The State Department is sitting on funds to free the flow of information in closed societies

Mrs. Clinton, Tear Down this Cyberwall. By L. GORDON CROVITZ
The State Department is sitting on funds to free the flow of information in closed societies.WSJ, May 03, 2010

When a government department refuses to spend money that Congress has allocated, there's usually a telling backstory. This is doubly so when the funds are for a purpose as uncontroversial as making the Internet freer.

So why has the State Department refused to spend $45 million in appropriations since 2008 to "expand access and information in closed societies"? The technology to circumvent national restrictions is being provided by volunteers who believe that with funding they can bring Web access to many more people, from Iran to China.

A bipartisan group in Congress intended to pay for tests aimed at expanding the use of software that brings Internet access to "large numbers of users living in closed societies that have acutely hostile Internet environments." The most successful of these services is provided by a group called the Global Internet Freedom Consortium, whose programs include Freegate and Ultrasurf.

When Iranian demonstrators last year organized themselves through Twitter posts and brought news of the crackdown to the outside world, they got past the censors chiefly by using Freegate to get access to outside sites.

The team behind these circumvention programs understands how subversive their efforts can be. As Shiyu Zhou, deputy director of the Global Internet Freedom Consortium, told Congress last year, "The Internet censorship firewalls have become 21st-century versions of Berlin Walls that isolate and dispirit the citizens of closed-society dictatorships."

Repressive governments rightly regard the Internet as an existential threat, giving people powerful ways to communicate and organize. These governments also use the Web as a tool of repression, monitoring emails and other traffic. Recall that Google left China in part because of hacking of human-rights activists' Gmail accounts.

To counter government monitors and censors, these programs give online users encrypted connections to secure proxy servers around the world. A group of volunteers constantly switches the Internet Protocol addresses of the servers—up to 10,000 times an hour. The group has been active since 2000, and repressive governments haven't figured out how to catch up. More than one million Iranians used the system last June to post videos and photos showing the government crackdown.

Mr. Zhou tells me his group would use any additional money to add equipment and to hire full-time technical staff to support the volunteers. For $50 million, he estimates the service could accommodate 5% of Chinese Internet users and 10% in other closed societies—triple the current capacity.

So why won't the State Department fund this group to expand its reach, or at least test how scalable the solution could be? There are a couple of explanations.

The first is that the Global Internet Freedom Consortium was founded by Chinese-American engineers who practice Falun Gong, the spiritual movement suppressed by Beijing. Perhaps not the favorites of U.S. diplomats, but what other group has volunteers engaged enough to keep such a service going? As with the Jewish refuseniks who battled the Soviet Union, sometimes it takes a persecuted minority to stand up to a totalitarian regime.

The second explanation is a split among technologists—between those who support circumvention programs built on proprietary systems and others whose faith is on more open sources of code. A study last year by the Berkman Center at Harvard gave more points to open-source efforts, citing "a well-established contentious debate among software developers about whether secrecy about implementation details is a robust strategy for security." But whatever the theoretical objections, the proprietary systems work.

Another likely factor is realpolitik. Despite the tough speech Hillary Clinton gave in January supporting Internet freedom, it's easy to imagine bureaucrats arguing that the U.S. shouldn't undermine the censorship efforts of Tehran and Beijing. An earlier generation of bureaucrats tried to edit, as overly aggressive, Ronald Reagan's 1987 speech in Berlin urging Mikhail Gorbachev: "Tear down this wall."

It's true that circumvention doesn't solve every problem. Internet freedom researcher and advocate Rebecca MacKinnon has made the point that "circumvention is never going to be the silver bullet" in the sense that it can only give people access to the open Web. It can't help with domestic censorship.

During the Cold War, the West expended huge effort to get books, tapes, fax machines, radio reports and other information, as well as the means to convey it, into closed societies. Circumvention is the digital-age equivalent.

If the State Department refuses to support a free Web, perhaps there's a private solution. An anonymous poster, "chinese.zhang," suggested on a Google message board earlier this year that the company should fund the Global Internet Freedom Consortium as part of its defense against Chinese censorship. "I think Google can easily offer more servers to help to break down the Great Firewall," he wrote.

More Mr. Nice Guy - While nukes proliferate, the Federal President fiddles

More Mr. Nice Guy. By John Bolton

While nukes proliferate, Obama fiddles.

The Weekly Standard, February 8, 2010, Vol. 15, No. 20

In his lengthy State of the Union address, President Obama was brief on national security issues, which he squeezed in toward the end. International terrorism, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and even America’s relief efforts in Haiti all flashed past in bullet-point mentions. On Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama emphasized neither victory nor determination, but merely the early withdrawal of U.S. forces from both. His once vaunted Middle East peace process didn’t make the cut.

Nonetheless, during this windshield tour of the world, the president found time to opine more explicitly than ever before that reducing America’s nuclear weapons and delivery systems will temper the global threat of proliferation. Obama boasted that “the United States and Russia are completing negotiations on the farthest-reaching arms control treaty in nearly two decades” and that he is trying to secure “all vulnerable nuclear materials around the world in four years, so that they never fall into the hands of terrorists.”

Then came Obama’s critical linkage: “These diplomatic efforts have also strengthened our hand in dealing with those nations that insist on violating international agreements in pursuit of nuclear weapons.” Obama described the increasing “isolation” of both North Korea and Iran, the two most conspicuous—but far from the only—nuclear proliferators. He also mentioned the increased sanctions imposed on Pyongyang after its second nuclear test in 2009 and the “growing consequences” he says Iran will face because of his policies.

In fact, reducing our nuclear -arsenal will not somehow persuade Iran and North Korea to alter their behavior or encourage others to apply more pressure on them to do so. Obama’s remarks reflect a complete misreading of strategic realities.

We have no need for further arms control treaties with Russia, especially ones that reduce our nuclear and delivery capabilities to Moscow’s economically forced low levels. We have international obligations, moreover, that Russia does not, requiring our nuclear umbrella to afford protection to friends and allies worldwide. Obama’s policy artificially inflates Russian influence and, depending on the final agreement, will likely reduce our nuclear and strategic delivery capabilities dangerously and unnecessarily. (Securing “loose” nuclear materials internationally has long been a bipartisan goal, properly so. Obama said nothing new on that score.) Meanwhile, Obama is considering treaty restrictions on our missile defense capabilities more damaging than his own previous unilateral reductions.

What warrants close attention is the jarring naïveté of arguing that reducing our capabilities will inhibit nuclear proliferators. That would certainly surprise Tehran and Pyongyang. Obama’s insistence that the evil-doers are “violating international agreements” is also startling, as if this were of equal importance with the proliferation itself.

The premise underlying these assertions may well be found in Obama’s smug earlier comment that we should “put aside the schoolyard taunts about who is tough.  .  .  .  Let’s leave behind the fear and division.” By reducing to the level of wayward boys the debates over whether his policies are making us more or less secure, Obama reveals a deep disdain for the decades of strategic thinking that kept America safe during the Cold War and afterwards. Even more pertinent, Obama’s indifference and scorn for real threats are chilling auguries of what the next three years may hold.

Obama has now explicitly rejected the idea that U.S. weakness is provocative, arguing instead that weakness will convince Tehran and Pyongyang to do the opposite of what they have been resolutely doing for decades—vigorously pursuing their nuclear and missile programs. Obama’s first year amply demonstrates that his approach will do nothing even to retard, let alone stop, Iran and North Korea.

Neither Bush nor Obama administration efforts toward international sanctions have had any measurable impact. The first Security Council sanctions on North Korea after its ballistic missile and nuclear weapons tests in 2006 did not stop Pyongyang from conducting further missile launches and a second nuclear detonation in 2009. Nor have the measures imposed after that second test, about which Obama boasted, impaired the North’s nuclear program or even brought Pyongyang back to the risible Six-Party Talks. Three sets of Security Council restrictions against Iran have only glancingly affected Tehran’s nuclear program, and the Obama administration’s threats of “crippling sanctions” have disappeared along with last year’s series of “deadlines” that Iran purportedly faced. In response, Tehran’s authoritarianism and belligerence have only increased.

With his counterproliferation strategies, such as they were, in disarray, Obama now pins his hopes on moral suasion, which has never influenced Iran, North Korea, or any other determined proliferator. Perhaps it would have been better had the president’s speech not mentioned national security at all.

John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, is the author of Surrender Is Not an Option.

Defining Deficits Down

Defining Deficits Down. By Isabel V. Sawhill
Brookings, January 29, 2010

January 29, 2010 — When the president submits his budget on February 1, there will be a lot of hand-wringing about the possible economic fallout from a virtually unprecedented accumulation of debt. A long string of deficits out into the future will increase our dependence on foreign lenders, threaten the recovery if borrowers begin to demand higher interest rates, burden taxpayers with the costs of servicing the debt, and leave our children with a less prosperous future. Although these economic consequences are bad enough, the effects on public confidence in their government are even worse. Paralysis in the face of such dire warnings tells the public that their government is not working, undermines trust in our political institutions, and leads to more cynicism about the entire process, with ramifications that go far beyond the fiscal problem itself. Moreover the problem is so dire now that instead of doubling down on our efforts to do something we have moved the goal posts and redefined our deficit reduction goals. Although this may simply reflect the depth of the hole we are in and the difficulty of digging our way out, it may also shift public perceptions toward too ready acceptance of current reality and its associated dangers.

