Category: Uncategorized

Why Al Qaeda Wants a Safe Haven

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Foreign PolicyPPI National Security Director Jim Arkedis has a new column up at Foreign Policy on why Al Qaeda needs a safe haven along the Af-Pak border to attack the U.S. again:

As deliberations about the Obama administration’s strategic direction in Afghanistan unfold, the White House is weighing whether al Qaeda, in fact, needs an Afghan safe haven — an expanse of land under the protection of the Taliban — to reconstitute its capability to attack the United States. Many noted scholars doubt it. In a recent Washington Post op-ed, Council on Foreign Relations President Richard Haass bluntly stated, “Al Qaeda does not require Afghan real estate to constitute a regional or global threat.”

He’s wrong. Although the group has been significantly weakened since late 2001, the only chance al Qaeda has of rebuilding its capability to conduct a large-scale terrorist operation against the United States is under the Taliban’s umbrella of protection.

Objections like Haass’s are rooted in the following arguments: that terrorists don’t need physical space because they can plot online; that the London and Madrid bombings prove deadly attacks can be planned in restrictive, Western, urban locations under the noses of local security services; and that denying terrorists one safe haven will simply compel them to move to another lawless region.

Read the full article at Foreign Policy.

The Best Hour You’ll Ever Spend on Insurance

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

 

 

The radio show This American Life is a staple in every progressive’s listening schedule, and I’m no different. While occasionally there’s a show that I end up fast-forwarding through, more often than not it’s better to just pop some popcorn and listen.

This past week’s episode was the second of a two-part series the show put together on the insurance industry — apropos as Congress and the administration look at the chronic problems of health insurance in this country. The first part was informative, but not riveting. This second part, however, taught me that:

  • Insurance companies have a billing code for injuries from spacecraft
  • 20-25% of all doctor’s bills are spent on taking care of billing issues with insurance companies
  • Co-pay coupons for pills make them more expensive
  • There’s pet health insurance and hedgehog cancer
  • And the solution to our insurance woes could lie in…Maryland

One of the drivers of insurance cost growth is the fact that rates for procedures are negotiated between insurers and hospitals. That cost can see some big variance depending on who has the upper hand. A procedure can be 10 times more expensive in an area where a hospital is dominant than in another area where the insurance carrier is dominant. That’s where Maryland’s approach comes in: the state has a Maryland Insurance Administration that sets statewide rates for procedures.

But the bottom line of the episode is summed up in the anecdote of how — by ruling that companies can take a tax deduction for providing healthcare — an unknown bureaucrat in the 1950s IRS gave us the health care system we have today. No matter the outcome of negotiations on the Hill as they overhaul the industry, it’s these incentives that will drive how our health care industry will work.

Education Reform Under the Radar

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In today’s New York Times, David Brooks writes about one of the Obama administration’s quiet successes:

Over the past few days I’ve spoken to people ranging from Bill Gates to Jeb Bush and various education reformers. They are all impressed by how gritty and effective the Obama administration has been in holding the line and inciting real education reform.

The engine for reform has been the administration’s Race to the Top initiative, a $4.3 billion fund that the federal government has used to reward states that have pursued reform most aggressively. With Secretary of Education Arne Duncan at the helm, Race to the Top has proven to be a rigorously applied program that’s meeting its objectives — as good in practice as it is on paper.

The initiative reflects this administration’s predilection for using incentives to nudge behavior, rather than issuing top-down policies to effect change. As Brooks points out, the approach has yielded stellar results: states raising their caps on charter schools, a stronger emphasis on student performance, greater union openness to pay reform.

In recent weeks, the administration has come under fire for its seemingly thin list of accomplishments to date. The jury is still out on hot-button topics like health care and Afghanistan, but on education, the administration has been as bold and effective as reformers had hoped.

Afghanistan Tests Democrats, Too

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Over at RealClearPolitics, PPI’s Will Marshall and Jim Arkedis have a new column on the challenge Democrats face on Afghanistan:

President Obama faces tough decisions on Afghanistan, but his party is on the hot seat too. Afghanistan is the first test since Vietnam of Democrats’ collective ability to manage a major armed conflict. Just how to do that is the subject of an intense internal debate. However it is resolved, the party must avoid a convulsive split that would cast doubt on its ability to defend the country.

