misleading with headlines

At the Atlantic, Marc Ambinder posts the following

A Separate Headline: Conrad: Reconciliation Won't Work

Sen. Kent Conrad, the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, on Face The Nation, has a distinct opinion on whether budget reconciliation would work for health care:  yes to fixes, no to the bill itself. 

Of course, the only thing on the table right now are the fixes. So the headline should have read, Conrad: Reconciliation Will Work. And this is important, because right now the House needs to be reassured that the Senate can actually pass the fixes through reconciliation. Prominent Democratic centrists saying it's fine, or at least appropriate in the circumstances (as they have been doing over recent days) is a huge boost, making House Dems much more likely to believe that the Senate will actually follow through on its side of the deal.

Update: Jonathan Chait has a take on this well worth reading.

I don't know why I read Opinionator

...cause this is some pretty stupid shit.

Clearly, “push for reform in the Senate rules” here means the demise of the filibuster, or what was called the nuclear option when the Republicans ruled the roost. For Balkin, oddly, that sort of radical change in representative government may not be the most unsettling potential course. 

Radical change in representative government?! By that he means getting rid of the filibuster, which is not in the constitution, and which by some reasonable readings of the constitution actually violates it, and which is a relatively recent innovation. The filibuster has been around for a long time, but no one really used it other than Southern Democrats to secure their herrenvolk democracy. One of the early times it was used for other purposes--to block money for war ships-- led to the creation of rules to control it. Then from WWI to the late 1960s it was only used for civil rights. When it was used for other measures, it quickly led to another change of the rules.

We've thankfully stopped using it as the bulwark of apartheid, but since the 1970s it's use has been almost consistently increasing. And then boom: 110 congress, it's use explodes. I see no reason why the filibuster is an integral part of "representative goverment" but efforts to reform it are "radical changes." The radical change has been in its use, and whenever such changes have happened in the past they've been followed by policy changes to rein it in.

Rights: civil, religious, expression, and gays in the military

This is the sort of thing that one sees all the time from opponents of homosexuality

Perkins argues that what happened to him is just the beginning of a trend in the military where civil rights will trump the religious freedom to oppose homosexuality. “People don’t understand that in the military there is a chain of command, and you have to follow orders,” Perkins said. “You’re not free to disagree.”

 When the military was desegregated, presumably, officers who didn't like black people were required to pretty much keep shut about it. And of course, they probably didn't entirely. But surely there was some movement by the upper-brass to enforce discipline. Racial slurs? Probably not too much attention was paid to them, but, I would hope, that persistent articulation of hate was disciplined. But apparently the same thing can't hold for anti-gay beliefs. Why? Because these are supposedly rooted in religion. 


Now there are all sorts of chauvinisms: let's suppose that there was a Muslim marine, who kept talking about how serving with infidels disgusted him, and kept talking about his opposition to any religion but Islam. Hell, he might even say that being forced to serve with Christians was likely to undermine morale and cohesion among the Muslim troops. Now how many conservatives do you think would jump to his defense if he were disciplined? What about a religion that taught certain races would be inferior, and its adherents in the military kept insisting on this fact, loudly and repeatedly asserting that their fellow soldiers were inferior subhumans? Would there be much complaining if those attacking their comrades were disciplined? Probably a bit more than in the case with the Muslims, but pretty much all of the military brass and most conservatives would probably be okay with doing so. 


But now let's say the Muslim believed this, but didn't talk about it, that the religious group that hates other races maintained their religious beliefs but didn't really make a stink about it. I think that in this case most people wouldn't much care. Sure they might not be the favorite among their comrades, but I can't see there being much of a fuss made. And rightfully so. 


The point is that the right of religious freedom is the right to practice your religion, within certain bounds (no human sacrifice), and the right of religious conscience, namely to believe what you want. It is not the right to not serve (voluntarily no less) with those you dislike. It is not that civil rights trump religious freedom. In fact, the two aren't in opposition. The right being restricted isn't religious at all: it's the right to free expression. Now some might argue that soldiers should be entirely unconstrained in what they should be able to express. Most people, recognizing the unique role of the military, think that maybe they shouldn't be allowed to do this at certain times. And again, right to free speech is not a right to certain public policies, whereas civil rights entail some right that public policies will not be arbitrarily discriminatory against certain groups on the basis of their being considered a part of that group. So freedom of expression and civil rights aren't really in conflict here either. Freedom of expression is in conflict with what we believe to be necessary characteristics of the military  (there wouldn't be much of a fuss if a soldier was disciplined for advocating the murder of the president or mutiny). Civil rights is in conflict with current public policy.


Where civil rights and religious freedom would be in conflict would be if the state mandated that all churches have to perform gay marriages. That, I'd wager, has never ever been proposed by any prominent gay rights organization. 


postscript: Of course non of this even applies to him, because presumably the military chaplain can invite anyone he wants to his events. If I'm organizing a conference on ethnic conflict, I'm not obligated to invite Proust scholars.

