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No Surprises in This Week’s Primaries

Posted on May 7, 2010 by The Progressive Policy Institute

This week three actual state primaries were held, and the results were mainly upsetting to those who strongly anticipated a bunch of upsets and the wholesale defeat of incumbents. You can read my earlier report for the results, but the bottom line is that the needle between the two parties did not move much in the three states holding Senate primaries.

Republicans will still be favored to take Evan Bayh’s seat in Indiana, though in nominating Dan Coats they are setting up the ripe target of a man with a very public record during many years in Congress and then a decade of controversial lobbying activities and out-of-state residence. Incumbent Republican Richard Burr will still be favored for re-election in North Carolina, but the two Democrats facing a runoff to become the nominee against him are probably happy for the exposure. And the Lee Fisher/Rob Portman fight in Ohio is probably one that will go right down to the wire.

There’s been a fair amount of anxiety in Democratic circles about the partisan turnout disparaties in Tuesday’s primaries. Reid Wilson of Hotline On Call had the numbers:

Just 663K OH voters cast ballots in the competitive primary between LG Lee Fisher (D) and Sec/State Jennifer Brunner (D). That number is lower than the 872K voters who turned out in ’06, when neither Gov. Ted Strickland (D) nor Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) faced serious primary opponents.

Only 425K voters turned out to pick a nominee against Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC). The 14.4% turnout was smaller than the 444K voters — or 18% of all registered Dem voters — who turned out in ’04, when Gov. Mike Easley (D) faced only a gadfly candidate in his bid to be renominated for a second term.

And in IN, just 204K Hoosiers voted for Dem House candidates, far fewer than the 357K who turned out in ’02 and the 304K who turned out in ’06.

By contrast, GOP turnout was up almost across the board. 373K people voted in Burr’s uncompetitive primary, nearly 9% higher than the 343K who voted in the equally non-competitive primary in ’04. Turnout in House races in IN rose 14.6% from ’06, fueled by the competitive Senate primary, which attracted 550K voters. And 728K voters cast ballots for a GOP Sec/State nominee in Ohio, the highest-ranking statewide election with a primary; in ’06, just 444K voters cast ballots in that race.

This is yet another sign that Democrats need to be concerned about voter mobilization in November. On the other hand, in Indiana at least, I’m not sure a lot of those conservatives who were excited about the highly competitive GOP Senate primary were very excited about the actual outcome, since 61 percent of them voted against Dan Coats. Runoff requirements are in many ways a pain in the butt for both voters and for candidates, but they do tend to produce reasonably popular nominees.

The next contest on the calendar is Utah’s State Republican Convention, which controls access to the actual party primaries. Three-term incumbent Republican senator Bob Bennett is in very deep trouble, and could be excluded from the primary altogether by running third at the convention, or, in an alternative scenario, a convention determined to snuff his career could give front-running challenger Mike Lee the nomination without a primary. Jonathan Martin and Manu Raju have a Politico piece today about the shock waves that Bennett’s impending demise is sending through the ranks of Republican senators. If you don’t count Charlie Crist being chased right out of the GOP, or the defeat of Kay Bailey Hutchison in Texas, this is the first major scalp to be claimed by right-wing insurgents this year, with others on the near horizon. Expect a lot of howling at the moon tomorrow.

Poll Watch

On the public opinion front, two new polls in Washington State (one by Rasmussen, the other by the local Elway firm) showed Sen. Patty Murray in reasonably good shape, even against conservative heart-throb Dino Rossi, who hasn’t decided whether to run. A new R2K poll in Kentucky (whose primaries are on May 18) shows Rand Paul and Dan Mongiardo still leading their respective party primaries, though Mongiardo’s lead over Jack Conway remains in the single digits. And in another May 18 primary state, Pennsylvania, the growing sense that Joe Sestak is finally catching up with Arlen Specter was reinforced by a new Muhlenberg poll showing them dead even.

The Brits Un-Decide

Posted on May 7, 2010September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

It wasn’t a big shock, but still, citizens of the United Kingdom woke up today to a very unsettled political situation, having rebuffed Labour and the Liberal Democrats in yesterday’s election, but without giving the Tories the majority necessary to immediately govern.

With votes still out from two seats, the Conservatives have 305 seats, Labour has 258, the Lib Dems 57, and other parties 28. The popular vote split 36 percent Tory, 29 percent Labour, and 23 percent Lib Dem. The major surprise was that the “Cleggmania” that seemed to grip the electorate during the campaign did not translate into a much better showing for the Lib Dems, who actually lost seats. But they certainly retained some influence as the party holding the balance of power, and today Nick Clegg is entertaining semi-public overtures from both the big parties to form a coalition government, while hoping to secure some sort of agreement to move the electoral system away from the first-past-the-post method that has so long frustrated the Lib Dems (most notably yesterday).

The most likely outcome is a minority Tory government under David Cameron with a short-term mandate to deal with the country’s immediate economic and financial problems and then hold another election, possibly even this year. Given the brevity of British campaigns, that’s not quite the nightmare scenario it sounds like to American ears.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Explaining Inequality Trends: Pretty Simple?

Posted on May 7, 2010September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

James Kwak, coauthor of the new financial crisis book 13 Bankers, recently sought to explain his thesis “in 4 pictures.” And impressive pictures they are. But I’ve been particularly struck by one of them — this chart, from a paper by economists Thomas Philippon and Ariell Reshef, showing the close correspondence between deregulation trends on the one hand and the ratio of financial sector wages to private sector wages on the other. My reaction to the chart was essentially, Huh. Those trend lines look like the basic income inequality trend line.

But to my knowledge, no one has really made this point since the chart has circulated widely. Certainly no one has tried to illustrate it.

Maybe people just lack my whiz-bang PowerPoint and Excel skills, or maybe I’ve actually had an Original Thought. But take a look at the chart I created, which overlays a trend line showing the share of income received by the top one percent (the black line) on top of the Philippon-Reshef chart. The trend line comes from the widely cited work of economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez, who used IRS data to look at the incomes of the very rich:

I’ve argued before that I think the Piketty-Saez top-share trend line overstates the recent rise in income inequality, but I don’t see much reason to doubt the basic U-shape of the trend since the Great Depression. For all of the consensus around the basic inequality trend, there’s surprisingly little agreement or understanding as to why it looks the way it does (a major theme of Paul Krugman’s Conscience of a Liberal). Could it really be as simple as the extent of financial regulation? Every analyst bone in my body says this is too easy, but…but….