In the past there were bipartisan efforts to deal with deficits that were far smaller than those currently projected. Such efforts were grounded in a common belief that spending beyond one’s means was imprudent, even morally wrong. The goal for most of the pre World War II years was simple: an annually balanced budget. This meant that spending was cut and taxes raised even when the economy was depressed as in the 1930s. Following World War II, economists began to argue that the goal should be amended to allow deficit spending during recessions as long as that was offset by surpluses during periods of full employment. By the 1980s, this slightly amended goal was still extant and enshrined, for example, in the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings bill that called for a balanced budget by 1991. And when Ross Perot campaigned in 1992 on the need for a balanced budget, and won 19 percent of the vote, Clinton responded by working hard throughout his two terms to get to balance. The decade ended with a surplus of $236 billion in the federal budget. Fast forward to this year, and the goal has shifted from balancing the budget to keeping deficits below 3 percent of GDP in the president’s budget. That would mean accepting a deficit of over $400 billion (in today’s dollars) as a goal. However, even this much more modest goal now appears impossible to reach.

The current administration will be criticized for moving the goal posts on deficit reduction and for doing far too little to restore fiscal balance. This year’s budget includes a freeze on non-security discretionary spending, support for pay-go rules, and a presidentially appointed deficit-reduction commission. These are good but totally insufficient steps. The spending freeze will affect only a tiny slice of the budget; the pay-go rules will make it more difficult for Congress to dig the hole deeper but won’t affect currently projected red ink; and the commission will likely be a paper tiger. In short, these proposals will still leave us with unsustainable deficits as far as the eye can see. Granted current deficits were largely inherited and have been further ballooned by the need to fight the current downturn, leaving the current administration with a herculean task. But it is depressing to discover that we can no long even aspire to balance the budget once the recession is over.

The late Senator Moynihan used to talk about defining deviancy down by which he meant that new norms get established in response to bad behavior. The nation’s fiscal behavior is now so bad that I fear we will soon accept a degree of fiscal profligacy that would have been unthinkable in earlier times. Shame on all of our elected officials, past and present, who have allowed this to happen.

Study finds focus on abstinence in sex-ed classes can delay sexual activity

Study finds focus on abstinence in sex-ed classes can delay sexual activity

By Rob Stein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 1, 2010; 4:35 PM

Sex education classes that focus on encouraging children to remain abstinent can convince a significant proportion to delay sexual activity, researchers reported Monday in a landmark study that could have major implications for the nation's embattled efforts to protect young people against unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted diseases.

In the first carefully designed study to evaluate the controversial approach to sex ed, researchers found that only about a third of 6th and 7th graders who went through sessions focused on abstinence started having sex in the next two years. In contrast, nearly half of students who got other classes, including those that included information about contraception, became sexually active.

"I think we've written off abstinence-only education without looking closely at the nature of the evidence," said John B. Jemmott III, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, who led the federally funded study. "Our study shows this could be one approach that could be used."

The research, published in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine, comes amid intense debate over how to reduce sexual activity, pregnancies, births and sexually transmitted diseases among children and teenagers. After declining for more than a decade, births, pregnancies and STDs among U.S. teens have begun increasing again.

The Obama administration eliminated more than $150 million in federal funding targeted at abstinence programs, which are relatively new and have little rigorous evidence supporting their effectiveness. Instead it is launching a new $114 million pregnancy prevention initiative that will fund only programs that have been shown scientifically to work. The administration Monday proposed expanding that program to $183 million next year. The move came after intensifying questions about the effectiveness of abstinence programs.

"This new study is game-changing," said Sarah Brown, who leads the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy. "For the first time, there is strong evidence that an abstinence-only intervention can help very young teens delay sex and reduce their recent sexual activity as well."

The new study is the first to evaluate an abstinence program using a carefully "controlled" design that compared it directly to alternative strategies -- considered the highest level of scientific evidence.

"This takes away the main pillar of opposition to abstinence education," said Robert Rector, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation who wrote the criteria for federal funding of abstinence programs. "I've always known that abstinence programs have gotten a bad rap."

Even long-time critics of the approach praised the new study, saying it provided strong evidence that such programs can work and may deserve taxpayer support.

"One of the things that's exciting about this study is that it says we have a new tool to add to our repertoire," said Monica Rodriguez, vice president for education and training at the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States.

Based on the findings, Obama administration officials said programs like the one evaluated in the study could be eligible for federal funding.

"No one study determines funding decisions, but the findings from the research paper suggest that this kind of project could be competitive for grants if there's promise that it achieves the goal of teen pregnancy prevention," said Health and Human Services Department spokesman Nicholas Pappas.

Several critics of abstinence-only approach argued that the curriculum tested was not representative of most abstinence programs. It did not take on a moralistic tone as many abstinence programs do. Most notably, the sessions encouraged children to delay sex until they are ready, not necessarily until they were married, did not portray sex outside of marriage as never appropriate or disparage condoms.

"There is no data in this study to support the 'abstain-until marriage' programs, which research proved ineffective during the Bush administration," said James Wagoner, president of Advocates for Youth.

But abstinence supporters disputed that, saying that the new program was essentially the same as other good abstinence programs.

"For our critics to use 'marriage' as the thing that sets the program in this study apart from federally funded programs is an exaggeration and smacks of an effort to dismiss abstinence education rather than understanding what it is," Valerie Huber of the National Abstinence Education Association.

The new study involved 662 African-American students who were randomly assigned to go through one of five programs: An eight-hour curriculum that encouraged them to delay having sex; an eight-hour program focused on teaching safe sex; an eight- or 12-hour program that did both; or an eight-hour program focused on teaching the youngsters other ways to be healthy, such as eating well and exercising.

Over the next two years, about 33 percent of the students who went through the abstinence program started having sex, compared to about 52 percent who were just taught safe sex. About 42 percent of the students who went through the comprehensive program started having sex, and about 47 percent of those who just learned about other ways to be healthy. The abstinence program had no negative effects on condom use, which has been a major criticism of the abstinence approach.

"The take-home message is that we need a variety of interventions to address an epidemic like HIV, sexually transmitted diseases and pregnancy," Jemmott said. "There are populations that really want an abstinence intervention. They are against telling children about condoms. This study suggests abstinence programs can be part of the mix of programs that we offer."

Haitian Amnesty - A humane decision for temporary refuge in America

Haitian Amnesty. WSJ Editorial
A humane decision for temporary refuge in America.
WSJ, Jan 16, 2010

The Obama Administration acted properly, and humanely, late yesterday in extending temporary amnesty to Haitians who were illegally inside the U.S. before this week's catastrophic earthquake. Some 30,000 Haitians had been awaiting deportation but will now be allowed to stay in the U.S. and work for another 18 months.

You might even call this amnesty of a sort, if we can use that politically taboo word. But we hope even the most restrictionist voices on the right and in the labor movement will understand the humanitarian imperative. The suffering and chaos since the earthquake should make it obvious that Haiti is no place to return people whose only crime was coming to America to escape the island's poverty and ill-governance.

For that matter, we don't mind if they stay here permanently. Haitian immigrants as a group are among America's most successful, which demonstrates that Haiti's woes owe more to corruption, disdain for property rights and lack of public safety than to any flaw in its people. Their remittances to Haiti also help to sustain the impoverished population. Haitians received some $1.65 billion from overseas in 2006, according to the Inter-American Development Bank.

We can argue later about whether to make this temporary amnesty permanent, but for now the U.S. decision to let the Haitians stay is evidence of the generosity that Americans typically show in a crisis.

Don't Like the Numbers? Change 'Em

Don't Like the Numbers? Change 'Em. By MICHAEL J. BOSKIN
If a CEO issued the kind of distorted figures put out by politicians and scientists, he'd wind up in prison.
WSJ, Jan 14, 2010

Politicians and scientists who don't like what their data show lately have simply taken to changing the numbers. They believe that their end—socialism, global climate regulation, health-care legislation, repudiating debt commitments, la gloire française—justifies throwing out even minimum standards of accuracy. It appears that no numbers are immune: not GDP, not inflation, not budget, not job or cost estimates, and certainly not temperature. A CEO or CFO issuing such massaged numbers would land in jail.

The late economist Paul Samuelson called the national income accounts that measure real GDP and inflation "one of the greatest achievements of the twentieth century." Yet politicians from Europe to South America are now clamoring for alternatives that make them look better.

A commission appointed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy suggests heavily weighting "stability" indicators such as "security" and "equality" when calculating GDP. And voilà!—France outperforms the U.S., despite the fact that its per capita income is 30% lower. Nobel laureate Ed Prescott called this disparity the difference between "prosperity and depression" in a 2002 paper—and attributed it entirely to France's higher taxes.

With Venezuela in recession by conventional GDP measures, President Hugo Chávez declared the GDP to be a capitalist plot. He wants a new, socialist-friendly way to measure the economy. Maybe East Germans were better off than their cousins in the West when the Berlin Wall fell; starving North Koreans are really better off than their relatives in South Korea; the 300 million Chinese lifted out of abject poverty in the last three decades were better off under Mao; and all those Cubans risking their lives fleeing to Florida on dinky boats are loco.

There is historical precedent for a "socialist GDP." When President George H.W. Bush sent me to help Mikhail Gorbachev with economic reform, I found out that the Soviet statistics office kept two sets of books: those they published, and those they actually believed (plus another for Stalin when he was alive).

