Category: Uncategorized

How to Beat the Demagogues

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The following is an excerpt from Mike Signer’s column published this weekend in the Daily Beast:

In the last few days following the passage of a new health care system in the United States, Tea Partiers have spit at U.S. representatives entering the Capitol. They’ve thrown bricks through the windows of congressional district offices. On her website, Sarah Palin has put a rifle target on the districts of lawmakers she opposes.

With unemployment still around 10 percent, home values falling and real incomes stagnating, people have been feeling stability slip away for years. The tendency for such insecurity to become anger instead has proven a treasure trove for opportunists — for politicians like Sarah Palin, in votes and speaking fees, and for entertainers like Glenn Beck, in advertising dollars.

In these charged, uncertain times, we’d do well to recall the lessons of the post-Depression 1930s. This was when the Louisiana Senator and Governor Huey Long prowled the national stage, when the charismatic Detroit “radio priest” Father Coughlin assailed FDR’s “communist” methods in favor of religiously-driven economic populism, and when the anti-Semitic reverend Gerald L.K. Smith agitated audiences across the country.

America ultimately emerged stronger than we went in. We directly confronted demagogues like Long, educated ourselves about our constitutional traditions and lawfulness, and tailored reform around action rather than rhetoric. The 1930s hold several key lessons we should remember today:

1. Ad hominem attacks can backfire. In 1935, Americans around the country walked into soda shops and lunch counters to see the word “Demagogues” on the front page of Newsweek. The week before, General Hugh Johnson, the revered director of FDR’s National Recovery Administration, had lambasted Long as a combination of “Peter the Hermit, Napoleon Bonaparte, Sitting Bull, William Hohenzollern, the Mahdi of the Sudan, Hitler, Lenin, Trotsky, and the Leatherwood God.”

However, Johnson didn’t realize that he had given the canny Louisiana Senator just the opening he needed to achieve national legitimacy. After Johnson’s speech, Long demanded that NBC, which had covered the speech, give him equal time. The network eventually agreed to give Long 45 minutes, free and clear. A stunning 25 million people tuned in. During his speech, Long spent about five minutes calmly dismissing the charges against him, and proceeded rationally to describe and proselytize for his “Share the Wealth” plan. A correspondent wrote that Johnson’s attack had managed to transform the Kingfish “from a clown into a real political menace.” One of FDR’s aides estimated that Long would win six million votes in the 1936 presidential election.

In the end, whether you’re Nancy Pelosi or Keith Olbermann, you need to realize that political outrage is not self-fulfilling; ad hominem attacks against opportunists like Beck and Palin can often backfire, making them both more popular and even more sympathetic.

Read the rest of the article on the Daily Beast.

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

Clean Energy, Guaranteed: Why Nuclear Energy Is Worth the Cost

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Download the report.

Last month, President Obama announced $8.33 billion in loan guarantees for the construction of two nuclear reactors in Georgia — the first to be built in the U.S. in more than 30 years. That announcement followed the president’s proposal to triple nuclear loan guarantees to $54.5 billion in his latest budget. If there had been any doubt about the administration’s support for nuclear power, the president’s actions in recent weeks should dispel them.

Obama’s pro-nuclear approach has displeased some of his allies in the environmental community. Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth, which endorsed Obama in the 2008 election, told the New York Times recently, “We were hopeful last year; he was saying all the right things. But now he has become a full-blown nuclear power proponent, a startling change over the last few months.”

But the president’s advocacy for nuclear energy shouldn’t disappoint progressives. Over the past few years the need to significantly reduce the emissions of carbon into the atmosphere has become generally accepted. This can only be accomplished if we replace large amounts of carbon-emitting electricity generated by coal with low- and non-emitting sources. While renewable sources like wind and solar power will no doubt play a greater role as we move beyond fossil fuels, we are still decades away from scaling up those sources and upgrading the grid to meet our base load electricity requirements. In light of our electricity needs, nuclear power must be a part of our energy future.

Nuclear currently makes up about 20 percent of our electricity usage and 70 percent of non-carbon-emitting electricity generation. To increase the fraction of non-emitting sources to displace fossil fuel-based power, we need to build new nuclear power plants, as the industry already is producing at more than 90 percent capacity in the existing 104 plants in the U.S. today.

Building new nuclear plants is an expensive proposition, however. Indeed, the cost of building new plants is one of the primary criticisms leveled against nuclear power. But as this policy memo demonstrates, while cost is a problem, it is not an insurmountable one. The cost factor is certainly no more onerous for nuclear than it is for solar and wind. To their credit, proponents of clean energy have refused to let the high cost of scaling up renewables prevent them from continuing to push for such projects. Why then do so many clean energy proponents insist on crossing off nuclear from the energy mix by pointing to its costliness?