Of course, saying it’s all financial regulation trends isn’t necessarily inconsistent with Krugman-esque arguments that it’s all about changes in cultural acceptance of inequality. Maybe financial regulation flows from public attitudes about inequality.

Anyway, interesting — no?

Party of One

Posted on May 6, 2010September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

When you read as much stuff on politics as I do, there’s an odd sort of exultation when you spot something so very poorly reasoned that you can spend many pleasurable hours tearing it apart. It helps when the author of such a “pinata” (i.e., it can be hit from just about any direction) is arrogantly or angrily wrong, stamping his or her feet at the very necessity of having to explain obvious truths that are anything but obvious or true. That’s why, on doctor’s orders, I only allow myself to read Peggy Noonan’s columns, so predictably full of rich manure, now and then.

Today the famous pollster and sometimes-Democratic, sometimes-strategist, Mark Penn, has published an op-ed in the Washington Post that is Noonan-esque in its strongly held folly. You can read the whole thing, but basically, Penn is saying that the vast uptick in independent voter sentiment in this country is creating a good environment for a centrist third party that’s socially liberal and economically conservative, and Penn points to the rise of the UK’s Liberal Democrats as an example of what could happen here.

As Jon Chait notes in his own demolition of Penn’s column, the first contention is demonstrably wrong, though it appears it will take wooden stakes to kill it:

In fact, pollsters and public opinion experts — a group that apparently excludes Penn — understand that independent self-identification largely reflects a desire not to be seen as a closed-minded, automatic vote. It does not, however, reflect actual voting independence. Most self-identified independents are at least as partisan in their voting behavior as self-identified Democrats or Republicans. It’s largely a class phenomenon, with wealthier and more educated voters being more likely to call themselves independent, but not more likely to go astray in the voting both. The rise of independent self-identification has little to do with voters moving toward the center or the parties moving toward the extremes. Plenty of those self-identified Democrats in the 1950s voted for Ike.

In other words, actual as opposed to professed independent political behavior — i.e., ticket-splitting — has regularly declined now for decades, as has the percentage of the electorate made up of “true” independents. So there is no ripe uncaptured constituency out there, and to the extent that it even exists, it’s ideologically polyglot, not a “centrist” coalition ready for the taking. Many self-professed “independents,” as we’ve seen once again in the Tea Party Movement and in elements of the Left disgruntled with Obama and before him with Bill Clinton, are more ideological than self-professed partisans. Maybe they’ll vote, and maybe they won’t, but they are not combinable in some sort of third-party impulse.

More importantly, as Penn does acknowledge, there are powerful institutional barriers to the rise of third parties. But in noting the failure of the last two major efforts (John Anderson’s in 1980, and Ross Perot’s in 1992 and 1996), Penn simply says they failed because neither leader was “dynamic” enough. Perhaps, as some observers will undoubtedly conclude, Penn’s column is really a public valentine to some very rich person (e.g., Michael Bloomberg) who might look in the mirror and see the leader “dynamic” enough to succeed where so many others, including reasonably dynamic people like Teddy Roosevelt, have failed. But in any event, Penn’s case for the viability of a third party totally depends on his analysis of the “centrist” and “independent” electorate, which is bogus to begin with.

Perhaps sensing the weakness of his case, Penn then hauls in the Liberal Democrats in an effort to divine some sort of transatlantic movement. You wouldn’t know if from his account, but far from being a “new” phenomenon, the LibDems represent a centuries-old political tradition (technically, the party represents a merger of the ancient Liberals with the Social Democrats, a splinter party that left Labour for many of the same reasons that Tony Blair and his associates found for reforming it a few years later). And it’s not exactly easy to match the Lib Dems to Penn’s template of “socially liberal and fiscally conservative” voters. Aside from “change,” they are for tax increases to reduce public debt, legalized same-sex marriages, major reductions in defense spending, liberalized immigration laws and more aggressive participation in Europe. Their opposition to British entry in the Iraq War is probably the recent position with which they were most identified. Does this agenda sound “nonpartisan centrist” in any context that is transferable to America, or to Penn’s own agenda? Or more like the left wing of the Democratic Party, which Penn despises?

Moreover, “Cleggmania” aside, it’s very unlikely that the LibDems will make gains in their parliamentary representation that are in any way comparable to the share of the popular vote they receive today. And that’s in a country where the barriers to third parties are considerably lower than in the U.S.

I am not, as it happens, among the vast ranks of Penn-haters in the progressive blogosphere. I gave his last book one of its more favorable reviews. But the reality is that Mark Penn is largely frozen out of today’s Democratic Party elites thanks to years of intra-party combat and particularly his abrasive role in Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. Yes, he’s very wealthy and still has the juice, it appears, to command the op-ed pages of the Washington Post when he feels like it. The third party he describes as just over the horizon, however, is pretty much a party of one.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

We Can’t Keep Borrowing to Cut Taxes

Posted on May 6, 2010September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

I am going to ever so slightly step out of my comfort zone to relay what I think is a brilliant policy frame for progressives in 2010 and beyond.

Fiscal hawks, like your hosts here at the PPI, have been clear about the stark choices future generations of Americans face. It’s simply not possible to have one of the lowest marginal tax rates in the world along with massive government spending on entitlements programs and defense. If the country is to emerge from the current economic crisis with its financial house in order, something has to give.

Will Marshall took a scalpel to the problem in a post a few weeks ago:

Here’s the blunt truth: the federal government faces a huge revenue hole – too big to be closed by spending cuts alone. Spending last year reached an astonishing 26 percent of national output, while revenues fell to 15 percent. Full economic recovery is expected to cut that yawning tax gap of 11 percent roughly in half.

Getting federal deficits down to a sustainable level – say three percent a year – will require both spending cuts and tax hikes. The president’s deficit-reduction commission will have to look hard at entitlement spending, but we will also need a sweeping overhaul of our tax system to solve our fiscal crisis.

