Month: July 2008

Don’t Get Too Comfortable on that SOFA

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by Eric Martin Though a grain of salt is warranted (only reported in one outlet thus far, and an Iranian one at that), if true, this is absolutely huge: The Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most revered Shiite leader in Iraq on Tuesday rejected any security agreement with US, stressing such deal will affect the … Read more

Edwards as VP, Take Two?

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by publius Ed Kilgore caught today’s NPR interview with John Edwards, who apparently signaled a greater willingness to serve as Obama’s VP. And to be honest, I’m warming to the idea. I haven’t felt strongly about the VP pick – but my tentative preferences have been Webb, Clark, Sebelius, and Biden. All of these choices … Read more

Slavery!

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by hilzoy Jonah Goldberg strikes again: “There’s a weird irony at work when Sen. Barack Obama, the black presidential candidate who will allegedly scrub the stain of racism from the nation, vows to run afoul of the constitutional amendment that abolished slavery. For those who don’t remember, the 13th Amendment says: “Neither slavery nor involuntary … Read more

Candidates Diverge

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by hilzoy

This is a very puzzling article. Here’s the lede:

“Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain are both proposing dramatic changes to Social Security, taking on the financially fragile “third rail of American politics” that Congress and recent presidents have been unable to repair.”

Here’s Matt Yglesias’ comment on it:

“This is a great lead except for the fact that Obama is not proposing dramatic changes to Social Security. Well, there’s also the fact that the projected deficits for Social Security are smaller and more manageable than those projected for the other entitlement programs (Medicare and Medicaid) and that the non-entitlement portion of the budget is running a huge deficit right now. Under the circumstances, Social Security would seem to be the least financial fragile aspect of the federal budget. And one more thing — to say “that Congress and recent presidents have been unable to repair” Social Security implies that recent presidents and Congresses have been trying to repair it when, in fact, George W. Bush’s Social Security proposals were, like John McCain’s, aimed at phasing the program out.

I think I’m afraid to read past the lede of that particular story.”

I, however, am willing to rush in where even Matt fears to tread:

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Thank You, Haley Barbour

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by hilzoy CNN: “Prisons in Mississippi got coffee makers, pillowcases and dinnerware — all intended for victims of Hurricane Katrina. The state’s Department of Wildlife, Fisheries and Parks took more coffee makers, cleaning supplies and other items. Plastic containers ended up with the Mississippi Department of Finance and Administration. Colleges, volunteer fire departments and other … Read more

Lie To Me Some More

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by hilzoy

Item 1, from Jared Bernstein:

“When it comes to taxes, Obama has drawn a firm line in the sand at $250,000. He cuts taxes for the vast majority of families — more than 95% — and raises taxes only on those with incomes above $250,000. Whether its income taxes, payroll taxes, capital gains, or stock dividends, his plan does not raise taxes on anyone below $250,000. He articulated this point today: “…if you’re a family making less than $250,000, my plan will not raise your taxes — not your income taxes, not your payroll taxes, not your capital gains taxes, not any of your taxes.”

Yet, from McCain’s speech today: “If you believe you should pay more taxes, I am the wrong candidate for you. Senator Obama is your man. The choice in this election is stark and simple. Senator Obama will raise your taxes.””

Here’s McCain’s speech. Read it for yourselves: it says exactly what Bernstein says it does. Here’s a quick summary of McCain’s and Obama’s tax proposals, and here (pdf) is the longer Tax Policy Center Report. See for yourselves: Obama does not propose to raise taxes on people making under $250,000 a year.

So unless McCain was addressing an audience made up entirely of people who make over $250,000 a year in his Denver Town Meeting, he was lying.

More lies below the fold.

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Just For Giggles

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by hilzoy From NRO’s Campaign Spot (h/t Attackerman): “So, the recent news out of the Obama camp is that they’re planning a huge rally with thousands of people in a stadium, want to create a mandatory youth corps for national service, and are thinking about a big dramatic speech in Berlin. It’s like they’re trying … Read more

No Fortunate Sons?

