When Politics Impede Progress

The title for this post is so generic it could apply to almost any policy issue at almost any time. When politics impede progress could probably be the subtitle for a book on the history of American government. Despite being able to accomplish some great things (we'll omit the boatload of mistakes they've made), our politicians of operate within an unnecessarily complex world of opaque backroom deals in which the progress of our nation is often of secondary important to the political well-being of an individual or his/her party.

Right now, the issue being held captive by politics as usual is desperately needed immigration reform. Though conservatives have begun moving in the right direction (meaning to the center) on the issue, many are loathe to take real action on the issue prior to the midterm elections because it may fracture the party when they have a chance to win seats.

There are so many outrageous things to say about this I don't even know where to begin. For starters, it's hard to imagine the Republican party presenting itself as a unified group on anything. Republicans in the House and Senate are very different breeds, and no amount of sanity is going to coax tea party candidates from their ensconced positions in districts that have been gerrymandered so safely that blue might as well be illegal.

Secondly, shouldn't doing what's in the best interest of the country be the voters' standard for electing or re-electing candidates? We desperately need immigration reform. Longtime allies of the Republican party in business are pushing for it hard. This isn't a red vs. blue issue. This is a national priority. The only real point of contention is the idea of "amnesty" (which as I've pointed out before, only far-right Republicans could turn into a bad word...), and there are ways to get around this. Even recently some Republicans have said they support a path to residency for illegal immigrants, just not citizenship. That seems like a perfectly acceptable place from which to start negotiations on overhauling the whole system. It frustrates me in the extreme that our politicians won't even look for common ground in their efforts (or lack thereof) to pass meaningful legislation, and that the bar for what constitutes acceptable behavior from a politician has been set so low that his or her first priority is self-preservation rather than the needs and well-being of the nation.

The nature of self-government is that we elect people who we believe represent us and our interests. This system, democracy, according to someone far wiser than I is "the worst form of government except for all those others that have been tried." Winston Churchill clearly understood that politics can impede progress as easily if not more easily than they spur progress. That means our system will only work well when we spend time thinking critically about the well-being of our nation and then holding our elected officials accountable for improving our situation rather than sitting on a "to do" list until they've been able to capitalize on any particular political situation.

The government does not exist to drive change, but to take the necessary steps to rectify situations that adversely affect the livelihood of the nation. It's been no secret that immigration has need fixing for quite some time, and yet our politicians have failed to act for nearly a decade if not longer. This is costing the nation money, and is creating a "shadow class" of residents who have few or no rights and who create more far problems through the uncertainty of their situation than they do through their presence or actions. It's far past time we fixed this issue, and it's far past time that we the people hold our politicians accountable for the work they've done to improve America, not the work they haven't done to benefit either the Democratic or the Republican cause.

More Rights, More Life

Abortion is a contentious issue in America. The terms used by each side convey their beliefs in the fundamental right espoused by their positions: pro-life and pro-choice. 

Each side makes a valid argument. On the one hand, at some point (I cannot and will not speculate on when that point is), an abortion does violate a baby's right to live. On the other hand, banning abortions is absolutely a violation of a woman's (and therefore a being that we can agree is living no matter how advanced her pregnancy) right to determine what she does with her body. 

At this risk of tiptoeing around this issue, I think it is important to acknowledge the seriousness of both positions, while finding a way to protect the rights of women and the unborn. The ultimate goal here should be to limit abortions while enshrining the right of a woman to have control over her body. Therefore the attempt to ban abortion outright I find unacceptable as it limits the right of a woman to control her body, but as the term implies, pro-choice does not mean pro-abortion, and I do believe that we can cut down on abortions without infringing upon women's rights. 

The way in which we limit abortions is not to strip women of their ability to have the procedure and implement regulations which would govern a woman's ability to control her own body. Rather, we need to discourage abortions by championing practices and education that would make the procedure more rare. The irony of the pro-life movement's focus on abolishing Planned Parenthood is that planned parenthoods are far less likely to result in abortions than unplanned parenthoods. Rather than compelling Americans to stay celibate (a truly lost cause), we can and should be educating people on the merits of safe sex, giving them access to contraceptives and other forms of birth control, and encouraging stable home and family lives in order to increase stable, two-parent households in which children receive the support and attention they need and deserve. 