Extending all the Bush tax cuts, of course, will only dig us in deeper. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that extending them through 2017 would cost $1.9 trillion. That doesn’t include the costs of servicing a bigger national debt, or the cost of adjusting the alternative minimum tax so it doesn’t offset the cuts.

So where does the national security guy get off talking about fiscal responsibility? Allow me to explain. There I was last Saturday night, sitting in a bar in Stockholm talking to two Swedes. One was my long-time buddy Eric Sundstrom, political junkie, ex-PPI fellow and current editor of the Social Democrats’ party newspaper. The other was Eric’s pal Torbjorn, who serves as a policy adviser to the Social Dems’ financial team and whose last name was erased from my memory by the time Scotch #3 rolled around.

I was complaining about America’s fiscal imbalance and national allergy to taxes, when Eric piped up and said, “It’s not just an American problem. Torbjorn concocted a brilliant message on it for Sweden, too.”

Smiling, Torbjorn looked up an uttered what could be the defining policy frame on taxes and spending for progressives this year — or any year:

“We can’t keep borrowing money to cut taxes.”

In that form, it’s brilliant in the American context. It puts Tea Partiers on notice that their tunnel vision for lower taxes is costing America dearly. But I’d make one modification to show exactly what’s at stake and where the money comes from:

“We can’t keep borrowing from China to cut taxes.”

Bill Clinton would probably agree. At the Peterson Institute last week, the former president said, “I think this is a national sovereignty issue,” noting that foreign creditors hold 48 percent of America’s debt. China alone holds more than $877 billion of U.S. debt.

So there you go, progressives — a talking point straight from Stockholm on why the right-wing obsession with cutting taxes is so irresponsible.

Florida Seeks More Speed on Its Tampa-Orlando Rail Line

Posted on May 6, 2010September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

While the Obama administration has been busy deflating expectations for rail passenger service above 110 miles per hour, Florida is improving the design of its corridor between Tampa and Orlando so trains can run above 180 mph.*

This nugget of good news came within the confines of testimony given Monday by Florida Transportation Secretary Stephanie Kopelousos at a hearing in Miami before a congressional panel reviewing the $8 billion in rail grants awarded in January.

Florida’s decision to speed up its trains amounts to a subtle rebuke of the Obama administration’s rail strategy. Joseph Szabo, chief of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), has argued before the same congressional panel that trains running at 150-200 mph, as is common in Europe and Asia, aren’t necessary on most intercity corridors.

Outside of Florida and California, the Obama administration has set 110 mph as the top speed for passenger trains that would use existing upgraded track owned by freight railroads. Rep. John Mica (R-FL), the ranking minority member of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, has denounced the administration’s plans as fake high-speed rail.

While Florida originally projected maximum speeds of 168 mph for the Tampa-Orlando route, “our engineering team is designing this system to international standards and is evaluating design options to increase speed and decrease travel time,” Kopelousos said.

The redesign is expected to whisk passengers from downtown Tampa to Orlando International Airport (85 miles) in “under 45 minutes,” Kopelousos said, compared to 56-59 minutes under the previous design.

This places the Florida system in line with the speed performance of most European trains, such as France’s famous TGV network. The accelerated trip represents a significant time savings over highway travel, which typically takes 80-90 minutes between Tampa and Orlando.

Kopelousos pledged to seek more federal funds to complete the Tampa-Orlando line. Florida sought $2.65 billion, but the FRA granted only $1.25 billion from the pot of high-speed rail funds awarded in January.

The shortfall has brought jitters to state transportation planners. But given Florida’s position as a battleground state in national elections, it seems unlikely that the Obama administration would forsake the project. A more plausible scenario is that additional federal money will come in spurts as the state completes phases of the corridor.

Florida also wants to build a high-speed line between Orlando and Miami. The FRA rejected Florida’s application for $30 million to start planning this leg of the railway, but Kopelousos said the state is funding its own planning work and will reapply for federal aid.

The Florida legislature has established the Florida Rail Enterprise, modeled on the Florida Turnpike Authority, to oversee the building of the railway, which is initially projected to carry two million passengers a year and earn a small profit that will grow once the Orlando-Miami segment is completed.

The Tampa-Orlando line will have a station stop at Disney World. About half of the passengers are expected to be tourists headed to Disney or to other tourism and recreational destinations in the region.

Building the railway along the median strip of I-4, rather than using private land or mixing the route with existing freight train lines, has reduced overall costs. When the state widened I-4 some years ago, it spent an extra $600 million reconfiguring the roadway and building overpasses with enough clearance for trains.

If all goes on schedule, the first trains will be running in 2015, making Tampa and Orlando the first metropolitan areas in the country connected by a railway dedicated to high-speed passenger service.

Graphic: Florida Department of Transportation

*Correction: This item originally stated that Florida is improving the Tampa-Orlando corridor design so trains can run up to 200 mph.

Good Food, Good Jobs: Turning Food Deserts into Jobs Oases

Posted on May 5, 2010 by The Progressive Policy Institute

The Progressive Policy Institute today hosted an event at Foggy Bottom FreshFarm Market featuring Joel Berg, author of the PPI Policy Report “Good Food, Good Jobs,” and Tom Colicchio, “Top Chef” judge and 2010 James Beard Outstanding Chef. For event details, click here.

Tens of millions of Americans need more nutritious, more affordable food. Tens of millions need better jobs. Just as the Obama administration and Congress have supported a “green jobs” initiative to simultaneously fight unemployment and protect the environment, they should launch a “Good Food, Good Jobs” initiative. Given that large numbers of food jobs could be created rapidly and with relatively limited capital investments, their creation should become a consideration in any jobs bill that Congress and the president enact.

Our hunger, malnutrition, obesity, and poverty problems are closely linked. Low-income areas across America that lack access to nutritious foods at affordable prices — the so-called “food deserts” — tend to be the same communities and neighborhoods that, even in better economic times, are also “job deserts” that lack sufficient living-wage employment. A concurrent problem has been the growing concentration of our food supply in a handful of food companies that are now “too big to fail.” A Good Food, Good Jobs program can address these intertwined economic and social problems.

