No, the Problem Isn't Gun Control....

Save perhaps to the extent that existing gun laws that are supposed to keep firearms out of the hands of the mentally ill were not adequately applied, perhaps because Jared Loughner managed to avoid diagnosis and treatment. Bob Herbert suggests,

If we were serious, if we really wanted to cut down on the killings, we’d have to do two things. We’d have to radically restrict the availability of guns while at the same time beginning the very hard work of trying to change a culture that glorifies and embraces violence as entertainment, and views violence as an appropriate and effective response to the things that bother us.

Richard Cohen focuses, more accurately, on handguns:

But rather than going on a national guilt trip, we should turn our attention to the one element in this tragedy that can be controlled: easy access to guns. After all, enough ought to be enough. Rifles can kill (John F. Kennedy, for instance), but most homicides committed using firearms - more than 70 percent - are the work of handguns (Robert F. Kennedy, for instance). The handgun is wonderfully effective. It's little and it's lethal.

I say "more accurately" because, back when I lived in Canada, about half of the homes in my province contained firearms but, due to gun control laws, primarily long guns. And although frequently the "Murder Capital of Canada", the city I lived in was actually quite safe. I do recall a double homicide involving a handgun, but the honor of being "murder capital" was earned primarily by virtue of having a relatively low population (it doesn't take many murders to skew the "per capita" statistic), and a subculture that all-too-often brought knives to knife fights.

Do I think Loughner would have been deterred from going on his rampage if he had to shorten the barrel of a shotgun, or learn to shoot with a rifle? No, not really. It's a bit like the argument over his extended magazine. Yes, he was disarmed when trying to reload. Yes, it's possible that had his magazine emptied sooner he would have been disarmed sooner with less carnage. It seems to me that such laws are more apt to make somebody like Loughner modify his plans, as opposed to abandoning them. Arguments about handgun control make more sense when directed at opportunistic crime or robbery of retail stores and banks, where the offender is carrying a gun with profit in mind, than they do when directed at somebody like Loughner.

"Do As I Say, Not As I Did... or Am Doing."

David Broder has penned a love letter to John Boehner who, with the potential of becoming majority leader, is giving lip service to cooperation across the aisle. Broder praises Boehner's "honesty" for not serving up the bald-faced lie that the problem is new, or that his party acted responsibly when it previously held a majority. But really, what are we supposed to make of the sudden embrace of bipartisanship by a chronically dishonest and hyperpartisan politician like Boehner?

I'd like to see Pelosi and the rest of the Democratic leaders take Boehner up on the challenge he has raised, not try to demean it. He said, for example, that rather than stifling debate through the manipulation of rules, "we should open things up and let the battle of ideas help break down the scar tissue between the parties. . . . Let's let legislators legislate again."

The thing is, why do we need to wait? What is stopping Boehner from immediately translating his words into action, apologizing for his obstructionism, the belligerence of his fellow Members of Congress, and his chronic misrepresentation of the majority's legislative goals and accomplishments? It's easy to praise Boehner for, in effect, arguing that the opposition party should roll over and play dead if his party wins - but why not call him to account for his own actions? Why not demand to know if he will live up to his words starting today, or if his party doesn't gain a majority in the House? Because even Broder has to know the answer to those questions....

When large majorities of the nation's voters voice disdain and distrust for a Congress that is supposed to represent them in writing the laws, it is not just a problem for one party or the other. It is a threat to our system of government.

Or perhaps the problem is that the public is treated to "analysis" from the likes of Broder who focuses on the horse race, not on substance, criticizes legislation not on its substance but based upon how many members of the opposition party defected to support a particular bill, and implicitly defines "bipartisanship" as "Democrats, whether in the majority or minority, making one-sided concessions to Republicans."

Update: Bob Herbert reminds us of the reality of John Boehner.

Give Politicians and Pundits the Benefit of the Doubt?

You must be joking.

Seriously, I hear from time to time that our nation's opinion leaders are sincere. That they aren't being deceptive, disingenuous, dishonest, but are merely stating valid opinions that, if you took a step back and thought about them, are a perfectly reasonably approach to an important problem or issue. And no, I don't want to overstate my case - there are some politicians and commentators who attempt exactly that. You may disagree with them some, most, or even all of the time yet still recognize that they're making a sincere contribution to the public discourse.

