Truth to Power on Obama’s Moral Failure

Ezra Klein explains the disheartening actions of the Obama Administration in not only their unjust treatment of Bradley Manning, but their subsequent firing of the State Department official who had the courage to speak out about it.

You may only hazily remember the name “Bradley Manning.” He’s the young soldier accused of passing thousands and thousands of classified documents to Wikileaks. I say “accused” not because his guilt is so doubtful, but because he has not yet stood for trial. At the moment, he is simply incarcerated. And in an apparent act of revenge, his captors are subjecting him to sleep deprivation, prolonged time in isolation and continuous nude spot-checks — conditions that Daniel Ellsberg calls “right out of the manual of the CIA for ‘enhanced interrogation’.”

Asked about Manning’s treatment at a speech in Cambridge recently, Crowley made the obvious points: it’s “ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid.” This made life difficult for the administration, and so Crowley — rather than the officials responsible for putting Crowley and every other administration member into the position of defending Mannin’s treatment — was forced to resign. The message of this is horrendous. “Crowley’s firing will make it even less likely in the future that decent public servants will speak out against such needless sadism,” writes Andrew Sullivan.

President Obama has done an objectively superior job delivering on many of his campaign promises, but his most significant failure is his unwillingness to rationalize and deconstruct the police-state national security apparatus constructed during 8 years of George W Bush. While major legislative actions require political capital and are hemmed in by Congressional politics, many of the policies that threaten our civil liberties and impugn our values can be overturned without even leaving the White House. The continuation of these policies are not the result of political obstruction or lack of agency. They represent a moral failure. Mike Konczal puts this reality into proper context by highlighting a paper that, now-former State Department Spokesman, PJ Crowley authored in 2008, articulating the liberal opposition to indefinite detainment.

Look again at what Crowley said, especially in line with his 2008 paper.  The extreme measures military officials are putting a U.S. citizen and soldier awaiting trial through, including extended isolation and mandatory nudity, is both wrong and counterproductive.  It alienates potential allies, bolsters the narrative of terrorists and extremists, betrays our ideals and ultimately makes us weaker.   It is a stupid, ridiculous, and counterproductive approach to a problem.

This argument is the liberal argument.  This is what distinguishes liberals from conservatives in this space.   The liberal argument isn’t that we have an extensive, unaccountable security state and feel really bad about it (while the conservative argument is that we cheerlead it), it’s that this kind of state is a bad deal.  The machine Cheney et al were operating in the dark, away from any oversight gave us no useful intelligence, corrupted offices, people and practices, and left us less safe than had we not done anything.   This is the argument I find convincing.  That Obama campaigned as the constitutional law professor from Chicago who could push back on the 8-year power grab was one reason I found him so compelling as a candidate.

Let the Dictators Keep Their Money

That’s right, I said it.  After being forced from power, former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak is currently cooling his heels in the isolated, Egyptian resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh. I don’t have any idea what negotiations, plans, or promises were being tossed around Cairo in the final days before Mubarak stepped down, but I would be pretty surprised if he wasn’t assured some kind of legal immunity if he left the stage with some grace. unfortunately for him, the AP is reporting that he may be coming back to Cairo not only as a much poorer man, but in the back of a paddy wagon.

Also Tuesday, an Egyptian court rejected an appeal by Mubarak and his family against a top prosecutor’s move to seize funds that could total in the billions of dollars. The decision clears the way for a criminal investigation and a possible trial of Egypt’s former leader.

Mubarak, his wife, two sons and their wives have also been banned from travel abroad.

Now I’m no Mubarak apologist. I’ve spent some time in Cairo and seen the ubiquitous poverty and rampant corruption first hand. That being said, I think that we should seriously think about the precedent that’s being set by freezing assets and prosecuting dictators who choose, even if strongly coerced, to step down from power. The ongoing horrors in Libya should be a reminder of the stakes involved in government ouster and how violent and devastating the process can be if a leader decides to stay and fight.

