The Democrats' Paradox

update, 6/1/06: The article I discuss below is, in fact, online, and you can read it here.

Putting aside the issue of whether it will be enough, in 2006, for Democrats to return to power in Congress solely on the strength of Republican venality and ineptitude, here's my take on the central dilemma the party faces:

To achieve partisan ends, they must eschew partisan means.

In other words, if they ever hope to again have a sustainable majority, the Democrats have to stop acting like Democrats. I'm not referring to the usual MSM-regurgitated critiques: the lack of a single voice, the muddled message, the schizophrenia (as if any major party at any time could avoid that). I mean the interest-group stridency below *and* the reflexive trimming and self-preservation above. Most of all, if they want to lead, prominent Democrats must stop being afraid of getting out in front of public opinion--and if we hope that others not online or intensely engaged in politics will follow, we need to stop being so damn condescending to our countrymen and -women.

What brings all this up? A piece in the current New Yorker, which details the ongoing struggle between the moderates and the true believers. (The article isn't online, but here is a Q&A with the author.) The story begins with a lot of the usual disingenuous arguments that annoy progressives about media portrayals of Democrats: shots at the Kerry campaign, an unsubstantiated jab at Howard Dean, etc. In that sense, it's annoying to read. But toward the end of the piece, the author makes two points that I found very disturbing--as, I think, should any progressive who hopes to see Democratic victories in 2006 and 2008.

The first, which has been talked to death everywhere else so I won't delve too deeply into it here, was the author's perception--one that, sadly, strikes me as accurate--that progressive activists just aren't very interested in issues of national security and particularly the struggle against Islamofascism.

These people--maybe it's a New York City thing--should be burning with outrage that we haven't caught bin Laden, that we haven't cracked down on financing for terror networks among our "allies" (and creditors, which probably explains things) in the region. They should be asking why we haven't even tried (to my knowledge) to create means of cultural outreach to the Arab world, to show them that America represents more than military power, to replicate the idealism of the Peace Corps and related efforts that helped win hearts, hearths and minds in the Third World, to really get smart about how we try to spread our ideas and ideals in that world rather than just giving it to Karen Hughes and Madison Avenue types with ties to Republican donors.

They should be asking why the president never called on his country to get personally involved in the effort, whether through writing letters to soldiers or setting up pen-pal programs with Iraqi schoolchildren, or even for some kind of new GI Bill for returning troops. If this is a "Long War," we'd better be trying to win it with more than military power.

The second was his description of the abortion debate, specifically the back and forth at one recent Democratic event:

Recently, at a meeting held at the Center for American Progress... an abortion-rights activist named Rachel Laser... was impatient with the refusal of others to view abortion as a moral issue as well as a personal one. "I said at this session that there are 1.3 million abortions in this cuontry and that's too many, and it's too many for the majority of Americans," Laser... recalled. "Polls show that a majority of Americans think that abortion is morally wrong some or all of the time, and we have to address that."

After Laser spoke, the moderator asked the audience "by a show of hands, how many people here think that 1.3 million abortions is too many abortions?" As Laser remembers the moment, "It was only me and maybe one other who raised our hands. I definitely touched a nerve. The fact is that the majority of Americans are pro-choice, but the majority of Americans also sees something sad in what this procedure does."

This is political tone-deafness--not to mentin stupidity and self-sabotage--of the highest order. As I think I've written on AIS before, I'm a big fan of the Prevention First Act as both good public policy and a political masterstroke. Laser (great name; think of Dr. Evil chatting her up) gets this; we can make the conversation about the rank hypocrisy at the core of the Dobson/Robertson position on abortion, which is that they're perfectly happy to keep the number of abortions at current levels if the alternative is fewer pregnancies through greater access to contraception and sex education. Most Americans aren't ideologues or theocrats; they'd like to see fewer unwanted pregnancies and fewer terminated pregnancies. Don't the Democrats?

Some are saying that 2006 is a "competence, not ideology" election. Fair enough, and successful progressive governance will move more Americans toward our worldview. But we have to change our elitist habits, and we can't just insist on our superior morality and rectitude. The first step to changing someone's mind would seem to be acknowledging that s/he has one.

Colbert's Greatest Coup
Even while on vacation this week and next, Stephen Colbert keeps leading the pack in American journalism. Now it seems his groundbreaking work has gotten the attention of one of Colbert's heroes, the man whose departure from Congress dropped the Colbert Report's "Better Know a District" feature to 433 parts... the one, the only Tom DeLay.

The Bugman cites Colbert's parodic interview with lefty documentary-maker Robert Greenwald as fuel to discredit Greenwald's new film "The Big Buy: Tom DeLay's Stolen Congress." The clip is at the top of the "Defend DeLay" website. I swear to freakin' God. I read about it at the link above, and figured it would be gone by now (11:30 Wednesday night), but it's not.

I know it's probably too much to believe that DeLay, or any of his thuggish associates, have much of a sense of humor... but damn, don't they read those papers they link to, just down the page? The NYT has repeatedly written about Colbert's White House Correspondents' Dinner performance, here and here for starters. I'm assuming that the Wall Street Journal, National Review, Houston Chronicle, Washington Post, and other broadsheets linked from this page have done so as well. Tone-deafness is one thing, but this goes far beyond.

Leadership vs. Showmanship
For I think the second time ever, I'm feeling a bit sorry for George W. Bush today.

(The first time was after reading a New Yorker story a year or two ago that included an anecdote about Bush visiting a wounded soldier at Walter Reed Hospital in DC. When he asked the young man what he could do for the troops, the soldier responded, "Make sure there's enough water." Bush ordered water sent to the man's unit by the hundreds of gallons--a small gesture, but one that suggested to me that in the face of war, the president must be as helpless and anxious as anyone else... not to mention much more potentially stricken with guilt.)

As you're probably aware, the president is scheduled to go on national TV tonight to announce his decision to send National Guard troops to patrol the U.S.-Mexican border. Attentive followers of politics saw this coming at least two weeks ago, when new White House Chief of Staff Josh Bolten's plan to preserve Republican congressional majorities leaked out. Tonight's installment of Karl Rove's stagecraft-as-statecraft is the first item on the list:

1 DEPLOY GUNS AND BADGES. This is an unabashed play to members of the conservative base who are worried about illegal immigration. Under the banner of homeland security, the White House plans to seek more funding for an extremely visible enforcement crackdown at the Mexican border, including a beefed-up force of agents patrolling on all-terrain vehicles (ATVs). "It'll be more guys with guns and badges," said a proponent of the plan. "Think of the visuals. The President can go down and meet with the new recruits. He can go down to the border and meet with a bunch of guys and go ride around on an ATV." Bush has long insisted he wants a guest-worker program paired with stricter border enforcement, but House Republicans have balked at temporary legalization for immigrants, so the President's ambition of using the issue to make the party more welcoming to Hispanics may have to wait.

Of course, there are problems with this plan. First, it's making Mexico, an increasingly important trade partner, very nervous--and it could help Mexican presidential candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (a potential ally of the leftist Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, and likely no great friend of the U.S.) in his close race against Vicente Fox's chosen successor, Felipe Calderón. Second, as Republicans like Chuck Hagel and Arnold Schwarzenegger have noted, the move puts further strain on a National Guard already depleted by the demands of the Splendid Little War. Finally, of course, there's the question of how we'll pay for this new action.

All this gets me to why I feel a bit of sympathy for Bush. As I understand it, what he'd really like to do on immigration--combine stronger enforcement of current law with a fairly generous program to put millions of those who entered the country illegally but are working and otherwise contributing on a path toward citizenship--sounds pretty logical. It's impossible to argue otherwise than that immigration has been a great, maybe the greatest, historical strength of the country--even though at every step of the way, from the anti-Irish Know-Nothings of the 1850s, to the anti-Semitic strain within the Populist Party 50 years later and down to the Minutemen today, small-minded bigots have raised hell at the specter of newcomers. Naturally, their heirs and champions in the DeLaystertner Republican Congress have passed an enforcement-only measure.

The demographics of the country--particularly the prospect of 76 million Baby Boomers retiring over the next 25 or so years--make it more important than ever that we bring in younger workers and take steps to integrate them into the national community. (For this reason, I'm ambivalent about the various measures to make English the official language... though I could probably get behind them 100 percent if such laws came with an ironclad commitment to fully fund English-language instruction for everyone who wanted it.) More immediate are the concerns of major Republican donors in the service sector of the economy--fast food restaurants, department stores--whose profit margins are partially dependent upon their ability to hire illegals (and government willingness not to enforce related laws). So Bush is caught between the fear and loathing of his Fox News-watching base, and the greed of his biggest corporate benefactors.

