I have more or less reached the dismaying political conclusions that, first, a health care bill which provides tangible benefits must pass (by no means is it a given that something will pass), and second, any bill that passes is going to be an enormous disappointment to many progressive activists here and elsewhere (a given). 

The principle lesson I draw, which should hardly be surprising given the history of progressive change efforts in our country, is that this Administration and a Democratic Congress simply are not going to move forward on this issue unless and until there is a coalescing of the many progressive groups active on this issue, a mass movement with public visibility and effective spokespersons, or some combination of both.  Neither likely will or can happen soon enough to produce a health care outcome that will be broadly satisfying to activists. 

There must, in the aftermath, be resolve to come back to the table on this issue soon, within, say, a couple of years, to build on this initial effort.  We, progressive activists, are not well advised to think that the politicians we want to fight for progressive change, are likely to do that unless we are not only resolved to push them, but also find ways to improve the effectiveness of the scattered, diffuse efforts this time around.  That will not be easy.  And no one said it would be. 

With those suppositions re health care, the question becomes: what is a way forward?

My evolving view is that a major jobs bill, with a focus on infrastructure upgrades and modernization with a strong green thrust, offers the best prospects of restoring the momentum generated during the campaign and avoiding losses, or possibly even under the best scenario leading to gains, in the mid-term Congressional elections.

The Republicans surely would seek to filibuster such a bill and I say, hooray: this is the best thing that can happen for progressive prospects going forward.  Doing so will make their true values and agenda transparent in a way the health care debate, because of its complexity, cannot.  But only if it is presented to the public as being about restoring American pride and hope and laying the foundation for a thriving economy going forward. 

This will go a long way towards addressing what is the largest vulnerability at present for the White House and the Democratic Congress, which is the perception that neither has done much, if anything, to help Main Street and ordinary Americans who are suffering enormously on account of this economy.   In specific political terms, no other initiative has as much likelihood of attracting support from working-class Americans who right now are wondering what change they were asked to believe in is going to do for them.

At the same time, my impression, and it is only that, is that a lot of the financial elite at some level might acknowledge that some measures to address the jobs problem are probably an overall stabilizing force for the investment climate, the more so because they are being created in the short-term at public rather than private expense. 

I think a lot of those folks at some level also have to realize that they have, relative to what many ordinary citizens have experienced, skated and can entertain no self-pity or illusions that this Administration or Congress are out to demonize them. 

That should, and might, be the case even if, as many of us certainly hope, there will be at least some positive steps next year towards addressing the financial sector regulatory failures that contributed so much to getting us into this mess.  Again, I would anticipate that we will get a much less than adequate outcome on that issue.  And I would draw the same conclusion as stated above regarding health care--that there needs to be something that looks like a popular movement that is visible to the policymakers and saying credible things in order for there to be real movement on that issue.

OTOH, perhaps there really is no limit to the extent to which financial and economic elites, no matter how coddled by the political elites terrified of incurring their wrath, are capable of feeling sorry for themselves and channeling that wrath into what are ultimately self as well as societally destructive efforts.  And we've seen, over a period of decades now, just how destructive those efforts have been.    

One of our fellow denizens said this today or yesterday, and I agree: there has to be a way.  There is no alternative we can bear.

Happy Thanksgiving to all. 

By most of the recent polls, the Democratic nominee for Virginia's next Governor, state senator Creigh Deeds, is trailing in the polls by around 7 points to his Republican challenger, Bob McDonnell.

When I watch the TV ads for McDonnell and Republican Lt. Governor candidate Bollinger, if I did not know which party they were with, I wouldn't be able to tell. The issues they push--reducing class size, raising teacher pay, addressing the northern Virginia transportation mess, and, oh, by the way, cutting taxes (look ma! no hands!) are, with the exception of the latter, *our* issues.

Even if we weren't in a major down economy, with almost all states having to raise taxes, cut services, or both, any candidate promising to increase education and transportation and cut taxes at the same time should not pass the smell test for being someone who could be a credible steward of Virginia's finances over the next few years.

Why isn't the Deeds campaign hammering on this point?

The Washington Post *loves* politicians, at any level of government, who speak the language of fiscal responsibility. If Creigh can get this thing a little closer, he might be able to pick up the Post endorsement late and if it's close that could tip it.

Why not make the case that Deeds alone is the person who as the next governor, will be a good steward of Virginia's finances and that we've heard the cut-taxes-and-increase spending flimflam before, so shame on us if we fall for that impossible math yet again.

