Social Policy Archives - Page 13 of 14 - Progressive Policy Institute

Let’s Get Pragmatic on Gun Control

Posted on February 1, 2011September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

As the debate over gun law reform continues in the wake of Jared Lee Loughner’s shooting spree in Tuscon, the biggest challenge will be finding a pragmatic solution that both sides of the gun control debate can support, and still addresses the fundamental issues in a comprehensive fashion. After all, gun control has historically been one of the most contentious areas in American politics.

Typically, on the subject of reducing gun violence through legislation, the loudest voices can be divided into two camps. On one side, guns are considered not merely instruments of violent people, but as actually creating or perpetuating violence. This group tends to focus on prohibiting certain configurations of firearms in the hope that if certain types of firearms are banned, criminals will be unable to inflict as much damage per incident.

A recent example is Rep. Carolyn McCarthy’s (D-NY) recently introduced bill to reinstate the ban on extended capacity magazines. The ban would limit firearm magazines to holding no more than 10 rounds. While it is difficult to articulate a need for an extended magazine in any civilian application, as a practical matter, changing magazines takes less than two seconds. This is not really an effective way to prevent shooting sprees as demonstrated by Seung-Hu Cho, the Virginia Tech shooter, who had nearly 20 magazines on him and went through half of them before committing suicide.

The other camp believes that putting guns in the hands of more people will counter gun violence by enabling ordinary citizens to defend themselves against criminal attacks. This group tends to introduce legislation to ease restrictions on carrying weapons, concealed or openly, and has recently gone so far as to attempt to legalize students and teachers arming themselves on college campuses. Any amount of time spent on or near a college campus after hours will cause most people to question the wisdom of arming mass groups of college students.

A more pragmatic approach, centered on comprehensive background checks and screenings to keep guns out of the wrong hands is necessary. This approach is also largely supported by both sides. Such an approach, unlike the polar alternatives, can deal with the fundamental issue surrounding the Tuscon tragedy, which is that Loughner was able to purchase a gun to begin with. This is a man who was removed from his community college because his professors, administrators and fellow students recognized that he posed a danger. Yet, 5 months later he was able to legally purchase a Glock 19 pistol, passing a background check without being flagged.

We need to work harder to identify and properly deal with people who are so psychologically troubled or demonstrably criminally inclined that they pose a legitimate risk to society. The signs were there with Loughner. Why was he not subsequently submitted for a 72-hour evaluation? Why is there not a system in place where, if a person is deemed to dangerous to attend Algebra class, he is not automatically flagged as, at least pending evaluation, too dangerous to purchase or own a firearm?

We need to develop a framework of comprehensive background checks and screening that is consistent across every state and includes exposure to a qualified firearms trainer who can evaluate, among other things, an individual’s capacity to safely and responsibly possess a firearm.

A proper information technology backbone is desperately needed in order to make a comprehensive background check system work.

Currently, each state government is responsible for reporting information to the federal system as a separate operation. A ridiculous mix of proprietary, incompatible, and isolated information systems throughout the country slows down, or even prevents, the exchange of relevant information.

According to research by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, 18 states have reported zero citizens with mental health records that would preclude them from owning firearms to the national background check database. It is the 21^st century, and there needs to be an open standard for all levels of government information systems that ensures interoperability so that manual information exchange is not necessary.

Such a system must allow hospitals, police departments, schools, states, counties and cities to enter information once, and have it immediately available to the federal system. Loughner would not have been able to pass a background check if the information had such a system been implemented.

As important as effective background checks are, however, no technological solution can surpass the effectiveness of human judgment. More comprehensive training and screening should be required before someone is able to purchase a firearm. This training should give a certified firearms instructor enough exposure to the applicant to provide sufficient opportunity to evaluate their potential for responsible gun ownership.

Had Loughner spent 5 days with a trainer, part of whose job it was to evaluate a person’s ability to responsibly own a weapon, perhaps his clear psychological instability could have been flagged and the gun would have been kept the gun out of his hands.

Most professional weapons training programs are designed, in part, to filter out those who are unfit to be armed. Such a requirement for civilian ownership could greatly reduce the likelihood that an unstable individual could legally purchase a firearm, independent of the severely limited background check system

If our legislative leaders focus on constructing this type of framework, both sides of the gun control issue can find something to be happy about. Proponents of gun control can be satisfied knowing that far more effort is going into ensuring that dangerous weapons, of any configuration, do not end up in the wrong hands. Proponents of the individual right to bear arms can be satisfied that, unless they exhibit behavior or criminal tendencies that should disqualify them from gun ownership anyway, their rights to bear arms will go unmolested.

While every tragedy cannot be prevented, common sense steps can be taken to keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of dangerous people. A framework that focuses on a solid system for comprehensive screening is a good first step.

Tucson: The Real Questions

Posted on January 10, 2011September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

We at the Progressive Policy Institute are heartsick over the senseless attack Saturday on Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, which also claimed the lives of six people, including a nine-year-old girl. Not only is Gabby our friend, she is an exemplar of the pragmatic progressivism that puts country before party. We pray for her recovery, and grieve for those who will never recover from this rampage.

As if this tragedy were not bad enough, some pundits have disgraced themselves by using it to score political points and vindicate their own particular stance. Thus, we’re instructed that the attack was the inevitable result of a climate of hostility created by the Tea Party, or Sarah Palin, or anti-immigration groups in Arizona. There’s no evidence this is true, but political gladiators apparently can’t help themselves.

We’ve refrained from commenting until now in hopes of learning more about the motives of the alleged shooter, Jared Lee Loughner. It seems he suffers from severe mental illness and was animated by his own inner demons, rather than “vitriol” in the atmosphere.

