Let's raise taxes to pay for our wars

Walter Pincus makes a sensible suggestion:

"Given today’s situation, why doesn’t President Obama link his request to restore Clinton-level taxes on the wealthy to the $88.5 billion requested for fiscal 2013 to pay for continuing the war in Afghanistan and counterterrorism efforts worldwide? That Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) account, the supplemental appropriation created to fund Iraq, Afghanistan and other military actions abroad, is expected to continue as long as the United States has troops in Afghanistan and elsewhere overseas confronting terrorists. 

For planning purposes, the Congressional Budget Office sees the OCO account running $44 billion a year through 2022. 

What about Obama, Romney or even hawkish members of Congress introducing a special excise tax on telephone calls or even Internet usage or ending some tax loopholes to pay that $44 billion a year. Taxes have been used to pay for America’s past wars going back to the War of 1812 — except for Iraq and Afghanistan."

There's an old saying: "If you want less of something, tax it." Since we have an all-volunteer military, the vast majority of Americans don't feel the effects of their country being at constant war around the globe--a situation that's persisted long enough now that most of us simply don't pay close attention anymore. Explicitly linking Americans' tax bills to those wars might give them some skin in the game--and force officials to justify their actions instead of relying on inertia to continue military operations. Which is why no such tax will be passed, probably. But it's galling to see some folks try to cut Social Security and Medicare while feeling little obligation to pay now for the wars we conduct.

The French bookselling model: Nice idea, but bad for readers

French Bookstores Are Still Prospering - NYTimes.com: 

"Since 1981 the “Lang law,” named after its promoter, Jack Lang, the culture minister at the time, has fixed prices for French-language books. Booksellers — even Amazon — may not discount books more than 5 percent below the publisher’s list price, although Amazon fought for and won the right to provide free delivery. 

Last year as French publishers watched in horror as e-books ate away at the printed book market in the United States, they successfully lobbied the government to fix prices for e-books too. Now publishers themselves decide the price of e-books; any other discounting is forbidden. 

There are also government-financed institutions that offer grants and interest-free loans to would-be bookstore owners."

Notice who wins in this scenario: Publishers and booksellers. Readers? Not so much. It's readers who benefit from price competition, after all.

Consider this: The list price of "Do Not Ask What Good We Do," Robert Draper's new book about the House of Representatives, is $28. If America had a French-style book law, nobody in the country could sell the new book for much less than that. Here, though, you can buy it from Amazon for $18.10--$13.50, if you buy new from one of the third-party sellers who operate on Amazon's site. I bought the book for $15, its Kindle price; in France, I'd perhaps have still paid $28, a printing press price for a cloud-based book.

What France's model does is price lower-class readers out of the market for new books; they have to wait until such books show up used. And that's not culturally crippling, I guess. But if you're somebody like me, with finite resources but a great desire to read current books, the French model would be a real hardship.

The alternative argument, I suppose, is that readers benefit when booksellers and publishers remain financially healthy to keep producing and selling books, and that's true enough. But that benefit is indirect--and keeps prices high enough that it's easy to speculate that France, for all its love of books, is actually selling fewer than it could or should because it keeps prices propped artificially high.

Today in Philadelphia Police corruption: Yes, *that* dumb

Philly cop charged with selling heroin: 

"THE IDEA to start selling heroin apparently wasn't dumb enough in the mind of young Philly cop Jonathan Garcia. 

The 23-year-old had to go and do it on duty. 

In uniform. 

Across the street from the district headquarters where he was assigned in Point Breeze."

In fairness: There is no John McNesby quote defending the guy.

Death of football watch: Why 'Friday Night Lights' isn't quite as much fun

A New York Times feature on how even professional football players are saying they won't let their kids play, for fear of long-term health problems:

"Jay Coakley, a sports sociologist at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, said: “Football is really on the verge of a turning point here. We may see it in 15 years in pretty much the same place as boxing or ultimate fighting.” 

In other words, less a lucrative American colossus and more a niche sport beloved for its brutality."