If we really are serious about creating a post- carbon future, solar and wind need to play a prominent role — but so does nuclear. Sure, nuclear plant capital costs are high, but nuclear plants have an advantage, in that their fuel costs are low, well understood and stable.

Solar and wind have the same economic and greenhouse gas-reducing characteristics as nuclear, with one very important difference: scale. Renewables come in very small unit sizes. The largest wind turbines have a capacity of no more than two to three megawatts, requiring the use of many, many individual turbines in a farm configuration. Nuclear plants come mostly in large sizes, with each plant producing up to 1,700 megawatts. A wind turbine rated at one megawatt of electrical capacity can provide enough electricity to power up to 300 homes for one year — and that’s when it’s generating electricity when the wind blows, which is the case about one-third of the time.

Compare that with a nuclear plant, which produces electricity better than 90 percent of the time, and can produce exponentially more power than a wind farm. A single nuclear plant rated at 1,700 megawatt capacity can provide power for a year for 1,258,000 homes per year.

Why Costs Are So High

The administration’s announcement of new loan guarantees for nuclear power underscores the reality that building nuclear plants is an expensive enterprise. Seventy percent of the cost of nuclear energy lies in upfront construction costs, while only 20 percent are in operations and maintenance and 10 percent goes toward fuel. Compare that to coal and natural gas, whose upfront costs are lower but whose fuel costs are considerably higher, and even more so when carbon is priced under a cap-and-trade regime.

The difficulties in building new nuclear plants are driven largely by the uncertainty surrounding the costs associated with large infrastructure projects. There are four primary causes for the high cost of assembling new nuclear plants:

  • Nuclear plants are some of the largest capital construction projects that exist today. A new nuclear power plant requires a significant amount of specialty materials and equipment that require well-established pedigrees to guarantee the highest standards of quality and safety.
  • Relatively long periods of time are needed to design, license and construct large facilities. Schedules are also affected by uncertainties related to delays that plague construction projects. As the U.S. hasn’t built a plant in three decades, the supply chain for highly specialized materials has atrophied — a factor that also compounds the problem.
  • High interest rates on borrowed money. Interest rates for nuclear projects typically carry an added premium to account for the uncertainty arising from missed construction deadlines and budget overruns that occurred during the construction of some nuclear projects in the late 1970’s and early ’80s.
  • Economies of scale have driven both reactor equipment suppliers and their potential customers to ever larger — and more exorbitantly priced — plants.

To hear critics of nuclear energy tell it, nuclear is simply too expensive a clean energy option for the U.S. But solar and wind projects are actually more expensive on the basis of cost per unit of electricity delivered. Without significant tax incentives, loan guarantees and power purchase requirements that have been given to developers of wind and solar farms to spur their growth, it is highly unlikely that we would have seen these large land-use icons pop up around the country.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) recently released their estimates of average levelized capital costs of electricity for new plants entering service in 2016. The EIA’s estimate took into account construction costs and time, operating and fuel expenses, and the costs of financing. The total system levelized cost for nuclear power was $119 per megawatt-hour (in 2008 dollars). That was lower than the estimate for wind ($149.3), offshore wind ($191.1), solar thermal ($256.6) and solar photovoltaic ($396.1).

One edge that nuclear has over solar and wind is its reliability. Currently, solar and wind suffer from the problem of intermittency — when the clouds come out or the winds die down, power stops being generated, which requires gas-powered backups and development of more advanced storage technology. Nuclear, on the other hand, produces 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and is largely immune to daily and seasonal weather changes.

Moreover, nuclear has met the test of longevity. The upfront costs may be high, but nuclear plants stand for a long time. Nuclear reactors typically receive operating licenses of 40 years from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. But nearly half of the country’s 104 reactors have received extensions for another 20 years of operation, and there is a reasonable expectation that almost all reactors will eventually be granted 20-year extensions by the agency.

What to Do About Costs

No more expensive in key cost metrics compared to solar and wind power, nuclear energy must be considered part of the energy mix if we are to move beyond fossil fuels. Solving the cost issue is central to making nuclear a key part of our energy future.

There are several potential answers here:

