Month: June 2008

The Going Exchange Rate

by

by Eric Martin The death toll from yesterday’s bombing of a Shiite marketplace keeps rising.  At present, it stands at a grisly 63.  This attack highlights the fact that even under "improved" security conditions – with levels of violence greatly reduced in many parts of the country – Iraq is far from peaceful.  From a … Read more

One Hundred Years of Solitude

by

by Eric Martin When a law was passed back in February that was supposed to ease the scope and severity of earlier de-Baathification efforts in Iraq, the media dutifully repeated Bush administration spin about the law’s significance in terms of signalling a new era of national reconciliation.   That celebration was premature.  As with most such … Read more

Obama’s Nonexistent 9/10 Mindset

by

by hilzoy Yesterday, Barack Obama said this: “And it is my firm belief that we can track terrorists, we can crack down on threats against the United States, but we can do so within the constraints of our Constitution. And there has been no evidence on their part that we can’t. And, you know, let’s … Read more

Notes From A Postracial Society

by

by hilzoy From the Dallas Morning News (h/t): “While a number of speakers — such as Railroad Commission chairman Michael Williams and Mike Huckabee — have praised the advance of Barack Obama and what it means towards a colorblind society, at least one vendor hasn’t gotten the message. At the Republican state convention, a booth … Read more

McCain And The Media

by

by hilzoy As I noted earlier, at his press conference yesterday, John McCain said this: “QUESTION: The European Union has set mandatory targets on renewable energy. Is that something you would consider in a McCain administration? […] MCCAIN: Sure. I believe in the cap-and-trade system, as you know. I would not at this time make … Read more

A New Cap-and-Trade Proposal

by

by publius This was simply too good to leave in the comments. In Hilzoy’s post illustrating that McCain doesn’t seem to know what cap-and-trade actually means, commenter Model 62 writes: Maybe McCain’s campaign should develop a cap-and-trade system for clarifying remarks. Advisers who shed more light on what McCain Actually Meant can sell their additional … Read more

Privatizing The Army

by

by hilzoy

From the NYT:

“The Army official who managed the Pentagon’s largest contract in Iraq says he was ousted from his job when he refused to approve paying more than $1 billion in questionable charges to KBR, the Houston-based company that has provided food, housing and other services to American troops.

The official, Charles M. Smith, was the senior civilian overseeing the multibillion-dollar contract with KBR during the first two years of the war. Speaking out for the first time, Mr. Smith said that he was forced from his job in 2004 after informing KBR officials that the Army would impose escalating financial penalties if they failed to improve their chaotic Iraqi operations.

Army auditors had determined that KBR lacked credible data or records for more than $1 billion in spending, so Mr. Smith refused to sign off on the payments to the company. “They had a gigantic amount of costs they couldn’t justify,” he said in an interview. “Ultimately, the money that was going to KBR was money being taken away from the troops, and I wasn’t going to do that.”

But he was suddenly replaced, he said, and his successors — after taking the unusual step of hiring an outside contractor to consider KBR’s claims — approved most of the payments he had tried to block.”

The obvious way to read this is as indicating that Halliburton had the connections to block any investigation of its recordkeeping. And while that’s true, I’m not sure that’s what’s going on here. The next paragraph of the NYT story:

“Army officials denied that Mr. Smith had been removed because of the dispute, but confirmed that they had reversed his decision, arguing that blocking the payments to KBR would have eroded basic services to troops. They said that KBR had warned that if it was not paid, it would reduce payments to subcontractors, which in turn would cut back on services.”

In fact, KBR did at one point threaten to stop providing basic supplies — little things like food — to our troops in Iraq. (I’ve put the account of this episode below the fold.) What that means is, to my mind, even more scandalous than simple corruption by a company with good connections. It means that we have outsourced absolutely critical functions to private companies, companies which, unlike military personnel, can threaten to stop doing their jobs without facing courts-martial. In wartime, when a company is doing something as important as providing food to our troops, the military has no choice but to cave to their demands. (That’s one reason I said it was more scandalous than simple corruption: it virtually ensures that that corruption will occur, while simultanously leaving our troops at risk.)