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by Eric Martin

This past April, when rumors of the return of the main Sunni political bloc (IAF) to the Maliki government were swirling, I preached caution – as similar stories had been reappearing regulary, to no avail, since August 2007 when the IAF withdrew.  Nevertheless, the prospect of the IAF re-upping with the Maliki government has never seemed like a bridge too far considering a few of the relevant factors.

For one, the Awakenings/Sons of Iraq groups have been forming political parties to challenge the IAF’s stranglehold on Sunni politics at the national and local levels.  In fact, the demand by the Awakenings/Sons of Iraq for a share of the political pie has been, ostensibly, one of the major impetuses behind the Bush administration’s call for regional elections in Iraq.  The IAF, however, lacks widespread support in the Sunni community due, in part, to being viewed as collaborators with the occupation/Maliki government, as well as the fact that many Sunnis (Sons of Iraq/Awakenings) boycotted the last rounds of elections so the IAF’s legitimacy as representatives of Sunni Iraqis has always been dubious.

So in many ways, the IAF is facing a similar intra-sect challenge that Maliki/ISCI are facing from the Sadrists: factions that had boycotted recent regional elections, benefiting from outsider status and anti-occupation credibility, mobilizing to challenge unpopular incumbents tied to the Americans.  Given this common predicament, it’s not entirely surprising to see reports (caution: still speculative) that the IAF might be looking to rejoin the Maliki government (again) if it can obtain an electoral advantage vis-a-vis its intra-sect rivals in the same ways that Maliki/ISCI have been attempting with respect to the Sadrists.  Marc Lynch:

The move to break up the Awakenings now is also, according to al-Khaleej, tied to a secret deal with the Islamic Party of Tareq al-Hashemi (which as part of the IAF has finally announced its return to the Maliki government ).  Maliki, reportedly, would move to weaken the Awakenings ahead of provincial and Parliamentary elections, breaking up their power and barring them from forming political parties (using the "no parties with militias" as the legal pretext, perhaps).   

Lynch, quite correctly, points out that the Maliki government has never been willing to integrate and embrace the Awakenings/Sons of Iraq groups and, thus, that it shares the goal of weakening them generally speaking.  So the IAF would have a willing ally in Maliki.  He goes on to suggest, however, that such a move by Maliki would likely run afoul of the Bush administration’s designs.  But I’m not so sure. 

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Lie To Me, Baby

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by hilzoy From Politico: “Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) plans to promise on Monday that he will balance the federal budget by the end of his first term by curbing wasteful spending and overhauling entitlement programs, including Social Security, his advisers told Politico. The vow to take on Social Security puts McCain in a political danger … Read more

Conservatives And Jesse Helms

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by hilzoy

I haven’t written anything about Jesse Helms’ death, since I don’t like speaking ill of the dead. However: every so often, conservatives wonder: why oh why do people think that the Republican party, and/or the conservative movement, is bigoted? I think that the conservative response to Helms’ death ought to settle that debate once and for all.

[UPDATE: I’m talking about about the Republican Party as an institution, not its individual members. Of course there are bigots and non-bigots in both parties. Ditto “the conservative movement”: I meant to refer to it as an organized force, not to all its members. Sorry not to have said this more clearly. END UPDATE.]

More below the fold. Note that I have largely restricted myself to conservatives’ own words (and not random bloggers, but people and magazines with some standing in conservative circles), and to Helms’ words and actions.

For my part, I’ll just echo Matt:

“Conservatives are taking a line that I might have regarded as an unfair smear just a week ago, and saying that Helms is a brilliant exemplar of the American conservative movement.

And if that’s what the Heritage Foundation and National Review and the other key pillars of American conservatism want me to believe, then I’m happy to believe it. But it reflects just absolutely horribly on them and their movement that this is how they want to be seen — as best exemplified by bigotry, lunatic notions about foreign policy, and tobacco subsidies.”