The political finger-pointing that has followed the shooting has been revolting. It’s not too early to start grappling with some of the pertinent questions this tragedy actually raises. We’d highlight three:

First, why is it so easy for mentally disturbed individuals to acquire handguns in America? The gun shop that sold Loughner the semiautomatic Glock 19 apparently ran a background check. Why did it not turn up the fact that the suspect had recently been booted out of a community college for his erratic and disruptive behavior? Surely more rigorous checks are in order and don’t impair the basic right to gun ownership.

And what public purpose is served by allowing citizens to buy high-capacity magazines more suitable for war than self-protection? These were covered under the ban on assault weapons passed on President Clinton’s watch, which has since lapsed. Let’s hope the Tucson massacre gives fresh impetus to reinstating it.

Second, how is it that we lack the legal tools to protect society against mentally unhinged people before they turn violent? Most people with serious mental illnesses aren’t dangerous, but some are. Obviously, it’s hard to assess such risks in advance. Yet when people exhibit patterns of bizarre and sociopathic behavior—as did the alleged suspect in Tucson, and as did Seung-Hui Cho, who massacred 32 people at Virginia Tech in 2007—they shouldn’t simply be left to their own devices. Determining how to preempt the potential for violence entails careful thought and a delicate calibration of individual rights and public safety. But society can’t simply look the other way as individuals descend into madness.

Third, will this attack result in erecting new barriers between elected representatives and the people? As we have seen since 9/11, elected officials have a tendency to overreact to acts of violence, erecting elaborate and costly security shields against low-probability threats. Will Members of Congress now demand bodyguards and be enveloped in security cocoons like the president? If the Tucson attack leads to a greater separation between politicians and those who elect them, it will have dealt a serious blow to our democracy.

Help wanted: One second-chance job

Posted on November 15, 2010 by The Progressive Policy Institute

Back in March, I stepped out of my comfort zone and wrote this op-ed for the Local Opinion page in the Washington Post. For the first time in a good long while, I wasn’t writing about national security, foreign policy, or the military. Rather, I penned a piece on a mentoring relationship I have with Tim Cofield, a 55 year old bipolar-schizophrenic with serious substance abuse and housing issues. This weekend, the Post published an update to that piece about the last eight months of Tim’s life. Here’s an excerpt:

Tim Cofield needed his public defender again way too soon. After his release from jail in March, I wrote on this page that Tim would soon be back in front of a judge if he did not get consistent access to substance-abuse counseling, mental health care and stable housing. Tim, who turned 55 on Wednesday, is a bipolar-schizophrenic who has rotated in and out of jail, usually for narcotics and parole violations, for most of his adult life.

Eight months later, Tim still isn’t receiving the care he needs. The result has hardly been surprising. His latest incarceration was from mid-October, when he submitted “dirty urines” at substance tests, until last week. It was the cognac Courvoisier, he told me.

…

It might be unrealistic to think that counseling, mental health services or the long public housing list will be improved overnight, but they don’t have to be. The past eight months convince me that Tim needs to catch one simple break to have a chance at turning his life around immediately: a job.

…
[A] job would mean much more than a few extra dollars in his pocket. A job would give him a stake in his own life. It would build a sense of accomplishment, occupy time otherwise spent with questionable associates and create a reason to save money for long-term goals. Moreover, as Michelle Singletary wrote in The Post just this month, a job would reduce Tim’s and others’ recidivism and crime throughout the community.

Read the entire piece here.

Photo credit: Rob

What Ever Happened to Opportunity Capitalism?

Posted on September 27, 2010September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

The number of billionaires based in New York City increased from to 56 to 57 from 2009 to 2010 and their collective net worth increased by $19 billion (from $183.5 billion to $202.65 billion), even as poverty soared, according to data recently released by Forbes magazine and analyzed by my organization, the New York City Coalition Against Hunger.

Given the soaring poverty, high unemployment, and stagnant wages for rank-and-file workers, these numbers show the folly of the politicians who want to further extend tax cuts for the mega-rich while doing nothing to prevent subway fair hikes – which are essentially tax increases on millions of working New Yorkers.

One of the main reasons that transit authorities in New York and elsewhere have to raise fares is that operating subsides from the federal government and state governments have been slashed, and one of the main reasons that neither the federal government nor the states have enough money for such subsidies or other vital purposes is that they no longer require the wealthiest to pay their fair share of taxes.

A person in New York working full-time at a minimum wage salary ($7.25 per hour) for 52 weeks would earn $15,080 in a year, often too little to feed their family. According to the Coalition’s calculations, that means that New York’s 57 billionaires collectively have as much money as the annual earnings of 13 million minimum wage workers. Those billionaires have an average net worth of $3.6 billion, which means that on average, each billionaire has as much money as the annual earnings of 232,000 minimum wage workers.

I am a committed capitalist. I firmly believe that our society should reward hard work and talent with success, as it once did for my grandparents and so many others after they came to this country. I don’t believe in government trying to guarantee equal outcomes, but government should ensure a level playing field for equal opportunity.

But does anyone believe that the main reason that the average New York City billionaire has 232,000 times as much money as the average minimum wage worker is that the billionaire works 232,000 times as hard or is 232,000 times as talented?

In the last few decades, all too often, wealth at the top has been generated by rigging the system in ways that actually hamper the long-term economic health of the society as a whole. We need to replace the crony capitalism of today with what I call the ‘opportunity capitalism’ of previous generations that gave families who worked hard and played by the rules the ability to get ahead.

And we need to once again ensure that the ultra-rich pay their fair share of taxes, which are necessary to maintain basic services. Government’s retreat from progressive taxation has resulted in food stamps funding cuts at the federal level, food pantry and soup kitchen cuts at the state level, and school lunch cuts at the city level. This is not just vague economic theory – this is real-life pain for hungry families.