I'm not a campaign consultant, but I would think that if they want to go that road they should be able to put together some punchy speeches and good ads for the home stretch.

I just don't know if Deeds at this point has enough time to really develop positive initiatives on education and transportation that he can establish as clearly his to the voters.  Maybe a way to pull this thing out is to make the case that those are fraudulent promises the Republican candidates are making and hope the voters have enough common sense to see that that is the case before they enter the polling places.

I'm definitely not favorable to federal candidates running on a fiscal responsibility theme at this time--that would be terrible economics and politics, both, in my estimation. The voters know the economy is bad--maybe they need someone to prod them into asking the logical question of how any candidate in this environment can promise to increase spending in these two areas and cut taxes at the same time.

My two pennies.  Maybe not in the cards.  But Virginia voters still don't know who Deeds is or what he wants to do.  If he can project himself as a responsible guy who will protect the spending Virginians want protected most...who knows?  I don't think voters in most states, including this one, are expecting miracles these days from their Governors.  Maybe this time they'd rather not be BS'd quite so brazenly as McDonnell is doing, and getting away with.  

There have been times, as when he recently raised questions about the wisdom of continuing the fighting in Afghanistan/Pakistan, when George Will seems to rise above his past, arch, too-clever-by-half partisan efforts to take Democrats and liberals down a peg. 

Then he writes a column like the one that appears today, where he applies a level of scrutiny to Obama's public words which he never showed the slightest curiosity in applying to Obama's predecessor.  The upshot of the column is to argue that the defining adjective of our President should be "vain".

How quickly Mr. Will seems to forget the stated views of the Bush-Cheney administration that we would be welcomed by the Iraqis as liberators.  And that democracy would flourish in Iraq because the Shi'ites, Sunnis, and Kurds would hold hands, put aside their differences, and sing kumbaya on their way to establishing a model democracy in the Middle East because, because, well, because the Bush Administration really, really wanted them to, of course? 

So, sure, let's talk about vanity.  Granted that anyone who succeeds in getting that job probably does not have an ego of ordinary size.

Where to start with this piece below in the WSJ? 

 

What the public option is about is people not wanting to pay private insurance companies' advertising and market segmentation strategy implementation costs, and for a degree of administrative complexity Kafka would have had a field day writing about.

 

I guess the author doesn't get that or doesn't want to get it. 

 

To characterize the goal of "liberals" on health insurance as only about universal coverage, and not also cost control, is false and a straw man argument.  The more taxpayer money gets spent on subsidies so businesses can provide private health insurance and the insurance lobby will actively support the bill, the less cost control we get, and the less likely it is that the public option can work. 

 

So it's really about the ability of the health insurance and big pharma (which is being bought off via the prohibition on the government using its bargaining power to negotiate less expensive drug prices for consumers), and the political party that is entirely (as opposed to the one that is partially) owned by corporate America , all playing by the current rules of the game, to block the changes we really need when the party more sympathetic to reform has as much control over the Executive and Legislative branches of the federal government as it has had in at least 40 years.   

 

The result is, under the current rules of the game, a) either these two lobbies in particular need to be bought off to get the universal coverage part done, at the cost of a tilting of the playing field to the point where the public option may not be able to serve as a robust enough alternative to private insurance to rein in costs over time, or b) no bill.   

 

What health care policy in our country is really about is how ordinary people are screwed and our economy damaged by our predominantly for-profit health care non-system and the power of the vested interests to block common-sense reform.    

 

I for one am finding it difficult to get clear enough bearings to know whether or not I should advocate that my senators support some version(s) of what eventually comes out of the process.  My efforts over the coming weeks are particularly focused on trying to figure out whether the public option as it stands is likely to be effective, or whether the opposition has succeeded in rendering it ineffective for what it is supposed to do, with little or no prospect of fixing the problems any time soon.

 

If the former, then, all the unnecessary cost notwithstanding, passing it and trying to fix the problems later on might be the least bad way to go and I'd hold my nose and urge my senators to hold their noses and vote yes. 

 

If any of you who have resolved similar concerns one way or the other would like to share with me how you're thinking about the situation at this time I'd appreciate it. 

 

Because in a struggle in which the forces of ignorance, irrationality, moral corruption, and taxpayer  stickups know clearly what alternatives they can accept, whereas the rest of us ordinary Janes and Joes just looking for a better health care deal are trying to sort that out, the odds are against anything good coming out of this.  And time's a ticking...

