Posts tagged politics
Courtesy of Bookforum:
From TPM, a special section on Health Care Before the Court. SCOTUS 101: A Wonkblog guide to health care oral arguments (andmore), and an interview with Don Berwick, former administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. The constitutional challenge to the Affordable Health Care Act is rhetorically powerful but analytically so weak that it dissolves on inspection. Forget interstate commerce: It’s the “necessary and proper” clause that’s the key to Obamacare’s future. Is there a weak link in the government’s case for Obamacare? The survival of Obamacare may come down to wheat, pot, guns — and a nagging question about broccoli. Jack Balkin on the small chance the Supreme Court will overturn the health care act. Damon Root on the 4 best legal arguments against ObamaCare. Forget precedent, ignore Scalia’s musings — the health care argument before the Supreme Court is all about optics, politics, and public opinion. Andrew Koppelman on bad news for Paul Clement. Jonathan Chait on what the health-care fight is really about. Jonathan Cohn on an educated guess about how the Justices will vote on Obamacare.
This day in history:
Nelson Mandela is released from prison after spending 27 years behind bars.
February 11, 1990 - 22 years ago today.
“”Having seen a number of presidencies unfold, and some unravel, I am fully aware of how difficult it is to assess them in real time. What I feel I’ve learned about Obama is that he was unready for the presidency and temperamentally unsuited to it in many ways. Yet the conjunction of right-wing hostility to his programs and to his very presence in office, with left-wing disappointment in his economic record and despair about his apparent inability to fight Republicans on their own terms, led to an underappreciation of his skills and accomplishments—an underappreciation that is as pronounced as the overestimation in those heady early days. Unprepared, yes. Cool to the point of chilly, yes. For all his ability to inspire and motivate people en masse, for all his advertised emphasis on surrounding himself with a first-rate “team of rivals,” Obama appears to have been unsavvy in the FDR-like arts of getting the best from his immediate team and continuing to attract the best people to him.
Yet the test for presidents is not where they begin but how fast they learn and where they end up. Not even FDR was FDR at the start. The evidence is that Obama is learning, fast, to use the tools of office. Whether he is learning fast enough to have a chance to apply these skills in a second term—well, we’ll reconvene next year.
James Fallows writing in the current issue of The Atlantic.
This is a pretty excellent read going into the general election. I think Fallows does a great service to one-time ardent supporters of this president who might be at a loss about his metamorphosis into a conventional, uninspiring centrist. Fallows is balanced where others have been partisan, even-tempered at a time of wanton hyperbole.
William Galston: Warning To Democrats: Romney Is A Stronger Candidate Than You Think | The New Republic
If Obama were running against Gingrich this fall, he’d win—barring outright economic or military catastrophe—because the former speaker will never be able to persuade a majority of the people that he has the right temperament and character to occupy the Oval Office. Pitted against Obama in January 2011, Gingrich was supported by 37 percent of the people, versus 55 percent for Obama. A year later, after introducing himself to a new generation of adults and refreshing the memories of their parents, he enjoys the support of … 37 percent of the people, versus 55 percent for Obama. Gingrich is a walking illustration of the maxim that you never get a second chance to make a first impression. (He has managed, however, to refute what I had previously regarded as a law of physics—namely, that a soufflé can’t rise twice.)
Against Romney, however, the race becomes much tougher. For example, while 47 percent of the people think that Obama is more competent than Romney, 47 percent think that Romney is more competent than Obama. And Obama’s job approval has not yet reached the level consistent with a general election victory.
Most important, the economic horizon for 2012 has darkened. The Federal Reserve Board, OECD, and the World Bank all predict slowing global growth, which is bound to dampen an export-led recovery in the United States. And the fourth quarter report issued on January 27 wasn’t exactly a blockbuster. GDP rose at an annual rate of 2.8 percent (a bit below expectations), but final demand rose by only 0.9 percent while inventories swelled. Consumer spending outpaced growth in disposable income, meaning that households spent more only by saving less. This can’t continue indefinitely: Over the past year, real actual tax incomes actually fell by 0.1 percent. Meanwhile, business investment grew at the slowest pace in two years. And as the Fed recently noted, the modest growth predicted for 2012 would not be enough to reduce unemployment significantly from current levels.
