Month: February 2014

Liza Mundy sees the late-in-life rise of Janet Yellen as evidence that “women’s careers have a different trajectory than men’s do – and that women may be defining a new career trajectory for everybody”:

One emerging insight, among those who study work-life issues, is that women’s careers may peak later than men’s do. That revelation could prove immensely helpful for families:

If women – and men – re-orient their thinking to accept that significant achievement can, and should, occur well beyond mid-life, they may be able to strike a work-life balance with less dissonance and tension. Life is long, and we now know that parents who dial back their work hours when their children are younger can still ascend to the highest career heights. There is a lot of work life left, after all, when the nest empties and the college tuition bills roll in.

It’s a liberating notion, really, to think that you don’t have to accomplish everything in your life – or “have it all” – simultaneously; that leaning back during one life stage doesn’t preclude leaning in later. Along these same lines, any number of workplace experts and career gurus are urging women to think of their career not as a “ladder” but as a lattice, or a jungle gym: Horizontal moves are followed by upward ones, followed by horizontal ones, etc. It may take longer to get to the top, but it doesn’t mean you won’t reach it eventually.

(Photo: Janet Yellen smiles after being sworn in as Federal Reserve Chairman by Federal Reserve Board Governor Daniel Tarullo on February 3, 2014. By Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Legalization vs. citizenship is shaping up to be the central point of contention:

The debate over immigration illustrates how truly difficult it often is to strike a big deal in politics, especially in divided government. Winning enough support to get a bill passed on a hot button issue lies in finding not just a gray area but the best possible gray area. If the middle ground includes things that are too hard for both sides of the debate to swallow, there will be nobody left in the middle to support it.

The most contentious part of the immigration debate is the question of whether most undocumented immigrants should be allowed a special path to citizenship. The House GOP plan says no. The plan that passed the Senate says yes. The initial plan being forwarded by House Republican leadership endorses legal status but not a path to citizenship — except for those who were brought into the country illegally as children.

Right now, that appears a middle ground worthy of at least a closer look, in the eyes of many major players invested in the issue.

Sargent points out that talk of even limited legal status counts as progress for the GOP:

It’s dispiriting that Republicans have ruled out a path to citizenship. But it’s important to understand how much of a shift these principles nonetheless represent.

Less than two years ago, the de facto party-wide position — echoed by the 2012 GOP presidential nominee — was self deportation, i.e., doing everything possible to get them the hell out of here. Now the party’s operating principle is that they should all stay, provided certain conditions are met — a real change from pandering to GOP base nativists to stiff-arming them in a big way. As the New York Times puts it today: “From absolute denial to the brink of grudging acceptance is a big step away from neo-nativism.”

Ramesh prefer a more gradual approach to reform:

A better idea would have four parts: We’d increase enforcement of immigration laws at the border and in the workplace. We’d put people who were brought here illegally while they were minors but have otherwise obeyed the law on a path to full citizenship. We’d signal that amnesty for other illegal immigrants might be possible in the future once we’re sure that enforcement is working. And we’d reform our legal immigration policies to let in more high-wage workers.

That compromise still wouldn’t win over anyone who opposes amnesty in principle. But it would be fair to the children of illegal immigrants, and it would be good for assimilation. It would also accord with what the public seems to want as measured by polls.

Any sort of legalization elicits a “no way, José” from NRO:

For some reason, House Republicans have fastened on eventual citizenship as the key issue. It isn’t. What will matter most to the illegal population is getting legalized. The experience of the 1986 amnesty was that most formerly illegal immigrants didn’t take advantage of the opportunity to become citizens. And it is the legalization itself that will act as a magnet to new illegal immigrants. They will take notice that we eventually welcome anyone who manages to come here to live and work in defiance of our laws.

Kilgore suspects that any Republican-led immigration reform will be designed to fail:

In all the analysis of the GOP’s immigration stance, it’s pretty much been taken for granted that the “self-deportation” stance of Mitt Romney—perhaps his most popular policy stance for movement conservatives, and an important key to his nomination—has to be discarded. But all this insistence on ruling out any “special path” to citizenship, however limited and remote, and on “hard triggers” for legalization that are designed to be unreachable, thinly disguises a fundamental unwillingness to accept the presence of unauthorized immigrants and the hope they will all find life here miserable enough to eventually go home. Illegal border crossings have already slackened significantly. The number of deportations remain very high. So all the talk of “enforcement first” increasingly sounds like an excuse for avoiding or at least delaying legalization in any form.

