Peace Is Hard, So Obama Should Give Up

I'm not sure that's what the Nobel Committee had in mind, but it's the gist of the advice of retired IDF general Ephraim Sneh in relation to the Israel-Palestine peace process. You have to love this:

It is because the political constraints of both leaders, the Palestinian Authority's Mahmoud Abbas and Israel's Binyamin Netanyahu, prevent any progress at the negotiation table. Abbas, without substantial achievements, cannot explain to his people why he made substantial concessions to the Israelis. Netanyahu, given the political composition of his government, cannot provide Abbas with such achievements.

So basically, Abbas can't demonstrate progress toward peace without Netanyahu's being willing to negotiate, and since Netanyahu won't negotiate you may as well call the whole thing off. I suspect that Sneh's real fear is that pressure from Obama might make Netanyahu seem unreasonable and obstructionist - despite the fact that Sneh just told us that he and his government are obstructionist.

Save Your Anger For Fictitious People

George Will presents something of an incoherent mumble on anger today, noting that people he assumes are liberal get angry over a shortage of parking at Whole Foods, and that other people get angry about speed bumps. This somehow relates to the perception that healthcare is a right, not a privilege, although Will doesn't do much to explain the connection.

If our vocabulary is composed exclusively of references to rights, a.k.a. entitlements, we are condemned to endless jostling among elbow-throwing individuals irritably determined to protect, or enlarge, the boundaries of their rights. Among such people, all political discourse tends to be distilled to what Mary Ann Glendon of Harvard Law School calls "rights talk."

Witness the inability of people nowadays to recommend this or that health-care policy as merely wise or just. Each proposal must be invested with the dignity of a right. And since not all proposals are compatible, you have not merely differences of opinion but apocalyptic clashes of rights.

Consider, for example, George Will himself. Having decided that corporations, fictitious persons, are entitled to the full panoply of rights granted to real people by the Bill of Rights, he's been sputtering with anger for years over efforts to regulate corporate speech. That, of course, he sees as a perfectly sensible exercise of pique - of his (self-)righteous, conservative anger - whereas it's pure silliness to advocate that real, living, breathing human beings have rights.

Meanwhile, I have to wonder how he came to witness the parking lot anger at Whole Foods. Perhaps after stealing somebody's parking space, while on his way to buy an heirloom tomato on the maid's day off?

Update: Civil rights at work, George Will-style.

Aspirational Awards

You know, I was as surprised as the next guy about President Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, but I'm not sure why some on the political right are so stunned by the idea of awarding a significant, although arguably unearned, prize to a President, in the hope that he'll do something to earn it after-the-fact.

After all, wasn't it the Supreme Court's award of the Presidency to George Bush that inspired him win the election in 2004?

Budget Cuts and the D.C. Schools

A newly hired D.C. teacher describes an unfortunate turn of events in a letter to the Washington Post:

Then, on Friday afternoon, I was laid off. In a last-minute attempt to balance the budget, Rhee and the city opted to cut more than 200 teachers during the most critical period of the academic year - just when students were getting acclimated to their new environments.

My immediate concern was about what would happen to my students, because I was the only third-grade teacher at my school. My principal informed me that my students would be mixed in with the fourth- and second-graders. Yes, these are tough economic times, but does that justify providing a poor educational experience for these children? Simply reassigning them in this way will greatly degrade the educational experience for my third-graders, not to mention those in the classes into which they must be integrated.

There are two obvious problems to this approach to a funding shortage:

• If your goal is to attract motivated, highly qualified graduates to teach in the D.C. schools, laying them off a month into the school year and putting them out of work (or turning them into desperate substitute teachers) for the balance of the year is counter-productive, not just in terms of the new recruits but in terms of whether future graduates fear the same will happen to them.

• If Rhee can't afford the teachers she has, why should they or their union believe that if they give up tenure and job protections they'll be rewarded with lavish raises? If current staff levels aren't sustainable, how can her proposed compensation scheme possibly be sustainable?

I don't hold Michelle Rhee responsible for staffing cuts made necessary by budgetary constraints, but I do think she now owes us an explanation of how her proposed replacement compensation scheme is even slightly viable. If she has donors lined up willing to subsidize such a scheme, why aren't they helping her right now? If they've decided that they have other priorities for their money, or are only interested in funding a scheme that busts the union, it again speaks to the unsustainability of her plan.

Also, I think this highlights what I mentioned the other day, - lip service, including the strong lip service of Fred Hiatt's editorial page, pays for zero teachers. Where's the Post's call for a school funding increase that will allow schools to sustain their present staffiing levels, let alone to improve them and where does it propose that money will come from?

Big Love and FLDS

Within one of the countless articles on Roman Polanski, I came across a criticism of Hollywood not taking child sex abuse seriously, by Professor Marci Hamilton:

First, as I discussed in a prior column, we had Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson producing HBO's "Big Love," which merely winks at the sexual degradation of girls in the Fundamentalist Latter-Day Saints enclaves, but never shows the system in an accurate light that would reveal its true, abhorrent nature. If the pretty fictions were stripped away, the show would be unrelentingly bleak and horrifying: a portrait of a male-dominated society that is inherently inimical to women's rights, progress, and power.

The author in that prior column argues,

Under the "Big Love" scenario, the community needs a three-women-to-one-man ratio. That's distorted enough in comparison to male-female birth rates. In reality, though, many polygamous arrangements involve more than three wives per each man, so more boys have to be discarded.

The distortion of the male-female balance also leads the husbands to seek younger and younger women. The result is that too many girls face abuse: When a girl is secretly "married" before the age of consent, which happens all too often, the marriage's "consummation" is more accurately described as statutory rape.

In other words, polygamy rests, inevitably, on child abuse and neglect.

She takes on a John Tierney column that spoke of polygamy in favorable terms.

Tierney also argues that "[p]olygamy isn't necessarily worse than the current American alternative: serial monogamy." But that's bunk: Divorced couples do not routinely discard their male children on the streets to increase the odds of the father getting the women, or girls, that he wants. And while a divorce may result in one ex-partner (almost always the ex-wife) receiving public assistance, at least the marriage wasn't initially predicated on anyone's receiving public assistance, as the many illegal relationships within many polygamous marriages must be.

I think she both overstates and understates her case. Yes, Big Love is set in a world in which, outside the auspices of its version of FLDS, polygamy is depicted as somehow viable and consensual - what the author describes as "syrupy speculations about how polygamy might be just fine in some possible world". That's the world of entertainment. The show does show some of the dark side of polygamous sects - the casting off of boys, the involuntary marriage of girls, the prophet's control over the lives of the people within the sect, banishment, excommunication, the separation of parent and child, the sect's control of the police departments that supposedly enforce laws on their compounds, violence, tax fraud.... but the focus is on the syrupy world of the main characters who live upper middle class lives outside of the compound. But even with all of that, the show only hints at the darkness.

In fairness to HBO and the show's producers, it's not just their show that diminishes the abusive elements of FLDS-type sects. The 2008 raid on an FLDS compound in Texas, for example, (which in fairness followed an anonymous report of abuse that appears to have been phony) had any number of people demanding the return of the children to their mothers on any number of grounds, none of which involved a good strong look at the abusive environment into which those children were returned. For example, law professor David Bernstein argued,

In the previous thread, some commenters seem to assert that the CPS may take all of the FLDS's children away because (a) there has been documented abuse of children at other FLDS communities; and/or (b) the "culture" of the FLDS is inherently abusive, as it encourages early marriage and leaves its children inherently isolated by homeschooling them and not exposing them to social events, television, and the like. The latter criterion, at least, would place Amish and some of the more insular ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in jeopardy.

