Peter L. Berger's Blog, page 612

America Needs Better, Classier Immigration Reformers

Donald Trump released an immigration-reform plan this weekend that may be the most aggressively restrictionist immigration policy proposal since the Progressive Era. As NPR summarizes, Trump would:

Build a wall across the southern border paid for by Mexico
Seize all remittance payments “derived from illegal wages” until Mexico agrees to pay for the wall
Implement a nationwide e-verify system and defund sanctuary cities that refuse to cooperate with the federal law
End birthright citizenship (currently enshrined in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution)
Crack down on H-1B visas, which are designated for high-skilled STEM employees, by requiring companies to hire from the pool of unemployed domestic workers first
Create criminal penalties for people who overstay a visa

Trump then topped himself in an interview by saying he’d deport all illegal immigrants in the country.

You’ve got to give Trump one thing: he’s a uniter, not a divider—which is to say, Trump has managed to bring thinkers from across the political spectrum, from  The Federalist ‘s Rich Cromwell to  Salon ‘s Joan Walsh, to condemn his plan as the blueprint for a xenophobic police state. And that’s what it is. Trump’s proposal is laced with measures that target legal as well as illegal immigrants. And it lays the grounds for a police state in that the measures required to enforce it, from the financial snooping it would take to identify and cut off remittences to the police effort necessary to deport the estimated illegal population of 11 million people, would lead to unparalleled government intrusion into the lives of law-abiding Americans of every background.And yet, the usual paradox: the more Donald Trump is condemned by traditional political outlets (even on the right), the more his stock seems to rise. Why—and what’s to be done?Once the politicians, commentators, and activists that profess to care so much about immigrants have thrown a few more punches at the terrible Trump and his evil immigration plan, they should go on to beat up those really to blame for this plan: themselves. The current potency of the “stop immigration at all costs” sentiment is the direct result of thirty years of immigration policy failure. And if something isn’t done to change that soon, the American public may demand truly decisive action to shut off immigration. It’s happened before.The last time American immigration levels stood as high as they do right now was during 1880–1924, the years of the so-called “Great Wave.” American immigration laws had always been liberal—in fact, during our nation’s first century, the phrase “immigration acts” usually referred to a set of laws designed to attract foreigners. From 1880 on, however, new technology (the steel-hulled, steam-powered ocean liner, which made crossing the Atlantic much quicker and cheaper), the growing allure of a more settled, more prosperous America, oppression abroad (particularly that aimed the Jews of czarist Russia and Eastern Europe), and economic malaise elsewhere (notably in Italy and Greece) combined to drive an unprecedented number of immigrants to these shores. It was a migration like nothing the country had seen, as 27 million new immigrants joined a nation that in 1880 had only 50 million citizens.The Great Wave gave us many enduring American institutions. Broadway musicals were the brain-children of displaced Eastern European Jews. The city of Chicago and the entire midwest were transformed and developed by the newcomers. Chinese immigrants altered the life and culture of the West Coast.But while the Wave had been cresting, other intellectual and social undercurrents had begun circulating in America: a populist nativism, national security concerns (about Eastern European radicals, and after 1917, Communists in particular), and a growing, international movement toward restrictionism. Do any of these conditions sound familiar?Meanwhile, America’s pro-immigration forces failed to make the case persuasively to preserve the status quo. They were unable to tailor the traditional defenses of liberal American immigration to new political realities, or to develop new narratives defending it instead. The ardent restrictionists built their case, over years of small measures (such as banning convicts) or failed bills (such as a vetoed 1913 bill imposing a literacy test on would-be immigrants). Moderate America began to pay attention. Some were swayed by this, some by that. The 1911 report of the Senate’s Dillingham Commission gave an official stamp of approval to “scientific”, Progressive racist theories (that were in fact no more than gussied-up a priori assumptions). World War I sealed for many the idea of the foreigner as menace. And afterward the United States, struggling economically, was anticipating another wave of immigration from Europe that it wanted no part of. Slowly, a restrictionist coalition assembled that would prove unstoppable.In 1924, Congress passed the Johnson-Reed Act. It set national-origin quotas for immigrants from each country at 2 percent of the number of foreign-born persons from that country recorded in the U.S. during the 1890 census—effectively barring mass immigration from South, Central, and Eastern Europe—and outright barred immigration from Asia. Not at all coincidentally, those were the areas which had fed the Great Wave, but whose populations were considered too poor and too culturally foreign to be assimilable en masse. Furthermore, an overall cap was set on immigration from the Eastern Hemisphere at 150,000 per year. Immigration halved within one year after implementation, and declined more than 90 percent over a decade, from 700,000-plus immigrants in 1924 to 29,400 in 1934.The “golden door” was slammed shut. The restrictionist consensus proved so strong that even in the wake of the Holocaust the U.S. was unwilling to throw that door open again to significant numbers of refugees.America’s attitude toward immigration wouldn’t liberalize at all until 1965, and in fact, legal immigration from the Old World never recovered. In ’65, Congress passed the Immigration and Nationality Act, which approximately doubled the absolute cap on immigration to 290,000 persons, and abolished the quota system in favor of emphases on jobs and family reunification. Significantly, Latin American nations were exempted from the per-country cap, though still subject to an overall quota; it was at this time that immigration from south of the border began in a serious way. But demand soon outstripped the legal supply of visas—which was still low by historical standards—and thus began the wave of illegal immigration from Latin America.The roots of our current immigration quagmire lie in the failed attempts to remedy that situation—particularly the failure of the compromise of 1986. That year, the Democratic House and Republican Administration hammered out one of the big bargains that were the hallmark of domestic policy in the Reagan years. The basic terms of this one were simple: amnesty in return for border enforcement. The resulting Simpson-Mazzoli Act had many problems, including the reliance on falsifiable documents for worker verification and insufficient border-patrol measures. But the biggest problem was that it took the sensible, intuitive solution to America’s immigration problem—amnesty for border enforcement—and failed to deliver on the second half of it, thus poisoning the well of public support for reform for a generation.Within a year, as immigration scholar Michael C. LeMay points out in his survey of American immigration history, Guarding the Gates, illegal immigration was back at its pre-amnesty levels. It isn’t at all surprising, therefore, that when Congress revamped the legal immigration system in 1990, public support was insufficient to get quota numbers high enough to meet demand. (Instead, the cap was lifted to 700,000 per year, and the “visa lottery” introduced.) Illegal immigration continued to fill the gap (some would say, “and then some”), and