National Payment Card has a new idea: People can register and use their driver’s licenses to pay for gas, saving up to 10 cents a gallon. Very clever, but the fact that NPC can offer rebates for consumers who use a different payment system is a reminder of that MasterCard and Visa are currently skimming off $6.6 billion from convenience stores alone--fees that are passed on to everyone who buys gas.
A new report released today by the Economic Mobility Project highlights the declining economic mobility of America. The think tanks comprising the project make for some strange bipartisan bedfellows, with the Pew Charitable Trusts, American Enterprise Institute, Brookings Institute, Heritage Foundation and the and Urban Institute all working together.
Some of the report's findings:
*The US has less relative mobility than many other developed countries.
*Absolute mobility in the U.S. is declining.
*Increases in productivity are not translating into higher incomes.
Warren Reports readers, which of these findings is most troubling?
It is not news to my readers here that I believe that in recent years the United States Congress has done very little to advance peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors.
On the contrary, Congress has specialized in legislation making it more difficult to provide aid to any and all Palestinians in the name of keeping aid away from terrorists. No matter that our policies have weakened the moderates willing to live in peace with Israel and mightily strengthened Hamas and company.
Even now when international relief agencies report that Congressional restrictions make it near-impossible to deliver aid to non-Hamas Palestinians because the existing law is so harsh, Congress is looking at ways to tighten it. The name of the game is Arab-bashing which Congress views as a sure crowd – i.e. donor – pleaser.
The good news is that the Congress that was elected in 2006 seems considerably less interested in playing that game. Speaker Nancy Pelosi demonstrated that when she resisted pressure and went ahead with her decision to include Damascus on her Middle East itinerary this spring.
Thanks, Yasemin. The Turkish generals have been more outspoken lately precisely because of the diminishing popularity of the EU project in Turkey. When 77 percent of the Turkish public supported the EU reform program of 2003-2004, the TGS was essentially forced to stand by as the AKP reduced the power and prerogatives of the MGK, (National Security Council). Three years later, only 30 percent of the Turkish public support EU membership and the generals have much more room to maneuver because they have a lot less to lose (in terms of public opinion) from their actions. As a result, it is unlikely that the e-memorandum would have been possible if Turkish public opinion had remained overwhelmingly in favor of EU membership.
Steve, I would like to ask a few questions before we wind up our discussion here. In RBNG, you state that if the Turkish military had actively opposed the Copenhagen Criteria, that would have been detrimental to their public image as the vanguards of modernization and, consequently, hurt their popularity. I share your point here. But would you not agree that Turkey’s top brass has been increasingly outspoken about its critical -- even hostile -- view of the EU lately? Is it the Turks’ diminishing respect and/or appetite for the EU that facilitates such overt opposition from the military? Could the e-memorandum of April 27 have been even possible if a good deal of EU’s soft power in Turkey had not evaporated? What might be the domestic indications if, in the coming months, Sarkozy et al. stick to their line that Turkey should not even be considered for full membership? Do you trust your “EU-Turkey Model” thesis, which, by the way, I fully agree with, will remain valid in the years ahead or might the EU and the Turkish military become inadvertent partners in delaying Turkey’s transition from authoritarianism?
Obama and Hillary voted against the Iraq supplemental this evening with 12 of their colleagues. Another excruciating vote in the midst of presidential politics.
(At leat) three tough questions for the candidates:
1. What's the right moral decision?
2. What's the right political decisions?
3. What's the right balance of 1 and 2 (and how do they influence each other)?
And the question for Cafe denizens (and the country) to wonder about: what was each of their answers were to each of these questions?
My head hurts.
The Jerusalem Post has just published the responses of five Presidential candidates on the question of how each of them would deal with Israel.
Their answers tell us something about how they would handle the Middle East -- not to mention how risk averse they are as candidates.
The responses are worth a read. Note the difference in approach among the five (including among the Dems) with some stessing the peace process and some ignoring it altogether. Some only talk about Israel while some also discuss the Palestinians.
I understand that these statements must be taken with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, there are differences here.
And they matter.
I have read carefully all the responses to my two recent pieces, from those who agreed with me and those who took exception to what I wrote. Because one of my hopes in writing The Price of Liberty and my two earlier posts here is to deepen the dialogue on these issues of how America can and should pay for its security, I was eager to read them all.