To my mind, we should not allow any company to assume any critical function in wartime without putting in place some guarantee that it will go on performing that function whether it wants to or not. If it’s impossible to do that legally, then that function should not be outsourced. Period. We cannot allow any private company to threaten to stop supplying our troops during wartime. But we have.

Read more

There He Goes Again, Again …

by

by hilzoy A couple of weeks I noted that John McCain didn’t seem to understand what a cap and trade system was, despite the fact that he not only advocates such a system, but has actually co-sponsored legislation to create one. There was some debate in comments about whether McCain might have meant something else. … Read more

A Strange Way To Spend Your Time

by

by hilzoy John McCain can’t seem to catch a break. First, he had to cancel a fundraiser with someone who had said that rape was like bad weather: “As long as it’s inevitable, you might as well lie back and enjoy it.” (Except that — oops! — McCain kept the money from the fundraiser, and … Read more

The Benefits of Neutrality

by

by publius Kevin Drum writes that the era of flat-rate broadband pricing may be over because of infrastructural limitations. But this part isn’t quite right: The enormous boom in long-haul fiber construction in the late 90s, followed by the dotcom bust, left us with so much overcapacity that for the past decade there’s been no … Read more

Make It Stop

by

by hilzoy Susan Faludi had an op-ed in the NYT today. She notes the following quotes: ““In many ways, he really will be the first woman president,” Megan Beyer of Virginia, a charter member of Women for Obama, told reporters. An op-ed essay in The New York Post headlined “Bam: Our 1st Woman Prez?” came … Read more

John McCain: The Robin Hood of Health Care

by

by publius

As we all remember from childhood, Robin Hood was the original working class hero. He, um, redistributed from the rich to help the poor. From reading Tony Pugh’s McClatchey piece on the candidates’ health care policies, you would think that John McCain is a modern-day progressive Robin Hood on health care. (I first saw the article in the print edition of the Houston Chronicle).

The article begins by describing a mother (Ms. Espinoza) who has employer-based health care for herself, but can’t afford to add her children (they remain uninsured). After Pugh describes to her the candidates’ rival health care plans, she ultimately decides that McCain’s policy sounds better. It’s outrageous and depressing, but it’s not her fault — it’s the fault of people like Pugh who need to do a better job describing the real-world consequences of these policies.

I’ll get to the policy side below, but first the politics. In one sense, McCain’s health care proposal shouldn’t be understood as policy at all — it’s merely a political weapon. It lets him say something in response to questions from the public and the press about health care. What’s troubling, though, is that the proposal may not be bad politics, assuming the public remains misinformed.

To the general public, McCain’s health care “policy” is “I’ll give your family $5000 — go knock yourself out.” And if that’s all you know, it doesn’t sound that bad. Having an extra $5000 is better than not having it (or $2500 for individuals). The problem is that McCain’s tax credit shouldn’t be analyzed in a vacuum. The same policy that would provide families $5000 would create enormous collateral damage — indeed, it would ultimately cause families to pay significantly more money for significantly less coverage (more on that below).

The political challenge, then, is figuring out ways to tell the truth in simple compelling terms — after all, it’s not demagoguery if it’s true and important. The public needs to understand that McCain’s policy isn’t just “here’s an extra $5000.” The promise of extra cash, though, is probably why Ms. Espinoza (depressingly) preferred McCain’s approach. True, she’s only one person — but we shouldn’t overestimate the ability of people to understand complex policy issues that can be obscured through, say, lying or lazy reporting.

So that’s the politics — below is my more detailed policy gripe with Pugh’s portrayal of McCain’s proposal:

Read more

McCain’s Thesis

by

by hilzoy The NYT has gotten a copy of John McCain’s thesis at the National War College. It’s quite interesting. I think the NYT’s account of it is somewhat misleading in its focus: “About a year after his release from a North Vietnamese prison camp, Cmdr. John S. McCain III sat down to address one … Read more

Guess What? You Already Did

by

by hilzoy Maureen Dowd passes on this gem: “A Democratic lawmaker who saw the president in the Oval Office recently and urged him to bring the troops home from Iraq quickly recounted that W. got a stony look and replied that 41 had abandoned the Iraqis and thousands got slaughtered. “I will never do that … Read more

