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One Winner in the Aviation Crisis: Europe’s Railways

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The media’s blanket coverage of the travel chaos gripping Europe has overlooked just one thing — fast and frequent trains have gotten hundreds of thousands of travelers to their destinations safely and on time while airplanes sat on the tarmac.

In fact, if there’s any winner in the crisis that began when a cloud of ash from an Icelandic volcano drifted over the continent, it’s Europe’s railways. They have operated with few disruptions at the same time air flight was grounded by authorities over safety concerns.

Since trains handle a large portion of commercial traffic between many cities, the average European has not been hurt by the “transportation tsunami” breathlessly described by CNN and other media outlets.

Travelers most affected by the air ban have been international flyers, such as British tourists coming back from Easter vacations in the Mediterranean and passengers on transatlantic flights, who couldn’t land in northern Europe, Scandinavia or the British Isles.

Since last Thursday, high-speed Eurostar trains have been the only direct link between London and the rest of the world. Running through the English “chunnel,” Eurostar has added trains to its daily roster of 32 trains to and from Paris and 18 trains to and from Brussels.

An estimated 50,000 passengers took the trains between Thursday and Sunday, a 30-percent jump from normal bookings. Eurostar’s website says trains are sold out through the end of this week, but that special service will be added to accommodate still-stranded air passengers.

Elsewhere in Europe, trains have been packed. A EuroCity train from Italy to France was so crowded over the weekend that people could barely squeeze through the doors. A Swiss Federal Railways spokesman said trains have been reconfigured with twice as many cars as normal to handle the increased patronage.

Although airports across Europe are preparing to resume limited flights today along “safe air corridors,” it will take days, if not a full week, before normal operations are reestablished, according to aviation officials.

Much will depend on the status of the Eyjafjallajökull volcano. It continues to spew out thick clouds of ash, whose microscopic shards of rock, glass and sand can stop jet engines by melting and congealing in turbines.

The volcano’s unexpected activity — leading to the biggest flight ban in aviation history — is a stark reminder of the vulnerability of air travel and the necessity of having solid transportation alternatives in a crisis.

Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/kbs478/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

On Mideast Policy, We Can Walk and Chew Gum at the Same Time

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

A few publications over the past week continue to highlight the importance of democracy promotion in the Middle East. Some have done a better job than others.

First up is Jackson Diehl’s piece in today’s Washington Post. Diehl makes one excellent suggestion — then diminishes it with a faulty assumption. His premise is that the Obama administration fails to understand that diplomacy in the Middle East is inextricably linked to timing. Diehl believes current geopolitical conditions suggest the White House should push for a democratic opening in Egypt, with elections looming this year to replace an aging president, and former International Atomic Energy Agency chief Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei building a credible reform movement in the country.

But as a consequence, Diehl believes that the Obama administration should set aside the larger Israeli-Palestinian peace plan that the Obama administration is cooking up to focus on Egypt.

The former is an excellent initiative and should be pursued despite America’s tricky, decades-long relationship with Egypt that has centered far more on regional military hegemony and diplomatic stability than democracy promotion. But Diehl treats Middle East policy as a zero-sum game, with Israel-Palestine being thrown by the wayside. According to Diehl, rather than focusing on Egypt:

Obama has focused most of his personal energy and diplomatic capital on the Arab-Israeli conundrum — where, for a variety of reasons, there is no immediate opportunity. …[T]he big challenge for the president is to set aside his preconceived notions about what big thing he can or should accomplish in the region — and seize the opportunity that is actually before him.

I ran this by my friend Andrew Albertson, executive director of the Project on Middle East Democracy, and he dismissed the notion that we can’t walk and chew gum at the same time. In an email, he responded:

I certainly agree that the U.S. can and should be doing more in response to events in Egypt. Egyptians view this year as an opportunity to push for important political reforms in their country, and I think we need to support that. But no — I don’t think this is an either-or proposition. In fact, on the contrary, I think we will be more credible — and more effective — if we convey our support for the region’s people and basic issues of human dignity across the board.

The point is that both democracy and Egypt and big initiatives on Israel-Palestine are worthy endeavors. The former seizes on the opportunity available, and the latter attempts to create a bit of opportunity over the long run.

So how is the Obama administration doing on promoting democracy? Albertson’s POMED has just put out a new report by Stephen McInerney that takes a hard look at the Middle East democracy budget. McInerney finds that “total funding for democracy and governance is up” with important programs that promote Internet freedom, as well as aid to Afghanistan/Pakistan and Yemen, emphasized.

One of the big concerns, McInerney says, closely echoes Diehl’s original point:

Controversial changes in U.S. assistance to Egypt have been reinforced.• Funding for democracy in Egypt remains at levels sharply reduced in March 2009, which included disproportionate cuts in funding for civil society. The decision to provide USAID funding only to organizations registered and approved as NGOs by the Egyptian government remains in place. Finally, the administration is now exploring the establishment of an “endowment” proposed by the Egyptian government to remove congressional oversight over future U.S. economic aid.

By all means we should address these problems. But doing so need not come at the expense of other Mideast initiatives.

