Does The Ledbetter Law Benefit Workers, Or Lawyers? By Stuart Taylor Jr.
Democrats and the media have distorted the facts underlying the new equal-pay law.
National Journal, Saturday, Jan. 31, 2009
This has been a good week, and may be a good year, for lawyers, civil-rights groups and others who think that America needs many more lawsuits to combat what they portray as pervasive job discrimination against women, minorities, the elderly, and the disabled.
Things are not going so well for those of us who fear that the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which President Obama co-sponsored as a senator and signed on Thursday, and other job discrimination bills in the congressional pipeline may be bad for most workers and may benefit mainly lawyers.
These measures seem likely to make it harder than ever for employers to defend themselves against bogus (as well as valid) discrimination claims, effectively adding to the cost of each new hire.
This would be justified if job discrimination were indeed pervasive. But the evidence suggests otherwise. Study after study has, for example, cast grave doubt on what appears to be the myth that sex discrimination in the workplace remains rampant more than 40 years after Congress adopted one law broadly banning job discrimination and another requiring equal pay for women and men doing equal work.
Congressional Democrats, liberal groups, and the media have thoroughly distorted the facts underlying the Ledbetter law to advance their agenda of opening the door wide to all manner of job-discrimination lawsuits.
The new law will virtually wipe out the 300-day time limit (180 days in Alabama and some other states) during which employees can file claims of discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Disgruntled employees will now be free to wait many years before hauling employers into court for supposedly discriminatory raises, promotions, or any other actions affecting pay.
The longer the wait, the more difficult it will be for the employer to contest an employee's one-sided and perhaps false account of the case, because key witnesses may have retired or died and records such as performance evaluations may have been discarded.
Indeed, some of the Ledbetter law's vague language could be construed as opening the doors for people to sue a company even years after retiring, on the theory that each new pension check is too small because of some claim of discrimination by some long-since-departed (or dead) supervisor.
This law represents an overreaction to a May 2007 Supreme Court decision, Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., that provoked an explosion of ill-informed media outrage and propelled the losing party, retired Goodyear employee Lilly Ledbetter of Alabama, to a speaking role at last year's Democratic National Convention.
The 5-4 decision reasonably (if debatably) held that the 180-day time limit for Ledbetter to file her Title VII claim had started running with the most recent act of intentional discrimination that affected her pay in the ensuing years. Ledbetter had argued -- and the new law now provides -- that the 180-day clock should restart with each new paycheck.
For this, the conservative majority was widely reviled as having denied any remedy to Ledbetter, because employees often don't know what their co-workers are paid and thus might not learn that they are victims until more than 180 (or 300) days after the supposed discrimination occurred.
But some critical facts -- ignored by the media and Congress -- belie their portrayal of the case, as detailed in my June 9, 2007, column.
First, Ledbetter waited more than five years after learning that she was paid substantially less than most male co-workers to file her Title VII claim for back pay, compensatory, and punitive damages. Second, by that time a key supervisor -- whom she belatedly accused of holding down her pay raises after she rejected his sexual advances -- had died. Third, Ledbetter chose not to pursue a claim under the Equal Pay Act of 1963, which has a much longer time limit (three years) than Title VII but does not (yet) provide for big-bucks damage awards.
Fourth, her years of poor performance evaluations, plus repeated layoffs that affected her eligibility for raises, convinced a federal magistrate judge (although not the jury) that her relatively low pay did not prove sex discrimination. Maybe Ledbetter was a victim of discrimination, as the jury found. Maybe not. The evidence is too stale to allow for a confident conclusion -- which is one reason the justices ruled against her.
That said, it would have been reasonable for Congress to amend Title VII by specifying (as some lower courts have held) that the clock does not start running until the employee is or should be aware that she is earning less than co-workers.
Instead, Congress chose to shift the balance dramatically against employers by effectively eliminating time limits for filing all manner of discrimination claims that have some impact on pay.
Another bill that may reach President Obama is the House-passed Paycheck Fairness Act. Its confusingly worded amendments to the Equal Pay Act of 1963 seem designed -- or at least likely -- to force pay raises for women who have never been victims of anything that most people would call discrimination.
The bill would, for example, expose an employer to liability for paying a woman less than a man in a similar job unless the employer can convince a jury that the differential is "job related" and "consistent with business necessity" -- and also that no "alternative employment practice exists that would serve the same business purpose."
What's that parade of nebulosities supposed to mean? I think it would invite judges and juries to go beyond providing remedies for real discrimination and to play Robin Hood by second-guessing justifiable pay disparities. It would force some employers who are entirely innocent of sex discrimination to settle unwarranted lawsuits.
An employer that has long paid higher salaries to employees with more experience or better scores on written tests of their job-related skills might be hit for a big damage award for failing instead to provide special training for inexperienced women or to use a different test.
A very big damage award, perhaps: The Paycheck Fairness Act would allow unlimited awards of both compensatory and (in cases of "reckless indifference") punitive damages. Other proposals likely to emerge during this Congress would eliminate the current caps on damages in Title VII lawsuits as well.
Worse, the Paycheck Fairness Act would allow lawyers to include masses of women who have little or no interest in suing in class-action lawsuits, excepting only those who go to the trouble of "opting out." This is a formula for lawyer-generated lawsuits to extort millions of dollars from companies without proving that they ever intentionally discriminated against anyone.
One of the myths underlying this bill is that, as then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York said on January 8: "It is disgraceful that... women in this country still earn only 78 cents on the dollar" earned by men.
No, it's not disgraceful. Nor is it true that "in many instances, the pay disparities can only be due to continued intentional discrimination or the lingering effects of past discrimination," as stated in the findings attached to the Paycheck Fairness Act.
Labor Department data and academic studies show that much of the male-female pay differential is explained by such factors as disproportionate child-rearing and caregiving responsibilities.These cut into women's working hours and motivate many to sacrifice higher pay for shorter hours and the flexibility to take career breaks.
The data also demonstrate that women who work 40 hours a week make 88 percent as much as men who work 40 hours. Economics professor June O'Neill of Baruch College reported in a 2003 article that the female-to-male wage ratio rises to 95 percent when other data -- on child-related factors, demographics, academic majors, work experience, and occupational characteristics -- are also taken into account. The "gender gap can be explained to a large extent by nondiscriminatory factors," O'Neill concluded.
"Men and women generally have equal pay for equal work now -- if they have the same jobs, responsibilities, and skills," wrote Diana Furchtgott-Roth of the conservative free-market Hudson Institute. She added, in a January 21 commentary published by Reuters, that the 5.9 percent unemployment rate for adult women is lower than the 7.2 percent for adult men.
This is not to suggest that sex discrimination is no longer a serious problem. I worry that my two daughters may run into the barriers that still lurk in some unknown percentage of workplaces. But I worry more that they and their peers will have a harder and harder time finding jobs in the first place if the government burdens employers with lawsuits that make it more and more expensive to bring in new hires.
Friday, January 30, 2009
In White House Blog: "Shameful"
Shameful
White House, Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
$18 billion.
That’s what Wall Street bankers pulled down in bonuses over the past two months, according to a report from the New York State comptroller -- even as many of these institutions received billions in taxpayer dollars.
"That is the height of irresponsibility. It is shameful," President Obama said today, following a meeting with Vice President Joe Biden, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, and the rest of the economic team.
Read the President’s full remarks below.
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT AFTER MEETING WITH THE VICE PRESIDENT AND THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY
The White House, Oval Office
January 29, 2009
THE PRESIDENT: Well, it's good to see you guys. I just had a terrific conversation with my Secretary of the Treasury, the Vice President, as well as the rest of our economic team, about the steps that we need to move forward on -- not only on the economic recovery and reinvestment package, but also on making sure that we begin the process of regulating Wall Street so that we can improve the flow of credit, banks start lending again, so that businesses can reopen, and that we can create more jobs -- but also to make sure that we never find ourselves in the kind of crisis that we're in again, that we've seen over the last several months.
And Secretary Geithner is hard at work on this process. We expect that even as the reinvestment and recovery package moves forward -- as I said, that's only one leg of the stool, and that these other legs of the stool will be rolled out systematically in the coming weeks so that the American people will have a clear sense of a comprehensive strategy designed to put people back to work, reopen businesses and credit flowing again.
One point I want to make is that all of us are going to have responsibilities to get this economy moving again. And when I saw an article today indicating that Wall Street bankers had given themselves $20 billion worth of bonuses -- the same amount of bonuses as they gave themselves in 2004 -- at a time when most of these institutions were teetering on collapse and they are asking for taxpayers to help sustain them, and when taxpayers find themselves in the difficult position that if they don't provide help that the entire system could come down on top of our heads -- that is the height of irresponsibility. It is shameful.
And part of what we're going to need is for folks on Wall Street who are asking for help to show some restraint and show some discipline and show some sense of responsibility. The American people understand that we've got a big hole that we've got to dig ourselves out of -- but they don't like the idea that people are digging a bigger hole even as they're being asked to fill it up.
And so we're going to be having conversations as this process moves forward directly with these folks on Wall Street to underscore that they have to start acting in a more responsible fashion if we are to together get this economy rolling again. There will be time for them to make profits, and there will be time for them to get bonuses -- now is not that time. And that's a message that I intend to send directly to them, I expect Secretary Geithner to send to them -- and Secretary Geithner already had to pull back one institution that had gone forward with a multimillion dollar jet plane purchase at the same time as they're receiving TARP money. We shouldn't have to do that because they should know better. And we will continue to send that message loud and clear.
Having said that, I am confident that with the recovery package moving through the House and through the Senate, with the excellent work that's already been done by Secretary Geithner in consultation with Larry Summers and Paul Volcker and other individuals, that we are going to be able to set up a regulatory framework that rights the ship and that gets us moving again. And I know the American people are eager to get moving again -- they want to work. They are serious about their responsibilities; I am, too, in this White House and I hope that the folks on Wall Street are going to be thinking in the same way.
White House, Thursday, January 29th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
$18 billion.
That’s what Wall Street bankers pulled down in bonuses over the past two months, according to a report from the New York State comptroller -- even as many of these institutions received billions in taxpayer dollars.
"That is the height of irresponsibility. It is shameful," President Obama said today, following a meeting with Vice President Joe Biden, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, and the rest of the economic team.
Read the President’s full remarks below.
REMARKS BY THE PRESIDENT AFTER MEETING WITH THE VICE PRESIDENT AND THE SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY
The White House, Oval Office
January 29, 2009
THE PRESIDENT: Well, it's good to see you guys. I just had a terrific conversation with my Secretary of the Treasury, the Vice President, as well as the rest of our economic team, about the steps that we need to move forward on -- not only on the economic recovery and reinvestment package, but also on making sure that we begin the process of regulating Wall Street so that we can improve the flow of credit, banks start lending again, so that businesses can reopen, and that we can create more jobs -- but also to make sure that we never find ourselves in the kind of crisis that we're in again, that we've seen over the last several months.
And Secretary Geithner is hard at work on this process. We expect that even as the reinvestment and recovery package moves forward -- as I said, that's only one leg of the stool, and that these other legs of the stool will be rolled out systematically in the coming weeks so that the American people will have a clear sense of a comprehensive strategy designed to put people back to work, reopen businesses and credit flowing again.
One point I want to make is that all of us are going to have responsibilities to get this economy moving again. And when I saw an article today indicating that Wall Street bankers had given themselves $20 billion worth of bonuses -- the same amount of bonuses as they gave themselves in 2004 -- at a time when most of these institutions were teetering on collapse and they are asking for taxpayers to help sustain them, and when taxpayers find themselves in the difficult position that if they don't provide help that the entire system could come down on top of our heads -- that is the height of irresponsibility. It is shameful.
And part of what we're going to need is for folks on Wall Street who are asking for help to show some restraint and show some discipline and show some sense of responsibility. The American people understand that we've got a big hole that we've got to dig ourselves out of -- but they don't like the idea that people are digging a bigger hole even as they're being asked to fill it up.
And so we're going to be having conversations as this process moves forward directly with these folks on Wall Street to underscore that they have to start acting in a more responsible fashion if we are to together get this economy rolling again. There will be time for them to make profits, and there will be time for them to get bonuses -- now is not that time. And that's a message that I intend to send directly to them, I expect Secretary Geithner to send to them -- and Secretary Geithner already had to pull back one institution that had gone forward with a multimillion dollar jet plane purchase at the same time as they're receiving TARP money. We shouldn't have to do that because they should know better. And we will continue to send that message loud and clear.
Having said that, I am confident that with the recovery package moving through the House and through the Senate, with the excellent work that's already been done by Secretary Geithner in consultation with Larry Summers and Paul Volcker and other individuals, that we are going to be able to set up a regulatory framework that rights the ship and that gets us moving again. And I know the American people are eager to get moving again -- they want to work. They are serious about their responsibilities; I am, too, in this White House and I hope that the folks on Wall Street are going to be thinking in the same way.
United States Humanitarian Support to Palestinians
United States Humanitarian Support to Palestinians
Media Note, Office of the Spokesman, US State Dept
Washington, DC, January 30, 2009
President Barack Obama has authorized the use of $20.3 million from the U.S. Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance (ERMA) Fund to address critical post-conflict humanitarian needs in Gaza. U.S. Government support for humanitarian assistance to Palestinian refugees and conflict victims now totals nearly $120 million in FY 2009, including nearly $60 million in Gaza.
Of the $20.3 million in new ERMA funds, $13.5 million will go to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), $6 million to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and $800,000 to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). These organizations are distributing emergency food assistance, providing medical assistance and temporary shelter, creating temporary employment, and restoring access to electricity and potable water to the people of Gaza.
Today’s contribution to UNRWA augments the $85 million the United States contributed in December 2008 toward UNRWA’s 2009 appeals. Of that amount, $25 million supported UNRWA emergency operations in West Bank and Gaza. The remaining $60 million supported UNRWA’s services for 4.6 million Palestinian refugees in the region, including Gaza. UNRWA is the largest provider of humanitarian aid in Gaza, providing 70 percent of the population with emergency food assistance, essential healthcare, and primary education. We are working to develop a longer-term reconstruction/development effort with international partners.
Furthermore, today’s contribution to ICRC complements the $9.7 million the United States provided earlier this month for ICRC’s activities for victims of conflict in the Middle East, with particular attention to its critical programs in Gaza. U.S. support of the ICRC buttresses the organization’s efforts to supply Gaza’s hospitals and clinics with urgently needed medical equipment, as well as to rehabilitate damaged water pumps and sanitation systems.
Finally, the U.S. contribution to OCHA supports its essential coordination activities for the Humanitarian Country Team, comprised of UN Agencies and non-governmental organizations providing humanitarian assistance in Gaza.
In addition to our contributions to UNRWA, ICRC, and OCHO, to date, USAID has provided more than $3.7 million for emergency assistance to Gaza. Food, milk powder, blankets, plastic sheeting, and other nonfood items have been distributed to beneficiaries, and the distributions are continuing. This assistance is distributed to beneficiaries through USAID’s implementing partners under six recently awarded grants ($250,000 each) to Mercy Corps, American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA), CHF International, Relief International, Catholic Relief Services, and CARE International. Food distributions are done through USAID’s grant to the World Food Program (WFP).
The U.S. reiterates its support for humanitarian actors responding to emergency needs in Gaza and encourages other states to provide urgently needed funding to UNRWA, ICRC, WFP and other international and non-governmental organizations providing this lifesaving care to civilians in Gaza.
2009/087
Media Note, Office of the Spokesman, US State Dept
Washington, DC, January 30, 2009
President Barack Obama has authorized the use of $20.3 million from the U.S. Emergency Refugee and Migration Assistance (ERMA) Fund to address critical post-conflict humanitarian needs in Gaza. U.S. Government support for humanitarian assistance to Palestinian refugees and conflict victims now totals nearly $120 million in FY 2009, including nearly $60 million in Gaza.
Of the $20.3 million in new ERMA funds, $13.5 million will go to the U.N. Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), $6 million to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), and $800,000 to the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). These organizations are distributing emergency food assistance, providing medical assistance and temporary shelter, creating temporary employment, and restoring access to electricity and potable water to the people of Gaza.
