House Republicans: Look How Many Layoffs We Helped Create

By Ryan Powers on May 12, 2009 at 7:05 pm

Today, the Washington Post reported that “eleven weeks after Congress settled on a stimulus package that provided $135 billion to limit layoffs in state governments, many states are finding that the funds are not enough and are moving to lay off thousands of public employees.” Washington state will be forced to layoff several thousand educators and Massachusetts which “cut 1,000 positions late last year, just announced 250 layoffs, with more likely to come soon.”

Apparently missing the article’s point — that the stimulus should have included more budget stabilization funding for states — the House GOP featured the article on their website today, suggesting that the report vindicated their unanimous opposition to the recovery act. Later in the day, they linked to the article on twitter and gleefully quipped, “Look how many layoffs the stimulus created“:

In reality, of course, the economic recovery didn’t “create” layoffs at the state level. Had the recovery plan included no money at all for state level budget stabilization — as the House Republicans proposed — layoffs of public servants at the state level would have been far more widespread.

Further, as the Post makes clear, it was members of the Republican party and several conservative Democrats sympathetic with the Republican line on the recovery package that actively lobbied for reductions in state budget stabilization funding by $40 billion:

But in the Senate, the stabilization funding was cut by $40 billion to secure the support of the three Republicans who were needed for a filibuster-proof 60 votes — Sens. Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine and Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania — as well as to gain the support of conservative Democrats such as Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska

Susan Collins (R-ME) defended her efforts to slash the state stabilization funding, saying, “The fundamental purpose of the stimulus bill is to save and create jobs and help get our economy moving again. … The bloated House-passed bill stood no chance of passing the Senate.”

()

Climate Progress

How I learned to stop worrying and love Waxman-Markey, Part 2: In praise of domestic offsets

By Joe Romm on May 12, 2009 at 6:21 pm

The two biggest concerns about domestic offsets in climate legislation — the possibility they will be riddled with fraud and/or that they will overwhelm the “genuine” emissions reductions — are I think, largely unwarranted. The fact that Waxman-Markey potentially allows a substantial amount of domestic offsets is no reason whatsoever oppose it.

As readers know, I do not like rip-offsets. I do not like them in DC. I do not like them in Chicago.

I would not like them here or there. I would not like them anywhere. And, yes, I have a 2-year-old daughter who likes Dr. Seuss.

But, seriously, there are two fundamental reasons I urge people not to buy offsets:

The market is unregulated, so you have no idea what you are buying. And most every time the media — or I — look into a specific offset, it turns out to be a project that would’ve happened anyway or, worse, had already been up and running for years. In short, your money is unlikely to be bringing about new emissions reductions. Thus you aren’t “offsetting” anything.
This country has no cap on emissions. Therefore, offsets don’t add up to anything. They don’t assuredly take you off the business-as-usual emissions path. It is wonderful to promote new wind projects — although the vast majority of wind-related offsets probably don’t do that (see “Schendler Part II: Good RECs vs. Bad RECs“) — but absent a cap on emissions, that project doesn’t necessarily actually lead to any net emissions reductions.

If, however, we passed comprehensive energy and climate legislation like Waxman-Markey, we would immediately solve both of those problems. Yes, on paper, Waxman-Markey allows polluters to purchase some 1 billion tons of domestic offsets (see bill summary here), which is nearly 15% of total U.S. emissions. And that seems like it would vitiate the near-term target of a 20% emissions cut in 2020.

But the EPA, in its preliminary modeling of the bill (here), finds that only a small fraction of that billion tons of domestic offsets would in fact ever be used, as this figure shows:

(10)

Yglesias

Endgame

By Matthew Yglesias on May 12, 2009 at 6:13 pm

Things I don’t have time to comment on:

— A big rewrite of federal transportation policy is coming but no one knows when.

— Henry Aaron thinks big-picture health care reform is both necessary and impossible. But if not now, when?

— Business roundtable vows “to spend whatever it takes” to defeat Obama’s corporate tax reform plans.

— Tax the sweeteners not the sweetened soda.

— The concept “suburb” can encompass many kinds of places.

Off to a happy hour.

