Published for www.commentarymagazine.com, May 8, 2012

Republican Representative Allen West, a Tea Party favorite from Florida, weighed in on President Obama’s 10-year security agreement with Afghan President Hamid Karzai. In the agreement, Obama pledged continued support to Afghanistan once NATO combat troops leave in 2014. “I look at what happened between President Obama and President Karzai as a 1930s, Chamberlain, Hitler moment,” Representative West told radio host Frank Gaffney. “There is not going to be peace in our time.”

I’m not quite sure what this analogy is supposed to prove. Is Karzai supposed to be Hitler? Whatever complaints one has with Karzai – and I have plenty of my own – he’s clearly no Hitler, and he doesn’t appear to have designs for world conquest.

As a general matter, the Chamberlain-Hitler-appeasement analogy is much overused and is often a sign of lazy thinking, as is the case here.

Representative West, it’s probably worth pointing out, also recently told a town hall meeting that “there’s [sic] about 78 to 81 members of the Democrat Party who are members of the Communist Party,” referring to their membership in the Congressional Progressive Caucus. (West’s defense of his comments can be found here.)

This is not simply an unfortunate comment but an ugly one. Communism is associated with immense and even incomprehensible humor horror, from the estimated 65 million deaths under Mao in China; to the more than 20 million Russians who perished under Stalin and Lenin; to the almost two million Cambodians – comprising around one quarter of the entire population – who died under the Pol Pot regime. Communism has been responsible for forced labor, slavery, starvation, mass executions, and wholesale slaughter. Surely West must know this. And so for him to characterize his (very) liberal colleagues as Communists, and then to defend the claim, is a form of slander.

West would do himself, his party and his cause a world of good if he decided to jettison the corrosive and insulting rhetoric.

Post published here

Published for www.dmarron.com, May 9, 2012

The recent double-counting dispute isn’t just about politics; it also reveals a flaw in budgeting for Medicare Part A.

Budget experts are waging a spirited battle over the Medicare changes that helped pay for 2010’s health reform. In April, Chuck Blahous, one of two public trustees of the program, released a study arguing that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) would increase the deficit by at least $340 billion by 2021, a sharp contrast from the $210 billion in deficit reduction estimated by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

Chuck bases his estimates on several factors, but the item that has garnered the most attention is his charge that the ACA’s spending cuts and revenue increases in Medicare Part A are being double counted: once to help pay for the ACA’s coverage expansion and a second time to improve the finances of the Part A trust fund, whose predicted exhaustion was delayed by several years.

Chuck notes that those resources can be used only once: They can either offset some costs of health reform or strengthen Medicare, but not both. He believes those resources will ultimately finance additional Medicare spending and thus can’t offset any health reform costs. For that reason, he concludes that the ACA would increase deficits, rather than reduce them.

That argument inspired a host of commentary from leading budget experts, ranging from denunciation to affirmation. See, for example, Jeffrey Brown, Howard Gleckman, Peter Orszag, Robert Reischauer (as quoted by Jonathan Chait), and Paul Van de Water, and a follow up by Chuck and Jim Capretta.

Full post here

Published for www.washingtonpost.com, May 7, 2012

“We’re not going back. . . . We’re going forward,” President Obama said during his formal campaign kickoff in Ohio. This rallying cry was pedestrian, and appropriately so. Obama is no longer a leader on horseback. His campaign — on the evidence of its first day — will be a long, unimaginative, partisan march to the sea.

Gone are the vast ambitions of national progress and healing. In Ohio on Saturday, Obama made a methodical appeal to various voting blocks — college-educated women, gays, Hispanics. He waded into the culture war on abortion, something he rarely did four years ago. And he accused the GOP of trickle-down hostility to the middle class.

To every interest group, a sop. On every wedge issue, a swat. To every class enemy, a turn in the tumbrel. Obama has gone “forward” all the way to the strategy of Walter Mondale.

The president may persuade voters with this message, but he apparently has given up trying to inspire them. And this is not a small thing, since the Obama brand once consisted mainly of inspiration.

The brand of the Obama reelection campaign, so far, is ruthlessness. It has accused Mitt Romney of being soft on Osama bin Laden. It has singled out some Romney donors by name for public attack. Romney, we are informed, enjoys shipping jobs abroad, which is “just what you’d expect from a guy who had a Swiss bank account.” Obama has accused Republican congressional opponents of social Darwinism and indifference to autistic children.

U.S. politics has a long history of ruthlessness, which is not always a Nixon-like negative. Franklin Roosevelt matched the ruthlessness of dictators in his defense of democracy. Lyndon Johnson ruthlessly broke filibusters in pursuit of civil rights legislation. Robert Kennedy reportedly joked about his reputation: “I am not ruthless. And if I find the man who is calling me ruthless, I shall destroy him.”

Full post here

Published for www.online.wsj.com, May 7, 2012

Like most dissidents, Chen Guangcheng has a lousy sense of timing. Count it among his virtues.