But most of the time, their voices are drowned out by the cacophony of voices that are more interested in gaining or solidifying their grip on money, power, or access to those with money and power than with making anything approaching an honest contribution to the debate. Sure, with some of them you have to wonder, "is it malice or stupidity", but in most cases it's... well, malice is (usually) too strong a word - malice may be present and directed at their political adversaries or those who dare question their bloviations, but even if their actions and policy proposals could have that effect their goal is not actually to harm the nation. The better word is probably "avarice".

Looking to the political world, we've historically been assured that a lot of the rancor between politicians is a fiction - that behind the scenes they're reasonable, public political foes may be close friends (e.g., Orrin Hatch and Ted Kennedy), and that what we see in public is largely a dog and pony show for the benefit of the folks back home. Of course there are issues where there are true, deep disputes, but even then we were to believe that politicians were working to bridge divides.

I suspect that was more true in the past, but there is a price to that sort of deception. When you ally yourself with and make public statements pandering to causes you don't believe, use angry, dishonest rhetoric to attack your political opponents, and spend more time thinking about how to ensure yourself a gilded life once your 'service' as an elected official ends than you do thinking about how to do what's best for the nation, the behind-the-scenes comity is going to diminish. We end up with people like Evan Bayh who spend years being part of the problem - then look at the mess they helped to create, declare that their job isn't fun any more, and quit. It sure is easier to quit than it is to grab a broom and clean up, but for some reason the media now loves quitters.

Bayh is correct that we should not glorify the Senate of the past, and this is far from the first time Congress has been dysfunctional. Politicians have been lying to gain votes, influence, wealth and power from the moment somebody dreamed up the election process. The media has at times been even worse in its eagerness to pander to political leaders. But what seems to have largely broken down is the sense that there is an institution that is responsible for its members - the media as an institution, the Senate, the House of Representatives, political parties.... Sure, it's possible to cross one of the few bright lines that can cause you to suffer a career setback or to lose your job, but for the most part a Member of Congress can shoot off her mouth in the most irresponsible of manners while suffering no disadvantage - or, I hate to say it, in order to gain power, publicity, and fame.

We're at a point where a Republican candidate for office can openly admit that his campaign is based upon fear-mongering and irresponsible, inflammatory, and obviously false rhetoric, and not only have the argument be treated as reasonable, but be given column space in a national newspaper to make his case. A rebuke from his party? Don't make me laugh. Acting like a petulant child can make you the toast of your party.

The media loves itself a loose cannon. It's time to get a quote, or have somebody appear on TV to take a position on an issue. Do they want a politician who is going to be nice, respect the opposing position, politely reject false arguments from both sides, and lay out the facts and issues as she truly sees them? Or do they call a politician they know will eagerly dissemble, or one who will reliably make claims about the other side that are ridiculous, inflammatory, often obviously false, but definitely attention-getting and quotable? They'll do the latter and, when challenged as to why they show such disregard for the truth, will hem and haw about not taking stances, "letting the public decide", or about how they're actually providing "news entertainment" or are merely sharing opinions, and that their productions should not be confused with actual news.

And then check out those talking heads on TV - how the various "experts" and politicians dispatched to TV shows, and often the hosts of those shows themselves, start regurgitating a set of talking points or repeating a specific word or phrase to negatively brand an issue or individual. Occasionally you'll see somebody call out the proponents of such a phrase - something that unfortunately is most likely to happen on The Daily Show than on an actual news show - but for the most part even if the host isn't joining in he's reluctant to offend his guest by pointing out to the audience that they're being fed propaganda. (Who would have dared say, for example, "Emperor Kingston, you're wearing no flag pin" - Figuratively or literally?)

Then you have the op/ed contributors from the nation's most prominent newspapers. Again, yes, some write sincere columns about important issues, doing their best to illuminate a problem and to inspire people to move to correct it. And the rest of the media world cries out, "Boring". The columnist who can be counted on to dogmatically advance the position of a political party or special interest group? Even if his only qualification is that he was once among the speechwriting team for Socks the Cat or Barney the Dog? That's interesting - that will get you on TV. And if you put on a good show, whatever the truth happens to be, you'll get invited back.