The irony is that his preferred approach, if sold well, not only might placate both groups, but is likely the best course of action. And here's where my sympathy ends.

In Team of Rivals, her wonderful book about Abraham Lincoln's Cabinet, Doris Kearns Goodwin makes a profound observation about the art of political leadership: public figures must simultaneously be responsive to public opinion and seek to lead and shape it. Her example, of course, is Lincoln's approach to the question of slavery and the war. Historians might argue forever about Lincoln's true intentions on ending slavery, but Goodwin makes the point that the great political accomplishment of the first 18 months of the Civil War was to lay the groundwork for the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863. A measure that, if promulgated a year or even six months earlier, might have short-circuited Northern support for the war and torpedoed Lincoln's presidency, instead helped the North win by reinvigorating abolitionist fervor and preserving the neutrality of the European powers. On issue after issue, Lincoln repeated this sublime balancing act, always mindful of how far the country would go while seeking to lead it in his preferred direction.

In the hands of a Reagan or a Clinton, much less a Lincoln, Bush's immigration policy might be a huge political winner. But when a president has so thoroughly committed himself to theatrics--and so completely undermined his own credibility even with many presumed allies--the leadership option is taken off the table.

Republican Endgame: Lower Taxes, Higher Spending

Having pretty much comprehensively failed to govern the country in a relevant, let alone competent, fashion, the Republican majority in Congress is going back to the tax-cut well one more time. For the sake of the nation's finances, pray it will be the last time:

Congress is poised to extend a number of tax cuts on dividends and capital gains, along with a very temporary "fix" of the alternative minimum tax and a deceptive new retirement savings break. House Speaker Dennis Hastert, who's worried he will become Minority Leader this November, called it a "day of celebration for the American people."

We don't hear much celebrating. According to the Brookings-Urban Institute Tax Policy Center, 80 percent of this bill's benefits would go to the top 10 percent of taxpayers, with almost 20 percent going to the top one-tenth of one percent of taxpayers. And the cost of this highly concentrated bonanza is being disguised by (a) making it a "temporary" extension, even though the Bush administration and its GOP allies fervently want to make these tax cuts permanent, which would expand the cost 15-fold; and (b) treating a new Roth IRA rollover provision as a revenue raiser, when it's clear the long-term impact would be quite negative.

This certainly continues the Bush Era GOP pattern of cynically hiding the cost to the public of tax cuts by making them temporary, and then extending them to "avoid tax increases" (hence the name of this legislation: the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act). But this particular exercise in chicanery is even more cynical: The administration and the Republican congressional leadership have made it clear they will come back with another tax cut bill between now and the November elections, creating, no doubt, another "day of celebration." Slicing up the tax cuts not only enables them to squeeze legislation into the special rules that prevent a Senate filibuster; it also helps distract attention from the continuing imbalance between serial tax cuts that balloon the budget deficit and the small spending cuts (mainly affecting low-income Americans and those relying on student loans) they've enacted.

To put it another way, this strategy represents deficit financing on the installment plan, and fiscal irresponsibility in bite-sized nuggets.

In a minute, I'll get to why I'd characterize the size of the irresponsibility as Value rather than Bite. But let's just stay with the politics for a moment. The DLC brief goes on to note that the new tax cut package "is intended to remind privileged GOP constituencies they have a tangible stake in helping Republicans hang on to power, while offering a withered booby prize to dispirited conservative "base voters" agitated by the aimless drift of their party and its leaders." That's true, as far as it goes, but it's only half, or maybe a third, of what the mutant-strain Republicans plan to do in pursuit of their political self-perpetuation. Their main complementary strategy is the other half of what we might call the Thomas Frank Two-Step: angry up the blood with a raft of proposals that have no chance of passage, but might stoke the fires of librul-hate.

The House and Senate agendas are packed with bills that, even supporters concede, have no chance of passing but that social and fiscal conservatives clamor for, like constitutional amendments banning flag-burning and gay marriage. By bringing them up, Republicans hope to inspire a constituency that has fractured in its support for President Bush and the party. They also hope to cast Democrats as obstructionists by drawing their plentiful ''no" votes.

But some GOP moderates fear the strategy risks alienating moderate voters, whom vulnerable Republicans need at the polls in November.

The strategy is on display during what Senate majority leader Bill Frist dubbed ''health week" in the Senate. On Monday, the Republican-controlled Senate considered two bills that would limit medical malpractice judgments, even though the Democrats were expected to stop the measures with a filibuster, and did.

Still, Republicans used the Senate debate to blast Democrats for their ties to trial lawyers and to accuse them of blocking progress. Meanwhile, the GOP leadership has tabled bolder but more controversial healthcare proposals, such as expanding stem cell research and allowing US citizens to import prescription drugs from Canada.

''What a waste of time," said Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the Senate's number-two Democrat. ''Republican leadership has given up on doing anything that is substantial and necessary. All they're dealing with now are bumper-sticker issues."

The efforts to feed red meat to their base come as opinion polls indicate that Bush and GOP congressional leaders' approval ratings are sinking near record lows.

The third leg of the right-wing stool (a word I use advisedly) is what Newsweek's Howard Fineman describes as Karl Rove's "Nightmare" strategy: switch the focus from endemic Republican failures by demonizing heretofore-obscure Democrats like John Conyers, Charlie Rangel and Henry Waxman, who might be in line for committee chairmanships should Democrats reclaim a majority. The pushback against this assault will tell us how far the Democrats have--or haven't--come since Rove won the 2004 election with one of the great political accomplishments ever: turning the election into a referendum on John Kerry's character (or rather, Rove's caricature of same) rather than on George W. Bush's first-term job performance.

So much for politics; back to the interesting stuff. The June Atlantic Monthly describes a recent analysis conducted by economist William Niskanen, chair of the libertarian and fiercely anti-tax Cato Institute, on the relationship between tax cuts and spending. Niskanen's findings strongly suggest that a basic premise of Republican governance over the past quarter-century--that tax cuts constrain the growth of government by limited resources--is 100 percent wrong. Far from "starving the beast," the most cherished dream of Grover Norquist and the generation of right-wing activists now in power, it seems that cutting taxes actually encourages higher government spending:

To the naked eye, Starve the Beast looks suspiciously counterproductive. After all, spending (as a share of the gross domestic product, the standard way to measure it) went up, not down, after Reagan cut taxes in the early 1980s; it went down, not up, after the first President Bush and President Clinton raised taxes in the early 1990s; and it went up, not down, following the Bush tax cuts early in this decade.

Niskanen recently analyzed data from 1981 to 2005 and found his hunch strongly confirmed. When he performed a statistical regression that controlled for unemployment (which independently influences spending and taxes), he found, he says, “no sign that deficits have ever acted as a constraint on spending.” To the contrary: judging by the last twenty-five years (plenty of time for a fair test), a tax cut of 1 percent of the GDP increases the rate of spending growth by about 0.15 percent of the GDP a year. A comparable tax hike reduces spending growth by the same amount.

Again looking at 1981 to 2005, Niskanen then asked at what level taxes neither increase nor decrease spending. The answer: about 19 percent of the GDP. In other words, taxation above that level shrinks government, and taxation below it makes government grow. Thanks to the Bush tax cuts, revenues have been well below 19 percent since 2002 (17.8 percent last year). Perhaps not surprisingly, government spending has risen under Bush.

As the author notes, these findings--particularly coming from the leader of a cornerstone institution of the conservative movement--are "in a sense tragic" for true believers on the right. They signal an unanswerable disconnect between favorite means (tax cuts) and cherished ends (smaller government). If tax cuts lead to bigger government, then the right has abetted what by its own lights is a great evil, and now faces a Hobson's choice of either turning away from further cuts--indeed, embracing higher taxes--or driving the economy right over the cliff. The latest Republican tax package indicates that we'd all best keep our seatbelts buckled.

Grover Norquist has come to national prominence as "the Lenin of the Right." Of course, Lenin's USSR eventually fell under the weight of its internal contradictions and wrong assumptions. Norquist's movement might be poised to suffer the same fate.