Take a look at some of the literature by former FLDS members, such as Lost Boy. You'll find out about a system of indoctrination and control, and how Rulon Jeffs (Warren's father) pulled the sect away from the secular world, eventually banning not only virtually all television programming, but children's literature (really, pretty much any literature that wasn't FLDS material), imposing sometimes bizarre dress codes and the trademark FLDS hairstyle for women, and how he created a school, run by his son Warren, where children were taught very little conventional educational material, but in which some were reportedly sexually abused by headmaster Warren Jeffs. The FLDS aren't the Amish.

Moreover, the emphasis within the community is on "keeping sweet". Prior to Rulon Jeff's becoming "prophet", young girls were allowed to express some preference in terms of who they married, albeit one attributed to messages delivered to them through prayer. But if you didn't "keep sweet", meaning capitulate to the church and male authority, you could find yourself married off to just about anybody. Call it consensual if you will, but when the prophet tells a teenage girl (or adult woman) "this is your new husband", and he gets to force himself on her, that sounds to me like rape, and not (just or even necessarily) of the statutory sort. (According to the author of Lost Boy, Warren Jeff's nephew Brent, some of the men in the community very much enjoyed that moment.) If you were married and had children but didn't "keep sweet" you could find yourself sent away, separated from your children. Oh, and having the prophet marry you off is a "blessing" - have you guessed yet? If you're keeping sweet, you don't reject a blessing.

On the other side of things, teenage boys could be sent away for not "keeping sweet", in some circumstances to other compounds where it was intended that they learn to capitulate. Girls could become "poofers" - being simultaneously sent away and married off to a man they had never met, with no way of knowing if or when they would see their parents or siblings again. For others, whether for not "keeping sweet" or for being too much of a potential challenge to the prophet, banishment follows - they become the lost boys, separated from their families, without any real world knowledge, and with few other than each other to turn to for support.¹ They come out of a culture of dependence, a world where control is kept in no small part by not letting people think independently - giving people little input into even the mundane decisions of everyday life - which not only leaves them unprepared for the outside world but, as Brent Jeffs describes, can at times inspire a longing to return to that world where you don't have to make decisions.

Brent Jeffs explains how his father came to leave the church. One of Brent's older brothers, who had married, had a baby die of SIDS. Their father allowed him to come home and held a funeral. Brent's father was called in by the prophet, his own father, and was told that for "harboring gentiles" he had a choice: He was to be stripped of his wives, and that his wives and children would be assigned to other husbands, and he could be on probation inside the church, or he could leave the church but his wives would still be assigned to other husbands. Do you think the wedding nights following reassignment would be consensual in any meaningful sense of the word? Does this still, to Professor Bernstein, sound like it could be an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community?

I don't think there can be any doubt that the polygamous sect depicted in Big Love is styled after the FLDS sect headed by Rulon Jeffs (who seems to be the model for the prophet in the show, Roman Grant) and Warren Jeffs (who seems to be the inspiration for the closeted homosexual, patricidal son, Alby, who hungers to take over the role of prophet). So when Professor Hamilton speaks of "the 'Big Love' scenario, the community needs a three-women-to-one-man ratio", she should consider the importance of that number to the FLDS. Under the teachings of that sect, a man must have not less than three lives in order to become the god of his own world after he dies. (No, I'm not making that up.) If a young man does not keep sufficiently sweet, and does not devote himself sufficiently (in the sometimes arbitrary eyes of the prophet) to the church, he won't be promoted through the priesthood, and he won't be awarded the wives he needs to become a god. (Really, I'm not making that up.)² Yes, that number does create the imbalances Professor Hamilton describes, but it's a real-world imbalance, not one confined to an HBO drama.

Watch a movie like Osama³, and consider the Taliban. Take away the burkas and public executions, and for a young woman how much distance is there between life under a Warren Jeffs-style prophet and life under the Taliban?
__________

1. Alcohol and drug abuse appear to be enormous problems for the "lost boys".

2. And fossils? They're not proof of the age of the world, or of past life on Earth, but are parts of other, failed worlds that were recycled to make our world. No, I'm not making that, up, either. FLDS "science" makes those "evolution is just a theory" stickers seem downright scientific.

3. The "Osama" of the film is a young girl, not Osama bin Laden.

More Pay For Less Work!

Who wouldn't want that? That's an admittedly uncharitable interpretation of an argument frequently raised at MedRants in relation to primary care providers. Primary care providers are compensated poorly in comparison to many specialists and, although compensated quite royally in comparison to the average working adult, that's the measure a lot of medical students use when choosing their eventual field of practice. Also, the current insurance compensation scheme pays per service provided, so to maximize income healthcare providers need to cram more patient care into less time. So we're presented with two arguments,

1. It will improve patient care to allow doctors to spend more time with their patients, and thus compensation schemes should be adjusted to compensate doctors for their time as opposed to by service or procedure provided; and

2. To encourage more doctors to enter the field of primary care, where more practitioners are desperately needed, we should increase their compensation to a level that approaches or matches the compensation received by specialists.

On their surface, both of these proposals seem reasonable. The problem is, they would both massively increase the cost of healthcare and would not necessarily provide the anticipated return in the quality of patient care.

The notion of paying per service or procedure appears to come from the idea that a particular action by the doctor could be performed in a set number of minutes, and compensation should be tied to performance and not to time actually spent with a patient. The efficient doctor sees more patients and earns more money. A doctor who is less efficient earns less money. I do have sympathy for a doctor who attempts to improve patient care by spending more time with each patient, sometimes a lot more time, and that doing so often will benefit patients.

The problem is, no insurer or employer will ever completely abandon efficiency measures. Doctors getting paid a salary will be expected to complete the work assigned to them. Those compensating doctors for the services they provide will never approve of a system where a doctor is paid to spend an hour talking to a patient before performing the procedure or service that brought the patient to the doctor. Many patients would like the opportunity to spend more time with their doctors, and concierge practices usually do provide that possibility, but few can afford that luxury.

I will grant that a salaried doctor can negotiate with his employer to have more time to spend with patients, and as the cost of the doctor is fixed the employer will be able to make budget and staffing decisions with that negotiated workload in mind. But for doctors who aren't traditional employees, as soon as you bring efficiency into the equation we're back in the same situation. Whatever the compensation, if it's possible to earn more by cramming more patients into the day, many doctors will do exactly that. And the doctors who choose not to do so will once again complain that they're being undercompensated in relation to their peers because of the time they're spending with their patients. Remember, the issue isn't that doctors can't spend more time with patients even under the current compensation scheme - the issue is that they want to be able to do so while earning the same or more money.

Another approach might be to assign an amount of time to each medical service, such that doctors would be compensated by the service, would have ample time to spend with their patients for each procedure, while capping the number of minutes they could claim for any particular day's work. I don't think it's much of a solution, as even assuming the limits could be policed and enforced, some doctors would invest that time in patient care while others would see it as a mechanism for getting out of the office by noon each day - see patients as quickly as possible, then call it a day. Meanwhile doctors would be able to see fewer patients, exaggerating the already existing shortage of primary care providers. As you can see, I'm having a hard time envisioning a compensation scheme along this line that would actually work.

The proposal to pay primary care physicians more isn't of itself unreasonable, as it does appear that the best way to attract more physicians into primary care is to reduce the differential (or anticipated differential) between primary care earnings and specialist earnings. Another way to tackle the issue might be to reduce compensation for specialist care and use that money to boost primary care compensation, but that would be a complex undertaking and I expect that it would be vehemently resisted by doctors.

