Paul Ryan's budget

Ben and I discuss it in our Scripps Howard column this week. My take:

Credit Paul Ryan for bravery: He has done what Republicans avoided doing for decades -- show exactly how the party would cut government.

Americans may not like taxes, but they do like government services.

Just don't give Ryan too much credit.

Why? Because his proposal is not entirely honest. Ryan presents cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and Pell Grants as a means to preserve the safety net for America's poorest. But many of Ryan's conservative allies see the proposal as an opening gambit to undo the welfare state entirely and turn the clock back to the 1920s, when the sick and elderly suffered needlessly. Back down, and it won't be long before we're debating whether the programs should exist.

Why? Because Ryan's diagnosis is wrong, treating government spending as though it is the main cause of America's recent financial troubles.

That's wrong: Wall Street went on a gambling spree and finally lost -- threatening to unmake the world financial system when it did so.

Spending on social programs was not the problem.

Why? Because to the extent that a long-term deficit does pose a problem, it's not entirely a spending problem. It's a paying problem: Americans aren't financially supporting the government we get.

Personal income tax rates are among the lowest they've been in 70 years; major corporations like GE pay little or no tax at all. Writer Bruce Bartlett notes that in 2011, federal revenues will only consume 14.4 percent of GDP -- below the postwar average of 18.5 percent, and well below the 20-percent-plus that accompanied the surplus years of the late 1990s.

Ryan's proposal hurts the poor. It benefits the rich. And according to Ryan himself, it doesn't balance the budget until 2040. That's not a path to prosperity for anybody except the already prosperous. This proposal must be defeated.

Ben is more enthusiastic. I think a welfare state should be sustainable, and I think Democrats have real work to do to address that issue. But I think Ryan's budget really begins a discussion that goes all the way back to the 1930s and 1960s—do we really want to have a welfare state at all?

The people's work

So: Who thinks voters gave the GOP control of the House in order to shut down government over abortion?

Why police officers shouldn't use Facebook

I think it's interesting that the common departmental response to officers posing as vigilante power abusers on Facebook isn't to try to curb the officers' attitudes—but to get them to stop posting to Facebook.

Congressman Kevin McCarthy's mighty big bootstraps

Last week I noted that the Koch brothers believe in the power of hard work and free enterprise because they turned themselves from millionaires into billionaires—seemingly missing the point that it's lots easier to become a billionaire if you start out with some word ending in "illionaire" as a description of your monetary worth.

Via Adam Serwer, I note that GOP Congressman Kevin McCarthy has a similar story to tell.

FOX: Sure. Such a good point. You would actually know something about the American dream because going... in the Wayback Machine for a moment... you won the California lottery.

McCARTHY: On my first ticket. I was 19. I won the lottery. I could do one of two things: I could become Charlie Sheen and throw a big party, but I chose to invest in the market, and after a while... I decided to invest in the American dream and open my own small business. [Despite] the challenge of government regulation, luckily I was successful, and at the end of two years, I then had enough money to pay my way through college.

He was a deli guy, so I wonder what kind of "challenges" government regulation posed. Did the government put its boot on his neck by forcing him to put unused meat in the refrigerator?

More seriously, it does seem to be a theme among Corporate Republicans that even in instances where they clearly benefitted from great luck or great genes, well, they believe that it was their own virtue that really carried the day. That's simplistic. Success is probably often a matter of both luck and hard work—and one without the other probably doesn't offer much long-term reward, generally speaking. Acting as though the stool only has one leg is foolish.

My Glenn Beck prediction

I've already said this on Twitter, but want to preserve this at the blog so that I can say "I told you so" in about two years.

My prediction is this: Within two years, Glenn Beck remakes himself as a David Brock/Arianna Huffington lefty 'disillusioned' with the right. He'll be so good at it that liberals will ... like him. Beck's left himself plenty of escape hatches along the way, with the "rodeo clown just trying to understand stuff" routine he does. He'll say: "Well, I understand now! And once Fox realized I was going places that weren't in line with GOP orthodoxy, they got rid of me!"

When I fall for this, I ask that one of you slap me. Hard.