"Why Did You Resign?"
That's the question everyone is asking Porter Goss, the now-former head of the Central Intelligence Agency. Goss himself isn't telling; his best response, as Dick Polman reports, is that it's "just one of those mysteries"--a more interesting rejoinder, at least, than "to spend more time with my family." One run-down of possible explanations is here; they include dissatisfaction with Goss by his immediate supervisor, John Negroponte, and his ultimate (at least nominal) boss, President Bush, as well as various speculations as to involvement with Hookergate. Nobody seems to think that Goss himself frolicked with prostitutes, but it seems like some of his higher underlings did, and when it all comes out, the shame will flow upward.

Of course, there's only one really good response to the question Goss refuses to answer:

I will not make any deals with you. I've resigned.

I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed or numbered.

My life is my own.

Tom DeLay: Original Gangsta
One of the sweeter moments in my life came one afternoon in 1999 or 2000, during my second year in grad school. For some reason, GPPI had invited Charles Murray, the right-wing writer who emerges every few years with another racist manifesto thinly veiled in pseudo-intellectual theorizing, to speak. Blathering on about whatever piece of garbage he was hawking at the time, Murray drew a sharp distinction between the moral conduct and core values of "the underclass" and those the rest of us hold and live by. Of course, he made particular mention of the "disgusting" sentiments expressed in hip-hop and rap, where stealing, screwing and every other form of self-gratification was celebrated.

When it came time for Q&A, I got the microphone and asked him whether, given the corporate transgressions and large living we remembered from the 1980s, the ongoing sexual misconduct of political leaders from both sides of the aisle, and the conspicuous consumption of people like Donald Trump, it might not be the case that, rather than repudiating the values expressed by the most prominent and visible people in American life, these supposed deviants might not instead be showing them the highest possible regard. The room erupted in a roar as Murray sputtered at my "very immature question."

This pleasant memory bubbled up today when I read about Tom DeLay's latest little problem:

Prosecutors have e-mails showing Rep. Tom DeLay's office knew lobbyist Jack Abramoff had arranged the financing for the GOP leader's controversial European golfing trip in 2000 and was concerned "if someone starts asking questions."

House ethics rules bar lawmakers from accepting free trips from lobbyists. DeLay, R-Texas, reported to Congress that a Republican advocacy group had paid for the spring 2000 trip that DeLay, his wife and top aides took to Scotland and England.

The e-mails obtained by The Associated Press show DeLay's staff asked Abramoff — not the advocacy group — to account for the costs that had to be legally disclosed on congressional travel forms. DeLay's office was worried the group being cited as paying the costs might not even know about them, the e-mails state.
...
Abramoff's credit card bills show the lobbyist initially charged tens of thousands of dollars in air fare for DeLay's trip to his American Express card. Cullen said he believes the lobbyist consulted with an ethics expert before making the payments.

The trip, which included golf at the famous St. Andrew's professional course, and others like it have become symbols of Abramoff's largesse to lawmakers and a focal point of the criminal investigation into influence peddling on Capitol Hill.

DeLay has steadfastly maintained he believed that the center paid for the trip as he reported.

The e-mails show that when DeLay's office began preparing the required disclosure reports for the free trip, his aides asked Abramoff's lobbying firm for the cost figures instead of the GOP group.

"Our financial disclosure forms from the England/Scotland trip are due tomorrow afternoon. ... I would appreciate if you would send me your information," a DeLay aide wrote Abramoff's firm.

The e-mails show Abramoff's team provided then-DeLay chief of staff Susan Hirschmann a final cost figure of $75,600 for the weeklong European trip taken by DeLay; his wife, Christine; Hirschmann; Hirschmann's husband; and Rudy.

Golf at St. Andrews, fine scotch and steak, and theatre. It might not exactly match up to cruisin' in the Benz stretch limo with the Cristal flowin', but then again Jay-Z, 50 Cent and their peers don't fling the bling on anybody's dime but their own.

And if I might get a little old-school, the emerging Hookergate scandal really suggests that for more than a few DC Republicans, life ain't nothin but bitches and money. DeLay, who was once known as Hot Tub Tom, must be proud.

Mourning a Champion of Cities
The legendary urban theorist and social critic Jane Jacobs passed away yesterday in Toronto. She was 89 years old.

In her book "The Death and Life of Great American Cities," written in 1961, Ms. Jacobs's enormous achievement was to transcend her own withering critique of 20th-century urban planning and propose radically new principles for rebuilding cities.

At a time when both common and inspired wisdom called for bulldozing slums and opening up city space, Ms. Jacobs's prescription was ever more diversity, density and dynamism — in effect, to crowd people and activities together in a joyous urban jumble.
...
"Death and Life" made four basic recommendations for creating municipal diversity: 1. A street or district must serve several primary functions. 2. Blocks must be short. 3. Buildings must vary in age, condition and use. 4. Population must be dense.

Ms. Jacobs's thesis was enlarged by her deep, eclectic reading. But most compelling was her description of the everyday life she witnessed from her home above a candy store at 555 Hudson Street, near 11th Street.

In that description, she puts out her garbage, children go to school, the dry cleaner and the barber open their shops, women come out to chat, longshoremen visit the local bar, teenagers return from school and change to go out on dates, and another day is played out. Sometimes, odd things happen: a bagpiper shows up on a February night, and delighted listeners gather around. Whether neighbors or strangers, people are safer because they are almost never alone.

"People who know well such animated city streets will know how it is," Ms. Jacobs wrote. "I am afraid people who do not will always have it a little wrong in their heads, like the old prints of rhinoceroses made from travelers' descriptions of rhinoceroses."

At the risk of sounding all Colbert, I'll admit that I've never read "Death and Life" all the way through. But the core thesis speaks powerfully to me, as I think it does to anyone who's ever been entranced and thrilled by city living. Pretty much since I moved to New York when I was 22, I haven't really wanted to be anywhere else; one of the big questions Annie and I grapple with is how we can afford to stay in Brooklyn if we're ever to actually own a home rather than flushing big bucks down the monthly rent rathole. We choose to be here, to the detriment of our bank accounts but, we think, to the benefit of our souls and our satisfaction.

There's a deep anti-urban bias in both the culture and the policymaking of the U.S. Your average suburban mom will cloud up facially in considering the dangers of city streets, the filth of the transit system, the crowding and crime. Somehow this view, born in ignorance and fear, has trumped the truth of cities as the setting where new art forms are born, new social understandings take root and tolerance spreads as different communities are forced to interact and intermingle, great ideas hatch through never-ending waves of argument and collaboration, and (not least) great fortunes are made and the economic health of the nation is based. As an unabashed lover of cities and a believer in their vitality and potential, Jane Jacobs will be missed, and should be celebrated.

So it's Come to This

From PoliticalWire:

"Katherine DeBrecht, who wrote Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed, is now coming out with a series of conservative books for parents to read to their children. Her next book will take on Hollywood vices, including the pursuit of fame. The idea is to return to family values."

Because I'm evidently the sort of person who can't drive past a car crash without slowing down to look, I clicked through and read the first few pages of the 160 or so user reviews on amazon.com. If you want to do the same, here's the link.

As anyone who's ever read this blog before surely gets, I don't claim to come to this debate unbiased. But the parallel the author and publisher tries to set up--that "Help! Mom!" is only a balancing corrective to what they view as "overtly liberal children's books advocating everything from gay marriage to marijuana use"--is a false one. Those books make their case by connecting positions to core values: you don't judge or define people by their sexuality any more than by their race or religion, but rather by their behavior. And unless I'm very wrong about this, those books (which I haven't read) don't take the approach of demonizing people who oppose gay marriage or drug legalization or whatever. "The Lorax," Dr. Seuss's classic environmentalist allegory, doesn't equate those who recklessly use up natural resources with monsters. (Seuss generally wasn't very big on totemic terror figures in his children's books.)

This one, by the description, really does. All the classic Paranoid Style tropes seem to be present, in more easily digestible form. Maybe today's seven year-old Katharine DeBrecht reader is tomorrow's Ann Coulter follower; maybe when Coulter just comes out and says that liberals should be rounded up and shot, it's more palatable to the child who's already internalized that they're inhuman.