One person asked “was I listening?” and the answer is, emphatically, yes. The problem with much of the debate on the war, and war funding, is that too few people are listening to one another and too many are so set in their views that they do not care to hear what those who differ from them are saying. That is not how vibrant democracy should work.
A few specific points bear mentioning.
We may say as a country that we value families and mothers, but a rise in job discrimination complaints by moms highlights how far most workplaces are from that ideal. Yesterday, to help clarify the responsibilities of employers, the Federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) issued new guidelines on what kinds of discrimination against parents is illegal.
Under federal law, the guidelines explain, an employer cannot encourage career advancement for men with children, while denying promotions to women with children or otherwise stereotyping working women with children as less able to cope than their male counterparts.
But here's the sad and somewhat shocking part. Nothing in federal law stops an employer from discriminating against parents generally:
Great posts, folks. It’s gratifying as an analyst and an author when people really dig into your work, ask probing questions, and fill in implications. One of the great things about this exchange is that it brings into sharp relief something other authors have told me and that perhaps I did not fully understand. A book is never really finished. There are always new avenues of analyses to pursue, new questions to be asked, and new facts to be discovered.
I’ll take on Mona’s post first and then move into an exchange with Yasemin’s comments on Turkey. Finally, I’ll take the two J’s together since their comments are focused almost exclusively on Egypt. Jon, I hope posting in Munich did not make you late for your connection.
In the congruence of popular, interesting, and unimportant -- what I call "deep but not profound" -- lies the issue of sports drafts.
The NBA is in crisis, more or less, because the two worst teams defied the laws of chance and did not end up winning (as the biggest losers are supposed to do) the right to draft the two best players. Even worse, the draft winners are in the far Northwest where despite the fact that basketball is played indoors out of the rain no one wants to watch the teams in Portland and Seattle either there or on television, and everyone in the East is asleep when they play anyhow.
So it's time for reform, as it always is when televised sports are in a kafuffle. Check that spelling please.
Whatever Al Gore’s shortcomings (and I wrote plenty about them in the 1990s), he has risen with impressive decency and effectiveness above setbacks I doubt I could have endured without succumbing to the mild derangement one finds in many a political “survivor.” Gore has only grown stronger. He’s been prescient about big changes in communications, in climates, even in the fog of war. And the best argument for his running for President is that a Gore-Obama ticket stands the best chance of bringing 16 years of seasoned sanity to the White House.
I have the campaign slogan ready: “Make it Right, America.” It means, “You know that you elected Gore in 2000, but see what you got instead. Make it Right.” The slogan blurs the moral and partisan meanings of “right” -- just in time for a political realignment beyond “liberal” and “conservative,” even “Democrat” and “Republican.”
There's only one small problem: Just what kind of political realignment would it be?
Egypt and Turkey are an interesting comparison, and having just spent time there in the last couple of weeks (I’m sending this on a layover in Munich), the contrasts are all very fresh in my mind.
Barack Obama and my son Nathaniel, who graduates college next week, have taught me (through speeches and essays, respectively) to recognize that if and when the election of 2008 produces a president who withdraws Americans from Iraq, it will be vital that Americans not repeat the finger-pointing, hate-mongering, and blame-assigning politics of the post-Vietnam period.
The withdrawal will be, if it ever happens, extraordinarily dangerous for people in Iraq and for stock markets and economic conditions around the world. It will be filled with scenes of horror and many in the mainstream media will immediately try to drag down any American president who is in office during this very difficult transition.
In his second post, Steve summarizes the conclusive points of RBNG vis a vis the evolution of Turkish military and national state. His warning, that sustainable democratic change in civil-military relations will only be achieved through "the institutional bridling" of the military, is valid. This, of course, as Steve also points out, will necessitate a "fundamental re-evaluation of Kemalism."
It all boils down to the struggle between the two concepts of change in Turkey. One is change as social phenomenon--the authentic and inevitable process that is shaped by many entangled factors and by both national and global dynamics. The other is change as social engineering--an elite activity to resist, control and domesticate social dynamics in order to keep them within Kemalism's prescribed formula of "progress."