we’ve been living with a two-tier system since.There are great costs to this dysfunction. It hurts illegal immigrants, who can never fully participate in the economic and civic life of their new country; American citizens, who see the respect for the rule of law, particularly at the local level, eroding before their eyes; and the nation as a whole, which is deprived of the full dynamism and participation of its new residents. This is not to mention the follow-on problems of the illegal immigration racket—the abuses of coyote smugglers, the empowerment of cartels, and the like.Frustration with this mess is what’s buoying Trump’s candidacy. “Comprehensive immigration reform” has become code for a repeat of the 1986 bill, strong on amnesty but weak on enforcement. And Americans across the spectrum understand that illegal immigration followed by amnesty would lead to more illegal immigration, as people worldwide begin for some reason to suspect that illegal immigration to America is really just delayed legal immigration. Larger and larger sections of the American public, not seeing a better option on the table, begin to think that a repeat of 1924 looks better and better. An ultra-restrictionist policy would be expensive, unwieldy, and a sharp break with current practice, sure—but that’s nothing the American voters haven’t demanded (and gotten) before.Fortunately, there are better options available, options that our failed immigration-activist class needs to start embracing and explaining in order to avert disaster. There’s a middle ground between uncontrolled illegal immigration and total restrictionism that most Americans can see and, given some leadership, would gladly occupy. Firstly, due to the failure of the amnesty-first, border security-second plan in the 1980s, border enforcement must come first this time for another grand bargain to be politically credible. For this to work, a new law would have to differentiate between new border crossers and illegals already here (as, for instance, the President’s current executive order on DREAMers claims to be able to do) long enough for enforcement to become visible and credible. Secondly, once the border is secure—visibly and in a way the public can trust—then for humanitarian and civic reasons, amnesty should follow. Thirdly, any deal would be more palatable and more workable if it were balanced with increased levels of legal immigration. This would make it clear to the Left that the policy in question wasn’t about restricting opportunity so much as bringing the question of who receives that opportunity under public scrutiny. It would also allow the Right to reframe the immigration narrative in terms of opportunity and economic dynamism. And it would presumably cut down on some, though not all, of the “draw” factors of illegal immigration by meeting much of the economy’s need for new workers.Of course, these compromises form a thicket of thorny issues. Where would we set the exact level of legal immigration? How would we adjust that number, so that it could respond to events—for instance, going up when the economy’s good, and coming down when unemployment’s a problem? Where would the new immigrants come from? What types of immigrants would get first preference? And so on. Well, dealing with tricky policy issues like these is what we pay Congress for, and advising them and lobbying them when they get it wrong is what immigration specialists and activists exist to do. This is a democracy, after all; these matters need to be hashed out in the public sphere (and ratified afterward indirectly by the voters). Right now they’re settled through a parallel system of coyotes, immigrants hiding in the shadows, and once-a-generation executive or legislative amnesties.Unfortunately, for those of us who want to avoid restrictionism, our leaders have not put these better options on the table. By now, the public knows that the Left doesn’t really want to secure the border. Liberals have not put forward a plan that would credibly do so in a generation. They have demonized those who have called for one. And worst of all, Democrats have spent a decade more-or-less openly salivating about the prospect of an immigrant-fueled “emerging Democratic majority” stretching endlessly into the distance. This tainted the whole project of reintegrating America’s illegal population as a partisan ploy. (No, the Left’s subsequent regret, now that it appears the “emerging majority” won’t happen, doesn’t wipe away the problems this rhetoric created.)Both parties have botched the case for increased legal immigration. Business-friendly Republicans have allowed it to be sullied by supporting measures like the H-1B and H-2 visas, which tie the visas of foreign workers to their employers. If workers holding these visas quit, or are fired, they have to leave the country. As I’ve written before, these visas hit the trifecta of bad policy: they’re used to displace American workers at cheaper rates, they facilitate exploitation of the immigrants in question, and they deprive the national economy of the full dynamism unfettered immigrants offer. Such measures divert political momentum from healthy reform and confirm the worst suspicions of the antis.These flawed approaches are compounded by other, rhetorical problems. (A tip for immigration reformers: it’s generally not helpful to portray middle America as a bunch of mouth-breathing xenophobes when you’re canvassing for popular support.) And the net result is that neither party enjoys the public’s confidence enough to reform the situation. The last time the Republicans tried, the John McCain and George W. Bush-backed 2007 Immigration Reform Act foundered amid a public outcry. For their part, the Democrats were unable even to touch the subject in 2009-10, despite controlling a large majority in both houses of Congress and the Presidency. What’s more, popular opinion was right both times—the proposals being circulated would have exacerbated, not fixed, our current immigration problems. The current generation of would-be reformers has earned the public’s distrust.That’s a shame. The basic compromise that’s been circulating since 1986—border enforcement, then amnesty, with a reformed legal immigration scheme—still seems suited to solve our problems, if implemented properly this time. Better yet, sold as a package, it’s politically appealing to most Americans. The main points of the resulting bill would look like this: better enforcement of the borders, including cracking down on visa overstayers and implementing the e-Verify program to screen new hires for legal status, matched with amnesty for the otherwise law-abiding among those already here (we cannot, logistically, deport 11 million people, nor would it be right to). And above all else, we need a generous new legal immigration policy, grounded in an honest and reasonable estimation of the level of legal immigration needed to sustain economic dynamism, pegged to changing economic conditions through a formula that would make it saleable to the skeptical but persuadable citizens of Middle America.New immigration realities are creating space to try for another try at a bargain after the next election. The Latin immigration wave has begun to subside, as economic conditions in Mexico and other Latin American countries have improved. China and India overtook Mexico as the leading sources of U.S. immigrants starting in 2013. Both of our two new leading immigrant populations are relatively well-educated, relatively affluent, and well-positioned for a 21st century economy. The time is ripe, then, for a pivot to a new national immigration policy for that century—one more honest to our citizens, more generous to our immigrants, and more beneficial to the national interest.But due to the failure of our elites, we couldn’t be further from reform. Instead, the left has embraced the satisfying but ultimately dead-end rhetorical position that anyone who doesn’t embrace amnesty, in total and without conditions, is a racist. Centrist Republicans are cowed and silent. And we’re all stuck with the Donald.