Reforming Government: Obama’s Next Task

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Public trust in the federal government, Congress and the political parties is scraping rock bottom, the Pew Research Center reports today. The findings don’t invalidate what President Obama and the Democrats have done over the past year, but they do underscore the need for a new direction.

According to Pew’s Andrew Kohut, only 22 percent of Americans trust the government in Washington to do the right thing. Anger at Washington has intensified and, most important for progressives, the public seems to be souring on activist government. “…[T]he general public now wants government reform and a growing number want its power curtailed,” he says. The important exception is regulation of Wall Street, which Americans continue to favor by nearly 2-1.

Obama’s first year was dominated by the economic emergency and the Herculean task of passing a landmark health care reform. The administration had no choice but to spend prodigiously to prevent a general financial collapse and pump up a stricken economy. If you think the polls look bad now, imagine how much worse they’d be had Obama failed to take decisive action on the economic front.

The health care push may have been the domestic equivalent of a war of choice, in that Obama could theoretically have deferred it until the economy recovered. But it was the right choice for a president with large reserves of political good will, and for a Democratic Party finally given undivided control of the federal government and a mandate to tackle big problems.

There’s no denying the rising public backlash against government intervention and spending, though it probably has as much to do with lingering economic anxieties as what Obama and the Democrats have been doing. In any case, public sentiment for a smaller federal government has risen, while Democrats’ favorable ratings have tumbled 21 points to 38 percent, about the same as the GOP’s, says Pew. At the same time, the poll also shows that voters aren’t hobgoblins of consistency. Even as they complain about the influence of special interests, 56 percent also say government does not do enough to help average Americans.

Progressives shouldn’t lose too much sleep over the Tea Partiers, who are hardcore conservatives and extreme libertarians. But independents are another question. The Pew study confirms the trend of recent elections, which saw independents from Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts abandon Obama’s winning 2008 coalition. This portends a difficult midterm election for Democrats, since independents seem highly motivated to turn out in November and, according to Kohut, express strong preferences for Republican candidates in their district.

What can progressives do to staunch the defection of independent voters? They should pass financial reforms, reduce home foreclosures and get as much of the bailout money back as possible. But the main emphasis for the rest of the year should be on stimulating economic innovation and growth. They should pay particular attention to relieving regulatory burdens on entrepreneurs and new enterprises – including onerous paperwork requirements in the new health care law — which are the primary generators of new jobs.

Progressives also must lay the groundwork for serious deficit reduction and entitlement reform next year as unemployment subsides. The Obama administration should press hard on health reform’s new cost containment measures, and produce concrete plans for closing Social Security’s funding gap. It’s vital for them to show they can discipline federal spending, not just raise taxes.

Here the administration can learn from Bill Clinton’s experience. He too faced an electorate worried about public spending and deficits, and skeptical about suspicious of bureaucratic overreach. He not only produced budget surpluses (a feat Obama won’t be able to duplicate), but also gave priority to downsizing and “reinventing” the federal government.

Obama doesn’t need to echo Clinton’s assertion that “the era of big government is over.”  But in this next phase of his presidency, he needs to be as ambitious in reforming government as he was last year in expanding government.

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

A Look at the Governors’ Races

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

With all the obsessive focusing on congressional races that is natural to Washington, it’s not a bad time to take a more comprehensive look at the 37 governors’ races that will be decided in November (if you happen to have a subscription to the Cook Political Report, their wizard on gubernatorial and Senate races, Jennifer Duffy, has a new overview out).

It’s quite an even playing field between the two parties: Democrats are defending 19 governorships and Republicans 18. More importantly, thanks to a combination of term limits and retirements, 22 of the 37 races are “open.” And quite a few of those are in states where the party controlling the governorship has not been the dominant party generally (thus creating a particularly ripe climate for a switch this year), ranging from “red states” with Democratic governors like Wyoming, Kansas, Oklahoma and Tennessee to “blue states” with Republican governors like Vermont, Connecticut, Minnesota, Hawaii and California. Absent a really massive Republican wave, we will probably see both major parties gain and lose more than a few governorships.

The other factor lending instability to governors’ races is, of course, the fact that state governments as a whole have been roiled by recession, revenue losses and automatic counter-cyclical increases in spending even more than the federal government (at least in all but a few fortunate, recession-resistant states), and nearly all have constitutional or statutory balanced budget requirements. It didn’t get much national attention at the time, but states didn’t really receive a lot of help from the 2009 economic stimulus legislation, with the exception of a temporary “super-match” for Medicaid (which is, along with mandates for expanded coverage, being continued by the new health reform legislation).

Most of the states are dealing with chronic budget shortfalls. And it’s all taking a toll on public confidence. A major new Pew survey just out today shows that the drop in the percentage of Americans saying government has a “positive impact” on their lives has dropped even more for the states (from 62 percent to 42 percent) than for the federal government (from 50 percent to 38 percent) since 1997. With voters viewing past state administrations somewhat nostalgically, it’s not surprising that there are no less than five former governors running for their old jobs this year (which, as Duffy points out, is really an unusual number): Democrats Jerry Brown of California, John Kitzhaber of Oregon, and Roy Barnes of Georgia; and Republicans Terry Branstad of Iowa and Bob Ehrlich of Maryland. All but Ehrlich have been out of office for at least eight years (Branstad for 12 years, and Brown for 28 years). Another wild card: there are presently three viable independent candidates for governor, all in New England (Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island), where weak Republican parties make indies a preferred alternative to Democrats for many voters.