Evolution of "the Internets"
Yeah, we all had a good laugh when Bush flashed his malaprops in the 2004 debates. But a pending sea change in how the online world operates could yet render him a "visionary in error," as Ahmad Chalabi might put it. Legislation is pending in Congress to effectively hand control of the Internet to the same group of telecommunications companies that made out like bandits when Clinton signed the odious Telecommunications Act of 1996. This change really will create different "Internets"--a fast one and a slow one, with preferred and discouraged destinations. And, as was the case ten years ago, both political parties are to blame.

Here's how it's about to go down:

Don’t look now, but the House Commerce Committee next Wednesday is likely to vote to turn control of the Internet over to AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Time Warner and what’s left of the telecommunications industry. It will be one of those stories the MSM writes about as “little noticed” because they haven’t covered it.

On the surface, it may seem a stretch to think that those companies could control the great, wide, infinite Internet. After all, the incredible diversity of the Net allowed everything Web sites and services of all kinds to exist in perfect harmony. What’s more, they were all delivered to your screen without any interference by the companies that carried the bits to and fro. Until recently, they had to. It was the law. The telephone companies, which carried all of the Web traffic until relatively recently, had to treat all of their calls alike without giving any Web site or service favored treatment over another.

The result was today’s Internet, which developed as a result of billions of dollars of investments, from the largest Internet company that spent millions on software and networking, to the one person with a blog who spent a few hundred dollars on a laptop. The Internet grew into a universal public resource because the telephone and cable companies simply transported the bits.

Last fall, however, the Federal Communications Commission, backed by the U.S. Supreme Court, decided that the high-speed Internet services offered by the cable and telephone companies didn’t fall under that law, the Communications Act. Out the window went the law that treated everyone equally. Now, with broadband, we are in a new game without rules.

Telephone and cable companies own 98% of the high-speed broadband networks the public uses to go online for reading news, shopping, listening to music, posting videos or any of the thousands of other uses developed for the Internet. But that isn’t enough. They want to control what you read, see or hear online. The companies say that they will create premium lanes on the Internet for higher fees, and give preferential access to their own services and those who can afford extra charges. The rest of us will be left to use an inferior version of the Internet.

Admittedly, it hasn’t become a problem yet. But to think it won’t become one is to ignore 100 years of history of anti-competitive behavior by the phone companies.

Emphasis mine. Given the vertical integration of entities that both "control the roads" and own the destinations, all sorts of monkeying with the market will be not only allowed, but encouraged: if Time Warner owns your connectivity and is allowed to speed your trip to the book or music site they own while slowing your connection to their competitor, what do you think they'll do?

For that matter, it's not a stretch to see them widening bandwidth to political sites and candidates they support, and shutting off your trip to those they don't. Candidates who support legislation not in the interests of the telecom companies could see their online fundraising s-l-o-w-e-d d-o-w-n to the point where users just slam the keyboard and give up.

This site adds more detail on how "the gutting of Network Neutrality" will affect all of us end-users. Here are just some of the groups that will be at risk:

• Nonprofits—A charity’s website could open at snail-speed, and online contributions could grind to a halt, if nonprofits can’t pay dominant Internet providers for access to “the fast lane” of Internet service.


• Online purchasers—Companies could pay Internet providers to guarantee their online sales process faster than competitors with lower prices—distorting your choice as a consumer.


• Small businesses and tele-commuters—When Internet companies like AT&T favor their own services, you won’t be able to choose more affordable providers for online video, teleconferencing, Internet phone calls, and software that connects your home computer to your office.


• Parents and retirees—Your choices as a consumer could be controlled by your Internet provider, steering you to their preferred services for online banking, health care information, sending photos, planning vacations, etc.


• Bloggers—Costs will skyrocket to post and share video and audio clips—silencing citizen journalists and putting more power in the hands of a few corporate-owned media outlets.

The Internet has been arguably the most positive and revolutionary technological development of the last fifty years, greatly increasing the ability of Americans and everyone else to communicate, shop, organize, work and play in ways unimaginable 20 years ago. We are now looking at the very real prospect of all those gains being washed away and our ability to join and enjoy "communities of affinity" closely controled by some of the world's wealthiest and most powerful corporations. Please click here to find out more and take action.

Lefty Rage
Today's Washington Post includes a five page (well, five-webpage) profile of Maryscott O'Connor, one of the more distinctive voices of the left-wing blogosphere. Though I don't think this was the writer's purpose, the article provides some good insight into both why community sites like Daily Kos and O'Connor's own My Left Wing might soon help to improve the political fortunes of progressive candidates, and why these sites offer potential danger for American politics even if they do help facilitate better electoral outcomes.

I used to spend a lot more time on dKos than I do now, and I remember O'Connor from at least three years ago. She's always stood out for cutting wit, inflammatory writing and just a burning, visceral loathing for Republicans. She also clearly had considerable gifts as a self-promoter: O'Connor is an attractive woman (though the pic in the WaPo piece wouldn't make you think so; this one, posted on her "My Left Wing" site in explicit response to the bad shot in the Post, gives both a more favorable impression and some insight into her monumental self-involvement, and this is the pic I think was her original on dKos) who wasn't shy about posting pictures of herself in her early dKos pieces, and in them she'd often talk about the vicissitudes of her own life--alcoholism, an unwanted pregnancy that ended in abortion, etc--in (sometimes abstract) connection to political arguments. In an emergent community with few visible leaders--Kos himself is not especially telegenic, and has an unfortunate speaking voice that makes him sound like a 12 year-old--O'Connor quickly acquired a cult following online, and that allowed her to start myleftwing.com... where the key word, I think, is "my."

People like O'Connor and, I think, her hero/admirer The Rude Pundit (whom I remember first hearing of in O'Connor's early dKos diaries; he's now on the permanent AIS blogroll, as I find his rants much funnier, less self-serving and more deeply felt than hers) seem like the necessary counterweight to the hyper-partisans on the right. A piece in the current New York Review of Books, breaking down the recently released, Kos-co-authored polemic Crashing the Gates, strongly makes this case. That it's personality-led might be a bit depressing to those of us who distrust cults, but hardly surprising: a lot of Bill O'Reilly's appeal probably is bound up in his personality, and in that sense too O'Connor, Kos and the rest of them are filling a void. Their outrage fuels the activism and determination to engage without which Democrats likely just can't win elections. What I'm pretty sure they can't do, however, is govern. It's not that they don't have well-articulated views on issues: O'Connor's MyLeftWing manifesto probably compares favorably, in depth and detail, to the major party platforms. But the absolute certainty with which she states her views, the incredulous and contemptuous dismissal of all other opinions, does not bode well for the likelihood of these views serving a fractured, divided and often ambivalent public if they ever gain the legitimacy of office.

So far as I know, none of the rising heroes of the online left are running for office: not Markos Moulitsas, not Air America's Randi Rhodes, and certainly not Maryscott O'Connor. This strikes me as a good thing: if they serve to keep more mainstream Democrats honest and focused on core principles, that's fine. But if and when their chosen champions do take office, that's going to present a new set of challenges: stridency might help win elections, but compromise and civility are required traits if the winners are to make their victories worthwhile.

War in Iran?
Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker reports that the Bush administration is actively planning for military action against Iran:

The Bush Administration, while publicly advocating diplomacy in order to stop Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon, has increased clandestine activities inside Iran and intensified planning for a possible major air attack. Current and former American military and intelligence officials said that Air Force planning groups are drawing up lists of targets, and teams of American combat troops have been ordered into Iran, under cover, to collect targeting data and to establish contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups. The officials say that President Bush is determined to deny the Iranian regime the opportunity to begin a pilot program, planned for this spring, to enrich uranium.

American and European intelligence agencies, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (I.A.E.A.), agree that Iran is intent on developing the capability to produce nuclear weapons. But there are widely differing estimates of how long that will take, and whether diplomacy, sanctions, or military action is the best way to prevent it.
...
There is a growing conviction among members of the United States military, and in the international community, that President Bush’s ultimate goal in the nuclear confrontation with Iran is regime change.
...
One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ ”
...
“This is much more than a nuclear issue,” one high-ranking diplomat told me in Vienna. “That’s just a rallying point, and there is still time to fix it. But the Administration believes it cannot be fixed unless they control the hearts and minds of Iran. The real issue is who is going to control the Middle East and its oil in the next ten years.”