Grad Degrees Drive Student Debt Disaster

Outstanding student loan debt now stands at around $1.2 trillion, and recent data suggests that graduates are increasingly falling behind on their payments. Yields on government-backed student loan bonds are rising relative to the LIBOR benchmark, highlighting rising worries among traditionally risk-averse investors about a sector of the market usually viewed as a safe bet. Moody’s is reevaluating its criteria for assessing the riskiness of securitized student debt, according to the Financial Times. A serious downgrade by Moody’s—which is scheduled to release the new criteria by Labor Day—could send the student debt market further off the cliff.

How did we get into this mess? The Wall Street Journal describes the outsized role played by overpriced graduate degrees, and the generous federal loan programs that prop up their sky-high tuition:

The doubling of student debt since the recession, to $1.19 trillion, has stoked a national discussion over how to rein in college costs and debt and is becoming a major issue in the 2016 presidential race. Little noted in the outcry is the disproportionate role played by postgraduate borrowers, who now account for roughly 40% of all student debt but represent just 14% of students in higher education.

Propelling the surge in grad-school debt is a welter of federal programs that make it easy for students to borrow large amounts, then to have substantial chunks of those debts eventually forgiven. Critics of the system say it makes it easier for graduate schools to raise tuition, and for some high-earning graduates such as doctors to escape debts they can afford to repay.

The data supports, among other things, the lawyer glut narrative we have been following for the last few years; the WSJ reports that debt growth has been most severe among law-school graduates. This is not surprising. Many law students took out massive loans when the JD was still viewed as an automatic ticket to an upper-middle class lifestyle. Thanks to the lawyer surplus and new technological innovations, this is no longer the case, and cash-strapped JDs are struggling to make good on the loans they took out when their degree looked like it would be much more lucrative.

But the problem extends beyond law school. As credential inflation proceeded apace, the number of students earning expensive master’s degrees swelled over the last few decades. Medical school debt has also soared, though doctors are often better-situated to pay it back than other graduate degree-holding professionals.The student loan crisis obviously poses the most acute problem for graduates, but it could soon become a problem for taxpayers in general. As John Dizard has noted, the federal government guarantees hundreds of billions of dollars of privately funded loans, an amount “on the same order as Greece’s debt to multilateral institutions.” Many of these loans are in income-based repayment programs, where students pay back a percentage of their income for a certain number of years, and the public is on the hook for the remaining balance.How the U.S. addresses its student loan crisis will be one of the major fiscal questions of the next decade. Reforming overpriced graduate programs has to be part of the answer.

China Rounds Up 15,000 in Push Against Cyber Crime

As part of its general crackdown on corruption, religious minorities, and anybody who poses a political threat to President Xi, China has been going after cyber criminals. Beijing’s latest announcement on that front is a biggie; authorities have reportedly rounded up north of 15,000 alleged cyber criminals recently, The FT reports:

“For the next step, the public security organs will continue to increase their investigation and crackdown on cyber crimes,” the ministry said on its website, adding that the arrests had resulted from investigations into 7,400 cases.

Last month, according to the statement, China launched a campaign code-named “Cleaning the Internet”, aimed at destroying online “criminal gangs”.China has a general problem with domestic cyber hacking and identity theft, which are rampant on the internet, and mainly perpetrated by gangs based elsewhere in Asia.

Chinese cybercriminals aren’t just people who sneak past Beijing’s “Great Firewall” and access the broader internet in order to find pornography or trade on black markets. They also include bloggers and citizen journalists whose work can be a real thorn in the side of an authoritarian state (as Vladimir Putin learned from opposition figure and corruption blogger Alexi Navalny). The FT goes on:

However, it is also clear that in the government’s definition, “cyber crime” in China also includes blogging and the use of social media to spread alternative points of view. Since August 2013 authorities have launched campaigns against “rumour mongering” on the internet. […]

Blogging in China is frequently a cat-and-mouse game between users and government spies, who keep a close eye on posts with any political content and swiftly block the use of any keywords that hint at dissent.

