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Yglesias

Why Context Matters

By Matthew Yglesias on Mar 18, 2011 at 7:50 pm

So I guess I agree with Jon Chait that the fact that the US isn’t using its influence over the Saudi or Bahraini governments to halt the killing of non-violent protestors there isn’t a reason to decline to intervene in Libya. Similarly, the fact that we’re not using our influence over the Yemeni government isn’t a reason not to intervene in Libya. Nor is the fact that we’re declining to deploy our military to restrain civil conflicts in Congo or Chad or Cote D’Ivoire exactly a reason not to intervene in Libya. And by the same token, the fact that the invasion of Iraq turned into a costly and bloody fiasco doesn’t show that intervening in Libya is futile. Nor does the mere fact that American public policy is utterly indifferent to the interests and human rights of Palestinian Arabs mean an intervention in Libya is unworkable. Nor does the fact that our most recent military incursion into Africa led to the total destabilization of Somalia have any particular bearing on the merits of no-fly zone in Libya.

But there’s a question of context here. Chait says: “Should we also spend more money to prevent malaria? Yes, we should. But I see zero reason to believe that not intervening in Libya would lead to an increase in in American assistance to prevent malaria.”

And of course that’s true too. But all this context is relevant as an indictment of the elite leadership class of the United States of America. If everyone cares as much about the political rights of Arabs as Libya interventionists say, then what on earth are they doing in Bahrain and Yemen and Palestine? If everyone cares as much about the loss of innocent African life as Libya interventionists say, then what on earth are they doing ponying up so little in foreign aid and doing so little to dismantle ruinous cotton subsidies? These aren’t really points about Libya. And why should they be? What do I know about Libya? What does Chait know about Libya? These are points about the United States of America and the various elites who run the country and shape the discourse. Exactly the kinds of subjects that frequent participants in American political debates know and care about. I see no particular reason to think that Libya will have any impact on malaria funding, but I do think the level of malaria funding is impacted over the long term by the existence of a substantial number of people (of which Chait is one) who seem to advocate for humanitarian goals in Africa if and only if those goals can be advanced through the use of military force to kill other Africans.

So I hope this Libya policy works out. I have my doubts, but who knows. The world is full of surprises. I do know, however, that providing more bed nets to prevent malaria would be cheap and logistically simple compared to deposing Gaddafi and that the easiest step America could take to deal a blow to Arab autocracy would be to stop selling weapons to Arab autocrats that they turn around and fire on their people.

Health

New Hampshire House Approves Tax Cut On Cancer-Causing Cigarettes, Cuts Health And Education Funding

By Guest Blogger on Mar 18, 2011 at 6:40 pm

In a flurry of legislative activity this week, the New Hampshire House approved a tax cut on cigarettes even while cutting funding for education, and health care. The ten cent tax cut bucks a national trend of raising taxes on tobacco since “forever” and, according to multiple studies, could lead to a 6.6 percent increase in respiratory cancer deaths.

Republican lawmakers claim that the tax cut, which the New Hampshire chapter of the Koch-funded front group Americans for Prosperity strongly pushed for, will attract out-of-state smokers and raise revenue in the “long run.” Yet a spokesman for Gov. John Lynch (D) notes that the state already has the second-lowest tax burden in the nation. And with rising gas prices, the odds of smokers driving to New Hampshire for their cigarettes are slim.

Instead lawmakers have chosen to weaken an extremely effective policy tool: cigarette taxes not only reduce smoking but help limit underage smoking, exposure to second-hand smoke, and related health care costs. The tax cut is just one part of a legislative agenda that New Hampshire Republicans pushed through this week that cuts programs that keep Main Street healthy and strong:

-Yesterday, The House’s powerful Finance Committee moved forward on legislation that would cause mass layoffs of physicians and nurses and result in more than 12,000 people, including 500 to 800 children, losing their health care coverage.

-Wednesday, the House approved a bill freezing funding for schools.

-Tuesday, lawmakers approved a bill that “removes compulsory school attendance for children.”

-The Republican-controlled Senate approved pension-reform legislation that increases health care costs and raises the retirement age for public workers.

-House members passed an amendment to the state Constitution “to bypass a Supreme Court decision ordering the state to pay for the cost of an adequate education for every public schoolchild.”

Last week at a public hearing, the state’s Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson called the recent legislation “a stubborn or selfish unwillingness by us, the privileged, to tighten our own belts for the good of our fellow citizens who are truly in need.” While similar cigarette tax cut bills have stalled in New Jersey and Rhode Island, Republicans hold veto-proof majorities in both the Senate and the House, limiting the state’s Democratic governor and progressive lawmakers ability to de-rail the legislation.

