Money in Politics

Kevin Drum highlights the McComish case which was argued before the Supreme Court today. He cites Paul Waldman, highlighting the main issue for me:

What is the "right" at issue here? It's not the right to free speech, since the self-financed candidate still can speak as much as he likes. It's the "right" to have the loudest voice if you have the most money, to drown out every other voice.

Which isn't a right at all. It's a privilege: the privilege of those with money to bend the political system to their will, to have the biggest megaphone, to make sure that their money gives them the ability to put a thumb on the electoral scale.

Conservatives favor those with money, so expect this one to be a 5-4 decision one way or the other with the 4 conservatives on the Court voting as a bloc.

That about sums up Newt

From The Economist's DIA blog:

"Now Mr Gingrich has added to this string of embarrassments with an acrobatic flip-flop on America’s involvement in Libya. Barely three weeks ago he told Fox News that Mr Obama should suppress the Libyan air force and establish a no-fly zone over the country right away. Yesterday he announced that a military intervention was a terrible idea to which he would never have resorted as president. Then he issued a convoluted explanation claiming these two stances were consistent, before criticising the president for his confusion and lack of resolve."

Who to believe?

The guy who's future political career depends on bringing President Obama down a couple of notches...

"This is about as badly run as any foreign operation in our lifetime... This is as badly executed, I think, as any policy we've seen since WWII, and it will become a case study for how not to engage in this type of activity."

Or a random commenter at Tom Ricks' blog...?

"The air campaign has been about as perfect as can be..."

I'm going with the random commenter.

Question of the Day

From Matthew Yglesias. His point is that the deficit can only be tackled with a combination of spending cuts and tax increases. But, as he points out - "Republicans simply refuse to acknowledge that revenue as a share of GDP needs to go higher than it was at the end of the Bush years." He says that if Republicans won't agree to any revenue increases, "that’s their prerogative, but willingness to compromise on revenue is the sine qua non of a bipartisan deal. Absent that willingness, there neither can nor will be a bipartisan deal."

So on to the question. "When will the Republicans produce a budget proposal? We’ve seen the White House proposal. Do Republicans have an alternative proposal that makes the deficit lower consistent with their position on taxes? If they do, I’d like to see them write it down on paper so we can talk about it."

Guiding Principles of the Day

Although I'm a few days late on this one. From Kevin Drum:

Modern conservatives have a few simple guiding principles. Keep taxes on rich people low. Let corporations do whatever they want. Toe the Christian right line on social issues and the NRA line on gun issues. Support military action overseas if a Republican president proposes it. Oppose spending on poor people.

Maybe we should have a Republican President

'Cause then the Republicans wouldn't be pretending they're worried about spending in general when what they really care about is spending on issues Democrats care about. Then maybe they'd actually see that cutting spending right now will lead to continued problems with the economy and higher unemployment.

Nah, a Republican President would still be terrible.

Support for the President

I'm probably one of the biggest supporters of the President that you'll run across, especially considering the fact that I'm in the military surrounded by a lot of pretty conservative types.
Still, I note with interest this piece from the Economist's Lexington columnist. He asks, "Wheres the courage?" with regard to President Obama and then cites:

"It's much easier to think of examples where he appears not to have had the courage of his convictions.

Guantánamo is still open, despite his promise to close it. He reinforced the troops in Afghanistan, but set a date to start withdrawing, a careful bit of bet-hedging. He pushed for peace in Palestine, but seems to have retreated at the first sign of gun smoke from Capitol Hill. He established a bipartisan commission on the deficit, but failed to pick up and run with its recommendations. He said he would let the Bush-era tax cuts expire for the rich, but backed down after the mid-term elections. His support for gay rights has been a study in caution, as has his position on gun control."

Let me say where I agree and disagree with his points. I've long advocated that the Democrats should play hardball politics just like (or even harder) than the Republicans. Instead of shying away from conflict, they should seek it out. Take the battle onto the Republicans turf. Fight them there, so we don't have to fight them here...(oops, one too many military metaphors). So, as much as I agree with the sentiment when it comes to Democrats in general, I generally disagree with regard to the President. Would I want the President to be a little more combative? Yes. But which do I want more - more combativeness or a Democratic president from 2012-2016? I think the answer's obvious. Now maybe that's a false choice. Why can't we have a more combative President and also get him reelected in 2012? It's certainly possible, but I think the President's a pretty good politician. In the current political climate, I think big gestures = big risks. A more cautious President is more likely to get reelected in 2012. He's going slowly, but he's also going in the direction that I prefer. I'd rather have 4 more years of slow in my direction, rather than having the country go in reverse after next year.