Yes, sometimes the politician or commentator has a set of preconceived notions that make him a good fit with the special interest group that is willing to pay his exorbitant speaking fees or underwrite an "educational" junket, but the goal is to clap on a set of golden handcuffs. To keep the politician or opinion leader fat and happy so that he never even considers focusing on the 10% of the issues where he differs in opinion from his sponsor, let alone takes a step back to examine his preconceived notions. The system rewards greed and laziness.

How do you even get one of those rare, highly coveted positions? Some national newspapers will claim that they are looking for balance, political left vs. political right, and to a small degree they offer that. But take a specific look at the Washington Post. You'll find that whatever the columnist's claimed political belief, no recent hire for the op-ed page has challenged the core beliefs of Fred Hiatt or his editorial board. War is good, especially in the Middle East, deficits are bad except to pay for war, we need to privatize education and kick unions in the teeth.... Predictable as clockwork. If you are somehow hired but consistently disagree with his board's stances, you can expect to be sent packing.

Over at the Times, let's just say that there's a reason Ross Douthat was hired instead of his Grand New Party co-author Reihan Salam, despite the fact that Salam is a much more interesting thinker. Meanwhile, the columnists who play ball with special interest groups can parlay their positions into lucrative book contracts, speaking engagements, etc., subject to loosey-goosey disclosure rules that are much more about preventing their editors from being embarrassed than they are about ensuring integrity.

Among the pundits who are less interested (for whatever reason) in achieving fame and building up their personal fortunes, there's an unfortunate tendency to avoid stirring the pot - on rare occasion it happens, but for the most part columnists pretend that the errors and misrepresentations of their peers don't exist. When referenced it's usually in as innocuous a manner as possible - "a recent column suggested", rather than directly addressing the errant columnist. Some columnists seem desperate for ideas - coming up with new subjects for biweekly columns can, no doubt, at times be difficult - and become part of the echo chamber, repeating a theme or story that is already in circulation. Some appear to do little more than to paraphrase the latest memo issued by a particular trade group or partisan think tank.

But digging into the issues, analyzing competing arguments and presenting cogent conclusions? For many, if not most, that's too much work. Besides, "their readers are more interested in the horse race", right? What does it matter if one side has superior policy positions, or one side is arguing contrary to established fact - the real story is in which narrative is winning. Besides, it's hard to learn stuff, and even harder to explain it in a succinct, clear manner. So why try? Isn't that somebody else's job?

So yeah - I'll give you the benefit of the doubt, but only if I first get the sense that you're doing your job. If you prefer to be a hack, to lazily play "he said, she said" games rather than study and analyze the facts, cover the horse race instead of the issues, act as a stenographer for a special interest group, or pretend that everybody is honest and acting in good faith (because it's easier than taking on the peers and institutions that provide you with that six to seven figure income) on the other hand....

Depersonalizing "The Enemy"

A few years ago, Richard Cohen personified the mindset that Bob Herbert finds so troubling. After explaining how he supported the Vietnam war until he was drafted, "no longer felt it was winnable" and he "did not want to lose my life so that somehow defeat could be managed more elegantly", Cohen drew a parallel to Iraq:

[O]riginally had no moral qualms about the war. Saddam Hussein was a beast who had twice invaded his neighbors, had killed his own people with abandon and posed a threat - and not just a theoretical one - to Israel. If anything, I was encouraged in my belief by the offensive opposition to the war - silly arguments about oil or empire or, at bottom, the ineradicable and perpetual rottenness of America.

On the contrary, I thought. We are a good country, attempting to do a good thing. In a post-Sept. 11 world, I thought the prudent use of violence could be therapeutic. The United States had the power to change things for the better, and those who would do the changing- the fighting - were, after all, volunteers. This mattered to me.

"Therapeutic" presumably meaning, "I thought it would make me feel better."

It was only when Cohen decided that the Iraq war could be lost that the numbers of U.S. soldiers dying for that cause started to concern him. The number of Iraqis (or Vietnamese) dying, before or after Cohen's change of heart on the war - either war? Apparently not a consideration. Continuing his theme from the earlier column, Cohen writes:

There are so few [war dead] - so few that in total for Iraq and Afghanistan we cannot even approach some individual battles of the Civil War or World War II, during which more than 19,000 Americans died at the Battle of the Bulge alone. In eight years, about 5,300 American service members have died in the two wars we now are fighting, the vast majority of them in Iraq. In that period, more than 250,000 Americans died in traffic accidents.

