Update: Candidate Dodd

As candidates continue their persistent scramble to find a way into voters' hearts, Sen. Dodd (D-CT) has called for a reform of a "reform," namely the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005. That legislation, heavily lobbied by banks and credit card issuers, is a typically draconian, anti-consumer bill that made filing for bankruptcy more difficult. Americans overcome by "consumer" debt (is there another kind?) were required, among other things, to undergo financial counseling, "means testing" (to determine whether they should file under Chapter 13--a restructuring of debt vs. Chapter 7--debt liquidation, in essence making it more likely that filers would be forced to pay some of their debt), and were not allowed to discharge student loan debt (an ever-skyrocketing expense for a growing number of Americans).
In Dodd's view, the law "was literally written to ensure that people would be trapped under financial burdens - either student loans or credit card debt."
Dodd took the opportunity to criticize his Democratic rivals, declaring himself "mortified" by their past support for bankruptcy legislation. He was particularly critical of John Edwards who has campaigned heavily on poverty issues. An Edwards spokesman said, as reported by the Des Moines Register, "Edwards' bold, specific proposals to crack down on predatory lenders, protect consumers, and help families get ahead go far beyond than any other candidate."

It's two years too late for some people (those who've already filed), but this is a critical consumer issue that far too often is simply ignored. And it's a definite reason (the fact of bankruptcy, apart from the mechanism) why the term "middle class" simply becomes less and less meaningful with each passing year.

Iraq + Math= Confusion

When it comes to violence in Iraq, much of the debate in the US has focused on whether it's declining and, if so, by how much. Certainly, this is of interest to political partisans as people seek to determine whether President Bush's troop surge is a success or a failure.
But lost in the domestic political calculation--this sad statistical gamesmanship that uses, primarily, Iraqi civilians as if they were casino tokens--is an open and representative picture of how many Iraqi civilians have been, and are continuing to be, injured and killed and by whom.
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The NY Times reports that the American military will begin relying more heavily on Iraqi government data, as troops levels begin to drop, in order "to gauge the level of violence and ultimately the effectiveness of the American strategy to stabilize the country."
The military's use of such data will prove more important since one of the factors skewing casualty data is a focus on American troop casualties. A recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) report said "attacks against Iraqi Security Forces and civilians have declined less than attacks against coalition forces.” It cautioned that “the incidents captured in military reporting do not account for all violence throughout Iraq. For example, they may underreport incidents of Shi’a militias fighting each other and attacks against Iraqi security forces in southern Iraq and other areas with few or no coalition forces.” Continuing violence "make[s] national dialogue challenging, and increasing levels of displacement are adding to an alarming humanitarian crisis.”
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Anthony Cordesman, an analyst at CSIS (Center for Strategic and International Studies) added that the data "and other figures on Iraqi civilian casualties -- do not cover large numbers of Iraqi wounded, most individual killings and disappearances; lesser forms of violence like beatings, threats and intimidation; and individual attacks on family members that are part of sectarian and ethnic cleaning and displacements."
Yet relying on Iraqi government data also has its drawbacks. Civilian victims of Iraqi government-initiated violence are not reliably counted. And given the problem of, for example, militia infiltration of Iraq's Interior Ministry, interested parties have political reasons for not reporting (or underreporting) civilian injuries and deaths.
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Perhaps the surge has helped reduce violence in Iraq although the reasons are not entirely clear. But the continued absence of political reconciliation, or "accommodation" as it's now termed, will probably only worsen an already unstable environment as the US begins its troop drawdown. How much time anyone has left, particularly Iraq's civilian population, is anyone's guess.

Political Cut and Paste

Accurate representations of situations and events seem increasingly harder to come by.
The latest example of inaccuracy, or "nuance" as some would have it, involves the assessment of the US military "surge" in Iraq. Rep. John Murtha (D-Penn), a well-known critic of that war, said "I think the surge is working, but that's only one element." Commenting on this, the conservative blog Hot Air emphasized the first part of the statement, then added "he qualifies it by insisting the Iraqis need to do better on political reconciliation, a conclusion also reached by, um, everyone."
But is this a "qualification"? George Bush said the intention of the surge was to give the Iraqi government "the breathing space it needs to make progress in other critical areas." Rather than a qualification, it is actually the purpose of the surge.
According to the Wall Street Journal (via Huffington Post), Murtha's concern with the surge was that it would affect "readiness at home or extend the tours of troops now in the war zone." Said Murtha at the time, "most of the military commanders say we can't afford to send more troops." In neither of these comments did he suggest or imply that the US military was somehow incapable, or that the surge would fail because of the inability of the military.
I'm not the least bit interested in defending Murtha or anyone else. I am interested in seeing a debate accurately represented--all issues, both (or more, as the case may be) sides--a debate on how best the US can encourage outcomes whether in Iraq or elsewhere.

