Yes, Bibi Wants Us To Go To War For Him, Ctd

Contra the prime minister, John Judis parses a new report by former State officials who recommend we ratchet down the pressure on Iran:

Instead of increasing the threat of war, the authors suggest that the Obama administration imitate a series of steps that would persuade Iran that in exchange for pledging not to build a nuclear weapon (and agreeing to inspections to confirm the pledge is being carried out), the U.S. and the other negotiating partners would progressively lift sanctions and would also agree to Iran’s development of a peaceful nuclear program. They urge a meeting in the next months between Obama and Rouhani—perhaps during the fall United Nations session.

The authors point out that the United States stands much to gain from an improved relationship with Iran—not just in ending the threat of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, but also in gaining Iran’s cooperation in neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan (where Iran initially worked closely with the United States against the Taliban and al Qaeda) and in Iraq and Syria, where a regional Sunni-Shia war looms on the horizon.

Is Rouhani someone “we can do business with” as Maggie once described Gorbachev? That would drive the neocons insane. Gary Sick thinks Bibi needs “a new set of talking points”:

Almost every year since the early 1990s, senior political figures, intelligence specialists and respected commentators have assured us that Iran would surely have a nuclear weapon in three to five years, sometimes less, unless Iran were forced to stop its mad dash for the bomb. It is not hard to understand the logic of this assertion. Israel itself managed to develop a nuclear weapons capability in absolute secrecy in only a few years. It was not alone. South Africa, India, even poor Pakistan with virtually no heavy industrial base, managed to develop nuclear weapons in secret within a decade or so of the decision to launch a determined program. By most accounts, Iran decided to restart its nuclear program — started under the shah and interrupted by the Iranian revolution — in the mid-1980s, nearly 30 years ago.

Detroit Goes Bankrupt: Reax

Population Decline

Yglesias provides an overview:

This is the largest city to ever file for bankruptcy, and obviously no large city goes bankrupt without a complicated array of problems. But the basic reason Detroit needs to do this is pretty simple. In 1950 there were 1.85 million people in Detroit. In 1970, it was 1.5 million. In 1990, it was a million flat. By 2010, it was down to 710,000. When your city is shrinking like that, you end up with a tax base that’s inadequate to maintain the fixed infrastructure or to pay off pension costs that were incurred in more prosperous times. Shedding legacy obligations is a necessary part of the fix. You can shed legacy obligations without filing for bankruptcy by just stiffing pensioners. But the scale of Detroit’s fiscal problems are so enormous that doing it entirely that way would be cruel and pointless—bondholders need to take a hit and this is the way to do it.

Plumer notes some of the city’s other problems:

— The official unemployment is now 18.6 percent, and fewer than half of the city’s residents over the age of 16 are working. Per capita income is an extremely low $15,261 a year, which means there’s not all that much tax revenue pouring in.

— Low tax revenue, in turn, means that city services are suffering. Detroit has the highest crime rate of any major city, and fewer than 10 percent of crimes get solved. The average response time for an emergency call is 58 minutes. Some 78,000 buildings are abandoned or blighted and there are an estimated 12,000 fires every year. About 40 percent of the city’s streetlights don’t work.

— High crime and blight are driving even more residents out of the city. It’s also driving down property values, which means many residents have stopped paying property taxes. The city collected about 68 percent of the property taxes owed in 2011. Both of those things put a further strain on Detroit’s finances.

Soltas zooms out:

Detroit’s dependence on cars … wasn’t exactly the problem. It was dependence itself. Cities should never go all in on any industry, cars or otherwise. It didn’t realize that until it was too late.

Rob Wile explains what happens next:

Assuming the case goes forward — some creditors may try to object to the filing — the court will now determine which entities — corporations, pension funds, employees and anyone else Detroit owes money to —  will actually see the money they were promised by the city.

According to the American Bankruptcy Institute Journal, Detroit technically gets to do all of the proposing for how that works out. It will submit a restructuring plan to the court, and if the plan doesn’t violate any sections of the federal bankruptcy code, it will be voted on by the creditors.

The creditors don’t get to propose their own plan, and the court can issue a “cram down” order to force objecting creditors to accept parts of the plan. But there will be negotiations going along the whole way where creditors will have their say.

John Cassidy expects this process to take time:

Having seen General Motors and Chrysler both emerge from bankruptcy leaner and with much less debt,  [Detroit’s mayor, Dave Bing,] and other officials are evidently hoping for a similar outcome for the city. But even assuming that the bankruptcy filing does survive a legal challenge, it’s far from clear how a case of this size, complexity, and political toxicity will work its way through the courts; the process could take years. Municipal bankruptcy cases are invariably complex. With Detroit’s debts standing at an estimated twenty billion dollars, this is by far the largest such case in U.S. history. And Detroit is still a city of more than seven hundred thousand people. Can an unelected official like [Kevyn Orr, Detroit’s emergency manager,] govern such a city for years on end with no democratic mandate? A mayoral election is due to take place later this year. So long as Orr is effectively running the show, its result won’t mean much.