Add it all up, and it’s very difficult to discern big national trends in governors’ races, aside from the fact that turnout patterns are likely to boost Republican prospects generally. Duffy currently rates an astonishing 17 races — close to half — as “toss-ups,” including seven governorships held by Democrats and ten by Republicans, with another seven races looking competitive. Some could be real barn-burners, with close, expensive races likely in big states like California, Texas, Florida, Illinois and Ohio. Others could produce upsets if the “wrong” candidate wins large, multi-candidate primary fields. This is particularly true on the Republican side, where the conservative/Tea Party upsurge could beat more electable Republican candidates in primaries ranging from Iowa to Alabama.

So buckle up the seat belts for a wild ride in gubernatorial elections this year.

Poll Watch

The most interesting polls to come out in the last few days involve highly competitive governor’s races. A new Quinnipiac survey shows Democrat Alex Sink significantly reducing Republican Bill McCollum’s lead in Florida; the race is now within the margin-of-error in that particular poll. Rasmussen now has incumbent Republican Rick Perry locked in a close race with Democrat Bill White in Texas. And Western New England College shows a close three-way race in Massachusetts among Democratic incumbent Deval Patrick, Republican Charles Baker and independent Tim Cahill.

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

Don’t Let Anyone Tell You Counterinsurgency Ain’t Tough

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

If you ever needed a reminder about the difficulties of counterinsurgency in Afghanistan, Joe Klein’s piece in Time is it. Klein tells the story of Capt. Jeremiah Ellis, a 29-year-old Army officer leading 120 soldiers in Dog Company, the only American presence in the remote village of Senjaray. Though anecdotal, the piece is a highly detailed, pitch-perfect account of why stabilizing Afghanistan is so difficult.

Here are some of the highlights.

On the Taliban:

Unlike many of his fellow officers in Zhari district, and many of the troops under his command, Ellis really believed in counterinsurgency (COIN) doctrine.

He still does, but he’s more skeptical now. The past four months in Senjaray have taught him how difficult it is to do COIN in an area that is, in effect, controlled by the enemy — and with a command structure that is tangled in bureaucracy and paralyzed by the incompetence and corruption of the local Afghan leadership. Indeed, as the struggle to open the school — or get anything of value at all done in Senjaray — progressed, the metaphor was transformed into a much bigger question: If the U.S. Army couldn’t open a small school in a crucial town, how could it expect to succeed in Afghanistan?

… [A]lmost any development project the Americans tried in Senjaray would end up benefitting the Taliban — except one: reopening the Pir Mohammed School.

On rules of engagement:

General McChrystal has issued a series of tactical directives and rules of engagement banning most forms of air support. There are also new rules governing when and how troops on the ground can use their weapons. “Look at these,” Ellis told me, tossing a fat sheaf of directives onto his desk. “Some of these are written by freaking lawyers, and I’m supposed to read them aloud to my troops. It’s laughable. We can’t fire warning shots. We can’t even fire pen flares to stop an oncoming vehicle. If a guy shoots at you, then puts down his weapon and runs away, you can’t fire back at him because you might harm a civilian.”

The troops hate the new rules. Indeed, a soldier from another of the 1/12’s companies sent an angry e-mail to McChrystal, saying the new rules were endangering the troops. The General immediately flew down to Zhari and walked a patrol with that soldier’s platoon. “It was a good experience,” McChrystal told me later. “I explained to them why we needed the rules. And I’ve been making it my practice to go out on patrol with other units ever since.”

Ellis understands the rationale for the rules — “It’s what distinguishes us from the Taliban” — but that doesn’t make them easier to enforce.

On internal military bureaucracy:

Lieutenant Reed Peeples, a former Peace Corps volunteer whose 2nd platoon patrolled the area around the school, put it more simply: “For months, we’ve been trying to win over the people of this town — and we haven’t produced anything tangible. They are sitting on the fence, waiting to see which side is stronger. We haven’t had much luck with development projects. We haven’t proved that we can take care of them. Reopening the school would be our first real win.”

It was unimaginable that the higher-ups — those in “echelons above reality,” as Ellis liked to say — would actually stop the Pir Mohammed project. He figured it would be delayed a day or two and decided to move ahead with his plan.

Read the whole article, it’s worth your time, and is a clear depiction of the challenges the U.S. military, including those they bring on themselves.

Now that we’re on the subject, I just want to remind readers of the arguments I made for counterinsurgency last year. In recent days I’ve been essentially accused of being a shill for the administration who would have blindly saluted and supported whatever the administration decided.