Socialism for the organized, capitalism for the unorganized

When I first heard of the Obama's administration decision to use federal contracting as leverage to "shape social policy and lift more families into the middle class", I thought that it was about time. I'm still convinced that the Obama administration should be doing more to ensure that this is a long-term objective of public policy, but Alex Tabarrok has convinced me otherwise (via Brad Delong).


My initial thought would be that this sort of policy is going to be very well-received by unions, and probably has been a union objective since Obama came into office. I don't know the recent origins of this policy proposal, but I think that it does have a strong appeal to those of us who believe that the government has wrongly abandoned its efforts to broaden the middle class. I think the appeal is in part based on the historical reading of FDR's use of federal contracts to press for racial integration in the economy. I'm not sure how well it worked, but it was probably an important contributor to the growth of a black middle class and the eventual civil rights movement. 


So the use of federal contracts for broader social purposes has a strong appeal for leftists. Enter some cold water 

[Tabarrok is]  more worried, however, about the long term consequences of creating a dual labor market in which insiders with government or government-connected jobs are highly paid and secure while outsiders face high unemployment rates, low wages and part-time work without a career path.

Long-term unemployment is at shockingly high levels which in itself creates a dynamic of persistence because the longer a worker is unemployed the less employable they become (in part due to loss of human capital and signaling problems). Thus, getting these workers back to work is going to be hard enough as it is.  Labor regulations which raise wages and make hiring and firing workers even more costly will make re-employing the long-term unemployed even more difficult.

Moreover, once an economy is in the insider-outsider equilibrium it's very difficult to get out because insiders fear that they will lose their privileges with a deregulated labor market and outsiders focus their political energy not on deregulating the labor market but on becoming insiders

 I think he is right on this. But given that the appeal, I think, is based on the FDR precedent, let me put the problem in those terms as well. Using federal contracts to leverage increased integration in the economy, I maintain, was the right thing to do. But it was undermined in its effects by other forms of exclusion that were built into the fabric of the key institutions that helped to expand and secure the middle class in the post-war years. Three of these institutions of importance were unions, and the increased bargaining power that they had been secured through state action, the Social Security Act, and the GI Bill. Each of these disproportionately excluded African Americans-- and had been designed to do so in their construction (the GI Bill less so, but with similar effects). The result was a sustained divergence in the fortunes of blacks and whites in the post-war period. In short, whites were inside the social protection, while blacks were largely excluded from social citizenship, except the politically vulnerable and underfunded assistance programs. This, I suggest, is one of the consistent findings of American political development: that the New Deal and post-war expansion of the middle class constructed an insider-outsider situation, one that entrenched interests such as white unions that became bitter opponents of civil rights legislation once it concerned matters relevant to the urban North.

So while I like the thought of an active use of federal power, including contracts, to expand and secure the middle class, it needs to be done in such a way that would not create even more inequality between those within the sphere of federal contracts and those outside.

Rolling down The Hill

When people talk about framing in journalism, the use of loaded terms of particular portrayals that either mislead or greatly bias the takeaway, this is the kind of garbage they have in mind

But while some liberal activists say Democrats should ram legislation through the Senate using special budget rules that require only a simple majority vote, Democratic leaders have taken a different view.

Should the Democrats "ram legislation through the Senate using special budget rules"? Well that certainly doesn't sound procedurally fair does it. It's probably not procedurally fair to "ram" anything through anything else. That is what the word "ram" implies in this context. And the pairing with "special budget rules", which is true, certainly amplifies the perception that this is unfair, trampling the procedural rights of the minority and the perception that the passage of the vote would reflect an aggregation of preferences arrived at through an open, fair, and prior established and respected procedure. Even the word "simple" in "simple majority vote" is doing some extra work here. If it were just a majority vote, that might raise some cognitive dissonance: what the hell is "special" about "majority vote"? The qualifier "simple" helps to mute that, by subtly suggesting that majority vote is some way a reduction of the normal process.

Of course you never need 60 votes on final passage. You only ever need 51. Sure you need 60 votes for filibuster, and denying the opportunity for filibuster is indeed what make these special rules. But the reader has been primed by the word "ram" and everything that follows from that just builds on that initial characterization.

Beyond the problem of framing is the problem that Bolton either (1) doesn't really know what is being suggested for passage through reconciliation, or (2) he doesn't think it's important to let his readers know what is actually being suggested for reconciliation. Liberal activists are not at this point calling for passing the bill through reconciliation, although many certainly did throughout 2009. Rather, what liberal activists are calling for is for the House to pass the Senate bill as is: no procedural tricks, no "ramming", no "special rules" although in this case it would be a majority vote, although the qualifier "simple" would be irrelevant.

Bolton sets up some unnamed liberal activists, misrepresents what liberal activists are calling for, and then says that "Democratic leaders have taken a different view." Of course they've taken a different view. No liberal activists are taking that view. No one is taking that view anymore, other than Republicans who are deliberately mis-portraying what is being suggested and the journalists who are either not aware of what is going on or don't care to actually tell people. Sure back in March and even through until November, maybe December, there were people calling for passing the entire bill through reconciliation. They were wrong on the merits (it almost certainly would have been gutted by the parliamentarian) but they were advancing that position. Not anymore. The reconciliation process being considered is different than it was in 2009: it is a smaller bill with the specific objective of making sure that the legislation passed is reconciled with the budget that was passed.

