Published for Contentious on commentarymagazine.com, September 3rd, 2010:
What are we to make of the most recent jobs report, which shows that (a) unemployment increased from 9.5 percent to 9.6 percent and (b) nonfarm payrolls fell by 54,000 last month? If you’re White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, you tweet, “Don’t be fooled — the economy added 67,000 private sector jobs, 8th straight month of added private sector jobs, job loss came in Census work.” Picking up on this, David Mark, Politico’s senior editor, writesthis:
At the White House Friday morning President Obama praised the private sector addition of 67,000 jobs in August, the eighth straight month of job growth. “That’s positive news, and it reflects the steps we’ve already taken to break the back of this recession. But it’s not good enough,” the president said. And Christina Romer, outgoing chair of the president’s Council of Economic Advisors, said the jobs figures were “better than expected.” Do they have a point about a slowly-but-surely improving jobs situation?
The answer is “no.” To understand why, it might be helpful to put things in a wider perspective.
For one thing, the so-called underemployment rate, which includes workers who are working part-time but who want full-time work, increased from 16.5 percent to 16.7 percent. During our supposed “Recovery Summer,” we have lost 283,000 jobs (54,000 in June, 171,000 in July, and 54,000 in August). And for August, the employment-population ratio — the percentage of Americans with jobs — was 58.5 percent. We haven’t seen figures this low in nearly three decades. As Henry Olson of the American Enterprise Institute points out, “Since the start of this summer, nearly 400,000 Americans have entered the labor force, but only 130,000 have found jobs. … America’s adult population has risen by 2 million people since [August 2009], but the number of adults with jobs has dropped by 180,000. The unemployment rate declined slightly despite these numbers, from 9.7 percent to 9.6 percent, because over 2.3 million people have left the labor force entirely, so discouraged they are no longer even looking for work. ”
Published for Contentious on commentarymagazine.com, September 3rd, 2010:
In his superb column today, Charles Krauthammer highlights a paragraph from Peter Baker’sNew York Times story on Barack Obama as commander in chief:
One adviser at the time said Mr. Obama calculated that an open-ended commitment would undermine the rest of his agenda. “Our Afghan policy was focused as much as anything on domestic politics,” the adviser said. “He would not risk losing the moderate to centrist Democrats in the middle of health insurance reform and he viewed that legislation as the make-or-break legislation for his administration.”
“If this is true,” Krauthammer writes, “Obama’s military leadership can only be called scandalous.”
Quite right. And it’s not the first time such a thing has been said about Obama. Here is a paragraph from a June 23 Washington Post article on the controversy then surrounding General Stanley McChrystal:
McChrystal’s apparent disdain for his civilian colleagues, and the facts on the ground in Afghanistan, have exposed the enduring fault lines in the agreement Obama forged last fall among policymakers and military commanders. In exchange for approving McChrystal’s request for more troops and treasure, Obama imposed, and the military accepted, two deadlines sought by his political aides. In December, one year after the strategy was announced, the situation would be reviewed and necessary adjustments made. In July 2011, the troops would begin to come home. [emphasis added]
These are damning admissions — war policies not only being influenced by partisan considerations but in important respects being driven by them.
Published for The Corner on nationalreview.com, September 3, 2010:
Today’s Washington Post (page A7) contains an ad from the Association of American Medical Colleges. It takes the form of a letter from medical school deans to Congress calling for a law to allow federal funding of embryo research, now that a federal judge has ruled that such funding may violate existing law and has issued an injunction stopping all such funding while the case proceeds through the courts. At the top of the ad is a large bold all-caps headline that reads: “CONGRESS MUST ACT NOW TO CONTINUE LIFESAVING STEM CELL RESEARCH.”
Now I hate to nitpick, but in order to be called “lifesaving” doesn’t something have to have saved a life? Embryonic stem-cell research (which is the only stem-cell research implicated in the federal court case) could surely be called promising, or be said to have potential, but it has not saved a life or even ever been used in any way in the treatment of any human being with any medical problem. The research does, however, take lives—since it relies on the destruction of living human embryos.