Guns N’ Justices

by

by publius Via Volokh, I saw this excellent overview of what to look for in the Heller Second Amendment case by Professor Mike O’Shea at Concurring Opinions. The decision could come Monday. There’s a lot to chew over, but the upshot is that the Court seems poised to recognize some sort of individual right. The … Read more

Flood

by

by hilzoy From the Washington Post (where I also got the picture): “CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa, June 13 — The sun finally broke through the layers of clouds on Friday, a reassuring presence after a week of rain. But as residents in and around this eastern Iowa city surveyed their waterlogged landscape, they did not like … Read more

Remembering Tim Russert

by

by publius Like everyone else, I’m shocked and saddened by the news. It’s just hard to believe that it’s real. Anyway, I think Ezra Klein has had the most appropriate words so far: But for now, it’s going to be strange indeed to turn on the TV on Sundays and not hear his voice. Presumably, … Read more

There He Goes Again…

by

by hilzoy

Here’s a YouTube showing John McCain’s shifting stands on whether he favors privatizing Social Security.

In 2004, McCain said: “Without privatization, I don’t see how you can possibly, over time, make sure that young Americans are able to receive Social Security benefits.”

Yesterday:

“My friends, I do not and will not privatize Social Security. It is a government program, and it’s necessary, but it’s broken, and we got to tell the American people that we’ve got to fix it, and we’ve got to sit down together the way that Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill did back in 1983 and fix Social Security. But my friends, I will not privatize Social Security, and it’s not true when I’m accused of that. But I would like for younger workers — younger workers only — to have an opportunity to take a few of their tax dollars — a few of theirs — and maybe put it into an account with their name on it.”

As Matt Yglesias says:

“In short, he stridently denies that he wants to favor privatizing Social Security. He just favors policies that are the same as the policies that were called “privatizing Social Security” before the GOP found out that privatizing Social Security is unpopular.”

But there’s more wrong with what McCain said than this sort of inconsistency. [UPDATE: “This sort of inconsistency” being not just the inconsistency between his past and present positions — people get to change their minds — but between his claim that he does not favor privatization and his claim that he favors, well, what everyone normally calls privatization. END UPDATE]

Read more

The Maverick

by

by publius Take it away Senator McCain (via Swampland): The United States Supreme Court yesterday rendered a decision which I think is one of the worst decisions in the history of this country. Sen. Graham and Sen. Lieberman and I had worked very hard to make sure that we didn’t torture any prisoners, that we … Read more

More Boumediene

by

by publius In response to the last post’s comment thread, I want to clarify some points about the adequacy of D.C. Circuit’s appellate review (I’ll address Roberts skepticism later). Some of my arguments were not clearly written, so let’s take another stab. The basic dispute in the comments turned on whether the Court’s decision about … Read more

Boumediene: When Justices Stop Being Polite, and Start Getting Realist

by

by publius

Boumediene deserves about a dozen posts, but here’s my initial take — the opinion is legal realism made flesh. Legal text and doctrine didn’t determine the Justices’ votes today— outside considerations of policy and politics did. And as I’ll explain, that’s not necessarily a bad thing (indeed, it was probably unavoidable).

[As a disclaimer, I’m assuming some basic knowledge of the opinion. If you want a summary, check out Hilzoy’s fine post or the invaluable ScotusBlog.]

To me, the most interesting question — and the crux of the whole decision — was the sufficiency of D.C. Circuit’s ability to review the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (i.e., the “courts” that determine if you’re an “enemy combatant”). Because Roberts’ dissent focuses on this issue in detail, he comes closest to obliterating the majority’s logical foundation.

To back up, there are really two separate procedures at issue here. The first is the CSRTs themselves that make the initial enemy combatant classification (they are not Article III courts). The second is the appellate review of those classifications. Regarding the latter, Congress (in the DTA and MCA) provided for a limited appellate review of the CSRTs by the illustrious D.C. Circuit alone. By law, the court can only determine (1) whether the CSRTs followed the President’s designated standards and procedures, and (2) whether “the use of such standards . . . is consistent with the Constitution and laws of the United States.”

That last part is crucial. If the D.C. Circuit review provides sufficient protections, then it’s a valid “substitute” for habeas. (Habeas, after all, is just a procedure to vindicate other rights). If it’s not, then Congress has unconstitutionally “suspended” habeas corpus.