Cohen contrasts the changes in our society, the ability to see each war fatality as an individual and movement away from religious faith, to the experiences of "our enemies":

The ability to individualize -- no more Unknowns -- has undoubtedly changed America. We remain a religious nation but not as we were in the Civil War, when the dying tried to take comfort from the certainty -- it's true, isn't it? -- that a better life awaited them. Religion has lost that sort of mystery. Ministers have less authority. Dying has become harder.

In contrast, our enemies take religious solace in their own deaths. It is not that they don't value life; it's just that they don't value this life.

Here, Cohen is speaking of people valuing their own lives. Cohen only values the lives of our soldiers when he has given up on the cause for which they are dying, and there's no sign that he cares at all about the lives of casualties on the other side - soldier, civilian, man, woman, child. Despite that, I expect he's at least as confused as Thomas Friedman on why the people of Afghanistan and Iraq (and, historically, Vietnam) aren't sufficiently grateful for our efforts.

In Iraq, no one knows the number of suicide bombings - thousands of them, certainly.

If we're going for the "us and them" theme, it's fair to ask, how many suicide bombings occurred in Iraq before the U.S. invasion? In the nation's entire pre-invasion history, the number is zero.

Cohen is either ignorant of, or willfully ignoring, the history of modern asymmetric war in which suicide bombing is not exclusively an Islamic or Arab phenomenon. (For all I know, Cohen thinks the Tamil Tigers were Arabic.) The Vietnamese used suicide attacks against French tanks. The Japanese used suicide attacks against our ships during WWII. But as I'm sure some part of Cohen knowns, it's so much easier to ignore facts and history, and to instead demonize and depersonalize "the enemy":

There is really no such thing as an American suicide bomber. We don't extol the bomber and parade his or her children before the TV cameras so that other children will envy them for the death of a parent. This is odd to us. This is chilling to us. This is downright repugnant.

See how awful "they" are? All of "them"? How different "they" are from "us"? The entire Arabic and Persian world reduced to a uniform, ugly stereotype that conveniently coincides both with the regions Cohen wishes to militarily attack and with his his complete disdain for their casualties?

By Design, Not By Accident

When it comes to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, Bob Herbert is upset that there's so little shared sacrifice, and many vocal proponents of the war have no interest in putting themselves on the line.

The idea that fewer than 1 percent of Americans are being called on to fight in Afghanistan and Iraq and that we’re sending them into combat again and again and again — for three tours, four tours, five tours, six tours — is obscene. All decent people should object.

* * *

The air is filled with obsessive self-satisfied rhetoric about supporting the troops, giving them everything they need and not letting them down. But that rhetoric is as hollow as a jazzman’s drum because the overwhelming majority of Americans have no desire at all to share in the sacrifices that the service members and their families are making. Most Americans do not want to serve in the wars, do not want to give up their precious time to do volunteer work that would aid the nation’s warriors and their families, do not even want to fork over the taxes that are needed to pay for the wars.

I recognize that Herbert's intimate experience with war was in an era during which we had a draft, while now we have a volunteer military. Sure, you can question how voluntary the military becomes once "stop-loss" policies kick in, or that some people choose the military out of economic need rather than out of a desire to become soldiers, but those arguments are peripheral to the issue of shared sacrifice. Even during the days of the draft, the children of the wealthy and connected could find ways out of service, or ways to avoid putting their lives on the line, so the sharing of the sacrifice was still not particularly egalitarian.

But more to the point, the military has switched to "all volunteer" both because it makes for a better military and because our nation's political leaders recognize that it's easier to fight wars without calling on the general public to share the sacrifice. In that earlier era, the student Herbert found who called for a "full-blown counterinsurgency effort, which would likely take many years and cost many lives" could easily have been a kid named Dick Cheney. In fairness to the Dick Cheneys of the world, and call it selfishness if you will, if not wanting "to serve in the wars" means "not wanting to get shot at on a battlefield" it's arguably evidence of sanity. The "shared sacrifice" imposed in the era of the draft was coercive.