Wrong. While I certainly applaud the administration’s process in arriving at its policy, I’m on record as calling for a counterinsurgency strategy before the administration announced its plan. In an October column, Will Marshall and I made the case that administration should hew closely to the counterinsurgency strategy outlined by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, during a period when our Afghanistan strategy was very much up in the air.

When the counterinsurgency strategy was announced, I offered my praise for what I thought was the right call, calling it our “best choice to offer definitive and lasting security,” even as I warned that it was “hardly a guaranteed success.” If the administration had taken a different route, I probably would have offered my criticism, even as I praised the careful and thoughtful process behind it. I’d just like to think that good process tends to lead to good policy – and I think that’s what happened here.

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

Some Good News for Dems; All Eyes on Crist

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

It’s been a week of fog and shadows in U.S. politics — a lot of fiery talk, much of it surrounding the financial regulation bill in Congress and Tax Day beyond it — and a few real developments.

The best news for Democrats is that potentially formidable Republican candidates for two must-win Senate seats decided not to run: former governors George Pataki of New York and Tommy Thompson of Wisconsin. This makes the seats of Democrats Kirsten Gillibrand and Russ Feingold relatively safe, at least for now.

The other good news for Dems is that they easily retained the South Florida House seat of resigned Rep. Robert Wexler in a special election. That shouldn’t have been surprising, given the heavily pro-Democratic voting history of the district. But after Scott Brown’s victory, some Republicans began to imagine they could win anywhere. Moreover, the heavy senior and Jewish voting segments of the district fed some Republican hopes that senior unhappiness with health reform and Jewish anxiety over the president’s stormy relations with Israeli PM Bibi Netanyahu might produce a backlash. No such luck.

Also in Florida, the very tangled U.S. Senate race took another odd turn, as embattled Gov. Charlie Crist, badly trailing Marco Rubio in the polls for their Republican primary, ended days of suspense by vetoing a “teacher merit pay” bill that had created vast partisan polarization in the Sunshine State. The bill, which would have phased out teacher tenure and based half of teacher evaluation on students’ performance on standardized tests, was the apple of former Gov. Jeb Bush’s eye. In vetoing the legislation, Crist became more of a pariah to conservatives than ever, spurring rumors (which the governor and his staff have been routinely denying) that he might withdraw from the primary and run as an independent.

One other little tidbit from Florida: Guess who just registered to vote in the Sunshine State?  Mike Huckabee. It could be just a coincidence, but Florida is certainly a more important state in the Republican presidential nominating process than Huck’s native Arkansas.  It’s probably also easier to get flights from there to New York, where Huckabee’s weekly Fox show is taped.

In a number of states, candidates are gearing down for a very heavy month of May, with competitive statewide primaries, and many downballot contests, on tap in Indiana, North Carolina and Ohio (May 4); and Arkansas, Kentucky and Pennsylvania (May 18). There are Senate primaries in all six states, and a competitive Democratic gubernatorial primary in PA.

Polling activity is also picking up.  There were three new polls out of Arkansas this week, all showing Sen. Blanche Lincoln maintaining a steady but not overwhelming lead against primary challenger Lt. Gov. Bill Halter. With a third candidate in the field, the big issue there may be whether Lincoln can avoid a runoff in which almost anything could happen.

The very day that Charlie Crist cast his fate to the winds by vetoing a GOP education bill, Quinnipiac came out with a new poll showing him getting crushed by Marco Rubio more than ever in a Senate primary, but actually leading a three-way race with Rubio and Democrat Kendrick Meek if he runs as an independent.

And there’s been some, well, unusual polling results on trial heats of possible 2012 challengers to President Obama. Rasmussen showed Ron Paul running even with the president, which is a bit hard to believe. And PPP showed four different Republicans (Huckabee, Palin, Gingrich and Romney) running almost exactly even with Obama, despite wide differences in their own approval ratings, which is a bit hard to understand.

Finally, if you haven’t seen yesterday’s New York Times/CBS poll that includes the most thorough survey we’ve seen of tea party supporters, do check it out, along with my analysis of it. Long story short: I don’t care what Doug Schoen and Pat Caddell say in today’s Washington Post; if the tea partiers are indeed, as they argue, “swing voters,” then I’m the next American Idol, and not just in the shower.

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

Reality Check on Taxes

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Americans are increasingly alarmed by the nation’s massive deficits. Yet according to a new CNN poll, 60 percent favor making the Bush tax cuts permanent, instead of letting them expire this year. This doesn’t compute. If President Obama is to make any headway in restoring fiscal discipline in Washington, he will have to inject a note of realism into the debate over taxes and spending.

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 3 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.

Obama pledged during the campaign to keep the Bush cuts for households making under $200,000 a year. He will either have to break that very expensive promise, or turn to other possible revenue sources. What are the options?

The first, and most attractive, is to go after the hundreds of billions of tax subsidies that range from specific industry tax breaks to broader provisions – like the health care exclusion and mortgage interest deduction – that benefit all taxpayers. This is the essence of an intriguing bill crafted by Sens. Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), which would broaden the tax base by eliminating all itemized deductions except for mortgage interest and charitable deductions.

