Month: June 2011

In order to achieve fiscal balance, the Dish has endorsed a mix of tax increases and spending cuts. Mickey Kaus says I'm wrong to believe that we "must have a full solution for each and every policy problem":

Opponents of bloated government don’t trust politicians to make cuts if extra revenues are in the offing. Neither, sensibly, do many voters.  But if you make dramatic cuts, demonstrate you’ve sweated out the fat–and there’s still a deficit, you’ve got a shot at getting a tax increase through. Cuts First!

Jared Bernstein differs:

The case for revenues is a simple one.  Given the level of deficit reduction to which both parties are committed, around $4 trillion over 10-12 years, if you try to get there solely by cutting spending, you’ll be forced to cut too deeply into parts of government that vulnerable people depend on.  In short, you’ll do more harm than good.

Ezra Klein eyes defense cuts:

If you want to get liberals excited about spending cuts, the defense budget is where you start. The Congressional Budget office will credit you with $1.4 trillion in savings if you put forward a credible plan to draw down the war — which is something that the administration is promising to do anyway — and that's before you even get into the defense budget proper. But Lori Montgomery and Paul Kane report that the GOP is open to digging into that honey pot, too. "House Republican leaders said they have found a surprising willingness to consider defense cuts that would have been unthinkable five years ago."

I must say Mickey's point seems powerful. I was even thinking that over in my head before he put it, as is his wont, so crisply into words. Let's say Obama persuaded the GOP to include historic defense cuts and serious tax reform without any revenue increases. The likelihood of future tax hikes – once the unpopularity of many of the cuts emerge – becomes inevitable. The key, as Mickey notes, is to prevent the size of the cuts from derailing the economy in the short term, and to endure long enough to persuade the middle that tax hikes are necessary for our fiscal health, while disarming the Tea Party.

My worry about this is simply that the GOP will pocket the spending cuts and refuse to raise revenues at any point. And the public is actually fine with raising taxes on the rich already. And the Democrats would have a huge cow. But it's a useful thought experiment.

The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for the Libyan leader for "crimes against humanity". Max Fisher looks at the implications:

As long as Qaddafi clings to power, it doesn't mean much. The ICC relies on member states to actually perform arrests. The Hague-based court can issue all of the warrants and indictments it wants, but it only has effective jurisdiction in countries that have both signed and ratified the treaty recognizing the court and its authority. The court issued an arrest warrant in 2009 for Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir, who today is still in office So, in practice, an ICC arrest warrant can be little more than a lifelong ban against traveling to certain countries.

This map, via Wikimedia commons, shows the ICC's global membership. The countries in green are party to the ICC and could arrest Qaddafi; countries in orange signed but didn't ratify the treaty and couldn't arrest the Libyan leader for an ICC warrant. Neither could the countries in gray, which do not recognize the court.

A good backgrounder on the now openly gay Bushite in the work that led to equality in New York:

Ken Mehlman met one-on-one with 13 lawmakers, including the four Republican state senators who eventually voted in favor of the bill. Mehlman took pains not to draw too much attention to his efforts. As his friend, Bill Smith, political director at the Gill Action Fund, a gay-rights organization that orchestrated the conservative lobbying in New York, puts it, “he has been careful not to leave many fingerprints, like people who are looking for credit.” But the four Republican votes ended a deadlocked legislative session and made New York the sixth, largest, and most influential state to adopt same-sex marriage.

Check out the comments section at NRO after this posting.

"One of my favorites [from the NRO inbox] deplored gay marriage as sending us down the road to “the full ‘gay’ morally relativistic agenda” which will result, if we permit it, in “materialism at high-tide.” Now, this is an objection I take very seriously indeed, because I think materialism is a great danger to the soul, especially in a wealthy country such as ours. So I hope we never reach those vilest depths of moral decay, the ones my reader is so worried about; and never become a country so overtaken by materialist excess that a respected conservative presidential candidate will have a million-dollar account at Tiffany’s to buy gifts for his wife. The gays will sure have a lot to answer for, if that ever happens," – Michael Potemra.

How wonderful to have some back and forth on this subject at NRO – instead of periodic encyclicals.

