Balasco

Special Assistant for What?

2006-01-12T17:41:00.000-05:00

Here's the quick backfill, via Kevin Drum: the K Street Project is not a abstract concept or simply a name for the current Republican graft phenomenon of the day, its organized enough to have its own website. (What's next? The Congressional Logrolling Caucus?)

Anyhow, on that website, via one of Kevin Drum's readers, is the mention of a job opening being filled at the Department of Labor: Special Assistant for Conservative Outreach (take a look at the lower left corner on the KStreet website).

So I just have to ask: is this appropriate? Isn't the whole idea that while its clear that the victorious political party occupies all the positions in government, the party machinery isn't supposed to BECOME the government? There's good reasons for this, beyond formalism. You can straight up hand money to a party, you can't to a government official. Many, if not all the legal and Constitutional barriers that prevent commercial interests, sectarian interests, foreign interests, etc. from improperly influencing government officials do not exist when it comes to political parties. While there is no way to separate government officials from the parties that nominate them and get them elected, you can at least keep them from OFFICIALLY using the instruments of government to aide their party's machinery. Of course, you can't do that if they are allowed to go so far and create government jobs for the express purpose of advancing the interests of their political party. Now, a defender might say, this isn't Republicans, its a discrete "community" of people who share the traits of conservatism. So, if Bill Clinton had created in each cabinet department a Special Assistant's for Advancing the Cause of the Democratic Party, we'd say the difference there is that Democrats just don't have the same sense of community, right?

Match Point, Melinda and Melinda, and Bananas

2006-01-05T13:53:00.000-05:00

Off real estate for just a moment.

My wife and I did very little with our New Year's Day weekend. New Year's Eve we got Melinda and Melinda via digital cable's Movies-on-Demand. This is Woody Allen's concept movie of telling very similar stories, but one as comedy and one as tragedy and going back and forth between them. The comedy featured Will Farrell, so my wife and I were sold.

We've both always been Woody Allen fans, but we were both struck by watching this movie how much it revealed of Allen's strengths and weaknesses. His dialogue is just awful, no one talks like Woody Allen's characters talk. Its more unrealistic than the Manhattan apartments in which he portrays them living. Because of that we hated the tragedy portion of Melinda. It was very difficult to care about the characters. But we really liked the comedy. Woody Allen is funny, and when the humor shows through, you can forgive a little stilted dialogue because you're distracted by the neurosis, the pratfalls, and the one-liners.

Which brings me to Match Point, which we saw in the theater the next evening, New Year's Day. Setting it in London with British and Irish characters was a reinvigorating move for Allen, because if the dialogue was just as stilted, as an American I wouldn't notice. I'd be curious to see what an Englishman would say. Nevertheless, I found this movie to be profoundly overrated. Spoiler alert: I can't tell you why without spoiling the movie, at least for Allen fans. Skip to Bananas if that's the case for you and you want to see it. Its the same damn plot as Crimes and Misdemeanors, which was a great movie. But its the same, except it takes longer to get to it. Some of the dialogue was stilted in Crimes and Misdemeanors as well, but that time the plot was more novel and there was a good comedic sideplot interwoven.

Finally, Monday I finally succeeded in talking my wife into watching Bananas, which I had Netflixed months ago because she had never seen. She disagrees with me, but I still think the slapstick of Bananas is where Allen was at his best.

Update to Real Estate Post

2006-01-05T12:56:00.000-05:00

Because of the attention my post on the NY Times real estate article got, I went back and took a look at the article again as well other people's critiques. I have to point out that upon reexamining the NY Times methodology, it seems they did control for down payments in their data, so that particular criticism by Elizabeth Warren, which I repeat in the update to my post, probably does not apply. My other criticisms stand and I believe the separate critiques of hers and others do as well.

One other very important critique that Matthew Yglesias raises over at Tapped is that commute times have increased. We've all heard a million times that real estate is about location, location, location. So even if we forgot about all of the other problems with saying that people pay the same for housing today as they used to, shouldn't we be very wary of that proposition if what people are getting for the same share of their income is a commute that is twice as long? [Full disclosure, in my quick search, I couldn't find any data comparing commute times today to 1980, but I think we can all agree they have probably risen significantly.]

Garance Franke-Ruta, another blogger at Tapped who's work I usually admire, argues the flip-side of this by saying that people complain about the rise in real estate costs because they demand premium real estate and refuse options like living in dangerous neighborhoods or longer commutes. I think that's kind of the point, today's generation is either paying more for the same or getting less if they are paying the same. I'm guessing, based on Ms. Ruta's profession, that she doesn't have to endure two hours of commuting a day regardless of where she chooses to live. Nor do I know if she has children, but you'd have to think that a person's willingness to buck up and brave getting mugged would dramatically decrease if they did have kids. Let me combine the two scenarios as well: if you work long hours and have kids, an extra hour of commute time per day means the percentage of your days spent with those kids is sharply reduced.

This is by no means an attempt to get personal with Ms. Franke-Ruta or flame her, I'm simply raising the possibility that she may be blithely placing way too little value on living close to one's workplace and in a safe neighborhood. This value is certainly a function of the shoes you stand in: a sketchy neighborhood or a longer commute is vastly more bearable to the single, low-paid 20-something with good hours than it is to the 30-something parent in a demanding job. Moreover, its usually the 30-something parent in the demanding job who's buying the house. This critique is the demographic flip-side to the not-so-implicit geographic critique of the NY Times article itself that people who live on the coasts are locked into their perception of a rising real estate market that is not the reality elsewhere.

I'd also like to pair my critique with a compliment of Ms. Franke-Ruta on a separate post on this issue where she notes the following:

[T]he fact that different parts of the country face completely different
economic realities has serious political implications. What impact do stagnant
wages have on people's self-assessments of economic well-being if they can also more easily purchase a home and achieve that central part of the American dream?
What do average incomes even mean if the costs of living are so different in
different parts of the nation? A couple earning $70,000 in St. Louis, for
example, can live in a very lovely three-bedroom house in a nice neighborhood,
while a single person earning the same amount in New York City can afford only a
bedroom in a shared apartment in Chelsea.

The NY Times did a very good article a couple years ago on the divergent real estate markets in what is essentially red America and blue America. That, unlike the NY Times article generating discussion here, was a very good, useful, and insightful article. Ms. Franke-Ruta is absolutely right that it has broad and important implications. I wish that the NY Times would pursue that trail rather than engage in what Jack Shafer calls the "bogus trendspotting" that created this man-bites dog story.

Happy New Year and Welcome Slate Readers!

2006-01-05T12:49:00.000-05:00

This may be news to my very small group of regular readers, but Balasco and its post on the NY Times real estate article was linked on Slate last week, so we may have some company here on Balasco. Unfortunately, I haven't been very welcoming with my sparse posting over the New Year's holiday. I didn't even know about the link until yesterday. I'll try to pick it up a little here. In the meantime new readers, makes yourselves at home, check out some of my previous posts, and check back in from time to time if you like what you see.

Rising/Falling Cost of Real Estate, NYTimes Style

2005-12-29T10:52:00.000-05:00

This front pager from the NY Times strikes me as an example of why people have become so skeptical of journalism as being more fluffy feeling-the-news infotainment than rigourous information and analysis. It appears to fashion a man-bites-dog story by deducing a reverse trend: that despite all the talk of a real estate bubble, the share of income that median families must devote to home ownership is actually lower than it was 20 years ago.

The problem is that you can only perceive this trend by ignoring the 25% of the country that lives in the northeast, south Florida, and California, and more importantly, by making sure that you are comparing what families are paying today to what they were paying in the early '80s, when interest rates were severely spiked upward and the housing market was in the midst of a previous boom. What's amazing is that even with interest rates through the roof in the early '80s and an ongoing boom, home buyers in NY, FL, CA, and DC were still paying a lower percentage of their incomes than they are now.

But more importantly, if the NY Times had bothered to compare what share of income median families paid for their homes in the 1970s, I suspect (without having done my own study) that they would have found that the parents of the current home buying generation paid less. But that's not a man-bites-dog story, so the NY Times didn't go back to the '70s. In addition, they buried another interesting lede in the article, which is that the share of income median families must devote to home ownership is the HIGHEST its been since 1989. Gee, I wonder what happened to the economy after 1989?

UPDATE: Elizabeth Warren over at TPMCafe picks up my point about the NY Times article using the early '80s as its point of comparison. But she makes a far more significant point: in the early '80s, people put 20% down payments on their homes, which is far less common now. Thus, the NY Times data comparison is deeply flawed: they are comparing the cost of median families paying for 80% of their homes in the early '80s with the cost of median families paying for closer to 100% of their homes today. Warren makes another significant point: for most families it now takes two incomes to achieve the median income status that was still more often achieved by one income in the early '80s. So your home may not take a greater share of your family income than it did in the early '80s, but it now takes twice as many people working to keep it that way.

Political Data Mining

2005-12-29T10:50:00.000-05:00

This post on Political Animal describes an unbelievably powerful and fascinating political tool that enables pollsters to predict which way a person will vote based on their voting habits. Unfortunately, right now its only in the wrong hands.

Not a Crook- Not in a Bubble

2005-12-13T13:37:00.000-05:00

"People have got to know whether or not their President's a crook. Well, I am not a crook." - President Richard Nixon 11/17/73 (http://www.msnbc.com/onair/msnbc/timeandagain/archive/watergate/nov1773.asp)

"I don't feel in a bubble. . . And it's a myth to think that I'm not aware that there [are] opinions that don't agree with mine. Because I'm fully aware of that." - President George W. Bush 12/12/05 (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051213/od_nm/bush_bubble_dc)

Why do [I] feel like this [is] not progress?

But Why Iraq?

2005-11-21T16:21:00.000-05:00

I've read the following quote from Steve Schmitt, here and here, and somewhere else I can no longer remember.

We're asking very traditional questions: Was information withheld? Was there
deceit about the information? Those are the familiar Watergate/Iran-contra
questions. But they overlook the Ideology of Information that the administration
created. By this I mean the whole practice of evaluating all information going
into the war not for its truth value, but for whether it promoted or hindered
the administration's goal of being free to go to war. The President could have
been given every bit of intelligence information available, and he and/or Cheney
would have reached the same decision because they would have discarded,
discounted, or disregarded most of it. Information that was Useful to that goal
was put in one box, Not Useful put in another. Entire categories of information
were assigned to the Not Useful box because their source was deemed an opponent
of U.S. military action, or assumed to have some other motive.

It's a great post, making explict what I think a lot us already implicitly understood but haven't clearly articulated.

But it also raises a very important question: if there was never an objective analysis that led to the decision to change the regime in Iraq at any point going back into the '90s, just WHY has this group been so dead set on the policy, a priori, for so long? For all the excellent reporting and explanations I've seen of the behavior of this administration and the neoconservative "cabal" that drove this war, unless I've missed it, no one, anywhere, has every explained just why this group decided in the mid-'90s that all of the national security eggs should go into the Iraq regime change basket.

Some will immediately say oil and Halliburton. I'm sure that's not unrelated, but I don't think, for all their problems, that's what really motivates guys like Bill Kristol and Paul Wolfowitz. And isn't there plenty of money to be made anyway building pipelines in Afghanistan and sucking up to the Saudis?

Was it a recognition that for national or parochial interests we needed to get our troops out of Saudi Arabia? Maybe, but wouldn't it be vastly easier to simply redeploy to Kuwait and react if Saddam started to threaten the Saudis again?

Was it that crazy RAND study that surfaced that saw this as the most convenient beginning of regime changes across the mideast? Maybe, but then why was it crucial to start with Iraq, not Syria, or Libya, or Sudan? For all of their documented hubris, did these very smart guys really believe, going back to the '90s, that they could pull off regime change across the middle east?

Here is my theory: a policy of regime change in Iraq was the only realistic way (if you could call that) that conservatives could hawkishly distinguish the Republican party and former cold war conservatives from Bill Clinton's already hawkish internationalist foreign policy. Here was one hawkish policy they could argue that they would do but Clinton would not- (after all, even they can't handle a war against Iran or North Korea, even though Clinton nearly did go to war with the North Koreans). Moreover, it also enabled them to rekindle and incorporate the time-honored conservative hostility to western Europe (who was softening on Iraq) and lump Clinton and the Democrats in with Western Europe as some how soft on security.

To say that this policy was based on political positioning and not any underlying objective analysis is pretty cynical. But isn't it pretty consistent with everything we've seen so far? As Steve Schmitt says, for these guys objective evidentiary support is just all backfill for what they already want to do. Haven't we heard before about this administration making policy choices in service of good politics that are subsequently justified however possible? Very much like the Bush tax cut that was devised in 1999 to beat Steve Forbes in the NH primary? Very much like what John D'Iulio and Paul O'Neill said about these guys?

And sadly, as you look at the 2002 and 2004 elections, didn't it work?

Why Moderate Republicans Are Useless Vol. 3

2005-11-16T11:20:00.000-05:00

Calling all NY area moderate Republican Congressman: Peter King, Chris Shays, Nancy Johnson, Sue Kelly, Rob Simmons, Mike Ferguson, Frank Lobiondo, Rodney Frelinghuysen. Why do we keep you around again? Your party just took $125 million of previously granted 9-11 money from New York. If you vote with a party that's way out of step with your constiuency, has made a mockery of your supposed fiscal rectitude, and you let them screw your constituents with impunity on local appropriations as sensitive as 9-11 funding, what exactly is your purpose in holding elected office again?

Well, Now That I'm Blogging

2005-11-15T19:53:00.000-05:00

There's something about the attempt to coopt the Democrats' votes in October 2002 for military force that has bothered me for as long as they have been identified as "votes for the war" in the public discourse.

The votes in October 2002 were to authorize Bush to use force in order to force Saddam to comply with UN inspections. In material respects, Saddam did comply, but Bush used the authority to use force anyway.

Democrats could easily say they didn't vote to use force no matter what, they voted to use force in case Saddam wouldn't comply with inspections (something I think I would still vote for). Bush publicly stated that's what the resolution was about. So now that he criticizes Democrats for voting for the war, is he implicitly saying "hey, you should have known I was lying and was going to war no matter what?" Maybe they did, but isn't ridiculous nonetheless?

Credit where credit is due: this has been covered on Talkingpointsmemo.com here and here.

Very Important

2005-11-15T19:33:00.000-05:00

I have aroused myself from lax attention to this blog to alert whatever readers I still have to this NY Times editorial.

Nothing I have read has as succintly and effectively summed up the actions of the Bush administration in the lead up to war and its lame excuses after the fact about its manipulation of prewar intellegence, i.e. that they had the same intelligence as everyone else (Clinton, Democrats in Congress, foreign intelligence) and that they reached the same conclusions. That's plainly false, and the NY Times explains it better than anyone else.

A Bolder Approach

2005-10-23T00:31:00.000-04:00

I'm sorry, I know this is a week late, but I feel like I have to say something about this quote by Condeleeza Rice on last week's Meet the Press:

The fact of the matter is that when we were attacked on September 11, we
had a choice to make. We could decide that the proximate cause was al Qaeda and
the people who flew those planes into buildings and, therefore, we would go
after al Qaeda … or we could take a bolder approach.

Say what you will about the decision to invade Iraq, you wouldn't want these people in charge of fixing your car:

The fact of the matter is that when your car broke down last week, we had a choice to make. We could decide that the proximate cause was the transmission system that stopped functioning and therefore have that fixed . . . or we could take a bolder approach, leave the transmission alone and change the engine instead.

So if you are wondering why our mideast policy seems like its on stall . . .

Thought He Outsmarted All Of Us

2005-10-23T00:08:00.000-04:00

By now, you're probably familiar with the famous DeLay smiling mugshot. The idea to smile as if its an appearance at a church dinner was really quite clever: it prevents Democrats from using the mugshot in their campaign ads in 2006.

Well, it might have been clever by half, because there's an uncropped photo of that mugshot. Now if I were a Democratic media consultant, I'd cut an ad that had my Republican opponent in a smiling embrace with DeLay, cut to separate pictures of them smiling, and then pan slowly to the right on the uncropped version, finally focusing in on the words "adult inmate." I think I'd like that better than the straight up grimace mugshot.

Bush Approval Ratings

2005-10-18T15:18:00.000-04:00

Survey USA has once again come out with a state-by-state break out of Bush's approval ratings. You can check them out for yourself, but here are some of the most shocking ones for my money:

South Carolina 40% Approve, 58% Disapprove
Texas!!! 42% Approve, 54% Disapprove
Kansas 43% Approve, 54% Disapprove

Kurtz Pitiful

2005-10-17T10:51:00.000-04:00

I've written before about how lousy the Washington press corps is at doing its job, and specifically how Howard Kurtz, the self-appointed dean of covering and evaluating Washington journalism, is himself a particularly bad journalist.

