Centerfield

Academic Parasites

I'm ashamed at having ever considered entering academia after this story in the NY Times about the University of Colorado professor that compared the 9/11 victims to Eichmann.

Hamilton College, where he is a sophomore, is embroiled in a controversy. An invited speaker - Ward Churchill, a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder - has compared American policy in Iraq to that of Nazi Germany. He also referred to Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Nazis' plan to exterminate the Jews, when he called the trade center victims "little Eichmanns."

Of course, that wasn't enough for this genius.

Later, Professor Rabinowitz began receiving e-mail messages from colleagues who had learned that Professor Churchill had written in a published essay that those killed in the trade center had ignored their role in American foreign policy. "They were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cellphones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants," he wrote.

The idiocy of this really boggles my mind; apparently, everyone that worked in the Twin Towers was some apostle of American imperialism, including, presumably, the janitors and secretaries. How else can you justify something this stupid?

"They were too busy braying, incessantly and self-importantly, into their cellphones, arranging power lunches and stock transactions, each of which translated, conveniently out of sight, mind and smelling distance, into the starved and rotting flesh of infants," he wrote.

And, then, not even having the balls (pardon my language) to stand up for what he said, this

For his part, Professor Churchill said in an interview, "My reaction is astonishment. This is a three-year-old piece that has been spun mercilessly and distorted. The comparison was of technocrats. Eichmann is someone who, after all, killed no one. He made the trains run on time."

I have several reactions to this. First, while I'm sure he believes this, I suspect that this also reflects how academia works, especially in the social sciences. A little controversy and you go from being some obscure professor to a renowned speaker famed for defending the First Amendment. (And, oh yeah, more money.)

Second, the utter lack of concern or compassion for people affected by 9/11. Later in the article, he says he does have sympathy for the victims of 9/11 as well as victims in Iraq and Palestine. But I suspect that people are just an abstraction to him. He doesn't give a damn about the 9/11 victims or the Iraqis or Palestineans either. They are simply symbols. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if he sort of liked seeing civilians killed to prove his point. Like many academics, he is so divorced and alienated from the real world that mere human sentiments and concerns from low-life ordinary Americans mean nothing to him.

Third, as I noted above, his disingenuousness and unwillingness to face up to the consequences of what he said. Right after he compared the victims to Eichman and talked about their "braying" he justified their murder as the only effective means of retribution; later, of course, he said he had sympathy for them.

Finally, what bothers me the most is the absolute hypocrisy of the academic Left. Having him speak and having academics defend him wouldn't bother me nearly as much if they were equally willing to defend people whose views they don't like. For example, what if someone like Daniel Pipes, or Charles Murray or Ward Connerly were to speak? Do you think the academics would be rushing to defend their right to speak? And then, of course, they blame the "political climate" for all sorts of ills. What would the "political climate" be if someone invited an opponent of affirmative action to speak on campus?

It is simply disingenuous and exhibits an utterly bizaare self-absorption when these people constantly make inflammatory statements that they know are offensive and hurtful and then express shock and dismay at any criticism. As if the First Amendment gives them the absolute right to offend anyone they want without any consequences whatsoever. Yet, when someone like Larry Summers makes, IMO, a much less inflammatory statement, that is considered beyond the pale. Of course, when you are an academic you become used to having people hand on your every word and express admiration for your brilliance. Ass kissing is the preferred method of advancement in academia. In the real world, if you made statements like this, you would get a punch in the mouth.

And what is even worse is that, for the most part, these statements aren't even designed to start a so-called "dialogue." They are intended simply to shock and appall. They have no interest in actually discussing ideas; it is simply agitprop. Apparently, the college will have a forum with this guy where people will supposedly be able to engage. Does anyone really think that this guy will do anything but sling mud at anyone who dares challenge him?

I apologize for my anger, but things like this sicken me. I used to hold the academy in such high regard; I thought there would be nothing better than to teach and discuss ideas. It is simply appalling what has happened on campus. I think tenure has outlived its usefulness; let these people get a taste of real life instead of having a sinecure for life. (My sister-in-law won't approve of these statements since her husband just got tenure at Penn.) Let Ward Churchill address the families of the 9/11 victims and tell them how their loved ones were braying little Eichmans. Of course, he wouldn't have the courage to look them in the face; he has to retreat back to his rock at the University of Colorado. Fortunately, he has at least resigned the chairmanship of his department although he remains on the faculty. (The fact that he was chairman of the department says something about what the social sciences have come to.)epartment is it that would have someone like this

How to "Fix" the Republican Party, Part 1

A while back I asked Rick why we seemed to perseverate on “How the Democratic party should change". He challenged me to suggest another topic. Since “turnabout is fair play” I’ve decided to look at how the Republican Party might change. Since success is fleeting; what are the issues that could potentially divide the Republican Party, hurt it in future elections AND is that important to centrists.

First, I’d like to examine an issue near and dear to Arizona: Immigration reform. This past election the Arizona voters easily passed Proposition 200 . While on the surface the proposition simply required that all Arizonans show proof of citizenship to vote and to receive public benefits, unofficially it was seen as a backlash to the illegal immigration problem that Arizona, as border state, wrestles with. The Federation for American Immigration Reform,Fair, was the major outside group behind Prop 200.

Most major Republican officer holders opposed the proposition as an unnecessary and ineffective initiative. A major voice for opposition in AZ was John McCain. McCain, as a counter-proposal, has worked with fellow senators (including Teddy Kennedy) to propose a guest worker program. President Bush has endorsed the concept. Groups such as FAIR suggest that only tighter enforcement of border restrictions and no amnesty or guest worker programs. Several prominent AZ Republicans support the FAIR agenda.

As an interesting sidelight, 44 % of Arizona Hispanics supported Prop 200 leading some pundits to suggest that such “anti-immigrant” referenda aren’t a “slam dunk” with Hispanic voters.

So what direction should the Republican Party go? What is the “conservative” position (i.e. free market versus greater government regulation)? What is the centrist position on immigration reform? And ultimately which party benefits from addressing this issue?

Centrists Gaining Visibility

BOPnews blogger paperwight isn't too happy with Marshall Wittman, the former Republican who is now blogging for the Democratic Leadership Council.
But what pleases me about this post is the comment by John:

i think this guy is what is lately called a centrist. i've noticed alot of new political blogs under this label lately. truthfully i don't really understand what a centrist is. they seem to be coming from the far right of the domestic political agenda with a corporate agebda at their core. i'd bet most of their funding is corporate.

Here is my response to John:

I'm delighted you've noticed an increased in centrist blogs. Most centrists I know are pro-business and socially tolerant. In fact, at the Centrist Coalition, we're supportive of gay marriage, and have had arguments with conservatives who say we can't really be centrists, because the median American voter is against gay marriage. In theory, a centrist could be anti-business and socially intolerant--kind of like William Jennings Bryan. I don't know anyone like that, however.

Except for the DLC blogs, I don't know of any centrists who are getting paid to blog. The Centrist Coalition is all-volunteer at this point.

As far as why someone might be a centrist, it's often because they have had life experiences that allow them to relate to both sides of the cultural divide. I for instance was raised in a highly traditional religious household, but also went to college in Cambridge, Mass.

The Welfare State Revisited

The problem presented by the millions of Americans that are unemployed and dependent on welfare is a troubling one. Democrats must put forth a solid strategy directed at solving this problem if we are going to get back to our roots and take back the areas of America that are now Republican.

Republicans rail against a "welfare state" while at the same time making it harder for welfare recipients to get low-level employment and shake that burden. Those who honestly want to get off of welfare do not like being on it. They do not wear it as a badge of pride. It is the bottom line, though, that rules the day for the Republicans: keeping the wages down and the profits coming in.

Unlike what anti-welfare proponents would like people to believe, there are more methods to solving this problem than hiking wages and making it difficult for the rest of us. The rhetoric doesn't measure up to analysis. Job turnover rates - the rate at which workers quit and employers have to replace them - has always been a problem with welfare workers. They just don't seem to stay at work. Wages play only a small part in this equation. When simple humanity is injected into the workplace, turnover rates dramatically decrease.

According to studies done in collaboration with the publication of David Shipler's brilliant account of welfare workers, The Working Poor, simply having an employee or supervisor talk to and eat lunch with a new employee regularly can reduce turnover rates by half. Yes, something so simple as making a welfare worker feel as if they are more than just one cog in the machine will help bridge that gap and cut turnover rates drastically.

Families that have used welfare through generations - the groups Republicans like to harangue - are often those who would be helped the most by this process. They normally show an increased difficulty attaching to a regular work schedule beyond a 60-day period of high motivation. These "60-day workers" are normally bound down by family issues and are not used to holding a fixed schedule. As an employer interviewed by Shipler put it, "Work is not the first job." With someone there to spot them, per se, they now feel needed. That fundamental motivation of feeling important in the workplace solves the most basic problem of turnover.

Looking for a college degree for a secretarial job, or in nursing or car repair, cuts out many applicants who have trained in these very skills through welfare job training programs. It sounds bad, but lowering the requirements for those jobs from a college degree to a G.E.D. would open doors for hundreds of thousands of otherwise capable but undereducated workers. Let me briefly explain why this is not such a negative thing:

The long-term solution to the swollen ranks of welfare recipients lies not in wages - which are also an important part of the workplace, but actually ranked lower than "Feeling Appreciated" in Shipler's studies - but in taking low-cost risks and focusing on the worker. It takes extra time, but a partnership between corporations and the government to allow for rebates if workers stay beyond a set time limit would help ease the burden employers may feel. A motivated welfare worker is much more likely to stay employed and work his or her way into self reliance and out of the welfare pit. This challenge is far more difficult than Republicans - or Democrats, for that matter - give credit for.

