• In a speech today at Camp LeJeune, NC, President Obama announced the withdrawal of all combat troops from Iraq by the end of August 2010, and a complete withdrawal of all remaining non-combat soldiers by the end of 2011. Meanwhile, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has denied there will be a surge in Afghanistan, and The Washington Post and Politico both look at disagreement between the White House and Congressional Democrats over the withdrawal plan. Also, expanding the NSC.
• Both this Dan Balz piece in the Post and a similar Bloomberg article make the point that Barack Obama's ambitious restructuring of budget priorities carries risk but potentially big rewards for Democrats in coming elections. It's hard to disagree with this analysis, but the most significant thing about the budget is encapsulated in this New York Times piece that argues that the Obama budget essentially undoes three decades of Reaganomics. Perhaps most significant is Paul Krugman's column, which enthusiastically approves of where Obama's budget is taking the country, particularly because Krugman has consistently been the biggest critic on the left of Obama-the-candidate and Obama-the-president's economic policy.
• Rasmussen has a couple of new polls that cast some public doubt on the progressive economic agenda. The first finds that a plurality (42 percent) believe reducing the deficit is a top priority, even though a majority (56 percent) believe that reducing the deficit won't actually happen any time soon. The second poll is a more frivolous, finding that 59 percent of voters "agreed with Ronald Reagan that 'government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.'"
• Democrats and organized labor are continuing to push the meme that the party of Lincoln is now the party of Limbaugh (no argument here), but they could do just as well by placing a stationary camera at CPAC, where, in addition to Michael Steele's agonizingly painful and inexplicably continued attempts at being hip (this time with an assist from Michele Bachmann), we learn that Mr. Wurzelbacher believes some members of Congress ought to be shot, conservatives continue to believe they are the natural party of the working class, and socialism is the hot new buzzword for conservative activists.
• When Bobby Jindal lies, baby Jesus cries.
• Daphne Eviatar has been doing some great national security reporting for The Washington Independent, and has a great story on the Obama administration's subtle nods to Bush on invoking "state secrets" privileges. She also reports on the push by civil liberties groups to open the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's inquiry into the Bush administration's interrogation techniques to the public, and Senate Intelligence Chair Diane Feinstein's green lighting of an inquiry into the CIA's use of those techniques.
• Remainders: Dobson calls it quits; libertarians find more evidence that America is embracing them; please God let Sarah Palin be the 2012 frontrunner; the netroots get serious about finding 2010 primary challengers; and a clueless California mayor can't understand why people can't find the humor in an email picturing the White House with a lawn full of watermelons.

--Mori Dinauer

In case you like getting up early on Saturday as much as I do, tomorrow morning I'll be on C-SPAN's Washington Journal from 8:30 to 9:00. We'll be discussing the president's budget and economic policy, and I will do my best to make those topics as stimulating as possible.

-- Tim Fernholz

I just escaped from a CPAC panel featuring activists who have achieved "conservative victories" at the grassroots. Most of them were college students who beat back all those terrible autocratic liberal policies at their universities that "silence" conservatives. "Liberals are successful at making people who are marginalized hurt," sniffed one presenter, referring to conservatives as the marginalized. Their two-minute speeches were apparently supposed to inspire activists in the audience to sue their university, form clubs on campus to combat "suicidally liberal" policies, form an anti-feminist book club, or fight back against an unspecified "Orwellian political re-education program" like at the University of Delaware. If conservatives whined about being marginalized when they were in power, imagine how how ramped-up the bitterness is going to be now.

The star of the show was Jonathan Krohn, the 13-year-old author of a book, Define Conservatism. His charm, if you can call it that, lay in his spittle-flecked enthusiasm, rather than his originality. The audience was so wowed by this wunderkind's paean to conservatism that they barely noticed Joe the Plumber saunter in for his Fox News interview in the back of the ballroom.

--Sarah Posner

That's why many of us were surprised by Mica's recent announcement that 80 companies have already expressed interest in bidding to operate HSR lines across the country. These include train manufacturers and state DOTs, as well as architectural, engineering and construction firms. Foreign operators like Britain's Virgin Trains (owned by Warren Buffett) and France's national railway, SNCF have also shown interest. At first glance, this would seem to bode well for the future of a robust HSR service in the US, but it's worth taking a second look at the consequences of private rail service operation. Trains for America points out that in Britain, where passenger lines were privatized in 1997, there is discontinuity in service between different companies. Ticket prices are among the highest in the world, and operators remain dependent on government subsidy. American passenger rail suffers a similar predicament, the difference being that service discontinuities explained by state-level neglect resulting from the absence of a comprehensive federal policy for non-highway transportation.

Railroading is a business characterized by the high fixed costs of building and maintaining tracks, signals, rights-of-way and other infrastructure. It is thus nearly impossible for passenger-hauling railroads to make enough revenue from ticket sales to cover these costs -- let alone turn a profit -- without raising fares to the point of discouraging ridership. American history has shown that major advancements in transportation are almost never made without government leadership to establish and fund a cohesive national plan. The federal government granted vast amounts of land and resources to railroads in the 19th century, helping them unite the nation as never before; trains became the engines of our economic prowess. Uncle Sam also generated the Interstate Highway System and established a dedicated funding apparatus (the Highway Trust Fund) to pay 90 percent of its construction costs. Now, with a strained and congested transportation network too reliant on a single mode with a myriad of negative impacts, federal leadership is needed once again to revitalize rail and guide the country towards efficient, green mobility. Public ownership of railroad infrastructure, an idea scarcely uttered in recent history, may be gaining traction. The Transport Politic summarizes various proposals and offers an appealing scheme.

Trains for America puts it bluntly: "You can either pay for a train system or you can not have one." Building a 21st-century transportation network that provides greener and more enjoyable travel options, relieves congestion, and that the public wants, is a smart investment, especially in the current economic climate.

-- Malcolm Kenton

Today, UNITE HERE is splitting apart in a bitter civil war that pits the UNITE side against the HERE side in a vicious, ugly fight. Some of the savviest and most dedicated union leaders and staffers ever to work in American labor are savaging each other as the UNITE side of the union endeavors to break away from the larger HERE side and a custody battle rages over the union's financial assets. For people who believe in the American labor movement, and who've seen the positive changes that these unions have made in the lives of their members, watching this battle unfold is like watching two good friends caught up in a vicious divorce. Sometimes one is right and sometimes the other is, but after a while, the battle takes on a life of its own, and the merits of each side's case become a secondary issue.

Jessica Hopper defends Susan Sontag against those who would judge her for her "ambition":

[C]an we judge the pursuits of a teen mom who went on to be one of the great American thinkers as vainglorious? She simply wanted to achieve her self. It is easy to say she did, though we can't presume she would agree. Sontag was not someone we think of as a mother; she was a private and seemingly singular entity, an upright truth-seeking device, the great public intellectual. And here we are, arriving unbidden, into her most private thoughts, wondering what we are to think of a mother who does not seem to want to be a mother, who is immersed in a self-interested pursuit.

And Terence Samuel writes that labor and environmental activists may have finally found common ground:

The current economic crisis and the unprecedented federal response may solidify the sometimes uneasy relationship between the labor and environmental movements, potentially creating a new political force with intersecting interests. Years in the political wilderness, along with the crush of the collapsing economy, have created a conciliatory mood on the left that is making coalition-building easier.

As always, subscribe to our RSS feed to receive our articles as soon as they are published. Also, follow us on Twitter for highlights from our blog.

--The Editors

In his first big national appearance as one of the "new faces" of the Republican Party, it seems Bobby Jindal decided he'd just make something up. Zachary Roth reported yesterday that a number of facts seemed to get in the way of Jindal's anecdote about the kindly Sheriff Harry Lee in New Orleans, trying the best to cut through the red tape during Katrina so he could rescue people. Jindal's spokesperson now admits the story was not true as Jindal told it:

But now, a Jindal spokeswoman has admitted to Politico that in reality, Jindal overheard Lee talking about the episode to someone else by phone "days later." The spokeswoman said she thought Lee, who died in 2007, was being interviewed about the incident at the time.

This is no minor difference. Jindal's presence in Lee's office during the crisis itself was a key element of the story's intended appeal, putting him at the center of the action during the maelstrom. Just as important, Jindal implied that his support for the sheriff helped ensure the rescue went ahead. But it turns out Jindal wasn't there at the key moment, and played no role in making the rescue happen.

Sheriff Lee wasn't exactly Andy Griffith either.

It's a good thing that the truth is coming to light now--by 2012, the story would probably involve sniper fire.

Speaking of which, we're going to get a whole lot of news analysis about how this incident proves that Bobby Jindal is full of ruthless ambition and bottomless insincerity, right?

-- A. Serwer

One major concern of the new budget is that the administration's forecasts for economic growth -- which would have a major affect on revenues -- are too optimistic. The administration expects 3.2 percent GDP increase in 2010, and the CBO recently predicted 1.5 percent during the same year. But apparently that forecast did not take into account the economic stimulus package that became law last week, which is designed to increase growth. According to Robert Greenstein, head of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, who spoke to reporters on a conference call today, the projections come from Christina Romer, the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, and she stands by them; he says the economists at the CBPP find them "plausible.," adding that "there certainly is a non-trivial potential that the economy could be considerably worse than this. ... Will the economy cooperate, will it rebound as well and as quickly as the budget assumes? ... It's always difficult to predict the future course of the economy, and its more difficult now than it's been in a long time."

-- Tim Fernholz

When Barack Obama gave a speech on fatherhood last year, Kathryn Jean Lopez probably spoke for many conservatives when she wrote "talk is cheap." Months later, the Democratic Party laid a new plank in their party platform last year devoted to fatherhood, which gave a rather broad outline recognizing the important role that fathers play in families, and committing to policy solutions for eliminating fatherlessness. Among those hinted at was more financial support for reentry programs, which help the formerly incarcerated adjust to life on the outside. The Justice Center estimates that more than 7 million children may have a parent in prison or jail, or under parole or probation supervision. Obviously, these children are at greater risk to follow in their parents footsteps. What reentry programs do is they offer job training so that fathers can provide financially for their families, but they also provide counseling and parental classes to help the formerly incarcerated meet their parental obligations. This kind of process is incredibly important; the skills one develops and culture one adjusts to in prison is completely antithetical to keeping a job or raising a family. 

The budget outline released yesterday shows the Obama administration is beginning to put their money where there mouth is, in funding it intends to commit to the Department of Justice:

Expands Prisoner Reentry Programs. The Budget includes $109 million for prisoner reentry programs, including an additional $75 million for the Office of Justice Programs to expand grant programs authorized by the Second Chance Act that provide counseling, job training, drug treatment, and other transitional assistance to former prisoners.

The impact of many of these programs is real but limited--they're staffed by highly motivated workers who are committed to fixing the shortcomings of the criminal justice system, many of them have been through it themselves. But because the movement is somewhat new, we still have a limited understanding of what works and what doesn't. 

-- A. Serwer

John Dickerson, Slate's in-house king of false equivalence, thinks that despite the new administration's claims, their budget is just as a full of gimmicks (a word I've gotten really tired of typing in the last week) as the old ones. True? He bases his argument on a few points, one that is sort of halfway concerning and one that is a gimmick in and of itself.

The first is that the administration's GDP growth estimates are much more optimistic than others -- for instance, in 2010 the administration predicts 3.2 percent GDP growth while CBO's most recent report suggests 1.5 percent. That would have a big effect on revenue. But instead of figuring out why the administration is making that projection -- I've got a call in -- Dickerson just makes a joke about bailouts for homeowners and others, suggesting that he hasn't done his homework and that he doesn't understand the administration's housing plan. But even if the projections are inflated, they're not hidden. Everyone is writing about them.

Dickerson's second big complaint is that Obama messes with the ten-year baseline, including things that won't be affecting us down the road. Well, there are a few reasons why that is. One, I'm told, is that most budgets don't use ten year projections, and that the new administration is being more transparent in including those forecasts. Further, the ten year projections are not considered as important as earlier numbers because so many changes are likely to occur -- for one thing, there could be a different president in four years, and all economic forecasts get increasing hazy the further into the future you go.

But the specific baseline tweaks that Dickerson objects to are ridiculous. He's mad because the budget "assumes the war will be funded at high levels for the next 10 years, even though Obama is planning to bring 100,000 troops home in the next 19 months." That's just wrong. The budget document makes clear that the contingency funding into the future is for all foreign operations, including Afghanistan, a conflict not likely to end soon, and the yearly funding level going forward is $80 billion less than the request for 2010. It's Dickerson who's pulling out the gimmicks here by pretending he doesn't know the money goes to Afghanistan as well as the the residual forces in Iraq, and implying that the funding remains at current levels. He might as well complain that the $250 billion placeholder for money that may or may not be needed by the financial system is a terrible gimmick because we don't know its necessary -- but I'm sure Dickerson and others would make a racket if that placeholder hadn't been included and Obama had to request an emergency appropriation.

His other baseline objections? That the government is anticipating Medicare reimbursements that used to be kept off the books; Dickerson is unhappy because they call for higher reimbursements than the law requires, but the government has paid at those levels in the past (hence the need for health care reform) and they still represent taxpayer costs that should be included in the budget and not ignored. He also accuses Obama of assuming the Bush tax cuts will affect the budget after they are set to expire. In part, that's the ten-year baseline problem again, and in part they are included because some of the provisions will be modified and continue, like the roll-back on dividend tax rates, which will go up 5 percent but not return to Clinton-era rates when dividends were taxed like income.

During the campaign, Dickerson liked to argue that John McCain and Obama had the same views on Iraq. Today Obama will be announcing his withdrawal plan. I doubt McCain would be doing the same today were he president. Now Dickerson -- who grudgingly comes around, in his last two paragraphs, to say that Obama's budget is much less disingenuous than Bush's -- is trying to convince his readers that Obama is being deceptive. Do you believe him?

-- Tim Fernholz

Dave Weigel reports that Tucker Carlson, speaking at CPAC, suggested conservative media outlets focus on you know, reporting. Carlson got a face-full of boos and catcalls because he cited the New York Times as an example of an ideological news outlet the right could emulate, as in by mixing ideology and reporting. 

Carlson finished his speech (”thank you for indulging me”) and the day was gaveled to a close. The image on the giant screens in the Omni Shoreham’s ballroom changed to an ad for PajamasTV, which promised “analysis” of the news-just the thing that Carlson had criticized. In a parody of Apple’s “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” ads, a staid-looking man in a suit played “mainstream media” to a hip young man’s “PajamasTV.”
“It’s my job to tell you the facts,” said Mainstream Media.

“Yeah, like Dan Rather got it right about President Bush’s service record,” said PajamasTV.

Zing! Meanwhile, what's PajamasTV up to now? Showing that staid PC media how to really just report the facts, right? Well, Chris Good writes that isn't exactly what's happening:

Following up on the idea of Tea Parties protesting the administration's mortgage refinancing plan, Pajamas Media has started running online ads (spotted on conservative blog Hot Air today), simultaneously encouraging readers to organize their own tea parties and promoting Pajamas Media's coverage of them. "The Pajamas TV team including Michelle Malkin, Glenn Reynolds, and Joe Wurzelbacher (aka Joe the Plumber) - are mobilized to help cover this new and evolving revolution," Pajamas' online promotion page reads.

Keep in mind, this isn't some Tea Party group advertising on Pajamas Media, this is Pajamas Media pushing their readers to form Tea Parties so they can cover them. Naturally, the PJ bloggers like Malkin and Reynolds have been "covering" the "Tea Party" movement while helping organize it at the same time.

So the New York Times is unethical and biased, but Pajamas Media creating their own news to forward an ideological agenda? That's real integrity.

Jeffrey Toobin had an important piece in The New Yorker discussing the Constitutional challenge to Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act that is soon headed for the Supreme Court. Section 5 forces jurisdictions with a history of discriminating against minority voters to "preclear" their election law changes with the Justice Department. Those arguing that Section 5 is unconstitutional are essentially reprising previous arguments about the law, that it infringes on states' rights, but with a new twist: Barack Obama's election proves racism doesn't exist anymore and therefore Section 5 is no longer needed. Toobin gets to why that isn't so simple (my emphasis):

What recent electoral history shows is that voting requires broader, not narrower, protection. In many parts of the country, the voting rights of poor and minority citizens are treated with not so benign neglect. In the 2000 election, African-American voters in Florida suffered disproportionately from that state’s shoddy practices, such as inadequately maintained registration lists and inferior technology; in 2004, many minority voters in Ohio endured long lines waiting for balky, and too few, voting machines. Across the nation, laws that remove the franchise from those with criminal convictions hit minorities especially hard. More directly, the Republican Party has made an institutional commitment to eradicate the nonexistent problem of voter fraud by imposing identification requirements that are obviously aimed at limiting the numbers of voters from demographic groups that favor Democrats. But neither Florida nor Ohio is a covered jurisdiction under Section 5, and the act is not written to address new techniques of suppression.

I think there was a time in the South when opposition to blacks voting was based on a sort of quasi-religious belief in white supremacy and entitlement. This was a white man's country, we weren't meant to be here except as property. The new minority voter disenfranchisement is rather utilitarian and almost incidental in its racism; it's not based on the idea that blacks shouldn't have a say in American democracy because we're inferior, it's based on narrow partisan interests. Blacks vote for Democrats, therefore, disenfranchising them through redistricting changes, the addition of at-large seats in local elected bodies to dilute black voting power, or even the moving or early closing of a polling place helps prevent Democrats from getting elected. To say we no longer need Section 5 because we can take for granted the idea that black people have the right to vote doesn't change the fact that blacks and other minorities continue to be targeted, in many of the Section 5 jurisdictions, because their votes are assumed on the basis of their ethnic background.

Moreover, part of the reason you don't hear more about terrible forms of voter disenfranchisement is that Section 5 prevents those kinds of things from happening. Part of the argument is that we no longer need Section 5 because disenfranchisement is no longer the problem it was, but that's partially because of vigorous enforcement of Section 5.

It's true that we're a very different country from 1965, and Obama's election is proof of that. But just because the old motivations for disenfranchising minority voters aren't there, doesn't mean that modern versions of such tactics are now completely legitimate.

-- A. Serwer

In his CPAC speech, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell insisted that conservatives are more "interesting" and "fun" than liberals. Here's his proof: "who wants to hang out with guys like Paul Krugman and Robert Reich when you can be with Rush Limbaugh?"

--Sarah Posner

Andrew Sullivan is unhappy with the budget:

If you believe, as I do, that withdrawing from Iraq won't happen as promised, then there is close to no actual spending restraint anywhere in sight. We are being presented with what can only be described as a massive increase in government spending and power with the only fiscal balance being wringing much more money from the successful. The president predicted a tight budget and spending control in his non-SOTU, and he appealed to fiscal conservatives by promising a long-term attack on entitlement spending. I see nothing here yet that fulfills that promise.

Well, for starters, I'd call this $4 billion per year savings a spending restraint. But I don't really get Andrew's surprise. McCain was the spending freeze candidate, not Obama, and cutting spending programs now would be counter-productive to the president's economic agenda of counter-cyclical spending. Most of the increase in deficit comes from the temporary stimulus package or was inherited from the last president. As Ambinder notes, non-defense discretionary spending is targeted to drop 1 percent in 2011 and 5 percent in 2012, a part of the deficit reduction plan that aims to have the shortfall at 3 percent of GDP by 2013. And, while Sullivan may not agree, the health care reform structure contained within the budget is a long-term attack on entitlement spending that would be more effective than any other. The really ironic thing is that though Sullivan premises his complaint on the idea that we will not withdraw from Iraq, in my estimation we are more likely to withdraw from Iraq quickly than see the optimistic levels of GDP growth that the budget forecast contains in 2011 and 2012.

The funniest part is Sullivan's criticism of the tax increases on high-income Americans. Was Sullivan not listening when Obama repeatedly said he'd roll back the Bush tax cuts during the campaign? Some provisions, like the dividends tax rate, aren't even being taken back to Clinton-era levels but instead merely upped from 15 percent to 20 percent, rather than being taxed as income. Does Sullivan really have a problem with the itemized deduction rate returning to Reagan era levels so that the middle-class and the wealthy get the same break on charitable contributions? This is my question: where would Sullivan like to see spending restraint in keeping with Obama's long-stated positions and the context of the economic times?

-- Tim Fernholz

• The Obama administration unveiled its budget proposal this morning, which includes a significant down payment for universal health care coverage, and increased spending for energy and education, paid for in part (the deficit will run $1.75 trillion for FY09) by a tax increase on families earning more than $250,000 (expiration of the Bush tax cuts), taxing carbon emissions and the eventual draw down of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. General defense spending will actually increase four percent and Obama has requested an additional $200 billion to fund Mideast military operations for the next 18 months. The budget also provides for the option of requesting an additional $750 billion to resuscitate the financial sector. See more from Ezra, Reich, and Dana.
  
