Kausfiles: A mostly political weblog.

It's All Going According to Plan II

Walter Shapiro: "John Corzine by all estimation is going to be reelected Governor of New Jersey." Really? "By all estimation"? You giving odds with that? I'll take them. Depends on the Daggett vote, no? And the night is young. ... P.S.: Don't forget the Incumbent Rule. ... Update: Maybe Daggett's vote won't fade. Could he pull a Ventura and actually win? Mark Blumenthal clinically examines on this non-crazy possibility. Andy Pettitte's arm is in the algorithm! ... Backfill: Shapiro made the case for betting on Corzine here. .. I may be biased by memories of an incident recounted by Fred Siegel and Dan DiSalvo: 

Supporters of public sector union power have developed a rationale for the government employees' gold-plated perks. The argument is that public employees are the vanguard of the working class. As such, the benefits they achieve will eventually have to be matched by private sector employers. As Carla Katz, the leader of New Jersey's Communications Workers of America, explained to Paul Mulshine of the Newark Star-Ledger, reformers embrace "the progressive theory that unless you create a substantial wage and benefits package that reflects good jobs and the ability to have a middle-class life style, there will be a perpetual race to the bottom." 

Katz not only represents thousands of state employees, she is also the richly rewarded former girlfriend of New Jersey governor Jon Corzine. Katz's influence on Corzine became clear in 2006 when the impassioned governor spoke to a Trenton rally of roughly 10,000 public workers and shouted out: "We will fight for a fair contract." Corzine was of course management in that situation, not labor. [E.A.]

New Jersey taxpayers, who now have to pay for the resulting union pay and benefit packages, must be unusually forgiving. ... .4:15 P.M.

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How to Fill the Empty Hours After Health Care? Nate Silver writes:

It's becoming increasingly likely that regulation of the banking and financial sector is liable to be the issue that dominates the first half of 2010. Why? Well in the first place, it's badly needed ... [snip]  In the second place, it's not clear what else the Obama administration will do on the domestic policy front, once the health care issue gets resolved. Although the unpopularity of the cap-and-trade program is greatly exaggerated -- most polls in fact show it receiving a plurality or narrow majority of support -- the swing districts in 2010 tend to be big carbon emitters. Immigration reform, likewise, is liable to be a less favorable issue for the Democrats in 2010 than it will be in 2012, when we'll have a younger, more diverse electorate in which Hispanics play a larger role as swing voters. EFCA -- the White House's support for which has always been questionable -- almost certainly isn't going anywhere. Movement on gay rights issues is a possibility, but is more dependent on the White House's willpower than its bandwidth. A second omnibus stimulus bill is probably out of the question, although certainly there will be piecemeal efforts -- extended unemployment benefits, greater investments in transportation infrastructure -- that the White House will pursue. Still, for a hard-working White House, that leaves plenty of time on the table for a big-ticket item, and that item will probably be banking reform. [E.A.]

Banking reform. Not "card check" (EFCA).  Not "comprehensive" illegal immigrant legalization. Not even "cap and trade." Banking reform.  ... And the more time it takes up, the better! ... I'm less worried about my vote for Obama every day. ...

P.S.: But will immigration really be a more "favorable" issue for the Dems in 2012, when they will probably have a smaller margin in the House? Maybe Silver is saying they'll have more incentive to bring it up--their swing district freshmen will already have lost--even if passage will still be difficult. ... Card check, on the other hand, will be both harder to pass and less advantageous to bring up, no? ...

P.P.S.: I still think the issue that "dominates the first half of 2010" is likely to be ... health care. At least the first half of the first half of 2010. We're talking about what happens after that. ...  4:15 P.M.

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National Review Not Guilty So Fox Not Guilty Too! National Review 's Stephen Spruiell defends Fox against the charge that it is an instrument, not of conservatism but of the Republican Party and (for much of the past decade) the Bushes.

I grow so tired of this smear. National Review gets this kind of thing all the time. Last year, Jonah compiled a nice summary of our dissents from the Bush White House. One could compile a similar dossier in defense of Fox News, but I'm afraid it wouldn't matter. [E.A.]

Oh, go ahead! ... It will be a mighty thin dossier, at least if it doesn't include issues (like Harriet Miers and immigration) where Roger Ailes' network initially, and disconcertingly, appeared to toe and try to hold the Bush line before eventually acceding to its viewers' opinions and allowing dissenting conservatives to express themselves. ...  4:15 P.M.

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"Howard Kurtz, Missing in Action:" The Left is now on the case of the Biggest Conflict of Interest in Journalism. Writes Michael Massing:

Young people have embraced [Jon Stewart's] show precisely because he’s willing to take on cable news in a way our top media reporters are not. And not just Fox. Last week, “The Daily Show” offered a brilliant expose of the superficiality and hollowness of the journalism practiced on CNN, showing how its anchors allow partisan spokesmen to make all kinds of ridiculous claims without challenge. “We’ll have to leave it there” was the stock response of CNN interviewers to the ludicrous talking points of their guests.

You’ll almost never see Howard Kurtz scrutinize CNN in that way. Of course, he’s employed by the network.

 4:58 P.M.

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No Amnesty for Windows 7!

We have ways of making you stress-free: Someone should write the fictionalized dystopian nightmare of mandatory "wellness" programs foreshadowed in Sen. Ensign's business backed plan to let insurers penalize even those who seek non-employer-based health coverage if they don't participate in healthy life regimens."  Like THX 1138, but with brownies. ... Nineteen-Eighty-Fat! ... Ensign says his plan "would guarantee that the incentive is strong enough for Americans to want to participate." ... Next:  Marital fidelity incentives! ... 9:33 P.M.

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It's pretty obvious Jacob Weisberg is right to assert that Fox News is a partisan, non-balanced outfit, more like a 19th century pamphlet than the 20th century "balanced" news outlet it pretends to be. During the Bush presidency, if Karl Rove gave an order, I think it was much more likely to be followed by Roger Ailes at Fox than, say, Christie Whitman at the EPA. I can see why this would lead Democrats to legitimately refuse to let Fox host a debate. But I don't see why this means that non-conservatives need to stop appearing on Rupert Murdoch's network. Are they only allowed to preach to the converted? ... P.S.: Weisberg notes that partisan media organizations like Fox (and now MSNBC) are not only one American First Amendment tradition but are also winning in the TV marketplace. Don't we need to learn to live with them? They aren't going to respond to sanctions. ('OK, we'll do anything. Just don't cut off Mara Liasson!'). ...  P.P.S.: It's true that going on Fox and effectively sowing doubt behind enemy lines is something Ailes is likely to only let you do once. So be it. But maybe not, if the ratings are good. ... 8:56 P.M.