Pakistan's Nuclear Weapons

The internal situation in Pakistan has probably caused plenty of sleepless nights in various parts of the world. Imagine a country where the central government supposedly has control over its nuclear arsenal but is unable to extend its authority over large parts of its own territory. Although the Defense Department says it isn't concerned about the Pakistani nukes, its answers strike me as opaquely constructed: "I don’t see any indication right now that security of those weapons is in jeopardy," is the way Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, put it. Upon reading that, I couldn't help thinking that, read differently, the security of the weapons might be in jeopardy, we just haven't seen any indication yet.
And then there's the answer by Sec. of Defense, Robert Gates, on the question of American knowledge about Pakistan's weapons and how and where they're stored:

Q: Are there gaps in the U.S. government's knowledge about the way that system works?

Sec. Gates: I don't know the answer to that.

I only hope he means that in a personal, technical way rather than a general comment on the state of American knowledge about this issue.
One of the reasons for concern (beyond the obvious) was the recent NY Times article which revealed that the US does not know where the weapons are located. And if this isn't bad enough, we need to keep in mind our imperfect knowledge about elements within Pakistan's military and intelligence, given "the considerable bloc of radical Islamist Taliban (if not al-Qaida) sympathizers within the Pakistani military and its notorious intelligence service, the ISI (which in fact helped create al-Qaida)."
In short, imperfect knowledge breeds uncertainty and insecurity. And that is a prescription for unpredictability. This isn't a pleasant thought and, indeed, becomes less pleasant with each passing day when we consider what we know of Iran's intentions--equally opaque, imperfect and uncertain.

Why Iraq's Refugees are Going Home

Iraqi refugees from Syria are starting to return to Iraq. The question is, are they returning due to a drop in violence following the troop surge, or because Syria is forcing them out?
Newsweek reports that "[t]housands of Iraqis are finally returning, lured by news of lessening bloodshed in Baghdad and increasingly unwelcome in the neighboring lands where they tried to escape the war."
Examples of that unwelcome attitude in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt, Newsweek says, include forbidding Iraqis to hold jobs. In the case of Egypt and Lebanon, it also includes a refusal to allow Iraqi children access to public schools.
The UNCHR reports, "that only 14 percent of Iraqi refugees are returning because of improved security conditions. Around 70 percent say they are leaving because of tougher visa regulations and because they are not allowed to work and can no longer afford to stay in Syria."
Contrast that with a stories from the Associated Press picked up by the NY Times, Washington Post and FoxNews:
WaPo: "Iraqi refugees, heartened by reports of the lull in violence in the capital, were beginning to return."
NY Times: the return of refugees was "hailed" by the Iraqi government "as a sign of growing public confidence." It quotes a Iraqi military spokesman who said, "the returning home of displaced families is considered as a great victory for law enforcement and national reconciliation."
FoxNews: "Many Iraqis have headed back on own their own from Syria and elsewhere as extremist attacks have fallen sharply in Baghdad and other areas."
Certainly, many Iraqis are returning because they believe it is safer to do so now than at any time in the past. But the wire stories carried by media here do a journalistic disservice to their readers by underplaying, to put it mildly, the reasons why a large majority of Iraqis are going home.

Republicans, CNN and Growing Irrelevance

The latest Republican "debate" demonstrates either how far CNN has fallen or how utterly irrelevant the Republican Party has become.
In what should've been, by any reasonable standard, a debate about issues was instead a series of increasingly bizarre questions regarding illegal immigration, the bible and the confederate flag. And in responses to immigration, no one addressed why we have such high numbers of immigrants (legal or otherwise)--namely, NAFTA, CAFTA (and three additional, pending agreements with other Latin American nations) and globalization, generally. Apparently, it isn't clear to these candidates that the people from Latin America are, implicitly, criticizing with their feet lop-sided trade agreements, else they would remain at home gainfully employed.
Instead, the candidates argued about whether illegal immigrants were employed at Mitt Romney's or Rudy Giuliani's governors' mansions and who would exhaust themselves the fastest "securing our borders."
But bizarre questions aside, there were some equally bizarre answers. Here's one:
Question: "What would you do as president to repair the image of America in the eyes of the Muslim world?"
Sen. McCain (R-AZ): "Well, I would do a lot of things, but the first and most important and vital element is to continue this surge which is succeeding and we are winning the war in Iraq. That's the first thing I would do. I would make sure that we do what we can to help reconstruct the country, to help the Maliki government move forward as rapidly as possible to train the police."
Even though the surge is drawing down. Even though reconstructing Iraq, training its police and helping the government (presumably to engage Sunnis in order to have a more representative government) was the goal in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007. It's nearly 2008. And this is McCain's answer.
But even stranger was Duncan Hunter's response: "[W]hen you [Muslim countries] were threatened from outside, the Americans left the safety of their own homes to come and defend you. I will never apologize for the United States of America."
He didn't specify which countries were threatened, by whom, or how the US defended them. As there was no follow-up by CNN, I suppose we'll never know.
It's remarkable to witness how far our political "elite" have fallen. And the media's encouragement of this, this ignominy, is as much a disgrace as anything.

