Ton visage sur mon magazine:
— Important new developments in sports bra science.
— “The Boom Not the Slump — The Right Time for Austerity”.
— Good advice.
— Bimodal distribution of lawyers’ compensation.
— Nenad Krstic arrested on charges of too-few vowels.
Malajube, “Montréal -40º C”
Something to add to the growing “what’s Obama done wrong” literature and the “what’s wrong with the ‘what’s Obama don’t wrong’ literature” literature is that too often these discussions seem to me to forget that the United States Congress is composed of free and equal human beings who are responsible for their own actions. For example, it may or may not be the case that a different approach on the part of Barack Obama or his staff would have caused Ben Nelson to do different things low these past several months, but it’s absolutely certain that had Nelson wanted to do different things that different things would have happened.
Given that to err is human, I think we can take it for granted that some errors existed in the White House’s approach to legislative negotiations. But it’s also clear that members have their own volition. A skeptical Blanche Lincoln could have responded to the $800 billion stimulus request by asking Barack Obama “what does Christina Romer think? will this really fill the output gap?” Vulnerable House members could have challenged Rahm Emannuel “if things turn out to be worse than you guys expect, we’re all going to lose in the midterms—wouldn’t it be more prudent to build in provisions for additional stimulus if necessary?” The members who insisted on exempting auto dealerships from the jurisdiction of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau could have said “you know what, Michael Barr is right, this doesn’t make any sense; we should do the right thing and tell the dealers to stop whining.”
Which is just to say that in a lot of respects members of congress seem to me to benefit from the soft bigotry of low expectations. Nobody really expects them to do the right thing or to ask smart questions or to listen to experts rather than engage in random acts of political posturing. So when they do bad stuff, we blame the White House for not doing a better job of preventing them from doing bad stuff. And fair enough—dealing with congress is an important part of the job. But you also do need to blame the people who are doing the bad deeds.
Yesterday, ThinkProgress climate editor Brad Johnson reported on The Wonk Room that big oil giant BP has been engaged in a “massive greenwashing campaign, which includes months of full-page advertisements in national and regional newspapers, radio spots, television commercials, and Internet ads on websites including ThinkProgress.org.” Pursuant to Johnson’s posting, BP has decided to pull its ads from ThinkProgress.
Here’s what happened. BP purchased advertising on ThinkProgress through Common Sense Media, our outside ad company. Common Sense Media services a whole network of liberal sites, including Firedoglake, Crooks and Liars, AmericaBlog, Eschaton, and others.
BP has an agreement with Common Sense Media to be notified about blog postings that are critical of its advertising campaign, and BP reserves the right to pull ads if they are offended by the posts. ThinkProgress was aware that BP would in fact be notified of our post. Nevertheless, we felt the story of BP’s massive ad campaign was an important issue that deserved attention on our blog.
Today, our ad provider notified ThinkProgress that BP has asked that all its ads on the ThinkProgress sites (TP, Yglesias, and Wonk Room) be pulled through the end of their campaign.
When I informed the ThinkProgress community in Aug. 2008 that we were introducing one paid advertising spot on our site, I stated: “Please rest assured that our advertisers will have absolutely no bearing on determining or influencing what we do or don’t write about.” The commitment, of course, cost us some advertising money from BP in the short-run. But the cost for maintaining our long-term credibility, our progressive identity, and your readership is well worth it.
Via Mark Thoma, Daniel Little offers a short but sweet account of how far contemporary America falls short of the Rawlsian ideal of a “property owning democracy.”
Consider immigration. Immigration exacerbates inequality among the native born, but makes most Americans better off, and of course makes immigrants better-off. Best possible policy response, according to me and according to Rawls, is to let immigrants come and do redistributive taxation. But what’s second-best? According to me, you let the immigrants in anyway. After all, most people benefit and the interests of the immigrants themselves are very relevant here—they’re much poorer than anyone in America. According to Rawls, however, for some reason the interests of Mexicans don’t count unless Mexico falls beneath some kind of threshold of humanitarian subsistence. That doesn’t make sense to me.
Of course I’m not the first person to disagree with Rawls on this point about the interests of foreigners and global aspects of international justice. But I think that the people who think about these things on a philosophical level are sometimes not paying attention to the interplay of foreign and domestic aspects of international policy. Or then think about the interplay of these concerns with intergenerational ones.
I think that if we look at the world as a whole over the past 30 years, we see a clear reduction in inequality of living standards thanks to economic growth in China and India and increased political liberty in Latin America and Eastern Europe. The big dark cloud is that we also see a frightening—and growing—risk of environmental disaster.
