Taxes, Taxes, Taxes

Ezra writes:

[W]hile it's true that we can't solve all our fiscal problems by taxing the rich, we can solve more of them than people realize, as inequality has made the rich a lot richer than people realize. In 2007, the top 1 percent of households accounted for 23.5 percent of the nation's income. That is to say, for every dollar of income in America, the top 1 percent got about a quarter and the rest of us split the other 76 cents.

What are the policy implications of continuing to solve our problems by taxing the top one percent? Of course we can set the top marginal rates as high was we want. The important question is whether this is a good idea.

Ezra is correct that the richest households accounted for 23.5 percent of the nation's income in 2007. But as the Tax Foundation points out, the top one percent of earners also paid 40.4 percent of all income taxes in 2007.

Is it really smart to have such a large portion of our federal income tax revenue coming from such a narrow base? Of course not. In fact, it's more dangerous than many people realize, since earners in top one percent tend to share many common characteristics.

The truth is that it's unwise for the federal government to get most of its revenue from such a narrow subset of the population for the same reason that it's unwise for an insurance company to cover mostly houses in a particular neighborhood. It's bad to have so many correlated risks. You need to diversify.

But how do you diversify when the wealthy have so much and the rest of us have so little?

Debates over tax policy are often framed in terms of rich versus poor. There are, as John Edwards insisted during the 2008 Democratic Primary, "two Americas." President Obama has arbitrarily decided that the division between these two Americas begins around the $200,000 income level. Anyone below this level should be exempt from federal tax increases, while anyone above this level should experience substantial rate increases.

Sounds good to most of us. But is it really fair that those making between, say, $30,000 and $199,000 should be insulated from any kind of federal tax hikes? Is it smart to tell so many people that they can have more services without having to pay more money? Is it good policy?

Politically, it may be wise to tell 95 percent of Americans that they should never expect to see their taxes raised. But, outside the world of electoral gimmickry, narrowing the tax base so dramatically isn't just stupid, it's essentially fiscal suicidal . . . .

Belated Thoughts on the Health Care Summit

FactCheck has a rundown of some of the more egregious errors and distortions here.

I think the president came off looking pretty bad in his dust up with John McCain. I was particularly taken aback by this response:

We can have a debate about process or we can have a debate about how we're going to help the American people at this point. And the latter debate is the one I think they care about a little bit more.

I don't know whether the "American people" concerned about product more than process at this point, but the president's snarky dismissal of McCain's point set me on edge.

One of the reasons that I voted for Senator Obama was because he seemed to actually care about the process. Transparency was one of the central planks in his platform. He continually railed against special-interests and backroom deal-making. He called for honesty and integrity in politics. And he eschewed the Machiavellian tactics of the Clinton campaign.

For him to now play the world-wise pragmatist is a bit disconcerting. Process is, in my view, just as essential as product.

And McCain is right -- there was no justification for provisions like the "Cornhusker Kickback" or any of the myriad of exemptions and special privileges that Democratic lawmakers carved out for their individual states.

But it's not just the sweetheat deals. I also have to agree with Ross Douthat here:

I look at liberal commentators and see a group that’s intent on being on-side against Republicans, and that’s willing to downplay significant weaknesses in major legislation (be it the stimulus, cap-and-trade, or now health care) in the quest to get things done.

I understand the frustration that most progressives feel. This has been a long, drawn-out debate, and many of the Republican attacks have been unjustified and unsportsmanlike. John Boehner's remarks toward the end of the Summit -- which seemed to begin magnanimously, but quickly descended into fear-mongering -- perfectly illustrate why so many on the left want to see health care reform forced through in reconciliation.

But I fear that, while Republicans appear to be balking at everything, Democrats remain single-mindedly focused on passing something -- regardless of whether it's good policy. Both parties deserve immense criticism here. The Republican antics are despicable, but the response from Democrats has been shameful . . . and politically troubling to those of us who actually care about how things get done.

It's just as dangerous to be overzealous as obstructionist.

Olbermann, Race, and the Right

I'm sometimes asked why I spend my time criticising Keith Olbermann when conservative commentators like Sean Hannity are much more belligerent and over-the-top. The truth is that I can't help but hold pundits on the left to a higher standard of integrity.

To me, a man like Sean Hannity is an obvious parody. His irrationalism is so transparent that it's just not worth illuminating. I don't know anyone who thinks that Sean Hannity is reasonable or intelligent, and perhaps more importantly, I don't know anyone who takes any of his arguments seriously. Even if I did, pointing out that a public option is not socialism would quickly get tiresome, just as the constant run-down of Sarah Palin's distortions came to occupy far too much of Andrew Sullivan's blogging time.

Of course, this doesn't mean that there aren't members of the electorate who eat up every morsel that Sean Hannity and Sarah Palin spit out. It just means that I don't willingly associate with any of those people.