• CPAC is on in Washington, D.C. today, and Sarah Posner has some great reports from enemy territory. Patrick Ruffini has an interesting reflection on the "Joe-the-Plumberization of the GOP" at The Next Right, and while though I don't agree with his analysis of liberalism, his assessment of contemporary conservatism is spot-on.
• Speaking of the state of conservatism, there's nothing surprising or novel about this William Kristol op-ed previewing the party-of-no strategy of the GOP. What I did find amusing was this description of the movement: "Conservatism is more sophisticated than it was back then [the 30's and 60's]." Sophisticated? I think he meant to say, "gets more attention." Some recent examples of the "sophistication" of the conservative movement: Rush Limbaugh convening a summit to explore the complex issue of why women think he's a sexist pig (hint: he's a misogynistic troglodyte); the stillborn "new American tea party" movement (they use Twitter!); calling an anti-crime provision in the omnibus bill "pork"; clinging to voodoo economics to the bitter end; keeping Birchism alive and well by giving space to (and applauding) citizenship conspiracy theorists; and their principled understanding of the role of federalism and freedom in American political life. If I were a Republican, I'd start listening to the governor of Utah, who continues to utter surprisingly honest and accurate assessments of the state of his party.
• Greg Sargent has a great set of posts detailing his interview with Bill Clinton, and the former president strikes me as quite optimistic. In addition to giving Obama's Tuesday quasi-SOTU address a big thumbs up, Clinton explained why he thinks the president will succeed with health care reform whereas he failed, and correctly identifies the Republican problem ("[they] have isolated themselves by having predictable, tired old objections which are not supportable by the facts") while suggesting how they can find their way back to the political mainstream: "They should give him [Obama] some more votes now in the Congress and develop an alternative plan for the future that’s different, and say, 'We’re all in a terrible crisis now, we’ll help him get through the emergency, but we don’t agree with his long term approach.' That I think would be a good strategy for them."
• Policy/legislation roundup: The Obama administration has changed defense policy to allow photography of coffins returning from war overseas; is seeking a new assault weapons ban; and will end medical marijuana police raids. Meanwhile, Democrats in the Senate and House are concerned about the administration's Iraq plan; the Senate rejects a reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine; reestablishing the line-item veto gains support in the Senate; D.C. statehood is imminent; and Republicans gear up to oppose OLC nominee Dawn Johnsen.
• Signs of the times: Harry Reid gets the endorsement of a top Nevada Republican, and a top Democratic donor becomes a major player with Log Cabin Republicans.
• Both Kevin Drum and John Quiggin have some concise thoughts on the worthlessness of hack columnists, at the expense, respectively, of Michael Gerson and George Will (who apparently is set to double down on the lies come tomorrow).
• It sure didn't take long for the "We Demand Kal Penn as Bobby Jindal on SNL" Facebook page to be created. God bless them intertubes.

--Mori Dinauer

In a piece for the print magazine that examines how liberals have an opportunity to change government, I took a look at the Federal Student Aid Office. Instead of subsidizing an unnecessary industry, liberals could simply "put students first. The FSA could use its power to simplify the confusing student-loan programs and advocate for more use of the Federal Direct Loan Program, which cuts out private-lender middlemen to provide loans directly to students. This could save the government millions -- while at the same time increasing access to higher education." I should have written "billions," but as Dana notes, the president's new budget calls for exactly that move. Making the change has been a progressive priority for years and the inclusion of this provision in the budget is one more indicator that this is a progressive administration.

Estimates of savings from the federal direct lending program are a healthy $4 billion a year. The politics of the debate that will no doubt ensue around the change will be fascinating. The student lending lobby shells out to members of congress to keep their subsidies (House Minority Leader John Boehner and Ranking Education Committee Member Howard "Buck" McKeon are two major recipients). But many of the same people who receive lender dollars are also self-styled budget hawks. Wondering how they'll ever be able to reconcile their support for corporate subsidies with their hopes for a smaller budget? I won't keep you guessing: Betcha they come down on the side of the former.

-- Tim Fernholz

Mike Huckabee stole the show today, as thousands of CPAC attendees, many of them college students, crammed the big ballroom to hear him talk about why John McCain lost the election the future of the conservative movement. Huckabee spared no criticism of the candidate he stumped for -- even lamenting, at one point, that he had campaigned for McCain even after the nominee voted for the bank bailout back in September. That "was not our best moment," said Huckabee, adding that it "would have been our best shot at winning the White House" if McCain had been a true conservative voice rather than "a meek 'me too' big government echo."

Huckabee was off the rails with the socialism theme -- saying that Stalin and Lenin would have loved the TARP and stimulus bill and that the United States was becoming the "Union of American Socialist Republics." It's the new cold war, only the enemy is here at home.

As is his shtick, Huckabee larded his speech with folksy tales of clean Arkansas living, precious metaphors, and biblical references. Some were more obvious than others, such as when he said that Democrats "want to keep dividing a loaf of bread among an increasingly dependent population," while Republicans understand that in a free market system, the "loaves and fishes" just keep multiplying. It might come as a surprise to many of his followers that Jesus relied on the free market rather than a higher authority. But for conservatives, the two are indistinguishable.

--Sarah Posner

Ben Smith offers this tidbit from Michael Steele's appearance on the Curtis Sliwa show.

Curtis Sliwa: When you used the hip-hop vernacular, man, Barack Obama has bling bling in this stimulus package, you got people's attention.

Michael Steele: Absolutely. There's a lot of bling bling -- the bling bling's got bling bling in this package. That's how bad it is.

At the always excellent Streetsblog, Aaron Naparstek points out that turning Broadway into a pedestrian corridor is also an economic stimulus plan for this still sort of seedy corridor:

With numerous storefronts vacant and office and retail rental rates lagging behind other prime Midtown corridors, Broadway is currently "under-performing" by a number of economic measures, [DOT Commissioner] Sadik-Khan said. Based on experience in other cities, a more pedestrian-friendly Broadway should "get more people out on the street. They will buy more coffee and do more shopping."

I grew up in Ossining, NY, a Hudson Valley village with a dilapidated downtown shopping area. As in so many American towns and cities, the streetcar tracks had been ripped up. Ever since, a lack of available parking has prevented Ossining's downtown from becoming a destination. But the beauty of a dense city like New York, where over half of residents don't even own a car, is that the opposite is true: Getting cars out of the way actually encourages consumption. That, after all, is the logic behind the mall; you leave your car behind, and walk on foot from shop to shop. There's food. There's a movie theater. Malls recreate the experience of the city. Nice to see a real city embracing what it does best: cater to people, not automobiles.

--Dana Goldstein

The recurring theme here at CPAC is that President Obama is the scariest thing to ever to happen to America. Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are terrible in their own way, but Obama has exotic magical powers to pass legislation that hasn't been introduced, use the government to steal our money, ban Rush Limbaugh from the airwaves. Amazing!

--Sarah Posner

Recently John Bellinger III, counsel to the State Department under former President Bush, told Jane Mayer that “[the Obama administration] will have to either put up or shut up. Do they maintain the Bush Administration position, and keep holding [terrorist suspect Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri] as an enemy combatant? They have to come up with a legal theory.”

The Obama administration has opted to put up, and will charge al-Marri, who is suspected of providing material support to terrorists, in a civilian court:

The decision to move Marri into the U.S. courts, where he will be able to assert a host of rights to challenge any evidence against him, comes after lengthy debate at the highest levels of government.

The move, which could be announced publicly as early as the end of the week, also could avert a Supreme Court hearing in April at which Marri's human rights lawyers had planned to use his case to seek a precedent that could bind not only al-Marri but also scores of prisoners subjected to indefinite detention at Guantanamo. They are likely to press the court to go ahead with the hearing even in the face of expected Justice Department arguments that new criminal charges against Marri make the dispute moot.

The ACLU's Jonathan Hafetz seems pleased with the development. Hafets said in a statement that "If true, the decision to charge al-Marri is an important step in restoring the rule of law and is what should have happened seven years ago when he was first arrested." Al-Marri is also the subject of an upcoming Supreme Court case where the ACLU is challenging the legality of his designation as an "enemy combatant." Charging him could put an end to his Habeas petition, which the ACLU does not want to see. Hafetz, who is the lead counsel on that case, says that "it is vital that the Supreme Court case go forward because it must be made clear once and for all that indefinite military detention of persons arrested in the U.S. is illegal and that this will never happen again."

The outcome of the case is significant, because even if the administration decides to try all of the terrorist suspects captured outside Afghanistan in civilian courts, it will likely still reserve the right to detain suspected terrorists captured in Afghanistan, based on the argument that Afghanistan is a combat zone and the military should have the right to detain enemy combatants captured on the field of battle. But this could also be a positive harbinger of things to come. While al-Marri was the only "enemy combatant" held on U.S. soil, (which makes the question of what to do with him if convicted easier since he's already here) it's hard to see how the administration would come up with a legal theory that sees al-Marri as someone who could be prosecuted in the civilian criminal justice system to the exclusion of all the other detainees in custody. In other words, al-Marri's prosecution could signal the end of prosecuting suspected terrorists through military commissions.

“I think clearly it’s the direction they intend to go," says Ken Gude, a human rights expert at the Center for American Progress. "There were some circumstances surrounding the al-Marri case that make it different from those in Guantanamo, but taking that aside, it is consistent with the position Obama articulated as a candidate, after he was elected, and after he took office, which is that he prefers to use the criminal justice system whenever possible.”

-- A. Serwer

Bibi Netanyahu is a nervous man, known for sweating heavily. What's making him sweat now is the prospect that his ruling coalition will consist only of those six parties of the right. That coalition will be fragmented and unstable. Even worse for a politician as America-obsessed as Netanyahu, it will deepen his difficulties in dealing with the Obama administration. Netanyahu would far prefer to share power with his ideological opponents, but as yet they are unwilling to rescue him.

Adam Serwer looks at the current administration's progress -- or lack thereof -- with regard to detention policy:

[S]ince January, a number of the decisions made by the Obama administration have caused anxiety among human-rights advocates, who fear that the new president may indeed continue many Bush-era policies. Obama officials such as Attorney General Eric Holder, solicitor general nominee Elena Kagan, and Principal Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyam have released statements endorsing the idea that terror suspects can be defined as "enemy combatants" and held "for the duration of hostilities" without trial.

We talk a lot about the glass ceiling, but one of the biggest problems for women is the sticky floor: There just aren't good job opportunities. What EFCA means is that women workers and particularly women workers of color, who are of the worst economic situation in this country, can finally move out of the worst jobs and the worst working conditions and into the kind of jobs which would allow them to support a family, buy a home, send their kids to college.

As always, subscribe to our RSS feed to receive our articles as soon as they are published. Also, follow us on Twitter for highlights from our blog.

--The Editors

OMB Chief Peter Orzsag announced on a conference call today that he will soon be returning to the blogosphere.

Paging Ezra Klein...

-- A. Serwer

In order to see the whole, you need to look both at where revenues will come from and at where they’ll go:

Come from: By allowing the Bush tax cuts to expire, the marginal income tax on the highest earners goes back to 39.6 percent (from 35 percent, now), and capital gains rates to 20 percent (from 15, now). The budget also limits the amount highest earners can claim for mortgage-interest and charitable deductions (from 35 percent now down to 28 percent), raising an estimated $318 billion over ten years. Finally, wealthier Medicare beneficiaries will have to pay higher premiums for prescription drugs.

Come from, and go: Revenues from a cap-and-trade auction -- the costs of which will presumably will be passed on to all consumers -- will finance a continuation of the middle-class and lower-income tax credits now in the stimulus bill at a slightly higher rate ($500 per individual, $1,000 per couple, phasing out above $75,000 per person).

Go: Although we don't have details as yet, the President's health-care proposal is likely to include substantial subsidies for lower-income families. In addition, let's hope the expanded Earned Income Tax Credit now in the stimulus bill will continue beyond 2010, as well as the refundable Child Tax Credit, enlarged Food Stamp program, larger Title I for poor school districts, and expansion of Pell Grants. (So are, no clear signal on this.)

Presidential budgets are aspirations. They're not real, in the sense that no one really has to adhere to them. Obama's budget now goes to Congress, where budget committees will draw up their own versions. Even these congressional budgets are mere guidelines for appropriations and tax-writing committees. Lobbyists will be swarming. So don't expect the final sausage to look exactly like the meat the President is putting into the grinder. On the other hand, the sausage is likely to bear more than a passing resemblance. Remember: This president's approval ratings are well over 60 percent -- substantially higher than Congress's overall approval rating, and far, far higher than Republicans in Congress -- and the nation is still looking to Obama to lead the way out of our troubled times. And it's a Democratic congress, with a Democratic Senate that could be (if Al Franken is seated) one vote short of being able to cut off a filibuster.

It's about time a presidential budget unequivocally redistributed income from the very rich to the middle class and poor. The incomes of the top one percent have soared for 30 years while median wages have slowed or declined in real terms. As economists Thomas Piketty and Emanuel Saez have shown, the top-earning one percent of Americans took home eight percent of total income in the 1970s; as recently as 1980, they took home nine percent. After that, total income became more and more concentrated at the top. By 2007, the top one percent took home over 22 percent. Meanwhile, even as their incomes dramatically increased, the total federal tax rates paid by the top one percent dropped. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the top one percent paid a total federal tax rate of 37 percent three decades ago; now it's paying 31 percent.

Fairness is at stake but so is the economy as a whole. This Mini Depression is partly the result of a widening gap between what Americans can afford to buy and what Americans, when fully employed, can produce. And that gap is in no small measure due to the widening gap in incomes, since the rich don't devote nearly as large a portion of their incomes to buying things as middle and lower-income people. The rich, after all, already have most of what they want.

--Robert Reich

Paul Ryan, the Republican Congressman from Wisconsin, was introduced this morning by the Heritage Foundation's Ed Feulner as the "future of the conservative movement," and Ryan rose to the occasion, I suppose, startling me back to the Reagan era, when communism was presented as the greatest threat to America's promise. Now, it's "European-style socialism," a term Ryan used repeatedly to strike fear in the hearts of all God-fearing conservatives.

Although Ryan was well into the speech before he named the president, it was quite early in the speech when he named the House Speaker, which is like an easy joke in conservative circles. Her name was invoked solely to jeer at her assertion that including money for contraception in the stimulus bill would ultimately save the government money. "The pretense that babies are a drain on our financial resources has always been one of the uglier aspects of liberalism," Ryan said. "People are not cause of this downturn, people are the answer to turning the economy around. The creation of more free minds is the only resource we have to make our economy grow." What a clever way to draw fiscal conservatives and anti-choice activists together!

I could see, though, why they're showcasing Ryan. He didn't brag about bagging moose or eating fried squirrels, but instead laid out a policy agenda he believes will revitalize conservatism out of the "wilderness." I don't know about that, but some fresh-faced young men just handed me a magazine with Ron Paul and Barack Obama arm-wrestling on the cover: "the battle for America's youth." That's all they got?

--Sarah Posner

I'm here at the Conservative Political Action Conference today, hoping to bring you some live-blogging from the year's most important gathering for charting the future of the conservative movement and the Republican Party. But, like last year, the wi-fi is spotty to nonexistent, but I'll my best try to bring you as much of the action as I can.

So far, the mood, oddly, seems more ebullient than last year, when a dispirited pall hung over the place, particularly after Mitt Romney used the venue to drop out of the GOP presidential primary. Somehow the attendees seem energized by the prospect of a fight against "the most radical president ever elected in this country's history" (John Bolten) and against the creeping "European-style socialism" they believe is poised to take over the country. More on that in a moment, after I gather my thoughts on the first big speech of the morning, from Wisconsin Republican Congressman Paul Ryan.

--Sarah Posner

After the election, DCCC Chair Chris Van Hollen picked up an additional job, Assistant to the Speaker, and a broad portfolio that includes policy liaison duties, work with the White House and the wonderful task of "incumbent retention" -- making sure Democratic members of congress, especially more-vulnerable freshmen and sophomores, keep their seats. This generally entails a lot of staff oversight and making sure that each member's office is following best-practices for constituent outreach. One new way of doing so: Van Hollen's office has sent a memo to members' staff urging them to appoint someone to work with constituents interested in participating in programs from the stimulus act. The idea originated in the office of Rep. Dan Maffei and was quickly seen as a smart move. A memo sent out by the office and obtained by the Prospect details the role of these "economic development coordinators":

"It will be the job of this individual to provide guidance, answer questions, coordinate with state officials, research formulas and application processes, write support letters, and troubleshoot for worthy individuals, government entities, groups or organizations who would like to access funds ... transparency measures are a large part of what gave this package credibility, and our constituents expect and deserve this money to land where it was intended. Accordingly, your office needs to be ready and willing to raise heck if and when you see things going wrong."

Several members have already signed on to the idea and detailed staffers to deal with recovery issues, including Reps. Paul Hodes, Larry Kissell and Eric Massa. The Dems' continuing work on the stimulus is in part communications strategy: a separate section of the memo encourages offices to "brand" the stimulus and use local statistics to communicate with skeptics and keep them updated on its results. But more than that, detailing these staffers to manage the economic recovery locally is smart political outreach to ensure a complex program works. "It helps to put in another layer of accountability," one House Democratic aide told me. "People are going to be calling about his anyways and it makes sense to have one point-person on it."

The Democratic leadership is starting to buy the idea that they live and die on the success of their policies, and they're willing to devote extra resources to ensuring that their districts can benefit from the economic stimulus legislation in tangible ways.

-- Tim Fernholz

The administration has released its 2010 budget overview. Perusing the Department of Education section, there are some newsy tidbits on NCLB, charters, and higher ed policy:

• Everyone wants to know what Obama is planning in terms of the re-authorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act -- you know it as No Child Left Behind. The budget gives a major hint that a push toward national standards will be a priority: "Building on the Recovery Act, the new Administration will help States increase the rigor of their standards so they prepare students for success in college and a career. Resources will also be available to improve the quality of assessments, including assessments for students with disabilities and English language learners. Such reforms will lay the groundwork for reauthorizing the Elementary and Secondary Education Act."
• On charters, Obama is again splitting the difference between teachers' unions and more aggressive reformers, acknowledging that the charter sector should expand, but that some charters really suck: "the Budget increases funding for the Charter School program to support the expansion of successful charter school models, while increasing State oversight to monitor and shut down low-performing charter schools."
• Recognizing that the push for college access for low-income and minority students must be complemented by a new focus on college completion, the administration is proposing a $2.5 billion Access and Completion Incentive Fund, "to support innovative State efforts to help low-income students succeed and complete their college education."
• The administration wants to originate all student loans in the direct lending program, cutting out wasteful middle-men. This is a very good thing, as it will save the federal government billions of dollars that can be funneled back to students.

--Dana Goldstein

Colorado Republican State Senator Dave Schultheis doesn't think that HIV testing for pregnant women should be mandated because women with HIV are sluts and deserve to die:

Democrats were outraged Wednesday morning when Republican state Sen. Dave Schultheis said he planned to vote against a bill to require HIV tests for pregnant women because the disease “stems from sexual promiscuity” and he didn’t think the Legislature should “remove the negative consequences that take place from poor behavior and unacceptable behavior.”

But we wouldn't want to "remove the negative consequences" for these kids, would we? No, of course not, you can't learn 'em that way:

What I’m hoping is that, yes, that person may have AIDS, have it seriously as a baby and when they grow up, but the mother will begin to feel guilt as a result of that...The family will see the negative consequences of that promiscuity and it may make a number of people over the coming years begin to realize that there are negative consequences and maybe they should adjust their behavior.

Why stop there? If we just inject people who have premarital sex with HIV eventually everyone will learn their lesson.

Bonus crazy: Schultheis once argued against emergency contraception for rape victims, because then women would fake sexual assault to get access to contraception. 

-- A. Serwer

Jon Chait points out that Bill Kristol has let the cat out of the bag GOP strategy-wise:

[Conservatives and Republicans] should do their best not to permit Obama to rush his agenda through this year. They can't allow Obama to make of 2009 what Franklin Roosevelt made of 1933 or Johnson of 1965. Slow down the policy train. Insist on a real and lengthy debate. Conservatives can't win politically right now. But they can raise doubts, they can point out other issues that we can't ignore (especially in national security and foreign policy), they can pick other fights -- and they can try in any way possible to break Obama's momentum.

Which is actually not altogether surprising since this has been the strategy of the conservative movement since William F. Buckley wrote his famous essay for National Review back when moderate Republicans still roamed the earth. Chait also notes that this was Kristol's strategy in 1994, when he wrote his own famous memo -- not so erudite as WFB's, but we all walk in someone's shadow -- calling on Republicans to "kill" Bill Clinton's health care reform without any attempt to compromise or find a constructive middle ground. I am surprised, though, that Kristol just up and admits that his calls for debate are merely delaying tactics. It's a very consistent approach, at least.

But it's not, at this point, a popular approach, and not one that will work in this political climate. Obama isn't Bill Clinton; he wasn't elected by a bare plurality, he isn't scandal-plagued, and he has much stronger congressional majorities. It's also a much worse crisis than when Clinton was elected, and as has been drilled into everyone's head, there's a corresponding increase in opportunity. Playing Dr. No may well be satisfying to the GOP, but the concept doesn't line up with the mood of the country, especially when there is such a long-term narrative of obstruction that has always held Republicans back electorally when not paired with some kind of new optimism or framing of the conservative approach. I'm guessing the GOP is going to have to rethink this strategy in a year or so, along the lines of Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, who is clearly conservative but also constructive -- the two don't necessarily need to contradict, right? But maybe that's wishful thinking.

-- Tim Fernholz

New York City will be completely closing the Great White Way to cars in both Times Square and Herald Square, the Times reports. For some context on this decision, check out my November profile of Janette Sadik-Khan, Mayor Bloomberg's transportation commissioner. Under Sadik-Khan's leadership, New York has not only pursued congestion pricing, but in the wake of that proposal's failure, policies of reclaiming surface space from cars and turning it over to pedestrians and cyclists.

In related good news, here in D.C. I walked to work today from Mt. Pleasant to South Dupont, and saw a record number of bike commuters. And, strangely, redheads.

--Dana Goldstein

A New York Times article this morning investigates how Mexican drug cartels get their weapons:

Drug gangs seek out guns in the United States because the gun-control laws are far tougher in Mexico. Mexican civilians must get approval from the military to buy guns and they cannot own large-caliber rifles or high-powered pistols, which are considered military weapons...

The gun laws in the United States allow the sale of multiple military-style rifles to American citizens without reporting the sales to the government, and the Mexicans search relatively few cars and trucks going south across their border.

I'm not terribly optimistic that we'll get over either of these issues anytime soon, although the War on Drugs is probably the more manageable of the two problems.

--Robert Farley

Karl Rove, February 26, 2009:

Even in an ostensibly nonpartisan speech marking Lincoln's 200th birthday, Mr. Obama used a straw-man argument, decrying "a philosophy that says every problem can be solved if only government would step out of the way; that if government were just dismantled, divvied up into tax breaks, and handed out to the wealthiest among us, it would somehow benefit us all. Such knee-jerk disdain for government -- this constant rejection of any common endeavor -- cannot rebuild our levees or our roads or our bridges." 