As for the substance of the article, there is the continued suggestion that Republicans might be willing to compromise

“The bipartisan trade-off in a viable healthcare bill is obvious: Combine universal coverage with malpractice tort reform in healthcare,” former Democratic Sen. Bill Bradley wrote in an op-ed for the New York Times last year.

This written before it became absolutely clear that there was no way that the GOP would accept this compromise. More importantly, it was written after the Republican leadership had explicitly rejected this offer.  As Karen Tumulty reported back in May 2009 (via Steve Benen)

When Barack Obama informed congressional Republicans last month that he would support a controversial parliamentary move to protect health-care reform from a filibuster in the Senate, they were furious. That meant the bill could pass with a simple majority of 51 votes, eliminating the need for any GOP support for the bill. Where, they demanded, was the bipartisanship the President had promised? So, right there in the Cabinet Room, the President put a proposal on the table, according to two people who were present. Obama said he was willing to curb malpractice awards, a move long sought by the Republicans and certain to bring strong opposition from the trial lawyers who fund the Democratic Party.
What, he wanted to know, did the Republicans have to offer in return?
Nothing, it turned out. Republicans were unprepared to make any concessions, if they had any to make.

I have no problem with this being included in the bill, but it should be clear that the only reason to do this would be to give House Dems currently buckling a little bit of cover. But Bolton does not make crucial things clear: (1) that the talk of reconciliation is now, unlike in 2009, about advancing not health care reform in total through the Senate, but rather in passing a few reforms that would make it more palatable to the House, (2) that the Democratic leadership has not rejected reconciliation, as the first paragraph highlighted implies, but rather have endorsed it, and (3) that this isn't going to get you a bipartisan bill.... it was offered, rejected, offered again, rejected again, all before Republicans had the nerve to insist that it wasn't in the bill! 

Passing the Senate Bill

When Democrats talk about how the  "The choreography gets a little complicated here" they are talking about the upcoming dance with the Senate, specifically who steps first and do you trust them.


Senate aides say that they cannot pass the reconciliation bill unless the House passes the Senate bill. House Dems say well we sure as hell don't trust the Senate to pass the reconciliation bill if we've already passed your bill. So there is a lack of trust, one that leads to a classic trap in which everyone desires the same thing and would be collectively better off for it, but they all need to move in coordination and no one trusts the other to follow through on their side.


I'm glad to hear that House Democrats have started to come to their senses. As Rep. Miller, the Dem Chairman of  the House Education and Labor Committee, notes

 "The choreography gets a little complicated here, but the point is that the House will present a reconciliation bill that will be based on the principles the president put forth to correct some of the problems the House and others have had with the Senate bill... That may require us to pass the Senate bill first, and then send the reconciliation bill to the Senate for them to pass. I think Senator Reid believes that he can put together the votes for that, and then we can have a new, modern health care system in this country that can be signed by... President Obama."

 I have no idea whether this is necessary or whether having the Senate pass the bill first would lead to a successful parliamentary challenge for trying to pass a reconciliation fix to a bill (the Senate health care bill) that is not yet law.  More importantly, however, I think that the House needs to pass the bill first just to kill the discourse that passing the whole bill through reconciliation is unprecedented. This is something that Steve Benen has been highlighting repeatedly (see here, or here). But the discourse in the media seems to have taken off, with the Republican talking points about 'sure we did it too, but never for something as complicated as this.' Or the constant repeating of Democratic Senator Byrd's claim that it would be outrageous for the Senate to pass health care reform through majority rules.

But Byrd said this about the idea of passing the entire bill through reconciliation. And although I never supported this tactic, I think it would be no less outrageous than passing 1996 Welfare Reform, the Bush tax cuts, or COBRA through reconciliation. But even if it were unprecedented to pass the health care bill through reconciliation, that is not what is being proposed.

Rather, the Senate bill has already passed, and can be passed by the House and signed by the President today. No reconciliation. The House won't do that unless it gets a fix, for which you need reconciliation. But that just points to why you absolutely need the House to pass the bill first (although potentially the Senate can introduce the reconciliation bill on the floor to calm nervous House Dems)

As soon as the House passes the bill, it kills the GOP talking point, but only if that is the lede and not reconciliation. If the House passed the bill, that means that the only thing preventing comprehensive health care reform from becoming law would be the signature of President Obama. That would dominate the news cycle for a few days, and no one could make any claims that would get any traction about how this was an illegitimate process. What the hell is illegitimate about passing a bill through the normal rules in both chambers.

A few days later, when the dust is settling, you move forward on the reconciliation. The GOP would howl, but even the most novice reporter would have to figure out why there is another health care bill being passed, and would have to explain that what is being passed is a smaller set of amendments.