Today’s contribution to UNRWA augments the $85 million the United States contributed in December 2008 toward UNRWA’s 2009 appeals. Of that amount, $25 million supported UNRWA emergency operations in West Bank and Gaza. The remaining $60 million supported UNRWA’s services for 4.6 million Palestinian refugees in the region, including Gaza. UNRWA is the largest provider of humanitarian aid in Gaza, providing 70 percent of the population with emergency food assistance, essential healthcare, and primary education. We are working to develop a longer-term reconstruction/development effort with international partners.
Furthermore, today’s contribution to ICRC complements the $9.7 million the United States provided earlier this month for ICRC’s activities for victims of conflict in the Middle East, with particular attention to its critical programs in Gaza. U.S. support of the ICRC buttresses the organization’s efforts to supply Gaza’s hospitals and clinics with urgently needed medical equipment, as well as to rehabilitate damaged water pumps and sanitation systems.
Finally, the U.S. contribution to OCHA supports its essential coordination activities for the Humanitarian Country Team, comprised of UN Agencies and non-governmental organizations providing humanitarian assistance in Gaza.
In addition to our contributions to UNRWA, ICRC, and OCHO, to date, USAID has provided more than $3.7 million for emergency assistance to Gaza. Food, milk powder, blankets, plastic sheeting, and other nonfood items have been distributed to beneficiaries, and the distributions are continuing. This assistance is distributed to beneficiaries through USAID’s implementing partners under six recently awarded grants ($250,000 each) to Mercy Corps, American Near East Refugee Aid (ANERA), CHF International, Relief International, Catholic Relief Services, and CARE International. Food distributions are done through USAID’s grant to the World Food Program (WFP).
The U.S. reiterates its support for humanitarian actors responding to emergency needs in Gaza and encourages other states to provide urgently needed funding to UNRWA, ICRC, WFP and other international and non-governmental organizations providing this lifesaving care to civilians in Gaza.
2009/087
Washington Post Editorial: Guns in Virginia
Guns in Virginia. Washington Post Editorial
Lawmakers should close the gun show loophole.
Washington Post, Friday, January 30, 2009; A18
THE VIRGINIA Senate has an unprecedented opportunity today to begin to reverse the state's abysmal record on gun regulation.
For years, state lawmakers have defeated bills requiring vendors at gun shows to conduct background checks of would-be buyers. Yet such legislation squeaked by the Senate Courts of Justice Committee by an 8 to 7 vote this week and is poised for a vote in the full Senate. Politicians of both parties, including self-described gun rights advocates, should endorse this modest bill.
Licensed gun dealers in Virginia are required to conduct background checks on buyers, including those to whom they sell at gun shows. Yet, according to the Virginia State Police, up to 35 percent of vendors at the scores of gun shows throughout the state are unlicensed and thus are under no obligation to perform the checks. This makes no sense, and the public is put at risk because felons or the mentally ill are not screened out if they attempt to purchase guns.
The Senate bill would close this loophole by requiring that even unlicensed vendors -- often hobbyists who do not make their living from gun sales -- conduct these checks. To facilitate compliance, the bill calls for the gun show promoter to ensure that those who already hold federal licenses to sell firearms will conduct checks on behalf of unlicensed vendors. The bill does not require background checks for those purchasing antique guns or for those who have concealed-weapons permits.
Gun rights advocates won a stunning victory last year before the U.S. Supreme Court when a majority of the justices determined that the Second Amendment bestows an individual right to keep and bear arms. Before this ruling, many advocates worried that gun control activists would use regulation to effectively ban gun ownership. Those worries should have been put to rest by the court's decision. There is no longer any legitimate reason for lawmakers to resist sensible provisions to ensure that only law-abiding citizens exercise this right. And the bill to require background checks by all vendors is but a minor inconvenience that respects gun-ownership rights while keeping weapons out of the hands of potentially dangerous people.
Lawmakers should close the gun show loophole.
Washington Post, Friday, January 30, 2009; A18
THE VIRGINIA Senate has an unprecedented opportunity today to begin to reverse the state's abysmal record on gun regulation.
For years, state lawmakers have defeated bills requiring vendors at gun shows to conduct background checks of would-be buyers. Yet such legislation squeaked by the Senate Courts of Justice Committee by an 8 to 7 vote this week and is poised for a vote in the full Senate. Politicians of both parties, including self-described gun rights advocates, should endorse this modest bill.
Licensed gun dealers in Virginia are required to conduct background checks on buyers, including those to whom they sell at gun shows. Yet, according to the Virginia State Police, up to 35 percent of vendors at the scores of gun shows throughout the state are unlicensed and thus are under no obligation to perform the checks. This makes no sense, and the public is put at risk because felons or the mentally ill are not screened out if they attempt to purchase guns.
The Senate bill would close this loophole by requiring that even unlicensed vendors -- often hobbyists who do not make their living from gun sales -- conduct these checks. To facilitate compliance, the bill calls for the gun show promoter to ensure that those who already hold federal licenses to sell firearms will conduct checks on behalf of unlicensed vendors. The bill does not require background checks for those purchasing antique guns or for those who have concealed-weapons permits.
Gun rights advocates won a stunning victory last year before the U.S. Supreme Court when a majority of the justices determined that the Second Amendment bestows an individual right to keep and bear arms. Before this ruling, many advocates worried that gun control activists would use regulation to effectively ban gun ownership. Those worries should have been put to rest by the court's decision. There is no longer any legitimate reason for lawmakers to resist sensible provisions to ensure that only law-abiding citizens exercise this right. And the bill to require background checks by all vendors is but a minor inconvenience that respects gun-ownership rights while keeping weapons out of the hands of potentially dangerous people.
Tennekes on Real Climate
Real Climate Suffers from Foggy Perception, by Henk Tennekes
Climate Science, January 29, 2009 @ 7:00 am
Excerpts:
Roger Pielke Sr. has graciously invited me to add my perspective to his discussion with Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate. [...]
A weather model deals with the atmosphere. Slow processes in the oceans, the biosphere, and human activities can be ignored or crudely parameterized. This strategy has been very successful. The dominant fraternity in the meteorological modeling community has appropriated this advantage, and made itself the lead community for climate modeling. Backed by an observational system much more advanced than those in oceanography or other parts of the climate system, they have exploited their lead position for all they can. For them, it is a fortunate coincidence that the dominant synoptic systems in the atmosphere have scales on the order of many hundreds of kilometers, so that the shortcomings of the parameterizations and the observation network, including weather satellite coverage, do not prevent skillful predictions several days ahead.
A climate model, however, has to deal with the entire climate system, which does include the world’s oceans. The oceans constitute a crucial slow component of the climate system. Crucial, because this is where most of the accessible heat in the system is stored. Meteorologists tend to forget that just a few meters of water contain as much heat as the entire atmosphere. Also, the oceans are the main source of the water vapor that makes atmospheric dynamics on our planet both interesting and exceedingly complicated. For these and other reasons, an explicit representation of the oceans should be the core of any self-respecting climate model.
However, the observational systems for the oceans are primitive in comparison with their atmospheric counterparts. Satellites that can keep track of what happens below the surface of the ocean have limited spatial and temporalresolution. Also, the scale of synoptic motions in the ocean is much smaller than that of cyclones in the atmosphere, requiring a spatial resolution in numerical models and in the observation network beyond the capabilities of present observational systems and supercomputers. We cannot observe, for example, the vertical and horizontal structure of temperature, salinity and motion of eddies in the Gulf Stream in real time with sufficient detail, and cannot model them at the detail that is needed because of computer limitations. How, for goodness’ sake, can we then reliably compute their contribution to multi-decadal changes in the meridional transport of heat? Are the crude parameterizations used in practice up to the task of skillfully predicting the physical processes in the ocean several tens of years ahead? I submit they are not.
Since heat storage and heat transport in the oceans are crucial to the dynamics of the climate system, yet cannot be properly observed or modeled, one has to admit that claims about the predictive performance of climate models are built on quicksand. Climate modelers claiming predictive skill decades into the future operate in a fantasy world, where they have to fiddle with the numerous knobs of the parameterizations to produce results that have some semblance of veracity. Firm footing? Forget it!
Gavin Schmidt is not the only meteorologist with an inadequate grasp of the role of the oceans in the climate system. In my weblog of June 24, 2008, I addressed the limited perception that at least one other climate modeler appears to have. A few lines from that essay deserve repeating here. In response to a paper by Tim Palmer of ECMWF, I wrote: “Palmer et al. seem to forget that, though weather forecasting is focused on the rapid succession of atmospheric events, climate forecasting has to focus on the slow evolution of the circulation in the world ocean and slow changes in land use and natural vegetation. In the evolution of the Slow Manifold (to borrow a term coined by Ed Lorenz) the atmosphere acts primarily as stochastic high-frequency noise. If I were still young, I would attempt to build a conceptual climate model based on a deterministic representation of the world ocean and a stochastic representation of synoptic activity in the atmosphere.”
From my perspective it is not a little bit alarming that the current generation of climate models cannot simulate such fundamental phenomena as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. I will not trust any climate model until and unless it can accurately represent the PDO and other slow features of the world ocean circulation. Even then, I would remain skeptical about the potential predictive skill of such a model many tens of years into the future.
Climate Science, January 29, 2009 @ 7:00 am
Excerpts:
Roger Pielke Sr. has graciously invited me to add my perspective to his discussion with Gavin Schmidt at RealClimate. [...]
A weather model deals with the atmosphere. Slow processes in the oceans, the biosphere, and human activities can be ignored or crudely parameterized. This strategy has been very successful. The dominant fraternity in the meteorological modeling community has appropriated this advantage, and made itself the lead community for climate modeling. Backed by an observational system much more advanced than those in oceanography or other parts of the climate system, they have exploited their lead position for all they can. For them, it is a fortunate coincidence that the dominant synoptic systems in the atmosphere have scales on the order of many hundreds of kilometers, so that the shortcomings of the parameterizations and the observation network, including weather satellite coverage, do not prevent skillful predictions several days ahead.
A climate model, however, has to deal with the entire climate system, which does include the world’s oceans. The oceans constitute a crucial slow component of the climate system. Crucial, because this is where most of the accessible heat in the system is stored. Meteorologists tend to forget that just a few meters of water contain as much heat as the entire atmosphere. Also, the oceans are the main source of the water vapor that makes atmospheric dynamics on our planet both interesting and exceedingly complicated. For these and other reasons, an explicit representation of the oceans should be the core of any self-respecting climate model.
However, the observational systems for the oceans are primitive in comparison with their atmospheric counterparts. Satellites that can keep track of what happens below the surface of the ocean have limited spatial and temporalresolution. Also, the scale of synoptic motions in the ocean is much smaller than that of cyclones in the atmosphere, requiring a spatial resolution in numerical models and in the observation network beyond the capabilities of present observational systems and supercomputers. We cannot observe, for example, the vertical and horizontal structure of temperature, salinity and motion of eddies in the Gulf Stream in real time with sufficient detail, and cannot model them at the detail that is needed because of computer limitations. How, for goodness’ sake, can we then reliably compute their contribution to multi-decadal changes in the meridional transport of heat? Are the crude parameterizations used in practice up to the task of skillfully predicting the physical processes in the ocean several tens of years ahead? I submit they are not.
Since heat storage and heat transport in the oceans are crucial to the dynamics of the climate system, yet cannot be properly observed or modeled, one has to admit that claims about the predictive performance of climate models are built on quicksand. Climate modelers claiming predictive skill decades into the future operate in a fantasy world, where they have to fiddle with the numerous knobs of the parameterizations to produce results that have some semblance of veracity. Firm footing? Forget it!
Gavin Schmidt is not the only meteorologist with an inadequate grasp of the role of the oceans in the climate system. In my weblog of June 24, 2008, I addressed the limited perception that at least one other climate modeler appears to have. A few lines from that essay deserve repeating here. In response to a paper by Tim Palmer of ECMWF, I wrote: “Palmer et al. seem to forget that, though weather forecasting is focused on the rapid succession of atmospheric events, climate forecasting has to focus on the slow evolution of the circulation in the world ocean and slow changes in land use and natural vegetation. In the evolution of the Slow Manifold (to borrow a term coined by Ed Lorenz) the atmosphere acts primarily as stochastic high-frequency noise. If I were still young, I would attempt to build a conceptual climate model based on a deterministic representation of the world ocean and a stochastic representation of synoptic activity in the atmosphere.”
From my perspective it is not a little bit alarming that the current generation of climate models cannot simulate such fundamental phenomena as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation. I will not trust any climate model until and unless it can accurately represent the PDO and other slow features of the world ocean circulation. Even then, I would remain skeptical about the potential predictive skill of such a model many tens of years into the future.
PPI on health savings accounts
Judgment Day for Health Care Consumerism. By David B. Kendall, PPI's senior fellow for health policy
Progressive Policy Institute, Jan 29, 2009
Conservative thinkers have touted medical savings accounts (later called health saving accounts) as the answer to the woes of U.S. health care. Twelve years after their first enactment in 1997, it's time to assess their success.
The judgment of two health care economists is that they have failed to solve the problem, yet they have not proven as bad as it their critics feared. Writing in Health Affairs, health economists James Robinson and Paul Ginsburg show how they have melded into the existing dysfunctional market dominated by managed care. They have ended up complementing managed care rather than replacing it.
A typical health savings account combines a high-deductible health insurance plan with a tax-free account for any money that a consumer doesn't use for health care. Initially, the idea was that patients would choose health care services directly from providers without any interference from an insurance company. Instead, most such plans use a network of doctors with whom insurance companies pre-negotiate prices and review the use of costly services.
Health savings accounts were supposed to put patients in charge of their health and health care, but instead employers and employees have opted for management services for chronic diseases. They have also incorporated prevention programs that provide employees with support services to encourage healthy habits.
Even with these embellishments, health savings accounts and similar programs have not grown large enough to change the entire health care marketplace. They have not proven popular enough to be a foundation for the kind of overhaul that health care needs. But they have contributed to the knowledge about what can and cannot reform health care.
Here is Robinson and Ginsberg's conclusion:
Health care should be consumer driven for reasons of both efficiency and ethics. When in possession of adequate information and faced with appropriate incentives, consumers make better choices for their own health than does any third party, be that third party motivated by the most praiseworthy of intentions. Moreover, as a matter of ethics, it is the patient and consumer, not the physician or insurer or employer or regulator, who should be vested with the right to make tradeoffs in the emotionally and sometimes spiritually charged domain of health care. That said, one must acknowledge that consumers often need support if their choices are to promote their well-being and constraint when they are spending other people's money. Health care is complex at best and not infrequently rife with nontransparent, anticompetitive, and even fraudulent behavior on the part of the many self-interested agents. Individual consumers can benefit from some of the efforts by governmental and employer sponsors, health insurance plans, provider organizations, and medical management programs. Consumers need others to create meaningful products and processes from which they can choose -- bundles of products and services that can be measured, priced, purchased, and used not only by the highly educated and motivated individual but by those who are sick and scared, of only modest means and financial sophistication.
Consumerism has a role in reform, but it won't work as an overriding ideology. It will take public action to enable private solutions that can truly solve the cost, quality, and access problems in U.S. health care. That's the platform that health care reform needs in 2009.
For more information:
Consumer-Driven Health Care: Promise And Performance, by James C. Robinson and Paul B. Ginsburg, Health Affairs, January 27, 2009
Progressive Policy Institute, Jan 29, 2009
Conservative thinkers have touted medical savings accounts (later called health saving accounts) as the answer to the woes of U.S. health care. Twelve years after their first enactment in 1997, it's time to assess their success.
The judgment of two health care economists is that they have failed to solve the problem, yet they have not proven as bad as it their critics feared. Writing in Health Affairs, health economists James Robinson and Paul Ginsburg show how they have melded into the existing dysfunctional market dominated by managed care. They have ended up complementing managed care rather than replacing it.