 

Wall Street Journal

August 11, 2009

CAPITAL JOURNAL: Health Debate Isn't About Health

By Gerald F. Seib

The health debate, which now has moved beyond the Beltway and into raucous town halls across the land, is so intense in part because it's not really about health care at all.

On a deeper level, it's about the role of government in America's economy. And that is a raw and unresolved topic, only made more so by months of exceptional government intervention amid a deep recession.

The trigger for this deeper debate has become the question of whether to include a "public option." The idea has become so heated that it's now making both sides lose their bearings a bit -- which is ironic, because the public option wasn't previously the focus of the health debate and is a question on which some obvious compromises already are on the table.

Like all political arguments, this one doesn't occur in a vacuum. In fact, in this case, the prelude is particularly important.

Beginning a year ago, before President Barack Obama took office, the federal government began taking a series of unprecedented actions designed to stabilize whole pieces of the economy -- first the financial sector, then the housing industry, and finally the auto makers. The result, of course, was the federal government owning controlling interest in an insurer (American International Group) and a car company (Chrysler), and big chunks of another car company (General Motors) and a big investment house (Citigroup).

The good news is that the financial sector avoided a meltdown, and the economy appears to stabilizing. But the maneuvering had one other effect: It has left the public a bit stunned to see its government dive so directly into the country's economic mainstream.

From there, Washington moved immediately into debating an overhaul of the nation's giant health-care system. Moving straight from wrenching economic crisis to wrenching health debate was a calculated gamble by the White House. It thought the economic shock might actually ease the way for a broad revamp because Americans would be ready to accept the idea of big changes and also would accept the argument that full recovery couldn't occur until runaway health costs were corralled.

But the timing has had another effect: It has meant the health debate is unfolding just as Americans are pondering what the shape and size of the government's role in the economy ought to be.

As a result, the flash point in the debate has become the question of whether a health overhaul should include a public option, in which the federal government offers its own health-insurance plan to compete with private insurers. Democrats want one, and Mr. Obama says it would provide choice and keep private insurers "honest." More important, the party's liberal wing has decided that a public option is essential.

In another environment, that might have been the fodder for a wonky policy debate about whether a public option would improve or distort the insurance market and whether it would really save or cost the government a lot of money. Instead, in this environment, the public option has raised the fear that a government already running AIG and GM would soon be gunning for Aetna as well. Everything else that has happened in the past year makes it easier for some people to believe that's what the health debate is all about.

So Republicans, who never liked the public-option idea anyway, have made it the centerpiece of the argument, portraying it as a Trojan horse designed to carry into the marketplace a wholly government-run health system. As the accompanying graphic illustrates, the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows that the two parties have divided so deeply on the question that they are mirror images of each other.

In the heat of the moment, both ends of the spectrum are losing their way a bit. Liberals have forgotten that their initial goal in health reform wasn't a government-insurance program but universal coverage for all Americans. To further the irony, the public option was never a centerpiece of Mr. Obama's campaign platform on health care last year; indeed, it was hardly discussed.

Republicans, meanwhile, have forgotten that they accepted a version of a public option just a few years ago, when they approved the Bush administration's plan to provide a prescription-drug benefit for Medicare recipients. That plan includes a fallback option for the federal government to organize drug plans for seniors if private insurers don't offer enough choices. The option isn't a precise parallel, and it has never been used, but it's there.

The real point is that there are ways out of this box. One would be to make a public-insurance plan merely a fallback, to be exercised only if private insurers aren't offering enough options in all markets. The other would be to take the suggestion of Senate moderates and replace the public option with nonprofit insurance cooperatives as an alternative that doesn't require the government to be directly in the business. In an environment less charged with arguments about government's proper role in the economy, both might be easier for each side to accept.