A senior Pentagon adviser on the war on terror expressed a similar view. “This White House believes that the only way to solve the problem is to change the power structure in Iran, and that means war,” he said. The danger, he said, was that “it also reinforces the belief inside Iran that the only way to defend the country is to have a nuclear capability.” A military conflict that destabilized the region could also increase the risk of terror: “Hezbollah comes into play,” the adviser said, referring to the terror group that is considered one of the world’s most successful, and which is now a Lebanese political party with strong ties to Iran. “And here comes Al Qaeda.”

The truth is that there are no good options in dealing with Iran, and that war always has unintended consequences--a notion that I worry our country has lost its understanding of since the historic success, in terms of meeting our objectives, of the first Gulf War. But what this looks like to me is a repeat of almost all the mistakes that these armchair warriors made in the runup to Iraq. It's just that this time, the target country has a real military, a government with some measure of popular support (which, in all likelihood, would shoot up to near-universal support upon the first news of American airstrikes), and deep, effective, operational ties to terror groups.

Any attack on Iran at this point will have three sets of consequences that I can see, unrelated to whatever happens in terms of the war itself. (Battlefield outcomes are not something I feel I can discuss with anything like expertise; I'm certain we'd "win," but I'm also sure that casualty levels would make Iraq look like Grenada. The Iranians have a bigger, better-equipped, and much better-led military than did Saddam, and haven't had the burden of sanctions holding them back as Iraq did in the 12 years between Gulf Wars.)

Here they are, in descending order of importance:

1) Economic disaster. The day the first bombs hit, where do you think the price of oil might go? Iran obviously won't sell to us at that point, and even the Saudis wouldn't be able to do too much in opening their reserves (which is the usual method of cushioning a price shock) because their public won't exactly be supportive of the U.S. bombing fellow Muslims. So where do we turn? Venezuela?

(On the other hand, Sen. Stevens probably will get his ANWR drilling. So I guess that's something...)

It's difficult to overstate how bad the economic hit might be. Right now the price of oil is a bit over $67 per barrel. My wife and I recently flew to Italy and back; we were told that oil costs accounted for about $200 each of our tickets. That's with the price in the $60s. Care to speculate what the spillover effects will be when we hit three digits? (Later in Hersh's piece, he cites one government consultant who observes that U.S. strategic reserves would suffice for 60 days, but also notes that those in the oil business were much less optimistic: "one industry expert estimated that the price per barrel would immediately spike, to anywhere from ninety to a hundred dollars per barrel, and could go higher, depending on the duration and scope of the conflict." I can't imagine that this would be a particularly short war; 60 days won't be enough.)

2) Security crackdown. Unlike what was said about Saddam and al Qaeda, Iran's ties to Hezbollah and other terror groups are real. Read Robert Baer; these guys know what they're doing. There will be attacks.

(To be fair, Baer is quoted in Hersh's article and says that Iran's government is "capable of making a bomb, hiding it, and launching it at Israel. They’re apocalyptic Shiites. If you’re sitting in Tel Aviv and you believe they’ve got nukes and missiles—you’ve got to take them out. These guys are nuts, and there’s no reason to back off.” Of course, we're not sitting in Tel Aviv. The distinction between America taking action directly, and supporting Israel in a limited strike, is a very important one; if Israel made the determination that Iran was close to going nuclear and attacked, I would hope and expect the U.S. to show support. Admittedly, a big part of this is that I trust the judgment of the Israelis on these questions vastly more than I do the Bush administration, given respective track records.)

Because of this, events that are now conducted with no or minimal security checks will become a lot more burdensome. Imagine cameras everywhere; imagine going through metal detectors every time you enter an office building, public school, sporting or entertainment event. And then imagine all the damage that will be done to First Amendment rights and civil liberties. All the abuses libertarians and liberals (and principled conservatives) worry about now will be far easier for whoever is in power once a much tighter "security regime" is in place. Again, I grant that safety concerns will necessitate higher scrutiny; I'd just prefer to avoid facing the question if at all possible.

3) More loss of face in the international community. It's bad enough now, but an attack on Iran while diplomatic efforts are still ongoing, in advance of winning support or even grudging recognition of the need from the EU and other powers, will alienate many of the friends we have left. Again, economics is the core issue here: nations thinking about changing their reserve currency from dollar to Euro will have one more reason to do so, and the creditor nations who have financed the Bush debt these last five years might reconsider the wisdom of continuing to do so.

And this is even before we get into the possible consequences of using nuclear weapons--which per Hersh, at least some in the administration are strongly contemplating.

As I said, I don't know what the right action is. The questions are, one, whether all these consequences add up to a worse set of outcomes than those that would follow if Iran got the bomb; and two, what we consider the possibilities of either forestalling Iran from getting the bomb through diplomacy and negotiation, or otherwise pushing for regime change through non-military action. (I concede that one feels like a real longshot, though toward the end of the story Hersh quotes a European intelligence official who observes: "The Iranian economy is in bad shape, and Ahmadinejad is in bad shape politically... He will benefit politically from American bombing. You can do it, but the results will be worse. ...If there was a charm offensive with Iran, the mullahs would be in trouble in the long run.” If this is a valid read, it should inform our policy.)

It might be that all these consequences would be worth it. Sometimes you have to fight, for reasons of both principle and safety. The question here is whether we yet have to fight, and whether you trust this group of decision-makers to make the decision, based on their judgments to date.

Here's the summary graf, as I see it, from Hersh:

The Pentagon adviser on the war on terror said that “allowing Iran to have the bomb is not on the table. We cannot have nukes being sent downstream to a terror network. It’s just too dangerous.” He added, “The whole internal debate is on which way to go”—in terms of stopping the Iranian program. It is possible, the adviser said, that Iran will unilaterally renounce its nuclear plans—and forestall the American action. “God may smile on us, but I don’t think so. The bottom line is that Iran cannot become a nuclear-weapons state. The problem is that the Iranians realize that only by becoming a nuclear state can they defend themselves against the U.S. Something bad is going to happen.”

Take These Broken Wings
I'm out of here for about a week and a half, starting late on Thursday the 23rd, for a vacation in Italy with my wife. If all goes to plan, when I get back on the evening of April 3, the Phillies will be 1-0 and the temperature will actually reflect the season known as "spring," rather than this 30-something degree unpleasantness we've had for most of this month.

But while I'm actually feeling pretty good about the Phillies right now--though, in deference to The Navigator, I'm not making any predictions--my other favorite team isn't looking so strong. I speak, of course, about the Philadelphia Eagles.

In sports, I believe that when teams enjoy a sustained run of success, they get arrogant and come to believe they're smarter than the competition. One bad year is too easily dismissed as an aberration; sometimes it takes a half a decade of regular beatings for humility to return. Sometimes--think of the 1980s-era Phillies, who didn't even start to smarten up until a decade-plus on the receiving end of ass-kickings--it takes a lot longer than that.

As Rich Hoffman wrote in Wednesday's Philadelphia Daily News, this year we're going to find out whether the Eagles really are as smart as they think they are. Right now, my strong hunch is that they aren't, and that we're more likely to see more sub-.500 seasons than a return to the top of the NFC East. The 2006 Eagles right now look like a seven-win team to me, given the issues of age, health, and quality of division opponents. And even that might be optimistic.

Here's an easy way to think about it:

1) Thanks to advancing age and accumulated injuries, the remaining players from the team that went to Super Bowl XXXIX, by and large, won't be as good in 2006 as they were in 2004.

2) Of everyone else, pending the April draft, we've probably lost more starter-level talent (Owens, Burgess, Simon, Chad Lewis, Mayberry--all of whom were solid or better for that team) than we've brought on from 2004 til now (Howard, Gaffney, Barber, Brown, Patterson). If Jon Runyan signs elsewhere, the gap widens further.

3) The division opponents are all now considerably better than they were in 2004. None look to me like probably Super Bowl teams, but all three are probably 8-11 win clubs. If the defensive players Parcells drafted last spring develop as expected, Julius Jones stays healthy, and TO more or less behaves, the Cowboys might be as strong as any club in the NFC. (Dear god, I'm not sure I've ever written a more galling sentence.)

4) Andy Reid's regime has not been so good in the draft--or, more to the point, developing the talent brought in from the draft--that we should hang our hopes on what happens in late April.

Another way to think about it is that NFL clubs win by outplaying their opponents on the lines and at the skill positions. Again, just thinking about the NFC East, the Eagles come up short in both dimensions. For playmakers on offense, they've got Donovan McNabb, Brian Westbrook, Reggie Brown, Jafar Gaffney, and LJ Smith; Dallas has Drew Bledsoe, Jones, TO, Terry Glenn, and Jason Witten. I'll take McNabb over Bledsoe; do the Eagles look better anywhere else? You could make a case for Westbrook over Jones, but the bigger, younger guy is likely the better bet going forward.