With the Chinese economy’s recent turmoil, Xi’s plan to “batten down the hatches” against the coming storm by intensifying social and political control of citizens’ lives is more urgent than ever.

Images of Rage and of Mercy

On August 14, 2015, The New York Times carried a story by Rukmini Callimachi titled “ISIS Enshrines a Theology of Rape.” I had seen the author on the preceding day in a lengthy interview on Public Television. It is about the systematic sexual slavery imposed on Yazidi women by the Islamist regime in Iraq and Syria. This monstrosity had been reported before, but not with the scope, the bureaucratic organization, and the details described in the NYT story. I found most appalling the theological handbook on the permissible treatment of sex slaves distributed to ISIS fighters about to purchase some, and the account by an underage victim of how her captor repeatedly prayed while raping her. In earlier reports, the availability of sex slaves had been mentioned as a recruiting device used by ISIS in Europe. One could imagine that this might be successful with the psychopaths who lurk on the margins of every society, most of whom could not care less about Islam. What is clear from this report is that at least some of these jihadis really believe that they are fulfilling a divine commandment by raping an infidel child. For them rage is a religious virtue, and any feeling of mercy is to be suppressed as a sinful weakness.

Very few people had ever heard of the couple of hundred thousand remaining Yazidis before they broke into the news when ISIS conquered their home territory in the Nineveh province of northern Iraq. Actually they are an interesting case of a small surviving religion. Originally derived from Zoroastrianism, the faith of ancient Iran, the Yazidis believe that the world was created by one God, who set seven angels to rule over it. One of these, Melek Taus (also known as the Peacock Angel), rebelled against God and was cast into hell. This figure is very likely identical to Satan, another product of the Iranian religious imagination and prototype of the Biblical angel who fell from heaven. But in the Yazidi myth the Peacock Angel was reconciled with God and is therefore an object of devotion. This is just about precisely the opposite of the widespread idea (among Muslims as well as Christians in the region) that Yazidis worship the devil—if so, it is a repentant devil returned to God’s favor. In any case, Yazidis (unlike Christians and Jews) were never recognized by Muslims as “People of the Book” and thus accorded some protection (even as second-class citizens). ISIS barely recognizes this fine distinction; it commits genocide against the most ancient Christian communities in the world, and would undoubtedly commit it against Jews if it could find any. But Yazidis were singled out for particularly ferocious persecution.ISIS has managed to become a widespread image of pure evil. How is that image to be related to the perception of Islam as a whole? The Obama Administration studiously omits the term “Islamist”, always uses the vague category of “extremists.” (Does this include homicidal Presbyterians? Enraged Methodists?) This linguistic etiquette affects the curious manner in which the media continue to refer to this group—“IS, also known as ISIS, ISIL, DAESH” (this latest being an Arabic acronym). In other words, anything that doesn’t use the adjective “Islamic.” (Perhaps, instead of referring to Russia, in whose ancient banners Putin wraps himself, we should refer to “the former Soviet Union, a.k.a. Holy Rus, a.k.a. the Third Rome”—or just refer to “the Putin mafia”.)The rhetorical separation of “genuine” Islam from the Islamist monstrosities that dominate the news makes political sense: Western democracies do not want to appear to be waging war against one of the world’s most populous faiths. Also, it makes intellectual sense: The sex slavery manual of ISIS does not represent the moral consensus of Muslims either today or in the past. But to say that ISIS has ”nothing to do with Islam” is like saying that the Crusades or the Inquisition had “nothing to do with Christianity.” (The Crusades were a European real estate venture in the Middle East? Torquemada just wanted to provide fireworks for public entertainment?)This avoidance of reference to Islam dates from 9/11. President George W. Bush wanted to emphasize that we were not at war with Islam, and that we didn’t blame all Muslims for the attack against the World Trade Center and the other targets in the U.S. He said “Islam means peace.” This was said with the best of intentions. It was not good Arabic: The word “Islam” does not mean “peace”; it means “submission”, from the verb aslama/”to submit.” (My Arabic is hardly better than Bush’s. But at that moment he didn’t have good linguists at hand.) The strategy worked remarkably well, at least for a while. The presidential embrace of Islam was followed by a barrage of the same message from an impressive array of American religious leaders (Christian and Jewish), expressions of solidarity with “good” Muslims all over the country, and an upsurge of interest in courses and books about Islam. In the immediate aftermath of the attack there was a single violent incident in which a man was killed—a taxi driver who wore a turban (he was a Sikh!). There is of course the opposite reaction (interestingly more recent than 2011), manifested by enraged preachers burning the Quran and other manifestations of fierce anti-Muslim sentiments. This reaction is much in evidence in populist parties in Europe. Geert Wilders, who founded such a party in the Netherlands, exemplifies the identification of Islam as such with its most violent contemporary excesses. Wilders also compared the Quran with Hitler’s Mein Kampf; he advocated that the former be banned just as the latter has already been banned in the Netherlands. (He is also staunchly pro-Israel.)There has been much talk recently, on both sides of the Atlantic, that ISIS cannot only be opposed militarily, that it must also be opposed on the battlefield of ideas. British Prime Minister David Cameron has urged this forcefully. The psychopaths who flock to ISIS’s black banners will not be swayed by such ideas, especially if developed and preached by Islam experts in Western universities (boots on the ground with academic credentials? Obama, I’m sure, would love that )—or worse, by bureaucrats in the State Department or Whitehall. Yet it is difficult to quarrel with the proposal for a viable ideological response to radical Islamism. But there are two questions