In Argentina, President Néstor Kirchner didn't like the political and budget hits from high inflation. After a politicized personnel purge in 2002, he changed the inflation measures. Conveniently, the new numbers showed lower inflation and therefore lower interest payments on the government's inflation-linked bonds. Investor and public confidence in the objectivity of the inflation statistics evaporated. His wife and successor Cristina Kirchner is now trying to grab the central bank's reserves to pay for the country's debt.

America has not been immune from this dangerous numbers game. Every president is guilty of spinning unpleasant statistics. President Richard Nixon even thought there was a conspiracy against him at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But President Barack Obama has taken it to a new level. His laudable attempt at transparency in counting the number of jobs "created or saved" by the stimulus bill has degenerated into farce and was just junked this week.

The administration has introduced the new notion of "jobs saved" to take credit where none was ever taken before. It seems continually to confuse gross and net numbers. For example, it misses the jobs lost or diverted by the fiscal stimulus. And along with the congressional leadership it hypes the number of "green jobs" likely to be created from the explosion of spending, subsidies, loans and mandates, while ignoring the job losses caused by its taxes, debt, regulations and diktats.

The president and his advisers—their credibility already reeling from exaggeration (the stimulus bill will limit unemployment to 8%) and reneged campaign promises (we'll go through the budget "line-by-line")—consistently imply that their new proposed regulation is a free lunch. When the radical attempt to regulate energy and the environment with the deeply flawed cap-and-trade bill is confronted with economic reality, instead of honestly debating the trade-offs they confidently pronounce that it boosts the economy. They refuse to admit that it simply boosts favored sectors and firms at the expense of everyone else.

Rabid environmentalists have descended into a separate reality where only green counts. It's gotten so bad that the head of the California Air Resources Board, Mary Nichols, announced this past fall that costly new carbon regulations would boost the economy shortly after she was told by eight of the state's most respected economists that they were certain these new rules would damage the economy. The next day, her own economic consultant, Harvard's Robert Stavis, denounced her statement as a blatant distortion.

Scientists are expected to make sure their findings are replicable, to make the data available, and to encourage the search for new theories and data that may overturn the current consensus. This is what Galileo, Darwin and Einstein—among the most celebrated scientists of all time—did. But some climate researchers, most notably at the University of East Anglia, attempted to hide or delete temperature data when that data didn't show recent rapid warming. They quietly suppressed and replaced the numbers, and then attempted to squelch publication of studies coming to different conclusions.

The Obama administration claims a dubious "Keynesian" multiplier of 1.5 to feed the Democrats' thirst for big spending. The administration's idea is that virtually all their spending creates jobs for unemployed people and that additional rounds of spending create still more—raising income by $1.50 for each dollar of government spending. Economists differ on such multipliers, with many leading figures pegging them at well under 1.0 as the government spending in part replaces private spending and jobs. But all agree that every dollar of spending requires a present value of a dollar of future taxes, which distorts decisions to work, save, and invest and raises the cost of the dollar of spending to well over a dollar. Thus, only spending with large societal benefits is justified, a criterion unlikely to be met by much current spending (perusing the projects on recovery.gov doesn't inspire confidence).

Even more blatant is the numbers game being used to justify health-insurance reform legislation, which claims to greatly expand coverage, decrease health-insurance costs, and reduce the deficit. That magic flows easily from counting 10 years of dubious Medicare "savings" and tax hikes, but only six years of spending; assuming large cuts in doctor reimbursements that later will be cancelled; and making the states (other than Sen. Ben Nelson's Nebraska) pay a big share of the cost by expanding Medicaid eligibility. The Medicare "savings" and payroll tax hikes are counted twice—first to help pay for expanded coverage, and then to claim to extend the life of Medicare.

One piece of good news: The public isn't believing much of this out-of-control spin. Large majorities believe the health-care legislation will raise their insurance costs and increase the budget deficit. Most Americans are highly skeptical of the claims of climate extremists. And they have a more realistic reaction to the extraordinary deterioration in our public finances than do the president and Congress.

As a society and as individuals, we need to make difficult, even wrenching choices, often with grave consequences. To base those decisions on highly misleading, biased, and even manufactured numbers is not just wrong, but dangerous.

Squandering their credibility with these numbers games will only make it more difficult for our elected leaders to enlist support for difficult decisions from a public increasingly inclined to disbelieve them.

Mr. Boskin is a professor of economics at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He chaired the Council of Economic Advisers under President George H.W. Bush.

Comentarios al post "California: Caos democrático" en Abilene blog

Comentarios al post "California: Caos democrático" en Abilene blog
Dec 28, 2009

hola, creo que hay varias cosas que no acaban de capturar realmente la esencia de las diferencias del sistema federal y el europeo continental:

“Con este hecho se demuestran las dificultades de articular estados en los que gobiernan políticos cuyas ideologías y planes de acciones han resultado fracasadas.”

A qué ideologías se refieren? Porque las dos cámaras son, sorpresa, de mayoría demócrata, cosa que no sé si se puede deducir del artículo (aunque sí del artículo de P Krugman). Parece, de otros trozos del mismo, que se refiere a que los fracasados son los republicanos.

Me parece ver aquí una habitual confusión: en política europea el primer ministro es elegido en la cámara popular, vamos a decir, por lo que muy difícilmente piensan distinto la mayoría de la cámara y el Ejecutivo (salvo el caso italiano), mientras que en los EE UU lo normal es que haya dos cámaras iguales (puede haber una) y el Ejecutivo sea elegido al margen de las mismas. Gobiernan todos, el Legislativo y el Ejecutivo. No hay que confundir gobernador o presidente federal con mayoría en la cámara baja, que es el caso de aquí.

Acerca de esto otro:

“Los ciclos legislativos desfasados del ciclo del país provocan que mientras hay una renovación política en EEUU, aun siguen gobernando en algunos estados las anteriores corrientes de poder (recordemos que en las elecciones generales B. Obama se proclamó vencedor en California, A. Schwarzenegger es republicano).”

un par de cosas:

- Lo de “siguen gobernando en algunos estados las anteriores corrientes de poder” da la impresión de que el autor cree que, ya que en las elecciones federales ha habido mayorías demócratas en las cámaras federales y el Ejecutivo federal, por ello debería haber casi 50 de los 50 estados con mayorías demócratas en Legislativo y Ejecutivo. Esto es totalmente ajeno a cómo funciona el sistema. De hecho, más o menos la mitad de los estados son republicanos y más o menos la mitad son demócratas, simplificando. Eso es al margen de quién consiga la presidencia federal.

- Como dije antes, las dos cámaras son demócratas (lo que hace que se vea especialmente flojo el análisis sociológico de “Sólo una minoría de los californianos se molesta en votar habitualmente, los votantes tienden a ser mayores, más blancos y más ricos que la mayoría predominante de la población”, según eso y las creencias del autor debería haber mayoría republicana en ambas cámaras). Que el gobernador sea republicano (y muchos republicanos dirían que es un RINO, Republican In Name Only) es irrelevante para esta discusión. Lo que falta es una mayoría suficiente de demócratas en las cámaras, pero si la gente prefiere la parálisis (y es bastante común tener el Ejecutivo de un partido y las cámaras o al menos una de ellas con mayoría de otro partido opuesto, ejemplo parálisis en la época Clinton), es lo que se necesita en ese momento, aunque visto desde Europa parezca incomprensible.

Por último, cree de verdad el autor que P Krugman es parte desinteresada en los análisis? Cree que se le puede recomendar como lectura única, sin equilibrar con otra visión después de frases como éstas?:

. “los miembros restantes del partido [republicano] se han vuelto cada vez más radicales, cada vez menos interesados en la labor de gobernar.”

. “el creciente extremismo del partido [republicano]”

. “Dicho sin rodeos: los últimos acontecimientos indican que el Partido Republicano se ha vuelto loco al perder el poder”

. “Los pocos moderados que quedaban [entre otras cosas] han huido”

Los que votan republicano son, como los que votan demócrata, cerca de la mitad del electorado y más o menos del país. Acusar a cualquiera de las mitades de creciente extremismo, haberse vuelto locos, haber hecho huir a los moderados, o estar boicoteando la labor de gobierno revela los odios y amores del profesor, que no parece una fuente que los historiadores puedan citar en el futuro sin añadir inputs de otras fuentes.

Jackson Toby's "The Lowering of Higher Education in America"

On Campus, Unprepared. By BEN WILDAVSKY
Colleges are filled with unserious students learning too little. What should be done?
WSJ, Dec 23, 2009

When President Barack Obama announced earlier this year that the U.S. should aim to have the world's highest proportion of college graduates by 2020, he was staking out an ambitious but hardly a maverick goal. It is widely recognized, by Republicans and Democrats alike, that the gap between the earnings of high-school graduates and college graduates has become a chasm in recent decades. More college graduates would mean more prosperity for individuals—and for the nation, too. Bowing to this logic, governments around the world—from China and India to the Middle East—are trying to boost college attendance for their knowledge-hungry populations.

As Mr. Obama's goal suggests, there is plenty of room for improvement in the U.S. While nearly seven in 10 high-school graduates go on directly to two- or four-year colleges (up from 49% in 1972), many students are poorly prepared for college and end up taking remedial courses. And huge numbers fail to graduate. Reformers believe, not without reason, that such problems can be solved in part by improved high-school preparation and better college instruction. But is it possible that aiming to increase the number of American college graduates is actually a fool's errand?