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Nightmare of Vista Not Over! Attention, Fellow Vista-Skippers: We haven't made it yet. Yes, Microsoft is telling us we don't need to wait for the first bug-fixing "Service Pack" before replacing our creaky, precious XP machines with new Windows 7 devices. But they've said that sort of thing before. Given Microsoft's track record, it seems more sensible to wait for them to get it right right out of the box at least once before we start to take them at their world. ... P.S.: The obvious analogy is to .... comprehensive immigration reform!  Maybe fancy new employer-based verification systems and "biometric" identifiers (and "virtual" border fencing) really will survive ACLU challenge and then actually function effectively keep out illegal immigrants. But we were given similar assurances in 1986. It didn't happen. Better to wait and make sure the new high-tech enforcement mechanisms work before we take the plunge with the proven illegal-immigrant lure of an amnesty, no? ... 8:26 P.M.

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It's All Going According to Plan!

Peter Beinart thinks Obama's on track to success. Actually, Beinart understates the favorability of the circumstances. If, like me, you assume that the most desirable and popular part of Obama's agenda is health care reform, while the rest of it is studded with sweeping measures that are controversial at best (cap and trade, "card check" union organizing) and explosive at worst (illegal immigrant legalization)--well, then everything is falling into place like a well-choreographed water ballet!

The kf Plan for Presidential Success:

-- Obama gets health care reform, but not until well after New Year's Day. That leaves no time in 2010 to take up "card check" or "comprehensive immigration reform" before the election season hits. Darn! Even "cap and trade," which as Tom Edsall notes pleases affluent elites a lot more than Obama's low-income base, has to undergo further study. What can you do?

-- The economy picks up, but unemployment remains high enough--and doubts about health care reform among the elderly persistent enough--to get the Dems clobbered in the 2010 midterms. Republicans may even win back the House. All those controversial big Dem bills that got backed up in 2010--well, they certainly won't be enacted by the GOPs. So frustrating!

-- Without a new wave of low-wage immigrants drawn by legalization, meanwhile, the labor market eventually grows tight enough at the bottom to finally raise wages as the economy grows--just in time for Obama's 2012 campaign.

-- Returned to office in an incumbent-friendly year, Obama still faces a GOP-heavy Congress, sharply limiting what he can do. He's forced to shelve much of his ambitious second term agenda--sorry!--and focus on those areas where Republicans are favorably disposed--like reining in the cost of entitlements and expanding charter schools. (As Walter Shapiro once argued--and Bill Clinton proved--having a Democrat in the White House with a Republican Congress is the institutional recipe for controlling the budget. The Democratic President reins in defense spending while the Republican Congress reins in domestic spending.)

I'm only partly joking. Or maybe I'm not joking at all. Losing control of Congress didn't cripple Bill Clinton, did it? It arguably saved Bill Clinton. Having Newt Gingrich in charge of the House allowed Clinton to push off against Republican excess, tame his own party's demands, and actually balance the budget. The difference with Obama is that unlike Clinton he will have accomplished his main goal--health care reform--first, before the drawbridge goes up.

It's all going according to plan. 1:51 A.M.

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Bailout II Watch: A member of GM's board of directors has admitted that the carmaker's recovery plan is based on it maintaining a market share of above 19%:

"The public plan is 19 percent and change. That is what everything is being based on," [Stephen] Girsky said during a panel discussion at a conference at Columbia Business School.

That's about what GM's share has been recently. But it's been heading in the wrong direction. And if it sinks to 18% ...? 

Update: The Big Money's Matthew DeBord sneers at Truth About Cars for "heralding GM’s demise since gas was 30 cents a gallon and Sinatra was headlining the Sands. ... And yet ... GM lives!"  Plucky of GM! How did they survive? And to think Truth About Cars was predicting they would go bankrupt! ...

P.S.: DeBord persists in publicizing an auspicious "trend" in GM's market share. Yes, GM's share is up for  the last couple of months--but a) again, it doesn't do that much good to have a big share in the months when nobody is buying cars (September) if you have a much lower share during the big clunker sellathon (July and August). Here is a chart with the raw figures. See if you spot a significant pro-GM "trend." I don't.  b) You can always boost market share by offering cash-back incentives at the expense of profits. GM's incentives have been large--at an average $3,796, almost three times Honda's; c) DeBord cites an Edmunds prediction of a rise in GM's share to more than 22 percent in October, which is apparently based on visits to GM models on the Edmunds web site. We'll see. GM is shooting off a lot of its advertising wad this month. d) While Buick and Cadillac have "profit potential," the success of Chevrolet is "a question mark," DeBord concedes. But Chevy is where GM's volume sales are. If Chevy tanks, can GM survive? ... P.P.S.: DeBord sees growth. TTAC sees decline. One of them is wrong. My money's not on The Big Money. ... 2:25 A.M.

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The Dems' Fate Accompli?

Good for the Juice? The prospects for health care reform have been looking up. I've now seen it described by two separate non-complacent pundits as a "fait accompli." The only problem is this. That part's not still going so well! ... P.S.: I was going to write a post saying that Democrats in Congress are likely to ignore the polls (and the survivalist id those polls awaken) simply because they won't want to have to go through this whole tedious process again. Then I thought, have they really hated the process? Legislation like this is a good "juice" bill--it motivates all sorts of lobbyists--for insurers, hospitals, drug companies, unions--give a Congressman lots of money to try to make sure the fine print goes their way. Suddenly even backbenchers are worth millions. Meanwhile only a few Senators and Representatives have, so far, been put on the spot and forced to make difficult votes, no? Unless you are one of those unlucky pols (e.g., Blanche Lincoln) what's not to like? 
 