Another option is to look for new revenue sources. The best would be a charge on carbon, which would raise revenue, boost clean energy investment and protect the earth’s climate all in one fell swoop. The emerging Senate climate and energy compromise, engineered by Sens. Kerry (D-MA), Graham (R-S.C.) and Lieberman (I-CT), would cap carbon emissions, but it appears that the revenues would be rebated to the public. This approach would blunt Republican charges that putting a price on carbon is tantamount to raising taxes in a weak economy, but it wouldn’t close our revenue gap.

That’s why there’s rising interest in a value-added tax (VAT). Paul Volcker, the éminence grise of high finance, floated the idea recently. It’s also been endorsed by leading progressive thinkers like Isabel Sawhill and Henry Aaron of the Brookings Institution. A VAT has traditionally been seen as a harbinger of European-level taxes, but Sawhill believes it may be the only way to finance health care. She adds:

In the end, any tax increase will be a heavy lift in a country that seems allergic to paying its bills. But it will have to happen sooner or later and sooner would be much better. As Larry Summers once noted, Republicans don’t like value-added taxes because they are a revenue machine and Democrats don’t like them because they are regressive. We will get a VAT when Democrats realize they are a revenue machine and Republicans realize that they are regressive.

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

What Will Our Cybersecurity Apparatus Look Like?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As I write, Lt. Gen. Keith Alexander is giving Senate testimony about why he’s qualified to lead Department of Defense’s new Cyber Command. He undoubtedly fits the bill and is probably about the most qualified senior-level military man in the country to serve in this capacity. He’s led the National Security Agency for the last four and half years, and has 35 years of experience within the ranks of Army Intelligence.

That’s why the issue isn’t with Lt. Gen Alexander’s qualifications, but whether the structure of the whole cyber defense enterprise is the right one. The Pentagon stands up its new Cyber Command to coordinate all cyber activities under its umbrella, but he’ll also remain in his job at the NSA. He believes his new organizational mission is to integrate:

[C]yberspace operations and synchronizing warfighting effects across the global security environment; providing support to civil authorities and international partners; directing global information grid operations and defense; executing full-spectrum military cyberspace operations; serving as the focal point for deconfliction of DOD offensive cyberspace operations; providing improved shared situational awareness of cyberspace operations, including indications and warning.

… which sure sounds a lot like his old organizational mission at Ft. Meade.

And Alexander is christened with his new duties as Noah Shachtman has actually proposed to separate powers within the cyber community:

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

While it would seem that these two actions — elevating the NSA’s director to oversee the whole kit-and-caboodle while keeping him entrenched in his old job and thus creating overlapping bureaucracies — are working at cross-purposes, it’s quite possible that perhaps we’re moving in that direction, albeit in measured fashion.

Sounds crazy? Think of it this way — in order to separate the NSA’s directorates, there would have to be political breathing space within the cyberspy bureaucracy to break them up. So instead of appearing like Alexander is getting a demotion by only controlling whichever half his old agency he ends up with, he gets a new title and the current directorate heads get elevated to new positions.

This surely isn’t gospel, but remains an interesting possibility.

The Heart of the Republican Dilemma

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Ah, another Tax Day, another Tea Party poll! This one, from CBS/New York Times, is probably the most extensive we’ve seen. But the findings are only surprising to people who haven’t been paying close attention to the Tea Party Movement.

Tea Partiers are, in almost every significant respect, overwhelmingly conservative Republicans. Two-thirds say they always or usually vote Republican. Two-thirds are regular Fox viewers. 57 percent have a favorable view of George W. Bush, and tea partiers, unlike their fellow-citizens, almost entirely absolve the Bush administration from responsibility for either the economic situation or current budget deficits. Over 90 percent of them disapprove of Barack Obama’s job performance in every area they were asked about, and in another sharp difference from everyone else, 84 percent disapprove of him personally. Ninety-two percent think Obama’s moving the country “in the direction of socialism.” Nearly a third think he was born in another country. Three-fourths think government aid to poor people keeps them poor instead of helping them. Over half think too much has been made of the problems facing black people. Well over half think the Obama administration has favored the poor over the rich and the middle class (only 15 percent of Americans generally feel that way).

Interestingly, tea partiers are less likely than the public as a whole to think we need a third political party. That shouldn’t be surprising in a cohort that basically thinks the Bush administration was hunky-dory, but you’d never guess it from all the talk about the “threat” of a Tea Party-based third party.

So these are basically older (32 percent are retired) white conservative Republicans whose main goal, they overwhelmingly say, is to “reduce government.” But two-thirds think Social Security and Medicare are a good bargain for the country. And they certainly won’t support higher taxes.

Here’s a revealing glimpse into the older-white-conservative psychology from the Times write-up of the poll:

[N]early three-quarters of those who favor smaller government said they would prefer it even if it meant spending on domestic programs would be cut.But in follow-up interviews, Tea Party supporters said they did not want to cut Medicare or Social Security — the biggest domestic programs, suggesting instead a focus on “waste.”

Some defended being on Social Security while fighting big government by saying that since they had paid into the system, they deserved the benefits.

