Matthew Yglesias's Blog, page 2298

Fear of the End of the World

By Alyssa Rosenberg

A week when 116 people were killed by tornadoes is perhaps not the best of all possible weeks to release a trailer for a movie that implies fear of extreme weather is a symptom of paranoid schizophrenia:

That said, while we have a lot of movies about apocalyptic disasters, ranging from alien invasion to Mayan prophecy, we have much less art about the way people respond to their fears of disaster and apocalypse. Obviously we don't live in an age of mass preparedness in the same way we did in the fifties and sixties: air raid drills aren't a regular part of school days, in areas of the country not affected by extreme weather, there are periodic runs on supermarkets, but with a sense of sheepishness attached, and I don't know that people watch the Doomsday Clock with the same trepidation that they once might have. When something like a projected date for the Rapture comes due, the mainstream reaction is a combination of mockery and pity, even as we consume art about the end of the world, from The Passage, to 2012, to The Walking Dead, like it's candy. Maybe absorbing ourselves in baroque fantasies of the end of the world (I am reasonably confident that we're not going to breed twelve tribes of super-vampires in Colorado, but who knows!) lets us convince ourselves that they'll never happen, while focusing instead on the fear of utter destruction is a little too close to an acknowledgement that things could really end badly.

Crime Falling Nationwide Despite Recession, Debunking Expectations Of The Ignorant

Excellent news on the crime front:

The number of violent crimes in the United States dropped significantly last year, to what appeared to be the lowest rate in nearly 40 years, a development that was considered puzzling partly because it ran counter to the prevailing expectation that crime would increase during a recession. In all regions, the country appears to be safer. The odds of being murdered or robbed are now less than half of what they were in the early 1990s, when violent crime peaked in the United States. Small towns, especially, are seeing far fewer murders: In cities with populations under 10,000, the number plunged by more than 25 percent last year.

I'm not sure where this expectation that crime would fall during a recession comes from. Crime rates were very low during the Great Depression, and crime shot up during the incredibly boom of the 1960s. The state of the labor market is but one of several factors influencing the incidence of crime and there's no evidence whatsoever that it swamps other things. Indeed, one of the most interesting determinants of crime is the level of crime itself. Consider, for example, the fact that there would be fewer murders in Philadelphia if murderers in Philadelphia had a higher chance of getting caught and sent to jail. But if there were fewer murderers in Philadelphia, then the cops could dedicate more resources to each murder and murderers would have a higher chance of getting caught and being sent to jail. So if the murder rate decline in Philadelphia, that decline has a good chance of becoming self-sustaining. Other feedback loops are also in effect since less crime will lead to more economic opportunity and more street activity, both of which will lead to less crime.

This is one reason why a temporary surge of federal policing resources into high-crime, low-income cities would likely serve as an a highly effective means of improving living standards.

It's also a reason to be disturbed by the fact that one exception to the falling crime trend came in New York City, America's largest municipality and basically the safest big city in the country.

Bibi Netanyahu's Case For One State

To thunderous applause from congress, the Israeli Prime Minister made the following points:

— One, a surprisingly lengthy argument was advanced about Israel's status as the only democracy in the region.

— Two, a very strong argument was advanced that Palestinian failure to publicly repudiate "right of return" makes peace impossible.

— Three, argued that Israeli security requires Israeli military presence in the Jordan River Valley.

— Four, argued that Jerusalem should never be divided.

— Fifth, argued that there should be no Palestinian military.

— Sixth, argued that "the Jewish people are not an occupying power" in the West Bank.

This very cogent case for granting full civil equality to Arab residents of the territory under the control of the state of Israel was then undermined by a weird insistence that he's actually aiming for the establishment of two separate states. One for Jews and one for Palestinians. Except the Palestinian state won't include the demographically Palestinian portions of Jerusalem, and the only military in the Republic of Palestine will be an Israeli force. That would be a funny sort of state.

I completely understand why Netanyahu wants to insist on ideas 3-6. And I also understand why he thinks a two state solution would be preferable to a binational one. But insisting on 3-6 makes a two state solution impossible. Netanyahu's Point 2 is also true. But an Israeli leader really interested in a two-state solution would be trying to put Palestinians in a corner by focusing on that point. Instead, Netanyahu's denying the reality of the occupation and using security as a cover for additional land grabs.

The US and UK Have Very Different Political Institutions

I completely agree with David Brooks that there's something admirable about the operation of British political institutions:

It's just that the system worked. Each party took different whacks at pieces of the great national problem, depending on its interests. Opposing parties, when it was their turn in power, quietly consolidated the best of what the other had achieved. Gradually, through constructive competition, the country quarreled its way forward.