On a related note, I (finally!) watched the pilot episode of "Friday Night Lights" last night, after years of hearing worshipful hubub from my friends. I was particularly struck by an early scene in which Taylor Kitsch's character--having shown up to practice half-drunk--is put at the center of a circle of teammates and tackled by each of them, taking turns, while the coach yells at him for his transgression.

The coach in the series is supposed to be a good guy. And the scene is meant to be a tough scene. But something has changed in the six years or so since it first aired: The scene felt cruel. Like I was watching "Hostel" or "Saw" or some other movie in the torture porn genre.

Granted, this is the same episode that (spoilers!) sees the star quarterback paralyzed with an in-game neck injury: "Friday Night Lights" doesn't shy away from the idea that the game is inherently violent. What's striking, though, is that after the kid is carted off the field, the game resumes, and we're treated to an underdog-comes-back story designed to give us goosebumps. And through the first two episodes, at least, nobody questions whether the game is worth the sacrifice of a young man's life and health. It's a tragedy, yes, but...tragedies happen?

Hey, it's just a TV show. And I intend to keep watching, for now: I'm told it's a good show that isn't about football, but which is set in a football milieu. OK. But the culture has shifted ever-so-minutely since these episodes first aired. Given what we know now about brain injuries and the number of football players who have committed suicide, it's initially hard to see "Friday Night Lights" as anything but the gasp of a dying era, and a dying sport.

Nash Keune's misleading numbers on the food stamp program

At NRO, Nash Keune asks why the food stamp program is still growing if unemployment is coming down:

"In 2000, only 17.3 million people were on food stamps. That number has ballooned to 46.6 million. Of course, it makes sense that participation in a countercyclical program would increase during a recession. But the number of people using food stamps has grown much more than the participation in other similar programs. For example, Medicaid spending increased 27 percent during the recession, while food-stamp spending has jumped 110 percent. 

Conversely, as the unemployment rate has come down in the last couple of years, the participation rates have actually jumped. From FY 2009 to FY 2011 the number of people receiving food stamps increased by 11.2 million even while the unemployment rate declined modestly. Even according to the rosy economic predictions of the Congressional Budget Office, the number of people on food stamps is projected to drop back only to 33.7 million by 2022, a time in which the unemployment rate is expected to fall to 5.3 percent. This projection of 33.7 million recipients is still slightly higher than the number of people on food stamps in the heart of the recession in 2009, and it’s almost twice the number of recipients in 2000."

It's true that the unemployment rate has declined somewhat, though it's still more than double the 4 percent unemployment rate that existed in 2000.  And even that number is misleadingly optimistic, since the workforce participation rate is incredibly low right now—lots of unemployed Americans have simply given up trying to find a job, since they aren't finding a job.

What's more, even as the unemployment rate has declined slightly, America's poverty rate has continued to climb: 2009's 14.3 percent poverty rate was the highest since 1965. Then it went up to 15.1 percent in 2010. That was about 46.2 million people living in poverty—a number that corresponds pretty closely to Keune's 46.6 million on food stamps, no? 


Yes, but Medicaid spending has increased at only a quarter the rate of food stamp spending! Well, sure. And the explanation for that is easy: Except when emergencies strike, people can and will put off medical spending when they're poor. But you gotta eat.

The unemployment rate on its own is an insufficient indicator of whether people need the food stamp program; just because you have a job doesn't mean it pays well. The poverty rate is probably a better indication of our national need.

In any case, it's telling that Keune cites a "declining unemployment rate" while never specifying the size of that decline. Maybe it's because the jobs situation is still much worse than it was in 2000; it's clear the need for food assistance remains high as well.

Would Obama attack Iran to beat Romney?