  • An expanded federal loan guarantee program to address the problems of long development times and cost. With the Obama administration’s tripling of the loan guarantee program in its 2010 budget — to $54 billion — and the announcement of $8 billion in loan guarantees for the completion of two new plants in Georgia, it’s obvious that the administration understands the importance of loan guarantees to jump-start our nuclear industry. Now Congress needs to follow the administration’s lead and provide these funds.Expanding the loan guarantee program to spur a larger number of projects sends a significant signal to the industry that the federal government is serious about nuclear energy. Note that a loan guarantee isn’t the same as a subsidy. All that a guarantee does is put the government on the hook in case the utility is unable to repay the loans they took out for the project. The government, by guaranteeing the loans, is merely greasing the wheel for nuclear construction projects to be funded by private banks. It should also be noted that the utilities pay a premium to have this insurance — a so-called credit subsidy cost to cover the government’s long-term liabilities.Past troubles with nuclear construction projects, most notably the bond defaults in Washington State in the early 1980s, were caused by rapid overexpansion by power companies that predicted that electricity demand would grow, as it had for decades up to that time, at seven percent per year. When actual demand rates fell far short of that historical target (more like one-to-two percent per year), many large nuclear construction projects were simply not needed. Electricity demand continues to grow, even now, just at a slower rate. The current risk of default is considerably reduced as both construction advances and load growth are much better understood now than they were in the late 1970s and early ’80s.
  • The way nuclear plants are built also contribute to their enormous costs. When plants were built in the 1970s and ’80s, they were constructed with designs that were specific to their locations. In other words, there was no standardization of plant design. More than two decades later, we now know we can do better — and cheaper. Design simplification, modularization and factory construction rather than onsite construction should be central to any effort to cut nuclear plant construction costs. Designing plants in a way that minimizes the need for high-cost materials — without sacrificing safety and quality, of course — would also contribute to making plants less expensive. By standardizing the way plants are built, we can make the process of construction much more efficient and less prone to mistakes and delays that have hobbled previous projects.
  • Having utilities build smaller reactors could also help. Too often, utilities take on large nuclear projects that start out with an astronomical price tag. Even small budget overruns and construction deadline delays become high-cost items in their own right. Smaller reactors are viewed by lenders as lower-risk investments, which could make it easier and cheaper to finance such projects. There are a number of companies now developing and marketing designs at small capacity. If they can prove their concepts to both the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and potential utility buyers and investors, it could prove to be a game-changer in the nuclear renaissance.
  • We should also consider public ownership or majority-interest construction, similar to the large water projects of the 1920s and ’30s that saw the federal government build the Tennessee Valley Authority, the Bonneville Power Authority and other entities to provide electricity for the public good. To this day, the government still manages and operates TVA and other similar projects. Indeed, this may be the only possible pathway for construction of large-scale nuclear power plants in the U.S. It already is the path that is being used in other countries.

If the Rest of the World Can Build Nuclear, Why Can’t We?

As we have engaged in a political tug-of-war over whether to make nuclear energy a part of our energy future, other countries have moved ahead with construction and financing their own nuclear plants. China, France, Russia, Finland, Japan and South Korea are all building plants using domestic knowledge and resources with the intent of building more plants both domestically and globally. Many of these countries are using government funds or incentives to achieve faster construction times and less investment risk.

Even those that are using private funds to build new large nuclear projects have a close working relationship with their governments, which makes construction times and, ultimately, costs more manageable. They undertake their projects secure in the knowledge that each new completed plant only adds to their understanding and mastery of nuclear technology.

Moving up the learning curve for nuclear financing and construction are important steps that the U.S. needs to take now. We cannot abandon the technology simply because of uncertainties in financing new construction. We have already fallen behind and ceded global leadership in this important technology — one that we pioneered — to others. Other countries have proven the capability and capacity to build nuclear projects on time and on budget. There is no reason we can’t do the same.

Conclusion

Nuclear energy is simply too important a technology for the long-term health of the planet for us to ignore. The cost problem is real — but it is not without solutions. Considering how badly we need to begin reducing carbon emissions immediately, the continuing efforts by some progressives to throw nuclear out of the energy mix — even as they support less reliable and just as costly renewables — is discouraging.

At least the Obama administration is moving in the right direction. As the U.S. embarks on a revival of its nuclear industry, progressives should rethink their long-standing opposition to nuclear power. To free ourselves from coal’s grip, we cannot leave any fuel behind. President Obama’s push for nuclear is exactly the kind of pragmatic, progressive approach to addressing climate change and clean energy that deserves our support.

Download the report.

Erie Times-News: High-speed rail group seeks stop in Erie

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute
Mark Reutter in the Erie Times-News:

Railroad historian and journalist Mark Reutter was the featured speaker at Thursday’s meeting.

He said Obama’s decision to fund high-speed rail with $8 billion in the Recovery Act money is “a step in the right direction.”

“But it’s hardly the end of the process,” Reutter said. “A lot more planning and creative thinking — not to speak of hard cash — are needed to make sure that this very complex building program gets off the ground and produces the most efficient means of travel possible with the greatest number of jobs and economic opportunities generated by new train service.”
Read the entire article.

Pre-Election Court Fight?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Congress wrapped up action on health reform with considerable dispatch in the wee hours last night. It’s generally assumed that financial regulation will be the next big issue, and one that many Democrats will relish given the likelihood that the stiff winds of public opinion will be at their backs for a change.

But it appears a very different fight may be thrust upon them pretty soon, with reports that Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens may retire as early as next month (when he turns 90). If that’s the case, a confirmation fight will inevitably coincide with the runup to the November elections.

