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Alyssa

Death of a Fansite

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Jan 5, 2011 at 4:41 pm

While I was watching Community in the same timeslot as Bones this fall, I missed a lot of episodes, and also missed the shuttering of Obsessed With Bones, a cheerful and kindly fansite for the show I read from time to time and which was often generous enough to link to things I wrote. I was surprised at how sorry I was at the news. Wendy kept up a good site with a constructive commenting section, but it wasn’t like I was a daily reader or anything. It’s just more evidence, I suppose, that what we consume is what we do, but I liked knowing that the site was out there, and knowing that Wendy had created a community around it. And it’s also evidence that when shows, series, artists, whatever, change, so do people’s lives. For years, Bones was a show that meant enough to Wendy to structure part of her life around it, and now it’s not any more.

I don’t really have any attachments to culture that exert that kind of pull on me at the moment, though I’ve certainly had those flings with Star Wars* and some television and movie series. And I don’t know that it says something either about the quality of our lives or the quality of our culture that we get attached like this. Rather, I’m glad we live in a time when technology makes it easier for shared affinity to be the basis for community.


*I promise, by the way, that the Extended Universe project is back this year.

Yglesias

Understanding the State/Local Budget Crunch

By Matthew Yglesias on Jan 5, 2011 at 4:30 pm

(cc photo by Justin Brockie)

From the California section of N+1′s year in review:

Without any pressure telling them otherwise, Democrats, faced with an ineluctable revenue crisis, are going to go with what has been their signature political move for decades: conceding. The point is, it hardly matters whether you cut the budget with fat Republican enthusiasm, like Chris Christie in New Jersey, or gaunt Democratic humility, as Jerry Brown has promised. What effect this coming evisceration of social services and mass layoff of public servants will have on the makeup of the country is incalculable. That it will only contribute to the deep recession, which supposedly ended several months ago, is axiomatic.

I think the spirit here is right, but the details are wrong. The thing about state governments is that they need to balance their budgets. Consequently, it actually matters a great deal whether you implement cuts with Christie-like enthusiasm or not. Christie has actually been lowering taxes on the richest New Jerseyites, thus increasing the need for cuts. Conversely, while it’s quite true that state budget cuts amidst a recession impair recovery, it’s also true that state tax hikes amidst a recession impair recovery. The only solution to the macroeconomic problem of state/local budget cuts is for congress to appropriate funds.

This is a really big problem! Congress should appropriate funds. What’s more, congress should—but gives no indication of giving any consideration whatsoever to doing so—be looking at some way to reduce the systematic tendency of state and local government to engage in pro-cyclical budgeting. So it’s really two big related problems, and their scope is much wider than the ideological back-and-forth about the optimal size of the state/local public sector.

Economy

Bush Operative Marcus Peacock To Run GOP Senate Budget Staff

By Brad Johnson on Jan 5, 2011 at 4:10 pm

Marcus PeacockNow that Republicans in the House are in charge of the appropriations process, Senate Republicans have hired a Bush-era specialist to guarantee anti-regulatory budgets. Congress is under a tight deadline to fund the government, as the budget continuation passed in the lame duck session expires March 4. House Republicans are relying on a passel of corporate lobbyists to set the agenda, and now Senate Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-AL) has hired former George W. Bush official Marcus Peacock as the Republican staff director, Politico’s Darren Samuelsohn reports.

Marcus C. Peacock was a top official at both the Bush OMB and EPA. From 2001 until August 2005, he served as the Associate Director for Natural Resources, Energy and Science at the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under John Graham. While at OMB, Peacock created the Performance Assessment Rating Tool (PART), a complex assessment system by which the OMB exerts authority over every action of executive branch agencies. PART was one of several tools used to centralize and politicize the executive branch under White House control during the Bush presidency.

Peacock then became the EPA’s “regulatory policy officer,” a position created in January 2007 by executive order to be the liaison between EPA and OIRA for regulatory reviews and discussions. “Graham henchman” Peacock tried to shutter EPA’s library system, politicized the air-quality-standard process, and appeared to have been involved in the firing of Region V Administrator Mary Gade over a dispute with Dow Chemical.