Tim Fernholz offers three reasons why Detroit filed yesterday instead of in September or October as expected. One theory:

[Orr] feared lawsuits from pension funds seeking to stop the bankruptcy. In Chapter 9, the city’s promise to spend billions paying for retiree health care is likely to be shifted to the federal government, and the pension funds themselves are likely to take significant cuts. Their managers have been filing lawsuits seeking to prevent the city from entering bankruptcy, but the filing stays them all.

Lydia DePillis looks at who Detroit owes money:

Detroit is about $18 billion in debt, and will only be able to pay out a fraction of that in the short term. The two main groups of creditors arguing they’re entitled to that money are public employees and retirees, and bond holders. The investors are likely to make out better, since more of that debt is secured; the city will continue to pay water and sewer bondholders. Most of the pension debt has no similar backstop.

City residents will likely suffer a lack of anything other than the most rudimentary public services for a long time, but the impact is likely to be felt most keenly by those who lost a large chunk of the retirement they were counting on.

Barro wishes the public sector pension system was designed differently:

If a federal court approves Detroit’s bankruptcy plan, its retired workers will see their pension benefits cut drastically.

It shouldn’t be this way.

When a company goes bankrupt, most of its workers’ pension benefits are insured through the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, a federal government entity established under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974.

Congress should extend ERISA or a similar set of rules to municipal and state governments. This would force governments to manage their pension systems in a safe way, and would protect workers from destitution in the event of a state or municipal insolvency like Detroit’s.

Sommer Matthews also considers the pensions:

Michigan’s constitution technically prohibits the accrued pension benefits of public employees from being reduced retroactively. But Detroit Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr has previously indicated that bankruptcy would mean pension cuts for both current and former city workers would be on the table. The city’s pension funds currently face an estimated shortfall of about $3.5 billion. For (hopefully obvious) political reasons, it’s unlikely that current retirees would see their checks disappear entirely, but smaller checks are a (frightening) possibility. Future retiree benefits would be the big area for cuts, though. Plenty of states and local governments have already slashed pensions even without going bankrupt.

The above map, on Detroit’s population loss, is from Nate Cohn, who rounded up various maps on Detroit’s decline.

The Egalitarianism Of Getting Laid

A reader writes:

This is kind of a tangent of the Richard Cohen and racial fear thread, but I had another thought about your ease with African-Americans back when your neighborhood in DC was still dangerous.  Do you think going to gay bars had anything to do with your comfort level?

I am not gay, but have been in a few gay bars with friends here in NYC.  One think that really struck me was how it was one of the only places where different classes mix – meaning upper-middle class/wealthy whites with poor blacks (and all of the other various combos).  I live in Washington Heights, and about the only bar where you see blacks, Latins, and newly-arrived whites mingle is at No Parking, the gay bar across the street.

Not being from here, I’ve been a bit surprised how much straight New Yorkers divide up by class and, de facto, race. I could see why there might be less understanding in our views of poor blacks and Latinos.

I’m sure being gay has a lot to do with it. There’s nothing like dating or fucking a person of another background, race or class to help you see the humanity in everyone. Alas, the gay bars in DC, while much less segregated than in other places, are still sadly divided. DC’s Pride is even divided into regular Pride and African-American Pride. But the gay commonality can dissolve many barriers if you’re open to it.

One of my most vivid early memories of nightlife in DC was a trip to the Clubhouse – now defunct – in a neighborhood that was deemed a little risky even for 1988. I went with a white club-kid friend of mine who kept raving about the music, which was similar to that played in The Warehouse in Chicago. It was one of the sources for early House music, and as we went in – around 2 am or so – it was packed with men of color, helium balloons and a big punch bowl. It was an informal event – in a warehouse space – but the music was so over-powering and amazing and unlike anything I had ever heard, I was captivated. I’d guess my friend and I were the only white dudes in the room (maybe we missed a couple in the mosh-pit of rhythm, and I was then a slip of a thing, a cute twinky English schoolboy. But within minutes I was part of the crowd, ignored by most, smiled at by a few, and completely immersed in that House sound that became the background to my coming out.

How do you get scared of generic young black men when you’ve danced with them all night long, or had so many fuckbuddies who needed a washcloth in the shower? In that sense, I’ve always felt that being gay was a real moral blessing. I could have been so much worse a human being if I’d been straight.