Whose philosophy is this? Many Americans justifiably believe that government is too big and often acts in counterproductive ways. But that's a far cry from believing that in "every" case government is the problem or that government should be "dismantled" root and branch. Who -- other than an anarchist -- "constantly rejects any common endeavor" like building levees, roads or bridges?

Bobby Jindal, February 24, 2009:

Instead of trusting us to make wise decisions with our own money, they passed the largest government spending bill in history, with a price tag of more than $1 trillion with interest. While some of the projects in the bill make sense, their legislation is larded with wasteful spending. It includes $300 million to buy new cars for the government, $8 billion for high-speed rail projects, such as a "magnetic levitation" line from Las Vegas to Disneyland, and $140 million for something called "volcano monitoring." Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C.

-- A. Serwer

One needn't parse Bobby Jindal's comments on volcano monitoring funds in the stimulus to recognize that opposition to public goods is now one of the fundamental tenets of modern conservatism. As Paul Krugman writes, and as I pointed out yesterday, Jindal implied as much earlier in his speech when he suggested that the lesson of Hurricane Katrina was that people can't count on their government to rescue them from natural disasters; the idea being that this is just another one of those things government shouldn't be doing because it's simply not good at it.

This isn't exactly new though, during the campaign the GOP became incensed over the process of funding public goods--namely, progressive income taxes--and labeling them "socialism". Obviously if that's the case America has been a socialist country for decades. I actually don't think that there's a coherent political philosophy that has developed on the right in opposition to public goods either. Rather they just oppose anything Democrats support, no matter how ridiculous it sounds.

-- A. Serwer

This post has been edited.

• Short of Michael Gerson, Rush Limbaugh and Newt Gincrich, I think it's safe to say that Bobby Jindal's national debut last night was viewed as an epic fail by just about everybody. Some random samples: "Obama was wrong: We haven't outlawed every form of torture." (Franklin Foer); "He was telling stories that seemed very simplistic and almost childish." (Juan Williams); "the McCain campaign continues, and Hurricane Gustav has claimed another victim." (Daniel Larison); "The intellectual incoherence is stunning. Basically, the political philosophy of the GOP right now seems to consist of snickering at stuff that they think sounds funny. The party of ideas has become the party of Beavis and Butthead." (Paul Krugman). I'd say my own reaction would be a synthesis of both Ezra ("Yesterday, he seemed like a different kind of Republican. Today, he doesn’t.") and David Brooks ("To come up at this moment in history with a stale 'government is the problem,' 'we can’t trust the federal government' - it’s just a disaster for the Republican Party"). It's not that Jindal himself, while a major disappointment, will be permanently damaged by his performance. But this was supposed to be the fresh, young and new face of the GOP. It was supposed to be the new generation of conservative policy wonks. Indeed, perhaps, the next Ronald Reagan. Instead it sounded like a speech Reagan might have given...in the mid-Sixties (but delivered poorly). Needless to say, things have changed quite a bit in the intervening forty years and with each passing day that the Republican party stands athwart history yelling "stop!" they come closer to becoming history themselves.
• Of course, any discussion of Jindal is inseparable from his political ambitions and I think Ben Smith gets the very, very early 2012 tea leaves right: "Jindal's weak performance last night -- along with the fact that, as Jonathan Martin noted, it's almost very hard for him to run for reelection in 2011 while roaming Iowa -- serves, along with Palin's fading profile, a reminder that the party is unlikely to have an obviously, visibly different face to put forward in 2012." Smith concludes that this leaves Mitt Romney as the default front runner -- which makes sense if you consider the winner-by-default fashion in which John McCain won the GOP nomination last year.
• Two potentially interesting stories coming out of the sausage factory: First, Ryan Grim reports that Senate Republicans were able to wrangle a budget increase for staff members, despite losing 20 percent of the their caucus in the last election. And Marc Ambinder notes the growing discontent among House Democrats who feel the House leadership's tight control over policy is shutting them out of the the decision-making and bill-writing process.
• Patrick Leahy has announced that hearings will go forward next week on creating his "truth commission" to investigate the crimes of the Bush administration.
• President Obama will announce on Friday that the bulk of U.S. soldiers serving in Iraq will be pulled out by 2010, 19 months from now, leaving a residual force of 30,000-50,000 troops.
• Dave Weigel reports that House Republicans are considering a new response to OMB Director Peter Orszag's assertion at the fiscal responsibility summit that "Health care reform is entitlement reform. The path of fiscal responsibility must run directly through health care." No, it's not a tax cut or elimination of the capital gains tax but an across the board spending freeze.

--Mori Dinauer

As was widely expected, the Supreme Court announced today that Pleasant Grove, Utah's unwillingness to display a monument erected by the Summum did not violate the religious group's free speech rights. Alito, writing for the Court, argued that "the placement of a permanent monument in a public park is best viewed as a form of government speech." Once the action is held to fall into the "government speech" category, there was no First Amendment violation, as the government (while it may be required to provide neutral access to public fora) is not required to be impartial when speaking itself, as long as its speech is consistent with the Establishment and Equal Protection clauses.

In an interesting concurrence, however, Justice Stevens attempted to draw some useful distinctions between today's case and previous cases held to be in the "government speech" category. For example, Alito's opinion approvingly cited Rust v. Sullivan, in which the Court narrowly held (over three dissenting opinions, including one by Stevens) that the infamous "gag order" that prevented any medical professional receiving federal family planning funds from even discussing abortion with a patient did not violate the First Amendment. As Stevens points out, however, there's a major difference between the two cases: the gag order interfered with private speech, which today's decision did not, as Pleasant Grove didn't do anything to prevent the Summum from displaying a monument on their own property. I agree with Stevens that today's decision is sturdier than many of the much more dubious "government speech" cases.

--Scott Lemieux

Yesterday, Chuck Schumer won plaudits for insisting that the stimulus wasn't "multiple choice," in response to Bobby Jindal's stated decision to reject a (minimum) amount of the money. To answer my friend Steve Benen's question, the stimulus is "multiple choice," and according to a post Jack Balkin wrote last week, that's what makes the bill Constitutional.

The Supreme Court's jurisprudence on conditional funding to the states under the spending or General Welfare clause is premised on the idea that conditions on federal grants to the states do not violate the reserved powers of the states under the Tenth Amendment because states always have the right to turn down the funding. For some, this doctrine is little more than a legal fiction: because states in the modern era are so dependent on federal largess, the offer of funding with strings attached is one that the states cannot refuse. Hence no matter what the courts say, the states are really being coerced into accepting federal regulation, which, critics of modern spending clause doctrine would contend, violates the Tenth Amendment.

Balkin adds that "Ironically, then, if one or more states seriously suggests that they may refuse some or all of the stimulus money because of the federal strings attached, this tends to demonstrate that the stimulus bill is a constitutional exercise of the spending power." So Bobby was right, and Chuck was wrong.

TTR has the goods on immigration crack-downs, the War in Afghanistan, the fake entitlement crisis and the very real need for stimulus. Check it out:

• Borderline nativist. [PDF] The result of border policies like Clinton’s Operation Gatekeeper (1994) and Bush’s Secure Fence Act (2006) hasn’t been a reduction of unauthorized immigration, but rather more Latinos being convicted in federal courts for immigration and drug-related offenses. A Pew Hispanic Center report, out last week, looks at statistics beginning before the crackdown in 1991. Today, Latinos make up the single largest racial and ethnic group among sentenced federal offenders, at 40 percent, whereas in 1991 they accounted for just a quarter (keep in mind, Latinos are only 13 percent of the adult U.S. population). Not surprisingly, the sentences responsible for this increase are happening in just five border-state courts, out of 94 federal courts in the U.S. The report is short on explicit analysis but full of data that suggests the problems of immigration are only more apparent after a decade of heightened security. Here’s one stat to entice you: “In 1991, three times as many Hispanics were sentenced in federal courts for drug crimes (60 percent) as for immigration crimes (20 percent). By 2007, that pattern had reversed; among Hispanic offenders sentenced in federal courts, 48 percent were sentenced for an immigration offense and 37 percent for a drug offense.” -- CP
• “Obama's War.” Are more troops really the answer in Afghanistan? Recently published research by the New America Foundation muddies the intellectual discussion a bit by revealing a number of troubling statistics. Between 2005 and 2008, U.S. and NATO forces increased by 19,810. During that same time period U.S. popularity among Afghans dropped from 83 percent to 47 percent while suicide-bombing rates increased by a factor of five. Nearly every metric shows a worsening situation in Afghanistan, evidenced not only by record levels of violence, but also by the increase in poppy production and the resurgence of the Taliban, though their popularity among Afghans has remained low. Most worrisome, however, is the deteriorating situation in the adjacent region of northwest Pakistan, where suicide and insurgent attacks have increased eight-fold since 2005. As the new administration continues to find its footing, perhaps we should begin to acknowledge the limits of military power in unstable regions – particularly one which houses a nuclear power. -- JL
• Crying wolf on social security. The entitlement crisis doesn’t exist and pretending that it does distracts from the real problem, reforming our health care system, according to a recent report from the Brookings Institute. The U.S. is threatened by a long-term budget crisis that is often blamed on expanding “entitlement” programs (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security), which conservatives argue should be trimmed in the name of fiscal responsibility. While some Medicare inefficiencies could be slashed, the savings would be negligible in comparison to the graying baby boomer cost expansion, and Medicaid is already anemic. Undermining existing federal health care programs will save a little money, but "bigger savings are possible from overall reform of the entire health care system." The so-called entitlement crisis distracts from the fact that profound health care reform, which could negate the long-term budgetary crisis, is the nation’s actual "long-term fiscal challenge." -- JB
• Governors: take the stimulus! The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities has issued a rebuttal to the mostly-Republican governors who are considering refusing some of the stimulus funding that is being sent to aid state governments. While it's obvious that refusing to use the money will continue the adverse feedback loop of job and service cuts that is fueling the recession, as Fed Chair Ben Bernanke said yesterday, what about the governors' arguments? Well, the primary argument -- that states would be required to continue and finance programs begun during the stimulus -- doesn't hold water. Once the stimulus expires, so do "maintenance of effort" requirements that force states to keep programs in action. These funds are intended to prevent massive budget short-falls at the state level which would exacerbate the recession. Refusing the money is political posturing at the worst possible time. -- TF

--TAP STAFF

Previous Round-Ups:
2/17/09
2/4/09

The economic crisis might not be all bad, though: Budget shortfalls may actually push legislatures to adopt sounder legal policy. With fewer resources available for law enforcement, support is weakening for costly tough-on-crime measures that appear to have little other substantive benefit. In some states, the financial argument against capital punishment may succeed where the ethical one has failed:

[Maryland Governor Martin] O’Malley, a Democrat and a Roman Catholic who has cited religious opposition to the death penalty in the past, is now arguing that capital cases cost three times as much as homicide cases where the death penalty is not sought. "And we can't afford that," he said, "when there are better and cheaper ways to reduce crime."

Lawmakers in Colorado, Kansas, Nebraska and New Hampshire have made the same argument in recent months as they push bills seeking to repeal the death penalty, and experts say such bills have a good chance of passing in Maryland, Montana and New Mexico.

--Alexandra Gutierrez

From Mike Gerson's column explaining how Bobby Jindal (yes, him) is much wonkier than than Barack Obama or even Ronald Reagan. Why?

Obama: "has always been more attracted to platitudes than to policy."

Reagan: "enjoyed painting on a large ideological canvas."

Aha. I had been wondering how to make a distinction between the two men. But is there time for an astrology joke?

-- Tim Fernholz

TAP senior correspondent Gershom Gorenberg recently discussed the future of Israel with David Frum on Bloggingheads.

In this clip, Gershom talks about the settlement problem:

Watch the whole debate here.

--The Editors

Nikolas Gvosdev (along with Dan Twining and Peter Pham) is worried that the Obama administration may not be paying India enough attention:

It's still early, of course. But the new U.S. - India relationship, while it has progressed a great deal, still remains unconsolidated. New Delhi cannot be taken for granted by Washington. It would be a pity if because of inattention or lack of focus, we have to cover some of the same ground again in the future.

I guess that I look at the Indo-US relationship and see an asymmetry of needs; the Indians need us much, much more than we need them. The United States controls all of the economic levers in the relationship, and has better relations with both Indian strategic competitors (China and Pakistan) than India itself. India retains a decent relationship with Russia, but that has been strained by severe tensions over weapon purchases (India's effort to acquire two nuclear submarines and one aircraft carrier from Russia have gone very poorly), and Russia is simply not in a position right now to match any "offer" that the US can make to India.

I think it's super that the world's two largest democracies have finally become close friends, after a needlessly confusing Cold War in which China rallied to the United States and India to the Soviet Union. I also think that managing India's nuclear capability through cooperation is altogether more productive than adopting an antagonistic position. Finally, the US and India do share the problem of extremist terrorism. All that said, I think it's pretty clear that the United States holds all of the important cards in this relationship. India needs us far more than we need India, and as such concern that Obama will somehow miss an opportunity is misplaced.

--Robert Farley

Behind the plan is an unlikely trio of officials. [Sheila] Bair, a Republican and former counsel to Bob Dole, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Shaun Donovan all pitched in to craft a plan the administration hopes will shore up the housing markets and help the 9 million homeowners in danger of defaulting on their mortgage. But it's been a long and occasionally contentious two-year process. What began as an internal revolt against the Bush administration's lack of policy response to the economic crisis has become a government-wide strategy that finally addresses the default-ridden mortgage market at the crisis' heart.

Mark Schmitt argues that Obama must find a way to change both democracy and capitalism:

[T]he old politics and the old capitalism lie in ruins; their assumptions cannot be salvaged. He has already come some way in changing the culture of politics, including acting with respect toward those whose party was defeated in the last election. Though Obama has frustrated some progressive Democrats who see him as caving to the enemy, this is his attempt to defuse the winner-take-all culture of Karl Rove-era politics. To do the same in the economy, he'll have to create an alternative to this particular form of capitalist culture. Obama will have to build institutions that foster a new culture, one still driven by the quest for growth, innovation, and profit but where the returns are more broadly shared and where stewardship and sustainability are valued more than today's share price.

Even if abstinence-only funding is eliminated from the federal budget, other federal programs may still be dispersing funds to abstinence programs, William Smith said. The lack of transparency in the Bush faith-based initiative, which Obama has pledged to remedy, makes it difficult to trace whether grants from other programs are used at the state level to promote abstinence-only education. The first step in reform, Smith said, would be to examine whether grantees under abstinence-only programs were also getting money from other programs through the faith-based initiatives and diverting it to promote abstinence-only education.

As always, subscribe to our RSS feed to receive our articles as soon as they are published. Also, follow us on Twitter for highlights from our blog.

--The Editors

It seems that on Friday, the president will announce his plan to withdraw from Iraq in the next eighteen months, or by August 2010. Now, he'll be leaving behind some 30,000 and 50,000 troops as a residual force -- for perspective, there are approximately 30,000 soldiers in South Korea now -- until December 2011, barring some renegotiation of the Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqis. Spencer's commentary seems spot on about the politics of the situation, and particularly the 90 day compromise between his campaign promise and the need to placate both the military commanders on the ground and the Washington establishment. But make no mistake: this is beginning of the end of the conflict in Iraq.

Nonetheless, there are still challenges: What if violence flares up -- especially around ethnic conflict as Iraq's political factions prepare for a post-occupation Iraq -- while American troops pull out? It's a hard question to answer (I imagine the administration has some thoughts on the issue) nor is it inevitable, but phasing out the troops needs to accompany renewed efforts to phase in regional players and continue building Iraq's security and democratic institutions.

-- Tim Fernholz

This is President Obama's worst betrayal yet. Having finally decided on a dog, the Obamas have gone with a pure breed.

Just like Obama to throw his fellow mutts under the bus.

-- A. Serwer

Pro-Publica confirms: Jindal's scaremongering about high-speed rail from Las Vegas to "Disneyland" has nothing to do with what is actually in the stimulus bill:

The $8 billion is for high-speed rail corridors that would connect far-flung cities. Suspicion has swirled around this provision after funding was dramatically increased from the original House and Senate bills during final negotiations. Republicans have targeted Sen. Harry Reid, R-Nev., who was in those negotiations and has advocated in the past for a high-speed rail between Los Angeles and Las Vegas. The train isn't in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, but it could be one of several projects seeking a piece of the pie. Even so $8 billion isn't enough to pay for even a single bullet train, according to The New York Times.

By the way, a train from Vegas to L.A. is actually a great idea. Think of all the DUIs it would cut back on!

--Dana Goldstein

The folks at EPI have put together a statement in support of the Employee Free Choice Act, which includes some of the usual suspects -- hey, it's our own Dean Baker! -- and some more surprising supporters, like Jagdish Bhagwati*, who despite being a very strict free-trader apparently believes that strong unions have their place in a capitalist society. There are also two Nobel laureates, for what that's worth -- Kenneth Arrow and Robert Solow. For now, majority sign-up legislation remains in limbo -- the Blue Dogs are asking that the House wait until the Senate passes the bill before they consider it, which is sort-of-kinda reasonable since the real sticking point is in the Senate anyways and it doesn't make sense to really twist arms in the House unless you know it's going through the upper chamber. But at least Labor Secretary Hilda Solis was confirmed yesterday and can begin work not only improving her department, especially its enforcement procedures, but also using her bully pulpit to lobby members of Congress to support the legislation, which has yet to be formally introduced.

-- Tim Fernholz

*True story: I was once in a short-lived band called "Jagdish Bhagwati and the Rhythm Method."

George Will is standing up for America's diminishing masculinity:

Asked for a "final thought" on the president's speech last night, conservative columnist George WIll chose to focus on the fact that Obama was able to wrap his arms around another man, in friendship. "I don't know when men started to hug each other, but hug they do, and look at that," he said.

My column in the March issue of TAP argued that President Barack Obama's primary mission was to change the culture and assumptions of American democracy, but he had acquired a second mission, which was to change the culture of capitalism. But the sicknesses and erroneous assumptions in the two cultures were intertwined, and even though the task is approximately twice as unimaginably large, he might be better off taking on the two missions together.

A key section in last night's non-SOTU speech captured precisely what I was thinking of:

We have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election. A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future. Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market. People bought homes they knew they couldn't afford from banks and lenders who pushed those bad loans anyway. And all the while, critical debates and difficult decisions were put off for some other time on some other day.

The press has, for some time, been running with the idea that Bobby Jindal is the GOP's Obama. It's unclear what prompts the comparison between the two other than that they are both young, brown, Ivy League-educated, and beloved by their respective bases. But it's a comparison that the monochromatic Republican Party, anxious to show its inclusiveness, has been happy to accept. That makes it no less inane, and no less transparent an attempt to put a nonwhite face on an increasingly white party.

Jindal and Obama could not be more different, and the contrasts begin but don't end with the fact that one of them changed his name to fit in while the other carried his daddy's "funny" African moniker all the way to the White House. Last night, the differences were clear: Where Jindal was awkward, Obama was confident. Obama has mastered his voice, Jindal sounded like he didn't know how to give a speech. Obama had mastered a variety of tones and cadences early in his career, Jindal offered a forced folksiness to a sing-song tune. But perhaps the most telling part of Jindal's response was his extended introduction of his family history. Until now, the GOP has allowed the press to make the Obama comparisons, last night, Jindal tried to make one himself, an act that was inadvertently self-diminishing.

The worst part of Jindal's response wasn't just that, as Ezra says, it could have been given by any Republican at any time in the last 20 years. It was that the Republicans completely failed to predict the tone and content of Obama's speech. It didn't sound like a response at all: Jindal argued his points like he hadn't heard a word Obama said. Jindal touted the Republican tax cut "stimulus" moments after the nation heard Obama say he had given 95 percent of Americans a tax cut. He said "Now is no time to dismantle the defenses that have protected this country for hundreds of years, or make deep cuts in funding for our troops," right after Obama said he was expanding the armed forces and giving them a raise. Trying to box Obama in as a pessimist, Jindal said, "Don't let anyone tell you that America's best days are behind her," which might have worked if Obama hadn't just given an entire speech saying just that.

More embarrassing was Jindal's attempt to frame Hurricane Katrina as a disaster that the federal government could not have dealt with. As though the response to Katrina were an ideological issue about the role of government and not a matter of individual incompetence on the part of President Bush and his Democratic counterparts in Louisiana. No one's memory is that short. It's almost as if he were saying, sure, the nation's in a crisis, but if it were up to us, you'd be on your own, because we know you can handle it. Just like the folks waiting on top of their roofs in New Orleans.

I have no idea why the GOP thought that would be an inspiring message. Picking Jindal for the response implied that the GOP still sees Obama through Rush Limbaugh's eyes, as a cipher whose only appeal is the color of his skin, rather than the uniquely talented politician he's proven to be. An election and several successful pieces of legislation later, the GOP still isn't taking Obama seriously. Until they do, they're going to continue having nights like this one.

-- A. Serwer

RedState is promoting this YouTube response to Obama's speech, from House Republican Study Group Chairman Tom Price of Georgia. Thematically, Price's speech is almost identical to Jindal's. Both were notable for a laser-focus on Big Business-triumphalism, and the exclusion of the usual cultural/social wedge issues. But Price's talk sure is delivered better:

--Dana Goldstein

Bobby Jindal used to be one of my secret conservative crushes: He was interesting. He attended my alma mater. He believed in exorcism. He seemed technocratic and whip-smart, having racked up a massive number of achievements by his early-thirties. Last night, though, Jindal lost his luster. I think Ezra gets it exactly right: "Jindal made a mistake accepting the GOP's invitation to give this response. Yesterday, he seemed like a different kind of Republican. Today, he doesn't."