I'm not sure what to make of this assertion from Victor Davis Hanson at NRO:

"Suddenly around October the world will become absolutely unsafe. In these dangerous times, Americans must forget their differences, come together, and embrace a bipartisan unity — given that it may be necessary, after all, to hit the Iranian nuclear facilities, since we’ll have learned that the bomb may be a reality by, say, mid-November. Just as we have been reminded that Barack Obama has saved us by his brave decisions to use double agents in Yemen, computer viruses in Iran, Seal Team Six in Pakistan, and philosophically guided Predator assassination hits, so too a strike against Iran may suddenly be of vital national-security interest, though keenly lamented by a Nobel laureate nose-deep in Thomas Aquinas. "

Emphasis added. There is a double-standard at work over the last 30 years or so: When Republican presidents go to war, they're righteously defending the country. When Democratic presidents go to war—and I'm also thinking here of impeachment-era Bill Clinton—it's wag-the-dog pandering designed to distract the country from the president's weaknesses.

It makes you wonder if the Republicans are, well, projecting a bit. Even if not, it's interesting: When Democrats are "tough" by Republican standards, it's additional proof of how weak they really are.

Me? I think we can probably ultimately live with a nuclear Iran, though I'd rather not have to. And I think President Obama—for all his many faults on the topics of war and civil liberties—understands that attacking Iran, no matter the timing, would be hugely destabilizing around the world. He seems to understand (in a way his predecessor didn't) that wars aren't just opportunities to look awesome—they can also create awful unintended consequences. I'm cynical, but I have a hard time envisioning him unleashing death and widespread misery merely for the sake of getting 270 electoral votes.

As for Victor Davis Hanson: He's basically asserting the president is willing to kill to win an election. If November comes without military action, I wonder if he'll apologize for his fact-free speculation of evil on the president's part. I doubt it.

One way to fight the recession: Communal living

Census Bureau: "In spring 2007, there were 19.7 million shared households — defined as a household with at least one “additional” adult. An additional adult is a person 18 or older who is not enrolled in school and is neither the householder, the spouse nor the cohabiting partner of the householder. By spring 2010, the number of shared households had increased to 22.0 million while all households increased by only 1.3 percent."

Mitt Romney learned the wrong lesson from Sarah Palin

Something I think many rank-and-file conservatives have misunderstood about the left's emphasis on diversity is that it's not just about getting women and minorities at the table for the sake of getting women and minorities at the table—it's often an attempt to tap and develop the talents of people who have traditionally been blocked from fully practicing those talents. Republicans tend to cast diversity efforts almost exclusively in terms of pandering—which may be why, when they get around to trying to promote diversity in their own ranks, they often do it in the worst, most pandering way possible.

Which brings us to Sarah Palin.

Shortly after she was picked for the GOP vice presidential nomination four years ago, I wrote—in a blog post that appears to be lost to the ages—that if it failed, Republicans would learn learn the wrong lesson from that failure—and see the problem more in Palin's gender than in her obvious deficiencies as a national-level candidate. Via Jonathan Chait, we see that's precisely what happened: 

"I think, unfortunately, Palin poisoned the well on that," said one informal Romney adviser, fretting that any woman selected as VP would draw inevitable comparisons to the former Alaska governor. "I would guess if I were inside the Romney mind that they're worried that any woman chosen will be subjected to a higher level of scrutiny. "

It's true that some of the attacks on Palin were sexist. However: Palin was subjected to a fair amount of scrutiny for a couple of reasons: A) She was largely unknown at the national level when John McCain selected her as his running mate. B) She avoided interactions with the press, making it appear she had something to hide. C) When she did sit down for in-depth interviews, it sure looked as though she wasn't adequately prepared for federal governance. She invited scrutiny precisely because she had never before been scrutinized.

If McCain had selected Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson—which wouldn't have happened for other political reasons—the dynamic would've been different. Yes, there would've been scrutiny on her as the first national female GOP candidate, but she was also a known quantity who would've been prepared to discuss federal issues.

But the lesson Republicans have learned from Palin's candidacy isn't: "Unprepared candidates are bad candidates," or "Polarizing candidates are polarizing" but "women are bad candidates." That's kind of sexist, but mostly it's dumb—and, if true, will deprive the party of some of its best and most energetic talent. Which is even dumber.