 

I do think David Brooks the other day stumbled onto some truth when he said Obama is not at this point feared by Congress.  I think that's accurate.  I think over the next couple of months re health care in particular he faces a challenge that could well affect his effectiveness for the rest of his Administration.  By his actions of late it looks to me as though he sees the situation similarly.   While having his Chief of Staff take a hard line with some members of Congress probably is or will prove to be necessary, I am hopeful that the recent uptick in efforts by the President to speak directly with the public on health care is the beginning of intensified efforts along these lines over the coming weeks.    He probably will need to be quite explicit about how, while the special interest health care lobbies are as entitled as any of the rest of us to express their views, their narrower interests, backed up by massive campaign contributions to members of Congress, cannot be allowed to override the pressing need for the peoples' government to protect the health of the people and also get health care costs under control.    And that the only way that can prevent this from happening, and help us get health care reform that will work for the American people and not just the health care special interests, is for large numbers of ordinary members of the public to be in contact with their representatives in Congress.    In the course of explaining the stakes, he may want to say there is no positive economic future for our people and our country without ensuring the health of our people, that our government has been reckless with the health of our people and that is why the status quo is entirely unacceptable, that our people are our greatest asset, and that with healthy and well-educated people whose efforts are supported instead of handicapped by their government, we can overcome any and all challenges we now face.  Words to this effect.   Some of the provisions in current bills being considered on the Hill may be counter-productive and might even cause reform to fail if allowed to get into law.  Addressing the more complex among these issues may be more of a task for his network of supporters, rather than trying to engage ordinary citizens at a level of specificity that risks stepping on his broader messages and appeals.    It's his ass, after all, that will be most directly on the line with anything that ends up passing, if something does pass.    He is being tested by Congress. Congress is like your and my kids--eventually, later if not sooner, they will test you.    And they will take extensive notes on how you respond.    This is the issue and this is the time for him to grow or cement his bond with the public by showing the public and Congress that he will fight for what is important to him on matters that are of fundamental and indeed life-threatening importance to Americans, their families, and all of our futures.     His only chance against the special interests to get something worth enacting on health care is to take his case, hard, to the public, right now and over the next couple of months at least.

One observation I am led to on health care based on discussions at the cafe is that many members of Congress seem either to have gotten the message that there is considerable support for including a public option in the final bill, or were disposed to want that anyway.

The other observation is that, given the propensity of members of Congress to want to try to please everyone, just having a public option begs the question of whether it will work in the way advocates want it to, given what the health insurance market looks like as a result of any legislation that gets passed.  

If the terms of the legislation leave open effective ways for employers and private insurers to retain most of the less-expensive-to-insure (actuarially speaking) employees in the private, employer-provided (subsidized) market while funneling the most-expensive-to-insure people towards the public plan option, then the legislation simply won't work to accomplish any of the important and worthy goals that we need from health care reform. 

Rather, it will ghettoize the public plan, ensuring its failure and resulting, very probably, in Congressional repeal of that option in the near future, as well as long-term stigmatization of any sort of public plan option going forward. 

This is precisely what the private health insurance lobby wants.  Employers are desperate to lower their health insurance costs any way they can.  To the extent they can offload the expensive employees onto taxpayer-funded health insurance, they're delighted as well. 

So the public option in whatever gets enacted, if something is enacted, needs to be robust and not unfairly disadvantaged and doomed to fail. 

Can cafe management bring Maggie Mahar back--and ask others to write about this issue specifically if they can also help--to help us sort out what a fair, workable bill would look like along this dimension of not unfairly disadvantaging the public option? 

It seems to me as though the whole issue of how to think about "fairness" towards both the public option and to private insurers really needs discussion soon, given the speed with which the legislation is moving. 

Maggie...wherever you are...help! 

 

 

 

 

 

This is the only post I hope I make on this odious subject.

Bush was deeply hated by many. But I don't believe I have ever seen a single comment by a tpmcafe denizen even suggesting or intimating violence against Bush or Cheney.  Not one, that I've seen, anyway. 

A major difference between right-wing hate versus hate emanating from other parts of the political spectrum is the public visibility of implied violence coming from the former, and the utter depravity of right-wing figures with a major media presence in failing to condemn it unequivocally.  Threats of violence surely come from people of all--and no discernible--ideology.  But that seems to me a major difference.

