Is It Good News? Is It Really, After All This Time, Good News?

Chart via Calculated Risk

Calculated Risk:

From the BLS:

Nonfarm payroll employment increased by 192,000 in February, and the unemployment rate was little changed at 8.9 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today.
…
The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for December was revised from +121,000 to +152,000, and the change for January was revised from +36,000 to +63,000.

The following graph shows the employment population ratio, the participation rate, and the unemployment rate.

Daniel Indiviglio at The Atlantic:

It should be noted that today’s report revised upwards the number of jobs for both December and January to 152,000 from 121,000 and to 63,000 from 36,000, respectively. Obviously, it’s good news that there were actually 58,000 more jobs created during these two months combined than we thought.

Those 192,000 net new jobs in February according to BLS’s Establishment survey aren’t far off the 250,000 estimated by its Household survey. There was a major discrepancy last month: these surveys estimated 36,000 and 589,000 jobs created, respectively. It’s nice to see these two surveys’ statistics a little closer together in February, as it provides better credibility to the numbers we’re seeing.

Private sector jobs did much better than government jobs in February. Firms added 222,000, while state and local jobs declined by 30,000. Federal jobs were unchanged.

Felix Salmon:

The general reaction to this morning’s jobs report is “meh”, as you might expect, given the release, where the phrases “changed little”, “about unchanged”, “little or no change”, “unchanged”, and “essentially unchanged” all appear in the first five paragraphs. But that’s largely a function of the fact that the release attacks the unemployment figures first; when it comes to payrolls, they rose by a statistically significant amount — 192,000 jobs, and the trend, while modest, is clearly in the right direction:

Since a recent low in February 2010, total payroll employment has grown by 1.3 million, or an average of 106,000 per month.

The really good news in this report is that it’s looking increasingly as though the sharp drop in the unemployment rate over December and January, when it fell from 9.8% to 9.0% in two months, is less of an aberration than it might seem. The 8.9% rate, while undeniably unacceptably high, is the first time we’ve seen an 8 handle on this figure in almost two years. And remember that in October 2009, the number was 10.1%.

Given that unemployment by its nature falls more slowly than it rises, a decrease of 1.2 percentage points in 16 months has to be taken as an indication that something is, finally, going right. (Other unemployment rates, like the much-discussed U6, are also down sharply: it’s now 15.9%, from 17.0% in November.)

Even the worst news of the report, in table A-12, is something of a statistical aberration: while the mean duration of unemployment hit an atrocious new high of 37.1 weeks, that’s mainly because the upper bound for for unemployment duration was changed this year to 5 years from 2 years. The median duration fell, to 21.2 weeks. There’s still an American underclass of about 2.5 million long-term unemployed, but it does seem to be shrinking a little.

Tom Diemer at Politics Daily:

The news wasn’t good enough for the Republican National Committee. RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said even with the better jobs numbers, “we have yet to see the leadership we need coming out of the White House to restore sustainable economic growth. . . . Frankly, if the answer doesn’t involve more spending, this administration is simply out of solutions.”

But Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) saw a better day ahead and warned that cutting the federal budget too deeply this year could cost jobs in a fragile economy. “Republicans should work with us to quickly pass a long-term budget that reduces the deficit while protecting jobs, and [giving] business certainty,” he said. Similarly, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said the improving economy “remains threatened by irresponsible budget cutting in Congress and in states and cities.”

Ezra Klein:

The most important thing for not only the economy, but also the long-term deficit, is that we get unemployment down, and fast. When businesses begin hiring again, that’ll mean more revenue rushing into state and federal coffers, it’ll mean gains in the stock market, it’ll mean lower social spending through programs like Medicaid and unemployment insurance. Sharp spending cuts may save us some money, but that doesn’t mean they’re a good deal, at least right now. What we need at the moment is more jobs reports like this one — businesses need to be convinced that this is a recovery, not merely a good month. Anything that might get in the way should wait until we’ve had a few of them in a row.

Doug Mataconis:

There are caveats, of course. There are still millions of people sitting outside the labor force after the recession, and returning them to full employment is going to be a difficult, if not impossible, task to achieve The rising price of oil, brought on by the myriad crises in the Middle East, could put a damper on any economic recovery we’re experiencing right now. And, of course, this could all be a one month anomaly. Nonetheless, this is good news and let’s hope it continues.

Try And Find Your Way Around Our Afghanistan Maze!

Dexter Filkins and Mark Mazzetti at NYT:

The aide to President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan at the center of a politically sensitive corruption investigation is being paid by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to Afghan and American officials.

Mohammed Zia Salehi, the chief of administration for the National Security Council, appears to have been on the payroll for many years, according to officials in Kabul and Washington. It is unclear exactly what Mr. Salehi does in exchange for his money, whether providing information to the spy agency, advancing American views inside the presidential palace, or both.

Mr. Salehi’s relationship with the C.I.A. underscores deep contradictions at the heart of the Obama administration’s policy in Afghanistan, with American officials simultaneously demanding that Mr. Karzai root out the corruption that pervades his government while sometimes subsidizing the very people suspected of perpetrating it.

Josh Duboff at New York Magazine:

Salehi was arrested in July after investigators wiretapped him soliciting a bribe in exchange for “impeding an American-backed investigation into a company suspected of shipping billions of dollars out of the country for Afghan officials, drug smugglers and insurgents.” He was promptly released after Karzai stepped in, however, which officials said may have been due to the fear he knew about “corrupt dealings” within Karzai’s administration. Both the CIA and Karazi declined to comment in response to inquires from the Times.

Tom Diemer at Politics Daily:

A CIA spokesman declined comment on Salehi but told the Times that “reckless allegations from anonymous sources” don’t change the fact that the agency “works hard to advance the full range of U.S. policy objectives in Afghanistan.” Another U.S. official said, “If we decide as a country that we’ll never deal with anyone in Afghanistan who might down the road — and certainly not at our behest — put his hand in the till, we can all come home right now. If you want intelligence in a war zone, you’re not going to get it from Mother Teresa or Mary Poppins.”

But others in the administration think the U.S. must maintain pressure in the battle against corruption in Kabul or risk seeing ordinary Afghans turn to the Taliban when they lose faith in the government.

Max Boot at Commentary:

Everyone knows that corruption is a huge, crippling, corrosive problem in Afghanistan and that reducing it won’t be easy. But aside from the obvious obstacles we face — namely an entrenched political class in Afghanistan that has gotten rich from foreign lucre — there is a not-so-obvious obstacle as well: the interest that many in the U.S. government have in lubricating relationships with lots of greenbacks. In this connection the New York Times’s Dexter Filkins and Mark Mazzetti have a great scoop today about how the CIA has been paying off Mohammed Zia Salehi, the aide to President Karzai who has been charged with corruption. As the Times account notes, “Other prominent Afghans who American officials have said were on the C.I.A.’s payroll include the president’s half brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, suspected by investigators of playing a role in Afghanistan’s booming opium trade.”

The list is actually considerably longer, and from the CIA’s narrow standpoint, the investments are well justified. The Times quotes an anonymous “American official” as follows: “If we decide as a country that we’ll never deal with anyone in Afghanistan who might down the road — and certainly not at our behest — put his hand in the till, we can all come home right now. If you want intelligence in a war zone, you’re not going to get it from Mother Teresa or Mary Poppins.” True, and the CIA has been paying off rogues for information ever since its inception. Such activity is to be expected from any competent intelligence service, but in Afghanistan, this has had parlous consequences.

The funding that the CIA has provided — along with largesse from the U.S. military, USAID, the State Department, and other agencies — has turbo-charged the problem of corruption. It has led to the emergence of a class of malign actors, fabulously wealthy Afghans who have connections not only to the U.S. government but also to the Taliban and the drug cartels. They are widely seen as the real center of power in Afghanistan, and it is this perception, more than anything else, that fuels support for the insurgency. The problem begins at the top with Hamid Karzai who, shamefully, intervened to get Salehi sprung from jail shortly after his arrest.

Some in the U.S. government believe that there is nothing to be done about such corruption and that fighting it is counterproductive because it will damage our “relationships” with key Afghans. As one “Obama administration official” tells Filkins and Mazzetti:  “Fighting corruption is the very definition of mission creep.” Wrong. Fighting corruption is the only way to achieve our mission.

Mark Kleiman:

Once you start intervening in the politics of corrupt countries, you can’t live without the crooks, and you can’t live with them. I never thought I’d say it, but Michael Moore was completely right about Karzai. The problem with this sort of foreign-policy “realism”is how unrealistic it is in imagining that the victims of the crappy little tyrannies we support won’t come to hate our guts.

“Good Morning America How Are You? Don’t You Know Me I’m Your Native Son.”