And on this question, Roberts’ argument seems pretty persuasive at first glance. He explains that if there are constitutional problems with the CSRT procedures, then the D.C. Circuit gets the first crack at them. What’s more, the D.C. Circuit by the very terms of the statute is free to reach the same conclusion that the Court did. There’s nothing, Roberts says, that the Court held today that the D.C. Circuit couldn’t have held. Thus, the Court is jumping the gun, throwing out a statute before the D.C. Circuit has considered any procedural challenges.

To repeat, the million dollar question is whether the D.C. Circuit could provide any relief that the detainees would be constitutionally entitled to.

The Court ultimately answered “no” — i.e., it held that the D.C. Circuit’s constitutional review was unconstitutionally narrow. That conclusion, however, seems hard to square with the language of the statute. As Roberts explained, the D.C. Circuit was explicitly authorized to review the constitutionality of the procedures.

On a purely abstract level, I think Roberts gets the best of this argument. But that said, I still think he was ultimately wrong, largely because of real-world considerations.

Read more

Obama And McCain On Taxes

by

by hilzoy The Tax Policy Center just put out a very good report (pdf) comparing McCain’s and Obama’s tax plans. The basics: how much, or (in Obama’s case) whether, each candidate’s tax plans would add to the deficit depends on what you take your baseline to be, and in particular, on whether you assume (a) … Read more

Boumediene For Dummies

by

by hilzoy As publius noted, the Supreme Court has ruled in Boumedienne et al v. Bush (pdf). Herewith, a quick and dirty rundown of the issues. As befits someone with no legal training, I have stuck to the straightforward issues, leaving complexities to others (cough, publius, cough.) I’m basically trying to explain this to non-lawyers … Read more

And Even More McCain

by

by publius

A few more thoughts relating to McCain’s tone deaf statement:

First, I think that McCain today got his first taste of a united Democratic party firing at him. In particular, he got a taste of how quick, powerful, and efficient the Obama operation is now that it’s free from primary distractions. I agree with Andrew that it’s important not to let the surrogates get out of control. But generally speaking, today looked like a strong, simple, quickly-assembled, well-coordinated attack that had the McCain team flailing about for most of the day.

And for that, you can thank Clinton. One benefit of the endless primary is that the Obama team is truly a battle-tested organization. Fighting off Romney or Huckabee statements just doesn’t provide the same type of trial by fire. It’s almost like Obama’s been training in the mountains and has come down to normal altitudes to battle Rick Davis’s ragtag operation.

Second, it seems odd that McCain is stressing Iraq so much at this stage. It’s extremely unpopular, it ties him to Bush, and it keeps him from moving into the centrist independent territory that would presumably play to his “core competencies.”

Read more

More McCain

by

by publius Hilzoy made several good points about McCain’s “not that important” line this morning. But I want to add a few more (or at least elaborate on them). First, I understand (and sympathize with) the argument that context matters. One of the most patently unfair aspects of YouTube politics is that candidates can be … Read more

*Shudders*

by

by hilzoy It’s just one of those days for people behaving badly. First, Judicial Superhottie and author of the world’s funniest dissent in dialog form, Alex Kosinski: “One of the highest-ranking federal judges in the United States, who is currently presiding over an obscenity trial in Los Angeles, has maintained his own publicly accessible website … Read more

Not Too Important

by

by hilzoy

Stunning:

“MATT LAUER: “If it’s working Senator, do you now have a better estimate of when American forces can come home from Iraq?”

SEN. MCCAIN: “No, but that’s not too important. What’s important is the casualties in Iraq. Americans are in South Korea, Americans are in Japan, American troops are in Germany. That’s all fine. American casualties and the ability to withdraw; we will be able to withdraw. General Petraeus is going to tell us in July when he thinks we are. But the key to it is that we don’t want any more Americans in harm’s way.”

The McCain campaign says: “John McCain was asked if he had a “better estimate” for a timeline for withdrawal. As John McCain has always said, that is not as important as conditions on the ground and the recommendations of commanders in the field.” But, as Greg Sargent notes, McCain did not in fact say that when the troops come home was less important than something else; he said it was not too important, period.