Up the Jersey Turnpike, the Giants have Eli Manning, Tiki Barber, Plaxico Burress, Amani Toomer and Jeremy Shockey. Again, McNabb's my preferred quarterback, though that gap will close. Otherwise, it's all Blue. Down I-95, the Redskins have Mark Brunell, Clinton Portis, Santana Moss, Brandon Lloyd or Antwaan Randle-El, and Chris Cooley. This is a recording: McNabb (if healthy) is the best quarterback in the division. And you could argue that LJ Smith is a better tight end than Cooley (who's listed as a fullback on the 'Skins' depth chart, for what that's worth).

Overall, I think it's clear that the Eagles have the worst overall talent at the offensive skill positions in the NFC East. And it's not particularly close; while McNabb is pretty clearly better than either of the veteran passers in Dallas and Washington, both guys can manage a game just fine--which minimizes the difference. Now, if the Eagles had a clearly superior offensive line, maybe that would make up for the deficit at the skill positions. Would you argue that they do? I sure wouldn't: the sacks-allowed and rush-per-carry stats peg their line (admittedly depleted by injuries) as substantially worse than either New York's or Washington's, and just a bit better than Dallas. With former Pro Bowler Runyan possibly leaving and fellow tackle Tra Thomas coming off a serious back injury, there might be more room for decline than improvement.

Rumor this afternoon (Thursday) is that Runyan might come back after all... but I'm out of time, and might (or might not) talk about the defense when I return. Suffice it to say that I don't think things are quite as bad on that side of the ball, but if they don't take a defensive tackle with their first draft pick, I'll be pretty upset.

My Nomination
...for one-trick political site of the year: right here.

What's particularly nice about this is that any Democrat this side of Jim Traficant (hell, maybe even him) probably could run against Cruella and successfully raise as much money as s/he needed. Unless Harris uses those same mad computer skillz that improperly purged likely Democratic voters from the Florida rolls in 2000 to access Bill Gates' Swiss bank account, her money ultimately won't matter.

Of course, it also doesn't help that she's implicated (though not facing imminent legal action) in one of this year's many Republican lobbying scandals, or that she's trailing incumbent Democratic Senator Bill Nelson by 10 points or so.

Bush Gets One Right (sort of)
Today's New York Times informs us that President Bush is about to embark upon another of those "series of major policy speeches" on Iraq. Though he has no new initiatives to unveil, and the ongoing drumbeat of bad news from that troubled region seems to present a risk of (yet more) severe political embarrassment in a second term that's well on the way to setting a standard of substantial and stylistic political failure, Bush evidently is set to make one meta-point that I think is well taken: America can't simply disengage from the rest of the world.

[S]tarting on Monday, just a few days shy of the third anniversary of Mr. Bush's order to topple Saddam Hussein, the president will begin an effort to explain his Iraq strategy anew in the changed environment of increased sectarian killings.

He acknowledged on Saturday that "many of our fellow citizens" are "now wondering if the entire mission is worth it."

But rather than simply delve into the familiar talk about the need to root out terrorists abroad so they cannot strike Americans here, the White House plans to have Mr. Bush expand his discussion of the need for the United States to embrace a new role in the world, even if that means explaining the benefits of globalization to a nation that does not appear to be in a mood to hear that message.
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A search of the White House Web site confirms that Mr. Bush, who in the days before he took office kept the take-no-prisoners speeches of Teddy Roosevelt on a table at his ranch, made little mention of "globalization" for much of his first five years in office, even when European leaders brought it up.

Asked once, several years ago, about his aversion to the topic, one of his senior aides said Mr. Bush associated the word with "mushy Clintonianism."

"It ranks up there with 'nation-building,' " he added.

No longer. Now Mr. Bush is moving into a new phase of his presidency, not by choice or natural inclination, it seems, but by necessity. Mr. Bush changed his tone on nation-building several years ago.

As the invasion turned to occupation, he emphasized the spread of democracy. But even that talk, especially during his re-election campaign, had a unilateralist subtext: the schools and polling places were open because the hammer of the American military made it possible.

His new theme is different, because it is all about interdependence. Two of his aides say the near defeat of the Central American Free Trade Agreement in Congress last summer — it passed by one vote, after arm-twisting by the president brought just enough Republicans back into the fold — jolted Mr. Bush into recognizing a new retreat from the world by his own party.

There are actually two things to like here. Globalization, first of all, is a fact of life whether we embrace it or not. Bush is very much with the mainstream of economic opinion when he says (as is noted later in this article) that we should be excited, not solely apprehensive, at what "a 300-million-person market of middle-class citizens here in India" can mean for the sale of American-made products.

(The corollary, which unfortunately Bush doesn't seem to grasp at the policymaking level, is that to take advantage of this emerging market, you need to continuously cultivate a world-class knowledge workforce that will create things of interest and value to that market--as well as to this one. Thus, government disinvestment in financial assistance for higher education and research and development within numerous fields of inquiry is ultimately self-defeating, no matter how happy it makes Grover Norquist when you cut the "investment budget" to fund his tax cut.)

Given how badly Bush has failed to explain anything with non-emotional arguments (see: Social Security "reform," Medicare Part D, Iraq since the '04 election), it seems like a stretch to believe that he'll be able to make this case. It can be done, however, and my guess is that as the 2008 election draws closer, there will be both Democrats and Republicans who successfully explain the issue. (He could also just ask Bill Clinton to do it.)

Bush's real problem is with the other half of the "engagement" argument: using America's power beyond our borders. When you've lost William F. Buckley on Iraq, who's left to count on? The administration's toxic mix of dishonesty, rhetorical incoherence, and just piss-poor implementation is what's really behind the rising neo-isolationist impulse, and this is Bad with a capital B for the country: though Saddam was not a threat, and we should have known as much, Iran could well prove to present a major danger to world peace and stability as well as American interests. Pakistan, too, is a nuclear-armed dictatorship with radical religious elements who want to rule; if Musharraf falls, it's hard to predict what would happen.

Rather than either acting unilaterally, as we essentially did in Iraq, or retreating from the world's troubled areas, we should be using every instrument in the toolbox of governance--sanctions, coalition-building, and force as a last result--to advance both our interests and ideals. By just about any standard, George H.W. Bush did this successfully in both managing the first Gulf War and helping to build a stable post-Cold War order; he had his failures as well, with China after the 1989 crackdown, the Balkans, and in places like East Timor, but on balance he was a successful foreign policy president.

And, terrible though she was as National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice has actually done a decent job at this since taking over the State Department--working through the EU on Iran, reaching out to China and Russia as well, trying to mediate disputes elsewhere in the Middle East. That's a pretty good start. The hard political sell, however, will come if/when those measures fail and some use of force is called for. I don't know which party will carry the neo-isolationist banner at that point--but whoever is in front will have a much stronger case because of George Bush's failures in Iraq.

Let There Be More Darkness
In the not quite six years I've been researching and writing on social policy issues, the most difficult but also most rewarding thing I've done was the Working Poor Families Project. Toward the end of 2004, CUF and our partners at the Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy released a report titled "Between Hope and Hard Times," about low-income working families in New York State and how government policies in a number of areas, from post-secondary financial aid to economic development investments to income supports like the Earned Income Tax Credit and Unemployment Insurance, helped or hindered them in their efforts to get ahead. The basic premise of the project, which was supported by three major national philanthropic foundations, struck me then and now as deeply resonant with the whole American idea: that families who work hard and live right should enjoy a measure of economic security.

We found that despite the general prosperity of the last decade-plus and some highly laudable programs at the state and local levels, the numbers of low-income working families in the state have increased. (A forthcoming update brief, to be released later this month, shows that this trend unfortunately has accelerated in the 18 months since we issued the full report.) The question we couldn't answer to my satisfaction, though, was this: are today's working poor substantially the same people who had jobs but struggled to make ends meet five, ten, twenty years ago? The problem, in other words, isn't necessarily poverty: it's opportunity and mobility. One state agency we engaged with in the course of researching the report presented us with a Census study from the late 1990s indicating that economic mobility remains high; we also found a study by two Federal Reserve economists that strongly suggested that mobility had sharply declined since the 1970s. In the report, we wrote that "for the state to truly gauge how its anti-poverty policies are performing, we must have better information."