Bradley Manning

I've been seeing a lot from folks up in arms over the treatment of Bradley Manning. Here's a piece by Kevin Drum and here's one from the Economist's DIA blog. These commentators tend to be center left to center on the ideological spectrum. There are some others even farther left who have been even more strident in their criticism of what's going on with Manning. And if the situation is actually as it is described by these critics, I would probably join them in their condemnation. But let me offer some context from what I know about situations like this (although I have no personal or first hand knowledge of the Manning case).

First, we bureaucrats in the military (and that's what I am after all) are very diligent in following the rules. In a situation like this, I can see how that puts the government at a disadvantage over a civilian defense counsel. Where the defense counsel in this case can be generally speaking the truth, but also maybe leaving some information out in hopes of swaying public opinion toward their client, due to the Privacy Act, the government is limited in what it can say in response. For instance, if there were a legitimate reason to restrict Manning or leave him without items of clothing for periods of time due to health or safety or suicide reasons, the government could probably feel like they couldn't say the actual "why" for what they're doing because to do so without a waiver from Manning would be a violation of the Privacy Act. So the government representatives in this case could be fighting this fight with one hand tied behind their backs. In this case, I suspect there is more to the story and the government representatives are just not able to tell us everything that's going on.

Another thing to consider is that, in the court-martial system, the allegations that the defense are making can be remedied at trial by a military judge. If the prison officials are doing what they're being accused of without good justification, then the defense is going to have a field day in motion practice at trial. If there is some indication that Manning is being treated this way in order to get him to talk, the statements are going to get thrown out, just as they would in Federal court. Similarly, there is a significant amount of case law in military law that will allow the defense to ask for additional credit against the final sentence based on violations of the rules on pretrial confinement. It's a moot point for a sentence of LWOP, but say Manning is sentenced to 10 years. All of the time he has spent in pretrial confinement counts against that time. Say Manning ends up spending 1 year in pretrial confinement before the case is completed. If the defense accusations are true, it wouldn't be unheard of to ask for and receive 2 for 1 or 3 for 1 credit. That means Manning would actually receive 2 or 3 years credit for his pretrial confinement against his 10 year sentence - a significant amount considering the first chance at parole comes at about the 1/3 of the sentence in the military system.

All that being said, I suspect I'm closer to the position of the defenders of Manning than the position of those who thinks he committed treason. Still, there's a lot we don't know yet. I'm curious to see what comes next.

Good Point

Matthew Yglesias makes a good point. Conservative ideology includes the bedrock principle that "public sector undertaking is necessarily going to end up as poorly run as the worst DMV line in America." Except, of course, where conservative ideology likes something even more than government bashing. Yglesias cites (in light of the tragedy in Japan) conservatives' very certainty that government regulation can do the trick in keeping nuclear power plants safe. He also cites management of nuclear weapons and invasions of medium-sized foreign countries.

Tax Subsidies for Oil Companies

In the context of the world that Republicans live, I get why they might be against eliminating tax subsidies for oil companies. Eliminate them and oil companies will pay more taxes. More taxes = bad in the GOP world. But really the way to look at this is when you compare oil companies to all other companies. There's a corporate tax rate and it ought to apply to all companies (with the same amount of revenue) equally. Except oil companies get tax breaks to make their taxes less for some reason, than say Walmart. So why is it that Republicans allow such disparate treatment? Oh yeah, they've got to protect their political donations.

Budget-mania

We're getting close to the deadline for shutting down the government, so I better make this fast. Wait a minute, no need to hurry. I'm in the military, so I'm going to work even if there is a shutdown.

I wanted to highlight some good pieces from the Economist's DIA blog on the budget wrangling going on. I nominate the following for Quotes of the Day (ok, maybe they're not quotes, but I sure like them):

Regarding hypocritical Republicans - "I find it hard to watch the same people who ten years ago were desperate to avoid the supposed dangers of government budget surpluses now trying to zero out Teach for America and the United States Institute for Peace, in order to scratch together a few pennies for interest payments on the debt they helped create by cutting taxes. But the most disturbing part is that, then as now, they try to present themselves as "responsible"."