And Ezra:

“Some of my conservative friends often complain about the difficulty of constructing a “usable history” out of the movement’s recent past, and I sympathize with their plight. When leading exemplars of your political tradition were trying to preserve segregation less than four decades ago, it’s a bit hard to argue that your party, which is now electorally based in the American South, is really rooted in a cautious empiricism and an acute concern for the deadweight losses associated with taxation. That project would really benefit, however, if more of them would step forward and say that Helms marred the history of their movement and left decent people ashamed to call themselves conservative. The attempt to subsume his primary political legacy beneath a lot of pabulum about “limited government and individual liberty” (which did not apparently include the liberty of blacks to work amongst whites or mingle with other races) is embarrassing. But if it goes unchallenged, what are those of us outside the conservative movement to think?”

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More From Zimbabwe

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by publius Today’s Post has an excellent, though chilling, account of the Mugabe government’s bloody repression of the opposition following the election. I wish I had something more intelligent to say, but the article pretty much speaks for itself. It’s revolting — and infuriating. Here’s an excerpt: On the evening of May 5 — three … Read more

Isn’t This Reassuring?

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by hilzoy Via Effect Measure, the AJC: “At the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s new $214 million infectious disease laboratory in Atlanta, scientists are conducting experiments on bioterror bacteria in a room with a containment door sealed with duct tape. The tape was applied around the edges of the door a year ago after … Read more

Happy Fourth Of July

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by hilzoy Lincoln’s Lyceum Address, 1838: “We find ourselves in the peaceful possession, of the fairest portion of the earth, as regards extent of territory, fertility of soil, and salubrity of climate. We find ourselves under the government of a system of political institutions, conducing more essentially to the ends of civil and religious liberty, … Read more

Much Ado About Nothing

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by hilzoy

(I see that publius just posted on this, but since mine is slightly different…)

Today, Barack Obama gave a speech on veterans that was instantly drowned out by the furor over this statement:

“I continue to believe that it is a strategic error for us to maintain a long-term occupation in Iraq at a time when the conditions in Afghanistan are worsening, Al Qaeda has been able to establish bases in the areas of northwest Pakistan, resources there are severely strained, and we’re spending $10 to $12 billion a month in Iraq that we desperately need here at home, not to mention the strains on our military.

So my position has not changed, but keep in mind what that original position was. I’ve always said that I would listen to commanders on the ground. I’ve always said the pace of withdrawal would be dictated by the safety and security of our troops and the need to maintain stability. That assessment has not changed. And when I go to Iraq and have a chance to talk to some of the commanders on the ground, I’m sure I’ll have more information and will continue to refine my policies.”

After the media went into a frenzy, he held another press conference at which he said that one of the points that was not up for refining was his commitment to ending the war as soon as possible.

I have a hard time seeing what the big deal is here.

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Obama Foolishly Underestimates Press Foolishness

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by publius

[UPDATE 10:00 CT: Ok, hilzoy changed my mind (she’s frustratingly good at that). There’s absolutely nothing sloppy about what Obama said when you read the whole passage. The press got Schmidt-Rolled today. It’s a complete and utter farce. So scratch what I say below about Obama’s sloppiness. The larger point of the post stands though — Obama has a nuanced policy, but it’s politically vital that he emphasizes the withdrawal side of that policy.]

When I first saw all the hysterical headlines this evening about Obama’s “refinement,” I got annoyed at Obama for being sloppy. As it turns out, I foolishly took these headlines at face value – bad idea [jeans]. When I actually read what he said, I realized that the press was largely fabricating a story out of nothing. Obama today said what’s he always said. Period. Full stop. The press is manufacturing a new story, with the help of GOP press releases (see Steve Benen for a fuller background).