'Never in history has liberals abstaining from a vote lead to a more progressive government'

Adam Serwer casts his lot with the lesser of the two evils:

Liberals may ultimately come back to the Democrats, but this isn't merely out of blind loyalty or because they're easily manipulated by cheap Democratic fearmongering. It's because the consequences of Republican dominance are anything but abstract.

And that makes sense. But there has to be something better for liberals than hoping for better Democratic governance and shrugging our shoulders when we don't get it. (Read Serwer's post, and that's more or less what his position amounts to.) On the civil liberties front, there are plenty of allies across the political spectrum—including, yes, the libertarian-oriented right—that a coalition that exerts real pressure and that can cause real pain ought to be possible. Perhaps I'm too optimistic. But seeing "civil liberties" as the cause of a narrow portion of the Democratic base, I think, is viewing things too narrowly—as is the idea that those of us who care about such issues find our natural home in the Democratic Party. I'm certain that's no longer the case.

Finding a positive way forward—one that's realistic and and create real change in favor of civil liberties—doesn't appear to be an easy project. I'm not interested in spending my days going to Green Party rallies. But I'm not interested in lending legitimacy or support to a president who doesn't deserve it, either.

The end of Barack Obama

First, do no harm.

That's where I start with my philosophy of governance. Maybe it sounds conservative. I don't think conservatives would have me as one of their own, though, because I think it is also wise—where possible—for republican government (as the servant of the community) to provide services we can't otherwise provide for ourselves. A safety net for the poor. Universal healthcare. NPR. Stuff like that.

But a government charged with providing such services to—and on behalf of—the citizens has a basic obligation that supersedes those: Do no harm.

Do not torture people.

Do not lock away people without due process of law.

Do not eavesdrop on people without a warrant.

Do not subject people to cruel and unusual punishment.

Do not deprive people of their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

If a government cannot do those things, the rest—the social services, the safety net—is just a payoff. If a government cannot do those things, then it is probably no longer a government that derives its power from its citizens, but instead is (or is on its way to becoming) a government that rules its citizens. It's not always easy to tell the difference between the two, but the distinction is there—and it is important.

I have lost confidence in the ability of Barack Obama to first do no harm.

He is in charge of a government that—despite promises to end torture—is clearly trying to break the will of one of its own citizens in a military brig.

He is in charge of a government that prosecutes suspected terrorists in whichever format seems most likely to guarantee a win for prosecutors, instead of giving every suspect equal access to the law.

He is in charge of a government that seeks ever more-expansive ways to spy upon its citizens. He is in charge of a government that claims the right to kill a citizen without any kind of legal proceeding. He is in charge of a government that proclaims itself legally immune from efforts to hold it accountable for transgressions. And he is in charge of an administration that reserves to itself the right to make war without permission from Congress.

I voted for Barack Obama in 2008 because I was mad. I was mad at George W. Bush for doing everything I've listed above, plus a few other things. I was kind of mad about Republican governance that seemed interested, mainly, in catering to the interests of the rich, but I was mostly mad about how the Bush Administration had reserved to itself unlimited, abusive wartime powers—in the name of prosecuting a war without end. Obama seemed to promise more than that.

He has delivered, on these matters, almost exactly what came before. I can no longer trust Barack Obama, or the Democratic Party, to be truly on the side of civil liberties.

Adam Serwer, a liberal, wrote: "Point is, though, if you voted for Obama in 2008 expecting a restoration of the rule of law, a rejection of the Bush national-security paradigm or even a candidate who wouldn't rush headlong into wars in Muslim countries expecting to turn back the current of history through mere force of will, then you don't have a candidate for 2012. You probably don't have a party either." He is right.

Conor Friedersdorf, a conservative, wrote: "Since his January 2009 inauguration, President Obama has embraced positions that he denounced as a candidate, presided over a War on Drugs every bit as absurd as it's always been, asserted the unchecked, unreviewable power to name American citizens enemy combatants and assassinate them, and launched a war without seeking Congressional authorization. His attorney general's efforts to live up to his boss' campaign rhetoric have been thwarted at every turn. And presiding over the disgraceful treatment of Bradley Manning, he has lost the right even to tout his record on detainee policy. On civil liberties, President Obama cannot be trusted." He is right.