A few skeptics think so. Most prominent among them is Charles Murray, who in "Real Education" (2008) argued that most young people are just not smart enough to go to college and should be encouraged to take other paths instead, especially vocational training. Now comes Jackson Toby with "The Lowering of Higher Education in America," a provocative variation on Mr. Murray's theme.

Mr. Toby draws on social-science data as well as personal experience—he taught sociology at Rutgers University for 50 years before retiring a few years ago—to decry the intellectual conditions that prevail on the American campus. Sidestepping the matter of students' innate abilities, he blames low academic standards mostly on the easy availability of financial aid to undergraduates who are unqualified for college-level coursework.

Early on, Mr. Toby concedes that education has become the country's "main economic escalator." But he is alarmed at how few students are prepared to meet even the minimal demands of a real college education. He faults lax college-admission standards that give high schools little incentive to push their students harder. Too many undergrads can't write with minimal competence or understand basic cultural references. Students often take silly, politicized courses. And they feel entitled to inflated grades: Mr. Toby reports that one of his students spewed obscenities at him for ending the young man's straight-A record.

Perhaps this kind of experience accounts for Mr. Toby's seeming bitterness toward unserious students, whom he calls "unprepared, half-asleep catatonics who drift in late and leave early." Most undergrads, Mr. Toby suggests, enjoy a steady diet of extracurricular hedonism while skating through their coursework (though it's unclear how this claim jibes with his complaints about low graduation rates).

Worst of all, he says, students have been misled about the value of their degrees. Yes, a bachelor of arts degree commands a wage premium, but less because of a graduate's acquired knowledge than because of the signal that his degree sends to employers about the abilities that got him into college and about a variety of soft skills, such as reliability and problem-solving capacity. Graduates in undemanding majors—in the humanities, for example, or most of the social sciences—are unlikely to earn what their more studious counterparts in, say, engineering can. They are thus disproportionately likely to be saddled with debt and prone to default, Mr. Toby argues. He claims that this pattern amounts to the kind of unsound lending that led to our recent credit crisis—one that he darkly suggests may soon be repeated in higher education. He believes that today's "promiscuous" system of college grants and loans—which, at the federal level, is based largely on financial need—ought to be retooled to focus on academic merit.

But his platform is less radical than his book's subtitle promises ("Why Financial Aid Should Be Based on Student Performance"). He acknowledges that quite a few states already have merit-based aid. And in a concession to political reality he would continue the federal Pell Grant program, which focuses on need alone. Mr. Toby's main proposal, then, is to require good grades and test scores from those seeking federal student loans. This requirement, he believes, would improve incentives for academic performance and mitigate the inevitable trade-off between widening access to college and maintaining educational standards.

Strangely, Mr. Toby does not address the biggest objection to merit aid, which is that it usually subsidizes middle- and upper-income students who would go to college anyway. By contrast, need-based aid often provides make-or-break help to low-income applicants: Without grants and student loans, they would probably not go to college at all.

Mr. Toby sees reduced college opportunities as the price of keeping under-prepared students off campus. But that is one trade-off we should not make, especially when a college degree carries so much value in the marketplace. Our vast and varied college system, to its credit, enrolls all sorts of students. Mr. Toby delineates the system's manifold shortcomings, which badly need to be remedied. And to be sure, academic merit deserves a place in our financial aid system. But the indisputable benefits of college ought to be spread more widely, not less.

Mr. Wildavsky, a senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation and a guest scholar at the Brookings Institution, is the author of "The Great Brain Race: How Global Universities Are Reshaping the World," to be published next spring.

Sometimes the good guys do commit 'war crimes'

The Real Rules of War. By WARREN KOZAK
Sometimes the good guys do commit 'war crimes.'
WSJ, Dec 23, 2009

Five years ago, a particularly gruesome image made its way to our television screens from the war in Iraq. Four U.S. civilian contractors working in Fallujah were ambushed and killed by al Qaeda. Their bodies were burned, then dragged through the streets. Two of the charred bodies were hung from the Euphrates Bridge and left dangling.

This barbaric act left an impression that our military did not forget: In a special operation earlier this year, Navy SEALs captured the mastermind of that attack, Ahmed Hashim Abed. But after he was taken into custody in September, Abed claimed he was punched by his captors. He showed a fat lip to prove it. Three of the SEALS are now awaiting a courts-martial on charges ranging from assault to dereliction of duty and making false statements.

This incident and its twisted irony takes me back to an oddly serene setting many years ago. When I was in college, I joined my parents on a trip to retrace my father's wartime experience in Europe. We drove from France, through Holland and Belgium and on to Germany—the same route he had taken with the U.S. Army in 1944-45. At a field outside the Belgian town of Malmedy, we got out of our rented car where my father described something I had never heard before.

During the Battle of the Bulge, in the bleak December of 1944, the Germans had quickly overrun the American lines. They took thousands of prisoners as they pushed through in a last chance gamble to turn the war around. One unit, part of the First SS Panzer Division, had captured over a hundred GIs. They were moving fast, and they didn't care to be burdened by prisoners. So the SS troops put the American soldiers in that field and mowed them down with machine guns.

Around 90 Americans were killed in that barrage. The Germans then walked through the tangle of bodies, shooting those who were still alive in the back of the head. The few that survived were brought to where my father was located in the nearby town of Liege where word of the massacre quickly spread.

My father was never a talker. And in spite of the fact that we were on a trip to look at his past, he didn't open up much, or couldn't. When I asked him what the reaction was among the U.S. troops, he answered without emotion: "We didn't take prisoners for two weeks." I immediately understood what he meant, and had the sense not to press the issue any further. I just looked out at the field, now green and peaceful on a beautiful summer day, and realized he was looking at the same field and seeing something quite different.

In the weeks following the Malmedy massacre, U.S. troops clearly broke the rules of the Geneva Conventions. Justified or not, they were technically guilty of war crimes.

My guess is that the American correspondents imbedded with those troops knew all about this and chose not to report it. So did their officers. They understood the gravity of the war, as well as the absolute importance of its outcome. And they understood that disclosing this information might ultimately help the enemy. In other words, they used common sense. Was the U.S. a lesser country because these GIs weren't arrested? Was the Constitution jeopardized? Somehow it survived.

You don't have to dig too deep to understand that war brings out behavior in people that they would never demonstrate in normal life. In Paul Fussell's moving memoir, "The Boys' Crusade," the former infantryman relates a story about the liberation of Dachau. There were about 120 SS guards who had been captured by the Americans. Even though the Germans were being held at gunpoint, they still had the arrogance—or epic stupidity—to continue to heap verbal abuse and threats on the inmates. Their American guards, thoroughly disgusted by what they had already witnessed in the camp, had seen enough and opened fire on the SS. Some of the remaining SS guards were handed over to the inmates who tore them limb from limb. Another war crime? No doubt. Justified? It depends on your point of view. But before you weigh in, realize that you didn't walk through the camp. You didn't smell it. You didn't witness the obscene horror of the Nazis.

Rules of war are important. They are something to strive for as they separate us from our distant ancestors. But when only one side follows these rules, they no longer elevate us. They create a very unlevel field and more than a little frustration. It is equally bizarre for any of us to judge someone's behavior in war by the rules we follow in our very peaceful universe. We sit in homes that are air-conditioned in the summer and warmed in the winter. We have more than enough food in our bellies and we get enough sleep. The stress in our lives won't ever match the stress of battle. Can we honestly begin to decide if a soldier acted in compliance with rules that work perfectly well on Main Street but not, say, in Malmedy or Fallujah?

In his book, Mr. Fussell probably sums up the feelings of many soldiers when he quotes a British captain, John Tonkin, who experienced a great deal of the war. "I have always felt," Capt. Tonkin said, "that the Geneva Convention is a dangerous piece of stupidity, because it leads people to believe that war can be civilized. It can't."

Mr. Kozak is the author of "LeMay: The Life and Wars of General Curtis LeMay" (Regnery, 2009).

Al From: Democrats Don't Need the Public Option - Transformational reforms have always passed with bipartisan majorities

Democrats Don't Need the Public Option. By AL FROM
Transformational reforms have always passed with bipartisan majorities.
WSJ, Oct 16, 2009

Now that the Senate Finance Committee has voted for a health-care bill that does not include a government-run plan, it would be a mistake for Democrats to insist on adding the public option to reform legislation this year.

By insisting on the public option, liberal Democrats will allow the Republicans, who have no ideas of their own, to cloud the prospects for reform. If this happens, Republicans will be able to divert attention away from reforms most Americans want and instead focus on what Americans disagree on—whether we need a new government-run health plan.

As President Barack Obama has made clear, we need to reform. Right now, health insurance is too costly and the health-insurance market is not competitive enough. Too many people lack insurance or the chance to choose a plan that best suits their needs. Too many people are denied coverage because of pre-existing conditions or lose their coverage when they become sick. And our most successful public program—Medicare—is on the road to going broke. Doing nothing is not acceptable.