Best scenario moving forward: House passes the bill, Obama makes a huge fanfare, promises to sign the bill, talks about how it's such a step forward, soak press coverage on passing the bill through the regular channels, and then before the bill is signed (to make sure the Sen Dems hold up their end of the bargain) pass the fix through reconciliation.

The Fed and Unemployment

The abstract for a working paper by James K Galbraith, Olivier Giovannoni, and Ann J Russo, "The Fed’s Real Reaction Function: Monetary Policy, Inflation, Unemployment, Inequality and Presidential Politics"

Using a VAR model of the American economy from 1984 to 2003 we find that, contrary to official claims, the Federal Reserve does not target inflation or react to “inflation signals.” Rather, the Fed reacts to the very “real” signal sent by unemployment; in a way that suggests that a baseless fear of full employment is a principal force behind monetary policy. Tests of variations in the workings of a Taylor Rule, using dummy variable regressions, on data going back to 1969 suggest that after 1983 the Federal Reserve largely ceased reacting to inflation or high unemployment, but continued to react when unemployment fell “too low.” We further find that monetary policy (measured by the yield curve) has significant causal impact on pay inequality–a domain where the Federal Reserve refuses responsibility. Finally, we test whether Federal Reserve policy has exhibited a pattern of partisan bias in presidential election years, with results that suggest the presence of such bias, after controlling for the effects of inflation and unemployment.

The first thing I've highlighted, about the change in Fed policy away from actually dealing with unemployment, is something that I've been thinking about a lot lately, and so it was nice to see some evidence for this. I had never really considered the effect of monetary policy on pay inequality, so this was also very interesting. As for partisan bias, I'm not terribly surprised. But I think it's the least substantively worrying element here. Really, the idea that there has been an effective abdication of dealing with high unemployment by the one institution that can make an enormous difference (either through monetary policy or by making sure that if fiscal policy is used that it is not undermined by monetary policy). Well worth a read.

The Return of the Public Option

Remember the days when the public option was a total cop-out? Then remember the days when it was the liberal line in the sand? Co-ops? Forget 'em! Then remember how it wasn't included in the Finance Committee's bill? But then came back in when Reid merged the HELP and Finance bills? Lieberman. Nelson. It seemed to be dead. And then there was the 'forget the public option, this is a total trade up' Medicare buy-in, which raised spirits. Then Lieberman again. Then it was dead, with nothing to replace it. But fine.... pass the bill. Then Brown. Which brought us Pass the Damn Bill.

and then, well not sure what really's been going on the last month. Oh I know what I've read and heard, but it seems to change daily. So much so that it all the reporting and blogging on health care often seemed to be just a random walk.

But apparently the public option is back on. The administration apparently isn't too keen on it, but maybe they're not all that opposed. But if Reid supports it for reconciliation, and the Administration is fine with it if Reid is fine with it, and if the number of Senators in favor keeps growing.... then who knows.

I'm still skeptical. I think that the administration is hell-bent on being seen as reaching out for bipartisanship, and this would probably not do the trick. But it will be a hard hit for the administration come November if they have to actually scuttle the public option. Liberal dems barely feel like turning out as it is. And it is one thing to say "we need to drop the public option cause it doesn't have the votes" and another thing to say "we need to drop the public option because even though we have the votes the administration wants to not piss off the Republicans."


Update: Ezra Klein believes that, as long as we're being fantastical, we should go the route of the Medicare buy-in. Which seems pretty fine by me.

The early labor movement and race

Something that caught my eye as I read through The Fall of the House of Labor by David Montgomery

Having  decided to be a militant craft union, rather than a southern fraternal lodge, the IAM's [International Association of Machinists] leaders were anxious to affiliate with the AFL, but the AFL refused to charter a union whose constitution excluded Afro-Americans. Its founding unions - those of carpenters, typographers, molders, miners, cigar makers, and iron and steel workers - had all formally admitted black workers by then [1890], and its hopes to grow in the South required the support of southern dockers. Indeed, when the admission of the IAM was debated at the AFL's 1890 Detroit convention, a black bricklayer from Cleveland, James F. Moxley, was presiding (p.199).

Furthermore, Gompers himself worked to encourage the IAM to change policy, rather than the AFL to change policy, even going so far as to support the creation of a rival union to the IAM that he hoped would eventually merge with the IAM and help bring them into the AFL with a non-discriminatory charter.

The extent of black participation in the formative period of the labor movement, as well as in political, social, and economic life in general, is often shrouded in the fog that covers history from Reconstruction to 'Reconquista' in the 1890s. After the 1890s, the calculus of union organizing, of political campaigns, and of efforts at social mobilization more broadly changed dramatically in this regard.

...the tide of segregationist thinking and segregation laws was rising rapidly. Although prominent members of the IAM... tirelessly urged their union to drop its racial barriers and join the AFL on the AFL's terms, other metal-trades unions, such as that of the boilermakers and the blacksmiths, devised local regulations that kept out black workers, the four railroad brotherhoods had always banned them, and the ARU at its 1894 convention narrowly but definitely voted to admit whits only to that new all-grade union of railway workers. Biracial unionism survived the 1890s primarily  in industries like coal mining and longshore, where blacker workers were deeply entrenched and fought with some success to preserve their place within the workers' organization. Even the Knights of Labor had abandoned its earlier defense of black workers, [with General Master Workman] James Sovereign [speaking] publicly in 1894 in favor of deporting all Afro-Americans to Africa, to the horror of many veteran Knights (p.200).