By way of update, Mickey Kaus provides another excellent example (scroll down to #6 in Kaus's post) of Kurtz falling down on the job. In this particular case, he misstates a fact that a cursory reading of other news accounts would prevent. I genuinely wonder if he went from chatting about the story at the water cooler immediately to writing his column without ever bothering to read the news.

Midterm Democratic Convention

2005-10-14T16:52:00.000-04:00

This is a great idea that I've been kicking around since even before Kerry blew it, but I wasn't smart enough to actually post something about it. I guess the 80-something Walter Cronkite is more nimble.

The Democrats badly need to set a clear course for the American people, who judging from opinion polling, are waiting for them to do it. A convention would get great press, because it would be used to decide something, unlike a nominating convention, which hasn't decided anything in a half-century. Part of the routine every four years is for the press to long openly for the good old days of meaningful conventions. Now they'd finally have it. Moreover, I think it would go far to dispel the meme that Democrats are looking to rely solely on the Republican implosion and don't have serious proposals of their own. Nothing could go farther in showing that they are serious than a public investment of party money and time in a process where the party tries to get a unified agenda on the record.

The down-side risk is that the sausage-making effect would hurt the Democrats. If there were large schisms in the party that forced papered over compromises and possible walkouts I think that would be a risk. The reality though is that the ideological differences in the party are wildly overblown and I suspect a convention would serve to unify the party around a set of principles that were heavily publicized and clearly articulated. This would be like going double or nothing on the Contract for America, and my bet is that it would turn up double.

There's Something About Harriet

2005-10-12T15:51:00.000-04:00

Before I get to a brief comment on the Miers nomination, I'd just like to note for the record, in light of the last post, that I'm crushed. OK, maybe not in tears like back in '81, but nevertheless, wounded.

Here's the thing about Hariett Miers. I actually think that her lack of qualifications is overplayed a little. Sure, if we're grading on a curve of available lawyers for the Supreme Court, Miers doesn't register very high. But I'm sure she's a smart lady, with a degree in math and a federal clerkship under her belt. Unlike Alberto Gonzales (and Lewis Powell for that matter), she spent her career as a litigator, in addition to having clerked for a federal judge.

Moreover, honestly, I'd rather have a mediocre person on the court who is not out to chip away at my fundamental rights than a brilliant legal mind who is. Maybe that's cynical, but hey, I didn't vote for the guy who nominated her, why should I be responsible for her credentials?

But in the wake of Brownie, there is something distasteful about Bush deciding that the nation is better off with his pal rather than a selection resulting from an objective, far reaching search for a great legal mind. In one sense, its of a piece with the Bush administration's rejection of objectivity and professionalism- that has no value to them, only loyalty to the cause- (and not some abstract ideological cause, just the cause of advancing the power of the Bush administration and its cronies).

But when I read the NY Times account of Harriet Miers correspondence with Bush, I feel like it opened a window into this guy's soul that we all suspected but now have clearly confirmed. The President, with all his insecurity and issues with his father, badly needs a posse to reaffirm his greatness to him constantly. He feels the need to place exclusively sychophants around him in positions of power. Its like he needs to marshall the federal government, with its budget in the trillions of dollars, for the sole purpose of propping up his fragile ego. All of the resources of the American taxpayer are being devoted to providing this guy with ego gratification. To me, and maybe its just me, but this gratification is a lot more costly and difficult to endure than Clinton's, er, pursuit of more worldly gratification.

To Yom Kippur observers: Have a good fast!

Watching the Playoffs: Old School, New School

2005-10-04T23:26:00.000-04:00

This post is for old school Yankee fans only, apologies to my other readers, both of them.

The Yanks are off on the right foot, 4-2 over the Angels.

Back in '81, the last time the Yanks were in the postseason during my childhood (as you might guess, it ended in tears)- I remember my Dad watching the game on mute while listening on the radio because he preferred the local radio guys over the national announcers who only called the Yanks in the postseason.

When the Yanks returned to postseason play in '95, many of my friends revived this old school tradition of muting out the national announcers for the local radio guys. The choice seemed even more obvious in the modern dynasty: John Sterling on the radio is an easy call over Tim McCarver and Joe Buck. (Tim McCarver is quite remarkable in his ability to unite Yankees and Red Sox fans on this point: he sucks.)

Anyhow, I found myself in an unusual situation: I wanted to listen to the first playoff game 'old school,' but with only 'new school' technology. Translation, while I have a sweet plasma TV and a great new laptop- I have no radio handy in my living room. Solution: I brought the laptop into the living room and purchased the radio broadcast from MLB.com. Well, partial solution- the delay between radio and TV is excacerbated by the internet. Even if I don't proceed with this plan, its not a total loss since I'm bound to be stuck at work on occasion this month during games, when I can use the $8 season subscription.

As it turned out tonight, I watched Mariano Rivera pop-up Casey Kotchman to end the game, I got up to go to the bathroom before John Sterling called it. Before I got to the door, I heard it "Yankees win! THHHHHHHHEEEEE Yankees Win!" You know, even a minute late, it still felt good to hear.

So I guess the lag isn't all that bad.

The Bill Bennett Thing

2005-10-02T18:53:00.000-04:00

So in case you missed it, Bill Bennett got himself in pretty hot water while responding on his radio show to a pro-lifer advancing the argument that aborted babies would pay payroll taxes and therefore keep the system solvent (I guess they would then abort themselves at 67 before actually collecting from the system). Bennett intended to argue, fairly, that you could make the same argument in favor of abortion. He could have used the controversial argument from Steven Levitt's book Freakonomics, which is that aborted babies would be more likely to become criminals and drive up the crime rate if they were not aborted. Alas, Bennett took a disastrous detour, and instead simply said that crime would go down if you aborted all the black babies in America.

Its not that Bennett is advocating aborting all of the black babies in America, he said he wasn't, and while I don't admire him, I take him at his word that he is genuinely pro-life. Its not that he was so insensitive to even suggest the hypothetical, sort of our of thin air, of aborting all the black babies in America. Although that is kind of a problem. Finally, its not that Bennett believes there's a link between crime and abortion, as I mentioned before, whether you agree with the theory or not, Freakonomics makes that old news.

The problem is, Mr. Bennett, why do you take it for granted that the unborn black children of the present will inevitably being a more prone to crime in 15-20 years than the general population?

Does Bennett just believe the situation of the black community is hopeless (despite some significant, steady, and healthy progress in the past half-century)? Or does he think its a genetic thing? Why does Bennett think that black babies are more likely to become criminals even before they get out of the womb? Is anyone in the Washington press corps smart enough to ask him? (Since the White House demand for an apology, courage would not be necessary in this particular instance.)

I think America ought to here Bennett's answers to that one before they keep buying his children's books and books on values.

P.S. Over at TPMCafe, Reed Hundt posts a pretty interesting anecdote about Mr. Bennett unrelated to the controversy at hand.

The Bushmeister, The Bushinator, Bushanopolis . . . Bush

2005-10-02T18:38:00.000-04:00

Perhaps you've already come across the list of nicknames that President Bush has conferred on various people in Washington. Read it, its funny (and, if you have a hard time believing it, true). Its not that I think that by and large the people on that list are entitled to more dignity than that which they get from their nickname. But as I read it, I couldn't help but wonder how we elected Richmeister, the photocopy character from Saturday Night Live, to President of the United States. If only that were his biggest problem.

Dude, Do Not Get A Dell

2005-10-02T17:36:00.000-04:00

The hard drive on my last laptop irretrievably melted down a couple weeks ago. Laptop gone, data gone (yeah, yeah, I know, I should have backed up). The laptop was a four year old Compaq Presario, the replacement hard drive was a two year installation from Best Buy pursuant to the extended warranty I got with the laptop. I could share what a miserable experience that was (it also involved a loss of data due to Best Buy), but I'll just let you infer from the two year lifespan of the replacement hard drive that Best Buy is also a place to avoid for anything but off-the-shelf, no-service-or-returns necessary purchases. That's not the point of the post though.

I decided to stick with a laptop for the next home computer for a variety of reasons, and I wanted a lightweight laptop at that because why have a laptop if you're never willing to lug it anywhere. On the other hand, I felt a little guilty about the extra cost involved, so I opted to go with a Dell Inspiron 700m.

I was concerned about a possibly cramped keyboard, one that I haven't seen since you can't look at a Dell in a retail store. So my plan (which ended up being quite expensive) was to get the lightweight Dell, but then get an external keyboard, mouse, monitor and dock that I could plug it in and out of. I had some final technical questions I couldn't answer online so I called the Dell number and ended up in a high-pressure sales situation that ended up with me buying everything on their no money down plan.

Flash forward about a week. The system arrives. I start setting it up. The keyboard is borderline ridiculous (for example, the period key, which, you know, you hit everytime you finish a sentence, is half size)- for some reason they don't use over a half inch of space on either side. Its difficult to place disks in the disk drive. The broadband cable requires a large amount of brute force to pull out once I've plugged it in.

Then I set up the monitor. I try plugging it in both ways- nothing but a test screen appears. I call Dell's service line, after 78 minutes on the phone with someone in India (much of that time holding) I get passed on to a second level guy (after a few more minutes of holding). During this time I also tried and failed to get my printer installed and printing correctly. 90 minutes and two Dell tech support people after I called, they're satisfied its a hardware problem. I say great, send me someone to fix it, since, you know, I spent a couple of hundred dollars on your #1 service plan which includes that. Oh, well they didn't know about that, I'd have to speak to a third person about that. At somepoint after the next few minutes of holding I got flat out disconnected.

When I called back, I just wanted to return everything and end the fiasco. That took 35 minutes. The experience came full circle when I ended up in another high pressure negotiation where I had to decline an offer to speak to a hardware expert and another offer to replace the whole system. When I told the woman that I had had enough and just wanted to return it, she told me I'd have to pay for the return shipping. I argued, saying why should I have to pay to ship back a product that didn't work. She said because I rejected their cure, which was a new system. I said, well, that would cure the defective product, but what would cure the horrendous service that I paid hundreds of dollars for? She said, and this shocked me even two hours in, that I "just didn't give it enough time." I wrote that down. I was given a return number to take to a UPS store, who would print return labels and ship the return boxes- at my expense. Naturally, even that was screwed up, as the number only covered two of the three boxes. I guess Dell figured I'd want to just keep the wireless keyboard and mouse and pretend I had a functioning Dell computer.

The happy ending here is that I am currently writing this post from my new Fujitsu Lifebook 6240 and I cannot sing its praises enough. The set up was completely smooth with the software and the externals (which unlike Dell, were not sold as a package). Like the Dell Inspiron 700m, the Fujitsu Lifebook 6240 is 4 pounds, but the keyboard is a decent size (slightly smaller than optimal, but good for a lightweight laptop). The screen is also bigger at 13.3 inches. So no external screen or keyboard necessary. Also, things that I had to pay extra for with Dell, like a weight-saving bay (the Dell saleswoman didn't even know what that was), or the back-up XP installation disk, came free with the Fujitsu. The Fujistu Lifebook is a few hundred dollars more, no doubt, but trust me, either way you get what you pay for.

P.S. As luck would have it, I used to live in the same building as the Dell dude, but he had to move out in search of lower rent after he lost his gig with Dell for his marijuana bust.

UPDATE 10/3/05: Called Dell to get the Return Authorization Number for that last box, it only took 26 minutes. Also, I forgot to mention that for some reason Dell didn't find it necessary to ship the computer or the monitor with a user manual. Great company.

Purpose Driven Life . . . and some crystal meth

2005-09-27T16:37:00.000-04:00

I must say, I did not see this one coming:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050927/ap_on_re_us/courthouse_hostage_book

Ashley Smith, the woman who says she persuaded suspected courthouse gunman
Brian Nichols to release her by talking about her faith in God, discloses in a
new book that she gave him methamphetamine during the hostage ordeal.

Smith did not share that detail with authorities after she talked her
way out of captivity.

In her book, "Unlikely Angel," released Tuesday, the 27-year-old Smith
says Nichols had her bound on her bed with masking tape and an extension cord.
She says he asked for marijuana, but she did not have any, so she dug into her
illegal stash of crystal meth instead.

Zellweger & Chesney No More

2005-09-16T17:36:00.000-04:00

I'm gonna leave you for the weekend on a lighter note- although not so much for Renee Zellweger.

One of things I didn't really realize before I got married but know now is that one major disincentive to getting divorced is that there's a degree of embarrassment involved that's closely related to the fact that a certain number of people attended your wedding, maybe traveled to get there, gave you gifts, and watched you take vows. The more people who did that, the more embarrassed you are likely to feel, although surely that would only be one component of the pain you would be experiencing.

So, while I understand that Renee Zellweger and Kenny Chesney would like the world to respect their privacy in this painful time- I really do- they kind of blew that upfront when they released a massive photo spread to various tabliods when they got married. They pretty much took the big wedding up to another level, and now that things didn't work out, they're gonna be stuck with some unwanted, but bargained-for embarrassment.

I wouldn't wish their pain on anybody, but the silver-lining here in that we can all draw a life lesson: don't marry someone without knowing them more than a month or so and then release the wedding pictures to Us Weekly for their cover. Because if it doesn't work out, the privacy thing is pretty much out the window at that point. Just saying. Have an awesome weekend.

Airlines

2005-09-16T17:15:00.000-04:00

Delta and Northwestern declared chapter 11 this week. What I hope is that these airlines are not bailed out in anyway. Not in the form of the direct bailouts that happened after 9/11, which they can't expect, or in the form of being allowed to weasel out of their pension obligations, like United, which they probably do.

Airlines cram their customers into truly uncomfortable conditions, frequently perform well-below customers' reasonable expectations in terms of on-time take-offs and other metrics, and I believe regularly lie to their customers. This summer I had a flight cancelled by a comparable airline to the two mentioned above for "bad weather"- it rained for all of five minutes on the day in question- lightly. This same flight, which I take regularly, is 100% reliable in the fact that the bathroom is never fully-functional, it is always missing water, soap, or a functioning door-latch. Delta has rewarded me for my frequent flying with points and coupons, which I have never been able to use despite many attempts because it seems every flight they have that takes off after 6 AM on any given day has no seats available for people with such points and vouchers. So its a typically meaningless gesture.

There are some airlines, which in my experience, aren't that bad. Midwest Express, Jet Blue, and usually American usually perform up to basic expectations. But in my experience Delta and Northwestern usually do not. So I think if they are going bankrupt, policymakers and bankruptcy judges should recognize that's happening for a reason. The owners of these airlines own a bad company with bad management. The consequences of owning bad companies with bad management is that you lose your money and management loses their jobs. That's what should happen here. The planes, the routes, and the employees won't go away, they will just fall into the hands of other managers and owners. Based on the success of other airlines, there's a decent chance the new managers will be a vast improvement. Any special treatment of management or shareholders in bankruptcy proceedings would only inhibit this.

Daily Show on Tom Coburn

2005-09-15T11:13:00.000-04:00

You may have read about Tom Coburn's weirdly tearful opening statement at the John Roberts hearing.

Everyone, even Tom Coburn, is entitled to be moved by the plight of our country in these times. But Coburn's pleas entail a certain, well, metric ton of chutzpah. As I watched the Daily Show last night, I think Jon Stewart, in his unique way, captured it perfectly. Reliably, Crooks and Liars has the clip. The Coburn part is about two and a half minutes into it. Please go and enjoy.

Back from hiatus

2005-09-15T10:59:00.000-04:00

I'll start slowly.

Here is a must read post from Ed Kilgore that I think follows on to my posts about Rove and Rovism pretty well (even if Kilgore almost certainly never read my posts on Rovism, he ideas still flow toegether well.) Kilgore's prescription for defeating this dangerous political movement is more process oriented, and I agree with it, but I still believe it should build, and incorporate, a set of first principles that are broadly and publicly adopted by Democrats.

Here's the money quote from Kilgore:

Most of these people have no concept of "accountability"--in terms of short-term
performance, long-range consequences, the judgment of history, or even public
opinion. Their only benchmark is progress towards their own ideological goals. . .
. . . In fact, I would argue that their most important tactical
consideration has been to destroy the possibility of accountability by
short-circuiting all the signals whereby a healthy society normally judges its
leaders. Any source of objective measurement has been systematically discredited
as inherently ideological: scientists are secularist fanatics; the media are
elitist liberals; the judiciary is full of anti-Christian activists; the
opposition party is anti-American. We've all had much fun with the conservative
characterization of "liberals" as "reality-based," but it's no laughing matter:
the essence of Rovism is to eliminate any zone of rational persuasion and force
Americans to pick sides in an identity politics of real and perceived privileges
under imaginary assault.

