Category Archives: Marketplace of ideas

The WashPost’s endorsement of Obama: Hoping he doesn’t really mean it

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This post is a spinoff of the last one.

In the earlier post, I mentioned The Post‘s endorsement of Obama. As I said, The Post‘s editorial board believes, as I do, that Obama has been persistently wrong about Iraq, but they rationalize that away:

Mr. Obama’s greatest deviation from current policy is also our biggest
worry: his insistence on withdrawing U.S. combat troops from Iraq on a
fixed timeline. Thanks to the surge that Mr. Obama opposed, it may be
feasible to withdraw many troops during his first two years in office.
But if it isn’t — and U.S. generals have warned that the hard-won
gains of the past 18 months could be lost by a precipitous withdrawal
— we can only hope and assume that Mr. Obama would recognize the
strategic importance of success in Iraq and adjust his plans.

As if that’s not enough, in the very next passage they ALSO rationalize away his position on trade — you know, the thing I was trying to get readers to take a fresh look at by mentioning the Colombian FTA in our endorsement:

We also can only hope that the alarming anti-trade rhetoric we have
heard from Mr. Obama during the campaign would give way to the
understanding of the benefits of trade reflected in his writings. A
silver lining of the financial crisis may be the flexibility it gives
Mr. Obama to override some of the interest groups and members of
Congress in his own party who oppose open trade, as well as to pursue
the entitlement reform that he surely understands is needed.

Here’s the thing about that: I think Obama is an honest man. I hope he’s just boxed himself into a rhetorical corner on Iraq, and I seize hopefully on his statements about other global hotspots as an indication that maybe Iraq is just an anomaly with him. But trade? Sorry, but I’m afraid I have greater faith in Sen. Obama’s veracity than some of his supporters do. He really does believe some of the bad stuff he says — for instance, about judicial selection.

Kagan’s right: Security trumps all

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Frederick Kagan has it exactly right in today’s Wall Street Journal: "Security Should Be the Deciding Issue." An excerpt:

As the scale of the economic crisis becomes clear and comparisons to the Great Depression of the 1930s are tossed around, there is a very real danger that America could succumb to the feeling that we no longer have the luxury of worrying about distant lands, now that we are confronted with a "real" problem that actually affects the lives of all Americans. As we consider whether various bailout plans help Main Street as well as Wall Street, the subtext is that both are much more important to Americans than Haifa Street.

One problem with this emotion is that it ignores the sequel to the Great Depression — the rise of militaristic Japan marked by the 1931 invasion of Manchuria, and Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933, both of which resulted in part from economic dislocations spreading outward from the U.S. The inward-focus of the U.S. and the leading Western powers (Great Britain and France) throughout the 1930s allowed these problems to metastasize, ultimately leading to World War II.

Is it possible that American inattention to the world in the coming years could lead to a similarly devastating result? You betcha.

A couple of things to note: Mr. Kagan doesn’t express a preference for either Obama or McCain. Of course, folks likely to vote for McCain are more likely to agree with him that security overrides such considerations as the economy. Democrats love it when the economy is the one thing on the table; just ask James Carville. And of course, I’ve had arguments with bud here about the relative importance of foreign affairs vs. the domestic economy. He thinks the economy is everything, and to me it’s less important (not to mention simply being something I hate to spend time talking or thinking about, because it has to do with money).

And, yeah — I trust McCain more on national security. At the same time, I don’t think Obama would be all that bad. Yes, he continues to insist upon being wrong about Iraq. But I think he has calculated that he has to be consistent there; his views on the rest of the world aren’t nearly as MoveOn.orgish.

But set all that aside, and the main thing I’m saying here is that I agree with Mr. Kagan: For us we turn inward fretting over our pocketbooks at the expense of ignoring our proper role in the world would be extraordinarily dangerous. Yeah, we can do both. But not the economy at the expense of international security.

Helen Alvaré on Obama and abortion

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Tomorrow, I plan to write a column for Sunday about how the remarks of the candidates on judicial selection in the third debate solidified my preference for John McCain, on several levels.

It won’t be about the abortion issue. Obviously, Obama and I disagree about abortion. But so do most Democrats, and I’ve supported plenty of Democrats in my day. What I plan to get into is the less emotional aspects of that debate, those that deal with bipartisanship, pragmatism, the Constitution and the proper roles of the respective branches of government. For instance, as I’ve mentioned here, I was rather shocked to hear a Harvard-trained attorney equate the inferred (and I believe, nonexistent) "right to privacy" to the all-important First Amendment, deliberately stating that the first is just as sacrosanct a principle to him as the latter.

Here’s my text from which I’ll be working. It’s this passage from the transcript of the third presidential debate:

SCHIEFFER: All right. Let’s stop there and go to another question. And this one goes to Senator McCain. Senator McCain, you believe Roe v. Wade should be overturned. Senator Obama, you believe it shouldn’t.

Could either of you ever nominate someone to the Supreme Court who disagrees with you on this issue? Senator McCain?

MCCAIN: I would never and have never in all the years I’ve been there imposed a litmus test on any nominee to the court. That’s not appropriate to do.

SCHIEFFER: But you don’t want Roe v. Wade to be overturned?

MCCAIN: I thought it was a bad decision. I think there were a lot of decisions that were bad. I think that decisions should rest in the hands of the states. I’m a federalist. And I believe strongly that we should have nominees to the United States Supreme Court based on their qualifications rather than any litmus test. Now, let me say that there was a time a few years ago when the United States Senate was about to blow up. Republicans wanted to have just a majority vote to confirm a judge and the Democrats were blocking in an unprecedented fashion.

We got together seven Republicans, seven Democrats. You were offered a chance to join. You chose not to because you were afraid of the appointment of, quote, "conservative judges."

I voted for Justice Breyer and Justice Ginsburg. Not because I agreed with their ideology, but because I thought they were qualified and that elections have consequences when presidents are nominated. This is a very important issue we’re talking about.

Senator Obama voted against Justice Breyer [sic — he meant Alito] and Justice Roberts on the grounds that they didn’t meet his ideological standards. That’s not the way we should judge these nominees. Elections have consequences. They should be judged on their qualifications. And so that’s what I will do.