With control of the White House and Congress, the American people will rightly hold Democrats accountable for the outcome of the health debate. At the same time, the focus on the public option and level of discord it has generated is already taking a toll on the president's approval ratings and hurting the party more generally. In January, Democrats enjoyed a double digit lead on the "generic ballot"—a measure of support for a party. Last week, a Gallup poll showed that Democrats are now essentially in a dead heat with Republicans on the generic ballot. Particularly significant, the poll showed a nearly 20-point drop in Democratic support since the last election among independents, the key to our victories in 2006 and 2008. Insisting on the public option could cost many Blue Dogs in the House and a number of red-state moderates in the Senate their seats.

Now is the time for Mr. Obama to lead the way to historic health-care reform. He's the only one who can. I'd suggest he do so by taking these three steps:

• First, say unequivocally that he wants a plan that jettisons the public option and contains real reforms to cut health-care costs. As the Senate Finance Committee bill shows, a public option is unnecessary to expand coverage. Dropping it should win support of most centrist Democrats.
• Second, make clear that he does not want Congress to use parliamentary maneuvers, like the budget reconciliation process, to ram through a bill that can't command 60 votes in the Senate. Health-care reform needs broad support; it is too important and too controversial for Congress to pass by resorting to legislative chicanery or short-circuiting the legislative process.
• And finally, make one more effort to bring moderate Republicans along. Transformational reforms, such as civil rights legislation and Medicare in the 1960s, have always been passed with bipartisan majorities. Health-care reform should be no exception. The president promised a post-partisan politics. What better place to forge it than on his most important initiative?

If Mr. Obama takes these steps, I'm convinced Congress would pass a bill that requires every American to buy insurance, offers consumers a choice of plans through a new health exchange like the successful Commonwealth Connector in Massachusetts, provides subsidies that assure everyone can afford a basic plan, and prevents insurance companies from denying coverage to people with pre-existing conditions or dropping coverage for people who become sick. All of these are reforms most American can agree on.

I'd personally like to see health-care reform include fees (as the president proposed) on Cadillac health-care plans, incentives to replace fee-for-service payments with more cost-effective models (the best way to bring down health-care costs over the long haul), and measures to limit abuses in malpractice suits (which Republicans have long called for).

Such a plan would meet the objectives the president has already outlined—expanding coverage, lowering costs, and improving quality—without adding to the federal deficit. With centrist Democrats signed on, such a plan should garner the 60 votes necessary to pass the Senate. Even without a public option, it would achieve most of what liberals have long fought for. Open-minded Republicans might even find it hard to resist.

Mr. From, the principal of The From Company LLC, is the founder of the Democratic Leadership Council.

‘Blue Dogs’ or Corporate Shills?

‘Blue Dogs’ or Corporate Shills? By Thomas Frank
WSJ, Aug 05, 2009

Capitalism is said to be in terrible trouble these days, with the profit motive suffering rampant badmouthing. Entrepreneurs are facing criticism, damnable criticism. And this criticism must stop.

If we don’t watch what we say, some warn, the supermen who shoulder the world will soon grow tired of our taunting, will shrug off their burden and walk righteously away, leaving us lesser mortals to stew in our resentment and envy.

So far have things gone that the editors of the Washington Post, ever vigilant against deteriorating public morals, apparently decided last week that Americans required a strong dose of instruction in the basic principles of their old-time economic religion. Stephen L. Carter, the famous law professor from Yale University, took the pulpit. And from the heights of the Post’s op-ed page, he instructed us to cheer whenever we discovered that someone was making money.

“High profits are excellent news,” he intoned. “The only way a firm can make money is to sell people what they want at a price they are willing to pay.”

Since that’s the one and only way a firm can make a profit—fraud isn’t a problem, I guess, nor are subsidies or cherry-picking or price-fixing or conflicts of interest—profit is a foolproof sign of civic uprightness.

Professor Carter’s essay was supposed to be a word of caution in a dark, anticapitalist time. But if you read your newspaper closely, it’s not hard to spot glimmers of profit-taking here and there. For example, while some see the city of Washington as a stage for anticorporate posturing, in fact it is ingeniously entrepreneurial.

Consider the “Blue Dog” Democrats, whose money-making ways were the subject of a page-one story in the Washington Post on the very day after Mr. Carter’s sermon. The Blue Dogs, as the world knows, are the caucus of conservative House Democrats who have been much in the news of late for their role in weakening the Obama administration’s plans for a public health-insurance option.

Much of the writing about the Blue Dogs revolves around the question of why they do what they do. What makes the Dogs run? Where did they get their peculiar name? And why do they chase this car but not that one?

The Blue Dogs’s official caucus Web site answers with rhetorical tail-chasing in which “centrism” is so exalted that it justifies any position the centrist takes by virtue of the label itself. The slightly more sophisticated explanation currently in vogue with the media—the Dogs come from heartland districts where the culture wars are a big deal—helps even less.
As the syndicated columnist David Sirota pointed out last week on the OpenLeft blog, having constituents who care deeply about, say, gun rights doesn’t really have anything to do with the pro-corporate stands on mortgage modification and health insurance that have made the Blue Dogs famous.

Friday’s page-one Post story about the Blue Dogs suggests a far simpler explanation: Entrepreneurship. In addition to everything else, the Dogs are champion fund raisers. Individual Dogs do far better than garden-variety Democrats when it comes to bringing in contributions from folks with business before Congress, like the insurance industry and the medical industry. According to CQ, their political action committee is the only Democratic PAC to rival the big Republican dogs; in 2009 fund raising it has been bested only by Mitt Romney’s gang.

So this is the Blue Dogs’ day, with games of fetch down on K Street that had me reminiscing, as I read the Post’s description, about the times when Tom DeLay and his pack did their own tricks for industry’s table scraps.

My guess is that the Blue Dogs, like Jack Abramoff’s Republicans before them, are more keenly attuned than their colleagues to that force of universal goodness, the profit motive. Theirs is simply a less ferocious version of what we had before, with cuddly bipartisan righteousness replacing the fierce red-state righteousness of DeLay’s dogs. But the master is the same as ever, and surely we can still count on the profit motive to deliver the very best in public policy.

Still, there remains the problem of the senseless moniker, “Blue Dog.” In the interests of improved political nicknames, let me propose an alternative. Back in 1932, the future Illinois Sen. Paul Douglas advised progressives not to expect too much from the Democratic Party. It was, he wrote, “maintained by the business interests” as a kind of “lifeboat.” Whenever the GOP ship sprung a leak—whenever Republicans were no longer willing or able to do business’s bidding—the interests simply piled into the other party and made their escape.

The Democrats have improved considerably since those days, at least from a progressive standpoint. But there are still branches of the party willing to carry out the ancestral mission. Let’s call them what they are: the lifeboat caucus.

Fukuyama: Iran, Islam and the Rule of Law

Iran, Islam and the Rule of Law. By FRANCIS FUKUYAMA
Islamic political movements have been one form of revolt against arbitrary government.
WSJ, Jul 28, 2009

When Columbia University President Lee Bollinger introduced Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at his school in September 2007, he denounced him as a “petty tyrant.”
Ahmadinejad is many bad things, including a Holocaust denier and a strong proponent of a nuclear Iran. But as recent events have underlined, Iran is not quite a tyranny, petty or grand, and the office Ahmadinejad occupies does not give him final say in Iranian affairs. That role is more truly occupied by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, head of the Council of Guardians and Iran’s supreme leader.

A real tyranny would never permit elections in the first place—North Korea never does—nor would it allow demonstrations contesting the election results to spiral out of control. Yet Iran is no liberal democracy. So what kind of beast is it? And in what ways should we want its regime to evolve?

Political scientists categorize the Islamic Republic of Iran as an “electoral authoritarian” regime of a new sort. They put it in the same basket as Hugo Chávez’s Venezuela or Vladimir Putin’s Russia. By this view, Iran is fundamentally an authoritarian regime run by a small circle of clerics and military officials who use elections to legitimate themselves.

Others think of Iran as a medieval theocracy. Its 1979 constitution vests sovereignty not in the people, but in God, and establishes Islam and the Quran as the supreme sources of law.

The Iranian Constitution is a curious hybrid of authoritarian, theocratic and democratic elements. Articles One and Two do vest sovereignty in God, but Article Six mandates popular elections for the presidency and the Majlis, or parliament. Articles 19-42 are a bill of rights, guaranteeing, among other things, freedom of expression, public gatherings and marches, women’s equality, protection of ethnic minorities, due process and private property, as well as some “second generation” social rights like social security and health care.

The truly problematic part of the constitution is Section Eight (Articles 107-112) on the Guardian Council and the “Leader.” All the democratic procedures and rights in the earlier sections of the constitution are qualified by certain powers reserved to a council of senior clerics.

These powers, specified in Article 110, include control over the armed forces, the ability to declare war, and appointment powers over the judiciary, heads of media, army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Another article lays out conditions under which the Supreme Leader can be removed by the Guardian Council. But that procedure is hardly democratic or transparent.

One does not have to go back to the Middle Ages to find historical precedents for this type of constitution. The clearest parallel would be the German Constitution adopted after the country was unified in the 1870s. Pre-World War I Germany had an elected parliament, or Reichstag, but reserved important powers for an unelected Kaiser, particularly in foreign policy and defense. This constitution got Germany into big trouble. The unelected part of the leadership controlled the armed forces. Eventually, though, it came to be controlled by the armed forces. This seems to be what’s unfolding in Iran today.

