Category: Uncategorized

Trading Up

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

For the past year, U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk has been the Obama administration’s equivalent of the Maytag repairman—a capable official with nothing to do. That is about to change.

As part of a broader push for job creation, the president yesterday unveiled an ambitious strategy for doubling U.S. exports over the next five years. Key elements include $2 billion more in export financing, an easing of export technology controls and a new Cabinet office to promote sales of U.S. products abroad. Obama also picked W. James McNerney, CEO of Boeing—one of America’s export champions—to chair the President’s Export Council.

The flurry of activity around trade is belated but welcome, since surging exports have been one of the few sources of job growth lately. It may also put to rest lingering doubts about Obama’s commitment to expanding trade.

During the 2008 campaign, candidate Obama sounded economic nationalist themes and indulged in ritual NAFTA-bashing. He even vowed to reopen that treat to get a better deal for U.S. workers, deeply alarming Canada and other trading partners worried about mounting protectionist sentiment in the United States.

But if Obama’s new push is reassuring to pragmatic progressives, anti-trade activists are donning their battle gear. Lori Wallach, president of Global Trade Watch, recently told Bloomberg News that the Obama administration must deal with the import side of trade to create U.S. jobs and increase innovation.

Obama yesterday invoked America’s economic travails to short-circuit a family squabble among progressives over trade. “We are at a moment where it is absolutely necessary for us to get beyond those old debates…Those who once would oppose any trade agreement now understand that there are new markets and new sectors out there that we need to break into if we want our workers to get ahead.”

In another positive development, House New Democrats this week released a trade agenda of their own. It emphasizes support for small business exports, the need to crack down on intellectual property theft, and, echoing a key PPI theme, the strategic benefits of expanding trade and economic opportunity across the Middle East.

Both the president and the New Dems call for efforts to rekindle progress on the stalled Doha round of global trade talks, and perhaps most controversially, for closing the deal on pending bilateral trade agreements with South Korea, Colombia and Panama. This is bound to provoke a reaction from anti-trade Democrats who see trade as a threat to U.S. jobs and wages. They have a powerful ally in the new House Ways and Means Chairman, Rep. Sandy Levin, a longtime trade skeptic.

Trade is not a panacea for America’s job woes. But as Obama and the New Dems understand, lowering foreign barriers to trade is integral to any credible strategy for U.S. economic growth and innovation. It’s also essential for the United States to resume leadership in forging a rules-based global trading system to keep everyone honest and prevent countries from adopting mercantilist strategies.

Finally, and most important for the long-run, boosting U.S. exports is also critical to re-balancing the global economy. Just as we export more and import less, Asian export powerhouses, especially China, need to import more and spur domestic consumption. Obama’s trade initiative is a small but vital first step toward moving world flows of trade and finance toward a sustainable equilibrium.

Obama’s Donations Reflect His National Security and Foreign Policy Priorities

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

President Obama gave away his $1.4 million Nobel Peace Prize award yesterday, and where national security is concerned, he literally put his money where his mouth is.

The largest donation—$250,000—was given to Fisher House, an organization that builds “comfort homes” on the grounds of major U.S. military installations that allow service members’ families “to be close to a loved one at the most stressful times—during the hospitalization for an unexpected illness, disease, or injury.”  It shouldn’t come as much of a surprise that President Obama would choose a charity like Fisher House, given the First Lady’s focus on the cause since the beginning of her husband’s presidency.  And with America’s military facing unprecedented strains, every drop in the bucket helps.

The president also gave $100,000 to AfriCare, which promotes health, food security, and access to water in Africa.  This donation mirrors Obama’s long-standing efforts to alleviate poverty in Africa, which dates back to his days in the Senate when he offered the 2007 Global Poverty Act that aims to cut the number of people living on a dollar a day in half by 2015.

Finally, Obama dropped 100 large on the Central Asia Institute, whose story is chronicled in the book “Three Cups of Tea.”  I wasn’t a huge fan of the book’s style, per se, but the CAI’s work is remarkable in and of itself, and it certainly deserves every penny for carrying out such an important mission of educating girls in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The donations are very embodiment of the notion that American national security policy is about more than the blunt instrument of military force (an idea most recently forwarded by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Admiral Mullen).  When force is used, it should be done in a careful and judicious manner that accounts for the extended effects on our fighting men and women.

False Friends

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Today’s big whoop in the manic conservative drive to kill health care reform is a Washington Post op-ed by Pat Caddell and Doug Schoen urging Democrats to abandon reform and work with Republicans on “bipartisan” proposals like “purchasing insurance across state lines, malpractice reform, incrementally increasing coverage,” and so on and so forth.

Now normally I don’t like to get into the motives or personality of people making political arguments, but in this case it’s unavoidable. The only reason anyone on earth is paying any attention to the views of Caddell and Schoen on this subject is that, as they note prominently in the WaPo piece, they used to work as pollsters for Democratic presidents (Schoen for Clinton, though it was really his business partner, Mark Penn, who had the White House account, and Cadell way back in the Carter administration). But the impression they give of being good Democrats who have finally spoken out in exasperation at the folly of health care reform is completely false. Schoen has never been much of a loyal Democrat; his latest enthusiasm has been encouraging a third party. And Caddell has a history of cranky eccentricity dating back at least a few decades. As Jon Chait points out, both of them have become fixtures on Fox News recently.

They are entitled to their opinion like anyone else, but Schoen and Caddell should check their worn-out Party Cards at the door before they write a piece repeating Republican talking points on health care reform.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

After Citizens United: A New Paradigm for Campaign Reform

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Join the Progressive Policy Institute and Americans for Campaign Reform

for a special presentation

featuring Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.)