Sure enough, the AFL and the IAM would come to a compromise: the IAM would remove the exclusionary clause, but would impose a ritual pledge that no member would propose a non-white person for membership, effectively excluding all non-whites from the union. These are the arrangements, some tacit, some explicit, others just passed over with neglect, that provided the racial fracturing of the union movement, resulting eventually in the different institutional forms given to civil rights and labor law (see Frymer's excellent account of this).

When the Fair Employment Practices Committee investigated unions in the 1940s, they found the movement to be rife with discriminatory practices, substantially affecting the structure of the labor market and opportunities for blacks to access the union jobs that were, alongside the GI Bill, greatly expanding the American middle class in the 1940s-1960s.Frymer notes that Jimmy Hoffa even acknowledged that "his union had voted to deny African Americans from being truck drivers because white drivers did not want to share close quarters with black drivers" and that the vigorous opposition of Southern Democrats and the AFL ensured that the FEPC would not be established on a permanent basis and would not include unions within the purview of the committee (Frymer, 2008 39).

On Hating My Job

I don't actually. In fact, a stipend is what we call high-class welfare: no one's going to call my house in the middle of the night to see if a man picks up the phone, and no one really gets any political traction by targeting me for abuse.

But I have hated many of my jobs. Many of my friends and family hate their jobs. And right now, ain't no one going to quit. A few years back my sister was working at a shitty job in Edmonton, during the boom years. The boom was largely driven by the energy sector, and a substantial labor shortage developed.

So my sister quit her shitty job, at which she was paid something like $7 an hour. And was immediately offered a raise to $10 an hour. So she stayed on. And hell, she probably could have got them for more. Those days are far behind. I suspect, but would love to see hard numbers on this, that a lot of people right now would choose a significant pay cut to being laid off.

Even when they hate their jobs. Like Cam'ron.



Don't know why this didn't get more play. Okay, I know why it didn't get more play. But still.... "I hate my boss, dude think he know it all, and i know i know it all, but i follow protocol."

Almost matches the fake line (which was so like Cam'ron's style that you can still find it listed as a great Cam'ron lyric): "We at the hot dog stand/ she made my hot dog stand"

On infrastructure

I am in no way qualified to write on whether  government spending on infrastructure has a relatively high multiplier effect (try here, but see here, and here), or on whether it achieves a reasonable rate of dollars spent per job (Felix Salmon calculates it to be highly expensive on that score).

But it strikes me that since we need massive amounts of infrastructure spending, regardless of the economic collapse (google Bob Herbert and infrastructure and see what comes up.... it's been a recurring theme in his writing for a while), that we might as well try and kill two birds with one stone. That is, we can either invest heavily infrastructure now, while unemployment is high, or we can do so later, when unemployment is likely to be (hopefully) lower. Massive government spending in good times is likely to be costlier than it is right now. In fact, taking on additional debt to finance needed investments that also create short-term jobs is never going to be cheaper or more economically sensible.

Hell, even conservatives are agreeing with the basic logic of this. John Hawkins at Right Wing News writes that

Seldom does this happen, but I do have to say, Bob Herbert is right....As a conservative, I consider the government to be a necessary evil because we do need them to do things like this. They should be making sure the infrastructure in the country doesn't fall apart and it shouldn't take a bridge collapsing to get them to do something.

While Andrew Samwick ,former director for Bush's Council of Economic Advisors, writes 

If the Federal government could administer a problem this intricate [employment tax incentives], I doubt we would be in the shape we are in. We are over two years into these discussions of stimulus and bailouts, and it is disappointing to continue to see these gimmicks being discussed. What are we going to have next, "Cash for Coworkers?" ...

So what do we need that we typically entrust the government to provide? Infrastructure -- repair of the old and expansion of the new. We need trillions of dollars of it, more than enough spending to replace the reduction in private sector demand that has occurred during this downturn.

This last one via Ezra Klein.

The question with infrastructure spending, then, seems to be less about whether it has a significantly high multiplier (or even a positive one), or even whether the ratio of cost to jobs created is in a range that might conceivably be called a good deal. The question is whether we do it now, when unemployment is high, debt is cheap, and infrastructure is collapsing, or later, when unemployment is low, debt is potentially more expensive, and infrastructure has collapsed even further.

Michelle Obama's Got Books...

...and man do you gotta love em. Over on Say Anything, we have Rob taking a picture of books chosen by the First Lady for the White House library (according to the tour guide).