In short, while I agree with the pro-life's goal of limiting abortion (not necessarily ending it, as there are instances - rape and incest among them - when I think abortion is acceptable), I disagree almost entirely with their tactics and ideas. Legislating abortion out of existence will only force the practice underground where it will become more dangerous without being any less common. If you think a "war on abortion" will be successful, I would encourage you to explore the undeniable and glaring failure of the "war on drugs." 

Giving women the freedom to make decisions on their bodies and health while simultaneously encouraging choices, education, and opportunities that will make abortion less likely are the keys to marginalizing that practice. Denying people their rights and freedoms is not the way to effect change, and it will not be successful - even if, in the unlikely event, it is deemed Constitutional. The pro-life movement needs a new strategy and a new plan to achieve their goals, and it would seem to me that there is substantial common ground for pro-life and pro-choice advocates to advance a goal of limiting abortions through empowerment rather than outlawing them entirely. I believe that if we give people more rights and opportunities, they are more likely to make choices that  benefit themselves and subsequently all of us. In this particular instance I believe more rights and therefore more life is the approach we need to take. 

Sanctions in the Senate

Earlier this week, in the wake of announcements that Iran would hold up its end of the nuclear bargain and temporarily freeze most of its nuclear activity, the Senate was strongly considering passage of even tougher sanctions on Iran. Such sanctions would in all likelihood undermine the deal agreed upon by the US and Iran late last year, and make a diplomatic solution to the Iranian nuclear question even more difficult.

One might wonder why, after all the furor about avoiding "war" in a country that is in it's fourth year of an increasingly bloody civil war - Syria - we would take steps to undermine a diplomatic solution that would help us decrease the likelihood of war with Iran. The onus is on politicians who support tougher sanctions to explain how that course, rather than diplomacy, will lead to Iran giving up it's nuclear program.

War, of course, should be avoided at all costs, and perhaps there some credence to the line of thinking that if we just make things so miserable in Iran that the regime will crumble and the nuclear program will fall apart. But of course, a regime is falling apart in Syria right now and it's not pretty. A regime collapsed in Egypt and it's ugly there too. Same goes for Libya. Perhaps we think that we can make life so miserable in Iran that the regime will fold completely before it collapses, but the Ayatollah can probably convince a significant number of Iranians that life there sucks because of American pressure, not any wrongdoing on his part. What happens then? War? An increase in terrorism? Something else ugly?

Conversely, if we give diplomacy a shot, there is a chance that it will work. Sure, Iran could fail to hold up its end of the bargain, but we haven't take the military option off that table, and it's not as though our intelligence agencies are going to stop paying attention to the situation. What if the Iranian leadership is serious about giving up the nuclear program for sanction relief? Wasn't that the point of sanctions? Shouldn't we try that approach? If we enforced economic sanctions on Iran in order to force them to abandon their aspirations for nuclear weapons, and they are now offering to abandon those aspirations, doesn't it make sense to work with them rather than enforcing more sanctions?

Many say that the new Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, is a wolf in sheep's clothing, and that he can't be trusted, but for how long will this remain true of Iranian leadership? Certainly not indefinitely. Allies and enemies shift after all. We won our independence from that nation that is now our staunches ally on the planet, and about 250,000 Americans died fighting our now allies Japan and Germany during WWII, a war in which we were allied with the Soviet Union, that nation with which we anticipated nuclear war for decades. It wasn't that long ago that President Reagan was selling weapons to the Iranian regime we find so untrustworthy. Perhaps Iran isn't trustworthy yet, but we won't know until we give them a chance to prove they can be trusted. The deal that is currently in place is a great opportunity to test Iran's commitment to integrity since America and our allies are making no major concessions. If Iran tries something sneaky, we'll know, and not move forward with the deal.