Jindal's delivery was too fast, too bouncy, and lacking in gravitas. In terms of policy, his basic message was that government causes problems, and can't fix them. The thing is, during this time of economic uncertainty, Americans are looking toward government for help and reassurance, not for a cold shoulder. Jindal seemed especially incensed about transit spending in the stimulus package, which he caricatured as frivolous, mentioning a Disneyland to Las Vegas rail line that isn't even part of the legislation. In fact, a new survey shows that 81 percent of Americans are enthusiastic about high-speed rail. Many believe the stimulus package doesn't go far enough; 50 percent of Americans actually want the federal government's investment in transit to equal its investment in highways. Republicans such as Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood and Rep. John Mica understand that there is nothing inherently "liberal" or "conservative" about mass transit. Too bad Jindal hasn't gotten the message.

This means my one remaining conservative crush is Nicolas Sarkozy. And I doubt I can be reformed on that one.

--Dana Goldstein

A lot of froth will be spilled over Obama's call for education "reform" in his speech tonight. The president did mention performance pay and greater support for charter schools. But he also promised to protect teachers' jobs and pay them more. The key thing to note here is that Obama is stepping out exactly no further than Randi Weingarten, the national face of the teachers' unions, has already gone. For more on Weingarten's November speech embracing these exact same reform proposals, read this.

What was much more radical was Obama's "ask" to the American people on education: that they commit to one full year of education post-high school. To do less, the president implied, is practically un-American.

It is our responsibility as lawmakers and educators to make this system work. But it is the responsibility of every citizen to participate in it. And so tonight, I ask every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training. This can be community college or a four-year school; vocational training or an apprenticeship. But whatever the training may be, every American will need to get more than a high school diploma. And dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It’s not just quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country – and this country needs and values the talents of every American. That is why we will provide the support necessary for you to complete college and meet a new goal: by 2020, America will once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.

This is an historic statement on the centrality of education to the American economy, and indeed, to the American character. A lot will be said about the meaning of such a statement coming from the first black president. But this is really broader than that; a full embracing, after the know-nothing Bush years, of intellectual engagement.

--Dana Goldstein

We'll have more commentary later and tomorrow morning. For now, I'm Tweeting the speech and its theatrics here.

--Dana Goldstein

At his U.S. News and World Report blog, Dan Gilgoff breaks a story about how President Obama's public rallies, like the ones he held recently in Elkhart, Indiana, and Fort Myers, Florida, to sell his stimulus plan, have opened with a prayer vetted by the White House. Gilgoff writes that the administration "may have skirted controversy by scheduling the invocations to be delivered before the president arrives at the events—and before national cable network cameras start rolling." The White House, he reports, said that the practice has been "standard since the campaign."

Except during the campaign, Obama was not yet president of the United States, and the White House wasn't giving its stamp of approval for the invocations. Americans United for the Separation of Church and State's Barry Lynn told Gilgoff, "The only thing worse than having these prayers in the first place is to have them vetted, because it entangles the White House in core theological matters."

--Sarah Posner

• The president is giving what amounts to a State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress tonight, where he will detail his road map for the United States' economy, health care and energy policies over the next few years. In the practical but macabre tradition of anticipating the worst, AG Eric Holder will be the chosen official in the line of presidential succession who gets out of town in case the bulk of the federal government gets wiped out. Earlier the president hosted Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso at the White House and lunched with top news anchors.
• The Senate is debating whether to grant the District of Columbia full voting representation, after passing a procedural vote to open the bill to floor debate, 62-34. The compromise legislation would grant D.C. and Utah each one seat. The Senate also confirmed Hilda Solis as labor secretary in an 80-17 vote. Meanwhile the U.S. House took up legislation that would initiate an ethics investigation concerning the one hundred members of Congress involved with a defense lobbying firm.
• Two new polls indicate that the the public believe it is Republicans who ought to be making concessions to the president rather than the other way around, with the ABC News/Washington Post poll finding that Americans trust the president over Congressional Republicans to handle the economy by a margin of 61-26. You think it has something to do with the flat-earth economic proposals of jokers like Newt Gingrich and the House GOP? I couldn't agree more with Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman (R), who remarked yesterday that "I don't even know the congressional leadership. I have not met them. I don't listen or read whatever it is they say because it is inconsequential - completely."
• Speaking of the powerless, RNC Chair Michael Steele -- last seen categorically rejecting even "consideration" of gay civil unions as "crazy" -- issued a largely empty threat against the three Republican Senators who voted for the economic stimulus package, claiming the RNC might consider withholding support for their next reelection campaign. Well let's see. Olympia Snowe isn't up for reelection for four years and Susan Collins just won reelection last year, meaning that by the time she could be fighting for party support, the RNC could potentially have a new chairman. That leaves Arlen Specter in 2010 but is the RNC really going to a gamble a GOP-held seat -- even if he is a RINO in their eyes -- just for ideological purity? Just ask Lincoln Chafee. (Indeed, it appears that Steele has already lowered the threat level.)
  
• Chuck Schumer has issued a letter urging the Obama administration to gently remind GOP governors grandstanding over "rejecting" part of the stimulus money that they do not have line-item veto power: "As you know, Section 1607(a) of the economic recovery legislation provides that the Governor of each state must certify a request for stimulus funds before any money can flow. No language in this provision, however, permits the governor to selectively adopt some components of the bill while rejecting others. To allow such picking and choosing would, in effect, empower the governors with a line-item veto authority that President Obama himself did not possess at the time he signed the legislation." Perhaps Bobby Jindal could elaborate on his own flip-flopping over accepting federal funds during his SOTU rebuttal.
• Spencer Ackerman has been looking at the proposed McCain-Levin defense procurement restriction legislation and concludes that the bill has "some real teeth when it comes to curbing cost overruns on Pentagon procurement."
• Remainders: liberal advocacy groups urge Eric Holder "to appoint a non-partisan independent Special Counsel to immediately commence a prosecutorial investigation" to investigate the crimes of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney and their underlings; the Obama administration is working towards enacting tough national emissions standards for vehicles; Rick Santelli claims the White House is threatening his children; and prostitute-solicitor David Vitter lectures Roland Burris on ethics.
  

--Mori Dinauer

Miracle on the Hudson pilot Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger will attend Obama's first SOTU speech tonight as a guest of Nancy Pelosi. No big surprise there. What's really cool is that Sully stuck his neck out for labor rights today when he testified in front of Congress. The AP reports:

[Sully] told the House aviation subcommittee that his pay has been cut 40 percent in recent years and his pension has been terminated and replaced with a promise "worth pennies on the dollar" from the federally created Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. These cuts followed a wave of airline bankruptcies after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks compounded by the current recession, he said.

The reduced compensation has placed "pilots and their families in an untenable financial situation," Sullenberger said. "I do not know a single, professional airline pilot who wants his or her children to follow in their footsteps."

Update: Sully also stood up for the labor rights of crew members in his testimony.

--Dana Goldstein

At Slate's XX Factor, my friend Eve Fairbanks compliments Hillary Clinton for not making a major human rights speech in China.

Amnesty International, I understand, was "disappointed" that Clinton failed to adequately whine about human rights abuses to the Chinese government, but I really liked that she replaced the ritualized righteous complaints with simple frank talk.

Instead, Eve is pleased that Clinton pissed off the Chinese authorities by attending church. So when it comes to foreign policy, do symbolic actions speak louder than words? Recent history tells us that can often be the case, for good or for ill: Remember Ariel Sharon's disasterous visit to the Temple Mount? But are we really ready to cede the moral authority that comes with calling a spade a spade?

--Dana Goldstein

Rattner’s pedigree is more Wall Street than Main Street, in sharp contrast to that of Ron Bloom, another Treasury auto adviser, who walked away from his own Wall Street investment bank (Keilin and Bloom) in the early ‘90s to become chief economic strategist for the United Steelworkers and the architect of much of the steel industry’s subsequent restructuring. Rattner, by contrast, was a champion of the Hamilton Project, the initiative started by Robert Rubin to bring the economic Clintonism that Rubin had shaped into the 21st century.

In July of 2006, Rattner took to the op-ed page of the Wall Street Journal to provide nothing less than the compleat world view of the modern Hamiltonian. He noted, as Rubin had, that income inequality was soaring, and that the economy’s very real productivity gains were not being shared among any but the wealthiest tenth of Americans. How to address this problem? Better hiring and evaluation of teachers was high on his list, as was wage insurance for displaced workers and a raise in the minimum wage.

But a larger portion of Rattner’s article was devoted not to such palliatives, but to what Democrats shouldn’t do in their quest for a fairer economy. They should not turn their back on trade agreements, he wrote, which “brought American consumers better, cheaper goods and allowed the economy to grow quickly without inflation.” (Presumably, this was before we discovered the cheaper and better lead in imported toys.)

“More extreme factions,” Rattner continued, “argue that the centrism of the Clinton administration doesn’t adequately address 21st-century fears and offer in its place statist visions of organizing economic policy around belittling American capitalism and fiscal responsibility, while trumpeting unionization and protectionism.”

"That’s terrible policy,” Rattner continued.

Where to begin? We could note that if anybody belittled fiscal responsibility, it was American capitalists, Robert Rubin of Citigroup high among them, whose banks ran up the towering levels of debt that American taxpayers are now compelled to assume. We could zero in on the claim that unionization is terrible policy, which, its empirical weaknesses aside, should make Rattner suspect to the UAW before he even sits down at the table.

Fortunately, Rattner will be joined at that table by Bloom. So now Treasury’s auto restructuring committee has Bloom, who uniquely represents the perspectives of both capital and labor, and Rattner, who all too typically represents the perspectives of capital and capital. Ah, inclusivity.

--Harold Meyerson

--The Editors

As Obama takes office, the heads of the biggest executive-branch departments have, understandably, received the bulk of the media coverage. But Cabinet secretaries cannot personally oversee their entire department and are often occupied with major agenda items. At lower rungs on the ladder, the right appointee has more control -- and thus more ability to create real change. When the president and his Cabinet put forth major initiatives, these officials are the ones who will actually execute them, making decisions along the way that determine whether the policies will succeed or fail.

And Paul Waldman argues that the Social Security crisis is but a myth:

For years, we've been told that Social Security is "going broke." It is also often said that at some future point, the program will "run out of money." Just last week, The Washington Post said matter-of-factly that "Social Security is projected to run out of money by 2041." This implies that at some future date, elderly recipients of Social Security will receive checks in the amount of $0, all the money having disappeared.

This is simply bogus. The truth is that the system is quite healthy and can meet all its future obligations with only minor adjustments or perhaps no adjustments at all, depending on what happens to the economy over the coming decades.

As always, subscribe to our RSS feed to receive our articles as soon as they are published.

--The Editors

White-owned farms are still being seized in Zimbabwe. Abstract questions of justice aside, the wages of this policy are fairly obvious: fiscal collapse, the collapse of agricultural production, and social disruption. The seizures are being blamed on members of Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party. According to the BBC report linked above, members of the old regime are worried that such seizures won't be supported when the new coalition government assumes full power. Thus, get while the getting is good. That said, I understand that such seizures remain broadly popular in Zimbabwe, which would certainly complicate any efforts by new Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai to remedy the situation.

--Robert Farley

An interesting article in the Times today about the race to capture now-Senator Kirsten Gillibrand's house seat in upstate New York, a Republican-leaning district that Gillibrand, running as a conservative Democrat, managed to capture in 2004 and 2006. While Republican Assembly Leader James Tedisco seemed to be in a perfect position to sweep the district -- experience, good name recognition and the right letter after his name -- he's put himself in a bind by refusing to take a position on the economic stimulus bill.

It's political malpractice: Tedisco and his advisers are hoping to fly under the radar and take the race based on special election low-turnout, but you can't ignore the biggest political issue of the day. His Democratic opponent, Scott Murphy, has the money to hit him for his waffling in the media and in public appearances while promoting the stimulus. The outcome of the special election at the end of March will be immediately seized by partisans of either side as a referendum on the stimulus, and pundits as a prognosticating data point to figure out how the president's legislative agenda is playing outside of the beltway. But if the beautifully stereotypical voter quoted towards the end of this piece is any kind of standard, it seems like Obama's gamble is paying off:

He said he doubted how much the stimulus package would really help the region, but he faulted Mr. Tedisco for “playing it safe.” After a moment, he added: “Somebody with that big of a clan [Murphy's local family] is going to be looking out for us and our problems more: If I vote, I vote for Murphy.”

The Democrats are hoping that voters appreciate them for taking action to solve the problem. Opposition to that agenda has political consequences, some bad and some good, and the congressional Republicans are taking a bet that the gamble will eventually go their way. At this time, it doesn't look like opposition will pay off, but it's not 2010 yet. Tedisco is caught in the middle of these two incentives thanks to the special election. What doesn't make sense to me: Why doesn't he endorse the stimulus but offer his own substantial misgivings on the bill? Surely the Republican caucus would rather have another member than demand ideological purity (the lesson of the Democrats in '06 and '08) and could forgive him stepping outside the caucus before he gets there. But apparently the struggle for purity continues its self-destructive course.

-- Tim Fernholz

We're in a deepening recession, in case you hadn't noticed. The biggest challenge is to ramp up aggregate demand. Yes, we have to borrow lots from the Chinese and Japanese to do this, and, yes, it's costly in terms of additional interest payments to them. But there's no choice. In fact, if the slump gets worse -- and I have every reason to fear it will because that's the direction we're heading in as fast as you can imagine -- we'll probably have to have a second stimulus. And if the second isn't enough, a third. And so on. FDR's biggest mistake was doing too little until World War II. (No one should interpret this as a recommendation for more military spending -- I'm just saying Obama will probably have to think and do much bigger than the $787 billion stimulus so far.)

Can we continue to borrow and borrow and borrow? Yes, but eventually we'll have to pay higher interest rates to continue to attract global savings, mostly from the Chinese and Japanese. But that's not anytime soon. The Chinese and Japanese are not going to yank their money out of Treasury bills because the slump is worldwide and T-bills are about the best and safest place to park savings. Besides, the Chinese don't want the dollar to plunge. They'd be stuck with a lot of paper worth far less than they got it for, and their exports would be in even worse shape than now.

Blue-Dog Democrats, Washington insiders who love to prattle on about the dangers of too much debt, Wall Street bond traders, and most of the Republican Party (including, notably, John McCain and Louisiana governor Bobby Jindal, the two "front-runners" for the Republican presidency in 2012, at least in terms of media attention), will continue to fuss about the skyrocketing debt. The very word "trillions" when juxtaposed with the word "dollars" is enough to send most people into paroxysms of shock and awe. So it makes political sense to talk now about fiscal responsibility, especially with Obama's first budget emerging this week, along with the likelihood that Geithner will soon ask for additional money for Wall Street.

But what happens when and if it's 2012 and the economy continues to need boosting? That promise could be a huge liability.

As to the economics, remember that when it comes to deficits and debt, the real issues over the long term are (1) the ratio of debt to GDP (we're still under 50 percent, which ain't bad, considering all the spending that's been going on; at the end of World War II it was substantially above 120 percent). And (2) whether and when we're back to growing the GDP, which is the most reliable way of improving the ratio.

If and when the stimulus package is big enough to get us back to full capacity, and if and when we make the public investments necessary to enlarge that capacity -- including the health and the education of our kids and our workforce, including a sustainable energy infrastructure, including public health and the environment -- we'll be in fine shape.

Halving the budget deficit by 2012 is a nice goal but it has little to do with the economic challenge we now face.

--Robert Reich

Over at Thinkprogress, DC Vote Communications Director Jaline Quinto dispatched most of Hans von Spakovsky's arguments against DC representation in Congress, which basically amounts to not wanting Democrats to get another Congressional seat. Spakovsky says that the founders never intended for DC to have representation, but they also didn't intend for black people not to be property. Things change over time, and our understanding of liberty under the Constitution is redefined. There's nothing democratic about DC residents being taxed and not having representation in Congress.

Trying to counter this point, von Spakovsky offers really bizarre argument:

And while statehood supporters cite the famous American rallying cry “no taxation without representation,” that is a false analogy. The entire Congress represents the interests of the District, because every single member of Congress works in the District.

I guess there's really no such thing as a dictatorship. Sure, people don't vote for dictators, but they work in the country they live in, so obviously they represent the interests of the people who live there and did not vote for them. In fact, what's the point in voting for governors or mayors? The issue of whether people are properly represented has already been solved by residency. There doesn't seem to be any point to electing any statewide or local officeholder, if they work there, they represent the interests of the constituency in which they work. Therefore, they should just be appointed by some benevolent, overseeing authority.

Von Spakovsky's general hostility to the voting franchise is nothing new, but remember, this guy used to be an assistant attorney for civil rights in the Justice Department. The Senate is deciding this morning on whether to consider a bill to grant DC residents a representative in Congress.

-- A. Serwer

If you've been following our recent discussion of Michelle Obama's image, you should check out Ta-Nehisi Coates' Atlantic profile of the woman he calls, simply, an "American girl." Yesterday I wrote that in her increasingly policy-driven role as first lady, Michelle has been distancing herself from the Jackie O image she seemed to cultivate during the general election, after she got into trouble for her "first time in my adult life" comment. But Coates, whose reporting dates back to the later part of the campaign season, has a different interpretation of Michelle. Early 1960s nostalgia is something she deeply feels, he writes, as it brings Michelle back to her stable, middle-class childhood on the segregated South Side of Chicago -- a place where, unlike the elite institutions in which she would spend her young adulthood, being both black and high achieving felt completely "normal." The first lady truly laments, Coates posits, "our collective fall from motherhood, Chevrolet, and a chicken in every pot." Michelle tells Coates:

My mom and maybe a few others were some of the few who were able to stay at home. A lot of my friends, they weren't called latchkey kids, they were just kids whose parents worked. ... We went to the public school right around the corner and we had lunch, and you could go home for lunch, and we had recess and there weren't closed campuses then. ... They'd bring their bag lunch, they'd sit on the kitchen floor and talk to my mom.

The power of this reminiscence from Michelle isn't just that it hearkens back, comfortingly, to a time of traditional gender roles and single-income prosperity. It is that memories like this one are treasured by just as many white baby boomers as black ones. Indeed, the Obamas are quite adept at using "family values" to cut across racial divides; think of Barack's focus on responsible fatherhood, for example, or Michelle's vow to have her daughters make their beds each day, as if the family didn't have a small army of servants at their disposal.

What's important to remember though, is that the reality of the Obamas' lives haven't always comported to their PR push around traditional family values. When the couple met, Michelle was Barack's boss. They delayed parenting until their mid-thirties. Michelle didn't stop working full-time until her husband's presidential campaign was underway. As much as Michelle treasures her own stay-at-home mom, you can't really understand this woman unless you realize she has never, herself, been a stay-at-home mom. At The Root, Dayo Olopade wonders whether Michelle is a "secret working girl." The truth is, there is no secret at all. Michelle has always worked. And she still is working, every single day.

--Dana Goldstein

Rupert Murdoch has apologized for Sean Delonas' cartoon, which depicted a chimp shot by police with the punchline, "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill." I've already expressed my feelings about newspapers apologizing for material that is merely offensive rather than factually incorrect. I think it sets a bad precedent, even in circumstances such as these.

Gawker's retrospective of some of Delonas' other work inspired me to look through some of his archives, which honestly make the chimp cartoon seem quite mild. This cartoon, which ran on March 19, 1999 however, has to be my "favorite":

I just love that Delonas outsources the dismemberment of Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan to a pair of sinister, large-schnozzed, Yiddish accented, evil Jewish quacks. I look at this cartoon, and I can't, for the life of me, figure out what Delonas has against Farrakhan. On the Jewish people, for instance, they appear to be in complete agreement. The above cartoon would have been at home in any Klan newsletter.

I mean there's more than a decade of this stuff. I find it so strange that people are just starting to get outraged about this guy.

-- A. Serwer

Juan Williams prefaced his remarks on Michelle Obama with a bit of conservative conventional wisdom, the idea that Michelle is a “liability” because everyone in America sees her as something similar to her caricature on that New Yorker cover. Like many closely held conservative beliefs, this one proves to be false.

Over all, 49 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of Mrs. Obama, 5 percent view her unfavorably and 44 percent do not yet have an opinion. 

In a February 1993 Times/CBS poll, 44 percent expressed a favorable view of the first lady at the time, Hillary Rodham Clinton, while 16 percent viewed her unfavorably. And early into Ronald Reagan’s first term in office, 28 percent rated Nancy Reagan positively and 10 percent negatively, with the rest offering no opinion.

Obviously, there’s a lot of room in that poll for people to view Michelle Obama unfavorably, and years of hysterical screeching from the right-wing noise machine did wonders for Secretary Clinton. It doesn’t matter if the American people see Michelle Obama the way The Corner does, the point is to make it true through incessant repetition. But to suggest that Michelle is currently a  political liability to the president because everyone sees her as a secret black radical is the opinion of a small, vocal fringe. 

— A. Serwer

You've probably heard about the end of yesterday's fiscal responsibility summit: President Obama had all of the various officials and stakeholders present gather so he could solicit their reactions to the day's events. He started with a snappy back-and-forth with John McCain over helicopter use. As he continued working the crowd, he sounded more and more like the professor he once was, calling on people by their first names (to House Minority Whip Eric Cantor: "Eric, you got some thoughts?"), complimenting SEIU leader Andy Stern on his scarf, cracking a joke about "socialized medicine" with Senator Mike Enzi and recognizing Charlie Rangel for his experience with tax reform in 1986. As always, someone asked Obama about bipartisanship in Congress and particularly in the House:

[T]he majority has to be inclusive. On the other hand, the minority has to be constructive.

And so to the extent that on many of these issues we are able to break out of sort of the rigid day-to-day politics and think long term, then what you should see, I think, is the majority saying, what are your ideas; the minority has got to then come up with those ideas and not just want to blow the thing up. And I think that on some of these issues, we're going to have some very real differences and, you know, presumably the majority will prevail unless the minority can block it. ...

... But on the issue that was just raised here on procurement, on the issues -- some of the issues surrounding health care, the way it cuts isn't even going to be Democratic/Republican. It's going to be -- you know, there may be regional differences, there may be a whole host of other differences. And if that's -- if we can stay focused on solving problems, then I will do what I can, through my good offices, to encourage the kind of cooperation you're encouraging....