In partnership with state, local, and tribal governments, nonprofit organizations, and the private sector, the federal initiative would bolster employment, foster economic growth, fight hunger, cut obesity, improve nutrition, and reduce spending on diet-related health problems. By doing so, not only could government help solve a number of very tangible problems, but it could fuse the growing public interest in food issues with the ongoing efforts, usually underfunded and underreported, to fight poverty at the grassroots level.

A Good Food, Good Jobs program could provide the first serious national test of the effectiveness of such efforts in boosting the economy and improving public health. The new initiative should:

Provide more and better-targeted seed money to food jobs projects. The federal government should expand and more carefully target its existing grants and loans to start new and expand existing community food projects: city and rooftop gardens; urban farms; food co-ops; farm stands; community-supported agriculture (CSA) projects; farmers’ markets; community kitchens; and projects that hire unemployed youth to grow, market, sell, and deliver nutritious foods while teaching them entrepreneurial skills.
Bolster food processing. Since there is far more profit in processing food than in simply growing it (and since farming is only a seasonal occupation), the initiative should focus on supporting food businesses that add value year-round, such as neighborhood food processing/freezing/canning plants; businesses that turn raw produce into ready-to-eat salads, salad dressings, sandwiches, and other products; healthy vending-machine companies; and affordable and nutritious restaurants and catering businesses.
Expand community-based technical assistance. Federal, state, and local governments should dramatically expand technical assistance to such efforts and support them by buying their products for school meals and other government nutrition assistance programs, as well as for jails, military facilities, hospitals, and concession stands in public parks, among other venues. Additionally, the AmeriCorps program — significantly increased recently by the bipartisan passage of the Edward Kennedy Serve America Act — should provide large numbers of national-service participants to implement nonprofit food jobs efforts.
Develop a better way of measuring success. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) should develop a “food access index,” a new measure that would take into account both the physical availability and economic affordability of nutritious foods, and use this measure as another tool to judge the success of food projects. All such efforts should be subject to strict performance-based outcome measures, and programs should not be expanded or re-funded unless they can prove their worth.
Invest in urban fish farming. Given that fish is the category of food most likely to be imported, and given growing environmental concerns over both wild and farm-raised fish, the initiative should provide significant investment into the research and development of environmentally sustainable, urban, fish-production facilities.
Implement a focused research agenda. The government should enact a focused research agenda to answer the following questions: Can community food enterprises that pay their workers sufficient wages also make products that are affordable? Can these projects become economically self-sufficient over the long run, particularly if they are ramped up to benefit from economies of scale? Could increased government revenues due to economic growth and decreased spending on health care and social services offset long-term subsidies? How would the cost and benefits of government spending on community food security compare to the cost and benefits of the up to $20 billion that the U.S. government now spends on traditional farm programs, much of which goes to large agribusinesses?

For a community to have good nutrition, three conditions are necessary: food must be affordable; food must be available; and individuals and families must have enough education to know how to eat better. This comprehensive proposal accomplishes those objectives. Moreover, in the best-case scenario, it could create large numbers of living-wage jobs in self-sustaining businesses even as it addresses our food, health, and nutrition problems. But even in a worst-case scenario, the plan would create short-term subsidized jobs that would provide an economic stimulus, and at least give low-income consumers the choice to obtain more nutritious foods — a choice so often denied to them.

Download the full report.

The CW Delivers

Posted on May 5, 2010September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Results from yesterday’s primaries in Indiana, North Carolina and Ohio showed that on occasion the conventional wisdom is right.

Dan Coats did indeed win a Senate nomination in Indiana with an unimpressive (39 percent) percentage because the hard-core conservative vote was divided between Sen. Jim DeMint’s (R-S.C.) favorite, Marlin Stutzman (who finished second), and paleoconservative John Hostettler.

Lee Fisher did indeed parlay superior money, name recognition and endorsements into a fairly comfortable (56/44) win over Jennifer Brunner in Ohio’s Democratic Senate primary.

And in the North Carolina Democratic Senate primary, Elaine Marshall and Cal Cunningham are indeed headed for a runoff on June 22, with Marshall leading the first round a few percentage points short of the 40 percent threshold for outright victory. As expected, Ken Lewis ran third, though with a relatively strong 17 percent.

A PPP survey over the weekend showed Marshall leading a hypothetical runoff contest 43/32 with a quarter of the vote undecided. I guess we will see just how much money Cunningham’s friends in the DSCC are willing and able to raise to help him overcome that lead.

In House races, the closest thing to a real upset was in Indiana, where endangered incumbent Republican congressmen Mark Souder and Dan Burton narrowly survived. This disappointed journalists who had prepared “anti-incumbent mood” pieces in advance.

Rep. Larry Kissell (D-N.C.) won his primary pretty easily in North Carolina, and self-funded conservative Tim D’Annuzio will be in a runoff in his effort to take on Kissell.

Next up on the calendar is Utah’s Republican State Convention on Saturday, which will determine the fate of endangered Sen. Bob Bennett, who may have fatally displeased conservatives by co-sponsoring bipartisan health reform legislation. One of Bennett’s chief tormenters, Red State’s Erick Erickson, is already moving on to an effort to demonize the guy who appears to be running second ahead of Bennett in delegates, so it must not look good for the incumbent.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Here We Go(P) Again…Why do Republicans Instantly Politicize Terrorism?

Posted on May 5, 2010September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Fifty-three hours — that is how long it took our law enforcement agencies to apprehend Faisal Shahzad, the main suspect in Saturday’s attempted Times Square bombing. The only thing faster has been Republican efforts to once again politicize a failed attack. Just like they did after the apprehension of the failed Christmas Day bomber, Republican leaders wasted no time yesterday trying to spin up mass hysteria by reminding us that we need to be living in a heightened state of perpetual fear, that Constitutional rights are meaningless, and that, oh yes, this is all Democrats’ fault.

Take Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA). At a speech he gave yesterday at the Heritage Foundation, the House minority whip made it abundantly clear that he believes the entire country should be living in a permanent state of nationwide panic:

[Yet] with each close encounter, my fear is that the country goes on heightened alert only as long as the media tend to cover it. All too often that means hours and days rather than permanently.

Does he not realize there are hundreds of thousands of American service members at war right now and have been for going on nine years? Cantor went on to say:

Many of the same critics who groused about how we failed to connect the dots prior to 9-11 are today repeating the same pattern. As a result, America is at risk of slipping into the type of false sense of security which prevailed before that September morning.