The sanctions in the Senate - if passed - are a setback for diplomacy, and therefore, a step closer to war. While I still advocate for intervention in Syria, that situation is very different, and we should be in no hurry to be drawn into conflict with Iran. Diplomacy must be given a chance. I think if we take that route we will be better off in the short-term and the long-term. Proving that we can work with Iran - if indeed that is is what happens - will do more to bring them into the global community, and therefore more to lessen the chances of future conflict. This is the move that is in our best interests, and while I think the President deserves criticism for his inaction in Egypt and Syria, this deal with Iran is absolutely the right move.

Death by Austerity

More than five years after the great recession, our economy is inching its way towards health. Each month a few more jobs are added, the stock market has rebounded nicely, the economy is growing.

It is therefore somewhat hard to believe that what progress we have made is but a fraction of the progress we should have made. In five and half years we have staggered towards an economic recovery despite many self-inflicted wounds.

I'm talking, of course, about the economically backwards idea of imposing austerity when times are hard. This is most clearly visible in the sequester, but even the failure to pick up public spending at a time when the government could have borrowed money essentially for free and revamped infrastructure was a serious mishap. We should have recovered quicker, but instead we chose the hard way (actually this isn't entirely true, a handful of right wing fringe lunatics running on a platform of lies in districts that are safely gerrymandered chose this for all of us, largely against our will).

But as bad as our problems have been, Europe's have been worse. Why? Because while sensible politicians in America - those who took Econ 101 in college - fought austerity, Europe embraced it.

What does Europe have to show for austerity? Not much worth talking about. The only country that has escaped the doldrums in Europe is Germany, which had been implementing smart economic practices well before the recession. The dose of austerity Germany tried to enforce on its neighbors after the recession - some harsh German medicine - has been a largely unmitigated disaster. Whereas America has been recovering, the lights are still off in Europe.

Yet this hasn't stopped austerity's champions - a dwindling and increasingly quiet bunch - from trying to find a success story, anything to validate views and policies which have been staggering failures almost everywhere, and hence we get Ireland, the supposed success story of austerity.

Now I have been laughing off austerity and the Irish recovery for quite some time, but since I haven't been there and I'm not Irish perhaps you can dismiss this as a misunderstanding on my part. But what better lens through which to view Ireland's woeful recovery than that of an Irishman. They are, after all, a talented bunch of writers, and journalist Fintan O'Toole (what a wonderfully Irish name) has given us quite a glimpse at how austerity has failed Ireland.  I'll let you read O'Toole's piece for yourself rather than summarizing, but the data he gives should surprise no one. O'Toole neatly points out that while you can't spend yourself out of debt - the idea of austerity being that public spending crowds out the private sector and thus inhibits growth - you can spend your way to an economic recovery and therefore more tax revenue without higher tax rates. In Ireland, not only has austerity failed to produce economic growth and jobs for the Irish, but it has actually led to a sharp increase in debt. No growth, no jobs, and higher debt. Two out of three ain't bad, but zero out of three is actually pretty horrible.

And yet this is as close as the proponents of austerity can get to claiming success. This is the where the disastrous policy of austerity has led Ireland, and this is where the US would have ended up had we followed the Tea Party's lead and slashed spending wantonly without any regard for the effects - which is more or less what the sequester was. Death by austerity is real, and we almost took that path. I hope Americans will consider this the next time those who espoused this view put forth economic proposals. The poor Irish suffered for us this time around. Let's make sure we don't give ourselves a dose of their own bad medicine moving forward. There is a time for austerity, but that time is when the economy is healthy and booming, not when it flounders.

The War on Poverty

Last week was the 50th anniversary of Lyndon Johnson's declaration of the War on Poverty. Naturally, people of all political stripes had something to say about the occasion, with Republicans inexplicably trying to claim that their platform was aimed at ending poverty, while those leaning more to the left just as inexplicably claimed that the war on poverty has been some sort of a success.