 

We have some classics here! We've got Goodwyn's The Populist Movement, Hicks' The Populist Revolt, Nichol's Invention of the American Political Parties. And of course, good ole' Glazer's The Social Basis of American Communism. Glazer's book is not at all sympathetic to communism. Goodwyn is certainly sympathetic to the populist movement, and what's more, he both praised them for their democracy and critiqued them for their failed handling of race. I'm not sure what Rob's critique is, other than that Michelle Obama apparently reads excellent books that promote popular involvement in democratic life by the citizenry and that condemn, but seek to understand, the American communist movement.

To be perfectly honest, I've never been a strong supporter of Obama. Certainly I thought better of him than I did of McCain, but I was torn between him and Clinton (I felt Clinton was better for labor and for health).

But this I can get behind, and it makes me trust and appreciate Obama much more knowing that at least somone in his family has read the history of the People's Party.

National Anthems and the Impressions

Ta-Nehisi Coates find "Lift Every Voice" too "milquetoast" for his taste, and asks for new suggestions for the national anthem.

He offers Nina Simone's "I wish I knew", and "Redemption Song," although recognizing that that song has really had the magic drained from it by drunken frat boys, on campus and on tour (the only thing that rang true in the otherwise forgettable movie "Auberge Espagnol" was just how irritating that song can be when it's known by every drunken dude with a guitar).

I offer "This is my country," although I've always heard the song not only as a classic song demanding equal and full enjoyment of the rights of citizenship ("shall we perish unjust or live equal as a nation") but also as an intervention in the civil rights movement itself, against separatism and black nationalism. I have no idea is this is true, but that (possible) dimension has always stood out for me when listening to the song. But "we've survived a hard road, and we want you to know, you'll face us at last" is uncompromising demands for justice at its best.

I couldn't find the Impressions' version online, and didn't have time to upload it. So here is Cyril Neville singing it. A decent version, but really doesn't do it justice.

Baker v. Brooks

As an update to my Valentine's Day post, here is Dean Baker on David Brooks' recent column .

By 11am, Baker was addressing the NYT article on the budget by Jackie Calmes, which really was a dozy.

The NYT ran a front page article claiming a "broad agreement broad agreement among critics about Exhibit A: The unwillingness of the two parties to compromise to control a national debt that is rising to dangerous heights." The article presents no evidence to suggest a broad agreement of any sort among critics, nor does it point out that every one of the "experts" cited failed to warn of the housing bubble, the collapse of which is projected to add close to $4 trillion to the national debt.

The article then throws in the utterly absurd statement: "After decades of warnings that budgetary profligacy, escalating health care costs and an aging population would lead to a day of fiscal reckoning, economists and the nation’s foreign creditors say that moment is approaching faster than expected, hastened by a deep recession that cost trillions of dollars in lost tax revenues and higher spending for safety-net programs."

The government has small deficits and then surpluses through the second half of the 90s and into the beginning of the last decade. Only people who completely ignored the data would at that point have been issuing "warnings that budgetary profligacy, escalating health care costs and an aging population would lead to a day of fiscal reckoning." There was no basis for this concern at that time.

Baker takes aim at what seems to be his personal peeve (an appropriate peeve), namely that the experts who missed the bubble continue to be in positions of intellectual and policymaking authority, and are actively obscuring the role of the housing bubble in creating the mess in which we are currently in. When times were good, they were rewarded. When they both failed to respond to a massive housing bubble and insisted that it wasn't, couldn't be there, they continued to be rewarded (although some were briefly humbled). And now that the pieces have fallen? Yep.... still banking it. But I'm going to stress a different aspect, namely the political aspect. As Baker notes, there is no evidence of any "broad agreement broad agreement among critics about Exhibit A: The unwillingness of the two parties to compromise to control a national debt that is rising to dangerous heights."

In fact, it seems to me to be entirely the opposite: any efforts at compromising put out by the Democrats have been rebuffed, rejected, and denied by Republicans. Why? Because with a few exceptions (Bruce Bartlett... but I think he no longer considers himself a Republican), Republicans don't actually care about the deficit. Or, more precisely, they care about it, but that's not a bug it's a feature. They think a sustained deficit is a terrible thing for the country. They think that it is such a terrible thing for the country that it necessitates drastic action. And they think that this drastic action should only affect Republican priorities. That is, they want to starve the beast. And the Republican leadership recognizes that the Democrats, who want to govern with a positive agenda (as in actually have the government provide functions, not necessarily positive in their effects) are eternally screwed, because wanting the government to actually be able to do anything requires having a government that is on sound fiscal footing, whereas shrinking the government is best accomplished by making sure that sound fiscal footing is achieved at a level that would have been modest prior to the New Deal.

This is a comment about the Republican party that I am loath to make. I do not generally find sweeping claims about "the others" to be all that convincing, and they're pretty damn distasteful to listen to and, surprisingly, just as distasteful to make. I do not believe that this is the case for Republican voters as a group. I do not even believe that it is the policy preference of all Republican members of Congress. It is almost certainly not the position of Republican governors not actively positioning themselves for higher office. But I have found over the last year the theoretical model "Republicans don't care about the deficit, they only care about taxes and winning political position" to be a much better predictor of member behavior and leadership pronouncements than "Republicans care about the deficit and sincerely want to resolve the country's long term political problems."