The Poor, the Constitution, and When a Search Isn't One (Really)

Earlier this week, the Supreme Court refused to hear a San Diego County case involving the 4th Amendment, warrantless searches and welfare recipients. Those receiving government assistance could be denied benefits if they refused to submit to searches of their homes. The 9th Circuit had earlier ruled that the home visits didn't constitute a search since recipients were free to turn away investigators.
But how free are people who depend on government assistance to turn away investigators, particularly if they might be denied benefits? The 9th Circuit's decision, that "because the . . . visits serve an important governmental interest, are not criminal investigations, occur with advance notice and the applicant’s consent, and alleviate the serious administrative difficulties associated with welfare eligibility verification," they were not unconstitutional.
It should be noted that this was never a question of fraud. As the ACLU said in its initial July, 2000 suit, "in direct violation of the Bill of Rights, the home-search program applies only to those individuals whose applications raise no suspicion of fraud and contain no factual inconsistency."
The Court's decision said such visits were not searches because the purpose was not criminal investigation. Really? Then why does the county send "investigators from the District Attorney's Office's Public Assistance Fraud unit to search the homes of welfare applicants unannounced and without a warrant"?
Someone sent from the fraud unit sounds to me like someone who's going to conduct a search. And you can bet a much greater number of people would be up in arms if this case didn't involve the poor.

Lobbying and Other Fun Games

Sen. Trent Lott's (R-MS) resignation announcement requires a revisiting of lobbying practices in Washington D.C.
Under new Senate rules, Lott would be prohibited from directly lobbying his former colleagues for two years were he to depart after the current session adjourns. If he resigns prior to that, as he intends, he will be eligible to lobby starting in January, 2009.
In August, Congress passed the “Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007” which, among other things, banned "travel junkets" paid for by lobbyists on behalf of members of congress and their staffs. But whatever the legislation accomplished, it obviously wasn't as comprehensive as it might have been since, as Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) observed in the NY Times, “this will continue the earmarking and pork-barrel projects. We are passing up a great opportunity and again the American people will have been deceived.”
While reform of a type might have been achieved by the legislation, the complications--and loopholes--in such legislation are obvious. From OMB Watch: "The FEC [Federal Election Commission] asked for feedback on various questions, including whether the requirements for disclosure should extend beyond registered lobbyists to include money bundled by other employees of a lobbying organization."
And, as the Washington Post noted, the gamesmanship,
by lobbyists allows for business as usual: "In recent days, about 100 members of Congress and hundreds of Hill staffers attended two black-tie galas, many of them as guests of corporations and lobbyists that paid as much as $2,500 per ticket. Because accepting such gifts from special interests is now illegal, the companies did not hand the tickets directly to lawmakers or staffers. Instead, the companies donated the tickets back to the charity sponsors, with the names of recipients they wanted to see and sit with at the galas."
The failure to address this problem honestly and comprehensively makes it clear how far we still need to go to ensure the American people have open, transparent and responsive government--responsive, that is, to the people and not to K Street.

Mitt Romney and the Art of Logic

Mitt Romney made a most peculiar statement yesterday. In response to a reporter's question on whether Romney would name a Muslim to a cabinet post, the Republican candidate for president said, "based on the numbers of American Muslims [as a percentage] in our population, I cannot see that a cabinet position would be justified. But of course, I would imagine that Muslims could serve at lower levels of my administration.”
Weird logic from a man who is himself a religious minority still reviled in some circles. By this reasoning, should he be running for the nation's highest office? After all, if I may doctor a quote, "based on the number of American Mormons, I cannot see that a presidential position would be justified." He didn't say that but then he could've.