Now Stevens (though appointed by Republican president Gerald Ford) is considered one of the Court’s staunchest liberals, so the confirmation process normally wouldn’t touch off the sort of frenzy on the Right you’d see if Obama were in a position to replace a conservative. But given the timing–not just the proximity to the midterms, but to the health care battle–none of that may matter. You can certainly expect the Tea Party movement and its Republican allies to use a Court fight to dramatize their claims that the Constitution is being shredded. And it’s particularly likely that the Christian Right (important to both the Tea Party movement and the GOP, but not very visible in the news media) would use the opportunity to remind everyone they’re still around, loud and proud.

The New York Times story on the probable Stevens retirement runs through the most prominent candidate for the next Court opening, with Cass Sunstein and Harold Koh the possibilities most likely to set off a major ideological war, though the odds of either getting the nod are slim.

Given the current environment, though, the president would probably have a big fight on his hands even if he appointed a card-carrying member of the Federalist Society to the Court. After health reform, virtually anything he does will by definition be treated by much of the Right as part of his nefarious plot to turn America into Sweden, if not Venezuela. So get ready for a major rumble.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Breaking Up Is Hard to Do, Even for Intel Geeks

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

I’d like to think Noah Shachtman started to think seriously about his latest policy proposal around the time he wrote this policy memo for PPI in January. But it’s more likely he had been chewing over the idea — articulated in the current issue of Wired magazine — to break up the National Security Agency (NSA) far earlier.

It’s a fairly daring proposal on the surface because, after all, even those of us who have worked in the intelligence community don’t have a great handle on what makes the NSA tick. Dissemination of intelligence products is so tightly controlled — even within the intelligence community — that we at NCIS would sometimes wonder (jokingly) if the NSA was actually on our side.

Here’s the gist:

NSA headquarters — the “Puzzle Palace” — in Fort Meade, Maryland, is actually home to two different agencies under one roof. There’s the signals-intelligence directorate, the Big Brothers who, it is said, can tap into any electronic communication. And there’s the information-assurance directorate, the cybersecurity nerds who make sure our government’s computers and telecommunications systems are hacker- and eavesdropper-free. In other words, there’s a locked-down spy division and a relatively open geek division. The problem is, their goals are often in opposition. One team wants to exploit software holes; the other wants to repair them. This has created a conflict — especially when it comes to working with outsiders in need of the NSA’s assistance. Fortunately, there’s a relatively simple solution: We should break up the NSA.

Noah advocates essentially splitting the offense (signals intelligence) from the defense (information assurance). Think of it in football terms: O and D can peacefully co-exist under a head coach in the NFL because they’re both working against a different team. But in the cyberwars, it’s unclear who the other team is, and the NSA runs the risk of putting its O and D on the field against one another.

To alleviate this problem, Shachtman wants to create a new Cyber Security Agency with the information assurance directorate. He believes the new CSA would be more trusted and thus able to coordinate better with outside cyber stakeholders. The directorates already have separate budgets and oversight, so it shouldn’t be all that painful.

That sounds about right to me.  However, I should note that Noah’s piece doesn’t elaborate on the drawbacks of this approach. Is that because they’re aren’t any, or because we wouldn’t know them until it’s too late? That’s worth looking into.

Frum Flung from Fox-Run GOP

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

I’m not a political strategy guy. The only time I ever ran for office (class president, sixth grade) I came in third. But I was surprised at some of the response I got from my piece highlighting some legitimate concerns about health care raised by former Bush speechwriter David Frum. A liberal buddy responded to my suggestion that we follow the president’s vision of bipartisanship and work with Republicans when they seem to be making a good-faith effort to improve policy with a “Were you just trolling?” But I wasn’t — not only is it good policy, it’s good political strategy.

Yesterday afternoon, neoconservative bastion American Enterprise Institute showed Frum the door for his critiques of Republican strategy. Frum is no moderate, and it is a sign of how far the Republican Party has moved to the right that the guy who coined the phrase “Axis of Evil” gets defenestrated for not being tough enough. Or — more likely — for being too tough on the real power source of the conservative movement: Rush Limbaugh, Fox News and what Frum called the “conservative entertainment industry.”

But this is an encouraging sign for progressive causes and the Democratic Party. As long as the conservative movement is dominated by Tea Party orthodoxy and spin-job martinets disciplining wonks and the rank-and file, it will continue to shrink its tent. The president’s willingness to sit down and negotiate with reasonable interlocutors across the aisle provides an instructive contrast. On the other side, bipartisan cooperation is verboten and heretics are cast out from the party. On our side, the president sets the tone by continuing to preach bipartisanship. Which of those approaches will play well with independents?

In much the same way as the Obama’s “open hand before the closed fist” foreign policy — an approach that has gotten Europe to line up with us against Iran and is likely soon to achieve a new START Treaty — has been more successful than W’s “with us or against us” cowboy ideology, so will a continued willingness to listen to constructive critiques provide better policy and better political results than refusing to listen to the opposition.