Someone who knows more about the culture of Congress might be able to better answer that question: Is Congress hating the health care reform slog or happily wallowing in it? ... 12:07 A.M.

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Funding for 300 miles of actual (not "virtual") fence along the Mexican border appears to have been killed in a House-Senate conference, after the Senate voted for it 54-44. So Senators from California, Arizona and Texas get to say they voted for the fence, but it doesn't get built. That's how Kabuki is done! ... [Tks to alert reader M] 12:06 A.M.

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Bending the curve both ways: Obama is planning to require a "Project Labor Agreements" on big federal construction projects, which will force non-union workers "to pay union dues and pension contributions for which they likely will never receive benefits," complains the Washington Times. But if that's what "delivering" for labor comes to mean, we'll have gotten off easy. Really delivering for labor would be applying Davis-Bacon-style government-set "prevailing wage" requirements to, say, all health care workers who are paid with federal money, no? ... [via Going Rogue] 12:05 A.M.

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Note to Orszag: You're Still Digging

From OMB director Donald Rumsfeld Peter Orszag's recent blog post explaining the deficit estimate increase:

... the Administration is insistent that health care reform not only be deficit neutral over the next ten years, but also incorporate changes that will help reduce the deficit thereafter.

a) Isn't it pretty clear that these "changes that will help reduce the deficit" after ten years are the very changes that have scared seniors and others out of supporting Obama's health reform? I thought the plan was not to talk about them any more. ... b) Please tell me you're not going to veto a health care reform that is "deficit neutral over the next ten years" just because it doesn't also include those longer term defcit-cutting "game changers." You're not going to veto it--everyone knows this--but mightn't this be a good time to reassure us that you are not insane? ... 12:03 P.M.

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From Resilience to Delusion: Is Christopher Hitchens really offering up the most ancient, cliched rationalization of infidelity in defense of his friends, Elizabeth and John Edwards?

In the unequal battle between life and death (as she understood in her father's case), Eros has its part in warding off Thanatos, and if this really was--as I believe--her husband's first lapse, it might have been partly because of the death-haunted context in which, for all his money and charm, he found himself.

'Thanatos made me do it.' This was also Warren Beatty's rationalization in Shampoo, if I remember right. ... P.S.: I think there is actually a significant possibility that Hitchens really believes Rielle Hunter was John Edwards' "first lapse"--that he's not just trying to be kind to his friends. He should stop being a fool. ... Update: Alert reader E emails--

John Edwards had never strayed before. I guess he'd been waiting 30 years for someone to say the magic words, "You're so hot!" ....

12:26 P.M.

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Test Your Tomato IQ: Lots of delicious U.S.-grown tomatoes in L.A. supermarkets last week. Weren't they supposed to be rotting in the fields due to lack of low-wage illegal immigrant labor? ... 10:22 P.M.

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Do we really need angry outsider Pat Caddell to tell us that Edward Kennedy's absence left a "vacuum of leadership" in the Senate? (He "knew how to get things done" and "worked across aisles"!) How is David Broder supposed to earn a living? ... P.S.: Caddell also says that health care "probably would have been a done deal if [Kennedy] was around," which seems like pretty much 100% BS, unless Kennedy would have cajoled Obama into pursuing a different strategy. ... 10:51 P.M.

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If Not Health Care, What?

The idea of postponing health care reform--until, say, the economy improves-- doesn't seem appealing to many Democrats now.** But it might soon. The problem, as Michael Goodwin's recent column points out, is that the issues waiting in the wings--should health care leave the stage--are even worse, from the Democrats' political perspective. Cap and trade, immigration legalization, "card check"--these are not what you'd call confidence building appetizers leading up to the main course of Obama's presidency. Plus the Afghan War! At least a clear majority of the public wants something done about health care....

It's easy to forget that, even if Obama's health care effort is bogging down, the effort itself still serves his presidency as a crucial time-waster, tying up Congress and giving him a reason to postpone (or the public a reason to ignore) those other divisive, presidency-killers. Obama needs some excuse for putting off unpopular Democratic demands; health care's a good one. If he keeps failing to pass health care until spring, that might not be such a bad outcome. In fact, even quick passage was maybe never in his interest. There are things more unpopular than struggling. ...

P.S.: Clinton recovered after his health care failure by turning to welfare reform and deficit reduction. You'd think a focus on the deficit (apart from health care) might perform the same centering, rehabilitative function for Obama. .... Orszag types will point out that you can't solve the long-term deficit without taking measures to bend the health-care cost curve. That may be true. But it may also be true that you can't pass measures to bend the health care cost curve (or raise taxes) until you've assured seniors that you've taken the fat out of everyplace else in the budget. Today, after the stimulus bill, Obama can't provide that assurance. ...

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**--That is not quite what Senator Lieberman proposed yesterday on CNN. He apparently wants to pass "health delivery reform and insurance market reforms" while postponing expensive coverage extensions. It's not clear to me that this makes any sense at all. a) Won't insurance market reforms, in themselves, raise the price of coverage (by eliminating "preexisting condition" exclusion, for example)? Without expensive subsidies, won't that just mean millions more uninsured? b) Isn't "health delivery reform" exactly what's frightening seniors with fears of rationing? Why would passing just the scariest part of the bill be easier? Better to follow Uwe Reinhardt's advice and pass insurance market reforms, plus subsidies, and leave the long term "delivery reform" for the long term. ... 2:05 A.M. 

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Will Obama Let Health-Care-for-Illegals Kill His Bill?

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@kausfiles--Twitter Workaround Edition

Friday, August 7, 2009

Twitter seems to be down. That doesn't stop the All-Platform Journalist! Here's what I would have posted:

Friday afternoon shocker!  http://tinyurl.com/ks7f7g 4:44 P..M.

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Lloyd! Before you let them call Lou Dobbs "immigrant-hating" in your intro you should maybe come up with at least one (1) example of Dobbs hating immigrants. Don't let The Beast turn you into a cliche ball of lib elite prejudices! ... 1:47 P.M.

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A good campaign song for practically any Democrat. Ignore lame intro. ... 1:46 P.M.