DATE:
Wednesday, March 17
10 a.m. – 12 p.m.
LOCATION:
U.S. Capitol Complex
Dirksen Senate Office Building – SD-106
Washington, D.C.
 

RSVP to attend the event

Space is extremely limited. RSVP required.
Seating is on a first-come, first-served basis and not guaranteed.

Opening Remarks:
Senator Dick Durbin (D-Ill.)
Featured Panelist:
Dan Weeks – President, Americans for Campaign Reform
John Samples – Director, Cato’s Center for Representative Government
Mark McKinnon – Vice Chairman, Public Strategies
Andrew Baumann – Senior Associate, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner
Moderated by:
Will Marshall – President, Progressive Policy Institute

RSVP to attend the event

Related Posts:

PPI Policy Memo – Campaign Finance Reform 2.0: A Small-Donor Approach to Fixing the System

Supreme Court Ruling Gives Boost to Public Funding Movement

No, Justice Alito, the President Was Right

Hindsight: Missile Defense Decision Actually is 20/20

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

If you supported the Obama administration on this one, it couldn’t have turned out any better.

Back in September, the White House decided to swap missile defense programs. Out was a ground-based system in Eastern Europe that depended on a stationary missile battery and radar station in Poland and the Czech Republic, respectively. It was geared towards a long-range ballistic missile threat, and was over cost, over schedule, and under-performing to boot.

Conservatives howled that the White House was “abandoning its Eastern European allies” to a salivating Russia. Or was it a salivating Iran? Either way, conservatives were all worked up in a tizzy that, despite our mutual-defense pact with Poland and the Czech Republic, surely we were doing irreparable  damage to the NATO alliance.

In the Eastern European system’s place, the Obama administration (with unanimous support from the Joint Chiefs) decided to deploy a sea-based system that was designed to counter a short-to-medium Iranian ballistic missile threat because it had higher technical capabilities and could be deployed more rapidly. Part of the White House’s justification was a new intelligence estimate that said Iran was focused on its short-to-medium range missiles.

So, six months on, how’s that workin’ out for you?

It appears the White House may have—gasp—known what it was doing. I’m a day or so behind on this, but the Wall Street Journal reported this week that … wait for it … Iran has in fact started production of the Nasr1, a highly accurate short range cruise missile:

Iran said it has started a new production line of highly accurate, short-range cruise missiles, which would add a new element to the country’s arsenal.

Gen. Ahmad Vahidi told Iranian state TV Sunday that the cruise missile, called Nasr 1, would be capable of destroying targets up to 3,000 tons in size.

The minister said the missile can be fired from ground-based launchers as well as ships, but would eventually be modified to be fired from helicopters and submarines.

I’m curious as to how a cruise missile is fired from a helicopter, but I digress. The point is that the Obama has matched the current threat with appropriate, functioning, defensive capability. Game over!

And how about that abandonment? Here’s Eugeniusz Smolar, the director of the Center for International Relations in Warsaw, who said to the Guardian adopting the Obama administration’s approach was an easy call for Poland:

“This [new] proposal is much more Europe oriented because the new system is to deal more with the medium- and short-range threats, and this is exactly what Poland has been seeking,” Smolar said.

He added that the new plan is also “more NATO oriented, which is good, because it means there will be much less tension among the allies who have been complaining that Poland has been doing its own agreement with the U.S. outside of NATO.”

Texas Revisionism

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

When we last checked in on the Texas textbook wars, the craziest advocate on the state School Board for rewriting American history was a dentist named Don McLeroy, who had become so embarrassing that he faced a Republican primary challenge from a more conventional conservative. The good news is that McLeroy lost, albeit very narrowly. The bad news is that he remains on the Board for ten more months, and as James McKinley explains in the New York Times today, McLemore and the conservative bloc he leads on the Board is going for the gold in imposing its revisionist views on the school children of the Lone Star State (and many other states, given Texas’ outsized clout in the textbook market).

Check this out:

Dr. McLeroy still has 10 months to serve and he, along with rest of the religious conservatives on the board, have vowed to put their mark on the guidelines for social studies texts.

For instance, one guideline requires publishers to include a section on “the conservative resurgence of the 1980s and 1990s, including Phyllis Schlafly, the Contract with America, the Heritage Foundation, the Moral Majority and the National Rifle Association.”

There have also been efforts among conservatives on the board to tweak the history of the civil rights movement. One amendment states that the movement created “unrealistic expectations of equal outcomes” among minorities. Another proposed change removes any reference to race, sex or religion in talking about how different groups have contributed to the national identity.

Don’t know if the instruction on the important role of the NRA will include in-class Eddie Eagle appearances, but it wouldn’t surprise me. The revisionism does not, of course, only pertain to relatively current events:

References to Ralph Nader and Ross Perot are proposed to be removed, while Stonewall Jackson, the Confederate general, is to be listed as a role model for effective leadership, and the ideas in Jefferson Davis’s inaugural address are to be laid side by side with Abraham Lincoln’s speeches.Early in the hearing on Wednesday, Mr. McLeroy and other conservatives on the board made it clear they would offer still more planks to highlight what they see as the Christian roots of the Constitution and other founding documents.

“To deny the Judeo-Christian values of our founding fathers is just a lie to our kids,” said Ken Mercer, a San Antonio Republican.

The new guidelines, when finally approved, will influence textbooks for elementary, middle school and high school. They will be written next year and will be in effect for 10 years.

