional spirit of American optimism. The unemployment rate appears stuck at 9.7 percent, and many project that it will fall to around only eight percent by 2012 and to perhaps five percent by the middle of the decade. Disquiet over jobs is joined by a vague fear that the U.S. has lost its edge in innovation: our companies are losing ground to emerging market competitors and our students are falling behind their peers in other countries. In a recent post, Michael Mandel put these two concerns together, saying our jobs crisis is simultaneously an innovation crisis.

In response, a common impulse in Washington has been to call on the federal government to somehow solve both problems together, whether by creating “green” jobs, directing more money into research and development, or, most distressingly, provoking a trade war with China. Yet the real solution to both crises — the way to create more jobs and innovation — is right in front of us: startups. As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman wrote recently: “Good-paying jobs don’t come from bailouts. They come from startups.”

Americans start new companies at one of the highest rates in the world, a pace that has been consistent for nearly 30 years. This steady stream of new companies was responsible for nearly all net job creation over that period of time, and many of those startups introduced new innovations into the economy, whether personal computers (Apple), productivity-enhancing software (Microsoft), 24-hour news (CNN), biotechnology (Genentech) or web browsers (Netscape).

The empirical evidence on the importance of startups is compelling, but not everyone is buying it. Responding to Friedman, for example, Dean Baker wrote:

Friedman’s conclusion about the special importance of new firms is utter nonsense. The claim that most net new jobs came from new firms conceals the fact that existing firms added tens of millions of jobs in this 25-year-period. Of course existing firms also lost tens of millions of jobs. We can say that the net job creation for existing firms was zero, but if we did not have an environment that was conducive for the job adders to grow (how many jobs did Microsoft, Apple, and Intel create after their first 5 years of existence?), then existing firms would have lost tens of millions more jobs.

There are basically two ways to look at job creation in the economy: gross and net. Large existing companies hire thousands of people each year, but they also see thousands of people leave. Gross job inflows and outflows in the American economy are enormous, an indicator of the ongoing reallocation of resources that drives economic growth. At the end of the day, however, if we want to keep pace with an expanding labor force (new entrants) and a changing economy (the rise and fall of sectors and companies), what matters is net job creation. It would be little consolation if we had 100 people looking for jobs, and large company ABC hired those 100 people but also fired 100 different people.

Many people prefer the (ostensible) comfort of big, established companies to the unpredictability of startups. Sure enough, while new companies create thousands of jobs each year, they also destroy thousands of jobs, whether through their effect on existing firms or through failure. (Roughly a third of new firms close in their first two years.) But these firms are important, too, in that they provide one of the few sources for big companies to draw on in adding jobs: in many cases a big company can only add net jobs by acquiring a new firm.

In addition to jobs, startups are an important source of innovation for the economy, responsible for a disproportionate share of breakthroughs. Big companies inevitably become locked into a cycle of quarterly earnings and long-term investments, leaving little room to pursue fringe ideas. Startups have the freedom to explore ideas at the frontier and succeed (or fail) in commercializing them.

This is not to say that large, established companies are unimportant. Far from it — the U.S. economy derives important strength from the symbiosis between startups and big firms. But if policy drifts too far in protecting big companies (whether through bailouts or certain types of regulation), it could suppress the number of startups. Just as importantly, should policymakers choose to focus on promoting entrepreneurship, it’s not clear that we can pick and choose certain sectors. The high-technology companies mentioned above garner much of the attention, but we see plenty of new firms emerge from seemingly mundane sectors such as retail and restaurants. We should reserve judgment on the types of startups we wish to see: every new company represents a source of renewal for the economy.

None of this means that startups represent the saving grace of the American economy; there is no silver bullet solution, to be sure. But, just as plainly, economic recovery will not happen without them. To begin creating our economic future, we need to start more new companies.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/philgyford/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Warm-Up Act for the Supreme Battle

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As we await word from Justice John Paul Stevens about his retirement plans, conservatives (and particularly the conservative legal activists who live for Court nomination battles) have decided to engage in a sort of warm-up act, or perhaps a show of force, by picking a fight over UC-Berkeley law professor Goodwin Liu’s nomination to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.