I do, however, routinely associate with people who believe that Keith Olbermann is both intelligent and reasonable. Many of my friends and classmates seem to find Olbermann's arguments extremely seductive. Some even contend that Olbermann's points are "irrefutable."

The clip above -- in which Olbermann casually remarks that "the whole of the anger against government movement" is predicated solely on racism -- illustrates why I continue to go after Olbermann.

Is it really fair to charge that everyone who is angry with the Obama administration -- everyone attending the Tea Party rallies -- is motivated by racism? Does Olbermann really provide the evidence to substantiate such a sweeping charge?

Olbermann's conclusion rests on three central propositions. First, there are undeniably racist sentiments being voiced during many of the Tea Party rallies. Second, the concerns of the those in the Tea Party movement are largely illegitimate. Third, black faces are virtually absent from these protests.

The initial premise obviously does not, on its own, support the conclusion. (This would be an example of the fallacy of composition.)

The second premise is a bit more enticing. Why weren't the people who are now clamoring for deficit reduction acting out during the Bush administration? Does this apparent hypocrisy on its own suggest that racism is lurking beneath the surface? There are a number of sensible reponses to this. You could argue that the deficits during the Bush administration were not even remotely comparable to the projected deficits under President Obama. You could argue that conservatives were more comfortable with wartime deficits than with deficits brought on by stimulus spending and entitlement extensions. But I think the most practical response is that partisan hypocrisy simply does not imply racism. In fact, if partisan double standards are evidence of bigotry, then Keith Olbermann is doesn't come off looking so good.

The final premise is facially absurd. The Tea Party Movement is clearly dominated by conservatives. And while it's true that many black Americans tend to be socially conservative, there hasn't been a strong black presence in the conservative movement for well over two decades. Would anyone expect to see black faces at an anti-Clinton rally during the 1990s? While it may be legitimate to criticize the lack of diversity on the right, there are many reasons why black voters' preferences are no longer aligned with the Republican Party, only some of which have to do with past racial discrimination. Either way, this does not offer any thing like the kind of evidence that Olbermann would need to substantiate his across-the-board accusation.

Olbermann's comments begin sensibly, but ultimately devolve into an unfair assault on an entire group of people. The basic problem is that Olbermann can't seem to bring himself to root out racism where it may exist -- and I believe that it clearly does exists in some corners of the Tea Party Movement -- without extrapolating his arguments far beyond reason. Certainly, we should be condemning the vicious attacks against the president. But is it fair to smear all those who engage in peaceful protests against the administration as racists?

I obviously can't read Olbermann's mind, but I think Olbermann legitimately believes that the right has no meaningful arguments. Olbermann may be smarter than Sean Hannity, but like Sean Hannity, Olbermann believes that he has the One Truth on his side.

It's easy to see why he can't seem to bring himself to acknowledge that any of those who disagree with him could possibly be acting in good faith.

Dumb Controversy of the Week

Are people really griping about this?

From AP:

Nevada lawmakers lashed out at President Barack Obama on Tuesday after he made another reference to Las Vegas while explaining how people should make tough choices on spending.

The issue is sensitive to Sin City because its economy is largely based on tourism, and several lawmakers said they were shocked that Obama singled out Las Vegas again after commenting one year ago about bailed-out banks holding meetings here.

"When times are tough, you tighten your belts," Obama said, according to a White House transcript of his appearance Tuesday at a high school in North Nashua, N.H.

"You don't go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage," Obama said. "You don't blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you're trying to save for college. You prioritize. You make tough choices."

The comments quickly sparked a flurry of reaction from federal, state and local lawmakers in the Silver State, which had an unemployment rate of 13 percent in December.

"I'll do everything I can to give him the boot," Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman said during a hastily called news conference, adding that he was incensed when he heard about the comments and said he would no longer welcome the president here if he visits.

"This president is a real slow learner," said Goodman, who is not affiliated with a political party.

"Enough is enough!" Democratic Congresswoman Shelley Berkley said in a statement. "President Obama needs to stop picking on Las Vegas and he needs to let Americans decide for themselves how and where to spend their hard-earned vacation dollars."

Nevada's economy has been hit hard with foreclosures, unemployment and bankruptcies during the past two years as consumers everywhere tighten leisure spending and companies spend less on meetings and conventions.

Harry Reid, Democratic Senate majority leader and one of Obama's closest allies, issued a statement headlined "Reid to Obama: 'Lay off Las Vegas'" and was unusually blunt in his reaction.

"The President needs to lay off Las Vegas and stop making it the poster child for where people shouldn't be spending their money," Reid said. "I would much rather tourists and business travelers spend their money in Las Vegas than spend it overseas."

Can the president say anything without being attacked? This is beyond ridiculous.