It’s long been a common ploy for Christian Right advocates to insist on the “Christian roots of the Constitution” as a way to marginalize the church-state-separatist legacy of Jefferson and Madison, and limit the protection of religious liberty to Christians (and we are talking about people with a rather rigid view of what constitutes a “Christian,” with the President of the United States or pro-choice Catholics often not qualifying). The elevation of Confederate leaders into a position of moral equivalency with Lincoln also has an old and unsavory history, as anyone who grew up in the Jim Crow South (as I did) can tell you. But it’s arguably not surprising to see such travesties gain ground in a state whose current governor has been known to flirt with antebellum theories of nullification and absolute state sovereignty.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Radical Sheet

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The following is an excerpt from Elbert Ventura’s review of Peter Richardson’s A Bomb in Every Issue in the newest issue of Democracy journal:

Flipping through The New York Times on the morning of February 16, 1966, a reader would have come across a startling photo: a stern-faced soldier, standing against a pitch-black backdrop, crowned by the bold declaration “I quit!” The soldier was Donald Duncan, a decorated Green Beret who had just returned from Vietnam. The small print announced Duncan’s opposition to the war after an 18-month tour. “I couldn’t kid myself any longer that my country was acting rationally, or even morally,” he said. But the photo wasn’t telling his story. It was selling it–it appeared in a full-page ad promoting the newest scoop fromRamparts magazine.

That wasn’t the first, and was hardly the last, of the Bay Area-based monthly’s provocations. In its brief and glorious heyday during the late 1960s, Ramparts produced a succession of images and stories that jumped out of newsstands and shook readers by the shoulders: four hands holding aloft burning draft cards; a portrait of Black Panther Huey P. Newton behind bars; an exhortation for more student uprisings and “two, three, many Columbias”; an all-American tyke holding the Viet Cong flag under the headline, “Alienation is when your country is at war and you want the other side to win.”

The magazine bloomed during a fertile period for radical media. Underground newspapers and leftist journals–the Berkeley Barb, the Los Angeles Free Press, Viet-Report, Rat–sprouted like wildflowers in the 1960s. But none of them were as big, as brash, or as influential asRamparts. This was no austere newsletter that took pride in its obscurity. Its covers were as eye-catching and inventive as anything mainstream publishing produced. Ramparts was unrepentantly glossy, filled with ads (a no-no for some on the left), groundbreaking design, and a pop savvy that tempered the sting of its incisive critique. Warren Hinckle, the executive editor, proudly wrote of the influential Ramparts style: “[B]y the late 1960s one could line up Evergreen Review, Harper’s, Atlantic, New Yorkmagazine, Esquire and Ramparts and be unable to tell the chicken from the egg.” By aping the look of the corporate media it mercilessly hammered, the magazine gave a sheen of mainstream legitimacy to radical ideas.

Considering that an entire continent’s worth of trees has been felled commemorating the ‘60s, it is something of a surprise that a proper history of Ramparts has never been published. Peter Richardson’s A Bomb In Every Issue: How the Short Unruly Life of Ramparts Magazine Changed America redresses that oversight. The editorial director of PoliPointPress, a publisher of progressive books, and author of a book on 1960s Nation editor Carey McWilliams, Richardson is steeped in the world of leftist ideas and journalism, and he ascribes an autobiographical dimension to his interest, noting that he grew up in the Bay Area and was marked at an early age by the very milieu that gave rise to Ramparts.

Richardson’s book offers a breezy, blow-by-blow account of the magazine’s short-lived existence. If anything, for those hungering for such a history, it might be a little too brisk–at a mere 227 pages including endnotes, the book whets one’s appetite for a longer, more immersive chronicle, not to mention an anthology of Ramparts’ best. But what’s here is choice. Relying heavily on two autobiographies by Ramparts editors–David Horowitz’s Radical Son and Hinckle’s If You Have a Lemon, Make Lemonade,, a gonzo memoir that’s due for rediscovery–Richardson also includes material from recent interviews with many of the magazine’s principals to put in perspective its unlikely achievements.

Smart enough to get out of the way of a story that needs no embellishing, Richardson fills in the backdrop with convincing color, placing Rampartsfirmly in its unique historical moment. The dramatis personae is a writer’s dream: eccentric millionaires, Berkeley radicals, Black Panthers, a dipsomaniac editor. Richardson is a lucid and even clever writer (a nice touch: lyrics from “The Star Spangled Banner” are used as chapter titles, a nod to Ramparts’ provenance). “If 1968 was the year America had a nervous breakdown, Ramparts was its most reliable fever chart,” writes Richardson. (The chapter is aptly titled “Bombs Bursting in Air.”) The line sums up Ramparts’ importance in the story of American journalism. In the postwar era’s most tumultuous decade, the magazine became the scrapbook of the zeitgeist. Richardson strains to make a case for Ramparts’–and his project’s–relevance to today, but he need not try so hard. The magazine’s singular brilliance and influence on its time more than qualify it for remembrance.

Read the rest at Democracy.

Devil’s Advocate

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Today’s strange quasi-political news is that Tiger Woods has turned to former Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer to help manage public relations for his comeback to the professional golf tour. Fleischer last made national news by becoming the spokesman for college football’s Bowl Championship Series, and earlier represented Mark Maguire and (as they were getting rid of quarterback Brett Favre) the Green Bay Packers, powerfully unpopular clients all.

Ari’s rise to become the hottest ticket in toxic waste management ranks right up there with AIG’s bonuses as a talking point for those who argue that the world is ruled is operated by a malevolent demiurge rather than a just God. But perhaps, as he showed in the White House, he does have a unique talent for combining mediocrity with mendacity, and can protect his embattled clients by boring the news media into submission by repeating lies in a manner designed to induce a trance-like stupor.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

FCC Can Win a Supporting Role Nod on Broadcast TV Fees

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

So I wasn’t the only one who thought the FCC dropped the ball in its dealing with the carriage fee kerfuffle over the weekend—some of the nation’s largest cable and broadcast companies have sent a letter to the FCC to that effect.