But aren't we really just presenting another twist on the concept of "relative poverty" - that poverty shouldn't be measured by what you do or don't have, but by comparing your assets and income to those of your peers? If we were to simply offer an across-the-board increase in the amount provided as compensation for primary care services, how long would it be before specialists were demanding a similar raise? (I don't think the ink would even be dry on the new compensation schedule before those demands came in). And if granted, we're back where we began - with a continued, significant differential between primary and specialist care, with a similar distortion of how medical students choose their areas of practice - but at a significantly higher cost to patients.

Although Dr. Centor links with approval to the argument that medicine should not be about money, and granting that his primary concern is to improve the quality of medical practice and not doctor compensation, the only incentives he points to and the only reforms he proposes revolve around money. There are other approaches to the problems that could be discussed. For example, even though I'm sure Dr. Centor could provide a good argument why doctors would do the job better, patients with more complex health needs could be assigned a case manager, LPN, or physician's assistant to monitor their care and help them better understand their options at a significantly lower cost than assigning those same tasks to a doctor.

I appreciate Dr. Centor's argument that "We must eschew any system that discourages us from spending time with patients", but I unfortunately have yet to hear any explanation of how that can be done except in the context of concierge medicine, or possibly by somehow bringing a Mayo-style (salaried) practice to the rest of the country.

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.

Wow... Those Are Some Ideas....

Bobby Jindal, a supposed expert on healthcare issues, presents what he contends could be the Republican answer to healthcare reform. His first proposal is straight out of "Hillarycare":

Voluntary purchasing pools: Give individuals and small businesses the opportunities that large businesses and the government have to seek lower insurance costs.

As CNN points out, to date they haven't worked.

Jindal offers up a plate of the usual reform ideas,

• Lawsuit reform - Something it's always fun to talk about, but which now seems to concern the insurance industry so little that it's not a big deal to either party (even if it remains a big concern of doctors). And something that isn't likely to actually bring about cost savings.

• Require coverage of preexisting conditions - Something that only works if there's an insurance mandate. Otherwise the free rider phenomenon makes insurance unaffordable, and you could have the perverse effect of getting healthy people to drop their coverage because they know they'll be able to pick up a plan if they become sick. If Jindal's an expert, he knows that... so why did he leave a mandate off of his list?

• Electronic medical records - Something that may bring about a modest direct cost savings but, if done correctly, could reduce medical error and provide data that could be analyzed to improve healthcare.

• Transparency and payment reform - providing consumers with information about healthcare providers and choices, and making payments "based on outcomes, not volume". The first part, when proposed by Democrats, gets spun by Republicans as "putting bureaucrats between you and your doctor"; I guess this is Jindal's apology? The second part is being tried to some extent with Medicare, although pilot programs haven't done much to reduce costs. The obvious danger of paying based on outcome is that it could lead to doctors turning away high risk patients to maximize their compensation (while also improving their scores on the aforementioned consumer reports on doctor performance).

Okay, Bobby, other than warmed over ideas from the Clinton Administration, ideas that are already being tried, or ideas you've pulled out of of the 2008 candidates' platforms and the Democratic Party's proposed legislation, what do you have?

Tax-free health savings accounts: HSAs have helped reduce costs for employers and consumers. Some businesses have seen their costs decrease by double-digit percentages. But current regulations discourage individuals and small businesses from utilizing HSAs.

As an "expert", Jindal should know that his claim of cost-savings is a half-truth. Sure, costs for businesses providing HSA's along with a catastrophic care-type policy see their costs go down, sometimes quite significantly. But consumers see their costs go up, in part due to how little their insurance actually covers and in part due to the loss of the insurance company as gatekeeper. Is Jindal proposing these plans because he believes in them, or because business lobbyists love them?

Portability: As people change jobs or move across state lines, they change insurance plans. By allowing consumers to "own" their policies, insurers would have incentive to make more investments in prevention and in managing chronic conditions.

There is an obvious problem with that proposal, in that many insurance plans focus on a state or region, and don't have networks of doctors available in other states. But let's assume for the moment that Jindal has a solution to the problem of in-network and out-of-network providers that could make plans work across state lines. There are two things he could be proposing here:

1. Indefinite COBRA - once you're in an insurance plan you can continue to carry the plan with you forever as long as you keep paying the premiums. If you change jobs, your employer could subsidize the new plan. The insurance companies would have to continue plans for anybody who wanted them to continue, even if the original employer dropped the plan.

2. Abolish group plans, and make everybody buy individual plans at vastly higher rates, although perhaps with these fanciful "purchasing pools" negotiating reduced rates for individual plans.

My bet is that Jindal is pushing his party's preference for the latter - abolition of group insurance plans in favor of individual plans that are affordable only by virtue of how little they cover.

Jindal offers a related idea:

Cover young adults: A large portion of the uninsured are people who cannot afford coverage after they have "aged out" of their parents' policies. Permitting young people to stay on their parents' plans longer would reduce the number of uninsured and keep healthy people in insurance risk pools -- helping to lower premiums for everyone.

(Isn't this in the Democratic bills as well?) I guess coverage under the group plans he and his party are so eager to abolish in favor of individual plans are cheaper and better than the plans he hopes will take their place? Because if not, young people would be better off with those new plans, wouldn't they? But seriously, if we're doing this, why not go a step further - let's say we let young people stay on their parents plans, without exception, until the age of 25. Why not 26? Why not 35? Why not... as long as their parent owns the plan? For that matter, why not then allow those young people to participate as full members of their parents' plans, following the "indefinite COBRA" principles previously outlined? Once again, if we're supposed to believe that the Republican alternative plans are going to be at all desirable, even if that right is granted they'll voluntarily drop out of those group plans in favor of the Republican plans, won't they?

Refundable tax credits (for the uninsured and those who would benefit from greater flexibility of coverage)

An idea gleaned from the McCain campaign (and also incorporated in a different way into the current Democratic bills), but watered down into something less than a replacement for employer-sponsored plans? I guess the idea is that the working poor will use tax credits to purchase low-coverage plans accompanied by HSA's they can't afford to fund. Jindal argues that "will help make non-emergency care outside the emergency room affordable for millions and will provide choices of coverage through the private market", but doesn't explain how. Either the tax credits he plans are going to be surprisingly generous, or Jindal expects the poor to somehow get cheap, full coverage policies even as he endorses stripping that type of policy away from working people. Because otherwise, the working poor will still have to get their routine care at the emergency room because, although insured for catastrophe, they won't be insured for that care.

Reward healthy lifestyle choices: Providing premium rebates and other incentives to people who make healthy choices or participate in management of their chronic diseases has been shown to reduce costs and improve health.

What does he mean by "healthy choices"? Not smoking? Not drinking? Not using recreational drugs? Not eating too much? Not eating too much fried food, candy, potato chips, etc., whatever your weight? Not being bulimic or anorexic? Not engaging in dangerous recreational activities? Not taking dangerous jobs?

How intrusive will this program be? And who will pay the subsidy? Does Jindal propose mandating that insurance companies offer these rebates, or does he propose that the government will be writing checks to people whom it deems to be making appropriately healthy choices? Will we take people at their word? What will be the consequence of getting caught fibbing? Really, how far does Jindal want the government to insinuate itself into our lives?

On the whole, Jindal's "reforms" largely accord with ideas incorporated into the various Democratic healthcare reform bills. Beyond that, they seem to be intended to let people think that they can keep their plans, and potentially even keep their children on their plans through the end of college or grad school, while producing a stack of incentives to allow and facilitate employers' dropping conventional plans (the ones people like) and replacing them with low-benefit plans and HSA's. McCain's plan meets Newt Gingrich. McCain's reputation for "straight talk" was tarnished in his campaign. (Please note also the prevarications at the beginning of Jindal's editorial.) I guess this is Jindal's roundabout way of saying, "For a Republican, that was straight talk - and then some."