()

Health

Fixing Medicare’s Insolvency Problem

By Igor Volsky on May 12, 2009 at 6:07 pm

A new Medicare/Social Security trustees report concludes that Social Security will start paying out more in benefits than it collects in taxes in 2016, while the Medicare trust fund for hospital expenses “will pay out more in benefits than it collects this year and will be insolvent by 2017.” The New York Times observes:

The two programs, which serve more than 50 million people, are caught in a difficult dynamic linked largely to the recession: Millions fewer people are working and paying the taxes that support the programs; yet health care costs are continuing to soar, millions of baby boomers have begun receiving Social Security retirement benefits, and Americans are living longer.

Employers have shed 5.7 million jobs since December 2007, leading a growing number of Americans to rely on safety net programs for food, health care and other basic services. The worsening economy is certainly a contributing factor, but, the real cause of Medicare insolvency is “the ever-escalating cost of health care. Unless we can do something to reign in system-wide health care cost-growth, the continuing financing problems highlighted in this report will only worsen.” Reforming our patchwork health care system and lowering health care costs is the only way to set the nation on a sustainable fiscal path.

One reason why we’re spending too much money on hospital care is because we don’t invest enough in preventive care — catching a disease early and preventing the need for hospitalization in the first place. Baby boomers, for instance — who make up 17 percent of non-elderly adults but account for 26 percent of those with at least one chronic illness — have a hard time finding affordable/continuous health coverage and contribute to increasing Medicare costs. A recent study found that “chronically ill people turning age 65 who were previously uninsured had lower spending than insured people prior to Medicare. Yet once on Medicare, these uninsured Americans spent 50 percent more than previously insured Medicare beneficiaries who also had chronic disease.” If, as one study suggests, being uninsured increases spending by 50 percent, “having 2.4 million more chronically ill Americans join Medicare as uninsured rather than previously insured could raise its costs by $2.4 billion per year in 2005 dollars.”

()

Politics

Conservatives Outraged Over Release Of Torture Photos, But Not Over Actual Torture

By Ali Frick on May 12, 2009 at 5:30 pm

On April 23, the Obama administration announced it would release hundreds of photos of detainee interrogation, obeying a court order from a lawsuit filed by the ACLU. Predictably, conservatives furious with the Obama administration’s attempt at greater transparency denounced the move. Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) wrote to President Obama asking him not to release the photos because they could inflame potential terrorists:

The release of these old photographs of past behavior that has now clearly been prohibited will serve no public good, but will empower al-Qaeda propaganda operations, hurt our country’s image, and endanger our men and women in uniform. We know that many terrorists captured in Iraq have told American interrogators that one of the reasons they decided to join the violent jihadist war against America was what they saw on Al-Qaeda videos of abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib,” wrote Graham and Lieberman.

Today, Liz Cheney, daughter of the former Vice President, decried the move as “appalling,” saying in a Fox News interview that the decision was proof Obama was aiming to “side with the terrorists”:

CHENEY: Clearly what they are doing is releasing images that show American military men and women in a very negative light. And I have heard from families of service members, from families of 9/11 victims, this question about, you know, when did it become so fashionable for us to side, really,with the terrorists?

Watch a compilation of conservatives complaining about the potential release of torture photos:

The photos of torture aren’t the root of the problem. After all — if you don’t torture, you don’t have torture photos. Notably, many of the figures decrying the release of photos have ardently defended the government’s right to torture people:

SEN. LIEBERMAN: “Most people think it’s definitely torture. The truth is, it has mostly a psychological impact on people. … [W]e ought to be able to use something like waterboarding.”

HANNITY: “I am having a hard time understanding, though, why dunking somebody’s head in water….just to scare the living daylights out of them… why would you oppose that?”

LIZ CHENEY: “[T]he tactics are not torture, we did not torture. The memos lay out the extent of exactly how far we could go before it would become torture because it was very important that we not cross that line into torture.”

LT. COL. BOB MAGINNES: “If we take away tools, whether actual tools or implied tools, from [American intelligence officials'] tool chest, and therefore undermine their potential effectiveness, then I think we hurt our whole cause.”

HUCKABEE: “It was like a carnival ride. … For example, it wasn’t that we were actually going to drown someone, but it was a simulation of it. And for that, there was in fact some information that came forth.”

In fact, Huckabee defended the utility of waterboarding within 30 seconds of agreeing with Hannity that Obama’s release of interrogation photos was “hurting our nation’s defenses.” Fox reporter Catherine Herridge said that “these pictures of humiliation” can be “a primary factor of suicide bombers.”