Maddow on the Spending Freeze, Continued . . .

The exchange between Rachel Maddow and Jared Bernstein is still bothering me, so I thought I'd offer some additional comments.



First, while I understand that Maddow is a strong-minded progressive, it's infuriating to hear someone -- even a left-wing television host -- assert the correctness of Keynesian theory without even acknowledging the opposition.

If Maddow had suggested that "many economists believe" that the Roosevelt Recession of 1937 and the Japanese Lost Decade were the result of contractionary fiscal policy, she would've been on much sounder footing. But Maddow didn't qualify her statements at all.

This kind of provincial thinking is exactly the reason liberals criticize conservative pundits, who seem unable to accept that there are often many legitimate views when it comes to complex economic problems. But for some on the left, fiscal stimulus seems to have become the liberal substitute for conservative tax-cutting ideology.

Second, Maddow's interpretation of both these events is, at best, extremely narrow-minded.

A more nuanced reading of the Japanese crisis provides a dramatically different story of the potential problems with a poorly-designed fiscal stimulus package:

For many, the moral of the story isn't that Japan erred in deciding to use fiscal policy to fix their economy -- its failure was in the execution.

For one thing, there was dubious logic behind too many of Japan's infrastructure projects. "It was the epitome of bridges to nowhere," says economist Ed Lincoln, director of the Center for Japan-U.S. Business and Economic Studies at New York University. "There was apparently a $2 billion bridge built to an island of 800 people."

. . .

Lincoln adds that at its peak in the 1990s, the government was spending 8% of GDP on public works projects. By comparison, the United States now spends about 3% - even several hundred billion dollars in proposed projects would not get the United States to Japan's peak.

. . .

Finally, any action by the government needs to be done swiftly and decisively.

The Japanese government's efforts were spread over several years but it was as if its leaders couldn't pick one strategy and stick to it. After passing a series of stimulus packages in the early 1990s, the economy showed signs of improving; by 1995, GDP was growing at roughly an annual rate of 2.5%.

And then the government took a fateful step. Worried about its growing debt, Japan raised its consumption tax two percentage points, to 5%, in 1997. And the economy, by now also hobbled with deflation, sunk into a recession.

"When you look at the Japanese crisis, you really don't see the drama of a collapsing economy and a big contraction of the economy and sharp increase in unemployment," says Reinhart. "What you see is this lingering malaise in which a very rapidly growing, buoyant economy becomes one that's limping along."

The trouble with any debate over Japan's stimulus in the 1990s is that it's impossible to know what would've happened if the government had taken lesser action. Many argue the situation would've been worse.

One thing is certain: Japan still faces a mountain of debt from all its spending; debt is now around 200% of GDP, vs. 45% for the U.S. And the U.S. can count on a similar situation if it embarks on more big-government spending.

In the end, though, looking to history can yield only so many lessons. Very few other countries have faced a comparable crisis followed by a huge government stimulus, and Japan is only one scenario. "I think it is extremely dangerous...to draw large lessons from one observation," says Reinhart. "Using the Japan example to make a bold statement about whether stimulus packages work or not I think is on very shaky ground."

Interpreting the cause of the Roosevelt Recession is an equally complicated business, and there are a number of different theories. Many economists attribute the rapid decline in 1937 to a contraction of the money supply, in addition to Roosevelt's dramatic reductions in the deficit spending. This was Milton Friedman's view of the problem, and those who took an introductory macroeconomics class may also remember that he wrote a whole book criticizing the Keynesian interpretation of the Great Depression.

Either way, Obama's proposed spending freeze -- which targets only non-defense discretionary funds, and is specifically designed to avoid impacting jobs -- is not remotely comparable to Roosevelt's large-scale reversal in federal spending, including vast reductions in funding to the WPA and other public works agencies.

Even some on the left have been savvy enough to criticise Maddow's faulty analogy. The more I watch Rachel Maddow, the more frustrated I become with her apparent lack of consideration for the other side.

Alito, Obama, and the STOU

Two good pieces to read after last nights' State of the Union address . . . .

First, Dahlia Lithwick has nice take on Justice Alito's now infamous head-nod:

There was absolutely nothing wrong with the president’s criticism of the court’s decision, although as Linda Greenhouse points out, he was less than precise in his description of the holding. But there was also absolutely nothing inappropriate about the justice’s reaction to him. Both the president and the justices are political actors, and all are entitled to screw up their faces and grumble in public as they see fit. Anyone who’s watched Alito at oral argument at the high court knows that he screws up his face and mutters to himself all the time. The suggestion that he was showboating or grandstanding last night is spectacularly unfair. Unlike several of his colleagues, Alito is meticulously polite, balanced, and measured on the bench, and goes out of his way to shun big drama. I’m sure if Alito could take it back this morning he would. I’m equally sure that if he attends the next SOTU at all, he won’t move so much as a muscle.