Update: A bit more on why experiments with insurance exchanges have failed:

Texas wasn’t the only state to see its insurance exchange fail. Florida and North Carolina were also unsuccessful. And California, which had the first exchange (established in 1992) and the largest market, shut its doors in 2006. All these state exchanges failed for the same reason: cherry-picking by insurers outside the exchange.

The author's proposed solution, "Insurers have to accept everyone and have to charge everyone the same rates regardless of health status." The former is largely accomplished by eliminating preexisting conditions from the reasons insurance companies can deny coverage. But the latter? Wouldn't that necessarily involve setting one group rate (or schedule of rates) for every person an insurance company insures? If we do that, won't we both eliminate group rates (thus the need for groups) and the need to negotiate discounts (as everybody pays the same rate)? Won't that also encourage insurance companies to try to define their policies to principally benefit people who don't need insurance - their profits becoming primarily dependent upon how few services their insureds require?

The author believes "It would be smarter for Congress to revisit the idea of creating a public plan" than to go with exchanges - if she's correct about the regulatory mess that would be required to make exchanges (maybe) work, that's hard to argue.

Douthat Wants It All (And He Wants It Now!)

No secret, I'm no economist. So when somebody presents an argument premises upon economics that's transparently wrong to me, it's safe to infer that they have no business writing on the subject. Case in point, Ross Douthat. Let's leave aside his political arguments for the moment, and focus on his economic argument. Having noted that there is a massive, growing disparity of wealth in this country, Douthat proposes,

For one thing, the lazy liberal’s cure for income inequality — soaking the wealthy with higher tax rates and cutting taxes for everybody else — simply isn’t going to happen.

Back up, Ross. Wealth and income are not the same thing. Certainly there are many people on the left who argue that higher income taxes on the wealthy can help pay for government, the alternative being a continuation of GW's bloated budget deficits, but I really can't think of any prominent voice who has argued that a higher income tax on the wealthy will significantly affect their wealth. Let's go uber-left, and take a look at Michael Moore's new movie, Capitalism: A Love Story. Moore (making one of the mistakes Douthat also makes, confusing marginal tax rates with effective tax rates) points out that this nation flourished, and many people became fabulously wealthy, under a 90% marginal tax rate. Douthat repeats his mistake with the corporate tax code, noting that the marginal rate "is one of the highest in the West", while ignoring the effective rate.

Second, as Douthat is looking only at pre-tax income inequality, it should be obvious to him that changes in the marginal tax rate do not affect income inequality. If I make $100,000 before taxes, and you make $20,000 before taxes, whether I pay 10% tax or 90% tax our income inequality remains the same. Douthat skips over something near and dear to the hearts of the super-rich - the tax code's beneficial treatment of their primary source of spending money, capital gains.

Third, if Douthat believes that high incomes result from supply and demand, then as effective tax rates go up, so should the income of top earners. That is, it's reasonable to infer that income disparity will increase as high earners get raises to help preserve their standards of living. Their post-tax incomes may be lower than before, but their pre-tax disparity would go up. But perhaps Douthat looks at himself, President Bush, and some of his pundit and editorial page colleagues, thinks of the Peter Principle, and figures that there are ample people who can fill the high-wage jobs such that there would be no pressure to increase their wages to make up for a tax increase.

Leaving aside his confusion over taxes, Douthat's principal argument is a straw man - one he sets up so that he can easily bat it down. First he states,

Liberals, though, have spent decades telling a more simplistic story, in which conservatives bear all the blame for stagnating middle-class wages and skyrocketing upper-class wealth. So it’s fair to say that if a period of Democratic dominance doesn’t close the gap between the rich and the rest of us, it will represent a significant policy failure for contemporary liberalism.

But then he admits,

In part, this is because the Democrats have become as much the party of the rich as the Republicans, and parties rarely overtax their own contributors.

Is Douthat arguing that "liberalism" now means "serving the rich, just like the Republicans"? (He's a self-described Republican - that's how he sees his party's agenda?) He reminds me of his own defense of the Republican Party, that it somehow departed from conservatism and thus shouldn't be held responsible for the ineptitude and destruction wrought by the Bush Administration. He can't have it both ways: If the Democratic party fails to promote equality because it is catering to the rich, its service of its effective base doesn't represent a "failure" of liberalism - it represents the fact that the Democratic Party has abandoned liberalism in favor of serving the wealthy .

Douthat also complains about immigration, arguing,

For instance, inequality is driven in part by low-skilled immigration: it nudges wages downward for native workers, and the immigrants themselves are taking longer to achieve upward mobility than earlier generations did.

Surely Douthat isn't arguing that immigration of low-skilled workers applies downward pressure on the jobs held by the wealthy, or even the bulk of the middle class. He doesn't appear to be adopting John McCain's line, that Americans wouldn't pick lettuce even at $50 per hour, one of the Republican defenses of bringing low-skilled workers into the U.S. He doesn't explain how the effect of a Democratic immigration policy would differ from Bush's idea of bringing in a class of unskilled workers who would never qualify to immigrate, or whether the Democratic alternative would be more stabilizing and help immigrants better establish themselves in the United States.

It does appear that immigration depresses earnings in service fields and the building trades, jobs which historically could provide anything from a decent second income to a decent middle class wage. But in terms of the middle class, isn't the effect of immigration dwarfed by the effects of outsourcing and globalization? Is the problem best addressed by pointing a finger at immigrants and whining, "You're taking our jobs", or by acknowledging that if you want a solid, middle class, upwardly mobile lifestyle in this country, your best bet is to pursue education and to develop specialized job skills?

Douthat brings his social conservatism into play, suggesting that "the collapse of the two-parent household" plays a significant role in inequality, and whining,

But today’s Democratic Party increasingly represents “unmarried America” — the single, the childless, the divorced. This makes it an unlikely vehicle for policies that discriminate, whether through tax code or the welfare state, in favor of the traditional nuclear family.

Okay, we've had Republicans controlling the White House and Congress for much of the past three decades, so remind me: what social engineering feats did they bring about, reducing out-of-wedlock births and strengthening marriage? If the two-parent household continues to collapse after the Reagan "conservative revolution" and after eight years of GW, and we assume that the Republican Party actually cares about strong families, isn't that both a profound indictment of Republican policies and a strong indication that we're not going to stop divorces or reduce out-of-wedlock births through federal social engineering? (Although, as "abstinence only" education shows, we can increase the rate of out-of-wedlock births through ill-considered federal policy.)

Douthat repeats a tired argument on education:

Inequality is perpetuated by our failing education system — and especially by the bloated cartel responsible for educating the nation’s poorest children.

Education is one of those subjects people pretend to care about, but only at the surface level. The Republican "cure" for failing schools is privatization (despite an absence of evidence that it's necessary, will save money, or that it will improve learning, let alone that it's the best approach) and standardized testing. I'm a huge proponent of meaningful improvement of public education at all levels, and I would like to see every inner city child go to school in a safe, orderly, well-maintained facility with quality teachers and administrators. But let's be honest for a moment, and return to Douthat's prior argument against increasing taxes on the wealthy - on their own, "reforms" like "standardized testing", "schools of choice", "vouchers," and "charter schools" don't cut it. If you want to offer quality inner city schools throughout the nation, you need to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure, school security, teacher improvement, and wages.