Photo credit: Steve Wampler

A More Productive Path than Self-Immolation

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

Everyone’s approvingly linking to this Edward Luce piece on “the crisis of middle-class America.” I want to set myself on fire.

Seriously, it’s discouraging to see so many people who should know better (because they’ve argued these points with me before) promoting this article. I can’t think of another piece in the doomsday genre—and there are many—that gets it so consistently wrong. I’ll stipulate that none of the criticisms below are intended to minimize the struggles that many people are facing. But it’s important to get this stuff right. Let me dive in, with Luce’s words in italics and my responses following:

Yet somehow things don’t feel so good any more. Last year the bank tried to repossess the Freemans’ home even though they were only three months in arrears.

The share of mortgages either in foreclosure or 3 or more months delinquent is 11.4 percent, which, because 30 percent of homeowners have paid off their mortgage, translates into 8 percent of homes. So the Freemans’ situation is typical of about one in twelve homeowners, or not quite 3 percent of households (since one-third rent).

Their son, Andy, was recently knocked off his mother’s health insurance and only painfully reinstated for a large fee.

Luce is arguing that there’s a new crisis facing the current generation. About 30 percent of those age 18 to 24 were uninsured in 2008 when the National Health Interview Survey contacted them. I don’t have trends for that age group, but the share of Americans under age 65 without health insurance coverage was 14.7 percent in 2008, up from…14.5 percent in 1984.

And, much like the boarded-up houses that signal America’s epidemic of foreclosures, the drug dealings and shootings that were once remote from their neighbourhood are edging ever closer, a block at a time.

Well, the violent crime rate in 2008 was 19.3 per 1,000 people age 12 and up, down from 27.4 in 2000 and 45.2 in 1985.

Once upon a time this was called the American Dream. Nowadays it might be called America’s Fitful Reverie. Indeed, Mark spends large monthly sums renting a machine to treat his sleep apnea, which gives him insomnia. “If we lost our jobs, we would have about three weeks of savings to draw on before we hit the bone,” says Mark, who is sitting on his patio keeping an eye on the street and swigging from a bottle of Miller Lite. “We work day and night and try to save for our retirement. But we are never more than a pay check or two from the streets.”

The key question is, again, Is this worse than in the past? The risk of a large drop in household income has risen modestly, but people experiencing a drop end up much better off than in the past. For example, the risk of a 25 percent drop in income over 2 years has risen from 7 percent among married couples in the late 1960s to 14 percent in the mid-2000s (based on my computations from Panel Study of Income Dynamics data). But if you look at the average income of married-couple families after their 25 percent drop, it rose from $40,000 to $63,000 (in constant 2009 dollars).

Solid Democratic voters, the Freemans are evidently phlegmatic in their outlook. The visitor’s gaze is drawn to their fridge door, which is festooned with humorous magnets. One says: “I am sorry I missed Church, I was busy practicing witchcraft and becoming a lesbian.” Another says: “I would tell you to go to Hell but I work there and I don’t want to see you every day.” A third, “Jesus loves you but I think you’re an asshole.” Mark chuckles: “Laughter is the best medicine.”

Hmmm…just a typical American household…

The slow economic strangulation of the Freemans and millions of other middle-class Americans started long before the Great Recession, which merely exacerbated the “personal recession” that ordinary Americans had been suffering for years. Dubbed “median wage stagnation” by economists, the annual incomes of the bottom 90 per cent of US families have been essentially flat since 1973 – having risen by only 10 per cent in real terms over the past 37 years. That means most Americans have been treading water for more than a generation. Over the same period the incomes of the top 1 per cent have tripled. In 1973, chief executives were on average paid 26 times the median income. Now the multiple is above 300.

Adjusting for household size and using the PCE deflator to adjust for inflation, median household income in the Current Population Survey rose from $29,800 in 1973 to $40,500 in 2008 (in 2009 dollars, again based on my compuatations). Factoring in employer and government noncash benefits would show even more impressive growth.

In the last expansion, which started in January 2002 and ended in December 2007, the median US household income dropped by $2,000 – the first ever instance where most Americans were worse off at the end of a cycle than at the start.

This is entirely a function of changes in the population composition (more Latinos) and in the share of employee compensation going to health insurance and retirement plans.

Worse is that the long era of stagnating incomes has been accompanied by something profoundly un-American: declining income mobility.

Nope. The evidence is ambiguous, but the best studies imply that intergenerational economic mobility hasn’t changed that much in the past few decades. Intra-generational earnings mobility has increased since the 1950s, though it has declined among men.

Alexis de Tocqueville, the great French chronicler of early America, was once misquoted as having said: “America is the best country in the world to be poor.” That is no longer the case. Nowadays in America, you have a smaller chance of swapping your lower income bracket for a higher one than in almost any other developed economy – even Britain on some measures. To invert the classic Horatio Alger stories, in today’s America if you are born in rags, you are likelier to stay in rags than in almost any corner of old Europe.

Tim Smeeding’s research based on the Luxembourg Income Study shows that in general Americans have higher incomes than their European counterparts as long as they are in the top 80 to 90 percent of the income distribution. Below that, incomes are more comparable across countries, and the living standards of Americans look less impressive. The US has comparable intergenerational earnings mobility to Europe, according to Markus Jantti’s research, except among men (but not women) who start out at the bottom. In terms of occupational mobility, David Grusky’s research shows we’re as good or better as anywhere else, but this doesn’t translate into earnings mobility because we let people get rich or poor to a greater extent than other countries do. Jantti and Anders Bjorklund have estimated that Sweden would have the same mobility as the U.S. if the return to skill was as high there as it is here. Finally, employer benefits further complicate how “bad” we look.