Joel Achenbach at WaPo:

I was in Toyko, my first and only trip to Asia, when Katrina hit, and rather than wander that exotic place I spent many hours in the hotel room, watching CNN and monitoring Web sites, rapt and horrified like everyone else. The hurricane was awful enough, but the aftermath was shattering — the incompetent response, the rapidly deteriorating conditions at the Superdome, the people dying in wheelchairs. Bush looking out the window of Air Force One, a politically fatal fly-over. There were those rumors (untrue) of roving gangs of rapists, as ugly racial fears surfaced. We all saw poverty and desperation like we hadn’t seen before. This can’t be America, is what a lot of people thought.

I remember we had a lot of great commentary on the Achenblog during the crisis. Unfortunately, they’re no longer live on The Post’s Web site, though maybe they’re stored somewhere. Here’s what I wrote, filing from Japan, one week into the crisis:

Katrina has become a story about race in America. Most affluent and semi-affluent Americans rarely see poor people — they live on the other side of town. The poor of the Deep South, largely black, haven’t been front and center in American consciousness since the 1960s. Katrina has changed that. Even though it’s a painful and rancorous issue, maybe some good will come out of it (predictable upbeat happy note). [A minute ago I caught myself on the verge of using the phrase “well-meaning whites” and had a Dave B. thought: “The Well-Meaning Whites” would make a great name for a rock band.]

There are many types of racism, including the type that says there’s no racism in America anymore, and the situation would be precisely the same if the victims all looked like Macauley Culkin. Then there’s institutional racism: We have to ask whether the government would have been better prepared for this sort of situation in New Orleans if the most vulnerable communities hadn’t been, for the most part, black neighborhoods. (Like, were the levees considered good enough for “the black part of town?”) [The Chicago Tribune ran a graphic showing elevation and demographics in New Orleans; to a striking degree the areas below sea level are predominantly African American.] This will likely wind up in congressional hearings — full-blown postmortems, with testimony from folks high and low, the rescuers and the not-quickly-rescued, that will be far more dramatic than the Supreme Court confirmation hearings (now plural).

In the meantime, there are a couple of good stories in The Post today on the racial dimension of Katrina and the slow response by the government. One is by Wil Haygood, who has been filing daily from the scene of the disaster, and who explains today why so many poor people didn’t evacuate before the storm hit. The second is an essay by Lynne Duke and Teresa Wiltz in the Style section, and one passage jumps out:

“In the Chicago Fire of 1871, the Galveston Hurricane of 1900 and the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, minority groups (Germans, African Americans and Chinese) were rumored to be preying on white women by chewing on their fingers to steal their jewelry. It’s not such a stretch to see parallels in the unconfirmed reports of roving bands of rapists in New Orleans.”

In Japan, at the Memorial Hall for the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, there is a separate monument to the Koreans who were killed because of rumors that they had caused the quake and were poisoning the water supply. There was no truth to it, of course. But in times of crisis, people turn on minorities. It will be interesting to see if some of the early news reports about gangs of armed thugs, about people shooting on rescue helicopters, hold up. Rumors are thick in a whirlwind.

I’ve been to New Orleans a few times this summer, and it still shows the effects of the Big One. At least that’s my impression, for what it’s worth. Bourbon Street is as rowdy as ever (the destiny of all iconic American locales is to become parodies of themselves), and the Garden District has charm to burn, but I still had the sense of a place damaged not just by water but by an exodus of people and capital.

Howard Steven Friedman at The Huffington Post:

I was working in Accra, the capital of Ghana, when the Katrina disaster occurred. The immediate reaction of one of my Ghanaian coworkers was to state, “America will rebuild New Orleans in no time!” With my natural cynicism, I asked, “Why are you so confident that American will react quickly?” My Ghanaian coworker countered, “America is the richest, most powerful country in the world. You even put a man on the moon. If America can spend billions of dollars on wars in Iraq, it can certainly rebuild a city in no time.” He then proceeded to challenge me:

Of course, America is a very corrupt country with a dirty history of oppression, injustice and slavery. While America likes to lecture Ghana about corruption, every African knows all about Halliburton’s no-bid contracts and their connections to your vice president.

He then qualified his initial statement by saying, “America could rebuild New Orleans in no time, if it wanted to.”

When our conversation ended, I walked away with many thoughts spinning in my head. I remembered how outside the United States, people are often more aware of other countries, cultures, history and news than Americans. Perhaps this is a reflection of America’s educational system, America’s embedded self-perception of exceptionalism or merely a negative side-effect of America being so powerful. I remembered the launching of the 2003 Iraq invasion and how pathetic Colin Powell appeared trying to defend the upcoming invasion with “evidence of weapons of mass destruction” that wouldn’t convince most schoolchildren, let alone the rest of the world. I remembered the feelings of helplessness as the American government insisted on waging a war, with virtually no debate or discussion in Congress or in the media, while public protests were actively suppressed. Finally, I remembered my grandfather’s collection of newspaper cover pages. His favorite was the 1969 moon landing as he insisted that the manned moon landing was the greatest event in all of history, not merely U.S. history. Mankind, he argued, had been staring at the moon throughout history, and America will always be known as the first country to place a human there.

Five years later, I dread running into that same Ghanaian coworker. He would undoubtedly remind me of the government’s poor response to those suffering during Hurricane Katrina. He would point out the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers failures, FEMA’s issues, the needless death and the slow recovery of many parts of the city. He would soon swing the conversation to talk about more recent events. He would cite how the US government can find so many billions of dollars to support banks, bankers and other financially and politically elite, as well as pay for wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan but how America is torn apart arguing about providing basic health care to all its citizens. He would point out that the ugly reality of American inequality raised its head in the government’s reaction to Katrina. He would remind me of the media’s obsession with race-based stories about chaos and hooliganism, prominently displaying images of armed national guards. Lastly, he would conclude that “A person, group or even a country’s priorities are reflected in how they spend their time and money. America could have rebuilt New Orleans in no time, if it wanted to.”

Michael D. Brown at The Daily Beast:

This still “minor” Hurricane Katrina struck Florida at 7 p.m. All responders were prepared yet there were still nine Floridians dead almost immediately. The next day would be worse.

August 26, 2005: As we expected from our exercise involving Hurricane Pam, Hurricane Katrina’s wind speed momentarily dropped to 75 miles an hour by 9 a.m. The change was not as encouraging as it might seem. It was like a long-distance runner slowing briefly around the curve before increasing speed for an all out race to the finish, in this case Louisiana. And as our experts predicted, eight hours later, the storm had regained its momentum and become Category 2. Hurricane Katrina was now ripping along the gulf at 100 miles per hour.

Hurricane Katrina swept through Florida, traveled along the Gulf Coast, and continued picking up speed. Unless it shifted direction, it would strike New Orleans with a minimum speed of 115 miles per hour—Category 3. The mayor knew this. The governor knew this. The city’s first responders, along with first responders in those nearby communities that maintained mutual assistance pacts, all knew this. That was why we expected the same call for assistance Jeb Bush had made. That was why we also expected a mandatory evacuation order within New Orleans. Instead I felt we were confronted with denial, delay, and poor choices.

Tom Diemer at Politics Daily:

With the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina approaching, a central figure in the botched response, then-FEMA administrator Michael Brown, says the Bush administration made a “fatal mistake” in churning out facts and figures about its efforts instead of explaining the wider picture and the obstacles the government faced in dealing with the catastrophe.

All of the numbers “were factually correct, but weren’t in context,” the former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency told CNN Thursday. “We’re moving all of this stuff in. We have teams here. Rescue teams are doing this. But we never explained to the people that it’s not coming as fast as we want it to, and it’s not enough, because of the number of people that were left behind in the aftermath of the storm.”

Brown said he winced when President Bush told him on Sept. 2, while chaos reigned in New Orleans, “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.” “I knew the minute he said that, the media and everybody else would see a disconnect between what he was saying and what I was witnessing on the ground. That’s the president’s style. His attitude and demeanor is always one of being a cheerleader and trying to encourage people to keep moving. It was just the wrong time and the wrong place.”

Ten days later Brown, who had little experience in dealing with natural disasters, was out as FEMA chief. He now criticizes his boss at the time, then-Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, for his handling of the situation. Chertoff was an avian flue conference during part of the unfolding catastrophe. “Whether it’s a natural disaster or man-made disaster, you need to have one person in charge. And that person needs to be on the ground with the team, understanding what’s going on,” Brown said.