Midterm Turnout

Jonathan Bernstein has a smart look at the strategic value of obstructionism.

Parties that oppose popular presidents may be able to benefit even if their own image is damaged -- after all, by definition minority parties are better off if all incumbents suffer. Individual Members of Congress from those minority parties, however, may find themselves more vulnerable to defeat even if their party overall benefits, and therefore they may choose to accommodate, rather than reject, the president's agenda..... The story here is that Republicans in 1993-1994 were able to convince incumbents to carry out a rejectionist strategy, and Republicans won in 1994, so Republicans (and many Democrats) are now convinced that rejectionist strategies are obvious choices. It's not at all clear, however, that Republican strategies in1993-1994 were responsible for Clinton's low approval ratings or the other causes of the Democrats' 1994 electoral debacle. And it's not at all clear to me that the Republican strategy is succeeding now. Barack Obama's approval ratings remain at around 50%, despite historically very high levels of unemployment. Would he be higher if Republicans had allowed his nominations to clear the Senate? Somehow, I doubt it. Higher if health care had passed? That, I can buy -- but I also think health care is still likely to pass, regardless of Republican actions. Meanwhile, Republican incumbents are subject to attacks for opposing locally popular projects, and Democrats will be attacking them on obstructing popular legislation.

The only thing missing is a discussion of the role of the different electorate for midterms. Is this a competition between the bases, with less partisan and actual independents less likely to vote? If that's the case then party mobilization seems to be absolutely crucial. Obstructionism, however, could go both ways here: it seems likely to strengthen the minority party, if obstructionism is able to mobilize their base, but it might also strengthen the majority party, if their base becomes even more aggrieved and outraged than they were when they won in the presidential election year.

I suspect, but do not actually have anything to back this up, that the base responds less to the actions of the other party than the actions of their own: if my party is scoring wins, either by passing legislation or by blocking legislation, then I'll be more likely to be motivated. If my party is losing in terms of passing policies (either they can't block things or they can't get things through), my motivation is going to depend very heavily on how my party's leaders behave and whether they are able to generate a convincing narrative that they are losing through some fault not of their own (some losers really make you want to cheer for them even harder--like Rocky 1--while others really just make you sickened at their behavior--my Edmonton Oilers, this year and so many other years in the past).

The nadir for the Democrats was likely the chaos after Scott Brown's election. Not because Brown lost, but because they treated it like a catastrophe that signaled they shouldn't even bother to try to advance their stated priorities. That was enough to demoralize a base incredibly quickly, greatly jeopardizing their chances were that level of demoralization going to last until November.

What I'd like to see before prognosticating on November are (1) Obama's popularity at a more fine-grained level (is his reasonably high popularity, given the economic circumstances, overly concentrated in already safe seats, or is it relatively high even in competitive seats? How much of the disapproval is from Democrats, who might then be less likely to turn out in November), and (2) historical turnout trends for midterms (is it a fight between the bases, or is it a pretty even decrease in turnout amongst all levels of identifiers and independents).

Liberal priorities and centrist policies

While I largely agree with the argument made by Matt Yglesias that the liberal base has not been getting either the policies it wants nor the support of the Administration in prioritizing and pushing for these policies, I do see some merit in the claim made by "centrist" members of congress that the left wing of the Democrats have been driving the agenda. The point though is that while liberals haven't been driving the policy agenda, they've been driving much of the priority agenda.

Yglesias points out none of the key liberal priorities that he lists (below) have been enacted, and that the administration has only even bothered pushing for one with any consistent effort (CFRA).

— A $1.2 trillion stimulus.
— The forcible breakup of large banks.
— Universal health care with a public option linked to Medicare rates.
— An economy-wide cap on carbon emissions, with the permits auctioned.
— Repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
— A path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.
— An exit strategy from Afghanistan.
— An end to special exemption of military spending from fiscal discipline.
— An independent Consumer Financial Protection Agency.
— The Employee Free Choice Act.

But I think the relevant point to ask is not whether liberals have achieved their priorities or even whether the White House has expended serious political capital in defense of their priorities, but rather, what are the priorities of the "centrists" democrats that could plausibly have dominated the agenda. Yglesias might see nation-wide Romney-care as a "centrist" priority, but I would disagree. The liberal priority was health care; the left preferred single-payer, but that wasn't feasible and so near-universal coverage became its priority. And that has been a consistent feature of the health care policymaking process, albeit one that was narrowed to 'near-universal' but only for American citizens, and that was constantly paired with cost control. It is a "centrist" policy, but largely because the "centre" is defined as a policy space in which the priorities of the left or right get sufficiently bastardized to get through Congress.

Same thing with cap'n trade (I much prefer cap'n crunch). The "centrists" as far as I can tell (and I've never really followed this one too closely), didn't really have a priority here. But the liberals had a priority of doing something, anything, on climate change and so accepted that this would have to be watered down, and will probably be paired with give-aways to corporations and nuclear power. I think that with the exception of citizenship for undocumented immigrants, this has been pretty much the case with all of the policies Yglesias lists. Liberals had priorities to deal with specific societal problems, knew that their desired policies wouldn't be feasible, and so pared back their proposals to something that would have a chance of passing. And Obama followed a strategy of "where's the pivot and what do they want?" And so we get a deformed list of policies, but one that reflects in broad terms liberal priorities.