Time, not money, will solve this problem. Time, care and adaptation will serve as three tonics that will do what money cannot do. Democrats and Republicans could both take some points away from Shipler's book: if we want to make welfare reform real, why not start by making jobs available to those who have the skills for the labor but not degree? Why not let them work their way out, like everyone seems to want? It's time to answer.

Brought to you by The New Democrat

Centrist National Voice Chat

Because we're scattered round the USA, it will be difficult for us to ever meet in person. That's why we've come up with the idea of a national voice chat. Centrist Coalition members have already been using the voice chat feature of Yahoo Groups to handle our business meetings. We've decided to set up a voice chat to talk about politics and anything else that interests us--the equivalent of our Friday open thread. We may also invite a blogger from our blogroll to be our featured guest.

To participate in the voice chat, you will need to install Yahoo's free Instant Messenger on your computer. That's all you need if you just want to listen; if you want to speak, you will either need a built-in microphone on your computer, or you will need to spend $15 to buy an external mike.

We plan on setting up a new Yahoo Group just for the voice chat. Users could select the "No mail" option to ensure they're not adding to their email traffic. We're taking nominations for a name for the group. The ones suggested so far are: Centrist Voice Chat, Centrist Townhall, and Moderate Mooseheads. Please leave your suggestions in the comments to this post.

Also, please suggest a day and time for what could become a weekly chat. I'm thinking 10PM Eastern Standard Time, which would be 7PM on the West Coast. I'm often committed in the evenings Monday-Thursday, so my favorites would be Friday or Sunday night--especially since I'd be stoked up by talk shows like the McLaughlin Group.

I hope we can get this rolling within a couple weeks. Stay tuned.

Good news from Iraq, Part 20

The regular Chrenkoff report on what you don't normally see on the 6 o'clock news.

Good news from Iraq, Part 20

Naturally, much on the elections, including the surprising show of voters in Falluja and Mosul. Also a few things on the election that I haven't found at all elsewhere, like the Turkish press report from the election observers.

Those Uber-Civilized Germans

'If you don't take a job as a prostitute, we can stop your benefits'

A 25-year-old waitress who turned down a job providing "sexual services'' at a brothel in Berlin faces possible cuts to her unemployment benefit under laws introduced this year.

Euro-socialism, anyone?

Are Americans from Mars and Europeans from Venus

Isiah Berlin is generally considered one of the great political philosophers of the 20th Century and a doyen of political pluralism. In recent years, some conservatives have questioned his legacy due to the aspect of cultural relativism in his work. Berlin spend most of his career at Oxford (he was born in Russia), but spent the war years in the United States. He reflected a very European view of the world (even in the 40s) and was generally uncomfortable with (although not hostile to) the United States.

Simon Schama reviewed a book of Berlin's letters in The New Republic recently and one part of the article really struck me as being relevant to the current transatlantic divide. It discusses Berlin's somewhat negative view of American optimism.

Early in his stay in the United States, where he arrived first in 1940, hoping to move on to Moscow (via Japan), Berlin realized that his skeptical and finally tragic view of history made him a cultural misfit. In New York, where Berlin was employed at the British Press Service in Manhattan, and in Washington, where he became head of the political survey section at the British Embassy, he blinked at the sunlit intensity of American optimism. Though he genuinely admired American energy and forthrightness, the mistaken conviction that exhaustive iteration was the same thing as comprehension depressed him. Ultimately he thought that the national passion for the unequivocal could only be sustained through an exercise of eye-shutting make-believe akin to a children's party game: the conversion of the world from what it was to what America wished it would be. This optimization of the world, he thought, was a willed self-deception about the reality of human behavior; namely, that there were no conflicts that, with the application of enough goodwill, money, and robust determination, could not be resolved.

Clearly, this reflects a still existing divide between European and American thought and, IMO, explains a lot of the policy differences. Largely because of history, the Europeans have a much more tragic view of history than we do and are much more skeptical in the ability of humans to shape their environment. Americans, on the other hand, believe in finding a clear cut solution. Contrary to what people might like to think, these different perspectives predate Bush and really have existed since the United States broke away from England. People on both sides of the ocean are often frustratrated by the inability of the other to see things their way, without realizing that the differences reflect, not just disagreements on particular policies, but completely different world views.

Obviously, for example, this explains a lot of the difference on Iraq. Where Americans want to get to the root and apply our resources and energy to solving the problems in the Middle East, Europeans are much more skeptical about the human ability to deal with complex issues and are much more comfortable with an incremental, cautious approach.

Thus,

Those exasperated by the reluctance of Sunni Iraqis to be reasonable and take their coming electorally rendered punishment on the chin could do worse than read Berlin on the tenacity of social magic in the allure of tribal nationalism.

Conservatives were traditionally skeptical of man's ability to solve problems and against efforts to change the status quo. Liberals were usually more receptive to change. Now, to some extent, this has reversed and many conservatives seem willing to embrace action for the sake of action with the idea that, at least with respect to the Middle East, the world is susceptible to change and improvement.

I think there is a lot to be said for both viewpoints, but I have to say I have a lot of sympathy for the Berlin perspective. I know there is not a lot of sympathy for Europe here, but the world is complicated and sometimes the best you can do is to muddle through. Expecting to bend the world (or a region) to your will can be counterproductive. I think the European view is often the more realistic. On the other hand, the fatalism inherent in the European attitude can lead to complacency (as I think it has) and a willingness to compromise with evil (as I think it has at times). Both perspectives have some validity and Europeans and Americans are making mistakes by ignoring (or dismissing) each other.

Voices of Islam

The January Issue of Current History (which is, unfortunately, subscription only), has writings from Muslim scholars (translated from the original) on issues relating to the the state and religion, tolerance, and freedom of thought. The writings are interesting because they take Islam away from the militants and theocrats and present a religion that is not what we have been presented in recent years. They also, I think, are startlingly candid in some respects about Islam.

I can't excerpt the articles, but I want to give some of the flavor. Gamal Al-Banna, an Egyptian, notes that the hardline interpretation of Islam (at least in Egypt) resulted in part from the repression practiced by the Nasser regime in the 50s and 60s. He argues that many of the militants had been tortured in Nasser's prisons and came out hard and impervious to what he calls "appeasement." Thus, he argues that terrorism arose originally from autocratic governments. Muhammad Shahrur says much the same thing, arguing that Islamic militancy arose largely because the modernist Arab governments failed to deliver and created a need for an alternative. He argues that the "central concern for the Arab Muslim world is the need to appreciate the urgent necessity of a second contemporary reading of the Koran and Sunna, guided by the imperatives of the world today." He advocates readings the focus on doctrines of constitutional jurisprudence, checking power and ensuring accountability to the people, "but these concepts were not found in the inherited traditional culture."

Mohsen Kadivar talks about Freedom of Throught and Religion. He notes that the Koran states that "Duress is not permissible in religion." He says this means that "God has prohibited us from imposing faith on anyone, since forced faith and tyranny are not valid." And, "if non-Muslims or skeptical Muslims do not accept our reasoning, we do not have an obligation to impose our version of truth on them."

Finally, Mohammad Boujnourdi, who is described as a "pragmatic" Iranian cleric, argues that "throughout history Muslims have been very tolerant people. We must emphasize this virtue among Muslims and in the world today."

Moreover, toldrance means more than just allowing something. He says it "means respect, acceptance, and appreciation of the rich diversity of world's cultures, forms of expression and ways of being human." Thus, "with non-Muslims we should have dialogue and good relations, but we cannot accept things that are contrary to our religion."

I think these are fascinating articles. I don't know whether these people reflect the consensus in Islam or not, but clearly, they believe that Islam has been hijacked by people with a radically different understanding of Islam. I would like to think that these writings are reasons for hope, in the sense that more people in the Muslim world will look askance at how their religion is being falsely portrayed to the rest of the world.

On the other hand, it's probably naive to think that the other interpretation of Islam is not also supported by a lot of people and that, in many cases, it serves the ends of the powerful in these countries. To truly encourage political reform, I believe, will require that we engage the religion and encourage the empowerment of people like these scholars on their terms--ie, not as geopolitical pawns serving US interests, but as people working within the Islamic world to further its interests.

Zarquawi Misjudges Iraqis

It looks like our friend Zarqawi has overreached; first, by setting the bar for disrupting the election so high that any decent turnout would be a victory for the good guys; second, by adopting a view of Islam that seems to have less and less appeal to the population. An article in today's Washington Post gives an interesting perspective on the reaction to Zarqawi's statements about democracy being incompatible with Islam.

In a widely disseminated Internet audiotape, Zarqawi didn't merely say that he opposed the mechanics or timing of the U.S.-run elections being held today in Iraq to choose a 275-member assembly and transitional government. And he didn't say he thought Iraqis should wait and vote after U.S. occupation forces depart. No, Zarqawi said that he opposes any elections under any circumstances.