This is what I've called "bipartisanship through alternation." The postwar Labour governments did a bunch of stuff, only some of which was undone by Margaret Thatcher who also did some new stuff, only some of which was undone by Tony Blair who also did some new stuff, etc. You almost never have "compromise" and you also don't see a straight ping-ponging back and forth. Instead, policy zigs and zags.

But Brooks attributes this to the personal qualities of British elites:

Britain is also blessed with a functioning political culture. It is dominated by people who live in London and who have often known each other since prep school. This makes it gossipy and often incestuous.

But the plusses outweigh the minuses. The big newspapers still set the agenda, not cable TV or talk radio. If the quintessential American pol is standing in his sandbox screaming affirmations to members of his own tribe, the quintessential British pol is standing across a table arguing face to face with his opponents.

British leaders and pundits know their counterparts better. They are less likely to get away with distortions and factual howlers. They are less likely to believe the other party is homogenously evil. They are more likely to learn from a wide range of people. When they do hate, their hatreds are more likely to be personal and less likely to take on the tenor of a holy war.

It's difficult to know how to quantify any of those assertions. But the real difference between the US and UK seems clear to me—it's the institutions. But Brooks sees the institutions as pushing against the kind of cozy comity ("The British political system gives the majority party much greater power than any party could hope to have in the U.S., but cultural norms make the political debate less moralistic and less absolutist") he celebrates.

I would argue that's backwards. The institutions are driving all of this. The British system is both more majoritarian and much less laden with veto points. This makes certain kinds of tactical extremism a much less viable political strategy. If you make promises to your base, your base expects you to deliver. And the median voter fears you'll deliver. That lends itself to a different kind of political strategy. It also lends itself to a different kind of governing strategy, specifically to that kind of bipartisanship by alternation.

House Republicans Aim To Reduce Regulation Of Derivatives

Via my colleague Pat Garofalo comes a story about why we're certain to see a giant new financial catastrophe in the not-too-distant future:

The CFTC's budget would fall to $172 million from $202 million under the plan to be considered tomorrow by the agriculture subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee. It "provides the necessary resources" for the CFTC to fulfill its duties, Representative Jack Kingston, a Georgia Republican and subcommittee chairman, said in a statement. President Barack Obama had requested $308 million in his 2012 budget proposal.

The CFTC is the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. It regulates derivatives. And the issue here isn't that derivatives are evil or that a 15% cut will or won't necessarily devastate the agency. The issue here is just that regulating the global financial system is a difficult task. Intelligent people disagree about the best way to do it. And for any given regulatory scheme, large incentives will exist for bankers to find and exploit loopholes in it. So effective implementation will be different. If everyone was well-meaning and well-intended, regulation still might fail. And these are not the kind of budget measures that a political movement interested in getting the job done would be taking. Given the objective difficulty of making financial regulation work properly, there's simply no chance that it will be effective if politicians don't want it to work.

That, I think, has always been the core difficulty with evaluating the likely impact of the Dodd-Frank bill or anything else. What you need is a system where if a regulator sees something he thinks is regulatory arbitrage, that some kind of action is taken. Which means his bosses need to want action to be taken, and the members of congress who underwrite his budget need to want action to be taken.

GOP Plans To Defend Wasteful Medicare Spending By Blocking Confirmation Of IPAB Nominees

There are currently two approaches to restraining the growth of Medicare spending in Washington. One, espoused by the Obama administration, is to create an Independent Payment Advisory Board which will prevent Medicare from paying for ineffective health care treatments. The other, espoused by House Republicans, is to do nothing whatsoever for the next ten years. And then to promise that nothing will ever be done to harm a precious hair on the head of a single precious person born in the good old days before 1955.

But if you were born after 1955? Then it's simple—no Medicare for you. You get a coupon, of decreasing value, to go buy private health insurance.

Sometimes conservative pundits claim to believe that the problem with the IPAB approach is that it can't be made to work. Other times conservative politicians dedicate themselves to fanatical defense of wasteful Medicare spending, denouncing IPAB as Kenyan socialist rationing. And Brian Beutler reports that they have a powerful tool to make sure IPAB fails—just don't confirm anyone:

There's just one problem: Each of the board's 15 members has to be confirmed by the Senate. That means filibusters and 60 vote requirements stand in the way of staffing a panel that Republicans decry as a government rationing board. And months ahead of the nominations, they're telling Obama "good luck with that!"

"I think it would be pretty tough," Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), the top Republican on the powerful Senate Finance Committee, told TPM Monday, when asked about confirming Obama's nominees to IPAB. "We don't believe in rationing, nor do we believe in an unaccountable organization like that. I mean that's crazy."