In a petition filed with the FCC, Time Warner Cable, Verizon Communications, Cablevision and advocacy group Public Knowledge said that regulations governing transmissions from broadcasters to subscription-television providers are outdated and warned that last weekend’s standoff between Cablevision and Walt Disney Co. will be repeated unless the FCC issues new rules. They also called on regulators to assign an arbitrator during stalled negotiations and to require broadcasters to maintain their signals if talks break down.

Updating technology and media legislation is a perennial issue in an era where rules are oftentimes obsolete as soon as they’re spelled out. But it’s rare that you see industry players go to the government and ask to be regulated further. In this case, the FCC should take them up on the offer.

The most immediate benefits will come from the willingness of both broadcasters and cable companies to submit to arbitration, and the signal maintenance requirement. The debate between broadcasters and cable companies is broadly not one of principle, but of money. This negotiation lends itself readily to arbitration, as both sides are not facing an all-or-nothing choice, but seeking a middle ground is reached on fee pricing. Arbitration means that they will find that middle ground faster.

In the off chance that they can’t find that middle ground in time for a “major television event” (whether it be the Oscars, a bowl game, or the 24 season finale), the signal maintenance requirement means that consumers wouldn’t be the loser if talks broke down. Agreeing to extend exiting contracts an additional couple of days is much less costly to either party than the damage done by angering customers in a fiasco like last Sunday’s Oscar-fest.

The FCC should take this opportunity to work with industry—and not impose a solution on them—on a negotiation framework that will be as big a hit with consumers than Sandra Bullock’s role in The Blind Side was with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences.

Afghanistan: Civilian and Military Casualties Aren’t a Zero-Sum Game

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Sarah Holewinski and Jim Morin–two of my friends through the Truman National Security Project –have an excellent op-ed in today’s Christian Science Monitor on a issue that may haunt and confuse many Americans. First, Holewinski and Morin restate something that may still be missed in the public debate–that our forces are primarily in Afghanistan to protect Afghan civilians from the Taliban, not to fight the Taliban directly. This then begs a question Holewinski and Morin ask–if our forces are primarily concerned with protecting Afghans from the Taliban, does that mean more of our guys will die as a consequence?  Here’s their take:

Military families back home want to know: Are troops walking into hell with one hand tied behind their backs? Are civilian lives being spared in exchange for military ones?

The answer to both questions is no.  […]

Protecting the population isn’t political correctness; it’s a vital military objective and a distinct advantage over an enemy that uses civilians as shields. The drop in civilian casualties is a mark of success.

Allied troop fatalities have meanwhile increased, but efforts to spare civilians are not the cause. Rather, troops are fighting the insurgents where they live – as in Marjah. Taking on the Taliban requires taking that risk. American and allied forces may be walking into hell, but given the right strategy and purpose, they remain free to fight effectively. […]

Combat is violent, frightening, and confusing, and troops on the ground have both the instinct – and the right – to protect themselves. The critical role for commanders is to convey the lesson taught by the US Army’s Counterinsurgency Field Manual, drafted under Gen. David Petraeus: “Sometimes the more you protect your force, the less secure you may be.”

Military tactics are always balanced against strategic objectives, force protection, and humanitarian imperatives. In Afghanistan, international forces have had more than eight years to figure out what hasn’t worked and what will. The new emphasis on civilian protection is a welcome move toward striking the right balance.

In the Army there is a saying, “Mission First, Soldiers Always.” Safeguarding civilians and taking care of soldiers are not mutually exclusive. We owe our troops as much training, operational guidance, and moral certainty as modern war will allow.

This issue highlights how policy can be distorted and create bad political optics.  This is a nagging problem with the Afghanistan debate.  For example, the public discourse on President Obama’s decision on the war centered on two issues: how many troops, and the right’s false charge that he was “dithering” on what to do.  In that regard, the White House let the debate get away from it because, frankly, thousands of troop numbers grabs headlines in ways that strategy discussions don’t.

So, progressives should heed this op-ed and use it to push back when charges come–from either the left or right–that our troops are dying because we’re allegedly more concerned with Afghans.  There will be casualties, of course, but we have to understand that Afghan casualties vs. American casualties aren’t a zero-sum game.

Are We Serious About Climate Change? Then Let’s Price Carbon

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Climate policy seems to be returning to the legislative agenda. The Cantwell-Collins “cap and dividend” bill is getting real (and bipartisan) interest. The Kerry-Graham-Lieberman “tripartisan” climate proposal is rumored to be nearly ready. As these proposals indicate, it is likely that the Senate will start its discussions on climate from first principles, despite the presence of a more-or-less complete bill (Waxman-Markey) from the House.

These are interesting times for climate politics, and in many ways similar to how the politics of health care reform played out last year, with likely shifts in the basic ideas and key details over the coming months. I firmly believe Congress will pass a comprehensive climate bill — it’s just a matter of time (though I do hope the endgame is not as protracted as it has been for health care). But what that bill will look like is anyone’s guess.

Major issues will be familiar: how to allocate allowances and revenues, whether to fund nuclear energy or expand drilling, whether and how to include offsets, maybe even whether to scrap cap-and-trade and tax carbon instead (I think there’s a nonzero chance). These debates are all worth having and paying attention to. But we — that is, anyone who cares about climate change, which should be everyone — cannot lose sight of the one element any climate bill must include: a price on carbon.

There is simply no other policy mechanism that can cut emissions, drive the necessary innovation and produce the necessary changes to the U.S. economy. It’s not just that nothing else is as efficient — nothing else will work. Other tools like technology standards, subsidies, and offsets may be useful, but they are secondary in importance. If a proposal does not include a carbon price, it either isn’t about climate or it isn’t serious. None of this is new or surprising: we have a tool, and we know it works.