I will find the best people in the world — in the United States of America who have a history of strict adherence to the Constitution. And not legislating from the bench.

SCHIEFFER: But even if it was someone — even someone who had a history of being for abortion rights, you would consider them?

MCCAIN: I would consider anyone in their qualifications. I do not believe that someone who has supported Roe v. Wade that would be part of those qualifications. But I certainly would not impose any litmus test.

SCHIEFFER: All right.

OBAMA: Well, I think it’s true that we shouldn’t apply a strict litmus test and the most important thing in any judge is their capacity to provide fairness and justice to the American people.

And it is true that this is going to be, I think, one of the most consequential decisions of the next president. It is very likely that one of us will be making at least one and probably more than one appointments and Roe versus Wade probably hangs in the balance.

Now I would not provide a litmus test. But I am somebody who believes that Roe versus Wade was rightly decided. I think that abortion is a very difficult issue and it is a moral issue and one that I think good people on both sides can disagree on.

But what ultimately I believe is that women in consultation with their families, their doctors, their religious advisers, are in the best position to make this decision. And I think that the Constitution has a right to privacy in it that shouldn’t be subject to state referendum, any more than our First Amendment rights are subject to state referendum, any more than many of the other rights that we have should be subject to popular vote.

OBAMA: So this is going to be an important issue. I will look for those judges who have an outstanding judicial record, who have the intellect, and who hopefully have a sense of what real-world folks are going through.

I won’t get into the right or wrong about abortion per se in my column except to acknowledge that yes, I’m pro-life, so there’s a fundamental disagreement there, and I think Roe has been enormously destructive to the politics of our nation. Then I’ll move on to the more abstract stuff, where I believe I will make points that someone should be able to relate to regardless of their position on abortion itself.

Other Catholics have taken on the ethical issue head-on, however, and are actively appalled at the idea of a "President Obama." A few minutes ago, I got an op-ed submission from Helen Alvaré, as follows:

(Helen Alvaré was the planning and information director for the pro-life efforts of the nations’ Catholic bishops for 10 years. She is now an Associate Professor at the George Mason University School of Law. The opinions expressed herein are purely personal, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of either of these institutions)

My name has been closely associated with Catholic Church pro-life efforts for almost two decades. For that reason, and because I believe ardently that religion cannot be reduced to politics, I have studiously avoided public commentary about particular candidates over the course of 18 years of pro-life work.  It still offends me at three or four levels when a minivan sporting a political bumper sticker arrives at carpool at my kids’ Catholic school, or parks for Sunday Mass.  I will not have one.

But Barack Obama has pushed me over the edge of anonymity.  Whatever else is true about the dangers of appearing to claim (wrongly) that God has a horse in this race, it is more dangerous to pretend that I’m less than horrified at the prospect of an Obama presidency.

For here is a man who has publicly thrown his considerable influence behind the idea that it is acceptable to let newborn infants die if their mothers wanted an abortion and the child was mistakenly delivered alive. Here is a man who can countenance doctors  partially-delivering living unborn children,  and then stabbing, suctioning and crushing their heads – all in the name of preserving “abortion rights.”   His public record is unambiguous in this regard, despite attempts by the some to torture the meanings of Senator Obama’s voting record.  The facts are simple. While an Illinois state senator, Senator Obama led the opposition to a law that would have protected children who were accidentally born alive after an abortion-attempt. He also worked with the nation’s leading chain of abortion clinics, Planned Parenthood, to strategize the defeat of bills that would have given parents information about their minor girls’ abortions.  As a U.S. Senator, he denounced an overwhelmingly popular law to ban the killing of partially-born infants. And as a presidential candidate, he told Planned Parenthood’s Action Fund on July 17, 2007 that the “first thing I’d do as president is sign the Freedom of Choice Act.” For emphasis, he repeated: “That’s the first thing I’d do.”  This is overwhelming on its face. Among all the first statements about the meaning of his historic presidency a President Obama could choose, it would be this: an expanded abortion license.   

What can be made of such a man?  It is no good to say he is simply acting to champion women’s rights when most American women would outlaw or more stringently regulate abortion (New York Times, April 19, 2007 Megan Thee, Public Opinion on Abortion).  Or when even Obama concedes the possibility that abortion is killing, which of course makes it a forbidden “means” to any end – woman’s rights or any other.  He cynically leaves it to others at a higher “pay grade” to determine the exact moment when life begins, but we all know the instrumental purposes of this utterance: appear to maintain common ground with both sides of the ever-churning abortion debate.

Some readers will say of my position:  “She is a single-issue voter, and those people don’t care what becomes of the rest of us.”  To the exact contrary, I am suggesting that when Obama supports allowing a parent to kill a child, at perhaps the most defenseless moment of his or her life, and when he refuses to see this killing as an intrinsic wrong, but calls it rather a cherished right,  we should understand that none of us is safe.  For where does his “reasoning” leave other defenseless persons?  What does it imply about all of the decisions a “President Obama” will make?

Some will say that the good Obama will do for some people simply outweighs the harm he will do to others. Even this calculus is absurd; Obama’s judicial appointments will ensure that legalized abortion continues to be forced upon every state, as it has been since 1973 when the U.S. Supreme Court in one fell swoop overturned laws against most abortions in every state in the Union.  We’re talking millions more abortions during our lifetimes and the lifetimes of our children.   Obama has even declared himself opposed to continued funding for “crisis centers” offering pregnant women a way to support the children they wish to keep.

But even were the above calculus somehow measurable and correct, it is never acceptable to endorse killing as a means to any end.  By endorsing it, then, candidate Obama has demonstrated that he doesn’t have a conscience that functions in a way Americans should even recognize.   Rather, his is a “conscience” which surely comprehends what it must be like to die violently, or by means of starvation and dehydrations; yet he votes to allow these to continue.  Elevating such a man to the most important legal and social bully pulpit in the nation is unthinkable. Worse, it is a national tragedy.

For these reasons, and for the first time in my life, I have to speak out. An Obama presidency would be a moral nightmare.