Ooh, They Have the Internet on Computers Now

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Tom Tauke, chief lobbyist at Verizon, spoke yesterday in a speech designed to take a fresh start on governance of the Internet. His comments got some coverage as challenging the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) role in regulating broadband communication. The FCC’s broadband powers may be decided in a court ruling expected this spring — following oral arguments in January — on a Comcast challenge to the FCC’s oversight of Internet service providers on constitutional grounds.

But it’s worth pointing out that many of the statutes covering internet communications are woefully out of date. The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), the main law against hackers, passed in 1984. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), the main law covering online privacy, was enacted in 1986. These laws were written when faxes were still cutting edge. While the behemoth PATRIOT Act included some fine-tuning of these laws, they still envision a last-millennium Internet. The CFAA treats hacking my desktop computer with the same penalties as hacking a Microsoft data center. ECPA requires Gmail to treat emails I have stored from six months ago — writing about the start of the baseball playoffs last season — differently from this month’s emails on spring training.

Tauke’s suggestion that the FCC should evolve into more of an enforcement body is worth discussing. But regardless of who oversees the Internet, getting new laws to bring it into the 21st century should be a top priority.

Delegitimizing Authority

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As James Vega pointed out in a post last night, threats or even acts of violence by right-wing fringe groups are entirely predictable — and even rational from the point of view of their perpetrators — in an atmosphere where even “respectable” conservatives often indulge themselves in charges that the country is sliding into some sort of totalitarian system.

I’d add that the problem goes even deeper than overheated rhetoric about the alleged “government takeover” of the health care system or the economy, or claims that an individual mandate to purchase health insurance (which, as progressives should mention as often as possible, has been supported in the very recent past by a large number of Republicans, among them 2012 presidential front-runner Mitt Romney) represents some sort of enslavement. More fundamentally, conservatives have sought to delegitimize the authority of the president and Democratic majorities in Congress by suggesting that they were not properly elected in the first place. That’s the obvious thrust of the “birther” argument, which Republicans continue to flirt with. And it’s the even more obvious implication of the “ACORN stole the 2008 election” meme, to which a significant share of rank-and-file Republicans appear to subscribe.

Moreover, the massive upsurge of militant constitutional “originalism” (a signature principle of the Tea Party Movement) is a new and alarming development, insofar as it implies that generations of Supreme Court rulings, by justices nominated by presidents of both parties, have consciously conspired to destroy the Founders’ design along with basic American liberties. To put it another way, if significant numbers of citizens come to believe that elected officials aren’t legitimately holding power, and that the justice system has failed to exercise any restraints on “tyranny,” what forms of civil authority are left? The armed forces? “Militias” exercising their Second Amendment rights to bear arms in self-defense?

Back in 1996, an obscure but significant dispute broke out among conservative intellectuals in the pages of First Things, a conservative ecumenical politics-and-religion journal edited by the late Rev. Richard John Neuhaus. To make a long (and controversial) story short, a number of Neuhaus’ colleagues argued that the “judicial usurpation” of democratic decisionmaking over abortion and same-sex relationships denied “the current regime” any genuine authority, or any loyalty from citizens. A number of other conservative intellectuals — many of them Jewish members of the “neoconservative” camp — recoiled in horror at this potentially revolutionary line of reasoning.

We’ve come a long way since then, it appears. Now similar arguments, aimed at all three branches of the federal government, are endemic on the Right, and have, for the first time since southern resistance to civil rights for African-Americans, a mass base in the population.

Thoughtful conservatives need to reflect on this development, and its implications, which go far beyond who wins or loses in 2010 and 2012. We are edging ever closer to the situation described by George Dangerfield in his famous study of pre-World War I British politics, The Strange Death of Liberal England, when Tory politicians opportunistically embraced revolutionary rhetoric against Home Rule for Ireland and nearly brought the United Kingdom to the brink of civil war.

It’s a trend that no American of any political persuasion should welcome.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

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

Meg’s Spendathon

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

You may have heard that Republican Meg Whitman held a narrow lead over Democrat Jerry Brown in the latest Field Poll on the California’s governor’s race. But this week’s state reports on the spending of the candidates puts that in a better perspective.

EMeg (as the former eBay exec is often called) has spent a total of $46 million — most of it from her own fortune — on her gubernatorial bid so far, shattering every California spending record, months before the June primary and long before the November general election. Brown has spent a bit over $700,000, giving Whitman more than a 60-1 financial advantage. To put it another way, Whitman has already spent about as much as her political mentor, Mitt Romney, spent on his entire 2008 presidential campaign.