The fact is that decisions on how to deal with a defrocked dictator should take into account the larger contexts. Was Mubarak a corrupt authoritarian who ruled with an iron fist? Yes. Were there serious abuses against his political enemies? Certainly. Did he embezzle billions of dollars from the government? I’m certain of it. But he didn’t perpetrate a genocide or other crimes against humanity. At the end of the day, letting Mubarak take his family and a few billion illicit dollars to live out his life on a private island somewhere seems like a fairly small price to pay for Egyptians to finally regain control of their country.

As autocratic rulers throughout the Middle East watch the evolving events in north Africa, it would probably be a good idea for them to see a reasonable way out. When faced with a popular, democratic uprising, we want the decision to step aside to be the most appealing option. If it becomes clear, however, that stepping down leads to frozen assets and a jail cell for them and their family, leaving peacefully begins to make little sense. We want to encourage the actions of Mubarak, because the alterative is Gaddafi and the streets running red with blood.

Republicans Have No Alternative To “ObamaCare”

The GOP has spent the last several months declaring that the solution to what ails the American healthcare system is to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. They couldn’t politically defend the old status quo system because it would be political suicide, so they began promulgating the notion that they had some better alternative policy that would improve access and quality of care while reducing costs. A Republican magic bullet on healthcare if only President Obama and the Democrats would let them bring it to the floor. They claimed that their mystery plan would retain all of the popular portions of “ObamaCare” (barring discrimination against preexisting conditions, etc) while eliminating the less popular parts (individual mandate) that make the popular provisions possible. Honest policy experts saw this as a tell-tale sign that the Republican party lacked any real alternative policy vision and was instead relying on talking points and make-believe. This reality, though, is finally going to be dragged out into the light of day for everyone else to see.

The Obama Administration recently endorsed legislation that would allow States to implement alternative healthcare reform as soon as the bulk of ACA ramps up in 2014. You would think that Republicans would be ecstatic. Finally, those Marxist Democrats have relented and allowed them to roll-out ReaganCare and prove the superiority of conservative healthcare reform. But there are no victory parties. The GOP is actually upset. Why? Here’s conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin:

Republicans would be wise to push back with a much broader opt-out proposal. Then we’ll see how willing the president is to give governors real flexibility.

What is this lack of flexibility? Well the new exemption simply requires alternative healthcare policies to provide coverage for at least as many people as ACA, with coverage that’s at least as good, and without any additional cost to the Federal government. Do what ObamaCare does, but better. That’s what the conservatives have been saying they could do from the beginning. But they can’t. That’s the dirty little secret they’re going to be forced to confront. There simply is no ReaganCare or BoehnerCare. Their position on this exemption proves that their only plan is to cover fewer people, give them worse coverage, or add to the deficit. So which is it?

[the exemption] still locks the states into guaranteeing a generous and costly level of benefits. True, a state could propose alternative benefit requirements if they had the same actuarial value as those in the ACA. But the requirements go well beyond basic coverage

So the Republican excuse for why they can’t put forth a policy alternative is going to be that ACA requires them to provide lavish, gold-plated health care. But that’s simply not true. ACA requires minimum coverage to have “actuarial value” of 60%, which means that it would cover 60% of expected annual health care costs. Here’s a comparison of other health care coverage levels.

So the minimum level of coverage is significantly below Medicare, Medicaid, and the coverage that most people get from employee sponsored health insurance, private health insurance, HMOs, or Health Savings Accounts. But apparently that’s too constrictive for ReaganCare. Their big idea apparently involves them offering really, really terrible health insurance and charging people more for it. It’s no wonder there isn’t a single declared Republican presidential candidate yet. Who wants to carry that banner?