Congratulations, Steven on an excellent book. I've enjoyed following the dicussion thus far and thought I'd weigh in from the perspective of the Algerian case. While I certainly wouldn't argue with the thrust of commentary underscoring the stability of Middle Eastern regimes and the critical role played by the military and security services towards insuring stability, I think a further examination of the Algerian case illuminates some deeper complexities and raises the question of how durable such arrangements are in the long run. Here, I think I disagree with Steven's initial post that "Hosni Mubarak's Egypt is looking pretty good" Perhaps, yes, when compared to Iraq, but what are the long-term implications?
Michele gets right to the heart of the matter: What’s in the black box that is Egypt’s military-security establishment? There is, of course, a ton of rumor-mongering and innuendo-peddling on these issues in Cairo as the first act in the post-Hosni Mubarak drama unfolds.
The relationship between the police and the armed forces is an interesting one. This was a topic of interest in the early and mid-1980s when it seemed that the cops had eclipsed the military, but the Central Security Forces—an organ of the Interior Ministry—riots of 1986 ended any discussion of which service was the guarantor of the regime. The military had to be called into the streets to quell the rioting CSF recruits, reinforcing the preeminent role of the armed forces in the Egyptian political system. Recently, budget figures have surfaced which suggest that the internal security services are more “privileged” that the military. This has caused somewhat of a stir among Egyptians and Egypt watchers. Has the Interior Ministry finally replaced the military as the primary pillar of the regime? I don’t think so, for two reasons. First, if you analyze the numbers carefully—and I am not convinced we have a full picture—the armed forces actually enjoy an overall bigger budget. Second, the military prefers to take a low profile on matters related to domestic security. While the officers see themselves as the natural guarantors of regime stability, they don’t want to get their hands dirty with police work.
Obama to Stephanopoulos on This Week:
I think that I have the capacity to get people to recognize themselves in each other.
Obama to graduating college students last week:
There’s a lot of talk in this country about the federal deficit. But I think we should talk more about our empathy deficit – the ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes; to see the world through those who are different from us – the child who’s hungry, the laid-off steelworker, the immigrant woman cleaning your dorm room.
As you go on in life, cultivating this quality of empathy will become harder, not easier.
Obama is calling for the cultivation of social empathy.
Ladies and gentlemen, the wait is over. Iiiiiiiiiit’s… Monica Goodling! That’s right, after a months-long legal and political serial drama – pleading the 5th, winning our hearts, crying, resigning from DOJ, gaining immunity, falling under investigation, regaining immunity, and ultimately securing immunity (and all while maintaining the photo-/video-graphic scarceness of a Sasquatch) – Goodling will be appearing before the House Judiciary Committee this morning to finally spill what she knows about the U.S. Attorney firings. In today’s early-bird edition of TPMtv, we tell you all you need to know about Goodling, why she’s testifying, and why she might be the last best hope for congressional investigators.
Over at the NY Times, columnist David Leonhardt provides a really interesting look at hedge funds, focusing on their returns and the compensation schemes (my word, not his) for those who run the funds.
But the article doesn’t speak to what’s becoming one of the most closely watched issues regarding these guys’ (yep, they’re all ‘guys’) compensation: should it continue to be taxed at the lower capital gains tax rate of 15 percent, or treated like regular income and taxed at 35 percent?
Guess which one I vote for?
I appreciate Steve's point about addressing both conventional wisdom and academic scholarship -- especially if expectations of Mubarak's government democratizing remain as widespread as they were ten years ago. Ruling But Not Governing provides readers a sense for the government's unremitting campaign against opposition activists of all kinds. To fully understand the opposition's predicament, we should also note the ways Egypt differs from traditional military regimes (such as the old juntas in Latin America or the current one in Myanmar). Here I will pick up on Michele Dunne's post, plus the comments made by John Stuart Blackton and Ben Smith. If we are asked "Who rules?" in Egypt, I think we would answer that it's been a symbiosis of the country's military, its security services, and its ruling political organization (the National Democratic Party), with the weight increasingly falling on the last two...
In the early morning hours of May 11th, the House of Representatives responded, at last, to the President’s assertion of inherent authority to eavesdrop on Americans without a warrant or any judicial review.
By a vote of 245-178, the House adopted an amendment that I offered with my colleague Jeff Flake (R-AZ) to reiterate that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (FISA) provides the exclusive authority to engage in domestic electronic surveillance for the purpose of gathering foreign intelligence information.