Published for Fox Forum at foxnews.com, September 3rd, 2010
The coverage of the growing disconnect between President Obama and America reminds me of some of my single friends lamenting the distance they feel with their boyfriends. For some of them, there’s a pattern – intense excitement at the promise of a new relationship, followed by bewilderment and anger as it starts to unravel, and ending in broken hearts and healing mantras of, “He just wasn’t right for me.”
There’s an old saying that a man marries a woman believing she’ll never change, and a woman marries a man believing she’ll be able to change him. Wrong on both counts – it doesn’t workthat way.
America was excited about its new relationship in January 2009 when it was fresh and shiny. Anything the new president said or did was captured on video and considered “Just amazing, and so funny, and so refreshing! I mean, did you SEE HIM catch that fly in the Oval Office? It was fantastic! He is the BEST!”
Several months later, the spark began to fade since unrealistic expectations can never be met.
America was confused over decisions that were at odds with what it wanted. Just where was this relationship going?
But hope sprang eternal – until another few months passed, and America started feeling jilted. “He just doesn’t understand me. He just doesn’t GET me. And, what’s worse, he doesn’t seem to care that he doesn’t. Lately I feel like he’s just saying what he thinks I want to hear. It’s like he’s just going through the motions.”
Published for The Roosevelt Room and CNBC.com, September 3rd, 2010:
The White House is looking ahead to the end game on the coming legislative battle on tax policy and is moving toward setting a “tax trap” to get its way.
Republicans believe no tax rates should be allowed to be hiked in the fragile economy — including rates on higher incomes, capital gains, and dividends. Democrats and the Obama Administration want the low Bush Administration tax rates for low- and middle-income Americans to remain, but want raise taxes on the highest income earners and on capital gains and dividends.
With the economy in a sideways stall this summer and mid-term congressional elections approaching, Democrats are facing the possibility of a “wave” election bringing Republican control of the House in its wake, and maybe the Senate, too. The biggest factor in this election — generating the most intensity among likely voters, especially independent swing voters — is the economy, particularly ballooning spending and the lack of job creation.
Voters have deemed any new spending programs toxic. Barring a significant, dramatic downturn in the economy, the probability of getting new spending through Congress is zero. And the Fed, despite anticipation that quantitative easing is coming, has said expressly and repeatedly it sees modest growth and relatively healthy inflation coming. No one should expect more action (again, barring a significant change in its outlook).
So what’s left? Tax policy. And because of the looming deadline of the expiration of current tax policy resulting in huge tax increases, it’s an issue that has to be dealt with.
The White House tried to make a class-warfare argument to win support for raising taxes on higher income earners, but with the economy skidding, economists are arguing that any tax increase could be risky. Even some Democrats are now joining in opposition to any new tax increases. The White House isn’t willing abandon its intent to raise tax rates on higher incomes, so it will try to get its way by making the cost of voting against a tax increase a lot more expensive.
Reports emerged this week that the White House is considering a raft of new tax cut measures — including a permanent reduction in the research and development tax credit, a payroll tax holiday, additional targeted tax cuts for small businesses and other measures.
By loading up the popular tax cut side of the ledger, Democrats and the White House will hope to put Republicans in a box, trying to ”win” either way: if Republicans split and join Democrats, the White House wins; if Republicans oppose the package, they’ll be branded as obstructionist and willing to hold up middle-class tax cuts to “protect” the wealthy.
The tax trap is an old, tried and true strategy, but it won’t work in this political environment for two reasons:
- The simple message that Democrats are increasing taxes (even as they propose other tax cuts) is far more salient with voters. Unless Democrats abandon any tax increases, they cannot carry voters with this message. The perception that Democrats want to tax more in order to spend more is firmly entrenched in the minds of likely voters.