Having declared Afghanistan a “war of necessity,” Obama last March said his policy is to prevent al Qaeda from attacking the United States and to keep the Taliban from returning to power. According to his handpicked commander, General Stanley McChrystal, achieving those goals will require an Iraq-style counterinsurgency campaign and up to 40,000 additional U.S. troops.

McChrystal’s request and Afghanistan’s rigged Presidential election triggered another White House review, leading many to wonder if Obama is having second thoughts. The President’s military advisers have endorsed McChrystal; Vice President Joe Biden and other White House officials are said to advocate a counterterrorism strategy with a smaller military footprint.

Read the full column at RealClearPolitics.

The Right Way to Curb Executive Pay

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Yesterday, word was leaked that after telling Bank of America head honcho Ken Lewis to expect a goose-egg in salary for 2009, the Obama administration pay czar Ken Feinberg was going to give pay cuts to chief executives at four other financial firms, including Citigroup and AIG, and the automakers GM and Chrysler. While no one to the left of Steve Forbes can really defend multimillion dollar payouts to executives for driving companies and the economy into the ground (and don’t be fooled — despite getting $0 in salary, Lewis will take home $53 million in “other compensation” this year), this plan isn’t the way to rein in payouts. It might feel good in the short term, but it doesn’t solve anything and could cause problems in the future.

First, cutting pay for financial executives in 2009 is a bit like slamming the barn door after the horse has bolted. These problems were festering for many years, and most of the chief executives who are running these companies weren’t in charge when errors were made — the beleaguered Lewis excepted, and he’s stepping down at the end of the year. So they’re getting blamed for their predecessors’ decisions.

It also doesn’t affect the main culprits who got us into this mess. The notorious Joe Cassano from AIG FP in London — who almost single-handedly drove the insurer into the ground — is untouched by the decision.

And, despite what the administration might hope, the rest of Wall Street is not going to rein in salary practices either in sympathy with their comrades or fear of rebuke. The companies affected are the ones that still have significant stakes owned by the government. Those that have returned their TARP money — Goldman and JP Morgan — are unaffected.

Given the incentive to work for a company with pay limited by the government or one where pay isn’t limited, people will jump ship for the latter. This has the potential to make the already weak companies — Bank of America and Citi, for example — even weaker. Which means that we might have a bigger problem on our hands if either of the two largest banks in the country drift with no one at the wheel (Lewis’ decision to resign without a replacement means we might see this at Bank of America anyway).

Finally, there is the concern that this will be the only chance we have to move on keeping salaries in the financial industry in line with a level that benefits the country, not bankers. When taking a hard look at pay in the future, bankers can use this as political cover, claiming that the administration has already “dealt with the issue.”

A better solution to the pay issue is to look not at short-term, feel-good measures, but to implement longer-term solutions. Line up incentives for bankers with those of shareholders and the American people. Eliminate “guaranteed” bonuses. Replace cash payouts and options with restricted stock grants, vesting over time, keeping executives interested in the long-term health of companies.

Rep. Barney Frank (MA) has pushed the Corporate and Financial Institution Compensation Fairness Act of 2009 through the House with a “Say on Pay” measure, giving shareholders a non-binding say on management salaries at the annual meeting, an idea that has merit. But its non-binding nature and the fact that most shareholder votes are made by institutional investors (more often than not either current or former I-bank employees) as proxies for their clients limit the measure’s effectiveness. A more effective part of the same bill also requires bonuses to be in line with risk-taking.

Even better is the fact that incentives will be disclosed. A little known secret on Wall Street is that traders can make more than the CEOs, and the trader’s payouts are normally undisclosed. If such incentive structures were spelled out to investors, they might not be so sanguine in signing off.

Russian Involvement Key in Iran Nuke Deal

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Though Iranian negotiators accepted a nuclear deal this week in Vienna, we should contain our excitement until the mullahs back in Tehran approve of it and the thing is actually executed.