Instead, it’s been left to the state’s Main Street Movement — a coalition of business leaders, union workers, social justice advocates and religious leaders — to stand up against the legislature’s right-wing agenda in public hearings and in demonstrations across the state.

– Kevin Donohoe

Politics

New Hampshire House Approves Tax Cut On Cancer-Causing Cigarettes, Cuts Health And Education Funding

By Guest Blogger on Mar 18, 2011 at 6:40 pm

In a flurry of legislative activity this week, the New Hampshire House approved a tax cut on cigarettes even while cutting funding for education, and health care. The ten cent tax cut bucks a national trend of raising taxes on tobacco since “forever” and, according to multiple studies, could lead to a 6.6 percent increase in respiratory cancer deaths.

Republican lawmakers claim that the tax cut, which the New Hampshire chapter of the Koch-funded front group Americans for Prosperity strongly pushed for, will attract out-of-state smokers and raise revenue in the “long run.” Yet a spokesman for Gov. John Lynch (D) notes that the state already has the second-lowest tax burden in the nation. And with rising gas prices, the odds of smokers driving to New Hampshire for their cigarettes are slim.

Instead lawmakers have chosen to weaken an extremely effective policy tool: cigarette taxes not only reduce smoking but help limit underage smoking, exposure to second-hand smoke, and related health care costs. The tax cut is just one part of a legislative agenda that New Hampshire Republicans pushed through this week that cuts programs that keep Main Street healthy and strong:

– Yesterday, The House’s powerful Finance Committee moved forward on legislation that would cause mass layoffs of physicians and nurses and result in more than 12,000 people, including 500 to 800 children, losing their health care coverage.

– Wednesday, the House approved a bill freezing funding for schools.

– Tuesday, lawmakers approved a bill that “removes compulsory school attendance for children.”

– The Republican-controlled Senate approved pension-reform legislation that increases health care costs and raises the retirement age for public workers.

– House members passed an amendment to the state Constitution “to bypass a Supreme Court decision ordering the state to pay for the cost of an adequate education for every public schoolchild.”

Last week at a public hearing, the state’s Episcopal Bishop V. Gene Robinson called the recent legislation “a stubborn or selfish unwillingness by us, the privileged, to tighten our own belts for the good of our fellow citizens who are truly in need.” While similar cigarette tax cut bills have stalled in New Jersey and Rhode Island, Republicans hold veto-proof majorities in both the Senate and the House, limiting the state’s Democratic governor and progressive lawmakers ability to de-rail the legislation.

Instead, it’s been left to the state’s Main Street Movement — a coalition of business leaders, union workers, social justice advocates and religious leaders — to stand up against the legislature’s right-wing agenda in public hearings and in demonstrations across the state.

– Kevin Donohoe

Yglesias

Endgame

By Matthew Yglesias on Mar 18, 2011 at 6:29 pm

Il m’a tenu chaud:

— Nukes or renewables: maybe we do have to choose.

— “One of the major reasons that there’s such a radical population shift is that central Texas is changing from arid grassland to uninhabitable desert”.

— 42 percent of DC’s land is in the Northwest “quadrant.”

— Local busybodies worried about “towering” five story buildings coming in across the street.

— Where the different Obamaland players came down on Libya.

Almost as good as March Madness, it’s Stereolab “Munich Madness”.

Economy

Gov. Scott’s Version Of ‘Fair Taxes’: Regressive Personal Taxes And No Corporate Tax

By Pat Garofalo on Mar 18, 2011 at 5:45 pm

Like many Republican governors, Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL) has released a budget that lays off thousands of state workers and slashes education and Medicaid funding, but still cuts Florida’s already low corporate income tax rate by two and a half percentage points. During an interview with CNBC’s Larry Kudlow last night (which didn’t air, but was posted online), Scott defended his budgeting moves, saying that his cut in the corporate income tax — and his desire to eventually phase that tax out entirely — is part of promoting “fair taxes” in the Sunshine state:

We want to make this the place where people say ‘look, its got a fair government, we have fair taxes.’ We don’t have an income tax, I’m getting rid of the business tax…We’re going to reduce it by two and a half percent this year, down to three percent, and then phase it out over the next few years.

Watch it:

Placing the burden of deficit reduction onto public workers and those who depend on public services, while simultaneously doling out new corporate tax cuts, certainly isn’t fair. But it’s even less fair considering that Florida has one of the nation’s most regressive tax systems, with no personal income tax and a high reliance on sales taxes.

Florida’s poorest 20 percent of residents currently pay 13.5 percent of their income in taxes, while the richest one percent of Floridians pay just 2.6 percent. In fact, Washington is the only state in the nation where a poor family can expect to pay higher taxes than in Florida, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. “The bottom line is that many so-called ‘low-tax’ states are high-tax states for the poor, and most of them do not offer a good deal to middle-income families either. Only the wealthy in such states pay relatively little,” ITEP wrote.