In doing so, he sets up a clash with more at stake than the outcome of today's voting. In the audiotape, which surfaced last Sunday, Zarqawi, the most feared and wanted militant in Iraq, declared a "fierce war" against all those "apostates" who take part in the elections. He called candidates running in the elections "demi-idols" and the people who plan to vote for them "infidels." And he railed against democracy because he said it supplants the rule of God with that of a popular majority. This wicked system, he said disapprovingly, is based on "freedom of religion and belief" and "freedom of speech" and on "separation of religion and politics." Democracy, he added, is "heresy itself."

A small but influential group of Islamic intellectuals is saying that Muslims should see democracy as compatible with Islam. Islamic political parties and movements across North Africa and the Middle East are deciding with greater frequency to take part in elections whenever possible. In the Palestinian Authority balloting, the radical Islamic Resistance Movement, known as Hamas, has entered candidates in races for local offices. In Egypt, Islamic political activists are urging President Hosni Mubarak to retire and permit free elections. And in Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the revered Shiite cleric, issued an edict saying participation in the balloting today was a "religious duty."

There was also an article, which I can't seem to find now, to the effect that other citizens in the Middle East are looking at the elections with interest. This and the results so far of the election are obviously good news. I still remain skeptical about the benefits of bringing democracy at the point of a gun, but it is clear that the autocratic Arab regimes may be under some pressure now. But the question remains how willing will the Bush Administration to pressure the Saudis to open up their system if the possibility exists that it may threaten our oil supply? It seems to me that, if you are really serious about political reform in the Middle East (which I think is a better term than democratizing), it's going to require some difficult choices and working for incremental change. Fawaz Gerges, who wrote the article on Zarqawi makes a good point

Terminology matters. You cannot sell Western liberal democracy to Muslims worldwide because Muslims associate it with Western colonialism and power. But some Muslims are trying to give democracy an Islamic dress while embracing essentials such as elections, human rights and the rule of law.

The point is, as long as opponents (including Arab governments) can identify political reform with American "imperialism" it is going to be a hard sell. But I have to say that I have been moved by the efforts and sacrifices a lot of the Iraqis are making to vote. I think its safe to say that many Americans (probably including me) would not do so. As I said in a comment the other day, while I still have deep problems with the Bush policy, people that behead others and kill their own people are not worthy of romanticizing as some sort of Bolivarian nationalists.

I think (hopefully) that we are beginning to see a roiling in the Middle East against radical Islam, although we are far from seeing its demise. In another post, I am going to discuss some writings from Islamic scholars recently published in Current History that highlight a much more positive view of Islam than we have been seeing in the West.

More Election Thoughts

72%.

The terrorists have failed. Freedom has prevailed.

Regardless of TalkLeft's whining that there's too much security, the fact that Matt Yglesias seems to be grudgingly and sarcastically conceding rather than celebrating freedom, and Daily Kos seems upset that America can't pull out as soon as the last ballot is cast.

I don't care. I'm ashamed to be a former Democrat.

Excuse my language, but can't these negative windbags shut the hell up for 24 hours and realize what is taking place here?! No, it isn't the end-all, be-all of Truth, Justice, and the American Way.

But it sure is something.

On another interesting note, as Rick mentioned earlier, Iraqis are getting their fingers dyed purple to celebrate their voting today. I really like this; it's a slap in the face to the terrorists.

We're not afraid of you.
You can't stop this.

Inheritability Of Private Accounts

What's the deal with inheritability of the private accounts being proposed by the Administration?

The GOP polling found that a majority of voters oppose reducing the starting benefit for all future retirees, or borrowing money or increasing the national debt.

On the other hand, there is support for applying the payroll tax to all income rather than maintaining an existing cap, and for reducing starting benefits for those who retire early.

As is often the case with political polls, the survey tested a variety of claims for and against the issue so Republicans would know which ones are most persuasive with the public.

On the positive side, "voters are most impacted by messages regarding inheritability, the voluntary nature of the program and the fact that workers would own and control, their account," the memo said.

Does anybody have more details on how the payouts of the private accounts would be scheduled, and whether they could be transformed into a life annuity?

Inheritability suggests to me that the payouts would simply be the interest on the accumulated balance, and the principal would never be touched. Upon death of the retiree, the principal would be inherited (tax-free of course) by heirs. Would the principal be transferred to the heirs private accounts, or would they be able to use the money immediately?

If this is the proposal and if there is no option to transform the payout into an annuity that would pay out the principal in payments actuarily adjusted for life expectancy, it seems dumb to me.

It means that the retiree will underspend their accumulated savings, and that the next generation will receive a windfall. Living purely off interest is the equivalent of an infinite life expectancy. The beauty of an annuity is that one doesn't need to know how long one will live. The insurer makes a calculation of life expectancy, and in return for a lump sum, which is never returned or passed on to heirs, a stream of payments are made which have an expected value equal to the lump sum. Without insurance, one either has to assume one will live indefinitely, and never touch the principal, leaving it to one's heirs, or dip into the principal, at risk of living too long and becoming indigent.

If there is an option to convert private account payments into an annuity, or an option to payout only the interest on the principal, I suppose that would be fair.

Does anyone know the details?

Politics Not Reason Enough for "No" Vote on Gonzalez

A few days back on his blog, the "real" New Democrat made a spirited argument, urging Democrats to stand against the Gonzalez nomination. I like Max, if the Democratic Party listened to him they would be in a lot better shape then they are now. However, on this one, he is wrong. In his post, he states:

The United States of America has, since its very creation, been a nation governed by law. No matter how heinous the crime, our laws still stand firm in their demand that every accused criminal be afforded his or her rights. When those men - terrorists or not - came under American control, by law they inherited those most basic protections of their life and liberty. The argument is often made that these are the men who would spare no expense to kill those we love. Perhaps this is true. However, could the same not be said for Timothy McVeigh? For John Wayne Gacy? We did not torture them. We provided them with cable television.

The criminal protections provided to those who stand accused of a crime are there not for those crimes we see as petty, but for those so gruesome and gut-wrenching that it takes the strength of our supreme law to keep their rights and liberties intact. If an American were detained somewhere far away, would we not demand he receive these same rights we deny the detainees at Guantanamo Bay? Would we deny him the right to plead his case? Would we stand for his torture and simply say that government was just trying to get some information? No. Alberto Gonzales does not represent these values...

Now how we can look under our own noses at those we deny the freedom to plead their case in a court of law and say, "There is nothing we can do for you...

Now is the time, my fellow Democrats, to stand for our principles in front of every American. Let the Republicans say what they will: if Alberto Gonzales is confirmed, if every able Democrat has not stood against him, we have let down not only the constituents of the Democrats, but all people who believe in upholding the American system.

I am one to argue that there are better alternatives to physical torture, but my question to Max would be, who are the Democrats to say what my values are? I know it is not this black and white, but if the choice is between torture or my family, I say use torture.

Furthermore, if Democrats followed Max's logic on this one, they would not vote for any of the President's cabinet picks because they simply could take any issue and say that the nominee is standing against their values, and therefore American values. After all, don't politicians from both parties claim to speak on behalf of what America stands for?

The fact of the matter is, this issue is a lot more complicated than looking at images on the internet and expressing a negative emotion. There are complexities to consider when we ask about the policy of torture other than, would we want that for ourselves or our troops? Yes, there is an argument for taking extreme measures when we are talking about the safety of the American people.

Max may be on one side of this issue and has made a fairly strong legal argument. I appreciate his willingness to share his opinion and am not so sure that we are that far apart, but I will say about Gonzalez what I said about Secretary Rice... It is improper for the Senate to vote down a nominee because they disagree with that person's viewpoint on certain issues. The President has a Constitutional right to appoint people to his cabinet who agree with him, or not. He did, after all, win an election.

As long as the nominee is not grossly unqualified, has been involved in unethical activity that is an obvious violation of the public trust, or has broken the law, the Senate should vote to confirm. I personally believe that there where better picks than Gonzalez because the Attorney General should have independence from the administration. I am not sure, because of his professional connection with the President, that Gonzalez can be effective. None the less, the man was a well respected and decorated attorney, state judge, and White House Counsel. I am glad that the discussion about his position on torture has occurred, but he is qualified to do the job.

Although some may disagree with the legality of the Gonzalez torture memo, no Court of law has charged him with a crime, or even said what he proposed was criminal activity. If they had, it wouldn't matter, because policy makers have a right to propose ideas that are reviewed by courts and determined to be unconstitutional if that is the case... It is the very reason for the idea of checks and balances.

If there is any question about the Gonzalez nomination, it should be about whether or not Carla is right about his alleged illegal cover up of that DWI, while he was a judge and the President was a Governor.

Cross-posted at the Dan Evans Republican.

Iraqi Polls Closed

Looks like a success. Iraqi officials report a turnout of 72%, reaching up to 90% in Shiite areas. It looks like the silent majority came out to choose their next leaders. The exception is in Sunni strongholds like Tikrit, where polling stations were empty. That's their loss.

Voters braved the threat of violence, and some actual execution of voters

But the landmark vote for a nation that has survived decades of brutal oppression and nearly two years of war and insurgency was marred by eight suicide bomb attacks in Baghdad that killed at least 11 people and injured 47 more.

Identifying them by their ink-stained fingers, insurgents also rounded up four voters after they left a polling station and killed them by throwing grenades at them, Iraqi police from Baghdad headquarters said.

Hopefully, this will inspire Iraqis to defend their new government, and allow American troops to withdraw without in any sense abandoning them.

Update: The Moderate Voice has an excellent roundup on the election, including a doctored photo which sends a message.