- Americans have had it with Washington fights. Another hot legislative battle with shrill rhetoric will be offensive to voters, and deepens their disgust with Washington. The pox-on-all-their-houses reaction hurts Democrats far more than Republicans as they have many more rickety congressional seats to defend in mid-term elections.
The White House would do best to make a deal with Republicans extending current tax policy on all income brackets, maintaining (or lowering) low pro-growth rates on capital and investment, and making permanent the R&D tax credit.
Businesses will respond positively to certainty in tax policy, markets will cheer — instilling much-needed confidence, and Americans will appreciate a rare moment of bipartisan comity.
Published for The Corner on nationalreview.com, September 3rd, 2010:
Amidst panels and assorted conversations at the annual convention of the American Political Science Association, I am struck by how the very people who claim to be most eager to see a revival of American civic engagement and citizen activism are also the ones who seem most hostile to the Tea Party movement. What do they think civic activism looks like? A Norman Rockwell painting of a New England town meeting?
The fact is, the Tea Party movement is the best example of spontaneous, engaged, and constructive citizen activism we have seen since the civil rights movement. Some communitarian intellectuals may not agree with the opinions being expressed and the goals being pursued, but surely they have to admit that these are citizens moved to speak up by very public-spirited concerns, who are driven by a love of country and an extraordinary reverence for the Constitution, and who—by protesting peacefully, petitioning office holders, reading, and writing—are pursuing reforms of public policy. These folks aren’t bowling alone; they’re uniting to improve the country as they see it.
Yet somehow the people who claim to have been looking under every rock for some sign oflife in American civil society refuse to consider that maybe this is the change they have been waiting for.
Published for The Enterprise Blog, September 2nd, 2010:
Yesterday, I noted President Obama’s comment in his Oval Office address decrying the fact that “We spent a trillion dollars at war, often financed by borrowing from overseas. This, in turn, has short-changed investments in our own people, and contributed to record deficits.” I pointed out the $1 trillion Obama cites includes not only the cost of the battle in Iraq (which he opposed), but also our military efforts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Arabian Peninsula, South Asia, the Horn of Africa, and other fronts across the world (which he not only supports but has even expanded).
But to put that figure in perspective, consider that from 2000 to 2009 the United States produced about $122.5 trillion of total gross domestic product (data here). So spending $1 trillion to prevent another terrorist attack comes to about four-fifths of 1 percent of the GDP the United States has produced over the past decade—less than a penny on the dollar. Seems to me that spending less than one cent on the dollar to stop another 9/11 is a pretty good investment—especially when one considers the human and economic costs of another catastrophic mass-casualty attack.
Published for The Washington Post, September 3rd, 2010:
Achurch in Florida is poised to commemorate an act of violence committed in the name of Islam, the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, with an act of stupidity committed in the name of Christianity, the public burning of the Koran.
This threatened libricide proves little more than the existence of a few attention-seeking crackpots in a continental country — the natural resource that makes cable news possible. But the Manhattan mosque controversy has exposed a broader, conservative Christian suspicion of mosques and Muslims. Protests against the construction of mosques in California, Tennessee and Wisconsin have often included Christian pastors. Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, a conservative Christian group, recently wrote: “Permits should not be granted to build even one more mosque in the United States of America, let alone the monstrosity planned for Ground Zero. This is for one simple reason: Each Islamic mosque is dedicated to the overthrow of the American government.”
In this debate, grace is in short supply but irony abounds. The Christian fundamentalist view of Islam bears a striking resemblance to the New York Times’ view of Christian fundamentalism — a simplistic emphasis on the worst elements of a complex religious tradition. Both create a caricature, then assert that the Constitution is under assault by an army of straw men. The debates within Islam on the nature and application of sharia law, for example, are at least as complex as the debates among Christian theologians on the nature of social justice. And the political application of Islam differs so greatly — from Saudi Arabia to Mali to Morocco to Bosnia to Tanzania to Detroit — that it defies easy summary.