Before the presidential election, Sinclair Lewis' classic It Can't Happen Here was creeping its way up the queue in my reading pile.  (I note that Tom Wright read it a few months back.)  I was specifically concerned with what might happen if we had another presidential election close enough that the outcome was seriously and credibly disputed, after having come to the conclusion awhile back that it is more likely than not that the 2004 presidential election was stolen.  Fortunately, we didn't.   After Obama won I breathed a big sigh of relief and hadn't thought about it much since then.   Playing by the rules of the radical right wing I could say that these people "hate America", the charges they levy freely against their fellow citizens who have strenuous objections to specific US policies adopted by particular Administrations and Congresses.  It isn't as though they don't have lots of levers to block the Obama agenda without resort to violence or threats of violence.  A good friend of mine--huge early Obama supporter, very active in media reform circles, and heavily involved in launching an interfaith reconciliation project (Muslims/Christians/Jews)--is not someone easily given to paranoia.  He sent me an email a couple of days ago on an interview done with the author of the book The Eliminationists.  I've not had a chance to watch the clip yet--my friend says the author emphasizes the distinction between free speech versus responsible speech.  Indeed.  Glad to post the link if anyone is interested. The haters never go away, alas.  They just stew and eventually regroup or refocus politically.  Their right-wing allies publish books called The End of Free Speech.  If the Justice Department were to launch one or two high profile incitement-to-violence prosecutions, the loonies would love nothing better.  It would "prove" their point that "liberal fascism" is here.  Oh happy day for them--time for the gloves to come off!  Their standard is: thinly veiled threats of violence are legit coming from them; intense criticism of particular public officials and public policies by those opposing them from a point of view not their own, however, amounts to "hating America."  These people--the haters--are sick.  There are always going to be people like that out there.  What is also inexcusable is the deafening silence when it comes to condemning that rhetoric from so many in the right-wing commentariat.

Some of the exchanges I've most enjoyed at the café took place four or five years ago.   They took place among some of the early regulars at the café among us ordinary denizens, on the topic, broadly, of what a useful, functional US foreign policy might look like.  More specifically, what sorts of policy changes, including institutional reforms on a post WWII or even broader scale, might serve to jumpstart flagging global efforts to address transnational threats such as climate change, nuclear weapons proliferation, lack of sustainable energy supplies, threat of pandemic, development/poverty reduction, terrorism, and genocide prevention? 

I recall cafe denizen DanK as among those offering notably penetrating comments.   

 

Conceptually there seemed to be a lot of agreement among the participants that the major security threats of our day are transnational in scope (or should be, if the people who are aching to bring on another Cold War can be prevented from doing that).  They cannot be solved by any one country.  Nor can they be solved without widespread international cooperation.

 

Since that time I've tried to keep an eye out for reports or books or really just arguments in any form that offered specific conceptual and practical policy recommendations for the kind of foreign policy reorientation needed for our era. 

 

I think I've come upon one that is most worthy of receiving attention from policymakers at the highest levels as well as from interested and engaged citizens at the café and elsewhere.    

 

It's called Power and Responsibility: Building International Order in an Era of Transnational Threats, by Bruce Jones, Carlos Pascual, and Stephen Stedman.  Stedman was special advisor to Kofi Annan at the UN circa 2005; Jones was his deputy, tasked especially to assist negotiations over a new Peacebuilding Commission and Peacebuilding Support Office at the UN.  Pascual was their American counterpart for most of that time as coordinator for reconstruction and stabilization at the State Department.  The book was published by the Brookings Institution a couple of months ago. 

 

Early chapters outline a concept of "responsible sovereignty" and their argument for it. 

 

The bulk of the book consists of six chapters, each devoted to proposals for international governance reforms and policies the authors believes they can facilitate, to address what they see as the six most critical transnational threats: climate change, nuclear proliferation, security from biological threats (principally ones that can lead to pandemics and those stemming from misuse of biotechnology); civil violence/regional conflict; transnational terrorism; and economic instability on account of financial instability and poverty in particular (this was the weakest of the six by far).  Each of these chapters identifies and assesses major threats, the current performance of the international community in addressing them, and the structural and policy gaps that inhibit effectiveness and need to be overcome, before offering the authors' own recommendations for how to do so.   

 

The penultimate chapter seeks to sketch out how the ideas and proposals might be put together to form an agenda for addressing major security threats arising from the Middle East, as the toughest case. 

 

A few highlights:

 

*The single most important structural change they recommend is the creation of a G16 as the smallest grouping possible that still includes the leading economies and most populous countries, regionally (and, they don't say, religiously) balanced.  It would replace the G8.  The 16 would be the current G8 (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, UK, US) plus China, Mexico, India, Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, Turkey and a second African nation, most likely Egypt or Nigeria.  Its major purposes would be to prenegotiate agreements on basic parameters of responses to major global challenges, often as a precursor to UN General Assembly refinement and hopefully adoption, and to serve as a mechanism for building knowledge, trust and patterns of cooperative behavior among the most powerful countries. 

 

*They offer recommendations for UN Security Council and other UN reforms, the former to come after the G16 is formed.  (as any effort to lead with Security Council membership reform would be DOA)

 

*The formation of several new multilateral institutions is recommended in the six chapters addressing the various transnational security threats.