I would counter both of these claims. For starters, the idea that the Republican party cares for the 47% is so out of touch with the policies they have championed for decades that it's almost not worth addressing. It does seem as though there are a few Republicans - primarily in the Senate - who have an idea of how flawed the system is, but the "rising tide lifts all boats" mantra has been emasculated by facts and data, and besides, we now know that in such a system the tide wanes as much as it waxes, and when that economic tide wanes it seems to hurt only the poor. Look no further than our most recent recession in which bankers got bailed out and are now profiting handsomely while unemployment remains stagnantly high. Republican policies got us here, so to claim to be the anti-poverty party would be a complete 180 from the group that gave us the economic failure that is Reaganomics.

How about the more liberal contention that the war on poverty has been a success, or at least somewhat successful. Both Nick Kristof and Paul Krugman made that claim last week and backed it up with some stats that suggest neither of them have spent a significant amount of time in a truly poor area, which - at least in Kristof's case - certainly is NOT true. Nevertheless, the contention that the war on poverty has been a success smacks of ivory tower liberalism. Anyone who believes we are winning the war on poverty clearly hasn't spent much of their time actually attacking the problem.

This is actually the perfect segue into what we should be doing to end the war on poverty, or rather, to end poverty. Despite Paul Krugman's frequent contentions that education is not the answer, I believe that investing in education is the only way to eradicate poverty and create a better society.

In order to make this claim, I will start by examining the problem that inequality poses for our society as well as the importance and limitations of safety net programs.

First, why bother to address poverty and inequality? We are taught that America is a meritocracy, and that our economic system produces winners and losers. The losers should have worked as hard as the winners. This profoundly naive view rests on the idea that America is a nation of equal opportunity, which in fact it is not, nor has it ever been. If in fact, America were a land of equal opportunity, and dire poverty was reserved only for those who were in fact lazy or had severe disabilities, we wouldn't have this conversation. But even Republicans acknowledge this is a fallacy, “Raising the minimum wage may poll well, but having a job that pays $10 an hour is not the American dream,” said Florida Republican Marco Rubio.

So we recognize that there are lots of hard working people who are stuck in poverty. Why do we care? Well, I'd like to think we have a collective sense of empathy, but even if we don't our entire economic and political system are built on the idea that this is a society for everyone. When a substantial portion of the population recognizes that the system is not working for them, it's hard to imagine they will partake in its preservation. Eradicating poverty (or at least substantially diminishing it) is not just a moral cause, it's important for the continued existence of our way of economic and political way of life.

Given that we have done a poor job of limiting poverty to date, we have come up with a variety of measures to help blunt its impact. We call these programs anti-poverty programs, and they are the ones cited as having been successful by Krugman and Kristof. No doubt these programs have mitigated poverty; it's undeniably true that without these programs the situation would be worse, but I don't think of Food Stamps and Welfare benefits as poverty-preventers, I see them as poverty-sustainers. Yes, they give our neediest citizens a lifeline to survival, but if $10 an hour isn't the American dream, I'd hardly think our vision for success would be government handouts. Safety net programs too often do nothing to end poverty, but a whole lot to prolong it by giving needy people just enough to eke out an existence. They are more of a way to assuage our collective conscious than they are a means of eliminating poverty.

Having said that I by no means accept the conservative narrative that poor Americans, the 47%, are a group of money-grubbing Cadillac Queens who only become a little bit more addicted to the sweetness of government subsidies with the arrival of each welfare check. That gross caricature isn't even a stereotype rooted in reality - it's a demonization of people that holds almost no validity. Inevitably there will be lazy people who decide not to work, but we only take offense to those people when they're poor. The jobless who live off their significant other's salary or their trust funds don't draw our collective ire. Laziness is only problematic when it costs us public dollars.

Of course, while we want to avoid falling into the trap of thinking that poor and lazy are synonymous, it is certainly true that we aren't putting our money to good use retroactively keeping people at subsistence levels. So while the Republican war on food stamps and unemployment benefits is rooted in a stereotypical fallacy, the idea that we should curtail these programs is the right way of thinking. However we must do this in a manner that doesn't harm the people who rely on these forms of support.