... I'm just a glutton for punishment. (Laughter.) I'm going to keep on talking to Eric Cantor. Some day, sooner or later, he is going to say, boy, Obama had a good idea. (Laughter.) It's going to happen. You watch, you watch. (Laughter.)

Two things to note about that comment: one, despite the administration's clear posture after the stimulus bill of being more agressive in arguing their policy priorities, it's clear that at least rhetorical bipartisanship will continue. The second is that Obama mentions calling Cantor, but not House Minority Leader John Boehner, whose lack of initiative is really making his position precarious. In any case, it's funny to picture most of the top federal officials gathered in a room, doing break-out sessions and having a Q&A moderated by the president. (Weirdly, it sounds like Bill Clinton's dream presidency). It's unclear whether these discussions will have any effect on actual policymaking. It's really just another chance for Obama to impress his style and his priorities on his immediate colleagues in government. Almost like an educator-in-chief.

-- Tim Fernholz

• President Obama hosted a fiscal responsibility summit at the White House today to address the long-term implications of our chronic budget shortfall, and over the weekend leaked a preview of what will be in his administration's first budget, due this Thursday. In addition, Obama named former Washington Governor Gary Locke as his third Commerce secretary nominee. Congress, meanwhile, is gearing up to approve the remainder of appropriations for funding the federal government, the lion's share of which were held over from last year to avoid former President Bush's veto pen. Elana Schor takes a peek at the details and notices that Medicaid family-planning -- recently stripped from the stimulus bill -- is also missing from the $410 billion appropriations package.
• In a disappointing decision, the Obama Justice Department has determined that prisoners held in the Bagram detention facility in Afghanistan do not have constitutional rights, echoing the Bush administration's policy. Attorney General Eric Holder, in the meantime, is personally touring the detainee prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which the Pentagon has determined meets the Geneva standards for prisoner treatment.
• In other foreign policy news, Richard Lugar has strongly come out in favor of changing the United States' decades-backward relationship to Cuba; Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba has backed the creation of a commission to investigate the torture policy of the Bush administration; the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad has reopened under new local management; and The New York Times looks at ongoing U.S. missile strikes at militant training camps in Pakistan.
• Gallup has polled Barack Obama's approval rating at the one month mark and found a slight decrease in overall support solely accounted for by sharp dissatisfaction among conservative Republicans. Other groups actually showed a modest increase in approval.
• Congressional Democrats have begun using targeted robocalls in the districts of some House Republicans, hitting them for voting against the "largest [middle-class] tax cut in history."
• It's a good thing that only a handful of people in the world actually believe what comes out of Alan Keyes' mouth or else his allegations that Barack Obama is not a citizen of the United States might need to be regarded slightly less mockery. But I'm struck by how rabid he sounds in the accompanying video -- this is the conspiratorial mind at its most distilled. Not to be left out of the fun, Alabama Senator Richard Selby told a local paper, The Cullman Times, that he hasn't seen the president's birth certificate, leaving open the possibility of a decades-in-the-making conspiracy. A Selby spokesperson has said the story is a "distortion" and that the Senator believes the matter of meeting the citizenship requirement has been put to rest. The Times has said they still stand behind the story.
• Republican Senator Jim Bunning has a prognosis for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who returned to the bench today after being treated for pancreatic cancer: she'll be dead in nine months. This is just speculation, but I'm guessing Bunning was given a consult by former Senate Majority Leader Bill "responds to visual stimuli" Frist. Bunning has since apologized for the remarks.
• Weekend remainders: The House GOP's plans to hitch its fortunes to a 1994-style comeback are likely doomed for very good reasons; loyal Bushies are having a tough time in the job market (and wingnut welfare ain't what it used to be); U.S. News does its part to keep sexism alive and well in mainstream America; and the Obama administration (again) sides with Bush, this time on the use of email.
• Recommended reads: Ryan Lizza's profile of Rahm Emanuel, The Washington Post's look at low-profile Obama "fixer" Jim Messina, Ryan Grim's explanation of why Harry Reid's Senate won't let Republicans stage a real filibuster, and Scott Shane's four options for investigating the crimes of the Bush administration going forward.

--Mori Dinauer

Maureen Dowd, repeating the conventional wisdom from September, frets that "Mr. Obama’s egghead manner has failed to soothe a nation with the jits. Maybe he has been so intent on avoiding the stereotype of the Angry Black Man, as he wrote in his memoir, that it’s hard for him to connect with and articulate public anger about our diminishment." I didn't realize that the Beltway extended up to the Upper East Side, but last time I checked Obama's approval ratings weren't hurting because of his inability to imitate President Camacho. She also doesn't want to hear any of that race talk anymore, after all, wasn't the deal that white people would vote for Obama, and they'd never have to think about race ever again?

Yet Obama is oozing empathy compared with his attorney general, who last week called us “a nation of cowards” about race.

Eric Holder, who showed precious little bravery in standing up to Clinton on a pardon for the scoundrel Marc Rich, is wrong. We have just inaugurated a black president who installed a black attorney general.

We need leaders to help us through our crises, not provide us with crude evaluations of our character. And we don’t need sermons from liberal virtuecrats, anymore than from conservative virtuecrats.

Dowd spent the late 90s wringing her hands, declaring that Bill Clinton had "killed something worthy and important in public life," while basking in every salacious detail of the Lewinsky scandal. The late 90s were good for Dowd, they were a political moment of unrivalled triviality and meaninglessness in politics, two qualities that can be endlessly found in her work. Today, she decries "virtuecrats," ten years ago, she was a professional virtuecrat. She's no "coward" on race, she just wants the brothers in the White House and the Justice Department to stop being mean mugging eggheads, maybe drop some archaic black idioms for use in her column. How can Dowd be expected to take the stimulus package seriously if it's not "off the hook"? 

During the election, people like Dowd mocked Obama supporters for their sky-high expectations, but it's February and the only people wondering why Obama hasn't solved the economic crisis, brought peace to the Middle East, and absolved white people from ever having to deal with race again are people like Dowd. In the meantime, she'll provide her crude evaluations of people's character, most likely in the form of childish names like "Obambi," and we'll all be dumber for it.

-- A. Serwer

I turned to the New York Times yesterday and saw that, remarkably, they had decided to publish yet another op-ed from Will Saletan arguing that conflicts over abortion can be ended if people would just agree that Will Saletan is completely right about everything. The "practicality" of this solution, I must admit, continues to escape me. Fortunately, Jesse, Steve and Mary have saved me some time by dealing with many of the obvious problems with this argument.

What continues to amaze me is that Saletan still doesn't seem to understand that perhaps anti-choicers support the criminalization of abortion for reasons that go beyond a desire to protect fetal life, although of course his ability to place op-eds seems to depend on his ongoing failure to understand this. (You would think that the recent movement for abortion regulations that inherently can't protect fetal life but can make obtaining abortions less safe for some women might have tipped him off, but I guess not.) As Steve says, Saletan's argument essentially amounts to a claim that if cultural reactionaries simply abandon most of their core principles we could end the culture wars. Alas, tautology is not a plan.

--Scott Lemieux

The NAACP had only recently decided that Jealous was the man -- er, person -- who could hold it together. On the eve of its centennial year, the organization risks becoming a victim of its own success. The leader of the Western world is a black man named Barack Obama, and even Bill Cosby sounds optimistic about the future of black America. The organization that publicized lynching and awakened the conscience of the nation, litigated against segregation all over the country, and helped organize the 1964 March on Washington now finds itself suffering from dwindling membership and an inability to connect to youth.

Paul Starr looks at conservatism's connection to the present crisis:

[R]eflexive, conservative ideology -- support for tax cuts, no matter the facts and circumstances; a preference for policies that favor the well-off; a bias against the use of public institutions and public regulation -- remains a powerful factor in national debate. So it's crucial, perhaps more for others than for Obama, to continue to press the case that our present problems have ideological roots -- that they are not due equally to all sides but rather to the mistaken premises, malignant neglect, and sometimes outright malfeasance of a long era of conservative government.

And Ezra Klein states that fiscal responsibility now means health reform:

[S]ince Medicaid and Medicare pay for health services on the private market, this can only be fixed through broader health reform…. it's no surprise that asked for details on today's fiscal summit, one senior administration official told me that "the most likely outcome at this point is that we focus on health care given that it's the key to our fiscal future." Another explained the focus starkly. "Health is mathematically bigger," he said.

As always, subscribe to our RSS feed to receive our articles as soon as they are published.

--The Editors

I've been hesitant to wade into the "Octomom" waters, but here's a reminder from the U.K. that if we had universal health care, we'd likely be living in a climate of far greater regulation of reproductive medicine: The British government is lifting a ban on in vitro fertilization for overweight women, smokers, and younger women. But it will continue to advise clinics to limit each woman to three IVF cycles.

I expect that upcoming debates over American health care reform will include a fair amount of hand-wringing and stalling from the right over these "culture war" issues. Abortion, cloning, IVF -- we'll hear about all of it. So it's interesting to see that in England, IVF is being simultaneously limited (in terms of number of procedures) and encouraged (in terms of expanding the number of women who are eligible).

--Dana Goldstein

Social Security is, as we all know, a very popular and very successful program. For a variety of reasons, centrist pundits in general and the Washington Post in particular have a huge fetish about undermining it in various ways. Recently, CeCi Connolly -- yes, the same one whose gruesomely bad campaign reporting helped to put George W. Bush in the White House -- got into the act, asserting that a "handful of changes that would prevent the retirement fund from going bankrupt." Of course, Social Security and its large dedicated funding stream are not going to "run out of money" or "go bankrupt" ever; there's a (far from certain) possibility that the trust fund generated by Social Security tax surpluses will run out of money. This is a different issue, but of course if you state the issue honestly it's hard to generate support for gutting Social Security decades before a not-terribly-difficult-to-resolve problem may or may not need solving.

So, of course, it makes perfect stance for the Washington Post to stand by their man George Will. After all, they're willing to let Connolly tell bald-faced whoppers about Social Security just like she invented statements and attributed them to Al Gore. And if you can do it on their news pages, I suppose their op-ed pundits deserve no less consideration.

--Scott Lemieux

You'll often hear, especially in the Christmas season, conservative commentators claiming that "Christianity is under attack" from godless, secular liberals (no word yet on whether we religious liberals are taking part in this attack) who come to little towns and file lawsuits to enforce federal law. The claims usually revolve around someone complaining about a nativity scene on public grounds, or a school play involving mainly Christian themes, and an isolated incident gets blown up into a huge referendum on how Christians are aggrieved victims.

But John Sides has flagged an interesting study that indicates a plurality of folks, particularly in the South, are ignoring Supreme Court rulings that prohibit prayer during public school activities: "The results show that more than half of the Southern schools in the sample do not comply with the Court’s decisions on graduation prayers and prayers at sporting events. A quarter of Southern schools don’t even comply with Engel v. Vitale. Graduation prayers are also common among schools outside the South." And thus, graph time:

It's very interesting to see how these Supreme Court decisions actually play out on the ground -- although anyone familiar with the slow path of desegregation is familiar with the phenomenon. But contra claims that ACLU lawyers are running around filing lawsuits to attack Christianity wherever they can, the data indicates that they haven't begun to tap into the number of anti-school prayer cases that are out there.

-- Tim Fernholz

Would shutting down the Raptor really put 95000 people out of work? No. David Axe has the data:

Problem is, that 95,000 number counts indirect employment at firms for whom the F-22 program is just one of many clients. And it also counts Lockheed assembly workers who are in high demand for other aviation projects. In fact, ending Raptor production today might not result in a single unemployed aerospace worker.

In any case, the F-22 topic of the day is that the Air Force has requested another 60 Raptors, which is a substantial reduction from what the Air Force wanted (380 fighters), but a substantial increase over what some defense analysts are willing to give. It's fair to say that my own thinking on this issue has evolved. While the United States is unlikely to face a crisis of air superiority in the short or medium term, it's true enough that foreign designs have become competitive with the best US air superiority aircraft, short of the F-22. Better training still gives the US a substantial edge, but it is nice to have the best aircraft available. I have also become steadily more disillusioned with the progress of the F-35 Lightning II; it's becoming apparent that the capabilities gap between the F-22 and the F-35 will be huge, but the price tag gap won't be very large at all.

Thus, while the entire F-22 project may have been a serious misallocation of resources, I don't think it naturally follows that buying an additional sixty aircraft, at this point, is a terrible idea. From an initial position it probably would have made more sense to continue production of advanced F-15s and F-16s. From where we are now, though, there seems to be little point in taking a step back. I doubt very much that there will ever be a manned air superiority aircraft better than the F-22; it will probably be the last of its kind.

--Robert Farley

This is Dustin Lance Black, who won Best Screenplay for "Milk." He says, "When I was 13 years old, my beautiful mother and father moved me from a conservative, Mormon home in San Antonio, Texas, to California, and I heard the story of Harvey Milk. And it gave me hope. It gave me the hope to live my life...that one day I could live my life openly as who I am, and maybe even someday I could fall in love and get married."

--Dana Goldstein

"Mad Men." "Revolutionary Road." Endless Updike remembrances. It's no secret that we're living in a time of nostalgia for the early sixties. And although many of the celebrated cultural products of that era pick apart gender constructs, there's one place where the media has seemed just fine with uncritically recreating the age of stay-at-home-moms, 9 to 5 dads, and traditional values: inside the White House.

Michelle Obama is lounging sultrily on the cover of Vogue. Her official biography refers to her "first and foremost" as "Malia and Sasha's mom." Her professional mentor, Valerie Jarrett, took to the airways shortly after Election Day to reassure America that "having a seat at .... the table and being co-president is not something [Michelle is] interested in doing." Yesterday, the first lady's main activity was giving culinary students a tour of the White House kitchen. And the New York Times style section is breathlessly conveying that the Obamas are tough love, do-your-chores kind of parents; none of that wishy washy, Me Generation self-esteem stuff.

And yet, in unscripted moments and with small gestures, you can see the old Michelle Obama emerging from behind the Jackie O facade. Most obviously, there is Michelle's tour of federal agencies, where she's been pitching her husband's stimulus package and thanking tens of thousands of bureaucrats for their service. A friend pointed out to me that these events are making Michelle more visible than Joe Biden. That's true. Don't look too closely, or you might see the Obamas' marriage for what it really is: something quite like the infamous "two for the price of one" that so terrified conservatives when it came to Bill and Hillary Clinton.

I'm not one to make too much of hair. But I have to say, I was struck by this swept-back, no-nonsense look that Michelle debuted at the Department of Transportation on Friday. The first lady is lovely with the sweet up-flip 'do she's been sporting since the campaign really got down and dirty. But with this new look, Michelle appears professional. And that's exactly what she is --- even if, as she joked to a second grader earlier this month, the job she's got "doesn't pay much." (How much does it pay to play the full time role of first lady? Exactly nothing.)

--Dana Goldstein

"There are some commentators, pursuing an ideological agenda, who want to use the current crisis to nationalize the entire financial system. That is nationalization in the style of a Latin American despot." -- Gerald P. O'Driscoll Jr.

"Some commentators," huh? I can't think of any. The author doesn't bother to name these influential public intellectuals (space issues, I'm sure) but presumably their outlet is the Socialist Worker. O'Driscoll, a Cato fellow, instead offers a uniquely neo-hooverite proposal: The best way to solve the crisis is to end federal deposit insurance, lending from the Fed and federal bank guarantees, since the dread specter of "politicization" hangs over all government activity. You can make crazy arguments if you want, but at least try to argue against what people like Alan Greenspan et. al. are actually for: "And once again, long-term government ownership isn’t the goal: like the small banks seized by the F.D.I.C. every week, major banks would be returned to private control as soon as possible."

-- Tim Fernholz

Over at Andrew Sullivan's blog, a great example of how the administration is having trouble convincing the public that the new housing plan is a good idea. An irate reader writes in to complain about near $900,000 condos in his city that his family chose not to buy because they knew the mortgage would be too much -- why should we bail out the people who decided to take a risky bet? But clearly, the reader, just like Rick Santelli -- and presumably Sullivan himself -- hasn't read the plan.

For starters, as HUD Secretary Donovan noted in his remarks the day of the plan's announcement, the maximum mortgage that the plan applies to is around $700,000, depending on the area of the country. So don't worry, fella, your neighbors' condos aren't up for a rescue! Sullivan indulges himself in a little conservative populism, glad to point the finger at people who cashed out home equity at the expense of responsible home economics. But what does he have to say about the families who took out responsible 30-year fixed-rate mortgages and diligently paid their weekly bills, only to see the housing market crash and wind up losing their equity through no fault of their own -- the prototypical "underwater" mortgage holder this plan is trying to reach. No doubt some people will get help they don't deserve as people in need are reached, but stopping foreclosures will also help stabilize the housing markets. I wonder if the gentleman who wrote to Sullivan complaining about his neighbor's new car will be pleased when he is living next to an abandoned home and his own property value starts dropping -- maybe he'll be the next homeowner underwater. It's very easy for Sullivan to stoke populist anger about hypothetical irresponsibility from where he sits. It's harder, though, to understand a complex plan addressing a serious economic challenge that doesn't have easy answers. I suggest he give it a try.

But what about people whose job isn't understanding public policy? That's where the administration hasn't been making its best sell, although Obama's speech on the day of the roll out was quite good. But like the stimulus bill, which initially faced some public opposition but has become nationally popular thanks to diligent salesmanship, this housing plan will require some more explanation to the American people. As Noam Scheiber noted the other day, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan did a good job explaining the plan to reporters last week. Actually, all three officials present at that briefing -- Donovan, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and FDIC Sheila Bair -- worked together really well; look for a column on the three officials later in the week. While Obama sells the budget this week, perhaps Donovan should be doing a public relations tour on the mortgage plan.

-- Tim Fernholz

Senator Jim Bunning of Kentucky on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who is currently fighting pancreatic cancer:

During a wide-ranging 30-minute speech on Saturday at the Hardin County Republican Party's Lincoln Day Dinner, Bunning said he supports conservative judges "and that's going to be in place very shortly because Ruth Bader Ginsburg ... has cancer."

"Bad cancer. The kind that you don't get better from," he told a crowd of about 100 at the old State Theater.

"Even though she was operated on, usually, nine months is the longest that anybody would live after (being diagnosed) with pancreatic cancer," he said.

Fortunately for Senator Bunning, diarrhea of the mouth is not fatal.

-- A. Serwer

According to the New York Times, Binyam Mohamed, who has been in custody since 2002, has been released from Guantanamo Bay Prison and is scheduled to arrive in Britain today. Mohamed claims that he was tortured while in CIA custody--the Guardian claims right up until his departure from Gitmo. Mohamed was suspected of trying to plant a dirty bomb in the United States. Mohamed admits to receiving training in Afghanistan but claims he was training to fight in Chechnya, not the U.S. While in Morocco, Mohamed claims that he was cut with a razor on his chest and genitals "about once a month," and that photos were taken of his injuries after he was transferred to Bagram Air Force Base. It's difficult to tell from the account whether they were documenting his treatment or simply trying to humiliate him.

Mohamed and four other men were suing Boeing subsidiary Jeppsen for its role in their rendition to countries where they were tortured, but the Obama administration recently invoked the state secrets doctrine--much as the Bush administration had in the past--to block evidence of the plaintiff's maltreatment from being released, citing national security concerns. This led to the lawsuit being dismissed.

Jake Tapper reports that some of the families represented by Military Families United are protesting Obama's decision to release Mohamed. Tapper quotes Brian Wise, director of the group, who says, "Whether or not he experienced harsh interrogation tactics doesn’t change the fact that he is universally recognized as a terrorist and a threat to America."

I find it interesting that we're supposed to accept that decisions are being made in the interest of national security when it involves imprisoning people indefinitely, but if anyone is actually released we're supposed to assume we are aware of all the relevant intelligence and that doing so is a sign of dangerous naiveté. What we know is that all the charges against Mohamed have been dismissed; there's no ethical or legal reason to keep him confined.

-- A. Serwer

• The good: the Obama administration announces the end of accounting gimmicks and other budgetary chicanery when he submits his first federal budget to Congress next week. The bad: Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood suggests a a mileage tax instead of a gas tax to fund infrastructure investment, although the administration appears to be ruling it out.
• I'm not surprised that some Congressional Republicans are talking up the benefits of some elements of the economic stimulus package despite unanimously voting against the full legislation, nor am I shocked to learn that the same conservative advocacy group that pushed the Ayers-Obama connection last fall have put out an ad starring Jesus Christ to argue against the stimulus because, well, it has a really big number attached to it. I am surprised, however, by the conservative embrace of Rick Santelli's rant against the Obama administration's housing plan. If this Politico piece on the lack of CEOs in Obama's administration or this Wall St. Journal op-ed praising the Gilded Age are any indication, then the right wing's embrace of reverse populism is just as misguided as Wall Street and the Beltway's worship of the captains of industry.
  
• Speaking of worship, do we really need to spend money to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of Ronald Reagan? It might be a pittance compared to refurbishing the National Mall, but at least the latter would have had a positive economic impact whereas publicly funding the cult of Reagan is at best a welfare check for conservatives overly sensitive to the fact that the country isn't paying sufficient attention to a president who left office twenty years ago and has been dead for half a decade.
  