 

*They argue against seeking a concert of democracies organizing framework (recommended by G. John Ikenberry, Anne-Marie Slaughter, Ivo Daalder, James Lindsay, and John McCain, among others), using pretty much the arguments that were used to argue against it here at the café a few years back.  It would be likely to increase international tensions by actually encouraging a hard bipolarity between democracies and non-democracies ("...the attempt to pit democracies against nondemocracies will provoke conflict, mistrust and hostility in the short term, and risk triggering a second cold war at a time when international cooperation is essential for mitigating transnational threats").  It is not clear what problems it would help to solve.  And most eligible members would not want to join, based on the authors' consultations. 

 

Jackets blurbs are from Kofi Annan, Brent Scowcroft, Madeleine Albright, Chuck Hagel, former Clinton Sec Def William Perry, and, yes, Anne-Marie Slaughter.  I believe the authors could have gotten many other folks not part of the DC foreign policy establishment to write positive blurbs.  The fact that they have support from this group I take as an encouraging sign that many others in addition to these establishment figures are probably also thinking much more boldly about the current situation than might be assumed, or at any rate might well be receptive to bold new initiatives if the Obama Administration decides to pursue some.

 

Certainly there is plenty of room for disagreement with their argument and specific suggestions.  But this is major intellectual work on what US foreign policy reflecting true global leadership should be moving towards, pronto.  The authors have done a great service.  If the Obama Administration were to embrace something close to this agenda and move to implement it aggressively I for one would feel a hell of a lot better about our country and world's prospects.  

Much of the economic policy discussion over the next few months will be about how to stop the bleeding in the financial sector, and then, how to prevent it from happening again.  Understandably so.

Paul Krugman is not alone, however, among respected economists who believe the size of the stimulus bill was, while helpful, not large enough.  Depending on what the situation looks like a few months down the road, we may be looking at a need for more stimulus.

The Washington Post's lead story following passage of the stimulus bill last month contained a serious factual error on its size relative to that of the New Deal.  I sent their Corrections department the following email on February 14:

The Post's February 14 lead story, "Congress Passes Stimulus Package" appears to contain a factual error about the relative size of the current stimulus package compared to federal spending during the New Deal. On page A10 it states: "The New Deal of the 1930s equaled no more than 2 percent of the nation's gross domestic product.  The new legislation represents over 5 percent..." 

(my name and contact information)

I received no acknowledgement from the Post indicating they had received this email.  Of course there has been no correction issued.

I have followed up with the Post's new ombudsman, Andy Alexander, to try to get the Post to respond.  He has no direct authority to make them do anything.  He can "only" make suggestions, in his Sunday column and more privately.  I have now spoken a few times with Andy, who has been in the newspaper business for some 40 years, and have found him to be smart and committed.  I also know he completely "gets" the bigger picture concerning the perilous fate of the newspaper industry.  Hopefully his efforts to bring about marked and rapid improvements in the Post's corrections process will meet with some success.  

However, the prospects for any somewhat longer-term process improvements aside, the chances of the Post either issuing a correction on the substantive matter I raised with them in the letter, or printing the letter as a Letter to the Editor, are at this point nil.  Thus this post, which is what comes to mind as perhaps the best option this Joe Citizen has at this point to try to counter, albeit in a small way, the inaccurate information in the Post's article.   

<a href="http://www.pnhp.org/blog/2009/02/26/nobel-laureate-joseph-stiglitz-on-single-payer/">Reluctantly</a>.  And it's not his specialty.  But still.  Go Joe!

 

Lots of distinguished names on this list of signatories endorsing the Employee Free Choice Act (scroll down below the article for the full list).  Notable for their absence are Krugman and Stiglitz--perhaps a fellow denizen knows the stories there. 

The Employee Free Choice Act is Needed to Restore Balance in the Labor Market

by Richard B. Freeman, Frank Levy, Lawrence Mishel

Although its collapse has dominated recent media coverage, the financial sector is not the only segment of the U.S. economy running into serious trouble. The institutions that govern the labor market have also failed, producing the unusual and unhealthy situation in which hourly compensation for American workers has stagnated even as their productivity soared.

Indeed, from 2000 to 2007, the income of the median working-age household fell by $2,000- an unprecedented decline. In that time, virtually all of the nation's economic growth went to a small number of wealthy Americans. An important reason for the shift from broadly-shared prosperity to growing inequality is the erosion of workers' ability to form unions and bargain collectively.