Compared to Section Eight, the references in the Iranian Constitution to God and religion as the sources of law are much less problematic. They could, under the right circumstances, be the basis for Iran’s eventual evolution into a moderate, law-governed country.

The rule of law was originally rooted in religion in all societies where it came to prevail, including the West. The great economist Friedrich Hayek noted that law should be prior to legislation. That is, the law should reflect a broad social consensus on the rules of justice. In Europe, it was the church that originally defined the law and acted as its custodian. European monarchs respected the rule of law because it was written by an authority higher and more legitimate than themselves.

Something similar happened in the pre-modern Middle East. There was a functional separation of church and state. The ulama were legal scholars and custodians of Shariah law while the sultans exercised political authority. The sultans conceded they were not the ultimate source of law but had to live within rules established by Muslim case law. There was no democracy, but there was something resembling a rule of law.

This traditional, religiously based rule of law was destroyed in the Middle East’s transition to modernity. Replacing it, particularly in the Arab world, was untrammeled executive authority: Presidents and other dictators accepted no constraints, either legislative or judicial, on their power.

The legal scholar Noah Feldman has argued that the widespread demand for a return to Shariah in many Muslim countries does not necessarily reflect a desire to impose harsh, Taliban-style punishments and oppress women. Rather, it reflects a nostalgia for a dimly remembered historical time when Muslim rulers were not all-powerful autocrats, but respected Islamic rules of justice—Islamic rule of law.

So what kind of future should we wish for Iran, in light of the massive demonstrations? My own preference would be for Iran to some day adopt a new, Western-style constitution guaranteeing religious freedom, a secular state, and sovereignty vested firmly in the people, rather than God.

But a considerable amount of anecdotal evidence (we don’t have anything better) suggests this is not necessarily the agenda of the protesters. Many of them, including opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi, say they want Iran to remain an Islamic Republic. They look at the radical regime change that occurred in next door Iraq and don’t want that for themselves. What they seem to wish for is that the democratic features of the constitution be better respected, and that the executive authorities, including the Guardian Council, and the military and paramilitary organizations, stop manipulating elections and respect the law.

Iran could evolve towards a genuine rule-of-law democracy within the broad parameters of the 1979 constitution. It would be necessary to abolish Article 110, which gives the Guardian Council control over the armed forces and the media, and to shift its function to something more like a supreme court that could pass judgment on the consistency of legislation with Shariah. In time, the Council might be subject to some form of democratic control, like the U.S. Supreme Court, even if its members needed religious credentials.

Eliminating religion altogether from the Iranian Constitution is more problematic. The rule of law prevails not because of its formal and procedural qualities, but because it reflects broadly held social norms. If future Iranian rulers are ever to respect the rule of law as traditional Muslim rulers once did, it will have to be a law that comes from the hearts of the Iranian people. Perhaps that will one day be a completely secular law. That is unlikely to be the case today.

Unfortunately, Iranians may never get to make the choice for themselves. The clerical-military clique currently exercising power is likely to drag Iran into conflict with other countries in the region. This could easily consolidate its legitimacy and power. Let us hope that the country’s internal forces push for an evolution of the political system towards genuine rule of law and democracy first.

Mr. Fukuyama, professor of international political economy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, is author of “America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy” (Yale, 2006).

Ted van Dyk: Obama Needs to 'Reset' His Presidency

Obama Needs to 'Reset' His Presidency. By TED VAN DYK
The president we have is very different from the man who campaigned for the office in 2008.
WSJ, Jul 17, 2009

Time out, Mr. President.

As we approach the August congressional recess, it's clear that our economic distress is deeper than we thought, and thus your health-care and energy initiatives are in danger of stalling out. You could use a reset button for domestic policy.

Let's take it from the top.

Your presidential campaign was superb. You restored hope to millions -- including me -- who had been demoralized by the political polarization that characterized the presidencies of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. You talked about reaching across party and ideological lines to get the public's business done. Your biography was appealing, and for those of us who entered politics motivated by the civil-rights struggle, your candidacy represented an important culmination.

You displayed an intellect and sense of cool that made us think you would weigh decisions carefully and view advisers' proposals with skepticism.

The first warning signals for me came with your acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. In it, you stressed domestic initiatives that clearly were nonstarters in the already shrinking economy.

I had greater concern when you staffed your administration and White House with a large number of Clinton administration retreads who had learned their trade in the never-ending-campaign culture of the Clinton years. Some appeared to represent what you had pledged to eradicate in the capital.

Many of the missteps that have followed flowed, in part, from your reliance on these Clinton holdovers. Your chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, defined your early strategy by stating that the financial and economic crises presented an "opportunity" to jam through unrelated legislation. To many of us, the remark was cynical and wrong-headed.

The crises did not represent an opportunity. They presented an obligation to do one thing: Return our financial system and our economy to good health.

Since January, your advisers have compared your situation to those of Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson after their landslide victories in 1932 and 1964. In fact, your situation is quite different. Most centrally, FDR's and LBJ's victories and congressional majorities were far larger than yours. Thus their mandates were stronger.

FDR's first months in office were devoted entirely to financial and economic recovery. His big domestic initiative, Social Security, was not enacted until 1935. LBJ pushed an ambitious Great Society agenda into law in 1965. But the U.S. economy was growing robustly in 1965. Johnson referred to it as "an endless cornucopia" which would generate tax revenues to pay for the Great Society. When he learned in mid-1967 that the projected federal budget deficit was $28 billion -- almost twice the amount projected six months earlier -- he went to Congress to push for tax increases in order to prevent Vietnam War and Great Society spending from creating unacceptable deficits.

Your staff recently has compared your strategy in pushing health-care and energy initiatives to the way Johnson pushed his Great Society legislation. That's not a fair comparison. Johnson's initiatives were framed in the White House by his administration. But at every stage, congressional leaders of both political parties and financial, business, labor and other private-sector leaders were consulted. Johnson wanted to assure that his legislation was substantively sound and could get consensus support in the Congress and the country.

Your strategy, by contrast, has been to advocate forcefully for health-care and energy reform but to leave the details to Democratic congressional committee chairs. You did the same thing with your initial $787 billion stimulus package. Now, you're stuck with a plan that provides little stimulus until 2010. A president should never cede control of his main agenda to others.

This tactic has already had negative consequences. Frightened by the prospective costs of your health-care and energy plans -- not to mention the bailouts of the financial and auto industries -- independent voters who supported you in 2008 are falling away. FDR and LBJ, only two years after their 1932 and 1964 victories, saw their parties lose congressional seats even though their personal popularity remained stable. The party out of power traditionally gains seats in off-year elections, and 2010 is unlikely to be an exception.

What adjustments should be made?

- Cut back both your proposals and expectations. You made promises about jobs that would be "created and saved" by the stimulus package. Those promises have not held up. You continue to engage in hyperbole by claiming that your health-care and energy plans will save tax dollars. Congressional Budget Office analysis indicates otherwise.

It's time to re-examine these initiatives. Could your health plan be scaled back to catastrophic coverage for all -- badly needed by most families, but quite affordable if deductibles are set at the right levels? Should the Rube Goldbergian cap-and-trade proposals be replaced with a simple carbon tax, with proceeds to be allocated to alternative-fuels development?

The evolving health and cap-and-trade bills are loaded with costly provisions designed to gain support from congressional leaders and special-interest constituencies. In short, they have become an expensive mess. This legislation will not clear Congress by the August recess, as you have requested, and could be stalled for the remainder of 2009. Settle for incremental change: Do not press Democratic legislators to vote for something they fear will destroy them in 2010.

- Talk less and pick your spots.You are outdoing even Johnson and Mr. Clinton with your daily speeches in the capital and around the country.

Applause and adulation are gratifying. But the more you talk, the less weight your words will hold. Let voters see you at your desk, conferring with serious people about serious matters. When you do choose to talk, people will understand that it's important and they should listen.

- Conform your 2009 politics to your 2008 statements. During your campaign, you called for bipartisanship and bridge-building. You promised to reduce the influence of single-issue and single-interest groups in the policy process. Yet, in your public statements, you keep using President Bush as a scapegoat.

You have ceded content of your principal proposals to Democratic congressional leaders who in large part have yielded to special-interest constituencies and excluded Republican leaders from policy formulation. This certainly was the case with the stimulus plan. It has been the case with health and energy legislation, with the notable exception of Sen. Max Baucus's attempt in the Senate Finance Committee to develop genuinely bipartisan legislation.

You have an enormous reservoir of goodwill among Americans of all persuasions. They want you to succeed. Level with them and trim your proposals to what is practical in the current environment.

You had things right in 2008. Take a timeout. Get back to yourself. Make a fresh start.

Mr. Van Dyk was Vice President Hubert Humphrey's assistant in the Johnson White House and active in national Democratic politics over 40 years. He is the author of "Heroes, Hacks and Fools," (University of Washington Press, 2008).

Cross-Strait Relations Improve, but China Still Deploys Missiles

Cross-Strait Relations Improve; China Still Deploys Missiles. By Richard C. Bush III, Director, Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies
Brookings, June 27, 2009

In the relations between Taiwan and China, something intriguing happened between last spring and this spring. I refer not to the impressive progress that the two sides have made since Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou took office in May 2008. They have restored dialogue mechanisms; concluded agreements to enhance cooperation in the areas of trade, transportation, finance, and crime control; and made possible Taiwan’s participation as an observer at the annual meeting of the World Health Assembly. This significant progress occurred against the backdrop of fifteen previous years of deepening mutual mistrust, which led Beijing and Taipei each to craft policy based on fears of the other’s intentions rather than hopes for cooperation.