• Patrick Leahy makes the case for his truth commission in Time and Daphne Eviatar identifies John McCain as a key vote to making the commission happen in The Washington Independent.
• I agree wholeheartedly with Adam that The Washington Post's decision to stand by George Will's factual errors and not issue a correction is vastly more offensive than The New York Post's incoherent and arguably bigoted political cartoon. WaPo's choice is a point of no return -- they have decided that keeping a conservative opinion maker happy is more important than maintaining their credibility as a newspaper, and that's devastating.
• Dana Milbank has learned the following from Richard Perle: Neoconservatism as a foriegn policy does not exist; the title of his 2004 book about ending the evil of terrorism, An End to Evil, was not chosen by him; and he has never advocated attacking Iran in his entire career. Maybe we ought to start taking Spencer Ackerman's advice: "Neoconservatism after Iraq is communism after the end of the Soviet Union. Treat Perle like you treat the men in colorful robes who stand in front of the subway claiming to be the lost tribe of Israel, because he’s just as foolish and conspiracy-minded. Avoid eye contact, shuffle awkwardly to your destination and put him out of your mind."
• It appears that organized labor and Senate Democrats are holding off on their big EFCA push until Al Franken is seated as Minnesota's junior Senator. Smart move. The coming shrillness from the right over this particular piece of legislation is going to make the stimulus battle look like a friendly argument between friends.
  

--Mori Dinauer

Ezra writes about Ray LaHood proposing a vehicle miles traveled tax. Yglesias prefers a gas tax. Both would be good. They incentivize living closer to one's job, which is good for the environment, for racial and socioeconomic integration of neighborhoods and schools, and for fighting sprawl.

That said, I'd practically bet my life against either policy being enacted within the next four years.

--Dana Goldstein

CBPP takes a look at the state funding in the now-enacted economic stimulus legislation and notices something of a problem: it only covers 40 percent of all the state budget deficits. Obviously, the federal government was never going to be able to ensure that every state has a balanced budget, but state aid was reduced in the final bill and we should look clearly at the consequences: The state-level cuts that will come as a result of the remaining deficits will certainly prolong the recession; jobs will be lost, the social safety net will be weakened, and investments in health care, schools, roads and law enforcement will all fall by the wayside -- Phoebe documents some of those losses. California's budget crisis, for instance, will result in tax hikes, program cuts and thousands of lay-offs around the state; it could be a harbinger of the coming months as other states assess their fiscal situations. California will be able to rescind some of their cuts thanks to the stimulus, but their overall fiscal strategy still flies in the face of what should be done to alleviate the recession. While not all states have budgeting processes as insane as California's, hard decisions are going to have to be made nationwide. Oh, and speaking of hard decisions, only one Republican voted for the plan-- supported by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger -- in California's state senate. Ideological purity above all else, I suppose.

-- Tim Fernholz

In his review of Sectioned: A Life Interrupted, Blake Morrison praises John O'Donoghue's portrayal of the "humdrum reality" of mental illness:

It's less a story of locked wards than of hostels, soup kitchens, sheltered housing, drug addicts, well-meaning charity workers and relentless poverty.

Patching together adequate treatment for those with mental health problems is always a challenge -- it's a stigmatized illness whose sufferers often go undiagnosed only to end up unemployed, homeless, incarcerated, or with substance abuse problems.

But we should be even more concerned about the precarious state of mental health services as the economic crisis hits state budgets. Chicago is closing four mental health clinics--all on the city's (poor, black) south side. Tennessee is facing state budget cuts that will further reduce the funding for counseling and treatment. Utah is considering $5.5 million in cuts to mental health services.

And California's recent budget deal? I called up Kirsten Barlow of the California Mental Health Directors Association, a group which has been lobbying against Schwarzenegger's proposed cuts to funding for the Mental Health Services Act (Prop. 63). She said the budget transferred $460.7 million in funding over the next two fiscal years for Prop. 63 to fund the federally-mandated EPSTD program. Yes, it's still a program that provides mental health screening, but the resulting cuts to the Prop. 63 program mean an overall decrease in the services California is offering.

Mental illness needs constant monitoring and treatment. As Dr. Jeffrey Ditzell told WYNC, "Certainly, consistency is the name of the game in mental health treatment. You have to be consistent with your energies and your treatment plans, and if not, that can spell relapse, which can be even more devastating than the financial concerns that are valid." And don't forget that studies have shown that during periods of economic stress, the need for mental health services increases. 

--Phoebe Connelly

Black folks have been shrugging their shoulders at the New York Post since before I was born, so I was kind of surprised to see them issue a semi-apology for the chimp cartoon produced by Sean Delonas. The cartoon is rather tame by Post standards, especially considering the material they were producing when New York City was genuinely gripped by racial tension, so I'm a bit surprised to see people planning to protest the paper.

I'll also say that while I think the cartoon was offensive, I don't think the Post should have apologized, even half-heartedly. I don't think, in general, that newspapers should apologize for printing material people find offensive. I think they should only apologize when they're factually wrong about something, which is sadly more often than they admit. Barack Obamais also a public figure, and while the cartoon, by virtue of being a racialized message, extends its fire to all black folks and not just the president, I don't really think it's the most effective or meaningful expression of outrage. It's mostly easy. My solution? Stop reading the freaking New York Post, and they'll get the message.

I find the Washington Post's printing of George Will's column, and their subsequent refusal to issue a correction despite Will's distortions, far more offensive. Newspapers are often on the frontlines of the battle to maintain the liberties guaranteed by the First Amendment, but publications like the Washington Post are obligated to hold themselves to a certain standard of truth and accuracy. The New York Post apologized for their cartoon, but as a newspaper, the Washington Post committed the far greater offense.

It's a pretty bold move by the president to eliminate the accounting gimmickry that undersold the deficits in the last eight years by putting the cost of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, disaster response and Medicare reimbursements off the books. Of course, it's going to make the deficit numbers much bigger (even though we were carrying that shortfall before, just not acknowledging it) and Obama's conservative critics will no doubt use that number for political attacks. But as the new administration has negotiated the challenges of taking campaign-trail change to Washington governance, not always successfully, the decision is a big step towards greater transparency. It also demonstrates respect for the average American, a trait that Obama used to his advantage last fall. Most politicians don't want to scare voters with bad news, or at least try to spin it; the new president realizes that Americans want to know the truth about their government's fiscal situation. It's change we can something something:

As for war costs, Mr. Bush included little or none in his annual military budgets, instead routinely asking Congress for supplemental appropriations during the year. Mr. Obama will include cost projections for every year through the 2019 fiscal year to cover “overseas military contingencies” — nearly $500 billion over 10 years.

For Medicare, Mr. Bush routinely budgeted less than actual costs for payments to physicians, although he and Congress regularly waived a law mandating the lower reimbursements for fear that doctors would quit serving beneficiaries in protest.

One other interesting thing:The administration plans to account for the 10-year cost of success Alternative Minimum Tax fixes, a $1.2 trillion revenue shortfall. Normally, the executive and congress simply do the yearly "AMT patch" -- exempting many Americans from the AMT's reach, as they did in the stimulus -- but don't project those costs into the future. Talking to a Senate aide who works on tax policy during the stimulus debate, I wondered why they didn't just make the patch permanent. He replied that the "ten year cost estimate would be far too ugly." Well, it looks like the president is ready to face up to reality -- maybe congress will follow?

-- Tim Fernholz

Even before the recession hit, the newspaper industry was facing a mortal threat from the rise of the Internet, falling circulation and advertising revenue, and a long-term decline in readership, as the habit of buying a daily paper dwindled from one generation to the next. The recession has intensified these difficulties, plunging newspapers into a tailspin from which some may not recover and others will emerge only as a shadow of their former selves. The devastation is already substantial. At the Los Angeles Times, the cumulative effect of cutbacks has been to reduce its newsroom by one-half--and that was before its parent company, Tribune, declared bankruptcy…

Newspapers are also shrinking in numbers of pages, breadth of news coverage, features of various kinds, and home delivery of print editions. All over America, as newspaper revenues plummet--by the end of 2008, ad sales were down about 25 percent from three years earlier--publishers cannot seem to shed editors, reporters, and sections of their papers fast enough. And there is more pain to come.

On a related note, former Los Angeles Times writer Joe Mathews offers a personal and poignant reflection on why the print media on a local level. The tragedy is in the stories lost.

--The Editors

One of the oddest of right-wing claims is that FDR's New Deal didn't pull America out of the Great Depression, so Barack Obama's "New New Deal" won't, either. While it's true that the New Deal didn't end the Great Depression, three points need to be impressed on the hard-pressed conservative mind:

1. The New Deal relieved a great deal of suffering by establishing social safety nets -- Unemployment Insurance, Aid to Dependent Children, and Social Security for retirees. Most have remained, a worthy legacy. But because the structure of the economy has changed (a much higher percentage of the working population is now employed part-time in several jobs or as independent contractors, for example), there are gaping holes in the safety net which a New New Deal should fill in order that the Mini Depression we're experiencing not cause excessive harm.

2. FDR's public-works spending did help the economy somewhat. By 1936, the economy was showing some life. Unemployment was declining and consumers were beginning to buy. But FDR cut back on public-works spending, and the economy sank back into its former torpor. A warning to Obama: Don't worry about so-called "fiscal responsibility" when aggregate demand still falls far short of the economy's total capacity.

3. The Second World War pulled the nation out of the Great Depression because it required that government spend on such a huge scale as to restart the nation's factories, put Americans back to work, and push the nation toward its productive capacty. By the end of the war, most Americans were better off than they were before its start. Yes, the national debt ballooned to 120 percent of GDP. But the debt-GDP ratio subsequently declined -- not just because post-war spending dropped but because the economy continued to grow as war production converted to the production of consumer goods. Lesson: The danger isn't too much stimulus, it's too little stimulus.

--Robert Reich

The need to prioritize among cases does achieve one important political goal: firmly restoring Roe v. Wade to its place as one case among many. It is somewhat jarring to read a book on women and the law that treats Roe as an explanatory tool for parsing the differences between privacy and equality law rather than as a main case study, but Strebeigh makes a convincing case that Roe should not overshadow the entirety of the canon of law affecting women.

Eileen Applebaum parses Obama's plan to rescue underwater homeowners:

President Obama's plan is a mixed bag. It is a serious effort to help homeowners and not just banks, as was the case under President Bush, but it is still heavily tilted toward lenders. It will make mortgage payments more affordable for some homeowners, at least temporarily, and should slow the current rate of foreclosure. It may also slow the fall in house prices due to a glut of vacant homes in some of the worst-hit neighborhoods. But it will not stop the decline in home prices in many housing markets where homes are still overvalued and will continue to fall.

And Terence Samuel mulls over the Burris fiasco:

The tragedy of Roland is that he cheaply ruined his chance to live out his dream of being in high office -- he ran for governor twice -- and to quietly add some sheen to an otherwise ordinary political career. Ego alone made him one of the few, maybe the only person, who would have accepted an appointment from Blagojevich under the circumstances. Blagojevich decided to play the race card against a Senate leadership who said it would not seat anyone he appointed, and it worked, because he had Burris to play along.

As always, subscribe to our RSS feed to receive our articles as soon as they are published.

--The Editors

“We thought the low points of last fall were behind us, but we seem to be in for more disappointments,” said Vincent Juvyns, a strategist at ING Investment in Brussels. “The markets have lost all sense of direction, which makes it hard to take a position.”

Emphasis mine; this comes from a story about the drop in international investment markets. Really, you thought the low points were in the past? Despite all of the economic forecasts that the global recession was only going to get worse? No wonder the financial industry is such a mess.

-- Tim Fernholz

More evidence of the much-ballyhooed "change in tone" in Washington. Obama and Biden met with mayors at the White House today, and you know, actually acknowledged our nation's population centers. Biden was the good cop, delivering some urban-triumphalist rhetoric:

But we know how important cities are -- 65 percent of our nation's population, as you all know, live in our cities. Our cities are the home of seven out of 10 American jobs. And when you're talking about the "knowledge economy jobs," the number rises to eight and 10 -- eight out of 10. Cities are vital to our economy, essential to our recovery, and haven't been paid much attention to. Our economy can never reach, in our view, its full potential if we have people who are living blocks away, but worlds away from the bustling downtowns full of opportunity. Our poor transportation systems don't provide mobility people need to get to the job.

And Obama played bad cop, demanding that mayors spend stimulus money wisely:

...what I will need from all of you, is unprecedented responsibility and accountability on all of our parts. The American people are watching. They need this plan to work. They expect to see the money that they've earned, that they've worked so hard to earn, spent in its intended purposes without waste, without inefficiency, without fraud.

--Dana Goldstein

Given Jeffrey Goldberg's Jewish mau-mauing of Glenn Greenwald and tagging everyone at The American Conservative as Buchanan-level anti-Semites, I feel that it's only appropriate I link to my original post on the similarities between right-leaning Jews' use of ethnic solidarity to bash Jewish critics of Israel and the brothers they love to hate. Just because Mark Schmitt is my boss doesn't mean I agree with everything he says or thinks. But if Mark Schmitt weren't even here and someone were attributing his views to me based on the fact that I worked at a magazine he used to run, that would be even weirder.

-- A. Serwer

Dayo Olopade liked Eric Holder's race speech:

Should Holder's message come as such a surpise? Polls suggest that the percentage of Americans who count at least one black friend has jumped 25 percent since 1973. But what about two black friends? Real friends? (Barack Obama doesn’t count.) Little current data exist, but now that the bar for “post-racial” interaction has been raised, American failures become more obvious. So Holder decried “electronically padlocked suburbs” alongside “race protected cocoons,” and also lamented the caging of race-based topics that are not to be brought up in mixed company—which, as Obama’s speech pointed out, “find voice in the barbershop or around the kitchen table” instead of being aired in plain view. Holder's conclusion, that “this nation has still not come to grips with its racial past nor has it been willing to contemplate, in a truly meaningful way, the diverse future it is fated to have” sounds the alarm: America is still segregated, is still blind to its uphill climb, is still afraid of itself.

Ta-Nehisi Coates found Holder's speech boring, perhaps because Holder said almost nothing he hadn't already heard. But the defensive, hysterical reaction on the right practically proves both Holder's and Olopade's points; in things social we often remain as separate as the fingers. This is not, as Holder suggests, the same as it was fifty years ago. But I think black folks who straddle class and racial lines become very aware of how separate things remain, because we often end up having to juggle very different social spheres. To put it bluntly, I can't remember the last time I was hanging out with a racially mixed group of friends. I'm either hanging out with black people or I'm hanging out with white people, and that's not in any way by design.

Holder's speech was if not interesting, important for a different reason. Most people focused on the content of the speech rather than what it means for a Department of Justice whose mandate to protect the vote for people of all races and origins was abdicated, and whose energies were directed to protecting a religious majority from "discrimination" while all but ignoring discrimination against women and people of color. Holder's speech is less important for what it said than for what it means for his tenure as Attorney General. Fox News' Megyn Kelly understood that much, and understood why it was significant, even if she believes the Justice Department was "reasonable" in abdicating its traditional duties.

-- A. Serwer

McClatchy, looking ahead as always, susses out the potential for a spike in crime due to the recession. It's an equation that has two parts: it's tougher to make a living, so more people have the motivation to turn to crime, and it's tougher for the government to keep law enforcement fully funded with dwindling revenues, so there are fewer police officers on the streets. Check out the handy chart from the news org's survey.

The piece itself points out two interesting dynamics: One is that as an informal measure of recessions, any time you have police departments facing cuts you can say that things have gotten pretty bad since that's the last place most politicians want to make large cuts. Second is that most of the people who might turn to crime aren't people who lose their jobs but are young men who can't find good jobs to begin with. The article notes that the stimulus legislation includes several billion dollars to help keep cops on the beat and that its job creation tools might help alleviate the demand side of the crime equation. It's just one more reason that the package was a good idea.

-- Tim Fernholz

On Feb. 3, the Washington Teachers' Union presented Chancellor Michelle Rhee with its counter-proposal to her radical red track-green track contract. Under Rhee's plan, the "green" track would require teachers to give up tenure in exchange for the possibility of large merit-pay bonuses financed by philanthropies. Alternatively, they could choose to retain their tenure privileges and stick to a traditional, seniority-based salary ladder with a lower ceiling. That would have been the "red" track.

Now the WTU has launched a website with further details on what they are proposing as an alternative, maintaining that it would still be "the most expansive performance-pay program in the country." Emphasis below is mine:

Rather then red and green, the proposal offers a very different vision for performance pay-that is aligned with student success but rooted in fairness, trust and shared responsibility. It includes schoolwide performance pay, additional individual pay options and a career-ladder program that recognizes individual teacher performance and service in a comprehensive way.

"Schoolwide performance pay" means that when the academic achievement of all the students in a school improves on aggregate, every teacher in that building would receive a salary bonus. "Additional individual pay options" and the "career ladder program" likely refer to bonuses for teachers who take on extra responsibilities, such as mentoring less experienced colleagues. Recognizing individual teacher performance "in a comprehensive way" is likely a nod toward creating a sophisticated teacher evaluation system that relies on more than just student test scores, and includes classroom observations of teaching. The WTU may be saying that high evaluations should lead to salary bonuses, but it's hard to tell without further details, which have not been released.

--Dana Goldstein

In Egypt, President Hosni Mubarak suddenly released one of the country's most popular opposition politicians, Ayman Nour, from jail Wednesday. Nour's al Ghad party represented one of the more influential secular liberal voices in Egyptian politics, and Nour himself won 12 percent of the vote against Mubarak in the 2005 presidential race before being thrown in jail on trumped up charges. The U.S. and Europe have pressured Mubarak for Nour's release ineffectually for some time; why does he act now? The Arabist has a compelling theory....

It is a clear message that says, “look: Bush tried for four years to pressure me. But I do things on my own timing and any pressure is counterproductive.” The message is, before Obama and his administration settle into a clear approach on Egypt (I don’t think the NSC staffer on Egypt has even been appointed yet), that if the same US approach to Egypt continues, it will only generate headaches. It was necessary to release Nour to improve the bilateral relationship, since ... over the last two years Congress has put unprecedented (even if still relatively mild) pressure on Egypt by withholding $100 million in military aid (but giving Condoleeza Rice the right to waiver the withholding, which she did twice). Now Congress will not have Ayman Nour to rally support around this, and the cautious State and DoD approach to the Egyptian relationship (which is very strong in military, intelligence, and a few issues aside diplomatic terms) could very well prevail - especially as we’re seeing a new Egyptian crackdown on the tunnels to Gaza, the other big issue for Congress.

... Obama staffers have a token sign of progress they can point to, and a lesson that the Bush approach failed. Congress has what it wants. Ayman Nour, under Egyptian law, is now no longer able to run for public office as he has a criminal record. The Ghad party has been torn in half and will take time to rebuild. The legislative and political environment is much worse than it was when Nour first emerged as a national figure in 2004-2005, and repression is taking place much more brutally and systematically. So, most probably, we will see US pressure on democratic reform die down, since policymakers will find it difficult to get support for another direct confrontation with the Egyptian regime. They will wait and see what happens after succession.

That sounds right. Even as Obama's administration is catalyzing change in some foreign policy areas by sheer dint of its difference from the Bush administration and its willingness to shift the debate, there are going to be countries that try and take advantage of the moment to make superficial concessions that don't actually change the situation on the ground. The release of Nour, while certainly a very good thing, does not represent an improvement for Egypt's democratic institutions or for the opposition's chances of pressuring the regime into making any reformist moves. But it will be very easy for the new administration to take the release at face value and gain breathing space to focus on other pressing foreign policy issues; that, ultimately, would be a mistake.

-- Tim Fernholz

• CQ Politics reports that over 100 members of Congress have been tied to a lobbying firm closely associated with John Murtha, who all went on to receive millions in earmarks and campaign contributions. Adam and Tim have more on this corrupt affair and the list of shame can be found here.
• Kathleen Sebelius is reportedly the top contender for Health and Human Services secretary following the fall of Tom Daschle, and Politico reports that health care reform will largely be in the hands of OMB Director Peter Orszag.
• The New York Times reports that the EPA will finally start regulating carbon emissions after ignoring a court order for years during the Bush administration. Significantly, the change "could accelerate the progress of energy and climate change legislation in Congress and form a basis for the United States’ negotiating position at United Nations climate talks set for December in Copenhagen."
• The rejection of stimulus money by some Republican governors is, unsurprisingly, merely posturing, as most state legislatures could override their governor's wishes and take the money anyway. Also, Joseph Cao -- the Republican who won William Jefferson's seat in a special election and subsequently flip-flopped on the stimulus vote -- is feeling the love of his constituents, who are organizing a recall petition.
• RNC Chair Michael Steele, whose election campaign is neatly summarized here, is planning, in his words, an "off the hook" PR campaign to apply conservative principles to "urban-suburban hip-hop settings." I think Ezra has a clever take on the GOP mindset.
• I'm quite surprised that Alberto Gonzales would willingly cooperate -- and say so on the record -- with Patrick Leahy's proposed truth commission, given his past performances, unless by "cooperation" he means showing up and patiently telling members of Congress that he suffers from chronic memory loss.
• Remainders: Christopher Hitchens -- literally -- gets beat down in Beirut; members of the Bush and Obama administrations team up to fight poverty; a Utah GOPer shares his enlightened views on homosexuality; Rick Santorum gets mistaken for an Islamic scholar; Joe Biden and Leon Panetta rightfully criticize Bush's foreign policy; the Obamas have some progressives over for cocktails to talk shop; Ben Smith frankly discusses David Paterson's handicap; and a Barack Obama sentence gets diagrammed.
  

--Mori Dinauer

Joint TAP/Campus Progress intern Jake Blumgart has a smart piece at CP about the state of debate on Latin American policy:

Many held high hopes for the hearing, which was the first held by a foreign affairs subcommittee post-inauguration. Titled “U.S. Policy Toward Latin America in 2009 and Beyond,” the meeting could have signaled a new chapter in U.S.-Latin American relations—which would have come as a relief to many in the hemisphere after eight years of disastrous Bush administration policies (on Cuba, drugs, and immigration, to name a few). But as the hearing got underway, McClintock—and anyone else who hopes Barack Obama’s mantra of change will apply to Latin America, too—was sorely disappointed. Instead of charting a new way forward in U.S.-Latin American relations, the hearing reconfirmed America’s commitment to polices that have been overwhelmingly rejected across the region. Both representatives and witnesses adhered to the tired solutions of the past, promoting Cold War era animosity and discredited neoliberal trade policies that do not reflect the new political realities in Latin America or the promise of Obama’s multilateral foreign policy. As it turns out, the new U.S. policy towards Latin America will look awfully familiar.