A natural response of workers unable to improve their economic situation is to form unions to negotiate a fair share of the economy, and that desire is borne out by recent surveys. Millions of American workers - more than half of non-managers - have said they want a union at their work place. Yet only 7.5% of private sector workers are now represented by a union. And in all of 2007, fewer than 60,000 workers won union status through government-sanctioned elections. What explains this disconnect?

The problem is that the election process overseen by the National Labor Relations Board has become drawn out and acrimonious, with management campaigning fiercely to deter unionization, sometimes to the extent of violating labor laws. Union sympathizers are routinely threatened or even fired, and they have little effective recourse under the law. Even when workers overcome this pressure and vote for a union, they are unable to obtain contracts one-third of the time due to management resistance.

To remedy this situation, the Congress is considering the Employee Free Choice Act. This act would accomplish three things: It would give workers the choice of using majority sign-up--a simple, established procedure in which workers sign cards to indicate their support for a union - or staging an NLRB election; it triples damages for employers who fire union supporters or break other labor laws; and it creates a process to ensure that newly unionized employees have a fair shot at obtaining a first contract by calling for arbitration after 120 days of unsuccessful bargaining.

The Employee Free Choice Act will better reflect worker desires than the current "war over representation." The Act will also lower the level of acrimony and distrust that often accompanies union elections in our current system.

A rising tide lifts all boats only when labor and management bargain on relatively equal terms. In recent decades, most bargaining power has resided with management. The current recession will further weaken the ability of workers to bargain individually. More than ever, workers will need to act together.

The Employee Free Choice Act is not a panacea, but it would restore some balance to our labor markets.  As economists, we believe this is a critically important step in rebuilding our economy and strengthening our democracy by enhancing the voice of working people in the workplace.

Statement Endorsers

Henry J. Aaron, Brookings Institution

Katharine Abraham, University of Maryland

Philippe Aghion, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Eileen Appelbaum, Rutgers University

Kenneth Arrow, Stanford University

Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research

Jagdish Bhagwati, Columbia University

Rebecca Blank, Brookings Institution

Joseph Blasi, Rutgers University

Alan S. Blinder, Princeton University

William A. Darity, Duke University

Brad DeLong, University of California/Berkeley

John DiNardo, University of Michigan

Henry Farber, Princeton University

Robert H. Frank, Cornell University

Richard Freeman, Harvard University

James K. Galbraith, University of Texas

Robert J. Gordon, Northwestern University

Heidi Hartmann, Institute for Women's Policy Research

Lawrence Katz, Harvard University

Robert Lawrence, Harvard University

David Lee, Princeton University

Frank Levy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Lisa Lynch, Brandeis University

Ray Marshall, University of Texas

Lawrence Mishel, Economic Policy Institute

Robert Pollin, University of Massachusetts

William Rodgers, Rutgers University

Dani Rodrik, Harvard University

Jeffrey D. Sachs, Columbia University

Robert M. Solow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

William Spriggs, Howard University

Peter Temin, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Mark Thoma, University of Oregon

Lester C. Thurow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Laura Tyson, University of California/Berkeley

Paula B. Voos, Rutgers University

David Weil, Boston University

Edward Wolff, New York University

 

I'd like to see this book get as widespread attention as possible. 

It is an engagingly reported look at working conditions in the south China industrial factories, which appears to be balanced and should help to ground discussion about our and other countries' policies towards China on a better factual foundation.  The book is subtitled "The True Cost of Chinese Competitive Advantage".  Harney, who freelances now, was the Financial Times' south China correspondent between 2003 and 2006 and speaks Mandarin Chinese.

I'll share a few things I learned from it below.  I'd be most interested if denizens have come across contrary information and points of view that seem credible.   

But before doing that, I'd like to recommend that those of you who are interested in what is going on in China should definitely check out recent blog posts from our fellow veteran cafe denizen, Tom Wright, at his <a href="http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/tom_wright/">blog page</a>  Tom has been traveling about China of late (and may still be there, not sure about that) and has, as he typically does, lots of interesting observations.

A few things I learned from Harney's book:

*the labor laws on China's books passed by its central government are far more substantial than I would have thought. The problem is that law enforcement efforts, which are localized, are paltry--and everyone knows it.