Others could not explain the contradiction.

“That’s a conundrum, isn’t it?” asked Jodine White, 62, of Rocklin, Calif. “I don’t know what to say. Maybe I don’t want smaller government. I guess I want smaller government and my Social Security.” She added, “I didn’t look at it from the perspective of losing things I need. I think I’ve changed my mind.”

And that’s the conundrum facing the Republican Party going forward. Having created a fiscal time bomb during the Bush administration, they are now born-again deficit hawks, and moreover, profess to think today’s federal government represents a socialist tyranny. But they are even more adamantly opposed to higher taxes, and their base doesn’t want them to touch “their” Social Security and Medicare, which they figure they’ve earned.

Barring a major retraction of America’s active role in the world, which would enable big reductions in defense spending (and we know few conservative Republicans favor that), the only thing left to do is the sort of wholesale elimination of federal functions last attempted by Republicans in 1995, which failed miserably, or an all-out attack on means-tested programs benefitting the poor. By all evidence, this last approach may please many Tea Partiers, but justice and efficacy aside, there is no approach more guaranteed to ensure that the Republican Party’s base gets even older and whiter than it already is.

At some point, the famous “anger” of the Tea Partiers will have to be propitiated by GOP leaders, but there’s no obvious way out of the dilemma Republicans have created for themselves.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

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

Voters in a Bad Mood, British Edition

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

As the British general election campaign races towards its culmination on May 6, it’s increasingly obvious that the U.S. is hardly the only place where voters are in a bad mood. Virtually all of the polls show the Tories falling short of the 40 percent or so of the popular vote that would probably give them a parliamentary majority. And in a “hung parliament” scenario, the most likely result would be a coalition government involving Labour and the Liberal Democrats.

Dysfunctional as it sounds, the “hung parliament” scenario seems to be one that an awful lot of Britons prefer, according to a poll from Populus commissioned by the Times of London:

The poll shows that 32 per cent of the public hope for a hung Parliament, against 28 per cent who want a Tory majority and 22 per cent a Labour one. Lib Dem voters prefer a deal with Labour in a hung Parliament. Populus also underlines the extent of disenchantment: a mere 4 per cent think that the parties are being completely honest with voters about their tax plans and only 6 per cent about their approaches to cutting the deficit.

Twenty-five per cent said that they thought that the Tories had put across the most convincing case so far, and 18 per cent said Labour. However, 43 per cent were unconvinced by any party.

Leaders of the three major parties will hold the first of three televised debates tomorrow night. But it’s unclear how many voters will be watching, or in any meaningful sense, listening.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

High-Speed Rail Agency Limits Public Comment Period

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

If you want to submit your thoughts about Washington’s strategy to develop high-speed passenger trains, you better act fast.

That’s because the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) has decided it’s in too much of a hurry to listen to a traditional period of public comment about its National Rail Plan, a document aimed at formulating a strategy to modernize America’s rail passenger and freight service.

When the FRA completed its Preliminary National Rail Plan last October, it emphasized that involvement by the public was essential. “The FRA’s National Rail Plan will involve a vigorous outreach strategy….To ensure that we capture nationwide input, FRA will place a notice in the Federal Register for the opening of a docket for anyone who may wish to submit written input,” the report concluded.

Last week, the FRA announced in the Register a 60-day period for public comment on the rail plan. But in a curious aside, the notice stated, “For comments to be considered during the critical stages of plan development, they should be received no later than May 3, 2010” – or four weeks before the June 4 deadline.

An agency official said yesterday that the FRA had decided to place public comments on “an aggressive timeline” so that the agency could complete its rail plan by the September 15 date requested by Congress.

Not only is the effective comment period limited, but the questions for which the agency seeks public input are quite circumscribed.

For example, whether passenger rail should be built on new, dedicated lines or existing freight train corridors — a matter that has provoked much public debate — is sidestepped in the comment notice.

Instead, the notice asks the public to address how to blend passenger service into freight corridors, including how improved passenger rail can be “balanced with freight railroad service requirements to assure that freight service will not be impeded.”

The 34-page Preliminary National Rail Plan was notable for its vagueness and lack of vision, which led critic Yonah Freeman to dub it a “rail plan with virtually no planning included.”

The final plan promises to be lengthier but no more specific in terms of proposing which high-speed corridors should be prioritized, what baseline train speeds should be placed into practice and what design criteria should be established for state plans.

According to FRA’s comment notice, the plan will consist of three main components:

  • a review of the current system, including a state-by-state list of rail plans proposed or under development
  • a “consideration of issues and policies that can ensure that the nation’s rail system is truly considered in surface transportation discussions about moving people and goods”
  • a “recommendation of programs, policies, and investments that will be required so the nation can be served with a transportation system that is safe and efficient”

In contrast to overseas competitors such as China, Washington’s rail planners appear determined to peddle platitudes and process, while avoiding concrete goals and specific timetables to establish a world-class rail program.

