Last month, China passed a new law to strengthen labor standards and protect the interests of workers. Millions of migrant workers in that country have been laboring in dangerous conditions for long hours and low wages that violate the minimum legal standards established over a decade ago. Moreover, employers regularly engage in a series of illegal practices—collecting security deposits, docking pay for meals and lodging, and simply withholding wages—that result in workers taking home even less than they had been promised. Can the new law promulgated by China’s National People’s Congress eliminate such inhumane treatment of workers? In other forums, I have already expressed my skepticism about how much the law can accomplish without more systemic political changes. This post describes how this belief has been reaffirmed by witnessing the struggle of over 30 Chinese deliverymen in New York City that both federal and state minimum wage laws have failed to protect from abuse.

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Today's New York Times editorial picks up on an unreported feature of the meltdown in the mortgage market.  The bankruptcy laws that are generally available to help people (and businesses) cope with unpayable debts are useless to deal with home mortgages.  As a result, the specific tool that might avert a collapse in housing prices isn't in the toolbox. 

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Within the last week we have been told that Al Qaeda is weaker, Al Qaeda is stronger, Al Qaeda is coming, Al Qaeda is here, and that we are fighting them in Iraq so we don’t have to fight them here except, somehow, maybe, they’ve found there way to our shores. Add to this Homeland Security Chief Chertoff’s “gut feeling” that we will be attacked even though there is no credible evidence.

Forgive me for mixing metaphors, but this is like an Abbott and Costello sketch (Who’s on First) set to the Troggs’ hit, Love is All Around.

Time to update the Troggs’ lyrics. We need someone to sing, “Al Qaeda is All Around".

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The federal government seems to be an odd beast, since as Ezra, Mark and Maggie seem to argue, progressives can get it to enact a comprehensive health care plan far better than anything the states can do-- yet if states enact their own plans, we can't depend on the feds to help them out with funding.

Mark is most optimistic in arguing that with a "perfectly conceivable 56 seats in the Senate in 2009, it should not be impossible to bring four or more Republicans over on a bill" for universal health care, yet he seems to argue that it will be impossible to maintain just the 51 votes needed to prevent "changes or cuts in Medicaid, S-CHIP or other programs."

You can't have an image of a federal government poised to overcome filibusters to enact universal coverage AND one that can't even muster a majority vote to keep Medicaid funds flowing to the states.

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Some realists argue that if the United States promotes democracy in places such as Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, the opening up of these polities would lead to more Islamist states. Thus democratization would damage U.S. interests, installing even more oppressive regimes in the nations involved—regimes that will promote terrorism in other nations to boot. Some "un-realists" argue that the United States should accept such a risk because theocracies are like childhood diseases that nations may have to endure before they can grow up to become democratic.

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Those readers who complain that I'm optimistic even when optimism is not warranted will have no such problem with this column.

There is little cause for optimism today. Both Israel and the United States are pursuing the "divide and conquer" strategy with the Palestinians and it simply is not going to work. The Palestinians are not going to remain divided, nor will the side embraced by Israel and the United States hold popular support – probably not even in the West Bank.

Pending their "reunification," it would be wise to seek out Gaza moderates we can do business with rather than assume that out of the current morass will arise a Palestinian "partner" who will submit to the demands and conditions Israel and the Americans put forward.

Nor will the Palestinians remain weak. At this point, Israel should cut a good deal with them rather than wait until they are in a position to demand more than they are asking for now. Is it better to negotiate after violence returns to Israel's major cities or when the Iranians (or even Al Qaeda) are playing major roles? Israel rejected President Sadat's offer to negotiate in 1971, when Egypt was weak, and instead was forced into negotiations two years later after Egypt pulled off an attack that killed 3000 Israelis.

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One of the animating delusions of late-20th Century American liberalism was the
idea that progress equals federal programs -- nationwide, standardized, fair,
and administered largely by responsible experts from Washington. It's easy to
understand why liberals thought that. It was a product of the civil rights
movement, with the awareness that at least a dozen states would, left to their
own devices, deny justice to their own citizens.

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Maggie below echoes Ezra Klein's worry that failures at the state level on health reform will undercut national reform, but I think its a larger worry that too large focus on federal changes-- that will almost certainly be filibustered -- will draw energy away from and undercut the more likely-to-succeed state efforts.  The flameout of the Clinton plan did suck the life out of many state efforts.  As I've said, I think short-term state reforms and long-term organizing at the national level can go hand-in-hand, but I think the danger of overhyping efforts that fail at the federal level is a far greater danger to state efforts than vise versa.