I believe, actually, that a lot more Americans would volunteer to help support the families of deployed troops if they had a sense of how they might do that. I also believe that our government should spend more attention (and money) on reintegrating troops back into society post-combat. Without making excuses for anybody who "goes off the deep end" after their return to the U.S., there's an enormous transition to be made from being in combat to being back with your family - and even bigger if your family isn't there to support you. I spoke with a veteran of the Afghanistan War who described how he was greeted by his mother upon his return home, and knew the moment he saw her that his wife had left him - with an empty house and an empty bank account. He commented that it took about two years to transition out of the combat mindset, and to get back into a state of enjoying a "normal life" that initially seemed boring. By way of support, the military should have offered him more than a pat on the back on his way out the door.

But I digress. Herbert nails it here:

The reason it is so easy for the U.S. to declare wars, and to continue fighting year after year after year, is because so few Americans feel the actual pain of those wars. We’ve been fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan longer than we fought in World Wars I and II combined. If voters had to choose right now between instituting a draft or exiting Afghanistan and Iraq, the troops would be out of those two countries in a heartbeat.

The political leaders who started this war, and the political leaders who want to continue the wars, don't want that type of pressure. So they continued a system carefully constructed by their like-minded predecessors - no pressure on us means no pressure on them.

Too Easy

I recently speculated,

I suspect that Obama will order an approach that he believes will improve the situation in Afghanistan, but with the idea of wrapping up major military operations by mid-2011. At that time he can begin withdrawing troops without fear of a Najibullah-type collapse of the Karzai government before the election. His Republican opponent will have to decide if he wants to run on a platform of re-escalating and perpetuating the war, or effectively endorsing Obama's policies - and I suspect that in a national election there's a lot more danger to a politician who does the former.

Early excerpts from President Obama's speech confirm,

Taken together, these additional American and international troops will allow us to accelerate handing over responsibility to Afghan forces, and allow us to begin the transfer of our forces out of Afghanistan in July of 2011.

I wouldn't go so far as calling it the "easier option", let alone a "tragic mistake". The tragedy will be if, even with another two years, we're still looking at "Taliban lite" as an "acceptable" outcome. Further, few people (and fewer Obama supporters) are going to be happy with the policy. But just as it wasn't difficult to anticipate a policy that is timed around the election cycle, even if the decision proves to be correct, it's not unfair to view it as something of a cop-out, or at least as being politically safe.

At Least We're Not Detroit

In keeping with videos on the failure of major cities that are sufficiently and sadly humorous to make it into Michael Moore's new movie,

Bob Herbert sees the pain behind the humor, commenting on Conan O'Brien's jokes about Newark.

Conan was just trying to be funny, but the reality behind his late-night humor is horrifying. In Detroit, the median sale price of a house has hovered around $8,000. Seventy percent of all murders in the Motor City go unsolved. Joblessness is off the charts. The school system is a catastrophe.

* * *

The inner cities have been in a recession for decades. They’re in a depression now. Myriad issues desperately need to be addressed: employment, education, the foreclosure crisis, crime, alcohol and drug abuse, health care (including mental health treatment and counseling), child care for working parents and on and on and on.

Sure, but there are two problems: We're not going to pour the money into the cities that it would take to fix these problems and, even if we were, there's cause to question whether that would be enough. I'm perfectly prepared to take Herbert up on his challenge to "think more seriously about what’s really going on in cities like Newark", but the answers I have (clearing out the dead buildings, consolidating cities like Detroit into areas they can afford to govern, etc.) don't really turn things around - they just make the status quo more sustainable.

The Poseidon Recovery

Recall the scene from the Poseidon Adventure where the captain sees a tsunami coming toward his giant ocean liner, and orders the ship turned? The ship banks dangerously, but it's much too slow. And, to put it mildly, things don't go well for most on board. The captain can't be blamed for the tsunami, or for trying to avoid having it capsize the ship, but sometimes no matter what you do you are going to be overwhelmed by forces larger than yourself.

President Obama was sworn into office as an economic tsunami hit the nation. After (ahem) bailing out the banks, he proposed a stimulus bill that would arguably help create jobs in an economy that did not appear able to do so. The immediate reaction from the right was either to do nothing, or to cut taxes for the wealthy. Once the stimulus bill passed, many immediately demanded to know why it hadn't worked, even though it hadn't been either funded or implemented. As if the U.S. government, an entity that makes the Poseidon look nimble, can turn on a dime. From the other side, Obama was pressed to do more, and to do it faster - a bigger stimulus bill. But Congress lacked the urgency of the crew of the Poseidon, perhaps because it was primarily other people who needed to be protected from the economic tsunami, and although Obama can be fairly criticized for making a lot of up-front concessions to try to gain Republican support I'm not sure how much more Congress would have given him under any circumstance.