Adding insult to injury, Scott wants to lower a corporate tax that is already riddled with giveaways and loopholes. The Florida Center for Fiscal and Economic Policy has found that “exemptions from the corporate income tax cost more than $1 billion annually, and the state loses several hundred million dollars each year because of ‘tax avoidance behavior’ by companies.” Instead of addressing these problems — or introducing some progressivity into his state’s personal tax code — Scott is proposing a new tax cut for corporations that his state can ill-afford.

Yglesias

Before There Was Chili’s

By Matthew Yglesias on Mar 18, 2011 at 5:29 pm

After scarfing down a quesadilla from the Chili’s Too (which apparently is what Brinker International calls Chili’s outlets that don’t serve babyback ribs) between flights at the Milwaukee Airport yesterday evening, I was all prepared to start thinking up a post on the baleful impact of travel on the American diet. Then I got on the plane and read this in Daniel Walker Howe’s What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1848:

The American of 1815 ate wheat and beef in the North, corn and pork in the South. Milk, cheese, and butter were plentiful; potatoes came to be added in the North and sweet potatoes in the South. Fruits appeared only in season except insofar as women could preserve them in pies or jams; green vegetables, now and then as condiments; salads, virtually never. (People understood that low temperatures would help keep food but could only create a cool storage place by digging a cellar.) Monotonous and constipating, too high in fat and salt, this diet nevertheless was more plentiful and nutritious, particularly in protein, than that available in most of the Old World. The big meal occurred at noon.

This is a far cry from the Pollanesque wonderland of good eating that we’re sometimes told existed before fast food and microwaves ruined everything. I wonder if this doesn’t kind of run in cycles with income. You start out very poor, eating crap. Then as the country gets richer, you start eating better stuff. But then you get rich enough to hire other people to cook for you, but the best way to make that economical is to make the food crappy. But then if incomes continue to rise the quality improves again.

Politics

Hidden Camera Activist James O’Keefe Refuses To Be Taped During Speech

By George Zornick on Mar 18, 2011 at 5:20 pm

Conservative activist James O’Keefe, who has gained notoriety for his hidden-camera stings of NPR executives, ACORN employees, teacher unions, and CNN reporters, gave a speech to a New Jersey Tea Party group today. The Asbury Park Press reports that O’Keefe had only one condition: that his speech not be videotaped in any way. A representative for the Tea Party group told a photojournalist from the Press that she didn’t agree with O’Keefe’s order, but explained that “This is a guy that’s in trouble with the law, he’s got lawsuits up the gazoo for trying to help you with your freedom.” Watch it:

The newspaper did report on the contents of O’Keefe’s speech, in which he said: “It all goes back to one fundamental principle — and that is to make (the media and public officials) live up to their own book of rules. If you want to call out a hypocrite, the best way to do that is look at how he lives his life.” Indeed.

Security

Lessons From Darfur: Is The U.N. Setting A New Example In Libya?

By Guest Blogger on Mar 18, 2011 at 4:50 pm

Our Guest Blogger is Laura Heaton, Writer/Editor for the blog, Enough Said.

Just a few days ago, support appeared to be waning for imposing a no-fly zone over Libya. But last night, the U.N. Security Council authorized military intervention in Libya, passing a Chapter VII resolution that gives the United Nations permission to use “all necessary measures” to protect civilians.

Earlier this week, I wrote a post for the Enough Project comparing the international response to Libya and to Darfur – a topic that has stirred up strong frustration among some in the Sudan advocacy community.

Drawing comparisons across foreign policy issues has limited use, of course, because there is so much variation from one situation to the next and thus, they illicit different responses. But in recent years, as a growing consensus has formed around the idea that the international community does indeed have a “responsibility to protect,” an important question has remained: Can we actually get our acts together and effectively protect civilians?

The question is by no means answered yet. Despite the quick vocal response of the U.N. Security Council – less than a week – in the wake of Qaddafi’s deployment of fighter jets against regime opponents, the U.N.’s February resolution (including an ICC referral) and the strong condemnation by many governments has had little measurable impact on saving civilians in Libya. But yesterday’s actions are an encouraging sign that if there’s a common and genuine international will to respond, it’s possible to take collective steps to prevent further bloodshed.

In my post earlier this week, I noted that the U.N.’s hesitation to act decisively in response to the growing crisis unfolding in Darfur gave the Sudanese government time to wage their campaign against civilians.

By contrast, the urgency with which the international community reacted and began drawing up plans for how it might get involved in Libya sets an important new precedent for preventing atrocities and protecting civilians – one that should guide future responses, I argued.