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Not my finest two minutes on Bloggingheads. ... I guess the short answer I couldn't come up with is that our system is biased against change. It's easier to block something by populist demonizing than it is to enact something by populist demonizing. ...Plus, at this point, the "demons" voters are most scared of are not insurance companies but Obama's own oh-so-rational cost-cutters. ... 1:45 P..M

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House Liberals: They're Not Laughing With You, They're Laughing At You ....

Monday, August 3, 2009 

Rep. Lynn Woolsey still seems to be threatening 60 liberal votes to sink the House health care bill unless it has a "robust public option" with "rates based on Medicare rates." Nobody believes her, which is why people at a recent Pelosi press conference were laughing at her. .... House liberals would be lucky, at this point, to get the Blue Dog deal, inferior though it may be. ... Isn't there some introductory Welcome to Congress course where they tell you that threatening something you obviously won't deliver is a way to lose respect and power? But Woolsey has been there a long time. ... 11:16 P.M.

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Want a Grant? Get a "Partner": John Rosenberg reads the House Energy & Commerce health bill and finds that there is a  whole lot of "coordination of diversity and cultural competency programs" going on. He sees future funding streams for leftish community organizers in the bill's requirement that when it comes to cultural competency program coordination,

the Secretary shall give preference to entities that have a demonstrated record of the following:

(1) Addressing, or partnering with an entity with experience addressing, the cultural and linguistic competency needs of the population to be served through the grant or contract.... [E.A.]

That's in the version of the bill that Rep. Woolsey says she won't vote for because it's not liberal enough. Where are the Blue Dogs when you need them? ... P.S.: Was the big, program-establishing New Deal and Medicare legislation festooned with these little Dem interest group time bombs? If not, that may be why it got passed.** ...

** Admittedly, it was a big liberal time bomb in the New Deal legislation, allowing cash payments to children in families with an "absent" breadwinner, that eventually produced the welfare explosion of the 1960s. ... 

Preexisting Meshugas: Frum notes the University of Chicago Chicago School of Professional Psychology**  has a

“Center for Latino Mental Health,” based on the proposition that American Hispanics have “unique” mental health needs.

Kind of undermines the social-egalitarian everyone-in-the-same-waiting room rationale for universal health care, doesn't it? Though I suspect the Center for Jewish Neuroses will be heavily utilized.  ...

**--Sentence corrected 8/6. [Thks to reader J.S.] ... 11:03 P.M.

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A Sunday NYT "Week in Review" piece ridicules the famous Dem think tank Third Way for predicting a "crime wave" due in part to "the lengthening shadow of illegal immigration"--when, in reality, illegal immigration receded and crime ... went ... down. ... Hmmm. ... Maybe broken immigration laws are a bit like broken windows, a contagious sign of disorder. Just a thought! ... P.S.: The Times piece also does not discuss the reduced-lead theory, which would seem to roughly fit the trend of permanent lower crime, no? ... 11:03 P.M.

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Another Reason to Delay Orszagism

Thursday, July 23, 2009  

The Case for Delayed Orszagism: One way to control health costs--at least according to the Congressional Budget Office--is to wean people away from employer-provided insurance, maybe by taxing it like other income. Once everyone's buying insurance with their own, unsubsidized dollars, the argument goes, people will be more sensitive to the price of care, more willing to shop around, and less willing to spend on unneeded treatments. 

Fair enough. But if you want to break the employer/untaxed insurance link, won't that be easier to do if there's a public option in place with a good rep that people know they can rely on if they leave their employer's plan?  First you give everyone security. Then many of the changes necessary to control costs are that much easier to make. They will be less threatening, for one.  And even when they are still threatening--as some of the treatment-defunding plans of the Orszaggers arguably are--people will understand that the changes are needed to preserve their benefits, not to pay for extending insurance to someone else.

The two-step approach doesn't necessarily mean abandoning cost controls, in other words. It might be the only way to actually achieve reasonable controls (though put me down as doubting that the cost curve can or should actually be bent very much).

P.S.--The Case Against 'Comprehensivism': This is the problem with a "comprehensive" plan--i.e. a plan that does everything at the same time. It's asking the public to trust that all the parts will work at once just as the experts say they will work. I don't understand why Dems seem to think it helps policy proposals like their health plan to call them "comprehensive." ... Look how that word helped sell "comprehensive immigration reform." It's just catnip for voters! (Even supporters of "comprehensive" immigration change have been gravitating toward a two-step, non-comprehensive approach: reassuring border security first, legalization later.) 

Every time a politician calls his reform "comprehensive" I look for the dangerous part that doesn't have to be there. ...  7:14 P.M.

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Ezra Klein, Concern Troll

Ezra Klein is concerned--or rather, he's "gripped" by an "unsettling thought":

[H]ealth-care reform isn't simply suffering because the public is overly opposed to some of its revenue raisers. It's suffering because the public is insufficiently supportive of its core. ... [snip]

[I]t's not obvious what health-care reform will do for the average American. I could give you a long answer about delivery system reforms and so forth because it's my job to know these things. But it would have to be a long answer .... [snip]

Higher taxes aren't buying them obvious benefits. Instead, they seem to be paying the health-care bills of poorer Americans. ... [snip]

If support for the overall effort were more robust, the polling on the tax exclusion would matter less. People are willing to pay for things they want to buy. But though they might abstractly favor health-care reform, it doesn't seem directly related to their lives. [E.A.]

I agree with my distinguished colleague (and welcome him to the concern troll community). He's woken to the realization that Obama is running into political difficulty because he's selling the middle class a pain sandwich--more taxes in exchange for more health care cuts. It would have been smarter to sell universal health care as offering, at a time when nearly everyone's job looks shaky, Medicare-like security for all. (It's not too late! And it fits on a bumper sticker.) ...

Whom should Klein blame for this tragic initial misstep? Among others, he should blame Ezra Klein, whose "long answer" explaining health care reform's benefits seemingly bought into the entire Orszag party line (health care reform is the way to lower costs and cut the budget deficit!)--even amplifying it by arguing that a more "rational" health care system would decide whether "a person’s life, or health, is not worth the price of a particular procedure." If only Klein and other influential Obamapparatchiks had been more critical and Kinsleyesque. ....