.
Professor Helen Alvaré  is an Associate Professor of Law at the George Mason University School of Law in Arlington, Virginia.

I certainly understand where Ms. Alvaré is coming from on this, even though I’m going to be tackling this from another angle.

Personally, I haven’t been as shocked by Obama’s positions on this as she is. I say, you want to be shocked? Look at Joe Biden. He’s a Catholic; he should know better. And yet, as I’ve said plenty of times before, I like Joe. And I’m not horrified by the idea of an Obama presidency, he is after all my strong second choice. But pieces such as this make me wonder about myself: Maybe I’ve allowed myself to accept too much about the "political realities" of being a Democrat in America. There is an alternative — pro-life Democrats such as Bob Casey in Pennsylvania DO get elected nowadays, even with NARAL fighting tooth and nail to stop them. Obama and Biden have a moral alternative. So what excuses their position, from my own Catholic point of view?

But that’s not what my column’s going to be about.

Let’s repeal the 12th Amendment

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Admittedly, I haven’t fully thought through the implications on this, but as we struggled with our presidential endorsement decision, I did have this thought occur to me several times: If we hadn’t gone to messing with the Constitution, we could elect BOTH McCain and Obama.

True, that wouldn’t please those of you who buy into the whole "my guy is pure good and the other guy is pure evil" thing. But for those of us who like both candidates, it would make things a little easier.

Of course, if current polls hold true, that would make Obama the president and McCain the veep, whereas I’d prefer it the other way around. But that’s better than getting one and the other being left out entirely. Thanks to the 12th Amendment, we get either McCain/Palin or Obama/Biden, and I just don’t find either of those combos entirely satisfactory…

McCain vs. Obama: The cognitive difference

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Reading some of the e-mail responses today from those who did not like our McCain endorsement, and thinking about what those complaints had in common with some of the feedback I’d already gotten here on the blog, I suddenly arrived at the simplest theory for explaining the difference between McCain supporters and Obama supporters.

This is going to seem not only simple, but painfully obvious — but it didn’t occur to me until today to put it this way. Here goes:

  • McCain supporters are all about his record, NOT about what’s happened in the campaign.
  • Obama supporters are all about what we’ve seen in the campaign.

No, this doesn’t explain everything. For instance, for some of those on the right who never liked McCain before, but will vote for him because of Sarah Palin (rather than in spite of her), it’s about the campaign. And for those who will back Obama because of Joe Biden are looking at Joe’s record.

But for an awful lot of us who are swing voters, who are neither of the left nor the right, my little epiphany explains a lot.

It certainly explains why there’s such a divide between me and those who just can’t understand (at least that’s what they keep saying) why I don’t even get into the such subjects as Sarah Palin in the endorsement. Basically, I’ve watched McCain over the years, and have liked what he actually does in office. If I didn’t have that to go by, I’d probably be for Obama, too. There’s no question that Obama is the better campaigner, far better at presenting himself in a positive light than McCain is. McCain the campaigner has been a pretty sad spectacle, compared to his proven record in office.

And that’s a good thing for Obama, because the campaign is about all the voters have to go by with him. Basically, there’s that, and the fact that he picked somebody with the experience he lacks to be his running mate, and that’s it. And because it IS about that for Obama supporters, they just don’t get how it’s not all about that for ME. But for me, what’s happened in the last few months (or even, for those focused on the general, the last few weeks) can only have a limited impact upon an impression based on a decades-long record.

Would it make y’all happier if I said that I’d be with you if it were all about (for me) Sarah Palin, or McCain’s message in his recent ads? But for me, it’s actually about having been right about Iraq (which is a genuine point of disagreement between me and some of you), and the demonstrated ability to work across the aisle on judicial appointments, the willingness to take huge political risks to act intelligently on immigration, years of fighting against the undue effect of money in political campaigns, and so forth. Not to mention having proved he puts "country first" in ways that few living men have, in ways so profound that it vastly outweighs the carelessness about his country’s future that so many see in his choice of Sarah Palin.

So it is that I can laugh at Tina Fey’s send-ups of Gov. Palin, but endorse McCain — something that seems to perplex some of y’all no end.

That ‘unrepentant’ Colin Powell

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You may recall that recently, I made the argument that William Ayers should not have been paid to come to a public university in South Carolina, that in fact he should be considered persona non grata in our fair state.

The crux of my argument was the fact that Ayers, by his own account, is an unrepentant terrorist.

So you can imagine my great sense of irony when someone on the anti-war left objected to Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama on the grounds that the general himself is "unrepentant:"

As CNN reported yesterday, Powell remains totally unrepentant both about his own critical role pushing us to war. For instance, he claims to have tried to stop the war, five years after giving the single most important (and discredited) speech in building the public case for war. He now claims he wants to see the war end, but it’s difficult to trust the integrity of a man who denies even the most basic facts of his public involvement in creating the crisis in the first place. That Obama now seems to reflexively trust Powell suggests not foreign policy prudence from the Democratic nominee, but knee-jerk ignorance — and worse, a potential to abdicate the very antiwar themes he’s run on for so long.

So what do you make of that?

While the two groups by no means correspond precisely, I imagine that there is a significant overlap between people who are untroubled by Ayers being unrepentant for plotting to bomb the Pentagon and those who ARE troubled that Gen. Powell is "unrepentant" about his role in the run-up to Iraq. In fact, some of our friends here on the blog may reside in that overlap.

But perhaps I’m wrong about that. I hope I am.

Speaking of which, I thought the general did a good job in his endorsement of Sen. Obama. It was better reasoned than the Tribune‘s.

Video: Richland 2 superintendent explains why he’s against 4-day school week

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Richland 2 Supt. Steve Hefner visited us today to talk about the $300 million dollar bond referendum that will be in front of voters on Nov. 4. More about that later. While he was here, I asked him about Jim Rex’s idea of letting districts go to four-day school weeks to save money.

He had some strong objections, which you can hear by viewing the video clip above, taken in our boardroom.