A typical health savings account combines a high-deductible health insurance plan with a tax-free account for any money that a consumer doesn't use for health care. Initially, the idea was that patients would choose health care services directly from providers without any interference from an insurance company. Instead, most such plans use a network of doctors with whom insurance companies pre-negotiate prices and review the use of costly services.
Health savings accounts were supposed to put patients in charge of their health and health care, but instead employers and employees have opted for management services for chronic diseases. They have also incorporated prevention programs that provide employees with support services to encourage healthy habits.
Even with these embellishments, health savings accounts and similar programs have not grown large enough to change the entire health care marketplace. They have not proven popular enough to be a foundation for the kind of overhaul that health care needs. But they have contributed to the knowledge about what can and cannot reform health care.
Here is Robinson and Ginsberg's conclusion:
Health care should be consumer driven for reasons of both efficiency and ethics. When in possession of adequate information and faced with appropriate incentives, consumers make better choices for their own health than does any third party, be that third party motivated by the most praiseworthy of intentions. Moreover, as a matter of ethics, it is the patient and consumer, not the physician or insurer or employer or regulator, who should be vested with the right to make tradeoffs in the emotionally and sometimes spiritually charged domain of health care. That said, one must acknowledge that consumers often need support if their choices are to promote their well-being and constraint when they are spending other people's money. Health care is complex at best and not infrequently rife with nontransparent, anticompetitive, and even fraudulent behavior on the part of the many self-interested agents. Individual consumers can benefit from some of the efforts by governmental and employer sponsors, health insurance plans, provider organizations, and medical management programs. Consumers need others to create meaningful products and processes from which they can choose -- bundles of products and services that can be measured, priced, purchased, and used not only by the highly educated and motivated individual but by those who are sick and scared, of only modest means and financial sophistication.
Consumerism has a role in reform, but it won't work as an overriding ideology. It will take public action to enable private solutions that can truly solve the cost, quality, and access problems in U.S. health care. That's the platform that health care reform needs in 2009.
For more information:
Consumer-Driven Health Care: Promise And Performance, by James C. Robinson and Paul B. Ginsburg, Health Affairs, January 27, 2009
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Conservative views: Opportunities exist to work with President Obama on space security
Securing Space, by Eric Sayers & Jeffrey Dressler
Opportunities exist to work with President Obama on space security.
Weekly Standard, Jan 29, 2009
As Washington remains engulfed in discussion over expected foreign policy shifts on hot-button issues like Iran and Afghanistan, one critical policy area that is primed for far-reaching modifications, yet receiving little attention, is the future of U.S. space security.
Critics of the Bush administration charge that his approach was as unproductive as it was controversial. The U.S. National Space Policy of 2006, including its dismissal of any legal regime to limit U.S. action in space; the January 2007 Chinese anti-satellite (ASAT) test targeting a weather satellite; and the February 2008 intercept of a damaged U.S. spy satellite have contributed to, or are the product of, an unnecessarily hostile approach to space security that has only served to make us less safe.
Thus, it's likely that the Obama administration will make a significant departure from the policies the Bush administration pursued. While recognizing the strategic importance of space, President Obama has chosen to offer the solution of an international treaty banning space weapons, or at the very least a discussion of "rules of the road" for space, as the solution for securing the nation's space assets. The feasibility of this policy and its desirability for U.S. interests has been widely questioned, perhaps most succinctly by the work of Ashley Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Although Tellis and others contend that this approach would be detrimental for U.S. security, elections have consequences and the direction President Obama chooses on space issues will be his to chart.
Those who may not agree with the approach the administration is likely to take would do well to identify and bolster support for programs that align with Obama's principles and can still play a beneficial role in securing America's access to space. Prominent amongst such initiatives are defensive-minded space systems, including the Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) program that aims to provide low-cost, miniaturized satellites that can be used to surge U.S. satellite capabilities or reconstitute those that have been damaged or destroyed.
President Obama recognizes that space is "critical to our national security and economy." This is an accurate and widely held view. The strength of America's military is reliant upon a constellation of satellites and corresponding ground installations that provide imagery, navigation, signal intelligence, communications, and early warning for missile launches. America's economy is similarly interconnected with a constellation of civilian satellites. However, as the military has placed a greater emphasis on networking the warfighter with the battlefield environment over the past two decades, this reliance has developed into a vulnerability.
Both the 2008 Annual Report to Congress on the Military Power of the People's Republic of China and the recently-released report of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission cite how the People's Liberation Army (PLA) views America's dependence on space assets as its "soft ribs," a strategic weakness to be exploited in an effort to undermine the foundations of American military strength. The U.S.-China Commission determined that the extent of China's anti-satellite capabilities are "significant," to include not just direct-ascent weapons like that used in China's ASAT test of January 2007, but also the development of co-orbital direct attack weapons, directed energy lasers, and various technologies designed for electronic "denial-of-service" attacks.
Preserving America's military advantages, therefore, requires ensuring unfettered access to space. If China continues to develop asymmetric capabilities to target U.S. space assets, without the United States taking the necessary steps to dissuade and deter these actions, it will only increase China's likelihood of prevailing in a short-duration, high-intensity war. Such an outcome would be disadvantageous for the U.S.-Taiwan security relationship, specifically if the United States develops a sense of hesitancy that jeopardizes the credibility of cross-Straits deterrence. Additionally, a more capable PLA will enhance the confidence of Chinese leadership, increasing the chance of a political-military miscalculation by China in the Straits.
Whether or not President Obama will follow through on his broad promise to seek "a worldwide ban on weapons that interfere with military and commercial satellites" is an open question. At the very least, he has been forthright in announcing his opposition to the weaponization of space. Complicating this commitment, however, is the broad range of military and civilian space assets that can be qualified as a "space weapon." The most effective direct-ascent ASAT weapon the U.S. has in its arsenal is the Standard-Missile 3 -- demonstrated by the successful February 2008 shoot-down of an American spy satellite. The dual-use of this weapon will also pose a serious dilemma for getting a space treaty off the ground without also requiring America to forgo its missile defense capabilities. Therefore, whatever the outcome of an international space regime, the utility of the SM-3 and other ASAT weapons as a traditional deterrence mechanism vis-à-vis Chinese ASAT weapons is likely to be downplayed by the Obama administration.
While these unfortunate policy prescriptions are a cause for concern, hope may lie in the possible defensive space measures that President Obama seems poised to embrace. His campaign website and new White House website encouragingly discuss "accelerating programs to harden U.S. satellites against attack" and "establishing contingency plans to ensure that U.S. forces can maintain or duplicate access to information from space assets." One of the most promising initiatives for achieving these duel objectives is Operationally Responsive Space (ORS). ORS seeks to rapidly deliver short-term capabilities to the warfighter that serve to augment space-based national security assets through the use of low-cost Tactical Satellites. The ORS Office, stood up in 2007 at the Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, now stands at the forefront of an effort to revolutionize the way the U.S. builds and deploys satellites.
The standard process by which the military continues to construct satellites emphasizes large, time-consuming programs that maintain a slow generational turnover of 15 to 20 years, preventing an important military asset like space to be exploited at the operational level. Alternatively, miniaturized satellites enjoy both nimble and adaptive qualities. Compared to traditional stand-alone satellite, micro satellites can continuously be outfitted with the latest technological upgrades and be sent to replace their outdated counterparts. More importantly, they can be used to help increase capabilities to meet the demands of combatant commanders. Indeed, the ORS Office is working right now on an ambitious 24 month timetable to supply U.S. Central Command with a satellite to meet an identified gap in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) assets. Should this effort succeed, it will be a telling example of what the future holds for operationalizing the power of space.
Perhaps the greatest advantage of ORS is the capacity it offers to reconstitute satellites quickly and cheaply. If the administration remains reluctant to pursue active mechanisms for ensuring deterrence in space, ORS could be employed as part of an array of defensive systems to help guarantee U.S. access to space by dissuading and deterring the development and use of Chinese ASAT technologies. If the United States retains the ability to replenish satellite constellations on an as-needed basis, the benefits provided by costly ASAT weapons would be greatly diminished for the PLA.
Of course, this may have the unintended consequence of compelling PLA planners to devote resources to denial-of-service weapons or acquire even more direct-attack weapons in an effort to overwhelm America's reconstitution capabilities. Thus, it will be necessary to develop a multifaceted defensive regime to build reserve micro satellites and stockpile cheap launch vehicles like the Minotaur, harden existing and future satellites against electromagnetic pulse and jamming, and further integrate satellite capabilities with allies.
Considering the benefits of ORS, reports that the budget for the ORS Office may be slashed between fiscal year 2011 and 2014, are highly discouraging. More recent reports now have funding being restored in 2012, but with a likely tightening of defense budgets in the years ahead, the outlook for a program already being targeted to pay Department of Defense's bills is bleak.
Although the level of confidence President Obama is prepared to place in diplomatic solutions to preserve space access is a serious concern, there remains ample opportunity to secure his support in other vital areas. As the administration begins to formulate its policies on space security, the utility and broad support for the ORS concept should make it a core element of its strategy. Remedying the ORS budgeting shortfall before the fiscal year 2010 budget is submitted would be a strong statement to China that the administration is invested in securing America's space assets. While only part of the solution, establishing such a precedent will be a step towards ensuring that the advantages the military procures from space can be further refined and enhanced in the coming decades.
Eric Sayers is a national security research assistant at The Heritage Foundation in Washington D.C. Jeffrey Dressler is an intern at The Heritage Foundation.
Opportunities exist to work with President Obama on space security.
Weekly Standard, Jan 29, 2009
As Washington remains engulfed in discussion over expected foreign policy shifts on hot-button issues like Iran and Afghanistan, one critical policy area that is primed for far-reaching modifications, yet receiving little attention, is the future of U.S. space security.
Critics of the Bush administration charge that his approach was as unproductive as it was controversial. The U.S. National Space Policy of 2006, including its dismissal of any legal regime to limit U.S. action in space; the January 2007 Chinese anti-satellite (ASAT) test targeting a weather satellite; and the February 2008 intercept of a damaged U.S. spy satellite have contributed to, or are the product of, an unnecessarily hostile approach to space security that has only served to make us less safe.
Thus, it's likely that the Obama administration will make a significant departure from the policies the Bush administration pursued. While recognizing the strategic importance of space, President Obama has chosen to offer the solution of an international treaty banning space weapons, or at the very least a discussion of "rules of the road" for space, as the solution for securing the nation's space assets. The feasibility of this policy and its desirability for U.S. interests has been widely questioned, perhaps most succinctly by the work of Ashley Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Although Tellis and others contend that this approach would be detrimental for U.S. security, elections have consequences and the direction President Obama chooses on space issues will be his to chart.
Those who may not agree with the approach the administration is likely to take would do well to identify and bolster support for programs that align with Obama's principles and can still play a beneficial role in securing America's access to space. Prominent amongst such initiatives are defensive-minded space systems, including the Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) program that aims to provide low-cost, miniaturized satellites that can be used to surge U.S. satellite capabilities or reconstitute those that have been damaged or destroyed.
President Obama recognizes that space is "critical to our national security and economy." This is an accurate and widely held view. The strength of America's military is reliant upon a constellation of satellites and corresponding ground installations that provide imagery, navigation, signal intelligence, communications, and early warning for missile launches. America's economy is similarly interconnected with a constellation of civilian satellites. However, as the military has placed a greater emphasis on networking the warfighter with the battlefield environment over the past two decades, this reliance has developed into a vulnerability.
Both the 2008 Annual Report to Congress on the Military Power of the People's Republic of China and the recently-released report of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission cite how the People's Liberation Army (PLA) views America's dependence on space assets as its "soft ribs," a strategic weakness to be exploited in an effort to undermine the foundations of American military strength. The U.S.-China Commission determined that the extent of China's anti-satellite capabilities are "significant," to include not just direct-ascent weapons like that used in China's ASAT test of January 2007, but also the development of co-orbital direct attack weapons, directed energy lasers, and various technologies designed for electronic "denial-of-service" attacks.
Preserving America's military advantages, therefore, requires ensuring unfettered access to space. If China continues to develop asymmetric capabilities to target U.S. space assets, without the United States taking the necessary steps to dissuade and deter these actions, it will only increase China's likelihood of prevailing in a short-duration, high-intensity war. Such an outcome would be disadvantageous for the U.S.-Taiwan security relationship, specifically if the United States develops a sense of hesitancy that jeopardizes the credibility of cross-Straits deterrence. Additionally, a more capable PLA will enhance the confidence of Chinese leadership, increasing the chance of a political-military miscalculation by China in the Straits.
Whether or not President Obama will follow through on his broad promise to seek "a worldwide ban on weapons that interfere with military and commercial satellites" is an open question. At the very least, he has been forthright in announcing his opposition to the weaponization of space. Complicating this commitment, however, is the broad range of military and civilian space assets that can be qualified as a "space weapon." The most effective direct-ascent ASAT weapon the U.S. has in its arsenal is the Standard-Missile 3 -- demonstrated by the successful February 2008 shoot-down of an American spy satellite. The dual-use of this weapon will also pose a serious dilemma for getting a space treaty off the ground without also requiring America to forgo its missile defense capabilities. Therefore, whatever the outcome of an international space regime, the utility of the SM-3 and other ASAT weapons as a traditional deterrence mechanism vis-à-vis Chinese ASAT weapons is likely to be downplayed by the Obama administration.
While these unfortunate policy prescriptions are a cause for concern, hope may lie in the possible defensive space measures that President Obama seems poised to embrace. His campaign website and new White House website encouragingly discuss "accelerating programs to harden U.S. satellites against attack" and "establishing contingency plans to ensure that U.S. forces can maintain or duplicate access to information from space assets." One of the most promising initiatives for achieving these duel objectives is Operationally Responsive Space (ORS). ORS seeks to rapidly deliver short-term capabilities to the warfighter that serve to augment space-based national security assets through the use of low-cost Tactical Satellites. The ORS Office, stood up in 2007 at the Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, now stands at the forefront of an effort to revolutionize the way the U.S. builds and deploys satellites.
The standard process by which the military continues to construct satellites emphasizes large, time-consuming programs that maintain a slow generational turnover of 15 to 20 years, preventing an important military asset like space to be exploited at the operational level. Alternatively, miniaturized satellites enjoy both nimble and adaptive qualities. Compared to traditional stand-alone satellite, micro satellites can continuously be outfitted with the latest technological upgrades and be sent to replace their outdated counterparts. More importantly, they can be used to help increase capabilities to meet the demands of combatant commanders. Indeed, the ORS Office is working right now on an ambitious 24 month timetable to supply U.S. Central Command with a satellite to meet an identified gap in intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) assets. Should this effort succeed, it will be a telling example of what the future holds for operationalizing the power of space.
Perhaps the greatest advantage of ORS is the capacity it offers to reconstitute satellites quickly and cheaply. If the administration remains reluctant to pursue active mechanisms for ensuring deterrence in space, ORS could be employed as part of an array of defensive systems to help guarantee U.S. access to space by dissuading and deterring the development and use of Chinese ASAT technologies. If the United States retains the ability to replenish satellite constellations on an as-needed basis, the benefits provided by costly ASAT weapons would be greatly diminished for the PLA.
Of course, this may have the unintended consequence of compelling PLA planners to devote resources to denial-of-service weapons or acquire even more direct-attack weapons in an effort to overwhelm America's reconstitution capabilities. Thus, it will be necessary to develop a multifaceted defensive regime to build reserve micro satellites and stockpile cheap launch vehicles like the Minotaur, harden existing and future satellites against electromagnetic pulse and jamming, and further integrate satellite capabilities with allies.
Considering the benefits of ORS, reports that the budget for the ORS Office may be slashed between fiscal year 2011 and 2014, are highly discouraging. More recent reports now have funding being restored in 2012, but with a likely tightening of defense budgets in the years ahead, the outlook for a program already being targeted to pay Department of Defense's bills is bleak.
Although the level of confidence President Obama is prepared to place in diplomatic solutions to preserve space access is a serious concern, there remains ample opportunity to secure his support in other vital areas. As the administration begins to formulate its policies on space security, the utility and broad support for the ORS concept should make it a core element of its strategy. Remedying the ORS budgeting shortfall before the fiscal year 2010 budget is submitted would be a strong statement to China that the administration is invested in securing America's space assets. While only part of the solution, establishing such a precedent will be a step towards ensuring that the advantages the military procures from space can be further refined and enhanced in the coming decades.