A Carbon Price Consensus?

To return to the health care analogy, a price on carbon will in some ways play a similar role to that played by the “public option” — it is considered by many to be the necessary core of a meaningful policy, and opposed fiercely by others. I think the similarities end there, however. Pricing carbon is far more important — indeed, necessary — to climate policy than a public option ever was for health care. It is possible to make progress on the basic goals of health care reform (cutting costs, reaching the uninsured, promoting equitable access, etc.) without a public option. The same is not true of climate change mitigation and a carbon price.

Consequently, there is broader and, to some extent, more bipartisan support for pricing carbon than there was for a public option. Despite Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (R-S.C.) recent declaration that cap-and-trade is dead (not exactly what he said, it should be pointed out), a few Republicans and virtually all Democrats alike realize that a carbon price must be part of meaningful climate legislation. The only people who don’t believe this either don’t believe in anthropogenic global warming at all (and are therefore at least principled, if on the wrong side of the science) or are just playing politics with the most important issue of our time. Perhaps this is not surprising, but it is disappointing.

If you care about climate change, the first question you should ask of any proposal is, “Does it put a price on carbon?” Only if the answer is yes is it worth getting into details. As someone once said about soccer, “The ball is round. The game lasts 90 minutes. That is fact. Everything else is theory.”

This holds true for proposals that might be attractive for other reasons, like an “energy only” bill, even if it includes a renewable portfolio standard. This or other measures that don’t include a carbon price are not going to produce significant change in U.S. emissions, and aren’t going to spur the necessary innovation for long-term change in how we produce and use energy. The same goes for incentives and subsidies for “green technology” and creation of “green jobs.” These sound nice, but if you really want the jobs and technology, you need to implement a carbon price. We are likely to see a wide variety of proposals with a wide variety of policy mechanisms over the coming months. All of them will be characterized as pro-climate, pro-innovation, and pro-jobs. It is critical to look past this rhetoric, and even beyond many of the policies included in the proposals, and determine whether there is a carbon price at their core — regardless of how much “rebranding” of climate proposals goes on.

Demanding a price on carbon makes sense regardless of your politics: producing the greatest reduction in emissions at the lowest cost is attractive for everyone. The details of a climate bill do matter, and will surely drive wedges between political groups — but the time has come for a political consensus on pricing carbon. I think progressives should be open to ideas on climate policy from all directions. The proposals that are likely to be at the center of debates in the Senate, Cantwell-Collins and Kerry-Graham-Lieberman, are bipartisan from the start. There will undoubtedly be other proposals and much discussion of the details. But amid all of the political maneuvering, we shouldn’t lose sight of the indispensable core of climate policy. Everyone serious about climate change should be banging the same drum: price carbon.

Can Charlie Crist Switch and Survive?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

One of the more interesting ongoing spectacles this year has been the crashing and burning of Republican Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, the once invincible political titan who now appears destined to lose, perhaps badly, a U.S. Senate primary to conservative Tea Party favorite Marco Rubio. Initially, Rubio was considered more or less a nuisance candidate who would keep Crist from straying too far off the conservative reservation. Now, according to a new PPP poll of Florida Republicans, Rubio is trouncing Crist 60-28.

Echoing earlier complaints among Florida Republicans that Crist should have just run for re-election, there’s been talk that the heavily tanned incumbent might switch to the governor’s race (qualifying doesn’t end until April 30). Others have suggested he should get some revenge on conservatives by staying in the Senate race but running as an independent. At 538.com, Nate Silver explores these alternatives, and concludes that Crist should probably either hang it up or run for the Senate as an indie, assuming he’s not interested in a future in the GOP. Turns out switching to the governor’s race isn’t promising:

The same PPP poll that found Crist trailing Rubio by 32 points also found him trailing Bill McCollum, the leading Republican candidate for governor, by 14. That’s not quite as bad a deficit to overcome, but it doesn’t account for the additional annoyance voters might feel if Crist switched races, which could come across as entitled and presumptuous. In addition, the general election could get tricky, as Crist’s approval ratings are tepid and as Democratic candidate Alex Sink — although now trailing McCollum in most polls — is considered a decent candidate.

On the other hand, says Nate, some polls have shown Crist running reasonably well as an indie against Rubio and likely Democratic Senate candidate Kendrick Meek, essentially creating a three-way tie.

Either “switch” by Crist, it’s clear, would be good news for Florida Democrats, giving them a better chance in November while promoting GOP ideological warfare.

But Charlie probably owes it to his dwindling band of friends in the GOP to make up his mind soon. In neighboring Georgia, the news that U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss and Gov. Sonny Perdue are hosting an Atlanta fundraiser for Crist has not gone over very well in Georgia Republican circles. If Crist is perceived as double-crossing Florida Republicans, he will become truly radioactive for all who have touched him.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Win Dixie

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As we all understand, Republicans are about to have a pretty good election in November. Much of the GOP excitement revolves around congressional races that could unseat “red-state” Democrats who won during the 2006 or 2008 cycles, along with a number of incumbents (some of whom have decided to retire) who have been around much longer. Ground zero for the Republican tsunami is, of course, the Deep South, where in some areas John McCain did better in 2008 than George W. Bush did in 2004, and where every available indicator shows the president to be very unpopular among white voters.