Reading today’s Quartet statement on resumption of direct talks, it’s worth noting that, while Prime Minister Netanyahu was successful in avoiding a complete reiteration of the Quartet’s March statement emphasizing Israel’s settlement obligations, as President Mahmoud Abbas wanted, Abbas also got a reference to 1967 (though notably not a reference to those borders as a basis for negotiaton) that he wanted, and which Netanyahu had resisted:
The Quartet reaffirms its full commitment to its previous statements, including in Trieste on 26 June 2009, in New York on 24 September 2009, and its statement in Moscow on 19 March 2010 which provides that direct, bilateral negotiations that resolve all final status issues should “lead to a settlement, negotiated between the parties, that ends the occupation which began in 1967 and results in the emergence of an independent, democratic, and viable Palestinian state living side by side in peace and security with Israel and its other neighbors.
Speaking to the press after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s announcement of the resumption of talks, Special Envoy George Mitchell said that the administration believed a peace agreement “can be done within a year, and that is our objective.”
Mitchell also restated the importance of achieving a peace agreement not only to the Israelis and Palestinians, but also as a key U.S. interest “in terms of dealing with other conflicts in the region.” This was a clear reference to the “linkage” concept that has informed much of the administration’s approach, but which is still resisted by many conservatives who contend that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is unrelated to other U.S. challenges in the Middle East.
As Pakistan continues to be ravaged by “the worst floods in its history,” it is desperately in need of continued international assistance. Most of the international response to Pakistan has been focused on aid, with the U.S. leading the way by donating $150 million to the disaster relief effort. While increasing aid to Pakistan is important, there is another way the United States can help the people of Pakistan that wouldn’t require giving a single taxpayer dime to the country.
The United States currently imposes an average 17 percent tariff on textile products like cotton pants and shirts from Pakistan. This tariff imposes a significant strain on an industry that is crucial to Pakistan’s economy. 3.5 million Pakistanis are employed in the textile sector, and comprise 40 percent of urban factory jobs. Textiles and apparels account for 60 percent “of Pakistan’s total exports.” $3 billion worth of these textile goods went to the United States last year.
The Wall Street Journal talked to one textile company owner, Rana Hassan Sajjad, who viewed lowering the tariff as more important than receiving more foreign aid:
Umer Apparel Ltd., a Faisalabad company that exports $15 million in goods to the U.S. annually, including brands like American Eagle and Aeropostale, has laid off almost a fifth of its work force of 1,500 and is running at only three-quarters of capacity, says its chief executive, Rana Hassan Sajjad. [...]
“It would help if they would lower the tariff,” said textile company owner Mr. Sajjad. “Being an owner of a company, do I benefit from aid? No. I don’t know what the government is doing with the money. They are not spending it on us.”
The paper estimates that eliminating these tariffs on Pakistani textiles would “boost the nation’s textile exports by $5 billion annually,” meaning that simply eliminating this punitive tariff would provide 33 times more money to Pakistanis than all flood aid given by the United States so far — and it would all be done without spending a single taxpayer dollar.
Last year, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would allow for “Reconstruction Opportunity Zones” (ROZs) that would create special trade zones for Pakistanis manufacture and develop textile goods that were not subject to tariffs. Unfortunately, as the New York Times editorialized, it “was so hemmed in with protectionist limits that it was almost worthless.” And the Senate has failed to pass even this watered-down bill “because Republicans have objected to sound language in the House bill endorsing basic international labor standards for Pakistani export workers.” That is an extreme position to hold, given that Pakistan’s weak labor enforcement has made many labor rights advocates skeptical of the use of ROZs in the country because the labor standards would not be tough enough.
A better idea would be for Congress to lower or simply eliminate, country-wide, the tariffs the United States has imposed on Pakistani textile products. Doing so would add billions of dollars to the Pakistani economy and help Pakistanis help themselves with their own hard work and ingenuity.
In comments on some of the Song of Ice and Fire posts, folks suggested having a book club over here. I’d read something at a reasonable pace, write a series of substantive posts about it, and open up discussion. Are people interested? I had a huge amount of fun with that series, and would happily taken on another series or book that y’all either thought I should read, or would enjoy having a discussion space for. If you’d want in, chime in with recommendations in comments, and I’ll set up a poll next week to determine what we should start with. If you guys want to do this, that is.
Since the passage of Arizona’s tough new immigration law, its defenders have justified SB-1070 by claiming that Phoenix, AZ is the “kidnapping capital of the world.” Though that claim was immediately dismissed by experts, the 358 kidnappings the Phoenix Police Department reported in 2008 is quite high when compared to other surrounding areas. Sgt. Phil Roberts, who worked kidnapping investigations for Phoenix, is now alleging that the Phoenix Police Department is “inflating its kidnapping numbers, possibly to get federal stimulus money.”