Iran, U.S. need a crisis exit ramp
At the link is my latest take on the crisis between the United States and Iran and what could be done to alleviate it. It is on the CNN Opinion page. It concludes:
U.S. policy has been one of pressure leading to negotiations. Iran has also pursued a dual-track policy of threats combined with offers of negotiation. These policies have resulted in the prospect of a war that would be disastrous to all. What we need right now is a crisis exit ramp. Perhaps this is the moment to explore the negotiating track that both sides say they prefer.
I tend to agree with almost anything Sick has to say on Iran, but this piece has left me puzzled. First, it amounts to yet another voice in the chorus that purports to be asking for “both sides” to step back from the precipice of conflict when it fact its prescriptions only concern the US. Now I’d be the last person to defend American foreign policy objectives, but surely the current standoff is largely do to the belligerence of the Islamic Republic for refusing to compromise on its enrichment activities. I’ve yet to read an honest, cogent argument taking to task the Iranian leadership for taking their country to the brink of war (just to ensure the survival of the regime). And this brings me to the second problem with this line of argument: whatever happened to understanding the domestic sources of foreign policy? As any good student of international politics would know, domestic politics play an important role in the foreign policy calculus of any state, especially autocratic ones that often find it convenient to combine national and self/regime interests together. At a time when the odious cabal in charge of Iran are literally raping and pillaging the human and natural resources of their country in the service of misbegotten interests, surely Iran watchers can muster the courage to step outside of their stereotypical roles and put forward a script more amenable to the interests of the Iranian people. Avoiding war is certainly the foremost objective; but it can be put with a hell of a lot more balance and sincerity than simply asking the US to back off.
Obama is Right on Iran (for now)
In a recent column posted on Foreign Affairs’s website, former State Department policy adviser, Suzanne Maloney, offers the following assessment of the Obama administration’s sanctions on Iran’s financial and oil industries:
What needs to be addressed is the disturbing reality that the Obama administration’s approach offers no viable endgame for dealing with Iran’s current leadership. The impression that the sanctions are permanent — indeed, the new law does not specify any conditions that Tehran might satisfy in order to lift the siege on its central bank — conforms to Iranian hard-liners’ darkest delusions about Washington’s intentions. By embracing maximalist measures, the White House has come full circle, abandoning, along the way, its earlier optimistic efforts at engagement. In doing so, it has implicitly relinquished the prospect of negotiating with the Islamic regime: given the ayatollahs’ innate mistrust of the West, they cannot be nudged into a constructive negotiating process by measures that exacerbate their vulnerability.
American policy is now effectively predicated on achieving political change in Tehran. Such an outcome will likely prove even more ellusive than productive talks with the revolutionary regime — something the United States has sought for 33-years.
Leaving aside the logical incoherence of the first paragraph (so even though the ayatollahs “cannot be nudged into a constructive negotiation process” given their “innate mistrust of the West,” the Obama administration is still wrong to have abandoned negotiations after trying it for a fair amount of time? - Wait, what?), one really ought to marvel at the shocking ignorance displayed here of internal political dynamics inside Iran. Not only is Iran mired in an acute political crisis not seen since the founding of the Islamic Republic, it is also rapidly turning into a military dictatorship. The plain fact of the matter is that the regime is threatened by a crisis of legitimacy vis-a-vis not only the majority of the population, but also its hardline base of support. The latter is brought on by the intense level of factionalism among ultra-conservative groups more interested in exacting revenge on their once-upon-a-time feudal lords (metaphorically speaking, of course) and re-imagining the virtues of the republic. The upcoming parliamentary elections in the spring are sure to blow the lid off these now mostly polite disputes in a way that would make the regime even more susceptible to mass domestic revolt.
Considering this climate, only an unqualified guarantee in the shape of a nuclear bomb can calm the nerves of the minority fat-cats at the very top. Khamenei and his acolytes are not under any illusions when it comes to what will ultimately deliver their survival, and so far as I can tell, nor is the Obama administration. I think Obama is rightly testing the shock absorbers of the regime, looking for cracks as they appear. Far from forcing himself into a corner as regards regime change, he seems quite aware of the fact that it is Khamenei & Co. who are the desperate ones looking for a way out of the dead-end alley they entered in 2009. Better to apprehend them now, while their compatriots wish the same, than dither and watch them take a whole nation hostage.