My New Anachronism

The fact that I live far away from my best friends and family seems to have merged with my fondness for English period dramas to lead me to one conclusion: I should write more. I don’t mean drafting a screen play or spending even more time on gchat. I’m talking about old school pen and paper. This idea has been percolating for some time and today I finally got around to stopping into Pulp, a wonderful stationery shop on 14th Street, to pick up some simple, well crafted stationary. So now that I have the requisite tools, I have no more excuses. I intend to write brief and periodic notes to family and friends not only as thank you cards, but also as updates, greetings, and on other occasions in which I just feel like dropping a line. I don’t really have any cogent, meta-reason for doing this, but I think that it will be nice for the people close to me and also provide a few moments for me to log-off, get away from my Macbook, and interact with people in a slower and more intentional way. All that being said, as I was leaving Pulp it occurred to me that the habit of writing notes is so anachronistic that I don’t even have addresses for most of my friends. Email and cell phones have always sufficed until now. So if you’re someone who would like to receive a pleasant note at some point in the future, please get me your address. Comments, email, text me, Facebook, whatever. Or you know what? You can just send me a note with your return address. Old school.

Selling Out The Future

Republicans have been attacking the President’s use of the term “investment” in reference to strategic infrastructure and education funding, preferring to call it simply “more government spending.” But using a term like investment actually highlights an important policy fact that Republicans would prefer to gloss over in this context. All spending is not created equal. Some spending, in fact, can lead to substantial return on investment in both financial and non-financial terms. Spending money to increase broad-based educational outcomes has positive-sum impacts for society. Paying an ethanol producer to create a product which is already required by law, does not.

This is also true on the other side of the coin. All spending cuts are not created equal, either. Ezra Klein has a great piece explaining the absurdity of the GOP’s quest to cut non-defense discretionary spending by slashing agency and administrative budgets.

But the money they’ll save in the next year with these cuts might end up dwarfed by the money we’ll spend over the next decade because of these cuts. Looking back, the absolute best investment the federal government could have made between 2000 and 2005 would’ve been regulators able to see and stop what was happening on Wall Street. Missing the bubble and the build-up of risk cost us trillions.

Same goes for Social Security. You could imagine a number of reforms that would reduce the program’s long-term spending. But cutting its administrative budget — which is already extremely lean — doesn’t mean less spending. It probably means more fraud, as there are fewer inspectors able to check up on questionable disability claims.

Similarly, it’s hard to write legislation well without the necessary staff. If members of Congress have to cut staff or cut staff pay, that means either less staff, or worse staff. But it doesn’t mean that constituents and interest groups and party organizations will want less legislation overall. The answer? Lower-quality legislation, with more technical mistakes, unintended consequences and missed targets. Congress might’ve saved a few bucks by hiring a couple fewer legislative aides, but we might spend a lot more than that to clean up the shoddy work that comes from an overworked, underpaid office.

There’s no doubt that we need to tackle long-run budget deficits, but when formulating a serious plan to do it we need more, not less, focus on which dollars go the farthest. The fact is that the real drivers of the medium and long-run fiscal trouble in this country is health care inflation and Social Security. Social Security is an easy one-time fix, but health care is much more difficult. And we’ll never address any of the real issues as long as our Congressmen continue to cut useful dollars out of already thin budgets in order to put off the challenging work of entitlement reform.

Boxee Box is Bold and Beautiful

I may not be entirely comfortable with a computer running the table against Jeopardy’s best and brightest, but I am more than happy to let a computer run my home entertainment system. In hopes of finally utilizing the 42” plasma that tends to sit idly in my living room, I recently invested in a Boxee Box to merge my computer with my TV. And it works beautifully.

For the uninitiated, Boxee is media software that’s been around for a number of years. It allows you to organize, manage, and view videos and music on your TV. Until recently, however, Boxee required third-party hardware to actually run the program and interface with your television. Thanks to my roommate in my last house this took the form of an Apple TV and then later a Mac mini, to much grander effect. The introduction of the Boxee Box now allows you to purchase one piece of dedicated hardware that is designed specifically to run their software.