about this: Who should present these ideas? And where can they be found? The first question can be answered quite easily: The ideas will have to be presented from within the global Muslim community, preferably by relatively conservative Muslim thinkers (and not those so liberalized that they have no broader following). Also they are unlikely to be in places where heterodox ideas can be physically dangerous. As to the source of these ideas: There are many traditions within Islam of independent interpretation (ijtihad) of the Quran, of hadith (non-scriptural traditions about the Prophet), and (especially important) of Islamic law. In the recent volume 18 of Current Trends in Islamist Ideology, published by the Hudson Institute, there is a surprisingly optimistic article by Reza Rumi, about “The Prospects for Reform in Islam.”I am not a Muslim, nor even a non-Muslim scholar of Islam. But I have an idea that the core of a religious tradition can be pronounced while one stands on one leg. I get this idea from Hillel the Elder (first century BCE), one of the fathers of rabbinical Judaism, who was asked (mockingly, I think) whether he could explain Torah while standing on one foot. He said yes, then pronounced the oldest known version of the Golden Rule (contrary to what many Christians think, Jesus did not originate this sentence; he was evidently citing Hillel). Then Hillel added a wonderful postscript: “The rest is commentary.” There is a Muslim saying, “The entire Quran is contained in the Bismillah” (I cannot locate the reference). The Bismillah /“in the name of” begins the first sentence of the first chapter (sura) of the Quran, which is then repeated over and over again at the beginning of every subsequent chapter and at the beginning of every daily prayer by a pious Muslim (which adds up to sixty-eight times every day). The sentence is Bismillah al-Rahman al-Rahim. The translation from the Arabic is difficult if one wants to avoid using two synonyms for the adjective—I understand that rhm is the so-called “stem” of the words for “mercy” or “compassion”—with rahman denoting a condition, rahim an action. So, if I follow these instructions, I come up with an English version: “In the name of God, who is merciful, who acts mercifully”. I may not know Arabic, but it seems to me that this sentence beautifully sums up the core quality of the God revealed in the Quran. A modest suggestion: There is the point where one may begin a counter-message against the merciless cult of death preached and practiced by ISIS. There is a hadith where these words are put in God’s (or perhaps the Prophet’s) mouth: “My mercy overcomes my anger.” Jalaluddin Rumi (1207­–1273), arguably the most profound Muslim mystic, says in a poem: “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field—I’ll meet you there.” In a curious way, this foreshadows a sentence by Emmanuel Levinas (1906­–1995), the French Talmudist and philosopher: “Beyond the law, there is the vast ocean of mercy.” It is as if Rumi’s Persian words anticipated Levinas’ French ones by seven hundred years (or who knows, perhaps the other way around–mystical perceptions transcend all categories!). In this connection, let me suggest that the comparison between Islam and Judaism is especially interesting in terms of the understanding of God’s mercy and his anger (the “wrath of God” in the Hebrew Bible). Both Islam and Judaism are religions of Law. (The word din actually means “law” in both Arabic and Hebrew. From early on rabbinical Judaism applied to legal reasoning the pervasive idea of God’s mercy. Until the destruction of Jewish sovereignty by the Romans in the first century CE the highest Jewish court was the Sanhedrin, which sat in Jerusalem. It was entitled to pass death sentences. But the imposition of such a sentence was made so difficult by various provisions that it was very rarely imposed. A Sanhedrin that passed even one death sentence in 70 years was called “a bloody Sanhedrin.” Then there was no Jewish state for all the centuries until the modern state of Israel; during this time the issue of the death penalty was purely theoretical (like when the rabbis discussed details of worship in the Jerusalem Temple that no longer existed). The modern State of Israel abolished capital punishment from its inception. It never executed an Arab terrorist. The only time a death sentence was pronounced and carried out was in the case of Adolf Eichmann (where even an ardent opponent of capital punishment might be tempted to approve). In any case, there is no reason to think that Islamic law, which began some seven hundred years after the beginning of rabbinical Judaism, could not also re-interpret the harshness of its din.Back to the question of who could be in the vanguard of the reform of Islam that is widely being called for. It is plausible that the Muslim diaspora in Western democracies could play an important role in this. Here are Muslims, many of whom have gone through modern higher education, who are enjoying vigorous protection of their religious freedom, and who are at least relatively free of intimidation by fundamentalist Islamists (at least as compared to the situation in the Islamic heartland). Of course they have every right to protest against any violations of their rights as citizens of a democracy. But it seems to me that they have more important things to do than to go on complaining about “Islamophobia” (as if the annoyance of special scrutiny at airports is somehow the moral equivalent of genocide). It is possible that the other Islam will take shape in America and Western Europe.

Producers Suffer as the Oil Gushes

Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, is trading just above $47 per barrel. America’s benchmark, West Texas Intermediate (WTI), is just a few quarters away from dipping below $40 per barrel. That’s an astonishing drop from last summer’s $100+ per barrel levels, and as the Energy Information Administration (EIA) reports, those prices aren’t expected to significantly rebound anytime soon:

EIA has lowered crude oil price forecasts in the Short-Term Energy Outlook (STEO), expecting West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil prices to average $49 per barrel (b) in 2015 and $54/b in 2016, $6/b and $8/b lower than forecast in last month’s STEO, respectively. Concerns over the pace of economic growth in emerging markets, continuing (albeit slowing) supply growth, increases in global liquids inventories, and the possibility of increasing volumes of Iranian crude oil entering the market contributed to the changed forecast.