Combine those two deep-seated trends with a third – steeply rising inequality – and you get the slow-burning crisis of American capitalism. It is one thing to suffer grinding income stagnation. It is another to realise that you have a diminishing likelihood of escaping it – particularly when the fortunate few living across the proverbial tracks seem more pampered each time you catch a glimpse. “Who killed the American Dream?” say the banners at leftwing protest marches. “Take America back,” shout the rightwing Tea Party demonstrators.

The rise in income inequality is mostly about the top 5 percent of the top 1 percent pulling away from everyone else, and existing estimates overstate inequality and its growth by ignoring employer and government noncash benefits and possibly by ignoring different rates of inflation in different parts of the income distribution.

Unsurprisingly, a growing majority of Americans have been telling pollsters that they expect their children to be worse off than they are.

Totally wrong. The key here is to only look at polling questions that ask people about their own kids, not kids in general. Here are the relevant survey results I could find:

General Social Survey (1994)—45 percent said their children’s standard of living will be better (vs. 20 percent worse)
General Social Survey (1996)—47 percent
General Social Survey (1998)—55 percent
General Social Survey (2000)—59 percent
General Social Survey (2002)—61 percent said their children’s standard of living will be better (vs. 10% worse)
General Social Survey (2004)—53 percent
General Social Survey (2006)—57 percent
General Social Survey (2008)—53 percent
Economic Mobility Project (2009)—62 percent said their children’s standard of living will be better (vs. 10 percent worse) (unlike GSS and PRC, asked only of those with kids under 18)
Pew Research Center (2010)—45 percent said their children’s standard of living will be better (vs. 26 percent worse)

BusinessWeek (1989)—59 percent said their children will have a better life than they had (and 25 percent said about as good)
BusinessWeek (1992)—34 percent said their children will have a better life than they had (and 33 percent said about as good)
BusinessWeek (1995)—46 percent said their children will have a better life than they have had (and 27 percent said about as good)
BusinessWeek (1996)—50 percent expected their children would have a better life than they have had (and 26 percent said about as good)
Harris Poll (2002)—41 percent expected children will have a better life than they have had (and 29 percent said about as good)

Harris Poll (1997)—48 percent felt good about their children’s future
Harris Poll (1998)—65 percent felt good about their children’s future (17 percent N.A.)
Harris Poll (1999)—60 percent felt good about their children’s future (15 percent N.A.)
Harris Poll (2000)—63 percent felt good about their children’s future (17 percent N.A.)
Harris Poll (2001)—56 percent felt good about their children’s future
Harris Poll (2002)—59 percent felt good about their children’s future
Harris Poll (2003)—59 percent felt good about their children’s future
Harris Poll (2004)—63 percent felt good about their children’s future

Pew Research Center (1997)—51 percent said their children will be better off than them when they grow up
Pew Research Center (1999)—67 percent said their children will be better off than them when they grow up

Bendixen & Schroth (1989)—68 percent said their children will be better off than they are
Princeton Religion Research Center (1997)—62 percent of men said their sons will have a better chance of succeeding than they did; 85 percent of women said their daughters will have a better chance
Angus Reid Group (1998)—78 percent said children will be better off than them
Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation/Harvard (2000)—46 percent said they were confident that life for their children will be better than it has been for them
Economic Mobility Project (2009)—43 percent said it would be easier for their children to move up the income ladder
Economic Mobility Project (2009)—45 percent said it would be easier for their children to attain the American Dream

Also, polls consistently show that Americans say they have higher living standards than their parents.

And although the golden years were driven by the rise of mass higher education, you did not need to have graduated from high school to make ends meet. Like her husband, Connie Freeman was raised in a “working-class” home in the Iron Range of northern Minnesota near the Canadian border. Her father, who left school aged 14 following the Great Depression of the 1930s, worked in the iron mines all his life. Towards the end of his working life he was earning $15 an hour – more than $40 in today’s prices.

Thirty years later, Connie, who is far better qualified than her father, having graduated from high school and done one year of further education, makes $17 an hour.

It’s not valid to compare her pay mid-career to her father’s at the end of his career—and also, how much work experience does she have relative to him? Did she take time off to raise kids?

The pace of life has also changed: “We used to sit around the dinner table every evening when I was growing up,” says Connie, who speaks with prolonged vowels of the Midwest. “Nowadays that’s sooooo rare.”

Time-use surveys show that while parents spend more time working (because of mothers) than in the past, they do not spend less time with children. They spend less time doing things by themselves.

Then there are those, such as Paul Krugman, The New York Times columnist and Nobel prize winner, who blame it on politics, notably the conservative backlash which began when Ronald Reagan came to power in 1980, and which sped up the decline of unions and reversed the most progressive features of the US tax system.

Fewer than a tenth of American private sector workers now belong to a union. People in Europe and Canada are subjected to the same forces of globalization and technology. But they belong to unions in larger numbers and their health care is publicly funded.

Though unionization has declined markedly in most of these countries, and their health care policies are increasingly becoming too costly. Also, most of the decline in unionization in the U.S. occurred before Reagan took office.

More than half of household bankruptcies in the US are caused by a serious illness or accident.

This is bad Elizabeth Warren research—she counts a bankruptcy as being “caused” by illness or accident if one was reported, but the household could have been in serious debt before these occurred. At any rate, bankruptcies are exceedingly rare (under 1 percent of households—see Figure 13).

Pride of place in Shareen Miller’s home goes to a grainy photograph of her chatting with Barack Obama at a White House ceremony last year to inaugurate a new law that mandates equal pay for women.

As an organizer for Virginia’s 8,000 personal care assistants – people who look after the old and disabled in their own homes – Shareen, 42, was invited along with several dozen others to witness the signing.