Undermining The Democrats

The Washington Posts Thomas Edsall reports on the potential political benefits of the Bush agenda to the Republican Party

Legislation putting caps on civil damage awards, for instance, would choke income to trial lawyers, among the most generous contributors to the Democratic Party.

GOP strategists, likewise, hope that the proposed changes to Social Security can transform a program that has long been identified with the Democrats, creating a generation of new investors who see their interests allied with the Republicans.

Less visible policies also have sharp political overtones. The administration's transformation of civil service rules at federal agencies, for instance, would limit the power and membership of public employee unions -- an important Democratic financial artery.

Mere interest group politics?

Republicans note that limiting the growth of lawsuits and damage awards, as well as proposed investment accounts in Social Security, are ideas Bush and other conservatives have championed for years. The Bush agenda lies "at the wonderful intersection where good policy is good politics for Republicans and conservatives," said Stephen Moore, president of the Free Enterprise Fund, which is lobbying for the Social Security changes.

Polarization in the UK

I have no intuition about why this is happening, but the center is reportedly in decline in British politics

Intriguingly, the poll also suggests the Tory vote is hardening to the right, with only six per cent identifying with the 'One-Nation Tory' label and a rise in those identifying themselves as Thatcherite. A similar shift on the left has seen a switch from those identifying as 'new Labour' to 'old Labour', suggesting the party may be losing floating voters.

Britain has a vigorous third party, the Liberal Democrats. I gather that on economic issues, they're to the right of Labour, but on foreign policy, particularly Iraq, they are to Labour's left.

The National Debt: How Bad Is It?

I keep meaning to write a lengthy post on this, but someone else has beat me to the essentials and done it with much more brevity than I can usually manage. Check it out!

National Debt burden: Full history

Swift Vet to Challenge Kerry

Fresh off the Political Wire:

Jerome Corsi, co-author of Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry, announced he will move to Massachusetts later this year and to run against Kerry in 2008, the Washington Post reports.

This lying, carpet-bagging, "war crimes don't need to be reported" idiot will be crushed in his tracks by Kerry.

Your fifteen minutes were up before you stepped to the mic, Jerome.

Health Care: The 800-lb Gorilla

While the Democrats work overtime to shoot down a Social Security reform plan that hasn't even been proposed or detailed yet, there's another crisis waiting in the wings to explode. And for this one, there's no cushion of lead time.

Tax-Exempt Hospitals' Practices Challenged
46 Lawsuits Allege That Uninsured Pay the Most

As the cost of medical care continues to increase faster than economic growth, even the institutions that are supposed to help are taking a very hard line indeed on collecting bills from the uninsured--and charging them more to boot. While insurors negotiate steep price breaks on services, the uninsured are dunned for full "list" price, sometimes as much as six times what an insured patient's bill would be. In times past, the poor's charges would be written off as charity. Now even the non-profits are sending the bill collectors to dun minimum-wage workers for bills they can't possibly pay.

Malpractice suits, insurance companies, high drug costs, boutique clinics, corporate medicine--the list of things and people to blame is endless. But the bottom line is that the system is out of control, and rapidly becoming unaffordable to even those in the middle rungs of the ladder. Health insurance for a family of four has already passed the $10,000 a year mark, and that's NOT including deductibles and co-pays. By far the #1 cause of bankruptcy in America today is medical bills.

Social Security reform, while not cheap, is not complicated. The choices are fairly clear, the finances not all that ambiguous. If we act soon, it can be brought under control without the system imploding. But Medicare isn't running out of tax revenue in 2018. It's running out of revenue NOW, and the overall cost of the program in constant-dollar terms is expected to more than quadruple in the coming years. And that may be an optimistic estimate. One conclusion is inescapable--Medicare can not be reformed without reforming the overall health care system.

In the meantime, fewer and fewer employers are picking up the full tab for medical insurance. And even fewer pay anything at all for the employee's dependents--that's extra. The cost of insurance is severely retarding wage growth, and is the #1 factor cited in "outsourcing" decisions by employers.

Many defenders of the American health care system like to say that we have the finest health-care system in the world. And it's true that American health-care innovation is unrivaled, in drug and technology and treatment development. But outcomes are lagging, as large portions of the populace simply can't afford to access these innovations. We do indeed have the finest for-profit health care system in the world. It's the absolute finest at producing profits. But it's rapidly becoming second-rate at producing outcomes.

I have no easy answers. But I'd love to hear suggestions. How do we cage the 800-lb gorilla? And how can we afford to feed it?

Is the nuclear option defused?

Recent counts have as many as seven Republican senators indicating that they may buck a party line vote that attempts to sustain a parliamentary ruling that Rule XXII (a/k/a cloture a/k/a the filibuster) does not apply to debate on judicial nominees.

Assuming that the Democrats are able to hold their line (some have suggested that red-state Democrats would buckle under pressure), the loss of seven Republicans would kill the nuclear option Senator Frist (R-Tenn.) continues to dangle like the sword of Damocles.

The Magnificent Seven (or Seven Samurai, depending on how much you like remakes) reportedly are Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.), Susan Collins (R-Me.), Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), Olympia Snow (R-Me.), Ted Stevens (R-Alaska), and John Warner (R-Va.).

Historic day: January 30, 2005

Usually, interested Americans watch a foreign election wondering only "who will win?" and/or "will it be fair?" That is not at all the case in Iraq. We don't even really know who the candidates are, but we do know that -- regardless of the inevitable irregularities and likely attempts at fraud -- the Shiites are going to "win" in the sense that their representatives will get a majority of the votes. The story in this election will be how many Iraqis are willing to defy the Sunni thugs for the sake of their own futures as well as future generations, and how many of those people are killed as a result. In that sense, I don't think that there has been an election remotely like this one in my lifetime.

I intend to bifurcate my evaluation of the news from Sunday into two categories: (1) what happened in the Sunni Triangle?; and (2) what happened in the rest of the country? The establishment of democracy anywhere requires time, and this election is only the first step for Iraq. After decades of repression in any country, a qualified success in the first democratic elections thereafter is probably the most that can be reasonably hoped for under the best of circumstances and, obviously, the best of circumstances do not exist in Iraq right now.

Please use this thread to express any thoughts you have regarding the good, the bad and/or the ugly in connection with this weekend's elections in Iraq.

Vandal-ized

Only a week after the controversy broke over Ricky Vandal's take-off of "The New Democrat," everything has quieted. 'Ricky Vandal' the person has been shamed away from his crown jewel weblog. 'Ricky Vandal' the Republican operative has been defeated. In a way, it is as if we come to the end of a great war for the security of Democratic discourse. It is a war, I am glad to say, we all won.

'Ricky Vandal' symbolized the kind of person, the kind of operative, that has been so successful in the past in confusing and spoiling the kind of frank discussion the Democratic Party needs in order to survive and thrive. His voice, disguised behind the banner of the Donkey, attempted to throw a monkey wrench into the new and expanding tool of the internet in guiding the course of our political parties.

Had it not been for a few angry, determined Democrats who demanded decency, it may well have continued. Those who pushed me on to do more than sit idly by while a Republican-in-disguise took links and traffic that rightfully belonged to Democrats deserve my highest praise and gratitude. Ricky is just one of many like this, and it should be the job of every Democrat - especially those who took time and effort in blunting Ricky's attacks and mistruths - to keep aware and do all we can to keep our discourse pure.

We are the party of the Big Tent, the party that has accepted blacks when they were shunned, that gave women the right to vote when others scoffed, and now defends the rights of homosexuals when others find them indefensible. This new vigor that has been brought into the Democratic Party from our defeat in November 2004 will serve us well if we can only keep it up, and keep men like Ricky from confusing and turning off those newcomers who expected frank discussion and got right-wing confusion tactics.

So my thanks goes out to you, Rick Heller, for informing me of all of this, and making The Centrist Coalition the headquarters of our Democratic offensive against the mistruths and misdeeds of Ricky Vandal. I thank in the highest Mr. Ron Brynaert, who worked more than any man ever should to bring to light the arrogance and ignorance of Ricky Vandal's past, a fact that helped bring him to account. Also, to all of those who tracked back to this -- The Moderate Voice, The New Industry, The Kentucky Democrat, Kudzu Files, The Blogging of the President, Watcher of Weasels, and Ron's blog.

This may not seem like much to those who were not involved in what happened, but it stands as one of the major victories Web Democrats have had - taking down a website a full 10 times larger than the one it is copying, through the effort of a group determined to make the smear- and confusion-machine account for what it did. We challenged Ricky Vandal to put up or shut up, and shut up he did.

Ricky Vandal's "New Democrat" is gone, and we are better for it.

Brought to you by The (REAL) New Democrat

The Anti-Rice Crowd

A lot of praise/insults (depending on your choice of Daily Kos or Power Line) are being hurled at John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, Robert Byrd and the other Democrats who protested against the appointment of Dr. Condoleeza Rice for SecState.

I'm wondering what your thoughts are on the matter - are these men and women obstructionists, or are they simply exercising their right to discourse? Nobody's arguing whether they had the right to hold up the nomination, but whether they should have done so.

I, personally, see no point in it. I'm by no means a hard rightist, but I have to work hard to steer clear of the term "obstructionist" - Rice was clearly going to get nominated. If not for this "boy who cried wolf" approach to the SecState position, perhaps the Democrats' criticisms of Alberto Gonzalez would be taken seriously.

