Does Obama believe a $172,000-per-year salary is modest?

That's the incredulous question posed, in passing, over at The Weekly Standard's blog. And it's a good question! After all, Robert Gibbs' salary is more than three times the median household income of an American family. 

On the other hand, the Standard has a bit of a history of poo-poohing the idea that households with yearly incomes of $250,000 or more could be reasonably defined as "rich." So the Standard's standard is clear: If you're making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, you're middle class -- unless you're a Democrat.

Slow blogging today

Swamped with other work. But trust me when I tell you that I've got a take on the whole "Huckleberry Finn" thing that's going to make nobody happy.

Mitch McConnell on filibuster reform

A change in the rules by a bare majority aimed at benefiting Democrats today could just as easily be used to benefit Republicans tomorrow. Do Democrats really want to create a situation where, two or four or six years from now, they are suddenly powerless to prevent Republicans from overturning legislation they themselves worked so hard to enact?

via washingtonpost.com

Here's the thing: the proposed reforms don't leave the minority party in the Senate "powerless."

Instead, they make the minority party actually work to obstruct the passage of legislation: If you want to filibuster, you actually have to take the floor of the Senate and filibuster. Right now, all Mitch McConnell has to do, essentially, is utter the word "filibuster" and the obstruction is passed. That's simply too low a bar -- one that presumes the minority has veto power over legislation unless proved otherwise.

Old-time filibustering actually worked once upon a time. It's why civil rights legislation was delayed. Filibuster reform is not filibuster removal. If you want to mount a filibuster, Sen. McConnell, be my guest. Stand up, make a speech, and drag out the cots for your colleagues.

Is America in your soul?

The New York Times adds to its coverage of efforts to repeal birthright citizenship, and includes this mind-boggling comment from Rep. Duncan Hunter:

In April, Representative Duncan Hunter, Republican of California, one of those pushing for Congressional action on the citizenship issue, stirred controversy when he suggested that children born in the United States to illegal immigrants should be deported with their parents until the birthright citizenship policy is changed. “And we’re not being mean,” he told a Tea Party rally in Southern California. “We’re just saying it takes more than walking across the border to become an American citizen. It’s what’s in our souls.”

If America is in the "soul" of anybody, it's probably somebody who fought to come here--crossing deserts, dealing with smugglers, and yes, breaking laws--so that they could partake in the freedom and opportunity this country supposedly offers. Beyond that, though, I wonder how Hunter proposes to do a soul-based citizenship test.

 

Mr. Mom Chronicles: A nice moment

A scene in the Craft-Mathis household:

Me: Tobias, I love you.

T: I lahv you!

Me (ratcheting it up): Tobias ... I LOVE you.

T: I lahv YOU! (Giggles.)

ME: I love YOU!

T: I lahv YOU! (Laughs maniacally.) Gufbaw.

He's right. I am a goofball.

House GOP to cut $100 billion?

Incoming House Majority Leader John Boehner is leading the charge to cut $100 billion from the domestic budget this year, reports the New York Times. The question is, where would the budget cuts come from? Military, domestic security, and veterans would be spared, but under the Republican plan, remaining federal programs would face savage cuts of about 20 percent this fiscal year. The $100 billion diet was part of a House GOP campaign pledge, but even Senate Republicans have backed away from such drastic cuts. Like many impending House Republican initiatives, its bark is worse than its bite – with the Senate still in the hands of Democrats and Obama retaining veto power, the budget-cutting vote is largely an act of political theater. The vote could give Republicans more bargaining power in their budget showdown with the White House this winter, however. For Democrats, the move to cut funding from education, transportation and scientific research could provide ammunition against Republicans in swing districts.

via slatest.slate.com

You know: I'm looking forward to this, actually. Maybe the House GOP can come up with $100 billion in cuts that won't be painful or set off an angry reaction. I doubt it. But if they do, more power to them. And coming up with an actual list of cuts will be useful: It's easy to campaign against spending when you're not talking about specifics. Showing your hand is a little more difficult.