A bill that grants legal status without citizenship would not be popular on the left, but Yglesias imagines that Obama would gladly go along with it:

I think it would be genuinely a bit nutty for the president to refuse to sign a bill along these lines were it to pass congress. Immigrants and their families want a path to citizenship, and Democrats want new citizens who can vote for them, but legal status alone would be a boon to both unauthorized migrants and the national economy. If the bill were on Obama’s desk, I just don’t see how he could avoid signing it. That said, we’ve time and again seen the political problems with pre-emptive compromise in this administration. The absolute best way to destroy conservative support for a legal status measure would be for the White House to embrace it.

After reading Masha Gessen’s Words Will Break Cement: The Passion of Pussy Riot, David Remnick asked its subjects for their take on Putin’s Russia:

“For Putin, the Olympic Games are an attempt to inflate the inflatable duck of a national idea, as he sees it,” [Nadezhda] Tolokonnikova told me. “In Russia today, there are no real politics, no real discussion of views, and meanwhile the government tries to substitute for this with hollow forms of a national idea—with the Church, with sports and the Olympics.”

“These Olympic Games are central to the meaning of his life—they are as important to him as anything he has done,” [Maria] Alekhina said. “For us, it is important from an entirely different point of view. People need to note the corruption involved in building Sochi for the Games; they should notice the demolitions of buildings.”

Tolokonnikova and Alekhina said they thought that Putin, despite managing to suppress the wave of anti-government protests that erupted in Moscow and elsewhere in Russia two years ago, is weaker than he seems to the outside world. Even though they are now traveling in Europe and the United States, they said that they had no intention of emigrating or backing off; they plan to remain in Russia and concentrate their efforts on human-rights issues, particularly the plight of prisoners in Russian jails and prison colonies.

Reviewing Masha’s book, Graeme Wood comes away with a newfound respect for Pussy Riot:

Tolokonnikova read out a long closing statement that Gessen quotes in full. Nothing we previously knew about Tolokonnikova can prepare us for that statement’s decency, wisdom, and sadness at how little Russia has learned from the still-living memory of Stalin. “It is the entire Russian state system that is on trial here, a system that, to its own detriment, is so enamored of quoting its own cruelty toward the human being, its own indifference toward his honor and integrity,” she said. “If the political system turns all its might against three girls who spent a mere thirty seconds performing in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, that means only that this political system is afraid of the truth.”

Read in tandem with Gessen’s Putin book, Words Will Break Cement would indeed seem to suggest that anti-Putinism is its own source of strength, and that oppression can prematurely impart wisdom to the young and ennoble the frivolous. Pussy Riot’s movement started silly but was forced to into a position of dignity and principle by its tremendously undignified and unprincipled opponent. Tolokonnikova’s speech — delivered, I am impressed to say, by a twenty-two-year-old — is a great deal more sophisticated than throwing cats at fry cooks, and it is sure to outlast any words uttered by the man who had hoped to render her silent.

Previous Dish on Pussy Riot here, here, and here.

(Photo: Pussy Riot – Denis Bochkarev, 2012. Via Wiki.)

Faiza Patel checks in on efforts to destroy Assad’s chemical weapons:

Finding a country willing to take the toxic chemicals turned out to be impossible; early candidates Norway and Albania backed out. The U.S. came forward with an innovative solution: priority chemicals would be destroyed at sea aboard an American vessel, the specially-outfitted Cape May, using mobile units developed by the American military.   Although there remain concerns about whether the units will work consistently on a ship at sea, the idea is not as outlandish as it might sound. The offshore approach has been taken before, albeit on a smaller scale: in the mid-2000s, Japan destroyed World War II-era bombs found at sea off the port of Kanda.

Here’s where the project has hit a snag.

In order to get the priority chemicals onto the Cape May, the Syrians first have to transport them to the northern port of Latakia.  The December 31, 2013 deadline for doing so has passed. Two batches of priority chemicals have been moved offshore. These reportedly comprise about 4% of Syria’s total 1300 ton stockpile. However, since we don’t know how much of the stockpile is priority chemicals, we cannot evaluate progress in moving the most toxic chemicals out of the country.  The OPCW has attributed the delays to security concerns, as well as logistical issues (although the recent remarks by the U.S. seem to point the finger at Syria). Meanwhile, the clock is ticking. According to the plan approved by the OPCW, priority chemicals must be destroyed—not just spirited out of Syria, but destroyed—by March 31, 2014.  And planners estimate that it will take approximately 45 to 60 days to complete the operation at sea.