What does that leave us with? Education, of course. Despite Krugman's oft-repeated opinion that a good education isn't worth what it used to be (he might be right about part of this given the staggeringly out of reach cost of a higher education), the route out of poverty in an ever-evolving economy in which new fields are constantly opening up while old fields disappear is through education. Only by imbuing children with the skills and abilities to critically analyze information and pursue answers will we empower them to chase their dreams, support themselves, and not count on a public handout.

This isn't a groundbreaking idea. In fact, it's the foundation upon which American success of the 20th century was built. The world is different now than it was in the aftermath of World War II, but in the decades since America showed the world the value of a good public education many countries have emulated us and capitalized on that blueprint. South Korea - just one example of many - went from an impoverished and war-torn rural nation to a global economic force by investing in education.

The war on poverty can be won, but in order to do so, America will need to take a page from our old playbook and reinvest ourselves in the idea that education should be a national priority deserving of our resources. Doing so won't only help us create a more equitable society, it will prevent the collapse of the one in which we currently live. If America hopes to persist, education must become our national priority, a victory over poverty will be a nice byproduct of the better society we will build with such an investment.

Mucking up Egypt

Democracy in Egypt is dying before it was ever really born. The Arab Spring, which took off in Cairo, may be stifled there as well. While the world remains preoccupied with the gratuitous violence in Syria and the specter of a nuclear Iran, the Arab world's most populous country has gone through turmoil and upheaval that threatens to snuff the flame of democracy.

America's foreign policy hasn't helped at all. We seem to have completely forgotten that Egypt exists, and for all of the woe, angst, and failure of nation-building in Iraq and Afghanistan, we never even tried to capitalize on fostering democracy in a nation that gave it a shot without the presence of US soldiers. Of course, who needs US troops to protect democracy when there are Egyptian troops to squelch it. When the Egyptian revolution took off, I initially praised the army for remaining largely out of the fray and helping to support the fledgling democracy that emerged after Hosni Mubarak was toppled.

Of course those days are long gone. Mr. Mubarak's legitimately elected successor, Mohammed Morsi, was the leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, and that apparently didn't sit well with that military which deposed Mr. Morsi in a coup last year, ending any semblance of legitimate self-representative government, and ushering in a military regime that has (again) outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood.

It seemed that Mr. Moris was inept, and certainly the election of a member of the Muslim Brotherhood didn't sit well with some foreign governments, but Egypt held an election without outside pressure or interference, and the man was elected. Our silence during and after his coup is tacit endorsement of the tactics of the military and the illegitimate government they have created. The US showed through our silence that we support democracy elsewhere only when that democracy serves what we believe to be in our best interest.

This isn't only hypocritical, it's wrong. What percentage of Americans are disappointed or worse after any given election? How many of our countrymen would have loved a President Romney? Do we revolt when our candidate loses? Of course not. After all, we recognize that democracy is messy and doesn't always yield the outcomes we desire, but we believe in the system, and we make a grand show of pushing for democracy elsewhere.

But we don't put our money where our mouth is, and Egypt is the most recent and glaring example of how America's misplaced sense of self-interest is actually working against us. We allied ourselves with Hosni Mubarak for the same reasons we ally ourselves with the Saudi Regime. They provide stability and a counterweight to terrorism. This is in our best interest, right? It would seem so until we realize that all of the 9/11 attackers came from Saudi Arabia and Egypt (not Iran, not Syria, not Afghanistan, not the Palestinian territories). We ask ourselves how this could have happened, and we realize that our hypocrisy is actually working against us, not for us. What message does it send to the world when President Obama, on the heels of his first inauguration, travels to Cairo and delivers a wonderful speech about reversing our relationship with the Arab Muslim world and fostering a sense of unity and togetherness, only to then see him sit by silently while the very democratic process he feigned to support was undermined by tanks and bombs? If that is leadership, I think we can do better.