For a long time, I have paused before the decision I find I must make. Democrats are awful, but Republicans are worse. They'll do all of the above—gleefully, without any pretense of a furrowed brow—and they'll do it while doing everything they can to exacerbate inequality between the very rich and the rest of us.

After the darkness of the Bush years, I came to convince myself that the lesser evil is, well, less evil. At some point, though, the lesser evil is still too evil to support. I don't believe Barack Obama is evil. I believe he is better than his opponents—but not in the critical realm where the "do no harm" rule applies. And I do not believe he is good enough.

The president has announced his re-election campaign. At this point, he will not have my vote. He has until November 2012 to earn it back. I do not expect he will.

Who wins under Paul Ryan's budget plan?

Chait: "Americans overwhelmingly oppose cuts to Medicare and Medicaid. Ryan understands he can only make his plan acceptable if those cuts are seen as necessary to save the programs.

And certainly some level of cutting is necessary. But Ryan's level of cutting goes far beyond what's needed to preserve those programs, and it does so in order to clear room for a very large, regressive tax cut. He is making a choice -- not just cut Medicare to save Medicare, but also to cut Medicare in order to cut taxes for the rich."

Barack Obama and Bradley Manning

A petition: "President Obama was once a professor of constitutional law, and entered the national stage as an eloquent moral leader. The question now, however, is whether his conduct as commander in chief meets fundamental standards of decency. He should not merely assert that Manning’s confinement is “appropriate and meet[s] our basic standards,” as he did recently. He should require the Pentagon publicly to document the grounds for its extraordinary actions—and immediately end those that cannot withstand the light of day."

Can Obama be trusted on civil liberties?

No: "Since his January 2009 inauguration, President Obama has embraced positions that he denounced as a candidate, presided over a War on Drugs every bit as absurd as it's always been, asserted the unchecked, unreviewable power to name American citizens enemy combatants and assassinate them, and launched a war without seeking Congressional authorization. His attorney general's efforts to live up to his boss' campaign rhetoric have been thwarted at every turn. And presiding over the disgraceful treatment of Bradley Manning, he has lost the right even to tout his record on detainee policy. On civil liberties, President Obama cannot be trusted."

Adam Serwer on Obama's failures

Co-sign.: "Point is, though, if you voted for Obama in 2008 expecting a restoration of the rule of law, a rejection of the Bush national-security paradigm or even a candidate who wouldn't rush headlong into wars in Muslim countries expecting to turn back the current of history through mere force of will, then you don't have a candidate for 2012. You probably don't have a party either."

Corporate America has a smaller tax bill than you do

Nancy Folbre: Tax Havens and Treasure Hunts - NYTimes.com:

"Our budget deficit would be smaller – and pressure to cut social programs lower – if corporate tax revenues had not declined over time relative to gross domestic product and relative to individual income tax revenues.

Corporate America is a world leader in creative tax minimization. As David Kocieniewski reported in The New York Times, General Electric used some particularly innovative strategies to take advantage of overseas tax havens, including “offshore profit-shifting.”

The Boeing Corporation, a major federal contractor, has had a net rebate in federal taxes over the last three years, and a total tax rate of 4.5 percent over the last five years, though the company points to pension contributions and research credits that have reduced the bill.

In 2008, the Government Accountability Office reported that 83 of the 100 largest publicly traded corporations in the United States had subsidiaries in jurisdictions listed as tax havens; it cautiously emphasized that this did not prove that their decisions to locate there were motivated by tax minimization."

Single-Tasking Sundays: Week One

The first Single-Tasking Sunday is over, and I think I can call it a success. I confess to using my phone to make a call and peak in the world on Sunday morning, but otherwise managed to keep the day clear of e-mail, Twitter, Facebook, and a host of other electronic distractions. In the morning, we had breakfast and read the papers. (Actual papers.) Around midday we did some housecleaning. In the afternoon, my wife and I went to see a movie and have dinner. Very relaxing all around.

In some respects, it wasn't an extraordinary day. It was just ... quieter. Two moments stood out for me.