Rudy Giuliani could not have said it better — noun, verb, 9-11.

Equally disappointing was the predictable line of attack dragged out by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Rep. Peter King (R-NY). The two pounced on the administration and the Department of Justice for reading Shahzad his Miranda rights after he was taken into custody — even though the suspect was interrogated (and apparently sang like a bird) before those rights were read. McCain said it would be a “serious mistake” to read the suspect his Miranda rights, while King was quoted as saying, “I know he’s an American citizen, but still.”

Republicans are blatantly suggesting that we ignore what our Constitution requires and our Supreme Court has mandated. They proudly embrace the argument that this suspected criminal — who is, whether you like it or not, an American citizen accused of committing crimes on American soil — has no protection under American laws. This is a very slippery slope.

Even Glenn Beck (yes, Glenn Beck!) disagrees with this, stating yesterday that this is no time to “shred the Constitution.”

This “strategy” of fear-mongering coupled with the casual application of due process and the rule of law is pathetic, predictable and dangerous. Republicans continue to insist that every act or attempted act of terrorism on American soil must be met with a militarized response straight from an episode of “24.” They ignore, at our peril, the long and successful track record our criminal justice system has in convicting these terrorists.

I fundamentally believe that there is only one way the terrorists “win,” and that is when we ourselves destroy the very ideals that are the foundation upon which our nation stands. Republicans seem to have no issue tearing down those pillars by themselves.

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

Obama Rail Chief Feels No Need for Speed

Posted on May 4, 2010September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

A year ago, when laying out his vision of fast trains zipping between major cities like they do in Europe and Asia, President Obama invoked the words of Chicago architect Daniel Burnham: “Make no little plans.”

Last month, Obama’s top rail administrator, Joseph Szabo, was in Chicago touting little plans — and slow trains — at a congressional field hearing about how the administration spent $8 billion in high-speed rail grants.

Trains might travel at or near 200 miles per hour overseas, but such velocity isn’t really necessary in the U.S., Szabo, chief of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), said. “There are some that believe that only investments yielding 200-mph service will yield benefits. The facts show otherwise,” he asserted in testimony before a House Transportation and Infrastructure panel.

Instead, he said the FRA “views high-speed and intercity passenger rail service in the context of the transportation markets served and the needs of the passengers rather than as a race to see how fast a piece of equipment can move.”

Such criteria helps explain why the FRA allocated more than half of high-speed rail grants to projects that don’t qualify as high speed by international standards. They include extending conventional Amtrak service from Portland, Maine, north to Brunswick.

Szabo praised Amtrak’s current trains between Boston and Portland as an example of modern service that attracts passengers — a rather breathtaking rewriting of the line’s actual history. Seventy years ago when the Boston & Maine Railway operated the line, trains made the Boston-Portland trip in one hour, 50 minutes. Today, Amtrak takes two hours, 25 minutes — or a third longer — to cover the same ground.

It’s this kind of regress, rather than progress, that has turned America’s once-superb railway system into a marginal operation outside of the Boston-Washington Northeast Corridor.

Szabo acted as the cheerleader for other rail grants handed out by his agency, such as $1.1 billion to add sidings and signals between Chicago and St. Louis to increase train speeds to a maximum of 110 mph.

When rolling out his rail plans a year ago, President Obama said that 110 mph was only a first step in attaining the type of fast train networks found in places like France, Spain and China. But a year later, the FRA bureaucracy seems ready to make the “first step” a long-term goal, which will only guarantee that America stays on the slow track behind the rest of the world.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/nfu/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Progress Report: Revisiting Rules of the Road for a New Economy

Posted on May 4, 2010September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

I know you’re not supposed to tout your own work on blogs, but for this, my inaugural post for Progressive Fix, I can’t resist.

When PPI established its New Economy Task Force 11 years ago, its first product was a pamphlet entitled “Rules of the Road: Governing Principles for the New Economy.” In Internet time, 11 years is a lifetime. But that short but powerful statement still holds up — and, I would argue, is just as relevant today as it was in 1999. This seems as good a time as any to revisit what we said and take stock of how far — or not — we’ve come.

The pamphlet started off with this statement:

The U.S. economy has undergone a profound structural transformation in the last decade and a half. The information technology revolution has expanded well beyond the cutting-edge high-tech sector. It has shaken the very foundations of the old industrial and occupational order, redefined the rules of entrepreneurship and competition, and created an increasingly global marketplace for a myriad of new goods and services.

I would venture to say that it’s even truer today than when we first wrote it. The introduction went on to state:

Yet while economic reality is fundamentally changing, much of our public policy framework remains rooted in the past. This mismatch between public policy and economic reality is not sustainable. … On one side of the political spectrum, policymakers advocate across-the-board tax cuts, a dramatically reduced role for government, and elimination of social regulations. … On the other side of the political spectrum, policymakers advocate increased spending on top-down social programs geared toward income redistribution, coupled with a focus on command-and-control regulation through bureaucratic institutions, ignoring just how entrepreneurial, fast moving, and flexible our economy has become. Furthermore, resistance from both ends of the political spectrum to open trade, global integration, and technological and organizational change threatens to slow the economic changes that hold great potential to yield higher standards of living for American workers

After 11 years, while some progress has been made, all too often policy-makers still view economic and technology challenges through either of these lenses. And those resistant to change, whether groups advocating for strict regulations on “network neutrality” and “Internet privacy,” or restrictions on globalization and trade, continue to be active, if not more so.

How Far Have We Traveled?

The guide offered 10 key rules to policy-makers to encourage an innovation-driven economy. How have we done on those prescriptions? Let’s go down the list:

Rule #1: Spur Innovation to Raise Living Standards

….Because innovation and change are disruptive, they tend to spark strong political demands to insulate affected segments of the economy and slow down economic change. Such demands, while understandable, inherently deny opportunities to less politically powerful interests in the guise of “protecting” those with clout. As a result, to effectively promote growth in the New Economy, government must facilitate, rather than resist, the processes of economic change and modernization as these changes create new opportunities and increased incomes for all Americans.

Unfortunately, the urge to protect the status quo is powerful, as Washington still shows little appetite for upsetting it by enabling or promoting innovation.