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

The Gold Standard in Your Future

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In a finding that will probably raise more questions about the pollster than about the poll-ees, Rasmussen has a new survey out that shows Ron Paul in a statistical dead heat with Barack Obama for the presidency in 2012, trailing him by one spare point (41/42).

The poll is of 1,000 “likely voters” (presumably likely 2010 voters), which really makes you wonder about Rasmussen’s famously narrow “likely voter” screen. And it shows Paul tying the president even though he has relatively weak support among self-identified Republicans; the eccentric opponent of foreign wars and the Federal Reserve System trounces Obama among “unaffiliated” voters 47/28.

I doubt too many observers will take this poll seriously, though it will be manna from heaven not only for the zealous foot soldiers of the Ron Paul Revolution, but for those who think (including, some might say, Scott Rasmussen) that right-wing libertarian “populism” is the wave of the future.

But the poll did produce one hilarious write-up, at USA Today. After reporting the numbers, the author (with a nod to the high-riding Senate campaign of Ron’s son Rand) says:

This raises the obvious question: will the Pauls be the next political dynasty, like the Kennedys and Bushes?

Now that’s what I call getting way ahead of the curve!

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Worried About Nuclear Proliferation? Let’s Learn From Vegas

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

For the last decade, leaders from both parties have agreed that the gravest danger facing the U.S. is the threat of the use of a nuclear bomb by a terrorist group or rogue state. But while nonproliferation has long been the provenance of governments, there is a clear role for industry to play as well.

Many of the components used to build a nuclear bomb — including the technology to create a uranium enrichment program — are inherently dual-use. This means that the same technology used for innocuous industrial purposes can also be used to help build a nuclear weapon. Some of these items, such as high-quality steel and bearings for centrifuges, are now well-known to be dual-use. Others, such as “triggered spark gaps” or very high-speed switches with medical purposes, are somewhat less well-known.

The U.S. and other countries use a series of restrictions on the export of certain goods — very high-speed computers, for example — to prevent adversaries from developing better weapons. But too often, both state and industry are slow to realize the dual-use nature of some products. When Iran started its centrifuge program, it was unable to acquire the ultra-high grade maraging steel typically used to build the rotors due to export controls. Instead, it purchased the highest quality steel it could buy — and that turned out to be good enough.

Further, there is little to no sharing of information among companies about who is trying to purchase what from whom. While some individual companies have internal compliance programs, a broader approach is required to share information among companies and industries. The sharing of information would ultimately prevent those who shouldn’t have access to such items from shopping around to find a company that will sell the technology with little concern for who the final customer may be. Some claim that Iran was able to use a series of front companies to eventually purchase the maraging steel that it needed, in addition to the “good enough” stuff.

Fixing this problem will not be easy. Companies exist to generate profit, and denying potential customers never makes shareholders happy. And one could imagine that some customers would lodge discrimination complaints. Further, information about sales, both actual and potential, is naturally considered commercial proprietary information.

How can this problem be solved? Two models spring to mind. In the first, government collects and analyzes information from applications for export licenses. In the second, industry leads the effort. From my perspective, the latter is preferable.

Government leadership on this problem would probably raise more concerns than it would solve: Which government would collect the data? How would governments share data? How would government gain access to information not contained in export license applications — especially for rejected sales? And how could industry be guaranteed that commercial secrets would not be leaked?

Having industry lead this effort would solve many of these problems. For starters, companies know about sales in progress and about sales denied, so they would be able to identify problems earlier. Industry also already collects much of this data to track sales, identify future markets and stay ahead of the competition. And it’s possible to come up with schemes where the information is not shared between companies until it’s needed. This would also reduce the role and intrusiveness of government, while probably being a cheaper regulatory regime than a government-run one.

Granted, industry leadership would also raise some questions — Who would fund the effort? How would information be protected? — but an important model already exists: Las Vegas casinos. This intensely competitive industry has learned how to share information about problem gamblers and cheaters between casinos in a way that helps them all earn more. No casino wants the competition to know how much profit it is making or how much money it is losing. But if an individual or a small group has found a way to beat the casinos and win large stakes, it helps all of the casinos to identify them and keep them from winning even more. What’s more, this is completely driven and funded by the industry, which realized that it could reduce losses through cooperation. Just as casinos can keep track of problem customers collectively, so can companies that supply dual-use materials.

The challenge, of course, is to convince those companies that they would serve themselves and their legitimate customers by working together to develop such an oversight system. After all, the promise of a nuclear-free world – a collective good – isn’t quite the same incentive as preventing cheaters from winning in your casino. While an industry-run regulatory system is the best solution, it may take the specter of an intrusive government regulatory scheme to spur companies to act in our shared interest and perhaps prevent the next Iran.

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

The New Pirates of Campaign Financing

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

In a staff post the other day, we noted that one big reason Republicans are willing to put up with the scandals and incompetence characterizing Michael Steele’s chairmanship of the Republican National Committee (RNC) is simply that new campaign finance rules have already undermined the party’s once-central role in funding campaigns.

At The American Prospect, Mark Schmitt has some useful if somewhat disturbing observations about the independent, corporate-funded committees that will dominate post-Citizens United Republican campaign financing.