In a summary of the mobilization over Liu that’s already far along among conservatives, Politico‘s Kasie Hunt suggests the professor’s views (or more specifically, the long paper trail that professors tend to leave) make him symbolically important to his and the president’s enemies:

Why all the fuss over just one among hundreds of federal judicial nominees? Conservatives see Liu as the tip of the spear for the next generation of jurists — if he makes it to the court they fear he could become a leading liberal jurist on property rights, the death penalty, affirmative action, guns and even interpretations of the health care law.

Now it’s fundamental to disputes over the Supreme Court and the Constitution that each side — sometimes fairly, sometimes not — tends to depict the other as aggressors against the status quo ante; I’d personally rephrase Hunt’s characterization of conservative opinion to say that they view a rising legal star like Liu as a conveniently “radical” foil for their own radical constitutional arguments, aimed at rolling back “liberal” Supreme Court decisions dating back at least to the New Deal.

Accordingly, progressives need to go into the fight over Liu not in a defensive crouch over his “controversial” utterances carefully taken out of context from law review articles and interviews, but determined to expose the radicalism of his tormentors. Among the conservative legal beagles who will be leading the charge against Liu are people who are determined to erode the separation of church and state; to undermine the constitutional basis of New Deal and Great Society programs like Social Security and Medicare; and to strip away significant civil liberties and civil rights protections.

Whatever happens to Liu’s judicial ambitions (and it’s worth noting that it’s a lot easier to defeat a circuit court nomination than a Supreme Court nomination), the fight over his nomination should be a warm-up act for progressives as well. As I wrote when word of Stevens’ likely retirement came out, the Supreme Court battle offers progressives a good opportunity to show that the Republican Party is increasingly the captive of people and opinions that won’t much stand the light of day, and whose radicalism is most evident when they begin trying to tamper with the Constitution. I suspect Goodwin Liu’s “controversial” liberalism will embolden them to go hog-wild.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Reviving the Labor Market with Middle-Skill Jobs

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Download the report.

The importance of worker education and skills to labor market success in the U.S. has never been clearer than it is now. The current economic downturn has hit all groups quite hard, but especially those with the least education and fewest skills. And as the labor market slowly begins to recover this year, we will be reminded of a basic fact of economic life: Workers increasingly need meaningful postsecondary education or training to find jobs that pay enough to sustain a middle-class lifestyle.

To its credit, the Obama administration recognizes how essential education and skills are in expanding labor market success, and has created some important initiatives to improve outcomes for all groups — especially the disadvantaged, who suffer the most from “achievement gaps” that open early in life. The administration’s Race to the Top fund creates strong incentives and financial support for school reforms in the K-12 system. Its American Graduation Initiative will provide grants for innovation in community colleges designed to improve both attendance and graduation rates. And the government has hiked Pell Grants by a considerable amount, as part of recently enacted reforms in the funding of federal student loan programs.

But are these initiatives enough, or should we be casting a wider net when dealing with various kinds of skill gaps and their role in labor markets? We need to consider the many levels at which shortfalls in education and skills plague American workers, and then determine the appropriate range of remedies for these problems.

Specifically, we need to prepare American youth and adults not only for jobs requiring four years of college and graduate study, but also for those we call “middle-skill” jobs — jobs that require something beyond a high school diploma but less than a bachelor’s degree. These jobs frequently pay well and are in high demand in the U.S. labor market, but too few workers now have the skills to fill them. A range of policy interventions to improve the skill levels and workforce-relevant credentials among Americans can raise the numbers of good jobs they can fill, and provide a gateway to the middle class that is now often closed for so many.

The Scale of Our Challenge

About a quarter of all American youth still drop out of high school each year.1 The research shows that some do so because of poor basic skills, but others are driven by boredom and the lack of any observed relevance of their high school coursework to their future earnings prospects.2 Of course, by dropping out, they create a self-fulfilling prophecy in which their earnings prospects are certain to be poor throughout their lives. Many will withdraw from the labor market altogether — especially under the current circumstances of a severe downturn and likely slow recovery. For some groups of dropouts (like young African-Americans), the odds of becoming incarcerated and parenting outside of marriage will be enormous, generating huge costs to themselves and to the rest of society.

Another quarter of American youth fail to attain any postsecondary education beyond high school graduation.3 They leave school without occupational skills or work experience that the labor market rewards, and with no plans for enhancing those skills. Both their employment rates and earnings levels after leaving school will be limited for many years, as they move from one unrewarding job to the next.

