« December 2009 | Main | February 2010 »
Continue reading "State of the Union and National Security" »
At the risk of engaging in a practice that I have come to abhor, I am going to draw a few parallels between Iraq and Afghanistan, knowing that the situations are not generally comparable. On the issue of tribal engagement, many knowledgeable regional experts have emphasized the fact that Afghan tribal structures have deteriorated in comparison with Iraq's tribal structures and that tribal authority is far from sacrosanct following decades of war.
Be that as it may, I wanted to respond to Patrick Barry’s post discussing the implications of providing direct support for the Shinwari tribe based on their declared intention to take on the Taliban. Patrick, in response to a post by Josh Foust, is sympathetic to the notion that this type of U.S. sponsorship will undermine the Afghan government since it is premised on a form of factionalism that is inimical to the state structure.
I watched President Obama’s State of the Union address with sixty of his Trenton-area campaign supporters just 300 meters from New Jersey’s State Capitol. The president’s speech certainly galvanized his supporters, who applauded lustily when he demanded Congress “get it right” on financial reform, “finish the job” on health reform, and kill the Republican tax cuts “for oil companies, for investment fund managers, and for those making over $250,000 a year.”
But, aside from his stated unwavering determination to pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq by next year, Obama’s treatment of foreign policy issues drew only desultory applause.
To be sure, Obama did not give them much to react to.
For progressives who had become demoralized over the inability of Congress to push health care reform over the goal line and the administration’s support for a debt commission and discretionary spending freeze, President Obama’s State of the Union address offered some solace. Much of it was devoted to the need to aggressively regulate financial institutions and revitalize the economy through investments in infrastructure, clean energy, education, and other critical needs that have the potential to create desperately needed jobs while laying a foundation for more broadly shared prosperity.
He also effectively described the payoff to
last year’s stimulus legislation: “Because of the steps we
took, there are about two million Americans working right now who would
otherwise be unemployed. 200,000 work in construction and clean
energy. 300,000 are teachers and other education workers. Tens of
thousands are cops, firefighters, correctional officers, and first responders.
And we are on track to add another one and a half million jobs to this total by
the end of the year.”
Find TCF Fellow, Maggie Mahar's podcast here.
In his address to the nation, President Obama made it clear: Jobs are now his #1 priority. This is what most Americans wanted to hear. They fear that he has spent too much time on health care, and has not paid enough attention to climbing unemployment. This does not mean that they oppose health care reform legislation—it’s just that there are tired of hearing about it. And the need for jobs is more pressing.
It was a strong speech—particularly when he acknowledged that “The only way to move to full employment is to lay a new foundation for long-term economic growth, and finally address the problems that America's families have confronted for years.” One jobs bill will not solve the problem. He opened the door to a college education for many students when he pledged: “ let's . . .give families a $10,000 tax credit for four years of college and increase Pell Grants. And let's tell another one million students that when they graduate, they will be required to pay only ten percent of their income on student loans, and all of their debt will be forgiven after twenty years – and forgiven after ten years if they choose a career in public service.” These are good ideas.
But what about health care? Hours before the State of the Union address, some believed that the President would save health- care reform for the very end of his speech. The pivotal question was this: would health care seem an after-thought or a climax? It would be neither. Rather than turning to reform as he closed his address , the president tucked the issue into the middle of his speech. One might even say that he “buried” the subject in the middle of a 90-minute oration. When he finally came to health care, the President began by going for the laugh-line: “Let’s clear a few things up. . . . By now it should be fairly obvious that I didn’t take on healthcare because it was good politics.”
On the education front, President Obama's State of the Union address
was notable in three respects.
First, he adroitly tied his reforms in higher education to his
larger message about holding banks accountable. Currently, the
government subsidizes banks to make low interest student loans for
college. Cutting the banks out and making loans directly will save
billions of dollars that Obama directs to increasing Pell Grants and other
education programs, such as better pre-K. This change has always made
sense and Obama is smart to link this reform to public anger over the role
of banks in the financial crisis.
Yesterday, voters in Oregon approved two measures that will raise taxes on high-income residents and corporations, enabling a state plagued by 11 percent unemployment to avoid severe cuts to education and other public services. As it turned out, the referenda passed easily, by a margin of 54 percent to 46 percent, notwithstanding efforts by business groups to convince Oregonians that the taxes would kill jobs.
Most states, including Oregon until now, finance their government through highly regressive systems, loaded most heavily on the backs of low- and middle-income families through sales, sin, and flat income taxes. Because states are obligated to balance their operating budgets every year, during recessions they are forced to take actions that exacerbate their downturns, either by cutting state spending or raising taxes. Economists have shown that increasing levies on upper income residents is the least economically harmful way for states to respond to recessions. That’s because wealthy families have a financial cushion that enables them to minimize the extent to which they cut back on spending, relative to middle- and lower income families. In addition, the wealthy have generally experienced rapid income growth in recent years while earnings have stagnated for everyone else.
Continue reading "At Last, Some Good News for Progressives" »
According to the headlines, 10 percent of Americans are unemployed. The truth is that closer to 17 percent of the population cannot find full-time work; this number includes workers who have become discouraged and have given up looking for work as well as those who have settled for part-time jobs because they cannot find the full-time employment that they need.
The situation is not going to change anytime soon. As Princeton economist Paul Krugman recently warned: “We are facing mass unemployment — unemployment that will blight the lives of millions of Americans for years to come.”
Continue reading "The State of the Union and the Economy: Why We Need Health Care Reform Now" »
It is fascinating and encouraging to see the titans of technology competing to distribute digital books. The new Apple reader will feature multi-media applications that have proved to be hugely popular on the iPhone. Amazon’s Kindle, among other devices, already has validated the e-book experience for significant audiences. Recognizing the importance—the potential and the risks—of this digital transformation, the publishing world, from industry behemoths to authors willing to self-publish, have mobilized to join a major new marketplace. What follows is a wrap-up I wrote as the executive director of Caravan, a just–concluded, four-year project to support leading university and nonprofit presses in dealing with changes that have arrived with astonishing speed:
The Caravan Project was launched in early 2006 with the objective of enabling university and nonprofit presses to take advantage of emerging digital technologies for the distribution of books. Our prospectus said “the intention is to create a chain that provides access and benefits for all participants from the author to the publisher, to the retailer or library and reader.” From the outset, Caravan’s focus was on books of serious purpose with relatively limited distribution that would become substantially more available as the formats for delivery on-demand developed. Caravan’s goals came to be summarized in this motto: “Good Books. Any Way You Want Them. Now.”
The panic that has gripped Democrats in Washington since their special-election ambush in Massachusetts last week has strengthened President Obama's apparent resolve to confront more boldly the country's economic challenges--lost jobs, ballooning deficits, and financial profiteering. But Obama seems tethered to his Wall Street bodyguards of economic policy on the one initiative that could address all three with one blow -- an international financial transactions tax.