David Dayen at Firedoglake:

I do recommend Spike Lee’s two-part HBO documentary, which touches on this. There, you see public housing projects in New Orleans torn down despite having no flood damage. You see Charity Hospital, one of the largest in the country and servicing the poor, unopened, while a new sprawling medical campus that would cater to a higher-class clientele gets planned. You see the racial and ethnic makeup of the population, and particularly the socioeconomic makeup, change. And you see a Republican Governor in Mississippi get much more attention and funding at the outset of the recovery, with the Bush Administration in office, than a Democratic Governor in Louisiana.

That said, there are bright spots, particularly Brad Pitt’s home-building project. But the disparities exist, as they have always existed. And, the money was available to reduce those disparities.

More than a quarter of the $20 billion in Housing and Urban Development relief funds that were earmarked for Gulf Coast states after Hurricane Katrina remains unspent five years after the storm, a fact noticed by at least one congressional leader who’s eager to spend it elsewhere.

(Sen. Tom) Coburn suggested some of these funds could be used to help cover federal budget deficits and said that “serious questions need to be asked about whether this money was appropriately designated as emergency funding.”

Officials in Mississippi, however, said that the unspent money is earmarked for needed recovery projects and that they are moving as fast as federal red-tape, litigation and arbitration and other hurdles will allow.

I think you can call the recovery in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast uneven and unfinished. And driven, as ever, by money.

Ron Futrell at Big Journalism:

Since we are now five years beyond the hurricane, let me tell you what the true disasters of Katrina were, and these are the things that the media will likely intentionally miss in their anniversary analysis. Some of us spotted these at the time, but now that the media now has the advantage of hindsight (which is supposed to be 20/20) so they only way they get it wrong now is if they want to get it wrong.

1) Government cannot save us.

The American left and its media believes that it is government’s job to save us all. I don’t care whether we’re talking about local, state or national government—it rarely has the power to save us. This is the most devastating fallout from Katrina, the fact that people think government is there to save us. The message was loud and clear from the media—“it is government’s job to save us.”  Yes, I think Mayor Ray Nagin should’ve used the buses to save his people, but he didn’t. Yes, I think Governor Kathleen Blanco should’ve called in the National Guard sooner, but she didn’t, and yes, I wish Bush would’ve responded faster with the recovery days after the Coast Guard was called in to pick people off their roofs, but he didn’t. Wait for government to save you, and you may never be saved.

2) Failure of the Welfare State.

Three generations of Democrat promises to the people of New Orleans were exposed when the levees broke. Democrat “leaders” in New Orleans had promised these good people that they would care for them from cradle to grave, just vote Democrat when you are bused to the polling places (the buses worked fine on Election Day.) The Democrat Welfare State was exposed on those rooftops that day.

It took at least 70 years to falsely teach those Americans that government would save them (see #1.) When they needed government most, it was not there for them. Imagine that? The media missed the real story behind those on the rooftops. Why were they still there? They were waiting for government to save them as promised.

3) Failure of the media to be accurate.

The media got as many stories wrong with Katrina as it got right. The headlines of the day shouted “Tens of Thousands Dead, Thousands Dead in the Superdome, Superdome Destroyed, Toxic Soup Floods New Orleans, Bush Hates Black People” (Oh, that was Kanye West, but the media helped him spread that message.) The tragedy is that more than 1,800 people died,  1,400 of those in New Orleans. Of those who died in New Orleans the large majority died because the levees (promised to be secure by all levels of government—see #1) broke. Had the money dedicated to the levees been spent where it was intended, they would’ve held and perhaps the number dead would’ve been in the dozens, not the hundreds. It was the levees’ breaking that caused the major damage, not the hurricane itself—the media seemed to blow by that fact in 2005.

Susan Enjoins, The Right Sphere Reacts

Tom Diemer at Politics Daily:

A federal judge has blocked a section of a controversial Arizona immigration law that empowered local police to check the immigration status of suspects they detain for other offenses, and also a requirement that immigrants carry identification papers at all times.

U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton, considering several challenges to the polarizing state law — including a lawsuit filed by the Obama administration — left other sections in place, according to the New York Times. It is supposed to take effect Thursday.

Lawyers for Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer are expected to appeal the ruling on a law that raised a furor across the country among both those favoring a crackdown on illegal immigration and others who believed the law was a violation of civil liberties and would lead to racial profiling of Hispanics .

John McCormack at The Weekly Standard

Daniel Foster at The Corner:

The preliminary ruling by Judge Susan R. Bolton of the U.S. District Court in Arizona enjoins the meatiest parts of the bill, putting their enactment on hold while the issue is slugged out in the courts.

The court blocked sections of SB1070 that would: require police to make “reasonable attempts” to determine the immigration status of persons stopped under suspicion of a crime; authorize police to arrest persons under probable cause that they have committed infractions that could lead to deportation; make it a crime for aliens not to carry immigration papers; make it a crime for an illegal aliens to apply for work.

The parts of the bill not enjoined by the ruling  include fairly anodyne provisions that make it easier for Arizona citizens and officials to help enforce federal immigration law, along with amendments to criminal statutes dealing with a number of other immigration-related crimes.

Ed Morrissey:

A temporary injunction gets put into place when a judge thinks that a court review has some likelihood of overturning a law in a full hearing.  That doesn’t amount to a decision on the merits, but it does indicate that Bolton thinks the Department of Justice can make a case for blocking the law.

What will be interesting will be to see whether this impacts public opinion.  The Obama administration has taken a beating in the polls on this issue, with poll after poll showing majorities of Americans supporting the Arizona law.  A temporary injunction on portions of the bill may get some people rethinking the issue, but I’d be surprised if there was any substantial movement. If a judge later rules against the law after a full hearing, it might change feelings about the law specifically, but probably not about enforcement.

I’d also expect the White House to claim this as vindication, but only because they have been utterly tone-deaf on this issue for the last three months.  They should wait on the I-told-you-so for the full hearing.

Michelle Malkin

Mark Krikorian at The Corner:

It’s no surprise that key parts of the Arizona immigration law were just suspended by Judge Bolton, pending the full trial. Assuming the state doesn’t give up, which it won’t, everyone understood this would take several years and reach the Supreme Court. It’s a stupid way to make policy, but with ACLU lawyers (both those inside and those outside the government) fanatically committed to open borders, there’s no alternative.

William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection:

The decision has to be viewed as a near complete victory for opponents of the law, as it restricts the state from routine and compulsory checks of immigration status as a matter of legislative mandate.

The decision would not, as I read it, prevent police from checking immigration status in a particular case, but would prevent a statewide system to do so.

The result of the decision will be to have a chilling effect on law enforcement officers who, in the absense of the law, would have checked immigration status based on reasonable suspicion anyway. Enforcement of immigration laws in Arizona, as a result of the decision, will be even more difficult than prior to S.B. 1070.

The only portions of the law upheld were:

A.R.S. § 13-2929: creating a separate crime for a person in violation of a criminal offense to transport or harbor an unlawfully present alien or encourage or induce an unlawfully present alien to come to or live in Arizona

and

A.R.S. § 28-3511: amending the provisions for the removal or impoundment of a vehicle to permit impoundment of vehicles used in the transporting or harboring of unlawfully present aliens

[Note to readers: The analysis above has been adjusted from the original as time permitted a more complete reading of the decision]

Update: My thoughts on the result, Helplessness and Anarchy

Dave Poff at Redstate:

I just can’t stop myself…I feel like that kid in church that just loses it when his big brother does something goofy in the middle of the sermon…

So, if I have this right, what this “Judge” has just told us is that the time spent while we wait for Law Enforcement to “run” our licenses and plate numbers is time during which our liberties are being restricted. Please let me be the next white guy to get pulled over so I can tell a State Trooper he is not allowed to run my numbers because it would be a burden on me, and it would restrict my liberty…that right there is made of teh awesome…but wait! There’s more:

Gisela and Eduardo Diaz went to the Mexican consulate in Phoenix on Wednesday seeking advice because they were worried about what would happen to their 3-year-old granddaughter if they were pulled over by police and taken to a detention center.

“I knew the judge would say that part of the law was just not right,” said Diaz, a 50-year-old from Mexico City who came to Arizona on a since-expired tourist visa in 1989. “It’s the part we were worried about. This is a big relief for us.”e-expired tourist visa…hunh-nothing wrong with THAT now, is there?

You do the math there folks? Here since 1989 on a since-expired tourist visa…hunh-nothing wrong with THAT now, is there? And of course, Judge Bolton steps in it even deeper by suggesting:

“There is a substantial likelihood that officers will wrongfully arrest legal resident aliens under the new (law),” Bolton ruled. She added that a requirement of the law that police determine the immigration status of all arrested people will prompt legal immigrants to be “swept up by this requirement.”

Just how will we wrongfully arrest legal aliens? Never mind; I’m running out of popcorn.