More than one Iraq

2005-08-26T12:10:00.000-04:00

One last point about the forces that are driving Iraq into three pieces. It may be that if Bush had managed this war competently, Iraq wouldn't be on the course it is now, destined to become separate Shiite, Kurdish, and Sunni states. But I just want to posit my deep thought for the day:

It could be that this a very natural part of a process that's been going on since 1918- the gradual deterioration of the national boundaries drawn at Versailles or before by colonialist European allied powers in contravention to Wilson's principle of self-determination. That process started with World War II, and has continued through to the partition of India and Pakistan, Israeli independence and the 1967 war which changed the boundaries of the Jewish state yet again, the French withdrawal in Southeast Asia, the disintegration of Yugoslavia, and the horrific cross-border tribal bloodshed in Africa.

Iraq shares with these conflicts the characteristic of distinct national groups coping with artificial borders drawn by European outsiders. If history is any guide, the goal of a single Iraqi state may never have been a realistic, long-term solution. Maybe the better question is how do these historical forces continue to play out in Saudi Arabia- also a creation of Versailles, and Africa.

Liberal hawks v. doves

2005-08-26T11:33:00.000-04:00

There's a debate simmering in the liberal blogosphere between "liberal hawks" and "doves." You can go to Matt Yglesias on TAPPED, or Kevin Drum in Political Animal, or Atrios for the dove side of the argument. Marshall Wittman is taking a leading edge of the "liberal hawk" side, with backup from Ed Kilgore, and most of the Democratic establishment.

Here's a very quick summary of how this argument plays out:

Doves: Whatever you thought of the war before, its clear
that we've blown it now, and the sooner we bring the troops home, the
better, since leaving them there to get killed isn't improving
things.

Liberal Hawks: Failure is not an option. Leaving
now, or on a fixed timetable, would be a disaster. Besides, its terrible
politics for Democrats, Democratic doves never win, even when they're right, see
George McGovern.

Doves: Its all well and good to recognize what a
disaster failure in Iraq is, but its a reality, and unless you have a plan for
succeeding there, which you don't, then all you're doing is leaving troops in
harms way for no good reason but political posturing.

Liberal hawks: Sure we do, err, train more Iraqi troops,
get more countries involved, ummmm...

Doves: yeah, you don't.

[While the liberal hawks really haven't articulated any great ideas on succeeding in Iraq, see Wes Clark's proposals in today's Washington Post, which both sides of this debate acknowledge are as good as what's out there.]

I think both the liberal hawks and doves are making a lot of sense, but neither are really articulating what is supposed to happen next in Iraq, whether we stay or leave. I think the doves are right in this sense: success, as we have defined it up to now, which is making Iraq some semblence of a stable, pluralistic democracy, is now beyond our reach. That horse left the stable months ago, regardless of what happened with the Iraqi Constitution. Iraq's Shiites and Kurds have demonstrated zero interest in governing the Sunni heartland, or sharing their wealth with it, or rebuilding it. I have seen accounts of over a hundred thousand Iraqis in uniform, I've seen no accounts of how many are willing to patrol Fallujah and Tikrit.

But the liberal hawks are right too: we leave Iraq as is, we leave a terrorist state in place in the Sunni heartland, and most likely an Iranian satellite theocracy in the Shiite south. Neither side of this debate views this as an acceptable result, both sides agree the blame lays squarely in the lap of the Bush administration. But the hard question is how do we prevent this outcome.

I think a lot of doves would come around to the liberal hawk position if they could articulate a way to avoid this outcome. But that's not going to happen if liberal hawks continue to look at the problem where success is framed as something that may never have been realistic and is now completely beyond the realm of possibility: a single, stable, democratic Iraq in which Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds coexist peacefully.

The goal needs to change: (i) a Western-oriented, democratic Shiite Iraqi state that projects more democratic and liberal influence on Iran than it receives theocratic influence from Iran; and (ii) a stable, Sunni Iraqi state that is governed by people with whom we can deal and who are committed to driving the Al Qaeda-backed insurgency out of their country.

Christopher Hitchens

2005-08-26T11:06:00.000-04:00

Earlier in the week, I intended to write a post about Christopher Hitchens. In Slate, he squarely put himself on the side of the scientific method in the debate over teaching creationism- (a.k.a. intelligent design) in our public schools. I was going to link to it and snark that Hitchens was endorsing the scientific method with respect to all things except the war in Iraq. But, the day passed by, I was distracted, late August summer doldrums, so on and so forth.

Then, last night (still pretty steep in the doldrums) I saw Hitchens making a guest appearance on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. As huge a fan as I am of the Daily Show, and as much as I think Stewart and his writers really are brilliant- and perhaps the best- at cutting to the quick when it comes to looking at the issues of the day, I've never really gotten as excited as others have about Jon Stewart as some sort of profound critic or deep thinker on public policy issues. I think he'd agree. He's a comedien, he takes a pop shot (usually a better pop shot than anyone), but gets the laugh and pulls out. A lot of times when he speaks to public figures, or even when he knocked Crossfire, I kind of think he falls back on this "why do we have to be so partisan" whine that seems to be oblivious to the fact that its deep in the nature of our system and doesn't get to what may be the real problems.

Back to Hitchens. Stewart started off the bat questioning Hitchens about his hawkish position on the war, and Stewart got serious for a moment and just completely smoked the guy. I laid in bed and thought to myself, I wish I could blog about this, but then I'd have to dig up a transcript or something, and who's going to actually get to see it.

Well, Wonkette did blog about it. So I'm linking to that. But you should go check out the video clip on the web, reliably provided by www.crooksandliars.com. In the meantime, here's the transcript of the last exchange, courtesy of Wonkette:

Stewart: The people who say we shouldn't
fight in Iraq aren't saying it's our fault. . . That is the conflation that is
the most disturbing. . .

Hitch: Don't you hear people saying. . .

Stewart: You hear people saying a lot of
stupid [bleep]. . . But there are reasonable disagreements in this country about
the way this war has been conducted, that has nothing to do with people
believing we should cut and run from the terrorists, or we should show weakness
in the face of terrorism, or that we believe that we have in some way brought
this upon ourselves. . .

Hitch: [Sputter]

Stewart: They believe that this war is being
conducted without transparency, without credibility, and without
competence...

Hitch: I'm sorry, sunshine... I just watched
you ridicule the president for saying he wouldn't give. . .

Stewart: No, you misunderstood why. . . .
That's not why I ridiculed the president. He refuses to answer questions from
adults as though we were adults and falls back upon platitudes and phrases and
talking points that does a disservice to the goals that he himself shares with
the very people needs to convince.
[Audience erupts in applause]

Hitch: You want me to believe you're really
secretly on the side of the Bush administration. . .

Stewart: I secretly need to believe he's on
my side. He's too important and powerful a man not to be.

Hitch: [Sputter, return to talking about
his latest book.]

If you have cable, you read this today, and will be home tonight, watch the rerun on Comedy Central for the whole interview, its worth it.

Celeste Zappala

2005-08-22T18:58:00.000-04:00

The Bush administration's casual relationship with reality and telling the truth is, in and of itself, infuriating for any American. I think that if its not the overtly expressed reason for Bush's staggering unpopularity just nine months after his reelection, its the primary underlying one.

Frank Rich wrote a powerful column Sunday about Cindy Sheehan and the Bush Iraq policy. Its a great column, but the best part might have been the link to the Daily News op-ed written the prior Sunday by Celeste Zappala. Ms. Zappala's son was killed protecting the Iraq Survey Group while they searched for WMD- a month AFTER Bush regaled the Washington press corps with his comedy routine which involved him looking for WMD under his own desk.

What is brought home by the story of this mother- who unlike Cindy Sheehan has NEVER had a meeting with the President- is that even if you believe that there was merit in the policies of regime change and preemptive force, there is no denying that this Presidency's casual relationship to the truth cost American lives. Even if you think invading Iraq was for one reason or another, then or now, a good idea, men died searching for WMD that this Administration had plenty of reasons to know weren't there, but said otherwise.

What's worse, the institution we rely on for truth, the press corps, attended that dinner and enjoyed a hearty laugh at Bush's faux-search for WMD. Their interest in political wins and losses, access to the Administration, and protection of their own parochial interests, is an accessory to the President's malfeasance. Even today, large swaths of the press corps expends far more ink on Judith Miller's "unjust" imprisonment (for protecting the illegal disclosure of the identity of an American intelligence operative) than her wildly off-base and poorly sourced reporting on WMD.

Now this same press corps will chase around stories about Cindy Sheehan, and whether this Gold Star mother holds views with which many of us disagree, and cavorts with left-of-center groups like MoveOn of whom the mainstream media disapproves. But the fact that Celeste Zappala is also camping outside that ranch where the President is enjoying his five week vacation, that the President has never granted her a meeting, and the fact that her son died trying specifically to validate this President's misrepresentation, has not made it onto the Sunday morning talk shows or into the pages of the Washington Post.

It's All Hackett

2005-08-18T09:58:00.000-04:00

It's been a busy month (in contrast with certain world leaders who live in Texas). Hopefully, this will not become a weekly.

Short post: the way is looking increasingly clear for Paul Hackett to run for Senate in Ohio, I really hope he does.

The Four Star General's Demotion

2005-08-11T19:54:00.000-04:00

I realize that I'm posting at a pretty slow pace. Hey, if the President can take five weeks off . . .

Yesterday, the military disclosed the summary dismissal of a four-star general. Today we learn it was for adultery.

This isn't a right to privacy issue, the Uniform Code of Military Justice forbids adultery, and whether its wise or not to get that far into a soldier's private life, there's no question that when you join the military voluntarily your right to privacy is one of the first things to go.

And of course, there's adultery and there's adultery. As the NY Times article notes "[i]n 1999, the Army demoted a retired general who admitted to adulterous affairs with the wives of four subordinates." OK, that's pretty nasty, maybe that should be prohibited.

But this General was having an affair with a civilian AFTER he separated from his wife. Doesn't this sound like a jail sentence for jay-walking? You've got to ask yourself: who did this guy piss off and why?

This guy has another good perspective on it.

DLCers v. Deaniacs

2005-08-07T01:24:00.000-04:00

Someone else gets it.

Matewan

2005-08-05T18:25:00.000-04:00

I just finished this movie by John Sayles that I received from Netflix and had wanted to see for a long time. It was one of the best movies I've seen in quite a while and highly recommend it.

Palmiero

2005-08-03T19:34:00.000-04:00

I think the steroid scandal in baseball is as serious as the Black Sox scandal in 1919. Which is why I take Bush's remarks on Raphael Palmiero not as an amusement, but a sad coda to how he has treated everything else in this Administration: choosing his friends over the public interest, declaring reality to be dependent on what he and his friends say, rather than objectivity.

"Rafael Palmeiro is a friend. He testified in public and I believe him," Bush
said, referring to Palmeiro's denials under oath to a congressional committee on
March 17. "He's the kind of person that's going to stand up in front of the
klieg lights and say he didn't use steroids, and I believe him. Still do."

Kevin Drum says it pretty well.

The Sum of All Fears (When It Comes to Roberts)

2005-08-03T16:54:00.000-04:00

This is what I was worried about.

Hackett

2005-08-03T11:35:00.000-04:00

Those of you following the special Congressional election in the Ohio 2d Congressional district know that Paul Hackett, a returning veteran from Iraq, lost by four points, even though the district is the most Republican in Ohio, going for Bush over Gore by 29 points. The previous Republican incumbent, Rob Portman, regularly won the district by 50 points in his reelections.

Ohio's Senator, Mike DeWine, is looking particular vulnerable as Republicans in Ohio are suffering from serious corruption scandals and an unpopular President. Democrats have been having a tough time finding a candidate.

I really hope they realize they've found him.

What Roberts Should Answer

2005-08-03T11:19:00.000-04:00

Back from a long weekend book-ended by very busy work days.

I've given a lot of thought to what prospective judges should be able to talk about in advance of their appointments to the bench. This is a particularly important issue to work out, not just because of the Roberts appointment and the coming replacement of Rehnquist, but because of a recent Supreme Court decision holding that candidates seeking election as state judges can't be restricted in what they say.

For at least a generation now, the standard for federal judicial appointees has been blurry, but resided somewhere in the range of not talking about controversial past decisions because doing so might be tantamount to a judge giving clues on how he/she might rule in future rulings. I think this standard isn't even close to where it ought to be in terms of how revealing it is.

We appoint (or in most cases at the state level, elect) judges for the explicit purpose of overruling the actions of legislatures and executives that are democratically elected, and in some cases unanimous decisions of juries. Why wouldn't we put great weight on the value of understanding the views of the person we are putting in this position to overrule democratic majorities? Wouldn't conservatives in particular, who rail about unelected federal judges, agree that it is better for the public to have a strong sense in advance of who were are putting in this powerful, lifetime position?

Moreover, while we are talking about conservative legal views, they have always placed great emphasis, not always incorrectly, on legal approaches that make the law as clear and as predictable as possible. So why wouldn't we want to know how judicial appointees view the legal precedents on which we rely? What good is having this body of precedent if we're not allowed to know whether the judges we appoint today believe those past cases were wrongly decided?

I think its fair for judicial nominees, or candidates, to say that it is inappropriate to discuss and essentially predict how they will rule on hypothetical cases. I think that's true, you undermine independent judicial review if the political process can lock in a judge's decisions ahead of time. In fact, I would go further, and affirm the Scalia precedent with the Pledge of Allegiance case, that any judicial candidate, whether elected or appointed, should be unable to preside over a case if he/she has already publicly opined on the facts of the case, even if in the form of a hypothetical discussion in advance.

On the other hand, I would create a safe harbor around any discussion by the judge of past cases that are no longer pending. Conservatives are absolutely right that the law should be clear and predictable. Knowing how our judges feel about the legal precedents on which we rely furthers that goal. Nor do I think it undermines independent judicial review to know how aggressively a judge will defend past precedents. The facts of those cases have already received independent judicial review once, if a judge plans to junk that review, I think that's something the public is entitled to know.

David Ignatius on Jihadists and Privilege

2005-07-27T10:19:00.000-04:00

David Ignatius writes a good column analyzing the idea that the bulk of jihadists actually come from privilege, but in one glaring paragraph he goes wildly off track:

[P]eople who were students in the 1960s will remember the phenomenon: the
idealistic kids from elite public and private schools who went to college, felt
guilty about their comfort amid a brutal world and joined the Progressive Labor
Party to ally with oppressed Third World workers. There is a cult aspect to this
jihad -- an extreme version of the logic that has always drawn disaffected kids
to self-destructive behavior.

I largely agree with this guy's analysis of the Jihadists but the comparison of Jihadists to college educated Britons who joined the Progressive Labor party in the '60s is profoundly insulting and is, in a way, quite relativistic and generous to the Jihadists. College educated, wealthy voters who become liberals do it out of an impulse to make the existing society a better place for everybody. Large swaths of educated voters, even in some instances majorities, have had that instinct in the past and in the present. Even conservatives often have that instinct, even if their party usually fails to act on it. To compare these people of good will to Jihadists, whose instinct is to destroy the society which has benefited them rather than improve it, is contemptible. Its not only deeply insulting to liberal leaning voters with education and means, it is flattering to the Jihadists, as if they are just a bunch of wealthy liberals, no different than Ted Turner and George Soros. This is divisive thinking that's well-worthy of Karl Rove, but not the Washington Post, and not an otherwise smart column in the Washington Post.

Taxes

2005-07-26T17:41:00.000-04:00

Matthew Yglesias hits the nail on the head: Republicans complain that families pay too much in taxes, particularly as compared to 1950, and rightfully so, but these same Republicans fail to note that this is largely their own fault.

Here are some past Balasco posts on taxes.

Where It Will Matter With Roberts II

2005-07-26T12:53:00.000-04:00

Two new developments on the Roberts front.

1) Democrats are demanding Roberts' memoranda from his Justice Department days, much as they did from Miguel Estrada.

2) Roberts appears to have misinformed the White House about whether or not he was a member of the Federalist Society. You may recall that much of my own commentary on Roberts was predicated on his membership of the group. Then it turned out I was wrong. Then it turned out I was right again.

I actually am wary of forcing judiciary candidates to turn over their memoranda from previous tenures in government legal positions. The result would certainly be to chill what attorneys working for the government will write in memoranda for their superiors. Why would we want to deprive our elected officeholders of the same uninhibited advice to which we are all entitled from our own attorneys? Having said that, now that the Bush Administration has agreed to release some of those memoranda from early in Roberts' career, its hard to understand why they get to pick and choose.

On the issue of the Federalist Society, I'm frankly more concerned. Why would Roberts mislead on this? I think the country was fully prepared for any nominee coming out of the White House to be actively involved in the Federalist Society, so why lie about it? Was the White House just so obsessed with minimizing Roberts' paper trail that they saw the need to obfuscate with respect to this?

Where It Will Matter With Roberts

2005-07-22T12:00:00.000-04:00

When you look at what the Supreme Court does, the lion’s share is line drawing. There is a legal principle to uphold, new facts make it unclear how far that legal principle extends, lower courts and parties disagree, and ultimately it falls to the Supreme Court to draw a line.