The final deadline for destruction of all Syrian chemical weapons is June 30th. Hayes Brown looks ahead to it:

Should the delays continue past the June deadline … the OPCW will have a decision to make, one that may bring force back onto the table. Under the terms of the United Nations Security Council resolution that demanded Syria hand over its stockpile, Ban and the OPCW Executive Director are required to jointly report Syrian non-compliance to the Council. Should that occur, the resolution promises that the Council will “impose measures under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter.” This can range from the imposition of economic sanctions to the use of military force, neither of which permanent members China and Russia are in favor of. Given the wording of the resolution, though, should Syria be found in non-compliance, they may not have much of a choice.

Philip Klein is aghast at the House speaker’s decision to pursue immigration reform in the lead-up to midterm elections:

If immigration reform passes, it will boost Democrats’ prospects in 2014 by demoralizing the GOP base and elevating President Obama, who just delivered a State of the Union Address that tacitly acknowledged he could no longer achieve anything major. If it fails again due to a conservative backlash, then it will trigger another wave of Democratic attacks on Republicans for being anti-Hispanic.

Per the chart above, Republicans favor neither legal status nor citizenship for illegal immigrants:

28% of Republicans oppose [temporary legal status] ‘strongly’. Around third also strongly oppose permanent residency (34%) and citizenship (36%) for illegal immigrants.

Overall, around half of the country (49%) favor a conditional ‘pathway to citizenship’ for illegal immigrants living in the U.S. that have passed background checks, paid fines and have jobs. 41% are opposed. This is about the level of support seen in YouGov polling over the last seven months. Granting temporary legal status is favored by 55%-36% opposed and permanent residency by 52%-39%. All three ideas are favored by the majority of Democrats.

Reihan thinks the GOP should focus on jobs instead:

If Republicans want to build trust with voters — foreign-born and otherwise — they ought to instead pass a serious jobs bill. In his State of the Union address, President Obama made it clear that he will use raising the federal minimum wage as a wedge issue to put GOP lawmakers on the back foot, and there is at least some reason to believe that he will succeed. A Gallup survey from late last year found that 58 percent of Republicans favored a substantial minimum wage hike, a fact that has greatly complicated conservative efforts to beat back a policy they fear will dampen future job growth. The perfect populist issue has fallen into the president’s lap, and a GOP immigration reform push will do nothing to dull its effectiveness.

But Ambers says now may be the “least worst” time for the Republicans to act. He lists reasons why this reckoning is inevitable:

(1) At some point, Republicans will no longer be able to build national political coalitions without reliably attracting more than 40 percent of the Latino vote. This is demographic destiny. The date of this eschaton can be delayed but not put off.

(2) Republicans will endure short term pain. (They’ll have given amnesty to people who don’t deserve it. They’ll be laying the groundwork for a cohort of Democratic voters. They’ll be ratifying ObamaCare.)

(3) Every cycle that passes by without immigration reform is a cycle that is one more removed from the day when Republicans will begin to rebuild a new political coalition that includes more Latinos.

John Avlon credits Boehner for taking on reform despite the political toxicity:

The good news is that Speaker John Boehner has finally decided to do what’s in the long-term best interest of his party and his country, betting big on what could be his most lasting positive legacy. “This problem’s been around for at least the last 15 years. It’s been turned into a political football. I think it’s unfair,” said the consummate dealmaker Boehner. “I think it’s time to deal with it. But how we deal with it is going to be critically important.”

The bad news is that the Tea Party and associated right-wing activist groups have already declared immigration reform a betrayal of conservative virtue, shots fired in the GOP civil war. A “Death Warrant for Conservatism,” declared the Powerline blog, while Heritage Action’s Dan Holler told The Daily Beast’s Patricia Murphy the proposal amounted to “a full-throated embrace of amnesty.”