I have repeatedly made the case for intervention in Syria because it is in America's best interest to promote human rights and democracy everywhere, even when we aren't enamored with the leaders that others choose for themselves. Believing in democracy means we accept that the person we support doesn't always win. That's what happened in Egypt, but rather than working with Mr. Morsi or denouncing the military coup, we watched idly as democracy took one on the chin. I wonder what that does to our reputation as a world leader and what kind of leverage it gives us to stop the much bloodier uprising in Syria.

President Obama's foreign policy certainly has not been a disaster. He can count some serious achievements among his endeavors abroad, but his handling of the Arab Spring has gotten progressively worse, and the region is teetering on the verge of an all out collapse. Perhaps this was unavoidable, perhaps this still is unavoidable, but it is going to require some difficult decisions and a legitimate support for human rights and democracy that seems largely absent from the Obama foreign policy playbook.

Nero fiddled while Rome burned, and the Obama administration is fiddling while the Middle East collapses. In Egypt we had a real chance to show the world that democracy does not need to come at the barrel of an American rifle, it can be brought about by the will of the people (ironic much?). But we mucked up Egypt, just as we are mucking up Syria, just as we have mucked up the aftermath of deft maneuvering in Libya. This isn't new of course, since WWII American foreign policy has been largely a misguided affair in which successive presidents get sucked into the idea that we have to go to war against ideas: communism in Vietnam and terrorism in Iraq and Afghanistan. When we aren't waging wars against ideas, we are undermining democracy in South America and the Middle East, and with the exception of President Clinton's courageous foray into the Balkans, we've done almost nothing to stop the suffering of people in Africa, Asia, and South America when they are being slaughtered in horrific numbers. Somehow or another, we've managed to do this for decades without ever asking ourselves how it really connects to our national defense or self-interests. Perhaps we haven't asked that question because we know the answer would undermine most of our post-war(II) foreign policy.

The situation in Egypt is just the latest example of Obama's foreign policy failures, and Obama is just the latest US president to blunder his way through foreign policy guided by some inexplicable sense of American interest that supposedly justifies most of our actions, but has in fact left us weaker than we would be otherwise.

America foreign policy is in need of a serious reboot. I suggest the president start by formally condemning the coup against a democratically elected president. It might be too late to stop Egypt's descent into chaos, but if we are going to turn around decades worth of bad decisions we have to start somewhere.

New Year's Resolutions

New year, now what? Four days into 2014, I'd like to take a moment to politely ask the men and women of Congress make 2014 a year of legislation and policy. I'd hope that Congress's new year's resolution would be to do something, anything really.

What could they do, and what should they do? Well, lots of things, but since I doubt Congress will come up with its own "to do" list in 2014, I'm going to make one for them. Below are my new year's resolutions for Congress.

1. Immigration reform. This really shouldn't be that hard since a bipartisan bill has already been passed by the Senate and is just waiting around to be debated by the House, which last year had more useful things to do like symbolically repeal Obamacare 40 times.  However, 2014 started auspiciously for immigration reform as an unlikely ally endorsed change. Perhaps John Boehner's new year's resolution was not to be the Tea Party's lapdog.

2. An energy policy. This should come from the president, but Congress can spur him to act as well. The president should begin by approving the Keystone Pipeline and establishing regulations for safe fracking so that we can exploit the bounty of natural gas upon which we are floating. Simultaneously we should be upping our standards for efficiency and cleanliness and encouraging research into more sustainable alternatives. In addition to exploring sustainable alternative energy sources, we need to develop technologies to harness them, such as high-capacity batteries, and technologies that can make the dirty energy sources we use cleaner.

3. I was mildly encouraged by the budget that was passed last month, not because it was at all substantive, but because it existed. The political implications were more important than the budget itself,  and I remain optimistic that it can be used as a springboard to reasonable and cooperative governance. A more thoughtful budget that encourages spending on infrastructure and education while making necessary adjustments to entitlement spending and cutting out inefficient military spending would be a great start.

This is ambitious, and I doubt the federal government - including the president - will commit to my new year's resolutions. But I think this is achievable, and I think that immigration reform and a budget could become realities. I don't want to get too excited, but a new year means new resolutions. Let's hope our government resolves to govern.