Let's also be honest about the effect of education reform. Let's say that we close the quality gap between schools in the inner cities and those of suburban America, and further close the achievement gap. We would have a bigger than ever pool of high school graduates looking for work. Does Douthat believe that would increase starting wages for high school graduates, or would the effect in fact be similar to that he perceives from immigration? That is, without taking the additional step of helping high school graduates obtain college degrees or obtain specialized job skills, miraculous though our results would be, our efforts should bring about poverty reduction but would continue to fall far short of what it takes to create equal opportunity for inner city youth. We as a nation should be investing in higher education, to make it more accessible and to keep our system (well, arguably at this point, restore it to being) the best in the world. Where's the Republican Party on that?

Douthat suggests that growing government in proportion to the private economy may reduce inequality, and observes that this is "the logic of our current fiscal trajectory: ever-larger government, and ever-slower growth". It's reasonable to note that if you gauge the size of government by comparing total federal spending to the GDP, under Reagan and George H.W. Bush, the ratio was about 22%. The Clinton administration reduced that figure to about 18%. Although G.W. promised to shrink government, under his Presidency the figure bloated back up to about 21%. Douthat closes by arguing that if we end up in an era of greater economic equality, but with larger government and slower growth,

The question is whether Americans will thank [the Democrats] for it.

If in fact the growth of government spending creates "the more egalitarian America that Democrats have long promised to deliver", Douthat has a point - whether or not they like the effect of the growth of government on the nation, it's principally the Republican Party, not the Democratic Party, that people should "thank".

On the whole, Douthat is pushing a familiar canard: that the only policies worth pursuing are those which will bring about overnight change, and if you propose policies that will effect improvement over a longer term, be it a decade, a generation, or a century, that somehow translates into failure. With myopia like that, who can be surprised Douthat's a proud Republican.

So That's What Friedman Meant?

A couple of years ago, Thomas Friedman laid out in explicit detail why he supported the Iraq war:

And what we learned on 9/11, in a gut way, was that [the terrorist] bubble was a fundamental threat to our open society because there is no wall high enough, no INS agent smart enough, no metal detector efficient enough, to protect an open society from people motivated by that bubble and what we needed to do was to go over to that part of the world, I’m afraid, and burst that bubble. We needed to go over here basically and take out a very big stick right in the heart of that world and burst that bubble.

And there was only one way to do it because part of that bubble said, “We’ve got you. This bubble is actually going to level the balance of power between we and you because we don’t care about it. We’re ready to sacrifice and all you care about is your stock options and your Hummers.”

And what they needed to see was American boys and girls going from house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, and basically saying, “Which part of this sentence don’t you understand? You don’t think we care about our open society? You think this bubble fantasy, we’re just going to let it grow? Well, suck on this, okay?”

That, Charlie, was what this war was about. We could have hit Saudi Arabia; it was part of the bubble. Could have hit Pakistan. We hit Baghdad because we could.

If I break that down and try to word it more artfully, Friedman seems to be arguing that:

• A "terrorist bubble" had developed, due to the conception that the U.S. was lazy and greedy, and lacked the force of will to stand up to terrorist attacks.

• We have no real defense against terrorism, as with enough motivation and enough effort eventually a terrorist will be able to get around our defenses.

• We thus must pop the "terrorist bubble" and let the terrorist know that we in fact have that force of will, and that their acts won't weaken our resolve.

• The best way to burst the "terrorist bubble" is to invade a country in the Middle East from which terrorists operate, and demonstrate a willingness to ferret out terrorists even if it means kicking in every door in the country.

• To burst the "terrorist bubble" we could have invaded any country that was part of this terrorist bubble, including Saudi Arabia or Pakistan.

• We chose Iraq over other possible targets "because we could."

Today Friedman rephrases his argument:

Our operation in Afghanistan after 9/11 was, for me, only about “the war on terrorists.” It was about getting bin Laden. Iraq was “the war on terrorism” — trying to build a decent, pluralistic, consensual government in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world. Despite all we’ve paid, the outcome in Iraq remains uncertain. But it was at least encouraging to see last week’s decision by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki to run in the next election with a nonsectarian, multireligious coalition — a rare thing in the Arab world.

Am I missing something, as that doesn't seem entirely consistent with his prior explanation of the war in Iraq - and the omitted element seems larger than what's left behind. ("Suck on this" translates into "nation building"?)

Friedman also argues,

These incidents [involving the recent arrest of suspected terrorists intent on striking U.S. targets] are worth reflecting on. They tell us some important things. First, we may be tired of this “war on terrorism,” but the bad guys are not. They are getting even more "creative."

Thus Friedman is telling us that the "terrorist bubble" didn't burst as a result of the Iraq war, something that surprises few other than Friedman. So that part - the part he argued was the principal reason for invading Iraq (or some other, randomly chosen country in the Middle East) - is conveniently dropped from his present argument.

Friedman also suggests that it is Obama who might transform the war in Afghanistan, described by Friedman as a "war on terrorists" that "was about getting bin Laden", into a "war on terrorism" involving nation-building. Flashing back a few years:

On Wednesday night, [President Bush] celebrated the military's nation-building role, saying that while "the main purpose of our military is to find and defeat the terrorists overseas," members of the armed forces are "also undertaking a less visible, but increasingly important task: helping the people of these nations build civil societies from the rubble of oppression."

Aides to Mr. Bush have said that his change of view began early in his first term, during a visit to Kosovo. But even then, he seemed to draw limits on what kind of nation-building activities he thought were appropriate.

On Wednesday, he celebrated the military's participation in actions that are normally considered civilian.

In Afghanistan, he noted, "Provincial Reconstruction Teams" were "helping the Afghan government to fix schools, dig wells, build roads, repair hospitals, and build confidence in the ability of Afghanistan's elected leaders to deliver real change in people's lives."

Has Friedman been following these issues at all

Taking The Guesswork Out of Psychiatric Medicine

I stumbled across the following:

Researchers with the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto said Tuesday they are "months away" from being able to personalize medical treatments for mentally ill patients by using genetics and brain imaging tests.

The project, called the neuroIMAGENE initiative, has been seven years in the making and will involve two evaluations — one that will use DNA testing, the other that will measure brain activity — to determine how a mentally ill patient will react to certain medications and to prescribe the best mix for treatment.

If it pans out, it will be an enormous benefit to recipients of psychotropic drugs, allowing them to avoid numerous trials of various drugs and drug mixtures "to see what works", and potentially allowing the selection of medications that minimize both dose and side effects.

Obama's President of What Nation, Again?

According to Michael Gerson, it's not good enough that the President of the United States evaluate the intelligence provided by U.S. intelligence agencies, consult with U.S. military leaders, and form a U.S. foreign and military policy based upon U.S. goals and interests.

Here is a paradox for President Obama to ponder while traversing the Iranian minefield: If the Israelis were confident that America would act decisively against the Iranian nuclear threat in the greatest extremity, they would be far less likely to act themselves. Lacking that confidence, they may conclude, once again, that delaying the threat is good enough.

No, here's a fact of life. President Obama, like President Bush, is entitled to conclude that a military attack on Iran would not be sufficiently effective to stop a nuclear power program, would not bring about a delay in that program that is significant to justify military intervention, would potentially cause blowback and complication of the U.S. missions in Iraq and Afghanistan (not to mention complicating the situations in Lebanon and the Palestinian territories), and would otherwise be contrary to U.S. foreign policy interests. Israel is a sovereign nation, is entitled to disagree, and is entitled to form its own military policy.