Now we look like we're poised to have, at best, a U-shaped recovery of the employment market. The economy is doing better, but it's still shedding jobs. There are lots of things the government could spend money on, with Bob Herbert (for example) proposing:

A massive long-term campaign to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure - which would put large numbers of people to work establishing the essential industrial platform for a truly 21st-century American economy - has not seriously been considered. Large-scale public-works programs that would reach deep into the inner cities and out to hard-pressed suburban and rural areas have been dismissed as the residue of an ancient, unsophisticated era.

But massive, long-term job creation schemes aren't going to fix things this year or next year. There is a need to improve our nation's infrastructure, and there's little question but that the inner cities can't be physically cleaned up (removing abandoned buildings, environmental clean-up, creating viable brownfields for redevelopment etc.) without a massive investment of government money, Good public policy arguments can be made for that type of investment. But to me it's not clear that it's the best way to create new jobs, let alone to create them quickly.

It's easy to suggest that Obama "needs to do more" about one crisis or another - we have any number of huge crises to deal with. The hard part is figuring out what to do - what will work. (And although I'm skeptical of the motives behind Republican opposition to the stimulus bill, sometimes the answer truly is that "nothing will work", "nothing will work fast enough to matter", or "despite the need, that proposal isn't the best way to use our nation's resources.") I'm a proponent of long-term thinking, and of trying to make our society better and more sustainable for the next generation. But I suspect that to create jobs over the short-term, the ideas proposed by Herbert would have had to have been implemented and funded several years ago.

Having a Volunteer Military

I'll give Bob Herbert his due, as he was drafted into military service and served in Korea. But when he speaks of the modern, volunteer military, I disagree with some of his contentions. He's completely right, in my opinion, that many members of the public don't appreciate what's involved in military service (and arguably you can't fully appreciate what's involved unless you've served in combat), but that's in no small part a matter of design - a political convenience advanced by the Bush Administration and continued under Obama.

As long as media coverage of casualties remains low, there's little pressure to change present policies. No doubt, the book Herbert mentions contains chilling pictures of the casualties of war, but if you're shocked by them it's because the mainstream media has decided it's distasteful, exploitive, or [insert excuse of the day] to run them.

America’s young fighting men and women have to make these multiple tours because the overwhelming majority of the American people want no part of the nation’s wars. They don’t want to serve, they don’t want to make any sacrifices here on the home front — they don’t even want to pay the taxes that would be needed to raise the money to pay for the wars. We just add the trillions to deficits that stretch as far as the eye can see.

It's hard to argue with that. Again, that's the fruit of deliberate political policy. The Bush Administration's response when asked about sacrifice on the home front? It boiled down to "Ignore the war and keep on spending." If you took the Republican Members of Congress who were the strongest advocates of the Iraq War they would still howl like banshees at the notion of raising taxes to pay for the war, even as they use the cost of the war as an excuse for opposing healthcare reform, stimulus bills, or similar initiatives.

But Herbert continues,

A clear idea of the pathetic unwillingness of the American people to share in the sacrifices of these wars can be gleaned from a comment that President Obama made in his address last week to the Veterans of Foreign Wars. “We are a country of more than 300 million Americans,” he said. “Less than 1 percent wears the uniform.”

The president was not chiding those who are not serving, he was only intending to praise those who are. But the idea that so few are willing to serve at a time when the nation is fighting two long wars is a profound indictment on the society.

Well, yes and no. It's an indictment of our present political culture that praises ever soldier as a hero while burying the most painful illustrations of sacrifice. For individual members of society, I think it's a fair indictment of the "fighting typists" - the faction of the Republican Party that expressed unbridled support for the war in word but not in deed. The Rush Limbaughs and Dick Cheneys of this world always have "other priorities".

Does it indict those who argued that the Iraq war was a war of choice, would put an undue burden on the military and jeopardize the mission in Afghanistan? Not so much. Had Bush not launched the war in Iraq, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. If Obama succeeds in significantly reducing troop levels in Iraq, we wouldn't need this discussion.