Rule #2: Expand the Winners’ Circle

Ensuring that the benefits of innovation and change are spread broadly will require that all Americans, including those not yet engaged in or benefitting from the New Economy, have access to the tools and resources they need to get ahead and stay ahead.

We’ve made some progress here, not the least of which was expanding health care coverage to more Americans (though the effects of reform won’t be felt for years). But more needs to be done, particularly in areas like unemployment insurance reform and better access to lifelong learning.

Rule #3: Invest in Knowledge and Skills

To spur innovation and equip citizens to win in the New Economy, government should invest more in the knowledge infrastructure of the 21st century: world class education, training and life-long learning, science, technology, technology standards, and other intangible public goods. These are the essential drivers of economic progress today.

Not many in Washington would disagree. But it’s a different matter altogether to muster the political will to increase investments in these areas, particularly when it means cutting old economy spending, such as agricultural subsidies.

Rule #4: Grow the Net

The Internet is a critical component of the emerging digital economy. …The information technology revolution is transforming virtually all industries and is central to increased economic efficiency and productivity, higher standards of living, and greater personal empowerment.

Governments must avoid policies and regulations that would inhibit the growth of the Internet or slow progress by protecting business interests threatened by the digitization of the economy. Policymakers should craft a legal and regulatory framework that supports the widespread growth of the Internet and high-speed “broadband” telecommunications, in such areas as taxation, encryption, privacy, digital signatures, telecommunications regulation, and industry regulation (in banking, insurance, and securities, for example).

In some ways Washington has embraced this message. The inclusion of billions of dollars for support for the smart grid, health IT and broadband in the stimulus package was a key step in the right direction. On the other hand, the growing interest in regulating the Internet — such as overly restrictive net neutrality and privacy regulations — suggests that we have gone in the wrong direction.

Rule #5: Let Markets Set Prices

In the old economy, government often regulated prices when national markets were dominated by oligopolies or monopolies. In those cases, the economic costs of government intervention were manageable, and sometimes necessary. But in the new, more competitive global economy, distorted prices are much more likely lead to economically inefficient decisions by consumers and producers and to unfair, politically driven resource allocation. Therefore, in the absence of clear market failures, markets, not governments, should set prices of privately provided goods and services.

It’s still hard for many policy-makers to embrace this rule, but it’s as valid today as it was a decade ago.

Rule #6: Open Regulated Markets to Competition

Economists have long acknowledged that competition keeps prices down. The New Economy creates another critical reason for competition: competition drives innovation, and ultimately provides the greatest benefits to consumers and citizens. Of course, government must continue to provide common-sense health, safety, and environmental regulations. However, government should move away from regulating economic competition among firms and instead promote competition … Through minimalist, yet consistent rules, public policy should also ensure that consumers have the information they need to make educated choices and provide a backstop to protect consumers and citizens from abuse in markets.

Like rule # 5, it’s hard for some policy-makers to resist intervention to regulate competition. We see it most clearly in telecommunications, where some still argue that more government-enforced competition is needed.

Rule #7: Let Competing Technologies Compete

Technological innovation has now become central to addressing a wide range of public policy goals, including better health care, environmental protection, a renewed defense base, improved education and training, and reinvented government. For example, technology provides doctors and patients with state-of- the-art health information systems that improve the quality of care. Similarly, new generations of cleaner technologies can dramatically reduce pollution generated by industrial processes. … We should look for technology-enabled solutions to public problems, but not so that today’s winners are frozen in place at the expense of tomorrow’s innovators.

Amen. While government does need to target technology areas (e.g., clean energy, IT, robotics, etc.), it shouldn’t pick specific technologies within those sectors.

Rule #8: Empower People With Information

In the old economy, information was a scarce resource to which few outside of large corporations and governments had access. In the New Economy, constant innovations in ever-lower-cost information technologies have enabled increasingly ubiquitous access to information, giving individuals greater power to make informed choices. Governments should encourage and take advantage of this trend to address a broad array of public policy questions by ensuring that all Americans have the information they need as consumers and citizens.

Progress on this front: The recently announced National Broadband Plan, for example, takes a number of important steps in this direction.

Rule #9:Demand High-Performance Government

Government should become as fast, responsive, and flexible as the economy and society with which it interacts. The new model of governing should be decentralized, non-bureaucratic, catalytic, results-oriented, and empowering. …

When designing solutions to compelling public concerns, such as reducing industrial pollution or delivering world-class public education, government should hold organizations and individuals accountable for meeting goals, while allowing them flexibility to achieve those goals. In many cases, industry self-regulation can achieve public policy goals in ways that are more flexible and cost effective than traditional command-and-control regulation, while also enabling technological innovation.

Procedurally, governments should use information technologies to fundamentally reengineer government and provide a wide array of services through digital electronic means to increase efficiency, cut costs, and improve service. Digitizing government is the next step in re-engineering government.

Washington may give lip service to #9, but when the rubber hits the road, much is still the same. Perhaps the main area of progress is using IT to transform government, but even here a great deal remains to be done.

Rule #10: Replace Bureaucracies With Networks

In the old economy, bureaucracy was how we addressed many major public policy problems. In the New Economy, we must rely on a host of new public-private partnerships and alliances.

Rather than acting as the sole funder and manager of bureaucratic programs, New Economy governments need to co-invest and collaborate with other organizations — networks of companies, universities, non-profit community organizations, churches, and other civic organizations — to achieve a wide range of public policy goals.

Yet public policy has only begun to explore the potential of bottom-up, decentralized networks assuming the lead role in solving pressing societal problems. Government needs to co-invest in these efforts and foster continuous learning through the sharing of best- practice lessons. Most importantly, the collaborative network model requires government to relax its often overly rigid bureaucratic program controls and instead rely on incentives, information sharing, competition, and accountability to achieve policy goals.

Of the 10 rules, this last one may be the hardest for policy-makers to embrace. The legacy of government bureaucracy and “programs” as the solution to our problems — rather than government-enabled networks — is so deeply held that new approaches are not even considered in many cases.