• We took a brief break from our mid-day chores. Often, these 10-minute breaks involve iPhones, iPads, and all manner of diddling around—to the point that chores are never returned to. On Sunday, I just sat. We had a Billie Holiday album playing on our sound system, and so I listened. Music is often background noise for me; on Sunday, for a few minutes, it moved to the foreground.

• At dinner, I found myself talking to my wife, instead of fiddling with my iPhone. (I left it at home to ensure some discipline.) Sure, there were moments of silence, but I didn't fill them with my usual e-diddling. We just took in each other's company.

I'm not sure what will come of this exercise in electronics-free Sundays. But if all I get are a few stolen moments of silence and serenity, that will probably be enough to justify this exercise.

Today in inequality reading: Real economic stability

New York Times:

"But many of the jobs being added in retail, hospitality and home health care, to name a few categories, are unlikely to pay enough for workers to cover the cost of fundamentals like housing, utilities, food, health care, transportation and, in the case of working parents, child care.

A separate report being released Friday tries to go beyond traditional measurements like the poverty line and minimum wage to show what people need to earn to achieve a basic standard of living.

The study, commissioned by Wider Opportunities for Women, a nonprofit group, builds on an analysis the group and some state and local partners have been conducting since 1995 on how much income it takes to meet basic needs without relying on public subsidies. The new study aims to set thresholds for economic stability rather than mere survival, and takes into account saving for retirement and emergencies."

As it happens, I've been thinking a lot about this National Affairs essay by Yuval Levin, which suggests tearing down much of the American welfare state and replacing it with a "true" safety net that offers government support for the real hard cases. The proximate cause of this is that the federal government is spending way more than it takes in, but there's a larger philosophical justification:

Because all citizens — not only the poor — become recipients of benefits, people in the middle class come to approach their government as claimants, not as self-governing citizens, and to approach the social safety net not as a great majority of givers eager to make sure that a small minority of recipients are spared from devastating poverty but as a mass of dependents demanding what they are owed. It is hard to imagine an ethic better suited to undermining the moral basis of a free society.

There's something very seductive about this vision—but only if people who do work hard and honestly stand a reasonable chance to provide for themselves and their families. And that doesn't seem to be the case, according to the Times' report:

According to the report, a single worker needs an income of $30,012 a year — or just above $14 an hour — to cover basic expenses and save for retirement and emergencies. That is close to three times the 2010 national poverty level of $10,830 for a single person, and nearly twice the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.

A single worker with two young children needs an annual income of $57,756, or just over $27 an hour, to attain economic stability, and a family with two working parents and two young children needs to earn $67,920 a year, or about $16 an hour per worker.

That compares with the national poverty level of $22,050 for a family of four. The most recent data from the Census Bureau found that 14.3 percent of Americans were living below the poverty line in 2009.

Two notes:

• Median household income in 2009 was around $50,000 a year. That means half of all households were making less than that. I presume there are a number of four-person families in the lower half of all American households. And since the sustainability number is actually north of the median number ... well, I'm going to presume that most American families aren't earning enough to sustain themselves without some form of government subsidy—at least if we accept the Wider Opportunities for Women study. Yikes.

• As Paul Krugman notes this morning, the GOP plan for getting the economy moving involves ... lowering American wages. That's good for business, but not so good for workers.

I'm all for retooling the safety net if the market provides a reasonable living for its participants. That doesn't seem to be happening right now. And it's not, frankly, how the market seems inclined to act.

The Philadelphia School District has blocked me from following its Twitter account

The Philadelphia Inquirer has done first-rate work this week with its series on violence in Philadelphia public schools. The overall effect of the series has been to re-affirm for me—based on prior observations—that Supt. Arlene Ackerman and the district leadership are more concerned with clamping down on critics and whistleblowers than they are with fixing the district's substantive problems.

My opinion was reinforced today when the @PhillyEducation, the district's official Twitter feed, decided to mount a sustained attack on the Philadelphia Daily News for running a Photoshopped picture of Ackerman with a chainsaw in her hands—to illustrate coming budget cuts. Word of the feud got around quickly, and I did two things:

* I decided to follow @PhillyEducation's feed.