The intriguing development was what happened in the military field. In spite of progress in the political and economic arenas, the People’s Liberation Army’s procurement and deployment of equipment that puts Taiwan at risk continued unabated. According to the last two Pentagon report on China’s military power, released in March of 2008 and 2009, China’s short- and medium-range missiles, which target Taiwan, increased from a range of 995-1070 to 1050-1150. This rate of growth is a bit less than previous years, but still raises the question, what is going on?

Let us stipulate, for purposes of discussion, the following:

• The PLA’s buildup occurred over the past decade because China perceived that Ma Ying-jeou’s predecessors planned somehow to permanently separate Taiwan from China. It was necessary, therefore, to secure the ability to deter this challenge to China’s fundamental interests, and to punish Taiwan if deterrence failed.
• Some of the systems the PLA is acquiring have multiple uses, including surface ships, submarines, fourth-generation aircraft, and cyber-warfare. These can be used, for example, to protect China’s interests in the East China Sea as well as attack Taiwan. (But that is cold comfort for Taiwan’s security planners. They worry—correctly that those systems will be used against them, and to block the United States from coming to the island’s defense.)

Still, it is startling that Beijing did not adjust the procurements and deployments that are most relevant to Taiwan in response to Ma’s taking office. After all, what drove China to its military buildup was its perception of threatening intentions of Ma’s predecessors. He on the other hand has pursued a policy of reassurance and reconciliation. We can imagine several possible reasons.

The first is bureaucratic: that the PLA procures equipment on a five-year cycle, and the adjustment to Ma will begin in the cycle that begins in 2011. The second concerns threat perception: PLA and other leaders do not believe that the threat of separatism has disappeared. Pro-independence forces could return to power and China must be prepared. The third possible reason is institutional. The PLA is increasingly a corporate entity that has its own view of how, within broad policy parameters, to protect China’s national security. It could be some combination of the three. We simply do not know.

China’s failure to adjust has important implications for the future of cross-Strait stability, because it affects the sustainability of Ma Ying-jeou’s policies. In his electoral campaign, he argued that that the best way to ensure Taiwan’s prosperity, security, and dignity in the face of a more powerful China to reassure and engage Beijing. His appeal, therefore, defines what he must achieve to secure re-election in 2012 for himself and his party. Moreover, Ma has made very clear that China’s existing military capabilities are an obstacle to creating a truly stable cross-Strait environment. As he told The New York Times last year, “We don't want to negotiate a peace agreement while our security is threatened by a possible missile attack.”

China derives significant strategic benefit from Ma Ying-jeou’s policies, because they diminish what it saw as a serious threat. Ironically, if the China is too grudging on what it offers in return, particularly in the area of security, it will undercut Ma’s core argument and the political support that sustains it. It was Taiwan fear of China’s buildup that helped create the previous vicious circle. It cannot be in China’s interest to restart a negative spiral.

What are the implications of this situation for the United States? Washington’s fundamental goal is the preservation of peace and stability in the Taiwan area. It does not believe that goal is served when Chinese military power creates a strong sense of insecurity on Taiwan. Taiwan is thus subject to coercion and intimidation because its own deterrent is weak and it cannot negotiate confidently with Beijing.

If by its actions Beijing demonstrates a continuing desire to increase Taiwan’s sense of insecurity, then it is proper for the United States to reduce it through arms sales and other forms of security cooperation. We should, of course, provide systems that strengthen Taiwan’s real deterrent, not those that are useful primarily as political symbols (China can easily tell the difference). True, continued arms sales will damage U.S.-China relations, but we are responding to a problem that China has itself created.

President Ma’s initiatives present a strategic opportunity to transform and stabilize cross-Strait relations. But opportunities must be seized. China has done so in some areas but certainly not in the military area. To further increase its own sense of security, China must be prepared to strengthen Taiwan’s as well.

Picking on the Swiss - The Obama Administration blows up a tax treaty

Picking on the Swiss. WSJ Editorial
The Obama Administration blows up a tax treaty.
WSJ, Jul 14, 2009

President Obama has been traveling the world to "reset" diplomatic relations with the likes of Russia and Iran. But his Administration continues to do what it can to blow up America's long and amicable relationship with Switzerland.

In a federal court in Florida, the IRS and Justice Department are seeking to compel the Swiss bank UBS to hand over the names of 52,000 U.S. taxpayers with private-banking accounts in Switzerland. According to an affidavit filed with the court by the Swiss tax authorities, the summons "does not identify any facts that could be construed as constituting tax fraud or the like, but rather makes a broad demand for the identity of all U.S. taxpayers for which certain forms have not been filed."

This sort of fishing expedition expressly violates the U.S.-Swiss treaty on sharing tax information. The original treaty dates back 30 years, and under the pact the Swiss regularly provide the IRS with information on specific cases. But what the IRS is attempting here is a mass search of U.S. taxpayers merely for banking in Switzerland.

This is not to say that everyone caught up in the IRS's dragnet is pure. But the American system of justice contains probable cause and reasonable search requirements precisely to prevent law enforcement from rounding up everyone who might conceivably be guilty of some crime. And while Justice argues that UBS systematically marketed its private banking services in order to avoid U.S. taxation, the charges against UBS itself were settled in February, so this is not about the bank. It is about its customers, and an effort to grab perhaps a couple of billion dollars in allegedly unpaid taxes.

Those customers are protected by Swiss bank-secrecy laws that make it a felony to improperly disclose client identities. Those laws are very much in force, and the Swiss authorities have threatened to seize the client data demanded by the U.S. rather than permit UBS to comply.

Switzerland is a neutral country and so technically isn't an American ally, but it has long been a good friend, representing U.S. interests in Cuba and Iran, among other good offices. On Monday, Judge Alan Gold delayed until August a hearing on the case, giving UBS and the feds time to reach a settlement before the judge rules on the IRS demands. Justice is nonetheless still threatening to indict UBS if it fails to comply.

Apart from the diplomatic ramifications, the government's request for so broad a swath of information could well run afoul of the Fourth Amendment's protections against unreasonable search. The Obama Administration should use the court reprieve to rethink the whole case.

The Obama Democrats pick income redistribution over job creation and economic growth

The Small Business Surtax. WSJ Editorial
The Obama Democrats pick income redistribution over job creation and economic growth.
WSJ, Jul 14, 2009

Jason Furman owes an apology to Michael Boskin, the Stanford economist who wrote a year ago on these pages that Barack Obama would raise American income tax rates nearly to 60%. Mr. Furman, then in the Obama campaign and now at the White House, claimed this was wrong and that Democrats would merely raise taxes back to their Clinton-era level.

House Democrats are now proving that Mr. Boskin had it right, and before it's over even he may have underestimated how high taxes will go. In the middle of a recession and with rising unemployment, Democrats have been letting it leak that they want to raise U.S. tax rates higher than they've been in nearly 30 years in order to finance government health care.

Every detail isn't known, but late last week Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel disclosed that his draft bill would impose a "surtax" on individuals with adjusted gross income of more than $280,000 a year. This would hit job creators especially hard because more than six of every 10 who earn that much are small business owners, operators or investors, according to a 2007 Treasury study. That study also found that almost half of the income taxed at this highest rate is small business income from the more than 500,000 sole proprietorships and subchapter S corporations whose owners pay the individual rate.

In addition, many more smaller business owners with lower profits would be hit by the Rangel plan's payroll tax surcharge. That surcharge would apply to all firms with 25 or more workers that don't offer health insurance to their employees, and it would amount to an astonishing eight percentage point fee above the current 15% payroll levy.

Here's the ugly income-tax math. First, Mr. Obama has promised to let the lower Bush tax rates expire after 2010. This would raise the top personal income tax rate to 39.6% from 35%, and the next rate to 36% from 33%. The Bush expiration would also phase out various tax deductions and exemptions, bringing the top marginal rate to as high as 41%.

Then add the Rangel Surtax of one percentage point, starting at $280,000 ($350,000 for couples), plus another percentage point at $400,000 ($500,000 for couples), rising to three points on more than $800,000 ($1 million) in 2011. But wait, there's more. The surcharge could rise by two more percentage points in 2013 if health-care costs are larger than advertised -- which is a near-certainty. Add all of this up and the top marginal tax rate would climb to 46%, which hasn't been seen in the U.S. since the Reagan tax reform of 1986 cut the top rate to 28% from 50%.

States have also been raising their income tax rates, so in California and New York City the top rate would be around 58%. The Tax Foundation reports that at least half of all states would have combined state-federal tax rates of more than 50%.

Mr. Rangel also wants to apply his surcharges to investment income like capital gains. So the combined effect of repealing the Bush tax cuts and the new surcharges would be to raise the tax on stock appreciation by at least 60% -- to as high as 24% from 15% today. President Obama has been worrying about a capital squeeze on small businesses, but raising the capital gains tax would only further starve them of funds.

Democrats claim these tax increases on the rich won't do any economic harm. They should read the work of Christina Romer before she became chief White House economist. Ms. Romer and her husband, David Romer, a Berkeley economist, have published multiple studies on the impact of tax policy changes over the past 100 years. One of their findings is that "tax increases appear to have a very large, sustained and highly significant negative impact on output." In other words, tax hikes are an antistimulus.