When this blind human rights attorney found his way to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing late last month, he provoked an instant diplomatic incident. That’s because his arrival came on the eve of a visit to China by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Now that Mr. Chen has left the embassy, he’s made the situation messier still by asking the U.S. to take him and his family to America.

Mrs. Clinton, who deserves credit for having raised Mr. Chen’s name when he was under house arrest, said what you would expect a U.S. secretary of state to say. At a news conference in Beijing on Friday, she declared that the U.S.-China dispute over Mr. Chen would not endanger the other “significant matters that we are working on together.”

Mrs. Clinton is right that the other matters between China and the United States are significant. At times the human rights community can forget this. These matters include such items as China’s valuation of the yuan, whether China will use its influence to help dissuade Iran and North Korea from their nuclear ambitions, and what role China might play in using its economic clout to ease tensions between Sudan and South Sudan.

That’s where dissidents like Mr. Chen come in. They remind us of something we can forget in our enthusiasm to negotiate: We do well to be skeptical about how much trust to repose in agreements with a government that would beat up and detain a blind lawyer, clap a Nobel Peace Prize winner into prison, or tell Chinese families how many children they can have.

Full post here

Published for http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/, May 7, 2012

President Obama is right to invite France’s new president to the White House in the coming weeks for a series of exploratory talks. The Obama team will understandably put a positive spin on such a visit, but I bet the motivation is as much fear as opportunity. From the point of view of American foreign policy, I think Doyle McManus has it right: Obama is sure going to miss Sarkozy.

Sarkozy was the indispensable key figure in two of the more prominent policies that Obama officials tout as “successes.” First, it was Sarkozy, not Obama, who led on Libya. Without Sarkozy (and British Prime Minister Cameron) pushing the agenda, it is likely that Obama’s initial policy of refusing to intervene in Libya would have held. Obama joined the bandwagon somewhat belatedly, something that even White House spinners couldn’t ignore, thus giving rise to the infamous “lead from behind” frame.

Likewise, it has been Sarkozy (and the U.S. Congress) more than the Obama administration out in front on using economic coercion to confront Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Obama’s innovative contribution to Iran policy was the unsuccessful attempt to hold unconditional talks with the Iranian leaders in 2009. However, with Sarkozy pushing hard from one end and the U.S. Congress pushing hard from the other end, eventually, after a year or so delay, the Obama administration did join in to impose tighter sanctions.

Thus, Sarkozy may well have been the indispensable figure in two of the more prominent talking points on Obama’s brag sheet. If his French partner had been more of a spoiler in the mold of Sarkozy’s predecessor, Jacques Chirac, is it plausible to think that President Obama would have intervened in Libya or secured new rounds of multilateral sanctions on Iran?

Finding out what kind of partner President Hollande will be is a high priority for President Obama. And finding that out may also tell us some important things about President Obama. To borrow a sports analogy that the president would doubtless understand, we may learn that Obama is not as good a point guard when the other guys on his team can’t or won’t run the fast break.

Post published here

Published for www.dmarron.com, May 7, 2012

Companies often run into trouble when they offer a service at a zero price.

Not always, of course. Many all-you-can-eat buffets continue to thrive even though the marginal cost of the next chicken nugget is zero. And many content providers manage to stay in business by selling radio, TV, or display ads against the free content users enjoy.

But all too often, a zero price attracts bad customers and encourages excessive consumption. Marco Arment of Instapaper, for example, discovered that a zero price attracted “undesirable customers” for his app. And AT&T famously discovered that offering unlimited iPhone data could overwhelm its capacity.

Thanks to Ken Besinger of the Los Angeles Times, we now have another juicy example: the lifetime passes that American Airlines sold to a small group of customers:

There are frequent fliers, and then there are people like Steven Rothstein and Jacques Vroom.

Both men bought tickets that gave them unlimited first-class travel for life on American Airlines. It was almost like owning a fleet of private jets.

Passes in hand, Rothstein and Vroom flew for business. They flew for pleasure. They flew just because they liked being on planes. They bypassed long lines, booked backup itineraries in case the weather turned, and never worried about cancellation fees. Flight crews memorized their names and favorite meals.

Each had paid American more than $350,000 for an unlimited AAirpass and a companion ticket that allowed them to take someone along on their adventures. Both agree it was the  best purchase they ever made, one that completely redefined their lives. …

Full post here

Published for http://johntaylorsblog.blogspot.com, May 7, 2012

The House Domestic Monetary Policy subcommittee, with Ron Paul in the chair, is holding hearings tomorrow ( May 8 ) on six proposed bills to reform the Fed. The bills are remarkably diverse ranging from Ron Paul’s Federal Reserve Board Abolition Act to Barney Frank’s bill to remove the Fed district bank presidents as voting members on the FOMC and replace them with appointees of the president of the United States.