According to Roberts, only 20 to 30 “traditional” kidnappings occurred in Phoenix in 2008 — a range which more closely resembles that of surrounding cities. “Traditional” kidnappings are defined by procedures such as monitoring phone calls, money drops and apprehension or attempted apprehension of kidnappers. Roberts believes the inflation occurred as a result of procedural errors and duplicate reports. “Despite this understanding of how kidnapping statistics were being falsely inflated,” he wrote in an August 13th memo, “others would later push and tout these numbers to the news media and eventually to the United States Congress.” KPHO reports that the Phoenix Police Department’s own records “describe 59 of those 358 reports as ‘incident information only,’ and states that those reports ‘should be excluded from the count of kidnapping incidents.’”
Mark Spencer, President of the Phoenix Law Enforcement Association (PLEA) is standing by Roberts’ claims. “Frequently when you work with the federal government as long as the problem persists the money keeps flowing,” explained Spencer. “The bigger the problem, the more money you get.”
Watch local coverage:
Nonetheless, the Phoenix Police Department denies Roberts’ and PLEA’s allegations. “If it’s a kidnapping, it’s a kidnapping and that’s what we count as a kidnapping,” stated Sgt. Tommy Thompson. Ironically, Roberts actually cited the same kidnapping figures he now disputes in an interview with ABC News for a report broadcast in February 2009. And despite PLEA’s claims that the kidnapping numbers are fudged and that the kidnapping problem is not as bad as it has been made out to be, they are still strong supporters of Arizona’s controversial immigration law.
Linda McMahon, the Republican senate nominee in Connecticut, is selling herself as the consummate business woman, thanks to her years as an executive with World Wrestling Entertainment. But if her appearance last night on CNBC is any indication, McMahon is a little unclear about how much money the typical small business owner is earning. CNBC’s supply-side devotee Larry Kudlow asked McMahon for her position on allowing the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest two percent of Americans to expire, and McMahon used the standard Republican argument that permitting the expiration would cause a tax increase on small businesses:
The fallacy Larry, and you know this as well as anyone, it’s not just that top marginal tax rate that’s going to affect the wealthy, it’s going to affect small businesses. I’ve started as a Subchapter S corporation, and so when you increase that top marginal tax rate, if it goes from 35 to 39.6 percent, you know, that’s going to be a big dig for small businesses. And as I talk to small businesses all over the state of Connecticut, they’re telling me, ‘look, I’m not going to grow. I’m not going to go over that level. I’ll lay somebody off, I won’t take that next job, I can’t work any harder, and I’m just not going to work any more for the government.’
Watch it:
The fact remains that fewer than two percent of small businesses and less than three percent of people with any business income whatsoever will see a tax increase if the top two income tax brackets reset to the 2001 level, as President Obama has proposed. As The Wonk Room explained, small businesses are actually hesitant to hire because of weak economic conditions and lack of demand, not the political climate as McMahon claims. McMahon herself, who holds personal assets worth anywhere from $156 million to $400 million, would face higher tax rates if the tax cuts for the rich expire, but the same can’t be said for the vast majority of small business owners.
![MPj04092680000[1].262132442_std 1](http://yglesias.thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/08/MPj040926800001.262132442_std-1.jpeg "MPj04092680000[1].262132442_std 1")
MB writes in to ask what I think of bar exams, and the answer is: not much. More generally, I think we ought to have a much freer market in legal services. As Dean Baker memorably put it “The ‘free-trade’ crew want to have a single set of standards for all forms of merchandise traded all over the world, but it has apparently escaped their attention that a lawyer from New York can’t practice across the river in New Jersey.”
It hasn’t escaped my attention! I just think we shouldn’t cling to this as a hypocrisy talking point. If someone in New Jersey wants to hire a New York lawyer to represent him in some matter, that should be between them. If a bunch of New Jersey lawyers want to form a membership organization called the New Jersey Bar Association and give people a test that you need to pass in order to call yourself a New Jersey Bar Association Certified Lawyer more power to them. But for them to get the project off the ground, they’d have to do something to turn the test into some kind of reliable indicator of quality. If you look at actual behavior of law firms, they don’t seem to indicate current bar exams in this light—you don’t need to pass the bar to get hired by a major firm out of law school. Similarly, I get that New Jersey and New York have different laws. But New York has different laws in 2010 than it had in 1990 and yet there’s no requirement that you need to retake the bar exam to check if you’ve been up to speed.
In general the failure to re-test incumbents is a good sign point that you’re looking at an arbitrary barrier to entry rather than a real indicator of quality. I’m not sure how big a deal this particular brand of licensing abuse actually is since I don’t get the sense that inadequate supply of lawyers is driving any particularly pressing social problems. A lot of lower-end legal services does, however, seem like it would be amenable to outsourcing to foreign clerical workers and I understand that there’s already a trend in this direction.
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