The fine Golden State political blog, Calbuzz, compared the Whitman and Brown spending records this way:

Our Division of Green Eye Shades and #2 Pencils calculates that if you take what Whitman has spent on private aircraft ($371,000), bookkeeping ($466,000) and catering ($113,000), it’s more than Jerry Brown has spent altogether ($716,000). The most catering cash –$67,800 – appears to have gone to Christopher’s Catering for a bunch of events, but our favorite is last May’s $10,962.69 paid to Wolfgang Puck for one event.

The bigger issue, of course, is that Whitman has been running saturation TV ads all across California, beginning with the Olympics, when she was far more ubiquitous than Apollo Ohno or Shaun White, and hasn’t let up since then (though she has recently shifted from a positive bio ad to attacks on conservative Republican rival Steve Poizner).

Whitman’s spending isn’t likely to slow down. Poizner has just launched his own ad blitz, and reportedly has $19 million stashed away for that purpose, and Meg has said she’s willing to spend $150 million on her own campaign before it’s all over.

Jerry Brown won’t be cash-strapped; he’s got $14 million in cash on hand, most of it raised before he even announced as a candidate, and will benefit from an estimated $40 million in independent expenditures by unions and other progressive groups.

It’s actually good news for Democrats that he’s basically even with Whitman after she’s spent like a waterfall and he’s spent like a bathtub trickle.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Rebranding Terrorism as Resistance

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Now that the Obama administration has chastised Israel for expanding settlements in East Jerusalem, it should turn its attention to Mughrabi Square.

Palestinian students gathered earlier this month to dedicate a square in the West Bank town of El Bireh to the memory of Dala Mughrabi, a young woman responsible for the worst terrorist attack in Israel’s history. The 19-year-old Mughrabi led a Palestinian terror squad that landed on a beach near Tel Aviv in 1978. In the ensuing massacre, 38 Israeli civilians were killed, including 13 children. An American photographer, Gail Rubin, was also slain.

According to the New York Times, the event was organized by the youth wing of Fatah, the ruling party led by President Mahmoud Abbas. Amid Israeli protests that it would violate their pledges to refrain from “incitement,” most top Palestinian leaders skipped the ceremony. But not all, as the Times reported:

“We are all Dala Mughrabi,” declared Tawfiq Tirawi, a member of the Fatah Central Committee, the party’s main decision-making body, who came to join the students. “For us she is not a terrorist,” he said, but rather “a fighter who fought for the liberation of her own land.”

The incident was overshadowed by the uproar over Israel’s announcement – during a visit by Vice President Joe Biden — of plans to add 1,600 housing units in East Jerusalem.

U.S. officials reacted furiously, calling the announcement an “insult” and demanding apologies from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Some observers see the U.S. outrage as contrived and likely counterproductive. After all, the settlement freeze announced last year by Netanyahu had explicitly exempted East Jerusalem. Others, like my colleague Jim Arkedis, saw the rebuke as essential to reestablishing America’s credentials as an “honest broker” in Middle East peace talks.
In any case, U.S. leaders ought to be at least as upset by the glorification of terrorists as they are by Israel’s settlement policies. Apparently emboldened by the settlement furor, Abbas told U.S. peace envoy George Mitchell this week that Palestinians have a “national right of resistance” to Israeli occupation.

Rebranding terrorism as “resistance” not only undermines prospects for a just resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict, it also validates the barbarous crimes against humanity perpetrated by al Qaeda and other extremist groups. That’s why U.S. leaders must categorically reject Palestinian attempts to justify attacks on civilians and to make martyrs out of murderers.

Blue Ribbon Panel on Nuclear Waste to Start Its Work

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The highly touted Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future that President Obama assembled last year will have its first public meeting today at the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C. The panel, co-chaired by former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-IN) and former National Security Advisor to President George H.W. Bush Brent Scowcroft, is tasked with reviewing policy options for managing the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle, including developing a safe, long-term solution to the nuclear waste problem.

What to think of the panel? The 15-person commission is comprised of a good mix of scientists, politicos and think tankers. Five of the members are science Ph.D.’s (including Per Peterson of Berkeley, who is considered by some to be the best in the field), which is pretty good as far as these things go. Too many Washington luminaries and it stops being serious; too many scientists and no one will listen. It might be easy to dismiss the participation of a perennial blue ribbonite like Lee Hamilton, but he’s reportedly been fairly proactive in staking out a broad mandate for the panel, urging the president to give the commission wide latitude on what to look into. His engagement is a good sign.

But the most significant thing about the panel is who organized it: Barack Obama. Throughout his first year-plus in office, he has proven to be serious about leading a comprehensive transformation of America’s archaic and damaging energy policies. While his support for nuclear energy has turned off some allies in the environmental community, it also shows that he knows that that U.S. can’t reduce its dependence on fossil fuels and meet rising energy demand without a significantly expanded role for nuclear. He’s lifting a three-decade old taboo on nuclear power and laying the groundwork for a revival of a domestic civilian nuclear power industry. And it’s not a moment too soon, as China rushes ahead with plans for as many as 400 nuclear plants.

