Author: Andrew Sullivan

Reihan clarifies his position:

My sense is that many voters resent the notion that they are bigots because they are concerned about unauthorized immigration. Many of these voters are, I suspect, more sympathetic to the would-be migrants who take part in the formal immigration system, e.g., by participating in the diversity visa lottery. My sketch of a more humanitarian immigration policy would be modeled on the diversity visa lottery, only it would be restricted to the world’s poorest countries. Residents of all countries would be eligible to apply to work and settle in the U.S. through a points system that emphasizes skills, as we discussed above. Even if the total number of migrants under this system were somewhat lower than the current total when we combine authorized and unauthorized migrants, the impact of remittances and brain circulation would, I suggest, do far more for global welfare than the existing system. Remember that we’re talking about helping societies in which large numbers of people haven’t reached the two-dollar-a-day standard.

The DREAM Act, in my view, entrenches an immigration status quo that privileges a politically appealing and influential group over voiceless would-be workers.

CityRyde's Jason Meinzer proposes that cities should try to monetize the benefit of riding a bike. He spoke with TreeHugger's A.K. Streeter:

One day I was reading the statistic how the Paris bike share program had reduced car trips by 8 percent in one year, and that's attributed to bike sharing, and then, it hit us – why shouldn't we be able to have revenue streams through carbon offset programs. Those bicycles trips are proven to displace carbon, there's a savings that can be quantified with precise precision, and then aggregated and certified and sold on on the open commodieties market place.

Felix Salmon runs the numbers.

(Photo: Frederic J Brown/AFP/Getty Images)

Howard Gleckman wants Obama to send the deficit commission's plan to Congress:

Republicans killed Democrats in November by selling voters on a wildly inconsistent platform of reducing taxes, opposing cuts in Medicare, and balancing the budget. This is absurd, but most voters didn’t know it. By demanding that GOP lawmakers vote on the fiscal panel’s plan—which trims deficits by both raising taxes and reducing future Medicare spending—Obama would issue a frontal challenge to the Republicans’ budget platform. They’d be forced to either oppose the only deficit reduction plan on the table or finally offer one of their own, thus ending their rhetorical free ride—and perhaps even opening the door to a serious deal. No matter how Republicans play it, Obama will have a chance to get back on offense on fiscal issues.

It's open and shut, but that isn't stopping the Obama Administration and its EPA from continuing the anti-science approach to energy conservation:

…subsidizing blending ethanol into gasoline is fiscally indefensible. If the current subsidy is extended for five years, the Federal Treasury would pay oil companies at least $31 billion to use 69 billion gallons of corn ethanol that the Federal Renewable Fuels Standard already requires them to use. We cannot afford to pay industry for following the law. Even Al Gore has admitted he was wrong to support ethanol subsidies.

Unfortunately, the Obama administration seems bent on carving out a special niche for ethanol, with the Environmental Protection Agency moving forward with an initiative to increase the amount of ethanol blended in fuels from 10% to 15%. Coming from Illinois, a major corn-producing state, Obama's position is not surprising and is consistent with his position as a senator when he was one of five signers of a letter to President George W. Bush urging him not to repeal the tariff on foreign ethanol.

While ethanol subsidies and tariffs are supposed to lead to energy independence and reduce gas prices, numerous studies have demonstrated that the program does little for gas prices while raising corn prices and potentially harming the environment. In fact, ethanol is a story of rent-seeking that transcends party lines, providing $6 billion in benefits to an industry that has been created by the government.

To his credit, Hugh Hewitt is calling out Republicans for their support of ethanol. The linked interview is also notable for Fred Barnes' impeccable performance as a hack GOP apologist… and even he can't bring himself to stand up for ethanol!

Today on the Dish, Andrew pondered whether Obama could finagle peace in the Middle East after starting over, and drafted a State of The Union address. James Franco's self-kiss left Andrew speechless, Peter Beinart measured the exodus of Israeli youth to other countries, and Andrew assessed the tuition tax hikes in Britain and what they've done to the Lib-Dem brand. We suffered another jolt in the DADT roller-coaster thanks to one man's bitter vendetta, and we tracked the full reax. Nate Silver decided DADT could be a nice slice of social reform pie to pair with economic reform, we kept an eye on Lieberman's tweets, and Serwer reminded us why DADT matters.

Will Wilkinson disparaged the left for its overblown reaction to the tax compromise and its silence on core liberties and Andrew agreed in principle. Hugh Hewitt hyperventilated about Tea Party opposition, Bush's economic wonk advised the right to take the deal, and Ed Kilgore considered a failed tax deal, with more analysis here. Larison nominated DeMint as the right's fiscal fraud, and Pelosi did to the tax cut deal what McCain (and Reid) were doing to DADT.