As much as we live in a highly ideological era, the reality is that these line-drawing exercises have far more to do with intellect and skill than ideology. It takes a lot of thought, wisdom, legal skill, and foresight to draw a line that won’t raise as many questions as it answers. This was the primary basis for criticism of the Supreme Court’s recent decision on sentencing guidelines- it made the law more confusing until the Supreme Court followed up with a clarifying decision. This is also, I think, a valid criticism of the recent Kelo decision on eminent domain- drawing the line on government’s ability to seize private property at the point where there’s “public benefit” is like not drawing the line at all.

Which brings me to my thoughts on Roberts. I believe that the reality here is that in the vast majority of cases, Roberts will be confronted with line-drawing problems. I suspect more often than not, I won’t agree with where he wants to draw the line. In the rare case, like Kelo, maybe I’ll prefer where he wants to draw the line. But in those cases our disagreement will be that of degree about a legal principle that is widely accepted.

Where it really matters, what puts a lump in my stomach, is where he might not agree with the legal principle at all.

For instance, I have no doubt that he would like to pare back Roe v. Wade, such as overruling cases like Stenberg and Casey, or even pare back Roe altogether. I don’t like any of that, but what worries me most is on what grounds Roberts would agree to do it. Will he argue that Roe is simply extending the fundamental right to privacy too far? Or will he argue, as Scalia and Thomas certainly would, that there is no fundamental right to privacy? No right against government interference with your reproductive decisions, such as birth control or fertility treatment. No right against government interference with your right to make your own sexual decisions. No right against government interference to make certain family decisions.

Similarly, I have no doubt that Roberts would have voted to allow the Ten Commandments to be posted in Kentucky- or probably anywhere else, including public schools. I don’t like that either, but again it’s a disagreement about where to draw the line between religion and state governments. What worries me the most deeply is that he’ll take the position Clarence Thomas took in a recent dissent: the Establishment Clause does not apply to states and there is no necessary line between church and state except for the federal government.

So my bottom line is that Senators should not play cute games to get Roberts to discuss his views on Roe v. Wade. I think we know the answer anyway, whether he’ll say it or not. What I would want to know, and what I think Roberts could answer, is whether he believes in the right to privacy. That’s not a hypothetical case, that’s a vast category of Constitutional protection. As far as I’m concerned, its like asking if he believes in the freedom of speech. Speaking of the First Amendment, I’d also like to know whether he believes in the separation of church and state for all government entities or just the federal government.

Roberts

2005-07-20T18:27:00.000-04:00

I think the most interesting thing about the Roberts pick is that this is the first Supreme Court selection ideologically certified by the Federalist Society, the powerful society for lawyers organized to advance conservative legal views and help conservative lawyers network.

Much was made of the role of Federalist Society lawyers in the Clinton impeachment and manufactured scandals of the '90s, but really Ken Starr and his gang would have found each other one way or another.

This Supreme Court appointment is where the Federalist Society places its stamp on our society. Some, including myself, had hoped that Bush might pick a nondescript Republican judge who could go the way of David Souter or even just Anthony Kennedy. But as I was reading the bio of Edith Brown Clement, the shortlist judge that everyone thought was the pick until the leaks proved wrong (that media whoring for access to powerful, confidential sources really pays off, doesn't it?)- I noted that she, as well as every other member of the short list, is a Federalist society member.

When Reagan and Bush I picked Supreme Court judges, and for that matter appellate judges, they didn't have the Federalist Society as its constituted today to guide them on the ideological rudder of judges. That meant they either had to choose a judge with a long established ideological record, like Robert Bork, who was unconfirmable, or they had to roll the dice on guys like Kennedy, Souter, and Thomas, (that's 1 for 3 from the standpoint of the right).

Republican Presidents aren't forced to make that choice anymore. Now they can pick a judge without much of a track record, like Roberts or Clement, but have their ideological orthodoxy validated by their Federalist Society colleagues, who have ample exposure and opportunity to discuss all of the relevant legal issues, and perhaps equally as important, know that the law clerks who will staff their chambers will be young Federal Society members with, if anything, a more radical ideological bent.

So when Christian conservatives pray for "no more Souters," perhaps they should just send a donation to the Federalist Society instead. For those who have such inclination, donate here.

Assassination of Sunnis on Iraqi Constitution Panel

2005-07-19T14:59:00.000-04:00

This is bad news, and very bad news for the idea of a multi-ethnic government that can govern all of Iraq.

On Rove and the Press

2005-07-19T14:43:00.000-04:00

I find the Rove scandal valuable because it illuminates so many things not just about Rove and this administration, but the media.

I think its been apparent to a lot of people for a long time that our Washington press corps does its job quite poorly. In the service of "balance," it repeats claims that are verifiably wrong, without doing the verifying. The insular Washington press corps tends to parrot itself, elevating conventional wisdom and cocktail chatter to the level of news. This behavior also elevates preestablished narratives to received wisdom, rather than story lines that the facts might defy. The Washington press corps is also obscenely self-serving, punishing public figures who's interaction with the press is unpopular for one reason or another. But more than anything else, the press is slavishly servile to access to those in power, willing to put off hard questions or tough stories to maintain their access.

Several of these phenomena, and particularly the last two, have come into sharp relief with the Rove story. The press has taken a harsh view of the prosecutor's behavior because they are reluctant to have a reporter/source privilege challenged in a way that renders it anything but absolute (in a way that no other profession retains such a privilege). The press has also fought to protect confidential sources who are not the powerless, whisteblowing confidential sources that non-journalists think of when they consider this privilege, but are powerful members of government who don't need to blow whistles because they themselves are in charge.

Michael Hiltzik, a journalist and guest blogger at the Washington Monthly's Kevin Drum/Political Animal blog, expresses better than I ever could how this is as much about journalists' protecting their exclusive access to power as it is about protecting confidential sources.

More Santorum

2005-07-18T16:26:00.000-04:00

You know, my idealized vision of this blog is a discourse about the ideas that underly the Democratic party and how we can form a governing coalition that enacts policies based on those principles.

But let's face it, sometimes during a busy day at work its just easier and more fun to run another Rick Santorum quote:

In this case, what we're talking about, basically, is priests who were having
sexual relations with post-pubescent men. We're not talking about priests with
3-year-olds, or 5-year-olds. We're talking about a basic homosexual
relationship. Which, again, according to the world view sense is a a perfectly
fine relationship as long as it's consensual between people. If you view the
world that way, and you say that's fine, you would assume that you would see
more of it.

Santorum made this statement as a way of exemplifying of where the right to privacy leads. Get it? If you have a right to privacy to do what you please in your bedroom, priests might commit rape and statutory rape of teenage (I'm sorry, post-pubescent) boys. Apparently priests cannot resist the pervasive influence that would arise from the Sodom and Gomorrah of consenting adults (and by that we include husbands and wives) doing what they please in the bedroom and it may lead them to pederasty. Is it me, or shouldn't this be as offensive to Catholics as it is to believers in the right to privacy?

Well, we can all let Rick know by helping Bob Casey.

Principles

2005-07-15T12:17:00.000-04:00

Given recent events and opinion polls, many are optimistic about the Democrats’ chances to pick up seats in the upcoming midterm elections. While I’m also somewhat optimistic, I’m also worried. If I’ve learned one lesson from November 2002 and November 2004 its that no level of Republican incompetence, bad faith, and ideological extremism will win elections for Democrats.

Let me take that one step further: Rovism works because Rove and his cronies can define Democrats however they want. This week in conversations with two friends who are Republican voters, their eyes just glassed over when I mentioned what Rove did, they couldn’t see what he did wrong. The lesson for me is that if Republicans can paint Democrats as a party with bad ideas or strictly partisan intentions or without integrity, then for their supporters there really isn’t any length to which they feel the Republicans can go too far in combating them. Even when it involves disclosing classified national security information. After years of Bush in office, I still haven’t exhausted my capacity to be shocked and appalled at what they get away with, but I digress.

The point is that Rovism works because they are able to define us, and they are able to define us because we do such a wildly inadequate job of defining ourselves. I’m not the first person to expend ink on the Democrats’ need to define themselves as a party of principles. But I’d like to take a slightly different tack than other approaches I’ve seen.

I’ve seen a lot discussion of developing new ideas for the Democratic party, new marketing messages, new issues that will resonate. I would propose that we can start a lot closer to home than that. We should first reveal the principles that already unite us right now. For all the spats between Howard Dean supporters and the DLC, between fans of Joe Lieberman and fans of Michael Moore, readers of the New Republic and readers of the Nation, there are principles that unite us and distinguish us from Republicans. I’m not talking about finding new common ground, I’m talking about finding common ground that has united us all along.

We should focus on this set of principles and make sure we articulate them, over and over again. We should make sure all of our policy proposals flow from them. We should guarantee voters we’ll adhere to them by demanding that our officeholders always do, even when its politically inexpedient. When voters enter the voting booth, they should know that these principles are what define us as an alternative to the Republicans- not merely an empty objection to the Republicans.

What I’m not talking about is vague pronouncements in favor of middle class families or education or the environment or against terrorism. Voters are too smart to be swayed by empty messages, and even if they weren’t Republicans have shown they can coopt these messages even when their policies accomplish the opposite.

Nor am I talking about specific policy proposals like those that every Democratic Presidential candidate since Clinton has offered on everything from accelerated small business asset depreciation to health care reimbursements to defense procurement policies. I think specific and substantive proposals from candidates are a very good thing, but few people read them and fewer remember them. They are effective and important when they flesh out a more basic, principled message.

So below is a list of what I am talking about. Its not in any particular order, nor is it exhaustive. Nevertheless, it should not be a laundry list in its final form. The principles will seem innocuous, but that’s no accident because they unite a large coalition of voters. Having said that, as innocuous as them may seem, they still distinguish us from modern Republican party, and we have not clearly conveyed to the average voter that these principles are what we are all about.

The greatest ideogical threat to our way of life is theocratic fascism, the
belief of some that they have exclusive access to the truth and this licenses
them to supercede the constitutional, human, and democratic rights of
others.

Alliances with free peoples make America stronger.

Some personal and family decisions should not be subject to a majority vote.

Environmental degradation is a threat to our way of life.

Budget deficits are a betrayal of our children and a risk to our economic security.

The tax burden must be shifted away from middle class families saving for their futures.

The crisis in health care is the most serious threat to our competitiveness and our status as an opportunity society.

The highest domestic priority for the government at every level should be recruiting and training qualified teachers.

Every qualified American student should have access to an affordable college education.

Energy independence through energy conservation is a national security issue as well as good for the environment.

Separation of church and state is at the core of a pluralistic, tolerant society.

America should always be prepared to fight two full-scale regional wars.

Drum: Nixon and Rove

2005-07-14T14:32:00.000-04:00

Kevin Drum has a great post up recounting how during the 1960 election, Richard Nixon found himself in a position akin to the one Karl Rove was in vis-a-vis Joseph Wilson. That is, Nixon had access to classified national security information that would enable him to score points (in fact, signficantly more points than Rove did) in a spat with a political opponent. Only Nixon (yes, NIXON), didn't do it. Says a lot about where we are.

The Shield II

2005-07-14T12:21:00.000-04:00

Last week I offered a legalistic perspective on why a journalist/source shield that applies anywhere and everywhere at all times is wrongheaded.

I think Jacob Weisberg offers a journalistic perspective reaching the same conclusion that nails it.

Rovism and Defeating Rovism

2005-07-14T11:20:00.000-04:00

One thing about the most recent Plamegate scandal involving Karl Rove is that it really brings his unique political system into sharp relief. Its a system that undeniably is wildly successful and effective, and depending on how the press handles Rove's outrageous behavior here, may continue to be.

Here, as best as I can deduce, is the code to Rovism:

1) Take a maximalist ideological position with no room for compromise. If ultimately you cut a deal, its a much better deal than you would have cut otherwise, with very little variation from the original position. If you do not ultimately cut a deal, you hang it around your opponent's neck as evidence that they are obstructionist and in favor of the problems that your position is ostensibly (but not necessarily actually) designed to solve. This strategy has been the hallmark of the Bush administration throughout: whether regarding:

A) The $1.6 trillion tax cut package, which became a $1.3 trillion tax cut package followed up by several more subsequent tax cut packages that made up the difference; or

B) Iraq, where the Administration initially said they'd invade Iraq without Congressional or UN approval, and ultimately invaded Iraq with a broad, open-ended Congressional resolution and without UN approval; or

C) judges, despite nominating some breathtakingly extreme nominees like Janice Rogers Brown (anti-Enlightenment) or Patricia Owen (who the Administration's own AG called a judicial activist), the Administration has a better confirmation rate than any other in recent history; or

D) Social Security (a work still in progress).

Alone, this strategy is just a very successful political strategy. As someone on the other side of the ideological spectrum, I don't like it, but I can't fault it for being immoral and I actually respect it for being highly effective. But of course there's more.

2) Sow division where there is consensus. The strategy stated above don't simply serve the purpose of getting as much as possible ideologically, they also serve the purpose of being able to carry the mantle on an issue where there is broad consensus while simultaneously taking positions to undermine that consenus by creating opposition where there would not have been any otherwise. There's no better example than terrorism. Rove's comments in New York that in the aftermath of 9/11 liberals wanted to offer indictments and therapy while conservatives prepared for war were a classic Rovist tactic. There was broad consensus, not only among conservatives and moderates, but liberals as well that military action was necessary after 9/11. Rather than accept that consensus and try to build on it, Rove has continuously tried to paint liberals as peaceniks. Was Iraq part of that strategy? I'd rather not think so.

Social Security is another excellent example. There is somewhat broad consensus that it would be a good idea to take some measures to bolster the system's finances to protect it against a projected shortfall well into the future. The Administration's response: demand a privatization scheme that will completely dismantle the program, then when Democrats balk, insist they don't want to fix the program.

This style of politics is divisive and not particularly admirable, but it gets so much worse.

3) Tell big lies and insist that they are true to the end. I won't rehash the big lies that got told about Iraq. I'll briefly mention Bush's claim that the majority of his tax cuts would go to middle class Americans and that they would not put the government back in the red. With respect to Social Security, I'd point to Bush's repeated claims that the system will be broke in 37 years (currently projections have it paying out 73% of planned benefits, a higher level of benefits than what we pay now in today's dollars) and that the trust fund is fictional (the trust fund is national debt that must be paid according to the 14th Amendment of the Constitution).

4) Treat anyone who brings forward contrary evidence as ideological and therefore untrustworthy. Discredit them by telling bie lies about them (see #3), preferably about their strengths. In an Alabama race in the '90s, Karl Rove started a whispering campaign that a judge and child welfare advocate was a child molester. In South Carolina, Rove passed rumors that McCain betrayed the United States while a prisoner of war and was now as a result of his imprisonment mentally unfit to be commander-in-chief. He also started the whispers about McCain fathering a black child (he has adopted children from South Asia). John Kerry, another war hero, was turned by the Swift Boat Vets, funded by Karl Rove's friends, into a coward and a showboater. Now, Joseph Wilson is not a whistleblower, he was covering things up. His wife, a CIA agent who risked her life in service of her country, was a mere ideological desk jockey.

There you have it, the Rove system, or as I'd like to coin it, Rovism. Its so outlandish, you have to wonder how it works. That's where the current state of the media comes in. You have a large conservative media, the Murdoch empire (Fox News, the NY Post), the Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal op-ed page, talk radio, conservative columnists and bloggers, who soak up unquestioningly whatever talking points Rove feeds them. So, if you peruse the conservative media today, you'd never know that Valerie Plame was anything other than a desk jockey, or that Rove not only outed her, but also the CIA front company for which she worked.

Along with the conservative media is a mainstream media that doesn't view its job as calling out untruths, but simply relaying the untruths put forward by the Administration and perhaps balancing it with one or two quotes from administration critics. They do not view it as their duty to call it out. It might require some independent investigation and it might jeopardize their access to the Republican administration in power. So Americans get a right-wing media that happily perpetuates the lies and propaganda and a mainstream media that treats it as a 50/50 proposition, where seeing it as wrong is an ideological position.

Let's face it, the system works. It works real well.

So how do we crack it? I would propose a two-pronged media strategy.

First, Democrats should do nothing to legitimize the conservative media. If Fox News or the Wall Street Journal editorial page is acting like a Republican propaganda outlet rather than a news outlet, why are Democrats appearing there to legitimize them? Howard Dean has said he won't go on Fox News, and say what you want about him, he's right on this one. Fox News is a Republican propaganda outlet and Democrats should not go on there to give the appearance that its anything otherwise.