Obama’s push for nuclear is also further evidence of the radical pragmatism that has marked his determination to tackle the nation’s biggest public problems. The question now is whether Republicans, many of whom have clamored loudly for a greater emphasis on nuclear energy, are willing to find common ground with Democrats, or continue their “flat earth” obstructionism on climate change and clean energy.

Obama’s blue ribbon panel has 18 months to conduct its work and issue its recommendations. Their work will be closely watched by those in the nuclear energy community. As the debate over nuclear power heats up, the problem of what to do about waste will need to be addressed. In the coming weeks, PPI will be issuing its own recommendations. Stay tuned.

Tea Party: Still the Republican Right

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Back on February 12, a CNN/New York Times poll gave us our first good look at the Tea Party Movement, and it didn’t confirm the media stereotype of angry average citizens who were somewhere in the “middle” on issues and equally disdained the two parties. Instead it showed the Tea Party folk to be, basically, very conservative Republicans determined to pressure the GOP to move to the right or suffer the consequences — in other words, a radicalized GOP base.

A new poll from Quinnipiac confirms that impression, and it’s really getting to the point where any other interpretation of the Tea Party Movement is probably spin (e.g., among Tea Party leaders who want to maintain their leverage over Republicans by pretending to be more independent than they actually are).

The alternative explanation has been that the Tea Partiers represent independent voters who are fed up with government and will join with Republicans to create a stable majority in this “center-right nation” if and only if Republicans stop talking about cultural issues and focus on lower taxes, smaller government and the economy. Nothing in the Quinnipiac poll supports that proposition. On question after question, self-identified Tea Partiers (13 percent of the total sample) are much closer in their views to self-identified Republicans than to self-identified independents. Most notably, the approval/disapproval rating for the Republican Party is 60/20 among Tea Partiers and 28/42 among indies. Among those voting in 2008, Tea Partiers went for McCain by a margin of 77/15; indies split down the middle (going for McCain 46/42). Tea Partiers have a favorable view of Sarah Palin by a 72/14 margin (significantly higher than among Republicans), while indies have an unfavorable view of her by a 49/34 margin. Tea Partiers self-identify as Republicans or Republican-leaners by a 74/16 margin. These are not the same people by any stretch of the imagination.

The poll doesn’t ask enough questions to get at the details of Tea Party ideology, but it also doesn’t supply any ammunition to the common perception that Tea Partiers are libertarians at heart, and/or that they are displacing the Christian Right within the conservative coalition. Actually, 21 percent of self-identified white “born-again” evangelicals consider themselves part of the Tea Party movement, well above the 13 percent figure for all voters. And the the two categories of voters share a rare positive attachment to Sarah Palin (white “born-agains” approve of her by a 55/29 margin, Tea Partiers by a 72/14 margin).

At some point, the more questionable assumptions that pundits are making about the Tea Folk — they are right-trending independents, they are hostile to the Christian Right — need to yield to empirical evidence. Now would be a good time to start.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Making Haiti the World’s First Wireless Country

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Channeling my inner Rahm: never waste a good crisis. The earthquake in Haiti was, and continues to be, tragic. However, at least one entrepreneur sees an opportunity to rebuild a critical part of Haiti’s infrastructure and probably make a few bucks in the meantime:

John Stanton, founder of Voice Stream and former chief executive of T-Mobile USA, wants the Haitian government to forget about rebuilding its copper wire communications network. Instead, he thinks Haiti should go mobile. … Stanton called for the Haitian government to create an all-wireless nation with more robust networks for the population of nearly 10 million and to build an economy centered on mobile technology.

Should Haiti choose to open up some wireless bandwidth, Stanton claims that he’ll put up $100 million of his company’s money. While the idea has merit, implementation involves a few caveats, one of which comes from PPI-alum Rob Atkinson, now president of the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation. He notes, “This could be a good strategy for as long as 20 years even, but I just don’t see it as an ultimate strategy because at a certain point you need fixed wire for services that require more bandwidth.”

Furthermore, there’s a question about competition — Stanton is angling for the first-mover advantage and trying to seize the initiative where he sees opportunity. But as with any government contract (even Haitian ones after a massive natural disaster), there’s the worry that a single-source supplier will distort the upside while dragging its heels on the outputs.

But on the whole, the idea tracks closely with what Mike Derham and I advocated in a PPI Policy Memo on Haitian reconstruction. We said that Haiti should embrace cell phone technology as a vital tool in facilitating capital flow:

Sub-Saharan Africa has adopted programs like M-PESA to allow people to use their cell phones as checking accounts. The time and effort necessary to establish a similar system in Haiti would be worthwhile. Credit can be transferred to individual phone numbers — including from overseas — and that credit can then be used for purchases from other phone owners who have a similar plan (including prepaid) from their provider. Cell coverage is one of the few institutions that covers all of Haiti. It is also an institution that has worked through the crisis, and that the American military is working to make sure stays running.