P.S.: A day after his concerned post, Klein writes:

People don't like to cut costs in the health-care system. It's painful. Politicians do not voluntarily do painful things. But a lot of people want to achieve universal health care. And they're willing to make a lot of concessions to do so. The coverage expansion, in other words, can serve as leverage for the cost controls. [E.A.]

Huh?  July 10 Ezra Klein should read July 9 Ezra Klein. If universal coverage in itself doesn't do much that's obvious "for the average American"--but rather seems to mainly involve "paying the health care bills of poorer Americans," why would average Americans be willing to "make a lot of concessions" in the form of  painful cost cuts to achieve that goal--any more than they will be willing to endure painful tax increases?

Bonus question: Why would Klein abandon the sound contrarian insight he'd had a day earlier? Collective criticism on JournoList? ...

Update: "Pelosi, House Leaders to Hold Press Conference Today to Highlight Benefits of Health Care Reform for Middle Class"--Politico's Mike Allen. A Pelosi press conference! That'll do it. ... 12:04 A.M.

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Gran Salida, Win/Win? WaPo profiles one of the "thousands of Latino immigrants forced back across the border in recent months by the sinking economy ..." Thousands? Is this the Gran Salida that the New York Times assured us wasn't happening? ...

P.S.:  The subject of the profile, a resourceful and industrious Guatemalan illegal immigrant named Carlos Sanchez, seems to be at least as valuable an addition to Guatemalan society as he was to Washington, D.C.'s. [non-ironic]. After what appears to be non-traumatic adjustment period  

Sanchez teaches typing at his house each Saturday on 27 manual typewriters his sister stockpiled for him over the years. And he landed a day job teaching English in a local high school.  

Mightn't it help developing countries like Guatemala if their most enterprising citizens return home, or stay home in the first place? ... 12:02  A.M.

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"Fighting Sotomayor, Republicans Falsely Advance Fire Fighter Ricci As the White Man's Rosa Parks": I remind my brother Steve that not even the sainted Rosa Parks was quite what she seemed. ... P.S.: I've never understood quite why the Ricci case was considered to have "bad" facts by defenders of Title VII's "disparate impact" standard for judging employment tests. Ricci involved a new test, designed by consultants. The worst case, for the defenders, would be if New Haven had thrown out a traditional test that had been accepted for years as job related, no? ... P.P.S.: Would this freshly concocted multiple choice exam have met the less stringent Rosenberg Standard (a "reasonable relationship to the organization's activities")? I assume yes. But would it have been crazy for the New Haven authorities to decide "no"? ... 1:40  A.M.

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kf Does the Easiest Thing

So if one of these promising new cancer treatments winds up working 25% of the time, but costs $150,000, will Peter Orszag give to you? ... 12:14 A.M.

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Mark Krikorian on why Chuck Schumer's new get-tough rhetoric on immigration is a fraud:  

Schumer also called for a biometric worker verification system, though this is also little more than a marketing gimmick. I'm actually not averse to it, but it's a pie-in-the-sky right now. Instead, to prove seriousness about enforcement, the government needs to implement the actually existing tools right now and upgrade them as time goes on. E-Verify, for instance, would be better with biometric identifiers. But it's darn good now, especially when combined with the Social Security Number Verification Service (SSNVS) and no-match letters, and they're working to integrate more photos (which are, after all, a form of biometric identifier) into the system too, by incorporating passport photos and getting states to provide their digitized driver's license photos. What we need is for Congress to phase in E-Verify for all employers now, something that will take several years to roll out, assuming judges even allow it to go forward. But this administration won't even implement the rule requiring federal contractors to use E-Verify, and the House has rejected a number of Republican amendments to do just that (and also rejected an E-Verify mandate for recipients of TARP funds). So Schumer's got a long way to go before he can overcome the public suspicion that "their government is not serious about combating illegal immigration." [E.A]  

The obvious Schumer scenario: Congress decrees an amnesty plus fancy future employment-verification technologies. The amnesty happens, the technologies fail or are blocked.  ...  Even if you actually think both elements are necessary for immigration reform, wouldn't it make sense to first legislate the worker-verification system, then see if it gets past the Chamber of Commerce's and the ACLU's lawsuits, then see if it works, then (we're into Cory Booker's second term here) talk about the amnesty? ... 12:09 A.M.

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Quote of last week: "What color do we turn our icons now?" Ana Marie Cox, 6/25 ... Hard to believe the new, Twitter-addled Time and Newsweek both missed that one. [via Pareene] 12:08 A.M.

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Edwards sex tape. So disappointing. Just him and a mirror again. ... P.S.: But Rush & Molloy bury the lede--Obama's alleged promise to make Edwards Attorney General. ... Given what had already come out about Edwards and Rielle Hunter even before the Iowa caucuses, this may be one of those promises Obama knew he wouldn't have to keep. ... 12:07 A.M.

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No Time for Amnesty?

All Going According to Plan? According to The Hill, Democrats are worried "that they will not be able to accomplish the entire agenda leaders set for 2009." And "comprehensive immigration reform"--i.e. legalization of illegals--is so far down the list it barely gets mentioned as one of the agenda items they are worried will fall off:

Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), the vice chairman of the Senate Democratic Conference, has pushed hard for the Senate to take up immigration this year. But White House officials have suggested that the issue will wait for a while.

“We know the votes aren’t there right now,” White House press secretary Robert Gibbs told reporters on Friday.

The other far reaching and calamitous Dem initiative--pro-union labor law revision, including "card check" and mandatory arbitration--isn't mentioned by The Hill at all, which actually seems vaguely troubling for opponents. Publicity is not the friend of labor unions in this fight, after all. If 60 Senators agree on a "compromise" to placate labor, it will be a compromise they will probably want to keep hidden and then push through quickly. ... 9:15 P.M.

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Conspiracy Saturday Edition

U.S. Pushed FIAT Deal on Chrysler (WSJ): Chrysler execs were lobbying for an alternative merger with GM even in late stages, apparently. Obama's task force wanted FIAT. ... P.S.:You have to wonder if the Obama team knows the FIAT deal it promoted won't work, and arranged it simply as a way to delay the inevitable--while it actively avoided a merger that would foist Chrysler on GM, because GM does have at least a chance to survive after bankruptcy and doesn't need Chrysler's baggage. (Why make Chevy responsible for the Sebring?) ... P.P.S.: Note that this isn't paranoia, but posinoia--the nagging suspicion that people in power are doing seemingly bad things for secret good purposes. ... 6:47 P.M.