More than a decade since we first published these rules, it’s clear that many of our prescriptions remain unheeded. Whether or not you embrace the term “New Economy” is not the point. The U.S. economy is fundamentally different than it was two decades ago. To pretend that it hasn’t changed, and to continue ignoring the shifting landscape, will consign us to economic stagnation. That rules of the road issued in 1999 remain relevant today underscores just how little progress was made in the 2000s, and how much work needs to be done to fully bring America into the 21^st century. Policy makers and stakeholders from across the political spectrum need to move beyond the talking points from another generation and embrace policies based on today’s realities.

The views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Progressive Policy Institute.

Charting the GOP Shift on Immigration

Posted on May 4, 2010September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Like observers from all over the partisan and ideological spectrum, I’ve been following the fallout from Arizona’s new immigration law (compounded by conflicting reports that the Obama administration and/or congressional Democratic leaders might be moving up federal immigration legislation in the queue) very closely, given the implications this issue has for both 2010 and (particularly) beyond.

But in his weekly column for National Journal over the weekend, Ron Brownstein has done us all the great service of carefully documenting how far and how fast Republican members of Congress have moved on this subject since the Senate passed a comprehensive immigration reform bill in 2006:

Just four years ago, 62 U.S. senators, including 23 Republicans, voted for a comprehensive immigration reform bill that included a pathway to citizenship for illegal aliens. That bill was co-authored by Arizona Republican John McCain and Massachusetts Democrat Edward Kennedy. President Bush strongly supported it. The Republican supporters also included such conservative senators as Sam Brownback of Kansas and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky….The measure almost certainly could have attracted the necessary 218 votes to pass the House. But it died when House GOP leaders refused to bring it to a vote because they concluded that it lacked majority support among House Republicans.

Since 2006, Republican support for comprehensive action has unraveled. In 2007, Senate negotiators tilted the bill further to the right on issues such as border enforcement and guest workers. And yet, amid a rebellion from grassroots conservatives against anything approaching “amnesty,” just 12 Senate Republicans supported the measure as it fell victim to a filibuster. By 2008, McCain declared in a GOP presidential debate that he would no longer support his own bill: Tougher border enforcement, he insisted, should precede discussion of any new pathway to citizenship.

So the GOP position was moving rightwards at warp speed even with a supporter of comprehensive immigration reform, George W. Bush, still in the White House, being advised by Karl Rove, who viewed such legislation as critical to maintaining a competitive position for Republicans among Hispanic voters. But it’s shifted even more since then, even though levels of immigration have significantly dropped.

For months, Sens. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., have been negotiating an enforcement-legalization plan that largely tracks the 2006 model with some innovative updates, including a “biometric” Social Security card to certify legal status for employment. On balance, their proposal appears more conservative than the 2006 bill.Yet it has been stalled for weeks because Graham had demanded that a second Republican sign on as a co-sponsor before the legislation is released, and none stepped forward. Even Graham angrily backed away this week, after Senate Democratic leaders briefly suggested they would move immigration reform ahead of climate-change legislation he is also negotiating. Reform advocates suspect that Graham is withdrawing from the immigration effort partly to avoid embarrassing his close ally McCain, who faces a stiff primary challenge from conservative former Rep. J.D. Hayworth.

So it appears that Senate Republican support for comprehensive immigration reform (or to be exact, a more conservative version of it) has dropped from 23 to 1 and perhaps soon to nada.

Underneath this shift, notes Brownstein, is the self-replicating demographic isolation of the GOP, which, as Rove forsaw, could make the construction of a Republican majority much harder in the medium-to-long-range future:

[T]he hardening GOP position also shows how the party is being tugged toward nativism as its coalition grows more monochromatic: In a nation that is more than one-third minority, nearly 90 percent of McCain’s votes in the 2008 presidential election came from whites. That exclusionary posture could expose the GOP to long-term political danger. Although Hispanics are now one-sixth of the U.S. population, they constitute one-fifth of all 10-year-olds and one-fourth of 1-year-olds.

This may not matter to Republican candidates in tough primaries this year, who aren’t looking beyond their noses and figure they can’t afford to get outflanked by opponents who are “getting tough” on immigration. But they are in danger of taking an existing demographic problem facing the GOP and making it immeasurably worse, and more immediate.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

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

The Times Square Bomb and Public Education

Posted on May 3, 2010September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

This weekend’s bomb plot in Times Square was the third significant terrorist try in the U.S. since August. After Najibullah Zazi‘s arrest that month and the failed underwear bomber on Christmas Day, it was also the third to fail. (Note that I’m leaving out the Ft. Hood incident, which I don’t classify as terrorism.)

Whether or not the Pakistani Taliban’s claims of responsibility prove true, the plot’s simplistic nature and the bomb’s failure to detonate are the latest anecdotal evidence that the terrorist threat has shifted. Out — for now — is the rarer, mass-causality, 9/11-style plot, while “in” is the more frequent but smaller-impact variety.

While it’s good news that the possibility of thousands of deaths in a single attack has decreased, there’s a sobering reality about this morphing modus operandi: Sooner or later, one of these small-fry, rig-it-up-in-my-garage plots is bound to work. While the recent cases aren’t connected to the same ultimate terrorist authority, their frequency and near-success indicate that similar attempts will keep coming, perhaps as often as three or four per year.
Amateurs may throw these plots together, but they stand a great chance of success even in an era of improving cooperation between police and intelligence services. A U.S. counterterrorism official points out something in today’s WaPo that I’ve believed for a long time: “‘Unsophisticated’ can still cause a lot of pain and misery… These events are so hard to detect in advance. If there were a foolproof way of finding people before they acted, whether it’s the [snipers] in D.C. or someone who puts a bomb in his car . . . it has to be understood how very difficult this business is.”

That’s where the White House has come up a bit short. While President Obama’s initial statements praising the NYPD and vows “to do what’s necessary to protect the American people” are important, they create the public expectation that the government actually can provide complete security, 100 percent of the time.

Instead, the White House should marry tough-minded rhetoric with an explanation of the evolving threat. It’s a delicate dance to be sure – it’s unnatural for any president to acknowledge chinks in America’s armor. Fortunately, complex explanations play to President Obama’s rhetorical skills, and its possible to envision a speech that strikes the right tone of strength, vigilance, caution and honesty about where we stand against an evolving threat.

The stark likelihood of an eventual success dictates the White House shouldn’t miss the opportunity to engage the public on this critical national security issue.