'Religious freedom' is just another word for 'nothing left to lose'

I think we're entering the phase where invocations of "religious freedom" are increasingly losing their meaning. The latest example is in Harrisburg, where the Catholic Church is backing a bill to eliminate Department of Public Welfare oversight of church-based day cares and give it to the state's Department of Education—which, incidentally, has no power or infrastructure to actually regulate those day cares:

"The committee chairman, Sen. Jeffrey Piccola (R., Dauphin), said the bill was needed because of "continuing encroachment that impacts the religious mission of schools and day-care facilities." 

When pressed by other lawmakers, neither Piccola nor a lobbyist for the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference, which supports the measure, could cite an instance where there had been an attempt by state officials to interfere with any religious curriculum."

We have enough battles over the appropriate spheres of public and private responsibility that I'd hate to see the term "religious freedom" turn into some Orwellian phrase that disguises more than it illuminates. Seems to me that if you're going to allege that the state is trampling such freedom, you ought to have at least an anecdote available to make the case. As it stands, the Pennsylvania Catholic Conference looks plenty cynical.

Alexander Aan: 'God does not exist'

Press release in my inbox just now:

Atheist Alliance International (AAI) has launched the 'God Does Not Exist' campaign to draw attention to the case of Alexander Aan, the Indonesian atheist attacked and arrested in January 2012 after posting 'God does not exist' and articles and cartoons about Islam on Facebook. Aan was convicted by an Indonesian court on 14 June 2012, sentenced to two years and six months jail and fined Rp100 million (c.US$10,600). 

AAI urges people to exercise their freedom of expression by tweeting messages of support for Aan with the hashtag #goddoesnotexist and posting 'God Does Not Exist' on their Facebook page.

Here's more on the case from the New York Daily News.

I mention this, because in similar cases in which people have been persecuted or prosecuted for making drawings of Mohammed, lots of folks on the "clash of the civilizations right" have been eager to show solidarity—and, not incidentally, insult Islam—by also drawing Mohammed. I understand the urge to blasphemy, but decided awhile back that it was mostly wrongheaded. The glee suggested to me that the intent of many Mohammed depicters was to blaspheme somebody else's faith more than to defend free speech. Their right, of course, but one that struck me ... distasteful.

I somehow doubt most folks who draw Mohammed will be moved to show solidarity with Aan this time by posting a statement—'God Does Not Exist'—that is general enough to implicate religions beyond Islam, to offend religious believers of a wider variety.

Alexander Aan shouldn't be in jail, period, for his expressions of unfaith. Are we willing to be just as vigorous—and offensive—in defending him as we are in other situations? I'm skeptical, but willing to be proved wrong.

Why Pennsylvania's liquor business should be privatized

Top LCB officials said to take gifts, favors from vendors:

"The report names LCB chief executive officer Joe Conti, board member Patrick J. "P.J." Stapleton III, and marketing director James Short as having accepted gifts and favors, including wine and tickets to sporting events and golf tournaments. 

It says one LCB vendor secured a round of golf with a pro for Stapleton during a tournament at Aronimink - and sent two employees to serve as Stapleton's caddies."

It seems to me that this is the kind of back-scratching behavior that goes on all the time among private business executives—maybe slightly unseemly, if that, but never rising to the level of outright bribery. What makes this report newsworthy is that it's not private business executives taking the gifts: It's state officials. And that's something different.

Saving liquor execs from charges of graft isn't really a reason to privatize Pennsylvania's system of state liquor stores—it's not even in the Top 10 reasons, really. But having the state dabble in what really should be a private business is going to create problems like this from time to time. Especially in a state like ours, where corruption isn't exactly uncommon.

Stay-at-home dads on the upswing

I'm a trend-setter: "Nationwide, the number of stay-at-home dads has more than doubled in the past decade, as more families are redefining what it means to be a breadwinner. There were only about 81,000 Mr. Moms in 2001, or about 1.6 percent of all stay-at-home parents. By last year, the number had climbed to 176,000, or 3.4 percent of stay-at-home parents, according to U.S. Census data."