Regarding the triviality of the cuts Republicans are trying to pretend are going to fix the budget deficit - "Once again, and for the umpteenth time: the United States faces a serious debt problem on the order of trillions of dollars over a 20- to 30-year time frame. This debt problem is overwhelmingly driven by rising Medicare and Medicaid spending due to rapid cost inflation in the medical sector. Other significant budget problems include a substantial but demographically limited increase in Social Security expenditures, and immense and spectacularly wasteful defence spending. The final serious budget issue is that American taxes are set at a level that remains several per cent of GDP lower than expenditures throughout the business cycle, a problem either created or severely exacerbated by the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003. Every other federal spending category apart from the ones I have mentioned is, from the point of view of our debt problem, trivial, and cutting any other category has a negligible effect on the debt (emphasis mine)."

Quote of the Day

From Paul Krugman.

Democrats aren’t fiscal saints. But we have one party that has been generally responsible, and tries to pay for what it wants, and another party that consistently, deliberately, takes actions to increase deficits in the long term. Saying this may be shrill; but not saying it is being deceptive.

Random Good News for the Weekend

From TPM - Gov. Scott Walker's job disapproval rating up to 57 percent.

What the People Want

The title is from a post by Kevin Drum. He points out,

"Out in real America, people want to tax the rich, cut stupid weaponsprograms, and stop subsidizing prosperous oil companies. They don't want to cut Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, or education."

Which is great and all. But I want to focus on another line from the post -

"Democrats, if they could manage to agree on a halfway coherent message, most likely hold all the cards in a budget showdown"

Yeah. So it works in theory, but if it's dependent on the Democrats doing the politics right, then you can certainly expect it not to work out.

Air Force Reduction in Force

Interesting goings-on in the Air Force of late. Since the economy has been so bad the last couple of years, the natural attrition of Airmen (officers and enlisted) has slowed to a crawl. So the higher-ups have recently been looking for additional ways to get the numbers down. It looks like they've exhausted all of the voluntary ways for people to go (with the idea being that they're not replaced and this brings our overall numbers down). Next up - Reduction in Force (RIF) boards. Everybody's records meet a group of senior officers and those who don't make the cut have to separate. Looks like the NLT separation date is February 1, 2012. And for those of you who are pretty sure you're not going to make the cut? Opt for voluntary separation during the month of March and you get a little bump to your separation pay.

I just learned that my year group is going to be one of those meeting one of these boards. I'm exempt because I have over 15 years total military service and because I'm within 2 years of retirement. These are anxious times for some of my peers, though.

Republican Budget Cutting will Hurt the Economy

There have been some recent reports (Goldman Sachs, Moody's) which says the budget cuts will hurt the economy (lesser GDP) and cost jobs. John Boehner says, "So be it." I agree with Kevin Drum:

In any case, it hardly matters. Maybe it's a million jobs, maybe it's half a million jobs. Maybe it will cost a point of GDP, maybe it will cost half a point of GDP. But considering that the economy is still sluggish and unemployment is extremely high, why are we considering budget cuts that will have any negative effect on jobs and growth? Especially cuts in the only part of the budget that isn't a long-term problem?

That's the big news from Bernanke's testimony: not that he thinks other estimates of job losses are too high, but the fact that he agrees the Republican budget plan will cost jobs and slow growth. That's coming from a Republican Fed chair! How much more evidence do we need that our current budget cutting mania is insane?

Neo-Con Controversy

I didn't realize this was an issue, but it looks like the dreaded neo-conservatives are bemoaning the outcome in Egypt as a loss for U.S. foreign policy. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, considering the debacle they led us into in Iraq and Afghanistan.

All in all, I agree with this guy.

"I think I can suggest one thing that's more pathetic than the usual round of "who lost [fill in the blank]", and that would be a round of "who lost [fill in the blank]" when we won. Nobody lost Egypt! Egypt just ousted its dictator in a non-violent popular revolution! It's going to have democratic elections in six months! In what perverse universe does this count as a defeat for American foreign policy, for the West, for enlightenment civilisation, for lovers of human rights? Sweet Douglas Feith, what do these people want?"