Ah…another representative household…

More and more young Americans are put off by the thought of long-term debt.

Evidence?

Had enough? I have speculated that to the extent economic insecurity has increased, it reflects the impact of a negativistic media (amplified by gloom-and-doom liberalism).

Pieces like Luce’s—and the blog posts it generates—affect consumer sentiment. Ben Bernanke and Tim Geithner aren’t the only people who can inadvertently talk down the economy.

This item is cross-posted at ScottWinshipWeb.

Photo Credit: Oddsock’s Photostream

RIP Robert Byrd

Posted on June 28, 2010September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

It’s been a tough year for the Democratic tradition in the U.S. Senate, with the loss of Edward Kennedy and the solidification of the Almighty Filibuster as the real power in the institution. But the death of Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia really does turn a lot of pages, while denying the Senate its unrivalled historian and parliamentarian.

Byrd’s tenure alone makes him one of the titans of Senate history: more than a half-century, spanning the administrations of eleven presidents. He was, however, the junior senator from West Virginia until he was 68, and in another reflection of the Senate’s slow pace of change, his career overlapped with only five Democratic leaders — not counting Byrd himself.

When Byrd was first elected to the Senate in 1958, Democrats from his corner of the world were typically hard-core segregationists and equally hard-core New Deal economic progressives. He abandoned and apologized for the former habit, but never the latter. The persistent poverty of West Virginia — for much of career it included some of the very poorest areas of the country — made it one place where politicians never shrank from the full exercise of power on behalf of the home folks, or from celebration of the seniority system that gave Byrd and so many others the clout to serve as equalizers. Byrd became the embodiment of Senate traditions for good reason: they served his constituents well.

He survived wave after wave of efforts in both parties to change the Senate and make it more responsive to national political trends, and might well have survived one or two more had he been born 10 years later. He also survived wave after wave of efforts to bend Congress to the will of presidents of both parties, and in that respect was more consistent than most of his colleagues in both parties.

In this era of political turbulence and simmering resentment of professional politicians, it’s unlikely America will ever see another senator like him. And so in a very real sense a big part of national history will go to the grave with him. His distinctive and authoritative voice will be missed, and may he rest in peace.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Photo credit: cliff1066™’s Photostream

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell On Its Way Out

Posted on May 25, 2010September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

You’ve probably heard the news by now, but word is that President Obama and Congress have reached an essential compromise on the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT), a law that keeps homosexuals in the military so long as they’re quiet about it, and kicks them out if they’re not. The new compromise allows homosexuals to serve openly:

The compromise was finalized in meetings Monday at the White House and on Capitol Hill. Lawmakers will now, within days, vote on amendments that would repeal the Clinton-era policy, with a provision ensuring that any change would not take effect until after the Pentagon completes a study about its impact on troops. That study is due to Congress by Dec. 1.

The Washington Post goes on to note that conservative Democrats claim that they would oppose DADT’s repeal unless military leaders support the new law. Guess what? They already have. Here’s Chairman of the Joints Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen in Senate testimony in February:

[I]t is my personal belief that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do. No matter how I look at the issue, I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.

Republicans have tried to distort the issue, claiming that the integration of homosexuals into the military amounts to a “liberal policy agenda,” which of course contradicts the chairman. Not to mention the fact that it makes America’s military, and the country, stronger. Here’s what Kyle Bailey said on P-Fix in March:

Under DADT, almost 800 “mission-critical” troops have been discharged in the last five years, including at least 59 Arabic and nine Farsi linguists. These unnecessary discharges create additional challenges and risks for our brave young men and women on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan. …

DADT unnecessarily limits the pool of potential recruits, including some of the best and brightest young minds we need to win the war on terror and run our military in the decades to come. According to recent estimates, some 4,000 service members each year choose not to re-enlist because of the policy, and 41,000 gay and bisexual men might choose to enlist or re-enlist if the policy were repealed.

Kyle’s right. This isn’t just about social policy — it’s about national security.

Photo Credit: Chairman of the Join Chiefs of Staff’s Photostream

Could Meg Whitman Lose Her Primary?

Posted on May 12, 2010September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

After spending upwards of $60 million, much of it lately on attack ads against her Republican primary rival, Steve Poizner, California gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman appears to have lost most of a large lead over Poizner and is heading towards the June 8 balloting in an astonishingly vulnerable position.

A new Survey USA poll out this week shows eMeg leading Poizner 39 percent/37 percent, a 20-point net swing in Poizner’s favor since the previous SUSA survey in April. Even if you are skeptical about the accuracy of SUSA’s robo-polls, California political cognoscenti all seem to agree that Poizner is closing fast.

This is significant beyond the borders of California for at least four reasons. The first and most obvious is that Whitman’s epic spending on early television ads doesn’t seem to be doing her a lot of good. If she winds up becoming the new Al Checchi — the 1998 Democratic gubernatorial candidate who broke all previous spending records on heavily negative ads and then got drubbed in his primary — it will be an object lesson to self-funders everywhere.

The second reason a Whitman defeat or near-defeat would resonate broadly is that it would confirm the rightward mood of Republicans even in a state where they are reputedly more moderate. At this point, both Poizner and Whitman are constantly calling each other “liberals,” with Poizner, who’s running ads featuring conservative GOP avatar Tom McClintock, getting the better of that particular argument. Whitman would have undoubtedly preferred to have kept closer to the political center in preparation for a tough general election campaign against Jerry Brown. But Poizner is forcing her to compete for the True Conservative mantle in a very conspicuous way.