Peacock also served in the OMB during the first Bush administration during the 1980s, and was top staffer for Bud Shuster (R-PA) in the Transportation Committee before joining George W. Bush administration.

Peacock now oversees the Pew Charitable Trusts initiative Subsidyscope — a comprehensive analysis of federal spending. In December, Peacock was appointed by Rep. John Boehner (R-OH) to the Commission on Key National Indicators.

Politics

New Tea Party Sen. Mike Lee: ‘I Understand The Logic’ Of A Health Insurance Mandate

By Ben Armbruster on Jan 5, 2011 at 4:00 pm

While running for U.S. Senate in Utah last year, Tea Party favorite Mike Lee, who defeated incumbent Bob Bennett in the state’s GOP primary, campaigned on the promise that he would work to repeal the new health care law. “Every possible means must be applied within Congress as well as through the application of the Constitution and the law to stop full implementation of this legislation,” his campaign website said, adding, “Health care reform must never give government the authority to force Americans to buy health insurance.”

But last night on CNN, host Eliot Spitzer explained to Lee that those without insurance usually seek emergency care and that taxpayers end up footing the bill. Spitzer noted that in order to rein in those costs, in Massachusetts for example, conservative governor Mitt Romney initiated an mandate for individuals to purchase insurance. This forced the newly minted Utah GOP senator to admit that a government mandate isn’t such a bad idea. “The concept itself can be appealing,” he said, but this time qualifying that the state governments must decide. Spitzer then clarified Lee’s position:

SPITZER: I’m just trying to figure out as a matter of policy whether the individual mandate, which is the obligation that everybody buy into the system and pay something into it, since we all get health care, whether is a policy matter that makes sense to you. Because I think then the subsidiary question is whether the states do it or the federal government. But you seem almost to be saying, yes, you understand the logic for that.

LEE: Yes, I understand the logic of it and I understand why some states might want to do it. I’m saying, it needs to be decided on a state-by-state basis. As a federal legislator, I’m agnostic as to the underlying policy question of whether it’s a good idea because it’s a state question. Not a federal one.

Watch it:

So during his campaign for Senate, Lee said he was against any government mandating its citizens to buy health insurance. Now that he knows the “logic” behind the policy, Lee thinks it’s a good idea. But in order to get the politics right, Lee has to make it a state’s rights issue.

Yglesias

14th Amendment History

By Matthew Yglesias on Jan 5, 2011 at 3:28 pm

A legitimate professional historian writes:

It’s not even clear Scalia has the legislative history of the 14th Amendment right. Rep. Benjamin Butler was present at the creation, and he believed the 14th Am. had the potential to guarantee equal protection for female citizens. Same with Chief Justice Salmon Chase, who affirmed a woman’s equal right to practice law in his 1873 dissent in Bradwell v. Illinois. Chase was not only closer than his fellow justices to the men who wrote the Amendment, he was much more deeply involved in the debates of the Reconstruction period.

I’d go stronger. Scalia is clearly mistaken about the legislative history. He said “Nobody ever thought that that’s what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that.” Clearly at least some people thought that.

But this is obviously the problem with trying to ascertain meaning with reference to the subjective beliefs of multiple collective entities. For an amendment to be ratified a ton of people have to vote for it and they have different things in their heads.

Health

Boehner Commits To ‘Open’ Process As GOP Moves Towards Adopting Closed Rule On Health Repeal

By Igor Volsky on Jan 5, 2011 at 3:20 pm

In a widely televised inaugural speech this afternoon, House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) reiterated his commitment to “openness” and fair debate in the 112th Congress, even as his new majority prepares to bar Democrats from offering any amendments to the health care repeal legislation and is forgoing the normal process of debating the measures in committee before they’re brought to the floor:

BOEHNER: We will do these things that restores and respects the time honored right of the minority to an honest debate, a fair and open process. And to my friends in the minority, I offer a commitment — openness. Once a tradition of this institution, but increasingly scare in recent decades, will be the new standard. There are no open rules in the House in the last Congress, in this one there will be many. And with restored openness, however, comes a restored responsibility. You will not have the right to willfully disrupt the proceedings of the people’s house, but you will always have the right to a robust debate and an open process that allows you to represent your constituents, to make your case, offer alternatives, and be heard.