The Facebook Kerfuffle

Posted on May 3, 2010September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

With our limitless capacity for outrage these days, it’s always nice to read a sober and reasonable take on the kerfuffle du jour. Today, it’s ITIF’s Daniel Castro’s memo on the Facebook privacy imbroglio.

For those who missed it, the world’s most popular social networking site has come under fire for its recent changes to its privacy policy. In the crosshairs are two new innovations: instant personalization and social plugins. Instant personalization is a pilot program that allows a few partners — Yelp, Microsoft Docs, and Pandora, to date — to use data from a Facebook user’s personal profile to customize their experience on their site. The latter enables websites to place a Facebook widget on a page, which would allow users to click on a “Like” button or post a comment that would automatically show up on a user’s Facebook feed. In both cases, users have to opt out of the service if they don’t wish to use it.

The changes predictably sparked an uproar from Facebook users and privacy advocates. The indignation even swept through the halls of Congress, with lawmakers registering their displeasure. But as Castro reminds us, it’s all much ado about not much:

Many Internet companies clearly intend to continue to find innovative ways to use personal data to deliver products and services to their customers. While Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg may or may not “believe in privacy”, it is clear that Facebook thinks that companies should respond to changing social norms on privacy and that the overall trend is towards more sharing and openness of personal data. So going forward, no Facebook user (or privacy fundamentalist) can continue to use the service without admitting that the benefits of using the website outweigh any reservation the user has about sharing his or her personal data. As the saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”

Certainly some users may still object to this tradeoff. But if you don’t like it, don’t use it. Facebook is neither a right nor a necessity. Moreover, it is a free tool that individuals can use in exchange for online advertising. In fact, one high-profile Facebook user, the German Consumer Protection Minister Ilse Aigner, has already threatened to close down her Facebook profile in protest of Facebook’s new privacy policies. Users that feel this way about Facebook’s changes should vote with their mouse and click their way to greener pastures. Companies respond to market forces and consumer demands, and if enough users object to the privacy policy of Facebook, these individuals should be able to find a start-up willing to provide a privacy-rich social networking experience.

Castro doesn’t weigh in on whether Facebook did, in fact, violate its stated privacy policy, leaving that question to the Federal Trade Commission and noting that any organization that deviates from its policy should be held liable.

But the outcry that greeted the revelation that a corporation might use valuable consumer information for its benefit is a real Capt. Renault moment. My guess is that after the fuss dies down, most users will stay on Facebook, recognizing that the benefits of using it outstrip the risks and inconveniences. If the scandal makes people more informed and vigilant about personal data and privacy — both online and off- — then all the better.

Of course, online privacy remains a big, unresolved issue, and we need to continue to press government to update our laws to protect consumers in a fast-evolving information environment. But, as Castro points out, the next time Facebook changes its privacy policy, “let’s not act like this is a national emergency.” We consumers actually have a lot more power than we think we have.

A Preview of Tomorrow’s Primaries

Posted on May 3, 2010 by The Progressive Policy Institute

There are three actual elections this week: party primaries in Indiana, Ohio and North Carolina, all on May 4. The Republicans are offering the main show in the Hoosier State, with former Sen. Dan Coats trying to hold off hard-right challenges for another Senate nomination from former U.S. Rep. John Hostettler and state senator Marlin Stutzman. Hostettler has a well-established following among Indiana conservatives (but not much money), while Stutzman is benefitting from national right-wing support, notably from Sen. Jim DeMint’s Senate Conservative Fund, RedState.org and Mike Huckabee. But a Survey USA poll that came out last week gives Coats a significant lead (36 percent for Coats, 24 percent for Hostettler and 18 percent for Stutzman) as his rivals split the True Conservative vote. The same poll shows all three handily defeating Democrat Brad Ellsworth at this point in the cycle.

In a House primary with less ideological freight than the Senate race, Indiana Republican Rep. Mark Souder, a member of the class of ’94, appears in danger of being upset by self-funding opponent Bob Thomas.

Over in Ohio, the Democratic Senate primary pits Lt. Gov. Lee Fisher, a long-time statewide elected official, against Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner. Fisher has had a big financial advantage and labor support, while Brunner has drawn a lot of attention from the progressive netroots. But a new Suffolk University poll last week shows Fisher building a big (55 percent – 27 percent) lead as Election Day nears. Both Democrats have been running even with or ahead of Republican nominee Rob Portman, in a seat being vacated by Republican George Voinovich (one of those oft-forgotten Dem opportunities that could offset likely losses).

And in North Carolina, a big field of Democrats is competing for the chance to take on Republican Sen. Richard Burr, one of those GOPers who looked pretty vulnerable early in this cycle. It’s been a relatively low-key primary and turnout is expected to be very low. The two long-time front-runners, Secretary of State Elaine Marshall and former state senator Cal Cunningham are both expected to fall short of the 40 percent of the vote needed to avoid a June 22 runoff. Marshall has drawn some netroots support, while Cunningham was reportedly lured into the race by D.C. Democrats who felt Marshall wasn’t electable. A third candidate, Ken Lewis, an African American attorney, could do well enough to become a big factor in the runoff.

The one new survey to come out over the weekend provided some expected bad news for Democrats in Hawaii. The winner-take-all special election to replace Democratic Rep. Neil Abercrombie (who resigned to run for governor) is favoring the one Republican in the race over two Democrats, according to a Honolulu Advertiser poll, which shows former Honolulu city councilman Charles Djou with 36 percent, former U.S. Rep. Ed Case with 28 percent and state Senate President Colleen Hanabusa with 22 percent. Djou would probably have little chance of holding onto the seat in a regular general election in November, but it’s still a loss that House Democrats could do without.

Finally, because today’s crazy state legislative proposals are often tomorrow’s campaign issues, you should check out Jillian Rayfield’s useful summary of nutty offerings from America’s statehouse solons at TalkingPointsMemo. Lowlights include an advance nullification measure that some Minnesota Republicans are pushing; a global warming denial measure in South Dakota; Georgia’s action to reestablish the important right to bring shooting irons into airports; and Arizona’s far-sighted stand against the breeding of human-animal hybrids. There’s also a sobering roundup of the latest state efforts to chip away at abortion rights.

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