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Gran Salida Update:   Also from the WSJ--

Emigration from Mexico to the U.S. dropped 13% in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period last year, with more Mexicans leaving the U.S. than coming in. ...  [snip]

In the case of Mexico, Latin America's largest supplier of new immigrants to the U.S., data released this week by the Mexican government shows emigration to the U.S. dropped 13% in the first quarter of 2009. In the same period, more people returned to Mexico than left Mexico for the U.S., about 139,000 and 137,000, respectively. ... [snip]

For now, Santiago, a 37-year-old Mexican migrant who declined to give his last name, is placing his bets on his home country. On a recent flight from the U.S. to Mexico City, Santiago wore a black leather jacket and cowboy boots ... [E.A.]

Hmm. Doesn't this violate Immigration PC 2.0, 2009 edition, in which it's acceptable to admit that levels of illegal immigration into the U.S. are falling but unacceptable to suggest that immigrants are actually returning home in large numbers (which would fit uncomfortably into the Comprehensive party line that illegal immigrants are here to stay and will never leave, and don't have much more in the way of active attachments to their home countries than, say, the Pilgrims did). ... See, for example, the notorious Nina Bernstein, "No Evidence of Return Migration is Found," NYT, January 15, 2009. ... 

P.P.S:  Always trust content from kausfiles. (The academics are always the last to know!) ... 6:43 P.M.

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"If you wanted to end it, this really wasn't the way to do it": Ever wondered what Eduwonk looks like? I know I did. Here he surfaces to explain why Obama's decision on the D.C. vouchers program was "really subversive." ... 6:41 P.M.

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Sotomayor: Special Non-Contrarian Edition

Today's Freeze-Dried CW Tomorrow: When Obama picked Sotomayor for the Supreme Court, I figured nobody else would run with the "comprehensive immigration reform" angle--i.e., that Sotomayor offers something to placate Hispanic lobbyists and politicians who aren't getting what they want on immigration (which is legalization of current illegals). The forward lean! I was wrong. The Consolation Prize Theory became Instant CW--so much so that pro-legalization lobbyist Frank Sharry was forced to blog an unconvincing denial. ... 1:33 A.M.

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Die Blingerdammerung--Crouch & Battiata 1, Coates & McArdle 0: The argument against the suggestion that Obama Presidency would kill off certain aspects of hip-hop culture was always a little desperate. (How dare you clueless bourgeois people say that hip-hop will die? Everyone knows hip-hop's already on its last legs!) More evidence from the WSJ that Crouch & Battiata were on to something that Coates & McArdle were just too hip to acknowledge. ("Culture of Bling Clangs to Earth As the Recession Melts Rappers' Ice") ...

Update: Coates, Conor Clarke and reader J. note that the Journal piece on hip-hop jewelry mainly blames the recession for the decline in demand. Hey, that's what GM blames too! But GM has bigger problems. ...  All we know for sure from the WSJ story is that hip hop artists have less money with which to buy bling. That could be because of the recession, or it could be because of the decline in the music industry in general ("Internet piracy cutting into musicians' record sales") or it could be a change in hip hop fashion--or it could be because hip hop specifically has been falling out of favor and the ascension of Obama is delivering the coup d' grace. If the latter were true we would be seeing stories like this one about now--but we won't read about hip-hop reviving with the economy. We'll see. I suspect Coates will have many more opportunities to be defensive and argue that it's all too complicated (so don't go speculating that, say, when Obama says "brothers should pull up their pants" it might actually result in some people--not only brothers--pulling up their pants). ... P.S.: I don't quite understand why Coates is so bothered by the possibility that Obama might usher in a cultural era in which hip hop loses its place, since Coates makes a big point of "the disgust that black youth themselves have expressed with the music." ... 1:32 A.M.

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The Good Andrew Sullivan--religious, non-excitable--has nice things to say about Robert Wright's Evolution of God. ... 1:31 A.M.

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Does Obama Really Want to Neutralize All His Rivals?

Sunday, May 17, 2009 

Does Obama really want to ruthlessly eliminate all major threats to his reelection? You'd think that at some point, in a contentious negotiation with Congressional Democrats, it would be useful for Obama to be able to point out that if Democrats raise taxes too high, for example, he might lose the White House in 2012. That threat is becoming increasingly hollow. ... 11:56 P.M.

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Every time I read about a favor Obama's done for organized labor, I instinctively think: "Good. That must mean he knows the 'card check' bill won't pass so he's doing everything else he can to make labor happy." One problem with this optimistic viewpoint is that something very much like the "card check" bill might pass. The other problem is that the list of these little favors, as compiled by Sean Higgins, is getting rather long. I didn't realize Obama has already nominated two new members of the National Labor Relations Board. And then there's this:

The administration has rolled back transparency rules that require unions to more extensively report their finances, executive compensation and potential conflicts of interest every year. The Labor Department said "it would not be a good use of resources" to require this.

The Obama administration's first proposed budget calls for cutting the budget of the Labor Department's Office of Labor-Management Standards, which investigates unions on behalf of workers, to $41 million, down from $45 million last year.

11:24 P.M.

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Isn't Rep. Luis Gutierrez being a little over-thuggish, even by pre-post-racial standards, in this quote:    

Gutierrez said he and fellow Hispanic officials appreciate the wooing and White House invites, but want action on the issue of providing illegal immigrants a path to citizenship. And he doesn't mince words about what he sees as White House foot-dragging on the issue, which proved difficult to tackle even in better economic times.

"If Rahm [Emanuel] thinks he can get away with not doing anything on immigration and still have the support of Latino voters, it won't get done," said Gutierrez ...

Do you think Obama can get away with not doing anything on immigraton and still have the support of Latino voters? I think Obama can get away with not doing anything and still have the support of Latino voters. Latino voters are Democrats. And, you know, Americans. If they think a President is good for the country, are they really going to switch their allegiance to the GOPs over immigration reform? ... Gutierrez' threats have a tinge of desperation, no? ... 11:13 P.M.