Wireless technology should a vital institution in Haiti, and Stanton’s offer should be evaluated seriously with that in mind.

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

Google vs. China

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

If you need a pet story to follow over the next year, Google and China is it. The issues at hand — freedom, human rights, censorship, and the almighty dollar — define, in a microcosm, China’s internal struggle to shape a coherent, enduring image on the world stage. Can China have its cake and eat it too — censorship and repression on one hand, and Western companies that help foster economic growth on the other? The long-term fallout from this story could set precedent for decades to come.

Here’s a quick recap: Google, whose slogan is “Don’t Be Evil”,  January revealed that it — along with 22 other companies– was the victim of a cyberattack sponsored by Beijing. As part of China’s intrusion, the Google email accounts of prominent human rights activists were hacked. Here was the company’s conclusion at the time, from Google’s blog:

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered — combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web — have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

After some additional research, the hammer just dropped yesterday:

We also made clear that these attacks and the surveillance they uncovered — combined with attempts over the last year to further limit free speech on the web in China including the persistent blocking of websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Docs and Blogger — had led us to conclude that we could no longer continue censoring our results on Google.cn.

So earlier today we stopped censoring our search services — Google Search, Google News, and Google Images — on Google.cn. Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong. Users in Hong Kong will continue to receive their existing uncensored, traditional Chinese service, also from Google.com.hk.

It is highly likely that Beijing will attempt to censor Google.com.hk, and their efforts will likely test the limits of what has become known as the Great Firewall of China. Unfortunately, I’m not enough of a tech-geek to know how feasible this is, but we’ll soon find out.

But the precedents that Google’s move sets will be far-reaching, and define American internet companies’ role in China for years. Will American corporations join Google, or attempt to replace it? Secretary of State Clinton spoke passionately that American businesses’ refusal “to support politically motivated censorship will become a trademark characteristic of American technology companies. It should be part of our national brand.” But is it too tempting for Yahoo.cn (which exists) and Bing.cn (which doesn’t… yet) to vacuum up the market share Google’s departure leaves hanging out there? And what about slightly more ambiguous cases, like Amazon.cn, which aren’t in the search engine business, but do exist and do provide Chinese with access to information?

And what would be necessary for Beijing to give way? Is there a conceivable scenario under which China might eventually permit unfettered searches of its internet content? And does this spat extend to companies beyond the information sector? Should it? Will the Obama adminstration bring pressure to bear on U.S. companies to, in turn, help pressure Beijing? Will non-information sector American companies abandon China in a mass protest against censorship? It is difficult to imagine any scenario where a major non-censored U.S. corporation forsakes its access to a market of 1.3 billion people, right? But Google’s decision is astounding and could create waves.

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

The Capricious CW

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Amazing what a little history-making legislation can do for your image. As others have already pointed out, the media narrative of the Obama presidency has undergone a wholesale revision in the wake of the House’s passage of health care reform legislation. Gone are the accounts of a flailing presidency and a Democratic Party headed for doom in November. In their place are breathless stories about an administration pulled back from the brink, and a presidency on its way to becoming one of the most consequential in the nation’s history.

It’s far too early to make a judgment of Obama’s legacy, of course. But the stories of triumphant Democrats are all too real and affirm what those who’ve been advocating for reform have been saying: winning does a party good. November may still look ugly for Democrats – historically, the out party has gained seats in a new president’s first midterm election – but passing their top domestic priority will rally the base and give them a fighting chance to keep losses to a minimum.

More than firing up a disillusioned base for the election, the passage of health reform also gives the American public an image of a triumphant Democratic Party. And if there’s one thing Americans like, it’s winners. Before the passage of health care reform, polls showed a majority viewing it unfavorably. In the wake of Sunday’s historic win – and, no less important, headline after headline about that historic win – the first Gallup poll to come out on health care now has the numbers flipped: 49 percent now call reform a “good thing,” versus 40 percent saying it was a “bad thing.” As the president is poised to go on the road to do some more barnstorming for the plan, expect those numbers to inch up some more.

One of the healthiest effects health care’s passage will have on Democrats politically is that it will likely give President Obama’s approval rating a boost. According to Nate Silver’s analysis, the correlation between a president’s approval rating prior to the midterms and his party’s performance at the polls is actually very strong. Today, President Obama’s approval-disapproval rating on Gallup’s daily tracking poll sits at 51 percent-43 percent; just a few days ago, it was at 46 percent-47 percent.

It’s early yet, of course, and capricious as the CW machine is, the narrative could change at any time. The bounce may prove to be evanescent. But compared to where the Democrats were before Sunday, it’s fair to say that health care reform was not just good policy but good politics as well.