"I'd have to think about that. If it were changed, then probably, but the way it's constituted now, it'd be difficult," Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK), an influential conservative in the Republican caucus, said Monday in response to a question from TPM.

Then once this effort to increase the cost-effectiveness of Medicare for all Americans is sabotaged, the success of the sabotage will become an argument in favor of scrapping Medicare altogether.

Cool Art Watch: "My Pie Town"

By Alyssa Rosenberg

Via Andrew Sullivan, I clicked on over to a gallery of the photos from Debbie Grossman's "My Pie Town" project, in which she alters a series of images Russell Lee took for the Farm Security Administration so that some pictures of men doing things like farm work are now images of women, and pictures of heterosexual couples are now pictures of same-sex couples. Grossman told the Morning News that "The main reason for doing so was to give us the unusual experience of getting to see a contemporary idea of family (female married couples as parents, for example) as if it were historical."

This is exactly why I think Kings' depiction of health care reform is so important, why Tamora Pierce's integration of dual responsibility for birth control into her fantasy novels matters so much. There's something so audacious about just presenting the world the way you want it to be, about letting your readers, or your viewers, draw their own conclusions about what it would be like to live in a world with effective herbal male contraceptives, or where environmental stewardship was a form of religious worship. Imagination is key fuel to hope. I'm not saying Avatar's going to spur a massive global environmental movement. But making progressive values aspirational through art is important, long-term work.

AIPAC As AIPAC Lobby

The Walter E. Washington DC Convention Center is conveniently located between my apartment and my office so I get to see all the conventions that pass through town. As such, I can assure you that the ongoing AIPAC annual conference is a big event. Attendance seems to be far surpassing last week's American Urological Association confab, to say nothing of such minnows as the J Street conference a few months ago.

Which is just a reminder that AIPAC is a really, really, really successful organization. Gets top notch speakers from both parties at every single event, has tons of enthusiastic members, raises lots of money, has a very nice office building, etc. And it's worth keeping in mind that the strength and success of AIPAC and similar organizations isn't just a factor in America's regional policy, it's also something to which the failure of America's regional policy has directly contributed. After all, had the Oslo Accords worked out in the mid-1990s and led to the establishment of the independent Republic of Palestine and the assumption of normal diplomatic relations between Israel and the Gulf Cooperation Council states that would have been great for Israel. And it would have been great for the United States of America. And it would have been great for Palestine. And generally speaking, it would have been good for the world.

But it would have been terrible for AIPAC as such. There's no way the AIPAC 2011 annual conference would be a huge deal had the Arab-Israeli dispute been settled in 1997. Nor would it be possible for writers and editorialists with hawkish views on Israel to earn generous paydays speaking to Jewish organizations around the country. And with the (fortunate!) decline of anti-semitism as a practical issue in American life, advocacy around the Arab-Israeli conflict has also become more central to the mission of the Anti-Defamation League and other American Jewish organizations that weren't initially founded with Zionist missions. Obviously, I don't think the leadership of these organizations are insincere in their efforts. But it's still the case that objective interests end up influencing people's behavior through motivated reasoning and motivated skepticism. And the fact of the matter is that we have a fairly large and very successful network of organizations in the United States that both influence Israeli and American policy and also have strong objective interests in seeing the conflict continue. Indeed, in a weird way the more embattled and isolated Israel becomes, the better "pro-Israel" organizations do.

Sitting Down All Day Is Bad For You

Via Lifehacker, an extravagant infographic on the health hazards of sitting all day.

As I've mentioned before, I've moved to a standing at work platform. The key element in it is that I bring a laptop (viz: MacBook Air) to work and most of the day I place it atop a stack of books that sits on the best. Then usually starting around 3PM I get tired of standing and pick the laptop up and work while sitting down. Easy! Obviously, not everyone owns a laptop, but my suspicion is that the proportion of officeworkers who own one will only grow over time. And, indeed, as the cost of computing power continued to fall there's more and more to be said for the idea of employers issuing laptops to employees rather than desktop computers. This kind of increased flexibility in terms of working style is just one of the advantages.

Endgame

You made me boring:

— Tim Pawlenty is boring: in a good way.

— Alyssa Katz says the housing collapse was avoidable.

— There's something fascinating about the idea of a whole neighborhood vanishing from the conceptual map.

— Former Elizabeth Warren foe now thinks she should get a recess appointment.

— Political reform badly needed in Gulf Arab states.

— IMF women object to NY Times characterization of the environment there.

— More evidence that college students need to do a better job of picking majors.

EMA, "California".