And oh, yes... I'm new here!

Open Thread

What's on your mind? Nothing is off topic.

(Beat you to it, Rick!)

Another Positive Sign for Abortion

I must make it clear, I am not a fan of President Bush’s. However, I was genuinely surprised and happy to hear his comments on abortion today in a New York Times interview.

"I think the goal ought to be to convince people to value life," Mr. Bush said. "But I fully understand our society is divided on the issue and that there will be abortions. That's reality. It seems like to me my job is to convince people to make right choices in life, to understand there're alternatives to abortion, like adoption, and I will continue to do so."

I think this positioning on the issue of abortion by Bush, as well as Hillary Clinton’s recent acknowledgement of the validity of discouraging abortions, is very promising. I hesitate to say it signifies the beginning of the end for the issue, but both Bush and Clinton represent their respective wings rather prominently, so their comments could lead to new, acceptable common ground.

Third Pundit On Government Payroll

Salon's Eric Boehlert reports that a third columnist, Michael McManus, got a government contract, in addition to Maggie Gallagher and Armstrong Williams. At first, I thought the problem might be restricted to the Education Department, but clearly this is a much bigger problem, as the other two had contracts from Health & Human Services.

The only defense I can imagine for this sort of abuse is, "Clinton did it too!" Did any liberal columnists get contracts from the previous administration? None that I know of. I'd like to see a thorough investigation of these public relations practices, going as far back as necessary.

Female Soldiers 'Broke' Gitmo Detainees With Sex

I'll be brief, because I can't stomach thinking about this for very long.

In what is rapidy becoming one of the most disturbing revelations out of Camp X-Ray, it appears that female soldiers have been playing sexual games with detainees in order to break them down for questioning.

I'll tell you, this really drops the bar on what I thought of our military. I know, the vast majority of our troops are honorable and are doing what they think is best. But this just crosses the line.

A similar situation went on in Abu Ghraib, and Cageprisoners.com has a comprehensive article on the horrifying and disgusting subject. Is this what the Army has become? Are we now so much like our enemies that we are resorting to attacks on their religious and culutural decency?

"Fake menstrual blood" was used in one case, the Yahoo! News story notes, smeared on the face of a detainee to humiliate him. Now to some of us the idea of female soliders in thongs and miniskirts may be the exact opposite of torture, but the military knew fully well that those sorts of things were frowned upon by Muslims. This is pyschological battering of the worst kind.

This is just another reason why Alberto Gonzales - the man who advocated all of this in the first place - must not be confirmed. Democrats need to stand up as a party and oppose this man's confirmation as strenuously as they can. Thanks, Alberto -- we're no better than the people we're fighting now.

Brought to you by The New Democrat

Kevin Drum on the Class-Based Social Security Bargain

In an earlier post, I pointed out that there were only four ways of closing the gap between Social Security income and payouts, if such a gap emerges in the currently projected year of 2018, or in any other year.

The four ways are:

1. Raising the payroll tax

2. Raising general taxes

3. Cutting benefits

4. Borrowing the money

Turns out Kevin Drum is indeed suggesting (in a post today and a Christian Science Monitor article) that option #2 is the way to go -- raise taxes that go to the general fund (i.e., income taxes) and transfer the money to Social Security.

I expressed skepticism about that option in my earlier post because I've never seen it discussed. All the Social Security fixes I hear about involve a combination of #1 and #3 above -- e.g., fixing it from within by adjusting Social Security taxes and benefits.

I propose a challenge. Who can be the first person to find a proposal by any elected representative that accomplishes what Kevin suggests? Maybe such things are being considered at some level of seriousness. It's quite possible that I just don't know about it.

I'd also like you to think about the class-based bargain that Kevin suggests occurred with the 1983 Social Security reform. He says that lower income people agreed to a higher payroll tax in 1983 (a type of tax that costs them more) in exchange for a payback from the general fund several decades later when the baby boom retirement begins.

Basically, by his theory, lower income people agreed to pay more for a roughly 35 year period beginning in 1983, in exchange for the wealthy paying higher income taxes beginning around 2018 or so.

Why, exactly, would lower income folks make that bargain? If fairness in these taxes is a key issue, why not just make it fair all the way through? Just tap into general fund revenues as part of the 1983 reform and have everybody pay their fair share. People live and die during the 35 year period involved in this class bargain. Why charge a janitor more in 1985 ... only to have him retire in 2005 and die in 2015, before the first dime of "payback" is charged to the rich?

Maybe we didn't tap into general revenues in 1983 because we just don't think that way regarding Social Security. There's an ingrained sense of it working internally, rather than being funded from outside. You can prove me wrong by finding all the proposals to pay the Trust Fund off with increased income taxes.

Massachusetts Meetup Canceled

I hate to wimp out, but due to sub-zero temperatures forecast tonight plus the fact that there's snow everywhere, I've canceled the centrist/independents meetup that was scheduled in Cambridge tonight.

Bush's press conference

With only 45 minutes notice, Bush announced his intention to give a press conference today. Perhaps his intention was to partially preempt a news-cycle that included reports of the deadliest day in Iraq for Americans since the war started. Personally, I don't think that this White House is that spontaneous and, instead, I think that this press conference was planned with the singular intent to address the building push-back from Congress (including Republicans) on the Social Security issue.

I was home this afternoon with a sick child and, being the geek that I am, I watched a CSPAN repeat of Bush's press conference. It struck me that he kept saying that he was "looking forward to" working with Democrats. I have now found the transcript from the press conference (here), and confirmed that he used the "looking forward to" phrase 15 times. (Gee--I wonder if it was a talking point that was discussed ahead of time?)

I think that Bush understands that his Social Security "reform" agenda is already in deep trouble.

Iraqi election coverage

Michael Totten has a new (albeit temporary) gig, editing reports filed directly by Iraqi correspondents during the week before and the week after the January 30 election in Iraq.

Enduring Hatred

As we approach the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp by the Soviet Red Army, Tom Carter has a moving post on remembering the Holocaust. At the same time, The Moderate Voice covers a remarkably anti-semitic document endorsed by 500 prominent Russians from opposition groups such as the still-extant Communist Party containing language describing Jews as "PROVOCATEURS AND HATERS OF HUMANKIND" and "JUDAIC AGGRESSIVENESS AS A FORM OF SATANISM"

I am a Jewish-American (and a Unitarian Universalist). It is chilling to know that people hate you and want you dead, even though you've never met them and have done nothing to harm them. I'm glad no one wants to exterminate Italians or Finns. There are some other ethnic groups besides Jews at risk, such as African Tutsis.

I have no solution to propose. Any suggestions?

Is Hillary a Centrist?

An interesting article in the New York Times about what seems to be Hillary Clinton's attempt to move to the center on the abortion issue. Senator Clinton spoke about finding "common ground" with pro-life people in terms of actions to discourage unwanted pregnancies. She even talked about how

We can all recognize that abortion in many ways represents a sad, even tragic choice to many, many women,"

and that

"The fact is that the best way to reduce the number of abortions is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies in the first place."

What is really interesting to me is the forum she chose to make this speech--the annual conference of the Family Planning Advocates of New York State. This is obviously a pro-choice group and, while Senator Clinton made clear that she supports abortion rights, her speech seemed to cause some consternation in the group.

This sounds like Senator Clinton was trying to reprise a "Sister Souljah" moment-ie, telling the liberal pro-choicers that they have to compromise. Of course, how much of a compromise her speech entails is really open to question. All she is really advocating here is education to prevent unwanted pregnancies, which shouldn't be too startling. Nevertheless, it's an interesting and, I think, admirable attempt to find some middle ground. Obviously, she is not going to win over hardcore pro-lifers and she is not going to convince the extremes of pro-choice that abortion is a problem at all. But that's not what she is aiming at. She is looking at the broad middle that is often troubled by abortion but doesn't want it banned outright. These people (and I guess I am one) might appreciate an approach that recognizes the complexity of the issue even if it doesn't offer any real solution. After all, saying we need to end unwanted pregnancies is like saying we need to end war--nice sentiments, but not terribly likely.

The thing about both Clintons is that, regardless of their actual sympathies, they are political pragmatists-some might say unprincipled. Is this enough to overcome Senator Clinton's disadvantages? I doubt it but it suggests that the fulcrum of the Democratic Party is unlikely to move significantly to the left.

Along this same line, The New Republic has an article on the governor of my childhood state of Tennessee, Phil Breseden. He is a native New Yorker educated at Harvard. He seems to be in the trend of Democrats that have been successful in the South--i.e., businessmen. If there is one thing that Southerners respect more than the military, it's businessmen. This is a guy, along with Mark Warner and some others, that I suspect are more viable presidential candidates than Hillary Clinton.

Benefit Bomb: Daniels Wants Medicaid Slash

Living in Indiana these days is a lot like following Alice's white rabbit down an endless tunnel. Surprises - bad ones - wait around every corner. Governor Mitch Daniels' plan to hack apart Medicaid is just the latest in a string of bad surprises he's dropped on Hoosiers across Indiana.

Right before he added $1 billion in new spending to Indiana's bloated, sinking budget, Gov. Daniels complained about how he would need to cut whatever it took to decrease the deficit. Yeah, you do the math - $1 billion in new spending and rhetoric about having to make essential trims in government services. We're in a crisis situation, Daniels seemed to be saying, and Medicaid landed square in his sights.