I guess there are two basic points here:
(1) the priorities are different from preferred policies, and liberal priorities (but certainly not policies) have been a major factor in the legislative activity of Congress over the year.
(2) many "centrists" don't really have priorities, or even policy preferences. They are not in the "centre" because they have strong preferences about "centrist" policies (they are not militant compromisers) but because they don't have strong preferences about all that much except continuing to get elected from what are often highly competitive districts.

My currently cynical suspicion is that had the "centrists" been setting the priorities, there would have been a whole lot of "votes against evil" and symbolic support for puppies, namely policies that reflect valence issues rather than a coherent and organized agenda of priorities about in what direction our society should be moving.

Political Science on the Web

Via the Monkey Cage, the International Political Science Association has put up what is likely to be a very helpful resource for political scientists, and graduate students and junior faculty especially. It is organized into different categories, including Data Banks, Access Services (library catalogues and the like), Institutions, Thematic Sites (including research institutions), etc., with links to what they call the "top 300 websites for political science." Well worth checking out.

http://ipsaportal.unina.it/

Kevin Sack in the NYT

But if Anthem was the whipping boy the White House needed, the confrontation has also reinforced an emerging shift of focus in Washington from the need for universal coverage to the need for serious cost control. And it brought into clear relief the deep rift between the administration and the insurance industry concerning a central question: whether such unsustainable pricing is driven by the bloodless economics of risk or a corporate culture of greed.

I haven't heard any major player in the health care debate talk about universal coverage in any other terms but cost control in months. More to the point, the Anthem rate hike represents exactly why universal coverage is necessary for cost control. Anthem's claim was that due to the recession, healthy people have been saving money by not getting covered, leaving Anthem with a sicker pool, raising costs and necessitating a premium hike.

In statements and letters, Anthem and WellPoint have explained what the industry calls a recessionary death spiral: as unemployment and declining wages prompt healthy people to drop their insurance, the remaining risk pool becomes sicker and more expensive to insure, which in turn forces up prices and pushes more people out of the market....

The death spiral “highlights why we need sustainable health care reform to manage the steadily rising costs of hospitals, drugs and doctors,” Anthem, which is based in Los Angeles, said in a statement.

Of course Anthem has been fighting reform from the beginning, presumably because it wants the individual mandate but no regulations. But I'm not sure how this 'Exhibit' underscores "an emerging shift of focus from universal coverage to cost control." In fact, it has been the language of the "death spiral" that has been pretty much the only thing keeping universal coverage from being entirely neglected in the discourse of the Administration and key Democrats for months.

Valentine's Day: David Brooks edition

Just finished reading Charles A. Valentine's Culure and Poverty, which I strongly recommend to anyone interested in the culture of poverty literature. It dismantles the culture of poverty thesis step by step, beginning from a consideration of the role of culture in anthropology, its emergence as a concept through imperialism, and narrowing in to a close consideration of the culture of poverty in how it was developed and deployed by academics and policymakers.

Valentine provides an excellent critique of the sloppy use of the concept of culture (indicators of the culture of poverty include persistent unemployment, lack of education, low status occupations, and meager wages, all of which Oscar Lewis categorizes as part of a "design for living" "handed on from generation to generation") and of the disappearance of any sort of structural factors that might result in higher unemployment other than cultural pathologies, while highlighting that most of the actual empirical work and anthropological immersion in culture of poverty works support the exact opposite conclusion (namely that there is a broadly shared culture between the poor and non-poor, but that there are substantially different opportunities).

A healthy contrast to David Brooks, who is probably the most prominent exponent of the thesis that poor people really only have their own shoddy selves to blame for their poverty, a recurring claim in his work that he found in Haiti's tragedy yet another opportunity to expound upon.

And speaking of David Brooks, does anyone else find any tension in his beliefs that (1) government intervention in the economy is nearly always destructive, as the emergent complexity of the market is nearly always too much for the limited rationality and constrained options of individual decision-makers, and (2) his belief that in regards to culture "intrusive government programs that combine paternalistic leadership, sufficient funding and a ferocious commitment to traditional, middle-class values" are the "remedy for the achievement gap."

Pointing out tension, and even contradictions, in people's beliefs and policy positions is no great accomplishment. I've got em, you've got em, we're all pretty mucked up by contradictory beliefs and positions. But given that we have numerous successful instances of government intervening in the economy (1) but very few successful instances of top-down restructuring of persistent cultural norms toward a specific end-point (2), my initial bias would be the other way.


(I really need to read some more recent critiques of culture of poverty... Arneil's Diverse Communities, which takes aim at certain varieties of the social capital literature, wavers between the excellent critique of Putnam's implicit, and occasionally explicit, view that women need to bear the burden of renewing civic life)