So it comes as a disappointment, but not a huge surprise, that the Bush administration proposes to do away with one of the federal government's more effective programs that provide *any* information on this subject: the Census Bureau's Survey of Income and Program Participation. Ironically, the study that suggested the enduring strength of economic mobility was a product of SIPP data. Follows here a little description, of both the program itself and how its demise has been presented:

The SIPP is the only major longitudinal survey that tracks the same families over time. While it has a representative sample that allows it to be used to examine issues affecting the whole population, it over samples low income households, which makes it especially useful for examining the impact of TANF, Medicaid, and other anti-poverty programs. Ostensibly, the reason for eliminating the SIPP is to save the $40 million annual cost of fielding the survey (@ 6 hours of the Iraq war).

Usually, plans to alter or eliminate major surveys are floated well in advance in order to get input from the community of researchers, policy makers, and advocates that rely on the survey. This plan was crafted in the dark of night and kept secret until the 2007 budget was released. Perhaps the secrecy was needed to keep us safe from the terrorists, but this does not seem like best path for producing reliable data.

To put it mildly, $40 million is not a lot of money in a multi-trillion dollar federal budget. It's the dime you find in the couch cushion, if that. For that matter, it's a pretty miniscule fraction of the money we spend on the programs SIPP helps us understand better: Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, the federal welfare program that was recently stealth-reauthorized when the Republicans inserted it within a budget reconciliation bill (a DeLay special: enact something that could never pass on its merits by tying it to a measure necessary to keep government functioning), has been flat-funded since Clinton first signed it in 1996, and we still spend something like $16 billion on it, plus state matching funds. Medicaid, the growth of which is squeezing state budgets from coast to coast, consumes a much bigger share of the federal budget.

A reflexive right-wing response to this whole problem might just be, "Fuck it--we should eliminate all those programs anyway." (In fact, I think one of our visiting trolls pretty much wrote that a few weeks ago.) Putting aside the human consequences of such a switch, the truth is that it's not happening: not now, not ever. Even the most rabid Republican governor would foul his wool britches without the billions in federal aid to fund income support and social safety net programs; they want more, not less. For that matter, consider poor Wal-Mart; without Medicaid, they'd be unable to sustain a workforce. The point is that these programs aren't just handouts; they're pivotal to the functioning of the U.S. economy. (Also keep in mind that majorities of the poor and near-poor work; this isn't your grandpa's Cadillac welfare queen, not that she ever really existed as much more than a trope for haters.)

So we're going to have these programs, and we're going to spend billions of dollars on them. The question is whether we want to keep the tools to evaluate them, see where they're helping and where they can be stretched farther and where they're being wasted--or whether we'd just prefer to remain in blissful ignorance, out of some notion that the less we know about those on the economic margin, the less we have to worry about them.

Education Pays--Just Not as Much as Hoped
One of the truisms of the policy field I work in is that post-secondary education is the best investment any individual can make in his or her economic future. And in a comparative sense, this is all but irrefutable: over the course of a working lifetime, the average college graduate makes as much as $1 million more than someone who boasts only a high school diploma. Even those who end their schooling with an associate's degree, or no college credential at all, earn dramatically more than high school grads who never set foot in a college classroom. The argument that education pays has been such a mainstay in Center for an Urban Future reports that we had a shorthand name for the chart used to illustrate the earnings premium for college grads: "More Ed, More Bread." Here's the same info with a bit more color to it.

A corollary to the Education Pays case is that as the United States and global economies become ever more responsive to "knowledge workers" and the specialized training one can only get after high school, the earnings differential would only continue to grow. Adding in the coming demographic crunch that's been a particular focus for me--in brief, what happens as Baby Boomers start to retire or cut back their hours in large numbers over the next 10 years or so--one can predict that the rate of earnings increase for college grads will spike as employers grapple with a shortage of high value workers that some analysts project will run close to 10 million by 2020.

All this might indeed turn out to be the case. But in his New York Times column today (subscription only; I finally swallowed hard and ponied up for TimesSelect), Paul Krugman points out that it isn't happening just yet.

What we're seeing isn't the rise of a fairly broad class of knowledge workers. Instead, we're seeing the rise of a narrow oligarchy: income and wealth are becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small, privileged elite.

I think of Mr. Bernanke's position, which one hears all the time, as the 80-20 fallacy. It's the notion that the winners in our increasingly unequal society are a fairly large group — that the 20 percent or so of American workers who have the skills to take advantage of new technology and globalization are pulling away from the 80 percent who don't have these skills.

The truth is quite different. Highly educated workers have done better than those with less education, but a college degree has hardly been a ticket to big income gains. The 2006 Economic Report of the President tells us that the real earnings of college graduates actually fell more than 5 percent between 2000 and 2004. Over the longer stretch from 1975 to 2004 the average earnings of college graduates rose, but by less than 1 percent per year.

Krugman goes on to note just how skewed the earnings increase has been: between 1972 and 2001, Americans at the 90th percentile of earnings saw their real wages increase by about 1 percent a year--not bad, but far from spectacular. (What I wish he'd included was how this compared to the change for those further down the distribution.) At the 99th percentile, however, income nearly doubled, rising 87 percent over the period. Those in the top 1000th of earnings did twice as well again, as their income increased by 181 percent. And the highest-earning 10,000th of Americans hit the jackpot, as their take-home pay exploded by 497 percent.

On Josh Marshall's site, Max Sawicky comments more strongly on what he deems the "meritocratic fallacy." In his take, the argument does seem to more closely resemble what's sometimes called Social Spenserism: the notion that the wealthy somehow inherently deserve their wealth, and the destitute their suffering.

What bothers me as a policy researcher is that I've been as guilty as Ben Bernanke and most others (on a comparatively miniscule scale, but still) in advancing this notion of a semi-meritocratic elite moving forward. Again, Krugman sums up nicely why this is such a common view:

Why would someone as smart and well informed as Mr. Bernanke get the nature of growing inequality wrong? Because the fallacy he fell into tends to dominate polite discussion about income trends, not because it's true, but because it's comforting. The notion that it's all about returns to education suggests that nobody is to blame for rising inequality, that it's just a case of supply and demand at work. And it also suggests that the way to mitigate inequality is to improve our educational system — and better education is a value to which just about every politician in America pays at least lip service.

The idea that we have a rising oligarchy is much more disturbing. It suggests that the growth of inequality may have as much to do with power relations as it does with market forces. Unfortunately, that's the real story.

While it's always helpful to have the facts at hand and to puncture even semi-benevolent myths like this one (I'm not particularly sorry to see an argument that pushes more people toward higher education, even if it's inaccurate on specifics), the solution is not as clear-cut. Krugman is historically correct in asserting, as he does in the close of the article, that at some point wealth inequity undermines democratic society, and it's probably a political winner for Democrats and maybe moderate Republicans to point out the widening gap between aggregate GDP growth and real-wage stagnation for almost everybody. But how do you push a more equitable distribution of profits from our more productive economy without too strongly disincentivizing entrepreneurship? I suppose it's a question that has to be answered through governmental art, rather than economic science.

The Politics of Port Security
If there's one thing the Bush administration does well, it's the symbolic politics of national security. They might not be able to capture bin Laden, run a tribunal system for detainees, or even secure nuclear power plants, but when it comes to getting in front of the cameras and looking like they're doing a good job, it really has been "Mission Accomplished."

So I am absolutely baffled as to why they're pushing this takeover of major East Coast ports by a company based in the United Arab Emirates, a country that has harbored and funded terrorists. In doing so, they've handed the Democrats an unscrewupable--even for Democrats--issue on which to run to the president's right, and prompted criticism from every embattled Republican governor and Congress member. As Bull Moose wrote this morning, "[T]he left and right are united against the port deal. This is a debacle that can bring together Ann Coulter and Arianna Huffington." Beyond symbolic squawkers, I can't imagine even the leftiest lefty on Daily Kos speaking up for the Dubai interests, nor even the most reflexive Bush-worshipping Frei Republik apologist backing the administration on this one.