Don’t miss the hilarious sideshow via the LA Times about Union thugs and pro-Federal-law-violation-by-non-Americans activists…caravaning to AZ to protest the law that never made it to the streets of AZ because of this so-called federal Judge.

Check the calendars folks, and wait for the date to be published for the appeals process…I take cash and credit cards… I BET the appeals will be delayed until that magical and mysterious date of November 3, 2010…a day AFTER all those illegal votes can be cast to keep Democrats in office for two MORE years of doing nothing about the problem they created in the first place.

Waste Not, Want Not

Tom Diemer at Politics Daily:

President Obama’s top budget adviser wants federal agencies to identify “laggard programs” that they can trim as a step toward reducing spending by 5 percent. The idea is to “make it easier” to comply with the president’s plan to freeze some federal outlays for three years beginning with the 2011 federal budget.

But there are caveats and exceptions. Budget Director Peter Orszag said in a speech Tuesday to the Center for American Progress that the proposed cuts would not begin until 2012 and would apply only to non-defense and non-security-related agencies. In other words, the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security would be immune — so too would be entitlements such as Social Security.

In addition, it appears the 5 percent pinch is not mandatory on the bureaucracy. “We are asking each agency to develop a list of their bottom 5 percent performing discretionary programs, as measured by their impact in furthering the agency’s mission,” Orszag said.

Matthew Yglesias:

A few observations on this:

— The case for cutting or eliminating ineffective programs is always strong.
— That issue is logically independent from the case for reduced overall spending, which is weak in the short term.
— The case for lower-than-projected long-term spending is strong, but this is primarily a matter of health care costs.
— “Defense” and security-related spending can’t be exempt from fiscal scrutiny. Montgomery reports that Defense Secretary Robert Gates “seems to be something of a budget-cutting inspiration for Obama” but the ask here is much bigger in percentage terms that anything Gates has proposed for the Pentagon.
— It’s never a good idea to just look at “spending” without scrutinizing tax expenditures.

Which is all just to say that I believe in what we at CAP call doing what works and not doing what doesn’t work. But I don’t like to see the objective of trimming or eliminating ineffective programs run together with with discussions of fiscal policy as a macroeconomic matter. It’s also worth noting that though the concern in public opinion about wasteful government spending is very real, it’s not clear that the public’s idea of “waste” corresponds very closely to a wonk’s conception of an ineffective program. People tend to like programs that they think benefit them, or people like them, and view other programs as wasteful. What’s more, bad economic times erode faith in public institutions and make people more inclined to see programs as wasteful. That’s really a different issue from the wonk’s worry about programs that don’t work well.

Conn Carroll at Heritage:

This spasm of fiscal responsibility can mean only one thing: the Obama administration is about to go on another wild spending binge. And sure enough Politico reports that while Blue Dogs in the House managed to whittle what was a $200 billion “jobs” bill down to $146 billion last month, the Senate is now larding it back up again with a $24 billion Medicaid bailout and a $23 billion teachers union bailout.

This spend-now/cut-later act has become a staple for the Obama administration. In February 2009, after signing the largest single-year increase in domestic federal spending since World War II, President Obama held a “fiscal responsibility” summit designed to “send a signal that we are serious” about putting the nation on sounder financial footing. Then in June 2009, the day after promising faster deficit spending to stimulate the economy, Obama called on Congress to pass “pay-as-you-go” legislation (PAYGO), a rule Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) has violated by a mere $1 trillion since she took power in 2006. And then after President Obama signed his trillion-dollar health spending plan, he convened his toothless National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform.

Kathryn Nix at Heritage:

There’s plenty of waste to go after.  In 2004, Heritage budget expert Brian Riedl listed duplicative programs that could, but have not yet been, eliminated.  These include 343 economic development programs, 130 programs serving the disabled, 130 programs serving at-risk youth…the list goes on.  Riedl explains that “having several agencies perform similar duties is wasteful and confuses program beneficiaries who must navigate each program’s distinct rules and requirements.”  Moreover, duplicity in government programs makes it more difficult for each one to achieve its goal.

Wasteful spending doesn’t stop at program redundancy, either.  In Heritage’s 2010 edition of Federal Spending by the Numbers, Riedl points to plenty of areas where lawmakers could make painless cuts.  For example, Washington spends $25 billion each year to maintain unused or vacant federal properties, and $92 billion on corporate welfare.  Then there’s the less costly but no less absurd $2.6 million that Washington spends to train Chinese prostitutes to drink more responsibly.

In the last five years, Government audits have shown that 22 percent of all federal programs fail to show any positive impact towards their intended objectives yet cost taxpayers $123 billion? Million? annually.

However, this should be seen as just the beginning.  To have a profound impact, more drastic changes will be needed.  This proposal alone would create at most $20 billion in savings, addressing just 2 percent of the federal deficit.  The next step should be deep impact reforms such as repealing the stimulus and the trillion plus health care bill, and enacting major entitlement reform, targeting the unfunded liabilities created by Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

Finally, the White House’s budget cuts wouldn’t require agencies to report on expendable programs until September 13, and effects wouldn’t occur until 2012.  If the White House is serious about cutting spending, they could—and should—start right now.  The Impoundment Control Act of 1974 gives the president the ability to rescind enacted spending by sending a message to Congress with directions, which a Member can then introduce in a bill.  Since 1974, presidents have submitted 1,178 rescissions totaling $76 billion.  Since Republicans expressed their desire for the president to offer a rescission package, an immediate request from the president would be almost sure to come to a vote in the House.

Baby steps towards fiscal responsibility are a positive turn for the administration, but to show the American people they mean business, the White House should also begin cutting spending immediately and pursue reform with larger impact on the federal deficit.

Veronique de Rugy at The Corner:

According to the Post, though, many budget analysts around town are complimentary about the proposal. Well, I guess I am just hard to please, because I think this is a joke. The federal government is spending almost $4 trillion this year. Our deficit is $1.4 trillion. Our debt held by the public is $7.5 trillion. Our long-term entitlement deficits are huge and growing. All of these figures will be larger the next time I blog about them. I don’t have much patience for agencies that need to be given incentives to do what is right. This money isn’t theirs. It’s taxpayers’ money, and the spending needs to stop.

But then again, considering that the Deficit Commission itself needs to be bailed out by the White House, nothing should surprise me anymore. See Daniel Foster on the issue here. And speaking of commissions, my colleague Jerry Brito has a very good study on the BRAC Commission of the late 1980s and early 1990s. It just came out last month and is very informative about the likelihood that today’s Deficit Commission will succeed. A shorter version of his study is here.

Derek Thompson at The Atlantic:

The federal deficit has stretched to $941 billion in the first eight months of Fiscal Year 2010, and politicians are getting nervous that all that red ink is starting to stink. That puts the White House in the awkward position on standing behind more stimulus — which would raise the deficit — while claiming the mantle of fiscal responsibility. How do you pull that off?

Well, you suggest small-ball reforms — or, as some critics contend, gimmicks. First, President Obama has proposed a three-year freeze on non-security discretionary funding, which amounts to about a fifth of the budget. Second, he’s requested the authority to lightly edit spending bills and send them back to Congress for an expedited vote without amendments. Third, he’s asking agencies to make plans to cut 5% of their budget.

These ideas tend draw much mocking from politicians and the commentariat, and maybe it seems a little weird to grow a trillion-dollar deficit and pare it down with limited freezes (like planting a Redwood and pruning it with a nail file). But I see nothing wrong with these ideas. They’re non-binding, forward looking, and potentially useful. Do we think government agencies should never have to identify programs they consider marginally unecessary? Is it pointless to even threaten to rein in earmarks with a light veto power? We should be running a large deficit in 2010, and we should be thinking about small ways to improve our medium-term budget.

Ezra Klein:

The news in Peter Orszag’s speech this morning is that the White House is “asking each agency to develop a list of their bottom 5 percent performing discretionary programs” in order to make cuts more obvious. On the one hand, reducing inefficient spending is good. On the other hand, reducing aggregate spending is not, at the moment, a good idea. This 5 percent isn’t much in the scheme of things, but it’s a buy-in to the idea that deficits are too high right now rather than an effort to convince people that the time for countercyclical spending hasn’t passed.

So that’s not the news in the speech. But it’s also a small part of it. The bulk of the address is about the need to modernize the federal government’s IT infrastructure, and it’s worth reading. Orszag notes, for instance, that “public sector productivity growth matched the private sector’s until about 1987,” at which point it began falling rapidly behind. If you’ve identified this as roughly coinciding with the rise of personal computing and the Internet eras, well, ding-ding-ding.

“At one time,” Orszag says, “a federal worker went to the office and had access to the most cutting-edge computer power and programs. Now, he often has more of both in a device clipped to his belt.” Oh, snap!