Looking at the districts where the Latino vote is decisive, Cillizza concludes that immigration reform won’t help any Republicans get elected to the House this year:

Of the 24 districts with a Hispanic population of 25 percent or higher, half are places where the Hispanic vote amounts to something close to the only Democratic vote in heavily Republican seats. Only four of the 24 districts were won by President Obama in 2012, and only five others — California’s 25th, Florida’s 25th, California’s 39th, California’s 49th and New Mexico’s 2nd — can be considered even potentially competitive between the two sides. Those nine districts represent roughly four percent of the 232 seats the Republican majority currently controls in the House.

Passing immigration reform is, without question, the right move for a Republican party with an eye on winning back the White House in 2016 and staying competitive in the presidential race for decades to come. But, viewed from the how-does-this-affect-me-and-my-political-career perspective that most rank and file House Republicans see the world, passing immigration reform is a far more mixed bag politically speaking.

Sargent sees it differently, noting how the politics could actually be worse next year than right now:

Here’s an alternate reading: If the party tackles reform in 2015, it could get tied up in GOP presidential primary politics, pulling the GOP field to the right and leaving the eventual nominee saddled with extreme party rhetoric and positions on the issue, further alienating Latinos in the general election — exactly as happened in 2012. So while it might be difficult for Republicans to get reform done this year, braving it might be better than waiting.

Sean Trende wonders whether the push is happening now because Boehner fears a big win this fall:

First, a landslide would present as much of a problem as it does an opportunity for those who might want to revisit the issue in 2015, especially if the GOP establishment (or its donors) believes this is a must-do before the 2016 elections.  The base would be even more agitated after a big victory, and appalled at any compromise on this issue if the GOP picks it up in 2015.  In addition, absent a majority, Democrats wouldn’t have the same incentive to support a bill that contained further compromises, especially since they already view the bill as a compromise in the first place. They’d be better off watching Republicans flail and fail to pass a bill as their own base abandons them; this is roughly what happened in the mid-2000s. …

This isn’t to suggest that the GOP leadership is affirmatively doing this to minimize Republican gains. What I am saying is that they are closer to neutral about big gains than we might think, given the problems that the surge in base enthusiasm caused for them after the 2010 elections. So if they check agenda items like this off the list now and still get a landslide, great.  But if they end up cooling off the base’s enthusiasm and get a narrow, establishment-based Senate majority and keep the House, well, that’s not the end of the world either.  In fact, it would mean a more docile caucus in both Houses, which is good for those who run those Houses.

Benjamin Wallace profiles Ezra Klein and describes his vision:

Klein’s theory of the news grew out of his frustration with the industry’s relentless presentism, with the fact that, because media organizations prioritize what’s new (that’s why it’s called news), an article about the latest development in Syria’s civil war would likely not mention the single most important fact necessary to understand what is happening: the historical enmity between Alawites and Sunnis …

The answer, as Klein sees it, lies in the handling of what he calls “persistent content,” the more static information that makes the new stuff make sense. And here, he believes, the Internet has untapped potential. Traditional media organizations have taken advantage of the Internet’s speed but not its longevity. “People set newspapers on fire, they use them for wrapping fish,” Yglesias says. “The Internet does not have that property. What I don’t think we’ve gotten is that you can make things last longer than in print.” People who think about digital journalism distinguish between what they call unchanging “stock content” and ephemeral “flow content.” Klein believes that distinction is unhelpfully stark. “We’re interested in ending the ‘versus’ there,” he says. “We believe there are rivers and lakes of content that work together.”

Working on the web has two essential qualities: the pond-skater and the plumb line.

The pond-skater can flit with astonishing speed on the surface of everything, on “news”, and on the very latest twists and turns of various discussions. The plumb line allows the pond-skater at any point to stop and drop anchor, plumbing essentially infinite depths of detail, context, information and history. Combining the two remains digital journalism’s great and unique possibility.

We do it every day, of course, on the Dish with every continuing thread and with every contextualizing hyper-link. We combine seventeenth century poetry, revisionist history, classic tomes and novels, scholarly studies, authors long since forgotten, and video from the past to create a constantly changing but, we hope, open-ended and deep inquiry into any number of subjects. The point is to make the new more comprehensible by understanding the old, and to make the old instantly new again by adding context and wisdom and perspective to the new.

There must be many ways to unlock this potential. Here’s hoping Ezra innovates another one.

(Photo: pond skaters using water surface tension when mating. By Markus Gayda via Wiki.)