Second, Democrats should vigorously call the mainstream media on its failures to call out conservatives on out and out lies. Democrats get terrible press, we're getting killed in the media world and Rovism is triumphant, so what are we afraid of? We shouldn't be afraid to stand up and say that certain mainstream journalists are not doing their jobs. Again and again. Most of the Washington media elite have glass jaws, they don't want to become jokes or considered lightweights. They should be made to feel like they will look bad if they pass on Republican propaganda unquestioningly. That job shouldn't be outsourced to liberal bloggers. Democratic office holders with platforms and credibility should be willing to say so.

Rove's Security Clearance

2005-07-13T18:47:00.000-04:00

Under the statute under which special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald is investigating the leak of Valerie Plame's identity, the leaker had to know that she was a covert CIA operative.

We don't really know for sure if Karl Rove knew that Valerie Plame was a covert operative. Many Republicans are attempting to spread misinformation about whether she in fact was a Republican operative. Here's why that's really not in question.

So while we don't know enough to put Karl Rove in jail, I think, in light of last week's revelation that he leaked Valerie Plame, aka Joseph Wilson's wife, to at least one reporter, we do know that Rove leaked classified information in a manner that was at least negligent or reckless. Not enough to put him in jail, but certainly enough to take away his security clearance.

That's just what House Democrats are demanding.

The Other Miller

2005-07-12T19:34:00.000-04:00

What's left to say about Zell Miller? How about, on top of everything, he might be a thief.

Bush Appointees Against Bush

2005-07-12T15:06:00.000-04:00

The mention of Larry Diamond's book in the previous post reminds me of an interesting list that's been on my mind today: the incredibly long list of national security officials who have left the Administration and seen fit to either outright oppose it or at least openly criticize it. Larry Diamond is just the last entry in a impressively long list.

Here is an incomplete list. Please let me who I have forgotten:

Richard Clarke (NSC liason on terrorism)
Rand Beers (Succeeded Richard Clarke as NSC liason on terrorism- then went to work for Kerry.)
Anthony Zinni (Former Marine General, Bush-appointed Middle East envoy)
David Kay (Bush appointed weapons inspector)
Paul O'Neill (sat on National Security Council as Sec. of Treasury)
Larry Diamond (former official of the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq)

Those are just the ones that jump quickly to mind.

Squandered Victory

2005-07-12T15:03:00.000-04:00

This anecdote from former Bush appointee Larry Diamond's book, Squandered Victory, caught my eye.

When history looks back at the story of the Bush administration, it will look at its uber-ideological, non-reality based approach to the world, and with equal importance, it will look at its breathtaking incompetence.

Real Moral Values, Take Three

2005-07-12T13:21:00.000-04:00

In prior posts about "real moral values," I've discussed right-wingers professed view in favor of school bullying.

But that really presumes that schools themselves are good thing, doesn't it?

Enter Rick Santorum. Yes, Santorum successfully collects money from a Pennsylvania school district in which he does not really live in order to home school (that is, not send his kids to school) in the DC metro area, but that's not why he enters our occasional "real moral values" feature. Its because he blames schools like MIT for things like pedarasty. If this perplexes you, you are not alone.

Here's the good news. Unlike Michele Malkin and the tools from the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America, we can actually end Rick Santorum's career in public life.

Here's how.

P.S. Casey's website highlights another gem from Rick Santorum, his criticism of women who choose to work. Here's the money quote:

"In far too many families with young children, both parents are working,
when, if they really took an honest look at the budget, they might confess
that both of them don't really need to, or at least may not need to work as
much as they do," he wrote.

He went on to question why women find a career more gratifying and
socially affirming than staying home with their children. "Here, we can thank
the influence of radical feminism," he wrote.

UPDATE: Man, Santorum just generates a lot of great material, here's another quote from his upcoming book:

“One of my political heroes, the eighteenth-century British statesman William
Wilberforce, argued that hypocrisy can often be a social good.” -Rick Santorum,
It Takes a Family, p. 280

Civilization & Barbarism

2005-07-12T13:18:00.000-04:00

This post by Marshall Wittman, quoting liberally from the incomparable Stanley Crouch, sums up where we are with Iraq and the War on Terrorism better in shorter space than anything else I've read. I highly recommend it.

Iran and Iraq Sign a Military Cooperation Agreement

2005-07-11T17:13:00.000-04:00

This to me should be major news, but it seems to have slid under the radar of the London bombings. (This blog seems to have a fuller account that does not require a subscription.) I've written a lot about the failed state we've created and now own in Sunni-dominated Western Iraq. I've written less about the risk that Shiite-dominated southern Iraq would become an Iranian ally. This certainly isn't good news, and domination and/or influence by Shiite hardliners would certainly at least partially offset the benefits of creating a democratic government in the heart of the Middle East.

Its funny, conservative ideologues love to talk about unintended consequences that arise from government intervention in domestic problems, but seem oblivious to this principle when it comes to military intervention abroad.

Just as a disclaimer, I think that while there's always this risk (at home and abroad), its often a risk worth taking if you know what you're doing and have good reasons for doing it. Its pretty clear the Bush administration was 0 for 2 on this score.

The Inheritance Tax

2005-07-11T16:06:00.000-04:00

The Republican CBO just issued a report admitting that there is really very little threat to the "family farm" from the estate tax.

This is why I find it so frustrating when the newest premiere think tank on the left, the Center for American Progress, responsible for championing new ideas for the long run comes up with half-measures like a permanent repeal of the estate tax for estates below $2.5 million or $5 million per married couple. Its one thing when Democrats in Congress do this kind of thing, at least theoretically they might have political pressures (although given the numbers, its hard to see why). But its not hard to see why people don't view Democrats as particularly principled as a party when even our think tanks that don't have to get reelected propose protecting multi-million dollar estates from taxation.

Is there a principle at stake here or do we really believe the right answer is that people should be able to inherits millions of dollars tax-free? Did anyone ask that question before proposing to exempt multi-million dollar estates?

The Shield

2005-07-07T16:00:00.000-04:00

I read somewhere yesterday that the source for whom Time journalist Matt Cooper almost went to jail to protect had signed a general waiver. Nevertheless, Matt Cooper refused to testify until the source signed a specific waiver because Cooper was concerned that the general waiver was coerced by the Administration.

I believe that there should be some reporter/source privilege, but I find this ridiculous. Its widely believed that the source was Karl Rove. Is there really a legitimate concern that Karl Rove could have been a victim of coercion here?

I do think that there is a First Amendment interest in a reporter/source confidentiality privilege, but it mystifies me how journalists seem to believe that this privilege should be far more absolute and far-reaching than the more long-standing and traditional privileges that other professions enjoy. For starters, almost every other profession's privilege is subject to a crime-fraud exception, so if Judith Miller was in some way advancing the Valerie Plame leak, and the leak was illegal, its hard for me to see why she should enjoy a privilege that extends beyond what the leaker's own criminal defense attorney would enjoy.

I know Josh Marshall would take issue with this next part, but I also want to point this out: the privilege is there to protect speech, not reporters. If by talking to a reporter, a confidential source is advancing law breaking that is not protected by the First Amendment, why is a reporter getting protection? The speech of whistleblowers is illegal in some contexts, but it is also often the subject of First Amendment protection. One of the more common lawsuits in federal courts is First Amendment retaliation suits by aggrieved government employees alleging mistreatment by their employers for their speech. There was nothing about the Plame leaker's statement that was protected, it was presumably illegal (at least the judge thinks so) and it sure wasn't whisteblowing. So if we're not protecting First Amendment speech here, what are we protecting?

Josh Marshall would say this is a line that you can't draw in the real world. I just disagree. A situation where a confidential source is making illegal revelations that are not whisteblowing is often clear and I suspect that sources, if not journalists, know when they are on the wrong side of that line and risk being one of the rare instances where a court will force a journalist to fess up. Journalists perform a valuable function in society and should enjoy a shield, but its just arrogant to say that journalists should have the power to confer absolute confidentiality to any type of behavior from a source- power that no other profession has, even prosecutors.

UPDATE: Matthew Yglesias cites Kevin Drum's post arguing that it is difficult to design a legal rule that separates bad leakers from good leakers. Josh Marshall also alluded to this idea in his post on the matter. I don't think any of these guys are lawyers, so I'm not sure what makes them so confident of the impossibility of this task. Moreover, I would argue that it is far easier that deciding who is a journalist for the purpose of getting testimonial immunity and who does not, a distinction, no matter how you choose to make it, is absolutely necessary in order to have a shield.

So here's my instant try: a journalist/source privilege shall not extend to information who's dissemination is (a) subject to criminal liability and (b) is not disclosed for the purpose of furthering understanding of a matter of public controversy. That's somewhat narrow. Admittedly, the second prong is a little mushy, but I think it would certainly hold water in this case. Presumably, the leaker's discussions with reporters were illegal, and its hard to see how Valerie Plame's identity furthers anyone's understanding of the Niger/uranium controversy. True, there's a judgment call here, but if a source is criminally leaking information (not the mushy part) shouldn't they be comfortable that what they are doing is for the purpose of furthering understanding of a public controversy and that the person to whom they are leaking can clearly convey that? If the disclosure is criminal, and the source and/or the journalist aren't comfortable that it serves the public- again- why are we protecting them?

Lara Flynn Boyle on Las Vegas

2005-07-06T17:55:00.000-04:00

Sorry Kitty Time, but I have to ask: is this a good idea? Las Vegas is pretty much a hard core guy show: women, gambling, and ex-military and intelligence guys in the form of James Caan solving crimes. So I'm guessing that this may fall just outside Kitty Time's jurisdiction.

Even though Las Vegas skews heavily male and appeals to a guy's more basic sensibilities, its pretty well-received. So why mess with it? What will Lara Flynn Boyle bring to the party? Will she be a great "bay guy" in the Heather Locklear/Melrose Place sense? I somehow doubt it, I think she worked well in the Practice because that show was more about pasty looking lawyers fighting in Boston courts and not beautiful people fighting it out on the Las Vegas strip. This seems like a "jump the shark" move to me, but I'd be very interested in another perspective on this one.

(Hey, it can't all be media criticism and Supreme Court stuff folks.)

Costas

2005-07-06T17:45:00.000-04:00

My father loathes Bob Costas. I never really bothered to ask why, rather, we all just find it entertaining to watch him get all worked up and shout "Shut up Bob Costas!" at the TV screen every time Costas is on. I vaguely recall enjoying "Later with Bob Costas" when I was awake to watch it years ago. Its depressing to think that time slot is now held by Carson Daly (is it? since I'm no longer in college, I'm really never up that late).

Its because of my Dad that I wasn't all that excited when Bob Costas was named a permanent sub for Larry King. For me, King is unwatchable, and I guess I just assumed based on some late-in-the-game parenting from my father that Costas was no better.

But this Nation piece by Katrina vanden Heuval makes me think that maybe Costas could be worth watching, at least if there's nothing else on at 9 PM (I sure as hell am not going to watch Hannity and Colmes or the Situation with Tucker Carlson). If Costas asking hard questions of people in power, that puts him way ahead of most other journalists.

Here's another question- why is it that sports journalists like Costas or Keith Olbermann are able to speak truth to power while eggheads like Tim Russert and Howard Kurtz behave like lapdogs? Is there something about covering sports that toughens you up?

Howard Kurtz and the Housing Bubble

2005-07-06T11:55:00.000-04:00

Part of the problem with the media is that a very large number of their most prestigious members are very bad at their jobs.

The most egregious case in point, oft-discussed elsewhere in the blogosphere, is Howard Kurtz, who, unfortunately, is the Washington Post's own media and journalism critic.

Robert Weissman of the Huffington Post illustrates just one very good example of why Howard Kurtz, the guy in charge of critiquing the work of other journalists, is himself a terrible journalist.

Here's the nutshell:

Washington Post media commentator Howard Kurtz thinks there is no housing
bubble, or at least that many in the media are "erring on the side of pessimism"
in reporting on the matter.

His number one expert to prove the point?

James Glassman, described as "financial commentator" and "American
Enterprise Fellow."

"The press has gone way overboard" in reporting the housing
bubble, Glassman tells Kurtz.
Wait a second.

Isn't that the same James Glassman who in 1999 co-authored Dow 36,000:
The New Strategy for Profiting from the Coming Rise in the Stock Market?

You bet it is.

Shouldn't this guy be permanently disqualified as a purported expert on
bubbles and market predictions?

Weissman goes on to point out correctly that Glassman is an ideologue to boot. Your liberal media at work. No need to wonder how Republicans get away with so much. By the way, here's my take on the housing bubble.

Rehnquist Too?

2005-07-05T18:58:00.000-04:00

The AP speculates that Rehnquist could follow O'Connor and create a double vacancy. It may not be worth commenting on this possibility, since the AP offers no basis whatsoever for believing this will happen. But I will anyway.

But I think this would be on the whole a good thing. It would give Bush cover to pick who he really wants, Alberto Gonzalez, for the court, and Gonzalez, while no prize, is by far the most moderate judge that Dems can possibly hope to see Bush appoint to the court. Bush would be able to do so by picking a much more conservative justice.

On the other hand, it may be that in order to mollify right wingers the conservative is completely off-the-charts. Moreover, with two picks at Bush's disposal, there will be some pressure to pick a woman, and if it has to be a right-wing woman, look for Edith Jones of the Fifth Circuit, who is pretty far out there.

So we'd have to ask ourselves: how bad is it if you replace O'Connor with a Bush crony who is somewhat moderate and Rehnquist with someone who makes Scalia and Thomas look like hippies? Well, if Gonzales holds the moderate center of the court, who cares how loony the dissents are? Would we have been better off if George H.W. Bush had appointed two more Scalias rather than Souter and Thomas? Definitely not.

The New Freedom Tower

2005-07-01T12:10:00.000-04:00

This post is a couple days late, but I wanted to comment on the new Freedom Tower design that was unveiled a couple days ago.

At first, I liked it. I hated the first design, and this design seemed to do a lot more to evoke the old towers, but in a sleeker more modern way.

But then I started thinking more and more about this 200 foot concrete pedastal they are putting it on.

We've removed the windmill from the top of the building, which was the only thing I liked about the old design. Its hard to miss how appropriate that was: a mechanism to lessen dependence on the oil that funded the animals who destroyed the original buildings. But we've traded that away for a windowless, concrete fortress. So the message we send to the world is: we can build it again, but behind a concrete fortress this time. I can't help but think that that is exactly where the terrorists who destroyed those buildings want us.

I find that kind of dispiriting. Its not that I don't take the safety concerns seriously, but if someone is inclined to kill a large number of New Yorkers with a truck bomb, its not as if there are no other skyscrapers in Manhattan that aren't on 200 foot concrete pedastals that they could hit.

For the record, I was always a fan of the United Architects proposal, which you can find here by clicking the gallery on the right.

Don't Fear the Reality

2005-07-01T11:58:00.000-04:00

ABC just pulled a reality show it planned to air where seven families who are either minorities or live some form of alternative life-style vie for a house in a white conservative community. I don't really want to address the merits of whether this is a good idea.

What struck me about this is this graph from the article:

Groups ranging from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation
(GLAAD) and the National Fair Housing Alliance to the conservative Family
Research Council had raised concerns about the show, the papers
said.

GLAAD was concerned that the gay couple might get grilled by the
neighbors, while the Family Research Council was worried that the
conservative neighbors might be ridiculed for their Christian beliefs.

Umm, I sort of get when groups don't like how they are portrayed by TV writers. But I'm not sure I get it when groups preemptively kill shows because they don't think they'll like how reality will play out. I would hope the lesson we take away from the Bush years, and I think GLAAD would agree with this, is that you kind of have to live with reality, no matter how it plays out. I think there are "reality shows," like Nanny 911, Dr. Phil, etc., that are horribly exploitive of children, and that's a real problem. But is it really worth anybody's time to stop depictions of what may happen to consenting adults on a reality show?

I know, perhaps I should be writing about the just-announced retirement of Sandra Day O'Connor, and not just-yanked ABC reality show. But what can I say, I can't be profound every day. We'll just have see where that takes us.

The Whole Ballgame in Iraq

2005-06-30T17:02:00.000-04:00

Even if you are not following the news of our progress in Iraq very closely, let me recommend this article from today's New York Times as the key to what's going on there:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/30/international/middleeast/30basra.html

The article discusses how secular Shiites would like the Shiite south to become an autonomous, independent region much like Kurdistan. Meanwhile, more radical Shiites, like Moktada Al-Sadr, want their brand of Shia theocracy to dominate all of Iraq without the safeguards of a federal system imposed by the American occupiers. No one knows yet where the popular and established religious Shia leader Ayatollah Al-Sistani stands.

Without raising the question, the article raises the question I raised in February: who are the Iraqis who are going to want to police and maintain order in the Sunni Al Anbar province? The secular Shia seem on track for the option I laid out in a thought experiment in February: they've got an oil-rich, religiously homogenous Gulf-state, why would they want to bother with fighting a Sunni insurgency in the Al Anbar province hundreds of miles to the northwest? The more radical, religious Shia want all of Iraq, but not in a liberal democracy kind of way, in an Iranian theocracy kind of way. Even if they could put a lid on the Sunni insurgency, would we want these to be the guys to do it? So when we talk about training Iraqi units, who are we talking about and where? If we're talking about Shia ready to patrol southern Iraq as policeman, or Kurds prepared to keep order in Kurdistan, I believe it. But how many Iraqis are there to defend liberal democracy in Al Anbar? If this is our only way out, perhaps we need another way out.