But even taken at face value, the argument has its limits. Yes, if we had more volunteers we would have a reduced need for "stop loss" and might even be able to eliminate it. But how many more volunteers do we actually need? If you raised the number of volunteers from "less than 1 percent" to 1%, you would likely exceed capacity. If you believe the need is to put 650,000 combat troops into Afghanistan and Iraq, you must have the capacity to train, support and supply those troops - you're talking about adding millions of people to the military. And in fairness to the American public, after 9/11 there was great interest in joining the military.

Five years after military recruiting hit the ceiling after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, recruiting remains solid, with every service meeting its active-duty recruiting goal for the 15th consecutive month.

To the extent that interest in joining the military has declined, it's less an indictment of society than it is of the Iraq war and the Bush Administration.

Herbert continues,

If we had a draft — or merely the threat of a draft — we would not be in Iraq or Afghanistan. But we don’t have a draft so it’s safe for most of the nation to be mindless about waging war. Other people’s children are going to the slaughter.

I disagree with this, as well. I recognize the talking point that, with a draft, people will oppose entering wars of choice. but... let's take another look at Herbert's résumé:

He was drafted during the buildup to the Vietnam War, but was ultimately sent to Korea.

Which of those two wars was prevented by the fact that there was a draft? For that matter, what war in any country has ever been prevented by virtue of conscription? To put it another way, with conscription in place, was the country not largely supportive of the Vietnam War at its inception, as it was with Iraq?

If you want to learn about the sacrifice of soldiers, you have to work at it. It's not in the mainstream media. Beyond platitudinous expressions like "support our troops" it's not in the right-wing media. It may well be that our political leaders and media conglomerates are right - we don't want to hear about it - and if true that is an indictment of our society. But it's more of an indictment of our media and political system.

If The Public Plan Is Stripped Out of Reform....

Then, for reasons Bob Herbert highlights, the side deal with the pharmaceutical industry should be flushed as well. And, also for reasons Herbert highlights, care needs to be exercised to ensure that people compelled to buy insurance are not only allowed to buy in without regard to pre-existing condition, but also at the group rate.

Herbert notes,

If the oldest and sickest are on Medicare, and the poorest are on Medicaid, and the young and the healthy are required to purchase private insurance without the option of a competing government-run plan — well, that’s reform the insurance companies can believe in.

More than that, it significantly raises the barrier to entry. Right now, at least in theory, a company that had a lot of money and a desire to enter the insurance business could do so - and could cherry-pick clients so as to protect its profits, just as the present group of for-profit insurers do. But post-reform, it would take a much larger investment, carrying much more risk, to start a new health insurance company.

Not that companies are leaping into the field, even under the status quo.

Bloodsucking Lenders

Bob Herbert called his piece Climbing Down the Ladder; I might have called it "The Bloodsucking Lenders of Transylvania County". His column describes an elderly widow in Rocky Mount, N.C. (in case you haven't guessed by now, Transylvania County) who may lose her house to foreclosure.

If you believe Ms. Richardson’s account, and I do, she was fast-talked into a mortgage that would have been impossible to pay off with her fixed income. Foreclosure would have seemed inevitable. But Ms. Richardson and her current lawyer, Carlene McNulty of Raleigh, N.C., said the figures that would have made it obvious to Ms. Richardson that she couldn’t afford the mortgage were deliberately concealed.

I think it goes without saying that there were lenders for whom deceit was a primary tool in closing loan agreements. I think we can all agree that the elderly as a group are more likely to be targeted by, and are more likely to fall for, predatory schemes involving their homes and money. But even then, a common thread in a lot of scams is "getting something for nothing (or next-to-nothing)" or "believing an offer that's too good to be true."

I don't know the background to the story Herbert shares, and I'm content to accept his impression that Ms. Richardson was scammed. But at the same time, I have to wonder what she received under her mortgage. Was she refinancing an existing mortgage for what she thought was a lower rate? Refinancing a mortgage and withdrawing equity for what she believed would be approximately the same rate? Or was this a new mortgage where she was receiving a substantial amount of cash in return for a mortgage payment that, in retrospect, was simply too good to be true?

I can see a lender targeting her for a "too good to be true" deal - "Refinance your current $80K mortgage, pull out $60K in equity to pay off all your bills, buy a new car, and redecorate, and your monthly payment only goes up $45! [until the teaser rate expires]" Who wouldn't want to believe that? Mix in a vulnerable population to target, and you have a formula for big, ill-gotten profits.