Here are the logistics: Iran is running low on uranium-derived fuel used in medical facilities (for MRIs, among other things). The country has enough uranium, but it’s not in the right form for medical uses and will run out before Tehran can enrich enough. Therefore, Iran had to look to the international community.

The U.S., France, and Russia proposed that Iran export the bulk of its uranium stock to Russia for enriching to the required medium-grade level (i.e., lower than weapons-grade). Russia then sends it on to France, where it will be fashioned it into fuel-plates.

On paper, the deal is a win-win: Iran gets its fuel but gives up most of its uranium. It will be almost another 12 months before it rebuilds its uranium stock to be able to attempt enriching it to weapons-grade (highly enriched). Or, as Joe Cirincione of the Ploughshares Fund says, “If Iran ships the uranium out of the country, we’ve lengthened the fuse.”

Note that big “if.” There is the distinct possibility that Tehran is playing for time by negotiating this draft plan to decrease tensions in the short term by stringing along the U.S., France, and Russia. It’s always good to remember that actions speak louder than words.

However, Russia’s involvement in this process is critical — the Kremlin had appeared divided on whether to support sanctions against Iran. Now that Moscow has partial ownership of this deal, non-compliance by Tehran should anger Medvedev and Putin, who might be more disposed towards pressure.

Deeds Undone by Obama? No.

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

It’s too early to write off the gubernatorial aspirations of Creigh Deeds in Virginia, but if he doesn’t overcome a consistent lead by Republican Bob McDonnell in the next twelve days, you can be sure many pundits will attribute his defeat to Barack Obama.

There’s only one problem with this hypothesis: despite his extraordinary unpopularity in other parts of the South, the President remains relatively popular in the Old Dominion. According to pollster.com, Obama´s average approval/disapproval ratio in recent Virginia polls is 51/46. Even Rasmussen has him in positive territory at 53/47, and the latest Washington Post poll had him at 53/46. This is precisely the same margin by which Obama carried the Commonwealth last November.

Nor does general disdain for the Democratic Party appear to be the culprit. The current governor of Virginia, Tim Kaine, is chairman of the Democratic National Committee. His average approval ratio at pollster.com currently stands at 53/39.

It’s always tempting to interpret state electoral contests as bellwethers for national political trends, particular in odd years like this one. But it’s usually wrong.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Southern Outlier

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Anyone familiar with sentiment in the region is aware that Barack Obama isn’t very popular among white voters in the Deep South. The Obama-Biden ticket did worse than Kerry-Edwards ’04 among white voters in much of that area, despite the Democratic breakthroughs in nearby North Carolina and Virginia.

But the scope of the continuing unpopularity of Obama and Democrats in the South is graphically demonstrated in recent analysis from DKos-R2K. Obama´s overall national favorable/unfavorable ratio in its October poll was 55/37. In the South, it was 27/68. The Republican Party’s rating nationally was 21/67. In the South, it was 48/37. The Democratic Party’s national rating was 41/51. In the South, it was 21/72. And on the congressional “generic ballot,” Democrats led nationally 35/29; GOPers led in the South 47/21.

These are regional averages which almost certainly overstate Democrats´ problems in Florida, NC, and Virginia, but may also understate the problem in the Deep South.

Such numbers will undoubtedly reinforce already strong tendencies by non-southern Democrats to “write off” the region as intractably reactionary if not incurably racist. That would be a major mistake. Most of the congressional districts held by southern Democrats are far friendlier to Obama than the regional averages indicate, and we need to hold as many of them as possible (the same is true of many statewide offices, and in the state legislative contests that will determine control of redistricting). And as the 2008 results in FL, NC and VA showed, there are demographic trends in the region that give Democrats considerable future hope wherever sufficient concentrations of minority voters, upscale professionals, and academic/research centers co-exist.

What the current numbers probably reflect more than anything is the exceptional unhappiness of southerners with the economy, which has reversed decades of sunbelt growth. If high southern unemployment rates begin to turn around by 2010 or 2012, the South´s outlier status may moderate as well.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

In Praise of Dissenters

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Historian Matthew Dallek has a piece in today’s Politico extolling the virtues of dissenting from one’s party. Exhibit A: Sen. Olympia Snowe (ME), whose vote in favor of the Senate Finance Committee’s health bill has proven crucial to giving health reform a much-needed boost in the late innings.