Hefnersteve

Rex’s ‘4-day-school-week’ idea

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I meant to raise this idea for discussion last week — Jim Rex’s idea that school districts be allowed (not required) to have four-day school weeks if that’s how they want to save some money in light of state budget cuts.

Here’s a memo that I got last week from Jim Foster (who works for Rex) on the subject:

TO:   News media

Dr. Rex made a variety of recommendations yesterday as possible cost-saving measures for South Carolina’s public schools.  The idea generating the biggest reaction is going to a four-day school week, so here’s some additional information on that.

Dr. Rex is not, as some headlines said this morning, "urging the state to adopt a four-day school week."  What he is doing is asking the General Assembly to modify the current 180-day minimum requirement for school calendars so that local communities would have the option of going to a four-day school week if that’s what they want to do.  That would mean lengthening four school days so that you would end up with what used to be a week’s worth of instruction, but delivered in just four days.

For parents who have young kids in day care, the idea of a four-day week is a legitimate cause for concern.  What you will probably hear is, "What am I supposed to do with my kid on a weekday when there’s no school?"

Several things to consider:

1.)  The current school day means that many parents must pay for after-school care every day.  Lengthening four days a week would mean lower day care bills (and more convenient pick-ups) on those four days.

2.)  School districts that choose a four-day week could keep one or more schools open on the fifth day to help working parents.  Staffing could be greatly reduced.  Homework assistance could be provided, recreation and athletics, etc. 

3.)  Having an "extra day" during the week could spur innovation and create new types of student-centered services.  For example, that day could be devoted to tutoring children who have particular academic needs.

Viewed from a broader perspective, four-day weeks are not a new thing.  Sixteen states currently have at least some schools on that kind of calendar.  And in some states, it appears to be taking hold in a more permanent way.  In Colorado, for example, 67 of the state’s 178 districts operate on a four-day week.  In New Mexico, 18 districts operate on a four-day week.

There are a variety of possible pros and cons, and each school district would have to examine those to determine if a four-day schedule is for them.

One question asked yesterday is what the financial savings might be in terms of school bus transportation.  Statewide, South Carolina’s school bus system costs $300,000 each day for fuel alone.  There are additional daily costs for state  maintenance facilities, driver salaries, etc.

Again, Dr. Rex is not urging the state’s 85 districts to adopt a four-day schedule.  He is, however, asking the General Assembly to make the statutory changes necessary for local districts to consider it as an option.

What do I think of it? Well, I’m weird, and on things like this I tend to go more than I should by my own experience as a schoolboy, which is one of the reasons WHY I’m weird. Here’s my own extreme case: In the 4th grade, I got caught between the northern hemisphere school year and the southern hemisphere year when we moved to Ecuador in November. I had spent a few weeks in school in Bennettsville, and then a few in Kensington, Md., but I arrived in Ecuador just before the school year ended, which meant that when it started back in April, I would probably have to start the 4th grade over and therefore be a year behind when we came back to the States.

So my parents got me a tutor, who did the 4th grade with me in one-hour sessions three times a week over eight weeks (and lots of homework). So I essentially did the 4th grade with 24 hours of instruction — and I didn’t miss anything.

And no, a teacher with 25 kids in the room can’t devote that kind of attention, but the experience made me think the 180-day year is less than sacrosanct.

You will be relieved to know that when I raise such points as this, my colleagues ignore me and go with expert opinion, and expert opinion maintains that kids need the time on task with a teacher. Fine. But in Sunday’s editorial, we said that while we see potential problems with Rex’s idea, at least he’s thinking in the right direction — we’re going to have to be flexible about how we do a lot of things in this fiscal crisis.

What do you think?

Holding my breath

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Sometimes as I’m making my way through the scores, often hundreds, of e-mails I get in a day, I sometimes wonder who the people sending me some of these press releases think is going to be interested?

An example:

Economists Grade Presidential Candidates
A to F on 10 Issues Vital to Women
 
Audio Press Conference This Thursday, Oct. 23

A network of more than 40 economists from across America have graded McCain and Obama on 10 issues vital to women, from taxes to retirement security and pay equity. 

Noting the importance of economic issues in a time of financial crisis, the report finds the candidates’ stands on several issues give valuable insights into how they would handle the crisis.  The report card also gives an overall composite grade.

AUDIO PRESS CONFERENCE

Economists’ Policy Group for Women’s Issues

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 23

1 PM EASTERN TIME

SPEAKERS
Professor Nancy Folbre, Chair.  University of Massachusetts Amherst; staff economist, Centre for Popular Economics; author Family Time: The Social Organization of Care and Who Pays for the Kids?; MacArthur fellowship for pioneering work in economics.
Professor Randy Albelda.  University of Massachusetts Boston; Vice-President, International Association for Feminist Economics; coauthor Glass Ceilings and Bottomless Pits:  Women’s Work, Women’s Poverty and Unlevel Playing Fields:  Understanding Wage Inequality and Wage Discrimination. 
Professor Robert Drago.  Pennsylvania State University and University of Melbourne;  co-founder and chair of Take Care Net; past president, College and University Work-Family Association; moderator, Workfam newsgroup; past Senior Fulbright Research Scholar; author of four books, including Striking a Balance, and over 70 articles.
Dr. Lois B. Shaw.  Senior consulting economist, Institute for Women’s Policy Research; previous research positions, U.S. General Accounting Office and Ohio State University’s Center for Human Resource Research; co-editor Warm Hands in Cold Age: Gender and Aging.
     # # #

I mean, I saw the headline and actually scrolled down to satisfy my extremely low level of curiosity as to what a group of feminist economists or whatever choose to say in connection with such a publicity stunt. And if I weren’t a blogger always on the lookout for the offbeat, I wouldn’t even have done that.

Then I saw that they were merely trying to whet my appetite for something coming up on Thursday.

Come ON, people! Who is going to put this on a calendar and tune in two days from now??? Who is sitting there thinking, Golly, I wonder which candidate will get the higher grades?

Broder just won’t go out on a limb

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One of the reasons I had to quit the whole news gig back in the early ’90s and turn to editorializing is that I got sick and tired of all the dodges, all the going out of your way NOT to say what you think. I’d rather just be straight-up with people, and opinion writing and editing lets you do that.