This is not a call to pull the troops out. We may well need to step things up. But Iraqizing the war might be an even bigger fantasy than Nixon's Vietnamizing the Vietnam War. The sooner we admit that, the sooner we can figure out a better strategy to win.

To be fair- I'm not seeing a lot of Democrats admitting that either. Its either do what the Bush is doing but better, or bring the troops home. Americans won't turn to Democrats just because Democrats accurately argue that Bush is rudderless and without a strategy on the war- a recent poll shows that.

Democrats need a strategy to win. To do that, we need to come to grips with reality: we've created a Sunni-dominated, failed state in the heart of the middle east that no one- NO ONE, but us is willing to police in the remotely near future, and its not called Iraq, its called the Al Anbar province.

Real Moral Values, Take Two

2005-06-30T16:54:00.000-04:00

In February, during the old Balasco era, I looked on with amazement and disgust as conservative activists decided that keeping school bullying alive should be part of their agenda. At the time, it seemed this pro-bullying contingent in movement conservatism wanted to make sure that gay teens continued to get cured by physical intimidation and verbal harassment.

Now, Michele Malkin comes along and carries the pro-bullying flag a little farther, although in her case, she doesn't seem to care so much about bullying gay teens, she just thinks teaching kids to resolve conflicts in a non-violent manner is bad for America.

Conservatives used to think too much government was unnecessary because we could just rely on the strength of our own civil society to solve our problems. Now many conservatives seem to be down on civil society too. They're more into "rule of the strong."

The reductio ad absurdum of conservative ideology: are we there yet?

Bush Approval- State by State

2005-06-29T21:26:00.000-04:00

You may have read elsewhere that Survey USA has released a 50 state survey of Bush's approval ratings, state by state. Confirming every other poll, it shows Bush is in the tank.

But alas, the election was eight months ago, so that and a couple bucks will get you on the subway.

Nevertheless, there are a few select results that are interesting because of their implications for races in '06:

The West:

Its pretty remarkable how sharp Bush's deterioration has been in the more marginally Republican swing states, check out Nevada:

Arizona: 46/49
Colorado: 45/52
Montana: 56/42
Nevada: 38/57!!!!
Washington: 41/57

Harry Reid isn't going to target John Ensign, whose own approval is in the tank, but it does raise a possible House pick-up if Dems can field someone against Jon Porter. Likewise, there will be no Senate race in Colorado, but an open House seat in a swing district if Bob Beauprez runs for Governor. John Kyl will have a competitive challenger, and while he otherwise wouldn't be at the top of the target list, these kinds of numbers could provide a drag that allows Dems to pick him off in a big year. The numbers in Montana tell me that while the blogosphere is real excited about Brian Schweitzer's win of the Governor's mansion in '04 and the perenial vulnerability of Conrad Burns, this may not be as fertile ground for a Democratic pick-up as elsewhere, even in other red states. On the flip-side, its hard to believe Maria Cantwell is much of a target in Washington where the Republican President is so unpopular.

The Midwest

Michigan: 38/59
Minnesota: 43/54
Missouri: 46/52
Nebraska: 60/37
North Dakota: 52/43
Ohio: 40/57!!!
PA: 42/53

This is about incumbents: Its hard to see how Debbie Stabenow gets unseated when her Republican opponent's President is under 40%. But for Kent Conrad and Ben Nelson, times could get tough, Bush is more popular than any other state save Utah. Bush's numbers in North Dakota are also high.

On the other hand, just to the east, in Minnesota, if the Democratic nominee is credible, the environment should be good. There will also be at least two Republican House seats in play in Minnesota, so a strong year for Democrats there could help in both houses. Meanwhile, this is bad news for Republican incumbents. Rick Santorum will be running against a very tough opponent in a tough environment for a Republican. Mike DeWine is in an even tougher environment, not only is the President at 40% in Ohio (this is the state that basically decided the election and kept him in office, now he's at 40% 8 months later), but the Ohio Republican party is neck-deep in scandal. This has got to be the Senate Democrats' number one recruiting priority at the moment. Jim Talent in Missouri is also an opportunity we shouldn't pass up given the environment there. Particularly given the jeopardy Nelson and Conrad may be in, it behooves Democrats to expand the field into places where they have a shot at making it a race.

The East

Florida 46/50
Maryland 41/57
Rhode Island 33/63
Tennesee 48/49

Florida and Tennessee are both close, if the best the Republicans can do is Katherine Harris, Bill Nelson should be fine. In Tennessee, 48% is not a great place for a Republican President to be, but if that's Bush's bottom, it will be a tough race for Harold Ford against a generic Republican. Finally, there's Rhode Island. Its a mirror image of Nebraska, its the state where Bush is more unpopular, save Vermont, yet the incumbent Lincoln Chafee is an incumbent from the wrong party. Democrats may have a solid opponent in Sheldon Whitehouse, if he can make Chafee pay for voting the party line too often, this is a very doable race. The Republicans in Maryland may nominate an interesting candidate in Michael Steele while the Democratic field is divided, but Martin O'Malley will win big in the Governor's race and this is definitely not Bush country, I think whoever wins the Democratic primary ought to be able to hold this seat.

California 37/58 How will this affect the already troubled Arnold?

Leave the Celebrity Gossip to Kitty Time

2005-06-27T14:58:00.000-04:00

I have been a little slow about posting on the newly revitalized and re-energized Balasco Blog....but I'm back.....and my first comment is to H. Leave the celeb and TV gossip to moi, kitty time. That arena is a Kitty's world.....

Now - let's roll up our sleeves and ligthen up this blog a little bit with a few witty and insightful comments on the empty and shallow world of celebrities and popular culture.

1. I am shocked that anyone with half a brain didn't pick up "Lost" after the first few episodes last year. The show is incredible. H is such a newbie at this show, however, that it's really a waste of Kitty's time to take this any further. As a virgin of "lost," you are not prepared to discuss the significance of the numbers or the boy yet. Snore. We'll talk when you're up to speed and I'll post a few links then to fantastic sites covering the show.

2. Leave the TomKat gossip to moi. First of all, any self-respecting gossip hound read that Katie was given a 5 year, 5 million dollar contract for all of her time and efforts with crazy Tom. Does anyone have any comments about renting/buying women in this day and age? Will this ridiculous relationship end up catapulting her career while simultaneously sabotaging his? And let this be a lesson to anyone out there - never ever ever hire a publicist/PR person with zero PR skills. What his sister has done to his career is beyond embarassing. He needs to fire her and then get a muzzle. Kitty can't even waste time discussing his comments on mental illness and medication.

3. Can anyone in their right mind truly believe that the manager of the flagship Hermes store in Paris did not know it was Oprah? And if so, thought it a wise business decision to not let the wealthiest female entertainer in America, into the store? Let alone the fact that she had just ordered a dozen bags at $6K each? That "manager" should be fired immediately. The only thing going for Hermes is that the people who can actually afford their products, likely don't give a rip about whether or not Oprah could shop there and they certainly won't be watching her show in September dedicated to trashing the store. Surely the lawyers out there can weigh in - if she has actual proof that the "North Africans" comment was made, then I will revise my comments and this opens a whole different can of worms. Until then, to the Frenchie's out there, when Oprah comes a knockin, do your f'ing job and open the door.....comprehend-moi?

4. I will end with two week old Washington gossip....a senate staffer tracked down Angelina Jolie while she was on the Hill...and can verify that she is only 5'2. Who knew. I had her at 5'8 at least.

Now that I've lightened things up...if you're headed to the beach to celebrate July 4th, make sure you have a tunic and NOT a sarong. Sarongs are so last year. Be sure to pack your metallic sandals and wooden bracelets. If you can pull-off the hippie look without looking like a beached whale, then all the more power to you. Sorry guys, I have no real fashion tips for you. But, aim for the gay vague look...metrosexual is so 2004.

kitty out.
meow.

Rove, Hagel, Cheney & Orwell

2005-06-27T10:19:00.000-04:00

This weekend the White House and the Republican right's Orwellian war on independent thought seems to have reached its climax.

Rove's comments began this latest episode, but certainly do not represent the beginning. This began when the Republican right's political and ideological machinery subjected any means of independent inquiry outside of their control to a withering relativistic assault with accusations of control by an out-of-touch liberal elite. They have argued for the rejection of any academic study, whether on global warming, the state of the economy, or public health, because it came out of liberal academia. They harshly deal with any unflattering reporting from the press and dismiss it as a liberal media that Bush needs to "bypass." Career professionals in the government are dismissed as the bureaucracy. They reject the decisions of life-tenured judges, many of whom were appointed by Republican Presidents, and attack them as judicial-activists.

In fact, one official came out and told Ron Suskind as much. He dismissed reporters trying to assess the world as it is- a "reality-based community" when the Bush administration creates reality.

The irony here is just so rich: the people who have brought us to this relativist, late -60's, French philosophe state of the world where there is no objective truth but only ideologically based reality are Republican conservatives.

But in order to make sure the conservative view of the world predominates, you can't simply discredit independent inquiry, but any competing ideological inquiry as well. Simply asking people to choose is dangerous business, especially for a group of people who don't trust academics, judges, professionals, and independent news outlets.

Enter Karl Rove. Republican defenders of Karl Rove are correct, the people he slandered in New York City were in fact liberals, not Democrats. (And make no mistake, he did slander liberals, 84% whom, according to contemporaneous polling, supported military action after 9/11. ) What those defenders don't say though is that everyone who is not a loyal movement conservative is a liberal now. A liberal whose motives need no longer be questioned, since, as Rove implied last week, they're treasonous.

Since academia, the media, activist judges, and the bureaucracy are all liberals that we can't trust, whose views can we accept but those of the Republican right? But what if someone who is part of the Republican right doesn't speak from the day's script?

Enter Chuck Hagel. Chuck Hagel would hardly strike many people as a liberal. A decorated Vietnam vet, a Republican Senator from Nebraska, a state where the President won a massive victory in November, and a self-described conservative who consistently advocates increases in defense spending, massive tax cuts, and opposition to abortion without any exceptions except the life of the mother. Chuck Hagel has a reputation for independence in Washington, but its smoke and mirrors, he pops off on the Sunday morning shows and then promptly votes the party line, one need not look any farther back than the filibuster showdown and the Bolton nomination fight to see pieces of his long established pattern.

Hagel, in a typically toothless manner, recently called out the Bush administration on the fact that Iraq war is going poorly. They wouldn't possibly discredit Hagel with the same brushstroke, would they?:

Enter Dick Cheney: "Since 9/11, we've had people like Chuck Hagel and other politicians and we've had people in the press corps and commentators who've said we can't do Afghanistan."

I guess soon we'll all be liberals. (In fact, polling of independents on their approval of the President now matches polling of Democrats.) Perhaps we are on the cusp of a second irony. This White House may ultimately do what no Democratic White House ever could: make liberalism respectable again.

Free Katie Holmes

2005-06-24T14:10:00.000-04:00

or not, really who the heck really cares. I don't.

But this is pretty funny.

By the way, a couple notes to Tom Cruise: (1) Nothing wrong with being on your third wife, but it kind of detracts from the power of disapproving statements about others such as "look at their lives." (2) Stating over and over again that you've researched and read up on something and another person hasn't, without offering any further information, doesn't win you the argument after about 10th grade.

Time to fire the publicist / sister / publicist / sister.

Have a great weekend Balasco readers, back to politics on Monday, hopefully with more contributors!

Lost

2005-06-23T15:07:00.000-04:00

Off politics for just a second.

Sometimes, during the summer, you can pick up watching a TV series that you didn't get to watch during the year. A lot of people probably heard that the ABC series Lost was really good, but having missed the first episode, couldn't get into it. The season finale came and went with all its hoopla and you had no idea what was going on with the island and the monster and what not.

Well, unfortunately, you've missed your second chance, since they restarted the whole series a couple of weeks ago. Luckily, I caught the first episode and have been watching and I have to say IT IS AWESOME! What a great show!

Now, I'm not posting this to make you feel bad. I bring good news. They are putting out the DVD in September before the 2d season starts. I highly recommend it.

Seconding the Barbarians Post

2005-06-23T14:09:00.000-04:00

hmayag nails the self-defeating opposition to regulation by the business community and gives it a good international perspective. Here's just one quick point I'd like to add to that perspective: right now the United States economy depends on about a half a trillion dollars of foreign capital infusions every year. If there is one single thing we can't afford, it is to undermine the confidence of those foreign investors in the integrity of our capital markets.

Biden's Speech

2005-06-23T13:33:00.000-04:00

Joe Biden gave a speech at the Brookings Institution about Iraq a couple of days ago. I thought since I've been musing about what to do now, I should probably provide a link to a guy who's actually been there five times and has vast experience with American foreign policy (this is not an endorsement by the way).

Its a very enlightening speech, for its assessment of how bad the Bush Administration has botched things, where we are now, and what we need to do to turn things around. Biden roughly categorized my view of what comes next as "bad option #3" but necessary if we don't get things right soon.

Biden argues the only good option is to redouble our efforts to train the Iraqi army and police, utilizing help offered, but for some reason not accepted, by our allies to do so. In addition, he talks about doing a better job rebuilding.

I don't disagree. We should be doing all of the things that Biden suggests. But unfortunately I'm simply more pessimistic to Biden. I think we are long past the point where we can expect an Iraqi army that is predominantly Kurdish and Shiite to risk life and limb to patrol the Sunni heartland. Sadly, I just don't see this happening. I can't recommend this particular Washington Post piece strongly enough, unfortunately I think it supports my point of view.

Barbarians at the gate

2005-06-23T13:29:00.000-04:00

When Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman William Donaldson announced his resignation earlier this month, the business community screamed a collective hallelujah. Headed by the Business Roundtable and U.S. Chamber of Commerce, they called the reign of this former Wall Street insider an unrestrained attack on corporate America. The charges were plentiful. Donaldson pressed too hard in implementing Sarbanes-Oxley, the sweeping corporate governance legislation passed in 2002, costing companies millions and pushing resources towards compliance rather than growth. Donaldson stretched beyond the SEC’s powers when he sided with two Democrats on the SEC’s commission to regulate hedge funds and other industries. What America needed, critics said, was less regulation, a mantra they have uttered for decades.

The business community misses the point. Yes, regulators do overreach sometimes, creating unnecessary costs and steps for legitimate enterprises. Remember. No rule meant for an entire economy will work perfectly in every situation. That is the nature of rules. And regulators are sometimes too zealous in prosecuting companies: even wrongdoers might need to be saved to avoid larger costs to the economy. But honest, credible, and trustworthy capital markets are essential for the health of our economy. America preaches to the developing world to fix legal systems, root out corruption, and ensure transparency so that investors are protected and businesses rise and fall due to their efforts rather than through favoritism or deception.

A key element of this prescription is government regulation. The courts protect economic rights but regulation – rather than lawsuits – is the best way to protect the interests of millions of investors, especially retail investors who lack direct access to company managers. Regulation is also the most efficient, ironically. Lawsuits take place after a company blows up, after tens of billions have been lost and with great legal and administrative costs. Only regulators can nip a problem in the bud, before acts of corruption in a company spread like a terminal cancer. It’s not that business interests want plaintiffs’ lawyers to replace regulators. No. They would prefer to have neither.

Without trust in the capital markets though, investors will move their money elsewhere just as our grandparents hid their cash underneath their mattresses after the banking meltdowns of the Great Depression. The FDIC was created to insure people’s assets so that depositors would have confidence their money was protected. It worked perfectly. The SEC went a long way in restoring the confidence in the stock market after collapses at Enron, WorldCom, and Adelphia. If the SEC didn’t take preventative measures and scandal after scandal cost billions, then capital would eventually dry up. The business community preaching unrestrained – laissez faire – capitalism knows better than anyone else that capitalism without capital will join the list of obsolete economic-isms of the past century.

A Victory for Liberals?

2005-06-23T13:11:00.000-04:00

The Supreme Court today ruled on the case of Kelo et al v. City of New London, in which the Court held that a city may use the right of "eminent domain" to condemn private homes, even when the property will be used for private development, not public use.

I'm sorry to say that in the 5-4 decision, Justice Kennedy joined all of the liberal justices, Ginsburg, Breyer, and Souter and Stevens who wrote the majority, with Justice O'Connor writing the dissent.

I'm not sure I can recall a Supreme Court decision being issued with a close ideological divide where I agreed with the conservative justices rather than the liberal justices, this may be the first.