Antonin Scalia: A woman isn't a person, or a citizen

An interview with Antonin Scalia:

In 1868, when the 39th Congress was debating and ultimately proposing the 14th Amendment, I don't think anybody would have thought that equal protection applied to sex discrimination, or certainly not to sexual orientation. So does that mean that we've gone off in error by applying the 14th Amendment to both?

Yes, yes. Sorry, to tell you that. ... But, you know, if indeed the current society has come to different views, that's fine. You do not need the Constitution to reflect the wishes of the current society.  Certainly the Constitution does not require discrimination on the basis of sex. The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't. Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that.

The text of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Emphasis mine. 

Even if you want to argue that legislators of the 1860s didn't intend for women to be protected by the equal protection clause, I'd think that even Scalia would agree that it's not very smart to read one amendment of the Constitution in isolation from the others. If women didn't count as "citizens" or "persons" during the Reconstruction Era, they most certainly did by 1920, when the 19th Amendment was passed guaranteeing women the right to vote. 

It's not crazy for people to read the equal protection clause as protecting every citizen within the United States. That's plainly what the amendment says. If Scalia wants it to apply only to men, he can go back and have a vote. We already have the law and its language.

Three cheers for filibuster reform

It looks like Democrats in the Senate might force reform of the filibuster. This makes Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander mad:

In a speech prepared for a Tuesday appearance at the Heritage Foundation, Mr. Alexander reiterated his position that Democrats would be making a mistake. “Voters who turned out in November are going to be pretty disappointed when they learn the first thing Democrats want to do is cut off the right of the people they elected to make their voices heard on the floor of the U.S. Senate,” he said in his planned remarks.

Which is why Dems should make the entirely correct case that their proposed reforms actually help newly elected senators make their voices heard on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

After all, the changes -- as I understand them -- won't do away entirely with the filibuster: Democrats can clearly see the day, two years ago, when they'll be in the minority: they'll want to have the tool available for themselves at that point. But right now, all a senator has to do to conduct a filibuster is say the word "filibuster." He or she doesn't have to take the floor, Mr. Smith style, and hold it until it can't be held anymore: they just have to indicate they might. That merest gesture triggers a supermajority requirement to get any legislation passed.

The proposed reform would require, more or less, that senators who want to filibuster a piece of legislation actually filibuster a piece of legislation. They'd have to hold the floor in front of God and the voters -- and, presumably, they'd use some of that time to explain why they were taking such extreme measures. Filibuster reform doesn't stifle senators' voices; it forces them to use them instead of hiding behind a wall of procedural rules. Democrats should be able to win this fight in the court of public opinion.

Is your library 'big government liberalism' in action?

Bill Kristol chortles over cuts at a Maryland library, which includes the loss of a subscription to his own Weekly Standard:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD knows that government spending at all levels must be reduced. And TWS puts the country first! So to all our readers who are offering to write in protest, to organize petitions, and to gin up denunciations of Montgomery County officials: No. We'll do our part for the greater good. Unjust and unwise as it is to deprive Bethesdans of TWS in their public libraries, we're willing to say: As long as public sector unions, politically correct county activities, foolish and unnecessary programs, and bloated government payrolls are also cut—we'll take the hit, too.

So Bethesdans who've been reading TWS in the library will have to subscribe (it's a good deal!). And we'll have done our part to help put the nation on the path to recovery from big government liberalism.

I don't know. It's true that libraries can sometimes become ambitious and opulent on the taxpayer dime, but it had never occured to me to think of the library as "big government liberalism" in action. Even Glenn Beck uses libraries! But it does make me wonder what kind of community-based social service programming Bill Kristol finds reasonable. Meals on Wheels? A socialist plot. 

