Month: January 2013

Brendan Greeley argues that the ban on earmarks is partially responsible for stagnation in Washington:

In the two years since [the ban, Congress has] done nothing but tie itself up with a supercommittee, a sequester, and continued promises to fix things in the future. Political hacks used to say pork was the political grease that lubricated legislative deals. Only now do we see how true that was. Would it really be so terrible to reintroduce some congressionally sanctioned bribery? That would let members lay claim to the odd million in the interest of striking a deal worth much more.

Eric Patashnik is onboard:

If Congress is ever going to pass a grand bargain that trims entitlements and raises taxes (pain for everyone), shouldn’t we give lawmakers something positive to vote for?

Of course we don’t want to return to the days of outright bribery and graft. As Matthew Yglasias writes in Slate, however, the current dysfunctional Congress makes it “hard not to miss a little old-fashioned earmarking and pork.” Sure it would be nice if lawmakers didn’t need to be given side payments to vote for general-interest legislation, but that’s not the American way. As John W. Ellwood and I wrote in our 1993 essay In Praise of Pork, “Favoring legislators with small gifts for their districts in order to achieve great things for the nation is an act not of sin but of statesmanship.”

A reader writes:

Tomasky is wrong. The NRA is not talking about Secret Service agents; they’re talking about the armed guards, which is why the ad says “armed guards”.  St. Alban’s and other DC private schools would have armed guards at the gates regardless of the President’s daughters. The kids of the rich always are better protected.

Another is on the same page:

The point of the ad is that the private school the first daughters attend, Sidwell Friends School, has a substantial security department composed of “Special Police Officers” and other security personnel. The NRA’s proposal has been met with widespread scorn, as if armed security in schools is nigh atrocious. The obvious question is, if a school for the rich can have it without atrocity, why not my local public school?

Liam Hoare assesses the renewed tensions between the UK and Argentina over the Falkland Islands:

[Argetine President] Kirchner’s latest dig came via an open letterpublished in two British newspapers, which called on London to “abide by the resolutions of the United Nations” and “negotiate a solution to the sovereignty dispute” between them — in other words, negotiate a way to hand the islands over to Argentina.

One reason why things have heated up:

The rancor on both sides, and more importantly, the bold urgency of Kirchner’s claims, speaks not only to past grievances — the old wounds of 1982 — and the economic challenges facing Argentina in the present, but also to the petrodollar future the Falklands might enjoy. For within the islands’ exclusive economic zone are oil reserves equivalent to 60 billion barrels. A sudden increase in the price of crude has finally made the extraction of this resource a profitable venture.

(Photo: Argentina’s President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner listens during a meeting at the United Nations headquarters in New York on the disputed Falkland Islands on the 30th anniversary of the end of war between the Britain and Argentina, on June 14, 2012. By Mehdi Taamallah/AFP/Getty Images)

Silver suspects that “the aim of seeking re-election may have colored Mr. Obama’s priorities during the prior debt ceiling negotiation”:

Economists differ on exactly how severe the economic costs of a United States debt default would be. But the most severe recessions, like the one that officially began in December 2007, can persist for about a year and a half. When added to an economic recovery that was already very feeble, a new economic shock could easily have produced a new recession that lasted through the November 2012 elections. Even if the economy had technically exited recession by then, growth in jobs tends to lag other economic indicators, so labor-market conditions would almost certainly have remained very poor.

He adds that, this time, “it is only members of Congress who will come before voters again.” Meanwhile, Keith Hennessey sees debt ceiling brinkmanship as counterproductive for the GOP:

[Obama] will start warning politically powerful constituencies: seniors, veterans, and troops, that they are at risk of not being paid on time, and their Republican Congressman is responsible for it, and his or her phone number is 225-XXXX. I have no idea why some conservatives think it’s smart strategy to hand the President this kind of political club.

“As for what I personally believe, which has been the subject of inquiries, accusations and speculation, I think Osama bin Laden was found due to ingenious detective work. Torture was, however, as we all know, employed in the early years of the hunt. That doesn’t mean it was the key to finding Bin Laden. It means it is a part of the story we couldn’t ignore … Bin Laden wasn’t defeated by superheroes zooming down from the sky; he was defeated by ordinary Americans who fought bravely even as they sometimes crossed moral lines, who labored greatly and intently, who gave all of themselves in both victory and defeat, in life and in death, for the defense of this nation,” – Kathryn Bigelow.