Still, I continue to have enormous respect for David Broder, even though (or perhaps because) he never fully made the transition. He’s still a newsman to the core.

Take his column that I put on today’s op-ed page. It’s premise is that those pesky Pennsylvanians who went for Hillary just a few months ago are "part of a mass movement to Obama." You see, being at heart a reporter, David Broder does this thing where goes out and talks to regular folks and finds out what they’re thinking. (And being an old-fashioned guy, he thinks of them as "voters" rather than "stakeholders".)

He backs up his premise reasonably well, to the extent that such a haphazard anecdotal approach is helpful. But apparently he doesn’t trust his own observations. Here’s how the piece started:

UPPER DUBLIN, Pa. — Last April, on the eve of the Pennsylvania primary, voters in this Philadelphia suburb were finding plenty of fault with both Barack Obama and John McCain. Many were preparing to — and soon did — vote for Hillary Clinton, helping her to a decisive victory in Pennsylvania.

This week, those voters are part of a mass movement to Obama, driven by much greater familiarity with the Illinois senator’s views, and a pronounced distaste for McCain and running mate Sarah Palin.

The striking shift in Montgomery County, often a bellwether, makes McCain’s task of recapturing Pennsylvania from the Democrats look almost like Mission Impossible…

Say what? "Look almost like…"?!?!? Mr. Broder, either it LOOKS like it or it doesn’t. We fully understand that if you go ahead and say it LOOKS like it to you, that’s your opinion. And you’re entitled to it; you’re the Dean of American political writers. I think you can go ahead and say what you think. If not now, when? You’re retiring at the end of the year. Take the plunge.

If it only "almost" looks like it, why bother us with it? What factor prevents it from looking entirely like it…

Anyway, stuff like this probably doesn’t bother anyone but an editor. I’ll go away now.

The problem with ‘stakeholders’

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No, not you, if that’s what you call yourself. I’ve got nothing against you. I just don’t like the word. Aside from it being bureaucratese, there’s something … presumptuous about it. As though one can accurately identify certain people as "stakeholders" which implies (but does not necessarily mean, I suppose) that some people are not.

I have this thing about the interconnectedness of all things that bridles at the notion that one can readily identify "stakeholders."

Then again, I suppose there’s a small-R republican part of me that objects to the context in which I usually find the term. I believe in representative democracy, not the direct kind. Barack Obama and other community organizer types are probably a lot more comfortable with the word, and with the concept of including all "stakeholders" (which in a community organizer sense I suppose means everybody who shows up at your meeting) in the decision-making process. Me, I’m all for listening to folks, but at some point a decision has to be made by the folks elected to do so. And often, very often, the correct decision is going to anger "stakeholders." And far, far too often, elected officials nowadays lack the cojones to go ahead and make that decision, because they’re so terrified of the "stakeholders."

Take, for instance, the issue of establishing a comprehensive center to deal with homelessness in metro Columbia. The city proper’s government has repeatedly bollixed up efforts to make this happen, out of fear of a certain sort of "stakeholder" — neighboring residents and business people motivated by the NIMBY principle. Here’s the thing about that: This center would be good for the community as a whole, and would in fact pull homeless people OFF the streets in its immediate area and start dealing with their problems. It needs to go SOMEWHERE, and that somewhere needs to be a place that homeless people can get to.

You may recall that several sites have been rejected over the last couple of years, from the State Hospital property on Bull St. (which would have been perfect for the temporary site that was under consideration), to one right down the road from us (which was fine with us at the newspaper, but OTHER "stakeholders" objected, so it fell apart).

In recent days, the group of citizens that has been busting its collective hump to make this thing happen in SPITE of the city has been moving toward establishing the center at the current Salvation Army site on Main St. Some on city council have been pushing a site down by the canal that you and I can’t actually see from the road (at least I haven’t). Maybe that’s a good site, but there are a couple of problems: The first is that the people who’ve actually been WORKING on the issue have a lot invested in the Main St./Elmwood site. The second is that, while the city council folks pushing the canal site say theirs is better because residential neighbors object to the Main/Elmwood one (true), now that word of it has gotten out, neighbors of the canal site are ready to sue as well (specifically, one big neighbor, the Canalside development). So it’s a wash.

The other day I remarked to Warren and Cindi that what’s needed is for the "stakeholders" OTHER than the neighbors need to get their act together and unite behind a site — something that’s supposed to happen in a meeting at 2:30 p.m. today, in fact — and then deal with the objections of neighbors. Because the objection of neighbors is a constant. It’s a wash. You have to deal with it either way. And the fact that some "stakeholders" are always going to be opposed cannot be allowed to prevent anything from happening.

Too many people who say "stakeholders" a lot think everybody has to be happy with a decision. As long as you’re willing to face the fact that some "stakeholders" will be unhappy even when you do the right thing (and some of them especially if you do the right thing), then by all means, go ahead and use the word.

What, you ask, set me off on this topic? Oh, I was cleaning out my e-mail from recent days, and ran across this, which is really unrelated to my rant about the word:

 

FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Oct. 8, 2008

DHEC announces water stakeholder meetings

COLUMBIA
– As part of an evaluation of the uses and quality of South Carolina’s
freshwater, the
S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control will be holding stakeholders
meetings across the state, the agency announced today.

"Stakeholders
will have an opportunity to share their thoughts on freshwater quality
standards, classifications, and uses, as they relate to recreation," said David
Wilson, chief of DHEC’s Bureau of Water. "We’ll be sharing information and also
will be available to answer questions and concerns….

I’m guessing that since this was a public announcement, "stakeholder" means anybody who shows up, although maybe I’m misunderstanding. Used to be we were "citizens," or "the public." But now we’re "stakeholders," and are we any better off for it? I don’t think so.

Isn’t worship of the private sector growing untenable?

51 Replies

As I do most days, I’m looking through the available syndicated columns for something for tomorrow’s paper, and I run across this in a Cal Thomas column:

… Inexplicably, McCain called for a reduction in federal spending as one way to begin fixing the spiraling economy, while he simultaneously proposed $300 billion in new spending to bail people out of mortgages they cannot afford. Do we need “real estate agent” added to the growing list of things government does not do well?