Eric Sayers is a national security research assistant at The Heritage Foundation in Washington D.C. Jeffrey Dressler is an intern at The Heritage Foundation.
NY Soda Tax: All Politics, No Science
NY Soda Tax: All Politics, No Science. By Elizabeth M. Whelan, Sc.D., M.P.H.
American Council on Science and Health, Jan 29, 2009
Aiming to combat the obesity epidemic in New York, Gov. David Paterson has recommended an 18% tax on sugar-sweetened soft drinks and a few other sweetened beverages. Unfortunately, the proposed tax is inconsistent with the facts about what causes obesity. It also sets an alarming precedent for taxing foods deemed "bad" by government officials -- further increasing the cost of living in the state -- particularly for the least affluent citizens.
•First, there is no scientific basis for singling out sugar-sweetened soda and certain fruit drinks as a primary underlying cause of obesity. So many Americans these days far exceed their ideal weight because they consume too many calories from all types of foods and beverages -- and do not dedicate sufficient effort to burning calories through exercise. Sugar-sweetened sodas don't make you fatter than eating too much meat, bread, potatoes, or anything else. The old adage "for every complex problem there is a simple solution -- and it never works" comes to mind here. It is always easier to zero in on one alleged villain and assume the problem is solved.
•Second, taxing soda sets up a precedent for taxing myriad foods considered "bad" by popular wisdom. Can we expect taxes next on cake, cookies, candy, and pizza? If food with high sugar or fat content is "bad" and deserving of punitive regulatory action, to be consistent will we tax orange juice (very high in sugar) and avocados (a plentiful source of fat)? Should we tax everything except tofu and spinach?
•Third, when the soda tax is examined closely -- given that it will have zero net effect on reducing obesity -- it must be perceived as another attempt to raise revenue for a financially strapped state. The Governor estimates that the soda tax will bring in $404 million the first year and $539 million annually after that. What's not to like about that if you are trying to balance a budget? But the bad news is that this influx of cash has nothing to do with fighting obesity and enhancing health.
There is, however, some good news about the proposed soda tax: Polls show that New Yorkers oppose this useless and regressive tax by nearly a 2:1 margin. Presumably, citizens recognize that obesity is a very serious health risk -- requiring serious solutions, not quick, ineffective regulatory fixes.
Dr. Elizabeth M. Whelan is President of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH.org, HealthFactsAndFears.com).
American Council on Science and Health, Jan 29, 2009
Aiming to combat the obesity epidemic in New York, Gov. David Paterson has recommended an 18% tax on sugar-sweetened soft drinks and a few other sweetened beverages. Unfortunately, the proposed tax is inconsistent with the facts about what causes obesity. It also sets an alarming precedent for taxing foods deemed "bad" by government officials -- further increasing the cost of living in the state -- particularly for the least affluent citizens.
•First, there is no scientific basis for singling out sugar-sweetened soda and certain fruit drinks as a primary underlying cause of obesity. So many Americans these days far exceed their ideal weight because they consume too many calories from all types of foods and beverages -- and do not dedicate sufficient effort to burning calories through exercise. Sugar-sweetened sodas don't make you fatter than eating too much meat, bread, potatoes, or anything else. The old adage "for every complex problem there is a simple solution -- and it never works" comes to mind here. It is always easier to zero in on one alleged villain and assume the problem is solved.
•Second, taxing soda sets up a precedent for taxing myriad foods considered "bad" by popular wisdom. Can we expect taxes next on cake, cookies, candy, and pizza? If food with high sugar or fat content is "bad" and deserving of punitive regulatory action, to be consistent will we tax orange juice (very high in sugar) and avocados (a plentiful source of fat)? Should we tax everything except tofu and spinach?
•Third, when the soda tax is examined closely -- given that it will have zero net effect on reducing obesity -- it must be perceived as another attempt to raise revenue for a financially strapped state. The Governor estimates that the soda tax will bring in $404 million the first year and $539 million annually after that. What's not to like about that if you are trying to balance a budget? But the bad news is that this influx of cash has nothing to do with fighting obesity and enhancing health.
There is, however, some good news about the proposed soda tax: Polls show that New Yorkers oppose this useless and regressive tax by nearly a 2:1 margin. Presumably, citizens recognize that obesity is a very serious health risk -- requiring serious solutions, not quick, ineffective regulatory fixes.
Dr. Elizabeth M. Whelan is President of the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH.org, HealthFactsAndFears.com).
Energy Reduction and Environmental Sustainability in Surface Transportation
Energy Reduction and Environmental Sustainability in Surface Transportation. By Samuel R. Staley, Ph.D.Testimony to the House Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure, Subcommittee on Highways and Transit, Massachusetts Joint Committee on Transportation
2. Mobility and Economic Competitiveness
First, we must recognize the central purpose of transportation policy is to provide for and improve mobility for citizens and businesses. In other words, transportation policy is focused on finding effective ways to move people, goods, and services from point A to point B faster and cheaper. This central goal should not be minimized despite the more current concerns over the state of the national economy and the vigorous public discussion over the impending stimulus package. At the end of the day, transportation policy will continue to be about providing efficient, safe, and reliable mobility above all other policy goals or objectives, and the focus of reauthorization will inevitably move beyond the short-term politics surrounding the economic recession.
Importantly, mobility is the proper goal of transportation policy. Reason Foundation Vice President Adrian Moore and I explain the critical role mobility plays in ensuring our continued global competitiveness in our book Mobility First: A New Vision for Transportation in a Globally Competitive Economy. We summarize a growing body of research that shows empirically what urban economists have known for decades: Mobility is critical to national and urban economic success.
The reason is straightforward. Economic productivity improves when we lower the costs of production and make it easier for people to interact. Increased mobility gives workers access to an increasingly diverse number of jobs, and employers enjoy greater access to an increasingly large skilled and productive workforce. This is why congestion has such debilitating impacts on economic growth. As congestion increases, and costs of getting from point A to point B grow, production costs increase and the "opportunity circle" that includes access to markets, resources and jobs resources shrinks.
Thus, while transportation investments are critical to economic productivity and growth, job creation is an indirect impact of successful transportation policy and not a primary goal. This, in fact, is the lesson from the Interstate Highway program created in the 1950s. The central objective of this multibillion dollar program was to link the nation's largest urban centers and integrate them into a truly national transportation network. This goal served economic purposes as well as broader national goals of geographically unifying the nation (in much the same way railroads did in the 19th century) and providing for a more efficient national defense.
The economic impacts were enormous and tangible. The Interstate Highway System and upgrades to various state and regional roads boosted economic growth because these new roads reduced transportation costs dramatically, allowing businesses to improve productivity. Some of these effects, such as providing more efficient routes for long-haul freight movement, were intended. Reducing urban traffic congestion was another, less important goal successfully met, although few anticipated the decentralization of metropolitan areas that followed.
As we move forward thinking about transportation and sustainability, we also need to recognize the fundamental link between mobility, economic productivity, and economic growth.
Reason Foundation, January 27, 2009
1. Overview
Chairman DeFazio, Ranking Member Duncan, members of the subcommittee, thank you for giving me this opportunity to discuss environmental sustainability and the future of transportation in the United States. This is a central issue as the federal government works toward its six-year authorization of transportation funding, and understanding the proper context for addressing environmental issues will be critical.
I would like to focus my remarks on two over-arching points:
- Transportation policy that loses sight of mobility as a central goal puts our economic competitiveness at risk; and
- Mobility is compatible with long-term goals of environmental sustainability.
2. Mobility and Economic Competitiveness
First, we must recognize the central purpose of transportation policy is to provide for and improve mobility for citizens and businesses. In other words, transportation policy is focused on finding effective ways to move people, goods, and services from point A to point B faster and cheaper. This central goal should not be minimized despite the more current concerns over the state of the national economy and the vigorous public discussion over the impending stimulus package. At the end of the day, transportation policy will continue to be about providing efficient, safe, and reliable mobility above all other policy goals or objectives, and the focus of reauthorization will inevitably move beyond the short-term politics surrounding the economic recession.
Importantly, mobility is the proper goal of transportation policy. Reason Foundation Vice President Adrian Moore and I explain the critical role mobility plays in ensuring our continued global competitiveness in our book Mobility First: A New Vision for Transportation in a Globally Competitive Economy. We summarize a growing body of research that shows empirically what urban economists have known for decades: Mobility is critical to national and urban economic success.
The reason is straightforward. Economic productivity improves when we lower the costs of production and make it easier for people to interact. Increased mobility gives workers access to an increasingly diverse number of jobs, and employers enjoy greater access to an increasingly large skilled and productive workforce. This is why congestion has such debilitating impacts on economic growth. As congestion increases, and costs of getting from point A to point B grow, production costs increase and the "opportunity circle" that includes access to markets, resources and jobs resources shrinks.
Thus, while transportation investments are critical to economic productivity and growth, job creation is an indirect impact of successful transportation policy and not a primary goal. This, in fact, is the lesson from the Interstate Highway program created in the 1950s. The central objective of this multibillion dollar program was to link the nation's largest urban centers and integrate them into a truly national transportation network. This goal served economic purposes as well as broader national goals of geographically unifying the nation (in much the same way railroads did in the 19th century) and providing for a more efficient national defense.
The economic impacts were enormous and tangible. The Interstate Highway System and upgrades to various state and regional roads boosted economic growth because these new roads reduced transportation costs dramatically, allowing businesses to improve productivity. Some of these effects, such as providing more efficient routes for long-haul freight movement, were intended. Reducing urban traffic congestion was another, less important goal successfully met, although few anticipated the decentralization of metropolitan areas that followed.
As we move forward thinking about transportation and sustainability, we also need to recognize the fundamental link between mobility, economic productivity, and economic growth.
3. Transportation and the Environment
The critical role transportation plays in economic growth and productivity does not obviate the need to consider the environmental consequences of our transportation investments, the environmental impact of different modes, or the way we use transportation facilities. On the contrary, as we become more aware of the environmental impacts of human activity, we have a responsibility to mitigate the negative effects. We have, for example, made tremendous strides toward improving our air quality even as our use of automobiles has increased dramatically. Air quality, by all metrics, has improved steadily in most U.S. urban areas since the early 1970s as a result of new technologies that lowered emissions while preserving the mobility implicit in automobile use. Indeed, rising economic productivity, and the increased wealth that comes with it, allows us to be even more creative and innovative in improving mobility in an environmentally responsible manner.
Thus, mobility and environmental protection can be complimentary goals. The key is to understand the right contexts in which these goals are pursued and choose strategies that allow for both to be achieved simultaneously. Environmental policy that explicitly or implicitly reduces mobility undermines the long term viability of our cities and national economy and, as a consequence, our ability to meet our long-term environmental policy goals.
A case in point is the role technology will play in meeting greenhouse gas targets. Preliminary findings of research being conducted by The Hartgen Group for Reason Foundation indicates that newly legislated fuel mileage standards will outstrip most other commonly proposed strategies for mitigating carbon dioxide by large margins (see Table 1). In an analysis of greenhouse gas trends in 48 urbanized areas, current trends suggest that without mitigating strategies, CO2 will increase 52 percent by 2030. The new CAFÉ mandates recently enacted by Congress will reduce CO2 by 31.2 percent by 2030. In contrast, increasing the price of fuel to $5 per gallon would only reduce emissions by about 4 percent. The combined effect of increasing the transit share of work trips by 50 percent, increasing the walk to work share by 50 percent, and increasing telecommuting would reduce CO2 emissions by just 2.5 percent.
Notably, the new fuel mileage mandates are also more cost-effective, averaging about $52 per ton removed, and meet the McKinsey & Company benchmark reported in Reducing U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions: How Much at What Cost? In contrast, most other strategies are significantly more costly. Physical capacity improvements, increasing transit's mode share, and reducing overall travel by raising the gas tax are expected to cost close to (or more than) $4,000 per ton removed.
4. Environmental Mitigation Strategies and Mobility
Each of these greenhouse gas mitigation strategies has different impacts on mobility and, as a result, on our nation's productivity. Increased fuel mileage mandates do not impact our nation's mobility although they have somewhat smaller impacts on the costs of using specific types of cars and trucks. If the mandates are modest and provide enough of a lead time, they can allow consumers and private suppliers to make choices about what technologies and modes of transport are most efficient for achieving transportation goals. This, combined with the independent decisions of millions of Americans to purchase more fuel efficient automobiles, can increase productivity and mitigate greenhouse gases.
In contrast, policies that attempt to directly reduce travel have an adverse impact on mobility and impinge on our economic productivity by reducing the opportunity circles accessible by employers, workers, and households.
A few quick illustrations make this point. Portland, Oregon's Tri-Met operates perhaps the most successful rail transit system in place among mid-size (and smaller) U.S. cities. Sixty-four light rail transit stations are part of a regional transit network that covers an urban area of 474 square miles and serves 1.2 million people according to the National Transit Database. Yet, these transit stations account for just 22 square miles, or about 5 percent of the regional service area. Even with the more compact urban form created in part by a mandated regional growth boundary, Tri-Met's ability to influence regional urban form and travel patterns is limited to the immediate area around the transit stations.
Arlington, Virginia provides another example. Arlington hosts some of the nation's most robust transit-oriented developments, using a large volume heavy rail system to support development at Metro stations around Ballston and Courthouse Square on the Orange Line and Pentagon City and Crystal City on the Blue Line. The eleven Metro stations represent about 8 percent of the county's land area. About 20 percent of the county's population lives within walking distance (1/4 mile) of one of these Metro stops. Among those within walking distance, however, the private automobile still captures more than half, and often two-thirds or more, of total trips. Thus, in Arlington, rail transit is used by just 5-10 percent of the county's population. Notably, transit's share of total travel in the Washington, DC urban area remains around 7 percent.
The point, however, is not to criticize transit. On the contrary, transit plays a vital role along key corridors in many urban areas and enhances mobility for many. Rather, transit's role in meeting environmental policy goals needs to be kept in context.
Despite recent gains in ridership, public transit remains a relatively small part of the overall travel equation in most major urbanized areas in the U.S. Notably, higher gas prices contributed to a reduction in road travel by 100 billion vehicle miles traveled in 2008, according to the Federal Highway Administration, a fall of about 4 percent. Public transit experienced an increase of about 5 percent. Yet, because transit carries a very small portion of travel, transit was able to capture just 3 percent of the overall decline in road travel.
In addition, the kinds of policies that will be necessary to fundamentally change land use to boost transit ridership significantly would require a dramatic and largely involuntary relocation of people and families into housing they do not want. The single-family, detached house would be an option only for the wealthier income brackets in our major urban areas, effectively inverting the existing distribution of home options and choices.
A policy that focuses largely on shifting travelers out of cars and into transit will reduce mobility. An examination of work trip travel times in 276 metropolitan areas found that the length of public transit trips exceeded those for private automobiles in 272 of those areas. On average, public transit riders spend about 36 minutes traveling to work while private automobile travelers commute about 21 minutes. This does not have to be the case. The innovative use of HOT Lanes, such as the networks being built in Northern Virginia and discussed in Atlanta, Houston, the San Francisco Bay Area, and Miami can finance critically needed road capacity while also providing viable bus rapid transit alternatives.
5. Sustainable Transportation Policy
Sustainable development policies call for a balancing of three goals: economic growth, the equitable use of resources, and environmental preservation. Transportation policy that undermines mobility compromises the productivity necessary to support better environmental stewardship.
What federal policy initiatives, then, can preserve the overarching goals of transportation policy to improve mobility while also recognizing the importance of meeting environmental goals?
First, achieving environmental goals will depend primarily on technological solutions, not broad-based changes in human behavior. The dramatic improvements in air quality in major urban areas is directly attributed to technological solutions, and the same will be true for addressing national greenhouse gas goals. Federal policymakers should resist attempts to directly use transportation policy to address broader environmental goals because it tends to be a very blunt and inefficient instrument.