Two of the bills (Kevin Brady’s and Mike Pence’s) would refrom the Fed’s dual mandate, which in my view would help the Fed get back to more a rules-based policy with fewer of the recent discretionary interventions which have proved so harmful. The Brady bill would go further and restrict the degree to which the Fed can purchase large quantities of mortgages and other non-Treasury securities. Kevin Brady and Barney Frank will be there to defend their own bills, and Ron Paul will be able to do so as the chair.

The witnesses for this hearing also have very diverse views: two economists from the Austrian school: Jeffrey Herbener and Peter Klein, as well as Jamie Galbraith, Alice Rivlin and me. All the written testimonies are posted on the House Financial Services Committee website.

Regardless of the disagreements one might have with specific proposals or individual witnesses, the subcommittee should be thanked for placing monetary policy reform issues in a prominent place in the public debate and for endeavoring to keep the debate wide open.

Post published here

Published for www.commentarymagazine.com, May 8, 2012

“Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore,” Dorothy says in “The Wizard of Oz.” Barack Obama might have had the same sensation this weekend when, in his first official campaign event at the Schottenstein Center at Ohio State, Obama spoke to a crowd of 14,000 in a center that fits 20,000. “There were,” according to the Toledo Blade, “a lot of empty seats.” This happened despite the fact that Obama volunteers worked feverishly to gin up a crowd.

“Axelrod, I have a feeling we’re not in 2008 anymore,” Obama might have thought.

To add insult to injury, the New York Times (as Jonathan points out here) reported on the opening event for Obama this way: “At times, the rallies had the feeling of a concert by an aging rock star: a few supporters were wearing faded ‘Hope’ and Obama 2008 T-shirts, and cheers went up when the president told people to tell their friends that this campaign was ‘still about hope’ and ‘still about change.’”

For a president whose only selling point these days is “cool” — and who is used to campaigning surrounded by faux Greek columns and adoring fans and cult-like music videos– this must come as quite a shock to the system. Perhaps the president, desperate to recapture a moment that is forever gone, can relate to the lyrics of a genuine aging rock star, Bruce Springsteen:

Now I think I’m going down to the well tonight

and I’m going to drink till I get my fill

And I hope when I get old I don’t sit around thinking about it

but I probably will

Yeah, just sitting back trying to recapture

a little of the glory of, well time slips away

and leaves you with nothing mister but

boring stories of glory days.

Barack Obama — with no record he can defend and no governing vision he can describe — may soon be left with nothing but boring stories of glory days.

Published for www.dmarron.com, May 4, 2012

As expected, today’s jobs data showed a slowing labor market. Payrolls expanded by 115,000 in April, less than hoped or expected. Upward revisions to February and March added another 53,000 jobs, however, so the overall payroll picture is better than the headline. The unemployment rate ticked down to 8.1%, the labor force participation rate slipped to 63.6%, weekly hours were unchanged at 34.5, and hourly earnings increased a measly penny from $23.37 to $23.38.

Put it all together, and this report is on the soft side of mediocre.

Unemployment and underemployment both remain very high, but they’ve been moving in the right direction. After peaking at 10% in October 2009, the unemployment rate has declined by about 2 percentage points. The U-6 measure of underemployment, meanwhile, peaked at 17.2% and now stands at 14.5%:

(The U-6 measures includes the officially unemployed, marginally attached workers, and those who are working part-time but want full-time work.)

Post published here

Published for www.commentarymagazine.com, May 4, 2012

George Will has a lovely tribute to his son Jon, who is a Washington Nationals fan who also happens to have Down syndrome.

Apart from his evident love and appreciation for his son, Will takes aim at the “full, garish flowering of the baby boomers’ vast sense of entitlement, which encompasses an entitlement to exemption from nature’s mishaps, and to a perfect baby.” He goes on to write about Jon’s gift of serenity. “With an underdeveloped entitlement mentality,” Will writes, Jon has “been equable about life’s sometimes careless allocation of equity. Perhaps this is partly because, given the nature of Down syndrome, neither he nor his parents have any tormenting sense of what might have been. Down syndrome did not alter the trajectory of his life; Jon was Jon from conception on.”

Here Will is touching on an enormous shift in human expectations that has occurred in modern times – the belief that we are owed, that we are entitled, to certain things, including a life very nearly free of hardship, of pain, and of loss. The reason for this shift is progress. In the West, we’ve seen fantastic gains made in medicine, technology, and standards of living. Early death was once a common feature; according to historian Lawrence Stone, during the Middle Ages, two or more living children were often given the same name because it was so common that at least one of them would die. Today, in America, early death is blessedly rare. We are also far less patient and far less willing to be inconvenienced than ever before. We forget that there was once a life before GPSs and ATMs; before iPhones, iPods, and iPads; before e-mails, Twitter, texting, Skype, Google, ESPN, and flat screen televisions.

Full post here