In other words, oil producers need to get used to these prices, because they appear to be the new reality for crude markets. The world is positively swimming in crude right now as OPEC hits record output numbers while American shale firms, the market’s newcomers, continue to surprise with their ability to keep the crude flowing even as their margins shrink.

A prolonged period of cheap oil prices will further incentivize fracking companies to streamline processes and innovate new ways to boost output with less investment, though it will also cull the lesser-performing plays and put a dent into what had been a period of unchecked growth for U.S. oil production. But the picture for OPEC’s members and the rest of the world’s petrostates is a lot grimmer, as these regimes will have to find new ways to balance their budgets (or finance their debts) as the bearish market pushes them further into the red.Consumers can expect relief at the pump, though the EIA notes that strong demand and refinery outages have led to an increase in the average U.S. gas price this summer. Analysts expect gas prices to drop again this fall, and, when they do, American drivers will be experiencing one of the many effects of the remarkable collapse in the price of oil this past year.

Ashley Madison and the New Web Anarchists

In January, we noted that 2014 was the year that the internet, with its troves of personal data, private corporate communications, and state secrets, began to “slip out of control”:

The snoops, the spies, and the cybercrooks spent last year consolidating a tight hold on the commanding heights of the worldwide web, even as more of our lives moved online. The global internet was supposed to be a transformational agent of human empowerment, but in 2014 it became clear that it is also an incredibly powerful weapon against which national governments, corporations and, yes, you, have no practical defense. 

These “snoops, spies, and cybercrooks” have a wide range of motives and agendas. Some are moralistic, some are selfish, and some, like the Joker from Batman, probably “want to watch the world burn.” WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange is a left-wing anti-government extremist; the Sony hackers appear to have been totalitarian puppets of North Korea; the JP Morgan hackers were fraudsters in it for the money. And now, with the unfolding story that hackers have posted the personal information of all members of Ashley Madison (a website for married adults looking to have affairs) the world may be faced with its first high-profile social conservative hacker-activists, or perhaps its first feminist hackers, or perhaps simply Joker-anarchists, depending on how you parse their statements and ultimatums.

“Too bad for these men, they’re cheating dirtbags”, the hackers wrote last month. “Find yourself in here? It was ALM [Avid Live Media, Ashley Madison’s parent company] that failed you and lied to you. Prosecute them and claim damages. Then move on with your life. Learn your lesson and make amends”, they said in a recent statement accompanying the released data. Are the hackers trying to punish the company, or teach its unfaithful users a lesson, or both? It’s unclear. For its part, ALM’s statement describes the hackers as militant Puritans:

This … is an illegal action against the individual members of AshleyMadison.com, as well as any freethinking people who choose to engage in fully lawful online activities. The criminal, or criminals, involved in this act have appointed themselves as the moral judge, juror, and executioner, seeing fit to impose a personal notion of virtue on all of society. We will not sit idly by and allow these thieves to force their personal ideology on citizens around the world.

Like most people who frown on infidelity, we at Via Meadia can’t help but be at least somewhat amused by this event—just as, no doubt, any North Korean partisans out there were amused by the Sony hack and left-wing anti-government extremists cheered Julian Assange’s exposure of State Department cables.

But the fact that any particular act of web vigilantism comports with one’s particular social or political ideology obscures the broader issue: The online systems that house more and more of our most personal information are not secure. It’s tempting to decry some privacy breaches and let others slide, much the same way as its easy to tolerate speech you agree with but hard to tolerate speech that attacks your most cherished beliefs. But however we may feel about the victims of a particular hack, everyone’s online privacy needs to be protected, and the Ashley Madison hack is another reminder that we still have a long way to go on that front.

Bad Stats Fall Flat

As technological innovation massively transforms our economy, many of the metrics we use to assess economic health increasingly miss the real story. The WSJ reports on the apparent failure of companies to aggressively pursue investment in “new machines, factories and technologies.” Some believe this low investment could explain why economic and productivity growth remain subpar globally, but that might not tell the whole story:

Many economists say the trend may not be as alarming as it looks. Data showing weak corporate investment, they argue, fail to capture powerful new trends in technology and business practices. They also say the nature of production has changed: Technology and connectivity are making machines more efficient. Software and data processing also are reducing the need for traditional capital-goods equipment. […]

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, following a two-year project titled “New Sources of Growth,” said companies now tend to invest as much or more in knowledge-based capital as they do in physical capital, such as machinery and equipment. That, according to the OECD, is creating “new challenges for policy makers, for business and for the ways in which economic activity is measured.”

Pundits and policymakers often use GDP growth as the main gauge for economic vitality, but focusing our lens entirely on that kind of statistic means our analyses miss the larger picture of better functionality, efficiency, and affordability created by the information revolution and new digital technologies. Moreover, as the article states, our methods for collecting and analyzing output and productivity data are themselves past their sell-by date. We are in desperate need of better ways to assess the changes brought about by technological innovation.