*There is growing consciousness and unhappiness among Chinese workers dissatisfied with their working conditions and lack of say on workplace issues, which a number of NGOs in Hong Kong have built on to stimulate interest in various forms of worker representation.

*the central government, at least in the abstract (minus real resources to enforce the laws they enact they don't appear to be that serious about it, however--it may be more for international show), appears interested in improving working conditions and workers' opportunities for some say in what goes on in the workplaces. A fundamental tension is that local governments depend for their revenues on development-maximizing policies, which runs headlong into enforcing the labor and environmental laws on the books because doing the latter worsen the (in this case, primarily foreign) investment climate in particular. Sound familiar? Non-unionized, low wage US states pursued this race to the bottom strategy only to see the jobs go to Mexico and then East Asia.

*India, Pakistan, and Vietnam are among the countries with lower wages than China which multinationals (mostly, for now) talk about moving to if the Chinese "weaken the investment climate" (i.e., address labor and environmental problems with laws and policies that are actually enforced). China retains some competitive advantages vis a vis these countries--including clustering of supply chains. Vietnam has independent labor unions which reduce its attractiveness to multinationals contemplating jumping off the China ship.

*Harney believes that when the Chinese government sets its mind to an objective, it is usually pretty successful at achieving it. There is considerable unrest--expressed in the form of large numbers of public protests--in the country over major, major environmental problems, air quality and contamination of drinking water supplies in particular, that are destroying the health and lives of growing numbers of Chinese citizens. This is the most immediate source of pressure on the government re environmental problems, and it appears to be growing.

*The one-child family policy adopted in the late 1970s is just now starting to contribute to labor shortages which could put workers in a somewhat more favorable position to bring about positive workplace change. The second generation of migrant workers shows signs of the sorts of cultural changes seen in Japan and other once-poor countries which experienced dramatic economic growth--rising and more demanding expectations in terms of what they want out of their lives in particular.

 

 

Some good comments in the book club discussion this week on Andrew Bacevich's book, both by invited contributors and cafe denizens.  

It could be so much better if Michael Klare, Bacevich, and others would engage with us riffraff.  Evidently they can't be bothered. 

I've been at this place for awhile and a couple of years ago some of the denizens were, I thought, obnoxious to many of the invited contributors.  It left me at least somewhat sympathetic towards those who opted not to engage.  Anne-Marie Slaughter, I recall, took a heap of abuse, yet to her great credit she did engage frequently and civilly, with a degree of equanimity and class I suspect few of us in her position likely would have been able to muster.  Ikenberry rarely if ever replied to comments or questions.  Daalder--infrequently--and he treated very poorly by some.  Michael Lind would sometimes give at least as good as he got where he took umbrage. Lindsay I thought could at times be just as obnoxious as some of the disrespectful denizens.  Steve Clemons was, and is, a gentleman through and through, a class act. 

I don't see any nastiness coming from denizens in book club threads this week, nor lately in book club discussions.  So I am considerably less sympathetic than I once was to the invited contributors who do not engage, which frankly is most of them. 

I get the sense that the folks invited to contribute think of the folks who frequent this site as spectators at a sporting event--permitted to watch and listen in on the "real" action, but not as citizens who might possibly have a worthwhile thought or question worth their time.   

Maybe some time back we cafe denizens got a collective rep for too much bad behavior that at one time may have been justified but no longer seems to be, but that we're having trouble shaking.    

At the cafe we are fortunate enough to be able to read Dean Baker regularly.  But if you are looking for a nice summary, for others as well as yourself, of his explanations of the stock market and housing bubble bursts, and how we could avoid them in the future, his new paperback book Plunder and Blunder, is very short, clear and accessible. 

It's so good to have him at the cafe.  He deserves a much wider public audience than he has.  Hopefully, things are moving in that direction.  He can write--and he's been right repeatedly, early, on big things.  Surely there ought to be a more prominent place for him in the public sphere than for others of whom one or both of those things cannot be said.   

Other stuff I've been reading lately:

Jonathan Alter's The Defining Moment: FDR's Hundred Days and the Triumph of Hope was a lively, journalistic-style read not deep on analysis of the New Deal but insightful about FDR's character and approach.  

Alan Lawson's A Commonwealth of Hope: The New Deal Response to Crisis was somewhat less lively but more informative as a programmatic overview of the New Deal.   

I note that one of the Very Short Introduction books, The Great Depression and the New Deal, by Eric Rauchway, is in the queue for a cafe discussion soon.  I've not read that one yet.