My reaction to that? Who do you think SHOULD do that job, since the private sector has screwed it up so royally?

Can’t we, at long last, call a moratorium on the obligatory "gummint is bad, private sector is good" garbage from the Right?

Seriously. people. I mean, do you really think there’s something unusual in the fact that AIG spent over 400 Gs on a spa retreat for executives AFTER the gummint bailed it out to the tune of $85 million? The only reason this is under scrutiny at all is BECAUSE it overlaps with the public sector. This sort of routine waste in the private sector normally goes undetected because it’s private. When government wastes, we hear about it, and are suitably outraged. But it is beyond idiotic to assume from that fact that ONLY the government is wasteful, and the private sector is efficient and thrifty and trustworthy.

To paraphrase Dan Akroyd in "Ghostbusters," I’ve worked in the private sector, for my entire adult life. So I know better.

Why Ayers should be persona non grata

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Phillip, whom I respect as a constructive and thoughtful contributor to this blog, raises the issue of academic freedom in connection with Bill Ayers and USC:

Like it or not, for many years now Ayers has been recognized as an
authority in the field of public education, and his academic standing
as professor at the University of Chicago attests to that. That’s the
reality as it exists today. If USC is to be a place where academic
freedom exists, where students are able to be exposed to a wide variety
of competing ideas, the School of Education would be remiss in not at
least including Ayers’ writings as part of their curriculum. You can
see from the website I cited that the conflicting issues raised by
Ayers’ presence or the study of his work were indeed freely "ayred."
(sorry, couldn’t resist that one.)

Anyway, as someone who has a strong record of supporting public
education in this state, it would seem that you would want our USC
students to have the widest knowledge possible in that field, as they
grapple with the challenges they will face in that terrain.

It’s not up to USC to make political/law enforcement judgments above
and beyond what our courts and domestic institutions have arrived at.
The University’s only role is to judge the academic worth of what a
scholar has to offer. There are no outstanding criminal charges against
Ayers; beyond that, if he is good enough to be a tenured professor at U
of C, you can (to borrow another 60’s phrase) bet your sweet bippy that
he’s good enough to give a visiting lecture or two at USC. In those
situations, if a student wants to walk out, or picket, that is also
absolutely appropriate and their right to do so.

Here’s the thing about that: William Ayers has placed himself beyond such bourgeois considerations. Academic piety is insufficient to excuse the man who, in an interview published in The New York Times on Sept. 11, 2001 (yes, that date is correct), said "’I don’t regret setting bombs. ‘I feel we didn’t do enough.” In the same interview, he said he did not recall having said in 1970, explaining the Weatherman philosophy, "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the
revolution home, kill your parents, that’s where it’s really at." But he acknowledged, "it’s been quoted so many times I’m beginning to think I did.” He further explained that ”It was a joke about the distribution of wealth.”

In my book, that makes him persona non grata. The private sector can do what it will, but NO taxpayer-supported institution should employ him for any reason, even temporarily, even in an arms-length relationship. It should be the duty of a public institution to divest itself of any such involvement, however tenuous.

All SC members voted for bailout, except Barrett

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The "how they voted" on the collapsed bailout plan is pretty simple: Every S.C. member of the U.S. House voted FOR the bailout, except Gresham Barrett.

Here’s his explanation (short version: It’s about him and his ideology.):

Washington, DC – Congressman Gresham Barrett (SC, 3) delivered the following remarks regarding his concerns with the level of government intervention and lack of free market principles included in H.R. 3997, the Financial Stabilization Package:

"First off, I want to commend my colleagues, especially Minority Leader John Boehner, Roy Blunt, Eric Cantor, and Ranking Member Spencer Bachus, for their work in improving this bill.  However, after careful – and agonizing – consideration, I cannot support H.R. 3997 and will be voting no.

"I understand the need to act and I understand the urge to act quickly. We must restore the flow of credit. I firmly subscribe to the belief that “Main Street” and Wall Street are inextricably linked.  Instability in the financial markets leads to instability in taxpayers’ personal accounts and their personal funds.  Meanwhile, that capital that flows through our financial markets is vital to the continued success of our businesses, large and small.  We should all agree that a failure of our credit markets would be an enormous catastrophe, and the government does have a role in ensuring that the financial markets function soundly.

"At the same time, we cannot allow the American taxpayers to become the insurance policy for financial decisions that did not turn out as planned.  Whether you’re talking about someone from South Carolina who took a mortgage they couldn’t afford or a Wall Street banker who financed that loan, we see just how important personal responsibility must be to American society, and I fear that this legislation erodes that accountability – and the freedom that comes with it. 

"Unfortunately, our government is in debt.  And we are in a lot of debt, both as a government and as a nation.  In fact, this whole crisis is built around debt, where too much bad debt has caused an inability to get new credit – otherwise known as debt.  My daddy always told me that you can’t borrow your way out of debt, and he was right.

"There are other reasonable options that we should explore to help the markets heal themselves and that would not burden our country under even greater mounds of debt.  I was pushing for a plan that would use more free market principles such as a suspension of the capital gains tax and incentives for repatriation of earnings, o help spur economic growth by helping all Americans whose retirement accounts are invested in the stock market, or who own a house, or a business and jump start the flow of funds back into the system.

"There is no doubt that we find ourselves in a precarious situation and people are angry, rightly so.  I am angry.  But we must not allow this anger to cloud our judgment, and make choices that will divide our country. This is not a matter of Wall Street versus Main Street.

"But when it becomes time to vote on this bill, I will be voting no. I understand my colleagues for their reasoning, and I am confident that we all want to do what’s best for the country. But, because I believe so strongly in the principles of the free market and the belief in freedom, I will be opposing this bill.  My fear is that today the government will be forever changing the face of the American free market."