Second, maintain mobility as the central goal of transportation policy. Policies that directly reduce mobility, including those designed explicitly to reduce vehicle miles traveled or direct commuters to alternatives that will lengthen commute times, should be avoided. While environmental concerns should play a role, federal objectives should include searching for and implementing win-win solutions.
Third, continue to put congestion reduction as a key priority for transportation policy and investments. Widespread traffic congestion places substantial burdens on businesses and individuals. Mitigating these effects should be a primary goal of transportation policy makers to ensure our cities and national economy remain competitive. Many congestion-mitigation strategies-HOT lanes, tolled facilities, capacity expansion-will also have environmental benefits, but their central purpose is to reduce transportation costs and improve economic productivity.
Fourth, aggressively move toward a transportation funding approach based on distance-based financing such as comprehensive road pricing. This approach would establish a more direct, transparent and accountable user-based funding system.
Fourth, aggressively move toward a transportation funding approach based on distance-based financing such as comprehensive road pricing. This approach would establish a more direct, transparent and accountable user-based funding system.
Thank you for your attention. I welcome any comments or questions members of the subcommittee may have.
Sam Staley is director of urban policy at Reason Foundation. He is co-author of Mobility First: A New Vision for Transportation in a Globally Competitive 21st Century (Rowman & Littlefield, 2008). An archive of Staley's work is here, and Reason's transportation research and commentary is here.
How to explain female absence from the sciences?
The Times’s Weak-Willed Women, by Heather Mac Donald
How else to explain female absence from the sciences?
City Journal, January 28, 2009
Women, feminists proclaim again and again, are strong, indomitable, and equal in every way to men. Except, that is, when they run up against an obstacle, thrown malevolently in their path, that is too formidable even for them, such as . . . a sitcom.
New York Times science reporter Natalie Angier recently called for renewed attention to the lack of proportional representation of women in science. (In the past, Angier has made something of a specialty of discovering proper gender role models in nature, along the lines of dominatrix polyps and sexually submissive male arachnids.) The imbalance in the sciences, Angier reported, is especially bad in physics, where just 6 percent of full professors are women. After canvassing some current theories explaining the imbalance, Angier offered her own scapegoats: “Bubble-headed television shows like ‘The Big Bang Theory,’ with its four nerdy male physics prodigies and the fetching blond girl next door.”
Imagine the devastation that such a show might wreak. A 15-year-old math whiz is happily immersed in the Lorentz transformations, the basis for the theory of special relativity. She looks up at the tube and sees a fictional group of male physics students bashfully speaking to a feisty blonde. Her confidence and enthusiasm shattered, she drops out of her AP physics course and starts hanging out at the mall with the cheerleading squad.
Gender-insensitive TV shows are just the start of the barriers blocking girls’ entry to the empyrean of pure science. There’s also the father of modern physics himself. What self-respecting girl wants to look like Albert Einstein? “As long as we’re making geek [culture] chic” under our new, science-friendly president, Angier suggests, “let’s lose the Einstein ’do and moustache.” We’re in whiplash territory here. For years, we have been told that the patriarchy brainwashes women into excessive concern with appearance. Now, however, it turns out that girls with an innate knack for science could be turned away from their calling just because the Über Role Model is frumpy. If Einstein had looked like Tom Cruise or Angelina Jolie, apparently, girls would be clamoring to participate in the Math Olympiad and earning their proportionate share of physics Ph.D.s.
Which is it? Are women “strong”? Or can they be crushed by fears of a permanent bad hair day and inspired by something as superficial as Hollywood fashion? Given the amount of time and money that most women spend on applying makeup, blow-drying their hair, shopping for clothes, and gullibly attending to preposterous wrinkle-cream ads in women’s magazines, Angier’s claim that girls could be thwarted by a TV comedy is not wholly unreasonable. It just happens to contradict the usual feminist claim that women are just as tough as men.
The evidence to date suggests that the highest-level math skills—those required for research physics—aren’t evenly distributed among men and women. Men greatly outnumber women at the very highest and lowest ends of the mathematics aptitude curve. As Christina Hoff Sommers has documented, men also show greater interest in abstract, non-empathetic careers than women. Of course, the conflicting demands of raising a family and pursuing pure science undoubtedly influence women’s career paths as well. If scientific pursuit can be made more family-friendly without in any way damaging its essential strengths, such changes should be contemplated. But the fertility clock and women’s greater involvement with their babies are not chauvinist plots; they are biological realities.
Unfortunately, Angier’s conviction that sexism lurks behind women’s rarity in the most abstract sciences isn’t confined to the New York Times or even to academia. A congressional bill, the Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Act of 2008, would apply Title IX gender quotas to academic science. Barack Obama endorsed the bill during the presidential campaign; women’s groups are clamoring for action.
Obama has indeed presented himself as a science president. Rejecting feminist propaganda, however belatedly, regarding sexism in science would be a strong start in justifying that title. In the meantime, stay tuned for the latest twist in feminists’ contradictory—dare one say, irrational?—apologetics.
Heather Mac Donald is a contributing editor of City Journal and the John M. Olin Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
How else to explain female absence from the sciences?
City Journal, January 28, 2009
Women, feminists proclaim again and again, are strong, indomitable, and equal in every way to men. Except, that is, when they run up against an obstacle, thrown malevolently in their path, that is too formidable even for them, such as . . . a sitcom.
New York Times science reporter Natalie Angier recently called for renewed attention to the lack of proportional representation of women in science. (In the past, Angier has made something of a specialty of discovering proper gender role models in nature, along the lines of dominatrix polyps and sexually submissive male arachnids.) The imbalance in the sciences, Angier reported, is especially bad in physics, where just 6 percent of full professors are women. After canvassing some current theories explaining the imbalance, Angier offered her own scapegoats: “Bubble-headed television shows like ‘The Big Bang Theory,’ with its four nerdy male physics prodigies and the fetching blond girl next door.”
Imagine the devastation that such a show might wreak. A 15-year-old math whiz is happily immersed in the Lorentz transformations, the basis for the theory of special relativity. She looks up at the tube and sees a fictional group of male physics students bashfully speaking to a feisty blonde. Her confidence and enthusiasm shattered, she drops out of her AP physics course and starts hanging out at the mall with the cheerleading squad.
Gender-insensitive TV shows are just the start of the barriers blocking girls’ entry to the empyrean of pure science. There’s also the father of modern physics himself. What self-respecting girl wants to look like Albert Einstein? “As long as we’re making geek [culture] chic” under our new, science-friendly president, Angier suggests, “let’s lose the Einstein ’do and moustache.” We’re in whiplash territory here. For years, we have been told that the patriarchy brainwashes women into excessive concern with appearance. Now, however, it turns out that girls with an innate knack for science could be turned away from their calling just because the Über Role Model is frumpy. If Einstein had looked like Tom Cruise or Angelina Jolie, apparently, girls would be clamoring to participate in the Math Olympiad and earning their proportionate share of physics Ph.D.s.
Which is it? Are women “strong”? Or can they be crushed by fears of a permanent bad hair day and inspired by something as superficial as Hollywood fashion? Given the amount of time and money that most women spend on applying makeup, blow-drying their hair, shopping for clothes, and gullibly attending to preposterous wrinkle-cream ads in women’s magazines, Angier’s claim that girls could be thwarted by a TV comedy is not wholly unreasonable. It just happens to contradict the usual feminist claim that women are just as tough as men.
The evidence to date suggests that the highest-level math skills—those required for research physics—aren’t evenly distributed among men and women. Men greatly outnumber women at the very highest and lowest ends of the mathematics aptitude curve. As Christina Hoff Sommers has documented, men also show greater interest in abstract, non-empathetic careers than women. Of course, the conflicting demands of raising a family and pursuing pure science undoubtedly influence women’s career paths as well. If scientific pursuit can be made more family-friendly without in any way damaging its essential strengths, such changes should be contemplated. But the fertility clock and women’s greater involvement with their babies are not chauvinist plots; they are biological realities.
Unfortunately, Angier’s conviction that sexism lurks behind women’s rarity in the most abstract sciences isn’t confined to the New York Times or even to academia. A congressional bill, the Fulfilling the Potential of Women in Academic Science and Engineering Act of 2008, would apply Title IX gender quotas to academic science. Barack Obama endorsed the bill during the presidential campaign; women’s groups are clamoring for action.
Obama has indeed presented himself as a science president. Rejecting feminist propaganda, however belatedly, regarding sexism in science would be a strong start in justifying that title. In the meantime, stay tuned for the latest twist in feminists’ contradictory—dare one say, irrational?—apologetics.
Heather Mac Donald is a contributing editor of City Journal and the John M. Olin Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Volunteer to Save the Economy
Volunteer to Save the Economy, by Bruce Reed and John Bridgeland
TNYT, January 22, 2009
Washington
THIS week, President Obama called upon all Americans to volunteer, to pitch in and give back. We hope that the president is serious about this challenge, because providing more opportunities for national and community service won’t just lift the nation’s spirit, it could help save the economy.
In fact, an investment in service as part of the economic recovery plan could add hundreds of thousands of jobs to the four million the Obama administration has proposed. And because jobs at nonprofit groups pay so little, they would cost the government less than many other stimulus measures.
The economic crisis has hit hospitals, nursing homes, nursery schools, centers for the elderly and soup kitchens with a triple whammy. The evaporation of wealth has depressed charitable donations; the state and local budget crunch has deprived nonprofit groups of their most dependable revenue stream; and, even as resources shrink, more Americans need assistance. In Michigan, for example, more than 70 percent of nonprofit groups have seen increased demand for their services, while half report that their financial support has dropped.
It’s important that charities remain able to help those in need. But the nonprofit plunge also seriously endangers the nation’s job market. Nonprofit enterprises have 9.4 million employees and 4.7 million volunteers nationwide — together, that’s 10 percent of the American work force, more than the auto and financial industries combined. Yet nonprofit groups have been almost completely overlooked during the economic debate. That’s a mistake.
There is, however, a bipartisan solution ready to go: during the campaign, both Mr. Obama and Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee, endorsed the Serve America Act, which would greatly expand national and community service.
By including key provisions of that bill in the economic recovery package, Congress and the administration would enable 250,000 Americans to do full-time service over the next two years. We can invest in a new generation of volunteers as well: if federal work-study programs were doubled, over half a million part-time opportunities a year would be created for college students. All this could be done through existing nonprofit groups, charities and faith-based organizations, not a new government bureaucracy.
The total two-year cost? Less than $8 billion — adding not even 1 percent to a $825 billion recovery package.
As Americans have proven in times of crisis, what we ask of ourselves matters a great deal. If we want to create the most jobs for the lowest cost with the least bureaucracy and foster the spirit of sacrifice that the president envisions, the economic recovery plan should find a place for more Americans to do good works in hard times.
Bruce Reed, the president of the Democratic Leadership Council, was President Bill Clinton’s domestic policy adviser. John Bridgeland, who held the same position under President George W. Bush, is the chief executive of a public policy firm.
TNYT, January 22, 2009
Washington
THIS week, President Obama called upon all Americans to volunteer, to pitch in and give back. We hope that the president is serious about this challenge, because providing more opportunities for national and community service won’t just lift the nation’s spirit, it could help save the economy.
In fact, an investment in service as part of the economic recovery plan could add hundreds of thousands of jobs to the four million the Obama administration has proposed. And because jobs at nonprofit groups pay so little, they would cost the government less than many other stimulus measures.
The economic crisis has hit hospitals, nursing homes, nursery schools, centers for the elderly and soup kitchens with a triple whammy. The evaporation of wealth has depressed charitable donations; the state and local budget crunch has deprived nonprofit groups of their most dependable revenue stream; and, even as resources shrink, more Americans need assistance. In Michigan, for example, more than 70 percent of nonprofit groups have seen increased demand for their services, while half report that their financial support has dropped.
It’s important that charities remain able to help those in need. But the nonprofit plunge also seriously endangers the nation’s job market. Nonprofit enterprises have 9.4 million employees and 4.7 million volunteers nationwide — together, that’s 10 percent of the American work force, more than the auto and financial industries combined. Yet nonprofit groups have been almost completely overlooked during the economic debate. That’s a mistake.
There is, however, a bipartisan solution ready to go: during the campaign, both Mr. Obama and Senator John McCain, the Republican nominee, endorsed the Serve America Act, which would greatly expand national and community service.
By including key provisions of that bill in the economic recovery package, Congress and the administration would enable 250,000 Americans to do full-time service over the next two years. We can invest in a new generation of volunteers as well: if federal work-study programs were doubled, over half a million part-time opportunities a year would be created for college students. All this could be done through existing nonprofit groups, charities and faith-based organizations, not a new government bureaucracy.
The total two-year cost? Less than $8 billion — adding not even 1 percent to a $825 billion recovery package.
As Americans have proven in times of crisis, what we ask of ourselves matters a great deal. If we want to create the most jobs for the lowest cost with the least bureaucracy and foster the spirit of sacrifice that the president envisions, the economic recovery plan should find a place for more Americans to do good works in hard times.
Bruce Reed, the president of the Democratic Leadership Council, was President Bill Clinton’s domestic policy adviser. John Bridgeland, who held the same position under President George W. Bush, is the chief executive of a public policy firm.
Yoo: Obama Made a Rash Decision on Gitmo
Obama Made a Rash Decision on Gitmo, by John Yoo
The president will soon realize that governing involves hard choices.
WSJ, Jan 29, 2009
During his first week as commander in chief, President Barack Obama ordered the closure of Guantanamo Bay and terminated the CIA's special authority to interrogate terrorists.
While these actions will certainly please his base -- gone are the cries of an "imperial presidency" -- they will also seriously handicap our intelligence agencies from preventing future terrorist attacks. In issuing these executive orders, Mr. Obama is returning America to the failed law enforcement approach to fighting terrorism that prevailed before Sept. 11, 2001. He's also drying up the most valuable sources of intelligence on al Qaeda, which, according to CIA Director Michael Hayden, has come largely out of the tough interrogation of high-level operatives during the early years of the war.
The question Mr. Obama should have asked right after the inaugural parade was: What will happen after we capture the next Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or Abu Zubaydah? Instead, he took action without a meeting of his full national security staff, and without a legal review of all the policy options available to meet the threats facing our country.
What such a review would have made clear is that the civilian law-enforcement system cannot prevent terrorist attacks. What is needed are the tools to gain vital intelligence, which is why, under President George W. Bush, the CIA could hold and interrogate high-value al Qaeda leaders. On the advice of his intelligence advisers, the president could have authorized coercive interrogation methods like those used by Israel and Great Britain in their antiterrorism campaigns. (He could even authorize waterboarding, which he did three times in the years after 9/11.)
Mr. Obama has also ordered that all military commission trials be stayed and that the case of Ali Saleh al-Marri, the only al Qaeda operative now held on U.S. soil, be reviewed. This seems a prelude to closing the military commissions down entirely and transferring the detainees' cases to U.S. civilian courts for prosecution under ordinary criminal law. Military commission trials have been used in most American wars, and their rules and procedures are designed around the need to protect intelligence sources and methods from revelation in open court.
It's also likely Mr. Obama will declare terrorists to be prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. The Bush administration classified terrorists -- well supported by legal and historical precedent -- like pirates, illegal combatants who do not fight on behalf of a nation and refuse to obey the laws of war.
The CIA must now conduct interrogations according to the rules of the Army Field Manual, which prohibits coercive techniques, threats and promises, and the good-cop bad-cop routines used in police stations throughout America. Mr. Obama has also ordered that al Qaeda leaders are to be protected from "outrages on personal dignity" and "humiliating and degrading treatment" in accord with the Geneva Conventions. His new order amounts to requiring -- on penalty of prosecution -- that CIA interrogators be polite. Coercive measures are unwisely banned with no exceptions, regardless of the danger confronting the country.
Eliminating the Bush system will mean that we will get no more information from captured al Qaeda terrorists. Every prisoner will have the right to a lawyer (which they will surely demand), the right to remain silent, and the right to a speedy trial.