Today in inequality reading: The negative income tax

Cato's Facebook page points me to this new National Affairs article by Harvard professor Jeffrey Miron, who proposes scrapping pretty much all U.S. entitlement programs and creating a "negative income tax:"

A negative income tax — an idea advocated by Nobel prize-winning economist Milton Friedman — would have two key components: a minimum, guaranteed level of income, and a flat tax rate that is applied to the total amount of income (if any) that a person earns. The net tax owed by any taxpayer would equal his gross tax liability — that is, his earned income multiplied by the tax rate — minus the guaranteed minimum income. If the gross liability were to exceed the guaranteed minimum, the taxpayer would owe the difference. If the gross liability were to fall short of the guaranteed minimum, the government would pay the difference to the taxpayer.

To illustrate, consider a negative tax-rate structure under which the guaranteed minimum is $5,000 and the tax rate is 10%. In this situation, a person earning no income would get a transfer from the government of $5,000 and have a total income of $5,000. A person earning $100,000 would have a gross tax liability of $10,000 and a net tax liability of $5,000, for a total after-tax income of $95,000. A person earning $10,000 of income would have a gross liability of $1,000 and a net liability of negative $4,000 (that is, this person would get a check from the government for $4,000), for a total after-tax income of $14,000.

The chief appeal of this proposal, according to Miron himself, is simplicity: One program to rule them all, instead of a hodge-podge of agencies that disburse various types of aid. Make sure everybody has a minimum level of cash in their pocket and send them on their way. It reduces admininistrative costs, and it frees entrepreneurs and big businesses to get on with the business of creating wealth. And that is enticing.

But I've got a couple of quibbles with Miron's piece -- one being the premise, the other in the proposal itself:

* The premise is that the welfare state is a huge drag on wealth producers. Maybe, but I'm not certain he makes the case. Part of his case is a table showing that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans pays 28.1 percent of all federal taxes. That does seem disproportionate until you realize that the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans own 42.7 percent of the country's entire wealth. Sounds like America's richest citizens are kind of getting off easy, actually. 

Look closer at the charts: The top 20 percent of Americans pay 68.9 percent of federal taxes, but control 85.1 percent of the wealth. The least-wealthy 80 percent of America owns 7 percent of the wealth -- and pay 30.9 percent of taxes. The burden of government, then, already falls disproportionately on the people who do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this country. 

* And that situation would probably get worse under Miron's proposal. Why? The flat tax that Miron says is a key part of the proposal. Everybody above Miron's minimum income rate would pay the exact same rate in taxes. But let's be honest: 10 percent out of a $10,000-a-year income is more burdensome in all sorts of ways than $10,000 out of a $100,000-a-year-income. The proportion of taxes might be more evenly amongst income groups, but it would feel heaviest to the people on the bottom. And as Miron himself suggests, there might be incentives for people right above the poverty line to abandon work and go on the dole. That's a problem with any program, but it seems likely to be a bigger problem if abandoning a progressive tax rate unduly burdens the lowest-income workers.

And to be honest, I'm not certain why a flat tax is a necessary component of the negative income tax. You can get the clarity Miron looks for, I think, by retaining a progressive tax system but reforming it to get rid of a ton of loopholes. That would allow tax rates to go down, even at the high end.

2011

The arrival of 2011 is just a touch bittersweet for me: It marks 20 years since I graduated from high school. Basically, I've been an adult now for longer than I was a kid, and yet I still feel like a kid. And I'm no longer even at the beginning of my adult journey, now: I'm approaching the middle somewhere. My feet and knees feel creeky, making sure that I understand that the youth inside my head is imprisoned there.

Other reasons to feel old. 2011 is...

* The 20th anniversary of "Terminator 2."

* The 25th anniversary of the Challenger disaster.

* The 30th anniversary of Reagan's presidency. He'll be as much a historical figure to my 2-year-old son as FDR was to me.

I can't remember 1976 too clearly. It was the year I turned 3, and I think I remember it mainly as the year my father introduced me to the "Captain Kangaroo" television show. 