Jake is getting ahead of the story with his prescriptive argument. This congressional sub-committee does not, thankfully, represent American foreign policy, nor will it have a huge say on specific foreign policy issues in Latin America; House Republicans will have next to no influence. It's the policymakers in the administration itself who will make the important choices, and no one there has gotten out front yet on Latin America.

But Jake's reporting on the rigid conventional wisdom surrounding the region does give a good preview of the lay of the land the administration will have to traverse if it does seek change. A look at the old campaign website on Latin America gives you some ideas of their priorities: On the positive side, furthering diplomatic engagement across the board, and especially with loosened travel restrictions in Cuba (though not loose enough for my tastes). But principles on trade agreements and rethinking the failing "War on Drugs" are much more ambiguous, and as Jake points out, likely to come after a number of agenda items higher up on the president's list. As the administration does begin to roll out its ideas for Latin America -- likely in the run up to the Summit of the Americas at the end of April -- we'll begin to get an idea of whether Jake's picture of the status quo accurately represents the Obama's approach, or whether he'll bring a fresher approach to our under-appreciated neighbors to the south.

-- Tim Fernholz

The world needs a coordinated response in which each country commits to undertake stimulus that's appropriate to the size of its economy and to its position in the global balance of trade. Further, we need a serious international commitment toward rebalancing in the medium-term -- to a weaker dollar, less U.S. consumption, more American exports, and less foreign economic dependence on the U.S. consumer market as an employment strategy.

As always, subscribe to our RSS feed to receive our articles as soon as they are published.

--The Editors

Via Joyner, Judy Dempsey argues that the readmission of France to full member status in NATO is part of a project to pursue an independent European defense capability:

At EU headquarters, France has often blocked the EU from working more closely with NATO, suspicious that Europe's defense ambitions would be reined in by the United States.

Sarkozy wants to end these tensions. They have been debilitating for both organizations, which have scant resources and can ill afford duplicating efforts, troops and equipment. As a bloc, the Europeans have not been prepared to take their defense and security policy seriously. Several countries are suspicious of France's long term agenda.

Rejoining NATO's integrated military structure, which would finally give France a full say in military issues, might just end those suspicions.

--Robert Farley

Earlier this month, Blackwater changed its name to "Xe" in an apparent effort to escape the bad publicity associated with the Blackwater brand. Now, whatever the merits or problems of the company, I've always thought that Blackwater was kind of a cool name. It combines a Doobie Brothers sensibility with a vague aura of menace, which is just about all you can ask for in a private security company's name. In fairness, Executive Outcomes was also a pretty awesome name for a mercenary company. Anyway, the firm's abandoning of the Doobie Brothers for a vaguely Chinese sounding moniker hasn't yet turned things around:

Xe spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said: "The company's ongoing reorganization has unfortunately required some staff reductions. These actions, while difficult, are part of a continuing effort to ensure the best value to our customers, and improve the company's efficiency."

While Tyrrell did not provide specific numbers, this is not the first time the company has been forced to downsize. Last year, the company laid off an undisclosed number of workers after the company failed to make the cut in the Pentagon's Joint Light Tactical Vehicle contest. The former Blackwater had plans to break into the manufacturing business as part of a strategy to diversify its business and reduce its dependence on controversial, high-end close protection contracts. The company recently announced plans to train pro athletes in self defense; it also continues to do less-known work, like low-cost, low altitude airdrops to supply U.S. troops on the ground in Afghanistan.

--Robert Farley

The Washington Post moves the ball forward on the Immigration and Customs Enforcement's National Fugitive Operations Program, which was initially designed to capture undocumented immigrants who had been ordered deported, excluded, or removed by an immigration judge. The drew a bonanza in funding from Congress, even as its original purpose, capturing undocumented immigrants who had avoided a deportation order or committed a crime, shifted to undocumented immigrants who hadn't committed any crimes. Being in the country illegally is a civil, not a criminal violation.

As a report from the Migration Policy Institute explains, the program's funding has increased from $9 million to $213 million, even as its original purpose has been abandoned. In 2006, ICE officials increased the quota of fugitive aliens--fugitive meaning they had committed a crime, or ignored a deportation order--to 1000. But the number of fugitive aliens captured decreased as time went on, as the FOP began capturing more and more ordinary status violators to fill their quota. What's most disturbing is the way some of these people were arrested, the Post highlights an incident in which an FOP official encouraged enforcers to just run around Lowe's or Home Depot parking lots looking for day laborers who they assumed were illegal.

In fact, according to the MPI report, criminal fugitives made up only 9 percent of those apprehended in 2007, after the quota was instituted. Of the remaining 91 percent, 40 were ordinary status violators--not the kind of undocumented immigrants the program was designed to target--and 51 percent were fugitives with no criminal history.

-- A. Serwer

On the heels of Nancy Pelosi's audience with Pope Benedict XVI, during which he lectured her that she should "protect life" (i.e., not be pro-choice), comes a damning investigation of the virulent anti-semitism of the St. Pius X Society. Benedict recently lifted the excommunication of Bishop Richard Williamson, a member of the Society, who openly denies the Holocaust.

The new investigation of the Society by the Belgian Jewish newspaper Joods Actueel shows that its anti-Semitic views are not limited to Holocaust denial. The group -- estimated to have up to a million followers worldwide -- rejects Vatican II and believes Jews are the "enemy of man." Its U.S. site contains statements such as "Money, the media, and international politics are for a large part in the hands of the Jews," "with vigilance and clear-sightedness we should launch a systematic and methodical opposition to the equally systematic and methodical onslaught of 'the enemy of man'", "international Judaism wants to radically defeat Christianity and to be its substitute" and "invented the decisive instrument to delete the name of Christian from the very face of the earth."

Read the whole thing here. H/t Failed Messiah.

--Sarah Posner

Now that the Democrats are predominant in Washington, what happens to progressive media organizations like TPM who have been making their names exposing Republican scandals? Well, they go right ahead and smack around Democrats who are being shady. Good for them (and for Adam). It will be very tempting for progressives to become complacent about corruption now that their agenda is the one being enacted, just as the conservatives did with the GOP, but it is imperative that we continue to push against the live-and-let-live attitude that allowed William Jefferson to remain in office as long as he did, or that lets Charlie Rangel keep his committee chair while under investigation by the House Ethics committee, or John Murtha his subcommittee chair. (There was a smarter reaction to allegations against Bill Richardson and Rod Blagojevich.)

The only good news is that this is a lesson that Republicans certainly haven't learned, as they spend money trying to protect the almost-certainly corrupt former Senator Norm Coleman's seat. The Democratic scandals don't matter on a larger level, yet, as Eve Fairbanks notes, but for that trend to continue the Democrats -- and the progressives who urge their agenda along -- can't tolerate influence peddling.

-- Tim Fernholz

There are 17 Uighurs, Turkic-speaking Chinese Muslims, imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay despite the fact that the government has determined that they are not enemy combatants. They have been cleared for release since 2003, but they have remained captive because the Chinese are demanding they be repatriated, and the U.S. suspects they will be tortured, and are instead trying to find homes for them elsewhere; several have been released to Albania and Sweden.

Yesterday, the the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned an October 2008 decision mandating their release into the United States on the grounds that only the executive branch can decide who is allowed to enter the country. These people are trapped in the very definition of a legal black hole: they cannot be released because no one other than China has agreed to take them, but the U.S. doesn't really have the authority to continue holding them because it has determined they are no longer enemy combatants.

UPDATE: I must have published an earlier version of this post where I hadn't made my opinion clear on this subject: The U.S. should offer to take the Uighur detainees at Guantanamo in, or repatriate them to a country of their choice. Either way they should be released as soon as possible. The court's ruling puts the ball in Obama's court.

-- A. Serwer

Ezra bemoans Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's performance and wishes that Tom Daschle's tax problems had come to the fore before those of the Treasury Secretary, since Daschle, it seems, is indispensable. But it's not so simple as that, and that defense of Daschle doesn't cut the mustard. And before I get into it, I'll note that I'm an admirer of Daschle and was bullish on his confirmation.

Geithner and Daschle's tax problems aren't an apples to apples comparison. Geithner failed to pay social security and medicare taxes on income he made at the IMF, which is either a common mistake or a common bit of tax fraud since the IRS had to issue a blanket deal to all IMF staff to get the matter resolved; Geithner ended up paying $25,970 in back taxes. But Daschle's initial intransigence -- accepting a free car and driver from a wealthy donor and failing to pay taxes on it as income, a $146,000 mistake -- revealed a worse problem: Daschle had been accepting money from the very industry he was expected to remake, with health care groups paying him some $220,000 in the last two years. Some of those groups referenced their payments to Daschle in advocacy messages.

It's not an uncommon thing in Washington for an ex-Senator to cash in. But it is a somewhat uncommon thing for a person like Tim Geithner, a career public servant who hasn't worked in the private sector since 1988, to become a cabinet secretary. Put simply: Whatever you think of him, Daschle's money mistakes compromised the work he would have done. Geithner's are at worst poor judgment.

But the real question is of whose confirmation need to come sooner, and the answer is clear: Geithner. While health care reform is key to the liberal project and the long-term health of the country, having Geithner come in and immediately work on three hugely complex and immediate packages to alleviate the recession -- the stimulus package, the housing market plan and the financial stability plan -- was immediately necessary, and couldn't have waited six weeks for another candidate to be found, vetted and confirmed; even Summers would have taken that long. Geithner's presentation of the financial stability plan was weak, but given all the issues on his plate its no surprise there was an early mistake. Blaming that mistake entirely on Geithner isn't a good idea, either: obviously other members of the White House economic team had their fingerprints all over it. Overall, his early performance has been good and its far too soon to judge the final results of the financial stability plan.

Meanwhile, health care reform moves forward in the OMB and congress. Maybe only Daschle could have filled the hybrid role designed for him as HHS Secretary and health care czar, but that role isn't a necessary condition for health care reform, which would never have come before a response to the economic crisis in any case. Geithner's tax problems emerging before Daschle's was a lot of things, but it wasn't a tragedy.

-- Tim Fernholz

Via Steve Benen, Michael Steele, the Republican Party's new black friend, continues the new black friendness in earnest:

Newly elected Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele plans an “off the hook” public relations offensive to attract younger voters, especially blacks and Hispanics, by applying the party's principles to “urban-suburban hip-hop settings.”

The RNC's first black chairman will “surprise everyone” when updating the party's image using the Internet and advertisements on radio, on television and in print, he told The Washington Times.

Yesterday Gwen Ifill said that the Republican Party wasn't "so caught up with the idea of Barack Obama being black that they were going to sacrifice their need to come back just to elect a black guy.” Okay well, I'd agree that they weren't caught up with the idea of Barack Obama so much as they suddenly felt as though their lack of diversity was becoming a political liability, but I'm not sure what else Steele was offering. He shares the same obsession with rebranding rather than developing new policy ideas that all the other RNC candidates had, and he's still preoccupied with it at the expense of everything else.

I also honestly find Steele's behavior more offensive than the idea that Republicans picked him out of a desire to change the image of the party. The idea that you're going to lure black voters to the GOP by laying an ad over Nas and Jay-Z's "Black Republican" is ridiculous, and it seems designed to remind the GOP that Michael Steele is black than it is meant to get any young people or people of color to join the party. It's narcissistic and insecure. What drives me crazy is that I always thought there was a possibility that Steele was using Republicans' desire not to be seen as racist in order to win the RNC race, but had every intent of driving them away from the racialized ignorance of "The Magic Negro." But he's still acting like he needs to win the approval of the people who elected him by reminding them how cool he is.

Look, I'll be the first person to argue that mainstream Hip-hop is, at some level, fundamentally conservative. But that doesn't mean it's easily co-opted by outsiders, particularly for political purposes. Obama didn't market himself to Hip-hop, heads were inspired by his example, despite, or perhaps because of, his rather insightful criticism of the culture. Steele is just assuming that being black makes this approach credible. It doesn't. 

There is a rather serious scandal brewing in the House, where more than a hundred lawmakers secured funding for one lobbying firm, The PMA Group, which shut down PAC last week amid reports that the FBI was investigating the firm for illegal contributions to Democratic Rep. John Murtha, among others. Jonathan Allen and Alex Knott have the story:

In the spending bill managed by Murtha, the fiscal 2008 Defense appropriation, 104 House members got earmarks for projects sought by PMA clients, according to Congressional Quarterly’s analysis of a database constructed by Ashdown’s group.

Those House members, plus a handful of senators, combined to route nearly $300 million in public money to clients of PMA through that one law (PL 110-116).

And when the lawmakers were in need — as they all are to finance their campaigns — PMA came through for them.

According to CQ MoneyLine, the same House members who took responsibility for PMA’s earmarks in that spending bill have, since 2001, accepted a cumulative $1,815,138 in campaign contributions from PMA’s political action committee and employees of the firm.

During Murtha's reelection campaign, a number of liberals and Democrats questioned whether keeping the seat was even worth it, given Murtha's reputation for corruption and his potential to be a liability. I feel like this story could create other potential problems as well, Obama's high approval ratings might insulate him from taint by association, but if the Democratic party starts gaining a reputation for corruption it will be difficult for them to go against the president when they have to.

-- A. Serwer

• The Obama administration unveiled its housing plan today, reactions to which Tim has helpfully rounded up here and here.
• Yesterday the president pledged to send an additional 17,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan, leading USA Today to declare the escalation part of "Obama's war."
  
• Bobby Jindal, slated to give the Republican response to next week's presidential address of Congress, claims he will reject $3.8 billion in funding for Louisiana as part of the economic stimulus package. Obviously this is political suicide, and I'd agree with Jonathan Stein, who argues Jindal is just posturing to prove his conservative bona fides if and when he runs for higher office. Indeed, Jindal has already raised more money than any previous Louisiana governor looking for reelection, with more than two years before his 2011 bid. Not to be outdone, Texas Gov. Rick Perry claims he too will turn down money for the Lone Star State. They say everything is bigger in Texas, and that no doubt includes bluffs.
• In other stimulus news, Pro Publica discovers that most infrastructure money won't go to states with high unemployment; Republicans in the House and Senate who voted against the stimulus love talking about how helpful it will be in their home states; Americans United for Change puts out a pro-stimulus advertisement; and Newt Gingrich boldly proposes eliminating the capital gains tax as part of his "alternative" stimulus proposal.
• This internal memo [PDF] detailing Politico's marketing strategy for their news stories is merely proof of what everyone already expected of the D.C. daily. But as Ed Kilgore suggests, this does not prove that Politico is the future business model for journalism given the uniqueness of the market (the Beltway) it caters to in print form. Still, I'd rather take the mindless fluff of Politico than The Washington Post editorial page's desperate need to promote the fantasies of conservative hacks who recycle old columns and then deign to lecture Congress about being more open to new solutions for climate change.
• Remainders: Laura Rozen wonders why key foreign policy appointments are taking so long; CQ Politics finds Democrats flush with cash for the 2010 election cycle; D.C. takes a few more steps towards taxation with representation; Brad DeLong recommends U.C. Berkeley's chancellor fire Boalt Law professor John Yoo; Aerosmith deprives the GOP use of their music; Barack Obama comes out against reinstating the Fairness Doctrine; and Mike Tomasky defends Obama's push for bipartisanship.
• Recommended reads: Michael Leahy keeps us in the loop on the governing style of Sarah Palin; Chris Hayes takes a look at the Blue Dog caucus; and Dave Weigel looks under the hood of Scott Rasmussen's polling firm.

--Mori Dinauer

A little more information on the new housing plan in the form of these fact sheets [PDFs] from the administration, which includes a better answer on whether or not this is a giveaway to lenders:

If the total expected cost of a modification for a lender taking into account the government payments is expected to be higher than the direct costs of putting the homeowner through foreclosure, that borrower will not be eligible. For those borrowers unable to maintain homeownership, even under the affordable terms offered, the plan will provide incentives to encourage families and lenders to avoid the costly foreclosure process and minimize the damage that foreclosure imposes on lenders, borrowers and communities alike. Moreover, Treasury will not provide subsidies to reduce interest rates on modified loans to levels below 2%.

Also see this useful hypothetical case study [PDF] that gives three examples of how the loan modifications would work, and a Q&A[PDF] directed specifically at homeowners. And these interviews with Barbara Sard and David Abromowitz from earlier in the day may interest you.

-- Tim Fernholz

Expect the usual grousing about "moral hazard," especially from Republicans who normally grouse about normal hazard. And under normal circumstances, they have a point. The government should not be bailing out mortgage lenders who should never have lent money to people unlikely to be able to repay, or borrowers who should never have taken out a mortage loan. Under normal circumstances, government shouldn't be bailing out bankers, either. But these aren't normal circumstances. We're in an economic crisis. And a failure to put millions of homeowners on a firmer footing would send more shock waves throughout the economy. Not only will more people lose their homes -- surrounding homes will lose value as well, as neighborhoods become blighted with more empty houses. And lenders, worried that even more borrowers can't repay loans, will stop making additional ones.

The Obama plan will help prevent a tsunami of foreclosures this year and next, but no one knows how big the wave may get notwithstanding. Nationwide, home prices have fallen 17.5 percent from where they were in early 2007, back to where they were in late 2004. But the housing bubble started earlier than 2004 -- and based on long-term ratios of home prices to rental prices and incomes, home prices probably could easily fall another 5 to 10 percent before bottom is reached.

And then what? Whether we're talking about the bailout of Wall Street, of the auto industry, or of homeowners, the biggest questions are (1) how long will it be until the business cycle turns up again? and (2) how long until the median value of financial assets, the demand for automobiles produced by the Big Three, and median home prices all return to where they were at the height of the bubble?

The answer to (1) is likely to be a year or two. But a turnaround is just the beginning. Taxpayers who are shelling out trillions of dollars (including, indirectly, commitments by the Federal Reserve Board), as well as people who are saving for retirement, many autoworkers, and a large number of homeowners won't be -- or feel -- safe until the economy at least returns to where it was in early 2007, and then continues to move upward from there. When will this be? It may take five to ten years, or longer; as to the Big Three, maybe never.

--Robert Reich

David Sirota responds to my post on economic populism reacting to the financial crisis and anti-Semitism:

The fact is, the Wall Street elite destroyed our economy. Believing that fact and voicing it through the rhetoric of populism doesn't make somebody "anti-semitic" just because there happen to be Jews working on Wall Street, or even if the person voicing outrage happens to mention the names of wrongdoers who happen to be Jewish (like, say, Bernie Madoff). Likewise, a group of very powerful conservative ideologues in the Pentagon and in the neo-conservative think tank world pushed the country to war. That's a fact - and believing it or voicing anger about it doesn't make somebody anti-semitic, just because some of those ideologues happen to be Jewish, or even if the person voicing anger mentions the names of some people who happen to be Jewish.

What makes someone anti-semitic is the assertion of exclusivity and/or causation. For instance, anti-semites are those who say that specifically Jews on Wall Street caused the economic meltdown - that implies both that only or primarily Jews were at fault, and furthermore that those Jews' religious/ethnic heritage played a role in their wrongdoing. Similarly, anti-semites are those who claim that specifically Jews in the Pentagon pushed the Iraq War - that implies both that only or primarily Jews were war hawks, and furthermore that those Jews religious/ethnic heritage was the motivator of their war advocacy (most often, this kind of truly anti-semitic claim asserted that these Jews pushed the war because they had loyalty to Israel before America).

I agree with Sirota entirely. I should have been more specific in my post, but part of what I was reacting to was the notion that the economic crisis was staged to throw the election to Obama. This is what Rush Limbaugh said:

Now let's assume for a second here that elements of this are true. Let's assume that there was a 550 billion dollar run on the banks, on money market funds in one to two hours. Now the question is, who was doing this, who was withdrawing all this money, and the next question is, why? And that's where my mind starts exploding. And this is dangerous to have this explosions going this way, could it have been George Soros, could it have been a consortium of countries, Russia, China, Venezuela, countries that are eager to have Barack Obama elected, because they know that will make it easier for them to continue their own foreign policies in the world.

J.D. Hayworth, on the other hand, has a well known history of anti-Semitism. This is what I mean by a pinkie toe's worth of difference, in Rush's case the narrative merely resembles well worn white supremacist conspiracy theories without explicitly embracing them. Hayworth just hates Jewish people. In neither case is the speaker placing the blame where it belongs. The elites they're referring to aren't Wall Street traders who created arcane financial instruments; they are are shadowy conspirators who resemble anti-Semitic caricatures.

-- A. Serwer

Matt Yglesias observes that conservative critics of the stimulus have been acting rather nutty:

How hard would it be for a conservative- or libertarian-inclined economist to just say “the idea of a fiscal stimulus makes some sense, insofar as it’s attempted my preference would be to work as much as possible through tax side measures lest a ‘temporary’ stimulus become a permanent expansion in the size of government”? That’s totally coherent. Instead we’re getting nutty resurrections of the Treasury View, people downplaying the catastrophic nature of the 19th century business cycle, Alan Reynolds, bizarre revisionism about the New Deal, etc.

In general, that's true. But today Mike Gerson more or less made the sensible conservative point:

But while the legislation was deeply flawed, there was little alternative to action. The usual recession remedy -- the lowering of interest rates by the Federal Reserve to loosen up credit and spending -- is of little use when the credit system itself is broken and rates are already near zero. The president and Congress were left with one option: attempting a fiscal jolt to counter the economic cycle. Such efforts in the past have often been mistimed, with the cavalry arriving just after the settlers have been massacred. But one has to try. In this case, necessity was the mother of excess. ... the stimulus does have a hidden virtue. A good portion of the funding is channeled to the poor through programs such as food stamps, unemployment insurance, the child tax credit and the earned-income tax credit.

So that's a pretty reasonable place to be. But of course Gerson goes on to say that the stimulus is also undermining welfare reform, an argument also made in the Wall Street Journal. Those arguments aren't true, and here's a timely and wonkish rebuttal for your arguing needs.