Watch it:

Just yesterday, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) — who was also sworn-in today — hinted to reporters “that the GOP will not allow what’s known as an ‘open rule.” “It’s a straightforward document,” Cantor said of the legislation that would repeal the largest reform of America’s health care system. “It reflect what most people inside the beltway and outside the beltway want.” The New York Times also confirmed last night that the health repeal legislation “will not be subject to amendments, nor will Republicans have to abide by their own new rules that compel them to offset the cost of new bills that add to the deficit; the health care repeal and tax cuts are not subject to this new rule.”

When the House first passed reform in November 2009 and then again in March 2010, Republicans insisted that they should be able to offer unlimited amendments to the legislation on the House floor and argued that all parts of the bill must first be debated in the appropriate committees of jurisdiction. Watch a compilation of their demands here.

Climate Progress

NSIDC: Lowest December Arctic sea ice extent in satellite record

By Joe Romm on Jan 5, 2011 at 3:20 pm

The cold may make the news, but it ain’t the story.

NSIDC 12-10

Arctic sea ice extent for December 2010 was the lowest in the satellite record for that month.

The National Snow and Ice Data Center has released its December report on Arctic sea ice.  The human-driven decline continues, spurred by a strong negative phase of the Arctic Oscillation, which leads to this regional air temperature anomaly:

Read more

Politics

Gov. Daniels Wants To Raise The Retirement Age Because Young People ‘Will Live To Be More Than 100′

By Pat Garofalo on Jan 5, 2011 at 3:04 pm

In the wake of President Obama’s fiscal commission releasing a report that aimed to put Social Security into long-term balance by, among other things, raising the retirement age, a whole host of lawmakers have jumped onto that particular bandwagon. “If we do not do something to extend the retirement age…you’re not going to have this program,” said Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), while Sen. Kent Conrad called for implementing the fiscal commission’s Social Security plan in an op-ed today.

The latest to advocate such a change is Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels (R). During an interview with the New York Times’ David Leonhardt, Daniels claimed that raising the retirement age makes sense because people will eventually live to be 100 years old by “replacing body parts like we do tires”:

Clearly, means testing. Clearly, retirement age, over time. What you’re saying to these younger people is –- who, by the way, I think, barring disasters, are going to live to possibly old ages, as we have always thought of it…They will live to be more than 100, because, again, barring accidents or something, or war, well over. They should. They’ll be replacing body parts like we do tires. If you ask a young person who’s paying any attention to this, “How old do you expect to be, and how long would you like to be a vital working person?” they’re not going to find this offensive. Thirty years from now, you might work at 68, 70, 72….

Aside from the obvious folly of raising the retirement age now in anticipation of human body-part replacement technology that may or may not exist at some undetermined point in the future, Daniels is basing his policy preference on the same faulty understanding of American life expectancy espoused by loads of would-be Social Security reformers.

While average life expectancy has indeed been rising, it is largely as a result of increases among upper income earners working in white-collar jobs. Middle- and low-income workers have not seen the same increases and would be disproportionately affected if the retirement age were raised. As the Center for Economic and Policy Research put it, “there has been a sharp rise in inequality in life expectancy by income over the last three decades that mirrors the growth in inequality in income”:

If the normal retirement age is increased to age 70 over the next 25 years, as advocated by many policymakers, then the rise in the retirement age will continue to offset most of the increase in life expectancy. In the event that trends in inequality continue, then workers in the bottom half of the wage distribution will see a decline in the expected length of their retirement. For these workers, in the higher retirement age scenario, the expected years of retirement will be less for the 1973 birth cohort than it was for the 1912 birth cohort.

Daniels has a reputation as a reasonable conservative, and he is willing to at least inhabit reality when it comes to things like tax policy. But his version of Social Security reform entails a regressive change that hurts those most dependent on the program. Here’s a progressive vision for modernizing Social Security that does not rely on the blunt instrument of raising the retirement age.

Cross-posted on the Wonk Room.