And Maggie touched on a favorite point of mine when she compared the fight for national health care to the civil rights effort, since passage of the national Civil Rights Laws were preceded by many states passing state civil rights laws.   Frustrated by the failure of the federal government to pass anti-lynching and other civil rights laws, the states began moving on civil rights laws.

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While the rest of us were busy stoking the initiative to tax hedge fund managers’ earnings as earnings, not capital gains—and feeling like we might actually be getting somewhere—these fund managers were busy pulling off an amazing tax coup.

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The BBC has a must-listen show on radio tomorrow titled Called to Account (times noted further below) offering a theatrical version of Tony Blair's indictment for Iraq War-related crimes. This may inspire many on this side of the Atlantic pond to think about various strategies to hold America's current political leadership accountable for duplicity and mismanagement of America's national security portfolio -- and particularly for the Iraq War.

Democracy has become a term derided in much of the world today because for many beleaguered peoples it has come to mean Western duplicity, uneven standards between the mighty and the weak, an excuse for invasion and occupation, a code word for regime change, or obsessive focus on ballots rather than healthy civil society institutions like courts and a free media that help to keep power accountable.

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“If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation…want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters…. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." Frederick Douglass, 1857

The fight for national healthcare reform will be fierce. To stand up to the powerful national interests that oppose reform, reformers will need muscle. This is just one reason why the battlle must take place at the national level. Incrementalism—one state at a time—is no answer.

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Imagine it is October 27, 1947. Why October 27, 1947? Because that date is 2128 days from December 7, 1941 and the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. So what? Today, 12 July 2007, marks 2128 days since Al Qaeda attacked us on 11 September 2001.

Can we envision President Harry Truman holding a press conference to trumpet the progress in the war against Japan while the leaders of Japan remained untouched? Would Truman offer an upbeat presentation if the United States is unable to quell the violence wracking Japan?

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(Personal Note #4)

I am sure every author has his own, often set, ways of stimulating his writing. For me, playing classical music—as long as it contains no voices!—both helps drown out the background noise and spurs my thinking and composition. The same is true about what might be called case studies. I find abstractions unconvincing; in contrast their specific implications and applications, in specific places and time periods, in short case studies are illuminating. Thus, to state that we owe it to Afghanistan and Iraq to reconstruct their countries after the ravages of war sounds right. However, when I studied—and then dedicated a segment of Security First to describing—what reconstruction actually entailed on the ground, the absurdity of this claim stood out. Afghanistan is in a very early state of economic development; practically everything it needs must be provided de novo. To refer to ‘reconstruction’ here is like speaking about ‘rebuilding’ a city where there was barely a village. Iraq’s economy was allowed by Saddam to deteriorate. To fix it would take huge amounts of resources and a decade or more, I found. It is not obvious who will have to pick up the tab for all this.

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A bit of conventional wisdom among the DC-based left is that, while it's nice for state legislators to play with health care toys in their little sandboxes, as soon as a Democratic grownup wins the Presidency, the states should just get back in their high chairs and wait for the feds to bring them national health care.

Ezra Klein in this month's Washington Monthly summarizes this Inside-the-Beltway wisdom (endorsed by Kevin Drum), but he both fails to deal with why it's unlikely, even with a Dem President, that we will get a real national health care program, and underplays the real likelihood that it will be the states, not the Feds, that drive change in health care policy.

It's the Filibuster, Stupid: Let's start with why putting hopes in federal change is so misguided. Rightwing legislators killed FDR's plans for national health care in the 1930s, killed Truman's plans in 1949, limited health care reform in the 1960s and 70s, and killed Clinton's health care plan in 1994. So with that track record, why is anyone so deluded as to think the rightwing GOPers won't use the filibuster to kill health care reform again?

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I’ve got a deal for you: when you’re in a pinch, I will loan you $30 but when you try to repay me a day later, you will owe me $88. No, this isn’t a payday loan or an auto title loan. These are the terms major banks insist on every day with millions of consumers through overdraft fees and loans. Consumers pay banks $17.5 billion per year in fees on $15.8 billion in overdraft loans, as the Center for Responsible Lending describes it in a new report. For every dollar the bank loans a customer, the bank asks for an average of $1.94 in fees (not including the $1 the customer owes on the loan).

And forget about asking for the annual interest rate on these incredibly short-term loans. The Federal Reserve considered issuing regulations requiring banks to report this information to their customers under the Truth-in-Lending Act, but banks successfully lobbied against them.  Fortunately, the House Financial Services Committee will be holding a hearing today on H.R. 946, the Consumer Overdraft Protection Fair Practices Act. This legislation would make such reporting mandatory. You can watch the hearing here.