Daniels has been ambiguous about his top secret plans for the Medicaid program - the "open door governor" doesn't want to talk about this one. Daniels has made senseless statements about Medicaid recipients, among the poorest Hoosiers in the state. He has claimed that they go to their doctor in limousines, a not-so-subtle hint of his that people can't be trusted with government money and that the program is corrupt enough to merit slicing away at. He has chastised recipients for what is in his mind "splurging." He has done everything but justify his plan.

Nearly 70% of Medicaid recipients in Indiana are children, children who deserve to have someone in the government watching out for them if their families do not have the means. This doesn't seem to bother Governor Daniels, who so blatantly made "the children" his campaign centerpiece not three months ago. Why, then, does he stand willing to cut their benefits in an area where they need it most? By 2007, The Indianapolis Star reports, nearly one million people - 700,000 of them children - will be on Medicaid. What do we say to them?

Are these families, these splurging families, wasting their Medicaid money? Are they wasting it on essential speech and occupational therapy so that their children can operate in an educational environment? Are they wasting it on special transportation so that their wheelchair-bound children can get in and out of the van? Maybe they're spending that money on diapers to keep their mentally disabled daughter or son sanitary.

They certainly aren't taking the family limousine to pick up expensive anti-seizure medicine, pills that, as the CEO of Eli Lilly Pharmaceuticals, Governor Daniels lobbied to keep high.

Governor Daniels does not understand the burden of being poor and counting on that extra help Indiana's Medicaid program provides. Medicaid is not some luxury handout for the poor - it is a necessity that allows families struggling with intense medical bills to ask the government for a little help making ends meet. It allows families to get the treatment they need should something happen that is not covered in their insurance. Medicaid makes life livable for many who would not have much without it.

Perhaps if Governor Daniels focused more on creating meaningful and well-paying jobs, as he promised to do, Medicaid's burden would ease itself. The white rabbit is tunneling along in the wrong direction again, and Hoosiers are getting claustrophobic.

Brought to you by The New Democrat

Josh Marshall's "Phase-Out"

Josh Marshall has two new posts this morning about the "phase-out plans" for Social Security -- his term for partial privatization plans that involve personal accounts.

A search of his site reveals that he's used the term "phase-out" in 70 separate posts on the topic over the last seven weeks. You could say he's intent on that phraseology.

Let's take a closer look at how these plans "phase out" Social Security.

The payroll tax that funds Social Security takes 6.2% out of each of our paychecks, and our employers match that amount, for a total 12.4% tax on earnings.

Of that 12.4%, the Kolbe-Stenholm plan would take 2% to 2.5% and put it in personal accounts. The Graham plan would take 4%. I haven't seen a plan that goes beyond the 4% in the Graham plan.

So, realistically speaking, these reform plans take between one-fifth and one-third of the payroll tax and put it in a personal account. None of them involve increases in this figure over time -- they take the same 2% or 4% of the payroll tax in projections 70 years out as they do in year one.

In other words, they don't phase out the program, and they never take more than a third of the program's funds.

Now let's look at the all-imprtant benefits side of the equation. How do these new private accounts impact benefits?

First, we should note that the plans typically include provisions aimed at controlling spending -- the kind of slight adjustments we might do anyway to make the program balance out in the coming decades. The Kolbe-Stenholm plan has an adjustment in the growth of benefits that would lower it by about .2 percentage points. This is a reduction in the growth rate of the program. Benefits don't go down -- they grow slightly less fast.

Second, we have the main mechanism these plans use to control costs -- something called an "offset". The private accounts are really small in the early years, so there is virtually no offset. But as the accounts grow, the new system reduces your traditional benefit by an amount equal to the growth in your private account.

It doesn't reduce your benefit according to the amount of money deposited in the account -- but rather according to a growth rate applied to that money.

The Kolbe-Stenholm plan uses a formula that reduces the traditional benefit mostly for individuals with above-average earnings in their private accounts.

The Graham plan uses a flat 2.7% offset. It assumes you will earn 2.7% on your private account funds, and reduces the traditional benefit by an equivalent amount. The 2.7% figure was chosen because it is the average gain on long-term government bonds.

That introduces a few wrinkles. On the one hand, it does make it possible to lose part of your Social Security benefit. If your private account doesn't grow by 2.7%, you won't make up all the difference between your new benefit and what the traditional benefit would have been.

However, since the Graham plan uses the Thrift Savings Plan as a model for private accounts, and since the Thrift Savings Plan has an option for investing in long-term bonds, each person has the option of basically matching the current non-privatized system. Just select the bond option, and watch as your private account grows at the same rate as the offset.

That's a weird kind of "phase-out" plan. It allows you to stay in the current system.

There's more. Both of these plans, it turns out, have built-in protections for those who's personal accounts perform poorly. The Graham plan sets a "floor" benefit of 120% of poverty. The floor does not include the personal account, so any amounts in the account would accrue on top of the base benefit.

The Kolbe-Stenholm plan adjusts this benefit according to years in the workforce. Those with 20 years of service have an 80% of poverty floor, while those with 30 years get 100%, and 40 years get 120%.

This is, again, a strange kind of "phase-out" -- one that guarantees a base benefit drawn from the traditional side of the program.

Why do the thoughtful proponents of partial privatization include these provisions? Because they don't want to eliminate the fundamental social protection function of the program. On the most fundamental level, they want to retain Social Security.

Josh can call this a "phase-out" fifty times a day, if he likes. He seems almost giddy with the term -- like it's his chance to frame the debate conceptually in a way that Republicans have done so successfully with other issues.

In this case, though, his terminology is almost totally divorced from the facts. It is, quite simply, a false charge, and one used by Josh to mislead his readers every day.

The Centrist"Coalition" or the Center-right Choir?

>I'm getting a lot of flak for adding you to our list
>of authors. People want me to dump you. I don't want
>to do that. However, I must admit that the tone which
>you are using is not working out. I agree with you
>about Boxer and Kerry, but your style isn't making any
>converts.
>

>I really do welcome your contribution, as we have a
>number of participants on the center-right, and I
>desire an equal measure from the center-left. I hope
>you don't drop out of Centerfield, but rather, adapt
>your style to our audience.
>

Thanks but no thanks Rick. No hard feelings, but the truth be known you guys aren't really centrists over here or a coalition either for that matter. As you note, overall the bloggers here are pretty much a doctrinal center-right block of apparent moderate republicans, Zell Miller Dems, maybe a smattering of libertarians etc.. And as far as I can tell all guys (white guys?). (I'm sure I'll be corrected on that one if not; if so, apologies up front). That's fine, it is in fact a free country. But it's also a diverse one. Given the apparently rather narrow focus and tolerance of this "audience", you'll likely fail to attract the support you need in order to govern it. Angry white guys are necessary but no longer sufficient to win.

I am who I am: centrist on average, while holding some views that come down to the left and right politically, given the issue. I may not agree with all positions, but I won't be afraid to hear and consider them because that's what authentic centrism's all about: opening up to all views across the spectrum and building solid consensus from that process. If you're not open to divergent positions, then there can be no consensus. Rather, just self congratulatory back-slapping between political clones.

For the record, I did reference my from the hip style as a potential issue when I offered to join. Anyone who has read my stuff would have known what they were in for. Could it in fact be that the real problem folks have with me over here is that I'm as hard on the Right as the Left? Hmm..

Yes, a Bigger Tent is in fact about broadening the Democratic voter base. We have several bloggers over there now that come down left to center-right in keeping with the mission. And we respect all those views because that's what real coalitions do. The Center Ring, on the other hand, is my personal op-ed blog and thus my personal take. And, yes, my style is provocative. Change that and it's no longer my style but instead yours. There it is.

I will leave you with this, though. If the centerfield mission is to reach out both right AND left from the "center", but the practice is to eschew those that don't fit the apparent CF PC code of center-right sensibility, then is this not just another case of "Mission Accomplished" unrealized?

Anyhoo, thanks for the opportunity to opine over here, if only temporarily. I'll proudly keep you folks on the blog roll precisely because A Bigger Tent is about reaching out. I'll also, I'm sure, continue to piss off a lot of folks - left, right and center - with The Center Ring by just telling the truth as I see it. I imagine it will at times seem like hell. But as everybody learns in grade school, the truth does indeed sometimes hurt. Some get over it and keep looking for the common ground. Others don't.

I sincerely hope that we all can and will succeed in building a true centrist coalition and meet in the winner's circle in 08. Not to will only serve to further the divisive cause of radicals and reactionaries.

Cheers, good luck and ciao.

The Ringmaster
The Center Ring
http://centerring.biggertent.com

Blog Name Theft

Is it okay for a blog to take the name of an already existing blog. Can I go into blogspot and create a new blog and call it Instapundit? As far as I know, there is no law against it. But a blog that would do that should get no incoming links from the blogosphere.

A new blog started up in January, taking the name of the already established blog, The New Democrat, which is written by Max Burns, who also contributes to Centerfield. I send an email to the author of the new blog, Ricky, alerting him to the issue, adding

I'm not aware of any legal issues involved, but I believe that the blogger code of ethics requires you to honor the prior claim to the name The New Democrat, and to select another name for your blog.

Ricky responded

Thank you for your e-mail. When I created this blog I didn't know there was another blog with the same title. I can't change the title now, because too many people linked to it under this title and especially this URL. Readers will understand the difference when they visit the blog. Mine is hosted on Blogspot.