Second, Ilyad Somin has a great post over at Volokh, attacking the idea that the Bush administration pursued free-market reforms:

In the State of the Union, Obama continued to blame Bush and the Republicans for our current economic problems. This is understandable for two reasons. First, the GOP does deserve a good deal of blame, though my list of their misdeeds would probably look different from Obama’s. Second, pretty much any president in Obama’s position would do the same thing.

Much less defensible is Obama’s attempt to claim that the Republicans purused free market policies during the last eight years, and thereby caused the economic crisis:

"From some on the right, I expect we’ll hear a different argument — that if we just make fewer investments in our people, extend tax cuts including those for the wealthier Americans, eliminate more regulations, maintain the status quo on health care, our deficits will go away. The problem is that’s what we did for eight years. That’s what helped us into this crisis. It’s what helped lead to these deficits. We can’t do it again."

In reality, of course, the Bush-era GOP greatly expanded government control of the economy, including major increases in spending, regulation, and federal “investment” in education. I discussed this at some length here, here, and here. Far from “maintain[ing] the status quo in health care,” Bush established the Medicare prescription drug benefit, the biggest new government program since the 1960s. Ironically, Obama referred to the prescription drug program and other Bush-era spending increases as contributing to the deficit earlier in this very same speech.

Stimulus and the Spending Freeze

Rachel Maddow chastises the President for his supposed plan to freeze federal spending:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Maddow argues that anyone who's taken an introductory macroeconomics course knows that you don't reduce federal spending during a recession. And, certainly, that seems to be the prevailing wisdom these days.

But it's not the only perspective. Perhaps Maddow should watch the second half of this video:



Here's another point that Maddow may be loath to acknowledge:

While it's true that two-thirds of economists surveyed by USA Today seem to favor a second stimulus, one third of those surveyed also said that they prefer tax cuts as the primary stimulus method.

What's Going On?

Is health care reform dead on arrival?

Perhaps the most important question about the game-changing election returns in Massachusetts is how they reflect on the Democratic-controlled Congress and on the president.

It's true that Martha Coakley was a rather uninspiring candidate, and if she were running in any other state -- or for any other Senate seat -- her failure may be explained away fairly easily. But the pre-election polling seemed to suggest that many Massachusetts residents were deeply opposed to the health care reform bill, worried about the cost of health care reform generally, and doubtful that Coakley would have shown any political independence in representing her constituents.

Even as Scott Brown charged ahead of Coakley in the polls, Coakley's positives continued to outweighed her negatives. This suggests that Coakley's lackluster campaign was not her only electoral problem. National issues likely had a large influence on the final results.

So, what's really going on here? Was this a referendum on the president's agenda?

Hard to say. It's true that President Obama still maintains majority approval in Massachusetts, but many aspects of his platform are rapidly losing support in the Bay State and in the country as a whole. Nationally, the president's approval ratings are slipping as Americans on both sides of the political divide seem to be disillusioned with his performance.

(Although, it's still important to look at Obama's approval ratings in historical context.)

Conor Friedersdorf considers the reasons why President Obama seems to be losing support:

On the campaign trail . . . Obama didn’t campaign as an establishment pragmatist. He didn’t say, “Health care reform is important, so I’ll hold my nose, cut deals with a lot of special interests, and get more Americans covered in a very imperfect way.” Nor did he try to communicate that message in more politically palatable language. Instead he made being a change agent the foundation of his appeal. He talked, as they all do, about a broken system in Washington DC, noting that issues like health care reform were too important to be addressed in the same old way. Again, I didn’t particularly believe any of this, but having my cynicism justified isn’t winning President Obama any points.

Perhaps a down economy is the biggest reason that President Obama’s numbers are down, but I cannot help but wonder if his slip isn’t also due to a lie at the heart of his campaign. This man is calculating politico, as comfortable as anyone we’ve got at navigating Washington DC as it exists today. It’s a style of leadership that is perfectly defensible. But he sold himself as an idealistic agent of change whose special contribution would be fixing a broken status quo.

When you’re talking approval ratings, overall impressions like this one are far more important than most specific issues, and Obama supporters who took the man’s rhetoric seriously have reason to feel misled on everything from Gitmo to gay rights to bank bailouts to health care deals cut with industry players to courting special interests generally. That they’d still prefer him to McCain/Palin, Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck eventually begins to register as damning with the faint praise that it is. Obama defenders are perfectly within their rights to point out that sane alternatives to the president’s agenda haven’t many GOP champions. But let’s raise the bar a bit. Is there anything President Obama has accomplished that we couldn’t have expected from a President George H.W. Bush or a Bill Clinton?

Exceptional rhetoric + mediocre performance = falling approval ratings. So it goes.