"I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world."

Actually there are no ten boxes, but I like to use this title to sort things out. Keep in mind I speak for nobody except maybe myself. I'm no big theorist; I'm a dissatisfied consumer. I don't belong in the New York Times. I believe much of what follows is recognized by mainstream, orthodox economic doctrine. It's just that economists act as if it is not.

1. Supply and demand, 1. This celebrated and most basic economic model while in principle multidimensional in practice obscures anything interesting that affects market conditions. It bespeaks militant, ideologically-based reductionism. A good illustration is the minimum wage debate. In the usual supply and demand model, a minimum wage can only reduce employment. Nothing else is logically possible.

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I promise I'll let you use this thread for whatever purposes you like if you just allow me to link to this The New York Times' piece that references Max Sawicky and the debate hosted here on Chris Hayes' Hip Heterodoxy.

TPMCafe isn't just about the news. It is news, ladies and gents.

A recent Los Angeles Times article began, “Americans don't have to worry that a $29 toaster could burst into flames, but the same can't be said for a $290,000 mortgage.” The article featured Professor Warren proposing a commission that would regulate financial products the way that the Consumer Product Safety Commission demands that all manufactured goods meet minimum safety requirements. This would represent a change from the current regime, which monitors industries instead of their actual products, resulting in significant and often devastating regulatory gaps.

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Where is Paul Revere when you need him? Surely someone should ride and alert the neighbors. AL QAEDA IS COMING!! AL QAEDA IS COMING!! Apparently not content to let the Brits have all the fear factor fun, the Bush Administration is jumping on board the scary train. Booooooo, Al Qaeda. Sure glad that no matter what we do to fight the terrorists (you know, fight them over there . . .) those tenacious bastards make zombies look lazy and unfocused. No matter how many we kill they keep coming and keep organizing.

So here is the story courtesy of ABC's Brian Ross:

• Senior U.S. intelligence officials tell ABC News new intelligence suggests a small al Qaeda cell is on its way to the United States, or may already be here.
• But, according to the White House, there is no credible evidence of an imminent threat.

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I don’t want to overstate the power of the TPM Café. But facts are facts. And the fact is, when I started posting here a week ago, Connecticut had a weak, limited fusion law. Now, as I wind up my posting here, it has a strong one. The new fusion law signed by Governor Rell last Friday is, as election-law maven Richard Winger says, “the first time in at least 70 years that any state has expanded fusion.” Is it just coincidence that it was passed right after my posts here?

Well, OK, it is a coincidence. The Connecticut WFP – the sister party to the one I run in New York – has been pushing hard for this reform for months now. But it is a big victory, and it is occasion for talking about something I’ve overlooked in my previous posts here – efforts to expand fusion voting to other states.

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Here in Jerusalem, the traffic gridlock makes Manhattan seem like a breeze. It takes over an hour at some points during the day to get just about a mile. It feels as if this city can't consume any more cars--and probably it can't. The hotels are filled with tourists on both sides of the city and construction for a light-rail system to ease traffic flow is actually mucking around with traffic now, with the cranes spitting up pieces of stone and workmen lining the roads, blocking traffic all over the place.

And, then, of course, there are the roadblocks, which are more spontaneous and frequent in East Jerusalem this month, and the entrance/exit from Jerusalem to Ramallah from the Qalandia checkpoint and the settlers' by-pass roads leading out of the city toward the settlement of Bet El and various other settlements and illegal outposts....

And once you cross over into the Palestinian side from Jerusalem, past the hulking cement wall and the large guard towers, you end up on the Qalandia road, that is in desparate need of paving. A Palestinian friend told me that Abu Mazen's office was waiting to start paving with funds from the Europeans and others until the new gov't was installed, to send a message to the Palestinian people that money and infrastructure will flow without Hamas in charge. So, now, the road work is underway, causing more delays, but perhaps in the end, it will actually ease the traffic. Only the politicians can decide on that.

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I had thought that former Middle East peace envoy Dennis Ross hoped to return to mediation when the next administration comes in.

Apparently, he's had it. He is currently in Israel chairing a major Jewish leadership conference on the future of Israel and the Jewish people -- with Netanyahu, Zuckerman, top AIPAC leaders and many of the other "usual suspects. This is not the kind of thing one does if one intends to get back into the "honest broker" business.