It’s not the pictures that recruits suicide bombers; it’s what the pictures depict. Torture — ordered by Bush and Cheney — damaged America and increased the risk of another terrorist attack, and revealing the truth of what happened doesn’t change that fact.

()

Media

Curmudgeons Should Keep Their Sites on Television

By Matthew Yglesias on May 12, 2009 at 5:25 pm

09librarystacks-1

Kevin Drum waxes curmudgeonly:

I’d love to be wrong about this. But I’m not. If you want to understand the world, not just collect endless factlets, you still need to read books. If you do, the internet makes you smarter. If you don’t, it makes you dumber.

Two things about this. One is that to an extent only time will tell. At the moment, even though a lot of people write on the internet, a great many people who write aren’t writing on the internet. And many of those people are extremely smart and you can learn an enormous amount from them. If you really want to understand what Christopher Leinberger has to say about urban policy, you really need to read his book just as if you want to understand Donald Shoup’s ideas about parking there’s no substitute for reading The High Cost of Free Parking. But a big part of the reason is that those guys aren’t writing blogs. If they were writing blogs, their blogs might be good sources of information about their work. But they’re not. So the books are vital.

In the future, thanks to generational turnover, I think we’ll see a higher-and-higher proportion of the smart people doing writing on the internet. So the internet will become a more valuable resource.

So I don’t entirely want to prejudge this issue. A really knowledgeable person, writing day-in and day-out about the issues he’s expert in, can convey an enormous amount of information via sustained blogging. But my guess is that Kevin’s right. I follow Mark Kleiman’s blogging very closely but reading his book was still hugely valuable. But my guess is that books and the internet are mostly complements. I think the internet tends to mostly crowd out reference books (which are a special case and clearly made obsolete by digital technology) and other kinds of “newsy” writing like newspaper op-eds and magazine articles. And I think that’s largely as it should be. There are good op-eds out there, but that’s primarily because good people get asked to write op-eds sometimes—there’s nothing virtuous about the format.

At any rate, if you want to be curmudgeonly about anything, I think television is still the right thing to be curmudgeonly about—just as it was fifty years ago. TV, unfortunately, is pretty awesome. And modern developments like high-definition, 300 channel digital cable, Tivo, and Netflix-on-demand make it all the more awesome. But it’s really not very informative at all. But it sure does suck you in. If televisions somehow all vanished, I bet we’d all be twice as smart within a year.

()

Politics

Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter to speak at ‘anti-Islamist’ conference.

By Amanda Terkel on May 12, 2009 at 4:46 pm

spectercl The Washington Independent’s Dave Weigel notes that on May 19, a coalition of conservative legal groups will be hosting a conference titled, “Libel Lawfare: Silencing Criticism of Radical Islam.” Here’s a description of the event:

Islamists have launched a two-pronged effort to suppress free discourse on such subjects as Islam, radical Islam, terrorism, and terrorist funding:

* By filing predatory lawsuits.
* By passing “hate speech” and defamation laws.

Victims of these “lawfare” attacks have included the famous and the obscure, politicians, journalists, analysts and plain citizens. This inhibition has great consequences, for when discussion of Islam and terrorism are limited, radical Islam is empowered and Western civilization is imperiled.

Issues to be discussed on May 19 include: A close analysis of Islamist methods; the possible need for legislation to protect free speech on these topics; a comparison of the situation in Europe and the United States; and ways to prevent the United Nations from curtailing discussion of Islam.

Speakers include Frank Gaffney, Daniel Pipes, and…Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA), who will be giving the opening speech.

()

Yglesias

Richard Posner Throwing In the Towel on the Conservative Movement

By Matthew Yglesias on May 12, 2009 at 4:44 pm

posner_richard

I actually don’t know that much about Richard Posner’s political views, being primarily familiar with his (quite good, in my opinion) more abstract and philosophical work. But he’s definitely a political conservative, a Reagan appointee, and an important product of the conservative legal movement. He also seems about done with the whole thing:

My theme is the intellectual decline of conservatism, and it is notable that the policies of the new conservatism are powered largely by emotion and religion and have for the most part weak intellectual groundings. That the policies are weak in conception, have largely failed in execution, and are political flops is therefore unsurprising. The major blows to conservatism, culminating in the election and programs of Obama, have been fourfold: the failure of military force to achieve U.S. foreign policy objectives; the inanity of trying to substitute will for intellect, as in the denial of global warming, the use of religious criteria in the selection of public officials, the neglect of management and expertise in government; a continued preoccupation with abortion; and fiscal incontinence in the form of massive budget deficits, the Medicare drug plan, excessive foreign borrowing, and asset-price inflation.