Of course, that's still a very small trend.

Mayor Nutter hates home cooking

Me today at The Philly Post, writing a letter urging President Obama to hire Mayor Nutter away from us:

"You can probably sympathize with the mayor because he, like you, has found his time in office derailed by a cratering economy and the desperate, flailing need just to keep the ship afloat. Neither of you get the credit you probably deserve for the fact that our city and nation simply haven’t burned down in the last four years.

Still, Mr. President, you at least got a version of health care reform enacted. You ended Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. You ended the war in Iraq. These have been mostly good things, substantive stuff that improves lives.

Mayor Nutter’s had a harder time coming up with a signature achievement. The AVI failure is most recent, but it’s not been so long since he failed in his attempt to impose a tax on sugary drinks. Has any Philadelphia mayor so routinely failed to get City Council backing for his initiatives?"

Head over to PhillyMag to read the whole thing.

Billy Eger writes in

I hadn't heard from my most-loyal correspondent in quite some time. Never fear, he's still tracking me:

Hey joel,thats the first time in 3yrs you kinda told the truth.whats wrong giving up on your marxist ideas?that hope an change not working out like you thought?ps. Its been 3yrs he had to work on it NOT 27 months.your a joke

As is often the case: I have no idea what he's talking about. But it pleases me to receive Billy's emails. It really does.

Turns out Republicans don't want campaign-finance transparency, after all

Back when Citizens United was decided, I suggested that we'd soon see a movement toward keeping campaign donors secret: "The effects of corporate money flooding campaigns can be somewhat counteracted by know who is spending the money and where it’s going to. Soon, though, we might not even have that. And what we’ll have is millions upon millions of dollars being spent to sway voters without those voters having any understanding of how the system is really working. That’ll be good for corporations and the candidates they support. But it won’t be so good for the rest of us — or for our democracy." And I said it because that was the clear aim of the big-money advocates.

I mention this because, in a rare bit of vindication for my political prediction abilities, that's precisely what has come to pass. Fred Hiatt gives the overview today:

Republicans always dangled this apple in the most alluring way. Political money will find a path, they would insist. Give up! Give in! We will post every donation on the Web, instantly! We will give you transparency! Sunshine! Accountability!

What could be more democratic?

I never strayed, though, and now I thank the gods of McCain-Feingold that I did not, because the temptation turns out to have been nothing but a trick. The Republicans, apparently, never meant it. Now that they have Unlimited Donations, or something pretty close, they don’t want Unlimited Disclosure after all.

They want unlimited contributions, in secret.

Read the whole thing, as they say. It was all rather drearily predictable.

John McNesby hates accountability for Philadelphia Police, continued

In Philadelphia, a homicide detective falsifies his time sheets and gets fired—and his supervisors are reprimanded. FOP President John McNesby is on the scene:

"The murder rates in Philadelphia are through the roof, and guys like Kenny Rossiter clear the murder rates," McNesby said. "If I had a relative who had been murdered, I would want somebody like Kenny Rossiter on the case, whether he's home, whether he's at the office, or whether he's in North Wildwood."

We all love movies featuring hard-bitten detectives who have deep, compromising flaws. In real life, Kenny Rossiter effectively (and, perhaps I should say, allegedly) robbed Philadelphia taxpayers of money. And that's a problem: We can't find any homicide detectives who don't cheat their employers?

I sometimes wonder if I give McNesby too hard a time: He very often shows up in the paper when some bit of police malfeasance in the news, and it's his job to provide a defense to members of the union. And yet: The cumulative effect of his defenses is to suggest that the police alone are allowed to be lawless in this city. McNesby is breeding cynicism. Maybe he cares. Maybe he doesn't.