Third, there are signs that Poizner is also forcing Whitman — and by implication, the entire California Republican Party — to risk a repetition of the 1990s-era GOP alienation of Latino voters by endorsing harsh immigration measures. This has been a signature issue for Poizner from the beginning; he supports bringing back Proposition 187 — the 1994 ballot measure pushed by then-Gov. Pete Wilson that is widely interpreted as having destroyed California’s Republican majority by making the state’s huge Latino population a reliable and overwhelming Democratic constituency. Poizner has also lavishly praised the new Arizona immigration law. Having tried to ignore the issue initially, Whitman is now running radio ads in which Pete Wilson (her campaign chairman) touts her determination to fight illegal immigration. If those ads migrate to broadcast TV, it’s a sure bet that Whitman is panicking, and that monolithic Latino support for Brown in the general election is a real possibility. And if that can happen in California, where immigrant-bashing is so obviously perilous, it can certainly happen in other parts of the country.

Finally, it’s worth noting that aside from immigration, the issue on which Poizner seems to be gaining traction is the attention he’s devoted to Whitman’s involvement with Goldman Sachs. She was on the firm’s board for a number of years, and earned a very large amount of money from an insider practice — then legal, now illegal — called “spinning,” which she nows says she “regrets.” Poizner’s having a lot of fun with this issue, and the California Democratic Party is chipping in with an ad ostensibly promoting financial reform in Washington that is mainly aimed at Whitman. Lesson to would-be-business-executive-candidates: some kinds of private-sector experience are not helpful to your candidacy in the current climate.

It’s worth noting that there’s another major statewide GOP primary going on in California, involving another female former-business-executive who gained national attention through involvement in the McCain presidential campaign. That would be Carly Fiorina, who is running for the Senate nomination to oppose Barbara Boxer, but is struggling to catch up with an opponent, Tom Campbell, who really does have a moderate repuation, at least on abortion and same-sex marriage. And one of Fiorina’s main problems is a third candidate, Chuck DeVore, who’s running hard as the True Conservative in the race. Fiorina has recently wheeled out endorsements from Sarah Palin and Rick Santorum. All three major GOP Senate candidates have endorsed the Arizona immigration law. The outcome of this race, and where the competition positions the winner, could also have a fateful impact on the general election and on the future of California politics.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

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

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.

Neo-Confederate History Month

Posted on April 8, 2010September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

As most readers have probably heard, Virginia’s Republican Governor Bob McDonnell got himself into hot water by declaring April “Confederate History Month,” in a proclamation that did not mention the rather pertinent fact that the Confederacy was a revolutionary (and by definition, treasonous) effort to maintain slavery against even the possibility of abolition.

After the predictable firestorm of criticism, McDonnell allowed that it must have been a mistake not to mention slavery in his proclamation. And then he repeated his rationale for the whole idea, which was, he claimed, simply a matter of promoting tourism in anticipation of the sesquicentennial of the Civil War’s outbreak. Tourism!

I’m sure most conservatives will consider McDonnell’s act of contrition sufficient, while many liberals will cynically conclude the whole thing was a dog whistle to the far Right, much like his earlier and less notorious commemoration of March 7-13 as Christian Heritage Week, in honor of the Christian Right’s revisionist theory that the Founders were theocrats at heart.

But as a white southerner old enough to remember the final years of Jim Crow, when every month was Confederate History Month, I have a better idea for McDonnell: Let’s have a Neo-Confederate History Month that draws attention to the endless commemorations of the Lost Cause that have wrought nearly as much damage as the Confederacy itself.

It would be immensely useful for Virginians and southerners generally to spend some time reflecting on the century or so of grinding poverty and cultural isolation that fidelity to the Romance in Gray earned for the entire region, regardless of race. Few Americans from any region know much about the actual history of Reconstruction, capped by the shameful consignment of African Americans to the tender mercies of their former masters, or about the systematic disenfranchisement of black citizens (and in some places, particularly McDonnell’s Virginia, of poor whites) that immediately followed.

A Neo-Confederate History Month could be thoroughly bipartisan. Republicans could enjoy greater exposure to the virulent racism of such progressive icons as William Jennings Bryan and Woodrow Wilson, not to mention Democratic New Deal crusaders in the South like Mississippi’s Theodore Bilbo. The capture of the political machinery of Republican and Democratic parties in a number of states, inside and beyond the South, by the revived Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s, would be an interesting subject for further study as well.

Most of all, a Neo-Confederate History Month could remind us of the last great effusion of enthusiasm for Davis and Lee and Jackson and all the other avatars of the Confederacy: the white southern fight to maintain racial segregation in the 1950s and 1960s. That’s when “Dixie” was played as often as the national anthem at most white high school football games in the South; when Confederate regalia were attached to state flags across the region; and when the vast constitutional and political edifice of pre-secession agitprop was brought back to life in the last-ditch effort to make the Second Reconstruction fail like the first.

Bob McDonnell should be particularly responsible, as a former Attorney General of his state, for reminding us all of the “massive resistance” doctrine preached by Virginia Senator Harry Byrd in response to federal judicial rulings and pending civil rights laws, and of the “interposition” theory of nullification spread most notably by Richmond News Leader editor James Jackson Kilpatrick.

Any Neo-Confederate History Month would be incomplete, of course, without reference to the contemporary conservative revival of states’ rights and nullification theories redolent of proto-Confederates, Confederates, and neo-Confederates.

Having flirted with such theories himself, Bob McDonnell probably wouldn’t be interested in discussing them in the context of Civil War history. But that’s okay: A greater public understanding of the exceptionally unsavory tradition that conservative Republicans are following in claiming that states can refuse to accept health care reform would be valuable without an explicit discussion of current politics.

So give it up, governor: If you are going to have a Confederate History Month, at least be honest enough to acknowledge that the legacy of the Confederacy didn’t die at Appomattox.