Candidate Richardson

Governor Bill Richardson has, for obvious reasons, emphasized his foreign policy experience in his presidential campaign. As former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (1997-1998), he has a familiarity with that body in particular and international diplomacy in general.
He wrote in July 2007 of the need for a "grand strategy" to fight and ultimately defeat Al Qaeda specifically and, more generally, what he terms jihadism: "A critical first step is to enhance our commitment -- military, political and economic -- to Afghanistan. To defeat the resurgent Taliban will require a significant increase in NATO forces along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border-- and that will require American leadership."
Interestingly, as a former UN ambassador, while one would think he'd understandably embrace a multilateral diplomatic approach to world affairs, calling for a "significant increase" in NATO forces in Afghanistan runs counter to the reluctance (to be polite) of NATO members to continue that fight at all, never mind actually increasing their military presence there.
At the most recent Democratic debate in Las Vegas, Richardson responded to CNN's Wolf Blitzer's "clever" question (essentially, are human rights more important than national security) by arguing that "[in] Pakistan . . . Islamic parties get maybe 15 percent of the vote . . . so this threat that, oh, revolutionary elements are going to overtake him, if he has a fair election . . . " is nonsense. He didn't add that the vast majority of moderate Pakistanis have had their aspirations consistently thwarted by the Bush Administration's refusal to force Musharraf to reinstate the Constitution, allow free elections, and step down from power.
As part of his overarching "grand strategy," Richardson also calls for a Marshall Plan for Afghanistan and Pakistan, citing the border areas of Waziristan as "poverty-stricken breeding grounds for Jihadism."
Richardson has articulated a multilateral, primarily soft-power message for fighting extremism in the Islamic world. What remains to be seen is how willing America's allies would be to sign on to this approach in any meaningful way. The Clinton Administration's Southwest Asian diplomatic strategy didn't bear much fruit given that Pakistan and India detonated their first nuclear weapons on Bill Clinton's watch. Perhaps, as has been argued, the Clinton Administration's approach to foreign policy was one of benign neglect, but Richardson seems to understand the obvious need for the sort of direct foreign policy engagement largely eschewed by his former boss.
In a speech at the Center for National Policy, Richardson spoke at length regarding a way forward with Iran. Significantly, he stressed the need for direct negotiations with the Iranians without preconditions. "Talking without preconditions does not mean backing off one inch over fundamental objectives, such as insuring that Iran never acquires nuclear weapons," he said.
He also made an important distinction between undermining the Iranian government by funding emigre groups who'd like to overthrow the regime, and initiating contacts within Iran "with moderate and pragmatic elements in both the Iranian political class and in the broader society, including business people and students who have supported moderate politicians in the past, and may do so again in the future."
Now, if the other candidates of both parties were to take such a reasoned approach, we might find ourselves better situated over time within the region.

Democracy Abroad

There's nothing like a good poke-in-the-eye gone wrong.
Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinijad has offered to be an observer at next year's presidential election. Unfortunately (but not really), Ahmadinijad seems to think George Bush is running again for re-election. "If the White House officials allow us to be present as an observer in their presidential election we will see whether people in their country are going to vote for them again or not," he said.
Of course, Iran's own elections probably wouldn't withstand international scrutiny since more than 1,000 candidates were disqualified by the guardian council whose members are appointed by Ayatollah Khamenei.
Similarly, Russia's Vladimir Putin has expressed anger at the U.S., accusing the State Department of persuading Europe's election monitoring group, the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), to refuse to monitor upcoming Russian elections.
"Their goal is to make the elections illegitimate," Putin said, a charge denied by the organization. Putin's anger is likely an effort at redirection since police detained hundreds of protesters over the weekend, including Garry Kasparov the former chess grandmaster, potential presidential candidate and Putin critic.

Candidate Thompson

Today we'll examine a Republican candidate for president, former Sen. Fred Thompson (R-Tenn), who is currently polling in Iowa at 15%, ahead of Rudy Giuliani and behind Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney.
The issues Thompson has highlighted in his campaign include a continuation of George Bush's tax cut policies.
Similar to the President's, Thompson's tax plan focuses
on corporate tax rates and small businesses. A central element of the plan involves letting "taxpayers [have] the option of remaining under the current, complex tax code or opting for a simplified, flat tax code."
Of course, this would have the effect--intended or otherwise--of fracturing and thus destroying the existing tax structure (while avoiding an unpopular national debate). Not detailed is where the federal budget will be cut to pay for his tax policy, beyond saying he would target (in the words his campaign's policy director, Mark Esper) "waste, fraud and abuse."
However, Citizens Against Government Waste, identified only $13.2 billion in "pork" for fiscal year 2007, a number clearly insufficient to pay for his proposed cuts.
A second way Thompson would control spending is on Social Security. He advocates a popular Republican plan that would index benefits to price growth instead of wage growth. In the most recent Republican debate, Thompson said, "the indexing of benefits in the future, from wages to prices, [would let] those retiring in the future get the same benefits in real dollars as those retiring now, but not more."
But according to the Urban Institute "since prices generally grow more slowly than wages, price indexing would reduce benefits for most new retirees by about 30 percent by 2050, compared to current law . . . [and] would significantly reduce Social Security's role in providing retirement security for middle-income workers."
How Thompson as president would sell this to an electorate who, when faced with a 30% drop in benefits, would be understandably enraged is unclear.
But he owes it to the voters to explicitly make clear the significant reduction in benefits his plan would entail.