The ACLU: Not just a bunch of liberal hacks

Via Radley Balko, we see that the ACLU is defending (PDF) a student who wore an anti-gay-marriage shirt to school

Read the whole thing. And as always, I ask: Would the righty American Center for Law and Justice take similar action on behalf of a gay student? No. No it wouldn't.

Marco Rubio's bad reason to oppose President Obama's immigration policy

NYTimes.com: "Congressional Republicans were more pointed in their criticism, but they too were careful not to oppose some kind of solution to the problem of young people who are in the country illegally but who are productive, otherwise law-abiding residents. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, denounced it as “possibly illegal” for essentially bypassing lawmakers. Mr. Rubio said the announcement would be “welcome news for many of these kids desperate for an answer,” but that by going around Congress, the president had made it “harder to find a balanced and responsible long-term” solution." (Emphasis added.)

Poppycock. The reason the president took action is that a "balanced and responsible long-term solution" has been impossible to come by in Congress. President George W. Bush tried and failed to achieve sane immigration reform when his party had control of Congress—but his party also has too many nativists who take a hard line against any path to citizenship for immigrants who are already here. President Obama, in the waning weeks of the Democratic majority in Congress in 2010, failed to secure passage of the DREAM Act that would give young immigrants a path to citizenship.

There's no reason—none—to believe that Congress is going to ever take a balanced and responsible action to resolve the situation. President Obama is walking up to the edge of his power in saying he affirmatively won't deport young illegal immigrants, but the idea that he's keeping Congress from doing the right thing is demonstrably ridiculous.

John Yoo doesn't like President Obama's immigration decision

Torture advocate John Yoo—who believes that the president has the legal power to order the testicle-crushing of a suspected terrorist's child and maybe even to suspend the First Amendment—believes that President Obama exceeded his power by saying he won't deport the children of illegal immigrants: "So what we have here is a president who is refusing to carry out federal law simply because he disagrees with Congress’s policy choices. That is an exercise of executive power that even the most stalwart defenders of an energetic executive — not to mention the Framers — cannot support."

This is actually completely consistent of Yoo, for one reason: President Obama didn't use "war" as the justification for the policy. But Yoo's history indicates there are virtually no limits on a president's powers if war-making is the justification. So Yoo would be conceivably be helpless—unless, of course, he's merely an opportunistic hack—if President Obama could justify his immigration decision in national security terms.

Let me offer one.

There is a national security concern that deporting young people—who, though they may not be actual citizens, have only known America as their home—to unfamiliar lands may radicalize them against the American government, a radicalization that, combined with their knowledge of the country and its customs, make them particularly useful allies to any terrorist organizations that wish to strike against us. 

Now, I don't think there's much of a chance that would happen. But what's the old Dick Cheney standard? The One Percent Doctrine? This seems to fit that doctrine. And under Yoo's view of executive power, it's all the justification needed for President Obama's action. "War"—real or not—means never having to say you're sorry.

Why can't Obama work with Congress?

A conservative friend recently told me that President Obama needs to be replaced with someone "who can work with Congress." But it's not entirely Obama's fault that Congress has been so unworkable. Michael Tomasky explains: 

"On the night of Obama's inauguration, Draper writes, about 15 GOP legislators from both houses--along with Newt Gingrich, journalist Fred Barnes, and pollster Frank Luntz, who arranged the evening--got together at a Washington restaurant. 

They were not necessarily the party's official leaders, but they were the emotional leaders of the new breed--Jim DeMint, Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy--which is to say, the cohort to whom many others were looking for leadership; indeed, if you know anything about Mitch McConnell, to whom the leadership was looking for leadership. They talked for four hours about what their posture should be. 

They agreed that night: oppose everything in completely unity. Show, Draper writes, "united and unyielding opposition to the president's economic policies." 

So, before President Obama had proposed a single idea, the Republicans had already decided that they would oppose everything he did. Didn't matter what it was. "

Emphasis added. And hey, there's nothing requiring Republicans to work with an opposite-party president. But Republicans have essentially broken the president's legs, then complained very loudly about how he doesn't run fast enough. It's not an honest criticism.