But that said, I think Obama was uncharacteristically sloppy too. True, the media is terrible, but it’s often terrible in predictable ways. And today’s headlines (and the GOP attacks) were entirely predictable. So Obama should have been more careful.

To be clear, Obama’s policy is – and has always been – phased withdrawal with flexibility. Conditions on the ground have always been part of it — indeed, it would be irresponsible if they weren’t.

But the real issue here isn’t policy itself, but policy emphasis. More precisely, the issue in the weeks ahead will be what aspect of Obama’s policy – the withdrawal or the flexibility – gets the most emphasis. To win the political battle, Obama must ensure that withdrawal receives more emphasis than flexibility. After all, the Bush administration has been citing flexibility to justify indefinite occupation for some time. That’s not Obama’s policy, and it’s imperative that he doesn’t let it get defined that way.

I’ll spell all this out in more detail below…

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We’ll Just Say that You Were Never Here

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by Eric Martin As I have been arguing for months, despite Bush administration spin to the contrary, the recent anti-Sadrist military operations in Iraq (Basra, Sadr City, Amarah) have had more to do with weakening the Sadrist movement politically, than with a general anti-militia policy implemented by Prime Minister Maliki.  After all, Maliki has not … Read more

And Speaking Of Smug …

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by hilzoy The inimitable Victor Davis Hanson considers the question: why do rich people support Barack Obama: “After talking to and observing lots of Bay Area affluent and staunch Obama supporters, I think the key to reconciling the apparent paradoxes is done in the following ways. Many enjoying the good life worry that their own … Read more

Obama As A Manager

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by hilzoy Barack Obama’s campaign has been a complete surprise to me. I knew Obama was a good candidate — that’s why I supported him. But I had no idea what he would be like as a manager: after all, he hasn’t managed that much. I’ve been astonished by it. And not just by the … Read more

Funny

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by publius Andy Borowitz, “Liberal Bloggers Accuse Obama of Trying to Win Election“: The liberal blogosphere was aflame today with new accusations that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill) is trying to win the 2008 presidential election. Suspicions about Sen. Obama’s true motives have been building over the past few weeks, but not until today have the … Read more

Trouble In McCain-land

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by publius The Politico reported earlier today that the McCain campaign is essentially replacing Rick Davis, its current campaign manager, with Steve Schmidt. Not exactly where you want to be in early July. This is big news for several reasons, but one particularly important reason is that it’s seemingly a repudiation of Rick Davis’s bold … Read more

Oh Noes! My Freedoms!

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by hilzoy Just in case publius’ quote from Michael Gerson didn’t provide your full quota of amusement for the day, here’s Jeffrey Lord, “a former political director in the Reagan White House”, in The American Spectator: “Remember this gem a while back from Barack Obama? “We can’t drive our SUVs and, you know, eat as … Read more

Noted Without Further Comment

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by publius The insufferable Michael Gerson: But it is hard to avoid the feeling that Obama has gained the nomination without fully earning it. Unlike Clinton or Bush, his intellectual contributions have been slight. George W. Bush – a regular Horatio Alger story. A Hegelian hero.

Unconscionable

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by Eric Martin The hits, they just keep coming.  And by hits, I mean punches to the gut of course: The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged … Read more

Posting Rules Change

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by hilzoy We have decided to add something to the posting rules. Here it is: “We have no desire to censor people whose views we disagree with. However, there is a difference between stating and defending an unpopular position on the one hand, and repeated drive-by insults on the other, and the fact that we … Read more

“Statistical Dead Heat”

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by publius Via the invaluable Nate Silver, I see that CNN is reporting that Obama’s 5-point lead in a poll with 3.5 margin of error is a “statistical dead heat.” Arrrgh. I’d encourage the good people at CNN to go read either Silver himself or Kevin Drum’s easy “margins of error for dummies” post.