Christie's latest "gubernatorial smackdown" goes national:

The governor's full response to Gayle here. Jonathan S. Tobin sounded off when the exchange first surfaced:

That clip will almost certainly go viral in the coming days–amusing conservatives and enraging liberals who will consider his response arrogant. And the critics won’t be completely wrong. If Christie were acting in such a way as to limit the opportunities of other children while his own children were enjoying benefits not available to others, then where his kids go to school would be the business of the public. The fact President Obama sends his children to an elite private school while seeking to kill opportunity scholarship vouchers for poor kids is just such an example of hypocrisy that is very much the business of all Americans.

I cannot help but like the guy's attitude. If only because it is so unlike all the very careful parsing of so many others.

A reader dug up an old speech (start 2:50 in if you’re interested) from one of countless talks I gave in the 1990s. Money quote from yours truly in 1997:

“The question that I ask myself is not why is this subject now being raised with respect to homosexuality… The real question is: why has it taken us so long to reach the central and most relevant institution with regard to sexual orientation?”

Another writes:

My son and I visited Christopher Street Day in Berlin today [Saturday], proudly headed up by Berlin’s gay mayor. More than usual numbers of “I love NY” shirts today. I’m waiting to hear someone playing “First We Take Manhattan“. It wasn’t just New York’s GBLT people who became more equal yesterday; it was all 19 million residents there. Big step forward, and congratulations from Berlin.

Another:

I just graduated from Vassar.  In the spring of my freshman year, I remember sitting in a dorm room with a bunch of my friends, about half of whom were gay or bi, talking about gay marriage.  At the time, most of us thought that gay marriage probably wouldn’t be legal in most states for at least 15 or 20 years.  I’m straight, and it seemed so insane and sad and horrifying to think that my friends, the most amazing people I had ever had the privilege of knowing, would probably not be able to legally marry the person they loved.

Since 2008, as full of ups and downs as that year was for gay rights, we’ve been growing gradually more hopeful.  And now, I am confident that by the time most of my friends seriously consider marriage, they will be able to legally marry in any state they choose.  The joy of that confidence is indescribable.

Another:

Last night’s victory was really incredible. You helped to start something pretty important when you started working for marriage years ago. Your post talks about why it was a “BFD”, and you stressed the role that Republicans played. If you look at the trajectory, the main story is obviously that more and more people are getting their basic rights. But we’re also moving from a situation where marriage rights were enforced by the courts to one in which they’re flowing from a broad and solid consensus among all of us.

And as more and more people can marry, the arguments against marriage collapse, because everyone can see that no one is harmed in any way. New York isn’t just NYC or Chelsea; it’s Buffalo and Albany and lots and lots of small towns. In all sorts of different kinds of places, different kinds of towns with different cultures, marriage is going to help people, and this victory is going to prove that it’s a universally good thing – that no one will be harmed by this extension of basic human rights. The victory here will deepen and strengthen the consensus in all kinds of different places, among all kinds of different people.

There are still many states left to persuade, but this is a really big win.

Meghan Cahill unravels a new study showing that bike and pedestrian infrastructure projects create 46 percent more jobs than road projects built only for cars:

On average, the “road-only” projects evaluated created 7.8 jobs per million, while the “bicycling-only” projects provided 11.4 jobs per million. For example, a roadway-focused project with no bicycle or pedestrian components in Santa Cruz, Calif. generated 4.94 jobs per $1 million spent. In contrast, a bicycle-focused project in Baltimore, Md. produced 14.35 jobs per million.

Ariel Schwartz points to an earlier study in Baltimore that came to a similar conclusion. No wonder the Europeans are getting ever more car-unfriendly.

(Image by Adreas Gursky via Scott Hansen)

Nate Silver floats the idea of Andrew Cuomo as Obama's successor:

Whoever is the Democratic nominee in 2016, he or she will almost certainly endorse same-sex marriage, as about two-thirds of Democratic voters already do. But it’s unlikely that any of them will be able to better Mr. Cuomo’s accomplishment. Particularly if Mr. Obama loses next year, his approach toward leadership is one that many Democratic voters will have an appetite for.

Cuomo is keeping his cards close for now.

Beijing, China, 3 pm