Their Name Is Mud

Stephen Power at Wall Street Journal:

Oil giant BP PLC told congressional investigators that a decision to continue work on an oil well in the Gulf of Mexico after a test warned that something was wrong may have been a “fundamental mistake,” according to a memo released by two lawmakers Tuesday.

The document describes a wide array of mistakes in the fateful final hours aboard the Deepwater Horizon—but the main revelation is that BP now says there was a clear warning sign of a “very large abnormality” in the well, but work proceeded anyway.

The rig exploded about two hours later.

The congressional memo outlines what the lawmakers say was a briefing for congressional staff by BP officials early Tuesday. Company representatives provided a preliminary report on their internal investigation of the April 20 disaster, which killed 11 workers and continues to spill thousands of barrels of oil daily into the Gulf of Mexico.

The new developments come as President Barack Obama, working to tame a political storm over the spill, is expected to announce Thursday that the government will impose tougher safety requirements and more rigorous inspections on off-shore drilling operations.

According to the memo, BP identified several other mistakes aboard the rig, including possible contamination of the cement meant to seal off the well from volatile natural gas and the apparent failure to monitor the well closely for signs that gas was leaking in, the congressmen wrote in their post-meeting memo. An immense column of natural gas, erupting from the oil well, fueled the fireball that destroyed the rig.

Randy Rieland at Grist:

Here’s something to fill you with confidence on the eve of BP’s risky “Top Kill” gambit: Workers on the Deepwater Horizon rig missed warnings that something was seriously wrong before the rig exploded. BP itself, in a memo to a House committee, reveals that crewmen failed to heed signs of a “very large abnormality” underwater. In fact, they apparently missed one warning sign after another that day.

Third time’s the charm?

Or will it be three strikes you’re out? Later today, BP will try, try, try again to — as the president put it — “plug the damn hole.” This latest attempt is the “top kill,” in which a mix of heavy mud and cement is shot into the well to counteract the upward pressure of leaking oil and gas. If the top kill fails, BP will move on to the “junk shot,” in which a gumbo of rope, tires, and golf balls gets pumped into the leak. If the junk shot doesn’t work, it’s “top hat” time — the smaller of the two containment domes will be lowered over the well to hopefully capture leaking oil and pump it to the surface.

And if that doesn’t work, well, we’re pretty much screwed.

Now that the oil giant relented to pressure from the feds, we can watch it all go down on the BP webcam.

Naked Capitalism:

But the one that got my attention was the exclusive interview of BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg in the Financial Times, in which he remarked:

The US is a big and important market for BP, and BP is also a big and important company for the US, with its contribution to drilling and oil and gas production. So the position goes both ways.

This is not the first time something has gone wrong in this industry, but the industry has moved on.

Yves here. This is simply stunning. First, the BP chairman essentially puts his company on an equal footing as the United States, implying their relation is not merely reciprocal, but equal. BP doesn’t even approach the importance of Microsoft in its heyday, a-not-very-tamed provider of a near monopoly service. And his posture “this is just one problem like others, no biggie” is an offense to common sense and decency.

Many readers have pointed to signs that BP’s order of battle in combatting the leak is seeking to maximize recovery rather than minimize damage, again a sign of backwards priorities. The widely cited gold standard for crisis management, Johnson & Johnson’s 1982 Tylenol tamperings, had the company immediately doing whatever it took, no matter how uneconomical it seemed, to protect the public. BP instead has been engaging in old school conduct: keep a wrap on information as long as possible, minimize outside input, and (presumably) contain costs.

What is worse is the complete lack of any apology or sign of remorse. Even if BP engaged in more or less the same conduct, it would be far more canny for its top officials to make great shows of empathy for all the people who are suffering as a result of the disaster, remind the public that they lost their own men too, and make great speeches about not resting until the leak is plugged, and then add the caveat” “but we have to proceed in a deliberate manner, rushing could make matters worse. We know this is frustrating, and we wish we could hurry the pace.”

The inability to perceive the need to fake remorse shows how wildly out of touch many corporate leaders are with reality. Let’s face it, they are surrounded by sycophants and image-burnishers, they get paid beyond the dreams of mere avarice whether they perform well or abjectly screw up. Unless one happens to be an exception that proves the rule like Jeff Skilling, the worst that might happen to them is a little ritual hazing by Congress for an hour or two and being the subject of the occasional unflattering news story. Real aristocrats, by contrast, at least recognized the importance of noblesse oblige, even if they didn’t always live up to it.

And BP’s outsized institutional ego is making mincemeat of Obama. It is clear that the Administration has NO Plan B if BP continues to get nowhere. And it has tolerated less than comprehensive disaster responses. Why hasn’t BP been asked to do more to contain the oil spill? Given the magnitude of the outflow, even limited success would make a difference. Why hasn’t the Navy been brought in? Trust me, if Al Qaeda had somehow gotten a missile cruise ship with a nuke or two into the Deepwater Horizon location, I’m sure all sorts of military hardware would be dispatched. If the leak turns out to be as bad an many fear, this disaster will be far worse than any readily imaginable terrorist incident, yet our response is sorely wanting.

Tom Diemer at Politics Daily:

BP began Wednesday shooting dense mud into a wellhead 5,000 feet below the waters of the Gulf of Mexico in the oil company’s latest attempt to stop a gusher spewing into the Gulf — polluting Louisiana beaches and marshlands.

There were no guarantees the procedure would work, as even the head of BP admitted, and as President Obama also noted during a trip to northern California. The so-called top kill maneuver pumps mud into the well with the aim of damming the spilling oil and then sealing it with cement.

BP spokesman Steven Rinehart said the process would go on for hours, but it may take a couple of days before anyone knows for sure whether it has worked, the Associated Press said

Andrew Moseman at Discover Magazine:

This procedure is no sure bet, because a top kill hasn’t been attempted 5,000 feet down in the sea before. BP’s CEO Tony Hayward estimates the percentage chance of success in the 60s.

The procedure requires an elaborate and precise orchestration among five vessels at the surface, whose duties range from housing pumping equipment to storing a total of 50,000 barrels of drilling mud, and several remote-controlled undersea robots. If all goes as planned, the dense mud will be pumped through a single 6-5/8-inch-diameter drill pipe from one vessel, which will then enter two 3-inch-diameter hoses. Those hoses will deliver the material to the sea floor, where they will intersect with the choke and kill lines of the damaged blowout preventer, which sits atop the well [Christian Science Monitor].

Whether this works may depend on whether the weight of the mud is enough to push the oil back into the well, which isn’t certain. If it fails, the junk shot option—trying to plug up the leak with tires and golf balls and other trash—is still on the table.

Jake Tapper and Huma Khan at ABC:

The White House is seemingly making an increased show of pressuring BP, but President Obama is facing political heat from within his own party for what some say has been a lackluster response to the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

The “political stupidity is unbelievable,” Democratic strategist James Carville said on “Good Morning America” today. “The president doesn’t get down here in the middle of this. … I have no idea of why they didn’t seize this thing. I have no idea of why their attitude was so hands off here.”

On Thursday, Obama will announce new measures the federal government will take to try to prevent any future BP oil spills, administration officials said. And on Friday, the president will visit the Gulf coast, his second trip to the region since the environmental disaster happened last month.

But Carville said the Obama administration’s response to the BP oil spill has been “lackadaisical,” and that rather than place the blame on the previous administration, it should’ve done more to deal with BP and “inept bureaucrats,” which would’ve in turn helped boost Obama’s approval ratings.

Conn Carroll at Heritage:

The federal government’s failure to know how to handle the Deepwater Horizon oil spill does not end with the EPA. It goes all the way to the top. Frustrated by his government’s inability to master the problem, President Barack Obama reportedly cut aides short recently, ordering them to “plug the damn hole.” As if no one had thought of that already. But instead of focusing on the problem at hand, President Obama moved to appoint an unaccountable commission to study the problem substituting process for action at a time when leadership was needed. The commission shifts the responsibility from the persons we elect to oversee these issues to unelected bureaucrats.

The Pew Research Center has released a poll showing a majority of Americans give President Obama and his administration bad marks for its handling of a massive oil spill.  To combat this rising discontent, the Obama administration flew Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen up to Washington to provide some clear answers as to who was in charge of the operation. Just this past Sunday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar had said of BP: “If we find that they’re not doing what they’re supposed to be doing, we’ll push them out of the way appropriately.” But when asked about Salazar’s comments Monday, Allen responded: “Well, I would — I would — I would say that that’s more of a metaphor. … You need equipment and expertise that’s not generally within the government — federal government, in terms of competency, capability or capacity. There may be some other way to get it, but I’m a national incident commander. And right now, the relationship with BP is the way I think we should move forward.”