In December 2005, we learned that the Bush Administration may be using the National Security Agency (NSA) to eavesdrop on Americans on U.S. soil without a warrant or any judicial oversight. Shortly after these activities were disclosed, I introduced the “NSA Oversight Act” with Mr. Flake to address the President’s “Terrorist Surveillance Program” (TSP) and to provide congressional oversight.
We strongly believed that Congress had a duty to respond because of the impact the program would have on the expectation of privacy of all Americans, as well as the very serious constitutional and separation of powers issues that were raised by the President’s actions.
Thank you to MJ for highlighting my recent Nation magazine article about Hillary Clinton and her circle of advisers, “Hillary Inc.” And thank you to the TPM Café staff for giving me a quick chance to respond.
Steve Cook's book adds a much needed dimension to discussions of Egyptian politics and the current transition phase in leadership. He touches briefly (understandably, as this is a comparative treatment) on several points that I hope we can expand in discussion. First, how does Steve view the interaction between the Egyptian armed forces and internal security forces? Does he view the security forces as simply a subset or as subservient to the military establishment? Where does someone like Intelligence Director Umar Suleiman fit in?
On Monday, I discussed how history illuminates the current fight between the White House and Congress over Iraq War funding. Today, I want to look at some of the long-term prospects for America’s security, both militarily and financially.
The Iraq War has thus far proved to be a costly endeavor. The loss of lives is first among the costs, and the political consequences of the war will burden U.S. foreign policy for many years.
Thanks Jason and Yasemin for being the first two to weigh-in. Jason, I have to say, I never thought anyone would call RBNG a pleasant summer read. I’ll keep my eyes open for it on Lucy Vincent Beach in July.
In all seriousness, both posts were thought provoking. I’ll deal with Jason’s comments first and follow-up with some thought on what Yasemin had to say.
Jason asks, “Who is Steve debating?” I know from whence he comes. This is a variant on Robert Vitalis’ classic question, “Who’s your audience, man?” In brief, I am debating a surprisingly large number of policy analysts and foreign policy practitioners, notably the Secretary of State who told a group of Washington Post editors in 2005 that a central challenge of American foreign policy was the instability of the Middle East. It is correct to assume a lag between the production of knowledge and its consumption by non-academics, but we shouldn’t assume that these folks are going to buy into the argument. Eva Bellin, Steven Cook, Jason Brownlee, Stephen Heydemann, and a whole host of others may firmly understand the stability and durability of authoritarian political systems, but instability remains very much the “CW” in Washington policy circles.
I don't know what to think.
Ari Berman has written a strong piece on Hillary Clinton's connections which, at first glance, seems troubling.
But I wonder if any of this is unusual. I mean, you do not get to be a Senator and Presidential candidate without all kinds of corporate baggage.
I hope some TPMers will read this (if you haven't already) and tell us if this is troubling or standard.
I honestly do not know.
A battle is raging in the Northern Lebanese city of Tripoli between the Lebanese Armed Forces and militants from the little and little known Fatah Al-Islam movement; meanwhile two bombs have exploded in civilian areas of Beirut in the last 48 hours. The death toll in and around the Nahr Al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in Tripoli, the center of the fighting, is unknown, but it already numbers in the tens.
Read on for some analysis on: (1) competing claims as to the identity of Fatah Al-Islam, (2) what next for the political process in Lebanon, (3) more spillover from the unresolved Palestinian conflict, (4) lessons for the broader front against Al Qaeda , and (5) the Iraqi connection.
Sometimes 24 hours is a lifetime in the Middle East, and sometimes, it is almost as if time stands still; seemingly intractable conflicts rage on year after year after year. The crude rocket fire lobbed by Hamas and Hamas-supported groups from Gaza cross Israel's (internationally recognized) border into the periphery town of Sderot and the surrounding kibbutzim and moshavim, is one of those intractables.
Two summers ago, I went to Sderot and a friend took me from street to street to show me the kassam rocket damage. We sat in her safe room, where she goes when the alarm sounds, and I met with the Mayor, Eli Moyal, whose fierce chain smoking seemed justified by the craziness of life for his townspeople under siege.
Two years later, the rockets are as fierce as ever--even moreso, and there is, seemingly, no ability by the Israeli government to defend its population, which in Sderot, is mostly a vulnerable and poor population with little resources.