But beneath this storyline, some odd and counterintuitive things are going on. In three Deep South states, Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina, Democrats have a decent chance of retaking long-lost governorships, in part because of infighting among Republican candidates, and in part because Republican rule in those states has not been terribly successful or popular. It’s far too early to make predictions, but it’s possible that we’re in for a repeat of the astounding gubernatorial Trifecta that Democrats pulled off in those same three states in 1998. That event confounded widespread assessments that the South had become a one-party GOP region, and it could happen again, in even more unlikely circumstances.

Our own appraisal begins in Georgia, with one of the surprise winners of 1998, former Governor Roy Barnes. Barnes lost his reelection bid in 2002 to Sonny Perdue, a party-switching state senator, despite the power of incumbency and a huge financial advantage. Since then, Barnes has regularly admitted his mistakes. And, amazingly enough, in the latest Georgia gubernatorial poll, he’s running ahead of every single Republican candidate.

Meanwhile, Georgia Republicans, who have dominated state politics since 2002, are having some serious problems with their own gubernatorial bench. The consistent frontrunner in the polls, longtime insurance commissioner John Oxendine, is awash in ethics allegations about contributions from the insurance companies that he is responsible for regulating. His record is so blatantly bad that none other than Erick Erickson, the Georgia-based proprietor of the nationally influential, hard-core conservative web site RedState, has said he’d vote for Barnes if Oxendine is the GOP nominee.

Rather pathetically, the alternative to Oxendine and the favorite of some party insiders is Representative Nathan Deal of Georgia’s Ninth District (like Perdue, a party-switcher), who recently said he would resign his congressional seat after a health care vote to concentrate on his gubernatorial campaign. As it happens, Deal’s resignation managed to short-circuit a House Ethics Committee investigation into a no-bid state auto-salvage contract that was awarded to a company which Deal controls. The insider buzz in Atlanta is that Deal was motivated to resign, in part, because of panic among Georgia Republican pooh-bahs who worried that Oxendine would walk away with the gubernatorial nomination on name ID alone.

The rest of the Republican gubernatorial hopefuls are struggling as well. The entire party, and several of the gubernatorial candidates, were tainted by association with disgraced former House Speaker Glenn Richardson, who was forced to resign after a lurid sex-and-lobbying scandal. The one candidate who seems ethically starchy, Secretary of State Karen Handel, has struggled to raise the money necessary to win, and also suffers from the perception that she’s the unpopular Sonny Perdue’s chosen successor.

All these Republican problems could eventually fade, and Roy Barnes must also navigate a Democratic primary against Attorney General Thurbert Baker, a law-‘n-order conservative who is one of the nation’s longest-serving African American statewide elected officials (as well as two other lesser but credible opponents). Nevertheless at present, Barnes—or Baker, if he could somehow upset Barnes—looks entirely viable for November.

Next door in Alabama, you’d think that the Democratic gubernatorial frontrunner, Congressman Artur Davis, wouldn’t stand a chance. He’s a member of the much-hated United States Congress; he’s African American; he’s a close personal friend of Barack Obama; and he’s frequently been tagged, like the president, as an Ivy League-educated, twenty-first-century–style black politician. But the sparse public polling available shows Davis in a very strong position for the general election, assuming that he dispenses with a primary challenge from state agriculture commissioner Ron Sparks, who’s been struggling to raise money. Davis, who has long nursed gubernatorial ambitions, carefully tailored his congressional record to Alabama public opinion: He voted against health care reform in the House, and he was also the first Congressional Black Caucus member (and, for that matter, the first one on the Ways and Means Committee) to call for Charlie Rangel to step aside from his powerful chairmanship.

Meanwhile, there is no real frontrunner in the Republican gubernatorial primary, which bids fair to become an ideological flame war. Back in 2002, the “establishment” candidate, state Senator Bradley Byrne, made the fatal mistake of voting for a-tax reform initiative that was soundly defeated in an emphatic expression of Alabamians’ mistrust of government. Tim James, son of former conservative Democratic and Republican Governor Fob James, was one of the main opponents of that initiative, and he will bring it up constantly. Meanwhile Christian Right warhorse Roy Moore, the famous “Ten Commandments Judge,” is actually running second to Byrne in early polls. All of the dynamics in the race will pull the GOP candidates to the hard-right, while Artur Davis continues to occupy the political center; and his candidacy will almost certainly boost African American turnout to near-2008 levels. That means anything could happen in November.

South Carolina is often thought of as the most Republican of Southern states. But Mark Sanford, the disgraced incumbent governor, has complicated his party’s prospects. Meanwhile, an ideological civil war is brewing that reflects the growing tension between the state’s two Republican senators, right-wing bomb thrower Jim DeMint and the more moderate Lindsey Graham (Graham, long suspect among home-state conservatives for his friendship with John McCain and his occasional bipartisanship, has recently been formally censured by two of South Carolina’s county GOP organizations for a variety of sins). As in Georgia and Alabama, the Republican gubernatorial field is a mess: Nobody is a frontrunner and all the candidates are stampeding to the hard right. And I do mean hard right. In a sign of the times, Lieutenant Governor Andre Bauer, who has few friends in the state’s Republican establishment, delivered a speech comparing recipients of subsidized school lunches to “stray animals” who should no longer be fed unconditionally. While he took a few shots from fellow Republicans for his indiscreet language, nobody disputed, and some praised, his basic premise that any form of public assistance corrupts its recipients and should come with some sort of reciprocal obligation.

The frontrunners in early polls are Bauer and Attorney General Henry McMaster. Upstate Congressman Gresham Barrett, who must overcome the opprobrium of voting for TARP, is close behind. Meanwhile, Sanford’s protégé, state Representative Nikki Haley (who was even endorsed by the governor’s ex-wife), is trying to push the campaign hard right by opposing any expenditure of federal stimulus dollars in this high-unemployment state. At a recent candidate forum, when the rivals were pushed to call themselves “DeMint Republicans” or “Graham Republicans,” Bauer and Haley flatly identified with DeMint, while McMasters and Barrett dodged the question.