There's no "paradox" on the U.S. side. If Israel chooses to exercise its right as a sovereign nation to attack Iran, despite having been instructed by two consecutive Presidents that the U.S. opposes any such attack, that is their right. We don't owe them a promise that there will be no consequences for such an attack, let alone insinuating that we might carry out an attack so that they "don't have to". Gerson wants to get us into something that could end up like Georgia, round II - a U.S.-backed political leader takes provocative military action in anticipation that the U.S. will back him militarily if that action provokes a strong response. I'll again emphasize, Iran's response could be to complicate or jeopardize the U.S. missions in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Gerson offers this understatement:

If Israeli planes were to fly over Iraq, the reaction against America in that country could get ugly. Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas would probably be forced to step away from talks with Israel. Iran could escalate the crisis, with missile launches against Israel and attacks from terrorist proxies such as Hezbollah.

Does Gerson have even the slightest idea of what would happen if Iran's border suddenly became porous, whether due to a real or contrived redirection of Iranian military forces to actions other than border defense, enabling hit-and-run attacks against U.S. military supply lines?

If Gerson or certain hawkish Israeli leaders see this, or the Administration's other efforts to advance U.S. military and foreign policy interests in the region, as "inject[ing] considerable suspicion into the American-Israeli relationship", that's really not Obama's problem. Sometimes our goals will conflict with those of even our most reliable allies, and yet we pursue them anyway.

As Gerson admits, his beloved former master, President Bush, held the same position as Obama on military strikes against Iran, and followed "the same basic approach" in dealing with Iran. Moreover, it seemed to be a point of pride for Bush to thumb his nose at the warnings and skepticism of our nation's historic allies. Perhaps Gerson should instead be contemplating how Bush's war of choice in Iraq likely both accelerated nuclear weapons programs in nations like Iran and North Korea, and has painted us into a corner in regard to Iran.

Premature Triumphalism

The Washington Post comments on a study about the performance of charter schools in New York City,

Researchers were careful not to draw conclusions, but they highlighted a correlation to practices such as a longer school day, performance pay for teachers, more time spent on English and effective discipline policies.

That's perfectly reasonable - and hardly surprising. More specifically, the study states,

We are cautious about all of the associations with achievement that we describe above. First, these associations may change as more data are added or more New York City charter schools open. Second, the associations can be difficult to interpret because some policies are routinely found together in packages: an example is the package of a long school year and long school day. It is difficult to disentangle the role played by each part of a package. Third, it is essential to remember that none of the associations we have described is a causal effect. We are not asserting that if a school adopts a certain policy, its achievement effects will rise. One must have causal effects to make such assertions. We cannot tell whether the policies themselves make the difference or whether the policies are merely correlated with factors that do make the difference (great leadership and so on). We strongly discourage readers from treating the associations as though they were causal effects--for instance, by changing a policy based on the estimates shown.

With all these caveats, the positive associations are with a long school year (this is especially strong), the number of minutes spent on English per day, a small rewards/small punishments disciplinary strategy, teacher pay based on performance or duties, and a mission statement that emphasizes academic performance.

None of that's a surprise and, given funding, many of those ideas could be implemented in public schools. So, having acknowledged that the study's authors warn against hasty assumptions or conclusions, how does Fred Hiatt's editorial board respond to these preliminary, and largely intuitive, findings?

Poor children learn. Teachers unions are not pleased.

Um... okay. Well, perhaps that's just a catchy little tagline meant to attract more readers. What else do you have, Fred?

A rigorous new study of charter schools in New York City demolishes the argument that charter schools outperform traditional public schools only because they get the "best students."

You know, the study is worthy of discussion. It introduces an element to the comparison of charter schools and public schools that has been missing from prior studies - an attempt to compare students who have been lotteried in versus those who lost the lotteries and remained in public schools. Not one of the correlations highlighted by the study relate to teaching technique, and not one of the correlations couldn't be implemented in public schools... given increased funding and, in some circumstances (e.g., with increasing the school day or year, or implementing merit pay), following the next union contract. The hardest factor is discipline - charter schools can do things to discipline students and maintain order that public schools cannot - but steps can be taken to improve order in schools and classrooms. It's hardly a surprise that students who are in a distracting, poorly disciplined school or classroom environment fall behind their peers who enjoy calm, orderly learning environments.

What this, the Post's "rigorous new study", highlights is how little research has been done into charter schools, what they contribute, how they compare to public schools, and what techniques can be translated from one set of schools to another. If this is to be taken as proof that underperforming schools should be closed in favor of more charter schools, the Post should be making a perfectly reasonable associated demand: that underperforming charter schools have their charters pulled. I have to tell you, the top performing charter schools posted impressive gains for their students. The Post's case would be much better if they were all performing at that level. We must also remember that we're talking about a school system that's pretty bad; when closing "about 86 percent of the 'Scarsdale-Harlem achievement gap' in math and 66 percent of the achievement gap in English" is trumpeted a great success, you know that the baseline is way below standard.

The study itself is worth reading, and its actual findings are definitely worthy of consideration and additional study. I would go so far as to say, with due respect to the study's caution against "changing a policy based on the estimates shown", underperforming school districts should be contemplating how to implement the factors identified as improving student performance (and newspapers like the Post, if they're going to offer more than words in support of education reform, should back their receiving the necessary funding to do so), and perhaps even implementing them as common sense reforms while we wait for further data. It doesn't seem to me that a whole lot of bad can come out of, for example, a longer school day or school year (assuming infrastructure, compensation and staffing issues are adequately addressed).

Who Wants to Marry Fred Hiatt?

That and other "reality show" alternatives to the Post's "America's Next Great Pundit" contest, from CJR.

The ultimate winner will get the opportunity to write a weekly column that may appear in the print and/or online editions of The Washington Post, paid at a rate of $200 per column, for a total of 13 weeks and $2,600.

Wow. That's really impressive and/or unimpressive.

Kathleen Parker Called President Obama a... What?

Kathleen Parker's not a stupid woman, and she knows the meaning (and double-meaning) of words, so let's not make any mistakes about what she means when she writes,

One may view these episodes as diminishing America's status or as a tolerable annoyance - sort of the way Dobermans view toy poodles. At some point, the big dog reminds the little yapper of his place. Unfortunately, the American commander in chief is a cat in a dog-eat-dog world.

No, she's not referring to Obama in the sense of "cool cat" - it's more of a Tom Jones thing. She's careful enough not to mix her metaphors:

In the midst of such charades, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emerging Dirty Harry persona is oddly reassuring. Often speaking through nearly clenched teeth, she has become Obama's bad cop.

Is Parker acknowledging Hillary Clinton as one of the "dogs"? No allusion to her "claws coming out"? Clenched teeth, not "bared fangs"? She's not "hissing" at people?

Parker suggests that the world would be better served by the macho bravado of a George W. Bush - one of the worst Presidents in our nation's history, already being relegated to the memory hole by his own party, and whose disastrous policies seem likely to haunt us for at least a generation. Let's review some highlights of how Bush's bravado carried the day:

• In 2001, Bush declares that he wanted to capture Osama Bin Laden, "dead or alive" - and for eight years we've been rewarded with periodic recordings of Bin Laden taunting Bush and our country.

• In 2002, Bush declared Iran, North Korea and iraq to be part of an "Axis of Evil" - and both Iran and North Korea responded by continuing their nuclear weapons programs, to the point that North Korea may have successfully tested a nuclear weapon, with Bush ultimately folding on his diplomatic stonewall of both nations.

• In 2002, Bush backed (and perhaps supported) a coup in Venezuela to topple Hugo Chavez - Chavez remains in power, and thumbed his nose at Bush for the remainder of Bush's presidency.

• In 2003, Bush launched a war of choice in Iraq, reportedly declaring in relation to Saddam Hussein, "that motherf---er tried to take out my dad" - and, just as he was warned by cooler heads, we're still stuck in Iraq.