BP, rather than taxpayers, should be held responsible for the costs of the clean-up and liability, and under current federal law that is the case. BP is currently responsible for every penny it costs to clean the mess up. Furthermore, they are responsible for up to $75 million in liability costs (i.e. the secondary costs incurred by businesses and communities) directly, and up to $1 billion additionally comes from the Oil Spill Liability Trust Fund. And the $75 million cap is waived if the responsible party is found to be grossly negligent. Calls to increase these caps retroactively are not needed and are more political expediency then either stopping the leak or mitigating its consequences. Equally frustrating are calls to raise the gas tax, and transfer the costs of this spill onto American consumers.

And that right there, in a nutshell, is the problem not only with the Obama administration’s handling of this crisis, but with the entire regulatory state. The Obama administration is set to announce new and stricter regulations on the oil industry tomorrow. But as the NEPA waivers and MMS failures of this accident show, the existing regulatory framework is already not being enforced. So how will new regulations piled on top of the old ones fix the problem? When government micromanages how private enterprises are run, those entities are not incentivized to prepare for the worst outcomes. Now no one has developed a plan or the expertise to deal with this spill.

John Cole:

I know that no matter what I say, some of you are going to claim I am shilling for Obama while others of you will read the same piece and claim I am unfairly attacking Obama, but I have a serious question- what exactly is the Obama administration supposed to do about the oil spill?

I’ve thought about it, and there are some things that really have pissed me off:

1.) BP keeps missing deadlines they themselves set to cap the spill

2.) BP keeps trying to hide the size of the spill anyway they can, whether it be using dispersants to keep the oil under the water so no one can see it, refusing to allow independent sources access, or just flat out lying.

3.) The government is, as we speak, issuing more permits to drill, even though it is perfectly clear we aren’t prepared for this kind of catastrophe.

Of course, the obvious damage to the gulf and the wildlife has me livid, but these are specific things that have pissed me off about the government and BP’s response. I also almost through something at the wall yesterday when I read Jake Tapper report that the Coast Guard called BP their “friends.”

Having said that, I just don’t know what the administration is supposed to do. What can be done? That, I think, is the real lesson from this- that we can’t really do anything about this sort of disaster, and i think the administration has done a really shitty job of getting that message out.

I hear screams to “take over” the operations from BP. And do what? Is there some secret naval division that handles deep-sea drilling that we have not deployed? Does the government have some elite unit with better equipment than BP? I’m as pissed at them as anyone and want the government to make them pay for every penny of the clean-up, but I have to believe that all the people with experience fighting these things and all the equipment to deal with this sort of thing is already there with BP. And that if we “took over” from BP, it would still be the same people.

In short, I just don’t know what kind of federal response there really could be to this kind of disaster. In Katrina, the reason fro anger was clear- there were people who needed food, shelter, water, and medical treatment, things we have a lot of all over the country, and we just dropped the ball getting it to them. But with this- what are we supposed to do?

Nobody Is Surprised That Nobody Is Surprised

Danny Hakim and Nicholas Confessore at New York Times:

Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo announced his candidacy for governor on Saturday, saying he was seeking not only to lead New York but to remake a state mired in political scandal and paralyzed by financial crisis.

In a direct confrontation with a Legislature controlled by his own party, Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, said he would pressure lawmakers this fall to state publicly whether they would embrace essential ethics changes, including disclosing their outside income, ceding control of redistricting to an independent panel and submitting to an outside ethics monitor.

Appearing in front of the former Manhattan courthouse named for Boss Tweed, the corrupt political boss of Tammany Hall, Mr. Cuomo told a crowd of supporters: “Unfortunately, Albany’s antics today could make Boss Tweed blush. Our message today is simple. Enough is enough.”

The approach underscores Mr. Cuomo’s determination to avoid the fate of the current governor, David A. Paterson, and the previous one, Eliot Spitzer, who both promised change but were quickly stymied by an obstinate Legislature, and later fell victim to their own scandals.

Huffington Post:

NAME: Andrew Mark Cuomo

BIRTH DATE – Dec. 6, 1957 (Age 52)

BIRTHPLACE – New York City.

RELIGION – Roman Catholic.

EDUCATION – Fordham University, 1979; Albany Law School, 1982.

EXPERIENCE – Managed father Mario Cuomo’s successful campaign for governor in 1982; special assistant to the governor, 1983; assistant district attorney in Manhattan, 1984; private law practice 1985-89; founded Housing Enterprise for the Less Privileged in 1986 and left his law practice in 1989 to run HELP full time; assistant secretary, federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, 1993-96; HUD secretary, 1997-Jan. 20, 2001; Island Capital Group real estate investment firm, vice president, 2004-05; New York attorney general, Jan. 1, 2007-present.

FAMILY – Divorced from Kerry Kennedy. Three daughters, including 15-year-old twins Cara and Mariah and 12-year-old Michaela. Companion is Food Network personality Sandra Lee.

Tom Diemer at Politics Daily:

In the 21-minute video carried by the Albany Times Union, Cuomo, a Democrat, sketched his campaign themes: a plan to freeze state worker salaries, streamline state government, clamp a 2 percent cap on property tax increases, and impose new ethics and disclosure rules on public officials.

Since Gov. David A. Paterson’s ethical issues made it virtually impossible for him to seek reelection — and the governor before him, Eliot Spitzer, was decked for consorting with a prostitute — Cuomo’s looming candidacy took on a sense of inevitability. His father, Mario Cuomo, was a three-term New York governor who was often viewed as a potential Democratic presidential candidate. He never took the plunge and lost in a bid for a fourth term as governor in 1994.

Joe Coscarelli at The Village Voice:

Wholly unsurprising breaking news from Cuomo Central: Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo officially announced his campaign to become governor of New York in the above video on his website early Saturday. It is embeddable, see!

The site also provides the full transcript (in .pdf form) of the announcement, which seems practical, as well as highlights, meaning the parts that the campaign is telling you (the media) are most important. The internet makes politics easy.

“As I hope you have seen, I don’t run from a problem. I run at it.” Truly a highlight.

Patrick Edaburn at Moderate Voice:

In one of the least surprising events of the year, New York AG Andrew Cuomo has announced he will accept his coronation as the next Governor of the Empire State.

Polls have shown Cuomo with about 70-80% of the Democratic primary vote and 60-70% of the general election vote. Of course polls are just a snapshot and things could change between now and November but I think that my chances of being the next Governor of New York are not much worse than the odds of the eventual GOP nominee.

Ravi Somaiya at Gawker

The Nukes Are Getting Nuked

Josh Rogin at Foreign Policy:

American and Russian negotiators have come to terms on how to handle the thorniest point of contention inside the negotiations over a new nuclear arms-reduction treaty: missile defense.

Russia had been stalling the last stage of the negotiations over the issue, holding fast to its position that missile defense must be included in some way in the new treaty. The U.S. side has insisted the treaty be confined only to offensive systems. Meanwhile, the old agreement, known as the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), expired last December and U.S. President Barack Obama has been pushing to complete the new deal before some 44 world leaders come to Washington for a major nuclear conference beginning April 12.

Washington was abuzz Wednesday after the New York Times reported there had been a “breakthrough” in the talks, but the Times never disclosed what the breakthrough was. The Cable got the details in an exclusive interview with Senate Foreign Relations ranking Republican Richard Lugar, R-IN, who met with Obama along with committee chairman John Kerry, D-MA, Wednesday morning.

“Missile defense will not be part of the treaty, but in the preamble both parties will state their positions and there will be a mention of offense and defense and the importance of those,” Lugar said. He added that because the missile-defense statements were outside the main text, “they are in essence editorial opinions.”

That closely tracks the original understanding that Obama and Medvedev agreed upon during their July meeting in Moscow, as enshrined in the Joint Understanding they issued at the time.

There are still some final details to be worked out, Lugar said, but the president believes there will be a final deal to sign “within the next few days.”

“The president thinks we are very close to an agreement. He hopes to have a signing with President Medvedev April 8 in Prague,” Lugar said.

David Dayen at Firedoglake:

The President and key cabinet members just announced a landmark arms reduction deal with Russia, which would reduce stockpiles among the two largest nuclear nations by around one-third. Both nations would still have more than 1,500 warheads after the end of the agreement, but the trajectory is moving in the right direction.

Ending a year of sometimes topsy-turvy negotiations, Mr. Obama and President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia sealed the deal in a morning telephone call, confirming resolution of the last outstanding details. They then announced they will fly to Prague to sign the treaty on April 8 in a ceremony designed to showcase improved relations between the two countries.