Essentially, with unemployment rising and the economy tanking, more and more people need to access the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, and it's harder and harder for people on welfare to find the jobs they are required to have under welfare-to-work. Under present conditions, the costs of TANF to states are going to increase -- the contingency fund could run out this year -- and they could be required to put a larger percentage of the recipients in work programs, both of which are increasingly difficult tasks. The stimulus legislation temporarily increased funding for TANF to address the benefits side of the problem, and stops increases in the rate of welfare-to-work participation (but the actual percentages of participants in work-to-welfare remain the same). Basically, the stimulus alleviates the hardship on states so that the TANF program can continue to function when it is most needed, rather than changing its structure in any way. Welfare reform remains intact; whether or not that's a good thing is a whole different discussion...

-- Tim Fernholz

The case of Mohammed Jawad is one of the more disconcerting products of the military commissions. The key evidence against Jawad was obtained under torture, and there's very little to suggest that he's actually guilty of what he's accused of. So little, in fact, that the prosecutor on the case, Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld resigned, saying Jawad should be released. Vandeveld released a 14-page statement in support of the ACLU's petition of habeas corpus on behalf of Jawad, which also functions as a compelling argument against the military commissions as a whole. Vandeveld wrote:

The chaotic state of the evidence, overly broad and unnecessary restrictions imposed under the guise of national security, and the absence of any systematic, reliable method of preserving and cataloguing evidence, all of which have plagued the Tribunals and Commissions since their inception in 2002 and 2006, make it impossible for anyone involved (the prosecutors) or caught up (the detainees) in the Commissions to harbor even the remotest hope that justice is an achievable goal.

Jawad is now 23 and has been in custody since he was 16 or 17. The Department of Justice is trying to dismiss or delay Jawad's habeas petition until his military commissions case is complete. But the Obama administration halted all the military commissions proceedings, so basically Jawad's petition would be delayed until the administration figures out how it intends to prosecute terrorist suspects. The ACLU has filed a motion in opposition.

There's little reason to prevent Jawad from having his day in court, other than that the possibility that the administration is trying to avoid the politically harmful optics of a suspected terrorist being set free, no matter how nonexistent the case against him is.

-- A. Serwer

Megan McArdle and Ross Douthat have both made good points about shame and social behavior, and I think Ross gets to something very important here:

The responses to shame are as variable as the human race itself, and the fact that shaming sometimes sets off a self-destructive spiral doesn't mean that in other cases it can't spur repentance, and an amended life. ... shame is useful as a deterrent even when it fails as a corrective. Having your mother kick you out of the house if you get pregnant out of wedlock probably isn't going to improve your life chances, but the fear that your mother might kick you out stands a good chance of deterring you from making a bad decision in the first place. The fact that shame provokes an impulsive response is a feature, not a bug, when you're trying to deter bad behavior that is itself impulsive.

McArdle and Douthat both offer compelling examples about how shame is effective as a deterrent; Douthat's example occurs within the intimate relationships of a family. And there's a reason for that. We not only care about what our family members think, but we generally assume that they love us and have our best interests in mind. What I disagreed with in Dreher's post was the notion that we as a society should shame unwed mothers, because that acts as a deterrent against future pregnancy out of wedlock.

Douthat's example is compelling precisely because it assumes a relatively healthy family, one unstrained by social and economic circumstances. Shame is powerful as a deterrent within such a context, but I don't see how society as a whole can enforce those norms from the outside into neighborhoods affected by isolation and urban poverty. That type of shame, coming not from intimate family or friends but from outsiders, has the most potential, in my view, to spur resentment rather than "an amended life." It exists as stigma rather than the sort of tough love in Douthat's example, and part of the problem with stigma is that it is difficult to control and has every potential to be transferred to the child of an unwed mother. Ostensibly, part of what we're talking about is the breakdown of the family under circumstances of isolated urban poverty, but I don't see how that changes with a great deal of finger wagging from people who live in what is essentially a different world. Not because those people don't necessarily mean well, but because the love that makes shame such a powerful deterrent within a family, or even a neighborhood, doesn't exist in that context. Moreover, as with any isolated space, people are most concerned with making the people they know respect them, rather than society at large.

Barbara Sard of the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities was kind enough to take my phone call even though she's on vacation. Here are her early thoughts on the principles outlined in the administration's housing plan (wonkiness follows):

The plan looks very good in a number of respects. Contrary to [David] Leonhardt's article in today's Times, it does aim to focus on both the underwater problem and sub-prime part.

Leonhardt's piece -- which despite being overtaken by events is still worth a read -- speculated that Obama would try to avoid dealing with mortgages that are "underwater," the situation that occurs when a homeowner owes more money on a loan than the real value of his or her house. While some of them can continue to make payments, they may be tempted to walk away from their homes and let them foreclose;.If that happens en masse it would be very problematic for the housing market -- its a ticking time bomb that may or may not go off. When Sard refers to the sub-prime part, she's talking about those people who can't afford their payments because of ballooning interest rates and will likely face foreclosure in any case.

It does the underwater part modestly, potentially by focusing on the mortgages that are already guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac … that's a very sensible way of slicing the problem where the government through their role in basically now owning Fannie and Freddie already carry some risk that those homeowners will walk away from their mortgages. By focusing on those mortgages and modifying the terms of refinancing, the federal government takes a little hit in terms of the ultimate amount of repayment on a mortgage, but probably takes less of a hit than if the homeowner walks away.

On the sub-prime piece ... Instead of focusing either only on people who are already behind on their mortgages or only on those who have kept up -- that was kind of a tension between Congress and the administration before -- it basically does both. You can be eligible for the write-down on your mortgages if you kept up and in some cases if you haven't. You have to see the details to know how they define the people who are eligible if they're already behind. [But] one real criticism of past efforts was that if you had to be behind in order to qualify for help, it became a perverse incentive to not pay your mortgage, so they're dealing with that by saying you can be either.

... It seems to me that they did some clever things in making lenders take part of the loss on the interest rate reduction, and then matching it, and dealing directly with the problems of servicers … they're basically paying servicers at the front-end to do the modification and then in an on-going basis if the homeowners stay in their homes. That is really smart because it creates an incentive for the servicers to write down the loans.

What about worries that this is a giveaway to lenders?

People owe the money. And [the administration] does indicate their support for the bankruptcy change. With the bankruptcy change you create the leverage, particularly for the homeowners who were really defrauded. [They] will have, if that’s enacted, other means, at no cost to the taxpayer, to pressure for a cramdown on the loan. But in a lot of cases these weren't fraudulent and nobody's going to be able to prove it and that case by case dealing with things would be way to slow. They were dealing with some very practical problems given the extent of the volumes that they need to reach. You can't do this in a boutique, case-by-case method. Again, you might hear people say it's too much of a giveaway, and I think some of that is going to depend on the details, but it does seem to me that it’s a more well-rounded approach to the problems than we've seen before.

Sard also noted that there doesn't seem to be any effort, at least in this plan, to prevent renters from being affected by foreclosure, although there is some money in the stimulus to help ease renters who have been already displaced.

Because all of these foreclosure prevention efforts are focused on owner-occupants, you still have this swath of homes that are owned by people who are renting them who apparently don't qualify for any of the help, at least according to the outline. Those foreclosures would presumably be unchanged. I understand why you don’t invest public funds [in people who] have invested in property as a business, but that still means that we've got another segment of a problem here. ... To the extent that these other measures reduce the rate of decline in home values, investors may be willing to hang on as well. There are lots of people who own property in order to rent it out, and not all of them are dirty speculators. If you called them small businessmen, it would look like they were socially valuable and like we should help them.

-- Tim Fernholz

[A]ll of those prescriptions revolve around the crisis part of the equation: What about the opportunity for a new agenda under a Democratic administration? Housing policy has been stagnant for years, underfunded on the federal level and in need of new framing, especially linkages with transportation, energy, and education policy.

Donovan had sharp criticisms for HUD under the previous administration, observing that the department had "in no way" been a leader on sustainable-housing issues and calling their relationship with Congress "disturbing." Asked about working with state and local stakeholders, the new secretary observed, "The first thing we can do is do no harm. Already that would be an advance from the current state of where HUD is in terms of quote-unquote helping nonprofits and other developers."

And Sarah Posner notes that civil-liberties groups have lost their teeth:

It appears that some of the justifiably proud guardians of the Constitution are still trying to find their footing in the Obama era. For eight long years, they stood their ground against the excesses of the Bush administration. They opposed the dominionist expeditions of the religious right into the halls of power and the halls of justice for even longer. Obama, they felt safe in concluding, was a fellow traveler and a comrade in arms for beating back the dangerous intertwining of government and religion. ...

Yet since Obama's election, the coalition's rhetoric is more muted. Rather than directly take aim at the government's faith-based institution, CARD members are tinkering with the margins.

As always, subscribe to our RSS feed to receive our articles as soon as they are published.

--The Editors

The logical inference is, of course, that Obama is the dying chimp. I'm not even going feign to understand what went through the minds of the all of the editors who thought this would be okay to publish, let alone that of Delanos. Understandably, Al Sharpton and New York governor David Paterson are demanding an explanation for the offensive cartoon.

Anyway, here's a pro tip for Post editors. Things you should emphatically not compare the president to: jihadists, characters from Harriet Beecher Stowe novels, and chimpanzees. Not implicitly, not explicitly, not ever.

--Alexandra Gutierrez

The Post's Al Kamen reports that Obama is down to two finalists for FDA commissioner: former New York City health commissioner Margaret Hamburg, who also served as an assistant HHS secretary in the Clinton administration, and current Baltimore health commissioner Joshua Sharfstein, formerly a health policy advisor to Rep. Harry Waxman.

Under the Bush administration, the FDA was relentlessly politicized, most notoriously when it delayed approval of over-the-counter emergency contraceptives, even after independent medical research found that the drug was safe for girls and women of all ages.

The good news is that both Hamburg and Sharfstein have excellent records on reproductive health, and a host of other issues. In the late 1980s, Hamburg, a pharmacology expert, worked on HIV/AIDS research at the NIH. In 1993, she was President Clinton's pick to be the first ever federal AIDS coordinator. Pregnant at the time, she turned the job down. As New York City health commissioner in the 1990s, she created a successful program to assist tuberculosis patients in accessing and properly taking their medications.

Sharfstein worked for the Obama transition, leading the FDA agency assessment team. His long-term interest in medical ethics is an excellent fit for the FDA; in several medical journal articles, Sharfstein protested Pfizer's marketing to doctors and tracked the AMA's political contributions. I especially like that he worked for Waxman, who, as head of the Government Reform and Oversight Commitee, published hard-hitting reports on Big Tobacco and "crisis pregnancy centers." In Baltimore, Sharfstein has championed food safety issues and, more controversially, new treatment methods for heroin addicts.

--Dana Goldstein

I e-mailed David Abromowitz, an expert in housing policy at the Center for American Progress, to get a very preliminary reaction to the administration's plan to prevent foreclosures. Noting that this is a very complex plan and that the devil, as always, is in the details, Abromowitz offers this first reaction to the administration's principles:

The Obama plan is a welcome change of course from the last few years, on 3 counts: The plan clearly places foreclosure prevention at the forefront of the overall economic recovery battle. Rather than hoping the modifications might occur as a benefit that would somehow flow from pumping more funds into banks, the plan plainly recognizes the basic facts: If over 10 million more families face the loss of their homes, then surrounding neighborhoods with 5 or 10 times that many families are all cutting back spending and shrinking the economy rapidly. What companies will be borrowing and expanding to sell more products if consumers are still scrimping, cutting costs and staying home? Contrast this plan with, for example, the recent conservative rhetoric during the stimulus debate acknowledging that foreclosures and vacant homes are the problem, but then proposing to reduce everyone's' mortgage rate to 4% regardless of whether they need it or not. This plan instead is targeted to where we most need to focus our efforts.

Also, by endorsing a bankruptcy change benefiting homeowners who owe more than their house is worth, they are signaling that lenders will no longer be able to simply try to wait out the problem or march forward with a foreclosure. This should help motivate modifications, in addition to the specific cash incentives for servicers and mortgage investors in the proposal.

And for the first time, by directly spending an estimated $75 billion on efforts crafted to accelerate widespread loan modifications, the Executive Branch is allocating major funding for the benefit of homeowners.

I think Abromowitz is particularly right about the incentives to motivate modifications: the key to this plan is getting mortgage holders and servicers out of their game theory-style security dilemma, where waiting out the crisis may be good for an individual lender but bad for the housing market and economy overall. The plan can't be a bribe for the lending industry -- hence the support for allowing bankruptcy judges to modify mortgages -- but it can grease the wheels to get loan mods rolling.

-- Tim Fernholz

Obama gets the Charlie Savage treatment, and it isn't pretty:

In little-noticed confirmation testimony recently, Obama nominees endorsed continuing the C.I.A.’s program of transferring prisoners to other countries without legal rights, and indefinitely detaining terrorism suspects without trials even if they were arrested far from a war zone.

The administration has also embraced the Bush legal team’s arguments that a lawsuit by former C.I.A. detainees should be shut down based on the “state secrets” doctrine. It has also left the door open to resuming military commission trials.

During their confirmation hearings, Solicitor General nominee Elena Kagan endorsed the view that someone financing Al Qaeda could be defined as an enemy combatant and held without trial indefinitely, and Leon Panetta suggested that he might continue the extraordinary rendition program.

Still, Obama is the boss, and his recent executive orders ostensibly outlaw extraordinary rendition, and it is ultimately Obama's decision, not Kagan's, how to deal with suspected terrorists or their funders. As Glenn Greenwald points out, what's disconcerting is that the most important questions have yet to be answered, such as whether or not terrorists will be prosecuted in civilian courts.

There really is no other viable option that preserves the rule of law and appropriately restricts the president's power. There's no real reason not to try terrorist suspects in civilian courts, that we believe they are terrible people is not a sufficient excuse to deny them due process, because being "a bad person" isn't a crime. If we have to release them because of insufficient evidence, but the government still believes them to be guilty, then the proper thing to do is keep tabs on them. Meanwhile, the military commissions are discredited as an avenue for justice because of the perception that they've been reverse engineered to secure convictions, and the fact that we just lock up whomever we feel like for as long as we want seriously hurts our interests abroad. There are sufficient legal structures in place to facilitate the safe use of confidential information as evidence, and we have successfully convicted terrorists in civilian courts before. There's a lot of talk about how the commissions are necessary for national security, but what exactly are we protecting if not a society that operates through due process of law?

Congress recently signaled they would be willing to step in and check Obama after he abused the state secrets doctrine to block a lawsuit filed on behalf of Binyam Mohamed, they may have to do so again.

-- A. Serwer

Yesterday, an "orgy of strange bedfellows," as former George W. Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson put it, got together to release a package of policy proposals to combat poverty, under the auspices of a new "common ground" coalition, The Poverty Forum.

The group was convened by Gerson and Sojourners president Jim Wallis, the ubiquitous but accommodationist crusader against poverty. Although Wallis claimed the proposals transcended labels of left and right or conservative and liberal, the intent was clear: Liberals and conservatives both have good ideas and can find "common ground" to press for policy changes everyone can agree on.

Except that both the "everyone" and "common ground" are limited: Wallis somewhat condescendingly dismissed the notion that the group might be aiming for something sweeping, like universal health care, and settled on small bore proposals that he maintains no one would find controversial. (As Mark Silk points out, it's not even clear that all the participants, Gerson included, endorse even the small bore proposals like a modest increase in the minimum wage.)

The avoidance of the dreaded divisiveness is Wallis' higher purpose, or so he thinks. He says that defining a fetus as a person under the federal children's health insurance program (SCHIP) is only intended to improve access to health care for pregnant women. Anyone with objections about the "slippery slope" to criminalizing abortion is just being petty and divisive. "We have to get past the fear of slippery slopes and what this language might mean for the legal argument, we must get to what really supports womens' health and children," said Wallis. All right, then. How about finding another way to provide health insurance?

The "orgy," as it were (oh, if only the project were that thrilling!) was really an orgy of wiping conservatives' slate clean of their policy sins. Sure, Gerson was just the speechwriter and not the policymaker, but his purpose in the Bush White House was to cloak legislation that was crushing the poor in the rhetoric of compassion and patriotism. A verbal orgy, if you will.

Among other participants in this "common ground" project were Chuck Donovan of the Family Research Council, which just today is emailing supporters warning that "President Barack Obama has unveiled his massive plan to silence the moral voices of America and reshape our country. He calls it 'The Agenda.'" They're worried about an imaginary orgy of another kind.

It's really the FRC view of the world -- with the "traditional family" at its center, everyone else be damned -- that animates this project. One participant, Brent Orrell, who served in various capacities in Bush's faith-based initiatives, remarked that the package of proposals "when taken as a whole, embodies the best and most timeless conservative ideas and principles [including] focusing on the traditional family as seedbed of virtue and education and economic participation."

If, as politicians have clearly decided, if not out of sincerity then out of political expediency, that they need to listen to "people of faith," they need to listen to a variety of voices, not just the (admittedly Christian-only) "common ground" of the Poverty Forum. As Peter Laarman puts it, "poor people DO have enemies, and among their worst enemies are conservative religious figures who cannot wean themselves from Reaganite free-market ideology, who cannot distinguish change from charity, and who still think that making poor women bear children for calamity (cf. Isaiah 65:23) somehow conduces to God’s greater glory. To kowtow to these enemies of the poor merely grants them yet more undeserved power and legitimacy."

--Sarah Posner

Via P6, the economic crisis is affecting institutions of higher education, in particular the Historically Black Colleges and Universities that produce more than a quarter of the country's black college graduates. One of the more notable changes is Spelman, Morehouse and Clark merging their education departments:

Spelman recently announced it is phasing out its department of education in favor of a shared teacher certification program based at Clark Atlanta University that will also include Morehouse College. All three are part of the Atlanta University Center, which recently announced cost-cutting measures that will include sacrificing people and programs.

Other cost-cutting measures at Spelman include eliminating 35 positions and closing campus for the week after graduation in May. Clark Atlanta cut 100 workers and canceled its physical education classes last week after a drop in spring enrollment. At Morehouse, 25 adjunct professors, a third of the school's part-time instructors, were released.

HBCU's were already struggling with a decline in enrollment, integration meant that the most talented professors and students didn't necessarily have to turn to an HBCU, and enrollment has been on a slow decline ever since. HBCUs still provide welcome cultural spaces for black students, where they don't have to "prove" they belong there and can focus on getting an education without the frustrating racial politics that often come with attending non-HBCUs. 

-- A. Serwer

This morning in Phoenix, President Barack Obama announced the third part of his economic recovery package, the Homeowner Affordability and Stability Plan, which will address the housing market and is particularly targeted at 7 to 9 million families facing foreclosure (there were 2.3 million foreclosures last year). Interestingly, the $200 billion in funding for the plan comes from the Housing and Economic Recovery Act passed last August, not TARP or the Financial Stability Plan. Here are the main points:

• There will be refinancing options for 4 to 5 million families whose mortgages are owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Falling home prices have made many ineligible to refinance, but now even homeowners who own less than 20 percent of their home will be able to see lower interest rates and more manageable monthly payments.
• Use $75 billion to do loan modifications in the private market for 3 to 4 million at-risk homeowners. This looks to require tax payers to share some costs with lenders, who will be responsible for lowering interest rates on mortgages to a certain level (38 percent of the homeowner's income) and then costs will be matched with the government down to 31 percent. The government will also split the costs of a reduction in principal -- essentially, a write-down of the home's value. There are also incentive fees to mortgage servicers and holders for taking these write-downs, and a $10 billion insurance fund to encourage them to to modify their loans sooner rather than continuing to wait for prices to fall.
• The loan modification procedures will be standardized across all government mortgage holding agencies and all financial institutions participating in the program, preventing anyone from seizing a more advantageous deal.
• The administration will support the legislation that will allow judges to modify primary home loans during bankruptcy proceedings.

• Treasury is buying another $100 billion in preferred stock in both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in an attempt to increase confidence; the two government mortgage giants will also be increasing their loan portfolios "by $50 billion to $900 billion," which seems like a hell of a range of possibilities.

The difficulty of foreclosure prevention has always been that someone has to take a financial hit. The previous effort at dealing with the problem, HOPE for Homeowners, came out of last summer's housing legislation and failed because the program was entirely voluntary for mortgage lenders. The new plan obviously offers cost-sharing incentives for lenders (who will still face some initial loss) but also some coercive measures: One is the willingness of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to expand their market share and refinance their loans, which will affect the housing market across the board. The second is the administration's support for bankruptcy loan modification. Now the government is essentially presenting a choice for mortgage lenders: take our deal, which is standardized across the entire industry, or let a bankruptcy judge modify the loan however he or she sees fit.

The president was also careful to present his plan in terms of the overall economic good, since many are still leery about bailing out homeowners who are defaulting on their loans, even if in many cases they were responsible and made their payments. The president stressed that foreclosures result in a drop in surrounding home value, and his fact sheet claims that "the average homeowner could see his or her home value stabilized against declines in price by as much as $6,000." So really, it's a rescue for everyone. Right?

More reaction to the plan to come later in the day...

-- Tim Fernholz

Although Krugman is of course right to blame a "fanatical, irrational minority" for the current crisis in California, it can't be emphasized enough that what really matters is the incredibly stupid institutional rules that empower this minority: namely, the idiotic super-majority for tax increases and an initiative system that both created that supermajority requirement and provides incentives to vote for every tax cut while mandating certain kinds of spending because the issues are isolated. Fortunately, the federal government (while it has too many veto points) is not quite at this level yet, and at least the stupid filibuster rule doesn't apply to budgets.

--Scott Lemieux

Q: When is $2 billion both "a drop in the bucket" and "too much?"

A: When the $2 billion in question is for neighborhood redevelopment, and the stimulus package drastically changes how such funds are allocated.

Here's the back story: When Congress allocate