Counterinsurgency: You're doing it wrong

General David Petraeus has his work cut out for him: Civilian casualties are at record levels in Afghanistan, with more than 2,000 having died in 2010. According to the Afghan Interior Ministry, 2,043 civilians, 1.292 policeman, 821 Afghan soldiers, and 5,225 insurgents were killed in 2010, plus many thousand more wounded. The U.N.’s number is even higher, estimating that 2,412 civilians died in 2010, up 20 percent from 2009. The 711 foreign troops killed in 2010 were also a record. Nearly two-thirds were American.

via thedailybeast.com

Needless to say, widespread civilian deaths are a pretty clear sign you're losing a counterinsurgency. Either you're doing the killing, and thus creating a backlash, or you're failing to prevent the killing -- in which case there's precious little reason for the population to support you.

BREAKING: Hugh Hefner is a gross, icky old man

When Hugh Hefner announced on Twitter that he was engaged to a woman who could be his great-granddaughter, it marked another instance of the Playboy tycoon living up to his reputation. A key part of that image involves the Playboy Mansion, the enviable setting of star-studded parties. But some of Hefner's so-called girlfriends have started talking about the inner workings of the place, revealing it to be more like a prison than a palace of love, reports the Daily Mail. At least for the women. That Hefner would treat women like property hardly seems surprising. Yet beyond that, it turns out the mansion is a disgusting mess that constantly smells like dog urine. They also had to put up with nightly curfews that would only be lifted when they accompanied Hefner to a club, where he would constantly check his watch to time his Viagra just right so that he could later enjoy the sex parties where he "just lay there like a dead fish," according to one of the disenchanted women.

via slatest.slate.com

A conservative friend of mine commented that this news wasn't surprising to people who run in social conservative circles. My reply? This story isn't really surprising to people who run in feminist circles, either.

What does the Tea Party stand for, exactly?

Just a month ago, Tea Party leaders were celebrating their movement’s victories in the midterm elections. But as Congress wrapped up an unusually productive lame-duck session last month, those same Tea Party leaders were lamenting that Washington behaved as if it barely noticed that American voters had repudiated the political establishment.

In their final days controlling the House, Democrats succeeded in passing legislation that Tea Party leaders opposed, including a bill to cover the cost of medical care for rescue workers at the site of the World Trade Center attacks, an arms-control treaty with Russia, a food safety bill and a repeal of the ban on gay men and lesbians serving openly in the military.

“Do I think that they’ve recognized what happened on Election Day? I would say decisively no,” said Mark Meckler, a co-founder of Tea Party Patriots, which sent its members an alert last month urging them to call their representatives to urge them to “stop now and go home!!”

via nytimes.com

I'm a little perplexed by the Tea Party anger over some of the items in that second paragraph. I've always understood the Tea Party's focus to be primarily on economic issues and budgetary issues. So why would they oppose medical care for 9/11 rescue workers? Or an arms-control treaty? Or repealing DADT?

E.J. Dionne and the sacred Constitution

From its inception, the Tea Party movement has treated the nation's great founding document not as the collection of shrewd political compromises that it is but as the equivalent of sacred scripture.

Yet as Gordon Wood, the widely admired historian of the Revolutionary era has noted, we "can recognize the extraordinary character of the Founding Fathers while also knowing that those 18th-century political leaders were not outside history. . . . They were as enmeshed in historical circumstances as we are, they had no special divine insight into politics, and their thinking was certainly not free of passion, ignorance, and foolishness."

An examination of the Constitution that views it as something other than the books of Genesis or Leviticus would be good for the country.

via washingtonpost.com

I think Dionne makes some good points here. We do tend to revere the Founders on the level of demigods, but they were politicians and operators who made compromises.

On the other hand: the Constitution deserves respect and adherence not just because the dudes who created it were super-awesome, but *because it's the law of the land.* I think it grants the national government more power -- and, weirdly, the people more rights -- than Tea Partiers seem to think. It's a good debate to have!

My gun-loving son

He made this from his blocks. He is making "pew pew" shooting sounds. His mama isn't happy. But I did similar things when I was a kid. My only question is: where did he come up with this?