“With this agreement, the United States and Russia, the two largest nuclear powers in the world, also send a clear signal that we intend to lead,” Mr. Obama said, appearing in front of reporters at the White House to announce the agreement. “By upholding our own commitments under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, we strengthen our global efforts to stop the spread of these weapons, and to ensure that other nations meet their own responsibilities.”

Key to the deal is the verification regime, so that talk can be backed up with evidence of action.

Tom Diemer at Politics Daily:

Obama, flanked by Secrertary of State Hillary Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates, made the announcement after finalizing details in a Friday morning telephone conversation with Russian President Dmitri Medvedev. The “most comprehensive arms control agreement in nearly two decades,” Obama said, will help both nations leave behind the dark days of the Cold War and build “a more secure future for our children.

“We’ve turned words into action. We’ve made progress that is clear and concrete,” the president said. “And we’ve demonstrated the importance of American leadership — and American partnership — on behalf of our own security, and the world’s.”

The agreement, if ratified by the Senate, would cut America’s and Russia’s deployed nuclear warheads by about one-third, down to 1,550 each — 74 percent lower than the limits set by the 1991 START treaty, which this deal is supposed to replace. It will also substantially reduce ICBM and submarine missile launchers and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear weapons. The two leaders plan a signing ceremony in Prague, the Czech Republic, on April 8.

Obama, who set his vision for a nuclear free world in Prague last April, said the new START treaty falls short of that ambitious goal, but is “pivotal” and demonstrates that America and Russia “can cooperate effectively.”

“With this agreement,” Obama said, “the United States and Russia — the two largest nuclear powers in the world — also send a clear signal that we intend to lead … and to ensure that other nations meet their own responsibilities.” He didn’t have to say it, but the “clear signal” was almost certainly meant for the government in Iran, which is pursuing its own nuclear agenda.

With his dramatic announcement in the White House briefing room, Obama appeared to be on a political roll. In less than a week’s time, he presided over passage of the most significant health care reform since Medicare’s enactment in 1965, a complete overhaul of the college student loan program, and a deal with Russia on nuclear weapons.

Spencer Ackerman:

[…]

apparently President Medvedev made a flattering display of congratulating President Obama on the new health-care law before getting to the substance of finalizing the details on New START during their morning phone call. To be very clear: all the substance of the treaty was long in the can before the health-care vote. Every single structural argument for New START — the long-term relationship with America is in the Russian interest; any arms-reduction treaty would be better than one negotiated right before the fall of the  Soviet Union; but really one should be negotiated even though START lapsed because it shows the U.S. and the Russians can do Big Things together — matters much more. But Medvedev mentioned it, and then he told Obama, in English, “If you want to get something done right, do it yourself.”

Conn Carroll at Heritage:

The full text of the new agreement has not been released, but early reports indicate that it will not adequately address three key issues and would therefore compromise U.S. national security:

Verification: The Russians have a long and well documented history of violating arms control agreements. By focusing intently on the reduction in each nation’s strategic arsenal, the U.S. has lost some negotiating ground on the issue of verification. The Senate must ensure that the new treaty is adequately verifiable. There is no reason to sign the treaty if the verification mechanisms fall by the wayside.

Nuclear Modernization: Some arms control advocates insist that the U.S. has a robust nuclear modernization program. This claim is simply inaccurate. The truth is that America’s nuclear infrastructure is rapidly aging, in deep atrophy, and is losing its reliability and effectiveness. The U.S. is not producing new nuclear weapons, and its ICBM force is shrinking and not being modernized. In contrast, Russia and China are engaged in a major modernization effort. On December 16, 41 U.S. Senators voiced their concerns and signed a letter saying they will oppose the new treaty if it does not include specific plans for U.S. nuclear modernization as stipulated in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2010.

Missile Defense: It is absolutely imperative that a new START agreement not undermine our post-Cold War defensive posture by linking offensive weapons with missile defense. But early reports indicate that the treaty does exactly that. The New York Times reports: “Administration officials describing the draft treaty said its preamble recognized the relationship between offensive weapons and missile defense, but that the language was not binding.” But the Times goes on to quote retired major general Vladimir Dvorkin who says Moscow will scrap the treaty if the U.S. pursues missile defense: “If, for example, the U.S. unilaterally deploys considerable amounts of missile defense, then Russia has the right to withdraw from the agreement because the spirit of the preamble has been violated.”

The Obama Administration’s arms control strategy has been deeply flawed. It is based on outdated 1970s arms control strategy and 1960s idealism and naivete. It will not work because it does not account for Russian nuclear strategy, which is based on approximate parity between the two sides, Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), denial of missile defenses to the U.S., and nuclear warfighting capability. The U.S. needs to reset the reset before the Obama administration is allowed to seriously undermine our national security.

James Joyner:

Now, as Josh Rogin aptly documents, this treaty is exceedingly unlikely to get the needed 67 votes in the United States Senate necessary for ratification.  In addition to an overall desire to thwart President Obama on, well, just about everything, several key Republicans have a legitimate quarrel with the treaty’s inclusion of language linking arms reduction and missile defense in Eastern Europe.  (There’s a throwaway line in the Preamble saying that offense and defense are, of course, linked. But the treaty imposes no limits on the latter.)

But the president doesn’t need a formal treaty to draw down our nuclear arsenal.  The only advantages a treaty would confer is to force Obama’s successors to continue to abide by the limit and as a show of good faith to secure Russian cooperation.   In this case, however, neither of those assurances is necessary:  It’s just too good a deal for both sides.

And it’s not because the deal will have any significant impact on nuclear proliferation or take us as a CSM headline puts it,  “closer to a nuclear weapons-free world.”   No, those remain wild fantasies.

The bottom line is that there’s simply no conceivable reason for the United States and Russia to maintain such massive stockpiles.  Both countries have, quite easily, more than twice the number of strategic weapons as the rest of the planet combined.  So easily, in fact, that it will still remain the case once we’ve cut to the new limits.  France, the third most dominant nuclear power, has 300 warheads.   China has 180 and the UK 160. Having 1550 warheads — or, indeed, 550 warheads — would still be more than adequate to meet any possible deterrent need.

As a senior White House official told me in a blogger conference call, the treaty is also important because the old inspections regime expired December 5th and we very much want to have the confidence building that vigorous inspections provide.  But, frankly, it’s in United States interests to reduce our arsenals irrespective of what the Russians do.

More to the point, the cuts are not only symbolically important in signaling reduced tension between the former Cold War superpowers but they’re pure win.  At zero loss of security or the sense thereof, the two powers shed a massive problem:  large stockpiles of rapidly decaying, obsolete weapons that must be maintained, safeguarded, and otherwise dealt with at great cost.   Cutting back by a third is better than printing money.  And both sides could use a little more cash right about now.

UPDATE: Allah Pundit

Stephen Carter at The Daily Beast

Max Boot at Commentary

Steve Benen

Bloggers Both Ask And Tell

Marc Ambinder at The Atlantic:

When Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint of Chiefs of Staff, testify before Congress today, they are expected to announce a series of first steps in the direction of preparing the military for the integration of gays and lesbians. According to an administration official, the most visible of those steps will be to revise the rule that allows third parties — other soldiers or outside accusers — to “out” soldiers and precipitate investigations that lead to their dismissal. Basically: if someone else outs you, you won’t be dismissed. It’s not clear what percentage of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell dismissals would be effected by this revision.

Sources said that Gates will tell Congress that he plans to appoint a commission, including civilians, to plan for an array of changes to military procedures and codes. Will sexual harassment laws have to be revised? How will sexual tolerance be taught in military academies? What will disciplinary procedures entail for soldiers who harass gay soldiers? What does it mean to declare oneself “gay?” What about partnership benefits for spouses?

The commission will report back within a year. Why so long? For one thing, Gates and Mullen will argue that full integration of gays and lesbians must be pursued carefully, in order to protect the rights of gay soldiers and to make sure that the policy, when finally implemented, is well accepted and seen as legitimate. Civil rights groups are likely to protest the delay, but the White House is on board with the timetable, and it’s not clear whether Congress can pass a full repeal.

Melissa Harris-Lacewell at The Nation:

Military service is at the heart of citizenship.

The implied social contract that binds a nation to her people is most fully realized in two primary acts: tax paying and military service. Those who labor and pay a portion of their income to the government have a particularly strong claim on government services and recognition. Those who willingly risk their lives to protect the borders and the ideals of their country also have a thick claim on citizenship.

This is why the armed forces have historically been the terrain on which marginal groups have sought full inclusion into the American project.