This item is cross-posted at The New Republic.

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

“About” Race

Posted on April 1, 2010September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

A perennial issue that’s been bubbling up a lot since the rise of Barack Obama has been whether and when it’s fair for progressives to suspect racial motives in conservative political appeals. Obama’s race has made the subject pretty much unavoidable, but the special ferocity of conservative reactions to Obama’s candidacy, presidency and policies has raised the possibility that something a bit unusual is going on. But if the subject ever comes up, conservatives now angrily accuse their accusers of “playing the race card,” as though the issue is by definition illegitimate or demagogic.

Frank Rich of the New York Times stirred up the latest contretemps with a column that suggested the heat behind much of the grassroots anger towards Obama comes at least in part from “fears of disenfranchisement among a dwindling and threatened minority in the country” — e.g., white men. At RealClearPolitics, a noted analyst of and sometimes advocate for the political views of white men, David Paul Kuhn, issued a response that accused not only Rich but “liberal elites” of perpetually playing the race card in order to ignore or dismiss legitimate discontent with liberal policies.

I have no interest in adjudicating the Rich/Kuhn dispute, other than to say that Rich is clearly imprecise in his attribution of semi-racist motives to conservatives, and that Kuhn trumps that mistake by pretending that Rich has accused every single white person who doesn’t approve of Obama’s job performance of being a racist.

I am interested in Kuhn’s broader argument, which is pretty characteristic of conservative “race card” rhetoric. His standard on this subject seems to be that if there is any possible non-racial motive for a political posture, then it’s irresponsible to impute any racial motives, not just today, but in the past:

For decades, leading liberals explained white concerns about urban upheaval, crime, welfare, school busing, affirmative action and more recently, illegal immigration, as rooted in racism. Not safer streets or safer schools. Not concern about taxes for welfare, as working class whites (like all races) struggled in their hardscrabble lives. Not regular men who never knew “white male privilege” but were on the losing end of affirmative action (recall Frank Ricci). Not job competition or economic class. Instead, leading liberals constantly saw the color of the issue as the only issue.

I don’t know which “leading liberals” he’s talking about, but generally speaking, that’s just not true. “Liberals” have typically viewed conservative appeals on issues like crime, welfare, busing, affirmative action, welfare and immigration as designed to play on both racial and non-racial fears and concerns. Kuhn, however, seems to think so long as there is an available non-racial motive for a “concern,” then examining possible racial motives is out of bounds. It’s got to be one thing or another — all race, or all something more noble-sounding or at least less disreputable.

It doesn’t take a lot of deep thinking, or “liberalism,” for that matter, to understand the folly of this approach. Self-conscious, highly-motivated racists do not often proclaim their racism these days, precisely because it is disreputable and does not win friends or influence people. And even back when open racism was more common, racists often denied racism as a primary motive (viz., Confederate and neo-Confederate claims that secession was not “about” slavery, but about states’ rights, constitutional protections for private property, southern “culture,” anti-capitalism, or regional honor — anything other than the ownership of other human beings). And during the more recent period of southern resistance to civil rights, which I experienced personally, and whose constitutional “theories” have been so avidly seized upon by many of today’s conservative activists, you didn’t hear much talk about segregation as a means of subjecting black folk as inferior. It was all about “racial peace,” and “the southern way of life,” and again, state’s rights and constitutional protections for private property. And it didn’t fool a soul.

If David Paul Kuhn really believes that antagonism to busing, affirmative action, welfare and immigration did not have any racial content, or that conservative appeals on these issues (which, as far back as George Wallace’s 1968 presidential campaign, always avoided overt racial language) did not count on racial resentment as one factor for their success, he’s living in a land innocent of actual experience with human beings.

If he doesn’t believe that, and has at least one foot in the real world where racial motives coincide with others, then the issue is not some sweeping effort to delegitimize the “race card,” but an examination of when political appeals cross the line into deliberate efforts to promote white racial resentment.

I’d say, for example, that the strange centrality of the (now-defunct) inner-city advocacy group ACORN in recent conservative demonology is hard to understand as anything other than a deliberate dog whistle to racist sentiments. According to an awful lot of right-wing rhetoric, ACORN’s housing advocacy for poor and mainly black people helped create the mortgage finance crisis, which led to the financial collapse, which in turn led to demands by poor and minority people for relief, which then led to a wholesale socialist agenda, promoted by a black politician who worked with ACORN in Chicago, who counted on ACORN-secured fradulent votes for his election. Elements of this ACORN Derangement Syndrome made it into McCain-Palin campaign ads and speeches, and also fed the Republican-led drive in Congress to “defund ACORN” last year. Polls have shown a remarkable degree of rank-and-file Republican fixation on ACORN.

Is it possible to believe or promote these preposterous things about ACORN’s vast and sinister influence while being innocent of racial motives? I guess so, but it’s most unlikely, given the organization’s inner-city focus, inner-city staffing and inner-city clientele. Why pick ACORN as the center of this conspiracy if you don’t want to paint it black? Beats me.

A closer call is the return of conservative “anti-welfare” rhetoric, generally abandoned after the 1996 national welfare reform law. It popped up first in Republican (and McCain) attacks on Obama’s campaign proposals (particularly for an increase in the Earned Income Tax Credit for the working poor), and then during the health reform fight. Recent conservative discussion of the the EITC as “welfare,” enabling people to vote for more benefits without paying taxes (not really true, since working poor families still pay heavily regressive federal payroll taxes), has been interesting because that rhetoric was rebuked by none other than George W. Bush when Tom DeLay raised it back in 1999. Combined with the “welfare queen” treatment of minority families who supposedly took out mortgages they couldn’t afford, triggering the mortgage crisis, the 2008 “anti-welfare” rhetoric sure looked suspiciously racial. And there’s nothing illegitimate, either, about wondering if the “undeserved” beneficiaries of mortgage relief or health care benefits might look a little dusky in the eyes of resentful middle-class voters who are being encouraged to oppose this sort of socialist looting.