Snowe has drawn fire from the right for her apostasy and from the left for her outsized role in the process (which, one suspects, would not be a problem had she been a strong supporter of the public option). But Dallek suggests that Snowe’s efforts, already crucial in the present context, could prove even more momentous in the long run:

Oftentimes, the consensus within either the Democratic or the Republican Party is a product of ideological blinders or groupthink — and the resulting policies are shortsighted and ultimately deeply flawed.

In recent decades, such voices of protest within a political party have occasionally proved to be far more insightful than anybody at the time cared to acknowledge or even contemplate.

Putting Snowe’s dissent in historical context, Dallek makes an interesting comparison with the creation of the DLC in the mid-1980s. He points out that while the DLC’s attempts to move the Democratic Party closer to the center angered traditional liberals at the time, it ultimately “made the party more competitive in presidential elections and erased the stigma of weakness from some of the party’s future standard-bearers.” The heterodoxy of leaders like then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton and then-Sen. Al Gore (TN) still does not play well in some progressive circles to this day, but the fact is their refusal to march in lockstep with the party ended up revitalizing it.

It’s probably unlikely that Snowe’s departure from the party line on health care — not to mention Sen. Lindsey Graham’s (SC) on climate change — will be similarly transformative. But Dallek’s point is well taken: done in good conscience, thinking outside the party box can often lead to more prudent, sensible ideas — and look good in hindsight to boot.

CO Dems Urge Up-or-Down Vote on Public Option

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

The prospects for health reform’s passage have certainly brightened over the last few weeks. Yesterday bought a new push in the direction of reform.

A trio of Colorado Democrats — Gov. Bill Ritter, Sen. Michael Bennett, and Sen. Mark Udall — released an open letter to U.S. senators urging them to reject a filibuster and give the public option an up-or-down vote in the Senate:

Even if you oppose a public option, we urge you not to hold it hostage with the threat of the filibuster. Stand up for the people, not the insurance industry, and give the public option the up-or-down vote it deserves.

The call for an up-or-down vote on the public option is something that has been building for a while. (Our own Ed Kilgore made a similar argument in September.) The principle behind it is certainly sound: a senator can vote their conscience and against the public option, as long as they allow the plan to come up for a vote, period. By supporting this tactic, progressives could also avoid the difficulties that come with trying to pass reform through the budget reconciliation process.

Regardless of where one stands on the public option — PPI has always believed that reform was possible with or without one — the idea of letting it stand for an up-or-down vote is something everyone should agree on. Because of their reputation as pragmatic progressives (as opposed to some of the plan’s more ideological supporters), Ritter, Bennett, and Udall’s move certainly makes such a vote a likelier possibility.

PPI in the News: New malpractice idea in health care debate

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

October 20, 2009 — A report from Associated Press notes that President Obama’s willingness to tackle the issue of medical malpractice lawsuits has breathed life into a new idea: the appointment of neutral experts to handle malpractice claims.

PPI’s own Will Marshall was quoted expressing his support for the idea: “There is a progressive opportunity here to leapfrog what has been a stereotypically polarized debate in Washington. This serves both progressive and conservative goals. You wouldn’t have to have a terrible injury and attract an enterprising malpractice lawyer to have access to court. And it would reduce malpractice premiums.”

Read the full article, “New malpractice idea in health care debate.”

The Right’s War Against Volunteerism

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Of all the hobbyhorses that the right has jumped on this year, perhaps one of the strangest is their crusade against volunteerism. Their latest salvo against community service comes against iParticipate, a week-long initiative by the Entertainment Industry Foundation, a Hollywood charitable group, to promote volunteerism in storylines and public service announcements in over 100 TV programs. Seems fairly innocuous, right? Not to some conservatives:

But while the project has found widespread support in Hollywood, the fact that it dovetails with President Barack Obama’s call for national service has fueled suspicion in some conservative circles that iParticipate is an effort to prop up left-wing causes.