I think Conor makes a good point. But I also believe that the problem is much larger, and has a lot more to do with human psychology.

Ross Douthat argues that President Obama's aggressive pursuance of a liberal agenda has turned some Americans against him. But on any given day, a Daily Kos blogger will argue that the President's conservative agenda -- or, at least, his deference to conservatives -- is what's causing all our problems.

Many party-line Democrats with whom I talk are extremely frustrated with the president for failing to deliver on what they viewed as his promise to transform the United States into a more progressive country. Meanwhile, conservatives seem convinced that President Obama is the most liberal president in history, and is actively transforming the United States into a more progressive country.

So, what's the real issue? Why do Americans on both sides seem to be rebelling against President Obama? Is all of this hostility toward the president really just a reflection of intellectual biases run wild?

As Morton Hunt once wrote in The Universe Within:

Most human beings earn a failing grade in elementary logic. We're not just frequently incompetent [in thinking logically], we're also willfully and skillfully illogical. When a piece of deductive reasoning leads to a conclusion we don't like, we often rebut it with irrelevancies and sophistries of which, instead of being ashamed, we act proud.

In my view, it's not just logical reasoning that we need. It's the ability to tell ourselves that we are biased creatures. The world is far more complex than our perceptions allow us to grasp.

I think we need to stop convincing ourselves that our intellectual opponents have nothing to offer but discredited ideals. We need to stop convincing ourselves that we're always right.

Are Corporations Conservative?

Ross Douthat responds to this (characteristically overdone) tirade from Keith Olbermann:



Ross makes the obvious point that large corporations are not "conservative" by nature. Rather, they have a rent-seeking agenda that is politically ambiguous:

Such rent-seeking doesn’t always translate into support for the administration’s policies. The business/government nexus is more potent on some issues than on others, and the “business community” is hardly a monolith. (Different industries have different interests, and rival companies often want different things from Washington.) Corporate America has been divided on cap and trade, for instance, and the health insurance industry has played a double game on health care reform (now trying to shape the bill to their liking, now trying to stir up public anxiety about it) that’s so complicated I’m not sure even they understand it.

. . .

But still: The hand-in-glove relationship between a Democratic administration and certain precincts of corporate America is one of the major stories of the Obama era. And if you want to know why the Department of Energy has become a venture capital firm, or what happened to Barack Obama’s pledge to allow American consumers to buy their drugs from overseas, or why the health care bill looks, well, the way it looks, [Tim] Carney’s book is a good place to start.

Carney is more stringently libertarian than I am — more anti-TARP, for instance, and more thoroughgoingly critical of the welfare state in general. But his kind of libertarian populism is a important counterweight to what’s been happening in Washington across the last twelve months. His analysis represents the cogent version of the inchoate angst that’s gripped the conservative base of late. And both conservatism and the country would be better off if it enjoyed [as] wide an audience as say, Glenn Beck’s nightly forays into performance art.

Bill O'Reilly's Presidential Report Card

Bill O'Reilly offers his Presidential Report Card:



Actually, I don't think he's too far off, although I'd probably give President Obama a bit more credit on health care reform.

Quote for the Day

Look, no one’s history, no one’s character that you look at like Barack Obama’s – agree with his policies or disagree with them – he is a thoroughly decent human being. To call that thoroughly decent human being –who’s trying to bring people together, as I believe he is – a 'racist' is just disgusting.

- Andrew Sullivan, on The Joy Behar Show.

Public Issues, Poor Decisions

Tyler Cowen offers some words of wisdom:

Breaking a three-day stalemate, the Senate approved an amendment to its health care legislation that would require insurance companies to offer free mammograms and other preventive services to women.

The vote was 61 to 39, with three Republicans joining 56 Democrats and the two independents in favor.

This happened directly after the release of evidence showing that many mammograms do not pass a comparative effectiveness test. Once the test became a public issue at all . . . well, now you see what happens. CBO, take note.

In fact, as I've noted before, the Congressional Budget Office has already weighed in on the issue of preventative services:

Although different types of preventive care have different effects on spending, the evidence suggests that for most preventive services, expanded utilization leads to higher, not lower, medical spending overall.

I'm sure that President Obama sincerely believes in comparative effectiveness research as a vehicle for cost-control. But the president doesn't rule by fiat.

Unfortunately, Members of Congress are beholden to ill-informed, self-interested constituents, who demand ineffective services . . . especially when they don't have to pay for those services directly.

Sullivan and Public Policy Polling

Today, Andrew Sullivan linked to this survey from Public Policy Polling, which seems to show that 52 percent of Republicans believe ACORN stole the election for President Obama. I've written to Sullivan before criticizing the results of another survey from Public Policy Polling.