Arab League Poised to Supply Arms to Libya

Declaring that “Libyan national security is Arab national security”, Libya’s government has called for Arab arms—and the Arab League Secretary-General has agreed that member states should provide them. The Wall Street Journal reports:

The appeal for arms was made by Libyan Foreign Minister Mohammed al-Dairi during an emergency session of the Arab League in Cairo. It came days after the government called for airstrikes by Arab allies on Islamic State positions in Sirte, the coastal city that was Mr. Gadhafi’s hometown and is now controlled by the militant group’s Libyan offshoot.

Arab League Secretary-General Nabil Elaraby supported Mr. Dairi’s request and urged members to respond quickly.

Though there was no immediate pledge of arms, that could change quickly; Egypt, backed by the U.A.E., has a strong interest in restoring order in Libya. And another shoe might be about to drop: Egypt’s president Abdel Fattah al-Sisi has called for Arab countries to field a transnational military force. According to the Journal, the League will meet on August 27 to talk over the status of the force. No prizes for guessing where it might be used.

Meanwhile, Western and international responses to the Libya problem continue to be ineffective at best:

Libya has been under a United Nations weapons embargo since 2011 and the U.N. has long resisted lifting it, citing fears that weapons could end up with the myriad militant groups operating in Libya, including Islamic State.

Shipping arms to Libya would undermine ongoing United Nations-led peace talks, a Western diplomat said.

The peace talks haven’t led to peace, and the arms embargo hasn’t deprived the Libyan dumpster fire of oxygen. No wonder the Arab League is starting, tentatively, to move on its own. And if that happens, the West will wind up watching from the sidelines as others resolve a war it started, then abandoned.

Obamacare Co-Ops Looking Like Solyndra?

Last winter, CoOpportunity Health, one of the 23 health care co-ops created by the ACA, went under after it could no longer afford to pay for the care of its customers, who turned out to be sicker than the co-op expected them to be. The co-op was one of the only insurers offering ACA plans in Iowa, and its collapse was a victory for big insurers. In the wake of its demise, it remains uncertain whether the company will be able to pay back federal loans of $147 million.

It now appears that CoOpportunity Health is not alone in the predicament it found itself. In case you missed it, the New York Times recently picked up on an audit released last month of the 23 co-ops created under the law. The story does not paint a pretty picture: 22 out of 23 co-ops lost money last year, and many could find it hard to repay the 2.4 billion that the federal government spent overall on the co-ops.

The story notes that not all the news is bad: Some of the co-ops are doing better than others, and some quoted by the Times predict that the co-ops’ financial situations will improve over time. Even there, however, the news is mixed, for one way some of these co-ops may become solvent, and thus able to pay back their federal loans, is by raising premiums:

The Kentucky plan lost $50 million last year, more than any other insurance co-op, as it paid out $1.25 in claims for every dollar it collected in premiums.

“We attracted many consumers with serious illnesses,” Ms. Dunlap said. “One of our most popular plans had low premiums, low out-of-pocket costs and a large network of providers. It’s difficult, it’s uphill, but we are energetic and hopeful. Trends are going in the right direction.”

The Kentucky insurance commissioner recently approved rate increases averaging 25 percent for the Kentucky Health Cooperative in 2016. The co-op said the additional revenue would help reduce its losses.

In the case of CoOpportunity Health, the failed company may be able to use other federal money due to it through the risk corridor program to discharge some of its liabilities. But if it will take big premium hikes to enable some of the co-ops to repay their federal loans, that’s the kind of cure that is worse than the disease.

No Room for Improvement

Why has the Obama Administration—in public, at least—rejected all suggestions to improve the Iran nuclear agreement?