So what does Boxee do, exactly? Well everyone prefers to consume media and entertainment differently, but I can tell you what it does for me. I don’t like live TV. I want to watch whatever I’m in the mood for at whatever time I like. Therefor, I don’t even have cable. What I do have is digital versions of a whole lot of TV shows and movies that I have…uh…acquired. These files reside primarily on my Macbook and two external hard drives. My adorable little Boxee Box sits next to my TV and is plugged in to my two hard drives. It is also connected to my wireless network and, therefore, to my Macbook. This means that I can turn on my TV and easily navigate and watch all of my movies, television shows, and music. The menus are simple and intuitive. It reads pretty much every type of media file. It plays content seamlessly off of my laptop in the next room. And it does all of this in 1080p Hi Definition. Not yet sold? Well it also has a host of apps and online services that allow you to stream television shows, movies, or TED Talks that you don’t own, Hulu-Style, from your TV.

Thus far I have been exceedingly impressed. It really does work exactly as I’d hoped that it did. It simply ties together all of the digital media in my personal universe and allows me to navigate it and watch it on my TV instead of squinting into my Macbook. And at $200 bucks, it’s a steal.

Union Busting – Republican Style

The drama in Wisconsin over Governor Walker’s proposed attack on public sector unions is getting a lot of national attention as people speculate about its broader implications. With many other states facing budget deficits and growing concern over national fiscal policies, it’s important to understand what’s actually going on in Madison. The Republican Governor is using a fiscal crisis, which the unions did not cause, as an excuse to cripple and destroy the public sector unions that he opposes for other ideological reasons. In doing so, he and his conservative supporters are attempting the obscure this reality with misleading or demonstrably false arguments and narratives. They are as follows:

The state is broke and public workers need to chip in. People would not be up in arms if the Governor was simply proposing that public workers ponied up a fair share of their benefits. He could do that without functionally eliminating the ability for workers to collectively bargain. His proposal would make it illegal to negotiate benefits, limit wage contracts to one year, freezing wages during contract disputes, and then eliminate the ability of an arbiter to settle the disputes. The proposal also bars the union members from paying their dues from their paychecks. Ezra Klein sums up the effect of these proposals:

The best way to understand Walker’s proposal is as a multi-part attack on the state’s labor unions. They make it harder for unions to collect dues from members, to negotiate stable contracts or to survive a bad year.

Wisconsin’s unions can’t deliver value to their members, they’re deprived of the resources to change the rules so they can start delivering value to their members again, and because of that, their members eventually give in to employer pressure and shut the union down in one of the annual certification elections.

People are welcome to argue that systematically dismantling public sector unions is good policy, but they need to be honest about it. This is not about deficits. It’s union busting. If Governor Walker was simply concerned about the State’s fiscal future he would not have also:

1. Exempted the only two unions that supported his campaign, and
2. Pushed through an expensive tax cut that is projected to cost the state $120 million over the next two years.

State workers are overpaid anyway. Republicans would like you to think that government workers (except themselves, of course) are living high-on-the-hog while their private sector colleagues struggle to pay their tax bills. The problem with this analysis is that it’s factually inaccurate. The graph below from an EPI analysis tells the tale: ”Wisconsin public-sector workers face an annual compensation penalty of 11%. Adjusting for the slightly fewer hours worked per week on average, these public workers still face a compensation penalty of 5% for choosing to work in the public sector.”

It’s certainly true that these workers receive defined benefit pensions, which most of their private sector counterparts do not. But that’s one of the reasons that a professional with a Masters degree is willing to leave over $25,000 on the table every year. The State made a promise to fund their pension in exchange for paying them a below-market salary. And if the State decides that it doesn’t want to pay for that pension, it’s defaulting on its commitments to real, middle class people who were willing to delay gratification and work for the public good.

So just to be clear. What’s happening in Wisconsin is a Republican Governor using a fiscal problem as an excuse to destroy unions who didn’t support him and default on his commitments to public servants, who have consistently sacrificed wages in exchange for a secure retirement.