The first thing any lawyer will do is tell his clients to shut up. The KSMs or Abu Zubaydahs of the future will respond to no verbal questioning or trickery -- which is precisely why the Bush administration felt compelled to use more coercive measures in the first place. Our soldiers and agents in the field will have to run more risks as they must secure physical evidence at the point of capture and maintain a chain of custody that will stand up to the standards of a civilian court.
Relying on the civilian justice system not only robs us of the most effective intelligence tool to avert future attacks, it provides an opportunity for our enemies to obtain intelligence on us. If terrorists are now to be treated as ordinary criminals, their defense lawyers will insist that the government produce in open court all U.S. intelligence on their client along with the methods used by the CIA and NSA to get it. A defendant's constitutional right to demand the government's files often forces prosecutors to offer plea bargains to spies rather than risk disclosure of intelligence secrets.
Zacarias Moussaoui, the only member of the 9/11 cell arrested before the attack, turned his trial into a circus by making such demands. He was convicted after four years of pretrial wrangling only because he chose to plead guilty. Expect more of this, but with far more valuable intelligence at stake.
It is naïve to say, as Mr. Obama did in his inaugural speech, that we can "reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." That high-flying rhetoric means that we must give al Qaeda -- a hardened enemy committed to our destruction -- the same rights as garden-variety criminals at the cost of losing critical intelligence about real, future threats.
Government policy choices are all about trade-offs, which cannot simply be wished away by rhetoric. Mr. Obama seems to have respected these realities in his hesitation to end the NSA's electronic surveillance programs, or to stop the use of predator drones to target individual al Qaeda leaders.
But in his decisions taken so precipitously just two days after the inauguration, Mr. Obama may have opened the door to further terrorist acts on U.S. soil by shattering some of the nation's most critical defenses.
Mr. Yoo is a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a visiting professor at Chapman Law School. He was an official in the Justice Department from 2001-03 and is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
The president will soon realize that governing involves hard choices.
WSJ, Jan 29, 2009
During his first week as commander in chief, President Barack Obama ordered the closure of Guantanamo Bay and terminated the CIA's special authority to interrogate terrorists.
While these actions will certainly please his base -- gone are the cries of an "imperial presidency" -- they will also seriously handicap our intelligence agencies from preventing future terrorist attacks. In issuing these executive orders, Mr. Obama is returning America to the failed law enforcement approach to fighting terrorism that prevailed before Sept. 11, 2001. He's also drying up the most valuable sources of intelligence on al Qaeda, which, according to CIA Director Michael Hayden, has come largely out of the tough interrogation of high-level operatives during the early years of the war.
The question Mr. Obama should have asked right after the inaugural parade was: What will happen after we capture the next Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or Abu Zubaydah? Instead, he took action without a meeting of his full national security staff, and without a legal review of all the policy options available to meet the threats facing our country.
What such a review would have made clear is that the civilian law-enforcement system cannot prevent terrorist attacks. What is needed are the tools to gain vital intelligence, which is why, under President George W. Bush, the CIA could hold and interrogate high-value al Qaeda leaders. On the advice of his intelligence advisers, the president could have authorized coercive interrogation methods like those used by Israel and Great Britain in their antiterrorism campaigns. (He could even authorize waterboarding, which he did three times in the years after 9/11.)
Mr. Obama has also ordered that all military commission trials be stayed and that the case of Ali Saleh al-Marri, the only al Qaeda operative now held on U.S. soil, be reviewed. This seems a prelude to closing the military commissions down entirely and transferring the detainees' cases to U.S. civilian courts for prosecution under ordinary criminal law. Military commission trials have been used in most American wars, and their rules and procedures are designed around the need to protect intelligence sources and methods from revelation in open court.
It's also likely Mr. Obama will declare terrorists to be prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions. The Bush administration classified terrorists -- well supported by legal and historical precedent -- like pirates, illegal combatants who do not fight on behalf of a nation and refuse to obey the laws of war.
The CIA must now conduct interrogations according to the rules of the Army Field Manual, which prohibits coercive techniques, threats and promises, and the good-cop bad-cop routines used in police stations throughout America. Mr. Obama has also ordered that al Qaeda leaders are to be protected from "outrages on personal dignity" and "humiliating and degrading treatment" in accord with the Geneva Conventions. His new order amounts to requiring -- on penalty of prosecution -- that CIA interrogators be polite. Coercive measures are unwisely banned with no exceptions, regardless of the danger confronting the country.
Eliminating the Bush system will mean that we will get no more information from captured al Qaeda terrorists. Every prisoner will have the right to a lawyer (which they will surely demand), the right to remain silent, and the right to a speedy trial.
The first thing any lawyer will do is tell his clients to shut up. The KSMs or Abu Zubaydahs of the future will respond to no verbal questioning or trickery -- which is precisely why the Bush administration felt compelled to use more coercive measures in the first place. Our soldiers and agents in the field will have to run more risks as they must secure physical evidence at the point of capture and maintain a chain of custody that will stand up to the standards of a civilian court.
Relying on the civilian justice system not only robs us of the most effective intelligence tool to avert future attacks, it provides an opportunity for our enemies to obtain intelligence on us. If terrorists are now to be treated as ordinary criminals, their defense lawyers will insist that the government produce in open court all U.S. intelligence on their client along with the methods used by the CIA and NSA to get it. A defendant's constitutional right to demand the government's files often forces prosecutors to offer plea bargains to spies rather than risk disclosure of intelligence secrets.
Zacarias Moussaoui, the only member of the 9/11 cell arrested before the attack, turned his trial into a circus by making such demands. He was convicted after four years of pretrial wrangling only because he chose to plead guilty. Expect more of this, but with far more valuable intelligence at stake.
It is naïve to say, as Mr. Obama did in his inaugural speech, that we can "reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." That high-flying rhetoric means that we must give al Qaeda -- a hardened enemy committed to our destruction -- the same rights as garden-variety criminals at the cost of losing critical intelligence about real, future threats.
Government policy choices are all about trade-offs, which cannot simply be wished away by rhetoric. Mr. Obama seems to have respected these realities in his hesitation to end the NSA's electronic surveillance programs, or to stop the use of predator drones to target individual al Qaeda leaders.
But in his decisions taken so precipitously just two days after the inauguration, Mr. Obama may have opened the door to further terrorist acts on U.S. soil by shattering some of the nation's most critical defenses.
Mr. Yoo is a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley and a visiting professor at Chapman Law School. He was an official in the Justice Department from 2001-03 and is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.
US on Madagascar Crisis
Madagascar Crisis
Press Statement by Robert Wood, Acting Spokesman, US State Dept
Washington, DC, January 29, 2009
The United States is deeply concerned by the recent political violence in Madagascar. We call on Malagasy leaders and people to exercise restraint and avoid all further violence. We urge for an immediate resumption of dialogue among principal political actors and the government. The United States reaffirms its commitment to Madagascar’s democratic development, emphasizing that calm and dialogue must be restored in order to effectively pursue development. We expect all parties in this conflict to respect the constitution of Madagascar as they resolve their political differences.
2009/086
Press Statement by Robert Wood, Acting Spokesman, US State Dept
Washington, DC, January 29, 2009
The United States is deeply concerned by the recent political violence in Madagascar. We call on Malagasy leaders and people to exercise restraint and avoid all further violence. We urge for an immediate resumption of dialogue among principal political actors and the government. The United States reaffirms its commitment to Madagascar’s democratic development, emphasizing that calm and dialogue must be restored in order to effectively pursue development. We expect all parties in this conflict to respect the constitution of Madagascar as they resolve their political differences.
2009/086
Remarks by the President on the economy after meeting with business leaders
Remarks by the President on the economy after meeting with business leaders
White House East Room, January 28, 2009
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. I want to thank Sam and David for their outstanding words. I want to thank all of you for being here today.
A few moments ago, I met with some of the leading business executives in the country. And it was a sober meeting, because these companies and the workers they employ are going through times more trying than any that we've seen in a long, long while. Just the other day, seven of our largest corporations announced they were making major job cuts. Some of the business leaders in this room have had to do the same. And yet, even as we discussed the seriousness of this challenge, we left our meeting confident that we can turn our economy around.
But each of us, as Dave indicated, are going to have to do our share. Part of what led our economy to this perilous moment was a sense of irresponsibility that prevailed in Wall Street and in Washington. And that's why I called for a new era of responsibility in my inaugural address last week, an era where each of us chips in so that we can climb our way out of this crisis -- executives and factory floor workers, educators and engineers, health care professionals and elected officials.
As we discussed in our meeting a few minutes ago, corporate America will have to accept its own responsibilities to its workers and the American public. But these executives also understand that without wise leadership in Washington, even the best-run businesses can't do as well as they might. They understand that what makes an idea sound is not whether it's Democrat or Republican, but whether it makes good economic sense for their workers and companies. And they understand that when it comes to rebuilding our economy, we don't have a moment to spare.
The businesses that are shedding jobs to stay afloat -- they can't afford inaction or delay. The workers who are returning home to tell their husbands and wives and children that they no longer have a job, and all those who live in fear that their job will be next on the cutting blocks -- they need help now. They are looking to Washington for action, bold and swift. And that is why I hope to sign an American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan into law in the next few weeks.
And most of the money that we're investing as part of this plan will get out the door immediately and go directly to job creation, generating or saving 3 to 4 million new jobs. And the vast majority of these jobs will be created in the private sector, because, as these CEOs well know, business, not government, is the engine of growth in this country.
But even as this plan puts Americans back to work it will also make the critical investments in alternative energy, in safer roads, better health care and modern schools that will lay the foundation for long-term growth and prosperity. And it will invest in broadband and emerging technologies, like the ones imagined and introduced to the world by people like Sam and so many of the CEOs here today, because that's how America will retain and regain its competitive edge in the 21st century.
I know that there are some who are skeptical of the size and scale of this recovery plan. And I understand that skepticism, given some of the things that have happened in this town in the past. That's why this recovery plan will include unprecedented measures that will allow the American people to hold my administration accountable. Instead of just throwing money at our problems, we'll try something new in Washington -- we will invest in what works. Instead of politicians doling out money behind a veil of secrecy, decisions about where we invest will be made public on the Internet, and will be informed by independent experts whenever possible.
We will launch a sweeping effort to root out waste, inefficiency, and unnecessary spending in our government, and every American will be able to see how and where we spend taxpayer dollars by going to a new website called recovery.gov -- because I firmly believe what Justice Louis Brandeis once said, that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and I know that restoring transparency is not only the surest way to achieve results, but also to earn back the trust in government without which we cannot deliver the changes the American people sent us here to make.
In the end, the answer to our economic troubles rests less in my hands, or in the hands of our legislators, than it does with America's workers and the businesses that employ them. They are the ones whose efforts and ideas will determine our economic destiny, just as they always have. For in the end, it's businesses -- large and small -- that generate the jobs, provide the salaries, and serve as the foundation on which the American people's lives and dreams depend. All we can do, those of us here in Washington, is help create a favorable climate in which workers can prosper, businesses can thrive, and our economy can grow. And that is exactly what the recovery plan I've proposed is intended to do. And that's exactly what I intend to achieve soon.
Thank you very much for being here.
White House East Room, January 28, 2009
THE PRESIDENT: Thank you. I want to thank Sam and David for their outstanding words. I want to thank all of you for being here today.
A few moments ago, I met with some of the leading business executives in the country. And it was a sober meeting, because these companies and the workers they employ are going through times more trying than any that we've seen in a long, long while. Just the other day, seven of our largest corporations announced they were making major job cuts. Some of the business leaders in this room have had to do the same. And yet, even as we discussed the seriousness of this challenge, we left our meeting confident that we can turn our economy around.
But each of us, as Dave indicated, are going to have to do our share. Part of what led our economy to this perilous moment was a sense of irresponsibility that prevailed in Wall Street and in Washington. And that's why I called for a new era of responsibility in my inaugural address last week, an era where each of us chips in so that we can climb our way out of this crisis -- executives and factory floor workers, educators and engineers, health care professionals and elected officials.
As we discussed in our meeting a few minutes ago, corporate America will have to accept its own responsibilities to its workers and the American public. But these executives also understand that without wise leadership in Washington, even the best-run businesses can't do as well as they might. They understand that what makes an idea sound is not whether it's Democrat or Republican, but whether it makes good economic sense for their workers and companies. And they understand that when it comes to rebuilding our economy, we don't have a moment to spare.
The businesses that are shedding jobs to stay afloat -- they can't afford inaction or delay. The workers who are returning home to tell their husbands and wives and children that they no longer have a job, and all those who live in fear that their job will be next on the cutting blocks -- they need help now. They are looking to Washington for action, bold and swift. And that is why I hope to sign an American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan into law in the next few weeks.
And most of the money that we're investing as part of this plan will get out the door immediately and go directly to job creation, generating or saving 3 to 4 million new jobs. And the vast majority of these jobs will be created in the private sector, because, as these CEOs well know, business, not government, is the engine of growth in this country.
But even as this plan puts Americans back to work it will also make the critical investments in alternative energy, in safer roads, better health care and modern schools that will lay the foundation for long-term growth and prosperity. And it will invest in broadband and emerging technologies, like the ones imagined and introduced to the world by people like Sam and so many of the CEOs here today, because that's how America will retain and regain its competitive edge in the 21st century.
I know that there are some who are skeptical of the size and scale of this recovery plan. And I understand that skepticism, given some of the things that have happened in this town in the past. That's why this recovery plan will include unprecedented measures that will allow the American people to hold my administration accountable. Instead of just throwing money at our problems, we'll try something new in Washington -- we will invest in what works. Instead of politicians doling out money behind a veil of secrecy, decisions about where we invest will be made public on the Internet, and will be informed by independent experts whenever possible.
We will launch a sweeping effort to root out waste, inefficiency, and unnecessary spending in our government, and every American will be able to see how and where we spend taxpayer dollars by going to a new website called recovery.gov -- because I firmly believe what Justice Louis Brandeis once said, that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and I know that restoring transparency is not only the surest way to achieve results, but also to earn back the trust in government without which we cannot deliver the changes the American people sent us here to make.
In the end, the answer to our economic troubles rests less in my hands, or in the hands of our legislators, than it does with America's workers and the businesses that employ them. They are the ones whose efforts and ideas will determine our economic destiny, just as they always have. For in the end, it's businesses -- large and small -- that generate the jobs, provide the salaries, and serve as the foundation on which the American people's lives and dreams depend. All we can do, those of us here in Washington, is help create a favorable climate in which workers can prosper, businesses can thrive, and our economy can grow. And that is exactly what the recovery plan I've proposed is intended to do. And that's exactly what I intend to achieve soon.
Thank you very much for being here.
WaPo on Afghanistan: Democrats have long called it 'the central front.' Will they retreat from it?
The Afghan Challenge. WaPo Editorial
Democrats have long called it 'the central front.' Will they retreat from it?
Washington Post, Thursday, January 29, 2009; page A18
FOR YEARS, Democrats excoriated the Bush administration for not devoting sufficient resources to Afghanistan. But now that Barack Obama has taken office, some seem to be having second thoughts. "Our original goal was to go in there and take on al-Qaeda. . . . It was not to adopt the 51st state of the United States," said Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Mr. Kerry pioneered the Democratic argument to send more troops during his own presidential campaign in 2004. Now he says "the parallels" to Vietnam "just really keep leaping out in so many different ways."
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates seconded that skepticism at a congressional hearing on Tuesday. "If we set ourselves the objective of creating some sort of Central Asian Valhalla over there, we will lose," he said, "because nobody in the world has that kind of time, patience and money, to be honest."
We're happy to agree that Afghanistan should not become the 51st state, or Valhalla -- but we're not sure who or what Mr. Kerry and Mr. Gates have in mind. So far as we know, the American objective in Afghanistan since 2002 has been pretty much what Mr. Gates says it should be: "an Afghan people who do not provide a safe haven for al-Qaeda, who reject the rule of the Taliban and support the legitimate government they have elected and in which they have a stake."