The New York Times noted this significance reporting on last night’s vote:

Diplomats said the specter of former conflicts in Bosnia, Rwanda and Darfur, when a divided and sluggish Security Council was seen to have cost lives, had given a sense of moral urgency to Thursday’s debate. Yet some critics also noted that a no-fly zone authorized in the early 1990s in Bosnia had failed to prevent some of the worst massacres there, including the Srebrenica massacre.

A mentor of mine with ample foreign policy experience was also cautious about the suggestion of a trend toward a more proactive international response to civilians at risk. “The Pentagon still hates the idea, and I am still unconvinced that the international community has the will and resources to see any kind of military intervention and post conflict effort successfully through,” he wrote in an email. The fact that Libya erupted after a string of uprisings across the Middle East is also an important piece of context that made this situation unique. The international community had a bit of lead-time while watching events unfold in Egypt, Tunisian, and Bahrain.

In the last 24 hours, the U.N.’s actions appear to have had their desired effect. Faced with promised U.N. strikes against his military, Qaddafi today announced of a ceasefire. We’ll see what happens next.

Yglesias

The Best Line on Economics and Science

By Matthew Yglesias on Mar 18, 2011 at 4:44 pm

Tyler Cowen sums it up: “Economics is most like a science when people do not care about the outcome of the argument.”

In other words, social science is like science when it’s like science—disinterested. But when it’s like politics, then it’s like politics. I note that American economists are generally able to reach a much greater degree of consensus when they offer policy recommendations to foreign countries than when they offer recommendations to the US congress. That’s not because foreign countries have easier problems to solve.

Politics

Gingrich Says We Should ‘Celebrate’ Corporate Tax Dodgers, Argues Employees Should Pay Instead

By Scott Keyes on Mar 18, 2011 at 4:20 pm

ThinkProgress filed this report from the Wild Irish Breakfast in Nashua, NH.

One of the top priorities for Republicans this year has been to preserve and extend corporate tax breaks. This includes GOPers like former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) who have eagerly defended corporations like Bank of America, ExxonMobil, and GE which have avoided paying a dime in corporate income taxes in recent years, but rake in huge annual profits.

Another one of those companies making millions in profits but failing to pay any corporate income tax is Arch Coal. In 2009, for instance, the corporation netted over $42 million, yet was able to use tax loopholes and gimmicks to avoid contributing anything in corporate income taxes.

ThinkProgress asked Gingrich about these corporate tax-dodgers this week at a St. Patrick’s Day breakfast in Nashua, New Hampshire. Gingrich defended Arch Coal and other corporations who avoided paying income taxes because “they don’t owe that” to the U.S. government. Striking an anti-populist note, the former House Speaker also praised the fact that even though many corporations were avoiding taxes, their employees would still be forced to contribute to the government’s coffers.

Gingrich concluded by enthusiastically championing corporate tax loopholes, telling ThinkProgress that corporations were using “an incentive…not a loophole.” “We should celebrate that as a good thing,” Gingrich added:

KEYES: There have been a lot of complains from the left and right about corporations not paying their fair share in taxes. For instance, Arch Coal in 2009 made $42 million but paid nothing in corporate income tax. What are your thoughts on that?

GINGRICH: My thoughts are I’m opposed to tax increases. I want to create more jobs in America, not fewer.

KEYES: But they’re not paying anything right now in corporate income tax.

GINGRICH: But you don’t know why they’re not paying anything. Did they buy new equipment? Did they do things that actually create jobs? I can’t give you an answer for any one company.

KEYES: But in general, corporations who are making millions and millions in profit but then not contributing anything to the United States government. Do you think that’s fair?

GINGRICH: First of all, if they make millions and millions in profit, they probably employ thousands and thousands of people and those thousands and thousands of people are contributing a lot to America. I am for the maximum job creation in the United States and I think that means lower taxes, not higher taxes. It means less regulations, not more regulation.

KEYES: But you don’t think we should try to be forcing them to pay what they owe?

GINGRICH: First of all, they don’t owe that. If what they did was legal, and if it was designed to create more jobs. For example, if we gave you 100 percent write-off for new equipment so you could compete with China, and you use that 100 percent write-off, you actually did what we wanted you to do. [...] You have to go ask Arch [Coal] “what is it they did right in order to lower their tax liability and did it create jobs in America?”

KEYES: Would you like to see those corporate tax loopholes closed though? [crosstalk]

GINGRICH: I just want to say this because it’s an important difference in how we approach this. If we give you an incentive to do something right that creates more jobs, that is not a loophole. That’s an incentive. If you then intelligently follow that incentive and create more jobs, we should celebrate that as a good thing.

Watch it:

Last year, Arch Coal made a direct $100,000 corporate donation to Gingrich’s political committee American Solutions for Winning the Future.

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