A few points:

First, Public Policy Polling isn't exactly an independent polling agency. Josh Krausharr of Politico writes:

Though there’s little to indicate the firm’s Democratic affiliation on its website — clients are listed, but without partisan identification — [pollster Tom Jensen] said PPP makes no secret of its politics.

This certainly doesn't mean that Public Policy Polling is doing anything nefarious. But shouldn't this conflict of interest be noted? What if the situation were reversed, and a Republican Party-affiliated pollster found that 52 percent of Democrats believed that the Republican National Committee manipulated the election results?

Second, Public Policy Polling often gets results that are out of line with other mainstream pollsters.

For example, in the very same survey that Sullivan links to, Public Policy Polling reports that only 77 percent of African-Americans approve of the job that President Obama is doing. Gallup currently puts the figure at 95 percent for this demographic group (with a monthly average of approximately 92 percent, and a comparable yearly average).

Third, only 33 percent of the 1066 respondents in this survey identified themselves as Republicans. Thus, the sample size for Republicans is about 352, and the sampling error around 52 percent is +/- 5 percentage points. Public Policy Polling notes that "[o]ter factors, such as refusal to be interviewed and weighting, may introduce additional error that is more difficult to quantify." So, the overall margin of error around the 52 percent figure could potentially be quite high.

Perhaps more importantly, Public Policy Polling uses Interactive Voice Response (IVR) technology to conduct its telephone interviews. As Brian Schaffner of Pollster points out, the use of IVR technology in polling is still quite controversial.

Schaffner explains:

[O]ne of the reasons for concerns with IVR polling is that citizens with only a cell phone cannot be reached by these pollsters and these citizens now comprise at least one-fifth of the population. Yet, while the cell-only problem may generally be an issue for IVR technology (and for live interview pollsters who aren't calling cell phones), it is less of a problem for polling on elections, and particularly in low turnout elections.

. . .

Where these polls may run into greater challenges is when they attempt to make inferences about the American public rather than registered (or likely) voters.

I think Sullivan should really consider some of these points before he links to another survey from Public Policy Polling without providing any context.

Update: The NYT will not publish the results of IVR polls.

Public School Song in Praise of Obama

There are two things that strike me about this video of New Jersey public school children singing songs in praise of President Obama's agenda and accomplishments.



First, it's not that big a deal.

This is a relatively trivial issue that conservatives have been eager to exploit for political gain. Rush Limbaugh has been pounding away at this story for more than a week, and Fox News has been feverishly churning out exposés and airing clips about the incident.

In some cases, the hysteria from right-wing pundits has been extremely offensive. Tucker Carlson, for example, recently likened the song lyrics to Khmer Rouge tactics. We should all be extremely concerned about this kind of hyperbole in our political discourse.

Second, some of the lyrics to these songs were inappropriate, and I can't believe that anyone on the left is trying to argue otherwise.

Here's a good example:

Hooray, Mr. President we honor your great plans, To make this country's economy number one again!

Whether or not you personally believe that President Obama's economic policies are admirable, public school children should not be 'honoring' the president's "great plans" to "make this country's economy number one again." Many of the president's fiscal plans are highly controversial, and instructing young students to honor his plans amounts to political and intellectual coaching. If these same public school children were expected to sing songs 'honoring' the economic plans of Ronald Reagan, many parents on the political left would be justifiably upset.

Elementary school teachers should never give the impression that they are endorsing a sitting president's plans in a specific policy area. Yes, Tucker Carlson is wrong, but that doesn't make the teachers in this story right . . . .

Has the Nobel Peace Prize Jumped the Shark?

According to Alex Massie, it has.

I like President Obama and I admire what he's trying to do, but after less than ten months in office, this seems a bit premature.

Can Obama already be "the person who [has] done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses"?

Slate's John Dickerson says no.

The Peace Prize Committee has suggested that it's merely trying to encourage the president to hold fast on his commitments to diplomacy and nuclear arms reduction. Thorbjoern Jagland, the head of the Committee, said today, "It was because we would like to support what he is trying to achieve."

This seems like a well-intentioned argument -- we certainly should support many of the goals that the president has outlined -- but I think earning a Nobel Prize makes the president's job more difficult in ways both practical and political.

WaPo's Glenn Kessler has a good analysis of the problems that could arise from awarding this kind of "aspirational" Peace Prize so early into President Obama's first term.

Update: The president strikes the right tone:

"Let me be clear: I do not view it a recognition of my own accomplishments but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations," he said.

“To be honest, I do not feel I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who have been honoured by this prize."