Several thoughts: First, my initial reaction to this was fury. There are men and women over in Iraq, in the middle of nowhere, counting the days until they come home. There are families who jump out of their skins every time the doorbell rings. There are spouses trying to keep their marriages together while they’re thousands of miles apart, soldiers wondering whether anyone will really understand what they’ve been through and kids growing up without knowing one of their parents. How could anyone say it doesn’t matter when they come home?

Of course, I’m sure McCain didn’t mean it that way. But this only goes so far. Suppose, by analogy, that I were giving a talk at a company that had announced a big wave of layoffs, and that was rumored to be preparing more; and I said: you know, it really doesn’t matter who gets fired and who doesn’t. Suppose further that I didn’t mean to be cruel: I was talking about macroeconomics, and from that point of view, the identities of people who get laid off are indeed irrelevant. That would show that I was not intentionally hurtful. But it would not begin to show that I wasn’t callous or thoughtless. The best explanation of my remarks is also the best explanation of McCain’s: namely, that I just wasn’t thinking about how they might sound to some of the people most obviously affected by them. Those people just sort of slipped my mind.

As Brandon Friedman says:

“What do the troops in theater think of a statement like that? What does the young sergeant on the 14th month of his third tour think when John McCain says it’s “not too important” when we come home? In fact, this kind of talk is devastating to the morale of the troops. And this type of careless, flippant remark demonstrates unmistakably that McCain clearly has no idea what it’s like to serve on repeated deployments. While he suffered much in his own war, he can neither empathize with, nor relate to today’s troops in Iraq.”

Nor with their families and friends. The fact that it’s a lack of empathy, not deliberate cruelty, is not much comfort.

Second, even taking McCain’s comments strictly on their own terms, they make no sense at all.

Read more

Capital Gains Idiocy

by

by hilzoy Maria Bartiromo, quoted in the NY Post: “WE’RE in for taxing times if Barack Obama wins the White House, says CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo. “He’s going to take the capital gains tax at 15 percent right now all the way up to 25 to 28 percent,” the “Money Honey” tells Avenue. “Sell anything, like … Read more

McCain On Energy

by

by hilzoy

I was reading blogs late this afternoon when I found a post by Steve Benen asking: why is John McCain still going on about a gas tax holiday? After explaining again why it’s a gimmick that would do nothing to help actual consumers, Steve wrote:

“When pondering why on earth McCain would continue to push obvious nonsense about an important issue, the answer came to me: it’s because he has nothing else to say.

I went to his website to check on his energy policy. On his home page, there’s plenty about golf gear, but nothing about energy or gas prices. Eventually, after digging around for a while, I found this:

John McCain Will Help Americans Hurting From High Gasoline And Food Costs. Americans need relief right now from high gas prices. John McCain will act immediately to reduce the pain of high gas prices.

That’s not an excerpt of a longer position paper, that’s the entire text of McCain’s position on gas prices. He’ll “act immediately.” How? No one knows. With what kind of policy? It’s a total mystery. (In contrast, Obama has a detailed policy page on oil and energy.)”

A bit later, I ran across a post at AmericaBlog titled “Why doesn’t McCain have a national energy strategy?” With gas prices headed through the roof, I thought: hmm, maybe I should check this out. So I did.

Read more

Very, Very Scary

by

by hilzoy Horrifying news from TownHall: “Obama’s advance troops have already taken over our college campuses, have bound and gagged our conservative professors, have ravished our virgins, have pillaged our stores of wisdom, and have ensconced themselves in the thrones of power in deans’, presidents’ and department heads’ offices.” Holy smokes! I didn’t even know … Read more

Some Thoughts on the General

by

by publius

So enough of the primary — let’s talk general election. Here are a few random observations:

Is “Bush III” a Wise Strategy?

Obama’s narrative is — to his credit — very simple. McCain is Bush III. Easy to explain, easy to understand.

Several people have, however, questioned the wisdom of this strategy. Because McCain’s brand is “Johnny Maverick,” the argument is that Obama can never make Bush III stick. For instance, one of my favorite conservative bloggers, Patrick Ruffini, has argued that Obama should instead adopt a “depress the base” strategy by highlighting McCain’s disputes with the conservative wing. In other words, Obama should use “Johnny Maverick” to remind conservatives why they dislike McCain.