I wish I could say this clears things up. On the one hand, torture wasn’t “the key” to finding bin Laden. On the other, “ordinary Americans fought bravely andsometimes crossed moral lines”. I don’t think you can describe the main torturer in the movie as sometimes crossing moral lines. He was a brutal, sadistic torturer all the time. He never stopped until he was exhausted and broken by the human souls and bodies he broke. But Bigelow does repeat my own partial defense of the film. Artists do not have to produce clarity; their murkiness can be itself an invitation for more involvement in the subject, not less. It also removes any doubt from any rational viewer that the US tortured prisoners – in violation of the Geneva Conventions, domestic law and American values. President Bush lied directly about this and repeatedly. Then this:

As a lifelong pacifist, I support all protests against the use of torture, and, quite simply, inhumane treatment of any kind. But I do wonder if some of the sentiments alternately expressed about the film might be more appropriately directed at those who instituted and ordered these U.S. policies, as opposed to a motion picture that brings the story to the screen.

Does she think that someone like Jane Mayer hasn’t been doing that for years as well? Or the Dish, for that matter? That’s a straw man. And if that’s so vital, why hasn’t Bigelow named names and called Cheney and Bush the war criminals they are. That would help a great deal. Her movie proves it, after all.

I don’t think the movie backs torture, although I have vowed to see it again soon. But I do think Steve Coll’s piece in the NYRB is the best thing I’ve yet read on the subject and shook me to the core. So much so that I reserve the right to change my mind a little if his critique holds up on my second viewing. Read the whole thing.

Shalom Auslander grapples with the news that his favorite rabbi from high school has fled the US, accused of molesting students:

[T]hat’s what makes this whole sordid tale so personally difficult. Because while my other rabbis encouraged me to be observant, to be a Good Jew, George encouraged my interest in art. He encouraged me to draw, to go to museums. He encouraged me to write, and to read, and to write some more. He encouraged me to not let my friends keep me from my goals, to not let myself get dragged down by the others around me.

Auslander’s affinity for Rabbi George makes the ordeal all the more ghastly for him:

The strange thing about monsters is that, as children, we believe in them and the adults tell us they’re not real, that there are no such things and we should just go back to sleep. And we believe them. But later, as we grow up and become adults and we see the world in all its misery and suffering and injustice and cruelty and shit…we decide to believe in monsters again. Because monsters help us to make sense of the world. Monsters help us feel better about our obviously non-monster selves.

There are monsters, after all, and then there’s…us. If only.

Goldblog thinks so:

The dysfunctional relationship between Netanyahu and Obama is poised to enter a new phase. Next week, Israeli voters will probably return Netanyahu to power, this time at the head of a coalition even more intractably right-wing than the one he currently leads.

Relatedly, David Remnick reports on the settler movement. A highlight:

Israeli politics continues its seemingly endless trek to the right. Every day, the Web carries the voice of another leader of the settler movement who insists that the settlers are the vanguard now, that the old verities are to be challenged, if not eliminated. Early last year, Benny Katzover, a leader in the settlement of Elon Moreh, told a Chabad paper, Beit Mashiach, “I would say that today Israeli democracy has one central mission, and that is to disappear. Israeli democracy has finished its historical role, and it must be dismantled and bow before Judaism.”

Despite the air of defeat that clings to the left, the center-left vote will still account for around fifty of a hundred and twenty seats. A political shift in its favor is always possible. Assaf Sharon, a leader of Molad, a think tank for the “renewal of Israeli democracy,” told me he believes that the national-religious position that the settlements are “irreversible” is “bullshit.”

(Caption: A man holds up a voting bill for the ultra-Orthodox Shas party during the annual pilgrimage to the grave of Rabbi Baba Sali in the southern Israeli town of Netivot on January 14, 2013. By David Buimovitch/AFP/Getty Images)

Tomasky sighs:

Let’s start with the ad’s broken logic. A, the Obama family has Secret Service protection; B, other American families do not; C, because of this, Obama is an elitist and a hypocrite. It’s pretty ludicrous. Malia and Sasha Obama get lots of things because their father won the presidency. They also have a chauffeur; get to ride on a big fancy airplane free of charge and don’t have to endure any TSA-related indignities; live in a beautiful big house rent-free; and so on. By the ad’s logic, all of these are instances of hypocrisy.

Frum adds:

[E]ven if the idea [of armed guards in school] were a good idea, the NRA’s sneering references to the president’s family are beyond the pale. As the makers of the NRA ad should know, and probably do know, the First Family has come under years of racially coded attack for their “uppityism,” as Rush Limbaugh phrased it. This latest attack ad looks to many like only one more attempt to enflame an ancient American wound.