• In 2007, Bush was out of patience with Burma, imposing sanctions - that accomplished nothing.

Oh, but Bush did have his great, glorious moment - when he declared how he had cowed Muammar Gaddafi:

Before September 11th, Libya was spending millions to acquire weapons of mass destruction. Today, because America and our allies sent a clear and easy-to-understand message, the leader of Libya has abandoned his pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and America and the world are safer.

He and Tony Blair rewarded Gaddafi with big, wet sloppy kisses (the figurative kind, not that a bit of kissing or hand-holding between a couple of guys can't be macho).

So Obama gives a speech at the UN, and Parker wants to make it Obama's fault that the next speaker up, Muammar Gaddafi, "looks like a renegade from Ringling Bros.", made a ridiculous speech, and has done some outrageous things since Bush decided he was reformed? Did Obama select the speaker line-up, or something? No, wait, "Obama shook hands [with Gaddafi] at a dinner in July". It must have been some sort of weak, cat-like handshake, not the strong "shake, boy" handshake you get from a dog. Shaking hands with a guy Bush claims as a reformed ally in the making? In Parker's eyes, does that make Tony Blair a cat or a poodle?

Meanwhile, Parker tells us that Obama "plans to turn his charms on Burma's military junta" while quoting Obama's head diplomat as stating that the Administration plans to "remain tough and continue sanctions pending credible democratic reforms"... so how is this a "change of policy"? Parker complains of the fact that the Obama Administration recognizes that sanctions have failed, but... you know, that's reality, even if she liked Bush's bravado in imposing sanctions that proved impotent.

The barking of a neutered, toothless dog, straining at the end of its leash? Much more impressive to Parker than anyone who considers facts or tries find rational solutions to problems. Thinking... how cat-like. So what would be a better approach to somebody like Hugo Chavez? What's the big-dawg, manly approach you should adopt toward a pissant who keeps insulting you? According to Parker, it's ignoring him - after all, what better represents the unbridled manliness of passive aggression better than the silent treatment?

And Obama's also to blame for the belligerence of Ahmadinejad (following Bush's aforementioned "successes" in dealing with Iran). It's awful that Ahmadinejad gives nutty, anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying speeches - something he would never have done were big-dawg Bush still in office. And, oh my, he's testing long-range missiles - something he surely would have been afraid to do (well, if we accept Parker's ignorance or prevarication, and pretend that he and not the Supreme Leader controls the military) if Bush were in office.

But we don't need to imagine how Bush would react. Iran did test missiles, so can simply turn to the headlines to find out how a big-dawg deals with such insolence: Bush Turns to Diplomacy to Deter Iran.

Down boy! Down!
_______________

Update: Had this occurred when GW was President, would Parker be praising it as the success of his "big-dawg" tactics or calling him a "cat"?

Iran agreed in principle Thursday to ship most of its enriched uranium to Russia, where it would be refined for exclusively peaceful uses, in what Western diplomats called a significant, but interim, measure to ease concerns over its nuclear program.

This is a Surprise?

Commenting on the various healthcare reform bills, Paul Waldman observes,

Terrific, [people] say - I can't wait for my newfound health security! And when do they get it? A little over three years from now. Because in all the versions of reform now moving through Congress, most of the provisions don't take effect until 2013.

The big surprise would be for a significant promise or policy change to be scheduled to occur before the start of a President's second term.

According To The Media, The President Should Avoid The Media?

It only seems like yesterday that all the President had to do to get gushing media attention was pull on a Superman suit, slap a silly claim on a banner, and get a bunch of firemen or servicemen to stand around him as props while he made a speech. My, how times change. Now, apparently, it's unseemly for a President to want media attention, and even worse for a President to consider his legacy.

First we have Robert Samuelson complaining that the only possible reason President Obama could be pursuing healthcare reform is as a manifestation of "politicians' psychological quest for glory." To prove that Obama is concerned only with himself, Samuelson selectively quotes and comments on statements made by Max Baucus. Funny, last I checked, Obama and Baucus were different people.

Next, we have Howard Fineman complaining that Obama is trying to take control of the message on healthcare reform, and is appearing in the media (of all places) to advance his goals. Following up on a couple months of flagrant lies and misrepresentations about healthcare reform from the political right, Fineman whines,

The president's problem isn't that he is too visible; it's the lack of content in what he says when he keeps showing up on the tube. Obama can seem a mite too impressed with his own aura, as if his presence on the stage is the Answer.

He proceeds with a rather childish, and in my opinion false, claim that Obama's speeches are too "self-referential (even self-reverential)". (Dare I ask, did Fineman ever write about Bob Dole?)

Now we have the astounding Richard Cohen joining the chorus of complaints,

Sooner or later it is going to occur to Barack Obama that he is the president of the United States. As of yet, though, he does not act that way, appearing promiscuously on television and granting interviews like the presidential candidate he no longer is. The election has been held, but the campaign goes on and on.

Whenever a theme like this starts to emerge, I am left wondering if there's a puppet master pulling the strings. Just as when you see a particular theme being circulated in the right-wing media, its timing and consistency, right down to the particular phrase they want to drill into listener's heads, is usually tightly coordinated.

Granted, sometimes the complaint that somebody is in the media "too much" means "He's talking to everybody else but won't return my calls." Sometimes this type of complaint is a thin substitute for the fact that the columnist doesn't agree with the President's goals, but it's a lot easier to write (particularly for somebody like Cohen) than a substantive piece on the underlying policies. And I don't think it takes much to wind Cohen up and cause him to write a thinly-reasoned, mean-spirited column about Obama. As they say, never attribute to malice that which can be explained by stupidity.

Update: The "It's all about me" theme has been picked by Marty Peretz and George Will, who respectively accuse Obama of being a narcissist and on an ego trip. Er... takes one to know one?

Who's Cheering?

The Washington post presents an attack on President Obama and his supporters that is anything but honest:

Mr. Obama Punts . . . And the left cheers as the president embraces what it once decried as a lawless detention scheme.

Note the artful use of the word "lawless" - as in "without a law" - not "unlawful" or "illegal". The unsigned editorial (which fails to identify even a single person who is "cheering" the decision, although if its claims were correct you would expect such cheers to be coming from the likes of Michelle Malkin and Rush Limbaugh) explains,

The Obama administration announced last week that it did not need and would not seek new legislation to govern indefinite detention of some terrorism suspects at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. In so doing, the administration has chosen the politically expedient and intellectually dishonest route.

Let's take a look, then, at the analysis offered by one of the most consistent voices on this issue, Glenn Greenwald:

Regardless of what motivated this, and no matter how bad the current detention scheme is, this development is very positive, and should be considered a victory for those who spent the last four months loudly protesting Obama's proposal. Here's why:

A new preventive detention law would have permanently institutionalized that power, almost certainly applying not only to the "war on Terror" but all future conflicts. It would have endowed preventive detention with the legitimizing force of explicit statutory authority, which it currently lacks. It would have caused preventive detention to ascend to the cherished status of official bipartisan consensus -- and thus, for all practical purposes, been placed off limits from meaningful debate -- as not only the Bush administration and the GOP Congress, but also Obama and the Democratic Congress, would have formally embraced it. It would have created new and far more permissive standards for when an individual could be detained without charges and without trials. And it would have forced Constitutional challenges to begin from scratch, ensuring that current detainees would suffer years and years more imprisonment with no due process.