Personally, I think Obama’s strategy is correct. Plus, he’s already unveiled it and a “depress the base” message at this point would conceptually undermine everything he’s already said. In any event, I think Ruffini is overlooking how much Obama’s Bush III strategy will indirectly depress the conservative base by forcing McCain to disown them. In short, “Bush III” will kill two birds with one stone.

Whatever the merits of the Bush III strategy may be, the McCain team clearly feels like it’s damaging them. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be pushing back so hard on it. Thus, as the general election goes on, McCain is increasingly going to feel the need to play up his maverick side. Of course, all candidates move to the center in the general. But McCain will feel more urgency about it than, say, Bush did. And each time he does so, it will rankle an already-rankled base. And let’s be honest — it’s hard to imagine the base knocking on doors this fall to get him elected as it is, much less after several months of hearing him run away from Bush.

Social Security — Use It Early and Often

So apparently old white people don’t like Obama so much. You know what they do like? Social Security. You know what they don’t like? Private accounts. And though he’s recently flip-flopped, McCain has supported Bush’s private accounts. He told the WSJ this March:

“As part of Social Security reform, I believe that private savings accounts are a part of it — along the lines that President Bush proposed.”

When the WSJ informed him that his website only favored private accounts as “supplements,” he told the WSJ that he would change the website. (He didn’t, perhaps because McCain wasn’t grasping the policy details at the time).

He’s since flip-flopped, but Obama should still hammer him on this — if for no other reason than to show that McCain doesn’t know what the heck he’s talking about. I haven’t dug up his 2005 statements during the original privatization debate, but I’m sure there’s some goodies in there.

If I were Obama, I would literally start putting the commercials up in Florida tomorrow. I mean, if only people had had a chance to invest a third of their Social Security benefits in the roaring markets over the past three years — just imagine the returns.

Read more

Roberts and Alito Followup

by

by publius For you law-dawgs out there interested in my Roberts/Alito post, Scott Lemieux has a more pessimistic take (which could very well prove correct though).

What Clinton Should Do Next

by

by publius

The more I think about it, the more I admire Clinton’s speech today. It’s impossible to imagine how difficult the speech must have been for her — yet that very difficulty is what made it so poignant. She left no ambiguity today — and she spoke in touching and personal ways. So kudos to her and her campaign.

So what’s next for her? I think her actions over the next few months will determine her political future — and today was a very good start. At this point, the single-best thing she can do for her career is to denounce Larry Johnson go all-out for Obama in the months ahead. She should work as hard as any surrogate. It’s not merely the right thing to do, it’s also in her political self-interest. That last part is the key.

I’ve just started Perlstein’s Nixonland, and it offers a useful comparison. Nixon very much wanted the nomination in 1964, thinking — correctly — that he was a superior candidate. At the time, the Republican establishment was treating Goldwater like a pariah.

But Nixon eventually came around and worked his tail off for Goldwater. After the inevitable crushing, it appeared that Nixon had squandered whatever capital he had left. But the chessmaster knew exactly what he was doing. Goldwater conservatives were taking over the party and he got out in front of the movement, positioning himself perfectly for 1968.

Moving ahead to 2008, you can see some interesting parallels. Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Clinton would be objectively better off if Obama loses. Clinton’s potential problem is that she can’t capitalize on the loss if people blame her (e.g., if lots of older liberal women stayed home and Clinton did little to get them out). More critically, she can’t capitalize if she is a persona non grata among key blocs of the emerging Democratic coalition — particularly African-Americans, young liberals, and netsrootsy urban knowledge-workers who make up a big part of the small-donor base (and there is of course overlap among these groups like a Venn diagram).

That’s why Al Gore’s much-derided embrace of Dean was politically astute. Gore — being years ahead of everyone, as usual — saw which way the wind was blowing.

Clinton — ever the savvy politician — shouldn’t ignore these trends. She has, frankly, taken a hit in the eyes of these blocs (though today helped a lot). But she can position herself well for the future. More below…

Read more

The Speech

by

by publius Quick take — it’s good. It was touching, and she said what she needed to say — even though it was doubtless an extremely difficult thing to do. Hilzoy and others have spoken eloquently about the historic nature of Obama’s victory. But it’s important to remember the truly historic nature of her campaign … Read more