Enslaved men who escaped to freedom behind Union lines demanded the right to fight as soldiers against the Confederacy. President Lincoln’s reluctance to arm these black men was rooted not only in his deep racial prejudices, but also in his concern that their service would give legitimate claims on equality. After the Civil War, Lincoln himself came to support the franchise for freedmen who had served in his army. In fact, his public declaration that black soldiers should have the vote precipitated his assassination.

During WWI, W.E.B. Du Bois urged African Americans to rally behind the flag and volunteer for military duty. He believed the services of black men could not go unnoticed by a grateful nation and felt that black soldiers would give the race stronger claims on the vote, equal education, and full citizenship. But in the years following WWI African American servicemen were regularly harassed, beaten, and lynched for wearing their uniforms on America’s streets. A black body in an American uniform was a statement against Jim Crow; it was a claim to full citizenship and it was viciously punished in a country still unwilling to fulfill its promise of equality.

American historians have argued that we must locate the initial impulse of the mid-century Civil Rights Movement in the radicalizing effect that WWII battles against Nazi Germany had on black soldiers. Unwilling to accept segregated service in a war against genocide and imperialism, these soldiers were unwilling to accept Jim Crow and racial violence at home.

Similar stories can be told about European immigrants who became fully American through their initial inclusion in the armed services. It can be told about young people who used their service in Vietnam to win an extension on the right to vote to 18-21 year olds. It can be told about women who moved from support roles to combat duty even as they shattered glass ceilings back home in the states.

Gay soldiers are part of this long history. Their open and unfettered participation in America’s armed services is a necessary part of the struggle for full inclusion in America. When gay men and lesbians can openly and proudly point to their sacrifices for our country then they can call upon our country for full first-class citizenship.

Let’s end DADT during Black History Month. President Obama’s presence in the White House was made possible by the broken bodies of black soldiers who believed and sacrificed for a country that shackled and segregated them. They willingly bled for this country and with that blood they bought for all of us a country where a black man could be president.

William Kristol in The Weekly Standard:

Here is contemporary liberalism in a nutshell: No need to consider costs as well as benefits. No acknowledgment of competing goods or coexisting rights. No appreciation of the constraints of public sentiment or the challenges of organizational complexity. No sense that not every part of society can be treated dogmatically according to certain simple propositions. Just the assertion that something must be done because it is in some abstract way “the right thing.”

John McCain’s response to Obama’s statement was that of a grown-up: “This successful policy has been in effect for over 15 years, and it is well understood and predominantly supported by our military at all levels. We have the best trained, best equipped, and most professional force in the history of our country, and the men and women in uniform are performing heroically in two wars. At a time when our Armed Forces are fighting and sacrificing on the battlefield, now is not the time to abandon the policy.” Whatever its muddled origins and theoretical deficiencies, the fact is “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” works pretty well at accommodating the complex demands of a war-ready military nestled in a liberal society.

The advocates of repeal say, it’s a matter of basic rights. No, it’s not. Leave aside the fact that there are difficult and unresolved questions of how our society should deal in various areas of public policy with questions of sexual orientation. There is no basic right to serve in the military. That’s why forms of discrimination we would ban in civilian life are permitted: Women have less opportunity to fight than men. The disabled are discriminated against, as are the short, the near-sighted, and the old.

Advocates of repeal will say sexual orientation is irrelevant to military performance in a way these attributes are not. But this is not clearly true given the peculiar characteristics of military service.

We’ll hear a lot, as the debate moves forward, about gay Arabic translators being discharged from military service. A decision to separate from the military someone who is sitting in an office in Northern Virginia may look silly. But the Obama Defense Department is entirely free to ensure that those men and women continue to use their skills to serve their country in those same offices as civilians. And translators who are uniformed members of the military are subject to the usual demands of training and deployment, so the questions about the effect of open homosexuals on unit morale and cohesion in training and combat situations remain relevant.

Andrew Sullivan responds to Kristol:

I presume he means that he thinks that straight servicemembers would be traumatized by having to serve alongside gay servicemembers because they harbor absurd fears that they will be sexually harassed or even “assaulted”, as his ally Tony Perkins recently asserted. So soldiers who can take on al Qaeda are too weak-kneed to deal with a gay buddy in the next bunk? Most Americans in 2010 have a higher opinion of the maturity and professionalism of today’s volunteer military than Kristol does. The younger generation, for the most part, finds such bigotry ridiculous. Of course, any sexual misconduct by gay servicemembers should be dealt with as severely as with straight servicemembers. But the bigotry of others is not a reason to prevent the honest service of so many Americans. It wasn’t right in 1948 when Truman ended racial segregation. It isn’t right now.

And then, the final canard – the idea that now is not the time to do anything because we are at war. But remember that Kristol believes our current war is permanent; and if one war ended, he would be doing all he could to advance the next one. And so this is mere rhetoric – rhetoric to disguise Kristol’s core belief that gay citizens should be permanently ghettoized outside civil society and public institutions, prevented from forming families, stigmatized for forming stable relationships, encouraged to be cured or stay closeted, rendered as invisible in society as they were decades ago.

Max Boot at Commentary:

The vast majority of service personnel are stationed at giant bases, whether in Iraq and Afghanistan or in Texas and North Carolina, where it is not hard to get privacy and where their jobs resemble those of civilian workers in many ways. Going to the bathroom involves, literally, a visit to the bathroom — not to a slit trench. Sexual issues are already raised on those bases by the presence of women. In fact the problem is more serious because women in heterosexual relationships have the potential to get pregnant — as some servicewomen do, thereby having to go home and creating a vacancy that has to be filled by someone else. There are also issues of sexual harassment and discrimination that need to be tightly policed — whether involving homosexuals or heterosexuals.

One of the adaptations the military has made is to allow women into most billets but not into tight-knit combat formations — nuclear submarine crews or infantry squads. They live in close quarters and often-unpleasant conditions where privacy is nonexistent and trust and esprit de corps are all-important. I remember discussing the issue last year with a Special Forces team deployed in the field and was struck by the unanimity of opinion against lifting the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy. The special operators were horrified at the thought of gays in their ranks. This may be rank prejudice, and perhaps the result of ignorance, since there are already probably some gays in their midst. But the attitude still exists and higher authority can tamper with the policy only at the risk of causing a drop in morale.

Special Forces is one of the areas in which women are still not allowed to serve even though most jobs in the military have been opened to them. Why not simply extend to gays the same policy applied to women? That is, let gays serve openly in most billets but not in a few combat designations. It seems like a reasonable compromise.

John Aravosis at AmericaBlog:

I’m sorry. I recently wrote that Barack Obama was not our president, but in fact Secretary Gates was president. In fact, I was wrong. It now appears that Phyllis Schafly is in charge of the Pentagon, and our entire government. Otherwise, why is the Pentagon putting out talking points about whether lifting the ban will force them to recognize gay marriages? Can they make this issue more incendiary? First segregated showers, now gay marriage.

Gotta hand it to them, when DOD decides to screw over their commander in chief and a key constituency of the Democratic party, they do it with gusto.

A series of telling stories out tonight, all of them bad. It appears that Secretary Gates is going to announce a special team of advisers at tomorrow’s DADT hearings in the Senate, and that team will take a good year or so to think over all the really hard issues confronting us with the potential repeal of DADT, such as gay marriage.

Their review is expected to look at several sensitive issues, including whether the military should extend marriage and bereavement benefits to the partners of gay soldiers, said the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

There is no gay marriage at the federal level, and DOMA forbids the federal government from providing marriage benefits. So why is DOD even bringing up gay marriage – and they do in this second story too, so this is clearly part of their prepared talking points – unless they’re simply trying to be sensationalistic.

Oh, and in the meantime, they’re going to implement the discriminatory policy in a more humane manner.

Funny, but I don’t recall that being Barack Obama’s promise to my community. To more humanely discriminate us against us. He promised to lift the ban. He promised to get ENDA passed. He promised to repeal DOMA. And none of those are currently being discussed. What is being discussed is another study to add to the pile of studies we already have. What is being discussed is a proposal to “change” DADT, rather than repeal it – just as Joe and I have been predicting.

Dan Savage:

Great, good, feeling hopey again about the repeal of DADT. But, again, Obama could suspend the enforcement of DADT today while Congress works on a solution, just as his head of Homeland Security suspended enforcement of the widow’s penalty while Congress works on a solution. And Obama described the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) as abhorrent and promised to repeal it but his administration nevertheless defended the law in court. But I’m prepared to take yes for an answer, of course, on DADT. As depressing as the lack of movement on the big promises—end DADT, repeal DOMA—there has been action on ending the HIV Travel Ban (set in motion by the Bush administration), and hate crimes legislation.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald

DiA at The Economist on Kristol

UPDATE #2: Tom Diemer at Politics Daily on Petraeus