Today in inequality reading: A sick society

There’s growing evidence that the toll of our stunning inequality is not just economic but also is a melancholy of the soul. The upshot appears to be high rates of violent crime, high narcotics use, high teenage birthrates and even high rates of heart disease.

That’s the argument of an important book by two distinguished British epidemiologists, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett. They argue that gross inequality tears at the human psyche, creating anxiety, distrust and an array of mental and physical ailments — and they cite mountains of data to support their argument.

“If you fail to avoid high inequality, you will need more prisons and more police,” they assert. “You will have to deal with higher rates of mental illness, drug abuse and every other kind of problem.” They explore these issues in their book, “The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger.”

via nytimes.com

I'm about halfway through reading Paul Krugman's "Conscience of a Liberal," and like today's Nicholas Kristof column (above) it's raising more questions for me than it answers.

Conservatives cast a low-tax low-regulation structure, often, in terms of freedom. And that's appealing: We all want to be free, right? But there's just a ton of evidence that the way the United States does capitalism isn't leading to income or social mobility -- and if the researchers Kristof cites above are correct, that it's not helping us create a healthy society.

The conservative era that began in 1980, then, appears to be one in which the rich get richer -- and everybody else gets sicker. It's a good deal for the rich, I suppose, but I wonder why the rest of us should go along with it.

2011 resolution update

Today: 2 miles walked.
2011 total: 2 miles walked.

Kris Kobach tries to ruin every state I live in

The newest initiative is a joint effort among lawmakers from states including Arizona, Oklahoma, Missouri and Pennsylvania to pass laws based on a single model that would deny American citizenship to children born in those states to illegal immigrants. The legislators were to announce the campaign in Washington on Wednesday.

A leader of that effort is Daryl Metcalfe, a Republican state representative from Pennsylvania. At a recent news conference, Mr. Metcalfe said his goal was to eliminate “an anchor baby status, in which an illegal alien invader comes into our country and has a child on our soil that is granted citizenship automatically.”

The campaign is certain to run into legal obstacles. Courts have interpreted the 14th Amendment as guaranteeing birthright citizenship. Even among those who seek its repeal, debate has hinged on whether that would require a constitutional amendment, an act of Congress or a decision by the Supreme Court.

via nytimes.com

The newly elected Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is a mover and shaker behind the initiative, and I wish he'd stick to screwing up his own state. I understand concerns about illegal immigration, to some extent, but -- and I'm just going to be unfair here, conservative friends -- I can't help but think the above-described measures indicate that *some* conservatives let their dislike of Latinos override their fidelity to the Constitution -- which has long, long, long been understood to grant citizenship to people born on American soil. It's a lousy measure, which probably means it stands an excellent chance at passage.

The myth of Boomer self-absorption

The New York Times leads off with a lazy New Year's story about how Baby Boomers are turning 65 this year, and gives an overview of the landscape thusly: 

Though other generations, from the Greatest to the Millennial, may mutter that it’s time to get over yourselves, this birthday actually matters. According to the Pew Research Center, for the next 19 years, about 10,000 people “will cross that threshold” every day — and many of them, whether through exercise or Botox, have no intention of ceding to others what they consider rightfully theirs: youth.

There are other hints throughout the story that Boomers are uncommonly shallow and narcissistic, but the problem is that the photo leading the story is of this guy, Aloysius Nachreiner, a 65-year-old who made his career at a folding box company and, by the looks of things, has had nothing to do with Botox at any point in his life.

Point being, sweeping generalizations about whole generational cohorts are kind of stupid. The kind of shallow narcissism that the Times describes as being typical of Baby Boomers is a more accurate description of upper- and upper-middle-class Americans who happen to be demographically similar to, ahem, the Times' editors and writers. But such critiques would be doubtless just as accurate for any generation of upper- and upper-middle-class Americans. Nobody likes to get old. Only some of us have the power to spend time and money fighting it, and those happen to be the same people inclined to document it.