Another implication of the Rangel plan is that America's successful small businesses would pay higher tax rates than the Fortune 500, and for that matter than most companies around the world. The corporate federal-state tax rate applied to General Electric and Google is about 39% in the U.S., and the business tax rate is about 25% in the OECD countries. So the U.S. would have close to the most punitive taxes on small business income anywhere on the globe.

Mr. Rangel and House Democrats are also banking on the idea that raising tax rates by 20% will raise 20% more tax revenue, but that's like telling Wal-Mart it can raise prices by 20% and get 20% more profit. When taxes on the rich rise, their reported income tends to decline. The last time the top federal income tax rate was 50%, the richest 1% paid only about 25% of all income taxes. Today, at a 35% rate they pay nearly 40%.

A new study by the Kaufman Foundation finds that small business entrepreneurs have led America out of its last seven post-World War II recessions. They also generate about two of every three new jobs during a recovery. The more the Obama Democrats reveal of their policies, the more it's clear that they prize income redistribution above all else, including job creation and economic growth.

Obama Gets It Right on Africa - We'd be glad if the government only skimmed 20%

Obama Gets It Right on Africa. By BRET STEPHENS
We'd be glad if the government only skimmed 20%.
WSJ, Jul 14, 2009
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124753013433935785.html

There's a striking passage in "Dreams From My Father," in which a young Barack Obama, on safari in Kenya, gets an unembellished picture of everyday African life from his driver, a man named Francis.

"[Francis] said he enjoyed his work with the travel agency but disliked being away from his family. 'If I could, I might prefer farming full-time,' he said, 'but the KCU makes it impossible.'

"'What's the KCU?' I asked.

"'The Kenyan Coffee Union. They are thieves. They regulate what we can plant and when we can plant it. I can only sell my coffee to them, and they sell it overseas. They say to us that prices are dropping, but I know they still get one hundred times what they pay to me. The rest goes where?' Francis shook his head with disgust. 'It's a terrible thing when the government steals from its own people.'"

Terrible indeed. And perhaps it was an echo of Francis's voice that shaped Mr. Obama's speech last Saturday in Ghana, by far the best of his presidency.

Here's some of what Mr. Obama said: "No business wants to invest in a place where the government skims 20% off the top." "The purpose of foreign assistance must be creating the conditions where it's no longer needed." "The West is not responsible for the destruction of the Zimbabwean economy over the last decade, or wars in which children are enlisted as combatants." "We must support strong and sustainable democratic governments." "America can also do more to promote trade and investment." "We have a responsibility to support those who act responsibly and to isolate those who don't, and that is exactly what America will do." "History shows that countries thrive when they . . . create space for small and medium-sized businesses that create jobs."

All this is not only true, it's groundbreaking. Since British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan gave his "Wind of Change" speech (also in Ghana) nearly 50 years ago, Western policy toward Africa has been a matter of throwing money at a guilty conscience (or a client of convenience), no questions asked. The result, as Mr. Obama pointed out, was that countries such as Kenya, which had a larger GDP than South Korea in 1961, "have been badly outpaced."

Maybe it took a president unburdened by that kind of guilt to junk the policy. Or maybe it simply took a conversation with some of the Francises of Africa -- the politically invisible middle classes held down by their own kleptocratic rulers. Whatever the case, Africa will be well served if Mr. Obama can make good on his rhetoric.

Now if only Mr. Obama would apply those same principles to the rest of his agenda, foreign and domestic.

For instance, if trade and investment are good ideas for the U.S.-Africa relationship, why has the Obama administration dragged its feet on free-trade agreements with Colombia and South Korea? Or, if the U.S. owes Africa no apologies for its recent disasters, why has Mr. Obama gone to such lengths to apologize to Iran for the 1953 Mossadegh coup, and, in his Cairo speech, to the entire Muslim world for the politics of the Cold War? Or if Mr. Obama wants to "isolate" irresponsible actors, why does he continue to promise engagement with Iran, Syria, Russia and perhaps North Korea no matter how they behave?

Similarly, while U.S. government officials don't usually demand bribes (at least outside of Illinois), the U.S. corporate tax rate, at 39%, is the second highest in the industrialized world. That's about 10 percentage points higher than the OECD average, or nearly twice the 20% "bribe tax" that scandalizes Mr. Obama.

As for creating "space for small and medium-sized businesses," it's ironic that Mr. Obama would make this point on the same weekend that House Ways and Means Chairman Charlie Rangel is calling for a 3% surtax on the wealthy -- many of whom, as Scott Hodge of the Tax Foundation notes, happen to be business owners. These are the same people now facing the prospect of next year's expiration of the Bush tax cuts and the return to the 55% top rate on estate taxes, another scourge of small-business owners.

Finally, if the $2.3 trillion the West has given in foreign aid over the past five decades -- a "stimulus" package if ever there was one -- has done nothing to raise Africa out of poverty, why does Mr. Obama think that any amount of stimulus spending is going to revive America's economic fortunes? At least in Africa's case, the West could periodically forgive its debts. Who will forgive ours?

In his conversation with Francis, Mr. Obama records his lament that Kenya's "big men" fail to take responsibility for their country:

"'Attitudes aren't so different in America,' I told Francis."

"'You are probably right,' he said. 'But you see, a rich country like America can perhaps afford to be stupid.'"

Somebody make this guy treasury secretary.

Federal President's comments on Moscow about the Cold War

Obama Rewrites the Cold War. By LIZ CHENEY
The President has a duty to stand up to the lies of our enemies.
WSJ, Jul 13, 2009

There are two different versions of the story of the end of the Cold War: the Russian version, and the truth. President Barack Obama endorsed the Russian version in Moscow last week.

Speaking to a group of students, our president explained it this way: "The American and Soviet armies were still massed in Europe, trained and ready to fight. The ideological trenches of the last century were roughly in place. Competition in everything from astrophysics to athletics was treated as a zero-sum game. If one person won, then the other person had to lose. And then within a few short years, the world as it was ceased to be. Make no mistake: This change did not come from any one nation. The Cold War reached a conclusion because of the actions of many nations over many years, and because the people of Russia and Eastern Europe stood up and decided that its end would be peaceful."

The truth, of course, is that the Soviets ran a brutal, authoritarian regime. The KGB killed their opponents or dragged them off to the Gulag. There was no free press, no freedom of speech, no freedom of worship, no freedom of any kind. The basis of the Cold War was not "competition in astrophysics and athletics." It was a global battle between tyranny and freedom. The Soviet "sphere of influence" was delineated by walls and barbed wire and tanks and secret police to prevent people from escaping. America was an unmatched force for good in the world during the Cold War. The Soviets were not. The Cold War ended not because the Soviets decided it should but because they were no match for the forces of freedom and the commitment of free nations to defend liberty and defeat Communism.

It is irresponsible for an American president to go to Moscow and tell a room full of young Russians less than the truth about how the Cold War ended. One wonders whether this was just an attempt to push "reset" -- or maybe to curry favor. Perhaps, most concerning of all, Mr. Obama believes what he said.

Mr. Obama's method for pushing reset around the world is becoming clearer with each foreign trip. He proclaims moral equivalence between the U.S. and our adversaries, he readily accepts a false historical narrative, and he refuses to stand up against anti-American lies.

The approach was evident in his speech in Moscow and in his speech in Cairo last month. In Cairo, he asserted there was some sort of equivalence between American support for the 1953 coup in Iran and the evil that the Iranian mullahs have done in the world since 1979. On an earlier trip to Mexico City, the president listened to an extended anti-American screed by Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega and then let the lies stand by responding only with, "I'm grateful that President Ortega did not blame me for the things that occurred when I was 3 months old."

Asked at a NATO meeting in France in April whether he believed in American exceptionalism, the president said, "I believe in American Exceptionalism just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism." In other words, not so much.

The Obama administration does seem to believe in another kind of exceptionalism -- Obama exceptionalism. "We have the best brand on Earth: the Obama brand," one Obama handler has said. What they don't seem to realize is that once you're president, your brand is America, and the American people expect you to defend us against lies, not embrace or ignore them. We also expect you to know your history.

Mr. Obama has become fond of saying, as he did in Russia again last week, that American nuclear disarmament will encourage the North Koreans and the Iranians to give up their nuclear ambitions. Does he really believe that the North Koreans and the Iranians are simply waiting for America to cut funds for missile defense and reduce our strategic nuclear stockpile before they halt their weapons programs?

The White House ought to take a lesson from President Harry Truman. In April, 1950, Truman signed National Security Council report 68 (NSC-68). One of the foundational documents of America's Cold War strategy, NSC-68 explains the danger of disarming America in the hope of appeasing our enemies. "No people in history," it reads, "have preserved their freedom who thought that by not being strong enough to protect themselves they might prove inoffensive to their enemies."

Perhaps Mr. Obama thinks he is making America inoffensive to our enemies. In reality, he is emboldening them and weakening us. America can be disarmed literally -- by cutting our weapons systems and our defensive capabilities -- as Mr. Obama has agreed to do. We can also be disarmed morally by a president who spreads false narratives about our history or who accepts, even if by his silence, our enemies' lies about us.

Ms. Cheney served as deputy assistant secretary of state and principal deputy assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs from 2002-2004 and 2005-2006.