Schmitt is one campaign finance expert who doesn’t think Citizens United has changed the source and direction of political money all that much. But it will affect control of political money, and strengthen an already powerful trend towards pirate independent operations that function on the margins of the political system:

Unlike parties and candidates, independent committees don’t have to worry about their long-term reputations. They are essentially unaccountable. The Republican Party plans to be around for decades into the future. It has to worry about its long-term reputation. But independent committees can be use-once-and-burn vehicles. There’s a reason we haven’t heard recently from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, the independent committee formed to take down John Kerry in 2004 — like a basketball player sent in to commit six fouls, such operations have one purpose only and can disappear when they are finished.

Finally, independent committees are likely to play a more polarizing role. While parties can choose an early strategy of mobilizing the ideological base, by Election Day, they have to build majorities that include swing voters and independents. The incentives for independent committees are different — by mobilizing the ideological base, they generate not just votes but more and more donors. Their clout, unlike the party’s, derives only from money.

Republicans these days certainly don’t need any additional incentives to run negative campaigns or to elevate considerations of ideology over those of practical governing. But that’s what Citizens United may have wrought.

In the meantime, the RNC will trudge along, and the reduced actual clout of its chairman will not immediately translate into less media attention, particularly if he continues to serve up a rich diet of personal gaffes and institutional funny business. It would be nice, though, if media observers began to get a better focus on the people who are actually raising and spending the money that drives Republican campaigns. They’re the ones flying the jolly roger and proudly flouting every convention.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

What Not to Do in Afghanistan

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Michael Cohen’s new piece in Dissent is a perfect blueprint for a colossal disaster in Afghanistan that would seriously jeopardize American security.

Michael, whose company I very much enjoyed during an ill-fated 72-hour effort to get to Afghanistan as election monitors, argues for a less-ambitious plan for American involvement in Afghanistan. It is deeply flawed.

The very first line, “The United States has been fighting the war in Afghanistan for more than eight years,” hints at the sentiments underlying his views: exhaustion with the war, a desire to end it. The piece makes a pitch for a new way forward in Afghanistan by offering a different strategy, something he calls an “enemy-focused approach.” His strategy calls for incorporating the Taliban into the government, shrinking the size of the Afghan army by some 80,000 troops and abandoning the entire South and East to the Taliban.

Where to begin? I’ve argued time and time again against the possibility of incorporating anything but the Taliban’s foot soldiers into the government. The most succinct argument I’ve seen against it is from Barbara Elias in last year’s Foreign Affairs:

[The Taliban’s] legitimacy rests not on their governing skills, popular support, or territorial control, but on their claim to represent what they perceive as sharia rule. This means upholding the image that they are guided entirely by Islamic principles; as such, they cannot make concessions to, or earnestly negotiate with, secular states.

Then there’s Cohen’s suggestion to scale back the size of the Afghan army, reasoning that 170,000 poorly trained Afghan soldiers trained by Americans are worse than 90,000 “trained to fight like an Afghan army — not an American proxy force.” Huh? Does anyone have a good example of what a model Afghan army looks like? Why does Cohen believe 90,000 is the right number? And why is Cohen so certain that American training efforts will fall flat for 170,000? And, if we did cut it off 90,000, what would we do with the extra 80,000 recruits to whom we’ve given basic firearms skills but have just lost their paycheck and would now feel betrayed by the U.S.?

And finally there is Cohen’s idea of just abandoning the South and East of the country. You know, the Marjas and Kandahars of Afghanistan where the U.S. is now either deeply invested or creating expectations that they’re about to be. Compounding the sense of betrayal that Afghans in those regions might feel (notice a theme?) would be the mistake of offering the Taliban the safe haven they require.

I suspect Cohen’s strategy is merely a fig leaf to preempt the inevitable right-wing cries of “cutting and running.” But while such sound-bite attacks are repulsive, there is a case to be made that Cohen offers his strategy disingenuously. Cohen thinks that “the original goal of the mission has been achieved; al Qaeda’s safe haven in Afghanistan has been destroyed and its Taliban allies pushed from power.” But if that’s the case, why would we need a new strategy — why not just pull out entirely? And why advocate returning the Taliban to power if we’ve already pushed them out of it?

Cohen may be justifiably war-weary — we all are. But I happen to believe what Cohen wrongly calls President Obama’s “rhetorical tricks” about the “risks of an al-Qaeda return to Afghanistan” if we do not create a stable environment that can endure after we leave. And I also think that the counterinsurgency strategy that Cohen curtly dismisses as “a fad” is a sound plan that’s our best shot at lasting security in Afghanistan. Cohen mistakes U.S. gains in Afghanistan for victory and says we can leave now; I see it as proof that what we’re doing is working and that we should keep at it.

Michael, I’m sorry to be so blunt, but if you’re just sick of the war, it would be better to say it straight out and not offer half-baked, ineffective solutions that would seriously jeopardize American and Afghan security. Competent governance is about making really difficult decisions with the best information available. That’s exactly what this White House did with its careful, deliberative process, and that’s why I’m going to trust them on this one.

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