The problem, as Mr. Gates acknowledged, is that meeting that aim necessitates such tasks as stabilizing western Pakistan, rooting out the opium trade, vastly expanding the Afghan army and constructing a workable legal system. That, in turn, will require more money, more troops, many more years of commitment -- and higher American casualties.
"Bottom line is, it's going to be tough, it's going to be difficult, in many ways harder than Iraq," Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) put it to Mr. Gates. "Do you agree with that?" "Yes," the secretary responded.
So why make it sound as if the Obama administration is scaling back U.S. ambitions? Part of this may be pure politics, to assure the antiwar left -- not to mention other Americans -- that the United States is not about to follow Russia and Britain into an Afghan quagmire. Yet the new administration, and supporters such as Mr. Kerry, ought to recognize a greater political need, which is to make clear to the country that the war against terrorism -- whatever it is now called -- did not end on Jan. 20 and that Afghanistan in particular will require years more patience and sacrifice to get right.
The way to avoid a quagmire is not to hold back on U.S. military reinforcements or development aid but to assemble a national civil-military plan that integrates war-fighting with reconstruction and political reconciliation. As Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) points out, such a plan was the foundation of the U.S. recovery in Iraq, but the model has never been applied in Afghanistan. That's largely because the United States must share authority with some 40 allies, many of which place strict limits on what their troops may do, insist on managing their own development programs, or both. The Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai, mired in corruption and increasingly at odds with U.S. commanders, is also not on board.
Afghanistan doesn't need to become the 51st state, but it does need a single, coherent, integrated plan to become a state strong enough to resist the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Creating one will require some aggressive diplomacy and maybe a little political china-breaking. That's something for which the State Department's new envoy to the region, Richard C. Holbrooke, is known. But low-balling the scale of the challenge, or the costs it may incur, won't help.
Democrats have long called it 'the central front.' Will they retreat from it?
Washington Post, Thursday, January 29, 2009; page A18
FOR YEARS, Democrats excoriated the Bush administration for not devoting sufficient resources to Afghanistan. But now that Barack Obama has taken office, some seem to be having second thoughts. "Our original goal was to go in there and take on al-Qaeda. . . . It was not to adopt the 51st state of the United States," said Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.), the new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Mr. Kerry pioneered the Democratic argument to send more troops during his own presidential campaign in 2004. Now he says "the parallels" to Vietnam "just really keep leaping out in so many different ways."
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates seconded that skepticism at a congressional hearing on Tuesday. "If we set ourselves the objective of creating some sort of Central Asian Valhalla over there, we will lose," he said, "because nobody in the world has that kind of time, patience and money, to be honest."
We're happy to agree that Afghanistan should not become the 51st state, or Valhalla -- but we're not sure who or what Mr. Kerry and Mr. Gates have in mind. So far as we know, the American objective in Afghanistan since 2002 has been pretty much what Mr. Gates says it should be: "an Afghan people who do not provide a safe haven for al-Qaeda, who reject the rule of the Taliban and support the legitimate government they have elected and in which they have a stake."
The problem, as Mr. Gates acknowledged, is that meeting that aim necessitates such tasks as stabilizing western Pakistan, rooting out the opium trade, vastly expanding the Afghan army and constructing a workable legal system. That, in turn, will require more money, more troops, many more years of commitment -- and higher American casualties.
"Bottom line is, it's going to be tough, it's going to be difficult, in many ways harder than Iraq," Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) put it to Mr. Gates. "Do you agree with that?" "Yes," the secretary responded.
So why make it sound as if the Obama administration is scaling back U.S. ambitions? Part of this may be pure politics, to assure the antiwar left -- not to mention other Americans -- that the United States is not about to follow Russia and Britain into an Afghan quagmire. Yet the new administration, and supporters such as Mr. Kerry, ought to recognize a greater political need, which is to make clear to the country that the war against terrorism -- whatever it is now called -- did not end on Jan. 20 and that Afghanistan in particular will require years more patience and sacrifice to get right.
The way to avoid a quagmire is not to hold back on U.S. military reinforcements or development aid but to assemble a national civil-military plan that integrates war-fighting with reconstruction and political reconciliation. As Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) points out, such a plan was the foundation of the U.S. recovery in Iraq, but the model has never been applied in Afghanistan. That's largely because the United States must share authority with some 40 allies, many of which place strict limits on what their troops may do, insist on managing their own development programs, or both. The Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai, mired in corruption and increasingly at odds with U.S. commanders, is also not on board.
Afghanistan doesn't need to become the 51st state, but it does need a single, coherent, integrated plan to become a state strong enough to resist the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Creating one will require some aggressive diplomacy and maybe a little political china-breaking. That's something for which the State Department's new envoy to the region, Richard C. Holbrooke, is known. But low-balling the scale of the challenge, or the costs it may incur, won't help.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
US Protectionism in the Stimulus Bill
U.S. Protectionism in the Stimulus Bill. By Philip I. Levy
AEI, Jan 28, 2009
Lurking inside the proposed stimulus bill is a provision that threatens to stoke global protectionism and weaken U.S. leadership. The "Buy American" clause requires the new infrastructure projects in the bill to use American steel exclusively in a misguided attempt to create jobs. Its proponents fail to consider the worldwide repercussions.
The federal government of the US is currently consumed with an effort to craft a fiscal stimulus that will save the economy. Even before assuming the Presidency this month, Barack Obama called for a major stimulus package and warned that without quick action "we could lose a generation of potential and promise . . . our nation could lose the competitive edge that has served as a foundation for our strength and standing in the world." In the process, however, the US is poised to lose some of its standing through its flirtation with protectionism.
Flirtation with protectionism
The $825 billion stimulus bill introduced in the US House of Representatives includes the following provision:
"None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used for a project for the construction, alteration, maintenance, or repair of a public building or public work unless all of the iron and steel used in the project is produced in the US." (Sec. 1110(a)) The bill allows for exceptions if the clause would boost project costs by more than 25% or "would be inconsistent with the public interest." It would take an unusually brave Obama Administration official, however, to seek a waiver on public interest grounds.
Fiscal stimulus as protectionism Trojan Horse
The inclusion of this "Buy American" clause is a deliberate attempt to translate stimulus dollars into American jobs. One group advocating the measure, the Alliance for American Manufacturing, cites a report it commissioned as finding that:
"[M]anufacturing employment gains from such an infrastructure program could be improved significantly if the percentage of US-made material inputs were increased. Simply put, a higher share of domestically produced supplies would have a significant impact in terms of generating new manufacturing jobs. Utilizing 100% domestically produced inputs for infrastructure projects would yield a total of 77,000 additional jobs nationally."
They argue that the provision would disproportionately help manufacturing, raising the number of stimulated manufacturing jobs by 33% (AAM 2009).
Protection and the open economy multiplier
The underlying report argues that:
"the most important source of leakages for the kinds of investment we consider in this report is the use of imported goods and services in the production of infrastructure. Spending on imports does not raise the demand for domestic output and therefore does not create additional jobs."
The report never mentions the word 'export.' (Heintz, Pollin, and Garrett-Peltier 2009, p. 23)
US traditional policy: level playing field on procurement and the GPA
With some exceptions, the US has generally taken a different stance in the past. The website of the US Trade Representative, as yet unchanged from the Bush Administration, lauds the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) and states that a "longstanding objective of US trade policy has been to open opportunities for US suppliers to compete on a level playing field for foreign government contracts." It cites WTO estimates that the parties to the GPA receive annual access to more than $300 billion in government tendering procedures.
What comes around goes around
Were there careful consideration of the implications, the US would seem to have little incentive to start a procurement fight. According to OECD figures (OECD 2008, pp. 56-57) the US in 2007 trailed only Switzerland, Mexico, Turkey, and Luxembourg in the race among members for lowest government consumption expenditure as a fraction of GDP.
Opposition from US business and trade groups
The "Buy American" stimulus provision has sparked opposition from US business and trade groups. They argue that it could prompt retaliation, undermine US leadership, and violate the pledge at the November 2008 G20 Summit in Washington not to adopt protectionist measures (Drajem, 2009).
It is unclear whether this lobbying will block the measure, though. There is extraordinary pressure to deliver the stimulus package to President Obama before the end of February. That allows little time for deliberation and debate. The rationale for the rush is the urgent need for the spending, though the Congressional Budget Office estimates that almost 60% of the new spending projects would take place after September of 2010 (CBO, 2009, p. 3).
Keynesian multiplier and the fallacy of composition
As significant as government procurement may be, the flawed mercantilist logic of the "Buy American" provision is even more dangerous because of its broader applicability. Dani Rodrik (2008) argues that one way to enhance the Keynesian multiplier effects of any fiscal stimulus would be to raise import tariffs. He writes: "Yes, yes, import protection is inefficient and not a very neighborly thing to do--but should we really care if the alternative is significantly lower growth and higher unemployment?"
Such analysis is flawed at several levels. Among them, there are the failings of Keynesian analysis more generally (see, e.g., Barro 2009), and the globally integrated nature of production, which would be exceedingly difficult and costly to unwind and which is uncaptured by simplistic macro models. But the idea is clearly seductive.
Obama's first test on protectionism
The protectionist urges in the stimulus debate pose a major challenge for President Obama at a difficult time.
He has not seemed to emphasize the importance of international economic relations in his appointments to date. His nomination for US Trade Representative, Ron Kirk, was one of his last, remains unconfirmed, and is inexperienced in global trade matters. President Obama has yet to name a new Secretary of Commerce after his first choice withdrew. His new Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, will likely be consumed with domestic aspects of stimulus and with averting financial collapse.
Campaign promises: Multilateral approach to foreign policy
In his campaign last year, President Obama called for a multilateral approach to foreign policy and a restoration of America's image in the world. It may fall to other world leaders to remind him of the role that global trade plays in US international relations.
AEI, Jan 28, 2009
Lurking inside the proposed stimulus bill is a provision that threatens to stoke global protectionism and weaken U.S. leadership. The "Buy American" clause requires the new infrastructure projects in the bill to use American steel exclusively in a misguided attempt to create jobs. Its proponents fail to consider the worldwide repercussions.
The federal government of the US is currently consumed with an effort to craft a fiscal stimulus that will save the economy. Even before assuming the Presidency this month, Barack Obama called for a major stimulus package and warned that without quick action "we could lose a generation of potential and promise . . . our nation could lose the competitive edge that has served as a foundation for our strength and standing in the world." In the process, however, the US is poised to lose some of its standing through its flirtation with protectionism.
Flirtation with protectionism
The $825 billion stimulus bill introduced in the US House of Representatives includes the following provision:
"None of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used for a project for the construction, alteration, maintenance, or repair of a public building or public work unless all of the iron and steel used in the project is produced in the US." (Sec. 1110(a)) The bill allows for exceptions if the clause would boost project costs by more than 25% or "would be inconsistent with the public interest." It would take an unusually brave Obama Administration official, however, to seek a waiver on public interest grounds.
Fiscal stimulus as protectionism Trojan Horse
The inclusion of this "Buy American" clause is a deliberate attempt to translate stimulus dollars into American jobs. One group advocating the measure, the Alliance for American Manufacturing, cites a report it commissioned as finding that:
"[M]anufacturing employment gains from such an infrastructure program could be improved significantly if the percentage of US-made material inputs were increased. Simply put, a higher share of domestically produced supplies would have a significant impact in terms of generating new manufacturing jobs. Utilizing 100% domestically produced inputs for infrastructure projects would yield a total of 77,000 additional jobs nationally."
They argue that the provision would disproportionately help manufacturing, raising the number of stimulated manufacturing jobs by 33% (AAM 2009).
Protection and the open economy multiplier
The underlying report argues that:
"the most important source of leakages for the kinds of investment we consider in this report is the use of imported goods and services in the production of infrastructure. Spending on imports does not raise the demand for domestic output and therefore does not create additional jobs."
The report never mentions the word 'export.' (Heintz, Pollin, and Garrett-Peltier 2009, p. 23)
US traditional policy: level playing field on procurement and the GPA
With some exceptions, the US has generally taken a different stance in the past. The website of the US Trade Representative, as yet unchanged from the Bush Administration, lauds the Government Procurement Agreement (GPA) and states that a "longstanding objective of US trade policy has been to open opportunities for US suppliers to compete on a level playing field for foreign government contracts." It cites WTO estimates that the parties to the GPA receive annual access to more than $300 billion in government tendering procedures.
What comes around goes around
Were there careful consideration of the implications, the US would seem to have little incentive to start a procurement fight. According to OECD figures (OECD 2008, pp. 56-57) the US in 2007 trailed only Switzerland, Mexico, Turkey, and Luxembourg in the race among members for lowest government consumption expenditure as a fraction of GDP.
Opposition from US business and trade groups
The "Buy American" stimulus provision has sparked opposition from US business and trade groups. They argue that it could prompt retaliation, undermine US leadership, and violate the pledge at the November 2008 G20 Summit in Washington not to adopt protectionist measures (Drajem, 2009).
It is unclear whether this lobbying will block the measure, though. There is extraordinary pressure to deliver the stimulus package to President Obama before the end of February. That allows little time for deliberation and debate. The rationale for the rush is the urgent need for the spending, though the Congressional Budget Office estimates that almost 60% of the new spending projects would take place after September of 2010 (CBO, 2009, p. 3).
Keynesian multiplier and the fallacy of composition
As significant as government procurement may be, the flawed mercantilist logic of the "Buy American" provision is even more dangerous because of its broader applicability. Dani Rodrik (2008) argues that one way to enhance the Keynesian multiplier effects of any fiscal stimulus would be to raise import tariffs. He writes: "Yes, yes, import protection is inefficient and not a very neighborly thing to do--but should we really care if the alternative is significantly lower growth and higher unemployment?"
Such analysis is flawed at several levels. Among them, there are the failings of Keynesian analysis more generally (see, e.g., Barro 2009), and the globally integrated nature of production, which would be exceedingly difficult and costly to unwind and which is uncaptured by simplistic macro models. But the idea is clearly seductive.
Obama's first test on protectionism
The protectionist urges in the stimulus debate pose a major challenge for President Obama at a difficult time.
He has not seemed to emphasize the importance of international economic relations in his appointments to date. His nomination for US Trade Representative, Ron Kirk, was one of his last, remains unconfirmed, and is inexperienced in global trade matters. President Obama has yet to name a new Secretary of Commerce after his first choice withdrew. His new Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, will likely be consumed with domestic aspects of stimulus and with averting financial collapse.
Campaign promises: Multilateral approach to foreign policy
In his campaign last year, President Obama called for a multilateral approach to foreign policy and a restoration of America's image in the world. It may fall to other world leaders to remind him of the role that global trade plays in US international relations.
Legislating the Lilly Ledbetter lie
Legislating the Lilly Ledbetter lie, by Paul Mirengoff
Powerline Blog, January 28, 2009 at 1:31 PM
President Obama is set to sign into law, as the first legislation of his tenure, the so-called Lilly Ledbetter Act. It changes the rules for bringing lawsuits for alleged pay discrimination, enabling plaintiffs to bring stale claims, as Ledbetter herself attempted to do.
It is fitting that this law will be the first legislative product of the Obama presidency, for it is based on a lie. I demonstrated this last year in a post called "Lilly Ledbetter, Living a Lie."
The Lilly Ledbetter lie is today peddled in this Washington Post story, which suggests that she had no idea she was the victim of pay discrimination until she supposedly received an anonymous note tippling her off. So is the White House. (Hat tip, Openmarket.org.)
In honor of the occasion, I have re-posted my piece on Lilly's lie:
Lilly Ledbetter, the unsuccessful plaintiff in an equal pay case that went to the Supreme Court, has become ubiquitous this political season. She spoke at the Democratic National Convention, has testified in congressional hearings, and appears in an ad for Barack Obama. Congress is considering legislation that bears her name. The Washington Post, in a piece by Matthew Mosk, reverentially described her as "the Alabama woman whose fight for equal pay led her to the United States Supreme Court and inspired. . .fair pay legislation."
Not since the equally alliterative and industrial-sounding Rosie the Riveter, has a working woman become such a folk hero. But like Rosie, the Lilly Ledbetter being presented for public consumption is largely mythical.