Democrats should stand for the rights of individuals, and at times that should include their property rights as well as their liberty interests. Moreover, when talking about someone's private home, there is no property right that comes closer to the sacred nature of a citizen's liberty interests, which Democrats and liberals rightfully defend.

Eminent domain, the principle that a local government can take private property for "just compensation" where necessary for public purposes, is a necessary evil. Without it, building roads, utility lines, rail roads, even parks and bike trails would be close to impossible. But no roads, power lines, or bike trails will get built because of today's decision, those purposes are already clearly allowed under eminent domain.

What will happen thanks to today's decision is that powerful private developers backed by local governments (or the other way around, depending on how you look at it) will be able to force less powerful homeowners to sell their homes at prices that are not determined by arms-length transactions but rather named by the purchaser. Justice O'Connor also took this view: ''Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random . . . The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms.'' How is this a victory for liberals?

Without a doubt, in many instances local communities will be better off for having made those purchases. But isn't that a rather low standard for taking someone's home? If I can get 50.1% off the people in a local community to agree with me that my use of your land will be more beneficial than your use of it for your residence, then I get to take it at a price that you are not allowed to negotiate? As Democrats, we insist, correctly, that there are some things that government needs more than a majority vote to take away, like the right to use birth control, or have an abortion, or have consensual sex with the adult of your choice, etc. Why are we happy to exclude taking someone's home and handing it over to a private developer from this category? Just because its called a property interest rather than a liberty interest?

That's my view of this decision in the abstract, here is the real world result of this decision:

The New London neighborhood that will be swept away includes Victorian-era
houses and small businesses that in some instances have been owned by several
generations of families. Among the New London residents in the case is a couple
in their 80s who have lived in the same home for more than 50 years.

City officials envision a commercial development that would attract
tourists to the Thames riverfront, complementing an adjoining Pfizer Corp.
research center and a proposed Coast Guard museum.

I can see it now: "the neighbors have all gotten together and decided they'd rather live next to Pfizer than you, so scoot."

Lions

2005-06-21T15:21:00.000-04:00

I had to post this simply unbelievable story about a 12 year old Ethiopian girl, abducted and beaten with the intent of forcing her into marriage, being saved by lions. I could talk about the abuse of young women around the world, or the poaching of endangered species, but I think this story really stands on its own.

To Be Fair

2005-06-21T15:00:00.000-04:00

I reread yesterday's post lecturing my fellow Democrats on supporting a disaster not of their own creation, and I thought I should at least follow up and clarify my view.

I think that while there is still a good possibility that we could pull a good result out of the war in the Shiite and Kurdish parts of Iraq, I think we face a very significant risk now of the western, Sunni-dominated Iraq becoming a destabilizing, terrorist breeding ground, with no end in sight for U.S. troops. (There are of course questions about the Shiite and Kurdish parts too, like will a democratic Shiite Iraq influence Iran or the other way around and what will the effects be of a independence seeking Kurdish Iraq on Turkey's border, but these questions pale in comparison to what we face in Western Iraq.)

If we pull our troops out of Western Iraq, there's no question whose hands we'll be leaving it in, and its not the newly elected Iraqi government.

Having said that, its a fair question to ask whether fighting an endless guerilla war is the right American policy.

Here is my best shot at what the right answer is. I think we should look at the relative success the Israelis have had with a Islamic militant insurgency and the lack of a legitimate government to contain it. The best way to describe the Israeli policy is "contain and destroy"- they pulled back their troops, cordoned off the parts of the occupied territories sending terrorists into Israel, and continued to go after terrorists from the outside, without exposing their troops to a continuing guerilla insurgency. Like the Israelis have done with the occupied territories, we should cordon off Western Iraq to keep it from further destablizing the rest of Iraq, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia. We have a real chance to succeed in the rest of Iraq and there's no reason we should allow the Sunni areas to undermine the modest successes we've had elsewhere. Walking away would send a horrific message, but that doesn't mean we have to leave ourselves completely exposed.

The analogy isn't perfect. The Israelis at least had the Palestinian Authority, which, while highly imperfect to say the least, was at least something. Its not clear that any of the more legitimate Sunni institutions in Iraq could step up and govern at all. But its not particularly clear that will happen any faster under the status quo.

How long would this strategy take? Would it require more troops or less? I don't have my own military planners, so I don't know the answer to that, nor should a political imperative change whatever the answer is.

A One Party War

2005-06-21T14:22:00.000-04:00

A recent poll was published today giving support for the war by party affiliation:

Republicans: 70% In Favor (Down 11%)
Independents: 40% In Favor (Down 8%)
Democrats: 17% In Favor (Up 2%)

I ask this next question as someone who firmly believes that regardless of all of the problems with how we got into the war, we must stick it out and find a way to win it.

Can we fight a war that is backed by only one party? Isn't this dangerous?

Perhaps, just maybe, we got to this result because the Bush administration used this war as a political cudgel from the very beginning (remember Andy Card's comment about rolling a new product after Labor Day?) and its failure to level with anyone on the intelligence and its motivation for going to war. OK, not maybe. I'm certain of it.

But having said that, I think most Democrats should realize, even if they don't indicate it to Gallup pollsters, that opposing what Bush did and opposing what we must do next are two different things.

On John Danforth and Janice Rogers Brown

2005-06-17T14:07:00.000-04:00

It'd be tempting to link to today's must read Danforth op-ed piece because this conservative Republican, Episcopalian minister and the Bush administration's last ambassador to the UN (to be succeeded in theory by John Bolton), comes down squarely on the tolerant side of a host of social issues from the separation of church and state to Terry Schiavo to stem cell research to the gay marriage amendment. But that's not why its a must read. This is why:

Many conservative Christians approach politics with a certainty that they
know God's truth, and that they can advance the kingdom of God through
governmental action. So they have developed a political agenda that they believe
advances God's kingdom . . . Moderate Christians are less
certain about when and how our beliefs can be translated into statutory form,
not because of a lack of faith in God but because of a healthy acknowledgement
of the limitations of human beings.

. . .

In the decade since I left the Senate, American politics has been
characterized by two phenomena: the increased activism of the Christian right,
especially in the Republican Party, and the collapse of bipartisan collegiality.
I do not think it is a stretch to suggest a relationship between the two. To
assert that I am on God's side and you are not, that I know God's will and you
do not, and that I will use the power of government to advance my understanding
of God's kingdom is certain to produce hostility.

In a couple of the previous posts I've talked about the need for Democrats to clearly articulate a set of principles in which they believe unbendingly and without reservation, that hold them together and differentiate them from the party now in power. As I read Danforth, I can think of one that I'd like to offer up right now:

#1: Any ideology that presumes to know absolute truth and to hold that truth higher than democratic principles and constitutional rights and liberties, is a threat to our way of life, at home and abroad.

The recent appointee to the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, Janice Rogers Brown, is not a violent woman, nor a criminal, nor anything close to the threat to our security that Islamic fundamentalists pose. The Christian right are not terrorists nor enemies of the United States. But when she, and they, hold that "higher truths" trump democratic and constitutional principles, they are undermining the very principle we are defending around the world. In a democracy, no one person, or one group of people, get to decide for everyone else what the higher truths are. Saying otherwise doesn't make you a terrorist or an enemy of the state, but it does put you in opposition to the way we view ourselves as a constitutional republic and what sets us apart from the bad guys.

On Dick Durbin

2005-06-17T13:57:00.000-04:00

There's been a little bit of a brouhaha in the last day or two about this quote from Democratic Minority Whip Dick Durbin on the floor of the Senate:

Durbin quoted an FBI report on Guantanomo:

On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained
hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water.
Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for
18-24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down
so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee
was shaking with cold. . . . On another occasion, the [air
conditioner] had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated
room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor,
with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his
hair out throughout the night. On another occasion, not only was the temperature
unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room, and
had been since the day before, with the detainee chained hand and foot in the
fetal position on the tile floor.

Then comments:

If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing
what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly
believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad
regime--Pol Pot or others--that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is
not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their
prisoners.

Predictably, Durbin's received a lot of criticism for invoking the Nazis while describing the actions of the U.S. military. The first time I read the passages above was in a blog by the Wall Street Journal's James Tarranto which was forwarded to me. I generally make a habit of avoiding Tarranto more than other conservative writers because of his noxious habit of belittling John Kerry for having "only" served four months in Vietnam. So its a bit ironic that the first criticism of Durbin's comments came from this defender of military servicemen everywhere.

Nevertheless, let's set aside the Nazi comparison, which I'm willing to concede is undergoing an epidemic of overuse by everyone in Washington (the best example of course, was Rick Santorum's use of it with respect to the filibuster, two months after trashing Robert Byrd for his use of it . . . with respect to the filibuster.) By the same token, I think its overuse has nothing to do with how seriously we view the holocaust, and everything to do with historical analogies of varying weakness.

But again, set that aside. Having read that FBI description, I think that if I read that without knowing it was the United States, I too would think it was the work of one of history's more brutal and repressive regimes, and not ours. And to say that its way beneath the standard of our society doesn't denigrate our troops- the guys risking their lives in Fallujah and Kandahar have nothing to do with this- it denigrates all of us for tolerating it. We all know the military is controlled by civilians we elected, so if it crosses the line, its not about the troops, its about us, and trying to make it about supporting the guys heroically risking their lives cheapens their sacrifices more than Nazi comparisons cheapen the holocaust. So Durbin's use of the Nazi comparison was probably injudicious, but the larger point was pretty apt, and anyone who misses the latter to focus on the former is kind of weeping at a funeral because he doesn't like the flowers on the coffin.

The Inaugural Post

2005-06-15T15:35:00.000-04:00

As promised.

I had a conversation with a friend yesterday who was very active in raising money for Democrats last year and is totally burned out and disillusioned. He asked a pretty fundamental question: why should I care if the Democratic party exists at all?

You know your party is in bad shape when that's the question. He made the point that a political party was basically a type of brand, and if the Democratic party doesn't offer a coherent alternative, well maybe its a dead brand and we should move on to something else.

Well, as a starting point, I would point to the Republican party and say, one thing I know is that they are very bad for this country. Whether its the fiscal unraveling they've caused, the disregard for fundamental constitutional protections like the separation of church and state, free speech, or the right to privacy, the continuing neglect of the state of our environment, the petty yet brazen corruption, or the dangerous point they have brought us to abroad, to me, Republican government means serious trouble for America.

Right now, there's only one vehicle to stop Republican rule of America and protect us from further damage, and that's the Democratic party. If the Democratic party didn't exist, even as flawed as it is, we'd have to invent it all over again.

Now that's not a very compelling argument for a political party's existence. But in that argument, there is some good news as well as bad news.

A political party is about, at varying levels of detail, a brand, a message, a set of principles, and a set of policy prescriptions. On that score, we're one for four. We've got plenty of policy prescriptions, but even they are kind of uninspiring and lacking much ambition or vision. Brand? Message? Clearly articulated principles? Not so much. That's the bad news.

Here is the good news: We do have, perhaps more than at any time in the history of this party, the second thing that makes a political party. A political party is a collection of people that agree on most things that are important and agree to work together to achieve power so that the government reflects that agreement on most things, if not everything. That we have, even if we don't know it. I've said this in a previous post, but if you compare what the ideological debates looked like in 1992 to today, you'd think the Democratic party was actually two different parties entirely. With Clinton and Paul Tsongas on one side, and Jerry Brown and Tom Harkin on the other, our party was riven with big fundamental disagreements over foreign intervention, welfare reform, federal spending levels, middle class tax cuts, health care reform, trade, and more. Today, if you look at the policy program of a Howard Dean or MoveOn.org and compare it to the Progressive Policy Institute, it would be hard to figure out why these guys hate each other so much.

So if we all agree, for example, that the huge budget deficits the government's running are dangerous, that guaranteed Social Security benefits are a good thing, that regardless of what you thought of the invasion of Iraq, we have to finish what we started there (the position of both Howard Dean and Joe Lieberman), that everyone should have affordable health care coverage, and that the Bush tax cuts were unwise and unfair . . . then why is it that when voters step into the voting booth, given a choice between a Republican they don't like and a Democrat, they feel like they at least know what the Republican stands for- as opposed to the Democrat?

Why is our brand in such bad shape? And how can we fix our brand without a message or clearly articulated principles for which we can guarantee we will fight without relent? Let's find out.

Balasco's Back Baby!

2005-06-10T21:12:00.000-04:00

After a long hiatus, Balasco is coming back- new and improved, with more members posting. Its a great group of contributors and we're looking forward to a fun dynamic. So tune in! The new Balasco returns next week!

So Maybe Government Isn't So Bad After All

2005-02-08T19:03:00.000-05:00

This is a pretty remarkable poll result that I just saw over at www.mydd.com. Without a broad consensus that more government is always a bad thing, or the ability to scale it back, what exactly is animating idea behind conservatism? And if people do believe in the power of good government, why can't Democrats offer a coherent vision of what they want to do with it?

A Thought Experiment On Iraq

2005-02-07T11:50:00.000-05:00

If you were an Iraqi Shiite mullah, would you rather be a slightly smaller Persian gulf nation with a population that is relatively uniform religiously and ethnically and security guaranteed by a non-occupying United States- or would you rather be a larger, religiously and ethnically diverse nation with severe internal security problems and a security guaranteed by an occupying United States?

Now, if you are a Sunni Iraqi, what do you gain from being ruled by Shiites? Do you want to (a) continue to fight with an aim toward reconquering Iraq? (b) make peace and hope that the long-oppressed Shiites (and possibly Kurds) will willingly share some of the bounty from Iraqi energy resources that are found in their- and not the Sunni- provinces, or (c) battle for secession from Shiite-dominated Iraq and attempt to live off Saudi and other Sunni-dominated Persian gulf petrodollars?

It would seem that the first question above isn't really such a tough one for the Shiites. In the case of the Sunnis, its harder to say which unattractive choice will emerge as most appealing. But if the Sunnis decide they're better off in a separate Iraq, its hard to see what will stop them if the Shiites view such a departure as a good thing.

What would a separatist Sunni Iraq look-like? Eastern Syria, a Baathist terrorist state? A new West Bank, where no one is really in control for a couple generations? Eastern Jordan? A poor Arab state without much in the way of resources that is trying to pull itself out of poverty with a more western-oriented system? Or a Saudi-client state? A militarist, wahhabi state that the Saudis use to keep Shiite Iraq and Iran at bay.

The Eastern Jordan scenario seems pretty unlikely, so it looks like finding a way to keep Sunni Iraq in Iraq is a pretty important goal before we can declare victory and leave. The only problem is, do the duly-elected Shiite Iraqis have any incentive to further that goal?

Not Just When Do They Want Us to Leave Iraq, But Where?

2005-02-07T11:35:00.000-05:00

In the wake of the Iraqi elections, there seems to be a lot of talk about how long the Shia who will run the government will be willing to let us stay. This seems to presume that the Shia will want to take over the task of suppressing the Sunni insurgency in Western Iraq.

Do they? Or deep down, is their ideal vision an America-free Shiite Iraq with American soldiers continuing to bear the brunt of fighting the insurgency in Sunni Iraq?

This seems to be a critical, short-term subsidiary question of the big question: is there any version of a decentralized Iraqi federal system in which the Sunni provinces will allow themselves to be peacefully ruled by a Shiite-dominated national government? (To a lesser extent, the same question holds over the long-term for the Kurds.)

What it boils down to is: is there anyway the Sunnis are ever going to submit to this peacefully or are the Shiites prepared to force them to submit to this militarily? What does Iraq look like if the answer is no and no?

Why Moderate Republicans Are Useless Vol. II

2005-02-02T19:15:00.000-05:00

Several weeks ago, when I hypothesized that moderate Republicans are useless, it was because they are supposed to be models of fiscal rectitude who happen to be socially liberal- but they have signed off on a complete unraveling of our nation's finances.

Another point behind electing moderate Republicans, of course, is also that they are members of the party in power and are supposed to bring home the bacon. Remember Senator Pothole?

Well, I wonder then, what good Arlen Spector, Lincoln Chafee, Chris Shays, Peter King, Sue Kelly, Nancy Johnson, Rob Simmons, Mike Ferguson, Frank Lobiondo, Phil English, Jim Greenwood and Rodney Frelinghuysen are doing for their northeast constituencies when Bush is proposing to end Amtrak's operating budget.

Again, useless.

Real Moral Values: Being Against "No Naming Calling Week"

2005-02-02T16:19:00.000-05:00

Well, I thought guys like James Dobson had long since lost it when they were going after SpongeBob SquarePants and Tinky Winky. If these lunatics want to pick on children's cartoon characters and puppets, be my guest. The fact that our own Secretary of Education has gotten into the act (actually, her very first act) is pretty sad, but I'm no longer surprised at how willing the Bush administration is to adopt the C-list arguments of their fringe supporters.