* I offered a series of my own Tweets criticizing the district for how it was handling the situation. I aimed my Tweets at Tara Murtha, a writer at Philadelphia Weekly, whose Tweet first alerted me to the imbroglio. I was irritated, as you can see, but I don't think my commentary was out of bounds:

Cut to this evening. I wanted to check into how the conversation had proceeded after I moved on to more productive work. Only to find out the school district had blocked me from subscribing to its feed:

From a technical standpoint, this isn't a huge deal. The district's feed is still open—I can see it if I just go to the feed page—but it is irritating. And it should be shocking: whoever runs the social networking voice of a government body has decided that mild criticism warrants being blocked from receiving "official" information about that body.

But it also proves my point. The district is more interested in blocking out the voices that talk about what it's doing wrong than it is fixing those problems. The folks at North Broad Street don't know me from Adam; I'm just another citizen, taxpayer and parent they feel free to ignore. It's a lot easier to block me on Twitter than it is to provide safe and adequate education to the children of Philadelphia.

Today in inequality reading: Joseph Stiglitz in Vanity Fair

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1% | Society | Vanity Fair: "America’s inequality distorts our society in every conceivable way. There is, for one thing, a well-documented lifestyle effect—people outside the top 1 percent increasingly live beyond their means. Trickle-down economics may be a chimera, but trickle-down behaviorism is very real. Inequality massively distorts our foreign policy. The top 1 percent rarely serve in the military—the reality is that the “all-volunteer” army does not pay enough to attract their sons and daughters, and patriotism goes only so far. Plus, the wealthiest class feels no pinch from higher taxes when the nation goes to war: borrowed money will pay for all that. Foreign policy, by definition, is about the balancing of national interests and national resources. With the top 1 percent in charge, and paying no price, the notion of balance and restraint goes out the window. There is no limit to the adventures we can undertake; corporations and contractors stand only to gain."

Bill James defends the jockocracy

Noted baseball stats expert Bill James has an interesting piece at Slate in which he suggests that the sports world does a much better job of identifying and promoting talent than, well, pretty much every other segment of society. "The average city the size of Topeka produces a major league player every 10 or 15 years. If we did the same things for young writers, every city would produce a Shakespeare or a Dickens or at least a Graham Greene every 10 or 15 years," he writes. (And am I the only one who thinks he sounds like Malcolm Gladwell in this piece?) But I think he gets weirdly defensive at the end.

Because the sporting world was always ahead of the rest of the world in breaking racial barri­ers, black kids came to perceive sports as being the pathway out of poverty. For this we are now harshly and routinely criticized—as if it was our fault that the rest of society hasn't kept up. Some jackass Ph.D ex-athlete pops up on my TV two or three times a year claiming that a young black kid has a better chance of being hit by lightning than of becoming a millionaire athlete. This is nonsense as well as being a rational hash.

Look, it's not our fault that the rest of the world hasn't kept up. It's not our fault that there are still barriers to black kids becoming doctors and lawyers and airline pilots. Black kids regard the athletic world as a pathway out of poverty because it is. The sporting world should be praised and honored for that. Instead, we are more often criticized because the pathway is so narrow.

I think James misreads the criticism, and the object of it. Yes, it's not uncommon to hear laments that young black men (and young men generally) see sports as their best ticket to the good life. But the criticism isn't really heaped on the shoulders of the sports world. It's aimed at society in general, which has invested so much time, energy, and money in the sports world, which is why you often hear comparisons between (say) Jimmy Rollins' paycheck and that of a South Philadelphia schoolteacher. The idea is usually that we should be heaping more honors and money on the teacher. And that's kind of the point that James is making. So why is he being so defensive?

Fatimah Ali leaves the Daily News

I'm not a particular fan of Fatimah Ali; I thought her column last week advocating school prayer was several different kinds of wrongheaded. Yet I'm somewhat troubled this morning to learn that she's being forced out at the Daily News:

Several months ago, I began ponder the possibility that I might not be at the Daily News forever. I saw small signals that indicated how far apart I might be from the paper's edgy new perspective.

SO IT CAME as no surprise when I was told last week that today's column would be my last. But I remain a committed communicator, as well as a believer that God's time is always best.