The bottom line is that anti-Obama appeals aren’t just “about” race, but it’s naive to think they are just “about” everything else. He is, after all, the living embodiment of the elite-underclass “liberal alliance” that conservatives have been warning white middle-class folks about for several decades now. At an absolute minimum, conservatives ought to accept responsibility for the racial sentiments their rhetoric can sometimes stimulate, and try to avoid such appeals, instead of simply intoning “race card” and trying to shut down any discussion of the subject.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

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

A Major Teachable Moment

Posted on March 29, 2010September 18, 2024 by The Progressive Policy Institute

The more I think about it, the fight over a Supreme Court nomination that we are likely to see begin in a month or so could be a major teachable moment for progressives about the underlying belief system of contemporary conservatives and of Republicans who have let themselves get radicalized to an extraordinary degreee since the latter stages of the 2008 presidential contest.

As we speak, conservatives all over the country are demanding legal action by states to challenge the constitutionality of health reform legislation (in my home state of Georgia, there’s even talk of impeaching the Democratic Attorney General, Thurbert Baker, for refusing to waste taxpayer dollars by launching a suit). Yet the basis for such suits — typically a denial of the power of Congress to legislate economic matters under the Commerce and Spending Clauses of the U.S. Constitution — is a collateral attack on the constitutionality of a vast array of past legislation, including the New Deal and Great Society initiatives, not to mention most civil rights laws.

And that questionable proposition is completely aside from other conservative efforts, many of them backed by major Republican officeholders, to “interpose” (to use the term for this strategy when it was deployed by segregationists in the 1950s) state sovereignty to block the implementation of health reform and other federal laws. And beyond that we have the even more radical nullification and secession gestures that have become standard features of conservative Republican rhetoric over the last year or so.

In other words, a debate that revolves around constitutional interpretation is not necessarily one that will help the conservative movement at this particular moment. Indeed, it could actually help progressives raise suspicions that Republicans are contemplating a very radical agenda if they return to power, one that could include (particularly given the stridency of their fiscal rhetoric lately) a direct assault on very popular programs like Social Security and Medicare.

Moreover, we can anticipate that a Court nomination fight will renew noisy efforts by the Christian Right, which has good reason right now to remind the news media and Republican politicians alike of its continuing power in the GOP, to advance its own eccentric views on America as a “Christian Nation” whose founders never intended to promote church-state separation, not to mention their demands for an overthrow of legalized abortion and same-sex unions. At a time when many conservatives are trying very hard to submerge divisive cultural issues and create a monomaniacal message on limited government, a Court fight will unleash cultural furies beyond control.

And finally, if it really gets vicious, a Court fight could cast a harsh spotlight on the drift of the conservative movement towards a general attitude of defiance towards the rule of law. As I noted in a post yesterday, the downside of the libertarian energy given conservatives by the Tea Party movement is its tendency to treat every major government institution, the presidency, the Congress, and the judiciary alike, with contempt as threats to liberty and “natural rights.” As much as Americans love liberty, they also love order and stability. They aren’t likely to react well to the spectacle of conservatives screaming for a virtual revolution against a popularly elected government, the social safety net, and constitutional doctrines that have been in place for 75 years.

So: bring on the Court fight, and bring it on with all the rhetoric Tea Party folk and other radicalized conservatives have been using about Obama’s “socialism” and the Nazi-like tyranny of universal health coverage! Before it’s over, Republicans may wish they had just picked a different fight.

This item is cross-posted at The Democratic Strategist.

Reason #178 Not to Negotiate with the Taliban: Women’s Issues

Posted on March 16, 2010 by The Progressive Policy Institute

I’ve written before about why we shouldn’t negotiate with any Taliban member who ranks higher than “low- and mid-level fighters.” I think it’s a fool’s errand to believe that the Taliban’s leadership would negotiate in good faith, especially when the likes of Taliban chief Mullah Omar starts sounding like he’d rather spend his time in Haight-Ashbury in 1968.

However, the idea has gained more-than-superficial traction with some highly respected individuals — Vice President Biden, Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, to name a few. Of course, details like with whom we would negotiate and under what circumstances remain relatively opaque, but the fact that the Pakistanis are now vacuuming up the Taliban’s higher-ups suggests that the idea is a serious one and Islamabad wants to control the bargaining chips.

But today, the Washington Post reports yet another reason not bark too far up the Taliban’s tree — women’s issues:

The Taliban’s repressive treatment of women helped galvanize international opposition in the 1990s, and by some measures democracy has revolutionized Afghan women’s lives. Their worry now is … that male leaders, behind closed doors and desperate for peace, might not force Taliban leaders to accept, however grudgingly, that women’s roles have changed.

[…]

“We don’t want them to stop us from getting an education or working in an office,” said Jan, 18, wearing a rhinestone-studded head scarf at her rebuilt school. Women, she said, should be “the first priority.”

Karzai, the Afghan president, has endorsed the idea of talking with all levels of the Taliban, and his aides insist that women need not worry about the equal rights the Afghan constitution guarantees them. But they also say they are performing a difficult balancing act, and suggest that making bold statements about the sanctity of such topics as women’s rights might kill talks before they start.

Is there any question about women’s fate in an Afghanistan that includes Taliban governing officials? There shouldn’t be — even if the Taliban holds a minority of, say, ministries or seats in parliament, it’s obvious that women’s development in all walks of Afghan life would be serverly hampered.