Babbage interviewed the Wikileaks Anonymous hackers, and Greenwald called it a war over control of the Internet. Andrew pointed out that the emperor still has clothes just not the power to keep them on, and Hemanshu Nigam confirmed the government probably won't ever be able to shut down the site completely. Contra Reihan, Serwer and Timothy Lee defended the DREAM Act, and Conor chalked it up to more than economics. Partisanship ruled whether attacks ads are considered fair, TSA may be categorizing airports as Fourth Amendment free zones, Google squared off with Amazon on e-books, and Matt Feeney marveled at the wave of Kelly Slater's skills.

Dissent of the day here, when Maggie met Sully here, FOTD here, VFYW here, chart of the day here, MHB here, and email of the day here.

–Z.P.

Obama is considering Bowles-Simpson tax reform as a key first step in addressing the long-term debt. The Dish rejoices.

Adam Serwer puts the debate in perspective:

I once asked a service member who had been deployed to Iraq what she thought about DADT. She recounted how a member of her unit had asked my friend to inform her partner and child in the event that she did not make it home. For obvious reasons, this woman had to hide the existence of her family from the service. At this point she was choking back tears — both because of the thought of losing her friend, and the depth of the responsibility she had been asked to take on. Gay and lesbian soldiers will not stop fighting and dying on foreign battlefields all over the planet as a result of this vote. They will simply do so in secret.

A key paragraph from Mark Zandi's economic analysis:

It is … important to note that growth will be slower in 2012 than previously anticipated, as the fiscal drag expected in 2011 is pushed off another year. The deal will also encourage businesses to pull investment forward into 2011, to the detriment of investment in 2012. The economy will end up in about the same place—as measured by GDP, jobs and unemployment—by mid-2013.

Krugman cites Zandi and concludes that the tax deal will lower Obama's re-election chances: 

[W]hat we know from lots of political economy research — Larry Bartels is my guru on this — is that presidential elections depend, not on the state of the economy, but on whether things are getting better or worse in the year or so before the election. The unemployment rate in October 1984 was almost the same as the rate in October 1980 — but Carter was thrown out by voters who saw things getting worse, while for Reagan it was morning in America.

Put these two observations together — and what you get is that the tax-cut deal makes Obama’s reelection less likely. Let me repeat: the tax cut deal makes Obama less likely to win in 2012.

Larison agrees. Drum doesn't. Nor does Ezra Klein:

The payroll-tax cuts look like the Bush tax cuts in reverse. By slapping an expiration date on the cuts, the Obama administration got twice as much as they otherwise would've (Making Work Pay, the tax cut being replaced, was only half size of the payroll-tax cut in 2011). And just as it was very difficult to let the Bush tax cuts expire, it'll be very difficult to let the payroll-tax cut expire. So the likely outcome here is that Democrats got $240 billion of payroll stimulus rather than $120 billion. That sounds good for Obama's reelection.

Republicans could, of course, try to let the payroll-tax cut expire. But then, as they've admitted, they'll be raising taxes in an election year. And nobody likes to do that.

Ryan Avent likewise believes Krugman is in the wrong:

Deceleration is not the same as "getting worse". And neither is decelerating growth the kiss of death. Take Mr Krugman's own example of the election of 1984, in which Ronald Reagan triumphed. Real GDP growth in that cycle actually peaked in the second quarter of 1983—more than a year before the election—after which it steadily slowed. From that 9.3% performance, growth tumbled to 3.3% by the fourth quarter of 1984, when voters actually went to the polls.

The second point to make is that according to Mr Bartels, it's income growth, rather than GDP growth, that really matters. And for income growth, the level of employment is clearly important; in a tighter labour market wages rise faster than in a slack market. On this score, the tax cut plan delivers. The level of employment is substantially higher with the deal than without it, and the unemployment rate is 8.4% in 2012 with the package compared to 8.7% with no package.

 

Bernstein takes another crack at DADT politicking: 

[W]hether the new plan will work depends on whether Harry Reid and the Democrats (and House Democrats) are willing to stick around and do it.  That, we don't yet know.  It may depend, too, on how quickly the tax bill and any other business can be finished.  And perhaps Republicans will be able to throw up enough roadblocks to run out the clock, after all.

Meanwhile, the original advantages of bundling repeal with the Defense Authorization bill turned out to have been a flop, or at least half a flop.  The idea behind it was always that marginal Senators would be afraid to vote "against the troops" and would therefore vote for the larger bill even if they didn't want to vote for DADT repeal — and that other Senators who may have wanted DADT repeal but didn't want to vote for it would be spared a separate vote.  Perhaps that's worked with some marginal Democrats (all Dems but Manchin voted yes today), but it certainly didn't work with Republicans.

A man walks in front of a poster of Chinese dissident and peace prize laureate Liu Xiaobo at an exhibition at the Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, December 9, 2010. With the guest of honour stuck in a Chinese prison, this year's Nobel Peace Prize ceremony will center around an empty chair, as its celebration of dissident Liu Xiaobo continues to split the global community and infuriate Beijing. The Norwegian Nobel Committee head said he was surprised at the level of international support for jailed Chinese dissident and peace prize laureate Liu Xiaobo despite pressure from Beijing. By Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images.