Beyond that, as a purely practical matter, nothing good -- and plenty of bad -- could come from having Congress write a new detention law. As bad as the Obama administration is on detention issues, the Congress is far worse. Any time the words "Terrorism" or "Al Qaeda" are uttered, they leap to the most extreme and authoritarian measures. Congress is intended to be a check on presidential powers, but each time Terrorism is the issue, the ironic opposite occurs....

In short, Fred Hiatt's editorial board hears the proverbial sound of one hand clapping and interprets it as "cheers". The author pretends he does not understand that the left had concerns about any new law as legitimizing problematic government conduct, and that the reaction to Obama's decision not to continue to pursue the legislation somehow constitutes a hypocritical endorsement of Bush's (their word) lawlessness. This, despite overtly acknowledging that the ACLU had consistently opposed any indefinite detention regime.

An honest editorial might explain what it sees as the elements of a good indefinite detention policy, how the concerns of the left could be addressed within the context of such a law, and why a formal policy would in fact be superior than relying upon existing law and constitutional language, and perhaps even whether the constraint should be on the President's ability to act "lawlessly" rather than positing that we need new legislation to fill every void, real or imagined, in the scope and reach of present federal law.

Wow, Google's Fast....

Not so many years back you would put content up on the web, wait for evidence that a search engine had spidered your site, then wait a few months for it to start showing up in search engine results. Google put an end to all that, and has brought us something close to instant gratification....

That post I put up earlier today (on Legal Media Relations) sorta poking fun at a web PR guy and his "authoritarian" web presence? It's presently showing up for "legal media relations" in Google - in the number three spot, behind that guy's principal sites. You heard it here first, folks: The stopped clock is now displayed in five or more first--page, top-10 results (although I'm still not sure what that means).

The lesson of the day: Don't suggest that there's skill involved in ranking for a search phrase for which you have no competition.

Update (Sept. 29): Easy come, easy go. There's apparently still a "freshbot" phenomenon in Google, which makes sense, giving a temporary boost to the newest content its spiders find. I still rank for the phrase "legal media relations", but now on page two of the SERPs.

Update (Oct. 4): Easy go, easy come? I'm back in spot #3 for "legal media relations" in Google.

Afghanistan - Buchanan v Brooks

A few things seem to be consistently absent from the musings of proponents of the continuation or escalation of the war in Afghanistan:

• Any sense of what the victory would look like - what it would mean to "win";

• Any sense of how victory would be accomplished, save perhaps by "sending more troops" or "stayling longer"; and

• Any sense of how much time it would take to achieve even an undefined "victory".

It's pretty easy to make fun of David Brooks for his inconsistency in relation to... everything beyond his apparent conceit that all of the world's problems can be solved militarily. (Come to think of it, you can make fun of that conceit, as well.) It's no surprise that he insists that the war must go on, with a massive escalation of both forces and combat operations.

The record suggests what Gen. Stanley McChrystal clearly understands — that only the full counterinsurgency doctrine offers a chance of success. This is a doctrine, as General McChrystal wrote in his remarkable report, that puts population protection at the center of the Afghanistan mission, that acknowledges that insurgencies can only be defeated when local communities and military forces work together.

To put it concretely, this is a doctrine in which small groups of American men and women are outside the wire in dangerous places in remote valleys, providing security, gathering intelligence, helping to establish courts and building schools and roads.

This is probably correct - that our path to a "victory" that's meaningful to U.S. eyes, we need to commit tens of thousands of new troops, put them in the direct line of fire throughout Afghanistan, and keep them there for... Brooks doesn't say, but probably for a generation or two. There's a peculiarity to the type of argument Brooks offers:

These are the realistic choices for America’s Afghanistan policy — all out or all in, surrender the place to the Taliban or do armed nation-building.

That is, we're repeatedly told how "tremendously unpopular" the Taliban is in Afghanistan, but at the same time that if U.S. forces depart they'll easily regain control of the nation.

Second, the enemy is wildly hated. Only 6 percent of Afghans want a Taliban return, while NATO is viewed with surprising favor. This is not Vietnam or even Iraq.

If Brooks' claim is true, simply arming and offering basic militia training to the masses, backed up with U.S. air power, logistical support, and partnering on more difficult operations, should be enough to keep the Taliban out of power forever. With a reasonably stable central government and a U.S.-backed, U.S. trained national army (even if rather ragtag, let alone what Brooks describes as "a successful institution") it should be even easier. So what's really going on? The most obvious inference is that the Afghan people have a Churchillian view of Taliban rule - that it's the worst form of government except for all the others, or at least the alternatives they're being offered. If that's the case it doesn't bode well either for the success of a counter-insurgency or for the long-term success of the Afghan government.

I'm not sure what approach to Afghanistan could have pleased Pat Buchanan, who isn't a fan of either U.S. military intervention or nation-building. Recall his words at the time:

I completely support what we're doing in Afghanistan, by the way. It's being morally done in a just way. I back the president in what we're doing. But I urge him to be cautious in Phase 2.

What "Phase 2" would have pleased Buchanan? Did he ever take the time to define a scope for an acceptable "Phase 2", or how the goals of "Phase 2" would be accomplished? It seems like he took the easiest of easy paths - embracing the popular invasion of Afghanistan, issuing a nebulous caution about what might happen after a successful invasion, and leaving himself plenty of room to impugn others for making "the wrong decisions" if they didn't achieve the impossible - a quick, easy exit that left a stable, reasonably progressive, pro-western government firmly in control of the nation.

Buchanan does correctly identify the costs of the Brooks-endorsed approach of escalation and counter-insurgency,

If Obama meets some or all of McChrystal’s request, America will stave off defeat in the short term. But the cost will be hundreds and perhaps thousands more U.S. dead, tens of billions more sunk, growing divisions in our country and more innocent Afghan victims. And the surge may simply push a U.S. withdrawal and Taliban takeover a few years off into the future.

But sometimes Buchanan's message gets muddied by his dislike for President Obama:

This assumes that Afghanistan is unwinnable, that America does not have the perseverance or will to send the hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops for the decade needed to crush the Taliban and create a government and army able to stand on their own when we depart.

If, however, Obama comes to believe the cost of “victory” in blood, money and years is not worth it, or the American people, already against the war and adding more troops, will not sustain it, or the war is unwinnable, then we need to look defeat in the face.

In other words, even if we go full-out, put tens our hundreds of thousands of troops into Afghanistan, and do everything McChrystal wants, taking as long as it takes to crush the Taliban and establish a stable Afghan government, it will be Obama's fault. Buchanan offers Obama only one alternative: be weak, withdraw, and jeopardize the security of the nation, and perhaps collapse the U.S. "empire". Seriously:

Russia’s withdrawal of 1988-89 led to the collapse of the Soviet Empire. What would a U.S. withdrawal do to the American Empire?

Despite his full support for the decision to get us into this war, and despite seven years of failed war policy under Bush, if Obama can't turn this thing around and quickly and easily "crush the Taliban and create a government and army able to stand on their own when we depart", he's to be personally faulted for whatever happens - and yes, he's to be faulted even if he achieves that goal but with "hundreds and perhaps thousands more U.S. dead, tens of billions more sunk, growing divisions in our country and more innocent Afghan victims". Buchanan's thesis would be more compelling if he were willing to admit that he has never had a coherent notion of how achieve what he now describes as the only acceptable victory, let alone achieve that without a greater investment of blood and money, or anything that might be described as "nation building". So we're left with this:

For America, loss of Afghanistan would poison U.S. politics as did the loss of China and of Vietnam. It would discredit nation-building for decades and ring down the curtain on Wilsonian interventionism for a generation. And it could bring about the defeat of Barack Obama as the liberal who lost the war al-Qaida began on 9-11.

Is it just me, or does that sound like an outcome Buchanan would applaud?