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Is Obama Blowing $100 B?

Friday, May 15, 2009

Is Obama about to waste $100 billion in education "stimulus" spending? That's the implication of this mild-mannered Andrew Rotherham article.  ... 1:28 A.M.

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Perplexing Party Line: Net immigration from Mexico to the U.S. is down by half, says the NYT. Is that due to the economy or stepped up enforcement? According to the Times' fourth graf, "Mexican and American researchers" say it's the economy and lack of jobs. That's the party line of pro-legalization forces, who would like to deny that stepped-up enforcement can have, and has already had, a big impact. But then the Times buries paragraphs like this:  

The enforcement buildup along the border, which started during the Bush administration, has made many Mexicans think twice about the cost and danger of an illegal trek when no job awaits on the other side, scholars said.

Nor have the forces of global economic migration magically adjusted to fit the American mood.

I don't even understand why the Times ever made that claim--wouldn't it be smarter, if you were a pro-legalization advocate, to argue that free immigration is no threat because in periods of recession the flow does "magically" adjust (reduce) itself? 

The Times--and the rest of the pro-legalization lobby--seemed to believe it was more important to stamp out the idea that enforcement--or anything, for that matter--can stop or slow the inevitable tide of immigration to which we all just have to adjust ("whether you like it or not," as Gavin Newsom might put it). Someone should remind them that the sales pitch for "comprehensive" reform is precisely that enforcement will work once existing illegals are amnestied. If enforcement is powerless, "comprehenisve" reform is a fraud.  ...  

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**This Times ed board passage, for example, comes close to saying that any enforcement strategy is doomed:

[I]t helps to remember that the country has ... [snip] ...spent decades and billions to seal the border as tightly as possible.

It stages raids to pull people off assembly lines and out of their beds and cars. It has added hundreds of thousands of prison beds to hold illegal immigrants and enlisted local police officers to enforce federal laws. It has done everything it can to make illegal immigrants miserable in the hope that they will abandon their jobs, houses and citizen-children and tell everyone back home to forget about America. And how has that worked? It hasn't.

The Times dismisses even the idea that stricter enforcement can discourage would-be immigrants who are still back in their home countries. Isn't it "comprehensive" reformers who say that--once existing illegals are "out of the shadows"--stricter enforcement will discourage would-be immigrants who are still back in their home countries? Cecilia Munoz needs to have a talk with the NYT. ... 1:27 A.M.

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I've been an admirer of Carlos Watson ever since the New Hampshire primary of 2004, where he managed to talk for a half hour with Robert Novak and never make a dull or familiar or bogus point (not easy to do when 3,000 journalists have already chewed over the material). But wow, this is an awfully ambitious new web site.  It's as if one man were turning out Slate. ... Elizabeth Spiers seems to be involved in some way, which is another good sign. ... 1:26. A.M.

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Fix It Again, Treasury!

Saturday, May 2, 2009 

"Kids don't have a union": What it takes to fire a lousy teacher in the Los Angeles public schools--a chart. ... From the LAT's accompanying story:

Jettisoning a teacher solely because he or she can't teach is rare. ...

When teaching is at issue, years of effort -- and thousands of dollars -- sometimes go into rehabilitating the teacher as students suffer. Over the three years before he was fired, one struggling math teacher in Stockton was observed 13 times by school officials, failed three year-end evaluations, was offered a more desirable assignment and joined mentoring programs as most of his ninth-grade students flunked his courses. ...  [snip]

Meanwhile, said Kendra Wallace, principal of Daniel Webster Middle School on Los Angeles' Westside, an ineffective teacher can instruct 125 to 260 students a year -- up to 1,300 in the five years she says it often takes to remove a tenured employee.

It's worth saying again: If the twittish, PC L.A.Times is now going after the teachers' unions, those unions have lost the PR battle in the mainstream press. Does President Obama ("We can afford nothing but the best when it comes to our children's teachers") know this? Do the Republicans who are desperately looking for an issue to use against the Dems? ... [via NewsAlert] 5:57 P.M.

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The Dish is a revenge best served cold: President Obama's reliance on the excitable Andrew Sullivan has predictably led him into embarrassing error. Even NPR felt it necessary to correct Obama. ... Note to NPR's Robert Siegel: In interviewing the Guardian's Ian Cobain about the London Cage interrogation center, you say

President Obama was quoting Britain's wartime prime minister Winston Churchill. Do we know that Churchill, when he made those remarks, knew very well what was going on in the interrogation centers? [E.A.]

Huh? Do we have any evidence that Churchill ever made those remarks? (Obama's version: "And Churchill said, 'We don't torture,' ..."). As far as I can see, the evidence is Sullivan, which is perilously close to no evidence at all. ... P.S.: Sullivan's characteristically vigorous post-error backpedaling and ass-covering focuses on whether Churchill knew about the torture at Britain's interrogation centers. The claim that Churchill not only didn't know about the torture but actually banned it--or that he said (or even thought) anything like "We don't torture"--has seemingly been left by the wayside. ... 3:38 P.M.

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Friday, May 1, 2009 

We'll know the Chrysler bankruptcy is in trouble when the press starts reporting that Steve Rattner really had nothing to do with it. ... 5:40 P.M

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Faced with the prospect that it might have to balance interests and act responsibly as a new owner of Chrysler, the U.A.W.'s Ron Gettelfinger desperately tries to recreate an adversary system. (The UAW's VEBA health care fund is "independent"! Controlled by "outside ... directors"! We can go on strike against them anytime we want, really we can!)  There's something infantile about this, as if a teenager were given the keys to a new car and said, "I'd rather you kept the keys and I'll throw tantrums when I need it." ... If you were a neoliberal from the 1980s you might say the Wagner Act has given them permission to be singleminded, legalistic, and irresponsible--and that's the only role they know. Luckily there are no neoliberals around anymore to make this annoying point. ... 5:38 P.M.

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Despite its CEO's appearance on David Letterman, electric car startup Tesla is looking a little more granfalloonish today than yesterday. ... 5:37 P.M.