Last week, I proposed five specific improvements to the Iran deal. These included ways to repair flaws in the process of penalizing Iran for possible violations; to raise the cost to Iran of transferring sanction relief funds to terrorist proxies; and to strengthen deterrence so Iran thinks twice before exploiting sunset clauses in the deal to sprint toward a nuclear weapon at a later date. Every one of these suggestions could be achieved either by unilateral U.S. action or coordination with our European allies. In other words, I argued that the agreement can be substantially improved without reopening its contents for renegotiation.I don’t claim originality for these ideas. Many were included in two statements issued weeks ago by members of The Washington Institute’s bipartisan Iran Study Group (here and here). My contribution was to pull them together and present them as evidence that one does not have to believe in unicorns, as Secretary of State Kerry suggested, to believe there are legitimate ways to improve the Iran deal.So far, however, the Obama Administration has doubled-down on the proposition that any improvement is a “fantasy.” With less than a month to the congressional vote, and public skepticism about the agreement growing, there has been no public recognition that the President considers any improvements possible, let alone preferable.On the face of it, this is understandable. After all, the White House does not need to win votes in either the House or the Senate; it merely needs to lose votes by less-than-landslide margins. With the yardstick for victory so low, success may come solely with solidifying core supporters. This was most likely the reason for the President’s rouse-the-base, my-way-or-the-highway speech at American University.But this approach doesn’t really take account of the substantial number of senators and congressmen who remain uneasy about the deal, despite efforts by advocates to lock up “yes” votes as early as possible. For many of these still-undecideds, a comprehensive set of improvements would likely push them into the “approval” camp. Conversely, the more time that passes with the Administration circling the wagons and refusing to pursue sensible correctives, the more likely some will just say “no.”So, why hasn’t the Administration taken any serious steps to address constructive critics of the agreement? In my view, there are seven possible reasons.1) The Administration really does believe its own rhetoric. If this is the case, then, by definition, no critic can be constructive and no improvements are possible or necessary. Given the gravity of the issues, one has to hope that the Administration has not deluded itself into thinking it has achieved the diplomatic equivalent of the divine and immutable message Moses brought down from Mt. Sinai.2) The Administration privately accepts the need for improvements but finds itself up a tree without a ladder. Having spent the month since the announcement of the Vienna accord arguing that improvements are fanciful, the White House may feel boxed in by its own rhetoric and fearful of the political fallout of admitting that fixes are both worthwhile and doable. The result is simply to wish the idea away. In this situation, political discretion sadly trumps strategic interest.3) The Administration is concerned about spooking Iran. This theory holds that taking any additional measures now to bolster deterrence will be evidence to Iran of America’s bad faith, triggering the unraveling of the entire agreement.  This even extends to a presidential declaration to use “all means necessary” to prevent Iran’s accumulation of highly enriched uranium, whose only practical use is for a nuclear weapon—a declaration that would have no practical effect until 2030, when restrictions on enrichment and centrifuges expire. The problem with this is twofold: first, none of the proposed improvements violates any terms of the agreement, so the Administration would be holding itself to an unreachable standard of deference to Iranian sensibilities. Second, and more importantly, if the Administration restrains itself from bolstering deterrence against Iran now, before the deal has even gone into effect, this is a horrible sign of the deep reluctance it will have to take any effective measures in the months and years ahead. If this is the reason for Administration inaction, Iran really is in the driver’s seat.4) The Administration tried to reach understandings with the Europeans and failed. Two of the five proposals to improve the deal focus on fleshing out details of cooperation with our allies. These include a commonly agreed-upon set of punishments for various Iranian violations of the agreement and a commonly agreed-upon approach to penalizing Iran for transferring sanctions-relief funds to its terrorist proxies. In this scenario, the Administration has quietly tried to reach understandings with London, Paris and Berlin but has been rebuffed; eager for the end of sanctions, the Euros will entertain no serious discussion of punishments, penalties, or other strategies that could validate the reintroduction of sanctions through some new format. If this is the case, the Administration would want to keep mum about European rejection of American overtures as word of such a trans-Atlantic divide could tilt the congressional vote toward disapproval.5) The Administration is too angry at Israel to give it independent means to undermine the deal. One idea proposed by members of the Iran Study Group and championed by my colleague Dennis Ross, former White House advisor on Iran policy, is to complement America’s own enhanced deterrence against Iran by ensuring that Israel retains its own non-nuclear deterrent capability. This could be achieved by transferring to Israel the one conventional weapon in the U.S. arsenal that could do substantial damage to Iran’s underground nuclear facilities, the Massive Ordnance Penetrator. In this scenario, Israel’s direct and public opposition to the nuclear deal soured the Administration on any serious consideration of the idea. There is simply too much ill will between the leaderships of the two countries to contemplate providing Israel with the tools it could use to act on its own against Iran. Again, politics trumps interest.6) The Administration considers the fact of the deal more important than its content, because the President genuinely sees it as transformative. According to this view, the transactional aspects of the deal—such as details of monitoring, verification, and consequences for violations—aren’t really important compared to the meta-change it triggers: the re-entry of Shi’ite Iran into the international system as a regional power to whom the United States can turn to resolve local problems and balance the dysfunction of America’s traditional Sunni allies. Since the announcement of the Vienna accord, Administration advocates have soft-pedaled these “transformational” arguments but it is not difficult to connect the dots from statements by the President and his top aides to see this goal emerge as a key animating rationale for the agreement. If this is the case, then the White House has little reason to worry much about what happens when restrictions on Iran’s enrichment and centrifuges expire in year ten or fifteen. By then, this argument goes, the Islamic Republic will already be a status quo partner cooperating with America on a broad range of regional issue.7) The Administration is quietly pursuing a comprehensive set of improvements and only needs more time to present them to Congress and the American people. There are two variations of this explanation for the Administration’s public posture—one promising, the other worrisome.The promising scenario is that the White House does recognize the necessity and urgency of devising a comprehensive set of fixes to some of the problems raised in and by the agreement and is working diligently toward that goal. In this scenario, the enemy is time. The most important fixes for near-term problems need U.S.-European cooperation, but negotiating with the Europeans is only slightly less vexing that negotiating with the Iranians. There may just not be enough time before the Congressional vote to work out the necessary details.In that case, one hopes the Administration approaches responsible leaders in Congress­—such as Senators Bob Corker and Ben Cardin, chairman and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, for example—and asks for an extension of the 60-day review period so it can complete the task. The alternative may be for legislators to disapprove the agreement, signaling their willingness to reconsider if the Administration produces the improvements that would merit a new vote.The worrisome alternative is that the White House is waiting until the last minute to offer one or two grudging concessions to its critics, in the hope that will mollify lingering undecided legislators thirsting for anything to justify a “yes” vote. The most likely of these would be a shift in declaratory policy that commits the U.S. to take action, including military force, to prevent Iran’s accumulation of fissile material for a bomb 15 years from now. After all, it’s pretty easy for the incumbent president to promise something that only binds a future president three elections from now. This eleventh-hour approach would fall short of a comprehensive set of improvements that would constitute a “better deal” but, for the White House, it would have the benefit of coming so late in the day so as to limit demands to concede more.Taken together, the odds aren’t great. Out of seven possible scenarios, six and a half are deeply problematic; only one version of one explanation holds promise. For the sake of an improved proposal that truly advances American interests in the Middle East, let’s hope that’s the one that describes what is really going on.