But at the same time, how do we get past that part of human nature that just doesn't want to hear the message, "There's no such thing as a free lunch"? (And if we accept that we can't - that at some level, all of our educational efforts will fail - what else can we do?) If we can't answer that, whatever the nature of the scheme or scam, it's another case of "same story, different day".

Weatherstripping, Nothing....

Bob Herbert endorses conservation, suggesting,

Because of the high price of oil, people in many parts of the country are already frightened, in the heat of summer, about their winter heating bills. Families are worried about having to choose between mortgage payments and fuel bills, or fuel bills and prescription medicine.

The Senate considered but was unable to pass a measure that would have substantially increased financing for the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program. It was a very bad sign. If the government can’t get that done in the current atmosphere, it hardly seems likely that it could move to an even more important step: finding a way to get the homes of these cash-strapped families properly weatherized so that they use substantially less fuel over the course of each winter.

How about we start subsidizing the conversion of their homes to geothermal heating and cooling systems. Using grants, subsidized loans and conventional loans, it should be possible to create affordable paths to geothermal systems for most consumers, with any loans repaid in a manner that still results in a net savings (and much greater stability) in their heating bills.

Bob Herbert? Boring?

Even before I read it, the recent Washington Monthly article, Why Is Bob Herbert Boring? inspired a reaction - "Because he writes about issues that many people claim to care about, but which they don't really care about. The author exemplifies my point.

This bothers me. Bob Herbert is the only national columnist at a major newspaper who consistently writes about the issues in our country that matter most yet seem to be covered least.... But, honestly, I don't read him either. I'll devour a Maureen Dowd column in which David Geffen trash-talks the Clintons. But I'll skip the next day's Herbert column counseling me to pay less attention to Anna Nicole Smith and more to, for instance, rebuilding New Orleans.

In my opinion he's one of the New York Times' better columnists, presenting steady, well-reasoned, fact-based analysis. For me, Dowd's attempts at gossipy wit often render her columns to dull to wade through.

For the most part, the author shares my immediate reaction - but then shifts responsibilty to Bob Herbert for not writing for his audience. They quote Herbert, in my opinion unfairly, to try to advance this argument:

I asked Herbert why he thinks his columns draw less attention in blogs and other media outlets than those of his colleagues. "The media tends to be drawn like a magnet to power," Herbert said. "Stories about power will generate more chatter." He added: "I think people who are in privileged positions either don't think a lot about people who are not, or don't care about them."

* * *

When I asked Herbert who he envisions his readers to be, he laughed. "I don't picture readers," he said. "I picture issues and the people that I'm covering."

I've never really had the sense that syndicated columnists, on the whole, spend a great deal of time thinking about their readers. George Will doesn't care if his readers want to read about baseball, but he frequently substitutes baseball commentary for his wilted political analysis. Charles Krauthammer doesn't care that is ideas are so trite that you can almost always predict his entire column from the headline. While columnists can target a larger group of readers through their subject matter, readers for the most part seek to seek out columnists who they expect to agree with. Simply put, if you write about subjects people don't care about, no matter how loudly they protest to the contrary, people won't read your column. If Herbert wrote for his audience, he may well develop a larger base of readers, but if the author's thesis is correct he'll have to start writing about the mendacity of one political party or the other, the Iraq war, perhaps throw in some catty name-calling, perhaps follow David Brooks' example of not caring about factual accuracy and then discounting his myriad errors as "jokes". What a joy that would be to read.

But I also think that the Times op-ed page could use more than just one writer on Herbert's beat. The New York Times (or any other major paper that professes to care about America's dispossessed) owes it to readers to find the sort of columnists who can wed the sentiments of Bob Herbert to the influence of William Kristol. And maybe, better still, it will find a conservative columnist who weds the sentiments of William Kristol to the influence of Bob Herbert. It wouldn't be a terrible world if we could read a conservative columnist in the Times and say, for a change, "Man, why is he so boring?"

That's just silly. Here's my counter-challenge to the Washington Monthly - take any popular columnist and have that columnist cover Bob Herbert's beat for a year - the columnist is to announce the change of subject matter up front, and to adhere to the Herber beat with no deviations. By the end of the year, I suspect that the Washington Monthly will be astonished that their (formerly) popular columnist is suddenly "even more boring" than Bob Herbert.