On the Democratic side, a Rasmussen poll in December showed the front-running Democrat, State School Superintendent Jim Rex, actually beating Bauer and running within single digits against other GOP candidates. (State Representative Vincent Sheheen is also a credible Democratic candidate). Again, anything could happen, but the assumption that Republicans have a lock on this state’s elections is as dubious as the same assumption back in 1998.

So, at a time when Democrats are despairing of good news, it’s important to understand that the donkey isn’t quite dead, even in the Deep South. There are consequences to Republican extremism and malfeasance in office. And, when GOP candidates battle for first place on the crazy train of contemporary conservatism, it’s Democrats who stand to benefit.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Blue Dogs Only Chasing Their Tail

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

It often seems that Blue Dog Democrats, along with a handful of Senate moderates, are the only people in Washington who are serious about fiscal responsibility. Chasing the will-o-the-wisp of a balanced budget amendment, however, seems more likely to distract from than advance that essential cause.

The idea is seductively simple: The only way to restrain deficit spending in Washington is to make it unconstitutional. That’s how the states keep their books balanced, and there’s no reason the federal government shouldn’t do the same.

In fact, there are several. Consider that today’s federal deficit is about 12 percent of GDP. It’s going to go down as the economy recovers, but the spending and tax adjustments that would have to be made to get it all the way down to zero would be unduly draconian and disruptive. Also, unlike state mandates, a federal balanced budget amendment for accounting reasons would not distinguish between capital investment and consumption. But government borrowing to invest in public infrastructure or higher education, for example, makes economic sense, because it will generate more economic activity and amortize itself over time.

What’s more, the federal government acts as the nation’s fiscal safety valve, or strategic reserve. During severe economic downturns, the only way many states can provide services while preserving their fiscal virtue is to get counter-cyclical assistance (or revenue sharing) from Washington. A constitutional ban on deficits could prevent Washington from responding to emergencies of all kinds.

In truth, we don’t need a balanced federal budget — we need a disciplined federal budget. Congress would be better off adopting Sen. Mike Bennett’s (D-CO) sensible suggestion that federal deficits be held first to four percent, then to three percent of GDP each year. At that level, they’d be gradually whittled down by economic growth, and the government could borrow without swelling the national debt.

A balanced budget amendment, moreover, is a blunter instrument than we need to deal with overspending and undertaxing in Washington. It doesn’t hone in on the real problem, which is the automatic and unsustainable growth in entitlement spending. A better idea, from the Brookings-Heritage Fiscal Seminar, is to bring Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security on budget, which would require Congress to periodically reconcile income and spending to keep the programs solvent.

Finally, a balanced budget amendment is just too damn difficult to enact. Congress has to approve Constitutional amendments by a two-thirds vote, well nigh inconceivable given how hard it is to muster the 60 votes needed to break a filibuster. Then three-fourths of the states would have to approve an amendment.

Demanding a balanced budget amendment thus is more of a symbolic gesture than a real solution to America’s fiscal crisis. Recall that it was a key plank in the GOP’s 1994 Contract with America, but Republicans quickly lost interest once they won control of Congress. Nonetheless, Newt Gingrich has endorsed the amendment in a bid to recapture the old magic for this year’s midterm elections.

Unlike the Republicans, of course, the Blue Dogs have real street cred when it comes to fiscal rectitude. They fought successfully to resurrect “pay go” rules that require Congress to offset new spending with tax hikes or budget cuts. And key Blue Dog leaders like Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN) have led the charge for a bipartisan commission to get entitlement spending under control.

It’s vital, though, that progressive deficit hawks not let the holy grail of a constitutional amendment deflect them from the gritty, day-to-day battles in Congress to get America’s exploding deficits and debts under control.

A Wake Up Call on National Security

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Democracy Corps and Third Way continue to hit on a theme I’ve been pushing for the last few weeks. Despite the president’s solid poll numbers on security, the organizations’ research shows that the historic national security gap is reappearing. Just after the president’s inauguration, the gap had closed to well within the margin of error. In early 2009, Democrats trailed Republicans by just three points on the question of which party was better equipped to “keeping America safe.” But in a new survey, Republicans now trump Democrats by 17 points. Ouch.

The poll digs much deeper than most polls, which traditionally lump in questions of national security with a slew of other issues. But this one is a full psychoanalysis of the country’s mood on our safety, and the results are more of a mixed bag than a downright nightmare for progressives. The president maintains stronger national security numbers than his overall approval rating (47 percent), with 58 percent approving of his handling of Afghanistan, 57 percent positive on “leading the military,” and 55 percent liking that he’s “improved America’s standing in the world,” among other similarly positive numbers.

Furthermore — and this is great — the poll continues to confirm that the public rejects accusations by Dick Cheney that Obama’s policies have made the country less secure. Oh yeah, and five percent believe Obama is doing a better job than George Bush against terrorists.

To sum up, the public approves of the commander-in-chief, but they’ve again become skeptical of generic Democrats. Or as the authors put it:

While ratings for the president may be softening, his party is facing an even more troubling trend. When the questions move beyond the president to Democrats generally, we see that the public once again has real and rising doubts about the Democrats’ handling of national security issues, as compared to their faith in Republicans. This security gap, which has roots stretching back to Vietnam, was as wide as 29 points earlier in the decade. The deficit began to close in 2006, with the Bush administration’s catastrophic mismanagement of Iraq and other national security challenges.