The Best Defense Is A Good Economy

Drezner has a long article (pdf) on the diminishing returns from defense spending. It concludes:

The lesson from this analysis for U.S. grand strategy is that an overreliance on military preponderance is badly misguided. Again, it is not that military power is useless; it is that the law of diminishing marginal returns has kicked in. The United States would profit more from investing in nonmilitary power resources than in military assets. An excessive reliance on military might, to the exclusion of other dimensions of power, will yield negative returns. Without a revived economy and the associated global recognition of a renaissance in American economic power, the United States runs the risk of strategic insolvency. The United States needs to focus primarily on policies that will rejuvenate economic growth, accelerate job creation, and promote greater innovation and productivity. If the U.S. economy is perceived to be rebounding, then the biggest economic beneªts that have been hypothesized to flow from military predominance will be preserved. Furthermore, over the long run, economic growth is the strongest driver for growth in defense spending. Short-term cuts can lead to long-term growth in defense spending. As policymakers weigh the choice between maintaining a large military and taking steps toward economic revival, the results in this article point strongly toward deeper cuts in defense expenditures.

Steinglass adds:

[T]here was a time when states needed huge armies because they were interested in conquering each other to get bigger, suck in more tax revenue, and justify their rulers’ thirst for glory. Then after that there was a time when states represented rival ideologies that fought each other to justify the belief systems that held them in power with their own populations. Then the Berlin Wall fell, and now that’s over too. I just don’t see the rationale for preserving a military that can defeat any other militaries anywhere in the world twice at the same time in an age when states are no longer seeking to conquer other states for fun and profit, as they were during the struggle of liberal democracies against totalitarianism. The vague strategic rationales that float underneath our defence budgets don’t describe a vision of the world that makes any sense to me.

Me neither, which finally dawned on me after the debacles of Iraq and Afghanistan. This issue is generational as well. Those born after the Cold War ended cannot understand why this vast continent, defended by two vast oceans, with woeful infrastructure and massive debt, should still be playing the global hegemon game. The Founders would be appalled. But the logic of this is so powerful that even 9/11 cannot refute it. In retrospect, au contraire. Our reaction proved its expiration date had long passed.

That’s why I can live with the sequester. It may be the only way to bypass the McCainiacs and military-industrial-complex and actually slash defense.

Where Music Isn’t Free

Chris Kjorness argues that reggae outlasted mambo for the same reason the United States outlasted the Soviet Union:

At the height of  ’50s mambo fever, you would have been laughed out of the room had you predicted that comparatively tiny and impoverished Jamaica would soon become a dominant force in global music, while the Caribbean’s longstanding cultural capital of Havana fell into irrelevance and decay. But the rise of communism and its attendant cultural protectionism soon choked off mambo and Cuban creativity at the source, while Jamaica’s economic boom and unfettered recording industry uncorked a revolutionary new music called reggae.

Many Cuban musicians welcomed the revolution, and quite a few benefited at first, but that soon changed:

By 1961, all production facilities had been nationalized. State approval was required for any new recording. Censorship and bureaucratic red tape frustrated artists. Reduced tourism and trade cut Cuba off from its most lucrative markets, and the lack of profit motive meant that no one stood to make money by pushing new music or reissuing perennially popular recordings. Meanwhile, the deteriorating economy (exacerbated by the U.S. embargo) made money still more scarce. By 1966, Cuba, which used to press millions of records a year, only managed to eke out 184,000.

Meanwhile, in free-market Jamaica:

[T]he sound-system dance was the place most Jamaicans went to show off their wares and hear new tunes. An underground economy grew around the dances: Organizers charged admission, DJs received a fee, and food and alcohol vendors lined the streets around the venue. Competition between DJs was intense, and customer feedback immediate. The hottest music in 1950s Kingston was American jazz and rhythm and blues. DJs paid a premium for records by artists such as Rosco Gordon and Fats Domino. Records were imported or bought off boat workers coming from the United States. Many DJs actually got their start working as migrant laborers in the United States, using the money they earned to collect equipment and records. A new breed of music entrepreneurs was just beginning to build the infrastructure needed for Jamaican music to flourish.

The Cuban government continued its censorship as recently as December:

A crackdown on reggaeton and other unnamed musical styles that are threatening the revolutionary country’s traditional musical culture will punish artists and fine those who programme it, according to Cuban Music Institute boss Orlando Vistel Columbié. “We are not just talking about reggaeton. There is vulgarity, banality and mediocrity in other forms of music too,” Vistel told the official Granma newspaper. “But it is also true that reggaeton is the most notorious.  On the one hand there are aggressive, sexually obscene lyrics that deform the innate sensuality of the Cuban woman, projecting them as grotesque sexual objects. And all that is backed by the poorest quality music.” …

Musicians who play reggaeton are threatened with being struck off official lists, making it harder for them to work, and recordings are already being purged from official catalogues. Radio and television stations are also under pressure to drop reggaeton – though Cubans can still turn their dials to radio stations in nearby Miami or elsewhere.