Never Let a Good Headline Go to Waste

By Matthew Yglesias on Jan 1, 2011 at 6:14 pm

McKay Coppins has a story in Newsweek arguing that former Utah Governor and current Ambassador to Beijing Jon Huntsman will run for President in 2012. James Fallows, sensibly, isn’t buying it:

Huntsman is part of the Obama Administration. He is right in the middle of dealings with America’s most important foreign-policy partner/challenge. So in the GOP Primaries, how exactly is he going to out-Obama anyone else in the field, given that he has served Obama (and, yes, the country) so loyally? The retorts from all the other Republicans are almost too easy. “If Ambassssadorrr Huntsman is so concerned about the Obama threat to America, then why,…?”

And if he got through that process, he would run against his current commander-in-chief …. how? And why? What is the issue of principle so important that it compels him to challenge Obama’s continuation in office, but has not justified any disagreement while he’s serving now? “Huntsman 2016″ would be a very logical inference from his current position. “Huntsman 2012″ would require suspension of basic laws of politics and common sense.

Quite so. That said “The Manchurian Candidate” is an excellent headline for an article about the hypothetical presidential campaign of an ambassador to China. So on those grounds alone I think you have to run with the story. Second, I do think that if you look at the history of Republican presidential nominees there’s something to be said for getting in the game and running even if the time isn’t right. Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush, and John McCain all ran and lost before they got the nomination.

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Yglesias

The Road Ahead

By Matthew Yglesias on Jan 1, 2011 at 4:29 pm

Krugman notes that we’d have to start doing something wildly different to get to full employment any time soon: “[S]uppose that from here on out we average 4.5 percent growth, which is way above any forecast I’ve seen. Even at that rate, unemployment would be close to 8 percent at the end of 2012, and wouldn’t get below 6 percent until midway through Sarah Palin’s first term.”

With regard to the Palin administration, it’s always worth noting that rates of change matter more than levels. Ronald Reagan won a landslide re-election on the strength of a nearly 7.5% unemployment rate so there’s no reason Barack Obama couldn’t win with 8 percent. In narrowly political terms, the problem is that the odds of doing even that well don’t look so great.

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Politics

Chris Christie Defends Florida Vacation During Blizzard: ‘A Great Five Days’

By George Zornick on Jan 1, 2011 at 1:50 pm

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie (R) has received heavy criticism from residents and lawmakers for leaving the state, along with the Lt. Governor, during the fifth-largest blizzard in New Jersey’s history. Yesterday, Christie defended his vacation as “a great five days.”

“I would have been doing the same thing here as I would have been there,” Christie said. “I would have been in a room someplace. I would not have been out, like, driving a plow.” The governor also dismissed a question about trapped residents and attacked some New Jersey mayors:

When asked about the hundreds of people trapped in their homes for days, Christie said unless they lived on state roads, it’s not something his administration would have been able to change.

“If someone is snowed into their house, that’s not our responsibility,” Christie said.

When asked about mayors who said they were forced to divert their resources to unplowed state roads instead of clearing local roads Christie said, “I know who these mayors are and they should buck up and take responsibility for the fact that they didn’t do their job.”

Some residents did not appreciate Christie’s vacation, however. “I think this was his first priority. I mean, I’m all for everybody going away and having a vacation. He’s entitled to that, just like any of us, but…this storm really debilitated the whole state,” one man told CBS New York.

Today, 95 percent of the roads in New Jersey are clear. Over 550 trapped vehicles had to be removed from roads, and Christie is requesting funds from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help pay for what he says is a state of disaster in 13 counties.

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Politics

Chief Justice Roberts Calls for End to Senate Obstruction of Judges

By Ian Millhiser on Jan 1, 2011 at 12:52 pm

Nearly one in nine federal judgeships are currently vacant, a vacancy rate that is leaving many courts barely able to function. Indeed, the problem has become so severe that Republican Chief Justice John Roberts used his annual year-end report on the federal judiciary to call upon the Senate to end this logjam:

Over many years, however, a persistent problem has developed in the process of filling judicial vacancies. Each political party has found it easy to turn on a dime from decrying to defending the blocking of judicial nominations, depending on their changing political fortunes. This has created acute difficulties for some judicial districts. Sitting judges in those districts have been burdened with extraordinary caseloads. I am heartened that the Senate recently filled a number of district and circuit court vacancies, including one in the Eastern District of California, one of the most severely burdened districts. There remains, however, an urgent need for the political branches to find a long-term solution to this recurring problem.

Roberts’ pox-on-both-your-houses comparison between the two political parties is unfortunate, because it obscures the very partisan explanation for the present vacancy crisis.

While Senate Democrats did unsuccessfully attempt to block a handful of President Bush’s most radical nominees — including one woman who compared liberalism to “slavery” and Social Security to a “socialist revolution,” and another who took thousands of dollars worth of campaign contributions from Enron and then wrote a key opinion reducing Enron’s taxes by $15 million when she sat on the Texas Supreme Court — neither political party has ever waged the sustained and indiscriminate campaign of obstruction the Senate GOP is presently waging against President Obama’s judges. As a result of this unprecedented campaign, Obama has the lowest judicial confirmation rate of any recent president:

Nevertheless, the Chief Justice’s call for an end to Senate obstruction of judges is welcome. In 1997, when Republican Chief Justice William Rehnquist criticized the Republican-controlled Senate for blocking President Clinton’s nominees, his rebuke shamed the Senate into nearly doubling its confirmation rate the next year. Hopefully, Roberts’ rebuke will yield a similar response.

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Yglesias

Decline is a Choice

By Matthew Yglesias on Jan 1, 2011 at 12:30 pm

I don’t think large real reductions in basic science and R&D are going to benefit America over the long haul, do you?

Alan Leshner, CEO of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, told the AFP news agency that the spending cuts could translate into a five to ten percent cut in research and development in the science sector for fiscal years 2011 and 2012.

“One big fear is that one version of the Republican agenda suggested bringing funding back to 2008 levels and that for science would be catastrophic,” said Leshner. “These kinds of budget cuts work against the ultimate national goals of restoring the US economy and its international prowess.”

Nearly all “competitor countries, including India, China and Korea, are increasing investments in science and engineering research, development, and education,” he added. “US funding looks like it could be heading the opposite direction.”

Don’t buy the “competitor countries” argument too much (though it may be useful for scaring House members), increased Asian spending on these things will have spillover benefits for the USA. But it’s absolutely perverse to respond to a cyclical downturn in economic activity by curtailing useful investments in long-term acquisition of knowledge. That’s how a pothole turns into a “car spinning out of control” scenario.

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Yglesias

Parking and Barber Regulation, Together at Last

By Matthew Yglesias on Jan 1, 2011 at 10:29 am

Here’s a little slice of life from Omaha (PDF) where city officials are evaluating a man’s plan to cut other people’s hair in exchange for money in a property he owns:

It looks like this story is going to have a happy ending and the man will get his permission, but for the millionth time this isn’t something that needs regulating. Land is a valuable commodity. And ability to park one’s car is also valuable. Property owners in any given area are perfectly capable of evaluating what portion of land should be dedicated to parking based on the market demand for parking relative to the demand for other uses of land. Mandating more parking than the market demands is bad for the environment, bad for economic growth, and constitutes a regressive transfer from poor to the non-poor. I was very glad to see one New York Times column dedicated to this issue in 2010 and in 2011 I’m looking forward to hounding the mass media into paying more attention than that.