As much as I appreciate Steven Cook's four points that summarize the basic messages of RBNG, I find the book's analysis especially valuable in the passages that deal with the EU reforms in Turkey. The desire to become a full member of the EU not only has resulted in a major --albeit incomplete-- uprooting of authoritarian laws and structures in the country, but also serves as a catalyst for the world to see who/what is modern in Turkey now. As Cook told me in a recent interview, "This is not your grandfather's Turkey." In an irony of history, the forces that are in the forefront of Westernization in today's Turkey come from among the religious masses of Anatolia, while many among the Western-looking secularist elite of the big cities are nostalgic for the modernism of 1920s and not ready to accept what it means to be modern and Western today.
The current legislative dispute between the president and Congress is generally described as a confrontation over war funding, but it is about a lot more that that: It is a battle to determine the future of America’s security.
History reveals several similar confrontations between administrations and legislators as well as guidance on how to address longer-term national security funding after such disputes are resolved. When the dispute over Iraq War funding quiets, America’s leaders will need to turn to other security challenges, including the lingering and unknown threats from terrorists. And these demand our leaders’ financial vigilance, not just rhetoric.
On a spectrum ranging from persistent autocracy to durable democracy, Egypt, Algeria, and Turkey would typically fall at very different points. Ruling But Not Governing puts these dissimilar governments in a single framework and cites a common thread: the continuing influence of military officers at steering national politics without directly managing them.
This useful comparison illuminates important shared characteristics that are overlooked in the typical democracy-authoritarianism divide that sets Egypt and Turkey in different categories, not to mention in different books. Ongoing events in Turkey remind us that the country’s military stewards remain ready to intervene in defense of their interests and national mission. Steve’s lucid discussion of the military’s continuing role thus provides a valuable and pleasant summer read. It raised several questions for me, too, and I am grateful for the invitation to engage Steve on his work. His opener dovetails with the issues I’d already jotted down.
In a TPMtv Sunday Show Roundup, we survey the Alberto-Gonzales-confidence landscape on the Sunday morning talk shows. And what we find isn’t too pretty.
Welcome to the TPMCafe Book Club! This is where we regularly invite authors to come and discuss their most recent works with readers and invited commentators. Past Book Club authors include Thomas Frank, Anthony Shadid, Larry Diamond, George Packer, Ivo Daalder/James Lindsay, Robert Dreyfuss, Chris Mooney, Gene Sperling, Gershom Gorenberg, Peter Beinart, Kevin Phillips, Sidney Blumenthal, Reed Hundt, Anne-Marie Slaughter/John Ikenberry, Jonathan Cohn, and Daniel Gross.
This week we'll be discussing Steven Cook's Ruling But Not Governing: The Military and Political Development in Egypt, Algeria, and Turkey.
While talk of "democratization" and "instability" remains the centerpiece of our discussions of the Middle East, Cook's book is a reminder that authoritarian regimes in the region have developed complex ways of holding on to power through both the institutions and traditions of military control.
Debating and discussing Cook's thesis will be Jason Brownlee, Yasemin Congar, Michele Dunne, Mona Yacoubian and Jon Alterman.
-ahg
Who knew that the Turkish military would issue their “electronic memorandum” on April 27th, just four days before Ruling But Not Governing: The Military and Political Development in Egypt, Algeria, and Turkey (RBNG) was published? I kind of wanted to sit back and laugh, but what is going on in Turkey is no laughing matter. The military’s action a few weeks ago threatens the tremendous progress that Turkey has made over the last three years toward a more open and democratic polity. I look forward to getting down to brass tacks with the discussants, but I thought it would be best to lay out the four basic underlying messages of RBNG…
The price of a gallon of unleaded gas is up 43%, or about $0.93, since January of this year. Hourly wages for most workers, before inflation, are up less than 2%, or about $0.30.
Ergo the squeeze on family budgets, right?
Well, maybe not. Or, maybe so, but maybe that’s okay. That is, not really okay, but…well, you know.Time's (and TIME) has sure changed. Not long ago the news weeklies would never put Al Gore on the cover unless they absolutely had to. He just depressed news stand sales.
But now that Al is a rock star, TIME puts him out there because its editors know that Al Gore, of all people, is the big sexy mystery of Presidential politics 2008. Will he or won't he?
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 David Sirota: Wither the Autocratic Progressives? |
 Jared Bernstein: Uprisings: Bottom Up and Top Down |
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