How do we firm this up? Basically, grab the ol’ bull by the horns, just like I’ve been blabbering on about. Seriously — Dems have a good record, now they just have to relay it through effective story-telling that connects with voters’ emotions. Progressives have been sheepishly responding to conservative attacks with wonky facts. But conservatives don’t care about facts — they painted Max Cleland, a Vietnam vet and triple amputee, as unpatriotic. Now that progressives have the facts behind them, they need to get aggressive about telling voters that we’re strong and smart on national security.

Why the Jobs Crisis Is Actually an Innovation Crisis

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Forget for the moment the $15 billion jobs bill moving through Congress — even its supporters admit that it’s far too paltry to make even a tiny dent in the unemployment rolls. And ignore the economic commentators who tell you that the labor market is recovering just because job loss has slowed.

No, the U.S. is having a genuine long-term jobs crisis, one which stems from a deeper problem: The Great Innovation Machine of the American economy seems to have broken down. With a few notable exceptions (think Apple and Google), this has been a period when companies have found it remarkably hard to turn promising breakthrough innovations into commercial breakthrough products. The list of “big-idea” innovations that seem tantalizingly close to market, but not quite there, just keeps getting longer and longer. Some examples: After 20 years of research, no human gene therapy has yet been approved for sale by the Food and Drug Administration; electricity generated from solar cells is still far from price-competitive with electricity from coal or natural gas; and biotech has not yet fulfilled its promise of speeding the discovery of new drugs.

The jobs crisis, in my view, is the direct result of the innovation shortfall. Since the 1990s, both Democrats and Republicans have expected the “jobs of the future” to come from the innovative, technologically advanced industries. Computers, semiconductors, internet companies, pharma, biotech, communications: all seemed to have enormous potential to create new jobs. What’s more, innovation seemed to be the only way that the U.S. could compete against low-cost producers abroad.

Many regions designed their economic development strategies around attracting biotech and infotech jobs to replace the “old-line” factory positions that had fled overseas (do a Google search for ‘biotech initiative’ and see how many hits you get). The desire to bring in pharma jobs is the reason why New London tore down homes and businesses to make room for a Pfizer research facility in 2001.

But the sad truth is that the innovative sector of the economy hasn’t generated many jobs recently. Let’s be very specific here. From the bottom of the job market in 2003 to the so-called peak in 2007, technologically advanced industries such as semiconductors, communications equipment manufacturing, and telecommunications lost thousands of jobs. Across the same period, the industry that the Bureau of Labor Statistics calls “Internet publishing and broadcasting and web search portals” — a catch-all category that includes Google, Yahoo! and all the high-profile Internet firms — added only 6,000 jobs.

Life sciences didn’t do much better. From 2003-2007, employment in pharma was stagnant, and biotech added only 16,000 jobs. Indeed, Pfizer recently pulled out of New London, leaving behind a lot of hard feelings. (For more on the jobs shortfall in the innovative sector, see my blog at www.southmountaineconomics.com.)

Turning Innovation into Jobs

So what has happened here? A big part of the jobs crisis stems from a simple fact: Commercializing innovation has taken a lot longer than people expected. Across multiple areas, from biotech to alternative energy to advanced materials to the private uses of space, both large and small companies have faced fundamental scientific and engineering problems. The best example is the sequencing of the human genome, which was announced to great fanfare in 2003. But turning that initial breakthrough into commercial products has turned out to be far more complicated and difficult than many thought. (For more on the innovation shortfall, see my June 2009 cover story, “The Failed Promise of Innovation in the U.S.,” for BusinessWeek.)

In today’s global economy, innovation makes up the main comparative advantage for the U.S. If we are not generating jobs in the innovative industries, it’s no surprise that we have a jobs crisis.

Addressing the innovation shortfall has to be a cooperative project between business and government. How? Here are three low-cost ways to foster a better climate for innovation and jobs:

  • Elevate innovation to the top of the policy agenda. President Obama needs to publicly give higher priority to innovation. In the latest Economic Report of the President, innovation is relegated to the very end of the report, and does not even get a whole chapter to itself (the chapter is called “Fostering Productivity Growth through Innovation and Trade”).Why is a public emphasis on innovation important? Government is much better at stopping breakthrough products and services than creating them. New ideas, by definition, are threatening to the status quo. That’s why the president has to give a clear signal to the entire government bureaucracy that innovation is important.On the one hand, this shift in public priorities can be done right now, without any additional funding, so Obama wouldn’t have to fight Congress. On the other hand, Obama might have a big struggle to get support from his own economic advisors, some of whom don’t seem to place such high value on innovation.
  • Broaden out government funding for R&D beyond healthcare. To maximize the chances for innovation-related job growth, we want a broad and diverse program of federal support. However, in recent years, federal funding for R&D has increasingly focused on healthcare. Obama’s proposed FY 2011 budget continues that trend, with federal spending on health R&D projected to exceed spending on nonhealth civilian R&D by more than 30 percent. The result: Other areas of R&D are being starved for funds.
  • Improve measurement of the innovative sectors of the economy. Innovation is not as tangible as, say, a new building or a new truck. We are great at counting construction and vehicle production, but horrible at keeping track of innovative activities.And as management consultants say, you get what you measure. For example, we know virtually nothing on business spending on R&D in the U.S. during the downturn — a key piece of information for understanding where the economy is going. The good news is that the Bureau of Economic Analysis and the National Science Foundation have made some progress in this direction. However, a relatively small amount of money could accelerate the upgrading of the statistics, with a big impact on policy.

These proposals will not guarantee that the U.S. will suddenly experience a surge of innovation-related job growth. There’s nothing that anyone can do to ensure that commercially viable innovation will arrive on a particular schedule. But to raise the odds of good jobs in the future, we need to make innovation a priority today.

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