Among those who attend college — whether two- or four-year — dropout rates are also very high. Fewer than 60 percent of students in four-year colleges graduate within six years.4 For those who attend community college, the odds of emerging with any type of credential after six years are even lower, below 50 percent.5 This is particularly true for minority and disadvantaged students, both youth and adults. Indeed, it is likely that a large majority of newly funded Pell Grant recipients will attend college, get stuck in remedial classes and drop out before obtaining any meaningful credential.

Even among those who finish, the labor market value of the certificates and associates degrees they acquire vary enormously, with too many students obtaining credentials that the market does not particularly value or reward.6 Our community and four-year colleges often lack any direct ties to our workforce development systems, and do not provide students with available information on career progressions or labor market opportunities. And many colleges do not face incentives or financial support for expanding capacity in areas of strong market demand, especially in the technical areas where instructors and equipment are relatively more costly to obtain.

Building Up the Middle-Skill Market

Our labor market generates strong rewards on average for those with college and, especially, graduate degrees, particularly in the “STEM” fields (science, technology, engineering and math). Improving student attainments in these areas is important for maintaining a competitive economy. But it is also striking that, over time, there remains strong demand in the U.S. for many middle-skill jobs.

Contrary to the popular view that we are developing a “dumbbell” labor market or an “hourglass” economy — with a shrinking middle and an expanding top and bottom — my work with Robert Lerman points to continuing strong demand and good pay in a wide range of jobs and sectors at the middle of the labor market. Indeed, a wide range of evidence shows that employers often have difficulty filling these middle-skill jobs, even when wages are rising and the job market is not very tight.

What kinds of jobs are these, and where are they located? In health and elder care, there will continue to be strong demand for nurses (including licensed practical nurses and certified nursing assistants) and many other kinds of technicians and aides. In construction (which will recover, albeit slowly, from the bursting of the housing bubble), there are frequent shortages in the skilled crafts. In manufacturing — despite a long-term decline in employment — demand remains quite strong for skilled workers, like machinists and even for welders.

A wide variety of economic sectors generate demands for technicians in equipment installation, maintenance and repair. A shift to a “greener” economy will generate many such jobs, as will increased federal spending on the repair and modernization of infrastructure. And in several diverse parts of the service sector, there is a strong need for well-trained personnel: police and firefighters, legal aid and protective service employees, and even cooks and chefs in restaurants.

Many of these jobs pay well enough to help support a middle-class lifestyle, and would be within reach of many of our high school graduates and dropouts who currently flounder in the job market and in life. It’s a tragic irony that over two million Americans are incarcerated on any given day — and several times that number are permanently scarred by criminal records — because many never saw pathways to good-paying jobs, while employers frequently can’t find enough trained welders, electricians and plumbers when they need them.

Of course, strong basic skills are required in all of these areas. No one would argue against the need to close the “achievement gaps” in youth literacy and numeracy skills — or that young people should be better prepared to handle college-level work. Still, the many levels at which educational outcomes are weak, along with the lack of occupational training and relevant workplace experience for so many who will likely not attend or complete college, suggests the need for a broader approach — one that prepares young people for labor market opportunities, wherever they appear.

A Range of Fixes

Both federal and state governments need to implement a range of policies that will reduce high school dropout rates and encourage young people and adults to develop the skills needed to obtain a postsecondary credential and succeed in the workforce. Different policies are appropriate for different groups; there is no magic bullet, and one size does not fit all.

Research is now generating a body of statistical evidence on “what works” in enhancing educational and employment outcomes for different populations.

First, it is clear that high-quality career and technical education in secondary and postsecondary schools can generate strong payoffs for at-risk youth. The Career Academies, which operate at 1,500 high schools nationwide, provide students with occupational training and work experience in a particular economic sector, even while they take academic courses and curricula. Evidence suggests that the Academies strongly reduce dropout rates among at-risk youth and improve their earnings for many years afterwards without discouraging students from obtaining postsecondary education. Other models, like Tech Prep and other apprenticeship programs, provide strong payoffs by moving young people directly from high school into community or technical colleges and offering them relevant work experience.