Update II: I think Megan McArdle is right:

I guess I must hate America, but I actually think it's kind of ludicrous that anyone is even trying to argue that Barack Obama truly deserves this Nobel Peace Prize. Could he have deserved it, after he'd had more than nine months in office? Easily. But he hasn't had time to, y'know, accomplish anything. Unless they're giving out the Prize these days for stimulus bills and banking sector interventions. The committee claims they awarded it for his "extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples"? Can even his most ardent supporters come up with any effort he's made that really qualifies as more extraordinary than those of everyone else in the world?

It's not like I want to take the prize away, and I'm certainly not angry about it . . . but I'd rather have seen Barack Obama honored for something besides not being George W. Bush.

I couldn't agree more.

Certainly, the reaction from many conservatives has been overstated (and in some cases, down right offensive), but it's absurd for some on the left to suggest that questioning whether President Obama actually deserves this award amounts to being unpatriotic.

I assume this criticism would also apply to the president himself?

Update III: NPR political commentators E.J. Dionne and David Brooks discuss whether the president should have accepted the Nobel Peace Prize.

Update IV: Peter Beinart, who blogs for The Daily Beast, writes:

The Nobel Prize Committee should be in the business of conferring celebrity on unknown human-rights and peace activists toiling in the most god-forsaken parts of the world; the people who really need the attention (and even the money). It should be in the business of angering powerful tyrants by giving their victims a moment in the sun. Choosing Barack Obama, who practically orbits the sun already, accomplishes the exact opposite of that. Let’s hope Obama eventually deserves this award. And let’s hope the Nobel Committee’s decision meets with such a deafening chorus of chortles and jeers that it never does something this stupid again.

Moore's Immoderation

Judith Warner questions Michael Moore's approach to activism:

I listened to Moore talk, in the morning, of “us.” (“I know where you come from,” he addressed an absent Barack Obama, his tone oddly menacing. “You come from us.”) I listened, in the evening, to him talk of “them”: “the rich … the Goldman boys.” I heard him threaten Blue Dog Democrats (“We will come after you, and we will remove you from office”), watched him whack a meaty fist into his palm — thwack! — as he recalled the hardball tactics of health care reform’s most stalwart opponents, and as he reveled in the thought of bringing down those who now oppose a public option: “It will make what was going on at those town meetings in August look like a tea party!”

“This is why some of us admire the other side,” he said. “Because they’re relentless. They never stop.”

. . .

And I found myself thinking, over and over again, of Molly Melching, the founder and executive director of the nongovernmental organization Tostan, which works to teach human rights and democracy and has helped more than 4,000 communities in Africa end the traditional cutting of girls. Melching, who has succeeded where any number of other women’s rights and global health organizations have failed, explained to me in an interview this summer that the secret to her group’s success lay in the fact that she had learned, through years of trial and error, that to reach people you had to meet them where they were. Respect them. Acknowledge their social norms, beliefs and practices. Find common ground. Build on shared human aspirations — for safety, for dignity, for a better life for one’s children — then discover how those shared aspirations might reasonably translate into ending practices that cause suffering. “If you come in and say, ‘You are awful people,’ people tune out and say, ‘Who do you think you are?’” she told me, speaking first from Senegal, where she has lived for the past 35 years. “Making people feel bad about what they’re doing doesn’t work; they only get defensive. What does work is getting people to discuss together what are their rights and what they mean. It’s not just a question of blaming and shaming people but educating and empowering them.”

“It’s a question,” she elaborated in her D.C. office last month, “of changing the script.”

. . .

These thoughts came back strongly while listening to Moore chuckle and brag, and while sitting through his new 127-minute opus of vilification. Moore’s script is the farthest thing possible from Melching’s truly radical — and, as it turns out, effective — vision of change. In fact, watching “Capitalism,” it felt as though he’d dusted off an old playbook, as though he was reliving the battles of the beleaguered Bush/Cheney years, just for the sheer fun of it.

Obama's Gay Problem

Andrew Sullivan blasts President Obama over his party's substantive failure on gay rights:

In some ways, Obama's fealty to the big gay lobby rather than to the real gay community is testimony to why Democratic party politics remain repulsive to me. HRC has achieved nothing substantive for gay equality on a federal level in the twenty years I've been observing them. But they sure know how to milk donors at swanky black tie affairs. They are the Rotary Club for affluent gays, and their prime job is to explain to the gay community why it is never in the Democratic party's interest to do anything for gay people that might actually resemble equality. Oh, yes, we'll get a lovely Obama speech. Like that costs him anything or proves anything. There is nothing Obama can say at this self-satisfied, well-heeled Rotary Club dinner that he hasn't said before.

. . .

If Obama wants to support gay equality, he knows what to do. If Pelosi and Reid want to support gay equality, they know what to do. If HRC believes in gay equality, they also know what to do. So spare us the schmoozing and the sweet-talking and do it. Until then, Mr president, why don't you have a nice steaming cup of shut-the-fuck-up?

Ouch.

Ouch.