Clark

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by hilzoy On Sunday Wes Clark said this: “CLARK: Because in the matters of national security policy-making, it’s a matter of understanding risk. It’s a matter of gauging your opponents, and it’s a matter of being held accountable. John McCain’s never done any of that in his official positions. I certainly honor his service as … Read more

Obama And Affordable Housing

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by hilzoy

While I was away, the Boston Globe had a story on Obama and some Chicago affordable housing projects that sound pretty bad. If you read the article carefully, the actual story seems to come down to this:

First:

“As a state senator, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee coauthored an Illinois law creating a new pool of tax credits for developers. As a US senator, he pressed for increased federal subsidies. And as a presidential candidate, he has campaigned on a promise to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that could give developers an estimated $500 million a year.

But a Globe review found that thousands of apartments across Chicago that had been built with local, state, and federal subsidies – including several hundred in Obama’s former district – deteriorated so completely that they were no longer habitable.”

Second, some of these failed projects were developed by Obama associates, supporters, and contributors. Third, some of them are in Obama’s old State Senate district, and he doesn’t seem to have done much about them.

I have no interest in defending Obama on the second and third points. I don’t know much about them. Some blog coverage of this story is wrong: contrary to some summaries of this article, Obama did not “run” these projects, and Grove Parc, the development the Globe story focusses on, was redeveloped by a public-private partnership in 1990, while Obama was still in law school. After citing a description of this project, Rick Moran writes: ” Obama pushed hard to finance these projects back in the 1990’s.” Projects with this legal structure, yes. This project, no.

The story here, to my mind, is not: Obama got support for the projects the article describes. It’s: Valerie Jarrett, one of his close advisors, let this continue after her group took over management of the project in 2001. It’s worth noting, though, that Jarrett and the company she now heads, Habitat, did not need Obama’s help to get into this business: when the Chicago Housing Authority was put into receivership in 1987 (before Obama went to law school), they were appointed its receivers. When Jarrett met Obama, and for quite a while afterwards, he would have been the one needing her help, not the other way around. That in no way excuses her allowing this property to deteriorate, or Obama’s not doing anything about it. I mention it only because when I read the blog coverage, a lot of people seemed to think that this story was about Obama getting contracts for his buddies. And I really don’t think that’s accurate. When a lot of the contracts mentioned in the story were given out, Obama was not in a position to do any such thing, nor were some of the buddies in question in need of his help.

But I do know a little about housing stuff, enough to find the idea that there’s something suspect about supporting public/private partnerships for low-income housing development a little odd. To get a hint of what bugged me about the Globe story’s presentation of this point, consider this quote:

“Under Mayor Richard M. Daley, who was elected in 1989, the city launched a massive plan to let private companies tear down the projects and build mixed-income communities on the same land.

The city also hired private companies to manage the remaining public housing. And it subsidized private companies to create and manage new affordable housing, some of which was used to accommodate tenants displaced from public housing.

Chicago’s plans drew critics from the start. They asked why the government should pay developers to perform a basic public service – one successfully performed by governments in other cities. And they noted that privately managed projects had a history of deteriorating because guaranteed government rent subsidies left companies with little incentive to spend money on maintenance.”

Chicago’s public housing had been, for decades, a symbol of nightmarish dysfunction:

“Planned for 11,000 inhabitants, the Robert Taylor Homes housed up to a peak of 27,000 people. Six of the poorest US census areas with populations above three people were found there. Including children who are not of working age, at one point 95 percent of the housing development’s 27,000 residents were unemployed and listed public assistance as their only income source, and 40 percent of the households were single-parent, female-headed households earning less than $5,000 per year. About 99.9 percent were African-American. The 28 drab, 16-story concrete high-rises, many blackened with the scars of arson fire, sat in a narrow two-block by 2.5-mile (300 m by 3 km) stretch of slum. The city’s neglect was evident in littered streets, poorly enforced building codes, and scant commercial or civic amenities.