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I may be imagining it—it’s awfully early and I’m under-caffeinated—but I think there’s been a slight change in the force.

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Remember when John McCain was the presumptive GOP nominee? When the vast majority of the vast punditocracy said "the GOP likes to nominate front-runners" and "McCain's waited his turn." Whoops.

While this certainly wasn't needed, McCain's fall strikes me as further proof of the general absurdity of, as the English TV man Jeremy Paxman put it, "the journalist-as-clairvoyant."

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Ann Hornaday has a worthy piece in today's WP on (surprise!) Hollywood's timidity about making movies set in the civil rights movement. She cites runarounds experienced by Taylor Branch among others, and lists a few directors spinning around in one waiting room or another. (In Hollywood, they call these episodes turnarounds. Very funny.)

If you were a patriot, wouldn't you want to bring this most ringing moment of the second half of the American twentieth century to cinematic life? Well--

Here's another example for her case...

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Fusion voting is a key tool both for strengthening progressives within the Democratic party. For progressives, the great virtue of fusion is that it lets us build our own organization while supporting good Democrats. It lets us wield our 2 or 3 or 5 or 10 percent of the electorate not as a symbolic protest vote, but as a voice with real power. It’s easy to say, “Democrats need to speak the language of jobs and health care and fair taxes if they want to win swing voters.” It’s easy to say, but hard to prove – unless this populist vote for the Democrats is tallied up separately via a fusion party.

For progressives, fusion gives us our own organization, a distinct voice, and a credible threat of exit when the Democrats run too far to the right. For the Democrats, fusion delivers votes that would not come to their candidate running just on the “D” line.

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The games have truly started at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), where the agency is gearing up for what may be the most significant auction of publicly owned spectrum.

How is this game scored? It appears as if one wins by pushing proposals that appear to be favoring competition, when in fact, they don’t.

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The debate over the nation’s health care system is big and getting bigger. While the debate over a large-scale overhaul is being carried on in the context of the presidential election, we also have ongoing debates over extending the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and reforming the Medicare drug benefit.

Polls consistently show that expanding coverage for children, and reforming the Medicare drug benefit to allow Medicare to negotiate directly with the pharmaceutical companies for lower prices, are both highly popular policies. These steps would be important in their own right, but they also would help lay the basis for more large-scale reform.

While the Republicans may seem to be on the defensive -- resisting the popular will -- the New York Times inadvertently told readers exactly how they plan to defeat these measures: appeal to ideology.

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Thanks to Ezra Klein, Chris Floyd and Seth Gitell for what I think was an excellent discussion of the "threat" posed by Iran, with particular thanks to Seth for agreeing to make his case in a venue far less hospitable to his views than his regular space at The New York Sun. The discussion benefitted from having someone advocate what is, roughly speaking, the neoconservative view on Iran. And thanks to Andrew Golis and TPM for organizing the discussion of A Tragic Legacy.

As I argue in my book, I think the question of what the Bush administration will do concerning Iran is the gravest and most pressing one we face as we endure the final 18 months of this presidency. Along those lines, I want to underscore one key point that emerged from this week's discussion.

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Folks: I didn’t want to let last week’s interesting discussion about vouchers and their implications for public education drop, so I asked Stanford professor Martin Carnoy to add his two cents. Carnoy is a professor of economics and education and has done much important work on education vouchers, including some revealing international comparisons.

Here are his thoughts…enjoy:

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Americans want big changes in our heath care system. And now Michael Moore's great new film, SiCKO is helping to turn a desire for change into a crusade for change. Now breaking box office records in its second week in theaters, SiCKO conveys powerfully emotional stories of Americans trapped in a system controlled by insurance and drug companies that deny care and destroy lives in order to maintain their profits. We walk into the movie house individuals with our particular gripes about the health care system. And we walk out wanting to be part of a national movement for health care for all. For great account of how spontaneous organizing literally occurred in the theater lobby – at a Dallas, Texas suburban cineplex – click here.

So, what kind of movement should we be building? Unlike this weekend's very expensive Live Earth rock and roll extravaganza whose major message (in the face of looming global environmental catastrophe) seemed to be to make personal life changes: "Buy better lightbulbs, unplug your cellphone chargers, and run your tour bus on bio-diesel," the thoughts of people who see Moore's movie turn immediately to institutional and political change.

After seeing Moore's film, most people want to pose a big question to all politicians: Will you work to guarantee health care for all? Not incrementally – one disease at a time, or one group (like kids) and then another group (like their parents) in another program – but through a universal system of health care for all?

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