Greg Mankiw tears into President Obama for his health care hypocrisy.

I suppose that while the president is apologizing to John McCain for attacking McCain's proposal to tax employer-provided health insurance, he should also apologize to Hillary Clinton for criticizing Clinton's proposal to mandate health coverage . . . .

Health Care Racism

Ryan Sager offers this assessment of the correlation between racial resentment and opposition to health care reform:

Whites in the South are the most anti-black group in America; a lot more whites in the South are now Republicans than were at the beginning of the 1990s.

What this all adds up to is that both of these statements can be true at the same time:

1) Many of Obama’s opponents harbor a significant amount of racial resentment against black people.

2) To quote Bill Clinton: “100% of those who are opposing him now would be against him if he were a white Democrat.”

Opposition to Obama is tied up with race because party identification in America is tied up with race. Are there some racist idiots at many of the GOP rallies? Yes. Would there be sexist idiots if Hillary Clinton were president? Also yes. Would any Democratic president be able to reform the entire health-care system — or undertake any major government-growing reform — without significant opposition from roughly the same group of people who are out protesting today? Absolutely not.

I think he's is right. But Sager also believes that a "very large chunk of the people predisposed to oppose Obama’s policies are also racists." As evidence he links to this WaPo "study," which I find extremely unconvincing:

As evidence of the link between health care and racial attitudes, we analyzed survey data gathered in late 2008. The survey asked people whether they favored a government run health insurance plan, a system like we have now, or something in between. It also asked four questions about how people feel about blacks.

Taken together the four items form a measure of what scholars call racial resentment. We find an extraordinarily strong correlation between racial resentment of blacks and opposition to health care reform.

Among whites with above average racial resentment, only 19 percent favored fundamental health care reforms and 57 percent favored the present system. Among those who have below average racial resentment, more than twice as many (45 percent) favored government run health care and less than half as many (25 percent) favored the status quo.

What survey data did they use? How large was the sample? How many respondents identified themselves as Republican? What was the survey's margin of error? What were the four questions that were used as a proxy for "racial resentment"? Were these questions designed to "coax" people into revealing their true racial sentiments? Were the questions open-ended? Were they ranked on an ordinal scale? How was the data coded? How strong was the correlation?

The authors don't reveal the answers to any of these questions.

Could their numbers be accurate? Maybe. But how can we assess the validity of this study if they have failed to provide even the most basic level of transparency?

Equal Bodies

My friend recalls an old conversation in which I argued for a more gender-balanced view of sexual objectification. She writes:

. . . men and women aren't treated equally, aren't seen as equals, aren't valued in the same ways in the same spaces. And yes, men shouldn't be reduced to muscular arms and flat, tan stomachs and shouldn't begin to enter the world of debasement women have been living in for such a long time, that reaching equality at the lowest common denominator is no way to reach equality. [But] men - white men, I should specify - are still generally seen first and foremost as people. Therefore, being reduced to an object is still a terrible thing, but its cultural impact is not the same if the same image is with a woman. Because, as much as I wish all things were equal, women are still primarily seen as bodies first. [my emphasis]

I'm not sure how to even begin unpacking this last sentence.

By whom are women "primarily seen as bodies" rather than people? Men? Society? The dominant culture? I think my friend may be lumping these three together.

Is it really so easy to pin down the dominant strands of contemporary American thought amidst such vast ideological diversity? Can we really paint with such broad strokes? Is power really so highly concentrated in today's pluralistic society?

As a policy person, I may approach these questions from a slightly different perspective. To me, power is the ability to place things onto the political decision agenda or to keep them off of that agenda. In both respects, women's organizations have been immensely powerful over the past several decades. And I think this may be part of the reason why I am unwilling to accept such a generalized conception of how women are "seen" in America.

This model of society -- a culture that is so fundamentally repressive toward women -- fails to incorporate the past 40 years of social progress, and the incredible political clout that women's organizations now wield.

It's no coincidence that the first bill President Obama signed into law was the Fair Pay Act. Nor was it surprising that one of the president's first public acts was to rescind the Mexico City Policy. Over the past several decades, feminist groups have deeply transformed the political landscape in America -- and, with it, many aspects of our culture. These changes should not be portrayed as exogenous. Indeed, they have played an important role in our cultural evolution, and they should be considered an internal part of our social model.

Unfortunately, I think that many contemporary feminists -- like other kinds of activists -- have a "tendency to minimize victories and exaggerate threats." In some ways this makes sense. Activism necessitates a certain kind of hyperbole. But these exaggerations distort the complex reality.

After multiple waves of feminism, a series of profound policy changes, and decades of intense social criticism, it's not so easy to make blanket statements about how women are really perceived by society.

At the very least, we should acknowledge that the issue of social perceptions is complex and requires quite a bit more qualification today than it did in the past . . . .