Police intelligence sources say that elevated number of homicides was the result of gang “turf wars,” as gang members and drug dealers fought over control of given Chicago neighborhoods. Its landlord, the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA), has estimated that $45,000 in drug deals took place daily. Former residents of the Robert Taylor Homes have said that the drug dealers fought for control of the buildings. In one weekend, more than 300 separate shooting incidents were reported in the vicinity of the Robert Taylor Homes. Twenty-eight people were killed during the same weekend, with 26 of the 28 incidents believed to be gang-related.”

I do not know much about the Chicago Housing Authority. For all I know, every single person who ever worked for it was as wise as Solon and a saint to boot, and all its problems were the result of disastrous coincidences that were utterly beyond its control. But given the actual history of government-run housing in Chicago, when I read the Globe article citing “critics” who “asked why the government should pay developers to perform a basic public service – one successfully performed by governments in other cities”, I thought: who are these critics? And why isn’t the answer to their question obvious? Namely: whatever works or doesn’t work in other cities, letting the CHA manage public housing in Chicago seems like a really, really bad idea. Maybe it would be less bad now — for all I know, the CHA might have improved a lot. But back in 1990 or so, the question “why not let the government run public housing in Chicago?” would have been like asking “why not let Michael Brown run FEMA?” right after Hurricane Katrina. Maybe Brownie was a great guy, but the appearances were certainly against him.

So if straight public housing was out, what were the alternatives to public-private partnerships?

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VitameataSurgeamin!, Part II

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by Eric Martin

David Brooks a week ago today:

But before long, the more honest among the surge opponents will concede that Bush, that supposed dolt, actually got one right. Some brave souls might even concede that if the U.S. had withdrawn in the depths of the chaos, the world would be in worse shape today.

That paragraph touches on, either expressly or implicitly, the various ways in which The Surge has been mythologized, exaggerated and shaped into a cudgel for political use, as discussed in Part I.  There is the unqualified assertion that The Surge succeeded, that as a result victory is within reach, and that those that supported The Surge showed superior judgment and thus should be rewarded at the ballot box.  That’s a lot of tendentiousness to unpack.

Initially, it is important to repeat, again, that the ostensible purpose of The Surge was to greatly reduce violence such that the various ethnic/religious/political factions could take advantage of the lull in fighting to nail down the many planks considered the foundation of long term, lasting political reconciliation (without which, presumably, the fighting will continue). As measured against its stated purpose, as enunciated by President Bush himself, The Surge has failed almost entirely. 

Far from fostering political reconciliation, the Maliki government is losing allies and falling back on ever slimmer parliamentary majorities (if that).  Most key components of the so-called benchmark legislation remain unpassed, and those measures that have passed (such as the relaxation of the De-Baathification law) have not been implemented in such a way as to achieve the desired result.  It’s not enough to simply pass legislation with benchmark titles after all.  The only worth such laws have is in how they effect the incentives of the warring parties, so implementation is everything.

The reasons that The Surge has failed should be familiar, and they reveal the serious conceptual flaws underlying this policy.  First, The Surge was, by design, a short-lived troop escalation.  As Daniel Larison points out, it was always unrealistic to expect that a temporary influx of soldiers would be able to hold the window open long enough to achieve the many difficult compromises associated with the reconciliation agenda.   

But even that begs the question.  The entire strategic foundation of The Surge rests on the assumption that the primary impediment to reconciliation is the violence itself – that if the groups could just stop fighting, they would agree to reconcile the issues that…led them to fight in the first place.  That only confuses the symptoms for the pathology.

It is not intra-Iraqi violence that is preventing the parties from agreeing on a vision of the future Iraq and from sharing power and wealth in order to achieve reconciliation.  Rather, the violence itself is a symptom of the unwillingness of groups with power to share, and the deep disagreement between many parties on a host of vital issues pertaining to the future character of Iraq as a nation (partition vs. unitary, sovereign vs. heavy-handed foreign presence, etc.). 

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