I send Ricky an email in response, agreeing that it was understandable that he could not change the URL, but that he could easily change the name of the blog to something close to "The New Democrat" that was not an exact duplicate of the name of Max's blog. Ricky has not responded to my second email, or changed the name of his blog. He has, however, kept on blogging.

Even more troubling, the imposter New Democrat blog, in its first two weeks of operation has scored links from Wizbang, Instapundit, and Andrew Sullivan. If nothing is done, people will soon think the upstart is the real New Democrat, and Max is an imposter. It's quite an achievement for a newbie to score 10,000 visitors in its first two weeks of operation. It turns out that Ricky is not a newbie, and his previous blog, John Kerry's The New Soldier was part of the network of right-wing blogs which supported the Swift Boat Vets attacks on John Kerry. Ricky even skirts copyright law--he calls it fair use--by linking to the entire scanned text of an out-of-print book by John Kerry. Ricky wrote (in a post he has now deleted, which itself shows bad faith. I saved a copy before he deleted it.)

"I know I had something to do with Kerry's defeat. For a long time my blog was the only blog with a link so you could read John Kerry's anti-war book "The New Soldier". I was the one, who marketed it all over the blogosphere. The book was unavailable. John Kerry took it off the market. Copies on Amazon and E-bay cost more than 2000 dollars. I was the first one making the book available for mass readership. "

While Ricky did not directly sell John Kerry's book, he earned money from the traffic

I sent many visitors to the SwiftVets website. I encouraged many to donate to them. I sold hundreds, more than 400 "Unfit for Command" books through my Amazon link. I also sold many Zell Miller and Tommy Franks books. I received a check for hundreds of dollars from Amazon. I haven't cashed it in yet.

Ricky's respect for intellectual property is demonstrated by this promotion of the pirated copy of Kerry's book, and his theft of Max's blog name. Now, the charge is going around that a blog called The New Democrat is a fraud and quite possibly a Republican operative. This too is damaging to Max, who as far as I can ascertain (I have not met him in person, but we've exchanged friendly emails) is a real and thoughtful centrist Democrat.

Ricky calls himself a Zell Miller Democrat. I have strong doubts whether he is any more a Democrat than David Duke is a Republican. But it's a free country. He can call his blog The New Democrat or The Daily Dish or Wizbang. But at least until he chooses a name that no other blog is already using, no one should link to new-democrat.blogspot.com

Update: Ron has done a number of posts alleging that Ricky has operated under other pseudonyms, and casting further doubt that Ricky is in any meaningful sense a Democrat. Not having access to IP logs, I cannot verify Ron's allegations. I can however, verify that Ricky's copycat New Democrat blog had a post claiming ownership of johnkerrythenewsoldier.blogspot.com. Sometimes later, Ricky deleted that post. This morning, it's back. He seems like a slippery character.

Clarification: In case I've caused any confusion, Ron is the originator of the charge that Ricky is a fraud. The post on tas's blog referenced in my entry above makes that point and contains a link to Ron's blog. I am not making that allegation myself, just reporting what Ron and Tas have charged. Before Ron added a link to his blog in a comment on my first post, I assumed that Ricky was a neophyte who had made an innocent mistake in taking the name of a blog that was already in use. My knowledge of Ricky's previous blog, John Kerry's The New Soldier, came from Ricky's own Full Disclosure post.

Personally, I don't care what else Ricky has been up to. I would just like him to change the name of his blog to something unique. He has no legal obligation to do so, as far as I know, but it would be the right thing to do.

Of Boxer, Kerry and Rice and Doing the Business of The People

Thank you Barbara Boxer. Thank you John Kerry. Thank you for reminding us that we have a system of checks and balances in this nation and for good reason. Check. Your move George.

Yes its time once again for the ringmaster to poke a stick in the eye of many (perhaps most?) of my more conciliatory comrades. This time the unfortunate targets of my jab glare forth from those centrists lambasting what is being cast as cheap partisan stonewalling on the Rice nomination for Secretary of State. Pardon me, just plucking the beam from your gaze that surely must be obscuring your view. It must be so else the thoroughly justified tactics exercised by Boxer and Kerry would be as obvious to other political realists as to myself. I'm sure of it.

How could it be otherwise when a woman who largely ignored, even dismissed the threat of al-Qaeda pre 9/11, even though clear warnings were communicated to her, is about to be confirmed for such a critical foreign policy position? What could those Senate Democrats so eager to confirm be but blind when they intend to deliver the crucial foreign affairs of the sole world superpower into the grasping hands of one who has thus far served as unswerving, unexamined and unrepentant cheerleader while her boss willfully mislead this nation and the world into his disastrous Iraq adventure? Where's the outrage? And given the dogmatic unilateral nature of the Bush Administration foreign policy approach thus far, where indeed is the moderation?

Thus are our heroes, B and K quite rightly, if cynically, doing the business of the people and the constitution. As dubya oh so cynically railed against tyranny on his inaugural, two lonely Senators were conspiring to actually check tyrannical power in it's jack-booted tracks.

Good and good I say. Another arrogant bully frustrated, if only temporarily. We will have our debate. The festering wound of the Bush cabal's secretive and manipulative process will be exposed if only a little to the cleansing light of democratic scrutiny.

This is no "Whitewater" under the bridge affair. This is not just politics (not just). This is about an ongoing tragedy engineered by that inner circle Rice inhabits. People are dying. Lives and places are being destroyed in real time. This is LIVE at 5. This debate needs to happen. This is democracy.

Got democracy?

PEACE

Playoffs thread

Get yer football comments in here!

I'm starting with a grumble on the "Verizon National Anthem?"

I didn't mind the stadium name selloff, but that seems pretty tacky....

Upon further review

A second round of debate on Bush's inaugural speech seems worthwhile, particularly given the push-back from otherwise reliable Republicans (e.g., Peggy Noonan).

Personally (and not a reliable Republican), I think that the odds are remote, absent a new attack in the U.S., that there will be any new wars initiated by the U.S. in the next four years. Rather, I think that Bush wanted to communicate an idea -- i.e., that increased U.S. national security is dependent upon decreased tyranny around the world -- that he wants to be his historical legacy. I do not think that he was telegraphing foreign policy tactics for the next 4 years as much as attempting to shift foreign policy strategy for the next generation.

Which Is The Real New Democrat?

You will have noticed some new bloggers here, including Max, a 17 year old prodigy who has a blog called The New Democrat. Imagine my confusion then, when Andrew Sullivan linked to a blog called The New Democrat. As far as I can tell, this new blog was created in 2005, while Max was blogging in 2004. I believe that Max has priority, and this new blog should modify its name. Blog names are not trademarked, so I suppose another blog could come along and call itself Centerfield or Instapundit, but I would hope peer pressure from other bloggers would ensure that names cannot be duplicated willy-nilly.

On the merits, the new blogger seems to be a Zell Miller Democrat, who likes George Bush better than John Kerry. Not my cup of tea, but within the parameters of centrism, and I would be willing to add the blog to the centrist blogroll, but not under the same name as an already existing blog.

Update: I've done a new post, explaining my exchange of emails with the duplicate New Democrat blog. He has refused to change names. Ricky has also deleted a post, and comments on the blog. Based on this and additional information I've received, I conclude that he is an unethical individual, perhaps the most unethical blogger I'm come across in my three years in the blogosphere. Centerfield will not link to his blog again, even if he does change its name.

Clarification: In case I've caused any confusion, Ron is the originator of the charge that Ricky is a fraud. The post on tas's blog referenced in my second post makes that point and contains a link to Ron's blog. I am not making that allegation myself, just reporting what Ron and Tas have charged. Before Ron added a link to his blog in a comment here, I assumed that Ricky was a neophyte who had made an innocent mistake in taking the name of a blog that was already in use. My knowledge of Ricky's previous blog, John Kerry's The New Soldier, came from Ricky's own Full Disclosure post.

Personally, I don't care what else Ricky has been up to. I would just like him to change the name of his blog to something unique. He has no legal obligation to do so, as far as I know, but it would be the right thing to do.

The Social Security Trust Fund

Josh Marshall has posted multiple times every day for weeks now on the Social Security issue. Kevin Drum has covered the issue pretty thoroughly, too, though not quite with the frenzy at Marshall's site.

Part of this energy on the left, I think, is the sense that they've found a winner of an issue. There's a growing expectation -- and I think and accurate one -- that Bush is headed for a major political failure on this issue.

On substance, there is a remarkably vast gap here. Opponents of partial privatization have a very different set of facts and concepts than supporters. Perhaps the single clearest gap relates to the Social Security Trust Fund -- the nature of the fund and how it is likely to work in the future.

The Trust Fund accumulated significant assets between 1983 (after the Reagan Social Security reform) and the present -- a total of 1.5 trillion dollars by 2003.

Those "assets" represent the difference between payroll tax receipts and expenditures since 1983. The money has been borrowed by the general treasury and spent on various government programs. So the Trust Fund holds U.S. Treasury securities in amounts equal to the accumulated Social Security surplus over these past 20 years.

It's on the basis of this fund that Marshall and Drum claim the problem date for Social Security should be 2042, the year currently projected by the Trustees as the moment the Trust Fund is fully exhausted.

They don't consider 2018 to be the important milestone. That's the year the Trustees estimate payroll tax receipts will no longer cover benefits. It's the year we spend more than we receive.