For youth who have already dropped out of school, the successful models are less clear. Intensive remediation efforts in a variety of settings — including the military model of the National Guard Challenge program — show some promise. But we also know that the provision of paid work experience to low-income young people is often critical for maintaining their interest and participation because they so value the upfront rewards of compensation. And systemic approaches that combine a range of services with educational and employment opportunities for young people, such as those in the Youth Opportunities program for poor neighborhoods implemented at the end of the Clinton administration, have generated successful outcomes.7

Second, workforce training for disadvantaged adults with some decent basic skills can be very successful if it generates a postsecondary credential and targets a strong sector of the economy that provides good-paying jobs. Indeed, sectoral training, in which workers are connected to employers and obtain work experience while they receive training, has shown some very strong results. Career pathway models, which combine classroom curricula and work experience leading to occupational certifications at a variety of levels, are also very promising.

Often, an active “intermediary” is needed to assist trainees with making connections to the labor market and obtaining the necessary support services (like child care and transportation) along the way. State-level training grants and technical assistance to employers in these sectors can often encourage them to train more of their incumbent workers and generate pathways into better-paying work within existing firms. Indeed, states like Pennsylvania, which have actively targeted key economic sectors and integrated their workforce and economic strategies, will likely reap major rewards as their labor markets recover in the next few years.

Third, we are learning what generates greater success in improving the odds of certificate or degree completion for disadvantaged students in community colleges. Performance-based financial aid (above and beyond the Pell Grant), which might include stipends, mandatory support services and small “learning communities” of students, all seem to help.

Further, programs that integrate remedial education and occupational training seem to generate higher success rates for disadvantaged students. One such approach, the well-known I-BEST program in the state of Washington, integrates basic adult education with occupational training (from two teachers) in each class; statistical evidence so far indicates that it has a potentially strong impact on educational outcomes. New curricular developments, like modular classes and “stackable credentials,” might help as well.

Fourth, under the very best circumstances, millions of low-income youth and adults will still end up in the many low-paying jobs that our economy now creates. We need stronger pay incentives to make sure these workers remain attached to the labor market under these circumstances. The Earned Income Tax Credit played a huge role in encouraging low-income single mothers to take jobs under welfare reform, and would likely have similar success in rewarding disadvantaged childless adults and non-custodial fathers when they work. And subsidized work for ex-offenders in the form of “transitional jobs” reduces their recidivism and raises work effort, at least in the short term.

Conclusion

What all of this suggests is that a broader set of educational and employment supports must be provided to encourage further success at all these levels. Reforms in the K-12 system remain critical and greater funding for Pell Grants will help.

But these should not be done in isolation from efforts to expand high-quality career and technical education, and better integrate education, workforce and economic development systems. Enhanced financial support for both youth and adults in a wide range of postsecondary education institutions, including community and technical colleges and apprenticeship programs, must be linked to a broader range of labor market information and services for them, while the systems themselves must be made more responsive to labor market realities. And expanding both educational opportunities and work supports for at-risk or disconnected youth and adults — including those still in high school as well as those who have dropped out of school and the labor market — are critical as well.

Any public resources expended in such efforts should be based on evidence of best practices and tied to further rigorous evaluation. In the current fiscal situation, such resources are scarce. But the social and economic costs of not making the needed investments in the skills of our youth and adults are enormous, while the payoffs to successful efforts in these realms can be quite impressive.

____

1 James Heckman and Paul LaFontaine, “The American High School Graduation Rate: Trends and Levels.” IZA Discussion Paper No. 3216, December 2007.

2 Robert Lerman, “Career-Focused Education and Training for Youth,” in H. Holzer and D. Nightingale eds. Reshaping the American Workforce in a Changing Economy. Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute Press, 2007.

3 See Heckman and LaFontaine, op cit.

4 Frederick M. Hess, et. al., “Diplomas and Dropouts: Which Colleges Actually Graduate Their Students (and Which Don’t),” American Enterprise Institute, June 2009; available at https://www.aei.org/paper/100019.

5 Thomas Bailey, et al., “Is Student Success Labeled Institutional Failure? Student Goals and Graduation Rates in the Accountability Debate at Community Colleges,” Community College Research Center, Teachers College, Columbia University, 2006. Of those students entering in any year, 36 percent earn degrees and certificates while another 13 percent have transferred elsewhere but not yet earned a degree.

6 Louis Jacobson and Christine Mokher, “Pathways to Boosting the Earnings of Low-Income Workers by Increasing their Educational Attainment,” The Hudson Institute and CNA, January 2009.