       ###

What I have not seen yet is any indication whether Mr. Barrett had any notion whether the bailout would actually fail on account of him and the others voting "no," or did he just intend to make a gesture? When I hear more on that, I’ll pass it on…

Kathleen Parker says Palin should drop out

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I thought y’all might want your attention drawn to the Kathleen Parker column on today’s page (our first syndicated column in the hallowed space previously reserved to editorial board members) in which she concludes:

What to do?

McCain can’t repudiate his choice for running
mate. He not only risks the wrath of the GOP’s unforgiving base, but he
invites others to second-guess his executive decision-making ability.
Barack Obama faces the same problem with Biden.

Only Palin can
save McCain, her party and the country she loves. She can bow out for
personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her
newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first.

Do it for your country.

But you should really go read it and see how she gets there. Wanting to make sure readers did that, I didn’t put the slam-bang conclusion in the headline. I DID put it in THIS headline, on account of the blog being all about provoking discussion.

An interesting thing about the column: Like Nixon going to China, you sort of needed a "conservative" (which I put in quotes because that oversimplifies Kathleen, but in this context it’s about widespread perception) woman to say this, assuming it needed saying. Sort of like nobody but fellow veterans could have criticized John Kerry’s service in the war.

Kathleen is able to cite her initial defense of Sarah, then her breathless tension watching her and hoping she wouldn’t screw up. And that’s something I can’t possibly identify with — worrying about someone’s performance because I’m a member of the same demographic. Maybe I’m too self-centered. But I have had to accept that black folks do that with Obama, and women do that with Hillary Clinton and/or Sarah Palin, depending on their proclivities. When I see a white guy out there succeeding or failing, he’s on his own as far as I’m concerned. I might agree with him or I might not, but it won’t have anything to do with which restroom he uses or what boxes he checks off on a census form.

That’s why it took Kathleen to write this piece. For my part, I haven’t had any particular expectations of Mrs. Palin. Y’all know what I thought when I first saw her, and all she had to do was give a reasonably competent convention speech to exceed my expectations.

But that’s me. What do you think?

The gonads of the economy

6 Replies

Did that headline grab you? Thought it might. It was suggested by some of the language I’ve read in the last day or two as writers struggle to explain just why Wall Street’s investment banks are so critically important that the SecTreas says we have to ditch capitalism in favor of a $700 billion gummint bailout.

George Will, in today’s column, calls financial services " the commanding heights of America’s economy." OK, maybe so.

But I had to object to the main leader in The Economist this week, which proclaimed that "Finance is the brain of the economy." It goes on to explain that "For all its excesses, it allocates resources to where they are productive better than any central planner ever could."

OK, but brain? I don’t picture it as being that high in our anatomy. It’s more like the gonads, driving us on with a remorseless libidinal beat, like Snoop Dogg in "Old School" chanting "make money-money, make money-money-MONEY…"

Here’s a libertarian nut for you (or is he?)

11 Replies

My first impression of this story in The Wall Street Journal was to think, Wow, talk about your ideological nut jobs…

Trader Makes a Quick $1.25 Million on Rescue, Then Slams It
William O. Perkins III says he turned a $1.25 million profit trading Goldman Sachs Group Inc. stock last week.

You would think that would count as a pretty good paycheck for the Houston energy trader. Instead, the experience left him so angry about the demise of capitalism that he says he has decided to spend his profits on advertisements attacking President George W. Bush’s planned $700 billion Wall Street bailout.

The president has run into a wall of skepticism over his plan…. But the 39-year-old Mr. Perkins is putting cash behind his anger. He commissioned an African-American arts collective to draw a cartoon depicting Mr. Bush, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Board Chairman Ben Bernanke trampling on the graves of private enterprise and capitalism. Then he paid $139,104 to run the drawing as a full-page ad in the Tuesday editions of the New York Times. And he promises to spend a million more on ads before he is done….

Shades of Howie Rich, huh? I have long been fascinated — an appalled by people who hate government SO much that they’re seemingly willing to pay more to FIGHT the "growth of government" than they would have to pay in additional taxes to support it. It’s not rational. On some level, it violates the very notion of rational selfishness that your purest libertarians avow. It’s letting emotion overcome reason.

Mind you, there are plenty of things to dislike in the Paulson bailout plan — or in the lesser ones that have already occurred. But we are fools if we reject a proposal on ideological grounds, because it does or does not "grow government" or some other quasi-religious incantation. The question should always be, should the government (and that’s ALL we can decide through public debate, what the government should do) should do THIS particular thing in THIS particular way under THESE particular circumstances? Sometimes the answer should be yes, and sometimes no, but we’ve got to consider it dispasionately and without resort to intellectual prejudices. I think that in the case of the Paulson plan, a case can be made that this government action is NOT necessary, especially when you consider that Warren Buffet just put $5 billion of his own money into Goldman Sachs — isn’t that the Wall Street supposed to work, the players who make the right calls attracting investment, while the ones who screw up fail? And if that’s happening, is this crisis really as bad as it’s being painted?

But don’t reject something on the basis that it "smacks of socialism" or some such. I don’t care if it smacks of antidisestablishmentarianism, if it’s the wise thing to do under the circumstances — and that’s what we have to decide.

All of that said, once I read further in the tale of Mr. Perkins, I decided that there was something going on here that went beyond offended ideological sensibilities. He actually felt that there was something wrong, something unfair, about his having made that $1.25 million, on account of the government having changed the rules in the middle of the game. Call it a quirky sense of honor or sportsmanship or whatever. But if a trader on Wall Street can actually realize that he didn’t earn such a payday, and feel like "I’ve gotta give that money back," as he put it, that’s probably a GOOD thing. And all too rare.

Of course, there are a lot more constructive things he could do with that money, and that’s where the notion of throwing it away on ideology comes into play. But he seems to be doing what he thinks is right by his own stunted lights, and that’s something.

Anybody ELSE want to be on a debate panel?

26 Replies

Passing through the newsroom this morning, I checked with Leroy to see what kind of response he’s gotten on the reader panel for the presidential debates.

He says he’s gotten eight applications from among the fine, upstanding citizens who frequent this blog, and 15 from the general public, via a notice they put in the paper Sunday.

One problem — so far, the respondents are heavily supportive of Obama, so he’s in the hunt for balance. Need more McCainiacs and independents.