The real Lilly Ledbetter worked for Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company from 1979 until she retired in 1998. After she retired, she sued Goodyear under Title VII of the Civil Rights of 1964 for alleged pay discrimination.
Ledbetter's pay discrimination claim went to a jury which found in her favor. However, the court of appeals reversed this verdict on the grounds that she did not file a charge of discrimination with the EEOC within the required statute of limitations period.
In her appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Ledbetter raised the following issue: "Whether and under what circumstances a plaintiff may bring an action under Title VII. . .alleging illegal pay discrimination when the disparate pay is received during the statutory limitations period, but is the result of intentionally discriminatory pay decisions that occurred outside the limitations period."
Ledbetter framed the issue this way because she did not claim that the relevant Goodyear decisionmakers acted with discriminatory intent during the limitations period. Instead, she asserted that the paychecks she received during this period were unlawful because they would have been larger if she had been treated in a nondiscriminatory manner prior to the limitations period.
In other words, the alleged intentional discrimination had occurred years earlier, outside of the limitations period. But Ledbetter felt its ongoing consequences every time she received a paycheck, until the end of her career, because her pay never caught up to where she believes it would have been absent the early discrimination. An employee's pay at any given point in time is typically a function of years of pay decisions.
The Supreme Court agreed with the court of appeals that Ledbetter's challenge to pay decisions that pre-dated the limitations period was time-barred. In doing so, the Court correctly applied three decades of its own precedent in cases where Title VII plaintiffs have attempted to rely on the current effects of past discrimination to defeat a statute of limitations defense.
The Court also emphasized the common sense proposition that stands behind these decisions: in discrimination cases "the employer's intent is almost always disputed and evidence relating to intent may fade quickly with time." Thus, an employee who waits until years after the underlyng alleged intentional act of discrimination to sue, as Ledbetter did, undermines the ability of the justice system to conduct a fair trial. For example, by the time Ledbetter brought her case to trial, the supervisor whose decisions formed the main basis for her pay discrimination claim was dead.
There is, of course, nothing novel in the Supreme Court's reasoning. Statute of limitations period exist precisely to prevent the injustice inherent in situations where a plaintiff "sleeps" on his or her rights for years.
Ledbetter and her Democratic fan club argue, however, that the result in her case permits hidden discrimination. They would have the public believe that the Ledbetter decision leaves plaintiffs who don't discover concealed discrimination for many years unable to overcome the statute of limitations defense, and thus unable to remedy wrongdoing.
This is nonsense. For decades the Supreme Court has recognized that the limitations period in a Title VII case can be extended or tolled in such circumstances. Tolling is available where, among other situations, the plaintiff has no reason to suspect discrimination at the time of the disputed event.
But Ledbetter did not argue that the limitations period should be tolled in her case, and for good reason. Ledbetter testified that she knew by 1992 that her pay was out of line with her peers. In 1995, she spoke to her supervisor about the problem, telling him that "I knew definitely that they were all making a thousand at least more per month than I was and that I would like to get in line." Yet Ledbetter waited until 1998 to file her EEOC complaint.
This delay is particularly difficult to understand given the fact that, in 1982, she had filed a sexual harassment complaint with the EEOC. That dispute was settled without litigation shortly thereafter. Had Ledbetter followed the same course with her pay claim, she would have had her day in court, and Goodyear would have had a fair chance to defend itself. That this did not occur is Ledbetter's fault.
Prevented by the facts from arguing in a real court that she didn't have enough knowledge about her pay situation to bring a timely EEOC charge, Ledbetter (and those who seek political advantage through her) now raise this false claim in the court of public opinion. For example, Ledbetter claims that "the only way that I really knew [about the pay discrimination] was that someone left an anonymous note in my mailbox showing my pay and the pay for the three males who were doing the same job, just on different shifts." According to Ledbetter, "when I saw that note, it just floored me. I was so shocked at the amount of difference in our pay for doing the same exact job. And I went immediately to EEOC."
This claim, of course, cannot be reconciled with her sworn testimony that three years before allegedly receiving the "anonymous note," she told her supervisor that she definitely knew that she was making thousands less than her male counterparts for the same work.
Lilly Ledbetter is living a lie, one that Barack Obama hopes will help propel him into the White House.
Powerline Blog, January 28, 2009 at 1:31 PM
President Obama is set to sign into law, as the first legislation of his tenure, the so-called Lilly Ledbetter Act. It changes the rules for bringing lawsuits for alleged pay discrimination, enabling plaintiffs to bring stale claims, as Ledbetter herself attempted to do.
It is fitting that this law will be the first legislative product of the Obama presidency, for it is based on a lie. I demonstrated this last year in a post called "Lilly Ledbetter, Living a Lie."
The Lilly Ledbetter lie is today peddled in this Washington Post story, which suggests that she had no idea she was the victim of pay discrimination until she supposedly received an anonymous note tippling her off. So is the White House. (Hat tip, Openmarket.org.)
In honor of the occasion, I have re-posted my piece on Lilly's lie:
Lilly Ledbetter, the unsuccessful plaintiff in an equal pay case that went to the Supreme Court, has become ubiquitous this political season. She spoke at the Democratic National Convention, has testified in congressional hearings, and appears in an ad for Barack Obama. Congress is considering legislation that bears her name. The Washington Post, in a piece by Matthew Mosk, reverentially described her as "the Alabama woman whose fight for equal pay led her to the United States Supreme Court and inspired. . .fair pay legislation."
Not since the equally alliterative and industrial-sounding Rosie the Riveter, has a working woman become such a folk hero. But like Rosie, the Lilly Ledbetter being presented for public consumption is largely mythical.
The real Lilly Ledbetter worked for Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company from 1979 until she retired in 1998. After she retired, she sued Goodyear under Title VII of the Civil Rights of 1964 for alleged pay discrimination.
Ledbetter's pay discrimination claim went to a jury which found in her favor. However, the court of appeals reversed this verdict on the grounds that she did not file a charge of discrimination with the EEOC within the required statute of limitations period.
In her appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Ledbetter raised the following issue: "Whether and under what circumstances a plaintiff may bring an action under Title VII. . .alleging illegal pay discrimination when the disparate pay is received during the statutory limitations period, but is the result of intentionally discriminatory pay decisions that occurred outside the limitations period."
Ledbetter framed the issue this way because she did not claim that the relevant Goodyear decisionmakers acted with discriminatory intent during the limitations period. Instead, she asserted that the paychecks she received during this period were unlawful because they would have been larger if she had been treated in a nondiscriminatory manner prior to the limitations period.
In other words, the alleged intentional discrimination had occurred years earlier, outside of the limitations period. But Ledbetter felt its ongoing consequences every time she received a paycheck, until the end of her career, because her pay never caught up to where she believes it would have been absent the early discrimination. An employee's pay at any given point in time is typically a function of years of pay decisions.
The Supreme Court agreed with the court of appeals that Ledbetter's challenge to pay decisions that pre-dated the limitations period was time-barred. In doing so, the Court correctly applied three decades of its own precedent in cases where Title VII plaintiffs have attempted to rely on the current effects of past discrimination to defeat a statute of limitations defense.
The Court also emphasized the common sense proposition that stands behind these decisions: in discrimination cases "the employer's intent is almost always disputed and evidence relating to intent may fade quickly with time." Thus, an employee who waits until years after the underlyng alleged intentional act of discrimination to sue, as Ledbetter did, undermines the ability of the justice system to conduct a fair trial. For example, by the time Ledbetter brought her case to trial, the supervisor whose decisions formed the main basis for her pay discrimination claim was dead.
There is, of course, nothing novel in the Supreme Court's reasoning. Statute of limitations period exist precisely to prevent the injustice inherent in situations where a plaintiff "sleeps" on his or her rights for years.
Ledbetter and her Democratic fan club argue, however, that the result in her case permits hidden discrimination. They would have the public believe that the Ledbetter decision leaves plaintiffs who don't discover concealed discrimination for many years unable to overcome the statute of limitations defense, and thus unable to remedy wrongdoing.
This is nonsense. For decades the Supreme Court has recognized that the limitations period in a Title VII case can be extended or tolled in such circumstances. Tolling is available where, among other situations, the plaintiff has no reason to suspect discrimination at the time of the disputed event.
But Ledbetter did not argue that the limitations period should be tolled in her case, and for good reason. Ledbetter testified that she knew by 1992 that her pay was out of line with her peers. In 1995, she spoke to her supervisor about the problem, telling him that "I knew definitely that they were all making a thousand at least more per month than I was and that I would like to get in line." Yet Ledbetter waited until 1998 to file her EEOC complaint.
This delay is particularly difficult to understand given the fact that, in 1982, she had filed a sexual harassment complaint with the EEOC. That dispute was settled without litigation shortly thereafter. Had Ledbetter followed the same course with her pay claim, she would have had her day in court, and Goodyear would have had a fair chance to defend itself. That this did not occur is Ledbetter's fault.
Prevented by the facts from arguing in a real court that she didn't have enough knowledge about her pay situation to bring a timely EEOC charge, Ledbetter (and those who seek political advantage through her) now raise this false claim in the court of public opinion. For example, Ledbetter claims that "the only way that I really knew [about the pay discrimination] was that someone left an anonymous note in my mailbox showing my pay and the pay for the three males who were doing the same job, just on different shifts." According to Ledbetter, "when I saw that note, it just floored me. I was so shocked at the amount of difference in our pay for doing the same exact job. And I went immediately to EEOC."
This claim, of course, cannot be reconciled with her sworn testimony that three years before allegedly receiving the "anonymous note," she told her supervisor that she definitely knew that she was making thousands less than her male counterparts for the same work.
Lilly Ledbetter is living a lie, one that Barack Obama hopes will help propel him into the White House.
On WaPo's position on giving DC a regular seat in the House of Representatives
Pass the Bill and Pass the Buck, by Matthew J. Franck
Bench Memos/NRO, Jan 28, 2009
The editors of the Washington Post are at it again today, impatient to pass a bill to give the District of Columbia a regular seat in the House of Representatives—without senators and without statehood. Continuing its practice of misleadingly calling this a "voting rights" bill, when D.C. residents currently have all the voting rights to which the Constitution entitles them, the Post thinks all debate on this matter should come to an end. Referring to a hearing yesterday before a House Judiciary subcommittee, the editors write:
Much of yesterday's discussion came down to the now familiar back-and-forth over whether the measure is constitutional. There are valid legal arguments for and against, with noted scholars on both sides, but the question is best left to the courts to decide. The use of such concerns to block the bill is a ruse by those who lack the political will to enfranchise D.C. residents.
It's nice for the Post to concede there are "valid" constitutional arguments on both sides. But I think they mean "plausible," since in a world where the Constitution means what it says, only one side can have the "valid" argument—i.e., the correct one. Having examined this matter as closely as anyone I know, I can say that in 30 years of studying the Constitution I've never come across a real (non-hypothetical) constitutional question that is easier than this one. The arguments on the other side, with all due respect to those who make them, are not only invalid but hardly even rise to the level of "plausible," requiring the tortuous misinterpretation of one clause in the text of the Constitution and the suppression of several others. For the short course, go to this recent post of mine, and follow the links for more elucidation.
But the Post, in its anxiety to remedy what it calls an "intolerable injustice," commits an injustice of its own in calling opposition on constitutional grounds a "ruse" by people who are somehow hostile or indifferent to "enfranchis[ing] D.C. residents." The constitutional grounds for a "no" vote on this bill are so compelling that the Post has long since ceased attempting to respond to them, and resorts only to name-calling and temper tantrums. Those grounds are so compelling that members of Congress who vote "no," as they should, can sleep the sleep of the just, knowing they have kept their oath to the Constitution. They don't need to be slandered by the capital's dominant newspaper as heartless bigots where D.C. is concerned.
The Post's editors, by contrast, have enough doubt about their position to recommend that the constitutional issue be "left to the courts to decide"—as if it were a) difficult, b) easy to hand off to the courts in a fashion that shapes it into a question courts can address, and c) appropriate for judicial rather than legislative resolution even if that were done. It is none of the above.
The Post writes also that "[n]o one at yesterday's hearing—even those who vehemently oppose the bill—could argue it's okay for the hundreds of thousands of Americans living in the nation's capital to be taxed, sent to war and governed without any real say in what their government does." I confess I don't get that exercised about the alleged injustice. But if that really concerned the editors, don't you think they'd want D.C. residents to have full representation in Congress—with senators too? Maybe those Americans could, you know, live in a state, which would automatically take care of the problem?
D.C. doesn't need or deserve statehood on its own. The best solution for D.C. residents to get "voting rights" in Congress is for the residential parts of the District to be "retroceded" to Maryland. This is how residents of Alexandria and Arlington, Virginia got to vote for congressmen again.
Majority leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland was a witness at yesterday's hearing and was in high dudgeon about the poor "disenfranchised" residents of D.C. But it's hard to avoid the conclusion that he just doesn't want them back as fellow citizens of Maryland.
Bench Memos/NRO, Jan 28, 2009
The editors of the Washington Post are at it again today, impatient to pass a bill to give the District of Columbia a regular seat in the House of Representatives—without senators and without statehood. Continuing its practice of misleadingly calling this a "voting rights" bill, when D.C. residents currently have all the voting rights to which the Constitution entitles them, the Post thinks all debate on this matter should come to an end. Referring to a hearing yesterday before a House Judiciary subcommittee, the editors write:
Much of yesterday's discussion came down to the now familiar back-and-forth over whether the measure is constitutional. There are valid legal arguments for and against, with noted scholars on both sides, but the question is best left to the courts to decide. The use of such concerns to block the bill is a ruse by those who lack the political will to enfranchise D.C. residents.
It's nice for the Post to concede there are "valid" constitutional arguments on both sides. But I think they mean "plausible," since in a world where the Constitution means what it says, only one side can have the "valid" argument—i.e., the correct one. Having examined this matter as closely as anyone I know, I can say that in 30 years of studying the Constitution I've never come across a real (non-hypothetical) constitutional question that is easier than this one. The arguments on the other side, with all due respect to those who make them, are not only invalid but hardly even rise to the level of "plausible," requiring the tortuous misinterpretation of one clause in the text of the Constitution and the suppression of several others. For the short course, go to this recent post of mine, and follow the links for more elucidation.
But the Post, in its anxiety to remedy what it calls an "intolerable injustice," commits an injustice of its own in calling opposition on constitutional grounds a "ruse" by people who are somehow hostile or indifferent to "enfranchis[ing] D.C. residents." The constitutional grounds for a "no" vote on this bill are so compelling that the Post has long since ceased attempting to respond to them, and resorts only to name-calling and temper tantrums. Those grounds are so compelling that members of Congress who vote "no," as they should, can sleep the sleep of the just, knowing they have kept their oath to the Constitution. They don't need to be slandered by the capital's dominant newspaper as heartless bigots where D.C. is concerned.
The Post's editors, by contrast, have enough doubt about their position to recommend that the constitutional issue be "left to the courts to decide"—as if it were a) difficult, b) easy to hand off to the courts in a fashion that shapes it into a question courts can address, and c) appropriate for judicial rather than legislative resolution even if that were done. It is none of the above.
The Post writes also that "[n]o one at yesterday's hearing—even those who vehemently oppose the bill—could argue it's okay for the hundreds of thousands of Americans living in the nation's capital to be taxed, sent to war and governed without any real say in what their government does." I confess I don't get that exercised about the alleged injustice. But if that really concerned the editors, don't you think they'd want D.C. residents to have full representation in Congress—with senators too? Maybe those Americans could, you know, live in a state, which would automatically take care of the problem?
D.C. doesn't need or deserve statehood on its own. The best solution for D.C. residents to get "voting rights" in Congress is for the residential parts of the District to be "retroceded" to Maryland. This is how residents of Alexandria and Arlington, Virginia got to vote for congressmen again.
Majority leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland was a witness at yesterday's hearing and was in high dudgeon about the poor "disenfranchised" residents of D.C. But it's hard to avoid the conclusion that he just doesn't want them back as fellow citizens of Maryland.
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