Thursday, April 03, 2003
NO MORE BLOGGING
…just until Monday. You can relax, ha-ha. Anyway, sorry about the lite blogging this week. It’s been busy, and today I’m off for a brief trip to Chicago.
Before I go, a few thoughts on the war. About two weeks ago I wrote:
I find it hard to believe that the war against Saddam is going so well. It seems to me that at some point our troops are going to meet heavy resistance. I hope and pray I'm wrong.
Well, they did meet heavy resistance, and the war has not gone as well as early developments led me to hope. Yet, overall, nothing so far has happened to justify a deep-rooted sense of dread—although you might not know it given most media coverage. Consider that in barely two weeks our troops are now about six miles outside of Baghdad. It is still a bit premature to call Operation Iraqi Freedom a huge success. But it won’t be for long if this war continues to go as it has thus far.
Finally, for more perspective on this war, read this post by Andrew Sullivan.
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Wednesday, April 02, 2003
FEAR AND LOATHING
Is there anything that the Des Moines Register editorialists hate more than tax cuts? Maybe the war against Saddam. Maybe.
They loathe them so much they use analogies that ultimately undermine their case:
You're already deep in debt, but you continue charging up the credit cards while planning even bigger purchases down the road. Meanwhile, the price of everything from driving your car to insuring your family is going up.
So you decide to take more time off work, bringing home even less money.
Stupid?
Sure.
But lawmakers in Washington like the idea.
In the middle of a costly war with Iraq, while Medicare and Medicaid are in fiscal trouble, while federal mandates on everything from domestic security to education go unfunded, and the national debt continues to grow, lawmakers continue to debate tax cuts.
Sorry, but tax cuts are not spending. It’s as simple as that. It is actual government expenditures that fit the spending analogy. Loading up the federal budget with discretionary spending—up 18% the last few years—and new entitlements like a prescription drug benefit is what fits the spending analogy.
The other reason the analogy doesn’t work is that the profligate spender is, ultimately, spending his own money. Government spends other people’s money.
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Tuesday, April 01, 2003
KRUGMAN: IT’S ALL ABOUT THE REELECTION
Today Paul Krugman continues his long-running theme that the Bush-Rove Team is screwing the nation in pursuit of reelection. This time the theme manifests itself in the funding scheme for homeland security. According to Krugman:
Here's how it works. In its main grant programs, the department makes no attempt to assess needs. Instead, each state receives a base of 0.75 percent of the total, regardless of its population; the rest is then allocated in proportion to population. This is a very good deal for states with small populations, like Wyoming or Montana. It's a very bad deal for states like California or New York, which receives only 4.7 percent of the money. And since New York and other big urban states remain the most likely targets of another major attack, it's a very bad deal for the country.
So what does this have to do with Bush-Rove reelection plan? Funny you asked:
Why adopt such a strange formula? Well, maybe it's not that strange: what it most resembles is the Electoral College, which also gives disproportionate weight (though not that disproportionate) to states with small populations. And with a few exceptions, small-population states are red states [states that voted for Bush] — indeed, the small-state bias of the Electoral College is what allowed Mr. Bush to claim the White House despite losing the popular vote. It's hard not to suspect that the formula — which makes absolutely no sense in terms of national security — was adopted precisely because it caters to that same constituency. (To be fair, there's one big "red state" loser from the formula: Texas. But one of these days, sooner than most people think, Texas may well turn blue.)
Texas may turn “blue”—i.e., become a state that votes Democrat in presidential elections? While there are some suggestive demographic trends, Texas isn’t going that way any time soon, and certainly not before the 2004 election. As a general rule, if a pundit mentions an exception to his thesis and then makes a lame attempt to explain it away, the thesis is probably garbage.
And Krugman’s thesis is on a one way trip to the wastebasket. Texas isn’t the only state that doesn’t fit the reelection explanation. Populous states that Bush won by small margins like Florida (I barely needed to mention that one) and Ohio (4%) would presumably get the shaft under the funding formula too. Nor would it win Bush much admiration in populous states that he lost by relatively small margins like Pennsylvania and Michigan (5% each). Given that Bush won the electoral college by only 3 electoral votes, it would be exceedingly stupid to shaft those larger states to benefit small states like Montana, North Dakota, and Wyoming, which voted for Bush over Gore by margins of 25%, 28%, and 41%, respectively.