The belligerent impulse of Iranian officials to keep up appearances (Naval maneuvers, blustery talk, etc.) notwithstanding, the sanctions have thus far been far more effective in reversing the advance of truly egregious, criminal enterprises of the Islamic Republic operating in every corner of the world than anything tried before. The main question going forward is for how much longer the regime is able to keep its base happy through propaganda and forced submission. With multiple nationwide elections on the horizon, we’re about to get a good sense.
“ The banks and the rating agencies have become the dictators of the West. Like the Mubaraks and Ben Alis, the banks believed – and still believe – they are owners of their countries. The elections which give them power have – through the gutlessness and collusion of governments – become as false as the polls to which the Arabs were forced to troop decade after decade to anoint their own national property owners. Goldman Sachs and the Royal Bank of Scotland became the Mubaraks and Ben Alis of the US and the UK, each gobbling up the people’s wealth in bogus rewards and bonuses for their vicious bosses on a scale infinitely more rapacious than their greedy Arab dictator-brothers could imagine.”
Robert Fisk (via azspot)
This is really an insult to those who endured life under Mubarak and Ben Ali. I’m not least bit moved by this moronic analogy. Until we acknowledge the complicity of ordinary people in the economic woes of this country we will continue building imaginary walls between us and them, with reality-defying comparisons to Arab dictators who ruled with iron fists paid for, you guessed it, by the American taxpayer!
Irritating.
(via azspot)
“ Remember, the public has long been ahead of the media in understanding that news is not as it seems. The defensiveness of journalists to discuss openly the way they work, and the way news is selected has left them behind. For me, the horrific human carnage of the wanton invasion of Iraq was the ‘final straw’ — if one was needed. The invasion caused the deaths of more than a million men, women and children — that’s the figure that comes from the Johns Hopkins University epidemiological survey, the only peer-reviewed study, and it’s higher than the Fordham University estimate of the number of people who died in the Rwanda genocide. The Johns Hopkins work was attacked and ignored by much of the western media, so that most people in the West have no idea of the sheer scale of suffering caused by their governments. According to Dan Rather, the former CBS news anchor I interview in my film, had journalists in the US done their job and challenged the lies about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, instead of amplifying and echoing them, the invasion may not have happened. So the blood of all those people is on our hands in the media.”
John Pilger (via azspot)
This is really irritating, not because of the sentiment and point Pilger wishes to make - which is incredibly important to make - but because of the inaccurate and hyperbolic way in which he makes it. The Johns Hopkins University epidemiological survey he refers to is the famous Lancet study, which put the figures at 654, 965 in 2006, and there simply hasn’t been a similar survey by them since. So Pilger is simply rounding up to the nearest millionth. The Lancet study was challenged by competing organizations, not “the Western media” - the World Health Organization (no stooge of the Bush administration) did their own study and came up with between 151,000 and 223,000 civilian deaths (with 95 percent degree of certainty).
Again, I don’t dispute the argument that we ought to be outraged by the nonchalance of media in the face of such numbers, or that the basic ignorance of the general public is significantly correlated with wanton militarism and murder by American and NATO policies. But why Pilger should resort to embellishments and hyperbole in making a point that can be made in a sensible and accurate way is beyond me. This is zealotry at bottom, and I for one have no more room left in my tiny little brain for zealots shouting from their outposts of certainty.
(via azspot)
“”In 2006, three months after he agreed to pay $135 million, a record at the time, for the Klimt painting “Adele Bloch-Bauer I,” Mr. Lauder sold a $190 million stake in his broadcast network CME.
When asked about the sale, Mr. Lauder’s spokesman said the proceeds were taxable in the United States at the full capital gains rate. Even then, though, CME’s complex corporate structure — it operates in Central Europe, is organized as a Netherlands holding company, keeps its headquarters in Bermuda and routed the $190 million sale through two Cayman Island companies — allowed Mr. Lauder to minimize taxes in countries outside the United States where it does business.
Some tax reform advocates say that it is unfair that the wealthiest can subsidize their lifestyles using myriad offshore maneuvers and complex accounting strategies.
“It’s admirable when people back their charitable impulses up with donations,” said Scott Klinger, tax policy director of the group Business for Shared Prosperity. “But the tax code shouldn’t allow the wealthy the kind of loopholes that let them, essentially, force other taxpayers to underwrite donations to their pet causes.”
Estée Lauder Heir’s Tax Strategies Typify Advantages for Wealthy - NYTimes.com
Say hi to the top 0.000258 percent!