Twitter users have posted messages complaining that the initiative is an abuse of the public airwaves. Writers on the blog Big Hollywood, part of the conservative news portal Breitbart.com, noted that iparticipate.org’s database of volunteer opportunities includes postings from Planned Parenthood and groups focused on ending global warming. (The database — powered by a nonprofit Web platform called All for Good — also includes listings for pro-life organizations and the conservative group Tea Party Nation.)

On his show last night, Glenn Beck joined in the fun:

[I]s it just a coincidence that all of this falls into line with President Obama’s Corporation for National and Community Service and call for more service and volunteerism?…It’s almost like we’re living in Mao’s China right now.

The assault on iParticipate continues the year-long war conservatives have been waging against community service. Earlier in the year, they trained their fire on that pernicious program, AmeriCorps, with the Examiner claiming that President Obama’s expansion of it had a “strong odor of creepy authoritarianism.” American Conservative magazine warned, “This is part of a long series of Democratic Party efforts to create pretexts to commandeer more of people’s lives.” Beck, as he is wont to do, went further, taking Obama’s call for a “civilian national security force” out of context and asserting that Obama’s bolstering of AmeriCorps “is what Hitler did with the SS.”

This smearing of volunteerism is, of course, deranged. One would think that everyone could agree that Americans devoting time and effort to community and national service was an unmitigated good that transcended ideology. (Indeed, just this weekend, Obama appeared with former President George H.W. Bush at Texas A&M in a joint celebration of volunteerism.) But the blind hatred of Obama — and his community organizing past, which Sarah Palin sneered at during the Republican convention — has led some on today’s right to oppose the seemingly uncontroversial. One gets the feeling that had Obama been an oncologist instead, these same folks would now be waging the War on the War on Cancer. Unfortunately these days, such inanities are simply the new normal for American conservatism.

“Performance Parking” in DC’s Backyard

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Variable pricing — charging different prices at different times — usually gets referenced in public policy debates as congestion pricing or cordon pricing: a fee to drive in a certain area during rush hour. As is often the case in urban planning, Singapore has been on the cutting edge of this, first trying it out in 1975. But the highest profile example has been the London City (downtown financial district) congestion pricing system, running since 2003.

While variable pricing is most often thought of as a way to provide incentives for cars driving, it can also be used for cars that are parked, too. Like lunch, there’s no such thing as “free parking.” Curbside parking that we don’t pay for costs us in other ways, whether from increased congestion from losing a lane on the street, to the time wasted circling looking for a spot in a downtown area. Performance pricing on parking meters is one way to make sure that parking availability on crowded city streets is subject to market demand. This can increase budget revenues for municipalities while keeping you from circling the block for hours looking for a spot.

In my hometown of Arlington, VA, the county is giving “performance parking” a shot, with the idea of aiming to keep parking spots on streets 85% full (PDF). Parking meters and parking ticket machines will be programmed to respond to observed parking rates so that it costs more to park in an area when it’s busier. The immediate thought is that this would benefit only those looking to park in the Wilson Boulevard business corridor during the week. But I can’t help but think that it’ll help with parking in the Clarendon area as well, where weekend nights find cars slowly rolling around looking for spots. People are stuck in their cars looking for a spot to open up, rather than in one of the nearby clubs that local bands play. Performance parking is a way to solve that problem.

Variable pricing is aimed at reducing congestion and increasing local revenues, but a better chance to hear rock and roll in Northern Virginia might be the upshot.

Is NATO Dead?

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

Anne Applebaum theorizes in the Washington Post that NATO is essentially useless:

There is almost no sense anywhere that the war in Afghanistan is an international operation, or that the stakes and goals are international, or that the soldiers on the ground represent anything other than their own national flags and national armed forces. …

The fact is that the idea of “the West” has been fading for a long time on both sides of the Atlantic, as countless “whither-the-Alliance” seminars have been ritually observing for the past decade. But the consequences are now with us: NATO, though fighting its first war since its foundation, inspires nobody. The members of NATO feel no allegiance to the alliance, or to one another.