That would describe some of y’all. So hurry up and sign up to be considered — the first debate’s Friday night.

To help you remember, here’s Leroy’s original message:

Colleagues,

The government team is assembling a panel of voters in our community
to watch the presidential and vice presidential debates with us and,
afterward, serve as a focus group on how the debaters fared during a
roundtable discussion we’ll have here at the newspaper. We will feature
this panel on thestate.com and include it in our debate coverage.

Know somebody who’s mad for McCain, crazy for Palin, in love with
Obama and rooting for Biden? Know somebody who is undecided? Please,
send them my way. Especially the undecideds.

We, of course, want diversity — men, women, young, old, political,
apolitical, Democrat, Republican, independent, black, white, brown,
etc. Keep that in mind as you think of folks who might be interested.

Anticipating a fun experience. Please let anyone who is interested
know we would like for them to sit on the panel for all four debates.

Thanks for your help 

Write to him at [email protected].

FYI, if there are enough folks from the blog, I might even show up to say hey.

Obama, Ayres, and another kind of ‘school choice’

66 Replies

Now that everyone has been totally desensitized by the ranting of Lee et al. about Obama, probably not much attention will be paid to an accusation of substance that appeared in The Wall Street Journal today. But if you do pay attention, it’s intriguing — and disturbing. It’s an op-ed piece headlined "Obama and Ayers Pushed Radicalism On Schools."

Basically, it provides fairly strong evidence to believe that Bill Ayres — unrepentant Mad Bomber and live-in of Bernardine Dohrn — has been considerably more than "a guy who lives in my neighborhood" to Barack Obama. Sen. Obama was the chairman, from 1995-99, of a foundation that the author, Stanley Kurtz, describes as Ayres "brainchild":

The Chicago Annenberg Challenge was created ostensibly to improve Chicago’s public schools. …. Mr. Ayers co-chaired the foundation’s other key body, the "Collaborative," which shaped education policy.

… The Daley archives show that Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers worked as a team to advance the CAC agenda.

… Mr. Ayers was one of a working group of five who assembled the initial board in 1994. Mr. Ayers founded CAC and was its guiding spirit. No one would have been appointed the CAC chairman without his approval.

The CAC’s agenda flowed from Mr. Ayers’s educational philosophy, which called for infusing students and their parents with a radical political commitment, and which downplayed achievement tests in favor of activism. In the mid-1960s, Mr. Ayers taught at a radical alternative school, and served as a community organizer in Cleveland’s ghetto.

In works like "City Kids, City Teachers" and "Teaching the Personal and the Political," Mr. Ayers wrote that teachers should be community organizers dedicated to provoking resistance to American racism and oppression. His preferred alternative? "I’m a radical, Leftist, small ‘c’ communist," Mr. Ayers said in an interview in Ron Chepesiuk’s, "Sixties Radicals," at about the same time Mr. Ayers was forming CAC.

Until now, the Obama/Ayres connection had been a minor worry at the back of my mind. This rachets that up a notch.

On a less serious note, I was amused to see that Ayres shared with Gov. Mark Sanford the goal of divorcing school funding from the institutional model: "Instead of funding schools directly, it required schools to affiliate
with "external partners," which actually got the money. Proposals from
groups focused on math/science achievement were turned down. Instead
CAC disbursed money through various far-left community organizers, such
as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (or Acorn)."

No, it’s not the same as what Sanford would do. Of course, if we did have vouchers and tax credits, parents would be free to spend it on Mr. Ayres’ idea of a good education, or some other loony alternative, with no accountability to the public from whose school coffers that funding would be diverted. Maybe that’s why I was reminded.

Pundits pan panicky Paulson plan

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The consensus over the last couple of days from syndicated columnists (and remember, since Mike’s been gone, I have to look at all of them every day, and choose the one that we have room for in the paper) is that Henry Paulson’s proposal for saving the credit markets has a lot of problems.

Unfortunately, I’m not seeing a lot of alternatives offered. This puts us as a nation in the extremely uncomfortable position of believing SOMETHING should be done, just not this.

A sampling:

  • The Krugman column we ran this morning, "Cash for Trash."
  • William Kristol’s "A Fine Mess." Excerpt: I’m not convinced. It’s not that I don’t believe the situation is dire. It’s not that I want to insist on some sort of ideological purity or free-market fastidiousness. I will stipulate that this is an emergency, and is a time for pragmatic problem-solving, perhaps even for violating some cherished economic or political principles. (What are cherished principles for but to be violated in emergencies?)… But is the administration’s proposal the right way to do this?
  • David Brooks says "The Establishment Lives!" Excerpt: What Paulson, et al. have tried to do is reassert authority — the sort that used to be wielded by the Mellons and Rockefellers and other rich men in private clubs. Inspired in part by Paul Volcker, Nicholas Brady and Eugene Ludwig, and announced last week, the Paulson plan is a pure establishment play. It would assign nearly unlimited authority to a small coterie of policy makers. It does not rely on any system of checks and balances, but on the wisdom and public spiritedness of those in charge. It offers succor to the investment banks that contributed to this mess and will burn through large piles of taxpayer money. But in exchange, it promises to restore confidence. Somebody, amid all the turmoil, will occupy the commanding heights.
  • That phrase, "commanding heights," appears twice in George Will’s column for tomorrow’s paper (embargoed for Wednesday) — in a quote from Lenin and on from the platform of the postwar British Labour government. Needless to say, Mr. Will is not pleased.
  • In another column for publication tomorrow, Robert Samuelson urges caution, and lists defects with the plan. The headline: "Paulson’s Panic."
  • Bob Herbert, in "A Second Opinion?," writes: Does anyone think it’s just a little weird to be stampeded into a $700 billion solution to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression by the very people who brought us the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression?

It’s easy to dismiss such rhetoric from Mr. Herbert as more of the usual — he doesn’t like these guys, so he never, ever likes what they propose. But Paul Krugman’s piece rose above that (a rare achievement for Mr. Krugman), and you certainly can’t fit Kristol, Brooks, Will or Samuelson into that box.