So who's going to defend this thing? The Times notes that Michael Chertoff, Homeland Security secretary and a New Yorker, has been on TV citing unspecified "assurances in place" that everything is going to be fine. But this is the guy who was just slammed for his handling of Hurricane Katrina, and is well known for his managerial deficiencies, now saying "trust us!" Against him, we've got everyone from Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich, a Republican who's surely thinking this will help him in what looks like an uphill re-election campaign this fall, to New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez, who even more certainly is thinking that some national security cred will help him win a very tough race against the son of 9/11 Commission chair Tom Kean in their November contest. Menendez and Hillary Clinton are likely to propose legislation that would ban future transactions of this type; will any Senator up for re-election this fall vote against that bill?

This looks like a huge self-inflicted wound for the Bush administration, energizing Democrats and dividing Republicans. Even if there's airtight justification in the details for this transaction, the reason these guys generally win political fights is that they take positions that don't need to be explained. John Kerry's infamous "I voted for the legislation before I voted against it" was explainable; it was just that few bothered to go past a statement that was idiotic on its face. Turning over port security to a company based in a country that harbors terrorist killers seems similarly dense, and it's very unlikely that many people will press for the specifics--even if the secrecy-obsessed Bushies were to offer them.

Randy and Ralph
Looking at Josh Marshall's site last night, I found this sordid exposition on the sins of former Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Republican of California. Duke's deeds are pretty stomach-turning, from soliciting bribes to browbeating aides with overactive consciences. As a former war hero turned crooked pol, his is a pretty compelling fall-from-grace story, and a potential bonanza for Democratic candidates who will look to pin that story to the self-serving and shameless Republican House majority this fall.

But none of this jumped out at me immediately upon reading the TPM entry. No, what I saw was this:

"Having admitted unparalleled corruption, defendant Randall H. Cunningham now comes before the Court to be sentenced..."

Emphasis mine. Yes, the new poster boy for right-wing wrongdoing is a namesake of the man who was perhaps my last great sports hero. (And by the way, God bless the wikipedia author/s for noting the unmatched, indeed unmatchable greatness of "QB Eagles.") No idea how this had never previously struck me.

At the other end of the spectrum of right-wing vileness is Ralph Reed, former Christian Coalition leader, Republican consultant, and bosom chum of Jack Abramoff. Reed is currently running for the office of Georgia Lieutenant Governor, a position he seems to consider a steppingstone to a future presidential run. Reed's close and extended Abramoff ties already have done damage to his bid, and what might sink him altogether is The Book of Ralph--a short graphic biography highlighting various episodes in Reed's checkered career.

Reading "The Book of Ralph," it seems almost impossible that a lawsuit won't be forthcoming, but considering that all its quotes are taken directly from previously published media stories, from Reed's tearful denunciations after being exposed as a plagiarist in college more than 20 years ago, to his spokeswoman's statement two months back that she referred to her own vagina as "my big cavernous pit of love," I'm not sure there's grounds.

More broadly, if this gets big enough, I wonder if we're seeing the next stage in the evolution of political attacks. In 1999 or so, I had this idea for a satirical comic book titled "The Adventures of George W. Bush at Harvard Business School," but having neither art skills nor abundant free time back then, I did nothing with this notion. Could we have changed history? Guess we'll never know.

Bad News From Ohio
Iraq war veteran Paul Hackett, a Democrat who captured national attention last year for his near-victorious congressional race in an Ohio district where President Bush had won 64 percent of the vote in 2004, announced last night that he was ending his bid for the Senate this fall. Hackett's departure from the race ends the prospect of a competitive primary and all but ensures that Congressman Sherrod Brown will challenge embattled incumbent Republican Mike DeWine this fall, in a race Democrats desperately need if they are to have any hope of recapturing a majority.

I don't know much about Brown. From what I've read, he's a good man and a good progressive, and I hope he wins. Party leaders had been pushing Hackett to drop out for weeks, largely because of Brown's perceived advantages in fundraising, organization, and experience. Hackett had been criticized for his high "burn rate," a political term of art that refers to how quickly a candidate spends the money he or she has raised. His well-publicized comment of a few weeks back comparing intolerant religious leaders in the U.S. to Islamic radicals probably made people like Chuck Schumer very nervous, and he's reputedly prone to a lot of swearing (a Marine trademark, some say). Finally, Hackett did not endorse Brown in his withdrawal announcement--a step that I'm sure confirms for some his bad judgment and unreliable temperament.

All that said, it strikes me that there's something very wrong with a Democratic Party that steps on the aspirations of citizens who enter politics out of conviction, rather than careerism, and that fears rather than embraces honesty and resistance to scripted, consultant-driven politics... particularly considering how badly Democrats have fared using those scripts.

Worse, the push against Hackett could threaten what I think is by far the Democrats' best storyline in 2006: the more than 50 military veterans the party has recruited to run for Congress. The message seems to be: "We want to use you as window dressing, but if we can't control you, don't bother." It will be interesting to see how many of the "Band of Brothers" will follow Hackett out of politics.

The party leaders wanted, and presumably still want, Hackett to repeat his 2005 run in Ohio's 2nd congressional district, where Jean Schmidt, the Republican who narrowly beat him last year has disgraced herself by slandering another Marine, Pennsylvania Democratic Congressman John Murtha, and will face a strong primary challenge. If Schmidt survives that, she'd likely be at a disadvantage in a rematch against Hackett; if she lost, Hackett likely would enjoy greater name recognition and a higher profile than the Republican.

But Hackett's not interested.

I will not be running in the Second Congressional District nor for any other elective office. This decision is final, and not subject to reconsideration.

I told the voters from the beginning that I am not a career politician and never aspired to be--that I was about leadership, service and commitment.

Similarly, I told party officials that I had given my word to other good Democrats, who will take the fight to the Second District, that I would not run. In reliance on my word they entered the race. I said it. I meant it. I stand by it. At the end of the day, my word is my bond and I will take it to my grave.

Compare that code of conduct to the reports that Democratic bigwigs, including Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, contacted donors to dissuade them from giving to Hackett.

Party leaders felt that Brown had a much better chance of victory in November. Given the facts of money and organization, and the congressman's presumed greater ability to avoid controversy, this might well be the case. But I will say this: if DeWine beats Brown, everyone who was involved in this decision should find another line of work. Because this will be the ultimate case of the tone-deafness of professional Democrats hurting the country as well as the party.

Cheney Shoots Fellow Hunter; Late-Nite Comic Writers Rejoice
The press and blogosphere are starting to get into a froth over the story out of Texas that our Vice-President, Citizen Dick Cheney, accidentally shot and wounded a companion while hunting for quail at a Texas ranch on Saturday. I'm really trying not to wallow in all the tasteless jokes one could make here (though if Cheney wanted to shoot someone in the wilderness, he passed up five opportunities to do so 40 years back). I do have to point out, however, that on one of the Sunday talk shows this weekend, Howard Dean referred to Aaron Burr while talking about Cheney's possible involvement in the Valerie Plame leak. Did he already somehow know that Cheney had just become the second Vice-President to shoot a man while in that office?

I think it's likely the left blogosphere will gin up a lot of wacky conspiracy theories around this incident. (In fact, I wrote one myself on DailyKos--in part to see if people would take it seriously given how over the top it was, and in part because, as I wrote in the post, so much of the Bush administration really has unfolded like a fourth-rate political potboiler novel that I can't totally rule out the possibility of shenanigans.) Much of the speculation already is around the guy who got shot, a 78 year-old lawyer whom Bush appointed to a Texas regulatory body in 1999 under somewhat controversial conditions, and around the family who owned the property, who are evidently six-figure givers in Texas Republican circles. With that cast of characters, and the fact that this incident wasn't publicly reported until about 24 hours after it happened, they speculate that something is being covered up.

As I said, I wouldn't put much past Cheney: he's shown bad judgment and cretinous disregard for people over his career, and his health issues and the medications he's presumably on all could factor into an accident or whatever. But the people involved--well, ask yourself this: what type of people would you expect Cheney to hang out with on weekends? Buddhists on meditative retreat? Ravers? Of course he's spending time with former/current political givers and fellow "big-time" Republicans. Given that the sheriff of the town (in the above-linked NYT piece) says there was nothing amiss, and that the guy seems to be recovering, it seems that at worst the "cover-up" is of Cheney doing something stupid or having an accident of some kind. In that sense he's probably no different than any other rich guy who's able to keep something embarassing but ultimately harmless out of the public spotlight.

(That said, imagine the reaction from certain quarters if it had been Ted Kennedy, Bill Clinton, or John Kerry who'd accidentally shot someone while hunting.)