So what explains the funding scheme? An article in the Washington Post (thanks to Don Luskin and RealClearPolitics) gives us a hint:
Among the formula's authors was then-Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), whose state gets more than six times as much money per capita as California under the formula. A spokesman for Leahy said smaller states need more money because their communities do not have large standing police forces to respond to emergencies. "Small states have security concerns, too," the spokesman said. "Protection of Vermont's northern border benefits the whole country. What if a terrorist got across and went to New York?"
There are two complimentary explanations for the funding scheme that are implied by that paragraph. The first is what political scientists call “distributive politics,” the process by which members of Congress distribute the goodies back home in order to maximize their chance of winning reelection. In the case of homeland security, it enables Senators like Patrick Leahy to tell his constituents that he brought back money to beef up security in Vermont.
The second explanation is the composition of the Senate. Specifically, there are enough Senators from small states, like Leahy’s Vermont, to all but ensure that any funding formula is not based solely on population. If we define a small state as one that has a population less than 3 million, then according to Census figures there are currently 20 small states. That’s 40 Senators in a 100 member body. With that kind of political muscle, it’s little wonder that funding formulas often do not favor large states.
The explanation for homeland security funding lies in congressional reelection concerns, not presidential ones. I suppose I should cut Krugman some slack since he is an economist and not a political scientist. But then, he could always ask some of the folks in the political science discipline. Some of them are in the same building, Robertson Hall, which houses Krugman’s office.
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SO LITTLE TIME
About two weeks ago the Des Moines Register ran an editorial about the war that began:
The debate is over. Now is the time to set aside the lingering doubts about the wisdom of war. Americans must unify in support of their troops poised in the desert.
That “time” continued two days later when it ran this editorial:
No other war in American history has been so much the product of one man's grit and determination. So begins Mr. Bush's war.
No president has so single-handedly led the nation into war. Franklin Roosevelt wanted the United States in World War II, but couldn't muster enough support until the attack on Pearl Harbor. Harry Truman had both public and United Nations support for war in Korea. Lyndon Johnson led the country into Vietnam only in small increments and with public opinion on his side in the beginning.
Get that? It’s “Mr. Bush’s War.” Not America’s War, or the War of the Coalition of the Willing. As for the second paragraph, what is this rubbish about LBJ leading America into Vietnam “in small increments”? Or was the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution just a fictitious entry in my high-school history book?
The “time to set aside the lingering doubts” continued five days later when the Register lectured us about how war is hard:
If there was any unwarranted optimism about this war, the administration and the military brass should accept some blame for failing to stress potential pitfalls.
As a sidenote, I loved the headline to that editorial “Victory? Yes, but not bloodless.” You mean in war blood is usually spilled? Okay loyal readers, repeat after me: NNNNOOOOOOO?????!!!!! You have to give the Register editorialists credit: sometimes they have a marvelous grasp of the obvious.
And then the Register set aside even more lingering doubts in this editorial where they informed us:
When President Bush told the people of Iraq "the day of your liberation is near," it evoked images of joyous civilians cheering the arrival of U.S. troops. One week later, it's clear that was mostly wishful thinking.
and,
Even Iraqis who opposed Saddam are sure to be embittered by civilian deaths resulting from the war, despite efforts to avoid them.
and,
The broader worry is that people throughout the region will interpret the war as a Western humiliation of the entire Arab world. If so, the war could fan the flames of terrorism for another generation.
President Bush no doubt took that possibility into account before giving the order to invade, but he is convinced that, once Saddam is gone, Iraq can be transformed into a model of democracy and a source of peace in the Middle East.
Let's hope there hasn't been a miscalculation about that, too.
Perhaps it’s a bit unfair to criticize the Register editorialists for not keeping their word. After all, maybe the doubts weren’t “lingering”, but brand new ones. Or perhaps in the future they should inform us that such a “time” is limited to 48 hours.
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WORLD THERAPY
Sometimes the reflexive, liberal impulses of the Des Moines Register editorialists are very amusing. For example, in its editorial supporting the United Nations, the Register offers this defense:
The organization also has value simply as a forum where all the nations of the world can come together to talk.
The world as one big encounter group! Surely, it must be helpful to have the representatives of leaders like Fidel Castro and Kim Jong Il getting together and having a bull session. Of course, nothing will get done, but what the heck, talk is valuable just as talk. It’s therapeutic, don’t ya know?
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Monday, March 31, 2003
NO BLOGGING TODAY
Blogging will resume tomorrow.
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