7 See “Youth Opportunity Grant Initiative: Executive Summary,” Decision Information Resources, March 2008. Report submitted to Employment and Training Administration, U.S. Department of Labor, Washington, D.C. The evaluation evidence showed increases in secondary school enrollments and in labor force participation rates for youth in the high-poverty neighborhoods receiving these grants.

Download the report.

Obama’s Nuclear Policy — An Opportunity for Bipartisanship

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The following is an excerpt from Jim Arkedis’s op-ed published today in AolNews.com:

In today’s polarized political debate — with congressional Republicans refusing to cooperate on much of anything and their Democratic counterparts not terribly inclined to include them anyway — finding common ground on any issue has been nearly impossible. But this coming week might highlight one issue that could galvanize long-overdue bipartisanship: nuclear security.

On Tuesday, the administration released its Nuclear Posture Review, which charts a new course on the use of nuclear weapons. On Thursday, President Barack Obama travels to Prague, where he’ll sign the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev. And early next week, the United States will play host to more than 40 world leaders at a nuclear security summit.

These events all aim to work toward the long-held promise of a world without nuclear weapons, a goal the president outlined a year ago this week in the Czech Republic.

After that speech, some conservatives jumped at the opportunity to cast the new president as green on weighty foreign policy issues. But Obama wasn’t driven by some fanciful naivety, as he was crystal clear that as long as others possessed the weapons, so would America. And it was a necessary reorientation—the work of ridding the world of nuclear weapons needed to be taken up anew after being sidetracked under Obama’s predecessor.

Read the full column at AolNews.com.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/macandliz/ / CC BY 2.0

Will the FCC Go Nuclear?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The D.C. Circuit Court ruled yesterday (PDF) that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) doesn’t have authority over the Internet. Back in 2007, Comcast was filtering the Internet connections of users who were suspected of using file-sharing programs and eating up a lot more bandwidth than expected. The FCC told Comcast to cut it out, under the concept of net neutrality, which required that all packets of data sent over the Internet be treated equally. Comcast challenged the FCC’s right to do that, and yesterday the court agreed with the Philly-based company.

The FCC had argued that it had the right under the authority given to it by Title I of the Communications Act of 1934, which established the FCC. According to the FCC’s argument, Title I empowered the commission to regulate Internet connectivity as an “ancillary” authority, even though it wasn’t explicitly charged to do so by Congress in the act (which, after all, was passed more than half a century before the World Wide Web was launched). The D.C. Circuit Court said no, Title I does not give the FCC that authority. While the decision can be appealed to the Supreme Court, which could reverse the ruling, even proponents of a strong net neutrality role for the FCC admit the decision is pretty solid.

While the case is technically a “win” for Comcast (their challenge was upheld) some observers say it could turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory. Now the FCC could claim authority to regulate Internet communication under its Title II powers. Regulating the Internet under Title II, which covers “common carriers,” would require Internet service providers (ISPs) to adhere to net neutrality as a common carrier requirement. This means that physical providers of an Internet connection to your house (in other words, traditional phone and cable companies that have evolved into ISPs) would be limited in their ability to manage the information going over their networks — unable to prioritize some data over other data — much as phone companies have no control over whom you talk to over your phone line.

This is apocalyptically referred to as “the nuclear option,” as it would result in a radical change in how telecommunications firms view Internet connectivity. Title II would require them to behave more like utilities. Proponents of this idea say its potential upside would be increased competition in services provided over that connection. Critics, including the ISPs themselves, say the potential downside is that ISPs could lose a big incentive (profit maximization) to invest in our residential broadband connections, which are lagging behind other countries like South Korea.

In its own discussions of a National Broadband Plan, the FCC has avoided the Title I vs Title II debate. However, with this ruling, the appeals court has forced the commission’s hand. The best solution for the FCC could be to go before Congress for clarification of its role in regulating the internet. As our friend Brian Wingfield points out, it’ll be a tech lobbying fight, but the FCC would have a better chance with a Democratic Congress than it’s likely to have in the courts.

The appeals court has ruled that the FCC lacks the authority to regulate Internet, but it may also lack the ability. The communications sector is changing rapidly. Some ISPs are acquiring content creators, and others are providing mobile services only previously seen in Dick Tracy cartoons. The FCC was established to regulate what was then regarded as a “natural” telephone monopoly. What’s needed is either an FCC with a dramatically transformed mandate or — maybe better — a new entity dedicated to protecting the environment for continuous innovation on the Internet.