By the fall of 2008, the face of the Republican Party had become Sarah Palin and Joe the Plumber. Conservative intellectuals had no party.

And then came the financial crash last September and the ensuing depression. These unanticipated and shocking events have exposed significant analytical weaknesses in core beliefs of conservative economists concerning the business cycle and the macroeconomy generally. Friedmanite monetarism and the efficient-market theory of finance have taken some sharp hits, and there is renewed respect for the macroeconomic thought of John Maynard Kenyes, a conservatives’ bête noire.

I don’t agree with this in every detail. I don’t see a lot of evidence, for example, that the GOP’s opposition to abortion rights suddenly became a huge political loser starting in 2006. But Posner is unusual, even among the dissident camp in the conservative movement, in his willingness to acknowledge that (a) conservatism is as conservatism does and you can’t just wash your hands of George W. Bush, and (b) that the failures of conservatism-in-practice were really comprehensive across a whole swathe of different policy domains.

()

Security

Brilliant New Conservative Talking Point Revealed: No ‘Peace Dividend’

By Matt Duss on May 12, 2009 at 4:30 pm

It’s official: Accusing President Obama of trying to cash in a “peace dividend” is now a conservative talking point. Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) first floated this argument in a speech last week at the American Enterprise Institute (a place which has contributed far more than its share of bad conservative ideas.) It was then pushed by AEI’s magazine wing. Today it’s a headline in the Washington Times and parroted by Washington Post blogger Bill Kristol, who lets fly with this gem:

It’s one thing to run deficits to fight wars and defend the country. It’s another to throw money at everything except defense and to increase the national debt while skimping on defense spending over the next several years, to the point where such spending will be, by 2016, at its lowest percentage of GDP since before World War II. Is the world really the safest it has been since the 1930s? Is it responsible to declare a peace dividend when we’re not at peace?

To read this, you might think that someone had actually “declared a peace dividend,” other than conservatives attacking the idea that there is one. As conservative talking points go, charging President Obama with trying to cash in a “peace dividend” seems pretty silly, both stylistically and substantively. A peace dividend sounds like something people would really like, not something they’d hate the president for cashing in.

As for comparing defense spending in 2016 to 1930 as a function of GDP — well, let’s just say that your average eighth grade could probably explain why that’s silly. But I will use this graph which I’ve stolen from Yglesias:

As always, conservative arguments speak volumes about the esteem in which they hold their intended audience.

()

Climate Progress

What exactly is the difference between journalism and blogging? ABC’s Jake Tapper and the AP blow the “White House disses EPA endangerment finding” non-story.

By Joe Romm on May 12, 2009 at 4:17 pm

UPDATE: Talk about journalistic malpractice. Greenwire (subs. req’d, reprinted below) now reports that “Comments accusing U.S. EPA of ignoring the economic consequences of regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act that were included in a White House document publicized today were written by a Small Business Administration office headed by someone appointed by President George W. Bush.”

Seriously, what is the difference between blogging and journalism? My answer is at the end. Your comments are welcome, as always.

The climate misreporting of the day goes to ABC News’ Senior White House Correspondent Jake Tapper and the AP’s Dina Cappiello. Tapper’s blog today runs the sensational but untrue headline:

Obama Administration Memo Warns of Harm to Economy if Greenhouse Gases Regulated through Clean Air Act

Tapper then asserts, very incorrectly

The White House has not yet decided to go forward with the [endangerment] finding. There is a 60-day comment period following the finding. As part of this process, the Obama administration requested comment from various departments and agencies on the endangerment finding, which is where the memo came from.

In fact, the White House decided to go forward with the endangerment finding weeks ago. The 60-day comment period is for public comments, and the memo ain’t part of that process. But otherwise, the paragraph is spot on!

[If you want to know why I moderate this blog, read Tapper's comments.]

The AP story ran a similarly inaccurate headline:

White House memo challenges EPA finding on warming

Rather than wasting your time with any further discussion of their misreporting, let’s just see what OMB director Peter Orszag has to say. The OMB is the source of this “White House memo” and apparently journalists don’t interview sources anymore. Orszag explains on his blog: