I thought this WikiLeaked account of a meeting between Assistant Secretary for Europe Philip Gordon and several French officials was kind of fascinating. Here’s a window into what I think is the under-discussed question of the economic consequences of a war with Iran:
Levitte said that he informed the Chinese FM that if they delay [sanctioning Iran] until a possible Israeli raid, then the world will have to deal with a catastrophic energy crisis as well. At the same time, the debate over stopping the flow of gasoline into Iran will be very sensitive and would have to take into account which countries would be only too willing to step in and replace European companies. Levitte informed us that they would like President Sarkozy to talk to President Obama by telephone in the coming days to discuss the G20 and Iran. The French are proposing two possible windows to schedule the call.
Now the other issue here is what about this besides its deployment as a talking point to get China to get tougher on Iran? Does the government of France genuinely think that an Israeli attack on Iran will in fact lead to catastrophic energy crisis? Does the American government think that? Does the Israeli government think that? For all the words that have been written on the Iranian nuclear issue, I think this question remains very poorly understood.
I rag on density issues all the time, because this under-discussed subject leads to real human suffering: “One in five renters and one in seven homeowners in the Washington area spend more than half their income on housing, according to census figures, a proportion that housing experts consider a severe burden.”
There are a lot of things you can try to do to ameliorate a shortage of affordable housing, but particularly when you look at the metropolitan scale nothing will really work unless you build more housing units and in an already large metro area like Washington that means allowing more density. I talk a lot about the need to allow more density in the city proper, but an even bigger impact would be seen if we allowed more density in the geographically larger inner suburbs. That’s not to say people need to be “forced” to live in high-density structures, it’s to say that we need to curtail the current practice of restricting people’s ability to choose higher density lifestyles if that’s the pay way to achieve the balance between commute time, neighborhood amenities, housing costs, and living space that they prefer.
Several weeks ago, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) refused to accept the findings of the Pentagon’s Working Group review of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy and insisted that the Department of Defense conduct an entirely new study on “the effects on morale and battle effectiveness.” This morning, CNN’s Candy Crowley asked McCain to respond to a letter he received from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates — first obtained and published by the Wonk Room — in which Gates defended the soon-to-be released study and argued that it would provide the military sufficient information into the effect of lifting the ban on gays serving openly. “I do not believe that military policy decisions — on this or any other subject — should be made through a referendum of Servicemembers,” Gates wrote, adding, “The Chairman and I fully support the approach and the efforts of the working group, as do the Service Chiefs.”
But McCain remained undeterred. He agreed that decisions about integration should not be held hostage to the opinions of servicemembers, but then insisted that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell doesn’t pose a problem for gay soldiers or the military. He also reiterated that the Service Chiefs — three of whom publicly endorsed the study last week — are still concerned about repeal:
CROWLEY: Doesn’t [Gates] have a point?
MCCAIN: Well, I think he certainly has a point. I would also certainly say that we should remember where this all started. There was no uprising in the military, there was no problems with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. [...]
It wasn’t a problem because you didn’t have. It’s called ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ Okay? If you don’t ask somebody and they don’t tell and it’s an all volunteer force. [...] The fact is, this was a political promise made by an inexperienced President or candidate for Presidency of the United States. [...]
The fact is, that this system is working and I believe we need to assess the effect on the morale and battle effectiveness of those people, those young Marines and Army people I met.
Watch it:
Despite McCain’s assertions, multiple reports have detailed the litany of costs “incurred by the military, the troops — both gay and non-gay alike — and the nation as a result of DADT. Indeed, research and experience now show that the policy is a costly failure that has had the opposite of its intended effect. As DADT scholar Nathaniel Frank points out, far from protecting military readiness, the policy has harmed it, “sacrificing badly needed personnel that is replaced with less qualified talent; undermining cohesion, integrity, and trust through forced dishonesty; hurting the morale of gay troops by limiting their access to support services; wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars; invading the privacy of all service members—gay and non-gay alike—by casting a cloud of suspicion and uncertainty over the intimate lives of everyone in the armed forces; and damaging the military’s reputation which makes it harder to recruit the best and brightest America has to offer.”
McCain’s characterization of President Obama as “inexperienced” is particularly petty, however, since every Democratic president and presidential candidate since President Clinton has come out against the ban.
Clinton signaled that he regretted the 1993 policy in 1999 and 2000, and fully broke with it in 2003, acknowledging that “there is no evidence to support a ban on gays in the military.” He said that the country should move “toward recognizing the full citizenship of gay Americans” and characterized his own policy as one which “unfairly restricts the talent pool available to the military — and that diminishes our security.”
Yet the idea that robots on wheels or legs, with sensors and guns, might someday replace or supplement human soldiers is still a source of extreme controversy. Because robots can stage attacks with little immediate risk to the people who operate them, opponents say that robot warriors lower the barriers to warfare, potentially making nations more trigger-happy and leading to a new technological arms race.
“Wars will be started very easily and with minimal costs” as automation increases, predicted Wendell Wallach, a scholar at the Yale Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics and chairman of its technology and ethics study group.
Singer’s calm exposition, however, does not conceal the alarming substance of his book. Perhaps the most disturbing truth is that a book about military applications of robotics is largely coextensive with a book about robotics in the United States. Singer alludes to the fact that the world leader in robotics is Japan, where technological prowess is used to do productive work on behalf of a skilled but aging population. There robots are “used for everything from farming and construction to nursing and elder care” in a country that contains “about a third of all the world’s industrial robots.” In the U.S., by contrast, civilian applications of robots remain relatively primitive. The field is dominated by defense-oriented research funding and competition for large defense-related government contracts. Perhaps the most notable American civilian robot is the Roomba, a sort of semi-intelligent vacuum cleaner. But even this is made by a firm, iRobot, that has extensive defense contracts for its PackBot and other military robots.
Shunting such a large proportion of our talented engineers into dreaming up more clever ways to engage in misguided military adventures seems to me to be a policy that’s going to end up leaving a lot of useful ideas on the table. If you took the funds currently appropriated for specialized high-tech defense procurement and put some of them into basic research funding and gave some of them back to the private sector, we’d be on the road to higher productivity.
Dr Matt Palmer, an ocean observations specialist at the Met Office, said: “It is clear from the observational evidence across a wide range of indicators that the world is warming. As well as a clear increase in air temperature observed above both the land and sea, we see observations which are all consistent with increasing greenhouse gases.”
The blockbuster news from the UK’s Met Office is that they’ve reviewed the global temperature data and concluded that the apparent slow down in the rate of global warming (as measured by surface temperatures) may not be real. It may largely be an artifact of “changes to sea-surface temperature measurement practices” along with “strong warming in the Arctic “” where there are fewer observations.”
I’ll do a post on that Monday, but here’s the overview of the full analysis by the Met[eorological] Office (part of the Defence Ministry) of long and short-term climate trends:
As Congress prepares to take up extension of the Bush tax cuts during its lame duck session, Republican lawmakers have been unanimous in demanding that the cuts for the richest two percent of Americans be extended, claiming they are necessary for economic growth and that tax cuts (miraculously) pay for themselves.
While independent economists have shown these arguments to be false, today on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, President Reagan’s former budget director took on his own party for pushing this faulty logic. David Stockman, who led the all-important Office of Management and Budget under Reagan and was a chief architect of his fiscal policy, criticized today’s GOP for misreading Reagan’s legacy by adopting a “theology” of tax cuts. Stockman has spoken outbefore, but took perhaps his strongest stance yet against his own party today, saying “I’ll never forgive the Bush administration” for “destroying the last vestige of fiscal responsibility that we had in the Republican Party.” He also broke with Republican orthodoxy on a number of key issues:
– We need “a higher tax burden on the upper income.”
– “After 1985, the Republican Party adopted the idea that tax cuts can solve the whole problem, and that therefore in the future, deficits didn’t matter and tax cuts would be the solution of first, second, and third resort.”
– The 2001 Bush tax cut “was totally not needed.”
– On claims that Reagan proved tax cuts lead to higher government revenues: “Reagan proved nothing of the kind and yet that became the mantra and it just led the Republican Party away from its traditional sound money, fiscal restraint.”
– Former Vice President Cheney “should have known better” than claim the Bush tax cuts would pay for themselves.
– “I’ll never forgive the Bush administration and Paulson for basically destroying the last vestige of fiscal responsibility that we had in the Republican Party. After that, I don’t know how we ever make the tough choices.”
I think this is a pretty confused discussion of Hispanic voting patterns from Lamar Smith:
Exit polls reported by CNN and updated this week reveal that a historically robust 38 percent of Hispanic voters cast ballots for House Republican candidates in 2010 – more than in 2006 (30 percent) and 2008 (29 percent). In fact, since 1984, Republican House candidates have only won a higher percentage of the Hispanic vote in one election: 2004. This level of Hispanic support for Republican candidates came despite widespread pre-election claims by advocates for illegal immigration that the Arizona law and a pro-rule-of-law stand would undercut Hispanic support for Republicans.
All we’re seeing here is that Latino support for the GOP moves up and down, just as white support does. 2010 was a better year for Republicans among all demographic sub-groups, and Hispanics are no exception. But it’s possible to look at the evolution of the white/Latino voting gap over time. In 2004, when I don’t think there was a clear partisan difference on immigration, Republican House candidates did 13 percentage points better with white voters than with Latino voters. By 2006, it was a 21 point gap. In 2008 that expanded to a 24 point gap. And in 2010 it was a 22 point gap. The hypothesis that the creation of this gap was driven by the opening up of a partisan difference on immigration strikes me as plausible and at any rate isn’t debunked by merely citing the fact that the overall level of Latino support for the GOP fluctuates with general political conditions.
Several weeks ago, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) refused to accept the findings of the Pentagon’s Working Group review of the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy and insisted that the Department of Defense conduct an entirely new study on “the effects on morale and battle effectiveness.” This morning, CNN’s Candy Crowley asked McCain to respond to a letter he received from Secretary of Defense Robert Gates — first obtained and published by the Wonk Room — in which Gates defended the soon-to-be released study and argued that it would provide the military sufficient information into the effect of lifting the ban on gays serving openly. “I do not believe that military policy decisions — on this or any other subject — should be made through a referendum of Servicemembers,” Gates wrote, adding, “The Chairman and I fully support the approach and the efforts of the working group, as do the Service Chiefs.”
But McCain remained undeterred. He agreed that decisions about integration should not be held hostage to the opinions of servicemembers, but then insisted that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell doesn’t pose a problem for gay soldiers or the military. He also reiterated that the Service Chiefs — three of whom publicly endorsed the study last week — are still concerned about repeal:
CROWLEY: Doesn’t [Gates] have a point?
MCCAIN: Well, I think he certainly has a point. I would also certainly say that we should remember where this all started. There was no uprising in the military, there was no problems with Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. [...]
It wasn’t a problem because you didn’t have. It’s called ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’ Okay? If you don’t ask somebody and they don’t tell and it’s an all volunteer force. [...] The fact is, this was a political promise made by an inexperienced President or candidate for Presidency of the United States. [...]
The fact is, that this system is working and I believe we need to assess the effect on the morale and battle effectiveness of those people, those young Marines and Army people I met…
Watch it:
Despite McCain’s assertions, multiple reports have detailed the litany of costs “incurred by the military, the troops — both gay and non-gay alike — and the nation as a result of DADT. Indeed, research and experience now show that the policy is a costly failure that has had the opposite of its intended effect. As DADT scholar Nathaniel Frank points out, far from protecting military readiness, the policy has harmed it, “sacrificing badly needed personnel that is replaced with less qualified talent; undermining cohesion, integrity, and trust through forced dishonesty; hurting the morale of gay troops by limiting their access to support services; wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars; invading the privacy of all service members—gay and non-gay alike—by casting a cloud of suspicion and uncertainty over the intimate lives of everyone in the armed forces; and damaging the military’s reputation which makes it harder to recruit the best and brightest America has to offer.”
McCain’s characterization of President Obama as “inexperienced” is particularly petty, however, since every Democratic president and presidential candidate since President Clinton has come out against the ban.
Clinton signaled that he regretted the 1993 policy in 1999 and 2000, and fully broke with it in 2003, acknowledging that “there is no evidence to support a ban on gays in the military.” He said that the country should move “toward recognizing the full citizenship of gay Americans” and characterized his own policy as one which “unfairly restricts the talent pool available to the military — and that diminishes our security.”
Update
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) made a very similar argument on Fox News Sunday, as Sam Stein reports:
“This is a political promise made by Senator Obama when he was running for president,” said Graham, during an appearance on Fox News Sunday. “There is no groundswell of opposition to Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell coming from our military. This is all politics. I don’t believe there is anywhere near the votes to repeal Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. On the Republican side, I think we will be united in the lame duck [session] and the study I would be looking for is asking military members: Should it be repealed, not how to implement it once you as a politician decide to repeal it. So I think in a lame duck setting Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is not going anywhere.”
I saw a very interesting exhibit on kitchens yesterday at MOMA that included this poster from a 1930 show in Basel of then-state of the art kitchen technology.
Among other things, it really had a way of putting the current era of technological progress in perspective. There was a time, in the not so distant past, when even in the richest countries on earth cooking food required the splitting of wood and the setting of fires. Between that and hand-washing clothes, the banal aspects of domestic life all entailed incredible quantities of manual labor that here in the developed world we’ve completely left behind. Something like the iPhone is a mighty cool gadget, but I think the digital technology that’s advancing rapidly these days just pales in comparison to some of the changes of a century ago in terms of really transforming people’s lives.
Brad DeLong’s talk on the failure of macroeconomic stabilization policy in the current crisis is excellent. One point I would make that he misses in his catalog of errors is that it should have been possible in 2009 to write a budget that included reconciliation instructions for possible additions to or subtractions from ARRA according to economic developments. This would have made it possible to enact more stimulus with 50 votes once it became clear that the unemployment rate was going to go higher than had been initially realized.