Questions surrounding NATO’s relevance have swirled as the war effort in Afghanistan has stalled. The alliance’s inability to keep members focused and actively engaged in the hard- and soft-power components of the mission is due to a variety of factors, not the least of which is the Bush administration’s neglectful resourcing of the conflict in favor of Operation Iraqi Freedom (a non-NATO mission, it should be noted). And this is something of a tragedy, given NATO’s invocation of Article V — stating an attack on one member is an attack on all members — in the wake of 9/11.

However, it is also true that NATO was not conceived to conduct an Afghan-type mission, particularly one lasting nine years. NATO was born, of course, as a security pact to face down the Soviet Union — a known quantity of traditional military capabilities. The potential threat coming from Afghanistan’s hinterland is a far cry from the Cuban missile crisis.

While Applebaum bemoans the “countless ‘whither-the-Alliance’ seminars,” I’d suggest that such discussions are necessary, if ill-timed. Instead, NATO’s Secretary General, ex-Norwegian Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, should squeeze out every possible commitment NATO countries are willing to devote to the Afghan mission in the short term, reminding them that attacks in the United Kingdom and Spain are compelling reasons to take the Obama administration’s refocused efforts there seriously.

When the Afghanistan mission is wrapped up in several years, NATO must sit down and decide when it is appropriate to fight, and what sort of resources its members are willing to commit.

Defusing the Debt Bomb

Posted on by The Progressive Policy Institute

When it comes to federal spending, America faces a dilemma that St. Augustine might have appreciated.

It was the young Augustine who prayed that God would make him chaste, only not now. Likewise, Washington must rein in its galloping deficits and debt, but not now — not when nearly 10 percent of Americans are jobless, long-term unemployment has reached new highs, and many have stopped looking for work altogether.

This isn’t the moment to impose fiscal austerity. But, as a group of smart Senate Democrats insist, it’s not too soon to start laying the groundwork for a return to fiscal responsibility once the economy recovers. Otherwise, our mountainous public debts will drain capital from the private economy and quite possibly scare off the foreign lenders who are keeping the U.S. economy afloat.

The Hill reports today that nine Senate Democrats and Independent Joe Lieberman (CT) have sent Majority Leader Harry Reid a letter urging him to set up a special legislative process to defuse the debt bomb. “We do not believe that action on these important issues will occur under the regular order in Congress,” they wrote.

The Senators, including such pragmatic progressives as Evan Bayh (IN), Mark Warner (VA), and Mark Udall (CO), are dead right. The key to getting Washington’s finances under control is curbing the unsustainable spending growth of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. As entitlements, these programs grow automatically each year, propelled by medical cost inflation and the baby boom retirement. This happens by formula, outside of the normal Congressional budgeting and appropriations processes.

It’s instructive that the last serious effort at entitlement reform came in 1983, when President Ronald Reagan and House Speaker Tip O’Neill agreed to create a special panel (chaired by Alan Greenspan) to fix Social Security. They understood that lawmakers are unlikely to tackle the politically explosive issue of entitlement reform without both parties having skin in the game.

Other forward-looking Democrats, such as Sen. Kent Conrad (ND) and Rep. Jim Cooper (TN), have proposed a bipartisan commission to identify the spending and tax changes necessary to start winding down the nation’s deficits over time. The Obama administration would be wise to embrace this approach. It would be seen by investors here and abroad as a kind of promissory note, a sign that U.S. political leaders are determined to deleverage the federal government and boost national savings.

Some liberals dismiss worry about deficits (which reached an astronomical $1.4 trillion this year, up from $455 billion in 2008). They say Democrats ought to focus on creating jobs and speeding economic recovery, which means more government spending. It’s a false choice. Maybe we need to spend more — we’ll have a better idea once the original stimulus package is spent.

Even so, the U.S. cannot afford to let its national debt rise to 80 or even 100 percent of national output, as some budget experts predict. We can’t build lasting prosperity on fiscal quicksand.

So it’s not a matter of choosing between more Keynsian stimulus and deficit reduction, it’s a matter of doing both — and getting the sequence right. As the Senate pragmatists recognize, that means starting now on the difficult work of building a broad political consensus for modernizing the big three entitlements.