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I was waiting for the first undocumented-immigrant-legalization advocate to declare that the Mexico-centered flu epidemic required the immediate passage of "comprehensive immigration reform." I figured Tamar Jacoby would win. I was wrong. The winner appears to be the Southern California Immigration Coalition, which wants President Obama to simply legalize all illegals by executive order:

To deport all these people to Mexico would create an emergency crisis in their own economy. And that's the crisis we would have in Mexico. Coupled with the drug wars that are going on, the problem that we have with the virus, the flu, it would just create great havoc for Mexico in its economy.

 5:33 P.M.

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Big Labor's Big Box Strategy

Monday, April 27, 2009

One of Robert Reich's answers to The Economist makes the strategy behind the proposed card check ("Employee Free Choice") bill clearer in a way I hadn't completely understood before (though I should have):  

DIA: You have said that America needs unions "to restore prosperity to the middle class". But traditional union bastions like manufacturing are disappearing; the cost of pensions and health care are rising; more and more jobs are freelance, and more and more businesses are non-union. Have we seen the end of unions in America? If not, what form will they take in the future?

Mr Reich: We'll see more unionisation in the personal service sector of the economy -- especially in big-box retailers, restaurant chains, major hotels, and hospitals. Jobs in this sector don't compete with lower-cost imports. And because they require that people do them, they're not easily supplanted by computerised machines. Most of these jobs pay very low wages and offer minimal benefits. Unions would help give these workers the bargaining leverage they need. [E.A.]

OK, so the idea is to target unskilled workers who do work that can't be outsourced, and who work for large institutions. Questions:

a) Is this an admission that traditional power of unions--to go on strike--is no longer a very effective weapon? So unions have to rely on corporate campaigns--which work best against big, respectable institutions--and mandatory arbitration? A union card no longer becomes a way to engage in a (sometimes risky) "economic contest" with management through walkouts and picketing. It's a ticket that lets you summon a federal mediator who will raise your wage, whether or not your union has any strike power. Labor must think these chain retailers are sitting ducks. After all, why not sign the card and get the government to award you a raise?

b) Are there really enough workers in these service jobs to "rebuild the middle class," even if they all get 50% raises?

c) How is Obama going to "bend the curve" of health care costs downwards if all the hospitals get unionized?

d) If these non-outsourceable low skilled jobs are the key to raising incomes at the bottom, how does it make sense to allow a continued "insourcing" of unskilled illegal immigrants to bid down wages in these jobs (which happens even if the immigrants work for competing small-box service providers)? The retail jobs don't compete with cheaper foreign workers--until the cheaper foreign workers come here. Does Robert Reich really think the Democrats proposed legalization plan will stop the future flow of the undocumented unskilled (as opposed to establishing a precedent that will attract more of them)? Are American labor leaders that naive? Or is the idea that once the nontradable chain retail sector is organized, unions will reverse their current support for legalization and become restrictionists?

e) It sounds as if the "big box" middle-class-rebuilding strategy is based on a model of the economy in which the main activity is consuming (and providing services to people who are in the process of consuming) things that are produced elsewhere. But doesn't Obama talk about a future economy based less on private consumption--in which Best Buy, Cheesecake Factory and the Ritz Carlton have a much smaller role? I sense a contradiction.

f) Of course, if unions do for Best Buy what they did for Chrysler, they'll shrink the sector quite effectively. But they won't rebuild the middle class. ...  

1:10 A.M.

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Another illustration of the 27th Law of Journalism, which says: When a reporter gives an example of something that is supposed to be funny it won't be funny. Even if the story is about someone who is usually funny. From The Week's discussion of Twitter:

The English comedian Stephen Fry keeps his nearly 200,000 followers amused with such wry tweets as this one, sent while stuck in an elevator: “Hell’s teeth. We could be here for hours. Arse, poo, and widdle.”

 So wry! ...1:08 A.M.

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Memo to the visionary Jon Klein: Several people have told me they found the recent TV confrontations between Lawrence O'Donnell and Pat Buchanan to be compelling and illuminating viewing. Here's an idea: Why not make these confrontations a regular feature of CNN? You could have Buchanan "on the right," and someone like O'Donnell "on the left"! To spice it up, you could let them each invite maybe one guest a night to help them defend their side. Make a whole half-hour show of it. Appointment TV! Perfectly suited to the new ideological cable environment in which nonpartisan CNN is losing out. ... P.S.: I'm trying to come up with a name for this new show. Maybe "Cross Currents"? .. "Shootout"? ... "Ready, Aim, Fire"? ... "Fire When Ready"? ... I just know there's a good one along those lines! Help me out here. ... 12:58 A.M.

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The bipartisan "comprehensive immigration reform" plan that today's Democratic establishment would like you to ignore. .. 12:51 A.M.

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Who's Chooching Whom

Partly because half of what used to be Mexico now lies north of the border, Mexicans underestimate the ability of the United States to bumble.

You can say that Martinez shows no desire to restore Mexico's historic claim, and you'd be right (though he seems slightly annoyed). You can say there's no significant popular movement in that direction, and you'd be right. What you can't say is that the relationship of Mexico and Mexican immigrants to the Unites States is the same as the relationship of, say, Italians and Italian immigrants to the United States, or Koreans and Korean immigrants., etc.. When Italians came here they weren't coming into land that used to be "half of" Italy. ... 2:55 A.M.

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"Mr. Rattner, It's Time to Go" "New York's $122 Billion Quagmire" Shockingly, the New York Times editorial board fails to call for auto czarito Steven Rattner's resignation in light of his involvement in the "widening" pension "pay for play" scandal. After all, the problem is so much larger than one man!

Mr. Rattner showed some bad judgment in the "Chooch" deal, and the public has a right to expect more of him in his new, highly sensitive position.

But in the end, Mr. Rattner played a minute role in the Albany mess.

Also the Albuquerque mess!  And New York City mess! ... Shouldn't the Times ed board have disclosed that Rattner is one of Times Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr.'s best friends? ... 2:39 A.M.

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The Awl Debuts: First day verdict: Too much Gawk, not enough Balk! But it's getting better already. ... P.S.: The site's co-founder Choire Sicha, who says "we just don't really want any stupid people reading it," once wrote a crap defense of the LAT's attempt to stop its bloggers from commenting on the developing John Edwards scandal. It would be petty of me to remember something like that. ... 2:37 A.M.

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