Because I'm not really a fan of Ali, I suppose it's possible that Larry Platt is merely clearing away some of the more stale elements of the Daily News as he continues to remake the paper. But given his track record in the first months, it's also possible that he's dispensing with a lesser-known voice in order to import another celebrity columnist. I hope that's not the case, but I'm still suspicious that the Daily News is transitioning from "gritty" to "flashy." Ugh.

The New York Times stops blaming the rape victim; Jonah Goldberg might want to take notice

The New York Times has revisited the story of the 11-year-old Texas girl who was allegedly raped by more than a dozen men. It doesn't acknowledge the story is an act of penance for its earlier victim-blaming piece on the same topic, although editor Bill Keller said as much in an aside in his Sunday column.

It turns out that the girl wasn't victimized one time, but repeatedly over a period of months.

The arrests have raised fundamental questions about how a girl might have been repeatedly abused by many men and boys in a tightly knit community without any adult intervening, or even seeming to register that something was amiss, until sexually explicit videos of the victim began circulating in local schools.

“It wasn’t that anyone was asleep,” said the Rev. Travis Hulett Jr., the pastor of the New Bethel Missionary Baptist Church, which anchors the Precinct 20 neighborhood where most of the defendants live. “You can be awake and see things and still not do anything.”

A tight-knit community in which 19 men felt they had the right to rape an 11-year-old girl, and only gradually did it dawn of folks that something wrong was going on here.

I couldn't help but think of this piece when I read Jonah Goldberg's column in today's Los Angeles Times, about how feminism has finished its work in the United States, and how what it really needs to do is pack up and start helping women overseas.

Islamist extremism and oppression of women go hand in hand. And while the correlation between poverty and terrorism is often overstated, the correlation between prosperity and women's liberation is profound. Female education is tightly linked with GDP growth, lower birthrates and even higher agricultural yields.

It's also tightly linked with human freedom and decency, which is why no Islamic "spring" is possible without a feminist revolution.

There is something to this. Recent events in the Arab world have brought us fresh examples that one of the tools of oppression is to rape and sexually humiliate women who challenge authority. Americans—and American feminists—should push back, hard, against those cultures.

But there's a certain "Go back to Russia!" quality to Goldberg's complaint. Yes, there are bad things happening overseas that deserve the attention of feminists. But we still live in a country where a community of men will take advantage of a young girl, and the community that surrounds them will struggle to justify their actions or blame the young girl, and where a major national newspaper will occasionally unthinkingly print those justifications without contradiction. That suggests to me there's still plenty of work for feminism to do at home, as well.

The fight over delivering cable to my iPad

I don't have Time Warner service, but this New York Times story about that company's new iPad app—it live-streams TV programming to the tablet to cable subscribers using the device in their home—is interesting. Apparently the TV networks think Time Warner is horning in on their business:

But some channel owners say that companies like Time Warner Cable should be consulting with them more closely before introducing new products. “Portability is a different business proposition,” said an executive at one of the major channel owners, suggesting that there should be a premium paid for the ability to take a TV show into bed or into the bathtub. One commercial for Time Warner Cable’s app actually shows a person watching TV on a tablet while taking a bath.

Portability is a different proposition—if true portability is involved. (By which I mean: I can take my iPad to the cafe down the street and watch CNN on it.) But that's not the Time Warner app. As the Times notes: "The iPad app only works inside the home, and only for customers who receive both television and Internet from the operator."

From a consumer standpoint, then, I don't think there's a significant difference here that should require me to, you know, pay more for cable service. Water comes into my apartment in several places, for different functions: A kitchen sink for washing dishes and providing water for cooking and drinking; the bathroom sink for hand-washing and tooth-brushing; the bathtub for body-cleaning. We also have water flowing into our washing machine.

Yet we don't get charged for the different types of ways the water gets used in our apartment: the water is delivered to us, we pay for it, and we use it as needed. Cable television isn't water, of course, but I don't know why it can't be the same way: Get the entertainment to my house and let me choose how to view it. Don't charge me extra just because I'm watching Comedy Central on my iPad instead of a television.