Month: February 2010

Spring-boarding off a post by Catherine Rampell, Andrew Samwick has some thoughts on job retraining: 

Even if the employment gains in this recovery will have to come from new jobs, it is not necessarily the workers whose entire occupations are disappearing that will have to fill the new jobs in emerging fields.  There is far more substitutability among workers than that.  These displaced workers may keep their current skill set and put downward pressure on the wages of all workers with those skill sets in all industries — not just the ones that are shrinking.  That downward pressure on wages will in turn cause the workers for whom retraining presents the smallest obstacles or the largest potential benefits to seek the new skill sets.

(Image via PZ Myers)

The president's budget proposes cutting farm subsidies and payments to the crop insurance industry. A reader adds:

There is a portion of the Republican base in the Plains states that believe not all Americans are entitled to health care, but all farmers are entitled to payments from the federal government for crops to be grown that nobody actually needs.  If a spending freeze means more cuts like the ones proposed here, I'm all for it.

Ryan Avent is worried:

The problem here is that budget balancing amid a weak economy is a bit like pushing on a string. The more you increase taxes and reduce spending, the weaker is the economy, which leads in turn to reduced revenues and increased spending on things like unemployment insurance. But as Ms Reinhart and Mr Rogoff point out, if you don't address the deficit at all, then markets eventually get worried and interest rates rise, choking off recovery.

The way you get around this is by taking credible steps to address long-term deficit issues while maintaining government support for the economy in the short run.

This is what Mr Nabors claimed the Obama adminstration was after, but his statement is clearly undermined by adminstration forecasts suggesting the unemployment rate will be above 9.8% at the point at which the discretionary spending freeze sets in. Meanwhile, the freeze itself will do nothing to convince markets of the administration's deficit-cutting resolve, given that it will result in only $250 billion in savings over the next ten years—a drop in the debt bucket.

Talbot:

[F]ollowing the Perry v. Schwarzenegger trial over the past three weeks has been a reminder that a courtroom can also be a great and theatrical classroom, where the values of thoroughness, precision in speech, and the obligation to reply have a way of laying bare the fundamentals of certain rhetorical positions. David Boies, who is one of the two lead lawyers for the plaintiffs, told me before the trial… [that] “Papers never meet each other—it’s like people talking past each other. The crucible of cross examination forces the witness to confront the other side; they can’t fall back on bumper sticker slogans like ‘marriage is between a man and a woman.’ ” And the same goes for the plaintiffs’ arguments.

Marcy Wheeler made an OPR report time-line – strongly suggesting that the DOJ's delay in releasing the OPR report was specifically designed to impede Jose Padilla's attempt to bring his torturers to justice. Marc does some reporting:

Holder seems to have believed that the report's release was imminent in June…then in August. Then November. Now — February. According to sources, the official Justice line is that the report is undergoing declassification review, a lengthy process. It is also true that Yoo and Bybee were given several opportunities to dispute the initial draft of the report — a draft that, according to sources of mine, was much harsher on the two men. It's not clear why or who in the department decided that a second round of responses and revisions were necessary. Reporting from August — not disputed at the time by DOJ — suggested that Holder's decision to appoint a prosecutor to re-review the CIA torture cases was influenced by his reading of the OPR report — which was submitted to him for review in what everyone assumed was its final form.

…Most likely, when the report comes out, it'll be framed by the left as a whitewash and by the right as a semi-vindication of the Bush approach to terror.

The details of this critical report and the way it was handled at DOJ are little short of infuriating. Here is a critical report whose conclusions were already clear months ago: that Yoo, Bybee at al were guilty of flagrant incompetence in assessing the law in order to allow their political masters to torture at will. And yet, out of some sort of tradition, DOJ hands over the final version to a 70 year-old career Justice Department official who allowed former DOJ officials to dispute and review the report again and again, and then allowed its central conclusion to be watered down. It is one more sign – along with the blanket dismissal of the serious allegations of misconduct at Gitmo – that the Obama administration is circling the establishment wagons on defending Bush era torture and war crimes. They seem either a) incapable of understanding the gravity of what went on or b) deliberately refusing to tackle clear violations of the law out of the usual political cowardice.

Yes, they ended torture. But everything else they have done has been to protect government law-breaking, rather than to investigate, let alone, prosecute it. There is no other word for this but betrayal – betrayal of the people who supported them and betrayal of those patriots within the government who take the rule of law seriously. But this is how Washington works:

"No question now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which."

Earlier Dish commentary on the latest developments here.

Reihan highlights this paragraph from Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff's analysis of the debt:

Given [the] risks of higher government debt, how quickly should governments exit from fiscal stimulus? This is not an easy task, especially given weak employment, which is again quite characteristic of the post-second world war financial crises suffered by the Nordic countries, Japan, Spain and many emerging markets. Given the likelihood of continued weak consumption growth in the US and Europe, rapid withdrawal of stimulus could easily tilt the economy back into recession. Yet, the sooner politicians reconcile themselves to accepting adjustment, the lower the risks of truly paralysing debt problems down the road. Although most governments still enjoy strong access to financial markets at very low interest rates, market discipline can come without warning. Countries that have not laid the groundwork for adjustment will regret it.

"Marriage was ordained by God, instituted among men; it is the glue that binds the American family, and the safest harbor in which to raise children. That is why it is so important to put in that most sacred of documents an affirmation of the foundation of our society – traditional marriage," – Mike Pence, the third-ranking Republican in the House.

He says he chose his "lifestyle" – that his heterosexual orientation was something he didn't experience as a given.

He offers absolutely no recognition of the issues that gay couples face in keeping their families together in the face of massive discrimination by their own government. He endorses nothing like domestic partnerships or civil unions. One of David Cameron's shadow cabinet members, Nick Herbert, is coming to Washington soon to explain how conservatism is indeed compatible with gay civil equality – and how the British Tories have moved to embrace the "Virtually Normal" position and are now very competitive with gay voters. There is a legitimately conservative alternative to this fundamentalism. It just doesn't exist in today's GOP – and has been effectively purged from it.

Patrick Strudwick went undercover to explore the world of ex-gay "therapy":

"Are you feeling quite lustful with the SSA [same-sex attraction]?" [a female psychotherapist who practices conversion therapy asks]. I reply that I am – but not just lust. In my last relationship, I say, I felt profound love towards my boyfriend. "That needs to be broken," she says. "There's a darkness that's very real that keeps you as its dog, but of course our God is more powerful than that." 

Jim Burroway highlights another section of the article.

Former CIA chief Michael Hayden attacks the administration on a variety of fronts related to the war on terror. Ackerman intervenes:

Hayden pulls together incidences in which Obama has allegedly sided against the CIA: canceling torture; releasing the OLC and CIA IG torture memos; and investigating agency interrogators for torture. “Intelligence officers need to know that someone has their back,” he writes. It’s funny. You’d think Hayden would consider the people who ordered the CIA to torture people to be the one who didn’t have their back.

George Packer refuses to get a BlackBerry:

Who doesn’t want to be taken out of the boredom or sameness or pain of the present at any given moment? That’s what drugs are for, and that’s why people become addicted to them. Carr himself was once a crack addict (he wrote about it in “The Night of the Gun”). Twitter is crack for media addicts. It scares me, not because I’m morally superior to it, but because I don’t think I could handle it. I’m afraid I’d end up letting my son go hungry.