But this takes the cake. Apparently, conservatives are opposed to "No Name Calling Week" because it condones homosexuality by discouraging name-calling directed at gay students.

“Schools should be steering kids away from identifying as gay,” said [Robert Knight, director of Concerned Women for America’s Culture and Family Institute].
“You can teach civility to kids and tell them every child is valued without
conveying the message that failure to accept homosexuality as normal is a sign
of bigotry.”

So conservatives are anti- "No Name Calling" because it precludes children from calling other children names in instances where those other children may- or may not- have adopted a lifestyle of which the conservatives do not approve. I don't want to take this critique seriously, but even assuming, which I don't, that homosexuality was some sort of sickness, do these clowns view name-calling as the cure? Are there any other childhood ailments or personality disorders where name-calling has been shown to fix it right up?

Here's another winner from the heart of darkness:

"Tolerance and diversity 'are almost always buzzwords for homosexual advocacy,'
[Dr. James]Dobson wrote. 'Kids should not be taught that homosexuality is just
another 'lifestyle' or that it is morally equivalent to heterosexuality.'"

So, to sum up, as it turns out, tolerance, diversity, and not-name-calling, are bad things because it creates an environment where people must treat others with whom they disagree with respect. That would preclude guys like Dr. Dobson and Robert Knight from ramming their world view down people's throats involuntarily- and we wouldn't want that, would we?

So, for those who feel like politics doesn't matter- or better- its worth tolerating the Republicans on social issues because they keep taxes down, you might want to keep an episode like this in mind. If you care about a way of life that includes a tolerant and diverse society then you shouldn't feel too secure that everyone shares your worldview.

Can Democrats talk about their moral values now? Like being against hectoring children? Is that a moral value?

Only the Who Die Young?

2005-01-28T09:53:00.000-05:00

You get diagnosed with a life-threatening illness and your neighbor comes over and all he's got to say is: it doesn't look like you're going to be needing those season tickets, I'm willing to buy them off you- at a discount of course.

Thanks.

You are the black community and your life expectancy is significantly lower than average Americans and your President addresses your leaders and says: you guys die so young anyway, you won't be needing that guaranteed retirement benefit, do you mind if I replace it with private accounts that will benefit higher income people more?

So for starters, we can set aside the callousness of this political pitch and say that it is demonstrably false (and that's not just Krugman talking but the Social Security's Chief Actuary, who works for George Bush).

Its false in the same way it was false when Condeleeza Rice said that the only use for Iraq's aluminum tubes was enriching uranium. False in the same way Dick Cheney said that we KNEW that Saddam was close to having nuclear weapons. False in the same way George Bush said that Iraqis had sought uranium from Niger. False in the same way Colin Powell claimed at the UN that Saddam was hosting Al-Zarqawi (he was operating in Iraqi territory not controlled by Saddam). False in the same way that George Bush said that the vast majority of tax cuts were going to middle-income Americans.

False because they had information from the professionals that worked for them that these claims were not true and they willfully ignored it. Making them either fools, liars, or both.

But I don't think it makes any sense to set aside the callousness and cheap racial pandering of this statement, and neither does Paul Krugman. I think Bush's willingness to go here places only second behind his fundamental dishonesty to why no President has ever been more profoundly unfit for office.

Someone Who Gets It . . .

2005-01-27T11:16:00.000-05:00

and yet again, who is unfortunately not someone who makes decisions in the national Democratic party.

I'm not sure about some of this guy's specific ideas, but the sentiment is dead on.

Nothing the Democrats propose is going to get passed, so we should be setting benchmarks of where we stand, not strategic programs that move the ball three yards in a cloud of dust. Did we elect anyone in this party who is capable of thinking big?

The Danger of the Dollar

2005-01-25T13:17:00.000-05:00

Strong article in today's NY Times about the threat of a precipitous slide in the dollar and the machinations abroad regarding this issue.

I've hit this note again and again, but I'll say it one more time: how is the complete reliance on foreign capital to fund our government- where the largest source is the Chinese- not a national security issue? Aside from this, a rapid slide in the dollar- driving prices and interest rates up and investment and growth down, is a giant and very real threat to the well-being of American families. Yet its remained completely under the radar as a political issue and I fear it will continue to do so until its too late.

One last point. The Bush administration likes to keep saying that the growth rate of the U.S. economy is well ahead of other major industrial economies and so the enormous, unsustainable trade imbalance (6% of GDP) is justified. It doesn't have to remain that way, as recently as fifteen years ago the Germans and Japanese were handily outgrowing us. Moreover, if the capital flows stop coming, you can't count on that growth, just look at what happened in the early '90s.

Just Because He's President Doesn't Mean We Have To Take HIm Seriously

2005-01-23T14:14:00.000-05:00

I've noticed that the pundocracy and other journalists are getting a lot of mileage over the question of whether the President really meant what he said in his speech and whether the United States will launch some sort of all-consuming crusade to spread freedom around the world. My take: who cares?

Set aside the uncomfortable question, which Bush and those surrounding him will never be intellectually honest enough to address, that spreading freedom and fighting terrorism aren't always consistent goals. Would Islamists fail to win a single election if they were held across the Muslim world? Would they lose in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan? Unlikely. Would the governments countries give us the cooperation we need in the war on terror if as a matter of official policy we are also seeking to have them overthrown? Highly unlikely. Can we overthrow dictatorships we dislike without diverting resources from the fight against radical Islam? I think recent history speaks for itself.

That's not to say that they are not both worthy and important goals, and we should pursue them both. But if we are never willing to reconcile them and honestly address the conflicts between them, we probably won't get very far on either front. Again, this isn't a prediction, this is the history of the Bush administration.

But that's not why I think this is a big joke. The reason is that this is a big joke is that we don't have the resources to launch a mission to spread freedom anywhere, much less everywhere. We need every soldier we can get our hands on to deal with Iraq, and we are borrowing 3o cents for every dollar we spend, some from the very people to whom we want to spread freedom and some from the Social Security trust fund that Bush likes telling everyone is going flat broke.

So what are we going to do, go to the Chinese and ask to borrow an extra trillion dollars over the next few years so we can spread freedom to them? That's kind of like borrowing trillions of dollars to give to Americans for private savings accounts so we can increase saving . . . oh, wait.

Don't you get the feeling that George Bush is like the kid who announces he's running away from home and then asks his parents for bus money and help packing?

Too much taxes?

2005-01-23T14:03:00.000-05:00

Taxes are too high because federal spending is too high, right? That's what conservatives have told us for years and years.

Here's an interesting fact: when you count the money that the federal government borrowed from the Social Security trust funds last year, the federal budget deficit was over $600 billion. Non-defense discretionary spending was under $450 billion. So if the federal government simply stopped spending money tomorrow on everything except defense, interest on the debt, medicare, and medicaid, we'd still be running 12 figure deficits under current tax policies.

So the next time someone blames the deficits on runaway federal spending, ask them how they would propose to pay for the federal government if there was no domestic discretionary spending at all, since Bush doesn't do it.

Here's another fun fact: when you exclude Social Security (which you should, since people pay for it with their regressive taxes with the understanding that it is accumulating assets, not simply subsidizing the Bush looting)- the federal government is borrowing nearly 30% of what it needs to pay the bills. Just imagine if every year you borrowing the equivalent of 30% of what you spent.

Why would "conservative" people endorse imposing an insane fiscal policy on everyone that they would never tolerate for themselves or their own children? Isn't this the ultimate corruption of conservatism? Where a policy meant to reign in spending results in borrowing (and a commitment to higher future federal spending due to interest payments) even for spending that even conservatives deem essential, like national defense?

Is it sensible national security to rely on Chinese lending for a substantial portion of the federal budget? More on this and the President's speech in the next post.

Democratic Governors

2005-01-20T18:59:00.000-05:00

In a recent AP article, Democratic Governors from Republican-leaning states make all kinds of claims that they are blazing the trail for returning Democrats back to power.

Now, don't get me wrong, I like these people. I like that they got elected and I'm sure that they are by and large very good Governors. Moreover, I'm sure they do have a lot of useful ideas to offer on helping Democrats win in red states. But the idea that they have figured it out themselves is a delusion. These people have won races for state office, not national office, and the issues involved in running a state are quite distinct from the issues involved in holding federal office. The article mentions foreign policy, but even the calculus regarding domestic issues differ.

For starters, most governors must live with balanced budgets, a constraint that the federal government can ignore. That means Republicans can cut taxes, but then they have to live with the consequences of less government, instead of just bloviate about it. Governors are also the ones who are primarily funding education, medicaid and law enforcement. So even in the reddest of states, Republicans can struggle with balancing their voracious hunger for tax cuts with the responsibilities of governing and Democrats can take advantage and win.

So we find states, such as Wyoming, Oklahoma and Kansas, where Democrats never win statewide elections for federal office with Democratic Governors. These governors should be congratulated on their victories and their advice should be heard, but history has demonstrated, somewhat decisively, that their victories do not translate into victories for federal office.

Here's a few good examples. Brian Schweitzer, the new Governor of Montana mentioned in the article, lost his Senate race four years ago. The article also mentions Brad Henry, who was narrowly elected Governor of Oklahoma in 2002. Yet last year, the equally moderate and attractive Brad Carson got whipped by Tom Coburn, who is a lunatic. Another excellent example is Ben Nelson, who lost his first race for U.S. Senate against Chuck Hagel during a strong Democratic year while still garnering approval ratings over 60% as Governor of Nebraska. Perhaps the best example is Tony Knowles, the very popular former Democratic Governor of Alaska who last year failed to dislodge Republican incumbent Lisa Murkowski, who had gotten her job by getting appointed by her own father. These are just the best examples, but the fact is that the club of popular statewide officeholders in very red states who failed to win federal office is a large one.

Sad and pathetic

2005-01-20T18:32:00.000-05:00

I'm not talking about the amount I've posted to this blog. I'm undergoing a major personal project that has forestalled posting for the past couple weeks and probably will for a couple weeks going forward. But keep checking back.

According to AP, Senate Democrats are voting to confirm Rice with the promise that she'll be candid with them. That'll make Democrats look tough, telling someone who is on record as repeatedly deceiving the American public about WMD and being embarrassingly evasive while under oath in front of the 9/11 commission that you'll vote for them as long as they are candid with you. While they're at it, why don't they also ring up the Swift Boat Veterans and offer to make a contribution if they promise to give John Kerry a fairer shake in the future? Is anyone supposed to believe this group can stand up to world leaders for America when they eat the crap that shills like Rice feed them for lunch? Pathetic.

What the hell are they worried about? That voters will punish them for not giving her a supermajority for her confirmation? Do they think that people will start voting Democrat if Democrats start pretending that Bush's foreign policy has been competently managed in the past four years? It'd be nice to be a member of a political party where the predominant number of our office holders are in possession of spines.

Opportunity

2005-01-07T10:44:00.000-05:00

This blog started out of despondency about how low the fortunes of the Democratic party have sunk. We've heard from some about permanent realignment and the permanent majority that Republicans could hold for a long time to come.

Read this poll. Bush's approval rating is at a record low for a recently reelected second term President (49% Approve/49% Disapprove), and Congress's approval rating (43 Approve/51 Disapprove) is even lower. The massive deficits and war in Iraq continue to burn on and now Bush is going to the American people to cut Social Security benefits and borrow another $2 trillion in the process (can someone bother to do the math on what that is per family? How will people feel when they realize that means ~$20,000 of debt just for them?)

My point is simple. If the Democrats can get their act together, we won't scrape back, we'll come roaring back. But of course, Democrats getting their act together is always a giant "if."

Housing Prices in Manhattan

2005-01-06T13:44:00.000-05:00

Off politics today. A recent NY Times article puts the average Manhattan apartment at over $1 million.

Let's just do a little bit of math. A $1,000,000 mortgage runs $5835.73 a month according to the mortgage calculator on the NY Times website. Now, I realize that people buying million dollar apartments put down something in the way of down payments, but also remember they also have to pay maintenance fees, so the monthly payment probably stays around $5800, even with some money down. That's about $70,000 a year. The general rule of thumb guideline I've read is that a family should pay no more than 28% of their income in mortgage payments. So, for someone to buy a million dollar apartment, they really ought to have an income that is sustainably $250,000 a year into the foreseeable future.

People make a lot of money in Manhattan, but does the average family make $250,000 a year? No way. So if you own one of those apartments, isn't it going to be hard over the long run to sell your apartment at that price? Can your apartment's value appreciate to the point where people need to earn, again sustainably, $300-400,000 a year? Unlikely.

Nor is Manhattan the only place in the country that has seen housing price inflation that has really outpaced the ability of families to continue buying. Just something to mull over as you weigh whether to buy, sell, or weight your portfolio toward real estate.

Tim Roemer for Not DNC Chair

2005-01-06T13:30:00.000-05:00

One of the most inside baseball decisions that go on in politics is the contest for party chairman. Now, with blogs, its becoming a much more high profile event, at least for political junkies outside the beltway. I never really intended to weigh in, although from the little I read Simon Rosenberg paired with a compelling red state politician/spokesman sounds pretty optimal.

But then I read Josh Marshall's post on Tim Roemer (yes, I know, yet another link to Josh Marshall. In November it was the New Republic, this month its Josh, I guess these things run in streaks.)

Marshall says it better, but the bottom line is Roemer voted against the Clinton budget of 1993 (you know, the one that brought balanced budgets and record prosperity), for the Bush budget of 2001 (you know, the one that brought us the greatest fiscal unraveling in the nation's history), and has indicated possible support for Bush's Social Security privitization plans. If we are to define ourselves as the party that won't bury everyone's children in debt, and I think we must, then Roemer is clearly the wrong guy to lead it, notwithstanding all his other fine qualities.

The Wehner Memo

2005-01-06T11:39:00.000-05:00

Josh Marshall publishes a memo from Peter Wehner, Karl Rove's deputy, on how the Administration should approach the impending Social Security debate.

Josh will get into a lot of the specifics and the politics, but I think its important to point out some context for the points that Wehner makes in his memo about wage indexation, the mechanism the Social Security Administration uses for increasing seniors' Social Security benefits:

It's worth noting that wage indexation was not part of the original design of Social Security. The current method of wage indexation was created in 1977, under (you guessed it) the Carter Administration. Wage indexation makes it impossible to "grow our way" out of the Social Security problem. If the economy grows faster and wages rise, this produces more tax revenue. But the faster wage growth also means that we owe more in Social Security benefits. This has produced a never-ending cycle of higher tax burdens, even during periods of robust economic growth. . . .

Here's a startling fact: under current law, an average retiree in 2050 would be scheduled to receive close to 40 percent more (in real terms) in benefits than an average retiree today -- and yet there are no mechanisms in place to produce the revenue to pay out those benefits. No one on this planet can tell you why a 25-year-old person today is entitled to a 40 percent increase in Social Security benefits (in real terms) compared to what a person retiring today receives.

Three points here. First, the reason wage indexation was created in 1977 is because before that measure Presidents and Congress, but most of all Republican Richard Nixon, kept introducing ad hoc increases to Social Security benefits to insure reelection, which really destablized the program. (Nixon also appointed his own guys at the Fed to accelerate increases in the money supply to speed up the economy and insure his reelection, at the expense of terrible inflation later on, but that's for another debate, specifically, the "other than Watergate Nixon was a great President" debate).

Second, Wehner makes the statement that because Social Security benefit increases are tied to wage growth, Social Security taxes can't keep up. Specifically, he states that "there are no mechanisms in place to produce the revenue to pay out those benefits." Umm, if I'm not mistaken, Social Security taxes are also tied to wage growth by means of an increase in the wage cap on payroll taxes every year. So to the extent there is a small imbalance, its not because payroll taxes can never keep up with benefit increases or because there is no mechanism to keep up with these increases. There is no hopelessly downward fiscal spiral- that would be the rest of the federal budget, which contains long-term deficits that are a multiple of those that exist in the Social Security program, thanks to Wehner's boss.

Last, Wehner highlights the injustice of a 25 year old receiving a standard of living of 40% higher than beneficiaries receive today. Wehner doesn't bother to note that in 37 years everyone's standard of living will be 40% higher than they are today. Does Wehner believe that in an ideal world people retiring today should be paid benefits that would provide a comfortable standard of living in 1962? I guess in a few years when my father hits 67 I should head over to the house and take back that color TV and answering machine- and the remote, lets face it, my folks could use the exercise. 25 year olds pay stiff payroll taxes to fund a standard of living at retirement commensurate with the times in which they live. Again, the deficits in Social Security are very small and for the most part these increases are funded. To the extent there is a gap that we need to close, its a legitimate issue, but retirees receiving benefits that maintain a 2004 standard of living in 2004 and a 2046 standard of living in 2046 is not what needs fixing.

Krugman's Back

2005-01-04T15:33:00.000-05:00

Paul Krugman is back from his hiatus and plans to engage fully in the Social Security debate. So far, so good.