According to the Trustees, borrowing the money to cover the Social Security deficit between 2018 and 2042 will add $7 trillion to the publicly held debt.

Kevin Drum says the 2042 date means the system is "in good shape for at least 40 years and maybe more like 60 or 70 years."

Nate at Common Sense says:

They argue that there is no Trust Fund and that Social Security is insolvent after 2018 when we officially reach deficit territory. They argue this even though they know that the Treasury bonds in the Trust Fund will have to be paid (it's in the Constitution) from the General Fund, i.e. income taxes.

There's another wrinkle to this debate in a recent New York Times Magazine article by Roger Lowenstein that resonated nicely in threads on Drum's and Marshall's sites.

Lowenstein points out that the Trust Fund has gone into negative spending in 11 years since 1970, and that it "redeemed bonds from the Trust Fund without a fuss."

I thought that was an interesting point, so I took a peek at the Social Security Administration's site. They show only 7 years since 1970 when Social Security was in deficit. I'm not sure where the discrepancy arises between these figures and Lowenstein's.

The 7 years of deficit are all consecutive, from 1975 to 1981. The deficit ranged between 1.5 billion and 5 billion a year. The Trust Fund paid out a combined $20 billion during that 7 year period -- a drop in the bucket in terms of the federal budget.

At the time, these consecutive years of deficit were viewed as a crisis, which resulted in the reforms signed into law in 1983, which in turn resulted in an accumulated 1.5 trillion in surplus over 20 years. All of it was then used for government spending, instead of the more responsible choice of paying down the debt (which would preseve our ability to borrow in the future).

Some of the other points Drum and Marshall make may very well be true. The estimates of 2018 and 2042 may be overly pessimistic, and could very well get pushed back.

If the dates turn out to be true, however, then I would say their understanding of the role played by the Trust Fund is deeply flawed.

If 2018 comes and we start running deficits, we will have four choices:

1. Raise the payroll tax

2. Raise general taxes

3. Cut benefits

4. Borrow the money, and add roughly $7 trillion to the debt.

Options #1 and #3 are essentially an acknowledgement that we can't spend down the Trust Fund. They represent efforts to match current revenues with current expenditures so that we don't have to dip into Trust Fund assets.

Option #2 is unlikely. I haven't seen a Social Security reform plan that raises general fund taxes and transfers the excess into the Trust Fund. The Social Security Trustees estimate taxes would have to be increased by 34% to cover the gap.

Option #4 is deeply irresponsible and not really a solution at all in terms of providing more funds to the system. It simply transfers the burden to the next generation.

This concept of a spend-down of the Trust Fund between 2018 and 2042 seems pretty fanciful to me. It's hard to view the Trust Fund, in it's current form, as something that takes Social Security away from its pay-as-you-go basis.

The fiscal hawks are right on this particular aspect of the issue. Read the pieces about the Trust Fund at Centrist.org and the Concord Coalition. Decide for yourself whether their understanding of the Trust Fund is more or less sound than those offered in daily posts by Drum and Marshall.

Texas Blowback

The Bush plan to partially privatize Social Security is running into resistance from House Republicans, and the New Republic's Peter Beinart, in a subscription-only article, posits that one of the causes is the DeLay gerrymander that defeated several Texas Democrats. Here is an excerpt

But there is one more reason that, as The Weekly Standard's Fred Barnes recently noted, "conventional wisdom in Washington" suggests that "Bush's plan to reform Social Security is dead before it's been unveiled." And it's more than a little ironic. It may be that the GOP's victories in last November's elections, the very victories that Bush says give him the "political capital" to push through partial privatization, are actually making the effort harder. By killing off the Democrats most susceptible to his influence, Bush may have created a political dynamic that works for his opponents, and against him.

The most obvious example, as Carolyn Lochhead recently pointed out in an excellent article in The San Francisco Chronicle, is Charlie Stenholm. Stenholm, a 13-term representative from West Texas, was probably the congressional Democrat most enamored of partial privatization. He had already co-sponsored a partial-privatization bill and would likely have done so again. Having Stenholm's name attached to private accounts would have given Bush's effort a bipartisan veneer--and an ally able to lobby red-state Democrats more effectively than the White House ever could.

This is rather Byzantine, but it makes sense. Moderate Republicans are lerry of being swept up in a party line vote and then having to pay for it if public opinion turns against the changes.

A Fresh Look at Welfare

I was recently speaking to some teens like myself about community service and assisting the poor over the holiday season. I never agreed with the policy of only helping the homeless when those with money feel guilty and want to give back – they get cold in October and last through March. Perhaps helping them over Halloween is a better option.

It was suggested that we reach out to those homeless who are in shelters due to lack of education or job loss, and offer food and money to help their suffering. It was at this point that I fully awakened to the difference between the position I advocate and include in my New Democratic Plan, and those of Terry McAuliffe’s version of the Democratic Party.

“The homeless do not need a one-time contribution of stiletto heels or pity money,” I said, bringing the discussion back to a joke I had made about a homeless man being given a pair of red heels. “The homeless need help getting back on their feet. They do not need a system of endless welfare and handouts. What they need more than anything is training for a job, a GED, a chance to succeed.”

President George W. Bush has cut job training and education programs for the homeless, unemployed and underemployed in a crude form social Darwinism. He also claims, with some justification, that welfare is not an unending charity for the un- or underemployed in America. The first point I see as being morally backwards. The second point, however, is a valid idea.

Welfare ought to be looked upon, it seems, in the lens that Franklin Roosevelt saw it – a government recovery benefit to be used until that person is able to find work on his or her own. Welfare should not become a way of life. Families should not have to learn how to play the system so as to live from check to check. Keeping welfare in place would be ideal, while placing a time limit on its use, and offering better access to educational and job-training programs. A responsible security net should be the keystone of any social-minded Democracy.

Emphasis must be put on helping those who are homeless or jobless, and who are able to work, find jobs that match their skills. If they do not have skills, it should be the moral duty of the government to provide facilities where they can gain an education. This means we must have a more comprehensive GED program, and better communication between homeless shelters, halfway homes, and the state and federal governments.

States should be given economic bonuses and incentives for increasing their educational and employment opportunities for homeless, unemployed or underemployed Americans. This idea, while active in some areas, is both seriously out of date and not hitting the areas in which states would be driven to educate and employ the population.

This requires that Republicans and Democrats work together in this divided nation, drop the partisan talking points, and admit several things: limited welfare is good, social programs do not all lead to Communism, there must be limits placed on welfare, and that people must, in the end, not rely wholly on the United States to tide them by. This will be made much harder than it has to be by both sides of the aisle.

The teenagers – the very liberal, most of them – shirked the idea and claimed that their Democratic friend had been indoctrinated by the GOP. The method I proposed would take too much work. Money is faster. It is too intrusive on the lives of the homeless. It would mean effort from both sides.

What was infinitely more inspiring was the group of teens – moderates, Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians – that nodded in silent agreement and walked away contemplating it. I even saw a Republican and Democrat, both of them well-known for their views, sharing mutual interest in the idea.

Partisanship can wait. Let us help the people now. Together.

The New Democrat

Open Thread

What's on your mind? Nothing is off-topic

What about Saudi Arabia?

I loved attending the swearing-in yesterday, and listening to the President's speech in person. I thought it was very well written and delivered, and he was making the argument that IMO he should have been making about Iraq since the start, instead of relying on a WMD message that clearly turned out to be false.

I admit I did wonder about the cost of a human rights crusade throughout the world and then there is the issue that Robin Wright and Glenn Kessler pointed out today in the Washington Post:

"President Bush's soaring rhetoric yesterday that the United States will promote the growth of democratic movements and institutions worldwide is at odds with the administration's increasingly close relations with repressive governments in every corner of the world.

Some of the administration's allies in the war against terrorism -- including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Uzbekistan -- are ranked by the State Department as among the worst human rights abusers. The president has proudly proclaimed his friendship with Russian President Vladimir Putin while remaining largely silent about Putin's dismantling of democratic institutions in the past four years. The administration, eager to enlist China as an ally in the effort to restrain North Korea's nuclear ambitions, has played down human rights concerns there, as well."

I don't think it is an appropriate policy to call for an end to tyranny in Iraq, Iran, and North Korea, without addressing the same issue with those nations that call themselves our friend. If there is anything 9/11 taught us, IMO, it is that we need to know who our friends are. After all, wasn't it a human rights violator that we empowered in the cold war, who in the end harbored the very terrorists that flew airplanes into our buildings?

Is Bush A Conservative?

Bush's second inaugural address outlined a utopian crusade for democracy throughout the world. It's antecedents are in Woodrow Wilson's idealism, and in John F. Kennedy's "bear any burden." Wilson's crusade seeded democracies in Europe, like that of Weimar Germany, all of which subsequently failed with disastrous consequences. Is this policy conservative in any meaningful sense? I think not.

Is Bush a conservative on economics? He's a big spender who piles on the debt. Yes, he cuts taxes. Tax cutting is identified with conservatives, but that really an accurate categorization? If one thinks of economic conservativism in terms of the old puritan value of thrift, then Bush is a spendthrift, and not a conservative.

Is Bush a conservative on social issues? Yes. Decidedly yes.

Bush is 1/3 conservative, and 2/3 I don't know.

Update: Fred Barnes says that Bush has smashed the wall between idealism and realism.

In effect, Bush said the policy of idealists will lead to the goal of realists. "America's vital int