LGBT

New Mexico Attorney General Says State Can Recognize Same-Sex Marriages Performed Elsewhere

By Igor Volsky on Jan 5, 2011 at 2:34 pm

NM Attorney General Gary King

New Mexico may soon join the ranks of New York, Rhode Island and Maryland as states that don’t perform same-sex marriages, but recognize gay couples married in other states, according to an opinion issued by attorney general Gary King. “While we cannot predict how a New Mexico court would rule on this issue, after review of the law in this area, it is our opinion that a same-sex marriage that is valid under the laws of the country or state where it was consummated would likewise be found valid in New Mexico,” King said:

As discussed above, the federal DOMA authorizes states to prohibit the recognition of out-of-state, same-sex marriages. While many states have enacted such a prohibition, New Mexico has not. Without an explicit statute, the principle of comity, codified in New Mexico in Section 40-1-4, would likely guide the analysis in this area. In Leszinske and Gallegos, New Mexico courts recognized out-of-state marriages pursuant to Section 40-1-4, despite state laws that would have precluded those marriages from being performed in New Mexico. Likewise, the Attorney General of Maryland concluded that Maryland would likely recognize an out-of-state, same-sex marriage despite a state law that precludes same-sex marriages. Although such state laws indicate an adverse public policy against certain marriages, they are not enough to invoke the public policy exception.

Although New Mexico does not expressly prohibit same-sex marriages, a previous Attorney General issued an advisory letter on this issue….According to the letter, state statutes that refer to a “husband” and a “wife” and the state marriage application form requiring a male and female applicant, suggested that the law in New Mexico contemplates that marriage will between a man and a woman. In light of Leszinske, Gallegos, and the general law surrounding the public policy exception, we do not believe that the reasoning in the advisory letter is enough to establish a strong or overriding public policy against same-sex marriages in New Mexico. Without an identifiable adverse public policy in this area, we conclude that a court addressing the issue would likely hold, pursuant to Section 40-1-4, that a valid same-sex marriage from another jurisdiction is valid in New Mexico.

Five states and Washington D.C. are currently issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples, and several others may consider the issue in this legislative session. “This increases the likelihood that New Mexico residents of the same sex who married while traveling or who move to New Mexico after marrying in a jurisdiction that allows same-sex marriages will seek to have their marriages recognized in this state,” King concluded.

It’s unlikely that King’s opinion will change state policy, however. New Mexico’s new governor, Susanna Martinez, opposes same-sex marriage and has not been moved by King’s analysis. “Gov. Martinez made it clear during the campaign that she opposes same-sex marriage. It’s important to note that no New Mexico court has ruled on this issue,” a spokesperson told The New Mexican. State Senator William Share (R) also plans to introduce a constitutional amendment “during the upcoming legislative session to define marriage as between a man and woman.”

Former Governor Bill Richardson, was unsuccessful in getting a domestic partnership bill through the legislature.

Alyssa

Speaking of Justin Townes Earle…

By Alyssa Rosenberg on Jan 5, 2011 at 2:33 pm

As someone who sort of followed her father into a field, I cannot imagine how absurdly hard it is to be Justin Townes Earle. I assume it’s gratifying, and probably reassuring, for Earle to get the reception he’s been getting lately. This is a really terrific song:

I am profoundly not a musician (stabs at violin and trumpet aside), but I assume it’s more satisfying to write a genuinely terrific pop song than to just get credit for a great performance of something mid-level or even mediocre, if only because you’ve created something new from the bones and flesh up.

And if Townes has it tough, I imagine Jakob Dylan has it even harder. Maybe it’s just being in the moment, but I feel like the younger Dylan never quite had the moment the younger Earle is having now, where the consensus seems to be that he’s an entirely worthy inheritor of his father’s tradition, no matter how successful Bringing Down the Horse was. I’m quite fond of the Wallflowers’ third album, (Breach), though. There’s a real bite to it, from the very first track:

It’s not Blood on the Tracks, but that’s not the point. Bob Dylan’s a shaman, a spirit walking the land. His son is a self-aware pop semi-star:

Just like Dad, though, he can kill with the inflection. “It’s where I’m from that lets them think I’m a whore / I’m an educated virgin” is one hell of a gorgeous line.

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